The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley

Books by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley (1985) Centaurus Changeling (1954) The Climbing Wave (1955) Exiles of Tomorrow (1955) Death Between the Stars (1956) Bird of Prey (1957) The Wind People (1959) The Wild One (1960) Treason of the Blood The Day of the Butterflies (1976) Hero's Moon (1976) The Engine (1977) The Secret of the Blue Star (1979) To Keep the Oath (1979) Elbow Room (1980) Blood Will Tell (1980) The Brass Dragon Endless Universe (1975) Part One PLANETS ARE FOR SAYING GOODBYE Part Two A TIME TO MOURN

Part Three HELLWORLD Part Four COLD DEATH Part Five A WORLD WITH YOUR NAME ON IT Falcons of Narabedla The Fall of Atlantis (1983) 1 Web of Light 2 Web of Darkness Afterword The Firebrand (1987) Hunters 1 Hunters of the Red Moon (1973)

The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley

(1985)

A SPHERE BOOK First published in the USA by Daw Books Inc. 1988 First published in Great Britain by Sphere Books Limited 1990 Copyright © Marion Zimmer Bradley 1985 All rights reserved. Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading. ISBN 0747404658 Sphere Books Ltd A Division of Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ A member of Maxwell Pergamon Publishing Corporation pic The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley

Introduction

I've told the story before; how, on a train journey from Watertown, New York, back to my family home in Rensselaer County, I changed trains in Utica, and, almost for the first time in my life, bought myself a box of chocolates and a magazine of my own free choice. It was literally the first time in my life that I had been in a newsstand with money from my summer job in my pocket; and I happened to have memory of reading a couple of issues of Weird Tales which I'd found in our attic before my mother, troubled by the lurid covers and the fear I'd have nightmares, took them away from me. I had intended to buy myself a copy of Weird Tales; but they didn't seem to have that magazine, so I looked around and bought myself a copy of Startling Stories containing the Kuttner novel THE DARK WORLD, which I later knew to have been written by Catherine Moore Kuttner instead.

Looking back over a long, not uneventful life, I can honestly say that no experience in my life has ever given me the same excited delight as riding through the twilight, reading Kuttner's wonderful mythic novel of a man who changed worlds. Perhaps it could compare only with the fascination of my first LSD trip, or the time I first walked through the British Museum of which I had read so much, or my first Turandot at Lincoln Center, or standing high atop the shrine at Delphi and looking down at the old Sacred Way. To this day, I can remember the shock of delight reading Tennyson's poem Tithonus where I discovered the quote which must have been

used for the title: "A soft wind blows the mists away: I feel A breath from that dark world where I was born."

When I finished the Kuttner novel, I read a couple of the short stories - I remember Jack Vance's "Planet of the Black Dust" - and then turned to the "fan letter columns" in the back. Shock of thrills: there were other people who loved this kind of story and were willing to talk about them, and even published fanzines to write about them.

By the time my journey was finished, I knew not only that I wanted to be a writer but that I wanted to write science fiction. Later that summer I typed a first draft of the novel I had written the year before, which ten years later was to see print under the name THE SWORD OF ALDQNES, and submitted it to Startling Stories: it was kindly rejected by Sam Merwin, the editor at that time. Later, Leo Margulies, the editor of Startling and its sister magazine Thrilling Wonder, bought several of my short stories. At that time I also began writing to magazines and to fanzines, and that fall I started fan activity. After a desperately lonely childhood as a bookworm among kids interested only in throwing various shapes and sizes of balls, or dressing up in short skirts and jumping around yelling "Yay, yay, yay" about the ball-throwers (an activity which is still, I consider, the only activity sillier than throwing the balls themselves), I discovered congenial people, who would and could talk to me as if I were a person, not a little girl.

Three years later, still an active fan, I married (it was, and in some areas still is the only way for a young woman to get away from a bad home situation) and during fourteen years in Texas in small and smaller towns, following the fortunes of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad

for which my first husband worked as an Agent-telegrapher, I substituted fan activity for the football -and-church centered life of Texas. To this day the mail is the high point of the day, and an empty mailbox will make me sulk or fall into a depression. I published fanzines, wrote voluminously for them, wrote reams of letters (I still do), and tried to write for the pulp magazines I still passionately loved. (I couldn't afford to buy books, and it never would have occurred to me then to try writing them. That came later, with my first novel, SEVEN FROM THE STARS. "Falcons of Narabedla," and "Bird of Prey," which later became novels, were novelette length Kuttner pastiches; not because I was deliberately imitating but because I wanted to write stories like the ones I read in the magazines.

Nevertheless my first long published novelette was not a pastiche, but my first really original work; in this day of embryo transfers and test tube babies it seems almost prophetic. "Centaurus Changeling" reflected my love of reading medical books. "The Wind People" was, I think, a dream I had in Texas. Most of those early Texas stories were reflecting a drab daily life cooking and washing diapers and cleaning our small rented houses; and an extremely lively interior life based on the books I read and the people I knew only through fanzines. Big events in my life were a sandwich at the local hamburger cafe (a night out); there was nothing else to do except go to church or listen to football games, and I have kept a perfect record: I have never yet attended a football game. I was, on the other hand, a vigorous listener to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, and my first use of money, when I began having it, was to buy season tickets to the San Francisco Opera; my biggest indulgence now is for telecast video tapes and laser disc performances of real operas.

Well, a day came when I sold my first long novelette: "Bird of Prey," later to be DOOR THROUGH SPACE, a novel about the Dry Towns which would surface later in the Darkover novels. Then I began writing about Darkover. About the time I was beginning to write science fiction again after a long hiatus writing pseudonymous novels for a trashy publisher called Monarch Books, I left Texas and my first husband. I have nothing bad to say about my first marriage: the enforced loneliness threw me on my own resources and gave me leisure to write. Brad thought I spent too much money on paper and postage, but if I was willing, as he put it, to have these things instead of fashionable clothes and possessions, it was OK with him; he was not ambitious. Also, if I was willing to live modestly on his salary instead of getting a job (I preferred not to raise our son in the care of someone whose market worth was even less than mine - i.e., leave him in the care of an uneducated woman who would otherwise be doing unskilled labor) he allowed me to do so. Eventually, the Monarch romances paid my tuition to a local small college - ostensibly so I could get a teaching certificate and support the family after Brad retired from the railroad. Instead I left Texas, moved to Berkeley, and married again; had two younger children by my second marriage, and once again discovered that writing was a way to stay home with my kids while working. This is why I have never believed the story that domesticity damages a woman's intellectual life; while the kids were small I wrote a few books every year.

Not easily. I remember training the kids that Mommy was never to be interrupted at the typewriter, and I bribed them shamelessly for letting me alone - they call it positive reinforcement, now.

But I had to learn to be sociable. I remember being afraid that with intellectual stimulation, libraries, music, free concerts and a loving husband who wished for my company instead of using me as a housekeeper, cook, laundress, I would lose the impulse to write. I still prefer to keep people at arm's length so that I can find the best company in the world; the characters who come out of my brain and mind.

Becoming an editor - when I had money enough, I published a fiction fanzine - helped me at long last to write more than the occasional short story. I never felt much at ease writing short stories: my "natural" feeling is to write novels, the longer the better. I learned painfully during the "Monarch years" to write novels to severe plot and deadline requirements, to cut my work to the bone: but only when I was freed of these length requirements by Don Wollheim's willingness to experiment with long novels like THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR (1975) did I really begin to write naturally.

Over a forty year writing career I have written forty odd novels (some of them, as I like to say, very odd indeed) and considerably fewer short stories, the great majority of them being impulses - I would wake up with an idea, juggle the plot a bit, and sit down and write it on a sustained impulse, not stopping till I finished it. Since I usually write novels "on contract," the short stories were seldom profitable. I write a short story only if I can't figure out a way to make the idea into a novel, or want to write a little known episode in the life of a character from one of my novels. "To Keep the Oath" is such a story; I was curious as to how Camilla met Kindra. Both characters were in THE SHATTERED CHAIN (1976).

I don't imitate Kuttner any more, or even Leigh Brackett. My current enthusiasms, besides opera, are Gay Rights and Women's Rights - I think Women's Liberation is the great event of the twentieth century, not Space Exploration. One is a great change in human consciousness; the latter is only predictable technology and I am bored by technology.

I write on a word processor, but prefer my typewriter. And I am still a fan at heart - because I am still looking for any reading matter which will arouse in me the old thrill of those early pulp magazines. FOR BETTER OR WORSE, A WRITER IS WHAT I AM, and I no longer bother to explain or excuse it. I prefer science fiction to any other reading or writing, and to people who ask why I don't read mainstream (or write it), I say I cannot imagine that the content of the mainstream spy novels, corruption in the streets, adultery in the suburbs can possibly compete with a fiction whose sole raison d'etre is to think about the future of the human race.

Centaurus Changeling (1954)

". . . the only exception to the aforesaid policy was made in the case of Megaera (Theta Centaurus IV) which was given full Dominion status as an independent planetary government; a departure almost without precedent in the history of the Terran Empire. There are many explanations for this variation from the usual practice, the most generally accepted being that which states that Megaera had been colonized from Terra only a few years before the outbreak of the Rigel-Procyon war, which knocked out communications in the entire Centaurus sector of die Galaxy and forced the abandonment of all the so-called Darkovan League colonies, including Megaera, Darkover, Samarra and Vialles. During these Lost Years, as they were called, a period embracing, in all, nearly 600 years ... the factors of natural selection, and the phenomenon of genetic drift and survival mutation observed among isolated populations, permitted these 'lost1 colonies to develop along scientific and social lines which made their reclamation by the Terran Empire an imperative political necessity. ..."

From J. T. Bannerton: A Comprehensive History of Galactic Politics, Tape IX.

The Official Residence of the Terran Legate on Megaera was not equipped with a roofpost for landing the small, helicopter-like carioles. This oversight, a gesture of bureaucratic economy from the desk of some supervisor back on Terra, meant that whenever the Legate or his wife left the Residence, they must climb down four flights of stairs to the level of the rarely used streets, and climb again, up the endless twisting stairs, to the platform of the public skyport a quarter of a mile away.

Matt Ferguson swore irritably as his ankle turned in a rut - since no Centaurian citizen ever used the streets for walking if he could help it, they were not kept in condition for that purpose - and took his wife's arm, carefully guiding her steps on the uneven paving.

"Be careful, Beth," he warned. "You could break your neck without half trying!"

"And all those stairs!" The girl looked sulkily up at the black shadow of the skyport platform, stretched over them like a dark wing. The street lay deserted in the lurid light of early evening; red Centaurus, a hovering disk at the horizon, sent a slanting light, violently crimson, down into the black canyon of the street, and the top-heavy houses leaned down, somber and ominous. Wavering shadows gloomed down over them, and a hot wind blew down the length of the street, bearing that peculiar, pungent, all-pervasive smell which is Megaera's atmosphere. A curious blend, not altogether unpleasant, a resinous and musky smell which was a little sickish, like perfume worn too long. Beth Ferguson supposed that sooner or later she would get used to Megaera's air, that combination of stinks and chemical emanations. It was harmless, her husband assured her, to human chemistry. But it did not grow less noticeable with time; after more than a year, Terran Standard time, on Megaera, it was still freshly pungent to her nostrils. Beth wrinkled up her pretty, sullen mouth. "Do we have to go to this dinner, Matt?" she asked plaintively.

The man put his foot on the first step. "Of course, Beth. Don't be childish," he remonstrated gently, "I told you, before we came to Megaera, that my success at this post would depend

mostly on my informal relations - " "If you call a dinner at the Jeth - sans informal - " Beth began petulantly, but Matt went on, " - my informal relations with the Centaurian members of the government. Every diplomatic post in the Darkovan League is just the same, dear. Rai Jeth - san has gone out of his way to make things easy for both of us." He paused, and they climbed in silence for a few steps. "I know you don't like living here. But if I can do what I was sent here to do, we can have any diplomatic post in the Galaxy. I've got to sell the Centaurian Archons on the idea of building the big space station here. And, so far, I'm succeeding at a job no other man would take."

"I can't see why you took it," Beth sulked, snatching pettishly at her nylene scarf, which was flapping like an unruly bird in the hot, grit-laden wind.

Matt turned and tucked it into place. "Because it was better than working as the assistant to the assistant to the undersecretary of Terran affairs attached to the Proconsul of Vialles. Cheer up, Beth. If this space station gets built, I'll have a Proconsulship myself."

"And if it doesn't?"

Matt grinned. "It will. We're doing fine. Most Legates need years to find their way around a difficult post like Megaera." The grin melted abruptly. "Rai Jeth - san is responsible for that, too. I don't want to offend him."

Beth said, and her voice was not very steady, "I understand all that, Matt. But I've been feeling -

ah, I hate to be always whining and complaining like this…"

They had reached the wide, flat platform of the skyport. Matt lighted the flare which would attract a cariole, and sank down on one of the benches. "You haven't whined," he told her tenderly. "I know this rotten planet is no place for a Terran girl." He slipped an arm around his wife's waist. "It's hard on you, with other Terran women half a continent away, and I know you haven't made many friends among the Centaurians. But Rai Jeth - san's wives have been very kind to you. Nethle presented you to her Harp Circle. I don't suppose any Terran woman for a thousand years has even seen one, let alone been presented - and even Cassiana."

"Cassiana!" said Beth with a catch of breath, picking at her bracelet. "Yes, Nethle's almost too sweet, but she's in seclusion, and until her baby is born, I won't see her. And Wilidh's just a child! But Cassiana, I can't stand her! That, that freak! I'm afraid of her!"

Her husband scowled. "And don't think she doesn't know it! She's telepathic, and a rhu'ad."

"Whatever that is," Beth said crossly. "Some sort of mutant."

"Still, she's been kind to you. If you were friends."

"Ugh!" Beth shuddered. "I'd sooner be friends with a Sirian lizard-woman!"

Mart's arm dropped. He said coldly, "Well, please be polite to her, at least. Courtesy to the

Archon includes all his wives - but particularly Cassiana." He rose from the bench. "Here comes our cariole."

The little skycab swooped down to the skyport. Matt helped Beth inside and gave the pilot the address of the Archonate. The cariole shot skyward again, wheeling toward the distant suburb where the Archon lived. Matt sat stiffly on the seat, not looking at his young wife. She leaned against the padding, her fair face sulky and rebellious. She looked ready to cry. "At least, in another month, by their own stupid customs, I'll have a good excuse to stay away from all these idiotic affairs!" she flung at him. "I'll be in seclusion by then!"

It hadn't been the way she'd wanted to tell him, but it served him right!

"Beth!" Matt started upright, not believing.

"Yes, I am going to have a baby! And I'm going into seclusion just like these silly women here, and not have to go to a single formal dinner, or Spice Hunt, or Harp Circle, for six cycles! So there!"

Matt Ferguson leaned across the seat. His fingers bit hard into her arm and his voice sounded hoarse. "Elizabeth! Look at me, " he commanded. "Didn't you promise - haven't you been taking your anti shots?"

"No…no," Beth faltered, "I wanted to - oh, Matt, I'm alone so much, and we've been married

now almost four years…"

"Oh, my God," said Matt slowly, and let go her arm. "Oh, my God!" he repeated, and sank back, the color draining from his face.

"Will you stop saying that!" Beth raged. "When I tell you a thing like, " her voice caught on the edge of a sob, and she buried her face in her scarf.

Matt's hand was rough as he jerked her head up, and the gray pallor around his mouth terrified the girl. "You damn little fool," he shouted, then swallowed hard and lowered his voice. "I guess it's my fault," he muttered. "I didn't want to scare you…you promised to take the shots, so I trusted you - like an idiot!" He released her. "It's classified top-secret, Beth, but it's why this place is closed to colonization, and it's why Terran men don't bring their wives here. This damned, stinking, freak atmosphere! It's perfectly harmless to men, and to most women. But for some reason, it plays hell with the female hormones if a woman gets pregnant. For 60 years since Terra set up the Legation here - not one Terran baby has been born alive. Not one, Beth. And eight out of ten women who get pregnant - oh, God, Betty, I trusted you!"

She whispered "But this - this was a Terran colony, once."

"They've adapted - maybe. We've never found out why Centaurian women go into seclusion when they're pregnant, or why they hide the children so carefully."

He paused, looking down at the thinning jungle of roofs. There would not be time to explain it all to Beth. Even if she lived - but Matt did not want to think about that. They never sent married men to this planet, but Centaurian custom could not admit a single man to be mature enough to hold a place in government. He had succeeded at this post where single men, twice his age, had been laughed at by the Archons. But what good was that now?

"Oh, God, Beth," he whispered, and his arms went out blindly to hold her close. "I don't know what to do."

She sobbed softly, scared, against him. "Oh, Matt, I'm afraid! Can't we go home...home to Terra? I want - I want to go home - to go home - "

"How can we?" the man asked drearily. "There won't be a star - ship leaving the planet for three months. By that time, you wouldn't be able to live through blastoff. Even now, you couldn't pass a physical for space." He was silent for minutes, his arms strained around her, and his eyes looked haunted. Then, almost visibly, he managed to pull himself together.

"Look, the first thing tomorrow, I'll take you to the Medical HQ. They've been working on it. Maybe... don't worry, darling. We'll get along." His voice lapsed again, and Beth, wanting desperately to believe him, could find no reassurance in the words. "You're going to be all right," he told her again. "Aren't you?" But she clung to him and did not answer. After a long, strained silence, he roused a little, and let her go, glancing from the windbreak of the cariole cabin.

"Beth, darling, fix your face - " he urged her gently. "We'll be late, and you can't go down looking like that - "

For a minute Beth sat still, simply not believing that after what she had told him, he would still make her go to the detested dinner. Then, looking at his tense face, she suddenly knew it was the one thing on earth - no, she corrected herself with grim humor, the one thing on Theta Centaurus IV, Megaera, that she must do.

"Tell him not to land for a minute," she said shakily. She unfastened her wrist compact, and silently began to repair the wreckage of her cosmetics. Above the Archonate, the cariole maneuvered frantically for place with another careening skycab, and after what seemed an imminent clash of tangled gyroscopes, slid on to the skyport only seconds before it. Beth shrieked, and Matt flung the door open and abused the pilot in choice Centaurian.

"I compliment you on your perfect command of our language," murmured a soft creamy voice, and Matt flushed darkly as he saw the Archon standing at the very foot of the roofport. He murmured confused apology; it was hardly the way to begin a formal evening. The Archon lipped a buttery smile. "I pray you do not think of it. I disregard speech of yours. It is again not spoken." With an air of esthetic unconcern, he gestured welcome at Beth, and she stepped down, feeling clumsy and awkward. "I stand where you expect me not, only because I think Senior Wife mine in cariole this one," the Archon continued. Out of courtesy to his guests, he was speaking a mangled dialect of Galactic Standard; Beth wished irritably that he would talk Centaurian. She understood it as well as Matt did. She also had the uncomfortable feeling that

the Archon sensed her irritation and that it amused him; a sizable fraction of the Megaeran population was slightly telepathic.

"You must excusing Cassiana," the Archon offered languidly as he conducted his guests across the great open skycourt which was the main room of a Centaurian home. "She went to the City, one of our families visiting, for she is rhu'ad, and must be ever at their call when she is needed. And Second Wife is most fortunately in seclusion, so you must excusing her also," he continued as they approached the lighted penthouse. Beth murmured the expected compliments on Nethle's coming child. "Youngest wife then be our hostess, and since she not used to formal custom, we be like barbarian this night."

Matt gave his wife a vicious nudge in the ribs. "Cut that out," he whispered, savagely, and with an effort that turned her face crimson, Beth managed to suppress her rising giggles. Of course there was nothing even faintly informal in the arrangement of the penthouse room into which they were conducted, nor in the classic and affected poses of the other guests. The women in their stiff metallic robes cast polite, aloof glances at Beth's soft drapery, and their greetings were chilly, musical murmurs. Under their slitted, hostile eyes, Beth felt despairingly that she and Matt were intruders here, barbaric atavisms; too big and muscular, too burned by yellow sun, blatantly and vulgarly colorful. The Centaurians were little and fragile, not one over five feet tall, bleached white by the red - violet sun, their foamy, blue - black hair a curious metallic halo above stiff classicized robes. Humans? Yes - but their evolution had turned off at right angles a thousand years ago. What had those centuries done to Megaera and its people?

Swathed in a symbolic costume, Rai Jeth - san's youngest wife Wilidh sat stiffly in the great Hostess Chair. She spoke to the guests formally, but her mouth quirked up at Beth in the beginnings of a giggle. "Oh, my good little friend," she whispered in Galactic Standard, "I die with these formals! These are Cassiana's friends, and not mine, for no one knew she would not be here tonight! And they laugh at me, and stick up their backs, all stiff, like this - " she made a rude gesture, and her topaz eyes glinted with mischief. "Sit here by me, Beth, and talk of something very dull and stupid, for I die trying not to disgrace me by laughing! When Cassiana comes back."

Wilidh's mirth was infectious. Beth took the indicated seat, and they talked in whispers, holding hands after the fashion of Centaurian women. Wilidh was too young to have adopted the general hostility toward the Terran woman; in many ways, she reminded Beth of an eager schoolgirl. It was hard to remember that this merry child had been married as long as Beth herself; still more incredible that she was already the mother of three children.

Suddenly Wilidh turned color, and stood up, stammering confused apologies. "Forgive me, forgive me, Cassiana - "

Beth also rose, but the Archon's Senior Wife gestured for them to resume their seats. Cassiana was not dressed for formal dining. Her gray street wrap was still folded over a plain dress of dark thin stuff, and her face looked naked without cosmetics, and very tired. "Never mind, Wilidh. Remain hostess for me, if you will." She smiled flittingly at Beth. "I am sorry I am not here to greet you." Acknowledging their replies with a weary politeness, Cassiana moved past them like

a wraith, and they saw her walking across the skycourt, and disappearing down the wide stairway that led to the lower, private parts of the house.

She did not rejoin them until the formal dinner had been served, eaten and removed, and the soft - footed servants were padding around the room with bowls and baskets of exotic fruit and delicacies and gilded cups of frosty mountain nectar. The penthouse shutters had been thrown wide, so that the guests could watch the flickering play of lightning from the giant magnetic storms which were almost a nightly occurrence on Megaera. They were weirdly beautiful and the Centaurians never tired of watching them, but they terrified Beth. She preferred the rare calm nights when Megaera's two immense moons filled the sky with uncanny green moonlight; but now thick clouds hid the faces of Alecto and Tisiphone, and the jagged bolts leaped and cast lurid shadows on the great massy clouds. Through the thunder, the eerie noise which passed, on Megaera, for music, was wailing from the slitted walls. In its shadow, Cassiana ghosted into the room and sat down between Beth and Wilidh. She did not speak for minutes, listening with evident enjoyment to the music and its counterpoint of thunder. Cassiana was somewhat older than Beth, small and exquisite, a filigree dainty woman fashioned of gilded silver. Her ash blonde hair had metallic lights, and her skin and eyes had almost the same hue, a gold - cream, smudged with gilt freckles, and with a sort of luminous, pearly glow ... the distinguishing mark of a curious mutation called rhu'ad. The word itself meant only pearl; neither Beth nor any other Terran knew what it implied. The servants were passing around tiny baskets, curiously woven of reeds from the Sea of Storms. Deferentially, they laid a basket before the three women. "Oh, sharigs!" Wilidh cried with a childish gusto. Beth glanced into the basket at the wriggling mass of small, greenish - gold octopods, less than three inches long, writhing and struggling in their

nest of odorous seaweed and striking feebly at each other with the stumps of claws they did not know had been snapped off. The sight disgusted Beth, but Wilidh took a pair of tiny tongs and picked up one of the revolting little creatures, and as Beth watched with fascinated horror, thrust it whole into her mouth. Daintily, but with relish, her sharp small teeth crunched the shell; she sucked, and fastidiously spat the empty shell into her palm.

"Try one, Beth," Cassiana suggested kindly. "They are really delicious."

"N - no, thank you," Beth said weakly - and suddenly disgraced herself and all her conditioning by turning aside and being very completely and excruciatingly sick on the shimmering floor. She barely heard Cassiana's cry of distress, although she was conscious of a prim offended murmur, and knew she had outraged custom beyond all credibility. Through helpless spasms of retching, she was conscious of hands and voices. Then she was picked up in strong familiar arms, and heard Matt's worried "Honey, are you all right?"

She knew she was being carried across the skycourt and into a lower room, and opened her eyes sickly to see Cassiana and Matt standing over her. "I'm - I'm so sorry - " she whispered. Cassiana's thin hand patted hers, comfortingly. "Do not think of it," she reassured, "Legate Furrga - soon, your wife will be well enough, you may return to the other guests," she said, gently, but in a tone that unmistakably dismissed him. There was no polite way to protest. Matt went, looking back doubtfully. Cassiana's strange eyes looked rather pitying. "Don't try to talk," she admonished. Beth felt too sick and weak to move and being alone with Cassiana terrified her. She lay quiet on the big divan, tears slipping weakly down her face. Cassiana's hand still clasped

hers; in a kind of childish petulance, Beth pulled her hand away, but the slender fingers only closed more tightly around Beth's wrist. "Be still," said Cassiana, not unkindly, but in a tone of absolute command, and she sat there, looking down at Beth with a staring intensity, for some minutes. Finally she sighed and freed Beth's hand.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Why - yes!" said Beth, surprised. Quite suddenly, the nausea and the pain in her head were altogether gone. Cassiana smiled. "I am glad. No - lie quiet. Beth, I think you should not ride in cariole tonight, why not stay here? You can visit Nethle - she has missed you since she went into seclusion."

Beth almost cried out with surprise. This was rare - for an outsider to be invited into a Centaurian house any further than the skycourt and penthouse reserved for social affairs. Then, with a stab of frightened memory, she recalled the reason for Nethle's seclusion - and her own fears. Nethle was her friend, even Cassiana had shown her kindness. Perhaps hi a less formal atmosphere she might be able to ask something about the curious taboo which surrounded the birth of children on Megaera, perhaps learn some way of averting her own danger . . . she closed her eyes and leaned against the cushions for a moment. If nothing else, it meant reprieve. For a little while she need not face Matt's gallantly concealed fear, his reproach. . . .

Matt, returning with Cassiana, quickly gave consent. "If that's what you really want, honey," he said gently. As she looked up into his tense face, Beth's impulse suddenly changed. She wanted

to cry out "No - don't leave me here, take me home - "a night here in this strange place, alone with Centaurian women who were, however friendly they might be, entirely alien, seemed a thing too fearful to contemplate. She felt inclined to cry. But Cassiana's eyes on her proved rather steadying, and Beth's long conditioning in the ceremonial life necessary on Megaera triumphed over emotions she knew to be irrational.

Her husband bent and kissed her lightly. "I'll send a cariole for you tomorrow," he promised.

The lower portions of a Centaurian home were especially designed for a polygamous society in harmony with itself. They were carefully compartmented, and the only entrance from one to the other was from the great common stairway which led to the roof and skycourt. Roughly a third of the house was sectioned off for the habitation of Rai Jeth - san and his seasonal consort. The remainder was women's quarters, and the Archon himself might not enter them without specific invitation. In effect, Megaera's polygamous society was a rotational monogamy, for although Rai Jeth - san had three wives - the legal maximum was five - he had only one at a tune and their alteration was strictly regulated by tradition. The surplus women lived together, always on terms of the most cordial friendship. Cassiana took precedence over the others, by custom, but there was the closest affection among all three - which had surprised Beth at first, especially when she found out that this was by no means rare; the bond between the wives of one man was traditionally the strongest family tie in existence, far stronger than the tie between natural sisters. Beth had discovered long ago that she was not alone in her awe of Cassiana, who was one of the peculiar patriciate of the planet. Men and women fought for the privilege of serving the rhu'ads; Beth, relaxing into the almost sybaritic luxury of the women's quarters, wondered again what

was Cassiana's strange power over the Centaurians? She knew Cassiana was one of the rare telepaths who were found in the Darkovan planets, but that alone would not have explained it, nor would Cassiana's odd beauty. On Megaera there were perhaps 10,000 women like Cassiana: curiously beautiful, more curiously revered. There were no male rhu'ad. Beth had seen both men and women throw themselves to the ground in a burst of spontaneous emotion as one of the small, pearl - colored women passed, but had never understood, or dared to ask. Cassiana asked her, "Would you like to see Nethle before you sleep - and our children?"

This was, indeed, a strange relaxation of tradition; Beth knew no Terran had ever seen a Centaurian child. Astonished, she followed Cassiana into a lower room.

It seemed full of children. Beth counted; there were nine, the youngest only a baby in arms, the oldest about ten. They were pale, pretty children, like hothouse flowers reared in secret. Seeing the stranger, they clustered together, whispering to each other timidly, staring with wide eyes at her strange hair and curious garments.

"Come here, my darlings," said Cassiana in her soft pleasant voice. "Don't stare." She was speaking in Centaurian, a further gesture of friendliness.

One little boy - the rest of the children were all girls - piped up valiantly, "Is she another mother for us?"

Cassiana laughed. "No, my son. Aren't three mothers enough?" Nethle rose from a cushiony

chair and came to Beth, her hands outstretched in welcome. "I thought you had forgotten me! Of course, you poor Terran women, only one wife to look after a husband, I cannot see how you ever have time for anything!"

Beth blushed. Nethle's outspoken references to Beth's "unhappy" state as a solitary wife, always embarrassed her. But she returned Nethle's greeting with genuine pleasure. Nethle Jeth - san was perhaps the only Centaurian whom Beth could tolerate without that sense of uneasy dislike.

She said, "I've missed you, Nethle," but secretly she was dismayed at the change in her friend. Since Nethle had gone into seclusion, months ago, she had changed frighteningly. In spite of the distortion of pregnancy, Nethle seemed to have lost weight, her small face looked haggard, and her skin was a ghastly color. She walked shakily, and sat down almost at once after greeting Beth, but her gay manner and brilliant joyous eyes belied her illness. She and Beth talked quietly, about inconsequential things - Centaurian custom almost outlawed serious conversation while Cassiana curled up, kitten - like, in a nest of soft pillows, picking up the littlest baby.

Two toddlers came and tried to crawl up on her knees at once, so Cassiana laughed and slid down on the floor, letting the children climb all over her, snuggle against her shoulder, tug at her garments and her elaborately arranged hair. She was so tiny that she looked like a little girl with a lapful of dolls. Beth asked her - hesitantly, for she did not know if it was polite to ask - "Which are your children, Cassiana?"

Cassiana glanced up. "In a way, all, and in another way, none," she said curtly and Beth thought

she had trespassed on courtesy; but Nethle put her hand on the solitary boy's head. "Cassiana has no children, Beth. She is rhu'ad, and rhu'ad women do not bear children. This is my son, and the oldest girl, and the girl with long hair. Those," she indicated the twin toddlers and the baby in Cassiana's lap, "are Wilidh's. The rest are Clotine's. Clotine was our sister, who died many cycles ago."

Cassiana gently put the children aside and came to Beth. She looked at one of the little girls playing in the corner. She made no sound, but the child turned and suddenly ran to Cassiana, flinging her arms around the rhu'ad. Cassiana hugged her, then let her go, and - to Beth's surprise - the tiny girl came and tugged at Beth's skirt, clambering into her lap. Beth put an arm around her, looking down in astonishment.

"Why, she…" she broke off, not knowing, again, whether she should remark on the extraordinary likeness. The tiny girl - she seemed about four - had the same, pearly, lustrous skin; her hair was a silvery eiderdown, pallid and patrician. Cassiana noted her discomfiture and laughed gaily. "Yes, Arli is rhu'ad. She is mine."

"I thought - "

"Oh, Cassiana, stop it," Nethle protested, laughing. "She doesn't understand!"

"There are many things she does not understand," said Cassiana abruptly, "but I think she will have to learn to understand them. Beth, you have done a terribly unwise thing. Terran women

cannot have children here in safety!"

Beth could only blink in amazement. The self - test taken the day before had shown her pregnancy to be less than a month advanced. "How ever did you know?" she asked.

"Your poor husband," Cassiana's voice was gentle. "I felt his fear like a gray murk, all evening. It is not pleasant to be telepath, sometimes. It is why I try not to go in crowds, I cannot help invading the privacy of others. Then, when you were so sick, I knew."

Nethle seemed to freeze, to go rigid. Her arms fell to her sides. "So that is it!" she whispered almost inaudibly. Then she burst out, "And that is the way with the women of Terra! That is why your Earthmen will never take this planet! As long as they despise us and come as conquerors, they cannot come here where their women die!" Her eyes glared. She rose and stood, heavy, distorted, menacing, over Beth, her lips drawn back in an animal snarl, her arm raised as if to strike. Cassiana gasped, sprang up, and with a surprising strength, she pushed Nethle back into her chair.

"Beth, she is raving - even women here, sometimes…"

"Raving!" Nethle said with a curl of her lip. "Wasn't there a day when our women and their unborn children died by the hundreds because we did not know the air was poison? When women died, or were kept in airtight rooms and given oxygen till their children were born, and then left to die? When men married a dozen wives to be sure of one living child? Did the Terrans

help us then, when we begged hem to evacuate the planet? No! They had a war on their hands for 600 years they had a war on their hands! Now they've finished their private wars, they try to come back to Megaera - "

"Nethle! Be quiet!" Cassiana commanded angrily. Beth had sunk into the cushions, but through her cupped hands she saw that Nethle's face blazed, a contorted mask of fury. "Yes, yes, Cassiana," her voice was a mocking croon, "Beth condescends to make friends with me - and now she will see what happens to the women of Terra who mock our customs instead of finding out why we have them!" The wildness of her hysteria beat and battered at Beth. "Oh, yes, I liked you," she snarled, "but could you really be friends with a Centaurian woman? Don't you think I know you mock our rhu'ad? Could you live equal to us? Get out!" she shouted. "Get off our world! Go away, all of you! Leave us in peace!"

"Nethle!" Cassiana grasped the woman's shoulders and shook her, hard, until the wildness went out of her face. Then she pushed Nethle down in the cushions, where she lay sobbing. Cassiana looked down at her sorrowfully. "You hate worse than she hates. How can there ever be peace, then?"

"You have always defended her," Nethle muttered, "and she hates you worst of all!"

"That is exactly why I have more responsibility," Cassiana answered. She went to the curtained door at the end of the room. At her summons, a servant came and began unobtrusively to shepherd the children out of the room. They went obediently, the older ones looking scared and

bewildered, glancing timidly at the weeping Nethle; the little ones reluctant, clinging to Cassiana, pouting a little as she gently pushed them out the door. Cassiana drew the curtain firmly down behind them; then went back to Nethle and touched her on the shoulder. "Listen," she said.

Then Beth had the curious feeling that Nethle and Cassiana were conversing through some direct mental exchange from which she was excluded. Their changing expressions, and faint gestures, told her that, and a few emphatic, spoken words seemed to give point to the soundless conversation - it made Beth's flesh crawl.

"My decisions are always final," Cassiana stated.

Nethle muttered ". . . cruel of you . . ."

Cassiana shook her head.

After long minutes of speech - silence, Cassiana said aloud, quietly, "No, I have decided. I did it for Clotine. I would do it for you - or for Wilidh, if you were fool enough to try what Beth has done."

Nethle flared back, "I wouldn't be fool enough to try to have a baby that way - "

Cassiana checked her with a gesture, rose, and went to Beth, who was still lying huddled in the

pillows of the big divan. "If I, who am rhu'ad, do not break the laws," she said, "then no one will ever dare to break them, and our planet will stagnate in dead traditions. Beth, if you can promise to obey me, and to ask me no questions, then I, who am rhu'ad. promise you this: you may have your child without fear, and your chance of life will be" she hesitated, "equal to a Centaurian woman's."

Beth looked up…speechless, her eyes wide. A dozen emotions tangled in some secret part of her mind, fear, distrust, anger. Yet reason told her that Cassiana was showing disinterested kindness in the face of what must certainly have been obvious to her, Beth's own dislike. At the moment Beth was unaware that proximity to the telepath was sharpening her own sense perceptions, but for the first time in months she was thinking reasonably, unblurred by emotion.

Cassiana insisted, "Can you promise? Can you promise, especially, not to ask me questions about what I have to do?"

And Beth nodded soberly. "I'll promise," she said.

The pale pink, watery sunlight looked feeble and anachronistic on the white, sterile, characteristically Terran walls, floors and furnishings of the Medical HQ; and the white indoor face of the old doctor looked like some sun - sheltered slug.

"He's lived here so long, he's half Centaurian himself," Matt Ferguson thought irrelevantly, and threw down the chart in his hand. "You mean there's nothing to be done!" he said bluntly.

"We never say that in my profession," Dr. Bonner told him simply. "While there's life, and all the rest of it. But it looks bad. You never should have left it up to the girl to make sure she took her anti shots. Women aren't reliable about that kind of thing - not normal women. A woman's got to be pretty damned abnormal, to be conscientious about contraceptives." He frowned. "You know, it's not a question of adapting, either. If anything, the third, fourth, fourteenth generations are more susceptible than the first. The planet seems so perfectly healthy that women simply don't believe it until they do get pregnant, and then it's too late."

"Abortion?" Matt suggested, lowering his head. Dr. Bonner shrugged. "Worse yet. Operative shock on top of the hormone reaction would just kill her now, instead of later." He leaned his head on his hands. "Whatever it is in the air, it doesn't hurt anybody until we get the flood of female hormones released in pregnancy. We've tried everything - manufacturing our own air chemically pure, but we can't get that stink out of it, and we can't keep it pure. There's just something linked into the atomic structure of the whole damned planet. It doesn't bother test animals, so we can't do any experimenting. It's just the human, female hormones of pregnancy. We've even tried locking the women in airtight domes, and giving them pure oxygen, the whole nine months. But we get the same reaction. Pernicious vomiting, weight loss, confusion of the balance centers, convulsions - and if the foetus isn't aborted, it's oxygen - starved and a monster. I've lived on Megaera 40 years, Matt, and I haven't delivered a live baby yet."

Matt raged, "Then how do the Centaurians manage? They have children, all right!"

"Have you ever seen one?" asked Dr. Bonner tersely.

At Matt's denial, he continued, "Neither have I - in 40 years. For all I know, Centaurian women cultivate their babies in test tubes. Nobody's ever seen a pregnant Centaurian woman, or a child under about ten years old. But one of our men - ten, twelve years ago - got a Centaurian girl pregnant. Of course, her family threw her out - right in the damn' street. Our man married the girl - he'd wanted to, anyhow. The man - I won't tell you his name - brought her in to me. I thought maybe - but the story was just exactly the same. Nausea, pernicious vomiting - all the rest. You wouldn't believe the things we tried to save that girl. I didn't know I had so much imagination myself." He dropped his eyes, bitter with an old failure. "But she died. The baby lived. It's up in the incurable ward."

"Jesus!" Matt shuddered uncontrollably. "What can I do?"

Dr. Bonner's eyes were very sorrowful. "Bring her in, Matt, right away. We'll do our damnedest for her." His hand found the younger man's shoulder as he rose, but Matt was not conscious of the touch. He never knew how he got out of the building, but after a reeling walk through streets that twisted around his bleared eyes, he heard the buzz of a descending cariole, and Cassiana Jeth - san's level voice.

"Legate Furr - ga - soon?"

Matt raised his head numbly. She was about the last person he cared to see. But Matt Ferguson

was a Legate of the Terran Empire, and had undergone strenuous conditioning for this post. He could no more have been rude to anyone to whom courtesy was required, than he could have thrown himself from a moving cariole. So he said with careful graciousness, "I greet you, Cassiana."

She signaled the pilot to set the hovering skycab down.

"This meeting is fortunate," she said quietly. "Get into this cariole, and ride with me."

Matt obeyed, mostly because he lacked, at the moment, the ingenuity to form an acceptable excuse. He climbed in; the skycab began to ascend again over the city. It seemed a long time before Cassiana said, "Bet1 is at the Archonate. I have made a finding the most unfortunate. Understand me, Legate, you are in situation of the baddest."

"I know," Matt said grimly. His wife's dislike of Cassiana suddenly became reasonable to him. He had never been alone with a telepath before, and it made him a little giddy. There was almost a physical vibration in the small woman's piercing gaze. Cassiana's mangling of Galactic Standard - she spoke it better than her husband, but still abominably - was another irritation which Matt tried to hide. As if in answer to his unspoken thought, Cassiana switched to her own language. "Why did you come to Megaera?"

What a fool question, Matt thought irritably. Why did any man take a diplomatic post? "My government sent me."

"But not because you liked Megaera, or us? Not because you wanted to live here, or cared about Terrans and Centaurians getting along? Not because you cared about the space station?"

Matt paused, honestly surprised. "No," he said, "I suppose not." Then annoyance triumphed. "How can we live together? Your people don't travel in space. Ours can't live in health or ordinary comfort on this - this stinking planet! How can we do anything but live apart and leave you to yourselves?"

Cassiana said slowly, "We wanted, once, to abandon this colony. For all Terra cared, we could live or die. Now they have found out their lost property might be worth."

Matt sighed. "The Imperialists who abandoned Megaera have all been dead for hundreds of years," he pointed out wearily. "Now, we have to have some contact with your planet, because of the political situation. You know that. No one is trying to exploit Megaera."

"I know that," she admitted. "Perhaps 50 other people on the whole planet realize that. The rest are one seething mass of public opinion, and under the anti - propaganda laws, we can't change that." She stopped. "But I didn't want to talk politics. Why did you bring Beth here, Legate?"

Matt bit his lip. Under her clear eyes he told the truth. "Because I knew a single man couldn't succeed at this post."

Cassiana mused. "It's a pity. It's almost certain that this affair will close out the Legation here. No married man will want to come, and we cannot accept a single man in such an important position. It is against our most respected tradition for a man to remain single after he is mature. Our only objection to your space station is the immense flood of unattached personnel who will come here to build it - drifters, unmarried men, military persons - such an influx would throw Megaera into confusion. We would be glad to accept married colonists who wanted to settle here."

"You know that's impossible!" Matt said.

"Maybe," Cassiana said thoughtfully. "It is a pity. Because it is obvious that the Terrans need Megaera, and Megaera needs some outside stimulus. We're turning stagnant." She was silent for a minute. Then she continued, "But I'm talking politics again. I suppose I wanted to see if it was in you to be honest. Perhaps, if you had grown angry sooner, been less concerned with polite formalities - angry men are honest men. We like honesty, we rhu'ad."

Mart's smile was bitter. "We are conditioned in courtesy. Honesty comes second."

"A proof that you are not suited to a society where any fraction of the population is telepathic," said Cassiana bluntly. "But that is not important. This is - Beth is in very real danger, Legate. I promise nothing - even we Centaurians die sometimes - but if you will let her live at the Archonate for three, maybe four of your months. I think I can promise you she'll live. And probably the baby, too."

Hope seethed in Matt. "You mean go into seclusion…"

"That, and more," said Cassiana gravely. "You must not attempt to see her yourself, and you must keep your entire Legation from knowing where she is, or why. That includes your personal friends and your officials. Can you do this? If not, I promise nothing."

"But that isn't possible."

Cassiana dismissed the protest. "It is your problem. I am not a Terran, I don't know how you will manage it."

"Does Beth want to."

"At this moment, no. You are her husband, and it is your child's life at stake. You have authority to order her to do it."

"We don't think of things that way on Terra. I don't."

"You are not on Terra now," Cassiana reminded him flatly.

"Can I see Beth before I decide? She'll want to make arrangements, pack her things."

"No, you must decide here, now. It may already be too late. As for her 'things,' " the pearly eyes held delicate scorn, "she must have nothing from Terra near her."

"What kind of rubbish is that?" Matt demanded. "Not even her clothes?"

"I will provide anything she needs," Cassiana assured him. "Believe me, it is necessary. No don't apologize. Anger is honesty."

"Look," Matt suggested, still trying to compromise acceptably. "I'll want her to see a Terran doctor, first, the authorities - "

Without warning, Cassiana lost her temper.

"You Terrans," she exploded, in a gust of fury that was like a physical blow. "You stupid lackwit from a planet of insane authoritarians, I told you, you must say nothing to anyone! This isn't a political matter, it's her life, and your child's! What can your so - called authorities do?"

"What can you do?" Matt shouted back. Protocol went overboard. The man and woman from two alien star systems glared at each other across a thousand years of evolution. Then Cassiana said coldly, "That is the first sensible question you have asked. When our planet was jettisoned as useless - we had to acquire certain techniques the hard way. I can't tell you exactly what. It isn't allowed. If that answer is not adequate, I am sorry. It is the only answer you will ever get. Wars have been fought on Megaera because the rhu'ad have refused to answer that question.

We've been hounded and stoned, and sometimes worshiped. Between science and religion and politics, we've finally worked out the answer, but I have never told even my husband. Do you think I would tell a bureaucrat from Terra? You can accept my offer or refuse it now."

Matt looked over the windbreak of the cariole at the wideflung roofs of the city. He felt torn with terrible indecision. Reared in a society of elaborately delegated responsibilities, it went against all his conditioning - how could one man make a decision like this? How could he explain Beth's absence? What would his government say if they discovered that he had not even consulted the medical authorities? Still, the choice was bald - Bonner had made it very clear that he had no hope. It was: trust Cassiana, or watch Beth die.

And the death would be neither quick nor easy.

"All right," he said, pressing his lips together. "Beth…Beth doesn't like you, as you probably know, and I'll be - I'll be everlastingly damned if I know why you are doing this! But I can't see any other way out. This isn't a very polite way to put it, but it was you who insisted on honesty. Go ahead. Do what you can. I…" his voice suddenly strangled, but the little rhu'ad did not take the slightest notice of his losing struggle for self - control. With an air of remote detachment, she directed the driver of the cariole to set him down before the Residence.

During the brief ride there, she did not speak a word. Only when the cariole settled on the public skyport did she raise her head. "Remember," she said quietly, "you must not call at the Archonate, or attempt to see Beth. If you have business with the Archon, you must arrange to

meet him elsewhere. That will not be easy."

"Cassiana - what can I say - "

"Say nothing," she advised, not smiling, but there was a glint in the pearly eyes. In a less reserved face, it might have been friendly amusement. "Sometimes men are more honest that way."

She left him staring dumbly upward as the cariole climbed the sky once more.

When Cassiana - no longer friendly, but reserved and rigid - had brought the news that Matt had commanded her to stay, Beth had disbelieved had shouted her hysterical disbelief and terror until Cassiana turned and walked out, locking the door behind her. She did not return for three days. Beth saw no one but an old lady who brought her meals and was, or pretended to be, deaf. In that time, Beth lived through a million emotions; but at the end of three days, when Cassiana came back, she looked at Beth with approval.

"I left you alone," she explained briefly, "to see how you reacted to fear and confinement. If you could not endure it, I could have done nothing for you. But I see you are quite calm."

Beth bit her lip, looking down at the smaller woman. "I was angry," she admitted. "I didn't think it was necessary to treat me like a child. But somehow I don't think you would have done it without good reason."

Cassiana's smile was a mere flicker. "Yes. I can read your mind a little, not much. I'm afraid you will be a prisoner again, for some time. Do you mind much? We'll try to make it easy for you."

"I'll do whatever you say," Beth promised calmly, and the rhu'ad nodded. "Now, I think you mean that, Beth."

"I meant it when I said it before!" Beth protested. "Your brain, and your reason, said it. But a pregnant woman's reasoning faculties aren't always reliable. I had to be certain that your emotions would back up your reason in the event of a shock. Believe me, you'll get some shocks."

But so far there had been none, although Cassiana had not exaggerated in the slightest when she said Beth would be a prisoner. The Terran woman was confined closely in two rooms on the ground floor - a level rarely used in a Centaurian house - and saw no one but Cassiana, Nethle and a servant or two. The rooms were spacious - even luxurious - and the air was filtered by some process which - while it did not diminish the distinctive smell was somehow less sickening, and easier to breathe. "This air is just as dangerous, chemically, as that outdoors," Cassiana cautioned her. "Don't think that this, alone, makes you safe. But it may make you a little more comfortable. Don't go outside these rooms."

But she kept her promise to make imprisonment easy for Beth. Nethle, too, had recovered from her hysterical attack, and was punctiliously cordial. Beth had access to Cassiana's library - one of

the finest tape collections on the planet, although, from a little judicious searching Beth decided that Cassiana had removed tapes on some subjects she thought the Terran woman should not study too closely - and when Cassiana learned that Beth knew the rather rare art of three dimensional painting, she asked her guest to teach her. They made several large figures, working together. Cassiana had a quick, artistic sensitivity which delighted Beth, and she swiftly mastered the complicated technique. The shared effort taught them a good deal about each other.

But there was much inconvenience which Cassiana's kindness could not mitigate. With each advancing day, Beth's discomfort became more acute. There was pain, and sickness, and a terrible feeling of breathlessness for hours she would lie fighting for every breath. Cassiana told her that her system, in the hormone allergy, had lost the ability, in part, to absorb oxygen from the bloodstream. She broke out in violent rashes which never lasted more than a few hours, but recurred every few days. The ordinary annoyances of early pregnancy were there, top, magnified a hundred times. And during the electric storms, there was a strange reaction, a taut pain as if her body were a conductor for the electricity itself. She wondered if this pain were psychosomatic or genuinely symptomatic, but she never knew.

For some reason, the sickness receded when Cassiana was in the room, and as the days slid past. Cassiana was with her almost constantly, once or twice even sleeping in the same room, on a cot pushed close to Beth's. Unexpectedly, one day, Beth asked her, "Why do I always feel better when you are in the room?"

Cassiana did not answer for a minute. All the morning, they had been working on a three -

dimensional painting. The floor was scattered with eyepieces and pigments, and Cassiana picked up an eyepiece and scanned a figure in the foreground before she even turned around to Beth. Then she disengaged her painting cone, and began to refill it with pigment.

"I wondered when you would ask me that. A telepath's mind controls her body, to some extent that's a very rough way of putting it, but you don't know enough about psychokinetics to know the difference. Well, when we are working together, as we have been today, your mind is in what we telepaths call vibratory harmony with mine, and you are able to pick up, to a very slight degree, my mental projections. And they, in turn, react on your body."

"You mean you control your body by thinking!"

"Everybody does that." Cassiana smiled faintly. "Yes, I know what you mean. I can, for instance, control reflexes which are involuntary in - in normal people.' Just as easily as you would flex or relax a muscle in your arm, I can control my heartbeat, blood pressure, uterine contractions - " she stopped abruptly, then finished, "and I can control gross reflexes, such as vomiting, in others - if they come within the kinetic field." She put down the spinning - cone. "Look at me, and I'll show you what I mean."

Beth obeyed. After a moment, Cassiana's gilt hair began to darken. It grew darker, darker, till the shining strands were the color of clear honey. Cassiana's cheeks seemed to lose their pearly luster, to turn pinker. Beth blinked and rubbed her eyes. "Are you controlling my mind so I think your skin and hair are changing color?" she asked suspiciously.

"You overestimate my powers! No, but I concentrated all the latent pigment in my skin into my hair. We rhu'ad can look almost as we choose, within certain limits - I couldn't, for instance, make my hair as dark as yours. There simply isn't enough melanin in my pigment. Even this much color wouldn't last, unless I wanted to alter my adrenalin balance permanently. I could do that, too, but it wouldn't be sensible. My hair and skin will change back to rhu'ad during the day we keep our distinctive coloring, because it's a protection against being harmed or injured accidentally. We are important to Megaera," abruptly she stopped again, and a mask of reticence slid down on her face. She re - engaged the spinning - cone and began to weave a surface pattern in the frame.

Beth persisted. "Can you control my body too?"

"A little," said Cassiana shortly. "Why do you think I spend so much time with you?"

Snubbed, Beth took up her spinning - cone and began to weave depth into Cassiana's surface figure. After a minute, Cassiana relented and smiled, "Oh, yes, I enjoy your company too. I did not at first, but I do now."

Beth laughed, a little shamefacedly. She had begun to like Cassiana very much - once she had grown accustomed to Cassiana's habit of answering what Beth was thinking, instead of what she had said.

Weeks slid into months. Beth had now lost all desire to go out of doors, although she dutifully took what slight exercise Cassiana required of her. The rhu'ad now remained with her almost continually. Although Beth was far too ill to study Cassiana, it finally became apparent even to her that Cassiana herself was far from well. The change in the rhu'ad was not marked; tenseness in her movements, a pallor Beth could not guess the nature of her ailment. But in spite of this, Cassiana watched over Beth with careful kindliness. Had she been Cassiana's own child, Beth thought, the rhu'ad could not have cared for her more solicitously.

Beth did not know that she was so dangerously ill as to shock Cassiana out of her reserve. She could not walk more than a step or two without nausea and a shooting, convulsive pain. The nights were a horror. She knew faintly that they had given her oxygen several times, and even this had left her half asphyxiated. And although it was now past the time when her child should have quickened, she had felt no stir of life.

Half the time she was dizzy, as if drugged. In her rare moments of lucidity, it disturbed her that Cassiana should spend her strength in tending her. But when she tried to voice this, Cassiana returned only a terse, hostile, "You think of yourself and I will take care of myself, and you too."

But once, when Cassiana thought Beth asleep, Beth heard her mutter aloud, "It's too slow! I can't wait much longer I'm afraid!"

No news from the Terran sector penetrated her seclusion. She missed Matt, and wondered how he had managed to conceal her long absence. But she did not spend much time wondering; life,

for her, had been stripped bare of everything except the fight for survival in each successive day. She had slipped so far down into this vegetable existence that she actually shuddered when Cassiana asked her one morning, "Do you feel well enough to go out of doors?" She dressed herself obediently, but roused a little when Cassiana held a heavy bandage toward her. There was compassion in her eyes.

"I must blindfold you. No one may know where the kail' rhu'ad is. It is too holy."

Beth frowned pettishly. She felt horribly ill, and Cassiana's mystical tone filled her with disbelieving disgust. Cassiana saw, and her voice softened.

She said persuasively, "You must do this, Beth. I promise I will explain everything some day."

"But why blindfold me? Won't you trust me not to tell, if it's secret?"

"I might trust you and I might not," Cassiana returned coldly. "But there are 10,000 rhu'ad on Megaera, and I am doing this on my single responsibility." Then suddenly her hands clenched so tightly on Beth's that the Terran woman almost cried out with pain, and she said harshly, "I can die too, you know! The Terran women who have died here, don't you think anyone ever tried - " her voice trailed off, indistinct, and suddenly she began to cry softly.

It was the first time since Beth had known her that the rhu'ad had betrayed any kind of emotion. Cassiana sobbed, "Don't fight me, Beth, don't! Both our lives may depend on your personal

feelings about me in the next few days - I can't reach you when you're hating me! Try not to hate me so much - "

"I don't hate you, Cassiana," Beth breathed, shocked, and she drew the Centaurian girl close and held her, almost protectingly, until the stormy weeping quieted and Cassiana had herself under control again.

The rhu'ad freed herself from Beth's arms, gently, her voice reserved again. "You had better calm yourself," she said briefly, and handed Beth the scarf. "Tie this over your eyes. I'll trust you to do it securely."

Sometimes Beth tried to remember in detail what happened after Cassiana removed the blindfold, and she found herself in a vast, vaulted room of unbelievable beauty. The opalescent dome admitted a filtered, frosty glimmer of pallid light. The walls, washed in some light pigment which both absorbed and reflected colors too vague to be identified, drifted with hazy shadows. Beth was oblivious to the emotional appeal of the place - she was too alien for that - but the place was unmistakably a temple, and Beth began to be afraid. She had heard about some of the extra terrestrial religions, and she had always suspected that the rhu'ad filled some religious function. But the beauty of the place touched even her, and gradually she became conscious of a low vibration, almost sound, pervading the entire building.

Cassiana whispered, "That's a telepathic damper. It cuts out the external vibrations and allows the augmentation of others."

The vibration had a soothing effect. Beth sat quietly, waiting, and Cassiana was altogether silent, her eyes closed, her lips moving as if she prayed, but Beth realized afterward that she was simply conversing telepathically with some unseen person. Later, she arose and led Beth through a door which she carefully closed and fastened behind them.

This inner chamber was smaller, and was furnished only with a few immense machines - Beth assumed they were machines, for they were enclosed anonymously in metallic casings, and dials and controls and levers projected chastely from a covering of gray paint - and a few small couches, arranged in pairs. Here three rhu'ad were waiting - slight patrician women who ignored Beth entirely and only glanced at Cassiana.

Cassiana told Beth to lie down on one of the couches, and, leaving her there, went to the other rhu'ad. They stood, their hands laced together, for minutes. Beth, by now habituated to Cassiana's moods, could guess that her friend was disturbed, even defiant. The others seemed equally disturbed; they shook their heads and made gestures that looked angry, but finally Cassiana's fair face looked triumphant and she came back to Beth.

"They are going to let me do what I planned. No, lie still - " she instructed, and to Beth's surprise, Cassiana lay down on the other couch of the pair. This one was located immediately beneath one of the big machines; the control panel was located in such a way that Cassiana could reach up and manipulate the dials and levers. This she proceeded to do, assuring herself that all were within easy reach; then reached across and touched Beth's pulse lightly. She frowned.

"Too fast - you're excited, or frightened. Here, hold my hand for a minute." Obediently Beth closed her hand around the one Cassiana extended. She forced back her questions, but Cassiana seemed to sense them. "Sssh...Don't talk, Beth. Here, where the vibrations are dampered, I can control your involuntary reactions too." And, after a few minutes, the Terran woman actually felt her heartbeat slowing to normal, and knew that her breathing was quiet and natural again.

Cassiana took her hand away, reached upward, and began to adjust a dial, her delicate fingers feeling for a careful calibration. "Just lie quietly," she warned Beth, but Beth felt not the slightest desire to move. Warmth and well - being held her lapped in comfort. It was not a perceptible thing, but an intangible vibration, almost but not quite sensible to her nerves. For the first time in months, she was wholly free of discomfort.

Cassiana was fussing with the dials, touching one control, discarding another, playing the vibration now upward until it was almost visible, no downward until it disappeared into sound. Beth began to feel a little dizzy. Her senses seemed augmented, she was so wholly conscious of every nerve and muscle in her body that she could feel Cassiana's presence, a few feet away, through the nerves of her skin. The particular sensation identified Cassiana as completely as her voice. Beth even felt it - an odd little coldness - when one of the other rhu'ad approached the couch . . . and when she moved away again.

I suppose, she thought, this is what it feels like to be telepathic. And Cassiana's thoughts seemed to penetrate her brain like so many tiny needles: Yes, almost like that. Actually, it's just the

electrical vibration of your body being put into phase with mine. That's a kind of short - term telepathy. Each individual has his own personal wave - length. We're tuned in to each other now. We used to have to do this telepathically, and it was a horrible ordeal. Now we use the dampers, and it's easy.

Beth seemed to float somewhere, weightless, above her body. A rhu'ad had walked through the edge of the vibratory field; Beth felt the shock of their out - of - phase bodies, as a painful electric jolt which gradually lessened as they adjusted into the vibration. Then she smelled a sharp - sweet smell, and with her augmented consciousness knew it was a smell of anesthetic what were they going to do? In a spasm of panic she began to struggle; felt steady hands quieting her, heard strange voices -

Her body exploded in a million fragments of light.

The room, the machines and the rhu'ad were gone. Beth was lying on a low, wide shelf, built into the wall of a barren cubicle. She felt sick and breathless, and tried to sit up, but pain shot through her body and she lay still, blinking back tears of agony. She lay gasping, feeling the weight of her child holding her like a vise of iron.

As details came back to her clearing sight, she made out a second shelf across the room. What she had at first taken for a heap of padding was the body of a woman - it was Cassiana sprawled face downward in an attitude of complete exhaustion. As Beth looked, the rhu'ad turned over and opened her eyes; they looked immense and bloodshot in the whiteness of her

face. She whispered hoarsely, "How - do you - feel?"

"A little sick - "

"So do I." Cassiana struggled upright, got to her feet, and walked, with heavy deliberation, toward Beth. As she approached, Beth felt a sort of echo of the soothing vibration, and the pain slackened somewhat. Cassiana sat down on the edge of the shelf, and said quietly, "We are not out of danger. There is still to be - " she paused, seeking a word, and finally used the Galactic standard term, "still to be allergic reaction. We have to stay close together - in same kinetic field - days till the reaction is desensitized, and our body develop tolerance to the grafted - " she stopped and said sharply in Centaurian, "I have told you you must not ask me questions! You want your baby to live, don't you? Then just do as I say! I - I am sorry, Beth - I do not mean to be angry, I do not feel very well either."

Beth knew already that Cassiana never exaggerated, but even knowing this she had not expected the violence of the next few hours. After they reached the Archonate, the world seemed to dissolve around her in a burning fever, a nausea and pain that made her previous illness seem like comfort by comparison. Cassiana, deathly pale, her hands as hot as Beth's own, did not leave her for an instant. They seemed unable to remain apart for an instant. When they were very close together, Beth felt a brief echo of the miasmic vibration which had eased her in the room of the machines; but at best this was faint, and when Cassiana drew away from her, by even a few feet, a vague, all - over trembling began in every nerve of her body, and the spasms of sickness were aggravated unbearably. The critical distance seemed about twelve feet; at that distance, the pain

was almost intolerable. For hours, Beth was too miserable to notice, but it finally dawned on her that Cassiana was actually sharing this same torture. She clung to Beth in a kind of dread. Had they been less ill, Beth thought, they might have found it funny. It was a little like having a Siamese twin. But it was not funny at all. It was a grim business, urgent as survival.

They slept that night on the narrow cots pushed close together. Half a dozen tunes in her fitful sleep Beth woke to find Cassiana's hand nestled into hers, or the rhu'ad girl's arm flung over her shoulder. Once, in a moment of intimacy, she asked, "Do all women suffer like this - here?"

Cassiana sat up, and pushed back her long pale hair. Her smile was wry and the drawn face, in the flicker of lurid lightning that leaped and danced through the shutters, looked bitter and almost old. "No, or I fear there would be few children. Although, I'm told, when Megaera was first colonized, it was pretty bad. More than half the - the normal women, died. But we found out that sometimes a normal woman could go through a pregnancy, if she was kept close to a rhu'ad constantly. I mean constantly. Almost from the minute of conception, she had to stay close to the rhu'ad who was helping her. It was confining for both of them. If they didn't like each other to start with - " suddenly, softly, Cassiana chuckled. "You can imagine, the way you used to feel about me!"

"Oh, Cassiana, dear - " Beth begged.

Cassiana went on laughing. "When they didn't hate us, they worshiped us, and that was worse. But now - well, a woman will have a little discomfort - inconvenience - you saw Nethle. But you

- if I had not taken you to the kail' rhu'ad when I did, you would have died very soon. As it was I delayed almost too long, but I had to wait, because my child was not - "

"Cassiana," Beth asked her in sudden understanding, "are you going to have a baby too?"

"Of course," Cassiana said impatiently. "How could I help you if I wasn't?"

"You said, rhu'ad don't - "

"They don't usually, it's a waste of time," said Cassiana unguardedly. "Married rhu'ad are not allowed to go through a pregnancy, for now, during all the six cycles of my pregnancy and two more while I recover, no woman in our family group can have a child" - suddenly her anger came back and closed down like a black cloud between their brief intimacy. "Why do you torment me with questions?" she flung furiously at Beth. "You know I mustn't answer them! Just let me alone, let me alone, let me alone!"

She threw up her arm over her eyes, turned on her side and lay without speaking, her back to Beth; but the other, sinking into a restless doze, heard through

her light sleep the sound of stifled crying . . . Beth thought it was the next day - she had lost consciousness of time - when she started out of sleep with the vague, all - over pain that told her Cassiana was not close to her. Voices filtered through a closed door; Cassiana's voice, muted and protesting, and Wilidh's high childish treble.

"... but to suffer so, Cassiana, and for her! Why?"

"Perhaps because I was tired of being a freak!"

"Freak?" Wilidh cried, incredulous. "Is that what you call it?"

"Wilidh, you're only a child," Cassiana's voice sounded inexpressibly tender. "If you were what I am, you would know just how much we hate it. Wilidh - since I was younger than you, I have had the burden of four families on my head. In all my life, am I not to do one thing, just one, because I myself wished for it? You have had children of your own. Can't you try to understand me?"

"You have Arli- " Wilidh muttered, sulky.

"She isn't mine - not as Lassa and the twins are yours. Do you know what it's like to carry a child - to watch it die - " Cassiana's voice broke. The voices sank, were indistinct - then there was a sudden sound like a slap, and Cassiana cried out furiously, "Wilidh, tell me what Nethle has done! I'm not asking you, I am ordering you to tell - "

Beth heard Wilidh stammering something - then there was a stifled scream, a wailing sound, and Cassiana, her face drained of color, pushed the door and came with groping steps to Beth's side. "Beth - wake up!"

"I'm awake - what's happened, Cassiana?"

"Nethle - false friend, false sister - " Cassiana's voice failed her. Her mouth moved, but no words came. She looked ghastly, sick and worn, and she had to support herself with one hand against the frame of Beth's cot. "Listen - there are - Terrans here, looking for you. They are looking for you - days now - your husband could not lie well enough, and Nethle told - " she clutched at Beth's hand. "You cannot leave here now. We might both die - " she stopped, her face gone impassive. There was a knock on the door.

Beth lay quiet, her eyes burning, as the door swung wide. Cassiana, a stony, statue - still figure of offended tradition, stared coldly at the two intruders who crossed the threshold. In 600 years no man had penetrated these apartments. The Terrans stood ill at ease, knowing they violated every tradition, law, custom of the planet.

"Matt!" Beth whispered, not believing.

In two strides he was beside her, but she drew away from his arms. "Matt, you promised!" she said unsteadily.

"Honey, honey - " Matt moaned. "What have they done to you here?" He looked down, tormented, at her thinner cheeks, and touched her forehead with disbelieving dismay. "Good God, Dr. Bonner, she's burning with fever!" He straightened and whirled on the other. "Let's get

her out of here, and talk afterward. She belongs in a hospital!"

The doctor thrust the protesting Cassiana unceremoniously aside. "I'll deal with you later, young woman," he said between his teeth. He bent professionally over Beth; after a moment he turned on Cassiana again. "If this girl dies," he said slowly, "I will hold you personally responsible for denying her competent medical attention. I happen to know she hasn't been near any practitioner on the planet. If she dies, I will haul you into court if I have to take it to Galactic Center on Rigel!"

Beth pushed Matt's hand away. "Please - " she begged. "You don't realize - Cassiana's been good to me, she's tried to - she sat up, clutching her night robe - one of Nethle's a little too small for her - about her bare shoulders. "If it hadn't been for her - "

"Then why all this secrecy?" the doctor asked curtly. He thrust a message capsule into Cassiana's hands. "Here. This will settle it." Like a sleepwalker, Cassiana opened it, drew out the slip of flexible plastic, stared, shrugged and tossed it to Beth. Incredulous, Beth Ferguson read the legal words. Under the nominal law of the Terran Empire, they could be enforced. But this to the wife of the Chief Archon of Megaera - she opened her mouth in silent indignation.

Matt said quietly, "Get dressed, Betty. I'm taking you to the hospital. No - " he checked her protest, "don't say a word. You aren't capable of making decisions for yourself. If Cassiana meant you any good, there wouldn't be all this business of hiding you."

Cassiana caught Beth's free hand tight. She looked desperate - trapped. "Leave her with me for three days," she made a final appeal. "She'll die if you take her away now!"

Dr. Bonner said tersely, "If you can give me a full explanation of that statement, I'll consider it. I'm a medical man. I think I'm a reasonable man." Cassiana only shook her head silently. Beth blinked hard, almost crying, "Cassiana! Can't you tell them - "

"Leave her with me for three days - and I'll try to get permission to tell you - " Cassiana begged helplessly. Before her despairing eyes, Matt lowered his own. "Look, Doc, we could be making a big mistake - "

"We're only delaying," the doctor said tersely. "Come on, Mrs. Ferguson, get dressed. We're taking you to Medical HQ. If we find that this - this delay hasn't really hurt you any - " he turned and glared at Cassiana, "then maybe we'll do some apologizing. But unless you can explain - "

Cassiana said bitterly, "I am sorry, Beth. If I were to tell now, without permission, I would not live till sunset. And neither would anyone who heard what I said."

"Are you threatening us?" Matt asked ominously.

"Not at all. Only stating a fact." Cassiana's eyes held cold contempt.

Beth was sobbing helplessly. Dr. Bonner rasped, "Pull yourself together! You'll go, or be

carried. You're a sick girl, Mrs. Ferguson, and you'll do as you're told."

Cassiana said softly, "Leave her alone with me for just a few minutes, at least, while I get her dressed - "

Matt started to leave the room, but the doctor put a hand on his shoulder. "Stay with your wife. Or I will."

"Never mind," said Beth wearily, and began to get out of bed. Cassiana hovered near her, not speaking, her face sick with despair, while the Earth - woman managed to dress herself after a fashion. But as Beth, still protesting helplessly, leaned on Matt, Cassiana suddenly found her voice.

"You will do justice to remember," she said, very low, "that I have warned you. When there come thing which you do not understand, remember. Beth - " she looked up imploringly, then without warning she broke down and collapsed, a limp rag, on the tumbled bed. The servant women, spitting Centaurian curses, hastened to her. Beth struggled to free Matt's hands, but the two men carried her from the room.

It was like dying. It was like being physically pulled into pieces. Beth clawed and fought, knowing in some subconscious, instinctive way that she was fighting for her life, feeling strength dram out of her, second by second. The world dissolved in red fog, and she slumped down fainting in her husband's arms.

Time and delirium passed over her head. The white sterile smells of the Medical HQ surrounded her, and the screens around her bed bounded her sight except when Matt or a puzzled doctor bent over her. She was drugged, but through the sedatives there was pain and a fearful sickness and she cried and begged Matt incoherently, "Cassiana - I had to be near her, can't you understand - " and Matt only patted her hand and whispered gentle words. She dived down deep into delirium again, feeling her body burning, while faces, familiar and strange, multiplied around her, and once she heard Matt shouting in a voice that cracked like a boy's, "Damn it, she's worse than she was when we found her, do something, can't any of you do anything?"

Beth knew she was dying, and the idea seemed pleasant. Then quite suddenly, she came up to the surface of her fogged dreams to see the pallid stern face of a rhu'ad above her. Beth's eyes and brain cleared simultaneously. The room was otherwise empty. Pinkish sunlight and a cool, pungent breeze filled the white spaces, and the rhu'ad's face was colorless and alien but full of reserved friendliness. Not only the room but the whole building seemed oddly silent; no distant voices, no hurrying footsteps, nothing but the distant hum of sky - cabs outside the windows, and the faint rustle of the ventilators. Beth felt a sort of drowsy, lazy comfort. She smiled, and said without surprise, "Cassiana sent you."

The rhu'ad murmured, "Yes. She nearly died too, you know. Your Terrans are - " she used a word which did not appear in Megaerean dictionaries " - but she did not forget you. I have done a fearful thing, so you must promise not to tell anyone that I've been here. I brought a damper into the building and hypnotized all the nurses on this floor. I've got to leave before they wake

up. But you will get well now."

Beth pleaded, "Why is this secrecy so necessary? Why can't you just tell them what you've done? I know they didn't think I'd live, the fact that I feel better should be enough proof!"

"They would try to make me tell them, and then they would not believe me. After they see your baby, they will believe it. Then we will tell them."

Beth asked her, "Who are you?"

The rhu'ad smiled faintly and mentioned the name of one of the most important men of Megaera. Her eyes twinkled at Beth's astonishment. "They sent me rather than an unknown - in the event I am found here, your Terrans might hesitate to cause an international incident. But just the same I don't intend to let them see me."

"But what was the matter with me?"

"You developed an allergy to the baby. Alien tissue - blood types that didn't mix - but you'll be all right now. I haven't time to explain it," the rhu'ad finished impatiently and turned, without another word, and hurried out of the room. Beth felt free and light, her body in comfort, without a trace of sickness or pain. She lay back on her pillows, smiling, feeling the faint stir and quickening of the child within her, then adjusted the smile to the proper angle as a nurse - one of Dr. Bonner's hard - faced old Darkovan assistants - tiptoed in, her face sheepish, and peered

round the corner of the screen. Beth had to force back a spontaneous laugh at the change which came over the old lady's face as she gasped, "Oh - Mrs. Ferguson - you - you do look better this morning, don't you? I - I - I think Dr. Bonner had better have a look at you - " and she turned and actually ran out of the cubicle.

"But what did they do to you? Surely you must know what they did to you," Dr. Bonner protested tiredly for the hundredth time. "Just tell me what you remember. Even if it doesn't make sense to you."

Beth felt sorry for the old man's puzzlement. It couldn't be pleasant for him, to admit he'd failed. She said gently, "I've told you everything." She paused, trying to put it into words he could accept; she had tried to tell him about the manner in which Cassiana's physical presence had soothed her, but he had shrugged it off angrily as delirium.

"This place where they took you. Where was it?"

"I don't know. Cassiana blindfolded me." She paused again. From prolonged mental contact with Cassiana, she had come from the kail' rhu'ad with a subdued sense of having taken part in a religious ritual, but it meant nothing to her as religion, and she could only give incoherent scraps of her impressions. "A big domed room - and a room full of machines - " at his request, she described the machines in as much detail as she could remember, but he shook his head. Trying to help, she ventured, "Cassiana called one of them a telepathic damper - "

"Are you sure? Those things are made on Darkover, and their export is generally discouraged even the Darkovans won't talk about them very much. The

other thing could have been a Howell C-5 Electro-psychometer. It must have been a special hopped - up model, though, if it could put your cell waves into phase with a telepath's!" His eyes were thoughtful. "I wonder what they did that for? It must have hurt like hell!"

"Oh, no!" Beth tried to explain just how it had felt, but he only shrugged and looked dissatisfied again. "When I examined you," he told her, and glanced side - wise at Matt, "I found an Incision, about four inches long, in the upper right groin. It was almost healed over, and they'd pulled it together with a cosmetic lacquer - even under a magnifying glass, it was hard to see."

Beth said, struggling for a dim memory, "Just as I was going under the anesthetic, one of the rhu'ad said something. It must have been a technical term, because I didn't understand it. Aghmara kedulhi varrha. Does that mean anything to you, Dr. Bonner?"

The man's white head moved slightly. "The words mean, placenta graft. Placenta graft," he repeated, slowly. "Are you absolutely certain those were the words?"

"Positive."

"But that doesn't make sense, Mrs. Ferguson. Even a partial detachment of the human placenta would have caused miscarriage."

"I definitely haven't miscarried!" Beth laughed, patting her swollen body.

The old man smiled with her. "Thank God for that!" he said sincerely. But his voice was troubled. "I wish I was sure of those words."

Beth hesitated, "Maybe it was - Aghmarda kedul - hiarra va?"

Bonner shook his head, almost smiling. "Kedulhi - placenta - is bad enough," he said. "Kedulhiarra - who ever heard of grafting a baby? No, you must have had it right the first time, I guess. Maybe they grafted, subcutaneously, some kind of placental tissue from a Centaurian. That would even explain the allergy. Possibly, Mrs. Jeth - san acted as the donor?"

"Then why did she have the allergy too?" Beth asked. Dr. Bonnet's heavy shoulders lifted and dropped. "God knows. All I can say is that you're a lucky, lucky girl, Mrs. Ferguson." He looked at her in unconcealed wonder, then turned to Matt. "You might as well take your wife home, Legate. She's perfectly all right. I've never seen a Terran woman look so healthy on Megaera. But stay close to home," he advised her. "I'll come over and have a look at you now and then. There must be some reason why the Centaurians go into seclusion. We'll try it with you - no sense in taking chances."

But Beth's sickness did not return. Contentedly secluded in the Residence, as snugly celled as a bee in her hive, she made tranquil preparations for the birth of her child. Nature has a sort of

anesthesia for the pregnant woman; it smoothed Beth's faint disquiet about Cassiana. Matt was tender with her, refusing to discuss his work, but Beth detected lines of strain in his face and voice, and after a month of this she asked him pointblank, "Is something wrong, Matt?"

Matt hesitated - then exploded. "Everything's gone wrong! Your friend Cassiana has really messed us up properly with Rai Jeth - san! I'd counted on his cooperation, but now - " he gave a despondent shrug. "He just says, in that damned effeminate voice of his," Matt's husky baritone rose to a thin mocking echo of the Archon's accent, "peaceful settlement is what we want. Terran colonists with their wives and children we will accept, but on Megaera we will not accept floods of unmarried and unattached personnel to disturb the balance of our civilization." Matt made a furious gesture. "He knows Terrans can't bring their women here! The hell with this place, Betty - space station and all! They can blow the planet into the Milky Way, for all I care! As soon as Junior is born, and you're clear for space, I'm going to throw this job right in the Empire's face! I'll take a secretaryship somewhere - we'll probably have to go out on the fringe of the Galaxy but at least I've got you!" He bent down to kiss his wife. "It serves me right for bringing you here in the first place!"

Beth hugged him, but she said in a distressed tone, "Matt, Cassiana saved my life! I simply can't believe that she'd turn the Archon against you. We don't deserve what Cassiana did for me - the Empire's been treating Megaera like a piece of lost - and - found property!"

Matt laughed, guilty. "Are you going in for politics?"

Beth said hotly, "You have authority to make recommendations, don't you? Why not, once, just once, do what's fair, instead of what the diplomatic manual recommends? You know that if you resign now, Terra will close out the Legation here, and put Megaera under martial law as a slave state! I know, the official term is protectorate - satellite, but it means the same thing! Why don't you make a formal recommendation that Megaera be given dominion status, as an independent, affiliated government?"

Matt began, "To achieve that distinction, a planet has to make some important contribution to Galactic Civilization - "

"Oh, comet dust!" Beth snapped. "The fact of their survival proves that their science is ahead of ours!"

Matt said dubiously, "The Empire might agree to an independent buffer state in this end of the Galaxy. But they've been hostile to the Empire . "

"They sent a petition to Terra, 600 years ago," Beth said quietly. "Their women died by thousands while the petition was being pigeonholed. I think they'd die all over again before they asked anything of Terra. It's Terra's turn to offer something. The Empire owes them something! Independence and affiliation - "

"Cassiana's certainly got you sold on Megaeran politics," Matt said sourly.

"Politics be damned!" Beth said with such heat that her husband stared. "Can't you see what it means, idiot - what Cassiana did? It proves that Terran women can come here in safety! It means that we can send colonists here for peaceful settlement! Can't you see, you half - wit, that's the opening Rai Jeth - san was leaving for you? Cassiana's proved a concession on their side - it's up to Terra to make the next move!"

Matt stared at her in blank surprise.

"I hadn't thought of it that way. But, honey, I believe you're right! I'll put through the recommendation, anyway. The planet's almost a dead loss now, things couldn't be worse. We've nothing to lose - and we might gain a good deal."

Beth's baby was born at the Residence - the Medical HQ did not have maternity ward facilities, and Dr. Bonner thought Beth would be more comfortable at home - on the first day of the brief Megaeran winter. She came, alert and awake, out of a brief induced sleep, and asked the usual questions.

"It's a girl." Mr. Bonner's lined old face looked tired and almost angry. "A little over three pounds, in this gravity. Try to rest, Mrs. Ferguson."

"But is she - is she all right?" Beth caught weakly at his hand. "Please tell me - please, please let me see her - "

"She's - she's - " the old doctor stumbled over a word, and Beth saw him blink hard. "She's we're giving her oxygen. She's perfectly all right, it's just a precaution. Go to sleep, like a good girl. You can see her when you wake up." Abruptly, he turned his back and walked away.

Beth struggled against the lassitude that forced her head back. "Dr. Bonner - please - " she called after him weakly. The nurse bent over and there was the sharp prick of a needle in her arm. "Go to sleep, now, Mrs. Ferguson. Your baby's all right. Can't you hear her squalling?"

Beth sobbed, "What's the matter with him? Is there something wrong with my baby?" The nurse could not hold her back. Before her fierce maternity the old woman hesitated, then turned and crossed the room. "All right, I guess one look won't hurt you. You'll sleep better if you've seen her." She picked up something and came back to the bed. Beth reached out hungrily, and after a minute, smiling faintly, the Darkovan woman put the baby down on the bed beside Beth.

"Here. You can hold her for a minute. The men don't understand, do they?"

Beth smiled happily, folding back the square of blanket that lay lapped over the small face. Then her mouth fell open and she uttered a sharp cry.

"This isn't my baby! It's not - she isn't, you don't - " her eyes blurred with panicky tears. Rebelliously, scared, she looked down in terror at the baby she held.

The infant was not red or wrinkled. The smooth soft new skin was white - a shining, lustrous,

pearly white. The tight - screwed eyes were a slaty silver, and a pallid, gilt - colored down already curled faintly on the little round head.

Perfect. Healthy. But - a rhu'ad.

The nurse dived for the baby as Beth fainted.

It was nearly a month before Beth was strong enough to get up during the day. Shock had played vicious havoc to her nerves, and she was very ill indeed. Her mind acquiesced, and she loved her small perfect daughter, but the unconscious conflict forced itself inward, and took revenge on every nerve of her body. The experience had left a hidden wound, too raw to touch. She sheltered herself behind her weakness.

The baby - over Mart's protest, Beth had insisted on calling the child Cassy - was more than a month old when one afternoon her Centaurian servant came into her room and announced, "The Archon's wife has come to visit you, Mrs. Legate Furr - ga - soon."

Beth had forced the memory so deep that she only thought that Nethle or Wilidh had come to pay a formal call. She sighed and stood up, sliding her bare feet into scuffs, and padding across to her dressing panel. She twisted buttons, playing out lengths of billowing nylene to cover her short indoor chemise, and slid her head into the brusher which automatically attended to her short hair. "I'll go up. Take Cassy down to the nursery, will you?

The Centaurian girl murmured, "She has her baby - with her."

Beth stared in stupefaction. No wonder the servant girl had seemed thunderstruck. A baby outside its own home, on Megaera?

"Bring her down here, then - " she directed. But that did not dull her surprise when a familiar, lightly moving form shrouded in pale robes, ghosted into the room.

"Cassiana!" she said tremulously.

The rhu'ad smiled at her affectionately as they clasped hands. Then suddenly Beth threw her arms around Cassiana and broke down in a tempest of stormy crying.

"Don't, don't - " Cassiana pleaded, but it was useless. All the suppressed fear and shock had broken loose at once, and Cassiana held her, awkwardly, as if unused to this kind of emotion, trying to comfort, finally bursting into tears herself. When she could speak again steadily, she said, "Can you believe me, Beth, if I say I know how you are feeling? Look, you must try to pull yourself together, I have promised I'd explain to you - "

She freed herself gently, and from the servant's arms she took a bundle, carefully shielded in tough, transparent plastic, with double handles for carrying. She opened the package carefully and from the depths of this ingenious cradle she lifted a wrapped baby, held it out and put it into Beth's arms.

"This is my little boy - "

Beth finally raised her eyes to Cassiana, who was standing, fascinated, by Cassy's crib. "He - he - he looks like - " Beth faltered, and Cassiana nodded. "That's right. He is a Terran child. But he's mine. Rather - he's ours." Her earnest eyes rested on the other in something like appeal. "I promised to explain - Dhemhari, Beth, don't start to cry again ..." "We rhu'ad would probably have been killed, anywhere except on Megaera," Cassiana began, a few minutes later, when they had settled down together on a cushioned divan, the babies snuggled down in pillows between them. "Here, we saved the colony. Originally, I think, we were a cosmic ray mutation. We were part of the normal population then. We hadn't adapted quite so far." She paused. "Do you know what Genetic Drift is? In an isolated population, hereditary characteristics just drift away from normal. I mean - suppose a colony had, to begin with, half blonde people, and half brunette. In a normal society, it would stay distributed like that - about 50 - 50 per cent. But in one generation, just by chance, it might vary as far as 60 - 40. In the next generation, it could go back to normal, or - the balance once having been changed - it could keep drifting, and there would be 70 per cent of blondes and only 30 per cent of brunettes. That's oversimplified, of course, but if that keeps up for eight or ten generations, with natural selection working hard too, you get a distinct racial type. We had two directions of drifting, because we had the normal population, and - we had the rhu'ad. Our normal women were dying - more in every generation. The rhu'ad could have children safely, but somehow, we had to preserve the normal type."

She picked up Cassy and snuggled her close. "Did you name her for me, then?" she asked. "Well

- I started to explain. A rhu'ad is human, and perfectly normal, except - they will find it out about Cassy some day - we have, in addition to our other organs, a third ovary. And this third ovary is parthenogenetic - self - reproducing. We could have perfectly, human, normally sexed children, either male or female, who would breed true to the normal human type. They were even normally susceptible to the poisonous reaction in this air. These normal children were carried, in the normal way, except that a rhu'ad mother was immune to the hormone reaction, and could protect a normal child. Or, a rhu'ad woman could, from the third ovary, at her own will - we have control over all our reflexes, including conception - have a rhu'ad, female child. Any rhu'ad can reproduce, duplicate herself, without male fertilization. I never had a father. No rhu'ad does."

"Is Cassy - "

Cassiana paid no attention to the interruption. "But the mutation is female. While the normal women were dying, and only the rhu'ad could have children - even these children died when they grew up - we were afraid that in three or four generations we would end with an all - female, parthenogenetic, all - rhu'ad society. No one wanted that. Least of all the rhu'ads themselves." She paused. "We have all the instincts of normal women. I can have a child without male fertilization," she looked searchingly at Beth, "but that does not change the fact that I - I love my husband and I want his children - like any other woman. Perhaps more - being telepathic. That's an emotional problem, too. We have done our part for Megaera, but we - we want to be women. Not sexless freaks!"

She paused again, then continued, evidently searching for words. "The rhu'ad are almost

completely adaptable. We tried implanting rhu'ad gametes - ova - from our normal ovaries, into normal women. It didn't work, so finally they evolved the system we have today. A rhu'ad becomes pregnant in the normal way - " for the first time Beth saw her blush slightly, "and carries her child for two, maybe three months. By that time, the unborn child builds up a temporary immunity against the toxins released by the hormone allergy. Then they transfer this two - month embryo into the host mother's womb. The immunity lasts long. enough that the baby can be carried to full term, and birthed. Then, of course, there's no more danger at all, for a male child - or, for a female child, no more danger until she grows up and herself becomes pregnant.

"Another thing: After a woman has her first child like that, she also builds up a very slight immunity to the hormone reaction. For a woman's second child, or third, or more, it is sufficient to transplant a fertilized ovum of six or seven days . . . provided that there is a rhu'ad within immediate call, to stabilize the chemistry in case anything goes wrong. One or more of my families always has a woman who is pregnant, so I must be continuously available."

"Isn't that terribly hard on you?" Beth asked.

"Physically, no. We've done what they do with prize cattle all over the Empire - hyperovulation. At certain days in each cycle, rhu'ads are given particular hormone and vitamin substances, so that we release not one ovum, but somewhere between four and twelve. Usually they can be transferred about a week later, and the operation is almost painless - "

"Then all the children in your four - families, are yours, and your husband's?"

"Why, no! Children belong to the woman who bears them and gives birth to them - and to the man who loves that woman, and mates with her!" Cassiana laughed. "Oh, I suppose all societies adapt their morals to their needs. To me, it's a little - nasty, for a man to have just one wife, and live with her all year. And aren't you terribly lonely, with no other women in your house?"

It was Beth's turn to blush. Then she asked, "But you said those were normal children. Cassy Cassy is a rhu'ad - "

"Oh yes. I couldn't do with you what I' - d have done with a Centaurian. You had no resistance at all, and you were already pregnant. Women do become pregnant sometimes, in the ordinary way, on Megaera - we are strict about contraceptive laws, but nothing is entirely reliable - and when they do, they die, unless a rhu'ad will take for them the risk I took for you. I had done it once before, for Clotine, but the baby I had died - well, during those three days while you were shut up alone, I went to the kail' rhu'ad, and put myself under a damper - and became pregnant. By myself."

A thousand tiny hints were suddenly falling into place in Beth's mind. "Then you did graft - "

Cassiana nodded. "That's right. When we went together to the kail' rhu'ad, the dampers put us into phase - so the cellular wave lengths wouldn't vary enough to throw the babies into shock and just exchanged the babies."

Beth had been expecting this; but even so, Cassiana's casual tone was a shock. "You really - "

"Yes. My little boy is - by heredity alone - your child and the Legate's. But he is mine. He lived because I - being rhu'ad - could carry him in safety, and manage to stabilize his reactions to the hormone allergy with the atmosphere. There was no question of Cassy's safety: a rhu'ad baby, even a rhu'ad embryo, is perfectly adaptable, even to the alien environment of a Terran body. The first few days were so crucial because you and I both developed allergies to the grafted alien tissue; our bodies were fighting the introduction of a foreign kind of substance. But once we mother - hosts began to develop a tolerance, I could stabilize myself, and my little boy, and you and when you were taken from me too soon, I could send another rhu'ad to complete the stabilization. There was no need to worry about Cassy; she simply adapted to the poisonous condition which would have killed a normal child."

She picked up Cassy and rocked her almost wistfully. "You have a most unusual little daughter, Beth. A perfect little parasite."

Beth looked down at Cassiana's little boy. Yes, she could trace in his face a faint likeness to the lines of Mart's, and yet - hers? No. Cassy was hers, borne in her body - she wanted to cry again.

Cassiana leaned over and put an arm around her. "Beth," she said quietly, "I have just come from the Legation HQ, where - with full permission of the Council of Rhu'ad - I have laid before them a complete, scientific account of the affair. I have also been allowed to assure the Terran authorities that when Terran colonists come here to build the Space Station, their women will be

safe. We have suggested that colonists be limited to families who have already had children, but we will give assurance that an accidental pregnancy need not be disastrous. In return I received assurance, forwarded from Galactic Center, that Megaera will receive full dominion status as an independent planetary government associated with the Empire. And we are being opened to colonization."

"Oh, how wonderful!" Beth cried impulsively. Then doubt crept into her voice. "But so many of your people hate us - "

The rhu'ad smiled. "Wait until your women come. Unattached men, on Megaera, could only make trouble. Men have so many different basic drives! An Empire man from Terra is nothing like a Centaurian from Megaera, and a Darkovan from Thendara is different from either - take ten men from ten different planets, and you have ten different basic drives - so different that they can only lead to war and ruin. But women - all through the Galaxy, Terran, Darkovan, Samarran, Centaurian, Rigelian - women are all alike, or at least they have a common basic area. A baby is the passport to the one big sorority of the universe. And admission is free to every woman in the Galaxy. We'll get along."

Beth asked numbly, "And you were convinced enough of that to risk your life for a Terran who hated you? I'm ashamed, Cassiana."

"It wasn't entirely for you," Cassiana admitted. "You and your husband were Megaera's first and last chance to avoid being a backwater of the Galaxy. I planned this from the minute I first saw

you. I - I wasn't your friend, either, at first."

"You - you couldn't have known I'd get pregnant - "

Cassiana looked shamed and embarrassed. "Beth I - I planned it, just as it happened. I'm a telepath. It was my mental command that made you stop taking your anti shots."

Beth felt a sudden surge of anger so great that she could not look at Cassiana. She had been manipulated like a puppet - She felt the rhu'ad's thin hand on her wrist. "No. Only a fortuitous accident in the way of destiny. Beth, look at them - " Her free hand touched the two babies, who had fallen asleep, cuddled like two little animals. "They are sister and brother, in more than one way. And perhaps you will have other children. You belong to us, now Beth."

"My husband - "

"Men will adapt to anything, if their women accept it," Cassiana told her. "And your daughter is a rhu'ad - who will grow up in a Terran home. There will be others like her. In her turn she will help the daughters of Terran families who come here, until science finds a new way and each woman can bear her own children again - or until Centaurians take their place, moving out into the Galaxy with the rest - "

And Beth knew in her heart that Cassiana was right.

(1954)

The Climbing Wave(1955)

Brian Kearns knew to the second, by his ship - time chronometer and by the faint, almost imperceptible humming of a monitor screen, when the limit of gravity tolerance was reached. Giving himself a round ten seconds for safety margin - Brian was a practical and methodical young man, and had spent twelve years training for this work and four and a half years doing it he unfastened the straps on his skyhook, the free - swinging, nest - like lounge cradle where he had been lying with ears and eyes fastened on the complex controls. He inched patiently, fly like, down the wall, braced himself to a handhold, and threw a certain switch to the farthest position leftward.

The barely perceptible humming stopped.

Brian Kearns had just put himself out of a job.

He picked up the stylus chained to the logbook, held a floating page down with his right hand, and wrote swiftly and expertly with his left:

"1676th day of voyage; have just thrown switch which cut the interstellar drives. Our

calculations were correct and there appear to have been no visible shock effects as the IS units went out of function. We are now standing fourteen hundred miles off Mars. Relinquished control of ship at - " he glanced at the chronometer again, and wrote " - 0814 hours. Position . . ." He added a series of complicated numerals, scribbled his initials beneath his entry, then picked up the hook of the intercabin communicator and waggled it.

A dim rasping voice said from the other end of the starship, almost half a mile away, "That you, Kearns?"

"Right, Caldwell."

"We're standing by with atomics back here, Brian. Were the figures right?"

"All calculations appear to have been correct," Brian answered stiffly. "The drives have been cut according to the schedule previously worked out."

"Yippee!" the voice shouted from the loudspeaker, and Brian frowned and coughed reprovingly. The faraway voice appeared to be stifling an expletive, but inquired correctly: "Standing by for orders, Captain Kearns?"

"All right, Captain Caldwell," Brian said; "she's your ship, as of - " he stopped, glanced at the chronometer again, and after a few seconds said, "now!"

He put down the hook, and looked around the main control room, in which he had spent the best part of the Homeward1?, long voyage. The tremendous interstellar drives were silent now, their dim hum stilled, and the metal surfaces faced him with a blank, metallic unresponsiveness. Brian had a curious feeling of anticlimax while he recapped the stylus, slid a moving panel over the logbook, and clung there to the handhold, wondering with the back part of his mind if he had left anything undone, while knowing, with the sureness of long habit, that he had not.

It is impossible to shrug one's shoulders in free fall; the motion sends you flying across the cabin, and Brian was too well - trained to make waste motions of that sort. But his eyebrow lifted a little, and a sort of elated grin spread across his face; for a minute, unobserved, he looked almost as young as he was. Then, re - schooling his expression to the gravity he always wore in the presence of his crew, he inched back across the wall, methodically unstrapped his rubber sandals from their place in the skyhook, worked his feet into them with the skill of long practice, and, pulling himself swiftly across the remaining section of wall, wriggled the forward part of his body through the sphincter lock which led to the forward part of the great starship. There he paused, his middle clasped firmly by the expanding diaphragm, looking down the narrow, cylindrical corridor. He could feel, now, the faint vibration all around him, as far away in the nose of the Homeward the atomic rockets began firing. He allowed himself to grin again, this time with the secret contempt of a hyperdrive technician for rockets, however necessary, and slowly hauled the rest of his long, narrow body through the sphincter; then, pushing his feet hard against the diaphragm which had snapped tight behind him, he arrowed down, in a straight line, his body rocketing weightless down the corridor. He braked himself with strong hands at the far end, then paused; there was a musical mewing behind him, and the ship's cat, Einstein - actually

a Centaurian mammal more nearly resembling a dwarf kangaroo - somersaulted dizzily through the air toward him.

"Brian - catch him!" a girl's voice called, and Brian turned, hooking one rubber sandal through a strap, and made a wide sweeping grab for the creature. He caught it by one spindly leg; it squalled and thrashed to get away, and the girl called anxiously "Hang on, I'm coming." She propelled herself down the corridor, and hurriedly snatched the little animal, who immediately quieted and snuggled under her chin.

"He went crazy when the rockets started," she murmured apologetically. "It must be the vibration or something."

Brian grinned down at the girl, who was small and slight, her curly fair hair standing weirdly around her head and her prim brief coverall floating put in odd billows. They had all lived at free fall conditions for so long that he barely noticed this, but he did see the disquiet in her brown eyes - Ellinor Wade was a food culturist, and knew rather less about the drives than the Centaurian cat.

"It's all right, Ellie; maybe Einstein's a hyperdrive technician. I just cut the IS units and turned the ship over to Caldwell."

She whispered, "Then we're almost there! Oh, Brian!" and her eyes were a double star, first magnitude. He nodded. "It's Caldwell's command now, so I don't know what he'll do," Brian

added, "but you'd better keep your ears lapped over for instructions. We'll have to strap hi, in a few minutes, for deceleration, if he's going to brake in at Mars."

"Brian, I'm scared ..." Ellie whispered, and let the Centaurian cat float free, fumbling around for his hand. "It would be - hideously ironical, if this old ship traveled to Centaurus and back, and then cracked up in atmosphere - "

"Relax," Brian advised her genially. "He may decide to go on to Earth, anyway - Caldwell knows his business, Ellie. And I know the Homeward."

"You certainly do." The girl attempted a smile, which somehow missed its purpose. "You're in love with this old wreck!"

Brian grinned disarmingly. "I won't deny it," he answered. "But it's just a kind of substitute passion till I can get you down to earth!"

The girl blushed and turned her face away from him. The twelve members of the Homeward's crew were all young, and the confined quarters aboard generated strong attachments; but men and women were carefully segregated aboard ship, for an excellent and practical reason which had nothing to do with morality. The trip from Centaurus, even at hyperspeeds, took the best part of five years. And no one has yet discovered any method for delivering a baby in free fall.

Brian unhooked his rubber shoe. "Going into the lounge?"

"No ..." She hung back. "I've got to feed Einstein, after - Paula's still in the Food Culture unit, and there's no public address system in there - I'd better go and tell her we may have to strap in. Go on ahead, and I'll tell Paula - "

"I'll come with you. I'm hungry and I want to snatch a bite before we go out, anyhow - "

"No!" The sharpness of her voice amazed him. "Go on out in the lounge, 111 bring you something."

He stared at her. "What - "

"Go on. Paula's - Paula's - " Ellie fumbled and finished, " - she's dressing in there."

"What the devil - Brian, suddenly suspicious, shoved hard against the handhold, and barreled across the corridor to the open lock of the Food Culture unit. Elite gave a wordless cry of warning as Brian fell through the doorway, and in the aftermath of that cry, beneath Brian's intrusive stare, two fused figures jerked convulsively and thrust apart, Paula Sandoval flung her arms over her face and grabbed at a floating garment, while Tom Mellen jackknifed upright and glared belligerently at Brian.

"Get the hell out of here!" he roared, simultaneous with Brian's needle - voiced, "What's going on in here?"

There was blue vitriol in Paula Sandoval's taut voice. "I think you can see what goes on, Captain!" and her black eyes snapped fire at him.

"Brian - " Ellie implored, her hand on his wrist with a gentle, repressive force. He threw it off with a violence that flung her halfway across the cabin.

He said, with icy command, "You'd better get up front, Paula. Caldwell will need his figures checked. As for you, Mellen, regulations - "

"Regulations go jump in a hot jet, and you too!" Tom Mellen stormed. He was a loose - limbed young fellow, well over six feet tall and looking longer. "What the hell do you think you're doing anyway, pushing your weight around?"

"Look," Brian said tersely, and jerked around to the girls, "Paula, get up front - that's an order! Tom, this part of the ship is off limits for men except at regular meal periods. This is the fifth tune - "

"The sixth to be exact, Captain's Log - book, and four times you didn't catch me. So what? What the hell are you, a blasted - "

"We'll leave my personal habits out of the matter, Mister Mellen. Sandoval" he flung at Paula. "I gave you an order!"

Ellie had her arms around Paula, who was sobbing harshly, but the small dark girl pulled away from Ellie, her eyes ablaze. "Give him another one for me, Tom," she said bitterly, and scooted out of the cabin. Brian added, more quietly, "You go too, Ellie. I'll settle this with Mellen right now."

But Ellie did not move. "Brian," she said quietly, "this is a pretty stupid time to be enforcing that regulation."

"As long as the Homeward is in space," Brian said tightly, "that particular regulation - and all others based on principles of necessity - will be enforced."

"You listen here… " Mellen began furiously, then abruptly, his face suffusing with violent color, he flung himself upward at Brian, before Kearns realized what was coming. "The atomics are on," he grated. "Which means Caldwell's captain! And for three years I've been waiting for this "

Brian dodged in a queer, jerky gesture, and Mellen hurtled over his head, thrown on by the momentum of his own blow. "Brian! Tom!" Ellie begged, diving toward them and thrusting her rubber - sandaled feet between the men, but Mellen shoved her aside.

"I'm warning you, Ellie, get out of the way - " he panted. Brian started "Look here - " then, as Mellen plunged at him again, put out both hands and shoved hard.

Momentum met momentum. Brian and Mellen spun apart with such violence that heads cracked at opposite ends of the Food Culture unit, and Brian, half-stunned, dragged himself groggily upright.

Mellen's laughter, wry and ironical, filled the cabin.

"Okay, damn it," he said bitterly. "I suppose there's no use having it out here and now. But just wait till I get you down to Earth - "

Brian rubbed his head and blinked dizzily, but his voice was precise, giving no hint of the shooting stars that were chasing themselves before his eyes. "By that

time," he answered coldly, "there will no longer be occasion for fighting, since my command will have terminated."

Mellen tightened his mouth, and Ellie interceded anxiously: "Tom, Brian is perfectly right, theoretically - don't stir up hard feelings now, when we're almost home - "

"Yeah, that's right . . ." Tom Mellen suddenly grinned, and his face was good - natured. "Hey, Brian now about it? No hard feelings, huh?"

Brian turned away. He said frigidly, "Why should there be hard feelings? It's my duty to enforce

regulations until the Homeward is down."

"God damn - " Mellen muttered under his breath at Brian's rigid back, and even Ellie looked troubled. Then Mellen made a useless movement and started toward the front of the ship.

"Come on. I expect Caldwell will be wanting us," he said tightly, and propelled himself in quick, wrathful jerks toward the forward lounge.

II

The technique of braking into atmosphere had been perfected a hundred years before the old Starward rose from Earth to aim at Centaurus. However, it was new to the Homeward's crew, and the tediousness of the process set nerves to jittering. Only Brian, strapped into one of the skyhooks in the lounge, was really calm, and Ellie, in the cradle next to his, absorbed a little of his calm confidence; Brian Kearns had been trained aboard the Homeward for twelve years before the trip began.

It had taken four generations for the stranded crew of the original ship, the Starward, to repair the hyperdrives smashed in landing, and to wrest from the soil of 0 Centauri fourth planet - Terra Two, they called it - enough cerberum to take a pilot crew back to earth with news of their success. A hundred and thirty years, subjective time. Taking account of the timelags engendered

by their hyperspeeds, it was entirely possible that four or five hundred years had elapsed, objectively, on the planet their ancestors had left. Ellie, looking across at Brian's calm face, at his mouth that persisted in grinning with some personal, individual elation when he thought himself unwatched, wondered if he felt no regrets at all. Ellie struggled with a moment of blinding homesickness, remembering their last view of the little dark planet spinning around the red star. They had left a growing colony of 400 souls, .a world to which they could never return, for, after five years of subjective time in hyperspeeds, it was entirely possible that everyone they had known on Terra Two had already lived out a full lifetime.

But Brian's thoughts were moving forward, not backward, and he could not keep them to himself.

"I suppose by now they've discovered a better method for braking into atmosphere," he mused. "If anybody's watching us, down there, we probably look like living fossils - and I suppose we are. In their world, we'll be so obsolete that we'll feel like stone - age man!"

"Oh, I don't know," Ellie protested. "People don't change - "

"But civilizations do," Brian insisted. "There was less than a hundred years between the first rocket to Luna and the launching of the Starward. That's how fast a scientific civilization can move."

"But how can you be sure they've moved along those lines?" Ellie wanted to know.

"Have you ever heard of time - binding?" he asked derisively. "When each generation accumulates the knowledge of the one before it, progress is a perfectly cumulative, straightforward thing. When the Starward left - "

"Brian - " she began, but he rushed on: "I grant you that man progressed at random for thousands of years, but when he acquired the scientific method, it was less than a hundred years from jet plane to rocketship. A race which had interstellar travel could progress in only one direction. If we wanted to take the time, we could sit down with an electronic calculator and add it all up, and predict exactly what we'd find down there."

"It seems," Ellie said slowly, "That you're leaving out the human element. The crew of the Starward were all scientists, hand - picked for compatibility, and the Terra Two colony is probably the nearest thing to a homogeneous society that ever existed. You can't make that kind of prediction for a normally populated planet."

"The human element - "

"Will you two quit it?" shouted Langdon Forbes angrily from his skyhook. "I'm trying not to get spacesick, but Kearns sounding off about progress is about all I can take! Does he have to pick a time when we're strapped in, and can't get away?"

Brian grumbled something unintelligible and lapsed into morose silence. Ellie reached dragging

fingers, newly clumsy, toward him, but he pushed the hand away.

A dismal wailing came from beneath Ellie's skyhook; Einstein was getting reacquainted with gravity, and didn't like it. Ellie scooped up the miserable little animal and held it cuddled tight against her straps. It was silent in the lounge; the steady, low vibration of the atomic drives was a sound already so deeply embedded in their consciousness that they did not think of it as sound at all. There was still no feeling of motion, but there was an unpleasant, dragging sensation as the enormous starship made its wide braking circles, first grazing the atmosphere for a second or two, as it swung elliptically, like a crazy comet; then entering atmosphere for a few seconds, then a full minute, then a few minutes - coming "down" in slow, careful spirals.

"I hope they've found some way to put artificial gravity in spaceships," Judy Keretsky moaned, half - laughing, from the skyhook where she swung, upside down, from what was now the ceiling of the lounge. He long, curly hair fell down over her head in a thick curtain; she alone of the starship's crew did not keep her hair clipped functionally short. She batted futilely at the waving curls as she wailed, "Oh, my poor head, I'm getting dizzy up here!"

"You're getting dizzy! What about this poor cat!" Ellie jibed.

"Say, whose idea was it to bring that animal along, anyhow?" someone demanded.

"Very valuable contribution to science," Judy burlesqued. "Why didn't you bring a pair of them, Ellie!" "Brian wouldn't let her," Marcia van Schreeven jeered, with an undertone of bitterness.

Ellie patted Einstein's darkish fur defensively, reminding Marcia in her peaceful voice: "Einstein is one of the third gender. When conditions are right, he'll reproduce in the first and second."

"Lucky animal," Brian said half - seriously, and Ellie glanced at him with unusual shyness as she murmured, "Well, Einstein will be unique on Earth, anyhow!"

"You'll see things much weirder than Einstein," Brian said offhandedly. "We've only been on one planet, and by now, Earth has probably colonized all the nearer stars. The people of Earth will be cosmopolitan in the largest sense - "

"Speaking of Earth," Langdon forcibly headed him off before he could hold forth again, "where on the planet are we going to set this thing down?"

"We won't know that till we contact the surface," Judy said irritably, batting her hair back. "We have the map the Firsts gave us, but it's unthinkable that the old spaceport at Denver would still be in use, and if it is, it would probably be so changed that we wouldn't know how to land - and too crowded for an IS ship this size."

"You've been listening to Brian," Langdon grinned.

"According to him, it's a wonder we haven't already bumped into the local rocket for the second galaxy!"

Brian ignored the confusion of technical terms and

answered seriously, "That's why I suggested landing on Mars. There are enough desert areas on Mars where we could have landed without any danger of damaging urbanized sections. I doubt if the population there is quite so centralized."

"Well, why didn't we?" Marcia queried sharply, and Langdon, frowning, twisted his head to her. "We tried to radio them from space," he answered, "but they evidently didn't pick up our signals. So Caldwell and Mellen decided to bring us in to Earth instead of wasting time braking in at Mars and maybe having to pick up again. We haven't enough fuel for more than one landing and pick - up."

"We could certainly have refueled at Mars - " Brian began, but was interrupted by an apologetic cough from the loudspeaker in the center of the lounge.

"Hey, Kearns," it said in a puzzled rasp. "Brian Kearns, come on up forward, will you? Kearns, please come up to the front control room, if you can."

Brian scowled, and started painfully unbuckling the straps on his skyhook. "Now what does Mellen want - " he wondered aloud.

"What's the matter?" Judy squeaked, "Are we in trouble?"

"Oh, hush!" Ellie commanded. "If we are, we'll be told!" She watched, with vague disquiet, as Brian crawled over the side of his skyhook and abruptly tumbled two feet, not very hard, to the floor. "Weight's on the axis now," he announced wryly to no one in particular. "Good thing I wasn't up where Judy is, or I'd have broken my neck! Somebody will have to lift her down - "

Judy squeaked again, but Ellie snapped at her: "Just stay where you are until we find out what's going on!" and watched, disturbed, as Brian crawled clumsily on hands and knees across the wall which lay along the central axis of the starship and therefore "down." He pushed at the refractory sphincter lock - it worked perfectly only in free fall - and forced his head and shoulders through into the forward control room.

Tom Mellen, his short hair bristling upright around his head, twisted around as Brian wriggled his shoulders through. "We've tried to raise them by FM, AM and wavicle," he said, scowling, "but they don't answer. Not a sign of a signal. What do you think of that, Brian?"

Brian looked deliberately around the cabin. Paula Sandoval, strapped in before the navigation instruments, hunched her bare, tanned shoulders and refused to meet his eyes; Caldwell, the gray - haired veteran who had repaired the atomic rockets, grinned truculently. Mellen's face was puzzled and defensive.

"I said it off Mars," Brian told them, "and I say it again; we're just wasting time trying to raise them with any communication devices aboard. By now, they're probably using something so far

beyond radio or wavicles that they can't pick us up. Their equipment would be too fine for our clumsy primitive devices to."

"Clumsy primitive - " Caldwell broke off, visibly summoning patience, and Mellen interrupted fiercely. "Look, Kearns, there are just so many ways of transmitting electric impulses."

"The first spacemen said that all fuels had to be chemical or atomic, didn't they?" Brian snapped. "And we came on cerberum. The world didn't end when the Starward left! You've got to realize that we've been stranded in what amounts to a time - warp for five hundred years or so, and we're hopelessly obsolete!"

"Maybe so . . ." Mellen said slowly, and waggled the switch again. Brian irritably flipped it shut.

"Why keep fussing with it, Tom? If they'd picked up our signals, they'd have answered by now. Have you seen any rockets entering or leaving?"

"Nothing larger than twelve centimeters since we entered the orbit," Mellon told him.

Brian frowned. "Where are we, Paula?"

The girl gave him a venomous look, but she glanced at her instruments and replied, "Orbiting at forty miles, velocity five point six m.p.s."

Kearns glanced at Caldwell. "You're the captain." "In a limited sense," Caldwell said slowly, and returned his steady gaze. "That's why I wanted you up here. There are two things we can do. We can go down under the cloud layer and maybe risk getting shot at - to find a place to set down, or else go on a permanent orbit, and send somebody down in the pickup."

"The pickup," Brian decided immediately. "Can you imagine trying to land a ship this size without instructions from outside? For all we know, there may be laws about landing spaceships. The pickup can set down in a few square yards. Whoever goes down can locate a spaceport big enough to handle the Homeward and see about getting the necessary permissions."

"You're overlooking one thing." Mellen forced the words out. "Suppose they haven't any spaceports!"

"They'd have to have spaceports, Tom," Caldwell protested, "even for interplanetary ships." And Brian added, "It's impossible that we'd have been the only interstellar ship - "

"That isn't what I mean," Mellen protested. "Surely one of the planets, Mars or Earth, would have picked up our signals. Someone must use radio for something, even if it's purely local. That is, if there's anyone down there at all!"

Brian snorted laughter. "You mean some kind of end - of - the - world disaster?" he asked, elaborately sarcastic, but Mellen took him seriously. "Something like that."

"There's one way we can find out," Caldwell interrupted, "Do you want to take the pickup down, Brian? We won't be using the IS drives again - there's nothing more you can do aboard."

"I'll go," Brian said shortly, but he could barely conceal his eagerness, and even forgot his animosity toward Mellen for a minute. "Shall I take Tom to handle the radio?"

Caldwell frowned, and answered half practically and half tactfully, "I'll need Tom, and Paula too, to bring the ship down when we're ready. Langdon can handle the radio in the pickup. And take a couple of others too; Mellen may or may not be right, but I don't think any crew members ought to go down alone until we know exactly what we'll find down there."

Caldwell's seriousness made little impression on Brian, but he realized that he would need someone to pilot the pickup in any case; his own training had fitted him only to handle the complex interstellar drives. And Langdon should, they decided, keep the radio at his fingertips, to report instantly to the Homeward in case of any unforeseen events.

So it was Ellinor Wade who took the controls of the small jet - driven stratoplane which had been designed for ship - to - surface shuttling, and used during the final stages of repair on the Homeward. She let the small plane sink through the thick clouds, and asked, "Where do we want to set down?"

Langdon bent over the carefully copied map. "Judy's scribbled all over this thing," he complained. "But try North America, midwest. That's where the first rocket ranges were built,

and we all speak English, after a fashion."

"Unless the language has changed too much," Brian murmured. Ellie frowned as she brought the swift little jet down, arcing across an unfamiliar land - mass; Brian and Langdon squeezed their hands to their eyes as the clouds thinned, for the sudden blaze of yellow light was like a stab in the eyeballs. Lighting aboard ship, of course, was keyed to the familiar crimson noon of Terra Two, under which the crew had lived all their lives. Ellie squinted over the instrument panel, using an unladylike word under her breath.

The ship dived over rolling hills, and Brian let out his breath slowly as the serried regular skyline of massive buildings cleaved the horizon, and said in an edgy voice, "I was beginning to wonder if Mellen had been right about those atomic deserts!"

Ellie warned, "From what the Firsts have told us, I don't care to get tangled up in a city airport! Let's find an open space and set down there." She headed northward from the city, and asked, "Have either of you seen anything that looks like transportation? Planes, rockets, anything on the ground?"

"Nothing at all with the naked eye," Langdon frowned, "and nothing moving that beeps the radar. And I've been watching pretty close."

"Funny ..." Ellie murmured.

From this height everything was clear, and as they swerved groundward, details became sharply incised in miniature: wide plowed fields, scattered, toy - like houses, clusters of small buildings. There seemed to be animals in the fields. Langdon smiled. "Just like home," he said happily, meaning Terra Two. "Regular rural community, except that everything looks green/"

"That's this ridiculous yellow light!" Ellie said, absently, and Brian scoffed, "Just like home! Better get set for a shock, Langdon!"

"It might be you that gets the shock," Langdon answered unexpectedly, and peered over Ellie's shoulder at the controls. "The ground's level here, Ellie."

The pickup bumped ground and rolled gently; Langdon's fingers moved delicately on the radio panel, and he made a brief report in staccato speech while Brian unsealed the door. Strange smells wafted in to the cabin, and the three crowded together in the entrance, eyes squinted against the stabbing light, strangely reluctant, at the last, to set foot on the unfamiliar soil.

"It's cold . . ." Ellie shivered in her thin garment.

Langdon looked down, dismayed. "You've set down in somebody's grainfield!" he reproached. Food was still conserved carefully on Terra Two, more from habit than from serious privation; Man's conquest of the new planet was uncertain, and the colony took no chances. The three felt a twinging guilt as they looked down at the blackened spears of grain, and Ellie clutched at Brian's arm. "Someone's coming - " she faltered.

Across the evenly plowed ridges, between rows of ripening wheat, a boy of thirteen walked, steadily and unhurried. He was not very tall, but looked sturdy; his face was deeply tanned under square - cut dark hair, and he was wearing a loose shirt and breeches tucked into low boots, all the same rich deep - brown color. Even Brian was silent as the boy advanced to the very foot of the pickup plane, paused and looked up at it, then glanced up indifferently at the three in the doorway, and began to move around to the tail, toward the smoking jets.

Brian quickly dropped Ellie's hand and scrambled to the ground. "Hey there!" he called, forgetting the prepared speech on his lips. "Better not go around there, it's dangerous - hot!

The boy desisted at once, turning to gaze at him, and after a moment he said in slurred but perfectly understandable English, "I saw the streak, and hoped that a meteor had fallen." He laughed, turned and began to walk away from them.

Brian looked blankly up at Ellie and Langdon. The man jumped down and gave Ellie a hand as she called after the boy "Please - wait a minute - "

He looked around, politely, and before his indifferent courtesy Brian felt the words, melting from his lips. It was Langdon who finally, said, in an empty voice, "Where can we - We have a message for the - the Government. Where can we get - transportation - to the City?"

"The City?" The boy stared. "What for? Where did you come from? The City?"

Brian quietly assumed command of the situation again. "We are from the first Centaurian expedition, the Starward," he said. "We or rather our ship, left this planet hundreds of years ago."

"Oh?" The boy smiled in a friendly way. "Well, I suppose you are glad to be back. Over that hill," he pointed, "you will find a road which goes toward the City." He turned again, this time with a definite air of finality, and started to walk away.

The three travelers stared at one another in blank indignation. Brian finally took a step forward and shouted: "Hey, come back here!"

With an irritated jerk of his head, the boy turned. "Now what do you want?" he demanded.

Ellie said conciliatingly, "This is only the pickup of our ship. We have to - to find someone who can tell us where to bring the spaceship down. As you can see," she gestured toward the ruined wheat, "our jets have destroyed a part of the crop here. Our spaceship is much larger, and we don't want to do any more damage. Perhaps your father - "

The boy's face, puzzled at first, had cleared while she was talking. "My father is not in our village now," he informed them, "but if you will come with me, I will take you to my grandfather."

"If you could tell us where the nearest spaceport is - " Brian suggested.

The boy frowned, "Spaceport?" he repeated. "Well, maybe my grandfather can help you."

He turned again, and led the way across the field. Langdon and Ellie followed at once; Brian hung back, looking uneasily at the pickup. The boy glanced over his shoulder. "You need not be anxious about your plane," he called, laughing. "It's too large to be stolen!"

Brian stiffened; the boy's attitude was just derisive enough to put him on the defensive. Then, realizing the futility of anger, he broke into a run to catch up with the others. When he came near them, the boy was saying, a little sulkily, "I thought that I would be fortunate enough to find a fallen meteor! I have never seen a meteorite." Then, making a tardy attempt to remember his manners, he added politely, "Of course, I have never seen a spaceship either - " but it was evident that a spaceship was a very poor substitute.

Ellie's thinly shod feet stumbled on the uneven ground, and all three were glad when they came out on a smoothed road which wound between low flowering trees. There seemed to be no vehicles of any kind for the road was just wide enough to permit the four to walk abreast. The boy's walk was rapid, and he kept moving, almost unconsciously, ahead of them, then looking back and deliberately slowing his steps.

Once when he had forged ahead, Langdon murmured, "Evidently vehicular traffic has been completely diverted from rural neighborhoods!" and Brian whispered, "This is incredible! Either the boy's half - witted, or else even the children here are so blas6 that the first star - expedition

doesn't mean anything to them!"

"I wouldn't be too sure," Ellie said slowly. "There's something that we don't understand. Let's not try to figure things out ahead, Brian. Let's just take them as they come."

III

Muscles virtually unused for nearly five years were aching by the time the narrow road wound into a village of low clustered houses, built of what seemed to be grayish field stone. A profuse display of flowers bloomed in elaborate geometrical patterns around nearly every doorstep, and little groups of children, dressed in smocks of dark yellow or pale reddish - gray, were chasing one another haphazardly on the lawns, shouting something rhythmic and untuneful. Most of the houses had low trellised porches, and women in short light dresses sat in little groups on the porches. The street was not paved, and the women did not appear busy; their low - pitched conversation was a musical hum, and all down the street the three strangers could hear a sound of singing. A man's voice, singing in a low, monotonous rise and fall of notes. It was toward this sound of singing that the boy led them, up the steps of a porch which was not trellised but roofed, and through an open door.

They stepped into a wide, light room. Two walls seemed to open in slatted shutters, giving a view of an evenly patterned garden; on another wall was a large fireplace, where embers

flickered quietly, and there was a gleaming kettle of some light, brilliant metal swung on a crane over the embers. It reminded Brian of a picture in one of his oldest history books, and he blinked at the anachronism. The other furniture in the room was unfamiliar, low cushioned seats built against the walls, and a few closed doors on the fourth wall. From an inner room, the singing filled the house: a baritone voice, rich and resonant, rising and falling in slow, unfamiliar harmonic patterns.

The boy called: "Grandpa!"

The singer finished one of the odd phrases; then the song ceased, and the three strangers heard slow, deliberate steps behind the closed door. It swung back, and a tall old man came out into the main room.

He looked like the boy. His hair was clipped short, but grew down along his cheeks, although his chin was shaven clean; he wore a shirt and breeches of the same rich brown, and his feet were thrust into slippers of stitched leather. He looked strong and vigorous; his hands, tanned and knotty, were extremely well - kept, though somewhat stained, and he stood very erect, surveying them with great composure, while his deep - set dark eyes studied them from their clipped and tended hair to their rubber - sandaled feet. The composure gradually gave way to a quizzical smile, and he came forward a few steps. His voice was a singer's voice, full and very strong.

"Be welcome, friends. You are home. Destry, who are our guests?"

The boy said calmly, "They came down in a spaceship, Grandpa, or rather, part of one. That streak wasn't a meteor at all. They said they wanted to go to the City. So I brought them along to you instead."

The man's face did not change by a fraction. Brian had been looking for surprise, or some more tangible emotion, but the man only surveyed them equably.

"Please be seated," he invited graciously. "I am Hard Frobisher, friends, and this is my grandson Destry."

The three sank on one of the cushioned seats, feeling a little like children in their first learning period before the Firsts. Only Brian had presence of mind enough to murmur their names. "Brian Kearns - Ellinor Wade - Langdon Forbes - " The old man repeated the names, bowing courteously to Ellie, at which the girl could barely conceal her amazement. He inquired, smiling, "Can I be of assistance to you?"

Brian stood up. "The boy didn't tell you, sir, but we're from the first Centaurus expedition - the Starward."

"Oh?" A faint flicker of interest crossed Hard Frobisher's face. "That was a good long time ago, I am told. Did the Barbarians have some means, then, of prolonging life beyond its appointed limits?"

Brian's patience had already gone a long way beyond its appointed limits, and now, abruptly, it deserted him.

"Look sir. We're from the first expedition into interstellar space. The first. None of us left Earth on the Starward. We weren't born. Our hyperspeeds, if you know what they are - which I'm beginning to doubt - threw us into a time - lag. There's no need to call us Barbarians, either. The ship's drives were smashed when they landed, and we've been four generations, four generations, getting it in operable condition to come back to Earth. None of us have ever been on Earth before. We're strangers here, understand? We have to ask our way around. We asked a civil question. Now if we could kindly have a civil answer - "

Hard Frobisher raised a placating hand. "I am sorry," he said calmly. "I didn't understand. Just what do you want me to do about it?"

Brian made a visible attempt to keep his temper. "Well, first, we want to get in touch with the authorities. Then I want to find a place where we can bring our spaceship down - "

Frobisher was frowning, and Brian fell silent.

"Frankly," the old man said, "I don't know whom you'd contact about a thing like that. There is plenty of open island to the south, nearer the city, where you might land your ship - "

"Now look - " Brian started, but Langdon touched his arm. So Brian only asked, "If you could

tell us how to get in touch with the Government. . ."

"Well," the old man said neutrally, "there are three governors in our village, but they only regulate the school hours, and make rules about locking houses. I wouldn't want to bother them about something foolish like this. I don't think they'd have much to say about your . . . oh, yes, spaceship."

That silenced Brian and Langdon completely. Ellie, feeling as if they were being tangled into a giant spider web, asked desperately, "Could we go to some other, perhaps some larger place?"

Frobisher looked at her, frankly puzzled.

"It's a half a day's walk to Carney," he said, "and when you got there, they would tell you the same thing. You are perfectly welcome to put your spaceship down on our barrens, if you want to."

Brian stiffened belligerently. "Now let's get this straight. There's a city over there. There must be someone there in authority!"

"Oh, the City!" Frobisher's voice held dismissal, "Nobody's lived in any of the cities for years! Why should you want to go there?"

Langdon said, baffled, "Look, Mr. Frobisher. We've come all the way from Centaurus, to bring

Earth the news about our expedition. We'd expected to be surprised at what we found - after all, it has been a long time since the Starward left. But are we supposed to understand from this run around you're giving us that there's nobody to listen, that the first of the interstellar expeditions doesn't mean anything to anyone?"

"Should it?" asked Frobisher, and his face was even more baffled than Brian's. "I can understand your personal predicament somewhat - after all, you've come a long way, but why? Didn't you like it where you were? There is only one reason why people move from one place to another and it seems to me that you have overdone it."

The room was silent. Hard Frobisher stood up, looking indecisively at his guests, and Brian half expected him to repeat Destry's move and walk away, uninterested; but he merely went to the fireplace and peered into the kettle.

"Food is prepared," he remarked. "Can I invite you to join us? Good food is ill - seasoned by dissension, and there is no wisdom in an empty belly."

Brian and Langdon just sat and looked dumbly at Frobisher. It was Ellie who said firmly, "Thank you, Mr. Frobisher," and dug an elbow into Brian's ribs, whispering savagely, "Behave yourself!"

The boy Destry came and helped his .grandfather bring food from the fireplace and from an inner room; he conducted the strangers to seats around a sort of table. The food was unfamiliar

and not altogether pleasant to the strangers, accustomed to the elaborate synthetics of the ship; Brian, altogether out of humor, made almost no effort to conceal his distaste, and Langdon ate listlessly; Hard and Destry ate with the unfeigned appetite of men who spend much time in the open air, and neither spoke much during the meal except to urge food upon their guests. Ellie, finding the curious liquids and semi-solids fascinating, if strange, tasted them with an interested professional curiosity, wondering how they were prepared.

It was not very long before Hard Frobisher nodded to Destry, and the boy rose and began taking dishes from the table. Frobisher pushed back his chair and turned to Brian. "We can now discuss your problem, if you wish," he said pleasantly. "Full stomachs make wise decisions." He glanced at Ellie, smiling. "I regret that there is no woman in my house to entertain you while we talk, young lady," he said regretfully, and Ellie dropped her eyes. On the Homeward - - as on Terra Two - men and women were equals and neither deferred to the other. Hard's polite deference was new, and his bland assumption that she could have no part in their talk was a somewhat distasteful surprise. Langdon clenched his fists, white Brian seemed about to explode. Ellie summed up the situation at a glance, and swiftly intervened by rising and glancing shyly at Destry. "Can I help you?" she offered diffidently, the boy grinned.

"Sure, come ahead," he told her. "You carry the dishes and I'll bring the kettle."

Frobisher settled back, taking a leather pouch from his pocket and meticulously stuffing a pipe of carved amber which swiftly revised Langdon's ideas of the present level of civilization. Smoking was a habit on Terra Two as well; only the smell of the tobacco was unfamiliar. Both

young men stifled coughs and refused his offer of the sack, taking out their own grayish cigarettes and inhaling the sweetish - sour smoke avidly to shut out the rank stench of the pipe. Somewhere, behind closed doors, they heard a splashing of water and the uncertain falsetto of the boy's voice, mingled with Ellie's merry soprano laughter. Brian scowled and leaned forward, his arms on his knees.

"See here, Mr. Frobisher," he said truculently. "I know you are trying to be hospitable, but if you don't mind, let's talk business. We have to bring the ship down, and after that - " He stopped and stared at the floor, wondering suddenly if he were on some kind of reservation for half - wits. No: the room was tastefully, if simply, furnished; everything was plain, but nothing crude. The wood of the furniture was beautifully stained and polished, and the hand - woven rug on the floor matched the thick draperies at the slatted windows. The house showed comfort, even a moderated luxury, and Frobisher's accents were those of a cultured man. Nor was he merely an eccentric, judging from what Brian had briefly seen of the other houses and the glimpsed people. Destry hadn't seemed surprised at the plane - he'd known what it was, and yet it hadn't impressed him. No, it wasn't savagery. But it was radically different from what he had expected, and the change bewildered him. He looked up at one of the many pictures which hung about the room, and there, for the first time, sensed a note of eccentricity; they were mostly sketches of birds, very precisely drawn, but the colors were combined in a fashion which only a madman could endure. . . . Then Brian realized that it was this bright, unfamiliar light which made the colors bizarre to him, and simultaneously he became conscious that his eyes were stinging and watering, and that he had a violent headache. He rested his forehead on his clenched hands, closing his eyes.

"It isn't that you aren't welcome here," Frobisher said thoughtfully, pulling at his pipe. "We realize that there is only one reason why you would leave your home planet, and that would, of course, be because you were unhappy there. And so we understand - "

"Of all the stupid, unjustified assumptions - " Brian began furiously, then checked himself. What was happening to his caution? He and Langdon were effectively cut off from the rest of the crew; they couldn't afford to get into trouble. He rubbed his aching eyes.

"Sorry, Mr. Frobisher," he said tiredly. "I didn't mean to be offensive."

"No offense taken," Frobisher assured him. "And certainly none was intended by me. Am I mistaken - "

"We came here for one reason," Langdon informed him. "To advance man's knowledge of the world outside the solar system. In other words, to finish what the Firsts started."

"And, judging by appearances - " Brian's voice was bitter, " - we've wasted our time!"

"Yes, I'm afraid you have." Something new in Frobisher's voice made both young men look up. "Whether you realize it or not, I am quite aware of your problems, Mr. Kearns. I have read a good deal about the Bar - excuse me, about the past." He tapped his pipe meditatively on a projecting corner of the fireplace. "I suppose it would be impossible for you to return to

Centaurus in your lifetimes?"

Brian bit his lip. "In our lifetimes - no, not impossible," he answered, "but in the lifetimes of anyone we had known, assuming that we could get back. Our fuel reserves are not great - " He looked questioningly at Frobisher.

"Then I don't quite know what to do with you," the old man said, and there was a genuine personal concern in his voice. And that friendly concern was the last thing needed to bring Brian to critical mass. Ignoring the warning pressure of Langdon's hand on his knee, he stood up.

"Look, Frobisher," he said tensely, "just who in hell gave you the authority to make this decision, anyhow?"

Frobisher's face did not change by a fraction. "Why, you landed in our field and my grandson brought you here."

"So you're just taking responsibility for the whole matter? Do you rule Earth?"

The man's mouth dropped open. "Do I rule . . . Ha, ha, ha!" Frobisher leaned back in his chair, holding his sides and rocking suddenly with uncontrollable laughter. "Do I rule ..." He collapsed into chuckles again, his mirth literally shaking the floor, and the large expansive laughter was so infectious that Langdon finally glanced up with a faint, puzzled grin, and even the worst of Brian's fury began to drain away a little. "I'm sorry," Frobisher said weakly at last, and there

were tears in his eyes. "But that - that is the funniest thing I've heard since spring sowing! Do I... ha, ha, ha, ha! Wait until I tell my son - I'm sorry, Mr. Kearns, I can't help it. Do I rule Earth!" he chuckled again, "Heavens forbid! I have enough trouble ruling my grandson!" He laughed again, irrepressibly. Brian couldn't see what was so funny and said so.

With an effort, Frobisher controlled his laughter and his eyes sobered - but not much - as he looked at Brian. "You did come to me," he pointed out, "and that makes it my responsibility. I'm not a man to evade responsibility or refuse you hospitality, but frankly, I wish you had found somebody else!" A tiny snort of laughter escaped him again, "I can see you'll make trouble here! But if you don't listen to me, you'll only have to find somebody else, and I'm afraid that whoever you found would tell you just about the same thing!" He smiled, and the anxious friendliness in his face took the edge from Brian's anger, although annoyed puzzlement remained.

Frobisher added quietly, "There is no reason that Norten village shouldn't have this problem, as well as any other." He stood up. "I expect the remainder of your ship's crew will be anxious about you. Do I assume correctly that you have a communication device?" At Langdon's exasperated nod, Frobisher twitched a loose coat from a peg. "Then why not report to them? We can talk further on the way - you don't mind if I come, do you?"

"No, not at all," Brian said weakly. "Not at all."

IV

Mindful of Caldwell's words about not getting separated, Brian insisted that Ellie should accompany them back to the pickup. Destry, apparently uninterested, at first refused his grandfather's invitation to join them, then changed his mind. He ran to fetch a warm jacket, but surprisingly, instead of donning it, he laid it about Ellie's shoulders. "She's cold," he explained briefly to his grandfather, and without waiting for thanks, strode ahead of them, along the road.

The sun was dropping westward, and the light was almost unbearable; Brian's eyes were squinted tight, and Langdon's forehead furrowed in deep - plowed lines; Ellie held one across her forehead, and Brian put his arm around her.

"Headache, darling?" he asked tenderly.

She grimaced. "Will we get used to this light, do you think, or are we going to have to put up with this all along?"

Langdon said wryly, "I suppose the Firsts felt like this under Theta Centauri!"

Ellie smiled faintly. "No one spread out a welcome for them."

Frobisher walked ahead of them, with long, swinging steps, and Brian said in a savage undertone, "I still think this whole thing is an elaborate bluff of some sort. Or else we're on a

primitive reservation. The whole world can't be like this!"

"Oh, don't be silly," Ellie said wearily, rubbing her aching eyes. "How could anyone have known that we'd choose to land here?"

Some of the women on the porches called familiarly to Frobisher, and he waved gaily to them in return, but no one paid any attention to the strangers, except for one plump woman, her hair in curly sausages all over her head, who waddled from her steps and toward the road. "I see you have guests, Hard," she called cheerfully. "If your house is too full, mine is empty!"

Frobisher faced around, smiling. "Your hospitality may be required," he said. "There are others, and they have come a long way."

The woman looked at Ellie with a sharp female glance, noting her fair cropped hair, the smooth spun - synthetic coverall beneath the boy's jacket, the molded sandals and bare legs. Then she put out a fat warm hand. "Are you planning to settle in our village, my dear?" she asked.

"They haven't decided," Frobisher answered noncommittally, but Ellie said with a shy, impulsive friendliness, "I do hope so!" and squeezed the offered hand.

"Well, I hope so too, dear. It isn't often we have young neighbors," the plump woman replied. "You and your husband" (Ellie blushed at the forthright archaism) "be sure and call on us, now, if you need anything before you get settled." She smiled and waddled back to her doorway.

Langdon said, low - voiced, "It's like being on Terra Two, except that everything - everything - "

Brian said, "There must have been some inconceivable disaster! Culturally, they're a thousand years behind the world when the Starward left. Why, even Terra Two is more civilized than they seem to be! Cooking with fire - and these little villages - and the cities empty - "

"Oh, I don't know," Ellie murmured surprisingly. "How do you measure culture? Isn't it possible that they've progressed in ways we don't know anything about? The difference might be in viewpoint."

Brian shook his head stubbornly.

"It's regression," he protested, but Ellie had no time to answer, for they had come within sight of the pickup, and Frobisher dropped back to walk with them.

"There is your plane," he said. "Do you intend to communicate from here, or will you rejoin your spaceship?"

Brian and Langdon looked at one another. "We haven't thought about it," Langdon said at last, "but - Brian - without a spaceship or at least a radio beaming device, how are they going to land?"

Brian frowned. "I don't know much about rockets," he said at last; "the hyperdrives are my job. How much landing room do they need?"

Langdon said, troubled, "Paula and Caldwell, between them, could land the Homeward in greatgrandfather Kearn's biochemistry lab, if they had to, without breaking a test tube. But they'd have to have a fix. If they land blind, they're apt to set down right on the village." He paused, and clarified, "That is, if they just aim at our general direction from what we transmit here."

"In that case," Brian suggested, "we'd better take up the pickup and rejoin the ship - and hunt up a good big desert to land blind."

"Rejoining the ship would be quite a problem in this light," Ellie said, troubled. "It's going to be dark in less than an hour, I'd say - and I have a feeling that we're going to find ourselves completely night - blind."

Frobisher had considerately withdrawn while they were talking, and Brian snapped, "What's the matter with your brain, Ellie? You can go around to sunward, and match velocities with the Homeward there!"

"But then we might not find this place again," Langdon said surprisingly, and Ellie added, "If we go hurtling all around the planet, who knows if we'd find this again?"

"For the love of - who cares?"

"I do," said Langdon firmly. "According to Frobisher, conditions are pretty much the same everywhere, and - I kind of like that old guy, Brian. I like it here. I'd like to land here. Maybe settle down here."

Brian stared. "Are you crazy?

Langdon said, "Not at all. If we want to look around after the Homeward is down, fine - we have the pickup, we can do all the exploring we want to. We've plenty of fuel for the pickup. We're down, let's stay down."

Brian's face lost a little of its self - confidence; it was the first time that any of the crew had ever questioned his judgment, although many had resented his methods. He shrugged in a sudden futile misery. "I'm outvoted! And anyhow I resigned command when the atomics went on! Settle it with Caldwell by radio!" He lurched away from them and around toward the other side of the pickup. He heard the staccato bark of the radio inside, but paid no attention until he suddenly became conscious of Ellie, close beside him.

She raised her face, with an affectionate smile. Brian, even distracted by a thousand irritated thoughts, found time to wonder at the new mystery of her fair hair in the golden sun: the red was dimmed out, here, and the short curls seemed a pure, delicate silver; she was very white and fragile in this new light, and Brian reached impulsively to pull her close. She responded eagerly, her arms going around him and her face lifted with a simplicity that he had not quite expected.

"Journey's end," she said gently. "We've waited a long time for this, Brian, even if that electronic calculator was off - beam about what we'd find down here. Kiss me, you idiot."

The strength in his arms was astonishing, and she gave a little cry. "Hey, I'm not used to weighing so much, take it easy - " she protested, laughing and the laughter trailed away as he bent his head down to hers. She was conscious of the sun in her eyes, of the physical fatigue from unaccustomed exercise, and the dragging feel of too much gravity - Terra Two was a small, light world. There was a crushing urgency in Brian's arms, and he strained her desperately close for a frantic minute, then abruptly pushed her away, his voice roughened.

"Where did Frobisher go? Damn it, Ellie, I need a clear head right now! The way it looks, we'll have the rest of our lives for that kind of thing!"

Hurt, but sensing the plea for help that begged her from behind the facade of his taut control, Ellie swallowed the pain of the personal rejection, and forced herself to think beyond the immediate moment. "He and Destry went to see how much of the grain had been ruined - "

"Hell, we can pay for the grain. There they come now - " Brian kicked out at a stalk of wheat, a curiously futile movement, and said in an odd, quenched voice, looking at his foot, "It's going to take months for us to get back in shape, after so long in free fall. We're coordinated all wrong for so much gravity. Notice the way Frobisher walks? Like he owned the world - " Resentment and envy mingled in his voice, and he stopped, then finished in a surprised tone, " - or as much of it

as he wants!"

He said abruptly as the grandfather and grandson joined them, "Mr. Frobisher, we'll be glad to pay for what wheat we ruined."

"I would not have mentioned it," Frobisher said, and for the first time there was something like respect in his voice, "but it shows a good spirit that you have mentioned it. I have abundance, and you will have much to do after your crew lands. But if you insist upon payment, you can contribute task - work next season, after you are settled."

Brian was puzzled, but decided not to press the point. Langdon rejoined them, and he asked, "What did Caldwell say?"

"He'll try it, if we'll fix up some kind of radio beam," Langdon responded. "Where do you want us to land, Mr. Frobisher?"

Hard Frobisher began to draw a sketch - map with a long stick in the dirt. "Over that rise - "

"We'll move the pickup over there," Ellie decided, men abruptly proffered the invitation, "Ride over there with us?"

Hard Frobisher looked speculatively at the plane, then toward the horizon. "Oh, it isn't a long walk," he said, but Destry said eagerly, "I believe I'd like it, grandpa."

The old man smiled deprecatingly. "The young are enthusiastic, Miss Wade," he said, almost in apology, "but - very well."

Brian logged another point of bewilderment. Could any educated humans be so trusting? Even on Terra Two, a well - united colony, there was a certain individual wariness, and strangers how did Frobisher and Destry know they wouldn't be kidnapped?

It was an incredible relief to get back inside the pickup and switch on the familiar crimson light. Destry expressed mild surprise at the lighting, but Frobisher asked no questions and did not seem impressed when the pickup rose straight upward and circled before relanding at the edge of the large barren tract where they were to bring the Homeward down. At only one point in the whole maneuver did Frobisher show the slightest surprise, and that was when Ellie took the controls; he glanced at Brian, then at Langdon, and then, in frank amazement, at the small slim girl at the controls; but he made no comment.

They landed, and Langdon touched the radio. Brian took it from his hand. "Hello? Hello the Homeward? Kearns talking. That you, Tom?"

Tom Mellen's husky voice, very far away, asked thinly, "Was I right about no spaceports?" "You were." Brian did not elaborate.

"We've got the direction of your beam. But Paula says if we follow it in, we'll land straight on

the pickup. And if we don't, how are we going to hit the spot you've picked out for us?" Tom sounded puzzled. "In the last few seconds of braking, this hulk isn't very easy to steer."

"Hell!" Brian swore. "Hold on a minute!" He explained the situation briefly to Langdon. "I told you so!"

Langdon said grimly, "There's only one way to handle it. Take the fuel out of the pickup impact would blow it up - move it out where we want them to land, and let them land on it. The pickup's expendable. The crew isn't. They'd land hard, but the crew will be in skyhooks, and Caldwell in a crash cockpit. Nobody'll be hurt."

"We're going to need the pickup later," Brian argued stubbornly.

"Well, have you a better idea?" Langdon asked. "If they follow the beam in part way, and try to swerve in the last few seconds, they're apt to miscalculate by a degree or two, and burn up the village."

"I still think we ought to hunt up a good - sized desert," Brian insisted.

Destry interrupted suddenly, in a tone of disgust, "Say, when you want a kingfisher to dive, you throw a hunk of bread where you want him to dive - you don't stand and hold it! If your radio what is it - beam comes from that," he gestured at the transmitter, "why not just rip that thing out of the plane, fix it to send out a steady signal, and take it out where you want your spaceship to

land? It won't hurt the spaceship to land on anything that small, will it?"

Brian stared at the boy in amazement for a minute, and Langdon's mouth dropped open.

"Destry," Ellie said after a brief silence, "you have the makings of a scientist."

"Look," the boy said uncomfortably. "The idea may not be much good, but why insult me?" "It is good," Langdon interrupted. "I don't know why I didn't think of it myself, except that I'm halfwitted in this light! Brian, that's it. Ellie, while I send word to Mellen - before I rip this out - get under the seat and find the radio kit; I may have to resolder a few wires. Looks like we'll be in the dark by the time we finish, too; better get out the small lamps. Come on, get busy - " He flipped the switch open. "Homeward? Forbes speaking. Tom? Listen, in about twenty minutes we'll have a fix set up - "

Brian and Ellie were struggling to lift the heavy seat; the unaccustomed gravity made it almost impossible to budge. Destry caught one end and heaved it up easily, and Ellie and Brian bent over the equipment stored there. The girl murmured in Brian's ear, "There goes your theory about regression! That kid knew what he was talking about."

Brian snorted. "And used an analogy from natural history! It was obvious enough, knowing the purpose of the radio. If either Langdon or I had been thinking, we'd have hit on it."

Ellie did not answer; there seemed no use in making Brian angry again. She went and stood

watching Langdon working swiftly and expertly to dismantle and readjust the radio set to emit a self - contained, steady signal. He had to switch on the lights in the pickup before he finished, and before the impromptu homing device was completed, the sun had gone down. As they stood in the doorway of the pickup, Langdon scowled.

"I can't see my hand before my eyes!" he protested, and took one of the small red hand lamps Ellie handed him. He looked at it disgustedly. "I can set the signal up with this, yes - but I don't know the lay of the land!" He gestured to the vast empty tract of barren land, and added, "I'll get lost there, or set it up on a side hill!"

Destry volunteered: "I know this place like my own hand - I'll come along and find a flat space."

"Need any help?" Brian offered, but Langdon shook his head. "No thanks. No sense in both of us getting tangled up in this murk." He picked up the homing device and, with Destry, moved away across the field which, to Brian and Ellie, was inky - dark, although in actuality it was bathed in clear moonlight. They stood in the door of the pickup, straining their eyes for the reddish, bobbing glimmer of Langdon's light, and Ellie shuddered in the rough warmth of Destry's coat. Brian's arm stole round her in the darkness.

She said tremulously, "What would have happened if we'd gone in at Mars!"

Frobisher, behind them, drew a harsh breath. "You're certainly lucky you didn't!" he said thankfully. "You couldn't have lived there three days, unless you stayed with your ship - I

assume the ship is self - contained?"

"Oh, yes," Brian told him. "But - Mars was a sizable colony when the Starward left!"

Frobisher shrugged. "Everybody came in from Mars before the spacers stopped running. There's no water there at all, now."

Brian murmured, ". . . and by now you should have had all the planets colonized, and reached most of the nearer stars!"

The older man's voice lost its pleasant inflection. "You say some very surprising things, Mr. Kearns," he said dryly. "You don't say that we could have colonized the planets - which, of course, is true - but that we should have. Do you mind telling me why? The planets are not exactly suited for human habitation, except this one - and I would hate to have to live on any other."

Brian asked almost savagely, "You mean there is no space travel?"

"Why, no," Frobisher said slowly. "No one cares to go to the planets."

"But ... the planets had already been reached, conquered, when the Starward left!"

Frobisher shrugged. "The Barbarians did a great many things which we regard as stupid," he

said. "But why should it be called conquest, to encourage men to go out to worlds for which they are not biologically adapted? I have read much about the Barbarians, their insatiable egotism, their idle, childish curiosity, their continual escapism and refusal to face their problems, but forgive me for saying this, no personal offense is intended - I had never believed it until today!"

Ellie took Brian's arm before he could answer. "Look there, Langdon's signaling - they must have the transmitter set up," she said, and moved her lamp in a wide circle. Before long, Langdon and Destry emerged from the bath of inky darkness, and sank down on the ground, in the little flood of reddish light from the pickup's windows. "That did it," Langdon said. "Now we sit and wait while Paula pinpoints the beam, and Caldwell will put her down right where we want."

"I hope somebody remembers to look after Einstein," Ellie worried. "I'd hate to have him break his neck in the last few seconds of the trip!"

"Judy will take care of him," Langdon reassured, and they waited in the red - cast darkness. Brian was mustering all the arguments he had heard from the Firsts about the necessity that had backed developing space travel.

"What about overpopulation? What about diminishing food supplies and natural resources?"

Frobisher's laugh was loud in the darkness. "Certainly not even the Barbarians expected to find natural food supplies on Mars or Venus!" he chuckled. "Interstellar travel might have solved it,

but at prohibitive cost. Still, once man decided to stop squandering natural resources on vast theoretical projects, and throwing them irrecoverably out into space, that problem was easily solved."

"But what forced the decision?" Brian asked almost timidly.

"I wouldn't know," Frobisher said thoughtfully, "but when a decision is really necessary, as a rule, some one makes it. Probably the overpopulation reached such extremes - the solar system as a whole, of course, since Earth had to feed Mars and Venus too - that for one or two whole generations, every able - bodied man

and woman had to put all his efforts into food making instead of theoretical astronomy or whatever they called it. And by the time they had that problem solved, people were thinking of science in terms of human benefits, and probably realized that their resources could be handled more efficiently here on Earth. That - I mean thinking in terms of cost and human benefits - did away with war, too. It doesn't take long for attitudes to grow up. Then, too, during the over populated generations, the population was almost entirely neurotic. The scientists of that day simply made it possible, I imagine, for women to avoid having the children they didn't want anyway, so that no one had children except the healthy - minded women whose primary interest was in children. The neurotic death wish in the others effectively reduced the population in only two or three generations. You might say that the neurotics committed race suicide. Is that your ship, or another of Destry's meteors?"

They scrambled down, stumbling in the darkness, as the incredible rocket - roar sounded, and, on a collapsing telescope of fire, the Homeward screamed down to its resting - place. Brian, standing between Destry and Ellie, wondered - but was too weary and too overexcited to ask - if Destry still regretted his failure to find a meteor.

Explanations, introductions and much rapid - fire conversation made the landing a babble of noise.

"Hey, we're here!"

"Who thought up that homing device?"

"Hey, I'm blind! No light on this planet? Couldn't we have landed sunward?"

"What, in China?"

"Damned gravity, I can't walk!"

"Ellie!" (More imperatively than the other voices.) "Come here and get this devil - ridden cat of yours!"

Ellie dashed to Judy, who was carrying the squirming Einstein as she stumbled, clumsy - footed, down the ladder. "Here, take this animal!" she said crossly. "He's pulling my hair out by the

roots!" She shoved the thick curls back over her shoulder, and fretted, "Hair's a worse nuisance in gravity than out of it!"

Ellie gently unwound her pet's suckers from Judy's ringlets, and the animal clung to her shoulder, squirming in crazy anticipation, struggling to get to the ground. She climbed the ladder painfully, wondering if she would ever adjust to the heavy gravity again, and, shoving into the lounge, ripped a strip of cloth from her skyhook to make a leash for the little animal. It was docile, but the prospect of running freely might tempt it to wildness. '

As she came down again, she heard Frobisher's rich voice. "I offer the hospitality of our village and my home, for as long as you wish."

Stumbling on the final rung, Ellie almost fell against Mellen and Paula, standing silently in each other's arms at its foot. Their faces glowed dimly in the reddish shimmer from the open door of the ship, and a pang of envy stabbed through Ellie. They had only one emotion about the landing. They didn't care what they found - they were here, and together. She turned swiftly, not wanting to violate their moment, but Tom looked up at her and smiled with a joyfulness that made his gaunt good - natured face almost handsome. Paula reached out and hugged Ellie, cat and all. "It's all over!" she whispered jubilantly. "We're here!" But her dark eyes were a little sad, too, as she added, "I only wish there was some way we could let - our mothers and fathers - know that we came safely."

"They would be sure of that," Ellie comforted softly.

Tom Mellen scowled. "What's Kearns sounding off about now? Shush, girls - "

Brian was protesting, "Look, we can't all go. Some of us ought to stay aboard the Homeward. I suggest that we sleep aboard, and visit the village in the morning - "

"You stay if you like," Caldwell said mutinously. "I've seen enough of the Homeward for a lifetime!"

Then open rebellion burst out. Little Judy set off the reaction by proclaiming violently. "If I ever go aboard the Homeward again, they'll have to carry me and tie me!" and Mellen shouted, "The trip's over and we're private citizens again, Kearns, so stop pulling your rank on us!" In the storm of voices, the Centaurian cat went wild and clawed its way from Ellie's shoulder, tumbling with a queer, staggering gait across the rough dark grass. Ellie screamed, "Catch him, catch him!" and Paula made a grab for the creature, but missed, to trip and fall in the darkness. She lay there, laughing hysterically, watching the cat as it dived into the ring of lights. It stumbled and weaved on its spindly legs, thrusting pouch and tail weirdly to balance against the unfamiliar gravity; it sniffed the grass, with a musical caterwauling, then rolled over and over in the dark grass of the barrens, like a crazy asteroid rumbling in a wildly erratic orbit.

Brian didn't have a chance after that. The Homeward's crew, barely more than adolescents, and semi - hysterical anyway with release from strain and the euphoria of journey's end, lay on the grass and rolled and stretched like children, paying less than no attention to Brian's harangue. By

the time Ellie had managed to recapture the staggering Einstein, and the laughter - drunk youngsters had calmed a little, Brian had only one desire; to restore some semblance of dignity to himself and his crew. Livid and all but speechless, he tersely requested Caldwell, the calmest of the group, to accept Frobisher's hospitality on behalf of all, and watched, leaning somberly against the ladder, as they trooped away, guided by Destry with a lantern, still laughing wildly at nothing, and hanging on to each other's hands in the darkness to keep from falling.

Hard Frobisher walked steadily toward him, and on an impulse Brian asked him, "Would you like to come aboard?"

Hard answered unexpectedly, "Yes, I believe I'd be interested to see the inside of your ship," and followed Brian up the ladder, navigating the rungs with more ease than Brian himself, and into the lounge.

He looked curiously at the skyhooks and the complicated recreation devices, inspected the cabins without much comment, gave an interested hum in the Food Culture department. Finally Brian led him upward, into the enormous cabin where he himself had spent most of the voyage, handling the incredibly complex IS drives.

And here, before the tremendous machinery, Frobisher seemed at last impressed. He broke his silence with a wondering, "And you - you know all about this - this gimcrackery?"

Since the IS drives weighed upwards of a hundred tons, Brian laughed tolerantly at this

understatement. "Yes, I'm a drive technician. I spent some time training."

"It must take a lifetime to learn all this!"

Brian condescended, "No, only about twelve years."

"Twelve years!" Frobisher repeated. "Twelve years, and how many - four? - on the way here, wasted on a room full of machines!" And now Brian uncomfortably recognized the emotion in his voice. It was pity. "You poor boy," Frobisher said, and repeated "Poor boy! To waste sixteen years on these metal levers and things! No wonder you are - " He broke off, perhaps aware of the tightness of Brian's clenched jaw.

Brian said in a low and deadly voice, "Oh, don't stop there! No wonder I am - what!"

"Neurotic," Frobisher said quietly. "Of course you must give yourself some reason why you have not wasted your life." And sadly he shook his head. "Fortunately, you are still young - "

"This ship," Brian said stiffly, "is the greatest accomplishment of the human race! If I live to be twice your age, I shall never - " Abruptly he rose and flicked a switch. The great dome cleared, and the immense magnifiers brought down the newly blossoming stars so that the man and boy stood under a vast, blazing galaxy of fire. "Damn it," Brian said huskily and his voice caught. "Man, we brought this little ship across nine light - years of nothing, nothing, nothing! We stepped on worlds where no human being had ever been before! You can't make out that that's

nothing! It's the biggest thing humanity ever did - and I had the privilege to be part of it - " He was stammering, and, aware of it, he stopped.

Frobisher looked sad and embarrassed. "Poor lad, and what for? What did you, personally, get from it? What good did it do - not you alone - any single human being?"

Brian shouted suddenly, "You senile, half - witted old imbecile. I don't suppose you ever heard of abstract knowledge!"

"It isn't wholly unknown to me," Frobisher said coldly, but added, again with the same anxious friendliness, "Well my boy, I suppose you believe as you've been taught - but can you show me one single human, now or in the past, who was benefited by the trip of the Starward, except in his personal vanity? I think, if you carefully examined the matter, you'd find that the building, launching and cost of the Starward defrauded quite a large number of people."

Brian said almost desperately, "Individuals don't matter. Knowledge - any knowledge - is for the good of the race as a whole - to lift humanity out of the mud of the sea bottom - toward the stars -"

"I can't breathe such thin air," Frobisher said lightly. "The mud is much more comfortable."

"And where would you be," Brian almost shouted, "if your remote ancestor had never crawled down a tree trunk because he was comfortable where he was?"

"Why," Frobisher returned, looking up at the stars that were brilliant in the dome, "I should be very happily scratching myself and swinging by my tail. Do you think the great apes have any ambition to be human? Unfortunately, I've come too far to be happy in a treetop or a cave. But it seems to me that it's important, for any individual human, to find the absolute minimum with which he can recover that state of effortless happiness he lost when he left the treetops. Do you know what this ship reminds me of?"

"No!" Brian snapped.

"A brontosaurus." Frobisher did not elaborate, and in surly silence Brian snapped a switch. The stars went out.

"Come on," he muttered, "let's get out of here."

Brian slept little that night. At daybreak he stole into the room where the six women of the crew were sleeping, and quietly woke them; one by one, wrapping themselves sleepily in blankets, they tiptoed into the men's bedroom, where the crew gathered close, listening to Brian's soft, savage whispers.

"Kids, we've got to do something - anything to get away from this madhouse!"

"Go easy, Brian," Mellen interrupted. "That's strong language, and I don't like it. These people

aren't crazy, from what we saw and heard last night. They think we're a little off course, though."

Caldwell muttered, "They're probably right. They used to say that being too long in space drove men crazy."

Brian said bitterly, "You all seem insane!"

"I don't blame them," Ellie said unexpectedly. "What is the good of going shooting all over the galaxy? It was fine, back in the days when it made people happy, but these people are happy without it."

"Brian's right, of course," said Don Isaacs, a quiet boy who had never grown too friendly with any of the crew except Marcia, and who never had much to say. "But there's this. Let's be practical. We're here. We can't go back to Terra Two. And we can't start reforming them. So let's just make the best of it."

Mellen said shortly, "Good for you, Don. And one more thing: if Kearns keeps shooting off his big mouth, we're apt to land in the local equivalent of the lock - up, for disturbing the peace or something. The peace seems to be valued pretty highly around here."

"But what are we going to do?" Brian wanted to know. "We can't just live here, can we?"

"And why not?" Paula's voice was defiant, and Judy murmured, "There aren't as many gadgets

and things as there are on Terra Two, but it's certainly a better place than the Ship!"

Mellen pulled Paula's small shadowy form upright beside him. "I don't know why you came on the trip, Brian," he said. "But I came for one reason: because the Firsts trained me for it, and because if I'd begged off, somebody else would have had to. This isn't home, but it's as close to it as we're apt to find. I like it. Paula and I are going to settle down, and build a house or something."

Langdon added, "It's no secret that Judy and I and Don and Marcia, - " he paused, "and Brian and Ellie too - have been waiting a lot longer than we wanted to wait. There are a couple of hundred people in this village. Nice people, too, I'll bet. I like that old fellow. He reminds me of great - grandpa Wade. Anyhow, that's almost as many as they have on Terra Two. And I'll bet they don't all spend their time knocking themselves out, synthesizing food and exploring and cataloguing the whole planet, either!"

"They certainly don't!" Ellie slid her arm through Brian's. "They are, now, where Terra Two is, without the struggle. They've conquered the planet. They can quit trying."

But Mellen murmured derisively, "Kearns is heartbroken! He wanted to find mechanical computers telling everybody when to spit, and robots doing all the housework!"

"Yes . . ." Brian said thickly. "I guess I did . . ."

He turned his back on them and slammed out.

Ellie thrust her way through the others and ran out into the new day. She plunged her way through the gradually thinning darkness after his retreating shadow, and found him, huddled at the foot of the pickup. She knelt close to him and put her warm hands over his cold ones.

"Brian - oh, my dearest - "

"Ellie, Ellie!" He flung his arms around her, hiding his head against her thin dress. The girl held him tight, without speaking. How young he was, she thought, how very young. He'd started training for this work before he could read. Twelve years, training for the biggest job in the world he knew. And now it all collapsed under him.

Brian said bitterly, "It's the waste, Ellie. Why - we might as well have stayed on Terra Two!"

"That's exactly what Frobisher said," Ellie told him gently. She glanced at the reddening clouds in the east, and such a wave of homesickness wrenched at her that she nearly sobbed.

"Ellie - why?" he insisted. "Why? What makes a culture just stop, go dead, stagnant? They were right on the borders of conquering the whole universe! What made them stop?" The agonized earnestness of the question made Ellie's voice very tender.

"Maybe they didn't stop, Brian. Maybe they just progressed in another direction. Space travel

was right for the culture we knew - or maybe it wasn't. Remember what the Firsts told us, about the Russo - Venusian War, and the Mars Raids? These people - maybe they've achieved what all cultures were looking for, and never found."

"Utopia!" Brian sneered, and pushed her away.

"No," said Ellie very low and put her arms about him again. "Arcadia."

"You're just the same, anyway. . . . Ellie, whatever happens, don't you leave me too - " he begged.

"I won't," she promised. "Never. Look, Brian, the sun's coming up. We should go back."

"Yeah, big day ahead," he said, and his mouth was too young to twist into such bitter lines. Then it relaxed, and he smiled and pulled her close to him.

"Not just yet . . ."

Paula and Ellie stood on a knoll, near the abandoned Homeward, and watched the skeletal houses going up almost visibly beneath them. "The entire village has turned out!" Paula marveled. "Our house will be finished before night!"

"I'm glad there was land near the village for us," Ellie murmured. "Don't you feel as if you'd

always lived here? And in only four months!"

The dark girl's face was sad. "Ellie, can't you do anything to keep Brian from - from sounding off at Tom? One day Tom will up and paste him one, and then you know what will happen to us!"

Ellie sighed. "And I'd hate to have either of us turned out of the village! It isn't all Brian's fault, Paula - " But then she paused, smiled sadly, and finished "I'm afraid he usually starts it, though. I'll do what I can, of course - "

"Brian is crazy!" Paula said emphatically. "Ellie - is it really true, that you and Brian will go on living in the Homeward?" She glanced distastefully at the black mass of the starship, and went on, "Why do you stand for it?"

"I'd live with Brian in a worn - out hydroponics tank, Paula. You would too, if it were Tom," Ellie said wearily. "And Brian's right, some one should keep the ship from being dismantled. Any of you had the same choice."

Paula murmured, "I like our house better, especially now - " and she put her head close to Ellie and whispered. Ellie hugged her delightedly, then asked, "Are you feeling all right, Paula?"

The girl hesitated before answering: "I tell myself it's all my imagination," she said at last. "This planet belonged to our ancestors, our race; my body should adapt to it easily. But after being

born and growing up on Terra Two where I weighed half what I do here, and then so long in free fall - I know it's hard for all of us, this gravity, but since the baby . . . My body is one damned enormous ache, night and day!"

"You poor thing - " Ellie put an arm around her friend. "And I think I have troubles because my eyes still hurt in this light!"

Judy, heavy - footed, puffed up the slope. She had wound her heavy hair into a coil on her neck, and would have been pretty, in her light synthetic ship's coverall, had her eyes been less painfully screwed up against the brilliant sunlight. "Lazy things," she called gaily. "The men are hungry!"

"In a minute," Ellie answered, but did not move. She still found it more convenient to prepare food in the culture units of the Homeward, but disliked doing so now. However, on occasions such as today, when the villagers had turned out en masse, making a holiday of building the five new houses, it would make it easy to feed almost three hundred.

Langdon and Brian came up the hill, Hard Frobisher striding easily beside them. Langdon squinted at the women and finally pretended to identify Judy. "You women are getting spoiled," he teased. "On Terra Two, you'd be working along with the men, Judy!"

Judy tossed her head. "I enjoy being spoiled," she said pertly, "and I'll have enough to do, learning what women do here!"

There was a derisive twist in Brian Kearns' smile. "I came off lucky," he commented sourly. "Elbe at least had training for this kind of Me. What about you, Paula, are you sorry not to be playing nurse to your electronic calculator?"

Paula gave an eloquent shrug. "The women of the Starward chose to be scientists and were chosen because they were scientists! I learned navigation because my grandmother learned to fix a cyclotron before she had her babies on Terra Two! I'm shedding no tears."

"Well, suppose you two come and have a lesson in food culture," Ellie admonished, and the three women turned toward the ship. At the foot of the ladder, however, Ellie paused. "Paula, dear, you shouldn't climb these steps now. Go on back, we'll manage by ourselves," she offered gently, and Paula gratefully turned back to rejoin the men.

Meanwhile, Frobisher sat looking down at the rising houses. "Soon you will be part of our village," he commented. "I think you have all done well."

Brian nodded curtly in acknowledgment. He had not been prepared to find the village operating as a self - contained colony, very much like the one at Terra Two - the crew of the Homeward had expected to re - enter the complex financial structure of the world the Starward had left. But the system seemed simplicity itself. Every man owned as much land as he, alone, was able to work, and owned whatever else he made with his own hands. A man gave his work wherever it was needed, and in return was entitled to take what he needed; food from those who grew it,

clothes from those who made them, and so forth. Whatever he needed beyond the necessities of life must be earned by industry, good management and private arrangements. Brian found the system easy and congenial, even enjoying the job he did - a carpenter in Norten had given him work, and Brian, whose training had familiarized him with tools and machinery, had found no trouble in adapting his specialized skills to carpentry and building. There was always building going on somewhere in the village, it seemed. Brian made a good living.

And yet, for all its simplicity, the system seemed remarkably inefficient. Brian said, looking down at the sprawled houses, "I would think it would be easier if you had some kind of central distribution system."

"It's been tried, often," the old man answered patiently. "Every few years, a group of villages will consolidate, to exchange services, or set up communications systems for private individuals, or distribute foods that can't be grown locally, or luxury goods of one kind or another. But that means devising a means of exchange, and keeping account of credits, and so forth. As a rule, the disadvantages are so much greater than the advantages that the consolidation breaks down again within a year or two."

"But there's no law against it?" Brian asked.

"Oh, no!" Frobisher sounded shocked. "What would be the sense of that? The purpose of the whole system is to leave each man as free as possible! Most places are just about like Norten the maximum of comfort, and the minimum of trouble."

Brian murmured, "I should think, then, that you'd want all kinds of labor - saving devices. You cook with fire - isn't it easier to have food culture units, such as we have on the Ship?"

Frobisher gave the matter grave attention. "Well, a wood fire imparts a fine flavor to food," he remarked. "Most people prefer it. And a cook must take pride in what she cooks, or why cook at all? And, although food culture units may be easier, if one is lazy, for those who use them, no one wants to take the time to manufacture them. One man can build a fireplace in a day, with a neighbor to help, and cook with it for the rest of his life. For a food culture unit, a man would have to spend years in learning to build it, and dozens of skilled and unskilled workers take months to build it; and, in order to make them cheaply enough for one man to buy, millions of them must be made, which means hundreds and thousands of people crowded together, just making them, having no time to grow or cook their own food, or live their own lives. The cost is too high. It's more trouble than it's worth."

Langdon asked him suddenly, "Just what is the population now?"

Frobisher frowned. "You people certainly are full of questions! Who knows? Collectively, people are nothing but statistics, which are no good to anyone. People are individuals. A few years ago, a philosopher in Carney - that's where Destry was born - worked out what he called the critical factor in population: the point where a village becomes too large to be efficient as a self - contained unit, and starts to break down. It's a nice problem, if you're interested in abstract mathematics - which I'm not."

"But I am," Paula said behind them, lowering herself carefully to the grass beside the men. "It sounds interesting."

Frobisher looked at her with fatherly friendliness. "You and Tom can come with me, next time I go to Carney," he invited. "I'll introduce you to Tuck - but all I know is, if a village gets too large, it's more trouble than convenience, and about half the population will go away and start a new one, or move to a smaller place."

"It doesn't sound very workable,", Brian said with sour skepticism.

"It works," Frobisher answered equably. "That's the final test of any theory - hullo, here's Tom. We're not lying down on the job, Tom - just waiting for the women to bring dinner."

Mellen thrust a penciled scrap of paper into Langdon's hands. "Is Judy around? I can't read this her writing is half Russian and half Arabic!"

"She's in the ship with Kearns' wife," Frobisher answered, not noticing how Paula winced at the word which, on Terra Two, had acquired an ignominious connotation of servitude and sexual inferiority. The three men from the Homeward tried to ignore the vulgarity, and Langdon gave a self - conscious laugh. "I think I can translate for you."

"What have you got there?" Brian asked, interested against his will - Judy had been an

electrician aboard the Homeward, responsible for all lighting circuits, and her work was capable and excellent. He squinted toward the paper. Langdon scowled. "I can't see a thing in this cussed sunlight! What's it supposed to be, Tom?"

"Wiring diagram. There are red bulbs in the Homeward, and Judy's going to put lighting in our house - and yours, too. Didn't she tell you?"

"I thought you'd both gone all out on the primitive life," Brian muttered. Langdon snorted mockingly, and Mellen clenched his fists, then relaxed, with an easy grin.

"It's a free country," he said. Then suddenly he added, "Brian, it's none of my business, but are you and Ellie really going to stick to this damn foolishness? You'll be lonely up here. We could start on a house for you tomorrow."

"Somebody's got to keep the ship from being dismantled," Brian said stiffly. "And that reminds me, if Judy's going to do any wiring, she'd better use spare parts. No more trying to dismantle the drive units!"

Langdon laughed softly, but Mellen's face darkened in annoyance. He said shortly, "You aren't captain any more. The Homeward isn't your personal property, Brian."

"I'm aware of that," Brian rasped. "Neither does it belong to the crew collectively. It's being held in trust. And since nobody else has any sense of responsibility, I'm acting as caretaker."

Frobisher looked up as if he were about to speak, but Paula forestalled him, asking gently, "What for? We've no fuel, we'll never take off again."

The nightmare settled down on Brian again. He was fighting - but fighting an intangible, unresisting opponent! If they had been malicious, it would have been easier. They weren't malicious, they were only stupid - unable to understand just why the Homeward must be safeguarded as their only link with civilized life. A year or two, he thought grimly, and they'll realize just what I'm doing, and why. Just now, this primitivism is new, novel. But they are basically intelligent, sooner or later they will get tired of this. They can't live from day to day, like the villagers - but how do the villagers live this way? Frobisher's a cultured man. Destry's a bright boy. How can they stand it, living like nice clean animals?

"What deep imponderable are you meditating?" Ellie mocked his serious expression with a gay grimace, and thrust a basket into his hands, loaded with hot food. "Langdon, Paula, Mr. Frobisher - all hands needed to carry food. Here, Destry, you take a basket too," she commanded, handing one to the boy. "Bring this down to the village, now. Dinner is ready. And hurry up before it all gets cold."

Brian absent - mindedly picked up a biscuit - like cake of protein and munched at it as they descended the hill, his mind still halfway circling the continual problem. Ellie offered her basket, in turn, to Destry and Frobisher, and the old man politely took a cake, but Destry shook his head. "Thanks, I don't care for synthetics, Ellie."

"Destry!" His grandfather said with unnecessary sharpness, while Ellie murmured, "I didn't know you'd ever tasted them."

Destry stumbled over a rock in the path and used a couple of unfamiliar expletives; by the time he had picked himself up, retrieved the luckily unhurt basket, and apologized unnecessarily for the words he had used - he might have saved the trouble, for Ellie had never heard them and did not know whether they were sacred or profane - Ellie had forgotten her question for another.

"Have you ever been out of Norten, Destry?"

"Once or twice. I went to Carney with my father, when he went to teach a man there how to weave a rug. He weaves beautiful rugs - much better ones than ours."

"I see," Ellie murmured.

"He wanted me to come with him this time, but one place is pretty much like another, and I had my gardens to look after, so I stayed with grandpa. Besides, I had to - " Destry abruptly stopped. They were nearing the site of the new houses, and he called loudly. "Dinner!" and watched the villagers swarm off their scaffolds and beams. He took one of the baskets and scooted away to hand it around.

The food from the Homeward's culture units was distributed, and the villagers ate it with polite

thanks, but without much enthusiasm; only the children seemed to enjoy the elaborate synthetics, and even the Homeward's crew seemed to have lost their taste for it. Brian, sitting on a half finished wooden step and munching absent - mindedly, abruptly made a face and flung the cake into the grass. Ellie cooked better, he decided, without the food machines. She liked the primitive cooking, and he had to admit she did it well. Still he felt disquieted. The food culture units synthesized their food out of a raw carbon, water, and almost infinitesimal amounts of raw chemicals; the whole process of growing food seemed, to Brian, wasteful and inefficient. It took so much time. Of course, he reflected, it was pleasant, outdoor work, and the people who did it seemed to enjoy it. It wasn't so confining as standing over the machines, and you didn't grow so deathly bored, month after month, with nothing to do except push a lever now and then, and between the lever-pushings, scan films and play endlessly complicated mental games. Brian had been expert at a certain three - dimensional board game which had to be played with the aid of an electronic computation device; now he felt a curiously disloyal thought that his proficiency had been born of boredom. When you enjoyed your work, he thought, you didn't have to invent things to do in your spare time.

But I enjoyed my work, he told himself in confusion, I enjoyed working on the IS units.

Didn't I?

Furiously scattering the remaining synthetics on his disposable plate, he crumpled up the bit of plastic and flung it angrily away, grabbing up his tools - the new hammer, plane and level which the village smith had made in exchange for roofing a chicken - house and repairing his cellar

steps - and shouted to Caldwell.

"Come on, let's get back at work, I want to get this floor laid by sundown!" He walked catlike across the empty beams, squatted where he had left off, and began sliding boards into place and nailing them with fierce, angrily precise blows.

He was still tersely angry and short - worded when, a few weeks later, he walked down through the village, a box in his hands. The houses were completed now, even to the steps, although still scantily furnished - Brian was still working, after each day's work, helping Caldwell build furniture.

He turned in at one still - raw, trampled muddy lawn, where brief spikes of summer grass were just beginning to peep through the wet earth, and knocked roughly.

Paula, a loose hand - woven smock wrapped about her body - she was beginning to grow clumsy and heavy now - opened the door, and her squinted, drawn face relaxed suddenly in a quick impulsive smile which made Brian feel ashamed and almost defensive.

"Brian - yes, Ellie's here, but - " She paused, hesitant, then invited shyly, "Won't you come in for a few minutes? We don't see much of you."

"I came down to see Tom - " Brian said uneasily, and followed Paula into the large reddish lighted room. Before the fireplace he saw, to his intense dismay, that not only Ellie was there

with Tom Mellen, but Langdon and Judy, Marcia and Don Isaacs, Destry, and - Hard Frobisher. Frobisher! It seemed that Hard Frobisher was continually underfoot, as if the crew of the Homeward needed his continual surveillance, assistance, advice! Brian frowned in annoyance; Frobisher acted like a self - appointed guardian to the newcomers. Yet it was impossible not to like the old fellow, even when he inquired genially, "And what have you in that big, interesting box, Mr. Kearns?"

"Just more of our top - heavy science," Brian said rudely, and undoing the box, took from it several pairs of red - lensed glasses in bent - plastic frames. He handed one pair to Mellen and donned one himself. "Turn out these lights, and see if these help any in the sun, will you?"

Tom looked at the glasses, puzzled, for a moment, then hooked the frames behind his ears and switched out the red lights, stepping to the west door and looking into the setting sun. Then he turned, grinning.

"They work, all right! What did you do, Brian? Just red glass wouldn't work - remember, we tried it?"

Brian shrugged. "There's a polarized layer inside. I couldn't find selenium, so I used an oxide of gold for the red color. It's a thin quartz filter ... oh, never mind. I'd have had them before, but it took a damned long time to grind them."

Langdon took a pair from the box. "That's right," he said slowly. "I remember, Miguel Kearns

made lenses for some of the old Starward instruments, when they broke, and when we were duplicating instruments for the strip. Did you help him?"

"Some," Brian returned. He met Frobisher's eyes, and said truculently, "So you have no use for science. Well, as you pointed out yourself, it's a free country, and my crew have been going around with sore eyes - and I don't like it!"

Paula's strained face relaxed as she slipped the filter glasses over her eyes, and she smiled. "This is wonderful, Brian," she said, and Ellie's face glowed with pride. Langdon mocked in a friendly voice, "The old fellow's human after all!" and flung a companionable arm around Brian's shoulders. "When are you and Ellie going to come down off your lofty peak and live with the rest of the pack?"

Brian stiffened, but the tone of approbation warmed him, and he came back, half - unwilling, to the fireplace, and listened to Frobisher, who said, laughing faintly, "It isn't science itself we don't like. It's the use of science as an end in itself, rather than a means. I mentioned a brontosaurus. I assume you know what that is?"

"We had them, alive, on Terra Two - or something like them. They're big, but not dangerous they're too dumb," Brian told him.

"Exactly," Frobisher said. "But they're not much good to themselves, are they?" He smiled; then his face sobered. "The brontosaurus, with his titanic body - mass, had outgrown the logical use of

a development which had, originally, been good and useful. Science," he proceeded, "was developed to make life easier for man. The individual man. The light body - armor of the Barbarian soldier was developed for more formidable weapons, and finally the armor had to be so cumbersome that the armored man must be lifted on his horse with a derrick. And if he fell down - well, there he was. It helped along the army, as a unit - but it certainly made life a mess, for the individual. And science gave so much time and thought to units - the Nation, the Race, Humanity - as - a - Whole - that it laid terrific burdens on humanity as individuals. To benefit the monster of Humanity - as - a - Whole, they even fought wars - which killed off humanity, individually, at a fearful rate. Eventually - well, the knight fell down inside his armor, and couldn't get up again. I think the collapse started even before the Starward left. The brontosaurus died along with his protective nuisances, but nature was a little kinder to men - individually. Humanity - as - a - Whole died out pretty thoroughly, even as a concept. The individuals who were left knew enough not to start the whole dreary process all over again. Science took its rightful place with the other arts and crafts - instead of using it to serve a hypothetical whole, we use each art, or science, to enrich the personal, private life of each individual." He gestured around the room. "The sawmill and pottery. Tom's red lighting in here. And - your red - lensed glasses, Brian. I think the time has come when I can tell you why - "

But Brian had already risen, and flung away from him.

"I didn't come down here to be lectured!" he shouted at Frobisher, and strode to the door. "There are the glasses, Tom. You hand them out. Tell everybody not to break them; they take forever to grind."

The door slammed behind him.

Now that he had defied Frobisher, he felt a little better, but as the days came and went, he felt tormented by the uselessness of his life. He spent more and more time in vicious, expert hammering and sawing - in solitude, now - at furniture, finding a sort of satisfaction in substituting physical activity for insoluble mental problems; Ellie never dared to broach the subject of moving away from the Homeward again, until one night when Brian was sitting hunched over in the former lounge, listlessly watching Einstein clamber around the axis beams. The Centaurian cat's suckers were not strong enough to support his weight, in this gravity; he had developed a queer shambling gait on his hind feet, amusing to watch, but clumsy and painful, and Ellie picked up her pet and patted him as she passed through the lounge.

"Poor Einstein doesn't know what to make of this," she observed. "Gravity, in here where there ought to be no gravity at all. He'd be happier in a regular house."

"I suppose so," Brian said sourly. "I suppose you would too. But look, Ellie; the crew would dismantle the ship inside a year or two."

"Well, why not let them?" Ellie asked, matter-of-factly.

Brian shrugged, helplessly. "I suppose, sooner or later - but still, some day Terra Two will go out into space again, too - they haven't reverted to savagery!"

Ellie only smiled. "It won't happen in our lifetime."

"You're worse than the others!" Brian shouted in sudden furious anger. She only murmured uncritically, "Come in and have dinner."

Brian morosely rose and followed her. He had to edge by a machine, suddenly stumbled over Einstein, and exploded violently, "It's too damn cramped in here!"

Ellie did not answer, and Brian finally said, "I suppose - it won't happen - in our lifetime, no."

"What are you going to do then, pass this great secret on to your sons?" Ellie' inquired, and Brian started to answer before apprehending the dry irony in her voice. It had taken him twelve years to learn even the basics of interstellar operation.

He applied himself grimly to his food; but his mood softened as he ate, and he finally looked up and said, "Frobisher can like it or not, but I'll make a scientist out of Destry yet. The kid's always underfoot. Ever since you taught me to fly the pickup - I took him up one day, and let him take the controls for a few minutes; they aren't very complicated." He spoke with a sort of satisfaction; it was a point of self - respect in his continual struggle to maintain himself in Frobisher's presence. "The boy's nuts on airplanes. He must have read a lot in old books."

Ellie asked suddenly, "I wonder what Destry's father is like?"

Brian scoffed, "He makes rugs!"

Ellie looked unconvinced. "Maybe he makes the rugs the way Frobisher paints those birds he has all over the house. Look what I found in Frobisher's bookcase. Destry loaned it to me when I asked him." She handed him a book, nicely handbound in red cloth. Brian opened it curiously, skipping over the name - John D. Frobisher - penned neatly on the cover. He had seen few books in Norten village, and those were mostly blank - books filled with recipes, musical notations, or diaries - diary - keeping was a favorite pastime among young people here. But this was printed, and filled with elaborate, exquisitely reproduced diagrams which reminded Brian of Judy's scrawls when she was working out a wiring diagram. He tried to read a page or two, but, although the language was only loosely technical, Brian's education had been so rigidly specialized that the vocabulary was beyond him. He shut it up, and asked, "Did you show this to Judy?"

"Yes. It's a text, she says, on radio and radar, and not an elementary one either."

"Funny ..." Brian mused.

"Here's something funnier," Ellie said. "Have you seen Caldwell lately? Or Marcia and Don Isaacs?"

"Come to think of it, I haven't. I never saw much of Don, though - "

"They went away, that night you and Frobisher had a fight. Marcia told me they were going so that Don could work in another village. That's what they always say - like Destry's father. People seem to come and go, here, all the time! Almost every day, somebody picks up a clean shirt and a pair of stockings, and walks off down the road. And nobody sees him again for three or four months - then he walks in again, as casually as I do when I go down to Paula's and back!"

"And the standard of living ..." Brian mused, "comfortable enough - but primitive - "

Ellie laughed. "Oh, Brian! We were happy enough on Terra Two, without quite so much. The ship is super - mechanized. We're spoiled - we've developed a lot of artificial wants - "

"Frobisher converting you, too?" he asked glumly.

Her laugh was gay. "Maybe."

Brian was silent, staring at the book. He felt trapped. It was an insidious poison, the temptation to relax, rest, dream and die in this - Ellie had called it Arcadia, but a fragment of poetry from an old book in the ship's library teased his brain; not Arcadia, he thought drearily, but the isle of the lotus eaters, who tasted the poison flower and forgot all that they had been before. ...

The words of the ancient poet sang insidiously in his brain. He rose and fetched the book from behind a panel in the lounge, and sat with it on his knees, the words of defeat staring him in the

face.

Hateful is the dark - blue sky,

Vaulted o'er the dark - blue sea;

Death is the end of life; ah, why

Should life all labor be?

Let us alone; Time driveth onward fast. ...

How could a man who had mastered space live like this, in animal content, year after year? He wondered if among the lotus eaters there had been anyone who had refused the poison - and finally eaten it from starvation, or because he could not endure the loneliness of being the only sane man among a crew abandoned to their dreams?

Let us alone . . . what pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease . . .

Brian scowled and let the book fall to the floor. There was nothing easy about life in Norten! In the last few days, weeks, months, he had worked harder than ever in his life. His hands, once sensitive and smooth, alert to the quiver of a lever, were hard and callused and brown. And yet

there was something satisfying about it. He no longer found himself inventing elaborate leisure time pursuits, no longer felt impelled by continual anxiety about his crew, lest some minor infringement of a rule should lead to catastrophe. And Ellie - he had Ellie, and that, if nothing else, was something to hold him here.

And yet - after he had crossed space - his body thrived, but his brain was starving. Or was it, he asked himself. He'd gotten almost as much satisfaction - the guilty thought came - out of seeing his crew's eyes get well again, with the special glasses he'd made, as he had in piloting the Homeward safely through a dangerous cloud of radioactive gas. Maybe - again the guilt - maybe more.

The glasses. But they couldn't go around wearing red goggles for the rest of their lives. There ought to be some way of gradually altering the filters, maybe at monthly intervals, so that they became gradually accustomed to the light. He pulled a stylus toward him, vainly rummaged for a loose sheet of paper, then irritably climbed into his old control room, searched, and at last slid open the moving panel over the log book. His hands hesitated at the vandalism, then he shrugged and swore - the voyage was finished, the log book closed out! He ripped a blank sheet from the back, sat down then and there on the edge of the skyhook, and began to sketch out, roughly, a plan for glasses with changeable filters.

The yellow dawn was a glare in the sky when he finally came down; Ellie was sleeping in the cabin, her curly hair scattered over her face, and he quietly tiptoed past her and down the ladder. The air was cold and clear, and he stretched and yawned, suddenly realizing that he was very

sleepy.

Against the brightening sky, a man's form was silhouetted as he gradually came over the knoll, and Tom Mellen called to him, "Is that you, Brian?" and came toward him with swinging strides. He had long ago discarded the shorts and sandals of the ship in favor of boots and long dyed breeches, and he wore one of his uniform shirts tucked into them. The ship's synthetics were not long - wearing or practical, although they were simply produced, but a few of the younger women in Norten had liked the thin pretty stuff, and exchanged lengths of it for the sturdier and more practical hand - made variety.

As he came near, Brian asked him, "Where are you going so early?"

"I'm going to work awhile in another town," Tom told him casually. "I've a letter to a friend of Frobisher's. I came up to ask a favor. I don't suppose Ellie's up yet? Well, don't bother her, but - " He paused, then added, "I meant for Paula to come along with me. But she's not very well, and she doesn't want to be with strangers. She'd particularly miss Ellie. But I hate to have her alone "

Brian said abruptly, "Tom, we're going to move down into the village. I've - " He glanced around at the Homeward and all his pent - up resentment suddenly spilled over and he shouted, "I'm tired of care - taking the damned old - brontosaurus! I'm through!"

Tom whistled. "What's gotten into you? I thought you were dedicated to maintaining a nice snug

little island of culture." Then at Brian's expression, the sarcasm left his voice, and he said eagerly, "Brian, if you mean that, why don't you and Ellie move down with Paula while I'm gone? I'll be back before the baby comes, and we can get started on a house for you two."

Brian stood thinking it over for a minute, and finally nodded. "All right. I'm sure Ellie will want to; she worries about Paula."

Tom stood looking at the ground. "Well, I'll shove along and tell Paula to expect you and then I'll get on my way." He paused, then said, low - voiced, "Brian - I thought, on the ship, you were just throwing your rank, about - well, about the girls. But now - " He stopped again, and said finally, embarrassed, "You know the baby was - started - before we landed?"

"I guessed that," Brian said coldly.

"I thought it was all right because we'd be landing within a month or two. But now - and the change in gravity, I'm afraid - if Paula and I had had the sense to wait - Judy's pregnant, you know, and she's not having any trouble at all, while Paula - " He stopped, and finally got out, "I guess I owe you an apology, Brian."

"You might better apologize to Paula," Brian said, but he had appreciated the spirit in which Tom spoke. So Tom finally realized that Brian had a good reason for what he'd done!

Tom added quietly, "I owe an apology for something else, too, Brian. It's my fault they've been

leaving you out of things around here. I had the idea you were still trying to rehabilitate the natives."

"Don't bother apologizing," Brian said frigidly. So Tom had missed the point after all! "I'm not particularly interested in 'things around here,' and sooner or later I expect the natives will need rehabilitating, as you put it. When that day comes, I'll be here."

Mellen's mouth hardened. "I guess Frobisher's right about you!" he said tightly. "So long, then." He put out his hand, rather unwillingly, and Brian shook it, without enthusiasm. He watched as Tom descended the hill, wondering where he was going and why. Was it just part of the local irresponsibility? Tom was irresponsible anyhow - the way he'd behaved toward Paula was shameful. And who, here, was going to look after her? The local witch - doctor? He scowled, and went in to tell Ellie about their impending move.

VIII

Paula was almost pathetically grateful for Ellie's company, and even Einstein settled down near the new fireplace as cozily as any of the ordinary Norton cats with whom he had a continual feud. Brian located a site for the house he intended to build and, aided by Destry, began a rough workshop of fieldstone. In return for the boy's help, Brian took him, nightly, into the dome of the Homeward and taught him the names and positions of the fixed stars. The boy was filling a blank

- book with astronomical data; Brian offered to present him with one of the astronomy texts duplicated in the ship, but Destry politely refused the gift. "I like to make my own. That way I'm sure of what's in it," he explained.

Brian himself was painstakingly perfecting his lens - grinding equipment. The workshop had gradually become his refuge and, now that he knew he was working on something which was worth doing, he slowly began to come out of the closed shell he had originally thrown about himself, forbidding intimacy with the life of the village. He relaxed from the painstaking lens grinding by beginning something he had not done since his early teens; glass - blowing. He made a set of fancy bottles for Ellie, and when Judy admired them, made one for her as well. Both Ellie and Judy had many friends in the village, and within a few weeks Brian found that so many men and women were asking him to make them that he could switch his full - time work from carpentry to glass - making. There was a potter in the village, who made extremely fine crockery, but at present the local glass - maker was - again the omnipresent phrase - "working in another village." Brian found the work congenial, and felt that he had approval. However, privately, anxiety piled on anxiety. He actually saw very little of Paula, for there was still a certain stiffness between them; however, he felt disturbed at her obvious weakness. Ellie, too, was expecting a child by now, although as yet she had told no one but him, and Paula's condition filled him with panic for Ellie.

There had not been a medical man on the Homeward: none of them had ever been ill. Marcia had nominally been responsible for their health % but even Marcia wasn't here now. And judging from what little talk Brian had heard here in Norten, it was simply a matter of any woman's

helping out when asked. Ellie had vigorously defended the system when Brian attacked it, protesting that having children was a natural function, and that the medical and surgical atmosphere with which the Terra Two colony surrounded it was enough to make any woman neurotic. Brian was unconvinced; that might be true when everything was normal, but Paula definitely needed care. He wondered how Ellie could be so unconcerned; Paula was her closest friend.

But even Brian was not prepared for the suddenness with which mere anxiety turned to disaster. At noon that day Paula was her usual self: pale and pathetically heavy of step, but gay and bright - eyed. In the evening she was quieter than usual, and went to bed early. And some time during the night Brian was roused by Elite's hand on his shoulder and her scared voice: "Brian - wake up!"

Brian drew himself upright, instantly alert, seeing Ellie's tensely drawn face and hearing the near - hysteria in her voice. "It's Paula - I've never seen anything like it - she was all right this evening - oh, Brian, please come!"

Brian pulled a robe about his shoulders, thinking, what could have happened so suddenly? He heard the low, incessant moans even before he stepped into the inner room and stopped, aghast at Paula's face. It was altogether drained of color; even the lips were white and sunken, but a curious dark line marred their edges. She had always been excessively thin, but now her hands seemed suddenly shrunken into claws, and when Brian touched one, it was fire - hot. Brian cast his mind rapidly over what little he had been taught about the relationship of gravity and

pregnancy - just enough to know that hi free fall, a dangerous condition could develop suddenly. He wished he had known" more, but they had taught him just enough that he was thoroughly convinced of the wisdom of enforcing strict celibacy hi spaceship personnel. His brain, strictly specialized for one limited aspect of science, retained only a few fragments of knowledge. They fluttered and teased at the edge of his mind: imperfect placental junction without the cohesive effect of gravity, hormone malfunction under the added strain of pregnancy, extensive damage to internal tissues - all this was at free fall conditions. But what about Paula, who was adapted to the light gravity of Terra Two, whose child had actually been conceived hi free fall, and who was being brutally punished by the dragging gravity of Earth? Something in the delicate balance of cohesions had evidently kicked loose. Brian looked down at the unconscious girl and spoke violently.

"Damn Mellen for an insubordinate idiot!" "Where's Tom?" Paula whispered rackingly. "I want Tom!" The feverish bony fingers clutched at Brian's, and she begged, "I want Tom!" Her eyes opened, but she was looking past Brian into space. Brian felt the old cold anger knotting inside him. He bent over and promised quietly, "I'll get him."

Ellie whispered, "But - I don't know where he's gone, Brian. Paula might be - "

Brian straightened savagely. "I'll find him if I have to take my fists to Frobisher! Thank God we still have the pickup! And I'll find out where Don and Marcia were sent; yes, sent! All along I've had the feeling - "

"Brian - " Ellie caught at his hand, but he pushed her away. "Frobisher's going to listen to me for once! He can damn science all he wants to. But if Paula dies on our hands because nobody on this dark - ages planet knows what to do for her, then by the living God I'm going to personally raise such hell in this god - forsaken little Utopia of theirs that Frobisher and his pals will snap out of their daydream and start living like human beings again!" Without another word he strode out of the room, dressed hastily and went out of the house, his long - repressed anger boiling up and stiffening his back as he hurried toward the village. He went up Frobisher's steps and across his porch at a single bound, thrust the door open without knocking, and stormed inside.

"Frobisher!" he bellowed unceremoniously.

In the darkness there was a surprised noise; then steps, a door flung open and a light shining in Brian's eyes - and Hard Frobisher, half - dressed, came swiftly into the main room. Another opening door showed the half - naked Destry, surprised and angry. Frobisher's face, dim in the firelight, was surprised, too, but there was no anger, and he asked calmly, "Is something wrong?"

And as always, his calm brought Brian's anger to the exploding point. "You're right there's something wrong," he raged, and advanced on Frobisher so violently that the old man retreated a step or two. "I've got a girl on my hands who looks as if she were going to die," Brian roared, "And I want to know where on this devil - ridden planet you packed Tom off to, and where Marcia's gone! And then I want to know if there's a decent medical man anywhere in this damned backward dark - ages Utopia of yours!"

Frobisher's face swiftly lost its calm.

"Tom's wife?"

"And there's no need to talk smut!" Brian shouted, "Paula!"

"Paula Sandoval, then, if you like it better. What's the trouble?"

"I doubt if you'd understand," Brian snapped, but Frobisher said steadily, "I suppose it's the gravity sickness. Tom mentioned it before he left. It's easy to get hold of him. Destry - " He turned to the boy in the doorway. "Quick, go down and get the Center on the wire. Tell them to fly Mellen back here, inside an hour if they can. And - - where's your father, Destry? This sounds like something for him."

Destry had disappeared inside his room while his grandfather was talking; almost instantly he came out again, stuffing his shirt into trousers. "He was in the Marilla Center last week, too," Destry said quickly, "but he's in Slayton now. And there's no regular transit plane there. Hey, Mr. Kearns - " He turned quickly to Brian. "You can fly the Homeward's plane now, can't you? Or shall we get Langdon? They'll fly Tom in from the Marilla Center, but we'll have to fly over and pick up my father."

"What the - what the hell!" Brian started, but Destry was already hurrying down a flight of stairs. Hard Frobisher put a compulsive hand on Brian's shoulder and shoved him after the boy.

Brian stumbled on the steps and blinked in the raw light of an electric arc bulb. On a rough wood workbench, with Destry's notebooks and a few ordinary boy - type oddments, the stupefied Brian recognized what was unmistakably a radio transmitter. And not a simple one. Destry was already adjusting earphones and making a careful calibration of an instrument which looked handmade but incredibly delicate. He moved a key and said in a hurried voice, "Marilla Center, please, second - class priority, personal. Hello - Betty? You've got a man in the Center working on radio? Mellen? That's the man. This is Destry Frobisher talking from Norten. Fly him over here as fast as you can make it. His wife's ill - yes, I know, but it's a special case. Thanks - " A long pause. "Thanks again, but we'll manage. Look, Betty, I have to get Slayton. Clear the stations, will you?" Another pause, and he said, "My father. Why? Oh - thanks, Betty, thanks a lot. Tell them we'll bring a plane over there for him." He closed the key and ripped off the headphone, standing up, and Brian exploded again.

"Just what's going on?" he demanded. "What kind of a bluff have you people been putting up on us?"

"No bluff," Frobisher said calmly. "I've told you, all along, that we use science, in its proper place. I've tried to tell you, two or three times, but you always shouted at me and shut me up before I could explain. Tom Mellen has been working in one of the Centers for a month. Didn't you wonder why he wasn't worried about leaving Paula, in her state of health? He's known that if any serious complication developed, he'd be sent for right away." He turned and started toward the stairs. "Don't you realize this is the first time you've ever shown the slightest personal concern for anyone or anything? Before this, you've been concerned with scientific

accomplishments for their own sake. Now look, you can stand here staring like a brainless fool, or you can come with me to the Center to fetch my son - Destry's father - who is one of the most skillful medical men in this section." As Brian stood stone still, unable to move before the onslaught of ideas, Frobisher urgently took his arm. "Snap out of it!" he commanded harshly. "I can fly a plane, but I would hate to have to manage that jet of yours! And I'll have to come with you, because you don't know the way! Destry, you stay close to the radio, just in case," he added.

Brian, too dazed to speak, stumbled with him across the dark fields toward the pickup, but by the time they reached it, his reactions were in operable condition; he climbed in at the controls, advised Frobisher to fasten a safety strap, put the pickup in the air, and listened intelligently to Frobisher's instructions for reaching the place he called Slayton Center. Then he turned his head.

"Look," he said grimly, "I'm a little stunned. Just what has been going on?"

Frobisher looked equally puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"All this - "

"Oh, this!" Frobisher dismissed it with a shrug. "You had fire extinguishers on your spaceship, I remember. Did you keep them out on your dinner tables, or did you leave them out of sight until they were needed in a hurry?"

"I mean - you let me go on thinking that people here didn't know much about science - "

"Listen, Kearns," Frobisher said abruptly, "you've been jumping to conclusions all along. Now don't jump to another one, that we've been bluffing, and concealing our civilization from you. We live the way we like to live."

"But radio - planes - you have all those things, and yet - "

Frobisher said, with barely concealed disgust, "You have the Barbarian viewpoint, I see. .Radio, for instance. We use it for emergency needs. The Barbarians used to listen to keep from doing things - I know, they even had radio with pictures, and used to sit and listen and look at other people doing things instead of doing them themselves. Of course, they led rather primitive lives "

"Primitive! Brian interrupted. "You have airplanes, and yet people walk - "

Frobisher said irritably, "Why not? Where is there to go in such a hurry - as long as we have fast transport for those few times when it is really necessary?"

"But even when the Starward left, each man had his own private copter - "

"Private baby carriage!" Frobisher snorted. "When I go anywhere, I go on my feet like a man! Stupid, primitive Barbarians, living huddled in cities like big

mechanical caves, never seeing the world they lived in, hidden away behind glass and steel and seeing their world on television screens and through airplane windows! And to make all those things they had to live huddled in their caves and do dirty smelly jobs with metal nuts and bolts, and never see what they were doing, never have any pride or skill - they lived like dirty animals! And what for? Mass men for mass production - to produce things they didn't need, to have money to buy other things they didn’t need! Top - heavy brontosaurs! Who wants to live that way, or do that kind of work? There are a few craftsmen who build airplanes, or design them, because that's what they would rather do, and they'd be unhappy if they couldn't. They're artisans. And we can always use a few planes. But there aren't many, so we keep the planes for necessary work. And most people like doing simpler things, things with personal satisfaction. We don't force them to mass - produce airplanes simply because it's possible!" He checked his vehemence with an almost apologetic cough. "I didn't mean to get angry - that's the Slayton Center down there. You can land inside that rectangle of lights."

Brian set the pickup down easily - it seemed to be rolling over a velvety carpet - and they got down and walked in silence, across the darkly luxuriant grass, toward a low frame building of dark wood. Inside, by the warm glow of a fireplace, a man sat at a large table, lighted by an expertly rigged system of miniature spotlights, looking down at what appeared to be a large relief map. A headphone was on his ears; he glanced up as they came through the door, but motioned them into silence, listening intently, and after a moment groped blindly into a box fixed on the side of the desk and came out with a large black pin which he stabbed accurately into the relief map. "Tornado reported between Carney and Marilla. All right, then, ring off and send Robinson up to put a bomb in the center of it before it hits the farms out that way." He

replaced the headphone, and inquired courteously. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

"Hello, Halleck," Hard Frobisher said, and, advancing to the desk, shook hands with the man, "This is Brian Kearns - came in from space."

"Oh, are they still coming in, down your way? The last one we had here was in my grandfather's time," the man Halleck observed casually. "No, come to think of it, down there in Marilla they have a man called Mellen, been working the weather station. Do you know him, Mr. Kearns? I'm glad to meet you."

Brian murmured something noncommittal, and looked around, dazed. Halleck added, "I suppose you came to pick up Dr. Frobisher? He's on his way over. Won't you sit down?"

"Thanks." Frobisher sank down in a comfortable armchair, motioned Brian into another. The man at the desk hung up his headset and came to stand by Frobisher's chair. "Good to see you, Hard. When do you come up here again?"

"Not for a month or so. You'll be off by then?"

"I should say so! I've a couple of good cows carving, and I want to be home."

"Those blacks?" Frobisher asked. "Drive a few through Norten some day, and we'll see if we

can't make a deal. I could use a good bull, and there are some new families with children, could use a milk cow."

Brian didn't try to follow the conversation after that; it seemed to be mostly about cows and the luck a mutual friend was having in breeding chickens which laid black - shelled eggs. Frobisher finally took pity on his blank face. "He's never been at a Center, before, Halleck," he told the stranger, who grinned. "Pretty dull, aren't they, Mr. Kearns? I'm always glad to come up here when it's time, but I'm always glad to get back to the farm."

Brian said, "I'm a little stunned at all this - " and added, "I'd understood your - your civilization wasn't scientific - "

"It isn't," Frobisher said sternly. "It definitely is not. We use science; it doesn't use us. Science, Mr. Kearns, is no longer the plaything of powerful warmongers, nor is it enslaved to an artificial standard of living, keyed to an unhealthy, neurotic population who want to be continually amused, rocked in a cradle of overstimulation! It is not playing for pressure groups, so - called educators, fanatics, adolescents, egocentric exhibitionists, or lazy women! Men are no longer under pressure to buy the products of commercialized science to create employment and keep the cities running. Anyone who's interested, and who has talents and skills which go beyond day - to - day living, which is more than half of the population, spends a few months every year doing the things which need doing, not just in science. Halleck here knows more about weather conditions than anyone else in the South Plains. About four months out of the year, he sits over there, or works out in a weather plane, fighting tornados before they get started, working on reforestation,

handling drought conditions. The rest of the year, he lives like anybody else. Everybody lives an easy, balanced life. Man's a small animal, and has to have a small horizon. There's a definite limit to his horizon, which is why a village breaks down and starts having internal trouble when it gets too big. But groups of people, as a whole, have to have some idea of the world over the horizon, if they're going to avoid the development of false ideas, superstitions and fears of strangers. So every man leads a secure, balanced life in the small horizon of his village, where he is responsible for himself, and responsible to every person he knows - and also, if he is capable, he lives a larger life beyond the village, working for others - but still and always for individuals, not for ideals." Brian opened his mouth to speak, but Frobisher quietly forestalled him. "And before he can work in the Centers, he has to prove himself as a responsible individual in the villages. There's a place waiting for you, Brian. How would you like to teach a course in the mechanics of interstellar space?"

"What?" Brian spluttered. "You mean - space travel?"

Frobisher laughed heartily. He glanced at his watch and said inconsequentially, "My son will probably be here in a few minutes - but still, I've time to explain - "

He turned to Brian again. "For two or three months a year," he reminded him. "There is always a use for knowledge, whether we can use it immediately or not. Our present way of life won't endure forever. At best it's an interim device, a probationary period, a sort of resting stage while man returns to sanity before he starts climbing again. Some day, man will probably take to space again, even the stars, but this time, we hope he'll do it with a sense of perspective, counting the

cost and weighing it against individual advantages." He paused, and added quietly, "I think he will."

After a long silence, he added, "I'm a historian. Back in the First Renaissance, man was starting to outgrow his atavistic notion about survival of the strong and powerful instead of the best. Then, unluckily for Europe, and also unluckily for the Redmen, the so - called New World was discovered. It's always easier to escape across a frontier, and drive your misfits out instead of learning to live with your problems. When that frontier was finally conquered, man had a second chance to learn to live with himself and with what he'd done. Instead, after wars and all kinds of trouble, he escaped again, this time to the planets. But he couldn't escape from himself - and eventually that frontier was filled up to the saturation point, too. So he escaped again, this time by launching the Starward - but that time he went just one step too far. And then the crash came. Every man had the choice: die in his armor, or take it off." He grinned. "I thought for a while, Brian, that you were a brontosaur."

Brian mopped his forehead. "I feel pretty extinct," he murmured.

"Well, you can try teaching interstellar mechanics for awhile. The rest of the time - "

"Say - " Brian interrupted anxiously. "I don't have to start right away, do I? I'm fixing up a new set of lenses for the crew - "

Frobisher laughed, heartily and kindly, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Take your own time,

my boy. The stars won't be bridged again for centuries. It's a lot more important to get your crew's eyes in good condition again." He rose abruptly. "Good - here is John, and I suppose by now, Mellen's on his way to Paula."

Brian quickly got to his feet as a tall dark - haired man in a white jacket came into the room. Even in the dim light the resemblance to Frobisher was obvious; he looked like an older, maturer Destry. Frobisher introduced the men, and Dr. John Frobisher gave Brian's hand a quick, warm hand shake.

"Glad to meet you, Kearns. Tom Mellen spoke about you, last time I was in Manila. Shall we be on our way?" As they turned outward, and crossed the lighted airfield, he and his father spoke in low tones, and for once Brian had nothing to say. Even his thoughts were not working as he put the pickup in the air. The reversal had been too fast. Then, abruptly, a memory hit him and he turned his head around to ask sharply, "Listen here, if you can receive radio signals, how is it that no one answered the Homeward's call from space!"

Frobisher looked a trifle embarrassed. He said gently, at last, "We use a special, tight - beam transmission. Your signals are the old wide - band ones, and they came in as bursts of static."

For some reason Brian felt incredibly relieved, and his relief exploded in laughter.

"I told Tom our radio devices would be obsolete. . ." he choked.

"Yes," Frobisher said quietly. "Obsolete, only in a way you hadn't planned for. The whole crew of the Homeward was obsolete - and you've been on probation all along. But you've come out of that now, I think. Wait a bit - don't go to Norten just yet. Turn north - just a mile or two. There's something I want you to see."

Brian protested, "Paula - "

John Frobisher leaned forward. "Mellen's wife - " and this time Brian did not bridle at the vulgarism, " - will be all right, Kearns. We don't get the gravity sickness very often, now, but any danger in it was knocked out even before the spacers quit running. The girl's probably uncomfortable, and it looks terrible, but it isn't dangerous. We'll have her fixed up within an hour."

And somehow Brian's anxiety slid away. The words didn't mean much to him, but his training had taught him one thing, at least; he recognized competence when he met it, and it was in every inflection of John Frobisher's voice. Acquiescently he swung the skip to the northeast. The rising sun broke in a wave of brightness over the horizon, revealing the far - away line of ruined buildings that looked down drearily over a too - flat strip of dismal, barren land where nothing grew, a straight level plain of gray concrete. For miles it seemed to stretch away; Brian, flying low, could see the grass that pushed its way upward through the crumbling concrete, the dreary gap - windowed buildings softened a little by ivy. And then he saw them: eight tall regular shapes, straight and still gleaming a little. . . .

"There are only two laws in our culture," Frobisher said quietly. "One is that no man shall enslave another. And the second - " he paused, looking straight at Brian, " - is that no man shall enslave himself. Which is why we have never destroyed these ships. This was the old spaceport, Brian. Does it look very majestic? Would you care to land?"

Brian looked, thinking: this was what he had expected to see first. And yet, somehow, this was what seemed greatest to him: that man, having created this monster, should have the common sense to abandon its dreary domination - and the courage to leave it there. Men destroy only what they fear.

"Come on," Brian said steadily. "Quit riding me.

Let's get back home - and I do mean home. There's a sick girl waiting for you, doctor. And even if it isn't dangerous, they're going to be worrying until you tell them it isn't." Abruptly he gunned the jets and turned the ship southeast toward Norten Village, into the rising sun. He was not aware that he had passed the final test. He was thinking about Paula, and about Ellie, waiting and worrying. He knew in the back of his mind that he'd come back here some day, look around a little, maybe even mourn a little; you couldn't put away the biggest part of your life. But he wouldn't come right away. He had work to do.

The pickup of the Homeward flew away, into the morning. Yet behind them the mighty symbols remained, cold and masterful, a promise and a threat: eight great starships, covered from nose to tail with green - growing moss and red rust.

(1955)

Exiles of Tomorrow(1955)

"A very strange thing happened when I was born," Carey Kennaird told me.

He paused and refilled his wine glass, looking at me with a curious appraisal in his young and very blue eyes. I returned his glance as casually as I could, wondering why he had suddenly decided to confide in me.

I had known Carey Kennaird for only a few weeks. We were the most casual of acquaintances; a word in the lobby of our hotel, a cup of coffee in a lunchroom he liked, mugs of beer in the quiet back room of the corner bar. He was intelligent and I had enjoyed his conversation. But until now it had consisted entirely of surface commonplaces. Today, he seemed to be opening up a trifle.

He had volunteered the information, unasked, that he was the son of a well - known research physicist, and that he was in Chicago to look for his father who had disappeared mysteriously a week or so before. Young Kennaird seemed oddly unworried about his father's plight. But I was pleased at the way his reserve appeared to be dropping.

As I say, Carey Kennaird had a casual way with him, and he puzzled me. He did not, somehow, seem emotionally in sympathy with the hectic tempo of the rushed age in which he had grown up.

"Well," I told him noncommitally, "childhood memories often make quite normal events seem strange. What was it?"

The appraisal in his eyes was franker now. "Mr. Grayne, do you ever read science fiction?"

"I'm afraid not," I told him. "At least, only very occasionally."

He looked a little crestfallen. "Oh - well, do you know anything about the familiar science fiction concept of traveling in time?"

"A little," I finished my drink, wishing the waiter would bring us another bottle of wine. "It's supposed to involve some quite staggering paradoxes, I believe. I'm thinking of the man who goes back in time and kills his own grandfather."

He looked disgusted. "That's at best a trite layman's idea!"

"Well, I'm a layman," I said genially. The arrogance of young people always strikes me as being pathetic rather than insulting. I did not think young Kennaird could have been more than

nineteen. Twenty, perhaps. "Now then, young fellow, don't tell me you've actually invented a time machine!"

"Good Lord, no!" The denial was so laughingly spontaneous that I had to laugh with him, "No, just an idea that interests me. I don't really believe there's much paradox involved in time - travel at all."

He paused, his eyes still on my face. "See here, Mr. Grayne, I'd like to - well, do you mind listening to something rather fantastic? I'm not drunk, but I've got a good reason for wanting to confide in you. You see, I know a great deal about you, really."

I wasn't surprised. In fact, I'd been prepared for just such a statement. I grinned a strained grin at the boy. "No, go ahead," I told him. "I'm interested." I leaned back in my chair, preparing to listen.

You see, I knew what he was going to say.

II

Ryn Kenner sat in his cell, his head buried in his hands.

"Oh, God - " he muttered to himself, over and over.

There were so many unpredictable risks involved. Even though he had spent three years coaching Cara, teaching her to guard against every possible contingency, he still might fail. If only he could have eliminated the psychic block. But that, of course, was the most necessary risk of all.

Sometimes, in spite of his humanitarian training, Ryn Kenner thought the old, primitive safeguards had been better. Executing murderers, locking maniacs up in cells was certainly better than exiling men in this horrible new way. Ryn Kenner knew that he would have preferred to die. Two or three times he had even thought of slashing his wrists with a razor before the Exile. Once he had actually set a razor against his right wrist, but his early training had been too strong for him. Even the word suicide could set off a mental complex of quivering nerve reactions impossible to control.

The tragedy, Kenner thought despondently, resided in the paradox that civilization had become too enlightened. There had been a time when men had thought that traveling backward in time would upset the framework of events and change the future. But it had been a manifestly mistaken idea, for in this year, 2543 A.D. the whole past had already occurred, and the present moment contained within itself the entire past, including whatever rectifying attempts time travelers had made in that past.

Kenner shivered as he realized that his own acts had all occurred in the past. He, Ryn Kenner,

had already died - six centuries before.

Time - travel - the perfect, the most humane way of banishing criminals! He had heard all the arguments which sophistry could muster. The strong individualists were clearly misfits in the enlightened twenty - sixth century. For their own good, they should be exiled to eras psychologically congenial to them. A good many of them had been sent to California in the year 1849. They thus took a one - way trip to an era where murder was not a crime, but a social necessity,

the respectable business of a gentleman. Religious fanatics were exiled to the First Dark Ages, where they could not disturb the tranquil materialism of the present century; too aggressive atheists, to the twenty - third century.

Kenner rose and began to pace his cell, which was a prison in fact, if not in appearance. Outside the wide window spread a spacious view of Nyor Harbor, and the room was luxuriously furnished. He knew, however, that if he stepped a foot past the lines which had been drawn around the door, he would be instantly overpowered by a powerful sleeping gas. He had tried it once, with almost disastrous results.

This hour of high decision was his last in the twenty - sixth century. In fifty minutes, in his own personal, subjective time from now, he would be somewhere in the twentieth century, the era to which his rashness had condemned him when he had been apprehended by the psycho police while attempting to rediscover the fabulous atomic isotopes. And he wouldn't remember enough

to get back. He would be permitted to keep all his training - all his knowledge, and memory - but there would be a fatal reservation.

Never, for the rest of his life, would Kenner be able to remember that he had come from the future. For the three weeks during which he had been confined to the cell the radiant suggestor had been steadily beaming at his brain. No defense his mind could devise had sufficed to stay its slow inroads into his thought.

Already his brain was beginning to grow fuzzy and he knew that the time was short. He drew a long breath, hearing steps in the corridor, and the whistle which meant the hypnotic gas was being momentarily turned off.

He stopped pacing.

Abruptly the door opened, and a psycho - supervisor entered the cell. Framed in the radiance behind him -

"Cara!" Kenner almost sobbed, and ran forward to catch his wife in his arms, and hold her with hungry violence. She cried softly against him. "Ryn, Ryn, it won't be long - "

The supervisor's face was compassionate. "Kenner," he said, "you may have twenty minutes alone with your wife. You will be unsupervised." The door closed softly behind him.

Kenner led Cara to a seat. She tried to hold back her tears, looking at him with wide, frightened eyes. "Ryn, darling, I thought you might have - "

"Hush, Cara," he whispered. "They may be listening. Just remember everything I've told you. You mustn't risk being sent to a different year. You already know what to do."

"I'll - find you," she promised.

"Let's not talk about it," Kenner urged gently. "We haven't long. Grayne promised he'd look after you until - "

"I know. He's been good to me while you were here."

The twenty minutes didn't seem long. The supervisor pretended not to notice while Cara clung to Kenner in a last agony of farewell. Ryn brushed the tears away from her eyes, softly.

"See you in nineteen forty - five, Cara," he whispered, and let her go.

"It's a date, darling," were her last words before she followed the supervisor out of the prison. Kenner, in the last few moments remaining to him, before he sank into sleep again, desperately tried to marshal what little knowledge he possessed about the twentieth century.

His brain felt dark now, and oppressed, as if someone had wrapped his mind in smothering folds

of wool. Dimly he knew that when he woke, his prison would be yet unbuilt. And yet, all the rest of his life he would be in prison - the prison of a mind that would never let him speak the truth.

III

" - and of course, this hypothetical psychic block would also contain a provision prohibiting marriage with anyone from the past," Carey Kennaird finished. "It would naturally be inconvenient for children to be born of the time exiles. But if my hypothetical man from the future should actually find the wife he'd arranged to have exiled with him, there'd be no psychic block against marrying her." He paused, staring at me steadily. "Now, what would happen to the kid?"

My own glass stood empty. I signaled to the waiter, but Kennaird shook his head. "Thanks, I've had enough."

I paid for the wine. "Suppose we walk to the hotel together, Kennaird?" I said. "You've got a fascinating theory there, my boy. It would make a fine plot for a science - fiction novel. Are you a writer? Of course, what happened to the boy - " we passed together into the blinding sunlight of the Chicago Loop, " - would be the climax of your story."

"It would," Kennaird agreed.

We crossed the street beneath the thundering El trains, and stood in front of Marshall Field's while Carey lit a cigarette.

"Smoke?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No thanks. You said you had a reason for confiding in me, young man. What is it?"

He looked at me curiously. "I think you know, Mr. Grayne. You weren't born in the Twentieth Century. I was, of course. But you're like Dad and Cara. You're a time exile, too, aren't you?"

"I know you can't say anything; because of the psychic block. But you don't have to deny it. That's now Dad told me. He made me read science - fiction. Then he made me ask him leading questions - and just answered yes or no." Young Kennaird paused. "I don't have the psychic block. Dad was trying to help me

discover the time - travel device. He came up to Chicago, and disappeared. But I'm on the right track now. I'm sure of it. I think Dad got back somehow."

Even though I'd known what he was going to say, I swallowed hard.

"Something very strange did happen when you were born," I said. "You put a peculiar strain on

the whole framework of time. It was something that never should have happened, because of - " my voice faltered, "the psychic block against marrying anyone from the past."

Carey Kennaird looked at me intently. "Hard to talk about the psychic block, isn't it? Dad never could."

I nodded without speaking. We climbed the hotel steps together. "Come up to my room," I urged. "We'll talk it over. You see, Carey - I'm going to call you that - Kenner used to be my friend."

"I wonder," Carey said, "If Dad got home in the twenty - sixth century."

"He did."

Carey stared. "Mr. Grayne! Is he all right?"

Regretfully, I shook my head. The elevator boy let us off on the fourth floor. I wondered if he, too, were an exile. I wondered how many people in Chicago were exiles, sullen behind the mask of a mental block which clamped a gag on their lips when they tried to speak the truth.

I wondered how many men, and how many women, were living such a lie, day in, and day out, lonely, miserable exiles from their own tomorrow, victims of a fate literally worse than death. Small wonder they would do anything to avoid such a fate.

My door closed behind us. While Carey stared, wide - eyed, at the device which loomed darkly in one corner of the room, I went to my desk, and removed the shining disk. I walked straight up to him. "This is from your father," I told him. "Look at it carefully."

He accepted it eagerly, his eyes blazing with excitement, sensing at once that it had come from the twenty - sixth century.

He died instantly.

Hating my work, hating time - travel, hating the whole chain of events, which had made me an instrument of justice, I stepped into the device that would return me to the twenty - sixth century.

Carey Kennaird had told the truth. A very strange thing had happened at his birth. Like an extra electron bombarding an unstable isotope, he had broken the link that held the framework of time together. His birth had started a chain reaction that had ended, for me, a week before in 2556, when Kenner and Cara had reappeared in the twenty - sixth century and been murdered in a panic by the psycho - supervisors. I, already condemned to time exile, had won a free pardon for my work, a commutation of my sentence to a light reprimand and the loss of my position. It was ugly work and I hated it, for Kenner and Cara had been my friends. But I had no freedom of choice. Anything was better than exile into time.

Anything, anything.

Besides, it had been necessary.

It isn't lawful for children to be born before their parents.

(1955)

Death Between the Stars(1956)

They asked me about it, of course, before I boarded the starship. All through the Western sector of the Galaxy, few rules are stricter than the one dividing human from nonhuman, and the little Captain of the Vesta - he was Terran, too, and proud in the black leather of the Empire's merchant - man forces - hemmed and hawed about it, as much as was consistent with a spaceman's dignity.

"You see, Miss Vargas," he explained, not once but as often as I would listen to him, "this is not, strictly speaking, a passenger ship at all. Our charter is only to carry cargo. But, under the terms of our franchise, we are required to transport an occasional passenger, from the more isolated planets where there is no regular passenger service. Our rules simply don't permit us to discriminate, and the Theradin reserved a place on this ship for our last voyage."

He paused, and re - emphasized, "We have only the one passenger cabin, you see. We're a cargo ship and we are not allowed to make any discrimination between our passengers."

He looked angry about it. Unfortunately, I'd run up against that attitude before. Some Terrans won't travel on the same ship with nonhumans even when they're isolated in separate ends of the ship.

I understood his predicament, better than he thought. The Theradin seldom travel in space. No one could have foreseen that Haalvordhen, the Theradin from Samarra, who had lived on the forsaken planet of Deneb for eighteen of its cycles, would have chosen this particular flight to go back to its own world.

At the same time, I had no choice. I had to get back to an Empire planet - any planet - where I could take a starship for Terra. With war about to explode in the Procyon sector, I had to get home before communications were knocked out altogether. Otherwise - well, a Galactic war can last up to eight hundred years. By the time regular transport service was reestablished, I wouldn't be worrying about getting home.

The Vesta could take me well out of the dangerous sector, and all the way to Samarra - Sirius Seven - which was, figuratively speaking, just across the street from the Solar System and Terra. Still, it was a questionable solution. The rules about segregation are strict, the anti discriminatory laws are stricter, and the Theradin had made a prior reservation.

The captain of the Vesta couldn't have refused him transportation, even if fifty human, Terran women had been left stranded on Deneb IV. And sharing a cabin with the Theradin was ethically, morally and socially out of the question. Haalvordhen was a non - human telepath; and no human in his right senses will get any closer than necessary even to a human telepath. As for a nonhuman one -

And yet, what other way was there?

The captain said tentatively, "We might be able to squeeze you into the crewmen's quarters - " he paused uneasily, and glanced up at me.

I bit my lip, frowning. That was worse yet. "I understand," I said slowly, "that this Theradin Haalvordhen - has offered to allow me to share its quarters."

"That's right. But, Miss Vargas - "

I made up my mind in a rush. "I'll do it," I said. "It's the best way, all around."

At the sight of his scandalized face, I almost regretted my decision. It was going to cause an interplanetary scandal, I thought wryly. A human woman - and a Terran citizen - spending forty days in space and sharing a cabin with a nonhuman!

The Theradin, although male in form, had no single attribute which one could remotely refer to

as sex. But of course that wasn't the problem. The nonhuman were specifically prohibited from mingling with the human races. Terran custom and taboo were binding, and I faced, resolutely, the knowledge that by the time I got to Terra, the planet might be made too hot to hold me.

Still, I told myself defiantly, it was a big Galaxy. And conditions weren't normal just now and that made a big difference. I signed a substantial check for my transportation, and made arrangements for the shipping and stowing of what few possessions I could safely transship across space.

But I still felt uneasy when I went aboard the next day - so uneasy that I tried to bolster up my flagging spirits with all sorts of minor comforts. Fortunately the Theradin were oxygen breathers, so I knew there would be no trouble about atmosphere - mixtures, or the air pressure to be maintained in the cabin. And the Theradin were Type Two nonhumans, which meant that the acceleration of a hyperspeed ship would knock my shipmate into complete prostration without special drugs. In fact, he would probably stay drugged in his skyhook during most of the trip.

The single cabin was far up toward the nose of the starship. It was a queer little spherical cubbyhole, a nest. The walls were foam - padded all around the sphere, for passengers never develop a spaceman's skill at maneuvering then: bodies in free - fall, and cabins had to be designed so that an occupant, moving unguardedly, would not dash out his or her brains against an unpadded surface. Spaced at random on the inside of the sphere were three skyhooks - nested cradles on swinging pivots - into which the passenger was snugged during blastoff hi shock absorbing foam and a complicated Garensen pressure - apparatus and was thus enabled to sleep

secure without floating away.

A few screw - down doors were marked LUGGAGE. I immediately unscrewed one door and stowed my personal belongings in the bin. Then I screwed the top down securely and carefully fastened the padding over it. Finally, I climbed around the small cubbyhole, seeking to familiarize myself with it before my unusual roommate arrived.

It was about fourteen feet in diameter. A sphincter lock opened from the narrow corridor to cargo bays and crewmen's quarters, while a second led into the cabin's functional equivalent of a bathroom. Planet - bound men and women are always surprised and a little shocked when they see the sanitary arrangements on a spaceship. But once they've tried to perform normal bodily functions in free - fall, they understand the peculiar equipment very well.

I've made six trips across the Galaxy in as many cycles. I'm practically an old hand, and can even wash my face in freefall without drowning. The trick is to use a sponge and suction. But, by and large, I understand perfectly why spacemen, between planets, usually look a bit unkempt.

I stretched out on the padding of the main cabin, and waited with growing uneasiness for the nonhuman to show. Fortunately, it wasn't long before the diaphragm on the outer sphincter lock expanded, and a curious, peaked face peered through.

"Vargas Miss Helten?" said the Theradin in a sibilant whisper.

"That's my name," I replied instantly. I pulled upward, and added, quite unnecessarily, "You are Haalvordhen, of course."

"Such is my identification," confirmed the alien, and the long, lean, oddly - muscled body squirmed through after the peaked head. "It is kind, Vargas Miss, to share accommodation under this necessity."

"It's kind of you," I said vigorously. "We've all got to get home before this war breaks out!"

"That war may be prevented, I have all hope," the nonhuman said. He spoke comprehensibly in Galactic Standard, but expressionlessly, for the vocal chords of the Theradins are located in an auxiliary pair of inner lips, and their voices seem reedy and lacking in resonance to human ears.

"Yet know you, Vargas Miss, they would have hurled me from this ship to make room for an Empire citizen, had you not been heart - kind to share."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, shocked, "I didn't know that!"

I stared at him, disbelieving. The captain couldn't have legally done such a thing - or even seriously have entertained the thought. Had he been trying to intimidate the Theradin into giving up his reserved place?

"I - I was meaning to thank you," I said, to cover my confusion.

"Let us thank we - other, then, and be in accord," the reedy voice mouthed.

I looked the nonhuman over, unable to hide completely my curiosity. In form the Theradin was vaguely humanoid - but only vaguely - for, the squat arms terminated in mittened "hands" and the long sharp face was elfin, and perpetually grimacing.

The Theradin have no facial muscles to speak of, and no change of expression or of vocal inflection is possible to them. Of course, being telepathic, such subtleties of visible or auditory expression would be superfluous on the face of it.

I felt - as yet - none of the revulsion which the mere presence of the Theradin was supposed to inspire. It was not much different from being in the presence of a large humanoid animal. There was nothing inherently fearful about the alien. Yet he was a telepath - and of a nonhuman breed my species had feared for a thousand years.

Could he read my mind?

"Yes," said the Theradin from across the cabin. "You must forgive me. I try to put up barrier, but it is hard. You broadcast your thought so strong it is impossible to shut it out." The alien paused. "Try not to be embarrass. It bother me too."

Before I could think of anything to say to that a crew member in black leather thrust his head,

unannounced, through the sphincter, and said with an air of authority, "In skyhooks, please." He moved confidently into the cabin. "Miss Vargas, can I help you strap down?" he asked.

"Thanks, but I can manage," I told him.

Hastily I clambered into the skyhook, buckling the inner straps, and fastening the suction tubes of the complicated Garensen apparatus across my chest and stomach. The nonhuman was awkwardly drawing his hands from their protective mittens and struggling with the Garensens.

Unhappily the Theradin have a double thumb, and handling the small - size Terran equipment is an almost impossibly delicate task. It is made more difficult by the fact that the flesh of their "hands" is mostly thin mucous membrane which tears easily on contact with leather and raw metal.

"Give Haalvordhen a hand," I urged the crewman. "I've done - this dozens of times!"

I might as well have saved my breath. The crewman came and assured himself that my straps and tubes and cushions were meticulously tightened. He took what seemed to me a long time, and used his hands somewhat excessively, I lay under the heavy Garensen equipment, too inwardly furious to even give him the satisfaction of protest.

It was far too long before he finally straightened and moved toward Haalvordhen's skyhook. He gave the alien's outer straps only a perfunctory tug or two, and then turned his head to grin at me

with a totally uncalled - for - familiarity.

"Blastoff in ninety seconds," he said, and wriggled himself rapidly out through the hook.

Haalvordhen exploded in a flood of Samarran which I could not follow. The vehemence of his voice, however, was better than a dictionary. For some strange reason I found myself sharing his fury. The unfairness of the whole procedure was shameful. The Theradin had paid passage money, and deserved in any case the prescribed minimum of decent attention.

I said forthrightly, "Never mind the fool, Haalvordhen. Are you strapped down all right?"

"I don't know," he replied despairingly. "The equipment is unfamiliar - "

"Look - " I hesitated, but in common decency I had to make the gesture. "If I examine carefully my own Garensens, can you read my mind and see how they should be adjusted?"

He mouthed, "I'll try," and immediately I fixed my gaze steadily on the apparatus.

After a moment, I felt a curious sensation. It was something like the faint, sickening feeling of being touched and pushed about, against my will, by a distasteful stranger.

I tried to control the surge of almost physical revulsion. No wonder that humans kept as far as possible from the telepathic races. . .

And then I saw - did I see, I wondered, or was it a direct telepathic interference with my perceptions? - a second image superimpose itself on the Garensens into which I was strapped. And the realization was so disturbing that I forgot the discomfort of the mental rapport completely.

"You aren't nearly fastened in," I warned. "You haven't begun to fasten the suction tubes - oh, damn the man. He must have seen in common humanity - " I broke off abruptly, and fumbled in grim desperation with my own straps. "I think there's just time - "

But there wasn't. With appalling suddenness a violent clamor - the final warning - hit my ears. I clenched my teeth and urged frantically: "Hang on! Here we go!"

And then the blast hit us! Under the sudden sickening pressure I felt my lungs collapse, and struggled to remain upright, choking for breath. I heard a queer, gagging grunt from the alien, and it was far more disturbing than a human scream would have been.

Then the second Shockwave struck with such violence that I screamed aloud in completely human terror. Screamed - and blacked out.

I wasn't unconscious very long. I'd never collapsed during takeoff before, and my first fuzzy emotion when I felt the touch of familiar things around me again was one of embarrassment. What had happened? Then, almost simultaneously, I became reassuringly aware that we were in

free fall and that the crewman who had warned us to alert ourselves was stretched out on the empty air near my skyhook. He looked worried.

"Are you all right, Miss Vargas?" he asked, solicitously. "The blastoff wasn't any rougher than usual - "

"I'm all right," I assured him woozily. My shoulders jerked and the Garensens shrieked as I pressed upward, undoing the apparatus with tremulous fingers. "What about the Theradin?" I asked urgently. "His Garensens weren't fastened. You barely glanced at them."

The crewman spoke slowly and steadily, with a deliberation I could not mistake. "Just a minute, Miss Vargas," he said. "Have you forgotten? I spent every moment of the time I was in here fastening the Theradin's belts and pressure equipment."

He gave me a hand to assist me up, but I shook it off so fiercely that I flung myself against the padding on the opposite side of the cabin. I caught apprehensively at a handhold, and looked down at the Theradin.

Haalvordhen lay flattened beneath the complex apparatus. His peaked pixie face was shrunken and ghastly, and his mouth looked badly bruised. I bent closer, then jerked upright with a violence that sent me cascading back across the cabin, almost into the arms of the crewman.

"You must have fixed those belts just now," I said accusingly. "They were not fastened before

blastoff! It's malicious criminal negligence, and if Haalvordhen dies - "

The crewman gave me a slow, contemptuous smile. "It's my word against yours, sister," he reminded me.

"In common decency, in common humanity - " I found that my voice was hoarse and shaking, and could not go on.

The crewman said humorlessly, "I should think you'd be glad if the geek died in blastoff. You're awfully concerned about the geek - and you know how that sounds?"

I caught the frame of the skyhook and anchored myself against it. I was almost too faint to speak. "What were you trying to do?" I brought out at last. "Murder the Theradin?"

The crewman's baleful gaze did not shift from my face. "Suppose you close your mouth," he said, without malice, but with an even inflection that was far more frightening. "If you don't, we may have to close it for you. I don't think much of humans who fraternize with geeks."

I opened and shut my mouth several times before I could force myself to reply. All I finally said was, "You know, of course, that I intend to speak to the captain?"

"Suit yourself." He turned and strode contemptuously toward the door. "We'd have been doing you a favor if the geek had died in blastoff. But, as I say, suit yourself. I think your geek's alive,

anyhow. They're hard to kill."

I clutched the skyhook, unable to move, while he dragged his body through the sphincter lock and it contracted behind him.

Well, I thought bleakly, I had known what I would be letting myself in for when I'd made the arrangement. And since I was already committed, I might as well see if Haalvordhen were alive or dead. Resolutely I bent over his skyhook, angling sharply to brace myself in free - fall.

He wasn't dead. While I looked I saw the bruised and bleeding "hands" flutter spasmodically. Then, abruptly, the alien made a queer, rasping noise. I felt helpless and for some reason I was stirred to compassion.

I bent and laid a hesitant hand on the Garensen apparatus which was now neatly and expertly fastened. I was bitter about the fact that for the first time hi my life I had lost consciousness! Had I not done so the crewman could not have so adroitly covered his negligence. But it was important to remember that the circumstance would not have helped Haalvordhen much either.

"Your feelings do you nothing but credit!" The reedy flat voice was almost a whisper. "If I may trespass once more on your kindness - can you unfasten these instruments again?"

I bent to comply, asking helplessly as I did so, "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Very far from all right," the alien mouthed, slowly and without expression.

I had the feeling that he resented being compelled to speak aloud, but I didn't think I could stand that telepath touch again. The alien's flat, slitted eyes watched me while I carefully unfastened the suction tubes and cushioning devices.

At this distance I could see that the eyes had lost their color, and that the raw "hands" were flaccid and limp. There were also heavily discolored patches about the alien's throat and head. He pronounced, with a terribly thick effort:

"I should have - been drugged. Now it's too late. Argha mad - " the words trailed off into blurred Samarran, but the discolored patch in his neck still throbbed sharply, and the hands twitched in an agony which, being dumb, seemed the more fearful.

I clung to the skyhook, dismayed at the intensity of my own emotion. I thought that Haalvordhen had spoken again when the sharp jolt of command sounded, clear and imperative, in my brain.

"Procalamine!" For an instant the shock was all I could feel - the shock, and the overwhelming revulsion at the telepathic touch. There was no hesitation or apology in it now, for the Theradin was fighting for his life. Again the sharp, furious command came: "Give me procalamine!"

And with a start of dismay I realized that most nonhumans needed the drug, which was kept on

all spaceships to enable them to live in free - fall.

Few nonhuman races have the stubbornly persistent heart of the Terrans, which beats by muscular contraction alone. The circulation of the Theradin, and similar races, is dependent on gravity to keep the vital fluid pulsing. Procalamine gives their main blood organ just enough artificial muscular spasm to keep the blood moving and working.

Hastily I propelled myself into the "bathroom" - wiggled hastily through the diaphragm, and unscrewed the top of the bin marked FIRST AID. Neatly pigeonholed beneath transparent plastic were sterile bandages, antiseptics clearly marked HUMAN and - separately, for the three main types of nonhuman races, in one deep bin - the small plastic globules of vital stimulants.

I sorted out two purple fluorescent ones - little globes marked procalamine - and looked at the warning, in raised characters on the globule. It read: FOR ADMINISTRATION BY QUALIFIED SPACE PERSONNEL ONLY. A touch of panic made my diaphragm catch. Should I call the Vesta's captain, or one of the crew?

Then a cold certainty grew in me. If I did, Haalvordhen wouldn't get the stimulant he needed. I sorted out a fluorescent needle for nonhuman integument, pricked the globule and sucked the dose into the needle. Then, with its tip still enclosed in the plastic globe, I wriggled myself back to where the alien still lay loosely confined by one of the inner straps.

Panic touched me again, with the almost humorous knowledge that I didn't know where to inject

the stimulant, and that a hypodermic injection in space presents problems which only space trained men are able to cope with. But I reached out notwithstanding and gingerly picked up one of the unmittened "hands." I didn't stop to think how I knew that this was the proper site for the injection. I was too overcome with strong physical loathing.

Instinct from man's remote past on Earth told me to drop the nonhuman flesh and cower, gibbering and howling as my simian antecedents would have done. The raw membrane was feverishly hot and unpleasantly slimy to touch. I fought rising queasiness as I tried to think how to steady him for the injection.

In free - fall there is no steadiness, no direction. The hypodermic needle, of course, worked by suction, but piercing the skin would be the big problem. Also, I was myself succumbing to the dizziness of no - gravity flight, and realized coldly that if I couldn't make the injection in the next few minutes I wouldn't be able to accomplish it at all.

For a minute I didn't care, a primitive part of myself reminding me that if the alien died I'd be rid of a detestable cabin mate, and have a decent trip between planets.

Then, stubbornly, I threw off the temptation. I steadied the needle in my hand, trying to conquer the disorientation which convinced me that I was looking both up and down at the Theradin.

My own center of gravity seemed to be located in the pit of my stomach, and I fought the familiar space voyaging instinct to curl up in the foetal position and float. I moved slightly closer

to the Theradin. I knew that if I could get close enough, our two masses would establish a common center of gravity, and I would have at least a temporary orientation while I made the injection.

The maneuver was unpleasant, for the alien seemed unconscious, flaccid and still, and mere physical closeness to the creature was repellent. The feel of the thick wettish "hand" pulsing feebly in my own was almost sickeningly ultimate. But at last I managed to maneuver myself dose enough to establish a common center of gravity between us - an axis on which I seemed to hover briefly suspended.

I pulled Haalvordhen's "hand" into this weight - center in the bare inches of space between us, braced the needle, and resolutely stabbed with it.

The movement disturbed the brief artificial gravity, and Haalvordhen floated and bounced a little weightlessly in his skyhook. The "hand" went sailing back, the needle recoiling harmlessly. I swore out loud, now quite foolishly angry, and my own jerky movement of annoyance flung me partially across the cabin.

Inching slowly back, I tried to grit my teeth, but only succeeded with a snap that jarred my skull. In tense anger, I seized Haalvordhen's "hand," which had almost stopped its feverish pulsing, and with a painfully slow effort - any quick or sudden movement would have thrown me, in recoil, across the cabin again - I wedged Haalvordhen's "hand" under the strap and anchored it there.

It twitched faintly - the Theradin was apparently still sensible to pain - and my stomach rose at that sick pulsing. But I hooked my feet under the skyhook's frame, and flung my free arm down and across the alien, holding tight to the straps that confined him.

Still holding him thus wedged down securely, I jabbed again with the needle. It touched, pricked - and then, in despair, I realized it could not penetrate the Theradin integument without weight and pressure behind it.

I was too absorbed now in what had to be done to care just how I did it. So I wrenched forward with a convulsive movement that threw me, full - length, across the alien's body. Although I still had no weight, the momentum of the movement drove the hypodermic needle deeply into the flesh of the "hand."

I pressed the catch, then picked myself up slowly, and looked around to see the crewman who had jeered at me with his head thrust through the lock again, regarding me with the distaste he had displayed toward the Theradin, from the first. To him I was lower than the Theradin, having degraded myself by close contact with a nonhuman.

Under that frigid, contemptuous stare, I was unable to speak. I could only silently withdraw the needle and hold it up. The rigid look of condemnation altered just a little, but not much. He remained silent, looking at me with something halfway between horror and accusation.

It seemed years, centuries, eternities that he clung there, just looking at me, his face an

elongated ellipse above the tight collar of his black leathers. Then, without even speaking, he slowly withdrew his head and the lock contracted behind him, leaving me alone with my sickening feeling of contamination and an almost hysterical guilt.

I hung the needle up on the air, curled myself into a ball, and, entirely unstrung, started sobbing like a fool.

It must have been a long time before I managed to pull myself together, because before I even looked to see whether Haalvordhen was still alive, I heard the slight buzzing noise which meant it was a meal - period and that food had been sent through the chute to our cabin. I pushed the padding listlessly aside, and withdrew the heat - sealed containers - one set colorless, the other set nonhuman fluorescent.

Tardily conscious of what a fool I'd been making of myself, I hauled my rations over to the skyhook, and tucked them into a special slot, so that they wouldn't float away. Then, with a glance at the figure stretched out motionless beneath the safety - strap of the other skyhook, I shrugged, pushed myself across the cabin again, and brought the fluorescent containers to Haalvordhen.

He made a weary, courteous noise which I took for acknowledgment. By now heartily sick of the whole business, I set them before him with a bare minimum of politeness and withdrew to my own skyhook, occupying myself with the always - ticklish problem of eating m free - fell.

At last I drew myself up to return the containers to the chute, knowing we wouldn't leave the cabin during the entire trip. Space, on a starship, is held to a rigid minimum. There is simply no room for untrained outsiders moving around in the cramped ship, perhaps getting dangerously close to critically delicate equipment, and the crew is far too busy to stop and keep an eye on rubbernecking tourists.

In an emergency, passengers can summon a crewman by pressing a call - button. Otherwise, as far as the crew was concerned, we were in another world.

I paused in midair to Haalvordhen's skyhook. His containers were untouched and I felt moved to say, "Shouldn't you try to eat something?"

The flat voice had become even weaker and more rasping now, and the nonhuman's careful enunciation was slurred. Words of his native Samarran intermingled with queer turns of phrase which I expected were literally rendered from mental concepts.

"Heart - kind of you, thakkava Varga Miss, but late. Haalvordhen - I deep in grateful wishing - " A long spate of Samarran, thickly blurred followed, then as if to himself, "Theradin - we, die nowhere only on Samarra, and only a little tune ago Haalvordhen - I knowing must die, and must returning to home planet. Saata. Knowing to return and die there where Theradin - we around dying - " The jumble of words blurred again, and the limp "hands" clutched spasmodically, in and out.

Then, in a queer, careful tone, the nonhuman said, "But I am not living to return where I can stop - die. Not so long Haalvordhen - I be lasting, although Vargas - you Miss be helping most like real instead of alien. Sorry your people be most you unhelping - " he stopped again, and with a queer little grunting noise, continued, "Now Haalvordhen - I be giving Vargas - you stop - gift of heritage, be needful it is."

The flaccid form of the nonhuman suddenly stiffened, went rigid. The drooping lids over the Theradin's eyes seemed to unhood themselves, and in a spasm of fright I tried to fling myself backward. But I did not succeed. I remained motionless, held in a dumb fascination.

I felt a sudden, icy cold, and the sharp physical nausea crawled over me again at the harsh and sickening touch of the alien on my mind, not in words this time, but in a rapport even closer - a hateful touch so intimate that I felt my body go limp in helpless fits and spasms of convulsive shuddering under the deep, hypnotic contact.

Then a wave of darkness almost palpable surged up in my brain. I tried to scream, "Stop it, stop it!" And a panicky terror flitted in my last conscious thought through my head. This is why, this is the reason humans and telepathy don't mix -

And then a great dark door opened under my senses and I plunged again into unconsciousness.

It was not more than a few seconds, I suppose, before the blackness swayed and lifted and I found myself floating, curled helplessly in mid - air, and seeing, with a curious detachment, the

Theradin's skyhook below me. Something in the horrid limpness of that form stirred me wide awake.

With a tight band constricting my breathing, I arrowed downward. I had never seen a dead Theradin before, but I needed no one to tell me that I saw one now. The constricting band still squeezed my throat in dry gasps, and in a frenzy of hysteria I threw myself wildly across the cabin, beating and battering on the emergency button, shrieking and sobbing and screaming. . .

They kept me drugged all the rest of the trip. Twice I remember waking and shrieking out things I did not understand myself, before the stab of needles in my arm sent me down into comforting dreams again. Near the end of the flight, while my brain was still fuzzy, they made me sign a paper, something to do with witnessing that the crew held no responsibility for the Theradin's death.

It didn't matter. There was something clear and cold and shrewd in my mind, behind the surface fuzziness, which told me I must do exactly what they wanted, or I would find myself in serious trouble with the Terran authorities. At the time I didn't even care about that, and supposed it was the drugs. Now, of course, I know the truth.

When the ship made planetfall at Samarra, I had to leave the Vesta and transship for Terra. The Vesta's little captain shook me by the hand and carefully avoided my eyes, without mentioning the dead Theradin. I had the feeling - strange, how clear it was to my perceptions - that he regarded me in the same way he would regard a loaded time bomb that might explode at any

moment.

I knew he was anxious to hurry me aboard a ship for Terra. He offered me special reservations on a lino-cruiser at a nominal price, with the obvious lie that he owned a part interest in at. Detachedly I listened to his floundering lies, ignored the hand he offered again, and told a lie or two of my own. He was angry. I knew he didn't want me to linger on Samarra.

Even so, he was glad to be rid of me.

Descending at last from the eternal formalities of the Terran landing zone, I struck out quickly across the port city and hailed a Theradin ground - car. The Theradin driving it looked at me curiously, and in a buzzing voice informed me that I could find a human conveyance at the opposite corner. Surprised at myself, I stopped to wonder what I was doing. And then -

And then I identified myself in a way the Theradin could not mistake. He was nearly as surprised as I was. I clambered into the car, and he drove me to the queer, block - shaped building which my eyes had never seen before, but which I now knew as intimately as the blue sky of Terra.

Twice, as I crossed the twisting ramp, I was challenged. Twice, with the same shock of internal surprise, I answered the challenge correctly.

At last I came before a Theradin whose challenge crossed mine like a sure, sharp lance, and the

result was startling. The Theradin Haalvamphrenan leaned backward twice in acknowledgment, and said - not in words - "Haalvordhen!"

I answered in the same fashion. "Yes. Due to certain blunders, I could not return to our home planet, and was forced to use the body of this alien. Having made the transfer unwillingly, under necessity, I now see certain advantages. Once within this body, it does not seem at all repulsive, and the host is highly intelligent and sympathetic.

"I regret the feeling that I am distasteful to you, dear friend. But, consider. I can now contribute my services as messenger and courier, without discrimination by these mind - blind Terrans. The law which prevents Theradin from dying on any other planet should now be changed."

"Yes, yes," the other acquiesced, quickly grasping my meaning. "But now to personal matters, my dear Haalvordhen. Of course your possessions are held intact for you."

I became aware that I possessed five fine residences upon the planet, a private lake, a grove of Theirry-trees, and four chattel boats. Inheritance among the Theradin, of course, is dependent upon continuity of the mental personality, regardless of the source of the young. When any Theradin died, transferring his mind into a new and younger host, the new host at once possessed all of those things which had belonged to the former personality. Two Theradin, unsatisfied with their individual wealth, sometimes pooled their personalities into a single host - body, thus accumulating modest fortunes.

Continuity of memory, of course, was perfect. As Helen Vargas, I had certain rights and privileges as a Terran citizen, certain possessions, certain family rights, certain Empire privileges. And as Haalvordhen, I was made free of Samarra as well.

In a sense of strict justice, I "told" Haalvamphrenan how the original host had died. I gave him the captain's name. I didn't envy him, when the Vesta docked again at Samarra.

"On second thought," Haalvamphrenan said reflectively, "I shall merely commit suicide in his presence."

Evidently Helen - Haalvordhen - I had a very long and interesting life ahead of me.

So did all the other Theradin.

(1956)

Bird of Prey(1957)

It would be an hour before I could board the starship. Straight ahead, an open gateway led to the spaceport, and the white skyscraper which was the Headquarters of the Terran Empire on Wolf; behind me, Phi Coronis was dipping down over the roofs of the Kharsa - the Old Town - which

lay calm in the bloody sunset, but alive with the sounds and the smells of human, nonhuman and half - human life. The pungent reek of incense from an open street - shrine made my nostrils twitch, and a hulked form inside, not human, cast me a surly green glance as I turned aside into the cafe at the spaceport gates.

It wasn't crowded inside. A pair of furred chaks lounged beneath the mirrors at the far end. One or two spaceport personnel, in storm gear, were drinking coffee at the counter, and a trio of Drytowners, rangy lean men in colorful shirtcloaks, stood at a wall - shelf, eating Terran food with aloof dignity. In my neat business clothes I felt more conspicuous than the furred and long tailed chaks; an Earthman, a civilian. I ordered, and by unconscious habit, carried my food to a wall - shelf near the Dry-towners, the only native humans on Wolf.

They were tall as Earthmen, weathered by the fierce sun of their parched cities of dusty salt stone - the Dry Towns which lie in the bleached bottoms of Wolfs vanished oceans. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One, without altering his expression or his easy tone, had begun to make elaborate comments on my entrance, my appearance, my ancestry and probable personal habits, all defined in the colorfully obscene dialect of the Dry Towns.

I leaned over and remarked, in the man's own dialect, that at some future and unspecified time I would appreciate an opportunity to return their compliments.

By custom they should have apologized, and laughed at a jest decently reversed on themselves. Then we would have bought each other a drink, and that would have been that. But it didn't

happen that way. Not this time.

Instead, to my dismay, one of them fumbled inside the clasp of his shirt cloak; I edged backward, and found my own hand racing upward, seeking a skean I hadn't carried his six years. It looked like a rough-house.

The chaks in the corner moaned and chattered. Then I became aware that the three Dry-towners were gazing, not at me, but at something, or someone, just Behind me. Their skeans fumbled back into the clasps of then' cloaks, and they surged back a pace or two.

Then they broke ranks, turned and ran. They ran - blundering into stools as they went, leaving a havoc of upset benches and broken crockery in their wake. I let my breath go, turned, and saw the girl.

She was slight, with waving hair like spun black glass, circled with a tracery of stars. A black glass belt imprisoned her waist, like clasped hands, and her robe, stark white, bore an ugly sprawl of embroidery across the breasts - the hideous Toad-god, Nebran. Her face was all human, all woman, but the crimson eyes held a hint of alien mischief.

Then she stepped backward, and with one swift movement she was outside in the dark street. A smudge of incense from the street - shrine blurred the air; there was a little stirring, like the rising of heat waves in the salt desert at noon. Then the shrine of Nebran was empty, and nowhere hi the street was there a sign of the girl; she simply was not there.

I turned toward the spaceport, slowly, walking through a dragging reluctance, trying to file the away in memory as just another riddle of Wolf that I'd never solve.

I'd never solve another riddle on Wolf. I'd never see it again. When the starship lifted at dawn, I'd be on it, outbound from Phi Coronis - the red sun of Wolf.

I strode toward the Terran H.Q.

No matter what the color of the sun, once you step inside an H.Q. building, you are on Terra. The Traffic Division was efficiency made insolent, in glass and chrome and polished steel. I squinted, readjusting my eyes to the cold yellowness of the light, and watched myself stride forward in a dozen mirrors; a tall man with a scarred face, bleached by years spent under a red sun. Even after six years, my neat civilian clothes didn't fit quite right, and, with unconscious habit, I still walked with the lean stoop of the Dry-towners I had impersonated. The clerk, a rabbity little man, raised his head in civil inquiry.

"My name's Cargill," I told him. "Have you a pass for me?"

He stared. A free pass aboard a starship is rare except for professional spacemen, which I obviously wasn't. "Let me check my records," he hedged, and punched scanning buttons on the mirror top of the desk. "Brill, Cameron - ah, yes, Cargill - are you Race Cargill of the Secret Service, sir? The Race Cargill? Why, I thought - I mean - everybody took it for granted that you

were - "

"You thought I'd been killed a long time ago because my name never turned up in the news? Yes, I'm Race Cargill. I've been working upstairs on Floor 38 for six years, holding down a desk any clerk could handle."

He gawped. "You, the man who went to Charm in disguise and routed out The Liess? And you've been working upstairs all these years? It's - hard to believe, sir!"

My mouth twitched. It had been hard for me to believe while I was doing it. "The pass?"

"Right away, sir." There was respect in his voice now, despite those six years. Six years of slow death since Rakhal Sensar had left me a marked man, my scarred face making me a target for all my old enemies, and ruining my career as a Secret Service man.

Rakhal Sensar - my fists knotted with the old, impotent hate. And yet, it had been Rakhal Sensar who had first led me into the secret byways of Wolf, teaching me a dozen alien languages, coaching me in the walk and step of a Dry-towner, perfecting a disguise which had become deep second nature to me. Rakhal was a Dry-towner from Shainsa, and he had worked in the Terran Secret Service, my partner since we were boys. Even now I was not sure why he had erupted, one day, into the violence that ended our friendship. Then he had simply disappeared, leaving me a marked man, my usefulness to the Secret Service ended ... a bitter man tied to a desk . . . and a lonely man - Juli had gone with him.

With a small whirring noise, a chip of plastic emerged from a slot on the desk. I pocketed the pass, and thanked the clerk.

I went down the skyscraper step, and across the vast expanse of the spaceport, avoiding or ignoring the last - minute bustle of cargo loading, process crews, curious spectators. The starship loomed over me, huge and hateful.

A steward took me to a cabin, then strapped me into the bunk, tugging at the acceleration belts until my whole body ached. A long needle went into my arm - the narcotic that would keep me safely drowsy during takeoff. Doors clanged, men moved and talked in the corridors with a vague excitement. All I knew about Theta Centaurus, my destination, was that it had a red sun, and the Legate on Megaera could use a trained Secret Service man. And not pin him down at a desk. My mind wandered and it was a pair of crimson eyes, and hair like spun black glass, that tumbled down with me, down to the bottomless pit of sleep. \ .

. . . someone was shaking me.

"Ah, come on, Cargill. Wake up, fella."

My eyes throbbed, and when I got them open I saw two men in the black leather of spaceforce guards, mingled with some vague memory of a dream. We were still inside gravity. I came all the way awake with a rush, swinging my legs out of the bunk, flinging aside the belts somebody

had unfastened.

"What the devil - 4s something wrong with my pass?"

He shook his head. "Magnusson's orders. Ask him about it. Can you walk?"

I could, although my feet were a little shaky on the ladders.

I knew it made no sense to ask what was going on. They wouldn't know. I asked anyway. "Are they holding the ship for me?"

"Not that one," he answered.

My head was clearing fast, and the walk speeded up the process. As the elevator swooped up to Floor 38, my anger mounted. Magnusson had been sympathetic when I resigned; he'd arranged the transfer and the pass himself. What right did he have to grab me off an outbound starship at the last minute? I barged into his office without knocking.

"What's this all about, chief?"

Magnusson was at his desk, a big bull of a man who always looked as if he'd slept in his rumpled uniform. He said, not looking up, "Sorry, Cargill, but there was just time to get you off the ship - no time to explain."

There was somebody hi the chair in front of his desk; a woman, sitting very straight, her back to me. But when she heard my voice, she twisted around, and I stared, rubbing my eyes. Then she cried out, "Race, Race! Don't you know me?"

I took one dazed step forward. Then she had flown across the space between us, her thin arms tangling around my neck, and I caught her up.

"Juli!"

"Oh, Race, I thought I'd die when Mac told me you were leaving tonight, it was the only thing that kept me going, the thought of seeing you," she sobbed and laughed at once. I held my sister at arm's length, looking down at her. I saw the six years that divided us, all of them, printed plain on her face. Juli had been a pretty child; six years had fined her features into beauty, but there was tension in the set of her shoulders, and the gray eyes had looked into horrors.

I said, "What's wrong, Juli? Where's Rakhal?"

I felt her shiver, a deep thing that I could feel right up through my own arms.

"I don't know. He's gone. And - oh, Race, he's taken Rindy with him!"

"Who's Rindy?"

She didn't move.

"My daughter, Race. Our little girl."

Magnusson's voice sounded low and harsh. "Well, Cargill? Should I have let you go?"

"Don't be a damned fool!"

"Juli, tell Race what you told me - just so he'll know you didn't come for yourself."

I knew that, already. Juli was proud, and she had always been able to live with her own mistakes. This wouldn't be any simple complaint of an abused wife.

She said, "You made your big mistake, Mac, when you turned Rakhal out of the Service. He was one of the best men you had."

"Matter of policy. I never knew how his mind worked. Do you, Juli? Even now? That final episode - Juli, have you taken a good look at your brother's face?"

Juli raised her eyes, and I saw her wince. I knew just how she felt; for almost three years I'd kept my mirror covered. Then she said, almost inaudibly, "Rakhafs face is - is just as bad."

"That's some satisfaction," I said.

Mac looked baffled. "Even now I don't know what it was all about."

"And you never will," I said for the dozenth time. "Nobody could understand it, unless he'd lived in the Dry Towns. Let's not talk about that. You talk, Juli. What brought you here? And what about the kid?"

"At first Rakhal worked as a trader in Shainsa," Juli began. I wasn't surprised. The Dry Towns were the core of Terran trade on Wolf. "Rakhal didn't like what the Empire was doing. But he tried to keep out of it. There were times - they'd come to him and ask for information, information he could have given them, but he never told anything - "

Mac grunted, "Yeah, he's an angel. Go ahead."

Juli didn't, not immediately; instead, she asked, "Is it true what he told me - that the Empire has a standing offer of a reward for a working model of a matter - transmitter?"

"That offer's been standing for five hundred years, Terran reckoning. Don't tell me he was going to invent one!"

"I don't think so, no. But he heard rumors - he knew about one. He said he was going to try to find it - for money and Shainsa. He started coming in at odd times - wouldn't talk to me about it.

He was queer about Rindy. Funny thing. Crazy. He'd brought her some kind of nonhuman toy from one of the inland towns, Charm, I think. It was a weird thing, scared me. He'd talk to her about it and Rindy would gabble all kinds of nonsense about little men and birds and a toymaker - it changed him, it …"

Juli swallowed hard, twisting her thin fingers in her lap. "A weird thing - I was afraid of it, and we had a terrible fight. He threw it out and Rindy woke up and shrieked, she screamed for hours and hours. Then she dug it up out of a trash pile, she broke all her fingernails but she kept on digging for it, we never knew where or why, and Rakhal was like a crazy man - " abruptly Juli checked herself, and visibly caught at vanishing self - control.

Magnusson broke in, very gently. "Juli, tell Race about the riots in Charin."

"In Charin - oh. I think he led the rioting; he came back with a knife cut hi his thigh. I asked him if he was mixed up in the anti - Terran movements, and when he wouldn't answer - that was when I threatened to leave him, and he said if I came there - I'd never see Rindy again. The next day he was gone - "

Suddenly the hysteria Juli had been forcing back broke free and she rocked back and forth in her chair, torn and shaken with great strangling sobs. "He - took - Rindy! Oh, Race, he's crazy, crazy, I think he hates Rindy, he took - he smashed her toys, Race, he took every toy she had and broke them one by one, smashed them into powder, every toy she had - "

"Juli. Juli, please - " Magnusson pleaded. I looked at him, shaken. "If we're dealing with a maniac - "

"Mac, let me handle this. Juli. Shall / find Rakhal for you?"

A hope was born in her ravaged face, and died there, while I looked. "He'd have you killed. Or kill you."

"He'd try, you mean," I amended. I stooped and lifted Juli, not gently, my hands gripping at her shoulders in a sort of rage.

"And I won't kill him - do you hear? He may wish I had, when I get through with him - hear me, Mi? I'll beat the living daylights out of him, but I'll settle it with him like an Earthman."

Magnusson stepped toward me and pried my crushing hands off her shoulders. He said, "Okay, Cargill. So we're all crazy. I'll be crazy too - try it your way."

A month later, I found myself near the end of a long trail.

I hadn't seen an Earthman or a Dry - towner in five days. Charm was mostly a chak town; not many humans lived there, and it was the core and center of the resistance movement. I'd found that out before I'd been there an hour.

I crouched along the shadow of a wall, looking toward the gypsy glare of fires, hot and reeking at the far end of the Street of the Six Shepherds. My skin itched from the dirty shirt cloak I hadn't changed in days - shabbiness is wise hi nonhuman parts, and Dry-towners from the salt lands think too highly of water to spend much of it in washing, anyway.

It had been a long and difficult trail. But I'd been lucky. And if my luck held, Rakhal would be somewhere in the crowd around those fires.

A dirty, dust - laden wind was blowing up along the street, heavy with the reek of incense from a street - shrine. I took a few steps toward the firelight, then stopped, hearing running feet.

Somewhere, a girl screamed.

Seconds later, I saw her; a child, thin and barefoot, a tangle of dark hair flying loose as she darted and twisted to elude the lumbering fellow at her heels. His outstretched paw jerked cruelly at one slim wrist. The girl sobbed and wrenched herself free and threw herself straight on me, wrapping herself around my neck with the violence of a storm wind. Her hair got in my mouth, and her small hands gripped at my back like a cat's flexed claws. "Oh, help me," she sobbed, "don't let him, don't - " And even in that broken cry, I took it in; the brat did not speak the jargon of the slum, but the pure, archaic Shainsa dialect.

What I did then was just as automatic as if it had been Juli; I pulled the kid's fists loose, shoved her behind me, and scowled at the pig - eyed fellow who lurched toward us. "Make yourself

scarce," I advised.

The man reeled; I smelled sour wine and the rank - ness of his rags as he thrust one grimy paw at the girl. I thrust myself between them and put my hand on the skean quickly.

"Earthman!" The man spit out the word like filth.

"Earthman!" Someone took up the howl; there was a stir, a rustle, all along the street that had seemed empty, and from nowhere, it seemed, the space in front of me was crowded with shadowy forms, human and - otherwise.

"Grab him, Spilkar! Run him outa' Charin!"

"Earthman!"

I felt the muscles across my belly knotting into a hard band of ice. I didn't believe I'd given myself away as an Earthman - the bully was using the old

Wolf tactic of stirring up a riot in a hurry - but just the same I looked quickly round, hunting a path of escape. "Put your skean in his guts, Spilkar!" "Hai - ai! Earth man! Hai - ai!" It was that last sound that made me panic, the shrill yelping Hai - ai of the Ya - men. Through the sultry glare of the fires, I could see the plumed and taloned figures, leaping and rustling; the crowd melted open. "Hai - ai! Hai - ai!"

I whirled, snatching the girl up, and high - tailed it back the way I'd come, only faster. I heard the yelping shrieks of the Ya - men behind me, and the rustle of their stiff plumes; I dived headlong around the corner, ducked into an alley, and set the girl on her feet. "Run, kid!"

"No, no! This way!" she urged in a hasty whisper, and her small fingers closed like a steel trap around my wrist; she jerked hard, and I found myself plunging forward into the shelter of a street - shrine.

"Here - " she panted, "stand in - close to me, on the stone - " I drew back, startled.

"Oh, don't stop to argue," she whimpered. "Come here! Quick!"

"Hai - ai! Earthman! There he is - " The girl's arms flung round me again; I felt her slight, hard body pressing on mine, and she literally hauled me toward the center of the shrine.

The world tilted. The street disappeared in a cone of spinning lights, stars plummeted crazily, and I plunged down - locked in the girl's arms - spun - dropped head - over - heels through reeling lights and shadows that wheeled around us. The yelping of the Ya - men whispered away in unimaginable distances, and for a second I felt the swift unmerciful blackout of a powerdive, with blood breaking from my nostrils and filling my mouth. . . .

Light flared in my eyes. I was standing square on my feet in a little street - shrine - but the street

was gone. Coils of incense still smudged the air, the God squatted, toadlike, in his recess; the girl was still hanging limp, locked between my clenched arms. As the floor straightened under my feet, I staggered forward, thrown off balance by the sudden return of the girl's weight, and grabbed, blindly, for support.

"Give her to me," said a voice at my ear, and the girl's light sagging body was lifted from my arms. A strong hand grasped my elbow; I found a chair beneath my knees, and sank gratefully into it.

"The transmission isn't smooth between such distant terminals," the voice remarked, "I see that Miellyn has fainted again. A weakling, the girl, but useful."

I spat blood, trying to get the room in focus. For I was inside a room; windowless, but with a transparent skylight, through which pink daylight streamed m thin long splinters. Daylight - and it had been midnight hi Charin! I'd come halfway around the planet in a few seconds!

From somewhere, the room was filled with a sound of hammering; tiny, bell - like hammering, a fairy's anvil. I looked up and saw a man - a man? - watching me.

On Wolf you see all kinds of human, nonhuman and half - human Me. I consider myself an expert on all three. But I had never seen anyone who so closely resembled the ordinary human and so obviously wasn't. He, or it, was tall and lean, humanoid, but oddly muscled, a vague suggestion of something less than human in the lean hunch of his body. Manlike, he wore tight -

fitting trunks, and a shirt of green fur that revealed bulging biceps where they shouldn't be, and angular planes where there should have been swelling muscles. The shoulders were high and hunched, the neck unpleasantly sinuous, and the face, only a little narrower than human, was handsomely arrogant, with a kind of wary, alert mischief that was the least human thing about him.

He bent, tilted the girl's inert body on to a divan of some sort, and turned his back on her, lifting his hand in an impatient gesture.

All the little tinkling hammers stopped as if their switch had been turned out.

"Now," said the nonhuman, "we can talk."

Like the waif, he spoke the archaic Shainsa, with its lilting, sing - song rise and fall. I asked in the same language, "What happened? Who are you? And where am I?"

The nonhuman crossed his hands. "Do not blame Miellyn. She acted under orders. It was imperative to bring you here, and we had reason to believe you might ignore an ordinary summons. You were clever at evading our surveillance - for a while. But there would not have been two Dry-towners in Charin tonight. You are Rakhal Sensar?"

Rakhal Sensar!

Shaken, I pulled a rag from my pocket and wiped the blood from my mouth. As far as I knew, there was no resemblance between Rakhal and myself - but it occurred to me, for the first time, that any casual description would fit either of us. Humans, tall and lean and without distinctive coloring, with the Dry-towner's walk and speech, and the same scars across face and mouth - and I'd been hanging around in Rakhal's old haunts. The mistake was natural; and natural or not, I wasn't going to deny it.

"We knew," the nonhuman continued, that if you remained where you were, the Earthman who has been trailing you - Cargill - would have made his arrest. We knew about your quarrel with Cargill - among other things - but we did not consider it necessary that you should fall into his hands."

I was puzzled "I still don't understand. Exactly where am I?"

"This is the Master - shrine of Nebran." Nebran! Knowing what Rakhal would have done, I hastily made the quick good - luck gesture, gabbling a few archaic words.

Like every Earthman on Wolf, I'd seen blanked impassive faces at mention of the Toad - god. Rumor made his spies omniscient, his priesthood virtually omnipotent, his powers formidable. I had believed about a tenth of what I heard, but even that was considerable. Now I was in his shrine, and the device which had brought me here, without a doubt, was a working model of a matter - transmitter.

A matter - transmitter - a working model - Rakhal was after it.

"And who," I asked slowly, "are you, Lord?"

The green - clad creature hunched his shoulders in a ceremonious bow. "My name is Evarin. Humble servant of Nebran and yourself, honorable sir," he added, but there was no humility hi his manner. "I am called the Toymaker."

Evarin. That was another name given weight by rumor; a breath of gossip in a thieves market, a scrawled name on a torn scrap of paper - a blank folder in Terran Intelligence. A Toymaker . . .

The girl on the divan sat up, passing slim hands over her disheveled hair. "My poor feet," she mourned, "they are black and blue with the cobbles, and my hair is filled with sand and tangles! Toymaker, I will do no more of your errands! What way was this to send me to entice a man?"

She stamped one small bare foot, and I saw that she was not nearly as young as she had looked in the street; although immature by Terran standards, she had a fair figure for a Dry - town girl. Her rags fell around her slim legs in graceful folds, her hair was spun black glass, and I suddenly saw what the confusion in the filthy street had kept me from seeing before.

It was the girl of the spaceport cafe - the girl with the Toad - god embroidered on the breast of her robes, who had sent the Dry-towners to running madly, insane with terror.

I saw that Evarin was watching me, and turned idly away. Evarin said, with a kind of rueful impatience, "You know you enjoyed yourself, Miellyn. Run along and make yourself beautiful again."

She danced out of the room.

The Toymaker motioned to me. "This way," he directed, and led me through a different door. The offstage hammering I had heard, tiny bell - tones like a fairy xylophone, began again as the door opened, and we passed into a workroom which made me remember nursery tales from a half - forgotten childhood on Terra. For the workers were tiny, gnarled - trolls! They were chaks - chaks from the Polar mountains, furred and half - human, with witchlike faces, but transformed, dwarfed. Tiny hammers pattered on miniature anvils, in a tinkling, jingling chorus of musical clinks and taps. Beady eyes focused, like lenses, over winking jewels and gimcracks. Busy elves. Makers of -

Toys!

Evarin jerked his hunched shoulders with an imperative gesture; I recalled myself, following him through the fairy workroom, casting lingering glances at the worktables. A withered leprechaun set eyes into the head of a minikin hound; delicate fingers worked precious metals into invisible filigree for the collarpiece of a dainty dancing doll with living emerald eyes; metallic feathers were thrust in clockwork precision into the wings of a skeleton bird no larger than a fingernail. The nose of the hound wobbled sensitively, the bird's wings quivered, the eyes

of the little dancer swiveled to follow me as I passed.

Toys?

"Come along." Evarin rapped, and a door slid shut behind us. The clinks and taps grew faint, fainter. But never ceased.

"Now you know, Rakhal, why I am called Toymaker. Is it not strange - the Master priest of Nebran a maker of Toys, the shrine of the Toad - god a workshop for children's playthings?" Evarin didn't wait for an answer. From a sliding cabinet, he took out a doll.

She was, perhaps, the length of my longest finger, molded to the precise proportions of woman, and costumed in the bizarre fashion of the Shainsa dancers. Evarin touched no button or key visible to me, but when he set the figurine on its feet, it executed a whirling, arm - tossing dance, in a familiar and tricky tempo.

"I am, perhaps, in a sense, benevolent," Evarin murmured. He snapped his fingers and the doll sank to her knees and posed there, silent. "Moreover, I have the means and - let us say - the ability to indulge my small fancies. The small daughter of the President of the Federation of Trade Cities was sent such a doll recently. What a pity that Paolo Arimengo was so suddenly impeached and banished!" The Toymaker clucked his teeth commiseratingly, "Perhaps a little companion - such as this - may comfort little Carmela for her adjustment to her new - position."

He replaced the dancer and pulled down something like a whirligig. "This might interest you," he mused, and set it spinning. I stared, entranced, at the wheeling pattern of lights and shadows that flowed and disappeared, melting in and out of visible patterns . . . Suddenly I realized what the thing was doing. I wrested my eyes away with an effort. Had I blanked out?

Evarin arrested the compelling motion with one finger. "Several of these harmless toys are available to the children of important men," he said absently, "an export of value for our impoverished and exploited world. Unfortunately, an incidence of nervous breakdowns is - ah interfering somewhat with their sale. The children, of course, are unaffected, and - ah - love them." Evarin set the hypnotic wheel moving again for an instant, glanced sidewise at me, and set it carefully back.

"Now - " Evarin's voice, hard with the silkiness of a tiger - snarl, clawed across sudden silence. "We'll talk business!"

He had something concealed in one hand. "You are probably wondering how we recognized and found you?" A panel cleared in die wall, and became translucent; confused flickers moved on the surface, then dropped into focus and I realized that the panel was an ordinary television screen and that I was looking down into the well - known interior of the Cafe of Three Rainbows, in the small Terran Colony at Charin. The focus gradually sharpened down on the long, Earth - type bar, where a tall man in spaceman's leathers was talking with a pale - haired Terran girl.

Evan said at my ear, "By now, Race Cargill has decided that you fell into his trap and the hands

of the Ya - men."

It seemed so unbearably funny that my shoulders twitched. Since I landed in Charin, I'd gone to great pains to avoid the Terran colony. And Rakhal, somehow, discovering this, had conveniently filled my empty place. By posing as me.

Evarin rasped, "Cargill meant to leave the planet - and something stopped him. What? You could be of great use to us, Rakhal - but not with this blood - feud unsettled!"

That needed no elucidation. No Wolfan in his senses will make any bargain with a Dry-towner carrying an unresolved blood-feud. By law and custom, formal blood - feud takes precedence over any other business, public or private, and is sufficient and legal excuse for broken promises, neglected duties - even theft or murder.

"We want this feud settled, once and for all," Evarin's voice was low, and unhurried, "and we're not above weighting the scales. This man Cargill can, and has, posed as a Dry - towner. We don't like Earthmen who can spy on us that way. In settling your blood - feud, you would do us a service, and we would be grateful. Look."

He opened his closed hand, displaying something small, curled, inert.

"Every living being emits a characteristic pattern of electrical nerve impulses. As you may have guessed, we have methods of recording these individual patterns, and we have had you and

Cargill under observation for a long time. We've had plenty of opportunity to key this - Toy - to Cargill's personal pattern." On his palm the curled, inert thing stirred and spread wings; a fledgling bird lay there, small soft body throbbing slightly; half - hidden in a ruff of metallic feathers, I glimpsed a grimly elongated beak. The tiny pinions were feathered with delicate down less than a quarter of an inch long; they beat, with rough insistence, against the Toymaker's prisoning fingers.

"This is not dangerous - to you. Press this point" - he showed me - "and if Race Cargill is within a certain distance - it is up to you to be within that distance - it will find Cargill and kill him. Unerringly, inescapably and untraceably. We will not tell you the critical distance. And we give you three days."

He checked my startled exclamation with a gesture. "It is only fair to tell you; this is a test. Within the hour, Cargill will receive a warning. We want no incompetents who must be helped too much. Nor do we want cowards! If you fail, or try to evade the test - " there was green and inhuman malice in his eyes - "we have made another bird."

He was silent, but I thought I understood the complexity of Wolf illogic. "The other bird is keyed to me?"

With slow contempt, Evarin shook his head.

"You? You are used to danger and fond of a gamble. Nothing so simple! We have given you

three days. If, within that time, the bird you carry has not killed, the other bird will fly, and it will kill. Rakhal Sensar - you have a wife. . ."

Yes, Rakhal had a wife. They could threaten his wife. . . . And his wife was my sister Juli. . .

Everything after that was anticlimax. Of course I had to drink wine with Evarin, the elaborately formal ritual without which no business agreement on Wolf is valid, and go through equally elaborate courtesies and formalities. Evarin entertained me with gory and technical descriptions of the methods by which the birds - and others of his hellish Toys - did their killing and their other tasks. Miellyn danced into the room and upset our sobriety by perching on my knee and drinking sips from my cup, and pouting prettily when I paid her less attention than she thought she merited. She even whispered something about a rendezvous in the Cafe of the Three Rainbows.

But eventually it was over, and I stepped through a door that twisted, and I spun again through a queer giddy blackness, and found myself outside a blank, windowless wall, back in Charin. I found my way to my lodging in a filthy chak hostel, and threw myself down on the verminous bed.

Believe it or not, I slept.

Later I went out into the reddening morning. I pulled Evarin's toy from my pocket, unwrapped the silk slightly, and tried to make some sense from my predicament.

The little thing lay innocent and silent in my palm. It couldn't tell me whether it had been keyed to me, the real Cargill, or to Rakhal, using my name and reputation in the Terran Colony. If I pressed the stud, it might hunt down Rakhal, and all my troubles would be over. On the other hand, if it killed me, presumably the other bird, keyed to Juli, would never fly - which would save her life, but would not get Rindy back for her. And if I delayed past Evarin's deadline, one of the birds would hunt down Juli, and give her a swift and not too painless death.

I spent the day lounging in a chak dive, juggling a dozen plans frantically in my head. Toys, innocent and sinister. Spies, messengers. Toys which killed - and horribly. Toys which could be controlled by the pliant mind of a child - and every child hates his parents now and again!

I kept coming back to the same conclusion. Juli was in danger, but she was half a world away, while Rakhal was here in Charin, calmly masquerading as me. There was a child involved, Juli's child, and I had made a promise involving that child; the first step was to get inside Charin's Terran Colony, and see how the land lay.

Charin is a city shaped like a crescent moon, encircling the small Colony of the Trade City; a miniature spaceport, a miniature skyscraper of an HQ, the clustered dwellings of the Terrans who worked there and those who lived with them and catered to their needs.

Entry from one to another - since Charin is in hostile territory, and far beyond the impress of the ordinary Terran law - is through a guarded gateway; but the gate stood wide open, and the guards

looked lazy and bored. They carried shockers, but they didn't look as if they'd ever used them. One raised an eyebrow at his companion as I shambled to the gate and requested permission to enter the Terran Zone.

They inquired my name and business. I gave a Dry - towner name I'd used when I was known from Shainsa to the Polar Mountains, and tacked one of the Secret Service passwords to the end of it. They looked at each other again, and one said, "Yeah, this is the guy," and they took me into the booth beside the gate and one of them used an intercom device. Presently they took me along into the HQ building, and into an office that said LEGATE.

Evidently I had walked straight into another trap. One of the guards asked me, straight out, "All right, now. Just what, exactly, is your business in the Terran Colony?"

"Terran business. You'll have to make a visicall to check on me. Put me straight through to Magnusson's office at Central HQ. The name's Race Cargill."

The guard made no move. He was grinning. He said to his partner. "Yeah, that's the guy, all right, the one we were told to watch out for." He put a hand on my shoulder and spun me around.

There were two of them, and spaceforce guards aren't picked for their good looks. Just the same, I gave a good account of myself, until the inner door burst open and a man stormed out.

"What's all this racket?"

One of the guards got a hammerlock on me, giving my arm a twist. "This Dry - towner bum tried to talk us into making a priority call to Magnusson - the Secret Service Chief, that is. He knew one or two of the Secret Service passwords - that's how he got through the gate. Remember, Cargill passed the word that someone might turn up trying to impersonate him?"

"I remember." The strange man's eyes were wary and cold.

I found myself seized by the guards, and frog - marched to the gate; one of the men pushed my skean back into its clasp, the other pushed me, hard, and I stumbled, and fell sprawling on the chinked street.

First round to Rakhal. He had sprung the trap on me, very neatly.

The street was narrow and crooked, winding along between double rows of untidy pebble houses. I walked for hours.

It was dusk when I realized that I was being followed.

At first it was a glance out of the corner of my eye, a head seen a little too frequently behind me for coincidence. It developed into a too - persistent footstep in an uneven rhythm; tap-tap-tap, tap- tap-tap.

I had my skean handy, but I had a hunch this wasn't anything I could settle with a skean. I ducked into a side street, and waited for my follower.

Nothing.

After a time, I went on, laughing at my imagined fears.

Then, after a time, the soft and persistent footfall thudded behind me again.

I fled down a strange street, where women sat on flower - decked balconies, their open lanterns flowing with fountains and rivulets of gold and orange fire; I raced down quiet streets where furred children crept to doors and watched me pass, with great golden eyes that shone in the dusk.

I dodged into an alley and lay there. Someone not two inches away said softly, "Are you one of us, brother?"

I muttered something surly in his dialect, and a hand seized my elbow. "This way, then."

Taptaptap. Taptaptap.

I let my arm relax in the hand that guided me. Wherever I was being taken, it might shake off my follower. I flung a fold of my shirtcloak over my face, and went along.

I stumbled over steps, then took a jolting stride downward and found myself in a dim room, jammed with dark figures, human and nonhuman. The figures swayed in the dimness, chanting in a dialect not altogether familiar to me; a monotonous wailing chant, with a single recurrent phrase: "Kamaina! Kamaina!" beginning on a high note, descending in a series of weird chromatics to the lowest tone the human ear could resolve. The sound made me draw back; even Dry-towners shunned the orgiastic rituals of Kamaina.

My eyes were adapting to the dim light and I saw that most of the crowd were Charin plainsmen and chaks; one or two wore Dry - towner shirtcloaks, and J even thought I saw an Earthman. They were all squatting around small crescent shaped tables, and all intently gazing at a flickery spot of light near the front. I saw an empty place at one table, and let myself drop there, finding the floor soft, as if cushioned. On each table, small, smudging pastilles were burning, and from these cones of ash - tipped fire came the steamy, swimmy smoke that filled the darkness with strange colors. Beside me, an immature chak girl was kneeling, her fettered hands strained tightly back at her sides, her naked breasts pierced with jeweled rings; beneath the pallid fur, cream - colored, flowing around her pointed ears, the exquisite animal face was quite mad.

There were cups and decanters on the table, and another woman tilted a stream of pale phosphorescent fluid into one cup, and proffered it to me.

I took a sip, then another; it was cold and pleasant, and not till the second swallow turned bitter on my tongue did I know what I tasted. I pretended to swallow while the woman's

phosphorescent eyes were fixed on me, then somehow contrived to spill the foul stuff down my shirt. I was wary even of the fumes, but there was nothing else I could do. It was shallavan, the reeking drug outlawed on every half - way decent planet in the Galaxy.

The scene itself looked like the worst nightmare of a drug - dreamer, ablaze with the colors of the smoking incense, the swaying crowd and their monotonous cries. Quite suddenly there was a blaze of orchid light and someone screamed in raving ecstasy, 'Wo ki na Nebran n'hai Kamaina!"

"Kamaieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!" shrilled the entranced mob.

Evarin stood in the blaze of the tights.

The Toy maker was as I had seen him last, cat - smooth, gracefully alien, shrouded in a ripple of giddy crimsons. Behind him there was a blackness. I waited until the painful blaze of the lights abated, then, straining to see past him, I got my worst shock.

A woman stood there, naked to the waist, her hands ritually fettered with little chains that stirred and clashed musically as she walked, stiff - legged, in a frozen dream. Hair like black glass combed into metallic waves banded her brow, and naked shoulders, and her eyes were crimson . . .

. . . and her eyes lived, in the dead face. They lived and they were mad with terror although the lips curved in a placid, dreaming smile.

Miellyn.

I realized that Evarin had been speaking for some time in that dialect I could barely understand. His arms were flung high, and his cloak went spilling away from them, rippling like something alive.

"Our world - an old world - "

"Kamaieeeena!" whimpered the shrill chorus.

"... humans, all humans, nothing but humans. They would make slaves of us all, slaves to the Children of the Ape . . ."

I blinked and rubbed my eyes to clear them of the incense fumes. I hoped what I saw was an optical illusion, drug - born. Something huge, something dark, was hovering over the girl. She stood placid, hands clasped on her chains, the wreathing smoke glimmering around her jewels, but her eyes writhed and implored in the still, frozen face.

Then something, I can only call it a sixth sense, warned me that there was someone outside that door. I'd been followed, probably by the Legate's orders; my follower, tracing me here, had gone away and returned, with reinforcements.

Someone struck a blow on the door, and a stentorian voice bawled. "Open up, there! In the name of the Terran Empire!"

The chanting broke off in ragged quavers. Evarin glanced around, startled and wary. Somewhere a woman screamed; the lights abruptly went out, and a stampede started in the room. I thrust my way forward, with elbows and knees and shoulders, butting through the crowd. A dusky emptiness opened, and yawned, and I got a glimpse of sunlight and open sky, and knew that Evarin had stepped into somewhere and was gone. The banging on the door sounded like a whole regiment of spaceforce. I dived toward the shimmer of little stars which marked Miellyn's tiara in the darkness, braving that black horror which hovered above her, and encountered rigid girl - flesh, cold as death.

I grabbed her, and ducked to the side. Every native building on Wolf has half - a - dozen concealed entrances and exits, and I know where to look for them. I pushed one, and found myself standing in a dark, peaceful street. One lonely moon was setting, low over the rooftops. I put Miellyn on her feet, but she moaned and leaned limply against me. I took off my shirtcloak and put it around her naked shoulders, then hoisted her in my arms. There was a chak - run cook shop down the street, a place I had once known, with an evil reputation and worse food, but it was quiet, and stayed open all night. I turned in at the door, bending under the low lintel.

The inside room was smoky and foul - smelling; I dumped Miellyn on one of the circular couches, sent the frowsy waiter for two bowls of noodles and coffee, handed him a few more coins than the food would warrant, and told him to leave us alone. He drew down the shutters

and went.

I stared at the inert girl for a few seconds, then shrugged and started to eat one bowl of the noodles; my own head was still swimming with the fumes of incense and drug, and I wanted it clear. I wasn't quite sure what I would do, but I had Evarin's right - hand girl, and I meant to use her.

The noodles were greasy, but they were hot, and I ate all of one bowl before Miellyn stirred and whimpered and put up one hand, with a little musical clashing of chains, to her hair. Finding that the folds of my shirtcloak interfered, she made a convulsive movement and stared around her with growing bewilderment and dismay.

"You! What am I - "

"There was a riot," I said briefly, "and Evarin ditched you. And you can stop thinking what you're thinking. I put my cloak on you because you were bare to the waist and it didn't look so good." I stopped to think that over, then grinned and amended, "I mean, I couldn't haul you around the street that way, it looked good enough."

To my amazement she gave a shaky giggle. "If you'll - "and held out her fettered hands. I chuckled and snapped the links. It didn't take much strength - they were symbolic ornaments, not real chains, and many Wolf women wear them all the time.

Miellyn drew up her draperies and fastened them so that she was decently covered, then tossed me back my shirtcloak. "Rakhal, when I saw you there - "

"Later." I shoved the bowl of noodles toward her.

"Eat it," I ordered, "you're still doped; the food will clear your head." I picked up one of the mugs of coffee, and emptied it at a single swallow. "What were you doing in that place?"

Without warning she flung herself across the table, throwing her arms around my neck. For a minute, startled, I let her cling, then reached up and firmly unfastened her hands. "None of that, now. I fell for it once, and it landed me in the middle of the mud pie."

Her fingers clutched at me with a feverish, tense grip. "Please, please listen to me! Have you still got the bird, the Toy? You haven't set it off, yet? Don't, don't, don't, don't, Rakhal, you don't know what Evarin is, what he's doing - " the words poured out of her in a flood, uncontrollable and desperate. "He's won so many men like you - don't let him have you too, they say you're an honest man, you worked once for Terra, the Terrans would believe you if you went to them and told them - Rakhal, take me to the Terran zone, take me there, take me there where they'll protect me from Evarin - "

At first I had leaned forward to protest, then waited and let the torrent of entreaty run on and on. At last she lay quiet, exhausted, her head fallen forward against my shoulder, her hands still clutching at me. The musky shallavan mingled with the flower - scents of her hair. At last,

heavily, I said, "Kid, you and your Toymaker have both got me all wrong. I'm not Rakhal Sensar."

"You're not - " she drew back, regarding me in dismay and disbelief. "Then who - ?"

"Race Cargill. Terran Intelligence."

She stared at me, her mouth wide like a child's.

Then she laughed. She laughed - I thought she was hysterical, and stared at her in consternation. Then, as her wide red eyes met mine, with all the mischief of Wolf illogic - I started to laugh.

"Cargill - you can take me to the Terrans where Evarin - "

"Damn!" I exploded, "I can't take you anywhere, girl, I've got to find Rakhal!" I hauled out the Toy and slapped it down on the greasy table. "I don't suppose you know which of us this is supposed to kill?"

"I know nothing about the Toys."

"You know plenty about the Toymaker," I said sourly.

"I thought so. Until last night." She burst out, in an explosion of passionate anger, "It's not a

religion! It's a front! For drugs and politics and every other filthy thing! I've heard a lot about Rakhal Sensar! Whatever you think of him, he's too decent to be mixed up in that!"

The pattern was beginning to take shape in my mind. Rakhal had been on the trail of the matter transmitter, and had fallen afoul of the Toymaker. Evarin's words, you were very clever at escaping our surveillance for a while, made sense to me now; Juli had given me the clue. He smashed Rindy's Toys. It had sounded like the act of a madman, out it made plain, good sense.

I said, "There's some distance limitation on this thing, I understand. If I lock it inside a steel box and drop it in the desert, I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody. Miellyn, I don't suppose you'd care to have a try at stealing the other one for me?"

"Why should you worry about Sensar's wife?" she flashed.

For some reason it seemed important to set her straight. "My sister," I explained. The thing to do, I suppose, is to find Rakhal first - " I stopped, remembering something. "I can find Rakhal with that scanning device in the workshops. Take me to the Master - shrine, will you? Where's the nearest street - shrine?"

"No! Oh, no, I don't dare!"

I had to argue and plead, and finally threaten her, reminding her that except for me she would have been torn to pieces or worse, by a crowd of drugged and raving fanatics, before she finally

consented to take me to a transmitter. She was shaking when she set her foot into the patterned stones. "I know what Evarin can do!" Then her red mouth twitched, in tremulous mischief. "You'll have to stand closer than that, the transmitters are meant for only one person!"

I stooped and put my arm round her. "Like this?"

"Like this," she whispered, pressing herself against me. A swirl of dizzy darkness swung around my head; the street vanished, and we stepped out into the terminal room in the Master - shrine, under a skylight darkened with the last splinters of the setting sun. Distant little hammering noises made a ringing in my ears.

Maellyn whispered, "Evarin's not here, but he might jump through at any minute!" I paid no attention.

"Exactly where on the planet are we?"

Miellyn shook her head. "No one knows that except Evarin himself. There are no doors, just the transmitters - when we want to go outside, we jump through them. The scanning device is through there - we'll have to go through the Little Ones' workroom." She opened the door of the workroom, and we walked through.

Not for years had I known that special feeling - thousands of eyes, all boring holes in the center of my back. I was sweating by the time we reached the farther door and it closed, safe and

blessedly opaque behind us. Miellyn was shivering with reaction.

"Steady," I warned. "We've still got to get out. Where's that scanner?"

She touched the panel. "I'm not sure I can focus it accurately, though. Evarin's never let me touch it."

"How does it work?"

"The principle is just the same as the matter - transmitter; that is, it lets you look through to anywhere, but without jumping. It uses a tracer mechanism, just as the Toys do," she added. "If Rakhal's electrical - impulse pattern were on file anywhere, I could - wait! 1 know how we can do it! Give me the Toy." I drew, it out; she took it quickly and unwrapped it. "Here's a good, quick way to find out which of you this bird is intended to kill!"

I looked at the fledgling thing, soft and innocent hi her palm. "Suppose it s turned on me?"

"I wasn't going to set it off." Miellyn pushed aside the feathers, revealing a tiny crystal set into the bird's skull. "The memory - crystal. If it's tuned to your nerve - patterns, you'll see yourself in the scanner, as if it were a mirror. If you see Rakhal - "

She touched the crystal against the surface of the screen. Little flickers of "snow" danced across the clearing panel; then, abruptly, a picture dropped into focus, the turned - away back of a man

in a leather jacket. The man turned, slowly, and I saw first, a familiar profile, then saw the profile become a scarred mask, more hideous than my own. His lips were moving; he was talking to someone beyond the range of the lens.

Miellyn asked, "Is that - "

"It's Rakhal, yes. Move the focus, if you can, try to get a look out of a window, or something. Charin's a big city. If we could get a look at a landmark - "

Rakhal went on talking, soundlessly, like television without sound. Abruptly Miellyn said "There!" She had brought the scanning device within range of a window; Rakhal was inside a room that looked out on a high pylon and two or three uprights that looked like a bridge. I recognized the place at once, and so did Miellyn.

"The Bridge of Summer Snows, in Charin. I can find him now. Come on, turn if off, and let's get out of here." I was turning away from the screen when Miellyn gave a smothered scream.

"Look!"

Rakhal had turned his back on our scanning device, and for the first time we could see the person he was talking to. A hunched and catlike shoulder, twisted, revealing a sinuous neck, a handsome and arrogant face -

"Evarin!" I swore. "He knows, then, that I'm not Rakhal. He's probably known all along. Come on, girl, we're getting out of here." She shoved the silk - wrapped bird into her skirt pocket and we ran through the workroom. We banged the workroom door shut behind us, and I shoved a heavy divan against it, barricading it shut.

Miellyn was already inside the recess where the Toad - god squatted. "There is a street - shrine just beyond the Bridge of Summer Snow. Hold me, hold me tight, it's a long jump - " suddenly she froze in my arms, with a convulsive shudder. "Evarin - he's jumping in! Quick!"

Space reeled around us.

We landed inside a street - shrine; I glimpsed the pylon, and the bridge, and the rising sun; then there was the giddy, internal wrench, a blast of icy air whistled around us; and we found ourselves gazing out at the Polar mountains, ringed in their eternal sunlight.

We jumped again, the wrenching sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from the girl, and dark clouds shivered around us; I looked out on an unfamiliar expanse of sand and wasteland and dust - bleared stars. Miellyn whimpered. "Evarin knows what I'm doing, he's jumping us all around the planet, he can work the controls with his mind . . . Psychokinetics ... I can do it, a little, only I've never . . . oh, hang on to me, tight, tight, I've never dared do this - "

Then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would make some tiny movement; we would fall, blind and dizzy, through the blackness, half - way through the giddy

spin, a new direction would wrench at us, and we would be thrust elsewhere - and look out on a different street. One instant we were in the Kharsa - I actually saw the door of the spaceport cafe, and smelled hot coffee - and an instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson fronds waving overhead, over the roofs of gilt temples. We froze and burned, moonlight, noon, dim twilight, in the terrible giddiness of hyperspace.

Then, suddenly, I caught a glimpse of the pylori, the bridge; luck or an oversight had landed us again for half a second in Charin. The blackness started to reel down again, but my reflexes are fast, and I made one swift, scrabbling step forward. We lurched, then sprawled, locked together, on the sharp stones of the bridge outside the street - shrine; bruised and bloody, but alive - and at our destination!

I lifted Miellyn to her feet; her eyes were dizzy with pain. Clinging together, the ground swaying madly under our feet, we fled along the Bridge of Summer Snows. At the far side, I looked up at the pylon. Judging by the angle, the place where we'd seen Rakhal couldn’t be far away. In this street there was a wine shop, a silk market, and one small private house. I walked up, and banged on the door.

Silence. I knocked again. From within there came a child's shrill question, a deeper voice hushing it, and the door opened, to reveal a scarred face that drew back into a hideous facsimile of a grin.

"I thought it might be you, Cargill," Rakhal said. "You've taken longer than I expected. Come

in."

He hadn't changed much, except for the crimson,

'y scars that drew up mouth and nostril and jawline. face was worse than mine. The mask tensed as he saw Miellyn, but he backed away to let us in, and shut the door behind us.

A little girl, in a fur smock, stood watching us. She had red hair like Juli's, and evidently she knew just who I was, for she looked at me quite calmly, without surprise. Had Juli told her about me?

"Rindy," Rakhal said quietly, "go into the other room." The little girl, still staring at me, did not move. Rakhal added, in a gentle, curiously moderate voice, "Do you still carry a skean, Race?"

I shook my head. "That's Juli's daughter. I'm not going to kill her father under her eyes." Suddenly my rage spilled over. "To hell with your damned Dry - town blood - feud and codes and your filthy Toad - god!"

Rakhal's voice was harsher now. "Rindy. I told you to get out." I took a step toward the little girl. "Don't go, Rindy. I'm going to take her to Juli, Rakhal. Rindy, don't you want to go to your mother?" I held out my arms to her.

Rakhal made a menacing gesture; Miellyn darted between us, and picked up Rindy hi her arms.

The child struggled and whimpered, but Miellyn took two quick steps and carried her bodily through an open door.

Rakhal began, slowly, to laugh.

"You're as stupid as ever, Cargill. You still don't realize - I knew Juli would come straight to you, if she was frightened enough. I thought it would lure you out of hiding - you filthy coward! Six years hiding in the Terran zone! If you'd had the guts to walk out with me when I engineered that final deal, we would have had the biggest thing on Wolf!"

"Doing Evarin's dirty work?"

"You know damn well that had nothing to do with Evarin. It was for us - and Shainsa. Evarin - I might have known he'd get to you! That girl - if you've spoiled my plans - " Abruptly he whipped out his skean and came at me. "Son of the ape! I might have known better than to depend on you! I'll finish your meddling, this time!"

I felt the skean drive home, slicing flesh and ribs, and staggered back, grunting with pain. I grappled with him, forcing back his hand. My side burned furiously, and I wanted to kill Rakhal and I couldn't, and at the same time I was raging because I didn't want to fight the crazy fool, I wasn't even mad at him -

Miellyn flung the door open, shrieking. There was a flutter of silk, and then the Toy was darting,

a small whirring droning horror, straight at Rakhal's eyes. There was no time even to warn him. I bent and butted him in the stomach; he grunted, doubled, and fell, out of the path of the diving Toy. It whirred in frustration, hovered, dived again. Rakhal writhed in agony, drawing up his knees, clawing inside his shirt. "You damned - I didn't want to use this - " He opened his closed fist, and suddenly there was another Toy in the room. An identical fledgling bird, and this one was diving at me - and in a split second I understood. Evarin had made the same arrangement with Rakhal, as with me.

From the door came a child's wild shriek.

"Daddy!"

Abruptly the birds collapsed in mid - air and went limp. They fell, inanimate, to the floor, and lay there, quivering. Rindy dashed across the room, her small skirts flying, and grabbed one of the vicious things in each hand. She stood there, tears pouring down her little face. Dark veins stood out like narrow cords on her temples. "Break them, quick. I can't hang on to them any longer - " Rakhal grabbed one of the Toys from a little fist, and smashed it under his heel. It shrilled and died. The other screamed like a living bird as his foot scrunched on the tiny feathers. He drew an agonized breath, his hands clutching his belly where I'd butted him.

"That blow was foul, Cargill, but I guess I know why you did it. You - " he stopped and said shamefacedly," You saved my life. You know what that means. Did you know you were doing it?" I nodded. It meant the end of the blood - feud. However we had wronged one another, this

ended it, finally and forever.

He said, "Better get that skean out of your ribs, you damn' fool. Here - " with a quick jerk he drew it out. "Not more than half an inch. Your rib must have turned it. Just a flesh wound. Rindy - " She sobbed noisily, hiding her head on his shoulder. "The other Toys . . . hurt you . . . when I was mad at you, Daddy, only ..." she dug her fists in her red eyes. "I wasn't that mad at you, I wasn't that mad at anybody . . . not even . . . him . . ."

He said over her head, "The Toys activate a child's subconscious resentments against his parents. That also means a child can control them - for a few seconds; no adult can." "Juli told me you threatened Rindy - "

He chuckled. "What else could I have done that would have scared Juli enough to send her to you? Juli's proud, nearly as proud as you, you stiff-necked son of the ape! She had to be desperate."

He tossed it all aside with a shrug. "You've got Miellyn to take you through the transmitters. Go back to the Master shrine, and tell Evarin I'm dead. In the Trade City, they think I'm Cargill; I can go in and out as I choose. I'll 'vise Magnusson, and have him send soldiers to guard the street - shrines; Evarin may try to escape through one of them."

"Terra hasn't enough guards on all Wolf to cover the street - shrines hi Charm alone," I objected, "and I can't go back with Miellyn." I explained why, and Rakhal pursed his lips and whistled

when I described the fight in the transmitters.

"You have all the luck! I've never been near enough to be sure how the transmitters work, and I'll bet you didn't begin to understand! Well, we'll do it the hard way. We'll face Evarin down in his own shrine - if Rindy's with us, we needn't worry."

I was shocked at his casual suggestion. "You'd take a child into that?"

"What else is there to do?" Rakhal inquired logically, "Rindy can control the Toys, and neither you nor I could do that, if Evarin should decide to throw his whole arsenal at us!" He called Rindy to him again, and spoke softly. She looked from her father to me, and back again to her father, then smiled, and stretched out her small hand to me.

While we hunted for another street - shrine - Miellyn had some esoteric reason for not wanting to use the same one we'd landed in - I asked Rakhal point - blank, "Are you working for Terra? Or for the resistance movement? Or for the Dry - towns?"

He shook his head. "I'm working for myself. I just want one thing, Race. I want the Dry - towns, and the rest of Wolf, to have a voice in their own government. Any planet which makes a substantial contribution to Galactic science, by the laws of the Terran Empire, gets the status of an independent commonwealth. If a Dry - towner discovers anything as valuable as a matter transmitter, Wolf gets dominion status. And incidentally, I get a nice fat bonus, and an official position."

Before I could answer, Miellyn touched my arm. "This is the shrine."

Rakhal picked up Rindy, and the three of us crowded close together. The street swayed and vanished, and I felt the familiar dip and swirl of blackness. Rindy screamed with terror and pain, then the world straightened out again. Rindy was crying, dabbing smeary fists at her face. "Daddy, my nose is bleeding - "

Miellyn bent and wiped the blood from the snubby nose. Rakhal set his daughter on her feet.

"The chak workroom, Race. Smash everything you see. Rindy, if anything comes at us, stop it stop it, quick!"

Her wide round eyes blinked, and she nodded, a solemn little nod. We flung open the door of the elves' workshop with a shout. The ringing of the fairy anvils shattered into a thousand dissonances as I kicked over a workbench and half - finished Toys smashed in confusion to the floor.

The chaks scattered like rabbits before our advance. I smashed half - finished Toys, tools, filigree and jewels, stamping everything out with my heavy boots. A tiny doll, proportioned like a woman, dashed at me, shrilling in a high supersonic shriek; I put my foot on her and ground the life out of her. She screamed like a living woman as she came apart. Her blue eyes rolled from her head and lay on the floor watching me, still alive; I crushed the blue jewels under my foot.

I was drunk with crushing and shattering and ruining when I heard Miellyn shriek in warning, and turned to see Evarin standing in the doorway. He raised both hands in a sardonic gesture, then turned, and with a queer, loping, inhuman run, headed for the transmitter.

"Rindy," Rakhal panted, "can you block the transmitter?"

Instead Rindy screamed. "We've got to get out! The house is falling down! It's going to fall on us - look - look at the roof!"

Transfixed by her horror, I looked up, to see a wide rift opening in the ceiling. The skylight shattered, broke, and daylight poured through the cracking, translucent walls. Rakhal snatched up Rindy, protecting her from the falling debris with his head and shoulders; I grabbed Miellyn around the waist, and we ran for the rift that was widening in the cracking wall. We shoved through, just before the roof caved in, the walls collapsed and we found ourselves standing on a bare, grassy hillside, looking down in shock and horror, as, below us, section after section of what was, apparently, bare hill and rock caved in and collapsed into dusty rubble.

Miellyn cried hoarsely, "Run! Run - hurry!"

I didn't understand, but I ran.

Then the shock of a great explosion rocked the earth, hurling me to the ground, Miellyn falling

in a heap on top of me. Rakhal stumbled, went down to his knees. When I could see again, I looked at the hillside.

There was nothing left of Evarin's hideaway, or of the Master - shrine of Nebran, but a great, gaping hole, still oozing smoke and black dust.

"Destroyed! All destroyed!" Rakhal raged. "The workroom, all the science of the Toys, the secret of the transmitters - " He beat his fists furiously. "Our one chance to learn - "

"You're lucky you got out alive," said Miellyn quietly. "Where are We?"

I looked down, and stared in amazement. Spread out below us lay the Kharsa, and straight ahead, the white skyscraper of the Terra HQ and the big spaceport. I pointed.

"Down there. Rakhal, you can make your peace with the Terrans, and with Juli. And you, Miellyn - "

Her smile was shaky. "I can't go into the Terran Zone like this. Have you a comb? Rakhal, lend me your shirtcloak, my robes are torn, and - "

"Stupid female, worrying about a thing like that at a time like this!" Rakhal's look was like murder. I put my comb into her hand, then, abruptly saw something in the symbols embroidered across her breasts.

I reached out, and ripped the cloth away.

"Cargill!" she protested angrily, turning crimson and covering her bared breasts with both hands. "Is this the place - and before a child, too - "

1 hardly heard her. "Look," I exclaimed, snatching at Rakhal's sleeve, "look at the symbols embroidered into the God! You can read the old nonhuman glyphs, I've seen you do it! I'll bet the formula is written out there for everyone to read! Look here, Rakhal! I can't read it, but I'll bet it's the equations for the matter - transmitter."

Rakhal bent his head over the torn robe. "I believe you have it! he exclaimed, shaken and breathless. "It may take years to translate the glyph, but I can do it! I'll do it, or die trying!" His scarred face looked almost handsome, and I grinned at him.

"If Juli leaves enough of you, once she finds out what you did to her. Look, Rindy's asleep. Poor little kid, we'd better get her down to her mother."

We walked abreast, and Rakhal said softly, "Like old times, Race."

It wasn't like old times, and I knew he would see it, too, once his exultation sobered. I had outgrown my love for intrigue, and I had a feeling this was Rakhal's last adventure, too. It would take him, as he said, years to work out the equations for the transmitter. And I had a feeling that

my own solid, ordinary desk was going to look pretty good to me in the morning.

But I knew now, that I'd never leave Wolf. It was my own beloved sun that was rising. My sister was waiting down below, and I'd given her back her child. My friend was walking at my side. What more could a man want?

I looked at Miellyn, and smiled.

(1957)

The Wind People(1959)

It had been a long layover for the Starholm's crew, hunting heavy elements for fuel - eight months, on an idyllic green paradise of a planet; a soft, windy, whispering world, inhabited only by trees and winds. But in the end it presented its own unique problem.

Specifically, it presented Captain Merrihew with the problem of Robin, male, father unknown, who had been born the day before, and a month prematurely, to Dr. Helen Murray.

Merrihew found her lying abed in the laboratory shelter, pale and calm, with the child beside her.

The little shelter, constructed roughly of green planks, looked out on the clearing which the Starholm had used as a base of operations during the layover; a beautiful place at the bottom of a wide valley, in the curve of a broad, deep - flowing river. The crew, tired of being shipbound, had built half a dozen such huts and shacks in these eight months.

Merrihew glared down at Helen. He snorted, "This is a fine situation. You, of all the people in the whole damned crew - the ship's doctor! It's - it's - " Inarticulate with rage, he fell back on a ridiculously inadequate phrase. "It's - criminal carelessness!"

"I know." Helen Murray, too young and far too lovely for a ship's officer on a ten - year cruise, still looked weak and white, and her voice was a gentle shadow of its crisp self. "I'm afraid four years in space made me careless."

Merrihew, brooded, looking down at her. Something about ship - gravity conditions, while not affecting potency, made conception impossible; no child had ever been conceived in space and none ever would. On planet layovers, the effect wore off very slowly; only after three months aground had Dr. Murray started routine administration of anticeptin to the twenty - two women of the crew, herself included. At that time she had been still unaware that she herself was already carrying a child.

Outside, the leafy forest whispered and rustled, and Merrihew knew Helen had forgotten his existence again. The day - old child was tucked up in one of her rolled coveralls at her side. To

Merrihew, he looked like a skinned monkey, but Helen's eyes smoldered as her hands moved gently over the tiny round head.

He stood and listened to the winds and said at random, "These shacks will fall to pieces in another month. It doesn't matter, we'll have taken off by then."

Dr. Chao Lin came into the shack, an angular woman of thirty - five. She said, "Company, Helen? Well, it's about time. Here, let me take Robin."

Helen said in weak protest, "You're spoiling me, Lin."

"It will do you good," Chao Lin returned. Merrihew, in a sudden surge of fury and frustration, exploded. "Damn it, Lin, you're making it all worse. He'll die when we go into overdrive, you know, as well as I do!"

Helen sat up, clutching Robin protectively. "Are you proposing to drown him like a kitten?"

"Helen, I'm not proposing anything. I'm stating a fact."

"But it's not a fact. He won't die in overdrive because he won't be aboard when we go into overdrive!"

Merrihew looked at Lin helplessly, but his face softened. "Shall we - put him to sleep and bury

him here?"

The woman's face turned white. "No!" she cried in passionate protest, and Lin bent to disengage her frantic grip.

"Helen, you'll hurt him. Put him down. There."

Merrihew looked down at her, troubled, and said, "We can't just abandon him to die slowly, Helen - "

"Who says I'm going to abandon him?" Merrihew asked slowly, "Are you planning to desert?" He added, after a minute, "There's a chance he'll survive. After all, his very birth was against all medical precedent. Maybe - "

"Captain" - Helen's voice sounded desperate - "even drugged, no child under ten has ever endured the shift into hyperspace drive. A newborn would die in seconds." She clasped Robin to her again and said, "It's the only way - you have Lin for a doctor, Reynolds can handle my collateral duties. This planet is uninhabited, the climate is mild, and we couldn't possibly starve." Her face, so gentle, was suddenly like rock. "Enter my death in the log, if you want to."

Merrihew looked from Helen to Lin, and said, "Helen, you're insane!"

She said, "Even if I'm sane now, I wouldn't be long if I had to abandon Robin." The wild note

had died out of her voice, and she spoke rationally, but inflexibly. "Captain Merrihew, to get me aboard the Starholm, you will have to have me drugged or taken by force; I promise you I won't go any other way. And if you do that - and if Robin is left behind, or dies in overdrive, just so you will have my services as a doctor - then I solemnly swear that I will kill myself at the first opportunity."

"My God," said Merrihew, "you are insane!"

Helen gave a very tiny shrug. "Do you want a madwoman aboard?"

Chao Lin said quietly, "Captain, I don't see any other way. We would have had to arrange it that way if Helen had actually died in childbirth. Of two unsatisfactory solutions, we must choose the less harmful." And Merrihew knew that he had no real choice.

"I still think you're both crazy," he blustered, but it was surrender, and Helen knew it.

Ten days after the Starholm took off, young Colin Reynolds, technician, committed suicide by the messy procedure of slicing his jugular vein, which - in zero gravity - distributed several quarts of blood in big round globules all over his cabin. He left an incoherent note.

Merrihew put the note in the disposal and Chao Lin put the blood in the ship's blood bank for surgery, and they hushed it up as an accident; but Merrihew had the unpleasant feeling that the layover on the green and windy planet was going to become a legend, spread in whispers by the

crew. And it did, but that is another story.

Robin was two years old when he first heard the voices in the wind. He pulled at his mother's arms and crooned softly, in imitation.

"What is it, lovey?"

"Pretty." He crooned again to the distant murmuring sound.

Helen smiled vaguely and patted the round cheek. Robin, his infant imagination suddenly distracted, said, "Hungry. Robin hungry. Berries."

"Berries after you eat," Helen promised absently, and picked him up. Robin tugged at her arm.

"Mommy pretty, too!"

She laughed, a rosy and smiling young Diana. She was happy on the solitary planet; they lived quite comfortably in one of the larger shacks, and only a little frown line between her eyes bore witness to the terror which had closed down on her in the first months, when every new day had been some new struggle - against weakness, against unfamiliar sounds, against loneliness and dread. Nights when she lay wakeful, sweating with terror while the winds rose and fell again and her imagination gave them voices, bleak days when she wandered dazedly around the shack or stared moodily at Robin. There had been moments - only fleeting, and penanced with hours of

shame and regret - when she thought that even the horror of losing Robin in those first days would have been less than the horror of spending the rest of her life alone here, when she had wondered why Merrihew had not realized that she was unbalanced, and forced her to go with them; by now, Robin would have been only a moment's painful memory.

Still not strong, knowing she had to be strong for Robin or he would die as surely as if she had abandoned him, she had spent the first months in a somnambulistic dream. Sometimes she had walked for days at a time in that dream; she would wake to find food that she could not remember gathering. Somehow, pervasive, the dream voices had taken over; the whispering winds had been full of voices and even hands.

She had fallen ill and lain for days sick and delirious, and had heard a voice which hardly seemed to be her own, saying that if she died the wind voices would care for Robin . . . and then the shock and irrationality of that had startled her out of delirium, agonized and trembling, and she pulled herself upright and cried out, "No!"

And the shimmer of eyes and voices had faded again into vague echoes, until there was only the stir of sunlight on the leaves, and Robin, chubby and naked, kicking in the sunlight, cooing with his hands outstretched to the rustle of leaves and shadows.

She had known, then, that she had to get well. She had never heard the wind voices again, and her crisp, scientific mind rejected the fanciful theory that if she only believed in the wind voices she would see their forms and hear their words clearly. And she rejected them so thoroughly that

when she heard them speak, she shut them away from her mind, and after a time heard them no longer, except in restless dreams.

By now she had accepted the isolation and the beauty of their world, and begun to make a happy life for Robin.

For lack of other occupation last summer - though the winter was mild and there was no lack of fruits and roots even then - Helen had patiently snared male and female of small animals like rabbits, and now she had a pen of them. They provided a change of diet, and after a few smelly unsuccessful experiments she had devised a way to supply their fur pelts. She made no effort at gardening, though when Robin was older she might try that. For the moment, it was enough that they were healthy and safe and protected.

Robin was listening again. Helen bent her ear, sharpened by the silence, but heard only the rustle of wind and leaves; saw only falling brightness along a silvered tree - trunk.

Wind? When there were no branches stirring?

"Ridiculous," she said sharply, then snatched up the baby boy and squeezed him before hoisting him astride her hip. "Mommy doesn't mean you, Robin. Let's look for berries."

But soon she realized that his head was tipped back and that he was listening, again, to some sound she could not hear.

On what she said was Robin's fifth birthday, Helen had made a special bed for him in another room of the building. He missed the warmth of Helen's body, and the comforting sound of her breathing; for Robin, since birth, had been a wakeful child.

Yet, on the first night alone, Robin felt curiously freed. He did something he had never dared do before, for fear of waking Helen; he slipped from his bed and stood in the doorway, looking into the forest.

The forest was closer to the doorway now; Robin could fuzzily remember when the clearing had been wider. Now, slowly, beyond the garden patch which Helen kept cleared, the underbrush and saplings were growing back, and even what Robin called "the burned place" was covered with new sparse grass.

Robin was accustomed to being alone during the day - even in his first year, Helen had had to leave him alone, securely fastened in the house, or inside a little tight - fenced yard. But he was not used to being alone at night.

Far off in the forest, he could hear the whispers of the other people. Helen said there were no other people, but Robin knew better, because he could hear their voices on the wind, like fragments of the songs Helen sang at bedtime. And sometimes he could almost see them in the shadowy spots.

Once when Helen had been sick, a long time ago, and Robin had run helplessly from the fenced yard to the inside room and back again, hungry and dirty and furious because Helen only slept on the bed with her eyes closed, rousing up now and then to whimper like he did when he fell down and skinned his knee, the winds and voices had come into the very house; Robin had hazy memories of soothing voices, of hands that touched him more softly than Helen's hands. But he could not quite remember.

Now that he could hear them so clearly, he would go and find the other people. And then if Helen was sick again, there would be someone else to play with him and look after him. He thought gleefully, Won't Helen be surprised? and darted off across the clearing.

Helen woke, roused not by a sound but by a silence. She no longer heard Robin's soft breaths from the alcove, and after a moment she realized something else:

The winds were silent.

Perhaps, she thought, a storm was coming. Some change in air pressure could cause this stillness - but Robin? She tip - toed to the alcove; as she had suspected, his bed was empty.

Where could he be? In the clearing? With a storm coming? She slid her feet into handmade sandals and ran outside, her quivering call ringing out through the silent forest:

"Robin - oh, Robin!"

Silence. And far away a little ominous whisper. And for the first time since that first frightening year of loneliness, she felt lost, deserted in an alien world. She ran across the clearing, looking around wildly, trying to decide which way he could have wandered. Into the forest? What if he had strayed toward the riverbank? There was a place where the bank crumbled away, down toward the rapids - her throat closed convulsively, and her call was almost a shriek:

"Oh, Robin! Robin, darling! Robin!"

She ran through the paths worn by then - feet, hearing snatches of rustle, winds and leaves suddenly vocal in the cold moonlight around her. It was the first time since the spaceship left them that Helen had ventured out into the night of their world. She called again, her voice cracking in panic.

"Robin!"

A sudden stray gleam revealed a glint of white, and a child stood in the middle of the path. Helen gasped with relief and ran to snatch up her son - then fell back in dismay. It was not Robin who stood there. The child was naked, about a head shorter than Robin, and female.

There was something curious about the bare and gleaming flesh, as if she could see the child only hi the full flush of the moonlight. A round, almost expressionless face was surrounded by a mass of colorless streaming hair, the exact color of the moonlight. Helen's audible gasp startled

her to a stop: she shut her eyes convulsively, and when she opened them the path was black and empty and Robin was running down the track toward her.

Helen caught him up, with a strangled cry, and ran, clasping him to her breast, back down the path to their shack. Inside, she barred the door and laid Robin down in her own bed, and threw herself down shivering, too shaken to speak, too shaken to scold him, curiously afraid to question. I had a hallucination, she told herself, a hallucination, another dream, a dream. . .

A dream, like the other Dream. She signified it to herself as The Dream because it was not like any other dream she had ever had. She had dreamed it first before Robin's birth, and been ashamed to speak of it to Chao Lin, fearing the common - sense skepticism of the older woman.

On their tenth night on the green planet (the Starholm was a dim recollection now), when Mernhew's scientists had been convinced that the little world was safe, without wild beasts or diseases or savage natives, the crew had requested permission to camp in the valley clearing beside the river. Permission granted, they had gone apart in couples almost as usual, and even those who had no enduring liaison at the moment had found a partner for the night.

It must have been that night...

Colin Reynolds was two years younger than Helen, and their attachment, enduring over a few months of ship time, was based less on mutual passion than on a sort of boyish need in him, a sort of impersonal feminine solicitude in Helen. All her affairs had been like that,

companionable, comfortable, but never passionate. Curiously enough, Helen was a woman capable of passion, of great depths of devotion; but no man had ever roused it and now no man ever would. Only Robin's birth had touched her deeply pent emotions.

But that night, when Colin Reynolds was sleeping, Helen stayed restlessly awake, hearing the unquiet stirring of wind on the leaves. After a time she wandered down to the water's edge, staying a cautious distance from the shore - for the cliff crumbled dangerously - and stretched herself out to listen to the wind - voices. And after a time she fell asleep, and had The Dream, which was to return to her again and again.

Helen thought of herself as a scientist, without room for fantasies, and that was why she called it, fiercely, a dream; a dream born of some undiagnosed conflict in her. Even to herself Helen would not recall it in full.

There had been a man, and to her it seemed that he was part of the green and windy world, and he had found her sleeping by the river. Even in her drowsy state, Helen had suspected that perhaps one of the other crew members, like herself sleepless and drawn to the shining water, had happened upon her there, such things were not impossible, manners and mores being what they were among starship crew's.

But to her, half dreaming, there had been some strangeness about him, which prevented her from seeing him too clearly even in the brilliant green moonlight. No dream and no man had ever seemed so living to her; and it was her fierce rationalization of the dream which kept her silent,

months later, when she discovered (to her horror and secret despair) that she was with child. She had felt that she would lose the haze and secret delight of the dream if she openly acknowledged that Colin had fathered her child.

But at first - in the cool green morning that followed - she had not been at all sure it was a dream. Seeing only sunlight and leaves, she had held back from speaking, not wanting ridicule; could she have asked each man of the Starholm, "Was it you who came to me last night? Because if it was not, there are other men on this world, men who cannot be clearly seen even by moonlight."

Severely she reminded herself, Merrihew's men had pronounced the world uninhabited, and uninhabited it must be. Five years later, hugging her sleeping son close, Helen remembered the dream, examined the content of her fantasy, and once again, shivering, repeated, "I had a hallucination. It was only a dream. A dream, because I was alone ..."

When Robin was fourteen years old, Helen told him the story of his birth, and of the ship.

He was a tall, silent boy, strong and hardy but not talkative; he heard the story almost in silence, and looked at Helen for a long time in silence afterward. He finally said in a whisper, "You could have died - you gave up a lot for me, Helen, didn't you?" He knelt and took her face in his hands.

She smiled and drew a little away from him. "Why are you looking at me like that, Robin?"

The boy could not put instant words to his thoughts; emotions were not in his vocabulary. Helen had taught him everything she knew, but she had always concealed her feelings from her son. He asked at last, "Why didn't my father stay with you?"

"I don't suppose it entered his head," Helen said. "He was needed on the ship. Losing me was bad enough."

Robin said passionately, "I'd have stayed!"

The woman found herself laughing. "Well - you did stay, Robin."

He asked, "Am I like my father?"

Helen looked gravely at her son, trying to see the half - forgotten features of young Reynolds in the boy's face. No, Robin did not look like Colin Reynolds, nor like Helen herself. She picked up his hand in hers; despite his robust health, Robin never tanned; his skin was pearly pale, so that in the green sunlight it blended into the forest almost invisibly. His hand lay in Helen's palm like a shadow. She said at last, "No, nothing like him. But under this sun, that's to be expected."

Robin said confidently, "I'm like the other people."

"The ones on the ship? They - "

"No," Robin interrupted, "you always said when I was older you'd tell me about the other people. I mean the other people here. The ones in the woods. The ones you can't see."

Helen stared at the boy in blank disbelief. "What do you mean? There are no other people, just us." Then she recalled that every imaginative child invents playmates. Alone, she thought, Robin's always alone, no other children, no wonder he's a little - strange. She said quietly, "You dreamed it, Robin."

The boy only stared at her in bleak, blank alienation. "You mean," he said, "you can't hear them, either?" He got up and walked out of the hut. Helen called, but he didn't turn back. She ran after him, catching at his arm, stopping him almost by force. She whispered, "Robin, Robin, tell me what you mean! There isn't anyone here. Once or twice I thought I had seen - something, by moonlight, only it was a dream. Please, Robin - please - "

"If it's only a dream, why are you frightened?" Robin asked, through a curious constriction in his throat. "If they've never hurt you ..."

No, they had never hurt her. Even if, in her long - ago dream, one of them had come to her. And the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair - a scrap of memory from a vanished life on another world sang in Helen's thoughts. She looked up at the pale, impatient face of her son, and swallowed hard.

Her voice was husky when she spoke. "Did I ever tell you about rationalization - when you want something to be true so much that you can make it sound right to yourself?"

"Couldn't that also happen to something you wanted not to be true?" Robin retorted with a mutinous curl of his mouth.

Helen would not let go his arm. She begged, "Robin, no, you'll only waste your life and break your heart looking for something that doesn't exist."

The boy looked down into her shaken face, and suddenly a new emotion welled up in him and he dropped to his knees beside her and buried his face against her breast. He whispered, "Helen, I'll never leave you, I'll never do anything you don't want me to do, I don't want anyone but you."

And for the first time in many years, Helen broke into wild and uncontrollable crying, without knowing why she wept.

Robin did not speak again of his quest in the forest. For many months he was quiet and subdued, staying near the clearing, hovering near Helen for days at a time, then disappearing into the forest at dusk. He heard the winds numbly, deaf to their promise and their call.

Helen too was quiet and withdrawn, feeling Robin's alienation through his submissive mood. She found herself speaking to him sharply for being always underfoot; yet, on the rare days when he vanished into the forest and did not return until after sunset, she felt a restless unease that set

her wandering the paths herself, not following him, but simply uneasy unless she knew he was within call.

Once, in the shadows just before sunset, she thought she saw a man moving through the trees, and for an instant, as he turned toward her, she saw that he was naked. She had seen him only for a second or two, and after he had slipped between the shadows again common sense told her it was Robin. She was vaguely shocked and annoyed; she firmly intended to speak to him, perhaps to scold him for running about naked and slipping away like that; then, in a sort of remote embarrassment, she forbore to mention it. But after that, she kept out of the forest.

Robin had been vaguely aware of her surveillance and knew when it ceased. But he did not give up his own pointless rambles, although even to himself he no longer spoke of searching, or of any dreamlike inhabitants of the woods. At tunes it still seemed that some shadow concealed a half - seen form, and the distant murmur grew into a voice that mocked him; a white arm, the shadow of a face, until he lifted his head and stared straight at it.

One evening toward twilight he saw a sudden shimmer in the trees, and he stood, fixedly, as the stray glint resolved itself first into a white face with shadowy eyes, then into a translucent flicker of bare arms, and then into the form of a woman, arrested for an instant with her hand on the bole of a tree. In the shadowy spot, filled only with the last ray of a cloudy sunset, she was very clear; not cloudy or unreal, but so distinct that he could see even a small smudge, or bramble scratch on her shoulder, and a fallen leaf tangled in her colorless hair. Robin, paralyzed, watched her pause, and turn, and smile, and then she melted into the shadows.

He stood with his heart pounding for a second after she had gone; then whirled, bursting with the excitement of his discovery, and ran down the path toward home. Suddenly he stopped short, the world tilting and reeling, and fell on his face in a bed of dry leaves.

He was still ignorant of the nature of the emotion in him. He felt only intolerable misery and the conviction that he must never, never speak to Helen of what he had seen or felt.

He lay there, his burning face pressed into the leaves, unaware of the rising wind, the little flurry of blown leaves, the growing darkness and distant thunder. At last an icy spatter of rain aroused him, and cold, numbed, he made his way slowly homeward. Over his head the boughs creaked woodenly, and Robin, under the driving whips of the rain, felt their tumult only echoed his own voiceless agony.

He was drenched by the time he pushed the door of the shack open and stumbled blindly toward the fire, only hoping that Helen would be sleeping. But she started up from beside the hearth they had built together last summer.

"Robin?"

Deathly weary, the boy snapped, "Who else would it be?"

Helen didn't answer. She came to him, a small swift - moving figure in the firelight, and drew

him into the warmth. She said, almost humbly, "I was afraid - the storm - Robin, you're all wet, come to the fire and dry out."

Robin yielded, his twitching nerves partly soothed by her voice. How tiny Helen is, he thought, and I can remember that she used to carry me around on one arm; now she hardly comes to my shoulder. She brought him food and he ate wolfishly, listening to the steady pouring rain, uncomfortable under Helen's watching eyes. Before his own eyes there was the clear memory of the woman in the wood, and so vivid was Robin's imagination, heightened by loneliness and undiluted by any random impressions, that it seemed to him Helen must see her too. And when she came to stand beside him, the picture grew so keen in his thoughts that he actually pulled himself free of her.

The next day dawned gray and still, beaten with long needles of rain. They stayed indoors by the smoldering fire; Robin, half sick and feverish from his drenching, sprawled by the hearth too indolent to move, watching Helen's comings and goings about the room; not realizing why the sight of her slight, quick form against the gray fight filled him with such pain and melancholy.

The storm lasted four days. Helen exhausted her household tasks and sat restlessly thumbing through the few books she knew by heart - they had allowed her to remove all her personal possessions, all the things she had chosen on a forgotten and faraway Earth for a ten - year star cruise. For the first time in years, Helen was thinking again of the life, the civilization she had thrown away, for Robin who had been a pink scrap in the circle of her arm and now lay sullen on the hearth, not speaking, aimlessly whittling a stick with a knife (found discarded in a heap of

rubbish from the Starholm) which was his dearest possession. Helen felt slow horror closing in on her. What world, what heritage did I give him, in my madness? This world has driven us both insane. Robin and I are both a little mad, by Earth's standard's. And when I die, and I will die first, what then? At that moment Helen would have given her life to believe in his old dream of strange people in the wood.

She flung her book restlessly away, and Robin, as if waiting for that signal, sat upright and said almost eagerly, "Helen - "

Grateful that he had broken the silence of days, she gave him an encouraging smile.

"I've been reading your books," he began diffidently, "and I read about the sun you came from. It's different from this one. Suppose - suppose there were actually a kind of people here, and something in this light, or in your eyes, made them invisible to you."

Helen said, "Have you been seeing them again?"

He flinched at her ironical tone, and she asked, somewhat more gently, "It's a theory, Robin, but it wouldn't explain, then, why you see them."

"Maybe I'm - more used to this light," he said gropingly. "And anyway, you said you thought you'd seen them and thought it was only a dream."

Halfway between exasperation and a deep pity, Helen found herself arguing, "If these other people of yours really exist, why haven't they made themselves known in sixteen years?

The eagerness with which he answered was almost frightening. "I think they only come out at night, they're what your book calls a primitive civilization." He spoke the words he had read, but never heard, with an odd hesitation. "They're not really a civilization at all, I think, they're like part of the woods."

"A forest people," Helen mused, impressed in spite of herself, "and nocturnal. It's always moonlight or dusky when you see them - "

"Then you do believe me - oh, Helen," Robin cried, and suddenly found himself pouring out the story of what he had seen, in incoherent words, concluding, "and by daylight I can hear them, but I can't see them. Helen, Helen, you have to believe it now, you'll have to let me try to find them and learn to talk to them ..."

Helen listened with a sinking heart. She knew they should not discuss it now, when five days of enforced housebound proximity had set their nerves and tempers on edge, but some unknown tension hurled her words at Robin. "You saw a woman, and I - a man. These things are only dreams. Do I have to explain more to you?"

Robin flung his knife sullenly aside. "You're so blind, so stubborn."

"I think you are feverish again." Helen rose to go.

He said wrathfully, "You treat me like a child!"

"Because you act like one, with your fairy tales of women in the wind."

Suddenly Robin's agony overflowed and he caught at her, holding her around the knees, clinging to her as he had not done since he was a small child, his words stumbling and rushing over one another.

"Helen, Helen darling, don't be angry with me," he begged, and caught her in a blind embrace that pulled her off her feet. She had never guessed how strong he was; but he seemed very like a little boy, and she hugged him quickly as he began to cover her face with childish kisses.

"Don't cry, Robin, my baby, it's all right," she murmured, kneeling close to him. Gradually the wild - ness of his passionate crying abated; she touched his forehead with her cheek to see if it was heated with fever, and he reached up and held her there. Helen let him lie against her shoulder, feeling that perhaps after the violence of his outburst he would fall asleep, and she was half - asleep herself when a sudden shock of realization darted through her; quickly she tried to free herself from Robin's entangling arms.

"Robin, let me go."

He clung to her, not understanding. "Don't let go of me, Helen. Darling, stay here beside me," he begged, and pressed a kiss into her throat.

Helen, her blood icing over, realized that unless she freed herself very quickly now, she would be fighting against a strong, aroused young man not clearly aware of what he was doing. She took refuge in the sharp maternal note of ten years ago, almost vanished in the closer, more equal companionship of the time between: "No, Robin. Stop it at once, do you hear?"

Automatically he let her go, and she rolled quickly away, out of his reach, and got to her feet. Robin, too intelligent to be unaware of her anger and too naive to know its cause, suddenly dropped his head and wept, wholly unstrung. "Why are you angry?" he blurted out. "I was only loving you."

And at the phrase of the five - year - old child, Helen felt her throat would burst with its ache. She managed to choke out, "I'm not angry, Robin - we'll talk about this later, I promise," and then, her own control vanishing, turned and fled precipitately into the pouring rain.

She plunged through the familiar woods for a long time, in a daze of unthinking misery. She did not even fully realize that she was sobbing and muttering aloud, "No, no, no, no!"

She must have wandered for several hours. The rain had stopped and the darkness was lifting before she began to grow calmer and to think more clearly.

She had been blind not to foresee this day when Robin was a child; only if her child had been a daughter could it have been avoided. Or - she was shocked at the hysterical sound of her own laughter - if Colin had stayed and they had raised a family like Adam and Eve!

But what now? Robin was sixteen; she was not yet forty. Helen caught at vanishing memories of society; taboos so deeply rooted that for Helen they were instinctual and impregnable. Yet for Robin nothing existed except this little patch of forest and Helen herself - the only person in his world, more specifically at the moment the only woman in his world. So much, she thought bitterly, for instinct. But have I the right to begin this all over again? Worse; have I the right to deny its existence and, when I die, leave Robin alone?

She had stumbled and paused for breath, realizing that she had wandered in circles and that she was at a familiar point on the riverbank which she had avoided for sixteen years. On the heels of this realization she became aware that for only the second time in memory, the winds were wholly stilled.

Her eyes, swollen with crying, ached as she tried to pierce the gloom of the mist, lilac - tinted with the approaching sunrise, which hung around the water. Through the dispersing mist she made out, dimly, the form of a man.

He was tall, and his pale skin shone with misty white colors. Helen sat frozen, her mouth open, and for the space of several seconds he looked down at her without moving. His eyes, dark splashes in the pale face, had an air of infinite sadness and compassion, and she thought his lips

moved in speech, but she heard only a win familiar rustle of wind.

Behind him, mere flickers, she seemed to make out the ghosts of other faces, tips of fingers of invisible hands, eyes, the outline of a woman's breast, the curve of a child's foot. For a minute, in Helen's weary numbed state, all her defenses went down and she thought: Then I'm not mad and it wasn't a dream and Robin isn't Reynolds' son at all. His father was Ms - one of these - and they've been watching me and Robin, Robin has seen them, he doesn't know he's one of them, but they know. They know and I've kept Robin from them all these sixteen years.

The man took two steps toward her, the translucent body shifting to a dozen colors before her blurred eyes. His face had a curious familiarity - familiarity - and in a sudden spasm of terror Helen thought, "I'm going mad, it's Robin, its Robin!"

His hand was actually outstretched to touch her when her scream cut icy lashes through the forest, stirring wild echoes in the wind - voices, and she whirled and ran blindly toward the treacherous, crumbling bank. Behind her came steps, a voice, a cry - Robin, the strange dryad man, she could not guess. The horror of incest, the son the father the lover suddenly melting into one, overwhelmed her reeling brain and she fled insanely to the brink. She felt a masculine hand actually gripping her shoulder, she might have been pulled back even then, but she twisted free blindly, shrieking, "No, Robin, no, no - " and flung herself down the steep bank, to slip and hurl downward and whirl around in - the raging current to spinning oblivion and death . . .

Many years later, Merrihew, grown old in the Space Service, falsified a log entry to send his

ship for a little while into the orbit of the tiny green planet he had named Robin's World. The old buildings had fallen into rotted timbers, and Merrihew quartered the little world for two months from pole to pole but found nothing. Nothing but shadows and whispers and the unending voices of the wind. Finally, he lifted his ship and went away.

(1959)

The Wild One(1960)

This is a story that they tell on the solitary farms on the borders of the Catskill mountains, where I grew up. It is a mistake to think that country is settled and modern, just because the big highways stretch from city to city, and the factories hold out clean jobs that pay better than the scratch - the - soil farming on shale rock. For between every farm is a stretch of woodland, and every farm has its own woods, and by night there are deer and rabbits and even wolves and the big lynxes that prowl south of Canada in a hungry season. And every now and again, to some lonely farm - girl who roams the edges and center of the deep woods by night, a child will be bom like Helma Lassiter . . .

Roger Lassiter lifted his hands abruptly from the keys of die piano, and stared across the room at his sobbing young wife.

"Helma, dear!" he said contritely, "If I'd known - I didn't hear you come in, dear. Please forgive me?"

"Of course!" Helma wiped away her tears, and her strange, hesitant smile flickered for an instant on the wet face, "If I'd known you wanted to play, I wouldn't have come back so early." She crossed the room, and Roger held out his arms to stop her as she passed and hold her, for a moment, close to him. "Did you and Nell Connor have a good time?"

She dropped her eyes. "I didn't go to see Nell, Roger, it was too lovely hi the woods. And - and there'll be a full moon tonight. ..."

He slid his arm around the girl's waist. "You're the wildest child of nature I ever knew," he murmured, halfway between exasperation and indulgence, and from the piano bench he twisted to look out the window at the deep stretch of dark woodland, oaks and maple and birch, that surrounded their house; then he turned back to rest his eyes on Helma.

She was good to look at; a tawny blonde girl, slight, delicately but strongly made, with creamy skin and dark - gray eyes that lightened to amber or an odd gold - flecked green when she was angry or excited, and so incredibly supple that he often wondered if she had been a ballet dancer. He did not know what she had been; she never talked about her childhood, and he knew only that she had run away from a farm in the Adirondacks when she was only fourteen years old. She had been twenty - three when they met, a chance acquaintance, almost a pick - up, at the swimming pool in Albany. Roger, escorting a pair of frisky nephews, had been attracted, then charmed, by

her unbelievable grace in the water, her swift clean beauty; a seal - woman of the legends could have shown herself no more at home in the sea. He had been shocked at the change which had come over her when she had run back to the dressing - rooms and reappeared in a cheap skirt and blouse, her hair brushed down and her legs encased in lumpy socks and shoes. It was as if rust had suddenly covered a bright coin. But he had not been able to forget the laughing, glowing nymph of the pool. And he had never forgotten. It had not taken him long to discover how she revived in the woods, in the country. After their marriage, they had built this small house at the edge of the forest; a necessity, not a luxury, for Helma drooped and wilted in an apartment. They had built the house with their own hands, camping in the woods while it rose from the foundations, sleeping at night in a tent; and day by day a visible radiance had crept over Helma until she seemed alive with an inner, glowing beauty. Still, on the first night they had slept in their new home, she had murmured *'I think I liked the tent better!" Even now, for choice, she slept on the open porch when she could.

He smiled now into her half - closed eyes and murmured what he had said many times, "I think you're half wood - cat, Helma!"

"Oh, I am," she returned, as always, "I am. Didn't you know?"

"And say, I used to have a dog who howled just like that when I played the piano. It's not what you'd call a compliment to my playing!"

She colored . . . even after four years of marriage, she was very sensitive about this. "I can't help

it," she whispered for the hundredth time, "It hurts my ears so much - "

He patted her shoulder gently. "Well, never mind, honey, I try not to play when you're around," he told her, "but seriously, I'm beginning to wonder if you ought to go so far into the woods alone. Bob Connor told me he's heard wolves, and the other day he shot a lynx. Perhaps it's all right in broad daylight, but I wish you'd stay out of the woods at night, Helma."

He was not a countryman by habit; born and reared in cities, it had thrown him into a panic, the first time that he had waked in the night and found himself alone in bed. He had hunted the house through and found it empty; in a growing apprehension, mounting to absolute terror, he had searched the woods with a lantern, shouting, panicked, until he had finally found Henna, snuggled into a hollow of summer grass, sleeping, a rabbit bolting from her side as he came near.

After a few months he had come to take it for granted; Helma was almost physically incapable of staying out of the woods when they were so near, night or day. Sometimes Roger wondered if he had been wise to bring her so far from the cities and the plowed farms on the highways; she might have been unhappy, but she might have been less wild.

He murmured, "Perhaps if we had a child - "

He had spoken almost under his breath, but her body stiffened in the curve of his arm and she pulled away from him. "Roger," she murmured, "You know I can't - "

He said, low - voiced, "We haven't talked much about this, because it always makes you so unhappy. Now I think we must. How do you know you can't have children? Perhaps we could see Doctor demons when we go into town this Saturday. Perhaps - "

Helma jerked away from him furiously, taut, her head flung back, even the short sleek tawny hair seeming electric and alive, and her eyes flared green. The small blunt hands were flexed into claws. "I won't!" she spat at him, "I won't be mauled about and stared at by some doctor. ..."

"Helma! Roger's sharp voice cut through her hysteria; she relaxed a little, but went on in a low angry voice, "I've never told you much about me, have I? I know that. I can't have your child, such a child as I could have, you wouldn't want, I - " She slumped down on a corner of the divan and buried her face in her arms despondently. After a long time she raised her face. "Would it make you so happy if I had a baby, Roger?" she asked pitifully.

The man could not bear it. He stood up and went to her, seating himself on the divan at her side and pulling the blonde head down on his shoulder. "Not if you don't want to, Helma," he said, in a gentle voice, "Maybe you're right, maybe - "

Her wide eyes burned tearlessly in the twilight. "You think I'm wild, you think I'm a crazy woman who might be normal if I had a baby to tie me down a little bit. You want me to be like your friends' wives, like Nell Connor, sleep in my bed nights and never step out further than the chicken house!" Her voice fell steadily, accusing. She pushed him away from her, stood up and backed away toward the door, a low menace, not quite a word, in her throat. Before her green

glare his own eyes fell. "Well, damn it, Helma," he muttered, "I'd appreciate it if you'd try, at least, to act like a normal adult human being! There are times when you're like a wild animal!"

"I am," she said huskily, and swiftly turned and went out of the room. Half rising, the man saw through the window the quick bound with which she crossed the porch and lawn, watched her bend, with that amazing suppleness, and unfasten first one sandal, then the other. She kicked her feet free and ran toward the back gate; with a single lissome movement she was up and over it, and Roger saw the pale gold of her hair and the green - and - brown plaid of her house dress melt into the forest like a shadow, and there was a tight breathlessness in his throat as he watched her slide away and vanish in the leaves.

But she was back before morning, slipping silently, barefoot, through the doors, and sliding into bed beside him, as noiselessly as a cat. Roger, who had not closed his eyes all night, felt her presence and moved toward her, but she shoved him away. Roger shrugged and sighed; he was used to this, too. Helma could be as violent and passionate as a young lioness when aroused, but she was curiously cold at other times, and would push or cuff him away if he touched her when she was not in the mood. Roger had reflected that civilized man alone, of all animals, is not cyclic in desire, and that Hernia's odd wildness was probably nothing more than a reversion to an earlier, possibly a cleaner day. Since in spite of occasional exasperations, Roger loved his wife devotedly, he respected her moods; it was as well that he did, for once, in the first year of their marriage - before he had learned how deep this was ingrained into Helma's whole nature - he had been less tolerant, and had once - only once - attempted to take her by force. There was still a tiny white line across his cheek where her wild hands had raked bone - deep. She had sobbed

frenzied apologies afterward, but Roger had never risked it again. All women, he knew, were periodic to some extent; and it was true that she was altogether satisfying when her nature allowed her to be compliant.

In the days and weeks that followed, Helma was unusually quiet, subdued and docile. Summer lazed to a close; the crisp leaves of September drifted from helpless branches and the twanging winds of autumn played mournful threnodies in the deserted woods. Helma haunted the leaf deep paths by day, but not once did she run off by night, and Roger Lassiter began to wonder if she was actually settling down. Surely it was time, after four years of marriage, that Helma should take on a look of sleekness and content, and for her body to soften a little from its hard angularity. She worked around the house happily - it was always neat and clean, but now it positively shone with soap and wax and polished floors, and Helma herself seemed as smooth and clean as a well - kept cat. Even her quick dancing walk seemed, although just as graceful, a trifle firmer and more subdued. And sometimes in the evenings when Roger returned home ... he worked days, in a chemical factory ... he would hear Helma singing, a curious contralto croon, almost toneless, but rising and falling in smooth, well - defined rhythmic cadences that were sweetly resonant.

She never told him, in so many words, that she was pregnant. Roger, although he guessed it as early as September, kept aloof from asking, thinking that perhaps she wanted to tell him herself, when she chose; but she never did, and finally he asked her only "When?"

"Early in the spring," she said, and her greeny eyes glanced, half - sorrowful, at his glad face. He

told her gently, "You see, you were wrong, Helma. Aren't you happy about this?"

She did not answer, but put down her book and came to curl up on the rug at his feet, putting her head of thick short straight hair into his lap. He stroked it without speaking, and she shut her eyes, leaning against his knee. After a time she began the odd rough contralto crooning, and he smiled. "What kind of witch - chant is that, Helma? I never heard you sing before. I didn't know you knew one note from another."

"I don't," her smile was a gamin, enigmatic thing.

"I don't know, I remember hearing my mother sing like this when I was very small."

"What was your mother like?" he asked, and Helma laughed softly. "Like me."

"I'd like to have seen that! What was your father like?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Perhaps - someone like you. Perhaps he was - different. Perhaps I never had a father, I can't remember."

Roger persisted "Did your mother never tell you?"

Helma suddenly drew her head away from her husband's stroking hands, looking up at him slantwise through her hair. "You would have called my mother mad," she said evenly, "She said

my father was a lynx - a wildcat she called it."

Roger abruptly shivered as if a freezing wind had blown out the cozy fire. "Don't talk rubbish, Helma."

She shrugged. "You asked me. It's what my mother used to say. She was mad, madder than I am. She lived on a farm away up in the mountains, with only her grandfather and a little sister. She used to listen to hunters' stories about men and women who turned into wolves and wildcats when the moon was full, and ran in the woods at night. I've heard old men howl like the gray timber - wolf, when the moon lit up the snow like daylight, and seen them slink through the shadows with red eyes. ..."

"Hell! You're morbid tonight!"

"No. Why? When I was a little girl I used to run around the hunters' huts. I could walk along a path and a wildcat would walk along the limb of a tree right over me and never even snarl, and I could pick up rabbits with my bare hands. I still can." Her smile was frankly malicious now. "You don't believe those old stories, do you? Till she died, my mother used to run out in the woods every full moon. She said my father was a lynx, I didn't. Do you believe I'll turn into a wildcat some night and rip out your throat? A silver bullet isn't any good, you know. That's just an old wife's tale. Just an iron knife, a knife of cold iron will kill a turn skin animal. That's what they say. Iron, or lead. Are you afraid of me?" She laughed, and Roger felt his goose fleshed arms stiffen and crawl. "For Godsake, cut it out!" he almost shouted.

She had stiffened and pulled away.

"I'm sorry. You asked me."

Roger Lassiter dreamed that night of wandering in black leafless woods, while green cat - eyes, disturbingly like Helma's, watched him from low branches; she came in before dawn, her dress torn, a bloodstain on one foot, shivering with cold, and lay huddled in warmed blankets, sobbing, while a dismayed and horrified Roger washed her thorn - lacerated legs, forced brandy between her blue lips, and for the first time in their married life laid down the law.

"This damned monkey business has got to stop, Helma. I thought that now, with the baby coming, you'd show some sense. Now, listen. You're going to a doctor, today, if you have to be carried. You're going to stay in the house, nights, if I have to lock you in. I know women act funny when they're pregnant, but you act clean crazy, and it's got to stop." For the first time her tears and pleas had no effect on him; he spooned hot milk between her chattering teeth, and continued, thin - lipped, "One more trick like this - just one, Helma - and we move back to Albany, at least till after the baby comes. Helma, if I have to have you examined by a psychiatrist, maybe - " he could not, although he wanted to, form the threat he had intended. Helma suffered enough in a house. Her acute claustrophobia would certainly kill her in a hospital.

But the threats he had already made had been effective enough to terrify Helma into submission.

She saw the doctor, as he stipulated, and reacted quite normally when he assured her that he believed she would have twins. As the winter settled in earnest, the house took on the air of tranquil peace which only the happily pregnant woman knows how to create around the home she has made. As in everything else, Helma was almost animal in this; Roger had never known a woman to seem so healthy, so casual. The wives of his friends fretted and were ungainly and unlovely and given to whims and complaints, and for the first time Roger could favorably compare his wife's docility with theirs.

The winter sneaked by on quiet - running feet. Snow came heavy that year, but the roads were kept plowed, and Roger managed to get back and forth every day. If Helma sometimes walked in the woods during the daytime, Roger did not know it, and she never left the house by night. The season was cruelly cold; now and then they could stand at the window and see a deer, made bold by the severity of the season, step out of the forest to the garden gate; and at night wolves howled in the darkness and now and then they heard the fierce snarl of a lynx, far away across the branch. Roger frowned and talked of getting a rifle, but Helma protested, "Wolves are cowards. They never attack anything bigger than a rabbit. And a lynx never bothered anybody who wasn't pokin' around him."

In February Bob Connor shot a lynx, less than a mile from the Lassiter house, and brought it over his shoulder to the door, thumping gaily till they came to look.

"I shot this big fellow down by the rocks on your creek, Roger. Listen, I've been making my kids stay right in the back yard, and if I were you, I wouldn't go in the woods at night, or let your

wife. There are a lot of these cats around," he continued, dumping the stiff corpse on the step to ease his shoulder, "And they can be nasty customers - God, Helma, what's the matter! Roglookout, " he warned, just in time for Roger to catch Helma as she slumped in a dead faint.

When she had been carried into the bedroom and revived, and had apologized shakily for being such a fool, Bob, out of earshot, had blamed himself severely.

"I'm sorry, Roger. I guess maybe the blood made her fainty - like. Nell hates seeing dead things. I knowed she was in the family way, too, and I ought to had more sense than barge in like that with an old dead wildcat!"

"I don't think that was it," Roger said, baffled, "Helma's never been squeamish about blood."

"She's a bit odd about wild things, though, ain't she?" Bob asked in a tone discreetly lowered, and Roger, distracted, confessed that she was. He watched Bob go down the road, feeling something like despair, realizing that Bob Connor would certainly add his bit to the stories already far too prevalent - of Helma Lassiter's "Queerness." But he had not the heart to reprimand or question Helma, nor to repeat Bob Connor's final words, said in that tactfully dropped voice, "I wouldn't let her run off into the woods thataway, Roger. I go out a lot, shooting these cats, and wolves - bounty on wolves, you know. I try to be careful, and God! I'd hate to shoot somebody!"

After that day Helma grew even quieter, more subdued, losing even the spasmodic impulse to

wander in the woods even in broad daylight. Somewhat alarmed, Roger found himself circuitously urging Helma into the garden, at least out of doors, out of the house which she now haunted, sleeping a great deal by day, but rising at night to prowl sleeplessly with her soft pacing movements through all the rooms. When Roger anxiously questioned her, she answered evasively: she was too tired to go far from the house, and the baby's movements in her body were most troublesome at night, and made her restless. She was heavy now, and her face was fuller, giving the wide - set cheekbones under her thick, tawny level brows a curiously unfathomable, animal, enigmatic look. She spoke little, but she seemed happy and tranquil, apart from her restlessness. Roger believed that Helma was trying consciously to wean herself from her wild ways and that she was silently suffering the torture of claustrophobia, for there seemed a curious disturbed look behind the green eyes, when she thought no one was watching her. Roger knew his young wife to be a strong - willed girl, and believed that she could discipline herself unsparingly.

In March came raging winds and a blizzard that swept down from the Adirondacks in a sort of apocalyptic violence, locking both Lassiters in the house for days. Then, overnight, the snow began to melt; the back of the winter was broken, the creeks overflowed with cool melting rains, and a strange moist green appeared through the soaked dead brownness of the grass. Crows and bluejays racketed in new - plowed fields, and a sweet chirping came from the trees at the edge of the woods. Sometimes now on the damp evenings, when light lingered at sundown, Helma would drag her distorted body to the forest gate and lean there, her face poignant with such longing that Roger, watching, felt a hurting pain and pity seeing his wild thing straining so hard at the leash of love he had finally girded about her heart. The gate was never locked, but Helma

never touched her fingers to the light latch. Roger was just as well pleased, for now in the warm nights they often heard the snarl and spit of the big wildcats, and in these spring days he knew, the females would be defending their young. Nor did Roger fail to wonder if Helma would likewise be violent hi defence of her child.

He had assumed that when the time came for her confinement he would drive her to the hospital in Albany. She did not say that she approved this arrangement, but on the other hand, she made no protest, and Roger took it for granted.

One evening in late March, while they sat at supper, Helma said quietly "You better drive to Albany and get some coffee, Roger. I used the last for breakfast this morning, and there's none for tomorrow's breakfast."

Like many pliant and easygoing men, Roger was crotchety in small and unimportant trifles, and he scolded Helma with as much severity as he ever used to her; why hadn't she told him at breakfast? She just looked back at him with her closed and heavy face.

"You better go now, or the stores are all going to be closed before you get there."

She was walking around the room restlessly, now and again stopping to pick up some small object and examine it meticulously, handle it with a curious, fidgety stroking movement of her small, rather stubby fingers, then put it impatiently down and resume her feline prowling, "But do you mind if I don't ride along? I'll stay here and go - go to bed. I'm awful tired."

Roger protested. "I don't like to leave you alone, specially at night. Suppose the baby started to come?"

"Well, you'll be back in an hour," Helma said reasonably.

"For heaven's sake, sit down, you'll drive me crazy, pacing like that - " Roger snapped at her, "Are you going to start your fool tricks again?"

"Oh, Roger, please," she started to sob, "I don't think I could stand being bounced around, until I have to!"

The man felt like a brute. Why, he wondered, should he get in a dither, because a girl in the last month of pregnancy didn't want to take a twenty - mile ride in an old car, over the worst roads in New York State? He shrugged and went to the closet for his coat.

"AH right, honey," he said tenderly. "Would you like me to get Mrs. Connor to come and sit with you while I'm gone?"

Helma said in a tone of intense disgust, "Look. I'm twenty - seven years old."

Roger hugged her. "Oh, all right, all right. I'll be back in an hour." He went to the garage to back out the car, but on another thought, ran back up the steps.

"Helma?"

"Yes? I thought you'd gone!"

"You sure you don't want to ride along, or come and stay to Nell Connor's place while I'm gone? I can pick you up on the way back."

Hernia's clear laugh raised staccato echoes in the unlighted porch. "Who's pregnant, you or me? Go along with you, or you'll have to drive all over town to find a store open!"

The muddy roads were now nearly clean of snow, and Roger made good time on the way to Albany. On the edge of town he found a small all - night grocery and decided to go in there, and turn back at once, instead of driving to the uptown chain - store where they usually traded. He bought the coffee and hurried out to the car again, forgetting his change, and only realizing when half - way home again that it had been a five - dollar bill.

It was already dark. Roger, his headlights sweeping a beam across the dark edges of the woods, pictured Helma, curled up kitten - fashion under quilts, but somehow the mental picture held no conviction nor comfort, and he pressed down the accelerator to the floorboard. If a state trooper caught up with him, he'd tell the truth. His wife was pregnant and he didn't like to leave her alone after dark. If it came to that, he'd rather pay a fine than leave her alone any longer.

The house was dark. Only the reflection of his headlights made ghosts on the unlighted window, and then Roger Lassiter saw that the garden gate swung open on its hinges, and that Helma's brown oxfords and crumpled duty socks lay in the mud beside the open gate.

At that sight Roger Lassiter's terror jumped up from behind the wall of consciousness, and caught him by the throat. One last wild hope still beat with the thudding of his pulse; Helma might have felt her labor imminent and run to Connor's - the path through the woods was shorter than the road. Like a crazy man he jumped into the auto and sent it careening wildly down the mud road. Before it had fully come to a stop before the Connor farmhouse, he flung the door open and pelted toward the kitchen door entrance.

Through the lighted window a Connor child saw him coming, and flung the door open.

"Mommy, here's Mister Lassiter!"

Nell Connor's horsy kind face peered over her child's head. "Roger, come in! What's wrong?"

The man stood blinking numbly in the light. "Is Helma here?"

"Helma? Why, no, Roger! I saw you drive by, earlier, and thought perhaps her time had come and you was takin' her to the hospital!"

"She's gone," Roger said numbly, "She's gone. I drove to Albany to get a pound of coffee, and

she said she was too tired to come along. And when I come back she's just gone! Where's Bob?"

"He went out to hunt lynxes, he said it was full moon and the big cats would prowl all night oh, my God, Roger!" Nell Connor's pleasant florid face was drained of color, "S'pose Helma's in the woods!" She lowered her voice, glancing at the children, "Bob told me last year that she run off in the woods sometimes, and he said he was scared to hunt. But this winter he's figured that with the baby coming, she'd stay right close to the house." She was reaching for a man's mackinaw that hung behind the stove, as she spoke. "Molly," she said to the oldest girl, "You put Kenneth and Edna to bed, now. Miz. Lassiter's lost in the woods, and I'm going to help Mister Lassiter look for her. Donny, you get a lantern and come along. An' Molly, after you get the kids to bed, you make up tots of hot coffee, mind, and you put a couple of hot - water bottles in my bed and put on both teakettles to boil." She explained in an undertone, "If the baby started to come, Helma's kind of nervous, she might get scared to death and just run off and get lost trying to come down here, poor thing. If she did, and the baby started to come, we'll bring her back here. I've had five, I reckon I could kind of look after her."

"You're so good - " Roger faltered.

"Oh, shucks, what's neighbors for? I s'pect Helma'd worry 'bout me, if I got lost." She beckoned to her oldest boy, and took the lantern from his hand.

"We'll go down the path, Donnie. You take the flashlight, and go down the back pasture, 'hind the barn. Keep yelling for your Dad, now. And if you find Miz. Lassiter, you yell like crazy and

keep on hollering till we hear you, and then come back and tell Molly to come an' help you get her in the house. Hurry up, now."

Never afterward in his life could Roger remember anything of the next few hours except plodding through moonlit darkness, with the lantern bobbing dully in his hand and Nell Connor's staunch and confident voice growing gradually tired and afraid. They shouted "Hel-ma! Hel-ma! Hel-ma!" until their lips were cracked with cold and their throats hoarse, stopping to listen for answering shouts, and Mrs. Connor faltered, "I dunno how Helma could come so far, being big like she was!" They trembled when they heard an animal snarl in the woods; and once Nell Connor - steady, nerve - less Nell, a farm woman all her life, fifty years old - screamed aloud as she saw green eyes and ears laid flat, peering down from a low branch. But worse than this were the times when they heard the distant crack! of a rifle and knew that Bob Connor had shot. Behind Roger's burning eyes was the picture of Helma lying still and stiff beside the path somewhere, shot by accident, or, overcome by travail, lying somewhere in agony, unable to come to them, too far away to hear their shouts and calls, or - worse - hearing, and too weak to answer. Roger wandered into a dark nightmare, which suddenly dissolved around him as a shout sounded in his ears; his heart stopped and began painfully to beat again, for it seemed that he had heard Helma cry out - Helma, screaming, not far away -

He caught at Nell's arm.

"Did you hear that?"

"I heard a catbird or something - " she said doubtfully.

"It's Helma! Oh, come on!"

"Roger!" She gripped and held him fast, "I didn't hear anything. Go easy, now. Hark, I heard something - steps - I think it's Bob." She raised her voice, shouting "Bob! Hel - ma! Helma - !"

Out of the night came the harsh snapping CRACK! of rifle fire, close at hand; two shots in rapid succession, then a crashing in the thickets, and Bob Connor lumbered out of the brushwood.

"Nell! Roger! For God's sake, what's the matter! You look like - has something happened to Helma?"

"She's gone - "

"Christ!" said Bob Connor simply. "How long you been hunting her?"

"All night. Bob, I just heard her scream! She's back in there - " Roger gabbled like a madman, "I heard her, and something else - like a baby crying - "

"Easy, easy, Roger!" Bob Connor, his big face compassionate, caught his arm, "I shot a 'cat. A big female, just had cubs. I couldn't leave the little things to die without their mom, so I shot 'em, too."

"It's Helma! Helma's back in there, dying! Let me go, damn it, let me go - " He twisted away from Bob's restraining hands and ran toward the thicket. The Connors followed, breaking into a run after him, catching up as he stopped over the body of the dead lynx.

It was a large female, not yet stiff, tawny gold in color, with strange eyes, and the limp newborn cubs were still wet with slime, unlicked. Roger stood a moment, numbly, over the big graceful still body; then slumped. Bob Connor stepped to put an arm about his shoulders and held him up.

"Come on, Roger. Come on, come on back to the house, you're worn out. Come on. Don't worry. We'll find Hernia. When we get back to the house, you have some coffee, and you look like you could use a shot of whisky. Come on. You're beat right out, man." While he talked, he was urging Roger's limp steps toward the path, "The minute we get to the house," he said soothingly, "I'll get right in the car and go get the state troopers. They'll look all over. Maybe she wandered across to one of the other farms. They'll find her, Roger. Come on."

Roger jerked up his head and looked into Bob Connor's eyes with the blank stare of a man who has been hit and does not know it yet.

"It's no use, Bob. Helma's dead. I know she's dead."

He dropped his head then and began to cry harshly.

Over his head, Bob and Nell Connor exchanged grave,

sympathetic glances. "He's worn right out. Come on,

Roger, Lean on me. Come on, now, fellow. . . ."

And where I grew up, they end the story there, because Helma Lassiter never came back. All the farm folks wonder, sometimes, whatever happened to the poor crazy girl.

I used to ride my bike past the Lassiter house that summer and see Mister Lassiter just sitting on his back porch, day after day, just looking off into the woods. The lawn went to rack and ruin, and the rabbits used to hop right up into the garden where he was sitting. And my Daddy never would let me go into the woods looking for nuts again, unless he could go with me with a gun.

(1960)

Treason of the Blood

Every night, as darkness folded over the Castello di Speranza, the little Contessa, Teresa, descended to gloat over her prisoner. There were formalities to this visit, each stylized as the motions of some pagan priest celebrating some high and ancient ritual before the altar.

First she dismissed all of her servants, even the deaf - mute Rondo who obeyed her as a trained dog. Then, each night bruising her frail hands anew on the steel, she drew the bolts of her chamber and fastened the locks of earn casement. If some mythical observer could have hidden behind the arras he would have seen a strange thing; into each metal bolt, roughly and painfully scratched by hands unused to such labor, the sign of the cross had been inscribed.

Then she knelt for a moment before the oaken prie-dieu, clasping her fingers about her beads; mere habit now, for she had long ceased to pray. The mirror at the far end of the chamber gave back her reflection dimly, a shadow pattern in black and white; the black coils of her hair netted with thin lace, the close black of a mourning gown crossed by the clasped fingers of white hands on ivory beads, her face - drawn to the whiteness of bone, of alabaster-brushed with black silken brows.

A face made for softness and for love, but hard now and cruel, the eyes level with hate, the soft mouth drawn to a thin white line. A saint, transformed by the double lashes of grief and sworn revenge into a fiend from the pit.

Rising and laying aside her beads, the Contessa lifted the lid of a carven chest, and took a three thonged whip of braided leather. At the end of each thong, bits of razor - steel had been fixed; the leather was blackened and the bits of steel dulled with a dull brownish - red stain. She touched her fingertips to the steel and drew them back quickly; the sharp steel had drawn her blood.

She shrugged, disregarding the pain. In the leather grip of the quirt, crudely cut by an inexpert knife, was again the sign of the cross.

There was no answering creak as she drew back the bolt of the secret panel. This door was kept oiled and in perfect repair. A taper held high in one hand, she descended the stairs as noiselessly as her own shadow, her trailing skirts sweeping aside fresh cobwebs and sending small spiders scurrying into the cracks of the stone.

The brackish smell of stagnant underground pools came up to meet her. There had been a time when her delicate nostrils had shuddered at this smell, but that time was long past. She herself hardly realized how much she had changed from the young girl, afraid of every shadow, her frail fingers bleeding from the struggle with the then - rusted bolt, who had first come down these steps in despair and terror.

She paused and sighed. "Why do I come?" she asked almost aloud, and tike an echo cast back from the dank depths there was a whisper and a sigh, "Come."

Two turns of the winding stair and she came into an arched corridor, lighted with dim moonlight filtering down long shafts built centuries ago. The passageway was lined with remnants of a grimmer day; the rusted bars of a pulley still suggesting the strappado, a crisscross of bars like a hard couch, the grim green - bronze stare of an Iron Maiden. The Contessa barely gazed at these things which once had made her shudder; now they seemed familiar friends. She toyed, indeed,

with a moment's thought they could be put in order before she turned the final twist in the passage, where a steel grating reared from stone floor to arched ceiling. Taking the great key from the chatelaine at her belt, the Contessa unlocked the grating and passed through.

"Good evening, Contessa," said the man chained to the wall.

The Contessa bowed her head. "And to you a good evening, messire, she said in her melodious voice, whose modulation was so deep a habit that even the transformation of maiden to fiend could not alter it.

She surveyed the man before her; his arms encased in cuffs of iron secured to the wall by long chains that passed through a ringbolt there. His legs too were locked in anklets of steel joined by a chain. A tattered white shirt and dark - stained leather riding breeches were all his clothing, yet, as he bowed, his fair hair caught the gleam of the taper and the dancing shadow, on the stone wall seemed to reflect wide wings.

The woman, standing carefully beyond the furthest reach of the chain, let her eyes linger on the features, thin, sharp and subtly sensual. As he raised his head again, his eyes, blazing with some strange spark, crossed hers. He shuddered as if with some terrible pain.

The long look was almost like a lover's glance. Again the Contessa was shaken by the curious beauty of the chained man. Beauty? A strange word, yet beauty it was, the beauty of some restless caged eagle, beating its wings with the fierce despair and agony of its inhuman hunger.

But his glance fell first, though when he spoke his voice held a lilting mockery.

"You are beautiful this evening, madonna," he said, "I regret that I may not kiss your hand."

A spasm of indefinable emotion seemed to convulse her face. "So," she said abruptly, "kiss if you will," and extended her slender fingers, bruised and bleeding, to him. It was a mocking gesture, but he seized her hand in his and bent low over it, touching his lips to the hand. Then, abruptly, he struggled as if sudden madness possessed him, his chained hands crushing over her wrist, bringing them up avidly to his lips.

With a single swift gesture she brought up the whip and, wrenching her other hand free, lashed out with a single brutal blow. He flinched momentarily and in that instant she was beyond his reach again, her eyes flaming.

"I had forgotten," she taunted, "it is full moon and you - hunger!"

He stood slumped in his chains, not deigning to answer her mockery. At last he said, quietly, "Aye, full moon again. Are not your dreams evil, madonna?"

She shuddered as if to ward off the memory, but said, "I count myself lucky if you can do no more harm than this - to send me evil dreams!" A spasm of disgust twisted her mouth. Suddenly she stepped back and caught up the whip again.

"Angelo, Count Fioresi," she cried in a ringing voice, "You have fed on your last victim vampire!" She laughed aloud.

"Three months have I kept you in chains and watched your strength diminish and your evil hunger grow!"

Suddenly he strained wildly against the chains, but the spasm was feeble and soon he fell back exhausted, leaning against the wall and sagging.

"Once you could have burst those chains," she said, smiling in cruel triumph, "had I not carved the cross into each bracelet! Now even ordinary chains would hold you, I think!"

He propped himself up on his hands.

"Madonna," he said in a low voice, "my life is at your mercy; you might end it at your pleasure. None could blame you, if you sought my death. But why do you find pleasure in tormenting me?"

"Need you ask?" she cried in a high anguished voice - the last remnant of the young girl she had been three scant months ago. "You, who came to this castle as my suitor, beguiling my father by posing as the grandson of his oldest friend? How often he spoke of you, saying he felt, when he was in your company, that the friend of his youth had returned from the dead? He did not know how true he spoke!"

The Count shook his head.

"No," he said wearily. "If you must tell again that old sad tale, tell it truly. That is but old wives telling, that such as I return from death. We do not die, but live many times the span of mortal men, unless accident cuts off our life - or, or, we are barred too long from our other source of life."

Her convulsed face seemed to waver in the dim light.

"Be it so then. Your old friend, my father, sickened and died, then Rico my brother, of a wasting sickness. Last of all Cassilda, the sister who had mothered me when I was left motherless, was laid in unhallowed Earth - still you sought to wed me."

"Madonna, you call me a fiend - "

"Can you deny it?" she cried. "Can you claim to be man, you who have touched neither food nor drink in these months since I brought you here?"

"I have admitted I am not a man of your sort," he said, his head bowed. "My race is far older than yours, Madonna, perhaps made before your own God gave dominion to your kind. Like some beasts, we live - when we have passed youth - only by the blood of living things. Till my thirtieth year, I thought myself as other men. Yet I did not kill your kin, Contessa. And if I had; if

I had? Your eldest brother Stefano was slain in a duel with the lord of Monteno, yet Monteno's kin are honored guests here in Castello di Speranzo. I did not know." He seemed suddenly to writhe in pain - "I did not know, death was already in your kinfolk when I came here."

"You lie!" she cried out, and the lash whistled in the air as it caught the man across face and chest. He cried out hoarsely and the fiend smile crossed the girl's face.

"It gives me joy to know that you can suffer!" she cried. "Suffer as I suffered!"

The whiplash had drawn blood; she looked at the crimson drops with a strange gloating smile.

"Have a care, Lady," said Angelo, Count Fioresi, softly. "I sought the blood of men so that I might not die; you have come to seek it for pleasure."

She raised the whip again, then lowered it.

"Why can I not seek your death?" she cried. "Why did I not kill you then? What can I not rid God's sweet earth of such a thing as you?"

"And why are your dreams so evil?" he asked softly, "and why was it that once you loved me, Madonna? Your God has forbidden revenge to his faithful. Why could you not slay me, and leave me to his vengeance and hell - or to his mercy?"

She turned suddenly and fled down the passage and up the winding stairs. Her footsteps made crisp echoes in the night. And Angelo, Count Fioresi, man, monster, vampire, whatever he was, dropped his face into his hands and wept.

The Contessa flung her windows wide, shivering as the night wind blew the dungeon stench from her gown; she would have knelt, but the words of the vampire burned in her heart; God has forbidden revenge.

What have I become? she asked herself, almost in wonder. She lay down in her great bed, but she feared to sleep, so great was the encompassing horror of the dreams that visited her. It was some evil spell of the vampire she held chained, she told herself; yet so great was the terror at the nights of full moon that she dared not close her eyes. She lay there recalling how she had first trapped the evil thing in man's form which lay now in her dungeon.

When first he came to them he had been ever at hand. She thought it was Cassilda's hand he sought, for her sister was both older and more beautiful; yet he showed to Cassilda only a curious courteous kindliness. It was the kindliness which she could not now reconcile with the horrors. When her father, then her brother had died, she had wept, "I am ill - fated; you cannot want me now." He had smiled and said, "Perhaps, when you are my wife, evil fortune will weary of following you."

But it seemed as if some evil spell lay on them all in those days, for there were deaths all through the village, as if some mysterious sickness plagued them. At last even Cassilda died,

though the castle's priest, Father Milo, hid away her body from Teresa.

Angelo had come to her that day where she wept near the chapel - aye, she now, recalled, he had never stopped within the chapel doors here - his fair and beautiful face wrung with what had seemed to be honest compassion. Was it truly hell - black hypocrisy?

"Teresa, Teresa, I cannot bear to see you so alone!"

Now she wondered; what, indeed, would have happened, had she succumbed to his pleas? Could he indeed have come within the chapel? Her cross - signs had held him fast; could he have wedded her indeed?

Would, she not, indeed, have accomplished her purpose by binding him fast in Sacrament. . . ?

Father Milo, drawn and quivering with his own terror, had drawn her into the chapel that night, and signed her with the cross, then bidden her sit on his bench while he stood before her, his face taut with pain and horror. At first she had hardly listened to his rambling tale of strange deaths in the village, the marks found on the throat of her father and brother, the hint of some more dreadful horror surrounding Cassilda's death. Only slowly and incredulously did she realize what he was telling her - that these deaths were the work of a vampire!

"But this is only wicked superstition," she cried in protest, and he shook his head.

"No, it is the devil's work, done by one in league with that same devil!" Father Milo replied, his face drawn and white. Slowly, word by word, he had convinced her. Even then she had never more than half believed the dreadful tales he had told - that the Count had been seen to fly in the form of a bat from the windows of the old tower, that a holy woman of the village had smelled grave clothes and the musk of the coffin when he passed by; but when at last she believed, she had knelt before the priest, a passion of rage and terror surging up in her heart.

"What can be done?" and Father Milo answered slowly:

"The creature must die."

"Death alone would not serve!" she cried out in anguish, her face as white as her mourning veil. "I remember - I remember the night before she died, Cassilda came to my bedside and wept; and I - I did not know, why!"

Father Milo laid his hand on her head. "Bear what I must tell you now, with courage, my daughter. Cassilda died by her own hand, for fear of that same fate."

Teresa cried out in pain. "Then death alone cannot serve this monster! He must suffer - suffer as I and mine have suffered!"

"Revenge belongs to God alone," the priest rebuked. "I know not for certain, but I have heard that these monstrous creatures of the devil - cannot truly die, but live on in their coffins, rising to

seek the blood of living things. Daughter, I must travel to Rome, and seek dispensation to deal with this - this thing, so that we may be rid of him forever."

"You must go tonight."

"But first we must make all secure," replied the priest, "So that he cannot harm you nor destroy you as he has done to your kin. Be watchful, but show no change in your manner, so that he will not suspect we know him for what he is. Then, when I return, we can destroy him and send him into true death back to his coffin for God in his infinite mercy to punish or pardon."

Teresa covered her face with her hands. "A thing from the grave and I had loved him!" she whispered. "God's mercy? I would see him burn forever in hell!"

The priest crossed himself, shaking his head sadly. "It grieves me that you speak such evil words," he said in rebuke. "Can you set limits on the mercy of God?"

"For that devil, yes!"

"Yet a great saint said once to Satan's self, daughter: 'to thee also I may promise God's mercy, when thou prayest for it.' Think you, Teresa; the Count Fioresi is a valiant soldier and a gallant courtier. He has borne this devil's curse many years, and for him this must be true hell, cast out of God's sight. Can you deny that the merciful God might one day pardon him?"

"If I thought this," she cried out passionately, "then would I find a way to keep him ever from that pardon - to make him live and suffer as me and mine!"

The priest had answered simply, "You are overwrought, and small wonder. Pray God to forgive your thoughtless words." He gave her his hand to rise. "I must go tonight; come now to your room, where we must make all safe."

His hands then had cut the sign of the cross into each door and window, and he had sprinkled them with holy water. He had left the main door for last, but as he turned to it Teresa felt a sudden, stifling terror. Even to save herself from death she could not endure to be shut in by spells, even holy spells.

"This I will seal myself with my crucifix when I am within," she said, and as she spoke, her plan leaped full - formed into her heart.

"Perhaps it is better so," he said thoughtfully. He drew from his robes a small vial. "Give him this in his wine," he said, "and God forgive us, daughter, but at least it will send him to the first death. When I return from Rome we will deal with the vampire, with stake and fire." Reverently he gave her a rosary. "This was blessed by a great Saint and is an heirloom of my family. It will keep him from rising from the dead until I come again."

He laid his hand on her head in blessing. "And mark," he added severely, "forget these wicked thoughts of revenge! I command you, on peril of your soul's health, pray for the soul of this lost

sheep of God; pray for the soul of Angelo Fioresi."

But the words had fallen on a hard heart. She bowed her head, but cried out inside, "Never!"

With her own hands she prepared food and drink for the first stage of the priest's journey; but as she bade him farewell and his palfrey ambled away, she had turned away with the first cruel smile, crushing the little vial in her hand. "But you will not return," she murmured, "and vengeance will be mine!"

Then, turning from the door, she met the smiling eyes of Count Angelo, and forced herself to smile and give him her hand to kiss.

"Why has the priest left us?"

"To secure permission for our marriage," she replied steadily.

"Then we are alone here?" he drew her close, smiling. "May his journey be swift!"

But a curious frown had touched his forehead, and Teresa quailed and shrank from his kiss. "Not now!"

She lay awake that night, feeling like the chained goat staked out to draw the prowling mountain lion, the pale light from the open door lying across her face, waiting for the step and shadow, as

of black wings across her door. She clasped the cross in terror, thinking; it is true, then, that the vampire moves like cat or ghost on noiseless feet.

Slowly the shadow bent till the full lips touched her throat, then, as if she feigned waking, she murmured, "Angelo?"

"Love - "

"Wait," she whispered, clutching the cross in her hand, "the door is ajar."

"Surely not," he whispered, turning, but with a scurry of step she reached it, slammed it to, and jammed the bolt together with the crucifix. "Now," she cried, white as her nightgown, "let me see if you can leave as you came, Angelo, Count Fioresi - fiend, monster, murderer - vampire!" She rushed at him, holding the light aloft. He whirled like a beast at the death, making a dash at the sealed windows, the other door, in vain.

She said hi a voice that shook, "I never more than half believed, till now. It seemed a monstrous lie, but true, then!"

The Count stretched his hands toward her and she raised the cross to ward him away, but although she had expected him to rush at her, bent on murder, he did not stir. "Teresa," he implored, "it is not what you think. I beg - I implore you, hear me before it is too late."

But in her wrath and fury she would not listen. She caught up the whip and rushed at him, raining blows on his face and shoulders. He cried out and with one swift movement wrenched the lash from her hands and cast it on the carpet.

"Have a care, lady," he said in a low, voice, "I know many things you know not. And I tell you, Teresa, at this moment you stand in peril more deadly than mine. Will you hear me - hear me but a moment, for the sake of the father who ties dead?"

Hear you, monster, murderer, grave - ghoul?" she cried, and a bleak smile crossed his face.

"The old tale that I rise from a coffin of death? No, Lady, I have never known death, yet. Nor do I want to die, yet. But if you kill me now, you pass into peril, so hear me first."

He strode toward her again, as if he would seize her and compel her to listen, but she snatched up the crucifix from the prie - dieu and held it before her. He flinched away and she gloated, "So that much superstition is true?" He cowered, his lifted arm covering his face.

"True in part, Teresa; I cannot harm you while you bear that symbol of your faith, that sign that you are under God's protection* Yet for the last time I beg you - "

"Would you beguile me with words?" she cried. Crucifix in hand, she raised the whip and brought it down across his cowering form. He retreated a step and she followed, the lash rising and falling. "So you can bleed and suffer?" she cried in triumph.

"Even as yourself," he muttered, and slumped to his knees: Warding herself with the cross, Teresa wielded the lash, savoring each dull crack and the thin lines of blood that gradually crisscrossed his body. At last she stood gasping above him; he lay senseless and bloody at her feet. With wary glances, fearing his faint was feigned, Teresa ran to the chest and dragged the heavy chains thence. Her own frail fingers had scratched the cross in each bracelet with her diamond ring. Then she summoned Rondo, the deaf - mute, and with his help she dragged the Count down the long stairs and, shivering, locked the chains to the dungeon wall. Then, sick with horror and replete with the satisfaction of her first plan of revenge, she fell almost senseless on her bed.

"Throw the windows wide," die motioned to Rondo, "I am fainting!"

When he had left she slept, but her dreams were evil. She seemed to rise and pass like a silent wraith from the castle, and confused horrors of blood and dying faces wandered in her mind. She woke to discover that she had walked in her sleep and lay half - in, half - out of the leaded casements.

Has he bewitched me? she wondered, as she fell across her bed in the growing daylight and slept.

She woke at dusk and descended, shuddering, into the crypt; but her fear was somehow soothed by seeing her enemy in chains. There she began the custom of descending each evening into the

crypt . . .

As the days passed this began to absorb her more and more, so that she lived only for the moments when she came before the chained man, looked into his fierce eyes like a caged falcon, and when his pleas grew too disturbing, silenced them with the cruel lash into which she had now cut the cross so that he could not wrench it away.

The evil dreams still tormented her. The spell seemed to seize all the castle, for some of her servants fled, and others came to her with a tale of deaths in the village, but she brushed them aside like buzzing flies.

The maker of deaths is safely chained below, she thought; they cannot now ascribe them to supernatural visits, nor lay all deaths to such a cause! She was impatient and cruel with them, longing only for the moment when she would descend to gloat over her prisoner, then return to sleep the sleep of dead exhaustion.

The people of the village murmured because Father Milo did not return, and sent old women to her to beg that she should find another priest. "Would you command me?" she shouted, pacing the floor, and when the delegation had fled, she stared at herself in horror in the glass; they will think I am mad!

So three moons waxed and waned, bringing little change. Then came a night when Angelo barely stirred when she spoke to him, but lay seemingly senseless in the straw and chains.

At last he opened his eyes and murmured, "Gloat your fill at my despair, madonna. The end comes. But I see you passing further and further into peril. For your own sake I beg you; end this."

"Why," she mocked, "the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be! Shall I set you as priest in Father Milo's chapel?"

"I am no monster of cruelty," he said, "though I cannot blame you for thinking me so. Yet, Teresa, I am safely chained here. Why, then, the deaths of your people?"

She shrugged callously. "Such folk are always dying. Am I responsible for them, bodies or souls?"

The chained creature gave her a curious calculating look. "Once you would not have spoken so. Once you were gentle and pious."

"And if I am a fiend from hell, who but yourself made me so?"

Almost he laughed. "No, no, you have guarded yourself from me, but have you not made yourself a fiend?"

"Silence," she shrieked. "Silence!" She brought down the whip full across his face, and, with a

terrible cry he fell, blood breaking from his broken lips.

She let the whip fall, and knelt beside him. "He spoke truly; the end is near," she thought. "Here let him lie forever."

The crucifix she still wore swayed back and forth, casting a strange shadow on her prisoner, and a random thought touched her:

I have had my revenge. It is not too late to put aside my hate and do as Father Milo bid me; put an end to his sufferings and convey him to God's mercy. I need but strike him through the heart. He has said that he cannot rise from the dead. Even so I can pray for him the prayers for the dead, doing penance. Then will I, too, return to God's mercy. And Angelo - Angelo will pass to the dust he should long have been, and his soul settle for his crimes before God.

She had the strange sense that the dungeon was crowded with watching, waiting spirits; it was as if she stood at some crossroads waiting for a victim to be hanged or pardoned, and the victim was herself. She could cast aside hate, and seek mercy, or -

Her lips curled in a smile of terrible cruelty. Never, never could she forego the pleasure she had found hi this! No, let him surfer, let him suffer forever! Who had need of God's forgiveness? There were many outside God's domain!

"So it is too late," he said. She shrank back, but moving inexorably he sat up, gripped her

roughly and burst the chains from his hands, then from his ankles.

Teresa shrieked aloud, cowering back and starting to her feet. She tripped over the fallen lash and fell to the stones and Angelo, rising, strode to her and stood over her.

"I would have saved you," he said at last. "Think, Teresa, of your evil dreams. Had they not begun before ever I came to Castello Speranza? Long years ago, one of the women of the Fioresi married into the Speranza clan; and I knew that one at least of your kin would be - of the full blood of my folk. Had it been Rico, I would have taken him as esquire in my service, to guard and protect him. I - I would have saved you," he said almost inaudibly, "guarded you as a thing more precious than my life. I watched over you, kept you safe, guarded you in innocence of what you were, though I came too late to save your father - "

She shrieked in horror as the words filtered through her brain, but he went on remorselessly.

"When Rico met his death, I could bear it no longer, and in desperation, seeking only to guard you, I made it known to Cassilda. I - I did not know she would slay herself with the horror. I thought only that together we might guard you, till I could bring you safely to knowledge of what you were. You could have come to accept it - not as a thing of terror, but simply another kind of life; a different nature living harmlessly by its own laws. No, I did not slay your kin," he said. "I have lived so for two hundred years. Since the first year when I first learned what I was, no man has - died from my touch; I know how to - take life - and harm them no more than a leech's blood - letting. I am neither evil nor cruel, madonna, because I live as I must."

He bent over her. She recoiled, mad with fear, and thrust the crucifix at him.

"No," he said gently, taking her shoulders hi his hands, "it will not protect you now."

He went on, almost sadly:

"I was reared to fear it; it was instilled into my inmost heart and brain, that I might never touch one who called sincerely on God's mercy. While you were still ignorant of what you were, Teresa, while you were sincerely pious in your faith, I could not pass through the symbol of your sincere belief. And the cross which you carved on my chains, thinking when you did so that you would protect others from my evil was a barrier to me. But now you have grown evil. You have rejected the teachings of your faith. You cannot call now upon your God for protection. The cross is now, to you, only an empty symbol, and it will not hold me."

He ripped the crucifix from her throat, gazed on it sadly and laid it aside.

"Perhaps I never had a soul," he said wearily, "but you, Teresa, cast yours away. You are too much monster even to live among my people."

The last thing the Contessa ever saw was his face, torn with pain, descending into a crimson blur into which she fell like death.

Hours later villagers gathered to watch the Castello di Speranza crash down in flames, and none marked the quiet, scarred man who rode silently into the forest, bowed as if in long agony, crouched in his saddle with grief and pain. He never looked back at the rising flame, but rode with head bowed over the neck of his horse and muttered again and again, "Teresa! Teresa! Teresa!"

The Day of the Butterflies(1976)

Diana was a city girl, had always been a city girl and liked it that way.

She came through the revolving doors at half - past - five, pulling kid gloves over her hands. The soft kid insulated her hands from the rough touch of wall and door, as her stilt heels tapping in bright rhythm insulated her feet from the hard and filthy concrete pavement. Her eyes burned with the smog, but to her senses it was fresh air, a normal sunshiny day in the city. She bought a paper from a street vendor without looking at him or it, and turned for the brisk three block walk to the subway which was her daily constitutional.

And then - what happened exactly? She never knew. There was a tiny queer lurch as if the sidewalk had shifted very slightly either this way or that, and . . .

... the sun was golden and honey warm and the green light filtered through a soft leaf canopy,

lying like silk on her bare shoulders. Soft - scented wind rustled grass and caressed her bare feet, and suddenly she was dancing, a joyous ecstatic whirl of dance, in a cloud of crimson and yellow butterflies, circling like sparks around the tossing strands of her hair. She flung out her hands to trap them, pressed cold turgid grass blades underfoot, the chilly scent of hyacinths refreshed her nose, and as the butterflies flowed away from her fingertips she was . . .

. . . slipping down the first step of the subway, so violently that she turned her foot over hard and had to grab at the railing. A fat garlic - smelling woman shoved by, muttering "Whynya look whereya going?" Diana shut her eyes, opened them again with a sort of shudder. The sooty light of the subway struck her with almost a physical pain; it's very strange, she thought with confused detachment, that I never realized before quite how ugly a subway staircase is, how grimy and dark . . . and then the jolt, delayed, hit her.

My goodness, she thought, there must be something wrong with my mind! Because I was there, for just a minute, dancing! I didn't just smell it, or feel it, or see it, I smelled it and felt it and saw it, and tasted it and walked on it and touched it! It was a hallucination, of course. A thought pinked her cheek with tingles, did I really dance here on Lexington Avenue? Automatically she thrust her token into the subway turnstile.

A golden butterfly fluttered from her hand.

Diana let the man behind shove her through the turnstile. She looked up, dazed, as the brilliant flicker of gold danced up through the noisy dismal stench and was gone. A tiny child squealed,

"Oh, lookit the butterfly!" but none of the grim faces pouring through the maw of the subway station faltered or looked up.

Diana wedged herself into the train and grabbed, dazed, at a strap. The rattle and jolt under her feet was acutely painful, though she had never noticed it before. Her toes wriggled, craving the cold of grass; she breathed, trying to recapture hyacinth and choked on garlic, sweaty bodies fetid with chemical deodorants, hairspray, cheap perfume and soot.

But what happened? She thought wildly that she wasn't the kind of person things like that ever happened to! No, I dreamed it, butterfly and all, or there's something wrong with my eyes.

And so, as a child of the twentieth century, who never had believed anything she could not see, and hi these days of TV and camera dynamation and special effects, only about half of what she did see, she managed to close her mind against this incredible opening of the door.

Until the next time.

The next tune she was in the hurly burly of Perm Station, midmorning of a busy Saturday. Bodies pushed, shouted, stared anxiously at some destination known only to themselves. The public address system made cryptic noises distorted into improbable sounds. Diana hurried along, her gloved hands resting firmly on Pete's serge arm, her heels racing to keep pace with his stride. It was not that they were in any particular hurry, but all the surroundings screamed at them to hurryhurryhurry, and obediently they hurryhurried.

It was as rapid as a thought, the fading of the thick noisy air, the descent of silence . . . except for the gently rustling wind in the long dry grass at her feet. She was running, dancing in a whirl of jeweled butterflies, tossing her arms in wild abandon, the play of chilly winds against her bare legs and feet. . .

... she was not. The air was thick and harsh in her lungs, and she literally gasped at the impact of noise hi the moment before she felt Pete stop in his tracks and watch her with a frown.

"Something the matter, Di?"

She felt like saying "Yes, everything. This horrible place, I've just realized just how horrible it is . . ." but she didn't. That would be to give reality, to give preference even to that . . . that dream or hallucination or whatever it was. She moved her feet inside the tight shoes, sighing a little.

"No, nothing. I felt - it's a little hot and stuffy in here and I felt a little absent - minded."

Absent - minded is right. My body was here - or Pete would have noticed - but my mind went off on a leave of absence, heaven know's where my mind was. She asked, "Why did you ask, Pete? What did I do?"

"Well, you sort of stopped in your tracks, and I couldn't see what you were looking at," said Pete the practical, "and you sort of lurched a little like you turned your ankle. You all right?"

"Of course," she said, responding to the tenderness in his voice. Oh, she loved him, he wasn't just another date, he was the right one, the one she wanted to spend her life with, and yet, was anything here ever really right, after all?

No, thinking like that gave all this reality . . . that hallucination . . .

"Got something on your foot? Chewing gum, dog mess?"

"No," said Diana, scraped her foot backward and it was true. Who would see or believe a crushed blade of grass here in the noise of Penn Station?

"Then let's hurry and get our train," he urged.

"Is there really any hurry?" she asked in sudden rebellion, "except, maybe, to hurry up and get out of this ugly filthy station? Did you ever stop and think how ugly most of the city is?"

"Wouldn't live anywhere else," Pete said promptly, "and neither would you! Or are you getting homesick for the corned hills of Iowa or something like that?"

"Pete, you nut, you know I was born in Queens!" It isn't even nostalgia for some faraway and lovely childhood! But what is it, then? How can I be - homesick? - for something I never saw, never even dreamed? Maybe I've just had a little too much of a good thing. Surely the city is a

good thing, everything man ever wanted is here, culture, progress, companionship, even beauty, and Pete. . . .

"Pete," she said, "do we have to finish this shopping right now?"

"No, certainly not. You're the one who was in a hurry to pick out towels and skillets and things and put them away for the day when we find that apartment and get that license. But what shall we do instead, then?"

And all too accurately she foresaw the astonishment in his face when she said, "Let's go walk in the park - under the trees - and look at some flowers." But she knew he would say yes, and he did. It wasn't much. But it helped. A little.

And now she never knew, when she blinked her eyes, whether she would open them to the noise and roar of the city - or to the green and dancing world of the butterfly glade. In some part of herself she knew it was hallucination, aberration of eyes and mind, but . . . why did she, now and then, find herself clasping a butterfly, a flower, a blade of grass? But she did not deceive herself about why she put off, again and again, her promised visit to a doctor - or an optician - or a psychiatrist. Next time, she told herself, next time for sure. But she knew why it was always next time and never this.

If it's a hallucination a doctor would make it go away.

And I don't want it to go away!

She flattered herself that no one knew, and yet one day she emerged from a maenad dance to the sound of distant Pan pipes, her disheveled hair hot and sweaty on her bare neck - and then with the shock and jerk, feeling the pins taut in the French knot at her neck, her hands just touching the keys of her office Selectric, and the girl at the next desk staring.

"What's with you, Diana? I've spoken to you three times."

She raised her hands from the keyboard, unwilling to let it go this time, aware that she had lost the thread of the document she was copying. ". . . comprising that particular tract of land being the Western half of a section beginning at the point of intersection between the Northern line of 48th Street and the Eastern Line of Raymond Street, formerly called Beaver Street, as said streets are shown on the map and hereinafter referred to as Lots 13, 14 and 15 of ..."

What absolute, utter rubbish! she thought, cradling in her hand the cool softness of the tiny blue blossom, her fingers cherishing the tiny petals. She concealed it inside her palm from the other girl's eyes and knew that her voice sounded strange as she said, "I'm sorry, Jessie. A - a kind of daydream, I guess."

"It must have been a real doozy," Jessie said, "you looked all sort of soft and radiant. Who was the guy? Michael Sarrazin, or somebody? Or just Pete? If he turns you on that much, you're one lucky woman!"

Diana laughed softly. "If it was anybody, it would be Pete. No, I just - " she found the words hard to form, "I was daydreaming about a - a wood. A kind of grove full of flowers and butterflies."

She had expected a flippant comment from the other woman, but it did not come. Instead Jessie's round face took on a remembering look. "Funny. That sounds like what I did the other day. I went to see my Aunt Marge in Staten Island, and I took the ferryboat, and I thought, all of a sudden, that I was running on a beach picking up shells. It seemed so real. I could hear the gulls, and smell the salt, and I even thought there was sand under my feet bare feet, that is. Only the only beach I ever been to is Coney Island, you know, so it wasn't that, this was a beach like in the movies, you know." She laughed, embarrassed. "Funny thing happened later."

"Yes?" Diana felt a choking lump in her throat and her upper arms prickled goose flesh.

"You won't believe me," Jessie said, "but when I got home, I took off my shoes - I always take my shoes off first thing when I get home, and - "

"Yes?"

"You won't believe it. But there was sand in my shoes."

"Sand?"

"Sand. White sand. Like it was all over my rug."

"You're right," Diana said, "I won't believe it."

If I did, what else would I have to believe?

She might have written it off as frustration - for she was very much a child of the Freudian age, and repressions and frustrations were as much a part of her vocabulary as computers and typewriters, but there was nothing either of repression or frustration in the surroundings next time, for she and Pete were curled up together on the big sofa in her apartment, the lights were low and the music soft, but Pete was quiet, abstracted; she thought for a moment he had dropped off to sleep, and moved ever so gently to extricate her arm, but he murmured, not opening his eyes, "Golly, that wood smoke smells great - " and the implication electrified her, so that she jerked upright as if an electric current had jolted them apart.

"Pete - you too?"

He sat up, with the look she knew had been so often on her own face, but to his murmured disclaimer she charged, "Where were you this time? Pete, it's happened to me too, only with me it's a wood, a wood with butterflies and grass . . . Pete, what's happening to people? I thought it was only me, but a girl in my office . . . and now you . . ."

"Here, here, hold on!" His hands seized, calmed her. "But it's happened to me - oh, maybe a dozen times; suddenly I'm somewhere else, I know it's a dream, but it smells so damned real . . ." He looked thoughtful. "What's real anyhow? Maybe this is only one reality, or maybe our reality has something wrong with it. Look at us ... all packed together like in a hive . . . fine for bees, sure, but people? Is this the way a million years of Nature evolved man to live?"

Diana felt curious choked excitement; but felt compelled to cling to logic. "And you a city boy? You always said the city was the end result of man's progress, social evolution - "

"I said too many dam fool things. Yeah, end result, all right. Dead end."

"Oh, yes," she sighed, "I hate it so now. Maybe I've always hated it and didn't know."

"And maybe there's nothing . . . nothing abnormal about this daydream, or hallucination, or whatever it is. Maybe it's just our subconscious minds warning us that we've had enough city, that we've got to get out if we want to stay sane."

"Maybe," she said, unconvinced, and shifted weight as he changed position, bending to retrieve what fell from his lap.

It was a tiny brown - scented pinecone, no longer than her thumbnail. She held it out to him, her throat tight with excitement.

"Pete - what's real?

Pete turned the small cone tenderly between his fingers. He said at last, "Suppose - suppose experiences are only a form of agreements? Even the scientists are saying, now, that space and matter, and above all, time, are not what the material physicists have always thought. Did you ever hear that all the solid matter in a planet the size of our Earth could be compressed into a sphere the size of a tennis ball - that all the rest of it is the space between the atoms and the electrons and their nuclei? Maybe we only see the material universe this way - " he gestured at the room around them, "because this is the way we learned to see it. And now humanity is so overcrowded and our senses so bombarded with stimuli that the - the texture of the agreements is breaking down, and those little spaces between the electrons are changing to conform to a new set of agreements? So that we find that ice isn't necessarily cold, and fire doesn't necessarily burn, and the chemical elements of smog might be butterflies in the oxygen - "

"But what would make that set of - of agreements break down, Pete?"

"God knows," he said slowly, and she knew he was not swearing. "Sensory deprivation can drive a man's sense receptors to pick up very funny things - five hours in a deprivation tank, they found out, was the most a man could take without going raving mad. Maybe sensory overload could do the same thing. Maybe - "

But she did not hear the rest, for the world dissolved in a green swirl, and she ran, dancing, through the green glade. Only this time Pete was there, too ...

From that day she began to look for signs. Her boss paused at her desk to ask for a legal document she was typing, but before Diana could pull it out of her typewriter he cocked his head to one side and she heard, briefly, the twittering of a distant bird, and he shivered a little, snapped, "I'll talk to you later about it," and she saw him, dazedly, heading downstairs for a drink. In a sudden rainstorm she managed to be first in the crush for a taxi - and a soft, curling green oak leaf lay on the seat.

Is it happening everywhere, then? And does everybody it happens to, think he or she is the only one?

She found herself scanning newspapers for strange happenings, felt a curiously confirmatory thrill the night a news correspondent, straight from wherever the "front" was this year, came on the air, sounding dazed, with a story he tried to refer to, flippantly, as "the gremlins getting out of hand again." It seemed that eight Army tanks had vanished without trace, before the eyes of an entire regiment. Sabotage was suggested, but then who had bothered to plant half a dozen beds of tulips in their place? A practical joke of enormous proportions?

But Diana was beyond surprise. Her own hands were filled with flowers she had gathered . . . somewhere. . . .

It made the cover of Time, next week, when after a lengthy manhunt, a criminal serving a sentence for armed robbery was found only a mile from the prison. Questioned, he said, "I just

got into a mood where I forgot the prison was there, and walked out," while the guards on the walls swore repeatedly - and lie detectors confirmed - that no one had gone in or out, not even the usual laundry truck. And the man might have rifled a supermarket - only there weren't any in the locality - for his arms were filled with exotic tropical fruits.

All Pete said to this, when the story was shown to him, was "The fabric of this reality is getting thinner and thinner. I bet a day will come when every morning more of the cells in that prison will be empty, and they'll never find most of the ones who walk out. After all, their reality is a lot more unbearable than most."

He frowned, staring into space. She thought he had gone away again, but he only mused, "It's getting pretty thin. I wonder how long it will last, and where it will rip all the way across?"

She clung to him in terror. "Oh, Pete, I don't want to lose you! Suppose it does - tear all the way across - and we lose each other, or one of us can't get back?"

"Hey, hey, hey!" he held her, comfortingly. "I've got a feeling that whatever it is between you and me, it's part of a reality that's maybe realer than this. We might have to find each other again, but if what we have is real, it'll last through whatever form reality takes." He looked somewhat abashed as he added, "I know it sounds corny in this day and age, but I love you, Diana, and if love isn't real, I don't know what is."

She was hardly surprised when, though his arms were still around her, she felt the cool grass

beneath them, saw the green light through the trees. She whispered, against the singing winds, "Let's never go back!"

But they did.

But the fabric thinned for Diana daily. Shopping in the East Village for beads to back up an advertising display, she was struck by the look of blank - faced ecstasy, die impression of being elsewhere, on the soft preoccupied faces of bearded boys and long - haired barefoot girls. They can't all be on drugs, she thought.

This is something else. And I think I know what.

A delicate wispy girl, in a long faded dress, her hair waist length, looked up at Diana; and Diana was conscious of her own elaborately twisted hair, her heels forced high on fashionable platforms, her legs itchingly imprisoned in nylon; thought wistfully of green forest light and gleaming butterflies, bare feet racing through the glades ... no. No. I'm here in the city, and I have to live with it. They seem to be living elsewhere. . . .

The hippie girl smiled gently up at Diana and gave her a flower. Diana would have sworn she had not been carrying flowers. She whispered, "You know, don't you? Do your thing while you can, if it's really your thing. It won't be long." And in her eyes Diana saw strange skies reflected, heard the distant roll of breakers and a faraway cry of gulls from . . . somewhere? Jessie's beach? She murmured, "I know where you are."

The sound of breakers died. "Oh, no," the girl said sadly, "but you know where we ought to be. It won't be long now, though. They're trying to pave it all over, you know. Make it into one big parking lot. But it won't work. Even if they covered over the whole planet with concrete, one day it would just happen. The Great God Pan would step down off that statue in Central Park - the real one - and stamp his hoof down through the concrete, and then . . . then violets would spring up through the dead land. . . ."

Her voice trailed into silence; she smiled and wandered away, her bare feet treading the filthy pavement as if she already wandered on the prophesied violets. Diana wanted to run after her, into that place where she so obviously spent so much of her time now, but she forced her feet on her own errand. She and the girl were in different layers of time, almost in different layers of space, and only by some curious magic had they come within speaking distance; like passing ships drifting through fog just within hail, or two falling leaves just touching as they fell from separate trees. She saw the street through a blur of tears, and for the first time tried, deliberately, to breach the veil, to reach for that other world which broke through into this so unpredictably, and never when you wanted it. ...

Even as a city girl, Diana had never liked Wall Street. At high noon it is chaos, noise and robot like humans all alike and all perpetually rushing nowhere; a human ant hill populated by mimic creatures, in suits and ties of a pattern so rigid that they seem to have grown on the semi human forms. The rush and pandemonium assaulted her senses so violently that she stopped dead, letting the insect like mimics - surely they could not be human - divide their flow around her, as

if she were a rock in their stream.

Ugliness! Noise everywhere! Horror! She thought wildly, this world is wrong, a huge cosmic mistake, a planetary practical joke! If everyone who knew, everyone who's seen the real world, would somehow just say NO to all this, would just reach out all together, say, This is too much, we don't, we won't, we can't stand . . . then maybe those ugly skyscrapers would just dissolve, violets spring up. ...

Oh, listen, she implored, her whole body and mind and senses all one strained hunger, listen! If they'd only stop and see all this the way it really is, see what's happening to people who think it's real and think they have to live in it!

Time and space are only this way because we have made them this way, and we've made them all wrong! Let's start all over again and do it right this time!

She never knew how long she stood there, because for her the accidents of time and space had stopped. She only knew that everything she was and ever had been had poured itself into the one, anguished, passionate plea, listen! And then she became aware that hers was only one voice in a vast, swelling choral song. As perception slowly came back to her overloaded senses, she saw first one, then another and another of the rigidly suited forms stop, fling away umbrella and briefcase, then split like an insect shedding his chitinous shell and burst into humanity again. The veil of illusion shredded from top to bottom; skyscrapers thinned to transparency, melted and vanished, and the great, towering, real trees could be seen through their wavering outlines.

Through the dead and splitting concrete, a shy blade of grass poked up its head, wavered slightly, then erupted in a joyous not of green, swiftly blotting out the concrete.

Great green lawns expanded from horizon to horizon, as the sky quickly cleared to a delicious blue.

Silence descended, threaded with tracery of birdsong; one lonely, bewildered taxi horn lingered, questioning, and frantic, before it died away forever; in the canyons of Manhattan, the real Manhattan breaking through, men and women ran naked on the grass, flowers in their hands and garlands in their hair, as the jeweled butterflies flashed upward, flaming and gleaming in the sun.

Diana, sobbing with joy, ran into the throng; knowing that Pete was there somewhere, and Jessie, and the hippie girl, and children and prisoners and everyone for whom illusion had vanished. She ran on, shedding butterflies at every step, and wondered, once and never again, if the other world, the one that wasn't real, was still there for anybody. But she didn't really care ... it wasn't there for her anymore, and Pete was waiting for her here. She knew she would find him, and of course she did.

(1976)

Hero's Moon(1976)

"That could be him now," Feniston said.

Young Rawlins bent to examine the whirling flickers on the radar screen, trying to distinguish any clear pattern in the "snow" and chaos of interference. "Yeah," he said at last, "or it could be another sun - spot. I'm betting on the sunspot."

It was so quiet in the bubble - dome that the scrape of their shoes on the floor, the very brush of Feniston's starched tunic against his chair, sounded loud. That; and the soft mechanical beeping, burping, clicking, rattling and plinking of instruments; the background rattle and sputter of static from the screens and relays. But they lived with that, and they never heard it. Only some abrupt change, or the cessation of those mechanical tickings and pipings, would have been audible to them. They would have heard it instantly if one of those ticks, tocks, peeps, beeps or clucks had not sounded at its appointed split second. But not while each one sounded in its mechanical perfection.

Feniston was a neat straight man of fifty, his whole personality as combed and brushed and starched as his uniform, but the starch was beginning to show a pattern of thin fine cracks from tension and weariness. He didn't answer Rawlins, watching the younger man with an odd sense of detachment, as if neither of them were quite real any more. Psych Section would tell me it's just fatigue. I'm not so sure.

The events of the last few days, it seemed to Feniston, had worn a little of the new off the

Rawlins kid. Rawlins still had his Earthside tan, and nothing could affect the bounce in his step, but he moved with a kind of hesitation that had never been there before, and there was something new in his eyes. Not fear, not yet. But something.

And above their heads was a narrow, smoked - glass horizon, and outside all hell was raging.

There is no air on Charmides, and therefore no rain, no wind, no thunder. From time to time a small vibration beat up through the soles of their shoes, or there would be the tiniest possible brightening of the light in the dome. Otherwise, only the insane racing and flickering of their dials and screens, the epileptic jerking of the indicators, back and forth without any pattern, told them that there was a wild hell of electric storm raging outside. The fierce glare and the eternal, unstirring dust were unchanged. Earthmen think of storms in terms of roaring wind, noise, visual and sonic battering. So it's hard to think of it as a storm. But there's nothing else to call it. And that quiet hell outside had damped out the fragile electrical impulses which held relays together and had turned the bubble - dome, which was Relay Station Twelve, into a private universe no wider than a tomb.

And it is a tomb. . . .

There was a third man in the tomb, but he didn't count. Dead men don't, and Rubichek was very, very dead indeed. He was draped with a sheet because he hadn't been much to look at even when he was alive; and after a four - hundred - pound rock had smashed down on his spacesuit, he was a lot less to look at. Even though he hadn't been alive when the rock smashed on him. He'd been

fried alive first, when the insulation failed in his storm suit.

Feniston turned his back on the draped and sheeted form and began to walk around the dome, pausing to make brief notations on a clipboard in his hand. Rawlins watched him with barely concealed rage, as he patiently worked his way around the perimeter, and finally exploded.

"Reading - on - this - instrument - made - impossible - by electrical - interference. Reading - on this - instrument - made - impossible - by - electrical - good God, sir, how many times in the last three days have you written that all down word for word? How many times have you made me write it all down, every twenty minutes? Every instrument, day or night, every twenty minutes damn it, Feniston, why!

"Rule book," Feniston said, knowing it would trigger an outburst, and it did. Rawlins swung around and told him in a loud voice what he could do with his censored, deleted and otherwise qualified rule book. Feniston listened, concealing a dismayed amusement at the kid's command of obscenities. They've got some new expressions Earthside. I always thought cussing was unoriginal. Rawlins finished by demanding: "Isn't there any paragraph something, section umpty - ump, rule whatsit, that tells you what to do with a dead man when you can't even get through to report his corpse?"

"As a matter of fact," Feniston said, putting the clipboard back into its cubbyhole, "there is. Section Nine - four Alpha. You preserve said corpse with all due attention to decency and the religious preferences of deceased as far as said preferences are known to you, unless such

preservation shall endanger health, safety or morale, in which case the senior officer present shall at his personal discretion bury, burn or otherwise dispose of said corpse without further - "

"Oh, damnation!" shouted Rawlins, "you've got an answer for everything, every goddamn thing, and all the time Rubichek lying dead, just because of you and your forever - be - damned rule book - "

Feniston sighed, picked up pen and clipboard and returned to the meaningless task of checking his instruments. He thought, poor Rubichek, but it was an impersonal sadness. Neither of them had known the dead man more than a few hours; when the storm broke he'd been outside, servicing the air mechanism on his regular monthly rounds. Feniston was a little worried about the air system. Rubichek hadn't finished the servicing when he ran into trouble. And there were all those other Relay Stations he hadn't gotten to yet this month. He'll never get to them, now. Poor Rubichek.

And poor Rawlins. Poor Tommy. Like all the other bright - eyed kids, when they first got to the Alpha Centaurus system, all full of big - eyed wonder about their life - time dream, and to run into something like this, his first assignment.

And the kid had been so excited, under a veneer of grown - up calm, about his first station in the Service. Feniston's bleak, disciplined face went gentle. Like Mike. Feniston and his son had discussed their plans, on his last furlough, two years ago. Mike had already wanted the Space Service himself. But his eyes weren't quite good enough. Good enough had to be just a little

better than perfect, and Mike's eyes weren't, not quite. So he followed the old man into Comm Section. And he's coming out this month on the Astraea. He won't be the first of the second generation men in the Service. Not quite. But there aren't so many, at that.

He let Rawlins pace the floor, though it got on his nerves. There's a time to be tough with kids, and a time to let them think they're getting away with something. Rawlins' outburst hadn't been exactly the way for. a first - year man to talk to his senior, and discipline in the Section was not quite military, but close enough; on a planet like Charmides it had to be. So most of the time when Rawlins did it, Feniston slapped him down hard, the way he'd have done with Mike when his son was younger. But today, knowing that in some indefinable way the outburst had done them both good, he let Rawlins pace and snort for a while, then called a halt to it as naturally as he could.

"It's getting pretty bright in here. Want to adjust the darkeners?"

Rawlins went to manipulate the controls that adjusted the thickness and darkness of the opaque fluid between the two layers of the bubble - dome, shutting out the glare of midday. At the height of noon which lasted for thirteen and a half hours, Earth reckoning the smoked glass and dark fluid would be reinforced by steel louvers, encasing the dome like an insect's carapace.

He's still mad. But not too mad to do what he's told. He knows my report this time will make or break him in Comm. So he's learning - slow, but he's learning - to keep his temper. And that's as it should be. You can't make it in the Section without control. Whether it makes sense by Earth

standards or not.

"It's mealtime, Tom, but I want to get on the panel - it might clear for a minute, and I might be able to patch a message around by Seventeen and Four. Want to fix us something? Let's have some of the chocolate for a change, and break out some of that canned jam." It was a time, he knew, for small, morale - building luxuries. "I'm sick of that instant lye the Rations Board calls coffee."

Rawlins grinned. "You mean to tell me that after thirty years you can still tell what ration coffee tastes like?"

Later he took the panel so that Feniston could eat. The older man noticed that his face changed when he straddled the monitor bench, became grave, intent, responsible. The older man, spooning peach jam on a biscuit, watched him with genuine affection. He'll make a good relay man, someday.

"I'll eat as fast as I can, Tom, and get back on the board."

"Take your time," Rawlins did not take his eyes off the monitor. "No sense getting ulcers; you're hard enough to live with, as it is."

Feniston chuckled. "Hardly have time to get an ulcer now."

"Will you be sorry to retire, sir? Get back Earthside?"

"How do I know, yet? Thirty years is a long time."

"You ought to have had a comfortable desk job, ten years ago, sir. Earthside, or at least Port Major."

Feniston set his cup down with a bang. "You think that's what I wanted? Sure, I could have had a desk job, or retired five years ago with full pension, but they're still short of qualified men, and they were glad I didn't start squawking to retire. And I went into debt to get Mike into technical school so he'd be ready for the Service." His thoughts ran a familiar channel. "I'll retire when he can come out and replace me. You know it's this month - "

"You told me," Rawlins reminded him, laughing, "half a dozen times. I'll be glad when that son of yours does get here."

Feniston laughed with him and spooned up the last of the jam. "I'll take the board now; you'd better get some sleep before it's time to go on shift again."

Rawlins had slept and returned, and the darkeners had been twice adjusted against the brightening day, when Rawlins at the monitor roused Feniston from a brief doze on the lounge in the dome.

"I think this is really it. Come and see, sir."

Feniston came barefoot across the cold tiles and blinked at the screen. "Something out there, yes," he said at last. "Try it on visual."

Rawlins turned the knobs; blurred geometrical patterns chased one another across the TV monitor and cleared for a second into the litter of dust, rubble and rocks that was Outside. Then it dissolved into racing waveforms. -

"Can't tell anything from that."

"But I know I picked up something that doesn't belong there," Rawlins argued, "just this side of that pointed rock you always use for your sightings. Watch when it clears." They bent side by side in front of the screen, Rawlins fiddling with dials; then the TV screen cleared for an instant. It dissolved three seconds later, but Feniston's trained eyes had seen.

"Looks like a Twelve Bug, Tom."

Rawlins let out an explosive sigh. "Thank God!"

"So glad to have company? Even a Special Agent come trouble - shooting?"

"Sir, after the last few watches, with Rubiehek there, I'd be glad to see a cop come to arrest me

for his murder." Rawlins bit off the word and looked away from Feniston. "When will he get here?"

"No telling, in that thing." The Twelve Bug - Surface Individual Transit, Model Twelve - B in the Service manuals - was little more than a spacesuit equipped with caterpillar treads and a motor; they crawled along, powered by cheap unprocessed crudes, residues from the mines all over the planet. "In good weather, twenty minutes."

But it was two hours before the little bubble - shaped vehicle crawled into the airlock and signaled. Since the lights downstairs were not working - the emergency generator covered only the minimum services without which no human could survive an instant on Charmides - Feniston went down with a hand lamp. Through the thick glass of the decompression chamber, Feniston saw a tentacled monster emerge from the Twelve Bug and move toward the door. Heavy, overbalanced, it raised one arm, encased in the tool - tipped pressure gloves, to unfasten clamps and grommets; then a reassuringly human head emerged from the monster, a head with close clipped graying hair, features lined by years of hard living, hard thinking, hard discipline. He handed the huge Dayside helmet to Rawlins, who had come down the hatch after Feniston.

"Jesus, what a trip!" He shook his head inside the collar of the suit, easing cramped muscles. "Lucky I had my Dayside helmet in the Bug, or my eyes would have been fried. When I started, I expected to get here before Centaurus was over the horizon. It's hell out there, did you know?"

"Glad you're safe, sir," Feniston said curtly. "My name is Feniston, senior in Relay Twelve

Station - "

"Look, let me get the hell out of this straight jacket before you start spouting the formalities, do you mind?"

"As you wish," Feniston said stiffly. "Rawlins will help you out of your suit. One of us should be on the panel." He disappeared up the metal stairway; the stranger raised his eyes, but didn't comment. A chip still on his shoulder, Rawlins demanded, "What possessed you to leave Port Major on a day like this, sir?"

The man gave him a single clinical glance. "I didn't. I left before the storm hit Port Major."

"But - good God, sir, that means you've been seventy hours and a bit, on a five - hour run!"

"Right. And a Twelve Bug feels like a coffin from the inside. I'd appreciate a basin of water, a soft place to sit down, and something to eat beside Basic Nute pills."

Rawlins helped ease the man out of his spacesuit. "Make yourself at home, sir. My quarters are right through there. No showers since the main generator went off, but there's some hot water, and I'll fix you some food."

"Thanks." Out of his suit he was a tall, thin man of forty, in sweat - stained and filthy fatigues. "I'm Special Agent Martell - Paul Martell, rank of major. And I'll take you up on all of that as

soon as I finish check over. Do you suppose your hospitality could run to a suit of clean clothes?" He started, with dragging movements, on the mandatory checkout for leaving a spacesuit - on an airless world like Charmides you never knew when you might have to jump right back into it. So you serviced it immediately, dumping disinfectant into body - waste units, checking air - hoses, wiping rubber grommets with preservative. But Rawlins saw that the man could barely stand. "Go in and get cleaned up, Major," he said roughly. "I'll service the damn thing. Help yourself to anything that fits."

An hour later, bathed, shaved and dressed in some off - duty clothes of Rawlins', Major Martell lay stretched out on the sofa in the main dome, finishing his coffee.

"Before we get started, sir, what's the news from Port Major? We've been cut off for days," Feniston said. The major shook his head. "Not much. Remember, I've been on the road for days myself. Oh, the Astraea landed with a new load fresh from Earthside - greenest bunch of scared kids I ever saw. A bogey came within a few hundred feet of holing their shuttle, but before I left they were all on their feet and piling into Orientation One. By now, they're probably all on their way to their first stations - unless the storm hit Port Major before then."

Feniston did not even try to conceal his excitement. "Was my son among them? Michael Feniston, Junior?"

"Sorry, I just saw them in a clump. I didn't see any name labels. Is that your son?" He took the photocube from Feniston's desk and studied it a moment, then shook his head, frowning in a

good - natured effort to remember. "Sorry. I seem to remember half a dozen of those lanky, dark - haired kids; I suppose he could have been there, but I couldn't say for sure." Feniston set down the cube. "Tough luck, this storm cutting you off just when he's coming in. Even if he tried to call you from Central, he'd have found that all the relays out this way have been cut off by the storm. Now you probably won't hear anything till he's settled down at his first station."

"Well, that's the way the breaks run," Feniston said, trying to conceal his disappointment. "Well, Major, I expect you want to make out your report on the accident."

It didn't take long. When Martell had finished, he put the sheet back over Rubichek, with impersonal sadness. "Poor devil. By the way, I checked with Records before I left Port Major. He never did fill out a Form A - 14. So there's no need to wait for transshipment space; we can go ahead and dispose of the body. I suppose your units will handle it here?"

"Oh, sure. Even without the main generator working." Feniston saw Rawlins flinch. "What's the matter, kid? Seem cold - blooded?"

"I thought at least he'd be shipped back to Port Major for burial!"

"Not unless his family had requested it in advance, or he had. Like I said, I checked. That's a damn silly law anyhow," Martell said, "using valuable cargo space on dead bodies that belong in the disposal units. Sop to public relations, that's all," Martell said. Feniston looked at him in agreement. After the unspoken condemnation that had blown like a stream of canned air, cold

and sour, from Rawlins' direction for the last few days, it was good to have Martell's support. He saw the muscles move in Rawlins' throat, but the kid only cast a murderous glare at Feniston and bent to his work.

Disposal was a messy but, fortunately, a brief affair. Afterward they had supper in the dome, Feniston interrupting himself every few minutes to check the instruments. Rawlins ate little; Feniston, watching him with pity, wished there was something he could say.

Martell finally pushed back his chair, sighing. "I've made a pig of myself. You fellows in the domes live pretty well, don't you? Oh well, something pleasant against that beautiful trip I've got ahead of me. I wonder if I have time for a couple of hours sleep before I hit the road back? They say you can sleep in a Twelve Bug, but I wonder if the guy who put that in the manual had ever been in one?"

"Got my doubts about it." Feniston pulled down the clipboard and started on his rounds again. Rawlins sneered. "Sacred ritual under way again. You could write it without moving from your chair - nothing's working yet, and you know it."

"Can't tell till you try." Feniston moved a useless dial. "Major, why not stay till the storm clears? Start now, and you'll be three days on the road again; wait till it clears, and you can make it in five hours."

Rawlins' mouth twisted. "Wouldn't that be against your precious rule book?"

Feniston started to answer, but Martell, with one swift movement, rose and stood looking down at Rawlins. "All right, mister, out with it. What's that chip on your shoulder? You've been dying to say something ever since I got here. Say it, or shut up!"

Rawlins shot to his feet. He swung from Feniston to Martell, with a trapped, desperate earnestness. "Damn it, we could have saved what's - his - name, Rubichek, that poor bastard we just cut up and put down the unit," he blurted. "We could have saved him, and we didn't! Feniston might just as well have killed him! The way I see it, Feniston murdered him!"

The dome was silent. Feniston heard, for the first time in years, the futile cricket chirps, bleeps, poops, ticks and tocks of his instruments. "Tom, I went all over that - "

"Wait." Martell held up his hand. "Let the kid have his say.

"Look, Major, I know I could have reached him. It was just a question of rigging a couple of tackles - we've got the equipment downstairs. Then we could have switched off the surface wiring for a few minutes and gone out in suits. Sir, I was on the tumbling team in college, I'm damn near a professional acrobat, even in a suit; I know I could have reached him. Feniston wouldn't have had to risk his precious neck - "

"It wasn't the risk, dammit."

"Let the kid finish, Feniston."

"Since we'd both have been outside in suits, we could have cut out the gears in the air system and brought him up through the baffle. We would have had a fighting chance to get him up inside, and everything switched on again, before there was a direct nit - "

Martell held up his hand. "Spare me the details," he said. "I'm neither an electrician or a mechanic, and certainly no acrobat. I'll willingly concede that a proper rescue team could have reached the poor devil somehow. But you've said enough to convince me there was no negligence on your senior's part. Feniston, didn't you tell him why it wasn't possible to tamper with the dome mechanisms that way? And - how long have you been in Service, Rawlins? Surely you know the first rule is that both members must never be outside the dome at the same time - "

"Oh, the rules and regulations were coming out of his ears," Rawlins said passionately, "but I thought all rules were off when there was a life at stake! And there was, here! Rubichek died because Feniston couldn't let go of his damn rule book for ten lousy minutes. ..."

Martell's mouth was set. Feniston started to speak, but Martell gestured him to silence. "And suppose you'd been killed too," he said, "and Feniston was left alone here with two dead bodies to put into the disposal instead of one?"

"But I wouldn't have been killed - " Rawlins swallowed hard. His voice stopped working. Feniston put a hand on his shoulder, but Rawlins shook it off. "I suppose if I'd been out there,

you'd have let me lie there and fry?"

"I hope to God that decision never comes up," Feniston said steadily.

"But you would?"

"I'd have to. I'd hate it, but I'd have to." Feniston bit his lip. "You're not Earthside now, or in a nice safe dome on Mars. When you're out here, the first thing you learn is to live by the rule book. Or you don't live long enough to learn anything else." He turned away and went to the instrument panel, not looking back.

"Okay, dammit, so you'd let me lie there and fry! But suppose it was somebody you cared about! Your son, maybe? How'd you stick to your precious damn rule book then?"

Feniston did not turn round. He said, "They wouldn't let Mike and me work in the same dome. Just for that reason. There's just so much human nature can take."

Martell said, half aloud, "The Branson kids. It was my first year out here."

Feniston nodded, not turning, remembering, trying not to remember. He said, "Yeah, I was on the wire that night. I was a junior then at Seventeen."

God, yes, the Bronsons. Dave and - what was his name, the little red - headed kid? Toby, that

was it. Dave and Toby. Brothers. Not wanting to, his mind insisted on playing the tape again, obsessively; now he had started. The Bronsons had somehow, no one knew how they'd wangled it - Section Twenty - two wasn't on the books then - gotten assigned together to a dome. Feniston had been working the interdome relay the night Toby had gone out in his suit and somehow, God knows how, slid down a pile of rocks and broken his hip and - they found out later - his back. He lay out there and screamed for hours. God knows why he never lost consciousness. Begging, pleading. Then he got delirious and started talking to Dave over his suitcom like they were little kids back home. Every dome down the line heard it. Hours. Days. Rescue One made it about an hour after Toby stopped talking. And about ten minutes after Dave blew his brains out.

The dome had been darkened to maximum now, and the steel louvers closed, turtleshell, over the relay station. Martell went to look over Feniston's shoulder at one of the TV monitors.

"Looks like it might be easing up, now."

"Not really," said Feniston, looking at the newly cleared screen. "It clears up for a minute or two at a time, then starts again; there's a regular pulse to it. You can see Outside, if you want to, though."

"/ don't guess the scenery's much to look at," Martell said, with a wry grin. "I think I'll get that sleep - "

"God almighty!" Rawlins jerked as if he had been stung, and pointed. "Feniston, look-by the big

rock out there! I guess I must be coming unstuck, thinking everything in the screen is electrical interference! Do you see it?"

"I thought I did. Let me try to clear it up again - " for the maddening swirls had covered the monitor once again. Martell had dropped right out of their consciousness. Again they were a team, operating together at peak. "I think I've got it - I can't make it out. I thought it was a pile of rocks. Has there been another rockslide out there?"

"Maybe I'm crazy, sir, but I thought it looked like a crawler." They were kneeling side by side on the bench, systematically trying the TV monitors and the outside radar. "Look, that blip - try the signal channels, one by one, will you?"

Confusing sounds crackled and blipped in random, infuriating patterns. It was Rawlins who flipped the switch that made him jerk back his hand as if it had shocked him; through the random static a loud, frantic blasting, a scream, shattered the silence in the dome. Feniston knew that Rawlins' horrified face only reflected his own. He wet his lips. "God help us," he muttered.

"What is it, Mr. Feniston?" Martell's voice intruded on their consciousness, and Feniston said, "Rescue One Alert; Extreme Distress Signal, from the crawler out there. Loud and clear."

"Whatever's out there is in trouble, then?"

"Anything out there is in trouble by definition, Major, but that signal means extra - special

trouble." Feniston was frantically trying the visuals again. "No damn good. Pull the louvers - put on your Dayside glasses first, dammit! Major, get your Dayside glasses on, or - with respect, sir leave the dome. Get downstairs."

Moving fast, Rawlins obeyed, while the major, whipping on his Dayside glasses, squeezed his eyes against the hellish brightness.

"By the big peak - my God," Rawlins almost whispered. "Look at that!"

Across the glaring, unstirring dust of Charmides, they could see now; a metal craft lay tilted sidewise, tractor treads up - ended, like some monster insect spilled helplessly on its back. Feniston sucked in his breath.

"God, those poor devils!"

The fierce sheet - lightning, never slackening, came and went with a searing glare. Feniston, his eyes watering, pushed the button that closed the steel louvers, feeling the comparative darkness with relief. He went to the transmitter and, without much hope, started sending. Voice reception would be drowned by static; this was the archaic dot - dash, electrical - pulse language, kept for just such emergencies. Static would probably drown it out too, but he had to try.

"Relay Station Twelve calling, crawler, calling crawler - come in, crawler. ..." He sent the message again and again, his nerves screaming with the relentless, automatic shrilling of the

Extreme Distress Signal, which, preset, would keep blasting on all frequencies until someone answered it. It was a long time before the static gave them a returning trickle of weak dashes and dots. "Relay . . . need assistance . . . crawler Fourteen - oh - nine, down in sector . . . need assist. . . ."

"Crawler, we have your position, we can see you from the Relay Station. Can you make the dome? Have you spacesuits and ground equipment?" He waited, endlessly, for an answer that did not come. Rawlins fiddled with the receivers and managed to lower the Extreme Distress blast to an endurable ear level, making the joke all the new men thought was funny, about an extremely distressing signal. "Dammit, why don't they answer?"

"They may be answering, and the static cut out their answer," Feniston said. "Or, of course, there may not be anyone alive in there - or anyone in a condition to answer." Feniston went to the relief map of the surrounding terrain and marked the crawler's position in erasable crayon. "Those crawlers don't just turn over. Probably the cliff above the road crumbled, and everybody inside is smashed to hell."

"Then who answered your signal?" Martell asked, but it needed no answer. The answerer might now be unconscious or dead inside the smashed crawler, or think himself safer inside an insulated crawler than he would be trying to make it to the dome in an ordinary spacesuit. Feniston was trying bands again, hopelessly, one by one. Abruptly, like a special miracle, the static momentarily quieted, and from one band came the first human voice the men in the Relay Station had heard in days.

"This is Rescue One. Rescue One. This is a special emergency band; state the nature of your emergency or get off this frequency at once."

"Rescue One, this is Relay Station Twelve. There is a downed crawler directly visible from relay windows, emitting Extreme Distress Signal. Inhabitants do not reply to call." Feniston went on, quickly reporting position, time and local conditions before the worsening storm should cut him off again. The voice at Rescue One said, "No crawler is scheduled to be within two kilometers of Relay Twelve, but someone may have been navigating on instruments that went out in the storm. We'll investigate when we can."

"How long?"

"No promises; we're snowed under here, and we have emergencies calling for help, men we know are alive. If you get any acknowledgment from them again, call us with the data. Otherwise, we'll assume they're dead or dying and leave them till we have the live ones rescued. Now get off this band, Relay Twelve, we're swamped. Rescue One, out."

Feniston watched young Rawlins pacing the floor, staring at the steel shutters. "Can't we do anything?"

"The young hero, raring to go again?" Martell frowned at Feniston. "Are you game for an extra hour on shift, Feniston? If you can run things awhile, I'll take Rawlins and go out. Maybe we can

find out, at least, if there's anyone alive in there and get Rescue One to put them on a priority."

Feniston consulted the chronometer. "Oh, sure," he said, "I can work straight through Tom's shift, if I have to; mark it down as Emergency Status. Go ahead."

He heard them go clanging down the metal stairway and felt, suddenly, very old and tired. They didn't even consider me for the rescue work. Oh, sure, it makes sense to pick the younger man.

But it would have felt good, rules or no, to do the human thing for once. To get out there, all of us, leave the station to look after itself and fight the black glare for those men's lives. . . .

And they didn't even ask me. . . .

Time crawled by grimly, stretching minutes until they felt like quarter hours, and hours into days. Now and then Feniston put on dayside glasses and drew the shutters back, scanning the burning rocks for some sign of the two suited figures. Once he saw them, crawling slowly between two great rocks, then lost them again in the shadows.

He followed them a little while longer through the confused, flickering shadows of the TV monitor, then lost them once and for all. Time crawled on, stretched out and finally lost meaning and merged into eternity. Hours later, when the steel shutters had been drawn back and the dark fluid adjusted to opaque the dome, he heard a noise downstairs at the airlock, then dragging, uneven steps from the hatchway. Rawlins, filthy and exhausted, hauled Martell into the dome.

"No good," muttered Martell, and slumped; Feniston sprang to help him into a chair, and he lay there collapsed, not moving. Rawlins, too, looked dead beat.

"Hell out there . . . ," Martell whispered, "almost got fried by - close hits. Got within half a kilometer and I - slid. Pulled muscle - back. Hadn't been for the kid - still be lying out there."

Rawlins straddled a chair, his head slumped on the back. "Crawler's turned over - door jammed shut, need a torch to burn them out - I heard them hammering inside - alive, all right - later I'll take a torch and go back - "

Martell pulled himself painfully upright. A kind of respect was mingled with his annoyance. "You don't give up easy, do you?"

"Not with lives at stake. Hell, no, sir! You want to sit and watch them die?"

Martell groaned and lay back. "In my case it's academic; until that ligament in my back heals up, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to catch hell from Central. A few hundred feet more, and you'd have had to leave me out there." He smiled grimly. "Feniston, the damn - fool kid half carried me in. Rawlins, I'm sorry, it was a good try, but there's nothing more we can do. We'll call in and tell Rescue One that they're alive in there and that we've done all we can."

Before Rawlins could muster the confused words that were gathering, Feniston explained it

again, gently. "Tom, we don't have rescue facilities here. We've got to leave them for Rescue One. I know how you feel - "

"The hell you do!" Rawlins had gone white under the dirt on his face. "You don't know a goddamn thing but your stinking rule book!"

"Look," Martell said, "in the long run, regulations cover situations with the greatest good for the greatest number - and the least danger. Charmides is short of qualified men, but it's better for two men to die waiting for Rescue One to get around to them than for a well - meaning amateur to take a hand and have three corpses to bury."

The color had returned to Rawlins' face in irregular patches, and white showed all around the pupils of his eyes. "You damned - monsters," he all but screamed. "You stinking, inhuman - "

Feniston knew the kid was hysterical, but he, too, had had all he could take.

"That's enough, mister. Get down to your quarters and get some sleep. You go on shift again in two hours. Damn it, that's an order. Move!"

Rawlins didn't move. Feniston, thought, almost incredulous, he's going to cry. But he didn't. Finally he turned on his heel, and his feet clanged on the metal stairway.

Poor, damned fool of a kid. . . .

Martell said it aloud. "Poor kid. Damn - fool kid."

Feniston covered his face with his hands. He finally said, mastering the curious pain, "He'll get over it."

"Yeah, I know. Someday he'll be just like all the rest of us, learn to line it up like double - entry bookkeeping. With reason, logic and good sense on one side, and common humanity on the other. And he'll even sleep nights after he learns it."

Feniston didn't look around at him. He only said, "There's some codeine in the medix box. I'd better get you some for your back, Major."

Martell dozed feverishly on the sofa; Feniston wearily went through the rounds at his panel. He was ready to drop; he had worked sixteen hours straight. At the end of the two hours' grace he had given Rawlins, he buzzed Rawlins' quarters, thinking longingly of a shave, some hot soup, and a good long sleep. Yeah, I'm getting old. Where the hell is Rawlins?

There was no answering buzz from below; Feniston swore, and Martell opened his eyes, started to sit up, winced and didn't. "Where's the kid? Still playing Achilles - sulking - in - his - tent?"

"Probably dead asleep," Feniston said slowly, "but this buzzer would wake up the Sphinx. Maybe it's gone out of service. With the main generator out, nothing works right." He was

beginning to worry. In the Service, quarters had doors. On an airless world where you lived in domes, privacy meant sanity. But the doors had no locks. So if your junior went stir - crazy and tried to suicide, he couldn't lock himself in to finish the job ... he hit the buzzer hard and repeatedly, swore, clanged down the metal ladder and banged, hard, on Rawlins' door. "Rawlins! Hey - Tom, damn it, you're on - shift! Get the hell up here!"

He thrust open the door. The bed was dented, not slept in. Feniston retraced his steps, an awful suspicion growing on him.

His own quarters were bare and shipshape; the tiny galley empty and clean. Finally there was nowhere else to look, and Feniston's steps dragged as he turned toward the airlock room.

Empty, but the light glowed on the panel.

WHEN THIS LIGHT IS ON

SOMEONE IS OUT.

DO NOT FASTEN DOOR

FROM INSIDE.

And Rawlins' spacesuit was gone.

He didn't have to tell Martell what had happened. The major swore, unprintably. Feniston slumped.

"What could I have done? Short of putting him under arrest in advance?"

"I know, damn it," Martell muttered. "I couldn't be too rough on him. Damn kid saved my life."

"Well, it's out of our hands now." Feniston, shaking with fatigue, dropped on the bench. His body felt as if it was permanently molded to it. He pulled down the log and wrote down the time, adding: "Unable to assign panel to second officer account - " His handwriting, he noticed with the glassy clarity of a brain fatigued almost to breaking point, had gone illegible. He braced his hand and printed in block capitals: RAWLINS AWOL.

Martell said, "Feniston, you've been working sixteen hours straight. You'll keel over. Can I take the panel?"

"Good of you, sir. But - against regulations to let an outsider on the panel. I'll get some wakers from the medix box." He went and swallowed the drug, waiting for the burst of energy. This is against regs too, except in emergencies. Well, we've got one hell of an emergency.

I had such hopes for the kid. As if he was filling in for Mike. And for his own sake, too. For the time when I wasn't around any more.

Martell muttered, when he came back, "I wonder if he realized we'll have to send Rescue One after him too?"

"I don't know what he thinks. Or if he thinks." Feniston hit the button. Miraculously, there was a clear channel. For once, Feniston wished there hadn't been. But he knew what he had to do, and he did it. His voice faltered a little as he reported Rawlins AWOL. It's just fatigue, he told himself. But he knew it wasn't.

Time wasn't time any more. Martell dozed, pain and codeine winning out over anxiety. Feniston stayed awake, half sick with the reaction from the wakers in his system, mingled with anger. Once he tried to pick up Rawlins on the TV monitor, but the bubble - dome's own revolving shadow cut off the light. Radar picked up a small, just - moving fleck that was about the right size for a man in a spacesuit. As the hours crawled by, Feniston's anger mingled with fear. Against his own will, something of the rage, the determination of Raw - tins' fight with death got through to the older man.

He felt an atavistic, almost savage approval as that little fleck crawled buglike across the screen. Every inch was a half mile nearer, across the crackling hell out there. A hazard surmounted. A margin of safety gained. It was a purely human reaction, logic aside, and Feniston didn't try to fight it. And as the little fleck neared the dome again on the return journey, for the first time in his thirty years Feniston forgot his panel checks. The last hundred feet were the worst. Feniston had exhausted his supply of desperation. He breathed with the flicker of light that was Rawlins

on the radar. Easy now . . . watch the rocks out there . . . if this was a house you'd be on the front lawn . . . he's going to make it back, by God he's going to make it. . . .

Roughly he went and shook Martell awake. "Open the shutters! Can you get him on visual?"

Martell hobbled to the control, groping for his Day - side glasses. "Can't see - oh, God, look what that crazy kid did! He took my Twelve Bug - wouldn't hold all of them, so he's adapted the crawler panel - they're riding on top of it! Rawlins and - one, two - three of the men from the crawler! On one damn Twelve Bug!"

Another charge against him, Unlawful use and adaptation. . . .

"He's rigged a lightning deflector - yes, damn it, I know as well as you do ... Feniston, my God, look at that crazy kid - "

"Told you he was a clever youngster," Feniston growled. But he didn't come and look. He didn't look at all.

And then it was over. Quietly, like an anticlimax, Feniston heard the airlock open, the hiss of the decompression room, and four men struggled up the steps into the dome. Rawlins and another man were carrying a third between them; the fourth man was limping, but he was on his feet. Feniston turned from the panel.

"Well, Tom!" It was welcome, grateful prayer of thanks, and unutterable weariness, all in one.

Rawlins smiled. His clothes clung like wet wash to his body. He wiped his face with a dripping sleeve and said blissfully, "I made it, sir."

The third man straightened. "Maydon, sir. I thought we'd had it for sure. He almost killed himself getting us out." He gestured to the man Rawlins had helped to carry, now lying inert on the sofa. "I thought sure the kid here wasn't going to make it, but now I guess he's got a chance."

Feniston said briefly, "I guess we can look after you all here until the men from Rescue One make it. Do any of you have a cert to fix a generator?"

"Yeah, me," Maydon said, staring at Rawlins. "You mean you're not from Rescue One? Man, I want to shake your hand!"

Rawlins gleamed at Feniston as Maydon wrung his hand. "I told you I could do it, sir! Regulations be damned! I told you - "

Maydon stopped dead. He dropped Rawlins' hand and stared, saying slowly, "Hey, you mean - "

"Later, Maydon," Feniston said. "Go below, Rawlins."

"You damn old sourpuss," Rawlins burst out, "All right - so raise hell, raise hell because I

walked all over your precious rule book. I saved three men's lives. Can't you get that through your damned thick head. I saved three lives! And will you have a look at this other kid here before he dies on us? Or is that against the rule book too?"

Feniston bent over the wounded man.

And froze there. It's just an insane, obscene nightmare. And now, at last, after all this, I can wake up -

But he didn't. Gripped by nightmare, paralyzed, Feniston saw the wounded man's face. Crushed and dirty and bloody, eyes closed in weakness and exhaustion, Feniston saw the face of his son Mike.

"No," Feniston said, thickly, "No! Oh, God, Mike!"

Rawlins was so near collapse himself that he absorbed the shock without surprise. "... glad," he mumbled, "heard nothing out of you for a month but Mike . . . maybe take the curse off ... have a heart. ..."

Mike Feniston opened his eyes. To an impersonal watcher - if there were any - he would have been only a nice - looking kid of twenty or so, who should never have been brought all these millions of miles from Earth to be smashed and left to fry inside a broken crawler in the hell of Charmides. He looked at his father without curiosity, as if the last hours had held so many

shocks that nothing could ever surprise him again.

"I made it, Dad," he whispered through bleeding lips, "only I goofed. Guess you won't be very proud of me, goofing up the works first thing. . . ."he whispered, and died.

Rawlins' tears rolled down, unashamed, and fell on Mike's face. "God! I'm so sorry, sir, so sorry - I did my best - I'd have risked my life twice over - "

"You did just exactly that, didn't you?" Feniston let go of Mike's hand. It was cold, now, and limp. "Quite the hero."

"I was glad to do it, sir." Rawlins, for all his filth stood there, somehow shining. "I like to think anyone in the Service would have done the same thing."

He means it. Feniston thought. And realized for the first time how the old cliches could seem, somehow, new and meaningful, with bright new sharp edges on them. He breathed deep, feeling the hurt down where pain still had meaning, knowing that his next words would sear away that shining thing in the boy forever. He had never hated anything so much in his life.

"Major Martell, I request that you place Rawlins under arrest. Reasons: general lack of discipline, insubordination, direct defiance of an order, and unlawfully modifying equipment outside the regular field of his duty." His mouth was dry, empty of words. Martell's face was compassionate, but Feniston, floundering in his own pain, saw only Rawlins. The shine had gone

out of the young hero's face; now he was just a beaten, exhausted kid.

"I - I - did I hear you right? Arrest? For saving a - for saving three lives?"

Martell rapped, "For risking your own life, almost making it four deaths, and unauthorized use of a Surface Transit Twelve - B. You were dumb and lucky, Rawlins. But out here you don't gamble on dumb luck, or heroics! Nobody gets a second chance out here, and you had yours!"

"I - " Rawlins looked around for something, someone, but there was only Martell, like a judgment of God. Feniston knew he would never forget that despairing sweep of Rawlins' head around the dome, as if appealing to a higher court for justice, before Martell took him by the arm, not unkindly.

"Better get below, mister. You'll be going back to Port Major with me - and probably out on the Astraea, return trip to Earth."

Rawlins stumbled on the metal rung. "Okay," he muttered, and Feniston knew that the whole dead load of fatigue was finally caving in on the kid, crushing him at last. "Okay. All right if I get a little - little sleep first? I'm dead."

And as he stumbled down the stairs, Feniston heard the sobs break out, thick, exhausted sobs of a hero beaten down to a whipped kid who still couldn't figure out what had hit him - - and probably never would.

Blind with pain, Feniston turned to Maydon. "You're certified. You take the panel. Emergency," he muttered. He felt his face crumple as he looked down into the face of his dead son. Like Rawlins' dream, his own life had crumbled into the dust and rubble of that quiet hell that was Charmides. He pulled a blanket over Mike's face.

And they won't even let me stay here to die. . . .

Mechanically, under the dimming glare, he adjusted the darkeners; the black sky of Charmides opened up, endless as space itself, over his head. He looked over his son's body into the blackness, but he didn't see it.

"I had two sons, really," he said in a hoarse, old man's voice, to no one in particular, "and today I lost them both."

He put his arm over his eyes. He would be very glad to get back to Earth.

(1976)

The Engine(1977)

I am hating the Engine.

Yes of course I know that it is the miracle of our century, that no man, and especially no woman, now suffers from deprivation as they have done from the dawn of history. It certainly was a barbarian thing, to leave the satisfaction of an instinct so vital to the chance clumsiness of mutual attraction or purely subjective emotions, or to deny it, perhaps, to those who need it most. The Engine takes care of all that. It reliably monitors all the reflexes, even to the reddening of the ear lobes and the painless contractions of the womb, so that nothing is left to chance.

A half-hour treatment on the Engine twice a month and all that tension and neurosis is ended forever. The neo-Reichians proved, a long time ago, how valuable it was, but not until the genius who invented the Engine could we free ourselves from the kind of deprivation that led not only to neurotic behavior and hysteria but to physical pathologies such as cancer and social pathologies such as war.

But I am still hating the Engine.

It is not painful this time, it has not been painful since I was twelve or so. The Med says my responses are boringly normal. Yet I wonder if all women feel, as I do, the numb terror and humiliation when feet are locked up into the stirrups and the sensors snake down to attach themselves to the areas richest in nerve endings.

I go to the trouble of reading the little booklet the Meds will give you, if you ask, about

understanding the Engine, even though my Med warns against it. "Don't intellectualize," he tells me; "simply give yourself up to the physical experience. It is completely programmed and monitors all your responses. You don't need to know how or why it works. Simply give yourself up to it. It is more beneficial that way."

Yet I read the book, finding to my chagrin that it only gives diagrams of nerve - fiber bundles and anatomical drawings that I find too grotesque to look at. I was hoping for something to explain the resentment, the hatred, the wrath, but nothing of that sort, just stories of all the ailments women had had before this century, ailments directly traceable to the lack of the Engine.

I am angriest when I have to take the main appliance in my hands and insert it myself. Of course now I am sticky with my own secretions and the mechanical lubricant that the sensors supply in precisely optimum amounts, compensating for lack or oversupply. I hate the smell of the mechanical lubricant, the smooth soft slickness between my fingers. Loathsome, like some animal. Yet once I program for mechanical entry I cannot endure watching the slow, seeking approach, the numb nuzzling, the sudden hard shock so that I hear myself screaming like the women in the other cubicles. Then the worst is over. I try to relax and let the Engine monitor the responses I cannot control or resist. Even that I resent, resent the way it takes control of consciousness, so that I writhe, I gasp, cry out, scream like the other women I can faintly hear, until the moment when even sound blacks out. I am boringly normal, the Med declares. I have had preorgasmic treatment only once or twice since I was fourteen. And only two or three times do I attempt to resist the Engine, experiment with inhibiting response, and the Med says most

adolescents do that once or twice too, simply a way of experimenting, testing their own responses. After all, they remind me, it does not matter, the sensors are programmed to occasional resistance, they can monitor it in skin tension and internal pulses, and they are programmed to linger as long as needed on manipulations of nerve - rich areas, which finally diminish even the most determined resistance.

And after this the responses and detensioning are so powerful that one is lassitudinous and weak, too weak to walk, and I find it worse humiliation to be helped gently out of the cubicle by a Med and given stimulants in view of the waiting line of women outside the cubicles, twelve year - olds frightened or grinning in bravado before their early treatments, married women coming in for detension monitoring weekly, menopausal spinsters for the more frequent treatment, which prevents the physical and nervous degeneration that used to set in at that time.

Once I apply for exemption. Sometimes women are exempt because of low vitality or ill health, and I wonder if my hatred of the Engine betrays some such unsuspected condition, when I am perfectly well aware of how beneficial the treatments are. I take all the tests, watch them checking my psych profile, actually monitoring, live rather than by sensor, one or two treatments. I am so nervous at the thought of the living monitor behind the controls - that I resist the Engine and have to be given reprogramming for resistance and preorgasmic treatment for the first time since I was fourteen. But they say that is normal too under the circumstances. The Meds are kind, as all androids are always kind. But afterward they show me the spiked curve of those boringly normal responses, and then show me the flattened ones of women who have legitimate exemptions, who cannot respond even after manual programming and preorgasmic

treatment. Such women comprise three point two in a thousand, they tell me, and most of them are heart cases or chronic low thyroids or severe mental retardates. I don't mention hate. What is the point of mentioning a purely subjective reality?

Lorn is deviling me again to marry him. I remember that marriage is a legal exemption. It might be worth trying. We apply for marriage permits, have our psych profiles checked and our legal status reregistered, apply for joint housing. I go in for my marriage exemption and am warned to come in every seven days for detension monitoring. I am told, to my shocked amazement, that I am always free to request extra sessions up to the legal maximum of three times a week. Again I wonder if I am unique, the only woman to feel this resistance and hatred. But I cling to the notion that I need never go on the Engine again, if detensioning is complete, while the marriage endures.

Lorn is very much in love. I try to match his eagerness. He is sweet, companionable. The Engine, I know, has made marriage less risky; no man now needs to marry for the detensioning and physical relief which the Engine can legally give him. I am shown drawings of the male models so that we will know about one another's experience. I am also told that now there is less pressure on a man's virility, since the Engine is always there to supplement detensioning to the exact level necessary. The men's model is even more grotesque, round and neutral, pouched, plastic pink and obscenely soft. It has fewer auxiliary sensors because the male erogenous zones are more narrowly located.

We are together. For a moment I wonder if I can respond to him as readily as the computer -

controlled sensors do, but he seems content. I am startled to see that men, too, cry out and writhe in the grip of the reflexes. The smell is subtly different from the mechanical lubricant, but Lorn tells me that is imagination, the chemical composition is precisely equivalent, and synthetic hormones are exact equivalents. I feel very tender. I am surprised and excited when he does not discover the richest nerve endings as the sensors do, but the very excitement makes me respond. I am ashamed to cry out as I do in the cubicle, but I find myself weeping, and he is dismayed. I tell him truthfully that it is from happiness. I love him. Lorn is my freedom.

I go for detension monitoring. The Med says it is not quite complete, and recommends - it is not compulsory - a treatment; I refuse, and he prescribes a relaxation exercise. It is better with Lorn the next time, even though I am troubled. If detension is not complete they will put me on the Engine again. I cry, I beg him for some of the nerve touches which the computer has discovered are my most responsive. He does his best, and this time I am sure it is complete.

I am completely happy. I go to work; Lorn and I sleep together, eat together, experiment with manual cooking - Lorn thinks it is not sanitary, but I tell him that for thousands of years humanity lived on such foods and substances. They have a subtle, different flavor, not quite like synthetics. He says that is my imagination too. For the first time since I was twelve years old, I go from week to week without thought of the upcoming Engine appointment. I am happy.

Yet the weekly detension monitorings frighten me, too. I am always recommended for relaxation therapy, even though they do not demand Engine treatment. I grow more and more worried, find myself begging Lorn to help me. It must succeed! It must!

A week comes when the detension monitoring ends in the Red Zone. They send me into the line for the cubicle. I cry all the time my feet are locked into the stirrups. I scream, I resist the machine, I resist so long that I am finally given override programming and come out weak, unable to walk. I cry all the time the Meds are giving me stimulants; I stop only when they tell me I must have successful detension monitoring before I go home, and crying like this will inhibit the monitoring and give false responses. Again I cry, on the way home, and Lorn is desperate; I cry, I accuse him, I tell him that it is his fault that he could not give me the detensioning I need so desperately. We make it up in one another's arms, but I am too limp to respond after the long purgatory of the cubicle. He grows angry, then is frightened when I cannot stop crying. He wants to call a Med. I beg him not to, stifle my sobs. I fall asleep hating him, wanting to die, but he is contrite, begs me for forgiveness, says we will try again.

We are gentle with one another now, and courteous. We try to relax with one another, and my next two detension monitorings come clear. The Med has told me that there are many early problems of adjustment. Maybe the worst is over. I touch Lorn gently, marveling at his soft liveness. I love him. I rest in his arms, happy.

Later he asks me for something I find myself unable to do. Surely there are no nerve endings there! But he pleads until I try. I am sickened, I retch, I rush away to vomit. He is angry at first, then contrite. But he asks again and again. Finally, when I refuse, he tells me angrily that if I refuse him he will go to the Engine, that the Engine's sensors have determined his needs and this is not unreasonable. I scream at him to go to the Engine and be damned. He stares at me in

shock, and we end in one another's arms.

I think he is punishing me for my refusal. Four nights he lies silent beside me, without a touch. At first I am stubborn, I say nothing. On the fourth night I begin to worry. My detension monitoring is tomorrow, and I will surely end in the Red Zone again. I tell him, and he takes me gently in his arms, but nothing happens. I am sure he has been going to the Engine for what he asked me and I refused.

We cannot go on like this! I am frantic, knowing I am tense and will surely fail my monitoring. I want to shriek insults at him. This once I message the center, giving them my ident, saying I have a chill and must skip the monitoring this week. They accept the excuse so easily I am elated. I will use it as often as I can.

Time passes and so far I am free of the Engine, but Lorn is going, I am sure, for legal supplementation. Since our psych profiles were matched for, complementary needs, I am afraid that the supplementation will lessen his energy, leaving him less able to give me the detensioning I need. I grow more and more frightened. It is humiliating to go for detension monitoring when I know it is programmed on my card that my husband has applied for legal supplementation for need.

I beg him to work a little more on the nerve fibers always programmed for my major needs. He refuses. Finally he lashes out at me, "Detension monitoring, detension monitoring, it is all you ever think about! I can never simply enjoy being with you any more!"

I flare at him, "Why do you think I married you? You were the only legal exemption I could get!"

Ice cold, we stare at one another. His voice is cold.

"Do you want a divorce?"

I shrug. "Why bother? This is a comfortable apartment. We can get in another bed if you would rather."

I do not bother to go for detension monitoring the next day. I am humiliated, but I fill out a card for legal supplementation. I program it for mechanical entry. I will resist, I will fight, they will give me preorgasmic treatment, I will come out too weak to walk, enjoy the stimulants, let them send me home in a public conveyance. I will not worry about Lorn. He is entitled to legal supplementation from the Engine.

(1977)

The Secret of the Blue Star(1979)

On a night in Sanctuary, when the streets bore a false glamour in the silver glow of full moon, so that every ruin seemed an enchanted tower and every dark street and square an island of mystery, the mercenary - magician Lythande sallied forth to seek adventure.

Lythande had but recently returned - if the mysterious comings and goings of a magician can be called by so prosaic a name - from guarding a caravan across the Grey Wastes to Twand. Somewhere in the Wastes, a gaggle of desert rats - two - legged rats with poisoned steel teeth had set upon the caravan, not knowing it was guarded by magic, and had found themselves fighting skeletons that howled and fought with eyes of flame; and at their center a tall magician with a blue star between blazing eyes, a star that shot lightnings of a cold and paralyzing flame. So the desert rats ran, and never stopped running until they reached Aurvesh, and the tales they told did Lythande no harm except in the ears of the pious.

And so there was gold in the pockets of the long, dark magician's robe, or perhaps concealed in whatever dwelling sheltered Lythande.

For at the end, the caravan master had been almost more afraid of Lythande than he was of the bandits, a situation which added to the generosity with which he rewarded the magician. According to custom, Lythande neither smiled nor frowned, but remarked, days later, to Myrtis, the proprietor of the Aphrodisia House in the Street of Red Lanterns, that sorcery, while a useful skill and filled with many aesthetic delights for the contemplation of the philosopher, in itself put no beans on the table.

A curious remark, that; Myrtis pondered, putting away the ounce of gold Lythande had bestowed upon her in consideration of a secret which lay many years behind them both. Curious that Lythande should speak of beans on the table, when no one but herself had ever seen a bit of food or a drop of drink pass the magician's lips since the blue star had adorned that high and narrow brow. Nor had any woman in the Quarter ever been able to boast that a great magician had paid for her favors, or been able to imagine how such a magician behaved in that situation when all men were alike reduced to flesh and blood.

Perhaps Myrtis could have told if she would; some of her girls thought so, when, as sometimes happened, Lythande came to the Aphrodisia House and was closeted long with its owner; even, on rare intervals, for an entire night. It was said, of Lythande, that the Aphrodisia House itself had been the magician's gift to Myrtis, after a famous adventure still whispered in the bazaar, involving an evil wizard, two horse - traders, a caravan master, and a few assorted toughs who had prided themselves upon never giving gold for any woman and thought it funny to cheat an honest working woman. None of them had ever showed their faces - what was left of them - in Sanctuary again, and Myrtis boasted that she need never again sweat to earn her living, and never again entertain a man, but would claim her madam's privilege of a solitary bed.

And then, too, the girls thought, a magician of Lythande's stature could have claimed the most beautiful women from Sanctuary to the mountains beyond Ilsig; not courtesans alone, but princesses and noblewomen and priestesses would have been for Lythande's taking. Myrtis had doubtless been beautiful in her youth, and certainly she boasted enough of the princes and wizards and travelers who had paid great sums for her love. She was beautiful still (and of course

there were those who said that Lythande did not pay her, but that, on the contrary, Myrtis paid the magician great sums to maintain her aging beauty with strong magic) but her hair had gone gray and she no longer troubled to dye it with henna or golden wash from Tyris - beyond - the sea.

But if Myrtis were not the woman who knew how Lythande behaved in that most elemental of situations, then there was no woman in Sanctuary who could say. Rumor said also that Lythande called up female demons from the Grey Wastes, to couple in lechery, and certainly Lythande was neither the first nor the last magician of whom that could be said.

But on this night Lythande sought neither food nor drink nor the delights of amorous entertainment; although Lythande was a great frequenter of taverns, no man had ever yet seen a drop of ale or mead or fire - drink pass the barrier of the magician's lips. Lythande walked along the far edge of the bazaar, skirting the old rim of the governor's palace, keeping to the shadows in defiance of footpads and cutpurses, out of that love for shadows which made the folk of the city say that Lythande could appear and disappear into thin air.

Tall and thin, Lythande, above the height of a tall man, lean to emaciation, with the blue star shaped tattoo of the Magician - Adept above thin, arching eyebrows; wearing a long, hooded robe which melted into the shadows. Clean - shaven, the face of Lythande, or beardless - none had come close enough, in living memory, to say whether this was the whim of an effeminate or the hairlessness of a freak. The hair beneath the hood was as long and luxuriant as a woman's, but graying, as no woman in this city of harlots would have allowed it to do.

Striding quickly along a shadowed wall, Lythande stepped through an open door, over which the sandal of Thufir, god of pilgrims, had been nailed up for luck; but the footsteps were so soft, and the hooded robe blended so well into the shadows, that eyewitnesses would later swear, truthfully, that they had seen Lythande appear from the air, protected by sorceries, or by a cloak of invisibility.

Around the hearthfire, a group of men were banging their mugs noisily to the sound of a rowdy drinking - song, strummed on a worn and tinny lute - Lythande knew it belonged to the tavern keeper, and could be borrowed - by a young man, dressed in fragments of foppish finery, torn and slashed by the chances of the road. He was sitting lazily, with one knee crossed over the other; and when the rowdy song died away, the young man drifted into another, a quiet love song from another time and another country. Lythande had known the song, more years ago than bore remembering, and in those days Lythande the magician had borne another name and had known little of sorcery. When the song died, Lythande had stepped from the shadows, visible, and the firelight glinted on the blue star, mocking at the center of the high forehead.

There was a little muttering in the tavern, but they were not unaccustomed to Lythande's invisible comings and goings. The young man raised eyes which were surprisingly blue beneath the black hair elaborately curled above his brow. He was slender and agile, and Lythande marked the rapier at his side, which looked well handled, and the amulet, in the form of a coiled snake, at his throat. The young man said, "Who are you, who has the habit of coming and going into thin air like that?"

"One who compliments your skill at song." Lythande flung a coin to the tapster's boy. "Will you drink?"

"A minstrel never refuses such an invitation. Singing is dry work." But when the drink was brought, he said, "Not drinking with me, then?"

"No man has ever seen Lythande eat or drink," muttered one of the men in the circle round them.

"Why, then, I hold that unfriendly," cried the young minstrel. "A friendly drink between comrades shared is one thing; but I am no servant to sing for pay or to drink except as a friendly gesture!"

Lythande shrugged, and the blue star above the high brow began to shimmer and give forth blue light. The onlookers slowly edged backward, for when a wizard who wore the blue star was angered, bystanders did well to be out of the way. The minstrel set down the lute, so it would be well out of range if he must leap to his feet. Lythande knew, by the excruciating slowness of his movements and great care, that he had already shared a good many drinks with chance - met comrades. But the minstrel's hand did not go to his sword hilt but instead closed like a fist over the amulet in the form of a snake.

"You are like no man I have ever met before," he observed mildly, and Lythande, feeling inside

the little ripple, nerve - long, that told a magician he was in the presence of spell casting, hazarded quickly that the amulet was one of those which would not protect its master unless the wearer first stated a set number of truths - usually three or five - about the owner's attacker or foe. Wary, but amused, Lythande said, "A true word. Nor am I like any man you will ever meet, live you never so long, minstrel."

The minstrel saw, beyond the angry blue glare of the star, a curl of friendly mockery in Lythande's mouth. He said, letting the amulet go, "And I wish you no ill; and you wish me none, and those are true sayings, too, wizard, hey? And there's an end of that. But although perhaps you are like to no other, you are not the only wizard I have seen in Sanctuary who bears a blue star about his forehead."

Now the blue star blazed rage, but not for the minstrel. They both knew it. The crowd around them had all mysteriously discovered that they had business elsewhere. The minstrel looked at the empty benches.

"I must go elsewhere to sing for my supper, it seems."

"I meant you no offense when I refused to share a drink," said Lythande. "A magician's vow is not as lightly overset as a lute. Yet I may guest - gift you with dinner and drink in plenty without loss of dignity, and in return ask a service of a friend, may I not?"

"Such is the custom of my country. Cappen Varra thanks you, magician."

"Tapster! Your best dinner for my guest, and all he can drink tonight!"

"For such liberal guesting I'll not haggle about the service," Cappen Varra said, and set to the smoking dishes brought before him. As he ate, Lythande drew from the folds of his robe a small pouch containing a quantity of sweet - smelling herbs, rolled them into a blue - gray leaf, and touched his ring to spark the roll alight. He drew on the smoke, which drifted up sweet and grayish.

"As for the service, it is nothing so great; tell me all you know of this other wizard who wears the blue star. I know of none other of my order south of Azehur, and I would be certain you did not see me, nor my wraith."

Cappen Varra sucked at a marrow - bone and wiped his fingers fastidiously on the tray - cloth beneath the meats. He bit into a ginger - fruit before replying.

"Not you, wizard, nor your fetch or doppelganger; this one had shoulders brawnier by half, and he wore no sword, but two daggers cross - girt astride his hips. His beard was black; and his left hand missing three fingers."

"Us of the Thousand Eyes! Rabben the Half - handed, here in Sanctuary! Where did you see him, minstrel?"

"I saw him crossing the bazaar; but he bought nothing that I saw. And I saw him in the Street of Red Lanterns, talking to a woman. What service am I to do for you, magician?"

"You have done it." Lythande gave silver to the tavern keeper - so much that the surly man bade Shalpa's cloak cover him as he went - and laid another coin, gold this time, beside the borrowed lute.

"Redeem your harp; that one will do your voice no boon." But when the minstrel raised his head in thanks, the magician had gone unseen into the shadows.

Pocketing the gold, the minstrel asked, "How did he know that? And how did he go out?"

"Shalpa the swift alone knows," the tapster said. "Flew out by the smoke - hole in the chimney, for all I ken! That one needs not the night - dark cloak of Shalpa to cover him, for he has one of his own. He paid for your drinks, good sir; what will you have?" And Cappen Varra proceeded to get very drunk, that being the wisest thing to do when one becomes entangled unawares in the private affairs of a wizard.

Outside in the street, Lythande paused to consider. Rabben the Half - handed was no friend; yet there was no reason his presence in Sanctuary must deal with Lythande, or personal revenge. If it were business concerned with the Order of the Blue Star, if Lythande must lend Rabben aid, or the Half - handed had been sent to summon all the members of the Order, the star they both wore would have given warning.

Yet it would do no harm to make certain. Walking swiftly, the magician had reached a line of old stables behind the governor's palace. There was silence and secrecy for magic. Lythande stepped into one of the little side alleys, drawing up the magician's cloak until no light remained, slowly withdrawing farther and farther into the silence until nothing remained anywhere in the world - anywhere in the universe but the light of the blue star ever glowing in front. Lythande remembered how it had been set there, and at what cost - the price an Adept paid for power.

The blue glow gathered, fulminated in many - colored patterns, pulsing and glowing, until Lythande stood within the light; and there, in the Place That Is Not, seated upon a throne carved apparently from Sapphire, was the Master of the Star.

"Greetings to you, fellow star, star - born, shyrya." The terms of endearment could mean fellow, companion, brother, sister, beloved, equal, pilgrim; its literal meaning was sharer of starlight. "What brings you into the Pilgrim Place this night from afar?"

"The need for knowledge, star - sharer. Have you sent one to seek me out in Sanctuary?"

"Not so, shyryu. All is well in the Temple of the Starsharers; you have not yet been summoned; the hour is not yet come."

For every Adept of the Blue Star knows; it is one of the prices of power. At the world's end, when all the doings of mankind and mortals are done, the last to fall under the assault of Chaos

will be the Temple of the Star; and then, in the Place That Is Not, the Master of the Star will summon all of the Pilgrim Adepts from the farthest corners of the world, to fight with all their magic against Chaos; but until that day, they have such freedom as will best strengthen their powers. The Master of the Star repeated, reassuringly, "The hour has not come. You are free to walk as you will in the world."

The blue glow faded, and Lythande stood shivering. So Rabben had not been sent in that final summoning. Yet the end and Chaos might well be at hand for Lythande before the hour appointed, if Rabben the Half - handed had his way.

It was a fair test of strength, ordained by our masters. Rabben should bear me no ill - will. . . . Rabben's presence in Sanctuary need not have to do with Lythande. He might be here upon his lawful occasions - if anything of Rabben's could be said to be lawful; for it was only upon the last day of all that the Pilgrim Adepts were pledged to fight upon the side of Law against Chaos. And Rabben had not chosen to do so before then.

Caution would be needed, and yet Lythande knew that Rabben was near. . . .

South and east of the governor's palace, there is a little triangular park, across from the Street of Temples. By day the graveled walks and turns of shrubbery are given over to predicants and priests who find not enough worship or offerings for their liking; by night the place is the haunt of women who worship no goddess except She of the filled purse and the empty womb. And for both reasons the place is called, in irony, the Promise of Heaven; in Sanctuary, as elsewhere, it is

well known that those who promise do not always perform.

Lythande, who frequented neither women nor priests as a usual thing, did not often walk here. The park seemed deserted; the evil winds had begun to blow, whipping bushes and shrubbery into the shapes of strange beasts performing unnatural acts; and moaning weirdly around the walls and eaves of the Temples across the street, the wind that was said in Sanctuary to be the moaning of Azyuna in Vashanka's bed. Lythande moved swiftly, skirting the darkness of the paths. And then a woman's scream rent the air.

From the shadows Lythande could see the frail form of a young girl in a torn and ragged dress; she was barefoot and her ear was bleeding where one jeweled earring had been torn from the lobe. She was struggling in the iron grip of a huge burly black - bearded man, and the first thing Lythande saw was the hand gripped around the girl's thin, bony wrist, dragging her; two fingers missing and the other cut away to the first joint. Only then - when it was no longer needed - did Lythande see the blue star between the black bristling brows, the cat - yellow eyes of Rabben the Half - handed!

Lythande knew him of old, from the Temple of the Star. Even then Rabben had been a vicious man, his lecheries notorious. Why, Lythande wondered, had the Masters not demanded that he renounce them as the price of his power? Lythande's lips tightened in a mirthless grimace; so notorious had been Rabben's lecheries that if he renounced them, everyone would know the Secret of his Power.

For the powers of an Adept of the Blue Star depended upon a secret. As in the old legend of the giant who kept his heart in a secret place outside his body, and with it his immortality, so the Adept of the Blue Star poured all his psychic force into a single Secret; and the one who discovered the Secret would acquire all of that Adept's power. So Rabben's Secret must be something else . . . Lythande did not speculate on it.

The girl cried out pitifully as Rabben jerked at her wrist; as the burly magician's star began to glow, she thrust her free hand over her eyes to shield them from it. Without fully intending to intervene, Lythande stepped from the shadows, and the rich voice that had made the prentice magicians in the outer court of the Blue Star call Lythande "minstrel" rather than "magician," rang out:

"By Shipri the All - Mother, release that woman!"

Rabben whirled. "By the nine - hundred - and - ninety, - ninth eye of Us! Lythande!"

"Are there not enough women in the Street of Red Lanterns, that you must mishandle girl children in the Street of Temples?" For Lythande could see how young she was, the thin aims and childish legs and ankles, the breasts not yet full - formed beneath the dirty, torn tunic.

Rabben turned on Lythande and sneered, "You were always squeamish, shyryu. No woman walks here unless she is for sale. Do you want her for yourself? Have you tired of your fat madame in the Aphrodisia House?"

"You will not take her name into your mouth, shyryu!"

"So tender for the honor of a harlot?"

Lythande ignored that. "Let that girl go, or stand to my challenge."

Rabben's star shot lightning; he shoved the girl to one side. She fell nerveless to the pavement and lay without moving. "She'll stay there until we've done. Did you think she could run away while we fought? Come to think of it, I never did see you with a woman, Lythande - is that your Secret, Lythande, that you've no use for women?"

Lythande maintained an impassive face; but whatever came, Rabben must not be allowed to pursue that line. "You may couple like an animal in the streets of Sanctuary, Rabben, but I do not. Will you yield her up, or fight?"

"Perhaps I should yield her to you; this is unheard of, that Lythande should fight in the streets over a woman! You see, I know your habits well, Lythande!"

Damnation of Vashanka! Now indeed I shall have to fight for the girl!

Lythande's rapier snicked from its scabbard and thrust at Rabben as if of its own will.

"Ha! Do you think Rabben fights street - brawls with the sword like any mercenary?" Lythande's sword - tip exploded in the blue star - glow, and became a shimmering snake, twisting back on itself to climb past the hilt, fangs dripping venom as it sought to coil around Lythande's fist. Lythande's own star blazed. The sword was metal again but twisted and useless, in the shape of the snake it had been, coiling back toward the scabbard. Enraged, Lythande jerked free of the twisted metal, sent a spitting rain of fire in Rabben's direction. Quickly the huge Adept covered himself in fog, and the fire - spray extinguished itself. Somewhere outside consciousness Lythande was aware of a crowd gathering; not twice in a lifetime did two Adepts of the Blue Star battle by sorcery in the streets of Sanctuary. The blaze of the stars, blazing from each magician's brow, raged lightnings in the square.

On a howling wind came little torches ravening, that flickered and whipped at Lythande; they touched the tall form of the magician and vanished. Then a wild whirlwind sent trees lashing, leaves swirling bare from branches, and battered Rabben to his knees. Lythande was bored; this must be finished quickly. Not one of the goggling onlookers in the crowd knew afterward what had been done, but Rabben bent, slowly, slowly, forced inch by inch down and down, to his knees, to all fours, prone, pressing and grinding his face farther and farther into the dust, rocking back and forth, pressing harder and harder into the sand. . . .

Lythande turned and lifted the girl. She stared in disbelief at the burly sorcerer grinding his black beard frantically into the dirt.

"What did you - "

"Never mind - let's get out of here. The spell will not hold him long, and when he wakes from it he will be angry." Neutral mockery edged Lythande's voice, and the girl could see it, too. Rabben with beard and eyes and blue star covered with the dirt and dust -

She scurried along in the wake of the magician's robe; when they were well away from the Promise of Heaven, Lythande halted, so abruptly that the girl stumbled.

"Who are you, girl?"

"My name is Bercy. And yours?"

"A magician's name is not lightly given. In Sanctuary they call me Lythande." Looking down at the girl, the magician noted, with a pang, that beneath the dirt and dishevelment she was very beautiful and very young. "You can go, Bercy. He will not touch you again; I have bested him fairly upon challenge."

She flung herself on to Lythande's shoulder, clinging. "Don't send me away!" she begged, clutching, eyes filled with adoration. Lythande scowled.

Predictable, of course, Bercy believed, and who in Sanctuary would have disbelieved, that the duel had been fought for the girl as prize, and she was ready to give herself to the winner. Lythande made a gesture of protest.

"No - "

The girl narrowed her eyes in pity. "Is it then with you as Rabben said - that your secret is that you have been deprived of manhood?" But beyond the pity was a delicious flicker of amusement - what a tidbit of gossip! A juicy bit for the Streets of Women.

"Silence!" Lythande's glance was imperative. "Come."

She followed along the twisting streets that led into the Street of Red Lanterns. Lythande strode with confidence, now, past the House of Mermaids, where, it was said, delights as exotic as the name promised were to be found; past the House of Whips, shunned by all except those who refused to go elsewhere; and at last, beneath the face of the Green Lady as she was worshiped far away and beyond Ranke, the Aphrodisia House.

Bercy looked around, eyes wide, at the pillared lobby, the brilliance of a hundred lanterns, the exquisitely dressed women lounging on cushions till they were summoned. They were finely dressed and be - jeweled - Myrtis knew her trade, and how to present her wares - and Lythande guessed that the ragged Bercy's glance was one of envy; she had probably sold herself in the bazaars for a few coppers or for a loaf of bread, since she was old enough. Yet somehow, like flowers covering a dung heap, she had kept an exquisite fresh beauty, all gold and white, flowerlike. Even ragged and half - starved, she touched Lythande's heart.

"Bercy, have you eaten today?"

"No, master."

Lythande summoned the huge eunuch Jiro, whose business it was to conduct the favored customers to the chambers of their chosen women, and throw out the drunks and abusive customers into the street. He came - huge - bellied, naked except for a skimpy loincloth and a dozen rings in his ear - he had once had a lover who was an earring - seller and had used him to display her wares.

"How may we serve the magician Lythande?"

The women on the couches and cushions were twittering at one another in surprise and dismay, and Lythande could almost hear their thoughts;

None of us has been able to attract or seduce the great magician, and this ragged street wench has caught his eyes? And, being women, Lythande knew they could see the unclouded beauty that shone through the girl's rags.

"Is Madame Myrtis available, Jiro?"

"She's sleeping, O great wizard, but for you she's given orders she's to be waked at any hour. Is this - " no one alive can be quite so supercilious as the chief eunuch of a fashionable brothel -

"yours, Lythande, or a gift for my madame?"

"Both, perhaps. Give her something to eat and find her a place to spend the night."

"And a bath, magician? She has fleas enough to louse a floorful of cushions!"

"A bath, certainly, and a bath - woman with scents and oils," Lythande said, "and something in the nature of a whole garment."

"Leave it to me," said Jiro expansively, and Bercy looked at Lythande in dread, but went when the magician gestured to her to go. As Jiro took her away, Lythande saw Myrtis standing in the doorway; a heavy woman, no longer young, but with the frozen beauty of a spell. Through the perfect spelled features, her eyes were warm and welcoming as she smiled at Lythande.

"My dear, I had not expected to see you. Is that yours?" She moved her head toward the door through which Jiro had conducted the frightened Bercy. "She'll probably run away, you know, once you take your eyes off her."

"I wish I thought so, Myrtis. But no such luck, I fear."

"You had better tell me the whole story," Myrtis said, and listened to Lythande's brief, succinct account of the affair.

"And if you laugh, Myrtis, I take back my spell and leave your gray hairs and wrinkles open to the mockery of everyone in Sanctuary!"

But Myrtis had known Lythande too long to take that threat very seriously. "So the maiden you rescued is all maddened with desire for the love of Lythande!" She chuckled. "It is like an old ballad, indeed!"

"But what am I to do, Myrtis? By the paps of Shipri the All - mother, this is a dilemma!"

"Take her into your confidence and tell her why your love cannot be hers," Myrtis said.

Lythande frowned. "You hold my Secret, since I had no choice; you knew me before I was made magician, or bore the Blue Star - "

"And before I was a harlot," Myrtis agreed.

"But if I make this girl feel like a fool for loving me, she will hate me as much as she loves; and I cannot confide in anyone I cannot trust with my life and my power. All I have is yours, Myrtis, because of that past we shared. And that includes my power, if you ever should need it. But I cannot entrust it to this

girl."

"Still she owes you something, for delivering her out of the hands of Rabben."

Lythande said, "I will think about it; and now make haste to bring me food, for I am hungry and athirst." Taken to a private room, Lythande ate and drank, served by Myrtis' own hands. And Myrtis said, "I could never have sworn your vow - to eat and drink in the sight of no man!"

"If you sought the power of a magician, you would keep it well enough," said Lythande. "I am seldom tempted now to break it; I fear only lest I break it unawares; I cannot drink in a tavern lest among the women there might be some one of those strange men who find diversion in putting on the garments of a female; even here I will not eat or drink among your women, for that reason. All power depends on the vows and the secret."

"Then I cannot aid you," Myrtis said, "but you are not bound to speak truth to her; tell her you have vowed to live without women."

"I may do that," Lythande said, and finished the food, scowling.

Later Bercy was brought in, wide - eyed, enthralled by her fine gown and her freshly washed hair, softly curling about her pink - and - white face and the sweet scent of bath oils and perfumes that hung about her.

"The girls here wear such pretty clothes, and one of them told me they could eat twice a day if they wished! Am I pretty enough, do you think, that Madame Myrtis would have me here?"

"If that is what you wish. You are more than beautiful."

Bercy said boldly, "I would rather belong to you, magician," and flung herself again on Lythande, her hands clutching and clinging, dragging the lean face down to hers. Lythande, who rarely touched anything living, held her gently, trying not to reveal consternation.

"Bercy, child, this is only a fancy. It will pass."

"No," she wept. "I love you, I want only you!"

And then, unmistakably, along the magician's nerves, Lythande felt that little ripple, that warning thrill of tension which said: spell casting is in use. Not against Lythande. That could have been countered. But somewhere within the room.

Here, in the Aphrodisia House? Myrtis, Lythande knew, could be trusted with life, reputation, fortune, the magical power of the Blue Star itself; she had been tested before this. Had she altered enough to turn betrayer, it would have been apparent in her aura when Lythande came near.

That left only the girl, who was clinging and whimpering; "I will die if you do not love me! I will die! Tell me it is not true, Lythande, that you are unable to love! Tell me it is an evil lie that magicians are emasculated, incapable of loving woman . . ."

"That is certainly an evil lie," Lythande agreed gravely. "I give you my solemn assurance that I have never been emasculated." But Lythande's nerves tingled as the words were spoken. A magician might lie, and most of them did. Lythande would lie as readily as any other, in a good cause. But the law of the Blue Star was this: when questioned directly on a matter bearing directly on the Secret, the Adept might not tell a direct lie. And Bercy, unknowing, was only one question away from the fatal one hiding the Secret.

With a mighty effort, Lythande's magic wrenched at the very fabric of Time itself; the girl stood motionless, aware of no lapse, as Lythande stepped away far enough to read her aura. And yes, there within the traces of that vibrating field, was the shadow of the Blue Star. Rabben's; overpowering her will.

Rabben. Rabben the Half - handed, who had set his will on the girl, who had staged and contrived the whole thing, including the encounter where the girl had needed rescue; put the girl under a spell to attract and bespell Lythande.

The law of the Blue Star forbade one Adept of the Star to kill another; for all would be needed to fight side by side, on the last day, against Chaos. Yet if one Adept could prise forth the secret of another's power . . . then the powerless one was not needed against Chaos and could be killed.

What could be done now? Kill the girl? Rabben would take that, top, as an answer: Bercy had been so bespelled as to be irresistible to any man; if Lythande sent her away untouched, Rabben

would know that Lythande's secret lay in that area and would never rest in his attempts to uncover it. For if Lythande was untouched by this sex - spell to make Bercy irresistible, then Lythande was a eunuch, or a homosexual, or ... sweating, Lythande dared not even think beyond that. The Secret was safe only if never questioned. It would not be read in the aura; but one simple question, and all was ended.

/ should kill her, Lythande thought. For now I am fighting, not for my magic alone, but for my secret and for my life. For surely, with my power gone, Rabben would lose no time in making an end of me, in revenge for the loss of half a hand.

The girl was still motionless, entranced. How easily she could be killed! Then Lythande recalled an old fairy - tale, which might be used to save the Secret of the Star.

The light flickered as Time returned to the chamber. Bercy was still clinging and weeping, unaware of the lapse; Lythande had resolved what to do, and the girl felt Lythande's arms enfolding her, and the magician's kiss on her welcoming mouth.

"You must love me or I shall die!" Bercy wept.

Lythande said, "You shall be mine." The soft neutral voice was very gentle. "But even a magician is vulnerable in love, and I must protect myself. A place shall be made ready for us without light or sound save for what I provide with my magic; and you must swear that you will not seek to see or to touch me except by that magical light. Will you swear it by the All - Mother,

Bercy? For if you swear this, I shall love you as no woman has ever been loved before."

Trembling, she whispered, "I swear." And Lythande's heart went out in pity, for Rabben had used her ruthlessly; so that she burned alive with her unslaked and bewitched love for the magician, that she was all caught up in her passion for Lythande. Painfully, Lythande thought; if she had only loved me, without the spell; then I could have loved. . . .

Would that I could trust her with my secret! But she is only Rabben's tool; her love for me is his doing, and none of her own will . . . and not real . . . And so everything which would pass between them now must be only a drama staged for Rabben.

"I shall make all ready for you with my magic."

Lythande went and confided to Myrtis what was needed; the woman began to laugh, but a single glance at Lythande's bleak face stopped her cold. She had known Lythande since long before the blue star was set between those eyes; and she kept the Secret for love of Lythande. It wrung her heart to see one she loved in the grip of such suffering. So she said, "All will be prepared. Shall I give her a drug in her wine, to weaken her will, that you may the more readily throw a glamour upon her?"

Lythande's voice held a terrible bitterness. "Rabben has done that already for us, when he put a spell upon her to love me."

"You would have it otherwise?" Myrtis asked, hesitating.

"All the gods of Sanctuary - they laugh at me! All - Mother, help me! But I would have it otherwise; I could love her, if she were not Rabben's tool."

When all was prepared, Lythande entered the darkened room. There was no light but the light of the Blue Star. The girl lay on a bed, stretching up her arms to the magician with exalted abandon.

"Come to me, come to me, my love!"

"Soon," said Lythande, sitting beside her, stroking her hair with a tenderness even Myrtis would never have guessed. "I will sing to you a love - song of my people, far away."

She writhed in erotic ecstasy. "All you do is good to me, my love, my magician!"

Lythande felt the blankness of utter despair. She was beautiful, and she was in love. She lay in a bed spread for the two of them, and they were separated by the breadth of the world. The magician could not endure it.

Lythande sang, in that rich and beautiful voice; a voice lovelier than any spell;

Half the night is spent; and the crown of moonlight Fades, and now the crown of the stars is paling; Yields the sky reluctant to coming morning; Still I lie lonely.

Lythande could see tears on Bercy's cheeks. / will love you as no woman has ever been loved.

Between the girl on the bed, and the motionless form of the magician, as the magician's robe fell heavily to the floor, a wraith - form grew, the very wraith and fetch, at first, of Lythande, tall and lean, with blazing eyes and a star between its brows and a body white and unscarred; the form of the magician, but this one triumphant in virility, advancing on the motionless woman, waiting. Her mind fluttered away in arousal, was caught, captured, bespelled. Lythande let her see the image for a moment; she could not see the true Lythande behind; then, as her eyes closed in ecstatic awareness of the touch, Lythande smoothed light fingers over her closed eyes.

"See - what I bid you to see! "Hear - what I bid you hear! "Feel - only what I bid you feel, Bercy!"

And now she was wholly under the spell of the wraith. Unmoving, stony - eyed, Lythande watched as her lips closed on emptiness and she kissed invisible lips; and moment by moment Lythande knew what touched her, what caressed her. Rapt and ravished by illusion, that brought her again and again to the heights of ecstasy, till she cried out in abandonment. Only to Lythande that cry was bitter; for she cried out not to Lythande but to the man - wraith who possessed her.

At last she lay all but unconscious, satiated; and Lythande watched in agony. When she opened her eyes again, Lythande was looking down at her, sorrowfully.

Bercy stretched up languid arms. "Truly, my beloved, you have loved me as no woman has ever been loved before."

For the first and last time, Lythande bent over her and pressed her lips in a long, infinitely tender kiss. "Sleep, my darling."

And as she sank into ecstatic, exhausted sleep, Lythande wept.

Long before she woke, Lythande stood, girt for travel, in the little room belonging to Myrtis.

"The spell will hold. She will make all haste to carry her tale to Rabben - the tale of Lythande, the incomparable lover! Of Lythande, of untiring virility, who can love a maiden into exhaustion!" The rich voice of Lythande was harsh with bitterness.

"And long before you return to Sanctuary, once freed of the spell, she will have forgotten you in many other lovers," Myrtis agreed. "It is better and safer that it should be so."

"True." But Lythande's voice broke. "Take care of her, Myrtis. Be kind to her."

"I swear it, Lythande."

"If only she could have loved me" - the magician broke and sobbed again for a moment; Myrtis looked away, wrung with pain, knowing not what comfort to offer.

"If only she could have loved me as I am, freed of Rabben's spell! Loved me without pretense! But I feared I could not master the spell Rabben had put on her . . . nor trust her not to betray me, knowing . . .

Myrtis put her plump arms around Lythande, tenderly.

"Do you regret?"

The question was ambiguous. It might have meant: Do you regret that you did not kill the girl? Or even: Do you regret your oath and the secret you must bear to the last day? Lythande chose to answer the last.

"Regret? How can I regret? One day I shall fight against Chaos with all of my order; even at the side of Rabben, if he lives unmurdered as long as that. And that alone must justify my existence and my Secret. But now I must leave Sanctuary, and who knows when the chances of the world will bring me this way again? Kiss me farewell, my sister."

Myrtis stood on tiptoe. Her lips met the lips of the magician.

"Until we meet again, Lythande. May She attend and guard you forever. Farewell, my beloved, my sister."

Then, the magician Lythande girded on her sword, and went silently and by unseen ways out of the city of Sanctuary, just as the dawn was breaking. And on her forehead the glow of the Blue Star was dimmed by the rising sun. Never once did she look back.

(1979)

To Keep the Oath(1979)

The red light lingered on the hills; two of the four small moons were in the sky, green Idriel near to setting, and the tiny crescent of Mormallor, ivory - pale, near the zenith. The night would be dark. Kindra n'ha Mhari did not, at first, see anything strange about the little town. She was too grateful to have reached it before sunset - shelter against the rain swept chill of a Darkovan night, a bed to sleep in after four days of traveling, a cup of wine before she slept.

But slowly she began to realize that there was something wrong. Normally, at this hour, the women would be going back and forth in the streets, gossiping with neighbors, marketing for the evening meal, while their children played and squabbled in the street. But tonight there was not a single woman in the street, nor a single child.

What was wrong? Frowning, she rode along the main street toward the inn. She was hungry and weary.

She had left Dalereuth many days before with a companion, bound for Neskaya Guild - house. But unknown to either of them, her companion had been pregnant; she had fallen sick of a fever, and in Thendara Guild - house she had miscarried and still lay there, very ill. Kindra had gone alone to Neskaya; but she had turned aside three days' ride to carry a message to the sick woman's oath - mother. She had found her in a village in the hills, working to help a group of women set up a small dairy.

Kindra was not afraid of traveling alone; she had journeyed in these hills at all seasons and in all weathers. But her provisions were beginning to run low. Fortunately, the innkeeper was an old acquaintance; she had little money with her, because her journey had been so unexpectedly prolonged, but old Jorik would feed her and her horse, give her a bed for the night, and trust her to send money to pay for it - knowing that if she did not, or could not, her Guild - house would pay, for the honor of the Guild.

The man who took her horse in the stable had known her for many years, too. He scowled as she alighted. "I don't know where we shall stable your horse, and that's certain, mestra, with all these strange horses here . . . Will she share a box stall without kicking, do you suppose? Or shall I tie her loose at the end?" Kindra noticed that the stable was crammed with horses, two dozen of them and more. Instead of a lonely village inn, it looked like Neskaya on market - day!

"Did you meet with any riders on the road, mestra?"

"No, none," Kindra said, frowning a little. "All the horses in the Kilghard Hills seem to be here in your stable - what is it, a royal visit? What is the matter with you? You keep looking over your shoulder as if you expect to find your master there with a stick to beat you - where is old Jorik, why is he not here to greet his guests?"

"Why, mestra, old Jorik's dead," the old man said, "and Dame Janella is trying to manage the inn alone with young Annelys and Marga." Dead? Gods preserve us," Kindra said. "What happened?"

"It was those bandits, mestra, Scarface's gang; they came here and cut Jorik down with his apron still on," said the old groom. "Made havoc in the town, broke all the ale - pots, and when the menfolk drove 'em off with pitchforks, they swore they'd be back and fire the town! So Dame Janella and the elders put the cap round and raised copper to hire Brydar of Fen Hills and all his men to come and defend us when they come back; and here Brydar's men have been ever since, mestra, quarrelling and drinking and casting eyes on the women until the townfolk are ready to say the remedy's worse than the sickness! But go in, go in, mestra, Janella's ready to welcome you."

Plump Janella looked paler and thinner than Kindra had ever seen her. She greeted Kindra with unaccustomed warmth. Under ordinary conditions, she was cold to Kindra, as befitted a respectable wife in the presence of a member of the Amazon Guild; now, Kindra supposed, she was learning that an innkeeper could not afford to alienate a customer. Jorik, Kindra knew, had not approved of the Free Amazons either; but he had learned from experience that they were

quiet guests who kept to themselves, caused no trouble, did not get drunk and break bar - stools and ale - pots, and paid their reckoning promptly. A guests's reputation, Kindra thought wryly, does not tarnish the color of his money.

"You have heard, good mestra? Those wicked men, Scarface's fellows, they cut my good man down, and for nothing - just because he flung an ale - pot at one of them who laid rough hands on my little girl, and Annelys not fifteen yet! Monsters!"

"And they killed him? Shocking!" Kindra murmured, but her pity was for the girl. All her life, young Annelys must remember that her father had been killed in defending her, because she could not defend herself. Like all the women of the Guild, Kindra was sworn to defend herself, to turn to no man for protection. She had been a member of the Guild for half her lifetime; it seemed shocking to her that a man should die defending a girl from advances she should have known how to ward off herself.

"Ah, you don't know what it's like, mestra, being alone without the goodman. Living alone as you do, you can't imagine!"

"Well, you have daughters to help you," Kindra said, and Janella shook her head and mourned. "But they can't come out among all those rough men, they are only little girls!"

"It will do them good to learn something of the world and its ways," Kindra said, but the woman sighed. "I wouldn't like them to learn too much of that."

"Then, I suppose, you must get you another husband," Kindra said, knowing that there was simply no way she and Janella could communicate. "But indeed I am sorry for your grief. Jorik was a good man."

"You can't imagine how good, mestra," Janella said plaintively. "You women of the Guild, you call yourselves free women, only it seems to me I have always been free, until now, when I must watch myself night and day, lest someone get the wrong idea about a woman alone. Only the other day, one of Brydar's men said to me - and that's another thing, these men of Brydar's. Eating us out of house and home, and just look, mestra, no room in the stable for the horses of our paying customers, with half the village keeping their horses here against bandits, and those hired swords drinking up my good old man's beer day after day - " Abruptly she recalled her duties as landlord. "But come into the common - room, mestra, warm yourself, and I'll bring you some supper; we have a roast haunch of chervine. Or would you fancy something lighter, rabbithorn stewed with mushrooms, perhaps? We're crowded, yes, but there's the little room at the head of the stairs, you can have that to yourself, a room fit for a fine lady, indeed Lady Hastur slept here in that very bed, a few years gone. Lilla! Lilla! Where's that simpleminded wench gone? When I took her in, her mother told me she was lack - witted, but she has wits enough to hang about talking to that young hired sword, Zandru scratch them all! Lilla! Hurry now, show the good woman her room, fetch her wash - water, see to her saddlebags!"

Later, Kindra went down to the common - room. Like all Guild - women, she had learned to be discreet when traveling alone; a solitary woman was prey to questions, at least, so they usually

journeyed in pairs. This subjected them to raised eyebrows and occasional dirty speculations, but warded off the less palatable approaches to which a lone woman traveling on Darkover was subject. Of course, any woman of the Guild could protect herself if it went past rude words, but that could cause trouble for all the Guild. It was better to conduct oneself in a way that minimized the possibility of trouble. So Kindra sat alone in a tiny corner near the fireplace, kept her hood drawn around her face - she was neither young nor particularly pretty - sipped her wine and warmed her feet, and did nothing to attract anyone's attention. It occurred to her that at this moment she, who called herself a Free Amazon, was considerably less constrained than Janella's young daughters, going back and forth, protected by their family's roof and their mother's presence.

She finished her meal - she had chosen the stewed rabbithorn - and called for a second glass of wine, too weary to climb the stairs to her chamber and too tired to sleep if she did.

Some of Brydar's hired swords were sitting around a long table at the other end of the room, drinking and playing dice. They were a mixed crew; Kindra knew none of them, but she had met Brydar himself a few times, and had even hired out with him, once, to guard a merchant caravan across the desert to the Dry Towns. She nodded courteously to him, and he saluted her, but paid her no further attention; he knew her well enough to know that she would not welcome even polite conversation when she was in a roomful of strangers.

One of the younger mercenaries, a young man, tall, beardless and weedy, ginger hair cut close to his head, rose and came toward her. Kindra braced herself for the inevitable. If she had been with

two or three other Guild - women, she would have welcomed harmless companionship, a drink together and talk about the chances of the road, but a lone Amazon simply did not drink with men in public taverns, and, damn it, Brydar knew it as well as she did.

One of the older mercenaries must have been having some fun with the green boy, needling him to prove his manhood by approaching the Amazon, amusing themselves by enjoying the rebuff he'd inevitably get.

One of the men looked up and made a remark Kindra didn't hear. The boy snarled something, a hand to his dagger. "Watch yourself, you - !" He spoke a foulness. Then he came to Kindra's table and said, in a soft, husky voice, "A good evening to you, honorable mistress."

Startled at the courteous phrase, but still wary, Kindra said, "And to you, young sir."

"May I offer you a tankard of wine?"

"I have had enough to drink," Kindra said, "but I thank you for the kind offer." Something faintly out of key, almost effeminate, in the youth's bearing, alerted her; his proposition, then, would not be the usual thing. Most people knew that Free Amazons took lovers if and when they chose, and all too many men interpreted that to mean that any Amazon could be had, at any time. Kindra was an expert at turning covert advances aside without ever letting it come to question or refusal; with ruder approaches, she managed with scant courtesy. But that wasn't what this youngster wanted; she knew when a man was looking at her with desire, whether he put it into

words or not, and although there was certainly interest in this young man's face, it wasn't sexual interest! What did he want with her, then?

"May I - may I sit here and talk to you for a moment, honorable dame?"

Rudeness she could have managed. This excessive courtesy was a puzzle. Were they simply making game of a woman hater, wagering he would not have the courage to talk to her? She said neutrally, "This is a public room; the chairs are not mine. Sit where you like."

Ill at ease, the boy took a seat. He was young indeed. He was still beardless, but his hands were callused and hard, and there was a long - healed scar on one cheek; he was not as young as she thought.

"You are a Free Amazon, mestra?" He used the common, and rather offensive, term; but she did not hold it against him. Many knew no other name.

"I am," she said, "but we would rather say: I am of the oath - bound - " The word she used was Comhi - Letzis - 'A Renunciate of the Sisterhood of Freed Women."

"May I ask - without giving offense - why the name Renunciate, mestra?"

Actually, Kindra welcomed a chance to explain. "Because, sir, in return for our freedom as women of the Guild, we swear an oath renouncing those privileges that we might have by

choosing to belong to some man. If we renounce the disabilities of being property and chattel, we must renounce, also, whatever benefits there may be; so that no man can accuse us of trying to have the best of both choices."

He said gravely, "That seems to me an honorable choice. I have never yet met a Renunciate. Tell me, mestra - " His voice suddenly cracked high. "I suppose you know the slanders that are spoken of you - tell me, how does any woman have the courage to join the Guild, knowing what will be said of her?"

"I suppose," Kindra said quietly, "for some women, a time comes when they think that there are worse things than being the subject of public slanders. It was so with me."

He thought that over for a moment, frowning. "I have never seen a Free-er - a Renunciate traveling alone before. Do you not usually travel in pairs, honorable dame?"

"True. But need knows no mistress," Kindra said, and explained that her companion had fallen sick in Thendara.

"And you came so far to bear a message? Is she your bredhis?" the boy asked, using the polite word for a woman's freemate or female lover; and because it was the polite word he used, not the gutter one, Kindra did not take offense. "No, only a comrade."

"I - I would not have dared speak if there had been two of you - "

Kindra laughed. "Why not? Even in twos or threes, we are not dogs to bite strangers."

The boy stared at his boots. "I have cause to fear - women - " he said, almost inaudibly. "But you seemed kind. And I suppose, mestra, that whenever you come into these hills, where life is so hard for women, you are always seeking out wives and daughters who are discontented at home, to recruit them for your Guild?"

Would that we might! Kindra thought, with all the old bitterness; but she shook her head. "Our charter forbids it," she said. "It is the law that a woman must seek us out herself, and formally petition to be allowed to join - us. I am not even allowed to tell women of the advantages of the Guild, when they ask. I may only tell them of the things they must renounce, by oath." She tightened her lips and added, "If we were to do as you say, to seek out discontented wives and daughters and lure them away to the Guild, the men would not let any Guild - house stand in the Domains, but would burn our houses about our ears." It was the old injustice; the women of Darkover had won this concession, the charter of the Guild, but so hedged about with restrictions that many women never saw or spoke with a Guild - sister.

"I suppose," she said, "that they have found out that we are not whores, so they insist that we are all lovers of women, intent on stealing out their wives and daughters. We must be, it seems, one evil thing or the other."

"Are there no lovers of women among you, then?"

Kindra shrugged. "Certainly," she said. "You must know that there are some women who would rather die than marry; and even with all the restrictions and rununciations of the oath, it seems a preferable alternative. But I assure you we are not all so. We are free women - free to be thus or otherwise, at our own will." After a moment's thought she added carefully, "And if you have a sister you may tell her so from me."

The young man started, and Kindra bit her lip; again she had let her guard down, picking up hunches so clearly formed that sometimes her companions accused her of having a little of the telepathic gift of the higher castes; laran. Kindra, who was, as far as she knew, all commoner and without either noble blood or telepathic gift, usually kept herself barricaded; but she had picked up a random thought, a bitter thought from somewhere, My sister would not believe ... a thought quickly vanished, so quickly that Kindra wondered if she had imagined the whole thing.

The young face across the table twisted into bitter lines.

"There is none, now, I may call my sister."

"I am sorry," Kindra said, puzzled. "To be alone, that is a sorrowful thing. May I ask your name?"

The boy hesitated again, and Kindra knew, with that odd intuition, that the real name had almost escaped the taut lips; but he bit it back.

"Brydar's men call me Marco. Don't ask my lineage; there is none who will claim kin to me now - thanks to those foul bandits under Scarface." He twisted his mouth and spat. "Why do you think I am in this company? For the few coppers these village folk can pay? No, mestra. I too am oath - bound. To revenge."

Kindra left the common - room early, but she could not sleep for a long time. Something in the young man's voice, his words, had plucked a resonating string in her own mind and memory. Why had he questioned her so insistently? Had he a sister or kinswoman, perhaps, who had spoken of becoming a Renunciate? Or was he, an obvious effeminate, jealous of her because she could escape the role ordained by society for her sex and he could not? Did he fantasy, perhaps, some such escape from the demands made upon men? Surely not; there were simpler lives for men than that of a hired sword! And men had a choice of what lives they would live - more choice, anyhow, than most women. Kindra had chosen to become a Renunciate, making herself an outcaste among most people in the Domains. Even the innkeeper only tolerated her, because she was a regular customer and paid well, but he would have equally tolerated a prostitute or a traveling juggler, and would have had fewer prejudices against either.

Was the youth, she wondered, one of the rumored spies sent out by cones, the governing body in Thendara, to trap Renunciates who broke the terms of their charter by proselytizing and attempting to recruit women into the Guild? If so, at least she had resisted the temptation. She had not even said, though tempted, that if Janella were a Renunciate she would have felt competent to run the inn by herself, with the help of her daughters.

A few times, in the history of the Guild, men had even tried to infiltrate them in disguise. Unmasked, they had met with summary justice, but it had happened and might happen again. At that, she thought, he might be convincing enough in women's clothes; but not with the scar on his face, or those callused hands. Then she laughed in the dark, feeling the calluses on her own fingers. Well, if he was fool enough to try it, so much the worse for him. Laughing, she fell asleep.

Hours later she woke to the sound of hoofbeats, the clash of steel, yells and cries outside. Somewhere women were shrieking. Kindra flung on her outer clothes and ran downstairs. Brydar was standing in the courtyard, bellowing orders. Over the wall of the courtyard she could see a sky reddened with flames. Scarface and his bandit crew were loose in the town, it seemed.

"Go, Renwal," Brydar ordered. "Slip behind their rearguard and set their horses loose, stampede them, so they must stand to fight, not strike and flee again! And since all the good horses are stabled here, one of you must stay and guard them lest they strike here for ours ... the rest of you come with me, and have your swords at the ready - "

Janella was huddled beneath the overhanging roof of an outbuilding, her daughters and serving women like roosting hens around her. "Will you leave us all here unguarded, when we have housed you all for seven days and never a penny in pay? Scarface and his men are sure to strike here for the horses, and we are unprotected, at their mercy - "

Brydar gestured to the boy Marco. "You. Stay and guard horses and women - "

The boy snarled, "No! I joined your crew on the pledge that I should face Scarface, steel in hand! It is an affair of honor - do you think I need your dirty coppers?"

Beyond the wall all was shrieking confusion. "I have no time to bandy words," Brydar said quickly. "Kindra - this is no quarrel of yours, but you know me a man of my word; stay here and guard the horses and these women, and I will make it worth your while!"

"At the mercy of a woman? A woman to guard us? Why not set a mouse to guard a lion!" Janella's shrewish cry cut him off. The boy Marco urged, eyes blazing, "Whatever I have been promised for this foray is yours, mestra, if you free me to meet my sworn foe!"

"Go; I'll look after them," Kindra said. It was unlikely Scarface would get this far, but it was really no affair of hers; normally she fought beside the men, and would have been angry at being left in a post of safety. But Janella's cry had put her on her mettle. Marco caught up his sword and hurried to the gate, Brydar following him. Kindra watched them go, her mind on her own early battles. Some turn of gesture, of phrase, had alerted her. The boy Marco is noble, she thought. Perhaps even Cornyn, some bastard of a great lord, perhaps even a Hastur. I don't know what he's doing with Brydar's men, but he's no ordinary hired sword!

Janella's wailing brought her back to her duty. "Oh!

Oh! Horrible," she howled. "Left here with only a woman to look after us ..."

Kindra said tersely, "Come on!" She gestured. "Help me close that gate!"

"I don't take - orders from one of you shameless women in breeches - "

"Let the damned gate stay open, then," Kindra said, right out of patience. "Let Scarface walk in without any trouble. Do you want me to go and invite him, or shall we send one of your daughters?"

"Mother!" remonstrated a girl of fifteen, breaking away from Janella's hand. "That is no way to speak - Lilla, Marga, help the good mestra shove this gate shut!" She came and joined Kindra, helping to thrust the heavy wooden gate tightly into place, pull down the heavy crossbeam. The women were wailing in dismay; Kindra singled out one of them, a young girl about six or seven moons along in pregnancy, who was huddled in a blanket over her night gear.

"You," she said, "take all the babies and the little children upstairs into the strongest chamber, bolt the doors and don't open them unless you hear my voice or Janella's." The woman did not move, still sobbing, and Kindra said sharply, "Hurry! Don't stand there like a rabbithorn frozen in the snow! Damn you, move, or I'll slap you senseless!" She made a menacing gesture and the woman started, then began to hurry the children up the stairs; she picked up one of the littlest ones, hurried the others along with frightened, clucking noises.

Kindra surveyed the rest of the frightened women. Janella was hopeless. She was fat and short of breath, and she was staring resentfully at Kindra, furious that she had been left in charge of their defense. Furthermore, she was trembling on the edge of a panic that would infect everyone; but if she had something to do, she might calm down. "Janella, go into the kitchen and make up some hot wine punch," she said. "The men will want it when they come back, and they'll deserve it, too. Then start hunting out some linen for bandages, in case anyone's hurt. Don't worry," she added, "they won't get to you while we're here. And take that one with you," she added, pointing to the terrified simpleton Lilla, who was clinging to Janella's skirt, round - eyed with terror, whimpering. "She'll only be in our way.

When Janella had gone, grumbling, the lackwit at her heels, Kindra looked around at the sturdy young women who remained.

"Come, all of you, into the stables, and pile heavy bales of hay around the horses, so they can't drive the horses over them or stampede them out. No, leave the lantern there; if Scarface and his men break through, we'll set a couple of bales afire; that will frighten the horses and they might well kick a bandit or two to death. Even so, the women can escape while they round up the horses; contrary to what you may have heard, most bandits look first for horses and rich plunder, and women are not the first item on their list. And none of you have jewels or rich garments they would seek to strip from you." Kindra herself knew that any man who laid his hand on her, intending rape, would quickly regret it; and if she was overpowered by numbers, she had been taught ways in which she could survive the experience undestroyed; but these women had had no such teaching. It was not right to blame them for their fears.

I could teach them this. But the laws of our charter prevent me and I am bound by oath to obey those laws; laws made, not by our own Guild - mothers, but by men who fear what we might have to say to their women!

Well, perhaps at least they will find it a matter for pride that they can defend their home against invaders! Kindra went to lend her own wiry strength to the task of piling up the heavy bales around the horses; the women worked, forgetting their fears in hard effort. But one grumbled, just loud enough for Kindra to hear, "It's all very well for her! She was trained as a warrior and she's used to this kind of work! I'm not!"

It was no time to debate Guild - house ethics; Kindra only asked mildly, "Are you proud of the fact that you have not been taught to defend yourself, child?" But the girl did not answer, sullenly hauling at her heavy hay - bale.

It was not difficult for Kindra to follow her thought; if it had not been for Brydar, each man of the town could have protected each one his own women! Kindra thought, in utter disgust, that this was the sort of thinking that laid villages in flames, year after year, because no man owed loyalty to another or would protect any household but his own! It had taken a threat like Scarface to get these village men organized enough to buy the services of a few hired swords, and now their women were grumbling because their men could not stand, each at his own door, protecting his own woman and hearth!

Once the horses had been barricaded, the women clustered together nervously in the courtyard. Even Janella came to the kitchen door to watch. Kindra went to the barred gate, her knife loose in its scabbard. The other girls and women stood under the roof of the kitchen, but one young girl, the same who had helped Kindra to shut the gate, bent and tucked her skirt resolutely up to her knees, then went and brought back a big wood - chopping hatchet and stood with it in her hand, taking up a place at the gate beside Kindra.

"Annelys!" Janella called. "Come back here! By me!"

The girl cast a look of contempt at her mother and said, "If any bandit climbs these walls, he will not get his hands on me, or on my little sister, without facing cold steel. It's not a sword, but I think even in a girl's hands, this blade would change his mind in a hurry!" She glanced defiantly at Kindra and said, "I am ashamed for all of you, that you would let one lone woman protect us! Even a rabbithorn doe protects her kits!"

Kindra gave the girl a companionable grin. "If you have half as much skill with that thing as you have guts, little sister, I would rather have you at my back than any man. Hold the axe with your hands close together, if the time comes to use it, and don't try anything fancy, just take a good hard chop at his legs,, just like you were cutting down a tree. The thing is, he won't be expecting it, see?"

The night dragged on. The women huddled on hay - bales and boxes, listening with apprehension and occasional sobs and tears as they heard the clash of swords, cries and shouts.

Only Annelys stood grimly beside Kindra, clutching her axe. After an hour or so, Kindra said, settling herself down on a hay - bale, "You needn't clutch it like that, you'll only weary yourself for an attack. Lean it against the bale, so you can snatch it up when the need comes."

Annelys asked in an undertone, "How did you know so well what to do? Are all the Free Amazons - you call them something else, don't you - how do the Guild - women learn? Are they all fighting women and hired swords?"

"No, no, not even many of us," Kindra said. "It is only that I have not many other talents; I cannot weave or embroider very well, and my skill at gardening is only good in the summertime. My own oath - mother is a midwife, that is our most respected trade; even those who despise the Renunciates confess that we can often save babies alive when the village healer - women fail. She would have taught me her profession; but I had no talent for that, either, and I am squeamish about the sight of blood - " She looked down suddenly at her long knife, remembering her many battles, and laughed; and Annelys laughed with her, a strange sound against the frightened moaning of the other women.

"You are afraid of the sight of blood?"

"It's different," Kindra said. "I can't stand suffering when I can't do anything about it, and if a babe is born easily they seldom send for the midwife; we come only when matters are desperate. I would rather fight with men, or beasts, than for the life of a helpless woman or baby ..."

"I think I would too," said Annelys, and Kindra thought: Now, if I were not bound by the laws of the Guild, I could tell her what we are. And this one would be a credit to the Sisterhood ...

But her oath held her silent. She sighed and looked at Annelys, frustrated.

She was beginning to think the precautions had been useless, that Scarface's men would never come here at all, when there was a shriek from one of the women, and Kindra saw the tassel of a coarse knitted cap come up over the wall; then two men appeared on top of the wall, knives gripped in their teeth to free their hands for climbing.

"So here's where they've hidden it all, women, horses, all of it - " growled one. "You go for the horses, I'll take care of - oh, you would," he shouted as Kindra ran at him with her knife drawn. He was taller than Kindra; as they fought, she could only defend herself, backing step by step toward the stables. Where were the men? Why had the bandits been able to get this far? Were they the last defense of the town? Behind her, out of the corner of her eye she saw the other bandit coming up with his sword; she circled, backing carefully so she could face them both.

Then there was a shriek from Annelys, the axe flashed once, and the second bandit fell, howling, his leg spouting blood. Kindra's opponent faltered at the sound; Kindra brought up her knife and ran him through the shoulder, snatching up his knife as it fell from his limp hand. He fell backward, and she leaped on top of him.

"Annelys!" she shouted. "You women! Bring thongs, rope, anything to tie him up - there may be

others - "

Janella came with a clothesline and stood by as Kindra tied the man, then, stepping back, looked at the bandit, lying in a pool of his own blood. His leg was nearly severed at the knee. He was still breathing, but he was too far gone even to moan and while the women stood and looked at him, he died. Janella stared at Annelys in horror, as if her young daughter had suddenly sprouted another head.

"You killed him," she breathed. "You chopped his leg off!"

"Would you rather he had chopped off mine, mother?" Annelys asked, and bent to look at the other bandit. "He is only stabbed through the shoulder, he'll live to be hanged!"

Breathing hard, Kindra straightened, giving the clothesline a final tug. She looked at Annelys and said, "You saved my life, little sister."

The girl smiled up at her, excited, her hair coming down and tumbling into her eyes. There was a cold sleet beginning to fall in the courtyard; their faces were wet. Annelys suddenly flung her arms around Kindra, and the older woman hugged her, disregarding the mother's troubled face.

"One of our own could not have done better. My thanks, little one!" Damn it, the girl had earned her thanks and approval, and if Janella stared at them as if Kindra were a wicked seducer of young women, then so much the worse for Janella! She let the girl's arm stay around her

shoulders as she said, "Listen; I think that is the men coming back."

And in a minute they heard Brydar's hail, and they struggled to raise the great crossbeam of the gate. His men drove before them more than a dozen good horses, and Brydar laughed, saying, "Scarface's men will have no more use for them; so we're well paid! I see you women got the last of them?" He looked down at the bandit lying in his gore, at the other, tied with Janella's clothesline. "Good work, mestra, I'll see you have a share in the booty!"

"The girl helped," Kindra said. "I'd have been dead without her."

"One of them killed my father," the girl said fiercely, "so I have paid my just debt, that is all!" She turned to Janella and ordered, "Mother, bring our defenders some of that wine punch, at once!"

Brydar's men sat all over the common - room, drinking the hot wine gratefully. Brydar set down the tankard and rubbed his hands over his eyes with a tired

"Whoosh!" He said, "Some of my men are hurt, dame Janella; have any of your women skill with leech - craft? We will need bandages, and perhaps some salves and herbs. I - " He broke off as one of the men beckoned him urgently from the door, and he went at a run.

Annelys brought Kindra a tankard and put it shyly into her hand. Kindra sipped; it was not the wine - punch Janella had made, but a clear, fine, golden wine from the mountains. Kindra sipped

it slowly, knowing the girl had been telling her something. She sat across from Kindra, taking a sip now and then of the hot wine in her own tankard. They were both reluctant to part.

Damn that fool law that says I cannot tell her of the Sisterhood! She is too good for this place and for that fool mother of hers; the idiot Lilla is more what her mother needs to help run the inn, and I suppose Janella will marry her off to some yokel at once, just to have help in running this place! Honor demanded she keep silent. Yet, watching Annelys, thinking of the life the girl would lead here, she wondered, troubled, what kind of honor it was, to require that she leave a girl like this in a place like this.

Yet she supposed it was a wise law; anyway, it had been made by wiser heads than hers. She supposed, otherwise, young girls, glamored for the moment with the thought of a life of excitement and adventure, might follow the Sisterhood without being fully aware of the hardships and the renunciations that awaited them. The name Renunciate was not lightly given; it was not an easy life. And considering the way Annelys was looking at her, Annelys might follow her simply out of hero - worship. That wouldn't do. She sighed, and said, "Well, the excitement is over for tonight, I suppose. I must be away to my bed; I have a long way to ride tomorrow. Listen to that racket! I didn't know any of Brydar's men were seriously hurt - "

"It sounds more like a quarrel than men in pain," Annelys said, listening to the shouts and protests. "Are they quarrelling over the spoils?"

Abruptly the door was thrust open and Brydar of Fen Hills came into the room. "Mestra, forgive

me, you are wearied - "

"Enough," she said, "but after all this hullabaloo I am not like to sleep much; what can I do for you?"

"I beg you - will you come? It is the boy - young Marco; he is hurt, badly hurt, but he will not let us tend his wounds until he has spoken with you. He says he has an urgent message, very urgent, which he must give before he dies. ...

"Avarra's mercy," Kindra said^ shocked. "Is he dying, then?"

"I cannot tell, he will not let us near enough to dress his wound. If he would be reasonable and let us care for him - but he is bleeding like a slaughtered chervine, and he has threatened to slit the throat of any man who touches him. We tried to hold him down and tend him willy-nilly, but it made his wounds bleed so sore as he struggled that we dared not wait - will you come, mestra?"

Kindra looked at him with question - she had not thought he would humor any man of his band so. Brydar said defensively, "The lad is nothing to me; not foster - brother, kinsman, nor even friend. But he fought at my side, and he is brave; it was he who killed Scarface in single combat. And may have had his death from it."

"Why should he want to speak to me?"

"He says, mestra, that it is a matter concerning his sister. And he begs you in the name of Avarra the pitiful that you will come. And he is young enough:, almost, to be your son."

"So," Kindra said at last. She had not seen her own son since he was eight days old; and he would, she thought, be too young to bear a sword. "I cannot refuse anyone who begs me in the name of the Goddess," she said, and rose, frowning; young Marco had said he had no sister. No; he had said that there was none, now, that he could call sister. Which might be a different thing.

On the stairs she heard the voice of one of Brydar's men, expostulating, "Lad, we won't hurt ye, but if we don't get to that wound and tend to it, you could die, do ye hear?"

"Get away from me!" The young voice cracked. "I swear by Zandu's hells, and, by the spilt tripes of Scarface out there dead, I'll shove this knife into the throat of the first man who touches me!"

Inside, by torchlight, Kindra saw Marco half - sitting, half - lying on a straw pallet; he had a dagger in his hand, holding them away with it; but he was pale as death, and there was icy sweat on his forehead. The straw pallet was slowly reddening with a pool of blood. Kindra knew enough of wounds to know that the human body could lose more blood than most people thought possible without serious danger; but to any ordinary person it looked most alarming.

Marco saw Kindra and gasped, "Mestra, I beg you - I must speak with you alone - "

"That's no way to speak to a comrade, lad," said one of the mercenaries, kneeling behind him, as Kindra knelt beside the pallet. The wound was high on the leg, near the groin; the leather breeches had broken the blow somewhat, or the boy would have met the same fate as the man Annelys had struck with the axe.

"You little fool," Kindra said. "I can't do half as much for you as your friend can."

Marco's eyes closed for a moment, from pain or weakness. Kindra thought he had lost consciousness, and gestured to the man behind him. "Quick", now, while he is unconscious - " she said swiftly, but the tortured eyes flicked open.

"Would you betray me, too?" He gestured with the dagger, but so feebly that Kindra was shocked. There was certainly no time to be lost. The best thing was to humor him.

"Go," she said, "I'll reason with him, and if he won't listen, well, he is old enough to take the consequences of his folly." Her mouth twisted as the men went away. "I hope what you have to tell me is worth risking your life for, you lackwitted simpleton!"

But a great and terrifying suspicion was born in her as she knelt on the bloody pallet. "You fool, do you know this is likely to be your death wound? I have small skill at leech craft; your comrades could do better for you."

"It is sure to be my death unless you help me," said the hoarse, weakening voice. "None of these men is comrade enough that I could trust him . . . mestra, help me, I beg you, in the name of the merciful Avarra - I am a woman."

Kindra drew a sharp breath. She had begun to suspect - and it was true, then. "And none of Brydar's men knows - "

"None. I have dwelt among them for half a year, and I do not think any man of them suspects and I fear women even more. But you, you I felt I might trust - "

"I swear it," Kindra said hastily. "I am oath - bound never to refuse aid to any woman who asks me in the name of the Goddess. But let me help you now, my poor girl, and pray Avarra you have not delayed too long!"

"Even if it was so - " the strange girl whispered - "I would rather die as a woman, than disgraced and exposed. I have known so much disgrace - "

"Hush! Hush, child!" But she fell back against the pallet; she had really fainted, this time, at last; and Kindra cut away the leather breeches, looking at the serious cut that sliced through the top of the thigh and into the pubic mound. It had bled heavily, but was not, Kindra thought, fatal. She picked up one of the clean towels the men had left, pressed heavily against the wound; when it slowed to an ooze, she frowned, thinking it should be stitched. She hesitated to do it - she had little skill at such things, and she was sure the man from Brydar's band could do it more tidily

and sure - handed; but she knew that was exactly what the young woman had feared, to be handled and exposed by men. Kindra thought: // it could be done before she recovers consciousness, she need not know . . . But she had promised the girl, and she would keep her promise. The girl did not stir as she stepped out into the hall.

Brydar came halfway up the stairs. "How goes it?"

"Send young Annelys to me," Kindra said. "Tell her to bring linen thread and a needle; and linen for bandages, and hot water and soap." Annelys had courage and strength; what was more, she was sure that if Kindra asked her to keep a secret, Annelys would do so, instead of gossiping about it.

Brydar said, in an undertone that did not carry a yard past Kindra's ear, "It's a woman - isn't it?"

Kindra demanded, with a frown. "Were you listening?"

"Listening, hell! I've got the brains I was born with, and I was remembering a couple of other little things. Can you think of any other reason a member of my band wouldn't let us get his britches off? Whoever she is, she's got guts enough for two!"

Kindra shook her head in dismay. Then all the girl's suffering was useless, scandal and disgrace there would be in any case. "Brydar, you pledged this would be worth my while. Do you owe me, or not?"

"I owe you," Brydar said.

"Then swear by your sword that you will never open your mouth about this, and I am paid. Fair enough?"

Brydar grinned. "I won't cheat you out of your pay for that," he said. "You think I want it to get round these hills that Brydar of Fen Hills can't tell the men from the ladies? Young Marco rode with my band for half a year and proved himself the man. If his foster - sister or kinswoman or cousin or what you will chooses to nurse him herself, and take him home with her afterward, what's it to any of my men? Damned if I want my crew thinking some girl killed Scarface right under my nose!" He put his hand to sword - hilt. "Zandru take this hand with the palsy if I say any word about this. I'll send Annelys to you," he promised, and went.

Kindra returned to the girl's side. She was still unconscious; when Annelys came in, Kindra said curtly, "Hold the lamp there; I want to get this stitched before she recovers consciousness. And try not to get squeamish or faint; I want to get it done quick enough so we don't have to hold her down while we do it."

Annelys gulped at the sight of the girl and the gaping wound, which had begun to bleed again. "A woman! Blessed Evanda! Kindra, is she one of your Sisterhood? Did you know?"

"No, to both questions. Here, hold the light - "

"No," said Annelys. "I have done this many times; I have steady hands for this. Once when my brother cut his thigh chopping wood, I sewed it up, and I have helped the midwife, too. You hold the light."

Relieved, Kindra surrendered the needle. Annelys began her work as skillfully as if she were embroidering a cushion; halfway through the business, the girl regained consciousness; she gave a faint cry of fright, but Kindra spoke to her, and she quieted and lay still, her teeth clamped in her lip, clinging to Kindra's hand. Halfway through, she moistened her lip and whispered, "Is she one of you, mestra?"

"No. No more than yourself, child. But she is a friend. And she will not gossip about you, I know it," Kindra said confidently.

When Annelys had finished, she fetched a glass of wine for the woman, and held her head while she drank it. Some color came back into the pale cheeks, and she was breathing more easily. Annelys brought one of her own nightgowns and said, "You will be more comfortable in this, I think. I wish we could carry you to my bed, but I don't think you should be moved yet. Kindra, help me to lift her." With a pillow and a couple of clean sheets she set about making the woman comfortable on the straw pallet.

The stranger made a faint sound of protest as they began to undress her, but was too weak to protest effectively. Kindra stared in shock as the under tunic came off. She would never have

believed that any woman over fourteen could successfully pose as a man among men; yet this woman had done it, and now she saw how. The revealed form was flat, spare, breastless; the shoulders had the hardened musculature of any swordsman. There was more hair on the arms than most women would have tolerated without removing it somehow, with bleach or wax. Annelys stared in amazement, and the woman, seeing that shocked look, hid her face in the pillow. Kindra said sharply, "There is no need to stare. She is emmasca, that is all; haven't you ever seen one before?" The neutering operation was illegal all over Darkover, and dangerous; and in this woman it must have been done before, or shortly after puberty. She was filled with questions, but courtesy forbade any of them.

"But - but - " Annelys whispered. "Was she born so or made so? It is unlawful - who would dare -"

"Made so," the girl said, her face still hidden in the pillow. "Had I been born so, I would have had nothing to fear . . . and I chose this so that I might have nothing more to fear!"

She tightened her mouth as they lifted and turned her; Annelys gasped aloud at the shocking scars, like the marks of whips, across the woman's back; but she said nothing, only pulled the merciful concealment of her own nightgown over the frightful revelation of those scars. Gently, she washed the woman's face and hands with soapy water. The ginger - pale hair was dark with sweat, but at the roots Kindra saw something else, the hair was beginning to grow in fire - red there.

Comyn. The telepath caste, red - haired . . . this woman was a noblewoman, bom to rule in the Domains of Darkover!

In the name of all the Gods, Kindra wondered, who can she be, what has come to her? How came she here in this disguise, even her hair bleached so none can guess at her lineage? And who has mishandled her so? She must have been beaten like an animal . . .

And then, shocked, she heard the words forming in her mind, not knowing how.

Scarface, said the voice in her mind. But now I am avenged. Even if it means my death . . .

She was frightened; never had she so clearly perceived; her rudimentary telepath gift had always, before, been a matter of quick intuition, hunch, lucky guess. She whispered aloud, in horror and dismay, "By the Goddess! Child, who are you?"

The pale face contorted in a grimace which Kindra recognized, in dismay, was intended for a smile. "I am - no one," she said. "I had thought myself the daughter of Alaric Lindir. Have you heard the tale?"

Alaric Lindir. The Lindir family were a proud and wealthy family, distantly akin to the Aillard family of the Comyn. Too highly born, in fact, for Kindra to claim acquaintance with any of that kin; they were of the ancient blood of the Hastur - kin.

"Yes, they are a proud people," whispered the woman. "My mother's name was Kyria, and she was a younger sister to Dom Lewis Ardais - not the Ardais Lord, but his younger brother. But still, she was highborn enough that when she proved to be with child by one of the Hastur lords of Thendara, she was hurried away and married in haste to Alaric Lindir. And my

father - he that I had always believed my father - he

r; all during my childhood I heard how proud he was of me, for I

was proud of his red - haired daughter; all during m>

would marry into Comyn, or go to one of the Towers and become a great and powerful sorceress or Keeper. And then - then came Scarface and his crew, and they sacked the castle, and carried away some of the women, just as an afterthought, and by the time Scarface discovered who he had as his latest captive - well, the damage was done, but still he sent to my father for ransom. And my father, that selfsame Dom Alaric who had not enough proud words for his red - haired beauty who should further his ambition by a proud marriage into the Comyn, my father - " She choked, then spat the words out. "He sent word that if Scarface could guarantee me - untouched then he would ransom me at a great price; but if not, then he would pay nothing. For if I was was spoilt, ravaged - then I was no use to him, and Scarf ace might hang me or give me to one of his men, as he saw fit."

"Holy Bearer of Burdens!" Annelys whispered. "And this man had reared you as his own child?"

"Yes - and I had thought he loved me," she said, her face twisting. Kindra closed her eyes in horror, seeing all too clearly the man who had welcomed his wife's bastard - but only while she could further his ambition.

Annelys' eyes were filled with tears. "How dreadful! Oh, how could any man - "

"I have come to believe any man would do so," the girl said, "for Scarface was so angry at my father's refusal that he gave me to one of his men to be a plaything, and you can see how he used me. That one I killed while he lay sleeping one night, when at last he had come to believe me beaten into submission - and so made my escape, and back to my mother, and she welcomed me with tears and with pity, but I could see in her mind that her greatest fear, now, was that I should shame her by bearing the child of Scarface's bastard; she feared that my father would say to her, like mother, like daughter, and my disgrace would revive the old story of her own. And I could not forgive my mother - that she should continue to love and to live with that man who had rejected me and given me over to such a fate. And so I made my way to a leronis, who took pity on me - or perhaps she, too, wanted only to be certain I would not disgrace my Comyn blood by becoming a whore or a bandit's drab - and she made me emmasca, as you see. And I took service with Brydar's men, and so I won my revenge - "

Annelys was weeping; but the girl lay with a face like stone. Her very calm was more terrible than hysteria; she had gone beyond tears, into a place where grief and satisfaction were all one, and that one wore the face of death.

Kindra said softly, "You are safe now; none will harm you. But you must not talk any more; you are weary, and weakened with loss of blood. Come, drink the rest of this wine and sleep, my girl." She supported the girl's head while she finished the wine, filled with horror. And yet, through the horror, was admiration. Broken, beaten, ravaged, and then rejected, this girl had won free of her captors by killing one of them; and then she had survived the further rejection of her family, to plot her revenge, and to carry it out, as a noble might do.

And the proud Comyn rejected this woman? She has the courage of any two of their menfolk! It is this kind of pride and folly that will one day bring the reign of the Comyn crashing down into ruin! And she shuddered with a strange premonitory fear, seeing with her wakening telepathic gift a flashing picture of flames over the Hellers, strange sky - ships, alien men walking the streets of Thendara clad in black leather . . .

The woman's eyes closed, her hands tightening on Kindra's. "Well, I have had my revenge," she whispered again, "and so I can die. And with my last breath I will bless you, that I die as a woman, and not in this hated disguise, among men . . ."

"But you are not going to die," Kindra said. "You will live, child."

"No." Her face was set stubbornly in lines of refusal, closed and barriered. "What does life hold for a woman friendless and without kin? I could endure to live alone and secret, among men, disguised, while I nursed the thought of my revenge to strengthen me for the - the daily pretense.

But I hate men, I loathe the way they speak of women among themselves, I would rather die than go back to Brydar's band, or live further among men."

Annelys said softly, "But now you are revenged, now you can live as a woman again."

Again the nameless woman shook her head. "Live as a woman, subject to men like my father? Go back and beg shelter from my mother, who might give me bread in secret so I would not disgrace them further by dying across her doorstep, and keep me hidden away, to drudge among them hidden, sew or spin, when I have ridden free with a mercenary band? Or shall I live as a lone woman, at the mercy of men? I would rather face the mercy of the blizzard and the banshee!" Her hand closed on Kindra's. "No," she said, "I would rather die."

Kindra drew the girl into her arms, holding her against her breast. "Hush, my poor girl, hush, you are over - wrought, you must not talk like that. When you have slept you will not feel this way," she soothed, but she felt the depth of despair in the woman in her arms, and her rage overflowed.

The laws of her Guild forbade her to speak of the Sisterhood, to tell this girl that she could live free, protected by the Guild Charter, never again to be at the mercy of any man. The laws of the Guild, which she might not break, the oath she must keep. And yet on a deeper level, was it not breaking the oath to withhold from this woman, who had risked so much and who had appealed to her in the name of her Goddess, the knowledge that might give her the will to live?

Whatever I do, I am forsworn; either I break my oath by refusing this girl my help, or I break it by speaking when I am forbidden by the law to speak.

The law! The law made by men, which still hemmed her in on every side, though she had cast off the ordinary laws by which men forced women to live! And she was doubly damned if she spoke of the Guild before Annelys, though Annelys had fought at her side. The just law of the Hellers would protect Annelys from this knowledge; it would make trouble for the Sisterhood if Kindra should lure away a daughter of a respectable innkeeper, whose mother needed her, and needed the help her husband would bring to the running of her inn!

Against her breast, the nameless girl had closed her eyes. Kindra caught the faint thread of her thoughts; she knew that the telepath caste could will themselves to die ... as this girl had willed herself to live, despite everything that had happened, until she had had her cherished revenge.

Let me sleep so . . . and I can believe myself in my mother's arms, in the days when I was still her child and this horror had not touched me . . . Let me sleep so and never wake . . .

Already she was drifting away, and for a moment, in despair, Kindra was tempted to let her die. The law forbids me to speak. And if she should speak, then Annelys, already struck with hero worship of Kindra, already rebelling against a woman's lot, having tasted the pride of defending herself, Annelys would follow her, too. Kindra knew it, with a strange, premonitory shiver.

She let the rage in her have its way and overflow. She shook the nameless woman awake,

knowing that already she was willing herself to death.

"Listen to me! Listen! You must not die," she said angrily. "Not when you have suffered so much! That is a coward's way, and you have proven again and again that you are no coward!"

"Oh, but I am a coward," the woman said. "I am too much a coward to live in the only way a woman like me can live - through the charity of women such as my mother - or the mercy of men like my father, or like Scarface! I dreamed that when I had my revenge, I could find some other way. But there is no other way."

And Kindra's rage and resolution overflowed. She looked despairing over the nameless woman's head, into Annelys' frightened eyes. She swallowed, knowing the seriousness of the step she was about to take.

"There - there might be another way," she said, still temporizing. "You - I do not even know your name, what is your name?"

"I am nameless," the woman said, her face like stone. "I swore I would never again speak the name given me by the father and the mother who rejected me. If I had lived, I would have taken another name. Call me what pleases you."

And with a great surge of wrath, Kindra made up her mind. She drew the girl against her.

"I will call you Camilla," she said, "for from this day forth, I swear it, I shall be mother and sister to you, as was the blessed Cassilda to Camilla; this I swear. Camilla, you shall not die," she said, pulling the girl upright. Then, with a deep resolute breath, clasping Camilla's hand in one of hers, and stretching the other to Annelys, she began.

"My little sisters, let me tell you of the Sisterhood of Free Women, which men call Free Amazons. Let me tell you of the ways of the Renunciates, the Oath - bound, the Comhi Letzii..."

(1979)

Elbow Room(1980)

Sometimes I feel the need to go to confession on my way to work.

It's quiet at first dawn, with Aleph Prime not above the horizon yet; there's always some cognitive dissonance because, with the antigravs turned up high enough for comfort, you feel that the "days" ought to reflect a planet of human mass, not a mini - planetoid space station. So at first dawn you're set for an ordinary - sized day; twenty hours, or twenty - three, or something your circadian rhythms could compromise with. Thus when Prime sets again for first dark you aren't prepared for it. With your mind, maybe, but not down where you need it, in your guts. By

third dawn you're gearing up for a whole day on Checkout Station again, and you can cope with third dark and fifth dark and by twelfth dark you're ready to put on your sleep mask and draw the curtains and shut it all out again till first dawn next day.

But at first dawn you get that illusion, and I always enjoy it for a little while. It's like being really alone on a silent world, a real world. And even before I came here to Checkout I was always a loner, preferring my own company to anyone else's.

That's the kind they always pick for the Vortex stations, like Checkout. There isn't much company there. And we learn to give each other elbow room.

You'd think, with only five of us here - or is it only four; I've never been quite sure, for reasons I'll go into later - we'd do a lot of socializing. You'd think we would huddle together against the enormous agoraphobia of space. I really don't know why we don't. I guess, though, the kind of person who could really enjoy living on Checkout - and I do - would have to be a loner. And I go squirrelly when there are too many other people around.

Of course, I know I couldn't really live here alone, as much as I'd like to. They tried that, early in the days of the Vortex stations, sending one man or woman out alone. One after another, with monotonous regularity, they suicided. Then they tried sending well - adjusted couples, small groups, sociable types who would huddle together and socialize, and they all went nuts and did one another in. I know why, of course; they saw too much of each other, and began to rely on one another for their sanity and self - validation. And of course that solution didn't work. You

have to be the kind of person who can be wholly self - reliant.

So now they do it this way. I always know I'm not alone. But I never have to see too much of the other people here; I never have to see them unless I want to. I don't know how much socializing the others do, but I suspect they're as much loners as I am. I don't really care, as long as they don't intrude on my privacy and as long as they take orders the way they're supposed to. I love them all, of course, all four or maybe five of them. They told me, back at Psych Conditioning, that this would happen. But I don't remember how it happened, whether it just happened or whether they made it happen. I don't ask too many questions. I'm glad that I love them; I'd hate to think that some Psych - tech made me love them! Because they're sweet, dear, wonderful, lovable people. All of them.

As long as I don't have to see them very often.

Because I'm the boss. I'm in control. It's my Station! Slight tendencies toward megalomania, they called it in Psych. It's good for a Station Programmer to have these mild megalomanic tendencies, they explained it all to me. If they put humble self - effacing types out here, they'd start thinking of themselves as wee little fleabites upon the vast face of the Universe, and sooner or later they'd be found with their throats cut, because they couldn't believe they were big enough to be in control of anything on the cosmic scale of the Vortex.

Lonely, yes. But I like it that way. I like being boss out here. And I like the way they've provided for my needs. I think I have the best chef in the galaxy. She cooks all my favorite foods

- I suppose Psych gave her my profile. I wonder sometimes if the other people at the station have to eat what I like, or if they get to order their own favorites. I don't really care, as long as I get to order what I like. And then I have my own personal librarian, with all the music of the galaxy at her fingertips, the best sound - equipment known, state - of - the - art stuff I'd never be able to afford in any comparable job back Earthside. And my own gardener, and a technician to do the work I can't handle. And even my own personal priest. Can you imagine that? Sending a priest all the way out here, just to minister to my spiritual needs! Well, at least to a congregation of four. Or five.

Or is it six? I keep thinking I've forgotten somebody.

First dawn is rapidly giving way to first noon when I leave the garden and kneel in the little confessional booth. I whisper "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

"Bless you, my child." Father Nicholas is there, although his Mass must be long over. I sometimes wonder if this doesn't violate the sanctity of the confessional, that he cannot help knowing which of his congregation is kneeling there; I am the only one who ever gets up before second dawn. And I don't really know whether I have sinned or not. How could I sin against God or my fellow man, when I am thousands of millions of miles away from all but five or six of them? And I so seldom see the others, I have no chance to sin with them or against them. Maybe I only need to hear his voice; a human voice, a light, not particularly masculine voice. Deeper than mine, though different from mine. That's the important thing; to hear a voice which isn't mine.

"Father, I have entertained doubts about the nature of God."

"Continue, my child."

"When I was out in the Wheel the other day, watching the Vortex, I found myself wondering if the Vortex was God. After all, God is unknowable, and the Vortex is so totally alien from human experience. Isn't this the closest thing that the human race has ever found, to the traditional view of God? Something totally beyond matter, energy, space or time?"

There is a moment of silence. Have I shocked the priest? But after a long time his soft voice comes quietly into the little confessional. Outside the light is already dimming toward first dark.

"There is no harm in regarding the Vortex as a symbol of God's relationship to man, my child. After all, the Vortexes are perhaps the most glorious of God's works. It is written in scripture that the Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the wonder of His work."

"But does this mean, then, that God is distant, incapable of loving mankind? I can't imagine the Vortex loving anyone or being conscious of anyone. Not even me."

"Is that a defect in God, or a defect in your own imagination, my child, in ascribing limits to God's power?"

I persist. "But does it matter if I say my prayers to the Vortex, and worship it?"

Behind the screen I hear a soft laugh. "God will hear your prayers wherever you say them, dear child, and whenever you find anything worthy of worship and admiration you are worshiping God, by whatever name you choose to call it. Is there anything else, my child?"

"I have been guilty of uncharitable thoughts about my cook, Father. Last night she didn't fix my dinner till late, and I wanted to tear her eyes out!"

"Did you harm her, child?"

"No. I just yelled through the screen that she was a lazy, selfish, stupid bitch. I wanted to go out and hit her, but I didn't."

"Then you exercised commendable self - restraint, did you not? What did she answer?"

"She didn't answer at all. And that made me madder than ever."

"You should love your neighbor - and I mean your chef, too - as yourself, child," he reproves, and I say, hanging my head, "I'm not loving myself very much these days, maybe that's the trouble."

Mind, now, I'm not sure there really is a Father Nicholas behind that screen. Maybe it's a relay

system which puts me into touch with a priest Earthside. Or maybe Father Nicholas is only a special voice program on the main computer, which is why I sometimes ask the craziest questions, and play a game with myself to see how long it takes "Father Nicholas" to find the right program for an answer. As I said, it seems crazy to send a priest out here for five people. Or is it six?

But then, why not? We people at the Vortex stations keep the whole galaxy running. Nothing is too good for us, so why not my personal priest?

"Tell me what is troubling you, my child."

Always my child. Never by name. Does he even know it? He must. After all, I am in charge here; Checkout Programmer. The boss. Or is this just the. manners of the confessional, a subtle way of reemphasizing that all of us are the same to him, equal in his sight and in the sight of God? I don't know if I like that. It's disquieting. Perhaps my chef runs to him and tells tales of me, how I shrieked foul names at her, and abused her through the kitchen hatch! I cover my face with my hands and sob, hearing him make soothing sounds.

I envy that priest, secure behind his curtain. Listening to the human faults of others, having none of his own. I almost became a priest myself. I tell him so.

"I know that, child, you told me. But I'm not clear in my mind why you chose not to be ordained."

I'm not clear either, and I tell him so, trying to remember. If I had been a man I would surely have gone through with it, but it is still not entirely easy to be ordained, for a woman, and the thought of seminary, with ninety or a hundred other priestlings and priestlets herded all together, even then the thought made me uneasy. I couldn't have endured the fight for a woman to be ordained. "I'm not a fighter, Father."

But I am disquieted when he agrees with me. "No. If you were, you wouldn't be out here, would you?" Again I feel uneasy; am I just running away? I choose to live here on the ragged rim of the Universe, tending the Vortex, literally at the back end of Beyond. I pour all this uncertainty out to him, knowing he will reassure me, understand me as always.

But his reassuring noises are too soothing, too calming, humoring me. Damn it, is there anyone there behind that curtain? I want to tear it down, to see the priest's face, his human face, or else to be sure that it is only a bland computer console programmed to reassure and thus to mock me. My hand already extended, I draw it back. I don't really want to know. Let them laugh at me, if there is really a they, a priest Earthside listening over this unthinkable extension of the kilometers and the megakilometers, let them laugh. They deserve it, if they are really such clever programmers, making it possible for me to draw endless sympathy and reassurance from the sound of an alien voice.

Whatever we do, we do to make it possible for you to live and keep your sanity ... "I think, Father, that I am - am a little lonely. The dreams are building up again."

"Perfectly natural," he says soothingly, and I know that he will arrange one of Julian's rare visits. Even now I hang my head, blush, cannot face him, but it is less embarrassing this way than if I had to take the initiative alone, unaided. It's part of being the kind of loner I am, that I could never endure it, to call Julian direct, have to take - perhaps - a rebuff or a downright rejection. Well, I never claimed to be a well - adjusted personality. A well - adjusted personality could not survive out here, at the rim of nowhere. Back on Earthside I probably wouldn't even have a love life, I avoid people too much. But here they provide for all my needs. All. Even this one, which, left to myself, I would probably neglect.

Ego te absolvo.

I kneel briefly to say my penance, knowing that the ritual is foolish. Comforting; but foolish. He reminds me to turn on the monitor in my room and he will say Mass for me tomorrow. And again I am certain that there is nobody there, that it is a program in the computer; is there any other reason we do not all assemble for Christian fellowship? Or do we all share this inability to tolerate one another's company?

But I feel soothed and comforted as I go down between the automatic sprinklers through the little patch of garden tended so carefully by my own gardener. I catch a glimpse, a shimmer in the air, of someone in the garden, turned away like a distant reflection, but no one is supposed to be here at this hour and I quickly look away.

Still it is comforting not to be alone and I call out a cheery good - morning to the invisible image, wondering, with a strange little cramp of excitement low in my body; is it Julian? I see him so briefly, so seldom, except in the half - darkness of my room on those rare occasions he conies to me. I'm not even sure what he does here. We don't talk about his work. We have better things to do. Thinking of that makes me tremble, squeeze my legs tight, thinking that it may not be long till I see him again. But I have a day's work to do, and with second dawn brightening the sky, glinting on reflections from which I glance away . . . you never look in mirrors ... I climb up into the seat that will take me up to the Wheel, out by the Vortex.

There is an exhilaration to that, shooting up toward the strange seething no - color of it. There is a ship already waiting. Waiting for me, for the Vortex to open. All that power and burning and fusion and raw energy, all waiting for me, and I enjoy my daily dose of megalomania as I push the speech button.

"Checkout speaking. Register your name and business."

It is always a shock to hear a voice from outside, a really strange voice. But I register the captain's voice, the name and registry number so that later they can match programs with Checkin, my opposite number on the far side of the Vortex - in a manner of speaking. Where the Vortex is concerned, of course, Near and Far, or Here and There, or Before and After, have no more meaning than - oh, than I and Thou. In one of the mirrors on the wheel I catch a glimpse of my technician, waiting, and I sit back and listen as she rattles off the coordinates in a sharp staccato. She and I have nothing to say to each other. I don't really think that girl is interested in

anything except mathematics. I drift, watching myself in the mirror, listening to the ship's captain arguing with the technician, and I am irritated. How dare he argue, her conduct reflects on me and I am enraged by any hint of rudeness to my staff. So I speak the code which starts the Vortex into its strange nonspace whorl, the colors and swirls.

This could all be done by computers, of course.

I am here, almost literally, to push a button by hand if one gets stuck. From the earliest days of telemetered equipment, machinery has tended to go flukey and sometimes jam; and during the two hundred years that the Vortex stations have been in operation, they've found out that it's easier and cheaper to maintain the stations with their little crews of agoraphobic and solitary loners. They even provide us with chefs and gardeners and all our mental and spiritual comforts. We humans are just software which doesn't - all things considered - get out of order quite as often as the elaborate self - maintaining machineries do. Furthermore, we can be serviced more cheaply when we do get out of order. So we're there to make sure that if any of the buttons stick, we can unstick them before they cost the Galaxy more than the whole operating costs of Checkout for the next fifty years.

I watch the Vortex swirl, and my knowledge and judgment tell me the same thing as do my instruments. "Whenever you're ready," I say, receive their acknowledgment, and then the strange metal shape of the ship swirls with the Vortex, becomes nonshape, I almost see it vanish into amorphous nothingness, to come out - or so the theory is - at Checkin Station, several hundred light - years away. Do these ships go anywhere at all, I wonder? Do they ever return? They

vanish when I push those buttons, and they never come back. Am I sending them into oblivion, or to their proper prearranged destination? I don't know. And, if the truth be told, I don't really care. For all the difference it makes to me they could be going into another dimension, or to the theological Hell.

But I like it out here on the Wheel. There is real solitude up here. Down there on Checkout there is solitude with other people around, though I seldom see them. I realize I am still twitching from a brief encounter with the gardener this morning. Don't they know, these people, that they aren't supposed to be around when I am walking in the gardens? But even that brief surge of adrenaline has been good for me, I suppose. Do they arrange for me to get a glimpse of one of my fellow humans only when I need that kind of stirring up?

Back at Checkout - there will not be another ship today - I walk again through the garden, putter a little, cherish with my eyes the choice melon I am growing under glass, warn the gardener through the intercom not to touch it until I myself order it served up for my supper. I remember the satisfaction of the cargo ship waiting, metal tentacles silent against the black of space, waiting. Waiting for me, waiting for my good pleasure, gatekeeper to the Void, Cerberus at a new, kind of hell.

Rank has its privileges. While I am in the garden none of the others come near; but I am a little fatigued, I leave the garden to the others and go to my room for deep meditation. I can sense them all around me, the gardener working with the plants like an extension of my own consciousness, I sit like a small spider at the center of a web and watch the others working as I

sit back to meditate. My mind floats free, my alpha rhythms take over, I disappear . . .

Later, waiting for my supper, I wonder what kind of woman would become chef on a Checkout station. I can cook, I have done my own cooking, I am a damn good cook, but I wouldn't have taken a job like that. Is she completely without ambition? I don't see her very often. We wouldn't have much in common; what could I possibly have to say to a woman like that? Waiting, floating, spider in my web, I find I can imagine her going carefully through the motions and little soothing rituals, chopping fresh vegetables I fingered in the garden this morning, heating the trays, all the little soothing mindless things. But to spend her life like that? The woman must be a fool.

I come out of the meditative state to find my supper waiting for me. I call my thanks to her, eat. The food is good, it is always good, but the dishes are too hot, somehow I have burned my hand on them. But it doesn't matter, I have something more to look forward to, tonight. I delay, savoring the knowledge, listening to one of my operatic tapes, lost in a vague romantic reverie. Tonight, Julian is coming.

I wonder sometimes why we are not allowed to see one another more often. Surely, if he cares for me as much as he says, it would be proper to see each other casually now and then, to talk about our work. But I am sure Psych is right, that it is better for us not to see each other too often. On Earth, if we grew tired of one another, we could each find someone else. But here there is no one else - for either of us. A phrase floats through my mind from nowhere, chains of mnemonic suggestion, as I set the controls which will allow him to come, silent and alone, into

my room after I have gone to bed.

He has come and gone.

I do not know why the rules are as they are. Perhaps to keep us from quarreling, to avoid the tragedies of the early days of the Vortex stations. Perhaps, simply, to avoid our growing bored with each other. As if I could ever be bored with Julian! To me, he is perfect, even his name. Julian has always seemed to me the most perfect name for a man, and Julian, my Julian, my lover, the perfect man to match the perfect name. So why is it we are not allowed to meet more often? Why can we meet like this, only in the silent dark?

Langorous, satisfied, exhausted, I muse drowsily, wondering if it is some obscure mystery of my inner Psych - profile, that one of us subconsciously desires the old myth of Pysche, who could retain her lover Eros only as long as she never saw his face? I see him only for a moment in the mirror, misty, never clearly perceived, over my shoulder; but I know he is handsome.

I am so sensitive to Julian's moods that I think sometimes I am developing special senses for my love; becoming a telepath, but only for him. When our bodies join it seems often as if I were one in mind with him, touching him, how else could I be so aware of his emotions, so completely secure of his tenderness and his concern? How else could he know so perfectly all my body's obscurer desires, when I myself can hardly bring myself to speak them, when I would be afraid or ashamed to voice them aloud? But he knows, he always knows, leaving me satisfied, worn, spent. I wish, with a longing so intense it is pain, that the regulations by which we live would let

him lie here in my arms for the rest of the night, that I could feel myself held close and cherished, comforted against this vast, eternal loneliness; that he could cuddle me in his arms, that we could meet sometimes for a drink or share our dinner. Why not?

A terrible thought comes to me. They give me everything else. My own cook. My own gardener. My technician. My personal priest.

My very own male whore.

I cannot believe it. No, no. No. I do not believe it. Julian loves me, and I love him. Anyhow, it would not suit the Puritan consciences of our legislators. No, I can't see it; how would they justify it on the requisition forms? Whore, male, one, Checkout Programmer, for the use of. No, such a thing couldn't happen. Surely they just hired some male technician, determined by Psych profile to have the maximum sexual compatibility with myself. That's bad enough, heaven knows.

Now an even more frightening thought surges up into my conscious mind. Can it be possible oh, God, no! - that Julian, my Julian, is an android?

They have designed some of them, I know, with extremely sophisticated sex programs. I have seen them advertised in those catalogs we used to giggle over when we were little girls. I am sick with fear and dread at the thought that during those conditioning trances which I have been conditioned to forget, I gave up all that data about my secret dreams and desires and sexual

fantasies, so that they might program them all into the computer of an android, and what emerged was . . . Julian.

'

Is he a multipurpose android, perhaps, then? Hardware, no more, both useful and economical; perhaps that gardener I see dimly sometimes, like a hologram, in the distance. He could, of course, be the gardener, though in the brief glimpses of the gardener I had the impression the gardener was a woman. Who can tell, with these coveralls we all wear, uniform, unisex? And it would look better on the congressional requisitions: Android, one, multiprogrammed. Checkout Station, for the maintenance of. And a special sexual program would only be a memo in the files of Psych. Nothing to embarrass anyone - anyone but me, that is, and I am not supposed to know. Just another piece of Station hardware. For maintenance of the Station. And of the Station Programmer. Hardware. Yes, very. Oh, God!

I have no time now for worrying about Julian, or what he is, or about my own dissatisfactions and fears. I cannot take any of these disquieting thoughts to that computerized priest, if he is indeed only a sophisticated computer, a mechanical priest - psychiatrist! Is he another android, perhaps? Or is he indeed the same android with still another program? Priest and male whore at the flip of a switch? Am I alone here with a multipurpose android serving all my functions? No time for that. A ship is out there, waiting for me; and my instruments tell me, as I ride out to the Wheel, even before I get the message; that ship is in trouble.

Perhaps all the signs, all my fears that I am going mad, are simply signs of developing telepathic potential; I never believed that I was even potentially an esper, yet somehow I am aware of

nearly everything my technician said to the ship's captain. I did not understand it all, of course, I have no technical skill at all. My skills are all executive. I can barely manage to make my little pocket calculator figure out the tariffs for the ships I send into the Vortex; I joked with Central that they should allow me a bookkeeper, but they are too stingy. But even though I did not understand all of what the technician said, when I read the report she left for me, I know that if the ship went into the Vortex in this state, it might never emerge; worse, it might create spatial anomalies to disturb the fields for other ships and put the Vortex very badly out of commission. So I know that they dare not pass through that gate; I cannot follow the precise mathematics of the switch, though, and I feel like a fool. When I was in preparatory school I tested higher in all the groups, including mathematical ability. But I ended up with no technical skill. How, I wonder, did that happen?

Later I have leisure to visit the captain by screen. He is a big man, youthful, soft - spoken, his smile strangely stirring. And he asks me a strange question.

"You are the Programmer? Are you people a clone?"

"Why, no, nothing like that," I say to him, and ask why.

"The technician - she's very like you. Oh, of course, you are nothing alike otherwise, she's all business - a shame, in a lovely young woman! I could hardly get her to say a pleasant word to me!"

I tell him that I am an only child. Only children are best for work like this; the necessary isolation from peer groups. A child reared in a puppy - pack, under peer pressure from siblings and agemates, becomes other - directed; dependent upon the opinions and the approval of others, without the inner resources to tolerate the solitude which is the breath of life to me. I am even a little offended. "I can't see the slightest resemblance between us," I tell him, and he shakes his head and says diplomatically that perhaps it is a similarity of height and coloring which misled him.

"Anyway, I didn't like her much, she flayed me with her tongue, kept strictly to business - you'd think it was my fault the ship was out of commission! You're much, much pleasanter than she is!"

And that is as it should be, I am the one with leisure for reflection and conversation; it wouldn't be right for my technician to waste her time talking! So we talk, we even flirt a little. I am aware of it; I pose and preen a little for him, letting the animal woman surface from all the other faces I wear, and finally I agree to the hazardous step, to visit him on his ship.

So strange, so strange to think of being with one who is not carefully Psych - profiled to be agreeable to me. There is nothing in the regulations against it, of course, perhaps they believe our love of solitude will keep us away as it has always done before, for me. Even a little welcome, alien. But when I am actually through the airlock I am shocked into silence by the strange faces, the alien smells, the different body - chemistry of strange male life. They say that men give off hormones, analogous to pheromones in the lower kingdoms, which they cannot smell on one

another; which only a woman is chemically able to smell. I believe, it, it is true, the ship reeks of maleness. Ushered into a room where I may strip my suit I avoid the mirror. Never look into a mirror, unless . . . unless . . . why would Psych have imprinted that prohibition on me? I need to see that my hair is tidy, my coverall free of grease. Defiantly I look into it anyway, my head swims and I look away in haste.

Fear, fear of what I may see, my face dissolving, identity lost. . . stranger, not myself, unknown. ...

A drink in my hand, flattery and compliments; I find I am hungry for this after long isolation. Of course I am selfish and vain, it is a professional necessity, like my little touch of daily megalomania. I accept this, and revel in seeing others, interacting with strange faces - really strange, not programmed to my personal needs and wishes. Yes, I know I need to be alone, I remember all the reasons, but I know also, too well, the terrible face of loneliness. All my carefully chosen companions are so dovetailed to my personality that talking to them is like . . . like talking to myself, like looking in a mirror . . .

Two drinks help me unwind, relax. I know all the dangers of alcohol, but tonight I am defiant; we are off duty, both the captain and myself, we need not guard ourselves. Before too long I find the captain's hands on me, touching me, rousing me in a way Julian has not done since his first visits. I give myself over to his kisses, and when he asks the inevitable question I brace myself for a moment, then shrug and ask myself Why not? His touch on me is welcome, I brush aside thoughts of Julian, even Julian has been too carefully adjusted, dovetailed, programmed to my

own personality; perhaps even a little abrasiveness helps to alter the far - too - even tenor of the days, to create something of the necessary otherness of lovemaking. That is what I have missed, the otherness; Julian being too carefully selected and Psych - profiled to me.

If a love - partner is too similar to the self there is not the needed, satisfying merging. Even the amoeba which splits itself, infinitely reduplicating perfect analogies of its own personality and awareness, feels now and then the need to merge, to exchange its very protoplasm and cell - stuff with the other; too much of even the most necessary similarity is deadly, and makes of love making only a more elaborate and ritualized masturbation. It is good to be touched by another.

Together, then, into his room. And our bodies merge abruptly into an unlovely struggle at the height of which he blurts out, as if in shock, "But you couldn't possibly be that inexperienced ..." and then, seeing and sensing my shock, he is all gentleness again, apologetic, saying he had forgotten how young I was. I am confused and distressed; I inexperienced? Now I am on my mettle, to prove myself equal to passion, sophisticated and knowledgeable, tolerating discomfort and strangeness, to think longingly of Julian. It serves me right, to be unfaithful to him, Psych was right, Julian is exactly what I need; I know, even while the captain and I are lying close, afterward, all tenderness, that I will not do this again. The regulations are wise. Back to the Station, back to my quarters, blur the experience all away in sleep, all of it ... awkwardness, struggle that felt like rape ... no, I will not do this again, I know now why it is forbidden. I do not think I will confess it even to the priest, I have done penance enough. Seal it all away in some inaccessible part of my mind, the bruising and humiliation of the memory.

Flotsam in my mind from the vast amnesia of the training program, as I seek to forget, that conditioning they will never let us remember; that J am suitable for this work because I dissociate with abnormal rapidity. . . .

And next morning at firstdawn I go up even before breakfast to the Wheel, their repairs are made and they do not want to lose time. The captain wants to speak with me, but I let him speak with the technician while I watch out of sight. I do not want to look into his face again; I never want to see again in any face that mixture of tenderness, pity - contempt.

I am glad to see their ship dissolve into the vast nonshape of the Vortex. I do not care if their repairs have been made properly or if they lose themselves somewhere inside the Vortex and never return. Watching their shape vanish I see a face dissolving in a mirror and I am agitated and frightened, frightened . . . they are not part of my world, I have seen them go, I have perhaps destroyed them. I think of how easy it would have been, how glad I would have been if my technician had given them the wrong program and they had vanished into the Vortex and come out . . . nowhere. As I have destroyed everything not the self.

Julian has been destroyed for me too. . . .

Maybe there is nothing out there, no ship, no Vortex, nothing. Everything comes into the human mind through the filters of self, my priest created to absolve a self which is not there, or is it the priest who is not there at all? Maybe there is nothing out there, maybe I created it all out of my own inner needs, priest, ship, Station, Vortex, perhaps I am still lying in the conditioning trances

down there on Earth, fantasizing people who would help me to survive the terrors of loneliness, perhaps these people whom I see, but never clearly, are all androids, or fantasies born of my own madness and my inner needs ... a random phrase floats again through my mind, always the danger of solipsism, in the dissociator, the feeling that only the self exists . . . eternal preoccupation with internal states is morbid and we take advantage . . .

Was there ever a ship out there? Did my mind create it to break the vast monotony of solitude, the loneliness I find I cannot endure, did I even fantasize the captain's gross body lying on my own?

Or is it Julian that I created, my own hands on my body, fantasy . . .a half - lighted image in a mirror . . .

The terrible solitude, the solitude I need and yet cannot endure, the solitude that is madness. And yet I need the solitude, so that I will not kill them all, I could murder them as all the earlier Vortex stations murdered one another, or is it only suicide when there is nothing but myself?

Is the whole cosmos out there - stars, galaxies, Vortex - only an emanation of my own brain? If so, then I can unmake it with a thought as I made it. I can snatch up my cook's kitchen knife and plunge it into my throat and all the stars will go away and all the universes. What am I doing in the kitchen . . . the cook's knife in my hand . . . here where I never go? She will be angry; I am supposed to give her the same privacy I yield to myself, I call out an apology and leave. Or is that pointless, am I crying out apology or abuse to myself? I have had no breakfast, at this hour,

near thirddawn, the cook always prepares, I always prepare breakfast, I meditate while breakfast is prepared and served to me on my tray, facing the mirror from which I emerge ... I am the other, the one with leisure for meditation and reflection - the executive, creative, I am God creating all these universes inside and outside of my mind . . . dizzied, I catch at the mirror, the knife slips, my face dissolves, my hand bleeds and all the universes wobble and spin on their cosmic axes, the face in the mirror commands in the voice of Father Nicholas, "Go, my child, and meditate."

"No! No!" I refuse to be tranquilized again, to be deceived . . .

"Command over - ride!" A voice I do not remember. "Go and meditate, meditate ..." meditate, meditate. . .

Like the tolling of a great bell, commanding, rising out of the deeps, the voice of God. I meditate, seeing my face dissolve and change. . . .

No wonder I can read the technician's mind, I am the technician . . .

There is no one here. There has never been anyone here.

Only myself, and I am all, I am the God, the maker and unmaker of all the universes, I am Brahma, I am the Cosmos and the Vortex, I am the slow unraveling. . . . . . unraveling of the mind . . .

I stumble to the chapel, images dissolving in my mind like the cook's face with the knife, into the confessional, the confessional I have always known is empty, sob out a prayer to the empty shrine. Oh, God, if there is a God, let there be a God, let there be somebody there . . . or is God too only an emanation of my mind . . .

And the slow dissolve into the mirror, the priest's voice saying soothing things which I do not really hear, the mirror as my mind dissolves, the priest's voice soothing and calm, my own voice weeping, pleading, sobbing, begging . . .

But his words mean nothing, a fragment of my own disintegration, I want to die, I want to die, I am dying, gone, nowhere . . .

The phenomenon of selective attention, what used to be called hypnosis, a self - induced dissociation or fugue state, dissociational hysteria sometimes regarded as multiple personality when the fragmented self - organized chains of memory and personality sets organize themselves into different consciousness. There is always the danger of solipsism, but the personality defends itself with enormously complex coping mechanisms. For instance, although we knew she had briefly attended a seminary, we had not expected the priest. . . .

"Ego te absolve. Make a good act of contrition, my child."

I murmur the foolish, comforting, ritual words. He says, gently, "Go and meditate, child, you

will feel better."

He is right. He is always right. I think sometimes that Father Nicholas is my conscience. That, of course, is the function of a priest. I meditate. All the terrors dissolve while I sit quietly in meditation, spinning the threads of this web where I sit, happy at the center, conscious of all the others moving around me. I must be developing esper powers, there is no other explanation, for while I sit quietly here meditating in the chapel the soothing vibrations of the garden come up through my fingers while my gardener works quietly, detached and calm, in my garden, growing delicious things for my supper. I love them all, all my friends around me here, they are all so kind to me, protecting my precious solitude, my privacy. I cannot cook the lovely things he grows, so I sit in my cherished solitude while my cook creates all manner of delicious things for my supper. How kind she is to me, a sweet woman really, though I know that I would have nothing to say to a woman like that. I waken out of meditation to see supper in my tray. How quickly the day has gone, seventhdawn brightening into seventh - noon, and darkness will be upon all of us again soon. How good it is, how sweet and fresh the food from my own garden; I call my thanks to her, this cook who spends all her time thinking up delightful things for me to eat. She must have esper powers too, my prize melon is on my tray, she knew exactly what I wanted after such a day as this.

"Good - night, dear cook, thank you, God bless you, goodnight."

She does not answer, I know she will not answer, she knows her place, but I know she hears and is pleased at my praise.

"Sleep well, my dear, good - night."

As I go to my room through the dimming of eighthdark, it crosses my mind that sometimes I am a little lonely here. But I am doing important work, and after all, the Psych people knew what they were doing. They knew that I need elbow room.

(1980)

Blood Will Tell(1980)

Dio Ridenow saw them first in the lobby of the luxury hotel serving humans, and humanoids, on the pleasure world of Vainwal. They were tall, sturdy men, but it was the blaze of red hair on the elder of them that drew her eyes. Comyn red. He was past fifty and walked with a limp, stiff kneed; his back was bent. Behind him walked a young man in nondescript clothing, tall, dark haired and black - browed, sullen with steel - gray eyes. Somehow he had the look of deformity, of suffering, which she associated with lifetime cripples, hunchbacks; yet he had no visible defect except a few half - healed scars along one cheek. The scars drew, up at the corner of his mouth into a permanent sneer, and Dio turned her eyes away with a faint sense of revulsion. Why would a Comyn lord have such a person in his entourage? Some hanger - on, poor relation?

For it was obvious that the man was a Comyn lord. There were redheads in the galaxy, on other worlds, but the facial stamp, the features of the Comyn, were unmistakable, combined with that hair; flame - red, dusted with gray now, but still - Comyn. And what was he doing here? For that matter, who was he, anyhow? It was rare to find Darkovans anywhere except on their home world. The girl smiled and thought to herself that she, too, might have been asked that question, for she was Darkovan and far from home. Her brothers came here because, basically, neither was interested in political intrigue; but they had had to defend and justify their absence often enough.

The Comyn lord moved slowly across the hall; limping, but with a kind of arrogance that drew all eyes, though he did nothing unusual. Dio framed it to herself, in an unfocused way: he moved as if he should have been preceded by his own drone - pipers and wearing high boots and a swirling cape - not the drab featureless Terran clothing he actually wore.

And having identified his Terran dress she suddenly knew who he was. One Comyn lord, and only one as far as anyone knew, had actually married, legally and with full ceremony, a Terran woman. He had managed to outface the scandal, which in any case had been before Dio was born; Dio had not seen him more than twice in her life, but now she knew who he was; Kennard Lanart - Alton, Lord Armida, self - exiled lord of the Alton Domain. And now she knew who the young man with the sullen eyes must be; this was his half - caste son, Lewis, who had been horribly injured during a rebellion back in the Hellers - Dio took no particular interest in such things and didn't know the details, she had still been playing with dolls when it all happened. But she knew Lew's foster sister, Linnell Aillard, who had a sister who was Keeper in Arilinn; and Linnell had told her of Lord Kennard's son Lewis and that her foster father had taken Lew to

Terra in the hope that they could help him.

The two Comyn were standing beside the central computer of the main hotel desk; Kennard was giving some quietly definite order about their luggage to the human servants who were one of the luxury touches of the hotel, of the pleasure world. Dio herself had been brought up on a world where human servants were commonplace and could accept it without embarrassment, but many people could not overcome their shyness or dismay at being waited on by people rather than servomechs or robots. Die's poise about such things had given her status among the other young women of Vainwal, many of them new - rich people who flocked to the pleasure worlds, knowing nothing of the refinements or niceties of good living, unable to accept luxury as if they had been brought up to it. Blood, Dio thought watching the exactly right way Kennard spoke to the servants, would always tell.

The younger man turned; Dio could see now that one hand was kept concealed in a fold of his coat, and that he moved awkwardly, struggling to handle some piece of their equipment which he did not want touched by anyone else. Kennard spoke to him in a low voice, but Dio could hear the impatient tone of the words, and the young man scowled, a black and angry scowl which made Dio shudder. Suddenly she realized she did not want to see any more of that young man. But from where she stood she could not cross the lobby without crossing their path.

She felt like lowering her head and pretending they were not there at all. After all, one of the delights of pleasure worlds such as Vainwal was to be anonymous, free of the restrictions of class or caste on one's home world. She would not recognize them, give them the privacy she

wanted for herself. But as she crossed their path the young man made a clumsy movement; he did not see Dio, and banged full into her. Whatever piece of luggage he was carrying slid out of his awkward one - handed grip and slid to the floor with a metallic clatter. He flung an angry word at her and stooped to retrieve it. It was long, narrow, closely wrapped; it might have held a pair of dueling swords, prized possessions never trusted to anyone else to handle. Dio automatically stepped back, but the young man could not get his hand on it, it slithered away, and she bent to reach for it and hand it to him.

"Don't touch that!" he said angrily. His voice was harsh, raw, and grating; he actually reached out and shoved her away from it and she saw the folded empty sleeve at the end of his arm. She stared, open - mouthed with indignation; she had only been trying to help!

"Lew!" Kennard Alton's voice was sharp with reproof; the young man scowled and muttered something like an apology, turning away and scrambling the wrapped dueling swords, or whatever they were, awkwardly into his arms, turning ungraciously to conceal the folded sleeve. Suddenly Dio felt herself shudder, a deep shudder that went all the way to the bone. But why should it affect her so? She had seen wounded men before; surely a missing hand was hardly reason to go about as this one did, with a continual outraged, defensive scowl, a black refusal to meet the eyes of another human being!

With a small shrug she turned away from him. There was no reason to waste thought or courtesy on this graceless fellow whose manners were as ugly as his face! Kennard was asking, "But you are a countrywomen, vai domna? I did not know there were Darkovans on Vainwal."

She dropped him a curtsy. "I am Diotima Ridenow of Serrais, my lord, and I am here with my brothers Lerrys and Geremy, by leave of my brother and my lord."

"I had believed you were destined for the Tower, mistress Dio."

She shook her head and knew the swift color was rising in her face. "It was so ordained when I was a child; I - I was invited to do so. But in the end I chose otherwise."

"Well, well, it is not a vocation for everyone," Kennard said genially, and she contrasted the charm of the father with the sneering scowl of the son, who stood frowning, without the most elementary formal phrases of courtesy! Was it his Terran blood which had robbed him of any vestige of his father's charm: In the name of the Blessed Cassilda, couldn't he even look at her? It was the scar tissue at the corner of his mouth which had drawn his face into a sneer; but he had taken it into his very soul, it seemed.

"So Lerrys and Geremy are here? Are they in the hotel?"

"We have a suite here, on the ninetieth floor," Dio said, "but they are in the amphitheater, watching a competition in null - gravity dancing. Lerrys is an amateur of the sport, but he was eliminated early in the competition, when he twisted a muscle in his knee and the medics would not allow him to continue."

Kennard bowed. "Convey them both my compliments," he said, "and my invitation, lady, for the three of you to be my guests tomorrow night, when the finalists perform in the amphitheater here."

"I am sure they will be charmed," Dio said, and took her leave.

She heard the rest of the story that evening from her brothers.

"Lew? That was the traitor," Geremy said. "Went' to Aldaran as his father's envoy and sold Kennard out, to join up with those pirates and bandits at Aldaran. His mother's people, after all, and believe me, Aldaran blood isn't to be trusted. They had some kind of super - matrix back there, and young Aldaran was experimenting with it. Burned down half of Caer Donn when the thing got out of hand. I heard Lew switched sides again, joining up with one of those hill woman bitches, one of Aldaran's bastard daughters, I heard, and sold out Aldaran like he sold out the rest of us; and got his hand burned off. Serves him right, too. But I guess Kennard couldn't admit what a mistake he'd made, after all he went through to get Lew declared his heir. Did they manage to regenerate his hands?" Geremy wriggled the three fingers lost in a duel, years ago, and regenerated, regrown good as new by Empire medics. "No? Maybe old Kennard thought he ought to have something to remember his treachery by."

"No," Lerrys said, "you have it wrong way round, Geremy. Lew's not a bad chap. He did his damnedest, so I heard, to control the fire - image when it got out of hand; and the girl died. I heard he'd married her. One of the monitors of Arilinn told me how hard they worked to save

her, and to save Lew's hand; but the girl was too far gone, and Lew - " He shrugged. "Zandru's hells, what a thing to face! Lew was one of the most powerful telepaths they ever had at Arilinn, I heard; but I knew him best in the cadets. Quiet fellow, standoffish if anything; but he had to put up with a lot of trouble from people who felt he had no right to be there, and I think it warped him. Good enough in his own way, though. I liked him, though he was touchy as the devil, and like a monk in some ways." He grinned. "He had so little to do with women that I made the mistake of thinking he was one of my kind, and made him a certain proposal. Oh, he didn't say much. But I never asked him that again!" Lerrys chuckled. "I'll wager he didn't give you a kind word, either? That's a new thing for you, isn't it, little sister, to meet a man who's not at your feet within a few minutes?" Teasing, he chucked her under the chin.

Dio said pettishly, "I didn't like him. I hope he stays far away from me!"

"Oh, you could do worse," Geremy mused. "After all, he is Heir to Alton; and Kennard's old and lame and probably not long for this life. How would you like to be Lady of Alton, sister?"

"No." Lerrys put a protective arm around her. "We can do better than that for Dio. Council will never accept him, after that Sharra business. Ken forced them to accept Lew, but they never accepted his other son, though young Marius is worth two of Lew; and once Kennard's gone, they'll look elsewhere for someone to inherit the Domain of Alton. No, Dio - " Gently, he turned her around to look at him. "I know, there aren't many young men of your caste here, and Lew's Darkovan, and, I suppose, handsome as women think of these things. But stay away from him. Be polite, but keep your distance. I like him, in a way, but he's trouble."

"You needn't worry about that," Dio said. "I can't stand the sight of him."

Yet, inside where it hurt, she felt a pained wonder. She thought of the unknown girl Lew had married, who had died to save them all from the unknown menace of the fire - Goddess. So it had been Lew who raised the fires, then, and suffered in order to quench them again? She felt herself shiver in dread and terror. What must his memories be like, what nightmares must he live, night and day! Perhaps it was no wonder that he walked apart, scowling, and could give no one a kind word or a smile!

Around the ring of the null - gravity field, small crystalline tables were suspended in midair; their seats apparently hanging from jeweled chains of stars. Actually, they were all surrounded by energy - nets, so that even if a diner fell out of his chair (and where the wine and spirits flowed so freely, some of them did) he would not fall; but the illusion was breathtaking, bringing a momentary look of wonder and interest even to Lew's closed face.

Kennard Alton was a generous and gracious host; he had commanded seats at the very edge of the gravity ring, and sent for the finest of wines and delicacies; they sat suspended over the starry gulf, watching the gravity - free dancers whirling and spinning across the void below them, soaring like birds in free flight. Dio sat at Kennard's right hand, across from Lew, who, after that first flash of reaction to the illusion of far space, sat silent, motionless, his scarred and frowning face oblivious; past them galaxies flamed and flowed and the dancers, half - naked in spangles and loose veils, flew like exotic birds, soaring on the star - streams. His right hand - evidently

artificial and motionless - lay on the table, unstirring, encased in a black glove. That unmoving hand made Dio uncomfortable; the empty sleeve had seemed somehow more honest.

Only Lerrys was really at ease, greeting Lew with a touch of real cordiality; but Lew replied only in monosyllables, and even Lerrys finally tired of trying to force conversation, and bent over the gulf of dancers, studying the finalists with unfeigned envy, commenting on the skills, or lack of them, of the performers. Dio knew he wished he was among them.

When the winners had been chosen and the prizes awarded, the gravity was turned on, and the tables drifted in spiral orbits, down to the floor. Music began to play, and dancers moved onto the ballroom surface, glittering and transparent, as if they danced on the same gulf where the gravity - dancers had whirled in free - soaring flight. Lew murmured something about leaving, but Kennard called for more drinks, and under the confusion Dio heard him sharply reprimanding Lew; all she heard was, " Damn it, you can't hide forever!"

Lerrys rose and slipped away; a little later they saw him moving onto the dance floor with an exquisite woman whom they recognized as one of the dance performers, in starry blue now covered with drifts of silvery gauze.

"How well he dances," Kennard said genially. "A pity he had to withdraw from the competition, though it hardly seems fitting to a Comyn lord - "

"Comyn means nothing here," Geremy laughed, "and that is why we come here, to do things

unbefitting Comyn dignity on our own world! Come, wasn't that why you came here, kinsman, for adventures which might be unseemly or worse in the Domains?"

Dio was watching the dancers, envious. Perhaps Lerrys would come back and dance with her. But she saw that the woman dancer, perhaps recognizing him as the finalist who had had to withdraw, perhaps simply impressed by his dancing, had carried him off to talk to the other finalists, and now Lerrys was talking intimately with a young, handsome lad, his red head bent close to the boy's. The dancer was clad only in nets of gilt thread and the barest possible gilt patches for decency; his hair was dyed a striking blue. It was doubtful, now, that he remembered that there were such creatures as women in existence, far less sisters.

Kennard, watching the direction of her glance, said, "I have not been able to dance for many years, Lady Dio, or I would give myself the pleasure; I can see you are longing to be with the dancers. And it is small pleasure to a young maiden to dance with her brothers, as I have heard my foster sisters and now my foster daughters complain. But you are too young to dance in such a public place as this except with kinsmen - "

Dio tossed her head, setting her fair curls flying. She said, "I do as I please, Lord Alton, here on Vainwal!" Then, seized by some imp of boredom or mischief, she turned to the scowling Lew. "Will you dance with me, cousin?"

He raised his head and glared at her; Dio quailed, wishing she had not started this. This was no one to flirt with, to exchange light pleasantries! He gave her a glance of pure hate; but even so,

he was shoving back his chair.

"As you wish, cousin. If you will do me the kindness." His harsh voice was amiable, even friendly - if you did not see the look deep in his eyes. It hardened Dio's resolve. Damn him, this was arrogance! He was not the only crippled man in the universe, nor on this planet, nor even in the room - his own father could hardly put one foot before the other, and made no bones about saying so!

He held out his good arm to her. "You will have to forgive me if I step on your feet. I have not danced in many years. It is not a skill much valued on Terra, and my years there were spent mostly in different hospitals."

He did not step on her feet, though. He moved as lightly as a drift of wind, and after a very little time, Dio gave herself up to the music and the pure enjoyment of the dance. They were well matched, and sifter a few minutes of moving together in the perfect matching of the rhythm - she knew she was dancing with a Darkovan, nowhere else in the civilized Empire did any people place so much emphasis on dancing as did the Darkovan culture - she raised her eyes and smiled at him, lowering mental barriers in a way any Comyn would have known to be an invitation for the telepathic touch of their caste.

For the barest instant, his eyes met hers, and she sensed him reach out to her, as if by instinct, attuned to the sympathy between their moving bodies; then the barriers slammed down between them, hard, leaving her breathless with the shock of the rebuff. It took all her self - control not to

cry out with the pain of that rebuff, but she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing he had hurt her; she simply smiled and went on dancing at the ordinary level, enjoying the movement, the sense of being perfectly in tune with his steps.

But, inside, she was dazed and bewildered. What had she done to merit such a rebuff? Nothing, certainly; her gesture had been bold, indeed, but not indecently so. He was, after all, a man of her own caste, a telepath and a kinsman. So, since she had done nothing to deserve it, it must have been made in response to his own inner turmoil, and had nothing to do with her at all.

So, she went on smiling, and when the dance slowed to a softer, more romantic movement, and the dancers around them were moving closer, cheek against cheek, almost embracing, she moved instinctively toward him. For an instant he went stiff and she wondered if he would violently reject the physical touch, too; but she moved instinctively toward him, and after a moment his arm tightened around her. Through the very touch, though his mental defenses were locked tight, she sensed the starved hunger in him. How long had it been, she wondered, since he had touched a woman? Far too long, she was sure of that. The telepath Comyn, particularly the Alton and Ridenow, were well - known for their fastidiousness in such matters; they were hypersensitive, much too aware of the random or casual touch. Not many of the Comyn were capable of tolerating casual love affairs.

The dance slowed, the lights dimming, and she sensed that all around them couples were moving into one another's arms. A miasma of sensuality seemed to lie over the whole room, almost visible. Lew held her tight against him, bending his head, and she raised her face to him,

again inviting the touch he had rebuffed.

He did not lower his mental barriers, but their lips touched, and Dio felt a slow, drowsy excitement climbing in her and they kissed. When they drew apart his lips smiled, but there was still a great sadness behind his eyes.

He looked around the great room filled with dancing couples, many now entwined in close embrace. "This - this is decadent," he said.

She smiled, snuggling closer to him. "Surely no more than midsummer - festival in the streets of Then - dara. I am not too young to know what goes on when the moons have set."

His harsh voice sounded gentler than usual. "Your brothers would call me out and challenge me to a duel."

She lifted her chin angrily. "We are not in the Kilghard Hills! Lew Alton, I do not allow any other person, even a brother, to tell me what 1 may or may not do! If my brothers disapprove of my conduct, they may come to me for an accounting of it, not to you!"

He laughed, and with his good hand touched the feathery edges of her short fair hair. It was, she thought, a beautiful hand, sensitive and strong without being over - delicate. "So you have cut your hair and taken on the independence of a Free Amazon? Have you taken their oath too, cousin?"

"No," she said, snuggling close to him again. "I am too fond of men ever to do that." When he smiled, she thought he was very handsome; even the scar that drew his lip tight only gave his smile a little more irony and warmth.

They danced together much of the evening, and before they parted, agreed to meet the next day for a hunt in the great hunting preserves of Vainwal. When they said goodnight, Kennard was smiling benevolently, but Geremy was sullen and brooding, and when the three of them were alone in their luxurious suite, he demanded wrathfully, "Why did you do that? I told you, stay away from Lew! We don't really want an entanglement with that branch of the Altons!"

"How dare you try and tell me who I can dance with? Or, if I choose, who I can make love with? I don't censure your choice of entertainers and singing - women and whores, do I?"

"You are a lady of the Comyn. When you behave so blatantly - "

"Hold your tongue!" Dio flared at him, "You are insulting! I dance one evening with a man of my own caste, because my brothers left me no one else to dance with, and you already have me bedded down with him! Geremy, I will tell you once again, I do what I wish, and neither you nor any other man can stop me!"

"Lerrys," Geremy appealed, "can you reason with her?"

But Lerrys stood regarding his sister with admiration. "That's the spirit, Dio. What is the good of being in an alien world in a civilized Empire if you keep the provincial spirit and customs of your backwater? Do what you wish, Dio. Geremy, let her alone!"

Geremy shook his head, laughing. "You two! Always one in mind, as if you had been born twins!"

"Certainly," Lerrys said. "Why, do you think, am I a lover of men? Because, to my ill - fortune, the only woman I have ever known with a man's spirit and a man's strength is my own sister." He kissed her, laughing. "Enjoy yourself, breda, but don't get hurt. He may have been in a romantic mood tonight, but he could be savage, I suspect."

"No." Suddenly Geremy was sober. "This is no joke. I don't want you to see him again, Diotima. One evening, perhaps to do courtesy to our kinsman; I grant you that, and I am sorry if I implied there was more than courtesy. But no more, Dio, not again. There are enough men on this world, to dance with, flirt with, hunt with - yes, damn it, and bed down with if that should be your will! But let Kennard Alton's damned half - caste bastard alone - do you hear? I tell you, if you disobey me, I shall make you both regret it!

"Now," said Lerrys, still laughing, as Dio tossed her head in defiance, "You have made it sure that she will see him again, Geremy; you have all but spread the bridal bed for them! Don't you know that no man can forbid Dio to do anything?"

In the hunting preserve the next day, they chose horses, and the great hawks not unlike the verrin hawks of the Kilghard Hills. Lew was smiling and good - natured, but she sensed that he was just a little shocked, too, at her riding breeches and boots. "So you are the Amazon you said you were not, after all?" he teased, and she smiled back into his eyes and said, "No; I told you why I could never be an Amazon, and the more I see of you, the more certain I am of that."

He was a good rider, although the lifeless artificial hand seemed to be very much in his way, and she wondered if he could not, after all, have managed better one - handed. She would have thought that even a metal hook would have been better, if they could not, for some reason, regrow the hand. But perhaps he was too proud for that, or feared she would think it ugly. He carried the hawk on a special saddle - block, as women did, rather than holding it on his wrist as most Darkovan men chose to do, and when she looked at it he colored and turned angrily away, swearing under his breath. Again Dio thought, with that sudden anger which he seemed able to rouse in her so swiftly, Why is he so sensitive and self - indulgent about it? What arrogance! Does he think I really care whether he has two hands, or one, or three?

The hunting preserve had been carefully landscaped and terraformed to beautiful and varied scenery, low hills which did not strain the horses, smooth plains, a variety of wildlife, colorful vegetation from a dozen worlds. But as they rode she heard him sigh a little. He said, just loud enough for her to hear, "It is beautiful here. But I wish I were in the Domains. The sun here is - is wrong, somehow.

"Are you homesick, Lew?" she asked.

He tightened his mouth. "Yes. Sometimes," he said, but he had slammed down his defenses again, and Oio turned back to attend to the hawk on her saddle.

The preserve was stocked with a variety of game, large and small; after a time they let their hawks loose: Dio watched in delight as hers soared high, wheeled in midair and set off on long strong wings after a flight of small white birds, directly overhead. Lew's hawk came after, swiftly stooping, striking at one of the small birds, seizing it in midair. The white bird struggled pitifully, with a long eerie scream. Dio had hunted with hawks all her life, and watched with interest, but as drops of blood fell from the dying bird, spattering them, she realized that Lew's face was drawn with horror; he looked paralyzed.

"Lew, what is the matter?"

He said, his voice strained and hoarse, "That sound - I cannot bear it - " and flung up his two arms over his eyes, the black - gloved artificial hand striking his forehead hard and awkwardly; searing, he wrenched it off his wrist and flung it to the ground under his horse's hooves.

"No, it's not pretty," he mocked, in a rage, "like blood, and death, and the screams of dying things! If you take pleasure in them, so much the worse for you, lady! Take pleasure, then, in this - !" He held up the hideously scarred bare stump, shaking it in fury at her; then he wheeled his horse, jerking at the reins with his good hand, and riding off as if all the devils in all the hells were chasing him.

Dio stared in dismay; then, forgetting the hawks, set after him at a breakneck gallop. After a time they came abreast; he was fighting the reins with his one hand, struggling to rein in the mount; but as she watched in horror, he lost control and was tossed out of his saddle, coming heavily to the ground to lie there senseless and stunned.

Dio slid from her horse and knelt at his side. He had been knocked unconscious, but while she was trying to decide if she should go bring help, he opened his eyes and looked at her without recognition.

"It's all right," she said, "the horse threw you. Can you sit up?"

"Yes, of course." He sat up awkwardly, as if the stump pained him, wincing; then saw it, colored and tried to thrust it quickly into a fold of his riding cloak, out of sight.

"It's all right, Lew, you don't have to hide. . . ."

He turned his face away from her, and the taut scar tissue drew up his mouth as if he were ready to cry. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . ."

"What was it, Lew? Why did you lose your temper like that?"

Dazed, he shook his head. "I - I cannot bear the sight of blood, now, or the thought of some

small helpless thing dying for my pleasure," he said, and his voice sounded exhausted. "I heard the little white bird crying, and I saw the blood, and I remembered - Oh God, I remembered Dio, go away, don't, don't, in the name of the merciful Evanda, Dio, don't - " His face twisted again and he was weeping, his face ugly and crumpled, turning away so that she would not see, trying to choke back the hoarse painful sobs. "I have seen ... too much pain . . . Dio, don't . . .."

She put out her arms, folded him in them, drawing him against her breast. He resisted, for a moment, frantically, then let the woman draw him close. She was crying, too.

"I never thought," she whispered. "Death in hunting, I am so used to it, it never seemed quite real to me. Lew, what was it, who died, what happened, what did it make you remember?"

"She was my wife," he said hoarsely, "my wife, bearing our child. And she died, died horribly in Sharra's fires - Dio, don't touch me, somehow I hurt everyone I touch, go away before I hurt you too - I don't want you to be hurt."

She said, "It's too late for that," and he raised his one hand to her face, touching her eyes. She felt him slam down his defenses again, but this time she knew it was not the rebuff she feared, only the defense of a man unimaginably hurt, a man who could endure no more.

"Were you hurt?" he said, his hand lingering on her wet eyes, on her cheeks. "There is blood on your face."

"It's the bird's blood. It's on you too," she said, and wiped it away. He took her hand in his and pressed the fingertips to his lips. Somehow, the gesture made her want to cry again, and she asked, "Were you hurt when you fell?"

"Not much." He sat up, testing his muscles. They taught me, in the Empire hospital on Terra, how to fall without hurting myself, when I was . . . before this healed." Uneasily, he moved the stump. "I can't get used to the damned hand, though. I can do better one - handed."

"Why do you wear it, then? Do you think I would care?"

His face was bleak. "Father would care. He thinks when I wear the empty sleeve I am making a show of my lameness. He hates his own so much. I would rather not - not flaunt mine at him."

Dio thought swiftly, then decided what she could say. "It seems to me that you are a grown man, and need not consult your father about your own arm and hand."

He sighed, nodded. "But he has been so good to me, never reproached me for these years of exile, and the way in which his own plans had been brought to nothing. I do not want to distress him." He rose, went to collect the grotesque, lifeless thing in its black glove. He put it away in the saddlebag, and fumbled one - handed to pin the sleeve over the stump. She started, matter-offactly, to offer help, then decided it was too soon for that. He looked into the sky and said, "I suppose the hawks are gone beyond recall and we will be charged for losing them."

"No." She blew the silver whistle around her neck. "They are birds with brains modified, so they cannot choose but come to the whistle . . . see?" She pointed as they spiraled down and landed, standing patiently on the saddle blocks, awaiting their hoods: "Their instinct for freedom has been burnt out."

"They are like some men I know" said Lew, slipping the hood on his hawk. But neither of them moved to mount. Dio hesitated, then decided he had probably had enough of politely averted eyes and pretenses of courteous unawareness. "Do you need help to mount? Can I help you, or shall I fetch someone who can?"

"Thank you, but I can manage, though it looks awkward." Again, suddenly he smiled, and his ugly scarred face seemed handsome again to her. "How did you know it would do me good to hear that said?"

"I have always been very strong. But I think if I were hurt I would not want people to pretend everything was exactly the same and perfectly normal. Please don't ever pretend with me, Lew." And then she asked, "I have wanted to know. Don't tell me if you don't want to, I'm not trying to pry. But - Geremy lost three fingers in a duel. The Terran medics re - grew them, just as they were before. Why did they not do that with your hand?"

"They - tried," he said. "Twice. Then I could - could bear no more. Somehow, the pattern of the cells - you are not a matrix technician, are you? I wonder if you can understand . . . the pattern of the cells, the - the knowledge in the cells, which makes a hand a hand, and not a finger or an eye

or a bird's wing, had been damaged beyond renewing, and what grew on my wrist was - was a horror. I - when I woke from the drugs, just once, and saw, I - I screamed my throat raw; my voice will never be right again, either; for half a year I could only whisper. I was not myself for for years. I can live with it, now, because I must. I can face the knowledge that I am - am maimed. What I cannot face," he said with sudden violence, "is my father's pretense that I am am whole!"

Dio felt sudden violent anger. So even the father could not face the reality of what had happened to his son! Could not even face the son's need to face what had happened to him. She said, voice low, "Don't ever think you have to pretend to me, Lew Alton."

He seized her in a rough grip, dragged her close. It was hardly an embrace. He said, in that hoarse voice, "Girl, do you know what you are saying? You can't know!"

She said, shaking, "If you can endure what you have endured, I can bear to know what it is that you have had to suffer. Lew, let me prove that to you!"

In the back of her mind she wondered, why am I doing this? But she knew that when they had come into each other's arms on the dancing floor, last night, even behind the barriers of Lew's locked defenses, their bodies had somehow made a pact. Barricade themselves from one another as they would, something in each of them had reached out to the other and accepted what the other was, wholly and forever.

She raised her face to .him. His arms went around her in grateful surprise, and he murmured, still holding back, "But you are so young, chiya, you can't know ... I should be horsewhipped for this, but it has been so long, so long ..." and she knew he was not speaking of the obvious. She felt herself dissolve in total awareness of him, the receding barriers, the memory of pain and horror, the starved sexuality, the ordeals which had gone on beyond human endurance; the black and encompassing horror of guilt, of a loved one dead, self - knowledge, blame, mutilation, guilt at living on when the beloved was dead. . . .

In a desperate, hungering endurance, she clasped him closer, knowing it was this for which he had longed most, someone who could touch him without pretense, accept his suffering, love him nevertheless. For an instant she saw herself reflected in his mind, not recognizing, glowing with tenderness, warm, woman, and for a moment loved herself for what she had become to him; then the contact broke and receded like a tide, leaving her awed, shaken, leaving tears and tenderness that could never grow less. Only then did he kiss her; and as she laughed and accepted the kiss she said in a whisper, "Geremy was right."

"What, Dio?"

"Nothing," she said, light - hearted with relief. "Come, love, the hawks are restless and we must get them back to their mews. We will have our fee refunded because we have claimed no kill, but I for one have had full value for my hunt. I have captured what I most wanted."

"And what is that?" he asked, teasing, but she knew he did not need an answer. He was not

touching her now, as they mounted, but she knew that somehow they were still touching, still embraced.

He flung up his empty sleeve in a laughing gesture. "Come on," he called, "we may as well have a ride, at least! Which of us will be first at the stables?"

And he was off, Dio after him, laughing. She knew as well as he how this day would end. And it was only the beginning of a long season on Vainwal.

It would be a beautiful summer.

(1980)

The Brass Dragon

PART 1

CHAPTER ONE

'No, Rellin!'

The scream crashed through the silence, and I woke up.

I sat up, blinking, and pain thundered through my head like the scream. My head felt huge, as if it were something balanced precariously on my shoulders. I eased the clumsy thing back down to the pillow, and cautiously slitted my eyes open again.

People screaming all over the place! Might as well be in the nut house. Instead of - I blinked again and came all the way awake:

This wasn't my bedroom!

The walls were white, and the window was white, too, and not curtained. There were Venetian blinds, and thick sunlight made streaks through them and lay, in yellow barred glare, on the wall. The glare hurt my eyes, and I shut them again. Where was I? And why were people screaming all over the place, so loud that it might as well be right in the-

For God's sake, it was right in the room!

I had screamed.

I put my hands up to my face. Where was I, and what was going on? I touched my face, and then I had the second shock:

My face was rough. I had a beard.

A beard? At my age? I'd shaved about twice in my life. That wasn't bad, for seventeen, but here I was with my chin rough and scratchy with a full-grown beard. Where was I? What had happened?

The door opened, and a nurse came into the room. and things suddenly clicked and fell into place.

Accident. I had had an accident, and I was in a hospital. Maybe a car had hit me on my way home from school-

The nurse was dressed in white, like most nurses. She was dark, and pretty, and smiling. 'Is something wrong?' she asked.

Wrong? Was anything right?

'I heard you cry out again - that was you, wasn't it?'

'Oh. Oh, yes, that was me.'

'Have you been dreaming again?' She sounded concerned.

Again? What was that supposed to mean? 'I'm sorry. I'm feeling pretty dim just now. Have I been screaming before this?'

She nodded. 'Yes. Don't you remember? Last night you woke up three times, shouting something about a railing. Can you remember now what it was? Did you fall through a railing, perhaps?'

'I don't know,' I said slowly. 'I assume I'm in a hospital. Is this Herrick?'

She nodded, smiling. 'Yes, this is Hendrick Hospital. So you know where you are? That's wonderful. Perhaps you'll remember, in a little while, what happened, and what all this is about railings.'

I frowned, and wished I hadn't: it hurt. It didn't sound like me. I didn't have nightmares, and I hadn't screamed since I was thirteen and slammed my fingernail in the car door. Why could I remember that, and not anything closer? Railings? I racked my brain, trying to remember what it was that I'd screamed - or dreamed. I couldn't remember, but for some strange reason I was sure it had nothing to do with a railing.

'Dr Bannon said he wanted to see you when you woke up,' the nurse said. 'I'll call him,' she added as she went out.

Dr Bannon? I'd never heard the name. I rubbed my hand against that strange wrongness of my face again, mostly because it kept me from thinking. Somewhere at the back of my mind I was beginning to get scared.

There was something wrong. Something I halfway knew about, and didn't dare think about yet. I knew that if I let myself think about it, that vague little bit of fear at the back of my mind would come roaring out like a tiger and I'd start screaming the place down again.

After a while, the door swung quietly open again, and a man stood in the door.

I'd never seen the man before, but I knew by his white coat that he was a doctor. He was youngish, with grey eyes and dark hair, and he frowned a little as he looked at me. Was I hurt as badly as all that?

'Miss Taylor tells me you've decided to wake up,' he said pleasantly, but his eyes stayed fixed right on me. 'How do you feel now?'

Experimentally, I moved. No casts, nothing seriously damaged or out of place, though there was something stiff and rustly on the calf of my leg that felt like a bandage, and my elbow felt queer. 'My head aches a bit. Apart from that, I guess I'm okay. What happened, anyway? An accident?'

*We were hoping you could tell us that,' he said slowly. *We don't know; a policeman found you lying in the street and brought you to the emergency room. We took X-rays to make sure your skull wasn't fractured; otherwise you're not badly hurt except for something like a burn on your leg and one temple. Frankly, I can't quite imagine what sort of accident - but no, you're not badly hurt. You should be all right in a day or two.'

"That's good,' I said, but unease was building up inside me again. I wasn't hurt badly, maybe, but there was something -

'But now that you're awake and can talk sensibly, maybe you can tell us,' Dr Bannon said. 'What happened?'

I tried thinking back. but it was like trying to remember what I'd screamed. There was a curious, fuzzy sense of fear. and a great crash that seemed to fill the sky...

'There was a crash,' I said slowly, 'and - and something must have hit me - but I can't remember. I can't remember!'

'Easy, easy,' the doctor said hastily. 'Don't get excited. It will come back to you. With a head injury, sometimes there's a memory lapse. Suppose we get the rest straight first. There was no identification on you, you know, so we haven't even been able to notify your family. First of all who are you?'

And then it crashed in on me, and I knew what it was that I hadn't wanted to feel. Why I'd kept my mind busy with so many unimportant questions. And why I'd held so many questions back.

Who are you?

A simple enough question. The first thing they always ask. There was nothing wrong with the question, just with the answer.

I didn't know who I was.

/ didn't know my own name!

I guess my face must have done something I didn't know about. Because the next thing I knew the nurse was there with a little paper cup of something that smelled funny, and Dr Bannon was saying 'Hey, hey, take it easy, kid!'

I just lay there, feeling stunned and sick. The nurse held the paper cup insistently to my mouth and I swallowed without arguing. Arguing wouldn't do any good, anyhow.

"That, that - I mean - I've got to know.' I stammered. 'It doesn't make sense-'

'Don't worry about it,' Bannon repeated. 'Above all, don't get excited. It happens sometimes with

a head injury. I'm sure you'll remember -'

A word flickered in my mind. 'Amnesia,' I said, interrupting the doctor's flow of words. 'Have I got amnesia? But I thought people forgot everything, so if I've forgotten my own name how do I know what amnesia is?'

He smiled. It made him look human, and likeable. 'Oh, there are different forms of amnesia,' he said. 'So you've heard the word, though? That's interesting. And you know what it means. Well, maybe you should know enough not to worry, then. Sometimes people forget just the things connected with their accident. Sometimes -'

But I didn't listen, because I knew what he was doing. He was just talking to keep me from panicking, from yelling and screaming like a little kid.

What was the matter? Who was I?

I said helplessly, 'Why can't I remember my name?' and heard my voice crack.

'What can you remember?' The doctor sounded calm and soothing. 'Miss Taylor said you knew where you were.'

I'm in a hospital. Is it Herrick Hospital?'

Now he looked at me, startled. 'No,' he said, 'it's Hendrick hospital. Do you know where that is?'

'Hendrick? I never heard of it,' I said, confused. 'Herrick is in Berkeley.' I added, after a minute, 'Berkeley, California. Is this hospital in San Francisco?*

Dr Bannon nodded. 'Now we're getting somewhere,' he said. 'Do you live in California? Or isn't Berkeley where the university is? Are you a student there?'

'No,' I said, 'I'm not in college. Please, where is this?'

'Take it easy,' Dr Bannon said. 'Hendrick Hospital is in Abilene, Texas.'

Abilene, Texas! I lay back, feeling a little sick. I'd never been in Texas in my life.

'I must have lost some time,' I said. 'What day is it?'

'What day do you think it ought to be?'

'June 4th, 1967 -' I shook my head, forgetting the bandage, and winced again. 'Did I miss my what day is it?'

Dr Bannon went out into the hall. He returned immediately with a newspaper in his hand. The Abilene Daily News. He pointed, silently, to the date:

September 2. 1968.

A year and three months!

'And when was I brought in here?'

It's Saturday now. They brought you in Wednesday night.' He smiled. 'What's the last thing you remember?'

Off in a corner of my mind there was something white, like - 'An albino dwarf,' I said. 'No, that doesn't make sense - Nothing. I'm sorry.'

'Nothing to be sorry about.' Bannon was soothing me again, calming me down, and I wished he wouldn't; I wanted to take this seriously.

'We've done some checking,' he said. 'You're not from me Army or the Air Force, and you weren't wearing any military dog tag, so I don't imagine the Navy or the Marines will claim you either; but it was worth checking. Missing Persons in Texas had nothing on any boy near your age. We have two leads. Give me that thing out on the desk,' he said to the nurse. When she went out to get it, he said, 'So you're from California. Have you lived there long? We can check with Missing Persons there, you know.'

The nurse came back with a long yellow sheet.

'It's routine, when we get anyone unidentified, to check with military AWOL lists, and Missing Persons,' he said. The police teletypes send out bulletins. Now, there are dozens of juveniles reported missing every month, but we could eliminate quite a number of them right away. And remember anything later than '67- Let me see - Portland, Maine, white male, blond, sixteen years old. Nels Angstrom - I think we can rule him out. You're not blond.'

I frowned. 'I don't think - Nels Angstrom didn't sound right.'

'From Los Angeles, wanted for armed robbery, Pedro Menendez - no, you're not Mexican, and I doubt if you're as much as twenty. From Seattle, Lloyd Sanderson, age eighteen, white, male, American, brown hair, dark eyes - that might be you; reported missing two months ago. We've wired the juvenile authorities in Seattle. Let me see - Berkeley, California, Barry Francis Cowan, age seventeen, missing from May '67, five-foot-eight - well, you could have grown an inch. We wired Mr Cowan, and he said he would fly in tonight just on the chance, but he said he'd made four flights already, to New York, and a couple of other places, to identify someone claiming to be his son. So if you're Cowan or Sanderson-*

'I don't know,' I said, and felt like crying. 'Juvenile authorities?'

'It's routine when someone turns up missing,' the doctor said quickly; 'it doesn't mean you've committed a crime.'

'Did I have anything at all on me when I came in? I mean - no wallet, keys, money?'

'Just the clothes you had on, and a couple of pieces of junk in the pockets,' Dr Bannon said.

'Can I see the clothes?'

'Get his clothes,' Bannon said to the nurse, and she went to a locker at one end of the room. She took out a brown coverall, and laid it across the bed. I eased my head up and took it in my hands.

It was rough and brown, woven of something like denim. Pants and shirt were all in one piece, and it zipped up the front. He said, 'It looks as if something had been ripped off the arm. That's why we checked the Army and Air Force.'

I turned it over in my hands. The rough looking material felt curiously soft to the touch. Without quite knowing why, I turned it over to the breast pocket, and frowned. Something had been ripped from that, too. It was a large irregular patch of lightish fabric. The nurse said, 'Oh, yes. It could be an eagle or something.'

I shook my head. 'I was wearing this?'

'You don't recognise it?'

'Sorry. Where did it come from?'

'I don't know,' Bannon confessed. 'As I say, I thought it might be uniform stuff - that material's amazingly strong and light, so of course I thought of the Armed Forces. But they said no. It might have been made overseas, of course. And of course, with all the new synthetics - ' He shrugged.

'What about the pockets?' I demanded impatiently.

He opened a drawer in the night table beside the bed, and took out a small object.

'Eighty cents in silver - it's downstairs in an envelope - and this thing.'

He handed it to me. It was about the size of a rabbit's foot, brass, and it was a little dragon. About two inches long, but a dragon, a brass dragon -

With a sharp intake of breath, I dropped the trinket on the bedclothes and grabbed up the coverall again. Examining the darkish ripped patch, I held it against the brass dragon. Yes. The patch was clearly dragon-shaped. Not an eagle. A dragon. I turned out the inside of the shirt with trembling fingers. There were still threads on the inner side, and the material showed signs of weakening there.

Why had the emblem been ripped off?

I picked up the Brass Dragon - strange, how I capitalised it in my mind - and examined it, with a feeling of horror. I didn't like touching it.

It was about two inches long. There was a small slot-shaped extrusion at the bottom, and I looked carefully at it, squinting my eyes, for anything that might say Made in USA or Made in Japan or anything of the usual kind. There was nothing. I rubbed my finger over the slot. Something had been broken from it, too; there was a rough spot there. And the dragon...

It seemed to grow, to fill the whole room - Without thinking, I screamed. And screamed again.

'No! Rellin, no!'

And everything went a lovely velvet black.

CHAPTER TWO

When I woke up the next time, there were rails around the bed. I examined them for a minute, then lay back and decided I deserved it. If I was going to act like a nut, they'd have to treat me like one. What had got into me, to fly off the handle that way? I felt like a loaded gun with the safety catch off; anything might happen at any time. I didn't like the feeling one bit.

'Awake again?' A very young nurse popped her head in the door. This one had red hair, cut short

enough so that only two or three stray curls peeked out under the cap; and instead of a full uniform she had on something like a blue-and-white striped bib apron. The little pin on the front of the apron said Lisa Barnard. 'Are you feeling better? I'm sorry, I don't know your name-'

'Neither do I,' I said, grinning for the first time since this had started, and her face turned so red that the freckles looked pink.

'Oh, I'm sorry -I mean -'

'Forget it,' I said. 'I thought I might as well get a couple of laughs; there isn't much else that's funny about this business.' I laughed, and after a minute the little nurse giggled too.

'I am sorry. They did tell me you'd had a head injury and hadn't been able to identify yourself yet. Are you able to sit up, Mr - '

'Just call me Mr X, the famous international spy,' I said, and hauled myself up on my elbow. My head still hurt, but I felt better. Maybe the old guy who said laughter was the best medicine had something after all. I couldn't remember his name, but it didn't bother me. If I couldn't remember my own name, why bother with his?

'I'm Lisa Barnard,' she said, trying to be prim and dignified, but on her it didn't look good, and the perky smile was there behind it.

I put a hand on one of the bed rails and shook it. 'What's with this business - a bed with barred windows?'

She giggled again. 'Oh, that. You were thrashing around in your sleep, and I think they were afraid you'd fall and hurt your head again. So they had me put the rails on the bed.' She popped out into the hall again and came back carrying a tray.

'I knew it was too good to be true,' I said dismally. 'What's on the hospital programme now?'

She chuckled. 'Cheer up. We're going to take off a few of those whiskers, that's all.' She picked up an electric razor.

'You don't approve of beards?' I asked, laughing, and she laughed back.

'I couldn't care less. But Dr Bannon thinks we'd better shave it off so that your father - if it is your father - will be able to recognise you.'

'Aw, shucks,' I said. 'How can I be Ivan X, the mysterious spy, without my beard?'

'It will grow back,' she said primly. It was the funniest thing, the way she'd giggle like one of the girls at my school and all of a sudden she'd have all the dignity you associated with a nurse forty years old. Suddenly I felt depressed. My school. In Berkeley? Yes; and probably my whole class had gone on and graduated, and all my friends -

'Look,' she said gently, and laid her small hand on my arm. 'You mustn't worry about things. It's going to be all right. A lot of people who get knocks on the head forget things for a while. One morning you'll wake up and remember everything all at once. Honest! I've seen it happen, and I've heard older nurses talking about it.'

'How old are you?' I asked suddenly.

'Eighteen. I've been in training four months - ' Suddenly the prim nurse-face slid down like a mask over the girl-face again. 'Come on,' she said with brisk cheerfulness. 'Let's get on with the shave.'

'Sure. Maybe I'll recognise my own face without the beard,' I said a little sourly, and watched her pick up the razor. It buzzed madly when she put it against my face, and she stopped short.

'What am I doing? I'd better trim it off first with scissors.' She took a pair from her pocket and snipped, turning my face this way and that with firm, capable small hands. Then she put up the razor to my face, and this time it behaved properly. She finished the job off with some sort of tart-smelling lotion, and handed me a mirror.

'Feel more like yourself now?'

But it was just a face. I knew it was mine, but that didn't do much good.

'Now,' she said briskly, handing me a blue cotton bathrobe, 'you can get up and walk to the bathroom - it's right in there. Want some help?'

'No, thanks, I can manage,' I said, my face burning and not from the shaving lotion. Maybe she was a nurse, but she was still a young and pretty girl. If it had been the old battle-axe, old enough to be my mother, maybe I wouldn't have felt that way. She saw me blush, and smiled gently, not giggling, as I swayed on my feet.

'Let me know if you want help,' she said kindly, 'And I'll call one of the orderlies or male nurses to give you a hand.'

'Oh. 'I felt foolish.

"The doctor says you can have a shower, and then something to eat, and then perhaps you'd like to put some clothes on and sit up,' she said. 'Try walking up and down the corridor a little; that will help you to get your legs under you again.'

I felt a little dizzy when I moved, but I found out that I could walk without help. After a warm shower I felt better; it seemed to take out the kinks in my muscles. I put the cotton robe on again and took a turn up and down the corridor; but by that time I was glad to get into bed and lie back. I was more tired than I thought. I felt as if I'd taken a beating. The windows were closed, and the hospital room was dark. I shut my eyes and tried to think, to remember.

Images, grey and blurry, drifted through my mind. Faces none of which meant anything to me. Slamming my finger in the door of the car when I was thirteen. I'd had to go and have the bone scraped later, and afterwards the doctor had diverted me by showing me an articulated skeleton of a hand, which opened and closed on wires. A ring of faces, sitting around a campfire, singing. The outline of a bridge against the sky; I knew it was the Golden Gate Bridge. Myself walking along a lane between over-hanging rhododendron bushes. Myself again, walking across dry desert country, my breathing-mask rough and clammy against my chin, shielding my eyes from the fierce orange glare of the giant over-head. The sharp, rocking impact of take off and then the slow return of sight, and the starburst glare of space beyond the quartz dome ... a burst of orange fire, searing bright and leaving the retina darkened for minutes ...

I rocked myself awake, shaking my head at the barrage of memories. That was no good. If my own memories could get mixed up with some science-fictional TV play, what was the good of trying to free-associate to my own past? Spaceships, for heaven's sake! Next thing, I'd be seeing myself on horseback with Hopalong Cassidy. How was it, I wondered, that I could remember watching television when I was five years old and not remember my own family, or who I'd watched it with? Some of the doctor's words, which I hadn't thought I was listening to at the time, came back to me: lacunary amnesia, usually connected with some head injury, blanked out only selective areas in the memory. For instance, a man he'd known once had fallen out of a third storey window. The man had been a teacher of French; when he came to himself, he could still read French but couldn't speak a word of it.

I heard soft steps in the hall, and Lisa Barnard came quietly into the room. 'Are you asleep? A man who claims to be your father is here. Do you feel up to seeing him?'

I wasn't so sure. Right now I wouldn't have known my father from Adam. The phrase popped into my mind and then I realised I wasn't so sure who Adam was, either. This wasn't good. If there was anybody who could straighten out this mess, I'd sure be glad to see him! It just might be that the minute I laid eyes on him, my whole past would pop back into being. I certainly hoped so.

'Bring him on,' I said.

Lisa turned back to someone in the hall. 'You can come in now, Mr Roland,' she said, and I waited, realising that my heart was pounding slightly. I heard heavier steps, and then a man came into the room - and my excitement subsided slowly.

I had never seen the man before - at least, not to my knowledge.

And yet - I hesitated. There was some haunting familiarity about him, and strangely, it was not a pleasant familiarity. If this was my father, the thought flashed through my mind, I'm not surprised at myself for running away.

He was tall and heavily built, with swarthy skin and dark eyes, but there was something else about him, something I couldn't identify; the best way I could put it to myself was that he looked

as if he were dressed in someone else's clothes. Not that I was any judge of clothes; I just knew that the clothes he was wearing now - a dark business suit, nothing remarkable about it, though the collar opened to accommodate the bulging of enormous neck muscles, and his tie-knot dangled loose a few inches below the collar - didn't suit him. I thought that over a minute, trying to think what would suit him, how he would look right. In uniform, maybe? A policeman's uniform, a Roman legionary's armour? I couldn't put my finger on it. But I didn't like it - and I didn't like him.

The silence had stretched out long enough to be awkward but Mr Roland still stood, looking down at me, without speaking. I wondered what he was waiting for, and had the distinct feeling that he wanted me to speak first. I decided I wouldn't, I'd just wait for him.

The silence went on stretching out. This was ridiculous. I bit my lip. 'If you're waiting for me to cry out "Daddy" and rush into your arms, it's no good,' I blurted out. 'As far as I know, I've never seen you before in my life.' And don't care if I never do again.

'Barry,' he said ruefully, shaking his head. 'I don't think it's necessary to bring the hostility between us out in a place like this.' I had the feeling that he was answering the part of the remark I hadn't made out loud, but the tone was familiar enough. 'I've been worried about you, son. Are you feeling all right now?'

'I'll live,' I said. 'Physically, that is. I guess they told you I don't remember anything.'

Mr Roland turned to the nurse. 'Well, that's that. Of course, he's my son. I assume he can be moved; will you get his clothes, please, and we'll go?'

'Hey,' I protested. 'Not quite so fast!' In the first place I didn't want to be pushed into going with this guy. I didn't recognise him, I felt sick and - yes, damn it, scared. The only familiar things in a bewildered world were this hospital room. Lisa and Dr Bannon, and I wasn't ready to cut adrift from them just yet. 'Right away?'

'Why not?' Roland asked logically. 'What else is necessary and why stay here? Where should you be, except with your father?'

"There are a few formalities,' Lisa said slowly, 'but I don't suppose they'll take very long. Since you do definitely identify him as your son ...?' She paused, but with the uplift of a question in her voice, and the big man said impatiently, 'Yes, yes, of course.'

'Well, then - ' she began, but I broke in. 'But I haven't definitely identified myself as his son! Do I have to go with him on his say-so?'

'Barry, don't be paranoid,' the man admonished sharply, then softened his voice. I had the impression of a film of sticky oil spread over dirty rough rock. He said in a conciliating voice to Lisa, 'I suppose he's afraid of being scolded or punished for running away.' The tone effectively reduced me to a twelve-year-old hiding from a spanking. 'Come, come, Barry, if I were to say that all is forgiven - '

'I don't believe you,' I said roughly. 'I don't think you have the right to forgive me anything, and I'm not going unless you can prove your identity to my satisfaction. Don't I have any rights here?' I clutched at a faint hope. 'Doesn't the doctor have to sign me out, or anything?'

Lisa looked at me with what seemed like a look of pity. She said, 'It's true that Dr Bannon has to release you formally. Shall I call him?'

'Why is all this necessary?' the man grumbled, and the little nurse said primly, 'Because if he is released, and has a relapse, the hospital is legally responsible. It won't take a minute. Why don't you sit here and have a nice visit with your son, Mr Roland? I'll have Dr Bannon paged.'

She buzzed off, and I lay staring at the window, not looking at the big man who claimed to be my father. I couldn't imagine having a nice visit with that character.

'What's the matter with you, Barry?' the man asked, after a brief silence. 'I thought your memory was gone. How can you possibly have anything against me?'

I countered with another question. 'How did you know I was here?'

'It was broadcast on TV,' he said slowly. 'They appealed for anyone who knew you to come forward.'

The cautiousness of the answer didn't surprise me. I knew he was hiding something and I hadn't expected anything else. I said, 'Tell me about the family.'

'Family?' For a moment I had caught him off guard. I had the feeling that didn't happen often and that he didn't like it; in the fast dark stare he gave me, I realised I'd probably be sorry for it. But his tone was neutral when he spoke. 'I had forgotten you wouldn't remember,' he said. 'Of course your mother is - is dead, and you have no brothers and sisters. Just you and me.'

The words were fine. Only why did they give me the cold chills? I shut my mouth, resolved not to say anything more, and didn't, until Dr Bannon came back.

'Mr Roland, is it? And you've identified your missing son?' he asked. 'Just a few questions. How long has he been missing?'

'Three weeks,' Roland said, with a quick glance at me.

'Why didn't you report him to Missing Persons?'

He had an answer for that one too. 'You know how young people are,' he said, with what was meant to be an understanding smile. 'I thought he would return of his own free will. Now, of course, I know he was not able.'

I said, 'I've been away longer than three weeks,' and looked appealingly at Dr Bannon. Bannon

frowned slightly and said, 'If you'll wait outside a minute, sir - '

'Now look here,' the man said, advancing on Bannon with an air of menace. 'This my son, and I have a right to take him home without all these formalities'. If you people attempt to prevent me, I shall make trouble!'

I suddenly put my finger on what was wrong. His own speech was too formal, as if he'd learned it from a book. Why did he say 'formalities' instead of 'red tape'? His dialogue wasn't convincing! I started to say so - and, looking up with my mouth open, met his eyes.

I can't explain it. Something in them made me wither like a sensitive plant left out too long in the sun. They were dark eyes, and I had the feeling, looking into them, that I couldn't look away unless he let me...

He said, very softly and not bullying at all, 'Clothe yourself, Barry, and we will leave. This person cannot prevent you.'

Dr Bannon said, 'I understand your - son? - still has some objections.'

Roland said suavely, 'Ask him, Barry-?'

I said automatically, 'Yes - ?'

'As you will see. he knows his name. Now' - Roland's voice suddenly snapped like a whip 'request him to become clothed at once and leave here!'

Bannon wasn't going to be bullied. 'Wait outside, then, while he dresses,' he said, and when Roland went into the hall, he turned to me. I sat slumped over in bed, feeling a slow paralysis of despair. Bannon couldn't help me. I'd have to go with him, and then -

'Barry,' Bannon said softly.

'Yes, sir?'

'It is your name, obviously,' Bannon pointed out, in a gentle voice. 'What's the matter, son?'

I wished that the 'son' were more than a phrase. It meant more when Bannon said it. I said, in a stifled voice. 'He's not my father,' feeling my throat drying as I spoke. My heart was banging, and the doctor looked at me with concern. 'You're frightened! Yet he knew you, Barry. He knew your name.'

'He said he knew me,' I muttered.

'Look,' the doctor urged, 'why should he claim you if he isn't a relative? If you were the heir to a big fortune, or some such thing as that, you would have been claimed before this. There would have been national headlines, if you were the victim of a kidnapping or anything like that. What

are you afraid of?'

I didn't know. But I knew when I was licked. Bannon couldn't help me and I couldn't help myself. I sank down on the bed, reaching for the denim coverall, but before I could get it on I started to tremble, and kept on shaking until the thing fell from my hand on to the floor. The greyness started to close in around me again; I saw and felt my hand shaking and I heard Bannon's ,voice, suddenly high, raised with fear or concern, shouting; but the words slid past me where I huddled in a blind, unthinking terror.

'Barry! Listen to me!' Bannon's hand clamped hard on my arm. 'Take it easy! Listen, kid; I won't release you against your will. If it hits you like that, you're obviously in no shape to leave the hospital anyhow, and I couldn't conscientiously sign you out! Come on, calm down!' His hand eased me back on the pillows as his words slowly filtered through to me. I swallowed, trying to get words out.

Bannon knew what I wanted to say. 'You don't want to face him again? All right, son; I'll tell him that you're not fit to leave the hospital.'

I felt the world settle down again, and slowly my pounding heart quieted to normal. I wet my lips; Bannon poured me a glass of water, handed me a small paper cup with a couple of pills. 'Here, take these. It's just a very mild sedative, but you need it. I'll tell him to come back in a day or two; by then you'll be feeling better. You may even have your memory back.'

I muttered, ashamed, 'Sorry to make - such a scene - '

'Blame this,' Bannon said firmly, touching the bandage on my head. 'It's the most natural thing in the world. You lie back and rest, now.'

'Doctor-' I said, as he was going out of the room. Tell him - if he comes back - tell him to bring some proof! Tell him to bring my - my -' I fumbled for elusive words, thoughts, memories, through the blankness. 'Tell him to bring my - my birth certificate or a picture of me. Or - or some proof that I'm still a minor, or - something like that.'

Bannon raised his dark eyebrows, but said only, 'I'm glad your mind is working as clearly as this; obviously your memory is right under the surface. But don't try too hard. Relax, now, and give that stuff a chance to calm you down.'

He went out, and after a minute, I heard his voice in the corridor, and Roland's, raised, angry, baffled; it went on for some time, and finally subsided and died away down the hall. I began to breathe freely again. Bannon had managed to get rid of him. But for how long?

The sedative he had given me was evidently powerful, no matter what he said. I felt drowsy - or was that just the reaction after my attack of panic? I felt ashamed of it, in a strange way. I ought to have been more coherent, more sensible; I ought to have given good reasons for not wanting to go with that guy - instead of going into hysterics like a silly kid! Dr Bannon must think I was an awful crybaby!

I still felt sheepish when, a little later. Lisa popped in. 'Suppertime,' she said briskly, but I could hardly look at her. Had she heard about me throwing a fit? But she was perfectly natural. 'Dr Bannon told me to check and see if you were awake and hungry; you'd had a sedative, and he said not to wake you up, if you were asleep, but if you were awake, feed you. How hungry are you?'

I thought about that and decided I was pretty hungry. 'I could eat a horse.'

Lisa giggled. 'I don't know if the kitchen has any horses in stock,' she said. 'Would you settle for a plain old chunk of cow or sheep?'

'Just cut off the horns and hooves,' I said gravely, and her mock-solemn smile came again.

'Why, is there something wrong with your teeth? You don't want a nice chunk of horn and hoof pie? Okay, I'll do the best I can.'

When supper came, it wasn't Lisa who brought it, but a pleasant old grey-haired motherly type, and it was some kind of stew, with other things like a salad and toasted muffins and some pudding quite inoffensive and all completely blah. Just the same, I was hungry enough to eat up everything on the tray, and when I shoved it aside, as an exercise in memory, I tried to make myself remember what I would rather eat. Steak. I remembered steak. Maybe a nice cold shrimp cocktail. Hot biscuits. Chili. Chocolate cake or maybe lemon pie.

I branched out a little then. Berkeley, California. I remembered Berkeley. I remembered hikes in the hills, up towards Strawberry Canyon, and the Botanical Gardens back there. But hikes with whom? I must have had a family, teachers, sisters and brothers, yet my mind seemed to be swept clean of people.

Go back to the beginning. Had I a house? Blast it, there was nothing but a blank spot. I knew what a house was, but I couldn't remember having one. Clothes, then. Could I remember any clothes? Yes, I remembered wearing a cowboy suit when I was about five. Great, I told myself cynically; just great, I could remember something when I was five. My head ached as if it would burst, and I had, again, that sense of something vast and frightening just past the curtain of memory. Clothes. The brown denim coverall I had been wearing, the little brass dragon -. Abruptly I discovered I was sitting bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding. What was it about that thing that scared me, and how did I happen to have something in my pocket that would scare the wits out of me like that?

I knew the doctor wouldn't approve of this. He'd told me not to work too hard at trying to remember; either my memory would come back without me doing anything about it at all, or it wouldn't. But he ought to try it, I thought resentfully, not being able to remember his own name, and see how calm and casually he could take it!

Barry. Was my name Barry? Why not - I groped for other names - why not James, or Karsten, or Michael, or Varzil, or John or Richard? Did any of them sound right? Or familiar? Yes, they all

sounded equally familiar - and equally unfamiliar.

Oh, nuts. This wasn't getting me anywhere.

Fortunately, before I wound myself up too far into knots, Dr Bannon came in again. He looked at me with a quizzical sort of scowl.

*We have another claimant for the young man of mystery,' he said, with some irony. 'Do you feel like seeing another father, looking for a missing son?'

'It isn't that other guy - ?'

'It isn't,' said Bannon, 'and this one has pictures that - well, they could be you, or almost any other boy your age and colouring. You're not exactly photogenic. He also has some school yearbooks, samples of your handwriting, birth certificate and the like. Want to see him?'

'I guess so,' I said, trying to control another brief flurry of panic. 'Who does this one say I am?'

Dr Bannon turned away. 'He's a Dr Cowan,' he said. 'He's from Berkeley, California. And' - he stuck his head back through the door - 'he says your name is Barry too.'

That was enough to start the panic going again, but I suppose by now the sedative must have been working, for there was no violent heart-pounding or dryness of mouth. I lay looking at the

door of the room, ready for anything.

Bannon came back, saying, 'This way, Dr Cowan.' He held the door, letting a tall, slender, slightly stooped man into the room. The man straightened up, turned, squared his shoulders as if prepared for disappointment - then drew a long, quiet sigh.

'Thank God,' he said, not to me or to anyone in the room.

And - to my utter relief - I felt none of that familiarity I had sensed about Roland. This time I was positive I had never set eyes on him before. He wasn't that Roland character - and he wasn't someone come from Him to collect me for Roland. I knew that.

This was a good man. I could tell that. A good, sincere, worried man, and I could no more imagine him in league with that thing Roland than I could imagine - well, my imagination, I found out, suddenly wasn't working.

So I knew, all at once, what I had to do.

'Hello, Dad,' I said quietly. 'It's good to see you again. I guess you've heard that I've had some sort of freak accident. I don't remember much. But can we go home, right away?'

It was a fake. It didn't know him from Adam, and I felt like a lousy, rotten phony, all the while that Dr Cowan, with tears in his eyes, was showing the doctor my pictures, and promising to take

me to a doctor at home for psychological tests and treatment for my head. He had even brought along a suitcase with some clothes, and he stared and frowned at the brown denim coverall, but packed it into the suitcase and urged me to put on a sweater and a pair of well worn corduroy slacks and sneakers. They seemed to go on easily enough, though my legs stuck out about four inches between the trouser bottoms and the sneaker tops, and Dr Cowan patted me awkwardly on the shoulder and muttered, 'Good lord, how you've grown!'

He signed papers and telephoned a taxi, and before I knew what had happened I was driving away, the hospital dropping away behind me, and every familiar thing in my life being left behind with it. I wished I could have said goodbye to Lisa. I was scared - but not half so scared as I had been in that hospital, where that Roland character might have come back the next day and demanded me!

But it was a heck of a thing to do to Dr Cowan, who still was all choked up when he spoke to me, who had shown me the woven tape with my name, so he said, Barry Francis Cowan, in the back of the worn tweed overcoat he'd brought along for me, who was urging me to look at snapshots of my mother, of a cute little ten-year-old girl he said was my sister Winifred.

'What happened. Dad? I'm still awfully confused. When did I leave Berkeley?'

'A year ago in June,' he said gravely. 'You went out to school - and none of us saw you from that day to this. We checked with the police, with the hospitals, everything - ' His voice failed again, and he gripped my wrist hard, trying to smile. 'I've made four cross-country trips to look at kids

in hospitals and morgues' - his voice cracked a little on that word - 'to look at kids I thought might be you. One of them was burned so badly no one could have identified him, and I was sure - ' he broke off. 'Well, thank God that's all over with. Have you had supper, Barry? Does your head ache too much? Are you thirsty?' He took out a pipe, and nervously filled it. 'Your mother didn't want me to come. She's sure you were dead. She said she couldn't bear another - another disappointment. I ought to call her. Do you want to talk to her?'

'I couldn't,' I said quickly. I could stand a lot of things, but talking to the mother of this Barry Cowan, who was probably dead, and getting her hopes up too, was more than I thought I could take and still look myself in the eye. The silence grew so oppressive that I fumbled, 'I - I'd rather see her. How is Mother anyhow?'

'Worrying,' he said dryly, and a small frown came between his eyebrows. 'Here's the airport.' He paid the taxi and carried the small suitcase inside. 'I have a flight at nine -I would have cancelled it, of course, if you hadn't been able to leave, but if it hadn't been you I didn't want to hang around in Texas.'

'No,' I said, then, remembering that Bannon had called him Dr Cowan, decided it was time to throw in a little local colour. 'I don't suppose you want to be away from your patients too long.'

He raised his brows again, but all he said was, 'Quite right. Are you feeling all right? You look a little pale. You can sleep on the plane.'

While we waited for the flight to be called I got a good look at him. He was tall, though I realised now, not so much taller than I. I must be nearly six feet now. He had blue eyes, deep-set under thick eye-brows that made powerful ridges across his forehead; and his hair, curly and balding, was brown, salted liberally with grey. He looked alert, good-humoured, and as if, when he wasn't worried, he'd be one great father for a fellow to have. I envied this Barry Francis Cowan.

But I didn't speak until the plane was airborne and already crossing the Grand Canyon in a huge, dark chasm of black rock. Then I said, hesitantly, 'Sir-'

'What is it, Barry?'

36 'I'm not your son,' I blurted out. 'I don't remember you. I pretended I did to get away from the hospital. I'll pay you back for the flight some time - and I'm sorry I kidded you - but I'm not your son. I haven't the faintest idea who I am - but I don't remember you.'

He looked at me and smiled. He smiled.

'I knew that,' he said. 'You never called me 'Dad' in your life; you've called me 'Father' since you outgrew saying 'Papa' when you were five. You never called your mother anything but 'Nina'. My doctorate is in invertebrate biology and I'm a professor at the university - I'd be clapped in jail for looking twice at a 'patient'. Just the same, you're my son, and I can prove it to my own satisfaction, and, God willing, to yours. But not just now. Just take it easy and relax. I'm

satisfied; that's all that matters.'

He closed his eyes and rested his head on the plane seat, and I blinked and stared into the darkness. Now what?

Had I jumped out of the frying pan into the fire?

Was it some sort of plot after all? How had he convinced Dr Bannon that he was my father when there was another claimant? I looked, in the darkness of the cabin, at Dr Cowan and still couldn't believe that he had anything to do with Roland.

But then - how had Roland known my name, or hit by chance on the same given name as this Cowan? Barry Cowan. Was it me? I didn't know.

I had nothing. My mind was as blank of memory as the dark square of the plane window was blank of scenery. Nothing - and then I thrust my hand in my pocket and my fingers closed over the shape of the little brass dragon. I must have thrust it into my pocket from the pocket of the hospital pyjamas I'd been wearing.

I had this. But did it hold the key to my lost memory - and why did it scare me so?

It was too much for me. I pushed it all aside. At least Dr Cowan was willing to wait - and that would give me time. Time to remember - or die trying!

CHAPTER THREE

The next month was, what with one thing and another, a mess.

Not that I knew it when we were coming down over the San Francisco airport. I suppose I must have thought the worst was over, when I told Dr Cowan my suspicions, and they hadn't bothered him. I'd slept during part of the flight, and had only strange, drifting dreams about nothing in particular. I awoke when the stewardess bent over me and touched my shoulder lightly.

'We're coming in over the airfield. Please fasten your seat belts.'

I tugged at mine, faintly surprised at the back of my mind that there was only one strap and one buckle to fasten. I didn't know why there should be more, but my fingers looked for them anyhow.

That wasn't a good beginning. It started me thinking about the strangeness again, and as I looked down at the lights on the field, the crawling line of lights beyond which I knew must be the freeway, the enormous coloured blinking beacons on the runways and hangars, that strangeness was redoubled. Why were we coming in at this angle? And why were the lights spread out this way? My fingers cramped, expecting to do - something, I couldn't tell what, and my foot moved by itself, hunting something to press, frustrated.

I muttered. The lights are the wrong colour.'

Dr Cowan had been dozing, but was instantly awake.

'What is it, Barry?'

I shook my head slightly, feeling my forehead draw up in a scowl. My ears ached slightly with the descent. 'I don't know,' I muttered. 'I thought, for a minute, that I remembered something. Only I guess it was just a flash of déjà vu or whatever they call it. That creepy feeling of - well, not exactly I've been here before, but I've seen something like this and it isn't quite right somehow. My face wrinkled up and I felt my hands knot. 'Why in hell can't I remember!'

Dr Cowan's voice was calm, but I could tell he was troubled. 'Don't sweat it, son. Remember what the doctor said. Take it easy. Things will come back, and if they don't, what does it matter?'

'What does it matter?' I demanded, on a high note: somebody in the next seat twisted to look at me; I noticed it and lowered my voice. *You try it. Just try it sometime and see how much it doesn't matter!' I added, harshly, 'And if one more person tells me to take it easy ...'

'Look, Barry, take it - uh - relax. I know it must be rough, and sort of frightening. But it could be worse, so why not ride with it for a while?'

I shrugged and settled back in my seat. What else could I do, anyhow? Dr Cowan was being as

nice about it as he could possibly be, and it couldn't have been easy for him either, if he thought I was his son, having me treat him like a perfect stranger - a nice, friendly stranger but a stranger. I quieted down, but now I'd started thinking about it all again, and I was jittering. I couldn't think of anything rougher than going into a family of strangers cold, especially where the strangers are all convinced that you're one of them and ought to care about them, and you can't prove anything one way or another.

Yes, I could think of something rougher.

The guy who called himself Roland. I could have been talked or bullied into going off with him - and who knows where I'd have been by now? Probably nowhere on Earth. Dr Cowan had come along just in time to save me from that - and I was damned grateful.

But grateful was all I was. I didn't feel the way I ought to feel if he were my father. Or did I? I still kept expecting that if and when I met somebody I really knew, my memory would come back - and when I met Dr Cowan it hadn't. Did that prove anything?

And if I was Barry Cowan, why had that Roland character tried to identify me? Having seen real, even if - I was sure - misguided, fatherly affection in Dr Cowan, you couldn't kid me that was what Roland felt for me. Or for anyone. If he'd ever been anyone's father. Or had a father!

Dr Cowan gathered together his bags and shepherded me off the plane. He had telephoned my mother - I called her that for convenience's sake in my mind - from Texas, but now he made

another move towards a phone booth, and I glanced at the thick milling crowd. / ought to disappear right now, I thought. Just drift. I'm out of Roland's reach, and why bring trouble on Dr Cowan? But Dr Cowan looked around at me, a little apprehensively, and I realised I couldn't do that to him. He shouldn't have to lose his son after finding him. If I wasn't his son, he'd find it out sooner or later, and that would be another story.

He stepped into a gift shop. 'I thought I'd pick up some chocolates for your mother,' he said. Then, grinning, 'Still like caramels?'

I shrugged, sorry to be unresponsive. 'How should I know?'

He laughed softly, picked up the box and handed it to me. 'I'll take a chance on it.'

I didn't recognise the car either, though there was no special reason I should; it was just like thirty million other cars on the road, neither very new nor very old. I got in, opening the caramels to have something to do. I ate one. It tasted good. Of course. Why had I thought it might not? I saw him glance at me and laughed. 'It beats yeast bars. anyhow.'

He looked amused now. 'Don't tell me you've been going in for health foods! Have you taken up Yoga too?' I laughed too and denied it, but the faint sense of strangeness remained. I was going to have to get used to everything feeling somehow wrong, it seemed.

The car swung into the stream of traffic, over the Bay Bridge, along quiet streets, climbing into

the Berkeley hills. Dr Cowan was silent in the car, occupying himself with the business of driving, until he made a sharp turn into the driveway of a house, dark in the duskiness, but with lights on at a side porch; then he stopped the car and turned his head to me.

'I see Winifred is still up.' He turned to me. 'Look, Barry, I know you're confused. This might not be easy for you. But try and soft-pedal these doubts of yours, at least with your sister. She's been something of a problem all this time we thought you were dead - I sometimes think it was harder on her than on your mother or me. Remember - no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say it that way; it's hard for me to keep it in mind - but stop and think. You've been not only her big brother but her hero all her life. Nina and I are old enough to take your doubts in our stride - we don't like it, but we can handle doubts and even a little hostility if we have to. Win can't - and don't forget it!'

I felt confused and guilty. All I could do was to mumble, 'I'll do my best,' and then the porch light went on and a small woman and a little girl were tumbling down the drive. Dr Cowan's hand was firm on my shoulder for a minute, then he turned me loose to be smothered.

It only lasted a minute, and then the woman said tremulously, 'Come in the house where I can get a good look at you. Oh, Barry, you're so thin - all right, all right, I won't fuss.' But she held on to my hand all the way up the steps and into the house. She was small, brunette, with a serious face and no make-up, and her hair was in a long braid down her back. She looked awfully young to be my mother, I thought. Winifred was wide-eyed and solemn, with dark fuzzy hair feathering up from her forehead and big dark eyes. She grabbed me and I thought of a kitten trying to climb

up my shirt front, but she didn't cry. She just stood there hanging on to me and shaking all over, and saying over and over again, 'You aren't dead, you aren't dead!'

I finally prised her loose a little and said, 'I'd better not be, or somebody'll get in trouble because I'm walking around instead of being decently buried!'

She giggled a little at that, and gulped a little, and then stood back and said, 'Are you really okay? Papa said you were in a hospital in Texas. Were you there all that time?'

'No, I don't think so. Somebody biffed me over the head.' I patted her shoulder kind of awkwardly. 'So if I get to acting absentminded it's because somebody knocked the sense out of me - literally. Okay?'

'Okay,' she said warily, but smiling again. She waited till I sat down, then edged up to me again and sat down on the rug, like a kitten rubbing against my shoe tops. She said primly, 'I think amnesia is very interesting. I read a book about it, but I didn't think I'd ever know anybody who had it.* Over her head I saw Dr Cowan and Nina exchange a quick grin. She'd be all right. I wished I could be that sure about myself.

Nina came over and parked herself on the edge of my chair. She said, 'I don't have to tell you how I feel, Barry - or do I? Because I knew you wouldn't do this to us just for nothing. When we reported you missing, back then, they kept pestering us. Had there been a fight, quarrels, teenage rebellions? I got so sick of telling them -I must have sounded awfully sickening about what a

happy home we had and what a good boy you were. I don't mean you were perfect - good Lord, no - but, well, they kept reminding me about how parents never really know their kids. I must have sounded like some neurotic mother type, because I kept saying, no, Barry isn't perfect, but this isn't the kind of thing he'd do to us. He isn't sadistic. He - he liked us, and if he wanted to take off for parts unknown, or go join the Foreign Legion, or hitchhike to New York, or go punch cows in Alaska, he'd come tell us, and ask us to forward his mail!'

I found that my throat felt funny and had to make a try or two before I said, 'I sure wouldn't have wanted to worry you, not if I was in my right mind. I don't know why I didn't get in touch with you' - I stopped, starting to say 'Mother* and then remembering what Dr Cowan had said about my always calling her Nina, and finally I didn't call her anything - 'but I don't think it was because I didn't want to. I don't remember anything about it, but if I didn't it was because I couldn't, I'm sure.'

'Enough of that, then. If you ever remember, and want to tell me, fine. If not, don't worry about it. And now - are you hungry?'

'We had supper on the plane. But could I have a glass of milk or something?'

'As if you had to ask!'

We were kidding it, trying not to overdo it. I said, 'Funny, but I forget where the kitchen is.'

'So it's time you found-out again. Right through there.' She pointed. I went through the door and found myself in a kitchen panelled with wood, with yellow curtains, very smooth and white and cleaned up for the night. I hunted in a cabinet or two until I found a glass and poured myself some milk. Inside, I heard them talking and wished I had the nerve to tiptoe back and listen in on what they were saying. Instead, I made some noise falling over my own feet before I came back with the glass in my hand. Dr Cowan, hanging my coat in a closet, turned to me and said, 'I was just telling Nina that you've grown about three inches. You'll have to get a whole new outfit -I don't think you've got a stitch of clothes that really fits you any more.'

I was a little relieved when everybody decided it was time for bed; but when I was left alone in the room they said was mine I found myself prowling around in it restlessly. All these things the sweaters in the drawers, the old map of San Francisco and the picture of a windjammer on the wall, the shelf of textbooks and battered kid's books and sea stories over the desk, the basketball shoes and track suit hanging in the closet, these were all vague clues to the person that had been me - or Barry Cowan. But were they mine, or was I an intruder, an impostor with no right to them? I put on faded pyjamas much too short for me, and lay down on top of the bedspread, which had a pattern of anchors and sailing boats woven into it. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the Barry Cowan of a year ago had liked ships and sailing.

I tried to follow that one out. Had I run away to sea? I scowled, and then heard in vague memory someone calling out, 'All aboard - lock those hatches!' I clung to the memory, trembling with excitement, and following it up, had a shaking moment of real memory: a long, very narrow passage lined with metal. I heard the steps of Dr Cowan in the hall, and stepped out to intercept

him.

'You look excited,' he said quietly. 'What is it?'

'I've remembered something,' I said. 'I think I was on a submarine at least part of that time.'

'A submarine? He sounded incredulous. 'Do you mean you think you joined the Navy?'

My enthusiasm was suddenly quenched. 'No,' I muttered, 'Dr Bannon said he'd checked my fingerprints. I evidently hadn't been in military service.' It was a whale of a letdown. Suddenly I was very tired. I don't remember what I said to him. I went back and crawled into bed. But I lay awake for a long time, jittery with anxiety about this family I liked but couldn't feel that I belonged to - and with fear that if I shut my eyes I would wake up screaming the way I'd kept doing in the hospital. That would have been a heck of a thing to do to nice people like this.

Finally I must have slept, though, because one time when I shut my eyes, I opened them again to bright sunlight and the good smell of coffee coming up the stairwell. When I went downstairs Nina was alone in the kitchen.

'Pancakes?' She was very casual. 'Your father's gone to his office; he said if you wanted him you could telephone. Win's gone to school already. Sit down - no, get yourself a plate first.'

I found myself wanting to reassure her. "Thanks, the food in the hospital was pretty blah.'

'Strictly speaking you ought to call the school, but we decided you shouldn't go back to school until you've been looked over by a doctor.'

I started to protest, then remembered I still had bandages on my head and leg, and burns. Time enough to worry about what they called 'picking up the threads where I'd left off'. I knew I couldn't do that, but I was willing to go along with them. There was nothing better to do.

There's no point in going into details of how I went with Dr Cowan and bought some clothes that fitted me, or how a doctor X-rayed my head again and scraped samples from the burns on my leg (I'd rather not even think about that, because it was fairly grim) and ran all over me with a Geiger counter. There was a big family conference including my grandfather (he was a nice, white-haired old man with a grey short curly beard, who taught cello in the university music department, but he doesn't come into this story anywhere else) about what to do about my schooling.

I'd missed a year, should I go back? My father held out that I ought to go back right away, that regular routine and old friends would do their best for me. I didn't want to make any plans until I felt a lot surer about who I was and what kind of person I had been - not to mention what kind of person I was now. Nina suggested a new school or a private tutor. Finally we compromised, which means we shelved the whole thing until January anyway. I pointed out that I was eighteen, which meant the truant officer wouldn't be coming around chasing me, and there was no awful hurry, and they let it go at that.

Things were awkward as hell; there was no getting around that. They wanted me to see old friends. I knew I couldn't hide in the house forever, but I didn't like the idea of trying to make conversation with a gang of total strangers. One came, though, trying to talk about basketball, and apparently wondering if I'd spent last year stashed away in an insane asylum somewhere, and after that Nina didn't insist any more. So I more or less spent my time with them and Winifred. I read a lot, trying to pick up the things I used to know.

But a few damned funny things happened.

For instance.

There was the night that Jens Swenson came to dinner.

He was evidently an old friend of the family. I liked him right away; a short, baldish little guy with a permanent pipe in his mouth, a face made out of pleated leather as if he'd spent all his time aboard the quarterdeck of a windjammer, and, according to my parents, thirty-two sciencefiction novels to his credit. I had a short shelf of them in my room, signed by him. I don't know what Father and Nina had told him about me, but he didn't pester me with questions, and after twenty minutes' conversation I felt as if I'd known him all my life. Of course, I had, but he was the first person I'd felt that way about.

After dinner, when we were sitting in front of the fireplace, watching the driftwood fire blaze

up, he fell silent, scowling into the flames, a beer can in his hand.

'What's biting you, Jens?' Father asked. 'Deadline blues? A novel to finish that you're stuck on?'

'Not exactly,' he said. 'Just a problem I wrote myself into, and I haven't got the know-how to write myself out of it. And I don't know anyone well enough to ask.' He set down the beer. 'A spaceship travelling at half the speed of light on planetary drive, and three times the speed of light on hyperdrive, expected to call in at three widely separated stars - and I can't figure out how long they'd be in space each way, or how long before landing they'd have to come out of drive to keep from crash-landing.'

Nina laughed. 'Write around that one,' she said. 'Just invent any kind of drive you want to, and keep them in space just long enough for your hero to lick your villain.'

'No,' he said, 'I'm intrigued by the relative ideas involved, but I haven't even got enough maths to make it sound plausible, let alone really figure it out.'

I was frowning over the problem. A planetary drive of half the speed of light sounded sort of implausible, but given those figures - 'Hold on, I'll work it out, Jens,' I said, and got up to go into my father's study. 'Dad, you have an old slide rule around somewhere, don't you, along with that sextant?' I was rummaging on his desk. Nina followed me to the door, and said, 'Why Barry, I thought - ' but my father put his hand on her arm. He said. 'The slide rule's in that pigeonhole with the lettering guides, Barry. Go to it.'

I grabbed up pencil and paper. 'How far apart are the stars in question, Jens?'

'Well, I picked them out on a star-map to sound good,' he said a little hesitantly, and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. 'I've been carrying them around just in case, but I didn't know you knew that much maths.' He handed me the paper with the figures.

I frowned over them, absorbed. 'I assume they have planets in accordance with the regular massdistance-size laws?'

He chuckled helplessly. 'I guess so. Whatever those are. I know I'm a hell of a guy to be writing science-fiction - I usually write around the scientific stuff, like Nina suggested.'

'Well then.' I moved the slide rule, frowning a little. *If they start from Earth, you can't turn on any faster-than-light drive inside the orbit of Saturn, or you'll crash the asteroids. Say two weeks to reach that point, then to hit your first star's fourth planet, you have to come out of drive after seven weeks, two days and twenty-two and a half hours - that's allowing for your standard timemass drift inside hyperspace, see?'

He bent over the sheet of paper, writing down my figures. I finished the computations, then asked, 'Think that will do it?'

'It's sure going to sound damned plausible,' he said. 'It looks like you ought to be writing the

science fiction in the family, kid!' He picked up the forgotten beer can and drained it. 'Where did you get all that stuff?'

'Why, uh-' I suddenly realised that the impetus had drained out of me. 'Damned if I know,' I said weakly. 'I must have been putting it together from my school maths last year.'

'Barry,' my father said quietly, 'you have good marks, but you failed required maths, and refused to take any more courses in it. I always thought you could learn it if you tried, but you said it was too much like work and you wouldn't be bothered. I couldn't even get you to learn navigation. Where in the hell did you learn to figure out all that stuff like an old hand?'

I shook my head and suddenly realised I was sweating all over. 'Can I have a glass of beer?' I suddenly asked. Nina gave me one without arguing. I gulped it down, almost without tasting it.

I was - scared.

It had seemed so real, so sensible to me, while I was doing it. And now I realised that nobody on Earth, except maybe professional astrologers - or did I mean astronomers? - ever had to figure out that sort of thing.

Jens asked, 'What was all that about mass-time drift inside hyperspace? Is that something new they've figured out in aerospace? I admit I don't keep up with my reading in the space and aeronautics field the way I used to.'

'Well, it - ' I began, then suddenly grabbed hold of myself. I'd been reading something about space travel in the news magazines lately and as far as I knew, hyperspace was just a theory. 'I don't know,' I said weakly; 'it just sounded good and authentic to take a small fixed percentage of time and space for drift.'

'Oh, I'm going to use it. It sounds convincing,' he said, and my father, picking up the slide rule I'd let drop, said quietly, 'But the mass-distance-size laws about planets are accurate enough. There is a law which states the distance from a sun where you'll find planets - the astronomer Herschel discovered Uranus that way, by postulating that there ought to be a planet at that distance from the sun, and hunting for it there. It looks like, somewhere, you've been picking up the rudiments of celestial navigation, Barry.'

'Maybe I went to school somewhere,' I said, almost biting my lip. 'Maybe I just saw a lot of science fiction movies.'

Jens put his hand on my shoulder firmly, almost consolingly. 'I wouldn't worry,' he said in an offhand way. 'At least you've learned something worth learning.'

Yeah, I thought, but what? Learned how to compute something they haven't invented yet?

Winifred giggled. 'Hey, maybe you spent all that time on a flying saucer and the little green men taught you,' she suggested, still laughing. 'And then they used one of their super-hyper rays on

you to make you forget it - '

I rounded on her, taking one fast step, feeling the blood drain from my face, 'Damn it,' I yelled, 'that's enough! Shut up! Quit picking on me! Don't say things like that, it's not funny-'

Nina grabbed my arm. She said sharply, 'Quiet, Win, that wasn't very funny. Barry, she didn't mean any harm.'

Winifred's eyes were huge and startled. I muttered, the anger ebbing away, 'I'm sorry. Win. That' - I tried to make a joke of it - 'that was just a little too close to what I was beginning to be afraid of myself.'

Jens was looking at me speculatively, but like the rest of the family, he let it drop. They were so damned tactful about it, that it almost hurt. At that particular point, I think I'd almost wanted to talk about it. My memory was gone, but at this point it had shown signs of coming back, and there must have been something to it. And they evidently felt it would be wrong to probe.

Maybe it would. Maybe if when I remembered something, it was going to be something as crazy as that - well, I'd been reading a few books on psychology too. Oh, the maths was accurate enough. I checked that in a textbook a couple of days later. I was dead right on the slide rule and all the computations. Somewhere in that missing year I'd learned a heck of a lot of maths: good, solid stuff. But - if I invented impossible memories out of a science fiction movie - what in the world were those fake memories trying to cover up, and why?

That was about when the dreams began.

I didn't tell anybody about them, because I knew what they'd say - it was what I tried to tell myself. Jens's talk about planets, my freak stunt with the slide rule, and Win's damned un-funny joke about maybe I spent that time in a flying saucer, all combined to give me the damnedest set of nightmares you ever heard of.

I was in some kind of spaceship, tied into a seat, with something rigged up behind my head so if I went to sleep and my head dropped it would ring a bell and wake me up again. I had to figure out some kind of orbit or there would be terrible trouble, and behind me some kind of lock was opening and someone, or some thing was coming through it ... and at this point I would wake up, swearing or maybe screaming in my sleep.

Or I was tied down in a bunk somewhere and outside the spaceport a planet kept getting bigger and bigger and coming at us faster and faster...

Same drill. Screams and all.

I can't have been awfully easy to live with while this was going on. Nina even started talking again about a doctor. I held out against it, mostly because I was scared. Losing your memory is bad enough; but remembering things that just have to be hallucinations - I kept telling myself that as long as I knew they were hallucinations, I was okay.

If it had kept on like this, I might really have gone crazy. I'm beginning to think people don't have hallucinations because they are crazy, they go crazy because they have hallucinations and don't know what to do about them. But fortunately, the next thing that happened was something tangible. After that, I knew I wasn't crazy; some damned funny things were happening but they weren't all inside me. And that made all the difference.

I might not have noticed the first thing, and to this day I'm not sure. It might have been an accident. But it fitted in so well with what happened later...

There wasn't much for me to do these days. Among other things, I was still having to check in with a doctor every other day about those burns on my leg, which didn't seem to want to heal. So I meandered around, reading books from the library, prowling around the museum, trying to pick up things I'd forgotten. Everything I learned was new, of course, though some seemed to be newer than others.

I suppose everybody who's ever had a mental breakdown thinks, at some time or other, that somebody's following him, so I told myself not to be paranoid when I noticed the same character half a dozen times in the museum. He was probably some kook from the university, who had a passion for the medieval tapestry or something.

But then there was the time I went in the restaurant for a sandwich. It was raining like the devil and my raincoat was soaked, so I hung it on a rack near the door instead of over the back of my

chair as I usually would have done. I finished my sandwich, paid the bill and went to claim the coat - and there was that same little guy, walking out the door in my coat.

I yelled and chased after him, but the manager grabbed me to pay the bill and I lost him.

Now don't tell me that was an accident. The little guy -I never got a good look at his face - was about five foot two, and my coat looked like Dracula's cape on him. There just isn't any absentminded professor that absentminded.

Nina was nice when I told her about it; I'd somehow expected her to be cross at me for having lost a perfectly good coat. But later that evening the doorbell rang, and when she went to answer it, there was nobody there - but the coat lay, a soggy mess, wadded up on the doorstep. I came and carried it to hang up, and then, when I took it by the collar to shake it out, I realised there wasn't any coat left. It had been slit at every seam, the lining cut loose, every pocket ripped open and even the stiffening inside the collar pulled out and picked to pieces.

Nina did throw a fit then, and I don't blame her. I was as baffled as she was, but I think she had a sneaking suspicion that for some completely crazy reason I'd arranged to have this done. She never said so, but she looked at me in the damnedest way. As for my father, he had two theories, which unfortunately cancelled each other out. He wavered between thinking it was some idiot prank by some school kid, which gave me a fit - I couldn't imagine anyone I knew doing anything so pointless and stupidly destructive; and if they didn't know me, how had they known where to return the coat? - or that it was some devious criminal plot and he should call the police,

which gave Nina a fit. She said, and with some justice, that she'd had enough police to last her a lifetime.

I could have tipped the scales towards the police, but I didn't. And I was damned glad I'd been the one to answer the phone, later that night. I picked it up and said the automatic, polite 'Hello?' and first there was a silence during which - I don't want to exaggerate - I kept hearing someone, or something, breathing. Not that there's anything sinister about breathing. Everybody does it all the time, so don't ask me why it bothered me, except to wonder why somebody would call me up on the phone and breathe at me. Then a sort of a voice said, 'Cowan?'

'This is Barry Cowan. Did you want Professor Cowan?'

'No,' the sort of voice rasped, or husked - no, neither of those things describes it, but it articulated. 'Did you get your coat back?'

'Just a minute,' I said sharply. 'Who is this?'

'You're clever,' the voice went on, though it sounded more like, 'Yuuh clevuh.' 'We didn't find it. Better leave it in the place you know about, or you'll look just like that coat - only in more pieces.'

'What's that? What-'

But the phone was dead, only the dial tone's buzzing emerging from it.

I stood with it in my hand for a minute, then slowly replaced it. Nina called from the other room, 'Who is it, Barry?'

I said thoughtfully, 'Just a wrong number, I guess, They asked for - somebody I never heard of,' which was, in a way, true.

I lay awake that night again, in a cold sweat. It had been bad enough thinking I was going crazy. But now I had traded hallucinations for unpleasantly tangible realities. Something out of those lost months was reaching for me - and I didn't like the sound of it at all. That coat hadn't just been ripped. It had been picked apart and shredded.

The idea that if I didn't recover some mysterious 'it' for that voice, I'd look like the coat, was nothing to reassure me about the tangibility of whatever had happened to me. People didn't do that to other people in this corner of the world, and if I had been in a corner where they did, I wasn't anxious to renew my acquaintance with it. Or them.

Maybe I should have gone straight to my father and sent him straight to the police. But it seemed to me that he and Nina had already been through enough on my account.

And what could they have wanted, anyhow? I didn't have anything on me, when I was picked up by the hospital, except the clothes I wore, a few cents in change, and a hunk of carved brass.

I snapped on my lamp to look at it; I kept it, for some reason, in the drawer of my bedside table. During the time my burns had been healing, I'd read a few of the books lying around the house kids' books, a lot of them, and thrillers - and of course I'd come across the old yam about the mysterious jewel which was the eye of some Eastern idol. The poor character who got away with it was dogged by sinister Chinamen or lascars, whatever lascars were, until he died a horrible death, clutching the jewel. I felt like a fool, but I wondered if the brass dragon was some melodramatic hunk of junk like that.

I was reluctant to pick it up. I remembered that, while I was still weak in the hospital, staring at it had made me throw some kind of scene. But I had to check on it.

If this were valuable, I was one of Win's little green men! It was an ordinary hunk of brass, made of the same stuff as a door key or an ashtray. It was nicely shaped into the form of a small dragon, but the carving wasn't anything to write home about either; in fact, it wasn't carved so much as milled. It could have been one of those cheap things that say A Present from Chinatown and mounted on an ashtray, only it seemed the wrong sort of size for that. Its value could have been something like thirty-nine cents. So scratch the mysterious eye of the idol of the Great God Foofooroney, complete with sinister Chinamen or lascars or little green men. This piece of junk could be thrown out anytime. I started to toss it into a waste-basket, then something held my hand. No, damn it, it was the only souvenir I had of a baffling experience. Even if it was only the remnant of a shopping trip in some lost-and-forgotten equivalent of Chinatown or a distant tencent-store - if I'd been to Texas, I might have been anywhere - I'd keep it until I remembered

what it was and why I'd bothered to spend my probable thirty-nine cents on the thing.

I slept that night, after a fashion, dreaming that I'd been hauled off by little green men who had me tied up by one leg and were torturing me to find out why I'd bought a brass dragon in Chinatown. Dr Fu Manchu was in the dream, too, and so was Sherlock Holmes, so I didn't bother trying to analyse the dream for remnants of subconscious memory when I woke up - especially since I'd forgotten to go and have the bandages changed on that damned burn on my leg, and I didn't need little green men to torture me over it - but I did wake up with an idea. While I was waiting for nine o'clock, so I could call the doctor and make up for the appointment I'd missed, I hauled out the set of clothes they'd found me in, in the hospital, and looked them over. I called Nina in and asked her help.

'Nina, what kind of material is this? Is it what they call denim?'

'No, denim's what they make blue jeans out of,' she informed me, scowling over it. 'It's good quality stuff, though. Not nylon, probably; too porous. Nylon clothes are sweat-boxes in hot weather, and this stuff is ventilated. Maybe it's some kind of dacron blend, or a new synthetic. It looks coarse but it's very good quality, like the stuff they make sails out of for small boats, or really good tents. I don't know.'

'Where would you go to buy something like this?' I asked,

'There you have me. I thought I knew a bit about clothes and materials, but - maybe it's Army or

Navy stuff. Very good quality surplus. You might look in an Army and Navy store. Or a very good sports store. But it doesn't seem to have been made on ordinary sewing machines. Look at those seams.' She demonstrated, tugging at one. 'I can't think of any sewing machines that makes crosswise stitches like that. Maybe it's some foreign stuff, Russian or something. Maybe Swiss, they make a lot of good special mountain-climbing equipment and stuff like that, and it looks adapted to rugged weather. It's not American.' She looked disturbed. 'Did you get this while - '

'While my memory was gone? Yes,' I said, 'but that doesn't mean anything. I could have been climbing mountains in Oregon and bought it or swapped it from some European tourist, you know. Or it could be some new Army surplus stuff you just haven't seen yet.'

But when she'd gone out of the room, I did the same sort of job on those coveralls that they, whoever they were, had done on my coat. It was a good idea but it didn't get me anywhere. By the end of half an hour I was sure that nothing was hidden in that cover- all, seams, pockets or padded spots.

They say if you know where something isn't, you're halfway to knowing where it is. Well, whatever it was, I knew where it wasn't. Now if I only knew what it was...

But that line of thought wasn't getting me anywhere, so I finally got up and called the doctor. At least he was only interested in the very tangible burns on my leg, not the unpleasantly intangible things in my brain. Although, if I thought about it enough, there was something awfully damned mysterious about those burns too. Not to mention unpleasant.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next thing that happened was in the 'unpleasantly tangible' class too; the house was searched.

It was a Saturday and for once it wasn't raining, so my father and Nina decided it would be a good weekend to drive up along the coast and see the redwoods again. I gathered it was something our family had done almost every year since I was a little kid. They'd skipped it last year while I was missing, and although I wasn't in much of a mood for travel or sightseeing, I could sympathise with their wish to take up all the family things where they left off. So I wasn't about to spoil it for them; and the funny thing was that I did, sort of, remember the scenery along that Northern California coast. The way the ocean stretched, blue and misty, from Point Reyes out towards the Farallones; the enormous towering redwoods, so high that when you looked straight up along their trunks, you got dizzy and started feeling as if you were looking down, into a deep well of sky ... all this was weirdly familiar to me, and in a way, comforting. Maybe I did belong here after all. Maybe all the other things were bad dreams. Maybe during that year of God-knows-what, I'd just seen too many science fiction movies.

We spent the night up in the Russian River district, drove all through mountains and high cliffs the next day, and arrived back in Berkeley late at night, with Winifred asleep on my shoulder. Nina went to turn on the lights in the house; I set Win on her feet and hoisted out the suitcases, while my father opened the garage door to put the car away. I was just picking up the overnight

cases to take them up the walk when I heard Nina scream.

I dropped the suitcases and ran. She was standing in the middle of the living room - and the place was chaos.

Chairs overturned. Rugs turned back as if somebody had been rummaging inside them. The contents of the china closet tipped out on the dining room table and two or three good pieces of Wedgwood china broken. And so forth and so on, all over the house.

My father, standing grimly in the wreckage, said, with his lips pressed tight, that at least we had insurance against vandalism. But no amount of insurance, I knew, could make up for the fright on Nina's face, or the way she looked at me. Not as if she blamed me. I'd been in the car with them the whole time it was happening. But as if, once again, I'd brought some incredible fear into their lives. It was inexplicable, and it was all over the house. They'd even ripped up Winifred's old teddy bear, seam to seam, and strewed its stuffing all over her room. That was what got me most. She didn't cry; she put on that very grown-up little face and said oh well, she was too big to play with that old thing anyhow, but she looked so bewildered, it broke my heart.

My father called the police right away, of course. But he kept me out of it, and he didn't say anything about the coat; he didn't say anything about the telephone threat, either, because I hadn't told him. And, though my own room was the worst of all, nothing was missing, except the brown coveralls I'd ripped to pieces looking for - well, for something. And I wasn't even sure they were missing, because Nina might have thrown them out.

It was midnight by the time the police and the insurance people had come and gone, and Nina and my father called a halt on any further discussion and speculation. But I didn't go to sleep. I sat up in my room, biting my lip, and staring at the wall, halfway back to my first theory about the mysterious whatsit of the sinister idol.

Because this time, I'd had that blasted little dragon in my pocket; I'd taken it along with me to Northern California. Now they'd searched my clothes - when I didn't have it - and my house when I did. I couldn't think of anything else I had that I hadn't had before.

I turned it over in my hand again and again. It wasn't valuable, damn it! It wasn't made of some strange strategic metal; it was ordinary soft brass. A pin could scratch it; I know because I tried. It had a rough place on one side as if it had been broken off something: an ashtray? There was nothing inside it - I thought of that too, and went over it with a magnifying glass, but the thing was absolutely solid, without even a hairline crack. Not even Dr Fu Manchu could have hidden anything inside it.

Blast it, was I getting completely paranoid? Hoodlums had been known to attack and vandalise houses, even here in the Berkeley hills, for no reason at all. Did it necessarily have to be connected with the year I had lost out of my life? But no matter how I reassured myself, I was still afraid to lie down and go to sleep. I don't know whether I was afraid of dreaming - or of something worse happening.

I spent most of the next day helping Nina clean up the mess. My father stayed home from his office and helped too, and he must have seen how I jumped every time the telephone rang. Finally, when Nina had broken off to make us some sandwiches he stopped putting towels back in the linen closet, and turned to me.

'Never mind those now, Barry. Come here.'

I came, without saying anything, and he looked straight into my eyes. 'I don't want to nag you, son. But you know something about this, don't you?'

'No,' I said miserably. 'No. I was just wishing I did.'

'What are you afraid of, then?'

'I-' my voice tangled itself up. Finally I got out, 'I only wish I knew.'

'Barry, if you weren't so shaken up I'd never have dreamed you had anything to do with it.'

'How could I have had anything to do with it?' I burst out. 'I was with you and Nina!' Then I bit my lip and muttered, 'Look, sir, I - I didn't have anything to do with it.'

'But can you give me your word that it had nothing to do with you?'

I hesitated, and he said quickly. 'I'm not blaming you. But can you give me your word - Barry, I think I'd understand, if you'd got into something, if you'd joined a gang and run out on them, and they were trying to intimidate you - I don't want to sound like the heavy father, but if you'd tell me about it I just might be able to help. I can't do a thing if you don't tell me.'

I shook my head. 'It makes some sense,' I said, 'but all I can say is what I said before. I don't remember. Honestly, I don't. I swear I don't.' I felt like crying. What kind of jerk did he think I was, to let something like this happen to my family, if I'd known what was going on?

'But you know something.' It wasn't even a question. And I couldn't say anything because what I did remember, or guess, or surmise, could only land me with life on the funny-farm.

He looked at me for another minute or two, then shrugged his shoulders. 'All right,' he said. 'Here comes Nina with some lunch. You might think about her a little bit; she can't take much more. No, go get your lunch,' he added a little curtly, as I bent to pick up the rest of the towels. 'I'll put those away.'

I went to take the lunch tray from Nina, but I felt rotten. I knew he didn't believe me, and it hurt. I already knew he was the kind of father I'd want to have trusting me. And Nina had been through too much already. What had I brought into their house now?

I tried not to show it, but I still jumped when the telephone rang. I certainly didn't want Nina - or worse. Win - to answer the phone and hear that sinister. unreal voice that breathed and made

horrible threats.

They say a watched pot never boils. All that day I grabbed the phone whenever it rang, and it was never anybody except the insurance company, or someone from the university for my father, or a newspaperman asking questions, or one of Win's friends wanting her to come and watch television. But the next day I went to the doctor - the burns were finally healing, but I still had to have the dressings changed - and the minute I came back I could tell from Nina's face that something else had happened.

'Barry, you had a long-distance call while you were out.'

'Who was it?' I almost yelled.

'I don't know. Whoever it was didn't give any name, and when I said you were out, he went off the line, and the operator said that you were to call Operator Seventeen in Abilene, Texas.'

I started towards the phone without even taking off my coat. 'What the devil for?'

'He didn't say,' Nina said dryly, 'but it was probably some ghost out of that mysterious past of yours.*

I stopped dead, forgetting the phone, and stared at her. For the first time it occurred to me. Other people had thought I was malingering; was it possible that my parents thought so too? My

parents?

And, right on the heels of that thought, another one: / expect them to trust me. Does that mean that. unconsciously, I really have accepted that they are my parents? Do I really believe, by now, that I am Barry Cowan, their son?

'I'm sorry, Barry,' Nina said a little sharply. 'Don't look at me like that. I shouldn't have said that. Only - to have thought all this time that you were dead, and then to have you come back, a grown-up stranger, with all these - these devilish things happening ...'

I felt so helpless. I suppose I should have hugged her, or something, but I simply felt at a loss. I said at last, 'Look, Nina - Mother,' I added a little awkwardly. 'Why do you think I'm so eager about all this? I'm going crazy, too, trying to figure it out - and Texas is where they found me. If it could give me even a clue - well, part of the reason I'm worried is that I don't want all these things happening to you and Win, and Father.'

Her face was controlled again, and she gave me a wry little smile and a pat on the arm. 'And we don't want them happening to you. Go and make your phone call, then, and if it sheds any light on this wretched business, be damned sure you let me know!'

I rang the operator for Abilene, Texas, according to instructions. "There was a long-distance call for Barry Cowan?'

'Just one moment, Mr Cowan.' There were the usual buzzings and beeps, and then I heard a faraway phone ringing. And ringing. And ringing. And then the operator's voice again, like the death knell of that particular hope. 'I'm very sorry, Mr Cowan, that line does not answer. The call must have been cancelled.'

I wanted to swear. 'Who was calling?'

'The party did not leave a nay-yum,' the operator said in a singsong.

'But you must have had the number,' I said frantically. 'Whose number is it?'

'I'm soh-ry, we cannot give out that in-for-may-shun,' she said, and disconnected abruptly, leaving me again with a dial tone and a rising frenzy of frustration. Was every door going to slam in my face? Nina, watching from the door, demanded, 'Barry, is something wrong?'

Was anything right? I felt like swearing again, but why take it out on Nina? 'No,' I said numbly. 'Just another practical joke or something. Nobody on the line.'

When Nina had gone about her household chores again I sat by the phone, scowling. Who could have been calling me from Texas, and why? Probably the key lay in my lost memory, in something that had happened before that curtain of fogginess came down like a guillotine between me and whatever had happened.

Roland? I thought of him with shudders; but at least he had manifested an open, not a concealed, interest in me. With sudden resolution I picked up the phone, then paused and yelled, 'Nina?'

She appeared at the kitchen door. 'Yes?'

'Do you mind if I make a long-distance phone call?'

'I guess not, though it would help if you could wait till evening when the rates go down.' But I looked so crushed that she made a dismissing gesture. 'Go ahead. We aren't that short of money, and it's worth it not to have you worrying.'

But when I had dialled the number for information, and had Abilene on the line, I realised this was a false trail. I asked for Mr Roland, and realised that I didn't know the man's Christian name - or even, for certain, if he lived in Abilene or had a telephone, or if Roland was his real name. I apologised to the operator and put the phone down again. Nina, on her way upstairs, taking off the apron she wore for kitchen chores, saw my dejected face and stopped beside me, asking, 'What's the matter? No answer again?'

'I didn't know where to call.'

'Barry, you were in a hospital in Texas, weren't you? Could it have been one of the doctors there, wondering if you were all right again? And - well, doctors are busy people, that could explain why he wasn't there when you called back. If you wait, he might call again.'

That, for some reason, cheered me up. That was certainly the most logical explanation. Dr Bannon had asked me to let him know how I got on, and probably the doctor who had been dressing my burns had checked with the hospital in Abilene. I even thought, with a degree of pleasure, of the red hair and perky smile of the little nurse - Lisa something - Lisa Barnard, that was it. She had seemed really friendly, not just professionally so. I pulled the telephone towards me with a resolute air, managed to get the Hendrick Hospital in Abilene without any trouble, and had Dr Robert Bannon paged and called to the telephone.

After a short time his slow, pleasantly familiar voice came through the wires. 'Dr Bannon speaking.'

"This is Barry Cowan, Doctor. Do you remember me?'

He hesitated only a minute. 'Why, of course, the amnesia case. How are you, Barry? Has your memory come back all right?'

'Not entirely, but it was something else - Doctor, did you telephone me a short time ago?'

Now he sounded startled. 'Why, no. I'm sorry to say I hadn't even thought of you for weeks. Why?'

That was a good question, and I felt like a fool. Of course not, I wasn't his patient; why should

he worry about me or even think about me again? 'Oh, just that I got a call from Abilene, and missed it, and I couldn't think of anyone else. I'm sorry to have bothered you, Dr Bannon.'

'No bother at all.' He said with quite genuine heartiness, 'Glad to hear from you, and I'm only sorry I can't help you. Who else could it have been? Did you ever hear any more from that Mr Roland who thought you were his son?'

'I thought of him, but I don't have his address and didn't know -'

Dr Bannon said, 'I believe he gave an address to the hospital. I can get it for you, if you like. Shall I switch you to records, and have them check your file?'

I thanked him and said goodbye, and he transferred the call. In a few minutes I was in possession of an address - an innocuous number on Simmons Street - and, although there was no telephone number attached, I was sure I could get it by calling the operator again.

Now the weird part starts.

I could not make myself pick up that phone and ask for the number of the mysterious Roland.

I could not. I physically could not. Half a dozen times I told myself this was ridiculous, idiotic, and reached out my hand to the phone - and then I'd drop it, weak all over and dripping icy sweat.

What the devil was I afraid of? What could he do to me from sixteen hundred miles away? Even if he had an extensible arm like one of the monsters from Jens's science fiction novels, it wouldn't reach that far!

Was I afraid that, if he answered the telephone in an unguarded moment, I would hear that strange breathing sound and that ghastly articulation? Was I giving myself nightmares because some hooligan had a speech impediment?

I must have sat there for the best part of two hours, and I might still be there except that the front door banged and Nina came in from shopping. 'Lunch, Barry? Did you make your call? I got some of that Monterey cheese you like; we'll have it on toasted sandwiches. Was it the Texas doctor?'

I told her no, it wasn't, and ate lunch, trying to put it all out of my mind. Briefly I wished Texas wasn't so far from California. It might be easier to go and find that Roland character and find out just what it was about him that made me cringe. I couldn't go on jumping at shadows. I'd go nuts. I laughed out loud, so that Nina stared at me; go nuts? According to most people, I was nuts already!

I should have known things couldn't go on like that without reaching some sort of breaking point. Nothing goes on forever; either it stops of itself, or - something happens. Considering the state we were all in, it had to happen soon. And it did.

Since the searching of the house, my father and I made the rounds every night to make sure that all the doors and windows were locked. When I was in my room, however, it seemed so intolerably stuffy that, after turning out the lights, I threw the window open. After all, Nina could be overdoing this safety business. My bedroom was on the second floor, and nobody except a human fly could get in at the window.

I stood there looking out into the night. Far away, the Golden Gate Bridge was a delicate arch of lights, like a Christmas tree garland. Beyond the bridge, the sky was flooded with full moon, and below me the garden was dark and quiet with little leaf rustlings. I lay down, looking at the moonlit window, not at all sleepy.

It might have been the moonlight that brought back the very clear memory. It was not imagination or a dream; I was wide awake. I remembered standing in a great desert, with low thick shrubbery around me, and moonlight overhead, strange greenish moonlight - and a moon curiously small, curiously bright.

Where had these strange memories come from? Were they only fantasies of amnesia? It was bad enough to have a lost memory; but when I began remembering things, and knowing that they were things that couldn't happen - what was I to think?

That was how I knew that what followed was no nightmare. I was far too keyed up, too tense for sleep. I lay there watching the moonlight, and cudgelling my brain to try to force myself to

remember, and then - something moved at the window.

I don't know to this day how he got there, but I saw him clearly outlined, head, shoulders, arms against the moonlit square of window. I reared up with a yell.

'Hey, you! What are you doing there?'

There was a huge snapping roar that seemed to fill the whole room and something whistled past my head. I leaped for the light, snapped it on; the shadowy form lurched and was gone. I ran to the window to see whether he had fallen or jumped, and beyond, in the garden, something flapped - something huge, ugly, horrible and dark. Sickness surged up in me, and horror; I retched, and ran for the bathroom.

I just made it.

I was still there, still heaving with that inexplicable crawling sickness, when I heard them all in the hall, and after a minute my father came into the bathroom. He didn't say a word, just wet a washcloth at the sink and handed it to me. I mopped my face, but I was dripping with cold sweat again.

'What happened, Barry?'

I could only say, 'There was something at the window -' I felt my voice shaking and failing. 'I

knows it sounds crazy. Something -I thought it was a man and then I saw it wasn't; it was something, some thing-'

'I heard you yell,' Dr Cowan said, 'and I heard - I didn't see anything, though. Barry, this can't go on. Your mother and sister can't take it. And you - ' He looked at me sympathetically, but I thought I knew what he was thinking.

'You think I ought to get out? Just pack up and leave before I cause any more trouble?'

'Good God, no!' He sounded honestly horrified. 'That never entered my head. Son, how can you say a thing like that? This is your home; we're your family! Whatever happens to you, we want to share it! But we've got to find out, whatever is going on! We've got to find out if it's real, or-'

'If it's real,' I said bitterly. 'You still think I'm crazy! If you'd only seen - '

'No,' he said. 'I admit I thought, at first, that all you'd been through had left you mentally unbalanced. Now I'm not so sure. And besides - when I heard you cry out, I went into your room first, and this was lying on the floor.' He held out his hand, a small round thing lying in it. I didn't recognise it, and said so.

'It's a cartridge case,' he said, 'from a rifle bullet. Someone shot at you.'

'But - the thing I saw - ' I began to shake again.

'Son, you had a nightmare and mixed it up with what happened,' he said. 'But - there was a man there, and however he got up to that window, he was real. Nightmares don't carry guns.'

There was no more sleep for me that night. The blending of memory and nightmare kept me lying awake, staring into space and racking my brain for a solution.

When morning came, I knew what I had to do. It might not be the best solution, but it was the only thing that came to me, the only thing I could think of doing at this time.

At breakfast, neither Nina nor my father mentioned the disturbance in the night; I wondered whether they were waiting for me to bring it up. But when Win had taken her schoolbooks and gone, and my father was getting his briefcase, I buttonholed him in his study.

'Father, when I first came back, you told me I had some money of my own - money I'd saved after working one summer.'

"That's right. That's why I was sure you hadn't run away on your own, you'd surely have taken that with you. It was yours, and though you'd been saving it for college, if you'd left home of your free will we'd have wanted you to have it - and you knew that.'

'I want it now,' I said, and he looked at me, startled.

'What for? It's yours, you don't have to ask, but if it's for anything ordinary, we are both morally and legally ready to pay your expenses, you know.'

'I know it,' I said, 'but this isn't ordinary. I want to go back to Texas.'

I saw the startled question in his eyes and before he could ask, I rushed on 'I'm going out of my mind, not knowing what happened! I want to backtrack - to find out where I was, what I was doing, when, where, how - to do detective work on myself!'

'Do you think you can?'

'I don't know,' I said, 'but I've got to try.'

'And suppose you never do find out?' Dr Cowan asked. 'Son, I think I know how you feel, but do you think it will do any good? I'm afraid you'll simply disappear again!' His eyes were shrewd. 'You say you want to remember, but - you have remembered something, haven't you?'

That's the main thing,' I told him. 'I can't believe that what I remember is real. It seems incredible.'

'I'm good at believing things. Why not give me a chance?'

I felt tempted; and yet - how could he believe it when I didn't believe it myself? He'd surely

believe I was deluded, hallucinating. How could anyone believe these weird memories of mine memories of spaceships, of strange views of alien worlds, of things that had the form of men and weren't - surely he'd say they were dreams. I believed they were dreams, and yet I had to know why they seemed so real to me. And if these memories were not real, what had I been doing? Where had I been? And what was that brass dragon, that I turned sick and sweating - scared at the sight of it?

'Barry, is it a girl?'

I laughed a little wryly. 'No, Dad. Whatever it was, I can promise you that. The only girl I can think of is the nurse in the hospital. She's nice, and I'd like to see her again, but - she isn't part of this, and I don't want her to be part of it.'

'And suppose you never do find out why you remember these things which you say don't make sense?'

'Then I'll have no choice. I'll come home and go to that psychiatrist. But give me a chance to prove it to myself first.'

'That's reasonable,' he said slowly. 'When do you want to leave?'

Once he had given way, he helped. He helped me break it to Nina, and even made it sound reasonable to her. He took me to the bank to get my money and put it in traveller's cheques, and

bought me a new canvas suitcase.

The hardest thing was to tell Win. I knew she'd hardly got over the shock of having me come back and knowing I didn't remember her, and now I was going again. I tried to explain, but it wasn't any good. She stood there twisting her hair and biting at the end of the braid, while her eyes got bigger and bigger and blacker and blacker.

'I'll come back. Win; I promise. Don't look like that,' I pleaded. 'I'll come back.'

'If you can,' she threw at me. 'But suppose you forget all about us again, and can't come back?'

There was nothing I could say to that. I tried to hug her, but she twisted away from me and ran down the hall. I felt as if I would break down and bawl like a baby.

Dr Cowan drove me to the airport, and waited with me while they called my flight; and then I was on board the plane, looking down at him through the window and wondering if I'd ever see him again. I was on my way to find the year that had been sliced out of my life - if it was my life - and I had only two clues.

Roland, coming to the hospital, had known that my name was Barry.

And in my pocket was the brass dragon.

CHAPTER FIVE

During most of the flight, I found myself furtively studying the other passengers. Enough had happened to make me almost certainly expect to be followed. And yet I saw no one whom I could surely identify; no vaguely familiar face which might have come from that mysterious memory, no little man like the one who had stolen my coat; and certainly no thing, like whatever it was that had nearly got in at my window. Dr Cowan had been sure that was a nightmare; I wasn't nearly as sure. He said nightmares couldn't carry guns. I wasn't so sure of that, either.

The flight from San Francisco to Dallas took three hours. The plane touched down on the airport and I was transferred, efficiently and impersonally, to a smaller plane for the flight to Abilene, which was off the main airline. This was it, I told myself; if I couldn't decide what to do before I got there, I might not have the chance.

It was mid-October, but when I stepped off the plane on to the Abilene airfield, I was struck by a wave of searingly hot burnt-dry air. The field itself was a bare expanse of white sand, with a few trees that seemed to be gasping in the heat, carefully lined up around the passenger terminal. I hoisted my one light suitcase, wiping my forehead with my free hand.

The taxi ranks drawn up before the terminal forced a decision on me almost at once. I had no place to start, so I might as well start where memory had returned. I climbed in and demanded to be driven to Hendrick Hospital.

The hospital lobby was cool, at least, and after I convinced the girl at the desk that I wasn't checking in as a patient, she agreed to page Dr Bannon and ask if he was free to talk to me for a few minutes. After a conversation over the switchboard she informed me that if I could wait for an hour, Dr Bannon could see me in his office.

It was past three when a receptionist told me to go into Dr Bannon's office. He stood up as I came in, extending his hand.

'Hello, Barry. What brings you to this part of the world again? I'd have thought you'd have had plenty of Texas for the present,' he went on jovially, motioning me to a chair. 'What can I do for you? Has your memory come back yet?'

I was just as glad he hadn't waited for answers to his first questions, because the last one was the only one I knew how to answer. 'Only bits and pieces, and what I remember isn't very - credible.'

'Have you remembered what caused the accident?*

'No.'

Bannon leaned back. He said, 'Very probably you never will, you know. That type of head injury - I'll try not to be too technical. We doctors don't know too much about the mechanism of amnesia. But one thing is fairly common, even when memory is recovered; the memories immediately before and after the injury seem to be wiped out completely. Possibly there is some

injury to brain cells which store this particular memory, so that the entire impression is effaced, not only the memory of it. If you recover memories up to within, say, seventy-two hours of the time you landed in the hospital, I wouldn't expect any more than that.'

I'd have been content with that. Mostly I wanted to know what I'd been doing during the eighteen months lost out of my life. A little matter of seventy-two hours wouldn't have bothered me.

'I must admit, though, that I'd hoped you'd have more to tell me. I was fairly curious about those burns of yours.'

'So am I. So is everybody who's seen them,' I told him. 'Doctor, are there any atomic works or radiation laboratories in this part of the country?'

He stared. 'Why didn't I think of that,' he said almost to himself. 'It never occurred to me that they could have been radiation - or X-ray - burns. Was that checked?'

'I don't know, but they went all over me with a Geiger counter. But where could I have got such a thing?' I asked him, and he scowled, thinking hard.

Finally he said, 'I don't know. There are top security air bases here; anything could be going on inside them. But don't ask me to believe that if you got into an Air Force base, at least in any part of it where you could get radiation burns, they'd beat you up and dump you on the streets of

Abilene. Our Air Force just doesn't work that way. If that had been it, you'd probably still be in a military hospital.'

That made sense, of course. And yet it seemed to leave no alternative except Win's little green men and their flying saucer. I told him so, and he chuckled. 'I must say that makes better sense than any theory so far. Unless you broke into a doctor's office and meddled with the X-ray machines, and he didn't want to call the police for some unknown reason.' He shoved back his chair in a clear preliminary to dismissal. 'Well, Barry, I'm glad you're getting along so well. I wouldn't worry about it. You've come through it, whatever it was, without too much trouble. Let me know how you get along.'

'Wait,' I begged, and he turned his eyes on me, suddenly kind again.

'Does this still bother you so much?' he asked. 'I hate to suggest it to an apparently healthy teenager, but your father asked if he should take you to a psychiatrist; I said I didn't think it was necessary, but if you're in this state - '

'It's not a psychiatrist I need,' I said violently, and suddenly it poured out of me. 'It was bad enough when I thought I was cracking up. I thought, if I could only be sure of that, I'd be all right! But it's real enough so that even my family is getting scared. I've got to know exactly what happened! No, don't look like that; this is no persecution complex!'

Arrested by my words, he stopped short while I told him the story; the theft and return of my

coat, the telephone calls, the house searched, the bullet fired through the window. I didn't mention the nightmares, or the thing that had prowled and flapped in the garden. The tangible things were enough.

'So you've decided to do some detective work,' he said slowly. 'Have you talked to the police?'

I shook my head. 'What could they do? I assume they checked up on what had happened to me.'

He nodded slowly. 'But I don't know what I can do, either, Barry. I never saw you until they brought you in unconscious.'

'Until who brought me in? Where did they find me, and how? And what exactly was wrong with me?' I asked abruptly, 'Did I look as if I'd been beaten up?'

He stopped to consider. 'Not exactly,' he said. 'Not in the ordinary sense of the word. More as if you'd been blackjacked or got in the way of something like a telephone pole falling on your head. There was a very faint skull fracture, you know. And there's one thing you ought to consider,' he added. 'I'm not denying what you say, but such things do occasionally produce recurrent and fairly obstinate hallucinations.'

I felt a little grim. 'Ask my mother if an hallucination ever turned a house upside-down. I doubt if even a whole crew of poltergeists could have done that!'

He nodded. But I could see him making mental notes. 'Do your parents know you're here?'

I told him yes, knowing that he would check on it anyway. Well, I wasn't worried about what he would find out. I asked one more question, anyway.

'It was the police who found me? Do you suppose they know anything?'

'I don't suppose they'd know much,' he said, 'but there's sure to be some record of the event. You could go and ask, if you like.'

He rose again, and although I wished I could ask more questions, I knew he was a busy man, and I wasn't even his patient any more. He shook my hand again and told me to let him know how I got along, but I was so shaken by his suggestion of recurrent hallucinations that it seemed only the humouring he might give a child or a lunatic.

When I came out in the street again, into the blast furnace of afternoon sunlight, I noticed that the gates of the hospital were filled with white-uniformed nurses. A glance at my watch told me it was four o'clock. The nurses were changing shifts now; it was just possible I would see that one particular redhead for whom I was looking. The crowd of nurses thinned out, and I had begun to turn away when, at the edge of the building, I saw a slight, red-haired girl, heading for a parking lot. She was about to get into a car; I ran towards her.

'Lisa! Lisa Barnard!'

She turned, slightly startled, evidently not recognising me. 'Did you want something?'

'You don't remember me,' I said. 'But I remembered you. You were the first thing I had to remember!'

Her eyes suddenly warmed with recognition and mirth. 'Of course! The amnesia case,' she said. 'I never did know your name, though I read on your chart that your father had come and identified you and taken you out of the state. What are you doing here?'

'It's a long story,' I said, 'but my name is Barry. That much, at least. I'm sure about.'

'It's so hot here.' She looked at me, solicitously. 'Won't you get into my car? It's air-conditioned. Well, my father's car; he lets me drive it to work.' She unlocked the door, flipped a switch and heavenly cool air began to flow through the seat.

I got in thankfully. 'It's like being on the moon or Mars, I said. 'You spend your time dashing through almost uninhabitable terrain to get from oasis to oasis. People in Texas really need spacesuits.'

She laughed heartily. 'It is pretty badly suited to anyone except a human salamander, isn't it? Maybe men should move out and leave it to the horned toads. But tell me, Barry, what are you doing here?'

'At the moment, trying to track down what happened,' I said, and told her about Dr Bannon. She listened with warm sympathy.

'I don't see what else you could do except come here,' she said. 'I couldn't have stood it either, never knowing. Are you going to the police? Let me drive you to the station.'

I demurred, but she insisted. 'The bus service here is incredibly slow; they assume that anyone important will have a car available, and they aren't concerned with anyone else.'

While we were driving, I sat back and relaxed. It was good to be with someone familiar, who took my fears seriously, instead of thinking me an hallucinating idiot going off in all directions at once.

The police were courteous, even though I told them much less than I had told Dr Bannon; only that I was trying to retrace my steps from the amnesia. All they could tell me was in their files, and the desk sergeant brought them out to show me.

'White, male, American, found lying unconscious at the corner of Fourth and Oak Streets, taken to Hendrick Hospital, treated for shock, concussion and burns.' They also had the record of a bulletin sent out on the police wires for any missing servicemen or juveniles.

"That doesn't leave you much further ahead,' Lisa commented as we came out of the police

station. 'In a word, it's what they told us at the hospital. A complete waste of time.'

'Not entirely,' I smiled at her, and fell silent; it would have been hard to tell her how much her sympathy had meant. She picked up my hand and squeezed it slightly, then coloured a little and let go.

'What are you going to do now, Barry? This seems to leave you right where you were before.'

I thought about it for a minute. 'I suppose I ought to tackle Roland,' I said slowly. 'I have an address for him from the hospital.'

'It could be a false address. If he was up to some skulduggery, I can't imagine him giving his real address,' Lisa said. 'But we can try.'

'We?'

'Yes. I'm counting myself in, Barry.'

I wasn't sure I approved. If they were starting to toss bullets around, the party was getting too rough for a girl. She seemed to follow my thoughts.

'After all, Dr Bannon and I put in a good deal of work on you, Barry. Why should it all be wasted?'

'In any case,' I said, looking at my watch, "There isn't much I can do tonight. I don't even know where I'm going to stay. I've got to find a hotel, call my family, work out some kind of a plan for approaching Roland. I can't just walk up to him and ask why he wanted to get his hot little hands on my non-existent fortune or whatever. Do you know a good hotel?'

'There aren't many hotels,' Lisa said, 'but there are plenty of motels, and you can come and go a lot more freely from a motel anyway, without going through the lobby. Suppose I drive you to one, and you check in. After that, if you like, we can go somewhere to get something to eat and decide what to do about your friend Roland.'

'Fine,' I said, 'as long as the motel's air-conditioned. I think people here in Texas should live in domes!'

She laughed. 'It sounds like a good idea at that,' she said. 'Come on, there's a good motel, not expensive, in the south part of town.'

I checked in at the motel, which was cool and comfortable; later Lisa and I had a steak at a place she said was good. It was. That was one thing about Texas: being right in the heart of the beef country, their steaks were great.

I stopped at a news-stand next door to the steak house after we came out. 'I want to pick up something to read,' I said. 'If I decide not to do anything tonight, I don't want to be stuck with the

Gideon Bible or a twenty-year-old movie on TV.'

'Here's just the right thing for you,' Lisa said, laughing. 'A story about a man who disappeared for six months and came back and told everybody he'd been to Venus in a flying saucer - Oh, my God!'

The garishly coloured paperback dropped to the floor. I turned to stare at her, saw the newspaper headline that had caught her eye.

ABILBNE SURGEON KILLED BY HIT-AND-RUN

'Someone you know. Lisa?' I bent beside her, and drew a deep breath of horror as my eyes ran quickly over the story.

'Dr Robert Bannon, resident surgeon at Hendrick Hospital, was run down and killed this afternoon at approximately 4 pm while emerging from his private office across the street from the hospital. The driver of the car, according to witnesses, crossed two lanes of traffic, came ten feet up on the pavement and deliberately ran down the doctor, then made a turn and drove away before stunned bystanders could summon assistance ...'

'Not an accident,' Lisa said with a gasp. 'Murder! Deliberate murder! But who on earth would want to-' Her voice broke. 'Barry, he was such a nice man-'

I felt almost the same way. He had been so unfailingly kind. I had him to thank that I hadn't been turned over to the tender mercies of that Roland character. And his had been the first real human touch of kindness when I had come out of the nowhere of unconsciousness. I felt almost as if I'd heard that Dr Cowan had been killed.

I paid for the paper, forgetting to get my book, and hurried Lisa away from there. I clenched my fists. and spoke between my teeth. 'If those people who are chasing me around, whoever they are - if they did this, I swear I'll get them for it, if it takes me a life time!'

Lisa mopped her eyes with a tissue and resolutely stopped crying. 'We've got to be sensible about this, Barry. How do we know it has anything to do with you?'

'What else could it be?' I demanded. 'Did Dr Bannon have any enemies? Was he the kind of person who gets run down by a gangster? Are there that many gangsters, anyway, in a one-horse town like this? I gather he was the sort of man everybody respected and liked. Would he be connected with two crazy melodramas like this?'

'There is something in that,' Lisa conceded, and gripped my hand hard enough to hurt. 'Barry, I'm afraid now! If they'd kill Dr Bannon just because you talked to him, what are they going to do when they catch up with you?

I wasn't worried about myself. They could have picked me off any time. I told her so. 'But I seem to be the kiss of death - Sorry, it's just a phrase, I forgot how it sounded. I'm more scared of

what they'll do to you. Lisa. I want you to go back home, don't even take me back to the motel, lock all your doors, call the police if you hear so much as a mouse in the walls, and forget I ever existed! It's the only safe way!'

Her eyes sparked with anger.

'What do you think I am? I don't run out my on my friends that way! Besides,' she added, while I was protestingly incoherently, 'if they've got a little list, I'm already right at the top of it. I've spent the whole afternoon with you. So if I go home alone, they can just pick me off all the easier.'

This was so true that I hardly knew what to say. At the same time, I was spoiling for action, and I couldn't do much if I had to haul Lisa around with me and protect her. I didn't have any bulletproof vests handy, anyhow.

'I still think you're crazy,' I told her, 'but if you really want to stick around, I'll do my best for you. Only I haven't the slightest idea what I'm going to do next.'

She said, 'Maybe if I'm with you they won't dare to try anything. I'd be a witness.'

That hadn't stopped them from running down Dr Bannon in front of a whole pavement full of witnesses, but I didn't say so. I felt in my pocket idly, closed my fingers around the brass dragon.

This might be what they were after. They - whoever they were - might not have known my memory had not come back. If they killed Dr Bannon after I had talked to him, they must have been afraid of something I might have told him, or given to him. And what else had I?

'I think I'm going back to the motel,' I told her. 'I'll put out the light and sit in the dark, and maybe somebody will try something. You don't happen to own a gun, do you?'

She didn't. 'Nothing more lethal than a golf club, I'm afraid. But I'll sit there with you. They try hard to make things look like accidents; maybe they won't try anything we can't handle between us.'

I felt strange, constrained, when Lisa came into the motel room with me and slid out of her highheeled shoes, saying she could walk easier without them in the dark. Before we put out the light, I showed her the little brass dragon.

'They must be after this,-' I said, 'although it doesn't seem to be worth anything and I can't imagine what they want with it.'

Lisa said, 'It could be the insignia or sort of a secret token of a secret society. Like the Black Hand.'

'Sounds like something out of Fu Manchu,' I said, having already thought of that and decided it was altogether too much.

'This whole thing is like something out of Fu Manchu,' she said. 'Remember the old saying: 'eliminate the impossible - and whatever is left, however improbable must be the answer.' There doesn't seem any sensible explanation, so whatever the explanation is, it's probably wilder than we can imagine.'

Silently I said amen. I'd already racked my brain trying out all the possible and most of the impossible solutions, and none of them made any more sense than Win's little green men. I'd just have to wait and see.

But I didn't dream how close we were to the solution.

At my urging. Lisa stretched out on the bed and I curled up in the armchair, on one of the pillows she insisted on giving me. I reached out one arm and put out the light.

That night remains in my memory as a strange, eerie progression of silent hours. We didn't talk much, and time crawled by with no sound except the soft tick of my watch. Every half-hour, by prearrangement, I spoke to her to be sure that neither of us had fallen asleep.

I remember the luminous dial of my wristwatch telling me that it was twelve, twelve-thirty, and I think I dozed a little before hearing Lisa's soft voice saying, 'It's one o'clock.'

'So far, so good,' I said, almost in a whisper, 'but I wonder if anything's going to happen at all.

I'm going to feel like a fool if the sun comes up and nothing's happened except losing one good night's sleep.'

'Oh, well, all in a good cause - Hush!' Lisa muttered, 'I hear something outside!'

'Somebody coming home after a late movie,' I whispered, but strained my ears to hear the faint sound; footsteps? I heard bedsprings creak softly as Lisa sat up, silently reaching for her shoes.

I listened hard. If there had been footsteps, they had passed us harmlessly. But I could not rest, even though Lisa sank back on the bed.

Minutes crawled by. Then there was a slight small sound, ever so quiet, behind us. Slowly, slowly, the window square moved, a gap widened. I threw myself at the window and grabbed.

'Let go, you fool,' said a low, furious voice. 'Let me in! I think there's a Changer around and if he gets wind of us - Barry, you idiot, don't you know me?'

I almost hesitated. There seemed to be something familiar in the voice; in any case it did not sound menacing; it was not Roland's voice, but - was it a trap?

'Get the light. Lisa.'

'No!' protested the person between my hands, twisting furiously. 'Don't put a light on! Damn it,

have you lost your wits? First you disappear, no one knows where, with the key on you, and now you drag the girl into it! If you wanted to consider yourself well out of it, why in the name of the Big Eternities couldn't you stay out? We'd have got in touch with you in our own good time, but now, if you've drawn outsiders into this - '

I didn't know what to make of his words. I reached across Lisa and put my hand on the light; my prisoner twisted loose and grabbed my wrist.

'For the last time, no! I have a flashlight, if you must see!'

'Give it here, then.' I took it from his hand, fumbled in the dark for the switch, flashed it on his face.

I knew the face. It was the face of a blond boy about my own age. He was wearing a brown coverall like the one I had worn, and his face was drawn and angry.

'Barry, what's got into you? Are you out of your mind? And now you know it's me, can we have that damned light out again?'

Still confused, I snapped it off. In the sudden blind dark I heard myself say, 'I know you. But who are you?'

I heard the newcomer draw breath. He said slowly, That explains it, then. The blow on your

head. You've lost your memory. You don't remember - anything?'

I said, 'I remember - little bits. Odd things.'

'I don't have time to explain everything. As I said, there's a Changer around - maybe two. Barry, do you have the key? Father was afraid they would capture him, and get it; he was sure they'd never think of you, so he told me he'd put it in the pocket of your uniform. I picked up your trail - ' He broke off, drew a sharp breath in the darkness, then cried out, an inarticulate shout of warning.

A blue glow blossomed at the window. I flung Lisa to the floor. Without thinking, I threw my arm across my eyes and tried to burrow my way through the floor. I heard the blond boy shouting.

Then something struck the back of my head; I heard myself shouting:

'No, Rellin!'

I fell into darkness; but as I fell, something like a burst of light flamed in my brain.

And I remembered ...

PART 2

CHAPTER SIX

I had got into the habit, that winter, of walking home every night. From the high school, down in central Berkeley, to our home way up in the Berkeley hills, was about two miles, mostly uphill, and it was a good way to keep my muscles hard for basketball. The basketball season was over now, but I was between girls anyhow, and it was something to do. That night I'd had to look up some things in the library; by the time I started home it was dark. I wasn't in any hurry - supper would be over by the time I got home anyhow, but Nina always kept plenty in the refrigerator. I set off for home at a good swinging pace. The buses only ran up that way every forty minutes, so there was no point hanging around on the corner for half an hour, when I could walk it almost that fast.

When I heard the yell I could hardly believe my ears. Berkeley is, or was then, a quiet college town, the sort of place where a little old lady could walk across town with a hundred dollars in her handbag and nobody would touch her except to help her across the street. So at first I thought that awful yell was somebody's tomcat out doing whatever tomcats do at night. Then it started up again, this time with an unmistakably human sound.

'Help! Help!'

It died out in a sort of gasping groan, and I started running. This part of the street was half deserted, a little stretch of woods; it was so quiet after the yell died away that I could hear leaves

rustling over my own running footsteps.

There were two of them running away; I started to chase them, and nearly tripped over somebody lying on the ground. The light of a street lamp fell on the pale face and I could see blood, and right then I realised that the thugs, or whatever they were, were going to get away; this guy needed help worse than the thugs needed the police.

When I got down beside him I noticed that he was only a kid, my own age or maybe a year younger. He wasn't anybody I'd seen around school, either. He was bareheaded and blond, and there was a cut on his head and the sleeve of his shirt was ripped open. There was plenty of blood too. I don't get sick at the sight of blood like a lot of people do, but I felt sick when I looked at that arm. It was a lot too much for me to handle with Boy Scout type first aid. I got up and started heading for the police callbox a block away when he called me back, weakly.

'Please-'

I went quickly back and knelt beside him. 'Take it easy, kid; just Be still. I've got to call the cops - the ambulance. You're okay, but they've got to fix up that arm of yours.'

'No.' He struggled to get up. He made it too, sitting erect, swaying only a little. 'No police. No hospital. If you please.'

There was a faintly foreign accent in the way he formed the words. I protested: 'Look, that's a

bad cut. You're bleeding all over the pavement.'

'I will be well enough. I thank you, but - ' He paused evidently searching for words. 'My - my father. He is not - not well; a hospital would frighten him badly. I must go home.' He put his hand to his head, then looked at his cut sleeve. "This is not - bad. It is only bleeding.' He reached in his pocket, took out a wadded hunk of tissue and pressed it over the cut. I offered my own handkerchief; he thanked me and tried to tie it around the arm, but couldn't quite make it. I tied it for him, and when he tried to get up on his feet, I gave him my arm. His face was as white as a corpse, but he had enough guts for two; that arm must have been giving him hell.

'Look,' I said, 'the people at the hospital will break it gently to your dad, or else they'll fix you up in the emergency room and send you home in a cab. You'd better use your head and let me call that ambulance.'

'You mean well,' he said stubbornly, 'but I must go home. Please, you must not trouble; I can manage for myself.'

He actually started to walk off, swayed a little and almost fell, recovered himself, started off again, he caught hold of a tree and braced himself on it.

I didn't realise it then, but that was Karsten all over: stubborn as seven devils. I was upset about it -I didn't want the guy dying on my hands - but at the same time you couldn't help admiring him.

I caught up with him and held him upright again. 'Okay, if you want to be pigheaded about it,' I said, 'I hope your father knows plenty about first aid - or that he'll wallop you good and call the hospital anyway. Where do you live? Let's get you there and argue afterwards.'

It turned out that his house was only a few blocks away, but it was uphill all the way, and up several flights of those funny streets we have in Berkeley, where there's no car traffic, just a footpath with flights of steps along it. The blond kid didn't complain, but he got whiter and whiter, and leaned on me a little harder every block. By the time we got there he couldn't talk, just shoved a key in my hand and gestured to me to unlock the door and help him inside.

The house was small and there was nothing unusual about it; it looked as if it had been rented furnished, because the furniture was all old and worn and beat-up. It had dark panelling and was evidently quite old, like a lot of the houses up in the hills, and there was a big expanse of dark neglected garden around it.

The boy sank into a chair, and I stood there wondering what I ought to do next, when a voice called down the hall stairs: 'Is that you, Karsten?'

The kid started to answer, but his voice was weak and wouldn't carry. I called, 'It's all right; there's been a little accident, but nothing serious.' I was lying in my teeth, but if the kid's father had a bad heart I wasn't going to be responsible for him dropping dead.

There was a sound upstairs, and a man came down the stairs, slowly, with a deliberate tread.

He looked older than you'd expect for the father of a kid Karsten's age, or at least that was how I interpreted it then. His hair was snow-white and smooth, his eyes blue, and they rested on me with distrust. He ignored me and went to Karsten.

'I am sorry. Father,' the boy said weakly. 'I had no alternative except to go to a hospital. I know how you feel about my bringing a stranger-' He trailed off into some foreign language; it might have been Russian or Scandinavian. Or maybe it was because they

were blond that I thought so; for all I could make out, it could have been Sanskrit or Tibetan.

I felt like a damned fool standing there. Was this all the thanks I got for hauling the kid home? I said politely, 'I apologise for intruding. Shall I go now?'

The man turned to me, and his tone was contrite to the point of courtliness. 'Forgive me. I had no intention of seeming rude; you have saved my son's life.' He bowed. 'Excuse me, I must go and fetch medicines.'

He left the room and the blond kid stretched out his hand to me. He said, 'Don't be angry with my father; he was worried about me; that is all. Don't go away.'

I stayed. It was a screwy set-up. Was the man some kind of ambassador? But what kind of

ambassador didn't like strangers? Well, I wasn't too crazy about them either, so far. I made up my mind that as soon as the man came back, I'd apologise and hit the road. This good Samaritan business had its limits.

The white-haired man came back with a flat box. 'You will hold the light close, please,' he said, in the voice of a man who was accustomed to being obeyed, and handed me an extension cord with a strong light, like a tensor lamp, at the end of it. I took it and moved closer. He opened the box, and I realised why Karsten had refused to go to the hospital; his father was evidently a doctor. I held the light while the white-haired man sponged, stitched, sprayed and bandaged, and finally told me to put the light down.

'I have not thanked you,' he said. 'I thought it most important to deal with my son's wounds. I am in your debt. My name is Varzil; my son you know. You are-?'

'My name is Barry Cowan,' I said, 'and I didn't do anything; if I'd arrived five minutes earlier this might not have happened.'

'And if you had arrived five minutes later my son might have been kicked to death,' he said. 'Words fail me to thank you adequately.'

'Honestly, I didn't do anything. Now can I please call my parents? They're going to be thinking I'm the one lying dead in the street,' I said, realizing it was almost eleven at night. They wouldn't really worry unless I was out after midnight without calling, but I'd get a lecture from Nina about

courtesy and not letting people worry, and I hated that sort of thing.

'I am very sorry,' Varzil said. 'We have no telephone instrument. But I dislike to see you travelling the dangerous streets alone!'

I laughed. 'Oh, lightning never strikes twice in the same place; I always go around alone. But seriously, you ought to call the police; those chaps who knifed your son might kill somebody next time.'

'I will deal with it,' Varzil said stiffly. I wondered what kind of name that was, anyhow. 'My servants will be returning in half an hour; they will escort you home in an automobile, if you can wait. Meanwhile, my son is hurt and should replenish his energies, and supper awaits us; will you join us?'

'Please do,' the boy said. He looked much more chipper with his cuts sewed up and bandaged, and he smiled at me. 'I hate to let you go like this. You saved my life, after all! What is your name? Barry? Please stay, Barry.'

I didn't stop to think more than a minute. I was hungry. I couldn't walk home in much less than half an hour anyway. If I could get a ride home, I might as well stay and have supper. So I said. Thanks, that would be fine,' and sat down, as he indicated, while Varzil disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a laden tray.

The food was good, and there was nothing very unusual about it; I guessed they had a Japanese cook or something, since there were things like bean curd and noodles, and the food was fixed rather oddly, but it was good and there was nothing really weird. Karsten ate with one hand, and his father sat by and helped him; I could tell that he was worried and anxious, though trying to hide it.

There wasn't much strange about the room, except for a book that lay open on the table near me; it had an illustration that looked like a spiral nebula, and the text looked like Arabic or Sanskrit. I asked, 'Are you an astronomer, sir?'

'I am,' Varzil said. 'I made that photograph.'

'Wow!' I looked closer. It had evidently been taken through an enormous telescope. 'Are you with the university here in Berkeley, sir?'

'I am sorry; I have not that honour. May I offer you more wine?'

I hadn't touched what he'd given me, and the boy Karsten laughed. 'I told you. Father, here the boys don't drink wine; get him some milk, why don't you?'

He said pleasantly, 'Perhaps you too, Karsten, should not drink until we are sure there will be no fever in your wounds; we have milk and fruit juice both.'

He went to fetch it, and Karsten said, his mouth half full of noodles, 'When I came here I found it hard to realise that grown-up people drink milk. Of course it's cow's milk, which is a little different.'

'Where do you come from?' I asked, and Karsten gave a quick look around. He said, 'You probably wouldn't recognise the name of my country; it's not one that's very important in America. Oh, here's Father; do you want milk or would you rather have some fruit juice?'

I took the juice, which was perfectly ordinary pineapple juice out of a can. I glanced at my watch; it was after twelve. Karsten saw the look, and said, a little anxiously, 'Harret should be back by now. Father; what can be keeping him?'

'I thought I heard him in the back, but it must have been something else,' Varzil replied. 'Let me go and see. He might have gone directly to his room, not thinking we would want him at this hour. I will - '

He broke off, with a smothered exclamation in some other language. Then he whirled round to us, suddenly active as a cat.

'Karsten! Get down! There's a Changer around,' he said, and gestured me imperiously back towards the corner of the room. He leaped for the light, snapped it out, and I heard a drawer rasp in and out. A dim blue light sprang up from nowhere, and in the glow I saw Varzil's hand and arm holding a slender blue-glowing glass rod.

I pressed myself against the wall, feeling as if I'd suddenly walked into a gangster movie.

Karsten slid noiselessly off the sofa and rolled towards the corner of the room. The blue glow filled the window. For a moment a great dark shape rose there, grew, moved and altered monstrously; a broad, flat, reptilian head flickered against the shadows. I passed my hand over my eyes; I was seeing things!

I was seeing things; the form at the window was a man's form, dark and squat, weapon in hand, shouting. Varzil edged back, wheeling his weapon, whatever it was. Then the moment of stasis broke. Karsten yelled, 'Harret! In here!' There was the sound of swiftly running feet, the door burst open and light exploded in the room.

Varzil fired twice with the blue rod; it made a hissing crackling sound. There was a strange receding howl. Then the blue glow at the window died and the garden was dark and empty again.

Varzil went and picked up Karsten from the floor and put him on the sofa. There was another man in the room now, tall, white-haired like Varzil, but infinitely younger; Varzil went to him and they conferred briefly in that mysterious language. I moved. I felt stiff, shaky and very much bewildered. I went over to Karsten and asked if he'd hurt himself;

he said no, but I could see that the knifed arm was paining him. I kept wondering what the devil I had walked into. And at the back of my mind, quite incongruous with all that was happening, I

was wondering when I was going to get home tonight.

To say I knew, then, that I'd walked into something fishy, would be an understatement. I'd known that for some time now. But my first thought, that I'd somehow got caught in the crossfire of gangsters, had given way to a strange, half-panicked, half-excited Wild Surmise. That strange weapon of Varzil's, and above all the incredible dragon-shaped head at the window, made me realise I had stumbled into something very strange and uncanny. Part of me wanted to hightail it out of there, before they remembered the innocent bystander in all this. But part of me wanted to hang around and see what in the world was going to happen next.

That's me all over. Barry Cowan, damned fool. If I'd had the brains, I probably could have got out while Varzil and the newcomer were still excitedly comparing notes, and the chances are they wouldn't have thought about me again.

Before long I realised they'd remembered me. Karsten broke in, speaking English again.

'You can't do that. Father; he saved my life, and it would be wrong, wrong, wrong to drag him into this!'

Varzil said slowly, 'you are right, Karsten, speaking from the point of view of pure ethics. But practically, we cannot take the risk. We must bring him along, and take the responsibility with the - ' He used a word I couldn't understand; it sounded like Congo, which made no sense at all in that context.

I thought it was time I spoke up for myself. I said, 'I think I'd better be going.'

I think I knew already they weren't going to let me go.

Varzil lowered his head, looking away from me. 'I am infinitely sorry,' he said. 'I fear we cannot let you go just now.'

The hell of it was, he really did sound sorry. He went on to say. This is a poor reward for your kindness, but I very much fear you must come with us.'

The newcomer in the room was moving around, putting a few papers into what looked like an ordinary collapsible briefcase; he dashed up the stairs, came back with an armful of something else and stuffed that in too. Karsten got up shakily, and came towards me.

He said, 'I'm sorry about this; I swear I am. I tried to tell them - '

I felt almost too bewildered to be frightened.

'I don't understand,' I said. And, boy, was that an understatement. 'Why should I have to go anywhere with you? What has all this to do with me?'

'We are leaving,' said Varzil slowly. 'The rendezvous is within fifteen hours. I dare not take the

risk that you will talk about this with your people. I must take you along with us. Do not be afraid; you will be released, unharmed, when it is safe for us.'

I felt awfully futile as I said, 'I wouldn't tell anybody anything. Who would I tell?'

'I am sure you could trust him,' Karsten said eagerly, and Varzil seemed to hesitate, then shook his head.

'I might trust you.' he said slowly, 'but I dare not risk the possibility that something might slip out, unintentionally. This is far too important to take any risks.'

I burst out, 'So this is what I get for trying to keep your father from worrying! My own family is going to be damned scared when I don't come home!'

Karsten looked away from me; his face was red.

Varzil repeated slowly: 'I have told you; I deeply regret this. If there was any alternative, I would not insist.' He glanced at the man who was packing the briefcase.

'Harret, are your preparations concluded?'

'We can leave at any moment,' Harret said. His accent was thicker than Varzil's and Karsten's.

Varzil got a thick duffel coat from a closet and put it on Karsten; he enveloped himself in a similar garment. Karsten winced as the coat was buttoned over his arm, tried to grin. 'Oh, well, at least this is the last time I'll have to wear these absurd things!'

Varzil came towards me, carrying what looked like a sailor's pea jacket. He said, 'Your clothing is thin; you had better put this on; it will be very cold.'

That was when I exploded. I yelled. 'I'm not going anywhere with you - and you can't make me!' I made a break for the door.

I'm a basketball player, tall, and strong, and muscled pretty well for my size. I figured I could knock the old guy out of my way and outrun any two of them. It was a heck of a way to treat a nice old man, but he'd asked for it. I braced myself -

And I got the shock of my life.

The old man must have been made of best quality sprung steel! He was strong, so strong that he literally picked me up as if I'd been a four-year-old child, and pinioned my arms at my side. I kicked hard, forgetting about the rules of fair play, and hammered at his face, and he didn't pay any more attention than if it'd been a little kid having a tantrum. He held me that way, not moving, not paying the slightest attention to all my squirming, kicking and yelling. Varzil just stood there, smiling gently and regretfully.

'I am sorry,' he repeated. 'I would not like to coerce you. I would much rather you would come with dignity and patience. You have been a good friend to us and I wish you would be cooperative. I give you my word, the word of a Commissioner' - I'm almost sure he said commissioner - 'that you will not be harmed in any way, and that you will be released at the first opportunity.'

What could I do? I was held as firmly as if a huge octopus had wrapped itself around me. Wherever they were going, it looked as if I was going with them. I couldn't do anything, and they didn't sound as if they intended to hurt me. After all, anyone as strong as Varzil could just as easily have knocked me over the head and I wouldn't have given him half as much trouble.

I said, 'When kidnapping's inevitable, I might as well relax and enjoy it. All right, you needn't tie me up; you've made your point. I'll come along.'

Varzil set me on my feet. He wasn't even breathing hard. He said, 'It will be cold. I beg of you to put on the heavy coat. It is my son's, and I assure you it is clean and sanitary.'

I almost laughed at that, as I put my arms into the coat. Karsten was shorter than I, but he was stockier so that it was a fair fit; and it certainly was warm. A lot too warm for a May night in California; it felt as if it had been intended for mid-winter in Siberia!

He seemed to know what I was thinking. 'I assure you, you will be glad of it before this night is over. Come with us now. I implore you to be quiet, not to get sudden ideas about shouting for

help; this house is very isolated. You will not be hurt. Harret, you have all of the special films? The two smaller - ' It sounded like thingtangles. 'I think we may safely abandon the larger one.'

'Everything is ready,' Harret assured him.

Varzil motioned me to go before him. He supported Karsten with his arm. Harret led the way out to a dark back yard, thickly grown over with rhododendron and tangled undergrowth. Harret flashed a small pencil of light at our feet, allowing us to keep from stumbling over rocks and roots. Karsten stumbled anyway, and Varzil, with a few soothing words in the strange language, picked him up and carried him. Good lord, the man was strong! No wonder Karsten hadn't made more fuss over a knifing that would have put me in the hospital for three weeks!

What on earth were these people, anyway?

We ended up at the dark, ivy-grown wall of what looked like an old garage. Varzil set Karsten on his feet and signalled to Harret to hold the small pencil light close.

There was a tangle of formidable padlocks and chains around the door. Varzil took out a bunch of keys and worked over them until at last he could shove them all aside and open the door; then he stepped back to allow Harret, supporting Karsten, and me, to enter the darkness. I had to drag my feet; they didn't want to move in that darkness. Behind me, Varzil slipped through and, by the pencil light, manipulated the locks again. Then he spoke briefly to Harret, a switch moved, and there was light.

And I nearly fell over backwards, except that Harret was crowded up against me.

Right ahead of me, in that dusty garage, filled around the edges with the junk of a dozen other tenants, pitilessly outlined in the new harsh light, it stood.

In this day and age nobody, but nobody, could mistake the outline of a flying saucer.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I think I must have been paralysed for a few minutes. I have no idea what I did next. I don't think I said anything. It went too deep for that. I guess I simply didn't believe the thing was real.

It didn't look like the ones on the TV programmes, of course. It was about fourteen feet across, I guess, and instead of being metallic, it was painted an almost fluorescent blue. It had the standard outer ring and dome in the centre. I was dumbstruck for a few minutes; then Varzil shoved me very gently towards some sort of steps that went up into the thing. I realised I was expected to go up in there.

When something like that happens you don't believe it. At least, I didn't. But when I set my foot on the first step, something snapped inside me. This wasn't a gag or a crazy nightmare. I felt a thickness surging up inside my throat, and wanted to scream. I was awake, and this was happening!. Furthermore, Karsten was climbing into it as if it were a Number 7 bus! His

calmness made the wheels of my brain start going around again; from feeling as if I were trapped in a nightmare I began feeling as if this were simply some very strange, but quite explicable situation. Evidently they were spies, possibly Russian. Heaven only knew what the Russians were doing these days behind the Iron Curtain. In any case, I couldn't do anything, so I had better go along, keeping my eyes wide open and my mind alert. I felt calm again, a funny iced-over calm. I stepped into the saucer. It was fixed up inside like a carnival ride, with the seats and belts and braces, padded so that people wouldn't slide around in the seats. There was machinery at a panel inside, vaguely like the control panel of an aeroplane. I couldn't make head or tail of it. Varzil settled me into a seat.

I finally found my voice.

'Where are you taking me?' I demanded. 'Russia?'

Varzil sat down in his seat, moving the padded braces around him, sliding his knees into the rests, with easy competence. He said, 'No, not Russia. We have no interest in your country's secrets nor any other country's; we are not like the - ' It sounded like deekri. 'I am a scientist. We are forbidden to interfere in the internal affairs of this world. That is how you may know you are safe; even if you wished, it would be quite forbidden for us to take you out of your own solar system. You will be returned on a shuttle ship within a few hours.'

Once again I had that you've-got-to-be-kidding, empty sensation in the pit of my stomach. The solar system!

I said rudely, fighting the surge of panic and disbelief, 'Don't try to tell me you're a man from Mars!'

'No,' Varzil said, quietly and matter-of-factly. 'Mars is only marginally fit for human habitation, although the deekri' - that word again! - 'survive there quite well. We usually avoid Mars when we can, although it is used as a scientific base for explorations in this system. No, our home world is entirely beyond your sun, but you will be returned before we leave this system.' He bent over the control panel. 'I am sorry, I cannot answer more

of your questions now; I must check my timing.'

I sat back in the softly padded material of the seat, a strange taste in my mouth. I hardly recognized the taste of fear. Flying saucers parked in a garage! Aliens from the stars renting a house in Berkeley! Surreptitiously I pinched myself. It hurt.

Somehow, the garage roof slid back. Don't ask me how they engineered it. Lights glowed in all colours around us, red, blue, green, amber, back to red again. I braced myself as a very soft humming noise began. Karsten reached a hand to me and said, 'Don't be frightened; the acceleration in the shuttle ships is not at all dangerous.' Still bracing myself, I remembered the steel strength of the old man and wondered if human flesh and blood would take the kind of acceleration they called not at all dangerous. Then there was a sort of tingling through the whole framework; the coloured lights flickered faster, wavering over our faces as the humming rose to

an eerie high-pitched whine. I realised we were rising, slowly, then faster and faster.

The high-pitched whine gradually climbed up and up through the audible range. The lights moved through the range of colours and back again. Varzil was moving his hands slowly at the controls. I felt myself crushed back against the seat as the whine died into noiselessness; the pressure grew and grew. There was a very soft hissing noise in the cushion behind my head, and I smelled the unmistakable sharp tang of pure oxygen.

The pressure lightened and was gone. The shifting spectrum of colours steadied, evened to a smooth, pale blue light, like a fluorescent bulb. Our faces were a ghastly colour, but everything could be seen with perfect clarity. Varzil loosened his safety straps and leaned back in his seat. He motioned to Karsten, who was unfastening his own and then stood up and came over to me.

He said, "The shuttle is locked on automatic control now, and acceleration is finished. Now I am free to answer your questions, if you wish. There may be some things I cannot answer, but in so far as I am free, I am at your service.'

I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling, 'If you wouldn't let me loose to talk about the characters who broke in on you, am I supposed to believe that you're going to take me back to to Earth to talk about this!

Varzil smiled and looked apologetic. 'About this you may talk freely, if you can gain any audience,' he said. 'There is now no proof available to you. If we had released you before we left,

someone might have prevented us from leaving.'

That, I realised, made a certain sort of sense. I had laughed at enough flying saucer yarns myself. Who would believe this? I could just see myself trying to convince Father and Nina - let alone a couple of tough cops - that I'd been kidnapped for a ride in a flying saucer.

But meanwhile, I was bursting with curiosity.

'Just where do you people come from? Where are you going? What were you doing in Berkeley?'

Varzil hesitated. Karsten said quietly, 'There is no reason not to tell you. My father is the representative of the Council of Worlds - our home is on the planet of the star you call Spica. He came here to study astronomy from this part of the galaxy. As you know, your world is in an isolated arm of the galaxy, and some views are easier to get from a less populated part of interstellar space. We have another commission, too. It would mean little to you.'

'And where are we going now?' I asked. I felt vaguely proud of myself. Galaxies. Planet of Spica. Here for astronomical study. Oh, sure, nothing to it, happens every day.

It was Varzil who answered, 'hi eleven hours we will rendezvous with our mother ship, which is in orbit outside of your moon. After this, you may be taken back and released. I suggest you settle back and enjoy the trip. You are well clothed, so you will not suffer from cold.'

Strange as it seemed, I decided to do just that. There was nothing else I could do. We were out in space - unless this was an incredibly elaborate hoax. Karsten was already pulling his thick coat up around his ears and snuggling back into the soft seat.

Varzil bent to check an instrument panel again, saying offhandedly, 'Navigation out here is nothing; closer to the surface of your world, of course, your skies are so cluttered with satellites that we must keep out of their way.'

I asked, 'Do many of your saucers - shuttle ships, whatever you call them - come in and out? Why has nobody ever tracked you on radar?'

'Radar? Oh, yes. The material this ship is made of is impervious to your devices,' Varzil said. He shivered, and suddenly I realised that I, too, was very cold. He said, 'For such short trips it is not feasible to use solar engines for heating, but your coat is warm. Look, my son is asleep. I suggest you sleep too; it is very late.'

He bent over the panels again as if he were tired of talking. I lay back against the cushion of the seat. My watch read past four, and I realised I was very tired. I lay watching Varzil, who sat very still, his white hair fluorescing vaguely in the blue light. As an adventure, I decided, this was definitely a bust. I couldn't see anything and nothing was going on.

Strange as it seemed, I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again, Varzil

was asleep in another seat and Harret was at the controls.

It went on like that for hours. Dozing, waking, sleeping again. Once, Harret produced a meal of sorts. I grinned a little wryly, because it looked and tasted just like surplus Army C-ration, and I found out afterwards that was exactly what it was. They had discovered it made excellent, longkeeping emergency rations on board the shuttle ships. But at the time I wondered why the hell a galactic civilisation couldn't have invented some better kind of food.

Varzil looked at Karsten's bandages, and checked a burn on Harret's arm, which had resulted from the skirmish back in Berkeley. I didn't ask any more questions and they didn't volunteer any more information.

That doesn't mean I wasn't thinking plenty. Why the sudden departure act? Had Karsten really been mugged by local hooligans, or was this part of their Galactic Spies act? If they were here only to study the stars, why should they be attacked with weapons which left nasty-looking burns?

Karsten woke up again, took a packet of the C-ration stuff and chewed on it. When he finished, he looked friskier than I'd seen him yet, and he came to sit next to me.

This is a wretched thing for you to get into,' he said. 'I hope no one will be waiting for you and worrying!'

I'd been trying not to think about that. Nina was going to be worrying herself sick. And, when and if I did get home, what was I going to tell them, anyway? I said, 'My mother is going to be scared.'

Karsten said, 'My mother died when I was very small. But I think I know how you must feel.'

'It isn't your fault,' I admitted.

'Please don't be angry with my father. He has his duties and responsibilities, you must know. He would never hurt anyone willingly.'

I said, 'is this why you wouldn't call the hospital? You were afraid they'd find out something about you?'

'Oh, no. But as I said, my father is not strong.'

I laughed, remembering the steely strength of those arms, and Karsten protested.

'No. He has a - a weakness. I feared to shock or frighten him. I knew he would be afraid I had been attacked by the dikri -'

I said, 'This is the third or fourth time you've mentioned them. Who or what are they?'

'They are - it is hard to explain,' Karsten said. They are - they come and go in the galaxy. Your planet is out of bounds without official permission, but they come and go without permission. They are - a form of outlaw. They are different; they cannot get by without strange disguises. It is hard to explain. I do not like to talk about them,' he concluded, looking slightly helpless.

Curiouser and curiouser! Not one group of aliens but two, and one of them Karsten couldn't describe! Coming and going on Earth, for inexplicable reasons ... Evidently the many stories of flying saucers had some foundation in fact after all! But I wasn't going to believe in Bug-Eyed Monsters!

I asked, 'How does your ship fly? Obviously it isn't rocket power, and it couldn't be atomic power or someone would have spotted the radiation in the atmosphere.'

'It uses magnetic currents and the energy from your sun - that is why it cannot be used outside the orbit of your fifth planet; the solar fields are too weak.'

Which, in effect, left me no wiser than I had been before. Who was I to imagine I could understand the science of a galactic civilisation? Just accepting that there was such a thing strained me to my limits.

It was about half an hour later when Varzil raised his head from the control board; there was a worried note in his voice.

'Harret,' he said, 'come here and check my reading. I can't get anything that makes sense. Either the instrument is out of focus, or - well, or else it isn't, in which case - '

'Let us hope the instrument is in error,' said Harret a little grimly. He crossed the middle area of the compartment and leaned over Varzil's seat at the control panel. The seats were situated around the outside rim of the circular saucer; the diameter was about nine feet. Harret twiddled one of the switches. He scowled, knelt down and unfastened a shielding plate and twiddled something inside that, then got up and checked the reading over Varzil's shoulder again. That went on for several minutes, while Karsten anxiously watched them. I watched all three of them, thinking. Oh, great, my first ride in a flying saucer and something goes wrong.

Varzil finally unfastened his belt and slid out of the seat. Harret took his place, but after a minute, he, too, relinquished it, and said, 'It's no use. We're already out of orbit to the point where we aren't going to be able to rendezvous with the mother-ship.'

Karsten said, 'Father-?'

Varzil took out something like a handkerchief - only it was iridescent green, and four times as big - and mopped his forehead. He said, 'I wanted not to worry you. But either our instruments are very badly damaged - and I don't see how that could have happened, since they were in good order when we took off - or else we are in an anti-proton damping field.'

Karsten said, and it sounded like swearing: 'Dikri!'

'I'm afraid so.'

I was fairly sure it was no time for me to butt in, but I'd sat watching this performance for some time now, and it was my skin too. I asked, 'is something wrong?'

Varzil turned to me with an impatient gesture, then controlled himself and said, 'Yes, you have a right to ask questions. Something is very much wrong. We are being drawn off our course. Karsten, will you explain to him?' He knelt down, removed another panel and started doing incomprehensible things inside it. I felt like a jaywalker on the freeway when traffic is halted in every direction and the cop starts swearing; definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Karsten moved into the seat next to me. He looked badly scared. He said, 'I mentioned the dikri to you. It was a dikri who tried to break into our house last night. One of my father's tasks on your planet was to report any interference with the legitimate concerns of scientists within this solar system by the dikri or their kind. Of course it is to their interest to keep him from making his proper reports. We thought we had got free without having them on our trail, but there must be others in this sector. They are generating a field which prevents us from taking in solar energy - do you understand?'

'Not exactly,' I said, I seemed to be given to understatement these days.

'Well, it's like - Have you ever heard of a tractor beam? There isn't any such thing except in

science fiction, but it works the way a tractor beam would if there was such a thing.'

'Oh, no!' I put both hands to my head, wondering if I'd wandered into somebody's else nightmare, while Karsten explained earnestly.

'They get between us and our objective with this field, and we cannot take in solar energy beams to proceed in our proper direction. So, like all free-falling objects in outer space outside a planet's gravitational field, we fall into orbit around the sun, or the nearest large body - and, since that direction is easy for anyone to predict with a slide rule, we can be followed and even attacked.'

'You mean, in effect, we're drifting instead of being under control,' I said, and Karsten said. 'That's it exactly. Without solar power we are subject to the same laws as any other celestial body.'

'And,' said Varzil, 'this means that all they have to do is to get into that orbit. They do not need to draw us down to them; they need only wait and we will inevitably fall towards them.'

'And isn't there anything we can do about it?'

'Nothing, without a source of power, and inside this field we cannot take on power,' Karsten said.

Then they all started jabbering together in their own language while I thought. Maybe these dikri or whatever, aren't as bad as they're painted. Maybe they would even rescue me from these characters. They had been pretty high-handed, talking about the legitimate concerns of scientists in this solar system, meanwhile not bothering to get permission from us, only from some galactic government off somewhere. I wasn't so sure I liked the idea of Varzil's chaps coming and going on Earth without so much as a by-your-leave. There was no reason I should assume, automatically, that the dikri, whatever they were, were the villains in this Cosmic Drama I seemed to be stuck in, and Varzil and his friends were the heroes.

In the next couple of hours Harret and Varzil alternately fiddled with controls that weren't working, gave up in disgust, took out slide rules and worked them, then started messing with the controls again, the way you keep trying to start a car several times even if you suspect it's out of petrol; just in the hope your gauge is wrong. Finally they both gave up and sat down in the spare seats.

'There are times,' said Harret, 'when I am inclined to criticise the Centre for their Weapons Control law.'

'Particularly since it is unenforceable,' Varzil said bitterly, 'and disarms only the law-abiding citizen without affecting the outlaw.'

After that, they each took out a couple of the blue-glowing rods I'd seen last night, looked them over and put them aside, while Karsten explained that they did not operate outside the

gravitational field of a planet. I sat there wishing my nails were long enough to bite effectively and wondering if, when these dikri caught up with us, I'd be rescued or murdered. We ate some more of the rations, the three aliens in the manner of condemned men enjoying their last meal. It kept getting colder and colder, and Karsten seemed uncomfortable, although he didn't complain. Then there was a curious, hard jolting sensation, the coloured lights within the saucer flickered on and off again, there was a whicking sound, and the door we'd come in by began slowly to open.

Karsten muttered, 'We must be fast to their hatch.* He was white to the lips. I found myself hanging on to my seat. And then the dikri came in.

He looked human: short and squat and flab-faced, but certainly not a bug-eyed monster; he had the right number of arms and legs and heads and noses and things. With both hands, he held a thing that looked like a short whip.

Varzil looked as if he was holding on to his seat too, but he kept his composure. He said, 'So it is you, Rellin. I should have known you would not accept a warning and Notice of Dismissal.'

'I did not come to make conversation,' the thing said. I said thing because the minute it spoke I knew it wasn't human. Something crawled down my spine, the way it had when I had seen that monstrous shape at the window of Karsten's living room in Berkeley.

'Varzil,' it articulated, 'and his spawn. And this one?'

'Rellin,' said Varzil harshly, 'this is an Earthman and by law a neutral!'

The dikri shrugged. 'Neutrals are none of my affair,' it said. 'This one is no good to me.' It raised the whip-thing. Varzil lunged, but too late. There was a greenish flare; Harret gave a strange stifled cry and fell limply out of his chair. My flesh crawled. I didn't need anyone to tell me he was dead: the thing had just shot him down without even thinking about it! I hadn't known Harret - he was less to me than Karsten and Varzil - but just the same he was an inoffensive human being, he hadn't been doing anything. he hadn't even been resisting, and the - the thing had just raised its weapon and wiped him out of existence!

Varzil was swearing in a choked voice. Karsten's eyes were filled with tears. The dikri did not even look at the dead body of Harret. He said, 'Varzil, you will come with me, or I will kill your spawn and the neutral.'

Varzil looked around helplessly. He got up out of his chair. 'What do you want with me?'

I was thinking, incredulously. Wasn't he going to do anything? It had shot down his friend, companion, co-worker, and was he just going to knuckle under? The dikri pushed Varzil roughly ahead towards the open door. Twisting a little in my seat, I saw a rough metal passageway between the saucer door, and beyond it, a blazing light which, I suspected, must come from inside the dikri ship. Varzil went quietly, saying only, 'Karsten, do nothing rash.'

Something boiled inside me, and I rushed in. Rellin turned its back on us for a minute to shove Varzil through the door, and I leaped.

Rellin went down under me, crying out. I kicked, and it must have hurt - because it gave a yell of rage - no, a roar, an inhuman screeching howl; it squirmed, reared up to a crouch and it -

It changed!

Before my eyes Rellin's face melted. That's the only way to describe it. Karsten shrieked at me in warning, but I was already backing away. It had dropped the whip-thing; I kicked it, slid and tripped, my horrified eyes fastened on the incredible trans- formation taking place in the dikri. Flesh seemed to flow like water, the crouched form hunched, rippled into a greyish wrinkled clawed mass. Where a man-form had stood - a dragon roared at me.

One paw ripped out and I went rolling, feeling blood break from my cheek. Karsten grabbed up the whip-thing desperately, but the dragon flapped, lunged, and in the cramped space Karsten fell backwards over a seat, dropping the weapon. A moment later the dikri had snatched it up and without another glance at us, as if we were too insignificant to mention, the dragon-form thrust Varzil through the opening. The door closed behind them.

CHAPTER EIGHT

For a minute I lay where I had fallen, wondering if my eye had been ripped out; I couldn't see

out of it, and I was sick all over with horror. Then I started to come to a little, and dragged myself upright. I wiped my eye and realised I could still see. Karsten still sprawled on the seat where he had fallen, and he was sobbing harshly, whether with pain or humiliation I could not tell. He looked too dazed to know what he was doing.

I looked at the closed door, still almost unable to grasp what had happened, and picked myself the rest of the way up. Varzil was gone and Harret's body lay limp and horribly dead on the floor, and Karsten still sprawled there crying.

I went over to him and saw that the bandages had come loose, and he was bleeding again. Trying not to hurt his bad arm, I tried to lift him upright. 'Stop bawling,' I said roughly. 'I'll do whatever I can for you, but crying won't help you - or your father.'

Refusing my arm, he pulled himself up and went to kneel by Harret's body. After a little he covered the man's face. When he turned back to me he looked grim and angry. 'He cared for me when I was a little child,' he said, 'and they killed him like an animal, without even anger against him. Should I be too unfeeling to mourn for him?'

I felt vaguely ashamed of myself. The dead man had been nothing to me, and yet the manner of his death had been shocking. Karsten certainly had a right to be upset, especially when his own father had been taken away by the same people - no - things. And Karsten was hurt himself. I bleakly remembered how I had hoped the newcomers would rescue me from Varzil and company.

I was beginning to feel a little less dazed. Karsten wiped his face and tried to readjust the bandages around his arm; I helped him. Then I asked, 'What - what are those things?'

'Dikri,' said Karsten, 'Shape-changers. You have, on your Earth, legends of werewolves. The dragon-shape is their true shape, but they can adjust it to pass as human among men.'

'But how can they change like that? Solid flesh and bone? Is it real, or a sort of hypnotism?'

'I don't know. I don't think they are all solid flesh and bone at all. I don't know how they change. I only know that they do.' He shuddered, bone-deep. 'I had never seen it before my eyes like this. It is horrible, horrible!'

It certainly was that. I wondered what they would do to Varzil and realised that I didn't even want to think about it. I also wondered what they would do to us, and if there was anything we could do to prevent it, whatever it might be.

Neither of us spoke for quite a while after that. Harret's dead body was not the most pleasant company, either. Karsten, poor kid, must have had even more frightening thoughts about what was happening to his father inside the dikri ship.

At last I said, 'Shouldn't we be deciding what we're going to do when they come back to us?'

'I don't know what we can do,' Karsten said. 'We're unarmed, and they have all the weapons they need.'

I supposed he was right. Heroism sounds good, and looks good in the movies, but deep inside I knew it wasn't going to help much to try to jump that creature in the shape of a man, unarmed. And there was something more, something I hardly dared admit even to myself. I could have faced a man, maybe, even a man with a gun or other weapon. But the thought of seeing that transformation again made me sick with a bone-deep sickness, a sort of paralysis. People throw around the word horror pretty easily these days, but I had a feeling I'd just had a taste of the real thing.

Just the same, it went against me to sit there and wait without doing anything to help ourselves. I felt that if I knew more about the dikri, it might help a little. No matter how repulsive and horrible they were, it made no sense to react so emotionally. I said, 'I gather everybody hates the dikri, but why? Is it only because they are against you? Or because everyone is afraid of that werewolf, or weredragon act they do?'

Karsten said, 'No, there are other shape-changing races, some of them less human in appearance than the dikri, but they are - well, this sounds like a paradox - more human. The dikri are cold and ruthless - unemotional. We call a brutal sadist inhuman because he has none of that fellowfeeling which men feel for their own kind. And most intelligent races, human or nonhuman, have some sense of kinship among all living creatures. They'll kill other living things which threaten them, or if they want to eat them, but not wantonly. The dikri, though, are like your sharks; they

have no sense of kinship even with their own kind. If a dikri is wounded, his fellow-dikri will kill or attack him at once simply because he impairs the perfection of their kind. There is no way we can communicate with them; they will not obey laws or keep treaties, and the worst of it is, they also are an intelligent race. If they were merely vicious animals we could exterminate them for the good of Cosmos.'

'It sounds like a hopeless proposition,' I said, 'but I have a feeling if I were in your people's shoes I'd forget about their intelligence and exterminate them anyway.'

Karsten looked disgusted. 'And then,' he commented, 'We should be no better than they, and have no more right to survive. Less, really, since we know better and they apparently do not.'

I gave up. Our minds just weren't meeting, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that I sounded like the backwoods barbarian to a Galactic citizen.

Karsten's aesthetic sensitivities about killing off the poor benighted dikri might be very civilised, but if his race had survived this long, they must have some common sense about survival. I said, 'Well, I hope your scruples don't prevent you from killing this particular specimen if we get a chance.'

'Rellin?' His face twisted. 'I would kill him with my bare hands if I had the strength!'

I looked at Karsten's bleeding arm and white face, and said, 'Obviously, you haven't. But there

ought to be some way we can even up the odds. I don't know if we can tackle the dragon - ' I touched the claw-wound on my face. 'But if he comes in here looking human, maybe we can do something. If these seats weren't fastened down, maybe we could whack him over the head with one of them.'

Karsten looked at me with something like admiration. 'I would never have thought of that. They unbolt at the base, of course.' I was already kneeling to unbolt one of them; finding that the bolts would not turn with my fingers, I swore softly, but Karsten was kneeling by Harret's body. He fished from the dead man's pockets a small tool kit and tossed it to me; there was an ingenious arrangement of detachable wrench and screwdriver heads which fitted into a small porcelain handle, and the maddest thing about it was that the handle was decorated with small flower designs in electric blue and fluorescent pink. In our culture it would have been a special Little Old Lady toolkit, and yet the damned thing was brutally efficient. There was even a four-inch knife blade, and after I had the seat unbolted I screwed the knife blade into the handle and said, 'I'll hang on to this.'

'A - a blade? Against his weapons?'

'A knife not much bigger than this made a bloody mess, and I do mean bloody, of your shoulder,' I pointed out. 'I don't know if those dikri chaps have blood or not, but whatever they have in place of it, I'm going to try to find out.*

He said, 'Not being a technician, I have no such tool kit, but-' He went to the control panel, and

took up a hefty wrench-like thing and deliberately smashed the glass; he broke off a sharp splinter. This might be of some use.'

I had my doubts, but I nodded approval. Then we sat down to wait, one on either side of the door opening.

It seemed like a long time, though I don't suppose it was more than three-quarters of an hour or so, before the lock handle began slowly to turn.

Take it easy,' I warned in a whisper. They might shove your father through first. We don't want to brain him.'

The warning was just in time; the door widened and Varzil stumbled through. He looked doped, glassy-eyed, but at least he was alive. Behind him one of the slab-faced humanoids moved, weapon at the ready; it stepped through, its eyes and weapon fast on Varzil - and I leaped and brought the heavy metal seat crashing down.

The dikri dropped like a stone, twisting and writhing; I leaped on top of it, Karsten beside me. I brought the knife blade down and shoved it into its throat. It went in so easily I felt a little sick. Then, just as I relaxed, there was a twisting, convulsive spasm; steely muscles threw me off and backwards, and Karsten went reeling. I struck my head against the metal seat I had used to brain the dikri with, and lay there half-stunned, every minute expecting a flash of searing heat that would broil me to death.

None came. Karsten picked himself up and said in a dazed voice, 'It's dead!'

'It's still moving!'

Varzil said, a trifle thickly. Their muscles go into spasm after death; it will continue to twitch like that for hours. But oh, yes, it is dead.'

I looked down at the still horribly-twitching dragon-form into which the dying dikri had metamorphosed with its dying convulsion. I wanted to throw up, and at the same time I wanted to cry, and together with both of these I felt a momentary exultation. I'd killed the damned thing! I'd never killed so much as a mouse before and theoretically at least I was a pacifist, but I figured most pacifists had never been in a corner like this. I stood trying to get back my breath and decide what to do next; then I realised that the open door through which Varzil and the dikri had come had suddenly swung shut and the lock snapped.

We had killed a dikri - but we were still locked in, and our ship was still fast to the dikri ship; we weren't a damned bit better off than we were before.

At least Varzil was back alive. I hadn't realised, until I saw him walk in safe and sound, how much I really had liked the old man. He was shaking his head.

'You might both have been killed,' he said reprovingly. 'And you have helped nothing.'

Karsten was holding his father's hand tightly. 'But - did they hurt you. Father?'

'Nothing so crude,' Varzil said with a little smile. 'Even the dikri need not resort to physical torture, and when they found out with their little brain-probes that I had not the information they wished for, they let me go again. I was sure that would happen.' He put his hands to his head. 'I have nothing worse than a bad headache from their methods of questioning.'

'Which means,' Karsten said, putting into words the thought that crossed my mind, 'that now none of us are of any use to them - and they may very well come and finish us off as they did Harret.'

Varzil looked grave. 'I think, if they planned that, they would never have brought me back into the saucer. Nothing would have been easier for them than to cut me down when they finished questioning, or simply to cut our saucer adrift, first dismantling the drives, so that we died in space. I think they plan something else for us - but I do not know what.'

He was silent, taking up a blanket from a compartment under one of the seats and throwing it over the dead dikri. I was glad to have the still-twitching corpse out of sight. When I was a kid I'd heard that if you killed a snake it would keep twitching till sun-down. I'd never believed it. I did now.

Then we all sat around and waited.

We didn't talk; we all had plenty to think about. I tried not to think about home, about Nina and Father and Win. It was pretty obvious I wouldn't be released, as Varzil had promised, in several hours. Nor did I stop to think that I was actually out in space, where nobody on Earth except a few of the astronauts in space capsules had ever gone before. That didn't bear thinking about, or I'd have been scared out of my wits. I tried hard not to think about the corpses on the floor, either. Mostly I just sat and waited to see what would happen next. There was nothing else to do, and at least we weren't dead yet. It's funny; you think of an adventure as being exciting, or terrifying, or interesting, but never of being just plain boring. Yet that is exactly what this part was; we sat, waiting, and it was as boring as waiting for the dentist to get started.

Varzil got up once and inspected the panel we had smashed. He said, 'I wanted to make sure you hadn't damaged the communicator. There is a bare possibility they might cut us adrift somewhere they believe we can't be rescued from, and if the communicator can function we might have a chance."

'No,' Karsten said. 'I smashed that particular panel on purpose. I knew we wouldn't need the stellar-field reader, whatever happened.'

Varzil said to me, 'I am sorry you became involved in this. Don't give up hope yet; there are very severe laws against interfering with the inhabitants of a neutral planet.'

'When did laws ever stop Rellin and his kind?' Karsten demanded bitterly.

'Yet, they may prefer not to break them too openly. Just as they knew that if I disappeared without trace, the Commissioners' Council would never abandon the search. Be assured, whatever they do to us, they will try to make it look like a natural disappearance; and we may have a chance. I should be deceiving you if I told you it would be any more than a very slim chance; but it might be a chance for life. If we keep our wits about us, we may live through this. So don't despair yet.'

I wasn't despairing. I guess nobody ever believes definitely that they're going to die; at least as long as they are physically intact and unwounded, with food and air to breathe and, for the moment, safety. I was scared, but there's something inside that keeps you believing, right to the last moment, that everything's going to be all right, the Marines will land or something.

Varzil motioned to us both to take stock of our remaining supplies. 'It's obvious they aren't going to kill us out of hand, or crash our saucer into the moon to make it look as if we'd landed there.'

I asked, 'What are the possibilities? What could they do with us?'

'I doubt if they'll simply cut us adrift in space now. If we were ever found - this saucer could be traced by the detection-beams - it would be easy to guess that we wouldn't simply have missed our rendezvous with the mother-ship.'

I asked, 'Won't your ship start looking for you when you are overdue for the rendezvous?'

'Not a chance,' he said rather soberly. "The cost and difficulty of manoeuvring one of the interstellar ships inside the field of a sun is prohibitive. They are kept in parking orbits fairly far out. Of course, they have rescue ships on board, and if we could get out a distress call they could send a saucer for us. But our communicator will not operate within the field generated by the dikri ship. No, I think they will keep us fast to them until we are well past the orbit of the mother ship, the ship of the Commission. After that - well, it is anyone's guess.'

Later, to while away the time - and there was plenty of it hanging on our hands by now - I asked Varzil something about his people, and what they were doing on Earth. He had been evasive about my questions before; now he didn't hesitate to answer, and that gave me my own ideas about our chances of coming through alive.

His people, who lived on a planet of Spica which had a name that sounded like Branntol, were one part of a confederation of planetary governments that took in fifteen or twenty star systems and about seventy planets. They were making a scientific survey of all inhabited planets in their area, to determine which ones could be taken into the Federation and which ones should be left alone to develop further and avoid cultural shock.

Planets like Earth were taboo, but there were a few outlaws - among whom. I gathered, the dikri were numbered - who liked unsurveyed planets, and couldn't be kept out of them. Sometimes they exploited the natives ruthlessly for their natural resources. Sometimes they merely used the planets as playgrounds for their private games, which, I gathered, were war games and left the

planet in question quite a mess. The Confederation did the best it could to keep them away from unprotected planets, but there were something like forty thousand unsurveyed planets already listed, and about as many more they hadn't got to yet; the whole project was contemplated in terms of millennia, not decades or even centuries, and meanwhile, the Confederation couldn't possibly keep a cop on every planet just to scare away the dikri and their kind.

Normally the dikri simply tried to operate in areas where the Confederation hadn't set up yet, because if provoked the Confederation, would exercise some sort of sanctions against the dikri. Varzil didn't tell me what they were and I didn't ask, but I imagined they were fairly drastic, because the dikri were willing to go to some lengths to avoid them.

In fact, I gathered that was the one hope we had - that an individual dikri, or group, like Rellin, would not risk bringing Federation machinery into action. 'Even the dikri,' said Varzil, 'do not like to - what is your phrase? - don't like to play with fire.'

We had eaten again, and slept, and repeated both of these two or three times, when a slow whicking sound began within the cabin, and the slow range of rainbow lights began to move within the saucer. I jerked erect out of a brief doze, and sat up, blinking, and wondered what would happen next.

'The dikri ship is decelerating,' Varzil said. 'The lights are a speed-range device, and operate automatically in here.'

'Where are we. Father?' Karsten asked.

Varzil went to the instruments and said, 'The space instruments, of course, are not working. But if we are coming inside a planet's gravitational field, I may be able to get a reading from the magnetic ones.'

'Could they have taken us back to Earth?'

Varzil hesitated, unwilling to damp the hope in his son's face, then said honestly, 'I think it unlikely. We were only nine hours off Earth, at saucer speeds, when we were intercepted; to take us back would have required little more than that. The dikri ships manoeuvre, within a solar system, a little more easily than our interstellar carriers but not nearly as well as our saucers. We are most likely somewhere near the orbit of Mars.*

I stored that away in my mind. We had been in space now about four days, I supposed. Everyone knew the figure of five days in free-fall, between the Earth and the Moon, so evidently they weren't bound by Earth's limiting speeds. Very likely their interstellar ships went faster than light, since Karsten was young enough not to have spent light years in space.

The lights continued flickering inside the cabin; blue, crimson, amber, green. I felt a curious, sick, empty feeling in my head and stomach which I supposed was the process of deceleration. Varzil and Karsten fastened their seat straps and bars and ordered me to do the same. The two dead bodies on the floor began to slide around and the blankets came off them, and maybe the

less said about that, the better.

Then we hit with a bump and a bang and the saucer's lights flicked off and everything was quiet; it didn't help a bit to know I was probably the first Earthman to land on Mars.

CHAPTER NINE

As soon as we were safely down, Varzil was tearing at his safety straps. 'Barry, get that seat again!' He was kneeling by the dead dikri, and when he straightened he had the creature's weapon in his hand. Karsten tried to unfasten his belt but could not manage it; I realised that without medical attention he would be in very serious trouble. I hoisted the seat over my head, flattening myself out next to the door of the saucer, as the lock began to turn.

A gap widened, arid the familiar thick head of a dikri in human form thrust itself through; I brought the seat crashing down, struck it a glancing blow, and was thrown in the reflex of the thing's metamorphosis halfway across the cabin. There was a flare of blue fire from Varzil's weapon, an inhuman howl of rage; then the saucer was crowded with three, four, five of the monsters and I knew we were licked. Nothing human could have bested four of the things in hand-to-hand combat.

I dragged myself to a sitting position on the floor and looked up bitterly, hating, at the slab-faced form of Rellin, at the others, wondering how anyone could ever mistake them for men.

Rellin said, in his thick voice: 'I see you killed Carandal. I thought that had happened.' It pushed the dead dikri slightly with its foot; glanced sideways at the writhing one I had bashed with the seat, lowered its weapon and shot it. Karsten had prepared me for this kind of callousness, but nevertheless I turned sick as I watched. Varzil was struggling between two other dikri; Rellin came and took the weapon from his hand, then said indifferently, 'Let him go.'

They released Varzil, who stood breathing hard, looking sick and exhausted. Rellin said, 'We are not going to kill you.'

I withheld any shouts of whoopee. I was fairly sure there was a catch to this. Varzil said, hoarsely, fighting for breath, 'Rellin, I warn you. The boy' - he pointed to me - 'is a neutral, a native. Harm him and the Confederation will never let up on you.'

'I told you we do not mean to harm you,' Rellin said, and smiled. Or, rather, its mouth stretched in a terrible parody of a smile. 'It is none of my doing if your craft attached itself to mine in space.

'Let them out.' Rellin gestured roughly.

The door gaped, and as one of the dikri advanced on me, I moved towards it. I felt my heart catch and turn over. A blast of icy wind raked at me. Then a rough paw thrust me through it; I groped for the steps with my feet, stumbled, fell full-length and lay sprawled, gasping in the bitter cold, on the surface of Mars. Behind me, Varzil stumbled down the steps, holding Karsten

carefully with one arm. The dikri hoisted the dead bodies out; dropped them beside us. I stood watching, in dumb horror, as the saucer door closed and lights began to blink on and off at the edges.

I looked up then and saw the dikri ship, huge and strange, glowing with the cold phosphorescence of a great sea slug, our saucer like a big glowing blister at its side. There was a soft whickering, whirring noise.

Then the two ships rose together, still joined; slowly gained speed, then rose further and further, grew smaller and smaller till they were only a pinpoint in the thin purple sky, and were gone.

We were alone, marooned on Mars. At our feet lay the dead bodies of Harret and the dikri. There was nothing else in sight.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

In short, we were dead.

I don't remember very well what happened in the next few minutes. I think I may have gone a little crazy. I remember hearing Varzil cursing in a steady stream, in the language I didn't know, but anyone could have known that he was cursing the dikri in every foul term he knew. Karsten

just stood there looking faint and dazed, and finally dropped to his hands and knees and crouched, shivering - and I think that brought us to our senses.

For the first time I began to realize what had happened, to take it in. The first thing I realised was that I was breathing. I'm no expert, but I'd kept up with the reports of the satellites, and I'd understood there wasn't enough air on Mars to support a cat, let alone a human. Just the same, I was breathing. It wasn't easy, the wind was blowing a gale and took the breath right out of my nostrils, but just the same I was breathing. So much for the experts.

And cold! I imagined it must be like this at the South Pole; only of course there was no snow. All around us, a dull grey-brown sand, littered with low green and blue rocks, lay undulating faintly in the wind. A few thick spiky plants, like a Salvador Dali version of cactus, broke the landscape at odd points,

138 Apart from that, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing; at an immeasurably far point, the grey- brown sand merged into dull blue and purple and blended imperceptibly with the sky. About forty degrees above the invisible horizon point, a tiny glowing red ball, the size of a thumbnail, hung in the sky to show where the sun theoretically was. I shivered in my heavy coat and wished I had four of them on top of each other. It was going to be bad enough starving to death in this howling desert - without freezing to death first!

I turned my head finally towards Varzil, who stood with his hands absently on Karsten's shoulder. He was watching me, and I felt like cursing him, and the impulse that had led me to

help Karsten, and had brought me to die here. I thought, suddenly and crazily, of Nina putting supper on the table and asking herself aloud, the way I'd heard her once, as I came in the back door unexpectedly: 'Where on earth is that boy?' A lump clogged my throat. My mother and father would never know whether I was alive or dead, or that I was nowhere on Earth at all. I opened my mouth to yell that it was all his fault and I'd never wanted to get mixed up in his damned Galactic politics, then shut it again. He and Karsten were going to die too and I didn't suppose they were any too crazy about the idea. So I asked instead, 'Is Karsten okay?'

'He is very far from well,' Varzil said gravely. 'If we cannot get him out of this cold, and find medical help for him soon, he will never be better.'

I said, rather grimly, 'You don't happen to know of a good hotel around here, do you?'

Karsten laughed, a weak, improbable sound. He said, in a ghost's voice, 'And to think I was furious that we had to be saddled with a native, a planetary, who would give up if things looked bad! I feel better already.'

'As for giving up when things look bad,' I said, with my mouth tight, 'my great-grandfather came over the Rockies and wintered in the Donner Pass with the Patrick Breen party, which wasn't exactly a picnic. I'll back a California pioneer against one of your people any old day!'

Varzil said, 'If you take it in that spirit it may not be as bad as we fear; yet I must warn you, our condition is desperate.' He moved a little to the lee of the dead bodies, lowered Karsten to the

sand, and said, 'Help me to pile these up to make a shelter.'

My face must have showed my horror, for he said sharply, 'I beg of you! We have no time for sentiment or squeamishness! They will guard us a little against the wind, and one of the dikri has still a little body warmth.'

It was still twitching, too, and it wasn't the most pleasant thing I'd ever done; but when Varzil instructed me to strip the dead man and the dead dikri, I protested, in a rage, 'I'm no corpserobber!'

'You may die with your scruples, then,' Varzil said. 'Warm clothing is warm clothing, and it is no good to Harret, may he rest in peace. Also, Harret has a few small tools in his pocket; and there is no telling what the dikri may have in their clothing.'

I apologised and obeyed. Just the same, I told myself as I hauled gingerly at the twitching corpse, if Varzil carried good sense one step farther I probably would mutiny. I'd rather starve than try to make a meal of dikri steak or hamburger.

I turned the assortment of oddments from Harret's pocket over to Karsten, then tackled the corpses of the dead dikri. They each had a small round transparent thing something like a compass, assorted papers and printed cards apiece; one was carrying a packet of Kleenex, which give me a sort of cold shiver, wondering where he had bought it and thinking about the unsuspecting human who had sold it to him. And each had a small brass token in which I

recognized a conventional dragon-shape, or dikri-shape. Varzil examined all these things, turning the dragon-shape between his hands.

Karsten weakly asked what they were, and Varzil said, 'Keys. Starting keys for the smaller individual ships of the dikri; like our saucers but less convenient. Which is why they wanted our saucer, of course.'

I couldn't help it. The idea of a flying saucer starting with an ignition key like any old Ford or Chevy was too much for me. I said, laughing almost hysterically. 'Don't help a good boy go bad. Lock your car. Take your keys!' Karsten chimed in. 'Now, if we can just find one of those things parked in the next lot...'

Varzil said, 'You never can tell,' put the two brass things in his pocket, and bent over Karsten, putting a thing very much like a flashlight in my hand. 'I must see to that knife-wound. Help me, now, and be quiet.'

When Karsten was bandaged, and the extra clothing from the dead shared out - it came in handy, I had to admit, including the thick heavy cloak of a dikri which fell to my share - we huddled in the lee of the corpses, trying to share body warmth and shelter against the biting wind.

'We cannot stay here,' Varzil said, not telling me anything I didn't know. The corpses were already beginning to freeze, and I knew damned well that if we stayed still we'd be in the same shape in a few hours. Karsten didn't speak - he seemed to be in shock - so I played straight man.

'We can't stay here and we can't go anywhere else - or am I missing something in the landscape? Don't tell me the dikri considerately dropped us off in easy walking distance from a luxury underground hotel for distressed spacemen?'

'No,' Varzil said. 'Unfortunately. I am not even certain where we are. But this planet is used now and again - for coming and going, both by the Confederation and by the dikri. I do not think they would land us in Confederation territory, but I read our field instruments before the saucer landed. We are near the twelfth parallel, and see - ' He pointed, and very dimly, through the haze and the gathering darkness, I made out a low line of grey hills. 'There are caves there, and I have heard that the dikri have built shelters there. We might find one unoccupied. It is our only chance; we must have shelter before a sand-blizzard comes. They are not infrequent in this season - and the season is just beginning.'

I wasn't crazy about the idea of finding shelter in any place frequented by dikri, but I supposed he'd thought of that, so I didn't say anything. Anyway, we'd never get there. I only asked, 'Can Karsten walk?'

'It is better to die on the way to shelter than to die doing nothing,' Varzil said stolidly. 'But for now we will rest; then we will go.'

While the sun dipped towards the invisible horizon and sank, we crouched beneath the bodies of the man and the dead dikri, and shivered, and waited. That night was grim. I'm no more imaginative than most people, but we had three corpses for company, and the dikri corpse closest

to me was still twitching; every now and then a sharp spasm would run through it and every time it happened I'd go into a spasm too. I was glad when it froze, even though it was colder that way, like huddling up against solid ice.

I didn't know, then, how long the Martian night was, but by the time that little pink glob of sun was above the horizon, I was ready to say it was too long. I was cramped and cold in every limb. Although the barricade of frozen bodies had been some shelter, the wind cut like a knife and my face felt half frozen. I hadn't slept for a moment. Nevertheless, when Varzil stretched and stood up, beating his hands together to try to warm them, I was ready to start off. Anything was better than this.

Karsten, though stiff and evidently sore, looked better than the night before. The only explanation I can give is that rest - such as it was, though I personally didn't feel rested - had helped, or that the intense cold had semi-anaesthetised and numbed his arm. His voice seemed stronger, and when Varzil took from his pockets a packet of the rations, divided it in equal pieces and passed them around, he ate hungrily. So, for that matter, did I. It seemed an awfully long time since I'd had a square meal.

Then Varzil took a compass from his pocket, studied it intently for a long time, squinted up at the sun through it, finally pointed and said, "This way. Let's go.' And we went.

We just started walking. And kept on. And on. And on.

The next period of time is one of the worst in my memory. We walked. The wind cut, and gritty sand kept whirling up and blowing. During one of our infrequent halts to rest - we would walk about two hours and rest about ten minutes - I scooped up a little of the sand and looked at it closely. It looked like fine emery powder, or ground iron filings, and felt like it when it blew against you or got in your eyes. After a while my skin was raw; we all took off some dispensable undergarment and wound it around our faces, up to the eyes, and if it was thin enough, over them. You can see through cotton undershirt material, I found out, if you put only one thickness over your eyes. You can't see very well, but then, on Mars there's no scenery and you don't miss much anyhow.

The air was so cold that with every breath I felt as if I were drawing down solid ice into my lungs, and this made thirst rasp my throat until I was gasping with it. But there was nothing I could do about it. Before long I was plodding along over the lumpy, trackless sand in a daze, dreaming about huge cups of hot coffee, refrigerators crammed with cartons of milk, taps flowing streams of steaming hot water to bathe in, icy water to gulp down my parched throat. It was slow, monotonous slogging underfoot; stones and sand, sand and stones, with some thick hairy softer stuff intermittently easing the walking - it felt a little like moss.

It got to where I hated to breathe because of the way it made my throat drier and drier. When we paused about the fourth time for a rest and a bite of the dried ration, I couldn't chew it at all, hungry as I was.

'Try to eat,' Varzil said. "The food will transform itself into heat.' He kept doggedly chewing at

his own ration, but his mouth, too, looked blue and parched. Karsten had said his father was 'not strong' but so far he was the toughest of us all.

The sun got higher until, at what must have been high noon, it was about as bright as it might have been on a foggy day in London; then it began to slide down again and get duller and darker still. And we kept moving, but the line of hills for which we were heading didn't seem to get any closer.

A while before sundown we ate the last scrap of food; and as the night closed in we stretched out, huddled close together in the lee of some low rocks, for the interminable hours of darkness. I lay on the inside, with Karsten next to me, and Varzil at the outside, and we piled all the dikri garments like blankets over the top. Varzil, evidently exhausted, slept with soft gasping snores.

Despite my exhaustion, I couldn't sleep. I was parched and famished, with cramps in my stomach, and a sore throat which could hardly gather enough moisture to swallow. During a lot of that night I think I was having hallucinations. I thought I was at home, with Win setting the supper table and the smell of pizza wafting deliciously through the air. But just as I'd start to take a bite I'd come to myself again and be under those damned rocks on Mars, with Varzil snoring and Karsten moaning softly in his sleep. I wondered how they could sleep, and if this would be our last night of life; if Varzil thought that without food, water and fire we could reach any place at all before we died.

I did sleep a little at last, nightmarishly, but as morning thinned the darkness a little, I was so

cold and parched that when Varzil stood up, stiffly stretching his cramped limbs, I didn't move. What was the point of another day like the last? Why not die here where we could do it a little more easily? Why keep putting one damned exhausted foot in front of the other until we fell in our tracks? Karsten hauled at me, but I shoved him away and covered my head with my arms.

'Go 'way,' I mumbled. 'Not goin' any further. No place to go anyway. Goin' stay right here.'

'What is there to stay here for?' I heard Karsten say, but I was too far gone for logic and persuasion. If I could only sleep...

Varzil said, 'We can't carry him,' and Karsten said, 'I won't leave him. If he hadn't saved my life he would have been safe at home.'

I felt Varzil grab my shoulder and drag at me again. He said, in a voice which seemed like the tolling of a bell, 'We brought you here; we won't abandon you. If you will not get up and help to save us all, we will have to stay and die with you. Is that what you want?'

Of all the damnably unfair ways to put it, I thought foggily through the great haze of sleep. Did they want me to be responsible for killing them? I grumbled, 'Oh, if you put it that way,' and hauled myself woozily upright.

Varzil's eyes were inflamed and sunken in his sand-rimed face. Karsten looked thinner, paler, his eyes bright with fever, and he tried not to move his bad arm at all. I didn't even want to think

about what I must have looked like. My throat was such torture I could neither swallow nor speak. I sank into sick apathy, lifting one foot drearily after the other and putting it down with a thump that seemed to jolt my whole sore body.

The day dragged on interminably. During one of the breathing spells - we had stopped talking now -I found myself looking around with a perilous, dying clarity.

We would die. Was there nothing to be done? There was no fire, and no way to make it. You couldn't rub two sticks where there was no plant life and no wood. In a desert on Earth, even the worst, there were animals to trap and plants edible and otherwise, if you knew the difference. Men trained in survival techniques had lived even in the Arctic and Death Valley. But here? There didn't seem to be an animal alive anywhere, and the moss underfoot didn't look promising, nor the nightmarish stuff that looked like cactus -

Cactus.

If it was cactus, how did it grow? Nothing living grew without water; I knew that much. I suddenly remembered what every Californian child knows. I dug in my pockets, finding my student card from Berkeley High and a couple of ball point pens. I tossed the card away, thinking insane thoughts about litter bugs, and then my hand closed around the knife I had used on the dikri. Shuddering, I tried to ignore the weird stains towards the tip, and tested the edge on my finger. Varzil, slumped with his eyes shut, suddenly opened his eyes and rushed at me, trying to wrest the knife away.

I exploded in rage: 'Did you think I was going to kill and eat you? Damn it, leave me alone a minute; I want to try something!'

Varzil said, hoarsely but with dignity, 'It was your own death wish I feared.'

I paid no attention. Now that I had this idea nothing was further from my mind than dying, but I hadn't the breath to waste. I headed towards one of the cactus-like growths.

The stuff was anywhere from eight inches to two feet in height, a dirty-looking no-colour with reddish- veined bulgy protuberances. I got down on my knees, almost holding my breath. I dug my knife into one of the bulges.

The plant screamed at me!

I know in retrospect that it was only escaping air; but it flung me back on my heels and I almost drove the knife into my palm out of sheer shock. It was a high, eldritch whine, with a weirdly human sound. Then I smelled a clear, tangy smell and I knew that death had suddenly turned to life, for a thin, clear, watery fluid was oozing from the cactus.

I sawed at the plant again with my knife and brought the dripping stem to my lips. It occurred to me at the last moment that it might be poison, but at that moment, parched as I was, I didn't even care about that. It was wet.

My lips soaked up the precious fluid. For a minute I couldn't even have told you what it tasted like; then I realised it had a sweetish, vaguely acid taste. It was icy cold, of course, cold enough to hurt my teeth, but who cared about that?

After a minute, when I had sucked enough to appease that first awful dryness, I remembered my companions. I sawed off a gourd-like leaf for Karsten, handed it to him, then gave Varzil the knife to cut himself a chunk while I went back to sucking and chewing on the delicious moisture.

For the next half hour we didn't do anything else. We hacked off bulby leaves of the Martian cactus and sucked and chewed them to pulp, extracting the last drops of moisture. The fibres were woody rather than succulent, and the taste was vaguely like broccoli with sawdust, but in our condition it tasted just fine.

And there was plenty of it. There was a whole planetful of it, and no Martian to come and bawl us out for robbing his watermelon patch.

At last, unbelievably, we had had enough. It was about then that I realised how cold I still was, and that the icy, gritty wind seemed stronger than ever, knifing at my face and hands until they were half frozen. There's no way to describe the terrible, slamming violence of that wind, and the silence of it. People think of wind as noisy. That's because what they hear is wind in the trees or beating around buildings and corners. This wind didn't beat around anything. It just swept for hundreds of miles over nothing but sand. I thrust my hands in under my coat and stood there,

shivering, no longer thirsty, but hungry and freezing.

Varzil said at last, "This should help us. The hills are further than I thought. That was a good idea of yours, Barry. It had never occurred to me that this vegetation was edible.'

I said, 'About those hills of yours. Will we be any better off when we reach them? Or will it just be another place we can starve and freeze in?'

'I know there are shelters there,' Varzil said, 'but I cannot be sure we will find them. Or what they will have for our comfort. This is a chance - no more than a chance.' He looked at Karsten and his lips pressed tight together. I knew what he was thinking; could the kid make it?

It wasn't quite so bad walking now, without the torture of thirst; but my muscles ached with the cold and I felt that my hands and especially my feet were beginning to freeze. My shoes had never been meant for long hiking, and my socks were a caked mess of sweat, dirt and ice. Every time I set foot down I felt a new blister forming. We slogged and slogged, and I felt as if I had been walking forever, cold, frozen, in pain. I drew up the improvised sand-mask over my eyes and walked in a dark dream, not knowing or caring where I went. Vaguely I knew, when we stopped to rest a few minutes and gulp down a little more of the acrid cactus-juice, that the wind was dropping; but I was unprepared for Karsten's cry:

'Look - look there!'

Through the clearing sand as the wind dropped, the hills were clearly visible: low ramparts of blue rock, stained with rusty darkness, worn away by endless erosion into sand. They were no more than five miles distant. But five miles in our present condition - and then how far to find shelter?

Varzil was scanning them, sheltering his eyes against the sand with his cupped hands. I saw how red-rimmed and inflamed his eyes were, and knew my own were just as bad. Finally Varzil pointed.

'An irregularity in the line there,' he said. 'It might be some sort of building.'

I couldn't see it. Neither could Karsten, though he looked for a long time. Nevertheless by silent consent, we all headed for it. The chance was better than nothing.

We were all stumbling now, half-blind, exhausted, three spectres in the endless desert. Each step I took seemed to get me nowhere, and I walked in an apathetic daze, without hope, not even caring much any more. When we got there, what would we find? A cold shelter of bare boards, empty, fireless, foodless? Or the warm and tender hospitality of the dikri. At least they seemed to have no interest in tormenting human beings; they'd shoot us down with no more compunction than I'd kill a fly.

During the last awful few miles I gave myself up almost completely to self-pity. I dragged along, not caring what happened to me or to my companions. Until Karsten cried out, stumbled

and fell headlong in the sand.

I knew this was the end. We would never reach the shelter, if there was any shelter.

Varzil knelt beside his son and I heard him talking in their own language, coaxing, pleading, threatening, I didn't listen. I was having hallucinations again. In the bare sand, with my head between my knees for less resistance to the terrible wind, I was once again smelling the spicy, wonderful smell of pizza. It's funny what hunger does to you ... hunger and a diet of broccoliflavoured cactus-juice. It tantalised me to the point of sickness. Karsten lay in the sand, not moving, and I wished it were me. He wasn't worrying. I wondered if he were dead.

I dragged myself up and shielded my face against the blowing sand again. I said to Varzil, 'is he all right?'

Varzil shook his head. 'He has been at the edge of collapse for more than a day now. His strength is finished.'

I said doggedly, 'I guess we can carry him. If it isn't too far.'

I knew it would be too far, as soon as we hoisted him between us. Five hundred feet would be too far, in the condition we were in. Holding Karsten between us, we could no longer shield our faces from the wind with our arms. My face was numb, and I realised my cheeks were frozen. I couldn't feel my feet any more, and that was just as well.

The wind was dropping. Maybe we were under the lee of the hills now. I couldn't raise my eyes to see, but Varzil said shakily, between gasps for breath, 'I think - I see - a building.'

I don't even remember when the wind died. I only know that I heard Varzil cry out with triumph. I stumbled forward into warmth and light, fell on top of Karsten; he moved and I was surprised to realize he wasn't dead. And that was the last thing I knew for a long, long time. I fell asleep right there where I had fallen.

CHAPTER TEN

When I woke up, I was lying on a floor of some smooth stuff, but my head was on a pillow and my shoes had been hauled off, and my feet were warm.

We were inside a little, dimly-lit, circular building. Karsten lay in a low bed, covered with the dikri cloak, Varzil slumbered on the floor at his side. I hauled myself upright, looking down at my feet. They were warm and, although dirty and blackened in spots, none of the toes seemed seriously damaged.

Varzil opened his eyes and looked at me.

I said, 'How's Karsten? And what's for dinner? In that order. And after that, where are we?'

'We are in one of the dikri shelters,' Varzil said. 'It is deserted and possibly forgotten, so there is no need to be worried about them. Karsten is better; I have looked at his shoulder and it is healing. As for food, I don't know. We must look around.'

We started hunting in the various cupboards and built-in storage spots right then. We found a few empty packages and a half dozen full ones. The stuff inside could have been soap or silver polish for all I knew, but Varzil said it was a special emergency ration, made unpalatable on purpose so that people would eat the bare minimum for survival; I supposed it was better than nothing.

Varzil still seemed troubled, and I asked if Karsten was really so bad.

'No,' he said, 'but the wind has died down.'

'Wonderful,' I said, 'beautiful. We can get along fine without it.'

'You don't understand. This means we are in the eye of a sand-hurricane. Winter is closing in and in winter there are sand-blizzards in which nothing can live. If the winter season closes in before we can get away from here - '

He didn't finish, and I knew he had been planning some form of rescue.

There were two doors to the building: the one we'd come in by, now closed tightly against the

out-doors, and another. Varzil pushed against it; it was locked and handleless, with only a round hole in the centre, like a keyhole. He hesitated a moment, then took out of his pocket the small brass dragon-shaped thing he had removed from the body of the dikri. It slid easily into the hole; he twisted and the door opened.

Stairs led downwards; slowly and cautiously, we went down.

The stairs ended and we came out into a sunken room. It was large - and damp. Damp! on dry, water-less Mars? But unmistakably, water was trickling from the stone walls; this was evidently an under-ground cave, and with some source of water. I breathed more freely. The room was so dark and shadowy that at first I did not notice the great, humped mound in the centre, until Varzil laid his hand on my arm, and pointed.

It was a flying saucer.

It wasn't Varzil's. It was larger, painted a drab grey, with curious striations which I supposed were some alien form of identification markings. It was clumsier, too. But it was a saucer - and we had the keys! We could get away from here! We were safe; we were saved! I saw myself back on Earth in a few more days, with only the memory of a great adventure. I let out a whoop.

'Don't rejoice too soon,' Varzil said. 'This means the place is not forgotten - the dikri owners may return to claim their property.'

'Then the thing to do is get out of here in a hurry!' I retorted. I was ready to climb on board right then. Varzil rebuked, 'It is not so simple. The wind is rising again, and a Martian sand-blizzard can blow an interstellar ship out of the sky, let alone a small craft like this. We are all still exhausted. And worst of all -I do not know how to operate the dikri craft. I suppose one saucer is much like another, but I can never be sure. I will have to study the craft, perhaps for days, before I can safely take it up even for a short flight. Calm yourself and let us go back.'

I might have been sore at what Varzil said, only it made too much sense. As we turned back I noticed a pizza smell. Was I hallucinating again? 'What is that marvellous smell?'

Varzil looked around briefly. Then he hurried to the side of the shed, and there, in a soaking tank full of water, the smell emerged fuller and spicier than ever; something that looked like moss was half submerged in reddish-looking water, and smelled exactly like hot pizza baking. It smelled so delicious I could have devoured it as it was.

'Martian lichens,' Varzil said. 'I did not think of them on the desert because they are poisonous in the raw state; but when soaked and boiled, they are edible and even palatable. It seems that we will not starve, however long we stay here.'

'Just the same, I hope it won't be long,' I retorted as I followed him up the stairs.

Except for the ever-present worry about one of the dikri coming back, the next few days would have been a picnic after the last. We had plenty to eat and enough to drink. Karsten slowly

recovered his strength, and the lichen, boiled up like beans, had the spicy smell and taste which made me think of spaghetti. The dikri shelter was no palace, but it was better than the desert by a long shot, and it was easier to breathe. Artificial oxygen was released by feeding sand into oxidating machinery, and the sand, being various copper and iron oxides, released its oxygen with due process.

Every day Varzil went down to crawl inside the dikri saucer and study the controls, and finally announced that if we ever got a lull in the windstorm - which now seemed perpetual - he thought he could fly it. Not between planets, but there was a small Federation base near one of the polar domes, and he thought he could get it that far.

I asked if there was a radio or some form of communicator on board through which he could send a message, and got the discouraging but unsurprising answer that the sand-blizzards at this time of year blotted out all communication on the surface of the planet; the sand was metallic and magnetic and wrecked all sorts of equipment. Nevertheless, I pinned all my hopes on Varzil's ability to fly the dikri saucer.

Karsten, too, was eager to get away. At the polar dome, which was a Federation Observatory, there were almost all the comforts of home. There would also be a chance, I gathered, to send a message to the mother ship about Rellin's illegal activities on Earth.

As for me, although I looked forward to the extra comforts of the Branntol Confederation base, I was still on Mars, and it wasn't my world. I had no idea when I could be sent back to Earth, if

ever. Questioning Varzil was very unsatisfactory; I gathered that it was a question now of scheduling of the larger ships. A saucer could fly between Earth and Mars, but it seemed to be on a par with sailing a fifteen-foot sail-boat across the Atlantic: nothing anyone would do except for adventure or in a desperate emergency.

At last, Karsten's arm was healed enough, and Varzil felt familiar enough with the dikri saucer, to make the attempt. We got into our foul and dirty clothing again - there was water, but not enough for washing - and went down the narrow and steep steps into the vaulted cave where the dikri kept their saucer parked.

Varzil had been inside many times, but neither Karsten nor I had yet stepped inside the alien craft. As I walked up the ramp I felt the now-familiar twinge of fear.

It was completely unlike the saucer of Varzil and company. The door unlocked by the same dragon-shaped key; there was a long metal corridor, slightly curving, with a door on either side. One of these doors opened into a storeroom, with bunks and closed cabinets. The other led into a control chamber with panels and instruments.

Varzil said gravely, 'You will have to handle the navigation, Karsten; I shall have enough to do with the controls. My arms are not as strong as those of a dikri and the control levers will demand all my strength.'

Karsten looked serious and older. 'I think I can manage. But wouldn't it be safer for you to

navigate and allow me to steer? You know your heart is not good.'

'And your arm is still weak,' Varzil told him. 'You haven't the strength.' They looked at me and I knew they were thinking of Harret. If he had been with us - their thought was almost audible instead of this weak native... Well, it wasn't my fault I was here.

Varzil came to check if I was safely tied down. He said apologetically, 'The acceleration of take off in the dikri craft is much rougher than for human craft. I could not forgive myself if you were hurt.' He was so nice, all the time, and I must have been in the way.

'It's likely to be even rougher than usual,' Karsten said, his face grim, 'with us handling these controls.'

Varzil finished strapping himself in and bent to the controls. He touched something, and lights, glaringly bright, began to flicker on and off, then steadied to a greenish glare. He said, 'Hold on,' and reached for a lever. He began to move it slowly to one side.

A high, shrill roaring began in my ears. The craft leaped up and I felt myself flattened, squashed back against the cushions. I fought and gasped for breath, my eyes squeezed shut, struggled not to cry out with the pain of it, heard Karsten's involuntary scream. That shocked my eyes open; Karsten hadn't cried out at all during that ordeal in the desert...

Horror struck me. Varzil's face was drawn and darkly congested, and he had slumped limp

against the retaining straps, his hands fallen from the lever. The lights oscillated wildly, bright to dim and bright again. Karsten tore at his straps, crying out incoherently, wrenched at the lever. The squashing pressure lessened, grew again, died away. The bottom dropped out of the world, and my stomach lurched and swam; we were falling, falling like stones; we would crash ... I shut my eyes and waited for the smash. Karsten screamed again as we struck, and I saw him flung down hard, and then we jolted, bounced, and dropped again with a crash that brought my head forward against the bars violently.

I shook my head dazedly, got out of my straps - the cabin was tilted at a crazy angle - and struggled across the swaying floor to Karsten. For a ghastly moment I was afraid they were both dead; then Karsten sat up. His face was covered with blood, but otherwise he seemed none the worse.

'What happened?' I asked in a daze.

'We crashed,' Karsten said tersely. 'My father's heart -I do not know if he is alive.'

Even now I don't like thinking about those ten minutes before Varzil's faint pulse began to rally and his eyelids flickered. We got him out of his straps and I went down the metal corridor and opened the door so I could see how far we had fallen from the shelter. To my infinite relief it was less than five hundred yards.

Carrying him between us, sheltering him as best we could against the rising wind, Karsten and I

were too anxious for despair. We got him inside, rubbed his wrists, poured hot drinks down his throat, and when he finally opened his eyes and knew us, I was almost as relieved as Karsten.

'The saucer isn't damaged,' Karsten told him quickly. 'We can try again.'

Varzil said, moving his lips with difficulty, *I should not - have tried. I should - have taught Barry to handle the controls; he is strong. Before next try I will do so.' He slept again, exhausted by these few words; but he'd given me plenty to think about during the long hours before he spoke again.

But before Varzil could sit up again, we had something else to think about.

The wind here in the mountains, roaring round the shelter, was noisier than that deadly, silent wind on the desert plain. It was so perpetual that you stopped hearing it. Now, suddenly, I began hearing it again. The normal roaring sound was now an almost deafening howl, roaring round the comers of the little shelter, which was round and streamlined to offer as little resistance as possible. Varzil lay listening to it; he looked grave. Finally be broke the bad news.

'That is a full-scale sand-blizzard,' he said, and his tired face looked a hundred years old. 'We cannot try again, if the winter season has set in. Nothing can survive that, no craft. We must stay here until the winter season is over.'

Apprehension struck me cold, and I hardly heard my own voice as I asked, 'How long does the

Martian winter last?'

'Fourteen of your months.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There's no sense in going into the events of that winter too deeply. There was nothing we could do except stay there. We stayed, and that was that.

The omnipresent worry about a dikri coming home unexpectedly and saying, 'Who's been sleeping in my bed,' like one of the Three Bears, eased off a little. We had to conserve water, and were always a little thirsty, but not dangerously so. The wind had occasional twenty-to-thirtyminute lulls, and then Karsten or I would make a dash outside for fresh supplies of lichen - there was plenty of it - to put to soak. We rigged a lifeline from the shelter so that neither of us would get lost if we estimated the time wrong and the sand began to howl again. If we'd been caught out more than a hundred feet from the shelter, in that roaring inferno of sand, we'd never have made it back. As it was, I lost the sight of one eye for almost ten days after getting caught outside. The sand was like emery powder; I knew enough to cover my face with both hands, but I had to put one hand down to open the door, and that did it. Fortunately Karsten had enough fresh clean water so that I could bathe it within seconds after getting in, and though I spent a nervous scared ten days, finally the soreness healed and I could see again. Varzil told us it was fortunate there were three of us; it had long been known that no two beings could endure being crammed together in confined space for months without going mad. I didn't argue. I thought three was bad

enough. We got fairly sick of each other's company, I suppose, and yet - after a few months I began to realise that if I had to be cooped up with somebody, it could have been worse.

We talked a lot, just to have something to do. At Varzil's suggestion, I whiled away the time, when it was my turn to talk, by trying to remember every scrap I knew of Earth's history and telling them all I knew. They were a little surprised that I knew only the history of one continent thoroughly, and the rest sketchily, and I felt a little ashamed at the superficial quality of my knowledge. In my lighter moments I tried to reconstruct such things as Alice in Wonderland so I could join in the story telling. and we searched our minds for all the old jokes we knew.

Varzil had only waited for enough strength to be able to talk again before starting to teach both Karsten and me, from rough-sketched diagrams, how to control the dikri ship. I think he was preparing us in case he had another attack and died here in the shelter. When he found out how poor I was in maths, he insisted on starting in, right then, to teach me.

I thought it was all I could do to count my change; that if I couldn't manage the maths of Earth I certainly couldn't manage that of the Galactic Confederation.

I learned anyhow.

Varzil decided that I'd had bad grounding in arithmetic as a kid and went back to the kindergarten stages and taught me all over again. It was easier after that. He gave me a lot of mental shortcuts and tricks which made it seem easy. And besides, there wasn't another damn

thing to do.

They took me up through arithmetic, algebra and trigonometry, with the help of the pocket tables they carried on them. Varzil also had a slide rule, and when I expressed surprise, he told me that it was a simpler form of one known in the Galactic civilisation; the principle was the same, but the Earth one was just handier to carry in a pocket. It took only a few minutes to learn to convert from one form of figures to the other. Having ten fingers, they also used maths to a base of ten, but they taught me to use a twelve-based one 'for convenience', and a three-based one 'as a mental recreation'; then they began to teach me celestial and sidereal navigation. By the time eight months were up we had run out of ordinary maths, and they started to go into complicated subjects like hyperspace orbit computation and mass-time star-drift. Varzil was an astronomer, and I ought to add that Karsten didn't know all these subjects either, when I caught up with him, he did lessons right along with me.

If I ever got back to Earth, I guessed, I wouldn't miss the year of school I was missing. I'd have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in maths!

The maths was fascinating, but just the same, we hung over that calender. We were all a mess. I'd lost about twelve or fourteen pounds - the lichen was pretty good, even as a steady diet, but you got tired of it and it didn't tempt you to fatten up. As for washing, we didn't, except just enough to keep our skin barely endurable. It's surprising how little you can wash, and how much you miss that daily bath when you can't have it. As far as our clothes were concerned they were crusted with dirt, and Karsten and I were growing out of our jeans and going through the elbows

of our shirts.

Early in the winter we had found cabinets with utility coveralls hanging inside; they had the loathsome dikri dragon-shape insignia on them and we shuddered away from them, but after five months of wearing the same clothes every day and sleeping in them at night, you'll wear almost anything. Karsten and I finally decided we would wear the dikri cover-alls, provided there wasn't a dikri in them. The alternative would have been a loincloth, and it was too cold for that.

The dikri garments had one advantage; they were almost completely windproof. We could go out in them for lichen, or sand for the oxygen converters, without getting frozen to the bone.

The great day came when Varzil said it would be safe to try again for the Polar colony, and we looked again at our filthy, sand-grimed Earth clothes, and put on the dikri garments, then Karsten grabbed the dikri insignia sewn on his coverall front, and pulled. It tore, then came loose.

'There!' he said violently, and I followed suit. It felt better, not having the damned dragon on us.

We didn't say much. We had discussed everything about the flight. We found the saucer where we had crash-landed it. Long before, we had made sure there was no gross damage, and if there was hidden damage - well, there was nothing we could do about repairing it, so we'd have to trust to luck. This time Varzil was strapped, tenderly, into the spare seat, and Karsten and I took our seat before the flight levers. I felt solemn and scared, but mostly just eager to get going. Karsten was going to navigate; I was going to handle the controls. I'd practised, 'dry', on a

sketched mock-up inside the shelter, and I thought I knew how to do it. It wasn't much different from driving a car, I thought, as I thrust the small brass dragon-key into the main power switch lock. There was an instant flare of green light, a shudder of power, a surge of acceleration. I hauled at the lever - it took all my strength - and we were airborne over Mars.

I relaxed, I could do it. I was flying the thing. I drew as much breath as I could against the acceleration, and Karsten, his face pale with pride, grinned at me.

'Here goes for the Polar colony,' he murmured, 'and if I see the Martian hills again, on the Last Day of All, it will be too soon for me!'

'Them's my sentiments exactly,' I quoted, and concentrated on a lever again. The instruments read the correct course. Speeds were calculated by a complex system with no Earth references, but I knew we would arrive at the Polar colony within six or seven hours.

For the first time in a long time, I felt good. This was the first step on my long road home. I fully expected to be at the Polar colony, and find that Karsten and I were the heroes of the hour.

It was astonishing how easy it was to fly the little craft. We hit some wind-buffeting as we crossed the equator, and went up above the limits of the atmosphere, finding that above the level of the sand-clouds the sun was colourless again, though still small and cold. We sighted the Polar colony through the viewing panel while we were still miles away, and began slowly to lower our saucer towards it.

We were hovering above the dome at about eight hundred feet when Karsten, who had been quieter and quieter, finally pointed downwards towards the tip of the dome.

'Look,' he said in a low voice. 'Father, unstrap your belts and come here. You must see this.'

Varzil approached as we hovered, lowering, over the field, and I realized that I was caught in the nightmare again.

Only once had I seen a big dikri ship; as we stood abandoned on the Martian desert, expecting death momentarily, watching as they left us there. The shape was printed indelibly on my heart.

And down below, over the Confederation dome, there were at least a dozen of them.

The Polar colony was in the hands of the dikri.

CHAPTER TWELVE

We didn't have to discuss it. We swung ship and got out of there fast, hoping it was fast enough. I didn't know what had happened. Neither did Varzil.

'It could be war,' he said, 'or they could have decided to - eliminate the base. If there were no Confederation personnel in this Sector, and if the Confederation ship had gone home, they might

be ignored by the Confederation for a considerable period of time. The Confederation might simply believe that the Polar colony had been wiped out by volcanic eruptions or some natural disaster, and not trouble to send replacements. It is not easy to get volunteers for re-staffing a colony on such an inhospitable world.'

Karsten's mouth worked. 'Are we going to let them do this?'

'My dear son, how can we prevent them?' Varzil sat back, looking very old. 'We cannot communicate with any ship in this system - or anywhere else - without our own equipment. Half of that was in the saucer the dikri stole from us; the other half, on Earth. You and I have probably long been listed as dead, along with Harret.'

Karsten flared, 'We could take this saucer back to Earth!'

Varzil's eyes sparked briefly, then he said, 'Too dangerous.'

I finally spoke up. 'You told me it's been done, even with Confederation small craft - and this is larger and more stable.'

'And I know it less well,' Varzil said. 'No, it is impossible. The only safe thing is to return to the shelter - '

'And wait for the dikri to remember the place, and come and polish us off? It seems to me we're

dead either way,' Karsten said angrily. 'Let's give them a run for their money! Barry, are you willing to try?'

I wasn't. I was scared to death, remembering that Varzil had told me it was like sailing a small boat round the Horn. But neither did I want to go back to the shelter to starve, freeze and eventually die there. I said firmly, 'I've learned enough maths for one winter!'

'Are you willing to take the chance of playing tag with the dikri ships if they spot us en route?' Varzil demanded. Karsten and I looked at each other, and finally nodded, first at one another, then at Varzil.

The old man sighed.

'Then I have nothing to say,' he said. 'You have grown up, both of you. You must do the flying. There are emergency rations on board, dikri rations, but we will not die of that. I am an old man; it is you who will do the work, so you must make the decision. I am in your hands.'

Karsten and I kept looking at each other. It was an awfully big step to take. Finally Karsten said, 'Now they have taken the Polar colony, what will they do to this world if it is not reported?'

'And where will they strike next?' I nodded. I knew more about the dikri than I'd known fourteen months ago.

I want it clear; I wasn't playing Save the Universe. I just wanted to get home - and I wanted to spike the dikri's guns. I think Karsten felt much the same way. We just looked at each other and nodded. Then Karsten started to unfasten his belts.

'Change places with me,' he said. 'Father, you strap yourself in. Barry, I'll take the controls on the first watch - and you set a course for Earth. We'll have to allow for orbital change.'

That was all there was to it. With no more fuss than that, the dikri saucer became an interplanetary ship, and we were in command.

Laying a course for Earth was easy. What wasn't easy was the knowledge that we were doing this in an unfamiliar ship, not really fitted for such a trip; that even Varzil was very uncertain about some of the emergency equipment. There is a big difference between navigating, and manipulating, a craft like this over the Martian desert, and navigating it on the long orbit between Earth and Mars, flying the tricky and unpredictable solar magnetic currents. It was going to take both of us to run the ship for this trip, which would take a minimum of four days or a maximum of six. We were going to be short of sleep.

Karsten spoke my thoughts aloud. 'No automatic pilot, which means we have to manhandle the thing all the way.'

Manhandle was the right word. There was a three-dimensional compass in a transparent bubble, lined up on the Sun and Polaris, and you had to haul sets of heavy levers up and down to keep

the ship in a spin oriented to your bearing in three dimensions. This was intended for a fast and manoeuvrable small craft, not limited by the speeds and directions of freefall orbits, but it was clumsy and hard to handle compared to a Confederation saucer; I realised that the dikri must have incredible physical strength.

There was another thing we didn't talk about. Dikri craft were coming and going all around Mars. If one of them spotted us - we'd had it.

I didn't know then, but I could have guessed, that the journey back to Earth was to haunt me in nightmares for months, years afterwards. Now and then, for a short time, Varzil came to take the auxiliary seat, so that Karsten or I could grab a fitful doze; but long before we sighted the small grey-greenish ball that was Earth in the viewer, we were both staggering with fatigue. In desperation, I rigged up a sort of alarm device; if my head fell backwards, a buzzer shocked me awake again. Twice, we saw flickers on the scanning screens which we were sure were dikri ships, but either we were mistaken, or they didn't see us.

I was at the controls when the levers began to fight my arms, and Karsten, white-faced, helped me to haul on them. Through gasps he panted, 'We're beginning to get inside the gravity field I'll cut the power down as far as I can - '

'How does this thing handle inside atmosphere? I don't want to set down in Tibet or the middle of the Pacific Ocean,' I gasped. Without wasting breath he got a hand loose and pointed to the planetary field-scanner below, with latitude and longitude lines. It wasn't a fine adjustment. I

supposed the dikri, familiar with these craft, flew by something analogous to visual flight rules, knowing where they wanted to go. I wasn't even too sure of the latitude and longitude of San Francisco.

The planet grew and grew in our viewscreen, swelling and swelling, seeming to rush towards us, hurtling through dead-black sky, which gradually paled and lightened. It felt a little like a ride on a too-fast roller coaster. We were skimming the magnetic currents around the planet now, making a fast pass into atmosphere, dipping out again before the decrease in speed could bum up the hull, gradually braking down with the atmosphere as our skid-brake. It was rough and bumpy and we were all sore and bruised despite restraining belts. It was lousy ship-handling and lousy navigation; we were aiming roughly at the lower Pacific edge of the North American continent. If we were lucky that would put us somewhere in California. If it weren't, we might have to hike back from South of the Border - or we might even take a nice long bath, and not the kind we'd been dreaming about all those endless months on Mars.

I felt the same strange, deathly clarity I had felt when we were almost dying of cold and thirst in the desert. Things were happening too fast after those long, long, dragging months. I didn't expect to be alive an hour from that minute. We managed somehow to skid down and hover, wobbling, five thousand feet above land. At least we weren't over the Pacific. Now all we had to do was pick a nice deserted area to land in. And then Karsten gasped and poked me in the ribs, without the breath to speak.

'Dikri craft!'

They hovered before us, small, deadly and grey, spinning in that momentary pause before rushing in. Karsten and I hit the levers almost together and got away from there, fast; but almost before we felt the surge of acceleration we knew we were lost. They were fresh, they knew how to handle their ships, they had everything going for them. I began to think I'd rather crash.

The ship swayed and seemed to roll silently beneath us. The straps cut into my belly with the force of acceleration. Behind, us, far astern and yet gaining, came the three dikri saucers.

Then, almost at the last minute, something roared off our bows and swung around with a thunder of jets. Two enormous military jets, swept-winged, huge, so strangely and dearly familiar that I wanted to cry, roared past - and I saw the dikri ships stop, with that unbelievable hovering motion in fast mid-flight - which is so unthinkable to anyone flying conventional planes, jet or rockets - reverse, and whisk out of sight. I hardly believed it. Karsten said, between his dry lips, 'Saved by a couple of Strategic Air Command planes. Those pilots will have fun chasing them and then go back to base and be called damned liars by their commanders. I'd like to send them all a bottle of whisky or a bunch of roses or something!'

Chasing the three saucers, the planes disappeared and we cautiously lowered our craft further and further. There was a wide open desert-like patch of country, with clumps of low green Joshua trees, visible now as wavery green. We hauled back at the levers, and with the last of our strength managed to set the craft down.

We were back on Earth. Fifteen months after we had left it, after the most incredible adventure anyone had known, I was home again. I felt dead and empty. 'What now?'

'Now,' said Varzil, 'we hide the saucer - the dikri must not find it again - and try to get to the nearest town.' He gestured to Karsten to unfasten his straps. Karsten asked anxiously, 'can you walk. Father?'

'I can do anything I have to do.' Varzil pulled himself upright. He looked dead beat, but he smiled, a very likeable smile. 'I told you, Barry, that we would bring you back at the earliest opportunity. I am sorry that it took just a little longer than I foresaw.'

That did it. We all stood there and howled with laughter until we were weak.

But I still felt anxious. We were wearing the dikri uniforms, and they would pass as normal coveralls or Army fatigues, and I supposed Varzil had some money. But I didn't even know what state we were in, and there still remained the problem of the dikri, flying around in their saucers.

I asked, a little anxiously, 'What will you do now?'

Varzil said, 'We must hide the dikri saucer. We will need it later. You see, I had, even in the Berkeley house, no transmitter; it is forbidden to install such a powerful transmitter on a planet without official Galactic representation. We're here more or less unofficially, you know, for scientific study; but it means I am strictly forbidden to do anything to reveal myself to the

authorities of your planet. However, there are three other scientists here on a similar project, though none of them have a small craft like my saucer which the dikri captured. If I can reach one of them, I can pick up a signal from the receivers they will have. Receivers are allowed, you see. It will tell me if there is a Confederation ship in the system, or when one will arrive, and I can take the dikri saucer up, rendezvous with it, and make my delayed report - and go home.' That had only one disadvantage. 'Will your Confederation ship be willing to rendezvous in space with a dikri craft? Won't they shoot you down, thinking you're a dikri?'

Karsten said, patiently, "They won't shoot anybody down. They'll probably think we are dikri wanting a conference, or to surrender. They will be surprised, but they won't hurt us, and when we board, they'll find out their mistake.'

Meanwhile, we had to find the other scientists from Varzil's home world; and I was getting pretty anxious. I said, "The first thing I've got to do is to telephone my parents. I've been missing for more than a year, and they must think I'm dead - or that I've joined the Foreign Legion or something.' I felt sick and a little trembly. What was I going to tell them?

The saucer was, of course, mounted on rollers, which made it easy to slide into the bushes. A passing truck driver gave the three of us a lift without asking any questions. A few very careful questions from me told us that we were in Texas. Well, I thought glumly, we only missed California by about nine hundred miles.

The truck dropped us near the edge of a small Texas city whose name I wasn't sure of. Before I

could call my family, I realised, I'd have to find out where I was! We stood for a moment not speaking, getting adjusted to being safe back on Earth.

It was frightfully hot. We had become so accustomed to the bitter cold of Mars, and the even more bitter cold of the unheated spacecraft, that we all felt weak and the sweat poured down our faces. I was coming slowly to terms with the awareness that I was safe, I was back home, in a few minutes I might hear my parents' voices. I felt strangely torn; this was the end of something, for it was unlikely that I would ever see Karsten or Varzil again.

Karsten broke the strange, tense silence between us. He said, 'Pardon me for being so prosaic at this fateful moment, but I'm hungry. Father, you had some American money when we left; did the dikri take it from you?'

"They took nothing,' Varzil said. 'It was so long ago I had almost forgotten. I suggest we all find ourselves a meal.'

Ordering a large and varied meal in the little cafe. we attracted no attention, or so I thought. I went to the telephone, and tried to call my parents in Berkeley, but I heard the phone ringing in the empty house, and felt almost sick with frustration. I kept saying to myself, I've waited fourteen months. I can wait a few hours longer, but it didn't help.

Karsten kept looking anxiously around, and finally Varzil sharply told him to sit still. 'You are acting like a child!'

Karsten said, almost inaudibly, "There is someone looking through the window at us. I think it is a Changer.'

'You have dikri on the brain,' I told him with exasperation. 'If they think of us at all, they think we're long dead on Mars.'

'Yes, even if they saw us land,' Varzil said, 'they would think we were one of their own.' He looked tired, tired to exhaustion. I hated to think of him trying to fly the dikri saucer up to their mother ship. I hated to think of the imminent parting, and yet I, too, was eager to get home. I realised I was going to miss them, and I felt angry with myself for getting so emotional about the whole thing. I ate fried chicken with dogged insistence, staring at my plate. In a few minutes I'd try to call Berkeley again.

Karsten said sharply, in a whisper, "There is that - man - again!'

I twisted around. The man was short and thick-set and he did seem to be staring at us. A dikri in the human metamorphosis? Or just an ordinary, ugly man? We probably looked like three beatup tramps in the worn dikri uniforms. But Karsten said urgently, 'Father! Are you weaponed? Our rods would function again, in the field of the planet - '

'Keep your voice down!' Varzil ordered. 'What is the matter with you, Karsten? Yes, I took one of the dikri weapons from the saucer. But I'm not going to use it here!' He paid the bill for the

meal and we left the little cafe.

It was getting dark, the sun huge and red at the flat horizon between the low buildings. Varzil said, 'We may have to spend the night here, if Barry cannot reach his parents at once. As for us, we must locate - '

He broke off, for a thick, unmistakable voice behind us said, 'Don't move!'

Nevertheless, I moved. I might have known.

Karsten said, 'Rellin!' in a voice of hatred and loathing.

The dikri looked smug, if human feelings could be transmitted to such a face. It said, 'Looking for a small craft here without permission, I discover an old enemy. No, Varzil - ' It swung the weapon in its hand towards the older man. 'I am curious how you got here. You seem to be my evil genius. However, since you have long been considered dead - '

'My corpse,' Varzil said softly. 'How will you move it through the streets here, or account for my being found dead months after my supposed death?'

Rellin paused for only a moment, but in that moment I leaped. I thought. If I can hurt it, if I can make it do that dragon-changing stunt right here on the street, it won't dare stay around where anyone can find it. At the same moment, as Rellin stepped back before my leap, Varzil drew his

weapon and fired. There was a bright blue flash and pain seared along my leg.

Karsten shouted 'Help! Help!' and I heard the sound of running feet, shouts and cries. Rellin had staggered back against a lamp post and its flesh writhed, moved, but with what must have been fearful effort it maintained the human shape. It snarled deep in its throat, and I braced myself for the terrible dragon-rush, but instead it swung towards Karsten and raised its weapon.

I shouted 'No, Rellin!' and charged.

Something struck my head like a thousand tons of TNT and I fell a million miles into outer space and disappeared.

PART 3

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My head felt as if it were bursting.

I opened my eyes to see Karsten bending over me, his eyes anxious and worried. I said. 'This seems to be where I came in.'

He said, in a low frightened voice, 'Barry, Rellin went - and took the girl with it! Are you all right? Have you still got the key?'

My head spinning, I sat up. Time kaleidoscoped, slid together, and I remembered where I was: in the Abilene motel, with Lisa Barnard-

Lisa! Lisa was gone - and Rellin had her!

Karsten said, white-faced. 'I couldn't stop them; Rellin said it would kill the girl unless I let it go.'

I hauled myself to my feet. 'Where did they go?'

'I think Rellin's heading for the saucer. You know - where we hid it, outside of town. That was why I had to stay here; to make sure no one from your planet had found it. Rellin has my father, Barry, I think it's hidden him aboard!'

Confused, I pulled myself together. 'Lisa's car is outside! Come on - if you know the way to the saucer, I can follow them!'

We ran for the car; fortunately Lisa had left the key in the ignition, and seconds later we were speeding along the highway out of town. At Karsten's direction I swung on to a country road and headed southwards.

Karsten said, 'You know me now!'

'Yes - but how did I get into the hospital?'

Karsten quickly filled me in. 'When you fell, Rellin swung its weapon on us - but evidently someone had heard the sounds of the fight and called the police. We heard sirens, and Rellin ran. My father and I ran, too; we were afraid of being questioned. I knew they would find you and take care of you. I was afraid Rellin would find us and take the key from us, so my father stuck it in the pocket of your coverall - Here, turn, this way.'

My foot pressed the accelerator and Lisa's car roared. I felt sick and shaken at the thought of Lisa in the hands of the dikri. True, Varzil had told me they would not normally dare to interfere with a native of a planet under observation, like Earth. But Rellin had broken law after law; it might be desperate enough to feel that a dead witness was safer than a live one.

I said, 'Have you been here all this time?'

'Yes - my father collapsed, after the fight with Rellin, and was seriously ill; I had to find a place to stay, and care for him. We were able to find a compatriot, here to study meteors, and he sent us a little money for expenses. Twice I tried to call your house in Berkeley and leave a message, but I was not able to reach you. I did find out, from the hospital, that someone had come to take you home. Father was very ill - we could not even think of leaving and in any case you had the key to the saucer.'

'He is better now, though?'

'Oh, yes,' Karsten said, 'but - not very strong. He needs care, and rest, and peace of mind. He has been through too much.'

So have you, I thought, looking at Karsten's drawn face in the darkness, but I didn't say so. I only said, 'How will you get home?'

'My father's scientist friend tells me that there is a Confederation ship just beyond the orbit of the moon; it moved away during the last months to keep clear of your moonshot satellites, but now it has come back. If we had the saucer, and the key - '

'We'll do our damnedest about the saucer,' I said between my teeth. 'Where is that hiding place?'

'Turn at this cotton patch,' Karsten instructed, 'and you'd better turn off the headlights.'

I switched off, slackening speed as I did so. We neared a clump of trees and bushes, and stopped. Karsten got out, closing the door very quietly, and pointed.

'The saucer is hidden there,' he whispered, 'and Rellin must have taken the girl aboard.'

We thrust through the brushwood, flinching at the mesquite thorns that tore our faces, tensed against the sound of our own footsteps.

The saucer rose against the darkness, a darker loom in the night. If Varzil and the girl were in there, they might almost as well be on Mars for all we could do for them. And yet I had to try. Lisa had been the first friendly voice in that dreadful time when I had lost myself. Varzil - Varzil had kept us alive during that trek across the Martian desert, which even now seemed like a nightmare. Now that I saw the dikri saucer again, now that I remembered that awful ordeal of cold and hunger and pain, the nightmarish flight and the horror of the dikri, I wanted to turn tail and run, to say to Karsten: This isn't my fight, I got into it by accident; this time I'm staying out of it. And yet if I did I knew I'd lose something worse than my memory. Karsten kept silent, and so did I, calculating our chances.

It was just crazy enough to work. Rellin wouldn't be expecting us, if we were lucky. It would think, with its hostages, it could take off in peace and quiet, and dispose of them as it saw fit. My own impulse, to call out the cops - or the Air Force - died almost as soon as I thought of it. Sure, if they saw the flying saucer right in front of their eyes, they'd believe me. They'd probably even help rescue Lisa.

But then what? Political complications, maybe even interplanetary war! We here on Earth simply weren't ready for a Galactic civilisation.

We took a few cautious steps up the ramp. Nobody shot at us.

I whispered, 'Are you sure Rellin is here?'

'It has come here before.'

We went on up the ramp. I was shaking. Suppose Rellin, who certainly must have a spacecraft key of its own, decided to shake us off once and for all by taking off while we were halfway up the ramp? We reached the door, and pushed against it.

It was locked.

That didn't matter. I had a key which would fit it. But if we walked in -

Suddenly the blaze of an idea flared in my mind. I remembered the controls of the dikri ship, as Varzil had taught me. Quickly, I jammed the key into the outside lock. 'The safety device,' I told Karsten. 'Remember? All hatches have to be closed and locked shut. With the key still in the door. this hatch is locked open - and Rellin can't take off!'

We left the lock jammed, and stole down the narrow metal corridor. With a strange sense of déjà vu, I recognized my dream. No wonder I thought I had spent some time on a submarine!

We paused at the cabin door. I heard a cry from inside, and started to rush it, but Karsten held me back.

'Let me go! Lisa - '

'We can't rush Rellin, or it'll kill my father and the girl,' Karsten said. 'I have a weapon - ' He showed me the narrow glass rod I had seen that night in Berkeley. 'We have to get them out of firing range somehow.'

We stood in the corridor, indecisive. All sorts of crazy plans spun in my head and were rejected; to set the saucer on fire, to yell and hide till he came out to find us -

'I have it,' I whispered, shoving Karsten towards the second door. I remembered that this led into a room filled with stored equipment and bunks. 'When Rellin finds out the lock is jammed, and can't take off, it'll come to investigate - '

We stood flattened inside the metal door as the lights began to flicker on and off. Rellin was preparing a take-off, and I was sure Karsten was right about what Rellin planned: to leave the atmosphere of Earth and dispose of the hostages in space. I tensed against the eerie fear, the flickering lights. If we were wrong, if Rellin did not bother to investigate the jammed lock, if it took off anyhow, we would be flung around, without safety belts, like eggs in a freight car.

The lights flickered again; there was a soft whining metallic sound, then the creak of a door, and the hideous dragon-head, incongruous above an ordinary business suit too small for the grotesque form, thrust through the door. Karsten yelled, fired twice in rapid succession; there was an inhuman horrid howl, the howl of a dikri in anguish, and it whirled with that terrible unstoppable energy and charged us. Karsten fired again; I threw myself down into a crouch and

butted, hard, with my head. Rellin went down, howling, twitched and lay still, convulsing.

I asked, 'Is it dead?'

'No,' Karsten said between his teeth, 'but give me time.'

But I left him standing over Rellin and burst into the cabin. Varzil, slumped against safety straps, said my name weakly as I came in, but I had eyes only for Lisa, white and terrified in the seat. I unstrapped her and helped her up.

'Take it easy,' I said with rough tenderness. 'The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand, or something like that. Don't yell; just give me one of your nylons or something. We've got somebody to tie up.'

You've got to hand it to that girl. She didn't even ask the million questions that must have been on the tip of her tongue. She just bent down and stripped off one of her nurse's white nylons, and I tossed it to Karsten.

'Here,' I said, 'the bursting strength of these things is probably more than even a dikri can manage. Tie the damned thing up.' Varzil was weakly unfastening his own straps, and I said, 'Go and help him, or Karsten's likely to strangle it, and I don't imagine you want that.'

'No,' said Varzil grimly, 'Rellin will return to the Confederation headquarters with us, to stand

trial for murder and attempted murder - and the Confederation will deal with the dikri at the Polar colony.'

I held Lisa back so that she would not see the dragon. But when I thrust my head into the corridor Rellin was human again, with bleeding face and torn clothing: only a tall, slab-faced man, the man I had known, briefly, as Roland.

I had not remembered him. But my unconscious mind had known. It had been wiped clean of everything save fear.

'Why,' Lisa said in wonder, coming into the corridor behind me, 'it's Mr Roland. Then he wasn't your father, Barry!' She stared at me. 'What sort of crazy game of international spies-'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I was always the innocent bystander.*

I couldn't even try to tell her, now. She deserved some explanation; but the true one was too fantastic for the moment. I said, 'Lisa, will you get out and wait in your car? I'll be with you in a minute.'

I stood in the hallway while they fastened Rellin into a seat, locking it firmly so that when it recovered strength, it could not escape. Varzil retrieved the key from the outside lock and said, 'And now we must go. There is no great hurry - the mother ship from the Confederation will remain in this system throughout the next fortnight - but I confess I am eager to be on home

territory. And now that I know you are safe, Barry, there is nothing to keep us.'

I faced them both, hating to say goodbye. We had been through so much together; they seemed somehow closer than family to me. I had found them again and now, irrevocably, there was this parting. My throat lumped up, and I could hardly speak.

Karsten, too, seemed moved. He swallowed hard and said, 'Why don't you come with us? We could get a permit for you - '

For a moment the temptation grew wildly in me. I had only gone the first step into space. There was so much I did not know. To see the stars - Then I shook my head firmly. I couldn't do that to my family. Not again.

Varzil said, 'Barry. Keep your eyes open. I will give your name to our other contacts in this star system; there are a few natives of this planet who know of our existence; it is helpful to us to have friends here. And' - a smile broke over his drawn face - 'in a few years, we will be back. I have not yet completed my work here.'

'And if he doesn't come back,' Karsten said firmly, 'I will - and I'll see you then!' He held out his hand, then suddenly, roughly, hugged me. 'I'm going to miss you,' he said. 'I'm going to miss you like the devil!'

I was going to miss him too. A big hunk of my life was going with them. My eyes were stinging

as I stumbled down the ramp, alone, and heard the door of the saucer lock behind me, cold, irrevocable, shutting me out forever from the world of my adventure.

By the time I reached Lisa's car, I had myself in hand again. She slid over from the wheel as I approached, saying. 'You drive. I can't without my shoes on.'

I took the wheel in silence, staring upwards at the pattern of lights which flickered blue, amber, green, rose silently higher and higher and disappeared. Then I put the car in gear and flicked on the headlights, and we got away from there. Lisa was silent all the way back to town. Finally she said. "That crazy aeroplane of theirs - it looked almost like a flying saucer!'

And I knew what I must say.

'Don't be silly! You didn't see any little green men inside it, did you?*

'Do you want to go back to the motel where you were staying?' she asked. It sounded like a dead anticlimax. I turned to her and laughed. 'No. I've got no reason to go back there now. I might just as well catch a plane to Berkeley.' Then I stopped the car, pulling to the edge of the road, and laughed softly at her crestfallen face.

'I'll be back,' I promised. 'I've got something to come back for now.'

It had been a long, long time since I'd kissed a girl. It was about time I started getting back to

myself. Now that I knew who I was - well, it had been a long time between girls.

EPILOGUE

It was raining in San Francisco when the plane landed, and they were all there to meet me: Father, grinning all over his face; Nina looking awfully glad to see me; and Win, small and very serious. I knew, when I saw them all, just how glad I was to be back, and just how afraid they must have been that I'd disappear again and never be heard of. It made me admire my father all over again. He'd known I might not come back - and yet he let me go. With a family like that, I might even be able to tell them the truth someday. But not now. They'd been through enough and this burden would be too much. For now, it would be enough that I was back - and myself again.

My father held the car door open; Nina got into the back so that Win and I could sit up front. This had been the special treat when we were little kids, and I felt touched by it. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She reached up her hand and patted me, then let me go and I got in, letting Win sit by the window.

Father started the car, then asked, 'Did you find out what you wanted to know, Barry?'

I nodded, and grinned at him. 'I found out.'

I knew I didn't have to tell him any more. Someday, when I could, I would, and he knew it; for

now, if I didn't want to say anything, I knew he wouldn't ask. It felt wonderful. I was home.

It was Win who asked, 'Where were you all that time, Barry? Did you find out?'

I winked at her, put my arm around her and squeezed. 'As a matter of fact,' I said, dead pan, 'I got kidnapped on a flying saucer and they took me to Mars - and I had to wait till we could steal a saucer and fly back.'

'Oh, you!' She flounced away and stared out of the window, then, giggling a little, snuggled back against me and put her head on my shoulder. 'What did I do to have a brother like you?'

It was Nina, leaning over from the back seat, who asked the important question. She took my free hand, the one that wasn't around Win, and asked, 'But - you're really all right now, Barry?'

'Yes,' I said, knowing it was true. I had caught up with the lost year; I had lost myself and found myself again, and now it was time to go on to the next thing. Karsten would be back someday and there were lots of flying saucers around..

'Yes,' I said again, 'I'm all right.'

Endless Universe (1975) endless

universe

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

ACE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS NEW YORK

A shorter version of this novel was originally published as ENDLESS VOYAGE.

ENDLESS UNIVERSE

An Ace Science Fiction Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace edition / May 1975 Fifth printing / April 1983

All rights reserved. Copyright © 1975, 1979 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Cover art by Attila Hejja

This book may not be reproduced in whole

or in part, by mimeograph or any other means,

without permission. For information address: Ace Science Fiction Books, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016

ISBN: 0-441-20668-9

Ace Science Fiction Books are published by Charter Communications, Inc., '200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

" 'Tis not too late to seek a better world."

Tennyson

Part One PLANETS ARE FOR SAYING GOODBYE I

Planets are for saying goodbye.

That's an old saying in the Explorers. I never believed it before. It never really hit me.

Never again. You never really realize what never means. It's a word you use all the time but it means ... it means never. NEVER. Not in all the millions of billions of trillions of . .

Get hold of yourself, dammit.

Everything on this planet had changed, but not the pattern of the Explorer Ship: it was lighted now from inside, and outlined in silver; a chained Titan, shadowed against the dark mass of the mountain that rose behind the new city.

The city was still raw, a mass of beams and scars in the wounded red clay of the planet's surface. Gildoran had first seen the great ship outlined against the mountain two years ago, planetside time—before the city had risen there, before any-thing had risen there—and every day since, but

now it felt as if he hadn't ever seen it before. There were strange sharp edges on everything, as if the air had dissolved and he saw them hard-edged in space.

Never again, I was a fool to think anything could be different.

How could Janni have done this to me?

I thought she was different. Every fool kid thinks that about the first woman he cares about.

Gildoran passed through the gates. They were still guarded, but that was only a formality. On every planet Gildoran had known—he could re-member four in twenty-two years of biological time—the earthworms kept away from Explorer ships.

I took Janni. I thought she'd have to feel the way I did. Wonder, and awe. But she was bored. I should have known then, but instead I was flat-tered, I thought it was just that she'd rather be alone with me. Maybe she would. Then.

That seems a long time ago now.

The guard didn't bother checking the offered ident disk. It was a formality anyhow. Gildoran's identity was on his face, like all Explorers. He knew what was whispered about them, but lifelong training made it beneath Gildoran's dig-nity to notice it or seem to remember it.

But I remember. Keep away, they say. Keep away from the Explorers. Keep your children away. They'll steal your children, steal your women.

I wouldn't have stolen Janni. But I might have stayed with her.

He walked with the arrogant pride of all the Explorers, conscious, and proud, of the differ-ences that set him off—set him off cruelly, a planetman might have said—from the rest of the swarming humanity around the city, the crews working to load the ships. He stood seven feet seven, although he was tall even for an Explorer, due to a childhood and youth spent at mini-mal gravity. The white—paper-white—skin and bleached white hair were colorless from years of hard radiation. He knew there were other dif-ferences, bone-deep, marrow-deep, cell-deep. Gene-deep. He never thought about them. But he had known from childhood that no one else ever forgot them.

Janni hadn't forgotten them. Not for a moment.

The crews around the ship parted to let him through, edging faintly back as he passed. But this was at the edge of his consciousness. He would have noticed it only if they hadn't.

Had she only wanted an exotic? Was it only his strangeness that had attracted her? Not romance, but a perverse desire for the bizarre, the alien, the freakish?

Did women like Janni boast of an Explorer lover, as they might boast the romantic conquest of a

gladiator from Vega 16?

Feeling faintly sick, Gildoran moved toward the refuge of the ship.

It's beautiful, more beautiful than anything else they'll ever build here. But it doesn't belong, and neither do I, and now I know it.

Behind him the new city was swarming with life, multiplex human, parahuman and nonhu-man life, the life of a Galaxy which had achieved the Transmitter and was no longer limited any-where by space or time. Life showed all sizes, shapes, colors, and integuments. Isolation and differences had vanished. All through history, from the first stirrings of consciousness in man and nonman, transportation—of people, of goods and services and ideas—had been the one bottleneck jamming mankind to an even rate of growth. But with the advent of the Transmitter, consciousness in the Galaxy had outstripped that limitation, and now there were no such limita-tions.

Or only one limitation. The speed of the Explorers.

Without us, none of this would be here. But we're still the freaks. We live in time and distance. They live free of them.

But only because of us.

The hint of a new planet to be opened, a new world to be developed and explored, the creation of new labor markets, new projects and products, new work of every kind from running ditchdigging machines to selling women for use and pleasure, had brought them swarming here from the first minute the Transmitter booths had been hooked into the Galactic network. Right here in the city behind him there were big red men from Antares and small bluish men from Aldebaran, furred men from Corona Borealis Six and scaly men from Vega 14, and there were women to match all of them and more. Every new, just-opened world was like this. A carnival of new life for the young, of second—or third, or twenty-' third—chances for the old; for the misfits, the excitement-seekers, the successes wanting new worlds to conquer and the failures who hadn't lost hope that this time they'd make it big.

But Gildoran walked through it, indifferent. He didn't bother looking back at the city.

There's nothing there for me now. There never was. Only Janni, and I know now she was never really there. Not for me.

He had no part in this world anymore. Once the Transmitter was set up on any world, the Explor-ers were finished with it. The Explorer ship which had found the world, explored it, subdued it suf-ficiently to build a Transmitter there, officially opened it, had nothing left to do. Nothing, that is, except to collect their tremendous fee from Head Center, and lift off to find another one. The Gypsy Moth had been here for a year and a half. It was time to move on.

There are other worlds out there, waiting. Plenty of them.

Yes, damn it, and women on all of them.

Someone called Gildoran by name and he looked round, seeing over the heads of the crowd the white bleached hair and starred tiaras of two of his companions from the Gypsy Moth. He slackened pace to let them catch up with him.

Raban was twice Gildoran's age, a man in his forties—biological time, of course, although he had probably been born several hundred years before by sidereal or objective reckoning—with the small stars on his sleeve that meant official-dom on the ship. Ramie was a small, fair girl whose great dark eyes showed that she had be-longed to one of the pigmented races before the ship radiation got in its work. Now her skin and hair were lucent pale, like Gildoran's own, but the eyes retained a long, curious tilt, and her voice had a light and fluting quality.

"It won't be long now, will it?"

"About midnight," Raban said. "Sorry to leave?"

Sorry, oh God, a wrench like death, never again, never again. . . . Oh, Janni, Janni, Janni . . .

Gildoran made himself grin, although it felt stiff. "You must be kidding. It was a beautiful planet, but look what they've done to it." He ges-tured toward the noise, and construction scars behind them. "Like a big nasty mushroom grow-ing up overnight."

Ramie waved at the night sky behind her. Beyond the blurring of the first vapor lights, com-ing on in the growing sunset, a few pale stars were visible behind the mountain.

"There are lots of other worlds out there. One thing the Universe never runs short of is planets." She smiled shyly at Gildoran, "Why aren't you at the Ceremonial Leavetaking?"

"Why aren't you?" They all laughed. Raban said gravely, "I've been thanking all the Gods I ever heard of, as well as a few I made up for the occasion, that I'm still important enough to duck such occasions."

"I almost went," Ramie said. "After all, this world has been home to me for a couple of years. I grew up here, really. It ought to mean something to me, even if I'm not sure what. And there's something funny about realizing that we'll never see it again—or at least anyone we've ever known on it. . . that even if we spent six months or less in space, and landed on another world with a Transmitter, and came back, it would be fifty or sixty years later planetside, and the girls I played with would be grandmothers."

Never again. . . .

Gildoran said, low, "I know. It hit me, too." Raban said "Planets are for leaving. For an Explorer, anyhow. After a while—" Gildoran sensed that he meant to comfort them, somehow, even though his voice was hard and unemotional, "you get so they all look the same to you."

They fell silent, crossing the great, grassy, un-developed expanse at the foot of the mountain, toward the ships, and Gildoran thought about planets. Before this one, they had all been the same, so maybe they would again. He'd known four. Not counting, of course, the world where he'd been born, though he didn't remember that one. He knew where it was, of course, as everyone seemed to know, although it was bad form to let anyone know that you knew. When you were an Explorer, your home world was your Ship, and the planet where you had actually been birthed, or decanted, or cultured, or hatched, was something you were expected to forget.

He was Gildoran, and his world was the Gypsy Moth. And that was all he was. Forever. His offi-cial legal ident was G-M Gildoran, just as Raban was G-M Gilraban, and Ramie was G-M Gilramie, and his only compatriots were those bearing the G-M Gil- prefix to their names.

Because you had no other world. You could never go back to any planet, once you left it; the inexorable march of time and slippage outside the sun-systems meant that once you lifted your Ship from any planet you had ever visited, it would be generations further on, unrecognizable, by the time you landed and could visit it again.

While you were living on a planet, of course, you were free of the inexorable drag of time. You could be here today and on Vega 19 tomorrow and three hours later step into a Transmitter booth and be back here again, or on Aldebaran or Antares, and only three hours would have elapsed. (Oh, technically there was a three-quarter of a second lapse inside the booth. It had something to do with Galactic Drag.) But outside the planetary magnetic fields, the freedom from time, the

simul-taneous transit all over the Galaxy, was gone. You spent six weeks, six months, a year in space, aging only by your biological clock inside. Your cells aged six months, a year. But the Galaxy went on without you; all the network of planets linked by Transmitter went on slipping past, and when you landed on a planet again, by sidereal time it was eighty or a hundred years later.

So when you left, when you said goodbye to a planet it was always forever. And the new worlds might be beautiful, or terrible, but they were al-ways new and strange; and the old worlds, if you faced the shock and went back to them, were new and strange, too. You were immortal, as far as the Galaxy was concerned, but you were always shaken loose from what you had known be-fore. ...

Gildoran turned to Raban and asked suddenly "Is it always like this? Is every new world spoiled—every time? Are we always just finding new worlds for people to come in and wreck them, and use them up?"

Raban laughed, but the younger two could see how grave his eyes were. He said, "Remember, they don't think of it as spoiling, but developing; civilizing. Most people like their worlds built up a little. Don't judge them."

He shook his feet fastidiously free of the mud at the base of the great ship, and said, laughing, "Maybe civilization isn't so bad. I've often won-dered why we don't have them pave the ap-proaches to the ship. After all, we've had to use this walkway for two years now, and I've

wrecked my footgear every time!"

He pointed. "Look, the servicemen are clearing away the scaffolding. We'll probably be cleared by midnight. I know everyone was supposed to check in by Tenth Hour. Now they'll probably have a stack of last-minute errands for every-body."

He swung up the steps; Gildoran and Ramie followed more slowly, turning to look down at the workmen loading materials and provisions through the lower hatch ways. Small shacks, rec-reation units, all were being taken down and rolled away on enormous trundling cranes and machinery. Eventually, the steps themselves would go.

The girl at his side, Gildoran climbed the steps and passed into the familiar, pale-gilded, coollighted halls of the lower levels. They were both silent as they went along the lower corridors, stepped into a gravity-shaft and rose upward to the living levels. Raban had dropped off some-where below, on business of his own; the younger two did not really miss him. He was older and, at least technically, still in authority over them, so that they felt freer when he had gone. But they didn't talk. Gildoran was lost in wrenching re-grets and memories, and the girl was silent, too.

I wonder if everyone has something they can't bear to leave, and knows they must.

Ramie had friends here—she spoke of them— she could have had lovers.

Is it always like this? For everybody?

Nobody ever speaks of it. But it must be.

On Level Four, they paused at a desk with a chronometer behind it, and pressed their ident disks against it, watching the patterns—in-dividual as thumbprints—flare on the telltales. A pleasant voice came from the desk:

"Ramie, you're wanted on the Bridge level, please. Gildoran, please report to the Nursery level."

"Duty tonight? We must be closer to Liftoff than I thought," Gildoran commented, and Ramie gig-gled. "They've reprogrammed that thing. It didn't always say please like that. Rushka must have had some new psych briefing." She stepped into an elevator; Gildoran took a slidewalk in the oppo-site direction. Damn, was he set for a spell of Nursery duty? He quailed faintly at the thought. He was fond enough of children, and the little ones growing up kept the ship from being dull in the long stretches between the stars; but he still liked them better once they were housebroken and articulate!

Still, like everyone else, he supposed he had to take his turn at it. He had a faint atavistic wish they'd leave it to the girls—at least biologically they were supposed to have an instinct for it— but he knew that notion was ridiculous, especially on Ship.

The Nursery was in what would be the maximal gravity level of the ship when they were out in

space, and had the optimal conditions of light, air, decoration, and service. Gildoran paused in front of the translucent glass a moment before enter-ing, watching a small group of three children—a nine-year-old and two five-year-olds—sitting on the floor having their supper, raptly listening to a story told by one of the huge, fuzzy brown humanoids who went, for some reason nobody on the Ships knew, by the name of Poohbears. One of the big creatures saw Gildoran through the wall, signalled for the children to go on with their meal, and waddled toward the doorway, puffing in spite of the extra oxygen rations in the Nursery level. Sinuous and freemoving in the low-gravity ship conditions of space, they were clumsy on a planet, dragging themselves along slowly.

The Poohbear said in her sweet, silvery voice "Gildoran, Rae wants you back at the Nursery office. Could you go back there directly and not disturb the children?"

"I will. Thanks, Pooh," he said with an affec-tionate smile. He supposed it was some sort of hereditary memory or something, but the Poohbears were everyone's perfect mother image. Maybe, he thought, it's just imprinting; after all, they're the first mothers any Explorer ever knows. They were the one race not bleached by space, and their long, dark fleece remained untouched and obstinately dark brown. On every Explorer ship, they were the specialist-experts with the babies.

In the Nursery office, Gilrae—the Biological Of-ficer for this year—was looking through a group of records, and frowning over them. She had al-ready discarded the planet-wear and was wearing the shipboard Explorer custume of a narrow support-band around her breasts and a

narrow kilt about her hips, with thin sandals strapped low on her ankles. It was hard to tell her age, she had not changed since Gildoran could remember. She had been his first teacher when he was eight years old, but she looked little older than Ramie. Now her face was drawn and Gildoran fancied, with sur-prise, that she had been weeping.

Did she find something—or someone—here that she can't bear to leave?

She raised her head and said "Doran, you're back early. I thought you'd be at the Ceremonial Leavetaking."

"I intended to, but at the last moment I didn't."

She tapped the Record scanner before her. She said "We're going to be shorthanded, Doran. I just had word. Gilmarin went by Transmitter to Head Center—they sent us word of new Galactic maps—and he must have made a routing mistake; he hasn't been heard of. And Giltallen is . . . " She stopped and swallowed, hard. "He left a mes-sage. He's not coming back."

Gildoran felt an answering catch of breath.

"Tallen. How could he? He's been with us—how old is he? He's old."

"It happens." Now Gildoran understood Rae's tears. In a sudden, intense surge of loyalty, he went and put his arms around the older woman. "Rae, don't cry. Maybe he'll change his mind,

there are a couple of hours still."

"He won't. He's been talking about it for years now. . . and once a planet gets hold of you . . ." Rae sobbed once, then struggled to control her-self. She said steadily, "We can't judge him."

But I can. I do. I was tempted, too. But here I am . . .

Rae said, "I thought we were going to lose you, too, Gildoran."

He silently shook his head. Now that he was aboard again, now that he was among the familiar things of his life, Janni seemed a brief madness.

Different, not part of my world. . . .

"Planets are for saying goodbye," he said. Her smile was faint and weak. "You're sure? Because I have to send you out again, everyone else is needed for last Liftoff check. Have you ever been to the Hatchery on Antares Four?"

"Are we short?"

Rae nodded, looked around to where a little girl of twelve was working at the files and said, "Gil-lori, I'm parched. Run out and fetch me some-thing to drink, precious." The child ran out of the Section, and Rae said, "We're desperately short, Doran. Remember, only two of the last batch

sur-vived, and only one before that. Lori is twelve, which means she can take an apprentice position in a year, but we've had bad luck. Our crew strength is down to forty, and only four children under fifteen. And . . . you know as well as I do that some of the Elders won't be able to handle full duty shifts for a full fifteen years more. We ought to have four or five youngsters ready to take over."

Doran nodded. From his childhood he had been trained to think in terms of five-year, eight-year, ten-year voyages.

"You'll have to make the Hatchery trip."

Gildoran started with surprise. Normally only the older members of the ship's crew were sent on lengthy Transmitter errands. But Gilrae was speaking as if this were a simple one-planet hop to fetch fruits for supper.

"The Gypsy Moth has special Extended Credit through Head Center," she told him, "and the Antares Hatchery works with us. We ought to have at least six babies; try to get them at six weeks old and with a full month of biological mothering; and birthed, not hatched."

Gildoran gulped. He said, "How in the sixteen Galaxies do I carry six yowling kids through four Transmitter laps?"

Gilrae laughed. "Rent a Baby-Haul, of course. And take Ramie with you." Her face was

suddenly very serious. "Doran. Get a Cleared Explorer Route from Head Center. We think Gilmarin tried to plot his own route and strayed onto one of the worlds where they still. . . don't like Explorers. Never forget; one rock thrown, six hours' delay— and you're gone. You could be a hundred years gone."

Her words sobered Gildoran like a faceful of ice-water. All his life he had known this . . . miss a liftoff and you're gone forever. But Gilmarin had been his playmate—picked up on the same world as Gildoran, surviving the extensive operations which allowed the Explorers to survive in space with him, his Nurserymate until they were ten, his companion ever since—and now he was gone; irrevocably gone, lost somewhere in the thou-sands of inhabited worlds in space. . . .

"Rae, can't we put a tracer on him, send some-one out after him? Head Center could trace his Transmitter coordinates . . ."

Rae's pale, narrow face went taut. Like all Explorers she was colorless, but her eyes were large and violet, and they seemed now to fill her face. She said almost in a whisper, "We tried, Doran. No luck. We followed the coordinates for three planets and stepped into a riot on Lasselli's World. He must have walked right into the middle of it. All Gilhart and I could do was clear out. Hart applied for Lasselli's World to be blocked to Explorers, but that's like putting up a shield when the meteor shower's over." She reached for his hand. Her fingers were narrow and hard, and seemed to shake slightly. She said "You stay off Lasselli's World, Doran. And go straight to the Hatchery and straight back. We can't lose you, too."

Gildoran felt faint and sick as he went up to the Bridge level to summon Ramie for help on this mission.

And he had actually thought of deserting his people, when they were so shorthanded?

When Gilmarin was gone, and Giltallen de-serted?

Dismay struggled with anger in him.

They hate us on some worlds, just because we used to take their unwanted—their surplus chil-dren. We can't have children of our own. We're sterile from space; we'd breed monsters. Without replacements from the planets we open, we'd have to stop traveling between the stars. . . .

And then no more worlds opened. Not ever.

And mankind needs a frontier. Without it, even if the known worlds span a Galaxy, mankind psychologically stagnates and goes mad. It was that knowledge that pushed man into space from Old Earth, thousands of years ago. It was that knowledge that lifted him from the swarming, dying, starving, crowded worlds of the First Sys-tem, pushed him into interstellar space in the days of the old Generation Ships before the Ein-stein Drives, kept him expanding, going outward. It was what drove mankind to invent the transmit-ter; that desperate need for a frontier, to know that they were still able to move onward.

But no one could go to a new world by Transmitter until the Transmitter was first set up there. There was no way to Transmit a Transmitter. Once the first Transmitter was established on a planet, anything could be brought through: people, supplies, building materials, anything from any other world which already had a Trans-mitter on it.

But new worlds still had to be found.

And the Explorers found them. Only the Explorers still traveled between the stars, at the Einstein-Drive speeds which telescoped time for them, and set up new Transmitters for the endless outward expansion of the human race.

And because we used to have to steal children, they hate us.

We have to steal them, beg them, or buy them. And when they go with us, they 're gone forever. FOREVER.

He stepped off the elevator at the Bridge level. On the Bridge, half a dozen crew members were working around the computers; Gildoran gave his message and the Year-Captain, Gilharrad (who was so old that even Gildoran could not imagine how many years it would be in planetary time) dismissed Ramie to accompany him. His eyes, almost lost in crinkles, reached into unguessable gulfs of memory.

"I was nearly killed once on a child-stealing expedition when I was your age," he said, holding out a withered hand that trembled faintly, "Look, I lost this finger from a knife-thrust, and that was so long ago, planet-time, that they didn't even have regeneration to regrow one for me. We took nineteen babies on that raid, hit three worlds. Of course, that was back when eight out often died in the first liftoff and one out of thirty lived more than a month, we didn't even name them until we were sure they'd make it. People haven't changed much, though. They'd still like to kill us, most worlds, if we ask for their children. Even the extra children, the ones they don't want. We're only a legend, on most worlds. But a legend they hate." He fell silent, his old eyes sliding away into the remoteness again. Gildoran, feeling an obscure urge to comfort the ancient, said, "We're dealing with licensed Hatcheries this time. We can simply buy what we need, from people who have a right to sell."

Harrad said, with dim bitterness, "Slavery too. Wait and see. On that one world they may be going through a period of enlightenment—or cynicism. Go back there next time we land—sixty, eighty years planet-time—and I'll bet you a planet-sized fee that they've got it written in their license: No selling to Explorers." He made a feeble movement toward the door. "Better get going, you two. You probably have to take the long way round, and we lift at midnight."

II

Gildoran and Gilramie emerged at the top of the steps, now wrapped in the all-purpose Travel

Cloaks. Standards of decency in clothing varied from world to world, so that every psychological type could find a world where they felt comfort-able. On some planets nakedness was the norm and clothing considered vaguely insulting, as if you wanted to hide yourself; on others, it was believed that too much bodily exposure blunted sexual drives, destroyed pleasure, so that con-cealment while you went about your day's work sharpened the impact of exposure in intimate conditions. But the Travel Cloaks were accepted everywhere as the sign that people were in transit and not deliberately flouting local custom.

As they made their way toward the tall, dark pylons of the Transmitter Station, Gildoran glanced at the rawbeamed city. Was Janni still there? It did not matter to him now; their parting had been too final for him to cherish any hopes of a reunion. Anyhow, by now she could be fourteen planets away, or at the other end of the Galaxy. With infinite transit, available to all, only desire could keep lovers together; and for Janni this had failed. Gildoran relentlessly turned his back on the city and his attention back to Ramie, small and smiling at his side.

"Did Rae say whether we should get males or females, Doran?"

"What difference does it make?" Gildoran smiled down at her. "It's chance anyhow." Aboard the Explorer ships, both sexes took their turns at all tasks, from Navigation to Nursery, and besides, you could never tell how many would survive. Gildoran and Gilmarin had been part of a lot of seven, four girls and three boys; two boys survived. They would probably take three boys and three girls. If they were fortunate, two of each would survive the first month in space; statistically, survival rates were now at two out of three. But statistics didn't always work.

Twelve years from now, the survivors would be apprentices in every field aboard the Ships. Whatever they were, boy or girl, they would be Explorers.

The two Explorers, tall and pale, shrouded in their Travel Cloaks, passed under the archways of the Transmitter Station. This late in the evening, the crowds had lessened somewhat; at the edge of each booth the lines were shorter than usual. A few merry couples with the look of dissipation, on their way to—or from—an evening of pleasure somewhere. A solitary Drifter or two, emerging for a look at the planet, with the usual look of bewilderment—Drifters took the dangerous route of punching coordinates at random for the thrill of reaching unknown worlds. A group of youngsters, looking sleepy, arriving for a guided tour under the chaperonage of two tall green-skinned governesses; probably a group of young adventurers bound for a survival-skills course on this new world.

Gildoran stopped at an information booth and laid his ident disk against the routing plate, punching a request for Routing Services. After the expected three-quarter-second lag, a disem-bodied voice demanded in Universal: "Nature of routing request, please."

"A cleared route for Explorers to Antares Four, please."

Again the lag. Then the computer began to chat-ter out the required information, sets of Transmit-ter coordinates. Gildoran put a small coin in the slot—information was free, but a printout of the information cost a small fee—he didn't care to take the chance of forgetting a vital factor in the coordinates and arriving on a planet six hundred light-years from his destination!

They stepped inside the glassed-in and green-lighted Transmitter booth, seeing without much attention the rules printed in the two official lan-guages of the Galactic civilization:

STAND FIRMLY ON PLATE

REMEMBER TO RECLAIM YOUR IDENT DISK WHEN LEAVING

BABIES UNDER ONE YEAR OF AGE AND UN-TRAINED ANIMALS MUST BE TRANS-MITTED INSIDE APPROVED SKINNER BOXES

ELDERLY OR FEEBLE PERSONS SHOULD HAVE A LIFE/SUPPORT HANDY FOR BOOSTING UNFAMILIAR OXYGEN LEVELS

NO MORE THAN THREE ADULT BEINGS MAY BE TRANSMITTED IN ANY ONE BOOTH

THIS BOOTH FOR PASSENGER TRAVEL ONLY. FOR TRANSPORT OF FREIGHT CARGO, OR HOUSEHOLD POSSESSIONS WEIGHING OVER APPROVED ALLOT-MENT OF EIGHTY UNIVERSAL KILOS, USE BOOTHS AT FAR END OF STATION

ATOMIC DEVICES MAY BE TRANSPORTED ONLY WITH SPECIAL PERMIT FROM

PLANET OF DESTINATION

He touched the buttons carefully for the first set of Coordinates. A warning light glowed, and the booth went dark for an instant.

Every time he used the Transmitter, Gildoran was briefly conscious of extended space. He had wondered, now and then, if it had anything to do with the mental disciplines of the Explorers or his familiarity with the sensation of time-dilation in-side the Ships; or if it were hallucination, imagi-nation, or a freak stimulation of brain cells from the Transmitter. After all, the Transmitters fed on energy drawn from the very fabric of space itself, the drifting matter free between Solar systems. He did not know what caused it; he did not know if other Explorers felt it, or if indeed it was common to everyone who used the Transmitter. He only knew that always, in that moment when the booth went dark, that instant of lag which prevented exact simultaneity. ...

The booth went dark. A sharp dizziness stung the roots of his nose, a tracery of colors flared in his brain, a retinal swirl of brilliance behind his eyes not too unlike the side-effect of drugs which kept them all sane during time-dilation; and again the strange sense of standing among swirl-ing atoms—or galaxies. . . .

A sharp snap like a brief, not unpleasant elec-tric shock; then he came to rest (had he moved at all?) knowing that three-quarters of a second had passed and he stood in another Transmitter booth with the identical admonitions facing him, this time in electric-blue neon lights, and now

the walls were glassy-green rather than glassy-blue, and he was four light-years away from the planet he had just left. He shook his head slightly, glanced at Gilramie—did she look a little dizzy, too?—and consulted the printout for the next set of coordinates on their route. Strictly speaking, the Transmitter had no limit; but it was more pleasant for most people not to jump more than four light-years in one Transmission, and the power-consumption, for some unknown reason, went up exponentially beyond that level; so that jumps much longer than that were not recom-mended except for the highest-priority personnel. Too long a jump seemed, for some psychological reason no one had ever figured out, to have an effect not unlike that of too-fast jet travel. There-fore, long trips were routed into short steps of four light-years at a time, where possible. Possibly, Gildoran thought, the human mind can't really absorb the idea of jumping much more than four light-years at a time.

Four more jumps, with brief swirls of darkness between them, and they reached the planet of Antares Four where the Hatchery was located. A map of the planet, and a jump by short-range Transmitter, brought them within a few streets of it.

It was a large glass-and-metal building, with streaming advertisers floating on the air around it, and solidographs of what seemed like hundreds of chubby smiling babies of every size, color and human phenotype. Ramie smiled at the insub-stantial infants and said, "I wonder if they're all as cute as this. Don't they have any homely or cranky or bawling ones?"

Gildoran chuckled. "Certainly not on the adver-tising posters."

A featureless servomech beckoned them in and said in a gentle, cultured voice, "Welcome, gentlebeings and prospective parents. Will you please wait in this area, and one of our salesbeings will be with you in a brief time. Meanwhile, we invite you to look at the literature describing our newest service." The servo's flexible metal arms thrust some leaflets at them, and it glided away. Gildoran glanced at one:

NOW, your favorite HATCHERY offers a NEW SERVICE! Are you tired of waiting six months for a baby to your order? Women, you now can escape nine months of missed pleasures, troublesome births, suicidal and dangerous postpartum depressions! You've decided you'd rather not adopt, so what to do? NOW, you can stop by for a simple painless visit, leave your one- to four-week fertilized fetus with us, and for a modest fee, you can be guaranteed abso-lutely against fetal insult, birth defects or de-formities; if, for any reason your baby isn't abso-lutely perfect, we hatch you another one FREE!

Smaller lettering read:

DNA surgery, guaranteed talents, or sex prefer-ence at a small additional fee. Ask us about bargains in unclaimed or rejected hatches. Ramie was looking through an identical leaflet. "This isn't any good to us. We need them birthed, not hatched, and with a full month of biological mothering."

Gildoran nodded. "Rae gave me the specifica-tions. Ramie, ask about musical talent. If Tallen really has gone. . . ." He didn't finish; he didn't have to. Giltallen had been the best musician

aboard Gypsy Moth—Rae herself excepted. He looked around the waiting room, also filled with advertising solidos, drifting through the air, of chubby smiling infants.

A thick-set, fussy small man bustled in. "Well, well, prospective parents, what can we do for you today—oh, Explorers. I suppose you'll be wanting a quantity?"

Gildoran put his question about musical talent, and the small man's face lighted up.

"Why, as it happens, I have just the one you want. The mother was a top-grade harpist, who paid for study on Capella Nine with Ligettini himself by having five children for me—one every year. She'd study all year, come here and birth them, give them the full month of biological mothering—these are absolutely top-grade mer-chandise—get impregnated again with sperm from top-level musical geniuses, each with a pre-potency factor of nine, and go off to study again during her pregnancy. All of them but this one were pre-sold, some of them ordered four years in advance. But the last couple had their hearts set on a girl, and she birthed a boy, and they're from one of those religious-fanatic planets which pro-hibit sex-change operations. Heartbreaking, really, but I can make you this absolutely splendid offer . . ."He mentioned a sum in stellars which struck Gildoran as not too exorbitant. He glanced at Ramie.

"Let's take that one," she said. "It would please Rae so much."

The little man riffled through a folder, and his face fell. "Sorry, gentlebeings," he said ruefully, "there's a hold on that one. To be sold only to a stable couple—no entertainment-mongers,

plea-sure worlds or—I'm sorry—Explorer Ships. But look here, you people from the Ships want quan-tity. I can give you a wonderful buy on ten cloned High-IQ Hatches. Quality absolutely guaran-teed—we aren't one of those places which sell off our dud merchandise to you people just because we know you can't come back and complain about them!"

Gildoran felt faintly sickened. Merchandise.' And did they want cloned identicals, even HighIQ? He didn't think so. The interpersonal rela-tionships aboard ship were loosely polarized, often shifting; identicals—ten of them, hor-rors!—might form a clique of their own, or worse, be so much alike in personality that they would be too uninteresting. Imagine having ten of the same person, making up one-fifth of the crew? Suppose they grew up with some unlikable per-sonality trait!

"No, thanks," he said, groped for an excuse, and hit quickly upon a true one. "We need them birthed, not hatched. And individuals, not clones."

"Oh, come now," said the little man deprecat-ingly, "don't tell me you people, with your scien-tific disciplines, have that old superstition that birthed babies are better than hatched ones?"

"For our purpose they are better," Gilramie said in her soft voice. "Somehow the experience of full-pregnancy closeness and the month of biological mothering gives them a better ability for imprinting and forming interpersonal rela-tions. And this also adds to their will to live; hatched babies tend to die quickly in space be-cause they don't immediately form an attachment with a

mother figure and have less desire to sur-vive."

"Well, you know your own business best, I suppose," the little man said. "Why don't you stroll through the warehouse and look around while I wait on someone else? This one will be quick— I've waited on her before—and maybe you'll see something that takes your fancy."

He opened the door to an enormous room, stretching into the distance, filled with boxes of oneway glass; the modern version of the "Skin-ner Box" which kept an infant dry, fed, and enter-tained without human intervention for up to twenty hours at a time. The room was filled with the soft thumping heartbeat-sound which was known to keep infants content. Behind the glass walls babies gurgled, kicked, crawled, howled, or suckled. They seemed happy, although Gildoran wondered if they could really be happy as the babies aboard Gypsy Moth were happy, continu-ally mothered and tended by the Poohbears.

"Specifications on the front of each box," the salesman said. "I'll be with you in a minute or two—this will be quick."

He went off to an enormously tall, sallow, but somehow enticing woman, wrapped in a Travel Cloak but with lovely streaming hair and a walk Gildoran could not take his eyes off.

"Yes, Gentlebeing?"

The woman's voice, very sweet and exquisitely trained, reached them from a distance.

"I need six prime females with empath poten-tial and musical talent, high sexuality potential. These are to be trained as top-level pleasure-girls, so make certain they are pretty ones."

The salesman scurried around, making up an order form, while Gildoran struggled against his initial revulsion, Slavery! And yet . . . these "prime females" would be pampered all their lives, beautiful and happy. . . .

The salesman was trying to push up the sale:

"Throw in a fine bargain on some distress merchandise—unclaimed hatches, wonderful condition but they're already six months old, so they're past imprinting. But they'll make fine manual workers or servants—all healthy and -guaranteed good-natured—no generic defects! Take 'em off my hands at a flat two thousand stellars for the three!"

When the salesperson came back, Gildoran and Ramie had chosen six from the specifications on the boxes; all were guaranteed high-IQ, with mathematical and mechanical ability, two were from families of surgeons on either side, and two were of hereditary lines with musical talent. Phenotype or skin color didn't matter of course; after two years, they'd be Explorers anyway. Hard radiation at faster-than-light speed would take care of that.

He watched the servos piling the infants bound for the pleasure-world into a tall, wheeled struc-ture which looked like a stack of small Skinner Boxes piled on top of one another; a

standard Baby-Haul for taking infants through the Trans-mitter. He asked abruptly, "How can you have the heart to sell them into what amounts to a life of prostitution?"

The little man shrugged. He said, "On some worlds, robots are banned, just for that—to make room for people to earn a living by manual labor. What the hell—some places won't sell to you be-cause you and I know that about one-third of them will die. Me, I sell them for anything except food—I do draw the line at that. A few exclusive places cater to the carriage trade—"

"What's that?"

"Sorry. Old salesbeing term—I think a carriage was some kind of luxury-class Transmitter in the early days. It means, sell only to luxury trade, all singletons, all for sale to families only. But me, I sell 'em to anyone who can pay for 'em, and I ask no questions. And it's a good thing, too— after all, where else would you people get babies if we were all that discriminating?"

A legend. But a legend they hate.

The little salesman had gotten himself wound up now.

"After all, there are billions too many ba-bies—most of them we pick up cheap on worlds with a population problem and some freak reli-gion that won't let them solve it—freaky worlds where abortion's illegal or worlds with fertility cults. Better than shipping them off wholesale for slave labor."

"I guess so," Gildoran said apologetically. "Here, I think we want these six." He had noted down the numbers of their display box. "And we'll need to rent a Baby-Haul; we can ship it back in less than an hour, after they're loaded."

He stood watching the servos load the babies. There was one, with dark tilted eyes like Ramie's and soft golden skin, that he wished he could pick up and cuddle. Ramie, too, was watching intent-ly. He looked questioningly at her and she mur-mured, "Oh, nothing. I was just wondering what it would be like to birth my own—"

"Messy, I would think, and it would interfere with ship routine," Gildoran said, deliberately making a joke of it.

Some questions you never asked. Ramie would learn.

While Ramie arranged for rental of the Baby-Haul and servos to tend it for the long and com-plex route through the Transmitter, back to the world of their departure, Gildoran accompanied the sales being to a public Computer Station, where he arranged for transfer of credits from Head Center to the Hatchery. Briefly he con-templated stopping somewhere for a last planet-side meal before they returned to the ship. No; they had a longish trip by Transmitter before them—at least three-quarters-of-an-hour, with the necessary hunt for booths large enough to handle a six-baby hauling unit—and the sooner the babies were loaded onto the Gypsy Moth, the sooner their troubles would be over.

He had already begun congratulating himself on a successful mission. With the aid of the ser-vos, who were rented ready-programmed, it was easy to find freight-size Transmitter booths. He verified a cleared return route at the Information booth and watched the servos wheel the Baby-Haul inside. He and Ramie stood on either side of the tall nest of opaque boxes, which of course had their own air-systems and optimal temperature inside.

He hoped the little golden-skinned girl with the sleek dark hair and slanted dark eyes would live. It would be fun to see her grow up. You didn't dare get attached to them until you were sure they'd live. . . .

The booth darkened; the disorientation and brilliant swirls of retinal circus—atoms? StarGalaxies?—raced through his brain. Snap! They were in the Transmitter booth. His fingers sought out the coordinates of the second jump, but he found himself wondering how the babies experi-ence Transmitter travel. Did they cry or feel shock or fear at the sudden darkening ? Was there a sense of telescoped time?

Does a baby experience time at all, I wonder? Or only his own biological rhythms?

He touched the coordinates; again the darkness, the swirling colors, the snap. He thought, I'll have to check, find out if others—Ramie, Harrad, Rae—if they sense this in the Transmitter.

It had never occurred to him to ask Janni.

And yet—we were so close, for a little while. But we had other things to ask each other.

The third jump; the third darkness-swirl-snap gestalt. And it struck him then, with a sense of irrevocable loss, that now he would never be able to ask Gilmarin—his playmate, the lost, the vanished—about this. NEVER. That word again. Gilmarin, his nurserymate-brother-playmate, that he would never be able to find out whether Gilma-rin shared this individual disorientation in the Transmitter, suddenly it struck him as greater tragedy than the now-very-small loss of Janni.

Janni and I shared—a planet. Gilmarin and I shared a life, and I've lost them both. When Janni left me, I felt as if I'd lost something wonderful, and I had; my dreams about her.

But with Gilmarin, I lost a piece of myself, wandering forever, as he is lost and wandering somewhere in a thousand thousand other worlds where I can never go. . . .

"Doran ..." Ramie's light voice wavered and sounded frightened, "Are you sure the coordi-nates were right? Something seems to be wrong." Snapping sharply to full attention, Gildoran checked the coordinates of the booth; an override light was blinking, and the coordinates on the telltale did not match those on the printout in his hand. He touched the proper set of coordinates again, spelling them out firmly with his fingers and verifying them again on the visual telltale before pressing the ACTIVATE button. . . . one of the many fail-safe devices which the Transmit-ter provided to keep careless travelers from press-ing non-existent coordinates to materialize in an unknown destination. The booth did not activate, and the light began to blink and spell out words

above them;

FOR REASONS OF EXTRA-HEAVY TRAF-FIC PATTERNS, ALL TRAVELERS IN THIS SECTOR ARE BEING REROUTED TO DESTI-NATIONS ELSEWHERE ON THEIR ULTI-MATE ROUTE. PLEASE CHECK WITH THE PUBLIC INFORMATION BOOTH AT THE FAR END OF THE STATION FOR A FREE REROUT-ING PRINTOUT. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE AND REASSURE ALL TRAVELERS THAT THOSE ARRIVING UN-REQUESTED ON THIS WORLD NEED NOT CHECK FOR CONTRABAND: REPEAT, ALL CONTRABAND REGULATIONS HAVE BEEN TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED FOR THE DURATION OF THE TRAVEL EMERGENCY PROVIDED THAT TRAVELERS DEPART WITHIN ONE PLANETARY HOUR OF AR-RIVAL.

Gildoran muttered an archaic vulgarism. "That's all we need." Ramie asked, "What's contraband?" "This must be one of the freaky planets—the ones that prohibit importation of servos or slaves or drugs or fissionables. Contraband means a sub-stance prohibited by law on this special planet. But relax; it doesn't apply to us anyhow because we're in transit and we arrived here without in-tending to. We'll have to go and get the rerouting printout."

They stepped out of the booth, Gildoran bend-ing down to peer through the window of the Baby-Haul. The translucent windows showed only that two were asleep, the others moving around; the soundproof box made it impossible to tell whether they were crying or not, but Gildoran knew that if they were hungry they would be fed, and that they would be kept amused

if awake, so there was no need to worry about them for a while, at least. He looked around, orienting him-self in the Transmitter station; they were all laid out to a standard pattern (this was so that the traveler could find food, clothing, or bathrooms, information or service with a minimum of trou-ble.

"What planet are we on?" Gilramie asked.

Gildoran shrugged. "How in time should I

know? Somewhere between Antares Four and the

planet where we left Gypsy Moth, obviously,

which cuts it down to a couple of hundred. Stay here by the booth, Ramie. There's no point in moving the Baby-Haul through the whole sta-tion."

She looked uneasily at the crowd. She said "Gildoran, I don't like it here much. Maybe it's just that stuff about contraband, but it evidently isn't a very free place. Can't we jump straight to the Gypsy Moth? I know those coordinates by heart, and so do you. Would it really hurt the babies to do it?"

"I don't know. Probably not, but I just don't know," Gildoran said. "The risk is supposed to be psychological, and as far as I know, nobody ever studied the effects of long jumps on babies. Just

the same, it's likely to be an awfully unpleasant experience. I made a twenty-light-year-jump once, and it wasn't any fun. I was dizzy for an hour afterward, and I could hardly see. Why give the poor brats traumas before we've had them half an hour? It won't take three minutes to get the rerout-ing."

"Well, all right..." she said uncertainly. He walked away toward the far end of the station, through a half-seen crowd of people.

They edged back. They always did. He would have noticed only if they hadn't. . . . You never looked at the crowds and the stares; you learned early never to take any notice . . .

"Dirty baby-stealer!" somebody yelled, "Hey, look, another one! They got their nerve!"

"LET'S GET THEM!"

Gildoran, jerked out of his habitual arrogant lack-of-notice, looked round him like a trapped animal. Someone jostled him; someone kicked; he was surrounded by a crowd pushing in, fight-ing. . . .

He bellowed, in the ship-language of the Explorers no one could understand, "Ramie! Take the kids and jump! Get back to the Gypsy Moth— all the way— FAST!" He turned, by instinct lead-ing them away from her . . . they hadn't seen her yet. His arm shot out; he kicked a man on the kneecap and the man howled and fell at his feet. He butted through the crowd; cast one swift

look back. Ramie and the Baby-Haul were gone.

Something snapped into awareness in his brain. Lasselli's World! Just a set of coordinates on a Transmitter route-map, but he knew enough to stay away from it—that was what had been wrong. Gilmarin would never have gone there knowing-ly, but the random bad luck of a computer re-routing traffic pattern had sent him there, just as it had sent himself and Ramie. ...

Well, the babies and Ramie were safely away, vanished into the booth; light-years away by now. He kicked, elbowed, butted through the crowd, fighting his way through a volley of blows and curses, struggling to stay on his feet. If he went down he was done for, he'd be trampled. . . .

"Kill the dirty Explorer! He won't steal any more babies here and kill them on his ships!"

"Get back!" There was the crackle of a heat-gun. Gildoran felt the crowd subside, draw away; leav-ing him standing in a cleared space before a dark-skinned youth in some kind of uniform with epaulets, and a baldric with an unknown emblem. He held the drawn heat-gun in his hand and the menace was obvious. The mob, thwarted, mut-tered and pushed; but it let the dark youngster through to Gildoran.

The stranger said in Universal, "Come with me, Explorer. We'll handle this legally." His voice crackled at the crowd like the snap and zip of his weapon, "Get away from him! I'll handle this!"

Gildoran drew himself up and managed to summon some remnants of his habitual arro-gance,

although he realized that his clothing was ripped and torn, his face bleeding from a blow. He said to the dark young man, "I protest. You have no authority over me. I was rerouted here by com-puter override, and all contraband regulations are legally suspended. I demand an immediate ap-peal to Head Center."

"You aren't going to demand anything," the stranger said tonelessly. "Come with me."

"You have no authority."

"This is my authority," said the youth, making a minute gesture with the heat-gun. "I'd rather not use it here. Come with me." He said in an under-tone, between clenched teeth, "Damn it, man, come on, I can't hold them long—do you want to be lynched? They killed one of you here today!"

Gildoran went, hearing the mutter of the crowd rising and knowing what the young stranger said was true. Gilmarin! Had he died here? Gildoran felt a sob strangling in his throat and set his mouth hard. Die like an Explorer. Marin would have done just that. He could, too, if he had to. He held his head high as they walked outside the station.

They stepped into the blinding light of a double bluewhite sun; Gildoran squeezed his eyes shut, looking through squinched lids at his captor. The strange uniformed man was more than a full head shorter than he, narrowly bearded, but looking no older than Gildoran himself; skin and hair were shiny black, but his eyes were a warm, lustrous animal brown. He let the heat gun drop

slightly and said "I thought I'd never get you out of there. Why did you try to fight me? You're safer in cus-tody than with a mob. I'm not going to hurt you." His thick lips parted in a grin. "I've got no author-ity to. My job is shooting escaped snakes from the forest preserve—that's where I got the uniform and the weapon—fortunately that mob hasn't realized it yet. Lucky I was in the station. Did you come here to rescue that poor devil they got to-day?"

Gildoran shook his head, and his face must have shown something, for the man said compas-sionately, "Friend of yours?"

"Shipmate. Best friend," Gildoran said briefly.

Anyway, Ramie had gotten away with the babies; even if he was lost, the ship wouldn't be dangerously short handed.

He said, summoning all his authority, speaking as he did from the Navigation post on the bridge of the Gypsy Moth, "I'm grateful to you for getting me away from that lynch mob. But now I really must insist that you get me through to Head Center without delay. I must rejoin my ship at once."

Even if they don't kill me . . . delay me four hours, and I'm dead to the only world that mat-ters.

The young man looked concerned. He slipped his weapon into its holster and said, "That's right—you Explorers can never dare miss a ship, can you? I've read everything I can find about

you. I... I'm interested. Look, we mustn't stay here. If anyone in the mob steps out and finds us chatting like old cronies I'll just be lynched alongside you, and my heat-gun won't really do all that much good—there isn't even a lethal setting for humans on it. Come on—hurry!"

He drew him along quickly, through a winding side street, and Gildoran went for a moment with-out protesting, but then dug in his heels.

"No! I can't risk losing myself here, losing sight of the Transmitter on a strange world—"

"You've got to trust mer" the youngster im-plored and drew him into the lee of a wall.

"Look here, you evidently don't understand the political situation here on Lasselli's World, and I haven't the time to explain. Let it go at this: if you went in to the formal authorities and asked to be put through to Head Center, you'd never make it. And they'll be expecting you to try and sneak back to that Transmitter station—I'd bet you a hundred stellars, if I had them, that there's someone from that mob watching every door, ready to raise a riot. There's a gang here trying to control Trans-mitter travel—yes, I know that Head Center has ruled that illegal, but we're a long way from Head Center. The facts of the matter are that with the Transmitter, anyone who doesn't like a given political regime can step into a Transmitter and be at the other end of the Galaxy in a few minutes, so local citizens are subject to spot-checks and searches at the main Transmitter stations, and offworlders tend to be hustled and rousted so they won't talk to our people and make them discon-tented. And unhappy people need something to hate—right now, you're it."

Gildoran said, "So what do I do?"

The man said, "I have an idea. It won't be easy, but we may be able to manage it. My name's Mer-rik, by the way; what's yours?"

"Gildoran of the Gypsy Moth."

"Well, Gildoran, they'll be expecting you to react just as you did—afraid to get far away from the Transmitter station, afraid to risk getting lost, so they'll be waiting, thinking you'll risk any-thing to try to slip back in, maybe in disguise. The one thing they won't expect is that you'll be able to get to another Transmitter station, maybe fifty kilos away. Oh, they may keep a half an eye on public transit, but they won't expect you to have help. Maybe we can fool them. How much time do you actually have? It isn't a matter of minutes, is it?"

Gildoran checked the chronometer on his wrist, which registered time on the Gypsy Moth's planet, whatever local time might be. He felt queer to realize that it was, to him, early evening, while here it was obviously only half-way through the morning. "No, I have about three planetary hours, objective time."

Merrik let out a breath of relief. "Oh, well. That's easily managed. Here, come through this back alley, I'll get you to my apartment. We've got to do something about your skin and hair before you try going out on any public street."

Gildoran, stunned and relieved, followed him. Inside a small lift to Merrik's rooms in a rabbitwarren of a building, he said, "Why are you doing this?"

Merrik shrugged, a little sheepishly. He said, "I'm interested in the Explorers. Fascinated by them. Sometimes I think you're the only real ad-venturers left. The idea of standing wholly free of time as you do. . . ."

Gildoran blinked; that was a strange viewpoint on it, whereas he thought of earthworms, planetdwellers, as living outside the drag of time as he did, going from star to star in the blink of an eye—literally—while the Explorers crawled be-tween stars by the Einstein Drive. He tried to say something of this; Merrik, opening the lift door with a cautious look down the hall and hurrying Gildoran inside, said "But think of it this way. We live our whole biological lifespan inside absolute, objective time. I was born nineteen years ago, and eighty-some years from now I'll die, having lived the fivescore years man's expected to live. And I have no idea, except from my reading and study, what the Universe was like a hundred years before I was born, and I'll never—never—never know what the Universe will be five hundred years from now. But you were born maybe five hundred years ago; you lived in a time that's only history to me, and your lifespan can go thousands of years into the future, in that same fivescore allotted years of man!"

Gildoran had never thought of it like this. Mer-rik was rummaging behind panels, pulling out some garments. "You're too tall to wear breeches, but I have a Travel Cloak that I bought on Rigel III, just swap it for yours. Here, this will handle the skin and hair." He sat Gildoran on a low seat and began rubbing him efficiently with a greenish paste which, surprisingly, dried

purplish-black on his skin. He sprayed his hair with some stuff from an aerosol globe.

"Now you just look like a slightly oversized Lasselli. Here, rub it into your hands, up to the elbows, and your feet up to the knees. The cloak will cover up the rest. What race are your people originally, what world did the Explorers come from?"

Gildoran looked at him in surprise. He thought everyone knew. "All worlds," he said. "We have men from everywhere, and women, too."

"You're joking, surely? You all have the same coloring, the same physique

"

"Radiation in space does that, and low-grav conditions on the Ships. I might have been as black as you when I was a baby."

Merrik grinned uneasily. He said, "Trying to tell me we're brothers under the skin? Well, we look it now, all right, except that your eyes are blue. So it's radiation, eh? But doesn't it affect your children? Or is it a mutation that breeds true?"

Gildoran said in astonishment, "But we can't have children; the Explorers are all sterile. Man, why do you think we buy them, and used to steal them sometimes?"

Merrik was open-mouthed. "But no one seems

to know that—most people think it's for some religious rite

"

"No," Gildoran said impatiently, "they simply become . . . our children. The only children we have. We were bringing six from a hatchery, my friend and I. One of them might be our Captain thirty years from now."

Merrik looked at him in deep sympathy. "Why don't you tell people?"

"We've told them," Gildoran said wearily, "told them and told them. But we can't tell a thousand thousand worlds with a million people on each, and evidently legends are more durable than facts."

"We have a saying," Merrik said "Truth crawls at light-speed; lies travel by Transmitter." He smiled and stood up. "Let me pour you a drink, my friend. And then, speaking of speed, we'd better make some. I have a surface-sled, a small airfoil; it belongs to my sister, but she's offplanet on her honeymoon and left it for me to use. I can get you to the Transmitter station fifty kilos away. They'll never look for you there—and if they do look for you, they'll never know you. I doubt if your own mother would—no, you don't have mothers, then? Your own shipmates won't know you. In fact, with you disguised like this, you could probably walk right back into the Transmit-ter station we left, but they just might be on the alert there for an extra-tall man."

Gildoran drank down the tingling liquid Merrik poured; it left him feeling vaguely euphoric and

refreshed. They went down by lift to the garage where Merrik's surface vehicle was parked. The garage held a stray dozen men and women, but none of them gave Gildoran more than an offhand glance; he clutched his cloak tightly round him lest it blow aside and reveal undyed skin. Merrik helped him strap into the seat of the airfoil car and they were off, skimming low above the surface of the planet.

Surface travel was something almost new to Gildoran. He sat back, feeling the wind blow through his hair and against his face, slitting his eyes against the blinding brilliance of the double sun. The sky was brilliant white, with clouds al-most electric-blue.

Such a beautiful world to hold such ugliness. And such kindness.

To Gildoran, Merrik's voice sounded a little wistful. "This is the closest I'll ever come to space travel. When humanity got the Transmitter, we gained the ability to travel between stars, but we lost the stars themselves. Sometimes I dream about them—about the stars."

"You have the freedom of a thousand thousand planets, Merrik. Each time I leave one, I can never go back."

"But they're all ... planets," Merrik half-whispered, and his eyes were full of longing. "Space is gone. No one but you Explorers have it now."

They brought the airfoil to rest in front of another Transmitter station. This one was almost

unoccupied; they walked in with no one taking the slightest notice of Gildoran with his darkened skin and long cloak. Gildoran went toward a booth. He said "I'll jump straight through to the Gypsy Moth. Merrik—how can I ever thank you?" He took the young man's hands in his own.

On this world he had lost a friend. On this world he had found a friend, and now would lose him, too. . . .

Merrik said "Let me go with you. I'd like to see one of your ships. Up close."

Gildoran put a hand on his shoulder. "Come along then."

Inside the booth he punched the familiar coor-dinates and braced himself for the long jump.

Darkness. A swirl of dizzying lights, like the drift of stars in space . . . strange pain at the root of his nose and in his ears . . . spinning galaxies, disoriented, whirling . . .

Snap!

With relief, he saw that they were back on the familiar world of the Gypsy Moth. Merrik was standing beside him, still looking dazed. He said, "That's the longest jump I ever made, in one leap."

Gildoran's head hurt. He said, "I'm sorry, real-ly. But I don't have a lot of time to spare, and my .

. . my shipmates will be worrying about me."

Roe. She must be in a real panic, Marin gone, Tallen deserted. Gods grant Ramie's back safely with the children.

He drew Merrik along, saying, "I've time to let you have a look at the Ship, though. It's the least I can do."

The guard at the gate, a middle-aged Explorer with a kind, lined face, stopped them as they came toward it, saying "Sorry. Too near takeoff time. Only Ship's personnel now, boys; no more tourists."

"Gilroth, don't you know me?" Gildoran laughed, held up his ident disk, pulled off the Travel Cloak.

Roth clutched Gildoran into a smothering bear hug.

"Doran," he gulped, "Doran, you made it, Har-rad and Rae are frantic, it was all we could do to keep them from going out after you, and it's get-ting so late, so late. . . ."

"I ran into a spot of trouble," Gildoran said, carefully casual. "Ramie made it back all right with the kids?"

"Oh, yes; poor child, she hasn't stopped crying since, but the babies are all on board, probably already tucked into the Poohbears' pockets for Liftoff." The pouches of the huge marsupial humanoids had been found to be safer during takeoff than any artificial-womb or life-support system for infants under three months old. Roth added "Better get aboard—tell Rae and the rest that you're all right. And don't forget to check in at the Nursery, either!"

"Just a minute. Merrik helped me escape—I'd never be here without him. I promised him a quick look inside."

"All right, but be quick, and do check with the Bridge right away," Roth said. "And have your friend out again in ten minutes—the steps are going to be cleared away."

Gildoran escorted Merrik up the steps. He shook his still-aching head, and Merrik, watching his face, said, "You too?" After a minute, he said, "Sometimes, when I make a long jump, it seems that what I see—behind my eyes—must be like what I would see from space. Could it be that we really do, somehow, go through all that space, without being aware of it?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure about the meaning of space and time anymore," Gildoran said hon-estly. He laid his ident disk against the telltale. The pleasant computer voice said, "You are late in reporting, Gildoran, please check at once with Rae at the Nursery level. I have been asked to inform you that Gilramie has already gone to her post on the Bridge. I am also requested to remind the stranger present with you that exactly nine minutes and eighteen seconds remain before ship-sealing."

Gildoran said "I'll give you a quick look at the Bridge." He stood quiet while the lift carried them up, slid open; quiet while Merrik looked, with longing eyes, at the bewildering controls and in-struments, the busy figures of the Explorers crew going about their unknown, and to him unknow-able, duties. Finally Gildoran touched his shoul-der, drew him away, and silently conducted him to the steps again.

One more goodbye. Forever.

He laid both his hands on Merrik's shoulders, feeling torn and lost and desperate.

"Gildoran," Merrik said suddenly, "take me with you. As crew. I'll do anything."

Deeply moved, Gildoran shook his head. Above them the sky was dark and the raw new city showed a thousand searing lights; but beyond them were a thousand searing stars. "I wish I could. But you'd die in space, Merrik. You have to be taken on when you're a baby. A year or less. The kind of ships we use now, you have to grow up on them. You wouldn't live a month, and it's a terrible death."

Merrik's dark face worked, but he didn't say anything. He only put a foot on the top step, turn-ing back for an instant to say, "Gildoran. When you reach your next world . . . come back again. You know my world. I know it will be a long time, but I won't forget. I swear I won't forget."

Hoarsely, Gildoran said, "No, Merrik. No, my friend. You might not forget. But you'd hate me. You'd be an old man, and I'd still be young, still the age we are now. Goodbye, Merrik." He blinked back tears as Merrik wrung his hands; then helplessly let him go. He didn't watch him stumble blindly away over the red mud.at the foot of the steps. He turned away inside and went dazedly toward the Bridge.

It's the effects of the long jump, he thought, clutching his aching head, but he knew it was more.

The tempo of the Gypsy Moth was picking up now; alarms rang, crew members—his brothers and friends, his only world—scurried to their sta-tions, the computer's soft voice routed orders here and there. Gildoran turned toward the Nursery level, dreading the way Rae would clutch at him and cry over him with anguished gladness at his return, but yet in some way longing for the com-fort of it, too. Someday he would tell her the whole story, but not now, not for a long, long time. ...

The ship was sealed; Gilroth, the last inside, caught up to Gildoran in the corridor. "Well, it's up stakes and out again, lad. Sorry to leave?"

His love. His oldest friend. His newest friend, the only one who had ever understood. . . . The last of his youth.

"Sorry to leave? Hell, no," Gildoran said. "Planets are for saying goodbye."

Something hidden; go and find it Something lost beyond the ranges. . . . Lost and waiting for you. Go!

Kipling

Part Two A TIME TO MOURN I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert; near them on the sand

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear;

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

Nothing beside remains; round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley

I

"Every year that goes by seems to go by faster," a voice said behind Gildoran. "I simply can't be-lieve it's Rotation Day already."

"What do you mean, already?" Gildoran did not raise his head from glumly laying out a small assortment of bowls and spoons on a brightly colored cloth. "This has been the longest year I can remember! I've been counting the days—no, the hours!"

Behind him, Gilrae chuckled. "You don't like Nursery duty much, do you, Gildoran?"

He started to say "No, not at all," then hesitated, looking at the four small hammocks against the wall and the two empty hooks; he had stopped feeling a lump in his throat whenever he looked at the place where they had been, but he still felt a generalized sadness. He was glad that the two babies who had died in the aftermath of the DNA surgery had never yet been named; those names would always have been, to him, like Gilmarin; never spoken without grief. He looked at the toddlers crawling on the Nursery floor, crowding around one of the Poohbears; at the three four-year-olds drawing busily in the corner, grouped around their low table.

"I wouldn't say that," he demurred, "but it's lonely down here. I'll be glad to get back to Ship routine and important work."

Gilrae shook her head. "This is the most impor-tant work there is, Doran. For the rest of their lives, those kids—the babies—are going to have you in the back of their minds as the perfect

per-son, the one they want to be like."

"Poor kids," he said and laughed.

"No, I'm serious, Doran. That's one reason we always have a special Nursery assignment and why people spend so much time helping down here. But the one on Nursery duty when there's a new batch of babies, he's the one—or she, some-times it's a woman—whom they all internalize as their perfect adult model."

"Oh, come on," he scoffed. "They're certainly too young for that! Only one or two of them are even talking yet, and one thing I have learned about baby psychology is that thoughts follow acquisition of language, not the other way round."

Gilrae shook her head. "Not true. They start acquiring language at least six months before they can say a single word. That's why we don't leave them to the Poohbears, or they'd grow up Poohbears with human bodies. The way they grow up human is to have human contacts and close relationships, and they seem to need one-to-one relationships. Leave them too much with each other, and you get peer standards instead of adult-group standards. We have to raise them with adult standards, or they won't be able to take their proper place in crew relations." She glanced at a chronometer and said, "I should be up for the Rotation ceremonies. Between you and me, Do-ran, I'm glad it's Rotation Day, too. Gilharrad is just too old to be Year-Captain; I thought he'd retire two years ago and take Floater status. If we had found a new planet this year, I don't know how he would have managed."

Gildoran only nodded—it would have been rude for anyone his age to comment on the compe-tence or otherwise of a Year-Captain, especially one as old and venerable as Gilharrad. Gildoran wasn't even qualified to be Captain yet, and his ident disk wasn't yet put into the lot for the yearly drawing. But he could agree with Gilrae without being rude.

As often happened, Gilrae seemed to read his thoughts. "It won't be long until you're on the Captain list," she said. "I think someday you'll make a good one, too." She looked at the array of bowls he was laying out. "In a way, it's too bad you'll miss the ceremony—"

"I don't care about the ceremony, but I like to know right away what my assignment's going to be next year," Gildoran grumbled. He didn't see why the Poohbears couldn't give the babies their supper.

"Well, there will be other years," Gilrae said cheerfully. She was always so cheerful with him, he thought resentfully, she treated him as if he were no older than the toddlers! She looked around the Nursery again. "I'll be sorry to leave. I like working down here with the kids and the Medics; I sometimes wish I'd specialized in Medic work." Rae had spent this year as biologi-cal officer, and whenever there were young babies in the Nursery, the biologists, as well as all medi-cally trained personnel, spent most of their time nursing the infants and looking after them. She added, "I've gotten fond of this batch, now that we know they're going to live. I suppose it's time to think about naming them, isn't it?"

"Another few weeks; then they'll be a full year old," Gildoran said. It would soon be a year, ship-time, since they had left the world where he had spent his adolescence; he thought, without too much of a pang now, of Janni. He never thought of her now. If they found a planet today and he went back, she would be an old, old woman, or dead.

Far more often than Janni, he thought of Merrik, who had wanted space, and knew he would never have it; he had known Merrik so briefly, and yet he had come closer to him, in that brief time, than to Janni in a year. Was a friend always closer than a lover?

Maybe, he thought, because I still miss Gilma-rin. All the time, every day. I shall never stop missing Gilmarin. Or Giltallen.

He looked at Rae and thought of her missing Giltallen as he missed his Nurserymate, playmate, first friend, companion, Gilmarin. He said impul-sively, "Maybe there ought to be a Giltallen in this batch of children, when we name them, Rae. Or a Giltallena, perhaps."

He saw her flinch, saw the raw pain in her eyes. She swallowed and couldn't answer for a mo-ment. Then she said, "Not yet, I think. It's too soon, Doran. Give me—give us all some time." Her voice was calm, but he had seen the flinching. She said quickly, "I must go up for the ceremony. I'll send someone down right away, as soon as I know, to tell you your new assignment. Cheer up—three more years and you'll be old enough to choose your first specialty."

She went and Gildoran returned to laying out the children's supper. He didn't dislike Nursery

duty, no. But he was a little tired of baby breech-clouts and rattles and picking up the toys they strewed from one end to the other of the Nursery. The four-year-olds were beginning to learn ship discipline, which included ironclad rules about replacing everything where it belonged, for the next person's hand; but the toddlers weren't ready for that yet. And worse than the clutter was the food. Nursery rations certainly were as whole-some as the food served elsewhere in the Ship, and perhaps more so, but he was really tired of a bland diet—and Nursery personnel shared what the babies ate. He wondered how the Poohbears managed to stand it.

Or maybe their race always ate bland food on whatever strange world they came from. He didn't really know. The Poohbears and the Explorers had shared ships from time out of mind, but he didn't really know that much about where they had originally come from. Neither did anyone else. Except, maybe, a few specialists in the his-tory of the Explorers.

One of them, at the far end of the Nursery, was urging the four-year-olds, in low tones, to replace their colored oilsticks on the shelf, while another tacked the bright-colored splashes of color up on the walls. One youngster had spilled his color box, and the Poohbear was telling him a story while his lagging fingers replaced each color in the proper indentation in the tray.

"... and the Captain said, 'But how can it be a proper planet without any ice caps?' And the Sci-entist told him, 'Planets don't have to have ice caps

"It's a little dull down here for you, isn't it?" said another Poohbear, reaching out a huge hand and giving Gildoran's hair an affectionate tousle; he remembered her doing this when he was no

bigger than the four-year-old sorting the color-sticks. "Well, I can't blame you, Doran. I suppose a big fellow like you wants adventure, and who knows, if you were up on the Bridge, you might discover a new world for us." Her light voice was gently, deprecatingly humorous.

"Adventure?" He chuckled. "Not much chance of that. We haven't found a proper planet in the last six solar systems—why should this one be any different?"

"But it's time, isn't it? demanded one of the four-year-olds, tugging at Gildoran's hand. "Ev-ery solar system we go through that doesn't have a planet—doesn't that mean there's more chance the next one will have one? When Gilmarti came down and talked to us about probability math"— he stumbled and lisped a little over the word— "she said something like that . . ."

"No Giljodek," said Gildoran, squatting down on the floor so he was eye-to-eye with the child, "Probability"—he pronounced it slowly and carefully so the child could imitate his speech— "doesn't work that way. Here, take this—" He took a twenty-sided die from a shelf, "Throw it twenty times. Do you have to get a—oh, say a seven—in those twenty tries?"

The child took the die and threw it, while Gil-doran counted aloud. "Seventeen, eighteen, nine-teen, twenty. See? One of the numbers could come up twice or three times, instead of every number just coming up once. If you threw it hun-dreds of times, over those times, each of the num-bers would come up about the same number of times; but every time you throw it, you have the same chance of getting any one of the twenty numbers. Do you understand?"

"I think so," Giljodek said, wrinkling his forehead. He was already bleached from space, as pale as Gildoran; the toddlers crawling on the floor were still pink and rosy, with hair dark or reddish.

"So you see, smallest, the probability math only works over big, big numbers. We know that in a hundred solar systems, probably fifteen or twenty will have at least one planet where humans can live; but we don't know which fifteen or twenty, and some of those fifteen or twenty won't be suit-able for some other reason: already settled with intelligent life-forms, too cold for most races, too warm for most races, just a shade too little oxygen and will need extensive terraforming, and so forth. And every time we go into a new solar system, we are like you throwing the die: you can't be absolutely sure a seven will come up, even if you've thrown it nine times already and haven't had a seven; you could get any one of the twenty numbers, any one time. Our next solar system could have a good planet, just as any of the last six or seven could have had one; but the fact that we haven't had one for seven solar systems doesn't mean we're any more likely to have one this time. We could get three good planets in a row from three systems, or we could keep on drawing blanks fifteen or twenty or eighty times in a row. Like drawing blanks in your domino game, with one difference; in the domino game, you run out of blanks. The Cosmos will never run out of solar systems with no good planets in them."

Giljodek's eyes were wide. "Then maybe it's lucky we ever find any good planets, isn't it, Doran?"

Gildoran grinned. "Maybe it is, at that," he said, and stretched his long legs upward, hoisting the child with him. "Here, sit up to the table, Poohbear has your dinner all ready."

The little boy sorting colorsticks scowled and said, "I want to hear about the Captain and the proper planet!"

The Poohbear continued. "The Captain said, 'How can it be a proper planet if it hasn't any rust stains for iron?' And the Scientist said ..."

"Supper!" It was a strident yell. "Story after-ward!" The Poohbear was jerked backward by a hearty tug on her long, dark hair from one of the toddlers.

Gildoran was at their side with a swift stride. "No!" he said sharply, "You don't do that, small-est! " But he kept his face straight with an effort. It was his special favorite among the babies, the tiny round-faced girl with golden skin and slightly slanted dark eyes, pug-nosed and aggressive. "Say, 'Sorry' to Pooh!"

The baby pouted. "Want supper! No story!"

Gildoran held her firmly. "Pooh may tell a story to anyone if she pleases; you don't have to lis-ten. Say 'Sorry' and go straight to the table, baby."

She kicked at him crossly. "Won't!"

"Then," said Gildoran, straightening up again, with the child between his strong hands, "you go

straight into your hammock, Naughty girls may not have supper."

She fought and kicked him all the way to the hammock; he held her, laughing, so that she could not hurt him or herself, extended at arm's length. He put her into the hammock and began to fasten the restraining straps over the small wrig-gling body.

"Supper!" she yelled, but she was laughing, too, "I want supper!"

"Then say 'Sorry' to Pooh for pulling her hair, naughty girl." He and the little dark-haired girl had had this struggle often; she was the largest and most aggressive of the babies, and the most definite personality. Until this stretch of Nursery duty, he had thought all young babies were alike: eating and sleeping, and very much the same. Now he had begun to realize that they developed very individual personalities within a month or two, one quiet and another noisy, one aggressive and another less so. This one was a wild little animal, but very quick and bright; she already talked in sentences, while most of the others said only one word at a time.

She went limp now in his arms, looking up at him with a coy smile. "Say 'Sorry' to you," she suggested, and he laughed again.

"Not a chance; come on, now, get into your straps like a good girl."

"Not a good girl," she yelled, kicking him again, and as he buckled the first hammock-strap, yielded. "Naughty girl say 'Sorry,' " she whis-pered, fluttering her long eyelashes as if she was

about to cry.

He set her down on the floor. She whispered, thumb in her mouth, "Sorry, Pooh," and the Poohbear picked her up and tousled her dark hair. "Sit down to your supper, now," she ad-monished, and laughed over the child's head at Gildoran.

"That one!"

Gildoran nodded as he was helping the other children into their small chairs. She was the one who kept the Nursery in an uproar. But Gilrushka, from Psych, said that the noisy, assertive, mis-chievous children were the ones who would grow up to be the most valuable crew members; the ones who were always asking questions, testing limits, exploring the outer parameters of their world. A "good" child, Gilrushka asserted, was simply a stupid or intimidated one, one who gave his elders no trouble.

Poohbear stretched her lips back over her teeth in what Gildoran knew to be a friendly grin; to an outsider, he imagined, it might seem a grimace of threat or attack. "I hope the word comes down soon to name them; I need some kind of name for that one—she already has a sense of identity. The others can wait." She put a spoon into the child's hand, admonishing, "Don't eat with your fingers, smallest."

"Why not? Like eating with my fingers."

"Because," Poohbear said patiently, "if you eat with your fingers, you will get your fingers all greasy, and then your clothes and your hair and your skin will be all greasy."

"Like to be greasy," said the child definitely, and went on eating with her fingers.

"Then," Poohbear said calmly, "you will have to have another bath."

"Like 'nother bath," said the child, cheerfully smearing her food on her already-buttery face. The Poohbear concealed a smile again as she gave in. "Bath after supper, then. Giljodek, hold your spoon the other way, and the food will not fall out as you eat it."

"Tell me about the Captain and the proper planet while I eat," teased the small boy finishing with his color box, and the Poohbear beside him said, "We don't tell stories at table. I will finish the story later and you may eat now, or I will finish the story now and you may eat later."

"But my supper will get cold," said the small boy, and the Poohbear said, "That is simply the decision you must make; will you wait for your supper or wait for the story, Gilvarth?"

The fair little face drew up in a frown. Finally he decided, "The story won't get cold and my supper will," and hurried off to climb into his chair. Now that they were all at table, Gildoran and the Poohbears sat down in their larger chairs, and Gildoran surveyed his bowlful of bland chunks with boredom. Well, it wouldn't be long, anyway.

The bland chunky stuff was succeeded by stewed fruit, and then the work began of bathing the infants, getting them into their sleeping coveralls, and then into their hammocks. The older children, four four-year-olds, were listening to music at the far end of the Nursery; Gildoran came and set out an array of songs for them to listen to. The other toddlers went into their ham-mocks without hesitation, curling up sleepily; Gildoran's special charge crawled away in her blue sleeper, sitting and listening to the music with fascination, waving her small fists in time.

"She's musical," the Poohbear commented. "Gilrae said she would start to teach her to play the harp as soon as her hands were big enough."

The child heard and cried out, demanding, "Rae play harp!"

"Not tonight, smallest," Gildoran said, "Rae had to go up to the Bridge. She can't play for you tonight. I'll put on a repro of the harp music for you." He started to hunt out the reproduc-tion cube of harp music, but the baby came and grabbed it up before he could sort it out from the others; she had recognized the design on the side. She was so smart, so clever, he thought, carrying her to her hammock and putting the cube into the wall-slot beside her where it would play softly, for her ears alone.

One of the Poohbears, following him, said softly, "And you still think it's dull down here?"

"Not really," Gildoran said, "but I'd like to talk to some grown people, now and then."

"Well," said the Poohbear kindly, "Here's Gil-nosta to talk to."

The young woman came into the Nursery. "I came down to say goodbye to my babies, I'm going to be working directly with Gilban," she said. She looked elated; it was a feather in a junior technician's cap, to be placed directly into ap-prenticeship with the Chief Medic. "But I'm going to miss my babies," she added, going around to hammock after hammock, hugging and fondling the infants one after another. "Oh, I'll come down again, I really am going to miss them—"

Watching, Gildoran thought that he, too, would miss the babies. But for Gilnosta it was a pro-fessional first, too; they were her first medical assignment, and since Nursery, he knew, Gilnosta—who was barely two years, shiptime, older than he was himself—had wanted to be on the Medic staff. She had had charge of the babies, special nursing care, after the complex surgery of their first month on board; and during that first month she had been closer to them even than Gildoran.

It was more than this; Gildoran knew he was the only one in the whole crew who had seen her cry, the night they knew they were not going to be able to save two of the six babies. To everyone else, Gilnosta had only repeated what Gilban, the Chief Medic, had said; that saving four out of six was a triumph which would have been considered spectacular, on any Explorer ship, even fifty years ago. They had a right to be proud of it. But to Gildoran she had wept, hopelessly, her grief for the two weakest ones who had died after the surgery. Gildoran shared her grief; and that night he had known, gut-deep, what he had known intellectually all his life; why no baby aboard an Explorer ship, was ever given a name, or allowed to become more than a

specimen, until it was certain that he or she would survive his first year.

It was hard enough to lose a nameless infant—a potential shipmate—one who might have grown up to be a Captain, or a lover, a friend . . . one of you. But a person, one given a traditional Explorer name, one with personality and individuality— no, that was intolerable. So the babies were kept in the Nursery, and no one but the Poohbears, and the assigned Nursery personnel, and the Medics who were required to learn detachment, ever had anything to do with them until it was certain that they would live to be named and to become part of the ship's people. Lori, the nine-year-old, and the four four-year-olds listening to music on the floor, were cherished by everybody aboard the Gypsy Moth. But the four nameless infants were known only to the three Medics, to the Biologist, who was Gilrae this last year, and Gildoran; and the grief for the two who died was limited to those few.

Nobody else will ever remember them. We don't even have a name to remember, Gildoran thought. Nobody else would ever grieve for the two.

But the other four, as Gilrae had said, would be forever imprinted with Gildoran's personality as an ultimate, interior, internalized image of what an adult of their own kind should be like. Not just me, Gildoran thought, watching Gilnosta hug the little almond-eyed one who was his special favor-ite, but Gilnosta herself. And Gilrae. It was the reward, perhaps, that would compensate for the grief that only they had known; they shaped the remaining children in their image.

Gilnosta was about to leave again—he noticed that she had left the straps loosened and the small

dark-haired one was wriggling down from her hammock. What a nuisance; she would head right for the music corner again and have to be pried loose, and this time she probably could not be placated with special music of her own. He hardly had time to think of anything else; he was heading off to fetch the child back when Gilnosta chided, "You haven't even asked me about your new assignment, Gildoran! Or who was drawn for Year-Captain?"

"Oh! who is the Captain, then?"

"Gilrae," Gilnosta said. "I think she'll be a good one; everyone likes her. And Gilharrad said he would never be Captain again; within seven years, he's going to take Floater status. Oh, yes, she added, "You're going to work in Transmitter with Gilraban, and he wants to see you as soon as you can make it. But you'd better catch her first," Gilnosta added, pointing. Gildoran groaned. The small girl with the almond eyes had reached the musicians.

Gildoran galloped after her and caught her up. "You're supposed to be in bed, you little mon-key," he admonished, lifted her firmly back into the hammock and fastened the straps over her. She answered, "Want to play drums!"

"Tomorrow you can play the drums," he said, and braced himself for another yelling fit, but she surprised him again, snuggling down into her hammock, smiling up at him sunnily and saying, "Kiss."

He hugged her close, kissing the soft cheek. Already it was bleaching, paler than the rosy color

he remembered, the long lashes on her cheek no longer the color of the starless void. For the first time consciously he voiced the thought as he re-joined Gilnosta.

"I can't help it—I'm so glad this one didn't die."

She nodded, without speaking. That would, he sensed, always be a raw place to her; he wondered if, like himself, she had found herself loving the children, giving them more than the measured doses of gentle handling and cuddling which the babies seemed to need to develop the will to live after the complicated surgery and the long period of convalescence.

If we had loved the others the way I loved this one, would they have lived, too? He wondered if Gilnosta was wondering that, if it would always be, for her, the kind of dulling, but never com-pletely healed memory that Giltallen's defection and Gilmarin's death, were for him. Did everyone have some such buried memory, never to be shared because sharing it could never ease the burden?

Enough, Gildoran thought. He was through with Nursery duty. He'd had the privilege of shap-ing a new generation of Explorers, and now it was time to go on to something else. He caught a shaft upward to the Transmitter department.

II

Like all Explorers, Gildoran had a working ac-quaintance with the workings of a Transmitter. He had been given his first lessons in theory and assembly when he was about eight years old, biological time. But mastering the intricate mathematics of computer assembly and Trans-mitter tie-ins to existing circuits was something else entirely.

"Of course, the Gypsy Moth's computer will handle most of this, most of the time," Gilrabin said on the first day, "but computers do break down, sacrilegious as it is to admit it, and you have to be able to spot it if you get some really freak answer—you can't just accept whatever it gives you. You've got the talent—I did your IQ assessment when you were in Nursery, you know."

Gildoran hadn't known.

"Oh, yes; you were our babies, Gilrae's and mine," Gilraban said. "We were on Nursery duty that year—they used to try and assign a male and a female, but we're too shorthanded for that now, so they assign one person, and make sure the main Medics are of the opposite sex if they can. That's why Gilnosta and Gilrae were the main ones to work with you this time. But Gilrae and I were there with you and Ramie and poor Gilmarin, and the ones who didn't make it. There was one—a boy—the brightest little thing I've ever seen, but he developed a blood idiosyncrasy . . . well, enough," he finished firmly and continued, "You've got the brains for this. But your brain's getting lazy because you've never had to use those abilities; now you've got to relearn all that math. I think you could make a good Transmitter spe-cialist, if you were interested."

Gildoran said he'd do his best. He didn't really think they would have assigned him to a specialty he couldn't handle. Assignments on Gypsy Moth came up by computer, but barring emergencies, natural talents and even preferences were taken into account.

But it took him a long time—a month shiptime—of the hardest work and study he'd ever put in, and there were days of discourage-ment when he wondered if the computer had made one of those mistakes Gilraban said it could. Then another month of building and taking apart Transmitter mockups and Jeffrey coils until he could put them together blindfolded or in his sleep (and sometimes, at the end of a long shift when Gilraban had been unusually exacting, he felt as if he had done it in his sleep) before he was qualified to work on a Transmitter when downworlding.

"Now all you have to do," Gilmarti, Raban's elderly mentor, said the day he finally did put together a Jeffrey coil blindfolded, "is to go up on the Bridge and tell them to find a planet we can let you practice on!"

Gildoran chuckled. "I don't think they're wait-ing for me to do that. We need a good planet—one to sit down on and get some rocks for fuel, even if we can't make a tie-in on the Transmitter."

"We could use a world to settle, too," Gilraban said. "We need fluorides, though, and silicone, for the Jeffrey coils. What you can do, though, is to go up to the Bridge and tell the Captain that there is another qualified Transmitter technician. Not expert, yet, but a qualified tech."

The Captain was Gilrae, this year. At the back of his mind was what Gilraban had told him, that Gilrae had been assigned to Nursery when he was very small. So was Gilrae, then, the internalized image of the perfect woman to him?

How silly! Of course not.' I know Gilrae isn't perfect—nobody is. But she's a splendid human being.'

Yet the small disquieting thought remained. When he reported to Gilrae on the Bridge to give his news, feeling somewhat stiff and constrained because now she was his Captain with all the authority of the Year-office, she smiled—the old familiar smile he seemed to have known all his life. "That's wonderful, Gildoran. I can't get over it. I still think of you as a youngster; it doesn't seem so long. How long has it been, shiptime? I can't believe it's twenty years!"

And then there was a further disquieting thought. Did she think of him as he thought of the little dark-eyed girl in the Nursery, crawling on the floor, wetting diapers, a demanding, disrup-tive, brilliant child? His little almond-eyed charge looked very much like Ramie, but he was perfectly sure that Gilramie had been a gentle child, wistful, not loud and demanding. Yet, Gil-rushka to the contrary, she had not grown up stupid.

Thinking of Ramie made him remember his other old Nurserymate and companion. Gilmarin was gone—probably dead on Lasselli's World— but he remained and Gilramie, and in the month since he had been freed from Nursery duty, he had hardly seen her.

"What assignment did Gilramie have this year?"

"She's working on the Bridge," Rae said, "Gilhart is Chief Navigator, and she's qualifying under him. There's been some pressure to qualify you two," she added, and he saw the faint lines of strain in her face. "We are shorthanded, and we will be until those four-year-olds in the Nursery grow up, and maybe after. Even if we found a world right away, even with the finder's fee, we'd have trouble getting a line of credit from Head Center for more babies; I was sure we'd find a new planet within six months shiptime, and now we have two generations' credit to pay for. You and Ramie are all we have now," she added, but she did not speak Gilmarin's name.

Gilraban had said it; you were our babies. Meaning himself and Ramie. And poor Gilmarin. And others who didn't make it.

One little boy, the brightest I've ever seen, but he developed a blood idiosyncrasy. The thought plucked at Gildoran with pain, that he might have had a brother, a Nurserymate and companion, whom he had never known, from his own mys-terious world, or elsewhere. Someone his own age, sharing his own problems and growth, as Gilramie did. He found himself regretting that lost and unknown brother, with a sudden emo-tional pull that was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Was he losing his mind, getting emo-tional all the time over nothing? He'd been like this ever since that spell in Nursery. Maybe they shouldn't assign Nursery duty to the people who had serious work to do! He was just getting too damned emotional all the time; he'd better go and see Gilrushka in Psych!

But he never did; because when he woke for his next shift, it was all over the Ship; Gilnosta told him first in the dining hall, and Gilmerritt, when he stopped in for a little exercise in the brilliant ultraviolet of the plant rooms. By the time he reached the Bridge, he was prepared for all the jubilation he found there.

"A planet," Gilrae told him when he came, at her invitation, up to the Officers' area, "A good one. Orange sun, getting old and turning reddish, but millennia yet before it cools or collapses. Look—She switched on a screen to show him a computerized blowup picture, "Polar caps, but not much cloud-cover. Sensors don't show much vegetation, but there's enough. Might need some terraforming."

"The place looks bleak," Gilhart agreed, com-ing up behind them to take another look, "but there's no reason there shouldn't be cities there, and even farms; the soil is probably arable."

"Not if it's that old," said Gilmerritt. She had crowded on the bridge, too; everyone had, eager to find some real or fancied errand that would give them a glance at the new world where their next work would be done. "Look at that sun; there might be soil exhausted by too many millennia, too many races coming and going—"

"No sign of life," Gilban said. The Chief Medic was a big man, tall as Gildoran—who was tall even for an Explorer—and broader than most; powerful and intimidating. "Most planets this age, if they can support life, develop it; and if a planet this old is still barren, there must be some reason. It could have developed life and lost it because basically it wasn't fit for a full

evolu-tionary process."

"That's still only a theory," Gilmerritt said, "The idea that life could evolve in two separate waves—"

But Gilban refused to be drawn, saying, "Maybe this is the planet that will prove it, one way or the other. How long will it be before we're close enough to send down the first landing party?"

III

The landing party went down two days later, but Gildoran wasn't on it. He was annoyed, know-ing this meant they considered him too junior for a post of danger. It seemed to rub it in, his youth and insufficiency, when they came up again, ju-bilant.

"It looks good," Gilraban said, summoning the whole Transmitter crew for a conference in the main briefing room, "The location in this end of the Galaxy will make it almost ideal for a Trans-mitter tie-in, no black holes or quasars for awk-ward routing patterns. We won't even have to go through Head Center, but can make the main tie-ins—" He grew technical about the routes to ar-range jumps back to the center of the Galaxy, and Gildoran felt elated, realizing that he could un-derstand everything Gilraban said without hav-ing to count on his fingers.

"I'm not too hopeful about it," Gilmerritt, the junior biologist, said. "The place is bleaker than we thought; mostly lichens. I don't think anyone will ever want to settle here; all rust and bare desert. It might make a good Transmitter stop, but that's about all."

Old Gilharrad teased, "You're prejudiced, Gilmerritt, because there aren't enough of your precious plants here! You want everything to be a beautiful garden!"

"I don't deny it," she said, laughing. "I like my planets to have everything. What's that old story they used to tell us in Nursery, about the Captain who asked, 'How can it be a proper planet if it hasn't got any green growing things?' "

"And remember the Scientist's answers," Gilharrad said. "There are all kinds of proper planets— a hundred thousand kinds of planets —and every single one of them is a proper planet..."

"And like all Nursery stories, that's absolute nonsense," Gilrae said. "If it were true, every planet we find would be a suitable planet. But I don't share your prejudice at all, Merritt; I can do without green garden worlds. I didn't have to be quite so alert—no cannibal vines waiting to gob-ble us up, no local equivalent of the great saurians hiding in the jungle to snap us all up for a light meal and never know he had lunch."

"Every planet has its own subtle worth," Gilharrad rebuked, "and its own especial place in the visualization of the Cosmic Totality. The fact that we don't know how to use the planet is no reflection on the planet's worth, but only de-scribes the limitations of our pitifully small human

view."

Gildoran was impatient with the ancient's philosophy; he thought irritably that Gilharrad ought to retire and take Floater status, out on the rim of the Gypsy Moth where he could devote all his time to intricate philosophies. Wasn't anyone else going to say anything? Were they only going to sit there and defer to the senile old man's dod-dering nonsense? Well, if no one else did, he would.

"Whatever else the planet is good for, we can get fuel from it, and silicone for Jeffrey coils," he remarked. "Is it so old that there are no remaining halogens? We need the fluorides."

Gilrae frowned at him. Did she think they had nothing better to do but sit and listen to the old man's maunderings? She said with gentle re-proof, "It's usually wise to remember that planets were not created for human use alone."

Gildoran had started, and he wasn't going to be stopped now. "Whatever the Infinite Purpose, or whatever it is that Gilharrad is talking about, the human use of this planet is what concerns us now. I thought we ought to point out what it is good for instead of dwelling on what it isn't. We need fuel, and fluorides, and Gilraban already pointed out that we can use it as a Transmitter stop."

"And there will be a finder's fee," Gilhart said, and Gilrae nodded.

"There's that, of course. But it's been so long between good planets that a finder's fee will only pay off debts. It won't put us back on a sound financial footing. We're still over our heads."

"Just paying off debts is being back on a sound financial footing, compared with having another year without a good planet," Gilhart reminded her, and as they left the Bridge, he slipped his hand through her arm in a close, possessive way.

Gildoran watched, frowning, and Gilramie came up to him, her almond eyes tilting upward.

"What are you looking so stormy about, Gildo-ran?"

"I am not looking stormy," he retorted sharply. The girl took his elbow, with the habit of years, saying, "But there's something bothering you— do you think I can't tell, Doran?"

He shrugged. "It's none of my affair. But Gilrae was always with Giltallen—they were coupled before I was born—and now she's always with Gilhart. Already."

Ramie said gently, "What was it they used to say in Nursery? 'For everything there is a season; a time to be born and a time to die, a time to mourn and a time to cease from mourning.' I'm glad to see Rae happy again. This last year has been so terribly hard for her. It was a blessing that there were babies to oversee, that she was working as Biological Officer; otherwise I honestly think she would have died."

Gildoran retorted, "And I suppose you thinkit's lucky that two of the babies died, so she'd have another loss to think about besides Giltallen's?"

Ramie's dark eyes flamed for a moment with indignation. "That was a cruel thing to say, Doran—it's not worthy of you!"

"I hate to see Tallen forgotten like this. And Gilmarin. Didn't you care—"

"Doran, how can you? Of course I care; I loved Gilmarin, as much as you did. He was my first—" her voice caught and she looked away. "He wanted to make a—a permanent pairing, and I wouldn't. I've blamed myself, wondering how I could have denied him that happiness when he was going to die so young . . ."

Gildoran looked down at his feet, feeling about two inches tall. He muttered, "I'm sorry, Ramie. I didn't know." He had been so absorbed in his own grief, had plunged so hard into his own work in the Nursery, in the small drama of life and death there, he had had nothing to spare for anyone else's loss. Perhaps he had felt that no one could grieve as he did, that Gilmarin had been his friend, his playmate. He had not realized that Ramie, too, who had been one of their group, would have her own private griefs and agonies; perhaps all the more so. His own adolescence had been spent suffering over Janni, who had deserted him; but Ramie, whose first lover had been one of their own, would have the greater grief.

"Ramie, I'm a beast, I shouldn't say things like that. What can I say? I didn't think, I didn't

know."

She clung to him, her head on his shoulder.

"It's all right. You had to grieve in your own way, just as I did."

"But you shouldn't have had to grieve alone," he said, muffled, his mouth against her soft hair, holding her tight.

When she raised her eyes, they were still wet, but she was calm. "No," she said, "I think it was good for me; I didn't have any way to hide from it, so I had to go into it and get it over. That's why it didn't take me as long. Rae has been so cut off; and now I'm so happy, so happy to know she's finding someone else. You haven't seen what it's done to her."

He hadn't. Absorbed in his own griefs and his work, he had not seen.

"I like Gilhart. He's so solid, somehow. I work under him on the Bridge, you know, and I hon-estly don't think I have any talent for Navigation; it's terribly dull and routine, and my mind just slips away from what I'm doing. But Hart is patient and kind, and he has managed to make me see that it's exciting in a way, being the one to guide the Gypsy Moth. Though I'll still be glad to get back to live things; that's just temperamental, I suppose. Are you enjoying your work with the Transmitter?"

He started to tell her about Gilraban, conscious of the new tone in her voice. For the first time in his life, he was conscious of Ramie as a woman and it was not really pleasant. She was a child, she was . . .

She was exactly his own age. Exactly.

He felt uneasy, wondering if, as Gilrae had managed to transfer her affections and desires to Gilhart, Ramie had decided to put him into the place of the dead Gilmarin. She couldn't be so foolish. Or could she?

"Anyway, I've qualified, and Gilraban says I can work on the Transmitter crew for this new planet," Gildoran said. "I hope this time I get real responsibility here, not just running errands."

It was time, he felt; the last world had finished his youthful irresponsibility, the disillusion of the end of the affair with Janni had matured him. He was an adult now, a man, ready to take on the responsibilities of a man, and he hoped they un-derstood it.

He was chosen for the second party, which would establish their first camp. The Gypsy Moth lay in a close orbit, a few hundred kilometers above the surface; but the little shuttle ship went closer still, drifting to dayside over great barren seas.

"Will there be enough water to support life?" Gildoran asked.

"I should think so," Gilrae said. "One of our first tasks will be to put down some artesians. There is an accessible water table, even though it's arid. Artesians will give us enough water for life support while there's just the ship, and once we get a Transmitter tie-in, we can bring in a terraforming crew, seed the place with algae, and start another chlorophyll cycle, which will give us oxygen, too. There's enough to breathe, but a higher oxygen ratio will be more comfortable for humans."

"Look," Ramie said, pointing. "Sunrise."

Over the edge of the barren desert below them, the red sun was rising, a huge disk, breaking clear and crimson, reflecting tracks on the desert; the glassy sand caught reflections and cast them back in a dazzling blood-colored light.

"Spectacular views," Gilraban said. "We might consider tourists coming here by Transmitter just for that view!"

"It is amazing," Gilrae said. "I saw it three times with the first landing party, and the effect doesn't wear off."

"What's that?" Ramie asked, bending over the viewscreen.

"Just an effect of the light," Gilrae answered without looking. But Ramie said, "No. I don't mean that. Look—straight lines. I thought you said this world had no sign of intelligent life, Rae."

"It didn't," Rae said, "and most of the lower forms died off when the sun cooled and it went arid."

"But that looks like the ruins of a city," Ramie said. "Take it down lower, Gilhart, can't you? That's an artifact of intelligent life or I've never seen one."

"Cosmos!" Gilhart exclaimed. "I think the girl's right, Rae! What were we thinking of, not to have seen it?"

"Don't be silly, Hart," she said, but her smile was intimate, and Gildoran still winced a little at seeing it. "We could have orbited a hundred times, and we could still have missed it. Take it down, Hart—we ought to have a closer look at this."

It was certainly a city; low clustered buildings, huddled crimson in the sunrise. Rae looked down at it and quoted, "A rose-red city, half as old as Time."

It looked it. The buildings were low, walls crumbling, made of something like adobe—or if it was something stronger, it must have been un-fathomably old, for there were no sharp corners anywhere on the buildings, roofless walls gaping everywhere like blind eyes staring at the sky.

"I take it back," Gilraban said. "This place could be more than a good view and a Transmitter stop. Archaeologists will come here from every-where to study the ruins. But why did they all

die?"

"Maybe they didn't," Rae said. "Maybe there are survivors. Hart," she said, "try an orbit that will take us all over the surface, and use high sensor levels to cover any forms of life. We didn't get a flicker last time, but we could have missed it, too."

Gilhart beckoned Ramie up to the controls.

"You take it," he said, smiling. "You're ready for this, I think. Set up a grid pattern all over the day side, why don't you?"

Ramie glowed with excitement, and Gildoran saw Rae smile at Gilhart. Yes, it had been kind of them to allow the young girl to take the responsi-bility of this exciting new exploration. Would Gilraban allow him this kind of responsibility on the Transmitter crew?

IV

They quartered the planet on a grid pattern for three days. They found one other area which looked as if it might be the ruins of some man-made city (or something created by intelligent life) but otherwise the planet was deserted; no sign of life except the small howler beasts in the desert which covered the world from pole to pole.

"Well," said Gilrae on the fourth day, "it looks as if it's all ours."

"Maybe so," Gilban said pessimistically, "but it doesn't happen that way very often—for a world to develop intelligent life and civilization, and then die out like this. Maybe what killed them is waiting down there to kill us."

"Not likely," Gilhart said. "We haven't seen any form of life except the little howlers, and they're harmless. As for vegetation—there's Gil-merritt's report, and I suppose you're familiar with that, too."

"I am," Gilrae confirmed. "The usual kind of arid desert plants—presumably everything which couldn't handle desert conditions died out. We did exhaustive air samples, and the atmosphere is fine, though it could use a little more oxygen. The first terraforming crew will probably seed some algae and start a vegetation cycle all over again—once the water table is back where it ought to be for a proper planet." She smiled deprecat-ingly and again Gildoran thought of the Pooh-bears' story—the story he had heard when he was still in Nursery himself, the story on which, he supposed, every Nursery child was brought up.

Gilrae looked around the briefing room. She said, "We'll go down tomorrow and land, take samples, and make our first assessments of what needs to be done. Are you going down for Trans-mitter, Gilraban?"

The older man shook his head. He said "I don't think so; I'll send Gildoran down. He can locate a site for the first tie-in to Head Center. Check out the bedrock, Doran; remember the mud in the last place? It wasn't anybody's fault—as I remember, there wasn't anyplace on that planet where we could put a tie-in without being buried ankle-deep in mud. But let's try to find someplace— this time—where there's a good solid rock foundation, and dig down to it. I don't like wading in mud!"

Gildoran felt a swell of pride. Rationally he knew this was not an assignment on which a very junior technician could make any serious mistakes—setting up an area for a first tie-in—but he still was excited. It was his first adult assign-ment; on the last world he had had no assign-ments more serious than fetching and carrying, handing and helping. He said seriously, "I'll try to find you a good spot," and wondered irritably why Gilrae was smiling. Couldn't anyone take him seriously?

"I don't want to inject a note of caution when everybody's being so hopeful," Gilmarti said, "but don't take any unnecessary risks. A planet that killed off one intelligent race could give us some unpleasant surprises."

"Not a chance," Gilban said definitely. "I'm convinced that the last sign of intelligent life on this world—and I'm judging from the apparent age of those ruins down there—must have been a couple of million years ago. My first guess about what killed them—barring discovery of their re-mains, which doesn't seem very likely, any or-ganic material would have decayed so many cen-turies ago that we'll never even know what they looked like—would be a plague which

spread planetwide and then, having killed off everything capable of catching it, died off from lack of host."

"Let's hope you're right," Gilmarti said, and Gilmerritt said, "In the air samples and the first soil samples, we found very little organic life, and very little one-celled life; hence no germs or bac-teria capable of spreading disease, and nothing to vector any plague. Nothing's ever been spread from vegetable to animal, so we won't catch any-thing from those lichens and tubers; and they caught a couple of the howlers and found no para-sites. A remarkably sterile world."

"I like it better that way," said Gilmarti. "I'm not especially fond of doing it the way the Tinkerbelle's crew had to, a few hundred years ago—re-member the trouble they had on that world that had reached early-feudal, trying to persuade them to have a Transmitter tie-in? They were con-vinced it was the work of a particularly nasty set of devils and almost sliced up the crew for sac-rifices to their particularly nasty gods. Poor Timharald—he was their Year-Captain at the time—did get killed off. At least those lichens and tubers and desert howlers aren't going to decide we're devils and sacrifice us up on some sort of altar!"

"That's true. I always wonder whether we're doing that kind of world any favor at all, bringing them the blessings of a Galactic civilization," Rae said. "Of course, history shows that most of them do integrate and find their own cultural patterns; but my own feeling is that barbarian or feudal worlds ought to be let alone for a few thousand years to grow up a little."

"That's a very provincial view," Gilban said.

"It's an ancient scarcity view, saying you want them to struggle along on the very edge of survi-val, living with all the dangers of a solitary race. Like those people down there," he said, making an inclusive hand gesture including the planet below their orbit, "At the mercy of whatever killed them off—while a Transmitter tie-in could have saved them and let their civilization go on, growing and modifying with the new cir-cumstance."

Gilharrad smiled gently. He looked, Gildoran thought, as if he was already old enough to spend all his time meditating. How old was he, anyway? He said, "Even the Transmitter can't wholly re-shape human destiny, Gilban."

"Maybe not," admitted the Medical Officer def-erentially, "but I'm convinced that we have a duty to try."

"I think you're missing Gilharrad's point," Gil-rushka from Psych said. "The question is whether we Explorers have any right to make the decisions that will shape every world in the Galaxy into the image of Head Center, depending on the Trans-mitter. Current thought seems to feel—"

"Let's hold that for meditation sessions—all right, Rushka?" Gilrae interrupted. "This isn't the time for philosophical wrangles." But she smiled at the young woman. "The question is who do we send down tomorrow for specimen work and pre-liminary exploration of Transmitter sites?"

"Take Gilramie," Gilhart said, "She's getting practice in planetary navigation. And someone who

can check terrain for geological conforma-tions. With no seas left, there may be no appreci-able tectonic or volcanic activity—considering the state of the core samples we got, and the study of the magnetic fields, there are no active vol-canoes left and no internal activity that would cause them to become active—but we ought to know. We don't want to set up on a site that's due for new volcanic outbursts within a couple of thousand years."

"Right," Gilrae agreed. "I'll study crew qualifi-cations and pick a group for tomorrow. Is that all for now?"

When they broke up, Gillori, the nine-year-old who, too junior even for an apprentice assign-ment, was used as the ship's messenger girl, came up to Gildoran.

"Poohbear says we're going to have a riot in Nursery if you don't come down to visit," she said, "One of the babies—the imp, you know which one I mean—keeps yelling for you. Why not come down and see her?"

Gildoran was struck by a sense of guilt; excited by his new work, he had completely forgotten his own special little charge. The imp. They would have to name her fairly soon; maybe he ought to speak to Gilrae about a naming ceremony—at least for the ones who were talking.

"It's too bad this one isn't a boy," Gillori said, "We could name her Gilmarin."

Gildoran turned on the child fiercely. "Do you really think anyone could replace Gilmarin?" he

demanded, and the little girl flinched.

"That wasn't what I meant. But it would be a way to"—she stammered a little—"a way of re-membering. . . ."

Gildoran was suddenly ashamed of himself. "I'm sorry, Lori, I didn't mean to shout at you. But I don't need anything like that to remember— look, do you mind not talking about it, Lori?"

Rebuked, she fell into silence. Gildoran took the shaft down to Nursery, inwardly seething. Did they think anyone could take Gilmarin's place, that he could endure having anyone else with Gilmarin's name, reminding him, night and day, year after year, of their loss? He loved the little girl, but he felt if he had to speak to her year after year by the name of his loved vanished friend, he would come to hate her.

He stepped into the Nursery and was im-mediately rushed by a breathless charge: a small girl in a tight pink coverall, swarming over him, trying to climb him like a stairway.

"Doran, Doran, Doran—" she babbled over and over again, and he discovered that she was crying. He sat down, holding and hugging her, trying to soothe her.

"Don't cry, sweet girl, don't cry, smallest. Do you think I wasn't coming back anymore? Did you think I didn't love you anymore?" he soothed, holding her tight. She had a sweet clean baby smell; her silky hair had its own perfume.

"Missed you," she hiccuped over again. "Naughty Doran. Not here to put me to bed."

When she quieted a little, he set her on his knee, facing him, smoothing her hair gently. "You mustn't cry," he admonished. "I love you, but I have other work to do."

She listened, and again he realized that this precocious little one probably understood every word he said. He must be very careful not to lie to her or mislead her. He should have explained to her before he left; but he had thought that she was only a baby, less than a year old, that she would not understand.

"Listen, smallest," he said, gently, bouncing her a little in his lap. "I want to talk to you seri-ously, baby. I love you. I always will. I'll be with you when I can. I can't play with you all the time anymore because now I have other work to do, and Gilbarni and Gilnosta and the others will be spending their time teaching you and looking after you. But I'll try and come down whenever I can, and when you're bigger, I'll take you all over the ship."

"Take me now," she begged.

"I can't, smallest; there are no places for little girls as little as you, and you could get hurt. When you are older, you will go all over the Gypsy Moth and be with me, and Ramie, and Rae, and all the other people on the Gypsy Moth who are waiting for you to grow up. But I will try to come down and see you every day or two. All right?"

She snuggled against him. "All right," she said, considering. "Come lots. Love you."

He blinked, angry with himself; why did he get so damned emotional all the time now? But he said, "Love you, little girl," and knew it was true. The clutch of her small fingers on his hand seemed to tighten directly around his heart. Until this stretch in Nursery, he had never realized it was possible to love anyone so much. Not Janni, ever. Nor even Gilmarin. No one.

He would have no special duties until the next day, when he would go down to the planet's sur-face. He agreed to stay for a while, letting all the children cluster around him, and when the Poohbear suggested that he tell the older children—the four-year-olds—about the new planet, he gathered them all around him, letting Giljodek climb on his other knee, the others snuggled on cushions all around, very close. Gilbarni, the new Nursery staff youngster—he was about fourteen, shiptime—raised his eyebrows and said, "Thanks, Gildoran. I still have some trouble talk-ing to kids this small. They don't understand a thing."

"Oh, yes they do," Gildoran retorted. "Talk to Gilrushka in Psych. They understand everything you say to them, even if they can't communicate it very well. So be careful."

Gilbarni gave a skeptical shrug, and Gildoran was outraged, until he remembered how he had felt at the beginning of his own Nursery shift; as if the babies were animals howling, incapable of any human communication. Gilbarni would learn, and after all, that was part of the reason for Nursery shifts; the Nursery attendant learned something, too, not just the babies. Gildoran

him-self had never thought of that before; he had al-ways thought the Nursery attendant took a year out of his own life to sacrifice it to the infants, stalling his real career. Now he realized that he had learned some very valuable things about hu-manity and love.

"Tell us about the planet," Gilvarth demanded, tugging at Gildoran, and he began, "Well, it's a big planet, with a nickel-iron core—you know what that is? There are polar caps, but very small ones, and there are no seas—"

"How can it be a proper planet without any seas?" Giljodek demanded, and Gildoran chuck-led, recognizing the quote from the old Nursery story, quoting back the response; "A planet can be a proper planet even when it doesn't have seas."

Gilvirga, the third four-year-old, an intense, serious big-eyed child, demanded, "If it doesn't have polar caps and doesn't have seas, what does it have?"

"Well, if you'll be quiet for a minute, I'll tell you," Gildoran said indulgently, and spent the next half hour telling the children as much as he knew himself about the new planet. He didn't know how much they understood about the tech-nical details, but he would tell them, and let them take what they could from it. The toddler in his lap drowsed, not yet old enough to be interested in any world outside Nursery. But the four-year-olds were intensely excited and finally demanded that he get a visual-screen picture from the Bridge and show them the planet floating beneath, which he did.

"Will we go down?" Giljodek asked.

"Maybe after we get everything set up down there," Gildoran said, "There's nothing there now but little rodents, and things that howl, out in the desert, like little monkeys."

"Do monkeys howl?"

"These do; they have big air-sacs in their throat that vibrate, so you can hear them for a long way. We'll have visuals of them in a few days, and I'll ask Gilrae to send some pictures down." He looked around. "Your supper is on the table, children."

"Eat with me," the baby girl in his lap begged.

"No, sweet; I will have my supper upstairs. That's where my work is now," Gildoran said gently. "But I'll sit here by you and watch you eat—is that all right?"

After supper she clung to him, demanding that he give her her bath, and he found that washing and drying the small wriggling pink body gave him distinct pleasure. After he finished, she in-sisted on showing him her drums and castanets, jingling them for him with a distinct sense of rhythm; and when she grew sleepy, he sat fon-dling her, feeling, with surprise, that he felt calmed and happy.

"Come tomorrow?"

"Not tomorrow, smallest. Tomorrow I am going down to the big planet you heard me tell about."

"What Doran do down there?"

"I will put up a Transmitter, baby, so we can visit other worlds and bring back pretty things for little girls," he said, thinking that one of his first errands when the Transmitter was set up would be to visit a world with a sophisticated music store and find an array of simple musical instru-ments for her to play with until her hands were big enough for the harp Rae wanted to teach her.

All the children wanted Gildoran to hug them and tuck them into their hammocks—even the least developed of the toddlers, who still could not say his name plainly and lisped "Doda." While he was putting each child into the ham-mock, he discovered that he had a special fond-ness for each of them; but somehow, for some reason, he felt closest to the little almondeyed one, the "imp." He wondered why.

He remembered a long spell of time in the third and fourth months of her life, shiptime, when she had made a slow recovery from one of the sessions of modifying surgery; it was then that the other two had died, and he had been afraid that this one would die, too; Gilban had not held out much hope. Night after night, when she lay awake whimpering, Gildoran had carried her around, propped up in his arms so that she could breathe more easily, or held her, sleeping, for hours,

be-cause she woke and fretted when she could not feel the comfort of his touch. Had this formed the bond between them? Even now, when she was healthy and strong, the largest and cleverest of the babies, that closeness remained.

Well, he would bring her some simple musical instruments. It would be good for all the children to have regular musical training, even if only one of them was highly gifted; he would speak to Gilrae about it. He tucked the child into her ham-mock with a final kiss, and lowered the light.

On the way to the door, he said, "We should name them, Pooh. She, at least, needs it."

"I'll speak to the Captain," the Poohbear said. "Come down again whenever you can, Doran. They really miss you."

"I will," he promised, and realized that he meant it.

V

The landing craft set down in the middle of the barren desert; and as they descended, Gildoran shivered.

"It's colder than I thought!"

"I don't know why," Ramie said, "but for some reason, one usually thinks of deserts as hot. I do, too."

"Well, they come in all temperatures," Gilrae said, "hot, cold, and everywhere in between. At least this one isn't snow-covered steppe!"

"There's not enough water in the water table for snow," said Gildorric, who had come down to make a geological assessment. "But I think if there were, it would be snowing."

"Well, thank goodness for thermal clothing, then," Ramie said, smiling, and Gildoran, looking at her triangular face, the slight tilt of her eyes, thought that twenty years ago she must have looked much like his little imp in the Nursery. She was dear and familiar, and it was good to be working with her again, after his year of exile from most of the adults in the Ship.

Gilrae was examining one of the plants close at hand. "Remember: Gilmerritt wants plant sam-ples," she reminded them, and Gildoran bent to look closely.

"A kind of tuber, aren't they? Though admit-tedly I don't know that much about biology; I thought tubers all grew underground,"

"Most of them do, especially food plants," Gil-rae said, "but I suppose as the soil grew more and more barren, the last survivors of these plants developed air-roots and air-tubers. Take a good

number of samples, will you, Gildoran, if you have room in your bag? And we should check for other varieties; they might be useful on other planets where there are desert conditions."

"You checked them for edibility, then?"

Gilrae nodded. "Gilmerritt ran a dozen tests. They're very high in proteins, and would be a very good food crop for arid lands, since they get their nutrients from air. I suspect that in a world with more moisture, they'd be tastier," she added, and cut open one of the white air-tubers. She offered sample cubes all round; Gildoran made a wry face.

"They might make good Nursery fare—too bland," he said.

"Not gourmet food, that's certain," Gildorric said, chewing the crisp tasteless stuff, "but nice to know there's something down here we can eat, if we have to."

"I'll stick to rations," Gildoran said, "but I sup-pose we could run it through the synthesizer and get some very tasty food. Boiled and mashed, it might be all right, with plenty of spices and sea-soning."

Gilrae looked round, assessing. "Gildorric, I suppose you want core samples—"

"Yes, and to check out bedrock," Gildorric said, "Gilraban and Gilmarti thought the ruins here"—he gestured at the horizon, ridged with low rocky shapes—"might be a good place to set

up the first Transmitter tie-in. Give the first tourists a good view, attract archaeologists. Set up a special study through Head Center, to get fund-ing for more studies. We might get a small extra grant over and above the finder's fee, for a find of special interest to science."

"That sounds like a good idea," Gilrae agreed. "And I'll get biological specimens. I'll take Doran along to carry the bags; it's not worth the trouble to get a mechanical servo set up—I don't need that many. Ramie, are you going to do anything spe-cial?"

Ramie shook her head. "I'm just transporta-tion," she laughed. "Nothing for me to do until you're ready to take off again; I'll come along and help carry specimens and get a look at the ruins." Then, glancing around at the others, "Unless Dor-ric and you others need me—"

Gildorric shook his head. He and his assistants were setting up heavy machinery. "We're just going to be drilling, checking out seismological studies, making sure we can set up here."

"Maybe I should stay," Gildoran hesitated, "I'm supposed to check for bedrock on a site—"

Gildorric shook his head firmly. "Nothing you could do here; you aren't trained to handle this equipment, and you couldn't touch anything. We'll get your bedrock level, lad, although I have a fair idea it's not far down. Go along with Rae and explore the ruins, if you want to."

Walking toward the low outline of the ancient city, Gildoran felt as if he had been given an un-expected holiday. The low heaped outline of the ruins had made him think they were farther

away than they were, that as they approached the piles would resolve themselves into buildings and separate shapes, but as they came closer, he could see that there were only low walls, piled rubble. Here and there a kind of structure rose a few meters, gaping roofless, filled with fallen rubble. Other structures were only low mounds already covered with the growing lichen and the low, prickly air-tuber plants.

"I wonder if this grows all over the planet," Gilramie asked.

Rae nodded. "It must have been an important food crop once—perhaps their principal one. It's a fairly sophisticated plant; highly complex, only one species spread planetwide; there may be minor variations. I don't know if it would sustain life indefinitely—we haven't made exhaustive tests—but it would make a good staple food, bal-anced with other things."

"I wonder if they cultivated it within the city limits this way."

"It's not impossible," Gilrae said. "That's one city pattern—buildings organized around the central food supply—if there are predators, a fairly common pattern. Another pattern is build-ings surrounded by croplands. I'm speaking of early stages of civilization, of course, before highly organized distribution of supplies, wheels, rails, air transit, Transmitter."

The city stretched, seemingly endless, kilome-ter after kilometer. Gildoran was not accustomed to walking so far, but he was young and resilient, and it was pleasant to walk on hard ground, to feel the tug of gravity exercising his muscles. The ruins were rubble, collapsed and faceless; he

marveled at the amount of time it must have taken to wear hard stone away like this, unto dulled formless heaps. Memory nagged at him; on the last planet, he had visited, as part of cultural edu-cation, many worlds by Transmitter, including ruins in all stages of decay. But nothing, nothing nearly as old as this. He had seen deserted cities, ancient temples, abandoned worlds and cultures; but some trace remained of whatever had built them. Mysterious they might be, yielding nothing of the central ideas behind the civilization, noth-ing of the philosophies, the religion and thought which had prompted the makers to build temples or cities or great catafalques; but always before, in every ancient civilization he had seen, there were at least physical traces of the population which had raised it toward the skies of their world, in primitive anticipation of the reunion with the civilization beyond their sun and stars.

Here there was nothing; the builders, faceless and unknown, whoever and whatever they might have been, had come and gone, not waiting for reunion with the Galactic culture far beyond their ken.

"Does anyone know if these people were ever visited while they were still flourishing, Rae?"

Gilrae shook her head. "I've checked the rec-ords. But we're in new Explorer territory; no ship has ever been in this sector before, as far as I can tell, and there aren't even any rumors of lost races or worlds out in this direction."

"They couldn't wait for us," Gilramie said. "How sad—we'll never know who or what they were!"

And strangely, Gildoran felt an incomprehen-sible thickness rising in his throat. Like the chil-dren in Nursery who had died before they were named, who would be unmourned because un-known, faceless, without potential—here was a race of people he would never know. Something never to touch his life except as an unguessable loss.

Who were they? What had they been? He would never know, could not even guess how they might have enriched the life and civilization of the Galaxy and the Cosmos ....

What's happened to me? I never used to think this way!

"I hope Gilban was right about whatever killed them off, being gone," Gilramie said with a sud-den shudder. "When I think of all the millions of people it must have taken to build a city this size, and something that could kill them all off—"

"There's nothing here to vector any disease," Gilrae said. "We checked that out, Ramie." She frowned. "Of course there are questions no one can ever answer completely without trying. We have to take some risks. That's why we disin-fected the landing party, be/ore they took off their space suits; thinking about spores. But any spore which could survive this many million-or billion—years, would be impossible to detect by any means at our command."

"Some of these places must have been huge," Ramie commented, turning into a gap in one of the low walls. "It's only four or five meters high now. But considering the length of the place,

vir-tually any aesthetic standard would dictate that it should be at least twenty or twenty-five meters high, maybe more. But—what's that?" She stopped, glancing around apprehensively at a sudden sharp rustle, a little skittering rush.

Gildoran said, "Look out—"

A sharp, desolate howling rose on the air and a small colony—nine or ten of the small monkeylike creatures who were the only surviving animals on the planet—erupted, screeching with a piercing, ululating yell, from their concealment within a big clump of the air-tuber plants. They paused, clutching one another and gibbering, turning to howl with menacing gestures, at the intruding humans; then fled.

"I feel guilty," Gilramie said, "It's their world now. And here we are trampling all through it."

She spoke in hushed tones; Gildoran realized that they had all been speaking in hushed voices as they walked through the great, deserted nec-ropolis, which hardly bore the shape of a city anymore, with the low mounds overgrown with vegetation. In another few hundred years it would be only low hills, a few ruined lines where walls had once been.

"I wonder," he said, watching the howler troop depart, "if we left them alone, would those little howlers develop into the next dominant race?"

Gilrae shook her head. "Not a chance. Not enough brain size; they seem to be an evolution-ary

dead-end. They'll probably be extinct in a few thousand years, unless somebody wants to preserve them in a scientific habitat. Few thousand more years left alone, and this planet would have no signs of life at all."

Gilramie smiled and said, "I feel better. Then we're just giving this planet a new lease on life."

"Gilharrad wouldn't agree with you," Rae said. "He would probably say that even for a planet, there is a time for everything—a time to live and a time to die—and we ought to let this one die in peace."

"Gilharrad," said Gildoran, "seems to spend most of his time philosophizing, without much relation to reality." His voice must have been more acerbic than he realized, for Gilrae frowned.

"When you're his age, perhaps you will have earned the right to philosophize, Doran."

Rebuked, he fell into silence. He was warm in his thermal suit, but the endless wind whistled disconcertingly around the low walls, a howl only less pervasive than the distant, unyielding noise of the faraway beasts out in the desert.

Gilrae said, "We ought to think about getting back to the landing craft. I don't think there is that much more to see out here; professional ar-chaeologists might find something of interest, but this all seems to be very much of a muchness. I doubt if there's anything more worth seeing. We might as well fill up a bag with the air-tubers for Gilmerritt—take some leaves too, Ramie—and

we'll start back." She turned to the younger woman, but found her gazing intently at a low stone.

"What is it, Ramie?"

Ramie looked up, her voice hushed, and said in a whisper, "I think—Rae, I think this stone has—or had—carving on it, once. Whoever these people were, they had some form of writing."

Rae came hastily to kneel before the stone and put out a hesitant finger toward the worn surface. It was buried in the blowing sand, so that only a meter rose above the surface; but lines of serra-tions or ridges, formless curves, rippled the flat stone surface a little. "It is," she said in awe. "I don't know if the sand has left enough so that it can ever be deciphered, but the archaeologists will want to see it. I know they'll come here now!''

Gildoran, too, knelt to examine the carving, though Rae warned him not to touch it. "It will have to be photographed, and they'll want to ex-cavate, carefully, to see how far down it goes," she said. "There may be more, in a better state of preservation, if we can find anything out of this wind and away from the eroding of the sand."

"There might be more carvings," Ramie said excitedly. "Let's look around!" She turned round, moving toward one after another of the low over-grown walls. Gildoran thought, himself, that calling them "carvings" was a little exaggerated, but perhaps, in a sheltered spot—

"Those walls under that hillock might be more protected," he suggested, pointing, and Gilrae

said, "Maybe for this thousand years; heaven knows how long that hillock has been there, it's really only a sand dune; there might be anything under it. Oh, archaeologists will enjoy this one," she said, and her eyes were glowing. As always, fired by her enthusiasm, he came and began to examine the low walls, while Gilrae moved around; she tugged her hood from her head, then, wincing, pulled it back up.

"The wind cuts like a knife—there are regular needles of sand," she said with a grimace. "Does it blow all the time here, I wonder? It's been blow-ing like this every time."

"Nothing to block it between here and the poles," Ramie said. "Gildorric said we were on the shores of what had been a sea, once. I wish they'd invent a time machine so that we could go back and see what this place looked like. Rae, do you suppose we'll ever have a time machine that will do for time what the Transmitter did for space?"

Rae's quick eyes smiled. "I don't know," she said, "but it's possible, I suppose. Although, since the Transmitter gives us endless planets and so much space to explore, it's possible that there may not be anyone with leisure to think about other dimensions like time." And Gildoran realized that all his life, ever since he could remember, he and Ramie and Gilmarin—poor Gilmarin!—had been clustering around Rae, asking her questions.

The same way the little kids in the Nursery asked me questions yesterday. He found the thought intensely unpleasant and turned away. Was Gilrae just an internalized image to him? He looked at the woman; she seemed no older than he was himself. Once matured, Explorers seemed not to

age until they started to grow older like Gil-marti and Gilharrad! Rae was a beautiful woman, should he think of her as a sort of—of—of mother-figure like a Poohbear?

Ramie was still circling around the stone with the carvings, disturbing a napping howler who made off with a scream. Suddenly she cried out and fell full length on the sand. Gildoran hurried to her side.

"What's wrong?"

"I put my foot in a hole," she said, rubbing her shin, clinging to his arm for support as she clam-bered to her feet, "No, I'm not hurt . . . look out!" she cried, as Gildoran, too, lost his footing and the ground crumbled away underneath. They scrambled to safety, sprawled fulllength, claw-ing at the sand caving in treacherously around them. Gilrae came, stretching her hands to haul them away to harder ground.

"We'll have to be careful," she said. "All this is sand dune, not hard ground, and there might be excavations. Look," she added, regarding the place where the ground had caved in, "this could have been a cellar—an underground chamber where the roof came down and the sand drifted over. I don't think it would be very wise to set up anything actually on the site of the old city unless we explore it carefully for solidity." She knelt to examine the girl's leg. "Sure you're not hurt, Ramie? Your suit is torn."

"I don't think the skin is broken," Gilramie said, "just banged a little. Maybe there will be a

bruise." She shivered in the chill wind, and Gilrae said, "We'd better get back to the landing craft. Get them on the radio, Doran, and ask if they need anything else from here: sand samples, loose rock—"

Gildoran tugged out his pocket communicator, but when he tried to use it, it crackled and no sign of voices could be heard. He jiggled it angrily, tried Gilramie and Rae's, finally stowed it away in disgust.

"Static; the storm, I guess. And the sand—"

Gilrae nodded. "The sand is full of metal frag-ments; note how it cuts. Probably magnetic condi-tions will make it impossible to use the radio a large part of the time."

"That's going to be a nuisance when we get to setting up the Transmitter," Gildoran said, think-ing of the delicate inner mechanism of the Joffrey coils and how hard it would be to stabilize mag-netic fields and keep the sand out of the works.

"We'll have to devise some kind of housing— temporary shelter to keep the sand out—before you start work," Gilrae said. "And if the com-municators aren't working, we'll have to find some kind of line-of-sight signaling system until we can devise some sort of frequency modulation to work around atmospheric conditions. That shouldn't be hard. I—ouch!" She went down, stumbling, measuring her length; and as she picked herself up, they stared at what faced them on the sand.

It was a great head; rising almost a meter from the sand, set on massive shoulders. The erosion of the unending wind and sand had rounded the corners but could not diminish the power of the pointed forehead, the long and feline eyes, the massive arched nose and mouth. It was a counte-nance of tremendous strength; the three Explorers stared at it, half-hypnotized; some ancient king or god stared back at them from his place, deep-buried in the sand.

Ramie said in a whisper, "At least now we know they were not human, whatever they were."

"What a pity that we will never know what they were," Gilrae whispered.

"I wouldn't say that," Doran said. "We found this; there might be other traces. Maybe under-ground, or in canyons sheltered from the wind."

"I wouldn't count on it," Rae said, looking around where the fallen ruins, stone crumbled low, stretched away to the horizon. She shivered, looking at the face. "How cruel he looks, and how powerful, how defiant—"

"And look where he is now," Ramie said.

"And yet how important he must have been once, and how powerful, to stand high over this city—" Rae said, still shivering, and quoted in a low voice, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. . . ."

"And there's nothing else," Gilramie mur-mured. He felt the shiver strike him, moving up and down the spine, a sense of dread and terror. Nothing then lasted. Someday the Gypsy Moth, and all of them, would be only a memory . . . gone. Like Gilmarin. Someday, even the toddlers down in the Nursery would be gone, like all the multitudes who once inhabited this vast and crowding city, and everything humans had ever known or thought, as indecipherable as the worn lines on the stone which might, once, have been carved. He was stricken with terror of his own mortality, that nothing would remain, nothing, ever. . . . How could Gilrae stand so calmly looking at the dead city?

Gilrae said softly, "It's scary, isn't it, kids?" and with a sense of mingled relief and resentment— how dared she read his mind all the time, that way?—he realized that she knew what he was feeling, must have felt it always. He suddenly realized that he and Ramie were huddled close together ... as the four-year-olds had been hud-dled around him, yesterday, for counsel or com-fort, and it annoyed him. Ramie wasn't hurt, she didn't need his support. He moved a little, away from her.

"They're gone and we're still here," Ramie said softly. "Does that mean that Explorers—or hu-mans in general—are more durable? We land on world after world, and never find one where hu-mans have died out; but this race was gone before we ever came here. Even with the time slippage in deep space. I could go back to—to our last world, or to the world where we visited the Hatchery, and the Hatchery might be gone, and everyone we saw there dead, and the government would have changed, and so forth, but there would still be humans."

"Yes, barring a general plague or pandemic; but we've never found a planet where all humans were exterminated," Rae said. "Maybe this race"—she looked at the enormous feline head— "was before any humans had come into our Galaxy at all. Maybe most of the suns where they lived have collapsed by now into black holes. This is a scientific discovery of the highest order, you realize, "she added. "We may be lucky—there will be more than a simple finder's fee in this one."

"I wonder where the rest of the statue is," Ramie said. "Has it fallen? Or is the rest of it buried underground?"

"From the proportions," Gildoran said, mus-ing, "if they are anything like human, I'd say the whole statue would have to be eight or nine me-ters high. The arms and legs—if it had any— might be buried under the sand dunes here or they might have fallen away. Arms and hands are the most vulnerable parts, I seem to remember."

"If it had any," Gilrae warned him. "We can't assume too many analogies with humans." And he scowled.

"Whatever built this city had hands. Or some-thing like them."

Rae looked around. "Where did Ramie go? It's getting dark. We don't want to lose her, and if the wind builds up at sunset, we might have a full-fledged sandstorm. We ought to get back to the

landing craft. Ramie? Gilramie!" she called but there was no answer.

The lowering red sun made dim shadows among the tumbled heaps of rubble. Gildoran called too, in growing apprehension.

"Gilramie! Ramie! What could have hap-pened?"

Gilrae said firmly, trying to take stock without letting the dimness and the general desolation trouble her, "There are no large animals here to harm her; in any case, she's able to call out. And whatever else might have happened, she's safe from anything alive. There hasn't been any intel-ligent life here for a couple of million years, at a conservative estimate. Ramie! Ramie, where are you?"

Gildoran started to hurry away; Gilrae caught at him. She said, and he could hear the faint quiver in her voice, "No, Doran. Stay with me. If the three of us get separated, we could wander all night in this murk and never find one another again. We're already split up; why make three groups?" In the growing shadow, she pulled out her light and flashed it repeatedly around the low stones and fallen walls.

"This is better than shouting; she'll see it and come back to us. I'm not surprised that she can't hear us, with this wind," she added violently, and Gildoran saw her shiver, in the wind that whis-tled, endlessly, with nothing to break its long sweep.

It seemed too light to have much use yet for the small gleam of Gilrae's portable flasher, but Gil-doran began to be troubled. Suppose it grew too dark to find their way back to the landing craft? Well, then, he reminded himself, the others in the party would simply come back hunting for them. If they didn't, or couldn't, then the worst that faced them was a single night spent in the de-serted city, listening to the faraway yelps and howls of the little howlers.

"There's no point in rushing off to hunt at ran-dom," Gilrae admonished. "Stay close to me, Doran. Which way did you see her go?"

"I didn't. I was looking at this rock, to see if there were any more carvings nearby; I turned around to speak to her, and she didn't answer."

"Then she can't have gone far," Gilrae said firmly. Gildoran looked apprehensively at the darkening sky. How quickly it grew dark, now that the sun was on the very rim of the horizon! Already there was nothing but dusk around them, dusk and eerie shadows.

"The only way to handle this is to search in a spiral," Gilrae said. "As long as we can see that dark spire of rock"—she pointed—"take that for our center and move out, slowly, in a curve—" she demonstrated. "Circle, a little farther out each time. You call; your voice will carry farther than mine over this wind. And flash the light so she knows it's a signal; I'll need to hold mine steady so we won't fall over something and break our shins—or our necks!"

Gildoran followed her, troubled, flashing his light in a regular signal pattern older than history,

and shouting, although as the wind whistled through the old fallen walls, he was sure Ramie could not hear it. Between shouts he paused to listen, and during one of the shouts, he heard a faint sound, carried to them uncertainly on the wind.

"Rae! Did you hear it?"

"I heard something; I thought it was a howler."

Gildoran shouted Ramie's name again, and heard again, this time closer, but invisible in the darkness, a faint answering cry.

"Rae! Gildoran!"

"Ramie! Where are you? Call out to us—flash your light—"

Again the faint cry, this time from almost under their feet. Gilrae moved slowly, steadying her light, but could see nothing; then, with a muffled cry, she missed her footing and slid, and Gildoran, leaping to steady her, heard the cry end in a shriek, then a yelp of pain. Then she shouted urgently, "Keep back! Keep back! It's all caved in—ah!" Again the shout of pain, and Ramie's voice, troubled, calling out.

He edged back slowly from the gaping lip that seemed to have opened—a deeper darkness—at his very feet. There was a muffled thrashing, and another cry.

"Gilrae! Rae! Ramie! Where are you?" Gildoran shouted, again and again, groping his way and shining the light to the very edge of the cave-in; but under his feet the ground seemed to shift uneasily and he stumbled back further.

Then Gilrae's voice came from below, taut and shaken.

"Gildoran. Are you all right?"

"Yes. Where are you?" He tried to focus the light into the dark cave.

"We fell. It's caved in here—a roof fell in or something. No, try not to come any closer—"

"Can you show me your light?"

"I lost it when I fell. And I think Ramie's is broken," she added. "It's dark down here; if we can get into my pack, I have spare batteries, so perhaps we can check Ramie's that way. If I can see to find them."

"Are you all right?"

"No," Rae said calmly, "I think I have broken my ankle. Otherwise, yes, and Ramie seems to be unharmed."

"Can I climb down? You'll need help—"

"It would be better to see if you could find your way back to the landing craft and get help," she said, and he marveled at the calm in her voice, "I certainly can't climb out in this shape, and until it's light, we won't be able to see whether Ramie can."

Slowly, keeping his light fixed on the treacher-ous ground under his feet, Gildoran circled, try-ing to see any glimmer which could be the distant, strong lights of the landing craft. On a planet without any light whatever except the distant stars—for there was no moon—he should have been able to see the slightest artificial gleam for many kilometers, but he didn't. Either some rise in the ground hid the landing-craft from them, or the configuration of walls and rubble in the dead city concealed the distant lights from their eyes.

He said, "I don't see the faintest sign of it. I'll try the communicator," but when he pulled it out he heard nothing but static; no matter how he twisted the dial there was nothing but faint angry crackling, and at last he stowed it away again, impatient. He knew beyond all doubt that they were trying to communicate with him, three members of the party separated from the main body, and there was no way they could hear one another. Damned planet, anyway!

"Stand back," he said, returning to the dark rim where the women had fallen, "I'm coming down."

"You should be here and signal in case they come looking for us—"

"They won't come in the dark, and you know it as well as I do. They'll think we decided to make camp in the dead city. In any case, they couldn't quarter all of it in the dark. And Rae is hurt," he added. Through the calm voice he could hear the tight clenched control; she must be in consider-able pain, and he had the only working light so they could even see—far less tend—her injuries.

"Speak to me, Ramie—let me know where you are so I won't fall on top of Rae and hurt her if I fall," he said, carefully tying his flasher at his belt so that he could not lose it in his descent.

"I'm here," she said, "and I'll stand over Rae— no, don't try to move, Rae—so that you can't bump into her in the dark."

He could still see, dimly in the twilight, the crumbling ground below. Now, as his eyes were accustomed to the deeper darkness, he could see very faintly the forms of the women below. He felt apprehensive as he prepared to make his way down; the fall had injured Rae, though Ramie seemed unhurt. He kept his light trained at his feet, so that he could see the slanting pile of caved-in rubble, trying to scramble down it with-out losing his footing; but just the same he lost his balance and slid, landing in a heap on top of the others; Ramie was shielding the other woman with her own body, so that Rae was not hurt by Gildoran's weight.

"Well, that's that," he said, recovering his breath, "Now let's see what's happened to your ankle,

Rae. Ramie, hold the light—"

"No, you hold the light; I took a turn with the Medics and I know what I'm-looking for," the girl said tartly. "Are you all right, Gildoran?" He felt her hands touch his briefly in the darkness, as if for reassurance, and cling there; but her voice was steady. "Rae, let me try and get your boot off—no, lie still, dear, don't try to move. Gildoran, try—" and as Rae's low cry of pain followed the lightest touch on the boot, she said, "No. Don't try to unlace it or pull it off. I have one of the stronger knives; it will cut the boot-plastic. Let me cut it off."

Even that was grim, Rae's face whitening in the light of the flasher, her teeth clamped in her lip; and when the boot and the stocking were cut away, the ankle was revealed as a bloody mess of crushed skin, small fragments of bone thrusting through. Gildoran shuddered and turned his eyes away, feeling ashamed; if Rae could suffer it, how could he not look at it?

"I've got a few emergency Medic Supplies in my pack," Ramie said calmly, though he could see that she was paler than usual. "Including dis-infectant powder—that's about all I can do for it now. Turn that light around here, Doran, so I can see what I'm doing."

Gildoran felt helpless, simply holding the light while Ramie's competent hands cleaned the wound with disinfectant, bandaged it, and then, the bandages being thin, tore her undergarment to reinforce it with a strong strapping. Gildoran knelt beside Rae, holding the light; but, seeing the woman's pain, finally braced the light where it was steady in a rocky niche and gathered Rae's trembling body in his arms, holding her close as Ramie's hands went unflinching about

their pain-ful work. Rae clung to him, shaking, although she did not cry out again, and as Gildoran held her, it seemed that for this moment she was as small and young as the sick infants in the Nursery that he had held and comforted. Always before Rae had seemed invulnerable, indomitable, the strongest person he knew, a rock of strength in his youthful world; now she was broken and vulnerable, turn-ing to him for comfort, as if he and Ramie were stronger.

"That's the best I can do for now," Ramie said at last and handed Rae a couple of tablets from her pack. "Swallow these, Rae. Here, take a sip from my canteen—that ought to help in a little while. Lie back and rest; when they get you back on board and can look after that ankle properly, there won't even be a scar."

Rae said, with a shaky laugh, "I'm supposed to be looking after you young people. Captain, for goodness' sake! And here I am—" she smiled up at Gildoran, who was still holding her gently. He did not know what to say; he tightened his arms around her shoulders. Rae had always been a part of his life; and now he saw her as if for the first time, wholly different, a woman subject to the same stresses and troubles and fears as himself. For the first time in some months, it seemed, he looked at her without inwardly censuring her for faithlessness to the deserted Giltallen; he saw her as alone, vulnerable, needing help and comfort as much as any other person; not a rock of strength leading them all forward.

Rae had lost her pack in the fall which had cost her her light; but Ramie and Gildoran still had theirs, and they wrapped Rae's shivering, shocked body in the thin foil blankets which could be compressed into one hand, yet perfectly insulated body heat. When they had made her as

comfortable as they could, with Gildoran's pack beneath her head, Gildoran flashed his light around where they had fallen.

"Look at that!" Ramie exclaimed, "It's a whole—a whole underground city! And carvings, pictographs—Rae, this is a treasure! It's price-less!"

"And we could have wandered around on the surface for days and never seen anything," Gildoran added. "Maybe that fall was lucky after all—if Rae hadn't been hurt!"

Rae sat up against the wall, blankets huddled around her. She said, "But I'm not badly hurt. And the Gypsy Moth will get a bigger finder's fee for a world so rich in archaeological treasures than for a bare desert with carvings too worn to see what they are. Gildoran! Do you realize this means that we'll do more than get out of debt? Archaeologists don't pay as much as miners or some others, but it will really help!"

Gilramie was taut with excitement; duty kept her close to the injured Rae, but Gildoran could see that she was bursting with excitement. "Rae, do you mind if we go and look around?"

"You don't need to ask my permission," Rae said gently, sensing what she meant. "It's Ship's business, child, but if you mean, will I be all right alone, yes, certainly. But—" Suddenly her voice was shaking again. "Don't go too far. There might be—other dangers. Maybe more caveins. Rockslides."

Gildoran shook his head. "No tectonic activity; what caved this end in was weight on the under-ground roof which had simply crumbled with time. The loose sand slid underfoot and carried you down with it."

They walked carefully through the great un-derground chamber, looking at the carved walls.

Here, where the air had not entered for centuries, and perhaps for millennia, the carvings were un-damaged by the erosion of sand, wind and weather. They were bas-reliefs, Ramie found out when she ran her fingers lightly over the rock.

Gildoran turned the small, powerful light on the reliefs. "There's our friend up there," he commented. The face staring at him from the stone was the same as the statue they had seen, the powerful pointed forehead, wide-set feline eyes, massive neck.

"Ozymandias," Ramie said, and at his blank look, elaborated. "The poem Rae was quoting. King of kings in ancient history or legend some-where; a world he built and thought it would last forever . . ."

"That's what I'm going to name this world," Rae said, behind them, "Captain's privilege . . . what else is there? Oh, damn this ankle—"

"Through that arch," Gildoran said, directing the narrow beam of light into a further chamber. "Rae, I hate to leave you in the dark—"

"I'll be all right, go and see," Rae said, and Ramie cried out in surprise.

"Look, rising up there—oh, I know what it is; it's the base of the statue we saw above—and those frescoes on the walls. Tomorrow we can bring lights down here and really see them."

Moving slowly in the dimness outside the cir-cle of light, Gilramie stumbled into another object rising waist-high.

"Look, a stone chest—"

"We shouldn't open it," Gildoran objected, "Whatever's inside it, might crumble away to dust when the air gets in."

"It's already partly opened," Ramie protested, "When the ceiling caved in above, it dislodged the cover—"

Thus admonished, Gildoran handed the light to Ramie and shoved. Inside lay a body, desiccated and small as a child's. Flashing his light, he saw other stone chests and coffins, very small.

"A burial chamber. But what killed them?"

"Who knows? We'll never know," Ramie said. "Plague. Famine. Hunger. War. Look at the

fres-coes."

The carvings had once been painted, but not even stray flakes of pigment clung, after so long, to the carven walls. Only the stone remained. Following the walls, moving along into further chambers, the two young Explorers saw, fasci-nated, the feline creatures offering sacrifice to huge stone creatures, rowing strange boats, (con-firming the guess that they were beside the shores of what had once been a sea) casting fishnets and cutting up strange sea-creatures, harvesting fields of the air-tubers they had seen, ranged at long banqueting tables.

Which reminded Gildoran that, in addition to being cold with the dankness of the underground chamber, he was hungry. There were rations in his pack—though not enough for three—and the earlier midday meal they had eaten had reduced them. But there were the air-tubers which they had harvested; they could get more tomorrow— there were enough of them, certainly!

Ramie protested. "Look, there are more rooms through there—"

"If more of the roof caved in, we'd be cut off from Rae," Gildoran admonished. "I think we should stay together; we can explore tomorrow."

"Just one more room," Ramie protested, then looked, startled.

"Look, Gildoran, in this room all the stone coffins—they're bigger, all of them, and the carv-ings reach higher on the wall! How strange, as if the people had almost doubled in size. Or shrank.

What would do that?"

"God knows," Gildoran said, turning his light on the carvings. "But come, let's get back to Rae."

Slowly, weaving to avoid the omnipresent cof-fins arranged in patterns on the floor of the cham-bers, they returned to the first room where Rae still huddled in the blankets. Gildoran and Ramie divided the meager rations remaining in their packs, while Gildoran with his knife, cut up two or three of the bland air-tubers. He thought, as he chewed the bland whitish stuff, that he would not want to eat it every day.

"Just think, they lived on it, and we're the first living creatures—except the monkeys and those tiny rodents we saw—to taste it in who-knows-how-many thousands of years!"

"But that's just exactly what they did," Ramie said. "No other plant survived. They lived on this, and on the fish we saw them catching. And then the seas dried up and they starved, probably. Maybe it tasted better then; as the sun cooled and the seas dried up, there could have been enough cosmic-ray leakage to create mutations of all kinds."

Rae chewed her portion thoughtfully. "Actu-ally, it isn't bad. Bland, but you want that with a staple food, and this is desert country; there might have been all kinds of cultivated plants. It may originally have been an underground tuber, and as the soil was exhausted, it got more and more of its nutrients from the air; as the ground became desert, less rainfall to leach out soil nutrients and carry them through to roots and tubers. So the only ones that survived may have been the

ones which could live on air, like this one. We'll never know." She shivered and Ramie said, "She's still chilled, but the food will help."

Gildoran handed Rae the last of his portion of the ration. "Eat that. No, don't argue; you need the concentrated protein. Rae and I are younger than you are, and we're not hurt. We can manage on the tubers."

Rae started to protest, but Ramie shoved another block of the stuff into her hand. "Doran's right and you know it, Rae," she said, and Gildo-ran felt her arms around him in the darkness. He hugged her tight, comforted by the touch. There in the darkness, feeling her close to him, he be-came aware again, as he had been when they spoke of Gilmarin, that his playmate Ramie, his Nurserymate and companion, was a grown wom-an, not the girl he had always thought her. He kissed her cheek as he had done dozens of times, a gesture of affection and kindness without mean-ing, and felt, in surprise and some dismay, how she moved closer into his arms; reluctantly felt his body quickening at the touch.

No, damn it, that's not what I want! Is she trying to put me in Gilmarin's place? Firmly—perhaps with more firmness than he intended—he freed himself from her clinging hands; in the faint light of his torch he saw that she was shocked at the rejection, but he wanted to make himself clear.

"Rae's cold," he said, trying to soften it a little. "Here, we'll lie down one on each side of her, and keep her warm. The blankets will cover all of us, if we're close together."

They arranged themselves one on each side of Gilrae, snuggled close together, wrapped in all their clothes and covered with the insulating blankets; and slowly, from the shared body warmth, Gildoran began to warm through and feel the chill dankness of underground less.

"All right to put out the light? The batteries won't last too much longer, the way we've been using them," Rae said, and he assented. In the dark they were very close.

"Like the inside of a Poohbear's pocket," Ramie said with an uneasy laugh. "Back to the womb."

"Anyhow, we're all together," Rae said in the darkness, and Gildoran felt her touch his cheek. "I'd hate to be alone down here. And when morn-ing comes, they won't rest till they find us."

Gildoran shifted his weight, trying to find a comfortable position on the rock floor without knocking against Gilrae's injured ankle. She felt soft and warm in his arms; he could smell her familiar fragrance, not scent or even soap, just the clean woman smell of her that it seemed he had always known. She sighed and he knew that she was still in pain.

"Didn't those pills Ramie gave you do any good?"

"Oh, yes, certainly they did; it doesn't hurt nearly as much now—just aches a little," she said, her breath warm against his neck. He clasped his hand over hers in the dark, and closed his arms around her; even through the layers of heavy clothing, she felt warm and comforting.

"Not cold now?"

"Oh, no, not at all. You're so warm," she said, and after a minute, he heard her breathing quiet, slide into sleep. He sensed that Ramie, too, slept beyond her; the three of them snuggled together in the dark, an animal heap, like small furry ani-mals . . . quiet, warm, drowsy. Yet Gildoran felt troubled.

It was troubling enough to realize that Ramie, his own agemate and playmate, was a woman. He had been so absorbed with the memory of Janni that he had not thought of another woman, and in any case Ramie was too close to him; and now that he knew she had belonged, though briefly, to his lost friend, Ramie was forbidden to him. Yet now he was troubled with awareness of Rae's close-ness. Always before she had seemed distant, old-er, someone to look after him and care for him and command him as a Captain or senior officer com-mands a youngster; but now he had become aware of her vulnerability, her human need, her woman-liness. And suddenly the thought he had been keeping at bay for some time surfaced. He wanted her—he wanted her as a man wants a woman; he needed her in a way he had never needed or wanted even Janni, whom he thought he had loved so much.

And why not? he thought rebelliously. If she could go from Giltallen to Gilhart, why can I not woo her, make her love me? Will she always think of me only as a child? Can't I make her see me as a man, make her care for me?

He knew that her arms around him were for warmth, for comforting in her pain and loneli-ness.

Yet he felt more than that; felt tenderness, yes, and desire. Rae didn't know; and in any case, in pain from her broken ankle and worried about their separation from the other party, she would not be aware of anything more than he had always shown her, the deference of a junior to a senior crew member, the close affection of a shipmate. And this was certainly not the time to force it on her. But that time would come; oh, yes, it would come.

VI

Comforted by thinking of that time that would come, soothed by the quiet breathing of the wom-en wrapped in his blankets, Gildoran slipped over the edge into sleep. But the ground be-neath him was hard, and he was not accustomed to this much gravity; his sleep was restless and his dreams strange. At first he saw the giant stone statue they had found above, king or god, stand-ing, looming, surrounded by living, breathing peoples of his own kind, as if all the rock carvings had come alive, and all the desiccated bodies in the stone coffins had risen, with their feline eyes and pointed mask-faces, an alien Day of Judg-ment. Then he saw the kings on the walls, sur-rounded by their subjects; casting nets and fish-ing, cutting up the fish and serving it at great banquets, golden and jeweled plates heaped high with the air-tubers they had gathered so many thousands of years later. Then he saw the king holding court, and behind him a great procession of his descendants or ancestors, dwindling away into the distance, smaller and smaller in the perspective, vanishing and growing tiny over the edge of the horizon. Long-dead kings and longer-dead kings, dying away into smallness and silence . . .

"No," he said aloud in his dream, half-waking, "the perspective is wrong." And suddenly, as if he were looking through the wrong end of a tele-scope, he saw the nearby feline kings very small, with the others farther and farther away, growing larger and more imposing, looming until the farthest, most distant, longest dead, were giants like the great statue he had seen. . . .

"That's it!" he said with a great cry, and woke, to find the dim sunlight of the fading sun flooding in on them, and the air faintly damp with the light of dawn. Gilramie made a muffled sound of pro-test, hiding her eyes from the light. Rae stirred in Gildoran's arms and said, "What is it, Gildoran. What's wrong? Why did you cry out like that?"

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, grasping at the fading memories of the dream. The light, breaking for the first time in centuries through the broken roof of the cave-in, was pale on the stone coffins and the dried body in the one Ramie and Gildoran had opened. Small coffins. The most recent. And those before were larger . . .

"It stunted their growth," he said. "As the seas dried up, they had no more fish and no more of the minerals that came out of the sea. And then the lack of rainfall meant they had nothing to eat—for centuries—except this plant." He pointed to the remnants of the air-tubers on the floor, and then to the paintings on the wall. "No soil nutrients—just what they could get from the air. Over the cen-turies they grew smaller and smaller—"

Ramie pointed to the small corpse in the coffin. "But what happened to the rest of them? The

last man alive couldn't bury himself like that, could he?"

"Of course not; we'll never know what hap-pened to the last of them. Without the iodine and minerals of the seas, they probably lessened in brain function until they weren't much brighter than the howlers out there, and the last few gener-ations probably struggled along as savages, not even knowing where they came from." He thought, with a shudder, of naked savages, the last survivors of the great race that had built this city, huddling together in the ruins, not even knowing that their race would die.

We will all die someday. Someday even the Cosmos will wind down and the Explorers will be gone, all of us, even my little one in the Nursery, and not even their names will live. Gone, like Gilmarin. Like Giltallen, who stayed on the world we left, and now he is dead, long dead. We will never know how long dead or where or how he died.

What else could Rae do but mourn when it was the time to mourn, and then find someone else to love, someone who is still there to love? Because Giltallen, even if he lives, is dead to her, dead to all of us, dead as all these forgotten kings carved on the walls there.

"You are probably right," Rae said, and he had gone so far into his thoughts that for a moment he could not remember the train of his thought.

"Once, before the Transmitter, when there were no Explorer ships, but colonies moving between stars at lightspeed, there was an abandoned col-ony, and when they were discovered again,

thousands of years later, they had mutated beyond recognition and, because of a lack of some essential nutrient—I don't remember the de-tails—they had been stunted as a race; they were so small that the tallest of them were no more than a meter high."

"And while you speculate about the causes of death among the dead races," Ramie said, shiver-ing as she crawled out of the blankets, "I might point out that if we starve here, we will not need generations to die out. Have you given any thought, Gildoran, to how we are going to get out of here?"

He went and looked at the rockslide. "I think I could climb up out of that cave-in," he said, and put his foot on it, but the loose rubble rolled and brought stones showering down.

"That's no good," Ramie said, and went into the adjacent room, flashing Gildoran's workable light in the dimness. "Look, here where the roots of the statue are; there's a gleam of light— see?—where the rocks have come away around the statue. I can climb up there, and through—"

"But Rae can't," Gildoran said, "You and I will have to climb out and bring help."

"Rae shouldn't be left here alone," Ramie said.

"You're right. Stay with her and I'll climb up," Gildoran said, putting his foot on the foot of the statue and grasping at the great knee.

She faced him in sudden anger. "Why do you take it for granted that you can climb better than I? I'll go; I'm lighter and can squeeze through that opening more easily. You stay with Rae—"

"Children, children," Rae said in amusement from her place in the first chamber, "there is no sense in fighting over it."

Gildoran chuckled. "Settle it Nursery style. Flip a coin—well, my ident disk. You call it; number or plain."

Yet it was not just the Nursery style; everything on the Gypsy Moth, including Rae's election as Year-Captain, was chosen by lot unless it could be rationally handled by computer. Ramie said, "Plain."

He flipped, and the disk rolled along the floor; they scrambled after it, shone the light.

"Plain," Ramie said, picking it up and handing it to Gildoran, "You stay."

"All right," he said, resigning himself, "Here, let me boost you up partway—"

He shone the light after her as Ramie struggled up the great worn statue, forcing her way through the chink of light near the roof of the chamber. She disappeared, was only kicking legs below; strug-gled upward, shouted back.

"I'll get back to the ship, bring them as soon as I can ..."

When she had gone, Gildoran went back to Rae. She looked white, worn with pain; but he had no more of the painkillers to give her. He knelt beside her, tenderly tucked her into all the blankets.

"They'll come soon, Rae, and they'll get you back aboard, and before midday your ankle will be all fixed up—"

"Oh, certainly," she said, with a wan smile that only stretched her mouth. "That's not what I'm worrying about. As soon as I get back aboard Gypsy Moth, they'll have it in a cast. I'll even be able to walk on it. It's just—I'm Captain, I hate abrogating my duties this way."

"They'll understand. You aren't to blame for a cave-in, for goodness' sake!"

She tightened her fingers on his hand and said, "The Captain's to blame for everything. You'll find that out someday."

"If they think it could have been prevented—if they think it's your fault, if they try to blame you, I'll—I'll—" Gildoran began, surging with anger that anyone might try to blame Rae. But she laughed. "You'll do what? You'll tell them otherwise? That's sweet of you, Doran," she said and patted his fair hair as if he were a Nursery child and she an indulgent Poohbear. "But you'll find out someday what it means to be a Captain, and you don't make excuses for what happens when

it's your Ship."

Gildoran felt impotent rage; did she think he was only a child? But she looked so exhausted, so worn with pain, that he could not show his anger. He could only try to take her mind off it as much as possible.

"You should see the carvings in the other room. A whole life-style for a nonhuman race," he be-gan. "Kings or Gods, sacrifices, harvests. . . ."

"Yes," said Rae with relief, understanding what he was trying to do, "Tell me all about them, Gildoran. I can't go and see them for myself."

VII

The sun was high, coming down vertically from the direction of the cave-in, when they heard shouts and noises outside. Three crew members came to the rockslide and carefully worked their way down, carrying shovels and a stretcher. Gil-ban, the Medic, quickly made his way across the rubble on the floor toward Rae; but Gilhart brushed him aside in his rush to scoop Rae up in his arms.

"Rae, oh, Rae, I was so frightened!" He laughed, with relief, holding her to him. "I gave them all

a bad time because they wouldn't agree to go out and look for you in the dark, I knew it was sense-less but I couldn't bear to think of you alone out here with only these wretched youngsters—"

"They took good care of me, Hart," she said, putting out her hand to stop him. "As well as anyone on the crew could possibly have done—"

"But they probably caused the trouble in the first place," Gilhart grumbled, scowling at Ramie and Gildoran. "You should have taken someone more experienced with you! Oh, my love, I was so frightened—"

"It's all right. I'm all right, dearest," she soothed, and the gesture became a caress, her hand moving across his cheek tenderly. "Look what we have found; there'll me more than a find-er's fee this time, and it's worth a broken bone or two."

"Not if it's yours," Gilhart grumbled, barely looking around the carvings.

"That will do." Gilban said sharply, "Put her down, Hart. I have to look at that ankle, and then get her up to the landing craft and then up to Gypsy Moth—that leg might need surgery. You two can do your billing and cooing later on."

While Gilban bent over Rae, Gildorric came behind Gildoran to look at the inner chambers. He said, "This is fabulous, tremendous, Gildoran." He listened with flattering attention while

Gildo-ran showed him, with the powerful lights they had brought, the carvings and explained their theory about why the race had first dwindled and then died.

"Could be, very likely was," he confirmed. "Any archaeological crew can tell us. And when we get to the Gypsy Moth we can analyze those air-tubers."

"We ate most of them," Gildoran confessed.

"There's billions more," Gildorric laughed, "and I have a pretty fair idea what you'll find; because we gave them preliminary testing. They contain only partial proteins; probably without the basis offish for their diet, the people couldn't survive. They look feline; probably they have di-gestions that can't completely metabolize vegeta-ble proteins, and they'd need large amounts of meat or fish, and with the oceans drying up—" He shrugged. "At a guess, lack of iodine and thyroid deterioration. No iodine in the spectrum—no halogens generally, no fluoride for Joffrey coils."

Gildoran thought about the Transmitter, bring-ing people here—but for what? "No one could live here, then, if the planet is devoid of essential elements—"

"A terraforming crew can take care of that, after we get a Transmitter tie-in," Gildorric said, "Plant plenty of algae and drill down to the water table; use nuclear fusion to get all the water we need for cloud cover and the seas could even come back someday. Oh, this is going to be a good world, but we'll leave it desert a while to preserve what we can of these ruins."

Aboard the Gypsy Moth it was quickly con-firmed that Gilrae's injuries were minor, though painful; soon, in a walking cast, she was going about her duties as if there had been no interrup-tion. Before Gildoran was sent down to the Transmitter crew working on the surface, he went to the Nursery again, hunting for his special small charge, who dropped the colorsticks she was scrawling with, and charged him, grabbing at his hair as he bent over.

"Want ride," she demanded, and as he hoisted her to his shoulder and obediently galloped around the Nursery, he felt an enormous inner twinge. He might never have seen her again; he might have been killed in the rockslide, be as dead to her as Gilmarin or the centuries of dead and stunted kings lying in their stone coffins in the necropolis down there.

"No, no more rides, sweet. Don't tease," he said firmly as he lowered her to the Nursery floor, "Gildoran has to go down and build a Transmit-ter, and little girls have to stay here and learn things to be big girls, so they can come and build Transmitters some day."

She considered this a minute, pouting, then snatched up some blocks and said, "Build Trans-mitter!"

It was time—more than time—that this one had a name. She was already capable of abstract thought; now she needed a solid sense of identity. And time would not delay or hold back, but moved relentlessly, bringing to everyone an ap-pointed time. A time to mourn. And a time to forget mourning and to remember the needs of love.

He bent down and kissed the rosy cheek. "Goodbye, Gilmarina," he said, "Build your Transmitter, and I'll go down and build mine."

And he went out of the Nursery, prepared to argue them all down for the right to give this name to the child he loved, in memory of the playmate he and Ramie had loved, but whose time was gone.

Part Three HELLWORLD It lay a thousand miles beneath them, blue and beautiful in their viewscreens, wrapped in a fluffy blanket of pale clouds, drifting endlessly across its face. There were continents and oceans and polar caps.

"Looks like it's got everything a planet ought to have," Raban said, twisting the dials that kept the world below them in focus. "What does it say to you, Doran?"

Gildoran read out the computer data, sum-marizing as he went. "Plenty of heavy metals. Nickeliron core. Low radiation background, no Van Allen-type belts worth mentioning. I think this one is going to be it, Raban."

The older man nodded. "We need it," he said. "We're running a little bit low on iron. Pooh Three said some of the babies had a low hemoglo-bin reading—not low enough to be dangerous, but low enough that we shouldn't pass up a planet with an iron-based chemical structure. Final de-cision's up to Rae and the Captain, of course, but I think we go in." He got up and stretched. "Let's go break the news."

Gildoran spoke formally to the fifteen-year-old girl at the Communications switchboard; "You have the Bridge, Lori." It still felt funny leaving her there alone. He'd spent the last year teaching her the work of her first post, and it had gone so deep in him—you never left a Class C apprentice on the job alone, not even for twenty seconds, not in any sector, without a Class A on the job—that he still felt he ought to call someone else to relieve him. He started to ask her if she thought she'd be okay, but fortunately he remembered in time how he'd felt on his first post. So he waited for her formal confirmation "I have the Bridge," and, without another word, made himself turn away and leave the Bridge at Raban's side without a backward glance.

Raban said, as they went down in the lift, "It's about time we found a good one. Many more like the last couple of systems, and we'd be getting into the center of the Nebula. Nothing but frozen giants and dark stars in system after system—and when Rae did find a likely-looking star, its com-panion picks just that time to go nova. Lucky we were still outside Barricini's Limit, or we'd have been drawn in." He looked grave. "I've always believed that's what happened to the Golden Hind. It was eighty years ago, shiptime and we never heard anything except that it hasn't been reported on any known world for two thousand years of their time. But when I last talked to a

friend from that ship, he said they were heading in the direction of the Greater Magellanic Cloud and there were half a dozen stars going nova in that direction, about then."

Gildoran was too young, shiptime, to remember the Golden Hind. It was only a name he'd heard, sometime, somewhere, knowing it was one of the old roster of the Explorer ships.

Once there were a hundred of them. How many are left now, I wonder?

But that was another of the questions you learned never to ask.

Raban said "It's your planet, Gildoran. You want the privilege of telling the Captain about it?"

This was generous of Raban; he could have claimed credit for himself. "Not necessary. We found it together. But before the official word goes out, can I drop down to the Nursery and tell Ramie? I know she's worrying."

Raban smiled knowingly and said, "Sure, you tell her first." And suddenly Gildoran was angry.

"Damn it! I'm sick of this—look, Ramie's work-ing in Nursery. She's worrying about the babies and the hemoglobin levels. I promised, if I got the word, I'd tell her right away. That's all it is. All."

Raban blinked and stared. "Have you two quar-reled, Doran?"

He said stiffly "There's no 'us two' to quarrel. No, Ramie and I have always been good friends. I hope we always will be."

That's no lie. We will be again, when Ramie gets over this nonsense . . .

"Look, Gildoran, I'm sorry," Raban said slowly, "I had no intention of getting you mad—or of prying into your business, either. It's only that everybody thinks of you and Ramie in the same breath, almost. Everybody on board Gypsy Moth expected that you two would be paired and set-tled down by now."

"Everyone thought! Everyone expected!" Gil-doran burst out. "Maybe that's half the trouble! People have been mentally putting me and Ramie to bed together since we were twelve years old!"

Even Ramie, herself. Dammit, can't she have a little more independence, a little self-respect? Can't she do her own thinking instead of just taking what other people think as gospel?

Raban said slowly "I'm sorry it bothers you, Doran. But look at it from our point of view, can't you? You're almost exactly the same age . . . you're the only two on Ship who are the same age, since we lost Gilmarin. If it isn't Ramie you want, who?"

"That's the kind of thinking I mean," Gildoran said desperately, "what difference does age

make? It isn't as if we could expect to start a family!" Raban looked shocked and offended as if Gildoran had voiced some blasphemy.

I've broken another taboo.'

"Everybody pairing us off just because we happen to have been hatched in the same litter! I thought we were all supposed to be equals aboard Ship, once we're out of the Nursery, the only caste being what office we're holding at the time! Is that true? Isn't that Explorer custom? Or is that just some kind of pretty lie you tell us, and the truth is that you keep all the children together in their play-pens?"

Raban blinked and shook his head. ."No," he said. "No, it's not that. You are our equals. You, or Ramie, might be the Captain of Gypsy Moth next year and every living soul on this ship would be under your orders. No, Doran. It's only that. . . well ... I don't know why it's hard to say this, but it is. We're . . . well, we're sentimental about you and Ramie, Doran. Maybe it's hard on you. Maybe it makes you feel as if we were intruding into your private affairs. But that's all it is, just sentiment. After all. . . " he looked away, in the narrow shaft, from the younger man, "after all . . . you were our babies."

It was Gildoran's turn to be shocked and to keep silent, while they stepped out of the lift shaft and moved down the corridor.

They were high in the ship now, far out on the rim where gravity was low, kept at minimum for

the Elders; the few elder statesmen of the Gypsy Moth, too old for work, too old to bear the gravity or stress of a planet. Even when they were on the surface of a world, they were kept within the antigravity fields for their own safety. Gilharrad, Year-Captain on the last world, had joined them at his own request only a few weeks ago, shiptime; he would never hold another official post aboard Gypsy Moth.

They found the Year-Captain, Gilhart, and Gil-rae, who was serving as Coordinator this year, in old Gilharrad's quarters. When Raban came in, it was the Elder, not the Captain, who immediately guessed their mission.

"The new planet's a good one."

"Looks like it," Raban said. "It was young Doran who found it, though, and checked it out, so that credit really belongs to him."

The captain, Gilhart, a man (apparently) in the prime of life, short and thick-set for an Explorer, with broad heavy cheekbones and peculiarly deep-set eyes, smiled in a friendly way, and said "Good work, youngster. It's about time."

"I've always thought Doran had an instinct for planet-finding," Gilrae said with a warm smile. She came and laid her arm lightly around Gildo-ran's shoulder.

Gilhart scoffed "Is that a woman's intuition, Rae?" It sounded like an old joke between them,

and Gildoran went stiff under Rae's arm.

"It's not a joke," old Gilharrad said, "I've often thought planet-finding is an instinct. A survival skill for Explorers, maybe. A psychic talent that some people have, like perfect pitch. Oh, yes, you young people can scoff all you like, but in my time more planets have been found by instinct and hunch than by all your scientific computations, Hart."

"I'll have to take your word for it," Gilhart chuckled, "because if it's a talent, I'm evidently tonedeaf. I trust my instruments."

"And much good they were doing you," Gilrae said affectionately. "Three years since the last good planet—I've been seeing frozen methane planets in my sleep!"

Gildoran watched the woman jealously.

She and Giltallen were paired before I was born. Now she's forgotten him and she's with Gilhart all the time.

He looked away from her, confused and angry as if she could read his thoughts.

Gilharrad said "Perhaps the planet simply was not ready to be found."

Gildoran looked at the old man. His wrinkled face was peaceful, his eyes half-closed; his body,

fragile and emaciated until the old bones barely seemed enclosed by the flesh, lay supported in a flotation hammock; he was smiling a little. The young man said uncertainly, "You're joking, of course."

"No. Perhaps the planet called to us uncon-sciously, and we reacted without knowing it. After all, what do we know of worlds? Our own brains are only magnetic fields, and planets have enormous magnetic fields. Why should one magnetic field not tune in to another?"

It makes a strange kind of sense. From where he is now, who knows what he sees?

Gilrae said softly, "Planets have a call. Every now and then someone will feel that call, and leave the Ships for some particular world. . . like Giltallen. . . ."

Gilhart said in a low voice, "There used to be a saying: 'For every Explorer, somewhere there's a world with his name on it!' "

Gilharrad said peacefully, "If that were true, then mine must be somewhere outside Cosmos, for now I will die as I lived, here on the Gypsy Moth."

The Captain grimaced. "Well, this one's wait-ing. Let's hope it doesn't have anyone's name on it; we're short handed."

The Elder smiled, a smile of utter content and peace. He said, "Well, go along, you children, and

look at your new world. You young people are always excited about every new planet!"

"Well, it's our job," Gilhart said.

Gilharrad shrugged that off. "Planets! Planets are only holes in space! They are only interrup-tions in the true Cosmos!"

"They're what the Explorers are all about," Gilhart said, and Gilharrad shook his frail head. "You think so? Never mind, someday the time will come when you can see the truth. Our true purpose is only the quest, the seeking. The planets are only the excuse." His eyes dropped over his lids wearily. "I will meditate on this new world and see what place it has within the com-pleteness of the Cosmos," he sighed, and im-mediately he slept.

The others quietly left the low-gravity room, and only when they were outside in the shaft did Gilhart say, "I wonder if he means all that stuff, or if he's playing a straight-faced joke on us all? I hate to think his mind's cracking."

Gilrae shrugged. "Who's to say what's true?"

Gilhart said, "Well, it's too mystic for me. I take it you're still excited about landing, Rae?"

The woman smiled. "Not really. I just get caught up in subjective time and meditation, and then I have to come down into gravity routines again. I can never meditate properly when we're

downworlding."

Raban said sourly, "Shall I fix you up a place in the Floaters level, Rae? Not this year, please. We're too short-handed."

She shook her head, and her bleached hair went flying in the low gravity. Again it seemed to Gil-doran that she had not changed a particle since he was in Nursery; he wondered how old she was, and felt a stab of pain at the thought of her chang-ing, however little.

How old is she, anyway? You never knew, un-less the person was younger than you.

"Don't mind me," Gilrae said. "I'm not due for Floater status for another hundred years shiptime. At least. Maybe three hundred. It's just . . . oh, well, life would be perfect if we didn't have to work for a living. I used to think of space as just something we had to get through between planets. Now it's the other way around. So let's go get through with it, and we'll never do that till we start."

Down on the Nursery level, the children were being tucked into hammocks by the great slowmoving Poohbears; when Gildoran came in, one of them broke off and came toward him.

"Is there news, Gildoran?"

"Yes. A planet," he said. "Nickel-iron core, so we're going in tomorrow."

The great brown-furred alien smiled with relief. "I was afraid we'd have to try synthesizing it," she said. "Three of the babies are showing signs of primary anemia. Now, of course, there's no hurry. Do you want to come in and say goodnight, Gildo-ran?"

He stepped into the great room, where the three-year-olds were being tucked into ham-mocks, and the seven-year-olds were finishing supper. They were already bleached like Explor-ers, skin translucently pale, hair silvery white; but the four small heads on the pillows of their ham-mocks were still faintly brown, rusty, blond. One of them wriggled loose and came running to Gil-doran naked, squealing his name. He bent and lifted the tiny girl up, hugging her close. In her hand was a pair of castanets which she jingled with rhythmic insistence. He chuckled. This one was never without some kind of musical instru-ment in her hand.

"Put the castanets away, Gilmarina, and go to sleep,"

"But I want to show you my big harp," she protested. "Rae let me play today on the big harp, not my little one!"

"But it's bedtime, smallest," he said indul-gently. "Tomorrow I'll come down and you can play the harp."

"Then you tuck me in bed. No, go away, naughty Pooh," said the child, frowning and kick-ing out at the Poohbear who came to take her, "No love you. Love Gildoran."

Ramie looked up from her place at table be-tween the older children. "I see you still have a fatal charm for her, Gildoran." The Poohbear said staidly, "You needn't bother with her unless you wish, Gildoran. Gilmarina has to learn that she can't have everything she wants."

"No, I'll put her to bed," he said, lifting Gil-marina in his arms and tucking her into her ham-mock. He bent and kissed the small, rosy, charm-ing face, thinking with a little sadness that in another year she would lose the last of that pretty color and be as pale as he was himself, as they all were. Well, it was only that she would, then, be a true Explorer, one of them, without even the last trace of any tie to whatever homeworld she might have claimed. Really theirs. But she had been that from the day they brought her aboard Gypsy Moth.

He said, as severely as he could manage, "Go to sleep now, Marina, and don't make trouble all the time. You're a big girl now, not a baby." But, accepting her damp kiss, he knew that for him she would always be a baby, his baby. Was this how Gilraban felt about Ramie, about him? Did Rae feel that way, too?

Secretly, for no one would ever say it aloud, he thought that he knew, just a little, what it must be like to be a father.

I wonder if that's why every one of us—-from the Captain to the twelve-years-olds—has to take a turn, every year, at Nursery duty? Just so we won't forget?

Ramie was finishing with the seven-year-olds. She called to him lightly "Just a minute, Gildoran. I'm off-shift and we can go up together." Her smile told Gildoran how pleased she was at the prospect. He squirmed. But what could he do? They had to live together on the Gypsy Moth, maybe for hundreds of years. He wasn't in love with her. He loved her, but only as he loved all of them, all people who had always been there. But he couldn't rebuff her, make trouble, cause mis-ery. He waited.

Watching the Poohbears, he felt—for the hundredth time—curious about these aliens who lived among the Explorers without being of them. They had always been there. But why? What did they derive from their contact with the Explorers?

It's necessary, of course. Every one of us—we live so long—is a potential sexual mate for every other Explorer. With the Poohbears for our mothers, we avoid any maternal relationship. Therefore there's never a hint of incest.

But where did the Poohbears come from? Did anyone even know?

He stared at the enigmatic, furred, beloved face of the Poohbear who had come to adjust Gilmari-na's covers around her small bare shoulders, with a wave of old, habitual love and affection. But he realized that he did not even know the Poohbear's personal name, or even if she had one. Or even, he thought with sudden shock, if she were a she! Somehow the speculation felt wrong, and he sup-posed one didn't speculate about one's mother's sexuality.

But Poohbear isn't even my own species! Yet she's my mother. Crazy!

Ramie came up to him, jauntily slipping her arm through his. "I'm finished. Let's go up to the Bridge, Gildoran, I want to look at the new planet. I expect I'll be baby-sitting most of the time we're here, but I can look at it, and hope there's enough sun to give the babies sunbaths."

"Are you disappointed that you're on Nursery duty while we're downworlding this time?"

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe I'd hoped to be on Transmitter detail. It's exciting to hook it up the first time and feel that you're tying a new world into a network of a hundred thousand worlds. But there'll be other planets, and I'm sure to hit Transmitter detail on one of them sooner or later. There's plenty of time."

"I wish I could be that contented about things."

Damn. There are so many good things about Ramie. I hate feeling at odds with her this way.

She glanced at him sidelong out of her strangely tilted dark eyes, and said quietly, "I'm not always that contented, Gildoran. I just don't like to get hysterical about things I can't change. That doesn't mean I'm just. . . accepting them. I don't suppose you've changed your mind?"

"No," he said, "I haven't changed my mind, Ramie."

Her voice sounded a little bitter. She said "Well, I suppose there's time for that, too."

He made his voice hard. "Don't count on it."

She tightened her hand briefly on his wrist. She said "Gildoran, I swear I won't be angry or. . .or make jealous scenes, but ... is it Lori you want?"

He flared in real anger. "That's not worthy of you! Lori's just a baby. What do you think I am?"

"As I remember, she made Class B a few weeks ago shiptime. I seem to remember you and poor Gilmarin being very indignant when someone spoke of our group as children, during that time. And you've spent all your time with her for the last year."

Gildoran pointed out with restraint that he had been teaching Gillori to operate the Communica-tions Desk during hours, and was not given to spending his recreation time with little children unless he was on Nursery duty. "You might as well be jealous of Gilmarina—I spend more time with her than I do with Lori, off duty."

Gilramie sighed. She said "It isn't jealousy, exactly, Doran. It's just"—she made a helpless gesture— "oh, call it habit, I'm used to you, maybe I simply haven't the . . . oh, the inner strength to take up with someone else. Maybe I'm just follow-ing the line of least resistance. If I knew, posi-tively, that you cared for someone else maybe it would be easier."

Gildoran felt intensely sorry for her, but even through his pity there was enough resentment to turn away without answering. Ramie sighed and said, "Oh, all right, forget I said anything. Pure self-indulgence on my part. Let's go along and have a look at the new planet."

II

There were twelve in the small shuttle ship which always went down first; that was the minimum number to do the basic preliminary work without leaving the ship short-handed. This was always the one real point of danger, the first penetration of a completely unknown planet. As they dropped through the thick cloud-cover, Gil-doran felt his muscles tensing with a curious, cold, strangely bracing fear. It was the first time he'd drawn landing-party duty, but he'd heard plenty about what you could find on a really strange planet. When he was still in the Nursery, four members of a landing party had gone into an innocent-looking, deserted swamp; within two minutes, all four had been swooped on, and liter-ally chewed up by swift-flying carnivorous birds. There had not even been enough left of them to bury.

Tradition required the Year-Captain to lead every landing party. It was the only way to divide this dangerous duty with absolute fairness; the Year Captains were chosen by lot, and everyone on shipboard over twenty-one was eligible, un-less he or she had been Year-Captain within the past seven years. Gilhart was up front next to old Gildorric, who was navigating; the other mem-bers of the landing party had been chosen either because there was a need for the specialty

they were filling this year—or because they were junior enough to be expendable. Gildoran knew he still came into that category, and so did Gillori, who was wedged into the seat beside him, chatter-ing from sheer nervousness. One of the Poohbears was among the crew to check the suitability of the climate for the children; if it was doubtful they would be kept inside the Gypsy Moth; if it was healthful, an outdoor camp would be set up im-mediately so that the children could get accus-tomed, again, to gravity and sunlight.

Lori said "What would happen if there was already an Explorer ship down there?"

Gilrae looked back at the girl and said, "It's been known to happen. About thirty years ago we teamed up with the Tinkerbelle, opening a big system with three habitable planets. But none of our signals were answered from space this time, so no Explorers. It's all ours." She frowned faint-ly, and Gilhart, looking over her shoulder at her instruments, said "What's the matter, Rae? Some-thing not looking quite right?"

She shook her head. "Nothing I can put a finger on. Maybe it looks too good—maybe I'm wonder-ing why no one's picked this one yet."

"Law of averages," said Gilhart with his win-ning grin. "We've got to have some luck. Don't go psychic on us, darling. If you do feel psychic, save it for. . .let's say. . .a more personal occasion." He laid a hand on the nape of her neck, and the woman smiled up at him, still bent over her con-trols, reaching her free hand up to take his.

Gildoran looked away.

The hell of it is, you can't even have the satis-faction of not liking Gilhart. He's such a damn nice fellow. You can even see what Rae sees in him. Everybody likes him.

It was a relief to hear Lori start chattering again. Lori asked, "What happens if we run out of planets some day?"

"We're in trouble," Gildoran said lightly, then more seriously, "But it's not possible. That's a big, big Universe out there, Gillori. Even if only one star in a thousand had planets and only one planet in a thousand was habitable, we still could go on for a million million years without exhausting the Galaxy, and that's just this one Galaxy."

"It's like the old story of the Marching Chinese." Gilhart said, "and don't ask me what the Chinese were because I never knew, but there used to be an old story that you could never line 'em up and count them because there were so many billions that by the time you came to the end of the line a whole new generation was born, grown up and having more children. Maybe they were some kind of rabbits. Anyway, by the time we came—theoretically—to the end of all the planets which exist now, more stars and planets would have evolved and cooled down and more spiral nebulae would have been thrown off and so forth. Of course, none of us would live that long—probably not even the oldest Floater still alive in the fleet—but theoretically, at least, the Explorers could go on for eternity."

"Now who's getting mystical?" Gilrae laughed. "Dorric, do you have the coordinates from me-teorology? Where are we going to set down?"

"Off the equator," the navigator replied, "Southern hemisphere, fairly near the seashore but far enough inland to avoid coastal rainfall belts. I don't much like the wind patterns in the northern hemisphere; too much danger of setting down in a hurricane belt, unless we could wait out a full season and observe. I can't guarantee anything, but this area should have as good a climate as we're likely to find."

"Not too cold, I hope for the children's sake," the Poohbear said in her gentle voice.

"I'll put in a special requisition," Gilrae said.

Gradually the small landing craft dropped down toward the cloud cover. There was the un-familiar sensation of weight growing as they came within the gravitational field and slackened speed, so that they were no longer an object in free orbit, but a vehicle with a described, not an orbital path above the planet. The brilliant sunlight dimmed and became vaporous and translucent as they went into the thick clouds.

"With this much cloud cover, we might get a greenhouse effect," said the second-string bot-anist, Gilmerritt, "Once we get this planet opened up it might turn out to be a health resort."

"Congratulations," Gilhart said absently. "You have just won the long-distance conclusion-jump

award. Planet not even landed on, and you're building a health resort."

"I'm not superstitious," Gilmerritt said with a touch of defensiveness, "We've done enough pre-liminary checking from space to know it's habita-ble, and that was an educated guess based on my experience in my own specialty."

Gilhart swung around to look at her. His face was very grave. "There's only so much checking we can do from space. Even if the last fifteen planets have been perfect—or the last hun-dred— never forget; there is no single planet in the Universe that's like any other. Maybe ninety-nine in a hundred that look good enough to land on could be playgrounds, health resorts, what-have-you. But sooner or later you're going to land on one that bites back."

"You really are accentuating negative thinking, aren't you, Captain?" Merritt said, a little startled.

He shook his head. "Always hope for the best, but don't expect it. Because that's when Explorers get taken off guard. And, sometimes, when they get killed. Okay, everybody, end of lecture. There are twelve of us landing. I'd like twelve of us to go home again tonight, if you're all agreeable, so pay attention. . . . Dorric—ready to land?"

"Ready, Captain."

"Cut in the atmospherics, and take us down."

The atmospheric drives came in with a roar, and conversation became impossible in the landingcraft cabin. Gildoran, yawning to ease the buildup of pressure inside his ears, felt the ten-sion, briefly dispelled by the good-natured ban-ter, build up again.

His planet.

He had discovered it. To some extent he would always be identified, in the minds of the crew of the Gypsy Moth, with this world. It was just one of those things. Not in the rules, of course. Legally it was the Captain's responsibility, and the Science Officer's, to decide whether or not it was a good world, one they could open and lock into the chain of the Transmitter. In the eyes of the Galaxy, the success or failure of this world belonged not to any one man, but to the Explorers as a whole in general, and to the Gypsy Moth in particular.

Legally, and according to Ship's rules, Gildoran would get no credit if the planet turned out well, and no blame if it turned out badly.

But it was one of those things. In the minds of the Gypsy Moth's crew, it was Gildoran's world, and if it was a good world it would somehow add to his stature and his reputation. And if it turned out to be a catastrophe—well, legally they couldn't fault him, they couldn't penalize him, it was just bad luck, but they wouldn't forget. Not in thirty years of shiptime, not in a hundred years, they wouldn't forget.

He raised his head, blinking with the strain of the descent, and stared at the rapidly growing image of the green world below them.

His world.

The whine of the atmospherics grew to a scream; then dimished. Instead of plunging through atmosphere, they were floating quietly, in the landing craft; hovering above what seemed to be a flat and featureless sea of green.

Gildoric asked "Do we burn off a space to set down, Captain?"

Gilhart shook his head. "Not right away. We will if we have to, but do a skim at a few hundred feet. Find an open space, if you can. Seems a shame to burn up any of that nice forest, and then we have to start controlling the fires right away. Not to mention the damage to any animal life. A burnoff should be a last resort. Not to mention that if we set down in the middle of a jungle, it's hardly a good spot for a Transmitter."

Rae chuckled. "I remember once when we had to set a twenty-four-hour guard over our equip-ment for six weeks while we were building. Turn your back for half a second and the small tools and wire just weren't there. Things like monkeys in the forest would snatch them up and we'd find them in the mud a few hours later—I think the little beasties used them for toys. It was madden-ing."

Gildorric grinned and said, "I think you were still in the Nursery, Rae, when we landed on a world where there were insects who grabbed our wire and chewed it up—and digested it, too. Did we ever have fun getting the first Transmitter up on that place!"

Lori asked, "But you did get it set up? Do you always get it set up?"

Gilhart shook his head slowly. "No. Like I say, sometimes you hit a world that bites back, and then all you can do is run. If you've got anything left to run with."

"Don't frighten the children," Gildorric said genially. "That doesn't happen twice in a life-time. Come here, Hart, and take a look through the viewer. How does this spot at the edge of the lake strike you? We'd have water supply for the camp, and it's grassy edge—plenty of solid ground."

Gilhart poised over the great flat tablelike screen where a projection of the ground surface was visible. "You mean the spot in the lee of those cliffs?"

"More or Jess. Out on the grasslands, where there doesn't seem to be too much underbrush," Gildorric said. "Those dark masses are some kind of plant, but not so big we can't get through. We can test for bedrock, and if it's solid enough, set up the Transmitter under the cliff some-where."

Gilhart nodded slowly. "I suppose so. And if not, we could camp here while we explore for a better site. All right, take us down to the surface. And try not to land us in a swamp."

The landing craft slowly descended; came to rest with a faint jolt. Gilhart and a couple of the older crew members were joking with Gildorric about the landing. "You've been in space too long, you've lost your downworld touch, banging us down like that!" Gildoran slowly unfastened his seat straps.

He was in a tearing impatience to get out, actu-ally to stand on the surface of the new world, but there was still some time to wait, while Gilmerritt checked test samples and sensors.

"The atmosphere looked fine from a few hundred feet up, but we want to be very sure what's at the surface." A few minutes later, she nodded. "Plenty of oxygen, and, as you'd expect with all those clouds and all that green stuff, a lot of water vapor in the air. But the temperature is all right, and nothing troublesome in the atmosphere—just the usual inert gasses. Little high in ozone, but not enough to give trouble."

Gildorric glanced at Gilhart, and the Captain nodded.

"Formal command," he said. "Unlock doors. Establish landing."

Raban stood up and moved toward the door. Gildoran felt like crowding behind him. Gilrae met Gildoran's eyes and smiled. She said, "It's always a thrill. No matter how often you do it. This is it, Gildoran. It's yours. Enjoy it."

He wanted to say, "Oh, Rae, I love you," and kiss her, but he didn't; he simply grinned at her, feeling foolish. She reached out and touched his shoulder affectionately.

She thinks I'm a child.

"It's Gildoran's world. Let him touch down first."

III

The whine of the doors opening, a rush of cool, sharply-scented air; a swift, overpowering im-pression of greenness. Greenness everywhere; even the sky, under its thick layer of cloud, seemed to reflect pale green light below. Gildoran moved slowly down the steps and took the first hard impression of weight and a curious, yielding texture beneath his feet. It felt strange after years of low weight and super-smooth metaled and plastic floors underfoot. Now he stood on spongy green moss or grass, green in a belt of thick lush green of every hue. A green world, a greenish sky, the glimmer of green water in the distance some-where.

He heard the other coming down the steps be-hind him. Gilmerritt sniffed audibly and said, "What did I say about greenhouse effect?"

It did smell strange. Was it the smell of the unknown vegetation all around, or was it simply that

any air would have smelled strange after the chemically pure recycled air aboard Gypsy Moth?

The small landing craft was backed against a low cliff of some reddish stone, the only note of relief for the eyes against the green that otherwise was everywhere. The cliff stretched for nearly a mile and sloped downward toward a small green lake, its surface just ruffled by a light wind. On the far shore of the lake a tall forest grew. Between the landing craft and the near shore of the lake stretched a wide green expanse of grassland, dot-ted here and there with thick clumps of bushlike growth; the cliff was lined with them, too. The nearer bushes were about five feet tall, with thick grayish branches and broad cup-shaped leaves; at the ends of the branches were cupshaped flowers with a sunlit glitter.

It was very quiet except for the soft humming and chirping of insects which hopped in the grass, hovered over the flowers, and over the cup-shaped bushes. But so far there was nothing larger than an inch or so, except for one pale butterfly which seemed to like hovering over the cupshaped blossoms. Gilmerritt walked toward the bushes; a trained biologist, she did not touch them, and would not until she was wearing thick plastic gloves—every Explorer biologist knew about the planets with fluoride-secreting flow-ers—but looked down at cup-shaped flower and butterfly with a pleased smile.

"Judging by looks, it still looks like a good place for a resort," she said. "Let's get started checking it out. I can hardly wait to see a luxury hotel here and people coming by Transmitter all across the Galaxy."

She laughed to show that she wasn't really jumping to conclusions this time. Gildoran thought nothing they built here could ever be as beautiful as the long expanse of green bush against the red granite and limestone of the cliffs, but he turned to Gilhart for orders.

"First step," Gilhart said, "put somebody on watch. Raban?"

The stocky older man nodded.

"Take somebody particularly able-bodied—Gilbarai, you care to go along?—draw two hand weapons from supplies, and climb up on the cliffs to keep watch for predators. Standing orders ap-ply; don't shoot unless something obviously un-intelligent looks as if it was going to attack anyone working down here. Station one man down by the lake, and between you, you can cover the whole landing party."

"Right." Raban and young Barni stepped back into the landing craft; emerged with hand weapons and gloves, and began to move along the foot of the cliff looking for a good spot to climb.

"Rae, did you say this was glacial moraine?" Gilhart asked.

"That's right," Rae said, shading her eyes against the light, "There should be good solid bedrock underneath; it might serve as a location for the first Transmitter set-up, although it's going to take a couple of weeks study to be sure. The first step is to get some core samples—here and down by

the lake."

The Captain nodded. "Gildoran, you and Lori can work the core sampler. Gilmerritt, you take everybody else but Gilrae and start getting soil, water, and life samples. Be sure everybody knows about wearing gloves, too. And Gilrae, you work with Poohbear, hunting for a good place for a Nursery camp. You know the kind of terrain we need."

She nodded. "Yes. And may I say something, Captain?" They were all being formal now; they were on the job. Gilhart nodded to give permis-sion, and Rae said, "All of you. Don't forget we need a good, solid spot to set down Gypsy Moth. The last world was desert, and just about perfect—lots of bedrock. We didn't have to move it again until we were ready for Liftoff. But the world before that—I'm sure all of you remember except Lori—we had trouble all the time with mud, so look for a spot where we can put down hard-surfaced walkways without too many extra hours of work. Or better yet, a hard, rocky spot. That's about all, Captain. Anything else?"

"Just that we'll break for a meal in four hours' shiptime. Daylight here lasts eighteen hours, so we may have trouble judging time by sunlight,"

They scattered to their various tasks; it took Gildoran and Lori the best part of an hour to un-load the core sampling tool, and assemble it with the compact battery generators and the wheeled drive for moving it around.

"Clumsy thing," Lori grumbled, and Gildoran laughed. "Rae told me when she was a kid core-

sampling drills had to be moved around on a truck. It was less than two hundred years ago that somebody on Vega 14 developed a hand-wheeled one. We can do as much in three days as it once took Gilharrad six weeks shiptime to do on a new planet, poor old chap. And we don't have to wait and carry all this stuff up to Gypsy Moth to test it, now that we have the groundlab facilities in the landing craft. There's a complete biological and geological laboratory—well, not complete, but complete enough for preliminary work—right here in the landing craft."

The girl shaded her eyes with her hand. "Doran, are there any eyeshades or protectors in the land-ing craft?"

"I don't know. The light isn't that bad, is it? What's the matter, Lori?"

"Glare, or something. I'm getting a wretched headache."

Now that he came to notice it, Gildoran had a headache himself. "Maybe it's just gravity when we're not used to it," he hazarded. "You can ask somebody, I guess."

"No, it's not worth bothering, I'll ask Pooh when we break for lunch." She tightened a screw bolt on the sampling tool, and gave it a shove with her hand. "There, I guess it'll run all right if the grass isn't too thick, or these little hoppers don't get inside and jam the wheels."

"There certainly are a lot of insects around," Gildoran agreed. He picked one carefully off his uniform.

"Now what?"

"Run it down by the lake, I guess, and wait until somebody gets enough water samples to be sure first, that what's in the lake is really water, and second, that it will work in our drilling fluid—riot too many chemicals that could dissolve the bit or clog it up."

Lori looked at him quizzically. "And what if it isn't water, or it's full of dissolved borax or some-thing?"

"Then," Gildoran said, "you can personally have the fun of going into the groundlab and distilling a few thousand gallons for us, sweet. Fortunately it doesn't have to be pure enough to drink in order to keep the drill bit cool. But every so often you run into some lake full of sulfuric acid, or some such thing."

Lori wrinkled up her childish face in disgust. "If that lake's full of sulfuric acid, this is no place for a landing camp ... I think you're teasing me, Gildoran."

"Well, maybe just a little bit. They did a lot of the preliminary checking in the geodesic studies from Gypsy Moth, in orbit. And most of what's in the atmosphere is just plain water vapor, period, so that's probably what we'll find in the lakes and the oceans and the rivers, too."

"So we go down to the lake?"

"Why bother? Gilmerritt or one of her crew will be up pretty soon with the first crop of samples, and she knows we need water for the drilling fluid. Let's hope we're lucky; if it's water, and even halfway pure, all we need is a good long supply of hose, a mixing pump, and we're all ready to go."

It was not long until Gildorric, bearing the early samples, came up from the lake, and reported that the water was just water, and rather exceptionally pure. "There's a lot of water-weed in it, so it might not be much good as a swimming pool," he re-ported, "but it'll run your drill bits, and it's good to drink—very good. Trace minerals, but nothing much except limestone, in any quantity, and that's wholesome enough. So you children can rig up your hoses and pumps, and get working on the samples."

The machinery was automatic; once Gildoran and Lori had rigged up their tool and chosen a spot for the first sample, there was nothing to do except check the gauges every few minutes to make certain that the bit remained vertical and the hoses containing the drilling fluid did not clog, and they could sit back and watch the others mov-ing around near the edge of the lake, collecting samples, returning to the landing-craft groundlab to test them. When the first core samples came up from the drill, Gildoran examined them quickly for porosity and obvious rock types, then put them aside—they would be more extensively tested aboard Gypsy Moth.

Lori said, "I still don't understand why we can't have a Transmitter inside the landing craft and send samples up that way, after we've landed. The Gypsy Moth is up here, and we could bring a

Transmitter down."

"Go back to first grade, Lori. The Gypsy Moth is in orbit—not just hanging there. We can't Trans-mit to a moving target."

"But everything in the Universe is moving, isn't it? Yet every planet has nine or ten Trans-mitters."

"Yes, But one of the things we do here is plot the regular orbital motion of this planet around its sun, and this sun around its position in the Galaxy, and that's all programmed into the Transmitter, so it knows exactly where in the Galaxy we'll be at any given miscrosecond for the next million years. That information goes to Head Center, and the nineteen or twenty backup Cen-ters, in case Head Center goes out of contact or its star goes nova, perish the thought."

They had a sizable group of core samples by the time Gildoran's chronometer told him it was time to assemble for meal break. Field rations had been brought down and they gathered in the shade of the landing craft for their food; the ground was soft and spongy beneath their bodies.

Gilmerritt took off her slippers and wriggled her toes in the grass; Gildoran reached out and touched the soft skin of her foot; it was plump and smooth and pretty. Gilmerritt leaned against him and murmured, "Was that an invitation, Gildo-ran?"

"It's whatever you want to make it." She said teasingly "I thought you had every-thing all set up

with Ramie."

"That's what everyone thinks, and I'm getting weary of it," Gildoran said. He looked across to where the Captain and Rae, slightly apart from the rest of the crew, had their heads close together.

Rae's out of my reach, and I'm damned if I'll pair off with Ramie because that's what every-body expects.

Merritt looked up at him. She was a pretty, round-faced woman with eyes of lustrous green, and a faintly cleft chin with deep dimples. "There's something about a planet," she mur-mured teasingly. "I can live solitary for months at a time in deep space but no sooner do we go downworlding than I start remembering that I'm a woman, and looking sidewise at all of you."

He caressed the plump toes of her foot, the soft well-manicured nails. Then, reluctantly, he said, "I think you probably ought to put your slippers on again, Merritt. The soil hasn't been tested

"

"And it might be full of submicroscopic hook-worms and parasites that have an affinity for human skin. I'm sure you're right," Merritt said reluctantly, and pulled on her silvery sandals. As she fastened the straps, she murmured, "Don't look now, but I'm getting some very nasty glances from little Gillori. It's your fatal charm, Gildoran."

Gildoran felt a spasm of anger. Lori was getting entirely too possessive. Knowing that the child's eyes were on him, he leaned over and kissed Mer-ritt, long and slow and very thoroughly.

When they came apart, she sighed. "I've wanted to do that for some time. But on the last planet you were all wrapped up in some earth-worm girl. . . ."

"That was strictly a downworld thing," he said lightly, and kissed her again before Gilhart and Rae came strolling over from the lee of the cliff.

"Shall I call Raban down for dinner?" one of the crew asked. "They could come one at a time."

"No, let them stay on watch, but take them some food," Gilhart commanded. He passed a hand over his head, scowling. "Are you sure they tested the air before landing, Rae? No, no, nothing to eat, Gildorric. I feel as if I'd been poisoned."

Gilrae said slowly "The air's fine. A little high in ozone until we get used to it, but nothing we can't adapt to—" she broke off. "Lori! Sweetheart, what's the matter?"

The young girl said in a wavering voice "Sorry, I, . . I think I'm going to be sick—"and promptly was. Gilmerritt scrambled to her feet and hurried to attend her; Lori tried to push her away for a moment, then was content to rest against the older woman's shoulder. Rae went to bend over her. Gildoran said, "She was complaining of headache earlier, said it was the glare."

Rae said "It doesn't seem that bright. How do the rest of you feel?"

"Headache," said Gildoran, and the Captain nodded. "Me too—rotten one."

"It's no wonder," said the Poohbear with sud-den violence. "This world is so damned noisy!"

Eleven faces turned to her in startlement; Lori did not raise her head but lay limply against Merritt's breast. Gilhart said "Take her inside the landing craft, Merrill. Can you walk, Lori, or do you want Doran to carry you?"

"I can walk," the child said, struggling to her feet, but she let Gilmerritt support her with an arm round her waist. Gilhart said to Poohbear, "I'm surprised, Pooh. Noisy? It seems quiet to me. I don't hear a thing, except the insects humming. Any of you?"

"I suppose it could be the insects," said the brown-furred alien, with a deprecating smile. Her eyes looked strained. "Buzz, chirp, drone, hum, I just don't like it."

"And some of us have headaches," Gilhart said. "It can't be the air—we sampled all that very care-fully and tested for any known disease organism."

Rae said, "The headaches could be from the ozone, of course. They probably are. We'll get used to that, but it could take a couple of days. How are the samples looking?"

"Good so far," said Gildorric. "Merritt's with Lori, so I'll report. The water's good, the soil seems good enough and fertile enough—if it grows all this stuff, it'll certainly grow food plants. There are nuts and berries which might test out as edible vegetable protein—and the plants are certainly hardy. So far none of them test out poisonous, either, and none of the insects are any bigger than a hopper."

"Animal life?" Gilhart asked.

"So far, none. We should check the other conti-nents when we get some surface travel down, but so far, so good. As far as I know we could go ahead with the Transmitter tonight, but of course we need to make some more extensive tests. Just to make sure there are no hidden jokers like vi-ruses."

So far, so good, Gildoran thought; his world was testing out almost too good to be true. Then why did he feel so flat, so let-down, so miserable? Had his expectations been too high? Was it just reaction from being keyed up over the new world? It was a good world, even a beautiful one.

Gilrae asked "How soon can we get the children down, Pooh? We found a perfect spot for the Nur-sery camp."

The Poohbear looked strained, almost haggard.

"I don't like it," she said slowly. "I know I'm being irrational, but I somehow don't feel right

about bringing the children down into a place like this."

"It's up to you, of course," Gilrae said, "You and the other Poohbears are in charge of the chil-dren. But after all, it was you, Pooh, who re-minded me that some of them were showing iron deficiency and were in a hurry to get them down."

"I know. As I said, I know I'm being irrational," the Poohbear said, "but I still can't see it. Couldn't we give them land-based drinking water—it has a good iron content—for a few days until you finish the tests?"

Gilhart frowned. "I'd be inclined to trust your instinct, Pooh," he said. "Let's leave it at that. Collect some land-based water—the lake water will do—and possibly some iron ore to feed into the ship's supplies of chemicals. Keep the chil-dren on board until we're sure."

She smiled at him with relief. "Thank you, Hart. That would relieve my mind." Gildoran re-flected that probably the Poohbear was the only person on board the Explorer ship who called the Captain simply "Hart." Except perhaps Rae, in private.

The Poohbear said "And if that's settled, why not let me go inside the landing craft and look after Lori? My ears can't take the noise, and it will release Merritt to finish her sampling for the day."

A light wind was rising as the Poohbear swung her heavy furry body up the landing craft steps.

Gildorric said "I wonder what she's worried about?"

"Who can say?" Gilhart was struggling to keep his loose notes together. "Probably their hearing is in a different range than ours. Human hearing is relatively dull—only from fifteen cycles-persecond up to twenty thousand or so. Sounds have been measured up to two million cps or so."

Gildoran was reminded again how little they knew about the Poohbears. Well, maybe everyone needed a touch of mystery. As if this new planet wasn't mystery enough!

Gilmerritt, returning, commented that Lori was still feeling deathly sick and that the Poohbear was looking after her. Before she went off to her work she looked at Gildoran with a long smile, and he returned it.

The Captain said, "With Lori out of commis-sion, you'll need someone to help you, Doran. Gildorric?"

"Anyone who knows how to run a core sam-pler."

Gildorric chuckled. "I was running a core sam-pler while the planet you came from was going through the Stone Age, Doran. Let's go."

Gilhart swore, testily. "Damn this wind! I'm going to move my things over in the lee of the cliff there. Those bushes should break the wind, and I can spread out the geodesic plots for this area.

Can you give me a hand with this stuff before we go back to work, somebody? Rae, send up some food for the men on the cliff. And make sure the sun isn't getting to them; there isn't much shade up there."

That's what it is to be a Captain, Gildoran thought. He himself would have forgotten the guards on the cliffs, but Gilhart had remembered. He had to remember everything.

All that afternoon, Gildoran worked with the core sampler, at Gildorric's side. They took sam-ples beneath the cliff, near the lake shore, and finally walked around to the far side of the lake, testing the depth of the soil and the depth of the bedrock. Finally, as the light was beginning to fade, they wound up the hoses and dried the pump, wheeling their sampling tool back near the landing craft.

"Good firm bedrock everywhere near here," Gildorric said. "We can probably set the Gypsy Moth down below the cliffs and establish our base here, provided everything else tests out properly. We'll need to start the mining machinery, but back in the hills there should be plenty of metals. It's a good, rich planet. Merritt's a fool; this place is too good to waste on a resort hotel."

"It's natural for her to think in terms of her own specialty," Gildoran defended.

Gildorric laughed. "And she's a pretty woman—I saw you flirting with her."

Gildoran had sense enough to ask amiably, "Not jealous, are you?" instead of flaring up.

"Jealous? Act your age, boy," Gildorric said. "I've known Merritt most of my life and we've worked together so many years you wouldn't be-lieve it. But I guess we know each other too well. Let's face it: when you're my age, you know all the women aboard the Gypsy Moth too well. Which is why . . ." He chuckled again, "I'm really getting excited about having the Transmitter set up again, and being in contact with the Galaxy. Just the fact of seeing a few new faces. Don't mistake me," he cautioned. "I'm not saying I don't love Merritt. I'd die for her—as I would for any of you," he added in a moment of complete seriousness, "But she just doesn't excite me anymore. It's been a long cruise. You're probably too young to know what I mean, but when you've been paired at least three times with every woman on the crew, and even made a few offbeat trips with the men, you'll know why most of us save our romance—and our sex—for downworlding."

Is that why Ramie doesn't excite me-I know her too well?

They were near the landing craft now, and other members of the landing party were bringing back their equipment and their samples, getting ready to board. It was Gilmerritt who noticed that the Captain had not yet returned. She went to Rae, as second in command, to ask "Have the guards been called in yet? There's no need to keep Gilraban and Barni up there in the broiling sun now that we're all in."

"That's for Gilhart to say," Rae returned, "but I see no harm in sending for them to come down.

You attend to it, Merritt. Gildoran, have you seen the Captain?"

It was Gildorric who answered, "No, neither of us have seen him since lunchtime, but he moved his plots and papers over in the lee of the cliff where the wind wouldn't be getting at them. Want me to go give him a hand with them?"

"You've got the atmospherics to handle," Rae said, "Let Gildoran go, Doran—and tell him I or-dered the guards in, will you?"

Gildoran went off in the direction he had last seen Gilhart moving, toward the cliff lined with tall bushes and their green cup-shaped blossoms. The sun was lowering now, and the clouds thick-ening so that the light had diminished some-what, but the cup-flowers still seemed to glimmer by some inner light. There was no sign of Gilhart, and Gildoran, puzzled, began to walk along the lower edge of the cliff, his eyes alert, his head turning from side to side for any trace of the Cap-tain. He felt a strange unease that was almost tangible, like a nasty taste in his mouth. After he had walked a few hundred feet along the cliff, and seen nothing but the green-gray branches and translucent cup-flowers, he began to be really worried. If it had been anyone on Gypsy Moth except the Captain, he would have shouted his name. And not too gently, either. His distress and worry were quickly mingled with anger; he could imagine what Gilhart would have to say if any of the crew had gone off like that,

In spite of shipboard etiquette, he began to call.

"Gilhart! Gilhart! Captain!"

There was no answer; no sound at all, except for the constant humming of insects in the underbrush—how he was beginning to hate that sound!—and the soft rustle of the wind in the cups of the bushes.

Gildoran shouted, this time at the top of his considerable lungs;

"Captain! Captain!"

Still the silence, broken only by the soft wind-rustle. Then Gildoran saw something which drew his glance quickly; a square of bluish-white, too regular, too bright to be any natural object in all this green, lying amid the cup-flowers. He pushed the branches aside. Thorns on the underbrush stung and lacerated his hands and snagged at his uniform; he put his hand in his mouth and sucked the bleeding fingers, but he thrust on, his heart pounding in sudden violent fear.

He found Gilhart lying in a small hollow be-tween the plants and the red limestone of the cliff base, crumbled in a heap. Gildoran bent over him, angry and apprehensive. Lori had been sick, and the Captain should have known he could get sick too, he shouldn't have gone off alone. How could anyone have heard him if he' d called for help ? But against this angry interior monologue Gildoran was kneeling beside the fallen man, unfastening his tunic and thrusting his hand inside, helplessly hunting for a pulse. But he already knew that the Captain was dead.

IV

". . . So we can't go down again until we know what killed him," Gildoran finished, and Ramie's soft almond eyes looked gentle and miserable. "Oh, poor, poor Gilrae! They were so close, Gildo-ran, they've always been so close to each other. Is she all right?"

"As much as she can be, I suppose," Gildoran said somberly. He was haunted by the memory of Rae's drawn, haggard face, bloodless and wretched as she struggled to pull herself together. As second officer, she was in command of Gypsy Moth until a new Captain could be chosen; and though the laws of the Explorers stipulated that this should be done within three days shiptime, there were still those three days to get through.

He was silent, remembering the last stressful half hour of their stay on the green world; the harrowing task of carrying Gilhart aboard, made harder by the gruesome task of stripping him to search his clothes for some possible cause— poisonous insect or animal which might have bit-ten him and be concealed in them. It had fallen to Gildoran to help roll the Captain in a blanket and carry one end of the heavy lump of clay that had been Gilhart, aboard the landing craft. It had been a silent, sad journey upward through the cloud cover to the Gypsy Moth. Gilrae had insisted on kneeling beside the blanket-wrapped body, trying to keep it from rolling about grotesquely; they had let her have her way. They had all been paralyzed by her grief, and all of them had shared it. Lori sobbed with her head in the Poohbear's lap; Gil-merritt clung to

Gildoran's hand, subdued, her merry green eyes downcast, and Gildoran knew that the woman was thinking of how Gilhart had good-naturedly teased and reproved her on the trip down. How light-hearted they had been then, and how different this trip back was!

Damn this world.' Damn it!

Gildoran spared Ramie all this except the briefest account, knowing she, too, was saddened. "I did my first Class B duty on the bridge when he was Navigator," she said, "and he was so goodnatured and so kind, always teasing me, and ready with a joke. And last year I worked in Medic with him. I simply can't believe that he's dead. But he was pretty old, Doran—couldn't it be natural causes?"

"Of course it could have been. It probably was. But we have to know for certain."

While they waited for the news, they went up to the Floaters quarters, to break the news to old Gilharrad. The ancient Explorer heard of Gilhart's death with a touch of sadness, but he did not weep. He sighed deeply and said, "Well, it can-not be helped. The planet simply held the ap-pointed end of his destiny; that is all. I know he would have preferred to die in space, but after all, space and downworld are all part of the same great Cosmos."

Before his ethereal calm, Gildoran was reluc-tant to broach his errand.

"We are desperately shorthanded, Harrad. Rae has asked if you can return to duty for a little

while."

The old man sighed. "Must I?" he asked plain-tively. "I've earned a rest, haven't I? I like it up here, with nothing to do but meditate on the Ulti-mate Cosmos."

Gildoran said gently, "You have certainly de-served a rest, Harrad, but we need you. And after all—" he added, with a certain amount of guile, "Gilhart never had a chance at his rest."

Gilharrad sighed again, deeply. "Well, well, I suppose I must," he said, "but just until the little ones grow up to Class B, mind you. And I refuse to go on the Ship's Officer list, I absolutely refuse. I'll advise, I'll work, I'll administer, but I won't hold Major Office, never again."

"I'm sure they'll agree to that," Ramie said, and held the thin old hand in hers for a moment. Gilharrad's flesh looked almost translucent, so bleached and thin that the pink color of the puls-ing blood inside the cells was clearly visible, and Gildoran was struck with compassion. But they were desperately short-handed. To lose Gilhart! And so soon after Giltallen and Gilmarin had been lost to them! A scant three years, even before the little ones grew old enough to take their places!

"Poor Hart," Gilharrad mused, easing himself out of his gravity-free hammock. Reluctantly he stood up, sighing as he resigned himself to the drag of gravity again. "I suppose we'd better go down and find out what killed him."

It was only on such occasions as this that the entire crew of Gypsy Moth—everyone, except for the babies in the Nursery and the very oldest Floaters up in the gravity-free levels—gathered together in one place. Gildoran took his seat and realized that the huge Assembly Lounge was al-most half-empty. What was the normal comple-ment of an Explorer Ship? The ideal number was supposed to be a hundred. Surreptitiously, Gildo-ran counted. And three seven-year-olds and four four-year-olds in the Nursery. And seven Poohbears.

I wonder what's the fewest we could work the ship with. What happens if we drop under that number?

Gildoran saw others looking around and guessed that they were secretly counting too.

Gilrae came slowly through the crowd to the front of the lounge. She looked pale, and as if she hadn't slept since Gilhart's death. Gildoran fer-vently hoped they hadn't made her perform the autopsy. Then she turned to the second-string Medic, Gilnosta, and took a memorandum from her, and Gildoran knew with relief that at least Rae had been spared that. It was about all she'd been spared, but she'd been spared that. It would have been hard enough for anyone. But worst for Rae.

Rae, Rae, what can I do to help you? What can I do to let you know how much I love you, how much I care for you, want to help you?

They didn't wait for Gilrae to call them to order. At her first breath there was complete quiet in

the room. Her voice was low and strained.

"The autopsy reports on Gilhart show that he died of natural causes."

Of course, thought Gildoran. It had to be. He wasn't attacked by anything. There were no poisonous insects or reptiles near. Ozone isn't poisonous enough to kill.

Gilrae went on. "The circumstances are, we admit, a little confusing. There seem no visible signs of heart disease or arteriosclerosis. The res-piratory and vascular systems were apparently in good shape. Yet there is absolutely no reason to believe his death was not natural. He had not ingested or inhaled any poisonous substance— and believe me, we checked that out very thoroughly. There were no signs in any vital organ of attack by any parasite, disease organism or virus—another thing we had to check carefully. Gilhart was apparently in excellent physical con-dition."

"What did he die of, then?" old Gilharrad sounded querulous. "Certainly not of a surplus of good health!"

Gilrae said patiently, "As nearly as we can tell, he must have suffered a cerebral accident—in other words, a stroke, a blood vessel which burst deep inside his brain. Such a thing could easily elude even a careful autopsy, but having elimi-nated all other possibilities, that seems the only remaining one."

Natural causes. Gildoran knew he should feel relieved; but there was still a strange heaviness resting on his mind.

Maybe it's because it's my world—and it's turn-ing sour so fast.

Gilban, the Chief Medical Officer—one of the few posts not rotated by lot every couple of years—stood up and said, "I take it this means that we can again go down to the surface? I want to get the children down there as soon as possible. They need gravity experience."

"Yes, Poohbear spoke about that," Gilrae said. "We can go back down any time after we choose a new Captain." She looked and sounded inexpres-sibly weary. Doran wondered if she had eaten, or slept, since Gilhart's death. "And that's the next order of business—to choose a Captain. Who's on Nursery duty? Gilramie? Go down to Nursery, darling, and bring us up one of the babies for the choosing. And let's be thinking about Exemp-tions. You all know the rules. Year-Captains for the last seven years are automatically Exempt. Lori and Gilbarni haven't yet held three Class A positions; you're not qualified. Any Exemption Requests?"

Gilban said shortly "I can't handle full Medic status and Captain, too. Exemption?"

Gilrae looked around. "Any objections? All right, Ban, you're Exempt. Anyone else?"

Gilharrad said without rising, "I'm too old, Rae. Can I be exempted, too?"

"I wish you wouldn't ask," the woman said. "We need your experience, Harrad. Can't you take a one-in-fifty chance?"

"I didn't even have to come back to Active Status," the old man pointed out, and Gilrae sighed and said, "Just the same "

They were both distraught, Gildoran thought, or they would have remembered, and he tactfully broke the deadlock. "Gilharrad was Year-Captain less than seven years ago, Rae."

The woman shook her head, confusedly. "Of course he was. Anyone else?"

Gilraban stood up and said "I'm going to have my hands full with Transmitter work. Exemp-tion?"

"Any objections?"

"I object," said Gilmarti, a tall thin elderly woman, "There are eight of us in Transmitter, and we can manage if we have to. Raban can take his chance with the others."

"Exemption refused," said Gilrae, sighing. "Anyone else? All right then, the rest of you put your ident disks into the box, and we'll draw as soon as Ramie brings up one of the children."

They rose and filed past the tumbling cylinder, each dropping his or her small metal disk inside. Raban was still grumbling. Gildoran paused be-side Rae, wanting somehow to show his feelings, but she did not look up, and he sensed somehow that any stray word of kindness, a moment of sentiment, and the woman would break down. He put his disk into the box and found Gilmerritt at his side. She went back with him to the seat Ramie had vacated. She looked sad and strained. "Who-ever the new Captain is, it's going to be hard, on us, and on him—or her. Everybody liked Gilhart. And if we get someone who actively doesn't want to be Captain, it's rough. I think anyone who asks should be Exempt."

'' But most of us would rather stick with our own specialties," Doran reminded her. "There are only about eight of us on board who'd be willing to take the job, and they're not always the best qualified. This is the best way, to make everyone take a turn sooner or later."

"I suppose so," she said, but she didn't sound convinced. Gildoran laughed. "Well, maybe you'll get it. Then you can build that resort you were talking about."

She shook her head and said seriously, "Heaven help the ship if I'm Captain. I don't think I have any talent at all for leadership."

Gildoran thought, "Me, too." This was only the second year he had been on the Qualified list. He looked around, and wondered how many of the Gypsy Moth crew were feeling just the same way.

Maybe we ought to Qualify people for Cap-taincy just as we do for Medic duty, or Nursery duty, or Engineering—talent, experience, inter-est, ability for leadership—if someone's tonedeaf, we don't make him lead music.'

Gilramie came in, holding Gilmarina in her arms; everyone began to smile at the sight of the chubby child in her pink-and-white coveralls, her dark hair and rosy cheeks still marking her out from the others.

She's going to be dreadfully spoiled—she's everybody's pet. The Poohbears kept the prettiest clothes for her, or is it just that they look prettier on her?

It crossed his mind suddenly, looking at Ramie's dark, long almond eyes, that before she was bleached by space, Ramie must have looked very much like Gilmarina. He couldn't remember back that far, but after all he and Ramie had been Nurserymates—he ought to have some memory of a charming dark-haired pink-cheeked Ramie be-fore she was six.

Ramie put Marina into Gilrae's arms, and the woman cuddled her close for a moment while Ramie dropped her ident disk into the tumbling box. Gilrae let it spin a moment; Ramie went to where she had been sitting, saw Gilmerritt there, and shrugged slightly, sliding into the nearest vacant place. Her look was neutral, but somehow Gildoran felt guilty.

Gilrae put out her hand and halted the spinning of the box. The small jangle of disks from the inside quietened slowly. She held Gilmarina down close to the box.

"Hand me one of the disks, Marina." The child plunged her chubby fist into the box. "Just one, that's right. Here, someone, take her . . ." with a small squeeze, Rae put Gilmarina into the arms of the nearest crewman. She turned over the disk, and a strange look crossed her face.

If she's Captain it would be good for the Ship, but it might wreck her. No. She was Captain six years ago. She's Exempt.

Gilrae, still with that strange expression, brought up the disk to her face and held it out.

"Gildoran," she said.

Gildoran blurted out, not believing, "Oh, no!"

She nodded slowly and came and put the disk into his hand. She added "Congratulations."

Gildoran was appalled at the irony of it.

His world. His responsibility.

And now his headache.

Gilrae touched his hand; clasped it within her own. She said "Don't look so stricken, Gildoran.

Sooner or later it happens to everyone." But he fancied she was thinking that he was no substitute for Gilhart.

Suddenly the woman's face worked, as if she were going to cry, and Gildoran, acting on sheer impulse, reached out and caught her in his arms. He was so much taller that she hardly reached his shoulder, and she seemed helpless and vulnera-ble as he held her, trembling, against him. He felt that he would break himself with the strength of his own love, and yet. . . and yet to force aware-ness of himself, of his own problems and troubles, on Gilrae at this moment, would be the cruelest thing he could possibly do.

And then, with the first almost-pleasant thought he had had since Gilhart died, he realized that there was one thing he now could do; that was, in fact, his responsibility to do and no one else would do it if he did not.

He held his beloved gently, a little away from him, and looking down tenderly at her, gave his first command as Captain of Gypsy Moth.

"You're worn right out, Rae, and no wonder. It's time you got some rest. Gilban, take her down to the Infirmary, and give her a sedative. I want you to sleep the clock around, Rae. We're all going to need you, and we can't let you make yourself sick with overwork and strain."

She looked up at him in surprise and gratitude, and almost visibly, the strain in her face relaxed.

"All right . . . Captain," she said softly, and went with the Medic.

V

Four days later, and the clearing under the red cliffs was transformed. Four portable groundlabs dotted the area between cliffside and lakeside, and working from the landing craft in flight, they had burned off an area of vegetation near the cliffs. This had meant the sacrifice of about half a mile of thick underbrush, mostly the thick bushes with the cup-shaped glimmering flowers, but it was that or the forest. Bushes were easier to burn, quicker to grow again if they had a stable place in the planet's ecology, and with the area cleared, there would be less chance of accidental fires near the camp when the Gypsy Moth set down.

Gildoran had established a temporary ground camp for the landing party plus the dozen-or-so experts who went out now, each day, making geodesic studies for the Transmitter Site. While theoretically it could be set down almost any-where on dry land, there were a few practical considerations. It should not be on a serious frac-ture line or geological fault; Transmitters were better off without the possibility of earthquake damage, and so were the cities that inevitably grew up around them.

Everyone aboard had been—as the etiquette, and the tradition of Gypsy Moth demanded— ready to cooperate with the new Captain. Al-though Gildoran knew that at least half the crew

was dismayed when he, the youngest of the qual-ified members, had been chosen by the relentless process of the lot, manners and longstanding de-cencies prevented anyone from letting Gildoran see it. Just the same, he had heard Gilnadir, from the Transmitter crew, say in disgust when he thought Gildoran out of earshot, "That boy—for Gilhart?" Gildoran had felt as embarrassed as if he had trespassed in hearing, rather than Gilnadir in saying, such a thing. He felt like yelling at Nadir, "Don't you think I feel that way, too? Do you think I want to fit into Gilhart's shoes?" Instead he had stealthily slipped out of the corridor, hoping Nadir wouldn't see him.

Just the same, he had not escaped an early con-frontation.

The day after Gilhart had been ceremoniously committed to space for burial, Gilban of the Medic staff had approached him. Gildoran had asked, "Is Gilrae all right?"

"She'll do. You did right to order her to rest, though; she was pretty near collapse. However, Captain, I'd like to know how soon you plan to go down again. We have to get the children downworld. They need to live in an iron-rich environment, they need sunlight, they need grav-ity. Can I order them down with the landing craft today?"

He looked and sounded belligerent; a surly man, he was one of the few crew members taller than Gildoran, who had always been a little in awe of him. He had been Medic Chief since Doran's own childhood.

Gildoran temporized. "Have you talked to the Poohbears about it?"

Gilban brushed that aside. "I know how they feel about it, but they're not Medical experts. I think this is more important than someone's vague feelings." He pressed. "Can I order the Nur-sery camp set down today?"

There was no help for it. Gildoran said, "I'd rather go along with the Poohbears feelings on the matter—at least for a couple of days, Gilban. They are, after all, the specialists on the well-being of the children." He fished for an acceptable excuse. "It might be more diplomatic not to antagonize them right away."

Gilban fixed the young Captain with a cold stare from long, yellow eyes; a stare which said more plainly than words that Gildoran could choose between antagonizing the Poohbears and antagonizing him. He said briefly, "I've given you my opinion as Medical expert. Are you going to take it, or not?"

Gildoran said, "Gilhart agreed to postpone it for further study, and we are giving them landbased drinking water, which should remedy the iron problem right away. As for gravity and sunlight, according to the Poohbears, that isn't nearly so urgent. I think we should take a few more days on the planet to see what made Poohbear so uneasy about it."

Gilban said, teeth clenched, "Gildoran, you're the Captain, but I'd like to remind you that I was Chief Medical officer on this ship before you were out of the Nursery. Are you questioning my

com-petence?"

This is bad. This is very bad. I'm going to need all the help lean get from the specialists, and I've already made Gilban furious. Does he think the power's gone to my head?

Desperately trying to placate the older man, Gildoran said, "I would never question that, Gilban. But this isn't my own decision, it's Gilhart's. I don't want to question his competence, either. I don't feel free to set it aside until I have advice from everybody, including those who have actu-ally been on the planet." He very carefully did not mention that Gilban hadn't.

Gilban said stiffly, "Then I can't persuade you to trust my judgment."

Damn it, he was asking for it right between the eyes, and there was no way Gildoran could avoid it. "I'll always be ready to hear your advice, Gil-ban, after you've been down to the surface and made a study from there."

Gilban clenched his hands at his sides. His very tufts of hair seemed to bristle with wrath. He said, "It's your decision to make, of course," and went away. And Gildoran knew that for the first time in his life, he had an enemy on the Gypsy Moth. Within hours of assuming his first command he had alienated one of the officials whose support would be most important to him.

Gildoran had posted no guards—extensive ex-ploration in the landing craft had shown no land animals of any sort, and no birds; in fact, no life-form larger than the gleaming seven-inch

but-terflies which fluttered around the small dymax-ion domes the crew had constructed for portable shelters. Ramie, walking at Gildoran's side across the burned area, smiled with pleasure at the iridescent shimmer of the creatures and said, "I wonder if they're looking for the bushes we burned down? I hate to think of killing off such lovely creatures by destroying their food supplies."

"There are miles and miles of these bushes all along the range of hills," Gildoran said, "and if they're like most butterflies, these individuals would live only a few days anyway. A burnoff this size won't damage anything, and it will keep the insects away until we're sure if there are any poisonous ones among them. Once we know, we can initiate control processes."

"These aren't poisonous, are they?"

Gildoran said "I'm no biologist, but Gilmerritt thinks not."

"What's the glitter on their wings? They look like jewels."

"According to our biological report, they al-most are," Gildoran said. "A lot of life is based on hydrocarbons, and jewels are just crystallized carbon. In essence, their wing surfaces are cov-ered with diamond dust—crystallized scales of microscopic carbon material. Diamondplated butterflies!"

Gilramie smiled. "I can see them becoming a fashion among some women. Remember how the

glow-lizards on little gold chains became a fash-ion? Wear a live diamond-plated butterfly jewel. We should get a nice finder's fee for this world— it's beautiful!"

Gildoran smiled at the whimsy, and thought, again, how comfortable it was to be with her, when she could accept him simply as a compan-ion. She must know by now that when he had moved into the Captain's quarters he had as-signed the adjoining cabin to Gilmerritt and that they were together, but she had not spoken of it, and he was grateful.

He said "I take it you're down here as Nursery representative? I'm not keeping you from your work?"

"No, Gilban asked me to scout around and lo-cate a good place for the children; drinking water, shade, reasonably away from the noise of the groundlab and equipment. I was tentatively thinking of the top of that little hill; the lake would be pleasant, but we're not sure yet about what forms of life the water might hold."

"Ramie, do you think I did wrong to refuse having the children down?"

"How do I know, Gildoran? I think you were wise to take the most careful course. Somebody's going to criticize you whatever you do," she re-minded him. "Gilban thinks you're too careful, somebody else would grouse because you're too reckless. You're going to get the blame either way, so you may as well make whatever decision you think you can live with."

But she still looked troubled, and he asked "What's bothering you, Ramie?"

Her eyes sought out the edge of the clearing where the geodesic crew was running survey lines. "Gilharrad," she said slowly. "I think I would have forbidden him to come down to the surface. There's work enough for him aboard the Gypsy Moth. Are you sure he can handle the grav-ity?"

"He wanted to come, and Gilrae asked for him," Gildoran said. "That's the hard part of it, Ramie. I don't feel comfortable giving orders to people who were commanding the Gypsy Moth before I learned how to hold a slide rule—or, for that mat-ter, a spoon. For the children, I had Gilhart's deci-sion to rest on."

"But you can't deny Gilrae anything," said Ramie shrewdly.

"Damn it, Ramie—"

"Oh, Doran—don't.' I can't, either—how could I? But I'm worried about Gilharrad. Can't you send him up next time we break? He doesn't look right to me."

When they gathered for lunch in the clearing, Gildoran made a point of observing the old man, but although he was slow-moving and fragile, Gilharrad had good color. When Gildoran asked him, he declared testily that he'd never felt better, that the air was doing him good, and that unless this planet had his name on it, nothing down here could hurt him anyway. "You don't look too great yourself, young man," he finished, and Gildoran gave up. It was true; he had a

headache. They all had headaches, and Gildoran suspected that if it wasn't the ozone, his at least was a purely psychosomatic headache; the result of having the weight, if not of the planet, at least of the Gypsy Moth, resting on his solitary shoulders.

I don't like this world. It's foolish, but I keep having this sense of impending disaster, and I don't like it.

Later that day Gilmerritt brought him a big sample box. "Did you ever see an insect who looked like a frog?" she asked, "Look at this fellow—an amphibious insect. But look at the big airbladders in his chest!"

Gildoran looked at the huge red-striped crea-ture. It did, indeed, resemble a monster frog; it was almost eight inches long. "But it's really an insect?"

"No doubt about it."

The huge chest was puffed like a bellows. "He ought to have a monstrous croak," Gildoran commented.

"But that's the charming bit about it," Gilmer-ritt said, dimpling. "Listen. You don't hear a thing, do you?"

"No. But I've got such a headache I can't see straight, so I'm just as pleased he doesn't make a

racket in proportion to his size."

"That's it," Gilmerritt said quietly. "That's why the Poohbear found this place noisy, and why Lori got sick, and why we all have headaches. The Poohbears evidently hear better than we do. Human ears only respond to sounds between, about, fifteen cycles per second, and twenty thou-sand cycles. This big fellow sends out subsonics—pulses at about nine per second. And everybody knows that subsonics will make people sick, give them headaches, feelings of fear and general malaise. We were reacting to sound-less noise from the croakings of a giant frog."

Gildoran felt a sudden overwhelming relief. So that was the reason behind his vague unease, behind Lori's sudden sickness, behind the headaches and strange nameless fears. Pure, physical reaction to sound waves! "Can we get rid of the frogs in the area of the Nursery camp?" he asked, and Gilmerritt nodded. "It will take a few days to round them all up, but I can bring down a subsonic detector to locate them. I ought to have thought of subsonics before—we have to damp them out for a mile or so around the Transmitter. So there's one of your problems on the way out, Doran." She touched the sleeve of his uniform, a curiously intimate gesture, and he smiled with relief.

"The subsonics won't do any physical dam-age?"

Gilmerritt shook her head. "Not unless they were of much, much greater volume than any-thing this size could give off. If this frog thing were the size of an elephant, now, he might be dangerous; as it is, he's just a pest. I thought you'd like to know."

Gildoran nodded, suggested she tell Gilban about it, and watched her go, thinking that, at least, one of their problems was ended. Once they knew that their malaise and headaches were due to a simple, physical and correctable cause, and once the frog bugs were rounded up and released out of earshot, the camp would become quite liv-able, and this beautiful world could begin living up to its promise.

At that moment he became aware of a clamor of voices in the distance. At first they were only wordless cries, from the general area of the geodesic crew; then he realized that someone was calling his name. He began to run along the burned edge of the cliffs, apprehension surging up again almost to the panic point.

What now? What now, damn it?

It wasn't far enough to use the landing craft, but too far for hearing.

Got to organize some surface transit down here.

Halfway he met them, a tight knot of crewmen and women, clustered together, carrying some-thing that was pale and terrifyingly limp, and with a hideous sense of replay, he knew that not all of his apprehension could be written off blithely to the subsonics.

Gilrae, looking even more white and shocked than at Gilhart's funeral, spoke the bad news in a

daze.

"It's Gilharrad," she said, softly, "I saw him fall. There was nothing near him. He was tracing a fault line with the portable sonar gear. He didn't even cry out. He just clutched his hand at his head and fell down. I wasn't three steps from him, and he was dead before I could reach his pulse. It was so sudden. So sudden!"

Over her bent head, Gildoran met Ramie's dark, accusing look. And Gildoran had no defense against those eyes.

"Call Gilban and have them take him up for an autopsy," he said wearily.

Poor old man, he wanted to die in space. He had earned it. I couldn't let him rest.

He asked the usual questions, hating what he knew it was doing to Gilrae. No, there had been nothing near him, nothing touching him. Was there anything about it that was like Gilhart's death? Only that it must have been very sudden, as he was passing below the cliffs. "Right there, behind that clump of bushes, next to the big gray-and-red-striped rock under the clump of cupplants." Young Gilbarni pointed out the spot.

Both deaths took place near the cup-plants. But that was ridiculous, Gilmerritt had tested every plant for organic poisons and in any case there was no trace of poisoning.

When he asked for an autopsy, Gilban audibly snorted, but agreed, with the quite obvious at-titude that he was humoring a power-mad dic-tator. That night, when they consigned Gilharrad's body to space for burial, Gilban gave him the results with weary patience.

"Immediate cause of death, obviously, a cere-bral hemorrhage."

"Just like Gilhart?"

"No," said the big man testily, "not just like Gilhart. Gilhart was a vigorous man in the prime of life, and though he was subject to sudden cere-bral accidents, like anyone else, it was evidently some sudden strain or attack. It could happen tomorrow to you or me. Gilharrad's real proxi-mate cause of death was simply extreme old age. He was five hundred and seven years old, ship-time. In planetary time—God alone knows . . . centuries . . . Millennia—Several thousand years, at least. He could have died of the same thing anytime during the last thirty or forty years; the blood cells in his brain must have been as fragile as spiderwebs, and one of them simply gave way. You or I should live so long!"

Gildoran knew this was reasonable, but couldn't hold back a further question.

"Then you don't think there's any serious coin-cidence in the fact of two accidental deaths, from the same immediate cause, within a few days?"

Gilban looked disgusted. "I told you they were not, in effect, the same cause at all," he said.

"You, or I, or one of the children of the Nursery, could die tomorrow of a cerebral hemorrhage. Anyone could. Don't try to work up a big sinister tragedy out of nothing, Gildoran, just to justify your own fears about this planet. And by the way, I'm order-ing the children down tomorrow. Gilmerritt as-sured me she'll have the subsonic frogbugs cleared out of that area by then."

Gildoran said "What do the Poohbears say?"

"I didn't ask them." Gilban's voice was cold. "I don't like having to remind you of this within a few days of your first command, Gildoran, but in emergency I have the authority to override even the Captain's orders on any strictly medical mat-ter. I want those babies down in gravity and sun-shine, Poohbears or no Poohbears—if they can't tolerate the noise, you can detail some crewmen for Nursery duty. The babies won't hear the sub-sonics even if a stray frogbug gets into the camp. I'm not eager to throw my weight around, Gildo-ran, but the facts of the matter are, you've left me no choice."

Having no choice himself. Gildoran gave in as graciously as he could. That night in his quarters, he gave way to his secret doubts and miseries.

"What could I say, Merritt? I've no claim to be psychic. I think it's simply too much to believe, that they both died of the same thing, at nearly the same spot, within a few days of each other, but what can I prove? Am I supposed to wait for another death to convince him? Have you analyzed the cup-plants?"

"Only superficially," she said. "They seem to have some strange internal organs, I can't figure them out—I suspect they're for reproduction. I can tell you the cups have that glitter, because, like the frogbugs, they're covered with carbon crystals—tiny fragments of diamond. There are other crystals inside and I suspect they digest live insects by grinding them up inside the cuproots. I found a half-dissolved butterfly inside one of the internal organs, so that the cups operate some-thing like a Venus's-flytrap. But there's no chemical poison involved—I doubt if anyone could eat one of the cups without one hideous tummyache, but no poison, no gas—it was the first thing I checked." She hesitated and added, "Anyway, the cup-plants are all burned off near the camp, just in case; shall I have them burn them off near the Nursery too?"

It was a temptation. Gildoran had a definite dislike for the cup-plants, ever since he had seen Gilhart lying dead under a cluster of them. But he was a scientist, not a child. "No," he said slowly, "certainly not, if they're harmless. There's no sense in disturbing the ecology any more than we have to; we'll have to do enough clearing when we set down the Gypsy Moth and get started on a Transmitter." He remembered that first thing tomorrow—in orbit around a planet, the Gypsy Moth observed day and night cycles—he would have to consult with Raban and Marti about a Transmitter location.

"I'd counted so on Gilharrad for advice," he said. "I forced him to come back. And it killed him."

Gilmerritt reached up and drew him down to her. She said softly, against his lips, "Hush, Doran. You know what he would have said to that: Planets and Space are all one Cosmos. And you know what he believed: for everyone, somewhere, there's a planet with your name on it. All we

can do is the best we can, until the right one comes along, I won't tell you not to grieve, Doran. I loved him, too. We all did. But there's nothing we can do for him, and we have to live."

Her mouth found his gently, trying to give com-fort and strength to his search. "All we can do is to live, Gildoran. And I'm here with you."

Why at this moment, drawing Merritt into his arms in a surge of sudden desire, did he think of Ramie's dark, accusing eyes?

I ought to be with her. She and Gilharrad were so fond of each other. She felt the way Gilmarina would feel if I died . . .

He had enough problems aboard Gypsy Moth. He wasn't going to add Ramie to them.

VI

"If the Test Transmitter works tomorrow, we can set the Gypsy Moth down and get started on the main Transmitter," Gilmarti said, and laid a group of printouts on Gildoran's improvised desk in the small dome. He handed them back to her without more than a glance.

"I'm leaving the Transmitter to you and Ra-ban, Marti. I have to," he said. The old woman's face

took on a quizzical look and he stiffened against it. Far too many of the crew, he knew, resented his youth. For the hundredth time he felt like reminding them that he didn't ask to be Cap-tain. But they all knew that.

Unexpectedly, Gilmarti smiled. "Well, there's two kinds of knowledge," she said, "knowing what to do yourself, and knowing how to find someone else to do it for you. We're doing our part, Gildoran. We'll have the Test Transmitter ready in a few hours."

He followed her to the door of the dome and stood in the cloudy sunlight, looking across at the lake. He asked "Where are you going to set up?"

"Back against the cliffs. I've got a crew in there burning off underbrush to make walkways, and the Transmit receiver booth will be down by the lake. If the Test works out all right, we've got hardpan, with granite under it, and no fracture lines or faults as far as we can see. So we can set up the big one. Test Transmitters are intended for only a few ounces Transmission, of course— mouse-sized animals and small weights—so we can make the preliminary gravity and drift allow-ances. But once we have them calibrated prop-erly, we can use the same calculations for the first big one to tie us in to Head Center."

He saw that the old woman was still excited about it, said so, and she smiled at him. "It's always an exciting thing," she confessed. "Even after all these centuries. A new world tied into the Galaxy. And a chance to see what's been going on while we were tied in shiptime."

"How many years has it been?" Gildoran asked.

His friend on Lasselli's World—could he still be alive?

Marti frowned slightly. "I couldn't tell you without a computer tie-in and a sliderule," she said, "but probably about ninety-seven years, downworld time. Does it matter?"

He shook his head. "Just thinking that the chil-dren in the hatchery where we got Marina and Taro and the others would be old people by now, and they're just out of diapers," he said. He saw that she was fidgeting, and remembered suddenly that, though she was four or five times his age, it was up to him to dismiss her. "I'm sorry, Marti, I'm keeping you from your work. Let me know right away when you're set up and I'll come and see the test Transmission."

He stood for a moment in front of the dome, trying to organize his thoughts. He had initiated a practice of making the rounds of the camp every morning. One or two of the older officials acted as if he was trying to keep an interfering finger on their work, but most of the groups appreciated it. When Gildoran had been working, whether on the bridge, in the Medic labs or in the Nursery, he'd liked knowing that the Captain knew what they were doing and that they'd get a sight of him now and then to ask any necessary questions. The Poohbears always welcomed him to the Nursery camp; Gilrae was always glad to see him at the coordinating data dome, and Gilmerritt was al-ways eager to show him what they were doing in the ecological studies. He had to walk warily with Gilban, but so far there had been no Medic emergencies except one of the Nursery seven-year-olds who had skinned his knee in sliding down the rocks, a sore throat from a

crewman who'd gotten wet collecting specimens from the lake, and a couple of sprained ankles and wrists from people unaccustomed to walking in gravity after all this time. The usual daily things.

Finally he decided that he would visit the biol-ogy groundlab first. In the ten days since Gilharrad's death, they had learned some fascinating things about this world. Their first impression that there was no large animal life was correct—in fact, so far there was no warm-blooded life at all, only the complex interstructure of plant and in-sect. Gilmerritt spent much of her time in the field taking samples, but she admitted it would take years to work out the complexities of the sym-bioses and interdependencies between plants and insects. Her main work was to discover any dangerous plants or insects which should be avoided by the teams who would flood in from all over the Galaxy to finish opening up the planet.

She was in the field with her team when he stopped by the groundlab, so he went on. Gilrae was busy with weather charts, but greeted him with an affectionate grin.

"Doesn't it ever rain here, I wonder?" she asked.

"Is there any reason it should? I should think with this much overcast and cloud, there'd be plenty of water vapor in the air," Gildoran said but she pointed to a small furled electroscope and said, "There's enough static electricity in the air that I'd expect some really monumental thun-derstorms. Or else, where's it coming from, and where does it go?"

"I'm sure you'll find out, sooner or later," he said, and she nodded. "Someday. Or else the teams coming in afterward will. I try never to get attached to a planet, Gildoran, or to care anything about it. Planets are for leaving."

I'm the Captain now, not a youngster. She can take me seriously. . . .

But he knew that she still shied away from emotion. Gilhart was too recently dead. He could love her, he could comfort her, but as for anything serious—no, it just wasn't in the records for now. Perhaps not for years, for years. . . .

Still, grasping at this moment of closeness and wanting to prolong it, he asked, "Do you still find it hard not to get attached to planets, Rae? From what you said to Gilharrad that day . . ."

She said slowly, evidently trying to frame thoughts she had trouble putting into words, "Maybe it's natural for Homo sapiens—to long for a particular horizon, a sky and sea of your own. Even Explorers were born in gravity, we're a downworld species, even if we try to be Homo cosmos. We've built up our own taboos, but they're customs, not instincts. You know I'm a musician; I think that way. There's an old, old folksong, some of us used to believe it was pre-space, preExplorer. I'm sure you sang it in the Nursery. I know I did and I heard Ramie singing it to Gilrita and Gilmarina the other day." In her soft, husky voice, she hummed the melody. . . .

She broke off quickly. "They say there's a spe-cial island for everybody. A world you can't resist, a planet with your name on it that calls to you. . . that's why I never could hate Giltallen

when he found his, and left us. . . ."

"I thought I'd found mine once," Gildoran said slowly. His throat was tight with a surge of strange nostalgia, almost of homesickness, but for something he had never known. "I thought it was my world, but it was only a girl, and it was the wrong girl. But you've never found yours, Rae?"

Her lips moved in a small smile. "Ah, that's a question you should never ask, Gildoran. But I'll tell you this much—this isn't the one that'll tempt me to stay. Not nearly."

She bent briefly over her electroscope again, and Gildoran said, with a start, "I ought to finish my rounds. I get to talking to you, Rae, and the time just disappears."

She raised a slender hand to touch his cheek; almost a gesture of love. He noticed for the first time in his life that her beautiful hands were lined and seamed. She said gently, "Rank still has its privileges, Doran. Relax. You can stand and talk a few minutes without anyone having the right to criticize you." Her smile turned impish. "But Gilmerritt will scratch my eyes out if you spend too much time making deep soulful conversation with me, so run along, Captain."

Gildoran laughed, slightly embarrassed, lifted a hand to her in farewell, and went on.

This isn't the world that'll tempt me to stay.

Me neither, Rae. I don't know why, but me neither.

Oh hell, there must be a frogbug around—I feel so damned apprehensive.

On the other hand, as he approached the Medic headquarters, he realized he didn't need a frogbug to feel wretched. Gilban didn't make a secret of his feelings, so he made his visit brief.

"Everything going all right?"

Gilban demanded briefly, "Why not?" and Gil-doran didn't press the point.

"Just making the rounds, Gilban. Let me know if you need anything or have anything to report. Carry on." And he took himself off again.

After that, I need a lift for my morale. How he hates me.

There was no sense in visiting the Transmitter site; Gilmarti had already reported, and they'd send him word when the test was ready. He would like to see Raban, whom he liked, but there was no need for it. Gilnadir, in charge of the geodesic crew, quite obviously regarded him as too young for the Captain's job and just going through the motions. Gildoran suspected that Gilnadir thought it was part of his work to teach the Cap-tain his job. He tended to over explain, but he was polite about it. So he listened politely to Gilnadir talking about fracture lines to be avoided, sites of possible soil slippage and rockslides, good build-ing sites for cities, water supply.

"You realize, Captain, this planet hasn't a name yet. We've logged it by number, but it ought to have a name."

"Any suggestions?" Gildoran asked.

Come to think of it, I never found out who names planets. I guess I thought they came al-ready named.

Gilnadir said with careful patience, "It's the Captain's privilege to name the world discovered under his command. Gilhart hadn't gotten around to it. There's no hurry, though. Not until we regis-ter it with Head Center."

"I see. I'll check the ship's library, then; I wouldn't want to duplicate anything we already have."

Not that this is a world I especially want to bear my name. It's my world, but it's no prize.

"Make sure Rae gets copies of all these reports," Gildoran reminded him, realized a split second too late that this reminder was unnecessary and Nadir was a little offended by it. He amended the offense as best he could, and went off toward the Nursery.

It was the prettiest of the sites they had yet seen on this planet, located on a little hill a quarter of a mile or so beyond the lake, hopefully out of ear-shot of the frogbugs, and shaded by tall,

fronded trees with beautiful jewel-colored cones. The two domes—one for sleeping quarters, one for the Poohbears—were brilliantly colored, their trian-gular sections in brilliant primary colors. On the grassy slope in front of the domes, a group of seven-year-olds was sitting on the grass having some kind of lesson in elementary mathematics, Ramie demonstrating with the sectioned rods and forms. They all scrambled to their feet to greet the Captain, then broke ranks and came to chatter questions at him. He spent a few minutes talking to the children, apologized to Ramie for breaking up her lesson, and asked where the Poohbears and the babies were.

"Gilrita and Gildando are napping," Ramie said. "I think Poohbear took Marina and Taro for a walk in the woods. They have more fun chasing butterflies. You should have seen Marina this morning, dressing herself up in the jeweled cones and trying to get a butterfly to stay on her shoulder for an ornament, the vain little monkey!"

"Did Gilmerritt give her permission to walk in the woods?" Gildoran asked, frowning. "We're not absolutely sure there are no poisonous plants or insects yet. This world could still have a few nasty surprises like the frogbugs."

"I thought I'd told you; Merritt's with them," Ramie said, "she was looking for leaf-samples. They only went off toward the edge of the forest."

"I think I'll walk that way," Gildoran said, feel-ing vaguely uneasy. Ramie gave him a faintly cynical look and said "I'm sure Merritt will be glad to have you—" then, relenting, "and I know Gilmarina will. She's been asking, 'Why doesn't Doran come to see us, doesn't he love me

any-more?' "

Gildoran chuckled. "I've been missing her, too. When things settle down, I'll come down to the Nursery and give them some lessons." The seven-year-olds began to clamor again to come with Gildoran, but he said severely, "No, sit down all of you, with Ramie, and finish your lessons."

As he walked away, he thought damn it, now Ramie will think I was making an excuse to be alone with Gilmerrit. Hell, we're living to-gether—we don't need excuses. Anyhow, we'll have one of the Poohbears and two of the babies for chaperones!

The path they had taken was quite clearly marked, a natural separation between fronded bushes and low-growing flowers. He saw a pink ribbon lying on the path and picked it up, think-ing that this was proof Marina had come that way, she loved pink and scattered her possessions broadcast. Well, he'd tie it back on her when he found them.

Several hundred feet into the wood, he began to hear voices, and turned in the direction of the sounds. Or was it the insects buzzing in their strange, high-pitched, droning tones? The woods were noisy, and he wondered how the Poohbears with their abnormally acute hearing—how far into the spectrum of sound did they hear?—could stand it. He felt like putting his own hands over his ears. There seemed an unusual amount of noise. . . .

Cosmos! Who was screaming? Gildoran began to run toward the sound, his heart pounding in sudden wild terror. A high-pitched shriek that sounded like Marina ... a harsh, terrible howl like

nothing he had ever heard before . . . screams . . . screams. ... He crashed through the underbrush and his heart almost stopped.

A scene of disaster lay before him; Gilmerritt lay senseless on the ground. The great brownfurred Poohbear lay thrashing in agony, one of the babies clutched in her arms, a horrible howling moan coming from her lips. Beyond her a scream-ing, kicking rag of pink coveralls— Gilmarina! Gildoran heard himself shouting as he ran, snatching up the shrieking, writhing child in his arms. She kept on screaming in wild agony, and it was a minute or two before he could see that she was clutching at her small pink-sandaled foot. Then, with a final shriek, she went limp in his arms.

She was breathing, but the pink sandal was blackened, and there was a great hole in it. Gildo-ran felt sick. He straightened, bellowing for help. Marina still cradled in his arms—he wanted to snatch her close, run madly with her for the Medic, but the others were part of his crew too, he couldn't leave them—he bent over the convulsed, moaning Poohbear. Her furry cheeks were con-torted in agony, her loose lips drawn back to ex-pose long yellow teeth. Only dimly could he make out what she was moaning. "My head . . . my head. ..."

Ramie burst into the clearing, stared at them aghast. Gildoran shouted "Get the children inside the dome! Then get Gilban up here, and stretchers and a Medic crew—right away! Hurry!"

Ramie didn't even spend time asking questions or offering help. She ran. Gildoran gently de-tached the remaining child, Giltaro, from the Poohbear's arms. He was limp and lifeless.

Gildo-ran could not tell whether or not he was breath-ing. He knelt beside Gilmerritt and saw that her eyelids were fluttering. She stared up at him with pain-glazed green eyes, moved her head faintly. "My hand. . . ." she whispered. "Burn. . . ."

The whole hand was blackened like Gilmari-na's sandal. She was obviously in shock, but there was nothing he could do for her. Gilmarina was breathing but unconscious, and Gildoran was glad she was spared the pain.

Giltaro was definitely not breathing now, and Gildoran could not find the faintest pulse in the little boy's chest. If they had been able to get a respirator or neurostimulator there within sec-onds. . . . The face had the same blue, twisted look he had seen that first day on Gilhart's face. Cerebral accident. Gildoran was aware that he was shaking with rage. Damn Gilban. Not even he could call this coincidence!

The Medic crew was there in minutes, and minutes later Gilmerritt and Poohbear were on stretchers and being carried down the hill; Gilban had pronounced Giltaro dead and offered to take Gilmarina from Doran's arms, but Doran said, "I can get her there as fast as you can," and strode down the hill to the Medic dome.

Gilban bent immediately over the Poohbear while Gilnosta stripped off Marina's tiny sandal, looking in dismay at the blistered, blackened foot. "Cosmos," she breathed, "this looks like a laser burn! I haven't seen anything like it since the war on Martexi!" She dressed the hideous burn, gave her a spray-injection of painkiller, and turned to Gilmerritt.

"Will they live?" Gildoran asked.

"Gilmarina will make it," Nosta said. "Cosmos only knows how much good that foot will ever be to her, but she'll live. Merritt—she's in shock. If we can pull her out of it, she'll be able to tell us what happened within the hour." But she shook her head over the Poohbear, and Gilban looked grave.

"There's extensive brain damage. Even if she lives, she's likely to be a vegetable," he said. "I can't seem to stop the convulsions. She keeps going from one to the other. I'm afraid she'll never recover consciousness. What happened to them, Captain?"

It took a moment for Gildoran to realize that he was being addressed. "I don't know," he said, "I heard screams and found them all like that. I think Taro was already dead."

"But what was around them? Had they touched anything?"

Gildoran wanted to shout that he, Gilban, had been responsible for declaring the planet safe, that Gilban alone was responsible for Taro's death and the Poohbear's, for Gilmarina's crippling in-jury, Gilmerritt's terrible wound. But one look at Gilban's tortured face told him that there was no need to tell the Medic anything. In that moment Gildoran knew the worst of command—in the last analysis, the Captain carries the burden of everything. It wouldn't help the dead and wounded to blame Gilban. He had honestly done the best he could. All he, Gildoran, could do

now was to help Gilban, because they needed him.

He said heavily, "I don't know, Gilban. Nobody knows. When Gilmerritt comes round, perhaps she can tell you. Meanwhile, I'll send a biology team, in space suits, up there to explore, and find, if they can, what attacked them. There's evidently something there that no one knew about." With a last longing look at Gilmerritt, he went to give the orders.

He did not hesitate an instant to order all the Nursery children up to the Gypsy Moth until the truth about this accident was known. The chil-dren were their future. They couldn't be risked. And now the Gypsy Moth was definitely short-handed, especially since someone would be needed to nurse the casualties night and day. His grief was deep and terrible for Giltaro. This was one of his own babies. He had jumped them across the Galaxy from the Hatchery. He had nursed them after the operations, had watched two of them die before they were even named. Now Taro was dead and little Gilmarina, her life spared, perhaps crippled for a lifetime. He ordered the Poohbears up with them. He had no doubt that whatever had killed Gilhart, and Gilharrad, had struck down the Poohbear too. She was probably dying. He wouldn't risk the others.

He was still waiting for the ordered spacesuits to be sent down—Transmitters from ship-toground would have been a help here—when Gil-raban came to tell him the test Transmitter was set up, and invite him to be present.

"Hold it off a while," he said heavily, "we can't set down until we know what hit them. We can't risk losing anyone else."

Raban grumbled, but he agreed. He also agreed to call in everyone from the woods and keep them inside the burned-over clearing area until they were certain what form of life had attacked the crew.

All that day a sort of stunned, sick silence hung over the clearing. Work was suspended, except for the biology crew in spacesuits exploring the clearing behind the Nursery where the accident had taken place. Gildoran wanted to put on a suit and go out there with them, to tear the place to bits and find out what had gone on there. But he couldn't even have that much satisfaction. He was the Captain. He belonged where people could find him and report to him.

He kept drifting to the Medic tent where Gil-merritt and Marina still lay drugged and the Poohbear twitched and muttered and moaned, then exploded, every few seconds, into another raging convulsion. Gilban looked haggard, his face almost gray.

"You can't stop the convulsions?" Gildoran raised his hand. "Not questioning your compe-tence, Ban, only asking for information."

The man shook his head heavily. "We know so little about the Poohbears, even after all these centuries. They never get sick. They taught us most of what we know about medicine, but we don't know that much about their biology. When I give her enough sedative to quiet the convulsions, she goes into Cheyne-Stokes breathing—her heart stopped twice, and I had to use a neurostimulator.

All I can do is try the obvious support measures to keep her alive, and they're failing anyway. It won't be long. A few hours at most; possibly a few minutes."

Gildoran said soberly, "Should we get down the other Poohbears? Shouldn't they know she's dying?"

"What good would it do? They ought to stay with the children."

Gildoran said slowly, "I think they have a right to say goodbye. Detail someone from the crew on the Gypsy Moth to look after the babies pro tem. And send up a shuttle for the Poohbears, unless you think it would be better to transfer her up in the landing craft."

Gilban shook his head. "The minute we move her, she'll die. No question."

Gildoran went and stood over the great dying creature. Grief and rage tore at him. He looked down into the furry kindly face, distorted now and unrecognizable. A face like this had been the first he had seen emerging from the blur of his baby memories on the Gypsy Moth.

Our mothers. My mother is dying, and I can't do anything for her. Damn this world!

He looked at Gilban's bent shoulders, and thought with a pang that it was his mother, too. On a deep impulse of pain, pity and the memories of a lifetime, he laid his arm around the older man's

shoulders, and for a moment they stood together.

He hates me. But we're brothers just now. We always will be. None of us have any world but this, or any people but each other.

He wanted to go on standing there, to weep like a child, to rage and demand of Cosmos why this had happened to them all. But he had work to do. He sighed heavily and went to do it.

The Poohbear who had been in the clearing died a couple of hours later. Gildoran was not present; he looked into the Medic tent and saw her great brown body surrounded by an impregnable circle of five other great brown furry backs, in a tight circle around the dying one, from which even Gilban was excluded. They were chanting softly in an unknown language.

Part of us for centuries. And we know nothing, nothing about them. They seemed as eternal as Cosmos, as deathless as the very stars.

Gilmarina had been sent up to the ship with the other children, under deep sedation. Gildoran went restlessly back to his own headquarters in one of the groundlabs, and Gilraban found him there.

"We can't do anything for the ones that are hurt, Captain. All right to go ahead with the Transmit-ter test?"

Gildoran had earlier told them to hold off, but now he shrugged. "Go ahead. Get it over with. One thing less to hold us up when we find out what the snag is. But be careful, Raban, we can't spare anyone else. What do you need?"

"Weights and some test animals. That's all right, we requisitioned them earlier, but the test animals we released on the surface are all behav-ing strangely."

Gildoran said absently, "Maybe we should have released test animals before coming down ourselves. Go ahead with your Test Transmission, Raban."

Gilraban hesitated. "How is Merritt? Will she be all right?"

"I don't know. I'm going back to see. Gilban says she '11 live but her hand is a mess, and she was still in shock when I was last there." Raban said heavily, "I'd go and see her, but I couldn't do anything—I'd only be in Gilban's way. Give her my love when she comes round, Doran."

"I will." When the thickset man had gone away, Gildoran walked aimlessly back toward the Medic dome. The cloudy sunlight was dimming under the perpetual haze, and it seemed to Gildoran that this day had been endless, and that he had spent all this long afternoon aimlessly shuttling back and forth between his own groundlab and the Medic quarters, not able to do anything in either place.

He wished Gilmerritt would regain conscious-ness, that she would open her green eyes and look

at him and he could be sure he had not sent her, too, to her death on this world. He wished he could go up to Gypsy Moth and sit in the infirmary and cuddle Gilmarina in his arms as he had done when she was a tiny baby, trying to ease her pain and sickness with the warmth of his love. He wished he could call Gilrae from her work and keep her beside him and pour out all his own grief and misery into her sympathetic ears. He wished he could sit and mourn for little Taro, a part of the future they would never know. And he couldn't do any of these things. He was the Captain of the Gypsy Moth, and he was in charge of his own planet, which had turned out to be a world that bit back. All he could do was go on helplessly fight-ing against it.

VII

With a painful, repeated sense of deja vu—how many times today had he entered the Medic dome?—Gildoran shoved aside the hanging panel and stepped inside. Then he recoiled, for a great darkness blocked off the light and kept him from entering. With a split-second of shock, al-most of fear, he saw that the five living Poohbears were massed before him, looming over him; bar-ring his entry to the Medic dome.

"May I come in, please?"

"No," said one of them, "you may not. E-te-ragh-o-mana, our sister is gone, she has left us on this world of hell and darkness, and we are lost, we are alone and desolate."

He looked up into the inscrutable animal faces. He was abruptly, shockingly conscious that after all these years he was among strangers, he had always called each of them, interchangeably, Poohbear. Now for the first time he heard the strange alien name she had borne, and he won-dered if they were among the peoples who allowed their true names to be known only after death.

None of them had died in living memory.

He said helplessly, trying to placate, "Pooh-bears, all of you, we too have lost our brothers. Gilhart has left us leaderless. Gilharrad and all his wisdom have gone into Cosmos, Giltaro lies dead with all the promise of his youth never to be known. We share your grief—you know that we all grieve with you—but we are all together in misfortune."

The unreadable brown faces held no visible emotion, but it seemed to Gildoran that there was both fury and contempt in the soft voice that answered him.

"You people are of short life and shorter mem-ory. Every few years you take to yourself children of your people, and you can bear to see half of them die like flowers never opened. Every little turn of the century you know you will lose your brothers and sisters. To you death is only a mo-ment, someone else is taken into the place of the dead, and it is as if he or she had never lived. I have seen a hundred of you come and go, die and be forgotten. Do not presume to compare your grief with ours, which is unending and eternal. We have lost a part of ourselves,

and we shall never again be as we were before."

Before the words, like a strange compelling dirge, Gildoran bent his head. What could he say?

Man that is born of woman is of few days and born to sorrow.

How, indeed, could he guess at their grief? Was this why the Explorers were hated by the downworld mankind, because they seemed, in human memory, almost undying? Did the downworlders believe they were immune from grief because no downworlder saw them age and die?

But he lifted his head and faced the Poohbears steadily.

"Grief is not less because we must meet it more often and we must learn to live every day of our lives with it," he said quietly. "In your sorrow, perhaps you do not know this, Poohbears. Grieve as you must. As we all must grieve. Perhaps in your grieving you will learn to know us better, and we you. What now can we do for you? Will you have us bury her here? Or shall we consign her to Cosmos as we do our own?"

Silence for a long moment, and the looming Poohbears seemed to close round him. And Gildoran thought, they were about to kill him then, but they opened a path for him. A third said, still in that cold, contemptuous, furious tone, "Our lost one told your people that we should not be here, nor your children. The loss of your little ones is the price you have paid for your

foolish-ness in refusing to hear our wisdom. We shall care for her as it is fitting that we do. Let us carry her forth."

Gildoran said flatly, "None of you are going anywhere on this planet, unless you all want to follow her and die. I'm sorry. I'll make what con-cessions I can to your rites for the dead, but I can't let you go out there where you can all be killed. I can clear one of the domes or groundlabs and let you have it to yourselves. Or I can arrange to send you all up to the Gypsy Moth. Whatever you say. But no one from Gypsy Moth goes out of sight on this world until we know just why the deaths happened and what we can do to keep any more of them from happening."

Again their huge forms seemed to close in around him, dwarfing him, looming over him, and Gildoran felt engulfed, terrified. Then the great furred bodies drew back, opening a way for him, and one of them said, "Be it as you will, but we must be alone. We will go up to the ship, and there we will learn to live with our unending grief."

As one, they turned their backs on him and, taking up the body of their dead, carried her out of the dome. Gildoran got in touch with Communi-cations from the nearest groundlab for a landing craft to take them up, and while he was at it, detailed four or five of the skeleton crew still aboard Gypsy Moth to take over in the Nursery. Somehow he knew, knew for a fact and without being told, that the Nursery would see nothing of the Poohbears for a long, long time.

When he finally put the communicator aside, he leaned his aching head in his hands. What next? He raised his head to see Gilmarti standing before him. He said wearily "What now?"

"First Test Transmission results," she said for-mally.

He shrugged. "Not now. I suppose it went off about as usual, didn't it?"

"No," she said grimly. "Oh, it operated. But the final results were all out of whack. The weights lost a few micrograms. And the test animals all died."

Gildoran pressed his fingers to his aching head. Of course. Murphy's Law, the law older than space—anything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong.

A Transmitter failure. He had never known a Transmitter setup to fail. He had used them, with-out thinking since he was old enough to walk, whenever he was on a planet tied into the world-net. He knew that if one failed, his atoms would be scattered all over the Cosmos, but they never failed. But then, Poohbears never died, either. Nothing was the way it should be on this world and he might as well stop expecting it.

"Do you have any idea why, Gilmarti?"

"Probably our instruments aren't working right. We need to check out the magnetic field of the planet again—double-check it. It's not radiation—we studied that; enough radiation to throw off a Transmitter would have us all dead already. After all, they operate in full Cosmic-ray fields."

But Gildoran was thinking of the singed fur of the Poohbear, the burnt and blackened sandal on Gilmarina's tiny foot, Gilmerritt's ruined hand. Radiation burns? He spoke to Gilmarti about this, but she shook her head.

"Radiation burns don't look or act like that," she said. "I haven't time to educate you about them now, Gildoran, you learned that in Nur-sery."

"You're right, of course. But if not radiation, what? In Cosmos' name, what is it on this planet, Gilmarti?"

The woman said grimly "You tell me and then we'll both know. You're the Captain; that's your job. Mine is to get a Transmitter functioning. Yours is to fix things so I can do mine."

She's right, of course. Yet what can I do? I can't say it's somebody else's fault. Ultimately every-thing that happens on the Gypsy Moth—or any world we're on—comes back to me. No wonder we change Captains every year! Who could live with this job any longer than that? No wonder people struggle to get Exemptions.

He said, "Well, all I can do, Gilmarti, is to give you a clear field to requisition any equipment you need to check it out. But not tonight. You look dead. Get some rest, and start again tomorrow. Raban, too. The Transmitter can wait."

"Right, Captain," she said, "although as short-handed as we are, the sooner we tie into the

world-net again so we can pick up some more children and supplies, the better."

She was about to leave, but he motioned her back for a minute. He said "Gilmarti. Just hypothetically, what if we had to abandon this world—not tie it in at all? Suppose we never get a Transmitter working at all here. What then?"

She thought that over. "It has happened, of course," she said. "Usually we find out that a world isn't suitable before we set down on it. We'd need more fuel, of course, for the converters, before we leave. Anything will do, of course— rock if there's nothing else. Anything that breaks down into hydrogen atoms, under fusion. But if we're too shorthanded to set up a Transmitter, we could be too shorthanded to work ship."

He didn't tell her the Poohbears were, for all practical purposes, on strike and some of their precious personnel must be used in caring for the children. "Well, keep it in mind, Marti, it could happen. Get what equipment you need to check out the trouble with the Transmitter."

"It would be easier if we could set Gypsy Moth downworld, instead of trying to dismantle the equipment and bring it down in the landing crafts."

He nodded. "I know, but we can't do that yet. As long as some of us are up there, we can't all meet with freak accidents. Do the best you can, Marti. Make a computer tie-in if you need to. But I can't order Gypsy Moth down till I'm sure. Maybe not at all."

She seemed to see that he'd said his last word on the subject and turned to go. Then she looked back abruptly.

"Captain," she said, "Gildoran, have you eaten anything today?"

He realized he hadn't. It was no wonder he felt woozy.

"I've no right to remind you of this," Gilmarti said, "it's not my job. But part of yours is to keep yourself fit to do it."

"I haven't felt like taking the time."

She said quietly, "If you don't, it's everybody's business. If you'll forgive me for making a suggestion."

"Please do." I need all the help I can get, he thought, but he didn't say so. Part of the help they needed was something he couldn't give them; confidence in their Captain. Somehow he had to give it to them.

"Shorthanded or not, detail somebody to wait on you and arrange to look after your routine needs," Gilmarti said. "No Explorer is servant to another—I know that. But your time belongs to the crew, and you have no right to spend it look-ing after things like hunting up your own meals and sorting your uniforms. It's not a question of privilege. I know you'd hate that as much as any

of us would. But when you take time for that sort of thing, you're neglecting your own work— and stealing time from us. Get someone like Lori or Gilbarni, whose work can be duplicated, and de-tail them for it."

She went away, having said her piece, and Gil-doran got on the communicator again and asked for Rae, who had personnel records at her finger-tips, to send him someone with something to eat.

He was learning more about command all the time. Maybe that was why they never gave you any special training for the job. You learned it through experience—fast—or you didn't live through it.

When he had eaten and snatched a brief nap, he went back—he'd lost count by now—to the Medic dome. The body of the Poohbear was gone. Gilban was asleep, dead exhausted, on a folding-cot; Giltaro's body was gone. Only Gilnosta, look-ing white and weary, sat beside the sleeping Gil-merritt. It was completely dark outside now, and a dim light fell on the woman's face.

"How is she, Nosta? Has she recovered con-sciousness?"

"Not really, but I'm expecting her to come round any minute. I imagined you'd want to see her." For a moment Gildoran was thinking that Nosta was speaking of the relationship between them, but the young Medic added, "You'll have to ask her what she knows about the accident, she's the

only one who may be able to tell you any-thing.''

So he wasn't even allowed to express normal concern, anxiety about his paired-mate; just in-formation about an accident to crewmembers! He went and stood beside the unconscious woman. A few days ago she had been just another crew-member, and everyone on the crew had been ex-pecting him to settle down with Ramie. Then Gilmerritt had suddenly emerged from the crew as part of his close-in world, had come sharply into focus for him, had moved into the center of his life. He looked down at her with a curious mixture of tenderness and concern.

This woman is my mate, my partner, we've committed ourselves to share our lives, our bodies, our loves, and yet . . . and yet. . .

Just now, all she could really be to him was the key to the mystery of what was killing his crew-men. He pressed his hands to his head, wishing somehow he could clarify his confused thoughts.

The ship in confusion and chaos, and I'm wor-rying about my own personal love life?

Against the pillow Gilmerritt stirred and he leaned forward and clasped her unbandaged hand. She opened her green eyes, dark with pain.

"Gildoran?" she whispered and he saw her look slowly around the Medic dome, trying to orient herself in space and time.

"I'm here, Merritt. How are you feeling now?"

He saw pain move across her face. "My hand. It hurts. It hurts terribly. The children—how are the children? I heard Gilmarina scream."

"Gilmarina's foot is in the same shape as your hand. Giltaro must have died instantly," he said, and saw her face crumple in anguish. "Poohbear died this evening."

Her free hand clutched convulsively at his, but she did not sob.

"Merritt. Darling, can you tell us what hap-pened?"

Slowly she shook her head. "I'm not sure," she said, and he saw her features twitch again as if in memory. "The children were picking flowers, and one of the flowers . . . burned them? Burned me? There was a sort of light—no, I didn't see anything. But the plant ... it screamed. It screamed like Gilmarina, and it whipped at me. And then ... I don't remember anything more, except that Poohbear fell across me, and I smelled something like burning meat." She frowned and added, confusedly, "It must have been my hand burning, and then I thought I heard you a time or two, and then ... I don't remember any more."

Her eyes slipped shut again.

The plant—it screamed?

So the plants were the danger. Gildoran realized that without being aware of it; he had suspected it all along. Gilhart had died in a group of cup-plants. Gilharrad, too. Had the portable sonar gear somehow frightened them? But plants that could emit burning rays? How? Damn it, how?

Gilmerritt's eyes flickered open again.

"Will I have the use of my hand?"

Gildoran looked at Gilnosta. The Medic said honestly "It's too soon to tell. When we can spare you for a year, to get you into a suspended-animation tank and grow you a new one, yes, of course. But until then—no, Merritt. I don't think so. And we're too shorthanded—excuse me, dear—to give you a year off."

The woman's eyes squeezed shut. The fingers of her good hand clutched spasmodically on Gildoran's, but she made no protest. There was noth-ing he could say. In the shape they were in, Gil-merritt could not be spared. Hands or no, they needed her mind, her intelligence, her directing force in the biology labs. Gildoran faced, grimly, the knowledge that it might be a long time before they could spare Gilmerritt for the year she needed in suspended animation to grow a new hand replacing the one which had been virtually burnt off. With one of the children dead and another crippled—although Gilmarina could go at once into a regrowth tank, as soon as there was someone to tend the tank—it would be years and years before they could spare a single

crew-member, even a one-handed one. They weren't able to spare Gilharrad—he had come back to them, and now even his frail help was gone.

Gilmerritt drew her hand away from his, turned her face away and lay in a stubborn, withdrawn isolation. And Gildoran understood that, too. Now he must bear the weight of Merritt's disabil-ity as well as everything else. All at once he felt broken, overwhelmed. All day, without knowing it, he had been waiting for Merritt to recover, to regain the lost part of himself. Burdened, over-whelmed with his own losses and griefs, he had still hoped somehow that among so much loss, at least Merritt's love for him would be unchanged, that he could rest for a little while in the certainty that had been theirs as a couple. Now that was gone, too.

Then Gildoran was appalled at his own selfish-ness. Had he been expecting Merritt, in her pain and loss, to comfort him for his? All he could do for her now was to love her and to accept even her anger and withdrawal. Disregarding her turned-away face, he kept hold of her good hand until she relaxed and slipped back into sleep. Perhaps what had been between them had not been deep enough to survive this shock. But it had not been merely a surface adventure either, and he would stand by her and do what he could for her, even if she turned away from him.

This damnable planet! This hellish world! It seemed that ever since they first touched down on it he had been going from one crisis to another, without an instant's pause!

Gildoran's world! Cosmos, what a wretched, ironic joke that was!

VIII

Gildoran had slept for a while in his groundlab before the crew working in spacesuits came in with their reports. They had checked the clearing and the plants, one by one, and had been able to find no trace of poisonous plants, plants which moved on attack or plants which secreted chemi-cals capable of causing such burns as the ones which Gilmerritt and Gilmarina had suffered. "We can analyze the plants section by section and organ by organ," Gildorric offered, "but Gilmer-ritt did that already."

"Then are you trying to tell me the accidents never happened?"

"No," said Gildorric, "but we still don't know how they happened, or what the mechanism is." He smiled, grimly, his bare head sticking out of the spacesuit. "Maybe the plants were on their good behavior. No headaches, even." He added, "Maybe it's just that the helmets screen out sounds too. I couldn't hear those damned frog-bugs either."

"Sound. ..." Gildoran broke off. The Pooh-bears had abnormally acute hearing. Human hear-ing went from fifteen cycles a second to about 20,000. The frogbugs put out sound at about nine cycles, subsonics. But there were other sounds which humans couldn't hear. A whole spectrum of them, up above 20,000 cycles. And if the frog-bugs were giving off subsonics, maybe other in-sects, or even plants, were giving off other sounds.

"I can't disturb Gilmerritt again," he said. "Who else is here from the bio groundlab?"

"I know my way around in there," young Gil-barni said.

"You brought down test animals and released them. Are there any bats among them?"

"Bats?" Gilbarni stared at him as if he had gone mad. "I think there are some bats in the hibernation sector, in the ecology-niche equipment. If you really want one, sir, I can send up to the Gypsy Moth and tell Gilmarlo to thaw a few out and send them down. You mean bats, sir? The things that fly

"

"And see in the dark, and find their way around by emitting ultrasonic radar shrieks," Gildoran confirmed. "Yes; send for some. And get down some oscilloscopes and a standard-scale vibra-tion-measuring device with extra short-pulse equipment on it. Meanwhile, everybody get some food, it's going to be a busy day."

Gilraban said "We have the equipment to check the Transmitter, Captain. Shall we go ahead?"

Gildoran shook his head. "Nobody outside the clearing except in spacesuits," he said, "until we check out my theory. Nobody near any plant that grows on this world, or any insect either."

Gildorric was frowning, trying to follow what he was saying. "You're thinking about

ultrasonics? But . . . Marina and Merritt were burned, Doran. Gilhart and Harrad died of cere-bral hemorrhage, and so did Giltaro. Are you try-ing to tell me

"

"I'm not telling you anything yet," Gildoran said. "Let's check it out first. But I should have guessed when I heard that Gilharrad had been using the portable sonar-gear—that sends out pulses of ultrasonics which bounce off solid layers of rock. My guess right now is that he scared something, and it struck back. If I'm right, it could explain everything. We'll know, now, in a few hours."

It was dusk again when, spacesuited, they walked toward the clearing behind the now-deserted Nursery camp. Other workers in spacesuits were taking down the brightly colored structures and only the skeletonlike dome framework remained, green bushes and trees clearly visible through the empty triangular seg-ments. The spacesuit helmets closed out all sounds, even the eerie squeaks of the bats in their cages. Inside the clearing Gildoran stopped and gestured to the others to release the creatures. One by one they fluttered up into the dark sky and began to circle there, and Gildoran visualized them sending out their high, ultrasonic pulses of sound—

And then, one by one, their fluttering ceased, turned into aimless confused flight. One by one they fell, like small stones, into the clearing at the Explorers' feet; some feebly moving, others al-ready dead. Gildorric, bent over an oscilloscope, nodded grimly.

"I thought so. The minute they started sending out their pulses of sound, the sound waves started coming from all over—zapped them, one by one. Evidently the plants here—mostly the cup-

plants, but others too—and some of the insects, send out sound waves between 30,000 and 100,000 cycles per second. Most of them are fairly weak, but those diamondlike crystals in the cup-plants, and probably a few others, act as piezoelectric crystals in ordinary electric equipment."

Gilraban said "Then that's what fouled up the Transmitter test."

"Right. Too much stray energy around which we didn't know about and hadn't compensated for," Gilmarti said. "Then that explains the deaths

"

"Right. And the brain damage. And the burns. Sound waves at various frequences can kill—and these must have been pretty narrowly focused— or they can burn as badly as a laser," Gildoran confirmed.

Gilraban said in deep disgust and despair, "Why did none of us think of it?"

Gildoran said heavily, "Because we weren't looking for it. I suspect it's a unique evolution on this planet—ultrasound is usually associated only with technology. At least that settles it fi-nally. No one to go out without spacesuits again, except in the burned-over areas where there's no plant life left. Get what fuel we need, right away. We'll have to decide what to do."

But he knew, as he took the shuttle up to Gypsy Moth that evening, that the "we" who would de-cide would be ultimately himself. Gildoran. That was what it meant to be Captain.

He had called together the most experienced officers on the Gypsy Moth; Gilrae, Gilban, Gilra-ban for the Transmitter crew, half a dozen of the older ones. He thought, with deep bitterness, of Gilhart and Gilharrad. They were so badly needed. And Gilmerritt, lying drugged and crip-pled in the infirmary; and of Gilnosta, who had been relieved of all her other duties to nurse her and Gilmarina until they were out of danger.

"The crux of the matter is," he said, after brief-ing, "that we are desperately shorthanded. We were shorthanded before; now we could almost say that Gypsy Moth is crippled. Is there any way to salvage this world? I admit frankly that I don't know; I haven't the experience. Raban, could we set up a Transmitter and get through to Head Center? With a complete terraforming team, we could probably transform this world into a fairly safe one."

Gilraban said, "I don't know. I don't think so. It would take months to compensate for the ul-trasonics all over the planet, unless we wanted to make a major burn of plant life—virtually strip it bare. Meanwhile we'd have to live aboard Gypsy Moth and commute down from groundlabs— we couldn't make a setdown. And work in spacesuits. Besides if we stripped the planet..." he shrugged. "What would they want a Trans-mitter here for, then?"

Gildoran had been afraid of that, but he put the next question anyway. "Gilmerritt could answer this better, but. . . Mario, can we possibly kill off enough of the lethal plants to work here?"

Gilmarlo, the second biologist, said, "Not with-out a major ecological study; probably not then.

Put it this way: if you kill off the most dangerous plants, their natural enemies—the most lethal insects—thrive, and you'll have an insect plague. After that, the insects overpopulate, and kill off even the harmless plants. Then you've got bare rock. Even if we all worked triple shifts—it would take nine or ten years shiptime to replace every-thing with a stable ecological cycle of harmless plants and animals. No, Gildoran. I'm afraid I agree with Raban. We've got to write this one off. We don't have the personnel, we don't have the biologicals, we don't have the time. And," she added, "we don't have Gilmerritt."

Gilban said harshly "Don't blame the Captain, Mario. I overrode him. Don't you think I know it's my fault that we've lost so many"

"No, Ban, that doesn't get us anywhere," Gildoran interrupted. "We could blame ourselves and each other all day and all night, if we wanted to. If I'd been sure of my facts instead of relying on instinct; if any of us had been willing to question the Poohbears and find out what it was they didn't trust. . . You did the best you could on the avail-able information; leave it at that. Your job now is to get the hurt ones back in shape."

He turned to Gilrae. If anyone could manage to pull any kind of victory out of what looked like total defeat, she would be the one. "Rae. You've had a lot of experience with planets that looked hopeless. With Harrad and Hart gone, you're al-most our senior working officer. Can you see any way out, short of simply abandoning this planet?"

Gilban muttered "I don't see why we should even think about it."

Rae looked first at the medical officer and said, "I know what Doran's thinking, Ban, and he's absolutely right. We've poured too much into this planet to leave it without trying to recover at least some of our losses. We're desperately short-handed; we're crippled. With the Poohbears on strike, we're worse than crippled. It's going to be hard to work the ship; it's going to be even harder to hold out until we find another usable world, or until the children grow up. If we could think of a way to save something out of this disaster, we ought to." But she had said if we could instead of if we can, and Gildoran knew it was hopeless, even as she went on. "But I'm still remembering what Gilhart said just before we landed—'Now and then you meet a world that bites back, and all you can do is run'—while you still have some-thing to run with. If we hang on here, we'll run the risk of further losses, and there isn't any real hope of gains to make up for them. I agree with Raban, Gildoran. We'll have to let it go."

Gildoran nodded slowly. She was right. There wasn't the slightest chance of anything salvaging the disaster of his first command. He might as well go and make it official.

As he went slowly down the shaft toward the bridge, Rae followed him; touched his shoulder lightly.

"Gildoran."

"I really made a mess of it, didn't I, Rae? My first planet, and my first command"

He had halfway expected comfort, but she frowned at him. "That is sheer self-indulgence, and you know it," she said. "Don't flatter yourself by thinking that you could have thought of a way out. There simply wasn't any. Sometimes there isn't any happy ending, Gildoran. It's human na-ture to want one. If it's any comfort to you, I don't think Gilhart could have handled it any better. But we'll never know. We've done the only thing we could; now all we can do is try to put it behind us and go on to the next thing. If you want a shoulder to cry on, try Ramie!"

It was like a bath of ice water. He felt the surge of adrenaline like a metal taste in his mouth; too angry to speak, he jerked on his heel and turned away toward the Bridge.

Behind him he did not see that Gilrae's face softened and there were tears in her eyes. He strode angrily into the Bridge deck without think-ing, moved into the spot where he had seen Gilhart sitting last.

Slowly, he pulled the ship-to-ground communicator toward him. Lori looked up expec-tantly from the scanner, but he paid no attention to the child.

"All hands, ship and groundlabs, this is the Captain," he said heavily. He knew that his voice was going all over Gypsy Moth—a rare thing— and only for official statements such as this. "By joint decision it has been decided to abandon the planet. Geodesic crew, abandon all exploration efforts and detail crew working in spacesuits to load fuel and metals for ship reserve and raw material for the converter. Dismantle all ground-labs, dismantle Test Transmitter, and return to

Gypsy Moth, suspending all operations. We will depart the planet one shiptime day from this moment."

Now it was official. He had given the orders which would make permanent the fiasco of his first command. He replaced the communicator slowly and looked into the big screen. It was a beautiful planet lying below them, wrapped in its veils of blue-green, gleaming faintly like an iridescent jewel in its own sun; but it was as deadly as poison.

He thought of Gilmerritt, who had wanted to build a beautiful resort world there; of Marina with the jeweled butterfly on her shoulder. Leav-ing the planet behind would not solve their prob-lems. We'll have to spare Gilmerritt some time soon, get her into a tank for a new hand, he thought. But when? With the Poohbears on strike—and three deaths—we'll need everybody. The problems had only begun, and this was only the beginning of his year of command. There were two gravely wounded crewmembers to be healed.

There was Gilban's self-confidence to be restored. He would have to persuade some of the older Floaters to come back to modified duty. The Poohbears must be coaxed back somehow. Ramie was working single-handed in the Nursery. . . . He looked down at the great blue-green planet below.

You didn't get us, after all. You're just another planet, and you're for leaving, like all the rest.

"Captain . . ." Lori said timidly. He sighed, wrenched his gaze from the bewitching ball of blue-

green cloud beneath them and said, "What is it, Gillori?"

"How shall I log this? The planet has no name in records, and it should be transmitted to Head Center when we can."

With a shock, Gildoran remembered that it was his privilege to name the planet.

Gilhart, he thought. A permanent memorial to the world which had, after all—in the phrase of the Explorers—had his name on it.

Revulsion struck him. He could just imagine Gilrae's accusing eyes if he gave her lover's name to this hellish world. Better to take the blame himself. Gildoran's World? Cosmos, no!

"Log it as Hellworld," he said, and thrust his seat aside to take a last look at the planet below. "I'm going down to Nursery, to see how Marina is getting on, and what the Poohbears are up to."

Others could handle the details of getting the crew and the groundlabs pulled in, loading fuel and raw material for converters and reserves, navigating away from the planet.

His world now was the Gypsy Moth, and every soul aboard her was his personal responsibility. Ramie, trying to handle eight children, one seri-ously injured, would have to be given help, and he should ask her what she needed and wanted. She wouldn't have any questions except the necessary ones, and she would understand that he had done the best he could, as she always

under-stood. Gilrae's taunting phrase, "If you want a shoulder to cry on, try Ramie's," came back to him. He thought he might just do that, sometime.

He said formally, "Lori, the Bridge is yours," and turned his back on the scene of his first com-mand.

Part Four COLD DEATH I

"Marginal," said Gilmarlo, who was Year-Captain, "very marginal. I don't think this one is worth the trouble. We can't spare the people to explore it, shorthanded as we are. And if we do get down there, and get a Transmitter tie-in, on that wretched chunk of barren rock down there, then what? A finder's fee—a very small one. You could hardly call it a planet at all; just an asteroid, a hunk of rock that happens somehow to have hung on to an atmosphere."

"It's not that bad," said Gilrae. "There are signs of life. A few signs. It was probably inhabited once. But not for millions of years. Like Ozyman-dias. Maybe by that same feline race."

"That's the point I'm trying to make," Gilmarlo said. "The time for life on this planet is past—

very, very far past. We came too late." She scanned the printout data from the computer again, looking around the briefing room at the staff who had assembled there. "And I just don't think we can afford to take this one; we ought to save our resources for the next good one we find. I don't even think there's insect life down there."

"That," said Gildoran, raising his head abrupt-ly, "might even be in its favor—after Hellworld. Where there's no life left, there's not likely to be any danger. And you yourself pointed out how shorthanded we were. You say we can't afford to do this one, Captain, but can we afford not to? There's no assurance that the next one will be any better, or the one after that. Look at Ozymandias; that was the last good planet we had, and even that one was old. I think we're getting into a part of the Galaxy where life came a long time ago and has simply died out. The oldest part—and we're not colonizing, we're recolonizing."

It lay beyond their blind viewscreen, unseen; the world old Gilmarti had discovered three days ago shiptime, and they had been quarreling about ever since.

"The question isn't whether we can afford to explore it, Gildoran," said Raban, "the question is, can we afford to pass it up? It isn't a particu-larly attractive world, not by my standards any-way. But we are going to have to set down whether we like it or not; we need fuel, rocks for the converter, if there isn't anything else, and since we have to set down anyway, we ought to assess it for opening. We need a finder's fee, even if that's all we get out of it. And we need Transmit-ter contact with other worlds. I don't see how we can afford to pass this one up. There might not be another good one for two or three years."

"We can't afford to open it unless it's a good one," Gilrae said. "As shorthanded as we are, we couldn't spare a very large Transmitter crew to make the first tie-in. Five years from now, the older children will be able to take real shifts and we could risk it. The ship is self-supporting, once we have rocks for the converters. We can get them by finding an asteroid belt anywhere. I say we wait till the older children are able to do their part, and then look for a world that's worth opening."

"We're shorthanded, all right," Gilban agreed somberly, "but that's all the more reason we need to get back into touch with the rest of the civilized Galaxy. We need children. It was a mistake not to get more when we were on Ozymandias ..."

' The youngest ones in Nursery were only a year old then," Gilnosta said, looking up, "and we decided they wouldn't be able to adjust to a new batch. And it's a blessing we didn't, because after Hellworld, when the Poohbears went on strike, who would have looked after a group of babies? We'd have had to divert half the ship's company into the Nursery. Even now, if we did manage a tie-in—and who would want to come to this place anyhow, unless it's made out of solid anthracite or diamond?—and we picked up six more kids, who, I ask you, is going to look after them? The Poohbears certainly won't."

There was silence in the briefing room, while they thought of the Poohbears, barricaded on an unused deck of living space—a deck that had not been used since the ship's complement of Gypsy Moth numbered more than a hundred—drawing rations from the synthesizer, but

otherwise mak-ing no contact of any sort with the ship's com-pany. Not since Hellworld. Not once.

"You're right," Gildoran said. "The Poohbears left us with two four-year-olds in the Nur-sery and one in a regrowth tank. And four seven-year-old children. And ever since then, we've had to divert more people than we can spare from the ship, into the Nursery. Just for the sake of argument, suppose we had had half a dozen newborns, or kids too young to crawl? How in Cosmos would we have managed?"

Gilban said "I can't believe the Poohbears would have left us if we'd have really young babies. Babies who needed them. It would have given them a responsibility."

Gilrushka from Psych, a slender ageless woman—but Gildoran knew she was one of the oldest on the staff, older than Rae—said, "You may be right. A responsibility, to take their mind off their loss. They may have felt—"

"I don't think any of us, not even you, is enough of an expert on the psychology of Poohbears to say that for certain," said Gilnosta, a little sharply. "Hellworld was a tragedy for all of us, not just the Poohbears. We needed them then—how we needed them! I spent those first four months af-terward tending that regrowth tank full-time—I never slept more than two hours at a time; I woke up normally every forty-five minutes to tend it. Do you think we didn't need the Poohbears then?"

"Still, helpless babies—" Gilrushka began, and Gilnosta retorted angrily, "Gilmarina was more helpless than any newborn, in that tank, and what it did to the other kids in Nursery, what kind of trauma that left, we'll never know! If we couldn't count on the Poohbears then, we can never count on them again. Never. For all I care, we can send them all out the airlock!"

Gilrushka said smoothly, "You're certainly en-titled to be bitter, Nosta, but I don't think—"

"That's the trouble; you don't think!" Nosta snapped. "What would it have meant to us, then, to have the Poohbears? Even one more function-ing pair of hands—" and she looked at Gilmerritt and then, uneasily, away. There was a momentary silence in the briefing room, and Gildoran felt his eyes go, with the old guilt, to Gilmerritt. She sat as she always did—as she had done since Hellworld—against one of the curved bulkheads, concealing her crippled and useless hand be-tween her body and the wall.

We needed her so much, we couldn't afford to take her out of service for a year to grow a new hand; not when it meant pulling someone else out of service to tend the tankfull-time. And it had to be my decision; and I was her lover. But I was Captain, too, and I had to think of them all, not just Gilmerritt.

Gildoran's thoughts ran round and round on their old guilty track. He had been too inexperi-enced as Captain; with the Poohbears on strike, and after losing Gilhart and Gildorric, he had not dared to deprive the ship of yet another experi-enced officer.

Gilmerritt was aware of the looks; she winced, and it seemed to Gildoran that she shrank away even farther into the wall.

Gilban said, his voice harsh and peremptory, "If there has to be blame for that, I'll share it; but there's no sense in going over and over old mis-takes. The question is, what can we do now? If we spent a year downworlding, we could assign someone, maybe one of the Floaters—someone who's still competent, but can't handle down-world gravity—to tend a tank while we're in orbit. That would settle one of our problems—"

"There's no way we could spend a year downworlding on that planet," Gilmarlo inter-rupted, drawing their attention back. "There's nothing to develop down there."

"We might be able to do mining, or at least contract it out for mining," said Gilraban, "I re-mind you, Captain, we can't afford to pass up anything. There's no assurance we'll get another good planet in this area; the suns seem to get older and older, and I am beginning to think they had their wave of evolution millions of years ago. I think we ought to go down and evaluate it any-way."

"But there's nothing—" Gilrae began, then stopped. Gilmarlo said, "How about this? We'll send down a landing party tomorrow. We'd have to find the best rock for the converter anyway. Once they see the surface, they can evaluate it and see whether it is worth exploring and making a Transmitter tie-in."

"And there's this," Gilraban said. "A planet like this one won't demand many resources to open it up. Just a Transmitter crew. Whereas a really good world—we'd be there for a year or more, making multiple tie-ins. Opening it up. With this one, we can make the tie-in, collect our finder's fee, up ship, and go looking for a better one. And maybe land the Poohbears, if they really want to leave us; maybe get into contact with some other Explorer ships and arrange for an exchange. Perhaps they would be happy on another ship, and we could have a different group—one with no personal grudges against any of us. That just might be the answer to the Poohbear prob-lem."

There was still some murmuring; some of the Gypsy Moth's crew felt strongly against wasting even the time and energy of a landing party. "Just send down one or two people with equipment to pick up rocks for converter fuel," they suggested.

"That's what I, personally, feel we ought to do," the Captain said, "but there are so many of you who feel we ought to give this planet a chance. We'll send down one landing party, and come to a final decision tomorrow, after we have some real data. How does that sound?"

There were still some protests, but they did accept it; it was, after all, the Captain's decision, and they knew she would go with the Landing party; so danger, if danger there was, would be hers, too. Most of them, though, remembering the barren world they had seen on the viewscreeen, with a mean temperature somewhere near the freezing point of water, thought more of the waste of time than of the danger. What, after all, could touch them, on a world barren and swept clean of life by recurrent ice ages?

As they left the briefing room, Gildoran joined Merritt; they moved together, silently, in the di-rection of the quarters they still shared. At first because, Captain or not, he had taken on himself a part of the task of nursing her; there were too few others, and she needed care at all hours, and they shared quarters anyhow. Later, despite her bitterness, he had remained, because he feared she would interpret any withdrawal as a personal re-jection; she was hypersensitive about her defor-mity.

"What do you think?" she asked him. "Could we exchange Poohbears with another ship?"

"I don't know." He looked at the lift shaft, which no longer opened on Living Deck Four; the Poohbears had adapted the lift controls so that no crewmember of the Gypsy Moth could come up there at all. "We'd have to communicate with them first, and they've cut off communication. I'm not sure we even have radio access to Deck Four any more. If they could modify elevator controls, they could modify communications too."

She chuckled. "Maybe we ought to have a Transmitter into Deck Four; come in and make them talk to us."

He looked into her laughing face. I love her, he thought. I wouldn't blame her if she hated me, and maybe she does. But I Jove her.

"Do you suppose that they would agree to go to another ship, in exchange for others who would be willing to work with us? And if they didn't want to—could we make them go, Merritt?"

"I don't know," she said, troubled. "I don't even know if we should. They're our mothers, Doran. You grew up in a Poohbear's pocket just as I did. You don't force your mother out of your home. Not even if she's angry with you, not even if she's useless to you." She gave her deformed hand a single cold, bitter glance, and said with a forced detachment, "After all, when it comes to uselessness—" "You aren't useless," he protested, but knew she did not even hear him. She said abruptly, "Isn't it your Nursery shift?"

He glanced at a chronometer. "Right." Since the defection of the Poohbears, every crew-member of Gypsy Moth worked a two-hour Nur-sery shift, every other day; it was the only way the children could have the close individual atten-tion they needed. Intelligence, in children, seemed to be a function of close and constant childhood stimulation, constant one-to-one in-teraction with adults. But he hesitated, reluctant to leave Gilmerritt. Was she sinking, again, into another of the recurrent depressions when, except for her obligatory hours of ship's duty, she would lie in her hammock for hours on end, not reading, not even meditating, just staring at the wall in black brooding?

"Why not come down to Nursery with me? An extra person there is always welcome," he suggested, and she turned on him.

"Damn it, no! I get enough sweetness and light on the Bridge, with everybody finding work for me to do that won't be physically taxing! And if I have to look at Gilmarina again, I think I'll go out of my mind! Have a little mercy, Doran!"

He protested again. "Merritt, don't stay alone—it isn't good for you—"

"Nothing's good for me," she said, and again the compulsive, bitter, detached glance at the ugly, useless claw, which was how, despite their best efforts, her burned hand had healed.

We should have put her right into a regrowth tank. Gilmarina's foot is as good as new, and she knows perfectly well that her hand could be just as good as that, too. It was my mistake. I did it to her. I can't blame her if she really hates me. In her place I would, too.

"Merritt—darling—" he began, but she cut him off impatiently. "Cosmos! Gildoran, stop hanging over me!"

"I only want—"

Her face softened. "Oh, I know. I'm no good to you, Gildoran. I'm no good to anybody. I'm worse than the Poohbears! You really hate me, don't you, Doran?"

"Hate you? How can you ask me that?" he said, dismayed, putting out his hand to her.

But she pushed him away. "I'm so damned tired of your guilt and your kindness," she said, her voice cracking, and ran away down the hall toward the shaft.

Gildoran started to follow her; then, flinching from the thought of another scene, turned back toward Nursery. He couldn't do anything for her, not now. She would calm down afterward, she always did; and then she would be guilty and contrite for having troubled him, and cling to him, begging for his forgiveness, desperately afraid he would abandon her. The cycle was familiar by now, but he loved her in spite of it.

Angrily trying to turn off his churning thoughts, he headed down toward the Nursery.

II

Inside the Nursery was music; Rae was at one end playing her harp, and Gilmarina, seated be-side her at a somewhat smaller harp, was stum-bling through an elementary exercise in arpeg-gios. She looked up and smiled sunnily at Gildo-ran, but she did not move and returned her eyes quickly to strict attention to the strings.

She's found something she loves, even more than me. One part of Gildoran felt chagrined— this was the first time he had ever come into the Nursery, since Gilmarina had emerged from her regrowth tank, that she did not immediately drop whatever she was doing and rush to him for hugs and reassurance. But another part of him was de-lighted. Gilmarina was growing up, she had begun to find things which absorbed her, de-lighted her; she had begun to submerge her energy in what she wanted to do, without the constant need for reassurance. She was,

essen-tially, now a year younger than her Nurserymates; she had spent a year in the tank, in suspended animation.

But she's still the brightest of them all. And fortunately, there had been no lasting emotional damage; for a few months after her emergence she had been sulky and clingy, crying for the Poohbears—her contemporaries had long man-aged to control their awareness of the loss— demanding constant reassurance and attention.

But the foot had regrown perfectly; she was barefoot, and he could see that the left foot, still pinker than the rest of her body (not yet bleached by hard radiation of intercosmic space) was otherwise a perfect match for the right one.

In a corner of the Nursery, Gilbeth, an appren-tice Navigator, had gathered the four eight-yearolds around her, and was giving a lesson in elementary mathematical sets and equations. Measuring rods and devices lay all around them. In another corner, Ramie was supervising the two five-year-olds, Gilmarina's contemporaries, in building elaborate constructions with modular rods and tiles; one had built a model of a solar system and powered it with a tiny electronic bat-tery so that it moved slowly and ponderously. Gilrita tugged at Gildoran.

"Come and see! How do you like my orrery?"

"Interesting," he said, squatting down on his heels to survey it at close range, "but don't you have too many planets with multiple moons? Five is a median number, and look, you have an

inner planet with seven moons, which is rare; small moons inside the proper limit tend to fall into the sun. It's outer planets which have larger sets of moons in stable orbits."

Gilrita frowned and said, "I like planets to have lots of moons. You can design more interesting orbits for them. Look, I have a planet which goes in a backward orbit, and another one right out of the ecliptic plane."

"Two anomalies in one system?" Gildoran questioned, with a raised eyebrow.

"It's an anomalous system," she insisted, and Gildoran chuckled. "It's your system. Build it the way you want to. What have you got there, Tal-len?" he asked the remaining child, and the small boy said, "A model ship. See, this one has a synthesizer right on the Bridge so the Captain can have a meal right there when he's hungry, and there are twenty Poohbears, so they won't all get mad and leave us at once."

Over the child's head Gildoran met Ramie's eyes in despair; were the children still grieving? Gilramie said gently, "You miss the Poohbears, don't you, Tallen?"

His eyes filled with tears. "Why don't they love us anymore? When they went away, did they take Giltaro with them?"

"No," Ramie said, her voice tender. "Giltaro was hurt like Gilmarina, only worse—hurt so bad we couldn't even put him in a growth tank and grow him all new again. So we had to let him go

into Cosmos, and we buried the body he was wearing on the planet where he died."

Again Gildoran marveled at the way in which the children needed to hear these simple things again and again. They learned intellectual mat-ters so quickly; but they could not manage grief and loss, and needed repeated reassurance. Would any of them, ever, really get over the trauma of losing Giltaro so young, losing their other Nurserymate Gilmarina for a year and hav-ing her emerge a year younger than they were, not having grown in the interval?

Maybe, in a way, losing the Poohbears has been good for them, he thought. They see more of us; before this, they saw only Nursery staff, and Medic and Psyph people, and specially detailed Educators. Now we all take turns with them and they get to know us all, more intimately.

Ramie said, "Would you like to have Rushka come down, Giltallen, so you can talk with her some more about how you miss Taro?"

He nodded, sniffling, and she said, "I'll get on the comm with her right away and ask how soon she can come and see you. Or maybe you'd like to go up on the Decks and see her?"

"I'm a big boy," Giltallen said, "I can go up on the Decks."

Ramie went to use an intercom, and came back to tell Giltallen that he could take the shaft up by himself to Rushka's quarters. He left the Nursery, and Ramie said, "You were right, Doran, and I was wrong. I was upset when you named them Gil-marina and Giltallen. I thought it would

remind me too much of poor Gilmarin, and hurt Rae too much, hearing "Giltallen" all the time. But now when I think Tallen,' I think about the little fel-low, and I know Rae does, too. A good memory drives out a bad. I never think about Gilmarin now when I look at Marina."

"She's very much herself," Gildoran agreed, looking at the tall white-haired woman at the harp, guiding Gilmarina's hands. Rae smiled at them both and said something in a low voice to Gilmarina; she replaced her harp, covering it, and came to Gildoran, rising on tiptoe to hug him.

"I played on the big, big harp too," she said. "Rae let me."

"I heard you, smallest," he said, stroking her feathery hair.

"Will you take us up on the Bridge, Doran? Where we can see the new planet? Is is a good planet?"

"Yes, I'll take you up, and no, I don't think it's a very good planet," Gildoran said. "There's noth-ing there but old rock. But we need rocks to make the converter work, to drive the ship and to break down atoms into other things."

"Can I go too?" demanded eight-year-old Gil-jodek, and the other children quickly crowded around, begging to be included in the expedition.

"Let me use the comm to the Bridge," Gildoran said, "and I'll see how many of you they can

have up there at a time."

Gilmarlo answered over the mechanical device that all of them could come, if they wished; there was nothing much going on. So Gildoran took the youngsters up the shafts to the Bridge, and Gil-marlo, who was not particularly busy at the mo-ment, let them sit one by one in her chair and look over the viewscreen at the planet below.

"Has it got a name?" Gilmarina asked.

"Not yet, child," the young Captain answered. "We usually try to find out what a planet is like before we give it a name. But I thought we might call it Tempest; preliminary weather study from orbit looks as if there were strong winds and heavy cyclone patterns."

"Tempest," repeated Gilmarina thoughtfully. "Is it a nice planet?"

"I don't know. I hope so," Gilmarlo said, smil-ing as she lifted Gilmarina out of her chair to give the next child a turn. "Well, Giljodek, do you want to sit in the Captain's chair?"

He clambered up, frowning. "I wish I could be a Captain someday."

"Why, you can," Mario said. "Every Explorer can be a Captain, as soon as you qualify in three Class A assignments, in three different special-ties. Unless you choose to be a Medic, then you need only two specialties. But Medics usually don't want to be Captains, they are too busy taking

care of sick people. You'll be a Captain someday."

"Really?" The small boy stared. "I thought only girls could be Captains. Like you. And Gilrae— somebody told me she was a Captain four times."

"But Gildoran was a Captain, too," Mario reas-sured him, smiling.

"Gilban never was. He said so."

"Gilban is too busy looking after the sick. If he had to stop and be a Captain, and decide how to open up planets, he wouldn't have time to look after sick people," Mario told him. "Of course you can be a Captain when you grow up. And so can Gilvarth, and so can Giltallen—where is he, Do-ran?"

"Up in Psych with Rushka," Gildoran told her. "Look, Giljodek, if you push that button, it will clear the viewscreen, and you can see the planet from the Captain's chair."

"What do these other buttons do?"

"These let me see what is going on in the Ship." Mario explained, "See, I can look into Medic bay, and into Nursery, and into the Transmitter center."

"Can you see into where I sleep?"

"No, Jodek, people need privacy while they sleep," the Captain said. "If you want me to see you from where you sleep, you must come out into the play area where people are doing things together. Or into one of the public areas . . . see, there is Gilban working in the Medic bays. We have no sick people on the Gypsy Moth now, Cosmos be praised. And here is the Rim where there is no gravity and the Floaters live. When you are very old and your bones are brittle you can live out there, but that will not be for hundreds and hundreds of years. There is old Gilrimin in a spe-cial hammock—she is five hundred and seventy years old shiptime. Someday you will be that old, too."

Giljodek was pressing the buttons one after another; this time the screen stayed blank. "What is there?" he asked.

Gilmarlo sighed. She said "That is where the Poohbears are. Deck Four. They have broken the screen there so that we cannot see them. Re-member, they are angry with us."

Giljodek scowled and said, "I'm angry with them. They shouldn't go away."

"But they did, and there is nothing we can do about it," Gilmarlo said. "And now it is Gilrita's turn to sit in my chair and see the views."

When Gildoran took the children back to Nur-sery, he lingered for a little while, talking to Ramie.

"I wonder if the Poohbears will ever come back?"

"I don't know," Ramie said. "I've wondered."

"It's doing something bad to the children. The knowledge that somebody they loved betrayed them. Even if they came back now, would the children even trust them again, ever believe they wouldn't be abandoned again?"

"Would any of us ever trust them again?" Ramie asked. "It seems to me that's the main question. We thought they were part of us. And then they could do something like that."

Hesitating, he told her of the suggestion that Raban had made; to exchange Poohbears with another Explorer ship if Transmitter contact was made with the populated worlds.

"Provided there's another Explorer ship downworlding at the same time, with a Transmit-ter tiein," Ramie said, "and provided their Poohbears and our Poohbears agreed to the ex-change."

"Gilmerritt said it wasn't a good idea. She said, 'You don't put your mother out of your house even when she's angry with you . . .' "

"Gilmerritt is kinder than I," Ramie said, "and more forgiving. I couldn't. I can't. There was a time when I wanted to kill them; when I saw what it did to the children, not to have them here.

And when I saw what it did, all over again, when Gilmarina came out of the tank . . ." There were tears in her eyes.

Gilmarina came running up, hearing her name mentioned. "Don't go, Doran," she begged. "Stay here. You can sleep with me in my hammock."

Gildoran chuckled. Ship's crew took it in turns, now, to sleep in the Nursery, one and two at a time; but it was not his turn tonight. "Your ham-mock wouldn't fit me, smallest."

"Then you can sleep with Ramie in Ramie's hammock," Gilmarina said. Gildoran looked down and colored, and Ramie said, laughing, "You don't do that, Gilmarina. Grown-up people decide for themselves who they want to sleep with them."

"Don't you want to sleep with Gildoran?" Gilmarina persisted, and Ramie burst into a helpless laugh.

"You don't ask questions like that, smallest."

"Yes I do," Gilmarina said, "you heard me."

"Then let me put it another way," Gilramie said. "Grown-up people don't answer questions like that unless they choose to, and I choose not to. Understand, smallest? Besides, if Gildoran slept down here with you and me out of his proper turn, Gilmerritt would be lonely, because Doran

sleeps in her room."

"Poor Gilmerritt," said Marina, diverted. "Her hand hurts, doesn't it?"

"Sometimes, maybe. Not much. But she thinks people are looking at it all the time, and it makes her unhappy," Gilramie said,

Gilmarina said, "Poor Merritt. Kiss her for me, Doran, and tell her not to be sad, because I love her."

"So do I, smallest," Gildoran said, catching up the child and kissing her. "So do I."

And yet Gildoran was reluctant to leave; when he said goodbye to Gilmarina, his feet lagged in the hall and into the shaft, fearing another scene; and when he came into the quarters they shared, seeing in the semidark that Gilmerritt slept, he was grateful, and tiptoed, quiet, fearing to waken her.

And then, in the small light from the hallway, he saw the blood; and, rushing to her, turned her over. She had slashed her wrist, deeply, just above the burnt, useless claw; and the bed they shared was soaked with blood.

During his year as Captain, he had learned to make decisions fast; it took him only seconds to determine that, although she was unconscious, she was still alive; and, seconds later, he was on

the comm device just outside their quarters, bringing Gilnosta and Gilban to him within sec-onds. Gilrushka, from Psych, followed only a moment later.

"If she'd had the use of both hands, she would have been dead," Gilnosta said, tightening a tour-niquet. "She couldn't cut deeply enough to reach an artery. She's all right, Doran, she hasn't lost enough blood to worry about, but she'll need stitching. Let's get a stretcher down here and get her up in Medic."

Following them, Gildoran thought wryly that if she had had the use of both hands, she wouldn't have come to this at all.

"In a sense, if it's anyone's fault, it's my fault," Gilrushka said, standing with Gildoran while the Medics were sewing up Merritt's arm. "I should have spent more time with her, realized the state she was in; she managed to function so well that I thought she was just talking wildly because she wanted your attention, that she was afraid you would leave her for Gilramie. Even so I should have realized how desperate she was." She looked, despairing herself, at the unconscious woman, saying, "The worst of it is, with a planet about to be opened—we simply cannot spare a single person to tend a tank full time. The best thing for her now would be to put her into a regrowth tank before she even recovers con-sciousness. During a year under electronic sleep, she'd manage unconsciously to integrate all her emotional problems—not to mention that restor-ing the use of her hand would eliminate her worst problem. We're even short of supplies, until we get the converter restocked; but after the landing party goes down, we'll have supplies for the tank. Perhaps we should spare her—we'd have to, if she were dead." She smiled again

wryly and said, "Maybe that's why she's trying to demonstrate to us—that if she were dead we would be deprived of her services ... so that we can get along without them while she's in a tank." She looked up and said, "She's awake again. Go and speak to her, Gildoran."

But Gilmerritt simply began to cry, helplessly, refusing to speak to Gildoran at all.

I don't blame her, he thought. I don't blame her.

"Why did you do this to us, love? Don't you know how much we need you?"

She cried out, raging, "You don't care about me! You're only interested in the things I can do for you, in my work here! You don't care how I have to live, with this—" She strained to lift her deformed hand, but it was still strapped to the metal surgery table. "All you care about is a liv-ing, breathing body that can work shifts . . ."

"That's not true, darling. That isn't true," Gil-doran soothed, stroking her hair as if she were Gilmarina's age, and she closed her eyes under his hand and began to weep.

"You don't love me. You can't, not love some-thing like this ..."

"She's punishing us," Rushka said later, sigh-ing, when she had fallen asleep. "Punishing us for making her live this way. And of course she's right. We are going to have to get her into a tank, or we'll lose her anyway. Oh, she may not try this again. But the first little infection or accident

will carry her off because she's lost the will to live." She shook her head. "I was against opening up that world out there," she said, "I didn't think, even if we got a Transmitter tie-in, that it would be worth it. But now I hope—Cosmos, how I hope— that we can open it up. We've got to get some way to take Gilmerritt off the duty roster for a year, get that poor woman's hand restored. She can't go on indefinitely like this." The smooth agelessness of the Psych's face was drawn and sorrowful. "If we cannot give her a year to recuperate, with all she has given us, she will die. Somehow, somehow, it must be managed. Gilnosta managed it while Marina was in the tank; we should have had Mer-ritt in at the same time. With the finder's fee for that world down there— what does Mario call it, Tempest?—perhaps it can be done sooner, rather than later."

III

The landing party was down. Gildoran had hoped he would be assigned a place on it, but it was a smaller landing party than usual, with the ship shorthanded, and Gilraban, who had spoken in favor of opening the planet anyway, wanted to go. Gildoran sat in the Meditation Center, trying to make his mind calm, to contemplate the im-mensity of Cosmos; but no matter how he tried to dismiss all other matters from his mind, he could not make that center of quiet within himself. Gil-merritt, Ramie, all his other troubles ran a race inside his mind, and finally he gave up, tiptoeing past the others in the Meditation Center and went out. He saw Rae there, peaceful, absorbed; he knew that even if he spoke her name or made a noise, she would not come back from that peace-ful distance within herself which she had achieved; and he envied her.

The landing party came up, jubilant; Gildoran joined about half the crew in the larger briefing room, eager to learn what their next year would be.

"No life," Gilmarlo said, "not a sign of it; it's older than Ozymandias, probably by a couple of million years; but the sun has a few millennia to run, so there's no danger yet to a Transmitter tiein. Fossils; archaeologists and paleontologists will be interested, because whatever life cycle they had here, it wasn't primate-based. Feline, perhaps. And it's a carbon cycle, or was; there are fossil fuels galore, and plenty of semi-industrialized planets still use them. So they'll be coming here via Transmitter for mining."

"Question," said Gilrae, "Why didn't the civili-zation which was there and died out, use up the fossil fuels?"

"I've no idea," said Gilraban, "but quite possi-bly they lived and died without industrialization. Or perhaps there has been time enough for more to form since their civilization died. But there's masses of anthracite, huge amounts of liquid hydrocarbons, and probably diamonds, too, since it's a carbon cycle. The planet may not be a gold mine, but it's a mine nevertheless. But I don't think anyone's ever going to want to live there." He shivered. "I'm not warm yet."

"You can't have caught cold," Gilban said, "Any cold viruses down there would have died out thousands of years ago, and I'll guarantee there are none on Gypsy Moth. How about your soil samples? Any signs of life? I haven't had time to check yet; they're in the lab under quarantine

conditions, but I'll wager you won't find any sign of bacteria or even viruses."

"No, everything seems sterile," Gilmarlo said, "but I don't envy the Transmitter crews who set the things up; I'm cold, too." She drew a long breath and said, "We can start arranging duty lists tomorrow; I'm going off-shift and try to get myself warm. Does anyone have an extra blanket?"

Gilraban chuckled. "Don't ask me; I'm going to be using mine."

"Me too," said young Gilbeth in a small voice. "I'm going to find someone who wants to warm me up." There was a chorus of laughter and a shower of suggestions, some vulgar enough to make the girl blush. The group broke up on rip-ples of laughter, and Gildoran went to bed feeling full of hope. Gilmerritt was quiet and subdued, the bandages still around her wrist, and Gilban felt she should stay another night in Medic; Gil-doran lay awake, thinking of a Transmitter tie-in, contacts with the rest of the Galaxy, news of other Explorer ships, and the excitement of a new world to be explored.

No doubt he would be on the Transmitter crew to go down today. He went to the Bridge, hoping, and a little ashamed of the hope, that Gilraban would still have his cold and not feel like going down to do the survey for a Transmitter site. He enjoyed that kind of work, and he had had all too little of it.

But Gilmarlo was not on the Bridge, and Gildo-ran asked the navigator what had happened.

"I think she's sick," Gilmarti said, "She was lying in her bunk shivering this morning, when I stopped by her quarters, and said she couldn't make it up to the Bridge. Maybe she has a touch of fever. I'll call down and see if she feels like com-ing up, if you want to take the Bridge for a min-ute." The old woman touched buttons and scowled. "What's wrong with the communica-tor? I'd better get maintenance on it; all I get is static. Shall I go down and see what's wrong, Doran?"

"Yes. I have the Bridge." He made formal acknowledgment and stood at the viewscreen, frowning down at the blind circle of Tempest below, the scanty icecaps, the barren windswept surface. He was feeling something too formless to be apprehension.

Time went on and Gilmarti did not return. Other members of the Gypsy Moth crew came and went on the Bridge, but there was no sign of the Captain, or of Gilraban, nor, Gildoran suddenly realized, of any member of the Landing party. Suddenly there was a buzz, and, through crack-ling static, came a voice:

"Gilban . . . Medic . . . Bridge . . ."

"We can't hear you, Gilban," Gildoran said, going to the Captain's seat and hitting the main comm button, "Can you clear up your signal?"

Crackling static. "Down here. . .Merritt. . ."

Gildoran looked quickly around. He was the senior officer on the Bridge at the moment. "Lori—

"

Gillori said quickly, "I have the Bridge," and Gildoran hurried down to Medic. Gilban, wearing surgical respirators, hurried out to meet him, then warded him away with one hand.

"You've got to get Gilmerritt out of here. Right away. She mustn't catch this thing."

Consternation swept over Gildoran. The one thing every member of the Gypsy Moth—every member of every Explorer ship—feared more than anything else: an alien plague. He understood, even before Gilban said, "I was afraid of it when I saw Gilmarlo this morning; she was lying in her bunk shivering and I thought we might have a pneumonia from exposure, so I brought her up here. Then Gilraban stumbled up saying he was freezing and felt as if he was dying. One by one they all came in, and the worst is this: Gilbarni's got it, whatever it is. He shared Gilbeth's bed last night, so somehow it's contagious. Probably not very, or everyone who heard the briefing yester-day would have it, including you and me. The first symptom seems to be intractable sensations of cold. I seem to be all right, but I'm not taking chances until we find out how it's spread." He tapped the respirator. "How do you feel, Doran?"

"I feel all right," Gildoran said, but it was not cold that swept a shudder through him. The big Medic said quietly, "We've got to get Gilmerritt out of here. If she catches this thing, she won't live; her will to live is too low already. Want to take her down to your quarters? Stay with her if you have to, or get Gilrushka, but she probably shouldn't be alone." He touched the com-municator button; received nothing but a crackle of static. "Of all the damn times for the

comm equipment to go out on us! Doran, when you get Merritt settled, go up to Nursery. Don't go in— you've been exposed. Tell Ramie, and"—he frowned—"everybody who wasn't in the briefing room yesterday, to barricade themselves in the Nursery with the kids, and stay there. Don't go in yourself, don't let anyone else in, don't let them out—until we're sure this thing is under control, or curable."

Gildoran obeyed, his face set. These were stan-dard instructions for plague. It hadn't happened in his lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone still alive on the Gypsy Moth, but it had happened, a few thousand years ago shiptime. Barricade the chil-dren in the Nursery; when everyone else aboard was dead, the children, the few survivors in the Nursery with them, and the Poohbears, all wear-ing spacesuits, cleaned out the bodies, put them into the converter, and started all over again from the beginning.

They already knew the incubation period was brief; it had hit the landing party with the first symptoms within two hours of their return from the planet, and within twelve hours they had all been shivering and desperately ill. But there were no further cases; those in the briefing room had not been sufficiently exposed, except for Gilbarni. So it took close and intimate contact to transmit from one to another. That, Gildoran thought bleakly, was something; it meant they could nurse the invalids without danger. Gilrushka remained with Gilmerritt, but since this was the first time there had been more than one in Medic in the last two years, they were overloaded, and Gildoran was sent down to nurse the sick, too.

"But what's wrong with them?" he demanded. "They said there was no bacterial life, and

proba-bly no viruses."

"I don't know," Gilban said. "I have to check the soil samples, but superficially there's nothing. No bacteria, even though some bacteria can live at subfreezing. It's unlikely that any viruses could live so long in such barren soil. But if we're deal-ing with subvirals—" He shook his head. "The tests will take a long time. Go in and help Gilnos-ta, will you? I know you have no Medic training, but you can feed them and fetch blankets." He touched Gildoran on the shoulder. "Wear a res-pirator. Where is Merritt?"

"In the Nursery with the babies. She wasn't in the briefing room." Gilmerritt had sunk into such apathy that she seemed not to care where she was; she had hardly seemed to understand that the entire crew of the Gypsy Moth was in danger of death. He no longer feared that the sight of Gilmarina would affect her too seriously; now he hoped it would affect her—in any way. But he had no time to spare in worry for her. Not now.

"I've got to go and finish the tests, find out what we're dealing with here," Gilban said and hurried off toward the labs. Gildoran went into Medic, to find Gilnosta. The young Medic looked harried, exhausted.

"Gildoran, thanks be to Cosmos!"

"How are they?" he asked, looking at the nine blanket-wrapped forms.

"Gilbeth and the Captain and Gilbandel are un-conscious," Gilnosta said. "I think Gilbeth is dy-ing. Whatever this thing is, it's fast." Her mouth tightened. "Even if we go down to get rocks for the converter now, we'll have to go in spacesuits. Nobody else is going to be exposed to this."

"What does it seem to be?"

"I don't know." Gilnosta drew a deep, ragged sigh. "Usually, with chills, the first thing you think of is fever, and at first there was intermittent fever. According to the blood samples we took, every immune reaction in their bodies had been stimulated and they were simply burning up, even though they were shivering themselves to death. But standard antipyretics didn't work. We tried ice baths and the temperature went down, but that caused so much distress that we stopped, wrapped them in blankets, and tried to warm them. But the more we packed them in hot blan-kets and fed them hot drinks, the colder they seemed to get. And now—" she shook her head— "they seem to be displaying symptoms—it sounds foolish—of hypothermia. Gilbeth's body temperature has gone down to 35° C., and that's dangerously low. Go and check it. Take it by armpit or rectum—she's unconscious. And what-ever you do, don't chill or uncover her. If her temperature goes down four more degrees—well, you know as well as I do what it means."

Gildoran knew. He went and bent over the young navigator. The girl's lips were blue, and when he touched her, she felt corpse-cold; al-though the cardiac monitor attached to her ribs still showed a faint pulse. Her body temperature was 34.78°, still dropping.

"I kept giving them hot drinks, while they could still swallow," Gilnosta said. "Gilbeth can't

swallow, but I think perhaps, hot coffee or milk by tube ..." Again she sighed. "Raban's still con-scious. We mustn't let him slip away. Go and try to get him to swallow some more hot drinks, Do-ran."

The big technician was lying in the bunk, electrothermal blankets piled over him; yet he was shivering. He whispered hoarsely to Gildoran, "I feel as if I'd done a spacewalk without a suit; absolute zero."

"The thermals are turned almost high enough to burn your skin, Raban," Gildoran said, trou-bled, checking them and drawing back his hand in automatic withdrawal. "In fact, it would be safer to turn them down a little; your skin is al-ready reddening. Doesn't it hurt?"

"Hurt? No, I can't feel them at all, I feel as if I were out in the cold . . ." His teeth were chatter-ing. "I had to crawl up here—I couldn't make my communicator work—"

"Here," Gildoran said, holding a hot sugared drink to his lips. "The sugar will warm you even if the thermals don't."

Raban made a wry face; but so weakly that it frightened Gildoran; the technician was such a vigorous, vital man, and he lay here shivering, helpless as a baby. "I've been swallowing that stuff till my teeth are floating, and I can't even let my bladder go to piss, I'm so damn cold! If I drink any more, I'll burst!"

Gildoran clenched his teeth, trying not to show his distress; this was another symptom, and a very serious one.

"Try not to worry about it. Drink this, Raban— you need the body heat of the calories," he ad-monished, "and if you're too uncomfortable, you can be catheterized. But you need the heat."

Obediently, still grumbling, Raban managed to swallow the hot drink. "It feels warm going down," he complained, "but it lies in my belly like a lump of ice. I feel queasy, as if I hadn't been digesting anything, as if my metabolism had shut right down. He added, plaintively, "Can't you turn up the thermals a little? Just a little? I'm freezing—I'm dying of cold!"

That was the trouble, Gildoran thought, dis-tressed, as he returned the cup to its place. As he reported to Gilnosta, she sighed and shook her head.

"Gilmarlo complained of the same thing before she lost consciousness," she said, looking at the inert form of the Captain. "I did catheterize her. And Doran, you won't believe this, but when we drew urine, it was cold. Cold, inside her body!"

"It's as if something inside them were drawing out heat," Gildoran said, and Gilmosta nodded. "It certainly acts that way. Something seems to be withdrawing all the body heat from their very cells."

Gilbeth died an hour later, without moving, her heart, on the monitor, simply ceasing to beat, her

brain tracings going flat. Gilnosta decreed sani-tary precautions for the body, in case the conta-gion should increase after death. Before the end of that shiptime day, the Captain died, and Gilraban lapsed into unconsciousness, his temperature steadily creeping down, a tenth of a degree at a time, but mercilessly. He died that night.

IV

"I thought we were crippled after Hellworld," Gilban said, looking around the briefing room with a single quick look, "I didn't know what the word meant. There are sixteen of us here; Gilnosta in Medic and Merritt in the Nursery with the kids; and that is our entire ship's complement at this moment. Plus three babies—"

"Not babies," Gilramie interrupted. "Two five-year-olds and a four-year-old, one biological year younger than the others."

Gilban waved that away impatiently. "Also four preadolescents; what are they, seven or eight? And four Floaters out on the rim, too old to work, three of them senile and the fourth coherent but unable to stand up or endure more than half grav-ity. Plus five Poohbears barricaded and incom-municado out on Deck Four. And that is the en-tire ship's complement of the Gypsy Moth. Rae, you're the senior officer present, with the Cap-tain dead. . . ."

She shook her head. "Gildorric is senior to me. A few years."

"Are they all dead?" Gillori asked, her voice shaking. "All of them?"

Gilban drew a heavy breath and sighed. "Everybody who went down to Tempest. Techni-cally, Gilnadir is still alive; but we lost the other seven, and I don't think there's one chance in twenty thousand that he'll live through to-night. He's unconscious and his body tempera-ture is down to 31°."

"But what killed them?" Rae demanded, "Do we even know?"

"I can give it a name, if you want it," Gilban said with a twist of his lips, "It's a subviral; can't see it except under an electronic microscope, and then not well. We found it when the culture medium it was supposed to be growing on lost normal heat. Naturally we didn't touch it; we used sensor probes. But when we saw frost condensing on the outside of the culture tubes . . ."

"It likes cold, then?"

"No," Gilban corrected, "on the contrary. It leaches out the heat from any organic substance. It evidently leached all the heat out of Tempest down there—" he made a vague gesture supposed to indicate the invisible surface of the planet be-low. "Every bit of organic life on the planet, down to bacteria and protozoans, then went dormant until we came along, nice and warm, and waiting, and alive. It's a heat-trope; attracted to any kind of organic heat, and draws it out from

the cells somehow, but I don't understand the mechanism yet." He added defensively, "It would take a whole college of surgeons working full time, a couple of years to track down something like this, and I'm only one man—and I first saw the damna-ble thing in action three days ago!"

"Nobody expects you to know more than that, Ban," Gilrae soothed, then looked around help-lessly. "I'm not the Captain. I have no au-thority—and with Gilmarlo dead—"

"I have the authority," Gilban said grimly, "and I intend to use it. By Ship's Charter, in a time of desperate emergency—and I don't think anyone would dispute that's what we've got—the Chief Medical Officer has the authority to override even a Year-Captain, and I warn you, whoever is cho-sen Captain, I fully intend to override him, or her, whenever I think it's necessary for safety reasons, until we're clear of that cold death-trap down there."

"I take it, then," Rae said, "that none of you have any question about the necessity of abandon-ing Tempest as inexplorable?"

Gildorric said vehemently, "I wouldn't touch it with a sensor probe half a Galaxy long!"

Rae asked "Gilban, do you want the formal au-thority as Captain? I don't think anyone will pro-test if you do, and there is a precedent for choos-ing a Captain by majority acclaim in time of Emergency. It hasn't been done since I was out of Nursery, but it has been done."

"Cosmos, no!" the Medic snorted. "I don't know the first thing about what a Captain has to do,

and I don't want to know. The last thing I want is to be stuck on the Bridge for a year, away from my own work! Pick anyone you want for Captain—it's nothing to me—but I warn you, if we get some youngster who doesn't know what the hell he's doing, and wants to go down there again—" He stared malevolently at Gildoran, and the young man quailed, remembering their many confrontations on Hellworld. He had been right that time and Gilban had been wrong, and the older Medic must have remembered it, but some-how it had managed to turn out the other way, as if he had persuaded Gilban against his will into Hellworld.

He said now, speaking up, "Rae, what is the situation, right now? Do we—physically—have enough functioning people to work the Ship?"

"After a fashion," Rae said. "With not much reserve. We can manage, when we're out in space. But we can't break orbit until we have fuel for the converter. Somehow we've got to manage that."

"We can't wait until we find an asteroid belt somewhere?"

Rae shook her head. "Too many asteroids are just ice chunks, low-grade fuel. We need some heavy elements for the synthesizer, even to get back to a more inhabited part of the Galaxy. We can go down in space suits, if we have to, and get fuel. But we have to go down one more time. We have to, Gilban—or we're stuck here in orbit, and we'll die before we can get to another system to pick up fuel."

Gilban shook his head. "Are we going to have to drift in space, then? We can't go down again. That's out."

"Are you prepared to die here, then?" Rae asked. "That's the choice we have. Four, five people could handle it, and they could do it in spacesuits. Not even filterable viruses can get into our self-contained suit mechanisms."

"This is a subviral," Gilban said, "and I don't know; it may get through—"

"From what Gilmarlo said," Gildorric said quietly, "they were out of spacesuits. They had checked and found no bacteria or even one-celled life, so they worked unhelmeted. Whatever that heat-trope is, it must exist in spore form, because it was still active, and there's been no organic life there for millennia."

"But it isn't able to transmit without contact," Gilban said, "Witness: only Gilbarni caught it, and he spent the night with poor Beth. There can't be anything left on the ship; as virulent as it is, and the incubation period is short, someone else would have sickened. Probably me, or Gilnosta, or Merritt, because she was in the Medic area when we brought them in. And we handled the—the bodies; admitted, we wore masks and gloves, but no one caught it from the bodies, even when that heat-trope, or whatever it is, must have been desperate to leave them. So if it had a chance to form spores, I would imagine that the inside of the converter has finished them off. If anything could survive inside an atomic-nuclear converter, we're all dead anyhow," he added brutally, seeing the looks of sudden dread that swept around the rem-nant of the crew. "I think we have to

assume that absolute-zero cold, or the inside of a nuclear con-verter, can kill that thing. I don't think we can make any other assumptions. But working in space-suits, it should be safe enough to go down for fuel. I won't overrule it, if you say we have to go down. But spacesuits—closed spacesuits. And without a Captain, who's going to order anybody down?"

Everyone looked at Rae. Gildoran noticed, thinking that in this emergency they all turned to her. Then it was not for him only that Rae was central to the Ship, but for everyone. Rae noticed, and she colored a little. She said, "We should draw disks for a Captain—"

"No." Gildorric put everyone's thoughts into words. "We don't dare trust the Ship to anyone without experience, in an emergency like this. Rae, take it over by acclaim. I think everybody wants you to."

She looked around, helplessly. But there was no dissenting voice.

"Does everyone want it, then? I warn you, I will demand exactly the same authority as if I had been properly chosen by lot, for the rest of Gilmarlo's term in office. And after it, the same seven-year Exemption from office. Fair enough?"

"I'll accept that," Gildoran said, and Gilramie and Gilban quickly chimed in. Gilban touched the button, then swore, morosely.

"Is anyone left alive in Maintenance? What in the Cosmos is wrong with the Comm equipment?

I think we ought to get Nosta and Merritt to agree—"

Gilredic, long and lean and silent, stood up and said, "I've been over it a dozen times. I can only imagine it's something in the planet down there. Let me see . . . hullo," he said, frowning, "It's working again. Try it—"

But before Gilban reached the button, there was a flash of light from the signal. Gilban said tersely, "Medic. It's probably for me. Gilban here—"

Gilnosta's voice came from the small grilled screen.

"I thought you should know. Gilnadir just died. Death rate now one hundred percent."

"I've got to get back," Gilban said and rose. "Rae, you're in authority. I reserve the right to override on points of medical safety; otherwise you're in charge, Captain."

"Poor Gilnadir," Rae said, shaking her head. "Is there anyone else left qualified for geological sur-vey?"

"I am," Gildoran said.

"I worked geodesic on Hellworld," Gillori said, "but I'm not qualified Class A yet."

"And Transmitter is short, too, with Gilraban dead," Rae said. "Doran, you'd better start teach-ing the kids in intensives. If we lose any more. . . No. I refuse to think about that. Now, about fuel. I can't order anybody down. Not when it's likely to be a suicide mission." She was shaking her head, slowly, distressed. "I'll take volunteers, but no-body who's alone in his specialty. I can't figure it out ..."

"No," said Gilrushka. The Psych looked haggard and exhausted. "Don't try to take that re-sponsibility, Rae. You aren't God. Put every-body's fully qualified specialties into the compu-ter and ask who's most expendable."

"I'd say I was," Gilmerritt said, coming in quietly. "I'm not even fully functioning physi-cally. I volunteer here and now."

Gilrae stared at her in consternation, but Gil-rushka said flatly, "Rae isn't asking for suicide missions. Not conscious ones; you'd be more in-terested in getting killed than in getting the fuel to save our ship. Anyway, you are the only com-pletely qualified biologist on board, except for the two remaining Medics. Sit down, Gilmerritt, and leave it to the computer."

Finally Rae nodded. "I'll do it that way. Rushka, you'll have to quantify specialties by priority; which ones are most expendable or could be re-learned from our educator tapes, in case we have no completely-expendables."

Gildoran shuddered; he did not envy the Cap-tain and the Psych that task. He knew they would

be fair about it—they would kill themselves to be strictly fair—but it meant that their decisions were literally condemning someone to go down into the jaws of death, on Tempest, to save the lives of the others. In any case, he knew he would have shrunk from the task of declaring that any person on the Gypsy Moth, in their tragically re-duced complement, was "Expendable."

Would I go? Would I be willing to go, if the computer came up with my name?

It won't. I'm the only fully-qualified person left on geodesic. And one of the two or three left who's fully qualified on Transmitter. I'm as safe as Gil-ban, I don't have to worry . . .

But would I? Would I have the courage to accept a death mission?

I'll never know. And maybe I don't want to know . . .

He was off-shift; he went to the Meditation Center and tried to clear his mind, floating free, and after a time he managed to center his thoughts on a point of light, a universal sun within the center of the universe, reflecting the universal point of light within himself, stars, planets, sun, galaxies, nuclei, rotating on that invisible center, flux and reflux, violence and calm, eternally ebb-ing and flowing; death and life parts of the great continuum. When he left the Meditation Center he was at peace; he spent a couple of hours in the Nursery, building solar-system patterns with Gil-rita and Gilmarina, preparing the preadolescents for the knowledge that they might, soon, have to come to the Bridge for an hour at a time and learn to tend screens and take messages. They were excited about the thought of new responsibilities, not yet aware of the

tragedy which had brought it on. Someone would have to break that to them, sometime soon. He didn't want the job.

But his peace vanished abruptly when he heard that the computer had drawn his name and he was to go down to Tempest with the fueling party.

Rae's face was drawn, and she could not look into his eyes. "That's the word. Gildoran. Believe me—" She couldn't finish.

"No," Gilmerritt cried, sobbing, clinging to him with both hands, "No, not Gildoran. Take me instead—I'm not as much use to you as he is . . ."

"Don't you think I'd rather?" Gilrae said coldly. "But you're not competent, Merritt; medically disqualified. Suicide attempts disqualify for three years. Leave the Bridge or I'll have you carried back down to Medic."

Gilmerritt drew a deep, shocked breath and quieted with a single glance. "I'll stay, and just you try carrying me away."

Gildorric said hesitantly, "Let me take Gildo-ran's place, Rae. He's only a boy."

"He's on the Captain's list," Gilrae said inflexi-bly, then her face broke. "I tried. I ran it through three times. Gildoran, Gilredic, Gilrannock. Gil-nosta was the fourth choice, but she's our only

remaining Medic, and Gilban is old enough to take Floater status—older than I am. Your knowl-edge is worth more than Gildoran's youth, Dorric. They added it all up."

Gildoran had wondered how he would feel, facing death. Now he knew; numb, and disbeliev-ing. Was there someone to cry over Gilredic and Gilrannock as Rae and Gilmerritt were crying over him, someone to protest the decision of the com-puter with wild disbelief and despair? He hoped so, and simultaneously he hoped not. Gilmarina would think he had abandoned her; as the Poohbears had left them, as the others who died had left them. He could not bear that Gilmarina might think he had deserted her.

Would it matter, if I am dead, should I care what she thinks? I will not care then; there will be nothing left that can care.

But he rejected that. He did not believe in personal survival after death, but he believed that some things survived death, and dead or alive, Gilmarina's trust was something he would not see violated; not even after his death. He told Rae quietly, "I'll go. Don't cry—it could have been any of us." He was grateful, as he knew within himself that Rae was grateful, that it had not been she who had to order him down. He was, as he now knew, one of her babies. Knowing his own emotions for Gilmarina—could he order her down to almost certain death?—he knew what Rae must be feel-ing now.

But before he left, he went down to the Nursery again, and finding a quiet corner near the ham-mock, sat down on a puffy seat and drew Gil-marina on to his lap.

"I have to tell you something, smallest," he said. "You must be a big girl and not cry if you do not see me again. I have to go away. I will come back if I can. I promise you I will try to come back to you. But I have to go down and get fuel for the converter, with Gilredic and Gilrannock, and there is something very dangerous down there that could kill all of us. If I don't come back, you must remember why I had to go away." He touched the corner of her eye. "It's because I love you, Gilmarina. Please don't think I went away because I didn't love you. I am going to do this because if I don't go, the Gypsy Moth and every-body on it will die. And I love you and want you all to live."

Her huge brown eyes stared up at his, filling with tears. "Can't somebody else do it, Doran? Why does it have to be you?"

The old question. Why me? He said, "I can't explain it to you, smallest, but the other people on the ship don't want it to be them either. And it has to be somebody. Don't cry," he added, touching the feathery eyelashes again, stroking her hair. "If everything goes well, you may see me again to-night, I will be here to tuck you into your ham-mock. Only if I don't come, remember it will be because I loved you, not because I didn't want to come. It will be because I loved all of you."

Because, if all three of us refused to go, every-one on the Gypsy Moth would die. Everyone in Nursery. The Floaters out on the rim. Gilmerritt, who has to live long enough to know what life is worth. Gilrae, because a Universe without Gilrae is not worth Jiving in. Gilmarina . . .

He knew, suddenly and without a moment's hesitation, that he was glad to die if the alternative was to watch the Gypsy Moth die, slowly, starving and freezing, empty of fuel; if the alternative was to watch Gilmarina suffering and dying.

"Kiss me, smallest," he said, bending to lay his lips against the pale cheek. There was not a trace now of pinkness there; she was pale, bleached; an Explorer, she belonged to Gypsy Moth, marked out on all worlds where she would go as forever alien. "Kiss me, but don't say goodbye. I'll come back to you if I can."

She swallowed hard, but she did not cry. She said steadily, "Good night, Gildoran," and he wondered if she understood. Well, he had done his best; now she would not suffer from wilful abandonment; perhaps she would remember that he had not violated her trust as the Poohbears had done.

V

"I don't know what's going on," Gilrae said, "The communicators are all working again. And Deck Four is open, too. We can see the Poohbears. I don't know if they can hear us, and they haven't tried to communicate. And their lift shaft still isn't opening on Deck Four. Something is going on."

"Maybe if they know what's happening, they'll come back," Gilrushka said. 'They left us because they couldn't endure the death of one of their number. If they knew how many of us are dead now—"

"Be damned to them," Gilramie said, her face implacable, "I'll never trust them again; they left us when we needed them most."

Gilrae sighed. "We need them worse now than we did then; how will we ever take on any more children, without Poohbears?" Gildoran, waiting in the bay outside the airlocks, knew that she was just delaying. He said gently, "We'd better go down while we're over dayside, Rae," and she nodded. Her face was calm now and frozen. Sud-denly she leaned forward, and, as she had not done since she thought him lost on Lasselli's World, clasped him close and kissed his cheek. "Be careful, Gildoran. Don't throw your life away. Gilban's going to be working all the time you're gone, to find . . ." She couldn't finish the sentence, but he did, mentally: to find a cure in case you three get it.

He got into the landing craft. Peripherally, at the edge of his mind, he thought that he had never landed one of these alone, before, and he might even have enjoyed it, under other circumstances. Fastening his helmet—this time they would take everything they needed, including air; the air of Tempest was breathable, but it was probably con-taminated with the spores of the deadly heattrope—he began the preflight check on the land-ing craft.

"Helmets fastened before we leave Gypsy Moth, Gilredic, Gilrannock," he said, and watched them comply.

They moved away from Gypsy Moth and Gildo-ran, watching the great ship recede in the viewscreens, wondered if he would ever see it again like this. Well, there was no advantage in thinking this way, doing everything he did as if it might be the last time; all he could do was to go quietly about routine, not thinking about whether or not he would ever do it again.

"Prepare for atmospherics," he said and cut in the controls, feeling the vicious surge of gravity against his midsection belts.

Before they landed, he made them recheck all the fastenings, as if they were going to do an outship spacewalk, something only Maintenance ever got a chance to do. "The surface here could be as dangerous to us as interstellar space," he warned tersely. "Don't relax even for a minute. Gilredic, do you have all the machinery ready to go?"

"Right; ramps will unship for unloading," the skinny technician said, "Check communicators. Cosmos, it's lucky they're working again! And it is luck—we didn't do anything at all to them."

They set down on the bleak surface. Bleak, bare, barren; all those words floated through Gildoran's mind as he looked out through shatterproof glass at the surface of Tempest. Reddishblack barren rock lay everywhere, and over the surface little dust-clouds whirled up, racing back and forth. Tempest. Gilmarlo had given it a suitable name, after all, with the storms raging on the

surface; and they had set down in a quiet spot, with no cyclones or hurricane-strength winds.

Tempest. A good name. But Deathtrap would be a better one.

Poor Gilmarlo didn't have any better luck with her first command than I did with mine. Less. I walked away from mine. Host two men, one child and seven Poohbears. Gilmarlo lost . . .

That's enough of that. No more self-pity. There's a job to be done.

For Gilmarina. For Rae, and Merritt, and all of them. Even for the Poohbears; they may not care if we live or die. But we care about them . . .

Enough.'

"Unship the ramps," he ordered crisply, "Get the machinery down."

It rolled on the surface easily, with no mechani-cal problems, and after brief checking of soil sam-ples with his space-gloved hands (guarding against the slightest tear which might admit the heat-trope) he selected a site and set the machin-ery to digging up great chunks of the ore-rich rocks. There were enough heavy elements in them that the converter could synthesize enough for all foreseeable needs in the next few years and they would surely find a solar system before then.

But we must get back toward the civilized part of the Galaxy. We need contacts, we need

chil-dren. We need a future . . .

He remembered bleakly that he would probably have no part in that future. Well, there were others to decide that. "How's the machinery working?" he started to ask, realized that his own voice in his ears, through the communicator, was only a crackle of static. Damn the communicators—they had gone out again; when they returned, Gilredic, for Maintenance, had better get right down to it and find out what in the Cosmos was wrong with them! There were no energy sources on this planet to create static—it must be a pure mechani-cal malfunction! And if Maintenance couldn't handle it, who could? He forced away the thought that Gilredic might not live long enough to check out the communicators or anything else.

It took him about an hour, perhaps two—he had lost track of time and they hadn't yet managed to find a way to make a chronometer visible through the spacesuit arm—and the machinery was run-ning hot, little puffs of steam rising from it in the chilly air. Breathing only the stale spacesuit air from Gypsy Moth, Gildoran longed for a breath of chill fresh air . . . but even one whiff might be filled with the deadly heat-trope or its spores. Did they take only organic heat from cells? Or were they organic at all? Did they form some strange interface between organic and inorganic life? Had they burrowed down to the very center of Tem-pest to absorb heat from the volcanic core, cooling though it was? Was that why it was cooling? Was there any way to determine how the heat-trope worked? Maybe that should be a riddle for Gilmerritt—she was the biologist. Gilban was so absorbed in the medical implications that he had no time for theoretical knowledge of how the thing worked. As he said, it would take a whole college of research scientists a whole year, and he was one Medic with eight dying crewmen on his hands. Would he

have three more to-night?

That line of thought led nowhere. "We might as well take her up," he said, then, realizing they could not hear him through the maddening crackle of static in the communicators, beckoned and indicated, with sign language. They shipped the heavy machinery, made a few final arrange-ments stowing the fuel; inside the landing craft, hatches sealed and the place flooded with pure air from the Gypsy Moth, Gildoran thought about loosening his helmet. No. They were probably doomed anyway—all three of them—but there was no need to take unnecessary chances; and there in the back of the landing craft was the rock from Tempest, perhaps saturated or infiltrated with the deadly heat-trope. Until that stuff was in the converter—all of it—he wasn't going to open his helmet or let either of the other men in his charge open theirs.

Slowly, at first, then with gathering speed, the little craft lifted from the surface of Tempest for the last time. Looking back at it, Gildoran hoped nothing else with life would ever touch down there.

We will have to get back in touch with the civilized part of the Galaxy now. We must warn other Explorers about this one. It could cost the life of another ship.

He stifled the thought that it might already have cost the life of this one. A few hours would tell; but he, Gildoran, might not be alive to see.

He wondered, approaching the Gypsy Moth, if he would have to execute the tricky maneuver

into the landing bay by sign language too, on the viewscreens; but capriciously, the com-municators had begun to work again with no more than the normal background trickle of static when they were inside the gravitational field of a planet. Perhaps this planet had anomalous magnetic fields which affected the communi-cators. It didn't matter; they'd be away from it within the hour, and hopefully no human foot would ever touch it again.

He found himself remembering, as he watched the great hatches lock, old Gilharrad's theory that planets were only holes in space, interruptions in the greatness of Cosmos. Well, this one was cer-tainly a cancer on the face of its Galaxy! Absolute zero must quarantine them, or that heattrope might have spread from world to world . . .

"Stand by to open landing craft," he ordered, looking out at the spacesuited figure in the dock-ing area. He felt a rush of relief washing through his whole body, realizing that they were safe again inside the Gypsy Moth's bowels. Safe as a Poohbear's pocket, he thought, and felt again a painful sting of loss and regret.

"Negative," said a voice from the communicator. "We are taking no chances; we are going to decontaminate everything. Remain inside the landing craft until decontamination process is finished."

From overhead in the docking bay he saw the fine mist of decontaminant spray, and knew they were flooding the landing craft with the powerful corrosive which would destroy any known kind of organic life.

"Eject fuel rocks into hopper," was the next order, and Gildoran knew that the fuel rocks from Tempest, possibly saturated with the deadly heat-trope, were going to be decontaminated even before they went into the converter. He recog-nized the voice—what was old Gilmarti of the Transmitter crew doing in the landing bay? That was a silly question. Shorthanded as they were, anyone was likely to be doing absolutely anything on Gypsy Moth for the next few years, and he might as well get used to it.

If he lived long enough to get used to anything. ... He cut off the self-pity and followed Gilmarti's orders to descend from the landing craft.

Still spacesuited, they went through the airlock and inside. Another technician was trundling the heavy machinery away. Gilmarti grinned at him self-consciously, but could not meet his eyes.

"Gilban wants all three of you in Medic tonight. In case you start showing any symptoms."

Gilban and Gilnosta welcomed them to Medic, giving them a meticulous checkup. Gilredic asked, "Shouldn't you wear spacesuits for that?"

Gilnosta shook her head. "We nursed the most acute cases. Evidently it's not airborne, but contact-spread; Gilbarni caught it from Gilbeth, but that's closer contact than we're going to have with any of you—until you are pronounced safe, anyhow. Maybe their decontaminants caught the last of it. But we'll play it safe; sleep in here tonight, and if any of you start having chills or

that high fever—well, we have a new idea for attack," she explained as Gildoran got out of his clothes and into one of the loose robes they wore in Medic. "Gilnadir lived longest: he was the one they packed in ice. We'll lower your body tem-perature as if you were going into cryogenic anes-thesia for major surgery. That will hold back these heat-beasties, whatever they are; I've theorized that the more heat we gave these things, the more they multiplied and spread and invaded the body; so that in ignorance we did the very worst thing. We packed the victims in thermal blankets turned up high, and the heat-tropes thrived on it. We fed them hot drinks and they withdrew the heat from the very body fluids—I remember we drew off cold urine still inside the bladder. This time any-one who gets it will be packed in ice, then cooled down as far as we dare. That might discourage them."

Gildoran agreed that it was worth a try.

But the day passed, and the night, and none of the three who had gone down to the surface of Tempest showed the slightest symptoms. By that time they were out of orbit and Tempest lay far behind them. Gildoran had begun to wonder if they had bested the heat-trope, if their spacesuit precautions had won, when Gilzand, a technician Gildoran did not know well, came into the Medic bay. His eyes were wide with dread verging on terror.

"I'm cold," he whispered, "I can't get warm, no matter what I do."

Gilnosta whispered aloud, "Oh, no! Cosmos, no!"

But there was no help for it. Shivering and protesting, Gilzand was packed in ice; his distress was so great that Gilban brought electrodes and sent him into deep hypersleep. "He'll mend better that way, and anyhow, fear and emotional distress wouldn't help him any," he declared, looking down at the sleeping technician.

Gilnosta asked "Tube feeding or intravenous glucose?"

"Neither," Gilban said, "the very calories we feed him might feed those things. We're going to starve them out. If it kills him, well, he'll die anyway, we don't know any cure for this thing. But he can afford to lose up to twenty per cent of his body weight before we have to start worrying about that."

"What was Gilzand's last assignment?" Gil-nosta asked. "Was he handling anything from Tempest?"

"I don't know," Gilban confessed, "I'll ask the Bridge. Damnation!" He scowled. "That com-municator is out again. Doran, get Gilredic on it, and go on up to the Bridge and ask someone what Gilzand was doing when he got sick."

When Gildoran reached the Bridge, Gilrae's eyes widened, and he saw that there were tears in them. Had she cared so much, then? But all she said was "Praise be, you're safe, Gildoran. All of you."

"Not all," Gildoran said reluctantly, "Zand is in Medic, and he's got it, whatever it is. And he didn't go down with us. I hope he was handling something from Tempest." The alternative—that the heat-trope was loose on the ship and they were all doomed—was too terrible to contemplate.

Her eyes widened. "Yes," she said, "he was cleaning and stowing the machinery you used down on Tempest."

Gildoran remembered the machinery at work, digging out the rock; heat rising like steam in the icy air of Tempest. Yes, that would attract the heat-trope. And, like damned fools, they had de-contaminated the outside of the landing craft, and the outside of the spacesuits, and even the rocks they had put into the converter; but they had not decontaminated the machinery, which had been carried back to Gypsy Moth in the comparatively warm interior of the landing craft.

Gilrae said "We should put that damned machinery right into the converter before anyone else handles it."

"We can't," said Gilmarti, "We don't have it in duplicate; it's a lifeline for the Gypsy Moth. With-out it, no more fuel—we're dead."

"We're probably dead anyhow," said Gilrae, "but we might try decontaminating it. In spacesuits. Meanwhile—" she glanced at Gildoran— "now that Gilban pronounced you officially free of contamination, you ought to go down to Nur-sery and put Gilmarina out of her misery. And Gilmerritt."

"I'm on my way," he said, "but first, get Gil-redic on the communicators. Gilban is going to need workable communications—"

"Is it out in Medic again?" Rae asked, "Mine, here, is certainly all right. Look, I can even get Deck Four; it's open, the microphone pickup, and I can hear the Poohbears talking among them-selves in their own language, though none of them has tried to communicate with us." She touched his cheek lightly. "I'm glad you're back, Gildoran. Now go up to Marina and tell her you're still alive."

VI

"You're still alive," Gilmarina kept repeating, clinging to him. She would not let him go. "You came back, Doran. You came back!"

"I told you I would," Gildoran said, soothing the sobbing child in his lap, "I told you I would come back if I could, Marina, darling. Don't cry. Be my brave girl and don't cry; it's all right now."

"I didn't cry when you were gone. Not once. Did I, Merritt? I'm crying now because I'm so happy, so glad you're not dead down on that awful planet . . ." she said, burying her face again in

his chest.

Gilmerritt was blinking, too, holding him with her good hand. "I was so sure I would never see you again ..." she said, and he pulled her down close to him and the child in his lap. "We were lucky," he said soberly, "but it's not over yet. Gilzand is dying. He handled the machinery from Tempest, and evidently the heat-trope got him."

"It doesn't need a living vector, then? It can come in the rock and soil?" Gilmerritt asked, frowning. "That means the organic decontami-nants aren't working. It has just occurred to me—" She got up quickly and went to the communicator panel.

"Landing bay," she said, urgently, "Who is in the landing bay? Cosmos, it's probably too late. The landing craft is clean, it went through the absolute zero of space on the way up here, but everything inside it—where you people were with the outsides of your spacesuits . . ." She broke off. "Hello. Gilmack? Listen to me; this is urgent, this is the Biological Officer. Seal off the docking bay. No one to go inside it except in spacesuits, and no one to go near the landing craft. Who put away the spacesuits that were worn down to Tempest?" She listened a moment. "Tell me, is he . . . oh, no.'" She turned to Doran, shak-ing her head. "Mack says that Gilrannock tended the spacesuits, and he just went up to Medic com-plaining of cold. And their communicator keeps going in and out . . ." "Merritt, what are you trying to say?" "I'm saying that I don't think that thing is or-ganic at all," she said, "I'm going down to the lab and put Gilban's culture samples into the conver-ter before somebody assumes they're dead and recycles the culture medium. With her usable hand, she pushed aside Gildoran's attempt to stop her. "No. You

took your risk. I have to take mine, for the Gypsy Moth. My life isn't worth anything, and yours is. Stay here with the children, Gildoran."

"You mean you know how that thing works—"

"Yes," Gilmerritt said tersely. "It eats heat

energy and it excretes static. Any organism degrades energy; the heat-trope takes in energy waves in the heat wavelengths and excretes radio waves. The communicator problem started in the briefing room when the eight who went down to Tempest were infected with it; it spread all over the ship when the eight were dying of it; it cleared up after they were dead because it had become dormant after consuming all their organic heat. It's lucky we put the bodies into the converter so quickly after they were dead. Tell me, when Gil-zand came up there, sick, did the communicator in Medic start acting up again?"

Staring, Gildoran realized that Gilmerritt had solved the riddle. He sat holding Marina on his lap, watching her go. She had insisted on taking the risk herself but she might have saved them all. Was this a clever form of suicide? Would she somehow manage to contaminate herself with the culture samples? He had to assume that she would not bring that danger into the Gypsy Moth again; after all, her first action when she knew was to seal off the docking bay, and all the spacesuits worn on Tempest. So it was not reckless suicide which would endanger others; and contaminat-ing herself, her body, could endanger the entire Gypsy Moth.

"Look," Gilmarina squealed in wild excite-ment, looking at the viewscreen which had sud-denly flickered into life, "It's a Poohbear! Pooh! Pooh! Where are you?"

The face of the great marsupial filled the view-screen. The voice, against a background crackle of static, light and clear and beloved, filled Gildoran with an aching nostalgia; but the Poohbear's voice was aggressive.

"Gildoran! What is happening down there. What are you doing? We have been listening, and we do not know. What are you doing?"

All of Gildoran's wrath against the great crea-tures they had loved, and who had betrayed them in the hour of their greatest need, flooded to the surface.

"We're dying—that's what we're doing," he said bitterly, "Eight of us are dead already, and two more are dying, and the rest of us may follow. Not that it would mean anything to you. One of yours died, and we were told in no uncertain terms that we mustn't dare to compare our grief to yours. But we have too much grief now to worry about yours. Stay up there on Deck Four and in-dulge yourselves in it for the rest of your lives, until all the rest of us are dead. Then you will have the Gypsy Moth for yourselves, and you can make of it a great floating tomb, if you will!" He stopped, in consternation, hearing what he had said; it had come flooding out of him, unbidden, from some inner recess of his being where he had fought his own battle with the fear of death. The Poohbear said nothing, only stared at him. Then the screen went blank again and silent and the Poohbear's face was gone.

That's all we needed. To worry about them, to make them angry when for the first time in two years they showed the slightest interest in what was happening to us.

I should have been polite, maybe begged them to come back . . .

No. We managed without them, and if they had been with us, we would not have been so shorthanded, not taken this terrible risk.

We could have ignored Tempest, passed it up for a better planet, risked two or three at most to go down and get fuel.

The Poohbears didn't worry about us; why should we worry about them now?

But he softened, as he looked into the empty screen. Maybe that had been the trouble. We never really worried about them. We took them for granted.

The communicator crackled softly with static, and Gildoran shuddered. Would he ever, now, hear static again without fearing the cold death which had swept over them so swiftly?

Gilmerritt's voice came from the small screen. "Doran, will you come up to the Bridge? We may have to try something ..." And he set Gilmarina down.

Gilrae had called the conference for the smaller briefing room; and looking around, Gildoran knew why. There were so many faces absent. At their last conference they had spoken of how des-perately shorthanded they were; now eight of those who had been there to make up the pitifully small complement of Gypsy Moth were dead and two more lying in hibernation, all but dead, their body temperature lowered almost to the point of death. None of them spoke of their desperately crippled state.

Swiftly Gilmerritt explained what she thought had happened.

"We decontaminated the outside of the landing craft; but the outside was safe—it had traveled through absolute-zero cold and could not carry the heat-trope. The heat-trope clung to the ma-chinery because it was absorbing the heat generated in the rocks, and in the metal parts, during the mining process. So the machinery is contami-nated, but cold; it probably cannot transmit the heat-trope unless it is warmed up again, but we will never dare handle it again except with spacesuits or gloves until it has been sterilized in absolute-zero cold. The same is true of the last three spacesuits worn down to Tempest. And" —she paused—"of the inside of the landing craft—everything you people might have touched with your contaminated spacesuits."

"What's the answer, then?" Gilmarti wanted to know. "Put machinery, spacesuits and landing craft all into the converter and make others?"

"That's one answer," Gilmerritt said, "but with the skeleton crew we have, it would mean aban-doning them until the babies grow up and can build them. I don't think I want to wait until

Giljodek and Gilvirga qualify, for landing craft replacement; we might find a good planet and want to open it up."

"We can't open a planet up with our present component," Gilmarti said somberly. "Not till the kids grow up. But we could find a good planet and make a Transmitter tie-in. We have to make a Transmitter tie-in, so we can get the word back to the rest of the Explorers. We have to warn them about the heat-trope. That may have been what killed out other races in this end of the Galaxy."

She had voiced Gildoran's own thought. The heat-trope was certainly the most dangerous thing they had found; it was even fortunate that they had been shorthanded when they landed, or the landing party would have been a full com-plement of twelve or fourteen, not the eight they had actually sent down.

"But we can't go near anyone in the rest of the Galaxy as long as the Gypsy Moth is carrying the heat-trope contamination," Gilmerritt said. "And we can't put down a landing craft on any planet where we might still be carrying it; not to mention that if we go into the landing craft without spacesuits we can get it again. For all we know, they may be nestling inside the drive units of the landing craft; the matter-antimatter in the Gypsy Moth has no heat, but the landing craft atmos-pherics run on fossil fuel and produce heat, and those vicious little heat-beasties are probably growing in there right now. They need a dose of absolute-zero cold to kill them."

"We could flush the fuels directly into the con-verter," suggested Gilmarti. "Whoever did it

could wear a spacesuit. The technician who took the rocks to the converter didn't get contami-nated; he's free of the cold-death."

"And then we have another spacesuit contami-nated," Gilrae reminded them.

"We could put the spacesuits into the conver-ter," Gildorric said. "We have fifty or more spacesuits. With our present component, we don't need so many; recycling them into the con-verter would give us plenty of heavy metals. And a margin of safety for supplies."

"We could do that," Gilmerritt said, "but who-ever handled them would contaminate his suit, and so forth ad infinitum. It doesn't seem to be so transmissible as all that. . . if it were, every blan-ket and sheet the sick ones used would have to go into the converter—"

"Gilban already did that," Gilnosta said. "I thought he was crazy. But the sheets and towels and so forth are organic compounds. So he was right even if it was for the wrong reasons."

"Did body wastes go into the converter, too?" Gilmerritt asked, and sighed with relief when Gilnosta nodded.

Gilmarti said, "Have all the contaminated spacesuits put into the converter, then the last person take a spacewalk outside Gypsy Moth to sterilize the last spacesuit."

"That's roughly what I was going to suggest," Gilmerritt said, "only more thorough. And we can

salvage the landing craft, too. I suggest that we put all the contaminated machinery into the land-ing craft, tying it down. That I, and Gilmarti who might be contaminated, but probably isn't, put on the suits, and one other person, go out in the landing craft—and once we're out in deep space, in orbit around the Gypsy Moth, we depressurize . . . and open the doors to deep space. Absolute-zero cold will sterilize everything inside the land-ing craft . . . and our spacesuits . . . and the machinery. Then we shut the doors again, repres-surize, and come back aboard."

Gilrae looked at the younger biologist in con-sternation. She said, "Gilmerritt, do you know how dangerous that is? If any kind of gravitation-al storm came up while you were outside Gypsy Moth, you'd be blown away and drift forever."

"It's a quicker death than the cold-death," Gil-merritt said. "And I saw the first symptoms of that, in Gilmarlo and poor little Gilbeth. I'd take a nice quick death in space anytime."

"I think it's the only way to be absolutely sure," Gilmarti said soberly. "You do know that Gilzand just died?"

Rae nodded slowly, "I wasn't going to mention it. We have enough to worry about and grieve over," she said. "Gilzand just died. And Gilran-nock is dying, unless Gilban's drastic cold therapy works; and I don't believe we can lower his internal temperature enough to kill the heattrope without killing him first."

Gilmerritt said flatly, "I am going. No, it's not suicidal. But if I do die—and I don't particularly

care one way or the other—I can better be spared than anyone with two hands. No—" she held up her hand. "I'm not the only biologist, Gilrushka. Rae is a better one than I will ever be, and if we have more use for a biologist than a Captain, she can appoint the oldest and most useless person on the Ship. Right now I am the most expendable person you have."

Silence fell in the briefing room. What Gilmer-ritt had said was so tragically true that there was not really any way to question it. Even if it were a suicidal urge that prompted her to recognize her own expendability, that did not lessen the truth; the emotional instability of the suicide wish made her all the more expendable.

And yet Gildoran knew he could not let her go alone into her own cold death; out there, knowing they had accepted her as being the least valuable person aboard Gypsy Moth, her own sense of les-sened self-worth might prompt another impulse of suicidal despair. What would she do? Open her suit, when she could die without endangering the life of anyone else? He said, "You can go, Gilmer-ritt; I don't think anyone here will stop you. But I am going, too. To take care of you. I'm under a death sentence, too, unless we stop this thing."

"You? Gildoran, no—" Gilramie protested. But he faced her, unflinching. "I have to do this for Gilmerritt. And for myself, too."

"Look," said Gilramie, in a hushed voice, "The Poohbears are watching us." Every face in the briefing room turned slowly to the viewscreen, where the massed bodies of the six surviving Poohbears watched them, silent, enigmatic be-hind their furry masks and great teeth.

"Damn the Poohbears!" Gildoran said harshly. "Let's get on with it."

VII

In the end, they finally and completely refused to take Gilmarti. The chance that she had incurred any contamination was one in a million or less; far less than that Gilban had become contaminated caring for the sick. It seemed that the heat-trope did not start into one host until it had exhausted the first, and the dead bodies had been handled only with surgical gloves, which had gone into the converter with them. She insisted that she was needed to wear the other spacesuit; instead they tied it down, firmly, into one of the bays.

Gildoran sat at the controls of the landing craft; he had justified his coming (though Gilmerritt had tried to get him, too, to stay behind) by stating the truth; that Gilmerritt was not experienced in handling small craft.

He saw the Gypsy Moth recede into the dis-tance. If this did not work, at least they were safe from contaminating it further; the others would lose the landing craft, but they could manage until they found some inhabited planet, and ask for rescue. So whatever happened, the others were safe. Gilmarina. Rae. Ramie. Even tough old Gilmarti and the Poohbears. Whatever they de-cided to do. The crackle of static inside the com-municators kept reminding them of the

serious-ness of this—as if, Gildoran thought wryly, they needed reminding.

Gilmerritt's voice was shaking. "Ready to open the doors?"

"Not quite." Working deftly with the waldos of his suit-fingers, he came and lashed Gilmerritt firmly into her seat.

"You don't need to do that," she said softly, "I won't do anything foolish like walking out into space. I don't feel I have to die, not anymore. If all the rest of you can live with what we've all been living with, I can live until something can be done about my hand. This"— she made a faint clumsy gesture with her suit-arm, which Gildoran cor-rectly interpreted as meaning, this mission—has shown me that even—even deformed this way, I'm still worth something to the rest of you. And to myself—"

"And to me, Gilmerritt," Gildoran said, just as softly. "I won't risk losing you, not now. I know you won't do anything reckless—not now—but you could slip. Accidents do happen. And I'm not taking any chances."

He lashed himself into his own seat, then, and thumbed the control that would open the hatches to the sterilizing cold of space, giving the heat-trope which had brought cold death to the Gypsy Moth an ice-cold death of its very own.

"Clear away hatches," Gildoran gave the order, knowing this time that it was safe. They

sur-rounded him on the Bridge, with hugs for him and Gilmerritt, crowding around; everyone, it seemed, wanted to touch them, to reassure him or herself that the two were still alive, that there was not another loss for their already decimated crew. Then they moved aside, as the huge dark form of a Poohbear moved through them. Then another.

"This must be said to Gildoran," the Poohbear said, "because it was he who bore the withdraw-al. We told him that we could never compare your grief with ours. In the little time that has passed—" and Gildoran realized that, to a death-less race like the Poohbears, the time between Hellworld and now must have sped by in the twinkling of an eye—"we have kept apart from you, but once the first sharpness of our grief had passed, we listened, and we learned. We have learned that you are not, as we thought, immune or indifferent to grief; but, as we never learned to do, you shortlived ones learned to live always with the knowledge of grief and death and loss to sharpen your love. And although we do not yet know how to do it, we have discovered that we must try. Our lives will be forever darkened by the loss of our sister; we can never speak her name more; but perhaps you can teach us how to live with the knowledge of death, as you have done all these years when we loved you, never knowing." The Poohbears gathered in close, holding out their arms in appeal. "Will you accept back the love which, in our grief, we had forgotten how to give?"

It was not a question; in moments the Poohbears were surrounded by Explorers, hugging them, flinging themselves into the arms of the only mothers any Explorer had ever known.

It was later—much later—when Gildoran re-membered to ask. "Gilrannock?" He asked Gil-

nosta, bracing himself for the news of one more death, but needing to know that it was over, that all precautions had been taken to know that the cold-death would not strike again from the dead.

"Oh, he's alive," Gilnosta said, "and conscious. They don't transfer to another host until they've exhausted the first. So we lowered Gilrannock's body temperature—he was in electronic sleep, of course, and unconscious—until we guessed that those heat-beasties must be getting uncomforta-ble. Then we gave them a nice warm host to trans-fer into."

Gildoran stared in shock. "A laboratory ani-mal?"

"Oh, no," Gilnosta said, "A nice, warm culture medium; a gel for growing bacteria, enclosed in a solid permeable membrane. And when it started cooling, we assumed that the heat-tropes had all transferred into it; we monitored it with a radio, and it was giving off static constantly as they ate up the heat from the warm gel. Then we took it up in surgical gloves . . . and consigned it to the converter. We were very careful thawing out Gilrannock—for fear there might still be some of them left. But he warmed up normally, and not long ago he asked us for an iced fruit drink; said he was too hot." She drew a long breath of relief. "So the last of the living heat-tropes are in the converter, and to hell with them. In fact," she added, "you could say that's just where I sent them. Inside a nuclear converter is as close to hell as any of us is ever going to get."

"Well, they crave heat," Gildoran said, "and you gave them more than they could ever absorb. So anyway they died happy."

Gilnosta shivered. "That," she said firmly, "was the last thing on my mind."

And the Gypsy Moth moved on through Cos-mos, turning back toward the inhabited center of the Galaxy.

Part Five A WORLD WITH YOUR NAME ON IT I

"Nobody's talking about blame," Gilrae said wearily. "It's bad luck, that's all. Two impossible planets in a row. What I'm talking about is facts, Gilban. The fact that we're crippled. The fact that we now have no functioning biological officer, with Mario killed on Tempest, and Merritt only able to direct. The fact that we have literally too few hands to work ship, even with Rita and Gil-marina and the other children working two hours a day on messenger service and such instead of doing lessons."

Gildorric smiled without mirth and said, "I once told you it couldn't happen twice in a lifetime. Now it's happened twice in seven years. If it happens again, we're dead."

Gildoran looked around the small briefing room. By common consent, they had ceased to use the large one, since Tempest; it was simply too empty. They had managed to work the ship, for the years since Tempest; with the Poohbears—the one good thing that had come of the Tempest tragedy—again taking responsibility for the youngest children, and the older children work-ing shifts doing messenger duty on the Bridge, they managed to function. But it couldn't go on much longer. And now they were back in known territory; they had retraced their path, back into the part of the Galaxy they had left.

"We need to down ship as soon as we can," Rae said, "We need children; if we must, we can finance it through Head Center. We need sup-plies. And we need—" she glanced at Merritt, who flinched, with the old habit of concealing her crippled hand.

Gildoran thought, she's right. We've got to set down and give Merritt her chance; if we can't spare her a year in a tank to grow another hand, we have got to give her a chance to go earthworm, if she wants to, get it on a planet.

I don't want to Jose her. But I can't bear to see her like this, either. It had been his mistake on Hellworld which had crippled her, and his further mistake which had not dared withdraw an experienced officer from the ship when he was so inexperienced as a Captain. And after Tempest, they had not been able even to spare Merritt; they were so cruelly shorthanded.

I should have insisted. They would have had to spare her if she had died of the heat-trope—and

she was the one who saved us.

But now, in any case, it would not be long until they found a world of some sort; they were back where suns were thick as electrons in an atom of transuranic metal. And they had only enough fuel for a few weeks of cruising, shiptime. The deci-sion could not be avoided much longer.

Rae was saying, "We simply can't take the chance of setting down on another planet which might not be suitable for opening. We need chil-dren. We need fuel, and supplies. We need news of the Cosmos and the world-net."

"Why?" Gildorric asked scornfully. "What are they to the Explorers?"

Gilrae said, "Do you believe that we exist inde-pendently of the world-net? That we can go on forever without contact with them?"

"If need be," Gildorric said. "We are Explorers. It is our journey and our quest that makes us Explorers—not the worlds we find."

"He's right," Gilnosta said. "We can't crawl in, crippled, to any world that will have us, going begging to Head Center for supplies and help to keep us going until we find another world! We're Explorers," she repeated proudly, "We go in as conquerors—or not at all!"

"It's an attractive mystique," Gilrae said. "Un-fortunately, it's only a mystique. And, like all such

mystiques, it's very far from the truth. Among other things, we need contact with the world-net and the world-lines of the Transmitter to let Head Center know we're still alive and still searching. How many Explorer ships have simply vanished, without trace? Do we want to be written off, too?"

Gildoran felt a sense of shock. Explorers never spoke of that. Suddenly he wondered; had the other ships been destroyed? Or had they simply grown so full of their own lives out in Cosmos, so reluctant to interrupt their endless voyage with occasional touchdowns, that they had taken to the infinite reaches of space, abandoning any pur-pose in their voyage, remaining forever dis-sociated from planets and downworlders, spin-ning on their own axes in endless hubris. . . .

Gilrae said urgently, "No! We need planets, just as the planets need us.' We need contact with other Explorers. We need contact with other downworlders, we need children—we need it to keep us human! To keep us from forgetting why we're Explorers!" Her face was grim and de-cided. "I'm giving the Bridge orders to set a course for the nearest charted, inhabited world. We set down there for overhaul, and to find out where the other Explorer ships are now."

She dismissed them and said no more, but Gil-doran could guess what was in her mind. Terribly shorthanded as they were, the only hope now was to find another Explorer ship and combine their crews and forces.

Was this the last voyage of the Gypsy Moth, as herself? Were they simply too shorthanded to go on? And what happened to an Explorer without a ship, when his long, long voyaging was done?

Wouldn't it be -better to die in Cosmos, end-lessly circling the long stars in an untouched, imperishable tomb, than to end their lives tied to downworld time, earthbound?

Gildoran was off duty for the moment, and had no wish to return to his own cabin, which he still shared with Gilmerritt—he had remained only because he feared, if he attempted to withdraw, that it might plunge her into deep depression. It was not an unwelcome arrangement entirely. Be-tween her moments of depression, Merritt was a pleasant, companionable partner, and the strong sexual compatibility had never really disap-peared.

There's no one I want more than Merritt. I sus-pect it's only the fact that I'm tied to her that makes me rebel against it.

He found that old habit was taking his feet to the farthest end of the living quarters, and into an empty room. There, surrounded by Gilramie's familiar things, he could relax and wait for her to come off-shift. He told himself he wouldn't wait for her, there was no need for that, he'd used her often enough as confidante and crying-towel dur-ing the bad year of his captaincy. But as usual, the stressless feel of her quarters relaxed him so much that he fell asleep, stretched out on her couch, and only the soft whirring of the opening door alerted him to Ramie's return.

He sat up, feeling a little dazed.

"I'm sorry, Ramie, I didn't mean . . . I'll go right away."

She laughed. "Why? You're not in my way, and I saw Merritt on the Bridge, so she certainly won't be missing you. What's on your mind, Gildoran?"

Rae's decision to set down," Gildoran said. "You know we may never take off again. What would we do? What would happen to us, Ramie, if the Gypsy Moth never got off the ground again?"

She came and sat close to him on the couch. She still looked like a child—slender, almost breath-less, her huge dark eyes serious and steady. She said, "I'd be sad, of course. But it wouldn't be the end of the world. It's a big Galaxy out there. There's sure to be somewhere I could go, some-thing I could do somewhere."

"But. . . to be an earthworm . . . never to be an Explorer again. . . ."

Ramie said "There are other Explorer ships. If I felt that way, it would be Cosmos—not the Gypsy Moth—that would be important to me." Her smile trembled a little. "What would hurt would be losing you—all of you," she amended quickly. "But we'll worry about it when it happens. More likely, once we're downworld, we'll be able to modify the ship's computers and technology to operate with fewer personnel. At worst we can wait there until the children grow up a little— Gilmarina and Rita will be Class B in about two years—and everything will be all right."

Gildoran said, a little sourly, "Just a born op-timist, aren't you?"

Ramie shrugged. "What did you want me todo? Tell you how hopeless it all was? I should think you'd get enough of that from Gilmerritt."

"You really dislike her, don't you? Or is it still only jealousy?"

"I don't dislike her. I admire her, for carrying on, even as well as she has done. It's outrageous, what she's had to go through. If I were crippled like that, I don't think I could carry on at all," Ramie said. "If anyone ever had a right to com-plain, she's the one. But it's been hard on you, too. As for being jealous . . ." another small shrug.

"I'm used to it by now. Maybe it's just perversity. I want only what I can't have."

It's very strange. Ramie is closer to me than anyone alive. Why don't I love her as she wants me to? Why? Is there something wrong with me? She's certainly just as desirable as Gilmerritt. Maybe more so. And yet . . . and yet . . .

It was several weeks of shiptime before the Bridge crew called them together to tell them that they were in orbit around a great blue-white sun with three habitable planets, at least one of which had been technologically colonized.

"We've gotten Transmitter readings from it," Gilrae said. "We'll make contact and ask

permis-sion to set down. From there we can Transmit to Head Center, or to Host, and make plans for the future."

Gildorari was working Communications when the first contact was made.

The voice on the panel sounded excited.

"The Explorer ship Gypsy Moth? We have heard nothing of any Explorer ships for twelve planetary years, but you are more than welcome to land here for repairs. It is our pleasure to offer you our hospitality. If you are not in dire emergency and can wait a few hours, a formal invitation will be extended to you from the Councillor. I have heard that the Councillor has a deep personal interest in the Explorer ships. If not, I am em-powered to grant you landing permission."

Gildoran replied that no, Gypsy Moth was shorthanded but not in desperate straits, and that they would be happy to wait for the Councillor's formal invitation.

"That's a relief," said Gillori. She was working as apprentice Navigator these days. "Suppose we'd set down someplace where they hated the Explorers, like that world where they killed Gilmarin and almost killed you?"

"Lasselli's World? In that case," Gildoran said, "I suppose we'd just go on to the next starsystem. But I'm glad we've found a place." He smiled at the girl. She was really a young woman

now, he thought; she must be quite nineteen, and compe-tent to hold any Major Office aboard Gypsy Moth, with the single exception of Transmitter and Medic Crew. Next time we draw for a Year-Captain, Lori will be on the list. It made Gildoran feel old.

It was less than a shiptime hour before the planet made contact again, this time to read out a formal invitation from the Councillor of Laszlo (that was as near as Gildoran could come, in Uni-versal Phonetics, to the name) that the Explorer Ship Gypsy Moth was welcome to set down, giv-ing them a choice of ports which had facilities to handle them, and extending an invitation to a formal reception for up to three dozen of the ship's personnel. Gildoran made the standard courteous reply and signed off, thinking with a faint grin, to get three dozen for an official recep-tion, we'd have to bring along the children in Nursery and a couple of the Poohbears, too!

At least they had the Poohbears. Between Hellworld and Tempest, they hadn't had them, and after brutal, killing seven-hour shifts everyone aboard, from the Captain down to the children, had had to take extra shifts at baby-tending in Nursery and on the regrowth tank monitoring Gilmarina. Civilized man couldn't live at that pace, but they'd managed it some-how, until Tempest, when—without being asked —the Poohbears had come back to them.

Maybe on this world we can find some children. Although it's not certain we have the technicians for the necessary DNA operations any more.

It was the first time he'd been on the Bridge for a shipdown. Last time the Gypsy Moth had been set down on a planet's surface, he'd been a Class-B, running errands. He'd been down in a

landing craft on Hellworld and Tempest, but it wasn't the same. As, under Gildorric's direction, he and Lori piloted the enormous ship down to the port, he thought that in a few more years, everyone with any actual experience of landing an Explorer ship would be dead, or resigned to Floater status. Explorers could do just so much with computers, on a strange planet. Downworld computers never bother to keep data for starship landing. The Explorer ships are the only ships there are—the colonized worlds used the Transmitters, they had no need of programs for a starship landing.

Ramie, who was off-shift, had brought Rita and Gilmarina to the Bridge to watch the landing, something they might not see again for years. He was struck by how much Gilmarina looked like Ramie, now that her skin and hair were com-pletely white. They had the same dark eyes with the epicanthic fold that gave them a long, slanting look, the same round smooth face, the delicate build and slender hands. Ramie came to Gildo-ran's side and said, "Remember what dear old Gilharrad said about planets—that the best worlds were found by ESP and hunches? I don't know why, but I feel good about this one. I think we're going to find what we want here."

He smiled at the young woman and said, "I hope you're right. Anyway, they're welcoming us. For the rest, we'll just have to wait and see."

II

Once they had landed, set up steps and un-sealed the doors, they discovered that they had been guided down to a landing-space in a great open, flat, country, surrounded at a distance by low rings of mountains, not high, but rocky-red and flattened at their tops. The sun was daz-zlingly blue-white and everywhere, vegetation grew lush and thickly.

"I'd expected a desert," Gildoran said, and Mer-ritt replied, "Not a chance. The tremendous amount of ultraviolet in the blue-white stars makes for lush plant growth."

It reminded Gildoran of something. Someplace strange and very long ago. The last planet he had seen had been Hellworld, and that certainly couldn't be it. The population of Laszlo was, like all worlds in the Transmitter world-net, enor-mously varied, all types and sizes and colors, but the predominant type, and therefore probably the indigenous or original colonizers, were of a single racial stock, tall, unusually dark-skinned, the majority well over six feet tall, even the wom-en. . . .

Lasselli's World! Laszlo.

Was the name only a coincidence?

Somehow he didn't think so. Surrounded by the royal welcome which the inhabitants of Laszlo gave to Gypsy Moth and her crew, it didn't seem important. If Lasselli's World and Laszlo were the same world, at least the political climate had changed and they were safe there. Safe? The Laszlans couldn't do enough for them!

For the first few days none of them did anything much except rest. The long, shorthanded voyage had taken its toll of them all. Gildoran found him-self seized by uncanny lassitude and the stress of gravity told more than he remembered. Ship's gravity, just strong enough to give them orienta-tion and prevent vertigo, was something else en-tirely.

Several days later Gilrae came to his quarters and said, "Someone must take a trip to Host and find out what's become of the rest of the Explorer fleet. I haven't the heart to put it off on anyone else. Will you come with me, Gildoran?"

"You're going by Transmitter?"

Rae said tartly, "Well, I'm certainly not going to take the Gypsy Moth."

"All right, I'll come." It had been a long time since Gildoran had made a trip by Transmitter. Not since that strange trip with Ramie—how long ago? How old was Gilmarina now? Twelve, biological time, but she had lost a year in the tank.

Her Nurserymates were thirteen. Thirteen years, then, since he had set foot on a planet, except for those disastrous few days on Hellworld, and the terrifying hours of his mission on Tempest.

As they walked through the huge open land-bowl he felt the luxurious heat of the great sun beating on his back.

Feels good, to be on solid ground. The feel of that sun. I wonder how we survive, so long in space without sun or wind or the feel of gravity under our feet. . . . Man wasn't made to live in space.

He told himself sternly not to be sentimental. For him, gravity wasn't even a childhood imprint. He'd been picked up for an Explorer ship before he was a month old, and the retailoring of the very cellprint of his body, his very innermost cells, had been made, tailormade just for that—to live in space. He wasn't a planetman, an earthworm, the differences were cell-deep, atom-deep. And yet . . . and yet, that sun, the cool sharp wind blow-ing against his cheek. . . .

He asked Gilrae, "Does it feel good to be on the surface again? Or are planets still just—what was it Gilharrad used to call them, just interruptions, holes in the Cosmos?"

"Dear, dear old Gilharrad," she said with a fond smile. "No, it feels good, but mostly because now I know you're all safe."

"Well, if we had to find a planet to set down on, permanently, we couldn't have found a better one," he said, then wondered exactly why he had said it as she raised a startled face to him. Did he mean that—would he want to stay here indefi-nitely?

There's a planet somewhere with your name on it. ...

He had the uncomfortable sensation that Gilrae could follow what he was thinking, but she forebore to say anything, simply asking, as they ap-proached the Transmitter terminal, "Have you ever been on Host? I wish we could have gone directly there. But it's almost fifty light-years from here; I don't think Gypsy Moth could have made it."

"If I was ever there, it was when I was too young to remember," Gildoran said.

"It's the home world of the Explorers," Gilrae said, "as much of a home world as they have. All our stored data is there. I have a transcript of Gypsy Moth's log with me, for the Archives-Major store." As they stepped into a Transmitter booth, she said, "It's a good thing we put in. Our Transmitters are obsolete. I'll have to send Gil-marti over for briefing on the new models. It seems the old four-light-years limit has been pushed out. These can handle twelve LYs without damage or disorientation."

She touched a set of coordinates, and there was a brief, sharp sense of whirling darkness, a small electrical snap, and the console before them had changed from blue to green and after repeating the maneuver twice more, they stood on Host.

It was a small planet, so small that it seemed to Gildoran, as he stood under the twilit gray canopy that was Host's sky, that he could see and feel the swift rotation, the rapid motion of the little planetoid about its dim and faraway sun. Or was that simply an illusion based on the swift over-head passing of some heavenly bodies which could have been moons or elaborate artificial satellites? It was cold, even through the thick warm Travel Cloaks with which they had pro-vided

themselves on Laszlo.

As they left the Transmitter terminal—it was a small one, Host evidently had little transient travel—a line of assorted humanoids stepped back before the Explorers.

Marked out. Alien. You would have noticed it only if they hadn't.

But then he saw the expressions on their faces. Not fear or hatred, this time—respect, verging on awe. And then the tall quasi-uniformed female at the head of their line said in a clear, carrying, perhaps mechanically amplified voice, "Please form into an orderly line and we will commence our tour with an inspection of the Explorer museum. . . ." and he understood.

Gilrae lifted an eyebrow at him and said, "That's new. Last time I was here, we were fight-ing to keep our allotment from being disallowed. For centuries—since before I was born—we've had a small subsidy from Head Center for locating new planets. But then I remember Head Center was trying to cut us down—they said that if we couldn't make enough on finder's fees to support our own ship, we should get out of the business. Two or three ships actually did go broke and had to decommission." She was smiling, a little tremulously. "I was prepared to find, when we downworlded this time, that we'd been entirely disallowed, and Host had closed up shop. There was some talk then—I don't know how many cen-turies ago planetary time—that there had been enough planets discovered for the foreseeable fu-ture, and that the Explorers were just a luxury the civilized Galaxy couldn't afford—siphoning off money and energy to a frontier. Time we settled down, they said, and learned to live on the worlds we had."

She paused for a moment before a small carven memorial. Two figures carved in some ala-baster-white metal, pale and elongated and obviously of Explorer type, stood triumphantly on a small jade-green planet. It was the first time Gildoran had ever seen a public inscription in the language the Explorers used among themselves. There was a translation into Universal ideographs below. Both inscriptions read:

TO THE CREW OF THE SEA WOLF LOST IN A NOVA IN THE VICINITY

OF THE NEBULA IN ORION "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

"That's new, too," Rae said, "or should I say— since my time. I've no idea how long it's been, planet time, since I was last here."

There was a small building whose doorway said—again in the language the Explorers used, Authorized and Ship's Personnel Only. Gilrae pressed her ident disk against the sensitive plate on the door and it opened.

Before a computer console, a tall pale Explorer was seated; he turned as they came in. "Gilrae of Gypsy Moth," he said warmly, turning. "We heard the report of your surfacing. We were afraid you'd been lost in space, my dear."

"Sarndall of Spray," Gilrae said, and embraced the strange man warmly. She introduced Gildo-

ran, who felt strangely ill at ease. It was the first time he had ever met anyone who was so obvi-ously one of them, an Explorer, and yet not one of his own. He didn't know how to act with the stranger who was not a stranger.

Gilrae asked, "Where is Spray now, Ball? Or shouldn't I ask?"

"Downworlded and decommissioned," Sarn-dall said, "Three successive lots of children all died, and we became too shorthanded to go on; and we lost our Poohbears in an epidemic; seven of them died in one night. We were too disheart-ened to try to go out again. Fortunately, there was work for most of us here on Host."

"Is the news all bad?"

"Not all, though it's not good. You saw the monument to Sea Wolf? But Tinkerbelle just surfaced—and they have four new planets opened and eight healthy four-year-olds growing up. And how is it with you, Rae?"

"Not good," Gilrae said, and gave the old Explorer the log transcript. "The details are in this." She gave him a brief account of the Hellworld and Tempest disasters.

"Lethal soundwaves from plants, eh? That's a new one," Sarndall said. "I'll file it in the list of dangers.

"We've met that cold-death thing before in that same sector, I think; maybe ships should be warned out of that sector for a few thousand years until it exhausts all possible hosts and dies out. Of course the computer people will make that deci-sion in the long run, but it's worth thinking about. So you're not opening a planet now?"

"No, we had to make a forcedown. We're on Laszlo."

"Good place for Explorers," Sarndall said. "Funny thing about Laszlo. For sixty years planet time, they were on the warn-off list. About a hundred and nineteen years ago we had a report of an Explorer mobbed and killed there, so we put out warnings. Then, about thirty years ago, they chose a new government—President, King, I forget what nonsense they call their leader

"

"Councillor," Gildoran murmured.

"Something like that. Anyway, his first official act was to get in touch with Host and open Laszlo formally to Explorers. They have a few special projects there that would interest you, I suspect."

"I imagine we'll find out about them," Gilrae said. "We're invited to a formal reception there. Up

to three dozen of us. We'll have to take every-body down to the Poohbears to make up that number!"

"So bad?" Sarndall answered.

"We're thinking of decommissioning," Rae said frankly. "That bad."

Sarndall's eyes were suddenly greedy. "Don't do that," he begged, "If it's a manpower problem, let us join on. There are twenty-nine of us, all dying to get out into Cosmos again. . . ."

"It's a thought," Gilrae said, "but of course the decision isn't mine. It would be up to the whole crew."

As they were leaving Host again, waiting in line behind the tourists who had completed their tour of the Explorer museum for the single Transmitter booth, Gildoran said, "That could be the solution to the manpower problem, Rae."

"Maybe." But Rae looked grave. "It almost never works," she said. "It's been tried. But it makes for two factions aboard a ship; us and them. We're not a family anymore. Not a single crew all of whom think of Gypsy Moth as our own special single home, but two crews. Each trying to run the ship its own way. As a last resort, it might be better than trying to decommission. But not much better."

Gildoran, too, had felt the strangeness; to be with an Explorer who both was and was not one of his own. All his life, since he was able to speak, every Explorer he had ever known was one of his own crew—his shipmate, his Nurserymate, his own family; to be loved, protected, defended against the entire Cosmos, against every other being in Cosmos. Everyone who was not one of Gypsy Moth's crew was an alien, a stranger, who could never understand. . . . Even those you thought you loved, like Janni, never really knew you, or cared to.

Except for that boy—what was his name? Merrik—on Lasselli's World. He had suddenly become a friend—and then he had had to say goodbye again.

And then, suddenly, he visualized the familiar halls, rooms and decks of Gypsy Moth filled with strangers. Explorers, yes. Part of the crew. But not—oh, no, never brothers, crewmates. Never known, beloved. Of them and yet not of them.

Strangers and not strangers. Alien and not alien. Gildoran shuddered.

Cosmos forbid!

He watched Rae programming the coordinates for Laszlo, and a random memory flickered in his mind, a memory of strange coordinates etched into an override signal. . . one unforgettable day in his youth.

Laszlo. Lasselli's World. Strange and the same, yet different beyond recognition. As they

stepped out into the fierce blue-white day shine, stormy with colorless clouds and the flicker of lightning in the upper atmosphere, he heard himself say, "Home again." He corrected himself quickly, back to Gypsy Moth, which was home, but that was not what he meant, and Rae's surprised eyes, raised to his, knew it.

He said "Did you know this was Lasselli's World, Rae?"

"Yes, I knew. I didn't know you did."

"Gilmarin was killed here."

And I'm calling it home.'

"I know," Rae said quietly. "And I was born here. No one knew except Gilharrad, and he's dead. He lost his finger when he stole me—and three others—from here. And it was for that, I suspect, for the memory of that raid, that Gilmarin died." She drew her Travel Cloak closely about her. "The place gives me the creeps. Do you mind if we go back on board Gypsy Moth right away?"

III

During the next few days Gildoran explored the downworld with Gilmarina, enjoying her first

tin-inhibited taste of sunshine and freedom. Ramie, or occasionally Gilmerritt, sometimes accom-panied them on these excursions, and when he saw family groups enjoying themselves in the green parks of Laszlo, he realized that a family was less a biological unit than a functional one. In every way that mattered, he and Ramie were Gil-marina's parents.

Gilmerritt was a little hesitant about showing herself on the surface. In this day and age, a de-formity like her crippled hand was truly astonish-ing, and people stared sometimes. She was appal-lingly sensitive about it, and Gildoran didn't blame her.

He broached the subject to her, in their shared quarters aboard Gypsy Moth, one night. "There's no reason you can't go into a growth tank anytime now, Merritt. There is an excellent regrowth center here. And we will be here at least a year, waiting for the children to grow up. We wouldn't leave you anyway."

"I know," Merritt said, "I visited the growth center the other day."

"Then shall we make the arrangements soon?"

Merritt shook her head. "Not yet," she said, "I have work to do. I want to do some research there."

He looked at her in astonishment. She said seri-ously, "Do you mind, Gildoran? I. . . first, I don't want to be away from you so long. And besides . . .there's something special I have to do. But do

you really mind? Are you. . . are you ashamed to be seen with . . . with this?" She raised the blackened, useless claw.

Gildoran drew her close. "Darling, don't even think of that. I'd love you if you had no hands at all. But . . ."he shook his head, faintly bewildered. "For so long, it's the only thing you've wanted"

"People tend to lose their sense of perspective, sometimes," Merritt said slowly. "Just now I think there's something more important. Do you mind, Doran?"

He said, holding her tightly in his arms, "You must do what seems best to you, my love." Here on this new world, where everything seemed new and fresh and somehow more real than in their isolated world between the stars, he was becom-ing freshly aware of how deeply and dearly he cherished her, how he would miss her if she were away from him so long. He found himself almost selfishly glad that they need not be separated. And yet he wondered what it could be that seemed so important to her that she would delay further the regeneration of her crippled hand. She did not offer to tell him, and he did not ask. He saw her poring over technological and medical journals, and she spent a great deal of time at the regrowth center, but he did not know why. She had always spent a great deal of time in reading and studying her chosen specialties— he sus-pected that in time she would have switched from the biological crew to the Medic crew—but until they landed here, he had somehow felt that her obsessive interest in regrowth

techniques was, at least in part, a way to make him feel guilty for the delay in salvaging her hand. Now he knew it was not that—but what could it be?

He accused her once, almost teasingly, "I sus-pect you want Gilban's job some day. Chief Medic Gilmerritt?" And she laughed and did not deny it, but that was all.

She was at the conference, too, where the Major Officers met to discuss acquiring some more chil-dren. The Poohbears, having no little ones left in Nursery, were all in favor of it. Gilmerritt's was the first voice raised against it.

"I think we must wait," she said. "We are going to be here at least a year, perhaps more. We cannot make the DNA modification until shortly after we take off. With the techniques we are using now, the child must be raised in free fall and deep space to develop the full Explorer mutation. If we take newborn or new-hatched infants now, they will be too old for the DNA change by the time we leave here."

Gilrae glanced at the chief Medic. "Gilban?"

"With our present technology, Merritt is right," he said. "I heard on Host that the Spray, being shorthanded, took a group of five-year-olds, hop-ing to diminish the time before they would be old enough to work ship. Not a single one survived."

Gilrae said quietly, "We needn't wait. I prom-ised to put it to you. The crew of the Spray wants

to join us—and there are twenty-nine of them. This would give us a crew of more than sixty. We could be off again next month, if we wished— with a crew of children for the Nursery—and be fully operational again for the first time in years.

To the murmur of voices—half approving, half in protest—that rose at once, she raised a hand. "We don't have to decide now," she said. "It must be put to vote. Think it over. We'll call another meeting and decide. But remember before you decide that the alternative is probably decommis-sioning. The Councillor's formal reception is to-night. It's not compulsory, but the Laszlans have been very kind to us, so please don't absent your-selves without some good reason."

Ramie caught up with him in the corridor. "Do-ran, did you hear this about the Spray? You didn't look particularly surprised when Rae brought it up."

"I heard it on Host," Gildoran said.

"It could be the answer," Ramie said. "We could all stay together, that way."

"But strangers—on Gypsy Moth . . ."

"They wouldn't be strangers. They're Explor-ers. Like us."

"It would be better if they were strangers," Gil-doran said helplessly. "We could learn to adapt

to them—and they to us—as we do when we're downworld. But the crew of another Explorer ship—with its own traditions—of us and still not of us—I honestly don't think it would work, Ramie."

"No, not if it split us into warring factions," Ramie said. "I see your point. I've often thought the perfect solution would be to be able to sign on adult volunteers whenever we needed them. Then there wouldn't be so much difference be-tween Explorers and downworld people. We wouldn't be freaks to them, and they wouldn't be alien races to us. It wouldn't be any more of a difference than transferring from Nursery to Transmitter crew. We'd all just be people to-gether." She considered a moment, her pretty pale face pensive. "Maybe we could do that with another Explorer crew. But it would be hard, be-cause we'd expect them to be just like us. And they couldn't be." She sighed and shookherhead. "Well, maybe the right answer will turn up."

"If we have to join with the Spray," Gildoran said harshly, "I'll go earthworm! Better live here among strangers I know are strangers, than try to pretend they're not."

Ramie looked startled and shocked. "Could you do that to us, Gildoran?"

He turned away, saying harshly "I wouldn't be the first, and I won't be the last."

He thought about that as he was pulling him-self, with an ill grace, into dress clothes for the Councillor's formal reception.

Maybe I would be the last. What did they say on Host—that perhaps they were going to cut off the Explorer ships? Well, I'm sure the Cosmos will survive very nicely without them, for the next few million years at least. By then, maybe they'll have something better.

Gilmerritt, in a slim green sheath the color of her eyes, stepped up behind him. "You're going to the Councillor's reception?"

"I don't suppose I could get out of it," Gildoran said. "Rae asked everyone to go. Aren't you?"

"I'd rather not. But I will, if you're going," she said. "Who is the Councillor?"

"How would I know? Some important politi-cian, I suppose, who has a thing about Explorers. I don't know whether he romanticizes us, or whether he just wants to know whether we really do kill and eat the children we steal or buy."

Gilmerritt made an expressive face of disgust. "Are there really people who still believe that?"

"Merritt, there are people who will believe any-thing," Gildoran said.

"Then maybe we'd better take Gilmarina with us. To prove otherwise," Gilmerritt said, and Gil-doran shrugged. "If she wants to go, I'm perfectly willing. But it seems a shame. She's really too young to have to be let in for these wretched formal affairs."

Gildoran found Gilmarina with Rae, playing a tall electronic harp in one of the Recreation rooms. Marina had recently been released offi-cially from the Nursery and had a room of her own, which she shared with Gilrita.

The Nursery's empty now. Strange how dead the Ship feels without babies aboard. And the children are the only future we have.

Gildoran stood, silent and unmoving, listening to the woman and the girl playing an elaborate duet. It was Gilrae who saw him first and broke off in the middle of an arpeggio.

"I see you're dressed for the Councillor's recep-tion. Shall we all go together, then?"

Gilmarina looked astonished and delighted. "Can I really go, Rae?"

"Of course, darling, if you want to," Rae said, and Gilmarina smiled. She had deep dimples in each cheek. "I'd better go and dress! I can imagine that it would hardly be protocol to turn up in Ship uniform!"

Gilmerritt laughed. "I doubt if the Laszlands would know the difference," she said, "they surely don't expect us to know, or abide by, their dress codes. Dress codes follow such subliminal cues anyhow. In worlds with the Transmitter, I doubt if anyone pays much attention any more. But it must have been a full-time occupation, to stay appropriately dressed, in the days when that was an important consideration."

"It was," Gilrae said. "I spent my twenties help-ing open up a world which became a pleasure resort, and it amused me to learn something about the psychology of appropriate dress there, and to compare it with the other worlds I visited. Of course, on a pleasure-world it's a deliberate thing—and quite artificial."

"Isn't it artificial everywhere?" Merritt asked. "Except, that is, on worlds with extremes of cli-mate, where you'd freeze or get sunstroke in the wrong clothing?"

"I don't know," Gilrae said. "It's a matter of subtle cues given and received, and if you give the wrong ones for the society, you may be in trou-ble."

"I imagine that's why Travel Cloaks were in-vented," Gildoran said. "Imagine an ordinary woman on one planet going out for a day's shop-ping, stepping just a few light-years away for something a little different to wear, and discov-ering she's suddenly subject—in her ordinary house-dress—to being sexually accosted."

Gilmerritt shrugged. "I'm sure it happens," she said, "but unless she's terribly neurotic, surely she wouldn't mind. She could always say no, or pretend not to understand his language."

Gilmarina returned, in close-fitting tights and a brief flared tunic of brilliant crimson, her pale hair tied into a glittered scarf.

She's a woman, and a pretty one. But she's still a baby, to me. She always will be.

The women admired Gilmarina's dress and they all started down toward the Transmitter. Gildoran was wearing ordinary dress uniform, silver and blue—the Councillor, confound him, wanted them not as guests but specifically as Explorers, so why not? Rae, as befitted an Elder, wore pale draperies, with artificial snowflakes in her snowy hair. Gilmerritt, in her green sheath, and Gilmarina in her brilliant tunic, were pretty women who might have come from any world of the millions who surrounded them.

"I suppose any attention to dress will wear off in a few years," Gilrae said, as they set the Trans-mitter coordinates for the destination of the Councillor's Residence, "No one alive could pos-sibly learn all those subliminal cues for more than one or two planets—four or five, if anyone wanted to make it a lifetime study or specialty."

"And what a waste of time," Gilmerritt laughed, as the brief sparkling darkness sur-rounded them.

Do we go through the Transmitter all together? Are we somehow intermingled, atoms mixing in the interspace between the Terminals. How do we know that each of us gets our own flesh and blood back? Am I part of everyone I've ever shared a Transmitter booth with?

He briefly considered signing up for Transmit-ter crew on their next voyage. But the possibility that the Gypsy Moth might never take another voyage caused black depression to settle down on

him like a blanket.

"You don't look very festive, Gildoran." Gilrae slid her arm through his. "This is a party. Cheer up."

He didn't feel at all festive. But for Gilrae's sake he let a smile cover his face like a mask.

"I'll do my best," he said. "I imagine that must be the Councillor's Residence over there, with all the lights and floating balloons around it. I'm glad it's not far—this must be in the Polar regions!"

They crossed the paved square through lightly falling snow, and went into the brightly lit Offi-cial Residence.

IV

What Gilrae had said about clothes could equally well apply to entertainments, Gildoran thought as they paused in the outer, marbled hall of the Residence to be divested of their Travel Cloaks by noiselessly moving servomechanisms. Formality in some places was random informality in another. An official reception on one world might mean that you stood quietly in line and listened to speeches by dignitaries; on another it might mean that you lolled about on cushions and sang drinking songs. It had been years since Gil-doran had attended any formal

entertainment—or for, that matter had mixed in large groups except with his own shipmates.

The most formal thing I've attended in thirteen years is the yearly Captain-choosing.

He murmured something of this to Rae as they went below lines of overhead crystal chandeliers, and she nodded. "Someday—any millennium now," she said, "some group or other will attempt to create guides for intercosmic etiquette. I be-lieve they have something like that already but only in high diplomatic interplanetary political circles. When customs get homogenized all the way down the social scales, decadence starts." She chuckled a little. "But as long as the Explorers keep opening up new worlds, decadence can be indefinitely delayed. Maybe we're the little leaven that leavens the whole Galaxy."

"Citizens of Laszlo and Honored Guests," the abnormally sweet mechanical voice of the servomech proclaimed, "The ship's officers of the Explorer ship Gypsy Moth. Gildoran; Gilrae; Gilmarina; Gilmerritt."

A fat little woman close to them murmured audibly "Oh, they're the Explorers! Councillor Marik is simply mad on the subject, you know!" She smiled up sweetly at Gildoran and asked, "Could you tell me why your names are all so much alike?"

Gildoran couldn't see that their names all were that much alike, but he replied courteously, explaining that every Explorer ship had a specific coded identification which was made into, a single syllable—Gil in the case of Gypsy Moth— and given as the first syllable of the name of

every person on that ship, so that from the name of the Explorer, any Explorer in the fleet could im-mediately identify him by the ship he came from,

"And how many ships are there in the Explorer fleet?" the woman asked.

"I really couldn't say. Perhaps Gilrae could tell you," Gildoran said, carefully not looking at the other woman.

Another man in the crowd around them said, "The ships have such strange and romantic names. Where do they come from?"

"The ships? Most of them were built on Host," Gildoran replied.

"No, the names! Where do the names come from?"

"They are names of ships sailed by explorers on mankind's original world," Gildoran replied, "or at least that's what the legends say. Ships were a form of land transit, I believe, and in those days explorers went out to find out all they could about their own world before they went into space. The names of some of those ships have been preserved in legend, or as far as we know that is true. Of course, after so many years, who can tell?"

A servomechanism glided up to him and at-tracted his attention by a discreet tug at his uni-form sleeve.

"Gildoran of the Gypsy Moth? Councillor Marik wishes to speak to you personally, if you will be so good," it murmured.

Just about the last thing Gildoran wanted was to go and chat with some higher-up political biggie who romanticized the Explorers, but he couldn't think of a single polite way to refuse. He followed the servomech to the Councillor's raised throne-like chair.

Councillor Marik was a shrivelled little figure, dark-skinned, but his hair was white as Gildoran's own. He looked up as Gildoran came close, and said:

"You don't remember me, do you, Gildoran? No, how could you, after—how many years has it been? More than a hundred, for me. You said you wouldn't come back, because I'd be sure to hate you. ..."

Something in the voice touched a string of memory in Gildoran. He said "Merrik!" with a curious sense of warmth.

Was this why I felt this world was home, be-cause I found a friend here I would never forget?

"You don't shoot escaped snakes in the forestry preserve any more, then?"

The old man chuckled. "You do remember, then. As for you—it's true, you don't look a day

older. No, I take that back," he said, scanning the other man's face. "What's happened? I under-stand your ship's in trouble. But it's good to have you as a guest here."

It was with a curious sense of things falling into place that Gildoran took a seat beside the Councillor and began to tell him what had befallen the Gypsy Moth in the years between.

If I choose to stay here as an earthworm, at least I shall begin with a friend. Not wholly as a stranger, then. And a friend, after all, in high places. Certainly I shall be able to find something worthwhile here.

Marik listened to Gildoran's tale in silence, seeming fascinated. Finally, when he heard of the choice facing them—to join with another Explorer ship or decommission—he said seriously, "But that is terrible! Not that you wouldn't be welcome here, any or all of you. But every Explorer ship we lose "

"Even Head Center seems to think we're a lux-ury the Galaxy can dispense with," Gildoran said.

"Head Center likes playing God," Marik said, "but this thing is too big for politics on this scale. I don't think you realize what the Explorers mean to us, Gildoran. You're too close to the prob-lem—what's the old saying, you can't see the ocean for the surf?"

Gildoran said "I'd be curious to know what you think the Explorers mean. To most of the people of most planets, we're either freaks, or a dangerous strangeness, a legend people hate."

"You're our safety valve," Marik said. "Our permanent frontier, our endless open end. As long as the Explorers are finding and opening new worlds, we can all be different, keep our individuality. Once the discovery of new worlds ends, once everything is known, we begin to stag-nate; we begin to die. It's like a race gone sterile; with nothing new beginning, that race, or that world, begins to die. When life is simply repeat-ing the known, when nothing new enters the equation, we find first a loss of new ideas, then of creativity in general, then general decadence. It's happened, historically, to every new planet when it's been entirely explored and mapped; from that moment it begins to die and go decadent. Man can't live, psychologically, without a frontier. And even if we—all of us—can't go exploring, we can survive, psychologically, knowing that new worlds are being found, that someone can go and find them."

It reminded him, a little, of what Gilrae had been saying—about homogenizing of manners being the beginning of decadence. But he asked bitterly, "Why do so many people ban us from their worlds, then? Why do they deny us chil-dren?"

"Because they don't understand," Marik said quietly. "I've spent my life, Gildoran, trying to make sure that Laszlo will understand. I think you'll find you can have all the children you want, here." He smiled a little wistfully and said, "I myself would be happy to know that someone of my blood would be exploring the stars, a thousand years after my old bones were dust. And I'm

sure there are millions who feel just as I do. Here and elsewhere."

That would be the answer, perhaps, Gildoran thought as the crew of the Gypsy Moth left the Residence much later that night, and walked toward the Transmitter Terminal. A world where the Explorers were not freaks and hated aliens, but an Explorer home world, where they could come each time they opened a new world; where they could return for their children instead of buying or stealing, where every family on this planet had a child on the Explorer ships—and if Head Center chose to close down Host, and phase out their support of the Explorers, Laszlo could remain as their home base. . . .

But as they entered the Transmitter he turned and said to Gilrae, "Take the girls home, will you? I'm going out for a while

"

"I'll go with you," Gilmerritt said, "unless you really want to be alone."

"I think I do. Thank you, darling, but you go home with Gilmarina. I'll see you tomorrow."

He stepped into a booth and pressed the coor-dinates for the main Transmitter Terminal on Laszlo. Here, in this terminal, he and Ramie had nearly been killed. Now they were honored guests.

He went outside, into the cool, soft night. Laszlo was at a central location in the Galaxy and the

night was brilliant with thousands upon thousands of close-in stars. It seemed to him that from the surface of this world the stars were somehow brighter than ever in space, that the soft winds and clouds touched his body with a warmth he had never known.

I don't want to leave this world again. No mat-ter how many worlds I see, there will never be another world which is mine, in this curious un-explainable sense. If I leave Laszlo, it will be tearing myself out by the roots, never to be whole again.

All that night, and all the following day, Gildo-ran went from Transmitter to Transmitter, jump-ing around the planet, from dayside to nightside, walking in the sun and rain, in park and desert, beauty spot and stinking slum, trying to find some part of Laszlo which he could honestly leave.

It was night again when he returned to the Gypsy Moth, sleepless, hungry, his eyes aching and his heart heavy. When he boarded and pressed his ident disk against the lock, the com-puter said "Gildoran, urgent you report to Recreation Area One. Ship's Council is about to convene, and Gilrae has been trying to locate you for hours."

When he came up to the area, he had half-expected to find the whole ship's company as-sembled and was astonished to find only Gilrae there.

She raised her eyes, with a look of relief so great that he thought for a moment that she would burst into tears.

"Gildoran," said she. "I was afraid you had gone for good "

"If I went, it would not be for good," Gildoran said.

"For good or ill, then," Rae said wearily. "You are thinking of deserting, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't say that, exactly. But I'm uncertain about what's ahead. And uneasy."

How had she known?

As if she read his thoughts, as Gilrae so often did, she raised her eyes and said, "There's a look they get, when a world takes hold on them. You have it. I can't imagine why—a world like this one, it gives me the creeps. But then, no one ex-cept the one it's happened to can ever explain it. I saw it with Giltallen, for months before he left us. And now you. . . ." Her face twisted as if she were about to cry.

"Don't, Rae. I'm here."

"But for how long?"

He wanted to make a quick promise, but then, meeting Rae's eyes, he knew that with her, at

least, he could be only completely honest. He said, "It depends mostly on what happens in Ship's Council, Rae. I can't live with our joining the Spray."

"Ramie told me you felt like that," Rae said quietly. "Do you dislike them all so much?"

"It's not that I dislike them. I don't know them," Gildoran said. "Better a strange world than my own world suddenly made strange

"

"Even if the cost is leaving all of us?" Rae said. "I can't imagine what Ramie—or Gilmarina— would do without you. And as for me . . ." she leaned back against him with a sigh. "But I cer-tainly don't have to tell you what you mean to me, Doran, it's the one thing I'm sure you know. And I know you're not doing this just to make trouble. I know how you must feel. I know it all too well. . . ."

He held her in his arms, knowing Rae was dearer to him than anyone alive. But she under-stood and he knew she wouldn't fight him, what-ever he wanted to do. . . .

He loosed her as others of the Gypsy Moth's company began to come into the room, one by one. Ramie cast a bitter look at him, as she came in. She said, "So you've come back again? Did you come to blackmail us into settling things your way? You know we can't lose you and still go on."

Gildoran said quietly, "That's not fair, Ramie. Every one of us has a right to a free choice. You

will choose your way no matter what I do. I could try to talk you into staying with me, you know."

Ramie flared, "And if you did—wouldn't that be a kind of blackmail too? Trying to get me to choose your way, just because you know how long I've loved you? Yes, I do love you. No one else has ever meant anything to me. There's been no one else for me, there never will be."

"Now who's trying blackmail?" Gildoran flared. He did not know whether the wild uprush of emotion he felt was love, or desire, or pure hatred. "You could have anyone you wanted!"

"You don't have to rub it in. I know that you don't care anything for me!" Ramie almost shouted at him.

Gilrae said wearily "Ramie. Doran. This is ... this is unseemly."

"We're not in Nursery, and we're not quarreling like babies," Ramie said, turning viciously on the older woman. "You've no right, Rae! It's easy enough for you to talk, when you know that every man on Gypsy Moth loves you first and never after cares for anyone else "

"Ramie! Ramie!" Gilrae said, in honest shock. "How can you say such things?"

"Ask Gildoran if it isn't true! Ask him if he's ever really loved anyone else—"

Gildoran rose in anger, swinging around to face both of the women. He said brutally, "Damn all women! I wish I'd never come back, to listen to this! You're like a pack of jackals!"

Ramie stood facing him, angrily, tears pouring down her cheeks. Gilrae buried her head in her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. Gildoran was appalled, but after a minute he realized, and was shocked to see, that she was laughing.

Ramie looked shocked, too, when Gilrae raised her head and she saw the other woman's laughter. Gilrae said, "I must be really getting old. This just seems funny to me. But, both of you . . ." She stretched her hands to them, and Gildoran saw, with shock, that although she was laughing, her thin, lined hands were trembling.

"Doran. Ramie. Whatever happens with either of you, don't go into it like this. Don't settle it in a storm of emotion. It may be the last thing that ever happens to all of us as one. After today it will be too late, and it may affect the Explorers—not just Gypsy Moth; all that are left of us. You can't let an—an emotional flareup destroy all of us. Think it over and try to decide. . . ." She broke off. "I won't say, decide without emotion. It's an emo-tional decision. I realize that, perhaps more than any of you. God knows I feel emotional enough about it. But try and decide what you really want—what you'll want, not today, but months from now. Years from now. And decide so it won't be too late."

The other crew members were coming in now, taking seats all over the room. Gildoran slid into a seat and suddenly realized that he was sitting exactly where he had been sitting when seven or eight years ago he had been chosen Captain. It seemed a lifetime ago. It was a lifetime ago. Ramie started to slip into a seat beside him; gave him an angry glare and moved to another. Had Rae tried to locate her, too?

Briefly Rae explained the choice that faced them. They were too shorthanded to work Gypsy Moth for another thirteen or fourteen years ship-time until another crew of babies could grow up to help them. Their choices were either to decom-mission Gypsy Moth and disband the crew, or to join forces with the crew of the Spray, creating one ship's crew from two.

"Each of you has a vote, from the oldest Floater to the youngest child," Rae explained quietly. "It is your future, too. A majority will decide. I should state also that if a majority votes to de-commission, or to join Spray, the vote will be binding on the minority. We will vote from eldest to youngest. Gildorric?"

"Join Spray," the old man said briefly. "I wouldn't live three planet-years in gravity. I just hope I live long enough for us to get free of the planet again."

"Gilmarti?"

"Decommission," she said. "Better an earth-worm than try to mix with another crew."

"Gilban?"

The Chief Medic frowned and said, "Abstain. I'll go with the majority, whatever you decide."

The voting went on. Gildoran tried to keep count but could not. When Gilramie's name was called she said, "Join with Spray. The time might come when we could separate again, if there were enough of us, someday. But it means keeping the Explorers alive."

Gildoran knew he was next on the roster. Gil-rae's face was haggard, almost desperate, as she said, "Gildoran."

My life is here.

The call of a world, a world I've made my own.

And yet . . . how could I cut myself off from Ramie, even if all we do is quarrel? She's part of my life. From Merritt, who's so much mine, who has needed me so much—from Marina, whose very life came from me. . . .

"Gildoran?"

To share the Gypsy Moth, day by day, year by year, world by world and century, with strangers

. . . strangers trying to be part of us. ...

He saw Ramie's white face, twisted in anguish, He opened his mouth to say, "Decommission," and the words would not come. He said at last, fighting the syllables through a dry throat, "Ab-stain. I'll go with the majority. It's a case of lesser evil, either way."

Rae's chest heaved, as if she was struggling to breathe.

He wanted to speak, to burst into a flood of explanation, but Rae had called the next name.

"Gilbarni?"

"Join with Spray," the boy said, "Explorers are explorers. No planet's worth staying on."

I felt that way once. . . .

"Gillori?"

Lori's round face was pale and frightened. She said, "I vote to decommission."

"Gilrita?"

The other of the "babies" said, so faintly that she could hardly be heard, "I vote to join Spray.

We could use some new friends."

"Gilmarina?"

Gilmarina murmured, "I'll . . ." She looked pleadingly at Gildoran and said faintly, "I'll ab-stain. I don't really know enough about it to vote. I'll agree to whatever the majority does."

Gilrae bent over the tally of the votes. Gildoran waited, hardly able to breathe. The next few mo-ments would decide the fate of all of them. Some people might have been keeping an accurate count. He envied them. They already knew, with-out this murderous suspense. ... He wished he had the courage to get up and walk out, into the sunlight of Laszlo, into the world he had sworn should be his, the world with his name on it, his special island. . . .

Gilmerritt rose and said "Rae, this wasn't necessary. If I may speak

"

Someone shouted, "Give us the results of the vote!"

Gilmerritt said, "I tallied them. There were ten votes to join Spray; ten to decommission, and three abstentions. There is no vote, and we need no vote." Her face was pale. She held up her useless clawlike hand. "I have been studying re-growth and DNA techniques," she said. "For ob-vious reasons. Our techniques are obsolete. With the new medical techniques at the command of the Laszlands there is no reason we cannot sign on adult volunteers. I won't go into the

technology involved. No one but Gilban and Gilnosta would understand it. But in general it's a matter of bone-marrow regeneration, with transplants and DNA transfusions. This means that anyone be-neath a certain age—actually the age when bone growth is complete and the epiphyses sealed— can sign on to an Explorer ship. There will be no need for taking children as babies—although we may still wish to, because one of our greatest pleasures is to see them grow up as a part of our world—but the adult volunteer, with a few minor surgical modifications, and a few weeks now and then in a regrowth tank, can perfectly well survive the journey into deep interstellar space. We might still choose to join forces—for a time—with people from the Spray," she added, "but it is no longer a question of two separate factions. We will all be different—and equal. It will take time to teach the newcomers the ways of the Ship. But already, on Laszlo, Councillor Marik has found us three dozen volunteers. We can go whenever we will," she finished, "and we will always have a home base here on Laszlo. Whatever new world we find, we will come back here, for new crew members, for children, for a world which will always be our own home world," she finished, before her words were drowned out in an outburst of wild cheering.

V

"After this year," Gilrae said, "I'm applying for Floater status. But whether I get it or not, I'm finished. This is my last term as Captain."

Ramie laughed and said, "I've heard that be-fore, too."

Rae said, "Wait till you've been Captain a time or two and see how you feel about it."

Gilmerritt said, "I've better things to occupy my time. Speaking of which, I'd better get down to the Medic area and see that the tanks are all ready for null-grav conditions. How are the volunteers making out on the Bridge, Rae?"

The woman looked around. "As well as any other Class-B crew," she said. "After six months of intensives, what did you expect?" She smiled affectionately at Gilmarina, bent over a Com-munications console, looking tense and a little scared. She said "Give me shipwide hookup, Marina—All hands attention, this is the Captain. Gypsy Moth will depart from Laszlo in fortyfive minutes Universal Time. Please adjust chro-nometers. In thirty seconds we will have a Uni-versal Time Signal. . . ."

Gildoran automatically checked his chronome-ter to the small repeated clicks and beeps of the signal.

When it had finished, Rae continued, "Gypsy Moth will depart from Laszlo in exactly thirtyeight minutes and twenty seconds. All shipboard visitors must now depart from the Ship. All crew personnel to Departure Stations, please. Intership hookup, Morgan, please."

Morgan—a Class B Laszlan, said, "You have it, Captain."

Gildoran looked round the Bridge, occupied with four crew from Gypsy Moth, three from Spray, and six Laszlans. It was strange to see dark hair, pigmented skins on a Bridge within a few minutes of takeoff. Gilrae was taking reports from Nursery, asking about the condition of the twelve Laszlan babies snuggled down there under the care of the Poohbears.

Gilrae put aside her Communicator and said "You three had better get to Departure Stations." She stood up and briefly embraced Gilmerritt. She said, "I won't see you for a while, Merritt; by the time I come off-shift you'll be in the tank, I sup-pose."

Merritt nodded. "I offered to stay and supervise the medics. But five of the Laszland Class B people are DNA technicians and surgeons, so they don't need me." She kissed the older woman's cheek. "See you next year, wherever—and when-ever—we are then."

Glancing briefly at Gilrae for permission, Gil-marina left her console and came to fling herself into Gilmerritt's arms. She said, "Good luck, dar-ling. I know perfectly well if it hadn't been for you I'd be worse off—Gilban said my foot was worse than your hand. If I could have taken your place, I'd have done it, to give you a chance. ..."

Gildoran asked, "Do you need me on the Bridge, Rae?"

"No indeed. Cosmos! It's such a relief not to be shorthanded," Rae said. "Take Merritt down and tuck her in, if you want to."

On their way down to the Medic deck, Gildoran said, "It seems strange to see people who don't look like Explorers on the Bridge."

Merritt smiled faintly. "Give them four year's in deep space, and they'll be as pale as we are. Any-way, it shouldn't bother us to have the babies with dark hair and skins, and if there's an occasional volunteer who doesn't bleach all the way, I think we'll get used to it. It might even be a pleasant variety. Didn't Rae say that homogeneity was the beginning of decadence? Even the Explorers could become decadent, I suppose, if things went too well for too long."

"That'll be the day!" He said, "What will we do without Rae, if she keeps her threat to turn Float-er?"

Gilmerritt smiled again. "That'll be a long time yet," she said, "Rae is the spirit of the Gypsy Moth for all of us, and I think she knows it. And by the time she really does leave us and turn Floater— well, then it will be someone else. Maybe you." She slipped her good hand through his arm, as they entered the Medic quarters.

Gilban was waiting for them, while the Lasz-land apprentice Medics put things in order. Helping to supervise them, Gildoran saw, the familiar slender figure, pale smooth hair, strange tilted eyes.

"Ramie, this is a new assignment for you," Gil-doran said.

"I wanted a change," Ramie said. "So I'll be taking care of you, Merritt. Are you all ready?"

"In a few minutes." Without self-con-sciousness, Gilmerritt began stripping off her clothing, ready for the regrowth tank. Ramie picked up a razor and sheared off Gilmerritt's heavy hair. "Easier to look after you," she said, "and by the time you're ready to come out, it'll have grown again."

Gilmerritt lowered her eyes. She said, "Don't look at me, Gildoran."

Gildoran took the woman into his arms. "Don't be a fool, my love," he said. "Do you think I care what you look like, after all these years? Hurry and get well, darling." He picked up the ugly clawed deformity of her hand, stroked it gently and laid his lips to it.

Cosmos! I'll miss her so.

She clung to him for a moment and said "Don't be lonely. It's not fair. You know I won't know or feel anything. Don't you dare miss me when I can't miss you." She reached for Ramie's hand, looking up at her seriously with her great green eyes, and said with strong emphasis, "Ramie. Don't let Gildoran miss me. Or be lonely. Prom-ise."

Ramie kissed Gilmerritt quickly on the forehead and said "I promise. I'll take good care of him, too."

Merritt lay back on the shelf; Ramie covered her with a sheet and Gildoran held her hand while the first of the needles went into her wrist, the one which would put her into the preliminary sleep while her temperature was lowered to hiberna-tion level. Later the useless hand would be am-putated and the wrist placed into the regrowth solution, so that a year from now, she would emerge from the tank with only a sense of long dreams—and a hand identical to the one she had been born with.

The intership hookup announced, in Rae's voice, "Gypsy Moth will depart the planet in exactly four minutes and eighteen seconds. Stand by for thirty-second countdown. Four minutes . . . three minutes and thirty seconds . . ."

A preliminary roar of sound, interspersed with bursts of static, began to shake the Gypsy Moth, and the floors and walls around them began to tremble. Ramie said, "We'd better strap down, Doran."

Everyone else on the Medic deck was already fastened into takeoff seats. The two Explorers went to adjoining seats and fastened the takeoff harnesses around waist and shoulders. Through the growing noise of the takeoff and the drives coming into action, Gildoran kept hearing Merritt's parting words. "Ramie. Don't let Gildoran miss me. Or be lonely. Promise." And Ramie had promised.

Gildoran reached out his hand between the seats and felt Ramie's slender fingers close over his

own. Yes, they belonged together. Merritt knew that, too. He didn't know how it would work out. It wouldn't be the same kind of relationship he had with Merritt. It didn't matter. Whatever it was, it would be the right thing for the two of them.

"Thirty seconds . . . twenty . . . ten . . . seven, six, five. ..."

With a shuddering, a scream and a glorious roar, the Gypsy Moth lifted from the surface of her homeworld, on another stretch of her endless voyage into Cosmos.

Falcons of Narabedla

CHAPTER ONE

SOMEWHERE on the crags above us, I heard a big bird scream.

I turned to Andy, knee-deep in the icy stream beside me. "There's your eagle. Probably smells that cougar I shot yesterday." I started to reel in my line, knowing what my brother's next move

would be. "Get the camera, and we'll try for a picture."

We crouched together in the underbrush, watching, as the big bird of prey wheeled down in a slow spiral toward the dead cougar. Andy was trembling with excitement, the camera poised against his chest. "Golly," he whispered, almost prayerfully, "six-foot wing spread at least, maybe more—"

The bird screamed again, warily, head cocked into the wind. We were to leeward; the scent of the carrion masked our enemy smell from him. The eagle failed to scent or to see us, swooping down and dropping on the cougar's head. Andy's camera clicked twice. The eagle thrust in its beak.

A red-hot wire flared in my brain. The bird—the bird—I leaped out of cover, running swiftly across the ten-foot clearing that separated us from the attacking eagle, my hand tugging automatically at the hunting knife in my belt. Andys shout of surprise and dismay was a far-away noise in my ears as the eagle started away with flapping, angry wings—then, in fury,

swept down at me, pinions beating around my head. I heard and felt the wicked beak dart in, and thrust blindly upward with the knife: ripped, slashing, hearing the bird's scream of pain and the flapping of wide wings.

A red-hot haze spun around me—

This had happened before. I had fought like this before, for my life, for my lifeThen the screaming eagle was gone, a lifting cry down-wind and a vanishing shadow, and Andy's rough grip was on my shoulder, shaking me, hard. His voice, furious and frightened, was barely recognizable. "Mike! Mike, you damned idiot, are you all right? You must be crazy!"

I blinked, rubbing my hand across my eyes. The hand came away red. I was standing in the clearing, the knife in my hand red with blood. Bird blood. I heard myself ask, stupidly, "What happened?"

My brother's face came clear through the red haze, scowling wrathfully. "You tell me that! Mike, what in the devil were you thinking of? You told me yourself that an eagle will attack a man if it's bothered. I had him square in the camera when you jumped out of there like a bat out of a belfry, and went for the eagle with your knife. You must be clean crazy!"

I let the knife drop out of my hand. "Yeah," I said heavily, "I guess I spoiled your picture, Andy. I'm sorry. I didn't..." My voice trailed off, helpless. I felt like a prize fool. The kid's hand was still on my shoulder. He let it fall away and knelt in the grass, groping for his camera. "That's all right, Mike," he said in a dead voice. "You scared the daylights out of me, that's all."

He stood up swiftly, looking straight into my face.

"Only—damn it, Mike, you've been acting crazy for a week. I don't mind the blasted camera, but when you start going for eagles with your bare hands—" abruptly he flung the camera away,

turned, and began to run down the slope in the direction of the cabin.

I took one step to follow, then stopped, bending to retrieve the broken pieces of Andy's cherished camera. He must have hit the eagle with it. Lucky thing for me. Even a hawk can be a mean bird, and an eagle—Why, why in the hell had I done a thing like that? I'd warned Andy, time and time again, to stay clear of the big birds.

Now that the urgency of action had deserted me, I felt stupid and a little light-headed. I didn't wonder that Andy thought I was crazy. I thought so myself, more than half the time. I stowed the broken camera in my tackle box, mentally promising Andy a better one, hunted up the abandoned lines and poles, cleaned our days catch. It was dark before I started for the cabin; I could hear the hum of the electric dynamo I'd rigged, and see the electric light across the dusk of the Sierras. A smell of bacon greeted me as I crossed into the glare of the unshielded bulb. Andy hadn't waited for the fish. He was standing at the cookstove, his back stubbornly turned to me. He did not turn. "Andy-" I said.

"It's okay, Mike. Sit down and eat your supper." "Andy—I'll get you another camera." "I said, it's okay. Now, damn it, eat." He didn't speak again for some time; but as I stretched back for a second mug of coffee, he got up and began to walk restlessly around the room.

"Mike, you came here for a rest," he said at last. "Why can't you lay off your everlasting work for a while, and relax?" He looked disgustedly over his shoulder at the work table where the light spilled over a confused litter of wires and magnets and coils. "You're turning this place into a

branch office of General Electric."

"I can't stop now," I said violently, "I'm on the track of something, maybe something big, and if I stop now, I'll never find it!"

"Must be real important," Andy said sourly, "if it makes you act like bughouse bait."

I shrugged, not answering. We'd been over that before. I'd known it when they threw me out of the government lab, just before the big blowup. I thought angrily, Maybe I'm heading for another one. But I didn't care.

"Sit down, Andy," I told him. "You don't know what happened down there. No, it's not any military secret, or anything. It was all declassified a long time before I finished my service hitch." I paused, swallowing down the coffee, not caring that it scalded my mouth. I said, with the old bitterness, "Except for me."

I'd been working in a government radio lab, on some new communications equipment. Since I'd never finished it, there's no point in going into details. It's enough to say that it would have made radar as obsolete as the stagecoach.

I'd built a special supersonic condenser, and had had trouble with a set of magnetic coils that wouldn't wind properly. When the thing blew up, I hadn't had any sleep for three nights, but that wasn't the reason. That was normal around there. I was normal then, just another

communications man, a little bug-eyed about the kind of research tinkering I liked, but without any of the crazy impractical notions that had lost me my job afterward. They called it overwork Only I know they thought the explosion had disturbed my brain. I didn't blame them. Sometimes I thought so myself. Or at least I'd have liked to think so.

It started one day in the lab with a shadow on the sun and an elusive short-circuit somewhere that kept giving me shock after shock until I was dizzy. By the time I got it fixed—and I never could figure out why that circuit should have shorted—the oscillator had gone out of control, or so I thought. I kept getting a series of low-frequency waves that were like nothing I'd ever seen before. Then there was something like a voice, speaking out of a very old, jerry-built crystal set —only there wasn't a radio receiver, or a speaker, anywhere in the lab, and nobody else heard it. I wasn't sure myself, because right then, every instrument in the place went haywire; and forty seconds later, part of the ceiling hit the floor, and the floor went up through the roof They found me, they say, half-crushed under a beam. Anyway, I woke up in a hospital, with four cracked ribs, and feeling as if I'd had a lot of voltage poured into me.

It went down in the report that I'd been struck by lightning. They had to say something.

It took me a long time to get well. The ribs, and the other things, healed fast—faster than the doctors liked. I didn't mind the hospital part, except that I couldn't walk without shaking, or light a cigarette without burning myself, for weeks. The thing I minded was what I remembered from before I woke up.

Delirium. That was what they told me. But the kind and type of marks all over my body didn't ring true. Electricity—even freak lightning—doesn't make those kinds of burns. And this comer of the world doesn't make a habit of branding people.

Only before I could show the marks to anyone outside the hospital, they were gone. Not healed, just gone. I remember the look on the intern's face when I showed him the spots where the burns had been. He didn't think I was crazy. He thought he was.

There was a psychiatrist sniffing around, too, putting forth slow, soothing suggestions about psychosomatic medicine and hysterical stigmata, but that was just for the record, too.

I knew the lab hadn't been struck by lightning. The Major knew it, too. I found that out the day I reported back to work All the time we talked, his big pen moved in stubby circles across the pages of his logbook, and he talked without raising his head to look at me.

"I know all that, Kenscott. No electrical storms reported in the vicinity, no radio disturbances within a thousand miles. But," his jaw was stubborn, "the lab was wrecked and you were hurt. We've got to have something for the record."

I could understand all that. What I resented was the way they treated me when I went back to work They transferred me to another division and another project. They turned down my request to follow up research on those low-frequency waves. My private notes were ripped out of my notebook while I was at lunch, and I never saw them again. And as soon as they could, they

shipped me to Fairbanks, Alaska, and that was the end of that The Major told me all I needed to know, the day before I took the plane to Alaska. His scowl said more than his words, and they said plenty.

"I'd let it alone, Kenscott. No sense stirring up more trouble. We can't monkey with side alleys, anyhow. Next time, you might get your head blown off, not just a dose of stray voltage out of the blue. We've done everything but stand on our heads, trying to find out where that spare energy came from and where it went."

"Then you admit there was something!" That was more than I'd been able to get from anyone else on the project.

"Unofficially, yes." The Major scowled, not looking at me. Then it all came out in a single fast string of words. "What it boils down to is that it shows up when you're around, and it doesn't show up when you're not around, and we don't know if it's fakery or poltergeists or ESP but we don't want any more of it, whatever it is. We've marked that whole line of research closed, Kenscott. And if I were you I'd call myself lucky and keep my mouth shut about it."

"It wasn't a message from Mars," I suggested without smiling, and he didn't think it was funny either. But there was relief on his face when I left the office and went to clean out my drawer.

I got along all right in Alaska, for a while. They put me on paperwork, routine supervisory jobs, and ignored me when I tried to get back to the practical end of it. And then they shipped me back

to the States, with a discharge, and a recommendation of a long rest I tried to explain it to Andy:

"They called it overwork They said I needed rest

Maybe so. The shock did something funny to me— tore me open—like the electric shock treatments they give catatonic patients. I seem to know a lot of things I never learned. Ordinary radio work doesn't seem to mean much to me any more. It doesn't make sense. And every now and then something will start to make sense, and then doesn't. When people out West were talking about Flying Saucers, whatever they were, and when there was all that talk about atomic fallout changing the weather, and the cloud-seeding experiments, all this sort of halfway made sense for a while. Only I kept expecting it to happen without"— I moved my hand, helplessly, trying to put words to a random impression—"without people having to go up there in planes and do anything about it. And when we came up here—" I paused, trying to fit more confused impressions together. He wasn't going to believe me anyhow, but I wanted him to. A tree slapped against the cabin window, and I jumped.

"It started the day we came into the mountains. Energy out of nowhere, following me around. It can't knock me out. Have you noticed that I let you turn the lights on and off? The day we came up here, I shorted my electric razor," I rubbed my hand over a stubbled face, "and I blew out five fuses trying to change one. Remember?"

"Yeah, I remember: we had to drive into town for some more." My brother's eyes rested uneasily on my face. "Mike, listen—you are kidding, aren't you?"

"I wish I were," I said. "That energy just drains into me and nothing happens. I'm immune." I shrugged, rose and walked to the Hallicrafter, picked up the disconnected plug and thrust it into the socket. I snapped the dial on. "Watch."

The panel flashed and darkened; confused static came crackling from the speaker. I took my hand away.

"Turn it up," said Andy uneasily.

"It's already up." My hand twiddled the dial.

"Try another station," the kid insisted. I pushed each button in succession; the static crackled and buzzed; the panel light flashed on and off in little cryptic flashes. I said "And reception was fine at noon; you were listening to the President's press conference." I took my hand away again. "Okay, you try it."

Andy frowned, but he came over and switched the button back on. The little panel light glowed steadily, and the mellow voice of Milton Cross filled the room:

"... orchestra in the Fifth, or Fate Symphony of Beethoven..."

And then the majestic chords of the symphony, thundering through the cabin:

"Ta-da-da-dumm. ... ta-da-da-DOOM!"

My brother stared at me as racing woodwinds caught up with the brasses. There was nothing wrong with the radio. I stood listening to the sound of fate.

"Mike. What did you do to it?"

"I wish I knew." I reached out; touched the volume button briefly.

Beethoven died in a muttering static of insane drums.

I swore, and Andy sucked in his breath between his teeth, edging warily backward. He stared at the radio and then at me, and then reached out and touched the dial. Once more the smoothness of the

"Fate" symphony rolled out into the room and swallowed us. I shivered.

Andy said, shakily, "Maybe you'd better let it alone."

The kid turned in early, but I stayed in the main room, smoking, restless, wishing I could get a drink without driving eighty miles over bad mountain roads. Neither of us had thought to turn the radio off, and it was moaning out some interminable, throbbing jazz. I turned my notes over

restlessly, not really seeing them.

Lightning that wasn't lightning. Scars on my body —curious festering marks that the psychiatrist had tried to tell me were psychosomatic. The cry of an eagle wheeling above me—striking savagely at my eyes, set to kill—and I deserved that death.

What had I remembered, just then, when I went far the eagle with a hunting knife?

I let my head sink in my hands, closing my eyes, trying to clear my mind of surface things and remember ... remember. ...

Fantasy? Was it fantasy that made me see a strange, cloaked form, and between the cloaked form and me, a woman? A golden woman. ...

Golden hair, tiger-tawny, fell like silk around her shoulders; her eyes were golden, wide open and fixed on me like the eyes of a great cat. She held something in her hands.

Vision, dream, fantasy—abruptly she was gone as Andy's voice came sleepily from the alcove:

"Going to read all night, Mike?"

"If I feel like it," I said tersely, and began walking up and down again.

"Michael! For the luvvagod quit that and let me get some sleep," Andy exploded, and I sank into the armchair again. "Sorry, Andy."

Where had the intangible part of me been, those hours and days while I lay crushed under a fallen beam in the lab, then under morphine in the hospital? Where had those scars come from— and where had they gone?

More important—what had made a radio lab, of all places, explode like that? Electricity can set fires, and radio waves, too intense, will inflict burns. Men can be shocked into insensibility, or even killed, by electricity. But electricity just doesn't explode.

And what freak of lightning was I carrying in my body, that made me immune to ordinary current? I hadn't told Andy about the time I'd deliberately shorted the dynamo in the cellar and taken the whole current through my body. I was still alive. It would have been a hell of a way to commit suicide, but I hadn't.

I swore, slamming down the window. I was going to bed. Andy was right; either I was crazy, or else there was something wrong that ordinary doctors didn't know about. Sitting here stewing about it wouldn't help. If it didn't let up, I'd take the first train home and see another psychiatrist—and if that didn't help, well, maybe I'd see a good electrician! But right now, I was going to hit the sack

My hand went out automatically and switched off the light.

"Damn!" I thought incredulously; I'd shorted the dynamo again. The radio stopped as if the whole orchestra had dropped dead; every light in the cabin winked swiftly out, but my hand on the switch crackled with a phosphorescent glow as the entire

house current poured through my body. I tingled with weird shock, heard my own teeth chattering.

And something snapped open in my brain. I heard, suddenly, an excited voice, shouting.

"Rhys! Rhys! That is the man!"

CHAPTER TWO

"You ARE MAD," said the man with the tired voice.

I was drifting. I was swaying, bodiless, over a vast abyss of caverned space; chasmed, immense, limitless. Vaguely, through that humming distance, I could hear two voices. This one was old, and very tired.

"You are mad. They will know. Narayan will know."

"Narayan is a fool," said the second voice. There was something hauntingly familiar about that voice. I had heard it before. Where?

"Narayan is the Dreamer," the tired voice said, "he is the Dreamer, and where the Dreamer walks they will know. But have it your way. I am old, and it does not matter. I give you this freely to spare you, and to spare Gamine what must come."

"Gamine—" the second voice stopped. After a long silence, "You are old and also a fool, Rhys. What is Gamine to me?"

Bodiless, blind, I drifted and swayed and swung in the sound of the voices. The humming, like a million high-tension wires, sang around me, and I felt myself cradled in the pull of something like a giant magnet, that held me suspended securely on nothingness, and drew me down into the field of some force below—

above—elsewhere. Far below me the voices faded, and as if their sound had removed some invisible and intangible support, I swung free—fell—plunged downward in sickening motion, head-over-heels into the abyss. ...

And yet, through all this, I was conscious of standing motionless, my hand on the light-switch in the cabin—and yet I was falling through nowhere space....

My feet struck hard flooring with a kind of snap. I wrenched back to full consciousness with a jolt. Winds blew cold in my face: the cabin walls had been flung back to the high-lying stars. I was standing at a barred window at the very pinnacle of a tall tower, in the lap of a weird blueness that arched flickeringly in the night. I caught a glimpse of a startled face, a lean tired old face beneath a high, peaked hood, in the moment before my knees gave way and I fell, striking my head against the bars of the window.

I was lying somewhere in the dark I had no awareness of myself as Mike Kenscott; instead my mind was filled with a nightmarish fear and urgency. There was something I had to do, a warning I had to give. ... and I was horribly afraid.

I stirred and around me the darkness thinned and grew paler; I could see, dimly, shapes and forms. I rose, with the fluid motion of movement in a dream, passed through a strangely arched door and into a dim-lighted corridor, burning with blue fluorescence. My own breath was loud in the silence, but I heard no footsteps. I knew I must be very still and keep to the edges of the corridors, and at the same time something angry and proud in me told me to walk fearless and unafraid.

The corridor was long, but I felt no fatigue. Twice I passed strange forms, feeling no curiosity about their strange cloaked and muffled shapes; I knew somehow that they could not see me. I paused before a bolted door, and the frightened part of myself stopped, feeling dreamish panic. Then I felt myself raise my hands, making curious gestures. The door slid noiselessly back and I passed through.

The room was dark and empty, with a great window opening on starred night. Here and there around the walls hung strange limp winged forms. Without hesitation I went to the wall and lifted down one of the things. ...

A cloak? A dead bird? I felt feathers, pinions, limp and lifeless; a curious fear sucked under my breastbone. Some tiny packed-away part of me screamed, What am I doing? But without hesitating, I drew the dark feathered thing over my head. ...

There was a strange, suspended, timeless moment when I floated, bodiless, a mere point of consciousness in space. Then, fumbling, I found my body again, moving the feet carefully to a low couch; supporting myself with my hands, I lowered myself and lay down. There was a strange pull to my body, an awful tugging as if the essential me was struggling to get out, to free myself from tangled heavy clothes. I knew somehow that I dared not yield yet to this struggle for freedom. Carefully, painfully, I lowered myself to the couch, straightened my body into a careful line, drew a deep breath ...

And suddenly I was out and away, rising up with a great flapping of wings, soaring on the rhythmic beat of pinions. My arms—my arms were great wings, and all around me was empty sky and cold fresh winds.

Flying! The oldest dream of mankind—but this was no dream! I could feel the cold sting of the wind, laden with sprinkles of dampness. Dark as it was, my eyes swept down from the dizzy

height and saw below me a vast tract of wooded country. Colors were filtered out in the moonlight, but far, far below me I saw a tower rising and the great black yawning window from which I had come.

Nightmarish haste beat at me; I felt my bird-body stretch itself into an arrow-straight line, felt the phiions extend themselves into regular beating. I was flying Eastward, over the woodland, seeing below me little roads and pathways, isolated dwellings and farmland, feeling the wind in my face.

It seemed hours that I flew, but I felt no fatigue, and the time seemed strangely telescoped, so that it might have been minutes or days. I passed the woodland, flying over hills and valleys, until at last, far below me, a cluster of tents and dwellings showed like dark shadows in the fading moonlight.

I banked against the breeze, began to fly downward in slow spirals. The freshening breeze in my eyes, the strengthening light, told me that dawn was near; the bird-body seemed tireless, the heart beating as strongly as an insensate machine, but I—the intangible me—felt fear and exhaustion and dread. I knew that the dawn brought danger for me; but I was not sure why.

Down, and down. A red line of light against the horizon crept and strengthened, giving color to the green meadowland below. Now I could see the tents clearly, and the men who were moving around them, coming out into the dawn.

Too late! I cried out and heard my voice a high, eerie falcon-scream; I had been seen. Below me the

forms of the men clustered, broke into groups, cried out and pointed upward.

"One of their accursed spies!"

I saw a big man, formless in the dawn and featureless, kneel down, something like a crossbow athwart his chest. Suddenly fear gave way to rage. He dared! Wheeling, darting with a speed that amazed me, that made the ground below me into a blur, I plunged downward. The men scattered, crying out, and I heard my soundless laughter explode into another eerie bird-cry. ...

An arrow sang shrilly by me; another. Swiftly, automatically, I eluded them, but fear and wonder were rising in me. What was I doing here? Why had I come? Why were they shooting at me when I had come to warn ... to warn. ...

To warn—whom?

I saw the crossbow bolt speeding toward me, desperately beat wings to one side—too late! I braced myself for the shock The arrow went into my breast. Strangely, I felt no pain, only a curious sense of pressure; a tingling snap and a painful shock I felt my wings go limp, collapse, heard a great outcry from the men below, joy and triumph and exaltation. I was falling. ...

With no sense of elapsed time, I was lying on a narrow high bed, in a room filled with doors and bars. I could see the edge of a carved mirror set in a frame, and the top of a chest of some sort. It was not the room where I had found—or dreamed?—the limp feather-forms. It was lighted with bright sunlight, and on a bench at the edge of my field of vision, two figures were seated.

One was an old man, an old, old, gray man in a high peaked hood, hunched wearily beneath the cowl of a robe like a Tibetan lama's. Briefly I had seen the face beneath the cowl, heard the old, tired voice, in the moment before plunging into that strange dream? -of flight.

The other was a slimmer, younger figure, swathed in silken, silvery-blue veiling, with a thin opacity where the face should have been, and a sort of pale shining of flesh through the silken sapphire of the veils. The figure was that of a slim boy or an immature girl; it sat erect, motionless, and for a long time I watched it, curious, between half-opened lids. But when at last I blinked, it rose, and passed through one of the multitudinous doors; almost at once, a soft sibilance of draperies announced its return.

I sat up, getting my feet to the floor or almost there; the bed on which I was lying was higher than a hospital bed. The blue-robed creature gave me a handled mug, like a baby's drinking-cup; I took it hesitantly between my fingers.

"Neither drug nor poison," said the blue-robe mockingly, and the voice was as noncommittal as the veiled body; a sexless voice, soft alto, a woman's or a boys. "Drink, and be glad it is none of Karamy's brewing."

I tasted the liquid in the mug. It had an indeterminate greenish look, and a faint pungent taste I could not identify, though it reminded me variously of anise and garlic. It seemed to remove the last traces of shock I handed it back empty and looked sharply at the old man in lama costume, who had not moved at all, or even raised his eyes to look at me.

"You're-Rhys?" I said. "Where in hell have I gotten to now?" At least, that's what I meant to say. Imagine my surprise when I heard myself asking in a language I'd never heard before, but understood perfectly, "To which of the nine hells of Zandru have I now been consigned?"

At the same time I became conscious of what I was wearing. I wouldn't have been surprised to see feathers—if I was still dreaming—but there weren't any. I was wearing what seemed to be an old-fashioned nightshirt, chopped off an inch or so below the loins, and deep crimson in color. "Red flannels, yet!" I thought with a gulp of dismay, and checked my impulse to get out of bed. I didn't know how I'd come here, or who had put me into the thing, but I wasn't going to stand around in a red nightshirt!

"You might have the decency to explain where I am," I said, "and how I got here."

The tiredness seemed part of Rhys' voice. "Adric," he said wearily, "try to remember. You are in your own Tower. And you have been under restraint again. I am sorry." His voice sounded futile. I felt prickling shivers run down my backbone. In spite of the weird surroundings, the phrase "Under restraint" had struck home. I was a lunatic and locked up somewhere!

The blue-robe cut in, in that smooth, sexless, faintly-sarcastic voice, "While Karamy holds the keys to his memory, Rhys, you will be explaining it to him a dozen times in a cycle. He will never be of any use to us again. This time, Karamy won. Adric, try to remember. You are at home, in Narabedla."

It sounded like Bedlam; and it looked like it. I shook my head. Nightshirt or no nightshirt, I'd face this on my feet.

I felt better standing up. I walked to Rhys; put my clenched hands on his shoulders. "Explain this! Who am I supposed to be? Where am I? You called me Adric. I'm no more Adric than you are!"

"Adric, you are not amusing!" The blue-robe's voice was edged with anger. "Use what intelligence Karamy has left you! You have had enough sharig antidote to cure a tharl! Now, who are you?"

The words were all but meaningless. I stared, trapped, and let my hands fall away from the old man. "Adric," I said, bewildered. No. I was Mike Kenscott. Hang on to that. Michael Warren Kenscott. Cabin in the Sierras. Fishing holiday with my brother Andy. Andy! Two times two are four. The circumference equals pi times the diameter. Four rulls is the chemming—stop that! Mike Kenscott. Army serial number 13-48746. I cradled my bursting head in my hands.

"I'm crazy. Or you are. Or we're both sane and this monkey business is all real."

"It is real," Rhys said, compassion in his tired voice. "He has been very far on the Time Ellipse, Gamine; never have I searched so far. Adric, you must try to understand. This was Karamy's work She sent you out on a time-line, very far, very far into the past. Into a time when the world was different. She hoped you would come back changed, or mad. Or perhaps she simply wanted to punish you."

"Punish me for what? Who is-"

The weary, hunched shoulders went up and then down.

"How can I say what is between you and Karamy? Must I concern myself with that, too?" His eyes were dim, withdrawn. "I have done what I can. Now I must return to my own tower—or die. I have long outstayed my leave. Gamine, will you explain?"

"I will." A hint of emotion flickered in the neutral voice of the blue-robe—Gamine? "Go, Ancient."

Rhys left the room, silently, without turning back, or a word of farewell. Gamine turned impatiently to me again. "We waste time this way. Fool, look at yourself"

I strode to a mirror that lined one of the doors. Above the crimson nightshirt I sought for my

own familiar face and the sight rocked my reason. Out of the mirror a man's face looked anxiously but the face of a stranger.

I clutched at the frame of the mirror with one hand. The man in the mirror did the same, as if in panicky striving to climb out of there. The face that was not mine was eagle-thin, darkly moustached, with sharp green eyes; and the body belonging to the face was lean and long and strongly muscled and not quite human. I squeezed my eyes shut. This couldn't be!

I opened my eyes. The man in the red nightshirt I was wearing was still reflected in the mirror, and he looked scared as hell. He was.

I turned my back on the mirror, walking to one of the barred windows to look down on the familiar outline of the Sierra Madre, a hundred miles away. I couldn't be mistaken. I knew those mountains.

But between me and the mountains lay a thickly forested expanse of land, which was like no scenery I had ever seen in my life. Or had I seen it in that dream of flying?

Dream?

The bars, I saw now, were not bars, but ornamental grilles; they opened, at a touch, onto a high

balcony floored with blue slate. I was standing near the pinnacle of a high tower; I dimly saw

the curve of another, just out of my line of vision, hardly more than a shadow. The whole landscape below me was bathed in a curiously pinkish light; through a heavy, overcast sky I could just make out, dimly, the shadowy disc of a watery red sun. Then—no, I wasn't dreaming, I really did see it—beyond it, higher in the sky and pale through the clouds, a second sun, so blindingly blue-white brilliant that even through the thick cloud-cover I had to squeeze my eyes shut and look away.

It was proof enough for me. I turned desperately to Gamine behind me. "Where have I gotten to? Where —when am I? Two suns—but I know those mountains."

The veiled face turned up to mine, question in the tilt of the shrouded head. What I had thought a veil was not that; it was more like a shimmering screen wrapped around the features, so that Gamine was faceless; an invisible person with substance but no recognizable characteristics. Yes, it was like that; as if an invisible person were wearing the curious silken drapery. But the invisible flesh was solid enough; fingers like warm steel gripped my shoulder:

"You have been back—back to the days before the second sun? Adric, tell me, was there truly only one sun, before the Cataclysm?"

"Wait," I begged. "You mean I've traveled in time?"

The exaltation slowly faded from Gamine's voice.

"Never mind. It is improbable in any case that you would remember enough—no, Adric, not really traveling. You were sent out on the Time Ellipse; you must have contacted someone in that Other Time.

Perhaps the contact lasted so long that you feel yourself someone else."

"But I'm not Adric!" I raged. Suddenly the words I had heard, in that sudden opening of my mind, came back to me: That is the man. The voice I now knew for Rhys had called him Adric.

"Adric sent me here, somehow! Maybe this is his body, but-"

I saw the blurring around Gamine's invisible features twitch. "It's never been proven that two minds can be interchanged that way. Adric's body—Adric's brain. The brain convolutions, the memory centers, the habit patterns—all those are part of the physical brain. You'd still be Adric. The idea that you are someone else is only an illusion of the conscious mind. It will wear off You stayed too long, Adric."

I shook my head, puzzled. I was Mike Kenscott. I hung on to that, desperately. "I still don't believe it. Where am I?"

Gamine moved impatiently. "Oh, very well. You are Adric of Narabedla, and—if you are yourself again—Lord of the Crimson Tower."

"And who are you?"

"You don't remember me?"

"I don't."

"I am Gamine. I am a spell-singer—and other things."

I jerked my elbow toward the window. "Those are my own mountains out there," I said roughly, "but I'm not Adric, whoever he is. My name is Mike Kenscott, and all your hanky-panky doesn't impress me. Take off that veil, and let me see your face."

"I wish you meant that," a mournfulness breathed in Gamine's soft contralto. "If I dared believe—"

A sudden fury blazed up in me from nowhere; without volition I took one step forward, and heard my own voice, shouting.

"What is it to you what I mean? What right have you to pry for that old fool Rhys? Get back to your own place, Spell-singer, before you find that Karamy has not all the magic in Narabedla!"

I broke off, appalled. What was I saying? Worse, what did I mean by it? Gamine turned; the sexless voice was merely amused. "Adric spoke then. Whoever sits in the seat of your soul,

Adric, you are the same and past redemption!" The iridescent draperies whispered on the flooring as Gamine moved toward the doorway. "Karamy is welcome to her slave!"

The door slammed.

Left alone, I flung myself down on the high bed, stubbornly concentrating on Mike Kenscott, shutting out the vague and blurring mystery that was Adric impinging on my consciousness. I had spoken Adric's words. At least, they were not my words. But I was not Adric! I would not be! I dared not go to the window, and look out at the terrifying two suns, not even to see again the familiar, reassuring outline of the mountains, lest seeing them I should begin to believe...

But persistently the Adric memories came, a guilty feeling of a shirked duty, a frightened face— a real face, not a blurred nothingness—beneath Gamine's blue veil. Memory of strange hunts and a big bird borne on the pommel of a high saddle. A bird hooded like a falcon, in crimson. ...

Consciousness of dress made me aware of the— nightshirt?—I still wore. Moving swiftly, without deliberate thought, I found myself going to a door and sliding it open. I pulled out some garments and quickly dressed in them. They went on easily, strange though they were—tights, high gaiters, a laced tunic and overblouse—when I did not stop to think about what I was doing. Every garment in the closet was the same color, a deep-toned crimson, although some were edged with dark fur and a few were embroidered with gold or silver threads. A phrase Gamine had used broke the surface of my mind, like a leaping fish; Lord of the Crimson Tower. Well, I looked it.

There were knives and swords in the closet; I took down one to look at it, and before I realized what I was about, I had belted it across my hip. I stared, decided to let it remain. It looked just about right with the rest of the costume. It felt right, too. I was stepping back to get a better look when another door folded noiselessly back and a man stood looking at me.

He was young, and he would have been handsome in an effeminate sort of way, had his face been less arrogant. Lean, somehow catlike, it was easy to determine that he was akin to Adric, and to me, even before habit and memory fitted a name to him, and an identity.

"Evarin," I said.

He came forward, moving so softly that for an uneasy moment I wondered if he had pads like a cat's on his feet. He wore deep green from head to foot, similar in cut and material to the garments that clothed me. His face had a flickering, as if he could, at a moment's notice, raise about himself a barrier of invisibility like that which surrounded Gamine. He didn't look as human as I—as Adric.

"I have seen Gamine," he said. "I'm told you are awake, and as sane as you ever were. And we of Narabedla are not so strong that we can afford to waste even a broken tool like yourself. So welcome home, brother!"

Wrath—Adric's wrath—boiled up in me; it was an unnerving experience to feel myself boiling

with rage against a man I'd never consciously seen before. I felt myself step forward, felt my hand grip around the hilt of my sword. Evarin moved lithely backward.

"I am not Gamine," he warned, "nor to be served as Gamine was served. Be careful!" he made no move to touch the knife in his belt.

"Be careful yourself," I muttered, not knowing what else I could have said. Evarin drew back his thin lips into a smile. "Why? You have been sent out on the Time Ellipse until you are only a shadow of yourself. But I did not come here for a quarrel, and all this is beside the point. Karamy says you are to be freed, so the seals are off all the doors, and the Crimson Tower is no longer a prison to you. Come and go as you please—at Karamy's bidding." His lips formed a sneer. "If you call that freedom."

I said slowly, "You don't think I'm crazy?"

"Except where Karamy is concerned, you never were," Evarin said. "What is that to me? I have all I could desire. The Dreamer gives me good hunting, slaves enough to do my bidding, and as for the rest— I am the Toymaker. I need little else. But you—" his voice leaped with sudden contempt, "you who were so powerful—now you ride Time at Karamy's bidding, and your Dreamer walks waiting the coming of his power that he may destroy us all one day!"

I stared somberly at Evarin; the words meant little to me, a jumble about Karamy again and Dreamers, and yet they seemed to wake an almost personal shame in me. Were emotions, then,

only a habit of the mechanical synapses of the brain? Had they no connection with the person I was, Mike Kenscott? Or was I mad—feeling the emotions of a person called Adric, shame and regret and fear over things I'd never done, or dreamed of doing?

Evarin watched me, and his face lost some of its bitterness. He seemed little more than a boy. He said quietly; "The falcon flown cannot be recalled. I came only to tell you that you are free." He turned, shrugging his thin shoulders that seemed somehow misshapen, and walked to the high grilled window. "As I say, if you call that freedom."

I followed him to the window. The mists were clearing; the two suns shone with blinding brilliance, and I had to turn my eyes away from the sky. By looking far to the left, I could see a line of rainbowtinted towers rising, tall and delicate, yet massive, capped with slender spires. The nearest seemed to be made of jeweled blue, some stone that gleamed in the light like lapis lazuli; one, clear emerald green; others were golden, flame-orange, violet. They formed a semicircle about a wooded park, and beyond them the familiar skyline, of the mountains tugged other memories. The blinding sky held no hint of blue, but was colorless as sunlight on ice. Abruptly I turned my back on it all.

Evarin murmured, "Narabedla. Last of the Rainbow Cities. Adric, how long now?"

I was trying to make sense of the names he had spoken. "Karamy"— I said hesitatingly, but Evarin took it for a question.

"Karamy can wait. Better for you if she waited forever," he said with that soundless laughter. "Come along with me, or Gamine will be back You don't want to see Gamine, do you?" He sounded anxious, and I shook my head. No. Emphatically, I did not want to see that insidious spook again.

He looked relieved. "Come along, then. If I know Gamine, you're pretty well muddied— amnesiac. I'll explain. After all," his voice mocked, "could I do less, for my only brother?"

He thrust open the door, gesturing for me to lead the way. Instinctively I drew back, telling myself it was only because I did not know which way to go. He laughed soundlessly and preceded me, and I followed, letting the door slide shut.

We went down stairs and more stairs, and I walked along at Evarin's side, wondering with some surface part of my thoughts why I was not more panicky. I was a stranger in an incredible world, wearing another man's clothes, called by his name, led around by his friends, or his enemies-how could I tell which? And yet I had the fantastic calmness with which men do incredible things in a dream. I was simply taking one step after another, surrendering myself to—Gamine had called them habits, memory patterns embedded in the convolutions of the brain. Patterns? I had Adric's body and presumably his brain. It seemed to know what to do. Only a superficial me, an outer ego, was a strange, muddled Mike Kenscott.

The subconscious Adric was guiding me. I let him ride. I felt it would be wise to be very much Adric around Evarin, though he seemed friendly enough.

We stepped into an elevator shaft which went down, curved around corners with a speed that threw me against the wall, then, slowly, began to rise. I had long since lost all sense of direction. Abruptly the door of the shaft opened, and we began to walk along a long, dimly-lighted corridor.

The corridor of my dream?

From somewhere we heard singing; a voice somewhere in the range of a trained boy's voice or a woman's mature contralto. Gamine's voice. I could make no sense of the words, but Evarin halted, swearing.

I thought the faraway voice sang my name, but I could not tell. "What is it, Evarin?"

He gave a short exclamation, the sense of which was lost on me. "Come along. It is only the spellsinger singing old Rhys back to sleep. You waked him this time, did you not? I wonder Gamine permitted it. He is very near his last sleep, old Rhys. I think you will send him there soon."

Without giving me a chance to answer—and indeed I had no answer ready—Evarin pulled me into another shaft which began immediately to rise with us. Eventually we stepped out into a room at the top of another tower, a room lavishly, even garishly furnished. Evarin flung himself down on a divan, gesturing me to follow his example.

"Now tell me, where in Time has Karamy sent you now?"

"Karamy?" I asked tentatively.

Evarin's raucous laugh rang out again. "Can you really be as confused as you sound? Ai, what a joke it would be on Karamy, if it were so! The Witch of the Golden Tower destroys your memory—even your memories of her!" He flung back his head, shaking

with that eerie laughter.

Then, suddenly quieting, he said with an odd air of confiding, "My one demand of the Dreamer is freedom from that witch's spells. We in the Rainbow City should at least leave one another free. Some daysome day I shall fashion a Toy for her, and she will discover that the Toymaker of Narabedla is to be reckoned with. I demand little of the Dreamers, Zandru knows, I do not care to pay their price. But Karamy does not rare what price she pays, so-" a spreading movement of his hands, "she has power over everyone, except me. She had power to send you out on the Time Ellipse. I wonder who brought you back?"

It was beginning to make an eerie sort of sense. Somehow. Adric had incurred the wrath of Karamy, who was a "witch of the Golden Tower." whatever that was, and she had sent him out of his body. Someone, in trying to bring him back, had snared— me.

But I wasn't going to tell Evarin that. Something deep inside me knew that a confession of weakness or fear would be a catastrophe. I only shook, my head.

"Anyhow, I'm back," I said. "Though I don't remember much."

"You remember me," Evarin said. "I wonder why she left you that? Karamy never trusted me."

And she was right not to trust him. The thought came out of that reservoir of knowledge that I could not tap at will, but nevertheless welled up in me. I said "Only your name. Nothing more."

Because Evarin, I knew, was never ten minutes the same. He would profess friendship at one minute, and mean it; ten minutes later, still in friendship and with no malice in him, he would flay the skin from my body and count it only an exquisite joke. He seemed to follow my thoughts, laughing.

"Still, you know my name, and that is somethingbare is brotherless back, and that goes for me as much as for you, Adric! Tell me what you have forgotten."

Could I trust him with my terrible puzzlement? How much could I, as Adric—and I must be Adric to him, for that was my only safety, his wary respect for Adric and what Adric might do— how much could I, as Adric, get along without knowing? And how many questions could I dare to ask without betraying my own helplessness?

"I've been out of my body too long," I said at last. "I can't remember." One thing, at least, I had to know, "What are the Dreamers?"

That had been the wrong question. I knew it as soon as it escaped my lips. His eyes altered; he felt safer with me. now.

"Zandru, Adric, you have been far indeed," he said. "You must have been back before the Cataclysm."

I had, whatever the Cataclysm was. But I only nodded.

"Well, our forefathers, after the Cataclysm, built the Rainbow Cities, and made the Compact that killed the machines. In the Rainbow Cities we who could be trusted with power, lived and ruled as we had always lived and ruled; but the Compact made it certain that lesser men would never again be able to defy us. Oh, there were a few idealists who said that we were reducing them to barbarism. They didn't understand!" Evarin sounded passionately excited. "It was only that we kept them safe—safe from powers they

only abused! They live simply, as common men are meant to live, and they cannot meddle with arts and powers beyond their understanding!"

He looked at me as if in challenge, but I said nothing, and Evarin got up and began to pace the floor restlessly.

"What are the Dreamers? No one knows; they do not know, themselves. They were men once. At least, they are born from men and women. Mendel knows what caused them. But one in every ten thousand men is born such a freak—a Dreamer."

"Mutations?" I said the word only to myself; Evarin did not hear. He went on:

"Some say that they were caused by the Cataclysm itself; others, that they are the souls of the dead machines. They are human and not human. They are telepaths. They have power; they can control everything: things, minds, people. They can throw illusions around men and things—they contested our rule."

He sat down again, brooding, quiet. "A dozen generations ago, here in Rainbow City, one of our people managed to bind the Dreamers. We could not kill them—they can protect themselves, I do not know how—for the weapon aimed at them must fall; the blow turned upon them recoils upon the striker. But he learned how to bind them, in sleep, make them harmless to us. That in itself might have been enough. But then we discovered that as they slept—and dreamed—they could be forced to give up their powers. To us. So that we controlled their powers, could wield their magic." There was a glimpse of horror behind his eyes as he said, "For a price. The price you know."

I kept silent I did not know the price. I wanted Evarin to go on.

He shivered a little, shook his head, and the horror vanished.

"So each of us in Rainbow City has a Dreamer who gives up his powers—for the price appointed—so that his master can do as he wills. And after years and years, as the Dreamer grows old and feeble, his powers wane, and then they can be killed. As they grow older and weaker, it is even safe to let them wake but never too strongly, or too long."

He laughed, bitterly. A fury came from nowhere into his face.

"And you loosed a Dreamer!" he cried. "A Dreamer with all his powers hardly come upon him! He is harmless as yet, but he waked, and he walks! And one day the power will come upon him and he will destroy us all!"

Evarin's thin features were drawn with despair, not arrogant now, but filled with fear and pain. "A Dreamer," he sighed, "and you had been made one with him already! Can you see now why we do not trust you, brother?"

Without answering, I rose and went to the window. This tower room did not look down into the neat little park, but on a vast tract of wild country. Far away, curious trails of smoke spiraled up into the abnormally bright sunshine, but a thick, cottony fog lay over the bottomland. There was a shine of lakes, patches of forest, bare hills. Against the sky I saw a bird wheeling, silent, hovering against the wind.

"Down there," said Evarin in a low voice, following me to the window, "down there the Dreamer walks and waits to destroy us all. Down there—"

But I did not hear the rest, for my mind completed it.

Down there is my lost memory. Down there is my life.

Somewhere down there I had left my soul.

CHAPTER THREE

I TURNED from the window. "Rhys is a Dreamer," I said, with slow certainty. "What is Gamine?"

Evarin nodded, ignoring the question. "Rhys is a Dreamer, yes," he said. "He is old now, so old he is near to mortal. So he wakes, and he walks. But once he was one of us, the only Dreamer ever born within Rainbow City. He will not harm his kindred; he is of our blood." Evarin cleared his throat. "So that Gamine takes what knowledge can be had from his old, old mind. And does not pay."

"But Gamine?"

Evarin still hesitated. "Karamy hates Gamine," he said at last, "and so no one sees Gamine's face. I ask no questions and I would not advise you to ask, unless you ask Karamy." A smile flickered on his mobile mouth. "Ask Karamy," he said gleefully. "She will tell!"

Karamy. She had been mentioned many times now, this Witch of the Golden Tower. Perhaps her memory lay in the same deep well that had fitted name and identity to Evarin when he stood before me. But it seemed safe to ask, "Why does Karamy hate Gamine?"

"My brother, if you cannot answer that, who can? Gamine and I have little love for one another, but on one thing we agree that Karamy's procession of slaves is monstrous, and that you are a fool, and worse, to pay for her desires. Karamy is far too fond of power in her own hands to pay to put it into yours. She has won every struggle between you so far—or why were you sealed within your own tower?"

"But I'm free now," I said.

He surveyed me, curiously. "Yes. It's possible you might be stronger than I think If so, we might join forces, you and I, if you think Karamy is too strong for our good. I can help you recover your memory." Evarin's prowling footsteps made no noise as he came to my side. "See, I have made you a Toy."

He put something small and hard into my hand, a thing wrapped in silvery silks. I raised my

hand curiously, untwisting the wrappings. They were smooth and colorless with a bluish cast, like Gamine's veiling, like no other fabric I had seen before.

Evarin backed slowly away from me. For an instant all I could see was a sort of blurred invisibility, like Gamine's face through the veil; then a sort of mirror surface became visible. It did not seem to reflect anything; rather, it was a coldly shining surface, cloudy, glittering from within. I bent to examine the pattern of the shadows that moved on the surface. There was a curious pull from the mirror, a cold that crept sluggishly through my hand, a familiar, soothing cold. My eyes bent closer—

A faint movement distracted me; Evarin was watching me, avid, eager, intent. Recognition crashed suddenly in my mind. Evarin's deadly Toys! I dashed the thing to the floor, giving it a savage kick The blurred invisibility wavered; I caught sight of a tiny jeweled mechanism before the thing sprang back to blurring gray ice again. Evarin had backed halfway across the room; I leaped at him and collared him.

"My memory's not that bad," I grated. "Damn you, I'll tie the thing to your throat!"

Evarin's mouth twisted; suddenly his whole face writhed into a blur and I felt his whole substance evaporate from between my hands; I backed away just in time as he materialized, whole and deadly, too close.

"I go guarded," he jerked out. "My Dreamer does not wake!"

He stooped for the fallen Toy; I kicked it out of his reach, bent to retrieve it. "I'll keep this," I said, and wadded the insulating silks around it, thrusting it into a pocket. Evarin glared at me, helplessly. Suddenly the rage in his face gave way to malicious laughter and he stood rubbing his braised shoulder, laughing and laughing. "Well, it was a good try!"

"Yes," I said, not laughing, "but this will stay in my pocket, and you'll stay solid for a while now, anyway! Toymaker! Damned freak!" I stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind me.

Now that Adric was back in control, I had no trouble discovering where I wanted to go. Some blind instinct led me through the maze of elevators, corridors, staircases. I passed servants quarters, kitchens, rooms full of things which I dismissed with a bare glance of disinterested familiarity. I would have been hopelessly lost if I had stopped to think where I was going, but finally I found myself in the open, the semicircle of rainbow towers rising around me.

Overhead the suns, red and white, sent a curious double-shadowed light through the neatlytrimmed

trees. A little day-moon, smaller than any moon I had ever seen, peered over the shoulder of the violet tower. The grass under my feet was just grass, but the brightly-tinted flowers in mathematically regular beds were strange to me; huge, fleshy, too bright. Paths, bordered by narrow ditches to keep the pedestrians off the flowers, wandered in and out of this strange lawn.

I accepted all this without conscious thought, but some scrap of memory made me avoid the ditches most carefully. As I remembered, there was an extremely practical reason for them.

Faint, shrill music tugged siren-like at my ears, wordless, like Gamine's crooning. Staring, I realized that the flowers sang. The singing flowers of Karamy's garden—Adric remembered their lotus song. A song of welcome? Or of danger?

I was not alone in the garden. Men, kilted and belted in the same gaudy red and gold as the flowers, passed and repassed restlessly, unquiet as chained flames. For a moment the old vanity turned uppermost in my mind. For all her slaves, Karamy paid homage to the Lord of the Crimson Tower! Paid— would continue to pay!

The men passed me, silent. They wore swords, but their swords were blunt, like children's toys. They were a regiment of zombies, of corpses. Their very salutes as I passed were jerky, mechanical.

A high note sang suddenly in the flowers; I felt, not heard, the empty parading cease. In a weird ballet they ranged themselves into blind lines that filed away nowhere. They were toy-soldiers, all alike.

And between the backs of the toy-soldiers and the patterned flowers I saw a man running. Another me, from another world, thought briefly of the card-soldiers, flat on their faces in the Alice-in-Wonderland garden of the Queen. Wonderland. I heard myself say, with half-conscious

amusement, "They all look so much alike until you turn them over."

The man running between the ditched flower-beds was no dummy from a pack of cards. He wore dark breeches and a dark shirt, and he moved quickly and lightly. I heard the high shrilling note again from the flowers—the flowers? Staring, I realized that the man held a whistle between his teeth, and it was this, blended into the flower-song, which gave the shrill note. He beckoned, still running, leaped over a ditch and came to rest near me.

"Adric!" he called softly, "Karamy walks here. Just listen to the flowers! I was afraid I'd have to get all the way into the Tower to find you and Narayan couldn't guard me that far!"

He raised his hand, the whistle in it, and blew a soft, liquid trill, which blended into the purring flower-tones. Then, drawing a deep breath, he said matter-of-factly, "Aldones! Am I glad to see you! Narayan said he knew you were free, but none of us quite believed it. He's outside the gates. He sent me to help. Come on."

The sight of the man touched another of those livewires in my brain. Narayan. The name hit another, a dull chord of fear, of dread and danger.

But I had come straight from Evarin. I knew the man. I knew the response he expected, but that brief glance into the Toymaker's mirror?—had set up a chain of actions I could not control. I tried to put out my hand in friendly greeting, and felt instead, with horror, my fingers at my sword-belt. I tried, without success, to halt the sword that flew, without volition, from its sheath.

The man backed away, eyes full of terror. "Adric—

no—the Sign—" he held up one hand, deprecatingly, then shrieked with agony, bent double, clutching at the severed fingers. I heard my own voice, savage, inhuman, the thin laughter of Evarin snarling through it:

"Sign? There's a sign for you!"

The man flung himself out of range, but his face, convulsed with anguish, held more stunned bewilderment than anything else. "Adric—Narayan swore to us that you were—you were yourself again."

I forced my sword back into its sheath. It didn't seem to want to go; I had to struggle as if it were a live thing, writhing out like a serpent. I stared without comprehension at the wound I had not wanted to inflict, at the darting heads of the flowers behind the man. I could not kill this man who had the name of Narayan on his tongue.

The flowers twitched, stirred, threw long, ropy tendrils out toward the man's bleeding hand. A quick nausea tightened my throat "Run!" I said urgently. "Run, or I can't-" The flowers shrilled. The man threw back his head, eyes wide with panic, and screamed.

"Karamy! Aieee!" He staggered back wildly, teetering on the edge of the little ditch; I cried

another warning, incoherent, too late. He trod on the flowers, stumbled across the little ditch. The writhing flowerheads shot up shoulder-high. They screamed) a wild paean of flower-music, and he fell among them, floundering, sprawling, I heard him scream once, harshly, hopelessly. I turned my eyes away. There was a wild thrashing, a flailing, a horrible yell that died and echoed against the walls of the enclosing towers. There was a sort of purring murmur from the flowers.

Then the flowers stilled and were quiet, waving innocently behind their ditches.

Karamy, gold and fire, walked along the winding path between the trees. And in the space of a second I forgot the man who lay in the bed of the terrible flowers.

She was all gold. From the glowing crown of her hair to the tips of her sandaled feet, she was a burnished shimmer; there was amber on her brows and a rod of amber twisted in her hand, and her smile was a dream. ...

A vision, a fantasy I had seen in my other world. ...

Great beauty has a stunning effect. It paralyzes other emotions. So I stared at the golden witch, at the shining amber rod that seemed to outline my face. But old habit made me turn my eyes away.

Karamy smiled, turning her cat's eyes to the lifeless sprawl in the flowers. "So? I thought I heard something. I wonder how he came so far?" Still watching me, she spun the shining rod; the

flower-song rose again, a soft keening wail, and two of the zombie guards moved noiselessly through the garden. At the silent movement of the amber rod, they lifted the corpse and bore it away. The music died. Karamy's eyes were bent on the ground; following the direction of her glance, I saw something lying there. A whistle.

Karamy touched it with one sandaled toe. "Clever," she said scornfully, "but not quite clever enough."

Then, eagerly, she raised her face to mine and held out her delicate hands.

"Adric! Adric! As soon as you are free, they pursue you again! That is not what you want, is it?"

I didn't answer. One of Adric's memories scuttled rabbit-fashion across my mind, giving a name to the man I had betrayed to the flowers.

Karamy slid in front of me so that I had to look at her. The lovely lazy voice murmured the name I was beginning to know.

"Adric, you are angry," the soft voice caressed me. "I knew it was cruel to let Evarin near you, but what else would have roused your anger enough to bring you back to yourself? Adric, we need you, Narabedla needs you. We felt betrayed when you left us, to shut yourself up alone with old Rhys and the stars! But now you have returned." Her hands gripped my shoulders and she clung to me. "Have you forgotten me, too? Or are you still my lover?"

It rang phony! Phony, was the way I put it to myself. Part of me felt like ripping her loose, calling her a lying, murdering she-devil, and getting that much, at least, on the record But I was fast acquiring a double cunning. The animal cunning of Adric's old habit—and a desperate, trapped cunning of my own, born of fear—fear of this unfamiliar world with terrible dangers at every corner, and magic lurking in mirrors and flowers. And how could I tell what I, myself, would do next? There was blood on my hands already. And if Adric was a pawn between warring forces in this world, how could I know what to do? There was nothing to do except ride along on the surface, play my hunches, and see where they took me.

I said, "Who could forget you, Karamy?"

She was very soft and sweet and something more than lovely in my arms, and I held her crushingly close while I struggled with a memory that would not quite come.

Karamy dropped her arms. The mantle of lazy seductiveness dropped with them. "You are still angry because I sent you out on the Time Ellipse! You do not yet know it was for your own good! You have not yet learned your lesson!"

I retorted, "If I were a tame cat, would you have any use for me?" and pulled her back again. That talk meant danger for me; I could think of only one way to silence it. She seemed to like it, but even with her lips acquiescent under mine, I was wary. Was I fooling her, or was she just playing my own game, and playing it a little better?

And my mind was not completely on what I was doing. I was still aware of the fleshy, deadly, waving flowers. ...

"Now we can make plans," she said, a little later. "First, Gamine." She looked sharply at me, but I kept my face expressionless, and she went on, "Gamine is always with the old Dreamer; she lets him wake far too long. He is old; he is akin to us, but even so he will grow too strong. We must send Rhys away from Narabedla. Gamine may stay, or follow him to exile, but Rhys must go."

"Rhys must go," I conceded.

"He should be slain, but Gamine will never do it," said Karamy, with a shrug that disposed of Rhys, "and at least, while Gamine is bound to Rhys, Gamine seeks no bond with a stronger Dreamer. Evarin—" she snapped her jeweled fingers. "His Dreamer sleeps sound! Evarin fears even his own powers! As for his Toys, well, they can serve us too. My Dreamer grows strong but he serves me!" The beautiful face looked ruthless and savage.

"Your Dreamer walks free in the forest! Only you can rebind him! You with my help, Adric of the Crimson Tower!" Her eyes smoldered. "Yes, and my Dreamer shall serve you, too, until then! I will pay to put power into your hands!"

The very phrase Evarin had used! Briefly, a shudder stung me. But Karamy's glowing face

burned through the sting of fear.

"You have come back to us, Adric and we need you! Tonight, tonight I go to the Dreamer's Keep, and you go with me. And after that, you will go to the forest where the Dreamer walks and end this danger to Rainbow City forever! And then," her lambent eyes burned, a flame, a coal, "then there will be no challenge to our power, in all Narabedla, in all the world!"

Against my will, I felt the slow kindling of the flame she roused. Power, power unlimited, and a beautiful woman with sorcery at her fingertips. Adric's ambition was like a fire in me, and I was swept away on it.

Witch—golden witch! I knew now, how the Dreamers must be paid—the price for which they would give up their magical powers into the hands of the Lords of the Rainbow. The small part of me that was still Mike Kenscott shuddered away in fear and disgust; the rest of me accepted the memory with a shrug, and it was this Adric part of me that spoke.

"I'll go. I need power badly enough to take it even from your hands, Karamy. And afterward I'll go into the forest where the Dreamer walks, and bring him back to you."

But even as I swept Karamy into my arms and bent her head back roughly under my mouth, a warning prickle iced my spine, and my eyes narrowed over her golden head.

I said, insinuatingly, "And then, Karamy—" but only in my mind did I complete the sentence:

And then, Golden witch—I will find a way to deal with you, too!

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTERWARD, WHEN I had found my way back to the Crimson Tower, I searched for hours for something that might give a clue to Adric's mysterious past. I was puzzled about this Adric, this strange cotenant who came and went as he pleased in the chambers of my memory.

What was identity anyhow? Was it just an awareness of self? I felt like myself—like Mike Kenscott. I could remember living a whole life as Mike Kenscott, childhood, school, army, work, girls. And yet, and yet, with Evarin, with Karamy, with the strange man I had betrayed to the flowers, I had found myself acting, speaking, thinking in ways that Mike Kenscott could never have accepted.

I didn't want to think about that. If I stopped to think about it, I'd start to panic again. Grimly, I rummaged the rooms for clues. I found many strange things, but nothing of importance. Whoever had taken Adric's memory (Karamy? Why?) had made sure that nothing in his surroundings should clear up the puzzle in his mind.

I knew only one thing; Adric was feared, disliked, distrusted by all the Narabedlans, except,

perhaps, Evarin in some moods. And all the Narabedlans except Gamine had something to gain by feigning friendship for Adric. I could not quite make out whether Karamy's attitude was love that pretended scorn to mold Adric to her will, or contempt that pretended love for the same reason. I didn't trust her, and I was just as glad that Adric didn't.

The name Narayan stuck burrlike in my mind. Friend or enemy?

The white sun had set, and the red sun was beginning to dip downward, when a servant knocked softly at the door, bringing food. He was not one of the zombies of Karamy's garden, but he spoke with respect verging on terror. Briefly, I considered questioning the man; then decided that I didn't dare. It would be foolhardy to let anyone in this rabbit-warren of enemies guess how weak, how confused and unsure I was. They thought that the Lord Adric was himself again, and if they were afraid enough of Adric, it might keep them off me for a while!

The man hesitated before backing out. "The Lady Cynara wishes to come to you, Lord Adric," he muttered at last. "May I bring her here?"

And who the devil was the Lady Cynara? Adric's wife? His concubine? Another of the Narabedlans, friend or foe, inhabitant of one of these Rainbow Towers? Whoever she was, I had enough trouble now. I said curtly "No," and the man mumbled something and went away.

I sat at the barred window of Adric's high tower, trying to force memory from the alien mind in which I was prisoner. And whether it was sheer effort of will, or the result of that fragmentary

look in Evarin's mirror, or whether, as Gamine insisted, I was really Adric, and Mike Kenscott only an illusion of Karamy's magic, memory did begin to pulse back In the early days ...

In the early days, before the vagueness that came on my mind, Adric of the Crimson Tower had been a powerful lord of Rainbow City. The memories of that time were not memories which I, as Mike Kenscott would have cared to own, but I, as Adric, found them vastly pleasing.

We were an ancient race, we lords of the Rainbow City. Our kin had wielded power over all this land but we were a shrinking race, too, and a dying race Fewer and fewer of the Children of the Rainbow were born to Narabedla's power. And of those, some were weaklings, unfit to share in the tremendous power of the captive Dreamers, and Adric, in his overpowering ambition, had struck against them, gathering all rule into his own hands. As kings in all lands have done from time out of mind, slowly, methodically, he eliminated all those who would contest his power And now all Narabedla looked to the Lord of the Crimson Tower for rule; and in Rainbow City there dwelt only Evarin, who toyed with pleasure and mischief, and Gamine—had Adric ever known the truth about Gamine?—who loved only wisdom, and a scant handful of others who acknowledged Adric as unquestioned lord.

And Karamy! Karamy who had come to challenge my power—and remained to share it!

I had wanted power and I had had it, unlimited, from a Dreamer newly bound, who stirred but vaguely in his sleep. Past Narabedla, half the known portions of this world sent tribute to the Lord of the Crimson Tower.

Some memories were triumphant. Some seemed funny to Adric's cynical mind. Some were terrible

beyond guessing, for Adric had not counted the cost of his triumphs, and even he shuddered at the price the Dreamers had exacted.

Then, to this willful and wild man, something had happened. I had no idea what. Fleeting images came through grayness—a blonde, boyish face lifted in incredulous terror, or joy: a fleeing form, veiled, that retreated down the corridors of my memory, averting its face as I followed.

Whatever had happened, it had come when Adric was surfeited, even if momentarily, with conquest, when he was sickened with blood and horror at the price of his power. For this magical power—forced through the mind of the Dreamers, the mutants, kept in enforced sleep or suspended animation—called for energy, kinetic energy, available from one source and from one source only. Adric had fed the Dreamer liberally with that source. For a time.

One day, as a whim, I had redeemed a young woman marked for that fate. Then the vagueness came and choked memory. I might think, I might burst my brain, but so far and no further could I remember. I could not force memory of that chain of events.

But after that, Adric's reign had collapsed like an arch with the keystone removed. His armies

scattered; he had shut himself up or been imprisoned in the Crimson Tower, his memories had been stolen, and he had gone, or been sent, spinning along a time line, forward or perhaps back, whether in Time or Space I could not imagine, until somewhere in the abyss of the other worlds he had touched the man who knew himself as Mike Kenscott.

And then, perhaps, Adric had escaped. He had reached out, drawn Mike Kenscott into his web and exchanged the two. It was a perfect escape, perhaps, for a life Adric had come to hate; a life filled with too many conflicts to be endured.

But I was Adric. ...

There was an explanation for that, too. The physical body could not make the transition. I had Adric's body, the convolutions of his brain, the synaptic links of habit. His memory banks. Only the ego, the superimposed pattern of conscious identity—the soul, if you will—was that of Mike Kenscott. In Adric's body and brain, the old patterns and habits ruled and, to all intents and purposes, I was Adric.

And back in my own time, I supposed, Adric was living in my body, living Mike Kenscott's life, going through the motions, with only the same queer lapses I was making here. And after a while, even these would fade. I was wholly trapped. Living Adric's life, would Adric grow stronger and stronger in me, until —he?—wholly unseated the other identity? And he, with my body, somewhere in the other world, would he become me?

Andy, 1 thought with a wild swift fear, what will he do to Andy?

Nothing. He could not harm Andy, not in my pattern, any more than I could hate Evarin. Or could he? I had drawn my sword, today, on a man who called me friend, given him to Karamy's terrible flowers.

I had to get back! God, I had to get back! But how?

How had I come here?

Once before, for a little while, Adric and I had touched lives on—what had Gamine called it? The Time Ellipse. That day they thought the lab was struck by lightning. For eighteen hours, while I lay

crushed under a laboratory beam, and later under drugs in the hospital) he and I had shared a fragment of life somehow. But the escape had not been complete. Something had driven him, or drawn him, back to his own world.

And he had tried again, or had been sent back And this time he seemed to have succeeded. Was he in my hunting cabin in the mountains, cleaning fish for supper, curiously rummaging through my electrical equipment? Viciously I hoped he'd give himself some damned good shocks on it.

Something of Adric had stayed with me after our first contact. The strange lapses, the day I had

flown at an eagle with my knife.

When the red sun glowed like a darkening ember across the Sierras, one of Karamy's toy-soldier guards came with a summons. Hat, mechanical, the words were a simple request for my presence, but they made me shudder. Somehow I had thought that these —zombies?—could not speak I stared at the man. He was a tall sturdy looking fellow, with a round simple freckled face, bronzed with health; arms and chest were bulging with muscle. But the eyes were random, unfocused, the mouth was drooping-slack, and when I questioned him about where I was to go he stared and shifted his eyes and repeated in the same flat tone:

"The presence of the Lord Adric is requested."

He stood without moving, immobile except for the slow rise and fall of his breath, and finally it dawned on me that if this creature had no volition, he—or itwas simply waiting for my command. I wanted to tell it to go away, but I wasn't sure whether I could find my way without a guide.

I went automatically to the cupboard, drew out a crimson cloak lined thickly with fur, and shrugged it around my shoulders with a careless gesture; thenwaved my hand at the silent sentry and he turned, his slow even tread ringing on the stairs. I followed him down through a labyrinth of stairs and elevatorshafts, finally emerging into a long corridor.

I strode down it, hearing my own steps echo; a second rhythm joined my steps, almost

imperceptibly, and Gamine stole out of the darkness, still luminously veiled, a noiseless ghost behind me. Later I became conscious of Evarin's padding cat-steps trailing us. And others came from darkened recesses to stretch the silent parade; a girl in a slim-winged cloak the color of flame, a dwarfed man who walked in a huddle of purple cloak and dark fur.

The corridor began to angle upward, climbing toward a gleam of light at the end. Without realizing it, I had swung into an arrogant, loping stride; now I brushed away the slave-soldier who headed the column, and took the lead myself. Behind me the others fell into file as if I had bidden them; the flame-clothed girl in the winged cloak, Evarin in leaf-green, the dwarf bent in his jester's cap, shrouded Gamine. Without warning we came into a vast courtyard, an enclosed plaza of imposing grandeur.

The red sun glowed above us like a gas fire. There were tall pillars on three sides of the court, and at the far end a vaulted archway, leading into a tree-lined drive that stretched away, shadowy, into the forest. Between two pillars Karamy waited, slim, shimmering, golden; a hungry impatience sparked her cat's eyes.

"You're late!"

"I'm ready now," I said. For what, I wasn't sure.

Karamy waved an impatient signal to the Narabedlans who were coming up. "Adric is with us again! Your allegiance to Adric, Children of the Rainbow!"

I stood at her side, mute, waiting, the guard of silent men behind us.

"Lord Idris!" Karamy summoned. The dwarf came to bow jerkily before me. "Welcome home, Lord!"

Evarin's face was sly and malicious, but his voice was a purr of silk "It is pleasure to follow you again, my brother."

The girl in flame-color said nothing, but her dipping curtsy was like the waver of a moth toward a flame. "Adric—" she murmured. She was a shy thing; the wings of her cloak lifted and fluttered as if they would fly of themselves, and her dark hair waved softly as if it too were winged. I touched her fingers lightly, but under the smolder of Karamy's eyes let her go.

"You ride with us, Cynara?" Karamy sounded displeased. The girl in the winged cloak raised her face, but she did not speak Gamine's voice, a soft singing croon, hummed for a moment, almost wordless, in the twilight. Then, gliding forward, Gamine murmured, "It is my will, Karamy. Do you dispute my right?"

For a moment the tension was like visible force, like a shimmer in the air; then Karamy made a careless gesture.

"What do I care for you or your spells, Gamine? Come or go at your own will, bring whoever

you like. There is no talk of rights at this moment."

I had wondered, seeing the Narabedlans assembled, if old Rhys would join us as well, but apparently he was not expected. From somewhere the silent men brought horses. Horses here in this nightmare world? They looked like any other horses anywhere. I had never been on a horse in my life. I found myself vaulting, with a nice co-ordination of movement, into the high, peculiarly horned saddle.

The courtyard, in spite of the stamping horses, the bustle of departure, somehow held the silence of the grave. Karamy kept me close to her; when we were all mounted, she flung the amber rod upward. The last rays of the sun caught its prism, and threw a beam of pure light down the darkened alleyway of trees. At the sight of that gleam, a curious emotion stole through me, at once familiar and strange. I flung up my arm over my head.

"Ride!" I cried. "Ride to the Dreamer's Keep!"

The alleyway under the arch of trees led for miles under the thick boughs. Behind us drummed the hooves of Karamy's guard; through the noise I could still hear the sweet floating sound of Gamine's singing, rising and falling with the rise and fall of the rolling road. The wind whipped Karamy's golden hair into a pale halo around her head.

I glanced back over my shoulder to where the rainbow towers stood, just black silhouettes now against the greater darkness of the mountains behind them. Overhead in the pink sky the crescent

of the tiny moon was brightening; lower, near the horizon, I saw a wider disc, almost at full, just coming clear of the trees. Cold air was stinging my cheeks and nipping my bones with frost. I felt the sparks struck from the hooves beating on the frozen ground.

Frost! Yet in Karamy's garden, the flowers had glowed in tropical glory!

And for a moment it was Mike Kenscott, entirely Mike Kenscott, sick, bewildered and panicky, who glanced about him with horror, feeling the swirling cold and a colder chill from the golden sorceress at my side. It was Mike Kenscott's will that jerked the reins of the big gelding, to end this farce now.

"What is it?" Karamy cried, above the hoofbeats.

And I heard my own voice, raised above the galloping rhythm, cry back, "Nothing," and call out a command to the horse.

Good God! I was Mike Kenscott, but prisoner in a body that would not obey me, a mind that persisted in thoughts and habits I could not share, a soul that would carry me to destruction! I was Mike Kenscott and I was trapped on a nightmare ride through hell!

CHAPTER FIVE

I HAD BEEN SCARED before. Now I was panicked, wild with a nerve-destroying fright I'm no coward. I set up a radar transmitter on Okinawa within ninety feet of a nest of Japs. That was something real. I could face it. But under two suns and a pair of strange moons, surrounded by weird people that I knew were not human as I understood it—all right I was a coward. I steadied myself in the saddle, trying with every scrap of my will to calm myself. If this was a nightmare well, I'd had some beauties.

But it wasn't, I knew that. The frost hurting my face, the sound of shod steel on stone, the vivid colors all around me—dreams are not in color. All these things told me that I was awake, wide awake. And through all this I was riding hell-for-leather, knees gripped on the saddle, guiding the horse with the grip of my thighs, and I'd never been on a horse in my life. Riding, riding—

We had ridden several miles, and stopped twice to breathe the horses, but we were still beneath the great archway of trees. The sky's pink sunset had faded; the land was flooded with blue, fluorescent moonlight. I looked up through the black foliage; I suppose I had some confused idea that I might find out, when I was by the stars. But the view to the north was hidden by mountains, and except for the Big Dipper, I don't know one constellation from another.

I had dropped back from Karamy's side until I rode between Gamine and the girl in flame-color. The spell-singer saluted me with a vague nod, but the girl in the winged cloak threw back her hood, and I saw dark eyes, watching me from a pure, sweet young face. Before the luminous innocence of those eyes, I wanted to cry out that I was not Adric, warlock of Narabedla, I was

just a poor guy called Mike, I was just—me!

But it was Gamine who spoke; the musical voice was not raised, but carried easily to my ears. "You seem to be wholly yourself again."

I didn't know what to say. I shook my head.

Strangely, there seemed to be sympathy in the neutral voice. "If our memory halts, at least you will remember—perhaps too much—at the Dreamer's Keep."

"Gamine," I asked, "who is Narayan?"

I saw the blue robes quiver a little, and a curious flickering glint crossed the face of the girl in the winged cloak. But Gamine's voice was perfectly even.

"I have never seen anyone of that name. Perhaps Cynara could answer you, if you asked her."

I glanced at the girl—Cynara? But I did not put the question, for the name Cynara had suddenly touched another of those live-wires in my brainor Adric's Cynara. Narayan. Narayan and Cynara. If I could only remember!

What would Cynara have said, if I had let the servant bring her to me, in the Crimson Tower? Was it too late to find out?

I looked up at the girl again, and something in me said No! Damn it, I didn't want any more of Adric's memories!

Cynara had drawn her dark pony level with mine. She rode side-saddle, easily, straight and slender, as if she had been born to it; beneath the flame-colored cloak she was small and slim, and endearingly human, the only normal, human thing I had seen in this world! I felt like bursting out, telling her—

"Don't be frightened," Cynara said, and her voice was low and sweet, muted so that I could barely make out the words, and her lips hardly moved. "You won't have to go. It's all arranged."

"What—" I burst out, but she shook her head quickly, with a warning glance at Evarin, who was swiftly overtaking us.

Karamy turned in her saddle; beckoned to me, imperiously. For a moment I rebelled; then I touched my heels to the horse's flank and rode forward to rejoin Karamy.

For several minutes the road had been climbing, and now we topped the summit of a little rise and abruptly the trees came to a halt. We drew our horses to a walk.

We stood atop the lip of a broad bowl of land, perhaps thirty miles across, filled to the brim with thick dark forest. Far out, at the bottom of this valley, lay a cleared space, and in that space rose a

great tower. Not a slender, fairylike spire, not one of the towers of Rainbow City. This was a massive donjon, thrusting heavy shoulders upward into the moonflooded sky, ancient, terrible.

The Keep of the Dreamers!

Something in me murmured "This is the forest where the Dreamer walks" or had the murmured

words come from Karamy, at my side? She rode eagerly, her face taut, her slender hands clenched on the reins. Part of me knew the reason for her eagerness, and part of me wondered at it. For all this time I was Mike Kenscott, but a helpless Mike Kenscott, who watched himself without knowing what he would say or do next! Like those puzzling nightmares where a man is both actor and audience to some mummery being played, I watched myself say and do things as if I were twins. In effect, I suppose I was—

Karamy turned in her saddle to face me.

"You don't trust me!" she said vehemently. "I can feel it! What is it?"

"Have I reason to trust you?" I was not sure whether I spoke or Adric, cautious, watching myself

I had expected her to flare into anger again; instead, a bewitching cat-smile spread over her features, and her gold eyes seemed to gleam in the light. She murmured, "Perhaps not," and her laughter was like a golden bell.

Then her face grew intent and eager.

"Adric, if you would stop to think, you would realize that I need you, that Narabedla needs your strength. Listen, Adric, everything has changed. The people are rebellious, even defiant. I can't lead armies against them! I ask you, have we ever had to ride with guards before, here in our own forest?"

I heard Evarin's harsh laugh behind me. "So, you would strip Adric of all his powers, then complain because you have no strong hand?"

"And little enough punishment," said the harsh voice of the dwarf Idris, drawing his horse level with ours. He glowered at me. "I hate you for a traitor, Adric, you, who freed a Dreamer and loosed all this upon us! I said you should die!"

"But you can see it was not needful that he should die," Karamy said, and looked at me as if seeking my support. "Surely you can see now, Adric, that what I did was only to bring you back to your senses—to save what I could."

"She's right," Evarin said. "We can settle our private quarrels later, Adric; just now we have a rebellion on our hands, and a Dreamer at large. If Rainbow City is to survive at all, we've got to forget the past. What Adric may have done in a moment of madness, he can undo now. If you can't make peace, at least make a truce!"

"Adric," Karamy murmured. "Take me where the Dreamer walks."

I knew, with sudden surety, that because of some bond between the freed Dreamer and myself, I could do this. But something cautioned me to say only, "That bond is broken, Karamy. Did you not break it yourself? I have not forgotten that much," and for my reward I saw unsureness leap in her cat's eyes. So that shot had told; Karamy had tried to break the bond, and had succeeded, or thought she had. Now, when she thought Adric was enough her dupe to use that bond only for her private purposes, and not against her, she was guessing.

But this woman was past mistress of subtlety. She murmured, "The bond can be reforged, that I swear."

Ah, but I knew how far to trust even Karamy's oaths! "Forge it, then," I said bluntly, "but don't count on me to undo what you did."

We had dipped down into the bowl of forest, and were riding through thick woods, along a road that struggled windingly, with many curves and sharp corners. Adric knew this country; his knowledge made Mike Kenscott shiver. He had hunted here, and for no four-legged game. As if Karamy read my thoughts, I heard her low laughter.

"So. My wrist aches for the feel of a falcon! We'll hunt here again, you and I!" The words gave me a quivering excitement, an insidious thrill.

Behind me I heard Gamine's chanting take on a new note. The words were still indistinguishable, but the very tone held warning. A pulse began to twitch jerkily in my neck

Without warning, the road twisted and redoubled in an S-curve. Karamy and I spurred our horses and rounded the first bend in one racing burst of speed, swung round the second, and were fairly in the trap before we knew it.

It was the agonized whinny of my horse, and the jolt of my body automatically righting itself from the plunging of the animal beneath me, that made me realize we had ridden straight on a chevaux-de-frise. I yelled, cursing, shouting to Karamy to get back, get back, but her own momentum carried her on; I saw her light body fly out of the saddle and disappear. The others, rounding the curve, were fairly on the barrier already, and the place was a scramble, with riderless horses milling in a melee of curses and the screaming of women and the thrashing of feet. I was out of my saddle in a moment, thrusting Gamine's mount back from the stabbing points fixed invisibly against the dark barrier in the road, shouting to Evarin and Idris. Evarin leaped to my side, and I tore madly at the barricade. Idris bore down on me, mounted. "Go round," he shouted. I plunged through the underbrush at the side of the road, with hasty feet twice snaked by long creepers. Past the barrier, the road lay open and deserted and Karamy lay there in a shimmer of crumpled silk, motionless.

"Gamine, Evarin," I shouted, "no one's here! Karamy is hurt."

The head and shoulders of Idris' horse thrust through the thick brushwood at the edges of the path. "Is she dead?"

I bent, thrusting my hand against her breast. "Only stunned. Her heart's beating. Get down," I ordered, and Idris scrambled, monkey-fashion, from the saddle. I lifted the woman in my arms, but she did not move or open her eyes. Idris touched my arm.

"Put her across my saddle."

She was a limp dead weight in my arms, and as I laid her on the saddle she stirred and moaned. Suddenly, behind me, Idris cried out.

"What?" I asked sharply.

"I heard-"

I never knew what Idris heard. His head vanished as if snatched away by a giant's hand; a rough grip collared me, choking fingers clawed at my throat, a thousand rockets went off in my head, and I lay sprawling in the brushwood, eating dust, with an elephant sitting on my chest and threatening hands gouging at my throat. My last coherent thought, before the breath went out of me, was—

"I'm waking up!"

CHAPTER SIX

BUT I WASN'T. When I came to—it can only have been a few seconds that I was unconscious—it was to hear Evarin snarling curses, and Idris barking incoherently with rage. I heard Karamy shriek my name, and tried to answer, but the steely fingers were at my throat, and with that weight on top of me I hadn't a chance. The fall, or something, had knocked Adric clean out of me, I was fuzzy-brained, but I was me; I was an innocent bystander again.

I could just see Evarin and Idris in the road, casting wary glances into the thick brushwood. Above me, I could barely make out the face of the man who was holding me pinned to the earth with his body. He had the general build of a hippopotamus, and a face to match. I squirmed, but the threatening face came closer, and I subsided. The man could have broken me in two like a matchstick Around me in the thicket were dozens of crouching forms, fantastic snipers with weapons at their shoulders, weapons that could have been crossbows or disintegrators—or both. "Enter Buck Rogers," I thought wearily. I was beginning to feel faint again, and old welterweight on my stomach didn't help any.

Just as I thought I'd burst, he moved, stubby fingers knotting a gag in my gasping mouth; then the intolerable weight on my chest was gone, and I sucked in air with relief The fat man eased himself cautiously away, but I felt a steel point caress my ribs. The threat didn't need words.

I could see the Narabedlans gathered in a tight little knot in the road. The snipers around me were still holding their weapons drawn, but the fat man commanded in a whisper "Don't fire. They're sure to have guards riding behind them."

The voices died away to a rasping mutter, and I lay motionless, trying to dig up some of Adric's memories that would help. But the only thing I got was a memory of my own football days, and a flying tackle from a Penn State halfback that had knocked me ten feet. Adric was gone, clean gone.

The Narabedlans were talking in low tones, Gamine the rallying-point around which they clustered. I wondered why that surprised me; then the surprise, too, faded. Evarin had his sword out, but even he did not step toward the mantling thicket. Cynara was holding Idris by the arm, and I heard her crying out, wildly, "No, no! If you make a move, they'll kill him!"

Between two breaths, the road was alive with mounted men. I never knew who they were; I was quickly jerked to my feet and dragged away. Behind me I heard shouting, and steel clashing, and saw flashes of colored flame; spots of black danced before my eyes as I stumbled along between two of my captors. I felt my sword dragged out of the scabbard. Oh well, I thought wryly, I don't know how to use it, anyhow, now that Adric's run out on the party!

Under the impetus of a knife in my ribs I found myself clambering into a saddle, awkwardly, hands

tied, felt the horse running beneath me. There wasn't much chance of getting away, and anyhow, the fire couldn't be much worse than the flying pan!

Behind us the sounds and scufflings died away. The horse I was riding raced sure-footed in the darkness. I hung on with my two hands; only Adric's habitual muscle reflexes kept me from tumbling ignominiously to the ground. I don't think I had any more coherent thoughts until the jolting rhythm broke and we came out of the forest into full moonlight and the glare of open fires.

I raised my head, still clinging to the saddlehorn with one hand, and looked round. We were in a grove, tree-ringed like a Druid temple, lighted with watch-fires and torches stuck up on long poles. Tents sprouted in the clearing, giving the place an untidy, gypsy appearance. At the back was a white frame house with a flat roof and wide doors.

I swallowed hard, swaying in the saddle, It was the place of my dream, where I had flown as a strange bird, where an arrow had struck me. I felt a strange darting pain in my chest, and grabbed at the horn of the saddle.

Men and women were coming out of the tents everywhere. The talk was a Pentecost of tongues, but I heard the name "Adric!" run in a blaze around the circle, and over and over again, another name, repeated:

"Narayan! Narayan!"

A slim young man, blonde, dressed in rough brown, came out of one of the larger tents and walked deliberately to me. The crowd drew back, widening to let him approach; before he came within twenty yards he signaled to one of the men, who immediately unknotted the gag from my mouth and untied my hands, helping me slide down from the saddle. I stood clinging to the stirrup, exhausted.

"Any trouble, Raif ?" the young man asked.

My gigantic captor shook his head. "Seems we caught 'em without any magic! They were bound for the Keep, but we've kept 'em away a good while now. The Witch had a few dozen of her guards, though."

The blonde young man shook his head soberly. "At least you got safely away? You didn't try to fight."

"Orders are orders," said the big man glumly. "You said, get Adric and get away again. Well, here he is and here we are, and those—" he swore, shockingly, and the blonde young man laughed.

"You'll have your chance for fighting, soon enough!"

He came forward until he could almost have touched me, and studied my face dispassionately. At last he raised his head, turning to the fat man, Raif.

"This isn't Adric," he said, "I don't know this man at all."

I should have been relieved. I don't know why I wasn't. Here was somebody, at last, who could tell the difference. Instead, my first reaction was bewilderment and angry annoyance. How could he tell that? I was as furiously embarrassed as if I'd been caught wearing stolen clothing. My beefy captor was as angry as I was.

"What do you mean, this isn't Adric?" he demanded. "Are you wearing your eyes inside your pockets? We took him right out of their accursed cavalcade! If it isn't Adric, who is it?"

"I wish I knew," Narayan said under his breath. His eyes were still fixed on my face, with a stillness that was disconcerting. He was tall and straightly built, with pale blonde hair, square-cut around his shoulders like a troubadour in a Provencal ballad, and gray eyes that looked grave, but friendly. I liked his looks, but he had a trace of the uncanny stillness I'd noticed in old Rhys. For a moment I had half decided to tell my story to this man with the grave eyes. He would surely believe it.

But as he looked at me, doubt came into his face, and then he sighed and looked at the men around him before turning back to me.

"Adric?" he said, "do you still remember me? Or did Karamy take that, too?"

I sighed. I didn't dare tell the truth, and I felt too chilled and exhausted and disoriented to lie convincingly. Yet lie I must, and do it well, without even knowing why this man—Narayan?— had twice risked an attack on the powers of Rainbow City to get Adric away.

Well, I had an excuse in Adric's supposed loss of memory. Anything I didn't remember, any mistakes I made—"You are Narayan?" I asked.

The fat man, still holding me by the elbow, scowled at Narayan. "Don't let him get by with that," he growled. "Look you, did Brennan come back this afternoon? He knows his way around Rainbow City, he went guarded! Ask Adric what happened to Brennan and make him tell you!"

The clamoring broke out around us again, but Narayan never took his eyes from my face as he answered gently, "There is always danger, Raif Blame no man unjustly. And even Adric is not to blame, if Karamy has him under her spells."

"Traitor!" Raif snarled at me, and spat. I had an eerie memory of Idris—same words, same gestures. Around us the crowding men muttered to one another, casting uneasy glances at me, and I felt my body tensing, my fists clench with the first traces of the now-familiar, murderous rage of Adric. Oh, God, no! Not again! I thought of Brennan, his face raised trustfully to me in friendship, felt again the whiplash stroke of my sword, heard his dying yell. ...

Shaking, I clutched at the saddle-horn, trying desperately to hold on to myself Of all the people I might have been in this madhouse world, this Adric takes the prize, I found myself thinking with a weird detachment, neither side trusts him as far as they can kick him and I don't blame them.

I let go of the saddle-horn and stepped dizzily forward. "You might try asking me," I said, with a weary anger.

"Then, if you're not Adric, who the hell are you?" fat Raif snapped, "and what did you do with Brennan?"

I shook my head, exhaustion sliding over me. I don't know what I would have said, but Narayan stepped toward me, saying quickly, "Not here, Raif." He seized my arm in a firm grip. "Stand back, you people there. Come along."

The men murmured to themselves, but they cleared a path for us, stepping back warily as Narayan led me toward the frame house at the edge of the grove; Raif and one other man trailed after us, and the men began to disperse into their tents and around their fires. A few, still grumbling, clustered hive-fashion round the door as we went up the steps.

Inside, in a great timbered room, a fire was burning; flames leaped up from a great crimson bed of

logs, creating warmth and light in the shadows. I went toward the fire gratefully; I was stiff with

riding, and chilled and empty and stupefied with the cold.

From a wooden settle near the fireplace, a slim figure rose, the figure of a slight dark girl in a cloak that caught the firelight like escaped flames.

"Cynara!"

"Adric," she said half-aloud, holding out both hands to me. I took them, partly because she seemed to expect it, partly because the girl seemed the only real thing in this whole incredible nightmare. Something real, something to hold on to—

Then she flung her arms around my neck and held herself close to me, not passionately, not sensuously, but, in a curious way, as if she were protecting me.

So she had known about this. But what was she doing here?

Narayan took the girl by the shoulder and gently pulled her away from me; she shrank a little before the annoyance in his eyes.

"Cynara," he said, "what are you doing here?"

"I—I slipped away from them in the dark I suppose Gamine knows, but they'll never find me here."

He looked down at her, shaking his head. At last he said, "Little sister, you must go back to Narabedla. I would not make you go if there was any other way, but there is not. We have all risked too much to keep you there." He beckoned to the third man who had come inside with us. "Kerrel, take Cynara back to the roadway, but don't get caught yourself. Cynara, you can tell them that you were lost in the woods, or that you were caught and escaped."

"I won't go back," she said, with her mouth trembling. "Now that Adric's here again, what's the use of it? Surely there can be an end to it, now."

She clung to my hand, but I only shook my head, helplessly. I didn't understand, but her fear communicated itself to me. I put my arm round her, feeling her tremble. Narayan looked from Cynara's face to mine, and finally sighed.

"Maybe you're right. Now's the time when we have to risk everything, win all, or lose all." He turned to the men. "I'll talk to Adric. Alone."

Raif's thick lips set, stubbornly. He looked as if he'd be a very nasty customer in a fight.

"If he's Adric, and if he's under Karamy's devilments, then—"

"I have faced Adric, and Karamy too," said Narayan with a friendly grin. "Get out, Raif, you're not my bodyguard, nor yet my nurse."

The fat man accepted dismissal, reluctantly, and Narayan came to my side. Cynara let go my hand and withdrew to the settle near the fire. I was sorry to lose her support.

She, at least, trusted Adric. ...

There was real friendliness in Narayan's smile. "Well," he said, "now we will talk, you and I. You cannot kill me, any more than I could kill you, so we may as well be truthful with one another. Why did you leave us again, Adric? And what has Karamy done to you this time?"

The room reeled around me. I put out a hand to steady myself; when the dizziness cleared, Narayan's arm was around my shoulders, and he was holding me up with a strength surprising in his slight frame. He eased me into a seat. "You've been pretty roughly handled," he said. "The men, well, they had orders.

But perhaps they carried them out with too much zeal. And if I know Karamy's ways, you've been heavily drugged for a long, long time." His eyes studied me, intently. "You don't look very glad to be here, but at least you didn't come in fighting. Maybe we can talk. Better come and have a drink And when did you eat last?"

I rubbed my forehead. "I can't remember," I told him honestly. Adric's servants had brought food, but I hadn't touched it.

"I thought so. You look half starved," Narayan said. "That's what sharig does to you, as I have reason to know." He went into the next room, assuming that I. would follow and that I knew my way around.

After the insanely furnished rooms in Rainbow City, I was a little surprised when the next room turned out to be a fairly ordinary and functional kitchen, equipped with items not too unlike those in my own world. Well, after all, how many ways are there to design a stove? Or a table?

Out of a relatively unsurprising icebox, (although it had an oval door) he assembled various cold foods, and poured liquid into an oddly-shaped handled cup, motioned me into a chair and set the things on the table. "Here, eat this," he said. "I know those damned drugs of theirs; you'll make more sense after you've eaten, and we've plenty of time to talk all night if we choose." He saw me glance at the mug, laughed sketchily and poured himself a drink from the same bottle; he sat down opposite me, sipping it slowly. "Go ahead. Even if I felt like poisoning you, I wouldn't until I knew what Karamy was up to," he chuckled.

I laughed, too. Poison? When any of them could have shoved a knife into me, at any time during the last three hours? I started eating. I hadn't felt hungry, but with the first bite, I realized that I was famished. I had last tasted food some forty-eight hours ago (and that had been in another world); Adric, judging from the hunger I felt, had evidently fasted longer than that. I ate everything on the plate; Narayan sipped his drink and watched me, and when I finally pushed the empty plate aside, he put back his mug and said, "Now, what's happened? You're Adric—and you're not."

I felt better and stronger than I'd felt since Adric, with help from Rhys (but why? Why?) had catapulted me into this world. Narayan seemed friendly, but so had Evarin. Now I must talk fast and convincingly, before those searching gray eyes.

"I'm not sure,'' I said at last. "I don't remember much, just coming to myself, this morning, in the Crimson Tower. I think it was this morning. I was freed. Karamy wanted to take me to the Dreamer's Keep? and then your men came along. I didn't know whether I was being captured or rescued. I still don't."

I stared with purposeful blankness at Narayan, and he stared back; I could feel his debate with himself, what to do or say. Obviously an Adric sane and glib and possibly untruthful was a different thing than a man too bewildered and drugged and shaken to tell anything but the truth.

Finally Narayan said, "I'm not sure what I ought to do or say, Adric. There was a time when I could read your thoughts. Not now. The bond between us isn't as strong as it was. You know that."

I nodded. Adric's thoughts seemed to be surging back, insidiously, as if Narayan held the key to unlock them. Fool, not to question me when he had me in his power! Soft fool!

I clung with both hands to my awareness of Mike Kenscott. What crazy drama was going to be unfolded in the battlefield of my mind now?

"What did Karamy do?" Narayan asked.

My voice was as quiet as his own. "Karamy sent me out on the Time Ellipse." This much I knew from Rhys and Gamine. "She hoped I'd come back changed, or mad, or maybe not at all. I think—I think she wanted me to betray you again."

"Adric!" Narayan reached out and gripped my arm, above the elbow, until I cried out with the pain of that steely grip and wrenched away, rubbing bruised flesh.

"Sorry," Narayan muttered, looking at his hands, "I forgot I was—" he swallowed, staring at me. "But why do you say—to betray me again? What betrayal? Adric, it was your hand that freed me! Zandru's hells, Adric," he begged, "Adric, how much have you forgotten? Who and what do you think I am?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE FIRE IN the other room had burned to an ember. Without a glance my way, Narayan mended the fire, sat down, his legs stretched to the little blaze, his chin in his hands, waiting. I could not stand still; I walked, restless, around the room, speaking in little jerks and halfsentences, not knowing how much was memory and how much was what I could piece together

from the jigsaw puzzle of this strange, nightmare world.

"You are—you were the Dreamer," I said. "I remember—being bound to you, and later I—I remember when I freed you. Not knowing what it might mean, not knowing whether you might have slain me on the ground of sacrifice."

"No." Narayan was as motionless as Gamine's veils. "No, Adric, never that. We cannot kill one another, you and I. I could order you killed, I suppose, but I—I would never do that unless there was no other way. I always hoped there would be another way, for me, for you."

I tried to trim my words carefully between the two personalities that were battling in my brain. At least I was beginning to reconstruct Adric's story with some coherence and logic, not the isolated scraps I had deduced before.

"Adric freed you," I said. "I am not sure whether it

was for your sake, or whether he wished to—to work for his own power against the others in Rainbow City." Yes, that was the burning incongruity; that Adric, this harsh and cruel man, should have freed a Dreamer, should have worked against his own people and his own power. Why, why? If I knew that, I would have the key to everything.

But I did not know. I sighed and went on.

"Karamy took Adric from you, by treachery," I said. "She sent him, half-mad, back to the Crimson Tower. Karamy's magic stripped him of his memories, broke the bond between you and Adric."

"Not entirely," Narayan said, staring into the fire. "I knew when you woke. But I could not come, myself, into Rainbow City and rescue you. You know what is kept there."

I didn't, but it hardly seemed important now.

"Karamy stripped Adric of memory and power, sent him back to stargazing in Narabedla; she hoped, when at last she let him return, that he would be the old Adric. Karamy needed his power, more than she feared it. But it was not Karamy—" the voice that was not quite mine shook, suddenly, with my own weariness and the blank terror I'd been keeping at bay, "it wasn't Karamy who sent me here! I'm not Adric, you were perfectly right, I'm no more Adric than you are! I'm in Adric's body, yes, I have—I have some of his memories, his thoughts, he sometimes moves me like a puppet, but her—" my voice cracked suddenly; I knew I sounded like a hysterical kid, but I couldn't stop once it had broken loose. "I'm not Adric! I'm not, I don't belong here at all."

Narayan jumped up and I heard his hurrying steps behind me; then his steely hands were on my shoulders hard, swinging me around to face him. "All right," he said, "steady. It's all right now."

I drew a long breath and let it out again, shamed. Narayan looked at me, his eyes still skeptical, but he sighed. I could guess his thoughts; had he broken me down into honesty, or was this more

of Adric's treachery?

I felt a light hand, a leaf-touch, on my arm; then Cynara was holding my hand, looking intently up into my face. "I knew," she whispered. "I couldn't be sure, but once I saw your eyes looking out at me from Adric's face."

I saw the doubt dissolve in Narayan's face. Slowly, he nodded. "I sensed you weren't the Adric I knew," he said. "But I couldn't believe that Adric, when it came to the test, would do that to me. I suppose, for him, it was the easy way out. A perfect way of escape."

He sank down on the bench again, dropping his head into his hands. "A perfect way out," he repeated, and his voice sounded suddenly old and tired. "Let his memories disintegrate, or step into another world, and leave another man in his place. Another personality. And just not care what happened."

I shook my head, still feeling the trembling inside. "But what would Adric want with my life?" He was a lord, a powerful warlock; could he step into the world of Mike Kenscott, radioman, ordinary citizen of an ordinary world?

"It was a way to escape the trouble he caused," said Cynara, bitterly. "So it was all for nothing! We haven't got Adric, and we've involved an innocent outsider!"

After a long time, Narayan looked up. "That's right; you're an outsider," he said slowly. "You

owe us nothing. But my men think you are Adric, and they think you've been rescued from Karamy, and brought back to us. I'd never be able to convince them otherwise. Do you think you could, in Adric's body?"

Cynara answered, clutching my hand in that close, protective way, "They'd think it was more of Karamy's magic. Like—like her zombies. They'd— they'd tear him to pieces, Narayan!"

Narayan said, troubled, "You don't owe us anything. But would you mind pretending to be Adric for a little while longer? Otherwise—" he stopped. I realized that he was not a man who would enjoy making threats, but I could understand his situation. I was just an outsider who messed things up by being, at the same time, Adric.

Well, I seemed to be stuck with it. I certainly didn't feel any loyalty to the Narabedlans of Rainbow City, or give a hang what happened to them. Narayan, by comparison, looked pretty decent. Even if he was making a pretty desperate effort to overthrow the government by force and violence, I couldn't blame him.

In fact, I wouldn't mind helping! I had a few scores to settle with Rainbow City, myself. ...

And, all these principles aside, it looked like the only way to save my skin—even if it was Adric's skin.

"All right," I said, "I'll try, but what's this all about, anyhow?"

"That's right, you wouldn't know. You have some of Adric's memories, but not all. Do you remember who I am?"

"Not entirely," I said. I remembered—in that strange Adric-way—some things. Narayan had been born, about thirty years before, into a respectable country family who were appalled to realize that they had given birth to one of the mutant Dreamers, and were only too glad to hand him over to those in power at Rainbow City. Still a child, he had been bound into the enforced stasis in the Dreamer's Keep, and there he had slept. ...

Cynara said, "You remember the old Dreamer who served the Crimson Tower?"

I remembered that, too—or Adric did. He had grown old and weak, mortal. He could no longer give, to Adric's vaulting ambition, the full measure of power that Adric had come to desire. And at last he had been eliminated. I bowed my head.

"I slept in the Dreamer's Keep," Narayan said, quietly. "I was awakened and bound to you, and given sacrifice. I learned to use my power, and to give it up to Adric." A brooding horror dwelt in the gray eyes; I realized that Narayan lived in his own personal, private hell with the memory of what he had done under the spell of Narabedla. "Adric was strong."

Yes. Adric had called upon the young Dreamer's developing powers, without counting the cost. What wonder if the memory maddened Narayan? The young Dreamer finally seemed to win his

silent struggle for self-control, and went on quietly; "Well, one day you—or rather, Adric—freed me. I was never sure why. I suppose it was in a moment of remorse." Cynara stirred, but Narayan went on, not seeming to see her.

"I found my sister again, Cynara." And now he raised his eyes to the girl, laying his hand on her shoulder; she smiled, and again I saw the strange protectiveness in that smile, as Narayan said quietly, "I was like a child. I had to learn to live again, all the

simplest things. Just being alive took all my strength for months. I was wholly powerless, because I had been trained to use my powers only through the Sacrifice. And I had to learn to— to live without that. It wasn't easy."

"Why?" I asked thoughtlessly.

Narayan's eyes froze me, but his answer dropped the last link into the chain of memory. "To use that power," he said, Outside the door I could hear the noises of the camp; the light of their watch-fires crept in through the cracks. The fire had burned low again, and Narayan's face was in shadow, he moved restlessly in the dim firelight.

"I have harnessed the power, somewhat," he said. "I can use it myself, a little. For simple things, and to protect myself."

I was beginning, vaguely, to understand. In my own world I had heard of psi powers, of extra-

sensory perception, of seance mediums who could do things called magical to those who did not understand them. I had also heard that these wild talents were physically exhausting, draining the physical energy; the collapse of a medium after a seance—I had thought it was fakery. Evidently the Narabedlans had found out a way to harness that psi power, to control it, to provide the energy for increasing it vastly, by feeding the Dreamers on the life energy of living men. ...

I shuddered, a bone-deep, racking thing that left me weak and white, and dropped nerveless on the seat. Cynara held me tight.

"No," said Narayan grimly, watching my face, "it's not pretty. But if I had any doubts of your not being Adric that would have finished them. You really didn't know, did you?"

I shook my head, still sick with the horror of it.

"Well, I learned to live without it," said Narayan, his face quiet and controlled again. "Then Cynara was taken for sacrifice." His eyes on the girl were tender. "Adric freed her, redeemed her, gave her the freedom of Rainbow City. He could do that because Evarin was weak and Gamine did not care. Even the Lords of the Rainbow have many commoners in their retinue. Not a spy there, never that. But someone to act as a link between us, Adric and me. Then there was Rhys, the old Dreamer."

Rhys. The only Dreamer-mutant ever born within Rainbow City.

"Yes. Gamine is bound to Rhys, but is careless and lets him wake for long periods of time, and Rhys and I have been in contact. I hardly know how to explain this to anyone else, our minds can speak."

"Telepathy too?" I murmured.

"Only to another Dreamer. He helped me to learn to use my powers. But he will not raise a hand against Narabedla. They are his kindred too."

I was hearing scraps of conversation from a vast abyss of time and space, whence I had been drawn in electrical coma across the Time Ellipse. They will know, Narayan will know. And Adric; What have I to do with Narayan? Adric had been playing a fancy double game with Narayan, and I opened my mouth to say so, but the young Dreamer was still talking, and I lost track of the words, thinking of Rhys.

Perhaps this was why Rhys had helped Adric find a way out of his world, because it had helped Rhys, too, find an escape from an unbearable conflict. With Adric gone, Rhys need not face a choice between his kindred in Narabedla, and his wish to see the Dreamers freed. With Adric gone, perhaps the old, old man could live out his last few years in a world precariously at peace.

"I had forgotten, we had all forgotten, that Adric was Narabedlan too. Until he vanished, until Karamy stretched out her hand and took him back" Narayan's voice brooded. These men had been friends.

"Adric was gone, and the hand of Narabedla lay heavy on us. Without Adric to lead them we felt there was a chance for rebellion. I have been working, planning—you saw." He bit his lip. "Then I knew that Adric was free, and I sent Brennan to see why he did not return to us. Brennan didn't come back"

I lowered my head and miserably told him what had happened to Brennan.

Narayan's face looked haggard in the firelight. "He was a brave man," Narayan said at last. "He knew what he faced, and dared it. I don't blame you. After the change, there was a time when you went on living Adric's life, almost by reflex, thinking his thoughts, carrying out his habits. But now he will grow weaker in you, I think I hope. Who are you in your own world?"

He thought Adric would grow weaker in me. I had feared that Adric would grow stronger and stronger, until he crowded me out entirely. Was Narayan right? Was Adric gone for good? "My name is Mike Kenscott," I said at last. "Michael."

"Michael." Cynara turned the strange word on her tongue, curiously. Her hand, forgotten, still lay in mine. "And what are you? A great lord of magic?"

I laughed, wearily; cut off the laughter as I looked into the lovely face. "No, girl," I said softly, "there's no magic in my world." Magic? I'd have to think about that.

"It must be very strange," she murmured, "strange and a little frightening, to change worlds. I can remember Narayan when he came from the Dreamer's Keep, with a life to learn."

Was it only compassion in her dark eyes, compassion for a man suffering the same disorientation as the brother she had cherished and protected? Or was it something more? "Michael," she repeated softly.

Narayan broke into our natural absorption, gently. "The men will have to call you Adric; they will believe you are Adric come back to us. Later, perhaps—" he shrugged. I didn't say anything. I was still afraid I hadn't seen the last of Adric; but I liked this man. And Cynara, clinging to my hand, the one person in this world who had known and accepted me for myself, not as a shadow of Adric.

Narayan moved to turn on lights. "It's very late," he said, "and you must be worn out. We've taught even the Narabedlans to stay out of the forests by night, lately, so we're safe enough here, even if they had some idea of getting Adric back And in any case, they can't do much until they've been to the Dreamer's Keep. If we can cut them off from the source of their magic—" he smiled, and with a sudden, boyish friendliness he held out his hand. "Well tomorrow we'll see what comes! Michael—" he hesitated, then said, almost reluctant to speak the words, "I'm glad you're not Adric. He might be hard to handle, now."

As if the lights had been a signal—for all I knew, they were—Raif came back into the room without knocking. Narayan crossed his hostile stare at me. "It's all right, Raif," he said. "Adric

has come back to us."

The elephantine face creased up in a sudden grin. "I'm sorry I handled you so roughly, Lord Adric. But I had orders, and I wasn't sure."

"I'd have done the same thing myself," I said, and took the hand he offered.

"Find him a place to sleep," Narayan suggested, and, with a backward glance at Cynara, I followed Raif up a low flight of the farmhouse stairs into an empty room. There was a bed there, clean but rumpled; Raif said "Kerrel went on watch at the roadway; he won't be back much before noon. You can sleep here."

I kicked off my boots and crawled between the blankets, suddenly too weary to speak I had been two days without sleep, and most of that time I had been under exhausting physical and mental strain, in two worlds. I saw Raif cautiously finger his weapon, and sensed that whatever Narayan said, he wasn't taking too many chances with Adric. I didn't blame him. He had brains, this outsize lieutenant of Narayan's.

Sleepily I said "You can put that away, friend elephant. I'm not even going to move until I've had a good, long-"

I didn't even finish the sentence. I went to sleep.

I had slept for hours. I came out of confused dreams—a great wheeling bird, a knife, Andy's face, the blue blur of Gamine's veiling, the pitiful cry of a woman in anguish—when I heard a softer voice, and felt small hands pulling me upright. I opened my eyes to see Cynara's dark lovely eyes gazing down at me.

"Michael, wake up! Karamy and Evarin are riding today, hunting Adric! Hunting you!"

I sat up, dizzy-brained, far from alert, still stupid with sleep; I could not understand her agitation, or the way she had spoken to me. But I put a careless, reassuring arm around her shoulders for a moment. Then, hearing the swift noise of steps on the stairs, released her, bent and began to pull on my boots.

Narayan shoved open the door, dragging a brown tunic over his head as he came. "I see Cynara's told you the news," he said. "I was right. We'll have to move quickly now. If they have too good hunting—"

He fumbled with the laces of his shirt. A dead weariness was in his eyes; they looked flat, almost glazed. He met my questioning stare and smiled tiredly.

"The Dreamers stir," he told me. "I am not yet free of that need, not wholly. So I must be careful."

Cynara shuddered and threw her arms around her brother's neck, clutching him in a fiercely

sheltering clasp. But he was already deep in thought again; he freed her arms without impatience. "We'll meet that when the time comes, little sister. So Karamy and Evarin ride hunting, Idris too, most like." His brows contracted. "All but Gamine," he mused. "If I could only get through to Rhys." Then, with an impatient gesture, he put the thought aside. "I don't dare. Not with that stirring."

I understood. Narayan was still attuned to the terrible hungers of the sleeping Dreamers in the Keep. Well, that was to be expected.

As for me, I felt fresh and strong, and my mind was working again, though with some strange blurs. How had I come here to the house of the freed Dreamer? Just what had happened last night? I had thought Narayan would never trust me again, but now, when I needed it most, here I was in his complete confidence again.

Soft fool!

Yes, this was better than any of Karamy's plans! Damn Karamy anyhow, meddling with my memory, but at least it had served my turn last night, to step aside into another identity, win Narayan's confidence!

And Karamy had the audacity to fly Evarin's devilbirds after me? After me, Adric of the Crimson Tower? Well, she should have a lesson she would never forget—and so should the damned Toymaker himself —and so should this walking zombie here, staring stupidly at me

with a foolish smile of friendship. Gods of the Rainbow, what preposterous things had I done and said last night?

"Let them come, birds and all," I said. "There's been no Sacrifice for some time. They have no other resources." I laughed soundlessly at the thought; are you short on magic today, Karamy? Forced to use the foolish gimcracks of the Toymaker? "We'll take them tonight at the Dreamer's Keep."

But what you do not know, Narayan, I added to myself with secret satisfaction, is that you will join them there! When I have used your powers in my revenge against those who were leagued against me, then you will go back to your place, Dreamer! Till then, plan to crush me and mine! Dream on—dream your waking dreams, till 1 scatter them. . . .

It never occurred to the soft fool to question if the Adric of last night were the Adric of this morning. We went downstairs and snatched a quick breakfast. Cynara saw the winged, flamecolored cloak she had worn in Rainbow City, lying on the settle, snatched it up wrathfully and stuffed it into the fireplace. In her plain gray dress, her shy prettiness was more striking than ever. Cynara was not Karamy, but she was a pretty thing, and after all, it helped Narayan to trust me when Cynara perched on the arm of my chair and ran her dainty fingers over the bruises on my face.

"Your roughnecks nearly killed him, Narayan!"

"Oh, I'm not hurt." I made my voice gentle for her ears alone. But I scowled darkly into my plate, pushed the food away and strode out into the camp. Narayan shouted quickly, jumping up, sending his chair crashing backward, as he ran after me and we went down the steps together. "Wait, wait! Don't forget, to them, you're still a traitor," he commanded.

I kept my voice foolish and humble. "I had forgotten."

"I know the truth, and they'll take my word," Narayan said with his friendly smile. He took my arm, and we walked like that through the tents, Narayan's expression almost belligerent. I saw the faces of the men as they came out of their rude shelters, saw suspicion and mistrust giving way to tolerance and then to acceptance and relaxation as they watched us walking arm in arm. Finally Narayan called to Raif, "Watch him, will you? Some of the men may not know yet."

"There's not much time for this nonsense," I said. "If they're out hunting. Raif, find me twelve men who aren't afraid to come close to Rainbow City."

Raif glanced at Narayan, who looked surprised. Then Narayan said, "I give what orders you want, Adric," and I had to hide a smile. Before long I would win back the place my foolishness had lost! The idiot whose body I had shared briefly had almost put it beyond redemption, but in a way he had helped, too; he had won Narayan's trust as I could never have done. Well, that futile booby should not share in my coming triumph! Nor should Narayan.

Fumbling in my pocket, I touched something hard and smooth. Evarin's magic mirror, not true

magic but the product of his childish tinkering. Still, it might serve. Narayan looked over my shoulder curiously as I pulled it out. "What is that?"

"One of Evarin's Toys. I may find a use for it," I said, and tossed it idly to him. "Look at it, if you like." I held my breath; Narayan took it in his hand for a moment, curiously, but did not untwist the silk "Go ahead," I urged, "unwrap it."

I might have sounded too eager; abruptly, Narayan handed it back "Here. You'd better keep it. I don't know anything about Evarin."

I should have known it would not be that easy. Feigning indifference, I thrust it back into my pocket. It didn't matter one way or another, Narayan would lose. For Evarin and Karamy rode ahunting today, and I knew what their game would be.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I PULLED MY cloak closer about me, prickling with excitement, as I knelt between Raif and Kerrel in the tree-platform. Just beneath me, Narayan clung to a lower branch. My ears picked up the ring of distant hoofbeats on the frozen ground, and I smiled.

I knew every nuance of this hunt. Evarin might not find his birds so obedient to his call today! A

scrap of me remembered another world, where a dazed and bewildered other self had flown at a living bird with his pocketknife, and I spared a moment to laugh at the memory.

Boldly, I plotted possibilities. There must be a snare. But who? Narayan himself? No, he was my only protection until I could get free of this riffraff Besides, he said he had been learning to use his power—unaided. If he unleased it, at close range like this, he could drain me lifeless, as a spider sucks a trapped fly.

Kerrel then, or Raif I had a grudge against the fat man, anyhow.

I plucked at Raif's sleeve. "Wait here for me," I said, cunningly, and made as if to leave the platform. Raif walked smiling into the trap. "Here, Adric! Narayan gave orders you weren't to run into any danger! After all! it's you they want!"

Good, good! I didn't even have to order the man to his death; he volunteered. "Well, we want a scout out," I demurred, "to carry word when they come." As if we wouldn't know!

"I'll go." Raif leaned past me, touching Narayan's shoulder. He explained in a whisper—we were all whispering, though there was no need for it—and Narayan nodded. "But don't show yourself."

I held back laughter. As if that would matter!

The man swung down into the road. I heard his heavy tread strike rock; heard footsteps diminish, die in the distance; felt it, like a tangible prickling of the nerves, when he passed the limit of Narayan's perceptions. Yes, we were still bound, like an invisible net! If I could only read his thoughts. . . but no. Then he'd be able to read mine!

A clamoring, bestial cry ripped the air, a cry that seemed to ring and echo up out of hell, a cry no human throat could compass. But I knew what had screamed. That settled the fat man! Narayan jerked all over, his blonde face white as death. "Raif." The word was almost a prayer.

We half-scrambled, half-leaped into the road. Side by side, we ran down the roadway together.

The screaming of a bird warned me. I looked up and dodged quickly. Over my head a great scarlet falcon, wide-winged, wheeled and darted in at me. Narayan's yell cut the air; I ducked, flinging up a fold of my cloak over my head. I ripped the knife from my belt and slashed upward, ducking my head, keeping one arm over my eyes. The bird wavered, hung in the air, watching me with live green eyes that shifted with every movement. The falcon's trappings were green, bright against the scarlet feathers.

I knew who had flown this bird!

The falcon wheeled, banking like a plane, and rushed in again. Falcon? But no egg had hatched these birds, and I knew who had shaped these scarlet pinions!

From behind my cloak-wrapped arm I saw Narayan pull the pistol-like electro-rod, and screamed warning:

"Drop it. Quick!"

The bird, holding Evarin's powers at this moment, could turn gunfire as easily as Evarin himself; could absorb the energy and in turn be re-charged by it. And if the falcon drew a drop of my blood, then I was slave to whoever had flown it.

I thrust upward with the knife, dodging between the bird's wings. Men leaped toward us, knives out and ready. The bird screamed wildly, flew upward a little way, and hovered, watching us with those curiously intelligent green eyes. Another falcon, and another, winged across the road, and a thin uncanny screeching echoed in the city air. I heard a tinnyjingle of little bells. The three birds—goldenand greentrapped and harnessed in royal purple—swung above us; three pairs of unwinking jewel eyes hung motionless in a row. And far behind us, against the darkening sky at the horizon, the dropping red sun silhouetted three figures, on horses, motionless there; Evarin, Idris and Karamy, intent on the falcon-play, three traitors baiting the one who had escaped their hands.

For a moment, briefly, I wished I were on the other side of this hunt. Slaves we had in plenty, but the taking of passive victims is dull stuff and ai, the falcongame was good sport! Body left behind, all senses poured into the stuff of the bird, soaring and darting down upon the terrified victim, playing with him as an eagle plays with her helpless prey! Darting at the eyes, the tender

parts, thrusting, drawing the blood that gave power over him, watching the helpless terror of the victim. Or, at times—but how rarely!—a spirited fight against some victim made bold by despair. A dangerous game, for if he killed the bird, it was a painful and nasty shock But what is a game without danger? There were always more birds. And the victim who escaped your hands once could be taken and tormented at leisure.

And I had faced the falcons before this, too; flown, myself, against another for a wager, or pitted myself, armed only with a knife, against another's bird. But this was no rough game with my kindred for careless sport or light stakes. This was deadly in earnest; they had all massed themselves against me, and I'd need every scrap of skill.

The falcons hung, poised, swept inward in massed attack They darted between my knife and Narayan's; behind me a fearful scream rang out, and I knew one of the falcons, at least, had drawn blood; that one of the men behind us was not ours! Turning and stumbling, the stricken man ran blindly through the clearing, down the road; tripped, reeled, stumbled over the body of a man who lay across the roadway under his feet. Narayan gave a gasping, retching sound, and I whirled in time to see him jerk out his electro-rod and fire shot after wild shot at the stumbling figure that had been our man.

"Fire!" he panted to me. "Larno wouldn't want to— to get to them. He'd rather be dead."

I struck down the weapon, savagely. "Fool! Some hunting they must have!" Narayan began protesting, and I wrenched the rod from him. The man was far beyond firing range now. At

Narayan's convulsed face I swore, savagely. This weak fool would ruin everything! What was one man more or less?

I glanced around, orienting myself quickly. The birds hung away again, and I motioned Narayan's men in close. "Don't fire on the birds," I cautioned them. "It only energizes them. They soak up the power from your weapons. Use knives. Cut their wings and try to immobilize them. Look out!" The falcons, like chain-lightning, traced thin orbits down in a flash of color, then darted in, in a slapping confusion of beaks and beating wings. I backed away, flicking up my cloak, beating at the birds with the weighted edge; our men, standing in a close circle, back to back, fought them off with knives and the ends of their cloaks, swatting them away. Three times I heard the inhuman scream, three times I heard the lurching footsteps as a man—not human any morebroke away from us and ran blindly, stumbling toward the distant ridge.

I heard Narayan cry out, whirled to him. He ran toward me, beating back the purple-trapped bird that darted in and out on swift, agile wings. The screeching of the falcons, the flapping of cloaks, the hoarse breathing of men hard-pressed, gave the whole scene a nightmarish unreality in which the only real thing was Narayan fighting at my side. His gasp made me whirl by instinct, flinging up my cloak to protect my back; my knife thrust out to cover his throat. He raked a long gash across the falcon's head above the beak, was rewarded with a scream of unbirdlike agony and the spasmodic open-and-shut convulsing of the talons. They razored outclawing. They furrowed a slash in the Dreamer's arm. The deadly beak darted in to cut, but I threw myself forward, unprotected, off balance, ready to strike.

At the last moment, talons and beak drew back from Narayan, turned aside straight for me, with more than birdlike intelligence! And my knife was turned aside guarding Narayan!

But Narayan jerked aside. His knife fell unheeded in the road as his arms shot out and grabbed the bird behind the head, twisting his whole body convulsively to be out of range of the stabbing needle of beak The bird lunged, pecking at the cloak that wrapped his forearm. Thrown off balance, I stumbled against Narayan and we fell together in a tangle of cloaks and knives and thrashing, slapping wings, asprawl in the road. The wings beat like a cyclone, the cruel talons, thrust with the power of steel, raked my face and Narayan's, but Narayan hung on grimly, holding the deadly beak away. I fumbled, blinded by the wings slapping against his face, for the knife; thrust again and again. Thin yellow blood spouted in great gouts, splattering us both with burning venom.

I snatched the struggling bird from the Dreamer's weakening hands and twisted until I heard the neck snap in my fingers. The bird's wild struggles suddenly stopped; it went limp between my hands. Whatever had given it life had withdrawn.

And high on the ridge above us the dwarfed figure of Idris threw up his hands and collapsed like an empty sack across the pommel of his saddle.

Narayan's breath went out in a long, limp sigh as we untangled our twisted bodies from one another and the dead falcon. Our eyes met briefly as we mopped away the blood, and he smiled, shakily, spontaneously. Damn it, what a waste! I liked this man! Almost I wished I need not send

him back to tranced and horrible dreams.

He said quietly "There is a life between us now."

I twisted my face into a smile matching his. "That's one of them," I said savagely, turned to watch the other two falcons tearing into the ring of men. "Come on," Narayan shouted, and he flung ourselves into the breach. I threw down my knife, snatched a sword from somebody, and waded in, swinging the sword in great arcs that seemed somehow right and natural. The men scattered before the sword, like scared chickens. The falcons dipped down; I went berserk with hate, sweeping it in vicious semicircles against the lashing birds.

The sword cut empty air and I realized, blankly, that both birds lay cut to ribbons at my feet. Their yellow blood washed the dead leaves. Narayan's eyes swam through a red haze into my field of vision. They were watching me, trouble and fright in their gray depths. I forced myself to sanity and dropped the sword on the dead birds.

"That's that," I said briefly.

We took toll of our losses. Three, four men, lost to the slavery of the birds. Most of the rest had razorslashes from the talons, and Narayan, gasping with pain, rubbed a spot of the yellow blood from his face. "That stuff burns!" he grimaced. I laughed, tightly. He didn't have to tell me. We'd both have festered burns, deep as the brand of red-hot iron, to deal with tomorrow, the stuff Evarin used for the "blood" of his birds was deadly.

"You saved my life." Narayan's voice was quiet,

and I bit my lip against murderous rage. Fool that I was, why hadn't I stood back? The Dreamers are invulnerable to ordinary human attacks, but they can be put out of action—

And yet I had acted without thinking, to save Narayan. Was there such a bond between us? I found myself shaking with doubt.

"Are you hurt?" Narayan asked. "Let me see your arm," but I shoved him away. Savagely, I told myself not to be a fool. Of course I had protected Narayan. I needed him still, and I wanted him strong and unharmed; nothing as quick and simple as an easy death. He'd rather die than go back to the Dreamer's Keep; I felt sure of that. Well, he wasn't going to be given a choice.

"Look!" One of the men stared, pointed upward, his face tense with fright. Another great bird of prey hung balanced on the wind above us; but as we watched, it wheeled and swiftly winged toward the Rainbow City. One of the men was quickly nocking an arrow to the bow, but the bird was too far and too high; I could barely see the azure shimmer of the bells and harness. A thin sweet tinkling came from them, like a mocking echo of the spell-singer's voice.

Gamine!

CHAPTER NINE

BACK IN THE windowless house, we snatched a hurried meal, cared for our slashes and burns, and tried to plan further. The others had not been idle while I led a picked party against the falcons. All day Narayan's vaunted army had been accumulating—I could hardly say assembling—in the great bowl of land between Rainbow City and the Dreamer's Keep.

There were, perhaps, four thousand men, armed with clumsy powder weapons, not more than half a hundred of the electro-rods like Narayan's, with worn swords that looked as if they had been long buried, with pitchforks, with scythes, even with knobbed wooden clubs. I was put to it to conceal my contempt for this ragtag and bobtail of an army. And Narayan proposed to storm the might of Narabedla, the magical powers of Rainbow City with this?

Yet everywhere I saw looks, heard scraps of conversation, cries and salutes, showing me the confidence that these desperate men had in their leader. Were they all mad, or deluded? So much the better, I thought grimly. Take him from them, and they'll scatter to their rat-holes again!

I felt my lips twisting in a bitter smile. They trusted Adric, too—Adric, who had freed the Dreamer. When I had shown myself to them, their shouts had made the very trees echo. Well— again the ironic smile came, unbidden—that was just as well too. When Narayan was properly reprisoned, I could use the power of their lost leader to tear down what he himself had built. The thought was deliciously funny.

"What are you laughing about?" Narayan asked me. We were lounging on the steps of the house, watching the men thronging around the camp. His slumberous gray eyes held deep sparks of fire, and without waiting for my answer, he went on, "Think of it! The curse of the Dreamers' magic lifted from this land. The tyranny of the Rainbow Cities gone forever. Think what it means! It means life and hope for any number of people, with no more fear, no more slavery, no sacrifices and raids, no evil birds—" he broke off, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture. "But you can't know. Even with all of Adric's memories, you couldn't know!"

I remembered that he thought I was still Michael Kenscott. Dimly, like something in a dream, I could remember" Michael's loyalty for Narayan. They were two of a kind, fools, soft weaklings. . ..

And even more dimly I could remember when I had shared that dream, when it had seemed more worthy than the lust for power. Cynara came down the steps and bent to me, laying her soft arm around my shoulder, and I drew her down, but a volcano of hate, so great that I had to hide my face, burned up in me. This man Narayan was my equal—no, I admitted it grudgingly, my superior—and I hated him for it. I hated him because he could not be killed save by mischance, and because he risked that invulnerable state in a way I would never have dared, even in the days when I had been guarded by all his magic. I hated him because I knew that in his dream of power no one would suffer, and I hated him because I knew what I would do with his powers, once I had him safely bound in the Dreamer's Keep again, fed with the energy that would force him to give them up piecemeal to me. And above all, I hated him because once I had been weak enough

to share his dream.

"You said once there was no magic in your world, Michael," Narayan broke into my thoughts, and I started. Well, let him deceive himself! I shrugged. "I suppose you'd call the forces of my world magical enough, until you understood them," I temporized.

"The falcon-hunt—Adric told me once that if the falcon was destroyed, the one who was inhabiting it went into shock," Narayan said musingly. "That means Idris, Evarin, Karamy, all three of them out of action for a time. If we could strike right away—"

I said abruptly, "Your plans are good, Narayan. There's just one thing wrong with them; they won't work Storming Rainbow City won't get you anywhere. It won't even make a beginning. You could kill Karamy's slaves by the hundreds, or the thousands, or the millions, but you couldn't kill Karamy. And the more slaves you kill, the more she'll search out and enslave to replace them. You've got to strike at them in the Dreamer's Keep. It's the only place they're vulnerable."

He did not question my knowledge, or Adric's memories. It was Cynara who reminded me, "Narayan's freedom is limited, remember. He cannot go into Rainbow City, or to the Dreamer's Keep, because Adric, freeing him, could not locate his talisman."

Narayan nodded. "So I've no choice. I'll have to attack them on the road to the Keep, and take my chances."

"What's your army for?" I asked, rudely, "to knock down haycocks? The army can deal with the guards, and the slaves, but the Narabedlans have to be taken in the Dreamer's Keep; it's the only way. I'll go to Rainbow City for you, and get the thing!"

"You?" Narayan and Cynara turned on me, simultaneously, and I reminded myself not to seem too confident; it was Kenscott's display of weakness that had made Narayan trust him. But Cynara's eyes were glowing. "Yes, and I'll go too, in case your memories fail."

Good, good and better. That suited me perfectly! Rainbow City was empty except for old Rhys, and perhaps Gamine, who had not flown falcon with the others, and was presumably indifferent to the internal struggles of the other Narabedlans. But Narayan looked doubtful. "Adric tried that once," he said sombrely, "and all that happened was Karamy recaptured him, and sent him out on the Time Ellipse."

"But Karamy won't be here this time; she and the others will be busy with your army," I reminded him. It was settled that way, and I listened to their plans and suggestions, half contemptuously. Yes, the Narabedlans were vulnerable in the Dreamer's Keep, but if I were there, with Narayan, and Narayan's talisman in my hands, I could stop worrying about Evarin, Idris and the rest.

Cynara bent lightly to touch the ripped talon-mark across my face. "You're hurt again, and you never told me," she accused. "Come this minute and let me take care of it!"

I almost laughed. Me, Adric of the Crimson Tower, being ordered around by a little country girl! I snorted, but spoke pleasantly.

"I'll live, I expect. Come and sit here with us." I pulled her down at my side, but she leaned her head against her brother's knee, and her face was troubled.

She was a pretty thing, and I thought, watching her, that I could forgive her, almost, for being the cause of all my troubles. When I took the girl, for a whim, from among Karamy's slaves, I had not known she was Narayan's sister. And then—and then —like a live wire jolting in my brain, the flash and the blankness. What lay hidden there? What had I forgotten? I put my two fists to my temples, as if to tear out the memory by main force, but nothing came except the blur of a face—blonde like Narayan's, white with terror—and a voice speaking words I could not understand, the silvery-sweet voice of Gamine. Who, what was Gamine?

"Michael—" Cynara looked frightened, and I brought myself back, by main force, to the present. I made myself smile.

"You—looked so fierce, so far away," she said, faltering, "like—like Adric, not like you."

I reached out to draw her to me, but she pulled away, rising lightly to her feet, like a dove poised for flight. I raised her slim fingers to my lips for a moment before I freed her. The gesture pleased her, so much that I watched with contempt as she tripped away. Silly, simple girl! It

would please her!

The white sun, incandescent on the horizon, was still bright enough to blur the red sun to a pale spot, when we set out for Rainbow City. Cynara rode at my side; Narayan was to come a part of the way. Kerrel had taken the army, in sections, to set an ambush for Karamy's guard near the Dreamer's Keep; I listened to Narayan giving him instructions, to the sound of grief in his voice when he spoke Raif's name.

But at last we took the opposite road, a winding, twisting road that led through the forested country to Rainbow City. Cynara rode beside me, her dark eyes brilliant, her cheeks red with the cold, lovely in her gray dress, but it did not suit her as the winged, flame-colored cloak of Narabedla had suited her. There was dainty witchery in Cynara, and a pretty trust that made me smile and promise, recklessly, "We will win." It pleased me to think that I could comfort Cynara for her brother's downfall. Once conditioned anew to Rainbow City, she would forget all this, and be a fair and beautiful companion. If she continued to please me. Well, it might be amusing to see this unformed country girl wield all the power of Karamy the Golden!

But would she ever look at me with so much trust again?

I cursed my fancies, savagely, and dug my heels into my horse's flank What did that matter? Was I morbid or mad again to care for that?

It took us an hour of hard riding to reach the lip of the great cup of land, where we paused,

looking down the dark, almost-straight alleyway of trees that led to the walls of Rainbow City. I whistled tunelessly between my teeth.

"Whatever we do, it's going to be wrong," I said. "We'd be taking quite a chance to ride up to the main gate this way. At the same time, they'd be expecting us—if we came at all—to sneak in the back way; they'd never expect us to ride straight up the front avenue."

"The deer walks safest at the hunter's door," quoted Narayan, laughing, "but won't they be expecting us to use that kind of logic?"

Cynara giggled but stopped at my frown. "At that rate," I said, "we could go on all night."

Narayan reached overhead, snatching down a crackling sheaf of frost-berries, selected one narrow pod. He held it between finger and thumb. "Chance. Two seeds, we go around; three, we ride straight up to the main gate. Agreed?" I nodded, and he crushed the dry husk One, two, three seeds rolled into my outstretched palm.

"Fate," said Narayan. "Ready?"

I jounced the seeds in my palm. "One for Evarin, and one for Idris, and one for Karamy," I said contemptuously, and flung the little black balls into the road. "We'll scatter them like that."

We were lucky. The drive was deserted; if there were guards out, they had been posted on the

secret paths that Adric knew. Straight toward the towers we rode, and just before dusk we checked our horses and tethered them within half a mile of the Rainbow City, going forward cautiously on foot. I objected to this arrangement. "I'll get in alone," I told them. "If anything happens to me, they mustn't lose you as well."

"I can't go inside," Narayan said, "but I'll come as close as I can. If anything goes wrong, well, I'll be here to help."

Silently, I damned the man's loyalty, but there was nothing I could say without spoiling the illusion I had worked so hard to create. I took his hand for a moment. "Thank you."

His voice was equally abrupt. "Good luck"

Cynara moved forward with me; I stopped, glanced at her with a frown.

"I'm coming," she said fiercely, and clung to my hand. "I'm coming, and there's no way you can stop me!"

So much loyalty? For me?

Still, she might be useful, if only as hostage later. "Come on, then," I said, "but keep your wits about you. They'll probably have all the bolt-holes guarded, and I'm not even sure yet how we're going to get in."

"Narayan," she asked, "can you help?"

The young Dreamer's face was in shadow, where we stood under the great dark loom of the outwalls, but I could tell that he was very pale. "Perhaps," he muttered, seeming to force the words out through some strange sluggishness. "I will try. Brennan came this way," he shook his head, as if dizzied.

"Maybe you'd better try," I said cautiously, "I have no magic, remember."

We moved slowly along, keeping in the lee of the rampart; Narayan moved unsteadily, on faltering feet. Then he stumbled; quickly, my hand was on his arm.

"You'd better go back" I said quickly. "We'll find a way in somehow."

I needed Narayan whole and strong, later! Afterward, when he had served my turn—

Cynara was looking at him, trouble in her eyes. He tried to smile reassuringly, but the effort only contracted the muscles of his face. "I don't know— exactly why it is," he said thickly, "I don't know what was done, but as I come closer to the walls I can feel my strength—leaving— me—"

I supported him upright, guiding his steps back sway from the outwall. On the surface, I was all

solicitude; inwardly I rejoiced. Now I knew what I wanted to know. Not in my lifetime had a freed Dreamer walked in Narabedla, except for old Rhys who was one of us, and my knowledge was hazy; I had not known how close Narayan could come to the forbidden areas.

Long years ago, generations ago, when the Dreamers first threatened the might of Rainbow City, there had been another Toymaker in Narabedla, and he had found the way to bind the Dreamers. They could not be killed. But he had made, and set up in Rainbow City, a device—blurred, vague memories of Mike Kenscott's world flickered across my consciousness, with words like vibrations, and subsonics— which, harmless to everyone else, worked selectively on the Dreamers who had been bound to Narabedla. A similar device, in the Dreamer's Keep, held them bound in their tranced sleep. Still a child, each of the mutant Dreamers we brought into contact with this device, and bound into rapport with one of the Narabedlans, as Narayan to me.

The effects of this device could be nullified, for brief periods of time, by the talismans. The Narabedlan kept the talisman (magic? vibrations?) that would wake his Dreamer and at the time of the sacrifice, the Dreamer was waked; fed with the life-energy that increased his powers tenfold, and these powers transferred to the giver of the sacrifice.

Magic?

Narayan brushed a hand across his eyes. "I'm all right here," he told me. "But until you get my talisman, this is about as close as I can come."

Did he really think I would turn it over to him? Yes, I supposed he was that foolish, to think that Adric, having given him his freedom, would also make him free of Rainbow City and the Dreamer's Keep—to destroy us all!

Cynara looked back at Narayan, uneasily, as we approached the outwalls again. But my attention was turned to the problem of getting in. I looked up at the ramparts of the outwall, surrounding the great semicircle of towers that was Rainbow City, their iridescent shine blurred to a dark glow in the dying sunlight. Rainbow City, a city no longer. Old, halfblurred memories nagged at me; there had been a day when this great castle had been alive with men and women, filled to the brim with joyous bustle, sport, and happiness—not the eerie, half-deserted haunt of half a dozen surviving warlocks of my caste, with their zombie retinue of the living dead! Cynara's hand felt warm in mine, and I felt that for a moment she almost shared my thoughts.

"It could be so beautiful."

"It will be beautiful again," I promised, "but just now we have to get in."

Around an angle of the ramparts there was a gate, little known, perhaps unguarded. We approached it fearfully, expecting every moment to hear a challenge or feel a bolt out of darkness; stole closer, keeping in the lee of the rampart.

The gate was open.

It swung, ajar, on hinges that creaked softly, rhythmically back and forth. Beyond it was darkness. I swept Cynara back with one arm, staring with hard eyes at that darkness. "Careful," I muttered, "it could be a trap."

And I had no magic! Carefully, on tiptoe, I stole closer to the gate.

Still nothing but the silent creaking. I beckoned with one arm, stepping through. Cynara followed me, her light footsteps sounding loud in the echoing stillness.

We were inside Rainbow City.

We stood in a pillared court, long and narrow, alabaster flagstones under foot, a long dark passageway opening before us, a dim patch of sunset sky high overhead. At one end of the court was a curved high-rising wall, shimmering greenly, the Emerald Tower, and at the other end, the pale loom of the Azure Tower rose blue and high over us. The colors were dimmed with dusk, and our very breathing seemed to give back echoes. I stood, looking around, trying to orient myself The walls of the court cut off any view of the other towers, and as always, when I tried to concentrate on any one detail it grew vague in my mind.

Cynara flinched and cried out as a shadow crossed us; I whirled, my breath coming loud, my hand already dragging my sword from the sheath. High above us a falcon wheeled, spiraled down; I heard the thin-sweet tinkling of bells. Gamine! I thrust Cynara behind me, but the falcon made no move to attack; it hovered, eyes bright with mechanical glitter, pinions moving faintly

to sustain it on the high air above us. I clenched my fingers nervously on swordhilt, itching to strike, but it hung out of reach, just watching, and somehow the poise of the wings made me think of the calm, malicious detachment of Gamine. But I kept my hand on my sword, guiding Cynara with one hand into the passageway.

It was wide and high, but seemed cramped after the open court, and I walked warily, glancing over my shoulder to see if the falcon would follow, but it did not. I saw it dart down and veer away again; heard the high screeching and the jingle of bells as it swept upward and vanished from our sight.

I went quickly now, finding my way through the labyrinth toward the Crimson Tower, Cynara hurrying at my side. We crossed open courts with pools and gardens and fountains quickly, keeping in the lee of the buildings, wary of being seen. I knew where I was, now. One more court, and one more passageway ...

Before us, the walls of the Crimson Tower rose at last, shining like a still-burning coal. Low lurid light burned in the courtyard before us; I breathed more freely. Now, at least, I was on familiar ground.

Cynara screamed, and I whirled, sword out and ready. Behind me, advancing in an unbroken line that spanned the court from one side to another, a round dozen of Karamy's guards in their gold and crimson advanced on slow feet; the lurid light sparked red on the steel tips of eight-foot pikes, leveled in a spear-wall toward my breast. In the burning twilight their faces were stolid,

expressionless; they called no challenge, seemed to show neither battlelust nor excitement. They simply advanced, step by mechanical step, pikes extended. Cynara shrank away; I took a step backward, darting my eyes along the line. Hopeless. There was no break in that solid phalanx, that advanced foot by slow foot, relentlessly.

"Quick," I cried, "Cynara! Into the tower!" and gripped my sword, not that I could reach any of them against those long pikes! My eyes darted from side to side, seeking escape. The steel points came closer, closer. ...

Then one of the zombie guards leaped into the air, still horribly silent, clawed at his breast, collapsed and lay still, with a clattering of his pike. I flung the useless sword away, snatched at the fallen guard's pike. Behind me Cynara stood shaking, Narayan's long black electro-rod in her small hands; she was steadying the weapon with both hands, twisting it frantically for another shot.

The zombie guards had neither halted nor hesitated, advancing step by mechanical step, closing the rank of their dead comrade. Gripping the pike, I swung it, knocked two of the oncoming pikes aside, while the guards tottered and fell back I ran the pike into one man's breast; he writhed horribly, half jerking the weapon from my hands, in that terrible voiceless silence; then died without a groan. I pulled the pike clear, leaped up the steps of the Crimson Tower. Past me, a white bolt crackled and another of the guards leaped, silently clawed his breast, and fell lifeless.

Still in that ghastly silence, the remaining pikesmen milled in confusion. I snatched the electrorod from Cynara, my fingers manipulating the controls with swift skill; swept it into the ranks. The guards, half their number lying dead, ran aimlessly back and forth, pikes thrusting mindlessly into the air, as if at some silent signal, then turned and silently fled, the sound of their booted feet dying away on the stones.

I wiped my brow and looked round at Cynara, pale and shaking at my back I had not known she had the weapon or that she knew how to use it!

"They're gone," she said, and I heard the effort she was making to keep her voice steady, "but they may be back I'll keep watch here, while you're in the Tower."

I nodded, my breath coming in great gasps, and went into the Tower. There might not be much time. If Karamy had set this trap for me, there might be others. I went up the stairs, slowly, rounding every bend with caution, but the Tower was silent and deserted.

Quickly, I ransacked room after room, to no avail. When she took my memories, Karamy had also been careful to take anything that would give me power over any of the Dreamers, even old Rhys. As for the thing that would force Narayan to my will again, I could find it nowhere.

I went up more stairs until I stood at the very pinnacle of the Tower; Adric's star-room; into which I had been catapulted—was it less than three days ago? I stood at the high window, vaguely thinking of a younger self, an Adric who had watched the stars here, not alone. I traced

back through the years, diving down into the seas of sudden memory, and brought up the knowledge of—

"Kenscott!" said a voice behind me, and I whirled to look into the face of a man I had never seen before.

He had the primitive look of a man out of the forgotten past. I had seen such creatures as I swam in the nowhere of the Time Ellipse. He was tall, cleanshaven; he looked athletic; his eyes and hair were a ridiculous color, pale brown. He looked angry, if he could be said to have any expression at all.

But he spoke clearly and with deliberate calm.

"Well, Michael Kenscott," he said, "you have taken my place very nicely. I suppose I should thank you. You've fooled Karamy into giving me my freedom, and Narayan into giving me his trust, and the rest, I think I can manage for myself." He laughed. "In fact, you're so much me that you don't seem to know who you are! What weak creatures you people are! But I can force you back into your own body, such as it is."

The man was mad! At any rate, he'd insulted the Lord Adric in his own Tower, and by Zandru's eyelashes, he'd pay for it! I flung myself at him with a yell of rage; my fingers dug into his throat.

And I cried out in the strangling clutch of long lean fingers grabbing at me, clutching my shoulders, biting into my neck An agonizing wrench shuddered over my body, a painful and somehow familiar jolt.

I faced—

Adric!

CHAPTER TEN

OF COURSE I understood, even while I fought, dizzy and reeling, to loosen the death-grip I'd put on my own throat. I was back, I was me, I was Mike Kenscott again.

Adric loosened his hands of his own free will, and stepped away, breathing hard. "Thank you," he said, in the harsh voice that had been mine for so long. "I myself could hardly have done better. No, I won't strangle you."

With one swift movement, he snatched something from a little recess in the wall—pointed, twisted—and fired pointblank at me. A white bolt zipped at me.

To my amazement, only a pleasant, tingling heat warmed me. I had enough split-second

reasoning reflex left to claw at my breast and fall in a slumped huddle to the ground. Adric fumbled in his pockets, half-drew his sword as if to reassure himself it was there; pulled out the little mirror I had taken from Evarin, still wrapped in its protective silks. I watched, breathless, between narrowed eyelids. If he would only look into it.

Instead, with a shudder of disgust, he flung it at me. With a braced, agonizing effort, I made myself lie perfectly still, not flinching to avoid the blow. The thing struck my forehead; I felt blood break to the surface and trickle wetly down my face. I heard Adric's firm receding steps and the risp of a closing door. He was gone.

I moved. To this day I am not sure how I escaped death from Adric's weapon, but I believe it was because I was in my own body—and his world. After I had touched Adric the first time, my reaction to earth's electricity had changed. In this world I was not immune to their forces, but I could absorb them without damage. I wiped the blood from my temple, glancing with brief, startled recognition at my own hands again.

Cynara! Cynara, waiting at the foot of the Crimson Tower, waiting for me, in Adric's body! I forgot that, overshadowed by Adric's memories, I had plotted against Narayan and Cynara; remembered, with anguish, the trust in Cynara's eyes. What would Adric do to her and to Narayan?

I grabbed up the mirror, crammed it into my pocket. Against the nightmare haste that drove me, I ran to the closet I remembered from that first day; quickly, from the racks of weapons, chose a

short, ugly knife. I wouldn't need swordsman's training to use that!

Thank God, I knew my way around the place; I could remember everything I had done when I was Adric! But I could also "remember" what he had done when he was me! (A vague, shocking memory of a scene with Andy half-stopped my heart, but I had no time for that now.) That meant that Adric could also "remember" everything that I had done and planned with Narayan!

This crazy, mixed-up business of identity! Would I ever again be sure which of us was which?

I dashed out of the tower room, ran down the endless stairs three at a time, heart pounding. The fallen zombie-guards still lay dead in the courtyard, but there was no sign of Cynara, nor of Adric.

"Cynara!" I shouted her name.

An eerie screaming answered me, and a dangerous whirring of wings suddenly beat around my head. I staggered, almost fell backward as one of the murderous falcons, the one in blue, darted at me. I backed against the wall, but the bird darted in again; I drew my knife, but the bird hung off Suddenly it made another dart; I edged along the wall, knife poised. Again it veered away and hung there, regarding me with those live eyes. The damned bird was herding me toward the blue tower!

And Gamine had not flown falcon with the others! Cautiously, I moved toward the blue tower

walls; the falcon followed me at a careful distance, out of knife-reach, hovering. Experimentally I took a step back toward the crimson tower, and the bird darted in again, the strong pinions beating in the enclosed space, the vicious little beak thrusting at me.

Cynara! What had happened to her? I tried to dodge past the bird; was enveloped in the flapping darkness of wings, beating hard against my face. Spent, breathless, I let myself be driven back and back, toward the blue walls of Gamine's tower; retreated slowly up the stairs, step after step.

The bird darted past me, poised in the stair-well. Blindly I slashed upward with the knife, was rewarded with a splatter of thin burning blood, but the bird, still not disabled, darted and pecked at me, driving me up and up.

"All right, damn it," I grated, ducked beneath the threshing wings and ran, up the stairs toward the pinnacle of the blue tower. Behind me, abruptly, the falcon flapped, threshed, went limp and rolled down the stairs, a tangle of wings, landing far below with a flailing thump, the life withdrawn from it.

I paused on the stairs, breathing hard. What now? Gamine was no friend to Adric, I knew that. My memories of Adric did not help me here; Adric had had a blankness in his memory around Gamine, a blurring and invisibility, a place where sight and memory stopped short. Had he ever seen Gamine?

Could Gamine help me against Adric?

What was Adric doing now? I had served him well; won Narayan's trust, then turned him loose again in his own body, to betray and destroy Narayan again—the one hope against Rainbow City, delivered into the hands of the man who had first freed, then turned against him!

And even yet I could not wholly hate Adric. I had lived three days and three nights in Adric's body and brain; I knew his strengths, his weaknesses, his dreams and his torments, his desires and his fears. I could not wholly condemn him.

He had done good once. He had freed the Dreamer, he had shared Narayan's dream of freeing Narabedla from the slavery of the Rainbow City, but why had he changed? Karamy's devilments? Few men would be to blame for yielding to Karamy's spells, the Golden Witch of Narabedla.

A shadow flitted across my sight; the robed and veiled Gamine stood above me in the stair-well, an air of cold amusement in the Spell-singer's mocking voice. "How like you this body, Adric? You are beaten now for sure! The stranger works with Narayan in your body, Adric!" The cold, neutral laughter chilled my blood. "Watch and see what you will do!"

"I'm not Adric," I shouted. "Adric's in his own body again, he got back, he's going to betray Narayan and Cynara."

"I expect you would like me to believe that," Gamine murmured, contempt in the clear, sexless

voice.

I clenched my fists, shaking with rage at the delay. Cynara at Adric's mercy, and Narayan. Suddenly I thought of the one person who would know. Rhys!

"Let me by to Rhys," I begged. "He'll know that I'm telling the truth!" How did I know that? Gamine laughed, and, infuriated by the mocking laughter, I shouted "Damn you, let me by," and thrust out my arms to move Gamine forcibly out of my way.

Whatever Gamine was—woman, man, imp, witch or robot—it was not human. Steel wires seemed to writhe between my hands. I struggled impotently with that bonebreaking grip; then, on swift impulse, thrust my hands swiftly at the blurred invisibility where Gamine's face should have been.

Gamine screamed, a thin cry of horror and despair. Suddenly I knew where I had been during those two weeks in the hospital when Adric lay lifeless in my body, in the hospital, in my place, crushed and shocked with unfamiliar force. An instinct I had grown to trust warned me to pull away, sharply, from Gamine's relaxed grip. I shouldered by and ran like hell.

Halfway up the last flight of stairs, I heard the Spell-singer's running feet behind me; I quickened my stride and sprinted for the heavy door at the top of the steps. I could feel Rhys's presence behind that door! I threw my weight against the door, twisted the handle frantically.

The door was locked.

Behind me I heard the soft, silk-shod feet of Gamine, and hopelessly I put my back to the door, my hand on Adric's knife. If there was no other way—

The door opened suddenly and I was flung backward, sprawling, into the room. "Well, Michael Kenscott," said the old, tired voice of Rhys, "you are a fool, but Gamine is no better. I knew you were not strong enough to crowd out Adric, but I had to try. Yes, I knew you were coming. I know where Adric has gone. I know where Narayan is, and what they plan to do."

I picked myself up angrily from the floor. The old Dreamer's calm voice, his serene wrinkled face beneath the peaked cowl, stirred me to sudden blind rage. I clenched my fists and advanced on him. "You know all that? Is there anything you don't know?"

Gamine had come into the room behind me; the old Dreamer stared over my shoulder at Gamine and said wearily, "I don't know whether you can stop them now. I let it go too far because I wanted peace, because I still hoped—" he spread his hands in a curious, hopeless gesture. The dreamy look of the very old, or the very young, was on his face. "I hoped —but no matter. It is time, Gamine. You must go with Narayan to the Dreamer's Keep."

"No," Gamine whispered in protest. "Narayan cannot go there! His talisman was destroyed! When Adric freed him, still fearing him, Adric kept the talisman and Karamy took it from him, and destroyed it!"

So that was what Adric had been seeking, without my knowing why. If I had found the talisman, and put it into Narayan's hands, then indeed the Dreamer would be free; free of the device—my training interpreted it as electronic waves, attuned somehow to the brain of the Dreamers—that would cast him into tranced sleep if he came within the magnetic field. Bearing his talisman to damp out the special electronic vibrations, Narayan could go where he would, even into Rainbow City, or the Dreamer's Keep.

But the talisman had been destroyed. Adric, his memories blurred by Karamy's magic, did not know that. A part of Adric's power over Narayan was gone. At least, Adric could not take and keep the talisman as he had planned, but Narayan was forever barred from freedom and from the full use of his power.

The talisman—magic? A special vibration device that held and concentrated the powers of the mind? I did not know. Maybe "magic" was only another word for a force that I could not understand. But the talisman was the bond between the sleeping Dreamer and the Narabedlan bound to him, through which the Dreamer's mind drew on the energy of the sacrifice, transferred that power to his master.

Old Rhys had lowered his head into his hands. Now he slowly raised his eyes.

"There is still mine. Give it to him, Gamine."

At Gamine's cry of dismay, Rhys' voice was suddenly a whiplash. "Give it to him! I still have power to—to compel that, even from you! What does it matter what happens to me? I am old, Gamine—old, and it is Narayan's turn, and yours!"

Gamine sobbed, harshly. From the silken veils the Spell-singer drew forth a small jeweled thing. Like Evarin's mirror, it was wrapped in insulating silks. She untwisted the silk

It was fashioned like a small sword, not a dagger, but a perfectly proportioned sword, a Toy. The hilt was an intricate pattern of blue crystals. It was about eight inches long. Briefly, another memory not mine touched me.

They were always made in the shape of a weapon, these talismans, symbols of the most powerful weapon known to Rainbow City, the power over the Dreamers.

Evarin's make, this Toy, Adric had seen its fashioning, when Gamine had been bound to the old Dreamer—so old that he could safely be freed from the Dreamer's Keep, bound by ties of blood to Narabedla. Gamine had not cared for power. Gamine had chosen only this: to sit at the feet of old Rhys and learn his wisdom. And this had given Rhys the freedom of Rainbow City.

"Michael must take it from your hands," Rhys' voice was gentler. "While you hold it, I am still bound to you, Gamine. The power must be transferred by an act of will. Then, with this in his own hands, Narayan will be free to go where he will, even to the Dreamer's Keep. Give it to Michael, Gamine." Rhys sat down, wearily, as if the effort of talking had tired him past bearing.

I stood and listened, with a rebellious patience, but my eyes were on the little Toy in Gamine's hands. It winked blue. It shimmered. It pulsed with a curious heartbeat, half-hypnotic. Rhys watched too, his tired face intent, almost eager.

"Gamine. If Adric had seen you, had remembered"

"I want him to remember!" Gamine's low wail was a weird keening in the silent room, and Rhys sighed.

"I cannot tell where this will end," he said at last. "I am Narabedlan. I could not destroy my own people. Gamine is not bound, nor you, Michael Kenscott. I suppose I am a traitor, but when I was born, Narabedla was a fair city, without so many crimes on its head. I have lived to see power grown to a vast evil, and I have let it grow. Now there must be an end. Go and warn Narayan."

Gamine hovered near me, intent, jealous, the shrouded gaze fixed on Rhys. The old man said in a fading voice, "Give it to him, Gamine, and let me rest. Stand away from me, Michael. I have made an end. I do not want to be bound again to you."

I did not understand and stood stupidly still; Gamine gave me an angry shove. "Over there, you fool!"

I reeled, recovered my balance; stood where Gamine directed, about twelve feet from the couch

where old Rhys leaned back against the cushions, half-reclining. The old man laid one hand on the hilt of the Toy talisman sword in Gamine's fingers.

"My poor city," he whispered. "Alas, for the Children of the Rainbow! Yet once their towers were fair beneath the double sun."

He took his hand away. He lay back on the cushions. Abruptly Gamine thrust the toy sword into my hands. I felt a sudden stinging shock, like electric current, jolt my whole body; saw Gamine's robed form quiver with the same jolt. The Toy in my hand was suddenly heavy, heavy as if made of lead, and the tiny winking in the hilt was dulled, dim, dead.

The peaked hood of Rhys dropped lower; lay unstirring over his face.

Gamine caught my arm roughly, and the steel of those inhuman fingers bit to the bone as they hauled me almost bodily from the room. I heard the echo of a sob in the Spell-singer's whispering croon.

Rhys farewell!

The next thing I knew, we were racing side by side down flight after flight of stairs. Together, we fled through the subterranean passages of Rainbow City. We came out into the pillared court where, two nights before, the Children of the Rainbow had assembled to ride to the Dreamer's Keep.

And across the courtyard I saw the form of a man. His brown tunic was ripped and torn, his pale face smeared with dirt or blood; he moved slowly, struggling, forcing himself as if he moved through quicksand, falling to his knees, sprawling, then painfully dragging himself upright again in a weary crawl. He braced himself with his two hands and stared at me, almost without comprehension, then his dragging hands moved—for a weapon, a spell?

There was no time for explanations. I threw myself at his knees in a tackle no football coach would be proud of, but it did the trick Narayan went down, sprawling weakly on the flagstones, struggling with the last remnants of strength.

Good God! What sheer will-power, what iron strength, had let him force himself so far into the Rainbow City, into the power of the terrible vibrations which were spell-binding to a Dreamer? His gray eyes, glazed with pain, looked at me with suspicion and helpless hate, and he forced his slow, painful movements upright, to his knees.

"Narayan, listen," I said urgently, seizing his shoulders, feeling the man tense himself against me, "I'm not one of Karamy's men!"

"Cynara, he's got Cynara," the Dreamer muttered dizzily. "Cynara—who in Zandru's hells are you?" He was almost unconscious, holding onto awareness with iron will.

"Michael Kenscott." Suddenly, knowing it was the best way to establish my good faith, I pulled

out the Toy Gamine had put into my hand. "I've seen Rhys. He sent you this."

The gray eyes were blurred, half-conscious, but he held out his hand to take the thing from me.

In his hand it came alive. The small jeweled Toy flared suddenly brilliant, dazzled with a wild sunburst of faceted light: blue, golden, crimson, flameorange, opal. Narayan's pale struggling face eased; the glazed eyes cleared, and he pulled himself up to his feet, erect and strong, alert, drawing a deep breath of relief and release, and letting it go again.

"In my own hands," he murmured, almost disbelieving. "Free! I'm free!" Then, shaking his head and coming out of his half-ecstatic contemplation, he started, and thrust the talisman inside his shirt.

"Michael Kenscott," he said, looking keenly at me. "Yes, I can sense that. I knew, when Adric came, that he had—changed."

"He's got Cynara?" I demanded.

Narayan nodded, grimly, speaking with hard restraint. "Yes. He surprised me, knocked me out. I fought, but he dragged me inside the court, where I was powerless. I felt my strength going. Cynara heard me cry out, and came and he dragged her away."

He looked past me. The robed, cowled figure of Gamine came noiselessly forward; stopped, a

pace or two away from Narayan. I tensed, but Narayan's gray eyes only widened, grew grave.

Then:

"Gamine," he said, very softly. "At last, face to face. Gamine."

"Rhys is gone. But I am here, Narayan, and the time has come." Gamine's soft, sweet voice was barely audible.

"The time has come."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I BROKE IN rudely, thrusting between the Dreamer and the robed form. "You can stand here like that," I accused, "but Adric's got Cynara! What will he do with her?" Cynara, the one real, human thing in this world, the one who had trusted me, who had even pitied and trusted Adric, and Adric had played on her trust, carried her away, God knows where!

Narayan said tensely, "He'll take her to the Dreamer's Keep. It's just the sort of revenge he'd want to try—" his voice strangled.

"How much start had he? Narayan?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure how long I was unconscious. No matter how we ride, we'll be too late." He clenched his fists in helpless rage and pain. "We'd need wings to stop him!"

Gamine cried out, low, "Wings! But we have wings! The falcons, Narayan! Evarin left the birds here!"

Narayan's face was convulsed, but he shook his head, resolutely. "No, Gamine. I can't. If I save Cynara, I lose the only chance to—to destroy the power of Narabedla. I can't take that chance. She—" he choked. "She wouldn't want me to; we've all risked too much to let one life stand in our way." He turned, grimly. "Come on! We'll ride to the Dreamer's Keep."

But Gamine caught at me, with that strange strength. "You, Michael," she said. "You can stop Adric, or delay him! You can go on the wings of a falcon!"

"What?"

And abruptly the memory rushed over me. The weird half-memory I had thought a dream. Adric, half-dazed, not knowing whether he was himself or some other, come back from the Time Ellipse, Mike Kenscott only a dazed atom in his mind; Adric, his memory gone but knowing by instinct that he had to warn Narayan, and knowing no other way. He had stolen into the room of the falcons, he had taken over the bird, he had flown—

Narayan was blinking at me, wide-eyed. "We saw a falcon," he said, low. "We thought it was one of Evarin's spies, and Raif shot it. So Adric really did try to warn me, once, before Karamy got him into her power again." He looked grieved, unhappy, but he turned to me. "Michael, Gamine is right. We are needed in the Dreamer's Keep, Gamine and I, but you —you can overtake Adric, and delay him, at least. Go as a falcon!"

A flood of ice-water seemed to drench my being. That was crazy, impossible, a weird dream! And I'd just gotten back into my own body, after all this time, and I damned well wasn't going to get out of it again! I tried to explain all this to Narayan, but he only repeated, his face drawn and troubled, "It's Cynara's only chance. Michael, I've no right to ask you, you don't owe us anything. But for Cynara—"

For Cynara. Cynara, who had trusted me, who had known I wasn't Adric, who had, perhaps, saved me in Narayan's camp. The thought turned my blood

cold, but I held myself together with both hands, and said thickly, "All right. I'll try. What-what do I have to do?"

Narayan gripped my hand, painfully hard. "Good," he muttered. "Show him, Gamine!"

"Quick! This way!"

I followed the robed form along a passageway, hauntingly familiar, dreamishly strange. A curious, sick, almost exhilarating fear braced every muscle in my body with tingling force, as a dark door opened and I saw the limp shapes of my dream.

Moving slowly, hesitantly, searching with every move for the right feel (to match the vague and elusive memory of a dream?) I reached up and pulled down one of the limp feather-shapes. It was a fluffy crimson mass, and felt curiously warm to the touch, not the cool neutral feel of cloth or feathers. Gamine stood by, not interfering. But when I held it between my hands I turned to the robed and enigmatic form, suddenly not sure.

"What do I do now? Adric had some sort of way to transfer his mind, his consciousness." I stood staring down at the feather-thing, like a limp pillow, in my hands. "I don't."

Gamine said, very low, "Pull it over your head. Like a cloak"

I started to unfold the thing; stopped, shaking, at a razor-touch that left a thin line of blood on my hands. Talons! I stared at the fine-steel claws, so exquisitely shaped, but Gamine made an impatient sound and I pulled it carelessly about my shoulders.

Almost immediately I felt the strange, not unpleasant sensation I remembered, as if my head were expanding like a great gaseous balloon, as if I were soaring up into the ceiling. I felt the falconwings expanding, beating—

Dimly I heard Gamine's warning cry, but the exhilaration of flight was already on me; with a great extending of wings, I fluttered, was flying. My eyesight was suddenly sharper, from a new perspective, the room forming strange new prisoning outlines around me. Not caring, I saw a clumsy two-legged body slump nerveless to the floor, saw an indistinct form fling the window wide, and I was out and gone on the buffeting winds, mounting higher and higher in a sort of ecstasy of soaring flight. ...

The sky was colorless pale, but not empty space. With strange new perceptions I could see, like layered ribbon, the currents of the wind and air. I rode them upward, dipped one wing and transferred to a shimmering downcraft, playing, intoxicated with the sense of space and freedom.

All my life I had been earthbound! Now for the first time I had the freedom of a dream, to lift and soar, float motionless on a scrap of wind, then with a mere touch of motion, drift and hover like a skimming cloud. . . .

Far, far below me, the rainbow towers were sharpedged and bright, toylike. Thick, dark carpet of forest dimmed the curve of the land below me, and far away, low on the horizon, a dark-rising shapeThe Dreamer's Keep! The sight recalled me to myself, brought me back from the intoxicating forgetfulness; Adric bore Cynara into danger, while I played here on the wings of the wind, carefree as a bird. ...

Quickly, I took stock and oriented myself I was hovering at a great height above the Rainbow City;

far, far below I saw the court and the gate, and three tiny figures that might have been mounted men, racing along the roadway. That was not what I wanted. I spread my wings, riding a swift pale perceptible current of air, and sped eastward.

Tonight the forest was deserted, though I made out, with the supernaturally-keen eyes of the falcon, the small moving shapes of pale deer and other strange animals. But nothing human moved in the forests tonight. Narayan's men had all been drawn away on a grave errand.

I soared up and up to a still greater height. The land was still clear and sharp-edged beneath me, every outline distinct—the sort of vision you get from a tremendously good pair of night glasses. Far away on the horizon I saw a great moving mass of men; Narayan's army on the march? Further still, serried ranks moving grimly, I caught a glimmer of red and gold and knew that Karamy's army of the living dead were prepared to meet the attack But what of Karamy, Evarin, Idris? Was their deadly cavalcade already at the Dreamer's Keep, was the awful sacrifice already on its way to doom? I didn't know what Narayan's powers might be, now that he was freed, but could he alone, whatever his psi force, dare to face three Narabedlans newly charged with force from that deadly sacrifice? Karamy, Idris, Evarin would be filled to the brim with power from their Dreamers—in their tranced sleep, glutted with lifeenergy, giving it up to the Narabedlans.

And Adric was racing to join them—and he had Cynara! But where, where?

Grateful for the telescope sight of the falcon, I quartered the country inch by inch, tracing the

roads that wound like white ribbons through the forest. Adric would take the shortest and straightest road.

There, there! Far below me, a solitary horseman raced, crouched over the neck of his steed, a limp, dark burden across his saddle. Adric!

I heard my own curses like a high shrill falcon-cry, and forced it back to silence. That cry might have warned him! Wheeling, soaring, I rode the downdraft in a long spiral, centering in on that solitary horseman. Silent, tipping my wings, I soared in, and strange, non-human calculations flickered curiously through my mind; I was aware of his body as juicy warmth, conscious of the motion of his horse as a tensile interplay of muscle against air, and the bare back of his neck was like a white glimmering magnet. Strike there, strike there! I hung motionless on the wind above him, beating my pinions just enough to match the speed of his horse, centering in on that vulnerable patch of skin where I could thrust, take purchase on his broad shoulders, strike at the root of the brain.

But I waited too long. Perhaps some small rustle of wings, perhaps the bird-shadow crossed his sight, but Adric jerked his body upright in the saddle, arching his back, crying out curses. He was warned! Cautiously I hung off, watching; then darted in, going for his eyes.

But his reflexes were lightning-fast, and he was an old hand at this game. The slapping edge of a weighted cloak struck one wing, knocking me off balance; I had to beat both wings to keep from falling like a stone, and when I balanced again on the air, he had his sword out and was sweeping

it in those great arcs I remembered.

I flapped my wings in fury, beating back on the air. I could not reach him without being cut to ribbons! I circled him, grimly, seeking an opening.

Across the saddle Cynara stirred and moaned. Adric cursed, his glance going swiftly from the girl to my hovering beak above him, and I exulted; now if Cynara can use her head, she can divide his attention just enough ...

Adric's sword-room was lessened with the girl stirring; he could not move freely, and I dived in, hearing Cynara's scream of terror. I struck between Adric and the girl, clawing, darting in my beak, wings beating. Adric toppled backward, overbalanced; the horse reared, and Cynara slid to the ground, struck heavily and lay still. I darted in, ready to strike, but Adric recovered, and had his sword out, making a steel ring between himself and me.

I cursed and heard again the eerie falcon-scream of rage and frustration, hanging away again. I circled behind him, but he turned, warily, keeping guarded. I darted into a sudden opening; slashed, was rewarded with an explosion of curses from Adric, and saw a long gash slowly open in his forearm; but he recovered swiftly, swung his sword up and I overbalanced, tipped, feeling the flight-feather gone from one wing. Strangely, I felt no pain, but a spasm of panic fear. I had to struggle for balance.

I saw Cynara raise herself, slowly, to a sitting position. Her eyes were wide with terror. I circled

in again, feeling the crippling weight in my wounded wing. Now I must risk all! I dived in like an airplane, zooming straight at Adric's face. I took him off guard and he overbalanced, fell backward; my claws slashed blood from his cheek as I dug my talons into him, wings beating, gripping for balance. I bent my beak for the kill.

His left arm sliced upward; with an eerie scream of fury I saw—too late!—the sharp-pointed dagger in his hand. I felt it slice through one wing; plunge into my heart. I saw a splatter of burning yellow venom, heard Cynara's scream, and I was. ...

... I was clinging, sick and shaking, to the saddle of a galloping horse. Rising wind beat in my face; above me the moons swung in an indigo sky, and sparks beat from the horse's hoofs on frosty stone. I gasped, for a moment disoriented, wobbling dangerously, not knowing what had happened.

Then awareness came. I had lost. Adric had killed the falcon, and I was back in my own body. ...

Riding! Narayan's blonde hair was frosty pale in the moonlight; he rode at my side, straight in the saddle, his face drawn and intent. At my other side, the robed Gamine was a nightmare ghost, a phantom.

"Narayan!" I gasped.

He turned in his saddle; drew his horse up for a moment.

"You're back! What happened? Adric—"

"I failed," I said bitterly, and told them. Narayan looked grim, but his hand gripped my shoulder. "Easy! You did the best you could, and at least you may have delayed him enough."

"But how did I get here?"

"We brought you with us," Gamine said sharply. "Enough talking! Ride!"

It took all my concentration to stick on the animal's back, but I was acquiring balance and a feel for riding. The ill wind was blowing some good, I thought inanely.

Far away we heard the sudden spatter of gunfire, the screams of dying men, the ring of swords and spears, the shrill cry of a falcon. Narayan's face looked haunted.

"Kerrel and his men have met the guards! They're attacking!"

The scream of falcons rang swiftly over Gamine's head. The too-familiar beat of wings slapped over my back; I flung up one arm to knock away one serpentine neck My terrified horse plunged and bucked, and I rocked in the saddle, nearly falling. Another bird swooped down on Narayan, and another, and then there were swarms of them, gold and purple and green, crimson, blue, flame-color; the air was thick with their wings. Gamine screamed. I saw Narayan beating the air

with his sword; the veiled Spell-singer, crouching in the saddle, was lashing them with a whip. The lash kept the birds at bay, but the razor claws caught at the blue shroudings.

Narayan, whip in one hand, sword in the other, beat round him in great arcs, and I heard one bird's death-cry send ringing echoes through the forest I got my knife out, slashed upward.

"The mirror," screamed Gamine, "Evarin's mirror! Quick, they're coming by millions!"

They were, indeed, coming in scores, darkening the sky; whirling and screeching, an army of ghastly death. These were not the soul-falcons such as I had flown, elaborately endowed with the intelligence of their launcher and all his human cunning; these were machines. Alive, yes, and deadly, but not with the life we know. Only the nightmare freak of a science gone

mad could control, or produce, these hateful things that were filling the clean air, groping for us with needle beaks and talons, wild wings beating. Only Evarin—

I fumbled blindly for the mirror-thing, clumsily stripping away the silks around it. A needletalon raked my wrist, and by sheer instinct I struck upward, turning the face of the mirror toward the bird.

The falcon reeled in mid-air, flapped, went limp and fell. A tingling shock rattled through my arm. 1 dropped the mirror and leaped to catch it. The thing was a perfect conductor. It drained energy! Now I knew why Evarin had been so anxious to have me— or Adric—gazing into its

depths!

The birds were brainless, all pure energy, unless controlled by the personality of the owner, and the Narabedlans had no time for that today, no leisure to play the falcon-game! But Evarin had loosed them against us, in a last desperate play.

I grabbed the mirror, and held it upright; I caught a half-glimpse, from the tail of my eye, of the weird lightnings that coiled inside it, but even that glimpse twisted my stomach in nervous knots. Shielding my face, I held the thing upward. The birds flew toward it like moths streaming around a candle; shock after shock flowed along my arm. Three more of the horrible falcons fell limp, lifeless, drained!

A strange exhilaration began to buoy me up. The force from the birds was not electricity, but some kindred energy which my nerves drank greedily. I thrust the mirror out; was rewarded again with the surge of power, and again the birds, by dozens this time, flapped and fell.

Then, as if whatever had loosed the army of falcons had realized their uselessness, the whole remaining force of the birds wheeled and fled, winging swiftly overland to the distant donjon that rose high on the horizon.

Recalled to the Dreamer's Keep!

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE FLOW OF strength had renewed me; I felt I could face whatever came. I thrust Evarin's mirror into a packet; flung a word to Narayan and we were riding again, Gamine racing behind us. The blue, shroudlike veils had been slashed to ribbons; I could see the pale gleam of naked flesh through the torn veiling.

The noise of battle behind us grew more distinct; I could make out separate explosions, flashes of colored flame. I shuddered; even now that frightful army of falcons might be winging to join Evarin. The rebels could kill some of them, but for every falcon dead there would be twenty more slaves for Narabedla. What could Narayan's men, with their scythes and pitchforks, do against the incredible science of a Toymaker?

Narayan's strained face was ghastly in the moonlight. I needed no telepathy to read his thoughts. Slaughter for his men. What for his sister? Our horses seemed to lag, to drag through a mire of motionlessness, though they were at the full gallop of endurance.

The sounds of battle drew nearer. Everything in me cried out that I was a fool, riding full tilt into a battle in which I had no personal stake, in a world that was not my own. Yet something else told me, coldly and with a grim truth, that all I possessed was what I might win today, for this was the only world I would ever know, that I would never see my own world again.

Never! And Adric should rot in a hell of his own choosing, for that!

But we were passing the sounds of battle! If we had raced before, now our horses seemed to fly. Behind us the fight raged, men screamed in the agony of death, wounded horses neighed and I heard the muffled sound of earth flying upward, exploding in fire. But the sounds grew dimmer; faded away.

We had left the forest, and were riding across a dark and hummocky plain. Moss padded our hoofnoises; now and then some small furry thing skittered across the track, and twice my horse shied at swooping night-birds and my heart stopped until I saw they were not the falcons of Evarin.

Stark and black now against a treeless horizon I could see the Dreamer's Keep. I rode hunched in the saddle, my eyes on the vast cairn only a few miles away now.

Suddenly a vast arch of lightning spanned the sky above the Dreamer's Keep. Blue lightning. I heard Narayan groan like a man in his death-agony; twisting in my saddle, I saw brooding horror on his face, mingled with pain, and a terrified satisfaction.

"The sacrifice, I still feel it," he breathed, in labored gasps, "I still—take strength from it— Michael!" His voice held unbearable torture, and the veins in the fair face stood out, black and congested with effort. "If I start to—to work for them—promise to—promise to shoot me."

"Oh, God-" I gasped.

"Michael, promise! Gamine!"

Gamine spurred her horse to his side; I heard the low, neutral voice, sweet, almost crooning. Again the vast arc of blueness spanned the sky; Narayan dug his spurs into his horse's flank and raced ahead of us.

On the plain, limned starkly in silhouette against the sky, a horseman appeared. He rode low in the saddle, his horse limping, a darkness across his saddle. I cursed; I knew that lean crouched figure, knew it as well as my own! I had delayed Adric, but now he rode to the sacrifice, and before him, limp across his saddle, he bore Cynara!

The rest of that nightmare ride is a blank in my memory. The next thing I remember clearly is reining up beneath the lee of the gaunt pile of rocks-onrocks that was the Dreamer's Keep. There was no sign of Adric, or of Cynara, no sign of any living person, nothing but the incandescent lightning that rayed out every four seconds or so. Narayan's face was a white death-mask, and Gamine's breathing came in short sobs. I alone was free of the effect; my body throbbed and tingled with the weird energy set free in the night.

We flung ourselves from our horses. Gamine tugged futilely at the torn veils, and for the first time the blurred invisibility wavered and I caught a glimpse of one blue eye, blue as the skylightnings that rose and flamed and died.

The tower dwarfed us with its massive bulk, rising sheer for hundreds of feet. Gamine clutched my arm. "Listen!"

All I could hear was a low, not unpleasant humming, like the singing drone of great bees, or hightension wires, but the sound struck them with horror. Narayan fumbled in his shirt; drew forth the little talisman Rhys had given me, and at the sight of it his haggard face relaxed. He gripped it tightly in his hands; drew a long moaning sigh, closed his eyes for a moment.

Somewhere above us a shivering scream rang out. It broke the static immobility that held us; Narayan, slipping the Toy inside his shirt again, began to run around the Keep, Gamine and I panting at his heels. We came around the corner beneath an arching outcrop of stonework No one needed to give orders; as one, we scrambled up on the ledge, crowding close together. I gripped my hand on the knife in my belt; it had a comforting solid feel. I needed that.

A framed archway let us look down into the interior of the Keep. Below us a voice cried out in despair and unbelief "Adric, Adric! No, oh no!" The voice was Cynara's.

Under our combined weight the glass shattered: we hurled inward. We found ourselves standing on a great shelf, about ten feet above the floor of the Keep, looking down at a scene framed in stark horror. Golden Karamy, dwarfed Idris, Evarin, stood in a close circle about a ring of coffins that glowed pale crystal, gleamed with scintillant radiance. In the hand of each of the Narabedlans was a tiny, jewelled sword, a Toy, and in the coffinsGamine screamed. "The

Dreamers!" Not till then did we see what Adric was doing. At the center of the ring of coffins, a dais rose upright, horribly altar-like, and a line of the mindless slaves, nude, vacant-eyed, moved in single file before that dais. As each one stepped forward, there was a shuddering moan, the tiny swords glared with light, and the slave—was not!

And Adric, Cynara captive between his hands, was thrusting her forward, into the space between the coffins, toward the nexus of blue light, toward the Sacrifice-stone of the Dreamers!

The sight put me beyond caution. We threw ourselves from the ledge, and went down into a writhing, sprawling mass of living flesh. A barked command from Idris, and the slaves swarmed on us, drowning us in smothering bodies. I kicked and sprawled and thrashed and scratched and bit my way to the top of the heap, and somehow, for a second, I rolled free.

That instant was enough. I was on my feet, the knife in my hand. Dragging bodies clung at my heels; I kicked out savagely, felt my boot strike naked flesh, felt and heard the pulpy sound of a skull crushing under the impact of my heel. The sound rocked my stomach, but I was not in a position to be fastidious. My eyes were swimming in trickling blood. Gamine clawed free, and together we elbowed out of the press.

Evarin sprang at me. I thrust blindly with the knife in my hand, ripped into his shoulder, missing the throat by inches. I caught the talisman Toy from his hand as it fell free. A moment of the clinging, tearing melee; then Gamine and Narayan and I were standing back to back in the center of the ring of coffins. There was a long howl of pain and terror from Evarin and the four

Narabedlans flung themselves backward in terror.

For within the coffins there was a stirring. ...

But Adric was no coward. He threw himself backward, grasped Cynara again and with all the force of his lean arms he flung the girl straight toward the nexus of blue light! Narayan and Gamine stood frozen, but I broke free, dashed forward, I passed straight across the cone of blue lightningUnharmed!

The blasting energy only tingled pleasantly in my body as I caught Cynara in mid-air and reeled away from the force that would have meant utter annihilation for her. Narayan caught Cynara's staggering body from my arms, drew her back to safety. Then I felt the impact as Adric's tall, heavy body crashed against me, felt the shock as my fist smashed into his jaw, and heard him grunt as we locked into a clinch that carried us nearer, and nearer to that center of blue energy! A moment we swayed there, at the very edge of the lightnings.

Then Evarin's tensed cat-body lit into the center of my back Again the heat thrust needles through me. Adric was flung clear, but there was an arch of blue that spanned the vault, a wild scream like the death-cry of a panther—

The Toymaker was gone!

Within the coffins the blue lights flared, as if the last shock of energy had freed them. Quickly

Idris and Karamy ran forward, thrusting the talisman Toys against the very lids of the coffins, but too late. The Toys in the hands of Narayan and Gamine spat glaring blue fire, and step by step the Narabedlans retreated, farther, farther, farther. ...

The coffins were suddenly empty. As if by magic, three men and a woman clustered around Narayan and Gamine. In their faces I could distinguish a curious likeness to Narayan, and to old Rhys; and Narayan, within the circle of Dreamers, reached out and flung the tattered veils from Gamine. A triumphant chant rushed sweetly from the lips of the Spellsinger as the veils came away and at the center of the mutants stood Gamine the Dreamer, dwarfing them all with her majesty, a Dreamer who had never slept, never been bound. She was a woman, as I had begun to guess, slender and fair and very beautiful, and I thought of Isis and the young Osiris as her blue eyes blazed and the lovely body arched upward in tall freedom from the shrouding veils. The blue lightnings swirled and faded, and the Dreamer's Keep was bathed with trembling, glimmering rainbows.

Karamy and Idris retreated, step by slow step, slinking backward into the shadows. Only Adric stood his ground. He looked dazed, his eyes fixed on Gamine, but he did not falter.

The rainbows died. The air was void and empty of energy. The Dreamers stood looking on the crouching Karamy with her hidden face; on the bent, gnarled dwarf, on Cynara kneeling white and radiant with joy, on Adric who stood staring at Gamine like a man released from a spell.

Gamine spoke at last "Rhys was right; the time had come. The time is here, now. What next?"

The circle of Dreamers turned one to another, but Gamine shook her head, her long pale hair lifting electrically around her face. "No. Why should they die? They are only an old dwarf, a silly fool who could not make up his mind." Her eyes dwelt first on Idris, then on Adric. "And Karamy. They have no power, now we are freed. They had not even power to see me as I was, not entirely. Pity them in their weakness. Now we are freed."

Adric drew himself upright. His slackly-parted lips set firmly, and he looked at Narayan with a dispassionate, stubborn shrug. Then he turned back to Gamine.

"Mil me, if you like."

But it was Narayan who answered, stepping to ward the man in crimson with a strange, choking excitement. "No, Adric. I want you to see what you saw before, to see what sent you away, to see the thing that drove you mad. Gamine, Gamine, show him what he saw then."

Gamine came slowly forward to where Karamy knelt..

"Stand up, witch."

Slowly, Karamy rose to her feet. There was no hope in her eyes, no mercy in Gamine's. The two pairs of eyes, cat-yellow and blue, fought for a moment.

"And was I wrong?" Karamy demanded at last, raising her head, her beautiful face set and cold with pride. "I knew you would destroy us, Gamine, and destroy our world. For that I was willing to fight you to the death, and if it is my death, still. What I have done was what had to be done!"

Gamine smiled, faintly. "And by that you stand or fall or die, Karamy?" She turned to the others. "Karamy is beautiful, is she not?"

I suppose no woman on Earth has ever been, or ever will be, as beautiful as Karamy the golden. She stood there, proud and straight, amber and golden and tiger-tawny and turned her eyes on Adric, and I saw longing an 1 love break forth in the man's eyes. He gazed and gazed, and Karamy held out her arms, and Adric, bemused, went toward her. ...

"Hold him," Narayan commanded tersely.

One of the Dreamers made a curious sign with his left hand, and Adric, arrested, stood gripped in a vice of invisible force.

"This was Karamy's power," said Gamine in her clear ringing voice, "but now see Karamy shorn of the Illusion her Dreamer threw to guard her! See the form of Karamy that she made me wear! This!"

She reached out and touched Karamy lightly with the little talisman Toy she held.

There was a gasp of horror from many throats. Karamy—Karamy the golden, the exquisite. There are no words for the kind and type of change that took place before our eyes. I was sick and retching with horror before the metamorphosis was half complete; Cynara was sobbing softly and piteously; but Adric, frozen, could not look away.

Gamine's laugh—low and sweet, and doubly deadly for its sweetness—reached our ears. "Yet I should be grateful," she murmured, mockingly, "for Karamy's magic kept my true shape hidden. So I am free, Karamy, free and a Dreamer, and you, shall I lend you my veils, sister?" Again, the horrible laugh. "No? Go forth!" Her voice was a lashing whip, and with a broken wail, the thing that had been Karamy threw up an arm across the staring sockets and fled away into the night. And we never saw it again. ...

So that was the end of Karamy the Golden, the end.

A little later I found that Adric and I were staring stupidly at one another, puzzled, but without animosity. Cynara came and slipped a protecting arm around Adric and I turned away, embarrassed, for the man was sobbing like a child.

I was amazed and sick with the enormity of all I had seen and done; I shook and shivered with deadly chill. I suppose it was reaction.

"Steady!" Narayan's steely hand on my shoulder kept me once again from making a fool of myself

"You've done a great deal for us," he said. "I wish we had some way of thanking you, not for myself, for millions of people. Perhaps some day we'll find a way of sending you back to your own world, but with Rhys and Karamy gone—"

Adric, looking subdued and speaking with a curious humility, looked at me over Narayan's shoulder. "There will be a way, some day. It will take time to find it, but some day—"

I knew what they meant. The magic of the Dreamers could not be used again in the old ways, and now their power was an unknown quantity. Adric said, "In the meantime—"

"In the meantime, you seem to be stuck with me," I said, and spontaneously we grinned at each other. I could not hate this man. We had known one another too well. Freed of his enchantments ...

He chuckled. "Rainbow City's big enough for us both."

Narayan looked from Adric to me; then Gamine's intent face was at his elbow. "I'll see to these men," she said. "Narayan, they need you." She motioned to the wakened Dreamers, standing in a dazed circle. "They must be told why they were wakened, and how. There are slaves to be freed, armies—"

Narayan glanced guiltily over his shoulder. "That's so," he acknowledged, gravely; squared his

shoulders and went to his people. I watched him go, feeling as if my one friend here had deserted me. But it had to be that way. Narayan was not our kind. He was the sort of man who could remodel a world, but the look he gave Adric and me told us that we should have a share, if we liked, in the rebuilding.

Gamine took my hand, and I left Adric and Cynara with a wistful glance. Cynara was lovely, and very human, and I suppose I had hoped that in some way she would compensate for my enforced stay in this world. But if Adric was himself again, could I hope that?

Gamine and I stood on the steps of the Dreamer's Keep and her voice, soft and wistful, mourned in the darkness. "Old Rhys knew I had been born with Dreamer powers, even before I was bound to him. He knew and kept me close to him, hid me and helped me. One day Adric found out. It changed him; he— we freed Narayan, together. Then Karamy made me what I was, what you saw. It hurt Adric—hurt something deep in him. I could have cured him, in time, but Karamy had him bewitched. She stripped him of power, of memory. Perhaps some day he will remember that I was what I was."

"Gamine! Gamine!" Adric's voice cried from within, and the next moment he rushed forth, caught the Dreamer woman in his arms and his mouth met hers, and she stood swaying in his arms, laughing and crying together. Cynara, following slowly, smiled with gentle satisfaction. Over Adric's shoulder, Gamine's blue eyes met mine. Adric knew.

Cynara's voice was tenderly humorous as we left them together, in the glory of the rising red

sun. "Poor Gamine," she said, "and poor Adric. I kept an eye on him, for her sake and Narayan's. I was sorry for them both, Michael, I knew—I knew you were not Adric-"

She was very lovely and very human, Cynara, and I remembered how I had looked into her eyes on our first ride together, and hated being the person Adric was then.

"I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made—"

"But you did," Cynara said softly, and I realized I had spoken the words aloud. I looked at Adric, clasped in Gamine's arms, standing in the glow of a new day that was dawning for them. He had found his world.

"But it is your world too," Cynara said, and taking my hand in hers, led me down the steps of the Dreamer's Keep, into the strange sunrise. A shout went up from the men assembled around the tower, waiting. I heard it, drew a deep breath and then put my arm around Cynara, calling to Adric to come and share it with me.

The Fall of Atlantis(1983)

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. Copyright © 1983 by Marion Zimmer Bradley Formerly published in parts as Web of Light and Web of Darkness All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Baen Book Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 www.baen.com ISBN: 0-7434-7157-1 Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet First hardcover printing, September 2003 Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Bell Road Press, Sherwood, OR Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

First, to my dear friend and mentor Dorothy G. Quinn, who, more years ago than I like to think about, explored the past with me, and wrote, with me, a thin sheaf of handwritten scenes exploring the characters of Domaris and Micon. The book has been through four rewritings since, and Dorothy would probably not recognize her brainchild; but it was in her company that I first trod this path, and the debt is inestimable. Second, to David R. Bradley, my son, who prepared the final draft of this manuscript for publication and who provided, from various sources, including the unpublished writings of his late father, Robert A. Bradley, the philosophical excerpts which appear at the head of each section.

—Marion Zimmer Bradley

1 Web of Light

BOOK ONE Micon

"All events are but the consummation of preceding causes, clearly seen but not distinctly apprehended. When the strain is sounded, the most untutored listener can tell that it must end with the keynote, although he cannot see why each successive bar must lead at last to the concluding chord. The law of Karma is the force which leads all chords to the keynote, which spreads the ripples from the tiny stone dropped into a pool, until the tidal waves drown a continent, long after the stone has sunk from sight and been forgotten.

"This is the story of one such stone, dropped into the pool of a world which was drowned long before the Pharaohs of Egypt piled one stone upon another."

—The Teachings of Rajasta the Mage

Chapter One EMISSARIES

I

At the sound of sandaled feet upon stone, the Priest Rajasta raised his face from the scroll he held open on his knee. The library of the Temple was usually deserted at this hour, and he had come to regard it as his peculiar privilege to study here each day undisturbed. His forehead ridged a little, not with anger, for he was not given to anger, but with residual annoyance, for he

had been deep in thought.

However, the two men who had entered the library had aroused his interest, and he straightened and watched them; without, however, laying aside the scroll, or rising.

The elder of the two was known to him: Talkannon, Arch-Administrator of the Temple of Light, was a burly, cheerful-faced man, whose apparent good nature was a shrewd dissemblance for an analytical temperament which could turn cold and stern and even ruthless. The other was a stranger, a man whose graceful dancer's body moved slowly and with effort; his dark smile was slightly wry, as if lips shut tight on pain could grimace more easily. A tall man, this stranger, deeply tanned and handsome, clad in white robes of an unfamiliar pattern, which glimmered with faint luminescence in the sunlit shadows of the room.

"Rajasta," the Arch-Administrator said, "our brother desires further knowledge. He is free to study as he will. Be he your guest." Talkannon bowed slightly to the still-seated Rajasta, and, turning back to the stranger, stated, "Micon of Ahtarrath, I leave you with our greatest student. The Temple, and the City of the Temple, are yours, my brother; feel free to call upon me at any time." Again Talkannon bowed, then turned and left the two men to further their acquaintance.

As the door scraped slowly shut behind the Arch-Administrator's powerful form, Rajasta frowned again; he was used to Talkannon's abrupt manners, but he feared that this stranger would think them all lacking in civility. Laying down his scroll, he arose and approached the guest with his hands outstretched in courteous welcome. On his feet, Rajasta was a very tall man,

long past middle age; his step and manner disciplined and punctilious.

Micon stood quite still where Talkannon had left him, smiling still that grave, one-sided smile. His eyes were deeply blue as storm-skies; the small creases around them spoke of humor, and a vast tolerance.

This man is one of us, surely,thought the Priest of Light, as he made a ceremonious bow, and waited. Still the stranger stood and smiled, unheedful. Rajasta's frown returned, faintly. "Micon of Ahtarrath—"

"I am so called," said the stranger formally. "I have come here to ask that I may pursue my studies among you." His voice was low and resonant, but held an overlay of effort, as if kept always in careful control.

"You are welcome to share in what knowledge is mine," Rajasta said with grave courtesy, "and you are yourself welcome—" He hesitated, then added, on a sudden impulse, "Son of the Sun." With his hand he made a certain Sign.

"A fosterling, only, I fear," said Micon with a brief, wry smile, "and overly proud of the relationship." Nevertheless, in answer to the ritual identifying phrase, he raised his hand and returned the archaic gesture.

Rajasta stepped forward to embrace his guest; they were bound, not only by the bonds of shared

wisdom and search, but by the power behind the innermost magic of the Priesthood of Light: like Rajasta, Micon was one of their highest initiates. Rajasta wondered at this—Micon seemed so young! Then, as they stepped apart, Rajasta saw what he had not noticed before. His face shadowed with sorrow and pity, and he took Micon's emaciated hands in his and led him to a seat, saying, "Micon, my brother!"

"A fosterling, as I said," Micon nodded. "How did you know? I was—told—that there is no outward scarring, nor—"

"No," Rajasta said. "I guessed. Your stillness—something in your gestures. But how did this come upon you, my brother?"

"May I speak of that at another time? What is—" Micon hesitated again, and said, his resonant voice strained, "—cannot be remedied. Let it suffice that I—returned the Sign."

Rajasta said, his voice trembling with emotion, "You are most truly a Son of Light, although you walk in darkness. Perhaps—perhaps the only Son of that Light who can face His splendor."

"Only because I may never behold it," Micon murmured, and the blank eyes seemed to gaze intently on the face they would never see. Silence, while that twisted and painful smile came and went upon Micon's face.

At last Rajasta ventured, "But—you returned the Sign—and I thought surely I was mistaken—

that surely you saw—"

"I think—I can read thoughts, a little," Micon said. "Only a little; and only since there was need. I do not know, yet, how much to trust to it. But with you—" Again the smile lent brilliance to the dark, strained face. "I felt no hesitation."

Again the silence, as of emotions stretched too tightly for speech; then, from the passageway, a woman's young voice called, "Lord Rajasta!"

Rajasta's tense face relaxed. "I am here, Domaris," he called, and explained to Micon, "My disciple, a young woman—Talkannon's daughter. She is unawakened as yet, but when she learns, and is—complete, she holds the seeds of greatness."

"The Light of the Heavens grant knowledge and wisdom to her," said Micon with polite disinterest.

Domaris came into the room; a tall girl, and proudly erect, with hair the color of hammered copper that made a brightness in the dark spaces and shadows. Like a light bird she came, but paused at a little distance from the men, too shy to speak in the presence of a stranger.

"My child," Rajasta said kindly, "this is Micon of Ahtarrath, my brother in the Light, to be treated as myself in every respect."

Domaris turned to the stranger, in civil courtesy—then her eyes widened, a look of awe drew over her features, and with a gesture that seemed forced, as if she made it against her will, she laid her right hand over her breast and raised it slowly to forehead level, in the salute given only to the highest initiates of the Priesthood of Light. Rajasta smiled: it was a right instinct and he was pleased; but he let his voice break the spell, for Micon had gone grey with a deep pallor.

"Micon is my guest, Domaris, and will be lodged with me—if that is your will, my brother?" At Micon's nod of assent, he continued, "Go now, daughter, to the Scribe-Mother, and ask her to hold a scribe always in readiness for my brother."

She started and shivered a little; sent a worshipful glance at Micon; then inclined her head in reverence to her teacher and went on her errand.

"Micon!" Rajasta spoke with terse directness. "You are come here from the Dark Shrine!"

Micon nodded. "From their dungeons," he qualified immediately.

"I—I feared that—"

"I am no apostate," Micon reassured firmly. "I served not there. My service is not subject to compulsion!"

"Compulsion?"

Micon did not move, but the lift of his brows and the curl of his lip gave the effect of a shrug. "They would have compelled me." He held out his mutilated hands. "You can see that they were—eloquent in persuasion." Before Rajasta's gasp of horror, Micon drew back his hands and concealed their betrayal within the sleeves of his robe. "But my task is undone. And until it is completed, I hold death from me with these hands—though he companion me most closely."

Micon might have been speaking of last night's rain; and Rajasta bowed his head before the impassive face. "There are those we call Black-robes," he said bitterly. "They hide themselves among the members of the Magician's Sect, those who guard the shrine of the Unrevealed God— whom we call Grey-robes here. I have heard that these . . . Black-robes—torture! But they are secret in their doings. Well for them! Be they accursed!"

Micon stirred. "Curse not, my brother!" he said harshly. "You, of all men, should know the danger of that."

Rajasta said tonelessly, "We have no way of acting against them. As I say, we suspect members of the Grey-robe sect. Yet, all are—gray!"

"I know. I saw too clearly, so—I see nothing. Enough," Micon pleaded. "I carry my release within me, my brother, but I may not yet accept it. We will not speak of this, Rajasta." He arose, with slow carefulness, and paced deliberately to the window, to stand with his face uplifted to the warm sunlight.

With a sigh, Rajasta accepted the prohibition. True, the Black-robes always concealed themselves so well that no victim could ever identify his tormentors. But why this? Micon was a stranger and could hardly have incurred their enmity; and never before had they dared meddle with so highly-placed a personage. The knowledge of what had befallen Micon initiated a new round in a warfare as old as the Temple of Light.

And the prospect dismayed him.

II

In the School of Scribes, Mother Lydara was in the process of disciplining one of her youngest pupils. The Scribes were the sons and daughters of the Priest's Caste who showed, in their twelfth or thirteenth year, a talent for reading or writing: and thirty-odd intelligent boys and girls are not easy to keep in order.

Mother Lydara felt that no child in all her memory had ever been such a problem to her as the sullen little girl who faced her just now: a thin angular girl, about thirteen, with stormy eyes and hair that hung dishevelled in black, tumbled curls. She held herself very stiff and erect, her nervous little hands stubbornly clenched, taut defiance in her white face.

"Deoris, little daughter," the Scribe-Mother admonished, standing rock-like and patient, "you must learn to control both tongue and temper if you ever hope to serve in the Higher Ways. The

daughter of Talkannon should be an example and a pattern to the others. Now, you will apologize to me, and to your playmate Ista, and then you will make accounting to your father." The old Priestess waited, arms crossed on her ample breast, for an apology which never came.

Instead the girl burst out tearfully, "I won't! I have done nothing wrong, Mother, and I won't apologize for anything!" Her voice was plangent, vibrating with a thrilling sweetness which had marked her, among the children of the Temple, as a future Spell-singer; she seemed all athrob with passion like a struck harp.

The Scribe-Mother looked at her with a baffled, weary patience. "That is not the way to speak to an elder, my child. Obey me, Deoris."

"I will not!"

The old woman put out a hand, herself uncertain whether to placate the girl or slap her, when a rap came at the door. "Who is it?" the Priestess called impatiently.

The door swung back and Domaris put her head around the corner. "Are you at leisure, Mother?"

Mother Lydara's troubled face relaxed, for Domaris had been a favorite for many years. "Come in, my child, I have always time for you."

Domaris halted on the threshold, staring at the stormy face of the little girl in the scribe's frock.

"Domaris, Ididn't! " Deoris wailed, and, a forlorn little cyclone, she flung herself on Domaris and wrapped her arms around her sister's neck. "I didn't do anything," she hiccoughed on a hysterical sob.

"Deoris—little sister!" chided Domaris. Firmly she disengaged the clinging arms. "Forgive her, Mother Lydara—has she been in trouble again? No, be still, Deoris; I did not askyou. "

"She is impertinent, impudent, impatient of correction and altogether unmanageable," said Mother Lydara. "She sets a bad example in the school, and runs wild in the dormitories. I dislike to punish her, but—"

"Punishment only makes Deoris worse," said Domaris levelly. "You should never be severe with her." She pulled Deoris close, smoothing the tumbled curls. She herself knew so well how to rule Deoris through love that she resented Mother Lydara's harshness.

"While Deoris is in the Scribe-School," said the Scribe-Mother with calm finality, "she will be treated as the others are treated, and punished as they are punished. And unless she makes some effort to behave as they behave she will not be long in the School."

Domaris raised her level brows. "I see . . . I have come from Lord Rajasta. He has need of a scribe to serve a guest, and Deoris is competent; she is not happy in the school, nor do you want

her here. Let her serve this man." She glanced at the drooping head, now snuggled into her shoulder; Deoris looked up with wondering adoration. Domaris always made everything right again!

Mother Lydara frowned, but was secretly relieved: Deoris was a problem quite beyond her limited capabilities, and the fact that this spoilt child was Talkannon's daughter complicated the situation. Theoretically, Deoris was there on an equal footing with the others, but the daughter of the Arch-Administrator could not be chastised or ruled over like the child of an ordinary priest.

"Have it as you will, Daughter of Light," said the Scribe-Mother gruffly, "but she must continue her own studies, see you to that!"

"Rest assured, I shall not neglect her schooling," said Domaris coldly. As they left the squat building, she studied Deoris, frowning. She had seen little of her sister in these last months; when Domaris had been chosen as Rajasta's Acolyte, the child had been sent to the ScribeSchool—but before that they had been inseparable, though the eight years difference in their ages made the relationship less that of sisters than of mother and daughter. Now Domaris sensed a change in her young sister that dismayed her. Always before, Deoris had been merry and docile; what had they done to her, to change her into this sullen little rebel? She decided, with a flare of anger, that she would seek Talkannon's permission to take Deoris again under her own care.

"Can I really stay with you?"

"I cannot possibly promise it, but we shall see." Domaris smiled. "You wish it?"

"Oh yes!" said Deoris passionately, and flung her arms about her sister again, with such intensity that Domaris's brow furrowed into lines of deep trouble. What had theydone to Deoris?

Freeing herself from the clinging arms, Domaris admonished, "Gently, gently, little sister," and they turned their steps toward the House of the Twelve.

III

Domaris was one of the Twelve Acolytes: six young men and six young women, chosen every third year from the children of the Priest's Caste, for physical perfection, beauty, and some especial talent which made them archetypal of the Priest's Caste of the Ancient Land. When they reached maturity, they dwelt for three years in the House of the Twelve, studying all the ancient wisdom of the Priest's Caste, and preparing themselves for service to the Gods and to their people. It was said that if some calamity should destroy all of the Priest's Caste save only the Twelve, all the wisdom of the Temples could be reconstructed from these Twelve Acolytes alone. At the end of this three-year term, each married his or her allotted mate, and so carefully were these six young couples chosen that the children of Acolytes rarely failed to climb high in the Priesthood of their caste.

The House of the Twelve was a spacious building, crowning a high green hill apart from the

clustered buildings of the precinct; surrounded by wide lawns and green enclosed gardens, and cool fountains. As the sisters sauntered along the path which climbed, between banks of flowering shrubs, toward the white walls of the retreat, a young woman, barely out of childhood, hurried across the lawns toward them.

"Domaris! Come here, I want you—oh, Deoris! Have you been freed from the Scribe's prison?"

"I hope so," said Deoris shyly, and the girls hugged one another. The newcomer was between Domaris and Deoris in age; she might almost have been another sister, for the three were very much alike in form and feature, all three very tall and slender, finely-boned, with delicate hands and arms and the molded, incised features of the Priest's Caste. Only in coloring did they differ: Domaris, the tallest, her fiery hair long and rippling, her eyes cool, shadowed grey. Deoris was slighter and smaller, with heavy black ringlets and eyes like crushed violets; and Elis's curls were the glossy red-brown of polished wood, her eyes merry and clear blue. Of all those in the House of the Twelve, or in all the Temple, the daughters of Talkannon loved their cousin Elis the most.

"There are envoys here from Atlantis," Elis told them eagerly.

"From the Sea Kingdom? Truly?"

"Yes, from the Temple at Ahtarrath. The young Prince of Ahtarrath was sent here with his younger brother, but they never arrived. They were kidnapped, or shipwrecked, or murdered, and now they're searching the whole seacoast for them or their bodies."

Domaris stared, startled. Ahtarrath was a formidable name. The Mother-Temple, here in the Ancient Land, had little contact with the Sea Kingdoms, of which Ahtarrath was the most powerful; now, twice in one day, had she heard of it.

Elis went on excitedly, "There's some evidence that he landed, and they're talking of Blackrobes! Has Rajasta spoken of this, Domaris?"

Domaris frowned. She and Elis were of the Inner Circle of the Priest's Caste, but they had no right to discuss their elders, and the presence of Deoris should restrain such gossip in any case. "Rajasta does not confide in me; nor should an Acolyte listen to the gossip of the Gates!"

Elis turned pink, and Domaris relented a little. "There is no swarm that does not start with a single bee," she said pleasantly. "Rajasta has a guest from Ahtarrath. His name is Micon."

"Micon!" Elis exclaimed. "That is like saying that a slave's name is Lia! There are more Micons in the Sea Kingdoms than leaves on a songtree—" Elis broke off as a tiny girl, barely able to stand alone, clutched at her skirt. Elis looked down, impatient, then bent to take up the child; but the dimpled baby laughed, scampered toward Deoris, then tumbled down and lay squalling. Deoris snatched her up, and Elis glanced with annoyance at the little brown-skinned woman who scuttled after her refractory charge. "Simila," she rebuked, "cannot you keep Lissi from under our feet—or teach herhow to fall?"

The nurse came to take the child, but Deoris clung to her. "Oh, Elis, let me hold her, I haven't seen her in so long, why she couldn't even creep, and now she's walking! Is she weaned yet? No? How do you endure it? There, Lissi love, youdo remember me, don't you?" The baby girl shrieked with delight, plunging both hands into Deoris's thick ringlets. "Oh, you fat little darling!" Deoris gurgled, covering the chubby cheeks with kisses.

"Fat little nuisance." Elis looked at her daughter with a bitter laugh; Domaris gave Elis an understanding little pat. Because the women of the Acolytes were given in marriage without any regard for their own wishes, they were free until the very day of their marriage; and Elis, taking advantage of this freedom, had chosen a lover and borne him a child. This was perfectly allowable under the laws of the Temple, but, what wasnot allowable, her lover had failed to come forward and acknowledge paternity. Terrible penalties were visited on an unacknowledged child; to give her child caste, Elis had been forced to throw herself on the mercy of her allotted husband, an Acolyte like herself, called Chedan. Chedan had shown generosity, and acknowledged Lissi, but everyone knew he was not the father; not even Domaris knew who had fathered little Lissi. The real father would have suffered a severe penalty for his cowardice, had Elis denounced him; this she steadfastly refused to do.

Domaris said, gently, before Elis's bitter eyes, "Why don't you send the child away, Elis, since Chedan dislikes her so much? She cannot be important enough to disturb the peace of the Acolytes this way, and you will have other children—"

Elis's mouth twisted briefly, cynically. "Wait until you know what you are talking about before

you advise me," she said, reaching out to reclaim her child from Deoris. "Give me the little pest, I must go back."

"We're coming, too," Domaris said, but Elis tucked Lissi under her arm, beckoned to the nurse and hurried away.

Domaris looked after her, troubled. Until this moment her life had moved in orderly, patterned channels, laid out as predictably as the course of the river. Now it seemed the world had changed: talk of Black-robes, the stranger from Ahtarrath who had so greatly impressed her—her quiet life seemed suddenly filled with strangeness and dangers. She could not imagine why Micon should have made such a deep impression on her.

Deoris was looking at her, her violet eyes disturbed, doubtful; Domaris returned, with relief, to the world of familiar duties, as she arranged for her sister's stay in the House of the Twelve.

Later in the day, a courteously worded request came from Micon, that she might bring the scribe to him that evening.

IV

In the library, Micon sat alone by a casement, shadowed; but the white robes he wore were faintly luminescent in the dimness. Except for his silent form, the library was deserted, with no light except that slight luminescence.

Domaris sang a low-toned note, and a flickering, golden light sprang up around them; another note, more softly pitched, deeped the light to a steady radiance with no apparent source.

The Atlantean turned at the sound of her voice. "Who is there? Is it you, Talkannon's daughter?"

Domaris came forward, Deoris's little hand nestled shyly in hers. "Lord Micon, I bring you the scribe-student Deoris. She has been assigned for your convenience at all times and will attend you." Encouraged by Micon's warm smile, she added, "Deoris is my sister."

"Deoris." Micon repeated the name with a soft, slurred accent. "I thank you. And how are you called, Acolyte to Rajasta? Domaris," he recalled, his softly vibrant voice lingering on the syllables. "And the little scribe, then, is your sister? Come here, Deoris."

Domaris withdrew as Deoris went timidly to kneel before Micon. The Atlantean said, disturbed, "You must not kneel to me, child!"

"It is customary, Lord."

"Doubtless, a Priest's daughter is well schooled." Micon smiled. "Yet if I forbid it?"

Deoris rose obediently and stood before him.

"Are you familiar with the contents of the library, little Deoris? You seem very young, and I shall have to depend on you wholly, for writing as well as reading."

"Why?" Deoris blurted out uncontrollably. "You speak our language as one born to it! Can you not read it as well?"

Just for a moment a tormented look flitted across the dark, drawn face. Then it vanished. "I thought that your sister had told you," he said quietly. "I am blind."

Deoris stood for a moment in dumb surprise. A glance at Domaris, who stood off to one side, showed her that her sister had gone chalky white; she had not known, either.

There was a moment of awkward silence; then Micon picked up a scroll which lay near him. "Rajasta left this for me. I should like to hear you read." He handed it to Deoris with a courteous gesture, and the child, wrenching her eyes from Domaris, unfastened it, seating herself upon the scribe's stool which was placed at the foot of Micon's chair. She began to read, in the steady and poised voice which never failed a trained scribe, whatever her emotions.

Left to herself, Domaris recovered her composure: she retired to a niche in the wall and murmured the soft note which lighted it brilliantly. She tried to become absorbed in a page of text, but, try as she might to fix her attention on her own tasks, her eyes kept returning, as with separate will of their own, to the man who sat motionless, listening to the soft monotonous murmur of the child's reading. She had not even guessed! So normal his movements, so beautiful

the deep eyes—why should it affect her so? Hadhe, then, been the prisoner of the Black-robes? She had seen his hands, the gaunt twisted travesties of flesh and bone that had once, perhaps, been strong and skillful. Who and what was this man?

In the strange confusion of her emotions, there was not a shred of pity. Why could she not pity him, as she pitied others who were blinded or tortured or lamed? For a moment she felt sharp resentment—how dared he be impervious to her pity?

But I envy Deoris, she thought irrationally. Why should I?

Chapter Two OF DISTANT STORMS

I

There was no thunder, but the insistent flicker of summer lightning came and went through the opened shutters. Inside it was damply hot. The two girls lay on narrow pallets placed side by side on the cool brick floor, both nearly naked beneath a thin linen sheet. The thinnest of net canopies hung unstirring above them. The heat clung like thick robes.

Domaris, who had been pretending to sleep, suddenly rolled over and freed one long plait of her

loosened hair from Deoris's outflung arm. She sat up. "You needn't be so quiet, child. I'm not asleep either."

Deoris sat up, hugging her lanky knees. The thick curls clung heavily to her temples: she tossed them impatiently back. "We're not the only ones awake, either," she said with conviction. "I've been hearing things. Voices, and steps, and, somewhere, singing. No—not singing, chanting. Scary chanting, a long way off, a very long way off."

Domaris looked very young as she sat there in her filmy sleeping garment, limned in sharp patches of black and white by the restless lightning; nor, on this night, did she feel much older than her little sister. "I think I heard it, too."

"Like this." Deoris hummed a thread of melody, in a whisper.

Domaris shuddered. "Don't! Deoris—where did you hear that chanting?"

"I don't know." Deoris frowned in concentration. "Far away. As if it came from under the earth—or in the sky—no, I'm not even sure whether I heard it or dreamed it." She picked up one of her sister's plaits and began listlessly to unravel it. "There's so much lightning, but no thunder. And when I hear the chanting, the lightning seems to brighten—"

"Deoris,no! That is impossible!"

"Why?" asked Deoris fearlessly. "Singing a note in certain rooms will bring light there; why should it not kindle a different light?"

"Because it is blasphemous, evil, to tamper with nature like that!" A coldness, almost fear, seemed to have clamped about her mind. "There is power in the voice. When you grow older in the Priesthood you will learn of this. But you must not speak of those evil forces!"

Deoris's quick thoughts had flitted elsewhere. "Arvath is jealous, that I may be near you when he may not! Domaris!" Her eyes held merry laughter that bubbled over into sound. "Isthat why you wanted me to sleep in your apartments?"

"Perhaps." A faint stain of color etched the older sister's delicate face with crimson.

"Domaris, are you in love with Arvath?"

Domaris turned her eyes from the searching glances of her sister. "I am betrothed to Arvath," she said gravely. "Love will come when we are ready. It is not well to be too eager for life's gifts." She felt sententious, hypocritical, as she mouthed these sentiments; but her tone sobered Deoris. The thought of parting from her sister, even for marriage, filled her with jealousy which was partly jealousy for the children she knew Domaris would have. . . . All her lifeshe had been Domaris's baby and pet.

As if to avoid that loss, Deoris said imploringly, "Don't ever make me go away from you again!"

Domaris slipped an arm around the meager shoulders. "Never, unless you wish it, little sister," she promised; but she felt troubled by the adoration in the child's voice. "Deoris," she said, squirming her hand beneath the small chin and turning Deoris's face up to hers, "you mustn't idolize me this way, I don't like it."

Deoris did not answer, and Domaris sighed. Deoris was an odd child: mostly reserved and reticent, a few she loved so wildly that it scared Domaris; she seemed to have no moderation in her loves and hates. Domaris wondered:Did I do that? Did I let her idolize me so irrationally when she was a baby?

Their mother had died when Deoris was born. The eight-year-old Domaris had resolved, on that night, that her newborn sister would never miss a mother's care. Deoris's nurse had tried to enforce some moderation in this, but when Deoris was weaned, her influence was ended: the two were inseparable. For Domaris, her baby sister replaced the dolls Domaris had that day discarded. Even when Domaris grew older, and had lessons, and later duties in the world of the Temple, Deoris tagged continually at her heels. They had never been parted for a single day until Domaris had entered the House of the Twelve.

Domaris had been only thirteen when she had been betrothed to Arvath of Alkonath. He also was an Acolyte: the one of the Twelve whose Sign of the Heavens was opposite to and congenial to her own. She had always accepted the fact that one day she would marry Arvath, just as she accepted the rising and setting of the sun—and it affected her just about as much. Domaris really

had not the slightest idea that she was a beautiful woman. The Priests among whom she had been fostered all treated her with the same, casual, intimate affection; only Arvath had ever sought a closer bond. To this, Domaris reacted with mixed emotions. Arvath's own youth and love of life appealed to her; but real love, or even conscious desire, there was none. Too honest to pretend an acquiescence she did not feel, she was too kind to repulse him utterly, and too innocent to seek another lover. Arvath was a problem which, at times, occupied her attention, but without gravely troubling it.

She sat, silent, beside Deoris, vaguely disturbed. Lightning flickered and glimmered raggedly like the phrases of a broken chant, and a coldness whispered through the air.

A long shiver ripped through Domaris then, and she clung to her sister, shuddering in the sudden, icy grip of fear. "Domaris, what is it, what is it?" Deoris wailed. Domaris's breath was coming in gasps, and her fingers bit sharply into the child's shoulder.

"I don't . . . I wish I knew," she breathed in terror. Suddenly, with deliberate effort, she recovered herself. Rajasta's teaching was in her mind, and she tried to apply it.

"Deoris, no force of evil can harm us unless we permit it. Lie down—" She set the example, then reached in the darkness for her sister's hands. "Now, we'll say the prayer we used to say when we were little children, and go to sleep." Despite her calm voice and reassuring words, Domaris clasped the little cold fingers in her own firm ones a little too tightly. This was the Night of Nadir, when all the forces of the earth were loosed, good and evil alike, in balance, for

all men to take as they would.

"Maker of all things mortal," she began in her low voice, now made husky with strict selfcontrol. Shakily, Deoris joined in, and the sanctity of the old prayer enfolded them both. The night, which had been abnormally quiet until then, seemed somehow less forbidding, and the heat did not cling to them so oppressively. Domaris felt her strained muscles unlock, taut nerves relax.

Not so Deoris, who whimpered, cuddling closer like a scared kitten. "Domaris, talk to me. I'm so frightened, and those voices are still—"

Domaris cut her off, chiding, "Nothing can harm you here, even if they chant evil music from the Dark Shrine itself!" Realizing she had spoken more harshly than was wise in the circumstances, she quickly went on, "Well, then, tell me about Lord Micon."

Deoris brightened at once, speaking almost with reverence. "Oh, he is so kind, and good—but notinhuman, Domaris, like so many of the Initiates; like Father, or Cadamiri!" She went on, in a hushed voice, "And he suffers so! He seems always in pain, Domaris, though he never speaks of it. But his eyes, and his mouth, and his hands tell me. And sometimes—sometimes I pretend to be tired, so that he will send me away and go to his own rest."

Deoris's little face was transparent with pity and adoration, but for once Domaris did not blame her. She felt something of the same emotion, and with far less cause. Though Domaris had seen

Micon often, in the intervening weeks, they had not exchanged a dozen words beyond the barest greetings. Always there was the strange sense of something half-perceived, felt rather than known. She was content to let it ripen slowly.

Deoris went on, worshipfully, "He is good to everyone, but he treats me like—almost like a little sister. Often when I am reading, he will stop me simply to explain something I have read, as if I were his pupil, his chela. . . ."

"That is kind," Domaris agreed. Like most children, she had served as a reader in her childhood, and knew how unusual this was: to treat a little scribe as anything more than an impersonal convenience, like a lamp or a footstool. But one might expect the unexpected of Micon.

As Rajasta's chosen Acolyte, Domaris had heard much of the Temple talk. The lost Prince of Ahtarrath had not been found, and the envoys were planning to return home, their mission a failure. By devious paths, Domaris had discovered that Micon had kept himself from their knowledge, that he had not even let them guess his presence within the Temple of Light. She could not fathom his motives—but no one could attribute any motive, other than the highest, in connection with Micon. Although she had no proof of it, Domaris felt sure that Micon was one whom they sought; perhaps the young brother of the Prince. . . .

Deoris's thoughts had drifted to still another tangent. "Micon speaks often of you, Domaris. Know what he calls you?"

"What?" breathed Domaris, her voice hushed.

"Woman-clothed-with-the-sun."

The grateful darkness hid the glimmer of the woman's tears.

II

Lightning flickered and went dark over the form of a young man who stood outlined in the doorway. "Domaris?" questioned a bass voice. "Is all well with you? I was uneasy—on such a night."

Domaris focussed her eyes to pierce the gloom. "Arvath! Come in if you like, we are not sleeping."

The young man advanced, lifting the thin netting, and dropped cross-legged on the edge of the nearer pallet, beside Domaris. Arvath of Alkonath—an Atlantean, son of a woman of the Priest's Caste who had gone forth to wed a man of the Sea Kingdoms—was the oldest of the chosen Twelve, nearly two years older than Domaris. The lightning that flared and darkened showed chastened, tolerant features that were open and grave and still loved life with a firm and convinced love. The lines about his mouth were only partly from self-discipline; the remainder were the footprints of laughter.

Domaris said, with scrupulous honesty, "Earlier, we heard chanting, and felt a—a wrongness, somehow. But I will not permit that sort of thing to frighten or annoy me."

"Nor should you," Arvath agreed vigorously. "But there may be more disturbance in the air. There are odd forces stirring; this is the Night of Nadir. No one sleeps in the House; Chedan and I were bathing in the fountain. The Lord Rajasta is walking about the grounds, clad in Guardianregalia, and he—well, I should not like to cross his path!" He paused a moment. "There are rumors—"

"Rumors, rumors! Every breeze is loaded with scandal! Elis is full of them! I cannot turn around without hearing another!" Domaris twitched her shoulders. "And has even Arvath of Alkonath nothing better to do than listen to the clatter of the market-place?"

"It is not all clatter," Arvath assured her, and glanced at Deoris, who had burrowed down until only the tip of one dark curl was visible above the bedclothing. "Is she asleep?"

Again Domaris shrugged.

"No sails stir without wind," Arvath went on, shifting his weight a little, leaning toward Domaris. "You have heard of the Black-robes?"

"Who has not? For days, in fact, I seem to have heard of little else!"

Arvath peered at her, silently, before saying, "Know you, then, they are said to be concealed among the Grey-robes?"

"I know almost nothing of the Grey-robes, Arvath; save that they guard the Unrevealed God. We of the Priest's Caste are not admitted into the Magicians."

"Yet many of you join with their Adepts to learn the Healing Arts," Arvath observed. "In Atlantis, the Grey-robes are held in great honor. . . . Well, it is said, down there beneath the Grey Temple, where the Avatar sits, the Man with Crossed Hands, there is a story told of a ritual not performed for centuries, of a rite long outlawed—a Black Ritual—and an apostate in the Chela's Ring. . . ." His voice trailed into an ominous whisper.

Domaris, her fears stirred by the unfamiliar phrases with their hints of unknown horrors, cried out, "Where did you hear such things?"

Arvath chuckled. "Gossip only. But if it comes to Rajasta's ears—"

"Then there will be trouble," Domaris assured him primly, "for the Grey-robes, if the tale is true; for the gossips, if it be false."

"You are right, it concerns us not." Arvath pressed her hand and smiled, accepting the rebuke. He stretched himself on the pallet beside her, but without touching the girl—he had learned that long ago. Deoris slept soundly beside them, but her presence enabled Domaris to steer the

conversation into the impersonal channels she wished; to avoid speaking of their personal affairs, or of Temple matters. And when Arvath slipped away to his own chambers, very late, Domaris lay wakeful, and her thoughts were so insistent that her head throbbed.

For the first time in the twenty-two summers of her young life, Domaris questioned her own wisdom in electing to continue as Priestess and student under Rajasta's guidance. She would have done better, perhaps, to have withdrawn from the Priesthood; to become simply another woman, content with dwelling as a Priest's wife in the Temple where she had been born, one of the many women in the world of the Temple; wives and daughters and Priests, who swarmed in the city without the faintest knowledge of the inner life of the great cradle of wisdom where they dwelled, content with their homes and their babies and the outward show of Priestly doings. . . .What is the matter with me? Domaris wondered restlessly.Why can't I be as they are? I will marry Arvath, as I must, and then —

And then what?

Children, certainly. Years of growth and change. She could not make her thoughts go so far. She was still vainly trying to imagine it when she fell asleep.

Chapter Three THE LOOM OF FATE

I

The Temple of Light, set upon the shores of the Ancient Land, was near the sea; it was set high above the City of the Circling Snake, which ringed it like a crescent moon. The Temple, lying between the spread horns of the crescent, at the focus of certain natural forces which the walls were built to intercept and conduct, was like a woman in the encircling glow of a lover's arm.

It was afternoon; summer and sun lay like smooth butter on the city, and like topaz on the gilded sea, with the dream of a breeze and the faint, salt-sweet rankness of tidewaters.

Three tall ships lay lifting to the swell of sails and sea, in the harbor. A few yards from the wharves, merchants had already set up their stalls and were crying their wares. The coming of the ships was an event alike to city-folk and farmer, peasant and aristocrat. In the crowded streets, Priests in luminous robes rubbed elbows uncaring with stolid traders and ragged mendicants; and a push or chance blow from some unwary lout, that would have meant a flogging on another day, now cost the careless one only a sharp look; tatterdemalion boys ran in and out of the crowd without picking the scrip of a single fat merchant.

One little group, however, met with no jostling, no familiarities: awed smiles followed Micon as he moved through the streets, one hand resting lightly on Deoris's arm. His luminous robes, fashioned of a peculiarly stainless white, cut and girdled in an unusual style, marked him no ordinary Priest come to bless their children or energize their farmlands; and, of course, the

daughters of the powerful Talkannon were known to all. Many a young girl in the crowd smiled as Arvath passed; but the young Priest's dark eyes were jealously intent on Domaris. He resented Micon's effect on his betrothed. Arvath had almost forced himself on them, today.

They paused atop a sandy ridge of dunes, looking out over the sea. "Oh!" Deoris cried out in childish delight, "the ships!"

From habit, Micon turned to her. "What ships are they? Tell me, little sister," he asked, with affectionate interest. Vividly and eagerly, Deoris described to him the tall ships: high and swaying above the waves, their serpent banners brilliantly crimson at the prow. Micon's face was remote and dreamy as he listened.

"Ships from my homeland," he murmured wistfully. "There are no ships in all the Sea Kingdoms like the ships of Ahtarrath. My cousin flies the serpent in crimson—"

Arvath said bluntly, "I too am of the Golden Isles, Lord Micon."

"Your lineage?" queried Micon with interest. "I am homesick for a familiar name. Have you been in Ahtarrath?"

"I spent much of my youth beneath the Star-mountain," the younger man said. "Mani-toret, my father, was Priest of the Outer Gates in the New Temple; and I am son by adoption to Rathor in Ahtarrath."

Micon's face lighted, and he stretched his gaunt hands joyfully to the young man. "You are my brother indeed, then, young Arvath! For Rathor was my first teacher in the Priesthood, and guided me first to Initiation!"

Arvath's eyes widened. "But—are youthat Micon?" he breathed. "All my life have I been told of your—"

Micon frowned. "Let be," he warned. "Speak not of that."

In uneasy awe, the young man said, "Youdo read minds!"

"That took not much reading, younger brother," Micon said wryly. "Do you know these ships?"

Arvath looked at him steadily. "I know them. And if you wish to conceal yourself, you should not have come here. You have changed, indeed, for I did not recognize you; but there are those who might."

Mystified and intrigued, the two girls had drawn together, alternately gazing at the two men and exchanging glances with one another.

"You do not—" Micon paused. "Recognize me? Had we met?"

Arvath laughed ringingly. "I would not expect you to know me again! Listen, Domaris, Deoris, and I will tell you about this Micon! When I was a little boy, not seven years old, I was sent to the home of Rathor, the old hermit of the Star-mountain. He is such a man as the ancients call saint; his wisdom is so famed that even here they do reverence to his name. But at that time, I knew only that many sober and serious young men came to him to study; and many of them brought me sweets and toys and petted me. While Rathor taught them, I played about on the hills with a pet cat. One day, I fell on a slide of rocks, and rolled down, and twisted my arm under me—"

Micon smiled, exclaiming, "Are youthat child? Now I remember!"

Arvath continued, in a reminiscent tone, "I fainted with the pain, Domaris, and knew no more until I opened my eyes to see a young Priest standing beside me, one of those who came to Rathor. He lifted me up and set me on his knee, and wiped the blood from my face. There seemed to be healing in his hands—"

With a spasmodic movement, Micon turned away. "Enough of this," he said, stifled.

"Nay, I shall tell, elder brother! When he cleaned away the blood and dirt, I felt no pain, even though the bones had pierced through the flesh. He said, 'I have not the skill to tend this myself,' and he carried me in his arms to Rathor's house, because I was too bruised to walk. And then, because I was afraid of the Healer Priest who came to set the broken bone, he held me on his knees while the bone was set and bandaged; and all that night, because I was feverish and could

not sleep, he sat by me, and fed me bread and milk and honey, and sang and told me stories until I forgot the pain. Is that so terrible a tale?" he asked softly. "Are you afraid these maidens might think you womanish, to be kind to a sick child?"

"Enough, I say," Micon pleaded again.

Arvath turned to him with a disbelieving stare; but what he saw in the dark blind face made his own expression alter into a gentler pattern. "So be it," he said, "but I have not forgotten, my brother, and I shall not forget." He pulled back the sleeve of his Priestly robe, showing Domaris a long livid streak against the tanned flesh. "See, here the bone pierced the flesh—"

"And the young Priest was Micon?" Deoris asked.

"Yes. And he brought me sweets and playthings while I was abed; but since that summer I had not seen him again."

"How strange, that you should meet so far from home!"

"Not so strange, little sister," said Micon, in his rich and gentle voice. "Our fates spin their web, and our actions bear the fruits they have sown. Those who have met and loved cannot be parted; if they meet not in this life, they meet in another."

Deoris accepted the words without comment, but Arvath asked aggressively, "Do you believe,

then, that you and I are bound to one another in such manner?"

The trace of a wry smile touched Micon's lips. "Who can tell? Perhaps, when I picked you up from the rocks that day, I merely redeemed an old service done me by you before these hills were raised." He gestured, with a look of amusement, toward the Temple behind them. "I am no seer. Ask of your own wisdom, my brother. Perhaps the service remains to be met. The Gods grant we both meet it like men."

"Amen to that," Arvath said soberly. Then, because he had been deeply moved, his quick emotions swung in another direction. "Domaris came to the city to make some purchases; shall we return to the bazaar?"

Domaris came alive out of deep preoccupation. "Men have no love for bright cloth and ribbons," she said gaily. "Why do you not remain here upon the docks?"

"I dare not let you from my sight in the city, Domaris," Arvath informed her, and Domaris, piqued, flung her proud head high.

"Think not that you can direct my steps! If you come with me—youfollow !" She took the hand of Deoris, and the two walked ahead, turning toward the marketplace.

II

The sleepy bazaar, wakened into life by the ships from the Sea Kingdoms, hummed with the bustle of much buying and selling. A woman was selling singing birds in cages of woven rushes; Deoris stopped, enchanted, to look and listen, and with an indulgent laugh Domaris directed that one should be sent to the House of the Twelve. They walked slowly on, Deoris bubbling over with delight.

A drowsy old man watched sacks of grain and glistening clay jugs of oil; a naked urchin sat cross-legged between casks of wine, ready to wake his master if a buyer came. Domaris paused again at a somewhat larger stall, where lengths of brilliantly patterned cloth were displayed; Micon and Arvath, following slowly, listened for a moment to the absorbed girlish voices, then grinned spontaneously at one another and strolled on together past the flower-sellers, past the old country-woman. Chickens squawked in coops, vying with the cries of the vendors of dried fish and fresh fish, or plump fruits from cakes and sweetmeats and cheap sour beer, the stalls of bright rugs and shining ornaments, and the more modest stalls of pottery and kettles.

A little withered Islandman was selling perfumes under a striped tent, and as Micon and Arvath passed, his shrivelled face contracted with keen interest. He sat upright, dipping a miniature brush into a flask and waving it in air already honey-sweet with mingled fragrances. "Perfumes from Kei-lin, Lords," he cried out in a rumbling, wheezy bass, "spices of the West! Finest of flowers, sweetest of spice-trees. . . ."

Micon halted; then, with his usual deliberate step, went carefully toward the striped tent. The scent-seller, recognizing Temple nobility, was awed and voluble. "Fine perfumes and essences,

Lords, sweet spices and unguents from Kei-lin, scents and oils for the bath, all the fine fragrances of the wide world for your sweetheart—" The garrulous little man stopped and amended quickly, "For your wife or sister, Lord Priest—"

Micon's twisted grin came reassuringly. "Neither wife nor sweetheart have I, Old One," he commented dryly, "nor will I trouble you for unguents or lotions. Yet you may serve us. There is a perfume made in Ahtarrath and only there, from the crimson lily that flowers beneath the Starmountain."

The scent-seller looked curiously at the Initiate before he reached back into his tent and searched for a long time, fumbling about like a mouse in a heap of straw. "Not many ask for it," he muttered in apology; but, finally, he found what was wanted, and wasted no time in extolling its virtues, but merely waved a scented droplet in the air.

Domaris and Deoris, rejoining them, paused to breathe in the spicy fragrance, and Domaris's eyes widened.

"Exquisite!"

The fragrance lingered hauntingly in the air as Micon laid down some coins and picked up the small flask, examining it closely with his hands, drawing his attenuated fingers delicately across the filigree carving. "The fretwork of Ahtarrath—I can identify it even now." He smiled at Arvath. "Nowhere else is such work done, such patterns formed . . ." Still smiling, he handed the

phial to the girls, who bent to exclaim over the dainty carven traceries.

"What scent is this?" Domaris asked, lifting the flask to her face.

"An Ahtarrath flower, a common weed," said Arvath sharply.

Micon's face seemed to share a secret with Domaris, and he asked, "You think it lovely, as I do?"

"Exquisite," Domaris repeated dreamily. "But strange. Very strange and lovely."

"It is a flower of Ahtarrath, yes," Micon murmured, "a crimson lily which flowers beneath the Star-mountain; a wild flower which workmen root up because it is everywhere. The air is heavy with its scent. But I think it lovelier than any flower that grows in a tended garden, and more beautiful. Crimson—a crimson so brilliant it hurts to look on it when the sun is shining, a joyous, riotous color—a flower of the sun." His voice sounded suddenly tired, and he reached for Domaris's hand and put the flask into it with finality, gently closing the fingers around it with his own. "No, it is for you, Domaris," he said with a little smile. "You too are crowned with sunlight."

The words were casual, but Domaris swallowed back unbidden tears. She tried to speak her thanks, but her hands were trembling and no words came. Micon did not seem to expect them, for he said, in a low voice meant for her ears alone, "Light-crowned, I wish I might see your face

. . . flower of brightness. . . ."

Arvath stood squarely, frowning ferociously, and it was he who broke the silence with a truculent, "Shall we go on? We'll be caught by night here!" But Deoris went swiftly to the young man and clasped his arm in a proprietary grip, leaving Domaris to walk ahead with Micon—a privilege which Deoris usually claimed jealously for herself.

"I will fill her arms with those lilies, one day," Arvath muttered, staring ahead at the tall girl who walked at Micon's side, her flaming hair seeming to swim in sunlight. But when Deoris asked what he had said, he would not repeat it.

Chapter Four THE HEALER'S HANDS

I

Rajasta, glancing from the scroll that had occupied his attention, saw that the great library was deserted. Only moments ago, it seemed, he had been virtually surrounded by the rustle of paper, the soft murmurings of scribes. Now the niches were dark, and the only other person he could see was a librarian, androgynously robed, gathering various scrolls from the tables where they had been left.

Shaking his head, Rajasta returned the scroll he had been poring over to its protective sheath and laid it aside. Although he had no appointments to keep that day, he found it faintly annoying that he had spent so long reading and re-reading a single scroll—one which, moreover, he could have recited phrase for phrase. A little exasperated, he rose to his feet and began to leave—only then discovering that the library was not so empty as he had thought.

Micon sat at a gloomy table not far away, his habitual wry smile almost lost in the shadows felling across his face. Rajasta stopped beside him and stood for a moment, looking down at Micon's hands, and what they betrayed: strange hands, with an attenuated look about them, as if the fingers had been forcibly elongated; they lay on the table, limp but also somehow tense and twisted. With a deft gentleness, Rajasta gathered up the strengthless fingers into his own, cradling them lightly in his strong grasp. Questioningly, Micon raised his head.

"They seemed—such a living pain," the Priest of Light heard himself say.

"They would be, if I let them." Micon's face was schooled to impassivity, but the limp fingers quivered a little. "I can, within certain limits, hold myself aloof from pain. I feel it—" Micon smiled tiredly. "But the essentialme can hold it away—until I tire. I hold away my death, in the same manner."

Rajasta shuddered at the Atlantean's calm. The hands in his stirred, carefully and deliberately, to free themselves. "Let be," Rajasta pleaded. "I can give you some ease. Why do you refuse my

strength?"

"I can manage." The lines around Micon's mouth tightened, then relaxed. "Forgive me, brother. But I am of Ahtarrath. My duty is undone. I have, as yet, no right to die—being sonless. I must leave a son," he went on, almost as if this were but the spoken part of an argument he had often had with himself. "Else others with no right will seize the powers I carry."

"So be it," said Rajasta, and his voice was gentle, for he, too, lived by that law. "And the mother?"

For a moment Micon kept silent, his face a cautious blank; but this hesitancy was brief. "Domaris," he answered.

"Domaris?"

"Yes." Micon sighed. "That does not surprise you, surely?"

"Not altogether," said Rajasta at last. "It is a wise choice. Yet, she is pledged to your countryman, young Arvath. . . ." Rajasta frowned, thoughtful. "Still, it is hers to choose. She has the right to bear another's child, if she wishes. You—love her?"

Micon's tense features brightened, relaxing, and Rajasta found himself wondering what those sightless eyes beheld. "Yes," Micon said softly. "As I never dreamed I could love—" The

Atlantean broke off with a groan as Rajasta's clasp tightened.

Chastened, the Priest of Light released Micon's abused hands. There was a long and faintly uneasy silence between them, as Micon conquered the pain once again, patiently, and Rajasta stood watching, helpless so long as Micon refused his aid.

"You have attained greatly," said Rajasta suddenly. "And I am not, as yet, truly touched by the Light. For the time allotted you—will you accept me as disciple?"

Micon lifted his face, and his smile was a transcendent thing. "What power of Light I can give, will surely shine in you despite me," he promised. "But I accept you." Then, in a lower, more sober tone, Micon continued, "I think—I hope I can give you a year. It should suffice. And if not, you will be able to complete the Last Seal alone. That I vow to you."

Slowly, as he did everything, Micon rose up and stood facing Rajasta. Tall and thin, almost translucent in the shadowy sunlight that shone upon them through the library windows, the Atlantean laid his twisted hands lightly on the Priest's shoulders and drew him close. With one hand he traced a sign upon Rajasta's forehead and breast; then, with a feather-touch, ran his expressive fingers over the older man's face.

Rajasta's eyes were wet. This was an incredible thing to him: he had called a stranger to that most meaningful of relationships; he, Rajasta, Priest of Light, son of an ancient line of Priests, had asked to be a disciple to an alien from a Temple referred to, contemptuously, among the

Priest's Caste, as "that upstart backwoods chantry in the middle of the ocean!"

Yet Rajasta felt no regret—only, for the first time in his life, true humility. Perhaps my caste has become too proud, the Priest thought, and so the Gods show themselves through this blind and tortured foreigner, to remind us that the Light touches not only those ordained by heredity. . . . This man's simplicity, his courage, will be as talismans to me.

Then Rajasta's lips tightened, stern and grim. "Who tortured you?" he demanded, as Micon released him. "Warrior of Light—who?"

"I do not know." Micon's voice was wholly steady. "All were masked, and in black. Yet, for a moment, I saw too clearly. And so, I see no more. Let it be. The deed will carry its own vengeance."

"No, that may be so, but vengeance delayed only gives time for further deeds. Why did you beg me to let you remain concealed while the envoys from Ahtarrath were among us?" Rajasta pressed.

"They would have slain many, tortured more, to avenge me—thus setting a worse evil in motion."

Rajasta started to make reply, but hesitated, again wondering at the strength of this man. "I will not question your wisdom, but—is it right to let your parents grieve needlessly?"

Micon, once more sitting down, laughed lightly. "Do not let that disturb you, my brother. My parents died before I was out of childhood. And I have written that I live, and how, and for how long, and sealed it with—with that my grandsire cannot mistake. My message travels on the same ship with the news of my death. They will understand."

Rajasta nodded approvingly, and then, remembering that although the Atlantean seemed to gaze into the Priest's very soul, Micon could not see him, said aloud, "That is as it should be, then. But what was done to you? And for what reason? Nay," he went on, more loudly, overriding Micon's protest, "it is my right—even more, myduty, to know! I am Guardian here."

Unknown to Rajasta, and all but forgotten by Micon, Deoris perched on the edge of her scribe's stool not far away from them. Silent as a little white statue, she had listened to all that they had said in mute absorption. She understood almost nothing of it, but Domaris had been mentioned, and Deoris was anxious to hear more. The fact that this conversation was not intended for her ears bothered her not at all; what concerned Domaris, she felt, was her affair as well. Fervently, Deoris hoped that Micon would continue, forgetful of her presence. Domaris must know of this! Deoris's hands clenched into small fists at the thought of her sister as the mother of a baby. . . . A smothered and childish jealousy, of which Deoris was never to be wholly aware, turned her dismay into hurt. Why should Micon have chosenDomaris? Deoris knew that her sister was betrothed to Arvath—but that marriage was some time in the future. This was now! How could Micon and Rajasta dare to talk of her sister this way? How could Micon dare to love Domaris? If only they did not notice her!

They did not. Micon's eyes had grown dark, their queer luminosity veiled with suppressed emotion. "The rack, and rope," he said, "and fire, to blind, because I ripped away one mask before they could bind me." His voice was low and hoarse with exhaustion, as if he and Rajasta were not robed Priests in an ancient and sacred place, but wrestlers struggling on a mat. "The reason?" Micon went on. "We of Ahtarrath have an inborn ability to use—certain forces of nature: rain, and thunder, lightning, even the terrible power of the earthquake and volcano. It is—our heritage, and our truth, without which life in the Sea Kingdoms would be impossible, perhaps. There are legends . . ." Micon shook his head suddenly, and smiling, said lightly, "These things you must know, or have guessed. We use these powers for the benefit of all, even those who style themselves our enemies. But the ability to control this power can be—stolen, and bastardized into the filthiest kind of sorcery! But from me they gained nothing. I am not apostate—and I had the strength to defeat their ends, although not to save myself . . . I am not certain what befell my half-brother, and so I must force myself to live, in this body, until I am certain it is safe to die."

"Oh, my brother," said Rajasta in a hushed voice, and found himself drawing nearer Micon again.

The Atlantean bent his head. "I fear Reio-ta was won over by the Black-robes. . . . My grandsire is old, and in his dotage. The power passes to my brother, at my death, if I die without issue. And I will not leave that power in the hands of sorcerers and apostates! You know the law!That is important; not this fragile body, nor that which dwells in it and suffers. I—the essential I—

remain untouched, and because nothing can touch that unless I allow!"

"Let me lend you strength," Rajasta pleaded, again. "With what I know—"

"Under necessity, I may do so," Micon returned, calm again, "but now I need only rest. The need may come without warning. In that event, I shall take you at your word. . . ." And then the timbre of Micon's rich voice returned, and his face lighted with his rare, wonderful smile. "And I do thank you!"

Deoris fixed her eyes studiously upon her scroll, to appear absorbed, but now she felt Rajasta's stern gaze upon the top of her head.

"Deoris," said the Priest severely. "What are you doing here?"

Micon laughed. "She is my scribe, Rajasta, and I forgot to dismiss her." Rising, he moved toward Deoris and put a hand upon her curly head. "It is enough for today. Run away, my child, and play."

II

Dismissed with Micon's one-sided smile, Deoris fled in search of Domaris, her young mind filled with entangled words: Black-robes, life, death, apostasy—whatever that was—torture, Domaris to bear a son. . . . Kaleidoscopic images twisted and glimmered in her dismayed young

mind, and she burst breathlessly into their apartments.

Domaris was supervising the slave women as they folded and sorted clean garments. The room was filled with afternoon sunlight and the fragrance of fresh, smooth linens. The women—little dark women, with braided hair and the piquant features of the pygmy race of the Temple slaves—chattered in birdlike trills as their diminutive brown bodies moved and pattered restlessly around the tall girl who stood in their midst, gently directing them and listening to their shrill little voices.

Domaris's loose hair moved smoothly upon her shoulders as she turned, questioning, toward the door. "Deoris! At this hour! Is Micon—?" She broke off, and turned to an older woman; not a slave, but one of the townspeople who was her personal attendant. "Continue with this, Elara," Domaris requested gently, then beckoned Deoris to her. She caught her breath at sight of the child's face. "You're crying, Deoris! What is the matter?"

"No!" Deoris denied, raising a flushed but tearless face. "I just—have to tell you something—"

"Wait, not here. Come—" She drew Deoris into the inner room where they slept, and looked again at the girl's flushed cheeks with dismay. "What are you doing here at this hour? Is Micon ill? Or—" She stopped, unable to voice the thought that tortured her, unable even to define it clearly in her own mind.

Deoris shook her head. Now, facing Domaris herself, she hardly knew how to begin. Shakily,

she said, "Micon and Rajasta were talking about you . . . they said—"

"Deoris! Hush!" Shocked, Domaris put out a hand to cover the too-eager lips. "You must never tell me what you hear among the Priests!"

Deoris twisted free, stinging under the implied rebuke. "But they talked right in front of me, they both knew I was there! And they were talking about you, Domaris. Micon said that you—"

"Deoris!"

Before her sister's blazing eyes, the child knew this was one of those rare occasions when she dared not disobey. She looked sulkily down at the floor.

Domaris, distressed, looked at the bent head of her little sister. "Deoris, you know that a scribe must never repeat anything that is said among the Priests. That is the first rule you should have learned!"

"Oh, leave me alone!" Deoris blurted out wrathfully, and ran from the room, her throat tight with angry sobs, driven by a fear she could neither control nor conceal. What right had Micon— what right had Rajasta—it wasn't right, none of it was right, and if Domaris wouldn't even listen, what could she do?

III

Deoris had no sooner left the library than Rajasta turned to Micon. "This matter must be brought to Riveda's attention."

Micon sighed wearily. "Why? Who is Riveda?"

"The First Adept of the Grey-robes. This touches him."

Micon moved his head negatively. "I would rather not disturb him with—"

"It must be so, Micon. Those who prostitute legitimate magic into foul sorcery must reckon with the Guardians of what they defile, else they will wreak havoc on us all, and more than we can undo, perhaps. It is easy to say, as you say, 'Let them reap what they sow'—and a bitter harvest it will be, I have no doubt! But what of those they have injured? Would you leave them free to torture others?"

Micon looked away, silenced, and his blind eyes moved randomly. Rajasta did not like the idea of what visions were in the Atlantean's mind then.

At last, Micon forced a smile, and a kind of laugh. "I thought I was to be the teacher, and you the pupil! But you are right," he murmured. Still, there was a very human protest in his voice as he added, "I dread it, though. The questioning. And all the rest. . . ."

"I would spare you, if I could."

Micon signed. "I know. Let it be as you will. I—I only hope Deoris did not hear all we said! I had forgotten the child was there."

"And I never saw her. The scribes are pledged to silence about what they hear, of course—but Deoris is young, and it is hard for mere babies to keep their tongues in silence. Deoris! That child!"

The weary exasperation in Rajasta's voice prompted Micon to ask, in some puzzlement, "You dislike her?"

"No, no," Rajasta hastened to reassure him. "I love her, much as I love Domaris. In fact I often think Deoris the more brilliant of the two; but it is only cleverness. She will never be so— socomplete as Domaris. She lacks—patience. Steadfastness is not Deoris's virtue!"

"Come now," Micon dissented, "I have been much with her, and found her to be very patient, and helpful. Also kind and tactful as well. And I would say that she is more brilliant than Domaris. But she is only a child, and Domaris is—" His voice trailed off abruptly, and he smiled. Then, recalling himself, "Must I meet this—Riveda?"

"It would be best, I think," Rajasta replied. About to say more, the Priest stopped and bent to peer closely at Micon's face. The deepening lines he saw etched there made the Priest turn and

summon a servant from the hall. "I go to Riveda now," Rajasta said as the servant approached. "Guide Lord Micon to his apartments."

Micon yielded gracefully enough—but as Rajasta watched him go, the muscles in his face were tight with worry and doubt. He had heard that the Atlanteans held the Grey-robes in a kind of reverence that bordered on worship—and this was understandable, in a way, when one considered the illnesses and disease that constantly troubled the Sea Kingdoms. The Grey-robes had done wonders there in controlling plague and pestilence. . . . Rajasta had not expected Micon to react in quite this way, however.

Rajasta dismissed his faint misgivings swiftly. It could only be for the best. Riveda was the greatest of their Healers, and might be able to help Micon where Rajasta could not; that, perhaps, was why the Atlantean was disturbed.After all, Rajasta thought,Micon is of a noble lineage; despite his humility, he has pride. And if a Grey-robe tells him to rest more, he will have to listen!

Turning, Rajasta strode from the room, his white robes making sibilant whispers about his feet. Even before this, Rajasta had heard the rumors of forbidden rituals among the Grey-robes, of Black-clad sorcerers who worked in secret with the old and evil forces at the heart of nature, forces that took no heed of humanity and made their users less human by degrees.

The Priest paused in the hall and shook his head, wonderingly. Could it be Micon believed those rumors, and feared Riveda would open the way for the Black-robes to recapture him? Well, once

they had met, any such doubts would surely melt away. Yes, surely Riveda, First Adept among the Grey-robes, was best fitted to handle this problem. Rajasta did not doubt, either, that justice would be done. He knew Riveda.

His mind made up, Rajasta strode down the hallway, through a covered passageway and into another building, where he paused before a certain door. He knuckled the wood in three firm and evenly-spaced knocks.

IV

The Magician Riveda was a big man, taller even than the tall Rajasta; firmly-knit and muscular, his broad shoulders looked, and were, strong enough to throw down a bull. In his cowled robe of rough gray frieze, Riveda was a little larger than life as he turned from contemplation of the darkling sky.

"Lord Guardian," he greeted, courteously, "what urgency brings you to me?"

Rajasta said nothing, but continued to study the other man quietly for a moment. The cowl, flung loose on Riveda's shoulders, revealed a big head, set well on a thick neck and topped with masses of close-clipped fair hair—silver-gilt hair, a strange color above a stranger face. Riveda was not of the true Priest's Caste, but a Northman from the kingdom of Zaiadan; his rough-hewn features were an atavism from a ruder age, standing out strangely in contrast to the more delicate, chiselled lineaments of the Priest's Caste.

Under Rajasta's silent, intense scrutiny, Riveda flung back his head and laughed. "The need must be great indeed!"

Rajasta curbed his irritation—Riveda had always had the power to exasperate him—and answered, in a level voice that sobered the Adept, "Ahtarrath has sent a son to our Temple; the Prince Micon. He was apprehended by Black-robes, tortured, and blinded—to the end that he serve their Illusion. I am come to tell you: look to your Order."

The frigid blue of Riveda's eyes was darkened with troubled shadows. "I knew nothing of this," he said. "I have been deep in study . . . I do not doubt your word, Rajasta, but what could the Hidden Ones hope to achieve?"

Rajasta hesitated. "What do you know of the powers of Ahtarrath?"

Riveda's brows lifted. "Almost nothing," he said frankly, "and even that little is no more than rumor. They say that certain of that lineage can bring rain from reluctant clouds and loose the lightning—that they ride the storm-wrack, and that sort of thing." He smiled, sardonic. "No one has told me how they do it, or why, and so I have reserved judgment, so far."

"The powers of Ahtarrath are very real," said Rajasta. "The Black-robes sought to divert that power to—a spiritual whoredom. Their object, his apostasy and—service to their demons."

Riveda's eyes narrowed. "And?"

"They failed," Rajasta said tersely. "Micon will die—but only when he chooses." Rajasta's face was impassive, but Riveda, skilled in detecting involuntary betrayals, could see the signs of emotion. "Blinded and broken as he is—the Releaser of Man will not conquer until Micon wills it. He is a—a Cup of Light!"

Riveda nodded, a trifle impatiently. "So your friend would not serve the Dark Shrine, and they sought to force apostasy upon him? Hmm . . . itis possible . . . I could admire this prince of Ahtarrath," Riveda murmured, "if all you say is true. He must be, indeed, a man." The Greyrobe's stern face relaxed for a moment in a smile; then the lips were harshly curled again. "I will find the truth of this business, Rajasta; believe me."

"That I knew," said Rajasta simply, and the eyes of the two men met and locked, with mutual respect.

"I will need to question Micon."

"Come to me then, at the fourth hour from now," Rajasta said, and turned to go.

Riveda detained him with a gesture. "You forget. The ritual of my Order requires me to make certain lengthy preparations. Only when—"

"I have not forgotten," said Rajasta coolly, "but this matter is urgent; and you have some leeway in such cases." With this, Rajasta hurried away.

Riveda stood looking at the closed door, troubled, but not by Rajasta's arrogance; one expected such things of the Guardians, and circumstances generally justified them.

There were always—would always be, Riveda suspected—a few Magicians who could not be restrained from dabbling in the black and forbidden arts of the past; and Riveda knew all too well that his Order was automatically suspected in any Temple disturbance. It had been foolish to submerge himself in study, leaving the lesser Adepts to govern the Grey-robes; now even the innocent might suffer for the folly and cruelty of a few.

Fools, worse than fools, Riveda thought, that they did not confine their hell's play to persons of no importance! Or, having dared so high, fools not to make certain their victims did not escape alive to carry tales!

Riveda's austere face was grim and ruthless as he swiftly gathered up and stored away the genteel clutter of the studies which had so long preoccupied him.

It was, indeed, time to see to his Order.

V

In a corner of the room set aside for Rajasta's administrative work, the Arch-Priest Talkannon sat quietly, for the moment apparently altogether detached from humanity and its concerns. Beside him Domaris stood, motionless, and with sidelong glances watched Micon.

The Atlantean had refused a seat, and stood leaning against a table. Micon's stillness was uncanny—a schooled thing that made Rajasta uneasy. He knew what it concealed. With a thoughtful frown, Rajasta turned his gaze away and saw, beyond the window, the grey-robed figure of Riveda, easily identifiable even at a distance, striding along the pathway toward them.

Without moving, Micon said, "Who comes?"

Rajasta started. The Atlantean's perceptivity was a continuing source of wonder to him; although blind, Micon had discerned what neither Talkannon nor Domaris had noticed.

"It is Riveda, is it not?" Micon said, before Rajasta could reply.

Talkannon raised his head, but he did not speak. Riveda entered, saluting the Priests carelessly but with enough courtesy. Domaris, of course, was ignored completely. She had never seen Riveda before, and now drew back in something like wonder. Her eyes met the Adept's for a moment; then she quickly lowered her head, fighting unreasoning fear and immediate dislike. In an instant she knew that she could hate this man who had never harmed her—and also that she must never betray the least sign of that hatred.

Micon, touching Riveda's fingers lightly with his own, thought,This man could go far. . . . Yet the Atlantean was also uneasy, without knowing why.

"Welcome, Lord of Ahtarrath," Riveda was saying, with an easy deference devoid of ceremony. "I deeply regret that I did not know, before—" He stopped, and his thoughts, running in deep channels, surfaced suddenly. This man was signed to Death; signed and sealed. It spoke in everything about Micon: the fitfully-fanned, forced strength; the slow, careful movements; the banked fires of his will; the deliberate husbanding of energy—all this, and the almosttranslucence of Micon's thin body, proclaimed that this man had no strength to spare. And yet, equally clearly, the Atlantean was an Adept—as the high Mysteries made Adepts.

Riveda, with his thirst for knowledge and the power that was knowledge, felt a strange mixture of envy and regret.What terrible waste! he thought.This man would better serve himself—and his ideals —by turning to Light's darker aspects!Light and Dark, after all, were but balanced manifestations of the Whole. There was a kind of strength to be wrested from the struggle with Death that the Light could never show or grant. . . .

Micon's greetings were meaningless sounds, forms of polite speech, and Riveda attended them with half an ear; then, amazed and disbelieving, the Grey-robe realized just what Micon was saying.

"I was incautious." The Atlantean's resonant voice rang loud in the closed room. "What happened to me is of no importance. But there was, and is, one who must return to the Way of

Light. Find my half-brother if you can. As for the rest—I could not, now, point out the guilty to you. Nor would I." Micon made a slight gesture of finality. "There shall be no vengeance taken! The deed carries its own penalty."

Riveda shook his head. "My Order must be cleansed."

"That is for you to decide. I can give you no help." Micon smiled, and for the first time Riveda felt the outpouring warmth of the man. Micon turned his head slightly toward Domaris. "What say you, light-crowned?" he asked, while Riveda and Talkannon stood scandalized at this appeal to a mere Acolyte—and a woman at that!

"You are right," Domaris said slowly, "but Riveda is right, too. Many students come here in search of knowledge. If sorcery and torture go unpunished, then evil-doers thrive."

"And what say you, my brother?" Micon demanded of Rajasta. Riveda felt a surge of envious resentment; he too was Adept, Initiate, yet Micon claimed no spiritual kinship with him!

"Domaris is wise, Micon." Rajasta's hand closed very gently on the Atlantean's thin arm. "Sorcery and torture defile our Temple. Duty demands that others must not face the peril you have tasted."

Micon sighed, and with a helpless gesture said, "You are the judges, then. But I have, now, no way of knowing those involved. . . . They took us at the seawall, treating us with courtesy, and

lodged us among Grey-robes. At nightfall we were led to a crypt, and certain things demanded of us under threat of torture and death. We refused. . . ." A peculiar smile crossed the lean, dark features. Micon extended his emaciated hands. "You can see their threats were no idle ones. And my half-brother—" He broke off again, and there was a brief, sorrowful silence before Micon said, almost in extenuation, "He is little more than a boy. And him they could use, although not fully. I broke free from them for a moment, before they bound me, and ripped the mask from one face. And so—" a brief pause, "I saw nothing more. After that—later, much later I think—I was freed; and men of kindliness, who knew me not, brought me to Talkannon's house, where I was reunited with my servants. I know not what tale was told to account for me." He paused, then added quietly, "Talkannon has told me that I was ill for a long time. Certainly there is a period which is wholly blank to me."

Talkannon's iron grip forced quiet on his daughter.

Riveda stood, with clasped hands, looking at Micon in thoughtful silence; then asked, "How long ago was this?"

Micon shrugged, almost embarrassed. "I have no idea. My wounds were healed—what healing was possible—when I awakened in Talkannon's house."

Talkannon, who had said almost nothing so far, now broke his silence and said heavily, "He was brought to me, by commoners—fishermen, who said they found him lying on the shore, insensible and almost naked. They knew him for a Priest by the ornaments he still wore about his

throat. I questioned them. They knew nothing more."

"Youquestioned!" Riveda's scorn was withering. "How do you know they told truth?"

Talkannon's voice lashed, whiplike and stern: "I could not, after all, question them under torture!"

"Enough of this," Rajasta pleaded, for Micon was trembling.

Riveda bit off his remarks unvoiced and turned to Micon. "Tell me more of your brother, at least."

"He is only my half-brother," Micon replied, a bit hesitant. Gone now was the uncanny stillness; his twisted, strengthless fingers twitched faintly at his sides, and he leaned more heavily against the table. "Reio-ta is his name. He is many years younger than I, but in looks we are not—were not—very dissimilar." Micon's words trailed away, and he wavered where he stood.

"I will do what I can," said Riveda, with a sudden and surprising gentleness. "If I had been told before—I cannot say how much I regret—" The Grey-robe bowed his head, maddened by the futility of his words. "After so long, I can promise nothing—"

"And I ask nothing, Lord Riveda. I know you will do what you must. But I beg you—do not ask for my aid in your—investigations." Micon's voice was an apology beyond words, "I have not

the strength; nor could I be of much use, having now no way to—"

Riveda straightened, scowling: the intent look of a practical man. "You told me you saw one face. Describe him!"

Everyone in the room bent slightly toward Micon, waiting. The Atlantean drew himself erect and said clearly, "That is a secret which shall die with me. I have said,there will be no vengeance taken! "

Talkannon settled back in his seat with a sigh, and Domaris's face betrayed her conflicting emotions. Rajasta did not question Micon even in his mind; of them all he knew the Atlantean best and had come to accept Micon's attitude, although he did not really agree.

Riveda scowled fiercely. "I beg you to reconsider, Lord Micon! I know your vows forbid you to take vengeance for your personal hurt, but—" He clenched his fists. "Are you not also under oath to protect others from evil?"

Micon, however, was inflexible. "I have said that I will not speak or testify."

"So be it!" Riveda's voice was bitter. "I cannot force you to speak against your will. For the honor of my Order, I must investigate—but be sure I shall not trouble you again!"

The anger in Riveda's voice penetrated deep; Micon slumped, leaning heavily on Rajasta, who

instantly forgot all else and helped the Atlantean into the seat he had previously refused.

Swift pity dawned in the stern features of the Adept of the Grey-robes. Riveda could be gracious when it suited him, and his urge now was to conciliate. "If I have offended, Lord Micon," he said earnestly, "let this excuse me: this thing that has befallen you touches the honor of my Order, which I must guard as carefully as you guard your vows. I would root out this nest of evil birds—feather, wing, and egg! Not for you alone, but for all who will follow you to our Temple's doors."

"With those aims I can sympathize," Micon said, almost humbly, his blind eyes staring up at Riveda. "What means you employ are none of my affair." He sighed, and his drawn nerves seemed to relax a little. Perhaps no one there except the abnormally sensitive Domaris had known how much the Atlantean had dreaded this interview. Now, at least, he knew that Riveda himself had not been among his tormentors. Tensed to this possibility, and prepared to conceal it if it had been so, relief left him limp with weariness. "My thanks are worth nothing, Lord Riveda," he said, "but accept my friendship with them."

Riveda clasped the racked fingers in his own, very lightly, secretly examining them with a Healer's eye to see how long they had been healed. Riveda's hands were big and hard, roughened by manual work done in childhood, yet sensitive as Micon's own. The Atlantean felt that Riveda's hands held some strong force chained—a defiant strength harnessed and made powerful. The strengths of the two Initiates met; but even the briefest contact with so much vitality was too much for Micon, and swiftly he withdrew his hand, his face ashen-pale. Without

another word, trembling with the effort to seem calm, Micon turned and went toward the door.

Rajasta took a step to follow, then stopped, obeying some inaudible command that said, plainly,No.

VI

As the door scraped shut, Rajasta turned to Riveda. "Well?"

Riveda stood, looking down at his hands, frowning. Uneasily, he said, "The man is a raw, open channel of power."

"What do you mean?" Talkannon demanded roughly.

"When our hands touched," Riveda said, almost muttering, "I could feel the vital strength leaving me; he seemed to draw it forth from me—"

Rajasta and Talkannon stared at the Grey-robe in dismay. What Riveda described was a secret of the Priest's Caste, invoked only rarely and with infinite caution. Rajasta felt unreasoningly infuriated: Micon had refused such aid from him, with a definiteness that left no room for argument. . . . Abruptly, Rajasta realized that Riveda had not the slightest understanding of what had happened.

The Grey-robe's harsh whisper sounded almost frightened. "I think he knew it too—he drew away from me, he would not touch me again."

Talkannon said hoarsely, "Say nothing of this, Riveda!"

"Fear not—" Uncharacteristically, Riveda covered his face with his hands and shuddered as he turned away from them. "I could not—could not—I was too strong, I could have killed him!"

Domaris was still leaning against her father, her face as white as Talkannon's robes; her free hand gripped the table so tautly that the knuckles were white knots.

Talkannon jerked up his head. "What ails you, girl!"

Rajasta, his stern self-control reasserted at once, turned to her in concern. "Domaris! Are you ill, child?"

"I—no," she faltered. "But Micon—" Her face suddenly streamed with tears. She broke away from her father and fled the room.

They watched her go, nonplussed; the room was oppressively silent. At last Riveda crossed the room and closed the door she had left open in her flight, remarking, with sarcastic asperity, "I note a certain lack of decorum among your Acolytes, Rajasta."

For once Rajasta was not offended by Riveda's acerbic manner. "She is but a girl," he said mildly. "This is harsh business."

"Yes," said Riveda heavily. "Let us begin it, then." Fixing his ice-blue eyes on Talkannon, the Adept proceeded to question the Arch-Administrator with terse insistence, demanding the names of the fishermen who had "discovered" Micon, the time when it all had happened, probing for the smallest revealing circumstance, the half-forgotten details that might prove significant. He had hoped to fuse overlooked bits of information into a cohesive basis for further investigation. He learned, however, little more than he had known already.

The Grey-robe's cross-examination of Rajasta was even less productive, and Riveda, whose temper was at the best of times uncertain, at last grew angry and almost shouted, "Can I work in the dark! You'd make me a blind man, too!"

Yet, even as his bafflement and irritation ignited, Riveda realized that he had truly plumbed the limits of their knowledge of the matter. The Adept flung back his head, as if to a challenge. "So, then! If Priests of Light cannot illuminate this mystery for me, I must learn to see black shapes moving in utter blackness!" He turned to go, saying over his shoulder, "I thank you for the chance to refine my perceptions!"

VII

In his secluded apartments, Micon lay stretched on his narrow bed, his face hidden in his arms,

breathing slowly and with deliberation. Riveda's vitality, flooding in through Micon's momentary incaution, had disturbed the precarious control he held over his body, and the surging imbalance left the Atlantean dumbly, rigidly terrified. It was paradoxical that what, in a less critical situation, would have speeded Micon's recovery, in this instance threatened him with a total relapse, or worse. He was almost too weak to master this influx of strength!

Micon found himself thinking, with grim sureness, that his initial torture and what he suffered now were only the preliminaries of a long-drawn-out and bitter punishment—and for what? Resisting evil!

Priest though he was, Micon was young enough to be bitterly bewildered.Integrity, he thought, in a sudden fury,is far too expensive a luxury! But he arrested the questing feelers of this mood, knowing such thoughts for a sending of the Dark Ones, insinuating further sacrilege through the pinholes that their tortures had opened. Desperately, he fought to still the mental rebellion that would diminish the already-fading control he barely held, and must keep, over his body's torment.

A year. I thought I could bear this for a year!

Yet he had work to finish, come what might. He had made certain promises, and must keep them. He had accepted Rajasta as disciple. And there was Domaris.Domaris . . .

Chapter Five THE NIGHT OF THE ZENITH

I

The night sky was a silent vault of blues piled up on blues, purple heaped high on indigo, dusted with a sprinkle of just-blossoming stars. A tenuous luminescence, too dim for starlight, too wispy for any light belonging to earth, hovered faintly around the moonless path; by its glimmer Rajasta moved unerringly, and Micon, at his side, walked with a quiet deliberation that missed no step.

"But why go we to the Star Field tonight, Rajasta?"

"Tonight—I thought I had told you—is the night when Caratra, the Star of the Woman, touches the Zenith. The Twelve Acolytes will scan the heavens, and each will interpret the omens according to their capability. It should interest you." Rajasta smiled at his companion. "Domaris will be there, and, I expect, her sister. She asked me to bring you." Taking Micon's arm, he guided the Atlantean gently as the path began to ascend the rim of a hill.

"I shall enjoy it." Micon smiled, without the twist of pain that so frequently marred his features. Where Domaris was, was forgetfulness; he was not so constantly braced. She had somehow the

ability to give him a strength that was not wholly physical, the overflowing of her own abundant vitality. He wondered if this were deliberate; that she was capable of just such outpouring generosity, he never doubted. Her gentleness and graciousness were like a gift of the Gods. He knew she was beautiful, with a faculty that went beyond seeing.

Rajasta's eyes were sad. He loved Domaris; how dearly, he had never realized until now, when he saw her peace threatened. This man, whom Rajasta also loved, walked ever more closely with death; the emotion he sensed between Micon and Domaris was a fragile and lovely thing to hold such seeds of grief. Rajasta, too, knew that Domaris would give so generously as to rob herself. He would not and could not forbid, but he was saddened by the inevitable end he foresaw with such clarity.

Micon said, with a restraint that gave point to his words, "I am not wholly selfish, my brother. I too can see something of the coming struggle. Yet you know, too, that my line must be carried on, lest the Divine Purpose strive against too great odds. That is not pride." He trembled, as if with cold, and Rajasta was quick to support him with an unobtrusive arm.

"I know," said the Priest of Light, "we have discussed this often. The cause is already in motion, and we must ensure that it does not turn against us. All this I understand. Try not to think of it, tonight. Come, it is not far now," he assured. Rajasta had seen Micon when he surrendered to his pain, and the memory was not a good one.

To eyes accustomed to the starshine, the Star Field was a place of ethereal beauty. The sky

hovered like folded wings, brushed with the twinklings of numberless stars; the sweet fragrance of the breathing earth, the rumor of muted talk, and the deep velvet of black shadows, made dreamy fantasy around them, as if a harsh word would dissolve the whole scene and leave an emptiness.

Rajasta said in a low tone, "It is—beyond words—lovely."

"I know." Micon's dark unquiet face held momentary torment. "I feel it."

Domaris, her pale robes gleaming silver as if with frost, seemed to drift toward them. "Come and sit with us, Teachers of Wisdom," she invited, and drew Deoris closely against her.

"Gratefully," Rajasta answered, and led Micon after the tall and lovely shape.

Deoris abruptly freed herself from the arm that encircled her waist, and came to Micon, her slender immaturity blending into the fantastic imagery of the place and the hour.

"Little Deoris," the Atlantean said, with a kindly smile.

The child, with a shy audacity, tucked her hand into his arm. Her own smile was blissful and yet, somehow, protective; the dawning woman in Deoris frankly took notice of all that the wiser Domaris dared not admit that she saw.

They stopped beside a low, sweet-smelling shrub that flowered whitely against the night, and Domaris sat down, flinging her cloak of silver gossamer from her shoulders. Deoris pulled Micon carefully down between them, and Rajasta seated himself beside his Acolyte.

"You have watched the stars, Domaris; what see you there?"

"Lord Rajasta," the girl said formally, "Caratra takes a strange position tonight, a conjunction with the Harpist and the Scythe. If I were to interpret it . . ." She hesitated, and turned her face up to the sky once again. "She is opposed by the Serpent," Domaris murmured. "I would say—that a woman will open a door to evil, and a woman will bar it. The same woman; but it is another woman's influence that makes it possible to bar the door." Domaris was silent again for a moment, but before her companions could speak, she went on, "A child will be born; one that will sire a line to check this evil, forever."

With an unguarded movement, the first one anyone had seen him make, Micon caught clumsily at her shoulders; "The stars say that?" he demanded hoarsely.

Domaris met his unseeing eyes in an uneasy silence, almost glad for once of his blindness. "Yes," she said, her voice controlled but husky. "Caratra nears the Zenith, and her Lady, Aderes, attends her. The Seven Guardians ring her about—protecting her not only from the Serpent but the Black Warrior, El-cherkan, that threatens from the Scorpion's claws . . ."

Micon relaxed, and for a space of minutes leaned weakly against her. Domaris held him gently,

letting him rest against her breast, and in a conscious impulse poured her own strength into him. It was done unobtrusively, graciously, in response to a need that was imperative, and in the instinctive act she placed herself in rapport with Micon. The vistas that opened to her from the Initiate's mind were something far and away beyond her experience or imaginings, Acolyte of the Mysteries though she was; the depth and surety of his perceptions, the profundity of his awareness, filled her with a reverence she was never to lose; and his enduring courage and force of purpose moved her to something like worship. The very limitations of the man proclaimed his innate humanity, his immense humility blending with a kind of pride which obliterated the usual meaning of the word. . . . She saw the schooled control inhibiting emotions which would have made another savage or rebellious—and suddenly she started. She was foremost in his thoughts! A hot blush, visible even in the starlight, spread over her face.

She pulled out of the rapport quickly, but with a gentleness that left no hurt around the sudden vacancy. The thought she had surprised was so delicately lovely that she felt hallowed, but it had been so much his own that she felt a delicious guilt at having glimpsed it.

With a comprehending regret, Micon drew himself away from her. He knew she was confused; Domaris was not given to speculation about her effect upon men.

Deoris, watching with mingled bewilderment and resentment, broke the filmy connection that still remained. "Lord Micon, you have tired yourself," she accused, and spread her woolly cloak on the grass for him.

Rajasta added, "Rest, my brother."

"It was but a moment's weakness," Micon murmured, but he let them have their way, content to lie back beside Domaris; and after a moment he felt her warm hand touch his, with a feather-soft clasp that brought no pain to his wrecked fingers.

Rajasta's face was a benediction, and seeing it, Deoris swallowed hard.What's happening to Domaris? Her sister was changing before her eyes, and Deoris, clinging to what had been the one secure thing in the fluid world of the Temple, was suddenly terrified. For a moment she almost hated Micon, and Rajasta's evident acceptance of the situation infuriated her. She raised her eyes, full of angry tears, and stared fiercely at the blurring stars.

II

A new voice spoke a word of casual greeting, and Deoris started and turned, shivering with a strange and unfamiliar excitement, half attraction and half fascinated fear.Riveda! Already keyed to a fever pitch of nervousness, Deoris shrank away as the dark shadow fell across them, blotting out the starlight. The man was uncanny; she could not look away.

Riveda's courtly, almost ritualistic salute included them all, and he dropped to a seat on the grass. "So, you watch the stars with your Acolytes, Rajasta? Domaris, what say the stars of me?" The Adept's voice, even muted in courteous inquiry, seemed to mock at custom and petty ritual alike.

Domaris, with a little frown, came back to her immediate surroundings with some effort. She spoke with a frigid politeness. "I am no reader of fortunes, Lord Riveda. Should they speak of you?"

"Of me as well as any other," retorted Riveda with a derisive laugh. "Or as ill . . . Come, Deoris, and sit by me."

The little girl looked longingly at Domaris, but no one spoke or looked at her forbiddingly, and so she rose, her short, close-girdled frock a shimmer of starry blue about her, and went to Riveda's side. The Adept smiled as she settled in the grass beside him.

"Tell us a tale, little scribe," he said, only half in earnest. Deoris shook her head bashfully, but Riveda persisted. "Sing for us, then. I have heard you—your voice is sweet."

The child's embarrassment became acute; she pulled her hand from Riveda's, shaking her dark curls over her eyes. Still no one came to the rescue of her confusion, and Micon said softly in the darkness, "Will you not sing, my little Deoris? Rajasta also has spoken of your sweet voice."

A request from Micon was so rare a thing, it could not be refused. Deoris said timidly, "I will sing of the Seven Watchers—if Lord Rajasta will chant the verse of the Falling."

Rajasta laughed aloud. "I, sing? My voice would startle the Watchers from the skyagain, my

child!"

"I will chant it," said Riveda with abrupt finality. "Sing, Deoris," he repeated, and this time there was that in his voice which compelled her.

The girl hugged her thin knees, tilted her face skyward, and began to sing, in a clear and quiet soprano that mounted, like a thread of smoky silver, toward the hushed stars:

On a night long ago, forgotten, Seven were the Watchers Watching from the Heavens, Watching and fearful On a black day when Stars left their places, Watching the Black Star of Doom.

Seven the Watchers, Stealing a-tiptoe, Seven stars stealing Softly from their places, Under the cover Of the shielding sky.

The Black Star hovers Silent in the shadows, Stealing through the shadows, Waiting for the fall of Night; Over the mountain, Hanging, hovering, Darkly, a raven In a crimson cloud.

Softly the Seven Fall like shadows, Star-shadows, blotted In starless sunlight! In a flaming shower, Seven stars falling Black on the Black Star of Doom!

Others who had gathered on the Star Field to observe the omens, attracted by the song, drew nearer, hushed and appreciative. Now Riveda's deep and resonant baritone took up a stern and rhythmic chant, spinning an undercurrent of weird harmonies beneath the silvery treble of Deoris.

The mountain trembles! Thunder shakes the sunset, Thunder at the summit! As the Seven Watchers Fall in showers, Star-showers falling, Flaming comets falling On the Black Star!

The Ocean shakes in torment, Mountains break and crumble! Drowned lies the Dark Star And Doomsday is dead!

In a muted, bell-like voice, Deoris chanted the lament:

Seven stars fallen, Fallen from the heavens, Fallen from the sky-crown, Drowned where the Black Star fell!

Manoah the Merciful, Lord of Brightness, Raised up the drowned ones,

The Black Star he banished For endless ages, Till he shall rise in light. The Seven Good Watchers He raised in brightness.

Crowning the mountain, High above the Star-mountain, Shine the Seven Watchers, The Seven Guardians Of the Earth and Sky.

The song died in the night; a little whispering wind murmured and was still. The folk that had gathered, some Acolytes and one or two Priests, made sounds of approval, and drifted away again, speaking in soft voices.

Micon lay motionless, his hand still clasped in Domaris's fingers. Rajasta brooded thoughtfully, watching these two he loved so much, and it was for him as if the rest of the world did not exist.

Riveda inclined his head to Deoris, his harsh and atavistic features softened in the starlight and shadows. "Your voice is lovely; would we had such a singer in the Grey Temple! Perhaps one day you may sing there."

Deoris muttered formalities, but frowned. The men of the Grey-robe sect were highly honored in the Temple, but their women were something of a mystery. Under strange and secret vows, they were scorned and shunned, referred to contemptuously as saji—though the meaning of the word was not known to Deoris, it had a bleak and awful sound. Many of the Grey-robe women were recruited from the commoners, and some were the children of slaves; this in great part accounted for their being shunned by the wives and daughters of the Priest's Caste. The suggestion that Deoris, daughter of the Arch-Administrator Talkannon, might choose to join the condemned saji so angered the child that she cared little for Riveda's compliment to her singing.

The Adept only smiled, however. His charm flowed out to surround her again and he said, softly. "As your sister is too tired to advise me, Deoris, perhaps you would interpret the stars for me?"

Deoris flushed crimson, and gazed upward intently, mustering her few scraps of knowledge. "A powerful man—or something in masculine form—threatens—some feminine function, through the force of the Guardians. An old evil—either has been or will be revived—" She stopped, aware that the others were looking at her. Abashed at her own presumption, Deoris let her gaze fell downward once more; her hands twisted nervously in her lap. "But that can have little to do with you, Lord Riveda," she murmured, almost inaudibly.

Rajasta chuckled. "It is good enough, child. Use what knowledge you have. You will learn more, as you grow older."

For some reason, the indulgent tolerance in Rajasta's voice annoyed Riveda, who had felt some astonishment at the sensitivity with which this untaught child had interpreted a pattern ominous enough to challenge a trained seer. That she had doubtless heard the others discussing the omens that beset Caratra made little difference, and Riveda said sharply, "Perhaps, Rajasta, you can—"

But the Adept never finished his sentence. The stocky, heavy-set figure of the Acolyte Arvath had cast its shadow across them.

III

"The story goes," Arvath said lightly, "that the Prophet of the Star-mountain lectured in the Temple before the Guardians when he had not told his twelfth year; so you may well listen to the least among you." The young Acolyte sounded amused as he bowed formally to Rajasta and Micon. "Sons of the Sun, we are honored in your presence. And yours, Lord Riveda." He leaned to twitch one of Deoris's ringlets. "Do you now seek to be a Prophetess, puss?" He turned to the other girl, saying, "Was it you singing, Domaris?"

"It was Deoris," said Domaris curtly, ruffled. Was she never to be free of Arvath's continual surveillance?

Arvath frowned, seeing that Micon was still almost in Domaris's arms. Domaris was his! Micon was an intruder and had no right between a man and his betrothed! Arvath's jealousy kept him from thinking very clearly, and he clenched his fists, furious with suppressed desire and the

sense of injustice. I'll teach this presumptuous stranger his manners!

Arvath sat down beside them, and with a decisive movement encircled Domaris's waist with his arm. At least he could show this intruder that he was treading on forbidden ground! In a tone that was perfectly audible, but sounded intimate and soft, he asked her, "Were you waiting long for me?"

Half-startled, half-indignant, Domaris stared at him. She was too well-bred to make a scene; her first impulse, to push him angrily away from her, died unborn. She remained motionless, silent: she was used to caresses from Arvath, but this had a jealous and demanding force that dismayed her.

Irked by her unresponsiveness, Arvath seized her hands and drew them away from Micon's. Domaris gasped, freeing herself quickly from both of them. Micon made a little startled sound of question as she rose to her feet.

As if he had not seen, Rajasta intervened. "What say the stars to you, young Arvath?"

The life-long habit of immediate deference to a superior prevailed. Arvath inclined his head respectfully and said, "I have not yet made any conclusions, Son of the Sun. The Lady of the Heavens will not reach absolute zenith before the sixth hour, and before then it is not possible to interpret correctly."

Rajasta nodded agreeably. "Caution is a virtue of great worth," he said, mildly, but with a pointedness that made Arvath drop his eyes.

Riveda, predictably, chuckled; and the tension slackened, its focus diffused. Domaris dropped to the grass again, this time beside Rajasta, and the old Priest put a fatherly arm about her shoulders. He knew she had been deeply disturbed—and did not blame her, even though he felt that she could have dealt more tactfully with both men. But Domaris is still young—too young, Rajasta thought, almost in despair, to become the center of such conflict!

Arvath, for his part, began to think more clearly, and relaxed. After all, he had really seen nothing to warrant his jealousy; and certainly Rajasta could not permit his Acolyte to act in opposition to the customs of the Twelve. Thus Arvath comforted himself, conveniently forgetting all customs but those he himself wished enforced.

Most powerful, perhaps, in alleviating Arvath's anger was the fact that he really liked Micon. They were, moreover, countrymen. Soon the two were engaged in casual, friendly conversation, although Micon, hypersensitive to Arvath's mood, answered at first with some reserve.

Domaris, no longer listening, hid herself from inner conflict in the earnest performance of her duty. Her eyes fixed on the stars, her mind intently stilled to meditation, she studied the portents of the night.

IV

Gradually, the Star Field quieted. One by one the little groups where the watchers clustered fell silent; only detached words rose now and then, curiously unearthly, from a particularly wakeful clique of young Priests in a far corner of the field. An idle breeze stirred the waving grasses, riffled cloaks and long hair, then dropped again; a cloud drifted across the face of the star that hovered near Caratra; somewhere a child wailed, and was hushed.

Far below them, a sullen flicker of red marked where fires had been built at the sea-wall, to warn ships from the rocks. Deoris had fallen asleep on the grass, her head on Riveda's knees and the Adept's long grey cloak tucked about her shoulders.

Arvath, like Domaris, sat studying the omens of the stars in a meditative trance; Micon, behind blind eyes, pursued his own silent thoughts. Rajasta, for some reason unknown even to himself, found his own gaze again and again turning to Riveda: still and motionless, his rough-cut head and sternly-straight back rising up in a blacker blackness against the starshine, Riveda sat in fixed reverie for hour after hour: the sight hypnotized Rajasta. The stars seemed to alternately fade and brighten behind the Adept. For an instant, past, present, and future, all slid together and were one to the Priest of Light. He saw Riveda's face, thinner and more haggard, the lips set in an attitude of grim determination. The stars had vanished utterly, but a reddish-yellow, as of thousands of filmy, wind-blown strips of gossamer, danced and twisted about the Adept.

Suddenly and brilliantly, a terrible halo of fire encircled Riveda's head. The dorje! Rajasta started, and with a shudder that was at once within him and without, his actual surroundings

reasserted themselves. I must have slept, he told himself, shaken. That could have been no true vision! And yet, with every blink of the Priest of Light's eyes, the awful image persisted, until Rajasta, with a little groan, turned his face away.

A wind was blowing across the quiet Star Field, turning the perspiration on the Priest of Light's brow to icy droplets as Rajasta wavered between lingering, mindless horror, and intermittent waves of reasoning thought. The moments that passed before Rajasta calmed himself were, perhaps, the worst of his life, moments that seemed an unending prison of time.

The Priest of Light sat, hunched over, still unable to look in Riveda's direction for simple fear. It could only have been a nightmare, Rajasta told himself, without much conviction. But—if it was not? Rajasta shuddered anew at this prospect, then sternly mastered himself, forcing his keen mind to examine the unthinkable.

I must speak with Riveda about this, Rajasta decided, unwillingly. I must! Surely, if it was not a dream, it is meant for a warning—of great danger to him. Rajasta did not know how far Riveda had gotten in his investigations, but perhaps—perhaps the Adept had gotten so close to the Black-robe sect that they sought to set their hellish mark on him, and so protect themselves against discovery.

It can only mean that, Rajasta reassured himself, and shivered uncontrollably. Gods and spirits, protect us all!

V

With tired and sleepless eyes, Domaris watched the sun rise, a gilt toy in a bath of pink clouds. Dawn reddened over the Star Field slowly; the pale and pitiless light shone with a betraying starkness on the faces of those who slept there.

Deoris lay still, her regular breathing not quite a snore; Riveda's cloak remained, snuggled around her, although Riveda himself had gone hours ago. Arvath sprawled wide-limbed in the grass as if sleep had stolen up upon him like a thief in the night. Domaris realized how much like a sturdy small boy he looked—his dark hair tumbled around his damp forehead, his smooth cheeks glowing with the heavy, healthy slumber of a very young man. Then her eyes returned to Micon, who also slept, his head resting across her knees, his hand in hers.

After Rajasta had gone away, hurrying after Riveda with a pale and shaken look, she had returned to Micon's side, careless of what Arvath might say or think. All night Domaris had felt the Atlantean's thin and ruined hands twitch, as if even in sleep there remained an irreducible residue of pain. Once or twice, so ashen and strengthless had Micon's face appeared in the grey and ghastly light before dawn that Domaris had bent to listen to his breathing to be sure he still lived; then, her own breathing hushed to silence, she would hear a faint sigh, and be at once relieved and terrified—waking could only bring more pain for this man she was beginning to adore.

At the uttermost ebb-tide of the night, Domaris had found herself half-wishing Micon might

drift out silently into the peace he so desired . . . and this thought had frightened her so much that she had but barely restrained herself from the sudden longing to clasp him in her arms and by sheer force of love restore his full vitality. How can I be so full of life while Micon is so weak? Why, she wondered rebelliously, is he dying—and the devil who did this to him still walking around secure in his own worthless life?

As if her thoughts disturbed his sleep, Micon stirred, murmuring in a language Domaris did not understand. Then, with a long sigh, the blind eyes opened and the Atlantean drew himself slowly upright, reaching out with a curious gesture—and drawing his hand back in surprise as he touched her dress.

"It is I, Micon—Domaris," she said quickly, addressing him by name for the first time.

"Domaris—I remember now. I slept?"

"For hours. It is dawn."

He laughed, uneasily but with that peculiar inner mirth which never seemed to fail him. "A sorry sentry I should make nowadays! Is this how vigil is kept?"

Her instant laughter, soft and gentle, set him at ease. "Everyone sleeps after the middle hour of the night. You and I are likely the only ones awake. It is very early still."

When he spoke again, it was in a quieter tone, as if he feared he might wake the sleepers she had referred to so obliquely. "Is the sky red?"

She looked at him, bemused. "Yes. Bright red."

"I thought so," said Micon, nodding. "Ahtarrath's sons are all seamen; weather and storms are in our blood. At least I have not lost that."

"Storms?" Domaris repeated, dubiously glancing toward the distant, peaceful clouds.

Micon shrugged. "Perhaps we will be lucky, and it will not reach us," he said, "but it is in the air. I feel it."

Both were silent again, Domaris suddenly shy and self-conscious at the memory of the night's thoughts, and Micon thinking, So I have slept at her side through the night. . . . In Ahtarrath, that would amount almost to a pledge. He smiled. Perhaps that explains Arvath's temper, last night . . . yet in the end we were all at peace. She sheds peace, as a flower its perfume.

Domaris, meanwhile, had remembered Deoris, who still slept close by them, wrapped warm in Riveda's cloak. "My little sister has slept here in the grass all night," she said. "I must wake her and send her to bed."

Micon laughed lightly. "That seems a curiously pointless exercise," he remarked. "You have not

slept at all."

It was not a question, and Domaris did not try to make any answer. Before his luminous face, she bent her head, forgetful that the morning light could not betray her to a blind man. Loosening her fingers gently from his, she said only, "I must wake Deoris."

VI

In her dream, Deoris wandered through an endless series of caverns, following the flickering flashes of light sparkling from the end of a strangely shaped wand held in the hand of a robed and cowled figure. Somehow, she was not afraid, nor cold, though she knew, in a way oddly detached from her senses, that the walls and the floor of these caverns were icy and damp. . . .

From somewhere quite nearby, a familiar but not immediately recognizable voice was calling her name. She came out of the dream slowly, nestling in folds of grey. "Don't," she murmured drowsily, putting her ringers over her face.

With tender laughter, Domaris shook the child's shoulder. "Wake up, little sleepyhead!"

The half-open eyes, still dream-dark, unclosed like bewildered violets; small fingers compressed a yawn. "Oh, Domaris, I meant to stay awake," Deoris murmured, and scrambled to her feet, instantly alert, the cloak felling from her. She bent to pick it up, holding it curiously at arm's length. "What's this? This isn't mine!"

Domaris took it from her hands. "It is Lord Riveda's. You went to sleep like a baby on his lap!"

Deoris frowned and looked sulky.

Domaris teased, "He left it, beyond doubt, so that he might see you again! Deoris! Have you found your first lover so young?"

Deoris stamped her foot, pouting. "Why are you so mean?"

"Why, I thought that would please you," said Domaris, and merrily flung the cloak about the child's bare shoulders.

Deoris cast if off again, angrily. "I think you're—horrid!" she wailed, and ran away down the hill to find the shelter of her own bed and cry herself back to sleep.

Domaris started after her, then stopped herself; she felt too ragged to deal with her sisters tantrums this morning. The Grey-robe's cloak, rough against her arm, added to her feeling of unease and apprehension. She had spoken lightly, to tease the little girl, but now she found herself wondering about what she had said. It was unthinkable that the Adept's interest in Deoris could be personal—the child was not fourteen years old! With a shudder of distaste, Domaris forced the thoughts away as unworthy of her, and turned back to Micon.

The others were waking, rising, gathering in little groups to watch what remained of the sunrise. Arvath came and put an arm about her waist; she suffered it absent-mindedly. Her calm grey eyes lingered dispassionately on the young Priest's face. Arvath felt hurt, bewildered. Domaris had become so different since—yes—since Micon had come into their lives! He sighed, wishing he could manage to hate Micon, and let his arm fall away from Domaris, knowing she was no more conscious of its removal than she had been of its presence.

Rajasta was coming up the pathway, a white figure faintly reddened in the morning light. Drawing near them, he stooped to pick up Micon's cloak of stainless white. It was a small service, but those who saw wondered at it, and at the caressing, familiar tone in Rajasta's normally stern voice. "Thou hast slept?" he asked.

Micon's smile was a blessing, almost beatific. "As I seldom sleep, my brother."

Rajasta's eyes moved briefly toward Domaris and Arvath, dismissing them. "Go, my children, and rest. . . . Micon, come with me."

Taking Domaris's arm, Arvath drew the girl along the path. Almost too weary to stand, she leaned heavily on his offered arm, then turned and laid her head for a moment against his chest.

"You are very tired, my sister," said Arvath, almost reproachfully—and, protective now, he led her down the hill, holding her close against him, her bright head nearly upon his shoulder.

Rajasta watched them, sighing. Then, his hand just touching Micon's elbow, he guided the Initiate unobtrusively along the opposite path, which led to the seashore. Micon went unerringly, as if he had no need whatsoever for Rajasta's guidance; the Atlantean's expression was dreamy and lost.

They paced in silence for some minutes before Rajasta spoke, without interrupting the slow rhythm of their steps. "She is that rarest of women," he said, "one born to be not only mate but comrade. You will be blessed."

"But she—accursed!" said Micon, almost inaudibly. The strange, twisted smile came again to his lips. "I love her, Rajasta, I love her far too much to hurt her; and I can give her nothing! No vows, no hope of real happiness, only sorrow and pain and, perhaps, shame . . ."

"Don't be a fool," was Rajasta's curt reply. "You forget your own teachings. Love, whenever and wherever it is found, though it last but a few moments, can bring only joy—if it is not thwarted! This is something greater than either of you. Do not stand in its way—nor in your own!"

They had stopped on a little rocky outcropping that overlooked the shore. Below, the sea crashed into the land, relentless, insistent. Micon seemed to regard the Priest of Light with his sightless eyes, and Rajasta felt for a moment that he was looking at a stranger, so oddly changed did the Atlantean's face appear to him.

"I hope you are right," said Micon at last, still peering intently at the face he could not see.

BOOK TWO Domaris

"If a scroll bears bad news, is it the fault of the scroll, or that which is described by the scroll? If the scroll is a bearer of good news, in what way does it differ from the scroll which bears the bad news?

"We begin life with a seemingly blank slate—and, though the writing that gradually appears on that slate is not our own, our judgment of the things written thereon determines what we are and what we will become. In much the same way, our work will be judged by the use to which other people put it. . . . Therefore, the question becomes, how can we control its use when it passes out of our control, into the hands of people over whom we have no control?

"The earliest teachings of the Priest's Caste have it that by performing our work with the wish and desire that it work for the betterment of man and the world, we endow it with our blessing which will reduce the user's desire to use it for destructive purposes. Doubtless this is not untrue—but reduction is not prevention."

—from the introduction to

The Codex of the Adept Riveda

Chapter One SACRAMENTS

I

A heavy, soaking rain poured harshly down on the roofs and courts and enclosures of the Temple precinct; rain that sank roughly into the thirsty ground, rain that splashed with a musical tinkling into pools and fountains, flooding the flagged walks and lawns. Perhaps because of the rain, the library of the Temple was crowded. Every stool and table was occupied, each bench had its own bent head.

Domaris, pausing in the doorway, sought with her eyes for Micon, who was not in his usual recess. There were the white cowls of the Priests, the heavy grey hoods of Magicians, the banded filletings of Priestesses, bare heads of student-priests and scribes. At last, with a little joyous thrill, she saw Micon. He sat at a table in the farthest corner, deep in conversation with Riveda, whose smoky, deep-cowled robe and harsh, gaunt face made a curious contrast to the pallid and emaciated Initiate. Yet Domaris felt that here were two men who were really very much alike.

Pausing again, even as she directed her steps toward them, her intense, unreasoning dislike of Riveda surged back. She shuddered a little.That man, like Micon?

Riveda was leaning forward, listening intently; the Atlantean's blind, dark features were luminous with his smile. Any casual observer would have sworn that they felt no emotion but comradeship—but Domaris could not dispel the feeling that here were two forces, alike in strength but opposite in direction, pitted against each other.

It was the Grey-robe who first became aware of her approach; looking up with a pleasant smile, Riveda said, "Talkannon's daughter seeks you, Micon." Otherwise, of course, he did not move or pay the least attention to the girl. Domaris was only an Acolyte, and Riveda a highly-placed Adept.

Micon rose painfully to his feet and spoke with deference. "How may I serve the Lady Domaris?"

Domaris, embarrassed by this public breach of proper etiquette, stood with her eyes cast down. She was not really a shy girl, but disliked the attention Micon's action called upon her. She wondered if Riveda was secretly scornful of Micon's evident ignorance of Temple custom. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper as she said, "I came on your scribe's behalf, Lord Micon. Deoris is ill, and cannot come to you today."

"I am sorry to hear that." Micon's wry grin was compassionate now. "Flower-of-the-Sun, tell her

not to come to me again until she is quite well."

"I trust her illness is nothing serious," Riveda put in, casually but with a piercing glance from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, "I have often thought that these night vigils in the damp air do no good to anyone."

Domaris felt suddenly annoyed. This was none of Riveda's business! Even Micon could sense the chill in her voice as she said, "It is nothing. Nothing at all. She will be recovered in a few hours." As a matter of fact, although Domaris had no intention of saying so, Deoris had cried herself into a violent headache. Domaris felt disturbed and guilty, for she herself had brought on her sister's distress with her teasing remarks about Riveda that very morning. More, she sensed that Deoris was furiously jealous of Micon. She had begged and begged Domaris not to leave her, not to go to Micon, to send some slave to tell him of her illness. It had been difficult for Domaris to make herself leave the miserable little girl, and she had finally forced herself to do it only by reminding herself that Deoris was not really ill; that she had brought on the headache by her own crying and fussing, and that if Deoris once and for all learned that her tantrums and hysterics would not get her what she wanted, she would stop having them—and then there would be no more of these headaches, either.

Riveda rose to his feet. "I shall call to inquire further," he said definitely. "Many serious ills have their beginnings in a mild ailment." His words were far from uncourteous—they were indeed stamped with the impeccable manners of a Healer-Priest—but Riveda was secretly amused. He knew Domaris resented him. He felt no real malice toward Domaris; but Deoris

interested him, and Domaris's attempts to keep him away from her sister impressed him as ridiculous maneuvers without meaning.

There was nothing Domaris could say. Riveda was a high Adept, and if he chose to interest himself in Deoris, it was not for an Acolyte to gainsay him. Sharply she reminded herself that Riveda was old enough to be their grandsire, a Healer-Priest of great skill, and of an austerity unusual even among the Grey-robes.

The two men exchanged cordial farewells, and as Riveda moved sedately away, she felt Micon's light groping touch against her wrist. "Sit beside me, Light-crowned. The rain has put me out of the mood for study, and I am lonely."

"You have had most interesting company," Domaris commented with a trace of asperity.

Micon's wry grin came and went. "True. Still, I would rather talk to you. But—perhaps it is not convenient just now? Or is it—improper?"

Domaris smiled faintly. "You and Riveda are both so highly-placed in the Temple that the Monitors have not reproved your ignorance of our restrictions," she murmured, glancing uneasily at the stern-faced scribes who warded the manuscripts, "but I, at least, may not speak aloud." She could not help adding, in a sharper whisper, "Riveda should have warned you!"

Micon, chagrined, chuckled. "Perhaps he is used to working in solitude," he hazarded, lowering

his voice to match the girl's. "You know this Temple—where can we talk without restraint?"

II

Micon's height made Domaris seem almost tiny, and his rugged, wrenched features made a strange contrast to her smooth beauty. As they left the building, curious heads turned to gaze after them; Micon, unaware of this, was nevertheless affected by Domaris's shyness, and said no word as they went through a passageway.

Unobtrusively, graciously, Domaris slowed her light steps to match his, and Micon tightened his clasp on her arm. The girl drew back a curtain, and they found themselves in the anteroom to one of the inner courts. One entire wall was a great window, loosely shuttered with wooden blinds; the soft quiet fragrance of rain falling on glass and expectant flowers came faintly through the bars, and the dripping music of raindrops pouring into a pool.

Domaris—who had never before shared this favorite, usually-deserted nook even with Deoris— said to Micon, "I come here often to study. A crippled Priest who seldom leaves his rooms lives across the court, and this room is never used. I think I can promise you that we will be quite alone here." She found a seat on a bench near the window, and made room for him at her side.

There was a long silence. Outside, the rain fell and dripped; its cool, moist breath blowing lightly into their faces. Micon's hands lay relaxed on his knees, and the flicker of a grin, which never quite left his dark mouth, came and went like summer lightning. He was content just to be

near Domaris, but the girl was restless.

"I find a place where we may talk—and we sit as dumb as the fish!"

Micon turned toward her. "And there is something to be said—Domaris!" He spoke her name with such an intensity of longing that the girl's breath caught in her throat. He repeated it again; on his lips it was a caress. "Domaris!"

"Lord Micon—Sir Prince—"

A sudden and quite unexpected anger gusted up in his voice. "Call me not so!" he ordered. "I have left all that behind me! You know my name!"

She whispered, like a woman in a dream, "Micon."

"Domaris, I—I am humbly your suitor." There was an oddly-muted tone in his voice, as of selfdeprecation. "I have—loved you, since you came into my life. I know I have little to give you, and that only for a short time. But—sweetest of women—" He paused, as if to gather strength, and went on, in hesitant words, "I would that we might have met in a happier hour, and our—our love flowered—perhaps, slowly, into perfection. . . ." Once again he paused, and his dark intent features betrayed an emotion so naked that Domaris could not face it, and she looked away, glad for once that he could not see her face.

"Little time remains to me," he said. "I know that by Temple law you are still free. It is your— right, to choose a man, and bear his child, if you wish. Your betrothal to Arvath is no formal bar. Would you—will you consider me as your lover?" Micon's resonant voice was now trembling with the power of his emotions. "It is my destiny, I suppose, that I who had all things, commanding armies and the tribute of great families, should now have so little to offer you—no vows, no hope of happiness, nothing but a very great need of you—"

Wonderingly, she repeated, slowly, "You love me?"

He stretched questing hands toward her; found her slim fingers and took them into his own. "I have not even the words to say how great my love is, Domaris. Only—that life is unendurable when I am not near you. My—my heart longs for—the sound of your voice, your step, your— touch. . . ."

"Micon!" she whispered, still dazed, unable to comprehend completely. "You do love me!" She raised her face to look intently into his.

"This would be easier to say if I could see your face," he whispered—and, with a movement that dismayed the girl, he knelt at her feet, capturing her hands again and pressing them to his face. He kissed the delicate fingers and said, half stifled, "I love you almost too much for life, almost too much. . . . you are great in gentleness, Domaris. I could beget my child upon no other woman—but Domaris, Domaris, can you even guess how much I must ask of you?"

With a swift movement, Domaris leaned forward and drew him to her, pressing his head against her young breasts. "I know only that I love you," she told him. "This is your place." And her long red hair covered them both as their mouths met, speaking the true name of love.

III

The rain had stopped, although the sky was still grey and thickly overcast. Deoris, lying on a divan in the room she shared with her sister, was having her hair brushed by her maid; overhead, the little red bird, Domaris's gift, twittered and chirped, with gay abandon; Deoris listened and hummed softly to herself, while the brush moved soothingly along her hair, and outside the breeze fluttered the hangings at the window, the fringed leaves of the trees in the court. Inside, the room was filled with dim light, reflecting the polished shine of dark woods and the glint of silken hangings and of ornaments of polished silver and turquoise and jade. Into this moderate luxury, allotted to Domaris as an Acolyte and the daughter of a Priest, Deoris nestled like a kitten, putting aside her slight feeling of self-consciousness and guilt; the scribes and neophytes were curtailed to a strictness and austerity in their surroundings, and Domaris, at her age, had been forbidden such comforts. Deoris enjoyed the luxury, and no one had forbidden it, but under her consciousness she felt secretly shamed.

She twisted away from the hands of the slave girl. "There, that's enough, you'll make my head ache again," she said pettishly. "Besides, I hear my sister coming." She jumped up and ran to the door, but at seeing Domaris, the eager greeting died on her lips.

But her sister's voice was perfectly natural when she spoke. "Your headache is better, then, Deoris? I had expected to find you still in bed."

Deoris peered at Domaris dubiously, thinking,Imust be imagining things. Aloud, she said, "I slept most of the afternoon. When I woke, I felt better." She fell silent as her sister moved into the room, then went on, "The Lord Riveda—"

Domaris cut her off with an impatient gesture. "Yes, yes, he told me he would call to inquire about you. You can tell me another time, can't you?"

Deoris blinked. "Why? Are you in a hurry? Is it your night to serve in the Temple?"

Domaris shook her head, then stretched her hand to touch her sister's curls in a light caress. "I'm very glad you are better," she said, more kindly. "Call Elara for me, will you, darling?"

The little woman came and deftly divested Domaris of her outer robes. Domaris then flung herself full-length upon a pile of cushions, and Deoris came and knelt anxiously beside her.

"Sister, is something wrong?"

Domaris returned an absent-minded "No," and then, with a sudden, dreamy decision, "No, nothing is wrong—or will be." She rolled over to look up, smiling, into Deoris's eyes. Impulsively, she started, "Deoris—" Just as suddenly, she stopped.

"Whatis it, Domaris?" Deoris pressed, feeling again the inexplicable inner panic which had risen in her at her sister's return only moments ago.

"Deoris—little sister—I am going to the Gentle One." Abruptly she seized Deoris's hand, and went on, "Sister—come with me?"

Deoris only stared, open-mouthed. The Gentle One, the Goddess Caratra—her shrine was approached only for particular rituals, or in moments of acute mental crisis. "I don't understand," Deoris said slowly. "Why—why?" She suddenly put out her other hand to clasp Domaris's between both of her own. "Domaris, what is happening to you!"

Confused and exalted, Domaris could not bring herself to speak. She had never doubted what answer she would bring Micon—he had forbidden her to decide at once—yet something deep within her heart was disturbed, and demanded comfort, and for once she could not turn to Deoris, for, close as they were, Deoris was only a child.

Deoris, who had never known any mother but Domaris, felt the new distance between them keenly, and exclaimed, in a voice at once wailing and strangled, "Domaris!"

"Oh, Deoris," said Domaris, freeing her hand with some annoyance, "pleasedon't ask me questions!" Then, not wanting the gap between them to widen any further, quickly added, gently, "Just—come with me? Please?"

"Of course I will," murmured Deoris, through the peculiar knot in her throat.

Domaris smiled and sat up; embracing Deoris, she gave her a quick little kiss and was about to pull away, but Deoris clutched her tight, as if, with the bitter intuition of the young, she sensed that Micon had not so long ago rested there and wished to drive his lingering spirit away. Domaris stroked the silky curls, feeling the impulse to confide again; but the words would not come.

IV

The Shrine of Caratra, the Gentle Mother, was far away; almost the entire length of the Temple grounds lay between it and the House of the Twelve, a long walk under damp, flowering trees. In the cooling twilight, the scent of roses and of verbena hung heavily on the moist and dusky air. The two sisters were silent: one intent on her mission, the other for once at a loss for words.

The Shrine shone whitely at the further end of an oval pool of clear water, shimmering, crystalline, and ethereally blue beneath the high arch of clearing sky. As they neared it, the sun emerged from behind an intervening building for a few moments as it sank in the west, lightening the Shrine's alabaster walls. A pungent trace of incense wafted to them across the water; twinkling lights beckoned from the Shrine.

Noticing that Deoris was dragging her feet just the least bit, Domaris suddenly sat down on the

grass to the side of the path. Deoris joined her at once; hand in hand they rested a little while, watching the unrippling waters of the holy pool.

The beauty and mystery of life, of re-creation, was embodied here in the Goddess who was Spring and Mother and Woman, the symbol of the gentle strength that is earth. To approach the Shrine of Caratra, they would have to wade breast-high through the pool; this sacred, lustral rite was undertaken at least once by every woman of the precinct, although only those of the Priest's Caste and the Acolytes were taught the deeper significance of this ritual: every woman came this way to maturity, struggling through reluctant tides, deeper than water, heavier and harder to pass. In pride or maturity, in joy or in sorrow, in childish reluctance or in maturity, in ecstasy or rebellion, every woman came one day to this.

Domaris shivered as she looked across the pale waters, frightened by the symbolism. As one of the Acolytes, she had been initiated into this mystery, and understood; yet she hung back, afraid. She thought of Micon, and of her love, trying to summon courage to step into those waters; but a sort of prophetic dread was on her. She clung to Deoris for a moment, in a wordless plea for reassurance.

Deoris sensed this, yet she looked sulkily away from her sister. She felt as if her world had turned upside down. She would not let herself know what Domaris was facing; and here, before the oldest and holiest shrine of the Priest's Caste into which they had both been born, she too was afraid; as if those waters would sweep her away, too, into the current of life, like any woman. . . .

She said moodily, "It is cruel—as all life is cruel! I wish I had not been born a woman." And she told herself that this was selfish and wrong, to force herself on Domaris's attention, seeking reassurance for herself, when Domaris faced this testing and her own was still far in the future. Yet she said, "Why, Domaris? Why?"

Domaris had no answer, except to hold Deoris tightly in her arms for a moment. Then all her own confidence flooded back. She was a woman, deeply in love, and she rejoiced in her heart. "You won't always feel that way, Deoris," she promised. Letting her arms drop, she said slowly, "Now I shall go to the Shrine. Will you come the rest of the way with me, little sister?"

For a moment, Deoris felt no great reluctance; she had once entered the Shrine beyond the pool, in the sacred rite undertaken by every young girl in the Temple when, at the first commencement of puberty, she gave her first service in the House of the Great Mother. At that time she had felt nothing except nervousness at the ritual's solemnity. Now, however, as Domaris rose from the grass, panic fixed chilly knuckles at Deoris's throat. If she went with Domaris, of her own free will, she felt she would be caught and trapped, handing herself over blindly to the violence of nature. Scared rebellion quivered in her denial. "No—I don't want to!"

"Not even—if I ask it?" Domaris sounded hurt, and was; she had wanted Deoris to understand, to share with her this moment which divided her life.

Deoris shook her head again, hiding her face behind her hands. A perverse desire to inflict hurt was on her: Domaris had left her alone—now it washer turn!

To her own surprise, Domaris found herself making yet another appeal. "Deoris—little sister— please, I want you with me. Won't you come?"

Deoris did not uncover her face, and her words, when they came, were barely audible—and still negative.

Domaris let her hand fall abruptly from her sister's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Deoris. I had no right to ask."

Deoris would have given anything to retract her words now, but it was too late. Domaris took a few steps away, and Deoris lay still, pressing her feverish cheeks into the cold grass, crying silently and bitterly.

Domaris, without looking back, unfastened her outer garments, letting them fell about her feet, and loosened her hair until it covered her body in a smooth cascade. She ran her hands through the heavy tresses, and suddenly a thrill went through her young body, from fingertips to toes:Micon loves me! For the first and only time in her life, Domaris knew that she was beautiful, and gloried in the knowledge of her beauty—although there was a chill of sadness in the knowledge that Micon could never see it or know it.

Only a moment the strange intoxication lasted; then Domaris divided her long hair about her neck and stepped into the pool, wading out until she stood breast-high in the radiant water, which

was warm and tingling, somehow oddly not like water at all, but an effervescent, living light. . . . Blue and softly violet, it glowed and shimmered and flowed in smooth patterns around the pillar of her body, and she thrilled again with a suffocating ecstasy as, for an instant, it closed over her head. Then she stood upright again, the water running in scented, bubbling droplets from her glowing head and shoulders. Wading onward, toward the beckoning Shrine, she felt that the water washed away, drop by drop, all of her past life, with its little irritations and selfishness. Filled and flooded with a sense of infinite strength, Domaris became—as she had not on any earlier visit to Caratra's Shrine—aware that, being human, she was divine.

She came out of the water almost regretfully, and paused a moment before entering the Temple; solemnly, with sober, intent concentration, the young Priestess robed herself in the sacramental garments kept within the anteroom, carefully not thinking of thenext time she must bathe here. . . .

Entering the sanctuary, she stood a moment, reverent before the altar, and bound the bridal girdle about her body. Then, arms wide-flung, Domaris knelt, her head thrown back in passionate humility. She wanted to pray, but no words came.

"Mother, lovely goddess," she whispered at last, "let me—not fail. . . ."

A new warmth seemed to envelop Domaris; the compassionate eyes of the holy image seemed to smile upon her, the eyes of the mother Domaris could barely remember. She knelt there for a long time, in a sober, listening stillness, while strange, soft, and unfocussed visions moved in her

mind, indefinite, even meaningless, yet filling her with a calm and a peace that she had never known, and was never entirely to lose.

V

The sun was gone, and the stars had altered their positions considerably before Deoris, stirring at last, realized that it was very late. Domaris would have returned hours ago if she had intended to return at all.

Resentment gradually took the place of alarm: Domaris had forgotten her again! Unhappy and petulant, Deoris returned alone to the House of theTwelve, where she discovered that Elara knew no more than she—or, at least, the woman refused to discuss her mistress with Deoris. This did not sweeten her temper, and her snappish response, her fretful demands, soon reduced the usually patient Elara to silent, exasperated tears.

The servants, and several of the neighbors, had been made as miserable as Deoris was herself when Elis came in search of Domaris, and innocently made things even worse by asking her cousin's whereabouts.

"How would I know!" Deoris exploded. "Domaris never tellsme anything any more!"

Elis tried to placate the angry girl, but Deoris would not even listen, and at last Elis, who had a temper of her own, made herself clear. "Well, I don't see why Domarisshould tell you anything—

what concerns her is none of your business—and in any case, you've been spoilt until you are absolutely unbearable; I wish Domaris would come to her senses and put you in your place!"

Deoris did not even cry, but crumpled up, stricken.

Elis, already at the door, turned and came back swiftly, bending over her. "Deoris," she said, contritely, "I'm sorry, really, I didn't mean it quite like that. . . ." In a rather rare gesture of affection, for Elis was undemonstrative to a fault, she took Deoris's hand in hers, saying, "I know you are lonely. You have no one but Domaris. But that's your own fault, really you could have many friends." Gently, she added, "Anyway, you shouldn't stay here alone and mope. Lissa misses you. Come and play with her."

Deoris's returning smile wavered. "Tomorrow," she said. "I'd—rather be by myself now."

Elis had intuitions that were almost clairvoyant at times, and now a sudden random impression almost as clear as sight made her drop her cousin's hand. "I won't try to persuade you," she said; then added, quietly and without emphasis, "Just remember this. If Domaris belongs to no one but herself—then you, too, are a person in your own right. Good night, puss."

After Elis had gone, Deoris sat staring at the closed door. The words, at first simple-seeming, had turned strangely cryptic, and Deoris could not puzzle out their meaning. At last she decided that it was just Elis being Elis again, and tried to put it out of her mind.

Chapter Two THE FOOL

I

Unmarried Priests, above a certain rank, were housed in two dormitories. Rajasta and Micon, with several others of their high station, dwelt in the smaller and more comfortable of these. Riveda might have lived there as well—but, of his own free will, from humility or some inversion of pride, the Adept had chosen to remain among the Priests of lesser accomplishment.

Rajasta found him writing, in a room which doubled as sleeping-room and study, opening on a small, enclosed courtyard. The main room was sparsely furnished, with no hint of luxury; the court was laid simply with brick, without pools or flowers or fountain. A pair of smaller rooms to one side housed the Grey-robe's attendants.

The day was warm; throughout the dormitory most of the doors were wide open, to allow some circulation of the deadening air. So it was that Rajasta stood, unnoticed, gazing at the preoccupied Adept, for several moments.

The Priest of Light had never had any cause to distrust Riveda—and although the vision of

thedorje sign still troubled Rajasta, courtesy demanded that he speak not again of the warning he had delivered to the Adept on the night of Zenith; to do so would have been an insulting lack of confidence.

Yet Rajasta was Guardian of the Temple of Light, and his responsibility no slight one. Should Riveda somehow fail to set his Order to rights, Rajasta would share the guilt in full, for by the strict interpretation of his duty, the Guardian should have persuaded, even forced Micon to give testimony about his ordeal at the hands of the Black-robes. The matter properly should have been laid before the High Council.

Now, thinking all these things over yet again, Rajasta sighed deeply. Thus it is that even the best of motives ensnare us in karmic webs, he thought tiredly. I can spare Micon, but only at my own expense—so adding to his burdens, and binding us both more closely to this man. . . .

Riveda, very straight at his writing-table—he said often that he had no liking for having some silly brat of a scribe running about after him—incised a few more characters in the heavy, pointed strokes which told so much about him, then abruptly flung the brush aside.

"Well, Rajasta?" The Adept chuckled at the Priest of Light's momentary discomfiture. "A friendly visit? Or more of your necessities?"

"Let us say, both," Rajasta answered after a moment.

The smile faded from Riveda's features, and he rose to his feet. "Well, come to the point—and then perhaps I shall have something to say, too. The people of my Order are restless. They say the Guardians intrude. Of course—" He glanced at Rajasta sharply. "Intrusion is the business of the Guardians."

Rajasta clasped his hands behind his back. He noticed that Riveda had not invited him to be seated, or even, really, to enter. The omission annoyed him, so that he spoke with a little more force than he had originally intended; if Riveda intended to discard the pretense of courtesy, he would meet the Adept half-way.

"There is more restlessness in the Temple precinct than that of your Order," Rajasta warned. "Day by day, the Priests grow more resentful. Rumors grow, daily, that you are a negligent leader who has allowed debased and decadent forms to creep into your ritual, so that it has become a thing of distortion. The women of your order—"

"I had wondered when we would come to them," Riveda interrupted in an undertone.

Rajasta scowled and continued, "—they are put to certain uses which frequently defy the laws even of your Order. It is known that you mask the Black-robes among yourselves—"

Riveda held up his hand. "Am I suspected of sorcery?"

The Guardian shook his head. "I have made no accusations. I repeat only the common talk."

"Does Rajasta, the Guardian, listen to the cackle of gate-gossip? That is not my idea of pleasant conversation—nor of a Priest's duty!" As Rajasta was silent, Riveda went on, the crackle of thunder in his deep voice. "Go on! Surely there is more of this! Who but the Grey-robes work with the magic of nature? Have we not been accused of blasting the harvests? What of my Healers who are the only men who dare to go into the cities when they are rotting with plague? Have they not yet been accused of poisoning the wells?"

Rajasta said tiredly, "There is no swarm that does not start with a single bee."

Riveda chuckled. "Then where, Lord Guardian, is the stinger?"

"That you care nothing for these things," Rajasta retorted sharply. "Yours is the responsibility for all these men. Accept it—or delegate it to another who will keep closer watch on the Order! Neglect it not—" Rajasta's voice deepened in impressive admonition: "—or their guilt may shape your destiny! The responsibility of one who leads others is frightful. See that you lead wisely."

Riveda, about to speak, instead swallowed the reproof in silence, staring at the brick floor; but the line of his jaw was insolent. At last he said, "It shall be seen to, have no fear of that."

In the silence which followed this, a faint, off-key whistling could be heard somewhere down the hall. Riveda glanced briefly at his open door, but his expression revealed little of his annoyance.

Rajasta tried another tack. "Your search for the Black-robes—?"

Riveda shrugged. "At present, all those of my Order can account for themselves—save one."

Rajasta started. "Indeed? And that one—?"

Riveda spread his hands. "A puzzle, in more ways than one. He wears chela's habit, but none claim him as their disciple; nor has he named anyone his master. I had never seen him before, yet there he was among the others, and, when challenged, he gave the right responses. Otherwise, he seemed witless."

"Micon's brother, perhaps?" Rajasta suggested.

Riveda snorted derision. "A halfwit? Impossible! Some runaway slave would be more like it."

Rajasta asked, using his privilege as Guardian of the Temple, "What have you done with him?"

"As yet, nothing," Riveda replied slowly. "Since he can pass our gates and knows our ritual, he is entitled to a place among our Order, even if his teacher is unknown. For the present, I have taken him as my own disciple. Although his past is a blanked slate, and he seems not to know even his own name, he has intervals of sanity. I think I can do much with him, and for him." A short space of silence passed. Rajasta said nothing, but Riveda burst out defensively, "What else

could I have done? Forgetting for the moment that my vows pledge me to the aid of anyone who can give the Signs of my Order, should I have loosed the boy to be stoned and tormented, seized and put in a cage for fools to gape at as a madman—or taken again for evil uses?"

Rajasta's steady stare did not waver. "I have not accused you," he reminded Riveda. "It is your affair. But if Black-robes have tainted his mind—"

"Then I shall see that they make no evil use of him," Riveda promised grimly, and his face relaxed a little; "He has not the wit to be evil."

"Ignorance is worse than evil intent," Rajasta warned, and Riveda sighed.

"See for yourself, if you will," he said, and stepped to the open door, speaking in a low voice to someone in the court. After a moment, a young man came noiselessly into the room.

II

He was slight and small and looked very young, but on a second glance it could be seen that the features, though smooth as a boy's, were devoid of eyelashes as well as of beard. His brows were but the thinnest, light line, yet his hair was heavy and black, felling in lank locks which had been trimmed squarely at his shoulders. Light grey eyes gazed at Rajasta, unfocussed as if he were blind; and he was darkly tanned, although some strange pallor underlying the skin gave him a sickly look. Rajasta studied the haggard face intently, noting that the chela held himself stiffly

erect, arms away from his body, thin hands hanging curled like a newborn child's at his sides. He had moved so lightly, so noiselessly, that Rajasta wondered, half-seriously, if the creature had pads like a cat's on his feet.

He beckoned the chela to approach, and asked kindly, "What is your name, my son?"

The dull eyes woke suddenly in an unhealthy glitter. He looked about and took a step backward, then opened his mouth once or twice. Finally, in a husky voice—as if unaccustomed to speaking—he said, "My name? I am . . . only a fool."

"Who are you?" Rajasta persisted. "Where are you from?"

The chela took another step backward, and the furtive swivelling of his sick eyes intensified. "I can see you are a Priest," he said craftily. "Aren't you wise enough to know? Why should I twist my poor brain to remember, when the High Gods know, and bid me be silent, be silent, sing silent when the stars glow, mooning driftward in a surge of light. . . ." The words slid off into a humming croon.

Rajasta could only stare, thunderstruck.

Riveda gestured to the chela in dismissal. "That will do," he said; and as the boy slipped from the room like a mumbling fog-wraith, the Adept added, in explanation to Rajasta, "Questions always excite him—as if at some time he'd been questioned until he—withdrew."

Rajasta, finding his tongue, exclaimed, "He's mad as a seagull!"

Riveda chuckled wryly. "I'm sorry. He does have intervals when he's reasonably lucid, and can talk quite rationally. But if you question—he slips back into madness. If you can avoid anything like a question—"

"I wish you had warned me of that,' Rajasta said, in genuine distress. "You told me he gave the correct responses—"

Riveda shrugged this off. "Our Signs and counter-Signs are not in the form of questions," he remarked, "at least he can betray none of my secrets! Have you no secrets in the Temple of Light, Rajasta?"

"Our secrets are available to any who will seek sincerely."

Riveda's frigid eyes glittered with offense. "As our secrets are more dangerous, so we conceal them more carefully. The harmless secrets of the Temple of Light, your pretty ceremonies and rites—no man could harm anyone even if he meddled with the knowledge unworthily! But we work with dangerous powers—and if one man know them and be unfit to trust with such secrets, then such things come as befell young Micon of Ahtarrath!" He turned savagely on Rajasta. "You of all men should know why we have cause to keep our secrets for those who are fit to use them!"

Rajasta's lips twisted. "Such as your crazy chela?"

"He knows them already; we can but make sure he does not misuse them in his madness." Riveda's voice was flat and definite. "You are no child to babble of ideals. Look at Micon . . . you honor him, I respect him greatly, your little Acolyte—what is her name? Domaris—adores him. Yet what is he but a broken reed?"

"Such is accomplishment," from Rajasta, very low.

"And at what price? I think my crazy boy is happier. Micon, unfortunately—" Riveda smiled, "is still able to think, and remember."

Sudden anger gusted up in Rajasta. "Enough! The man is my guest, keep your mocking tongue from him! Look you to your Order, and forbear mocking your betters!" He turned his back on the Adept, and strode from the room, his firm tread echoing and dying away on stone flooring; and never heard Riveda's slow-kindled laughter that followed him all the way.

Chapter Three THE UNION

I

The sacred chamber was walled with tall windows fretted and overlaid with intricate stone-work casements. The dimmed moonlight and patterns of shadow bestowed an elusive, unreal quality upon the plain chairs and the very simple furnishings. A high-placed oval window let the silvery rays fall full on the altar, where glowed a pulsing flame.

Micon on one side, Rajasta on the other, Domaris passed beneath the softly shadowed archway; in silence, the two men each took one of the woman's hands, and led her to a seat, one of three facing the altar.

"Kneel," said Rajasta softly, and Domaris, with the soft sibilance of her robes, knelt. Micon's hand withdrew from hers, and was laid upon the crown of her head.

"Grant wisdom and courage to this woman, O Great Unknown!" the Atlantean prayed, his voice low-pitched, yet filling the chamber with its controlled resonances. "Grant her peace and understanding, O Unknowable!" Stepping back a pace, Micon permitted Rajasta to take his place.

"Grant purity of purpose and true knowledge to this woman," said the Priest of Light. "Grant her growth according to her needs, and the fortitude to do her duty in the fullest measure. O Thou which Art, let her be in Thee, and of Thee." Rajasta took his hand from her head and himself

withdrew.

The silence was complete. Domaris felt herself oddly alone upon the raised platform before the altar, though she had not heard the rustlings of robes, the slapping of sandals which would have accompanied Micon and Rajasta out of the room. Her heartbeats sounded dully in her ears, a muffled throbbing that slowed to a long drawn-out rhythm, a deep pulsing that seemed to take its tempo from the quivering flame upon the altar. Then, without warning, the two men raised her up and seated her between them.

Her hands resting in theirs, her face stilled to an unearthly beauty, Domaris felt as if she were rising, expanding to touch the far-flung stars. Even there a steady beat, a regular cadence that was both sound and light fused, filled and engulfed her. Domaris's senses shifted, rapidly reversing, painlessly twisting and contorting into an indescribable blending in which all past experience was suddenly quite useless. It was around her and in her and of her, a sustenance that, somehow, she herself fed, and slowly, very slowly, as if over centuries, the pulsing bright static of the stars gave way to the hot darkness of the beating heart of the earth. Of this, too, she was a part: it was she; shewas.

With this realization, as if borne upward by the warm tides of the waters of life, Domaris came back to the surface of existence. About her, the sacred chamber was silent; to either side of her, she could see the face of a man transfigured even as Domaris had been. As one, the three breathed deeply, rose, and went forth in silence from that place, newly consecrated to a purpose that, for a little time, they could almost understand.

Chapter Four STORM WARNINGS

I

A cool breeze stirred the leaves, and what light penetrated the branches was a shimmering, shifting dance of golden and green. Rajasta, approaching along a shrubbery-lined path, thought the big tree and the trio beneath it made a pleasing picture: Deoris, with her softly curling hair, looked shadowy and very dark as she sat on her scribe's stool, reading from a scroll; before her, in contrast, Micon's pallor was luminous, almost translucent. Close by the Atlantean's side, yet not much more distant from her little sister, Domaris was like a stilled flame, the controlled serenity of her face a pool of quiet.

Because Rajasta's sandals had made no noise on the grass, he was able to stand near them unnoticed a little while, half-listening to Deoris as she read; yet it was Domaris and Micon on whom his thoughts focussed.

As Deoris paused in her reading, Micon abruptly raised his head and turned toward Rajasta, the twisted smile warm with welcome.

Rajasta laughed. "My brother, you should be Guardian here, and not I! No one else noticed me." There was a spreading ripple of laughter beneath the big tree as the Priest of Light moved closer. Gesturing to both girls to keep their seats, Rajasta stopped a moment, to touch Deoris's tumbled curls fondly. "This breeze is refreshing."

"Yes, but it is the first warning of the coming storm," said Micon.

There was a brief silence then, and Rajasta gazed thoughtfully upon Micon's uptilted face. Which sort of storm, I wonder, does he refer to? There is more trouble ahead of us than bad weather.

Domaris, too, was disturbed. Always sensitive, her new relationship with Micon had given her an awareness of him that was uncanny in its completeness. She could, with inevitable instinct, enter into his feelings; the result was a devotion that dwarfed all other relationships. She loved Deoris as much as ever, and her reverence for Rajasta had not altered in intensity or degree—but Micon's desperate need came first, and drew on every protective instinct in her. It was this which threatened to absorb her; for Domaris, of them all, had the faculty for an almost catastrophic selfabnegation.

Rajasta had, of course, long known this about his Acolyte. Now it struck him with renewed force that, as her Initiator, it was his duty to warn her of this flaw in her character. Yet Rajasta understood all too well the love that had given rise to it.

Nevertheless, he told himself sternly, it is not healthy for Domaris to so concentrate all her forces on one person, however great the need! But, before he had even quite completed this thought, the Priest of Light smiled, ruefully. It might be well for me to learn that lesson, too.

Settling on the grass beside Micon, Rajasta laid his hand over the Atlantean's lax and twisted one in a gently reassuring clasp. Scarcely a moment passed before his skilled touch found the slight, tell-tale trembling, and Rajasta shook his head sadly. Although the Atlantean seemed to have quite recovered his health, the truth was far otherwise.

But for the moment, the trembling lessened, then stilled, as if a door had slammed shut on sullen fury. Micon allowed the Guardian's strength to flow through his tortured nerves, comforting and reinforcing him. He smiled gratefully, then his face sobered.

"Rajasta—I must ask—make no further effort to punish on my behalf. It is an effort that will bear no, or bitter, fruit."

Rajasta sighed. "We have been over this so often," he said, but not impatiently. "You must know by now, I cannot let this rest as things stand; the matter is too grave to go unpunished."

"And it will not, be assured," said Micon, his blind eyes bright and almost glowing after the flow of new vitality. "But take heed that punishment for punishment not follow!"

"Riveda must cleanse his Order!" Domaris's voice was as brittle as ice. "Rajasta is right—"

"My gracious lady," Micon admonished gently, "when justice becomes an instrument of vengeance, its steel is turned to blades of grass. Truly, Rajasta must protect those to come—but he who takes vengeance will suffer! The Laws of Karma note first the act, andthen —if at all— the intention!" He paused, then added, with emphasis, "Nor should we involve Riveda overmuch. He stands already at the crossroads of danger!"

Rajasta, who had been prepared to speak, gasped. Had Micon also been vouchsafed some vision or revelation such as Rajasta had had on the Night of Zenith?

The Priest of Light's reaction went unnoticed as Deoris raised her head, suddenly impelled to defend Riveda. Hardly had she spoken a word, though, before it struck her that no one had accused the Adept of anything, and she fell silent again.

Domaris's face changed; the sternness grew tender. "I am ungenerous," she acknowledged. "I will be silent until I know it is a love for justice, not revenge, that makes me speak."

"Flame-crowned," said Micon in softly ringing tones, "thou wouldst not be woman, wert thou otherwise."

Deoris's eyes were thunderclouds: Micon used the familiar "thou," which Deoris herself rarely ventured—and Domaris did not seem offended, but pleased! Deoris felt she would choke with

resentment.

Rajasta, his misgivings almost forgotten, smiled now on Domaris and Micon, vast approval in his eyes. How he loved them both! On Deoris, too, he turned affectionate eyes, for he loved her well, and only awaited the ripening of her nature to ask her to follow in her sister's footsteps as his Acolyte. Rajasta sensed unknown potentialities in the fledgling woman, and, if it were possible, he greatly desired to guide her; but as yet Deoris was far too young.

Domaris, sensitive to his thought, rose and went to her sister, to drop with slender grace at her side. "Put up thy work, little sister, and listen," she whispered, "and learn. I have. And—I love thee, puss—very dearly."

Deoris, comforted, snuggled into the clasp of her sister's arm; Domaris was rarely so demonstrative, and the unexpected caress filled her with joy. Domaris thought, with selfreproach,Poor baby, she's lonely, I've been neglecting her so! But Micon needs me now! There will be time for her later, when I am sure . . .

"—and still you know nothing of my half-brother?" Micon was asking, unhappily. "His fate is heavy on me, Rajasta; I feel that he still lives, but I know, Iknow that all is not well with him, wherever he may be."

"I shall make further inquiries," Rajasta promised, and loosed Micon's quiet hands at last, so that the Atlantean would not sense the half-deception in the words. Rajasta would ask—but he had

little hope of learning anything about the missing Reio-ta.

"If he be but half-brother to thee, Micon," Domaris said, and her lovely voice was even softer than usual, "then he must find the Way of Love."

"I find that way not easy," Micon demurred gently. "To think always and only with compassion and understanding is—a difficult discipline."

Rajasta murmured, "Thou art a Son of Light, and hast attained—"

"Little!" An undertone of rebellion sounded clear in the Atlantean's resonant voice. "I was to be—Healer, and serve my fellows. Now I am nothing, and the service remains to be met."

For a long moment, all were silent, and Micon's tragedy stood stark in the forefront of every mind. Domaris resolved that every comfort of mind and body, every bit of service and love that was hers to give, should be given, no matter what the cost.

Deoris spoke at last, quietly but aggressively. "Lord Micon," she said, "you show us all how a man may bear misfortune, and be more than man. Is that wasted, then?"

Her temerity made Rajasta frown; at the same time, he inwardly applauded her sentiment, for it closely matched his own.

Micon pressed her small fingers lightly in his. "My little Deoris," he said gravely, "fortune and misfortune, worth and waste, these values are not for men to judge. I have set many causes in motion, and all men reap as they have sown. Whether a man meets good or evil lies with the Gods who have determined his fate, but every man—" His face twisted briefly in a smile. "And every woman, too, is free to make fortune or misfortune of the stuff that has been allotted him." The Atlantean's full, glorious smile came back, and he turned his head from Rajasta to Domaris in that odd gesture that gave almost the effect of sight. "You can say whether there is no good thing that has come of all this!"

Rajasta bowed his head. "My very great good, Son of Light."

"And mine, also," said Micon softly.

Deoris, surprise shadowed in her eyes, watched with vague discontent, and a jealousy even more vague. She drew her hand from Micon's light clasp, saying, "You don't want me any more today, do you, Lord Micon?"

Domaris said instantly, "Run along, Deoris, I can read if Micon wishes it." Jealousy never entered her head, but she resented anything which took Micon from her.

"But I must have a word with you, Domaris," Rajasta interposed firmly. "Leave Micon and the little scribe to their work, and you, Domaris, come with me."

II

The woman rose, sobered by the implied rebuke in Rajasta's tone, and went silently along the path at his side. Her eyes turned back for a moment to seek her lover, who had not moved; only now his bent head and his smile were for Deoris, who curled up at his feet: Domaris heard the clear ripple of her little sister's laughter.

Rajasta looked down at the shining crown of Domaris's hair, and sighed. Before he had made up his mind how to speak, Domaris felt the Priest's eyes, grave and kind but more serious than usual, bent upon her, and raised her face.

"Rajasta, I love him," she said simply.

The words, and the restraint of the emotion behind them, almost unmanned the Priest, disarming his intended rebuke. He laid his hands on her shoulders and looked down into her face, not with the severity he had planned, but with fatherly affection. "I know, daughter," he said softly. "I am glad. But you are in danger of forgetting your duty."

"My duty?" she repeated, perplexed. As yet she had no duties within the Priest's Caste, save for her studies.

Rajasta understood her confusion, but he knew also that she was evading self-knowledge. "Deoris, too, must be considered," he pointed out. "She, too, has need of you."

"But—Deoris knows I love her," Domaris protested.

"Does she, my Acolyte?" He spoke the term deliberately, in an attempt to recall her position to her mind. "Or does she feel that you have pushed her away, let Micon absorb all your attention?"

"She can't—she wouldn't—oh, I never meant to!" Reviewing in her mind the happenings of the last few weeks, Domaris found the reproof just. Characteristically, she responded to her training and gave her mentor's words strict attention, emblazoning them upon her mind and heart. After a time, she raised her eyes again, and this time they were shadowed with deep remorse. "Acquit me, at least, of intentional selfishness," she begged. "She is so dear and close that she is like a part of myself, and I forget her concerns are not always as my own. . . . I have been negligent; I shall try to correct—"

"If it be not already too late." A shadow of deep trouble darkened the Priest's eyes. "Deoris may love you never the less, but will she ever trust you as much?"

Domaris's lovely eyes were clouded. "If Deoris no longer trusts me, I must accept the fault as mine," she said. "The Gods grant it be not too late. I have neglected my first responsibility."

And yet she knew she had been powerless to do otherwise, nor could she truly regret her exclusive concern with Micon. Rajasta sighed again as he followed her thoughts. It was hard to reprove her for a fault which was equally his own.

Chapter Five THE SECRET CROWN

I

The rains were almost upon them. On one of the last sunny days they might reasonably expect, Domaris and Elis, with Deoris and her friend Ista, a scribe like herself, went to gather flowers; the House of the Twelve was to be decorated by the Acolytes for a minor festival that night.

They found a field of blossoms atop a hill overlooking the seashore. Faintly, from afar, came the salt smell of rushes and seaweed left by the receding tide; the scent of sweet grass, sun-parched, hung close about them, intermingled with the heavy, heady, honey-sweet of flowers,

Elis had Lissa with her. The baby was over a year old now, and scampering everywhere, to pull up flowers and trample in them, tumble the baskets and tear at skirts, until Elis grew quite exasperated.

Deoris, who adored the baby, snatched her up in her arms. "I'll keep her, Elis, I've enough flowers now."

"I've enough, too," said Domaris, and laid down her fragrant burden. She brushed a hand over her damp forehead. The sun was near-blinding even when one did not look toward it, and she felt dizzy with the heavy sickishness of breathing the mixed salt and sweet smells. Gathering her baskets of flowers together, she sat down in the grass beside Deoris, who had Lissa on her knees and was tickling her as she murmured some nonsensical croon.

"You're like a little girl playing with a doll, Deoris."

Deoris's small features tightened into a smile that was not quite a smile. "But I never liked dolls," she said.

"No." Her sister's smile was reminiscent, her eyes turned fondly on Lissa more than Deoris. "You wanted your babies alive, like this one."

Slender, raven-haired Ista dropped cross-legged on the grass, jerked at her brief skirts, and began delicately to plait the flowers from her basket. Elis watched for a minute, then tossed an armful of white and crimson blooms into Ista's basket. "My garlands are always coming untied," Elis explained. "Weave mine, too, and ask me any favor you will."

Ista's dexterous fingers did not hesitate as she went on tying the stems. "I will do it, and gladly, and Deoris will help me—won't you, Deoris? But scribes work only for love, and not for favors."

Deoris gave Lissa a final squeeze and put her into Domaris's arms; then, drawing a basket toward her, began weaving the flowers into dainty festoons. Elis bent and watched them. "Shameful," she murmured, laughing, "that I must learn the Temple laws from two scribes!"

She threw herself down in the grass beside Domaris. From a nearby bush, she plucked a handful of ripe golden berries, put one into her own mouth, then fed the others, one by one, to the bouncing, crowing Lissa, who sat on Domaris's knees, plastering them both with juicy kisses and staining Domaris's light robe with berry juice. Domaris snuggled Lissa close to her, with a queer hungriness.But my baby will be a son, she thought proudly,a straight little son, with dark-blue eyes. . . .

Elis looked sharply at her cousin. "Domaris, are you ill—or only daydreaming?"

The older woman pulled her braid of coppery hair free from Lissa's fat, insistent fingers. "A little dizzy from the sun," she said, and gave Lissa to her mother. Once again she made a deliberate effort to stop thinking, to give up the persistent thought that the form of words, even in her own mind, might make untrue.Perhaps this time, though, it istrue. . . . For weeks, she had secretly suspected that she now bore Micon's son. And yet, once before, her own wish and her own hope had betrayed her into mentioning a false suspicion which had ended in disappointment. This time she was resolved to be silent, even to Micon, until she was sure beyond all possible doubt.

Deoris, glancing up from her flowers, dropped her garland and leaned toward Domaris, her eyes

wide and anxious. The change in Domaris had struck the world from under Deoris's feet. She knew she had lost her sister, and was ready to blame everyone: she was jealous of Arvath, of Elis, of Micon, and above all at times of Rajasta. Domaris, wrapped in the profound anesthesia of her love, saw nothing, really, of the child's misery; she only knew that Deoris was exasperatingly dependent these days. Her causeless childish clinging drove Domaris almost frantic. Why couldn't Deoris behave sensibly and leave her alone? Sometimes, without meaning it—for Domaris, although quick to irritation, and now tense with nervous strain, was never deliberately unkind—she wounded Deoris to the quick with a single careless word, only seeing what she had done when it was too late, if at all.

This time the tension slackened: Elis had taken Lissa, and the baby was pulling insistently at her mother's dress. Elis laughed, wrinkling her nose in pretended annoyance. "Little greedy pig, I know what she wants. I'm glad there are only a few months more of this nonsense!" She was unfastening her robe as she spoke, and gave Lissa a playful spank as the baby caught at her breast. "Then, little Mistress Mine, you must learn to eat like a lady!"

Deoris averted her eyes in something like disgust. "How do you endure it?" she asked.

Elis laughed merrily without troubling to answer; her complaints had been only in jest, and she thought Deoris's question equally frivolous. Babies were always nursed for two full years, and only an overworked slave-woman or a prostitute would have dreamed of shirking the full time of suckling.

Elis leaned back, cradling Lissa on her arm, and picked another handful of berries. "You sound like Chedan, Deoris! I sometimes think he hates my poor baby! Still—" She made a comical face and thrust another berry between her lips. "Sometimes I wonder, when shebites me—"

"And you will no sooner wean her," Ista remarked with gleeful gravity, "than she will begin to shed her baby teeth."

Domaris frowned: she alone knew that Deoris had not been joking. Lissa's eyes were closed, now, in sleepy contentment, and her face, a pink petal framed in sunny curls, lay like a curled bud on her mother's breast. Domaris felt a sudden stab of longing so great that it was almost pain. Elis, raising her eyes, met Domaris's glance; the intuitive wisdom of their caste was especially strong in Elis, and the girl guessed at a story that closely paralleled her own. Reaching her free hand to her cousin, Elis gave the narrow fingers a little squeeze; Domaris returned the pressure, furtively, grateful for the implied understanding.

"Little nuisance," crooned Elis, rocking the sleepy baby. "Fat little elf . . ."

The sun wavered, hiding itself behind a bank of cloud. Deoris and Ista nodded over their flowerwork, still drowsily tying stems. Domaris suddenly shivered; then her whole body froze, tense, in an attitude of stilled, incredulous listening. And once again it came, somewhere deep inside her body, a faint and indescribable fluttering like nothing she had ever felt before, but unmistakable, like the beating of prisoned wings—it came and went so swiftly that she was hardly sure what she had felt. And yet sheknew.

"What's the matter?" Elis asked in a low voice, and Domaris realized that she was still holding Elis's hand, but that her fingers had tightened, crushing her cousin's fingers together painfully. She let go of Elis, drawing back her hand quickly and in apology—but she did not speak, and her other hand remained resting lightly and secretly against her body, where once again that little instantaneous fluttering came and went and then was stilled. Domaris remembered to breathe; but she stayed very still, unable to think beyond that final, unmistakable surety that the concealed secret was now a confirmable truth, that there within her womb Micon's son—she dared not think that it was other than a son—stirred to life.

Deoris's eyes, large and somewhat afraid, met her sister's, and the expression in them was too much for the taut Domaris. She began to laugh, at first softly, then uncontrollably—because she dared not cry, shewould not cry. . . . The laughter became hysterical, and Domaris scrambled to her feet and fled down the hill toward the seashore, leaving the three girls to stare at one another.

Deoris half rose, but Elis, on an intuitive impulse, pulled her back. "She would rather be alone for a while, I think. Here, hold Lissa for me, won't you, while I fasten my dress!" She plumped the baby into Deoris's lap, and carefully knotted the fastenings of her dress, taking her time, to avert a minor crisis.

II

At the edge of the salt-marshes, Domaris flung herself full-length into the long grass and lay

hidden there, her face against the pungent earth, her hands clasped across her body in a wonder that was half fright. She lay motionless, feeling the long grasses wavering with the wind, her thoughts trembling as they did, but without stirring the surface of her mind. She was afraid to think clearly.

Noon paled and retreated, and Domaris, raising herself as if by instinct, saw Micon walking slowly along the shore. She got to her feet, her hair tumbling loose about her waist, her dress billowing in the wind, and began to run toward him on impatient feet. Hearing the quick, uneven steps, he stopped.

"Micon!"

"Domaris—where are you?" His blind face turned to follow the sound of her voice, and she darted to him, pausing—no longer even regretful that she could not throw herself into his arms— a careful step away, and lightly touching his arm, raised her face for his kiss.

His lips lingered an instant longer than usual; then he withdrew his face a little and murmured, "Heart of flame, you are excited. You bring news."

"I bring news." Her voice was softly triumphant, but failed her. She took the racked hands lightly in her own and pressed them softly against her body, begging him to understand without being told. . . . Perhaps he read her thoughts; perhaps he only guessed from the gesture. Whichever it may have been, his face grew bright with an inner brilliance, and his arms went out

to gather her close.

"You bring light," he whispered, and kissed her again

She hid her face on his breast. "It is sure now beloved. This time it is sure! I have guessed it for weeks, and I would not speak of it, for fear that—but now there is no doubt! He—our son— stirred today!"

"Domaris—beloved—"

The man's voice choked, and she felt burning tears drop from the blind eyes onto her face. His hands, usually so sternly controlled, trembled so violently that he could not raise them to hers, and as she held herself to him, loving him and almost drowning in the intensity of this love so closely akin to worship, she felt Micon's trembling as even a strong tree will tremble a little before a hurricane.

"My beloved, my blessed one . . ." With a reverence that hurt and frightened the girl, Micon dropped to his knees, in the sand, and managed to clasp her two hands, pressing them to his cheeks, his lips. "Bearer of Light, it is my life you hold, my freedom," he whispered.

"Micon! I love you, I love you," the girl stammered incoherently—because there was nothing else that she could possibly have said.

The Initiate rose, his control somewhat regained, though still trembling slightly, and gently dried her tears. "Domaris," he said, with tender gravity, "I—there is no way to tell you—I mean, I will try, but—" His mouth took on an even greater seriousness, and the twist of pain and regret and uncertainty there was like knives in Domaris's heart.

"Domaris," he said, and his voice rang in the deep and practiced tones that she recognized as the Atlantean's oath-voice. "I will—try," he promised solemnly, "to stay with you until our son is born."

And Domaris knew that she had pronounced the beginning of the end.

Chapter Six IN THE SISTERHOOD

I

The Temple of Caratra, which overlooked the Shrine and the holy pool, was one of the most beautiful buildings of the entire Temple precinct. It was fashioned of milky stone, veined with shimmering, opalescent fires in the heart of the rock. Long gardens, linked by palisaded arbors covered with trailing vines, surrounded pool and Temple; cool fountains splashed in the courts

where a profusion of flowers bloomed the year round.

Within these white and glistening walls, every child of the Temple was born, whether child to slave-maiden or to the High Priestess. Here, also, every young girl within the Temple was sent to render service in her turn (for all women owed service to the Mother of All Men); in assisting the Priestesses, in caring for the mothers and for the newly born, even (if she was of a satisfactory rank in the Priest's Caste) in learning the secrets of bringing children to birth. And every year thereafter she spent a certain assigned period—ranging from a single day for slave women and commoners, to an entire month for Acolytes and Priestesses—living and serving in the Temple of the Mother; and from this assigned yearly service, not the humblest slave nor the highest Initiate was ever exempted.

Over a year before, Deoris had been adjudged old enough to enter upon her time of service; but a severe, though brief, attack of fever had intervened, and somehow her name had been passed over. Now her name was called again; but although most of the young girls of the Priest's Caste looked on this service rather eagerly, as a sign of their own oncoming womanhood, it was with reluctance bordering on rebellion that Deoris made her preparations.

Once—almost two years earlier, at the time of her first approach to the Shrine—she had been given her initial lesson in the delivery of a baby. The experience had bewildered her. She dreaded a recurrence of the questions it raised in her mind. She had seen the straining effort, and the agony, and had been revolted at the seeming cruelty of it all—though she had also witnessed, after all that, the ecstatic welcome that the mother had given the tiny mite of humanity. Beyond

the puzzlement she had felt at this contradictory behavior, Deoris had been dismayed at her own feelings: the bitter hurt that she too must one day be woman and lie there in her turn, struggling to bring forth life. The eternal "Why?" beat incessantly at her brain. Now, when she had almost managed to forget, it would be before her again.

"I can't, I won't," she burst out in protest to Micon. "It's cruel—horrible—"

"Hush, Deoris." The Atlantean reached for her nervously twisting hands, catching and holding them despite his blindness. "Do you not know that to live is to suffer, and to bring life is to suffer?" He sighed, a feint and restrained sound. "I think pain is the law of life . . . and if you can help, dare you refuse?"

"I don't dare—but I wish I did! Lord Micon, you don't know what it's like!"

Checking his first impulse to laugh at her naivete, Micon reassured her, gently, "But I do know. I wish I could help you to understand, Deoris; but there are things everyone must learn alone—"

Deoris, flushed and appalled, choked out the question, "But howcan you know—that?" In the world of the Temple, childbirth was strictly an affair for women, and to Deoris, whose whole world was the Temple, it seemed impossible that a man could know anything of the complexities of birth. Was it not everywhere a rigid, unalterable custom that no man might approach a childbed? No one, surely, could imagine this ultimate indecency! How could Micon, fortunate enough to have been born a man, even guess at it?

Micon could no longer restrain himself; his laughter only served to bruise Deoris's feelings even more. "Why, Deoris," he said, "men are not so ignorant as you think!" As her hurt silence dragged on, he tried to amend his statement. "Our customs in Atlantis are not like yours, child— you must remember—" He let an indulgent, teasing tone creep into his voice. "You must remember what barbarians we are in the Sea Kingdoms! And believe me, not all men are in ignorance, even here. And—my child, do you think I know nothing of pain?" He hesitated for a moment; could this be the right moment to tell Deoris that her sister bore his child? Instinct told him that Deoris, wavering on the balance between acceptance and rejection, might be swayed in the right direction by the knowledge. Yet it seemed to him it was Domaris's right, not his, to speak or be silent. His words blurred in sudden weariness. "Darling, I wish I could help you. Try to remember this: to live, you need every experience. Some will come in glory and in beauty, and some in pain and what seems like ugliness. But—theyare. Life consists of opposites in balance."

Deoris sighed, impatient with the pious repetition—she had heard it before. Domaris, too, had failed her. She had tried, really tried, to make Domaris understand; Domaris had only looked at her, uncomprehending, and said, "But every woman must do that service."

"But it's so awful!" Deoris had wailed.

Domaris, stern-eyed, advised her not to be a silly little girl; that it was the way of nature, and that no one could change it. Deoris had stammered on, inclined to beg, cry, plead, convinced that Domariscould change it, if she only would.

Domaris had been greatly displeased: "You are being very childish! I've spoilt you, Deoris, and tried to protect you. I know now that I did wrong. You are not a child any longer. You must learn to take a woman's responsibilities."

II

Deoris was now fifteen. The Priestesses took it for granted that she had, like most girls of that age, completed the simpler preliminary tasks allotted to those who were serving for the first or second time. Too shy and too miserable to correct their mistake, Deoris found herself assigned an advanced task: as befitted a girl of her age who was the daughter of a Priest, she was sent to assist one of the midwife-Priestesses, a woman who was also a Healer of Riveda's Order; her name was Karahama.

Karahama was not of the Priest's Caste. She was the daughter of a Temple servant who, before her daughter was born, had claimed to be with child by Talkannon himself. Talkannon, then recently married to the highly-born Priestess who later became the mother of Deoris and Domaris, had most uncharacteristically refused to acknowledge the child. He admitted intimacy with the woman, but claimed that it was by no means sure that he was the father of her unborn child, and produced other men who had, in his opinion and theirs, a better claim.

Under such flagrant proofs of misconduct, the Elders had admitted that no one could be forced to acknowledge the child. The woman, stripped of her privileges as a Temple servant, was given

only a minimum of shelter until the birth of her daughter, and then dismissed from the Temple altogether. Man and woman were free to live as they would before marriage, but promiscuity could not be tolerated.

The child Karahama, casteless and nameless, had been taken into the Grey-robe sect as one of theirsaji —and had grown up the very image of Talkannon. Eventually, of course, the ArchPriest became aware of the jeers of the Temple slaves, the concealed gossip of his juniors. It was indeed a choice bit of scandal that the Temple's Arch-Priest should have a small replica of himself among the worst outcasts in the Temple. In self-defense, he at last succumbed to popular opinion. After doing lengthy penance for his error, he legally adopted Karahama.

As the Grey-robes had no caste laws, Karahama had been accepted by Riveda as a HealerPriestess. Restored by Talkannon to her rightful caste and name, she had chosen to enter the Temple of Caratra, and was now an Initiate, entitled to wear the blue robe—a dignity as high as any in the Temple. No one could scorn or spit on the "nameless one" any more, but Karahama's uncertain beginnings had made her temperament a strange and uncertain thing.

At the realization that this girl assigned to her guidance was her own half-sister, Karahama felt oddly mixed emotions, which were soon resolved in Deoris's favor. Karahama's own children, born before her reclamation, were outcasts, nameless as she herself had been, and for them nothing could be done. Perhaps this was why Karahama tried to be particularly kind and friendly to this young and almost unknown kinswoman. But she knew that sooner or later she would have trouble with this child, whose sullen rebellion smouldered unspoken behind scared violet eyes,

and whose work was carefully deliberate, as if Deoris made every movement against her will. Karahama thought this a great pity, for Deoris obviously had all the qualities of a born Healer: steady hands and a keen observation, a deft sure gentleness, a certain instinct for pain. Only the will was lacking—and Karahama quickly resolved that somehow she must make it her duty to find the hidden thing in Deoris which would win her over to the service of the Mother.

She thought she had found it when Arkati came to the House of Birth.

Arkati was the girl-wife of one of the Priests, a pretty thing scarcely out of childhood; younger, in fact, than Deoris herself. A fair-skinned, fair-haired, diminutive girl with sweet pleading eyes, Arkati had been brought to the Temple of Caratra a few weeks before the proper time, because she was not well; her heart had been damaged by a childhood illness, and they wished to strengthen her before her child was born. All of them, even the stern Karahama, treated the girl with tenderness, but Arkati was weak and homesick and would cry at nothing.

She and Deoris, it soon turned out, had known one another since childhood. Arkati clung to Deoris like a lost kitten.

Karahama used influence, and Deoris was given what freedom she wished to spend with Arkati. She noticed with pleasure that Deoris had a good instinct for caring for the sick girl; she followed Karahama's instructions with good sense and good judgment, and it seemed as if Deoris's hard rebellion gave the girl-mother strength. But there was restraint in their friendship, born of Deoris's fear.

More than fear, it was a positive horror. Wasn't Arkati afraid at all? She never tired of dreaming and making plans and talking about her baby; she accepted all the inconveniences, sickness and weariness, unthinkingly, even with laughter. How could she? Deoris did not know, and was afraid to ask.

Once, Arkati took Deoris's hand in hers, and put itagainst her swollen body, hard; and Deoris felt under her hand an odd movement, a sensation which filled her with an emotion she could not analyze. Not knowing whether what she felt was pleasure or acute annoyance, she jerked her hand roughly away.

"What's wrong?" Arkati laughed. "Don't you like my baby?"

Somehow this custom, speaking of an unborn child as if already a person, made Deoris uncomfortable. "Don't be foolish," she said roughly—but for the first time in her entire life, she was consciously thinking of her own mother, the mother they said had been gentle and gracious and lovely, and very like Domaris, and who had died when Deoris was born. Drowned in guilt, Deoris remembered that she had killed her mother. Was that why Domaris resented her now?

She said nothing of all this, only attended to what she was taught with a determination born of anger; and within a few days Karahama saw, with surprise, that Deoris was already beginning to show something like skill, a deftness and intuitive knowledge that seemed to equal years of experience. When the ordinary term of service was ended, Karahama asked her—rather

diffidently, it is true—to stay on for another month in the Temple, working directly with Karahama herself.

Somewhat to her own surprise, Deoris agreed, telling herself that she had simply promised Arkati to remain with her as long as possible. Not even to herself would she admit that she was beginning to enjoy the feeling of mastery which this work gave her.

III

Arkati's child was born on a rainy night when will-o'-the-wisps flitted on the seashore, and the wind wailed an ominous litany. Karahama had no cause to complain of Deoris, but somewhere in the dark hours the injured heart ceased to beat, and the fight—pitifully brief, after all—ended in tragedy. At sunrise, a newborn child wailed without knowing why, in an upper room of the Temple, and Deoris, sick to the bone, lay sobbing bitterly in her own room, her head buried in her pillows, trying to shut out memory of the sounds and sights that would haunt her in nightmares for the rest of her life.

"You mustn't lie here and cry!" Karahama bent over her, then sat down at her side, gathering up Deoris's hands in hers. Another girl came into the little dormitory, but Karahama curtly motioned her to leave them alone, and continued, "Deoris, listen to me, child. There was nothing we could have done for—"

Deoris's sobs mixed with incoherent words.

Karahama frowned. "That is foolishness. The child did not kill her! Her heart stopped; you know she has never been strong. Besides—" Karahama bent closer and said, in her gently resolute voice, so like Domaris's and yet so different, "You are a daughter of the Temple. We know Death's true face, a doorway to further life, and not something to be feared—"

"Oh, leave me alone!" Deoris wailed miserably.

"By no means," said Karahama firmly. Self-pity was not in her category of permitted emotions, and she had no sympathy with the involved reasoning that made Deoris curl herself up into a forlorn little huddle and want to be left alone. "Arkati is not to be pitied! So stop crying for yourself. Get up; bathe and dress yourself properly, and then go and tend Arkati's little daughter. She is your responsibility until her father may claim her, and also you must say protective spells over her, to guard her from the imps who snatch motherless children—"

Rebelliously, Deoris did as she was told, assuming the dozen responsibilities which must be taken: arranging for a wet-nurse, signing the child with protective runes, and—because a child's true name was a sacred secret, written on the rolls of the Temple but never spoken aloud except in ritual—Deoris gave the child the "little name" by which she would be called until she was grown:Miritas. The baby squirmed feebly in her arms, and Deoris thought, with unhappy contempt,Protective spells! Where was the spell that could have saved Arkati?

Karahama watched stoically, more grieved than she would say. They had all known that Arkati

would not live; she had been warned, when she married, that she should not attempt to bear a child, and the Priestesses had given her runes and spells and arcane teachings to prevent this. Arkati had willfully disobeyed their counsel, and had paid for this disobedience with her life. Now there was another motherless child to be fostered.

But Karahama had known something else, for she understood Deoris better even than Domaris. Unlike as they were, both Deoris and Karahama had inherited from Talkannon a rugged and stubborn determination. Resentment, more than triumph, would spur Deoris on; hating pain and death, she would vow to conquer it. Where being forced to witness such a tragedy might have lost another neophyte, driving her away in revulsion, Karahama felt that this would place a decisive hand on Deoris.

Karahama said nothing more, however; she was wise enough to let the knowledge ripen slowly. When all had been done for the newborn child, Karahama told Deoris that she might be excused from other duties for the remainder of the day. "You have had no sleep," she added dryly, when Deoris would have thanked her. "Your hands and eyes would have no skill. Mind that you rest!"

Deoris promised, in a strained voice; but she did not ascend the stairway to the dormitory reserved for the women who were serving their season in the Temple. Instead, she slipped out by a side entrance, and ran toward the House of the Twelve, with only one thought in her mind—the lifelong habit of carrying all her sorrows to Domaris. Her sister would certainly understand her now, shemust!

A summer wind was blowing, moist with the promise of more rain; Deoris hugged her scarf closely about her neck and shoulders, and ran wildly across the lawns. Turning a sharp corner she almost tumbled against the stately form of Rajasta, who was coming from the House. Barely pausing to recover her balance, Deoris stammered breathless words of apology and would have run on, but Rajasta detained her gently.

"Look to your steps, dear child, you will injure yourself," he cautioned, smiling. "Domaris tells me you have been serving in Caratra's Temple. Have you finished with your service there?"

"No, I am only dismissed for the day." Deoris spoke civilly, but twitched with impatience. Rajasta did not seem to notice.

"That service will bring you wisdom and understanding, little daughter," he counselled. "It will make a woman of a child." He laid his hand for a moment, in blessing, on the tangled, feathering curls. "May peace and enlightenment follow thy footsteps, Deoris."

IV

In the House of Twelve, men and women mingled almost promiscuously, in a brother-andsisterly innocence, fostered by the fact that all Twelve had been brought up together. Deoris, whose more impressionable years had been spent in the stricter confines of the Scribe's School, was not yet accustomed to this freedom, and when, in the inner courtyard, she discovered some of the Acolytes splashing in the pool, she felt confused and—in her new knowledge—annoyed.

She did not want to seek her sister among them. But Domaris had often cautioned her, with as much sternness as Domaris ever showed, that while Deoris lived among the Acolytes she must conform to their customs, and forget the absurd strictures forced upon the scribes.

Chedan saw Deoris first, and shouted for her to strip and bathe with them. A merry boy, the youngest of the Acolytes, he had from the first treated Deoris with a special friendliness and indulgence. Deoris shook her head, and the boy splashed her until her dress was sopping and she ran out of reach. Domaris, standing under the fountain, saw this exchange and called to Deoris to wait; then, wringing the water from her drenched hair, Domaris went toward the edge of the pool. Passing Chedan, his bare shoulders and turned back tempted her to mischief; she scooped up a handful of water and dashed it into his eyes. Before the retaliating deluge, she dodged and squealed and started to run—then, remembering that it was hardly wise to risk a fall just now, slowed her steps to a walk.

The water fell away in shallows, and Deoris, waiting, looked at her sister—and her eyes widened in amazement. She didn't believe what she saw. Abruptly, Deoris turned and fled, and did not hear Domaris cry out as Chedan and Elis, screaming with mirth, caught Domaris at the very edge of the pool and dragged her back into the water, ducking her playfully, threatening to fling her into the very center of the fountain. They thought she was playing when she struggled to free herself of their rough hands. Two or three of the girls joined in the fun, and their shrieks of laughter drowned her pleas for mercy, even when, genuinely scared, Domaris began to cry in earnest.

They had actually swung her free of the water when Elis suddenly seized their hands and cried out harshly, "Stop it, stop it, Chedan, Riva! Let her go—take your hands from her, now, at once!"

The tone of her voice shocked them into compliance: they lowered Domaris to her feet and released her, but they were still too wild with mirth to realize that Domaris was sobbing. "She started it," Chedan protested, and they stared in disbelief as Elis encircled the shaken girl with a protecting arm, and helped her to the rim of the pool. Always before, Domaris had been a leader in their rough games.

Still crying a little, Domaris clung helplessly to Elis as her cousin helped her out of the water. Elis picked up a robe and tossed it to Domaris. "Put this on before you take a chill," she said, sensibly. "Did they hurt you? You should have told us—stop shaking, Domaris, you're all right now."

Domaris wrapped herself obediently in the white woolen robe, glancing down ruefully at the contours emphasized so strongly by the crude drapery. "I wanted to keep it to myself just a little longer . . . now I suppose everyone will know."

Elis slid her wet feet into sandals, knotting the sash of her own robe. "Haven't you even told Deoris?"

Domaris shook her head silently as they arose and went toward the passageway leading to the

women's apartments. In retrospect, Deoris's face, shocked and disbelieving, was sharp in her memory. "I meant to," Domaris murmured, "but—"

"Tell her, right away," Elis ventured to advise, "before she hears it as gossip from someone else. But be gentle, Domaris. Arkati died last night."

They paused before Domaris's door, Domaris whispering distractedly, "Oh, what a pity!" She herself had barely known Arkati, but she knew Deoris loved her, and now—now, in such sorrow, Deoris could not come to see her without receiving a further shock,

Elis turned away, but over her shoulder she flung back, "Yes, and have a little more care for yourself! We could have hurt you badly—and suppose Arvath had been there?" Her door slammed.

V

While Elara dried and dressed her, and braided her wet hair, Domaris sat lost in thought, staring at nothing. There might be trouble with Arvath—no one knew that better than Domaris—but she could not spare any worry about that now. She had, as yet, no duty toward him; she acted within her rights under the law. Deoris was a more serious matter, and Domaris reproached herself for neglect. Somehow she must make Deoris understand. Warm and cozy after Elara's ministrations, she curled up on a divan and awaited her sister's return.

It was, in fact, not very long before Deoris returned, sullen fires burning a hectic warning in her cheeks. Domaris smiled at her joyously. "Come here, darling," she said, and held out her arms. "I have something wonderful to tell you."

Deoris, wordless, knelt and caught her sister close, in such a violent embrace that Domaris was dismayed, feeling the taut trembling of the thin shoulders. "Why, Deoris, Deoris," she protested, deeply distressed; and then, although she hated to, she had to add, "Hold me not so tightly, little sister—you'll hurt me—you can hurt us both, now." She smiled as she said it, but Deoris jerked away as if Domaris had struck her.

"It's true, then!"

"Why, yes—yes, darling, you saw it when I came from the pool. You are a big girl now, I felt sure you would know without being told."

Deoris gripped her sister's wrist in a painful grasp, which Domaris endured without flinching. "No, Domaris! It can't be! Tell me you are jesting!' Deoris would disbelieve even the evidence of her own eyes, if Domaris would only deny it.

"I would not jest of a sacred trust, Deoris," the woman said, and a deep sincerity gave bell-tones to the reproach in her voice, and the near-disappointment.

Deoris knelt, stricken, gazing up at Domaris and shaking as if with intense cold. "Sacred?" she

whispered, choking. "You, a student, an Acolyte, under discipline—you gave it all up forthis? "

Domaris, with her free hand, reached down and unclasped Deoris's frantic grip from her wrist. The white skin showed discolorations where the girl's fingers had almost met in the flesh.

Deoris, looking down almost without comprehension, suddenly lifted the bruised wrist in her palm and kissed it. "I didn't mean to hurt you, I—I didn't know what I was doing," she said, her breath catching with contrition. "Only I—I can't stand it, Domaris!"

The older girl touched her cheek gently. "I don't understand you, Deoris. What have I given up? I am still student, still discipline; Rajasta knows and has given his blessing."

"But—but this will bar you from Initiation—"

Domaris looked down at her in absolute bewilderment. Taking Deoris's resisting hand in hers, by main force she pulled her up on the divan, saying, "Who has put these bats into your brain, Deoris? I am still Priestess, still Acolyte, even if—no, because I am a woman! You have served in Caratra's Temple a month or more now, you should know better than that! Surely they have taught you that the cycles of womanhood and of the universe itself are attuned, that—" Domaris broke off, shaking her head with a light laugh. "You see, I evensound like Rajasta sometimes! Deoris, dear, as a woman—and even more as an Initiate—I must know fulfillment. Does one offer an empty vessel to the Gods?"

Deoris retorted hysterically, "Or one soiled by use?"

"But that's absurd!" Domaris smiled, but her eyes were sober. "I must find my place, to go with life and—" She laid her slender, ringed hands across her body with a protective gesture, and Deoris saw again, with a shudder, the faint, almost negligible rounding there. "—accept my destiny."

Deoris twisted away from her. "So does a cow accept destiny!"

Domaris tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob.

Deoris moved close to her again and threw her arms around her sister. "Oh, Domaris, I'm hateful, I know it! All I do is hurt you, and I don't want to hurt you, I love you, but, this, this desecrates you! It's awful!"

"Awful? Why?" Domaris smiled, a little mournfully. "Well, it does not seem so to me. You needn't be afraid for me, darling, I have never felt stronger or happier. And as for desecration—" The smile was not so sad now, and she took Deoris's hand in hers again, to hold it once more against her body. "You silly child! As ifhe could desecrate me—Micon's son!"

"Micon?" Deoris's hand dropped away and she stared at Domaris in absolute bewilderment, repeating stupidly, "Micon'sson? "

"Why, yes, Deoris—didn't you know? What did you think?"

Deoris did not answer, only staring at Domaris with a stunned fixity. Domaris felt the sob trembling at her lips again as she tried to smile, saying, "What's the matter, Deoris? Don't you like my baby?"

"OH!" Stung by a twinge of horrified memory, Deoris wailed again, "Ohno! " and fled, sobbing, hearing the grieved cries of her sister follow her.

Chapter Seven WHAT THE STARS REVEALED

I

On a couch in her room, Domaris lay watching the play of the rainclouds across the valley. Long, low waves of cloud, deep grey tipped with white vapor like foam capping the waves of the sea, shifted in the wild winds as they drove across the sky, scattering arrows of sunshine across the face of Micon, who half reclined on a heap of cushions nearby, his useless hands in his lap, his dark quiet face at peace. The silence between them was charged with restfulness; the distant rumble of thunder and the faraway drumming of the stormy surf seemed to accentuate the

shadowy comfort and coolness within the room.

They both sighed at the knock on the door, but as the tall shadow of Rajasta crossed the threshold, Domaris's annoyance vanished. She rose, still slender, still moving as lightly as a dancing palm, but the Priest detected a new dignity in her bearing as she crossed the room.

"Lord Rajasta, you have read the stars for my child!"

He smiled kindly as she drew him toward a seat by the windows. "Do you wish me to speak before Micon, then, my daughter?"

"I most certainly do wish it!"

At her emphatic tone, Micon raised his head inquiringly. "What means this, heart-of-flame? I do not understand—what will you tell us of our child, my brother?"

"I see thatsome of our customs are unknown in Atlantis." Rajasta smiled pleasantly, and he added, lightly, "Forgive my satisfaction that I can, for a change, make youmy disciple."

"You teach me much, Rajasta," Micon murmured soberly.

"You honor me, Son of the Sun." Rajasta paused a moment. "Briefly, then—among the Priest's Caste, before your son can be acknowledged—and this must be done as soon as possible—the

hour of his conception must be determined, from your stars and those of his mother. In this way, we shall know the day and the hour of his birth, and we may give your coming child a suitable name."

"Before even being born?" Micon asked in astonishment.

"Would you have a child bornnameless? " Rajasta's own amazement verged on the scandalized. "As the Initiator of Domaris, this task is mine—just as, before Domaris was born, I read the stars for her mother. She, too, was my Acolyte, and I knew that her daughter, although fathered by Talkannon, would be the true daughter of my own soul. It was I who gave her the name of Isarma."

"Isarma?" Micon frowned in confusion. "I don't—"

Domaris laughed gleefully. "Domaris is but my baby name," she explained. "When I marry—" Her face changed abruptly, but she went on, in an even voice, "I shall use my true Temple name, Isarma. In our language that meansa doorway to brightness. "

"So you have been to me, beloved," Micon murmured. "And Deoris?"

"Deoris means only—little kitten.She seemed no bigger than a kitten, and I called her so." Domaris glanced at Rajasta; to discuss one's own true name was permissible, but it was not common practice to speak of another's. The Priest of Light only nodded, however, and Domaris

continued, "Her true name on the rolls of the Temple is Adsartha:child of the Warrior Star. "

Micon shuddered, a convulsive shiver that seemed to tear at his whole body. "In the name of all the Gods, why such a name of cruel omen for your sweet little sister?"

Rajasta's aspect was grave. "I do not know, for I did not read her stars; I was in seclusion at the time. I always meant to confer with Mahaliel, but—" Rajasta broke off. "This I know," he said, after a moment. "She was conceived upon the Nadir-night, and her mother, dying only a few hours after Deoris was born, told me almost with her last breath, that Deoris was foredoomed to much suffering." Rajasta paused again, regretful that in the rush of events following Deoris's birth he had not made time to inquire of Mahaliel, who had been greatly skilled; but the old Priest was many years dead now, and could be of no help any more. Drawing a deep breath, Rajasta resumed, "And so we guard our little Deoris so tenderly, that her sorrows may be lessened by our love, and her weakness nurtured by our strength—although I sometimes think too much care does not diminish weakness enough—"

Domaris cried out impatiently, "Enough of all these omens and portents! Rajasta, tell me, shall I bear my lord a son?"

Rajasta smiled and forbore to rebuke her impatience, for indeed it was a subject he was happy to set aside. He drew from his robes a scroll covered with figures which Domaris could not read, although he had taught her to count and to write the sacred numbers. For everyday counting, everyone but the very highest Initiates reckoned on their fingers; numbers were the most sacredly

guarded mystery, and were never used lightly or for any frivolous purpose, for by them Priests read the movements of the stars and reckoned the days and years on their great calendar-stones— even as the Adepts, through the sacred numbers, manipulated the natural forces which were the source of their power. In addition to the cryptic figures and their permutations, Rajasta had drawn the simpler symbols of the Houses of the Sky—and with these Domaris, as an Acolyte of the Twelve, was familiar; to these, therefore, he referred as he spoke.

"At such a time, in the Sign of the Scales, were you born, Domaris. Here, under the House of the Carrier, is Micon's day of birth. I will not read all of this now," Rajasta said, in an aside to the Atlantean, who stirred with interest, "but if you truly wish, I will read it to you later. At present, I am sure, the primary interest to you both is the date upon which your child will be born."

He went on, pedantically, to give himself opportunity to ignore the overtones in their voices as they murmured happily to one another, "In such an hour, so your stars tell me, under the signs of the moon which regulate these things in women, your womb must have received the seed of life—and on such a day," he tapped the chart, "in the sign of the Scorpion, you will be brought to bed of a son—if my calculations are perfectly correct."

"A son!" Domaris cried out in triumph.

But Micon looked troubled.

"Not—on the Nadir-night?"

"I trust not," Rajasta reassured him, "but surely soon thereafter. In any case, remember that the Nadir-night brings not only evil. As I have told you, Deoris was conceived upon the Nadir-night, and she is as clever and dear a child as one could desire. With the balancing effects of your child's conception date falling so closely between your birthdate and that of Domaris—"

Rajasta rattled on soothingly like this for a little while, and Micon showed definite signs of relief which, in truth, Rajasta did not altogether share. The Priest of Light had puzzled over this chart for many hours, troubled by the knowledge that Micon's son might, indeed, be bom on that night of evil omen. Try as he had, though, Rajasta had been unable to wholly exclude this possibility, for it had proven impossible to fix the time of conception with any exactness.Had I only instructed Domaris more completely, he now thought, not for the first time,she herself would have been able to determine the proper time!

"In fact," Rajasta ended, with just the proper note of amused tolerance for parental worryings, "I should say the worst thing you have to fear for your son-to-be is that he will be perhaps overfond of contests and strifes, and be sharp-tongued, as Scorpions often are." He put the chart aside, deliberately. "Nothing that proper instruction during his youth cannot correct. I have other news, as well, my daughter," he said, smiling at Domaris. She was, he thought, lovelier than ever; something of the glow and sanctity of motherhood was already in her face, a radiant joy undimmed by the shadow of grief. Yet that shadow lay there already, a menace formless as yet, but discernible even to the relatively unimaginative Rajasta, and the Priest felt a surge of protectiveness.

"The time has come when I may give thee work for the Temple," Rajasta said. "Thou art woman, no longer incomplete." Catching the expression of fleeting disquiet in Micon's face, he hastened to reassure him. "Have no fear, my brother. I will not permit her to exhaust herself. She is safe with me."

"Of that I have no doubt," said Micon, quietly.

Rajasta returned his attention to Domaris, whose thoughtful expression was tinged with a great curiosity. "Domaris—what know you of the Guardians?"

She hesitated to answer, considering. Rajasta himself, Guardian of the Outer Gates, was the only Guardian ever named in public. There were others, of course, but no one in the Temple knew their names, or even for certain that there were no more than the seven who sat veiled in Council on high occasions. A sudden suspicion widened her eyes.

Rajasta went on, without waiting for her answer, "My beloved daughter, you yourself have been chosen Guardian of the Second Circle, successor to Ragamon the Elder—who will remain at his post to teach and instruct thee until thou art mature in wisdom. You will be pledged to this duty as soon as your child has been acknowledged—although," he added, with another smile in Micon's direction, "this will entail no arduous duties until you have fulfilled your responsibilities to the coming child. And, as I know women—" His face was filled with tender indulgence as he regarded his young Acolyte. "—the acknowledgment of your son will take precedence over the

greater ceremony!"

Domaris lowered her eyes, color staining her cheeks. She knew that if she had received this high honor at any other time, she would have been almost overcome by the thought; now it seemed remote, a vague secondary consideration beside the thought of the ceremony which would admit her child into the life of the Temple. "It is even so," she admitted.

Rajasta's smile was a benediction. "No woman would have it otherwise."

Chapter Eight THE NAMING OF THE NAME

I

It was the responsibility of the Vested Five to keep the records of the Priest's Caste and, as Temple Elders, to investigate and ascertain all matters pertaining to the place assigned each child born within the precinct. Their voluminous robes were embroidered and imprinted with cryptic symbols of such antiquity that only the highest Initiates had even a foggy conception of their meanings.

Side by side, Domaris and Micon stood before them in meditative silence as the ceremonial sprinkling of incense burnt itself out in the ancient filigreed bowl, filling the air with its perfume. As the last smoky tendrils curled up and were gone, an Acolyte stepped forward to softly shut the bowl's metal lid.

For the first time, Domaris was robed in blue, the color sacred to the Mother; her beautiful hair was braided and bound into a fillet of blue. Her heart pounded with a vast joy, touched with pride, as Micon, alerted by the faint sound of the incense burner's closing, stepped forward to address the Vested Five. Robed in simple white, with a fine golden band about his head, the Atlantean took his place before them with a sureness of step that belied his blindness.

His trained tones filled the room proudly, without being loud.

"Fathers, I am come here with this woman, my beloved, to announce and acknowledge that my chosen lady is with child, and that this child of her body is sole son of my begetting, my firstborn, and the inheritor of my name, station, and estate. I make solemn declaration of the purity of this woman, and I now swear, by the Central Fire, the Central Sun, and the Three Wings Within the Circle, that the law has been observed."

The Atlantean now took a step back, turned, and with a deliberation and economy of movement which told the Vested Five much, he knelt at Domaris's feet. "This mother and this child," Micon said, "are acknowledged under the law, in gratitude and in reverence; this, that my love not be wasted, nor my life unblessed, nor my duty unfinished. This, that I may give all honor where

honor is due."

Domaris placed her hand lightly upon the crown of Micon's head. "I am come," she said, her voice ringing defiantly clear in that centuried chamber, "to announce and acknowledge my coming child as the son of this man. I, Domar—Isarma, daughter of Talkannon, declare it." She paused, coloring, abashed at having stumbled in the ritual; but the Elders did not move an eyelash, and she continued, "I further make declaration that this is the child of virginity, and the child of love; in reverence, I declare this." She now knelt beside Micon. "I act within my right under the law."

The Elder who sat at the center of the Five asked gravely, "The child's name?"

Rajasta presented the scroll with a formal gesture. "This to be placed in the archives of the Temple; I, Rajasta, have read the stars for the daughter of Talkannon, and I name her son thus: O-si-nar-men."

"What means it?" whispered Micon to Domaris, almost inaudibly, and she returned, in an undertone, "Son of Compassion."

The Elders stretched forth their hands in a gesture older than humanity, and intoned, "The budding life is acknowledged and welcome, under the law. Son of Micon and Isarma, O-si-narmen. Be thou blessed!"

Rising slowly, Micon put out his hand to Domaris, who clasped it in her own and rose. They stood together with bent heads, as the low-voiced cadenced blessing flowed on: "Giver of Life— Bearer of Life—be thou blessed. Now and ever, blessed thou art, and blessed thy seed. Go in peace."

Domaris raised her hand in the ancient Sign of honor, and after a moment Micon followed her lead, hearing the rustling of her sleeve and remembering the instructions he had received from Rajasta. Together, with quiet humility, they left the council room—but Rajasta remained behind, for the Vested Five would wish to question him regarding specifics of the unborn child's horoscope.

In the outer vestibule, Domaris leaned against Micon's shoulder for a moment. "It is done," she whispered. "And even as I spoke, our child stirred again within me! I—I would be much with you now!"

"Beloved, thou shalt be," Micon promised tenderly; yet a wistful note shadowed his voice as he bent to kiss her. "Would that I might see thy coming glory!"

Chapter Nine A QUESTION OF SENTIMENT

I

Karahama, Priestess of Caratra, had judged Deoris well. In the days after Arkati's death, Deoris had indeed concentrated all her facilities upon this work she had formerly despised. Her intuitive knowledge grew into a deft sureness and skill and at the conclusion of her extra term of service, it was almost with reluctance that she prepared to leave the Temple.

Having completed the ritual purification, she went to Karahama to bid her goodbye. In the last weeks they had drawn as close as the older woman's reserve would allow, and in spite of Karahama's severe mannerisms, Deoris suddenly realized that she would miss Karahama.

After they had exchanged the usual formal exchanges, the Priestess detained Deoris a little longer. "I shall miss you," she said. "You have become skillful, my child." And while Deoris stood speechless with surprise—Karahama's praise was rare and difficult to earn—the Priestess took up a small silver disk on a fine chain. This ornament, inscribed with the sigil of Caratra, was a badge of service and achievement given eventually to every woman who served the Goddess— but it was rarely bestowed on anyone as young as Deoris. "Wear it in wisdom," said Karahama, and herself fastened the clasp about the girl's wrist. This done, she stood regarding Deoris as if she would speak further.

Karahama was a big woman, tall and deep-breasted, and imposing, with yellow cat-eyes and tawny hair. Like Talkannon, she gave the impression of an animal ferocity held in stern control;

the blue robes of her rank added a certain arrogance to her natural dignity. "You are in the Scribe's school?" she asked at last.

"I left it many months ago. I have been assigned as a scribe to the Lord Micon of Ahtarrath."

Karahama's scorn withered Deoris's pride. "Any girl can do that work of reading and writing! Have you chosen to makethat your life's work, then? Or is it your intention to follow the Lady Domaris into the Temple of Light?"

Until that very moment, Deoris had never seriously doubted that she would one day seek initiation into the Temple of Light, following in her sister's footsteps. Now, all at once, she knew that this was impossible, that it had always been impossible for her, and she said, with the first real decisiveness of her life, "No. I do not wish either of those things."

"Then," Karahama said quietly, "I believe your true place is here, in Caratra's Temple—unless you choose to join with Riveda's sect."

"The Grey-robes?" Deoris was shocked. "I, asaji? "

"Caratra guard you!" Karahama's hands wove a swift rune. "All Gods forbid I should send any child into that! No, my child—I meant as a Healer."

Deoris paused again, considering. She had not realized that women were admitted into the

Healer sect. She said, tentatively, "I might—ask Riveda—"

Karahama chuckled lightly. "Riveda is not a very approachable man, child. Your own kinsman Cadamiri is a Healer-Priest, and it would be far easier to take up the matter with him. Riveda never troubles himself with the novices."

Her smile, for some reason, annoyed Deoris, who said, "Riveda himself once asked me whether I wished to enter the Grey Temple!"

This did have the desired effect, for Karahama's expression altered considerably, and she regarded Deoris in a curious silence before saying, "Very well then. If you wish, you may tell Riveda that I have pronounced you capable. Not that my word will carry much weight with him, but he knows my judgment to be sound on such matters."

Their talk turned to other matters; faltered and soon died away. But, watching Deoris go, Karahama began to be disturbed.Is it really well, she asked herself,to send this child in Riveda's path? The Priestess of Caratra knew Riveda better, perhaps, than his own novices did; and she knew his motives. But Karahama threw off the disturbing thought. Deoris was nearly grown up, and would not take it kindly if Karahama were to meddle, even with the best of intentions. Riveda aroused strong feelings.

II

In the House of the Twelve, Deoris put away the bracelet and wandered idly through her rooms, feeling lonely and neglected. She wanted to make up the quarrel with Domaris, slip back into her old life, forget—for a while, at least—everything that had happened in the last few months.

The emptiness of the rooms and courts bothered her obscurely. Suddenly she stopped, staring at the cage which held her red bird. The bird lay in a queer still heap on the floor of the cage, its crimson plumage matted and crumpled. With a gasp Deoris ran to unfasten the cage door and took up the tiny corpse, cradling it in her palm with a little cry of pain.

She turned the bird helplessly on her hand, nearly crying. She had loved it, it was the last thing Domaris had given her before she began to change so—but what had happened? There was no cat to tear it—and anyhow, the tiny thing had not been mauled. Looking into the now-empty cage, she saw that the little pottery bowl inside was empty of water and there were only one or two scattered husks of seeds in the dirty litter at the bottom.

The sudden entrance of Elara startled her and Deoris, turning around, flew at the little woman in a fury. "You forgot my bird and now it's dead, dead!" she charged passionately.

Elara took a fearful step backward. "What bird do you mean? Why—I did not know—"

"Don't lie to me, you miserable slut!" Deoris cried out, and in an uncontrollable rage, she slapped Elara across the face.

"Deoris!" Shock and anger were in the voice, and Deoris, with a catch of breath, whirled to see Domaris standing, white and astonished in the doorway. "Deoris, what is the meaning of this— this performance?"

She had never spoken so roughly to Deoris before, and the girl put her hand to her mouth in sudden guilt and fear, and stood scarlet and speechless as Domaris repeated, "What is going on? Or must I ask Elara?"

Deoris burst into a flood of angry tears. "She forgot my bird, and it's dead!" she stammered, choking.

"That is neither a reason nor an excuse," Domaris said, still angry, her voice taut. "I am very sorry, Elara. My sister will apologize to you."

"To her?" Deoris said incredulously. "I will not!"

Domaris made her words come steadily, with an effort. "If you were my own child and not my sister, you should be beaten! I have never been so ashamed in my life!" Deoris turned to flee, but before she had taken more than a few steps, Domaris had grasped her wrist and held it in a tense grip. "You stay here!" she commanded. "Do you think I am going to let you disobey me?"

Deoris twisted free, white and furious; but she did stammer out the required apology.

Elara raised her serene face, the print of fingers already reddening on the tanned cheek. Her voice had its own dignity, the unshakable poise of the humble. "I am truly sorry about your bird, little mistress, but its care was not entrusted to me; I knew nothing of it. Have I ever forgotten anything you asked of me?"

When Elara had left them alone, Domaris looked at her sister almost in despair. "What has come over you, Deoris?" she said at last. "I don't know you any more."

Deoris's eyes remained sullenly fixed on the paving-stones; she had not moved since muttering her "apology" to Elara.

"Child, child," Domaris said, "I am sorry about your bird, too, but you could have a dozen for the asking. Elara has never been anything but kind to you! If she were your equal it would be bad enough, but to strike a servant!" She shook her head. "What am I going to do with you?"

Still Deoris made no reply, and Domaris looked into the open cage, with a shake of her head. "I do not know who is responsible," she said quietly, glancing back at Deoris, "but if there was negligence here, you have no one to blame but yourself."

Deoris muttered sulkily, "I haven't been here."

"That does not lessen your fault." There was no mercy in the older woman's voice. "Why did you not delegate its care directly to one of the women? You cannot blame them for neglecting a

duty which no one had assigned to any one of them. Your own forgetfulness cost your pet its life! Have you no sense of responsibility?"

"Haven't I had enough to think about?" Pitiful tears began to trickle down the girl's face. "If you really cared about me,you'd have remembered!"

"Must I shoulder your responsibilities all your life?" Domaris retorted, in so furious a tone that Deoris actually stopped crying. Seeing her sister's shocked face, Domaris relented a little, taking the dead bird from Deoris's hands and laying it aside. "I meant what I said; you may have all the birds you wish," she promised.

"Oh, I don't care about the bird! It'syou! " Deoris wailed, and flung her arms around Domaris, crying harder than ever. Domaris held her tight, feeling that Deoris was finally giving way to the frozen resentment she had been unable to speak before; that now perhaps they could cross that barrier which had lain between them since the night in the Star Field . . . but, finally, she had to remind her: "Gently, Deoris. Hold me not so tightly, you must not hurt us—"

Abruptly, Deoris's arms dropped to her sides and she turned away without a word.

Domaris stretched out her hand, pleading. "Deoris, don't draw away like that, I didn't mean— Deoris, can I saynothing that does not wound you?"

"You don't want me!" Deoris accused miserably. "You don't have to pretend."

"Oh, Deoris!" The grey eyes were misted now with tears. "How can you be jealous? How can you? Deoris, don't you know that Micon is dying? Dying! And I must stand between him and death!" Her hands clasped again, with that strange gesture, across her body. "Until our son is born—"

Blindly, Deoris caught her sister in her arms, hugging her close, anything to shut out that terrible, naked grief. Her self-pity fell away, and for the first time in her life she tasted a sorrow that was more than personal, knowing she could only try to comfort where there clearly could be no comfort, vainly try to say what she knew to be untrue . . . and for the first time, her own rebellion fell away, unimportant before her sister's tragedy.

Chapter Ten MEN OF PURPOSE

I

With a definiteness that left no room for argument, Riveda at last informed Rajasta that his house had been set in order. Rajasta complimented him on work well done, and the Adept bowed and took his leave, a faintly derisive smile behind his heavy-lidded eyes.

The investigation into forbidden sorceries by members of his Order had lasted half a year. It had resulted in a round dozen of merited floggings for rather minor blasphemies and infringements: misuse of ceremonial objects, the wearing or display of outlasted symbols, and other similar offenses. There had also been two serious cases—not clearly connected—involving lesser Adepts who had been beaten and then expelled from the rolls of the Grey-robe sect. One had made use of certain alchemical potions to induce various otherwise blameless neophytes andsaji to take part in acts of excessive sexual cruelty which, afterward, the victims could not even remember. In the other of these two cases, the culprit had broken into a locked shelf of the Order's private library and stolen some scrolls. This alone would have been bad enough, but it turned out that the man had been growing contagious disease cultures in his rooms. Decontamination procedures were still going on, so far with good hopes of a satisfactory outcome.

Still, all this had warned the undetected that Riveda was alert to their existence, and further progress was not likely to be easy.

For Riveda himself, the greatest reward, in some ways, was the discovery of a new field of experiment with tremendous potentials, which the Adept intended to test. The key to it was the stranger he had taken on as chela. Under hypnosis the lad revealed strange knowledge, and a stranger power—though hypnosis was necessary to make any impression on the odd apathy of the unknown, who existed (one could not say he lived) as in a shell of dark glass over which events passed as shadowy reflections, holding attention only a moment. His mind was locked

away, as if from some recent horror and shame that had frozen him; but in his rare ravings he burst forth with oddly coherent words that sometimes gave Riveda clues to great things—long vistas of knowledge which Riveda himself could only glimpse were hidden in that seemingly damaged mind.

Whether the man was Micon's brother, Riveda did not know, nor did he care. He felt, quite sincerely, that any attempt to confront the two could only harm them both. Scrupulously he refrained from making serious inquiry into the chela's origin, or into the mystery of his coming to the Grey Temple.

However, Riveda did watch Micon—always casual, as became a Magician among Priests of Light; always detached, barely hovering on the edges of the Atlantean's circle of acquaintances, but studying them intently. Riveda quickly saw that for Domaris all had ceased to exist, save only Micon; he also discerned Rajasta's preoccupation with the blind Initiate, a relationship which transcended that of fellow-Priests and approached, at times, that of father and son. It was with somewhat less casualness that he watched Deoris.

Riveda did not very often agree with Rajasta, but in this case, both sensed strange potentialities in the young girl. With the coming of her womanhood, Deoris might be powerful, if she were properly taught. Yet, though he had spent much time in meditation over the question, Riveda could not quite determine exactly what potentialities he saw in her—possibly because they were many, and varied.

She seemed to be, Riveda noticed, Micon's pupil as well as his scribe. Somehow this enraged the Adept, as if Micon were usurping a privilege which should be Riveda's own. The Atlantean's impersonal and diffident guidance of the girl's thoughts impressed Riveda as fumbling, overcautious, and incompetent. In his opinion, they were holding Deoris back, where she should be allowed—even, if necessary, compelled—to open and unfold.

He watched, with detached humor, the growth of her interest in him; and, with even more amusement, the childish and stormy progress of her relationship with Chedan, an Acolyte and the pledged husband of Elis. Temple gossip (to which Riveda was not as deaf as he tried to seem) often made reference to the strained relations between Elis and Chedan. . . .

Chedan's infatuation with Deoris may have begun as an attempt, pure and simple, to spite Elis. In any case, it was now more serious than that. Whether Deoris really cared for Chedan or not— and not even Domaris pretended to know that—she accepted his attentions with gravely mischievous pleasure. Micon and Domaris watched and welcomed this new state of affairs, believing that it might bring Deoris some understanding of their own predicament, and alleviate her hostility to their love.

Riveda happened upon them one morning in an outdoor garden: Deoris, seated on the grass at Micon's feet, was sorting and caring for her writing instruments; Chedan, a slender brown-eyed stripling in the robes of an Acolyte, bent over her, smiling. Riveda was too far away to hear their words, but the two children—they were hardly more, especially in Riveda's eyes—disagreed on something. Deoris sprang up, indignant; Chedan fled in pretended terror, and Deoris raced after

him, laughing.

Micon looked up at Riveda's approaching steps, and stretched out his hand in welcome—but he did not rise, and Riveda was struck anew by the ravages of pain in the blind Initiate's face. As always, because he was smitten by devastating pity, he took refuge in the mocking deference with which he masked his deepest emotions.

"Hail, Lord of Ahtarrath! Have your disciples fled from teachings over-wise? Or are you ready with a birchen rod for your neophytes?"

Micon, sensing the sarcasm, was wearily perplexed. He had genuinely tried to conquer his first wariness of Riveda, and his own failure dismayed him. Superficially, of course, Riveda was an easy man to like; yet Micon thought he could almost as easily hate this man, if he would permit himself to do so.

Now, sternly disciplining himself, Micon shrugged off Riveda's sardonic mood and instead spoke of the fevers that regularly decimated the coastal hills, and of the famine that might rage if too many men were disabled by disease and could not harvest the crops. "It is your Healers who can do most to remedy that," he complimented, sincerely and deliberately. "I have heard of the fine work which you have done among them, Lord Riveda. These same Healers were, if I recall rightly, hardly more than corrupt charlatans, not ten years ago—"

"That would be something of an exaggeration." Riveda smiled, with the grim enjoyment of the

reformer. "Yet it is true, there was much decadence in the Grey Temple when I came here. I am not of the Priest's Caste—as I would guess Rajasta has told you—I am a northman of Zaiadan; my people were common fisher folk, sea-farers after their fashion. In my land, we know that the right drugs are more efficient than the most earnest prayers, unless the illness be all in the brain. As a boy I learned the care of wounds, because I was lame in one leg and my family thought me fit for nothing else."

Micon seemed startled by this statement, and Riveda chuckled. "Oh, I was healed—never mind how—but I had learned by then there was more to the body than most Priests will ever admit— except in their cups." He chuckled again; then, sobering, went on, "And I had also learned just how much stronger the mind can be when the body is harnessed and brought under the discipline of the will. As, by that time, I had little fondness for the village of my birth, I took up my staff and wandered abroad, as they say. So I came to know of the Magicians; you call them Greyrobes here." Expressively, he shrugged, forgetful for a moment that Micon could not see him. "At last I came here, an Adept, and found among the local Order of Magicians a cult of lazyminded mystics who masqueraded as Healers. They were not, as I have said, utter charlatans, for they had on their shelves most of the methods we employ today, but they had become decadent and careless, preferring chants and spells to honest work. So I threw them out."

"In anger?" Micon murmured, with a hint of deprecation.

"In good solid wrath," Riveda returned, with a laugh and a relishing grin. "Not to mention a few well-placed kicks. Some, in fact, I threw out bodily, only stopping to talk about it afterward . . ."

He paused a moment in reflection. "Then I gathered together the few who felt as I did—both Priests of Light and Grey-robes—men who believed, like me, that the mind has healing powers of a kind, but that the body needs its treatments, too. The greatest help I had was from the Priestesses of Caratra, for they work with living women, not souls and ideals, and it is not so easy for them to forget that great truth, that bodies must be treated simply as suffering bodies. They have been using the correct methods for centuries; and now I have managed to return them to the world of men, where they are equally, if not more needed."

Micon smiled, somewhat sorrowfully. As a physician, at least, he knew he must admire Riveda; and the mental daring of Micon's own nature saluted like qualities in the Adept.What a pity, Micon thought,that Riveda did not apply his high intelligence and his supreme good sense to his own life . . . what a pity that such a man must be wasted on the empty conquest of Magic!

"Lord Riveda," he said suddenly, "your Healers are above all reproach, but some of your Greyrobes still practice self-torture. How can a man of your intelligence countenance that?"

Riveda countered, "You are of Ahtarrath; surely you know the value of—certain austerities?"

Micon's answer was to form a certain Sign with his right hand. Riveda pondered the value of returning this gesture to one who could not see—but went on, less guardedly, "Then you will know the value of sharpening the senses, raising certain mental and physical factors to a high level of awareness—without completing the pattern or releasing the tension. There are, of course, less extreme methods available, but in the end, you must concede that a man is his own master,

and that which harms no one else—well, in the last analysis, there is not much one can do about it."

The Initiate's face betrayed his dissent; the thin lips seemed uncharacteristically stern. "I know that—results may be had from such procedures," he said, "but such results I call valueless. And—there is the question of your women, and the—uses—you make of them." He hesitated, trying to phrase his words in such a way as to give the least offense. "Perhaps what you do brings development, of a kind—but it can only be unbalanced, a violence to nature. You must always guard against madness within your walls, as a result."

"Madness has many causes," Riveda observed. "Yet, we Grey-robes spare our women the brutality of bearing children to satisfy our pride!"

The Atlantean ignored the insult, only asking quietly, "Have you no sons, Riveda?"

There was an appreciable pause. Riveda lowered his head, unable to rid himself of the absurd notion that this man's blind eyes saw more than his own good ones.

"We believe," Micon continued quietly, "a man shirks duty who leaves no son to follow his name. And as for your Magicians, it may be that the good they do others shall at last outmeasure the harm they do themselves. Yet one day they may set in motion causes which they themselves cannot control or set right." The twisted grin came back to Micon's face. "Yet that is but a possibility. I would not quarrel with you, Lord Riveda."

"Nor I with you," the Adept returned, and there was more than courtesy in his emphatic tone. He knew that Micon did not altogether trust him, and had no wish to make an enemy in so high a place as the Atlantean currently occupied. A word from Micon could bring the Guardians down upon the Grey Temple, and no one knew better than Riveda that certain of his Order's practices would not bear dispassionate investigation. Forbidden sorcery they might not be—but they would not meet with the approval of the stern Guardians. No, he did not want to quarrel with Micon. . . .

Deoris and Chedan, walking side by side and sedately now, rejoined them. Riveda greeted Deoris with a deference that made Chedan stare, his jaw suddenly loose and useless.

"Lord Micon," the Adept said, "I am going to take Deoris from you."

Micon's dark sightless features went rigid with displeasure, and as he turned his face toward Riveda, some ominous instinct touched the Atlantean. Tightly, he said, "Why do you say that, Riveda?"

Riveda laughed loudly. He knew very well what Micon meant, but it pleased him to misunderstand. "Why, what think you I meant?" he asked. "I must speak with the little maiden for a few minutes, for Karahama of Caratra's Temple gave me her name for admission into the Healers." Riveda laughed again. "If you think so ill of me, I will gladly speak in your presence, Prince Micon!"

A deathly weariness crept into Micon, supplanting his anger by degrees. His shoulders sagged. "I—know not what I meant. I—" He broke off, still nervous but unable to justify it even to himself. "Yes, I had heard that Deoris was to seek Initiation. I am very glad. . . . Go, my Deoris."

II

Thoughtful, Riveda drew the girl along the pathway. Deoris was sensitive, fine-grained, all nerves; instinctively he felt she belonged, not among the Healers but among the Grey-robes themselves. Many of the women of the Grey Temple were onlysaji, despised or ignored—but now and then a woman might be accepted on the Magician's Path. A few, only a few, could seek attainment on the same footing as a man, and it would be hard to make a place for Deoris among them.

"Tell me, Deoris," said Riveda suddenly, "have you served long in the House of the Mother?"

She shrugged. "Only the preliminary services which all women must do." She glanced briefly into the Adept's eyes, but looked away again as she murmured, "I worked for a month with Karahama."

"She spoke of your skill." Riveda paused. "Perhaps you are not learning this for the first time, but recovering something which you once knew, in a previous life."

Deoris raised her eyes to his once more, wonder clear to read in her face. "What do you mean?"

"I am not permitted to speak of it to a daughter of Light," said Riveda, smiling, "but you will learn of this, as you rise in the Temple. Let us talk for a minute about practical things." Aware that her shorter legs were not accustomed to his own swift stride, Riveda turned aside onto a little plaza that overlooked one of the rivulets that ran through the Temple precinct. "Karahama," the Adept continued, "tells me that you wish admission into the Healers, but there are many reasons why I do not wish to accept you at this time." He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he said this, and was vaguely gratified at her discomfort. "As a Healer," he went on, "you would remain only a child of the Temple, not a Priestess. . . . Tell me, have you yet been bound into the Path of Light?"

So rapidly had Deoris's emotions vacillated in the last minutes that at first she could only shake her head, speechless. Then, recovering her composure, she clarified, "Rajasta has said I am still too young. Domaris took no vows until she was past seventeen."

"I would not have you wait so long," Riveda demurred, "but it is true that there is no need of haste—" He fell silent again, gazing off across the plaza and into the distances beyond. At last, turning to Deoris, he said, "This is what I advise you: first, to seek initiation into the lowest grade of the Priestesses of Caratra. As you grow older, you may decide that your true place is among the Magicians—" Riveda checked her question with an imperative gesture. "I know, you do not wish to besaji, nor do I suggest it. However, as an Initiated Priestess of Caratra, you could rise in Her service to the highest levels—or enter the Grey Temple. Most women are not fit to attain the

grade of Adept, but I believe you have inborn powers." He smiled down at her and added, "I only hope you will use them as you should."

She returned his gaze earnestly. "I don't know how—"

"But you will learn." He laid one of his hands on her shoulder. "Trust me."

"I do," she said confidingly, with the sudden realization that it was true.

In perfect seriousness, Riveda warned her, "Your Micon puts no faith in me, Deoris. Perhaps I'm not a good man to trust."

Deoris looked unhappily down at the flagstones. "Micon—Lord Micon has been so cruelly treated—perhaps he trusts no one any more," she hazarded, unable to face the idea that Micon might be right. She didn't want to believe anything unpleasant of Riveda.

The Adept let his hand fall away from her. "I will ask Karahama, then, to take you under her personal guidance," he said, with an air of dismissal. Deoris, accepting it, thanked him rather timidly and departed. Riveda stood watching her go, his arms folded on his chest, and though there was a trace of an ironic smile upon his lips, his eyes were thoughtful. Could Deoris be the woman he had visualized? No one knew better than he that the random memories of previous lives sometimes appear to one as presentiments of the future. . . . If he read this girl's character rightly, she was eager—over-eager, perhaps, even impetuous. Did she have any caution at all?

Unwilling to let his thoughts drift too far from current realities, Riveda turned on his heel and began to walk once more, his stride swiftly carrying him from the plaza. Deoris was still a little girl, and he must wait, perhaps for years, to be sure he was not mistaken—but he had made a beginning.

The Adept Riveda was not accustomed to waiting for what he wanted—but this once, it might prove worth the waiting!

Chapter Eleven OF BLESSINGS AND CURSES

I

Her hands folded meekly before her, her hair simply braided, Deoris stood before the assembled Priestesses of Caratra. She wore, for the last time, her scribe's frock, and already it felt strange.

Even while she listened with serious attention to the grave admonitions of Karahama, Deoris was scared, even panicky, her thoughts running in wistful counterpoint to the Priestess's words. From this day and hour, she would no longer be "little Deoris," but a woman who had chosen her

life's work—although for years to come she would be no more than an apprenticed Priestess, even this conferred upon her the responsibilities of an adult. . . .

And now Karahama beckoned her forward. Deoris stretched forth her hands, as she had been bidden.

"Adsartha, daughter of Talkannon, called Deoris, receive from my hands these ornaments it is now thy right to wear. Use them wisely, and profane them never," Karahama adjured. "Daughter thou art to the Great Mother; daughter and sister and mother to every other woman." Into the outstretched hands Karahama placed the sacred ornaments which Deoris must wear for the rest of her life. "May these hands be blessed for the Mother's work; may they be consecrated," said Karahama, and closed Deoris's small fingers over the ritual gems, holding them closed for a moment, then Signing them with a protective gesture.

Deoris did not consider herself in any way a superstitious person, and yet she half-expected to feel the touch of some great, warm, and mystic power flowing into her—or else, that the very walls would denounce her as unworthy. But she felt nothing, only a continuing nervous tension and a slight trembling in her calves from standing almost motionless throughout the long ceremony—which, clearly, was not yet ended.

Karahama raised her arms in yet another ritual gesture, saying, "Let the Priestess Deoris be invested as befits her rank."

Mother Ysouda, the old Priestess who had brought both Domaris and Deoris into the world and who had cared for them after the death of their mother, led her away; Domaris, in the place of her mother, accompanied them into the antechamber.

First the scribe's flaxen frock was taken from her and cast into the fire; Deoris stood naked, shivering on the stones. In prescribed silence, Mother Ysouda's face too forbidding to reassure either of them, Domaris unbraided her sister's heavy hair, and the ancient Priestesses sheared it off and cast the heavy dark ringlets into the flames. Deoris blinked back tears of humiliation as she watched them burn, but she did not utter a sound; it would have been unthinkable to weep during such a ceremony. While Mother Ysouda performed the elaborate rites of purification, and of dressing the shorn and chastened Deoris in the garments of a Priestess of the lowest grade, Domaris looked on with eyes shining. She was not sorry that Deoris had chosen a different service than herself; all were aspects of the hierarchy into which they had been born, and it seemed right that Deoris should choose the service of humanity, rather than her own choice of the esoteric wisdom of Light. Seeing Deoris in the simple novice's garments, Domaris's eyes filled and spilled over with tears of joy; she felt a mother's pride in a grown child, without a mother's sorrow that the child is grown past her control.

Once Deoris had been robed in the straight sleeveless garment of blue, cross-woven with white, they bound a plain blue girdle about her waist and fastened it with a single pearl—the stone of the Great Deep, brought from the womb of earth in danger and death, and thus symbolic of childbirth. About Deoris's throat was hung an amulet of carven crystal, which she would later learn to use as both hypnotic pendulum and psychic channel when this became necessary in her

work.

Thus clothed and thus adorned, she was led back to the assembled Priestesses, who had broken their solemn circle and now crowded around the girl to welcome her to their order, kissing and embracing her, congratulating her, even teasing her a little about her shorn hair. Even Mother Ysouda, stern and bony, unbent enough to reminisce with the delighted Domaris—who stood apart from the throng of blue-clad women crowding about the newcomer.

"It hardly seems that it can have been fifteen years since I first laid her in your arms!"

"What was I like?" Deoris asked curiously.

Mother Ysouda straightened herself with a dignified air. "Very much like a little red monkey," she returned, but she smiled at Deoris and Domaris lovingly. "You have lost your little one, Domaris—but soon now I shall lay another child in your arms, shall I not?"

"In only a few months," Domaris said shyly, and the old lady pressed her hand with warm affection.

II

Since Deoris's formal duties would not begin until the next day, the sisters walked back together toward the House of the Twelve. Domaris put a hand to her sister's close-cropped head with

hesitant compassion. "Your lovely hair," she mourned.

Deoris shook her head, sending the short ringlets flying. "I like it," she lied recklessly. "Now I need not spend all my time plaiting and combing it—Domaris, is it so very ugly?"

Domaris saw the tremble of her sister's mouth and laughed, reassuring her quickly, "No, no, little Deoris, you grow very lovely. I think the style suits you, really—but it does make you look very little," she teased. "Chedan may ask proof that you are a woman!"

"He is welcome to such proofs as he has had already," Deoris said negligently, "but I shall not imperil my friendship with Elis for the sake of that overgrown baby!

Domaris laughed. "You might win Elis's undying gratitude if you took Chedan from her altogether!" Her mirth evaporated as an annoyingly recurrent little thought came to trouble her again: she still did not know how Arvath really felt about the fact that she had invoked her legal freedom. Already there had been some unpleasantness, and Domaris anticipated more. She had seen how Chedan behaved when Elis had done the same thing. She hoped Arvath would be more generous, more understanding—but more and more she suspected that hope was only wishful thinking.

Frowning slightly, Domaris gave a little impatient shrug. She had made her choice, and if it involved unpleasantness, well, she would face it when the time came. Deliberately, she turned her thoughts to more immediate concerns. "Micon wished to see you after the ceremonies,

Deoris. I will go and take off these tapestries," she joked, shaking the cumbersome robes which she had had to wear for the ritual, "and join you both afterward."

Deoris started. Inexplicably, the idea of confronting Micon without Domaris nearby disturbed her. "I'll wait for you," she offered.

"No," said Domaris lightly, "I think he wanted to see you alone."

III

Micon's Atlantean servants conducted her into a room which opened on a great series of terraced gardens, green with flowering trees and filled with the sound of falling waters and of the songs of many birds. These rooms were spacious and cool, as befitted apartments reserved for visitors of rank and dignity; Rajasta had spared no pains to insure the comfort of his guest.

Outlined against the window, Micon's luminous robes gave his erect, emaciated form an almost translucent look in the afternoon sunlight. As he turned his head, smiling brilliantly, Deoris caught a flash of radiant color, like an aura of sparkling, exploding brightness around his head— then it was gone, so swiftly that Deoris could only doubt the evidence of her own eyes. The instant of clairvoyant sight had made her a little dizzy, and she halted in the doorway; then regretted the pause, for Micon heard her and moved painfully toward her.

"Is it you, my little Deoris?"

At hearing his voice, her lingering nervousness vanished; she ran and knelt before him. He grinned down at her crookedly. "And I must not call youlittle Deoris now, they have told me," he teased, and laid his hand, thin and blue-veined, on her head; then moved it in surprise. "They have cut off your pretty hair! Why?"

"I don't know," she said shyly, rising. "It is the custom."

Micon smiled in puzzlement. "How odd," he murmured. "I have always wondered—are you like Domaris? Is your hair fiery, like hers?"

"No, my hair is black as night. Domaris is beautiful, I am not even pretty," said Deoris, without subterfuge.

Micon laughed a little. "But Domaris has said the same of you, child—that you are lovely and she is quite plain!" He shrugged. "I suppose sisters are always so, if they love one another. But I find it hard to picture you to myself, and I feel I have lost my little scribe—and indeed I have, for you will be far too busy to come to me!"

"Oh, Micon, truly I am sorry for that!"

"Never mind, puss. I am glad—not to lose you, but that you have found the work which will lead you to Light."

She corrected him hesitantly. "I am not to be a Priestess of Light, but of the Mother."

"But you are yourself a daughter of Light, my Deoris. There is Light in you, more than you know, for it shines clearly. I have seen it, though these eyes are blind." Again he smiled. "But enough of this; I am sure you have heard quite enough vague exhortations for one day! I know you may not wear ornaments while you are only an apprentice Priestess, but I have a gift for you . . ." He turned, and from a table beside him took up a tiny statuette: a little cat, carved from a single piece of green jade, sitting back on sleek haunches, topaz eyes winking comically at Deoris. About his neck was a collar of green stones, beautifully cut and polished. "The cat will bring you luck," he said, "and when you are the Priestess Adsartha, and no longer forbidden to wear gems and ornaments—" Deftly, Micon unclasped the collar of gems. "See, Master Cat will lend you his collar for a bracelet, if your wrist be still as dainty as now." Taking her slim hand in his, he slipped the circlet of stones for a moment over her wrist; then removed it, laughing. "But I must not tempt you to break your vow," he added, and clasped the ornament about the cat's throat again.

"Micon, it's lovely!" Deoris cried, enchanted.

"And therefore, it could only belong to you, little one—my beloved little sister," he repeated, his voice lingering for a moment on the words; then he said, "Until Domaris comes, let us walk in the garden."

The lawns were shadowy and cool, although the summer greens were parched now and yellow. The great tree where they had so often sat during the summer was dry, with clusters of hard bright berries among the branches—but the fine gritty dust did not penetrate to there, and the trees filtered out the burning glare of the sun somewhat. They found their old seat, and Deoris dropped to the dry grass, letting her head rest lightly against Micon's knees as she looked up at him. Surely the bronzed face was thinner—more drawn with pain.

"Deoris," he said, his odd smile coming and going like summer lightning, "your sister has missed you." His tone was not reproachful, but Deoris felt guilty crimsons bannering her cheeks.

"Domaris doesn't need me now," she muttered.

Micon's touch on her shorn curls was very tender. "You are wrong, Deoris, she needs you now more than ever—needs your understanding, and—your love. I would not intrude on what is personal between you—" He felt her stir jealously beneath his hand. "No, wait, Deoris. Let me tell thee something." He shifted restlessly, as if he would have preferred to speak standing; but an odd look crossed his mobile features, and he remained where he was. "Deoris, listen to me. I shall not live much longer."

"Don't say that!"

"I must, little sister." A shadow of regret deepened the Atlantean's resonant voice. "I shall live— perhaps—until my son is born. But I want to know that—afterward—Domaris will not be

altogether alone." His mutilated hands, scarred but thin and gentle, touched her wet eyes. "Darling, don't cry—I love you very dearly, little Deoris, and I do feel I can trust Domaris to you. . . ."

Deoris could not force herself to speak, or move, but only gazed up into Micon's sightless eyes as if transfixed.

With a ghastly emphasis, the Atlantean went on, "I am not so much in love with life that I could not bear to leave it!" Then, as if conscious that he had frightened her, the terrible self-mockery slowly faded from his face. "Promise me, Deoris," he said, and touched her lips and breast in a curious symbolic gesture she did not understand for many years.

"I promise," she whispered, crying.

The man closed his eyes and leaned back against the great tree's broad trunk. Speaking of Domaris had weakened the fiercely-held control to which he owed his life, and he was human enough to be terrified. Deoris saw the shadow that crossed his face and gasping, sprang up.

"Micon!" she cried out, fearfully bending close to him. He raised his head, perspiration breaking out upon his brow, and choked out a few words in a language Deoris could not comprehend. "Micon," she said gently, "I can't understand—"

"Again it comes!" he gasped. "I felt it on the Night of Nadir, reaching for me—some deadly

evil—" He leaned against her shoulder, heavy, limp, breathing with a forced endurance. "I will not!" he shrieked, as if in reply to some unseen presence—and the words were harsh, rasping, utterly unlike his usual tone, even in extremity.

As Deoris drew him into her arms, unable to think of anything else to do, she suddenly found herself supporting all of his weight. He slipped down, almost insensible but holding to consciousness with what seemed must be his last wisps of strength.

"Micon! What shall I do?"

He tried to speak again, but his command of her language had deserted him again, and he could only mutter broken phrases in the Atlantean tongue. Deoris felt very young, and terrified: she had had some training, of course, but nothing that prepared her for this—and the wisdom of love was not in her arms; the very strength of her frightened embrace was cruel to Micon's painwracked body. Moaning, he twitched away from her, or tried to; swaying, he would have fallen precipitously had the girl not held him upright. She tried to support him more gently, but fingers of freezing panic were squeezing at her throat; Micon looked as if he were dying, and she dared not even leave him to summon aid! The feeling of helplessness only added to her terror.

She uttered a little scream as a shadow fell across them, and another's arms lifted the burden of Micon's weight abruptly from her young shoulders.

"Lord Micon," said Riveda firmly, "how can I assist you?"

Micon only sighed, and went limp in the Grey-robe's arms. Riveda glanced at Deoris, his stern, sharp face appraising her coolly, as if to make certain she was not about to faint.

"Good Gods," the Adept murmured, "has he been this way for long?" He did not wait for her answer, but easily rose to his feet, bearing the wasted form of the blind man without apparent effort. "I had better take him at once to his rooms. Merciful Gods, the man weighs no more than you! Deoris, come with me; he may need you."

"Yes," Deoris said, the flush of her embarrassment at her previous terror fading. "I will show you the way," she said, rushing ahead of Riveda and up the path.

Behind them, Riveda's chela sought his master with dull, empty eyes. A flicker of life momentarily brightened their flatness as they observed Micon. Moving noiselessly at Riveda's heels, the chela's face was a troubled emptiness, like a slate wiped imperfectly with a halfdampened sponge.

As they entered Micon's suite, one of the Atlantean servants cried out, running to help Riveda lay the unconscious man upon his bed. The Grey-robe Adept gave a swift succession of lowvoiced orders, then set about applying restoratives.

Mute and frightened, Deoris stood at the foot of the bed. Riveda had forgotten her existence; the Adept's whole intense attention was concentrated on the man he was tending. The chela ghosted

into the room on feet more silent than a cat's, and stood uncertainly by the doorway.

The blind man stirred on the bed, moaned deliriously, and muttered something in the Atlantean tongue; then, quite suddenly, in a low and startlingly clear voice, he said, "Do not be afraid. They can only kill us, and if we submit to them we would be better dead—" He emitted another groan of agony, and Deoris, sickened, clutched at the high bed-frame.

The chela's staring eyes found Micon, and the dulled glance widened perceptibly. He made an odd sound, half gasp, half whimper.

"Be quiet!" Riveda snarled, "or get out!"

Beneath the Grey-robe's gently restraining hands, Micon moved: first a stir, as of returning consciousness—then he writhed, groping, his head jerking backward in a convulsive movement, his whole body arching back in horror as the twisted hands made terrible clutching movements; suddenly Micon screamed, a high shrill scream of agonized despair.

"Reio-ta! Reio-ta! Where are you? What are you? They have blinded me!"

The chela stood twitching, as if blasted by lightning and unable to flee. "Micon!" he shrieked. His hands lifted, clenched, and he took one step—then the impulse died, the spark faded, and the chela's hands fell, lax-fingered, to his sides.

Riveda, who had raised his head in sharp question, saw that the chela's face was secret with madness, and with a shake of his head, the Adept bent again to his task.

Micon stirred again, but this time less violently. After a moment he murmured, "Rajasta—"

"He will come," said Riveda, with unwonted gentleness, and raised his head to the Atlantean servant, who stood staring at the chela with wide, unbelieving eyes. "Find the Guardian, you fool! I don't care where or how,go and find him! " The words left no room for argument or hesitation; the servant turned and went at a run, only pausing to cast a furtive quick look at the chela.

Deoris, who had stood motionless and rigid throughout, suddenly swayed, clutching with wooden hands at the high bed-frame, and would have fallen—but the chela stepped swiftly forward and held her upright, his arm about her waist. It was the first rational action anyone had yet seen from him.

Riveda covered his start of surprise with harsh asperity. "Are you all right, Deoris? If you feel faint, sit down. I have no leisure to attend to you, too."

"Of course I am all right," she said, and pulled herself away from the grey-clad chela in fastidious disgust. How dared this half-wit touch her!

Micon murmured, "My little Deoris—"

"I am here," she assured him softly. "Shall I send Domaris to you?"

He gave a barely perceptible nod, and Deoris went quickly before Riveda could make a move to prevent her; Domaris must be warned, she must not come unexpectedly upon Micon when he was like this!

Micon gave a restless sigh. "Is that—Riveda? Who else is here?"

"No one, Lord of Ahtarrath," Riveda lied compassionately. "Try to rest."

"No one else?" The Atlantean's voice was weak, but surprised. "I—I don't believe it. I felt—"

"Deoris was here, and your servant. They have gone now," said Riveda with quiet definiteness. "You were wandering in your mind, I think, Prince Micon."

Micon muttered something incomprehensible before the weary voice faded again, and the lines of pain around his mouth reappeared, as if incised there by words he could not utter. Riveda, having done all he could, settled himself to watch—glancing, from time to time, at the blankfaced chela.

It was not long before the rustling of stiff robes broke into the near silence, and Rajasta practically brushed Riveda aside as he bent over Micon. His face had a look no one else ever

saw. Wonder and question mingled in his voice as he spoke the Adept's name.

"I would that I might do more," Riveda answered, with grave emphasis, "but no living man can do that." Rising to his feet, the Grey-robe added softly, "In his present state, he does not seem to trust me." He looked down at Micon regretfully, continuing, "But at any hour, night or day, I am at your service—and his."

Rajasta glanced up curiously, but he was already alone with Micon. Casting all other thoughts from his mind, the Priest of Light knelt by the bedside, taking Micon's thin wrists carefully in his hands, gently infusing his own strengthening energies into the depleted and flickering spirit of the half-sleeping Atlantean. . . . Hearing steps, Rajasta came out of his meditation, and motioned for Domaris to approach and take his place.

As Rajasta lifted one hand, however, Micon stirred again, whispering with an effort, "Was— someone else—here?"

"Only Riveda," said Rajasta in surprise, "and a half-wit he calls his chela. Rest, my brother— Domaris is here."

At Rajasta's answer to his question, a frown had crossed Micon's face—but at mention of Domaris, all other thoughts fled. "Domaris!" he sighed, and his hand groped for hers, his taut features relaxing.

Yet Rajasta had seen that frown, and immediately divined its significance. The Priest of Light's nostrils flared wide in disdain. There was something very wrong about Riveda's chela, and Rajasta resolved to find out what it was at the earliest opportunity.

IV

Micon slept, at last, and Domaris slipped down on the floor beside his bed in a careful, listening stillness—but Rajasta bent and gently raised her up, drawing her a little distance away, where his whispered words would not disturb the sleeping man.

"Domaris, you must go, daughter. He would never forgive me if I let you spend your strength."

"You—you will send for me if he wakes?"

"I will not promise even that." He looked in her eyes, and saw exhaustion there. "For his son's sake, Domaris. Go!"

Thus admonished, the girl obediently departed; it was growing late, and the moon had risen, silvering the dried foliage and wrapping the fountains in a luminous mist. Domaris went carefully and slowly, for her body was heavy now, and she was not altogether free of pain.

Abruptly a pale shadow darkened the pathway, and the girl drew a frightened breath as Riveda's tall broad figure barred her way; then let it out, in foolish relief, as the Adept stepped aside to let

her pass. She bowed her head courteously to him, but the man did not respond; his eyes, cold with the freezing fire of the Northern lights, were searching her silently and intently. Then, as if compelled, he uncovered his head and bent before her in a very ancient gesture of reverence.

Domaris felt the color drain from her face, and the pounding of her heart was very loud against her ribs. Again the Grey-robe inclined his head—this time in casual courtesy—and drew the long skirt of his cowled robe aside so that she might pass him with more ease. When she remained standing, white and shaken, in the middle of the pathway, the ghost of a smile touched Riveda's face, and he moved past her, and was gone.

It was perfectly clear to Domaris that the Adept's reverence had been directed, not toward her personally, nor even to the rank betrayed by her Initiate's robes, but to the fact of her incipient maternity. Yet this raised more questions than it answered: what had prompted Riveda to bestow upon her this high and holy salutation? It occurred to Domaris that she would have been less frightened if the Adept of the Grey-robes had struck her.

Slowly, thoughtfully, she continued on her way. She knew very little of the Grey Temple, but she had heard that its Magicians worshipped the more obvious manifestations of the life-force. Perhaps, standing like that in the moonlight, she had resembled one of their obscenely fecund statues! Ugh, what a thought! It made her laugh wildly, in the beginnings of hysteria, and Deoris, crossing the outer corridor of the House of the Twelve, heard the strained and unnatural laughter, and hurried to her in sudden fright.

"Domaris! What's wrong, why are you laughing like that?"

Domaris blinked, the laughter choking off abruptly. "I don't know," she said, blankly.

Deoris looked at her, distressed. "Is Micon—"

"Better. He is sleeping. Rajasta would not let me stay," Domaris explained. She felt tired and depressed, and longed for sympathetic companionship, but Deoris had already turned away. Tentatively, Domaris said, "Puss—"

The girl turned around and looked at her sister. "What is it?" she inquired, with a shade of impatience. "Do you want something?"

Domaris shook her head. "No, nothing, kitten. Good night." She leaned forward and kissed her sister's cheek, then stood watching as Deoris, released, darted lightly away. Deoris was growing very fast in these last weeks . . . it was only natural, Domaris thought, that she should grow away from her sister. Still she frowned a little, wondering, as Deoris disappeared down the passageway.

At the time when Deoris had made known her decision to seek initiation into Caratra's Temple, she had also been assigned—as befitted a girl her age—separate apartments of her own. Since she was still technically under the guardianship of Domaris, those apartments were here, in the House of the Twelve, and near those of Domaris, but not adjacent to them. Domaris took it for

granted that all the Acolytes mingled casually, without considering the strictures usually accepted outside: there was an excellent reason for this freedom, and it really meant very little. Nothing could be kept secret from the Acolytes, and everyone knew that Chedan slept sometimes in Deoris's rooms. How little that meant, Domaris knew; since her thirteenth year Domaris had passed many nights, quite innocently, with Arvath, or some other boy at her side. It was acceptable behaviour, and Domaris detested herself for the malice of her suspicion. After all, Deoris was now fifteen . . . if the twowere actually lovers, well, that too was permissible. Elis had been even younger when her daughter was born.

As if their minds ran along similar paths, Elis herself suddenly joined Domaris in the hallway. "Is Deoris angry with me?" Elis asked. "She passed me without a word just now."

Domaris, dismissing her worries, laughed. "No—but she does take growing up very seriously! I am sure that tonight she feels older than Mother Lydara herself!"

Elis chuckled in sympathy. "I had forgotten, her ceremony was today. So! Now she is a woman, and a postulant of Caratra's Temple; and perhaps Chedan—" At the look on her cousin's face, Elis sobered and said, "Don't look like that, Domaris. Chedan won't do her any harm, even if— well, you and I would have no right to criticize."

Domaris's face, in its halo of coppery hair, was pale and strained. "But Deoris is so very young, Elis!"

Elis snorted lightly. "You have always babied her much too much, Domaris. She is grown up! And—we both chose for ourselves. Why deny her that privilege?"

Domaris looked up, with a heartbreaking smile. "You do understand, don't you," she said; and it was not a question.

Brusquely, to hide her feelings (Elis did not often display emotion), she took Domaris by the wrist and half pulled, half pushed her cousin into her room, propelled Domaris to a divan and sat down beside her. "You don't have to tell me anything," she said. "Remember, I know what you are living through." Her gentle face recalled humiliation and tenderness and pain. "I have known it all, Domaris. It does take courage, to be a complete person. . . ."

Domaris nodded. Elisdid understand.

A woman had this right, under the Law, and indeed, in the old days it had been rare for a woman to marry before she had proven her womanhood by bearing a child to the man of her choice. The custom had gradually fallen into disuse; few women these days invoked the ancient privilege, disliking the inevitable accompaniment of curious rumors and speculations.

Elis asked, "Does Arvath know yet?"

Domaris shivered unexpectedly. "I don't know—he hasn't spoken of it—I suppose he must," she said, with a nervous smile. "He's not stupid."

Arvath had maintained a complete and stony silence in the last weeks, whenever he came into the presence of his pledged wife. They appeared together when custom demanded, or as their Temple duties brought them into contact; otherwise he let her severely alone. "But I haven't told him in so many words—Oh, Elis!"

The dark girl, in a rare gesture of affection, laid her soft hand over Domaris's. "I—am sorry," she said shyly. "He can be cruel. Domaris . . . forgive me for asking. Is it Arvath's child?"

Silently, but indignantly, Domaris shook her head. Thatwas forbidden. A woman might choose a lover, but if she and her affianced husband possessed one another before marriage, it was considered a terrible disgrace; such haste and precipitancy would be cause enough for dismissing both from the Acolytes.

Elis's lovely face showed both relief and a residual disturbance. "I could not have believed it of you," she said, then added softly, "I know it to be untrue, but I have heard whispers in the courts—forgive me, Domaris, I know you detest such gossip, but—but they believe it is Rajasta's child!"

Domaris's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before she covered her face with her hands and rocked to and fro in misery. "Oh, Elis," she wept, "how could they!"That, then, was the reason for the cold looks and the whispers behind her back. Of course! Such a thing would have been shame unutterable and unspeakable; of all the forbidden relationships in the Temple, the

spiritual incest with one's Initiator was the most unthinkable. The bond of Priest and disciple was fixed as immutably as the paths of the stars. "How can they think such a thing?" Domaris sobbed, desolately. "My son's name, and the name of his father, have been acknowledged before the Vested Five, and the entire Temple!"

Elis turned furiously crimson, shamed at the turn their conversation had taken. "I know," she whispered, "but—he who acknowledges a child is not always the true father. . . . Chedan acknowledged my Lissa, when we had never shared a single couch. I have heard it said—that—it is only because Rajasta is Guardian that he has not been scourged from the Temple, because he seduced you—"

Domaris's sobs became hysterical.

Elis regarded her cousin, frightened. "You must not cry like that, Domaris! You will make yourself ill, and injure your child!"

Domaris made an effort to control herself, and said helplessly, "How can they be so cruel?"

"I—I—" Elis's hands twisted nervously, fluttering like caged wild birds. "I should not have told you, it is only filthy gossip, and—"

"No! If there is more, tell me! It is best I should hear it from you." Domaris wiped her eyes and said, "I know you love me, Elis. I would rather hear it all from you."

It took a little while, but at last Elis relented. "Arvath it was who said this—that Micon was Rajasta's friend, and would take on himself the burden—that it was a deception so transparent that it was rotten. He said Micon was only a wreck of a man, and—and could not have fathered your child—" She stopped again, appalled, for Domaris's face was white even to the lips, except for two spots of hectic crimson which seemed painted on her cheeks.

"Let him say that to me," said Domaris in a low and terrible voice. "Let him say that honestly to my face, instead of sneaking behind me like the craven filth he is if he can think such rottenness! Of all the filthy, foul, disgusting—" She stopped herself, but she was shaking.

"Domaris, Domaris, he meant it not, I am sure," Elis protested, frightened.

Domaris bent her head, feeling her anger die, and something else take its place. She knew Arvath's sudden, reckless jealousies—and he had had some provocation. Domaris hid her face in her hands, feeling soiled by the touch of tongues, as if she had been stripped naked and pelted with manure. She could hardly breathe under the weight of shame. What she had . . . discovered, with Micon, was sacred! This,this was defilement, disgrace.

Elis looked at her in helpless, pained compassion. "I did wrong to tell you, I knew I should not."

"No, you did right," said Domaris steadily. Slowly she began once more to recover her selfcontrol. "See? I will not let it trouble me." She would confess it to Rajasta, of course; he could

help her bear it, help her to learn to live with this shameful thought—but no word or breath of this should ever reach Micon's ear. Dry-eyed now, she looked into Elis's eyes and said softly, "But warn Arvath to guard his tongue; the penalty for slander is not light!"

"So I have reminded him already," Elis murmured; then looked away from Domaris, biting her lip. "But—if he is too cruel—or if he makes a scene which embarrasses you—ask one question of him." She paused, drawing breath, as if afraid of what she was about to say. "Ask Arvath why he left me to throw myself on Chedan's mercy, to face the Vested Five alone, lest my Lissa be born one of theno people. "

In shocked silence, Domaris slowly took Elis's hand and pressed it. SoArvath was Lissa's father! That explained many things; his insane jealousy was rooted deep in guilt. Only the feet that everyone knew for a certainty that Chedan had not truly fathered Elis's child had allowed him to honorably acknowledge the child—and even so, it could not have been an easy decision for him to have made. And that Arvath had let this happen!

"Elis, I never guessed!"

Elis smiled ever so slightly. "I made sure you would not," she said coolly.

"You should have told me," Domaris murmured distractedly. "Perhaps I could have—"

Elis stood up to move restlessly about the room. "No, you could have done nothing. There was

no need to involve you. Actually, I'm almost sorry I told you now! After all, you will have to marry the—the worthless fool, someday!" There was wrath and shadowy regret in Elis's eyes, and Domaris said no more. Elis had confided in her, she had given Domaris a powerful weapon which might, one day, serve to protect her child against Arvath's jealousy—but that gave Domaris no right to pry.

Nevertheless, she could not help wishing that she had known of this before. At one time, she had had influence enough with Arvath that she could have persuaded him to accept his responsibility. Elis had humiliated herself to give her child caste—and Chedan had not been pleasant about the matter, for they had risked much.

Domaris knew herself well enough to realize that only the greatest extremity could bring her to use this powerful weapon against Arvath's malice. But her new understanding of his underlying cowardice helped her to regain her perspective in the matter.

They talked of other things, until Elis clapped her hands softly and Simila brought Lissa to her. The child was now past two, and beginning to talk; in fact, she chattered and babbled incessantly, and at last Elis gave her a tiny exasperated shake. "Hush, mistress tongue-loose," she admonished, and told Domaris acidly, "What a nuisance she is!"

Domaris was not fooled, however, noting the tenderness with which Elis handled the tiny girl. A vagrant thought came to trouble her: did Elis still love Arvath? After all that had happened, it seemed extremely unlikely—but there was, beyond any imaginable denial, an unbreakable bond

between them . . . and always would be.

Smiling, Domaris held out her arms to Lissa. "She grows more like you every day, Elis," she murmured, taking the little girl up and holding the small, wriggling, giggling body to her breast.

"I hope she is a finer woman," Elis retorted, half speaking to herself.

"She could not be more understanding," said Domaris, and released the heavy child, smiling tiredly. Leaning back, with a gesture now familiar, Domaris pressed one hand against her body.

"Ah, Domaris!" With an excess of tenderness, Elis caught Lissa to her. "Nowyou know!"

And Domaris bowed her head before the dawning knowledge.

V

All through the quiet hours of the night Rajasta sat beside Micon, rarely leaving his side for more than the briefest moment. The Atlantean slept fitfully, twitching and muttering in his native tongue as if the pains that sleep could ease were only replaced with other pains, deeper and less susceptible of treatment, a residue of anguish that gnawed its way deeper into Micon's tortured spirit with every passing moment. The pallor of false dawn was stealing across the sky when Micon moved slightly and said in a low, hoarse voice, "Rajasta—"

The Priest of Light bent close to him. "I am here, my brother."

Micon struggled to raise himself, but could not summon the strength. "What hour is it?"

"Shortly before dawn. Lie still, my brother, and rest!"

"I must speak—" Micon's voice, husky and weak as it was, had a resoluteness which Rajasta recognized, and would brook no argument. "As you love me, Rajasta, stop me not. Bring Deoris to me."

"Deoris?" For a moment Rajasta wondered if his friend's reason had snapped. "At this hour? Why?"

"Because I ask it!" Micon's voice conceded nothing. Rajasta, looking at the stubborn mouth, felt no desire to argue. He went, after encouraging Micon to lie back, and hoard his strength.

Deoris returned with him after a little delay, bewildered and disbelieving, dressed after a fashion; but Micon's first words banished her drowsy confusion, for he motioned her close and said, without preliminaries, "I need your help, little sister. Will you do something for me?"

Hardly hesitating, Deoris replied at once, "Whatever you wish."

Micon had managed to raise himself a little on one elbow, and now turned his face full toward

her, with that expression which gave the effect of keen sight. His face seemed remote and stern as he asked, "Are you a virgin?"

Rajasta started. "Micon," he began.

"There is more here than you know!" Micon said, with unusual force. "Forgive me if I shock you,but I must know; I have my reason, be sure of that!"

Before the Atlantean's unexpected vehemence, Rajasta retreated. For her part, Deoris could not have been more surprised if everyone in the room had turned into marble statuary, or removed their heads to play a game of ball with them.

"I am, Lord," she said, shyness and curiosity mixing in her tone.

"The Gods be praised," said Micon, pulling himself more upright on his bed. "Rajasta, go you to my travel chest; within you will find a bag of crimson silk, and a bowl of silver. Fill that bowl with clear water from a spring. Spill no drop upon the earth, and be sure that you return before the sun touches you."

Rajasta stared at him stiffly a moment, surprised and highly displeased, for he guessed Micon's intention; but he went to the chest, found the bowl, and departed, his mouth tightly clenched with disapproval;for no one else, he told himself,would I do this thing!

They awaited the Priest of Light's return in nearly complete silence, for though Deoris at first pressed him to tell her his intentions, Micon would only say that she would soon know, and that if she did not trust him, she was not bound to do as he asked.

At last Rajasta returned, and Micon directed, in a low voice, "Place it here, on this little table— good. Now, take from the chest that buckle of woven leather, and give it to Deoris—Deoris, take it from his hand, but touch not his fingers!" Once this had been done, and Micon had in his own hands the bag of crimson silk, the Atlantean went on, "Now, Deoris, kneel at my side; Rajasta, go you and stand afar from us—let not ever your shadow touch Deoris!"

Micon's mutilated fingers were unsteady as he fumbled with the knot, unfastening the red silk. There was a short pause, and then, holding his hands so that Rajasta could not see what was between them, he said quietly, "Deoris—look at what I have in my hands."

Rajasta, watching in stiff disapproval, caught only a momentary but almost blinding flash of something bright and many-coloured. Deoris sat motionless, no longer fidgeting, her hands quiet on the hand-woven leather buckle—a clumsily-made thing, obviously the work of an amateur in leatherwork. Gently, Micon said, "Look into the water, Deoris. . . ."

The room was very still. Deoris's pale blue dress fluttered a little in the dawn breeze. Rajasta continued to fight back an unwonted anger; he disliked and distrusted such magic—such games were barely permissible when practiced by the Grey-robes, but for a Priest of Light to dabble in such manipulations! He knew he had no right to prevent this, but much as he loved Micon, in

that moment, had the Atlantean been a whole man, Rajasta might have struck him and walked out, taking Deoris with him. The Guardian's severe code, however, allowed no such interference; he merely tightened his shoulders and looked forbidding—which, of course, had no effect whatever upon the Atlantean Prince.

"Deoris," Micon said softly, "what do you see?"

The girl's voice sounded childish, unmodulated. "I see a boy, dark and quick . . . dark-skinned, dark-haired, in a red tunic . . . barefoot . . . his eyes are grey—no, they are yellow. He is weaving something in his hands . . . it is the buckle I am holding."

"Good," Micon said quietly, "you have the Sight. I recognize your vision. Now put down the buckle, and look into the water again . . .where is he now, Deoris? "

There was a long silence, during which Rajasta gritted his teeth and counted slowly to himself the passing seconds, keeping silence by force of will.

Deoris sat still, looking into the basin of silvery water, surprised and a little scared. She had expected some kind of magical blankness; instead, Micon was just talking in an ordinary voice, and she—she was seeing pictures. They were like daydreams; was that what he wanted? Uncertain, she hesitated, and Micon said, with a little impatience, "Tell me what you see!"

Haltingly, she said, "I see a little room, walled in stone . . . a cell—no, just a little grey room

with a stone floor and stone half way to the ceiling. He—he lies on a blanket, asleep . . ."

"Where is he? Is he in chains?"

Deoris made a startled movement. The pictures dissolved, ran before her eyes. Only rippling water filled the bowl. Micon breathed hard and forced his impatience under control. "Please, look and tell me where his is now," he asked gently.

"He is not in chains. He is asleep. He is in the—he is turning. His face—ah!" Deoris's voice broke off in a strangled cry. "Riveda's chela! The madman, the apostate—oh, send him away send him—" The words jerked to a stop and she sat frozen, her face a mask of horror. Micon collapsed weakly, fighting to raise himself again.

Rajesta could hold himself aloof no longer. His pent-up emotion suddenly exploded into violence; he strode forward, wrenched the bowl from Deoris's hands and flung its contents from the window, hurling the bowl itself into a corner of the room, where it fell with a harsh musical sound. Deoris slid to the floor, sobbing noiselessly but in great convulsive spasms that wrenched her whole body, and Rajasta, stooping over her, said curtly, "Stop that!"

"Gently, Rajasta," Micon muttered. "She will need—"

"I know what she will need!" Rajasta straightened, glanced at Micon, and decided that Deoris's need was more imperative. He lifted the girl to her feet, but she drooped on his arm. Rajasta,

grimly angry, signalled to his slave and commanded, "Summon the Priest Cadamiri, at once!"

It was not more than a minute or two before the white-robed form of a Priest of Light, spare and erect, came with disciplined step from a nearby room; Cadamiri had been readying himself for the Ceremony of Dawn. Tall and gaunt, the Priest Cadamiri was still young: but his severe face was lined and ascetic. His stern eyes immediately took in the scene: the feinting child, the fallen silver bowl, Rajasta's grim face.

Rajasta, in a voice so low that even Micon's sharp ears could not hear, said, "Take Deoris to her room, and tend her."

Cadamiri raised a questioning eyebrow as he took the swooning girl from Rajasta's arms. "Is it permitted to ask—?"

Rajasta glanced toward Micon, then said slowly, "Under great need, she was sent out over the Closed Places. You will know how to bring her back to herself."

Cadamiri hefted the sagging, half-lifeless weight of Deoris, and turned to carry her from the room, but Rajasta halted him. "Speak not of this! I have sanctioned it. Above all—say no word to the Priestess Domaris! Speak no falsehood to her, but see that she learns not the truth. Refer her to me if she presses you."

Cadamiri nodded and went, Deoris cradled in his arms like a small child—but Rajasta heard him

mutter sternly, "What need could be great enough to sanctionthis? "

And to himself, Rajasta murmured, "I wish I knew!" Turning back to the racked figure of the Atlantean, he stood a moment, thoughtful. Micon's desire to learn the fate of his brother Reio-ta was understandable, but to put Deoris at hazard thus!

"I know what you are thinking," Micon said, tiredly. "You ask yourself why, if I had this method at my disposal, I did not use it earlier—or under more closely guarded auspices."

"For once," said Rajasta, his tone still curt, biting back anger, "you misread my thoughts. I am in fact wondering why you dabble in such things at all!"

Micon eased himself back against his cushions, sighing. "I make no excuses, Rajasta. I had to know. And—and your methods had failed. Do not fear for Deoris. I know," he said, waving a hand weakly as Rajasta began to speak again, "I know, there is some danger; but no more than she was in before, no more than you or Domaris are in—no more than my own unborn child, or any other who is near to me. Trust me, Rajasta. I know full well what I did—better than you, or you would not feel as you do."

"Trust you?" Rajasta repeated. "Yes, I trust you; else I would not have permitted this at all. Yet it was not for such a purpose that I became your disciple! I will honor my vow to you—but you must make compact with me, too, for as Guardian I can permit no more of this—thissorcery! Yes, you are right, we were all in danger merely by keeping you among us—but now you have

given that danger a clearer focus! You have learned what you sought to know, and so I will forgive it; but had I known beforehand exactly what you intended—"

Micon laughed suddenly, unexpectedly. "Rajasta, Rajasta," he said, calming himself, "you say you trust me, and yet at the same time that you do not! But you say nothing of Riveda!"

Chapter Twelve LIGHTS HOSTAGE

I

Only the comparatively few high Initiates of the Priesthood of Light were admitted to this ceremony, and their white mantles made a ghostly gleaming in the shadowed chamber. The seven Guardians of the Temple were gathered together, but the sacred regalia upon their breasts was shrouded in swathes of silvery veilings, and all save Rajasta were hooded, their mantles drawn so closely over their heads that it was impossible to ascertain whether men or women stood there. As Guardian of the Outer Gate, Rajasta alone wore his blazoning clear to see on his breast, the symbol gleaming visible about his brow.

Laying his hand on Micon's arm, Rajasta said softly, "She comes."

Micon's haggard face became radiant, and Rajasta felt—not for the first time—the stab of an almost painful hope, as Micon asked eagerly, "How looks she?"

"Most beautiful," Rajasta returned, and his eyes dwelt on his Acolyte. "Robed in stainless white, and crowned with that flaming hair—as if in living light."

Indeed, Domaris had never seemed more beautiful. The shimmering robes lent her a grace and dignity that was new and yet wholly her own, and her coming motherhood, perfectly noticeable, was not yet a disfigurement. Her loveliness seemed such a visible radiance that Rajasta murmured softly, "Aye, Micon: light-crowned in truth."

The Atlantean sighed. "If I might—only once—behold her," he said, and Rajasta touched his arm in sympathy; but there was no time for further speech, for Domaris had advanced, and knelt before the high seat of the Guardians.

At the foot of the altar the eldest of the Guardians, Ragamon, now aged and grey but still erect with a serene dignity, stood with his hands outstretched to bless the kneeling woman. "Isarma, Priestess of Light, Acolyte to the Holy Temple; Isarma, daughter of Talkannon; vowed to the Light and to the Life that is Light, do you swear by the Father of Light and the Mother of Life, ever to uphold the powers of Life and of Light?" The old Guardian's voice, thin now, almost quavering, still held a vibrant power that clanged around the hewn rock of the chamber, and his narrowed eyes were clear and sharp as they studied the uplifted face of the white-clad woman.

"Do you, Isarma, swear that, fearing nothing, you will guard the Light, and the Temple of Light, and the Life of the Temple?"

"I do so swear," she said, and stretched her hands toward the altar—and at that moment a single ray of sunlight lanced the gloom, kindling the pulsing golden light upon the altar. Even Rajasta was always impressed by this part of the rite—although he knew that a simple lever, operated by Cadamiri, had but caused some water to run through a pipe, altering the pipe's balance of weight and setting in motion a system of pulleys that opened a tiny aperture exactly overhead. It was a deception, but a sensible one: those who took their vows honestly were reassured by that beam of sunlight, while those who knelt and swore falsely were chastened, even terrified; more than once this little deception had saved the Guardians from undesirable infiltrations.

Domaris, her face aglow and reverent, laid her hands over her heart. "By the Light, by the Life, I so swear," she said again.

"Be watchful, vigilant, and just," charged the ancient. "Swear it now not by yourself alone, not by the light within you and above you, but also by that Life you bear; pledge you now, as your surety and hostage, the child you carry in your womb; this lest you hold your task lightly."

Domaris rose to her feet. Her face was pallid and solemn, but her voice did not hesitate. "I do pledge the child of my body as hostage," she said, and both hands curved themselves about her body, then stretched again toward the altar, with a gesture of supplication, as if offering something to the light that played there.

Micon stirred a little, unquietly. "I like not that," he murmured.

"It is customary, that pledge," Rajasta reassured him, softly.

"I know, but—" Micon shrank, as if with pain, and was silent.

The old Guardian spoke again. "Then, my daughter, these be thine." At his signal, a mantle of white was laid about the woman's shoulders; a golden rod and a gold-hilted dagger were placed in her folded hands. "Use these justly. My mantle, my rod, my dagger, pass to you; punish, spare, strike, or reward, but above all, Guard; for the Darkness eats ever at the Light." Ragamon stepped forward to touch her two hands. "My burden upon thee." He touched her bowed shoulders, and they straightened. "Upon thee, the seal of Silence." He drew up the hood of the mantle over her head. "Thou art Guardian," he said, and with a final gesture of blessing, vacated the raised space, leaving Domaris alone in the central place before the altar. "Fare thee well."

Chapter Thirteen THE CHELA

I

The garden was dry now; leaves crackled underfoot, and blew about aimlessly with the night wind. Micon paced, slowly and silently, along the flagstoned walk. As he halted near the fountain, a lurking shadow sprang up noiselessly before him.

"Micon!" It was a racking whisper; then the shadow darted forward and Micon heard the sound of heavy breathing.

"Reio-ta—it is you?"

The shadow bowed his head, then sank humbly to his knees. "Micon . . . my Prince!"

"My brother," said Micon, and waited.

The chela's smooth face was old in the moonlight; no one could have known that he was younger than Micon.

"They betrayed me!" the chela said, raspily. "They swore you would go free—and unhurt! Micon—" His voice broke in agony. "Do not condemn me! I did not submit to them from cowardice!"

Micon spoke with the weariness of dead ages. "It is not for me to condemn you. Others will do that, and harshly."

"I—I could not bear—it was not for myself! It was only to stop your torture, to save you—"

For the first time, Micon's controlled voice held seeds of wrath. "Did Iask for life at your hands? Would I buy my freedom at such a price? That one who knows—whatyou know—might turn it to a—spiritual whoredom?And you dare to say it was for my sake? " His voice trembled. "I might have—forgiven it, had you broken under torture!"

The chela started back a little. "My Prince—my brother—forgive me!" he begged.

Micon's mouth was a stern line in the pallid light. "My forgiveness cannot lighten your ultimate fate. Nor could my curses add to it. I bear you no malice, Reio-ta. I could wish you no worse fate than you have brought upon yourself. May you reap no worse than you have sown. . . ."

"I—" The chela inched closer once more, still half crouching before Micon. "I would strive to hold it worthily, our power . . ."

Micon stood, straight, stiff, and very still. "That task is not for you, not now." He paused, holding himself immobile, and in the silence the fountain gushed and spattered echoingly behind them. "Brother, fear not:you shall betray our house not twee! "

The figure at Micon's feet groaned, and turned his face away, hiding it in his hands.

Inflexibly, Micon went on, "That much I may prevent! Nay—say no more of it! You cannot, you know you cannot use our powers while I live—and I hold death from me, until Iknow you cannot so debase our line! Unless you kill me here and now, my son will inherit the power I hold!"

Reio-ta's grovelling figure sank lower still, until the prematurely old face rested against Micon's sandalled feet. "My Prince—I knew not of this—"

Micon smiled faintly. "This?" he repeated. "I forgive you this—and that I see not. But your apostasy I cannot forgive, for it is a cause that you, yourself, set in motion, and its effect will reach you; you will be ever incomplete. Thus far, and not further, can you go. My brother—" His voice softened. "I love you still, but our ways part here. Now go—before you rob me of what poor strength remains to me. Go—or end my life now, take the power and try to hold it.But you will not be able to! You are not ready to master the storm-wrack, the deep forces of earth and sky—and now you shall never be! Go!"

Reio-ta groaned in anguished sorrow, clasping Micon's knees. "I cannot bear—"

"Go!" said Micon again, sternly, steadily. "Go—while I may yet hold back your destiny, as I hold back my own. Make what restitution you may."

"I cannot bear my guilt . . ." The voice of the chela was broken now, and sadder than tears. "Say one kind word to me—that I may know you remember that we were once brothers. . . ."

"Youare my brother," Micon acknowledged gently. "I have said that I love you still. I do not abandon you utterly. But this must be our parting." He bent and laid a wasted hand upon the chela's head.

Crying out sharply, Reio-ta cringed away. "Micon! Your pain—burns!"

Slowly and with effort, Micon straightened and withdrew. "Go quickly," he commanded, and added, as if against his own will, in a voice of raw torture, "I can bear no more!"

The chela sprang to his feet and stood a moment, gazing haggardly at the other, as if imprinting Micon's features upon his memory for all time; then turned and ran, with stumbling feet, from his brother's presence.

The blind Initiate remained, motionless, for many minutes. The wind had risen, and dry leaves skittered on the path and all about him; he did not notice. Weakly, as if forcing his steps through quicksand, he turned at last and went toward the fountain, where he sank down upon the dampened stone rim, fighting the hurricane clamor of the pain that he refused to give mental lease. Finally, his strength all but gone, he lay huddled on the flagstones amid the windblown leaves, victoriously master of himself, but so spent that he could not move.

In response to some inner uneasiness, Rajasta came—and the face of the Guardian was a terrible thing to see as he gathered Micon up into his strong arms, and bore him away.

The next day, the whole force of the Temple gathered for the search. Riveda, suspected of connivance, was taken into custody for many hours, while they sought throughout the Temple precincts, and even in the city below, for the unknown chela who had once been Reio-ta of Ahtarrath.

But he had disappeared—and the Night of the Nadir was one day closer to them all.

Chapter Fourteen THE UNREVEALED GOD

I

About three months after Deoris had been received into the Temple of Caratra, Riveda encountered her one evening in the gardens. The last rays of the setting sun turned the young Priestess into a fairy shape of mystery, and Riveda studied her slim, blue-garbed form and grave, delicate young face with a new interest as he carefully phrased his request. "Who would forbid you, if I should invite you to visit the Grey Temple with me, this evening?"

Deoris felt her pulses twitch. To visit the Grey Temple—in the company of their highest Adept!

Riveda did her honor indeed! Still she asked, warily, "Why?"

The man laughed. "Why not? There is a ceremony this evening. It is beautiful—there will be some singing. Many of our ceremonials are secret, but to this one I may invite you."

"I will come," Deoris said. She spoke demurely, but inwardly she danced with excitement: Karahama's guarded confidences had awakened her curiosity, not only about the Grey-robes, but about Riveda himself.

They walked silently under the blossoming stars. Riveda's hand was light on her shoulder, but Deoris was intensely aware of the touch, and it made her too shy to speak until they neared the great windowless loom of the Temple. As Riveda held aside the heavy bronze doors for her to pass, Deoris shrank in amazed terror from the bent wraith that slipped past them—the chela!

Riveda's hand tightened on her arm until Deoris almost cried out. "Say nothing of this to Micon, child," he warned sternly. "Rajasta has been told that he lives; but it would kill Micon to be confronted with him again!"

Deoris bent her head and promised. Since that night when Cadamiri had carried her, senseless, from Micon's rooms, her awareness of Micon had been almost as complete as that of Domaris; the Atlantean's undercurrents of emotion and thought were clear to her, except where they concerned herself. Her broadened perceptions had gone almost unnoticed, except for her swift mastery of work far beyond her supposed skill in the Temple; not even Domaris had guessed at

Deoris's wakening awareness. Domaris was now wholly absorbed in Micon, and in their coming child. And the waiting, Deoris knew—and there was still more than a month to wait—was an unbearable torment to both, a joy and yet an insufferable pain.

The bronze doors clamored shut. They stood in a narrow corridor, dimly dark, that stretched away between rows of closed stone doors. The haggard, haunted figure of the chela was nowhere to be seen.

Their footsteps were soundless, muffled in the dead air, and Deoris, moving in the silence, felt some electric tension in the man beside her, a coiled strength that was almost sensible to her nerves. At the end of the corridor was an arched door bound about with iron. Riveda knocked, using a curious pattern of taps, and from nowhere a shrill, high, bodiless voice challenged in unfamiliar syllables. Riveda spoke equally cryptic words in response; an invisible bell sounded in midair, and the door swung inward.

They passed into—greyness.

There was no lack of light, but warmth or color there was none; the illumination was serene and cold, a mere shimmer, a pallor, an absence of darkness rather than a positive light. The room was immense, lost above their heads in a grey dimness like a heavy fog, or solidified smoke. Beneath their feet, the floor was grey stone, cold and sprinkled with chips of crystal and mica; the walls, too, had a translucent glitter, like winter moonlight. The forms that moved tenuously, like wraiths of mist in the wan radiance, were grey as well; tenebrous shadows, cloaked and cowled

and mantled in sorcerer's grey—and there were women among them, women who moved restlessly like chained flames, robed in shrouding veils of saffron color, dull and lightless. Deoris glanced guardedly at the women, in the moment before Riveda's strong hands turned her gently about so that she faced—

A Man.

He might have been man or carven idol, corpse or automaton. Hewas. That was all. He existed, with a curious sort of finality. He sat on the raised dais at one end of the huge Hall, on a great throne-like chair, a grey bird of carven stone poised above his head. His hands lay crossed on his breast. Deoris found herself wondering whether He were really there, or if she dreamed Him there. Involuntarily, she whispered, "Where sits the Man with Crossed Hands. . . ."

Riveda bent and whispered, "Remain here. Speak to no one." Straightening, he walked away. Deoris, watching him wistfully, thought that his straight figure, grey-robed and cowled in grey though he was, had a kind of sharpness, as if he were in focus whereas the others were shadowy, like dreams within a dream. Then she saw a face she knew.

Standing tautly poised, half-hidden by one of the crystal pillars, a young girl watched Deoris shyly; a child, tall but slight, her slim body still straight between the saffron veils, her small pointed face lifted a little and shadowed by the translucent light. Frost-pale hair lay whitely around her shoulders, and the suppressed glitter of the Northern lights dwelt in her intent, colorless eyes. The diaphanous gauze about her body fluttered lightly in an invisible breeze; she

seemed weightless, a wraith of frost, a shimmer of snowflakes in the chilly air.

But Deoris had seen her outside this eerie place, and knew she was real; this silver-haired girl slipped sometimes like a ghost in or out of Karahama's rooms. Karahama never spoke of the child, but Deoris knew that this was the nameless girl, the child of theno people, born to the thenstill-outcast Karahama. Her mother, it was said, called her Demira, but she had no real name. By law, she did not exist at all.

No man, however willing, could have acknowledged Demira as his daughter; no man could have claimed or adopted her. Even Karahama had only a debatable legal existence—but Karahama, as the child of a free Temple woman, had a certain acknowledged, if illegitimate, status. Demira, under the strict laws of the Priest's Caste, was not even illegitimate. She was nothing. She was covered by no law, protected by no statute, recorded in no Temple writing; she was not even a slave. She quite simplydid not exist. Only here, among the lawlesssaji, could she have found shelter and sustenance.

The stern code of the Temple forbade Deoris, Priest's daughter and Priestess, to recognize the nameless girl in any way—but although they had never exchanged a single word, Deoris knew that Demira was her own near kinswoman, and the child's strange, fantastic beauty excited Deoris's pity and interest. She now raised her eyes and smiled timidly at the outcaste girl, and Demira smiled back—a quick, furtive smile.

Riveda returned, his eyes abstracted and vague, and Demira slipped behind a pillar, out of sight.

II

The Temple was crowded now, with men in grey robes and the saffron-shroudedsaji, some of whom held curious stringed instruments, rattles, and gongs. There were also many chelas in grey kilts, their upper bodies bare except for curious amulets; none were very old, and most of them were approximately Deoris's own age. Some were only little boys of five or six. Looking about the room, Deoris counted only five persons in the full grey robe and cowl of Adeptship—and realized, startled, that one of these was a woman; the only woman there, except Deoris herself, who was not wearing thesaji veils.

Gradually, the Magicians and Adepts formed a roughly circular figure, taking great pains about their exact positions. The saji with their musical instruments, and the smaller chelas, had withdrawn toward the translucent walls. From their ranged ranks came the softest of pipings, a whimper of flutes, the echo of a gong touched with a steel-clad fingertip.

Before each Magician stood either a chela or one of thesaji; sometimes three or four clustered before one of the Adepts or one of the oldest Magicians—but the chelas were in the majority, only four or five of those in the inner ring being women. One of these was Demira, her veils thrown back so that her silver hair glittered like moonlight on the sea.

Riveda motioned Reio-ta to take his place in the forming Ring, then paused and asked, "Deoris, have you the courage to stand for me in the Chela's Ring tonight?"

"Why, I—" Domaris stuttered with astonishment. "I know nothing of it, how could I—?"

Riveda's stern mouth held the shadow of a smile. "No knowledge is necessary. In fact the less you know of it, the better. Try to think of nothing—and let it come to you." He signalled Reio-ta to guide her, and, with a final look of appeal, Deoris went.

Flutes and gongs broke suddenly into a dissonant, harsh chord, as if tuning, readying. Adepts and Magicians cocked their heads, listening, testing something invisible and intangible. Deoris, the chord elusive in her skull, felt herself drawn into the Ring between Reio-ta and Demira. A spasm of panic closed her throat; Demira's small steely fingers clutched hers like torturer's implements. In a moment she must scream with horror. . . .

The flattened impact of Riveda's hand struck her clenched finger, and her frenzied grasp loosened and fell free. He shook his head at her briefly and, without a word, motioned her out of the Ring. He did not do it as if the failure meant anything to him; he seemed absolutely abstracted as he beckoned to asaji girl with a face like a seagull to take her place.

Two or three other chelas had been dismissed from the Ring; others were being placed and replaced. Twice more the soft but dissonant chords sounded, and each time positions and patterns were altered. The third time, Riveda held up his hand, looking angry and annoyed, and stepped from his place, glaring around the Chela's Ring. His eyes fell upon Demira, and roughly, with a smothered monosyllable, he grasped the girl's shoulder and pushed her violently away. She

reeled and almost fell—at which the woman Adept stepped out of line and caught the staggering child. She held Demira for a minute; then, carefully, her wrinkled hands encircling the child's thin wrist, she re-guided her into the Ring, placing her with a challenging glance at Riveda.

Riveda scowled darkly. The woman Adept shrugged, and gently moved Demira once more, and then again, changing her position until suddenly Riveda nodded, immediately taking his eyes from Demira and apparently forgetting her existence.

Again the dissonant whimper of flutes and strings and gongs sounded! This time there was no interruption. Deoris stood watching, faintly bewildered. The chelas answered the music with a brief chanting, beautifully timed but so alien to Deoris's experience that it seemed meaningless. Accustomed to the exalted mysticism of the Temple of Light, and the sparse simplicity of their rituals, this protracted litany of intonation and gesture, music and chant and response, was incomprehensible.

This is silly,Deoris decided,it doesn't mean anything at all. Or did it? The face of the woman Adept was thin and lined and worn, although she seemed young, otherwise; Riveda's aspect, in the pitiless light, gave the impression almost of cruelty, while Demira's fantastic, frosty beauty seemed unreal, illusive, with something hard and vicious marring the infantile features. All at once, Deoris could understand why, to some, the ceremonies of the Grey Temple might seem tinged with evil.

The chanting deepened, quickened, pulsed in strange monodies and throbbing cadences. A

single whining, wailing dissonance was reiterated; the muffled piping came behind her like a smothered sob; a shaken drum rattled weirdly.

The Man with Crossed Hands was watching her.

Neither then nor ever did Deoris know whether the Man with Crossed Hands was idol, corpse, or living man, demon, god, or image. Nor was she able—then or ever—to determine how much of what she saw was illusion . . .

The eyes of the Man were grey. Grey as the sea; grey as the frosty light. She sank deep into their compelling, compassionate gaze, was swallowed up and drowned there.

The bird above his chair flapped grey stone wings and flew, with a harsh screech, into a place of grey sands. And then Deoris was running after the bird, among needled rocks and the shadows of their spires, under skies split by the raucous screaming of seagulls.

Far away, the booming of surf rode the winds; Deoris was near the sea, in a place between dawn and sunrise, coldly grey, without color in sands or sea or clouds. Small shells crunched beneath her sandals, and she smelled the rank stench of salt water and seaweed and marshy reeds and rushes. To her left, a cluster of small conical houses with pointed grey-white roofs sent a pang of horror through Deoris's breast.

The Idiots' Village!The awful stab of recognition was so sharp a shock that she thrust aside a

briefly flickering certainty that she had never seen this place before.

There was a deathly silence around and between and over the screeching of the seagulls. Two or three children, large-headed and white-haired with red eyes and mouths that drooled above swollen pot-bellied torsos squatted, listless, between the houses, mewling and muttering to one another. Deoris's parched lips could not utter the screams that scraped in her throat. She turned to flee, but her foot twisted beneath her and she fell. Struggling to rise, she caught sight of two men and a woman coming out of the nearest of the chinked pebble-houses; like the children, they were red-eyed and thick-lipped and naked. One of the men tottered with age; the other groped, his red eyes caked blots of filth and blood; the woman moved with a clumsy waddling, hugely swollen by pregnancy into an animal, primal ugliness.

Deoris crouched on the sands in wildly unreasoning horror. The half-human idiots were mewling more loudly now, grimacing at her; their fists made scrabbling noises in the colorless sands. Scrambling fearfully to her feet, Deoris looked madly around for a way of escape. To one side, a high wall of needled rock bristled her away; to the other, a quicksand marsh of reeds and rushes stretched on to the horizon. Before her the idiots were clustering, staring, blubbering. She was hemmed in.

But how did I come here? Was there a boat?

She spun around, and saw only the empty, rolling sea. Far, far in the distance, mountains loomed up out of the water, and long streaks of reddening clouds, like bloody fingers, scraped the skies

raw.

And when the sun rises . . . when the sun rises . . .The vagrant thought slipped away. More of the huge-headed villagers were crowding out of the houses. Deoris began to run, in terror-stricken panic.

Ahead of her, lancing through the greyness and the bloody outstretched streaks of sullen light, a sudden spark flared into a glowing golden gleam.Sunlight! She ran even faster, her footsteps a thudding echo of her heart; behind her the groping pad-pad-pad of the pursuit was like a merciless incoming tide.

A stone sailed past her ears. Her feet splashed in the surf as she turned, whirling like a cornered animal. Someone rose up before her, red hideous eyes gleaming emptily, lips drawn back over blackened and broken teeth in a bestial snarl. Frantically, she struck the clutching hands away, kicked and twisted and struggled free—heard the creature shrieking its mindless howling cries as she stumbled, ran on, stumbled again—and fell.

The light on the sea exploded in a burst of sunshine, and she stretched her hands toward it, sobbing, crying out no more coherently than the idiots behind her. A stone struck her shoulder; another grazed her skull. She struggled to rise, scratching at the wet sands, clawing to free herself from groping, scrabbling hands. Someone was screaming, a high, wild ululation of anguish. Something hit her hard in the face. Her brain exploded in fire and she sank down . . . and down . . . and down . . . as the sun burst in her face and she died.

III

Someone was crying.

Light dazzled her eyes. A sharp-sweet, dizzying smell stung her nostrils.

Elis's face swam out of the darkness, and Deoris choked weakly, pushed away the hand that held the strong aromatic to her nostrils.

"Don't, I can't breathe—Elis!" she gasped.

The hands on her shoulders loosened slightly, laid her gently back in a heap of pillows. She was lying on a couch in Elis's room in the House of the Twelve, and Elis was bending over her. Behind Elis, Elara was standing, wiping her eyes, her face looking drawn and worried.

"I must go now to the lady Domaris," Elara said shakily.

"Yes, go," Elis said without looking up.

Deoris struggled to sit up, but pain exploded blindingly in her head and she fell back. "What happened?" she murmured weakly. "How did I get here? Elis, whathappened? "

To Deoris's horror, Elis, rather than answering, began to cry, wiping her eyes with her veil.

"Elis—" Deoris's voice quavered, little-girlish. "Pleasetell me. I was—in the Idiots' Village, and they threw stones—" Deoris touched her cheek, her skull. Though she fancied she felt a stinging sensation, there were no lacerations, no swellings. "Oh, my head!"

"You're raving again!" Elis grabbed Deoris's shoulders and shook her, hard. It brought a sudden flash of horror; then the vague half-memory closed down again as Elis snapped, "Don't you even remember what you did?"

"Oh, Elis, stop! Please don't, it hurts my head so," Deoris moaned. "Can't you tell me what happened? How did I get here?"

"You don't remember!" Shock and disbelief were in Elis's voice. As Deoris struggled to sit up again, Elis supported her cousin with an arm around her shoulders. Still touching her head, Deoris looked toward the window. It was late afternoon, the sun just beginning to lengthen the shadows.Yet it had been before moonrise when she went with Riveda —

"I don't remember anything," Deoris said shakily. "Where is Domaris?"

Elis's mouth, which had softened, became set and angry again. "In the House of Birth."

"Now?"

"They were afraid—" A strained fury tightened Elis's voice; she swallowed hard and said, "Deoris, I swear that if Domaris loses her child because of this, I will—"

"Elis, let me come in," someone outside the door said; but before any reply could be made, Micon entered, leaning heavily on Riveda's arm. Unsteadily, the Atlantean moved to the bedside. "Deoris," he said, "can you tell me—"

Hysterical laughter mixed with sobs in Deoris's throat. "What can I tellyou? " she cried. "Doesn't anybody know what's happened to me!"

Micon sighed deeply, slumping noticeably where he stood. "I feared this," he said, with a great bitterness. "She knows nothing, remembers nothing. Child—my dear child! You must never allow yourself to be—used—like that again!"

Riveda looked tense and weary, and his grey robe was crumpled and darkly stained. "Micon of Ahtarrath, I swear—"

Abruptly, Micon pulled away from the support of Riveda's arm. "I am not yet ready for you to swear!"

At this, Deoris somehow got to her feet and stood swaying, sobbing with pain and fright and frustration. Micon, with that unerring sense that served him so well instead of sight, reached

toward her clumsily—but Riveda drew the girl into his own arms with a savage protectiveness. Gradually her trembling stilled, and she leaned against him motionless, her cheek resting against the rough material of his robe.

"You shall not blameher! " Riveda said harshly. "Domaris is safe—"

"Nay," said Micon, conciliatingly, "I meant not to blame, but only—"

"I know well that you hate me, Lord of Ahtarrath," Riveda interrupted, "though I—"

"I hate no one!" Micon broke in, sharply. "Do you insinuate—"

"Once for all, Lord Micon," Riveda snapped, "I do notinsinuate! " With a great gentleness that contrasted strangely with his harsh words, Riveda helped Deoris to return to the couch. "Hate me if you will, Atlantean," the Grey-robe said, "you and your Priestess leman—and that unborn—"

"Have a care!" said Micon, ominously.

Riveda laughed, scornful—but his next words died in his throat, for out of the clear and cloudless sky outside the window came the rolling rumble of impossible thunder as Micon's fists clenched. Elis, forgotten, cowered in the corner, while Deoris began to shiver uncontrollably. Micon and Riveda faced each other, Adepts of vastly different disciplines, and the tension between them was like an invisible, but tangible, force, quivering in the room.

Yet it lasted only a moment. Riveda swallowed, and said, "My words were strong. I spoke in anger. But what have I done to merit your insults, Micon of Ahtarrath? My beliefs are not yours—none could fail to see that—but you know my creed as I know yours! By the Unrevealed God, wouldI harm a childing woman?"

"Am I then to believe," Micon asked savagely, "that a Priestess of Caratra would—of her own will—harm the sister she adores?"

Deoris's hands went to her mouth in a wordless shriek and she ran to Elis, clinging to her cousin and sobbing in nightmarish disbelief.

"I invited the child," Riveda stated, coldly, "to witness a ceremony in the Grey Temple. Believe, if you will, that it was with malice and forethought—that I invoked Dark Powers. But I give you my word, the pledged word of an Adept, that I meant no more than courtesy! A courtesy it is my privilege to extend to any regularly pledged Priest or Priestess."

Save for the muted snuffling of Deoris, still huddled against Elis, the room was quite silent. The late afternoon light had vanished, as if night had come, while the skies continued to fill with sudden, heavy clouds. The two women dared not even so much as look at the wrangling Adepts.

Yet at last the awful tensions in the room abated somewhat; the very stones of the walls seemed to sigh in relief as Micon half-turned away from Riveda, who, had any been watching, could

have been seen to blink several times, and wipe a cold sweat from his forehead.

"During the ceremony," the Grey-robe resumed, in a quiet voice, "Deoris became giddy and fell to the floor; one of the girls took her into the open air. Afterward, it did not seem serious. She spoke to me quite normally. I conducted her to the gates of the House of the Twelve. That is all that I know of this. All." Riveda spread his hands, then looked around at Deoris and asked her gently, "Do you truly remember nothing?"

Deoris shuddered as the terror she had been thought closed in again, squeezing her heart with icy talons. "I was watching the—the Man with Crossed Hands," she whispered. "The—the bird on his throne flew! And then I was in the Idiots' Village—"

"Deoris!" Micon's cry was a strained and hoarse shout. The Atlantean drew a deep breath that was almost a sob. "What mean you by—the Idiots' Village?"

"Why, I—" Deoris's eyes grew wide, and with growing horror, she whispered, "I don't know, I never—I never heard of—"

"Gods! Gods!" Micon's haggard face was suddenly like that of a very old man, and he staggered where he stood; gone now was the inner strength that had called on the powers of Ahtarrath, as he stumbled and groped his way into a nearby chair. "I feared that! And it has come!" He bent his head, covered his face with gaunt and twisted hands.

Deoris, at seeing Micon's sudden weakness, had left Elis and rushed to the Atlantean's side. Half-kneeling before him, she pleaded, "Micon, tell me!What did I do? "

"Pray that you never remember!" Micon said, his voice muffled behind his hands. "But by the mercy of the Gods, Domaris is unhurt!"

"But—" Deoris found herself oddly unable to speak that name which had so upset Micon, and so instead said only, "But that place—what—how could I have—?" Her voice broke down utterly.

Micon, regaining control of himself, stretched one trembling hand to the crown of her head and drew the sobbing girl to him. "An old sin," he murmured, in a quavery old man's voice, "an allbut-forgotten shame of the House of Ahtarrath . . . enough! This attack was not aimed at you, Deoris, but at—at one of the Ahtarrath yet unborn. Do not torture yourself, child."

Silent, Riveda stood, unmoving as stone, his arms crossed tight upon his chest, his lips tightly set and his bright blue eyes half-closed. Elis sat shivering on the couch, staring at the floor, alone with her thoughts.

"Go to Domaris, my darling," said Micon softly; and after a moment, Deoris wiped away her tears, kissed the Atlantean's hand reverently, and went. Elis rose and followed her from the room on tiptoe. Behind them was silence.

Riveda broke the stillness, saying roughly, "I will never rest easy until I know who has done

this!"

Micon dragged himself heavily to his feet. "What I said was the truth; this was an attack on me, through my son. I personally am not now worth attacking."

Riveda chuckled—a low-pitched rumble of cynical amusement. "I wish I had known that a few minutes ago, when the very thunders of heaven came to your defense!" The Grey-robe paused, then asked, softly, "Or is it that you do not trust me?"

Micon answered sharply, "You are in part to blame; though you took Deoris into danger unknowing, nonetheless—"

Riveda's fury exploded, spilled over, "I to blame? What of you? Had you managed to pocket your damnable pride long enough to testify against these devils, they would have been flogged to death long ago, and this could not have happened! Lord of Ahtarrath, I intend to cleanse my Order! Not now for your sake, nor even to preserve my own reputation—that has never been so good! But the health of my Order requires—" He suddenly realized he was shouting, and lowered his voice. "He who allows sorcery is worse than he who commits it. Men may sin from ignorance or folly—but what of a wise man, pledged to cleave to Light, whose charity is so great that he refuses even to protect the innocent, for fear of injuring the guilty? If that is the path of Light, I say, let Darkness fall!" Riveda, looking down at the collapsed Micon, felt his last anger fading. He put his hand on the Atlantean's thin shoulder and said gravely, "Prince of Ahtarrath, I swear that I will find who has done this, though it cost me my own life!"

Micon said, in a voice whose very shrillness revealed the edge of exhaustion, "Seek not too far, Riveda! Already you are too deeply involved in this. Look to yourself, lest it cost you more than your life!"

Riveda emitted a little snort of ugly, mirthless laughter. "Keep your dooms and prophecies, Prince Micon! I have no less love for life than any other—but it is my task to find the guilty, and take steps to prevent another such—incident. Deoris, too, must be guarded—and it is my right to guard her, even as it is yours to guard Domaris."

Micon said, in a quick, low voice, "What mean you?"

Riveda shrugged. "Nothing, perhaps. It may be your prophecy carries its own contagion, and I see my own karma reflected in yours." He stared at Micon, his eyes wide and bleak and blue. "I don't know quite why I said that. But you will not bid me spare punishment to those responsible!"

Micon sighed, and his emaciated hands twitched slightly. "No, I will not," he murmured. "That, too, is karma!"

Chapter Fifteen

THE SIN THAT QUICKENS

I

Only in extreme emergency or death were men allowed within the boundaries of the Temple of Caratra; however, the circumstances were unusual, and after certain delays Mother Ysouda conducted Micon to the rooftop court where Domaris had been taken, for coolness, once they knew that her child would not be prematurely born.

"You must not stay long," the old Priestess cautioned, and left them alone.

Micon waited until her receding footsteps were lost on the stairs, then said with a mirthful sternness that mocked its own anxiety, "So, you have terrified us all for nothing, my Lady!"

Domaris smiled wanly. "Blame your son, Micon, not his mother! Already he thinks himself lord of his surroundings!"

"Well, and is he not?" Micon seated himself beside her and asked, "Has Deoris been to you?"

She looked away. "Yes. . . ."

Micon's hand closed gently on hers and he said lovingly, "Heart-of-flame, be not resentful. Our

child is safe—and Deoris is as innocent as you, beloved!"

"I know—but your son is very precious to me!" Domaris whispered; then, with implacable vehemence: "That—damned—Riveda!"

"Domaris!" In surprise and displeasure, Micon covered her lips with his hand. She kissed the palm, and he smiled, then went on gently, "Riveda knew nothing of this. His only fault was that he suspected no evil." He touched her eyes, lightly, with his gaunt fingers. "You must not cry, beloved—" Then, half-hesitant, his hand lingered. "May I—?"

"Of course." Divining his wish, Domaris took his hand lightly in hers, guiding it gently across her swollen body. Suddenly, all of Micon's senses coalesced; past and present fell together in a single coherent moment of sensation so intense that it seemed almost as if he saw, as if every sense combined to bring the meaning of life home to him. He had never been so keenly alive as in that moment when he smelled the sharpsweet odor of drugs, the elusive perfume of Domaris's hair, and the clean fragrance of linens; the air was moist with the cool and salty sting of the sea, and he heard the distant boom of surf and the gurgle of the fountain, the muted sounds of women's voices in distant rooms. Under his hand he felt the fine textures of silk and linen, the pulsing warmth of the woman-body, and then, through the refined sensitivity of his fingers, he felt a sharp little push, a sudden slight bulging, elusive as a butterfly beneath his hand.

With a quick movement, Domaris sat up and stretched her arms to Micon, holding herself to him in an embrace so light that she barely touched the man. She had learned caution, where a careless

touch or caress could mean agony for the man she loved—and Domaris, young and passionately in love, had not easily learned that lesson! But for once Micon forgot caution. His arms tightened about her convulsively. Once, once only he should have had the right to see this woman he loved with every atom, every nerve of his whole being. . . .

The moment passed, and he admonished gently, "Lie still, beloved. They made me promise not to disturb you." He loosed her, and she lay back, watching him with a smile so resigned that Domaris herself did not know it was sorrowful. "And yet," said Micon, his voice troubled, "we have been too cowardly to speak of many things. . . . There is your duty to Arvath. You are bound by law to—to what, exactly?"

"Before marriage," Domaris murmured, "we are free. So runs the law. After marriage—it is required that we remain constant. And if I should fail, or refuse, to give Arvath a son—"

"Which you must not," said Micon with great gentleness.

"I shall not refuse," Domaris assured him. "But if I should fail, I would be dishonoured, disgraced . . ."

"This is my karma," Micon said sorrowfully, "that I may never see my son, that I may not live to guide him. I sinned against that same law, Domaris."

"Sin?" Domaris's voice betrayed her shock, "You?"

He bent his head in shamed avowal. "I desired the things of the spirit, and so I am—Initiate. But I was too proud to recall that I was a man, too, and so under the law." The blind face brooded, distantly. "In my pride I chose to live as an ascetic and deny my body, under the false name of worthy austerity—"

Domaris whispered, "That is necessary to such accomplishment—"

"You have not heard all, beloved. . . ." Micon drew a shaky breath. "Before I entered the Priesthood, Mikantor required me to take a wife, and raise up a son to my house and my name." The stern mouth trembled a little, and his rigid self-control faltered. "As my father commanded, so I allowed myself to be wedded by the law. She was a young girl, pure and lovely, a princess; but I was—I was blind to her as I am—" Micon's voice broke altogether, and he covered his face with his hands. At last he spoke, in a suffocated voice. "And so it is my fate that I may never look on your face—you that I love more than life and more than death! I was blind to her, I told her coldly and—and cruelly, Domaris—that I was vowed a Priest, and—and she left my marriage-bed as virgin as she came to me. And in that, I humiliated her and sinned, against my father and against myself and against our whole House! Domaris—knowing this—can you still love me?"

Domaris had turned deathly white; what Micon had confessed was regarded as a crime. But she only whispered, "Thou hast paid the price, thrice over, Micon. And—and it brought thee to me. And I love thee!"

"I do not regret that." Micon's lips pressed softly against her hand. "But—can you understand this? Had I had a son, I could have died, and my brother been spared his apostasy!" The dark face was haunted and haggard. "Thus I carry the blame for his sin; and other evil shall follow— for evil plants evil, and reaps and harvests a hundredfold, and sows evil yet again . . ." He paused and said, "Deoris too may need protection. Riveda is contaminated with the Black-robes."

At her quick gasp of horror, he added quickly, "No, what you are thinking is not true. He is no Black-robe, he despises them; but he is intelligent, and seeks knowledge, and he is not too fastidious where he acquires it. . . . Never underrate the power of intellectual curiosity, Domaris! It leads to more trouble than any other human motive! If Rivedawere malicious, or deliberately cruel, he would be less dangerous! But he serves only one motive: the driving force of a powerful mind which has never been really challenged. He is entirely devoid of any personal ambition. He seeks and serves knowledge for its own sake. Not for service, not for selfperfection. If he were a more selfish man, I would feel easier about him. And—and Deoris loves him, Domaris."

"Deoris?Loves that detestable old—?"

Micon sighed. "Riveda is not so old. Nor does Deoris love him as—as you and I understand love. If it were only that, I would feel no concern. Love is not to be compelled. He is not the man I should have chosen for her, but I am not her guardian." He sensed something of the woman's confusion and added quietly, "No, this is something other. And it disturbs me. Deoris is barely

old enough to feelthat kind of love, or to know it exists. Nor—" He paused. "I hardly know how to say this . . . She is not a girl who will grow easily to know passion. She must ripen slowly. If she should be too soon awakened, I would fear for her greatly! And she loves Riveda! She adores him—although I do not think she knows it herself. To give Riveda his due, I do not believe he has fostered it. But understand me: he could violate her past the foulest prostitution and leave her virgin—or he could keep her in innocence, though she bore him a dozen children!"

Domaris, troubled and even a little dazed by Micon's unusual vehemence, bit her lip and said, "Idon't understand!"

Reluctantly, Micon said, "You know of thesaji —"

"Ah, no!" It was a cry of horror. "Riveda would not dare!"

"I trust not. But Deoris may not be wise in loving." He forced a weary smile. "You were not wise, to be sure! But—" Again he sighed. "Well, Deoris must follow her karma, as we follow ours." Hearing Domaris's sigh, an echo of his own, Micon accused himself. "I have tired you!"

"No—but he is heavy now, and—your son hurts me."

"I am sorry—if only I could bear it for you!"

Domaris laughed a little, and her hands, feather-soft, stole into his. "You are Prince of

Ahtarrath," she said gaily, "and I am your most obedient handmaiden and slave. But this one privilege you cannot have! I know my rights, my Prince!"

The grave sternness of his face relaxed again, and a delighted grin took its place as he bent to kiss her. "That would indeed be magic of an extraordinary sort," he admitted. "We of Ahtarrath have certain powers over nature, it is true. But alas, all my powers could not encompass even such a little miracle!"

Domaris relaxed; the moment of danger was past. Micon would not break again.

But the Night of the Nadir was almost upon them.

Chapter Sixteen THE NIGHT OF THE NADIR

I

These months have not been kind to Micon,Rajasta thought, sad and puzzled by the Atlantean's continuing failure to heal to any significant degree.

The Initiate stood before the window now, his gaunt and narrow body barely diminishing the evening light. With a nervousness of motion that was becoming less and less foreign to him, Micon fingered the little statuette of Nar-inabi, the Star-Shaper.

"Where got you this, Rajasta?"

"You recognize it?"

The blind man bent his head, half-turning away from Rajasta. "I cannot say that—now. But I— know the craftsmanship. It was made in Ahtarrath, and I think it could belong only to my brother, or to me." He hesitated. "Such works as this are—extremely costly. This type of stone is very rare." He half-smiled. "Still, I suppose I am not the only Prince of Ahtarrath ever to travel, or have something stolen. Where did you find it?"

Rajasta did not reply. He had found it in this very building, in the servants' quarters. He told himself that this did not necessarily implicate any of the residents, but the implications dismayed and sickened him, for it was by the same token impossible, now, to eliminate any of them as suspects. Riveda might be truly as innocent as he claimed, and the true guilt lie elsewhere, perhaps among the very Guardians themselves—Cadamiri, or Ragamon the Elder, even Talkannon himself! These suspicions shook Rajasta's world to the very foundations.

A haunting sadness drifted across Micon's face as, with a lingeringly gentle touch, he set the exquisitely carven, opalescent figurine carefully on a little table by the window. "My poor

brother," he whispered, almost inaudibly—and Rajasta, hearing, could not be quite sure that Micon referred to Reio-ta.

Realizing that he had to say something, the Priest of Light took refuge in pleasantries. "Already it is the Nadir-night, Micon, and you need have no fear; your son will surely not be born tonight. I have just come from Domaris; she and those who tend her assure me of that. She will sleep soundly in her own rooms," Rajasta went on, "without awakening and without fear of any omens or portents. I have asked Cadamiri to give her a sleeping drug. . . ."

Yet, as he had spoken, the Priest of Light had stumbled slightly over the name of Cadamiri, as his newfound apprehension conflicted with his desire to assure Micon. The Atlantean, sensing this without knowing the precise reason for Rajasta's nervousness, grew rigid with tension.

"The Nadir-night?" Micon half-whispered. "Already? I had lost count of the days!"

A fitful gust of wind stirred in the room, bringing a faint echo; a chant, in a strange wailing minor key, weirdly cadenced and prolonged. Rajasta's brows lifted and he inclined his head to listen, but Micon turned and went, not swiftly but with a concentrated intention, to the window again. There was deep trouble on his features, and the Priest came to stand beside him.

"Micon?" he said, with a questioning unhappiness.

"I know that chant!" the Atlantean gasped. "And what it forebodes—" He raised his thin hands

and laid them gropingly on Rajasta's shoulders. "Stay thou with me, Rajasta! I—" His voice faltered. "Iam afraid!"

The older man stared at him in ill-concealed horror, glad Micon could not see him. Rajasta had been with Micon through times of what seemed the ultimate of human extremity—yet never had the Initiate betrayed fear like this!

"I will not leave you, my brother," he promised—and the chant sounded again, ragged phrases borne eerily on the wind as the sun sank into the dusk. The Priest felt Micon grow tense, the wracked hands clutching on Rajasta's shoulders, the noble face ashen and trembling, a shivering that gradually crept over the man's entire body until every nerve seemed to quiver with a strained effort. . . . And then, despite the visible dread in Micon's bearing and features, the Atlantean released his hold on Rajasta and turned again to the window, to stare sightlessly at the gathering darkness, his face listening avidly.

"My brother lives," Micon said at last, and his words fell like drum-beats of doom, slow-paced in the falling night. "Would that he did not! None of the line of Ahtarrath chants thus, unless— unless—" His voice trailed away again, giving way to that listening stillness.

Suddenly Micon turned, letting his forehead fall against the older man's shoulder, clutching at him in the grip of emotions so intense that they found a mirror in Rajasta's mind, and both men trembled with unreasoning fear; nameless horrors flickered in their thoughts.

Only the wind had steadied: the broken cadences were more sustained now, rising and falling with a nightmarish, demanding, monotonous, aching insistence that kept somehow a perfect rhythm with the pounding of blood in their ears.

"They call onmy power! " Micon gasped brokenly. "This is black betrayal! Rajasta!" He raised his head, and the unseeing features held a desperation that only increased the terror of the moment. "How shall I survive this night?And I must! I must! If they succeed—if that which they invoke—be summoned—only my single life stands between it and all of mankind!" He paused, gasping for breath, shivering uncontrollably. "If that link be made—then even I cannot be sure I can stay the evil!" He stood, half-swaying, at once twisted and yet utterly erect, clinging to Rajasta; his words fell like dropped stones. "Only three times in all our history has Ahtarrath summoned thus! And thrice that power has been harnessed but hardly."

Rajasta gently raised his own hands to echo Micon's, so that they stood with their hands upon each other's shoulders. "Micon!" said Rajasta sharply. "What must we do?"

The Atlantean's clutching hands relaxed a little, tightened, and then fell to his sides. "You would help me?" he said, in a broken, almost childish voice. "It means—"

"Do not tell me what it means," said Rajasta, his own voice quaking a little. "But I will help you."

Micon drew a shaky breath; the least bit of color returned to his face. "Yes," he murmured, and

then, his voice becoming stronger, "yes, we have not much time."

II

Groping in the chest where he kept his private treasures, Micon took out a flexible cloak of some metallic fabric and drew it about his shoulders. Next he removed a sword wrapped in sheer, filmy cloth, which he set down close beside him. Muttering to himself in his native tongue, Micon rummaged in the chest for no little while until he at last brought out a small bronze gong, which he handed to Rajasta with the admonition that it must not touch the floor or walls.

All the time the awful chant rose and fell, rose and fell, with eerie wailing overtones and sobbing, savage cadences; a diapason of sonic minors that beat on the brain with boneshaking reiteration. Rajasta stood holding the gong, concentrating his attention fully on Micon as he bent over the chest again, shutting his mind and ears to that sound.

The Atlantean's angry mutterings turned to a sigh of relief, and he brought forth a final object— a little brazier of bronze, curiously worked with embossed figures that bulged and intertwined in a fashion that confused the eye into thinking they moved. After a moment Rajasta recognized them for what they were, a representation of fire-elementals.

With the sparse economy of movement so characteristically his, Micon rose to his feet, the wrapped sword in one hand. "Rajasta," he said, "give me the gong." When this was done, the Atlantean went on, "Move the brazier to the center of the room, and build thou a fire—pine and

cypress and ultar." His words were clipped and brief, as if he recited a lesson learned well.

Rajasta, ignoring the second thoughts that already besieged him, set about the task resolutely. Micon went to the window again, and placed the sword upon the little table next to the figurine of Nar-inabi. Unwrapping the cloth, he exposed the decorated blade and the bejewelled hilt of the ceremonial weapon, and grasped it firmly again, to stand facing the window in a strained, listening attitude; Rajasta could almost see the Initiate gathering strength to himself; in sudden sympathy, he laid his hand on Micon's arm.

Micon stirred, impatiently. "Is the fire ready?"

Rebuked, the Priest bent to the brazier; kindling the slivers of fragrant wood, scattering the grains of incense over the thin blaze. Clouds of misty white smoke billowed upward; the smouldering woods were tiny sullen eyes glaring through the smoke.

Far away the chant rose and fell, rose and fell, gathering strength and volume. The thin column of fire rolled narrowly upward through the smoke, and subsided.

"It is ready," Rajasta said—and the chanting swelled, a rising flood of sound; and around the sound crept silence, as if the very pulses of the living were hushed and slow and heavy.

Almost majestic of aspect, quite changed from the Micon Rajasta knew so well, the Atlantean Initiate moved slowly to the room's center, placed the very tip of the ceremonial blade upon the

brazier's metal rim, and half-circled so that again he faced the window. The sword's point still touching the brazier, Micon raised the gong, and held it before him at arm's length a moment; the smoking incense rose to writhe about the gong, as metal filings to a magnet.

"Rajasta!" Micon said, commandingly. "Stand by me, your arm across my shoulders." He winced as the Priest of Light complied. "Gently, my brother! Good. And now—" He drew a deep breath. "We wait."

The keening wail deepened, a rushing crescendo of sonic vibrations that ranged away and above the audible tones. Then—silence.

They waited. The sudden quiet lengthened, dripped and shadowed, crept back and welled up, suggesting the starless vastnesses of the universe, drowning all sounds in a dead, immense weight of stillness that crushed them like the folds of burial robes.

Rajasta could feel Micon's body, straight and stiff and real beneath the metallic cloak, and it was somehow the only real thing in all that empty deadened stillness. With a rasping whisper a wind blew through the window, and the lights grew dim; the air about them quivered, and a prickling came and crawled over Rajasta's skin. He felt, rather than saw, a misty shivering in the gloom, sensed faint distortions in the outlines of the familiar room.

The trained resonance of the Initiate's voice rang through the weight of the silence: "I have not summoned! By the Gong—" Moving suddenly, he struck the gong a sharp, hard blow with the

sword's pommel; the brazen clamor sounded dashingly through the deadness. "By the Sword—" Again Micon raised the sword and held it outstretched, the point toward the window. "And by the Word on the Sword—by iron and bronze and fire—" He plunged the sword down, into the flame, and there was a crackling and sputtering of sparks.

Then the Word came slowly from Micon's throat, almost visible, in long tremolos of slow vibration that echoed and reechoed through octave over octave, thrilling and reverberating, sounding on . . . and on . . . and on, into some unimaginable infinity of time and space, quivering through universe after universe, into a stirring and a quickening that had neither place nor moment, but encompassed beginning and end and all between.

The shimmering distortion swirled and sparkled, faster and faster as if the masonry walls spun around and closed in upon them. Once more Micon raised the sword and sounded the gong with its pommel; again he thrust the blade's point into the brazier. There came a dull, distant roaring as the fire flared and tongued its way up the embedded blade. The distortions continued to twist around them, closer but less dizzyingly swift now; no longer did the room seem about to collapse.

Red and sullen orange, the hot light glowed in a streak across the Initiate's dark face. Slowly, slowly, the shimmerings wrapped themselves around the sword-blade, and for a moment lingered, a blue-white corona pulsing, before flowing down the blade into the flickering fire— which, with a hiss and a whisper, extinguished itself. The floor beneath them quaked and rattled. Then all was quiet.

Micon let himself lean against Rajasta, shivering, the aura of power and majesty quite gone from him. The sword remained, still upright in the burnt-out coals of the brazier. Rajasta was about to speak when there was a final, ear-splitting boom from far away.

"Fear not," Micon whispered, harshly. "The power returns through those who sought to use it, unsanctioned. Our work is—ended, now. And I—" He sagged suddenly and went limp, a dead weight in the Priest's arms.

Rajasta lifted the Atlantean bodily and carried him to the bed. He laid Micon down, gently loosed and removed the leather thong about the Initiate's wrist, from which the gong had hung suspended. Setting the instrument aside, Rajasta dampened a bit of cloth he found nearby and bathed the beaded sweat from the unconscious man's face. Micon stirred and moaned

Rajasta frowned sternly, his lips pursed with worry. The Atlantean had a white and death-like pallor, a waxen quality that boded no good.This, Rajasta reflected,is exactly what I do not like about magic! It weakens the strong, enervates the weak! It would be a fine thing, he thought angrily,if Micon drove away one danger, only to succumb to this!

The Atlantean groaned again, and Rajasta rose up, to stride to the door with a sudden decision. Summoning a slave, the Priest said only, "Send for the Healer Riveda."

III

For Domaris, drugged but tense with half-waking, formless shadows and horrors, the Nadirnight was a confused nightmare. It was almost a relief to struggle to awareness and find imperative physical pain substituted for dreams of dread; her child's birth, she suddenly realized, was imminent. On a fatalistic impulse, she sent no word to Micon or Rajasta. Deoris was nowhere to be found, and only Elara knew when she went, alone and afoot as the custom required, to the House of Birth.

And then there was the long waiting, more tiresome at first than painful. She submitted to the minor irritations of the preliminary stages with good grace, for Domaris was too well-disciplined to waste her strength in resentment: answering questions, giving all sorts of intimate information, being handled and examined like some animal (like a kittening cat,she told herself, trying to be amused instead of annoyed) kept her mind off her discomfort.

She was not exactly afraid: in common with all Temple women, she had served in Caratra's Temple many times, and the processes of birth held no mysteries for her. But her life had been one of radiant health, and this was almost her first experience with pain and its completely personal quality.

Moreover, and worse, she felt sorry for the little girl they had left with her during this first time of waiting. It was all too obviously the child's first attendance at a confinement, and she acted frightened. This did not add to Domaris's assurance, for she hated blundering of any sort, and if she had one deep-rooted fear, it was of being placed in unskilled hands when she could not help

herself. And yet, irrationally, her annoyance grew, rather than lessening, when little Cetris told her, by way of reassurance, that the Priestess Karahama had chosen to attend her confinement.

Karahama! thought Domaris. That daughter-to-the-winds!

It seemed a long time, although it was barely past noon, when Cetris sent for the Priestess. To Domaris's complete astonishment, Deoris came into the room with her. It was the first time since the ceremony that Domaris had seen her sister robed as a Priestess of Caratra, and for a moment she hardly recognized the little white face beneath the blue veil. It seemed to her that Deoris's face was the most welcome thing she had ever seen in her life.

She turned toward her little sister—they had kept her on her feet—and held out her arms. But Deoris stood, stricken, in the doorway, making no move to come near her.

Domaris's knuckles were white as she clenched her hands together. "Deoris!" she pleaded. With frozenly reluctant steps, Deoris went to her sister's side and stood beside Domaris, while Karahama took Cetris to a far corner and questioned her in an undertone.

Deoris felt sick, seeing the familiar agony seize on Domaris. Domaris! Her sister, always to Deoris a little more than human. The realization shook something which lay buried in Deoris's heart; somehow, she had thought it would have to be different with Domaris. Ordinary things could not touchher! All that—the pain and the danger and the blood—it couldn't happen to Domaris!

And yet it could, it would. It was happening now, before her eyes.

Karahama dismissed Cetris—the little girls of twelve and thirteen were allotted only these simple tasks of waiting, of fetching and carrying and running errands—and came to Domaris, looking down at her with a reassuring smile. "You may rest now," she remarked, goodhumouredly, and Domaris sank gratefully down on the couch. Deoris, steadying her with quick, strong hands, felt that Domaris was trembling, and sensed—with a terrible sensitivity—the effort Domaris was making not to struggle, or cry out.

Domaris made herself smile at Deoris and whisper, "Don't look like that, you silly child!" Domaris felt quite bewildered: what was the matter with Deoris? She had seen Deoris's work, had made a point of informing herself, for personal reasons, about her sister's progress. She knew that Deoris was already permitted to work without supervision, even to go unattended into the city to deliver the wives of such commoners or merchant women as might request the attendance of a Priestess; a token of skill which not even Elis had won as yet.

Karahama, noticing the smile and the rigid control, nodded with satisfaction.Good! This Domaris has courage! She felt kindly disposed toward her more fortunate half-sister, and now, bending above her, said pleasantly, "You will find the waiting easier now, I think. Deoris, the rule has not yet been broken—only bent a little." Karahama smiled at her own tiny joke as she added in dismissal, "You may go now."

Domaris heard the sentence with her heart sinking. "Oh, please let her stay with me!" she begged.

Deoris added her own plea: "I will be good!"

Karahama only smiled tolerantly and reminded them of the law: both women must surely know that in Caratra's House it was forbidden for a woman's sibling sister to attend the birth of her child. "Moreover," Karahama added, with a deferential movement of her head, "as an Initiate of Light, Domaris must be attended only by her equals."

"How interesting," Domaris murmured dryly, "that my own sister is not my equal."

Karahama said, with a little tightening of her mouth, "The rule does not refer to equality of birth. True, you are both daughters to the Arch-Priest—but you are Acolyte to the Guardian of the Gate, and an Initiate-Priestess. You must be attended by Priestesses of equivalent achievement."

"Has not the Healer-Priest Riveda, as well as yourself, pronounced Deoris capable?" Domaris argued, persisting despite the inner knowledge that it would serve no purpose.

Karahama deferentially repeated that the law was the law, and that if an exception was made now, exception would pile upon exception until the law crumbled away completely. Deoris, afraid to disobey, bent miserably to kiss her sister goodbye. Domaris's lips thinned in anger; this bastard half-sister presumed to lecture them on law, and speak of equals—either of birth or

achievement! But a sudden wrench of pain stopped the protests on her tongue; she endured the pain for a moment, then cried out, clutching at Deoris's hands, twisting in sudden torment. Deoris could not have freed herself if she had tried, and Karahama, watching not unsympathetically for all her icy reserve, made no motion to interfere.

At last the spasm passed, and Domaris raised her face; sweat glistened on her forehead and her upper lip. Her voice had a knife's edge: "As an Initiate of Light," she said, throwing Karahama's words back to her, "I have the right to suspend that law! Deoris stays! BecauseIwish it! " She added the indomitable formula—"As I have said it."

It was the first time Domaris had used her new rank to command. A queer little glow thrilled through her, to be drowned in the recurring pain. An ironical reflection stirred in the back of her mind: she had power over pain for others, but she was powerless to save herself any of this. Men's laws she might suspend almost as she willed; but she might not abrogate Nature so much as a fraction for her own sake, whatever her power, for she must experience fully, to her own completion. She endured.

Deoris's small hands were marked red when Domaris released them, and the older girl raised them remorsefully to her lips and kissed them. "Do I ask too much, puss?"

Deoris shook her head numbly. She couldn't refuse anything Domaris asked—but in her heart she wished that Domaris had not asked this, wished that Domaris had not the power to set aside those laws. She felt lost, too young, totally unfitted to take this responsibility.

Karahama, indignant at this irrefutable snubbing of herself and her authority, departed. Domaris's pleasure at this development was short-lived, for Karahama returned minutes later with two novice pupils.

Domaris raised herself, her face livid with fury. "This is intolerable!" she protested, her wrath driving out pain for a moment. Temple women were supposed to be exempt from being the objects of lessons; Domaris, as a Priestess of Light, had the right to choose her own attendants, and she certainly was not subject to this—this humiliation!

Karahama paid not the slightest attention, but went on calmly lecturing to her pupils, indirectly implying that women in labor sometimes developed odd notions. . . . Domaris, smouldering with resentment, submitted. She was angry still, but there were intervals now, more and more often, when she was unable to express herself—and it is not effective to vent one's wrath in broken phrases. The most humiliating fact was that with each paroxysm she lost the thread of her invective.

Karahama's retaliation was not entirely heartless, however. Before long, she concluded her remarks, and began to dismiss her pupils.

Domaris summoned enough concentrated coherence to command, "You too may go! You have said yourself that I must be attended by my equals—so—leave me!"

It was biting dismissal: it repaid, in full and in kind, the indignity offered to Domaris. Spoken to an equal, without witnesses, it would have been cruel and insulting enough; said to Karahama, before her pupils, a blow in the face would have been less offensive.

Karahama drew herself erect, half inclined to protest; then, forcing a smile, only shrugged. Deoriswas capable, after all; and Domaris was not in the slightest danger. Karahama could only demean herself further by argument. "So be it," she said tersely, and went.

Domaris, conscious that she violated the spirit if not the letter of the law, was almost moved to call her back—but still, not to have Deoris with her! Domaris was not perfect; she was very human, and very angry. Also, she was torn again by a hateful wave of pain that seemed to tear her protesting body in a dozen different directions. She forgot Karahama's existence. "Micon!" she moaned, writhing, "Micon!"

Deoris quickly bent over her, speaking soothing words, holding her, quieting the restless rebellion with a skillful touch. "Micon will come, if you ask it, Domaris," she said, when her sister had calmed a little. "Do you want that?"

Domaris dug her hands convulsively into the bedding. Now at last she understood this—which was not law but merely custom—which decreed that a woman should bear her child apart and without the knowledge of the father. "No," she whispered, "no, I will be quiet." Micon should not, must not know the price of his son! If he were in better health—but Mother Caratra! Was it like this for everyone?

Although she tried to keep her mind on the detailed instructions Deoris was giving, her thoughts slid away again and again into tortured memories.Micon, she thought,Micon! He has endured more than this! He did not cry out! At last I begin to understand him! She laughed then, more than a little hysterical, at the thought that, once, she had prayed to the Gods that she might share some of his torments.Let no one say the Gods do not answer our prayers! And yes, yes! I would endure gladly worse than this for him! Here her thoughts slid off into incoherence again.The rack must be like this, a body broken apart on a wheel of pain . . . and so I share what he endured, to free him of all pain forever! Do I give birth, or death? Both, both!

Grim, terrible laughter shook her with hysterical frenzies until mere movement became agony unbearable. She heard Deoris protesting angrily, felt hands restraining her, but none of Deoris's coaxing and threatening could quiet her hysteria now. She went on and on, laughing deliriously until it became more than laughter and she sobbed rackingly, unconscious to all except pain and its sudden cessation. She lay weeping in absolute exhaustion, unknowing, uncaring what was going on.

"Domaris." The strained, taut voice of her sister finally penetrated her subsiding sobs. "Domaris, darling, please try to stop crying,please. It's over. Don't you want to see your baby?"

Limp and worn with the aftermath of hysteria, Domaris could hardly believe her ears. Languidly she opened her eyes. Deoris looked down, with a weary smile, and turned to pick up the child—a boy, small and perfectly formed, with a reddish down that covered lightly the small round head,

face tightly-screwed and contorted, squalling lustily at the need to live and breathe apart from his mother.

Domaris's eyes had slipped shut again. Deoris sighed, and set about wrapping the baby in linen cloths.Why should such an indefinite scrap of flesh be allowed to cause such awful pain? she asked herself, not for the first time. Something was gone irrevocably from her feeling for her sister. Domaris never knew quite how close Deoris came to hating her then, for having put her through this. . . .

When Domaris's eyes opened again, reason dwelt behind them, though they looked dark and haunted. She moved an exploring hand. "My baby," she whispered fearfully.

Deoris, afraid her sister would break into that terrible sobbing again, held the swaddled infant where Domaris could see him. "Can't you hear?" she asked gently. "He screams loud enough for twins!"

Domaris tried to raise herself, but fell back with weariness. She begged hungrily, "Oh, Deoris, give him to me!"

Deoris smiled at the unfailing miracle and bent to lay the baby boy on his mother's arm. Domaris's face was ecstatic and shining as she snuggled the squirming bundle close—then, with sudden apprehension, she fumbled at the cloths about him. Deoris bent and prevented her, smiling at this, too—further proof that Domaris was no different from any other woman. "He is

perfect," she assured. "Must I count every finger and toe for you?"

With her free hand, Domaris touched her sister's face. "Little Deoris," she said softly, and stopped. She would never have wanted to endure that without Deoris at her side, but there was no way to tell her sister that. She only murmured, so very low that Deoris could, if she chose, pretend not to hear: "Thank you, Deoris!" Then, laying her head wearily beside the baby, "Poor mite! I wonder if he is as tired as I am?" Her eyes flickered open again. "Deoris! Say nothing of this to Micon! I must myself lay our son in his arms. That is my duty—" Her lips contracted, but she went on, steadily, "and my very great privilege."

"He shall not hear it from me," Deoris promised, and lifted the baby from his mother's reluctant arms.

Domaris almost slept, dreaming, although she was conscious of cool water on her hot face and bruised body. Docilely, she ate and drank what was put to her lips, and knew, sleepily, that Deoris—or someone—smoothed her tangled hair, covered her with clean fresh garments that smelled of spices, and tucked her between smooth fragrant linens. Twilight and silence were cool in the room; she heard soft steps, muted voices. She slept, woke again, slept.

Once, she became conscious that the baby had been laid in her arms again, and she cuddled him close, for the moment altogether happy. "My little son," she whispered tenderly, contentedly; then, smiling to herself, Domaris gave him the name he would bear until he was a man. "My little Micail!"

IV

The door swung open silently. The tall and forbidding form of Mother Ysouda stood at the threshold. She beckoned to Deoris, who motioned to her not to speak aloud; the two tiptoed into the corridor.

"She sleeps again?" Mother Ysouda murmured. "The Priest Rajasta waits for you in the Men's Court, Deoris. Go at once and change your garments, and I will care for Domaris." She turned to enter the room, then halted and looked down at her foster daughter and asked in a whisper, "What happened, girl? How came Domaris to anger Karahama so fearfully? Were there angry words between them?"

Timidly with much prompting, Deoris related what had happened.

Mother Ysouda shook her grey head. "This is not like Domaris!" Her withered face drew down in a scowl.

"What will Karahama do?" Deoris asked apprehensively.

Mother Ysouda stiffened, conscious that she had spoken too freely to a mere junior Priestess. "You will not be punished for obeying the command of an Initiate-Priestess," she said, with austere dignity, "but it is not for you to question Karahama. Karahama is a Priestess of the

Mother, and it would indeed be unbecoming in her to harbor resentment. If Domaris spoke thoughtlessly in her extremity, doubtless Karahama knows it was the anger of a moment of pain and will not be offended. Now go, Deoris. The Guardian waits."

The words were rebuke and dismissal, but Deoris pondered them, deeply troubled, while she changed her garments—the robes she wore within the shrine of the Mother must not be profaned by the eyes of any male. Deoris could guess at much that Mother Ysouda had not wanted to say: Karahama was not of the Priest's Caste, and her reactions could not accurately be predicted.

In the Men's Court, a few minutes later, Rajasta turned from his pacing to hasten toward Deoris.

"Is all well with Domaris?" he asked. "They say she has a son."

"A fine healthy son," Deoris answered, surprised to see the calm Rajasta betraying such anxiety. "And all is well with Domaris."

Rajasta smiled with relief and approval. Deoris seemed no longer a spoilt and petulant child, but a woman, competent and assured within her own sphere. He had always considered himself the mentor of Deoris as well as of Domaris, and, though a little disappointed that she had left the path of the Priesthood of Light and thus placed herself beyond his reach as a future Acolyte or Initiate, he had approved her choice. He had often inquired about her since she had been admitted to the service of Caratra, and it pleased him greatly that the Priestess praised her skill.

With genuine paternal affection he said, "You grow swiftly in wisdom, little daughter. They tell me you delivered the child. I had believed that was contrary to some law. . . ."

Deoris covered her eyes with one hand. "Domaris's rank places her above that law."

Rajasta's eyes darkened. "That is true, but—did she ask, or command?"

"She—commanded."

Rajasta was disturbed. While a Priestess of Light had the privilege of choosing her own attendants, that law had been made to allow leniency under certain unusual conditions. In wilfully invoking it for her own comfort, Domaris had done wrong.

Deoris, sensing his mood, defended her sister. "Theyviolated the law! A Priest's daughter is exempt from having pupils or voices beside her, and Ka—"

She broke off, blushing. In the heat of the moment, she had forgotten that she spoke to a man. Moreover, it was unthinkable to argue with Rajasta; yet she felt impelled to add, stubbornly, "If anyone did wrong, it was Karahama!"

Rajasta checked her with a gesture. "I am Guardian of the Gate," he reminded her, "not of the Inner Courts!" More gently, he said, "You are very young to have been so trusted, my child. Command or no command—no one would have dared leave the Arch-Priest's daughter in

incompetent hands."

Shyly, Deoris murmured, "Riveda told me—" She stopped, remembering that Rajasta did not much like the Adept.

The Priest said only, "Lord Riveda is wise; what did he tell thee?"

"That—when I lived before—" She flushed, and hurried on, "I had known all the healing arts, he said, and had used them evilly. He said that—in this life, I should atone for that. . . ."

Rajasta considered, heavy-hearted, recollecting the destiny written in the stars for this child. "It may be so, Deoris," he said, noncommittally. "But beware of becoming proud; the dangers of old lives tend to recur. Now tell me: did it go hard for Domaris?"

"Somewhat," Deoris said, hesitantly. "But she is strong, and all should have been easy. Yet there was much pain that I could not ease. I fear—" She lowered her eyes briefly, then met Rajasta's gaze bravely as she went on, "I am no High Priestess in this life, but I very much fear that another child might endanger her greatly."

Rajasta's mouth became a tight line. Domaris had indeed done ill, and the effect of her wilfulness was already upon her. Such a recommendation, from one of Deoris's skill, was a grave warning—but her rank in the Temple was not equivalent to her worth, and she had, as yet, no authority to make such a recommendation. Had Domaris been properly attended by a Priestess of

high rank, even one of lesser skill, her word, when properly sworn and attested, would have meant that Domaris would never again be allowed to risk her life; a living mother to a living child was held, in the Temple of Light, as worth more than the hope of a second child. Now Domaris must bear the effect of the cause she had herself set in motion.

"It is not your business to recommend," he said, as gently as possible. "But for now, we need not speak of that. Micon—"

"Oh, I almost forgot!" Deoris exclaimed. "We are not to tell him, Domaris wants to—" She broke off, seeing the immense sadness that crossed Rajasta's face.

"You must think of something to tell him, little daughter. He is gravely ill, and must not be allowed to worry about her."

Deoris suddenly found herself unable to speak, and her eyes stared wide.

Brokenly, Rajasta said, "Yes, it is the end. At last—I think it is the end."

Chapter Seventeen DESTINY AND DOOM

I

Micail was three days old when Domaris rose and dressed herself with a meticulous care unusual with her. She used the perfume Micon loved, the scent from his homeland—his first gift to her. Her face was still, but not calm, and although Domaris kept from crying as Elara made her lovely for this ordeal, the servant woman herself burst into tears as she put the wiggling, clean-scented bundle into his mother's arms.

"Don't!" Domaris begged, and the woman fled. Domaris held her son close, thinking dearly,Child, I bore you to give your father death.

Remorsefully she bent her face over the summer softness of his. Grief was a part of her love for this child, a deep bitter thing twisting into her happiness. She had waited three days, and still she was not sure that either her body or her mind would carry her through this final duty to the man she loved. Lingering, still delaying, she scanned the miniature indeterminate features of Micail, seeking some strong resemblance to his father, and a sob twisted her throat as she kissed the reddish down on his silken forehead.

At last, raising her face proudly, she moved to the door and went forth, Micail in her arms. Her step was steady; her reluctant feet did not betray her dread.

Guilt lay deep on her. Those three days were, she felt, a selfishness that had held a tortured man

to life. Even now she moved only under the compulsion of sworn duty, and her thoughts were barbed whips of self-scorn. Micail whimpered protestingly and she realized that she was clutching him far too tightly to her breast.

She walked on, slowly, seeing with half her eyes the freshening riot of color in the gardens; though she pulled the swaddlings automatically closer about her child's head, Domaris saw only Micon's dark haggard face, felt only the bitterness of her own pain.

The way was not long, but to Domaris it was the length to the world's end. With every step, she left the last of her youth a little further behind. Yet after a time, an indefinite period, the confusion of thought and feeling gradually cleared and she found herself entering Micon's rooms. She swayed a little with the full realization:Now there is no return. Dimly she knew that for her there had never been.

Her eyes swept the room in unconscious appeal, and the desperation in her young face brought choking grief to Deoris's throat. Rajasta's eyes became even more compassionate, and even Riveda's stern mouth lost some of its grimness. This last Domaris saw, and it gave her a new strength born of anger.

Proudly she drew herself erect, clasping the child. Her eyes resting on Micon's wasted face; she put the others out of her mind. This was the moment of her giving; now she could give more than herself, could surrender—and by her own act—her hopes of any personal future. Silently she moved to stand beside him, and the change which but a few days had wrought in him smote her

like a blow.

Until this moment, Domaris had allowed herself to cling to some faint hope that Micon might still be spared to her, if only a little longer. . . . Now she saw the truth.

Long she looked upon him, and every feature of Micon's darkly noble frame etched itself forever across her life with the bitter acid of agony.

Finally Micon's sightless eyes opened, and it seemed that at last he saw, with something clearer than sight, for—although Domaris had not spoken, and her coming had been greeted with silence—he spoke directly to her. "My lady of Light," he whispered, and there was that in his voice which defied naming. "Let me hold—our son!"

Domaris knelt, and Rajasta moved to unobtrusively support Micon as the Atlantean drew himself upright. Domaris laid the child in the thin outstretched arms, and murmured words in themselves unimportant, but to the dying man, of devastating significance: "Our son, beloved— our perfect little son."

Micon's attenuated fingers ran lightly, tenderly across the little face. His own face, like a delicate waxen death-mask, bent over the child; tears gathered and dropped from the blind eyes, and he sighed, with an infinite wistfulness. "If I might—only once—behold my son!"

A harsh sound like a sob broke the silence, and Domaris raised wondering eyes. Rajasta was as

silent as a statue, and Deoris's throat could never have produced that sound . . .

"My beloved—" Micon's voice steadied somewhat. "One task remains. Rajasta—" The Atlantean's ravaged face turned to the Priest. "It is yours to guide and guard my son." So saying, he allowed Rajasta to take the baby in his hands, and quickly Domaris cradled Micon's head against her breast. Weakly smiling, he drew away from her. "No," he said with great tenderness. "I am weary, my love. Let me end this now. Begrudge not your greatest gift."

He rose slowly to his feet, and Riveda, shadow-swift, was there to put his strong arm under Micon's. With a little knowing smile, Micon accepted the Grey-robe's support. Deoris reached to clasp her sister's icy hand in her tiny warm one, but Domaris was not even aware of the touch.

Micon leaned his face over the child, who lay docile in Rajasta's arms, and with his racked hands, lightly touched the closed eyes.

"See—what I give you to see, Son of Ahtarrath!"

The twisted fingers touched the minute, curled ears as the Initiate's trained voice rang through the room: "Hear—what I give you to hear!"

He drew his hands slightly over the downy temples. "Know the power I know and bestow upon you, child of Ahtarrath's heritage!"

He touched the rosy seeking mouth, which sucked at his finger and spat it forth again. "Speak with the powers of the storm and the winds—of sun and rain, water and air, earth and fire! Speak only with justice, and with love."

The Atlantean's hand now rested over the baby's heart. "Beat only to the call of duty, to the powers of love! Thus I, by the Power I bear—" Micon's voice thinned suddenly. "By the—the Power I bear, I seal and sign you to—to that Power . . ."

Micon's face had become a drained and ghastly white. Word by word and motion by motion, he had loosed the superb forces which alone had held him from dissolution. With what seemed a tremendous effort, he traced a sign across the baby's brow; then leaned heavily on Riveda.

Domaris, with hungry tenderness, rushed to his side, but Micon, for a moment, paid her no heed as he gasped, "I knew this would—I knew—Lord Riveda, you must finish—finish the binding! I am—" Micon drew a long, labored breath. "Seek not to play me false!" And his words were punctuated by a distant clap of thunder.

Grim, unspeaking, Riveda let Domaris take Micon's weight, freeing him for the task. The Greyrobe knew well why he, and not Rajasta or some other, had been chosen to do this thing. The apparent sign of the Atlantean's trust was, in feet, the exact opposite: by binding Riveda's karma with that of the child, even in this so small way, Micon sought to ensure that Riveda, at least, would not dare attack the child, and the Power the baby represented. . . .

Riveda's ice-blue eyes burned beneath his brows as, with a brusque voice and manner, he took up the interrupted ritual: "To you, son of Ahtarrath, Royal Hunter, Heir-to-the-Word-of-Thunder, the Power passes. Sealed by the Light—" The Adept undid, with his strong skillful hands, the swaddlings about the child, and exposed him, with a peculiarly ceremonious gesture, to the flooding sunlight. The rays seemed to kiss the downy skin, and Micail stretched with a little cooing gurgle of content.

The solemnity of the Magician's face did not lighten, but his eyes now smiled as he returned the child to Rajasta's hands, and raised his arms as for invocation. "Father to son, from age to age," Riveda said, "the Power passes; known to the true-begotten. So it was, and so it is, and so it shall ever be. Hail Ahtarrath—and to Ahtarrath, farewell!"

Micail stared with placid, sleepy gravity at the circle of faces which ringed him in—but not for long. The ceremony ended now, Rajasta hastily placed the baby in Deoris's arms, and took Micon from Domaris's embrace, laying him gently down. Still the Atlantean's hands groped weakly for Domaris, and she came and held him close again; the naked grief in her eyes was a crucifixion.

Deoris, the baby clasped to her breast, sobbed noiselessly, her face half-buried in Rajasta's mantle; the Priest of Light stood with his arm around her, but his eyes were fixed upon Micon. Riveda, his arms crossed on his chest, stared somberly upon the scene, and his massive shadow blotted the sunlight from the room.

The Prince was still, so still that the watchers, too, held their breath. . . . At last he stirred, faintly. "Lady—clothed with Light," he whispered. "Forgive me." He waited, and drops of sweat glistened on his forehead. "Domaris." The word was a prayer.

It seemed that Domaris would never speak, that speech had been dammed at its fountainhead, that all the world would go silent to the end of eternity. At last her white lips parted, and her voice was clear and triumphant in the stillness. "It is well, my beloved. Go in peace."

The waxen face was immobile, but the lips stirred in the ghost of Micon's old radiant smile. "Love of mine," he whispered, and then more softly still, "Heart—of flame—" and a breath and a sigh moved in the silence and faded.

Domaris bent forward . . . and her arms, with a strange, pathetic little gesture, fell to her sides, empty.

Riveda moved softly to the bedside, and looked into the serene face, closing the dead eyes. "It is over," the Adept said, almost tenderly and with regret. "What courage, what strength—and what waste!"

Domaris rose, dry-eyed, and turned toward Riveda. "That, my Lord, is a matter of opinion," she said slowly. "It is our triumph! Deoris—give me my son." She took Micail in her arms, and her face shone, unearthly, in the sublimity of her sorrow. "Behold our child—and our future. Can you show me the like, Lord Riveda?"

"Your triumph, Lady, indeed," Riveda acknowledged, and bent in deep reverence.

Deoris came and would have taken the baby once more, but Domaris clung to him, her hands trembling as she caressed her little son. Then, with a last, impassioned look at the dark still face that had been Micon's, she turned away, and the men heard her whispered, helpless prayer: "Help me—O Thou Which Art!" Deoris led her sister, resistless, away.

II

That night was cold. The full moon, rising early, flooded the sky with a brilliance that blotted out the stars. Low on the horizon, sullen flames glowed at the sea-wall, and ghost-lights, blue and dancing, flitted and streamed in the north.

Riveda, for the first and last time in his life robed in the stainless white of the Priest's Caste, paced with stately step backward and forward before Micon's apartments. He had not the faintest idea why he, rather than Rajasta or one of the other Guardians, had been chosen for this vigil— and he was no longer so certain why Micon had suffered his aid at the last! Had trust or distrust been the major factor in Micon's final acceptance of him?

It was clear that the Atlantean had, in part at least, feared him. But why? He was no Black-robe! The twists and turns of it presented a riddle far beyond his reading—and Riveda did not like the feeling of ignorance. Yet without protest or pride he had divested himself tonight of the grey

robe he had worn for so many years, and clothed himself in the ritual robes of Light. He felt curiously transformed, as if with the robes he had also slipped on something of the character of these punctilious Priests.

Nonetheless he felt a deeply personal grief, and a sense of defeat. In Micon's last hours, his weakness had moved Riveda as his strength could never have done. A grudged and sullenly yielded respect had given way to deep and sincere affection.

It was seldom, indeed, that Riveda allowed events to disturb him. He did not believe in destiny—but he knew that threads ran through time and the lives of men, and that one could become entangled in them.Karma. It was, Riveda thought grimly, like the avalanches of his own Northern mountains. A single stone rattled loose by a careless step, and all the powers of the world and nature could not check an inch of its motion. Riveda shuddered. He felt a curious certainty that Micon's death had brought destiny and doom on them all. He didn't like the thought. Riveda preferred to believe that he could master destiny, pick a path through the pitfalls of karma, by his will and strength alone.

He continued his pacing, head down. The Order of Magicians, known here as Grey-robes, was ancient, and elsewhere held a more honored name. In Atlantis were many Adepts and Initiates of this Order, among whom Riveda held high place. And now Riveda knew something no one else had guessed, and felt it was legitimately his own.

Once, in mad raving, a word and a gesture had slipped unaware, from his chela, Reio-ta. Riveda

had noted both, meaningless as they had seemed at the moment. Later, he had seen the same gesture pass between Rajasta and Cadamiri when they thought themselves unobserved; and Micon, in the delirium of agony which had preceded the quiet of his last hours, had muttered Atlantean phrases—one a duplicate of Reio-ta's. Riveda's brain had stored all these things for future reference. Knowledge, to him, was something to be acquired; a thing hidden was something to be sought all the more assiduously.

Tomorrow, Micon's body was to be burned, the ashes returned to his homeland. That task he, Riveda, should undertake. Who had a better right than the Priest who had consecrated Micon's son to the power of Ahtarrath?

III

At daybreak, Riveda ceremoniously drew back the curtains, letting sunlight flood in and fill the apartment where Micon lay. Dawn was a living sea of ruby and rose and livid fire; the light lay like dancing flames on the dark dead face of the Initiate, and Riveda, frowning, felt that Micon's death had ended nothing.

This began in fire, Riveda thought, it will end in fire . . . but will it be only the fire of Micon's funeral? Or are there higher flames rising in the future . . . ? He frowned, shaking his head. What nonsense am I dreaming? Today, fire will burn what the Black-robes left of Micon, Prince of Ahtarrath . . . and yet, in his own way, he has defeated all the elements.

With the sun's rise, white-robed Priests came and took Micon up tenderly, bearing him down the winding pathway into the face of the morning. Rajasta, his face drawn with grief, walked before the bier; Riveda, with silent step and bent head, walked after. Behind them, a long procession of white-mantled Priests and Priestesses in silver fillets and blue cloaks followed in tribute to the stranger, the Initiate who had died in their midst . . . and after these stole a dim grey shadow, bowed like an old man shaken with palsied sobbing, grey cloak huddled over his face, his hands hidden within a patched and threadbare robe. But no man saw how Reio-ta Lantor of Ahtarrath followed his Prince and brother to the flames.

Also unseen, high on the summit of the great pyramid, a woman stood, tall and sublime, her face crimsoned with the sunrise and the morning sky ablaze with the fire of her hair. In her arms a child lay cradled, and as the procession faded to black shadows against the radiant light in the east, Domaris held her child high against the rising sun. In a steady voice, she began to intone the morning hymn:

O beautiful upon the Horizon of the East, Lift up the light unto day, O eastern Star. Day-star, awaken, arise! Joy and giver of light, awake. Lord and giver of life, Lift up thy light, O Star of Day, Day-star, awaken, arise!

Far below, the flames danced and spiralled up from the pyre, and the world was drowned in flame and sunlight.

2 Web of Darkness

BOOK THREE Deoris

Chapter One THE PROMISE

I

"Lord Rajasta," Deoris greeted the old Priest anxiously. "I am glad you are come! Domaris is so—so strange!"

Rajasta's lined face quirked into an enquiring glance.

Deoris rushed on impetuously, "I can't understand—she does everything she should, she isn't crying all the time any more, but—" The words came out as a sort of wail: "She isn'tthere !"

Nodding slowly, Rajasta touched the child's shoulder in a comforting caress. "I feared this—I will see her. Is she alone now?"

"Yes, Domaris wouldn't look at them when they came, wouldn't answer when they spoke, just sat staring at the wall—" Deoris began to cry.

Rajasta attempted to soothe her, and after a few moments managed to discover that "they" referred to Elis and Mother Ysouda. His wise, old eyes looked down into Deoris's small face, white and mournful, and what he saw there made him stroke her hair lingeringly before he said, with gentle insistence, "You are stronger than she, now, though it may not seem so. You must be kind to her. She needs all your love and all your strength, too." Leading the still sniffling Deoris to a nearby couch, and settling her upon it, he said, "I will go to her now."

In the inner room, Domaris sat motionless, her eyes fixed on distances past imagining, her hands idle at her sides. Her face was as a statue's, still and remote.

"Domaris," said Rajasta softly. "My daughter."

Very slowly, from some secret place of the spirit, the woman came back; her eyes took cognizance of her surroundings. "Lord Rajasta," she acknowledged, her voice little more than a ripple in the silence.

"Domaris," Rajasta repeated, with an oddly regretful undertone. "My Acolyte, you neglect your

duties. This is not worthy of you."

"I have done what I must," Domaris said tonelessly, as if she did not even mean to deny the accusation.

"You mean, you make the gestures," Rajasta corrected her. "Do you think I do not know you are willing yourself to die? You can do that, if you are coward enough. But your son, and Micon's— " Her eyes winced, and seeing even this momentary reaction, Rajasta insisted, "Micon's son needs you."

Now Domaris's face came alive with pain. "No," she said, "even in that I have failed! My baby has been put to a wet nurse!"

"Which need not have happened, had you not let your grief master you," Rajasta charged. "Blind, foolish girl! Micon loved and honored and trusted you above all others—and you fail him like this! You shame his memory, if his trust was misplaced—and you betray yourself—and you disgrace me, who taught you so poorly!"

Domaris sprang to her feet, raising protesting hands, but at Rajasta's imperative gesture she stilled the words rising in her throat, and listened with bent head.

"Do you think you are alone in grieving, Domaris? Do you not know that Micon was more than friend, more than brother to me? I am lonely since I can no longer walk at his side. But I cannot

cease to live because one I loved has gone beyond my ability to follow!" He added, more gently, "Deoris, too, grieves for Micon—and she has not even the memory of his love to comfort her."

The woman's head drooped, and she began to weep, stormily, frantically; and Rajasta, his austere face kind again, gathered her in his arms and held her close until the crisis of desolate sobbing worked itself out, leaving Domaris exhausted, but alive.

"Thank you, Rajasta," she whispered, with a smile that almost made the man weep too. "I—I will be good."

II

Restlessly, Domaris paced the floor of her apartments. The weary hours and days that had worn away had only brought the unavoidable nearer, and now the moment of decision was upon her. Decision? No, the decision had been made. Only the time of action had come, when she must grant the fulfillment of her pledged word. What did it matter that her promise to Arvath had been given when she was wholly ignorant of what it entailed?

With a tight smile, she remembered words spoken many years ago:Yes, my Lords of the Council, I accept my duty to marry. As well Arvath as another —Ilike him somewhat.That had been long ago, before she had dreamed that love between man and woman was more than a romance of pretty words, before birth and death and loss had become personal to her. She had been, she reflected dryly, thirteen years old at the time.

Her face, thinner than it had been a month ago, now turned impassive, for she recognized the step at the door. She turned and greeted Arvath, and for a moment Arvath could only stand and stammer her name. He had not seen her since Micon's death, and the change in her appalled him. Domaris was beautiful—more beautiful than ever—but her face was pale and her eyes remote, as if they had looked upon secret things. From a gay and laughing girl she had changed to a woman—awoman of marble? Or of ice? Or merely a stilled flame that burned behind the quiet eyes?

"I hope you are well," he said banally, at last.

"Oh, yes, they have taken good care of me," Domaris said, and looked at him with tense exasperation. She knew what he wanted (she thought with a faint sarcasm that was new to her); why didn't he come to the point—why evade the issue with courtesies?

Arvath sensed that her mood was not entirely angelic, and it made him even more constrained. "I have come to ask—to claim—your promise. . . ."

"As is your right," Domaris acknowledged formally, stifling with the attempt to control her breathing.

Arvath's impetuous hands went out and he clasped her close to him. "O beloved! May I claim you tonight before the Vested Five?"

"If you wish," she said, almost indifferently. One time was no worse than another. Then the old Domaris came back for a moment in a burst of impulsive sincerity. "O Arvath, forgive me that I—that I bring you no more than I can give," she begged, and briefly clung to him.

"That you give yourself is enough," he said tenderly.

She looked at him, with a wise sorrow in her eyes but said nothing.

His arms tightened around her demandingly. "I will make you happy," he vowed. "I swear it!"

She remained passive in his embrace; but Arvath knew, with a nagging sense of futility, that she was unstirred by the torment that swept him. He repeated, and it sounded like a challenge, "I swear it—that I will make you forget!"

After an instant, Domaris put up her hands and freed herself from him; not with any revulsion, but with an indifference that filled the man with apprehension . . . Quickly he swept the disturbing thought aside. He would awaken her to love, he thought confidently—and it never occurred to him that she was far more aware of love's nature than he.

Still, he had seen the momentary softening of pity in her eyes, and he knew enough not to press his advantage too far. He whispered, against her hair, "Be beautiful for me, my wife!" Then, brushing her temple with a swift kiss, he left her.

Domaris stood for a long minute, facing the closed door, and the deep pity in her eyes paled gradually to a white dread. "He's—he'shungry, " she breathed, and a hidden trembling started and would not be stilled through her entire body. "How can I—I can't! I can't! Oh. Micon,Micon! "

Chapter Two THE FEVER

I

That summer, fever raged in the city called the Circling Snake. Within the Temple precincts, where the Healers enforced rigid sanitary laws, it did not strike; but in the city itself it worked havoc, for a certain element of the population was too lazy or too stupid to follow the dictates of the priests.

Riveda and his Healers swept through the city like an invading army, without respect for plague or persons. They burned the stinking garbage heaps and the festering, squalid tenements; burned the foetid slave-huts of cruel or stupid owners who allowed men to live in worse filth than beasts. Invading every home, they fumigated, cleaned, nursed, isolated, condemned, buried, or burned, daring even to enter homes where the victims were already rotten with the stink of death. They

cremated the corpses—sometimes by force, where caste enjoined burial. Wells suspected of pollution were tested and often sealed, regardless of bribes, threats. and sometimes outright defiance. In short, they made themselves an obnoxious nuisance to the rich and powerful whose neglect or viciousness had permitted the plague to spread in the first place.

Riveda himself worked to exhaustion, nursing cases whom no one else could be persuaded to approach, out-bullying fat city potentates who questioned the value of his destructive mercy, sleeping in odd moments in houses already touched by death. He seemed to walk guarded by a series of miracles.

Deoris, who had served her novitiate in the Healers sponsored by her kinsman Cadamiri, met Riveda one evening as she stepped out for a moment from a house where she, with another Priestess, had been caring for the sick of two families. The woman of the house was out of danger, but four children had died, three more lay gravely ill, and another was sickening.

Seeing her, Riveda crossed the street to give her a greeting. His face was lined and very tired, but he looked almost happy, and she asked why.

"Because I believe the worst is over. There are no new cases in the North Quarter today, and even here—if the rains hold off three days more, we have won." The Adept looked down at Deoris; effort had put years into her face, and her beauty was dimmed by tiredness. Riveda's heart softened, and he said with a gentle smile, "I think you must be sent back to the Temple, my child; you are killing yourself."

She shook her head, fighting temptation. It would be heavenly comfort to be out of this! But she only said, stubbornly, "I'll stay while I'm needed."

Riveda caught her hands and held them. "I'd take you myself, child, but I'd not be allowed inside the gates, for I go where contagion is worst. I can't return until the epidemic is over, but you . . . " Suddenly, he caught her against him in a hard, rough embrace. "Deoris, you must go! I won't have you ill, I won't take the chance of losing you too!"

Startled and confused, Deoris was stiff in his arms; then she loosened and clung to him and felt the tickly stubble of his cheek against her face.

Without releasing her, he straightened and looked down, his stern mouth gentle. "There is danger even in this. You will have to bathe and change your clothing now—but Deoris, you're shivering, you can't be cold in this blistering heat?"

She stirred a little in his arms. "You're hurting me," she protested.

"Deoris!" said Riveda, in swift alarm, as she swayed against him.

The girl shivered with the violent cold that crawled suddenly around her. "I—I am all right," she protested weakly—but then she whispered. "I—I do want to go home," and slipped down, a shivering, limp little huddle in Riveda's arms.

II

It was not the dreaded plague. Riveda diagnosed marsh-fever, aggravated by exhaustion. After a few days, when they were certain there was no danger of contagion, they allowed her to be carried to the Temple in a litter. Once there, Deoris spent weeks that seemed like years, not dangerously ill, but drowsily delirious; even when the fever finally abated, her convalescence was very gradual, and it was a long time before she began to take even the most languid interest in living again.

The days flickered by in brief sleeps and half-waking dreams. She lay watching the play of shadows and sunlight on the walls, listening to the babble of the fountains and to the musical trilling of four tiny blue birds that chirped and twittered in a cage in the sunlight—Domaris had sent them to her. Domaris sent messages and gifts nearly every day, in fact, but Domaris herself did not come near her, though Deoris cried and begged for her for days during her delirium. Elara, who tended Deoris night and day, would say only that Arvath had forbidden it. But when the delirium was gone, Deoris learned from Elis that Domaris was already pregnant, and far from well; they dared not risk the contagion of even this mild fever. At learning this, Deoris turned her face to the wall and lay without speaking for a whole day, and did not mention her sister again.

Arvath himself came often, bringing the gifts and the loving messages Domaris sent. Chedan paid brief, shy, tongue-tied visits almost every day. Once Rajasta came, bearing delicate fruits to tempt her fastidious appetite, and full of commendation for her work in the epidemic.

When memory began to waken in her, and the recollection of Riveda's curious behavior swam out of the bizarre dreams of her delirium, she asked about the Adept of the Grey-robes. They told her Riveda had gone on a long journey, but secretly Deoris believed they lied, that he had died in the epidemic. Grief died at the source; the well-springs of her emotions had been sapped by the long illness and longer convalescence, and Deoris went through the motions of living without much interest in past, present, or future.

It was many weeks before they allowed her to leave her bed, and months before she was permitted to walk about in the gardens. When, finally, she was well enough, she returned to her duties in the Temple of Caratra—more or less, for she found them all conspiring to find easy and useless tasks which would not tax her returning strength. She devoted much of her time to study as she grew stronger, attending lectures given to the apprentice healers even though she could not accompany them in their work. Often she would steal into a corner of the library to listen from afar to the discussions of the Priests of Light. Moreover, as the Priestess Deoris, she was now entitled to a scribe of her own; it was considered more intelligent to listen than to read, or the hearing could be more completely concentrated than the sight.

On the evening of her sixteenth birthday, one of the Priestesses had sent Deoris to a hill overlooking the Star Field, to gather certain flowers of medicinal value. The long walk had taxed her strength, and she sat down for a moment to rest before beginning the task when, suddenly, raising her head, she saw the Adept Riveda walking along the sunlit path in her direction. For a moment she could only stare. She had been so convinced of his death that she thought

momentarily that the veil had thinned, that she saw not him but his spirit . . . then, convinced she was not having hallucinations after all, she cried out and ran toward him.

Turning, he saw her and held out his arms. "Deoris," he said, and clasped her shoulders with his hands. "I have been anxious about you, they told me you had been dangerously ill. Are you quite recovered?" What he saw as he looked down into her face evidently satisfied him.

"I—I thought you were dead."

His rough smile was warmer than usual. "No, as you can see, I am very much alive. I have been away, on a journey to Atlantis. Perhaps some day I will tell you all about it . . . I came to see you before I left, but you were too ill to know me. What are you doing here?"

"Gatheringshaing flowers."

Riveda snorted. "Oh, a most worthy use of your talents! Well, now I have returned, perhaps I can find more suitable work for you. But at the moment I have errands of my own, so I must return you to your blossoms." He smiled again. "Such an important task must not be interrupted by a mere Adept!"

Deoris laughed, much cheered, and on an impulse Riveda bent and kissed her lightly before going on his way. He could not himself have explained the kiss—he was not given to impulsive actions. As he hastened toward the Temple, Riveda felt curiously disturbed, remembering the

lassitude in the girl's eyes. Deoris had grown taller in the months of her illness, although she would never be very tall. Thin and frail, and yet beautiful with a fragile and wraithlike beauty, she was no longer a child, and yet she was hardly a woman. Riveda wondered, annoyed with himself for the direction his thoughts took, how young Chedan stood with his lovemaking.No, he decided,that is not the answer. Deoris had not the look of a girl mazed by the wakening of passion, nor the consciousness of sex that would have been there in that case. She hadpermitted his kiss, as innocently as a small child.

Riveda did not know that Deoris followed him with her eyes until he was quite out of sight, and that her face was flushed and alive again.

Chapter Three CHOICE AND KARMA

I

The night was falling, folding like soft and moonless wings of indigo over the towered roofs of the Temple and the ancient city which lay beneath it, smothered in coils of darkness. A net of dim lights lay flung out over the blackness, and far away a pale phosphorescence hung around the heavier darkness of the sea-harbor. Starlight, faint and faulty, flickered around the railings

which outlined the roof-platform of the great pyramid and made a ghostly haze around the two cloaked figures who stood there.

Deoris was shivering a little in the chilly breeze, holding, with lifted hands, the folds of her hooded cloak. The wind tugged at them, and finally she threw back the hood and let the short heavy ringlets of her hair blow as they would. She felt a little scared, and very young.

Riveda's face, starkly austere in the pallid light, brooded with a distant, inhuman calm. He had not spoken a single word since they had emerged onto the rooftop, and her few shy attempts to speak had been choked into silence by the impassive quiet of his eyes. When he made an abrupt movement, she started in sudden terror.

He leaned on the railing, one clenched hand supporting the leaning blackness of his body and said, in tones of command, "Tell me what troubles you, Deoris."

"I don't know," Deoris murmured. "So many new things are coming at once." Her voice grew hard and tight. "My sister Domaris is going to have another baby!"

Riveda stared a moment, his eyes narrowing. "I knew that. What did you expect?"

"Oh, I don't know. . . ." The girl's shoulders drooped. "It was different, somehow, with Micon. He was . . ."

"He was a Son of the Sun," Riveda prompted gently, and there was no mockery in his voice.

Deoris looked up, almost despairing. "Yes. But Arvath—and so soon, like animals— Riveda,why? "

"Who can say?" Riveda replied, and his voice dropped, sorrowful and confiding. "It is a great pity. Domaris could have gone so far. . . ."

Deoris lifted her eyes, eager, mute questions in them.

The Adept smiled, a very little, over her head. "A woman's mind is strange, Deoris. You have been kept in innocence, and cannot yet understand how deeply the woman is in subjugation to her body. I do not say it is wrong, only that it is a great pity." He paused, and his voice grew grim. "So. Domaris has chosen her way. I expected it, and yet. . . ." He looked down at Deoris. "You asked me,why. It is for the same reason that so many maidens who enter the Grey Temple aresaji, and use magic without knowing its meaning. But we of the Magicians would rather have our women free, make themSA#kti SidhA#na —know you what that is?"

She shook her head, dumbly.

"A woman who can use her powers to lead and complement a man's strength. Domaris had that kind of strength, she had the potentiality . . ." A significant pause. "Once."

"Not now?"

Riveda did not answer directly, but mused, "Women rarely have the need, or the hunger, or the courage. To most women, learning is a game, wisdom a toy—attainment, only a sensation."

Timidly, Deoris asked, "But is there any other way for a woman?"

"A woman of your caste?" The Adept shrugged. "I have no right to advise you—and yet, Deoris ...

Riveda paused but a moment—yet the mood was shattered by a woman's cry of terror. The Adept whirled, swift as a hunting-cat; behind him Deoris started back, her hands at her throat. At the corner of the long stairway, she made out two white-robed figures and a crouching, grey and ghostly form which had suddenly risen before them.

Riveda rapped out several words in an alien tongue, then spoke ceremoniously to the white robes: "Be not alarmed, the poor lad is harmless. But his wits are not in their seat."

Clinging to Rajasta's arm, Domaris murmured in little gasps. "He rose out of the shadows—like a ghost."

Riveda's strong warm laughter filled the darkness. "I give you my word he is alive, and harmless." And this last, at least, was proven, for the grey-clad chela had scuttled away into the

darkness once again and was lost to their sight. Riveda continued, his voice holding a deep deference exaggerated to the point of mockery, "Lord Guardian, I greet you; this is a pleasure I had ceased to expect!"

Rajasta said with asperity, "You are too courteous, Riveda. I trust we do not interrupt your meditations?"

"No, for I was not alone," Riveda retorted suavely, and beckoned Deoris to come forward. "You are remiss, my lady," he added to Domaris, "your sister has never seen this view, which is not a thing to be missed on a clear night."

Deoris, holding her hood about her head in the wind, looked sullenly at the intruders, and Domaris slipped her arm free of Rajasta's and went to her. "Why, if I had thought, I would have brought you up here long ago," Domaris murmured, her eyes probing her sister's closely. In the instant before the chela had risen up to terrify her, she had seen Riveda and Deoris standing very close together, in what had looked like an embrace. The sight had sent prickles of chill up her spine. Now, taking her sister's hand, she drew Deoris to the railing. "The view from here is truly lovely, you can see the pathway of the moon on the sea. . . ." Lowering her voice almost to a whisper, she murmured, "Deoris, I do not want to intrude on you, but what were you talking about?"

Riveda loomed large beside them. "I have been discussing the Mysteries with Deoris, my lady. I wished to know if she has chosen to walk in the path which her sister treads with such great

honor." The Adept's words were courteous, even deferential, but something in their tone made Rajasta frown.

Clenching his fists in almost uncontrollable anger, the Priest of Light said curtly, "Deoris is an apprenticed Priestess of Caratra."

"Why, I know that," Riveda said, smiling. "Have you forgotten, it was I who counselled her to seek Initiation there?"

Forcing his voice to a deliberate calm, Rajasta answered, "Then you showed great wisdom, Riveda. May you always counsel as wisely." He glanced toward the chela, who had reappeared some distance away. "Have you found as yet any key to what is hidden in his soul?"

Riveda shook his head. "Nor found I anything in Atlantis which could rouse him. Yet," he paused and said, "I believe he has great knowledge of magic. I had him in the Chela's Ring last night."

Rajasta started. "With empty mind?" he accused. "Without awareness?" His face was deeply troubled. "Permit me this once to advise you, Riveda, not as Guardian but as a kinsman or a friend.Be careful —for your own sake. He is—emptied, and a perfect channel for danger of the worst sort."

Riveda bowed, but Deoris, watching, could see the ridge of muscle tighten in his jaw. The Grey-

robe bit off his words in little pieces and spat them at Rajasta. "My Adeptship, cousin, is— suitable and sufficient—to guard that channel. Do me the courtesy—to allow me to manage my own affairs—friend!"

Rajasta sighed, and said, with a quiet patience, "You could wreck his mind."

Riveda shrugged. "There is not much left to wreck," he pointed out. "And there is the chance that I might rouse him." He paused, then said, with slow and deadly emphasis, "Perhaps it would be better if I consigned him to the Idiots' Village?"

There was a long and fearful silence. Domaris felt Deoris stiffen, every muscle go rigid, her shoulders taut with trembling horror. Eager to comfort, Domaris held her sister's hand tightly in her own, but Deoris wrenched away.

Riveda continued, completely calm. "Your suspicions are groundless, Rajasta. I seek only to restore the poor soul to himself. I am no black sorcerer; your implication insults me, Lord Guardian."

"You know I meant no insult," Rajasta said, and his voice was weary and old, "but there are those within your Order on whom we cannot lay constraint."

The Grey-robe stood still, the line of his lifted chin betraying an unusual self-doubt; then Riveda capitulated, and joined Rajasta at the railing. "Be not angry," he said, almost contritely. "I meant

not to offend you."

The Priest of Light did not even glance at him. "Since we cannot converse without mutual offense, let us be silent," he said coldly. Riveda, stung by the rebuff, straightened and gazed in silence over the harbor for some minutes.

The full moon rose slowly, like a gilt bubble cresting the waves, riding the surf in a fairy play of light. Deoris drew a long wondering breath of delight, looking out in awe and fascination over the moon-flooded waves, the rooftops . . . She felt Riveda's hand on her arm and moved a little closer to him. The great yellow-orange globe moved slowly higher and higher, suspended on the tossing sea, gradually illuminating their faces: Deoris like a wraith against the darkness, Domaris pale beneath the hood of her loose frost-colored robes; Rajasta a luminescent blur against the far railing, Riveda like a dark pillar against the moonlight. Behind them, a dark huddle crouched against the cornice of the stairway, unseen and neglected.

Deoris began to pick out details in the moonlit scene: the shadows of ships, their sails furled, narrow masts lonesome against a phosphorescent sea; nearer, the dark mass of the city called the Circling Snake, where lights flickered and flitted in the streets. Curiously, she raised one hand and traced the outline made by the city and the harbor; then gave a little exclamation of surprise.

"Lord Riveda, look here—to trace the outline of the city from here is to make the Holy Sign!"

"It was planned so, I believe," Riveda responded quietly. "Chance is often an artist, but never

like that."

A low voice called, "Domaris?"

The young Priestess stirred, her hand dropping from her sister's arm. "I am here, Arvath," she called.

The indistinct white-robed figure of her husband detached itself from the shadows and came toward them. He looked around, smiling. "Greetings, Lord Rajasta—Lord Riveda," he said. "And you, little Deoris—no, I should not call you that now, should I, kitten? Greetings to the Priestess Adsartha of Caratra's Temple!" He made a deep, burlesque bow.

Deoris giggled irrepressibly, then tossed her head and turned her back on him.

Arvath grinned and put an arm around his wife. "I thought I would find you here," he said, his voice shadowed with concern and reproach as he looked down at her. "You look tired. When you have finished your duties, you should rest, not weary yourself climbing these long steps."

"I am never tired," she said slowly, "not really tired."

"I know, but . . ." The arm around her tightened a little.

Riveda's voice, with its strangely harsh overtones, sounded through the filtered shadows. "No

woman will accept sensible advice."

Domaris raised her head proudly. "I am a person before I am a woman."

Riveda let his eyes rest on her, with the strange and solemn reverence which had once before so frightened Domaris. Slowly, he answered, "I think not, Lady Isarma. You are woman, first and always. Is that not altogether evident?"

Arvath scowled and took an angry step forward, but Domaris caught this arm. "Please," she whispered, "anger him not. I think he meant no offense. He is not of our caste, we may ignore what he says."

Arvath subsided and murmured, "It is the woman in you I love, dear. The rest belongs to you. I do not interfere with that."

"I know, I know," she soothed in an undertone.

Rajasta, with an all-embracing kindliness, added, "I have no fear for her, Arvath. I know that she is woman, too, as well as priestess."

Riveda glanced at Deoris, with elaborate mockery. "I think we are two too many here," he murmured, and drew the girl along the railing, toward the southern parapet, where they stood in absorbed silence, looking down into the fires that flickered and danced at the sea-wall.

Arvath turned to Rajasta, half in apology. "I am all too much man where she is concerned," he said, and smiled in wry amusement.

Rajasta returned the smile companionably. "That is readily understood, my son," he said, and looked intently at Domaris. The clear moonlight blurred the wonderful red mantle of her hair to an uneven shining, and softened, kindly, the tiredness in her young face; but Rajasta needed no light to see that.And why, he asked himself,was she so quick to deny that she might be primarily woman? Rajasta turned away, staring out to sea, reluctantly remembering.When she bore Micon's son, Domaris was all woman, almost arrogantly so, taking pride and deep joy in that. Why, now, does she speak so rebelliously, as if Riveda had insulted her —instead of paying her the highest accolade he knows?

With a sudden smile, Domaris flung one arm around her husband and the other around Rajasta, pulling them close. She leaned a little on Arvath, enough to give the effect of submission and affection. Domaris was no fool, and she knew what bitterness Arvath so resolutely stifled. No man would ever be more to Domaris—save the memory she kept with equal resoluteness apart from her life. No woman can be altogether indifferent to the man whose child she carries.

With a secret, wise little smile that did much to reassure the Guardian, Domaris leaned to touch her lips to her husband's check. "Soon, now, Rajasta, I shall ask to be released from Temple duties, for I will have other things to think of," she told them, still smiling. "Arvath, take me home, now. I am weary, and I would rest."

Rajasta followed the young couple as Arvath, with tender possessiveness, escorted his wife down the long stairway. He felt reassured: Domaris was safe with Arvath, indeed.

II

As the others disappeared into the shadows, Riveda turned and sighed, a little sorrowfully. "Well, Domaris has chosen. And you, Deoris?"

"No!" It was a sharp little cry of revulsion.

"A woman's mind is strange," Riveda went on reflectively. "She is sensitive to a greater degree; her very body responds to the delicate influence of the moon and the tidewaters. And she has, inborn, all the strength and receptivity which a man must spend years and his heart's blood to acquire. But where man is a climber, woman tends to chain herself. Marriage, the slavery of lust, the brutality of childbearing, the servitude of being wife and mother—and all this without protest! Nay, she seeks it, and weeps if it is denied her!"

A far-off echo came briefly to taunt Deoris—Domaris, so long ago, murmuring,Who has put these bats into your brain? But Deoris, hungry for his thoughts, was more than willing to listen to Riveda's justification for her own rebellion, and made only the faintest protest: "But theremust be children, must there not?"

Riveda shrugged. "There are always more than enough women who are fit for nothing else," he said. "At one time I had a dream of a woman with the strength and hardness of a man but with a woman's sensitivity; a woman who could set aside her self-imposed chains. At one time, I had thought Domaris to be such a woman. And believe me, they are rare, and precious! But she has chosen otherwise." Riveda turned, and his eyes, colorless in the moonlight, stabbed into the girl's uplifted face. His light speaking voice dropped into the rich and resonant baritone in which he sang. "But I think I have found another. Deoris, are you . . . ?"

"What?" she whispered.

"Areyou that woman?"

Deoris drew a long breath, as fear and fascination tumbled in her brain.

Riveda's hard hands found her shoulders, and he repeated, softly persuasive, "Are you, Deoris?"

A stir in the darkness—and Riveda's chela suddenly materialized from the shadows. Deoris's flesh crawled with revulsion and horror—fear of Riveda, fear of herself, and a sort of sick loathing for the chela. She wrenched herself away and ran, blindly ran, to get away and alone; but even as she fled, she heard the murmur of the Adept's words, re-echoing in her brain.

Are you that woman?

And to herself, more than terrified now, and yet still fascinated, Deoris whispered, "Am I?"

Chapter Four THE SUMMIT AND THE DEPTHS

I

The opened shutters admitted the incessant flickers of summer lightning. Deoris, unable to sleep, lay on her pallet, her thoughts flickering as restlessly as the lightning flashes. She was afraid of Riveda, and yet, for a long time she had admitted to herself that he roused in her a strange, tense emotion that was almost physical. He had grown into her consciousness, he was a part of her imagination. Naive as she was, Deoris realized indistinctly that she had reached, with Riveda, a boundary of no return: their relationship had suddenly and irrevocably changed.

She suspected she could not bear to be closer to him, but at the same time the thought of putting him out of her life—and this was the only alternative—was unbearable. Riveda's swift clarity made even Rajasta seem pompous, fumbling . . . Had she ever seriously thought of following in Domaris's steps?

A soft sound interrupted her thoughts, and Chedan's familiar step crossed the flagstones to her

side. "Asleep?" he whispered.

"Oh, Chedan—you?"

"I was in the court, and I could not . . ." He dropped to the edge of the bed. "I haven't seen you all day. Your birthday, too—how old?"

"Sixteen. You know that." Deoris sat up, wrapping her thin arms around her knees.

"And I would have a gift for you, if I thought you would take it from me," Chedan murmured. His meaning was unmistakable, and Deoris felt her cheeks grow hot in the darkness while Chedan went on, teasingly, "Or do you guard yourself virgin for higher ambition? I saw you when Cadamiri carried you, unconscious, from the seance in the Prince Micon's quarters last year! Ah, how Cadamiri was angry! For all of that day, anyone who spoke to him caught only sharp words.He would advise you, Deoris—"

"I am not interested in his advice!" Deoris snapped, flicked raw by his teasing.

Again, two conflicting impulses struggled in her: to laugh at him, or to slap him. She had never accepted the easy customs and the free talk of the House of the Twelve; the boys and girls in the Scribes' School were more strictly confined, and Deoris had spent her most impressionable years there. Yet her own thoughts were poor company, confused as they were, and she did not want to be alone.

Chedan bent down and slid his arms around the girl. Deoris, in a kind of passive acquiescence, submitted, but she twisted her mouth away from his.

"Don't," she said sulkily. "I can't breathe."

"You won't have to," he said, more softly than usual, and Deoris made no great protest. She liked the warmth of his arms around her, the way he held her, gently, like something very fragile . . . but tonight there was an urgency in his kisses that had never been there before. It frightened her a little. Warily, she shifted herself away from him, murmuring protesting words—she hardly knew what.

Silence again, and the flickering of lightning in the room, and her own thoughts straying into the borderland of dreams. . . .

Suddenly, before she could prevent him, Chedan was lying beside her and his arms slowly forced themselves beneath her head; then all the strength of his hard young body was pressing her down, and he was saying incoherent things which made no sense, punctuated by frightening kisses. For a moment, surprise and a sort of dreamy lassitude held her motionless . . . then a wave of revulsion sent every nerve in her body to screaming.

She struggled and pulled away from him, scrambling quickly to her feet; her eyes burned with shock and shame. "How dare you," she stammered, "how dare you!"

Chedan's mouth dropped open in stupefaction. He raised himself, slowly, and his voice was remorseful. "Deoris, sweet, did I frighten you?" he whispered, and held out his arms.

She jerked away from him with an incongruous little jump. "Don't touch me!"

He was still kneeling on the edge of the bed; now he rose to his feet, slowly and a little bewildered. "Deoris, I don't understand. What have I done? I am sorry. Please, don't look at me like that," he begged, dismayed and shamed, and angry with himself for a reckless, precipitous fool. He touched her shoulder softly. "Deoris, you're not crying? Don't, please—I'm sorry, sweet. Come back to bed. I promise, I won't touch you again. See, I'll swear it." He added, puzzled. "But I had not thought you so unwilling."

She was crying now, loud shocked sobs. "Go away," she wept, "go away!"

"Deoris!" Chedan's voice, still uncertain, cracked into falsetto. "Stop crying like that. Somebody will hear you, you silly girl! I'm not going to touch you, ever, unless you want me to! Why, what in the world did you think I was going to do? I never raped anyone in my life and I certainly wouldn't begin with you! Now stop that, Deoris, stop that!" He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her slightly, "If someone hears you, they'll . . ."

Her voice was high and hysterical. "Go away! Just go away, away!"

Chedan's hands dropped, and his cheeks flamed with wrathful pride. "Fine, I'm going," he said curtly, and the door slammed behind him.

Deoris, shaking with nervous chill, crept to her bed and dragged the sheet over her head. She was ashamed and unhappy and her loneliness was like a physical presence in the room. Even Chedan's presence would have been a comfort.

Restless, she got out of bed and wandered about the room. What had happened? One moment she had been contented, lying in his arms and feeling some emptiness within her heart solaced and filled by his closeness—and in the next instant, a fury of revolt had swept through her whole body. Yet for years she and Chedan had been moving, slowly and inexorably, toward such a moment. Probably everyone in the Temple believed they were already lovers! Why, faced with the prospect itself, had she exploded into this storm of passionate refusal?

Obeying a causeless impulse, she drew a light cape over her night-dress, and went out on the lawn. The dew was cold on her bare feet, but the night air felt moist and pleasant on her hot face. She moved into the moonlight, and the man who was slowly pacing up the path caught his breath, in sharp satisfaction.

"Deoris," Riveda said.

She whirled in terror, and for an instant the Adept thought she would flee; then she recognized his voice, and a long sigh fluttered between her lips.

"Riveda! I was frightened . . . itis you?"

"None other," he laughed, and came toward her, his big lean body making a blackness against the stars, his robes shimmering like frost; he seemed to gather the darkness about himself and pour it forth again. She put out a small hand, confidingly, toward his; he took it.

"Why, Deoris, your feet are bare! What brought you to me like this? Not that I am displeased," he added.

She lowered her eyes, returning awareness and shame touching her whole body. "To—you?" she asked, rebellious.

"You always come to me," Riveda said. It was not a statement made in pride, but a casual statement of fact; as if he had said,the sun rises to the East. "You must know by now that I am the end of all your paths—you must know that now as I have known it for a long time. Deoris, will you come with me?"

And Deoris heard herself say, "Of course," and realized that the decision had been made long ago. She whispered, "But where? Where are we going?"

Riveda gazed at her in silence for a moment. "To the Crypt where the God sleeps," he said at length.

She caught her hands against her throat. Sacrilege this, for a Daughter of Light—she knew this, now. And when last she had accompanied Riveda to the Grey Temple, the consequences had been frightening. Yet Riveda—he said, and she believed him—had not been responsible for what had happened then.What had happened then . . . she fought to remember, but it was fogged in her mind. She whispered, "Must I—?" and her voice broke.

Riveda's hands fell to his sides, releasing her.

"All Gods past, present, and future forbid that I should ever constrain you, Deoris."

Had he commanded, had he pleaded, had he spoken a word of persuasion, Deoris would have fled. But before his silent face she could only say, gravely, "I will come."

"Come, then." Riveda took her shoulder lightly in his hand, turning her toward the pyramid. "I took you tonight to the summit; now I will show you the depths. That, too, is a Mystery." He put his hand on her arm, but the touch was altogether impersonal. "Look to your steps, the hill is dangerous in the dark," he cautioned.

She went beside him, docile; he stopped for a moment, turned to her, and his arm moved; but she pulled away, panicky with denial.

"So?" Riveda mused, almost inaudibly. "I have had my question answered without asking."

"What do you mean?"

"You really don't know?" Riveda laughed shortly, unamused. "Well, you shall learn that, too, perhaps; but at your own will, always at your own will. Remember that. The summit—and the depths. You shall see."

He led her on toward the raised square of darkness.

II

Steps—uncounted, interminable steps—wound down, down, endlessly, into dim gloom. The filtered light cast no shadows. Cold, stone steps, as grey as the light; and the soft pad of her bare feet followed her in echoes that re-echoed forever. Her breathing sounded with harsh sibilance, and seemed to creep after her with the echoes, hounding at her heels. She forced herself on, one hand thrusting at the wall. . . . Her going had the feeling of flight, although her feet refused to change their tempo, and the echoes had a steady insistence, like heartbeats.

Another turn; more steps. The grayness curled around them, and Deoris shivered with a chill not born altogether of the dank cold. She waded in grey fog beside grey-robed Riveda, and the fear of closed places squeezed her throat; the knowledge of her sacrilege knifed her mind.

Down and down, through eternities of aching effort.

Her nerves screamed at her to run, run, but the quicksand cold dragged her almost to a standstill. Abruptly the steps came to an end. Another turn led into a vast, vaulted chamber, pallidly lighted with flickering greyness. Deoris advanced with timid steps into the catacomb and stood frozen.

She could not know that the simulacrum of the Sleeping God revealed itself to each seeker in different fashion. She knew only this: Long and long ago, beyond the short memory of mankind, the Light had triumphed, and reigned now supreme in the Sun. But in the everlasting cycles of time—so even the Priests of Light conceded—the reign of the Sun must end, and the Light should emerge back into Dyaus, the Unrevealed God, the Sleeper . . . and he would burst his chains and rule in a vast, chaotic Night.

Before her strained eyes she beheld, seated beneath his carven bird of stone, the image of the Man with Crossed Hands . . .

She wanted to scream aloud; but the screams died in her throat. She advanced slowly, Riveda's words fresh in her mind; and before the wavering Image, she knelt in homage.

III

At last she rose, cold and cramped, to see Riveda standing nearby, the cowl thrown back from his massive head, his silvered hair shining like an aureole in the pale light. His face was lighted with a rare smile.

"You have courage," he said quietly. "There will be other tests; but for now, it is enough." Unbending, he stood beside her before the great Image, looking up toward what was, to him, an erect image, faceless, formidable, stern but not terrible, a power restricted but not bound. Wondering how Deoris saw the Avatar, he laid a light hand on her wrist, and with a moment of Vision, he caught a brief glimpse in which the God seemed to flow and change and assume, for an instant, the figure of a seated man with hands crossed upon his breast. Riveda shook his head slightly, with a dismissing gesture, and, tightening his grasp upon the girl's wrist, he led her through an archway into a series of curiously furnished rooms which opened out from the great Crypt.

This underground maze was a Mystery forbidden to most of the Temple folk. Even the members of the Grey-robe sect, though their Order and their ritual served and guarded the Unrevealed God, came here but rarely.

Riveda himself did not know the full extent of these caverns. He had never tried to explore more than a little way into the incredible labyrinth of what must, once, have been a vast underground temple in daily use. It honeycombed the entire land beneath the Temple of Light; Riveda could not even guess when or by whom these great underground passages and apartments had been constructed, or for what purpose.

It was rumored that the hidden sect of Black-robes used these forbidden precincts for their secret practice of sorcery; but although Riveda had often wished to seek them out, capture them and try

them for their crimes, he had neither the time nor the resources to explore the maze more than little way. Once, indeed, on the Nadir-night when someone unsanctioned—Black-robes or others—had sought to draw down the awesome thunder-voiced powers of the Lords of Ahtarrath and of the Sea Kingdoms, Riveda had come into these caverns; and there, on that ill-fated night, he had found seven dead men, lying blasted and withered within their black robes, their hands curled and blackened and charred as with fire, their faces unrecognizable, charred skulls. But the dead could neither be questioned nor punished; and when he sought to explore further into the labyrinthine mazes of the underground Temple, he had quickly become lost; it had taken him hours of weary wandering to find his way back to this point, and he had not dared it again. He could not explore it alone, and there was, as yet, no one he could trust to aid him. Perhaps now . . . but he cut off the thought, calling years of discipline to his aid. That time had not come. Perhaps it would never come.

He led Deoris into one of the nearer rooms. It was furnished sparsely, in a style ancient beyond belief, and lighted dimly with one of the ever-burning lamps whose secret still puzzled the Priests of Light. In the flickering, dancing illumination, furniture and walls were embellished with ancient and cryptic symbols which Riveda was grateful the girl could not read. He himself had learned their meaning but lately, after much toil and study, and even his glacial composure had been shaken by the obscenity of their meaning.

"Sit here beside me," he bade her, and she obeyed like a child. Behind them the chela ghosted like a wraith through the doorway and stood with empty, unseeing eyes. Riveda leaned forward, his head in his hands, and she looked upon him, a little curious but trusting.

"Deoris," he said at last, "there is much a man can never know. Women like you have certain— awarenesses, which no man may gain; or gain only under the sure guidance of such a woman." He paused, his cold eyes pensive as they met hers. "Such a woman must have courage, and strength, and knowledge, and insight. You are very young, Deoris, you have much to learn but more than ever I believe you could be such a woman." Once again he paused, that pause that gave such a powerful emphasis to his words. His voice deepened as he said, "I am not young, Deoris, and perhaps I have no right to ask this of you, but you are the first I have felt I could trust—or follow." His eyes had flickered away from hers as he said this; now he looked again directly into her face. "Would you consent to this? Will you let me lead you and teach you, and guide you to awareness of that strength within you, so that some day you might guide me along that pathway where no man can walk alone, and where only a woman may lead?"

Deoris clasped her hands at her breast, sure that the Adept could hear the pounding of her heart. She felt dazed, sick and weightless with panic—but more, she felt the true emptiness of any other life. She felt a wild impulse to scream, to burst into shattering, hysterical laughter, but she forced her rebellious lips to speak and obey her. "I will, if you think I am strong enough," she whispered, and then emotion choked her with the clamor of her adoration for this man. It was all she desired, all she ever desired, that she might be closer to him, closer than Acolyte or chela, closer than any woman might ever be—but she trembled at the knowledge of what she committed herself to; she had some slight knowledge of the bonds the Grey-robes put on their women. She would be—close—to Riveda. What was he like, beneath that cynical, derisive mask he wore? The mask had slipped a little, tonight—

Riveda's mouth moved a little, as if he struggled with strong emotion. His voice was hushed, almost gentle for once. "Deoris," he said, then smiled faintly, "I cannot call you my Acolyte—the bonds of that relationship are fixed, and what I wish lies outside those bonds. You understand this?"

"I—think so."

"For a time—I impose obedience on you—and surrender. There must be complete knowledge of one another, and—" He released her hand, and looked at the girl, with the slight, stern pause that gave emphasis to his words, "—and complete intimacy."

"I—know," Deoris said, trying to make her voice steady. "I accept that, too."

Riveda nodded, in curt acknowledgement, as if he took no especial notice of her words—but Deoris sensed that he was unsure of himself now; and, in truth, Riveda was unsure, to the point of fear. He was afraid to snap, by some incautious word or movement, the spell of fascination he had, almost without meaning to, woven around the girl. Did she really understand what he demanded of her? He could not guess.

Then, with a movement that startled the Adept, Deoris slid to her knees before him, bending her head in surrender so absolute that Riveda felt his throat tighten with an emotion long unfamiliar.

He drew her forward, gently raising her, until she stood within the circle of his arms. His voice was husky: "I told you once that I am not a good man to trust. But Deoris, may the Gods deal with me as I deal with you!"

And the words were an oath more solemn than her own.

The last remnant of her fear quickened in a protest that was half-instinctive as his hands tightened on her, then died. She felt herself lifted clear of the floor, and cried out in astonishment at the strength in his hands. She was hardly conscious of movement, but she knew that he had laid her down and was bending over her, his head a dark silhouette against the light; she remembered, more than saw, the cruel set of his jaw, the intent strained line of his mouth. His eyes were as cold as the northern light, and as remote.

No one—certainly not Chedan—had ever touched her like this, no one had ever touched her except gently, and she sobbed in an instant of final, spasmodic terror.Domaris —Chedan—the Man with Crossed Hands—Micon's death-mask—these images reeled in her mind in the short second before she felt the roughness of his face against hers, and his strong and sensitive hands moving at the fastenings of her nightdress. Then there was only the dim dancing light, and the shadow of an image—and Riveda.

The chela, muttering witlessly, crouched upon the stone floor until dawn.

Chapter Five WORDS

I

Beneath a trellised arbor of vines, near the House of the Twelve, lay a deep clear pool which was known as the Mirror of Reflection. Tradition held that once an oracle had stood here; and even now some believed that in moments of soul-stress the answer one's heart or mind most sought might be mirrored in the limpid waters, if the watcher had eyes to see.

Deoris, lying listlessly under the leaves, gazed into the pool in bitter rebellion. Reaction had set in; with it came fear. She had done sacrilege; betrayed Caste and Gods. She felt dreary and deserted, and the faint stab of pain in her body was like the echo and shadow of a hurt already half forgotten. Sharper than the memory of pain was a vague shame and wonder.

She had given herself to Riveda in a dreamy exaltation, not as a maiden to her lover, but in a surrender as complete as the surrender of a victim on the altar of a god. And he had taken her— the thought came unbidden—as a hierophant conducting an Acolyte into a sacred secret; not passion, but a mystical initiatory rite, all-encompassing in its effect on her.

Reviewing her own emotions, Deoris wondered at them. The physical act was not important, but

close association with Domaris had made Deoris keenly conscious of her own motives, and she had been taught that it was shameful to give herself except in love. Did she love Riveda? Did he love her? Deoris did not know—and she was never to have more assurance than she had had already.

Even now she did not know whether his mystical and cruel initiatory passion had been ardent, or merely brutal.

For the time, Riveda had blotted out all else in her thoughts—and that fact accounted for the greater part of Deoris's shame. She had counted on her own ability to keep her emotions aloof from his domination of her body.Still, she told herself sternly,Imust discipline myself to accept complete dominance; the possession of my body was only a means to that end —the surrender of my will to his.

With all her heart, she longed to follow the path of psychic accomplishment which Riveda had outlined to her. She knew now that she had always desired it; she had even resented Micon because he had tried to hold her back. As for Rajasta—well, Rajasta had taught Domaris, and she could see the result ofthat !

She did not hear the approaching steps—for Riveda could move as noiselessly as a cat when he chose—until he bent and, with a single flexing of muscular arms, picked her up and set her on her feet.

"Well, Deoris? Do you consult the Oracle for your fate or mine?"

But she was unyielding in his arms, and after a moment he released her, puzzled.

"What is it, Deoris? Why are you angry with me?"

The last flicker of her body's resentment flared up. "I do not like to be mauled like that!"

Ceremoniously, the Adept inclined his head. "Forgive me. I shall remember."

"Oh, Riveda!" She flung her arms about him then, burrowing her head into the rough stuff of his robes, gripping him with a desperate dread. "Riveda, I am afraid!"

His arms tightened around her for a moment, strong, almost passionate. Then, with a certain sternness, he disengaged her clinging clasp. "Be not foolish, Deoris," he admonished. "You are no child, nor do I wish to treat you as one. Remember—I do not admire weakness in women. Leave that for the pretty wives in the back courts of the Temple of Light!"

Stung, Deoris lifted her chin. "Then we have both had a lesson today!"

Riveda stared at her a moment, then laughed aloud. "Indeed!" he exclaimed. "That is more like it. Well then. I have come to take you to the Grey Temple." As she hung back a little, he smiled and touched her cheek. "You need not fear—the foul sorcerer who threw you into illusion that

previous time has been exorcized; ask, if you dare, what befell him! Be assured, no one will dare to meddle with the mind of my chosen novice!"

Reassured, she followed him, and he continued, abridging his long stride to correspond with her steps, "You have seen one of our ceremonies, as an outsider. Now you shall see the rest. Our Temple is mostly a place of experiment, where each man works separately, as he will, to develop his own powers."

Deoris could understand this, for in the Priest's Caste great emphasis was placed on selfperfection. But she wondered for what sins the Magicians strove. . . .

He answered her unspoken question. "For absolute self-mastery, first of all; the body and mind must be harnessed and brought into subjugation by—certain disciplines. Then each man works alone, to master sound, or color, or light, or animate things—whatever he chooses—with the powers inherent in his own body and mind. We call ourselves Magicians, but there is no magic; there is only vibration. When a man can attune his body to any vibration, when he can master the vibrations of sound so that rock bursts asunder, or think one color into another, that is not magic. He who masters himself, masters the Universe."

As they passed beneath the great archway which spanned the bronze doors of the Grey Temple, he motioned to her to precede him; the bodiless voice challenged in unknown syllables, and Riveda called back. As they stepped through the doors, he added, in an undertone, "I will teach you the words of admission, Deoris, so that you will have access here even in my absence."

II

The great dim room seemed more vast than before, being nearly empty. Instinctively, Deoris looked for the niche where she had seen the Man with Crossed Hands—but the recess in the wall was hidden with grey veils Nevertheless she recalled another shrine, deep in the bowels of the earth, and could not control a shudder.

Riveda said in her ear, "Know you why the Temple is grey, why we wear grey?"

She shook her head, voiceless.

"Because," he went on, "color is in itself vibration, each color having a vibration of its own. Grey allows vibration to be transmitted freely, without the interference of color. Moreover, black absorbs light into itself, and white reflects light and augments it; grey does neither, it merely permits the true quality of the light to be seen as it is." He fell silent again, and Deoris wondered if his words had been symbolic as well as scientific.

In one corner of the enormous chamber, five young chelas were grouped in a circle, standing in rigidly unnatural poses and intoning, one by one, sounds that made Deoris's head ache. Riveda listened for a moment, then said, "Wait here. I want to speak to them."

She stood motionless, watching as he approached the chelas and spoke to them, vehemently but

in a voice pitched so low she could not distinguish a word. She looked around the Temple.

She had heard horrible tales about this place—tales of self-torture, thesaji women, licentious rites—but there was nothing fearful here. At a little distance from the group of chelas, three young girls sat watching, all three younger than Deoris, with loose short hair, their immature bodies saffron-veiled and girdled with silver. They sat cross-legged, looking weirdly graceful and relaxed.

Deoris knew that thesaji were recruited mostly from the outcastes, the nameless children born unacknowledged, who were put out on the city wall to die of exposure—or be found by the dealers in girl slaves. Like all the Priest's Caste, Deoris believed that thesaji were harlots or worse, that they were used in rituals whose extent was limited only by the imagination of the teller. But these girls did not look especially vicious or degenerate. Two, in fact, were extremely lovely; the third had a hare-lip which marred her young face, but her body was dainty and graceful as a dancer's. They talked among themselves in low chirping tones, and they all used their hands a great deal as they spoke, with delicately expressive gestures that bespoke long training.

Looking away from thesaji girls, Deoris saw the woman Adept she had seen before. From Karahama she had heard this woman's name:Maleina. In the Grey-robe sect she stood second only to Riveda, but it was said that Riveda and Maleina were bitter enemies for some reason still unknown to Deoris.

Today, the cowl was thrown back from Maleina's head; her hair, previously concealed, was flaming red. Her face was sharp and gaunt, with a strange, ascetic, fine-boned beauty. She sat motionless on the stone floor. Not an eyelash flickered, nor a hair stirred. In her cupped hands she held something bright which flickered light and dark, light and dark, as regularly as a heartbeat; it was the only thing about her that seemed to live.

Not far away, a man clad only in a loincloth stood gravely on his head. Deoris had to stifle an uncontrollable impulse to giggle, but the man's thin face was absolutely serious.

And not five feet from Deoris, a little boy about seven years old was lying on his back, gazing at the vaulted ceiling, breathing with deep, slow regularity. He did not seem to be doing anything except breathing; he was so relaxed that it made Deoris sleepy to look at him, although his eyes were wide-open and clearly alert. He did not appear to move a single muscle . . . After several minutes, Deoris realized that his head was several inches off the floor. Fascinated, she continued to watch until he was sitting bolt upright, and yet at no instant had she actually seen the fraction of an inch's movement, or seen him flex a single muscle. Abruptly, the little boy shook himself like a puppy and, bounding to his feet, grinned widely at Deoris, a gamin, little boyish grin very much at variance with the perfect control he had been exercising. Only then did Deoris recognize him: the silver-gilt hair, the pointed features were those of Demira. This was Karahama's younger child, Demira's brother.

Casually, the little boy walked toward the group of chelas where Riveda was still lecturing. The Adept had pulled his grey cowl over his head and was holding a large bronze gong suspended in

midair. One by one, each of the five chelas intoned a curious syllable; each made the gong vibrate faintly, and one made it emit a most peculiar ringing sound. Riveda nodded, then handed the gong to one of the boys, and turning toward it, spoke a single deep-throated syllable.

The gong began to vibrate; then clamored a long, loud brazen note as if struck repeatedly by a bar of steel. Again Riveda uttered the bass syllable; again came the gong's metallic threnody. As the chelas stared, Riveda laughed, flung back his cowl and walked away, pausing a moment to put his hand on the small boy's head and ask him some low-voiced questions Deoris could not hear.

The Adept returned to Deoris. "Well, have you seen enough?" he asked, and drew her along until they were in the grey corridor. Many, many doors lined the hallway, and at the centers of several of them a ghostly light flickered. "Never enter a room where a light is showing," Riveda murmured; "it means someone is within who does not wish to be disturbed—or someone it would be dangerous to disturb. I will teach you the sound that causes the light; you will need to practice uninterrupted sometimes."

Finding an unlighted door, Riveda opened it with the utterance of an oddly unhuman syllable, which he taught her to speak, making her repeat it again and again until she caught the double pitch of it, and mastered the trick of making her voice ring in both registers at once. Deoris had been taught singing, of course, but she now began to realize how very much she still had to learn about sound. She was used to the simple-sung tones which produced light in the Library, and other places in the Temple precincts, butthis —!

Riveda laughed at her perplexity. "These are not used in the Temple of Light in these days of decadence," he said, "for only a few can master them. In the old days, an Adept would bring his chela here and leave him enclosed in one of these cells—to starve or suffocate if he could not speak the word that would free him. And so they assured that no unfit person lived to pass on his inferiority or stupidity. But now—" He shrugged and smiled. "I would never have brought you here, if I did not believe you could learn."

She finally managed to approximate the sound which opened the door of solid stone, but as it swung wide, Deoris faltered on the threshold. "This—this room," she whispered, "it is horrible!"

He smiled, noncommittally. "All unknown things are fearful to those who do not understand them. This room has been used for the initiation ofsaji while their power is being developed. You are sensitive, and sense the emotions that have been experienced here. Do not be afraid, it will soon be dispelled."

Deoris raised her hands to her throat, to touch the crystal amulet there; it felt comfortingly familiar.

Riveda saw, but misinterpreted the gesture, and with a sudden softening of his harsh face he drew her to him. "Be not afraid," he said gently, "even though I seem at times to forget your presence. Sometimes my meditations take me deep into my mind, where no one else can reach. And also—I have been long alone, and I am not used to the presence of—one like you. The

women I have known—and there have been many, Deoris—have beensaji, or they have been— just women. While you, you are . . ." He fell silent, gazing at her intently, as if he would absorb her every feature into him.

Deoris was, at first, only surprised, for she had never before known Riveda to be so obviously at a loss for words. She felt her whole identity softening, pliant in his hands. A flood of emotion overwhelmed her and she began softly to cry.

With a gentleness she had never known he possessed, Riveda took her to him, deliberately, not smiling now. "You are altogether beautiful," he said, and the simplicity of the words gave them meaning and tenderness all but unimaginable. "You are made of silk and fire."

III

Deoris was to treasure those words secretly in her heart during the many bleak months that followed, for Riveda's moods of gentleness were more rare than diamonds, and days of surly remoteness inevitably followed. She was to gather such rare moments like jewels on the chain of her inarticulate and childlike love, and guard them dearly, her only precious comfort in a life that left her heart solitary and yearning, even while her questing mind found satisfaction.

Riveda, of course, took immediate steps to regularize her position in regard to himself. Deoris, who had been born into the Priest's Caste, could not formally be received into the Grey-robe sect; also she was an apprenticed Priestess of Caratra and had obligations there. The latter obstacle

Riveda disposed of quite easily, in a few words with the High Initiates of Caratra. Deoris, he told them, had already mastered skills far beyond her years in the Temple of Birth; he suggested it might be well for her to work exclusively among the Healers for a time, until her competence in all such arts equalled her knowledge of midwifery. To this the Priestesses were glad to agree; they were proud of Deoris, and it pleased them that she had attracted the attention of a Healer of such skill as Riveda.

So Deoris was legitimately admitted into the Order of Healers, as even a Priest of Light might be, and recognized there as Riveda's novice.

Soon after this, Domaris fell ill. In spite of every precaution she went into premature labor and, almost three months too soon, gave painful birth to a girl child who never drew breath. Domaris herself nearly died, and this time, Mother Ysouda, who had attended her, made the warning unmistakable: Domaris must never attempt to bear another child.

Domaris thanked the old woman for her counsel, listened obediently to her advice, accepted the protective runes and spells given her, and kept enigmatic silence. She grieved long hours in secret for the baby she had lost, all the more bitterly because she had not really wanted this child at all. . . . She was privately certain that her lack of love for Arvath had somehow frustrated her child's life. She knew the conviction to be an absurd one, but she could not dismiss it from her mind.

She recovered her strength with maddening slowness. Deoris had been spared to nurse her, but

their old intimacy was gone almost beyond recall. Domaris lay silent for hours, quiet and sad, tears sliding weakly down her white face, often holding Micail with a hungry tenderness. Deoris, though she tended her sister with an exquisite competence, seemed abstracted and dreamy. Her absentmindedness puzzled and irritated Domaris, who had protested vigorously against allowing Deoris to work with Riveda in the first place but had only succeeded in alienating her sister more completely.

Only once Domaris tried to restore their old closeness. Micail had fallen asleep in her arms, and Deoris bent to take him, for the heavy child rolled about and kicked in his sleep, and Domaris still could not endure careless handling. She smiled up into the younger girl's face and said, "Ah, Deoris, you are so sweet with Micail, I cannot wait to see you with a child of your own in your arms!"

Deoris started and almost dropped Micail before she realized Domaris had spoken more or less at random; but she could not keep back her own overflowing bitterness. "I would rather die!" she flung at Domaris out of her disturbed heart.

Domaris looked up reproachfully, her lips trembling. "Oh, my sister, you should not say such wicked things—"

Deoris threw the words at her like a curse: "On the day I know myself with child, Domaris, I will throw myself into the sea!"

Domaris cried out in pain, as if her sister had struck her—but although Deoris instantly flung herself to her knees beside Domaris, imploring pardon for her thoughtless words, Domaris said no more; nor did she again speak to Deoris except with cool, reserved formality. It was many years before the impact of those wounding, bitter words left her heart.

Chapter Six CHILDREN OF THE UNREVEALED GOD

I

Within the Grey Temple, the Magicians were dispersing. Deoris, standing alone, dizzy and lightheaded after the frightening rites, felt a light touch upon her arm and looked down into Demira's elfin face.

"Did not Riveda tell you? You are to come with me. The Ritual forbids that they speak to, or touch, a woman for a night and a day after this ceremony; and you must not leave the enclosure until sundown tomorrow." Demira slipped her hand confidently into Deoris's arm and Deoris, too bewildered to protest, went with her. Riveda had told her this much, yes; sometimes a chela who had been in the Ring suffered curious delusions, and they must remain where someone could be summoned to minister to them. But she had expected to remain near Riveda. Above all, she had

not expected Demira.

"Riveda told me to look after you," Demira said pertly, and Deoris recalled tardily that the Greyrobes observed no caste laws. She went acquiescently with Demira, who immediately began to bubble over, "I have thought about you so much, Deoris! The Priestess Domaris is your sister, is she not? She is so beautiful! You are pretty, too," she added as an afterthought.

Deoris flushed, thinking secretly that Demira was the loveliest little creature she had ever seen. She was very fair, all the same shade of silvery gold: the long straight hair, her lashes and level brows, even the splash of gilt freckles across her pale face. Even Demira's eyes looked silver, although in a different light they might have been grey, or even blue. Her voice was very soft and light and sweet, and she moved with the heedless grace of a blown feather and just as irresponsibly.

She squeezed Deoris's fingers excitedly and said, "You were frightened, weren't you? I was watching, and I felt so sorry for you."

Deoris did not answer, but this did not seem to disturb Demira at all. Of course, Deoris thought, she is probably used to being ignored! The Magicians and Adepts are not the most talkative people in the world!

The cold moonlight played on them like sea-spray, and other women, singly and in little groups surrounded them on the path. But no one spoke to them. Several of the women, indeed, came up

to greet Demira, but something—perhaps only the childlike way the two walked, hand in hand— prevented them. Or perhaps they recognized Deoris as Riveda's novice, and that fact made them a little nervous. Deoris had noted something of the sort on other occasions.

They passed into an enclosed court where a fountain spouted cool silver into a wide oval pool. All around, sheltering trees, silvery black, concealed all but the merest strips of the star-dusted sky. The air was scented with many flowers.

Opening on this court were literally dozens of tiny rooms, hardly more than cubicles, and into one of these Demira led her. Deoris glanced round fearfully. She wasn't used to such small, dim rooms, and felt as if the walls were squeezing inward, suffocating her. An old woman, crouched on a pallet in the corner, got wheezily to her feet and shuffled toward them.

"Take off your sandals," Demira said in a reproving whisper, and Deoris, surprised, bent to comply. The old woman, with an indignant snort, took them and set them outside the door.

Once more Deoris peered around the little room. It was furnished sparsely with a low, rather narrow bed covered with gauzy canopies, a brazier of metal that looked incredibly ancient, an old carved chest, and a divan with a few embroidered cushions; that was all.

Demira noted her scrutiny and said proudly, "Oh, some of the others have nothing but a straw pallet, they live in stone cells and practice austerities like the young priests, but the Grey Temple does not force such things on anyone, and I do not care. Well, you will know that later. Come

along, we must bathe before we sleep; and you've been in the Ring! There are some things—I'll show you what to do." Demira turned to the old woman suddenly and stamped her foot. "Don't stand there staring at us! I can't stand it!"

The crone cackled like a hen. "And who is this one, my missy? One of Maleina's little pretties who grows lonely when the woman has gone to the rites with—" She broke off and ducked, with surprising nimbleness, as one of Demira's sandals came flying at her head.

Demira stamped her bare foot again furiously. "Hold your tongue, you ugly witch!"

The old woman's cackling only grew louder. "She's sure too old for the Priests to take in and—"

"I said hold your tongue!" Demira flew at the old woman and cuffed her angrily. "I will tell Maleina what you have said about her and she will have you crucified!"

"What Icould say about Maleina," the old witch mumbled, unhumbled, "would make little missy turn to one big blush forever—if she has not already lost that talent here!" Abruptly she grasped Demira's shoulders in her withered claws and held the girl firmly for an instant, until the angry light faded from Demira's colorless eyes. Giggling, the girl slid free of the crone's hands.

"Get us something to eat, then take yourself off," Demira said carelessly, and as the hag hustled away she sank down languidly on the divan, smiling at Deoris. "Don't listen to her, she's old and half-witted, but phew! she should be more careful, what Maleina would do if she heard her!" The

light laughter bubbled up again. "I'd not want to be the one to mock Maleina, no, not even in the deepest chambers of the labyrinth! She might strike me with a spell so I walked blind for three days, as she did to the priest Nadastor when he laid lewd hands on her." Suddenly she leaped to her feet and went to Deoris, who still stood as if frozen. "You look as if struck with a spell yourself!" she laughed; then, sobering, she said kindly, "I know you are afraid, we are all afraid at first. You should have seen me staring about and squalling like a legless cat when they first brought me here, five years ago! No one will hurt you, Deoris, no matter what you have heard of us! Don't be afraid. Come to the pool."

II

Around the edge of the great stone basin, women lounged, talking and splashing in the fountain. A few seemed preoccupied and solitary, but the majority were chirping about as heedlessly and sociably as a flock of winter sparrows. Deoris peered at them with frightened curiosity, and all the horror-tales of thesaji flooded back into her mind.

They were a heterogenous group: some of the brown-skinned pygmy slave race, a few fair, plump and yellow-haired like the commoners of the city, and a very few like Deoris herself—tall and light-skinned, with the silky black or reddish curls of the Priest's Caste. Yet even here Demira stood out as unusual.

They were all immodestly stripped, but that was nothing new to Deoris except for the careless mingling of castes. Some wore curious girdles or pectorals on their young bodies, engraved with

symbols that looked vaguely obscene to the still relatively innocent Deoris; one or two were tattooed with even older symbols, and the scraps of conversation which she caught were incredibly frank and shameless. One girl, a darker beauty with something about her eyes that reminded Deoris of traders from Kei-Lin, glanced at Deoris as she shyly divested herself of the saffron veils Riveda had asked her to wear, then asked Demira an indecent question which made Deoris want to sink through the earth; suddenly she realized what the old slave woman had meant by her taunts.

Demira only murmured an amused negative, while Deoris stared, wanting to cry, not understanding that she was simply being teased in the traditional fashion for all newcomers.Why did Riveda throw me in with these —these harlots! Who are they to mock me?She set her lips proudly, but she felt more like bursting into tears.

Demira, ignoring the teasing, bent over the edge of the pool and, dipping up water in her palms, with murmured words, began swiftly to go through a stylized and conventional ritual of purification, touching lips and breasts, in a ritual so formalized that the symbols had all but lost their original form and meaning, and done swiftly, as if from habit. Once finished, however, she led Deoris to the water and in an undertone explained the symbolic gestures.

Deoris cut her short in surprise: it was similar in form to the purification ceremonies imposed on a Priestess of Caratra—but the Grey-robe version seemed an adaptation so stylized that Demira herself did not seem to understand the meaning of the words and gestures involved. Still, the similarity did a great deal to reassure Deoris. The symbolism of the Grey-robe ceremonies was

strongly sexual, and now Deoris understood even more. She went through the brief lustral rite with a thoroughness that somehow calmed and assuaged her feeling of defilement.

Demira looked on with respect, struck into a brief gravity by the evident deep meaning Deoris gave to what was, for Demira, a mere form repeated because it was required.

"Let's go back at once," Demira said, once Deoris had finished. "You were in the Ring, and that can exhaust you terribly. I know." With eyes too wise for her innocent-seeming face, she studied Deoris. "The first time I was in the Ring, I did not recover my strength for days. They took me out tonight because Riveda was there."

Deoris eyed the child curiously as the old slave woman came and wrapped Demira in a sheetlike robe; enveloped Deoris in another. Had not Riveda himself flung Demira out of the Ring, that first time, that faraway and disastrous visit to the Grey Temple?What has Riveda to do with this nameless brat? She felt almost sick with jealousy.

III

Demira smiled, a malicious, quirky smile as they came back into the bare little room. "Oho, now I know why Riveda begged me to look after you! Little innocent Priestess of Light, you are not the first with Riveda, nor will you be the last," she murmured in a mocking sing-song. Deoris angrily pulled away, but the child caught her coaxingly and hugged her close with an astonishing strength—her spindly little body seemed made of steel springs. "Deoris, Deoris," she crooned,

smiling, "be not jealous of me! Why, I am of all women theone forbidden Riveda! Little silly! Has Karahama never told you that I am Riveda's daughter?"

Deoris, unable to speak, looked at Demira with new eyes—and now she saw the resemblance: the same fair hair and strange eyes; that impalpable, indefinable alienness.

"That is why I am placed so that I may never come near him in the rites," Demira went on. "He is a Northman of Zaiadan, and you know how they regard incest—or do you?"

Deoris nodded, slowly, understanding. It was well known that Riveda's countrymen not only avoided their sisters, but even their half-sisters, and she had heard it said that they even refused to marry their cousins, though Deoris found this last almost beyond belief.

"And with the symbols there—oh!" Demira bubbled on confidingly, "It has not been easy for Riveda to be so scrupulous!"

As the old woman dressed them and brought them food—fruits and bread, but no milk, cheese, or butter—Demira continued, "Yes, I am daughter to the great Adept and Master Magician Riveda! Or at least it pleases him to claim me, unofficially, for Karahama will almost never admit she knows my father's name . . . she wassaji too, after all, and I am a child of ritual." Demira's eyes were mournful. "And now she is Priestess of Caratra! I wish—I wish . . ." She checked herself and went on swiftly, "I shamed her, I think, by being born nameless, and she does not love me. She would have had me exposed on the city wall, there to die or be found by

the old women who deal in girl-brats, but Riveda took me the day I was born and gave me to Maleina; and when I was ten, they made mesaji. "

"Ten!" Deoris repeated, shocked despite her resolve not to be.

Demira giggled, with one of her volatile shifts of mood. "Oh, they tell some awful stories about us, don't they? At least wesaji know everything that goes on in the Temple! More than some of your Guardians! We knew about the Atlantean Prince, but we did not tell. We never tell but a particle of what we know! Why should we? We are only theno people, and who would listen to us but ourselves, and we can hardly surprise one another any more. But I know," she said, casually but with a mischievous glance, "who threw the Illusion on you, when you first came to the Grey Temple." She bit into a fruit and chewed, watching Deoris out of the corner of her eye.

Deoris stared at her, frozen, afraid to ask but half desperate to know, even as she dreaded the knowledge.

"It was Craith—a Black-robe. They wanted Domaris killed. Not because of Talkannon, of course."

"Talkannon?" Deoris whispered in mute shock. What had her father to do with this?

Demira shrugged and looked away nervously. "Words, words, all of it—only words. I'm glad you didn't kill Domaris, though!"

Deoris was by now utterly aghast. "You know all this?" she said, and her voice was an unrecognizable, rasping whisper in her own ears.

Whatever slight malice had motivated Demira, it was vanished now. She put out a tiny hand and slipped it into Deoris's nerveless one. "Oh, Deoris, when I was only a little girl I used to steal into Talkannon's gardens and peep at you and Domaris from behind the bushes! Domaris is so beautiful, like a Goddess, and she loved you so much—how I used to wish I were you! I think—I think if Domaris ever spoke kindly to me—or at all!—I would die of joy!" Her voice was lonely and wistful, and Deoris, more moved than she knew, drew the blonde head down on her shoulder.

Tossing her feathery hair, Demira shook off the moment of soberness. The gleam came back to her eyes as she went on, "So I wasn't sorry for Craith at all! You don't know what Riveda was like before that, Deoris—he was just quiet and scholarly and didn't come among us for months at a time—but that turned him into a devil! He found out what Craith had done and accused him of meddling with your mind, and of a crime against a pregnant girl." She glanced quickly at Deoris and added, in explanation, "Among the Grey-robes, you know, that is the highest of crimes."

"In the Temple of Light, too, Demira."

"At least they have some sense!" Demira exclaimed.

"Well, Riveda said, 'These Guardians let their victims off too easily!' And then he had Craith scourged—whipped almost to death before he ever delivered him over to the Guardians. When they met to judge him, I slipped a grey smock over mysaji dress, and went with Maleina—" She gave Deoris another wary little glance. "Maleina is an Initiate of some high order, I know not what, but none can deny her anywhere, I think she could walk into the chapel of Caratra and draw dirty pictures on the wall if she wanted to, and no one would dare to do anything! It was Maleina, you know, who freed Karahama from her bondage and arranged for her to enter the Mother's Temple. . . ." Demira shuddered suddenly. "But I was speaking of Craith. They judged him and condemned him to death; Rajasta was terrible! He held the mercy-dagger, but did not give it to Craith. And so they burned him alive to avenge Domaris—and Micon!"

Trembling, Deoris covered her face with her hands.Into what world have I, by my own act, come?

IV

But the world of the Grey Temple was soon familiar to Deoris. She continued, occasionally, to serve in the House of Birth, but most of her time was spent now among the Healers, and she soon began to think of herself almost exclusively as a Grey-robe priestess.

She was not accepted among them very soon, however, or without bitter conflict. Although Riveda was their highest Adept, the titular head of their Order, his protection hindered more than helped her. In spite of his surface cordiality, Riveda was not a popular man among his own sect;

he was withdrawn and remote, disliked by many and feared by all, especially the women. His stern discipline was over-harsh; the touch of his cynical tongue missed no one, and his arrogance alienated all but the most fanatic.

Of the whole Order of Healers and Magicians, only Demira, perhaps, really loved him. To be sure, others revered him, respected him, feared him—and heartily avoided him when they could. To Demira, however, Riveda showed careless kindness—entirely devoid of paternal affection, but still the closest to it that the motherless and fatherless child had ever known. In return, Demira gave him a curious worshipping hate, that was about the deepest emotion she ever wasted on anything.

In the same mixed way, she championed Deoris among thesaji. She quarrelled constantly and bitterly with Deoris herself, but would permit no one else to speak a disrespectful word. Since everyone was afraid of Demira's unpredictable temper and her wild rages—she was quite capable of choking a girl breathless or of clawing at her eyes in one of these blind fits of fury—Deoris won a sort of uneasy tolerance. Also, for some reason, Deoris became very fond of Demira in quite a short time, though she realized that the girl was incapable of any very deep emotion, and that it would be safer to trust a striking cobra than the volatile Demira at her worst.

Riveda neither encouraged nor disparaged this friendship. He kept Deoris near him when he could, but his duties were many and varied, and there were times when the Ritual of his Order forbade this; Deoris began to spend more and more time in the curious half-world of thesaji women.

She soon discovered that thesaji were not shunned and scorned without good reason. And yet, as Deoris came to know them better, she found them pathetic rather than contemptible. A few even won her deep respect and admiration, for they had strange powers, and these had not been lightly won.

Once, off-handedly, Riveda had told Deoris that she could learn much from thesaji, although she herself was not to be given thesaji training.

Asked why, he had responded, "You are too old, for one thing. Asaji is chosen before maturity. And you are being trained for quite a different purpose. And—and in any case I would not risk it for you, even if I were to be your sole initiator. One in every four . . ." He broke off and shrugged, dismissing the subject; and Deoris recalled, with a start of horror, the tales of madness.

Thesaji, she knew now, were not ordinary harlots. In certain rituals they gave their bodies to the priests, but it was by rite and convention, under conditions far more strict, although very different, than the codes of more honored societies. Deoris never understood these conventions completely, for on this one subject Demira was reticent, and Deoris did not press her for details. In fact, she felt she would rather not be too certain of them.

This much Demira did tell her: in certain grades of initiation, a magician who sought to develop control over the more complex nervous and involuntary reactions of his body must practice certain rites with a woman who was clairvoyantly aware of these psychic nerve centers; who

knew how to receive and return the subtle flow of psychic energy.

So much Deoris could understand, for she herself was being taught awareness like these magicians, and in much the same way. Riveda was an Adept, and his own mastery was complete; his full awareness worked like a catalytic force in Deoris, awakening clairvoyant powers in her mind and body. She and Riveda were physically intimate—but it was a strange and almost impersonal intimacy. Through the use of controlled and ritualistic sex, a catalyst in its effects on her nerves, he was awakening latent forces in her body, which in turn reacted on her mind.

Deoris underwent this training in full maturity, safeguarded by his concern for her, guarded also by his insistence on discipline, moderation, careful understanding and lengthy evaluation of every experience and sensation. Her early training as a Priestess of Caratra, too, had played no small part in her awakening; had prepared her for the balanced and stable acquisition of these powers. How much less and more this was than the training of asaji, she learned from Demira.

Sajiwere, indeed, chosen when young—sometimes as early as in their sixth year—and trained in one direction and for one purpose: the precocious and premature development along psychic lines.

It was not entirely sexual; in fact, that came last in their training, as they neared maturity. Still, the symbolism of the Grey-robes ran like a fiercely phallic undercurrent through all their training. First came the stimulation of their young minds, and excitement of their brains and spirits, as they were subjected to richly personal spiritual experiences which would have

challenged a mature Adept. Music, too, and its laws of vibration and polarity, played a part in their training. And while these seeds of conflict flourished in the rich soil of their untrained minds—for they were purposely kept in a state little removed from ignorance—various emotions and, later, physical passions were skillfully and precociously roused in their still-immature minds and bodies. Body, mind, emotion, and spirit—all were roused and kept keyed to a perpetual pitch, restless, over-sensitized to a degree beyond bearing for many. The balance was delicate, violent, a potential of suppressed nervous energy.

When the child so trained reached adolescence, she becamesaji. Literally overnight, the maturing of her body freed the suppressed dynamic forces. With terrifying abruptness the latent potentials became awareness in all the body's reflex centers; a sort of secondary brain, clairvoyant, instinctive, entirely psychic, erupted into being in the complicated nerve ganglions which held the vital psychic centers: the throat, solar plexus, womb.

The Adepts, too, had this kind of awareness, but they were braced for the shock by the slow struggle for self-mastery, by discipline, careful austerities, and complete understanding. In thesaji girls it was achieved by violence, and through the effort of others. The balance, such as it was, was forced and unnatural. One girl in four, when she reached puberty, went into raving madness and died in convulsive nerve spasms. The sudden awakening was an inconceivable thing, referred to, among those who had crossed it, asThe Black Threshold. Few crossed that threshold entirely sane. None survived it unmarred.

Demira was a little different from the others; she had been trained not by a priest, but by the

woman Adept Maleina. Deoris was to learn, in time, something of the special problems confronting a woman who travelled the Magician's path, and to discount as untrue most of the tales told of Maleina—untrue because imagination can never quite keep pace with a truth so fantastic.

The other girls trained by Maleina had exploded, at puberty, into a convulsive madness which soon lapsed into drooling, staring idiocy . . . but Demira, to everyone's surprise, had crossed The Black Threshold not only sane, but relatively stable. She had suffered the usual agonies, and the days of focusless delirium—but she had awakened sane, alert, and quite her normal self . . . on the surface.

She had not escaped entirely unscathed. The days of that fearful torment had made of her a fey thing set apart from ordinary womanhood. Close contact with Maleina, as well—and Deoris learned this only slowly, as the complexity of human psychic awareness, in its complicated psycho-chemical nervous currents, became clear to her—had partially reversed, in Demira, the flow of the life currents. Deoris saw traces of this return each month, as the moon waned and dwindled: Demira would grow silent, her volatile playfulness disappear; she would sit and brood, her catlike eyes veiled, and sometimes she would explode into unprovoked furies; other times she would only creep away like a sick animal and curl up in voiceless, inhuman torture. No one dared go near Demira at such times; only Maleina could calm the child into some semblance of reason. At such times, Maleina's face held a look so dreadful that men and women scattered before her; a haunted look, as if she were torn by some emotion which no one of lesser awareness could fathom.

Deoris, with the background of her intuitive knowledge, and what she had learned in the Temple of Caratra about the complexity of a woman's body, eventually learned to foresee and to cope with, and sometimes prevent these terrible outbursts; she began to assume responsibility for Demira, and sometimes could ward off or lighten those terrible days for the little girl—for Demira was not yet twelve years old when Deoris entered the Temple. She was hardened and precocious, a pitifully wise child—but for all that, only a child; a strange and often suffering little girl. And Deoris warmed to this little girl in a way that was eventually to prove disastrous for them all.

Chapter Seven THE MERCY OF CARATRA

I

A young girl of thesaji, whom Deoris knew very slightly, had absented herself for many weeks from the rituals, and it finally became evident that she was pregnant. This was an exceedingly rare occurrence, for it was believed that the crossing of The Black Threshold so blighted thesaji that the Mother withdrew from their spirit. Deoris, aware of the extremely ritualistic nature of the sexual rites of the Grey-robes, had become a bit more skeptical of this explanation.

It was a fact, however, that thesaji women—alone in the whole social structure of the Templecity—served not Caratra's temple; nor could they claim the privilege granted even to slaves and prostitutes—to bear their children within the Temple of Birth.

Outlawed from the rites of Caratra, thesaji had to rely on the good graces of the women around them, or their slaves, or—in dire extremity—some Healer-priest who might take pity on them. But even to thesaji, a man at a childbed was fearful disgrace; they preferred the clumsier ministrations of a slave.

The girl had a difficult time; Deoris heard her cries most of the night. Deoris had been in the Ring, she was exhausted and wanted to sleep, and the tortured moaning, interspersed with hoarse screams, rubbed her nerves raw. The other girls, half fascinated and half horrified, talked in frightened whispers—and Deoris listened, thinking guiltily of the skill Karahama had praised.

At last, maddened and exasperated by the tormented screaming, and the thought of the clumsy treatment thesaji girl must be getting, Deoris managed to gain access to the room. She knew she risked terrible defilement—but had not Karahama herself beensaji once?

By a combination of coaxing and bullying, Deoris managed to get rid of the others who had bungled the business, and after an hour of savage effort she delivered a living child, even contriving to correct some of the harm already done by the ignorant slave-women. She made the girl swear not to tell who had attended her, but somehow, either through the insulted and foolish

talk of the slaves, or those invisible undercurrents which run deep and intractable within any large and closely-knit community, the secret leaked out.

When next Deoris went to the Temple of Caratra, she found herself denied admission; worse, she was confined and questioned endlessly about what she had done. After a day and a night spent in solitary confinement, during which time Deoris worked herself almost into hysteria, she was sternly informed that her case must be handled by the Guardians.

Word had reached Rajasta of what had happened. His first reaction had been disgust and shock, but he had rejected several plans which occurred to him, and many that were suggested; nor did Deoris ever become aware of what she so narrowly avoided. The most logical thing was to inform Riveda, for he was not only an Adept of the Grey-robe sect but Deoris's personal initiator, and could be relied upon to take appropriate action. This idea, too, Rajasta dismissed without a second thought.

Domaris was also a Guardian, and Rajasta might reasonably have referred the matter to her, but he knew that Domaris and Deoris were no longer friendly, and that such a thing might easily have done far more harm than good. In the end, he called Deoris into his own presence, and after talking to her gently of other matters for a little while, he asked why she had chanced such a serious violation of the laws of Caratra's Temple.

Deoris stammered her answer: "Because—because I could not bear her suffering. We are taught that at such a time all women are one. It might have been Domaris! I mean . . ."

Rajasta's eyes were compassionate. "My child, I can understand that. But why do you think the priestesses of Caratra's Temple are guarded with such care? They work among the women of the Temple and the entire city. A woman in childbirth is vulnerable, sensitive to the slightest psychic disturbance. Whatever bodily danger there may be to her is not nearly so grave as this; her mind and spirit are open to great harm. Not long ago, Domaris lost her child in great suffering. Would you expose others to such misery?"

Deoris stared mutely at the flagstoned floor.

"You yourself are guarded when you go among thesaji ,Deoris," said Rajasta, sensing her mood. "But you attended asaji woman at her most vulnerable moment—and had thatnot been discovered,any pregnant girl you attended would have lost her child!"

Deoris gasped, horrified but still half disbelieving.

"My poor girl," said Rajasta gently, shaking his head slowly. "Such things are generally not known; but the laws of the Temple are not mere superstitious prohibitions, Deoris! Which is why the Adepts and Guardians do not permit young Novices and Acolytes to use their own ignorant judgment; for you know not how to protect yourself from carrying contamination—and I do not mean physical contamination, but something far, far worse: a contamination of the life currents themselves!"

Deoris pressed her fingers over her trembling mouth and did not speak.

Rajasta, moved in spite of himself by her submission—for he had not looked forward to this interview, thinking back upon her younger days—went on, "Still, perhaps they were to blame who did not warn you. And as there was no malice in your infraction of the law, I am going to recommend that you not be expelled from Caratra's Temple, but only suspended for two years." He paused. "You yourself ran great danger, my child. I still think you are somewhat too sensitive for the Magician's Order, but—"

Passionately, Deoris interrupted, "So I am always to deny aid to a woman who needs it? To refuse the knowledge taught to me—to a sister woman—because of caste? Is that the mercy of Caratra? For lack of my skill a woman must scream herself to death?"

With a sigh, Rajasta took her small shaking hands into his own and held them. A memory of Micon came to him, and softened his reply. "My little one, there are those who forsake the paths of Light, to aid those who walk in darkness. If such a path of mercy is your karma, may you be strong in walking it—for you will need strength to defy the simple laws made for ordinary men and women. Deoris, Deoris! I do not condemn, yet I cannot condone, either. I only guard, that the forces of evil may not touch the sons and daughters of Light. Do what you must, little daughter. You are sensitive—but make that your servant, not your master. Learn to guard yourself, lest you carry harm to others." He laid one hand gently on her curls for a moment. "May you err always on the side of mercy! In your years of penance, my child, you can turn this weakness into your strength."

They sat in silence a few moments, Rajasta gazing tenderly on the woman before him, for he knew, now, that Deoris was a child no longer. Sadness and regret mingled with a strange pride in him then, and he thought again of the name she had been given: Adsartha, child of the Warrior Star.

"Now go," he said gently, when at last she raised her head. "Come not again into my presence until your penance is accomplished." And, unknown to her as she turned away, Rajasta traced a symbol of blessing in the air between them, for he felt that she would need such blessings.

II

As Deoris, miserable and yet secretly a little pleased, went slowly along the pathway leading down toward the Grey Temple, a soft, deep contralto voice came at her from nowhere, murmuring her name. The girl raised her eyes, but saw no one. Then there seemed a little stirring and shimmering in the air, and suddenly the woman Maleina stood before her. She might have only stepped from the shrubbery that lined the path, but Deoris believed, then and always, that she had simply appeared out of thin air.

The deep, vibrant voice said, "In the name of Ni-Terat, whom you call Caratra, I would speak with you."

Timidly, Deoris bent her head. She was more afraid of this woman than of Rajasta, Riveda, or

any priest or priestess in the entire world of the Temple precincts. Almost inaudibly, she whispered, "What is your will, O Priestess?"

"My lovely child, be not afraid," said Maleina quickly. "Have they forbidden you the Temple of Caratra?"

Hesitantly, Deoris raised her eyes. "Ihave been suspended for two years."

Maleina took a deep breath, and there was a jewel-like glint in her eyes as she said, "I shall not forget this."

Deoris blinked, uncomprehending.

"I was born in Atlantis," Maleina said then, "where the Magicians are held in more honor than here. I like not these new laws which have all but prohibited magic." The Grey-robed woman paused again, and then asked, "Deoris—what are you to Riveda?"

Deoris's throat squeezed under that compelling stare, forbidding speech.

"Listen, my dear," Maleina went on, "the Grey Temple is no place for you. In Atlantis, one such as you would be honored; here, you will be shamed and disgraced—not this time alone, but again and again. Go back, my child! Go back to the world of your fathers, while there is still time. Complete your penance and return to the Temple of Caratra, while there is still time!"

Tardily, Deoris found her voice and her pride. "By what right do you command me thus?"

"I do not command," Maleina said, rather sadly. "I speak—as to a friend, one who has done me a great service. Semalis—the girl you aided without thought of penalty—she was a pupil of mine, and I love her. And I know what you have done for Demira." She laughed, a low, abrupt, and rather mournful sound. "No, Deoris, it was not I who betrayed you to the Guardians—but I would have, had I thought it would bring sense into your stubborn little head! Deoris,look at me. "

Unable to speak, Deoris did as she was told.

After a moment, Maleina turned away her compelling gaze, saying gently, "No, I would not hypnotize you. I only want you to see what I am, child."

Deoris studied Maleina intently. The Atlantean woman was tall and very thin, and her long smooth hair, uncovered, flamed above a darkly-bronzed face. Her long slim hands were crossed on her breast, like the hands of a beautiful statue; but the delicately molded face was drawn and haggard, the body beneath the grey robe was flat-breasted, spare and oddly shapeless, and there was a little sag of age in the poised shoulders. Suddenly Deoris saw white strands, cunningly combed, threading the bright hair.

"I too began my life in Caratra's Temple," Maleina said gravely, "and now when it is too late, I

would I had never looked beyond. Go back, Deoris, before it is too late. I am an old woman, and I know of what I warn you. Would you see your womanhood sapped before it has fully wakened in you? Deoris, know youyet what I am? You have seen what I have brought on Demira! Go back, child."

Fighting not to cry, her throat too tight for speech, Deoris lowered her head.

The long thin hands touched her head lightly. "You cannot," Maleina murmured sadly, "can you? Is it already too late? Poor child!"

When Deoris could look up again, the sorceress was gone.

Chapter Eight THE CRYSTAL SPHERE

I

Now, sometimes, for days at a time, Deoris never left the enclosure of the Grey Temple. It was a lazy and hedonistic life, this world of the Grey-robe women, and Deoris found herself dreamily enjoying it. She spent much of her time with Demira, sleeping, bathing in the pool, chattering

idly and endlessly—sometimes childish nonsense, sometimes oddly serious and mature talk. Demira had a quick, though largely neglected intelligence, and Deoris delighted in teaching her many of the things she herself had learned as a child. They romped with the little-boy chelas who were too young for life in the men's courts, and listened avidly—and surreptitiously—to the talk of the older priestesses and more experiencedsaji; talk that often outraged the innocent Deoris, reared among the Priesthood of Light. Demira took a wicked delight in explaining the more cryptic allusions to Deoris, who was first shocked, then fascinated.

She got on well, all told, with Riveda's daughter. They were both young, both far too mature for their years, both forced into a rebellious awareness by tactics—though Deoris never realized this—almost equally unnatural.

She and Domaris were almost strangers now; they met rarely, and with constraint. Nor, strangely enough, had her intimacy with Riveda progressed much further; he treated Deoris almost as impersonally as Micon had, and rarely as gently.

Life in the Grey Temple was largely nocturnal. For Deoris these were nights of strange lessons, at first meaningless; words and chants of which the exact intonation must be mastered, gestures to be practiced with almost mechanical, mathematical precision. Occasionally, with a faintly humoring air, Riveda would set Deoris some slight task as his scribe; and he often took her with him outside the walls of the Temple precincts, for although he was scholar and Adept, the role of Healer was still predominant in Riveda. Under his tuition, Deoris developed a skill almost worthy of her teacher. She also became an expert hypnotist: at times, when a broken limb was to

be splinted, or a deep wound opened and cleansed, Riveda would call upon her to hold the patient in deep, tranced sleep, so that he could work slowly and thoroughly.

He had not often allowed her to enter the Chela's Ring. He gave no reason, but she found it easy to guess at one: Riveda did not intend that any man of the Grey-robes should have the slightest excuse for approaching Deoris. This puzzled the girl; no one could have been less like a lover, but he exercised over her a certain jealous possessiveness, tempered just enough with menace that Deoris never felt tempted to brave his anger.

In fact, she never understood Riveda, nor caught a glimmering of the reasons behind his shifting moods—for he was changeable as the sky in raintime. For days at a time he would be gentle, even lover-like. These days were Deoris's greatest joy; her adoration, however edged with fear, was too innocent to have merged completely into passion—but she came close to truly loving him when he was like this, direct and simple, with the plainness of his peasant forefathers. . . . Still, she could never take him for granted. Overnight, with a change of personality so complete that it amounted to sorcery, it would become remote, sarcastic, as icy to her as to any ordinary chela. In these moods he rarely touched her, but when he did, ordinary brutality would have seemed a lover's caress; and she learned to avoid him when such a mood had taken him.

Nevertheless, on the whole, Deoris was happy. The idle life left her mind—and it was a keen and well-trained mind—free to concentrate on the strange things he taught her. Time drifted, on slow feet, until a year had gone by, and then another year.

II

Sometimes Deoris wondered why she had never had even the hope of a child by Riveda. She asked him why more than once. His answer was sometimes derisive laughter, or a flare of exasperated annoyance, occasionally a silent caress and a distant smile.

She was almost nineteen when his insistence on ritual gesture, sound, and intonation, grew exacting—almost fanatical. He had re-trained her voice himself, until it had tremendous range and an incredible flexibility; and Deoris was beginning, now, to grasp something of the significance and power of sound: words that stirred sleeping consciousness, gestures that wakened dormant senses and memories . . .

One night, toward the low end of the year, he brought her to the Grey Temple. The room lay deserted beneath its cold light, the grayness burning dimly like frost around the stone walls and floors. The air was flat and fresh and still, soundless and insulated from reality. At their heels the chela Reio-ta crept, a voiceless ghost in his grey robes, his yellow face a corpse-like mask in the icy light. Deoris, shivering in thin saffron veils, crouched behind a pillar, listening fearfully to Riveda's terse, incisive commands. His voice had dropped from tenor to resonant baritone, and Deoris knew and recognized this as the first storm-warning of the hurricane loose in his soul.

Now he turned to Deoris, and placed between her trembling hands a round, silvery sphere in which coiled lights moved sluggishly. He cupped the fingers of her left hand around it, and motioned her to her place within the mosaicked sign cut into the floor of the Temple. In his own

hand was a silvered metal rod; he extended it toward the chela, but at its touch Reio-ta made a curious, inarticulate sound, and his hand, outstretched to receive it, jerked convulsively and refused to take the thing, as if his hand bore no relation to its owner's will. Riveda, with an exasperated shrug, retained it, motioning the chela to the third position.

They were standing by then in a precise triangle, Deoris with the shining sphere cradled in her raised hand, the chela braced defensively as if he held an uplifted sword. There was something defensive in Riveda's own attitude; he was not sure of his own motives. It was partly curiosity that had led him to this trial, but mainly a desire to test his own powers, and those of this girl he had trained—and those of the stranger, whose mind was still a closed book to Riveda.

With a slight shrug, the Adept shifted his own position somewhat, completing a certain pattern of space between them . . . instantly he felt an almost electric tension spring into being. Deoris moved the sphere a very little; the chela altered the position of only one hand.

The patterned triangle was complete!

Deoris began a low crooning, a chant, less sung than intoned, less intoned than spoken, but musical, rising and falling in rhythmic cadences. At the first note of the chant, the chela sprang to life. A start of recognition leaped in his eyes, although he did not move the fraction of an inch.

The chant went into a weird minor melody; stopped. Deoris bent her head and slowly, with a beautiful grace and economy of motion, her balanced gestures betraying her arduous practices,

sank to her knees, raising the crystal sphere between her hands. Riveda elevated the rod . . . and the chela bent forward, automatic gestures animating his hands, so slowly, like something learned in childhood and forgotten.

The pattern of figures and sound altered subtly; changed. Amber lights and shadows drifted in the crystal sphere.

Riveda began to intone long phrases that rose and fell with a sonorous, pulsating rhythm; Deoris added her voice in subtle counterpoint. The chela, his eyes aware and alert for the first time, his motions automatic, like the jerky gestures of a puppet, was still silent. Riveda, tautly concentrated on his own part in the ritual, flickered only the corner of a glance at him.

Would he remember enough? Would the stimulus of the familiar ritual—and that it was familiar to him, the Adept had no doubts—be sufficient to waken what was dormant in the chela's memory? Riveda was gambling that Reio-ta actually possessed the secret.

The electric tension grew, throbbed with the resonance of sound in the high and vaulted archway overhead. The sphere glowed, became nearly transparent at the surface to reveal the play of coiled and jagged flickers of color; darkened; glowed again.

The chela's lips opened. He wet them, convulsively, his eyes haunted prisoners in the waxen face. Then he was chanting too, in a hoarse and gasping voice, as if his very brain trembled with the effort, rocking in its cage of bone.

No,Deoris reflected secretly, with the scrap of her consciousness not entirely submerged in the ceremonial,this rite is not new to him.

Riveda had gambled, and won. Two parts of this ritual were common knowledge, known to all; but Reio-ta knew the third and hidden part, which made it an invocation of potent power. Knew it—and, forced by Riveda's dominant will and the stimulus of the familiar chant on his beclouded mind, was using it—openly!

Deoris felt a little tingle of exultation. They had broken through an ancient wall of secrecy, they were hearing and witnessing what no one but the highest Initiates of a certain almost legendary secret sect had ever seen or heard—and then only under the most solemn pledges of silence until death!

She felt the magical tension deepen, felt her body prickling with it and her mind being wedged open to accept it. The chela's voice and movements were clearer now, as memory flooded back into his mind and body. The chela dominated now: his voice was clear and precise, his gestures assured, perfect. Behind the mask of his face his eyes lived and burned. The chant rushed on, bearing Deoris and Riveda along on its crest like two straws in a seething torrent.

Lightning flickered within the sphere; flamed out from the rod Riveda held. A vibrant force throbbed between the triangled bodies, an almost visible pulsing of power that brightened, darkened, spasmodically. Lightning flared above them; thunder snapped the air apart in a

tremendous crashing.

Riveda's body arched backward, rigid as a pillar, and sudden terror flooded through Deoris. The chela was beingforced to do this—this secret and sacred thing! And for what? It was sacrilege— it was black blasphemy—somehow it must be stopped! Somehow she must stop it—but it was no longer in her power even to stop herself. Her voice disobeyed her, her body was frozen, the restless sweep of tyrant power bore them all along.

The unbearable chanting slowly deepened to a single long Word—a Word no one throat could encompass, a Word needing three blended voices to transform it from a harmless grouping of syllables into a dynamic rhythm of space-twisting power. Deoris felt it on her tongue, felt it tearing at her throat, vibrating the bones of her skull as if to tear them to scattering atoms . . .

Red-hot fire lashed out with lightning shock. White whips of flame splayed out as the Word thundered on, and on, and on . . . Deoris shrieked in blind anguish and pitched forward, writhing. Riveda leaped forward, snatching her to him with a ferocious protectiveness; but the rod clung to his fingers, twisting with a life of its own, as if it had grown to the flesh there. The pattern was broken, but the fire played on about them, pallid, searing, uncontrollable; a potent spell unleashed only to turn on its blasphemers.

The chela, frozenly, was sinking, as if forced down by intense pressure. His waxen face convulsed as his knees buckled beneath him, and then he jumped forward, clutching at Deoris. With a savage yell, Riveda lashed out with the rod to ward him away, but with the sudden

strength of a madman, Reio-ta struck the Adept hard in the face, narrowly avoiding the crackling nimbus of the rod. Riveda fell back, half-conscious; and Reio-ta, moving through the darting lights and flames as if they were no more than reflections in a glass, caught Deoris's chewed hands in his own and tore the sphere from them. Then, turning, he gave the staggering Riveda another swift blow and wrenched the rod from him, and with a single long, low, keening cry, struck rod and sphere together, then wrenched them apart and flung them viciously into separate ends of the room.

The sphere shattered. Harmless fragments of crystal patterned the stone tiles. The rod gave a final crackle, and darkened. The lightning died.

Reio-ta straightened and faced Riveda. His voice was low, furious—and sane. "You filthy, damned, black sorcerer!"

III

The air was void and empty, cold grey again. Only a faint trace of ozone hovered. Silence prevailed, save for Deoris's voice, moaning in delirious agony, and the heavy breathing of the chela. Riveda held the girl cradled across his knees, though his own shaking, seared hands hung limply from his wrists. The Adept's face had gone bone-white and his eyes were blazing as if the lightning had entered into them.

"I will kill you for that someday, Reio-ta."

The chela, his dark face livid with pain and rage, stared down darkly at the Adept and the insensible girl. His voice was almost too low for hearing. "You have killed me already, Riveda— and yourself."

But Riveda had already forgotten Reio-ta's existence. Deoris whimpered softly, unconsciously, making little clawing gestures at her breast as he let her gently down onto the cold stone floor. Carefully Riveda loosened the scorched veils, working awkwardly with the tips of his own injured hands. Even his hardened Healer's eyes contracted with horror at what he saw—then her moans died out; Deoris sighed and went limp and slack against the floor, and for a heart-stopping instant Riveda was sure that she was dead.

Reio-ta was standing very still now, shaken by fine tremors, his head bent and his mind evidently on the narrow horizon between continued sanity and a relapse into utter vacuity.

Riveda flung his head up to meet those darkly condemning eyes with his own compelling stare. Then the Adept made a brief, imperative gesture, and Reio-ta bent and lifted Deoris into Riveda's outstretched arms. She lay like a dead weight against his shoulder, and the Adept set his teeth as he turned and bore her from the Temple.

And behind him, the only man who had ever cursed Riveda and lived followed the Adept meekly, muttering to himself as idiots will . . . but there was a secret spark deep in his eyes that had not been there before.

Chapter Nine THE DIFFERENCE

I

For the first two years of their marriage, Arvath had deceived himself into believing that he could make Domaris forget Micon. He had been kind and forbearing, trying to understand her inward struggle, conscious of her bravery, tender after the loss of their child.

Domaris was not versed in pretense, and in the last year a tension had mounted between them despite all their efforts. Arvath was not entirely blameless, either; no man can quite forgive a woman who remains utterly untouched by emotion.

Still, in all outward things, Domaris made him a good wife. She was beautiful, modest, conventional, and submissive; she was the daughter of a highly-placed priest and was herself a priestess. She managed their home well, if indifferently, and when she realized that he resented her small son, she arranged to keep Micail out of Arvath's sight. When they were alone, she was compliant, affectionate, even tender. Passionate she was not, and would not pretend.

Frequently, he saw a curious pity in her grey eyes—and pity was the one thing Arvath would not endure. It stung him into jealous, angry scenes of endless recrimination, and he sometimes felt that if she would but once answer him hotly, if she would ever protest, they would at least have some place for a beginning. But her answers were always the same; silence, or a quiet, halfshamed murmur—"I am sorry, Arvath. I told you it would be like this."

And Arvath would curse in frustrated anger, and look at her with something approaching hate, and storm out to walk the Temple precincts alone and muttering for hour after hour. Had she ever refused him anything, had she ever reproached him, he might in time have forgiven her; but her indifference was worse, a complete withdrawal to some secret place where he could not follow. She simply was not there in the room with him at all.

"I'd rather you made a cuckold of me in the court with a garden slave, where everyone could see!" he shouted at her once, in furious frustration. "At least then I could kill the man, and be satisfied!"

"Wouldthat satisfy you?" she asked gently, as if she only awaited his word to pursue exactly the course of action he had outlined; and Arvath felt the hot bitter taste of hate in his mouth and slammed out of the room with fumbling steps, realizing sickly that if he stayed he would kill her, then and there.

Later he wondered if she were trying to goad him to do just that. . . .

He found that he could break through her indifference with cruelty, and he even began to take a certain pleasure in hurting her, feeling that her hot words and her hatred were better than the indifferent tolerance which was the most his tenderness had ever won. He came to abuse her shamefully, in fact, and at last Domaris, hurt past enduring, threatened to complain to the Vested Five.

"You will complain!" Arvath jeered. "Then I will complain, and the Vested Five will throw us out to settle it ourselves!"

Bitterly, Domaris asked, "Have I ever refused you anything?"

"You've never done anything else, you . . ." The word he used was one which had no written form, and hearing it from a member of the Priest's Caste made Domaris want to faint with sheer shame. Arvath, seeing her turn white, went on pouring out similar abuse with savage enjoyment. "Of course I shouldn't talk this way, you're an Initiate," he sneered. "You know the Temple secrets—one of which allows you to deliberately refuse to conceive my child!" He made a little mocking bow. "All the while protesting your innocence, of course, as befits one so elevated."

The injustice of this—for Domaris had hidden Mother Ysouda's warning in her heart and forgotten her counsel as soon as it was given—stung her into unusual denial. "You lie!" she said shakily, raising her voice to him for the first time. "You lie, and you know you lie! I don't know why the Gods have denied us children, butmy child bears my name—and the name of his father!"

Arvath, raging, advanced to loom over her threateningly. "I don't see what that has to do with it! Except that you thought more of that Atlantean swine-prince than of me! Don't you think I know that you yourself frustrated the life of the child you almost gave me? And all because of that— that . . ." He swallowed, unable to speak, and caught her thin shoulders in his hands, roughly dragging her to her feet. "Damn you, tell me the truth! Admit what I say is true or I will kill you!"

She let herself go limp between his hands. "Kill me, then," she said wearily. "Kill me at once, and make an end of this."

Arvath mistook her trembling for fear; genuinely frightened, he lowered her gently, releasing her from his harsh clasp. "No, I didn't mean it," he said contritely; then his face crumpled and he flung himself to his knees before her, throwing his arms around her waist and burying his head in her breast. "Domaris, forgive me, forgive me, I did not mean to lay rough hands on you! Domaris, Domaris, Domaris . . ." He kept on saying her name over and over in incoherent misery, sobbing, the tight terrible crying of a man lost and bewildered.

The woman leaned over him at last, clasping him close, her eyes dark with heartbroken pity, and she, too, wept as she rocked his head against her breast. Her whole body, her heart, her very being ached with the wish that she could love him.

II

Later, full of dread and bitter conflict, she was tempted to speak at last of Mother Ysouda's warnings; but even if he believed her—if it did not start the whole awful argument over again— the thought that he might pity her was intolerable. And so she said nothing of it.

Shyly, wanting fatherly advice and comfort, she went to Rajasta, but as she talked with him, she began to blame herself: it had not been Arvath who was cruel, but she who shirked sworn duty. Rajasta, watching her face as she spoke, could find no comfort to offer, for he did not doubt that Domaris had made a deliberate display of her passivity, flaunted her lack of emotion in the man's face. What wonder if Arvath resented such an assault on his manhood? Domaris obviously did not enjoy her martyrdom; but, equally certainly, she took a perverse satisfaction in it. Her face was drawn with shame, but a soft light glowed in her eyes, and Rajasta recognized the signs of a self-made martyr all too easily.

"Domaris," he said sadly, "do not hate even yourself, my daughter." He checked her reply with a raised hand. "I know, you make the gestures of your duty. But are youhis wife, Domaris?"

"What do you mean?" Domaris whispered; but her face revealed her suspicions.

"It is not I who ask this of you," said Rajasta, relentlessly, "but you who demand it of yourself, if you are to live with yourself. If your conscience were clean, my daughter, you would not have come to me! I know what you have given Arvath, and at what cost;but what have you withheld? " Pausing, he saw that she was stricken, unable to meet his gaze. "My child, do not resent that I give you the counsel which you, yourself, know to be right." He reached to her and picked up

one of her tautly clenched and almost bloodlessly white hands in his own and stroked it gently, until her fingers relaxed a little. "You are like this hand of yours, Domaris. You clasp the past too tightly, and so turn the knife in your own wounds. Let go, Domaris!"

"I—I cannot," she whispered.

"Nor can you will yourself to die any more, my child. It is too late for that."

"Is it?" she asked, with a strange smile.

III

Rajasta's heart ached for Domaris; her stilled, bitter smile haunted him day after day, and at last he came to see things more as she did, and realized that he had been remiss. In his innermost self he knew that Domaris was widowed; she had been wife in the truest sense to Micon, and she would never be more than mistress to Arvath. Rajasta had never asked, but heknew that she had gone to Micon as a virgin. Her marriage to Arvath had been a travesty, a mockery, a weary duty, a defilement—and for nothing.

One morning, in the library, unable to concentrate, Rajasta thought in sudden misery, It is my doing. Deoris warned me that Domaris should not have another child, and I said nothing of it! I could have stopped them from forcing her into marriage. Instead I have sanctimoniously crushed the life from the girl who was child to me in my childless old age—the daughter of my own soul.

I have sent my daughter into the place of harlots! And my own light is darkened in her shame.

Throwing aside the scroll he had ineffectually been perusing, Rajasta rose up and went in search of Domaris, intending to promise that her marriage should be dissolved; that he would move heaven and earth to have it set aside.

He told her nothing of the kind—for before he could speak a word she told him, with a strange, secret, and not unhappy smile, that once again she was bearing Arvath a child.

Chapter Ten IN THE LABYRINTH

I

Failure was, of all things, the most hateful to Riveda. Now he faced failure; and a common chela, his own chela, in fact, had had the audacity to protect him! The fact that Reio-ta's intervention had saved all their lives made no difference to Riveda's festering hate.

All three had suffered. Reio-ta had escaped most lightly, with blistering burns across shoulders and arms; easily treated, easily explained away. Riveda's hands were seared to the bone—

maimed, he thought grimly, for life. But thedorje lightning had struck Deoris first with its searing lash; her shoulders, arms, and sides were blistered and scorched, and across her breasts the whips of fire had eaten deep, leaving their unmistakable pattern—a cruel sigil stamped with the brand of the blasphemous fire.

Riveda, with his almost-useless hands, did what he could. He loved the girl as deeply as it was in his nature to love anyone, and the need for secrecy maddened him, for he knew himself incapable now of caring for her properly; he lacked the proper remedies, lacked—with his hands maimed—the skill to use them. But he dared not seek assistance. The Priests of Light, seeing the color and the fearful form of her wounds, would know instantly what had made them—and then swift, sure, and incontrovertible, punishment would strike. Even his own Grey-robes could not be trusted in this; not even they would dare to conceal any such hideous tampering with the forces rightly locked in nature. His only chance of aid lay among the Black-robes; and if Deoris were to live, he must take that chance. Without care, she might not survive another night.

With Reio-ta's assistance, he had taken her to a hidden chamber beneath the Grey Temple, but he dared not leave her there for long. To still her continual moans he had mixed a strong sedative, as strong as he dared, and forced her to swallow it; she had fallen into restless sleep, and while her fretful whimperings did not cease, the potion blurred her senses enough to dull the worst of the agony.

With a sting of guilt Riveda found himself thinking again what he had thought about Micon: Why did they not confine their hell's play to persons of no importance, or having dared so far, at

least make certain their victims did not escape to carry tales?

He would have let Reio-ta die without compunction. As Prince of Ahtarrath, he had been legally dead for years; and what was one crazy chela more or less? Deoris, however, was the daughter of a powerful priest; her death would mean full and merciless investigation. Talkannon was not one to be trifled with, and Rajasta would almost certainly suspect Riveda first of all.

The Adept felt some shame at his weakness, but he still would not admit, even to himself, that he loved Deoris, that she had become necessary to him. The thought of her death made a black aching within him, an ache so strong and gnawing that he forgot the agonies in his seared hands.

II

After a long, blurred nightmare when she seemed to wander through flames and lightning and shadows out of half-forgotten awful legends, Deoris opened her eyes on a curious scene.

She was lying upon a great couch of carven stone, in a heap of downy cushions. Above was fixed one of the ever-burning lamps, whose flame, leaping and wavering, made the carved figures on the rails of the couch into shapes of grotesque horror. The air was damp and rather chilly, and smelled musty, like cold stone. She wondered at first if she were dead and laid in a vault, and then became aware that she was swathed in moist, cool bandages. There was pain in her body, but it was all far away, as if that swaddled mass of bandages belonged to someone else.

She turned her head a little, with difficulty, and made out the shape of Riveda, familiar even with his back to her; and before him a man Deoris recognized with a little shiver of terror— Nadastor, a Grey-robe Adept. Middle-aged, gaunt, and ascetic in appearance, Nadastor was darkly handsome and yet forbidding. Nor was he robed now in the grey robe of a Magician, but in a long black tabard, embroidered and blazoned with strange emblems; on his head was a tall, mitered hat, and between his hands he held a slight glass rod.

Nadastor was speaking, in a low, cultured voice that reminded Deoris vaguely of Micon's: "You say she is notsaji? "

"Far from it," Riveda answered dryly. "She is Talkannon's daughter, and a Priestess."

Nadastor nodded slowly. "I see. That does make a difference. Of course, if it were mere personal sentiment, I would still say you should let her die. But . . ."

"I have made herSA#kti SidhA#na. "

"Within the restraints you have always burdened yourself with," Nadastor murmured, "you have dared much. I knew that you had a great power, of course; that was clear from the first. Were it not for the coward's restrictions imposed by the Ritual . . ."

"I am done with restraints!" Riveda said savagely. "I shall work as I, and I alone, see fit! I have not spared myself to gain this power and no one—now—shall curtail my right to use it!" He

raised his left hand, red and raw and horribly maimed, and slowly traced a gesture that made Deoris gasp despite herself. There could be no return from that; that sign, made with the left hand, was blasphemy punishable by death, even in the Grey Temple. It seemed to hang in the air between the Adepts for a moment.

Nadastor smiled. "So be it," he said. "First we must save your hands. As for the girl—"

"Nothing about the girl!" Riveda interrupted violently.

Nadastor's smile had become mockery. "For every strength, a weakness," he said, "or you would not be here. Very well, I will attend her."

Deoris suddenly felt violently sick; Riveda had mocked Micon and Domaris just that way.

"If you have taught her as you say, she is too valuable to let her womanhood be sapped and blasted by—that which has touched her." Nadastor came toward the bed; Deoris shut her eyes and lay like death as the Black-robe drew away the clumsy bandages and skillfully dressed the hurts with a touch as cold and impersonal as if he handled a stone image. Riveda stood close by throughout, and when Nadastor had ended his ministrations, Riveda knelt and stretched one heavily bandaged hand to Deoris.

"Riveda!" she whispered, weakly.

His voice was hardly any stronger as he said, "This was not failure. We shall make it success, you and I—we have invoked a great power, Deoris, and it is ours to use!"

Deoris longed only for some word of tenderness. This talk of power sickened and frightened her; she had seen that power invoked and wished only to forget it. "An—an evil power!" she managed to whisper, dry-mouthed.

He said, with the old concentrated bitterness, "Always babbling of good and evil! Must everything come in ease and beauty? Will you run away the first time you see something which is not encompassed in your pretty dreams?"

Shamed and defensive as always, she whispered, "No. Forgive me."

Riveda's voice became gentle again. "No, I should not blame you if you are fearful, my own Deoris! Your courage has never failed when there was need for it. Now, when you are so hurt, I should not make things any worse for you. Try to sleep now, Deoris. Grow strong again."

She reached toward him, sick for his touch, for some word of love or reassurance—but suddenly, with a terrifying violence, Riveda burst into a fit of raving blasphemy. He cursed, shouting, straining with an almost rabid wrath, calling down maledictions in a foul litany in which several languages seemed to mix in a pidgin horrible to hear, and Deoris, shocked and frightened beyond her limits, began to weep wildly. Riveda only stopped when his voice failed him hoarsely, and he flung himself down on the couch beside her, his face hidden, his shoulders

twitching, too exhausted to move or speak another word.

After a long time Deoris stirred painfully, curving her hand around his cheek which rested close to hers. The movement roused the man a little; he turned over wearily and looked at Deoris from wide, piteous eyes in which steaks of red showed where tiny veins had burst.

"Deoris, Deoris, what is it that I've done to you? How can I hold you to me, after this? Flee while you can, desert me if you will—I have no right to ask anything more of you!"

She tightened her clasp a little. She could not raise herself, but her voice was trembling with passion. "I gave you that right!Igo where you go! Fear or no fear. Riveda, don't you know yet that I love you?"

The bloodshot eyes flickered a little, and for the first time in many months he drew her close and kissed her, with concentrated passion, hurting her in his fierce embrace. Then, recollecting himself, he drew carefully away—but she closed her weak fingers around his right arm, just above the bandage.

"I love you," she whispered weakly. "I love you enough to defy gods and demons alike!"

Riveda's eyes, dulled with pain and sorrow, dropped shut for a moment. When he opened them, his face was once again composed, a mask of unshakable calm. "I may ask you to do just that," he said, in a low, tense voice, "but I will be just one step behind you all the way."

And Nadastor, unseen in the shadows beyond the arched door of the room, shook his head and laughed softly to himself.

III

For some time Deoris alternated between brief lucid moments and days of hellish pain and delirious, drugged nightmares. Riveda never left her side; at whatever hour she awakened, he would be there, gaunt and impassive; deep in meditation, or reading from some ancient scroll.

Nadastor came and went, and Deoris listened to all they said to one another—but her intervals of consciousness were so brief and painful at first that she never knew where reality ended and dreams began. She remembered once waking to see Riveda fondling a snake which writhed around his head like a pet kitten—but when she spoke of it days later, he stared blankly and denied it.

Nadastor treated Riveda with courtesy and respect, as an equal; but an equal whose education has been uncouthly remiss and must be remedied. After Deoris was out of danger and could stay awake for more than a few minutes undrugged, Riveda read to her—things that made her blood run cold. Now and again Riveda demonstrated his new skill with these manipulations of nature, and gradually Deoris lost her personal fear; never again would Riveda allow any rite to get out of control through lack of knowledge!

With only one thing was Deoris at odds: Riveda had suddenly become ambitious; his old lust for knowledge had somehow mutated into a lust for power. But she did not voice her misgivings over this, lying quiet and listening when he talked, too full of love to protest and sure in any case that if she protested he would not listen.

Never had Riveda been so kind to her. It was as if his whole life had been spent in some tense struggle between warring forces, which had made him stern and rigid and remote in the effort to cleave to a line of rectitude. Now that he had finally abandoned himself to sorcery, this evil and horror absorbed all his inborn cruelty, leaving the man himself free to be kind, to be tender, to show the basic simplicity and goodness that was in him. Deoris felt her old childlike adoration slowly merging into something deeper, different . . . and once, when he kissed her with that new tenderness, she clung to him, in sudden waking of an instinct as old as womanhood.

He laughed a little, his face relaxing into humorous lines. "My precious Deoris . . ." Then he murmured doubtfully, "But you are still in so much pain."

"Not much, and I—I want to be close to you. I want to sleep in your arms and wake there—as I have never done."

Too moved to speak, Riveda drew her close to him. "You shall lie in my arms tonight," he whispered at last. "I—I too would have you close."

He held her delicately, afraid to hurt by a careless touch, and she felt his physical presence—so

familiar to her, so intimately known to her body, and yet alien, altogether strange, after all these years a stranger to her—so that she found herself shy of the lover as she had never been of the initiator.

Riveda made love to her softly, with a sensitive sincerity she had not dreamed possible, at first half fearful lest he bring her pain; then, when he was certain of her, drawing on some deep reserve of gentleness, giving himself up to her with the curious, rare warmth of a man long past youth: not passionate, but very tender and full of love. In all her time with Riveda she had never known him like this; and for hours afterward she lay nestled in his arms, happier than she had ever been in her life, or would ever be again, while in a muted, hoarse, hesitant voice he told her all the things every woman dreams of hearing from her lover, and his shaking scarred hands moved softly on her silky hair.

Chapter Eleven THE DARK SHRINE

I

Deoris remained within the subterranean labyrinth for a month, cared for by Riveda and Nadastor. She saw no other person, save an old deaf-mute who brought her food. Nadastor

treated Deoris with a ceremonious deference which astonished and terrified the girl—particularly after she heard one fragment of conversation . . .

She and Riveda had grown by degrees into a tender companionship like nothing the girl had ever known. He had no black, surly moods now. On this day he had remained near her for some time, translating some of the ancient inscriptions with an almost lewd gaiety, coaxing her to eat with all sorts of playful little games, as if she were an ailing child. After a time, for she still tired quickly, he laid her down and drew a blanket of woven wool over her shoulders, and left her; she slept until she was wakened by a voice, raised a little as if he had forgotten her in his annoyance.

". . .all my life have I held that in abhorrence!"

"Even within the Temple of Light," Nadastor was saying, "brothers and sisters marry sometimes; their line is kept pure, they want no unknown blood which might bring back those traits they have bred out of the Priest's Caste. Children of incest are often natural clairvoyants."

"When they are not mad," said Riveda cynically.

Deoris closed her eyes again as the voices fell to a murmur; then Riveda raised his voice angrily again.

"Whichof Talkannon's . . . ?"

"You will wake the girl," Nadastor rebuked; and for minutes they spoke so softly that Deoris could hear nothing. The next thing she caught was Nadastor's flat statement, "Men breed animals for what they want them to become. Should they scatter the seed of their own bodies?" The voice fell again, then surged upward: "I have watched you, Riveda, for a long time. I knew that one day you would weary of the restraints laid on you by the Ritual!"

"Then you knew more than I," Riveda retorted. "Well, I have no regrets—and whatever you may think, no scruples in that line. Let us see if I understand you. The child of a man past the age of passion, and a girl just barely old enough to conceive, can be—almost outside the laws of nature . . ."

"And as little bound by them," Nadastor added. He rose and left the room, and Riveda came to look down at Deoris. She shut her eyes, and after a moment, thinking her still sleeping, he turned away.

II

The burns on her back and shoulders had healed quickly, but the cruel brand on her breasts had bitten deep; even by the time she was able to be up again, they were still swathed in bandages which she could not bear to touch. She was growing restless; never had she been so long absent from the Temple of Light, and Domaris must be growing anxious about her—at the very least, she might make inquiries.

Riveda soothed her fear a little.

"I have told a tale to account for you," he said. "I told Cadamiri that you had fallen from the seawall and been burned at one of the beacon fires; that also explained my own hurt." He held out his hands, free now of bandages, but terribly scarred, too stiff even to recover their old skill.

"No one questions my ability as Healer, Deoris, so they did not protest when I said you must be left in peace. And your sister—" His eyes narrowed slightly. "She waylaid me today in the library. She is anxious about you; and in all truth, Deoris, I could give no reason why she should not see you, so tomorrow it would be well if you left this place. You must see her, and reassure her, else . . ." he laid a heavy hand on her arm, "the Guardians may descend on us. Tell Domaris—whatever you like, I care not, but—whatever you do, Deoris, unless you want me to die like a dog, let not even Domaris see the scars on your breasts until they are wholly healed. And Deoris, if your sister insists, you may have to return to the Temple of Light. I—I grieve to send you from me, and would not have it so, but—the Ritual forbids any maiden of the Lightborn to live among Grey-robes. It is an old law, and seldom invoked; it has been ignored time and time again. But Domaris reminded me of it, and—I dare not endanger you by angering her."

Deoris nodded without speaking. She had known that this interlude could not last forever. In spite of all the pain, all the terror, her new dread of Riveda, this had been a sort of idyll, suspended in nothingness and wrapped in an unexpected certainty of Riveda's nearness and his love; and now, already it was part of the past.

"You will be safest under your sister's protection. She loves you, and will ask no questions, I think." Riveda clasped her hand in his own and sat without moving or speaking for a long time; at last, he said, "I told you, once, Deoris, that I am not a good man to trust. By now I imagine I have proved that to you." The bitter and despondent tone was back in his voice. Then, evenly and carefully, he asked, "Are you still—my Priestess? I have forfeited the right to command you, Deoris. I offer to release you, if you wish it."

As she had done years ago, Deoris let go of his hand, dropped to her knees and pressed her face to his robes in surrender. She whispered, "I have told you I will defy all for you. Why will you never believe me?"

After a moment, Riveda raised her gently, his touch careful and light. "One thing remains," he said in a low voice. "You have suffered much, and I—I would not force this on you, but—but if not tonight, a year's full cycle must go by before we can try again. This is the Night of Nadir, and the only night on which I can complete this."

Deoris did not hesitate even a moment, although her voice shook a little. "I am at your command," she whispered, in the ritual phrase of the Grey-robes.

III

Some few hours later, the old deaf-mute woman came. She stripped Deoris, bathed and purified her, and robed her in the curious garments Riveda had sent. First a long, full robe of transparent

linen, and over this a tabard of stiffly embroidered silk, decorated with symbols of whose meaning Deoris was not wholly certain. Her hair, now grown thick and long, was confined in a silver fillet, and her feet stained with dark pigment. As the deaf-mute completed this final task, Riveda returned—and Deoris forgot her own unusual garb in amazement at the change in him.

She had never seen him clothed in aught but the voluminous grey robe, or a simpler grey smock for magical work. Tonight he blazed in raw colors that made him look crude, sinister— frightening. His silver-gilt hair shone like virgin gold beneath a horned diadem which partially concealed his face; he wore a tabard of crimson like her own, with symbols worked in black from which Deoris turned away shamed eyes: the emblems were legitimate magical symbols, but in company with the ornaments of her clothing they seemed obscene. Under the crimson surcoat, Riveda wore a close-fitting tunic dyed blue—and this to Deoris was the crowning obscenity, for blue was the color sacred to Caratra, and reserved for women; she found she could not look at it on his body, and her face was aflame. Over all, he wore the loose magician's cloak which could be drawn about him to form the Black Robe. Seeing her blushes slowly whiten, Riveda smiled sternly.

"You are notthinking, Deoris! You are reacting to your childhood's superstitions. Come, what have I taught you about vibration and color?"

She felt all the more shamed and foolish at the reminder. "Red vitalizes and stimulates," she muttered, reciting, "where blue produces calmness and peace, mediating all inflamed and feverish conditions. And black absorbs and intensifies vibrations."

"That's better," he approved, smilingly. He then surveyed her costume critically, and once satisfied, said, "One thing remains; will you wear this for me, Deoris?"

He held out a girdle to her. Carved of wooden links, it was bound with crimson cords knotted in odd patterns. Runes were incised in the wood, and for a moment some instinct surged up in Deoris, and her fingers refused to touch the thing.

Riveda, more sternly, said, "Are you afraid to wear this, Deoris? Must we waste time with a lengthy explanation?"

She shook her head, chastened, and began to fasten it about her body—but Riveda bent and prevented her. With his strong, scarred hands he cinctured it carefully about her waist, tying the cords into a firm knot and ending with a gesture incomprehensible to her.

"Wear this until I give you leave to take it off," he told her. "Now come."

She almost rebelled again when she saw where he was taking her—to the terrible shrouded Crypt of the Avatar, where the Man with Crossed Hands lay, continually bound. Once within, she watched, frozen, as Riveda kindled ritual fire upon the altar which had been dark for a million years.

In his deepest voice, blazing in his symbolic robes, he began to intone the invocatory chant and

Deoris, recognizing it, knew in trembling terror what it invoked. Was Riveda mad indeed? Or splendidly, superbly courageous? This was blackest blasphemy—or was it?And for what?

Shivering, she had no real choice but to add her own voice to the invocation. Voice answered voice in dark supplication, strophe and antistrophe, summoning . . . entreating. . . .

Riveda turned abruptly to the high stone altar where a child lay, and with a surge of horror Deoris saw what Riveda held in his hands. She clasped her own hands over her mouth so that she would not scream aloud as she recognized the child:Larmin. Karahama's son, Demira's little brother—Riveda's own son . . .

The child watched with incurious drugged eyes. The thing was done with such swiftness that the child gave only a single smothered whimper of apprehension, then fell back into the drugged sleep. Riveda turned back to the terrible ceremony which had become, to Deoris, a devil's rite conducted by a maniac.

Nadastor glided from the shadows, unbound the little boy, lifted the small senseless figure from the altar-stone and bore it from the Crypt. Deoris and Riveda were alone in the Dark Shrine—the very shrine where Micon had been tortured, alone with the Unrevealed God.

Her mind reeling with the impact of sound and sight, she began to comprehend if not the whole, then the drift of the blasphemous ritual: Riveda meant nothing less than to loose the terrible chained power of the Dark God, to bring the return of the Black Star. But there was something

more, something she could not quite understand . . . or was it that she dared not understand?

She sank to her knees; a deathly intangible horror held her by the throat, and though her mind screamedNo! No-no-no-no! in the grip of that hypnotic dream she could not move or cry out. With a single word or gesture of protest she could so distort and shatter the pattern of the ritual that Riveda must fail—but sound was beyond her power, and she could not raise a hand or move her head so much as a fraction to one side or the other . . . and because in this crisis she could not summon the courage to defy Riveda, her mind slid off into incoherence, seeking an escape from personal guilt.

She could not—shedared not understand what she was hearing and seeing; her brain refused to seize on it. Her eyes became blank, blind and though Riveda saw the last remnant of sanity fade from her wide eyes, it was with only the least of his attention; the rest of him was caught up in what he did.

The fire on the shrine blazed up.

The chained and faceless image stirred . . .

Deoris saw the smile of the Man with Crossed Hands leering from the distorted shadows. Then, for an instant, she saw what Riveda saw, a chained and faceless figure standing upright—but that too swam away. Where they had been a great and fearful form hulked, recumbent and swathed in corpse-windings—an image that stirred and fought its bonds.

Then Deoris saw only an exploding pinwheel of lights into which she fell headlong. She barely knew it when Riveda seized her; she was inert, half-conscious at best, her true mind drowned in the compassionate stare of the Man with Crossed Hands, blinded by the spinning wheel of lights that whirled blazing above them. She knew, dimly, that Riveda lifted and laid her on the altar, and she felt a momentary shock of chill awareness and fear as she was forced back onto the wet stone. Not here, not here, not on the stone stained with the child's blood . . .

But he isn't dead! she thought with idiotic irrelevance, he isn't dead, Riveda didn't kill him, it's all right if he isn't dead . . .

IV

As if breaking the crest of a deep dark wave, Deoris came to consciousness suddenly, sensible of cold, and of pain from her half-healed burns. The fire on the shrine was extinguished; the Man with Crossed Hands had become but a veiled darkness.

Riveda, the frenzy gone, was lifting her carefully from the altar. With his normal, composed severity, he assisted her to rearrange her robes. She felt bruised and limp and sick, and leaned heavily on Riveda, stumbling a little on the icy stones—and she guessed, rightly, that he was remembering another night in this crypt, years before.

Somewhere in the labyrinth she could hear a child's distant sobs of pain and fright. They seemed

to blend with her own confusion and terror that she put her hands up to her face to be sure that she was not crying, whether the sounds came from within or without.

At the door of the room where she had lain all during her long illness, Riveda paused, beckoning the deaf-mute woman and giving her some orders in sign-language.

He turned to Deoris again, and spoke with a cold formality that chilled her to the bone: "Tomorrow you will be conducted above ground. Do not fear to trust Demira, but be very careful. Remember what I have told you, especially in regard to your sister Domaris!" He paused, for once at a loss for words; then, with sudden and unexpected reverence, the Adept dropped to his knees before the terrified girl and taking her icy hand in his, he pressed it to his lips, then to his heart.

"Deoris," he said, falteringly. "O, my love—"

Quickly he let go her hand, rose to his feet and was gone before the girl could utter a single word.

BOOK FOUR Riveda

" . . . common wisdom has it that Good has a tendency to grow and preserve itself, whereas Evil

tends to grow until it destroys itself. But perhaps there is a flaw in our definitions—for would it be evil for Good to grow until it crowded Evil out of existence?

" . . . everyone is born with a store of knowledge he doesn't know he possesses. . . . The human body of flesh and blood, which has to feed itself upon plants and their fruits, and upon animal meats, is not a fit habitation for the eternal spirit that moves us—and for this, we must die—but somewhere in the future is the assurance of a new body-type which can outlast the stones which do not die. . . . The things we learn strike sparks, and the sparks light fires; and the firelight reveals strange things moving in the darkness. . . . The darkness can teach you things that the light has never seen, and will never be able to see. . . .

"Unwilling to continue a merely mineral existence, plants were the first rebels; but the pleasures of a plant are limited to the number of ways in which it can circumvent the laws governing the mineral world. . . . There are poisonous minerals that can kill plants or animals or men. There are poisonous plants that can kill animals or men. There are poisonous animals (mostly reptiles) which can kill men—but man is unable to continue the poisonous chain, poison other creatures though he may, because he has never developed a means for poisoning the gods. . . ."

—from The Codex of the Adept Riveda

Chapter One A WORLD OF DREAMS

I

"But Domaris, why?" Deoris demanded. "Why do you hate him so?"

Domaris leaned against the back of the stone bench where they sat, idly fingering a fallen leaf from the folds of her dress before casting it into the pool at their feet. Tiny ripples fanned out, winking in the sunlight.

"I don't believe that I do hate Riveda," Domaris mused, and shifted her swollen body awkwardly, as if in pain. "But I distrust him. There is—something about him that makes me shiver." She looked at Deoris, and what she saw in her sister's pale face made her add, with a deprecating gesture, "Pay not too much attention to me. You know Riveda better than I. And— oh, it may all be my imagination! Pregnant women have foolish fancies."

At the far end of the enclosed court, Micail's tousled head popped up from behind a bush and as quickly ducked down again; he and Lissa were playing some sort of hiding game.

The little girl scampered across the grass. "I see you, M'cail!" she cried shrilly, crouching down

beside Domaris's skirt, "Pe-eep!"

Domaris laughed and petted the little girl's shoulder, looking with satisfaction at Deoris. The last six months had wrought many changes in the younger girl; Deoris was not now the frail, hugeeyed wraith bound in bandages and weak with pain, whom Domaris had brought from the Grey Temple. Her face had begun to regain its color, though she was still paler than Domaris liked, if no longer so terribly thin . . . Domaris frowned as another, persistent suspicion came back to her.That change I can recognize! Domaris never forced a confidence, but she could not keep herself from wondering, angrily, justwhat had been done to Deoris. That story of falling from the sea-wall into a watch-fire . . . did not ring true, somehow.

"You don't have foolish fancies, Domaris," the girl insisted. "Why do you distrust Riveda?"

"Because—because he doesn't feeltrue to me; he hides his mind from me, and I think he has lied to me more than once." Domaris's voice hardened to ice. "But mostly because of what he is doing to you! The man is using you, Deoris . . . Is he your lover?" she asked suddenly, her eyes searching the young face.

"No!" The denial was angry, almost instinctive.

Lissa, forgotten at Domaris's knee, stared from one sister to the other for a moment, confused and a little worried; then she smiled slightly, and ran to chase Micail. Grown-ups had these exchanges. It didn't usually mean anything, as far as Lissa could tell, and so she rarely paid

attention to such talk—though she had learned not to interrupt.

Domaris moved a little closer to Deoris and asked, more gently, "Then—who?"

"I—I don't know what you mean," Deoris said; but the look in her eyes was that of a trapped and frightened creature.

"Deoris," her sister said kindly, "be honest with me, kitten; do you think you can hide it forever? I have served Caratra longer than you—if not as well."

"I amnot pregnant! It isn't possible—Iwon't !" Then, controlling her panic, Deoris took refuge in arrogance. "I have no lover!"

The grave grey eyes studied her again. "You may be sorceress," Domaris said deliberately, "but all your magic could not compassthat miracle." She put her arm around Deoris, but the girl flung it petulantly away.

"Don't! I'm not!"

The response was so immediate, so angry, that Domaris only stared, open-mouthed. How could Deoris lie with such conviction, unless—unless . . .Has that damned Grey-robe, then, taught her his own deceptive skills? The thought troubled her. "Deoris," she said, half-questioning, "itis Riveda?"

Deoris edged away from her, sullenly, scared. "And if it were so—which it is not!—it is my right! You claimed yours!"

Domaris sighed; Deoris was going to be tiresome. "Yes," the older woman said tiredly, "I have no right to blame. Yet—" She looked away across the garden to the tussling children, her brows contracting in a half-troubled smile. "Ican wish it were any other man."

"You do hate him!" Deoris cried, "I think you're—I hateyou! " She rose precipitately to her feet, and ran from the garden, without a backward glance. Domaris half rose to follow her, then sank back heavily, sighing.

What's the use?She felt weary and worn, not at all inclined to soothe her sister's tantrums. Domaris felt unable to deal with her own life at present—how could she handle her sister's?

When she had carried Micon's child, Domaris had felt an odd reverence for her body; not even the knowledge that Micon's fate followed them like a shadow had dimmed her joy. Bearing Arvath's was different; this was duty, the honoring of a pledge. She was resigned, rather than rejoicing. Vised in pain, she walked with recurrent fear, and Mother Ysouda's words whispering in her mind. Domaris felt a guilty, apologetic love for Arvath's unborn son—as if she had wronged him by conceiving him.

And now—why is Deoris like that? Perhaps it isn't Riveda's child, and she's afraid of what he'll

do . . . ? Domaris shook her head, unable to fathom the mystery.

From certain small but unmistakable signs, she was certain of her sister's condition; the girl's denial saddened and hurt Domaris. The lie itself was not important to her, but the reason for it was of great moment.

What have I done, that my own sister denies me her confidence?

She got up, with a little sigh, and went heavily toward the archway leading into the building, blaming herself bitterly for her neglect. She had been lost in grief for Micon—and then had come her marriage, and the long illness that followed the loss of her other child—and her Temple duties were onerous. Yet, somehow, Deoris's needs should have been met.

Rajasta warned me, years ago,Domaris thought sadly. Was it this he foresaw? Would that I had listened to him! If Deoris has ceased to trust me—Pausing, Domaris tried to reassure herself.Deoris is a strange girl; she has always been rebellious. And she's been so ill, perhaps she wasn't really lying; maybe she really doesn't know, hasn't bothered to think about the physical aspects of the thing. That would be just like Deoris!

For a moment, Domaris saw the garden rainbowed through sudden tears.

II

In the last months, Deoris had abandoned herself to the moment, not thinking ahead, not letting herself dwell on the past. She drifted on the surface of events; and when she slept, she dreamed obsessively of that night in the Crypt—so many terrifying nightmares that she almost managed to convince herself that the bloodletting, the blasphemous invocation, all that had transpired there, had been only another, more frightening dream.

This had been reinforced by the ease with which she had been able to pick up most of the broken threads of her life. Riveda's story had been accepted without question.

At her sister's insistence, Deoris had returned to Domaris's home. It was not the same. The House of the Twelve now contained a new group of Acolytes; Domaris and Arvath, with Elis and Chedan and another young couple, occupied pleasant apartments in a separate dwelling. Into this home Deoris had been welcomed, made a part of their family life. Until this moment, Domaris had never once questioned the past years.

But I should have known!Deoris thought superstitiously, and shivered. Only last night, very late, Demira had stolen secretly into the courts and into her room, whispering desperately, "Deoris— oh, Deoris, I shouldn't be here, I know, but don't send me away, I'm so terribly, terribly frightened!"

Deoris had taken the child into her bed and held her until the scared crying quieted, and then asked, incredulously, "But what is it, Demira, what's happened? I won't send you away, darling, no matter what it was, you can tell me what's the matter!" She looked at the thin, huddled girl

beside her with troubled eyes, and said, "It's not likely Domaris would come into my rooms at this hour of the night, either; but if she did, I'll tell her—tell her something."

"Domaris," said Demira, slowly, and smiled—that wise and sad smile which always saddened Deoris; it seemed such an old smile for the childlike face. "Ah, Domaris doesn't know I exist, Deoris. Seeing me wouldn't change that." Demira sat up then, and looked at Deoris a moment before her silvery-grey eyes slid away again, blank and unseeing, the white showing all around the pupil. "One of us three will die very soon," she said suddenly, in a strange, flat voice as unfocussed as her eyes. "One of us three will die, and her child with her. The second will walk beside Death, but it will take only her child. And the third will pray for Death to come for herself and her child, and both will live to curse the very air they breathe."

Deoris grabbed the slim shoulders and shook Demira, hard. "Come out of it!" she commanded, in a high, scared voice. "Do you even know what you are saying?"

Demira smiled queerly, her face lax and distorted. "Domaris, and you, and I—Domaris, Deoris, Demira; if you say the three names very quickly it is hard to tell which one you are saying, no? We are bound together by more than that, though, we are all three linked by our fates, all three with child."

"No!" Deoris cried out, in a denial as swift as it was vehement.No, no, not from Riveda, not that cruelty, not that betrayal . . .

She bent her head, troubled and afraid, unable to face Demira's wise young eyes. Since the night when she and Riveda and the chela had been trapped in the ritual which had loosed the Fire-spirit on them, scarring her with the blasting seal of thedorje, Deoris had not once had to seclude herself for the ritual purifications . . . She had thought about that, remembering horror-tales heard among thesaji, of women struck and blasted barren, remembering Maleina's warnings long ago. Secretly, she had come to believe that, just as her breasts were scarred past healing, so she had been blasted in the citadel of her womanhood and become a sapped and sexless thing, the mere shell of a woman. Even when Domaris had suggested a simpler explanation—that she might be pregnant—she could not accept it. Surely if she were capable of conception, she would have borne Riveda's child long before this time!

Or would she? Riveda was versed in the mysteries, able to prevent conception if it pleased him. With a flash of horrified intuition, the thought came, to be at once rejected.Oh no, not from that night in the Crypt —the mad invocation—the girdle, even now concealed beneath my nightdress. ..

With a desperate effort, she snapped shut her mind on the memory. It never happened, it was a dream . . . except for the girdle. But if that's real—no. There must be some explanation . . .

Then her mind caught up with the other thing Demira had said, seizing on it almost with relief. "You!"

Demira looked up plaintively at Deoris. "You'll believe me," she said pitifully. "You will not

mock me?"

"Oh, no, Demira, no, of course not." Deoris looked down into the pixyish face that now laid itself confidingly on her shoulder. Demira, at least, had not changed much in these three years; she was still the same, strange, suffering, wild little girl who had excited first Deoris's distrust and fear, and later her pity and love. Demira was now fifteen, but she seemed essentially the same, and she looked much as she had at twelve: taller than Deoris but slight, fragile, with the peculiar, deceptive appearance of immaturity and wisdom intermingled.

Demira sat up and began to reckon on her fingers. "It was like an awful dream. It happened, oh, perhaps one change of the moon after you left us."

"Five months ago," Deoris prompted gently.

"One of the little children had told me I was wanted in a sound-chamber. I thought nothing of it. I had been working with one of Nadastor's chelas. But it was empty. I waited there and then— and then a priest came in, but he was—he was masked,and in black, with horns across his face! He didn't say anything, he only—caught at me, and—oh Deoris!" The child collapsed in bitter sobbing.

"Demira, no!"

Demira made an effort to stifle her tears, murmuring, "You do believe me—you will not mock

me?"

Deoris rocked her back and forth like a baby. "No, no, darling, no," she soothed. She knew very well what Demira meant. Outside the Grey Temple, Demira and her like were scorned as harlots or worse; but Deoris, who had lived in the Grey Temple, knew that such as Demira were held in high honor and respect, for she and her kind were sacred, indispensable, under protection of the highest Adepts. The thought of asaji being raped by an unknown was unthinkable, fantastic . . . Almost unbelieving, Deoris asked, "Have youno idea who he was?"

"No—oh, I should have told Riveda, I should have told, but I couldn't, I just couldn't! After the—the Black-robe went away, I—I just lay there, crying and crying, I couldn't stop myself, I— it was Riveda who heard me, he came and found me there. He was . . . for once he was kind, he picked me up and held me, and—and scolded me until I stopped crying. He—he tried to make me tell him what had happened, but I—I was afraid he wouldn't believe me . . ."

Deoris let Demira go, remaining as still as if she had been turned to a statue. Scraps of a halfheard conversation had returned to float through her mind; her intuition now turned them to knowledge, and almost automatically she whispered the invocation, "Mother Caratra! Guard her," for the first time in years.

It couldn't be, it simply was not possible, not thinkable . . .

She sat motionless, afraid her face would betray her to the child.

At last Deoris said, frozenly, "But you have told Maleina, child? Surely you know she would protect you. I think she would kill with her own hands anyone who harmed you or caused you pain."

Demira shook her head mutely; only after several moments did she whisper, "I am afraid of Maleina. I came to you because—because of Domaris. She has influence with Rajasta . . . When last the Black-robes came into our temple, there was much terror and death, and now, if they have returned—the Guardians should know of it. And Domaris is—is so kind, and beautiful— she might have pity, even on me—"

"I will tell Domaris when I can," Deoris promised, her lips stiff; but conflict tore at her. "Demira, you must not expect too much."

"Oh, you are good, Deoris! Deoris, how I love you!" Demira clung to the older girl, her eyes bright with tears. "And Deoris, if Riveda must know—will you tell him? He will allow you anything, but no one else dares approach him now, since you left us no one dares speak to him unless he undresses them, and even then . . . " Demira broke off. "He was kind, when he found me, but I was so afraid."

Deoris stroked the little girl's shoulder gently, and her own face grew stern. Her last shred of doubt vanished.Riveda heard her crying? In a sealed sound-chamber? That I'll believe taken the sun shines at midnight!

"Yes," said Deoris grimly, "I will talk to Riveda."

III

"She did not even guess, Deoris. I did not mean that you should know, either, but since you are so shrewd, yes, I admit it." Riveda's voice was as deep and harsh as winter surf; in the same icy bass he went on, "Should you seek to tell her, I—Deoris, much as you mean to me, I think I would kill you first!"

"Take heed lest you be the one killed," Deoris said coldly. "Suppose Maleina makes the same wise guess I did?"

"Maleina!" Riveda practically spat the woman Adept's name. "She did what she could to ruin the child—nevertheless, I am not a monster, Deoris. What Demira does not know will not torment her. It is—unfortunate that she knows I am her father; fool that I was to let it be guessed even in the Grey Temple. I will bear the responsibility; it is better that Demira know nothing more than she does now."

Sickened, Deoris cried out, "And this you will confess to me?"

Slowly, Riveda nodded. "I know now that Demira was begotten and reared for this one purpose alone. Otherwise, why should I have stretched out my hand to save her from squalling to death

on the city wall? I knew not what I did, not then. But is it not miraculous, you see, how all things fall together to have meaning? The girl is worthless for anything else—she made Karahama hate me, just by being born." And for the first time Deoris sensed a weak spot in the Adept's icy armor, but he went on swiftly, "But now you see how it all makes a part of the great pattern? I did not know when she was born, but Karahama's blood is one with yours, and so is Demira's, that strain of the Priest's Line, sensitive—and so even this unregarded nothing shall serve some part in the Great work."

"Do you care for nothing else?" Deoris looked at Riveda as if he were a stranger; at this moment he seemed as alien as if he had come from far beyond the unknown seas. This talk of patterns, as if he had planned that Demira should be born for this . . . was he mad, then? Always Deoris had believed that the strangeness of his talk hid some great and lofty purpose which she was too young and ignorant to understand. But this, this shedid understand for the corrupt madness it was, and of this he spoke as if it were more of the same high purpose. Was it all madness and illusion then, had she been dragged into insanity and corruption under the belief that she was the chosen of the great Adept? Her mouth was trembling; she fought not to break down.

Riveda's mouth curved in a brutal smile. "Why, you little fool, I believe you're jealous!"

Mutely, Deoris shook her head. She did not trust herself to speak. She turned away, but Riveda caught her arm with a strong hand. "Are you going to tell Demira this?" he demanded.

"To what purpose?" Deoris asked coldly, "To make her sick, as I am? No, I will keep your

secret. Now take your hands from me!"

His eyes widened briefly, and his hand dropped to his side. "Deoris," he said in a more persuasive voice, "you have always understood me before."

Tears gathered at her eyelids. "Understood you? No, never. Nor have you been like this before! This is—sorcery, distortion—black magic!"

Riveda bit off his first answer unspoken, and only muttered, rather despondently, "Well, call me Black Magician then, and have done with it." Then, with the tenderness which was so rare, he drew her stiff and unresponsive form to him. "Deoris," he said, and it was like a plea, "you have always been my strength. Don't desert me now! Has Domaris so quickly turned you against me?"

She could not answer; she was fighting back tears.

"Deoris, the thing is done, and I stand by it. It is too late to crawl out of it now, and repentance would not undo it in any case. Perhaps it was—unwise; it may have been cruel.But it is done. Deoris, you are the only one I dare to trust: make Demira your care, Deoris, let her be your child. Her mother has long forsworn her, and I—I have no rights any more, if ever I did." He stopped, his face twisted. Lightly he touched the fearful scars hidden by her clothing; then his hands strayed gently to her waist, to touch the wooden links of the carved symbolic girdle with a curiously tentative gesture. He raised his eyes, and she saw in his face a painful look of question and fear which she did not yet understand as he murmured, "You do not yet know—the Gods

save you, the Gods protect you all! I have forfeited their protection; I have been cruel to you— Deoris, help me! Help me, help me—"

And in a moment the melting of his icy reserve was complete—and with it fled all Deoris's anger. Choking, she flung her arms about him, saying half incoherently, "I will, Riveda, always—I will!"

Chapter Two THE BLASPHEMY

I

Somewhere in the night the sound of a child's sudden shrill wailing shredded the silence into ribbons, and Deoris raised her head from the pillow, pressing her hands to her aching eyes. The room was filled with heavy blackness barred by shuttered moonlight. She was so used to the silence of thesaji courts—she had been dreaming—then memory came back. She was not in the Grey Temple, nor even in Riveda's austere habitation, but in Domaris's home; it must be Micail crying . . .

She slid from the bed, and barefoot, crossed the narrow hall into her sister's room. At the sound

of the opening door, Domaris raised her head; she was half-clad, her unbound hair a coppery mist streaming over the little boy who clung to her, still sobbing.

"Deoris, darling, did he wake you? I'm sorry." She stroked Micail's tangled curls as she rocked the child gently against her shoulder. "There now, there now, hush, hush you," she murmured.

Micail hiccoughed sleepily with the subsidence of his sobs. His head dropped onto Domaris's shoulder, then perked up momentarily. "De'ris," he murmured.

The younger girl came quickly to him. "Domaris, let me take Micail, he's too heavy for you to lift now," she rebuked softly. Domaris demurred, but gave the heavy child into her sister's arms. Deoris looked down at the drooping eyes, darkly blue, and the smudge of freckles across the turned-up nose.

"He will be very like . . ." she murmured; but Domaris put out her hands as if to ward off a physical blow, and the younger woman swallowed Micon's name. "Where shall I put him?"

"Into my bed; I'll take him to sleep with me, and perhaps he will be quiet. I am sorry he woke you, Deoris. You look—so tired." Domaris gazed into her sister's face, pale and pinched, with a strange look of weary lethargy. "You are not well, Deoris."

"Well enough," said Deoris indifferently. "You worry too much. You're not in the best health yourself," she accused, suddenly frightened. With the eyes of a trained Healer-priestess, Deoris

now saw what her self-absorption had hidden: how thin Domaris was in spite of her pregnancy; how the fine bones of her face grew sharp beneath the white skin, how swollen and blue the veins in her forehead were, and those in her thin white hands . . .

Domaris shook her head, but the weight of her unborn child was heavy on her, and her drawn features betrayed the lie. She knew it and smiled, running her hands down her swollen sides with a resigned shrug. "Ill-will and pregnancy grow never less," she quoted lightly. "See—Micail's already asleep."

Deoris would not be distracted. "Where is Arvath?" she asked firmly.

Domaris sighed. "He is not here, he . . ." Her thin face crimsoned, the color flooding into the neck of her shapeless robe. "Deoris, I—I have fulfilled my bargain now! Nor have I complained, nor stinted duty! Nor did I use what Elis . . ." She bit her lip savagely, and went on, "This will be the son he desires! And that should content him!"

Deoris, though she knew nothing of Mother Ysouda's warning, remembered her own; and intuition told her the rest. "He is cruel to you, Domaris?"

"The fault is mine, I think I have killed kindness in the man. Enough! I should not complain. But his love is like a punishment! I cannot endure it any more!" The color had receded from her face, leaving a deathly pallor.

Deoris mercifully turned away, bending to tuck a cover around Micail. "Why don't you let Elara take him nights?" she protested. "You'll get no sleep at all!"

Domaris smiled. "I would sleep still less if he were away from me," she said, and looked tenderly at her son. "Remember when I could not understand why Elis kept Lissa so close to her? Besides, Elara attends even me only in the days, now. Since her marriage I would have freed her entirely, but she says she will not leave me to a strange woman while I am like this." Her laugh was a tiny ghost of its normal self. "Herchild will be born soon after mine! Even in that she serves me!"

Deoris said sulkily, "I think every woman in this Temple must be bearing a child!" With a guilty start, she silenced herself.

Domaris appeared not to notice. "Childbearing is a disease easily caught," she quoted lightly, then straightened and came close to her sister. "Don't go, Deoris—stay and talk to me a little. I've missed you."

"If you want me," Deoris said ungraciously; then, penitent, she came to Domaris and the two sat on a low divan.

The older woman smiled. "I always want you, little sister."

"I'm not little any more," Deoris said irritably, tossing her head. "Why must you treat me like a

baby?"

Domaris suppressed a laugh and lifted her sister's slender, beringed hand. "Perhaps—because you were my baby, before Micail was born." Her glance fell on the narrow, carven girdle which Deoris wore cinctured loosely over her night-dress. "Deoris, what is that?" she asked softly. "I don't believe I've seen you wearing it before."

"Only a girdle."

"How stupid of me," said Domaris dryly. Her slim fingers touched the crimson cord which knotted the links together, strangely twined through the carven wooden symbols. Clumsily, she bent to examine it more closely—and with a sharply indrawn breath, counted the links. The cord, twined into oddly knotted patterns, was treble; thrice sevenfold the flat carved emblems. It was beautiful, and yet, somehow . . .

"Deoris!" she breathed, her voice holding sudden sharpness. "Did Riveda give youthis? "

Scared by her tone, Deoris went sulky and defensive. "Why not?"

"Why not indeed?" Domaris's words were edged with ice; her hand closed hard around Deoris's thin wrist. "And why should he bind you with a—a thing like that? Deoris, answer me!"

"He has the right . . ."

"No lover has that right, Deoris."

"He isnot —"

Domaris shook her head. "You lie, Deoris," she said wearily. "If your lover were any other man, he would kill Riveda before he let him put that—thatthing on you!" She made a queer sound that was almost a sob. "Please—don't lie to me any more, Deoris. Do you think you can hide it forever? How long must I pretend not to see that you are carrying a child beneath that—that—" Her voice failed her. How pitifully simple Deoris was, as if by denying a fact she could wish it out of existence!

Deoris twisted her hand free, staring at the floor, her face white and pinched. Guilt, embarrassment and fear seemed to mingle in her dark eyes, and Domaris took the younger girl in her arms.

"Deoris, Deoris, don't look like that! I'm not blamingyou! "

Deoris was rigid in her sister's kind arms. "Domaris, believe me, I didn't."

Domaris tipped back the little face until her sister's eyes, dark as crushed violets, met her own. "The father is Riveda," she said quietly; and this time, Deoris did not contradict her. "I like this not even a little. Something is very wrong, Deoris, or you would not be acting this way. You are

not a child, you are not ignorant, you have had the same teaching as I, and more in this particular matter . . . youknow —listen to me, Deoris! You know you need not have conceived a child save at your own and Riveda's wish," she finished inexorably, although Deoris sobbed and squirmed to get free of her hands and her condemning eyes. "Deoris—no, look at me, tell me the truth— did he force you, Deoris?"

"No!" And now the denial had the strength of truth. "I gave myself to Riveda of my free will, and he is not by law celibate!"

"This is so; but why then does he not take you to wife, or at the very least acknowledge your child?" Domaris demanded, stern-faced. "There is no need of this, Deoris. You bear the child of one of the great Adepts—no matter what I may think of him. You should walk in honor before all, not skulk girdled with a triple cord, forced to lie even to me. Enslaved! Does he know?"

"I—I think. . . ."

"Youthink! " Domaris's voice was as brittle as ice. "Be assured, little sister, if he doesnot know, he very soon shall! Child, child—the man wrongs you!"

"You—you have no right tointerfere! " With a sudden burst of strength, Deoris twisted free of her sister, glaring angrily though she made no move to go.

"I do have the right to protect you, little sister."

"If I choose to bear Riveda's child . . ."

"Then Riveda must assume his responsibility," said Domaris sharply. Her hands went out to the girdle at her sister's waist again. "As for this foul thing . . ." Her fingers shrank from the emblems even as they plucked at the knotted cords. "I am going to burn it! My sister is no man's slave!"

Deoris sprang up, clutching at the links. "Now you go too far!" she raged, and seized the woman's wrist in strong hands, holding Domaris away from her. "You shall not touch it!"

"Deoris, Iinsist! "

"No, I say!" Though she looked frail, Deoris was a strong girl, and too angry to care what she did. She flung Domaris away from her with a furious blow that made the older woman cry out with pain. "Let me alone!"

Domaris dropped her hands—then gasped as her knees gave way.

Deoris quickly caught her sister in her arms, just in time to save her from falling heavily. "Domaris," she begged, in swift repentance, "Domaris, forgive me. Did I hurt you?"

Domaris, with repressed anger, freed herself from her sister's supporting arm and lowered herself slowly onto the divan.

Deoris began to sob. "I didn't mean to hurt you, you know I'd never. . . ."

"How can I know that!" Domaris flung at her, almost despairingly. "I have never forgotten what you . . ." She stopped, breathing hard. Micon had made her swear never to speak of that, impressing it on her repeatedly that Deoris had not had, would never have, the slightest memory of what she had almost done. At the stricken misery in Deoris's eyes, Domaris said, more gently, "I know you would never harm me willingly. But if you hurt my child I could not forgive you again: Now—give me that damned thing!" And she advanced on Deoris purposefully, her face one of disgust as she unfastened the cords, as if she touched something unclean.

The thin nightdress fell away as the girdle was loosened, and Domaris, putting out a hand to draw the folds together, stopped—jerked her hand back involuntarily from the bared breast. The girdle fell unheeded to the floor.

"Deoris!" she cried out in horror. "Let me see—no, I saidlet me see! " Her voice tightened commandingly as Deoris tried to pull the loosened robe over the betrayal of those naked scars. Domaris drew the folds aside; gently touched the raised sigil that gaped raggedly red across both rounded breasts, running swollen and raw like a jagged parody of a lightning-flash down the tender sides. "Oh, Deoris!" Domaris gasped in dismay. "Oh, little sister!"

"No, please, Domaris!" The girl pulled feverishly at her loosened clothing. "It's nothing . . ." But her frantic efforts at concealment only confirmed Domaris's worst suspicions.

"Nothing, indeed!" said Domaris wrathfully. "I suppose you will try to tell me that those are ordinary burns? More of Riveda's work, I suppose!" She loosed her grip on the girl's arm, staring somberly at her. "Riveda's work. Always Riveda," she whispered, looking down at the cowering girl . . . Then, slowly, deliberately, she raised her arms in invocation, and her voice, low and quiveringly clear, rang through the silent room: "Be he accurst!"

Deoris started back, raising her hands to her mouth as she stared in horror.

"Be he accurst!" Domaris repeated. "Accurst in the lightning that reveals his work, accurst in thunder that will lay it low! Be he accurst in the waters of the flood that shall sweep his life sterile! Be he cursed by sun and moon and earth, rising and setting, waking and sleeping, living and dying, here and hereafter! Be he accurst beyond life and beyond death and beyond redemption—forever!"

Deoris choked on harsh sobs, staggering away from her sister as if she were herself the target of Domaris's curses. "No!" she whimpered, "no!"

Domaris paid her no heed, but went on, "Accurst be he sevenfold, a hundredfold, until his sin be wiped out, his karma undone! Be he cursed, he and his seed, unto the sons and the son's sons and their sons unto eternity! Be he accurst in his last hour—and my life ransom for his, lest I see this undone!"

With a shriek, Deoris crumpled to the floor and lay as if dead; but Micail only twisted slightly beneath his blanket as he slept.

II

When Deoris drifted up out of her brief spell of unconsciousness, she found Domaris kneeling beside her, gently examining thedorje scars on her breasts. Deoris closed her eyes, her mind still half blank, poised between relief, terror, and nothingness.

"Another experiment which he could not control?" asked Domaris, not unkindly.

Deoris looked up at her older sister and murmured, "It was not all his fault—he himself was hurt far worse. . . ." Her words had pronounced a final indictment, but Deoris did not realize the fact.

Domaris's horror was evident, however. "The man has you bewitched! Will you always defend . . . ?" She broke off, begging almost desperately, "Listen, you must—a stop must and shall be put to this, lest others suffer! If you cannot—then you are incapable of acting like an adult, and others must intervene to protect you! Gods, Deoris, are you insane, that you would have allowed—this?"

"What right have you—" Deoris faltered as her sister drew away.

"My sworn duty," Deoris rebuked sternly, in a very low voice. "Even if you were not my

sister—did you notknow? I am Guardian here."

Deoris, speechless, could only stare at Domaris; and it was like looking at a complete stranger who only resembled her sister. An icy rage showed in Domaris's forced stillness, in her brittle voice and the smoldering sparks behind her eyes—a cold wrath all the more dreadful for its composure.

"Yet I must consider you in this, Deoris," Domaris went on, tight-lipped.

"You—and your child."

"Riveda's," said Deoris dully. "What—what are you going to do?" she whispered.

Domaris looked down somberly, and her hands trembled as she fastened the robes about her little sister once more. She hoped she would not have to use what she knew against the sister she still loved more than anyone or anything, except her own children, Micail and the unborn. . . . But Domaris felt weak. The treble cord, and the awful control it implied; the fearful form of the scars on Deoris's body; she bent, awkwardly, and picked up the girdle from the floor where it lay almost forgotten.

"I will do what I must," Domaris said. "I do not want to take from you something you seem to prize, but . . ." Her face was white and her knuckles white as she gripped the carven links, hating the symbols and what she considered the vile use to which they had been put. "Unless you swear

not to wear it again, I will burn the damned thing!"

"No!" Deoris sprang to her feet, a feverish sparkle in her eyes. "I won't let you! Domaris, give it to me!"

"I would rather see you dead than made a tool—and to such use!" Domaris's face might have been chiselled in stone, and her voice, too, had a rocklike quality as the words clanged harshly in the air. The skin of her face had stretched taut over her cheekbones, and even her lips were colorless.

Deoris stretched imploring hands—then shrank from the clear, contemptuous judgment in Domaris's eyes.

"You have been taught as I have," the older woman said. "How could you permit it, Deoris? You that Micon loved—you that he treated almost as a disciple! You, who could have . . ." With a despairing gesture, Domaris broke off and turned away, moving clumsily toward the brazier in the near corner. Deoris, belatedly realizing her intention, sprang after her—but Domaris had already thrust the girdle deep into the live coals. The tinder-dry wood blazed up with a flickering and a roar as the cord writhed like a white-hot snake. In seconds the thing was only ashes.

Domaris turned around again and saw her sister gazing helplessly into the flames, weeping as if she saw Riveda himself burning there—and at the sight, much of her hard, icy anger melted away. "Deoris," she said, "Deoris, tell me—you have been to the Dark Shrine? To the Sleeping

God?"

"Yes," Deoris whispered.

Domaris needed to know no more; the pattern of the girdle had told her the rest.Well for Deoris that I have acted in time! Fire cleanses!

"Domaris!" It was a pathetic, horrified plea.

"Oh, my little sister, little cat . . . " Domaris was all protective love now, and crooning, she took the trembling girl into her arms again.

Deoris hid her face on her sister's shoulder. With the burning of the girdle, she had begun to dimly see certain implications, as if a fog had lifted from her mind; she could not cease from thinking of the things that had taken place in the Crypt—and now she knew that none of it had been dream.

"I'm afraid, Domaris! I'm so afraid—I wish I were dead! Will they—will they burn me, too?"

Domaris's teeth gritted with sudden, sick fear. For Riveda there could be no hope for clemency; and Deoris, even if innocent—and of that, Domaris had grave doubts—bore the seed of blasphemy, begotten in sacrilege and fostered beneath that hideous treble symbol—A child I myself have cursed!And with this realization, an idea came to her; and Domaris did not stop to

count the cost, but acted to comfort and protect this child who was her sister—even to protect that other child, whose black beginnings need not, perhaps, end in utter darkness. . . .

"Deoris," she said quietly, taking her sister's hand, "ask me no questions. I can protect you, and I will, but do not ask me to explain what I must do!"

Deoris swallowed hard, and somehow forced herself to murmur her promise.

Domaris, in a last hesitation, glanced at Micail. But the child still sprawled in untidy, baby sleep: Domaris discarded her misgivings and turned her attention once more to Deoris.

A low, half-sung note banished the brilliance from the room, which gave way to a golden twilight; in this soft radiance the sisters faced one another, Deoris slim and young, the fearful scars angry across her breasts, her coming motherhood only a shadow in the fall of her light robes—and Domaris, her beautiful body distorted and big, but still somehow holding something of the ageless calm of what she invoked. Clasping her hands, she lifted them slowly before her; parted and lowered them in an odd, ceremonious manner. Something in the gesture and movement, some instinctive memory, perhaps, or intuition, struck the half-formed question from Deoris's parted lips.

"Be far from us, all profane," Domaris murmured in her clear soprano. "Be far from us, all that lives in evil. Be far from where we stand, for here has Eternity cast its shadow. Depart, ye mists and vapors, ye stars of darkness, begone; stand ye afar from the print of Her footsteps and the

shadow of Her veil. Here have we taken shelter, under the curtain of the night and within the circle of Her own white stars."

She let her arms drop to her sides; then they moved together to the shrine to be found in every sleeping-room within the Temple precincts. With difficulty, Domaris knelt—and divining her intention, Deoris knelt quickly at her side and, taking the taper from her sister's hand, lighted the perfumed oil of devotion. Although she meant to honor her promise not to question, Deoris was beginning to guess what Domaris was doing. Years ago she had fled from a suggestion of this rite; now, facing unthinkable fear, her child's imminence a faint presence in her womb, Deoris could still find a moment to be grateful that it was with Domaris that she faced this, and not some woman or priestess whom she must fear. By taking up her own part, by touching the light to the incense which opened the gates to ritual, she accepted it; and the brief, delicate pressure of Domaris's long narrow fingers on hers showed that the older woman was aware of the acceptance, and of what it meant . . . It was only a fleeting touch; then Domaris signalled to her to rise.

Standing, Domaris stretched a hand to her sister yet again, to touch her brow, lips, breasts, and—guided by Domaris—Deoris repeated the sign. Then Domaris took her sister in her arms and held her close for a moment.

"Deoris, repeat my words," she commanded softly—and Deoris, awed, but in some secret part of her being feeling the urge to break away, to laugh, to scream aloud and shatter the gathering mood, only closed her eyes for a moment.

Domaris's low voice intoned quiet words; Deoris's voice was a thin echo, without the assurance that was in her sister's.

"Here we two, women and sisters, pledge thee, Mother of Life— Woman—and more than woman . . . Sister—and more than sister . . . Here where we stand in darkness . . . And under the shadow of death . . . We call on thee, O Mother . . . By thine own sorrows, O Woman . . . By the life we bear . . . Together before thee, O Mother, O Woman Eternal . . . And this be our plea. . . ."

Now even the golden light within the room was gone, extinguished without any signal from them. The streaming moonlight itself seemed to vanish, and it seemed to the half-terrified, halffascinated Deoris that they stood in the center of a vast and empty space, upon nothingness. All the universe had been extinguished, save for a single, flickering flame which glowed like a tiny, pulsating eye. Was it the brazier fire? The reflection of a vaster light which she sensed but could not see? Domaris's arms, still close about her, were the only reality anywhere, the only real and

living thing in the great spaces, and the words Domaris intoned softly, like spun fibers of silken sound, mantras which wove a silvery net of magic within the mystical darkness. . . .

The flame, whatever it was, glowed and darkened, glowed and darkened, with the hypnotic intensity of some vast heart's beating, in time to the murmured invocation:

"May the fruit of our lives be bound and sealed To thee, O Mother, O Woman Eternal, Who holdest the inmost life of each of thy daughters Between the hands upon her heart. . . ."

And there was more, which Deoris, frightened and exalted, could scarce believe she heard. This was the most sacred of rituals; they vowed themselves to the Mother-Goddess from incarnation to incarnation, from age to age, throughout eternity, with the lesser vow that bound them and their children inextricably to one another—a karmic knot, life to life, forever.

Carried away by her emotion, Domaris went much further into the ritual than she had realized, far further than she had intended—and at last an invisible Hand signed them both with an ancient seal. Full Initiates of the most ancient and holy of all the rites in the Temple or in the world, they were protected by and sealed to the Mother—not Caratra, but the Greater Mother, the Dark Mother behind all men and all rites and all created things. The faint flickerings deepened, swelled, became great wings of flame which lapped out to surround them with radiance.

The two women sank to their knees, then lay prostrate, side by side. Deoris felt her sister's child move against her body, and the faint, dreamlike stirring of her own unborn child, and in a flutter of insensate, magical prescience, she guessed some deeper involvement beyond this life and beyond this time, a ripple moving out into the turbulent sea which must involve more than these two . . . and the effulgent glory about them became a voice; not a voice that they could hear, but something more direct, something they felt with every nerve, every atom of their bodies.

"Thou art mine, then, from age to age, while Time endures . . . while Life brings forth Life. Sisters, and more than sisters . . . women, and more than women . . . know this, together, by the Sign I give you. . . ."

III

The fire had burned out, and the room was very dark and still. Deoris, recovering a little, raised herself and looked at Domaris, and saw that a curious radiance still shone from the swollen breasts and burdened body. Awe and reverence dawned in her anew and she bent her head, turning her eyes on herself—and yes, there too, softly glowing, the Sign of the Goddess. . . .

She got to her knees and remained there, silent, absorbed in prayer and wonder. The visible glow soon was gone; indeed, Deoris could not be certain that she had ever seen it. Perhaps, her consciousness exalted and steeped in ritual, she had merely caught a glimpse of some normally invisible reality beyond her newness and her present self.

The night was waning when Domaris stirred at last, coming slowly back to consciousness from the trance of ecstasy, dragging herself upright with a little moan of pain. Labor was close on her, she knew it—knew also that she had brought it closer by what she had done. Not even Deoris knew so well the effects of ceremonial magic upon the complex nervous currents of a woman's body. Lingering awe and reverence helped her ignore the warning pains as Deoris's arms helped her upright—but for an instant Domaris pressed her forehead against her sister's shoulder, weak and not caring if it showed.

"May my son never hurt anyone else," she whispered, "as he hurts me. . . ."

"He'll never again have the opportunity," Deoris said, but her lightness was false. She was acutely conscious that she had been careless and added to her sister's pain; knew that words of contrition could not help. Her abnormal sensitivity to Domaris was almost physical, and she helped her sister with a comprehending tenderness in her young hands.

There was no reproach in Domaris's weary glance as she closed her hand around her sister's wrist. "Don't cry, kitten." Once seated on the divan, she stared into the dead embers of the brazier for several minutes before saying, quietly, "Deoris, later you shall know what I have done—and why. Are you afraid now?"

"Only—a little—for you." Again, it was not entirely a true statement, for Domaris's words warned Deoris that there was more to come. Domaris was bound to action by some rigid code of her own, and nothing Deoris could say or do would alter that; Domaris was in quiet, deadly

earnest.

"I must leave you now, Deoris. Stay here until I return—promise me! You will do that for me, my little sister?" She drew Deoris to her with an almost savage possessiveness, held her and kissed her fiercely. "More than my sister, now! Be at peace," she said, and went from the room, moving swiftly despite her heaviness.

Deoris knelt, immobile, watching the closed door. She knew better than Domaris imagined what was encompassed by the rite into which she had been admitted; she had heard of it, guessed at its power—but had never dared dream that one day she herself might be a part of it!

Can this, she asked herself, be what gave Maleina entry where none could deny her? What permitted Karahama—a saji, one of the no-people—to serve the Temple of Caratra? A power that redeems the damned?

Knowing the answer, Deoris was no longer afraid. The radiance was gone, but the comfort remained, and she fell asleep there, kneeling, her head in her arms.

IV

Outside, clutched again with the warning fingers of her imminent travail, Domaris leaned against the wall. The fit passed quickly, and she straightened, to hurry along the corridor, silent and unobserved. Yet again she was forced to halt, bending double to the relentless pain that

clawed at her loins; moaning softly, she waited for the spasm to pass. It took her some time to reach the seldom-used passage that gave on a hidden doorway.

She paused, forcing her breath to come evenly. She was about to violate an ancient sanctuary— to risk defilement beyond death. Every tenet of the hereditary priesthood of which she was product and participant screamed at her to turn back.

The legend of the Sleeping God was a thing of horror. Long ago—so ran the story—the Dark One had been chained and prisoned, until the day he should waken and ravage time and space alike with unending darkness and devastation, unto the total destruction of all that was or could ever be. . . .

Domaris knew better. It was power that had been sealed there, though—and she suspected that the power had been invoked and unleashed, and this made her afraid as she had never dreamed of being afraid; frightened for herself and the child she carried, for Deoris and the child conceived in that dark shrine, and for her people and everything that they stood for. . . .

She set her teeth, and sweat ran cold from her armpits. "Imust!" she whispered aloud; and, giving herself no more time to think, she opened the door and slipped through, shutting it quickly behind her.

She stood at the top of an immense stairwell leading down . . . and down . . . and down, grey steps going down between grey walls in a grey haze beneath her, to which there seemed no end.

She set her foot on the first step; holding to the rail, she began the journey . . . down.

It was slow, chill creeping. Her heaviness dragged at her. Pain twisted her at intervals. The thud of her sandalled feet jerked at her burdened belly with wrenching pulls. She moaned aloud at each brief torture—but went on, step down, thud, step down, thud, in senseless, dull repetition. She tried to count the steps, in an effort to prevent her mind from dredging up all the halfforgotten, awful stories she had heard of this place, to keep herself from wondering if she did, indeed, know better than to believe old fairy-tales. She gave it up after the hundred and eightyfirst step.

Now she was no longer holding the rail, but reeling and scraping against the wall; again pain seized her, doubled and twisted her, forcing her to her knees. The greyness was shot through with crimson as she straightened, bewildered and enraged, almost forgetting what grim purpose had brought her to this immemorial mausoleum. . . .

She caught at the rail with both hands, fighting for balance as her face twisted terribly and she sobbed aloud, hating the sanity that drove her on and down.

"Oh Gods! No, no, take me instead!" she whispered, and clung there desperately for a moment; then, her face impassive again, holding herself grimly upright, she let the desperate need to do what must be done carry her down, into the pallid greyness.

Chapter Three DARK DAWN

I

The sudden, brief jar of falling brought Deoris sharply upright, staring into the darkness in sudden fear. Micail still slept in a chubby heap, and in the shadowy room, now lighted with the pale pink of dawn, there was no sound but the little boy's soft breathing; but like a distant echo Deoris seemed to hear a cry and a palpable silence, the silence of the tomb, of the Crypt.

Domaris!Where was Domaris? She had not returned. With sudden and terrible awareness, Deorisknew where Domaris was! She did not pause even to throw a garment over her nightclothes; yet she glanced unsurely at Micail. Surely Domaris's slaves would hear if he woke and cried—and there was no time to waste! She ran out of the room and fled downward, through the deserted garden.

Blindly, dizzily, she ran as if sheer motion could ward off her fear. Her heart pounded frantically, and her sides sent piercing ribbons of pain through her whole body—but she did not stop until she stood in the shadow of the great pyramid. Holding her hands hard against the hurt in her sides, she was shocked at last into a wide-awake sanity by the cold winds of dawn.

A lesser priest, only a dim figure in luminous robes, paced slowly toward her. "Woman," he said severely, "it is forbidden to walk here. Go your way in peace."

Deoris raised her face to him, unafraid. "I am Talkannon's daughter," she said in a clear and ringing voice. "Is the Guardian Rajasta within?"

The priest's tone and expression changed as he recognized her. "He is there, young sister," he said courteously, "but it is forbidden to interrupt the vigil—" He fell silent in amazement; the sun, as they talked, had crept around the pyramid's edge, to fall upon them, revealing Deoris's unbound hair, her disarranged and insufficient clothing.

"It is life or death!" Deoris pleaded, desperately. "I must see him!"

"My child—I do not have the authority. . . ."

"Oh, you fool!" Deoris raged, and with a catlike movement, she dodged under his startled arm and fled up the gleaming stone steps. She struggled a moment with the unfamiliar workings of the great brazen door; twitched aside the shielding curtain, and stepped into brilliant light.

At the faint whisper of her bare feet—for the door moved silently despite its weight—Rajasta turned from the altar. Disregarding his warning gesture, Deoris ran to fling herself on her knees before him.

"Rajasta, Rajasta!"

With cold distaste, the Priest of Light bent and raised her, eyeing the wild disarray of her clothing and hair sternly. "Deoris," he said, "what are you doing here, you know the law—and why like this! You're only half dressed, have you gone completely mad?"

Indeed, there was some justification for his question, for Deoris met his gaze with a feverish face, and her voice was practically a babble as her last scraps of composure deserted her. "Domaris! Domaris! She must have gone to the Crypt—to the Dark Shrine."

"Youhave taken leave of your senses!" Unceremoniously, Rajasta half thrust her to a further distance from the altar. "Youknow you may not stand here like this!"

"I know, yes, I know, but listen to me! I feel it, I know it! She burned the girdle and made me tell her . . ." Deoris stopped, her face drawn with conflict and guilt, for she had suddenly realized that she was now of her own volition betraying her sworn oath to Riveda! And yet—she was bound to Domaris by an oath stronger still.

Rajasta gripped her shoulder, demanding, "What sort of gibberish is this!" Then, seeing that the girl was trembling so violently that she could hardly stand upright, he put an arm gingerly about her and helped her to a seat. "Now tell me sensibly, if you can, what you are talking about," he said, in a voice that held almost equal measures of compassion and contempt, "if you are talking about anything at all! I suppose Domaris has discovered that you were Riveda'ssaji. "

"Iwasn't! I never was!" Deoris flared; then said, wearily, "Oh, that doesn't matter, you don't understand, you wouldn't believe me anyhow! What matters is this: Domaris has gone to the Dark Shrine."

Rajasta's face was perceptibly altering as he began to guess what she was trying to say. "What— but why?"

"She saw—a girdle I was wearing, that Riveda gave me—and the scars of thedorje. "

Almost before she had spoken the word, Rajasta moved like lightning to clamp his hand across her lips. "Say that not here!" he commanded, white-faced. Deoris collapsed, crying, her head in her arms, and Rajasta seized her shoulders and forced her to look at him. "Listen to me, girl! For Domaris's sake—for your own—yes, even for Riveda's!A girdle? And the—that word you spoke; what of that?What isthis all about? "

Deoris dared not keep silent, dared not lie—and under his deep-boring eyes, she stammered, "A treble cord—knotted—wooden links carved with . . ." She gestured.

Rajasta caught her wrist and held it immobile. "Keep your disgusting Grey-robe signs for the Grey Temple! But even there that would not have been allowed! You must deliver it to me!"

"Domaris burned it."

"Thank the Gods for that," said Rajasta bleakly. "Riveda has gone among the Black-robes?" But it was a statement, not a question. "Who else?"

"Reio-ta—I mean, the chela." Deoris was crying and stammering; there was a powerful block in her mind, inhibiting speech—but the concentrated power of Rajasta's will forced her. The Priest of Light was well aware that this use of his powers had only the most dubious ethical justification, and regretted the necessity; but he knew that all of Riveda's spells would be pitted against him, and if he was to safeguard others as his Guardian's vows commanded, he dared not spare the girl. Deoris was almost fainting from the hypnotic pressure Rajasta exerted against the bond of silence Riveda had forced on her will. Slowly, syllable by syllable at times, at best sentence by reluctant sentence, she told Rajasta enough to damn Riveda tenfold.

The Priest of Light was merciless; he had to be. He was hardly more than a pair of bleak eyes and toneless, pitiless voice, commanding. "Go on. What—and how—and who . . ."

"I was sent over the Closed Places—as a channel of power—and when I could no longer serve, then Larmin—Riveda's son—took my place as scryer. . . ."

"Wait!" Rajasta leaped to his feet, pulling the girl upright with him. "By the Central Sun! You are lying, or out of your senses! A boy cannot serve in the Closed Places, only a virgin girl, or a woman prepared by ritual, or—or—a boy cannot, unless he is . . ." Rajasta was pasty-faced now, stammering himself, almost incoherent. "Deoris.What was done to Larmin? "

Deoris trembled before Rajasta's awful eyes, cowering before the surge of violent, seemingly uncontrollable wrath and disgust that surged across the Guardian's face. He shook her, roughly.

"Answer me, girl! Did he castrate the child?"

She did not have to answer. Rajasta abruptly took his hands from her as if contaminated by her presence, and when she collapsed he let her fall heavily to the floor. He was physically sick with the knowledge.

Weeping, whimpering, Deoris moved a little toward him, and he spat, pushing her away with his sandalled foot. "Gods, Deoris—you of all people! Look at me if you dare—you that Micon called sister!"

The girl cringed at his feet, but there was no mercy in the Guardian's voice: "On your knees! On your knees before the shrine you have defiled—the Light you have darkened—the fathers you have shamed—the Gods you have forgotten!"

Rocking to and fro in anguished dread, Deoris could not see the compassion that suddenly blotted out the awful fury on Rajasta's face. He was not blind to the fact that Deoris had willingly risked all hopes of clemency for herself in order to save Domaris—but it would take much penance to wipe out her crime. With a last, pitying look at the bent head, he turned and left the Temple. He was more shocked than angry; more sickened even than shocked. His maturity and

experience foresaw what even Domaris had not seen.

He hastened down the steps of the pyramid, and the priest on guard sprang to attend him—then stopped his mouth wide.

"Lord Guardian!"

"Go you," said Rajasta curtly, "with ten others, to take the Adept Riveda into custody, in my name. Put him in chains if need be."

"The Healer-priest, Lord? Riveda?" The guard was bug-eyed with disbelief. "The Adept of the Magicians—inchains? "

"The damned filthy sorcerer Riveda—Adept andformer Healer!" With an effort, Rajasta lowered his hoarse voice to a normal volume. "Then go and find a boy, about eleven years old, called Larmin—Karahama's son."

Stiffly, the priest said, "Lord, with your pardon, the woman Karahama has no child."

Rajasta, impatient with this reminder of Temple etiquette which refused theno-people even a legal existence, said angrily, "You will find a boy of the Grey Temple who is called Larmin— and don't bother with that nonsense of pretending not to know who he is! Don't harm or frighten the boy, just keep him safely where he can be produced at a moment's notice—and where he

can't be conveniently murdered to destroy evidence! Then find . . ." He paused. "Swear you will not reveal the names I speak!"

The priest made the holy sign. "I swear, Lord!"

"Find Ragamon the Elder and Cadamiri, and bid them summon the Guardians to meet here at high noon. Then seek the Arch-priest Talkannon, and say to him quietly that we have at last found evidence. No more—he will understand."

The priest hurried away, leaving, for the first time in easily three centuries—the Temple of Light unattended. Rajasta, his face grim, broke into a run.

II

Just as Domaris had, he hesitated, uncertain, at the entrance to the concealed stairs. Was it wise, he wondered, to go alone? Should he not summon aid?

A rush of cool air stirred up from the long shaft beneath him; borne out of unfathomable spaces came a sound, almost a cry. Incredibly far down, dimmed and distorted by echo, it might have been the shriek of a bat, or the echoes of his own sighing breath—but Rajasta's hesitation was gone.

Down the long stairway he hurried, taking the steps two and three at a time, steadying himself

now against one sheer wall, now against the shuddering railing. His steps clattered with desperate haste, waking hurried, clanging echoes—and he knew he warned away anyone below, but the time was past for stealth and silence. His throat was dry and his breath came in choking gasps, for he was not a young man and ever at his back loomed the nightmare need for haste that pushed him down and down the lightless stairs, down that grey and immemorial shaft through reverberating eternities that clutched at him with tattered cobweb fingers, his heels throwing up dust long, long undisturbed, to begrime the luminous white of his robes . . . Down and down and down he went, until distance became a mockery.

He stumbled, nearly falling as the stairs abruptly ended. Staring dizzily about, trying to orient himself, Rajasta again felt the hopeless futility of his plight. He knew this place only from maps and the tales and writings of others. Yet, at last, he located the entrance to the great arched vault, though he was not sure of himself until he saw the monstrous sarcophagus, the eon-blackened altar, the shadowy Form swathed in veils of stone. But he saw no human being within the shrine, and for a moment Rajasta knew fear beyond comprehension, not for Domaris but for himself . . .

A moan rose to his ear, faint and directionless, magnified by the echoing darkness. Rajasta whirled, staring about him wildly, half mad from fear of what he might see. Again the moaning sounded, and this time Rajasta saw, dimly, a woman who lay crumpled, writhing, in the fiery shroud of her long hair, before the sarcophagus. . . .

"Domaris!" On his lips the name was a sob. "Domaris! Child of my soul!" In a single stride he was beside the inert, convulsed body. He shut his eyes a moment as his world reeled: the depth

of his love for Domaris had never been truly measured until this moment when she lay apparently dying in his frightened arms.

Grimly he raised his head, glancing about with a steady wrath. No, she has not failed! he thought, with some exultation. The power was unchained, but it has again been sealed, if barely. The sacrilege is undone—but at what cost to Domaris? And I dare not leave her, not even to bring aid. Better, in any case, she die than deliver her child here!

After a moment of disordered thought, he bent and raised her in his arms. She was no light burden—but Rajasta, in his righteous anger, barely noticed the weight. He spoke to her, soothingly, and although she was long past hearing, the tone of his voice penetrated to her darkened brain and she did not struggle when he lifted her and, with a dogged desperation, started back toward the long stairway. His breath came laboringly, and his strained face had a look no one would ever see as he turned toward that incredibly distant summit. His lips moved; he breathed deeply once—and began climbing.

Chapter Four THE LAWS OF THE TEMPLE

I

Elara, moving around the court and singing serenely at her work, dropped the half-filled vase of flowers and scurried toward the Guardian as he crossed the garden with his lifeless burden. Alarmed anxiety widened her dark eyes as she held the door, then ran around him to clear cushions from a divan and assist Rajasta to lay the inert body of Domaris upon it.

His face grey with exhaustion, the Guardian straightened and stood a moment, catching his breath. Elara, quickly taking in his condition, guided him toward a seat, but he shook her off irritably. "See to your mistress."

"She lives," the slave-woman said quickly, but in anticipation of Rajasta's command, she hurried back to Domaris's side and bent, searching for a pulse-beat. Satisfied, she jumped up and spent a moment seeking in a cabinet; then returned to hold a strong aromatic to her mistress's pinched nostrils. After a long, heart-wrenching moment, Domaris moaned and her eyelids quivered.

"Domaris—" Rajasta breathed out the word. Her wide eyes were staring, the distended pupils seeing neither priest nor anxious attendant. Domaris moaned again, spasmodically gripping nothing with taloning hands, and Elara caught them gently, bending over her mistress, her shocked stare belatedly taking in the torn dress, the bruised arms and cheeks, the great livid mark across her temples.

Suddenly Domaris screamed, "No, no! No—not for myself, but can you—no, no, they will tear me apart—let me go! Loose your hands from me—Arvath! Rajasta! Father, father . . ." Her voice

trailed again into moaning sobs.

Holding the woman's head on her arm, Elara whispered gently, "My dear Lady, you are safe here with me, no one will touch you."

"She is delirious, Elara," Rajasta said wearily.

Tenderly, Elara fetched a wet cloth and blotted away the clotted blood at her mistress's hairline. Several slave-women crowded at the door, eyes wide with dread. Only the presence of the Priest stilled their questions. Elara drove them out with a gesture and low utterances, then turned to the Priest, her eyes wide with horror.

"Lord Rajasta, what in the name of all the Gods has come to her?" Without waiting for an answer, perhaps not even expecting one, she bent over Domaris again, drawing aside the folds of the shredded robe. Rajasta saw her shiver with dismay; then she straightened, covering the woman decently and saying in a low voice, "Lord Guardian, you must leave us. And she must be carried at once to the House of Birth. There is no time to lose—and you know there is danger."

Rajasta shook his head sadly. "You are a good girl, Elara, and you love Domaris, I know. You must bear what I have to tell you. Domaris must not—shecannot —be taken to the House of Birth, nor—"

"My Lord, she could be carried there easily in a litter, there is not so much need for haste as

that."

Rajasta signed her impatiently to silence. "Nor may she be attended by any consecrated priestess. She is ceremonially unclean."

Elara exploded with outrage at this. "A priestess? How!"

Rajasta sighed, miserably. "Daughter, please, hear me out. Cruel sacrilege has been done, and penalties even more terrible may be to come. And Elara—you too are awaiting a child, is that not so?"

Timidly, Elara bowed her head. "The Guardian has seen."

"Then, my daughter, I must bid you leave her, as well; or your child's life too may be forfeit." The Priest looked down at the troubled round face of the little woman and said quietly, "She has been found in the Crypt of the Sleeping God."

Elara's mouth fell open in shock and involuntary dread, and she now started back a pace from Domaris, who continued to lie as if lifeless. Then, resolutely, Elara armed herself with calm and met the Guardian's eyes levelly, saying, "Lord Guardian, I cannot leave her to these ignorant ones. If no Temple woman may come near her—I was fostered with the Lady Domaris, Lord Guardian, and she has treated me not as a servant but as a friend all my life! Whatever the risk, I will bear it."

Rajasta's eyes lighted with a momentary relief, which faded at once. "You have a generous heart, Elara, but I cannot allow that," he said sternly. "If it were only your own clanger—but you have no right to endanger the life of your child. Enough causes have been set already in motion; each person must bear the penalties which have been invoked. Place not another life on your mistress's head! Let her not be guilty of your child's life, too!"

Elara bowed her head, not understanding. She pleaded, "Lord Guardian, in the Temple of Caratra there are priestesses who might be willing to bear the risk, and who have the right and the power to make it safe! The Healer woman, Karahama—she is skilled in the magical arts. . . ."

"You may ask," conceded Rajasta, without much hope, and straightened his bent shoulders with an effort. "Nor may I remain, Elara; the Law must be observed."

"Her sister—the Priestess Deoris . . ."

Rajasta exploded in blind fury. "Woman! Hold your foolish tongue! Hearken—least of allmay Deoris come near her!"

"You cruel, heartless, wicked old man!" Elara flared, beginning to sob; then cringed in fright.

Rajasta had hardly heard the outburst. He said, more gently, "Hush, daughter, you do not know what you are saying. You are fortunate in your ignorance of Temple affairs, but do not try to

meddle in them! Now heed my words, Elara, lest worse come to pass."

II

In his own rooms, Rajasta cleansed himself ceremonially, and put aside to be burnt the clothing he had worn into the Dark Shrine. He was exhausted from that terrible descent and the more terrible return, but he had learned long ago to control his body. Clothing himself anew in full Guardian's regalia, he finally ascended the pyramid, where Ragamon and Cadamiri awaited him; and a dozen white-clad priests, impassive, ranged in a ghostly procession behind the Guardians.

Deoris still lay prostrate, in a stupor of numbed misery, before the altar. Rajasta went to her, raised the girl up and looked long into her desperate face.

"Domaris?" she said, waveringly.

"She is alive—but she may die soon." He frowned and gave Deoris a shake. "It is too late to cry! You, and you!" He singled out two Priests. "Take Deoris to the house of Talkannon, and bring her women to her there. Let her be clothed and tended and cared for. Then go with her to find Karahama's other brat—a girl of the Grey Temple called Demira. Harm her not, but let her be carefully confined." Turning to the apathetic Deoris once again, Rajasta said, "My daughter, you will speak to no one but these Priests."

Nodding dumbly, Deoris went between her guards.

Rajasta turned to the others. "Has Riveda been apprehended?"

One man replied, "We came on him while he slept. Although he wakened and raved and struggled like a madman, we finally subdued him. He—he has been chained, as you said."

Rajasta nodded wearily. "Let search be made through his house and in the Grey Temple, for the things of magic."

At that moment, the Arch-priest Talkannon entered the chamber, glancing around him with that swift searching look that took in everyone and everything.

Rajasta strode to him and, his lips pressed tight together, confronted him with formal signs of greeting. "We have concrete evidence at last," he said, "and we can arrest the guilty—for weknow! "

Talkannon paled slightly. "You know—what?"

Rajasta mistook his distressed disquiet. "Aye, we know the guilty, Talkannon. I fear the evil has touched even your house; Domaris still lives, but for how long, no one can tell. Deoris has turned from this evil, and will help us to apprehend these—these demons in human form!"

"Deoris?" Talkannon stared in disbelief and shock at the Priest of Light. "What?" Absently, he

wiped at his forehead; then, with a mighty effort, he recovered his composure. When he spoke, his voice was steady again. "My daughters have long been of an age to manage their own affairs," he murmured. "I knew nothing of this, Rajasta. But of course I, and all those under my orders, are at your service in this, Lord Guardian."

"It is well said." Rajasta began to outline what he wanted Talkannon to do . . .

But behind the Arch-priest's back, Ragamon and Cadamiri exchanged troubled glances.

III

"Good Mother Ysouda!"

The old Priestess looked down at Elara with a kindly smile. Seeing the trembling terror in the little dark face, she spoke with gentle condescension. "Have no fear, my daughter, the Mother will guard and be near you. Is it time for you, Elara?"

"No, no, I am all right," said Elara distractedly, "it is my lady, the Priestess Domaris—"

The old lady drew in her breath. "May the gods have pity!" she whispered. "What has befallen her, Elara?"

"I may not tell thee here, Mother," Elara whispered. "Take me, I beg you, to the Priestess

Karahama—"

"To the High Priestess?" At Elara's look of misery, however, Mother Ysouda wasted no more time on questions, but drew Elara along the walk until they reached a bench in the shade. "Rest here, daughter, or your own child may suffer; the sun is fierce today. I will myself seek Karahama; she will come more quickly for me than if I sent a servant or novice to summon her."

She did not wait for Elara's grateful thanks, but went quickly toward the building. Elara sat on the indicated bench, but she was too impatient, too fearful to rest as Mother Ysouda had bidden. Clasping and unclasping her hands, she rose restlessly and walked up and down the path.

Elara knew Domaris was in grave danger. She had done a little service in the Temple of Caratra, and had only the most elementary knowledge—but this much she knew perfectly well: Domaris had been in labor for many hours, and if all had been well, her child would have been born without need of assistance.

Rajasta's warning was like a terrible echo in her ears. Elara was a free city woman, whose mother had been milk nurse to Domaris; they had been fostered together and Elara served Domaris freely, as a privilege rather than a duty. She would have risked death without a second thought for the Priestess she loved, almost worshipped—but Rajasta's words, remembered, made a deafening thunder in her mind.

She is contaminated . . . you are generous, but this I cannot allow! You have no right to

endanger the life of your child-to-be . . . place not another crime on Domaris's head! Let her not be guilty of your unborn child's life, too!

She turned suddenly, hearing steps on the path behind her. A very young priestess stood there; glancing at Elara's plain robe with indifferent contempt, she said, "The Mother Karahama will receive you."

In trembling haste, Elara followed the woman's measured steps, into the presence of Karahama. She knelt.

Not unkindly, Karahama signalled her to rise. "You come on behalf of—Talkannon's daughters?"

"Oh, my Lady," Elara begged, "sacrilege has been done, and Domaris may not be brought to the House of Birth—nor is Deoris permitted to attend her! Rajasta has said—that she is ceremonially unclean. She was found in the Crypt, in the Dark Shrine. . . ." Her voice broke into a sob; she did not hear Mother Ysouda's agonized cry, nor the scandalized gasp of the young novice. "Oh, my Lady, you are Priestess! If you permit—I beg you, I beg you!"

"If I permit," Karahama repeated, remembering the birth of Micon's son.

Four years before, with a few considered words, Domaris had humiliated Karahama before her pupils, sending the "nameless woman"—her unacknowledged half-sister—from her side. "You

have said I must be tended only by my equals," Karahama could hear the words as if they had been spoken that very morning. "Therefore—leave me." How clearly Karahama remembered!

Slowly, Karahama smiled, and the smile froze Elara's blood. Karahama said in a her melodious voice, "I am High Priestess of Caratra. These women under my care must be safeguarded. I cannot permit any Priestess to attend her, nor may I myself approach one so contaminated. Bear greetings to my sister, Elara, and say to her—" Karahama's lips curved— "say that I could not so presume; that the Lady Domaris should be tended only by her equals."

"Oh, Lady!" Elara cried in horror. "Be not cruel—"

"Silence!" said Karahama sternly. "You forget yourself. But I forgive you. Go from me, Elara. And mark you—stay not near your mistress, lest your own child suffer!"

"Karahama—" Mother Ysouda quavered. Her face was as white as her faded hair, and she moved her lips, but for a moment no sound came forth. Then she begged, "Let me go to her, Karahama! I am long past my own womanhood, I cannot be harmed. If there is risk, let it fall on me, I will suffer it gladly, gladly, she is my little girl—she is like my own child, Karahama, let me go to my little one—"

"Good Mother, you may not go," said the High Priestess, with sharp sternness. "Our Goddess shall not be so offended! What—shall Her Priestesses tend the unclean? Such a thing would defile our Temple. Elara, leave us! Seek aid for your lady, if there is need, among the Healers—

but seek no woman to aid her! And—heed me, Elara—stay you afar from her! If harm comes to your child, I shall know you disobedient, and you will suffer full penalty for the crime of abortion!" Karahama gestured contemptuous dismissal, and as the woman, sobbing aloud, rushed from their presence, Mother Ysouda opened her mouth to make angry protest—and checked it, despairing. Karahama had only invoked the literal laws of the Temple of Caratra.

Again—very slightly—Karahama smiled.

Chapter Five THE NAMING OF THE NAME

I

Toward sunset, Rajasta, gravely troubled, went to Cadamiri's rooms.

"My brother, you are a Healer—priest—the only one I know who is not a Grey-robe." He did not add,The only one I dare to trust, but it was understood between them. "Do you fear— contamination?"

Cadamiri grasped this also without explanation. "Domaris? No, I fear it not." He looked into

Rajasta's haggard face and asked, "But could no priestess be found to bear the risk?"

"No." Rajasta did not elaborate.

Cadamiri's eyes narrowed, and his austere features, usually formidable, hardened even more. "If Domaris should die for lack of skilled tending, the shame to our Temple will live long past the karma which might be engendered by a fracture of the Law!"

Rajasta regarded his fellow-Guardian thoughtfully for a silent moment, then said, "The slavewoman brought two of Riveda's Healers to her—but . . ." Rajasta let the appeal drop.

Cadamiri nodded, already seeking the small case which contained the appurtenances of his art. "I will go to her," he said with humility; then added, slowly, as if against his will, "Expect not too much of me, Rajasta! Men are not—instructed in these arts, as you know. I have only the barest gleaming of the secrets which the Priestesses guard for such emergencies. However, I will do what I may." His face was sorrowful, for he loved his young kinswoman with that passionate love which a sworn ascetic may sometimes feel for a woman of pure beauty.

Swiftly they passed through the halls of the building, pausing only to pick three strong lesser priests in the event of trouble. They did not speak to one another as they hurried along the paths to Domaris's home, and parted at the door; but although Rajasta was already late for an appointment, he stood a moment watching as Cadamiri disappeared from his view.

In her room, Domaris lay as one lifeless, too weak even to struggle. Garments and bed-linen alike were stained with blood. Two Grey-robes stood, one on either side of the bed; there was no one else in the room, not even the saving presence of a slave-woman. Later, Cadamiri was to learn that Elis had stubbornly remained with her cousin most of the day, defying Karahama's reported threats and doing her ineffectual best—but the air of authority with which the Greyrobes had presented themselves had misled her; she had been persuaded, at last, to leave Domaris to them.

One of the Grey-robes turned as the Guardian entered. "Ah, Cadamiri," he said, "I fear you come too late."

Cadamiri's blood turned to icy water. These men were not Healers and never had been, but Magicians—Nadastor and his disciple Har-Maen. Clenching his teeth on angry words, Cadamiri walked to the bed. After a brief examination he straightened, appalled. "Clumsy butchers!" he shouted. "If this woman dies, I will have you strangled for murder—and if she lives, for torture!"

Nadastor bowed smoothly. "She will not die—yet," he murmured. "And as for your threats. . ."

Cadamiri wrenched open the door and summoned the escort of Priests. "Take these—these filthysorcerers! " he commanded, in a voice hardly recognizable as his own. The two Magicians allowed themselves to be led from the room without protest, and Cadamiri, through halfclenched teeth, called after them, "Do not think you will escape justice! I will have your hands struck off at the wrists and you will be scourged naked from the Temple like the dogs you are!

May you rot in leprosy!"

Abruptly Har-Maen swayed and crumpled. Then Nadastor too reeled and fell into the arms of his captor. The white-robed Priests jumped away from them and made the Holy Sign frantically, while Cadamiri could only stare, wondering if he were going mad.

The two Grey-robed figures rising from the floor, meek and blank-eyed in oddly-shrunken robes, were—not Har-Maen and Nadastor, but two young Healers whom Cadamiri himself had trained. They stared about them, dumb and smitten with terror, and quite obviously oblivious to everything that had happened.

Illusion!Cadamiri clenched his fists against a flood of dread.Great Gods, help us all! He gazed helplessly at the quivering, confused young novice-Healers, controlling himself with the greatest effort of his life. At last he said hoarsely, "I have no time to deal with—with this, now. Take them and guard them carefully until I. . ." His voice faltered and failed. "Go! Go!" he managed to say. "Take them out of my sight!"

Almost slamming the door shut, Cadamiri went again to bend over Domaris, baffled and desolate. His sister Guardian had indeed been cruelly treated by—by devils of Illusion! With a further effort, he put rage and sadness both aside, concentrating on the abused woman who lay before him. It was certainly too late to save the baby—and Domaris herself was in the final stage of exhaustion: the convulsive spasms tearing at her were so weak it seemed her body no longer had the strength even to reject the burden of death.

Her eyes fluttered open. "Cadamiri?"

"Hush, my sister," he said in a rough, kindly voice. "Do not try to talk."

"I must—Deoris—the Crypt. . ." Twisting spasmodically, she dragged her hands free of the Guardian's; but so exhausted was she that her eyes dropped shut again on the tears that welled from them, and she slept for a moment. Cadamiri's expression was soft with pity; he could understand, as not even Rajasta would have. This, from infancy, was every Temple woman's ultimate nightmare of obscene humiliation—that a man might approach a woman in labor. When Elis had been bullied into leaving her, her mind—sick and tormented—had receded into some depth of shame and hurt where no one could reach or follow her. Cadamiri's kindness was little better than the obscene brutality of the sorcerers.

When it was clear that there was no more that he could do, Cadamiri went to the inner door and quietly beckoned Arvath to approach. "Speak to her," he suggested gently. It was a desperate measure—if her husband could not reach her, probably no one could.

Arvath's face was pinched and pallid. He had waited, wracked by fear and trembling, most of the day, seeing no one save Mother Ysouda, who hovered about him for a time, weeping. From her he had learned for the first time of the dangers Domaris had deliberately faced; it had made him feel guilty and confused, but he forgot it all as he bent over his wife.

"Domaris—beloved—"

The familiar, loving voice brought Domaris back for a moment—but not to recognition. Agony and shame had loosed her hold on reason. Her eyes opened, the pupils so widely distended that they looked black and blind, and her bitten-bloody lips curved in the old, sweet smile.

"Micon!" she breathed. "Micon!" Her eyelids fluttered shut again and she slept, smiling.

Arvath leaped away with a curse. In that instant, the last remnant of his love died, and something cruel and terrible took its place.

Cadamiri, sensing some of this, caught restrainingly at his sleeve. "Peace, my brother," he implored. "The girl is delirious—she is not here at all."

"Observant, aren't you?" Arvath snarled. "Damn you,let me go! " Savagely, he shook off Cadamiri's hands and, with another frightful curse, went from the room.

Rajasta, still standing in the courtyard, unable to force himself to go, whirled around with instant alertness as Arvath reeled staggering out of the building.

"Arvath! Is Domaris . . . ?"

"Domaris be damned forever," the young Priest said between his teeth, "and you too!" He tried

to thrust his way past Rajasta, too, as he had Cadamiri; but the old man was strong, and determined.

"You are overwrought or drunken, my son!" said Rajasta sorrowfully. "Speak not so bitterly! Domaris has done a brave thing, and paid with her child's life—and her own may be demanded before this is over!"

"And glad she was," said Arvath, very low, "to be free ofmy child!"

"Arvath!" Rajasta's grip loosed on the younger Priest as shock whitened his face. "Arvath! She is your wife!"

With a furious laugh, he pulled free of Rajasta. "My wife? Never! Only harlot to that Atlantean bastard who has been held up all my life as a model for my virtue! Damn them both and you too! I swear—but that you are just a stupid old man. . ." Arvath let his menacing fist fall to his side, turned, and in an uncontrollable spasm of retching, was violently sick on the pavement.

Rajasta sprang to him, murmuring, "My son!"

Arvath, fighting to master himself, thrust the Guardian away. "Always forgiving!" he shouted, "Ever compassionate!" He stumbled to his feet and shook his fist at Rajasta. "I spit on thee—on Domaris—and on the Temple!" he cried out in a breaking falsetto—and, elbowing Rajasta savagely aside, rushed away, into the gathering darkness.

II

Cadamiri turned to see a tall and emaciated form in a grey, shroud-like garment, standing a little distance from him. The door was still quivering in its frame from Arvath's departure; nothing had stirred.

Cadamiri's composure, for the second time that day, deserted him. "What—how did you get in here?" he demanded.

The grey figure raised a narrow hand to push aside the veil, revealing the haggard face and blazing eyes of the woman Adept Maleina. In her deep, vibrant voice she murmured, "I have come to aid you."

"You Grey-robe butchers have done enough already!" Cadamiri shouted. "Now leave this poor girl to die in peace!"

Maleina's eyes looked shrunken and sad then. "I have no right to resent that," she said. "But thou art Guardian, Cadamiri. Judge by what you know of good and of evil. I am no sorceress; I am Magician and Adept!" She stretched her empty, gaunt hand toward him, palm upward—and as Cadamiri stared, the words died in his throat; within her palm shone the sign he could not mistake, and Cadamiri bent in reverence.

Scornfully, Maleina gestured him to rise. "I have not forgotten that Deoris was punished because she aided one no priestess might dare to touch! I am—hardly a woman, now; but I have served Caratra, and my skill is not small. More, I hate Riveda! He, and worse, what he has done! Now stand aside."

Domaris lay as if life had already left her—but as Maleina's gaunt, bony hands moved on her body, a little voiceless cry escaped her exhausted lips. The woman Adept paid no more heed to Cadamiri, but murmured, musingly, "I like not what I must do." Her shoulders straightened, and she raised both hands high; her low, resonant voice shook the room.

"Isarma!"

Not for nothing were true names kept sacred and secret; the intonation and vibration of her Temple name penetrated even to Domaris's withdrawn senses, and she heard, though reluctantly.

"Who?" she whispered.

"I am a woman and thy sister," Maleina said, with gentle authority, calming her with a hand on the sensitive centre of the brow chakra. Abruptly she turned to Cadamiri.

"The soul lives in her again," she said. "Believe me, I do no more than I must, but now she will fight me—you must help me, even if it seems fearful to you."

Domaris, all restraint gone, roused up screaming, in the pure animal instinct for survival, as Maleina touched her; Maleina gestured, and Cadamiri flung his full weight to hold the struggling woman motionless. Then there was a convulsive cry from Domaris; Cadamiri felt her go limp and mercifully unconscious under his hands.

With an expression of horror, Maleina caught up a linen cloth and wrapped it around the terribly torn thing she held. Cadamiri shuddered; and Maleina turned to him a sombre gaze.

"Believe me, I did not kill," she said. "I only freed her of . . ."

"Of certain death," Cadamiri said weakly. "I know. I would not have—dared."

"I learned that for a cause less worthy," said Maleina, and the old woman's eyes were wet as she looked down at the unconscious form of Domaris.

Gently she bent and straightened the younger woman's limbs, laid a fresh coverlet over her.

"She will live," said Maleina. "This—" she covered the body of the dead, mutilated child. "Say no word about who has done this."

Cadamiri shivered and said, "So be it."

Without moving, she was gone; and only a shaft of sunlight moved where the Adept had stood a

moment before. Cadamiri clutched at the foot of the bed, afraid that for all his training he would fall in a faint. After a moment he steadied himself and made ready to bear the news to Rajasta; that Domaris was alive and that Arvath's child was dead.

Chapter Six THE PRICE

I

They had allowed Demira to listen to the testimony of Deoris, wrung from her partially under hypnosis, partially under the knowledge that her sworn word could not be violated without karmic effect that would spread over centuries. Riveda, too, had answered all questions truthfully—and with contempt. The others had taken refuge in useless lies.

All this Demira endured calmly enough—but when she heard who had fathered her child, she screamed out between the words, "No! No, no, no. . ."

"Silence!" Ragamon commanded, and his gaze transfixed the shrieking child as he adjured solemnly. "This testimony shall bear no weight. I find no record of this child's parentage, nor any grounds save hearsay for believing that she is daughter to any man. We need no charges of

incest!"

Maleina caught Demira in her arms, pressing the golden head to her shoulder, holding the girl close, with an agonized, protective love. The look on the woman's face might have belonged to a sorrowing angel—or an avenging demon.

Her eyes rested on Riveda, seeming to burn out of her dark, gaunt face, and she spoke as if her voice came from a tomb. "Riveda! If the Gods meted justice, you would lie in this child's place!"

But Demira pulled madly away from her restraining hands and ran screaming from the Hall of Judgment.

All that day they sought her. It was Karahama who, toward nightfall, found the girl in the innermost sanctuary of the Temple of the Mother. Demira had hanged herself from one of the crossbeams, a blue bridal girdle knotted about her neck, her slight distorted body swaying horribly as if to reprove the Goddess who had denied her, the mother who had forsworn her, the Temple that had never allowed her to know life.. . .

Chapter Seven THE DEATH CUP

I

Silence . . . and the beating of her heart . . . and the dripping of water as it trickled, drop by slow drop, out of the stone onto the damp rock floor. Deoris stole through the black stillness, calling almost in a whisper, "Riveda!" The vaulted roof cast the name back, hollow and guttural echoes: "Riveda . . . veda . . . veda . . . eda . . . da. . . ."

Deoris shivered, her wide eyes searching the darkness fearfully. Where have they taken him?

As her sight gradually became accustomed to the gloom, she discerned a pale and narrow chink of light—and, almost at her feet, the heavy sprawled form of a man.

Riveda!Deoris fell to her knees.

He lay so desperately still, breathing as if drugged. The heavy chains about his body forced him backward, strained and unnaturally cramped . . . Abruptly the prisoner came awake, his hands groping in the darkness.

"Deoris," he said, almost wonderingly, and stirred with a metallic rasp of chains. She took his seeking hands in hers, pressing her lips to the wrists chafed raw by the cold iron. Riveda fumbled to touch her face. "Have they—they have not imprisoned you too, child?"

"No," she whispered.

Riveda struggled to sit up, then sighed and gave it up. "I cannot," he acknowledged wearily. "These chains are heavy—and cold!"

In horror, Deoris realized that he was literally weighed down with bronze chains that enlaced his body, fettering hands and feet close to the floor so that he could not even sit upright—his giant strength oppressed so easily!But how they must fear him!

He smiled, a gaunt, hollow-eyed grimace in the darkness. "They have even bound my hands lest I weave a spell to free myself! The half-witted, superstitious cowards," he muttered, "knowing nothing of magic—they are afraid of what no living man could accomplish!" He chuckled. "I suppose Icould, possibly, bespeak the fetters off my wrists—if I wanted to bring the dungeon down on top of me!"

Awkwardly, because of the weight of the chains and the clumsiness of her own swelling body, Deoris got her arms half-way around him and held him, as closely as she could, his head softly pillowed on her thighs.

"How long have I been here, Deoris?"

"Seven days," she whispered.

He stirred with irritation at the realization that she was crying softly. "Oh, stop it!" he commanded. "I suppose I am to die—and I can stand that—but I willnot have you snivelling over me!" Yet his hand, gently resting upon hers, belied the anger in his voice.

"Somehow," he mused, after a little time had passed, "I have always thought my home was—out there in the dark, somewhere." The words dropped, quiet and calm, through the intermittent dripdripping of the subterranean waters. "Many years ago, when I was young, I saw a fire, and what looked like death—and beyond that, in the dark places, something . . . or some One, who knew me. Shall I at last find my way back to that wonderworld of Night?" He lay quiet in her arms for many minutes, smiling. "Strange," he said at last, "that after all I have done, my one act of mercy condemns me to death—that I made certain Larmin, with his tainted blood, grew not to manhood—complete."

Suddenly Deoris was angry. "Who were you to judge?" she flared at him.

"I judged—because I had the power to decide."

"Is there no right beyond power?" Deoris asked bitterly.

Riveda's smile was wry now. "None, Deoris. None."

Hot rebellion overflowed in Deoris, and the right of her own unborn child stirred in her. "You yourself fathered Larmin, and insured that taint its further right! And what of Demira? What of

the child you, of your own free will, begot on me? Would you show that child the same mercy?"

"There were—things I did not know, when I begot Larmin." In the darkness she could not see the full grimness of the smile lurking behind Riveda's words. "To your child, I fear I show only the mercy of leaving it fatherless!" And suddenly he raised up in another fit of raving, heretical blasphemies, straining like a mad beast at his chains; battering Deoris away from him, he shouted violently until his voice failed and, gasping hoarsely, he fell with a metallic clamor of chains.

Deoris pulled the spent man into her arms, and he did not move. Silence stole toward them on dim feet, while the crack of light crept slowly across her face and lent its glow at last to Riveda's rough-hewn, sleeping face. Heavy, abandoned sleep enfolded him, a sleep that seemed to clasp fingers with death. Time had run down; Deoris, kneeling in the darkness, could feel the sluggish beating of its pulse in the water that dripped crisply, drearily, eroding a deep channel through her heart, that flowed with brooding silence. . .

Riveda moved finally, as if with pain. The single ray of light outlined his face, harshly unrelenting, before her longing eyes. "Deoris," he whispered, and the manacled hand groped at her waist . . . then he sighed. "Of course. They have burned it!" He stopped, his voice still hoarse and rasping. "Forgive me," he said. "It was best—you never knew—ourchild!" He made a strange blurred sound like a sob, then turned his face into her hand and with a reverence as great as it was unexpected, pressed his lips into the palm. His manacled hand fell, with a clashing of chains.

For the first time in his long and impersonally concentrated life, Riveda felt a deep and personal despair. He did not fear death for himself; he had cast the lots and they had turned against him.But what lot have I cast for Deoris? She must live —and after me her child will live—that child!Suddenly Riveda knew the full effect of his actions, faced responsibility and found it a bitter, self-poisoned brew. In the darkness, he held Deoris as close and as tenderly as he could in the circumstances, as if straining to give the protection he had too long neglected . . . and his thoughts ran a black torrent.

But for Deoris the greyness was gone. In despair and pain she had finally found the man she had always seen and known and loved behind the fearful outer mask he wore to the world. In that hour, she was no longer a frightened child, but a woman, stronger than life or death in the soft violence of her love for this man she could never manage to hate. Her strength would not last— but as she knelt beside him, she forgot everything but her love of Riveda. She held his chained body in her arms, and time stopped for them both.

She was still holding him like that when the Priests came to take them away.

II

The great hall was crowded with the robes of priests: white, blue, flaxen, and grey-robed, the men and women of the Temple precincts mingled before the raised däis of judgment. They parted with hushed murmurings as Domaris walked slowly forward, her burning hair the only

fleck of color about her, and her face whiter than the pallid glimmer of her mantle. She was flanked by two white-robed priests who paced with silent gravity one step behind her, alert lest she fall—but she moved steadily, though slowly, and her impassive eyes betrayed nothing of her thoughts.

Inexorably they came to the däis; here the priests halted, but Domaris went on, slow-paced as fate, and mounted the steps. She spared no glance at the gaunt, manacled scarecrow at the foot of the däis, nor for the girl who crouched with her face hidden in Riveda's lap, her long hair scattered in a dark tangle about them both. Domaris forced herself to climb regally upward, and take her place between Rajasta and Ragamon. Behind them, Cadamiri and the other Guardians were shadowy faces hidden within their golden hoods.

Rajasta stepped forward, looking out over the assembled Priests and Priestesses; his eyes seemed to seek out each and every face in the room. Finally he sighed, and spoke with ceremonious formality: "Ye have heard the accusations. Do you believe? Have they been proved?"

A deep, threatening, ragged thunder rolled the answer: "We believe! It is proved!"

"Do you accept the guilt of this man?"

"We accept!"

"And what is your will?" Rajasta questioned gravely. "Do ye pardon?"

Again the thunder of massed voices, like the long roll of breakers on the seashore: "We pardon not!"

Riveda's face was impassive, though Deoris flinched.

"What is your wall?" Rajasta challenged. "Do ye then condemn?"

"We condemn!"

"What is your will?" said Rajasta again—but his voice was breaking. He knew what the answer would be.

Cadamiri's voice came, firm and strong, from the left: "Death to him who has misused his power!"

"Death!" The word rolled and reverberated around the room, dying into frail, whispering echoes.

Rajasta turned and face the judgment seat. "Do ye concur?"

"We concur!" Cadamiri's strong voice drowned other sounds: Ragamon's was a harsh tremolo, the others mere murmurs in their wake. Domaris spoke so faintly that Rajasta had to bend to hear

her, "We—concur."

"It is your will. I concur." Rajasta turned again, to face the chained Riveda. "You have heard your sentence," he charged gravely. "Have you anything to say?"

The blue, frigid eyes met Rajasta's, in a long look, as if the Adept were pondering a number of answers, any one of which would have shaken the ground from under Rajasta's feet—but the rough-cut jaw, covered now by a faint shadow of reddish-gold beard, only turned up a little in something that was neither smile nor grimace. "Nothing, nothing at all," he said, in a low and curiously gentle voice.

Rajasta gestured ritually. "The decree stands! Fire cleanses—and to the fire we send you!" He paused, and added sternly, "Be ye purified!"

"What of thesaji? " shouted someone at the back of the hall.

"Drive her from the Temple!" another voice cried shrilly.

"Burn her! Stone her! Burn her, too! Sorceress! Harlot!" It was a storm of hissing voices, and not for several minutes did Rajasta's upraised hand command silence. Riveda's hand had tightened on Deoris's shoulder, and his jaw was set, his teeth clenched in his lip. Deoris did not move. She might have been lying dead at his knees already.

"She shall be punished," said Rajasta severely, "but she is woman—and with child!"

"Shall the seed of a sorcerer live?" an anonymous voice demanded; and the storm of voices rose again, drowning Rajasta's admonitions with the clamor and chaos.

Domaris rose and stood, swaying a little, then advanced a step. The riot slowly died away as the Guardian stood motionless, her hair a burning in the shadowy spaces. Her voice was even and low: "My Lords, this cannot be. I pledge my life for her."

Sternly, Ragamon put the question: "By what right?"

"She has been sealed to the Mother," said Domaris; and her great eyes looked haunted as she went on, "She is Initiate, and beyond the vengeance of man. Ask of the Priestesses—she is sacrosanct, under the Law. Mine be her guilt; I have failed as Guardian, and as sister. I am guilty further: with the ancient power of the Guardians, invested in me, I have cursed this man who stands condemned before you." Domaris's eyes rested, gently almost, on Riveda's arrogant head, "I cursed him life to life, on the circles of karma . . . by Ritual and Power, I cursed him. Let my guilt be punished." She dropped her hands and stood staring at Rajasta, self-accused, waiting.

He gazed back at her in consternation. The future had suddenly turned black before his eyes.Will Domaris never learn caution? She leaves me no choice. . . . Wearily, Rajasta said, "The Guardian has claimed responsibility! Deoris I leave to her sister, that she may bring forth, and her fate shall be decided later—but I strip her of honor. No more may she be called Priestess or

Scribe." He paused, and addressed the assembly again. "The Guardian claims that she has cursed—by ancient Ritual, and the ancient Power. Is that misuse?"

The hall hissed with the sibilance of vague replies; unanimity was gone, the voices few and doubtful, half lost in the vaulted spaces. Riveda's guilt had been proved in open trial, and it was a tangible guilt; this was a priestly secret known but to a few, and when it was forced out like this, the common priesthood was more bewildered than indignant, for they had little idea what was meant.

One voice, bolder than the rest, called through the uneasy looks and vague shiftings and whispers: "Let Rajasta deal with his Acolyte!" A storm of voices took up the cry: "On Rajasta's head! Let Rajasta deal with his Acolyte!"

"Acolyte no longer!" Rajasta's voice was a whiplash, and Domaris winced with pain. "Yet I accept the responsibility. So be it!"

"So be it!" the thronged Priests thundered, again with a single voice.

Rajasta bowed ceremoniously. "The decrees stand," he announced, and seated himself, watching Domaris, who was still standing, and none too steadily. In anger and sorrow, Rajasta wondered if she had the faintest idea what might be made of her confession. He was appalled at the chain of events which she—Initiate and Adept—had set in motion. The power vested in her was a very real thing, and in cursing Riveda as she had, she had used it to a base end. He knew she would

pay—and the knowledge put his own courage at a low ebb. She had generated endless karma for which she, and who knew how many others, must pay . . . It was a fault in him, also, that Domaris should have let this happen, and Rajasta did not deny the responsibility, even within himself.

And Deoris. . . .

Domaris had spoken of the Mystery of Caratra, which no man might penetrate; in that single phrase, she had effectively cut herself off from him. Her fate was now in the hands of the Goddess; Rajasta could not intervene, even to show mercy. Deoris, too, was beyond the Temple's touch. It could only be decided whether or no this Temple might continue to harbor the sisters. . . .

Domaris slowly descended the steps, moving with a sort of concentrated effort, as if force of will would overcome her body's frailty. She went to Deoris and, bending, tried to draw her away. The younger girl resisted frantically, and finally, in despair, Domaris signaled to one of her attendant Priests to carry her away—but as the Priest laid hands on the girl, Deoris shrieked and clung to Riveda in a frenzy.

"No! Never, never! Let me die, too! I won't go!"

The Adept raised his head once more, and looked into Deoris's eyes. "Go, child," he said softly. "This is the last command I shall ever lay upon you." With his manacled hands, he touched her

dark curls. "You swore to obey me to the last," he murmured. "Now the last is come. Go, Deoris."

The girl collapsed in terrible sobbing, but allowed herself to be led away. Riveda's eyes followed her, naked emotion betrayed there, and his lips moved as he whispered, for the first and last time, "Oh, my beloved!"

After a long pause, he looked up again, and his eyes, hard and controlled once more, met those of the woman who stood before him robed in white.

"Your triumph, Domaris," he said bitterly.

On a strange impulse, she exclaimed, "Ourdefeat!"

Riveda's frigid blue eyes glinted oddly, and he laughed aloud. "You are—a worthy antagonist," he said.

Domaris smiled fleetingly; never before had Riveda acknowledged her as an equal.

Rajasta had risen to put the final challenge to the Priests. "Who speaks for mercy?"

Silence.

Riveda turned his head and looked out at his accusers, facing them squarely, without appeal.

And Domaris said quietly, "I speak for mercy, my lords.He could have let her die! He saved Deoris, he risked his own life—when he could have let her die! He let her live, to bear the scars that would forever accuse him. It is but a feather against the weight of his sin—but on the scales of the Gods, a feather may balance against a whole human soul. I speak for mercy!"

"It is your privilege," Rajasta conceded, hoarsely.

Domaris drew from her robe the beaten-gold dagger, symbolic of her office. "To your use, this," she said, and thrust it into Riveda's hand. "I too have need of mercy," she added, and was gone, her white and golden robes retreating slowly between the ranks of Priests.

Riveda studied the weapon in bis hands for a long moment. By some strange fatality, Domaris's one gift to him was death, and it was the supreme gift. In a single, fleeting instant, he wondered if Micon had been right; had he, Domaris, Deoris, sowed events that would draw them all together yet again, beyond this parting, life to life . . . ?

He smiled—a weary, scholarly smile. He sincerely hoped not.

Rising to his feet, he surrendered the symbol of mercy to Rajasta—long centuries had passed since the mercy-dagger was put to its original use—and in turn accepted the jewelled cup. The Adept held it, as he had the dagger, in his hands for a long, considering minute, thinking—with

an almost sensuous pleasure, the curious sensuality of the ascetic—of darkness beyond; that darkness which he had, all his life, loved and sought. His entire life had led to this moment, and in a swift, half-conscious thought, it occurred to him that it was precisely this he had desired— and that he could have accomplished it far more easily.

Again he smiled. "The wonder-world of Night," he said aloud, and drained the death-cup in a single draught; then, with his last strength, raised it—and with a laugh, hurled it straight and unerring toward the däis. It struck Rajasta on the temple, and the old man fell senseless, struck unconscious at the same instant that Riveda, with a clamor of brazen chains, fell lifeless on the stone floor.

Chapter Eight LEGACY

I

The small affairs of everyday went on with such sameness that Deoris was confused. She lived almost in a shell of glass; her mind seemed to have slid back somehow to the old days when she and Domaris had been children together. Deliberately she clung to these daydreams and fancies, encouraging them, and if a thought from the present slipped through, she banished it at once.

Although her body was heavy, quickened with that strange, strong other life, she refused to think of her unborn child. Her mind remained slammed shut on that night in the Crypt—except for the nightmares that woke her screaming.What monster demon did she bear, what lay in wait for birth . . . ?

On a deeper level, where her thoughts were not clear, she was fascinated, afraid, outraged. Her body—the invincible citadel of her very being—was no longer her own, but invaded, defiled.By what night-hauntedthing of darkness, working in Riveda, has she been made mother —and to what hell-spawn?

She had begun to hate her rebel body as a thing violated, an ugliness to be hidden and despised. Of late she had taken to binding herself tightly with a wide girdle, forcing the rebellious contours into some semblance of her old slenderness, although she was careful to arrange her clothing so that this would not be too apparent, and to conceal it from Domaris.

Domaris was not ignorant of Deoris's feelings—she could even understand them to some faint extent: the dread, the reluctance to remember and to face the future, the despairing horror. She gave the younger girl a few days of dreams and silence, hoping Deoris would come out of it by herself . . . but finally she forced the issue, unwillingly, but driven by real necessity. This latest development was no daydream, but painfully real.

"Deoris, your child will almost certainly be born crippled if you bind the life from him that

way," she said. She spoke gently, pityingly, as if to a child. "You know better than that!"

Deoris flung rebelliously away from her hand. "I won't go about shamed so that every slut in the Temple can point her finger at me and reckon up when I am to give birth!"

Domaris covered her face with her hands for a moment, sick with pity. Deoris had, indeed, been mocked and tormented in the days following Riveda's death.But this —this violence to nature! And Deoris, who had been Priestess of Caratra!

"Listen, Deoris," she said, more severely than she had spoken since the disasters, "if you are so sensitive, then stay within our own courts where no one will see you. But you must not injure yourself and your child this way!" She took the tight binding in her hands, gently loosening the fastenings; on the reddened skin beneath were white lateral marks where the bandages had cut deep. "My child, my poor little girl! What drove you to this? How could you?"

Deoris averted her face in bitter silence, and Domaris sighed. The girl must stop this—this idiotic refusal to face the plain facts!

"You must be properly cared for," said Domaris. "If not by me, then by another."

Deoris said a swift, frightened, "No! No, Domaris, you—you won't leave me!"

"I cannot if I would," Domaris answered; then, with one of her rare attempts at humor, she

teased, "Your dresses will not fit you now! But are you so fond of these dresses that you come to this?"

Deoris gave the usual listless, apathetic smile.

Domaris, smiling, set about looking through her sister's things. After a few minutes, she straightened in astonishment. "But you have no others that are suitable! You should have provided yourself. . ."

Deoris turned away in a hostile silence; and it was evident to the stunned Domaris that the oversight had been deliberate. Without further speech, but feeling as if she had been attacked by a beast that leaped from a dark place, Domaris went and searched here and there among her own possessions, until she found some lengths of cloth, gossamer-fine, gaily colored, from which the loose conventional robes could be draped.Iwore these before Micail's birth, she mused, reminiscent. She had been more slender then—they could be made to fit Deoris's smaller slighter body. . . .

"Come then," she said with laughter, putting aside thoughts of the time she had herself worn this cloth, "I will show you one thing, at least, I know better than you!" As if she were dressing a doll, she drew Deoris to her feet, and with a pantomime of assumed gaiety, attempted to show her sister how to arrange the conventional robe.

She was not prepared for her sister's reaction. Deoris almost at once caught the lengths of cloth

from her sister's hands, and with a frantic, furious gesture, rent them across and flung them to the floor. Then, shuddering, Deoris threw herself upon the cold tiles too, and began to weep wildly.

"I won't, I won't, I won't!" Deoris sobbed, over and over again. "Let me alone! I don't want to. I didn't want this! Go away,just go away! Leave me alone!"

II

It was late evening. The room was filled with drifting shadows, and the watery light deepened the vague flames of Domaris's hair, picked out the single streak of white all along its length. Her face was thin and drawn, her body narrowed, with an odd, gaunt limpness that was new. Deoris's face was a white oval of misery. They waited, together, in a hushed dread.

Domaris wore the blue robe and golden fillet of an Initiate of Caratra, and had bidden Deoris robe herself likewise. It was their only hope.

"Domaris," Deoris said faintly, "what is going to happen?"

"I do not know, dear." The older woman clasped her sister's hand tightly between her own thin blue-veined ones. "But they cannot harm you, Deoris. You are—we are,what we are! That they cannot change or gainsay."

But Domaris sighed, for she was not so certain as she wanted to seem. She had taken that course

to protect Deoris, and beyond doubt it had served them in that—else Deoris would have shared Riveda's fate! But there was a sacrilege involved that went deep into the heart of the religion, for Deoris's child had been conceived in a hideous rite. Could any child so conceived ever be received into the Priest's Caste?

Although she did not, even now, regret the steps she had taken, Domaris knew she had been rash; and the consequences dismayed her. Her own child was dead, and through the tide of her deep grief, she knew it was only what she should have expected. She accepted her own guilt but she resolved, with a fierce and quiet determination, that Deoris's child should be safe. She had accepted responsibility for Deoris and for the unborn, and would not evade that responsibility by so much as a fraction.

And yet—to what night-haunted monster, working in Riveda, had Deoris been made mother? What hell-spawn awaited birth?

She took Deoris by the hand and they rose, standing together as their judges entered the room: the Vested Five, in their regalia of office; Karahama and attendant Priestesses; Rajasta and Cadamiri, their golden mantles and sacred blazonings making a brilliance in the dim room; and behind Karahama, a grey-shrouded, fleshless form stood, motionless, with long narrow hands folded across meager breasts. Beneath the grey folds a dim color burned blue, and across the blazing hair the starred fillet of sapphires proclaimed the Atlantean rites of Caratra in Maleina's corpse-like presence—and even the Vested Five gave deference to the aged Priestess and Adept.

There was sorrow in Rajasta's eyes, and Domaris thought she detected a glint of sympathy in the impassive face of the woman Adept, but the other faces were stern and expressionless; Karahama's even held a faintly perceptible triumph. Domaris had long regretted her moment of pique, those long years ago; she had made a formidable enemy.This is what Micon would have called karma . . . Micon! She tried to hold to his name and image like a talisman, and failed. Would he have censured her actions? He had not acted to protect Reio-ta, even under torture!

Cadamiri's gaze was relentless, and Domaris shrank from it; from Cadamiri, at least, they could expect no mercy, only justice. The ruthless light of the fanatic dwelt in his eyes—something of the same fervor Domaris had sensed and feared in Riveda.

Briefly, Ragamon the Elder rehearsed the situation: Adsartha, once apprentice Priestess of Caratra,saji to the condemned and accursed Riveda, bore a child conceived in unspeakable sacrilege. Knowing this, the Guardian Isarma had taken it upon herself to bind the apostate Priestess Adsartha with herself in the ancient and holy Mystery of the Dark Mother, which put them both forever beyond man's justice . . . "Is this true?" he demanded.

"In the main," Domaris said wearily. "There are a few minor distinctions—but you would not recognize them as important."

Rajasta met her eyes. "You may state the case in your own way, daughter, if you wish."

"Thank you." Domaris clasped and unclasped her hands. "Deoris was nosaji. To that, I believe,

Karahama will bear witness. Is it not true, my sisterand more than my sister. . . . " Her use of the ritual phrase was deliberate, based on a wild guess that was hardly more than a random hope. "Is it not true that no maiden can be madesaji after her body is mature?"

Karahama's face had gone white, and her eyes were sick with concealed rage that she, Karahama, should be forced into a position where she was bound by solemn oath to aid Domaris in all things! "That is true," Karahama acknowledged tautly. "Deoris was nosaji, butSA#kti SidhA#na and, thus, holy even to the Priest of Light."

Domaris went on quietly, "I bound her to Caratra, not altogether to shield her from punishment nor to protect her from violence, but to guide her again toward the Light." Seeing Rajasta's eyes fixed on her in almost skeptical puzzlement, Domaris added, on impulse, "Deoris too is of the Light-born, as much as I am myself; and I—felt her child also deserved protection."

"You speak truth," Ragamon the Elder murmured, "yet can a child begotten in such foul blasphemy be so received by the Mother?"

Domaris faced him proudly. "The Rites of Caratra," she said with quiet emphasis, "are devoid of all distinctions. Her Priestesses may be of royal blood—of the race of slaves—or even thenopeople. " Her eyes dwelt for an instant upon Karahama. "Is that not so, my sister?"

"My sister, it is so," Karahama acknowledged, stifled, "even had Deoris beensaji in truth." Under Maleina's eyes she had not dared keep silence, for Maleina had taken pity on Karahama

too, years before; it had not been entirely coincidence which had brought Demira to Maleina's teaching. The three daughters of Talkannon looked at one another, and only Deoris lowered her eyes; Domaris and Karahama stood for almost a full minute, grey eyes meeting amber ones. There was no love in that gaze—but they were bound by a bond only slightly less close than that binding Domaris to Deoris.

Cadamiri broke the tense silence with blunt words: "Enough of this! Isarma is not guiltless, but she is not important now. The fate of Deoris has yet to be decided—but the child of the Dark Shrine must never be born!"

"What mean you?" Maleina asked sternly.

"Riveda begot this child in blasphemy and sacrilege. The child cannot be acknowledged, nor received. It must never be born!" Cadamiri's voice was loud, and as inflexible as his posture.

Deoris caught at her sister's hand convulsively, and Domaris said, faltering, "You cannot mean. . ."

"Let us be realistic, my sister," said Cadamiri. "You know perfectly well what I mean. Karahama. . ."

Mother Ysouda, shocked, burst out, "That is against our strictest law!"

But Karahama's voice followed, in honeyed and melodious, almost caressing tones. "Cadamiri is correct, my sisters. The law against abortion applies only to the Light-born, received and acknowledged under the Law. No letter of the Law prevents snuffing out the spawn of black magic. Deoris herself would be better freed from that burden." She spoke with great sweetness, but beneath her levelled thick brows she sent Deoris such a look of naked hatred that the girl flinched. Karahama had been her friend, her mentor—and now this! In the past weeks, Deoris had grown accustomed to cold glances and averted faces, superstitious avoidance and whispering silence . . . even Elis looked at her with a hesitant embarrassment and found excuses to call Lissa away from her side . . . yet the ferocious hatred in Karahama's eyes was something different, and smote Deoris anew.

And in a way she is right, Domaris thought in despair. How could any Priestess—or Priest— endure the thought of a child brought so unspeakably to incarnation?

"It would be better for all," Karahama repeated, "most of all for Deoris, if that child never drew breath."

Maleina stepped forward, motioning Karahama to silence. "Adsartha," said the woman Adept severely—and the use of her priest-name wakened response even in the frightened, apathetic Deoris. "Your child was truly conceived within the Dark Shrine?"

Domaris opened her lips, but Maleina said stiffly, "I beg you, Isarma, allow her to speak for herself. That was on the Night of Nadir, you say?"

Timidly, Deoris whispered assent.

"Records within the Temple of Caratra, to which Mother Ysouda may testify," Maleina said, with chilly deliberateness, "show that each month, at the dark of the moon—observe this, withperfect regularity—Deoris was excused her duties, because at this time she was sacramentally impure. I myself noted this in the Grey Temple." Maleina's mouth tightened briefly as if with pain, remembering in whose company Deoris had spent most of her time in the Grey Temple. "The Night of Nadir falls at moon-dark. . ." She paused; but Domaris and the men only looked baffled, though from Karahama's heavy-lidded eyes, something like comprehension glinted. "Look you," Maleina said, a little impatiently. "Riveda was Grey-robe long before he was sorcerer. The habits of the Magicians are strict and unbreakable. He would not have allowed a woman in the days of her impurity even to come into his presence! As for taking her into such a ritual—it would have invalidated his purpose entirely. Must I explain the rudimentary facts of nature to you my brothers? Riveda may have been evil—but believe me, he was not an utter fool!"

"Well, Deoris?" Rajasta spoke impersonally, but hope began to show upon his face.

"On the Nadir-night?" Maleina pressed.

Deoris felt herself turning white and rigid; she would not let herself think why. "No," she whispered, trembling, "no, I wasn't!"

"Riveda was a madman!" Cadamiri snorted. "So he violated his own ritual—what of it? Was this not just another blasphemy? I do not follow your reasoning."

Maleina faced him, standing very erect. "It means this," she said with a thin, ironic smile. "Deoris was already pregnant and Riveda's rite was a meaningless charade which he, himself, had thwarted!" The woman Adept paused to savor the thought. "What a joke on him!"

But Deoris had crumpled, senseless, to the floor.

Chapter Nine THE JUDGMENT OF THE GODS

I

After lengthy consideration, sentence had been pronounced upon Domaris: exile forever from the Temple of Light. She would go in honor, as Priestess and Initiate; the merit she had earned could not be taken from her. But she would go alone. Not even Micail could accompany her, for he had been confided by his father to Rajasta's guardianship. But by curious instinct, choice in her place of exile had fallen on the New Temple, in Atlantis, near Ahtarrath.

Deoris had not been sentenced; her penance could not be determined until after her child's birth. And because of the oath which could not be violated, Domaris could claim the right to remain with her younger sister until the child was born. No further concession could be made.

One afternoon a few days later, Rajasta sat alone in the library, a birth-chart spread before him—but his thoughts were of the bitter altercation which had broken out when Deoris had been carried away in a faint.

"They donot hide behind mysteries, Cadamiri," Maleina had said quietly, heavily. "I who am Initiate of Ni-Terat—whom you call Caratra here—I have seen the Sign, which cannot be counterfeited."

Cadamiri's wrath had burst all bonds. "So they are to go unpunished, then? One for sorcery— since even if her child is not child to the Dark Shrine, she concurred in the ritual which would have made it so—and the other for a vile misuse of the holy rites? Then let us make all our criminals, apostates, and heretics Initiates of the Holy Orders and have done with it!"

"It was not misuse," Maleina insisted, her face grey with weariness. "Any woman may invoke the protection of the Dark Mother, and if their prayers are answered, no one can gainsay it. And say not they go unpunished, Priest! They have thrown themselves upon the judgment of the Gods, and we dare not add to what they have invoked! Know you not," her old voice shook with ill-hidden dread, "they have bound themselves and the unborn till the end of Time? Through all

their lives—alltheir lives, not this life alone but from life to life! Never shall one have home, love, child, but the pain of the other, deprived, shall tear her soul to shreds! Never shall one find love without searing the soul of the other! Never shall they be free, until they have wholly atoned; the life of one shall bear on the hearts of both. We could punish them, yes—in this life. But they have willfully invoked the judgment of the Dark Mother, until such time as the curse of Domaris has worked itself out on the cycles of karma, and Riveda goes free." Maleina's words rolled to silence; fading echoes settled slowly. At last, the woman Adept murmured, "The curses of men are little things compared to that!"

And for this, even Cadamiri could find no answer, but sat with hands clasped before him for some time after all others had left the hall; and none could say whether it was in prayer, or anger, or shock.

II

Rajasta, having read the stars for Deoris's unborn child, finally called Domaris to him, and spread out the scroll before her. "Maleina was right," he said. "Deoris lied. Her child could not possibly have been conceived on the Nadir-night. Not possibly."

"Deoris would not lie under that oath, Rajasta."

Rajasta looked shrewdly at the girl he knew so well. "You trust her still?" He paused, and accepted. "Had Riveda but known that, many lives would have been saved. I can think of nothing

more futile than taking a girl already pregnant into a—a rite of that kind." His voice had a cold irony that was quite new to him.

Domaris, unheeding of it, caught her hands to her throat, and whispered weakly, "Then—her child is not—not the horror she fears?"

"No." Rajasta's face softened. "Had Riveda but known!" he repeated. "He went to his death thinking he had begotten the child of a foul sorcery!"

"Such was his intent." Domaris's eyes were cold and unforgiving. "Men suffer for their intentions, not their actions."

"And for them he will pay," Rajasta retorted. "Your curses will not add to his fate!"

"Nor my forgiveness lighten it," Domaris returned inflexibly, but tears began to roll slowly down her cheeks. "Still, if the knowledge had eased his death. . ."

Gently, Rajasta placed the scroll in her hand. "Deoris lives," he reminded her. "Wherever Riveda may be now, Domaris, the crudest of all hells to him—he who worshipped the forces of Life with all that was best in him, so that he even bent in reverence to you—this would be cruellest to him, that Deoris should hate his child; that she, who had been Priestess of Caratra, should torture herself, binding her body until it is like enough that the child will be born crippled, or worse!"

Domaris could only stare at him, speechless.

"Do you think I did not know that?" Rajasta murmured softly. "Now go. Take this to her, Domaris—for there is now no reason for her to hate her child."

III

His white robes whispering, Rajasta paced soberly to the side of the man who lay on a low, hard pallet in a small, cold room as austere as a cell. "Peace, younger brother," he said—then, quickly preventing him: "No, do not try to rise!"

"He is stronger today," said Cadamiri from his seat by the narrow window. "And there is something which he will say only to you, it seems."

Rajasta nodded, and Cadamiri withdrew from the room. Taking the seat thus vacated, Rajasta sat looking down at the man who had been Riveda's chela. The long illness had wasted the Atlantean to emaciation again, but Rajasta hardly needed Cadamiri's assurances to tell him that Reio-ta of Ahtarrath was as sane as the Guardian himself.

Now that the madness and vacancy were gone from his face, he looked serious and determined; the amber eyes were darkly intelligent. His hair had been shaven from his scalp during his illness, and was now only a soft, smooth dark nap; he had been dressed in the clothing of a Priest

of the second grade. Rajasta knew that the man was twenty-four, but he looked many years younger.

Suddenly impelled to kindness, Rajasta said gently, "My younger brother, no man may be called to account for what he does when the soul is left from him."

"You are—kind," said Reio-ta hesitantly. His voice had lost its timbre from being so little used over the years, and he was never to speak again without stammering and faltering in his speech. "But I was—at fault be—before." More shakily still, he added, "A man who loses—loses his soul as if it were a toy!"

Rajasta saw the rising excitement in his eyes and said, with gentle sternness, "Hush, my son, you will make yourself ill again. Cadamiri tells me there is something you insist upon telling me; but unless you promise not to overexcite yourself. . ."

"That fa-face has never left my memory for—for an instant!" Reio-ta said huskily. His voice steadied, dropped. "He was not a big man—rather, gross and florid—heavy of build, with great long hands and a wide nose flat at the bridge over large jaws and great teeth—dark hair going grey at the temples, and such eyes! And his mouth—smiling and cruel, the smile of a big tiger! He—he looked almost too good-natured to be so ruthless—and heavy brows, almost sandcolored, and rough, curt speech.. . ."

Rajasta felt as if he were stifling. It was all he could do to mutter the words, "Go on!"

"Two special marks he had—a gap between his great front teeth—and such eyes! Have you seen the pr-Priestess, Karahama? Cat's eyes, tiger's eyes—the eyes in his face might have been her own.. . ."

Rajasta covered his face with his hand. A hundred memories rushed over him. I have been blinder than Micon! Fool—fool that I was not to question Micon's tale of kind men who brought him to Talkannon's house! Fool to trust . . . Rajasta gritted his teeth, uncovered his eyes, and asked, still in that stifled voice, "Know you whom you have described, my son?"

"Aye." Reio-ta dropped back on the pillow, his eyes closed, his face weary and resigned. He was sure Rajasta had not believed a single word. "Aye, I know. Talkannon."

And Rajasta repeated, in stunned and bitter belief, "Talkannon!"

Chapter Ten BLACK SHADOWS

I

Domaris laid the scroll in her sister's lap. "Can you read a birth-chart, Deoris?" she asked gently. "I would read this to you, but I have never learned."

Listlessly, Deoris said, "Karahama taught me, years ago. Why?"

"Rajasta gave me this for you. No," she checked her sister's protest, "you have refused to face this thing until the time was past when I could have forced action. Now we must make some arrangement. Your child must be acknowledged. If your own position means nothing to you, think of your child's as one of theno-people! "

"Does it matter?" Deoris asked indifferently.

"To you, now, perhaps not," Domaris returned, "but to your child—who must live—it is the difference between living humanly or as an outcaste." Her eyes dwelt sternly on the rebellious young face. "Rajasta tells me you will bear a daughter. Would you have her live as Demira?"

"Don't!" cried Deoris convulsively. She slumped, and defeat was in her face. "But who, now, would acknowledge me?"

"One has offered."

Deoris was young, and against her will a gleam of curiosity lightened her apathetic face. "Who?"

"Riveda's chela." Domaris made no attempt to soften it; Deoris had denied too many facts. Let her chew on this one!

"Ugh!" Deoris sprang up defiantly. "No! Never! He's mad!"

"He is no longer mad," Domaris said quietly, "and he offers this as partial reparation."

"Reparation!" Deoris cried in rage. "What right has he . . . ?" She broke off as she met Domaris's unwavering stare. "You really think I should allow—"

"I do advise it," said Domaris inflexibly.

"Oh, Domaris! I hate him! Please, don't make me.. . ." Deoris was crying piteously now, but the older woman stood unbending at her side.

"All that is required of you, Deoris, is that you be present at the acknowledgement," she said curtly. "He will ask. . ." She looked straight into her sister's eyes. "He willallow no more!"

Deoris straightened, and tottered back into her seat, white and miserable. "You are hard, Domaris . . . Be it as you will, then." She sighed. "I hope I die!"

"Dying is not that easy, Deoris."

"Oh, Domaris,why? " Deoris begged, "Why do you make me do this?"

"I cannot tell you that." Relenting somewhat, Domaris knelt and gathered her sister into her arms. "You know I love you, Deoris! Don't you trust me?"

"Well, yes, of course, but. . ."

"Then do this—because you trust me, darling."

Deoris clung to the older woman in exhaustion. "I can't fight you," she murmured, "I will do as you say. There is no one else."

"Child, child—you and Micail are all I love. And I shall love your baby, Deoris!"

"I—cannot!" It was a bewildered cry of torment, of shame.

The older woman's throat tightened and she felt tears gathering in her eyes; but she only patted the listless head and promised, "You will love her, when you see her."

Deoris only whimpered and stirred restlessly in her arms, and Domaris, letting her embrace loosen, bent to retrieve the scroll, wincing a little—for she was not altogether free of pain.

"Read this, Deoris."

Obediently but without interest the girl glanced at the traced figures, then suddenly bent over them and began to read with furious concentration, her lips moving, her small fingers gripping the parchment so tightly that Domaris thought for a moment it would tear across. Then Deoris flung herself forward, her head pillowed on the scroll, in a passion of wild weeping.

Domaris watched with puzzled consternation, for she—even she—did not wholly understand the girl's terrible fear and its sudden release; even less could she know of that single night Deoris had hoarded apart like a treasure in her memory, when Riveda had been not Adept and teacher, but lover . . . Still, intuition prompted her to take Deoris very gently into her arms again, holding her with tender concern, not speaking a word, hardly breathing, while Deoris sobbed and wept until she could weep no more.

Domaris was relieved beyond telling; grief she could understand, but Deoris's childlike, dazed lethargy, the fits of furious rage which alternated with apathy, had frightened the older woman more than she knew. Now, as Deoris lay spent on her shoulder, her eyes closed and her arm around Domaris's neck, it was for a moment almost as if all the years had rolled back and they were again what they had been before Micon's coming . . .

With a flash of inner, intuitive sight, Domaris knew what had been wrought of love; and some touch of her own loss and grief returned, transfigured.Micon, Riveda —what matter? The love and bereavement are the same.And to the depths of her being Domaris was glad—glad that after

so long, Deoris could at last weep for Riveda.

II

But Deoris was dry-eyed again, sullen and rigidly polite, when she was confronted with Reio-ta outside the hall where they must go before the Vested Five. Her memory of him was still that of a mad chela ghosting cat-footed after the dark Adept—this handsome, self-possessed young Priest startled her. For a moment she actually did not know who he could be. Her voice stumbled as she said, formally, "Prince Reio-ta of Ahtarrath, I am grateful for this kindness."

Reio-ta smiled faintly without raising his eye to her. "There is no d-debt, Deoris, I am y-yours to command in all things."

She kept her eyes fixed upon the blue hem of her loose, ungainly garment, but she did take his offered hand, touching him with scared hesitation. Her face burned with shame and misery as she felt his eyes study her awkward body; she did not raise her own to see the sadness and compassion in his gaze.

The ceremony, though very brief, seemed endless to Deoris. Only Reio-ta's strong hand, tightly clasped over her own, gave her the courage to whisper, faintly, the responses; and she was shaking so violently that when they knelt together for the benediction, Reio-ta had to put his arm around her and hold her upright.

At last Ragamon put the question: "The child's name?"

Deoris sobbed aloud, and looked in appeal at Reio-ta, meeting his eyes for almost the first time.

He smiled at her, and then, seeing the Vested Five, said quietly, "The stars have been read. This daughter of mine I name—Eilantha."

Eilantha!Deoris had climbed high enough in the priesthood to interpret that name.Eilantha— the effect of a sown cause, the ripple of a dropped stone, the force of karma.

"Eilantha, thy coming life is acknowledged and welcome," the Priest gave answer—and from that moment Deoris's child was Reio-ta's own, as if truly begotten of him. The sonorous blessing rolled over their bent heads; then Reio-ta assisted the woman to rise, and although she would have drawn away from him, he conducted her ceremoniously to the doorway of the hall, and retained her fingers for a moment.

"Deoris," he said gravely, "I would not b-burden you with cares. I know you are not well. Yet a few things must be said between us. Our child. . ."

Again Deoris sobbed aloud and, violently wrenching her hands away from his, ran precipitately away from the building. Reio-ta called after her sharply in hurt puzzlement, then started to hasten after the fleeing girl, fearful lest she should fell and injure herself.

But when he turned the corner, she was nowhere to be seen.

III

Deoris came to rest finally in a distant corner of the Temple gardens, suddenly realizing that she had run much further than she had intended. She had never come here before, and was not certain which of the out-branching paths led back toward the house of Mother Ysouda. As she turned hesitantly backward and forward, trying to decide precisely where she was and which way to go, a crouching form rose up out of the shrubbery and she found herself face to face with Karahama. Instinctively Deoris drew back, resentful and frightened.

Karahama's eyes were filled with a sullen fire. "You!" the Priestess spat contemptuously at Deoris. "Daughter of Light!" Karahama's blue garment was rent from head to foot; her unkempt, uncombed hair hung raggedly about a face no longer calm but congested and swollen, with eyes red and inflamed, and lips drawn back like an animal's over her teeth.

Deoris, in an excess of terror, shrank against the wall—but Karahama leaned so close that she touched the girl. Suddenly, with awful clarity, Deoris knew: Karahama was insane!

"Torturer of children! Sorceress! Bitch!" A rabid wrath snarled in Karahama's voice. "Talkannon's proudest daughter! Better I had been thrown to die upon the city wall than see this day! And you for whom I suffered, daughter of the high lady who could not stoop to see my poor mother—and what of Talkannon now, Daughter of Light? He will wish he had hanged himself

like Demira when the priests have done with him! Or has the proud Domaris keptthat away from you, too? Rend your clothing, Talkannon's daughter!" With a savage gesture, Karahama's clawed hands ripped Deoris's smock from neck to ankle.

Screaming with fright, Deoris caught the torn robe about her and sought to twist free—but Karahama, leaning over her, pressed Deoris back against the crumbling wall with a heavy, careless hand against her shoulder.

"Rend you clothing, Daughter of Light! Tear your hair! Daughter of Talkannon—who dies today! And Domaris, who was cast out like a harlot, cast out by Arvath for the barren stalk she is!" She spat, and shoved Deoris violently back against the wall again. "And you—my sister, my little sister!" There was a vague, mocking hint of Domaris's intonation in the phrase, a sing-song eeriness, an echo like a ghost. "And your own womb heavy with a sister to those children you wronged!" Karahama's tawny eyes, lowered between squinting lashes, suddenly widened and she looked at Deoris through dilated pupils, flat and beast-red, as she shouted, "May slaves and the daughters of harlots attend your bed! May you give birth to monsters!"

Deoris's knees went lifeless under her and she collapsed on the sandy path, crouching against the stones of the wall. "Karahama, Karahama, curse me not!" she implored. "The Gods know—The Gods know I meant no harm!"

"She meant no harm," Karahama mocked in that mad, eerie sing-song.

"Karahama, the Gods know I have loved you. I loved your daughter, curse me not!"

Suddenly Karahama knelt at her side. Deoris cringed away—but with easy, compassionate hands the woman lifted her to her feet. The mad light had quite suddenly died from her eyes, and the face between the dishevelled braids was sane again and sorrowful.

"So, once, was I, Deoris—not innocent, but much hurt. Neither are you innocent! But I curse you no more."

Deoris sobbed in relief, and Karahama's face, a mask of pain, swam in a ruddy light through her tears. The crumbling stones of the garden wall were a rasping pain against her shoulders, but she could not have stood, unsupported. Suddenly she could hear the low, insistent lapping of the tide, and knew where she was.

"You are not to blame," said Karahama, in a voice hardly louder than the waves. "Nor he—nor I, Deoris! All these things are shadows, but they are very black. I bid you go in peace, little sister . . . your hour is upon you, and it may be that you will do a bit of cursing yourself, one day!"

Deoris covered her face with her hands—and then the world went dark about her, a dizzy gulf opened out beneath her mind, and she heard herself screaming as she fell—fell for eternities, while the sun went out.

Chapter Eleven VISIONS

I

When Deoris failed to return, Domaris slowly grew anxious, and finally went in search of her sister—a search that was fruitless. The shadows stretched into long, gaunt corpses, and still she sought; her anxiety mounted to apprehension, and then to terror. The words Deoris had flung at her in anger years ago returned to her, a thundering echo in her mind:On the day I know myself with child, I will fling myself into the sea . . .

At last, sick with fright, she went to the one person in all the Temple precincts on whom Deoris now had the slightest claim, and implored his assistance. Reio-ta, far from laughing at her formless fears, took them with an apprehension that matched her own. Aided by his servants, they sought through the night, through the red and sullen firelight of the beaches, along the pathways and in the thickets at the edge of the enclosure. Near morning they found where she had fallen; a section of the wall had given way, and the two women lay half in, half out of the water. Karahama's head had been crushed by fallen stones, but the scarred, half-naked form of Deoris was so crumpled and twisted that for sickening minutes they believed that she, too, was lifeless.

They carried her to a fisherman's hut near the tide-mark, and there, by smoldering candlelight, with no aid save the unskilled hands of Domaris's slave-girl, was born Eilantha, whose name had been written that same day upon the rolls of the Temple. A tiny, delicately-formed girl-child, thrust two months too soon into an unwelcoming world, she was so frail that Domaris dared not hope for her survival. She wrapped the delicate bud of life in her veil and laid it inside her robes against her own breast, in the desperate hope that the warmth would revive it. She sat there weeping, in reborn grief for her own lost child, while the slave-girl tended Deoris and aided Reio-ta to set the broken arm.

After a time the infant stirred and began feebly to wail again, and the thin sound roused Deoris. Domaris moved swiftly as she stirred, and bent over her.

"Do not try to move your arm, Deoris; it is broken at the shoulder."

Deoris's words were less than a whisper. "What has happened? Where?" Then memory flooded back. "Oh! Karahama!"

"She is dead, Deoris," Domaris told her gently—and found herself wondering, in a remote way, whether Deoris had flung herself over the wall and Karahama had been killed in attempting to prevent it—whether they had simply fallen—or whether Karahama had thrust her sister over the wall. No one, not even Deoris was ever to know.

"How did you find me?" Deoris asked, without interest.

"Reio-ta helped me."

Deoris's eyes slipped wearily shut. "Why could he not . . . attend to his own affairs . . . this one last time?" she asked, and turned her face away. The child at Domaris's breast began its whimpering wail again, and Deoris's eyes flickered briefly open. "What is . . . I don't. . ."

Cautiously, Domaris lowered the infant toward her sister, but Deoris, after a momentary glimpse at the little creature, shut her eyes again. She felt no emotion except faint relief. The child was not a monster—and in the wrinkled, monkey-like face she could discern no resemblance whatever to Riveda.

"Take it away," she said tiredly, and slept.

Domaris looked down at the young mother, with despair in her face which lightened to a haunted tenderness. "Thy mother is tired and ill, little daughter," she murmured, and cradled the baby against her breasts. "I think she will love thee—when she knows thee."

But her steps and her voice dragged with exhaustion; her own strength was nearly gone. Domaris had never fully recovered from the brutal treatment she had received at the hands of the Black-robes; moreover, she dared not keep this a secret for long. Deoris was not, as far as Domaris could judge, in physical danger; the child had been born easily and so swiftly that there had been no time even to summon help. But she was suffering from exposure and shock.

Domaris did not know if she dared to take any further responsibility. With the baby still snuggled inside her robes, she sat down on a low stool, to watch and think.. . .

II

When Deoris awoke, she was alone. She lay unmoving, not asleep, but heavy with weariness and lassitude. Gradually, as the effect of the drugs began to weaken, the pain stole back, a slow pulsing of hurt through her torn and outraged body. Slowly, and with difficulty, she turned her head, and made out the dim outline or a basket of reeds, and in the basket something that kicked and whimpered fretfully. She thought dully that she would like to hold the child now, but she was too weak and weary to move.

What happened after that, Deoris never really knew. She seemed to lie half asleep through all that followed, her eyes open but unable to move, unable even to speak, gripped by nightmares in which there was no clue to what was real—and afterward there was no one who could or would tell her what really happened on that night after Riveda's child was born, in the little hut by the sea.. . .

It seemed that the sun was setting. The light lay red and pale on her face, and on the basket where the baby squirmed and squalled feebly. There was a heat-like fever in Deoris's hurt body, and it seemed to her that she moaned there for a long time, not loudly but desolately like a hurt child. The light turned into a sea of bloody fire, and the chela came into the room. His dark,

wandering glance met hers . . . He wore bizarrely unfamiliar clothing, girt with the symbols of a strange priesthood, and for a moment it seemed to be Micon who stood before her, but a gaunt, younger Micon, with unshaven face. His secret eyes rested on Deoris for a long time; then he went and poured water, bending, holding the cup to her parched lips and supporting her head so gently that there was no hurt. For an instant it seemed Riveda stood there, nimbused in a cloud of the roseate sunset, and he bent down and kissed her lips as he had done so rarely in her life; then the illusion was gone, and it was only the solemn young face of Reio-ta looking at her gravely as he replaced the cup.

He stood over her for a minute, his lips moving; but his voice seemed to fade out over incredible distances, and Deoris, wandering in the vague silences again, could not understand a word. At last he turned abruptly and went to the reed-basket, bending, lifting the baby in his arms. Deoris, still gripped by the static fingers of nightmare, watched as he wandered about the room, the child on his shoulder; then he approached again, and from the pallet where Deoris was lying he lifted a long loose blue shawl, woven and fringed deeply with knots—the garment of a Priestess of Caratra. In this he carefully wrapped the baby, and, carrying her clumsily in his hands, he went away.

The closing of the door jarred Deoris wholly awake, and she gasped; the room was lurid with the dying sunlight, but altogether empty of any living soul except herself. There was no sound or motion anywhere save the pounding of the waves and the crying of the wheeling gulls.

She lay still for a long time, while fever crawled in her veins and throbbed in her scarred breasts

like a pulsing fire. The sun set in a bath of flames, and the darkness descended, folding thick wings of silence around her heart. After hours and hours, Elis (or was it Domaris?) came with a light, and Deoris gasped out her dream—but it sounded delirious even to her own ears, all gibberish and wild entreaties. And then there were eternities where Domaris (or Elis) bent over her, repeating endlessly, "Because you trust me . . . you do trust me . . . do this because you trust me. . ." There was the nightmare pain in her broken arm, and fever burning through her veins, and the dream came again and again—and never once, except in her unquiet slumber, did she hear the crying of the small and monkey-like child who was Riveda's daughter.

She came fully to her senses one morning, finding herself in her old rooms in the Temple. The feverish madness was gone, and did not return.

Elis tended her night and day, as gently as Domaris might have; it was Elis who told her that Talkannon was dead, that Karahama was dead, that Domaris had sailed away weeks before for Atlantis, and that the chela had disappeared, no one knew where; and Elis told her, gently, that Riveda's child had died the same night it was born.

Whenever Deoris fell asleep she dreamed—and always the same dream: the dark hut where her child had been born, and she had been dragged unwillingly back from death by the chela, whose face was bloodied by the red sunlight as he carried away her child, wrapped in the bloodstained fragments of Karahama's priestly robes . . . And so she came at last to believe that it had never happened. Everyone was very kind to her, as to a child orphaned, and for many years she did not even speak her sister's name.

BOOK FIVE Tiriki

"When the Universe was first created out of nothing, it at once fell apart for lack of cohesion. Like thousands of tiny tiles that have no apparent meaning or purpose, all the pieces are identical in shape and size, though they may differ in color and pattern; and we have no picture of the intended mosaic to guide us. No one can know for sure what it will look like, until the last tile is finally fitted into place . . . There are three tools for the task: complete non-interference; active control over each and every movement; and interchange of powers until a satisfactory balance is achieved. None of these methods can succeed, however, without consent of the other two; this we must accept as a fundamental principle—else we have no explanation for what has already transpired.

"The problem is, as yet, unsolved; but we proceed, in waves. An advance in general knowledge is followed by a setback, in which many things are lost—only to be regained and excelled in the next wave of advancement. For the difference between that mosaic and the Universe is that no mosaic can ever become anything more than a picture in which motion has ended—a picture of Death. We do not build toward a time when everything stands still, but toward a time when everything is in a state of motion pleasing to all concerned—rock, plant, fish, bird, animal and

man.

"It has never been, and never will be, easy work. But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination."

from The Teachings of Micon of Ahtarrath, as taken down by Rajasta the Mage

Chapter One THE EXILE

It was deep dusk, and the breeze in the harbor was stiffening into a western wind that made the furled sails flap softly and the ship rise and fall to the gentle rhythm of the waves. Domaris stared toward thedarkening shores, her body motionless, her white robes a spot of luminescence in the heavy shadows.

The captain bowed deeply in reverence before the Initiate. "My Lady—"

Domaris raised her eyes. "Yes?"

"We are about to leave the port. May I conduct you to your cabin? Otherwise, the motion of the ship may make you ill."

"I would rather stay on deck, thank you."

Again the captain bowed, and withdrew, leaving them alone again.

"I too must leave you, Isarma," said Rajasta, and stepped toward the rail. "You have your letters and your credentials. You have been provided for. I wish. . ." He broke off, frowning heavily. At last, he said only, "All will be well, my daughter. Be at peace."

She bent to kiss his hand reverently.

Stooping, Rajasta clasped her in his arms. "The Gods watch over thee, daughter," he said huskily, and kissed her on the brow.

"Oh, Rajasta, I can't!" Domaris sobbed. "I can't bear it! Micail—my baby! And Deoris. . ."

"Hush!" said Rajasta sternly, loosing her pleading, agonized hands; but he softened almost at once, and said, "I am sorry, daughter. There is nothing to be done. Youmust bear it. And know this: my love and blessings follow you, beloved—now and always." Raising his hand, the

Guardian traced an archaic Sign. Before Domaris could react, Rajasta turned on his heel and swiftly walked away, leaving the ship. Domaris stared after him in astonishment, wondering why he had given her—an exile under sentence—the Sign of the Serpent.

A mistake? No—Rajasta does not make such mistakes.

After what seemed a long time, Domaris heard the clanking of anchor-chains and the oar-chant from the galley. Still she stood on the deck, straining her eyes into the gathering dusk for the last sight of her homeland, the Temple where she had been born and from which she had never been more than a league away in her entire life. She remained there motionless, until long after night had folded down between the flying ship and the invisible shore.

II

There was no moon that night, and it was long before the woman became conscious that someone was kneeling at her side.

"What is it?" she asked, tonelessly.

"My Lady—" The flat, hesitant voice of Reio-ta was a murmuring plea, hardly audible over the sounds of the ship. "You must come below."

"I would rather remain here, Reio-ta, I thank you."

"My Lady—there is—something I m-must show thee."

Domaris sighed, suddenly conscious of cold and of cramped muscles and of extreme weariness, although she had not known it until now. She stumbled on her numb legs, and Reio-ta stepped quickly to her side and supported her.

She drew herself erect at once, but the young Priest pleaded, "No, lean on me, my Lady. . ." and she sighed, allowing him to assist her. She thought again, vaguely and with definite relief, that he was nothing at all like Micon.

The small cabin allotted to Domaris was lighted by but a single, dim lamp, yet the slavewomen—strangers, for Elara could not be asked to leave her husband and newborn daughter— had made it a place of order and comfort. It looked warm and inviting to the exhausted Domaris: there was a faint smell of food, and a slight pungent smoke from the lamp, but all these things vanished into the perimeter of her consciousness, mere backdrop to the blue-wrapped bundle lying among the cushions on the low bed . . . clumsily wrapped in fragments of a stained blue robe, it squirmed as if alive. . .

"My most revered Lady and elder sister," Reio-ta said humbly, "I would b-beg you to accept the care of my acknowledged daughter."

Domaris caught her hands to her throat, swaying; then with a swift strangled cry of

comprehension she snatched up the baby and cradled it against her heart "Why this?" she whispered. "Why this?"

Reio-ta bent his head. "I-I-I grieve to take her from her m-mother," he stammered, "but it was— it was—you know as well as I that it would be death to leave her there! And—it is my right, under the law, to take my d-daughter where it shall please me."

Domaris, wet-eyed, held the baby close while Reio-ta explained simply what Domaris had not dared to see. . .

"Neither Grey-robe nor Black—and mistake not, my Lady, there are Black-robes still, there will be Black-robes until the Temple falls into the sea—and maybe after! They would not let this child live—they b-believe her a child of the Dark Shrine!"

"But. . ." Wide-eyed, Domaris hesitated to ask the questions his words evoked in her mind—but Reio-ta, with a wry chuckle, divined her thought easily.

"To the Grey-robes, a sacrilege," he murmured. "And the B-Black-robes would think only of her value as a sacrifice! Or that—that she had b-been ruined by the Light-born—was not the—the incarnation of the—" Reio-ta's voice strangled on the words unspoken.

For another moment, Domaris's tongue would not obey her, either; but at last she managed to say, half in shock, "Surely the Priests of Light. . ."

"Would not interfere. The Priests of Light—" Reio-ta looked at Domaris pleadingly. "They cursed Riveda—and his seed!They would not intervene to save her. But—with this child gone, or vanished—Deoris too will be safe."

Domaris buried her face in the torn robe swathed abut the sleeping infant. After a long minute, she raised her head and opened tearless eyes. "Cursed," she muttered. "Yes, this too is karma.. . ." Then, to Reio-ta, she said, "She shall be my tenderest care—I swear it!"

Chapter Two THE MASTER

I

The soft, starlit night of Ahtarrath was so still that the very steps of their bare feet on the grass could be heard. Reio-ta gave Domaris his hand, and she clutched at his fingers with a grip that betrayed her emotion before this ordeal; but her face was serene in its lovely, schooled calm. The man's eyes, brooding secretly under dark lashes flashed a swift, approving look at her as his other hand swept aside the heavy sacking curtain that screened the inner room. Her hand was cold in his, and a sense of utter desolation seemed to pass from her to him. She was calm—but

he was fleetingly reminded of the moment when he had led the trembling Deoris before the Vested Five.

Full realization suddenly welled over Reio-ta, lashing him with almost unbearable self-loathing. His remorse was a living thing that sprang at him and clawed at his vitals; a lifetime, a dozen lifetimes could never wipe out anything he had done! And this sudden insight into the woman beside him, the woman who should have been his sister, was a further scourge. She was so desperately, so utterly alone!

With a gentle, deprecatory tenderness, he drew her into the austere inner chamber, and they faced a tall, thin-faced old man, seated on a plain wooden bench. He rose at once and stood quietly surveying them. It was not until many months later that Domaris learned that the ancient Priest Rathor was blind, and had been so from birth.

Reio-ta dropped to his knees for the ancient's blessing. "Bless me, Lord Rathor," he said humbly, "I bring n-news of Micon. He died a hero—and to a noble end—and I am not blameless."

There was a long silence. Domaris, at last, stretched imploring hands to the old man; he moved, and the movement broke the static pattern of self-blame in the younger Priest's face. Reio-ta continued, gazing up at the aged Rathor, "I b-bring you the Lady Domaris—who is the mother of Micon's son."

The ancient master raised one hand, and breathed a single sentence; and the softness of his voice stayed with Domaris until the moment of her death. "All this I know, and more," he said. Raising Reio-ta, he drew him close and kissed the young Priest upon the forehead. "It is karma. Set your heart free, my son."

Reio-ta struggled to steady his voice. "M-Master!"

Now Domaris also would have knelt for Rathor's blessing, but the ancient prevented her. Deliberately, the master bent and touched his lips to the hem of her robe. Domaris gasped and quickly raised the old man to his feet. Lifting his hand, Rathor made a strange Sign upon her forehead—the same Sign Domaris had yielded to Micon at their first meeting. The ancient smiled, a smile of infinite benediction . . . then stepped back and re-seated himself upon his bench.

Awkwardly, Reio-ta took her two hands in his own. "My Lady, you must not cry," he pleaded, and led her away.

Chapter Three LITTLE SINGER

I

With the passing of time, Domaris grew somehow accustomed to Ahtarrath. Micon had lived here, had loved this land, and she comforted herself with such thoughts; yet homesickness burned in her and would not be stilled.

She loved the great grey buildings, massive and imposing, very different from the low, whitegleaming structures in the Ancient Land, but equally impressive in their own fashion; she grew to accept the terraced gardens that sloped down everywhere to the shining lakes, the interlacing canopies of trees taller than she had ever seen—but she missed the fountains and the enclosed courts and pools, and it was many years before she could accustom herself to the many-storied buildings, or climb stairs without the sense that she violated a sacred secret meant for use in temples alone.

Domaris had her dwelling on the top floor of the building which housed the unmarried Priestesses; all the rooms which faced the sea had been set aside for Domaris and her attendants—and for one other from whom she was parted but seldom, and never for long.

She was instantly respected and soon loved by everyone in the New Temple, this tall quiet woman with the white streak in her blazing hair; they accepted her always as one of themselves, but with reserve and honor accorded to one who is a little strange, a little mysterious. Ready always to help or heal, quick of decision and slow of anger, and always with the blond and sharpfeatured little girl toddling at her heels—they loved Domaris, but some strangeness and mystery

kept them at a little distance; they seemed to know instinctively that here was a woman going through the motions of living without any real interest in what she was doing.

Only once did Dirgat, Arch-priest of the Temple—a tall and saintly patriarch who reminded Domaris slightly of Ragamon the elder—come to remonstrate with her on her apparent lack of interest in her duties.

She bowed her head in admission that the rebuke was just. "Tell me wherein I have failed, my father, and I will seek to correct it."

"You have neglected no iota of your duty, daughter," the Arch-priest told her gently. "Indeed, you are more than usually conscientious. You fail us not—but you fail yourself, my child."

Domaris sighed, but did not protest, and Dirgat, who had daughters of his own, laid his hand over her thin one.

"My child," he said at last, "forgive me that I call you so, but I am of an age to be your grandsire, and I—I like you. Is it beyond your power to find some happiness here? What troubles you, daughter? Open your heart. Have we failed to give you welcome?"

Domaris raised her eyes, and the tearless grief in them made the old Arch-priest cough in embarrassment. "Forgive me, my father." she said. "I sorrow for my homeland—and for my child—my children."

"Have you other children, then? If your little daughter could accompany you, why could not they?"

"Tiriki is not my daughter," Domaris explained quietly, "but my sister's child. She was daughter to a man condemned and executed for sorcery—and they would have slain the innocent child as well. I brought her beyond harm's reach. But my own children. . ." She paused a moment, to be sure that her voice was steady before she spoke. "My oldest son I was forbidden to bring with me, since he must be reared by one—worthy—of his father's trust; and I am exiled." She sighed. Her exile had been voluntary, in part, a penance self-imposed; but the knowledge that she had sentenced herself made it no easier to bear. Her voice trembled involuntarily as she concluded bleakly, "Two other children died at birth."

Dirgat's clasp tightened very gently on her fingers. "No man can tell how the lot of the Gods will fall. It may be that you will see your son again." After a moment he asked, "Would it comfort you to work among children—or would it add to your sorrow?"

Domaris paused, to consider. "I think—it would comfort me," she said, after a little.

The Arch-priest smiled. "Then some of your other duties shall be lightened, for a time at least, and you shall have charge of the House of Children."

Looking at Dirgat, Domaris felt she could weep at the efforts of this good and wise man to make

her happy. "You are very kind, father."

"Oh, it is a small thing," he murmured, embarrassed. "Is there any other care I can lighten?"

Domaris lowered her eyes. "No, my father. None." Even to her own attendants, Domaris would not mention what she had known for a long time; that she was ill, and in all probability would never be better. It had begun with the birth of Arvath's child, and the clumsy and cruel treatment she had received—no, cruel it had been, but not clumsy. The brutality had been far from unintentional.

At the time, she had accepted it all, uncaring whether she lived or died. She had only hoped they would not kill her outright, that her child might live . . . But that had not been their idea of punishment. Rather it was Domaris who should live and suffer! And suffer she had—with memories that haunted her waking and sleeping, and pain that had never wholly left her. Now slowly and insidiously, it was enlarging its domain, stealing through her body—and she suspected it was neither a quick nor an easy death that awaited her.

She turned back her face, serene and composed again, to the Arch-priest, as they heard tiny feet—and Tiriki scampered into the room, her silky fair hair all aflutter about the elfin face, her small tunic torn, one pink foot sandalled and the other bare, whose rapid uneven steps bore her swiftly to Domaris. The woman caught the child up and pressed her to her heart; then set Tiriki in her lap, though the little girl at once wriggled away again.

"Tiriki," mused the old Arch-priest. "A pretty name. Of your homeland?"

Domaris nodded . . . On the third day of the voyage, when nothing remained in sight of the Ancient Land but the dimmest blue line of mountains, Domaris had stood at the stern of the ship, the baby folded in her arms as she remembered a night of poignant sweetness, when she had watched all night under summer stars, Micon's head pillowed on her knees. Although, at the time, she had hardly listened, it seemed now that she could hear with some strange inward ear the sound of two voices blended in a sweetness almost beyond the human: her sister's silvery soprano, interlaced and intermingled with Riveda's rich chanting baritone . . . Bitter conflict had been in Domaris then, as she held in her goose-fleshed arms the drowsing child of the sister she loved beyond everything else and the only man she had ever hated—and then that curious trick of memory had brought back Riveda's rich warm voice and the brooding gentleness in his craggy face, that night in the star-field as Deoris slept on his knees.

He truly loved Deoris at least for a time, she had thought. He was not all guilty, nor we all blameless victims of his evil-doing. Micon, Rajasta, I myself—we are not blameless of Riveda's evil. It was our failure too.

The baby in her arms had picked that moment to wake, uttering a strange little gurgling croon. Domaris had caught her closer, sobbing aloud, "Ah, little singer!" And Tiriki—little singer—she had called the child ever since.

Now Tiriki was bound on a voyage of exploration: she toddled to the Arch-priest, who put out a

hand to pat her silky head; but without warning she opened her mouth and her little squirrel teeth closed, hard, on Dirgat's bare leg. He gave a most undignified grunt of astonishment and pain— but before he could chide her or even compose himself, Tiriki released him and scampered away. As if his leg had not been hard enough, she began chewing on a leg of the wooden table.

Dismayed but stifling unholy laughter, Domaris caught the child up, stammering confused apologies.

Dirgat waved them away, laughing as he rubbed his bitten leg. "You said the Priests in your land would have taken her life," he chuckled, "she was only bearing a message from her father!" He gestured her last flustered apologies to silence. "I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, daughter! The little puppy's teeth are growing, that is all."

Domaris tugged a smooth silver bangle from her wrist and gave it to Tiriki. "Little cannibal!" she admonished. "Chew on this—but spare the furniture, and my guests! I beg you!"

The little girl raised enormous, twinkling eyes, and put the bangle to her mouth. Finding it too large to get into her mouth all at once—although she tried—Tiriki began to nibble tentatively on the rim; tumbled down with a thump on her small bottom, and sat there, intent on chewing up the bracelet.

"A charming child," Dirgat said, with no trace of sarcasm. "I had heard that Reio-ta claimed paternity, and wondered at that. There's no Atlantean blood in this blonde morsel, one can see it

at a glance!"

"She is very like her father," said Domaris quietly. "A man of the Northlands, who sinned and was—destroyed. The chief Adept of the Grey-robes—Riveda of Zaiadan."

The Arch-priest's eyes held a shadow of his troubled thoughts as he rose, to take his departure. He had heard of Riveda; what he had heard was not good. If Riveda's blood was predominant in the child, it might prove a sorry heritage. And though Dirgat said nothing of this, Domaris's thoughts echoed the Arch-priest's, as her glance rested on Riveda's daughter.

Once again, fiercely, Domaris resolved that Tiriki's heritage should not contaminate the child.Buthow can one fight an unseen, invisible taint in the blood —or in the soul?She snatched Tiriki up in her arms again, and when she let her go, Domaris's face was wet with tears.

Chapter Four THE SPECTRE

I

The pool known as the Mirror of Reflections lay dappled in the lacy light filtering through the

trees, repeating the silent merging of light with darkness that was the passing of days, and then of years.

Few came here, for the place was uncanny, and the pool was credited with having the ability to collect and reflect the thoughts of those who had once gazed into its rippling face, wherever they might be. In consequence the place was lonely and forsaken, but there was peace there, and silence, and serenity.

Thither came Deoris, one day, in a mood of driving unrest, the future stretching blank and formless before stormy eyes.

The whole affair had been, after all, something like using a bullwhip to kill a fly. Riveda was dead. Talkannon was dead. Nadastor was dead, his disciples dead or scattered. Domaris was in exile. And Deoris herself—who would bother to sentence her, now that the child of sacrilege was dead? More, Deoris had been made an Initiate of the highest Mystery in the Temple; she could not be simply left to her own devices after that. When she had recovered from her illness and her injuries, she had entered upon a disciplinary period of probation; there had been long ordeals, and a period of study more severe than any she had ever known. Her instructor had been none other than Maleina. Now that time, too, was ended—but what came after? Deoris did not know and could not guess.

Throwing herself down on the grassy margin of the pool, she gazed into the depths that were stained a darker blue than the sky, thinking lonely, bitter thoughts, yearning rebelliously for a

little child of whom she had scarcely any conscious recollection. Tears gathered and slowly blurred the bright waters, dripping unheeded from her eyes. Tasting their salt on her lips, Deoris shook her head to clear her vision, without, however, taking her intent, introspective gaze from the pool.

In her mood of abstraction, of almost dreamy sorrow, she saw without surprise the features of Domaris, looking upward at her from the pool: a thinner face, the fine boning distinct, and the expression a look of appeal—of loving entreaty. Even as she looked, the lips widened in the old smile, and the thin arms were held out, in a compelling gesture, to fold her close . . . How well Deoris knew that gesture!

A vagrant wind ruffled the water and the image was gone. Then, for an instant, another face formed, and the pointed, elfin features of Demira glinted delicately in the ripples. Deoris covered her face with her hands, and the sketched-in ghost vanished. When she looked again, the ripples were ruffled only by lifting breezes.

Chapter Five THE CHOSEN PATH

I

In these last years, Elis had lost her old prettiness, but had gained dignity and mature charm. In her presence, Deoris felt a curious peace. She took Elis's youngest child, a baby not yet a month old, in her arms and held him hungrily, then handed him back to Elis and with a sudden, despairing move, she flung herself to her knees beside her cousin and hid her face.

Elis said nothing, and after a moment Deoris lifted her eyes and smiled weakly. "I am foolish," she admitted, "but—you are very like Domaris."

Elis touched the bent head in its coif of heavy dark plaits. "You yourself grow more like her each day, Deoris."

Deoris rose swiftly to her feet as Elis's older children, led by Lissa—now a tall, demure girl of thirteen—rushed into the room. Upon seeing the woman in the blue robes of an Initiate of Caratra, they stopped, their impulsive merriment checked and fast-fading.

Only Lissa had self-possession enough to greet her. "KihaDeoris, I have something to tell you!"

Deoris put her arm around her cousin's daughter. Had she ever carried this sophisticated little maiden as a naughty toddler in her arms? "What is this great secret, Lissa?"

Lissa turned up excited dark eyes. "Not really a secret,kiha . . . only that I am to serve in the Temple next month!"

A dozen thoughts were racing behind Deoris's calm face—the composed mask of the trained priestess. She had learned to control her expressions, her manner—and almost, but not quite, her thoughts. She, Initiate of Caratra, was forever barred away from certain steps of accomplishment, Lissa—Lissa would surely never feel anything like her own rebellion . . . Deoris was remembering; she had been thirteen or fourteen, about Lissa's age, but she could not remember preciselywhy she had been so helplessly reluctant to enter the Temple of Caratra even for a brief term of service. Then, in the relentless train of thought she could never halt or slow once it had begun in her mind, she thought of Karahama . . . of Demira . . . and then the memory that would not be forced away. If her own daughter had lived, the child she had borne to Riveda, she would have been just a little younger than Lissa—perhaps eight, or nine—already approaching womanhood.

Lissa could not understand the sudden impetuous embrace into which Deoris pulled her, but she returned it cheerfully; then she picked up her baby brother and went out on the lawns, carefully shepherding the others along before her. The woman watched, Elis smiling with pride, Deoris's smile a little sad.

"A young priestess already, Elis."

"She is very mature for her age," Elis replied. "And how proud Chedan is of Lissa now! Do you remember how he resented her, when she was a baby?" She laughed reminiscently. "Now he is like a true father to her! I suppose Arvath would be glad enough to claim her now! Arvath

generally decides what he wants to do when it is too late!"

It was no secret any more; a few years ago Arvath had belatedly declared himself Lissa's father and made an attempt to claim her, as Talkannon had done with Karahama in a similar situation. Chedan had had the last word, however, by refusing to relinquish his stepdaughter. Arvath had undergone the strict penances visited on an unacknowledged father, for nothing—except, perhaps, the good of his soul.

A curious little pang of memory stung Deoris at the mention of Arvath; she knew he had been instrumental in pronouncing sentence upon Domaris, and she still resented it. He and Deoris did not meet twice in a year, and then it was as strangers. Arvath himself could advance no further in the priesthood, for as yet he had no child.

Deoris turned to take her departure, but Elis detained her for a moment, clasping her cousin's hand. Her voice was gentle as she spoke, out of the intuition which had never yet failed her. "Deoris—I think the time has come for you to seek of Rajasta's wisdom."

Deoris nodded slowly. "I shall," she promised. "Thank you, Elis."

Once out of her cousin's sight, however, Deoris's countenance was a little less composed. She had evaded this for seven years, fearing the condemnation of Rajasta's uncompromising judgment . . . Yet, as she went along the paths from Elis's home, her step hurried.

What had she been afraid of? He could only make her face herself, know herself.

II

"I cannot say what you must do," Rajasta told her, rigid and unbending. "It is not what I might demand of you, but what you will demand of yourself. You have set causes into motion. Study them. What penalties had been incurred on your behalf? What obligations devolve upon you? Your judgment of yourself will be harsher than mine could ever be—but only thus can you ever be at peace with your own heart."

The woman kneeling before him crossed her arms on her breast, in strict self-searching.

Rajasta added a word of caution. "You will pronounce sentence upon yourself, as an Initiate must; but seek not to meddle again with the life the Gods have given you three times over! Death may not be self-sentenced. It is Their will that you should live; death is demanded only when a human body is so flawed and distorted by error that it cannot atone, until it has been molded into a cleaner vehicle by rebirth."

Momentarily rebellious, Deoris looked up. "Lord Rajasta, I cannot endure that I am set in honor, called Priestess and Initiate—I who have sinned in my body and in my soul."

"Peace!" he said sternly. "This is not the least of your penance, Deoris. Endure it in humility, for this too is atonement, and waste is a crime. Those wiser than we have decided you can serve best

in that way! A great work is reserved for you in rebirth, Deoris; fear not, you will suffer in minute, exact penance for your every sin. But sentence of death, for you, would have been the easy way! If you had died—if we had cast you out to die or to fall into new errors—then causes and crimes would have been many times multiplied! No, Deoris, your atonement in this life shall be longer and more severe than that!"

Chastened, Deoris turned her eyes to the floor.

With a hardly audible sigh, Rajasta placed a hand upon her shoulder. "Rise, daughter, and sit here beside me." When she had obeyed, he asked quietly, "How old are you?"

"Seven-and-twenty summers."

Rajasta looked at her appraisingly. Deoris had not married, nor—Rajasta had taken pains to ascertain it—had she taken any lover. Rajasta was not certain that he had been wise in allowing this departure from Temple custom; a woman unmarried at her age was a thing of scorn, and Deoris was neither wife nor widow. . . . He thought, with a creeping sorrow that never left him for long, of Domaris. Her grief for Micon had left her emotions scarred to insensitivity; had Riveda so indelibly marked Deoris?

She raised her head at last and her blue eyes met his steadily. "Let this be my sentence," she said, and told him.

Rajasta looked at her searchingly as she spoke; and when she was finished he said, with a kindness that came nearer to unnerving her than anything in many years, "You are not easy on yourself, my daughter."

She did not flinch before him. "Domaris did not spare herself," Deoris said slowly. "I do not suppose I will ever see my sister again, in this life. But . . . " She bent her head, feeling suddenly almost too shy to continue. "I—would live, so that when we meet again—as our oath binds us to do in a further We—I need not feel shame before her."

Rajasta was almost too moved to speak. "So be it," he pronounced at last. "The choice is your own—and the sentence is—just."

Chapter Six WITHOUT EXPECTATIONS

I

In the eleventh year of her exile, Domaris discovered that she could no longer carry on her duties unaided, as she had done for so long. She accepted this gracefully, with a patient endurance that marked everything she did; she had known for a long time that she was ill, and

would in all probability never be better.

She went about those duties which remained with an assured serenity which gave justice to all— but the glowing confidence was gone, and all the old sparkling joy. Now it was a schooled poise that impressed her personality, a certain grave attention that lived in the present moment, refusing equally the past and the future. She gave respect and kindness to all, accepting their honor with a gentle reserve; and if this homage ever struck at her heart with a sorrowful irony, she kept it hidden in her heart.

But that Domaris was more than a mere shell, no one could doubt who saw her in the quiet moments of the Ritual. Then she lived, and lived intensely; indeed she seemed a white flame, the very flesh of her seemed to glow. Domaris had not the slightest idea of her impact on her associates, but she felt then a strange, passive happiness, a receptivity—she never quite defined it, but it was compounded of a lively inner life that touched mystery, and a sense of Micon's nearness, here in his own country. She saw it with his eyes, and though at times the gardens and still pools roused memories of the enclosed courts and fountains of her homeland, still she was at peace.

Her Guardianship was still firm and gentle, but never obtrusive, and she now reserved for herself a period of each day which she devoted to watching the harbor. From her high window she gazed, with a remote and terrible loneliness, and every white sail which left the harbor laid a deeper burden of solitude on her heart. The incoming ships lacked, for her, the same poignant yearning that washed over her as she waited, quiescent, for something—she did not know what.

There was a doom upon her, and she felt that this interval of calm was just that—an interval.

She was seated there one day, her listless hands still, when her serving woman entered and informed her, "A woman of nobility requests audience, my Lady."

"You know that I see no one at this hour."

"I informed her of that, Lady—but she insisted."

"Insisted?" Domaris expostulated, with an echo of her old manner.

"She said she had travelled very far, and that the matter was one of grave importance."

Domaris sighed. This happened, now and again—usually some barren woman in search of a charm that would produce sons. Would they never cease to plague her? "I will see her," she said wearily, and walked with slow dignity to the anteroom.

Just at the door she stopped, one hand clutching at the door-frame, and the room dipped around her.Deoris!Ah, no —some chance resemblance, some trick of light—Deoris is years away, in my homeland, perhaps married, perhaps dead.Her mouth was suddenly parched, and she tried, unsuccessfully, to speak. Her face was moonlight on white marble, and Domaris was trembling, not much, but in every nerve.

"Domaris!" And it was the loved voice, pleading, "Don't you recognize me, Domaris?"

With a great gasp, Domaris reached for her sister, stretching out her arms hungrily—then her strength failed, and she fell limp at Deoris's feet.

Crying, shaking with fright and joy, Deoris knelt and gathered the older woman in her arms. The change in Domaris was like a blow in the face, and for a moment Deoris wondered if Domaris was dead—if the shock of her coming had killed her. Almost before she had time to think, however, the grey eyes opened, and a quivering hand was laid against her cheek.

"It is you, Deoris, it is!" Domaris lay still in her sister's arms, her face a white joy, and Deoris's tears fell on her, and for a time neither knew it. At last Domaris stirred, unquietly. "You're crying—but there is no need for tears," she whispered, "not now." And with this she rose, drawing Deoris up with her. Then, with her kerchief, she dried the other's tears and, pinching the still-saucy nose, said, elder-sisterly, "Blow!"

II

When they could speak without sobbing, or laughing, or both, Domaris, looking into the face of the beautiful, strange, and yet altogether familiar woman her sister had become, asked shakily, "Deoris, how did you leave—my son? Is he—tell me quickly—is he well? I suppose he would be almost a man now. Is he much like—his father?"

Deoris said very tenderly, "You may judge for yourself, my darling. He is in the outer room. He came with me."

"O merciful Gods!" gasped Domaris, and for a moment it seemed she would faint again. "Deoris, my baby—my little boy. . ."

"Forgive me, Domaris, but I—I had to have this one moment with you."

"It is all right, little sister, but—oh, bring him to menow !"

Deoris stood and went to the door. Behind her Domaris, still shaking, crowded to her side, unable to wait even a moment. Slowly and rather shyly, but smiling radiantly, a tallish young boy came forward and took the woman in his arms.

With a little sigh, Deoris straightened herself and looked wistfully at them. There was a little pain in her heart that would not be stilled as she went out of the room . . . and when she returned, Domaris was seated on a divan and Micail, kneeling on the floor at her feet, pressed a cheek already downy against her hand.

Domaris raised happy, questioning eyes at Deoris, startled by seeing. "But what is this, Deoris? Your child? How—who—bring him here, let me see," she said. But her glance returned again and again to her son, even as she watched Deoris unwrapping the swaddling bands from the child she had carried in. It was partly pain to see Micail's features; Micon was so keenly mirrored in

the dark, young, proud face, the flickering half-smile never absent long from his lips, the clear storm-blue eyes under the bright hair that was his only heritage from his mother's people . . . Domaris's eyes spilled over as she ran her thin hand over the curling locks at the nape of his neck.

"Why, Micail," she said, "you are a man, we must cut off these curls."

The boy lowered his head, suddenly shy again.

Domaris turned to her sister again. "Give me your baby, Deoris, I want to see—him, her?"

"A boy," said Deoris, and put the yearling pink lump into Domaris's arms.

"Oh, he is sweet, precious," she cooed over him lovingly, "but . . . ?" Domaris looked up, hesitant questions trembling on her lips.

Deoris, her face grave, took her sister's free hand and gave Domaris the only explanation she was ever to receive. "Your child's life was forfeited—partly through my fault. Arvath was debarred from rising in the priesthood because he had no living son. And the obligation, which you had—failed—could be said to pass to me . . . and . . . Arvath was not unwilling."

"Then this is—Arvath's son?"

Deoris seemed not to hear the interruption, but continued, quietly, "He would even have married me, but I would not tread on the hem of your robe. Then—it seemed a miracle! Arvath's parents are here, you know, in Ahtarrath, and they wished to have his son to bring up, since Arvath is not—has not married again. So he begged me to undertake this journey—there was no one else he could send—and Rajasta arranged that I should come to you and bring Micail, since when he comes to manhood he must claim his father's heritage and his place. So—so I took ship with the children, and. . ." She shrugged, and smiled.

"You have others?"

"No. Nari is my only child."

Domaris looked down at the curly-headed child on her knee; he sat there composed and laughing, playing with his own thumbs—and now that she knew, Domaris fancied she could even see the resemblance to Arvath. She looked up and saw the expression on her sister's face, a sort of wistfulness. "Deoris," she began, but the door bounced open and a young girl danced into the room, stopping short and staring shyly at the strangers.

"KihaDomaris, I am sorry," she whispered. "I did not know you had guests."

Deoris turned to the little maiden; a tall child, possibly ten years old, delicate and slender, with long straight fine hair loosely felling about her shoulders, framing a pointed and delicate little face in which glimmered wide, silver-blue eyes in a fringe of dark lashes . . .

"Domaris!" Deoris gasped, "Domaris,who isshe? Who is that child?Am I mad or dreaming? "

"Why, my darling, can't you guess?" Domaris asked gently.

"Don't, Domaris, I can't bear it!" Deoris's voice broke on a sob. "You—never saw Demira—"

"Sister, look at me!" Domaris commanded. "Would I jest so cruelly? Deoris, it is your baby! Your own little girl—Tiriki, Tiriki darling, come here, come to your mother—"

The little maiden peered shyly at Deoris, too timid to advance, and Domaris saw dawning in her sister's face a hope almost too wild for belief, a crazy half-scared hope.

"But, Domaris, my baby died!" Deoris gasped, and then the tears came, hurt, miserable sobs, lonely floods she had choked back for ten years; the tears she had not been able to shed then; the nightmarish misery. "Then it wasn't a dream!I dreamed Reio-ta came and took her away—but later they told me she died—"

Deoris put the little boy down and went swiftly to her sister, clasping the dark head to her breast. "Darling, forgive me," Domaris said, "I was distracted, I did not know what to say or do. I said that to some of the Temple people to keep them from interfering while I thought what I might do; I never believed it would—oh, my little sister, and all those years you thought . . ." She raised her head and said, "Tiriki, come here."

The little girl still hung back, but as Deoris looked longingly at her, still only half daring to believe the miracle, the child's generous small heart went out to this beautiful woman who was looking at her with heartbreaking hope in her eyes. Tiriki came and flung her arms around Deoris in a tight hug, looking up at the woman timidly.

"Don't cry—oh, don't!" she entreated, in an earnest little voice that thrust knives of memory into Deoris's heart. "KihaDomaris—is this my mother?"

"Yes, darling, yes," she was reassured—and then Tiriki felt herself pulled into the tightest embrace she had ever known. Domaris was laughing—but she was half crying, too; the shock or joy had been almost too great.

Micail saved them all. From the floor, holding Deoris's baby with a clumsy caution, he said in a tone of profound boyish disgust:

"Girls!"

Chapter Seven THE UNFADING FLOWER

I

Domaris laid aside the lute she had been playing and welcomed Deoris with a smile. "You look rested, dear," she said, drawing the younger woman down beside her. "I am so happy to have you here! And—how can I thank you for bringing Micail to me?"

"You—you—what can I say?" Deoris picked up her sister's thin hand and held it to her own. "You have already done so much. Eilantha—what is it you call her—Tiriki—you have had her with you all this time? How did you manage?"

Domaris's eyes were far away, dim with dreamy recollection. "Reio-ta brought her to me. It was his plan, really. I did not know she was in such terrible danger. She would not have been allowed to live."

"Domaris!" Shocked belief was in the voice and the raised eyes. "But why was it kept secret from me?"

Domaris turned her deep-sunken eyes on her sister. "Reio-ta tried to tell you. I think you were— too ill to understand him. I was afraid you might betray the knowledge, or. . ." She averted her eyes. "Or try to destroy her yourself."

"Could you think. . .?"

"I did not knowwhat to think, Deoris! It is a wonder I could think at all! And certainly I was not strong enough to compel you. But, for varying reasons, neither Grey nor Black-robes would have let her live. And the Priests of Light . . ." Domaris still could not look at her sister. "They cursed Riveda—and his seed." There was a moment of silence; then Domaris dismissed it all with a wave of her hand. "It is all in the past," she said steadily. "I have had Tiriki with me since then. Reio-ta has been a father to her—and his parents love her very much." She smiled. "She has been terribly spoilt, I warn you! Half priestess, half princess. . ."

Deoris kept her sister's white hand in hers, looking at her searchingly. Domaris was thin, thin almost to gauntness, and only lips and eyes had color in her white face; the lips like a red wound, the eyes sometimes feverishly bright. And in Domaris's burning hair were many, many strands of white.

"But Domaris! You are ill!"

"I am well enough; and I shall be better, now that you are here." But Domaris winced under her scrutiny. "What do you think of Tiriki?"

"She is—lovely." Deoris smiled wistfully. "But I feel so strange with her! Will she—love me, do you think?"

Domaris laughed in gentle reassurance. "Of course! But she feels strange, too. Remember, she

has known her mother only two days!"

"I know, but—I want her to love me now!" There was more than a hint of the old rebellious passion in Deoris's voice.

"Give her time," Domaris advised, half-smiling. "Do you think Micail really rememberedme? And he was much older.. . ."

"I tried hard to make him remember, Domaris! Although I saw little of him for the first four or five years. He had almost forgotten me, too, by the time I was allowed to be with him. But I tried."

"You did very well." There was tearful gratitude in her eyes and voice. "I meant that Tiriki should know of you, but—she has had only me all her life. And I had no one else."

"I can bear it, to have her love you best," Deoris whispered bravely, "but only just—bear it."

"Oh, my dear, my dear, surely you know I would never rob you of that."

Deoris was almost crying again, although she did not weep easily now. She managed to still the tears, but in her violet-blue eyes there was an achingacceptance which touched Domaris more deeply than rebellion or grief.

A childish treble called, "KihaDomaris?" and the women, turning, saw Tiriki and Micail standing in the doorway.

"Come here, darlings." Domaris invited, but it was at her son she smiled, and the pain in her heart was a throbbing agitation, for she saw Micon looking at her.. . .

The boy and girl advanced into the room valiantly, but with a shyness neither could conquer. They stood before their mothers, clinging to one another's hands, for though Tiriki and Micail were still nearly strangers, they shared the same puzzlement; everything had become new to both. All his life Micail had known only the austere discipline of the priesthood, the company of priests; in truth he had never completely forgotten his mother—but he felt shy and awkward in her presence. Tiriki, though she had known hazily that Domaris had not actually borne her, had all her life been petted and spoiled by Domaris, idolized and given such complete and sheltering affection that she had never missed a mother.

The strangeness welled up again, and Tiriki dropped Micail's hand and ran to Domaris, clinging jealously to her and hiding her silver-gilt hair in Domaris's lap. Domaris stroked the shining head, but her eyes never left Micail. "Tiriki, my dearest," she admonished softly, "don't you know that your mother has longed for you all these years? And you do not even greet her. Where are your manners, child?"

Tiriki did not speak, hiding her eyes in bashfulness and rebellious jealousy. Deoris watched, the knife, thrusting into her heart again and again. She had outgrown her old possessiveness of

Domaris, but a deeper, more poignant pain had taken its place; and now, overlaid upon the scene it seemed she could almost see another silver-gilt head resting upon her own breast, and hear Demira's mournful voice whispering,If Domaris spoke kindly to me, I think I would die of joy . . .

Domaris had never seen Demira, of course; and despite what Deoris had said to comfort the littlesaji girl, Domaris would have treated Demira with arrogant contempt if she had seen her.But really, Deoris thought with sadness and wonder,Tiriki is only what Demira would have been, given such careful, loving fosterage. She has all Demira's heedless beauty, her grace, and a poised charm, too, which Demira lacked —a sweetness, a warmth, a—a confidence!Deoris found herself smiling through her blurry vision.That is Domaris's work, she told herself,and perhaps it may be all for the best. I could not have done so much for her.

Deoris put out her hand to Tiriki, stroking the bright, feathery hair. "Do you know, Tiriki, I saw you but once before you were taken from me, but in all these years there has been no day when you were absent from my heart. I thought of you always as a baby, though—I did not expect to find you almost a woman. Maybe that will make it—easier, for us to be friends?" There was a little catch in her voice, and Tiriki's generous heart could not but be moved by it.

Domaris had beckoned Micail to her, and apparently forgotten their existence. Tiriki moved closer to Deoris; she saw the wistful look in the violet-blue eyes, and the tact so carefully instilled by her beloved Domaris did not fail her. Still timidly, but with a self-possession that surprised Deoris, she slipped her hand into the woman's.

"You do not seem old enough to be my mother," she said, with such sweet graciousness that the boldness of the words was not impertinent; then, on impulse, Tiriki put her arms about her mother's waist and looked up confidingly into her face . . . At first, Tiriki's only thoughts had been,What would Kiha Domaris want me to do? I must not make her ashamed of me! Now she found herself deeply affected by Deoris's restrained sorrow, her lack of insistence.

"Now I have a mother and a little brother, too," the little girl said, warmly. "Will you let me play with my little brother?"

"To be sure," Deoris promised, still in the same restrained manner. "You are almost a woman yourself, so he will grow up to believe he has two mothers. Come along now, if you like, and you shall watch the nurse bathe and dress him, and afterward you shall show us the gardens— your little brother and me."

This, it soon became clear, had been exactly the right thing to say and do; the right note to strike. The last reserve dropped away quickly. If Tiriki and Deoris were never really to achieve a mother-and-daughter relationship, they did become friends—and they remained friends through the long months and years that slipped away, virtually without event.

Arvath's son grew into a sturdy toddler then a healthy lad: Tiriki shot up to tallness and lost the last baby softness in her face. Micail's voice began to change, and he too grew tall; at fifteen the resemblance to Micon had become even more pronounced; the dark-blue eyes sharp and clear in the same way, the face and slender strong body animated with the same intelligent, fluid

restlessness . . .

From time to time Micon's father, the Prince Mikantor, Regent of the Sea Kingdoms, and his second wife, the mother of Reio-ta, claimed Micail for a few days; and often they earnestly besought that their grandchild, as heir to Ahtarrath, might remain at the palace with them.

"It is our right," the aging Mikantor would say somberly, time and again. "He is Micon's son, and must be reared as befits his rank, not among women! Though I do not mean to demean what you have done for him, of course. Reio-ta's daughter, too, has place and rank with us." When saying this, Mikantor's eyes would always fix Domaris with patient, sorrowful affection; he would willingly have accepted her, too, as a beloved daughter—but her reserve toward him had never softened.

On each occasion that the subject arose, Domaris, with quiet dignity, would acknowledge that Mikantor was right, that Micon's son was indeed heir to Ahtarrath—but that the boy was also her son. "He is being reared as his father would wish, that I vow to you, but while I live," Domaris promised, "he will not leave me again. While I live—" Her voice would dwell on the words. "It will not be long. Leave him to me—until then."

This conversation was repeated with but a few variations every few months. At last the old Prince bowed his head before the Initiate, and ceased from importuning her further . . . though he continued his regular visits, which became if anything more frequent than before.

Domaris compromised by allowing her son to spend a great deal of time with Reio-ta. This arrangement pleased all concerned, as the two rapidly became intimate friends. Reio-ta showed a deep deference to the son of the older brother he had adored and betrayed—and Micail enjoyed the friendliness and warmth of the young prince. He was at first a stiff, unfriendly boy, and found it difficult to adjust to this unrestricted life; Rajasta had accustomed him, since his third year, to the austere self-discipline of the highest ranks of the Priest's Caste. However, the abnormal shyness and reserve eventually melted; and Micail began to display the same open-hearted charm and joyfulness that had made Micon so lovable.

Perhaps even more than Reio-ta, Tiriki was instrumental in this. From the first day they had been close, with a friendliness which soon ripened into love; brotherly and unsentimental love, but sincere and deep, nonetheless. They quarrelled often, to be sure—for they were very unlike: Micail controlled, calm of manner but proud and reserved, inclined to be secretive and derisive; and Tiriki hot-tempered beneath her poise, volatile as quick silver. But such quarrels were momentary, mere ruffles of temper—and Tiriki always regretted her hastiness first; she would fling her arms around Micail and beg him, with kisses, to be friends again. And Micail would pull her long loose hair, which was too fine and straight to stay braided for more than a few minutes, and tease her until she begged for mercy.

Deoris rejoiced at their close friendship, and Reio-ta was altogether delighted; but both suspected that Domaris was not wholly pleased. Of late, when she looked into Tiriki's eyes, an odd look would cross her face and she would purse her lips and frown a little, then call Tiriki to her side and hug her penitently, as if to make up for some unspoken condemnation.

Tiriki was not yet thirteen, but already she seemed altogether womanly, as if something worked like yeast within her, awaiting some catalyst to bring sudden and complete maturity. She was a fey, elfin maiden, altogether bewitching, and Micail all too soon realized that things could not long continue as they were; his little cousin fascinated him too greatly.

Yet Tiriki had a child's innocent impulsiveness, and when it came it was very simple; a lonely walk along the seashore, a touch, a playful kiss—and then they stood for several moments locked tight in one another's arms, afraid to move, afraid to lose this sudden sweetness. Then Micail very gently loosed the girl and put her away for him. "Eilantha," he whispered, very low—and Tiriki, understanding why he had spoken her Temple name, dropped her eyes and stood without attempting to touch him again. Her intuition set a final seal on Micail's sure young knowledge. He smiled, with a new, mature responsibility, as he took her hand—only her hand—in his own.

"Come, we should return to the Temple."

"O, Micail!" the girl whispered in momentary rebellion, "now that we have found each other— must we lose this again so quickly? Will you not even dare to kiss me again?"

His grave smile made her look away, confused. "Often, I hope. But not here or now. You are— too dear to me. And you are very young, Tiriki—as am I. Come." His quiet authority was once again that of an older brother, but as they mounted the long terraced path toward the Temple gateway, he relented and turned to her with a quick smile.

"I will tell you a little story," he said with soft seriousness, and they sat down on the hewn steps together. "Once upon a time there was a man who lived within a forest, very much alone, alone with the stars and the tall trees. One day he found a beautiful gazelle within the forest, and he ran toward her and tried to clasp his arms around her slender neck and comfort his loneliness—but the gazelle was frightened and ran from him, and he never found her again. But after many moons of wandering, he found the bud of a lovely flower. He was a wise man by then, because he had been alone so long; so he did not disturb the bud where it nodded in the sunshine, but sat by it for long hours and watched it open and grow toward the sun. And as it opened it turned to him, for he was very still and very near. And when the bud was open and fragrant, it was a beautiful passion-flower that would never fade."

There was a faint smile in Tiriki's silver-grey eyes. "I have heard that story often," she said, "but only now do I know what it means." She squeezed his hand, then rose and danced up the steps. "Come along," she called merrily. "They will be waiting for us—and I promised my little brother I would pick him berries in the garden!"

Chapter Eight DUTY

I

That spring the illness Domaris had been holding at bay finally claimed her. All during the spring rains and through the summer seasons of flowers and fruits, she lay in her high room, unable to rise from her bed. She did not complain, and turned away their solicitude easily; surely she would be well again by autumn.

Deoris watched over her with tender care, but her love for her sister blinded her eyes, and she did not see what was all too plain to others; and, too often, neither Deoris nor any other could help the woman who lay there so patiently, powerless through the long days and nights. Years had passed since anyone could have helped Domaris.

Deoris learned only then—for Domaris was too ill to care any longer about concealment—how cruelly her sister had been treated by the Black-robes. Guilt lay heavy on the younger woman after that discovery—for something else came out that Deoris had not known before: just how seriously Domaris had been injured in that strange, dreamlike interlude which even now lay shrouded, for Deoris, in a dark web of confused dreams—the illusive memory of the Idiots' Village. What Domaris at last told her not only made clear exactly why Domaris had been unable to bring Arvath's first child to term, it made it amazing that she had even been able to bear Micon's.

Prince Mikantor finally got his dearest wish, and Micail was sent to the palace; Domaris missed her son, but would not have him see her suffering. Tiriki, however, would not be so constrained,

but defied Deoris and even Domaris, for the first time in her life. Childhood was wholly behind her now; at thirteen, Tiriki was taller than Deoris, although slight and immature, as Demira had been. Also, like Demira, there was a precocious gravity in the greyed silver of her eyes and the disturbed lines of her thin face. Deoris had been so childish at thirteen that neither sister noticed, or realized, that Tiriki at that age was already grown; the swifter maturity of the atavistic Zaiadan type escaped their notice, and neither took Tiriki very seriously.

Everyone did what they could to keep her away on the worst days; but one evening when Deoris, exhausted from several days almost without sleep, napped for a moment in the adjoining room, Tiriki slipped in to see Domaris lying wide-eyed and very still, her face was white as the white lock in her still-shining hair.

Tiriki crept closer and whispered, "Kiha—?"

"Yes, darling," Domaris said faintly; but even for Tiriki she could not force a smile. The girl came closer yet, and picked up one of he blue-threaded hands, pressing it passionately to her cheek, kissing the waxen fingers with desperate adoration. Domaris tiredly shifted her free hand to clasp the little warm ones of the child. "Gently, darling," said Domaris. "Don't cry."

"I'm not crying," Tiriki averred, raising a tearless face. "Only—can't I do anything for you,Kiha Domaris? I—you—it hurts you a lot, doesn't it?"

Under the child's great-eyed gaze, Domaris only said, quietly, "Yes, child."

"I wish I could have it instead of you!"

The impossible smile came then and flickered on the colorless mouth. "Anything rather than that, Tiriki darling. Now run away, my little one, and play."

"I'm not a baby,Kiha! Please, let me stay with you," Tiriki begged, and before the intense entreaty Domaris closed her eyes and lay silent for a space of minutes.

Iwill not betray pain before this child!Domaris told herself—but a drop of moisture stood out on her lower lip.

Tiriki sat down on the edge of the couch. Domaris, ready to warn her away—for she could not bear the lightest touch, and sometimes, when one of the slave-women accidentally jarred her bed, would cry out in unbearable torture—realized with amazement that Tiriki's movements had been so delicate that there was not the slightest hurt, even when the girl bent and twined her arms around Domaris's neck.

Why, Domaris thought, she's like a little kitten, she could walk across my body and I would feel no hurt! At least she's inherited something good from Riveda!

For weeks now, Domaris had borne no touch except her sister's, and even Deoris's trained hands had been unable to avoid inflicting torment at times; but now Tiriki . . . The child's small body

fitted snugly and easily into the narrow space at the edge of the couch, and she knelt there with her arms around her foster-mother for so many minutes that Domaris was dumbfounded.

"Tiriki," she rebuked at last—reluctantly, for the child's presence was curiously comforting— "you must not tire yourself." Tiriki only gave her an oddly protective, mature smile, and held Domaris closer still. And suddenly Domaris wondered if she were imagining it—no,it was truethe pain was gradually lessening and a sort of strength was surging through her worn body. For a moment the blessedness of relief was all Domaris could understand, and she relaxed, with a long sigh. Then the relief disappeared in sudden amazement and apprehension.

"Are you better now,Kiha? "

"Yes," Domaris told her, resolving to say nothing. It was absurd to believe that a child of thirteen could do what only the highest Adepts could do after lengthy discipline and training! It had been but a fancy of her weakness, no more. Some remnant of caution told her that if it were true, then Tiriki, for her own safety, must be kept away . . . But keeping Tiriki away was easier to resolve than to do.

In the days that followed, though Tiriki spent much time with Domaris, taking a part of the burden from the exhausted Deoris, Domaris maintained a severe control over herself. No word or movement should betray her to this small woman-child.

Ridiculous, she thought angrily, that I must guard myself against a thirteen-year-old!

One day, Tiriki had curled up like a cat beside her. Domaris permitted this, for the child's closeness was comforting, and Tiriki, who had been a restless child, never fidgeted or stirred. Domaris knew she was learning patience and an uncanny gentleness, but she did not want the girl to overtax herself, so she said, "You're like a little mouse, Tiriki. Aren't you tired of staying with me?"

"No. Please don't send me away,Kiha Domaris!"

"I won't dare, but promise me you will not tire yourself!"

Tiriki promised, and Domaris touched the flaxen hair with a white finger and lay still, sighing. Tiriki's great grey cat's eyes brooded dreamily . . .What can the child be thinking about? What a little witch she is! And that curious —healing instinct. Both Deoris and Rivedahad had something like that,she remembered,I should have expected as much . . . But Domaris could not follow the train of thought for long. Pain was too much a part of her now; she could not remember what it was like to be free of it.

Tiriki, her small pointed face showing, faintly, the signs of exhaustion, came out of her reverie and watched, helpless and miserable; then, in a sudden surge of protectiveness she flung her arms lightly around Domaris and pressed gently to her. And this time it was not a fancy: Domaris felt the sudden quick flow of vitality, the rapid surging ebb of the waves of pain. It was done unskillfully, so that Domaris felt dizzy and light-headed with the sudden strength that filled her.

The moment she was able, she sharply pushed Tiriki away. "My dear," she said in wonder, "you mustn't . . ." She broke off, realizing that the girl was not listening. Drawing a long breath, Domaris raised herself painfully up on one elbow. "Eilantha!" she commanded shortly. "I am serious! You must never do that again! I forbid it! If you try—I will send you away from me altogether!"

Tiriki sat up. Her thin face was flushed and a queer little line was tight across her brow. "Kiha," she started, persuasively.

"Listen, precious," Domaris said, more gently, as she lay herself on her pillow again, "believe me, I'm grateful. Someday you will understand why I cannot let you—rob yourself this way. I don't know how you did it—that is a God-given power, my darling . . . but not like this! And not for me!"

"But—but it'sonly for you,Kiha! Because I love you!"

"But—little girl—" Domaris, at a loss for words, lay still, looking up into the quiet eyes. After a long moment, the child's dreamy face darkened again.

"Kiha," Tiriki whispered, with strange intentness, "when—where—where and when was it? You said—you told me . . ." She stopped, her eyes concentrated in an aching search of the woman's face, her brows knitted in a terrible intensity. "Oh,Kiha, why is it so hard to remember?"

"Remember what, Tiriki?"

The girl closed her eyes. "It was you—you said to me—" The great eyes opened, haunted, and Tiriki whispered, "Sister—and more than sister—here we two, women and sisters—pledge thee, Mother—where we stand in darkness." Her voice thickened, and she sobbed.

Domaris gasped. "You don't remember, you can't! Eilantha, you cannot, you have been spying, listening, you could not. . ."

Tiriki said passionately, "No, no, it wasyou, Kiha! It was! I remember, but it's like—a dream, like dreaming about a dream."

"Tiriki, my baby-girl—you are talking like a mad child, you are talking about something which happened before. . ."

"It did happen, then! It did! Do you want me to tell you the rest?" Tiriki stormed. "Why won't you believe me?"

"But it was before you were born!" Domaris gasped. "How can this be?"

White-faced, her eyes burning, Tiriki repeated the words of the ritual without stumbling—but she had spoken only a few lines when Domaris, pale as Death, checked her. "No, no Eilantha!

Stop! You mustn't repeat those words! Not ever, ever—until you know what they mean! What they imply . . ." She held out exhausted, wasted arms. "Promise me!"

Tiriki subsided in stormy sobs against her foster-mother's breast; but at last muttered her promise.

"Some day—and if I cannot, Deoris will tell you about it. One day—you were made Devotee, dedicated to Caratra before your birth, and one day . . ."

"You had better let me tell her now," said Deoris quietly from the doorway. "Forgive me, Domaris; I could not help but hear."

But Tiriki leaped up, raging. "You! You had to come—to listen, to spy on me! You can never let me have a moment alone withKiha Domaris, you are jealous because I can help her and you cannot! I hate you! I hate you, Deoris!" She was sobbing furiously, and Deoris stood, stricken, for Domaris had beckoned Tiriki to her and her daughter was crying helplessly in her sister's arms, her face hidden on Domaris's shoulder as the woman held her with anxious, oblivious tenderness. Deoris bent her head and turned to go, without a word, when Domaris spoke.

"Tiriki, hush, my child," she commanded. "Deoris, come here to me—no, there, close to me, darling. You too, baby." she added to Tiriki, who had drawn a little away and was looking at Deoris with resentful jealousy. Domaris, laid one of her worn, wax-white hands in Tiriki's and stretched out her other hand to Deoris. "Now, both of you," Domaris whispered, "listen to me—

for this may be the last time I can ever talk to you like this—the last time."

Chapter Nine THE SEA AND THE SHIP

I

As summer gave way to autumn, even the children abandoned the hope and pretense that Domaris might recover. Day after day she lay in her high room, watching the sun flicker on the white waves, dreaming. Sometimes when one of the high-banneredwing-bird ships slid over the horizon, she wondered if Rajasta had received her message . . . but not even that seemed important any more. Days, then months slipped over her head, and with each day she grew paler, more strengthless, worn with pain brought to the point beyond which even pain cannot go, weary even with the effort of drawing breath to live.

The old master, Rathor, came once and stood for a long time close to her bedside, his hand between her two pale ones and his old blind eyes bent upon her worn face as if they saw not some faraway and distant thing, but the face of the dying woman.

As the year turned again, Deoris, pale with long nights and days of nursing her sister, was

commanded unequivocally to take more rest; much of the time, now, Domaris did not know her, and there was little that anyone could do. Reluctantly, Deoris left her sister to the hands of the other Healer-priestesses, and—one morning—took her children to the seashore. Micail joined them there, for since his mother's illness he had seen little of Tiriki. Micail was to remember this day, afterward, as the last day he was a child among children.

Tiriki, her long pale hair all unbraided, dragged her little brother by the hand as she flew here and there. Micail raced after them, and all three went wild with shouting and splashing and rowdy playing, chasing in and out of the sloshing waves on the sand. Even Deoris flung away her sandals and dashed gaily into the tidewaters with them. When they tired of this, Tiriki began to build in the sand for her little brother, while Micail picked up shells at the high-water mark and dumped them into Tiriki's lap.

Deoris, sitting on a large sun-warmed rock to watch them, thought, They are only playing at being children, for Nari's sake and mine. They have grown up, those two, while I have been absorbed in Domaris . . . It did not seem quite right, to Deoris, that a boy of sixteen and a girl of thirteen should be so mature, so serious, so adult—though they were acting, now, like children half their age!

But they quieted at last, and lay on the sand at Deoris's feet, calling on her to admire their sandsculpture.

"Look," said Micail, "a palace, and a Temple!"

"See my pyramid?" little Nari demanded shrilly.

Tiriki pointed. "From here, the palace is like a jewel set atop a green hill . . . Reio-ta told me, once.. . ." Abruptly she sat up and demanded, "Deoris, did I ever have a real father? I love Reiota as if he truly were my father, but—you andKiha Domaris are sisters; and Reio-ta is the brother of Micail's father. . ." Breaking off again, she glanced unquietly at Micail.

He understood what she meant immediately, and reached out to tweak her ear—but his impulse changed, and he only twitched it playfully instead.

Deoris looked soberly at her daughter. "Of course, Tiriki. But your father died—before you could be acknowledged."

"What was he like?" the girl asked, reflectively.

Before Deoris could answer, little Nari looked up with pouting scorn. "If he died before 'nowledging her, how could hebe her father?" he asked, with devastating small-boy logic. He poked a chubby finger into his half-sister's ribs. "Dig me a hole, Tiriki!"

"Silly baby," Micail rebuked him.

Nari scowled. "Not a baby," he insisted. "My father was a Priest!"

"So was Micail's, Nari; so was Tiriki's," Deoris said gently. "We are all the children of Priests here."

But Nari only returned to the paradox he had seized on with new vigor. "If Tiriki's father diedbefore she was born, then she don't have a father because he wasn't live to be her father!"

Micail, tickled by the whimsy of Nari's childish innocence, grinned delightedly. Even Tiriki giggled—then sobered, seeing the look on Deoris's face.

"Don't you want to talk about him?"

Again pain twisted oddly in Deoris's heart. Sometimes for months she did not think of Riveda at all—then a chance word or gesture from Tiriki would bring him back, and stir again that taut, half-sweet aching within her. Riveda was burned on her soul as ineradicably as thedorje scars on her breasts, but she had learned calm and control. After a moment she spoke, and her voice was perfectly steady. "He was an Adept of the Magicians, Tiriki."

"A Priest, like Micail's father, you said?"

"No, child, nothing like Micail's father. I said he was a Priest, because—well the Adepts are like Priests, of a sort. But your father was of the Grey-robe sect, though they are not regarded so highly in the Ancient Land. And he was a Northman of Zaiadan; you have your hair and eyes

from him. He was a Healer of great skill."

"What was his name?" Tiriki asked intently.

For a moment, Deoris did not answer. It occurred to her then Domaris had never spoken of this, and since she had raised Tiriki as Reio-ta's daughter, it was her right not to . . . At last Deoris said, "Tiriki, in every way that matters, Reio-ta is your father."

"Oh, I know, it isn't that I don't love him!" Tiriki exclaimed, penitently—but as if drawn by an irresistible impetus, she went on, "But tell me, Deoris, because I remember, when I was only a baby—Domaris spoke of him to another Priestess—no, it was a Priest—oh, I can't remember really, but . . ." She made a strange little helpless gesture with her hands.

Deoris sighed. "Have it as you will. His name was Riveda."

Tiriki repeated the name curiously. "Riveda.. . ."

"I did not know that!" Micail broke in, with sudden disquiet. "Deoris, can it be the same Riveda I heard talk in the Priest's Court as a child? Was he—the sorcerer, the heretic?" He stopped short at the dismay in Deoris's eyes, her pained mouth.

Nari raised his head and clamored, "What's a heretic?"

Micail, immediately repenting his rash outburst, unfolded his long legs and hoisted the little boy to his shoulder. "A heretic is one who does wicked things, and I will do a wicked thing and throw you into the sea if you do not stop plaguing Deoris with foolish questions! Look, I think that ship is coming to anchor, come, let's watch it; I'll carry you on my shoulder!"

Nari crowed in shrill delight, and Micail galloped off with him. Soon they were little more than tiny figures far along the beach.

Deoris came out of her daydream to find Tiriki slipping her hand into hers, saying with a low voice, "I did not mean to trouble, you, Deoris. I—I only had to be sure that—that Micail and I were not cousins twice over." She blushed, and then said, entreatingly, "Oh, Deoris, you must know why!" For the first time, of her own will, Tiriki put up her face for her mother's kiss.

Deoris caught the slender child in her arms. "Of course I know, my little blossom, and I am very happy," she said. "Come—shall we go and see the ship too?" Hand in hand, close together, they followed the trail of Micail's hurrying feet through the sand until all four stood together again.

Deoris picked up her son (Nari at least was hers alone, for a time at least, she was thinking) and listened smiling as Micail, his arm around Tiriki, talked of thewing-bird which was gliding to harbor. The sea was in his blood as it had been in his father's; on the long voyage from the Ancient Land he had been made with joy.

"I wonder if that ship is from the Ancient Land?" Tiriki said curiously.

"I would not be surprised," Micail answered wisely. "Look—they're putting out a boat from the ship, though; that's strange, they don't usually land boats here at the Temple, usually they go on to the City."

"There is a Priest in the first boat," Tiriki said as the small craft beached. Six men, common sailors, turned away along the lower path, but the seventh stood still, glancing up toward where the Temple gleamed like a white star atop the hill. Deori's heart nearly stopped; it was. . .

"Rajasta!" Micail cried out, suddenly and joyously; and, forgetting his new-found dignity, he sped swiftly across the sands toward the white-robed man.

The Priest looked up, and his face glowed as he saw the boy. "My dear, dear son!" he exclaimed, clasping Micail in his arms. Deoris, following slowly with her children, saw that the old Guardian's face was wet with tears.

His arm about Micail, Rajasta turned to greet the others; Deoris would have knelt, but he embraced her with his free arm. "Little daughter, this is a lucky omen for my mission, though it is not a mission of joy," he told her. To her own surprise, Deoris discovered that she was weeping. Rajasta held her close, with a sort of dismayed embarrassment, comforting her awkwardly as she sobbed, and little Nari tugged at his mother's skirt.

"You'd spankme for that, D'ris," he rebuked shrilly.

Deoris laughed at this, recovering her composure somewhat. "Forgive me, Lord Rajasta," she said, flushing deeply, and drew Tiriki forward. "A miracle befell me, my father, for when I came here I found—my own small daughter, in Domaris's care."

Rajasta's smile was a benediction. "I knew of that, my daughter, for Reio-ta told me of his plan."

"You knew? And all those years . . . ?" Deoris bent her head. It had, indeed been wisest that she learn to think of her child as lost to her forever.

Tiriki clung to Deoris, bashfully, and Rajasta laid his hand on her silky head. "Do not be frightened little one; I knew your mother when she was younger than you, and your father was my kinsman. You may call me Uncle, if you wish."

Nari peeped from behind his sister. "Myfather is a Priest!" he said valiantly. "Are you my Uncle, too, Lord Guardian?"

"If you like," said Rajasta mildly, and patted the tangled curls. "Is Domaris well, my daughter?"

Deoris paled in consternation. "Did you not receive her letter?You do not know? "

Rajasta, too, turned pale. "No, I have had no word—all is confusion at the Temple, Deoris, we have had no letters. I have come on Temple business, though indeed I had hoped to see you both.

What—what has befallen her?"

"Domaris is dying," Deoris said unsteadily.

The Priest's pale cheeks looked haggard—for the first time in her life, Deoris realized that Rajasta was an old, old man. "I feared—I felt," the Guardian said, hoarsely, "some premonition of evil upon her.. . ." He looked again at Micail's thin, proud face. "You are like your father, my son. You have his eyes. . ." But Rajasta's thoughts went on beyond his words:He is like Domaris, too. Domaris, whom he loved as more than a daughter—no one begotten of his own flesh had ever been half so dear to Rajasta; and Deoris said she was dying!But the essential part of Domaris, he reminded himself sternly and sadly,has long been dead. . . .

They dismissed the children as they neared the dormitory of the Priestesses. Alone together, Rajasta and Deoris climbed the stairs. "You will find her very changed," Deoris warned.

"I know," said Rajasta, and his voice held a deep sorrow; he leaned heavily on the young woman's offered arm. Deoris tapped gently on the door.

"Deoris?" a faint voice asked from within, and Deoris stepped aside for the Guardian to precede her. She heard her own name again, raised questioningly, then a glad cry: "Rajasta! Rajasta—my father!"

Domaris's voice broke in a sob, and Rajasta hastened to her side. Domaris tried to raise herself,

but her face twisted with pain and she had to fall back. Rajasta bent and elapsed her gently in his arms, saying, "Domaris, my child, my lovely child!"

Deoris very quietly withdrew and left them alone.

Chapter Ten KARMA

I

Standing on the terrace, listening for the shouts of the Temple children in the lower gardens, Deoris heard a quiet step behind her, and looked up into Reio-ta's smiling eyes.

"The Lord Rajasta is with Domaris?" he asked.

Deoris nodded; her eyes grew sad. "She has been living only for this. It will not be long now."

Reio-ta took her hand and said, "You must not grieve, Deoris. She has been—less than living— for many years."

"Not for her," Deoris whispered, "but only for myself. I am selfish—I have always been selfish—but when she is gone I shall be alone."

"No," said Reio-ta, "you will not be alone." And, without surprise, Deoris found herself in his arms, his mouth pressed to hers. "Deoris," he whispered at last, "I loved you from the first! From the moment I came up out of a—a maelstrom that had drowned me, and saw you lying on the floor of a Temple I did not recognize, at the feet of—a Grey-robe, whose name I did not even know. And the terrible burns on you! I loved you then, Deoris! Only that gave me the strength to—to defy. . ."

Matter-of-factly, Deoris supplied the name that, after so many years, his tongue still stumbled on. "To defy Riveda.. . ."

"Can you care for me?" he asked passionately. "Or does the past hold you still too close?"

Mutely Deoris laid her hand in his, warmed by a sudden confidence and hope, and knew, without analyzing it, that it was of this that she had waited all her life. She would never feel for Reio-ta the mad adoration she had known for Riveda; she had loved—no, worshipped Riveda— as a suppliant to a God. Arvath had taken her as a woman, and there had been friendship between them and the bond of the child she had given him in her sister's place—but Arvath had never touched her emotions. Now, in full maturity, Deoris found herself able and willing to take the next step into the world of experience. Smiling, she freed herself from his arms.

He accepted it, returning her smile. "We are not young," he said. "We can wait."

"All time belongs to us," she answered gently. She took his hand again, and together they walked down into the gardens.

II

The sun was low on the horizon when Rajasta called them all together on a terrace near Deoris's apartments. "I did not speak of this to Domaris," he told them soberly, "but I wished to say to you tonight what I mean to tell the Priests of this Temple tomorrow. The Temple in our homeland—the Great Temple—is to be destroyed."

"Ah, no!" Deoris cried out.

"Aye," said Rajasta, with solemn face. "Six months ago it was discovered that the great pyramid was sinking lower and lower into the Earth; and the shoreline has been breached in many places. There have been earthquakes. The sea had begun to seep beneath the land, and some of the underground chambers are collapsing. Ere long—ere long the Great Temple will be drowned by the waves of the sea."

There was a flurry of dismayed, confused questions, which he checked with a gesture. "You know that the pyramid stands above the Crypt of the Unrevealed God?"

"Would we did not!" Reio-ta whispered, very low.

"That Crypt is the nadir of the Earth's magnetic forces—the reason the Grey-robes sought to guard it so carefully from desecration. But ten years and more ago. . ." Involuntarily Rajasta glanced at Tiriki, who sat wide-eyed and trembling. "Great sacrilege was done there, and Words of Power spoken. Reio-ta, it seems, was all too correct in his estimation, for we still had not rooted out the worms at our base!" For a moment Rajasta's eyes were stark and haunted, as if seeing again some horror the others could not even guess at. "Later, spells even more powerful than theirs were pronounced, and the worst evils contained, but—the Unrevealed God has had his death-wound. His dying agonies will submerge more than the Temple!"

Deoris covered her face with her hands.

Rajasta went on, in a low, toneless voice, "The Words of Power have vibrated rock asunder, disrupted matter to the very elements of its making; and once begun at so basic a level the vibrations cannot be stilled until they die out of their own. Daily about the Crypt, the Earth trembles—and the tremors are spreading! Within seven years, at the most, the entire Temple— perhaps the whole shoreline, the city and the lands about for many and many a mile—will sink beneath the sea—"

Deoris made a muffled, choking sound of horror.

Reio-ta bowed his head in terrible self-abasement. "Gods!" he whispered, "I—I am not guiltless

in this."

"If we must speak of guilt," Rajasta said, more gently than was his habit, "I am no less guilty than any other, that my Guardianship allowed Riveda to entangle himself in black sorceries. Micon shirked the begetting of a son in his youth, and so dared not die under torture. Nor can we omit the Priest who taught him, the parents and servants who raised him, the great-greatgrandsire of the ship's captain who brought Riveda's grandmother and mine from Zaiadan . . . no man can justly apportion cause and effect, least of all upon a scale such as this! It is karma. Set your heart free, my son."

There was a long pause. Tiriki and Micail were wide-eyed, their hands clasped in the stillness, listening without full understanding. Reio-ta's head remained bowed upon his clasped hands, while Deoris stood as rigid as a statue, her throat clasped shut by invisible hands.

Finally, dry-eyed, pale as chalk, she ran her tongue over dry lips and croaked, "That—is not all, is it?"

Rajasta sadly nodded agreement. "It is not," he said. "Perhaps, ten years from now, the edges of the catastrophe will touch Atlantis as well. These earthquakes will expand outwards, perhaps to gird the world; this very spot where we now stand may be broken and lie beneath the waters some day—and it may be, also, there is nowhere that will be left untouched. But I cannot believe it will come to that! Men's lives are a small enough thing—those whose destiny decrees that they should live, will live, if they must grow gills like fishes and spend their days swimming

unimaginable deeps, or grow wings and soar as birds till the waters recede. And those who have sown the seeds of their own death will die, be they ever so clever and determined . . . but lest worse karma be engendered, the secrets of Truth within the Temple must not die."

"But—if what you say is so, how can they be preserved?" Reio-ta muttered.

Rajasta looked at him and then at Micail. "Some parts of the earth will be safe, I think," he replied at last, "and new Temples will rise there, where the knowledge may be taken and kept. The wisdom of our world may be scattered to the four winds and vanish for many an age—but it will not die forever. One such Temple, Micail, shall lie beneath your hand."

Micail started. "Mine? But I am only a boy!"

"Son of Ahtarrath," Rajasta said sternly, "usually it is forbidden that any should know his own destiny, lest he lean upon the Gods and, knowing, forbear to use all his own powers . . . yet it is necessary that you know, and prepare yourself! Reio-ta will aid you in this; though he is denied high achievement in his own person, the sons of his flesh will inherit Ahtarrath's powers."

Micail looked down at his now slight, strong hands—and Deoris suddenly remembered a pair of tanned, gaunt, twisted hands lying upon a tabletop. Then Micail flung back his head and met Rajasta's eyes. "Then, my father," he said, and put out his hand to Tiriki, "we would marry as soon as might be!"

Rajasta gazed gravely at Riveda's daughter, reflecting. "So be it," he said at last. "There was a prophecy, long ago when I was still young—Achild will be born, of a line first risen, then fallen; a child who will sire a new line, to break the father's evils forever. You are young . . ." He glanced again into Tiriki's child-face; but what he saw there made him incline his head and add, "But the new world will be mostly young! It is well; this, too, is karma."

Shivering, Tiriki asked, "Will only the Priests be saved?"

"Of course not," Rajasta chided gently. "Not even the Priests can judge who is to die and who is to live. Those outside the Priesthood shall be warned of danger and told where to seek shelter, and assisted in every way—but we cannot lay compulsion on them as on the Priesthood. Many will disbelieve, and mock us; even those who do not may refuse to leave their homes and possessions. There will be those who will trust to caves, high mountains, or boats—and who can say, they may do well, or better than we. Those who will suffer and die are those who have sown the seeds of their own end."

"I think I understand," said Deoris quietly, "why did you not tell Domaris of this?"

"But I think she knows," Rajasta replied. "She stands very close to an open door which views beyond the framework of one life and one time." He stretched out his hands to them. "In other Times," he said, in the low voice of prophecy, "I see us scattered, but coming together again. Bonds have been forged in this life which can never separate us—any of us. Micon, Domaris— Talkannon, Riveda—even you, Tiriki, and that sister you never knew, Demira—they have only

withdrawn from a single scene of an ending drama. They will change—and remain the same. But there is a web—a web of darkness bound around us all; and while time endures, it can never be loosed or freed. It is karma."

III

Since Rajasta had left her, Domaris had drifted in dreamless reverie, her vague thoughts bearing no relation to the pain and weakness of her spent body. Micon's face and voice were near, and she felt the touch of his hand upon her arm—not the frail and careful clasp of his maimed hands, but a strong and vital grip upon her wrist. Domaris did not believe that there was immediate reunion beyond death, but she knew, with serene confidence, that she and Micon had forged bonds of love which could not fail to draw them together again, a single bright strand running through the web of darkness that bound them one to another. Sundered they might be, through many lives, while other bonds were fulfilled and obligations discharged; but they would meet again. Nor could she be parted from Deoris; the strength of their oath bound them one to the other, and to the children they had dedicated from life to life forever. Her only regret was that in this life she would not see Micail grow to manhood, never know the girl he would one day take to wife, never hold his sons. . . .

Then, with the clarity of the dying, she knew she need not wait to see the mother of Micail's children. She had reared her in her lonely exile, sealed her unborn to the Goddess they would all serve through all of Time. Domaris smiled, her old joyous smile, and opened her eyes upon Micon's face . . .Micon? No—for the dark smile was crowned with hair as flaming bright as her

own had once been, and the smile that answered hers was young and unsteady as the clasp of his still-bony young hand upon hers. Beyond him, for an instant, she saw Deoris; not the staid Priestess but the child of dancing, wind-tangled ringlets, merry and sullen by turns, who had been her delight and her one sorrow in her carefree girlhood. There, too, was Rajasta, smiling, now benevolent, now stern; and the troubled, hesitant smile of Reio-ta.

All my dear ones,she thought, and almost said it aloud as she saw the pale hair of the littlesaji maiden, the child of theno-people, who had slipped away from Karahama's side to lead Domaris to Deoris that day in the Grey Temple—but no; time had slid over them. It was the face of Tiriki, flushed with sobbing, that swam out of the light. Domaris smiled, the old glorious smile that seemed to radiate into every heart.

Micon whispered, "Heart of Flame!" Or was it Rajasta who had spoken the old endearment in his shaking voice? Domaris did not see anything in particular now, but she sensed Deoris bending over her in the dim light. "Little sister," Domaris whispered; then, smiling, "No, you are not little any more. . ."

"You look—so very happy, Domaris," said Deoris wonderingly.

"Iam very happy," Domaris whispered, and her luminous eyes were wide twin stars reflecting their faces. For a moment a wave of bewilderment, half pain, blurred the shining joy; she stirred, and whispered rackingly, "Micon!"

Micail gripped her hand tight in his own. "Domaris!"

Again the joyous eyes opened. "Son of the Sun," she said, very clearly. "Now—it is beginning again." She turned her face to the pillow and slept; and in her dreams she sat once more on the grass beneath the ancient, sheltering tree in the Temple gardens of her homeland, while Micon caressed her and held her close, murmuring softly into her ear. . .

IV

Domaris died, just before dawn, without waking again. As the earliest birds chirped outside her window, she stirred a little, breathed in her sleep, "How still the pool is today—" and her hands, lax-fingered, dropped over the edge of the couch.

Deoris left Micail and Tiriki sobbing helplessly in each other's arms and went out upon the balcony, where she stood for a long time motionless, looking out on greyish sky and sea. She was not consciously thinking of anything, even of loss and grief. The fact of death had been impressed on her so long ago, that this was only confirmation.Domaris dead? Never! The wasted, wan thing, so full of pain, was gone; and Domaris lived again, young and quick and beautiful. . .

She did not hear Reio-ta's step until he spoke her name. Deoris turned. His eyes were a question—hers, answer. The words were superfluous.

"She is gone?" Reio-ta said.

"She is free," Deoris answered.

"The children—?"

"They are young; they must weep. Let them mourn her as they will."

For a time they were alone, in silence; then Tiriki and Micail came, Tiriki's face swollen with crying, and Micail's eyes bloodshot above smeared cheeks—but his voice was steady as he held, "Deoris?" and went to her. Tiriki put her arms around her foster-father and Reio-ta held her close, looking over her shining hair at Deoris. She in turn looked silently from the boy in her arms to the girl who clung to the Priest, and thought,It is well. These are our children. We will stay with them.

And then she remembered two men, standing face to face, opposed in everything yet bound by a single law throughout Time—as she and Domaris had been bound. Domaris was gone, Micon was gone, Riveda, Demira, Karahama—gone to their places in Time. But they would return. Death was the least final thing in the world.

Rajasta, his old face composed and serene, came out upon the balcony and began to intone the morning hymn:

"O beautiful upon the horizon of the East, Lift up thy light unto day, O eastern Star, Day-star, awaken, arise! Lord and giver of Life, awake! Joy and giver of Light, arise!"

A shaft of golden light stole over the sea, lighting the Guardian's white hair, his shining eyes, and the white robes of his priesthood.

"Look!" Tiriki breathed. "The Night is over."

Deoris smiled, and the prism of her tears scattered the morning sun into a rainbow of colors. "The day is beginning," she whispered, "the new day!" And her beautiful voice took up the hymn, that rang to the edges of the world:

"O beautiful upon the horizon of the East, Day-Star, awaken, arise!"

Afterword

One of the questions writers are asked ad nauseam is this:

"Where do you get your ideas?"

When answering this I tend to be rude and dismissive, because it makes it sound as if "ideas" were some sort of gross infestation, alien to the asker's kind, implying that being able to get "ideas" was unusual; whereas I cannot even imagine a life without having, every hour or so, more "ideas" than I could ever use in a lifetime.

More rationally I know that the asker is only seeking, without being sufficiently articulate to say so, some insight into a creative process unknown to him or her; and when I am asked whence arose the idea for such a book asWeb of Darkness, I really can answer that I have no idea. Wheredo dreams come from?

One of my earliest memories, when I was the merest tot, was of building great imposing structures with the many building-blocks of wood-ends which my father, a carpenter, gave us to supplement the small and unimaginative supply of toy blocks in the playroom; when asked what I was building, I invariably replied "temples." The word was alien even to me; I suspected that they were "something like churches" (which Idid know) "only muchmore. " I remember seeing a picture of Stonehenge, andrecognizing it; I did not see that actual construct till in my forties; yet when I did, the "shock of recognition" was still there. I was not taken to enough movies (and those mostly of the slapstick or cowboy variety, not very interesting to such a child as I was), and in my infancy there was no television; so where did I find the wish to recapture the imposing structures of Indian or Egyptian temples, great rows of columns occupied always in my

imagination by masses of priests and priestesses clad in long sweeping cloaks, whose colors defined what they did?

The only actual physical images of my childhood (I am speaking of four years old, before I could read anything much butAlice in Wonderland) were from a book of Tanglewood Tales with the wonderful landscapes and images of an ancient world which surely never existed except perhaps in Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" (a poem which well might have been read to me before I was able to understand it—my mother was a romantic). But I knew that this world of images existed; I recognized them in the Maxfield Parrish landscapes; and when my mind (fed on Rider Haggard and Sax Rohmer), long before I discovered fantasy or science fiction via the pulps, began to teem with these characters and incidents, I can only imagine that I fitted them mentally into the temples and scenes I had constructed with my blocks, as a playwright fits his characters onto the stage of a certain toy theatre he may have owned in childhood.

Where do dreams come from anyway? From that mysterious source and that alone can I seek for the "idea" ofWeb of Light andWeb of Darkness. And into that mysterious fountain I dipped again years later for the visions which brought me MISTS OF AVALON.

Where do dreams come from?

—Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Firebrand (1987)

EBook Design Group digital back-up edition v1 HTML November 27, 2002

POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION Copyright © 1987 by Marion Zimmer Bradley All rights reserved.

To the memory of Mary Renault

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge especially the help of my husband, Walter Breen, who assisted materially in the research, and whose knowledge of classical Greek - both language and history - was an invaluable help in creating this story, particularly including the quotation from the Athens museum which will be found in the postscript, providing historical basis for the—fate and the very historical existence—of Kassandra of Troy, from whose viewpoint this story is told.

Readers will be likely to bring challenges; ' That's not the way it happened in theIliad .' Of course not; had I been content with the account in theIliad , there would have been no reason to write a novel. Besides, theIliad stops short just at the most interesting point, leaving the writer to conjecture about the end from assorted legends and traditions. If the writers of Greek drama felt free to improvise, I need not apologise for following their excellent example.

One further apology: Walter's knowledge of the language persuaded me, in the name of linguistic 'correctness' and rather against my better judgement, to use classical transliterations rather than the more familiar Latinised forms; hence Akhaians for Achaeans (the term Greek was

not known then), Akhilles or Akhilleus for Achilles and, worst of all, Kassandra for Cassandra. To me the difference is appalling and changes the whole meaning of the name and character. A cow or a crow would not, after all, be the same creature if called a kow or a krow. To those whose visual aesthetics are as acute as mine, and to whom the look of a name on the page alters its very essence, I can only express my apologies. Linguistics and aesthetics are, after all, very different things, and the argument between them will never be solved - at least not by me.

I also acknowledge my debt to Elisabeth Waters, who on many occasions when I was 'stuck' with the 'what happens next' blues, never failed to help me find the most constructive answer, and to the other members of my household who suffered all through the fall and the sack of Troy with me.

VOLUME ONE : Apollo's Call

PROLOGUE

The rain had been coming down all day; now heavy, now tapering off to showers but never

entirely stopping. The women carried their spinning indoors to the hearth and even the children huddled under the overhanging roofs of the courtyard, venturing out for a few minutes between showers to splash through the brick-lined puddles and track the mud inside to the hearthside. By evening the oldest of the women by the hearth thought she might go mad with the shrieking and splashing, the charging of the little armies, the bashing of wooden swords on wooden shields, the splintering sounds and quarrelling over the broken toys, the shifting of loyalties from leader to leader, the yells of the 'killed' and 'wounded' when they were put out of the game. Too much rain was still coming down the chimney for proper cooking at the hearth; as the winter day darkened, fires were lighted in braziers. As the baking meat and bread began to smell good, the children one after another came and hunched down like hungry puppies, sniffing loudly and still quarrelling in undertones. Shortly before dinner a guest arrived at the door; a minstrel, a wanderer whose lyre strapped to his shoulder guaranteed him welcome and lodging everywhere. When he had been given food and a bath and dry clothing, the minstrel came and sat in the seat reserved for the most welcome guests, close to the fire. He began to tune his instrument, leaning his ear close to the tortoise-shell pegs and testing the sound with his finger. Then, without asking leave—even in these days a bard did as he chose—he strummed a single loud chord and declaimed:

"I will sing of battles and of the great men who fought them;

Of the men who lingered ten years before the giant-builded walls of Troy;

And of the Gods who pulled down those walls at last, of Apollo Sunlord and Poseidon the mighty Earthshaker;

I will sing the tale of the anger of powerful Akhilles;

Born of a Goddess. So mighty no weapon could slay him;

Even the story of his overweening pride, and that battle

Where he and great Hector fought for three days on the plains before high-walled Troy;

Of proud Hector and gallant Akhilles, of Kentaurs and Amazons, Gods and heroes,

Odysseus and Aeneas, all those who fought and were slain on the plains before Troy—"

"No!" the old woman exclaimed sharply, letting her spindle drop and springing up, "I won't have it! I'll not hear that nonsense sung in my hall!"

The minstrel let his hand fall over the strings with a jangling dissonance; his look was one of dismay and surprise, but his tone was polite.

"My lady?"

"I tell you I won't have those stupid lies sung here at my hearth!" she said vehemently.

The children made disappointed sounds; she gestured them imperiously to silence. "Minstrel, you are welcome to your meal and to a seat by my fire; but I won't have you filling the children's ears with that lying nonsense. It wasn't like that at all."

"Indeed?" the harper inquired, still politely. "How do you know this, madam? I sing the tale as I learned it from my master, as it is sung everywhere from Crete to Colchis—"

"It may be sung that way, from here to the very end of the world," the old woman said, "but it didn't happen that way at all."

"How do you know that?" asked the minstrel.

"Because I was there, and I saw it all," replied the old woman.

The children murmured and cried out.

"You never told us that, grandmother. Did you know Akhilles, and Hector, and Priam, and all the heroes?"

"Heroes!" she said scornfully. "Yes, I knew them; Hector was my brother."

The minstrel bent forward and looked sharply at her.

"Now I know you," he said at last.

She nodded and bent her white head forward.

"Then perhaps, Lady,you should tell the story; I who serve the God of Truth would not sing lies for all men to hear."

The old woman was silent for a long time. At last she said, "No; I cannot live it all again." The children whined with disappointment. "Have you no other tale to sing?"

"Many," said the harper, "but I wish not to tell a story you mock as a lie. Will you not tell the truth that I may sing it elsewhere?"

She shook her head firmly.

"The truth is not so good a story."

"Can you not at least tell me where my story goes astray that I may amend it?"

She sighed. "There was a time when I would have tried," she said, "but no man wishes to believe the truth. For your story speaks of heroes and kings, not queens; and of Gods, not Goddesses."

"Not so," said the harper, "for much of the story speaks of the beautiful Helen, who was stolen away by Paris; and of Leda, the mother of Helen and her sister Klytemnestra, who was seduced by great Zeus who took the form of her husband the King—"

"I knew you could not understand," the old woman said, "for to begin, at first in this land there were no Kings, but only Queens; the daughters of the Goddesses, and they took consorts where they would. And then the worshippers of the Sky Gods, the horse folk, the users of iron, came down into our country; and when the Queens took them as consorts, they called themselves Kings and demanded the right to rule. And so the Gods and the Goddesses were in strife; and a time came when they brought their quarrels to Troy—" Abruptly she broke off.

"Enough," she said. "The world has changed; already I can tell you think me an old woman whose wits wander. This has been my destiny always: to speak truth and never to be believed. So it has been, so it will ever be. Sing what you will; but mock not my own truth on my own hearth. There are tales enough. Tell us about Medea, Lady of Colchis, and the golden fleece which Jason stole from her shrine - if he did; I dare say there is some other truth to that tale too; but I neither know it, nor care what the truth may be; I have not set foot in Colchis for many long years." She picked up her spindle and quietly began to spin.

The harper bowed his head.

"Be it so, Lady Kassandra," he said. "We all thought you dead in Troy, or in Mykenae soon after."

"Then that should prove to you that at least in some particulars the tale speaks not the truth," she said, but in an undertone.

Still my fate: always to speak the truth, and only to be thought mad. Even now, the Sunlord has not forgiven me…

CHAPTER 1

Sparta

At this time of the year, light lingered late; but the last glow of sunset had faded now in the west, and mist had begun to drift in from the sea.

Leda, Lady of Sparta, rose from her bed where her consort Tyndareus lingered still. As usual

after their coupling, he had fallen into a heavy sleep; he did not notice when she rose from the bed and, throwing a light garment about her shoulders, went out into the courtyard of the women's quarters.

Women's quarters, the Queen thought angrily,when it is my own castle; one would think that I, not he, was the interloper here; that he, not I, held land-right in Sparta. Earth Mother knows not so much as his name .

She had been willing enough when he came and sought her hand, even though he was one of the invaders from the north: worshipper of thunder and oak and of the Sky Gods, a coarse, hairy man who bore the hated black iron on spear and armor. And yet now his kind were everywhere, and they demanded marriage by their new laws as if their Gods were more than interlopers in the place of the Goddess who owned land and harvest and people. These iron-bearing folk expected the woman who wedded one of them to join in the worship of their Gods and to give her body only to that man.

One day, Leda thought, the Goddess would punish these men for keeping women from paying their dues to the forces of Life. These men even said the Goddesses were subservient to the Gods; which seemed to Leda a horrible blasphemy and a mad reversal of the natural order of things. Men had no divine power; they neither bred nor bore; yet somehow they felt they had some natural right in the fruit of their women's bodies, as if coupling with a woman gave them some power of ownership, as if children did not naturally belong to the woman whose body had sheltered and nourished them.

Yet Tyndareus was her husband and she loved him; and because she loved him she was even willing to indulge his madness and jealousy, and risk angering the Earth Mother by lying only with him.

If only she could make him understand that it was wrong for her to be shut up in the women's quarters, that as a priestess she must be out and around the fields to be sure that the Goddess was given her due of service, that she owed the gift of fertility to all men, not to her consort alone; that the Goddess could not restrict her gifts to any one man, even if he called himself a king.

A distant muttering of thunder reverberated from far below, as if it had risen from the sea, or as if the great Serpent who now and again caused the Earth to shake might be stirring in her depths.

A riffle of wind stirred the light garment about Leda's shoulders, her hair flew wildly like a solitary bird in flight; faint lightning suddenly flared all the courtyard alight; and silhouetted against the squared light of the doorframe she saw her husband coming in search of her. Leda shrank inwardly; would he berate her for leaving the women's quarters, even at this hour of the night?

But he did not speak; he only moved toward her, and something in his step, the deliberate way he moved, told the woman that despite the well-known form and the features now clearly visible in the moonlight, this was not her husband. How this could be she did not know, but around his shoulders a flicker of errant lightning seemed to play, and as he walked his foot struck the

flagstones with the faintest sound of faraway thunder. He seemed to have grown taller, his head thrown back against the levin-light which crackled in his hair. Leda knew, with a shudder that crackled down the small hairs on her body, that one of the Stranger Gods was now abroad within the semblance of her husband, riding him as he would mount and ride one of his own horses. The lightning-flare told her it was Olympian Zeus, controller of thunders, Lord of Lightning.

This was nothing new to her; she knew the feel of the Goddess filling and overflowing her body when she blessed the harvests or when she lay in the fields drawing down the Divine power of growth to the grain. She remembered how she seemed to stand aside from her familiar self, and it was the Goddess who moved through the rites, dominating everyone else with the power within her.

She knew Tyndareus must now watch from within, as Zeus, the master of his body, moved toward his wife. She knew, because Tyndareus had once told her, that of all his Gods it was for the Thunder Lord that he felt most devotion.

She shrank away; perhaps he would not notice her and she could remain unseen until the God departed from her husband.

His head moved, that flicker of lightning following the loose flying movement of his hair. She knew he had seen her; but it was not Tyndareus's voice that spoke, but a voice deeper, softer, a profound bass rumble filled with the distant thunders.

"Leda," said Zeus Thunderer, "come here to me."

He put out his hand to take hers, and obediently, mastering the sudden inner dread—if this God bore the lightnings, would his touch strike her with the thunder-stroke?—she laid her hand in his. His flesh felt cold, and her hand shivered a little at the-touch. Looking up at him she perceived on his face the shadow of a smile wholly unlike Tyndareus's stern and unbending look, as if the God were laughing - no, not at her, but with her. He drew her in under his arm, casting the edge of his mantle over her, so that she could feel his body's warmth. He did not speak again, but drew her along inside the room she had quitted only a few moments ago.

Then he pulled her close to him, inside the mantle, so that she could feel his manhood rising against her body.

Dothe laws against lying with any other man prohibit a God in my husband's very shape and form ? she wondered wildly. Somewhere inside the real Tyndareus must be looking out at her: jealously, or pleased that his woman found favour with his God? She had no way to know; from the strength with which he held her she knew it would be impossible to protest.

At first she had felt his alien flesh as chill; now it seemed pleasantly warm, as if fevered.

He lifted her and laid her down; a single swift touch and somehow she was already open, throbbing and eager. Then he was over and within her, and the lightning played around his form and face; its echo deep in the pounding rhythms of his touch. For a moment it seemed that this

was not a man, that in fact it was nothing human at all, but that she was alone on a great windswept height, encircled by beating wings, or a great lapping ring of fire, or as if some beast swept round her and ravished her with confusion and ecstasy; beating wings, thunder, as a hot and demanding mouth took possession of hers.

Then suddenly it was over, as if it had been a very long time ago, a fading memory or a dream, and she was lying alone on the bed, feeling very small, chilled and abandoned and alone as the God towered over her - it seemed, to the sky. He bent and kissed her with great tenderness. She closed her eyes and, when she woke, Tyndareus was fast asleep at her side and she was not sure she had ever left her bed. It was Tyndareus; when she put out her hand to be sure, his flesh was warm—or cool—and there was not the faintest crackle of lightning in the hair which lay on the pillow beside her.

Had she only dreamed it, then? As the thought crossed her mind she heard from far outside the house the ripple of thunder; wherever he had gone, the God had not wholly left her. And now she knew that however long she might live with Tyndareus as his wife, she would never again look on her husband's face without searching in it for some sign of the God who had visited her in his form.

CHAPTER 2

Troy: Priam's City

Hecuba the Queen never went outside the walls of Troy without looking back in great pride at this fortress of a city, rising up, terrace upon terrace, above the fertile plain of the green-flowing. Scamander, beyond which lay the sea. She always marvelled at the work of the Gods that had given her the rulership over Troy. Herself, the Queen; and Priam as her husband, warrior and consort.

She was the mother of Prince Hector, his heir. One day her sons and daughters would all rule over this city and the land beyond, as far as the eye could see.

Even if this child should be a daughter, Priam would have no cause to complain of her. Hector was now seven, old enough to learn arms-play. His first suit of armor had already been ordered from the smith who served the royal household. Their daughter Polyxena was four years old, and would someday be pretty, with long reddish hair like Hecuba's own; one day she would be as valuable as any son, for a daughter could be married to one of Priam's rival kings and cement a firm alliance. A king's household should be rich with sons and daughters. The palace women had also borne Priam many sons and a few daughters. But Hecuba, as his Queen, was in charge of the royal nursery and it was her duty—no, her privilege - to say how every one of the King's children should be brought up, whether born to her or to any other woman.

Queen Hecuba was a handsome woman, tall and broad-shouldered, with auburn hair drawn back smoothly from her brow and dressed in long curls at her neckline. She walked like the Goddess Hera, carrying her child, low and near to birth, proudly before her. She wore the low-cut bodice and tiered skirt, with a pattern of brilliant stripes, which was the common dress of the noblewomen of Troy. A gold collar, as wide as the palm of her hand, gleamed about her throat.

As she walked through a quiet street near the marketplace, a woman of the people, short and dark and coarsely dressed in an earthy-coloured linen, darted out to touch her belly, murmuring, as if startled at her own temerity, "A blessing, O Queen!"

"It is not I but the Goddess who blesses you." Hecuba held out her hands, feeling above her the shadow of the Goddess, like a tingling in the crown of her head; she could see, in the woman's face, the never-failing reflection of awe and wonder at the sudden change.

"May you bear many sons and daughters for our city. I pray you bless me also, daughter," said Hecuba seriously.

The woman looked up at the Queen—or did she see only the Goddess? - and murmured, "Lady, may the fame of the Prince you bear outshine even the fame of Prince Hector."

"So be it," murmured the Queen, and wondered why she felt a small premonitory shiver, as if the blessing had somehow been transmuted, between the woman's lips and her ears, into a curse.

It must have been visible on her face, too, she thought, for her waiting-woman stepped close and said in her ear, "Lady, you are pale; is it the beginning of labour?"

Such was her confusion that for a moment the Queen actually wondered if the strange sweating chill which seized her was the first touch of the birth process. Or was it only the result of that brief overshadowing by the Goddess? She did not remember anything like this with Hector's birth, but she had been a young girl then, hardly aware of the process taking place within her. "I know not," she said. "It is possible."

"Then you must return to the palace and the King must be told," said the woman. Hecuba hesitated. She had no wish to return inside the walls, but if she was truly in labour it was her duty - not only to the child, and to her husband, but to the King and to all the people of Troy, to safeguard the prince or princess she bore.

"Very well, we will return to the palace," she said, and turned about in the street. One of the things that troubled her when she walked in the city was that a crowd of women and children always followed her, asking for blessings. Since she had become visibly pregnant they begged for the blessing of fertility, as if she could, like the Goddess, bestow the gift of childbearing.

With her woman, she walked beneath the twin lionesses guarding the gates of Priam's palace, and across the huge courtyard behind them where his soldiers gathered for arms-drill. A sentry at the gate raised his spear in salute.

Hecuba watched the soldiers, paired in teams and fighting with blunted weapons. She knew as much about weapons as any of them, for she had been born and raised on the plains, daughter of a nomad tribe where women rode horseback, and trained like the men of the cities with sword and spear. Her hand itched for a sword, but it was not the custom in Troy, and while at first Priam had allowed her to handle weapons and practice with his soldiers, when she became pregnant with Hector he had forbidden it. In vain she told him that the women of her tribe rode horseback and worked with weapons until a few days before they were delivered of their children; he would not listen to her.

The royal midwives told her that if she so much as touched edged weapons it would injure her child and perhaps the men who owned the weapons. A woman's touch, they said, especially the touch of a woman in her condition, would make the weapon useless in battle. This sounded to Hecuba like the most solemn foolishness, as if men feared the notion that a woman could be strong enough to protect herself.

"But you have no need to protect yourself, my dearest love," Priam had said. "What sort of man would I be if I could not protect my wife and child?" That ended the matter; and from that day to this, Hecuba had never so much as touched the hilt of a weapon. Imagining the weight of a sword in her hand now, she grimaced, knowing that she was weak from women's indoor work and soft from lack of training; Priam was not so bad as the Argive kings who kept their women confined inside their houses, but he did not really like it when she went very far outside the palace. He had grown up with women who stayed indoors at all times, and one of the worst epithets he had for a woman was 'sunburnt from gadding about'.

The Queen went in through the small door into the cool shadows of the palace and through the marble-floored halls, hearing in the silence the small sound of her skirts trailing against the floor and her waiting-woman's soft footfalls behind her.

In her sunlit rooms, with all the windows flung open as she preferred to keep them, her women were sunning and airing linens, and as she came through the doors they paused to greet her. The waiting-woman announced, "The Queen is in labour; send for the royal midwife."

"No, wait." Hecuba's soft but definite voice cut through the cries of excitement. "There is no such hurry; it is by no means certain. I felt strange and had no way of knowing what ailed me; but it is by no means sure it isthat ."

"Still, Lady, if you are not sure, you should let her come to you," the woman persuaded, and the Queen at last agreed. Certainly there was no need for haste; if she was in labour there would soon be no doubt about it; but if she was not it would do no harm to speak with the woman. The strange sensation had passed off as if it had never been, nor did it return.

The sun declined, and Hecuba spent the day helping her women fold and put away the sunbleached linens. At sundown Priam sent word that he would spend the evening with his men, she should sup with her women and go to bed without waiting for him.

Five years ago, she thought, this would have dismayed her; she would not have been able to go

to sleep unless she was encircled in his strong and loving arms. Now, especially this late in pregnancy, she was pleased at the thought of having her bed to herself. Even when it crossed her mind that he might be sharing the bed of one of the other women of the court, perhaps one of the mothers of the other royal children, it did not trouble her; she knew a king must have many sons and her own son Hector was firm in his father's favour.

She would not go into labour this night at least; so she called her women and let them put her to bed with the expected ceremony. For some reason the last image in her mind before she slept was of the woman who had asked her for a blessing that day in the street.

Shortly before midnight, the watchman outside the Queen's apartments, drowsing on duty, was awakened by a frightful shriek of despair and dread which seemed to ring throughout the entire palace. Galvanized to full awareness, the watchman stepped inside the rooms, yelling until one of the Queen's women appeared.

"What's happened? Is the Queen in labour? Is the house afire?" he demanded.

"An evil omen," the woman cried,"the most evil of dreams—" and then the Queen herself appeared in the doorway.

"Fire!" she cried out, and the watchman looked in dismay at the usually dignified figure of the Queen; her long reddish hair unbound and falling dishevelled to her waist, her tunic unfastened at the shoulder and ungirt so that she was half naked above the waist. He had never noticed

before that the Queen was a beautiful woman.

"Lady, what can I do for you?" he asked. "Where is the fire?"

Then he saw an astonishing thing; between one breath and the next, the Queen altered, one moment a distraught stranger, and the next, the regal lady he knew. Her voice was shaking with fear, even though she managed to say quietly, "It must have been a dream. A dream of fire, no more."

"Tell us, Lady," her waiting-woman urged, moving close to the Queen, her eyes alert and wary as she motioned to the watchman. "Go, you should not be here."

"It is my duty to be sure that all is well with the King's women," he said firmly, his eyes fixed on the Queen's newly calm face.

"Let him be; he is doing no more than his duty," Hecuba told the woman, though her voice was still shaking. "I assure you, watchman, it was no more than an evil dream; I had the women search all the rooms. There is no fire."

"We must send to the Temple for a priestess," urged a woman at Hecuba's side. "We must know what peril is betokened by such an evil dream!"

A firm step sounded and the door was thrust open; the King of Troy stood in the doorway, a tall

strong man in his thirties, firmly muscled and broad-shouldered even without his armor, dark curling hair and a neatly trimmed curly dark beard, demanding to know, in the name of all the Gods and Goddesses, what was all this commotion in his house.

"My lord—" the servants backed away as Priam strode through the door.

"Is all well with you, my lady?" he asked, and Hecuba lowered her eyes.

"My lord husband, I regret this disturbance. I had a dream of great evil."

Priam waved at the woman. "Go and be certain that all is well in the rooms of the royal children," he commanded, and the woman scurried away. Priam was a kindly man, but it was not well to cross him on the relatively rare occasions when he was out of temper. "And you," he said to the watchman, "you heard the Queen; go at once to the Temple of the Great Mother; tell them that the Queen has had a dream of evil omen and is in need of a priestess who can interpret it to her. At once!"

The watchman hurried down the stairs and Hecuba held out her hand to her husband.

"It was truly no more than a dream, then?" he asked.

"No more than a dream," she said, but even the memory of it still made her shiver.

"Tell me, love," he said, and led her back to her bed, sitting beside her bed and leaning forward to clasp her fingers - hardly smaller than his own - between his calloused palms.

"I feel - such a fool for disturbing everyone with a nightmare," she said.

"No, you were perfectly right," he said. "Who knows? The dream may have been sent by some God who is your enemy - or mine. Or by a friendly God, as a warning of disaster. Tell me, my love."

"I dreamed - I dreamed—" Hecuba swallowed hard, trying to dispel the choking sensation of dread, "I dreamed the child had been born, a son, and as I lay watching them swaddle him, suddenly some God was in the room—"

"What God?" Priam interrupted sharply. "In what form?"

"How should I know?" Hecuba asked reasonably. "I know little of the Olympians. But I am sure I have not offended any of them nor done them any dishonor."

"Tell me of his form and appearance," Priam insisted.

"He was a youth and beardless; no more than six or seven years older than our Hector," Hecuba said.

"Then it must have been Hermes, the messenger of the Gods," Priam said.

Hecuba cried out, "But why should a God of the Argives come to me?"

Priam said, "The ways of the Gods are not for us to question. How can I tell? Go on."

Hecuba spoke, her voice still uncertain. "Hermes, then, or whichever God it may have been, leaned over the cradle, and picked up the baby—" Hecuba was white, and beads of sweat stood on her brow, but she tried hard to steady her voice, "It wasn't a baby but—a child—a naked child, burning—I mean it was all afire and burning like a torch. And as he moved, fire came and invaded the castle, burning everywhere and striking the town…" She broke down and sobbed. "Oh, what can it mean?"

"Only the Gods know that for certain," Priam said, and held her hand firmly in his.

Hecuba faltered, "In my dream the baby ran before the God… a newborn child, running all afire through the palace, and after him, as he passed, all the rooms took fire. Then he ran down through the city - I stood on the balcony overlooking the town, and fire sprang up behind him as he ran, still flaming, so that Troy was burning, all on fire, from the high citadel to the shore, and even the sea was all afire before his steps."

"In the name of Poseidon," Priam murmured under his breath, "what an evil omen… for Troy and for all of us."

He sat silent, stroking her hand, until a slight sound outside the room announced the arrival of the priestess.

She stepped inside the room and said in a calm, cheerful voice, "Peace to all in this house. Rejoice, O Lord and Lady of Troy. My name is Sarmato. I bring you the blessings of the Holy Mother; what service may I do to the Queen?" She came inside the room, a tall sturdily built woman, probably still of child-bearing age, though her dark hair was already showing streaks of grey. She said to Hecuba, smiling, "I see that the Great Goddess has already blessed you, Queen. Are you ill or in labour?"

"Neither," said Hecuba. "Did they not tell you, priestess? Some God sent me an evil dream."

"Tell me," said Sarmato, "and fear not. The Gods mean us well, of that I am certain. So speak and be not afraid."

Hecuba recounted her dream again, beginning to feel, as she told it, now she was fully awake, that it was not so much horrible as absurd… Nevertheless she shivered with the terror she had felt in the dream. The priestess listened with a slight frown gathering between her brows.

When Hecuba had finished she said, "You are sure there was nothing more?"

"Nothing that I can remember, my lady."

The priestess frowned, and from a pouch tied at her waist she drew out a small handful of pebbles; knelt on the floor, and cast them like knucklebones, studying and muttering over their arrangement, casting them again and yet a third time, finally gathering them up and returning them to the pouch.

Then she raised her eyes to Hecuba.

"Thus speaks the Messenger of the Gods of Olympos to you; you bear a son under an evil fate, who will destroy the city of Troy."

Hecuba caught her breath in consternation, but felt her husband's fingers clasping hers, strong and warm and reassuring.

"Can anything be done to avert this fate?" Priam asked.

The priestess shrugged. "In seeking to avert fate, men often bring it closer. The Gods have sent you a warning, but they have not chosen to tell you of what you must do to avert this doom. It might be safest to do nothing."

Priam frowned and said, "Then the child must be exposed at birth," and Hecuba cried out in horror.

"No! No! It was but a dream, a dream…"

"A warning from Hermes," said Priam severely. "Expose the boy as he is born; hear me!" He added, in the inflexible formula which gave the words the force of laws carved into stone, "I have spoken; let it be done!"

Hecuba crumpled weeping on her pillows, and Priam said tenderly, "I would not for all Troy have given you this grief, my dearest, but the Gods cannot be mocked."

"Gods!" Hecuba cried, frantic. "What kind of God is it that sends deceitful nightmares to destroy an innocent little child, a newborn babe in the cradle? Among my people," she added, resentfully, "a child is its mother's, and no one but she who carried it for most of a year and brought it to birth can say its fate; if she refuses to suckle it and bring it up, that is her own choice. What right has aman over children?" She did not saya mere man , but her tone of voice made it obvious.

"The right of afather," Priam said sternly. "I am the master of this house, and as I have spoken, so it shall be done—hear me, woman!"

"Don't saywoman to me in that tone of voice," Hecuba said, angrily. "I am a free citizen and a Queen and not one of your slaves or concubines!" Yet for all that, she knew that Priam would have his way; when she had chosen to marry a man from those who dwelt in cities and assumed rights over their women, she knew she had consented to this. Priam arose from her side and gave

the priestess a piece of gold; she bowed and departed.

Three days later Hecuba went into labour and gave birth to twins; first a son, then a daughter, as like as one rosebud to another on the same branch. They were both healthy and well-formed, and cried lustily, although they were so tiny that the boy's head fitted into Hecuba's palm, and the girl was smaller still.

"Look at him, my lord," she said fiercely to Priam when he came. "He is no bigger than a kitten! And you fearthis was sent by some God to bring disaster on our city?"

"There is something in what you say," admitted Priam. "Royal blood is, after all, royal blood, and sacred; he is the son of a King of Troy…" He considered for a moment, "No doubt it would be enough to have him fostered far away from the city; I have an old and trusted servant, a shepherd on the slopes of Mount Ida, and he will bring up the child; will that content you, my wife?"

Hecuba knew that the alternative was to have the child exposed on a mountain, and he was so small and frail that he would die quickly. "Let it be so, then, in the name of the Goddess," she said with resignation, and handed the boy to Priam, who held the child awkwardly, as one unused to handling babies.

He looked into the child's eyes and said, "Greetings, little son." Hecuba sighed with relief; after having formally acknowledged a child, a father could not have it killed, or expose it to die.

Hector and Polyxena had been allowed to come and speak with their mother. Hector said now, "Will you give my brother a royal name, Father?"

Priam scowled, thinking it over. Then he said, "Alexandras. Let the girl be called Alexandra, then."

He went away, taking Hector with him, and Hecuba lay with the dark-haired baby girl in the curve of her arm, thinking that she could comfort herself with the knowledge that her son lived, even if she could not rear him herself, while she had her daughter to keep.Alexandra , she thought;I will call her Kassandra .

The princess had remained in the room with the women and now edged close to Hecuba's side. Hecuba asked, "Do you like your little sister, my darling?"

"No; she is red and ugly, and not even as pretty as my doll," said Polyxena.

"All babies are like that when they are born," said Hecuba. "You were just as red and ugly; soon she will be just as pretty as you are."

The child scowled. "Why do you want another daughter, Mother, when you have me?"

"Because, darling, if one daughter is a good thing, two daughters are twice blessed."

"But Father did not think that two sons were better than one son," Polyxena argued, and Hecuba recalled the woman's prophecy. Among her own tribe, twins were thought to be, in themselves, an evil omen, and were invariably put to death. If she had remained with them, she would have had to see both infants sacrificed.

Hercuba still felt the remnant of superstitious fear—what could have gone amiss to send her two children at one birth, like an animal littering? This was what the women of her tribe believed, yet she had been told that the true reason behind that for the sacrifice of twins was only this: it was all but impossible for a woman to suckle two children in a single season. Her twins had at least not been sacrificed to the poverty of the tribe; there were plenty of wet-nurses in Troy, she could have kept them both. Yet Priam had decreed otherwise; she had lost one child but, by the blessing of the Goddess, only one, not both.

One of her women murmured, almost out of hearing, "Priam is mad! To send away a son and rear a daughter?"

Among my people, Hecuba remembered,a daughter is valued no less than a son; if this little one had been born in my tribe I could rear her to be a warrior woman! But if she had been born to my tribe, she would not have lived. Here she will be valued only for the bride-price she will bring when she is married as I was to some King !

But what would become of her son? Would he live in obscurity as a shepherd all his life? It was

better than death, perhaps, and the God who had sent the dream and was therefore responsible for his fate might yet protect him.

CHAPTER 3

Light gleamed in eye-hurting flashes from the sea and the white stone. Kassandra narrowed her eyes against the light and tugged softly at Hecuba's sleeve.

"Why do we go to the Temple today, Mother?" she asked.

Secretly she did not care. It was a rare adventure for her to be allowed outside the women's quarters and rarer yet to go outside the palace altogether. Whatever their destination, the excursion was welcome.

Hecuba said softly, "We go to pray that the child I am to bear this winter will be a son."

"Why, Mother? You have three sons already. I should think . you would rather have another daughter; you have only two of us girls. I would rather have another sister."

"I am sure you would," said the Queen, smiling, "but your father wants another son. Men always want sons so they can grow up to fight in their armies and defend the city."

"Is there a war?"

"No, not now; but there are always wars when a city is as rich as Troy."

"But if I had another sister she might be a warrior woman, as you were when you were a girl, and learn to use weapons and defend the city as well as any son." Then she paused to consider. "I do not think Polyxena could be a soldier, she is too soft and timid. But I would like to be a warrior woman. Like you."

"I am sure you would, Kassandra; but it is not the custom for women of Troy."

"Why not?"

"What do you mean, why not? Customsare . There is no reason for them."

Kassandra gave her mother a skeptical look, but she had already learned not to question that tone in her mother's voice. She thought secretly that her mother was the most queenly and beautiful woman in the world, tall and strong-looking, in her low-cut bodice and flounced skirt, but she no longer quite believed her all-knowing like the Goddess. In the six years of her life, she had heard something similar nearly every day and believed it less with every year; but when Hecuba spoke like that, Kassandra knew she would get no further explanation.

"Tell me about when you were a warrior, Mother."

"I was of the nomad tribe, the riding women," Hecuba began; she was almost always willing to talk about her early life, more so, Kassandra thought, since this latest pregnancy. "Our fathers and brothers were also of the horse-folk and they are very brave—"

"Are they warriors?"

"No, child; among the horse-tribes, the women are the warriors. The men are healers and magicians, and they know all kinds of wisdom and about the lore of trees and herbs."

"When I am older can I go to live with them?"

"The Kentaurs? Of course not; women cannot be fostered in a man's tribe."

"No; I mean with your tribe, the riding women."

"I do not think your father would like that," said Hecuba, thinking that this small, solemn daughter might well have grown to be a leader among her own nomad people, "but perhaps some day it can be arranged. Among my tribe a father has authority only over his sons, and it is the mother who decrees the destiny of a daughter. You would have to learn to ride and to use weapons."

She took up the small, soft hand in hers, thinking that it was hardly the hand of a warrior woman.

"Which Temple is that - up there?" Kassandra asked, pointing upward to the highest of the terraces above them, indicating the building which gleamed brilliantly white in the sun. From where they stood they were high enough to see a series of terraces below them; Kassandra could look down, leaning on the wall that guarded the winding stairway upward, and see the roofs of the palace and the small figures of the women laying out washing to dry, small trees in tubs, the bright colours of their clothing and the mats where they lay to rest in the sun; and far below that, the city walls looking out over the plain.

"It is the Temple of Pallas Athene, the greatest of the Goddesses of your father's people."

"Is she the same as the Great Goddess, the one you call Earth Mother?"

"All the Goddesses are one, as all the Gods are one; but they show themselves with different faces to mankind, in different cities and at different times. Here in Troy Pallas Athene is the Goddess as Maiden, because in her temple under the care of her maidens is guarded the holiest object within our city. It is called the Palladium." Hecuba paused, but Kassandra, sensing a story, was mouse-silent, and Hecuba went on in a reminiscent tone.

"They say that when the Goddess Athene was young she had a mortal playmate, the Libyan maiden Pallas, and when Pallas died Athene mourned her so greatly that she added her name to

her own and was thereafter known as Pallas Athene; she fashioned an image of her friend and set it up in the temple of Zeus on Olympos. At that time, Erechtheus, who was king in Crete -your father's forefather before his people came to this part of the world—had a great herd of a thousand beautiful cattle, and-Boreas, the son of the North Wind, loved them, and visited them as a great white bull; and these sacred cattle became the Bull-Gods of Crete."

"I did not know that the kings of Crete were our forefathers," Kassandra said.

"There are many things you do not know," Hecuba said in reproof, and Kassandra held Ker breath - would her mother be too cross to finish the story? But Hecuba's frown was fleeting, and she went on.

"Has, the son of Erechtheus, came to these shores and entered the sacred Games here. He was the victor of the Games, and as his prize he won fifty youths and fifty maidens. And rather than making them his slaves, he said, "I will free them, and with them I will found a city." And so he set forth in a ship at the will of the Gods - and he sacrificed to the North Wind to send him to the right place for his city, which he meant to call Ilion; which is another name for the city of Troy."

"And did the North Wind blow himhere ?" Kassandra asked.

"No; he was blown from his course at sea by a whirlwind, and when he came to rest near the mouth of our holy Scamander, the Gods sent one of these cows, a beautiful heifer, a daughter of the North Wind, and a voice came to Has, crying out, "Follow the cow! Follow the cow! Where

the cow lies down, there establish your city!" And they say that the cow wandered to the bend of the river Scamander and there she lay down; and there Has built the city of Troy. And one night he awoke hearing another voice from Heaven, saying, "Preserve the image I give you; for while Pallas dwells within your city, your city shall never fall." And he woke and beheld the image of Pallas, with a distaff in one hand and a spear in the other, like Athene's self. So when the city was built, he built this temple first, on the high place, far up here, and he dedicated it to Athene she was quite a new face of the Goddess, then, one of the great Olympians, worshipped even by those who honor the Sky Gods and the Thunderer - he made her the patron of the city. And she brought to us the arts of weaving and the gifts of the vine and the olive, wine and oil."

"But we are not going to her Temple today, Mother?"

"No, my love; though the Maiden Goddess is also patron of childbirth and I should sacrifice also to her. Today we seek the Sunlord Apollo. He is the Lord of the Oracles as well; he slew the great Python, the Goddess of the Underworld, and became Lord of the Underworld as well."

"Tell me, if the Python was a Goddess, how could she be slain?"

"Oh, I suppose it is because the Sunlord is stronger than any Goddess," her mother said, as they began to climb the hill at the center of the city. The steps were steep, and Kassandra's legs felt tired as she struggled up them. Once she looked back; they were so high, so near the God's house, that she could see down over the wall of the city, to the great rivers where they flowed down across the plain and came together in a great flood of silver toward the sea.

Then for a moment it seemed to her that the surface of the sea was shadowed and that she saw ships blurring the brightness of the waves. She wiped her eyes and said, "Are those my father's ships?"

Hecuba looked back and asked, "What ships? I see no ships. Are you playing some game with me?"

"No; I really see them. Look there, one has a grey sail - no, it was the sun in my eyes—I cannot see them now." Her eyes ached and the ships were gone—or had they ever been more than the glare on the water?

It seemed to her that the air was so clear, filled with little sparkles like a thin veil, that at any moment the veil might tear or slip aside, revealing a glimpse into another world beyond this one. She could not remember ever seeing anything like this before. She felt, without knowing how, that the ships she had seen were there in that other world, perhaps they were something which she was going to see some day. She was young enough not to think this in any way strange. Her mother had moved on ahead and for some reason it seemed to Kassandra that it would disturb the Queen if she spoke again about the ships she had seen and could not see now. She hurried after her mother, her legs aching as she strained up the steps.

The Temple of Apollo Helios the Sunlord stood more than halfway to the summit of the hill upon which was built the great city of Troy. It was overlooked only by the great height of the

maiden Temple of Athene far above; but it was itself the most beautiful of the temples of the city. It was built of shining white marble, with tall columns at either side, on a foundation of stonework set up - so Kassandra had been told more than once - by Titans before even the oldest men in the city were born, with high walls which, she had been told, those giants had built. The light was so fierce that Kassandra shaded her eyes with her hands. Well, if this was the very home of the Sun God, what would it-be except strong and perpetual light?

In the outer court, where merchants were selling all manner of things, animals for sacrifice, small clay statues of the God, various foods and drinks, her mother bought her a slice of sweet melon. It slid deliciously down her throat, dry from the long and dusty climb. Under the portico of the next court it was cool and shadowy; there a number of priests and functionaries recognized the Queen and beckoned her to come forward.

"Welcome, Lady," said one of them, "and the little princess too. Would you like to sit here and rest for a moment until the priestess can speak with you?"

They showed them to a marble bench in the shade. Kassandra sat quietly beside her mother for a moment, glad to be out of the heat; she finished her melon and wiped her hands on her underskirt, then looked about for a place to put the rind; it did not seem quite right to throw it on the floor under the eyes of the priests and priestesses. She slid down from the bench and discovered a basket where there was a quantity of fruit rinds and peelings, and put her rind inside it with the others.

Then she walked around the room slowly, wondering what she would see, and how different the house of a God would be from the house of a King. This of course was only his reception room, where people waited for audience—there was a room like this in the palace where petitioners came to wait when they wanted to ask a favour of the King or bring him a present. She wondered if he had a bedroom and where he slept or bathed. And Kassandra peered through into the main room which, she thought, must be the God's audience chamber.

He was there, so lifelike that Kassandra was not really aware for a moment that it was only a statue. It seemed reasonable that a God should be a little larger than life, rigidly upright, smiling a distant but welcoming smile. Kassandra stole into the room, to the very foot of the God, and for a moment she thought she had actually heard him speak; then she knew it was only a voice in her mind.

"Kassandra," he said, and it seemed perfectly natural that a God should know her name without being told. "Will you be my priestess?"

She whispered, neither knowing or caring if she spoke aloud, "Do you want me, Lord Apollo?"

"Yes;it is I who called you here ," he said. The voice was great and golden, just what she imagined that a God's voice would be; and she had been told that the Sunlord was also the God of music and song.

"But I am only a little girl, not yet old enough to leave my father's house," she whispered.

"Still, I bid you remember, when that day comes, that you are mine," said the voice, and for a moment the motes of golden dust in the slanting sunshine became all one great ray of light through which it seemed that the God reached down to her and touched her with a burning touch… and then the brightness was gone and she could see that it was only a statue, chill and unmoving and not at all like the Apollo who had spoken to her. The priestess had come to lead Hecuba forward to the statue, but Kassandra tugged at her mother's hand.

"It's all right," she whispered insistently,"the God told me he would give you what you asked for."

She had no idea' when she had heard this; she simplyknew that her mother's child was a boy, and if she knew when she had not known before, then it must have been the God who told her, and so, though she had not heard the God's voice, she knew that what she said was true.

Hecuba looked down at her sceptically, let her hand go and went into the inner room with the priestess. Kassandra went to look round the room.

Beside the altar was a small reed basket, and inside, as Kassandra peeped in, a suggestion of movement. At first she thought it was kittens; and wondered why, for cats were not sacrificed to the Gods. Looking more closely, she noted that there were two small coiled snakes in the basket. Serpents, she knew, belonged to Apollo of the Underworld. Without stopping to think, she reached out and grasped them in either hand, bringing them toward her face. They felt soft and

warm and dry, faintly scaly beneath her ringers, and she could not resist kissing them. She felt strangely elated and just faintly sick, her whole body trembling all over.

She never knew how long she crouched there, holding the serpents, nor could she have said what they told her; she only knew that she was listening attentively to them all that time.

Then she heard her mother's voice in a cry of dread and reproof. She looked up, smiling.

"It's all right," she said, looking past her mother to the troubled face of the priestess behind Hecuba. "The God told me I might."

"Put them down, quickly," said the priestess. "You are not used-to handling them; they might very well have bitten you."

Kassandra gave each of the serpents a final caress and laid each one gently back in the reed basket. It seemed to her that they were reluctant to leave her, and she bent close and promised them she would come again and play with them.

"You wretched, disobedient girl!" Hecuba cried as she rose, grabbing her by the arm and pinching her hard, and Kassandra drew away, troubled; she could not remember that her mother had ever been so angry with her before, and she could not imagine why she should make a fuss about something like this.

"Don't you know that snakes are poisonous and dangerous?"

"But they belong to the God," Kassandra argued. "He would not let them bite me."

"You were very lucky," said the priestess gravely.

"Youhandle them and you are not afraid," Kassandra said.

"But I am a priestess and I have been taught to handle them."

"Apollo said I was to be his priestess, and he told me I might touch them," she argued, and the priestess looked down at her with a frown.

"Is this true, child?"

"Of course it is not true," Hecuba said sharply. "She is making up a tale! She is always imagining things."

This was so unfair and unjustified that Kassandra began to cry. Her mother grabbed her firmly by the arm and pulled her outside, pushing her roughly ahead and down the steep steps so sharply that she stumbled and almost fell. The day seemed to have lost all its golden brilliance. The God was gone; she could no longer feel his presence, and she could have cried for that even more than for the bruising grip of her mother on her upper arm.

"Why would you say such a thing?" Hecuba scolded again. "Are you such a baby that I cannot leave you alone for twenty minutes without getting into mischief? Playing with the Temple serpents - don't you know how badly they could have hurt you?"

"But the God said he would not let them hurt me," Kassandra said stubbornly, and her mother pinched her again, leaving a bruise on her arm.

"You must not say such a thing!"

"But it is true," the girl insisted.

"Nonsense; if you ever again say such a thing I will beat you," said her mother crossly. Kassandra was silent; what had happened had happened. She had no wish to be beaten but she knew the truth and could not deny it. Why couldn't her mother trust her? She always told the truth.

She could not bear it, that her mother and the priestess should think she was lying, and as she went quietly, no longer protesting, down the long steps, her hand tucked tightly under the larger hand of the Queen, she clung to the face of Apollo, his gentle voice in her mind. Without even being aware of it, already something very deep within her was waiting for the sound.

CHAPTER 4

At the next full moon, Hecuba was delivered of a son, who was to be her last child. They named him Troilus. Kassandra, standing by her mother's bed in the birth-chamber, looking on the face of her small brother, was not surprised. But when she reminded her mother that she had known since the day of her visit to the Temple that the child would be a boy, Hecuba-sounded displeased.

"Why so you did," she said angrily, "but do you really think a God spoke to you? You are only trying to make yourself important," she scolded, "and I will not listen to it. You are not so little as that. That is a babyish thing to do."

But that, Kassandra thought angrily, was the important thing; she hadknown; the God had spoken to her. Did he speak to babies, then? And why should it make her mother angry? She knew the Goddess spoke to her mother; she had seen the Lady descend on Hecuba when she invoked her at Harvest-time and in blessing.

"Listen, Kassandra," said the Queen seriously,"the greatest crime is to speak anything but the truth about a God. Apollo is Lord of the Truth; if you speak his name falsely, he will punish you, and his anger is terrible."

"But I am telling the truth, the Goddid speak to me," Kassandra said earnestly, and her mother

sighed in despair, for this was not an unknown thing either.

"Well, I suppose you must be left to him, then. But I warn you, don't speak of this to anyone else."

Now that there was another prince in the palace, the fourth son of Priam by his queen, there was rejoicing through the city. Kassandra was left very much to herself, and she wondered why a prince should be so much more important than a princess. It was no use asking her mother why this should be so. She might have asked her older sister, but Polyxena seemed to care for nothing except gossip with the waiting-women about pretty clothes and jewellery and marriages. This seemed dull to Kassandra, but they assured her that when she was older she would be more interested in the important things of a woman's life. She wondered why these should be so important; she was willing enough to look at pretty clothes and jewellery, but had no desire to wear them herself; she would as soon see them on Polyxena or her mother. Her mother's waitingwomen thought her as strange as she thought them. Once she had stubbornly refused to enter a room, crying out, "The ceiling will fall!" Three days later there was a small earthquake and it did fall.

As time passed and season followed season, Troilus began first to toddle and then to walk and talk; sooner than Kassandra thought possible he was almost as tall as she was herself. Meanwhile, Polyxena grew taller than Hecuba and was initiated into the women's Mysteries.

Kassandra longed fiercely for the time when she too should be recognized as a woman, though

she could not see that it made Polyxena any wiser. When she had been initiated into the Mysteries, would the God speak again to her? All these years she had never again heard his voice; perhaps her mother was right and she had only imagined it. She longed to hear that voice again, if only to reassure herself it had been real. Yet her longing was tempered with reluctance; to be a woman, it seemed, was to change so irrevocably as to lose all that made her herself. Polyxena was now tied to the life of the women's quarters, and seemed quite content to be so; she no longer even seemed to resent the loss of her freedom, and would no longer conspire with Kassandra to run away down into the city.

Soon enough Troilus was old enough to be sent to the men's quarters to sleep, and she herself was twelve years old. That year she grew taller and from certain changes in her body she knew that soon she too would be counted among the women of the palace and no longer allowed to run about where she chose; even now, her mother insisted that she was old enough to stay inside the women's quarters instead of wandering all over the palace. As for going about alone into the city, her mother seemed horrified and frightened by the very idea. Kassandra hated this but she was obedient; she allowed her mother's old nurse to teach her to spin and weave tapestry. She still cherished her clay doll and, with the help of her father's unmarried sister, Hesione, let herself be coaxed into spinning the thread and weaving a robe for her doll. She hated the drudgery which made her fingers ache, but she was proud of it when it was done.

She now occupied a room in the women's quarters with Polyxena, who was sixteen and old enough to be married, and Hesione, a lively young woman in her twenties, with Priam's curling dark hair and brilliant green eyes. She obeyed the seemingly senseless rules her mother and

Hesione gave her (mostly that she must stay indoors and ignore all the interesting things which might be happening in the palace or the city). But there were still days when Kassandra tried hard to evade the vigilance of the women, when she would run off alone to one of her secret places.

One morning she slipped out of the palace and took the route through the streets that led upward to Apollo's Temple.

She had no desire to climb to the temple itself, no sense that the God had summoned her. She told herself that when that day came, she would know. As she climbed, halfway up she turned to look down into the harbor, and saw the ships. They were the ships she had seen the day the God spoke to her, but now she knew they were from the country to the south, the island kingdoms of the Akhaians and of Crete. They came for trade with the Hyperborean countries at the far side of the North Wind; Kassandra thought, with an excitement that was almost physical, that they would reach the country of the North Wind, from whose breath were born the great God-Bulls of Crete. She wished she might sail north with the ships; but she could never go. Women were never allowed to sail on any of the great trading ships which, as they sailed up through the straits, must pay tribute to King Priam and to Troy. And as she stared at the ships, a shudder, unlike any physical sensation she had ever known, ran through her body…

She was lying in the corner of a ship, lifting up and down to the motion of the waves; nauseated, sick, exhausted and terrified, bruised and sore; yet when she looked up at the sky above the great sun-shimmering sail, the sky was blue and Apollo's sun gleamed down into her face. A man's

face looked down at her with a fierce, hateful, triumphant smile. In one moment of terror, it was printed forever on her mind. Kassandra had never in her life known real fear or real shame, only momentary embarrassment for a mild reproof from her mother or father; now she knew the ultimate of both. With one part of her mind she knew she had never seen this man, yet knew that never in her life would she forget his face, with its great hook of a nose, like some rapacious bird of prey, the eyes gleaming like a hawk's, the cruel fierce smile and the harsh jutting chin; a black-bearded countenance which filled her with dread and terror.

In a moment, between a breath and a breath, it was gone, and she was standing on the steps, shaking with terror, the ships lying distant in the harbor below her. Yet a moment ago, sheknew , she had been lying in one of those ships, a captive—the hard boards under her body, the salt wind over her, the flapping sound of the sail and the creaking of the wooden boards of the ship. She felt again the terror and the curious exhilaration which she could not understand.

She had at the moment no way of knowing what had happened to her, or why. She turned around and looked inward to where the Temple of Pallas Athene rose white and high above the harbor, and prayed to the Maiden Goddess that what she had seen and felt was no more than some kind of waking nightmare. Or would it truly happen one day… that she would be that bruised captive in the ship, prey of that fierce hawk-faced man? He did not resemble any Trojan she had ever seen…

Deliberately putting away the frozen horror of her - nightmare? vision?—Kassandra turned away and looked inland, to where the great height of the holy mountain, Ida, rose. Somewhere on

the slopes of that mountain… no, she had dreamed it, had never set foot on the slopes of Ida. High above were the never-melting snows, and below the green pasturelands where, she had been told, her father's many flocks and herds grazed in the care of shepherds. She rubbed her hands fretfully over her eyes.If she could only see what lay there beyond her sight .

Not even years later, when all things which had to do with prophecy and the Sight were second nature to her, was Kassandra ever sure whence came the sudden knowledge of what she must do next. She never claimed or thought she had heard the voice of the God;that she would have known and recognized at once. It was simplythere , a part of her being. She turned round and ran quickly back to the palace. Passing through a street she knew, she glanced almost wistfully at the fountain; no, the water was not still enough for that.

In the outer court, she spied one of her mother's women, and hid behind a statue, fearing that the woman might have been sent to search for her. There was always a fuss now, whenever she went outside the women's quarters.

Such folly! Staying inside did not help Hesione, she thought, and did not know what she meant by it. Thinking of Hesione filled her with a sudden dread, and she did not know why, but it occurred to her that she should warn her.(Warn her? Of what? Why? No, it would be no use. What must come will come.} Something within her made her wish to run to Hesione (or to her mother, or to Polyxena, or to her nurse, anyone who could ease this nameless terror which made her knees tremble and her stomach wobble). But whatever her own mission might be it was more urgent to her than any fancied or foreseen dangers to anyone else. She was still crouched, hiding,

behind the pillar; but the woman was out of sight.I was afraid that she would see me .

Afraid? No! I have not known the meaning of the word! After the terror of that vision in the harbor, Kassandra knew that nothing less would ever make her feel fear. Still she did not wish to be seen with this compulsion upon her; someone might stop her from doing whatmust be done. She hurried to the women's quarters and found a clay bowl which she filled with water drawn fresh from the cistern, and knelt before it.

Staring into the water, at first she saw only her own face looking back, as from a mirror. Then as the shadows shifted on the surface of the water, she knew it was a boy's face she looked on: very like her own, the same heavy straight dark hair, the same deep-set eyes, shadowed beneath long heavy lashes. He looked beyond her, staring at something she could not see…

Troubled with care for the sheep, each one's name known, each footstep placed with such care; the inner knowledge of where they were and what must be done for each of them, as if directed by some secret wisdom. Kassandra found herself wishing passionately that she could be trusted with work as responsible and meaningful as this. For some time she knelt by the basin, wondering why she had been brought to see him and what it could possibly mean. She was not aware that she was cramped and cold, nor that her knees ached from her unmoving posture; she watched with him, sharing his annoyance when one of the beasts stumbled, sharing his pleasure at the sunlight, her mind just touching and skimming over the occasional fears, of wolves, of larger and more dangerous beasts… shewas the strange boy whose face was her own reflection. Lost in this passionate identification, she was roused by a sudden outcry.

"Hai! Help, ho, fire, murder, rape! Help!" For a moment she thought it was he who had cried out; but no, it was somehow adifferent kind of sound, heard with her physical ears; it jolted her out of her trance.

Another vision, but this one with neither pain nor fear. Do they come from a God? She returned with a painful jolt to awareness of where she was: in the courtyard of the women's quarters.

And she suddenly smelled smoke, and the bowl into which she still stared clouded, tilted sideways, and the water ran out across the floor. The visionary stillness went with it, and Kassandra found that she could move.

Strange footsteps clattered on the floor; she heard her mother scream, and ran out into the corridor. It was empty, except for the shrieking of women. Then she saw two men in armor, with great high-crested helmets. They were tall, taller than her father or the half-grown Hector; great hairy savage looking men, both of them with fair hair hanging below their helmets; one of them bore over his shoulder a screaming woman. In shock and horror, Kassandra recognized the woman: her aunt Hesione.

Kassandra had no idea what was happening or why; she was still partially within the stilled apartness of her vision. The soldiers ran right past her, brushing past so close to her and so swiftly that one all but knocked her off her feet. She started to run after them, with some vague notion that she might somehow help Hesione; but they were already gone, rushing down the

palace steps; as if her inner sight followed she saw Hesione borne, still screaming, down the stairs and through the city. The people melted away before the intruders. It was as if the men's gaze had the quality of the Gorgon's head, to turn people to stone—they must not only avoid looking on the Akhaians but they must not even be looked upon by them.

There was a dreadful screaming from the lower city and it seemed that all the women in the palace like a chorus had taken up the shrieks.

The screaming went on for some time, then died away into a grief-stricken wailing. Kassandra went in search of her mother -suddenly frightened and guilty for not thinking sooner that Hecuba might have been taken, too. In the distance she could faintly hear sounds of clashing warfare; she could hear the war-cries of her father's men, who were fighting the intruders on their way back to the ships. Somehow Kassandra was aware that their righting was in vain.

Is what I saw, what I felt, that which would happen to Hesione? That terrible hawk-faced man— will he take her for his captive, Did I see—and worse, did I feel—what will happen to her?

She did not know whether to hope that she herself need not suffer it, or to be ashamed that she wished it instead upon her beloved young aunt.

She came into her mother's room, where Hecuba sat, white as death, holding little Troilus on her lap.

"There you are, naughty girl," said one of the nurses. "We were afraid that the Akhaian raiders had got you too."

Kassandra ran to her mother and fell to her knees at her side. "I saw them take Aunt Hesione," she whispered. "What will happen to her?"

"They will take her back to their country and hold her there until your father pays ransom for her," Hecuba said, wiping away her tears.

There was the loud step at the door that Kassandra always associated with her father, and Priam came into the chamber,-ready for battle but with some of his armor's straps half-fastened as if he had armed himself too quickly.

Hecuba raised her eyes and saw behind Priam the armed figure of Hector, a slender warrior of nineteen.

"Is it well with you and the children, my love?" asked the King. "Today your eldest son fought by my side as a true warrior."

"And Hesione?" Hecuba asked.

"Gone. There were too many for us and they had got to the ships before we could reach her," Priam said. "You know perfectly well that they care nothing for the woman; it is only that she is

my sister and so they think they can demand concessions and freedom from harbor tolls, that is all." He set his spear aside with an expression of disgust. Hecuba called Hector to her, fussing over him till he moved away and said irritably, "Have done, Mother - I am not a little one still holding your skirts!"

"Shall I send for wine, my lord?" Hecuba asked, putting the child down and rising dutifully, but Priam shook his head.

"Don't trouble yourself," he said. "I would not have disturbed you, but I thought you would like to know that your son came honorably and unwounded from his first battle."

He went out of the room, and Hecuba said between her teeth, "Battle indeed! He cannot wait to get to his newest woman, that is all, and she will give him unmixed wine and he will be ill! And as for Hesione - much he cares forher! As long as they do not disturb his precious shipping, the Akhaians could have us all and welcome!"

Kassandra knew better than to ask anything further of her mother at that moment; but that night when they gathered in the great dining-hall of the palace (for Priam still kept to the old custom where men and women dined all together, instead of the new fashion where women took their meals separately in the women's quarters 'So that the women need not appear before strange men' as the Akhaian slaves put it) she waited until Priam was in a good humour, sharing his finest wine with her mother, and beckoning Polyxena, whom he always petted, to come and sit beside him. Then Kassandra stole forward and Priam indulgently motioned to her.

"What do you want, bright-eyes?"

"Only to ask a question, father, about something I saw today."

"If it is about Aunt Hesione—" he began.

"No, sir; but do you think the Akhaians will ask ransom for her?"

"Probably not," said Priam. "Probably one of them will marry her and try to claim rights in Troy because of it."

"How dreadful for her!" Kassandra whispered.

"Not so bad, after all; she will have a good husband among the Akhaians, and it will perhaps, forthis year, stave off war about trading rights," Priam said. "In the old days many marriages were made like that."

"How horrible!" Polyxena said timidly. "I would not want to go so far from home to marry. And I would rather have a proper wedding, not be carried off like that!"

"Well, I am sure we can arrange that sooner or later," said Priam indulgently. "There is your mother's kinsman young Akhilles - he shows signs, they say, of being a mighty warrior—"

Hecuba shook her head. She said, "Akhilles has been promised to his cousin Deidameia, daughter of Lykomedes; and I would as soon my daughter never came into that kindred."

"All the same, if he is to win fame and glory… I have heard that the boy is already a great hunter of lions and boars," countered Priam. "I would gladly have him for a son-in-law." He sighed. "Well, there is time enough later to think of husbands and weddings for the girls. What did you see today, little Kassandra, that you wanted to ask me?"

Even as the words crossed her lips Kassandra felt she should perhaps keep silent; that what she had seen in the scrying-bowl should not be spoken; but her confusion and her hunger for knowledge were so great she could not stop herself. The words rushed out: 'Father, tell me, who is the boy I saw today with a face so exactly like my own?"

Priam glared at her so that she quivered with terror. He stared over her head at Hecuba and said in a terrible voice, "Where have you been taking her?"

Hecuba looked blankly at Priam and said, "I have taken her nowhere. I do not have the faintest idea what she is talking about."

"Come here, Kassandra," said Priam, frowning ominously, and pushing Polyxena away from his knee. "Tell me more about this; where did you see this boy? Was he in the city?"

"No, Father, I have only seen him in the scrying-bowl. He watches the sheep on Mount Ida, and he looks exactly like me."

She was frightened at the abrupt change in her father's face. He roared, "And what were you doing with scrying, you little wretch?"

He turned on Hecuba with a gesture of rage and, for a moment, Kassandra thought he would strike the Queen.

"You, Lady, this is your doing—I leave the rearing of the girls to you, and here is one of my daughters meddling with scrying and sorceries, oracles and the like—"

"But whois he?" Kassandra demanded. Her need for an answer was greater than her fear. "And why does he look so much like me?"

In return her father roared wordlessly and struck her across the face with such force that she lost her balance and skidded down the steps near his throne, falling and striking her head.

Her mother shouted with indignation, hurrying to raise her, "What have you done to my daughter, you great brute?"

Priam glared at his wife and rose angrily to his feet. He raised his hand to strike her, and Kassandra cried out through her sobs, "No! Don't hit Mother; she didn't do anything!" At the

edge of her vision she saw Polyxena looking at them, wide-eyed but too frightened to speak, and thought with more contempt than anger,She would stand by and let the King beat our mother ? She cried out, "It was not Mother's fault, she did not even know! It was the God who said I might - he said I was to be his priestess when I was grown up, and it was he who showed me how to use the scrying-bowl—"

"Be silent!" Priam commanded, and glared over her head at Hecuba. She could not imagine why he was so angry.

"I'll have no sorceries in my palace, Lady, do you hear me?" Priam said. "Send her out to be fostered before she spreads this nonsense to the other girls, the proper maidenly ones…' He looked round and his frown softened as he looked at the simpering Polyxena. Then he glared at Kassandra again where she still crouched holding her bleeding head. Now she knew there wasreally some secret about the boy whose face she had seen.

He would not talk about Hesione—he does not care. It is enough for him that she will be married to one of those invaders who carried her off. The thought, coupled with the fear and the shame of the vision - if that was what it had been - made her feel a sudden dread.Father will not tell me. Well, then, I shall ask the Lord Apollo .

He knows even more than Father. And he told me I was to be his own; if it was me and not Hesione he would not let me be carried away by that man. It is enough for Father that she would be married; if that man carried me off would he let me go to a marriage like that? Her vision of

the man with the eagle face was never to leave her. But to block it she closed her eyes and tried to summon up again the golden voice of the Sunlord, saying,You are mine .

CHAPTER 5

Kassandra's bruises were still yellow and green, the moon faded to a narrow morning crescent. She stood beside her mother, who was laying a few of her tunics in a leather bag, with her new sandals and a warm winter cloak.

"But it is not winter yet," she protested.

"It is colder on the plains," Hecuba told her. "Believe me, you will need it for riding, my love."

Kassandra leaned against her mother and said, almost in tears, "I don't want to go away from you."

"And I will miss you, too, but I think you will be happy," Hecuba said. "I wish I were going with you."

"Then why don't you come, Mother?"

"Your father needs me."

"No, he doesn't," Kassandra protested. "He has his other women; he could manage without you."

"I am sure he would," Hecuba said, grimacing a little. "But I do not want to leave him to them; they are not as careful of his health and his honor as I am. Also, there is your baby brother, and he needs me."

This made no sense to Kassandra; Troilus had been sent to the men's quarters at the New Year. But if her mother did not wish to go, there was nothing she could say. Kassandra hoped she would never have children, if having them meant never doing what you wanted.

Hecuba raised her head, hearing sounds down in the courtyard. "I think they are coming," she said, and took Kassandra's hand in hers. Together they hurried down the long stairs.

Many of the housefolk were gathered, staring at the women who had ridden their horses, white and bay and black, right into the court. Their leader, a tall woman with a pale, freckled face, vaulted down from the back of her horse and ran to catch Hecuba in her arms.

"Sister! What joy to see you," she cried. Hecuba held her, and Kassandra marvelled to see her staid mother laughing and crying at once. After a moment the tall stranger let her go and said, "You have grown fat and soft with indoor living; and your skin is so white and pale, you might be a ghost!"

"Is that so bad?" Hecuba asked. The woman scowled at her and asked, "And these are your daughters? Are they house-mice too?"

"That you will have to decide for yourself," Hecuba said, beckoning the girls forward. "This is Polyxena. She is already sixteen."

"She looks too frail for an outdoor life such as ours, Hecuba. I think perhaps you have kept her indoors too long, but we will do what we can with her, and return her to you healthy and strong."

Polyxena shrank away behind her mother, and the tall Amazon laughed.

"No?"

"No; you are to have the little one, Kassandra," said Hecuba.

"The little one? How old is she?"

"Twelve years," Hecuba answered. "Kassandra, child, come and greet your kinswoman Penthesilea, the chief of our tribe."

Kassandra looked attentively at the older woman. She was taller by several finger-breadths than Hecuba, who was herself tall for a woman. She wore a pointed leather cap, under which

Kassandra could see tucked-up coils of faded ginger-coloured hair, and a short tight tunic; her legs were long and lean in leather breeches which came below the knee. Her face was thin and lined, her complexion not only burnt dark by the sun, but clustered with thousands of lightbrown freckles. She looked, Kassandra thought, more like a warrior than a woman; but her face was enough like Hecuba's own that Kassandra had no doubt that this was her kinswoman. She smiled at Kassandra good-naturedly.

"Do you think you will like to come with us, then? You are not frightened? I think your sister is afraid of our horses," she added.

"Polyxena is afraid of everything," Kassandra said. "She wants to be what my father calls a proper good girl."

"And you don't?"

"Not if it means staying in the house all the time," said Kassandra, and saw Penthesilea smile. "What is your horse's name? Will he bite?"

"Sheis called Racer, and she has never bitten me yet," said Penthesilea. "You may make friends with her if you are able."

Kassandra went boldly forward and held out her hand as she had been taught to do with a strange dog so that it could smell her scent. The horse butted her great head down and snorted,

and Kassandra stroked the silky nose, and looked into the great loving eyes. She felt, returning that wide-eyed gaze, that she had already found a friend among these strangers.

Penthesilea said, "Well, are you ready to come with us then?"

"Oh, yes!" Kassandra breathed fervently. Penthesilea's thin stern face looked friendlier when she smiled.

"Do you think you can learn to ride?"

Friendly or not, the horse lookedvery large, and very high off the ground; but Kassandra said valiantly, "If you can learn and my mother could learn, I suppose there is no reason I cannot."

"Won't you come up to the women's quarters and share some refreshment before you must go?" asked Hecuba.

"Why, yes, if you will have someone look after our horses," Penthesilea said. Hecuba summoned one of the servants and gave orders to take Penthesilea's horse and those of her two companions to the stables. The two women with her, dressed as she was dressed, the Amazon leader introduced as Charis and Melissa; Charis was thin and pale, almost as freckled as the Queen, but her hair was the colour of brass; Melissa had brown curly hair and was plump and pink-cheeked. They were, Kassandra decided, fifteen or sixteen. She wondered if they were Penthesilea's daughters but was too shy to ask.

Climbing to the women's quarters, Kassandra wondered why she had never noticed before how dark it was inside. Hecuba had called the waiting-women to bring wine and sweets and while the guests nibbled at them, Penthesilea called Kassandra to her and said, "If you are to ride with us, you must be properly dressed, my dear. We brought a pair of breeches for you. Charis will help you to put them on. And you should have a warm cloak for riding; when the sun is down it grows cold quickly."

"Mother made me a warm cloak," Kassandra said, and went with Charis into her room to fetch the leather bag of her possessions. The leather breeches were a little big for her - Kassandra wondered who had worn them before this, for they were shiny in the seat with hard wear. But they were astonishingly comfortable once she had grown used to their stiffness against her legs. She thought that now she could run like the wind without tripping over her skirts. She was threading the leather belt through the loops when she heard her father's step and his boisterous voice.

"Well, kinswoman, have you come to lead my armies to Mykenae to recover Hesione? And such splendid horses - I saw them in the stable. Like the immortal horses of Poseidon's own herd! Where did you find them?"

"We traded for them with Idomeneus, the King of Crete," said Penthesilea. "We had not heard about Hesione; what happened?"

"Agamemnon's men from Mykenae, or so we thought," Priam said. "Akhaians anyhow, raiders. Rumour says Agamemnon is a vicious and a cruel king. Even his own men love him not; but they fear him."

"He is a powerful fighter," said Penthesilea. "I hope to meet him one day in battle. If you yourself will not lead your armies to Mykenae to recover Hesione, wait only until I summon my women. You will have to give us ships, but I could have Hesione back to you by the next new moon."

"If it were feasible to go against the Akhaians now, I would need no woman to lead my army," Priam said, scowling. "I would rather wait and see what demand he makes of me."

"And what of Hesione, in Agamemnon's hands?" asked Penthesilea. "Are you going to abandon her? You know what will happen to her among the Akhaians!"

"One way or other, I would have had to find her a husband," said Priam. "This at least saves me a dowry, since if it is Agamemnon who has taken her, he cannot have the insolence to ask a dowry for a prize of war."

Penthesilea scowled, and Kassandra too was shocked: Priam was rich, why should he begrudge a dowry?

"Priam, Agamemnon already has a wife," said Penthesilea, "Klytemnestra, the daughter of Leda

and her king Tyndareus. She bore Agamemnon a daughter who must be seven or eight years old by now. I cannot believe they are so short of women in Akhaia that they must resort to stealing them… nor that Agamemnon is so much in need of a concubine that he would carry one off when he could have any chief's daughter within his kingdom."

"So he married the daughter of Leda?" Priam frowned for a moment and said, "Is that the one who was, they said, so beautiful that Aphrodite would be jealous, and her father had to choose among almost forty suitors for her?"

"No," said Penthesilea. "They were twins, which is always ill fortune; one was Klytemnestra, the other daughter, Helen, was the beauty. Agamemnon managed to swindle Leda and Tyndareus—God knows how he managed it - into marrying Helen off to his brother, Menelaus, while he married Klytemnestra."

"I don't envy Menelaus," said Priam. "A man is cursed who has a beautiful wife." He smiled absently at Hecuba, "Thank all the Gods you never brought me that kind of trouble, my dear. Nor are your daughters dangerously beautiful."

Hecuba looked at her husband coldly. Penthesilea said, "That could be a matter of opinion. But from what I know of Agamemnon, unless rumour lies, he is thinking less of the woman's beauty than of power; through Leda's daughters he thinks to claim all Mykenae, and Sparta too, and call himself King. And then, I suppose, he will seek to gain more power to the north—and make you look to your own city here in Troy."

"I think they are trying to force me to deal with them," Priam said,"to recognize them as kings— which I will do when Kerberos opens his doors and lets the dead out of Hades's realm."

"I doubt they will seek gold," said Penthesilea. "There is gold enough in Mykenae; though rumour has it that Agamemnon is a greedy man. If I should make a guess, it would be that what Agamemnon will demand is you give him trading rights through the strait yonder—" and pointed to the sea, "without the toll you charge."

"Never," said Priam. "A God brought my people here to the banks of Scamander; and whoever wishes to pass beyond to the country of the North Wind must render tribute to the Gods of Troy." He stared crossly at Penthesilea and demanded, "What is it to you? What has a woman to do with the government of countries and the payment of tribute?"

"I too dwell within the lands where the Akhaian raiders dare to come," said the Amazon Queen, "and if they should steal one of my women, I would make them pay for it, not in gold or dowries alone, but in blood. And since you could not stop them from carrying off your own sister, I repeat: my warriors are at your service if you wish to lead them against those pirates."

Priam laughed, but bared his teeth as he did so, and Kassandra knew that he was furious, though he would not say so to Penthesilea. "On the day when I call upon my women, kin or no, for the defense of the city, Troy will be in evil straits, kinswoman; may that day be far away indeed." He turned round and saw Kassandra in her leather breeches and heavy cloak coming into the room.

"Well, what's this, Daughter? Showing your legs like a boy? Have you resolved to become an Amazon, bright-eyes?"

He sounded surprisingly good-natured; but Hecuba said quickly, "You bade me send her to be fostered away from the city, husband, and I thought my sister's tribe as good as any."

"I have found you the best of wives, no matter where you came from, and I have no doubt your sister will do well enough by her," said Priam, and bent down to Kassandra. She flinched, half expecting another blow, but he only kissed her gently on the forehead.

"Be a good girl, and forget not that you are a princess of Troy."

Hecuba took Kassandra in her arms and hugged her hard.

"I shall miss you, Daughter; be a good girl and come back to me safely, my darling."

Kassandra clung to her mother, Hecuba's former harshness forgotten, aware only that she was going away among strangers. Hecuba let her go. She said, "I have my own weapons for you, Daughter," and brought out a leaf-shaped sword in a green scabbard, and a short, metal-tipped spear. They were almost too heavy to lift, but struggling with all her strength and pride, Kassandra managed to belt them about her waist.

"They were mine when I rode with the Amazons," said Hecuba. "Carry them in strength and

honor, my daughter."

Kassandra blinked away the tears that were forming in her eyes; Priam was frowning, but Kassandra was accustomed to her father's disapproval. She defiantly took the hand Penthesilea held out to her. Her mother's sister could not be too unlike her mother, after all.

The Amazons reclaimed their horses in the lower courtyard. Kassandra was disappointed to be lifted to Racer's back behind Penthesilea. "I thought I was to ride a horse by myself," she said, with her lip quivering.

"You will when you learn, my child, but we have no time to teach you at this minute. We want to be far from this city by nightfall; it does not please us to sleep within walls, and we do not want to camp in the lands ruled by men."

That made sense to Kassandra; her arms gripped hard around the woman's narrow waist, and they were off.

For the first few minutes it took all her strength and attention to hold on, rocked up and down by the bumpy gait of the horse on the stones. Then she began to get the feel of letting her body sway and adjust itself to the motion, and began to look around and see the city from her new perspective. She had time for one brief look backward at the palace atop the heights of the city, then they were outside the walls and descending toward the green waters of the Scamander.

"How will we get across the river, Lady?" she asked, leaning her head forward, close to Penthesilea's ear. "Can the horses swim?"

The woman turned her head slightly. "To be sure they can; but they will not need to swim today; there is a ford an hour's journey upriver." She touched her heels lightly to the horse's sides, and the animal began to run so swiftly that Kassandra had to hold on with all her strength. The other women were racing alongside, and Kassandra felt a kind of elation through her whole body. Behind Penthesilea she was a little sheltered from the wind, but her long hair blew about so wildly that for a moment she wondered how she would ever manage to comb and tidy it again. It didn't matter; in the excitement of the ride she soon forgot her hair. They had ridden for some time when Penthesilea pulled her horse to a stop and whistled, a shrill cry of some strange bird.

From a little thicket up ahead, three horses ridden by Amazon women emerged.

"Greetings," one of the newcomers called. "I see you are come safe from Priam's house; you were so long gone, we were beginning to wonder! How is it with our sister?"

"Well, but she grows fat and old and worn with childbearing in the King's house," said Penthesilea.

"Is this our fosterling - Hecuba's daughter?" asked one of the newcomers.

"It is," said Penthesilea, turning her head toward Kassandra, "and if she is truly her mother's

daughter she will be more than welcome among us."

Kassandra smiled shyly at the newcomers, one of whom held out her arms and leaned over to embrace her.

"I was your mother's closest friend when we were girls," she said.

They rode on, toward the gleam of the river Scamander. Dusk was falling as they drew their horses up at the ford; in the last glow of sunlight Kassandra could see the rapid flicker of the sun on the shallow ripples, the sharp stones in the streambed where the river ran fast and shallow. She gasped as the horse stepped over the steep edge down into the water, and was again admonished to hold on tight. "If you fall off, it will be hard to get you again before you are bashed about."

Having no desire whatever to fall on those sharp rocks, Kassandra held on very tightly, and soon the horse was scrambling up at the far edge. They galloped during the few minutes of light remaining, then they pulled to a stop, gathered their horses in a circle; and dismounted.

Kassandra watched with fascination as without discussion one of the women built a fire, and another, from her saddlebags, pulled out a tent and began unfolding it and setting it up. Soon dried meat was bubbling in a cauldron and smelled very savoury.

She was so stiff that when she tried to come forward to the fire she tottered like an old woman.

Charis began to laugh, but Penthesilea scowled at her.

"Don't mock the child; she hasn't whimpered, and it was a long ride for one unused to horseback. You were no better when you came to us. Give her something to eat."

Charis dipped up a cup of stew and handed it to Kassandra in a wooden bowl.

"Thank you," she said, dipping the horn spoon they handed her into the mixture. "May I have a piece of bread, please?"

"We have none," Penthesilea said. "We grow no crops, living as we do with our tents and herds." One of the women poured something white and foaming into her cup; Kassandra tasted it.

"It is mare's milk," said the woman who had introduced herself as Elaria, Hecuba's friend. Kassandra drank curiously, not sure that she liked either the taste or the idea; but the other women drank it, so she supposed it would not do her any harm.

Elaria chuckled, watching the cautious look of suppressed disgust on Kassandra's face. She said, "Drink it and you will grow as strong and free as our mares, and your mane as silky." She stroked Kassandra's long dark hair. "You are to be my foster-daughter as long as you dwell with us. In our village you will live in my tent: I have two daughters who will befriend you."

Kassandra looked a little wistfully at Penthesilea; but she supposed that if the woman was a queen she would be too busy to care for a little girl, even her sister's daughter. And Elaria looked kind and friendly.

When the meal was finished, the women gathered around the campfire; Penthesilea appointed two of them to stand watch.

Kassandra whispered, "Why do we have sentries? There is no war, is there?"

"Not as they would use the word in Troy," Elaria whispered back. "But we are still in the lands ruled by men; and women are always at war in such lands. Many—most men would treat us as lawful prizes, and our horses too."

One of the women had started a song; the others joined in. Kassandra listened, not knowing the tune or the dialect, but after a time she was humming along on the choruses. She felt tired and lay back to rest, looking up at the great white stars far. above; and the next thing she knew she was being carried through the dark. She woke up, startled, "Where am I?"

"You fell asleep at the campfire; I am taking you to my tent to sleep," said Elaria's voice softly, and Kassandra settled down and slept again, waking only when there was daylight in the tent. Someone had taken off her leather breeches and her legs were chafed and sore. As she woke, Elaria came in. She smoothed some salve on the sore places and gave Kassandra a pair of linen drawers to wear under the leather, which helped a great deal. Then she took a comb carved of

bone, and began combing out the tangles in Kassandra's long, silky hair; she braided it tightly and gathered it up under a leather pointed cap like those all the women wore. Kassandra's eyes watered as the comb jerked out the knots, but she did not cry, and Elaria patted her head approvingly.

"Today you will ride behind me," Elaria said, "and perhaps today we will reach our own grazing grounds and we can find a mare for you and begin to teach you to ride. A day will come, and not too far from now, when you will be able to spend all day in the saddle without weariness."

Breakfast was a chunk of leathery dried meat, gnawed upon as she clung to the saddle behind Elaria. As they rode, the character of the land changed gradually from the fertile green of the riverbed to a barren windswept plain rising higher and higher from the low-lying fields. At the edge of the plain were round bald hills, brown all over with great rocks jutting from their slopes, and beyond them sheer-rising cliffs. On the sides of one of the hills she could see flecks moving, larger than sheep; but Elaria turned and pointed.

"There our horse-herds graze," she said. "By nightfall we will be at home in our own country."

Penthesilea was riding beside them. Very softly, she said, "They are not our herds. Look there, and see the Kentaurs, riding among them."

Now Kassandra could see more clearly; among the horses she made out the hairy bodies and bearded heads of men, rising among the herds. Like all city children, Kassandra had been reared

on stories of the Kentaurs: wild, lawless men with the heads and upper bodies of men and the lower bodies of horses; like many little girls she had been told that they stole women from cities and villages, and had been admonished by her nurse, "If you are not a good girl the Kentaurs will carry you off."

She murmured, frightened, "Will they hurt us, Aunt?"

"No, no, of course not; my son lives among them," Penthesilea said, "and if it is Cheiron's tribe, they are our friends and allies."

"I thought that the Amazon tribes had only women," Kassandra said, surprised. "You have a son, Aunt?"

"Yes, but he lives with his father; all our sons do," Penthesilea said. "Why, silly girl, do you still believe the Kentaur tribes are monsters? Look, they are only men; riders like ourselves."

Kassandra felt foolish indeed; she should have known better than to believe such a story. Now she could see the advancing riders; men who sat their strong tall horses so naturally that she could imagine now how the story had arisen that they were part of their horses' bodies. Such a tale now seemed no more sensible than stories of mermaids, women to the waist but with fishes' lower bodies and tails for legs. Nevertheless as the riders came closer she shrank away; the men were all but naked, and looked wild and uncivilized indeed; she shrank behind Elaria on her horse where they would not see her.

"Greetings, Lady of the Horsewomen," called out the foremost rider. "How fared you in Priam's city?"

"Well enough; as you see, we are back safe and well," Penthesilea called. "How is it with your men?"

"We found a bee tree this morning and have taken a barrel of honey," the man said, leaning close and embracing Penthesilea from horseback. "You shall have a share, if you will."

She pulled away from him and said, "The cost of your honey is always too high; what do you want from us this time?"

He straightened and rode alongside her, smiling in a good-natured way. "True," he said, "you can do me a service if you will. One of my men became besotted with a village girl a few moons ago, and carried her away without troubling to ask her father for her. But she's no good for anything but his bed, can't even milk a mare or make cheese, and weeps and wails all the time; now he's sick to death of the blubbering bitch, and—"

"Don't ask me to take her off your hands," Penthesilea interrupted. "She'd be no good in our tents either."

"What I want is that you take her back to her father—" the man said, and Penthesilea snorted.

"And let us be the ones to face her tribesmen's wrath and swords? Not likely!"

"Trouble is, the wench is pregnant," said the Kentaur. "Can't, you take her till the babe's born? Seems like she might be happier among women."

"If she'll come with us with no trouble," said Penthesilea, "we'll keep her till the child's born, and if it's a daughter, keep them both. If it's a son, do you want him?"

"To be sure," said the man, "and as for the woman, once the child's born you can keep her or send her back to her village, or, for all I care, drown her."

"I am simply too good-natured," Penthesilea said. "Why should I get you out of trouble you made for yourselves?"

"For a half barrel of honey?"

"For a half barrel of honey," said Elaria, I'll look after the girl myself, and deliver her childand get her back to her village."

"We'll all share it," Penthesilea said, "but next time one of your men gets horny, send him to our tents and no doubt one of ours will satisfy him with no such complications. Every time one of your men goes after a girl out of season and goes into the villages, all the Tribes get the backlash;

more tales about how lawless we all are, men and women alike."

"Don't scold me, Lady," the man said, hiding his face briefly with his hands. "None of us is more than human. And who is that, hiding there behind your companion?" He looked around Elaria, and winked at Kassandra; he looked so droll, with his hairy face screwed up behind his matted hair, that she burst out laughing. "Have you stolen a child from Priam's city?"

"Not so," Penthesilea said. "It is my sister's daughter, who is to dwell with us for a few seasons."

"A pretty little thing," said the Kentaur. "Soon all my young men will be fighting over her."

Kassandra blushed and hid behind Elaria again. In Priam's palace, even her mother freely admitted that Polyxena was'the pretty one', while Kassandra was'the clever one'. Kassandra had told herself that she did not care; still it was pleasing to think someone foundher pretty. Penthesilea said, "Well, let us see this honey, and the woman you want us to take off your hands."

"Will you feast with us? We are roasting a kid for the evening meal," the Kentaur said, and Penthesilea glanced at her women.

"We had hoped to sleep this night in our own tents," she protested, "but the kid smells savoury and well-roasted, it would be a shame not to take our share." And Elaria added, "Why not rest here for an hour or two? If we do not get home tonight, tomorrow is another day."

Penthesilea shrugged. "My women have answered for me; we will accept your hospitality with pleasure - or perhaps just with greed."

The Kentaur beckoned and rode toward the central campfire, and Penthesilea motioned to her women to follow. A young woman knelt before the fire, turning the spit where a kid was roasting. The fat dripping on the fire smelled wonderful and the crisped skin sizzled. The women slid from their horses, and after a time the men followed.

Penthesilea went at once to the woman turning the spit. Kassandra noticed with horror that both her ankles had been pierced and that her feet were hobbled together by a rope passed through the holes, so that she could neither stand nor walk. The Amazon Queen looked down at her, not unkindly, and asked, "You are the captive?"

"I am; they stole me from my father's house last summer."

"Do you want to return?"

"He swore when he pierced my feet that he would love me and care for me forever; will he cast me off now? Would my father have me back in his house crippled and my belly swelling with a Kentaur's child?"

"He tells me you are not happy here," Penthesilea said. "If you wish to come with us, you may

dwell in our village until your child is born, and then return to your father's house or wherever you wish to go."

The woman's face twisted with weeping. "Like this?" she said, gesturing to her mutilated ankles.

Penthesilea turned to the Kentaur leader and said, "I would have taken her willingly, had she been unharmed. But we cannot return her like this to her father's village. Wasn't it enough for your young man to carry her away and take her virginity?"

The Kentaur spread his hands helplessly. "He swore he wanted her forever, to keep and cherish, and feared only that she might manage ever to escape him."

"You should know, after all these years, how long that kind of love endures," chided the woman. "It seldom outlasts the taking of the maidenhead. An eternal love sometimes lasts as long as half a year, but never survives pregnancy. Now what can we do with her? You know as well as I she cannot be returned to her father's village this way. This time you have got yourself into something we cannot extricate you from."

"At this point my man would pay to be rid of her," the Kentaur said.

"So he must. What will he give, then, to be rid of her?"

"A good mare in foal as indemnity to her father, or for a dowry if she wishes to marry again?"

"Perhaps for that we can manage to be rid of her when she can walk again," Penthesilea said, "but I promise you, this is the last time we solve your love troubles. Keep your men away from the village women and perhaps you will not bring us all into disrepute like this. And it had better be a good mare or it will not be worth the trouble."

She sniffed appreciatively. "But it would be a pity for the kid to burn or roast too done while I scold you. Let's have a slice of it, shall we?"

One of the Kentaurs took a big knife and began to slice chunks of meat and crisp skin off the kid. The women gathered round and sat on the grass while the food was handed round, with wine from leathern jacks, and chunks of honeycomb. Kassandra ate hungrily; she was tired of riding, and willing to recline on the grass as she ate, and drank the wine. After a time she felt dizzy, and lay back closing her eyes drowsily. At home she was allowed to drink only well-watered wine, and now she felt a little sick. Nevertheless it seemed that no meal eaten within walls had ever tasted so good to her.

One of the young men who had ridden next to the Kentaur leader came to refill the cup in her hand. Kassandra shook her head. "No more, I thank you."

"The God of wine will be cross with you if you deny his gifts," said the boy. "Drink, brighteyes."

That was what her father called her in his rare affable moods.

She sipped a few more swallows, then shook her head, "Already I am too dizzy to sit my horse!"

"Then rest," the boy said, and pulled her back to lie against his shoulder, his arms round her.

Penthesilea's eyes rested on them and she said sharply to the boy, "Let her be, she is not for you. She is the daughter of Priam and a princess of Troy."

The Kentaur chief laughed and said, "He is not so far beneath her, my lady; he is the son of a King."

"I know your royal fosterlings," said Penthesilea. "I recall too well when Theseus took our Queen Antiope from us, to live within walls, and die there. All the same, this maiden is in my care, and anyone who touches her must first deal with me."

The boy laughed and let Kassandra go. "Perhaps when you are grown up, bright-eyes, your father may think better of me than your kinswoman does; her tribe does not like men, nor marriage."

"Neither do I," said Kassandra, pulling away from him.

"Well, perhaps when you are older you will change your mind," the boy said. He leaned forward

and kissed her on the lips. Kassandra pulled away and wiped her mouth vigorously, as the Kentaurs laughed. Kassandra saw the crippled village woman watching her, frowning.

The Amazon Queen called her women to their horses, helping one of them load the promised honey on her mare's back. Then she helped the crippled woman to the back of a horse, speaking to her gently. The woman was not crying now; she went willingly with them. The Kentaur embraced Penthesilea as she mounted her horse.

"Cannot we persuade you to spend the night in our tents?"

"Another time perhaps," Penthesilea promised, and heartily returned his embrace. "For now, farewell."

Kassandra was confused; were these men and boys the terrible Kentaurs of the legends? They seemed friendly enough. But she wondered just what their relations were with one another. They did not treat the women the way her father's soldiers spoke with the women of the household. The handsome boy who had kissed her came and looked up, smiling at her.

"Perhaps I shall see you at the round-up?" he said. Kassandra looked away, blushing; she did not know what to say to him. It was the first time she had spoken to any boy except her own brothers.

Penthesilea motioned the women to follow her, and Kassandra saw that they were riding inland,

and that the slopes of Mount Ida towered over them. She thought of the vision she had had of the boy with her face herding sheep on the slopes.

He may herd sheep, but I am to learn to ride, she thought, and, still dizzied with the unaccustomed wine, she leaned forward, balancing herself against Elaria, and fell asleep, rocked by the horse's swaying gait.

CHAPTER 6

The world was bigger than she had ever thought; though they rode from first daylight till it was too dark to see, it seemed to Kassandra that they were simply crawling over the plains. The hills of Troy could still be seen behind them, no further away than before; in the clear air it sometimes seemed she could reach out and touch the shining summit of the city.

Within a very few weeks it seemed to Kassandra that her life had always been lived with the horsewomen of the tribe. From day's beginning to day's end she did not set her feet to the ground, but even before breaking her fast was already in the saddle of the chestnut mare they had allotted to her use, whom she called South Wind. With the other girls her age she stood watch against invaders, and at night kept the horses together, watching the stars.

She loved Elaria, who cared for her as she did her own daughters, girls of eleven and seventeen;

Penthesilea she worshipped, although the Amazon Queen rarely spoke to her except for a daily inquiry as to her health and welfare. She grew bronzed with the sun, strong and healthy. In the endless burning sun on the plains she saw the face of Apollo Sunlord, and it seemed to her that she lived her life under his eyes.

She had lived with the horsewomen for more than a moon when one day she found herself telling Penthesilea all about the curious vision. The tribe had dismounted for their frugal noonmeal of hunks of strong mare's-milk cheese in view of the now distant Mount Ida.

"His face was as like mine as is mine to my own face reflected in the water," she said, "yet when I spoke of him my father knocked me down; and he was angry with my mother too."

Penthesilea paused for a long time before answering, and Kassandra wondered if the silence of her parents was to be repeated; then the woman said slowly, "I can well see that your mother, and especially your father, would not wish to speak of this; but I see no reason you should not be told what half of Troy knows. He is your twin brother, Kassandra. When you were born the Earth Mother, who is also Serpent Mother, sent my sister an evil omen: twins. You should both have been killed," she said harshly. When Kassandra shrank away, her lips trembling, she reached out and stroked the girl's hair. "I am glad you were not," she said. "No doubt some God has laid his hand on you.

"Your father felt, perhaps, that he could escape his fate by exposing the child; but as a worshipper of the Father-principle—which is, in truth, a worship of power and the ability to

father sons - he dared not wholly renounce a son, and the child was fostered somewhere far from the palace. Your father did not wish to know anything of him because of the evil omen of his birth; so he was angry when you spoke of him."

Kassandra felt enormous relief; it seemed to her that all her life she had walked alone when there should have been another at her side, very like her but somehow different.

"And it is not wicked to wish to see him in the scrying-bowl?"

"You do not need the scrying-bowl," Penthesilea said. "If the Goddess has given you Sight, you need only look within your heart and you will find it there. I am not surprised you are so blessed; your mother had it as a girl and lost it when she married a city-dwelling man."

"I believed that the - Sight—was the gift of the Sunlord," Kassandra said. "It first came to me within his Temple—"

"Perhaps," said Penthesilea. "But remember, child, before ever Apollo Sunlord came to rule these lands, our Horse Mother -the Great Mare, the Earth Mother from whom we all are born was there."

She turned and laid her two hands reverently on the dark earth, and Kassandra imitated the gesture, only half understanding. It seemed that she could feel a dark strength moving upward from the earth and flowing through her; it was the same kind of blissful strength she had felt

when she held Apollo's serpents in her two hands. She wondered if she were being disloyal to the God who had called her.

"They told me in the Temple that Apollo Sunlord had slain the Python, the great Goddess of the Underworld. Is this the Serpent Mother of whom you speak?"

"She who is the Great Goddess cannot be slain, for she is immortal; she may choose to withdraw herself for a time, but she is and will remain forever," said the Amazon Queen, and

Kassandra, feeling the strength of the earth beneath her hands, took this in as absolute truth.

"Is the Serpent Mother then the mother of the Sunlord?" she asked, and Penthesilea, drawing a breath of reverence, said, "She is Mother to Gods and men alike, mother of all things; so Apollo is her child too, even as you and I are."

Then…if Apollo Sunlord sought to slay her, then was he seeking to kill his mother ? Kassandra's breath caught with the wickedness of the thought. But could a God do wickedness? And if a certain deed was wicked for men, was it wicked also for a God? If a Goddess was immortal, how then could she be slain at all? These things were Mysteries, and she set her whole being into fierce resolve that one day she would understand them. Apollo Sunlord had called her; he had given her his serpents; one day he would lead her to knowledge of the Serpent Mother's mysteries as well.

The women finished their noon-meal and stretched out to rest on the green turf. Kassandra was not sleepy; she had not been accustomed to sleep this way at midday. She watched the clouds drifting across the sky and looked up to the slopes of Mount Ida rising high above the plain.

Her twin brother. It made Kassandra angry to think that everyone knew this when she, whom it concerned most closely, had been kept in ignorance.

She tried to remember deliberately and consciously the state she had been in when she had first seen her brother in the waters of the scrying-bowl. She knelt motionless on the grass, staring upward at the sky, her mind blank, searching for the face she had seen but once and then only in a vision. For a moment her questing thoughts settled on her own face, seen reflected as if in water; and the golden shimmer which she still called, in her mind, the face and breath of Apollo Sunlord.

Then the features shifted and the face was her own and yet somehow subtlynot her own, filled with a mischief wholly alien to her, and she knew she had found her brother. She wondered if he had a name and what he was called, and if he could see her.

From somewhere in the mysterious linkage between them, the answer came: he could if he wished, but he had no reason to seek, and no particular interest.Why not ? Kassandra wondered, not yet knowing that she had stumbled on the major flaw in her twin's character; a total lack of interest in anything which did not relate to himself or contribute in some way to his own comfort and satisfaction.

For an instant this puzzled her enough that she lost the fragment of vision; then she collected herself to call it back. Her senses were filled with the intoxicating scent of thyme from the slopes of the mountain, where the bright light and heat of the Sunlord's presence gathered together the fragrant oils of the herb and concentrated their scent in the air. Looking out of the boy's eyes, she saw the crude brush in his hand as he combed the sleek sides of a great bull, smoothing the gleaming white hair of the flanks into patterns like waves; the beast was larger than he was himself - like Kassandra he was slight and lightly made, wiry rather than muscular. His arms were sunburnt brown as any shepherd's, his fingers calloused and hard with endless hard work. She stood there with him, her arm moving like his, making-patterns on the bull's sides, and when the hair was suitably smooth and wavy, she put aside the brush. With another brush she dipped into a pot of paint that stood at his side, laying the coat of smooth gilt paint across the horns. The bull's great dark eyes met her own with love and trust and a touch of puzzlement, . so that the beast shifted its weight restively. Kassandra wondered if somehow the animal's instincts knew what her brother did not: that it was not only his master who stood before him.

The combing and gilding finished, Paris (she did not ask herself how she now knew his name, but she knew it like her own) tied a garland of green leaves and ribbons around the animal's broad neck, and stood back to survey his handiwork with pride. The bull was indeed beautiful, the finest that she had ever seen. She shared his thoughts, that he could honestly name this fine animal, on whose looks and condition he had spared no effort in all the past year, as the finest bull in the fair. He tied a rope carefully around the animal's neck, and gathered up a staff and a leather wallet in which there was a hunk of bread, a few strips of dried meat, and a handful of

ripe olives. Tying the wallet round his waist, he bent to slip his feet into sandals. He gave the great bedizened bull a gentle smack with the staff on its flank, and set off down the slopes of Mount Ida.

Kassandra found herself, to her own surprise, back in her own body, kneeling on the plain, among the sleeping Amazons. The sun had begun to decline a little from its zenith and she knew the tribe would soon wake and be ready to ride.

She had heard that in the islands of the sea kingdoms far to the south, the bull was held sacred. She had seen in the temples little statues of sacred bulls, and someone had told her the story of Queen Pasiphae of Crete, of whom Zeus had become enamoured. He had come to her as a great white bull and they said that she had subsequently given birth to a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. He was called the Minotaur, and had terrorised all the sea kings until he was slain by the hero Theseus.

When Kassandra was a little girl she had believed the story; now she was old enough to be present in the birthing-rooms she knew better than to believe a mortal woman could mate with a bull - even if the bull was possessed by a God - or give birth to such a monster, or that such a monster could live at all. She wondered what truth, if any, lay behind the preposterous story. Having learned the truth behind the legend of the Kentaurs, she believed there must be some such truth, however obscure, behind all such stories.

There were deformed men who were bestial both in looks and manner; she wondered if the

Minotaur had been such a man with the mark of his father's animal disguise in body or mind.

She was eager to see what had become of Paris, and of his beautiful white bull. Young women, particularly from the royal house, were never allowed to attend the cattle fairs, held all over the countryside, but she had heard of them and was intensely curious.

But the women were stirring, and in a few minutes the movements about her, and their voices, dispelled the quietness necessary to remain in the state where she could follow him. She sprang up, with only a little regret, and ran to catch her mare.

Once or twice in the next day or two she caught a glimpse of her brother, driving the garlanded bull; fording a river (where he spoiled his sandals) and falling in with other travellers driving cattle bedecked like his own; none of the other animals quite so fine or so handsome.

The moon grew round, lighting the whole sky from sunset to sunrise. During the day the sun blinded, the white dust glittered. Drowsing on horseback while the mares moved steadily, grazing in their close-kept ring, Kassandra watched the dry dust-devils lifting up and swirling across the grass before they dispelled themselves. She thought of the restless God Hermes, Lord of the winds and of deception and artifice.

Daydreaming, she saw one of the little whirlwinds shiver and tremble and draw itself upright into the form of a man; and so she followed the shifting restless wind eastward across the plains to the very foot of Mount Ida. In the blinding sunlight, a beam of gold shifted and altered in the

glow and became a man's form; but taller and brighter than any man, with the face of Apollo Sunlord; and before the two Gods walked a bull.

Kassandra had heard the story of the bulls of Apollo; great shining cattle, more beautiful than any earthly beast; and surely this was one of them; broad-backed, with shining horns needing no gilt or ribbons to make them gleam with light. One of the oldest ballads sung by the minstrels of her father's court had to do with how the infant Hermes had stolen Apollo's sacred herd, and then turned away Apollo's anger by fashioning for him a lyre from the shell of a tortoise. Now the brightness of the sacred bull's eyes, and the bright luster of his coat, dimmed the memory of the bull Paris had decorated with so much toil. It was not fair; how could any mortal bull venture to be judged alongside the divine cattle of a God?

She leaned forward, her eyes closed; she had learned to sleep on horseback, yielding her body bonelessly to the animal's movement. Now she lowered her lids against the sunlight, drowsing, her mind ranging out in search of her brother. Perhaps it was the sight of Apollo which drew her to the animal Paris led to the fair.

Kassandra looked out from her brother's eyes on the great body of assembled beasts and ran in his mind over their faults and virtues. This cow had flanks too narrow; that one, an ugly pattern of brown and pink mottled on her udders; this bull had horns twisted askew and not fit for guarding his herd; that one, a hump above his neck. Near or far, Paris thought with pride, there was none to match the bull from his own herd, which he had garlanded with such pride and brought here. He could declare the honors of the day to his foster-father's own bull. This was the

second year he had been chosen to judge the cattle, and he was proud of his skill and proud of the confidence his neighbours and fellow herdsmen felt in him.

He moved among the cattle, motioning gently to bring one forward so he could see better, or to take an animal not seriously being considered out of his range of vision.

He had chosen the finest heifer and calf, and signalled to the finest cow, to murmurs of acclaim; she was a splendid cow indeed, her hide pale white with patches of a grey so subtle that it was all but blue, her eyes were mild and motherly, her udders smooth and uniformly pink as a maiden's breasts. Her horns were small and wide-spread, and her breath fragrant with the thyme-scented grass.

Now it was time to judge the bulls. Paris moved with satisfaction toward his foster-father's own Snowy, the beast he had tended and decorated with such care. In a whole day of judging cattle he knew that he had honestly seen no beast to match him, and he felt justified in awarding the prize to his foster-father's animal. He had actually opened his mouth to speak when he saw the two strangers and their bull.

As soon as the younger - Paris supposed he was the younger -began to talk, Paris knew somehow that he was in the presence of the more-than-mortal. It was his first such encounter, but the blaze of the man's eyes from under his hat, and something about the voice, as if it came from very far away and yet very close, told him this was no ordinary man. As for Kassandra, she would have recognized the unearthly shimmer around the golden curls of her God anywhere; and

perhaps without Paris's knowing it consciously, something crept through to him from the mind of his unknown sister.

He said aloud, "Strangers, bring the bull closer so I may see him. I have never seen such a fine animal." But perhaps the bull had some fault not apparent, Paris thought, walking around it from all sides. No, the legs were like pillars of marble, even the tail moved with an air of nobility. The horns were smooth and broad, the eye fierce yet gentle, and the animal even suffered, with a look of boredom, for Paris to open his mouth gently and look at the perfect teeth.

What right has a God to bring his perfect cattle to be judged among mortal men? Paris wondered. Well, it was Fate, and it would be arrogant to set himself against Fate.

He beckoned again to the man who held the rope around the bull's neck, and said with a regretful glance at Snowy, "I am sorry to say it, but never in all my life have I seen a bull so fine. Strangers, the prize is yours."

The glowing smile of the Immortal blurred into the sun; and as Kassandra woke, she heard a voice no more than an echo in her mind:This man is an honest judge, perhaps he is the one to settle the voice of Eris … and then she was alone in her saddle and Paris was gone, this time beyond any recall at her command. She did not see him again for a long time.

CHAPTER 7

No sooner had they reached the country of the Amazons than the weather changed. One day there was blinding sun from early morning to sunset; overnight, it seemed, there was day long rain combined with damp dripping nights. Being on horseback was no longer a pleasure but toil and exhaustion; to Kassandra every day was a constant battle against cold and damp.

The Amazons kept up fires in their sheltered camps; many lived in caves, others in heavy-walled leather tents set up in thick-leaved groves. Small children and pregnant women stayed inside all day, huddling close to the smoking fires.

There were times when the warmth tempted her, but among the tribe, girls Kassandra's age counted themselves among the warriors, so she covered herself with a heavy robe of thick oilsurfaced wool, and endured the dampness as best she could.

As the rainy season dragged by she grew taller and one day when she dismounted for a rare hot meal in the camp around the fire she realized that her body was rounding, small breasts sprouting under the rough loose garments.

From time to time as they rode she slipped in and out of visions of the boy with her face. He was taller now, the long woven tunic he wore barely covered his thighs, and she shivered in sympathy when he tried to cover himself with his too-short cloak. Surrounded by his flock, he lay on the slopes of the mountain, and once she saw him at a festival, one of a group of boys garlanded and

moving in a dance. Another time she sat within him before a blazing fire as he was given a new warm cloak and his long hair was cut for the altar of the Sunlord. Was he too under Apollo's protection?

Once in spring, silent in a group of other boys, he watched a group of little girls - though most of them were as tall as or taller than he - wrapped in bearskins, dancing a ritual dance to the Maiden.

Curious sensations attacked her body; the roughly woven wool of her tunic rubbed her nipples raw and she begged from one of the other women an undergarment of soft cotton cloth. It helped, but not enough; her breasts were sore most of the time.

The days shortened and a pale winter moon stood in the sky. The herds circled aimlessly, searching for food. Later the mares' milk failed and the hungry beasts moved restlessly from exhausted pasture to exhausted pasture.

The loss of the mares' milk, their staple food, meant there was even less to eat; what there was was saved by custom for the pregnant women and the youngest children. Day after day Kassandra knew little but sharp hunger; she kept her small allowance of food to eat before she slept so that she would not wake dreaming of the ovens in Priam's castle and the rich warm smell of baking bread. In the pastures as she watched over the horses, she searched endlessly for driedout fruits or stringy berries clinging to dead vines; like all the other girls she ate anything she could find, accepting that about half of the food so found would make her sick.

"We cannot stay here," the women said. "What is the Queen waiting for?"

"Some word from the Goddess," said the others, and the older women of the tribe went to Penthesilea, demanding that they move on to the winter pastures.

"Yes," said the Queen, "we should have gone a moon ago; but there is war in the countryside. If we move the tribe with all our children and old women, we shall be captured and enslaved. Do you want that?"

"No, no," the women protested. "Under your will we will live free and if we must we will die free."

Nevertheless Penthesilea promised that when the moon was full again she would seek counsel of the Goddess, to know Her will.

Seeing her own face once in the water after a hard rain, Kassandra hardly recognized herself; she had grown tall and lean, face and hands burnt brown by the unremitting sun, her features sharp and more like a woman's than a girl's - or perhaps like a young boy's… There were freckles on her face too, and she wondered if her family would know her if she should appear unannounced before them, or whether they would ask, "Who is this woman from the wild tribes? Away with her." Or would they, perhaps, mistake her for her exiled twin?

Despite the hardship she had no wish to return to Troy; she missed her mother sometimes, but not the life of the walled city.

Now she seldom thought about indoor life except for a vague constant nag of a time when she was confined to the palace and never allowed outside.

One night at sunset, the young girls returning to the camp for dry clothing and a share-out of such food as could be found -usually astringent boiled roots, or some hard wild beans - were told not to take the horses out again, but to remain and gather with the other women. All fires in the camp but one had been extinguished and it was dark and cold.

There was not so much as a mouthful of food to be shared out, and Elaria told her fosterling that the Queen had declared that all must fast before the Goddess was petitioned.

"That's nothing new," Kassandra said. "I should think we had-done enough fasting in this last month to satisfy any Goddess. What more can she ask of us?"

"Hush," said Elaria. "She has never yet failed to care for us. We are all still alive; there have been many years when there is raiding, and many outlaws in the countryside, when we do not leave our pastures till half our young children are dead. This year the Goddess has not taken so much as a babe at the breast, nor a single foal."

"So much the better for her," Kassandra said. "I cannot imagine what use dead tribeswomen

would be to the Goddess, unless she wishes us to serve her in the afterworld."

Aching with hunger, Kassandra got out of her damp riding leathers and slipped into a dry robe of coarsely woven wool. She tugged a wooden comb through her hair and braided it, coiling it low on her neck. In her exhausted and semi-starved state, the very feel of dry clothing and the heat of the fire was sensuous pleasure; she stood for some time simply feeling the heat soak into her body, until one of the other women shoved her aside. In the close air of the tent the smoke was gradually filling the entire space and she coughed and choked until she felt that she would vomit, if her stomach had not been so empty.

Behind her in the tent, she felt the pressure of other bodies, the silent rustle of women and girls and children; all the women of the tribe seemed to be gathered in the dark behind her. They squatted around the fire, and from somewhere came the soft thump of hands on taut skins stretched across a hoop, of gourds with dry seeds, shaken and rattling like the dry leaves, like the rain pattering on the tents. The fire smoked with little light, so that Kassandra could feel only the faint streams of discouraged heat.

Out of the dark silence next to the fire, three of the oldest women in the tribe rose up and cast the contents of a small basket on the fire; the dried leaves blazed up, then smouldered, flinging out thick white clouds of aromatic smoke. It filled the tent with its curious, dry, sweetish perfume, and as she breathed it in, Kassandra felt her head swimming and strange colours moved before her eyes, so that she no longer felt the dull pain of her hunger.

Penthesilea said from the darkness, "My sisters, I know your hunger; do I not share it? Anyone who is unwilling to share our lot, I freely give you leave to go to the men's villages where they will share their food if you lie with them. But do not bring daughters so born back to our tribe, but leave them to be slaves as you have shown yourselves to be. If there are any who wish to leave now let them do so, for you are not fit to stay while we petition our maiden Huntress, who cherishes freedom for women."

Silence; within the smoke-filled tent no woman stirred.

"Then, sisters, in our need let us summon her who cares for us."

Again silence, except for the fingertip drumming. Then out of the silence came a long eerie howl.

"Oww—ooooo-ooooo-ooooow!"

For a moment Kassandra thought it was some animal lurking outside the tent. Then she saw the open mouths, the strained-back heads of the women. The howl came again, and again, the faces of the women no longer looked quite human. The howling screams went on, rising and falling as the women swayed and yelled, and were joined by a sharp short 'yip-yip-yip-yip-yip… yip-yipyip', until the noise filled the tent; it beat and battered at her consciousness and she could only harden herself to remain apart from it. She had seen her mother overshadowed by the Goddess, but never in the midst of mad commotion like this.

At this moment, for the first time in many moons, Hecuba's face was suddenly before Kassandra's eyes and it seemed she could hear Hecuba's gentle voice:

It is not the custom…

'Why not?

There is no reason for customs. Theyare,no more …

She had not believed it then and she did not believe it now. There must be a reason why this weird howling should be thought a suitable way to summon the Maiden Huntress.Are we to become as the wild beasts she is hunting ?

Penthesilea rose, stretching out her hands to the women; between one breath and the next Kassandra saw the Queen's face blur and the brightness of the Goddess shone through the very skin, the voice altered beyond recognition. She cried out, "Not to the south where the men's tribes wander! Ride to the east past two rivers; there remain until the spring's stars fall!"

Then she crumpled forward; two women of the tribe's elders caught her and supported her in a fit of coughing so violent that it ended in weak retching. When she raised herself her face was her own again.

She asked in a hoarse whisper, "Did she answer us?"

A dozen voices repeated the words she had spoken while she was overshadowed:

'Not to the south where the men's tribes wander I Ride to the east past two rivers; there remain until the spring's stars fall!"

"Then we ride at dawn, sisters," Penthesilea said, her voice still weak. "There is no time to lose. I know of no rivers to the east but if we turn our backs on Father Scamander, and follow the east wind, we will surely come to them."

"What meant the Goddess when she spoke of 'until spring's stars fall'?" asked one of the women.

Penthesilea shrugged her narrow shoulders. "I do not know, sisters; the Goddess spoke but did not explain her words. If we follow her will she will make it known to us."

Four of the women brought in baskets filled with coiled roots and passed round leathern bottles of wine. Penthesilea said, "Let us feast in her name, sisters, and ride at dawn filled with her bounty."

Kassandra realized how long food must have been hoarded for this midwinter feast. She tore into the tasteless boiled roots like the starving animal she felt, and drank her share of the wine.

When the baskets were empty and the last drop had been squeezed from the wineskins, the tribe's few possessions were gathered; the tents taken down and bundled together, a few bronze cooking kettles, a store of cloaks worn by former leaders, were gathered together. Kassandra was still seeing the Goddess's face through and over Penthesilea's own, and hearing the curious alteration in her kinswoman's voice. Kassandra wondered if one day the Goddess would speak through her voice and spirit.

The tribe of women drew their horses into a line of march; Penthesilea and her warriors at the head, the elderly or pregnant women and the smallest girls at the very center, surrounded by the strongest young women.

Kassandra had a spear and knew how to use it, so she took a place among the young warriors. Penthesilea saw her and frowned, but she said nothing; Kassandra took her silence as leave to stay where she was. She didn't know whether she hoped for her first battle or whether she was inwardly praying that the journey would be completely uneventful. Dawn was breaking as Penthesilea called out the signal to ride; a single star still hung in the dark sky. Kassandra shivered in the wool robe she had worn to the ceremony; she hoped there would be no rain this night; she had left her riding leathers in the tent and they had been packed somewhere among the leather bags and baskets.

Her closest companion, a girl of fourteen or so whom her mother called 'Star', rode next to her, and made no secret that she was hoping for a fight.

"One year when I was small there was a war against one of the Kentaur tribes - not Cheiron's band, they're our friends, but one of the tribes from inland. They came down on us just as we left our old camp and tried to steal away the strongest of our stallions," Star told her. "I could hardly see them; I was still riding with my mother. But I heard the men screaming as Penthesilea rode them down."

"Did we win?"

"Of course we won; if we hadn't they'd have taken us to their encampment and broken our legs so we couldn't run away," Star said and Kassandra remembered the crippled woman in the men's camp. "But we made peace with them and we lent them the stallion for a year to improve their herds. And we agreed to visit their village that year instead of Cheiron's; Penthesilea said we have become too close akin to his people by now and should skip a few years because it is not wise to lie with our own brothers and fathers for too many generations. She says when we do the babies are weak and sometimes they die."

Kassandra did not understand, and said so. Star laughed and said, "They wouldn't let you go anyhow; before you go to the men's villages, you must be a woman, not a little girl."

"I am a woman," Kassandra said. "I have been old enough for bearing for ten moons now."

"Still, you must be a tried warrior; I have been grown now for a year and more, and I am not yet allowed to go to the men's villages. But I'm not in a hurry; after all, I might be pregnant for nine

moons and bear only a useless male who must be given to his father's tribe," said Star.

"Go to the men's villages? What for?" Kassandra asked, and Star told her.

"I think you must be making it up," Kassandra said. "My mother and father would never do anything like that." She could understand a mare and a stallion, but the thought of her royal parents engaging in such maneuvers seemed disgusting. Yet she remembered, unwillingly, that whenever her father summoned one of the many palace women into his sleeping quarters, sooner or later (more often sooner than later), there would be a new baby in the palace, and if it was a son, Priam would visit the palace goldsmith; and there would be handsome gifts, rings and chains and gold cups, for the newly favoured woman and for her children.

So perhaps this thing Star was telling her was true after all, strange though it seemed. She had seen children born, but her mother had told her it was not worthy of a princess to listen to the tattle of the palace women; now she remembered certain gross jests she had not understood at the time and felt her cheeks burning. Her mother had told her that babies were sent into the wombs of women by Earth Mother, and she had wondered sometimes why the Goddess did not send her one, because she dearly loved babies.

"That's why the city-dwellers keep their women locked up in special women's quarters," Star said. "They say that city women are so lecherous that they cannot be trusted alone."

"They're not," said Kassandra, not sure why she was so angry.

"They are too! Or why would their men have to keep them locked up inside walls? Our women aren't like that," Star said, "but city women are like goats - they will fornicate with any man they see!" With an ill-natured smile at Kassandra, she said, "You are from a city, aren't you? weren'tyou locked up to keep you away from men?"

Kassandra's knees tightened on her horse; she lunged forward and flung herself on Star, howling in rage. Star clawed at her, and Kassandra jerked Star's roughly braided hair, trying to drag the girl from her horse. Their mounts neighed and snickered as they fought, slapping and clawing and yelling; Kassandra felt the girl's elbow connect with her nose and blood begin to drip as her nails raked into Star's cheek.

Then Penthesilea and Elaria were both there, laughing as they nudged their horses between the girls. Penthesilea dragged Kassandra from her saddle and held her under her arms while she flailed angrily.

"For shame, Kassandra! If we fight like this among ourselves, how can we hope to have peace with other tribes? Is it so you treat your sisters? What are you righting about?"

Kassandra hung her head and would not answer. Star was still grinning that disgusting grin.

"I said to her that city women are kept locked up because they fornicate like goats," Star jeered, "and if it were not true would she have bothered to fight me about it?"

"Oh, Star, for shame," said Elaria. "It is not that city women are lecherous, but only that their men are so afraid of their own manhood that they do not trust their women. And it is not so in Troy as it is among the Akhaians where women are nothing but slaves!"

Kassandra said angrily, "My mother is no man's slave! Tell her to take it back!"

Penthesilea leaned close to her and said in her ear, "Will your mother be different for her saying it, true or lie?"

"No, of course not. But if she says it—"

"If she says it, you fear that someone will hear it and believe it?" Penthesilea asked, raising a delicate eyebrow. "Why give her that much power over you, Kassandra?"

The girl hung her head and did not answer, and Penthesilea cast her eyes scowling on Star.

"Is this how you treat a kinswoman and guest of the tribe, little sister?"

She leaned from her horse and touched her finger to Star's bleeding cheek. "I will not punish you, for you are already punished; she defended herself well. Next time, show more courtesy to a guest of our tribe. The goodwill of Priam's wife is valuable to us." She turned her back on them and leaned toward Kassandra, still holding her tight against her breast. Kassandra could feel the

laughter in her voice. "Are you old enough to ride alone without getting into trouble, or must I carry you before me like a baby?"

"I can ride alone," Kassandra said sulkily, though she was grateful to Penthesilea for defending her.

"Then I shall set you on your horse again," said the Amazon Queen, and gratefully Kassandra felt South Wind's broad back beneath her. Star caught her eye and wriggled her nose at Kassandra and she knew they were friends again. Penthesilea rode to the head of the line of march and called out, and they rode.

A chilly drizzling rain was falling, and gradually soaked through everything. Kassandra drew up her striped wool robe over her head, but her hair was still wet and clung to her head. They rode all day and pressed on into the night; Kassandra wondered when they would reach the new pastures. She had no idea where they were going, but rode in the damp darkness, following the tail of the horse ahead of her.

She rode in a dark dream, and through the darkness without stars, felt curious sensations attacking her body which she could not identify. Then the glow of a fire appeared before her eyes, and she knew she was not seeing it with her own eyes at all. Somewhere Paris sat before this fire, and across the fire he was looking at a slender young woman with long fair hair loosely tied at her neck. She wore the long, loose, tucked-up gown of the mainland women and Kassandra sensed the way in which Paris could not take his eyes from her, the sharp hunger in

his body which confused her enough that she took her eyes from the fire and then she was riding again, feeling the dampness of her cloak dripping cold water down her neck. Her body was still alive with the tug of what she knew, without understanding, to be desire. It was the first time she had been so wholly aware of her own body… yet it was not her own. The memory of the girl's great eyes, the tender curve of her cheek, the swell of her young breasts where the robe stood away from her body, the way in which these memories aroused totally physical sensations, troubled her; in a flash she began to associate them with the troubling things Star had been saying, and she was filled with dismay and something she was still too innocent to identify as shame.

Toward morning the rain stopped and the dark ragged clouds blew away; the moon came out and Kassandra could see that they were passing through a narrow gorge of rock, high up; she looked down on broad plains below, covered with small twisted trees, and orderly ploughed fields enclosed by stone walls. They moved slowly down the steep slope, and gradually the leading horses slowed and stopped. The tents were unpacked and the fire-pot was set in a central place. Already the first rays of a red sun were coming up across the gorge they had crossed in the night; they sent the young girls to look for dry wood - there was little to be found after days of soaking rain, but under the thick twisted olive trees Kassandra found a few dry chips where the rain had not penetrated, and she ran back with them to the fire.

The sun came up as they sat there, in a flood of red which told of more rain to come, so they sat there enjoying the damp heat and drying their hair and robes. Then the older women started to supervise the setting up of the tent and took one of the pregnant women inside; the warriors told

the young girls to set the herds to grazing, and Kassandra went with them.

She was very tired and her eyes burned, but she was not sleepy; a part of her mind was back in the tent where the women clustered encouraging the labouring woman, and a part of her was still far away, sharing with Paris. She knew he was on the hillside with his flocks, and that his thoughts remained with the girl whose memory obsessed him. She knew the girl's name, Oenone, the sweet mortal sound of it, and knew hauntingly how Paris clung to the memory that wiped out all awareness of what should have been uppermost in his thoughts, his duty to his flock. And even before Paris sensed it himself she heard - or felt, or smelled - the presence of the girl stealing toward him through the groves of trees on the mountainside.

The bitter scent of juniper was all around them. Kassandra hardly knew which of them, Paris or the girl, first saw one another or who moved first to run and crush the other into eager arms. The touch of hungry kisses almost jolted her back into her own body and her own place, but she was ready for it now, and clung to her awareness ofhis emotions and sensations. The next thing she knew, Oenone was sprawled on the soft grass, while Paris knelt above her, pulling at her garments.

Suddenly aware that this was not a moment to be shared even with a twin sister, she pulled back and away and was astride her own horse with drops of a rain shower on her face. She longed for the sunshine of her own country, Apollo's own sunshine, and ,for the first time since she had ridden away with the Amazons wondered when she would return.

She felt sick, her eyes burned and a queasiness attacked her; the memory of what she had shared answered some of the many questions in her mind, but she was not sure whether it was her brother with whom she had shared this curious experience, or the girl Oenone, whether she was lover or beloved.

She was not certain now that she was within her own body, or whether she was still lying in the soft grass on Mount Ida with her brother and the girl, their bodies still locked in the afterglow of desire. Her mind would not stay within the confines of her body; but spread far beyond her, so that a part of her was here in the circle of horses and young women, and a part of her extended downward into the birthing tent where the woman knelt in a ring of women watching her, crying out instructions and encouragement; she felt the rending pains attacking her inexperienced body. She was racked by confusion, felt the blood leaving her cheeks, heard her own breath rasp in her throat.

She turned round wildly, pulling so hard on the reins that her mare almost stumbled, and dug her heels into the horse's flank, fleeing across the plain, as if by fierce physical effort she could bring all her consciousness back into her own body. Penthesilea saw her riding away from the camp and quickly jumped to the back of her own horse and raced after her.

Kassandra, stretched out along the mare's back desperately' trying to shut out everything outside herself, sensed the pursuit and dug her heels harder. Nevertheless Penthesilea's horse was longerlegged and she was by far the better rider; gradually the gap between the two riders narrowed and the Amazon drew abreast of the girl, seeing with dismay Kassandra's flushed face and

terrified eyes.

She held out her arms and scooped Kassandra from the back of her mare, holding her limp on the saddle before her.

She could feel the girl's forehead fire-hot as if with fever. Almost delirious now, Kassandra struggled against her, and the older woman held her tight in her strong arms.

"Hush! Hush! what ails you, bright-eyes? Why, your forehead feels as if you were sun-stricken, yet it is not a hot day!" Her voice was kindly, yet Kassandra felt that the older woman was mocking her, and struggled frantically to be free.

"Nothing is wrong—I did not mean to—"

"No, all is well, child; no one will hurt you, no one is angry with you," Penthesilea held her, soothing her. After a moment Kassandra abandoned her struggles and went limp in her kinswoman's arms.

"Tell me about it—"

Kassandra blurted out, "I was - with him. My brother. And a girl. And I couldn't shut it out, anything, anywhere in the camp—"

"Goddess be merciful," Penthesilea whispered. At Kassandra's age she too had borne the gift (or curse) of the wide-open seeing. Sharing experiences for which the mind or body were unprepared could indeed touch upon inner madness and there was not always a safe return. Kassandra was lying in her arms only half conscious, and her kinswoman was not sure what to do for her.

First she must get her back to the camp; so far from the other women, or the horses, there were likely to be strange lawless men in these wilds, and in Kassandra's present state, such an encounter might drive her sheer over the edge of sanity. She turned about, holding the reins of Kassandra's mare so it would follow her. She cradled the girl against her breast, and when they were within the circle of the camp, lifted her down and carried her inside the tent, where the new mother was resting beside her sleeping infant. Penthesilea laid Kassandra down on a blanket and sat beside her, her firm hand on her niece's brow, covering her eyes, willing her to shut out all the intrusions into her mind.

Silent and at peace, Kassandra's sobbing subsided and she slowly grew calm, turning her face into Penthesilea's hand like a baby, curled up against her.

After a long time Penthesilea asked, "Are you better now?"

"Yes, but—will it come again?"

"Probably. It is a gift of the Goddess and you must learn to live with it. There is little I can do to

help you, child. Perhaps Serpent Mother has called you to speak for the Gods; there are priestesses and seeresses among us. Perhaps when it is time for you to go underground and face her…'

"I do not understand," Kassandra said. Then she remembered when Apollo had spoken to her and asked that she should be his priestess. She told Penthesilea of this, and the older Amazon looked relieved.

"Is it so? I know nothing of your Sunlord; it seems to me strange that a woman should seek a God rather than the Earth Mother or our Serpent Mother. It is she who dwells underground and rules over all the realms of women - the darkness of birth and death. Perhaps she too has called you and you have not heard her voice. I have heard that sometimes it is so with the priestessborn; that if they do not hear her call she will set her hand on them through the darkness of evil dreams, so that they may learn how to listen to her voice."

Kassandra was not certain; she knew little of Penthesilea's Serpent Mother, yet she remembered the beautiful serpents in Apollo's house and how she had longed to caress them. Perhaps this Serpent Mother had called her too; not only the bright and beloved Sunlord.

She had hoped that her kinswoman, who knew so much about the Goddess, would tell her what she must do to be rid of this unwanted Sight. Now she began to realize that she must herself control it, must find a way within herself to shut the floodgates before they overwhelmed her.

"I will try—" she said. "Are there any who know about these things?"

"Perhaps among the servants of the Gods. You are a princess of two royal houses; ours of the Amazons, and your father's; I know nothing of those Gods, but as one of us, a time must come when you must go underground to meet the Serpent Mother, and since already she has called you, it should be sooner rather than later. Perhaps at the next moon; I shall speak to the elders and see what they say of you."

Perhaps, Kassandra said to herself,this is why the God called me to be his servant . Yet she had herself opened these doors; she should not complain that she had been given the gift which she had asked.

Day after day the tribe rode, into the fierce winds and the raw icy rain. It grew colder and colder, and at night the women wrapped themselves in all their woollen garments and blankets; but this was not enough; they nestled in twos and threes, sharing blankets. Kassandra curled up next to her horse, sheltering in the warmth of the big sleek body. Eventually the skies grew clear and brilliant and the rain stopped. Still to the east the tribe travelled; when the women asked their leaders when they would rest and find pasture for their horses, Penthesilea only sighed: 'We must first pass two rivers as the Goddess has decreed."

The moon had waxed and waned again when they sighted the first human beings that they had seen on this journey; two solitary men dressed in skins to which hair clung, so that the women guessed that the art of tanning skins was still unknown to them.

There are pastures here, Kassandra thought,this might be the place to rest our herds and remain. But not with these men …

The men stared open-mouthed and loutish at the women, and Penthesilea drew up her horse beside them.

"Who owns these flocks and herds?" she asked, pointing to the sheep and goats grazing on the bright green vegetation.

"We do. What kind of goats be ye riding?" asked the men. "Never did we see goats so big and healthy."

Penthesilea started to say that they were not goats but horses; then decided that in their ignorance there might be some advantage for the tribe. "They are the goats of Poseidon, God of the sea," she told him, and he asked only, "What be the sea?"

"Water from here to the horizon," she said and he gasped, "Oh, my! Never do we see water but what's in some muddy hole that dries in the summer! No wonder they look rich and fat!" Then he smiled craftily and asked in his rude dialect if the ladies would care to pasture their herds beside his own.

"Perhaps for a night or two," said Penthesilea.

"Where be ye menfolks?" he asked.

"We have none; we are free of all men," said the Amazon, "but we will accept the hospitality of your pasture for this night, since we have been riding for a long time. Our animals are weary and will welcome a little of your good grass."

"They are welcome to it," replied one of the men, who seemed a little cleaner than the rest, and his garment a little more whole.

As they were dismounting, Penthesilea whispered to Kassandra that they must be wary, and not sleep, but watch their horses even through the night. "For I do not trust these men, not even a little," she whispered. "I think, as soon as we are sleeping, or they think we are sleeping, they will try to steal our horses, and perhaps attack us."

The men tried to edge their way into the circle of women and to steal furtive touches, and Kassandra thought if they had been city women, inexperienced in guile, they would not have realized what the men were doing. She rose with the other young girls to begin spreading out their blankets. She slipped hobbles over her horse's feet, so that she could not go far away in the night, loosened her leather belt and lay down in her blanket, between Elaria and Star.

"I wonder how far we will ride?" Star murmured, hugging her blanket around her thin shoulders against the dampness. "If we do not soon find food, the children will begin to die."

"It is not as bad as that," Elaria remonstrated. "We have not even begun to bleed the horses. We can live on their blood for least a month before they even begin to weaken. Once when there was a bad year we lived on the mares' blood for two months. My first daughter died, and we were all so near starving that when we went to the men's village, none of us became pregnant for almost half a year."

"I am hungry enough that I would drink mares' blood - or anything else," Star grumbled, but Elaria said, "That cannot be until Penthesilea gives orders; and she knows what she is doing."

"I am not so sure," Star muttered. "Letting us sleep here among all these men—"

"No," said Elaria,"she bid usnot sleep."

Slowly the moon rose above the trees, climbing higher and higher. Then across her lowered eyelids Kassandra saw dark forms stealing through the clearing.

She was waiting for Penthesilea's signal when suddenly the stars above were blotted out by a dark shadow and the weight of a man's body was suddenly across hers; hands were tearing away her breeches, fumbling at her breast. She had her hand on her bronze dagger; she struggled to free herself but was pinned down flat. She kicked, and bit at the hand that covered her mouth; her attacker yelped—like the dog he was, she thought fiercely—and she thrust up hard with the hilt of the dagger, striking his mouth; he yelped again and Kassandra felt a spray of blood and curses

from his broken lips. Then she got the dagger right way round 'and struck; he yelled and fell across her, just as Penthesilea shouted and all over the grove women sprang to their feet. Someone thrust a torch into the dying coals and the firelight flared up, reflecting light on bronze daggers naked in the men's hands.

"Such is your hospitality to guests?"

Kassandra cried out, "I have taken care of one of them, Aunt!" She scrambled free, pushing the groaning man off her body. Penthesilea strode toward her and looked down.

"Finish him," she said. "Don't leave him to die slowly in pain."

But I don't want to kill him, Kassandra thought.He can't hurt me now and he didn't do me any real harm . All the same, she knew the law of the Amazons; death for any man who attempted to rape an Amazon, and she could not violate that law. Under the cold eyes of Penthesilea, Kassandra bent reluctantly over the wounded man and drew her dagger hard across his throat. He gurgled and died.

Kassandra, feeling sick, straightened and felt Penthesilea's hand hard on her shoulder. "Good work. Now you are truly one of our warriors," she murmured and strode forward into the torchlight toward the assembled men.

"The Gods have decreed that the guest is sacred," Penthesilea chided. "Yet one of your men

would have ravished one of my unwilling maidens. What excuse can you give for that breach of hospitality?"

"But who ever heard of women to be riding alone this way," one of the men argued. "The Gods only protect women who are decent wives, and you're not; you don't belong to anyone."

"What God told you that?" Penthesilea inquired.

"We don't need a God to tell us what just stands to reason. Women were made for women's work and to look after men's needs." declared the shepherd. "I never heard of such a thing as women riding so far away from their men. And since you had no husbands, we decided we'd take ye in and give ye what ye needed most, men to look after ye."

"That is not what we need nor what we seek," the Amazon declared, and gestured to the women surrounding the men with their weapons.

"Take them!"

Kassandra found herself rushing forward with the rest, her dagger raised. The man she rushed against made no particular effort to defend himself; she pushed him down and knelt over him with her knife at his throat.

"Don't kill us," the men cried out. "We won't hurt you!"

"Nowyou won't," Penthesilea said fiercely, "but when we were sleeping and you thought us helpless—you would have killed or raped us!"

Penthesilea thrust with her dagger at his throat and he cringed. "Will you swear by your own Gods never again to molest any women of our tribes—or any other—if we let you live?"

"No, we won't," said the leader. "The Gods sent you to us, and we took you, and I think we did what was right."

Penthesilea shrugged and gestured to cut his throat. The other men screamed that they would swear, and Penthesilea motioned the women to let them go. One by one, except for the leader, they knelt and swore as required.

"But I do not trust even their oath," said Penthesilea, "once they are out of sight of our weapons." She gave orders for their possessions to be gathered together and for the horses to be saddled, so that they could ride at dawn.

After her sleepless night, Kassandra's eyes burned and her head ached; it seemed that she could still feel the man's gross hands on her body. When she wished to move she could not; her body was rigid, locked; she heard someone calling her name but the sound was very far away.

Penthesilea came to her, and the touch of her hand brought Kassandra back to herself.

"Can you ride?" she asked.

Wordlessly, Kassandra nodded and pulled herself up into the saddle. Her foster-mother came and embraced her, saying, "You did well; now you have killed a man, you are a warrior, fit to fight for us. You are a child no more." Penthesilea called out the signal to ride, and Kassandra, shivering, urged her horse into motion. She wrapped her blanket over her shoulders.

Ugh, she thought,it smells of death .

They rode, chill rain in their faces; she envied the women who were carrying covered clay pots of hot coals. Eastward, and further eastward they rode, the wind chilling and growing colder. After a long time the sky lightened to a pale grey, but there was no true daybreak. All round her Kassandra heard the women grumbling, and she ached with hunger and cold.

Penthesilea at last called for a halt, and the women began -setting up their tents for the first time in many days. Kassandra clung to her horse, needing the heat of the animal's body; the aching cold seemed to seep into every muscle and bone of her body. After a time there were fires burning at the center of the encampment and she went like the others and crouched close to the tongues of warmth.

Penthesilea gestured near where they had been riding and the women saw; with astonishment, green fields of half-ripened grain. Kassandra could hardly believe her eyes: grain at this season?

"It is winter wheat," Penthesilea said. "These peoples plant their grain before the first snow falls, and it lies through the winter under the snow, and ripens before the barley harvest. For this cold climate, they have two grains, and it is the rye I seek."

The Amazon Queen gestured to her kinswoman to walk beside her and Kassandra came to her side.

"What land have we come to, Aunt?" she asked.

"This is the country of the Thracians," Penthesilea told her, "and northward," she gestured, "lies the ancient city of Colchis."

Kassandra remembered one of her mother's stories. "Where Jason found the golden fleece, by the aid of the witch Medea?"

"The same. But there is little gold there, these days; though there is much witchcraft."

"Are there people living hereabouts?" asked Kassandra. The countryside seemed so barren after the fertile fields of the Trojan plain, that it seemed impossible that people would choose to live in this desolate place.

"Fields of rye do not plant themselves," Penthesilea reproved her. "Where there is grain, there is

always someone, man or woman, to plant it. And here there are people and also—" she pointed, "horses."

Far away on the horizon, hardly visible, Kassandra made out small moving flecks which seemed no larger than sheep; but from the way they moved, she could see they were horses. As they surged nearer, Kassandra made out that they were very different from the horses that she and the other Amazons rode: small and dun-coloured with heavy-set bodies and thick shaggy hair almost like fur.

"The wild horses of the north; they have never been ridden nor tamed," Penthesilea said. "No God has touched them to mark them for mankind or women. If they belong to any God they are the property of the huntress Artemis."

As if moved by one spirit, the whole herd wheeled and dashed away, the lead mare pausing with her head up to stare, nostrils dilated and eyes shining, at the women.

"They smell our stallion," said Penthesilea. "He must be watched; if he scents a herd of mares he might well try to add them to our own and these horses are no use to us. We could not feed them and there would not be enough pasture."

"What are we doing here?" Kassandra asked.

"The Goddess is wise," her kinswoman replied. "Here in the country of the Thracians, we can

trade for iron and replenish our weapons. There will be grain for sale in the city of Colchis, if not nearer; and we have items for trade; saddles and bridles, leather work, and more. We will go this afternoon to the village and see if we can buy food."

Kassandra looked at the grey sky and wondered how anyone could tell whether it was morning or afternoon. She supposed that Penthesilea had some way of knowing.

Later that day Penthesilea summoned Kassandra and one of the other young maidens, Evandre, and they rode toward the village which lay at the center of the grainfields lying beneath the snow. As the women entered the village—only a few small round stone houses, and a central building open to the sky where women were working at the shaping of pots - the inhabitants came out to see them.

Many of the women were carrying spindles with wool or goat's hair wrapped round them. They wore long loose skirts of woven goat's hair dyed green or blue; their hair was dark and ragged. Some had children in their arms, or clinging to their skirts.

Kassandra saw, with a little thrill of horror, that many of the children were curiously deformed; one little girl had a raw-looking cleft through her lip, running up through her face till her nostril looked like an open sore; another had but a thumb and one deformed finger on her tiny hand which looked like a claw. She had never seen living children like this; in Troy a child born deformed was immediately exposed on the slopes of Mount Ida for wolves or other wild beasts to destroy. Women and children hung back without speaking, but looked curiously at the

Amazons and their horses.

"Where are you going?"

"Northward at the will of our Goddess, and at the moment, to Colchis," said Penthesilea. "We would like to trade here for grain."

"What have you to trade?"

"Leather goods," said Penthesilea, and the women shook their heads. "We make our own leather from the hides of our horses and goats," said a woman who appeared to be a leader among them. "But sell us a dozen of your little girls and we will give you all the grain you can carry."

Penthesilea's face turned pale with anger.

"No woman of our tribe is ever sold into slavery."

"We do not want them for slaves," said the woman. "We will adopt them as our daughters. A sickness has raged here and too many women have died in childbirth, while others cannot bear healthy babies; so you can see women are very precious to us."

Penthesilea was paler than ever. She said softly to Evandre, "Pass the word back that no woman is to dismount from her horse for an instant in this village; not for any purpose, no matter what

the need; we will ride on."

"What is the matter, Aunt?" Kassandra asked.

"We must touch none of their grain," Penthesilea said, and said to the woman, "I am sorry for your sickness; but we can do nothing to help you. Nevertheless, if you would be free of it, cut down your standing grain and burn it, do not even let it lie to fertilize the fields. Get yourselves fresh seed corn from somewhere south of here. Examine the seeds carefully for any trace of blight; it is this that has poisoned the wombs of your women."

As they rode away from the village, Penthesilea, riding through the rye fields, bent down and plucked a few of the green stalks. She held them up, pointing to the place where the seeds would be forming.

"Look," she said. Pointing out the purplish threadlike fibers at the tips of the stalks, she held it towards Kassandra. "Smell it; as a priestess you must be able to recognize this whenever you encounter it. Do not taste it, whatever you do, nor eat of it even if you are starving."

Kassandra smelled a curious mouldy, slimy, almost fishy smell.

"This rye will poison any who eat fresh grain, or even the bread which could be baked from it; and the worst form of poisoning is that it kills the children in the womb and can destroy a woman's fertility for years. That village may already be doomed. It is a pity; their women seem

handsome and industrious, and their spinning and weaving is notable. Also they make fine pots and cups."

"Will they all die, Aunt?"

"Probably: many of them will eat the poisoned grain and not die of it, but no more healthy children will be born in that village, and by the time they are desperate enough to enforce, perhaps, a year's famine on their people, it may be too late."

"And the Gods permit this?" Kassandra asked. "What Goddess is angry enough to blight the grain in the village?"

"I do not know; perhaps it is not the doing of any Goddess at all," said her kinswoman. "I only know that it comes, year after year, especially when there has been too much rain."

It had never occurred to Kassandra to doubt that the grain of the fields was watched over and made to grow through the direct agency of Earth Mother; this was a frightening heresy and she put it out of her mind as quickly as possible. She was aware again of hunger - she had been without substantial food for so long that she had almost ceased to be aware of it for days at a time.

As they rode, they began to see small animals jumping in and out of burrows in the ground. A young girl quickly strung her bow and loosed a hunting-arrow shaped of fire-hardened wood

instead of the precious metal and the animal it struck fell over and lay kicking. The archer leaped off her pony and clubbed it over the head. A flight of other arrows followed the first, but only one or two found their mark. At the thought of hare roasted on the spit, Kassandra's mouth watered.

Penthesilea drew the riders to a halt with a gesture.

"We will camp here, and I promise you, we will not ride on until we are all fed somehow," she said. "You warriors, take your bows and hunt; as for the rest of you, set up the targets and practice with your arrows. We have neglected practicing our hunting and righting skills in these days while we ride. Too many of those arrows went far from the targets. In my mother's day, that many arrows would have brought down enough hares to feed us all."

She added, "I know how hungry you all are - I am no more fond of fasting than any of you, and it has been as long for me as for any of you since I have eaten a good meal. Yet I beg you, my sisters, if you found—or stole - any grain or anything made of it, or any food at all in that village, let me see it before you eat of it. Their grain is cursed, and those who eat of bread made from it may miscarry, or your child may be born with one eye, or only one finger on her hand."

One woman defiantly pulled out a hard and somewhat mouldy loaf of bread from beneath her tunic. She said, "I will give this to some woman past childbearing age who can eat of it safely. I did not steal it," she added. "I bartered an old buckle for it."

One of the oldest women in the tribe said, "I will exchange it for my share of the hare I brought down with my arrow; it has been too long since I tasted bread, and I will certainly never bear any more children to be damaged by it."

The sight of the bread made Kassandra so hungry that she felt she would rather risk miscarriage or damage to a child she might bear some day far in the future; but she would not disobey her kinswoman. Other Amazons brought forth items of food they had bartered - or stolen - in the village, almost all of which Penthesilea confiscated and threw on the fire.

Kassandra went to shoot at targets while the seasoned warriors rode away to seek game and the old women spread out across the flat countryside to seek food of any sort. It was too far into the winter for berries or fruits, but there might be roots or some edible fungus somewhere.

The short winter day was darkening into twilight when at last the hunters returned, and soon the cut-up hares were seething in a cauldron with flat wild beans and some roots; chunks hacked from a larger beast—it had been skinned, but

Kassandra suspected it was one of the rough-furred wild horses, and was hungry enough not to care - were roasting over a great fire. For that night at least they would have their fill, and Penthesilea had promised there would be plenty of food in Colchis.

CHAPTER 8

"There it lies," Penthesilea said, and pointed. "The city of Colchis."

Accustomed to the fortified Cyclopean walls of Troy, rising high above the rivers of the fertile plain, Kassandra was not at first sight impressed by the walls of sun-hardened baked brick, dull in the hazy sunlight. It would, she thought, be vulnerable to attack from anywhere. In her year with the Amazons she had learned something - not formally, but from the other Amazons' tales of sieges and war - of military strategy.

"It is like the cities of Egypt and the Hittites," said Penthesilea. "They do not build impressive fortifications; they do not need them. Inside their iron gates you will see their temples and the statues of their Gods. These are greater than the temples and statues of Troy as the walls of Troy are greater than the walls of Colchis. The story goes that this city was founded by the ancient ship-peoples of the far South; but they are unlike any peoples here, as you will see when we enter the city. They are strange; they have many curious customs and ways." She laughed. "But then, that is what they would say of us, I suppose."

Of all this, Kassandra had heard onlyiron gates . She had seen little of the metal; once her father had shown her a ring of black metal which he told her was iron.

"It is too costly, and too hard to work, for weapons," he said to her. "Some day when people know more about the art of forging it, iron might be of use for ploughing; it is much harder than

bronze." Now Kassandra, remembering, thought that a city and a people which knew enough of iron to forge it into gates must indeed be wise.

"It is because the gates are of iron that the city has not been taken?" she asked.

Penthesilea looked at her and said in some surprise, "I do not know. They are a fierce people, but they are seldom involved in war. I suppose it is because they are so far from the major trade areas. All the same, people will come from the ends of the world for iron."

"Will we enter the city, or camp outside the walls?"

"We will sleep this night in the city; their Queen is all but one of us," Penthesilea said. "She is the daughter of my mother's sister."

So, thought Kassandra,she is my mother's kinswoman too, and mine .

"And the King?"

"There is no king," Penthesilea said. "Imandra rules here, and she has not chosen yet to take a consort."

Behind the city red-rust cliffs rose, dwarfing the gates. The path leading to the city was paved underfoot with gigantic blocks of stone, and the houses, with stone steps and arches, were

constructed of wood and lath and brightly plastered and painted. The city streets were not paved, but muddy and trampled, and strange beasts of burden, horned and shaggy, moved between the houses, laden with huge baskets and jars. Their owners whacked them aside as the Amazons, drawn up in almost military formation, rode through the streets. Kassandra, conscious of all the eyes on her, braced her spear against the weariness of riding, and sat erect, trying to look like a warrior.

The city was very different from Troy. Women went everywhere freely in the streets, carrying jars and baskets on their heads. Their garments were long, thick and cumbersome, but, for all their clumsy skirts and eye-paint, the women looked strong and competent. She also saw a forge where a woman, dark-faced and soot-stained, with a warrior's thick muscles, was working. Bared to the waist to tolerate the fierce heat of the bellows and the flying sparks, she hammered on a sword. A younger woman, not much more than a girl, worked the bellows. Kassandra had, in her months with the Amazons, seen women doing many strange things but this was the strangest of all.

The sentries on the walls were women too and might well have been members of the Amazon company, for they were armed and wore breastplates of bronze, and carried long spears. As the Amazons rode through the streets the sentries set up a long whooping battle-cry; and before long half a dozen of them, with their spears laid in rest in token of peace, appeared in the streets before them; their leader rode forward and embraced Penthesilea from the saddle.

"We greet you rejoicing, Penthesilea, Queen of Mares," she said. "The Lady of Colchis sends

you greeting and welcomes your return to us. She bids your women make camp in the field within the Southern Wall, and invites you to be her guest in the palace with a friend, or two if you wish."

The Amazon Queen called back the news the sentry had brought.

"And more," the woman of Colchis said,"the Queen sends your women two sheep as a gift, and a basket of bread baked this day in the royal ovens; let your women feast here while you join her at the palace." The Amazons sent up a great cheer at the thought of all this long-untasted food.

Penthesilea saw her women encamped on the field, their tents raised and the sheep slaughtered. Kassandra, standing by as a good rump portion was burnt for the Huntress, noted that the sheep were quite ordinary looking, like the sheep of Troy. Penthesilea, watching her, said, "What is it? Were you expecting to see the sheep of Colchis with golden fleeces? They do not grow that way; not even the herds of Apollo Sunlord are born so. But the Colchians lay their fleeces in the stream to catch the gold that still washes down the rivers; and though there is less gold than, perhaps, in Jason's day, still before you depart from Colchis you shall see these fleeces of gold. Now let us dress to dine at a Queen's table."

The Amazon Queen went into her own tent, took off her riding clothes, and put on her finest skirt and boots of white doeskin, with a tunic leaving one breast bare as the custom was here. Told to dress in her best, Kassandra put on her Trojan dress - it was too short for her now, and came only halfway down her calves—and her sandals.

Penthesilea had taken a stub of kohl from her pack and was smudging her eyes; she turned and said, "Is this the only dress you have, child?"

"I'm afraid so."

"That will never do," said Penthesilea. "You have grown more than I thought." She dug into her own saddlebag and pulled out a worn dress dyed pale saffron. "This will be too big for you, but do the best you can."

Kassandra dragged the dress over her head and fastened it with her old bronze pins. She felt so awkward and cumbered by the skirts about her knees that it was hard to remember that once she had worn this kind of garment every day.

Together they walked up through the paved streets of Colchis. Kassandra felt that she was gaping like a barbarian at the tall houses - it had been so long since she had been inside city walls.

The palace was built somewhat like the palace of Troy, of the local grey marble. It stood on the high place at the center of the city, and not even a Temple stood above it; Kassandra, raised in the custom in her land that the dwellings of men might not rise so high as the temples of the Gods, was a little shocked.

As they stood on the palace steps, they could look out over the sea.Just as it is in Troy , thought Kassandra; only this sea was not the intense blue she remembered from her home, but dark grey and oily. Men were peacefully loading and unloading the ships lying at anchor near the habour; they were not pirates or raiders, but merchants. This many ships near Troy would be a sign of disaster or war.

Yet she could see them lying off Troy, ships so many that the blue of the sea was darkened…

With an effort she brought herself back to the present. There was no danger here…

Penthesilea touched her arm. "What is it? What did you see?"

"Ships," Kassandra murmured,"ships—threatening Troy—"

"No doubt, if Priam goes on as he has begun," her kinswoman said dryly. "Your father has attempted to grasp power he is not strong enough to hold, and one day that power will be tested. But for now we must not keep Queen Imandra waiting for us."

Kassandra had never thought to question her father's policies; yet she could see that what Penthesilea said was true. Priam exacted tribute from all the ships which went through the straits into this sea; thus far, the Akhaians had paid it because it was less trouble than mustering a navy to challenge it. She looked at the iron gates and realized that they meant a whole new way of life, sooner or later.

She told herself she was unrealistic; her father was strong, with many warriors and many allies; he could hold Troy forever.Perhaps one day Troy too will have iron gates, like this city of Colchis . As they passed through the wide corridors, woman guards in bronze breastplates and leather helmets inlaid with metal raised their fists in token of salute. Now they came into a highceilinged room with a high skylight inlaid with translucent green stone, and at the center a marble high seat where a woman was sitting.

She looked like a warrior herself, with a beaten silver breastplate, but under it she was clad in a fine robe of brocade from the far south, and a light chemise of Egyptian gauze, the kind that was known as 'woven air'. On her face she wore a false beard, gilded and tied like a ceremonial wig; token, Kassandra felt, that she ruled not as a woman but as King of the city. Around her hips was a belt inlaid with green stones, and a fine sword hung from the belt. She wore leather boots embroidered and dyed, which came up to her calves. Just below her breastplate, about her waist, was a curious belt which seemed to rise and fall with her breathing; as they came nearer Kassandra realized that it was a living snake.

As they approached, the Queen rose and said, "I greet you rejoicing, cousin. Have your warriors been properly welcomed and feasted? Is there anything more I can do to make you welcome, Penthesilea, Queen of Horsewomen?"

Penthesilea smiled and said, "Indeed we have been welcomed, Lady; now tell me what you want of us. For I have known you-since we were girls, and I know well that when not only I, but all

my warriors are made welcome and feasted, it is not just for courtesy's sake. Kinship alone would require that I put myself and my women at your service, Imandra; ask freely what you desire of us."

"How well you read me, Penthesilea; indeed I have need of friendly warriors," Imandra said in her husky and pleasing voice, "but first let us share our dinner. Tell me, cousin, who is the maiden? She is a little too young to be either of your daughters."

"She is the daughter of our kinswoman Hecuba of Troy."

"Oh?" Imandra's delicately painted eyebrows went up in an elegant arch.

She beckoned to a waiting-woman and snapped her fingers lightly; this was the signal for a number of slaves bearing jewelled dishes covered with an assortment of food to come forth: roast meat and fowl in various delicious sauces, fruits in honey, sweets so richly spiced that Kassandra could not even guess what they were made of.

She had been hungry so long that all this food made her feel slightly sick; she ate sparingly of the roast fowl and some hard cakes of bread, then at the Queen's urging tasted a rich sweetmeat spiced with cinnamon. She noted that Penthesilea too ate little, and when the trays had been carried away and rose-water poured over their hands, the Queen of Colchis said, "I thought Hecuba had long forgotten her days as a warrior. Yet her daughter rides with you? Well, I have no quarrel with Priam of Troy. She is welcome. Is it she who is to marry Akhilles?"

"No, that I had not heard," said Penthesilea. "I think Priam will find, when he tries to find a husband or marriage for this one, that the Gods have claimed her for their own."

"Perhaps one of her sisters, then," said Imandra indifferently. "If we have need of a King in Colchis, perhaps I will marry my own daughter to one of Priam's sons; I have one of an age to be married. Tell me, Priam's daughter, is your oldest brother yet pledged in marriage?"

Kassandra said shyly, "Not that I have heard, Lady, but my father does not confide his plans to me. He may well have made some such arrangement many years ago that I have not heard about."

"Honestly spoken," said Imandra. "When you return to Troy my envoys shall go with you, offering my Andromache for your father's son; if not the eldest, then another—he has fifty, I believe, and several are the sons of your royal mother, are they not?"

"I do not believe there are as many as fifty," said Kassandra, "but there are many."

"Be it so, then," said Imandra, and as she stretched out her hand to Kassandra, the serpent coiled about her waist began to stir; it crawled up on to her arm and as Kassandra put out her own hand the creature thrust out its nose and its coils followed; it began to wind itself around Kassandra's wrist like a slender bracelet.

"She likes you," Imandra said. "Have you been taught to handle them?"

Kassandra said, remembering the serpents in the Temple of Apollo Sunlord, "They are not strange to me."

"Take care; if she should bite you it would make you very ill," said Imandra. Kassandra felt no fear, but a sense of elation as the snake crawled along her arm, the soft dry sliding of the scales distinctly pleasurable to her flesh.

"And now to a serious matter," said Imandra. "Penthesilea, did you see the ships in the harbor?"

"Who could help seeing? They are many."

"They are laden with tin and iron from the north, from the country of the Hyperboreans," she said, "and naturally my fellow kings envy this. Since I do not, they say, sell them sufficient tin for their bronze - they say I fear the weapons they will make, where the truth is I have little enough for myself and they have nothing I crave - they have taken to attacking my caravans of tin and carrying it off without payment. In this city, there are too few trained warriors. What payment will you ask, to bring your warriors to guard my shipments of metal?"

Penthesilea raised her eyebrows. "It would be simpler—and cheaper, I suspect - to sell them what they want."

"And let them arm themselves against me? Better that my smiths make weapons and let them pay with gold for such weapons as they want. I send some tin and lead and also iron south to the Hittite kings - those that are left of them. Those caravans too are robbed. There is gold in it for you, then, and for your women if they crave it."

"I can guard your caravans," said Penthesilea, "but the price will not be small. My women have travelled here under an omen and are not eager for war; all we want is to return to our own pastures in the spring."

Kassandra lost track of the conversation; she was absorbed in the snake that was coiling around her arm, gliding into the front of her dress, curling up warm between her breasts. She looked aside to one of the slave women juggling three gold-coloured balls, and wondered how the girl managed it. When she returned to paying attention to what was happening, Penthesilea and Imandra were embracing, and Imandra said, "I shall await your warriors the day after tomorrow; by that time the caravans will be loaded and the ships sailing away again to the secret mines in the northern countries. My guards will escort you back to the field where your women are encamped; the Goddess give you a good night; and you too, little kinswoman." Then she held out her hand. "My snake has abandoned me. Bid her return to me, Kassandra."

With a certain reluctance, Kassandra reached into the bosom of her dress and scooped out the snake, which draped itself loosely over her hand, twining round her wrist. She loosened it awkwardly with her other hand.

"You must come back and play with her again; usually if I ask someone to hold her for me, she is likely to bite," said Imandra. "But she has taken to you as if you were a priestess. Will you come?"

"I would find it a pleasure," Kassandra murmured, as Imandra scooped the snake from her wrist; it crawled swiftly up her arm and slithered down into the Queen's dress.

"Then I shall welcome you another day, daughter of Hecuba. Farewell."

As they returned, with the woman guards walking two paces behind them, Kassandra thought they were more like prisoners being escorted, than honored guests being protected. Nevertheless as they walked through the busy streets, she heard scufflings in alleys and once a muffled scream, and felt that here in this strange city it might not, after all, be entirely safe for women who were not a part of Colchis.

CHAPTER 9

Ten days later, Penthesilea rode out of Colchis with a picked group of Amazon warriors, Kassandra among them. They would accompany the caravans of tin, unloaded from the harbor ships, on their way southward to the faraway country of the Hittite kings.

Secretly Kassandra was remembering the words spoken in, prophecy: 'There remain till the spring stars fall!' Was her kinswoman then defying the command of the goddess? But it was not her place to ask questions. Across her shoulder she carried the Scythian bow, formed of a double span of horn, strung with the braided hair of her horse's tail. At her side was the short metaltipped javelin of an Amazon warrior. Riding next to Star she remembered that her friend had already fought in a battle.

Yet it seemed so peaceful this morning, the bright clear air adazzle with pale sunlight, a few clouds flying overhead. Their horses' hooves made a muffled sound on the road beneath, a counterpart to the heavy rumble of the carts, each drawn by two teams of mules, piled high with the wrapped bundles and crude ingots of the dull/shiny metal and covered with black cloth as heavy as a ship's sail.

The night before she had stood, with the other warriors, guarding the loading of the wagons; remembering the dense blackness of the ingots of iron, the dullness of the lumps of tin, she wondered why this ugly stuff should be so valuable. Surely there was enough metal in the depths of the earth that all men could have a share; why should men—and women - fight wars over the stuff? If there was not enough for all those who wished for it, certainly it would be easy enough to bring more from the mines. Yet it seemed that Queen Imandra took pride in the fact that there was not enough for everyone who wanted a share.

That day was uneventful; the Amazons rode along in single file over the great plain, slowed to the pace of the trundling wagons. Kassandra rode beside one of the blacksmith-women of

Colchis, talking with her about her curious trade; she discovered to her surprise that the woman was married and had three grown sons.

"And never a daughter I could train to my trade!"

Kassandra asked, "Why can you not teach your sons your trade of a smith?"

The small muscular woman frowned at her.

"I thought you women of the Amazon tribes would understand," she said. "You do not even rear your own men-children, knowing how useless they are. Look, girl; metal is ripped from the womb of the Earth Mother: what would be her wrath should any man dare to touch or mould her bounty? It is a woman's task to shape it into earthly form for men to use. No man may follow the smith's trade or the Earth Mother will not forgive his meddling."

If the Goddess does not wish this woman to teach her sons her craft, Kassandra thought,why did she give the woman no daughters ? But she was learning not to speak every thought that crossed her mind. She murmured, "Perhaps you will yet have a daughter," but the blacksmith grumbled, "What? Risk bearing again when I have lived almost forty winters?" and Kassandra made no answer. Instead she pulled her horse ahead to ride beside Star. The older girl was cleaning dirt from under her fingernails with a little chipped bone knife.

"Do you really think we shall have to fight?"

"Does it matter what I think? The Lady thinks so, and she knows more about it than I do."

Rebuffed again, Kassandra withdrew into her own thoughts. It was cold and windy; she drew her heavy mantle about her shoulders and thought about fighting. Since she had lived among the Amazons, she had been set every day to practice shooting with the bow, and had some skill with the javelin and even with the sword. Her eldest brother Hector had been in training as a warrior since he was old enough to grasp a sword in his hand; his first set of armor had been made for him when he was seven years old. Her mother too had been a warrior maiden, yet in Troy it had never occurred to anyone that Kassandra or her sister Polyxena should learn anything of weapons or of war. And although like all Priam's children she had been weaned on tales of heroes and glory, there were times when it seemed to her that war was an ugly thing and that she was better out of it. But if war was too evil a thing for women, why then should it be good for men? And if it were a fine and honorable thing for men, why should it be wrong for women to share the honor and the glory?

The only answer she could summon to solve her perplexity was Hecuba's comment:It is not the custom .

But why? she had asked, and her mother's only answer had been:Customs have no reason; they simply are .

She believed it no more now than she had believed it then.

Withdrawing into herself, she found herself seeking inward for her brother. Troy, and the sunny slopes of Mount Ida, seemed very far away. She thought of the day when he had pursued, and caught, the girl Oenone, and the curious passionate sensations their coupling had roused within her. She wondered where he was now and what he was doing.

But, except for a brief and neutral glimpse at the sheep and goats grazing on the slopes of Mount Ida, there was nothing to see. Usually, she thought, it is men who travel and women who remain at home; here I am far afield, and it is my brother who remains on the slopes of the sacred mountain. Well, why should it not be so once in the world?

Perhaps she would be the hero then, rather than Hector or Paris?

But nothing happened; the carts trundled along slowly and the Amazons rode behind them.

When the early-winter sunset stretched the shadows to ragged wavering forms, and the Amazons gathered their horses in a tight circle to camp, surrounding the wagons, Penthesilea voiced what had been in all their minds.

"Perhaps, with the caravan so guarded, they will not attack at all; perhaps we will simply waste a weary long journey."

"Wouldn't that be the best thing that could happen? For them never to attack at all, and the

caravan to reach the end of its journey in peace?" one of the women asked. "Then it would be settled without war…?"

"Not settled at all; we would know they were still lurking and the moment the guard was withdrawn they would swoop down again; we could waste all the winter here," another said. "I want to see these pirates disposed of once and for all."

"Imandra wants the lesson taught that the caravans from Colchis are not to be attacked," said one of the women fiercely. "And that lesson will be a good thing—"

They cooked a stew of dried meat over the fires and slept in a ring around the wagons; many of the women, Kassandra noted, invited the men from the wagons into their blankets. She felt lonely but it never occurred to her to do the same. She had also discovered during her time with the Amazons that many of the women, especially the young girls, chose lovers among themselves; sometimes she wished that someone would choose her, but she had no close friend among them. She was shy and solitary, knowing herself different. Little by little the camp fell silent, with no sound except the eternal wind of the plains; and they slept.

It seemed that the same day was repeated over and over again; they crawled like an inchworm wriggling across a leaf, keeping pace with the heavy wagons, and at the end of that time Kassandra, looking back over the vast plain, thought they seemed no more than a single good day's ride on a good fast horse from the iron-gated city of Colchis and its harbor of ships.

She had lost count of the tediously limping days, that brought no greater adventure than a bundle falling from a wagon, and the whole line of wagons coming to a halt while it was gathered up and laboriously hoisted back up again.

On the eleventh or twelfth day—she had lost count since there was nothing to mark out the time—she was watching one of the tied bundles inching its way slowly backward under the tarpaulin which covered the load. She knew she should ride forward and notify the carvan master, or at least the wagon driver so that it could be lashed tight, but when it fell at least it would be a break in the monotony. She counted the paces before it would become unbalanced and tumble off.

"War," she grumbled to Star. "This is hardly an adventure, guarding the caravans; will we travel all the long way to the country of the Hittites? And will it be any more interesting than this?"

"Who knows?" Star shrugged, "I feel we have been cheated -we were promised battle and good pay. And so far there has been nothing but this dreary riding." She twitched her shoulders. "At least the country of the Hittites would be something to see. I have heard that it never rains there; all their houses are made of mud bricks, so that if therewas ever a good rain, houses and temples and palaces and everything would wash away and their whole Empire would fall. But here, there is so little to think about that I am half tempted to invite that handsome horse-keeper into my bed."

"You would not!"

"No? Why not? What have I to lose? Except that it is forbidden to a warrior," said Star, "and if I had a child, I should spend my next four years suckling the brat, and washing swaddling clouts, instead of fighting and earning my place as a warrior."

Kassandra was a little shocked; Star spoke so lightly of such things.

"Haven't you seen him looking at me?" Star insisted. "He is handsome and his shoulders are very strong. Or are you going to be one of those maidens who are vowed to remain chaste as the Maiden Huntress?"

Kassandra had not thought seriously about it. She had assumed that for years at least she would remain with the Amazon warriors who took chastity as a matter of course.

"But all your life, Kassandra? To live alone? It must be well enough for a Goddess who can have any man she will," said Star, "but even the Maiden, it is said, looks down from Heaven now and again and chooses a handsome youth to share her bed."

"I do not believe that," said Kassandra. "I think men like to tell those tales because they do not like to think any woman can resist them; they do not want to think that even a Goddess could choose to remain chaste."

"Well, I think they are right," said Star. "It is what every woman desires; only among us, we are

not bound to remain with any man and keep his house and wait on his wishes; but without men we would have no children, either. I am eager to choose my first; and for all your talk I am sure you are no different from any of us."

Kassandra remembered the coarse shepherd who would have violated her, and felt sick. At least here among the Amazons no one would insist that she should give herself to any man unless she chose; and she could not imagine why any woman would choose such a thing.

"It's different for you, Kassandra," Star said. "You are a princess of Troy and your father will arrange a marriage with any man you wish; a king or a prince or a hero. There is nothing like that in my future."

"But if you want a man," Kassandra asked, "why are you riding with the Amazons?"

"I was given no choice," Star replied. "I am not an Amazon because I wished for it, but because my mother, and her mother before her, chose that way of life."

Kassandra said, "I can imagine no better life than this."

"Then you are short on imagination," Star said, "for almost any other life I can imagine would be better than this; I would rather be a warrior than a village woman with her legs broken, but I would rather live in a city such as Colchis and choose a husband for myself, than be a warrior."

It did not sound like the kind of life Kassandra would wish for and she could not think of anything else to say. She returned to watching the heavy wagon's bundles as they shifted, and she was half asleep in her saddle when a loud yell startled her and the wagon driver fell headlong to the trail, an arrow through his throat.

Penthesilea shouted to her women, and Kassandra slung her strung bow swiftly to her breast, nocked an arrow and let fly at the nearest of the ragged men who were suddenly swarming on the plain, as if they had sprung like the dragon's teeth from the sand. The arrow flew straight to its target; the man who had sprung up beside the driver fell off screaming, and at the same moment the heavy bundle clanged to the rocky path, crushing one of the attackers who was trying to pull himself up on the wagon. Man and metal rolled together down the slope, and one of the warriors leaped from her horse and ran toward him, thrusting quickly with her javelin.

One of the running men grabbed at Kassandra's saddle-straps and hauled at her leg; she kicked but he dragged her off and she struggled to get her knife free.

She thrust upward and he fell across her, blood streaming from his mouth; another thrust, with the javelin this time, and he fell lifeless across her body; she struggled to get herself free of his weight. Then there was a javelin aimed at her throat; she thrust upward with her knife to knock it aside and felt a tearing pain in her cheek.

A man was gripping her elbow; she knocked the elbow into his mouth and felt blood and a tooth sprayed into her face. Over her shoulder she could see many men hauling at the bundles of metal,

flinging them down into the roadway; she could hear Star screaming somewhere and the sound of arrows singing in flight. All round her was the high shrilling of the Amazon battlecry; Kassandra thrust her javelin and the man attacking her fell dead; she jerked her javelin free and found it covered with blood and entrails. Hastily unslinging her bow again she began shooting at the invaders, but as every arrow flew she was afraid it would hit one of her companions.

Then it was all over; Penthesilea ran toward the wagon, beckoning her women to rally close. Kassandra hurried to catch her horse, who, to her amazement, had come through the thick of the flying arrows untouched. The driver of the wagon was dead, lying back along the roadway. Star lay half crushed under her fallen horse; the beast had been slain by half a dozen of the strangers' arrows. Shocked, Kassandra ran to try and heave the horse from her friend's body. Star lay still, her dress torn, the back of her head smashed into a reddish mess, her eyes staring straight ahead.

She wanted a battle, Kassandra thought.Well, she had one . She bent over her friend and gently closed her eyes. Not till then did she realize that she herself was wounded; her cheek torn open, blood dripping from the flap of skin and torn flesh.

Penthesilea came to her and bent over Star's body.

"She was young to die," said the Amazon Queen gently. "But she fought bravely."

That was not, Kassandra thought,much good to Star now . The Amazon Queen looked her straight in the face and said, "But you too are wounded, child. Here, let me tend your wound."

Kassandra said dully, "It is nothing, it doesn't hurt."

"It will," said her kinswoman, and took her to one of the wagons, where Elaria washed the torn cheek with wine, and then dressed it with sweet oil.

"Now you are truly a warrior," said Elaria, and Kassandra remembered being told that on the night when she had killed the man who had tried to ravish her. But she supposed that a real battle made her more truly a fighting woman. She bore the wound proudly, the mark of her first battle.

Penthesilea, her face smeared with blood, bent close to examine the cleansed wound and frowned. "Bind it carefully, Elaria, or there will be a dreadful scar - and that we must not have."

"What does it matter?" Kassandra asked wearily. "Most Amazon warriors have scars." Penthesilea herself was dripping blood from an open slash on her chin. Kassandra touched her cheek with careful fingers. "When it is healed it will hardly show. Why make a fuss about it?"

"You appear to be forgetting, Kassandra, that you are not an Amazon."

"My mother herself was once a warrior," Kassandra protested. "She will understand an honorable scar of battle."

"She is a warrior no longer," Penthesilea said grimly. "She chose a long time ago what she

would be; that she would live with your father, keep his house, bear his children. So if your father is angry - and angry, believe me, he will be if we send you back to him with your beauty marred - your mother will be greatly distressed, and her goodwill is very valuable to us. You will go back to Troy when we head south in the spring."

"No!" Kassandra protested. "Only now am I beginning to be of some use to the tribe instead of a burden. Why should I go back to being a house mouse," she pronounced the words disdainfully, "just when I have shown myself fit to become a warrior?"

"Think, Kassandra, and you will know why you must go," Penthesilea replied. "You are becoming a warrior; which would be well and good were you to spend the rest of your life with us. I would welcome you among our tribe, a true warrior and a daughter to me as long as I live. But this cannot be; soon or late, you must return to your life in Troy - and since it must be so, then for your own sake it had best be soon. I would not send you back so changed that you would be miserable all your life if you must spend it within city walls." Kassandra knew this was true, but it seemed to her that she was being punished for becoming one of them.

"Don't look so downcast, bright-eyes; I am not sending you away tomorrow," her kinswoman said, and drew the girl to her breast, stroking her hair. "You will remain with us at least for another moon, perhaps two, and return with us to Colchis. Nor have I forgotten the promise I made you; the Goddess has called you to her service, she has set her hand upon you as priestessborn; we could not claim you as warrior in any case. Before you depart from among us, we shall see you presented to her."

Kassandra still felt that she had been cheated; she had worked so long and bravely to be accepted as an Amazon warrior, and it was that very hard work and bravery in battle which had lost her the coveted goal.

The scene of the battle was being cleared away; the bodies of the Amazons - besides Star, two other women had been slain by arrows and one crushed beneath a fallen horse - were being dragged away to be burnt. Penthesilea pushed Kassandra gently down when she would have risen.

"Rest, you are wounded."

"Rest? What are the other warriors doing, wounded or not? May I not bear the part of a warrior at least while I still remain among you?"

Penthesilea sighed. "As you will, then. It is your right to see those you have slain sent to the Lord of the Underworld." With tenderness she touched the girl's wounded cheek.

Goddess, Mother of Mares, Lady who shapes our Fates, she thought,why did you not send this one, the true daughter of my heart, to my womb, rather than to my sister who had chosen to give her to a man's dominion? She will know no happiness there and I see only darkness lying before her; darkness, and the shadow of another's fate .

Her heart yearned for Kassandra as never for her own daughters; yet she realized that Hecuba's daughter must bear her own destiny, which she could not abate, and that the Dark Goddess had set her hand on the girl.

Nowoman can escape her Fate , she thought,and it is ill done to seek to deprive the Earth Mother of her appointed sacrifice. Yet for love of her, I would send her to serve Earth Mother below, rather than sentence her to serve the Dark One here in mortal lands .

CHAPTER 10

Kassandra saw her companions consigned to the flames without any visible display of emotion; when they made camp that night, at their insistence, she spread her blankets between those of Penthesilea and Elaria.

It did filter through her mind that without consulting her, a decision had been made. Now that the worst of the danger was over, they seemed suddenly to have remembered that she wasa princess of Troy , and she was now to be carefully protected. But she was no more and no less a princess than she had been two or three days ago.

She missed Star, though they had not, she supposed, really been friends. Yet there was a subdued horror in Kassandra at the thought that every night on this journey she had spread out

her blankets on the trail close beside this girl whose body now lay burned to ashes after having been smashed into ruin and pierced with arrows.

A little less luck, an opponent a little more skilled and the javelin which had torn her cheek would have gone through her throat; it would have been her body burned tonight on that pyre. She felt vaguely guilty, and was too new to the warrior's world to know that every one of the women lying around her felt exactly the same way; guilty and troubled that it was she who was alive and her friend who had died.

Penthesilea had spoken of the Goddess laying her hand upon her, as if this were a fact like any other, and Kassandra found herself wondering if she had been spared because the Goddess had some use for her.

Her torn cheek itched with maddening ferocity, and when she raised her hand to try and ease it by scratching or rubbing, a sharp pain kept her from touching it. She shifted the cloak she had wadded under her head and tried to find a comfortable position to sleep. Which Goddess had laid a hand on her? There were many; the Moon Lady whose tides and daily shifting rhythms laid her compulsion in every female animal; the Mother of

Mares whom Penthesilea invoked; the Maiden Huntress, whose protection was on every maiden and everyone who shot with the bow, guardian of warriors; the Dark Mother of the under-earth, Snake Mother of the Underworld… but she, Kassandra thought in confusion as her thoughts began to blur into sleep, had been slain by Apollo's arrows…

There were so many Goddesses; every little village seemed to have a shrine to one or more of them, and yet Penthesilea had told her once, casually, that all these Goddesses were the same, although each village and tribe had its own name for her.

As often before sleep she reached out in her mind for the familiar touch of her twin's thoughts. There was the riffle of a wind from home, and the thyme-scented air of Mount Ida drifted through her senses; the darkness of the shepherd's hut she had never, in her own body, entered, was around her; she wondered what he would have thought of the battle. Or would this have seemed commonplace to him? No; for now she, a woman, had more experience of battle than he had. Shadowed darkly at her side she could see - or sense - a sleeping form she identified as the woman Oenone who had for so long been the center of her—ofhis fantasies. She had become accustomed in the last months to this curious division of herself and her twin, till she was no longer sure which sensations and emotions were hers and which Paris's. Was she asleep and dreaming? Was he? >

The moonlight illuminated the softly shining form of a woman standing in the shadowed doorway of the shepherd's hut, and she knew she looked on the form of the Lady; a Queen, regal and shining; now the shining one shifted, and the light streamed from the silver bow, with arrows of moonlight filling the little room.

The moonlight seemed to pierce through her body - or his -running through the veins, weaving around her like a net, drawing her toward the figure in the doorway. It seemed to her that she

stood, facing the Lady, and a voice spoke from behind her left shoulder.

"Paris, thou hast shown thyself a fair and honest judge." Kassandra saw again for an instant the bull Paris had awarded the prize at the fair. "Judge thou therefore among the Goddesses, which is the fairest."

"Truly," she felt Paris's reply come as if from her own mouth,"the Lady is most fair in all her guises…'

Boyish laughter echoed at her shoulder. "And canst thou worship Her with perfect equality in all the Goddesses—without preferring one above another? Even the Sky Father shies from such a difficult balance as that!" Something smooth and cool and very heavy was put into Paris's hands, and golden light shone up upon his face. "Take thou this apple, and offer it to the Most Fair Goddess."

The figure in the door shifted slightly; the full moon crowned it with a shining halo, and its robes shone like polished marble. Sky Father's Queen stood there, Hera, stately and majestic, rooted in earth but reigning over it. "Serve me, Paris, and you will be great. You shall rule over all the known countries, and the wealth of the world shall be yours."

Kassandra felt Paris bow his head. "Truly you are fair, Lady, Most Powerful Queen." But the apple still lay heavy in his hand.

She looked up cautiously, fearing the Lady's wrath, but now the moon seemed to shine through a golden haze, glinting from the helmet and shield the Lady bore. The golden light radiated from her as well, and even the owl on her right shoulder shone with reflected glory.

"You will have much wisdom, Paris," Athene said. "Already you know that you cannot rule the world unless you first rule yourself. I shall give you knowledge of self, and build upon it all other knowledge. You will have wisdom to live well, and achieve victory in all battles."

"I thank you, Lady, but I am a shepherd, not a warrior. And there is no war here - who would dare to challenge the rule of King Priam?"

Kassandra thought she saw a look of scorn on the Lady's face, but then she moved, coming close enough so that Kassandra felt she could reach out and touch her. Her shield and helmet had disappeared, as had her pale draperies, and light radiated from her perfect body. Paris brought his hands, stll clasping the apple, up to shield his eyes. "Bright Lady," he murmured.

"There are other battles a shepherd can easily win—and what victory can there be without love and a lady to share it? Thou art fair, Paris, and most pleasing to all the senses." Her breath brushed against his cheek and he felt dizzy, as if the entire mountain were spinning around him. The air around him was warm; he shone brilliantly, bathed in the Lady's golden glow, her voice continued, soft and seductive, pulling him towards her. "You are a man any woman would be proud to marry -even such a woman as Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world."

"Surely no mortal woman could compare with you, Lady." Paris looked into Aphrodite's eyes, and Kassandra had the curious impression that she and he were drowning together, washed away in the tide of light that shone from the eyes of the Queen of Love.

"But Helen is not entirely mortal; she is a daughter of Zeus -and her mother was fair enough to tempt him. She is almost as beautiful as I am, and she holds Sparta as well. All men desire her; all the Kings among the Argives sued for her hand. She chose Menelaus, but I assure you that one look at you would make her forget that choosing. For you are beautiful, and beauty draws all to itself."

Kassandra thought of Oenone, lying entranced at Paris's side;What does he want of a beautiful woman? He already has one - but Paris seemed unaware of her presence. The apple seemed feather-light in his hands as he handed it to her, and the golden glow brightened as if it would consume him…

The sunlight was shining in her eyes through the tent flap that Elaria had just opened. "How are you feeling this morning, bright-eyes?"

Kassandra stretched warily, slitting her eyes against the light -only sunlight, after all. Had it been a vision, or only a dream, and had it been her dream, or her brother's? Three Goddesses -but not one of them had been the Maiden Huntress. Why not?

Perhaps Paris has no interest in Maidens, she thought flippantly. But neither had there been any

sign of Earth Mother - or was Earth Mother the same as Hera? No, for Earth Mother is Goddess by her own right, not wife even to a God, and those Goddesses were all defined as wife or daughter to Sky Father. Are those, then, the same as the Goddesses of Troy?

No, they could not be; why would a Goddess agree to be judged by any man—or even by any God?

None of these Goddesses is the Goddess as I know her—the Maiden, Earth Mother, Serpent Mother—nor even Penthesilea's Mother of Mares. Perhaps a land where the Sky Gods rule, can only those Goddesses be seen who are perceived as servants to the God? This left her more confused than ever.

It cannot have beenmydream, for if I had dreamed of Goddesses I would have dreamed of those Goddesses I worship and honor. I have heard of these Goddesses; Mother told me of Athene with her gifts of olive and grape, but they are not mine, nor of the Amazons .

"Kassandra? Are you still sleeping?" asked Elaria. "We are to return to Colchis, and Penthesilea has been asking for you."

"I am coming," said Kassandra, pulling her breeches on. As she moved the curious tension of the dream - or vision—seemed to slip away, so that in her mind was only the curious memory of the alien Goddesses.

The vision is my brother's, not mine.

"Say to my kinswoman that I am coming," Kassandra said. "Let me but brush my hair."

"Let me help you," Elaria said, and knelt beside her. "Does your head hurt? The bandage has come away from your face; ah, good; there is no sign of a scar, it is healing cleanly. The Goddess has been kind to you."

To herself Kassandra wondered, "Which Goddess? but she did not speak the question aloud. In a few minutes she was in the saddle, and as they turned toward Colchis for the long ride, Kassandra saw before her in the brilliant sunlight the faces and forms of all the world's Goddesses; but what did these Goddesses of the Akhaians want with my brother, or with me? Or with Troy?

CHAPTER 11

Riding at their own pace and no longer held to the slow lumbering of the clumsy tin wagons, Penthesilea, Kassandra and the other Amazons who were returning to Colchis left the caravan to make its way to the faraway country of the Hittites.-Kassandra's face ached, and the jolting of her horse made it worse. She wondered what fortune the rest of the warriors would have on their journey and almost wished she could ride with them to that unknown land, even if only to join

them in battle or death. But, she thought, I should not complain; I have already travelled further from my home than any woman of Troy has ever travelled, further than any of my brothers, or even Priam himself.

Penthesilea seemed unconcerned about attack as they retraced their way toward the city; perhaps the Amazons were not worth attacking without the metal they guarded. And who would guard the next caravan, with so many of the Amazons gone to guard this one? she wondered but she knew it was not her affair.

Now that she thought about it, she was eager to see more of the city of Colchis; Penthesilea's oracle had commanded her to remain for some time. All she had to look forward to after this was a return to Troy. Now she understood what her kinswoman meant saying that she should return before she was completely unfit for the ordinary life of a woman of Troy.But , thought Kassandra,it is already too late for that .

I shall go mad, prisoned inside house walls for the rest of my life.

And then she remembered her vision of the Goddesses and of her brother. With this gift she would always have a way of going outside her immediate surroundings, and thus she was more fortunate than many other women.

But was it any kind of substitute for actual change? Or merely a mockery, that her mind should escape the imprisoning walls when her body could not?

She felt she would like to talk about this at length with her mother, who had lived both lives and might understand. But would her mother be willing to talk about it freely, having made her own irrevocable choice? What had her mother gained for all she had given up? Would she still make the same choice?

Yet Kassandra knew she would never really have that opportunity. To Hecuba it was important that she should be seen as powerful and to this end she would never admit to Kassandra - or to anyone else - that she might have made a choice that was less than perfect.

Who else was there to talk to? Was there anyone to whom she could confide her confusion and distress? She could think of no one. It was unlikely that Penthesilea would be ready for such a talk. Kassandra was sure her kinswoman loved her, but that she regarded Kassandra as a child, not an equal with whom she would talk freely.

Even though they were travelling at the best speed of their horses, the ride to Colchis seemed all but endless. At the end of the first day they came within sight of the high walls of the iron-gated city, but there was still a long way to go; days in the saddle from first light, broken at noon for the usual cheese or curds. At least it was better than the hunger in the southern pastures. It was sunset of the third or fourth day when at last the tired riders rode under the great gates and towers. They set up a cheer in which Kassandra joined, but opening her mouth to cheer made the bandaged cut on her face ache. It was growing cold, and rain was threatening.

Within the shadow of the walls, a messenger from the palace came and spoke to Penthesilea; after which she beckoned to Kassandra.

"You and I are bidden to the palace, Kassandra; the rest of you, join the others in the camp."

Kassandra wondered what the Queen wanted of them. They trotted slowly through the cobbled streets, gave up their horses at the gates, and were conducted by Queen Imandra's women into the royal presence.

She was waiting for them in the same room where she had greeted them before. A young girl with coils of dark curls arranged low on her neck sprawled beside her on a rug.

"You have done well," Imandra said, gesturing them to come forward; seizing Penthesilea's hand she slid on it a bracelet of carved golden leaves, set with bits of green stone. Kassandra had never seen anything so beautiful.

"I will not keep you long," said the Queen, "you will be wanting a bath and dinner, after your long journey. Still, I wanted to speak with you for a little."

"It is our pleasure, kinswoman," Penthesilea said.

"Andromache," said Queen Imandra, gesturing to the girl on the rug beside her,"this is your cousin, Kassandra, daughter of Hecuba of Troy. She is the sister of Hector, your promised

husband."

The dark-haired girl sat up, flinging her long curls to one side. "You are Hector's sister?" she inquired eagerly. "Tell me about him. What is he like?"

"He is a bully," Kassandra said forthrightly. "You must be very-firm with him or he will treat you like a rug and walk all over you—and you will be no more than a timid little thing perpetually yessing him, as my mother does to my father."

"But that is suitable for a husband and wife," said Andromache. "How would you have a man behave?"

"It's useless to talk to her, Kassandra," said Queen Imandra. "She should have been born to one of your city-dwelling women. I had intended her for a warrior, as you can tell from the name I gave her."

"It's useless to say that to Kassandra," said Penthesilea,"she speaks no language but her own."

"It's horrible," Andromache said. "My name means "Who fights like a man"—and who would want to?"

"I would," said Penthesilea, "and I do."

"I don't want to be rude to you, kinswoman," said Andromache, "but I don't like fighting at all. My mother can't forgive me that I was not born to be a warrior like her, to bring her all kinds of honor at arms."

"But the wretched girl," Imandra said, "will have nothing to do with weapons; she is lazy and childish, she only wants to stay indoors and wear pretty clothes. And already her mind is full of men. When I was her age I hardly knew there were men in the world except for my arms-master and I only wanted him to be proud of me. I made the mistake of letting her be brought up by women, indoors; I should have turned her over to you, Penthesilea, as soon as she could sit a horse. What sort of Queen is this for Colchis? Good for nothing except to marry - and what good is that?"

"Oh, Mother!" said Andromache, crossly. "You must accept that I am not like you. To hear you talk one would think that there is nothing to life except war and weapons and the ruling of your city, and beyond that, trade and ships beyond the borders of your world."

Imandra smiled and said, "I have found nothing better. Have you?"

"And what of love?" asked Andromache. "I have heard women talk—real women, not women who are pretending to be warriors—"

Imandra stopped her short by leaning over and slapping her face.

"How dare you say "pretending" to be a warrior? I am a warrior, and no less a woman for that!"

Andromache's smile was wicked, even though she put her hand to her reddening cheek.

"Men say that women who take up weapons are only pretending to be warriors because they are unable to spin and weave and make tapestries and bear children—"

"I did not find you under an olive tree," interrupted Imandra.

"And where is my father to say so?" asked the girl impudently.

Imandra smiled. "What does our guest say? Kassandra, you have lived both ways—"

"By the girdle of the Maiden," Kassandra said, "I would rather be a warrior than a wife."

"That seems to me folly," said Andromache, "for it has not brought happiness to my mother."

"Yet I would not change with any woman, wedded or unwedded, on the shores of the sea," said Imandra. "And I do not know what you mean by happiness. Who has put these sentimental notions into your head?"

Penthesilea spoke for the first time and said, "Let her alone, Imandra; since you have decided she is to be married, it is just as well she should be contented in that state. A girl that age does

not know what she wants, nor why; that is so among our girls as well as yours."

Kassandra looked down at the soft-skinned, rosy-cheeked young girl at her side. "I think you are quite perfect as you are; I find it hard even to imagine you otherwise."

Andromache lifted her hand toward Kassandra's bandaged cheek. "What have you done to yourself, cousin?"

"Nothing worth mentioning," Kassandra said. "No more than a scratch." And indeed before Andromache's soft eyes she felt it truly nothing, a trivial incident she should be ashamed to mention.

Imandra leaned forward, and as she did so, Kassandra saw the small squarish head sliding out of her bodice. She put out her hand. "May I?" she asked, pleading, and the snake glided forward to slide round her wrist. Imandra guided the snake into her hand.

"Will she speak to you?"

Andromache looked on with a frown. "Ugh, how can you touch those things? I have such a horror of them."

Kassandra brought the snake caressingly to her cheek. "But that is foolish," she said. "She will not bite me, and if she did it would do me very little harm."

"It has nothing to do with fear of being bitten," Andromache -said. "It is not right, notnormal to be unafraid of snakes. Even a monkey who has been kept in a cage for all its life, and never seen a living snake, will cry and shiver if you so much as throw a piece of rope into his cage, thinking it is a snake. And I think men too are intended by nature to be afraid of snakes."

"Well, perhaps then I am not normal," Kassandra snapped. She bent her head close to the snake, crooning to it.

Imandra said gently, "It is not for everyone, Kassandra. Only for such as you, who are born with the link to the Gods."

"I do not understand this," Kassandra said, feeling sullen and inclined to contradict everything that was said to her. Petting the snake, she said, "I dreamed the other night - or perhaps it was a vision of some sort - of the Goddesses. But the Serpent Mother was not one of them—"

"You dreamed? Tell me about it," said Imandra, but Kassandra hesitated. Partly she felt that to tell her dream might dilute the magic; it had been sent to her as a sacred secret and was not intended for anyone else. She cast a pleading look at Penthesilea, for she did not want to offend the Queen who had been so good to them, either.

"I advise you to tell her, Kassandra," said the Amazon Queen. "She is herself a priestess of the Earth Mother, and perhaps she can tell you what this means to your destiny."

Thus encouraged, Kassandra began, detailing every moment of her vision, ending with her confusion that neither the Maiden, nor Earth Mother, nor Serpent Mother had appeared among the Goddesses. Imandra listened intently, even when Kassandra, momentarily overcome by the memory, let her voice sink to a whisper.

When she finished, Imandra asked quietly, "Was this your first encounter with any of the Immortals?"

"No, Lady; I have seen the Mother Goddess of Troy speak through my mother's mouth, though I must have been very small indeed at the time. And once…' she swallowed, lowered her head and tried to steady her voice, knowing that if she did not she would break into wild weeping without knowing why, "Once… in his own temple… Apollo Sunlord spoke clearly to me…'

She felt Imandra's gentle fingers rest on her hair.

"It is as I thought when first I spoke with you; you have been called as a priestess. Do you know what that means?"

Kassandra shook her head and tried to guess.

"That I must live in the Temple and care for the oracles and the rites?"

"No, it is not as simple as that, child," Imandra told her. "It means that from this very day you must stand between men and Immortals, to explain the ways of the one to the other… it is not a life I would choose for my own daughter."

"But why have I been chosen?"

"Only those who called you know the answer to that, little one," Imandra said, and her voice was very gentle. "On some of us they lay their hand in a way we cannot mistake. They do not explain their ways to us. But if we try to escape their will they have ways of forcing us to their service, forget it not… no one seeks to be chosen; it is the Gods who choose us, not we who seek to give our service to them."

Yet, thought Kassandra,I think I would have sought this service… at least I do not come to it unwilling . The snake seemed to have fallen asleep in a heavy puddle on her arm; Imandra leaned forward and scooped it up still sleeping, letting it slide as if melting down the front of her dress.

"When next the moon shines full, you shall seek her," she said. And Kassandra felt an omen in the way she spoke.

CHAPTER 12

"I know so little of being a priestess," Kassandra said. "What must I do?"

"If the Goddess has called you, she will make it clear to you," said Penthesilea, "and if she has not, it does not matter what you-do or do not do; it will be all the same."

She patted Kassandra on the head and said, "You must get yourself a snake, and a pot to keep it in."

"I would rather keep it inside my dress as the Queen does."

"That is all very well," said Penthesilea, "but any animal must have a place that is all her own, for a refuge."

Kassandra could very well understand that. And so she went to the market with her kinswoman, seeking a pot for her snake; tomorrow, she told herself, she would go into the countryside, seeking a snake for herself. It did not seem suitable to buy one at the market for money, though she supposed she could speak with the people who raised snakes for the temple. Perhaps Imandra could be persuaded to tell her what she should know.

She searched among the pot-sellers in the marketplace, and finally found a vessel tinted bluegreen and decorated <,with sea-creatures; on one side stood a priestess offering a serpent to some unfamiliar Goddess. It seemed to Kassandra that this was the perfect pot in which to keep her snake and she at once bought it with the money that Penthesilea had given to her. There were

many pots decorated exactly like it, and she wondered if they were all put to the same use.

That evening as the sun set, she stood with Andromache on the palace roof, looking down into the darkness of the town as one by one, lights were kindled in the city below.

"You cannot go before the Goddess in leather Amazon breeches," said Andromache. "I will lend you a robe."

Kassandra frowned. "Is the Goddess a fool? I am what I am; do you think I can deceive her by changing my garment?"

"You are right, of course," Andromache said soothingly, "it cannot matter to the Goddess. But other worshippers might see and be scandalized, not understanding."

"That is another matter," Kassandra agreed, "and I understand what you mean; I will wear a robe if you are kind enough to lend me one."

"Certainly, my sister," said Andromache, then hesitated, saying almost defensively, "You will be my sister if I marry your brother, and when I come to Troy I will have a friend in your strange city."

"Of course." Kassandra slipped her arm around the younger girl, and they stood close in the darkness. "But Troy is no stranger thanyour city."

"Stranger to me, though," said the young girl. "I am accustomed to a city where a Queen rules. Truly, does your mother Hecuba not rule the city?"

Kassandra giggled a little at the thought of Hecuba ruling over her stern father.

"No, she does not. And your mother—has she no husband?"

"What should she do with a husband? Two or three times since my father died, she has taken a consort for a season and sent him away when she was tired of him—that is what is right for a Queen to do if she has desire for a man—at least in our city."

"And yet you are willing to marry my brother and be subject to him as our women are subject to their men?"

"I think I shall enjoy it," Andromache said with a giggle, and then cried out.

"Oh, look!"

Across the sky a line of brilliant light slashed and was gone.

Another followed it swiftly, and another, so brightly that for a moment it seemed that the earth itself reeled as the sky displaced itself. Star after star seemed to lose its moorings and fall, as the

two girls watched. Kassandra murmured, "There remain till the Spring stars fall…'

In the darkness a shadow separated, became two, and Queen Imandra and Penthesilea appeared on the roof.

"Ah; I thought perhaps you were here, girls. It is as they told us," said Penthesilea, looking up at the shimmering heavens, as star after star appeared to detach itself from the sky and shimmer downward, "a shower of falling stars."

"But how can the stars fall? Will they all fall out of the sky?" Andromache asked, "and what will happen when they are all gone?"

Penthesilea chuckled and said, "Never fear, child, I have seen the star-showers every year for many years; there are always plenty left in the sky."

Imandra added, "Besides, I cannot see how it would affect us here on earth if they all fell except that I should be sorry not to have their light."

"Once," said Penthesilea, "when I was a very young woman, I was with my mother and her tribe - we were riding on the plains far to the north of here, among the iron mountains - and a star fell close to us, with a great crackling and sizzling noise and light. We searched all the night, in the smell of the burnt air, and at last we found a great black stone, still glowing red; that is why many believe that the stars are molten fire which cools to' rock. My mother left me this sword,

which I saw forged of the sky-metal."

"Sky iron is better than iron ripped from the Earth," confirmed Imandra, "perhaps because it is not under the curse of the Mother - it has not been torn from the Earth but is a gift of the Gods."

"I wish I could find a fallen star," murmured Andromache,"they are so beautiful."

She was still encircled in Kassandra's arm, and her tone was so wistful that Kassandra murmured, "I wish I could find one and give it to you as a gift worthy of you, little sister."

Penthesilea said, "So we are free to return to our own plains and pastures; we do not yet know why the Goddess sent us here."

"Whatever the reason," said Imandra, "it was my good fortune; perhaps the Goddess knew I had need of you here. When you go southward, you shall ride with my gifts. And if some, of your women choose to remain and instruct the women of my guards they shall be well paid." She looked upward where the stars were still tumbling and dancing across the sky and murmured, "Perhaps the Goddess has sent this as an omen for your journey before her, Kassandra. There was no such omen for me when I sought her far country to offer my service," she added, almost enviously.

"Where must I go?" asked Kassandra, "and must I journey alone?"

Imandra touched her hand gently in the dark. She said, "The journey is of the spirit, kinswoman; you need not travel a single step. And although you will have many companions, every candidate journeys alone, as the soul is always alone before the Gods."

Kassandra's eyes were dazzled by the falling stars, and in the strange mood of the night it seemed that Imandra's words had some curious and profound meaning stronger than the words themselves implied.

"Tell me more about the metal from the sky," said Andromache. "Should we not search for it, since it is falling all around us, and we need not mine it nor send for it on the ships from the Northern lands?"

Imandra said, "My court astrologers foretold this star-shower, and they will be watching from a field outside the city, with swift horses, so that if a star should fall near, they will go out and search for it. It would be impious to let a gift of the Gods go thus unclaimed or to let it fall into the hands of others who would not treat it with due reverence."

It seemed to Kassandra that hundreds of stars had fallen; but looking into the dark lightsprinkled heavens overhead there were quite as many as ever. Perhaps, she thought, new stars grow when these fall. The spectacle was beginning to seem quite ordinary, and she turned her eyes from the sky, sighing.

"You should go to bed," Penthesilea said, "for tomorrow you will be taken with the others who

are to seek the Goddess in her country. And eat well before you sleep, for tomorrow you will be required to fast the day through."

"You will sleep in my room this night," Andromache said, "because I have promised to lend her a robe for tomorrow, Mother."

"That was a kindly thought for your kinswoman," Imandra said. "Get you to bed, then, girls, and do not lie awake long talking and giggling together."

"I promise," Andromache said, and drew Kassandra to the dark staircase leading down into the palace. She took Kassandra to her own room, where she called one of her serving-women to bathe them both and bring bread and fruit and wine. When they had bathed and eaten, Andromache leaned on the windowsill.

"Look, cousin, the stars are still falling."

"No doubt they will do so all the night," Kassandra said. "Unless one falls through the window into our chamber, I cannot see that it makes any difference to us."

"I suppose not," said Andromache. "If one should fall here, Kassandra, you can have it for a sword like Penthesilea's; I have no desire for weapons."

"I suppose I have no need for them either, since it seems I

no am not to be a warrior, but a priestess," said Kassandra, sighing.

"Would you rather be a warrior for all your life, Kassandra?" But Kassandra set her teeth and said, "I do not think it ever matters what I would rather; my destiny has been set, and no one can fight fate, no matter what weapons they may bear."

When both girls lay side by side in Andromache's bed, and even the intermittent light of the falling stars had dimmed toward morning, Kassandra sensed through her fitful sleep that someone stood in the door; she half roused to murmur a question, but she was still held in sleep and knew she made no sound. Drowsily she knew that it was Penthesilea who stole quietly into the room-to stand looking down at them in the moonlight for a long time, and then reached down to touch her hair for an instant as if in blessing. Then, although Kassandra did not see her leave the room, she was gone and there was only moonlight there.

CHAPTER 13

The dawn was just paling in the sky when a woman entered the room, unannounced, and flung open the draperies. Andromache buried her head under the blankets against the light, but Kassandra sat up in bed and looked at her. She was a woman of Colchis, dark and sturdily built, with the self-confident bearing of one of Penthesilea's warrior women; she wore a long robe of

bleached linen, pure white and unadorned. About her wrist coiled a small green serpent, and Kassandra knew she was a priestess.

"Who are you?" Kassandra asked.

"My name is Evadne, and I am a priestess sent to prepare you," she said. "Is it you or your companion who is to face the Goddess this day? Or, perhaps, both of you?"

Andromache uncovered one eye and said, "I was initiated last year; it is my cousin only." She shut her eyes and seemed to sleep again. Evadne gave Kassandra a droll smile, then became very serious again.

"Tell me," she said, "all women owe service to the Immortals; and all men too; do you mean that you will do them service when they ask it of you or that you will devote your life to serving them?"

"I am willing to devote my life to that service," Kassandra said, "but I do not know what it is that they ask of me."

Evadne handed her the robe Andromache had laid over a bench. "Let us go into the outer room so we will not disturb the princess," she said. When they were in the outer chamber she said, "Now tell me, why do you wish to become a priestess?"

Kassandra then told the story again of what had happened to her in the Sunlord's House, for the first time speaking without an instant of hesitation; this woman knew the Immortals, and if anyone alive could understand, she would be the one. Evadne listened without comment, smiling slightly at the end.

"The Sunlord is a jealous master," she said at last, "and it comes to me that he has called you. All the same, the Mother owns every woman, and I cannot deny you the right to face her."

Kassandra said, "My mother told me that Serpent Mother and the Sunlord are ancient enemies. Tell me, Lady—" the term of respect came naturally to her lips,"she said that Apollo Sunlord fought Serpent Mother and that he slew her; is this true? Am I disloyal to the Sunlord if I serve the Mother, then?"

"She who is the Mother of All was never born - and so she can never be slain," Evadne said, making a reverent gesture. "As for the Sunlord, the Immortals understand one another and they do not see these things the way we might. Earth Mother, so they say, first had her shrine where Apollo built his Oracle; and they say that while the shrine was a-building, a great serpent or dragon came out of the very navel of the earth, and the Sunlord - or, perhaps his priest, it makes no difference—slew the beast with his arrows. And so, I think, some ignorant folk put it about that he had a quarrel with the Serpent Mother; but the Sunlord, like all other created beings, is her child."

"Then, although it is the Sunlord who has called me, I may answer the call of the Mother?"

"All created beings owe service to her," said the priestess, repeating her reverent gesture, "and more than that I may not say to the uninitiated. Now, I think, you should wash and make yourself ready to join the others who will make this journey with you. Later, if you wish, I can tell you some tales of the Goddess as she is worshipped here."

Kassandra hastened to obey, neatly arranging the gown she had so quickly thrown on. Andromache's robe was too long for her, and hung loose about her ankles; she tucked it up through her girdle so that she could walk easily. Then she combed her dark hair and left it unbound, as she had been told was seemly for virgins in this city, though it was troublesome to feel it hanging loose and blowing in the wind instead of being neatly braided.

Outside in the street she could hear the sounds of the festival; women were coming out of the houses and were running about carrying green branches and bunches of flowers. Evadne came and led her into the throne room where a number of girls about her own age were gathered; the throne was empty today, covered with a cloth of woven gold, on which coiled Imandra's great snake.

"Look," whispered one of the girls. "They say the Queen is also a priestess who can transform herself into a snake."

"What nonsense," Kassandra said. "The Queen is elsewhere and has left her serpent on the throne as a symbol of her power."

Penthesilea was among the women waiting. Kassandra stole to her kinswoman's side and the Amazon Queen took her hand and held it tight; although Kassandra was not exactly frightened, she was glad of the reassurance of the touch. Imandra was there among them too, but at first Kassandra had not recognized her, for the Queen wore the ordinary dress of a priestess. This seemed reasonable to Kassandra—it was also the custom in Troy that the Queen should be the mortal representative of the Great Goddess.

She was surprised not to find Andromache also among them; if her cousin had been initiated last year, why did she not join the other priestesses? Still, it seemed Andromache was not particularly involved in religion; was this, she wondered, another reason Imandra hesitated to have her daughter succeed her as Queen? She had not known this was how Imandra felt till now; but she was growing accustomed to knowing or hearing the unspoken and seeing the invisible.

Imandra gestured the chattering girls to silence; the women who were already initiated priestesses gathered around her. Kassandra realized that she was the eldest of the candidates remaining; probably it was the custom in this city to initiate women somewhat younger. She wondered if all of these girls were to dedicate their lives to the Goddess, or only to 'offer service when it was asked of them', which was the alternative Evadne had suggested. Either way this was a preliminary initiation and taken for granted, it seemed, as a first step to service to the Immortals.

The older women gathered the uninitiated girls into a circle in their midst, with Imandra at their

center. Behind them Kassandra heard from somewhere the beating of a drum, a soft incessant sound like a heartbeat.

"At this time of the year," Imandra intoned, "we celebrate the return of Earth's daughter from the underground where she has been imprisoned during the chill of the winter season. We see her coming as the green of spring spreads over the barren lands, clothing the meadows and woods with the brightness of leaves and flowers."

Silence, except for the unending thrumming of the drums beaten by the women behind them.

"Here we sit in darkness, awaiting the return of Light; here we shall descend, each of us, to seek Earth's daughter, into the realms of darkness. Each of us shall be purified and learn the ways of Truth."

The story went on in a monotone, telling the tale of Earth's daughter, and how she had been lured into the underground realms, and how the serpents had comforted her and sworn that no one of them would ever harm her. Kassandra had heard only scraps of the story before this; either because the story was not known to the uninitiated, or was not considered suitable hearing for outsiders. She listened intently, fascinated, her head aching with the sound of the drums that went on and on, never ceasing, behind the voices.

It began to seem as if she were caught in a dream that went on and on for many days, knowing she was awake, but never fully conscious. Some time later she became aware, without the slight-,

est idea how or where it had happened, that they were no longer in the throne room, but in a great dark cave with water trickling from the damp walls that rose far overhead into great echoing spaces which made the voices ring hollow and drowned even the sound of the drums.

Somewhere there was a reed flute whispering thin music and calling to her in a voice she almost knew. Then she felt - for it was too dim to see anything - a flat pottery bowl with raised design being passed from hand to hand, each girl in turn raising the bowl to her lips, drinking, and passing it on. She could never remember afterward what they had said when she was bidden to drink. She thought, till she touched her lips to the brew, that it was wine.

She tasted a curious slimy bitterness that was almost but not quite the taste of the blighted rye Penthesilea had bidden her remember; as she drank she thought her stomach would rebel, but with a fierce effort she controlled the queasiness and brought her attention back to the drums. The story had ended; for the life of her she could not remember how it had ended, or what had been the fate of Earth's daughter.

After a time her disorientation became so great that it seemed she was no longer within the circle of women in the cave; she had no idea where she was but she did not wonder about it. It did cross her mind that perhaps the brew had been some kind of drug, but she did not wonder about that either. She touched the chilly damp ground and was surprised that it felt like ordinary paving stone - had she moved at all? Strange colours crawled before her eyes and it seemed for a moment that she was walking through a great dark tunnel.

Share with Earth's daughter the descent into darkness, a voice guided her from afar; whether a real voice or not she never knew.One by one you must leave behind all the things of this world which are dear to you, for now you have no part in them .

She discovered that she was wearing her weapons; she would willingly have taken oath that she had left them behind this morning. Through the sound of the drums the guiding voice came again:

This is the first of the gates of the Underworld; here you must give up what binds you to Earth and the realms of Light.

Kassandra fumbled with the unfamiliar girdle of the robe she was wearing, and unfastened the jewelled belt which fastened her sword and spear. She remembered Hecuba admonishing her to wear them always with honor; but that was very far away and had nothing to do with this dark chamber. Had Penthesilea too come to this dark doorway and yielded up her weapons? She heard the sword and spear slide to the floor and strike there with a metallic sound within the noise of the drums.

Why did her hands move so slowly, or had she moved them at all? Was it all an illusion of the drums, or was she still crouched motionless in the dark circle, even while she strode boldly down the dark tunnel, clad in Andromache's long ungirt robe which somehow did not trip her up at all.

Somewhere there was an eye of fire; flames below her? Or was she looking into the slitted eye

of the serpent?

It surveyed her unblinking, and a voice demanded:

This is the second Gate of the Underworld, where you must give up your fears or whatever holds you back from travelling this realm as one of those whose feet know and tread the Path in my very footprints.

The serpent's eye was close now; it moved, caressing her, and in a flicker of memory - centuries ago, in another life perhaps? - she remembered how she had caressed the serpents in the Sunlord's house, and embraced them without fear. She embraced them again, and the eye came closer and closer; the world narrowed further till there was nothing in the dark with her except the serpent's embrace. Pain stabbed through her until she was certain she was dying, and she sank into death almost with relief.

But she was not dead; she was still moving through the fiery darkness alone; but there was a voice heard through the thrumming of the drums, which went on until her whole head was ringing with it.

Now you are in My kingdom, and this is the third and final

Gate of the Underworld. Here there is nothing left to you but your life. Will you lay that down as well to serve Me?

Kassandra thought madly,I can't imagine what good my life would be to Her, but I've come so far, I won't turn back now . She thought that she spoke aloud, but a part of her mind insisted that she made no sound, that speech was an illusion, like everything else which had happened to her on this journey - if it was indeed a journey and not a curious dream.

I will not turn back now, even if it means my life. I have given all else, take this as well, Dark Lady.

She hung senseless in the darkness, shot through with fire, surrounded by the rushing sound of wings.

Goddess, if I am to die for you, at least let me once behold your face!

There was a little lightening of the darkness; before her eyes she saw a swirling paleness… from which gradually emerged a pair of dark eyes, a pallid face… she had seen the face before, reflected in a stream… it was her own. A voice very close to her whispered through the drumming and the whining flutes:

Doyou not yet know that you are I, and I am you ?

Then the rushing wings took her, blotting out everything. Wings and dark hurricane winds, thrusting her upward, upward toward the light, protesting,but there is so much more to know …

The winds were ripping her asunder; a lightning-flash revealing cruel eyes and beaks, rending, tearing—it was as if something alien flowed through her, filling her up like deep dark water, crowding out all thought and awareness. She looked down from a great height on someone who was and at the same time was not herself, and knew she looked on the face of the Goddess. Then her tenuous hold on consciousness surrendered, and, still protesting, she fell into an endless silent chasm of blinding light.

Someone was gently touching her face.

"Open your eyes, my child."

Kassandra felt sick and weak, but she opened her eyes to silence and cool damp air. She was back in the cavern… had she ever left it? Her head was pillowed in Penthesilea's lap; the older woman's face was blurred with such a halo of light that Kassandra shielded her eyes with her hands and blurted out, "But you—youare the Goddess—" and was silent in awe before her kinswoman. Her eyes hurt and she closed them.

"Of course," the older woman whispered, "and so are you, my child, never forget that—"

"But what happened? Where am I? I was—"

Penthesilea quickly covered Kassandra's lips with a warning hand.

"Hush; it is forbidden to speak of the Mystery," she said. "But you have come far indeed; most candidates go no further than the First Gate. Come," Penthesilea murmured, "come."

Kassandra rose, stumbling, and her kinswoman steadied her.

The drums were silent; only the fire and a thin wailing. Now she could see the flute player, a thin woman hunched behind the fire. Her eyes were vacant and she swayed faintly as if in ecstasy; but the fire and the flute at least had been real. In a circle around them, about half the maidens still lay entranced, each watched over by one of the older priestesses. There were vacant spaces in the circle. Penthesilea urged her to make her way carefully, touching no one, toward the entrance of the cavern. Outside it was raining, but from the dim twilight she could tell that the day was almost over. The drops of rain felt icy and clean on her face. She felt sick and fiercely thirsty; she tried to catch rain in her hands and sip the drops, but Penthesilea led her through a door she vaguely remembered seeing, and then she was in Imandra's lamp-lit throne room, where the magical journey had begun. She still walked carefully, as if she were a fragile jar filled to the brim with alien wine which would spill if she made a careless movement. Queen Imandra came from somewhere and embraced her, clasping her tightly in her arms.

"Welcome back, little sister, from the realms where the Dark One walked with you. Your journey was long, but I rejoice for your safe return," said the Queen. "Now you are one with all of us who belong to Her."

Penthesilea said, "She passed all three Gates."

"I know," Imandra answered. "But this Initiation was long delayed. She is priestess-born, and it is late for her."

She stood back and took Kassandra by the shoulders as her mother might have done. "You look pale, child; how are you feeling?"

"Please," said Kassandra, "I am so thirsty." But when Penthesilea would have poured her some wine the smell sickened her and she asked for water instead. It was clear and cold and relieved her thirst, but like everything she would eat or drink for many days, it had a pervasive slimyfishy taste.

Imandra said, "Be sure to notice what you dream this night; it will be a special message from Earth's daughter." Then she asked Penthesilea, "You will be returning south soon, now you have her word?"

"As soon as Kassandra is able to ride, and Andromache prepared to return with her to Troy," answered the Amazon Queen.

"Be it so," Imandra said. "I have readied Andromache's dower, and many to travel with her. And for our young kinswoman, the priestess, I have a gift."

The gift was a serpent; a small green one very like Imandra's own, but no longer than her forearm and about as thick as her thumb. Kassandra thanked her, tongue-tied.

Imandra said softly, "A suitable gift from priestess to priestess, child. She is hatched from an egg of one of my own serpents; and besides, what else should I do with her? Give her to Andromache, who would flee from her? I think she will be happy to travel south with you in that beautiful pot, and to serve with you at the shrine in Troy."

That night Kassandra lay long awake, troubled at the thought of what she might dream; but when she fell asleep she saw only the rain-washed slopes of Mount Ida, and the three strange Goddesses; and it seemed that they struggled with one another, not for Paris's* favour, but for hers, and for Troy.

CHAPTER 14

They set forth in carts as clumsy and slow as the tin wagons, laden with gifts for Troy and many of the treasures of Colchis, gifts from the Queen to her Trojan kindred, Andromache's bride-gifts and dowry; weapons of iron and bronze, bolts of cloth, pottery and gold and silver and even jewels.

Kassandra was unable to imagine why Queen Imandra was so eager to have her daughter allied

with Troy, and even less able to imagine why Andromache was willing - no, eager—to go along with it. But if she must return to Troy she was glad to have with her something of the wide world she had discovered here.

Also she had come to love Andromache; and if she must part from Penthesilea and the women of the tribe, at least she would have with her one true friend and kinswoman in Troy.

The journey seemed endless, the wagons crawling day by day at a snail's gait across the wide plains, moon after moon fading and fulling as they seemed no nearer to the distant mountains. Kassandra longed to mount and ride swiftly at the side of the Amazon guards, leaving the wagons to follow as best they could; but Andromache could not, or would not ride, and fretted at being alone in the wagons; she wanted Kassandra's company; so, reluctantly, Kassandra accepted the confinement and rode with her, playing endless games of Hound and Jackal on a carved onyx board, listening to her kinswoman's simple-minded chatter about clothing and jewellery and hair ornaments and what she would do when she was married - a subject which Andromache found endlessly fascinating (she had even resolved on names for the first three or four of her children) till Kassandra thought she would go mad.

She endured it because she genuinely loved Andromache; her cousin was far from stupid, but she never thought to let her mind range beyond the permitted destiny of a married woman, and that seemed enough for her. If she had ever thought about it at all Kassandra would have thought that all women were like herself and Penthesilea, wanting more freedom; even her mother, though outwardly she accepted her life, at least knew that a wider life was possible.

On her outward journey (it seemed to her that she had been immensely younger then) Kassandra had never realized the enormous distances they had covered; only when summer arrived again and they were only beginning to see the distant hills behind Troy, was she fully aware of how long this journey had been. In Troy, Colchis was popularly regarded as being halfway round the world. Now she was old enough to take account of the many months of travel; and of course with the wagons they were travelling more slowly than the riding bands. She was in no hurry to see the end of the journey, knowing that her arrival in Troy would close the walls of the women's quarters round her again', but she wondered how things fared in the city, and one night while Andromache slept, she reached out in her mind to see, if not Troy, at least the mind of the twin brother whom she had not visited for so long. And after a time pictures began to form in her mind, at first small and faraway, gradually enlarging and becoming all of her awareness…

Far to the south on the slopes of Mount Ida, where the dark-haired youth called Paris followed his foster-father's bulls and cattle, on a day in late autumn, a group of well-dressed young men appeared on the mountainside, and Paris, alert to any dangers to the herd he guarded, approached them with caution.

"Greeting, strangers; who are you, and how may I serve you?"

"We are the servants and the sons of King Priam of Troy," replied one of them, "and we have come for a bull; the finest of the herd, for it is a sacrifice for the funeral games of Priam's son by his first wife. Show us your finest."

Paris was somewhat troubled at their arrogant manner; nevertheless his foster-father Agelaus had taught him that the wishes of the King were law, and he did not wish to be thought lacking in courtesy.

"My father is Priam's servant," he said, "and all that we have is at his disposal. He is from home this day; if it will please you to await his return, he can show you what we have. If you will rest in my house out of the heat of the noonday sun, my wife will bring you wine, or cool buttermilk; or if you prefer, mead from the honey of our own bees. When he returns he will show you the herds and you may take what you will."

"I thank you; a drink of mead would be welcome," replied the newcomer from the city, and as Paris led the way to the little house where he lived with Oenone, he heard one of them whisper, "A handsome fellow; and I had not thought to find such manners so far from the city."

As Oenone, bright and pretty in her working-day tunic, with her hair tied up under the cloth she wore mornings for sweeping the house, fetched mead in wooden cups, he heard the other muttering, "And if nymphs as lovely as this are in abundance on the mountainsides, why should any man stay within city walls?"

Oenone looked sidewise at Paris, as if wondering who these men were and what they wanted; but he knew little more than she, though he had no desire to say so in their hearing. "These men have business with my father, my dear," he said. "Agelaus will return before the noon hour, and

then they can settle it with him, whatever it may be." If they had wanted goats or even sheep he would have felt qualified to deal with them himself, even if they were specially wanted for sacrifice; but the cattle were his father's special pride and joy. So he sipped at the mead Oenone had poured and waited, finally asking, "Are you all King Priam's sons?"

"We are," replied the eldest of them. "I am Hector, Priam's eldest son by his Queen, Hecuba; and this is my half-brother Deiphobos."

Hector was unusually tall, almost a head taller then Paris himself, who was not a small man. He had the broad shoulders of a natural wrestler, and his face was strong-featured and handsome, with brown eyes set wide apart over high cheekbones and stubborn mouth and chin. He bore at his waist an iron sword which Paris at once coveted, although until recently he had thought there could be no finer weapon than the bronze dagger Agelaus had given him as a special gift when he had gone out into a late-winter snowstorm and brought back a dozen weakling lambs who would all otherwise have perished.

"Tell me about these funeral games," he said at last. He noticed the way Hector was looking at Oenone and did not like it. But he also noticed that Oenone was taking no notice whatever of the stranger.She is mine , he thought.She is a good woman and modest, not one to go about staring at strange men .

"They are held every year," Hector said, "and they are like any other games at festivals; you look strong and athletic, have you never competed in such games? I am sure you could carry off

the prize for running and jumping at least, if not for archery or any sport requiring training or special skill."

"You mistake me," Paris said, "I am not a nobleman like yourselves, with leisure for sport; I am a humble shepherd and your father's servant. Games and the like are not for me."

"Modestly spoken," said Hector, "but the games are open to any man not born a slave; you would be welcome."

Paris thought about it. "You spoke of prizes—"

"The major prize is a bronze tripod and cauldron," Hector said. "Sometimes my father gives a sword for special valour."

"I would like that prize for my mother," said Paris. "Perhaps if my father gives me leave I will go."

"You are a grown man; you must be fifteen or more," said Hector, "quite old enough to come and go without permission."

And as Paris heard the words he thought it must be so indeed; but he had never gone anywhere without Agelaus's leave and had never thought he would. He noticed that Hector was staring at him fixedly, and raised questioning eyebrows.

Hector coughed nervously. "I am wondering where I have seen you before," he said. "Your eyes - they seem to remind me of someone I know well, but I cannot remember where."

"I go sometimes to the marketplace on errands for my father or my mother," Paris said, but Hector shook his head. To Paris it seemed that a curious shadow hung over him; he felt an instinctive dislike for this large young man. Yet Hector had been in no way offensive, but had treated him with perfect courtesy, so he did not understand it.

He rose restlessly and went to the door of the house, peering out. After a moment he said, "My foster-father has come home," and almost immediately Agelaus, a small slight man who still moved quickly despite his age, came into the room.

"Prince Hector," he said, bowing, "I am honored; how is it with my lord your father?"

Hector explained their errand, and Agelaus said, "It's my boy can help you with that, my prince; see, he knows the cattle better than I do, does all the cattle-judging at fairs and such. Paris, take the gentlemen out into the cattle-field and show them the best that we have."

Paris chose the finest bull of the herd, and Hector came and looked into the beast's face.

"I am a warrior and I know little of cattle," he said. "Why choose this bull?"

Paris pointed out the width of the bull's shoulders, the breadth of his flank. "And his coat is smooth, without scars or imperfections; fit for a God," he said, and inwardly thought,He is too good for sacrifice, he should be saved for breeding; any old bull will do to strike off his head and bleed on an altar .

And this arrogant prince comes and waves his hand and takes the best of the cattle my father and I have laboured long and hard to raise; but he is right, all the cattle belong to Priam and we are his servants.

"You know more than I of these matters," Hector repeated. "So I accept your word that this bull is the fittest for sacrifice to the Thunder Lord; now I must have a virgin heifer for the Lady, his consort."

Instantly Paris saw in his mind the fair and stately Goddess who had offered him wealth and power. He wondered if she bore him a grudge that he had not awarded her the apple; perhaps if he chose for her the finest creature in all the herd, she would forgive him.

"This heifer," he said, "is the finest of all; see her smooth brown coat, and her white face, and see how beautiful her eyes are; they seem almost human."

Hector patted the little animal's smooth shoulder and called for a tie rope.

"You don't need it, my prince," Paris said. "If you're taking the herd bull she'll follow you like a

puppy."

"So cows are not unlike women then," Hector said with a crude laugh. "I thank you, and I wish you would reconsider coming to the games; I am sure you would carry off most of the prizes; you look a natural athlete."

"It is kind of you to say so, my prince," Paris said, and watched Hector and his entourage as they descended the mountain toward the city.

Later that evening, when he went with his foster-father to fetch the goats for milking, he mentioned Hector's invitation; he was not at all prepared for the old man's response.

"No; I forbid it! Don't even think of it, my son; something terrible would be sure to happen!"

"But why, father? The prince assured me that it did not matter that I was not nobly born; what harm could there possibly be? And I would like to have the cauldron and tripod for my mother who has been so good to me and has no such things."

"Your mother don't want no cauldrons; we want our good son safe here at home where nothing could happen to you."

"What could possibly happen to me, father?"

"I am forbidden to tell you that," the old man said seriously. "Surely it should be enough for you that I forbid it; you have always been a good and obedient son to me before this."

"Father, I am no longer a child," Paris said. "Now when you forbid me something, I am old enough to know the reason."

Agelaus set his mouth sternly.

"I'll have no impudence and I don't have to give you no reasons; you'll do as I say."

Paris had always known that Agelaus was not his real father; since his dream of Goddesses, he had begun to suspect that his parentage was higher than he had ever dared to believe. Now he began to think that Agelaus's prohibition had something to do with this. But when he put the question Agelaus looked more stubborn than ever.

"I can't tell you nothing at all about that," he said, and stamped off to milk the goats. Paris, following his example, said no more; but inside he was fuming.

Am I no more than a hired servant, to be bidden here or there? Even a hired servant is entitled to his holiday, and father has never denied me leave before. I shall go to the games; my mother at least will forgive me if I bring her back a cauldron and tripod. But if I carry off the prize and she does not want it, I will give it to Oenone.

He said nothing that night; but early the next morning, he put on his best holiday tunic (it was in fact coarse enough, though Oenone had woven it of their finest wool and dyed it with berry juice to a soft red colour) and went to bid her farewell. She looked at him, her mouth contorted in distress.

"So you are going? In spite of your father's warning?"

"He has no right to forbid me," Paris replied defensively. "He is not even my father, so it is no impiety to disobey him."

"Still, he has been a good and kindly father to you," she said, her lip quivering. "This is not well done, Paris. Why do you wish to go to their games anyway? What is King Priam to you?"

"Because it is my destiny," he retorted hotly. "Because I no longer believe that it is the will of the Gods that I sit here all my days keeping goats on the mountainside. Come, girl, give me a kiss and wish me good fortune."

She stood on tiptoe and obediently kissed him, but she said, "I warn you, my love, there is no good fortune for you in this journey."

He scoffed, "Why, are you nowgoing to speak as a prophetess? I have no love for such warnings."

"Still I must give it," Oenone said, and threw herself weeping into his arms.

"Paris, I beg you, for love of me, stay." She put her hand shyly over her swollen small belly and entreated timidly, "Forhis sake if not for mine?"

"It is for his sake all the more that I must go and seek good fortune and fame," Paris said. "His father will be something more than Priam's herdsman."

"What is wrong with being the son of a herdsman?" Oenone asked. "I am proud to be a herdsman's wife."

Paris scowled at her and said, "Beloved, if you do not give me your blessing, I must even go without it; would you wish me ill?"

"Never, my love," she said seriously, "but I have the most terrible feeling that if you go you will never return to me."

"Now that is the greatest folly I have ever heard," he said, and kissed her again. She clung to him still, so at last he gently disengaged her clinging hands and set off down the mountain; but he knew that she watched him till he was out of her sight.

Kassandra slowly became aware again of where she was; the darkness of the wagon, not the bright autumn sunlight of Mount Ida. And they were hardly into summer; they would reach Troy

in the autumn, perhaps. At her side Andromache still slept quietly; cramped and cold, Kassandra crept into the blankets beside her, grateful for the warmth of her cousin's body.

He is in Troy; perhaps he will be in Troy when I come there; I shall see him at last. The thought was almost too exciting to endure; Kassandra slept no more that night.

CHAPTER 15

It was Andromache rather than Kassandra who first saw the great high walls of Troy rising in the distance. She sounded overwhelmed as she said, "It really is bigger than Colchis."

"I told you so," Kassandra remarked.

"Yes, but I didn't believe you; I could not believe that any city couldreally be bigger than Colchis. What is the shining building high at the top of the city? Is that the palace?"

"No; it is the Temple of the Maiden; in Troy the highest places are reserved for the Immortals. And she is our patron Goddess who gave us the olive and the vine."

"King Priam cannot be a truly great King," Andromache said. "It is forbidden in Colchis for any house—even a Goddess's house - to be higher than the royal palace."

"And yet I know your mother is a pious woman who respects the Goddess," said Kassandra. She recalled that when she had first come to Colchis, it had seemed blasphemy to her to build a mortal's house so high. Her eyes sought out the Sunlord's house with its golden roofs, rising a terrace above the palace; she pointed out the palace to Andromache.

"It is not built so high; but it is as fine a palace as any in Colchis," she told Andromache. Now that they were actually within sight of the city, Kassandra examined her own feelings warily, like biting on a sore tooth: she did not know how she felt about returning to Troy itself after her years of freedom. She realized that she was almost painfully eager to see her mother and her sister Polyxena, and without trying she felt her mind reach out for that insubstantial and confusing link with the twin brother who was at times even more real than her self.

I will not be caged again. Then she amended it a little:I will never let them cage me again. No one can imprison me unless I am willing to be imprisoned .

She looked round at her escort, half wishing she might return to the Amazon country with them. Penthesilea was not among them; she said that after their long absence she must remain to set the affairs of the tribe in order. Kassandra knew that if she was dwelling among the Amazons now she would be sent with the other women of childbearing age to the men's villages to bear a child for the tribe. She felt she would even be willing to observe that custom, if it was the price of remaining with Penthesilea's tribe, but that was not among the choices offered to her.

"But what is happening?" Andromache asked. "Is it a festival day?"

Processions were coming forth from the gates, long lines of men and women in holiday garments, animals garlanded with ribbons and flowers, whether for show or sacrifice she could not tell. Then she saw Hector and some of her other brothers wearing only the brief loincloth in which they competed on the field and knew it must be the games. These were no business of women -though her mother had told her once that in ancient times women had competed in the foot-races and in casting of spears and in archery too. Kassandra, who was a good shot, wished she were still small-breasted enough to pretend to be a boy, and shoot with the archers; but if she had ever been capable of such disguise, she was not now. Resignedly, she thought; well, one day my skill at weapons may still be of use to my city—in war, if not at games - and then saw, bringing up the end of the procession, a chariot bearing the shrunken but still impressive figure of her father Priam. She was about to throw herself headlong from the wagon and embrace him, but the sight of his grey hair shocked her; this old man was all but a stranger to her!

Behind him, riding on a smaller chariot, and wearing the insignia of the Goddess, Kassandra saw her mother; Hecuba seemed not to have changed by a single hair. Kassandra got down from the wagon and came forward, bending low before her father in token of respect, then hurrying to throw herself into her mother's arms.

"You are come at a good hour, my darling," Hecuba said, "but what a woman you have become! I would hardly have known this tall Amazon for my little daughter." She drew Kassandra up on the chariot beside her. "Who is your companion, my child?"

Kassandra looked at Andromache, who was still seated on the forward seat of the wagon. She looked very much alone, and out of place. This was not how she had intended to introduce her friend to Troy.

"She is Andromache, daughter of Imandra, Queen of Colchis," said Kassandra slowly. "Imandra our kinswoman sent her to be a wife to one of my brothers. She has a wagonload of treasure of Colchis for a dowry," and as she spoke it seemed crude, making it a mere matter of purchase and queenly expediency, as if Imandra had sent her daughter as a bribe for Priam. Andromache deserved better than that.

"Now I see she has a look of Imandra," said Hecuba. "As for a marriage that is for your father to say; but she is welcome here, marriage or no, as my kinswoman."

"Mother," said Kassandra seriously—after coming all this way Andromache should not be rejected -'she is the only child of the ruling Queen of Colchis; my father has sons and to spare and if he cannot find one of my brothers to marry her for such an alliance he is not as clever as he is reputed to be." She hurried to fetch Andromache, helping her down from the wagon and presenting her to Priam and Hecuba; Hecuba kissed her, and Andromache smiled and dimpled as she made a submissive bow to them. Priam patted her cheek and took her up on the stands beside him, calling her daughter, which seemed a good start. He seated her between himself and Hecuba, while Kassandra wondered why Andromache was being so submissive. She asked, "Where is my sister Polyxena?"

"She has stayed in the house like a proper modest girl," Hecuba reproved in a whisper. "Naturally she has no interest in seeing naked men competing at arms."

Well, Kassandra thought,if I ever had any doubt, now I know I am home again; am I to spend the rest of my life as a proper modest girl ? The thought depressed her. She watched with tepid interest, trying to pick out those of Priam's sons whom she knew by sight. She recognized Hector at once, and Troilus who must now, she thought, be at least ten years old. As they set off Hector quickly took the lead and remained there throughout the first lap; then behind him a slighter, dark-haired youth began to gain: almost easily he overtook him and flashed past, touching the mark a fraction before Hector's outstretched hand.

"Bravely run," shouted the other contestants, clustering around him.

"My dear," Priam said, leaning across Andromache to Hecuba, "I do not know that young man, but if he can outrun Hector he is a worthy contestant. Find out who he is, will you?"

"Certainly," Hecuba said and beckoned to a servant. "Go down and find out for His Majesty who is the young man who won the foot-race."

Kassandra shaded her eyes with her hand to look for the winner, but he had disappeared into the crowd. The contestants were now fitting strings to their bows; Kassandra, who had become an expert archer, watched with fascination, and suddenly, dazzled by the sun, felt confused—surely

she was herself on the field, nocking an arrow into the bowstring -my parents will be so angry— then, looking down at the strong bare arm so much more muscular than her own, knew what had happened, that her thoughts had again become entangled with those of her twin brother. Now she knew why the young winner of the foot-race had seemed almost painfully familiar to her; this was her twin brother Paris, and as she had foreseen, she was indeed present at his homecoming to Troy.

With that curious double sight, it seemed she was at once on the field and in her seat above it, looking up at Priam as if it were the first time, seeing him at once as her father and as a strange frightening old man with the unfamiliar majestic look of royalty; there were also old men whose names neither of them knew - Paris deduced, rightly, that these must be the Trojan's King's advisers—a sweet-faced old lady he was sure was the Queen, a gaggle of young boys in expensive bright clothing, whom he assumed—correctly - to be Priam's younger sons, not old enough yet to take part in these contests, and some pretty girls who caught his eye mostly because they looked so different from Oenone. He wondered what they were doing here perhaps the palace women were allowed to watch the Games. Well, he would give them something to watch. Now they were beckoning him forward to shoot at the mark; his first shot went wide because he was nervous, and his second flew past the targets and far beyond.

"Let the stranger shoot again," Hector said. "You are not accustomed to our targets; but if you can shoot so high and so far, surely you cannot be incapable of a proper shot." He pointed out the target and explained the rules; Paris prepared to shoot again, thoroughly surprised at Hector's courtesy. He let fly his arrow, this time straight into the center of the target. The other archers

shot one by one, but not even Hector could better his shot. Hector was not smiling now; he looked cross and sullen, and Kassandra knew he was regretting his impulsive generosity.

There were other contests, and Kassandra, pulling herself back into her own mind and body with a fierce effort, watched with interest and pleasure as her twin won them all. He threw Deiphobos almost effortlessly at wrestling, and when Deiphobos got up and rushed him, stretched him out insensible, not to rise till the games were over; he cast the javelin further even than Hector, listening to their shouts of 'He is strong as Hercules' with ingenuous smiles of pleasure.

A servant came to the King and Queen with a message, and Kassandra heard her father repeat aloud, "He says that the young stranger is called Paris; he is the foster-son of Agelaus the shepherd." Hecuba turned white as bone. "I should have known; he has a look of you. But who could have believed it; it has been so long, so long…'

The contests now were ended, and Priam gestured for Paris as the winner to come forward; then he rose.

"Agelaus," he called aloud, "you old rascal, where are you? You have brought back my son—"

The old servant shuffled forward, looking pale and ill at ease. He bowed before the King and muttered, "I didn't tell him he could come today, your Majesty; he came without my leave, and I'd perfectly well understand if you were angry with me—with us both."

"No, indeed," Priam said graciously, and Kassandra saw her mother's knuckles unclench their painful grip over her heart. "He's a credit to you, and to me too. My own fault for listening to superstitious rubbish; I have only thanks for you, old friend." He took a gold ring from his own finger and put it on Agelaus's work-gnarled finger.

"You deserve more reward than this, my old friend, but this is all I have for you now; but before you return to your flocks I shall have a better gift for you."

Kassandra watched in astonishment as her father, who had slapped her to the ground even for inquiring of the existence of this brother, embraced Paris and awarded him all the prizes of the day. Hecuba was weeping and came forward to embrace her lost son.

"I never thought to see this day," she murmured. "I vow an unblemished heifer to the Goddess."

Hector frowned at the sight of his father bestowing lavish gifts on Paris: the promised tripod (which Paris said he wished to send to his foster-mother), a crimson cloak with embroidered bands of the palace women's weaving, a fine helmet of worked bronze, and an iron sword.

"And of course you will return to the palace and dine with your mother and me," he invited at last, smiling expansively. As Priam rose, gathering his cloak over his arm, one of the old men in the circle surrounding him came up and whispered urgently to the King; Kassandra recognized the man as an old palace hanger-on, one of the priest-soothsayers in his circle.

Priam scowled and waved the man away.

"Don't talk to me of omens, old croaker! Superstitious rubbish; I should never have listened to them."

Kassandra could feel the shock - partly fear - that went through Paris at the words. Of course; he would know of the omens which had exiled him from the palace and his birthright—or was he only now learning of them?

Hector said into his father's ear - but clearly audible to Paris: 'Father, if the Gods have decreed that he is a danger to Troy—"

Priam interrupted, "The Gods? No; a priestess, a reader of chicken guts and dreams; only a fool would have deprived himself of a fine son at such a one's blitherings. A King does not listen to the omens of a breeding woman, or her fancies—"

Kassandra felt torn, half in sympathy for the twin whose fear and insecurity she could not but feel as if they were her own, half for her mother's dread. She wanted to step forward, and draw away her father's anger to herself as she had so often done before; but before she could speak, Priam's eyes fell again on Andromache.

"And now I'll put right my old mistake and bring home my lost son. How say you, Hecuba, shall we marry the Colchian Queen's daughter to our wonderful new son?"

"You cannot do that, Father," said Hector, even as Kassandra felt Paris's eyes rest greedily on Andromache, "Paris has already a wife; I beheld her myself in the house of Agelaus."

"Is this true, my son?" Priam asked; Paris looked sullen, but he understood the implied threat. He spoke politely: 'It is true; my wife is a priestess to the River God Scamander."

"Then you must send for her, my son, and present her to your mother," Priam said, and turned to Hector. "And to you, Hector, my eldest son and heir, to you I give the hand of Queen Imandra's daughter; tonight we shall solemnize the marriage."

"Not so fast, not so fast," said Hecuba. "The child needs time to make her wedding clothes like any other girl; and the women of the palace must have time to prepare for this feast, which is an important one in a woman's life."

"Rubbish," said Priam. "As long as the bride is ready, and the dower arranged, wedding clothes can be made any time. Women are always worrying about such trivial things."

All this might be a foolish thing, Kassandra thought,but it is crude of Priam to disregard it. What would the Queen of Colchis think to have her daughter's wedding tacked on to the end of the festival ?

She bent close to Andromache and whispered, "Don't let them hurry you this way. You are a

princess of Colchis, not an old cloak to be given as an extra games-prize or a consolation for Hector because he did not win!"

Andromache smiled and whispered to Kassandra, "I think I'd like to have Hector before your father changes his mind again or decides he can use me as a prize for someone else." She looked up and murmured in a small and timid voice which Kassandra had never heard her use before, so false she did not see why Priam did not laugh at her: 'My Lord Priam… my husband's father… the Lady of Colchis, my mother the Queen, sent with me all kinds of clothing and linens; so if it pleases you, we can hold the wedding whenever you think proper."

Priam beamed and patted her shoulder.

"There's a fine girl," he said, and Andromache blushed and looked down shyly as Hector came and looked her over just as, Kassandra thought, he had looked over the virgin heifer Paris had chosen for the sacrifice.

"I shall be most content to take the daughter of Queen Imandra for a wife."

Nodoubt you would , Kassandra thought,but hadn't anyone even noticed that neither he nor Andromache had been asked what they wanted ? It did not surprise her - marriages were always arranged this way - but did no one even make a gesture for the approval of the daughter of the most powerful queen in the world? Kassandra thought that if Imandra could have foreseen this she would have made the journey herself, if only to ensure adequate ceremony for the daughter.

Well, at least Andromache was willing; she seemed eager to make certain she would have Hector, even at the cost of a hasty wedding. If it suited her, why should Kassandra be indignant on her behalf?

The long day was drawing to a close. Priam and Hecuba were helped into their chariots for the return to the palace. Kassandra found herself walking at Paris's side; she was deeply distressed because as yet he had not addressed a single word to her nor acknowledged in any way the bond between them which was so important to her. How could he ignore it?

She wondered if he too was under the special protection of the Sunlord, or of the three strange Goddesses, that he could come and face the father who had intended to expose him at birth; and now acknowledged him and intended to restore him to his rightful place in the family.

Hector was walking close to Andromache; he turned and laid his hand on Kassandra's shoulder, then gave her a rough hug of welcome.

"Well, sister Kassandra, how brown and sunburnt you are -though after all these years with the Amazons I should not be surprised. Why did you not gird on your bow and go into the field to shoot with the archers?"

"She could have done so, never doubt it," said Andromache, "and bettered your shot."

"No doubt," said Hector, "I was not at my best this day; and—" he coughed and lowered his voice, casting a quick look over his shoulder at Paris, "I would rather be beaten by a girl than by that upstart." He gestured to Deiphobos, who was still holding his head as if it hurt him, "Tell me, brother, what are we to do with this fellow? I cut my teeth on that old story about how Father exposed him because he was a threat to Troy, Am I to overlook it because Father saw fit to bribe me with a beautiful wife?"

Deiphobos said, "It seems Father is already besotted with him. He should take a lesson from King Pelias when he was confronted with his lost son Jason; I recall he sent Jason on a quest to the far ends of the world - to seek for the Golden Fleece—"

"But there is no longer any gold in Colchis," said Andromache.

"Well, we must devise some way to rid ourselves of him," Hector said. "Perhaps we could persuade Father to send him to use some of that charm on Agamemnon and persuade him to return Hesione."

"A good thought that," said Deiphobos. "And if that fails, we can send him - oh, to talk the sirens out of their sea-hoards, or to shoe the Kentaurs where they dwell - or to harness them to pull our chariots—"

"Or anything else that will take him away a thousand leagues from Troy," agreed Hector. "And this for Father's own benefit; if the Gods have decreed he is not a boon to Troy—"

"Nor, certainly, to us," said Deiphobos, but Kassandra had heard enough. She stepped out of the path and dropped back to walk at Paris's side.

"You," he said, looking at her rudely, "you - I thought you were a dream." And as their eyes met for the first time she felt again the bond establish itself between them; was he too aware of how they were linked, within the soul?

"I thought you were a dream," he repeated, "or perhaps a nightmare."

The rudeness of his words was like a blow; she had hoped he would embrace her in welcome.

She said, "Brother, do you know they are plotting against you? You have no welcome in Troy from our brothers." She reached for contact again, only to feel him draw back from her angrily.

He said, "I know that; do you think me a fool? After this, sister, keep your thoughts to yourself and stay out of mine!"

She recoiled with pain at the harshness of being shut out of his mind. Ever since she had known of his existence and the bond between them, she had fancied that when they met he would welcome her with joy and thereafter she would be special and even precious to him. Now, quite unlike her fantasy, he rebuffed her, thought of her as an intruder. Did he not even see that she was the one person here ready to welcome him with acceptance and love even greater than

Priam's own?

She would not weep and beg him for his love.

"As you will," she snarled. "It was never my wish to be bound to you this way. Do you think then that perhaps our father exposed the wrong twin?" She flung away from him, hurrying down the path to rejoin Andromache, all the joy of her homecoming spoilt.

CHAPTER 16

Throughout the evening Kassandra thought that this was more of a celebration of Paris's welcome to the family than a wedding feast for Hector and Andromache, though once Priam had decided to solemnize the wedding he went to considerable trouble to leave nothing undone. He sent to the royal cellars for the best wine, and Hecuba went to the kitchens for delicacies to be added to the evening meal: fruits, honeycomb, all kinds of sweetmeats. Musicians, jugglers, dancers and acrobats were summoned for entertainment.

A priestess from the Temple of Pallas Athene was summoned to supervise the sacrifices which were such a necessary part of a royal wedding. Kassandra stayed close to Andromache, who, now that it was actually at hand, looked pale and frightened -or perhaps, Kassandra thought, with an irony which astonished her, this was Andromache's idea of how a properly modest woman

should behave on the eve of her wedding.

As they stood together in the courtyard, solemnly watching the sacrifices being gathered, Andromache leaned toward Kassandra and whispered, "I should think the Gods would have had enough sacrifices for one day. Do you suppose they ever get bored with watching people kill animals for them? A slaughterhouse wouldn't entertainme ." Kassandra had to choke back a giggle which would have been scandalous; but it was true; there had already been many sacrifices at the games. The couple stood side by side, hands clasped on the sacrificial knife, and Hector bent and whispered to Andromache. She shook her head, but he insisted, and it was her hand which drew the knife unhesitatingly across the throat of the white heifer. To Kassandra, who had eaten nothing since early morning, the smell of the roasting meat was like ambrosia.

After that it was only a few minutes till they went inside and Hecuba sent serving women to Andromache and Kassandra to dress them for the feast. They were in the room which Kassandra had shared with Polyxena when they were little children; but it was no longer a simple nursery. The walls had been painted in the Cretan fashion with murals of sea-creatures, strange curving squid and tentacled octopus entangled in coils of seaweed, and nereids and sirens. The tables were of carven wood, littered with cosmetics and scent bottles of blue glass carved into the shapes of fish and mermaids. There were curtains at the windows, Egyptian cotton, dyed green, through which the late sunlight entering the rooms came in as if through waves, giving a curious underwater light.

The wagonload of gifts from Colchis had been unloaded and carried into the palace and

Andromache rummaged in the boxloads for a suitable wedding gift for her new husband.

The Queen sent up for Kassandra a fine gown of Egyptian gauze, and Andromache found among the chests from Colchis a gown of silk, full-skirted but so fine that the entire garment could be pulled through a ring, and dyed with the priceless crimson of Tyre.

The Queen also sent her own maids, who set out tubs of warmed water and bathed and perfumed both girls. They curled their hair with heated tongs, then sat them down and painted their faces with cosmetics. They put on red lip-salve that smelled of fresh apples and honey; then they applied kohl from Egypt to darken their brows and underline their eyes, and painted their eyelids with a blue paste that felt like powdered chalk but smelled of the finest olive oil. Andromache accepted all this attention as if she had been accustomed to it all her life, but Kassandra made nervous jokes as the women tended her.

"If I had horns I am sure you would gild them," she said. "Am I a guest, or one of the sacrifices?"

"The Queen ordered it, Lady," said one of the waiting-women. Kassandra supposed that Hecuba had ordered all of this so that the Colchian princess might think Troy no less luxurious than her own faraway city.

The waiting-woman said, "She ordered that you should be no less fine than herself; and rightly so, for the old song says every lady is a Queen when she rides her bridal cart. And this is the way

I have dressed the Lady Polyxena for every festival since she was grown."

She frowned as she rubbed Kassandra's hands with scented oil that smelt of lilies and roses. "Your hands are calloused, Lady Kassandra," she said reprovingly. "They will never be as soft as the princess's hands, which are like rose petals—as a lady's should be."

"I am sorry, there is nothing I can do about it," Kassandra said, twisting the maligned hands. It was at that moment that she first realized how much she would miss the outdoor life as she already missed her horse. Penthesilea had given her a fine mare for a parting gift; but Kassandra's last act of the journey had been to send the horse back with the Amazon guard; she knew she would not be allowed to ride freely and she did not want to see her noble companion penned up in the stables or, worse, given to one of her brothers to pull a chariot.

The sun was setting; the waiting-women lighted torches and put a gold brooch into the shoulder of Kassandra's tunic, and laid a new cloak woven of striped wool over her shoulders. Andromache slid her feet into gilded sandals.

"And here is a pair for you, just like them," she said, bending to put them on Kassandra's feet.

"You will be as fine as the bride," said the attendant, but Kassandra felt that Andromache, with her shining curls, was more beautiful than any woman in all of Troy.

The two girls hurried out to the stairs; but Kassandra could not run in the elaborate sandals and

they had to walk carefully step by step down the long flights of stairs.

The great feasting-hall flared with many torches and lamps; Priam was already seated on his high throne, and looked displeased because they were late. But when the herald called out 'The Lady Kassandra and Princess Andromache of Colchis', Priam stretched out his hand goodnaturedly to the girls to approach him. He seated Andromache in the favoured position beside him, sharing his own gold plate and goblet.

Hecuba signalled Kassandra to sit beside her, and whispered, "Now you truly look a princess of Troy, not a wild tribeswoman, my darling. How pretty you are."

Kassandra thought she must look like a painted doll, like the little effigies which came from Egypt and were intended for the tombs of Queens and Kings. That was what Polyxena looked like; but if her mother was pleased she would not protest.

When everyone was seated Priam proposed the first toast, raising his cup.

"To my splendid new son Paris, and to the kindly fate which has restored him to me and his mother, a comfort in our old age."

"But, Father," Hector protested in an undertone, "have you forgotten the prophecy at his birth, that he would bring down disaster on Troy? I was only a child, but I remember it well."

Priam looked displeased, Hecuba seemed about to cry. Paris looked unsurprised; Agelaus must have told him. But it was rude of Hector to mention it at a feast.

Hector was in his finest robes, a tunic embroidered with gold which Kassandra recognized as the work of the Queen's own hands; Paris too had been given a fine robe and a new cloak like Kassandra's, and looked splendid. Priam surveyed them both with satisfaction as he said, "No, my son, I have not forgotten the omen which came not to me, but to my Queen. But the hand of the Gods has restored him to me, and no man can argue with Fate or the will of the Immortals."

"But are you certain," Hector persisted,"that it was the Gods," and not perhaps the work of some evil Fate bent on destroying our royal House?" Paris's dark face looked like a thundercloud, but Kassandra could not read her twin's thoughts now.

Priam said with a frown of warning which made Kassandra cringe, "Peace, my son! On this subject alone I will not hear you. I had rather see all Troy perish, if it came to that, than any harm come to my splendid new-found son."

Kassandra shuddered. Priam, who scorned prophecy, had just uttered one.

He smiled benevolently at Paris, who was seated at Hecuba's other side, his fingers tightly clasped in hers. Her face was wreathed in smiles, and Kassandra felt a stab of pain; the discovery of Paris meant that such welcome as her mother might have given her was quite lost. She felt sad and heart-sore but told herself that in any case Penthesilea had become her true mother; among

the Amazons a daughter was useful and welcome, while here in Troy a daughter was always thought of only as not being a son.

Priam urged Andromache to drink every time the cup went round, forgetting that she was a young girl who would ordinarily not be allowed or encouraged to drink this way. Kassandra could see that already her friend was a little fuddled and tipsy.Just as well perhaps , she thought,for at the end of this feast she is to be sent quite unprepared to my brother Hector's bed. And he is quite drunk too .

It suddenly occurred to her to be glad that Andromache was not marrying Paris as had been suggested; with the mind-link between them, she probably could not have avoided sharing in the consummation of the marriage. The thought made her hot and cold by turns; her sensitivities were honed to fever pitch.

Where was Oenone? Why had Paris not bidden her, as his wife, to the wedding?

Hector, perhaps because he was drunk, chose to pursue the subject. "Well, my father, you have chosen to honor our brother; will you not consider that he should be allowed to earn the honor you have bestowed upon him? I entreat you to send him at least on a quest to the Akhaians, so that if the evil prophecy still stands, it may be diverted to them."

"That's a good thought," murmured Priam, himself now the worse for a good deal of wine, "but you do not want to leave us already, do you, Paris?"

Paris murmured correctly that he was eternally at the disposal of his father and his king.

"He has charmed us all," replied Hector, not without malice. "So why not let him try this irresistible charm upon Agamemnon and persuade him to ransom the Lady Hesione."

"Agamemnon," said Paris, looking up sharply. "Is he not the brother of that same Menelaus who married Helen of Sparta? And is he not himself married to the sister of the Spartan Queen?"

"It is so," Hector said. "When these Akhaians came from the north with their chariots and horses and their Thunder Gods, Leda, the Lady of Sparta, wedded one of these kings, and it was rumoured that when she bore him twin daughters, that one of them had been fathered by the Thunder Lord himself."

"Well, Helen married Menelaus," Hector said, "although she was said to be fair as a goddess, and could have married any king from Thessaly to Crete. There was, I heard, much dissension at Helen's wedding, so that it nearly resulted in a war then and there. You are not ill-looking, my Andromache," he said, coming close and looking attentively at her face, "but not so beautiful, I think, that I will need to keep you imprisoned lest all men envy me and covet you." He took her chin in his hands and looked down at her.

"My lord is gracious to his humble wife," said Andromache with a small grin which only Kassandra recognized as sarcasm.

Paris was watching Hector so closely that Kassandra could not help but notice. What was he thinking? Could he be jealous of Hector, who was neither as handsome nor as clever as he? With a beautiful wife like Oenone, he could hardly envy Hector Andromache just because she was a princess of Colchis. Or was he envious of Hector because Hector was the older, and his father's established favourite? Or was he angry because Hector had, after all, insulted him?

She sipped slowly at the wine in her cup, wondering how Andromache really felt about this marriage; she could not imagine anyone being overjoyed at being married to the bullying Hector but she supposed Andromache was not displeased at eventually being a Queen in Troy. Surreptitiously - her mother had always warned her that it was not proper to stare at men -she looked round the room, wondering if there was any man there she would willingly marry. Certainly none of her brothers, even supposing she were not their sister; Hector was rough and contentious; Deiphobos was shifty-eyed and a sneak; even Paris, handsome as he was, had already neglected Oenone. Troilus was only a child, but when he grew up he might be gentle and kindly enough. She remembered how even among the Amazons the girls had talked all the time about young men, and there too she had felt the weight of beingdifferent on her heart. Why was it she cared nothing for what was so important to them?

There must be something worthwhile in marriage or why would all women be so eager for it? Then she remembered the words of the Colchian priestess:You are priestess-born, called and set apart . At least this was a valid reason for difference.

Her eyelids were drooping, and she blinked and sat up straight, wishing this was over; she had been awake and travelling before daylight and it had been a long day.

Priam had called Paris to his side, and they were talking about ships, the route for sailing to the Akhaian islands, and how best to approach Agamemnon's people. Andromache was half asleep. This was, thought Kassandra, the dullest feast she had ever known—though after all she had not attended so many.

Finally Priam was proposing a toast to the wedded pair, and calling for torches to escort Hector and his bride to the bridal chamber.

First among the women, Hecuba led the procession with a flaming torch in her hand. It flickered and flared brilliantly coloured lights along the walls as the women, with Kassandra and Polyxena on either side of Andromache, led her up the stairs, followed by every woman in the palace: Priam's lesser wives and daughters, and all the servants down to the kitchen maids. The torches smoked and hurt Kassandra's eyes: it seemed to her that they were flaming high, that beyond the walls was a dreadful fire, even within the bridal chamber, that they led Andromache forth to some dreadful fate—

Clasping her hands to her head as if to shut out the sight, she heard herself screaming; "No! No! The fire! Don't take her in there!"

"Be quiet!" Hecuba gripped her wrists till Kassandra writhed with the pain. "What is the matter

with you? Are you mad?"

"Can't you hear the thunder?" Kassandra whispered. "No, no, there is only death and blood… fire in there, lightning, destruction—"

"Be still," Hecuba commanded. "What an omen at a bride's bedding! How dare you make such a scene—"

"But can't they hear, can't they see—" Kassandra felt as if she brimmed with darkness and could see nothing but darkness shot through with fire. She put her hands over her eyes to shut it out. Was it no more than the smoking torches, distorting her sight.

"For shame," her mother was still scolding as she dragged her along, "I thought the princess of Colchis was your friend; would you spoil her bridal night with this fuss? You have always been jealous whenever anyone else is the center of attention; but I thought you had grown out of that—"

They led Andromache into the bridal chamber. It too had been painted, with sea-creatures so realistic that they seemed to wriggle and swim on the walls. Hecuba had told her at supper that workmen from Crete had been in the palace for a year, redecorating the walls in the Cretan style, and that the carved furniture was tribute from the Queen of Knossos.

On the table beside the bed there was a little carved statue of Earth Mother, her breasts bared

over a tightly laced bodice, a flounced skirt, a serpent clasped in each hand. Andromache, as the women were stripping off her bridal finery and putting her into a shift of the Egyptian gauze whispered to Kassandra, "Look, it is Serpent Mother; she has been sent from my home to bless me this night—"

For a moment the dark flooding waters inside Kassandra again threatened to swell up and take over, she was drowning with fear; it was all she could do to keep from shrieking out the terror and apprehension that threatened to strangle her.

"Fire, death, blood, doom for Troy—for all of us—"

Her mother's face, stern and angry, held her silent. She embraced Andromache with a numb dread, thrusting the beautiful little statue at her and murmuring, "May she bless you with fertility, then, little sister." Andromache seemed no more than a tall child in her shift, her hair brushed out of its elegant curls and streaming over her shoulders, her painted eyes enormous and dark with the kohl smudged around the lids. Kassandra, still submerged in the dark waters of her vision, felt ancient and withered among all these girls playing at weddings without the faintest idea what lay beyond.

Now they could hear the chanting of the men as they led Hector up the stairway to claim his bride. Andromache clung to her and whispered, "You are the only one who is not a stranger to me, Kassandra. I beg you, bless me and wish me happiness."

Kassandra's throat was so dry she could hardly speak.

If only it were as easy to bestow happiness as it is to wish it. She murmured through dry lips, "I do wish you happiness, sister."

But there will be no happiness, only doom and the greatest grief in the world…

She could almost hear the shrieks of anguish and mourning through the joyous singing of the marriage hymn, and as Hector, led by his friends, came into the room the streaked red torchlight made their faces crimson with blood… or was it only the bones of their faces standing out like skulls?

The priestess standing by the bed gave them the marriage cup. Kassandra thought,That should have been my task , but her face was frozen in dread, and she knew she would never have had the heart to set it in her friend's hand.

"Don't look so woebegone, little sister," Hector said, touching her hair lightly. "It'll be your turn soon enough; at supper our father was talking of finding you a husband next. Did you know, the son of King Peleus, Akhilles, has made an offer for you? Father says there's a prophecy that he'll be the greatest hero of the ages. Maybe marriage to an Akhaian would settle these stupid wars; though I'd rather fight Akhilles and have the glory of it."

Kassandra gripped frantically at Hector's shoulders.

"Have a care what you pray for," she whispered. "For some God may grant it to you! Pray that you never meet with Akhilles in battle!"

He looked at her in distaste and firmly removed her hands from his shoulders.

"As a prophetess, you are a bird of ill-omen, sister, and I would rather not hear your croakings on my wedding night. Get you to your own bed, sister, and leave us to ours."

She felt the dark waters drain away leaving her hollow and empty and sick, without the slightest idea what she had been saying. She murmured, "Forgive me; I mean no harm; surely you know I wish you nothing but good, you and our kinswoman from Colchis—"

Hector brushed her forehead with his lips.

"It has been a long day, and you have travelled far," he said. "And the Gods alone know what madness you have been taught in Colchis. It is no wonder you are all but raving with weariness. Good night then, little sister, and -this for your omens!" He took the torch beside the bed and swiftly crushed out the flame. "May they all come to nothing, just like this!"

She turned away, her feet unsteady, as the remaining women raised their voices in the last of the marriage songs. She knew she should join in, but felt that for her very life she could not utter a single note. On groping feet she blundered away from the bed and out of the marriage chamber,

hurrying to her own room. She fell on her bed, not even bothering to take off her finery, or wipe the smeared cosmetics from her face. She fell into sleep as the dark waters surged over her again, drowning out the remaining echo of the joyous hymns.

CHAPTER 17

For many days now the harbor had rung with the sound of hammers and adzes as the ship grew in the cradle where the keel had been laid, and harpers had come almost every evening to the Great Hall to sing the lay of Jason and the building of the Argo.

For weeks provisions had been loaded for the voyage while sailmakers stitched with their huge needles on the voluminous sail where it was laid out on the white sand of the beach; to dry or smoke barrels of meat, fires burned night and day in the courtyard; baskets of fruits and great jars of oil and wine, and always more and more weapons. It seemed to the women that for months now all the smiths in the kingdom had been hammering away at arrowheads of bronze, swords of bronze or iron, armor of all kinds.

Dozens of Priam's best warriors were going with Paris, not to make war but in case they encountered pirates in the crossing of the Aegean, whether the notorious plunderer Odysseus (who came sometimes to Priam's palace to sell his loot, or sometimes only to pay the toll Priam exacted of all ships northbound through the straits) or some other pirate. This expedition, laden

with gifts for Agamemnon and the other Akhaian kings, was not to be plundered; the mission, or at least so Priam said, was to negotiate an honorable ransom for the Lady Hesione.

Kassandra watched the ship growing under the builders' hands, and wished passionately that she were to sail in her with Paris and the others.

On two or three days while the warriors were training in the courtyard, she borrowed one of Paris's short tunics, and, concealing herself under a helmet, practiced with them at sword and shield. Most people believed it was Paris fighting; since he seldom appeared on the practice field, she was not at once discovered. Even though she knew it was pretense, she enjoyed it immensely and for a considerable time her long-limbed skill and muscular strength kept her identity unknown.

But one day a friend of Hector's matched her and knocked her down; her short tunic flew up above her waist and Hector himself came and jerked the helmet from her head; then, angrily, wrested the sword out of her hand, turned it edgeways and beat her hard on the backside with it.

"Now get inside, Kassandra, and tend to your spinning and weaving," he snarled at her. "There is enough women's work for you to do; if I catch you masquerading out here again I will beat you bloody with my own hands."

"Let her alone, you great bully," cried Andromache, who had been watching from the sidelines; she had been fitting a crimson cushion to Hector's chariot and tacking the last bits of gold thread

on it. Hector turned on her angrily.

"Did you know she was here, Andromache?"

"What if I did?" demanded Andromache rebelliously. "My own mother, and yours too, fights like a warrior!"

"It's not suitable that my sister, or my wife, be out here before the eyes of soldiers," Hector said scowling. "Get inside, and attend to your own work; and no more conniving with this wretched hoyden here!"

"I suppose you think you can beat me bloody too!" Andromache said pertly. "But you know what you shall have from me if you try!" Kassandra saw, in astonishment, the line of embarrassed crimson that crept upward in her brother's face.

Andromache's dark hair blew out around her face in the fresh wind; she was wearing a loose tunic almost the same colour as her wedding gown, and looked very pretty. Hector said at last, so stiffly that Kassandra knew that he was stifling whatever he really wanted to say as not being suitable before an outsider, even a sister, "That's as it may be, wife; nevertheless, it is more seemly for you to go the women's quarters and mind your loom; there is plenty of women's work to be done, and I would rather you do it, than come out here learning Kassandra's ways. Still, if it makes you feel better, I will not beat her this time. As for you, Kassandra, get inside and attend to your own affairs, or I will tell Father and perhaps he can put it in such a way that you will

mind his words." She knew that the sulkiness on her face reached him, for he said, a little more kindly, "Come, little sister, do you think I would be out here wearing myself into exhaustion with shield and spear if I could stay cool and comfortable inside the house? Battle may look good to you when it is only playing with spears and arrows with your friends and brothers, but look." He bared his arm, rolling up the woollen sleeve of his tunic past the bright embroidered edgework and showed her a long red seam, still oozing at the center. "It still pains me when I move my arm; when there are real wounds to be given and received, war does not look so exciting!"

Kassandra looked at the wound marring her brother's smooth and muscular body, and felt a curious sickening tightness under her diaphragm; she flinched and remembered cutting the throat of the tribesman who would have raped her. She almost wanted to tell Hector about it - he was a warrior and would certainly understand. Then she looked into his eyes. There, perhaps, she misjudged him; he was not altogether without imagination; but he would never, she thought, see beyond the fact that she was a-girl.

"Be glad, little sister, that it was only I who saw you stripped like that," he said, not unkindly. "For if you were revealed as a woman on the battlefield… I have seen woman warriors ravished and not one man protest. If a woman refuses such protection as is lawful for wives and sisters, there is no other protection for her." He pulled down his helmet and strode away, leaving the women staring after him, Kassandra angry and knowing she was supposed be ashamed, Andromache suppressing giggles. After a moment the giggles surfaced.

"Oh, he was so angry! Kassandra, I would have been terrified if he had been that angry with

me!" She drew her white shawl around her shoulders in the fresh wind. "Come, let's get out of the way. He's right, you know; if any other man had seen you—" she drew down her mouth into a grimace, and said with an exaggerated shudder,"something terrible would certainly have happened."

Seeing no alternative, Kassandra followed her, and Andromache linked her arm through her sister-in-law's.

Kassandra, for the first time in days, became aware of the prophetic darkness filling her up inside.

While she had been on the field with a weapon she had not been conscious of the thing which had made her cry out on the night of the wedding. Now, through that dark water she saw Andromache, and all round her something else, overlaid with a cold and frightening fire of grief and terror, but enough joy before the sorrow that it made her lay her hand urgently on Andromache's arm and say softly, "You are with child?"

Andromache smiled; no, thought Kassandra, she glowed. "You think so? I was not sure yet; I thought perhaps I would ask the

Queen how I could be sure. Your mother has been so kind to me, Kassandra; my own mother never understood or approved of me, because I was soft and a coward and I did not want to be a warrior; but Hecuba loves me, and I think she will be happy if it is so."

"I am sure of that, at least," Kassandra said, and then because she knew Andromache was about to ask 'How do you know?" she fumbled for words she could use instead of trying to explain about the dark waters and the terrible crown of fire. "It seemed for a moment," she said,"that I could see you with Hector's son in your arms."

Andromache's smile was radiant; and Kassandra was relieved that for once she had given pleasure instead of fear with her unwanted gift.

In the days following she did not again take up her weapons, but went out often, unrebuked, to see how the ship was progressing. It grew daily on the great cradle on the sand, and almost before Andromache's pregnancy was visible to unskilled eyes, it was ready for launching, and a white bull was sacrificed for the moment when it slid easily down the ramp toward the water.

At that moment Hector, standing between his wife and Kassandra, said, "You who prophesy unasked all the time, what do you see for this ship?"

Kassandra said in a low voice, "I see nothing. And perhaps that is the best omen of all." She could see the ship returning in a golden glow like the face of some God, and nothing more. "But I think it lucky that you are not sailing, Hector."

"So be it, then," said Hector. Paris came to bid them goodbye, clasping Hector's hand warmly, and embracing Kassandra with a smile. He kissed his mother and leaped on board the ship, and

his family stood together, watching it drift out of the harbor, the great sail bellying out with the wind. Paris stood at the steering oar at the back, straight and slender, his face alight with the westering sun. Kassandra shook off her mother's arm and walked away through the cheering crowd; she went straight to where a tall woman stood with her eyes fixed on the sail as it dwindled to the size of a toy.

"Oenone," she said, recognizing her from the moment when, with Paris, she had held the girl as if in her own arms, "what are you doing here? Why did you not come to bid him farewell with the rest of his kin?"

"I never knew when first I loved him that he was a prince." said the girl. Her voice was as lovely as she was, light and musical. "How could a common girl like me come up to the King and the Queen when they were saying goodbye to their son?"

Kassandra put her arm around Oenone and said gently, "You must come and stay at the palace. You are his wife and the mother of his child, so they will love you as they do Paris himself."And if they do not , she thought to herself,they can just behave as if they do, for the honor of the family . Tothink he went away without bidding her goodbye !

Oenone's face was flooded with tears. She clutched Kassandra's arm. "They say you are a prophetess, that you can see the future," she said, weeping. "Tell me that he will come back! Tell me that he will come back to me!"

"Oh, he will come back," said Kassandra.

He will come back. But not to you.

She was confused at the depth of her own emotions. She said, "Let me speak to my mother about you," and went, with Andromache, to Hecuba. Andromache said in gentle reproach, "Oh, Kassandra, how can you? A peasant girl - to bring her to the palace?"

"She's not; she's as well born as either of us," Kassandra said. "You've only to look at her hands to see that. Her father is a priest of the River God, Scamander."

She repeated this argument to Hecuba, whose first impulse had been to say: 'Of course, if she is carrying Paris's child—and how can you be so sure of that, my dear?—we must see that she is well provided for and not in want. But to bring her to the palace?"

Nevertheless when she met Oenone she was charmed at once by her beauty, and brought her to a suite of rooms high up in the palace, light and airy and looking out on the ocean. They were empty, and smelled of mice, but Hecuba said, "No one has used these rooms since Priam's mother lived here; we will have workmen in and have them redecorated for you, my dear, if you can manage with them this way for a night or two."

Oenone's eyes were large and almost disbelieving. "You are so good to me - they are much too fine for me—"

"Don't be foolish," Hecuba said brusquely. "For my son's wife - and soon his son—there's nothing too fine, believe me. We'll have workmen from Crete—there are workmen here painting frescoes in some houses in the city, and painting vases and oil jars, I'll send a message to them tomorrow."

She was as good asher word, and within a day or two the Cretans came to plaster the rooms and paint festival-scenes on the walls, great white bulls and the leaping bull-dancers of Crete, in realistic colours. Oenone was delighted with the pretty rooms, and pleased in a childlike way when Hecuba sent women to wait on her. "You must not over-exert yourself, or my grandson may suffer," Hecuba said bluntly when Oenone tried inarticulately to thank her.

Andromache was kind to Oenone too, though in a careless way, and at first Kassandra spent a great deal of time with them, confused by her own feelings. Andromache now belonged to Hector, and Oenone to Paris; she had no close friends and though every day or so Priam spoke of the necessity of finding her a husband, she was not sure that was what she wanted, or what she would say if they asked her—which they probably would not.

She did not understand why Oenone's presence should affect her this way; she supposed it was because she had shared Paris's emotions (but if Paris felt this way about Oenone, why had he been willing to leave her?) towards the girl when he made her his wife. She felt a great desire to caress the other woman, and comfort her, while at the same time she drew away from her, selfconscious even of the kind of careless embrace customary between girls.

Confused and frightened, she began to avoid Oenone and this meant that she avoided Andromache too; for the two young wives now spent a good deal of time together, talking of their coming babes, and weaving baby-clothes; a pastime which appealed to Kassandra not at all. Her sister Polyxena, never a friend, was not yet married although Priam was haggling for the best possible alliance for her and she thought and spoke of little else.

Kassandra fancied that when Paris returned she might be less obsessed with Oenone; but she had no idea when that might be. Alone under the stars on the high roof of the palace, she sent out her thoughts seeking her twin, and achieved no more than fresh sea breezes, and a blinding view of the deep darkness of the sea, so clear that she could see the pebbles on the sea bottom.

One day, choosing a time when Priam was in a good humour, she went to him and carefully emulating Polyxena's kittenish behaviour, asked softly, "Please tell me, Father, how far Paris is going, and how long a journey is it till he will be back?"

Priam smiled indulgently, and said, "Look, my dear. Here we are on the shores of the straits. Ten days' sail this way, southward, and there is a cluster of islands ruled by the Akhaians. If he avoids shipwreck on reefs here—" he sketched a coastline, "he can sail southward to Crete, or northwesterly to the mainland of the Athenians and the Mykenaeans. If he has fair winds and no shipbreaking storms, he could return before the summer's end; but he will be trading and perhaps staying as a guest with one or more of the Akhaian kings… as they call themselves. They are newcomers to this country; some of them have been there no more than their father's lifetimes.

Their cities are new; ours is ancient. There was another Troy here before my forefathers built our city, you know, daughter."

"Really?" She made her voice soft and admiring like Polyxena's, and he smiled and told her of the ancient Cretan city which once had risen not more than a day's sail south along the coast. "In this city," he said, "were great storehouses of wine and oil, and they think this may have been why the city burned when great Poseidon Earthshaker made the sea rise and the ground tremble. For a day and a night there was a great darkness over the whole world, as far south as Egypt; and the beautiful island Kallistos fell into the sea, drowning the temple of Serpent Mother and leaving the temples of Zeus the Thunderer and Apollo Sunlord untouched. That is why there is now less worship, in the civilized lands, of the Serpent Mother."

"But how do we know it is the Gods who have shaken the lands?" Kassandra asked. "Have they sent messengers to tell us so?"

"We do not know," Priam said, "but what else could it be? If it is not the Gods, there would be nothing but Chaos. Poseidon is one of the greatest Gods here in Troy, and we petition him to keep the earth solid beneath our feet."

"May he long do so," Kassandra murmured fervently, and since she saw that her father's attention had wandered to his wine cup, murmured a courteous request to go; her father nodded permission and she went out into the courtyard, with much to think about. If indeed it had been the great earthquake (which she had heard about during her childhood - it had been several years

before Priam's birth) then perhaps this was sufficient reason that the worship of Earth Mother had been discredited, except among the tribeswomen.

The courtyard was a-bustle; it was a brilliant day. Workmen were moving about; the people painting friezes high up in the rooms assigned to Oenone for Paris were grinding new pigments and mixing them with oil, tally-men were counting jars of oil brought in as tithes on one of the ships lying out in the harbor; some of the soldiers were practicing at arms, and far out beyond the city, she could see a cloud of dust which was probably Hector exercising the horses of his new chariot. She wandered among them like a ghost unseen.It is as if I were a sorceress and bad made myself invisible , she thought, and wondered if she could make herself so in truth, and if it would make any difference if she did.

For no reason at all her eyes fell idly on a young man who was dutifully marking tallies with a notched stick and pressing wax on the sealing ropes of great jars, oil or wine, pressing the seal that indicated these had been taken for the King's household.

He seemed a bit restless under her scrutiny, turning his eyes away, and Kassandra, blushing she had been taught it was unmaidenly to stare at young men - looked away. Then her eyes were drawn back; the young man seemed to glow, his eyes grew very strange, almost vacant; then they focused and he drew upright. He seemed to grow taller, looming over her; yes, it was she, Kassandra, whom he fixed with his eyes, and in a flash she recognized what God possessed him, for she was looking again into the face of Apollo Sunlord.

His voice reverberated as thunder, so that she wondered, with a scrap of wandering consciousness, how the other workers could go on quietly with their work.

Kassandra, daughter of Priam, have you forgotten me?

She whispered under her breath, "Never, Lord."

Have you forgotten that I have set my hand upon you and called you for my own?

Again she whispered, "Never."

Your place is in my Temple; come, I bid you.

"I will come," she said, half aloud, gazing on the luminous form. Then the overseer strode through the yard, and the young man shimmered, wavered in the sun which blurred Kassandra's eyes…

The vision was gone. For a moment Kassandra wondered if she had indeed been bidden to the Sunlord's Temple? Should she fetch her cloak and her serpent, climb up to the High Place of the Gods at once? She hesitated - if she had actually dreamed it and it had never happened, what would she say in the Temple to the priests and priestesses? Surely there were penalties for blasphemy of that kind…

No. She was Priam's daughter, a princess of Troy, and she had been made a priestess of the Great Mother. She might be mistaken, but it was certainly no blasphemy nor anything to be ignored. Silently she went into the palace, under her breath whispering, "If I have not been called, Sunlord, send me a sign."

On the great stairway, she encountered Hecuba, wrapped in a workaday smock, frown lines drawn between her brows making her look older.

"You are idle, daughter," Hecuba rebuked her. "If you cannot find any reason to keep yourself occupied, I will myself find you some task; henceforth you will not leave the women's quarters on any morning until your share of spinning and weaving is done. For shame, to leave your work to your sister. Was it only laziness you learned among the women of my tribe?"

"I am not idle!" Kassandra replied angrily. Was this the sign for which she had asked? 'I have been sent for by the God, and I am required in his Temple."

Hecuba frowned at her, narrowing her eyes.

"Kassandra, the Gods choose their priestesses from among simple folk; they do not call to a princess of Troy."

"Do you think me less worthy than another?" Kassandra flared out. "I have known since I was a child that Apollo Sunlord wanted me for his own, and now he has summoned me!"

"Oh, Kassandra!" Hecuba sighed. "Why do you talk such nonsense?" but Kassandra was no longer listening to her. She turned away and ran down the stairs and out through the great gates, hurrying up the hill toward Apollo's Temple.

CHAPTER 18

Kassandra ran up the steps of the street which traversed the city from lower to highest ground, hardly realizing that the women who dwelled in the crowded houses built along the steep street had come crowding out of the houses, in a flutter of brightly dyed dresses, to watch her precipitous flight. The pounding of her heart forced her to slow her steps to a walk, and then to a full stop.

She bent over, half sick. She had been rigidly schooled always to maintain her decorum before strangers; she pressed the loose sleeve of her dress over her lips, trying to control the nausea and sharp pain in her chest, and sought a step where she could catch her breath. She did not want to appear on the doorstep of the God as a dishevelled fugitive.

A kindly voice said 'Princess—" and she looked up to see an aging woman bent over her, holding a clay cup in her hand. "You have climbed too far, and too swiftly, in this sun. May I offer you a drink of water? Or I can fetch you some cooled wine, if it would please you to step

inside."

The thought of going into the cool shaded interior was tempting, but Kassandra was ashamed to show or admit weakness.

How can I be overcome by the sun? I am the beloved of Apollo Sunlord -but she did not say this aloud, murmuring her thanks and setting the cup to her lips. The water tasted a little of clay and was not over cool, but it felt good to her parched lips and throat.

"Will you rest for a moment inside my house, Princess?"

"No, thank you." She kept her eyes averted. "I am quite well; I will sit here and rest for a moment." The light hurt her eyes; she shaded them with her hand, looking down at the clear dazzling reflection of the harbor. For a moment the sun blurred her sight, then she saw clearly and all but cried out; the clear blue of the sea was dark with the sails of many ships.

Somany! Where had they come from ?

They were not her father's ships; and as she tried to focus on any one of them she was suddenly no longer sure it was there. After a few moments of this, the harbor burned empty with dazzling blue sea, broken only by the shape of one old Cretan ship which had been loading paints and lumber for the past three days.

It had been only a vision, then; a hallucination.

She wrenched her aching eyes from the illusory sea, slowly got to her feet and began to climb upward. She kept her eyes slitted narrowly against the sun, which glared like fire spreading down across the walls of Troy, and kept climbing, slowly, against a growing sense that to run away like this was folly, that one did, not flee to a God like a strayed goat bolting from the flock. She should have come, oh, yes, but she should have come like a princess of Troy, attended properly, and bearing the proper gifts for the House of the God.

Nevertheless it would be wrong to turn back now.Unless the deceitful vision of ships had been meant as a warning… ? No; even so, she could not take back her commitment to the God.

She climbed on, approaching the temple of the Sunlord.

A flare of light, haloed by a flash of summer lightning, drew her eyes to the heights, where the Temple of Pallas Athene stood, and suddenly doubt assailed her. She had been made priestess of the Goddess, sent into the Underworld to seek her, and had been accepted; was it not Earth Mother who had called her since her earliest childhood, and had spoken to her with the voice of prophecy? Was she then abandoning her loyalty to the Divine Mother, Maiden and protectress of maidens, forsaking her for the beautiful Sunlord?

Sudden panic flooded her, so that for a moment she thought she would vomit, and swallowed spasmodically; her whole body was filled with a fear she could all but taste. She heard hard steps

pursuing her and for a moment the sky above her was dark, and there was but one thought filling her mind to the brim, submerged in the dark waters…I must reach the Temple of the Maiden, there alone will I be safe… no man would dare lay hands on any whom she protects …

Kassandra blinked incredulously. There was no peril, no flame, no pursuer. The harbor gleamed empty and blue; the street around her contained only a few women, watching her climb sedately toward the great gates of the Sunlord's Temple.

Is it the God who has sent madness on me? She paused to catch her breath and stepped over the threshold into Apollo's Temple.

There was a sudden rush of wind, as if a giant hand pushed her across the threshold. Kassandra, patting her hair distractedly into place, looked about, almost disappointed that no one seemed to take notice.What did I expect? That the God himself would come out and make me welcome ?

A woman in the ordinary dress of a priestess - a white tunic and a veil dyed with saffron to a sunny golden colour - raised her head and looked at Kassandra; then stood up and came toward her. She said, "Welcome, daughter of Priam; have you come here for an oracle or an omen, or to offer sacrifice?"

"None of these things," Kassandra said, self-consciously, not knowing how to say what she had come to say. "I came - because the God has called me to come - to be his priestess—" and she broke off, feeling more than a little foolish.

But the older woman smiled in a kindly way and said, "Yes, of course; I remember that you came once to us when you were only a little girl, and seemed so much at home here, I thought perhaps one day the Sunlord would call you. So now come inside, my dear, and tell me all about it. First, how old are you?" she asked. "You seem well-grown to womanhood."

"My mother tells me that I shall be seventeen soon after midsummer," Kassandra answered as they went inside. She remembered the waiting room where many years ago she had eaten a piece of sweet melon while her mother awaited the oracle, and found it hard to believe that it had changed so little in so many years. She wondered about the serpents she had seen and caressed at that time; they had been a short-lived species, probably they were long dead. The thought saddened her.

The priestess gestured to her to sit.

"Now tell me about yourself; everything which makes you think you have been called to our Temple."

When Kassandra had finished the priestess spoke. "Well, Kassandra, if you wish to be one of us, you must live for a year here within the Temple, to learn to interpret the oracles and the omens and to speak for the God."

Kassandra said, feeling a surge of upswelling happiness, "I shall be happy to live in the House

of the God."

"Then you must send one of the Temple servants to fetch your belongings; only a few changes of clothing and perhaps a warm cloak, for you must wear the common dress of a priestess; we are all as sisters here, and you may not wear jewels and ornaments while you dwell in the shrine."

"I do not care for jewels," Kassandra said, "and indeed I have very few. But why is it not permitted?"

The old woman smiled. "It is a rule of the Temple," she said, "and I do not know why it is so. Perhaps it is because many of the folk who come here to consult us are poor, and if we were hung with jewels they might feel that we were enriching ourselves upon their offerings. My name is Charis," she said, "which is one of the names of Earth Lady. I have dwelt in the house of the Sunlord since I was nine winters old, and now I am seven-and-forty. We are long-lived here, unless we are chosen to bear a child to the God and it should chance that we die in childbirth; but that does not happen often, and many of our brothers and sisters are healer-priests. Have you your mother's or your father's leave to dwell in the House of the God?"

Kassandra said, "I do not think my mother will object; I have spoken with her of this. As for my father, he has so many sons and daughters, I do not think he will know or care whether I am in the God's house or his. I have never been one of his favourites." 'But tell me," she asked the priestess, "may I have my serpent to live with me in the Temple? She was a gift from Imandra,

Queen and priestess of Colchis, and no one else in Troy loves her; I fear she will be neglected if I am not there to care for her."

"She will be welcome," Charis said. "You may have her brought here."

The old priestess now summoned a servant, and Kassandra instructed her as to which of her possessions she wanted fetched from the palace. "And go to my mother Queen Hecuba," she said, "and tell her that I beg for her blessing."

The servant bowed and went away. "And now, if you wish," Charis said, "I will show you the dormitory where the virgins of Apollo sleep."

So began the time that Kassandra remembered later as the happiest and most peaceful of her entire life. She learned to consult the oracles, to read the omens, and to serve the shrine with the appointed offerings. She cared for the sacred serpents, and learned to interpret the meanings of their movements and behaviour.

As she had foreseen, her mother made no difficulties; she sent by the servant the requested belongings, and a message: 'Say to my daughter Kassandra that I bless her and approve what she has done; tell her I send her many kisses and embraces."

Very soon she found many friends at the shrine, and after only a few months there were many clients and supplicants who came to deal with her and preferred that she should accept their

offerings and give them advice.

Once she asked an older priest: 'I do not understand; why do they come to the God to ask these foolish questions for which they do not need a God's advice, but only the common wits they were born with?"

"Because so many of them are born fools or worse," said the old priest bluntly,"they think the Gods have nothing better to do than to trouble themselves with human affairs. Myself, I believe the Gods have enough concerns of their own, in the land of the Immortals, to worry themselves very much with the business of ordinary men. Perhaps with the doings of Kings and the great ones; but—" and he lowered his eyes and spoke almost in a whisper, "I have seen little evidence even of that, daughter of Priam."

Kassandra was a little shocked by this blasphemy, but felt that if the priest had little faith in the God, it was more his loss than anyone else's. As for herself, while she dwelt in the shrine she had a great and often overpowering sense of the presence of her God, as in the moment when first he had called her.

This was not to say that her time in the Temple was entirely carefree. Some of the maidens in the shrine were openly jealous of her because she was a favourite with the older priests and priestesses, and spoke to her, or of her, with unkindness or spite; but she had never been popular with girls of her own age, not even with her sister and half-sisters, except among the Amazons and had become resigned to that before she was out of childhood.

Mostly she felt she was surrounded with loving attention; what else could it be when she dwelt in the house of her God? There were many women in the shrine who spoke of the Sunlord as other maidens spoke of a husband or lover; in fact one of the common names of the priestesses was 'brides of the God'. One of the women, Phyllida, was regarded as having been the bride of the God in truth; she had borne a child who was accepted as a son of Apollo.

When Kassandra first heard this she was annoyed and disgusted with what seemed obvious nonsense.

Is the girl simply a fool, deceived by some quite ordinary seducer? Or was she telling a tale to make up for some forbidden adventure of her own? Kassandra wondered, for the virgins of the God were forbidden to have anything to do with men; they were carefully watched and not allowed to receive visits or gifts or to meet even with their own brothers or fathers except in the presence of one or two of the older governesses.If I wished to be the bride of any mortal man, my father would be all too happy to arrange a marriage for me , she thought.

Sometimes Kassandra would half awaken at night, hearing the unmistakable voice of the God when he had called to her, a shining Immortal who was something more than mere man." More than once she dreamed that she lay fainting within the arms of her God, an ecstasy more than human sweeping through all her senses; from listening to the other girls talk (though out of shyness she took little part in this gossip), she learned that she was not the only girl so favoured with such dreams.

Once when one of the young maidens was telling her latest dream, filled with erotic detail which Kassandra thought only romantic imagining, she said: 'If you dream so much of lying with a man, Esiria, why not send for your father and ask him to find you a husband? Otherwise, cannot you find something else to occupy your thoughts and something more useful to talk about?"

"You are only jealous because he does not visit you even in a dream," Esiria retorted. "And if he did, would you then refuse him?"

A curious chill went over Kassandra.

"If he should visit me," she declared, "I should try to be very certain that it was in truth the God, and not some lecherous man bent on deceiving a foolish and credulous woman, or romantic girl who mistakes a mere lecher for a God's deputy. I know there are men in this temple who would not be above taking advantage of a silly girl that way; or do you think priests are eunuchs because they have taken a vow of chastity?"

Esiria would say no more; and Kassandra held her peace; but the next day when the women went to draw water at the well she sought out Phyllida and asked to see her child. Like all mothers, the young woman (for she was not yet Kassandra's age) was eager to show her little boy.

He was pretty indeed, with big blue long-lashed eyes and a crop of golden curls which made it

easy to believe that he was indeed the child of the Sunlord. Kassandra admired and kissed him, then asked Phylhda in a sufficiently awed tone, "How did you know it was the God who had come to you?"

"At first I did not know," the girl said, "I thought it was a man in the mask of the God, and I opened my mouth to cry out for one of the governesses: but then - have you ever heard the voice of the God, daughter of Priam?"

Kassandra felt a catch in her throat, remembering that voice; she said, "I have heard—" and could not go on.

"Then, if it happens to you, you will know," said Phyllida abruptly, and said no more.

Kassandra looked again at the little boy and said, "He is beautiful; may I hold him for a moment?"

"Certainly." The child had fallen asleep, though his baby mouth, like a half-opened rose, still clung to the nipple; Phyllida lifted him and put him into Kassandra's arms. He stirred and whimpered, but she jiggled him a little as she had seen his mother do and he was quiet. His weight, damp and soft in her arms, was unlike anything else she had ever felt; even among the Amazons she had never held quite so young a baby. She bent over close to him, touching the soft skin with her lips; it felt exactly like rose-petals.

For a moment a vast content came over her; then it seemed as if a cloud covered the sun, and a cold wind blew over her though she was sitting still in the warm bright court under a sun which almost burned her, so that she drew the end of her veil over the baby lest it should damage his eyes or burn his skin. She recognized the darkness of vision, and, motionless, awaited what she could not avoid.

Suffering and grief were the essence of it; somehow she slid through time and knew that years had passed since this quiet moment; the child who lay against her breast was her own, the little head in her bosom was dark and curly, and even as that strange inward surge of happiness touched her it was clouded with despair, the memory of this very moment, and an angry revulsion. It was so strong that for a moment it paralysed her then she knew where she was again; for once she had managed to prevent the dark waters from drowning her.

She saw Phyllida's wide childish eyes regarding her in something like dread as she put the babe back into his mother's arms. Phyllida whispered, "You looked so far away and strange, Kassandra. They say you can see into the future; what did you see for my child?" And as Kassandra was silent, she entreated, "You would not curse my baby?"

"No, no, of course not, little one," Kassandra said.

"Will you bless him then, daughter of Priam?"

Kassandra wished to reassure her, and reached within herself for the distant touch of the

Goddess, to draw upon that power for blessing; instead she heard herself say: 'Alas, there is no blessing for any child of Troy born in this inauspicious year; but perhaps Apollo, his father, will bless him where I may not." She rose quickly and went away, leaving Phyllida staring after her in wordless dismay.

CHAPTER 19

A few days later, a messenger arrived, with gifts from the King's house for the Temple, and a message for Kassandra herself.

"Your father and mother have asked that you may make a visit to your home for the wedding of your sister Creusa."

"I shall have to ask leave," Kassandra told him, but permission was readily granted - perhaps too readily. Kassandra knew that it would not have been so swiftly given for any of the other young priestesses, and she really wished to be treated as one of them; but she could not fault the priests and priestesses that they did not wish to offend Troy's King. They insisted only that -since she was not yet a full priestess but still in the probationary year - if she wished to spend the night in her father's house she must be properly accompanied and chaperoned by a senior priestess.

The priestess who heard her request said, "It lies in your power to confer a favour, daughter of

Priam: who will you have to accompany you?"

Kassandra was not totally a stranger to these kind of courtly intrigues; whoever she chose, others might feel slighted. Making a choice no one could fault or envy, she chose the elderly Charis, who had first welcomed her to the House of the God.

Dressing herself in the most festive of the few simple dresses she had with her, with the older woman at her side, she went quietly through the streets, attended only by one of the Temple slaves.

Charis, a lifelong dweller in the House of the Sunlord, was nevertheless impressed as they approached the Great Citadel of Priam, and said little.

Kassandra was silent too, for she had looked down from the heights and seen again the dark ships in the harbor, not knowing whether they were really there or yet to come.

As they entered the forecourt, Hecuba came to greet them; Kassandra bent to embrace her mother - Hecuba was a tall woman but now Kassandra was taller still, and Hecuba lamented as she turned her face up to her tall daughter: 'You cannot be still growing! Why, you are taller than most warriors, Kassandra! A man might not wish to have you near—"

"What does it matter, mother? Since I am not to be married but to dwell in the House of the God…'

"That I shall never accept," said Hecuba with spirit. "I want to see your children before I die…'

But you never will, Kassandra suddenly knew; it came with the painful memory of holding Phyllida's child in her lap, that before she held her grandchild -the bitterness, the despair— Hecuba's eyes would forever have closed on this world.

"Mother, let's not speak of that; if you want a wedding, you have Creusa now to marry off, and Polyxena's older than I am, and still unwed. Find her a husband, and don't bother about me," she said. "Tell me about Creusa's husband."

"She is to marry Aeneas, son of Anchises," Hecuba said. "So handsome, they say he is truly a son of foam-born Aphrodite…'

"She is a Goddess of whom I know nothing," Kassandra said, before she remembered the beautiful one in Paris's dream; Goddess of love and beauty, surrounded by her doves. If his father claims to be the lover of Aphrodite, I should think the Goddesses would be angry with him," said Kassandra. "I must see this marvel of a man."

"Well, Creusa is content with him, and so is your father," said Hecuba, "and in my youth I would have been more than happy with such a husband." She turned a little anxiously to Kassandra and said, "Please try not to prophesy doom at this wedding, darling; it upsets people so much."

Kassandra thought with a surge of anger:Does she think I prophesy for the pleasure of doing it ? But her mother looked so troubled that Kassandra could not be angry; she kissed her again and said, "I will certainly try not to see any disasters; if the Gods are kind, I may be able to foretell something better."

"Gods grant it," murmured Hecuba piously. "Well, come in, my dear; I have missed you very much."

After a moon spent in the House of the Sunlord, everything in the palace seemed smaller and gaudy; yet dear and familiar. Andromache, dressed for the wedding in flame-dyed finery, ran out to greet Kassandra. Her pregnancy was very obvious now, and she waddled with the typical walk of a pregnant woman, tilting her body backward for balance. Kassandra, thinking of the lithe young girl in Imandra's house, felt saddened, but Andromache embraced her joyously.

"Oh, I am so glad to see you! I wish you would marry and come home so we could be together! Just think, in another moon I will have my son in my arms!"

"Where is Oenone? Should she not be among us? A pregnant woman is the luckiest of all guests at a wedding."

"She is not pregnant now," said Andromache. "Have you not heard? She bore Paris a son four days ago, and she is still in bed; she had a dreadful time, poor thing - your mother said she was

so slender she should have known better than to have a child at all. But when I asked how she could have avoided it, she would not tell me - she said Hector would not like it. Oenone has called her son Corythus - so if Creusa wants a pregnant woman at her wedding she will have to make do with me."

"Creusa is fortunate to have you among her guests," Kassandra said.

Andromache smiled like a kitten lapping cream and said, "I hope she thinks so too."

"I should go and see Oenone," Kassandra said. Andromache took Kassandra's hand and drew her along the stairs.

She said, "You had better not; she has been very strange lately. When I went to see her she would not speak to me. She said I was her husband's enemy because Hector had sent him away."

They went into the upstairs suite where the women were dressing the bride. It was the beautiful room with the Cretan murals of bull-dancers, and Kassandra said, "But this is the room my mother had made ready for Oenone."

"She would not stay in it," Andromache said. "She said she did not want to lie here day after day looking out on the sea which had borne Paris away from her, so she insisted on moving into a room at the back of the palace where she can look upon Mount Ida, her home. But never mind that now; come and help dress the bride."

Far below they could hear the sounds of the men in the hall, drinking and toasting the wedding.

Creusa was being covered with an embroidered veil; she put it back for a moment and came forward to greet Andromache with a bow, then kissed Kassandra coolly and said, "Welcome, sister."

She was not Hecuba's daughter, but Priam's by the most important of his lesser wives. Strictly speaking, by court etiquette, it was for Kassandra first to claim sisterhood, but she was not interested at the moment in preserving protocol. She returned Creusa's embrace warmly, and wished her good fortune: 'May Earth Mother and the Bright Ones bless you, sister."

"Can you see good fortune for me, Kassandra - you who are a prophetess?"

"I will know that when I have seen your husband," said Kassandra elliptically.

"When you have seen him I think you will envy me," Creusa said.

Kassandra smiled and said, "Indeed I hope so, sister. Mother told me how handsome he is."

"And he is rich too, and a prince in his own country," said Creusa. "Surely no woman can be luckier than I."

"Do not say such things, lest the Immortals be jealous," reprimanded Charis. "Remember the fate of the woman who said her spinning was as fine as that of Pallas Athene, and Athene turned her into a spider who should forever spin her webs to have them torn down by housewives!"

"Come, come," said Andromache, who was the first of the bride-women. "Let us finish dressing her quickly, or the men will all be drunk before she comes. Kassandra, your fingers are nimblest, will you put the flowers in her hair?"

Kassandra quickly tied the blossoms into a wreath and fastened them into Creusa's bright curls.

"Now she is ready; let us lead her down."

Taking her by the hands, the women surrounded the bride and led her carefully down the steep staircases of the palace, holding her carefully lest she stumble and begin her marriage with a false step - the worst of omens.

They lifted up their voices in the oldest of marriage hymns, the one to Earth Mother, and Kassandra felt surrounded with as much joy and gaiety as if it were her own wedding.For once , she thought, 7can be as carefree as any other young girl . She was briefly aware that others did not observe themselves in this way; what was the difference? But for once she had an answer to that painful sense of difference.I am a priestess and need not be like the others; if I can somehow manage to seem like the rest it is enough .

They were at the very threshold of the feasting-hall when they heard a cry of surprise and welcome.

Priam called out, "Odysseus, you old cheat! Right enough, you know just when to come to sample our best wine for a wedding! Come in and have a drink, old comrade!"

Kassandra reached out and pulled Creusa back.

"Let our father welcome his guest first."

Creusa said sulkily, "I didn't want that old pirate at my wedding!"

Andromache whispered, "I have heard all my life of the stories he can tell; he has sailed further than Jason and has many traveller's tales. He visited my mother in Colchis and brought her a mother-of-pearl comb that he said was given him by a mermaid."

"Perhaps he has brought you a wedding gift too, Creusa," Kassandra said. "In any case even the Gods must show hospitality; let us go in."

She took up the first line of the hymn to the Maiden, always sung at weddings, and the other girls joined in. Priam looked up and gestured them forward; Kassandra saw a handsome young man, tall and slender, with curly light-brown hair, and a scattering of dark freckles just gilding his face. She supposed, from the ornate crimson tunic he wore, that this was the bridegroom. Just

approaching the high seat was a short, burly man of middle age, with crisply curled hair and a red face, weather-beaten and hook-nosed, with deep-set blue eyes that seemed to look out on immense distances. She supposed, even before she saw the recognition in Andromache's eyes, that this was the famous seafarer and pirate, her father's old friend Odysseus.

The seafarer turned and cried out, "What a bunch o' beauties, old friend. These cannot all be your daughters, Priam; or can they? I seem to remember you've somewhat more'n your share of womenfolk."

Priam summoned them to him with a wave of his hand.

Kassandra found herself enveloped in a great bear hug.

"Your second daughter, isn't it? Is this the bride? Well, why not, in the name of all the demons?" He smelled of salt air and faintly of wine. She could not be offended by the embrace; it was as kindly and enthusiastic as a gust of the sea wind. "You'd like one as beautiful as this, wouldn't you, Aeneas, my friend?"

Kassandra could see that Aeneas's eyes rested on her with appreciation and that Creusa was almost crying.

She pulled back from Odysseus gently and said, "Don't, sir. I am not for any man; I am a virgin of Apollo Sunlord, and content to be so."

"Hellfire!" His swearing was enormous as everything else about him. "What a waste, beautiful; I'd marry you myself, except I have a wife already back in Ithaca and Hera, my protecting Goddess, is a Goddess of marital fidelity; I'll have trouble with her if I go sniffing round other women. Not that I haven't had my share, but I couldn't marry anyone else, and besides you want some beautiful young fellow, not an old walrus like me." She giggled; with his huge moustache, he really did look like a walrus.

"And this is Hector's bride?" he said, turning to Andromache. "Hector, you won't mind if an old man kisses your wife, will you? Customary in my part of the world, you know." He took Andromache by the arms, patted her bulging belly. "Can't get close enough to you now for a real kiss, can I, girl? Well, some other time, maybe." He kissed her smackingly on the cheek.

"I brought some things in my pack - loot from a Cretan ship -bride-gifts for your daughter, Priam, and gifts for that fine grandson this pretty girl here's going to give you in a few days—no? And since this one won't marry, I'll give gifts to the Sunlord's temple for her."

"In Apollo's name I thank you, sir," said Kassandra courteously, but Odysseus pulled her down to sit at his side.

"Here, sit beside me, drink from my cup; you're the only unattached girl here, and such flirting as I can do before your father and mother will do you no harm, hey?"

"My sister Polyxena is not married," Kassandra said with a glimmer of mischief, and Odysseus said, laughing, "Won't be long if I know your father, my girl; Polyxena's pretty enough, but just between you and me I like a girl with a little more meat on her bones. You'll do just fine."

She poured his cup and mixed his wine, and when the servers went round filled his plate; she found herself feeling a kindly warmth for the old man.

Priam said, "Now tell us your news, Odysseus. And I need your advice, too, friend; I have had an offer for Polyxena, from Akhilles son of Peleus; if you were in my place, would you accept? He is noble and I hear that he is also brave—"

"Brave he certainly is," Odysseus said, "but he has no pleasure except in killing. If I had a daughter I'd cut her throat before I married her off to that madman."

"He has the strength of Herakles—" Hector began.

"And many of his other faults," Odysseus interrupted. "Like Herakles, he's no man for women; takes a fancy to one now and then and is likely to kill her in a moment of madness. I sailed with Herakles; just once. That was enough; I got tired of his moping over his boy friends and his sudden rages. Akhilles is too like him for my taste. There are enough fine young men in Troy or even fine honorable Akhaians if that's what you want for her - but she looks like a nice young girl; find her someone else. That's my best advice." Then he shouted to a servant and requested that his chests be brought into the hall, and from each of them he brought out strange and

beautiful things, gifts for everyone in the hall, presenting them lavishly to Priam and to his sons and daughters. For Hecuba there was a little cup, nolarger than a closed fist, of beaten gold.

"From the House of the Bulls in Crete," he said. "I found it myself in the remains of what was once the Labyrinth; God knows how it escaped the earlier looters."

"Maybe some God preserved it for you."

"Maybe," said Odysseus. "See the bulls?"

Hecuba looked admiringly at the cup, then passed it round the admiring circle of women. Kassandra examined it in her turn, exclaiming over the finely chiselled carvings; a bull in nets as finely carved as thread, with young men in a chariot, and a cow to lure him.

"But this is a priceless treasure," she said, "you should keep this for your own wife."

"I have just as many fine things again," Odysseus said with great good-nature, "for my wife and my son. Never think I would give awayall my best."

For Andromache he had a golden comb and for Creusa a bronze mirror with gold-washed beads about the edge.

"A mirror fit for Aphrodite herself," he said. "I got this when I spent the night in the cave of a

sea-nymph. All night we loved and when we parted in the morning she gave me this because she said she'd never look in it again if she wasn't beautiful enough for me to stay with her." He winked and said, "So now you're a bride and can make yourself beautiful for your husband."

Kassandra's gift was a necklace of blue beads which looked like glass, oblong in shape, and simply made, except for the plain gold clasp which held them at the ends.

"It is a small thing," he said, "but I seem to remember that priestesses are not allowed to wear elaborate ornaments, and this is simple enough, perhaps, that you may wear it in memory of your father's old friend."

Touched by the words, Kassandra kissed him on the cheek as she would hardly have dared with her own father.

"I need no gifts to remember you, Odysseus; but I will wear this whenever I am permitted. Where was it made?"

"In Khem, the land where Pharaoh rules, and the Kings build great tombs which make the whole city of Troy look like a little village," he said, and she was so accustomed already to his fantastic tales that she did not know for many years that for once he was speaking only the simple truth.

The gifts bestowed, he asked Priam: 'When are you going to make me free of the straits, so that I can come and go without paying taxes like those other Akhaians?"

"You are certainly different from the others," Priam temporised, "and I would be ungrateful indeed if after so many gifts I should extort more from you, my friend. But I cannot allow anyone and everyone to travel through my waters. The tax I ask of you is only to tell me what is happening in the world faraway. Is there peace in the islands where those Akhaians reign?"

"There will be peace there, perhaps, when the sun rises in the west," Odysseus said. "As with Akhilles, the kings think of warfare as their greatest pleasure. I will go to war only when my own lands and peoples are threatened; but they think of battle as a pastime more virtuous than any games… the great game at which they would gladly spend all their lives. They think me unmanly and cowardly that I have no love for fighting, though I am better at fighting than most of them."

"For years they have been trying to provoke us to war," Priam said, "but I have made a policy of ignoring insults and provocations, even when they stole my own sister. You live among the Akhaians, old friend; if they make war will you too come against us?"

"I will try not to be drawn into any such war," Odysseus said. "I have only one oath binding me; when the woman who is now Queen of Sparta was wed, there were so many suitors that none of them would yield to another and it looked as if only a war would settle it. Then it was I who created a compromise, and I am proud of it."

"What did you do?" Priam asked.

Odysseus grinned hugely. He said 'Picture this: perhaps the most beautiful woman who ever borrowed the girdle of Aphrodite, and all of us standing about calling out what gifts we would give to her father, and offering to fight for her, with the winner to take bride and dowry of Sparta… and I suggested that she herself should choose, with all of us swearing an oath we would protect the one she chose, should anyone interfere with his wife—"

"Whom did she choose?" asked Hecuba.

"Agamemnon's brother Menelaus; a poor thing, but perhaps she thought he was as wise and strong as his brother," Odysseus said. "Or perhaps it was just out of love for her sister, who had been married to Agamemnon the year before. Sisters marrying brothers… it creates confusion in the family, or so I should imagine."

"Yet if Aeneas had a brother I should be willing to marry him," Polyxena whispered into Kassandra's ear, "if the brother had but half of his good looks and kindliness."

"So should I," Kassandra whispered back, "if the brother but looked at me the way Aeneas looks on Creusa."

Hecuba murmured in a fussy voice, "It is rude to whisper, girls; speak to the company or be silent. Anything not fit to be said aloud is not fit to be said at all."

Kassandra was tired of her mother's strictures of courtesy. She said aloud, "I for one am not

ashamed of what we were saying; we said only that either of us would willingly marry a brother to Aeneas if Aeneas is anything like his brothers."

She was rewarded with a swift blazing look from Aeneas; he said, smiling, "Alas, daughter of Priam, I am my father's only son; but you make me wish I were twins or even triplets for I would willingly share a marriage cup with all three of you. What about it, my lord?" he asked Priam. "Is it fitting for me to have as many wives as you do? If you are eager to marry off your daughters I will gladly take all three of them, if Creusa gives me leave."

Polyxena dropped her eyes and blushed; Kassandra heard herself giggle. Creusa reddened and said, "I would rather be first and only wife; yet the law permits you to have as many wives as you will, my husband."

"Enough; this is no jest," Priam said. "A king's daughters are not to be lesser wives or concubines, son-in-law."

Aeneas smiled in friendly fashion and said, "I meant your daughters no insult, sir," and Priam answered, clasping his hand in a friendly, somewhat drunken clasp, "I know that well; late in a banquet when the wine has been round a few times more than is wisest, jests far more unseemly than that may be forgiven.

And now perhaps it is time for the women to take your bride away, before the party grows too rough for maiden ears."

Hecuba gathered the women together and they surrounded Creusa, with their torches, Kassandra, whose voice was the clearest, leading the wedding hymn. Creusa kissed her father and he laid her hand in Aeneas's; then the women led her up the stairs. Creusa, close to Kassandra, whispered, "Will you prophesy good fortune for my wedding, sister?"

Kassandra pressed her hand and whispered, "I like your husband well; you heard me say I would gladly marry him myself. And such good fortune as may come to any wedding in this year will surely be yours; I see long life and good fame for your husband and for the son you will bear him."

Andromache touched Kassandra's shoulder and whispered, "Why had you no such prophecy for me, Kassandra? We have been friends and I love you."

Kassandra turned to her friend and said gently, "I do not prophesy what I wish, Andromache, but what the Gods send me to say. If I could choose prophecy I would wish you long life and honor, and many sons and daughters to surround you and Hector in your honorable old age on the throne of Troy."

And only the Gods know how much I wish that had been the prophecy sent me…

Andromache smiled and took Kassandra's hand.

"Perhaps, my dear, your goodwill may count for more than your prophecy," she said. "And can you see enough into the future to know how long before Hector's child is born - and if it is a son? My mother would have had me bring a daughter first into the light; but here Hector talks of nothing but his son, so I too wish for a boy - and will I live through childbirth to see his face?"

With enormous relief, Kassandra clasped her friend's slender fingers in hers.

"Oh, it is a boy," she said. "You will have a fine strong boy, and you will live to guide him toward manhood…'

"Your words give me more courage," Andromache said, and Kassandra felt a catch in her throat, remembering the fires which had been all she could see at Andromache's wedding.Perhaps , she thought,it was madness after all and not true prophecy; this is what my mother believed. I would rather be mad than to believe, in this quiet place under these peaceful stars, that fire and disaster should fall on all of these I love .

"Kassandra, you are daydreaming again; come and help us undress the bride," demanded Andromache. "We cannot undo these knots you have tied into Creusa's hair."

"I am coming," Kassandra said quickly, and went to help the other girls at making her sister ready for her husband's coming. With all her heart she was glad she had foreseen for them no disaster.

CHAPTER 20

After all the noise and excitement of the wedding the House of the God seemed even more silent and peaceful, more separated from the disturbances of ordinary life. Ten days after Creusa's wedding, Kassandra was summoned again to a celebration at the palace: for the birth of a son to Hector and Andromache, Priam's first grandson.

"But it is not Priam's first grandson," Kassandra said. "There is Paris's son by Oenone."

"That's as may be," the messenger said, "but Priam chooses to call Hector's son his first grandson and as far as I know the King has the right to choose who he'll name his next heir after Prince Hector."

This was true, but, Kassandra thought, it is hard on Oenone to see her son passed over as was his father. So she chose not to attend the naming-feast.

She had come to treasure the peace and calm of the Temple and resented anything which broke into it, but she got leave to pay a visit to Andromache. She found her in the elaborate suite with the murals of sea-creatures, sitting propped up on pillows, the small red-faced baby in a wicker basket at her side. She looked healthy and blooming, with a good colour in her cheeks, and Kassandra was relieved; so many women died in childbirth or soon after, but Andromache

looked quite well.

"What is all this nonsense aboutHector's son?" she asked, only half joking. "It was you who went to the trouble of carrying him for the best part of a year, and you who went through all the pain and fuss of birthing him. I would call him Andromache's son!"

Andromache grimaced, then giggled. "Maybe you have the best of it, being sworn to the God and forbidden to men! After all that, I am in no hurry to welcome Hector back to my bed. Childbirth is a much overrated pastime; I would as soon wait a few years before I try it again. And they say women are too fragile to handle weapons for fear of wounds? I wonder how brave my dear Hector would have been inthis battle!"

Then she chuckled. "Can't you hear it now - we change all the customs and bards will make ballads about the bravery of Hecuba, mother of Hector! Well, and why not - she has triumphed in that battle at least a dozen times, which means she has more bravery than I ever hope to have! They tell us about the delights of marriage, every girl is brought up to think of nothing else; but the delights of childbearing we are left to discover for ourselves. Ah, well—" she leaned over, grimaced with the pain of movement, and beckoned to one of the servants to put the baby into her arms; the look of delight on her face as she held him close belied her words, "I think my prize of battle is worth more than the sack of a city!"

"Well, I should think so," said Kassandra, touching the tiny curled fist. "What will you call him?"

"Astyanax," said Andromache. "So Hector desires. Did you know that when he is carried down to the naming-feast, he will be laid in Hector's shield and carried that way? Imagine it -what a cradle!"

Kassandra tried to visualise the infant laid at the center of Hector's great war-shield; suddenly she shuddered and went rigid, seeing the great shield, and the child - how old was he? Surely too young for a warrior! - his broken body laid out as for burial. It was like a wave of icy water; but Andromache, happily holding her baby at her breast, did not see.

Kassandra closed her eyes in hopes that that would drive the bloody sight away. "How is it with Creusa?"

"She seems happy; she says she cannot wait to be pregnant. Shall I tell her all of what lies in store for her?"

"Don't be unkind," said Kassandra. "Let her enjoy her first happiness; there will be time enough for everything else later."

"You are right; there are enough old witches who try to spoil things for young brides by warning them of everything in store for them in the fullness of years," Andromache agreed. "And no matter what, I would not have wanted to miss my little darling." She buried her lips in the baby's soft neck, and snuffled at him ecstatically. As when she had seen Phyllida holding her child,

Kassandra was touched and almost envious.

"Is there any other news?"

"Yes; the ship of Paris has been sighted; a runner from the mountain lookout came to tell the King so," said Andromache. "He is your twin, but I do not think him so much like you."

"I am told we are much alike in looks," Kassandra said, hesitating. "I do not think we are much alike otherwise. There are some who think him the handsomest man in Troy."

Andromache said lightly, stroking Kassandra's hand, "I am not among them, of course; for me no man is the equal of Hector, whether in looks or otherwise."

This pleased Kassandra; she felt herself responsible for this marriage and rejoiced that Andromache was content with her husband. And Hector had no reason to be dissatisfied either.

"And everyone thinks you beautiful," Andromache went on, "but I do not think your face would well suit a man: it is too delicate. I do not remember that you were as like as that; is he so girlish then?"

"I don't think so, and surely he is manly enough, for he won so many events at the games," Kassandra said. "He is a fine archer and athlete and wrestler, and a very devil in a chariot. But I think," she added with a touch of mischief, "if we were matched on the field, he would be no

better warrior than I."

"My mother said," Andromache remarked,"that you had the soul of a great warrior in the body of a field mouse."

Kassandra giggled, and put her face down to the baby Astyanax; she felt she had somehow wronged him in giving way to her visions.

"May all the Gods bless him, and you too, my dear," she said.

"Will you not stay to drink to his good fortune at the naming-feast?"

"No, I think not," she said. "I will come home, perhaps, for a day or two when Paris returns. For now I will go and embrace my mother, and then return to the Temple."

She took an affectionate farewell of Andromache, knowing that she was closer to her than to any of her own sisters, and went briefly to Hecuba for her blessing. Then she went to the simple rooms at the back of the house where Oenone dwelt with a couple of servants, quiet girls who had been, she knew, votaries of the River God.

Oenone was curled up in a hammock nursing her son; Kassandra came and embraced her, aware of the woman's fragility; it was Oenone, she thought, and not herself, who had the spirit of a warrior in the body of a field mouse. Oenone seemed so delicate that she would break at a touch.

"Are you well, my sister?" Kassandra asked, using the word deliberately. She was certainly fonder of Oenone than of Creusa or even Polyxena. But when she was close to her she felt again that disturbing impulse to caress the girl, and because she did not know whether this was her own emotion or Paris's, it made her diffident and shy with Oenone.

"I would have come to visit you when I was here for Creusa's wedding, my dear; but they told me you were not well enough for guests," she said.

Oenone smiled and returned her embrace. She said, "Well, now that Andromache's son is born and Hector's place is secure, I need not fear formy son."

Kassandra was shocked. "Surely there is no need to fear for him—"

"Surely I hope there is not," Oenone said, "but Hector managed to be rid of Paris and I do not think he welcomes Paris's son or has any reason to love him."

"I think surely you misjudge Hector," Kassandra said. "He has never shown any jealousy of Paris—not to me."

Oenone laughed and said, "Oh, Kassandra, I do not think you know how much everyone values your good opinion and wishes to show you only their very best side. If Hector felt so you would be the very last to know."

Kassandra blushed. To turn the conversation aside she picked up the baby and dandled him in her arms. "He is pretty," she said. "Is he like his father, do you think, or like you?"

"It is too soon to tell," Oenone said. "I should hope he would be like my own father, true and honorable."

Kassandra sensed the disappointment in the words, more strongly perhaps than even Oenone herself knew. She said, "He may well be likeyou; and then none can question his goodness."

"Only time will tell whether he or Hector's son is best fitted to rule over this city; and I truly rejoice that he will bear no such burden or such fate."

Kassandra said quickly, "Oenone, never envy the fate of Hector's son."

"What have you seen?" Oenone asked apprehensively. "No, do not tell me; I heard what you prophesied at Andromache's wedding. I wish for no such blessing on my son… Paris's son."

"Yes, I was talking about that with Andromache," said Kassandra. "At least among the Amazons a son may bear his mother's name; Hector would be the son of Hecuba—"

"And my child son of Oenone, not son of Paris of the house of Priam," said Oenone. "Fair enough; yet in your city only the son of a harlot bears the name of his mother and not of his

father."

Kassandra said gently, "None could call you so, Oenone, and so I would bear witness." Yet the words were meaningless for she had no power to change matters; Andromache had been pledged to Hector before all of the city, where Oenone was Paris's wife only by virtue that she had accepted him with her father's blessing.

"Oenone, who was your mother?"

"I never knew her name," Oenone said. "Father told me she died young. She too was one of the priestesses of the River God's shrine."

Yes; women who bear the children of Gods are more nameless even than the children of men. She kissed Oenone and promised to send her son a gift; on the way back to the Sunlord's house, she had plenty to think about. If there were men like Aeneas in the world, there might be others she would be willing to marry.

Later that morning she was in Phyllida's room, holding the fair-haired baby while the young mother folded an armful of freshly washed napkins and blankets. She had taken off the baby's swaddling bands so that he could kick freely and was holding the small chubby feet in her hands, admiring the soft perfection of the tiny toes and nails, putting her face down to the little feet to kiss them and caress them with her lips. She blew into the middle of his soft belly to make him laugh, and laughed herself. At this moment she was almost wishing she had her own baby to play

with, though she was by no means interested in any of the preliminaries necessary for getting one.

Phyllida came and bent to reclaim her son, but Kassandra clung to him.

"He likes me," she said proudly. "I think he knows who I am, don't you, beautiful?"

"Why should he not?" Phyllida said, "You are always ready to cuddle and spoil him when I am too busy to give him all the attention he wants."

Hearing his mother's voice, the baby began to squall and reach toward her.

"He is hungry," said Phyllida with resignation, beginning to unfasten her tunic at the neck, "and that you cannot do for me, I fear."

"I would if I could," said Kassandra, barely above a whisper.

"I know," Phyllida said, settling down with the baby at her breast.

Watching her with the child, Kassandra felt the dark waters of a vision rise and subside.

"Kassandra, why will you not tell me what you see?" Phyllida asked, staring at her fearfully.

Kassandra was silent.

This morning I have held in my arms three babes and have seen no future for any of them; what does this mean? Perhaps that I am to die and can see no future because I shall not be here to see any of them grow to manhood? If only I thought it was as simple as that - if I thought it was only that, I would fling myself from the heights of the city before this day's sun had set.

But that was not her destiny; a fate approached her and she must live to behold it and to endure it.

She bent to kiss Phyllida and the baby too and said, not answering directly, "We must all bear our fate; you and I and the baby too. Believe me, knowing a fate makes it no easier to endure."

"I don't understand you," Phyllida said.

"I don't understand myself," Kassandra said and went out into the courtyard of the temple overlooking the sea. She saw a ship there—yes, Andromache had said Paris's ship had been sighted.

It was no part of her duty to welcome Paris to the city, but something stronger than duty drew her downward.

As Kassandra climbed down the long street she saw processions forming at the ships, readying

to approach the palace; and another procession coming from the palace down to the shore.

Paris was driving his chariot - no doubt he had had it unloaded first so that he could make an impressive entrance to the city, in contrast to his unheralded entry to the Games. Beside him in the chariot was a female figure, her identity concealed by a long veil.

Had Paris succeeded then in having Hesione returned to Troy? Kassandra quickened her pace slightly so that she emerged from the city gates just as Paris pulled up before them. At the same time Priam and Hecuba, riding Priam's best ceremonial chariot, drew up facing him. Hector stood a pace behind his father, looking something less than pleased, and Kassandra looked about for Andromache. Surely her friend would not want to miss all this excitement? She looked up at Andromache's window to see her sitting there, with Oenone standing beside her, each with her son in her arms. Even at this distance she could see that Oenone was clutching the side of the window, white-knuckled.

Paris descended from the chariot and turned to lift down the veiled woman: then he bowed low before Priam, who raised him and embraced him.

"Welcome home, my son." He extended a hand in welcome to the veiled woman, who stood motionless beside the chariot. "You have succeeded in your mission, my son?"

"Beyond our wildest hopes."

Hector tried to look pleased. "Then you have brought Hesione back to us, my brother?"

"Not so," said Paris. "My king and my father, I bring back a prize greater far than that for which you sent me."

He brought the lady forward and pulled back her veil; Kassandra and everyone else in the courtyard gasped. The woman was beautiful beyond imagining.

She was tall and beautifully formed, with hair as fine and, yellow as the best beaten gold; her features were like chiselled marble, and her eyes the blue of the depths of a stormy sky.

"I present to you Helen of Sparta, who has consented to become my wife."

Only Kassandra raised her eyes to the window where Oenone pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, then whirled and was gone, leaving Andromache staring after her in dismay. Paris glanced upward; Kassandra could not guess whether he had seen Oenone's swift retreat.

He turned quickly back to Helen, who prompted him in a whisper; then he turned again to Priam.

"Will you welcome my lady to Troy, Father?"

Priam opened his mouth but it was Hecuba's voice that was heard first.

"If she is here of her free will she is welcome," the old Queen said. "Troy will give no countenance to the stealing and ravishing of women; else we should be no better than that vicious man who stole Hesione from us. And speaking of Hesione, where is she? Your mission, my son, was to return Hesione to our family; in that, at least, it seems you have failed. Lady Helen, have you come here willingly?"

Helen of Sparta smiled and touched her shining hair. It was long and loose, as only young virgins wore it in Troy, like a shining veil hardly paler than the fillet of gold which held it back from her forehead. She wore a tunic of the finest linen from the country of the pharaohs, and her waist, which was narrow, was encircled with a girdle of discs of beaten gold inlaid with circles of lapis lazuli which echoed the colour of her eyes.

Her body was full, deep-breasted, with long legs whose shape was just perceptible beneath the loose folds of the linen. When she spoke her voice was deep and soft.

"I beg you, Lady of Troy, give me welcome and harbor here; the Goddess herself gave me to your son, and She herself could know no more of love than I have for him."

"But you have a husband already," said Priam hesitantly, "or did we hear falsely that you were wed to Menelaus of Sparta?"

It was Paris who replied, "She was given to him unlawfully; Menelaus was a usurper who took

the lady for her lands; Sparta is Helen's own city by mother-right; her mother Leda held it, from her mother before her and her grandmother. Her father—"

"Is no father of mine," Helen interrupted. "My father was Zeus Thunderer, not that usurper who seized my mother's city by right of arms and wed an unwilling Queen."

Priam was still suspicious. "I know little of the Thunderer," he said. "He is not worshipped here in Troy. We do not serve the Olympians and we are not stealers of women—"

"My lord," Helen interrupted him, advancing to Priam and taking his hand with a gesture that seemed bold to Kassandra, "I beg you in the name of the Lady to extend me protection and the hospitality of Troy. For your son's sake, I have made myself an exile among the Akhaians who have conquered my home. Would you send me back to be outcast among them?"

Priam looked into the lovely eyes, and for the first time Kassandra saw the effect Helen always had upon strangers; there was a sort of melting in his face. He swallowed and looked up at her again.

"That seems reasonable," he said, but even in so short a sentence he had to breathe twice. "The hospitality of Troy has never been appealed to in vain. Surely we cannot return her to a husband who has taken her by force—"

Kassandra could keep silent no longer. She cried out, "Now there at least she lies; do you not

remember how Odysseus told us that she herself chose Menelaus from more than two dozen suitors, and made the others swear to defend her chosen husband against anyone who refused to accept her choice?

"Father, have nothing to do with this woman! It is she who will bring ruin and disaster on our city and our world! What does she really want here?"

Helen's lovely mouth opened in surprise; she made a cry—like a stricken animal, thought Kassandra, hardening herself not to feel sorry for the Spartan Queen.

Paris looked at Kassandra with angry distaste.

"I have always known you were mad," he said. "My lady, I beg you to take no notice of her; she is my twin sister, whom the Gods have stricken with madness, and the deluded think her a prophetess. She speaks of nothing but ruin and death for Troy, and now she has chosen to think you the cause."

Helen's wide eyes rested on Kassandra.

"What a pity that one so beautiful should suffer madness."

"I pity her," said Paris, "but we need not listen to her ravings. Can you sing no other song, Kassandra? We have all heard this one before, and we are all weary of it."

Kassandra clenched her fists. "Father," she appealed,"see reason at least. Whether I am mad or not, what has that to do with what Paris has done? Paris cannot marry this woman; for she has a husband, whom dozens of witnesses saw her marry of her free will, and Paris has a wife. Or have you forgotten Oenone?"

"Who is Oenone?" asked Helen.

"She is no one who need ever trouble you, my beloved," Paris said, gazing into Helen's eyes. "She is a priestess of the local River God, Scamander, and I loved her for a time; but she went forever from my mind on the day I first looked on your face."

"She is the mother of your first-born son, Paris," Kassandra said. "Do you dare deny that?"

"I do deny it," said Paris. "The priestesses of Scamander take lovers where they choose; how do I know who fathered the child she bore? Why do you think I did not take her in marriage?"

"Wait," Hecuba said. "We accepted Oenone because she bore your child—"

Oenone was good enough for the wife of a shepherd, son of Agelaus, but not high-born enough for Priam's son, Kassandra thought. She said aloud, "If you abandon Oenone you are a fool and a villain. But whatever he may do, Father, I beg you to have nothing to do with this Spartan woman. For I can tell you now that it will bring down war at least on this city—"

"Father," Paris said, "will you listen to this madwoman rather than to your son? For I tell you now, if you refuse shelter to the wife the Gods have given to me, I shall go from Troy and never return—"

"No!" cried Hecuba in despair. "Don't say that, my son! I lost you once—"

Priam said, looking troubled, "I want no quarrel with Menelaus's brother. Hector," he appealed, "what say you?"

Hector stepped forward and looked into Helen's eyes; and Kassandra saw in dismay that he too succumbed to her beauty. Could no man look at Helen and retain his reason? Hector said, "Well, Father, it seems to me that you already have a quarrel with Agamemnon; have you forgotten he still holds Hesione? And we can always say that we hold her as hostage for Hesione's return. Are we nothing but a field from which these Akhaians steal women and cattle? I welcome you to Troy, Lady Helen—sister," he said, holding out his hand and enclosing her small fingers in his big ones, "and I pledge to you that an enemy to Helen of Sparta is an enemy to Hector of Troy and all his kin. Will that content you, my brother?"

"If you take her into this city it is you who are mad, my father!" Kassandra cried out. "Can you not even see the fire and death she brings in her train? Will you set all Troy ablaze because one man has no loyalty and desires another man's wife?" She had resolved to remain calm and sensible, but as she felt the dark waters rise to take her by the throat, she shrieked in dismay.

"No! No, I beg you, Father—"

Priam stepped back up into his chariot.

"I have tried to be patient with you, girl; but I have no more patience now. Get back to the Sunlord's house; he is the patron God of the demented - and pray to him for kindlier visions. As for me, let it never be said that Priam of Troy refused hospitality to a woman who came to him as supplicant."

"Oh, Gods," she cried, "can you not even see? Are you all besotted with this woman? Mother, can't you see what she has done to my father, my brothers—?"

Hector stepped forward and dragged Kassandra, protesting, out of the path of the chariots. "Don't stand here wailing," he said good-naturedly. "Calm yourself, bright-eyes; suppose it really does come to war with that Akhaian crew? Do you suppose we couldn't send them yelping back to those goat pastures they call their native land? War need not mean disaster to Troy, but to our enemies." His voice was compassionate. She flung her head back and gave a long wail of dismay and despair.

"Poor girl," Helen said, stepping toward her, "why have you chosen to hate me? You are the sister of my beloved; I am ready to love you as a sister."

Kassandra jerked away from Helen's outstretched hands; she felt that she would fall down and vomit if the woman actually touched her. She stared up at Priam in anguish.

"Oh, why can't you listen to me? Can't you see what this will mean? It is not man alone but the Gods who struggle here—and no man can live when there is war among the Immortals," she wailed. "And yet you say it is I who am mad! Your madness is worse than mine, I tell you!" She whirled and ran away into the palace.

Her heart was pounding as if she had run all the way from the Sunlord's house; she felt sick and shaking, and it seemed that she was running through flames that rose around her, engulfing all the palace in the smell of burning, the smoke… when hands touched her she shrieked in terror and tried to pull away, but the hands held her tight, and in a moment she was wrapped in loving arms. The darkness rolled away; there was no fire. She gazed in confusion into Andromache's dark eyes.

"Kassandra, my dearest! What ails you?"

Kassandra, jolted out of the nightmare but not yet fully aware of what was happening or where she was, could only stare, unable to speak.

"Sister, you are exhausted, you have been too long in the sun," Andromache said. She put her arms around Kassandra and led her into the cool, shadowed room.

"Oh, if it were only no worse than that," Kassandra gasped as Andromache pushed her down on a bench with soft cushions, and held a cool cup of water to her lips. "Don't you think I would rather believe myself mad, or sun-smitten, if it meant I need not see what I have seen?"

"I believe you," Andromache said. "I do not think you mad: but I do not believe your visions either."

"Do you think I would invent such a thing? How wicked you must think me!" Kassandra cried out indignantly. Andromache held her close in an affectionate embrace.

"No, sister; I believe that the Gods have tormented you with false visions," she said. "No one could believe you malicious enough to pretend such things. But, my dear, listen to reason. Our city is strong and well defended; we have no lack of warriors or weapons, or if it came to that, of allies; if the Akhaians should be fools enough to come chasing after this bitch in heat instead of saying "good riddance to a very nasty piece of rubbish", why should you think they would not get more of Troy than they ever bargained for?"

Kassandra could see the good sense in that; but she moaned, clutching at her heart.

"Yes, Hector said something like that—" she murmured, "but—" she heard herself crying again, "it is the Immortals who are angry with us." She fought desperately to bring herself up out of the dark waters.

"At least you know she is no more than a bitch in heat," she said at last.

"Oh yes; I saw the looks she cast on Hector and even on your father," Andromache said. "And it may well be that she is a curse sent to our city by one of the Immortals; but if it is their will we cannot avoid it."

Kassandra rocked to and fro in misery; Andromache's quiet words and acceptance filled her with despair.

"Do you truly believe that the Gods would stoop to fight against a mortal city? What reason could they have? We are not wicked or impious - we have not angered any God."

"Perhaps," said Andromache,"the Gods do not need reasons for what they do."

"If the Gods are not just," Kassandra said, weeping, "what hope is there for us?"

As if in a blaze she saw the face of the Beautiful One, the Goddess who had tempted Paris successfully.

I will give you the most beautiful woman in the world—

As she had thought then, she thought again:But he already has a woman …

She raised her face to Andromache.

"Where did Oenone go?"

"I did not see; I thought perhaps she went to care for her child—"

"No; she saw Paris with Helen and ran away," Kassandra said. "I will go to her."

"I cannot see why Paris would desert her even for Helen, beautiful as she is," said Andromache. "Unless some Goddess has ordained it."

"Such an unjust Goddess I would never serve," Kassandra said bitterly.

Andromache covered her hands with her ears. "Oh, don't say that," she implored. "That is blasphemy; we are all subject to the Immortals—"

Kassandra raised the unfinished cup and drained it; but her hands were shaking and she almost dropped it.

"I will go and speak with Oenone," she said, rising.

"Yes," Andromache urged, "go and tell her we love her and we will never accept that Spartan in her place, were she Aphrodite herself."

Though Kassandra searched the palace everywhere, Oenone was nowhere to be found; nor was she ever again seen in Priam's house. At last, hearing the royal party on the stairs - making ready, she thought, to solemnize Paris's wedding - which, since Oenone was not there to protest it, could not be prevented -Kassandra left the palace and returned quietly to the Sunlord's house. She had no wish to hear wedding hymns sung for Helen when they had been denied Oenone. She would have been willing to rebuke them in the name of any God if a God had spoken to her, but nothing happened, and she had no wish to make a further spectacle of herself crying out the death and disaster that she could not help but see.

vol_2

VOLUME TWO : Aphrodite's Gift

CHAPTER 1

Kassandra spoke to no one, either in the Sunlord's house or elsewhere, of Helen or Paris; but she should have known that such news would never be kept silent; before three days had elapsed, Helen's story, and Kassandra's prophecy, were on every tongue in Troy.

There were even those who, seeing Helen's beauty, believed, or said they believed, that the Akhaian Goddess of Love and Beauty, Aphrodite, had come herself to the city. Kassandra, if asked about this, said only that Helen was indeed very beautiful—beautiful enough to turn the head of any mortal man—and that in her own country she was believed to have been fathered by an Immortal.

She did not know or care whether anyone believed this; her own worry was now for Oenone. She hoped that the girl had simply taken her child and returned to the Temple of Scamander; but she did not believe it. At the back of her mind was the haunting fear that Oenone had somehow chosen to sacrifice herself and her son to the River God. If Aphrodite was indeed a Goddess of Love, why had she not chosen to guard the love between Oenone and Paris?

She wondered about this Goddess Aphrodite, who put such temptation into the hearts of men and women too; it was not only that Paris had chosen and could not resist Helen, but Helen too, though Queen of Sparta by Mother-right, had chosen to give herself to Paris—after having chosen her husband, as few women in the Akhaian world could do. If I were Queen, she thought, I should choose to be like Imandra and reign alone, taking no consort.

The Goddesses of Troy and of Colchis were sensible Goddesses, who acknowledged the primacy of the Earth and of Motherhood; but this Goddess who disrupted all things for a whim they called Love—no, this was no Goddess she could ever consent to serve. And then one night she dreamed she stood in a strange Temple before the Akhaian Goddess who looked very much like the Spartan Queen.

So you have sworn you will not serve me, Kassandra of Troy? Yet you have given your life to the service of the Immortals—

Kassandra half knew that she was dreaming; she looked up toward the Goddess and saw that she was even more beautiful than the Spartan Helen. And for a moment it seemed that in Aphrodite's face was the half forgotten beauty of the vision of Apollo Sunlord: could she resist the call of that love?

"I am sworn to serve the Mother of All," she said. "You are not she, and you have no part in her worship; for you are denying her, I think."

Faraway laughter sounded like a chiming of bells.

You too will serve me in the end, Priam's daughter. I have more power than you, and more than the ordinary Goddesses of your cities. All women here shall worship me, and you too.

Kassandra cried out 'No!" and woke with a start, to find her room empty and only the bright face of the sun at her window, like a mockery of the beauty she had seen.

How strange these Akhaians were; first they chose to worship a goddess of marriage who would punish any woman for straying outside it; and then they chose a goddess of passionate love, who would tempt a woman to forsake the vows she had sworn. It was as if the Akhaians both feared

and desired faithlessness in their wives—or perhaps they only wished an excuse for abandoning their own wives.

Perhaps it was better that a child belong only to his mother. Maybe marriage and fatherhood were not good for men; a woman must care about the welfare of the child she had carried in her body, but siring children came too easily to men; they were pawns to be used for their father's advantage. Phyllida had the best bargain after all; a God could have as many wives as he wished and need not cast off the old when he chose the new.

The thought reminded Kassandra that she had. duties in the Temple; and while she had sworn never to serve Aphrodite, she had sworn to serve the Sunlord. She should go down and join the other priestesses and priests for the sunrise greeting.

They were already gathered there, from the venerable elder healer-priests to the youngest novices; she was almost the last to take her place, and Charis gave her a patient, reproving glance. The chief priest regarded them all, and said, "In the name of the Sunlord, I ask you to welcome a newcomer among us; he served the shrine on Delos, the Sunlord's own isle. Give welcome to our brother, who is called Khryse."

He was well-named Khryse,golden . He was unusually tall; almost as tall as Hector, although not so muscular or well-built. His fine features were covered all over with a fine dusting of freckles; his hair shone all the fairer because he was sun-bronzed. His smile was radiant, showing white well-shaped teeth, and his eyes a bright sea-blue.

When he spoke his voice was strong and vibrant, with resonant echoes which strongly reminded Kassandra of the times she had heard the voice of the God.Well has he chosen a God to serve , she thought.The Sunlord might well be jealous of such a mortal …

Charis asked, "Whose duty is it today to receive and tally the offerings?"

Kassandra, recalled to her duty, started and said, "It is mine."

"Then you will take our brother to the court and show him how they are bestowed."

Kassandra lowered her eyes shyly, almost as if she felt Khryse might read her thoughts, which, it seemed to her, were too bold.

Khryse said, "I thank you for this welcome; but if I might first ask a favour of you, Lady—"

"Certainly you may ask," said Kassandra sharply when it became obvious that Charis was not going to answer, "but I can promise nothing till I know what it is you wish."

He raised his eyes so that he spoke to all of them.

"I would ask you to give shelter here to my daughter, who is motherless," he said, and beckoned forth a little girl who was hiding among the shrubbery at the edge of the court.

At first Kassandra thought she was about eleven years old. She wore a ragged and outgrown tunic which came hardly below her knees, and her hair, the same astonishing golden colour as her father's, hung in a tangled matted mass halfway to her waist.

"I have been travelling for a long time, and it is hard for a man alone to care properly for a woman child," Khryse said, following Kassandra's eyes. "May she live here in the Sunlord's house?"

"Certainly," Charis said, "but she is too young to be chosen as one of Apollo's maidens; time enough when she is grown to choose that path for herself if she wishes. But for now - Kassandra, will you take the child away and be certain she is properly cared for?"

"Then I shall be twice grateful to the Lady Kassandra," said

Khryse, bowing and smiling at her. Trying not to look at him again, she stretched her hand to the girl.

"Come with me, dear; are you hungry?"

"Yes; but Father said I was not to ask for anything."

"Well, you shall be fed; no one goes hungry in the God's house," Kassandra said, and leading

the girl to her own room, she called a servant and asked her to bring bread and wine and a basket of fruit.

"First you must have a bath and some fresh clothes," she said, for the girl's garment was filthy as well as ragged. With the help of one of the governesses she bathed the girl. As she was soaping the girl's body, she realized the child was not nearly as young as she looked; her breasts were already well-formed, and there was a tangle of golden hair at her crotch. Washed clean of the dirt of the roads, she had her father's beauty, and Kassandra, asking her name, was not surprised to hear the answer: 'My mother named me Helike at birth; but father has always called me Chryseis."

Golden. "The name suits you well," Kassandra said, "especially if your hair were not so tangled."

"I suppose it will have to be cut off," Chryseis said.

"Oh, no, that would be a shame," Kassandra exclaimed. "It is far too lovely for that." She took a comb and carefully teased out the worst of the tangles; two or three of them indeed were beyond unravelling and she had to cut them. Brushed till it was smooth and glowing, the shining hair curled over the girl's shoulders. When the girl was dressed in the white novice's robe, with a woven girdle of silk, one of Kassandra's own, tied about her waist, Chryseis touched it with awed fingers.

"Now you look worthy to be one of the maidens of the Sun-lord," Kassandra said. "Lord Apollo will be pleased with you as he would not be with a dirty child."

The girl still looked half starved; her hands trembled as she attacked the bread and grapes, as if she had eaten nothing for days, though Kassandra could see that she was trying to restrain herself and show good manners. She thanked Kassandra with tears in her eyes.

"While we were travelling, sometimes Father was fed at the shrines," she said, "but he did not want strange men to see me." Then lest she should seem to criticize her father she added, "He saved something for me whenever he could."

Against her will Kassandra was touched.

"If the governesses give leave you may sleep in my room and I will look after you."

Chryseis smiled shyly. "And will I have duties in the Temple too?"

"Of course; no one is idle in the God's house," Kassandra said, "but until we find what you are skilled to do, we will give you such tasks as are suitable for your age." She suggested to the governess, "Take her to Phyllida and let her help to look after the baby."

It was still early in the day when she returned to the court where Charis and Khryse were waiting for her. The old priestess was helping him to tally the offerings left in the Temple court

during the night, simple offerings left from simple piety by citizens who had no special petitions to ask. They were making marks on tally-sticks: one mark for a jar of oil or wine, another for a tray of flat cakes, yet another for the pair of pigeons in a woven-reed cage. She told them what arrangements she had made for the child.

"That was sensible," said Charis,"she'll come to no harm rocking the baby, and it will free Phyllida to return to her own duties."

"I cannot tell you my gratitude," Khryse said. "It is all but impossible for a man to care for a girl child; if she had been a boy I might have managed it. When she was very small, it was simpler; now she is all but grown I must watch her night and day. Among the Sunlord's virgins I need not fear for her."

"We will certainly guard her maidenhood for you," said Charis, "but is that so important just now? I thought she was only about ten or eleven years old."

"So did I," Kassandra said, "but when I bathed her I saw she was older than I thought."

Khryse considered.

"Her mother died ten years ago," he said, "and I am sure she was not three years old. Four months ago womanhood came on her, and I did not even know what to say to a girl. It was then I decided I must leave my wandering life and settle somewhere so that she could be properly cared

for. On the road I could not even keep her fed, and she was too pretty to let her go out as a beggar."

"Poor motherless child," Kassandra said. "I will care for her as if she were my own."

"You have no children of your own, Lady?"

"No," Kassandra said. "I am a virgin of Apollo."

She felt herself blushing at the look he gave her and said quickly, "They are beginning to bring in offerings and to consult the shrine; I must go and be ready to speak with them."

The first man had brought an offering of a jar of good wine; he asked, "Priestess, I wish to ask the God how shall I get my sister well married; my father is dead and I have been away from my village for many years serving in my king's army."

Kassandra had been asked similar questions many times; she went into the shrine and dutifully repeated the question. She did not believe it was important enough for the God to answer; nevertheless she waited several minutes in case the God had something to say. Then she returned to the waiting man and said:

"Go to your father's oldest friend and ask for his advice out of friendship for your father; and forget not to give him a generous gift."

The man's face brightened.

"I am grateful to the God for his advice," he said, and Kassandra nodded to him courteously, holding herself back by force from sayingIf you had used what wit the God saw fit to give you, you would have saved yourself the trouble of coming here; but since any sensible person could have given you such an answer, we might as well have a gift for it .

Later when Khryse asked her, "How do you know what to answer? I find it hard to believe a God would trouble himself with such matters," she told him that the priests had worked out proper answers to the commonest questions.

"But never forget to be silent for a few moments, in case the God has another answer to be given. Even the most foolish questions - from our point of view—the God sometimes sees fit to answer," she warned him.

After a little, another man came carrying a great basket of excellent melons and asked, "What shall I plant in my south field this year?"

"Has there been fire or flood or any great change on your land?"

"No, Lady."

She went into the shrine, sitting for a moment before the great statue of the Sunlord, remembering how the first time she saw it as a child she had thought it a living man. When the God did not speak to her she returned and said: 'Plant the crop you planted there three years ago."

This answer could do no possible harm; if he had been rotating his crops as the headmen of most villages now advised, it would not conflict with their advice, and if he had not, it would make things no worse. As he thanked her she felt the common exasperation; this was the safe answer for any farmer in any year, and she felt he should have known it without asking; but they would all enjoy the melons, anyway.

The morning went slowly, with only one question which gave her a moment's thought; a man brought a fine kid as an offering, and said that his wife had just borne him a fine son.

"And you wish to give thanks to the Sunlord?"

The man shifted his feet uneasily, like a guilty child.

"Well, not exactly," he muttered. "I wish to know if this child is mine, or has my wife been unfaithful to me?"

This was the question Kassandra always most dreaded; her year among the Amazons had taught her that a man's suspicion of a woman usually meant that he did not feel himself worthy of a woman's regard.

Yet she accepted the offering calmly and went into the shrine; sometimes this question was actually answered, apparently at random:If you are not certain, expose the child at once . But there was no answer, so she gave the suitable answer for such occasions: 'If you can trust your wife in other ways, there is no reason to doubt her in this."

The man looked enormously relieved, and Kassandra sighed and told him, "Go home, now, and thank the Goddess for your son, and forget not to make apology to your wife for doubting her without reason."

"I will, lady," he promised, and Kassandra, seeing that there were no other worshippers waiting consultation, turned to say to Khryse, "At this hour we should now close the shrine, and rest until the sun begins to decline; it is the custom to take a little bread and fruit before we return to see anyone who comes."

He thanked her and added, "The lady Charis told me you are the second daughter of King Priam and of his queen. You are nobly born, and as beautiful as Aphrodite - how is it that you serve here in the shrine when every prince and nobleman on this coast and southward to Crete must have been seeking you in marriage?"

"Oh, not so many as that," she said, laughing nervously. "In my case, the Sunlord called me to his service when I was younger than your daughter."

He looked skeptical. "He called you? How?"

"You are a priest," she said. "Surely he has spoken to you."

"I have had no such fortune, Lady," he said. "I think the Immortals speak only to the great. My father - he was a poor man - pledged me to the God's service when my elder brother was spared from the fever which raged in Mykenae a score of years ago. He thought it a fair bargain; my brother was a warrior, and I, he said, fit for nothing."

"That was not right," Kassandra said vehemently. "A son is not a slave."

"Oh, I was willing enough," Khryse said. "I had no talent for becoming a warrior."

Kassandra laughed a little. "Strange; surely you are stronger than I, and I was a warrior for several years among the Amazons."

"I have heard of the maiden warriors," he said, "and I have heard also that they kill their lovers and their boy children."

"Not so," she said, "but men dwell apart from women there; male children are sent to their fathers as soon as they are weaned from the breast."

"And had you a lover when you dwelt among them, beautiful Amazon?"

"No," she said softly. "As I told you, I am sworn as a virgin to the Sunlord."

"It seems a pity," Khryse said,"that so beautiful a lady should grow old unloved."

"You need not pity me," Kassandra said indignantly. "I am well content with no lover."

"That seems to me the pity of it," Khryse said. "You are a princess, and beautiful, and you are kind too—so you showed yourself to my daughter - yet you live alone here and give yourself to these wretched petitioners and serve here as any low-born maiden might do—"

Abruptly he pulled her close to him and kissed her; startled, her hands tried to push him away, but he held her so tightly she could not escape. Her mouth was surprised at the warmth of his lips.

"I mean you no dishonor," he whispered. "I would be your lover—or your husband if you would have me."

She pulled away frantically and ran from the room; flying up the stairs as if pursued by demons, her heart pounding and the sound of her own blood beating in her ears. In Phyllida's room she found Chryseis rocking the baby and singing to him in a small thin voice. Phyllida was sleeping, but she sat up as Kassandra burst into the room.

Kassandra had been ready to pour out the whole story; but looking at Chryseis, she thought:If I complain of him they will send him away; and then this child will be again at the mercy of the chances of the road .

So she said only, "My head aches from the sun; Phyllida, will you exchange duties with me this afternoon, and take the offerings in the shrine, if I care for the baby? I can send someone to fetch you when he needs to be fed."

Phyllida agreed gladly, saying she was weary of staying indoors with the child, and it was really time he should be weaned anyhow. When she had gone Kassandra put the baby to play in the sunshine, and sat down to think about what had happened to her.

She had panicked foolishly, she was sure; no priest of Apollo would have raped her in the God's shrine.

Surely he had meant no real harm; she had felt no such revulsion as against the tribesman who had tried to ravish her when she rode with the Amazon band. If she had not run away whatwould he have said or done? She would not have wanted to kill him; but would he have pushed it that far?

She did not really want to know; she liked Khryse, and felt no real anger, only a sense of helplessness.This was not for her . She felt within herself the surge of dark waters, and knew this was not what the Goddess willed for her, either.

CHAPTER 2

For several days Kassandra managed to avoid the duty of taking the offerings; but she heard from others that Khryse was making himself popular among the other priests and priestesses. Not only was he familiar with the secret craft of bees and the art of taking their honey (though she had been told that in Crete this work was forbidden to men and allowed only to special priestesses) but he was familiar with many of the arts known in Crete and Egypt as well.

"He has travelled in Egypt," Charis told her, "and has learned their art of marking tallies; and he has said that he will teach anyone who wishes to learn. It will simplify our keeping of records enormously, so that we can know at once what is in our storehouses without counting - even counting tally-sticks."

Others told of his friendliness, of his many tales of his travels and of his devotion to his daughter; so that she began to feel she had behaved like a little fool. A day came when she returned to her ordinary duties, and when she entered the shrine and found Khryse there to work with her she was ashamed to lift her eyes to his.

"I rejoice to see you again, Lady Kassandra. Are you still angry with me?"

Something in his voice strengthened her resolve, told her that at least she had not imagined what happened between them.Why should I be ashamed to meet his eyes? I have done nothing wrong; if there was any trespass, it was his, not mine .

She said, "I hold no grudge; but I beg you, never touch me again." She was annoyed with herself, for she had spoken as if she was asking a favour, not demanding her right to refuse an unwanted touch.

"I cannot tell you how much I regret offending you," he said.

"There is no need for an apology; let us not speak of it again." She drew nervously away.

"No," he said, "I cannot leave it at that. I know I am not worthy of you; I am only a poor priest, and you are a king's daughter."

"Khryse, it is not that," she said. "I am sworn to belong to no man save the God."

He laughed; a short bitter sound.

"He will never claim you, nor be jealous," he said.

"As for that, I should not be the first—"

"Oh, Kassandra," he said, laughing, "I believe you innocent, but you are surely not innocent enough - or child enough - to believethose old tales!"

She interrupted him. "Let us not speak of such things; but whether it be true or false that the God may claim his own, I am not foryou ."

"Do not say that," he pleaded, "never in all my life have I ever desired any woman as I desire you, nor did I think I could ever want any woman so much, until I beheld you here—"

"I will believe you if you say so," she said, "but even if this is true, never speak again of this to me."

He bowed his head. "As you will," he said. "Not for worlds would I offend you, princess; I am indebted to you for your kindness to my daughter. Yet I feel that Aphrodite - she who is mistress of desire—has bidden me to love you."

"Such a Goddess sends only madness to men and women," Kassandra said, "I would never love any man at her bidding; I am the Sunlord's own. And now say no more of this or we shall quarrel in truth."

"As you will," Khryse said. "I say only that if you deny the power of the One whom all women must serve it may be that she will punish you."

This new Goddess is created by men to excuse their own lechery; I do not believe in her power, Kassandra thought, then remembered her dream, but she shrugged;I have had it so much on my mind, it is like dreaming of thunder when one hears the rain on the roof .

"There are worshippers in the Temple, and we must take the offerings; will you teach me your new method of tallying them in writing? I have seen the picture writings of Egypt; but it is very complicated, and once, years ago, an old man who had lived there told me that their scribes must study all their lives to learn it."

"That is so," Khryse said, "but their priests have a simpler writing which is not so difficult to learn, and the Cretan style is simpler still, for each mark is not a picture or an idea, as on the tombs of their kings, but asound; so it can be written down in any language."

"Why how clever! What God or great man created this system?"

"I do not know," Khryse said, "but they say the Olympian Hermes, the messenger God who travels on the wings of thought, is patron God of writing." Khryse took out his tablets and tallying sticks. "I will show you the simplest signs and how to write them down; and then they can be copied on clay tablets so when they dry we will have a record that will never perish and does not depend on any man's memory."

She learned quickly; it was as if something in her was crying out for this new knowledge, and she soaked it up as the parched ground absorbed rain after a long drought. Kassandra had learned

the Cretan writing and threatened to be quicker than he was at it; then Khryse insisted she must learn no more.

"It is for your own good," he insisted. "In Crete no woman may learn this writing, not even the Queen. The Gods have ordained that women are not to be taught these things, for it will damage their minds, dry up their wombs, and the world will become barren everywhere. When the sacred springs are dry, the world thirsts."

"This is foolishness," she protested. "It has not harmed me."

"Would you be able to judge? Already you have refused me, or any lover; is this not an insult to the Goddess, and a sign that already you have refused womanhood?"

"So you refuse me this out of pique at what I refused you?"

He looked bitterly wounded.

"It is not me alone that you have refused; it is the great power of nature which has ordained that woman is made for man. Women alone have that sacred and precious power to bear—"

It seemed so ridiculous that Kassandra laughed in his face.

"Are you trying to tell me that before the Gods and the Goddess gave men wisdom and learning,

men could bear children, and that because man created other things he was denied that power? Even the Amazons know better than that, They do all manner of things forbidden to women here, yet they bear children as well."

"Daughters," he said scornfully.

"Many Amazons have borne fine sons."

"I had been told that among the Amazons they kill male children."

"No; they send them to their fathers. And they know all the arts which in tribes of different customs are reserved to men. So if women in Crete are not allowed to read, what has that to do with me? We are not in Crete."

"A woman should not be able to reason like that," Khryse protested. "The life of the mind destroys the life of the body."

"You are even more of a fool than I thought," she said. "If this were true, it would be even more important to teach no man, lest it destroy him as a warrior. Are all the priests of Crete eunuchs, then?"

"You think too much," Khryse said sadly. "It will yet destroy you as a woman."

Her eyes glinted with mischief.

"And if I should give myself to you it would save me from that dreadful fate? You are kind indeed, my friend, and I am ungrateful that I do not appreciate the great sacrifice you are willing to make for me."

"You should not scorn these mysteries," said Khryse soberly. "Do you not believe that because the God has put desire for you into my heart that it is a message from the God that I should have you?"

Raising her eyebrows with scorn, Kassandra said, "Every seducer has spoken so since time began, and every mother teaches her daughter not to listen to such false nonsense. Would you have me teach your own daughter this kind of thing, that because some man desires her it is her duty to give herself?"

"My daughter has nothing to do with this."

"Your daughter has everything to do with this: my conduct is to be a model to her of virtue. Would you wish her to give herself to the first man who pleads that he desires her?"

"Certainly not, but—"

"Then you are a hypocrite as well as a fool and a liar," said Kassandra. "I liked you once,

Khryse; do not complete the work of destroying all my goodwill toward you."

She walked away from him and out of the shrine; all the while they had worked together he had not for a single day ceased his importuning. She would endure it no longer; she would go to Charis, or to the chief priest, and tell him she would no longer work with Khryse, for he had but one use for her, and that she would not allow.

It would be simpler to leave the temple myself. But should I let such a man drive me away?

It was twilight; trying to soothe her own exasperation, Kassandra moved down the hill toward the enclosure where the priestesses were housed. As she passed by the building, a small sound in the shrubbery disturbed her; she turned and saw two figures, melted together in the shadows. On impulse she moved toward them and the man broke away and bolted. Kassandra had not recognized him and did not really care. The second figure was another matter; Kassandra moved swiftly and caught young Chryseis's arm.

The girl's dress was mussed, tucked up almost to her waist, leaving her crotch bare; her mouth was swollen and bruised; her face reddened and sleepy. Shocked, Kassandra thought,but she's a child, a baby ! Yet it was clear that whatever they had been doing—and there was certainly no doubt about that - the girl had been an all too willing participant.

Sullenly the girl pulled her dress down and rubbed her arm over her face. Kassandra finally burst out, "Shameless! How dare you stand there like that! You are a virgin of Apollo!"

Defiant, Chryseis muttered, "Don't look at me like that, you sour dried-up spinster; just because no man has ever desired you, how dare you reprove me?"

"How dare I?" Kassandra repeated, thinking,And it was because I was concerned for this girl that I concealed her father's offense! There is no need to speculate how she came by her behaviour .

She said quietly, "Whatever you may think of me, Chryseis, it is not my conduct at issue, but yours; this is forbidden to the maidens here. You sought refuge in the Sunlord's Temple; you must then obey the rules under which the other maidens live."

Perhaps, Kassandra thought,it would be wisest to send forth the worthless daughter and father together from the House of the God .

"Go into the house, Chryseis, and change your dress and wash yourself, or it will not be only I who chides you," she said, as gently as she could. The girl had been placed in her care; somehow she must manage it that Chryseis was not a disgrace to the Sunlord's house, or to Kassandra's teaching. As Chryseis went indoors, Kassandra thought.It seems now that I am to be at the mercy of Aphrodite; will Chryseis too complain that she is under the influence of that Goddess whose business is to lure women into unruly and lawless love ?

She raised her eyes to the face of the Sun high in the heavens.

"We are inyour power, Lord Apollo," she prayed. "Surely you are in charge of your House and the hearts and minds of those who have sworn their lives to you. I mean no disrespect to any Immortal; but cannot you keep order in your own place and your own shrine?"

CHAPTER 3

There was no immediate answer to her question; but she had not expected any. For several days she avoided the shrine, pleading illness; it seemed as if the Sunlord's house, once so happy, had turned hostile, for Khryse was everywhere. At last she climbed' the hill to the very height of the city, and there she offered a sacrifice to the Maiden, patron Goddess of Troy; her thoughts were in turmoil, and she asked herself if this was disloyalty to the Sunlord whose priestess she was. Yet she had been called to Earth Mother and made a priestess there too.

When she had offered her sacrifice she felt calmer, though the Goddess did not speak directly to her. She went back to the Sunlord's house and presented herself at the evening ceremonies, and when she saw Khryse among the priests and he smiled at her she did not seek to avoid his gaze. It was not she who had done wrong; why should she feel ashamed?

That night her dreams were confused and dreadful; it seemed to her that a storm raged over Troy, and that she stood on the highest part of the city, at the 'citadel of the Maiden, somehow

seeking to call the lightning bolts to strike her first, that they might not fall on those she loved. The Thunder Lord of the Akhaians strode across the great giant-builded walls, shaking his fists, The Earthshaker, Lord of Troy, who had been called to be consort to Earth Mother, was striving and struggling to protect the city of Troy. There were the other Immortals too, and somehow she, Kassandra, had angered them.But I have done nothing wrong , she protested, in confusion. If any had trespassed, it had been Paris. She called out to the Sunlord to save his city; but he frowned and hid the brightness of his face, saying,They worship me also among the Akhaians , and she woke with a cry of dread. When she was fully awake she realized the absurdity of the dream— surely the Gods, who were all-wise, would not punish a great city for the foolish transgression of a single man and a woman.

After a time she slept again; and again she began to dream.

She thought she held Phyllida's baby at her breast; and she felt again the mixture of enormous tenderness combined with horrible revulsion and despair. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. She struggled to consciousness; the touch on her breast was still there, and a dark shape bent over her, save where the light of the full moon glinted on the golden mask of Apollo. But she recognized the touch of the hand on her breast, and she opened her mouth to cry out.

The hand quickly moved from her breast to cover her mouth. "You are mine, Kassandra!" an alltoo-familiar voice intoned. "Would you deny your God?"

Kassandra bit the hand, which was removed with a most ungodlike cry and sat up, pulling her

tunic back into place. "I know the voice of the God, Khryse," she snarled furiously at him, "and it is notyour voice! Blasphemer, do you think that Apollo cannot protect his own?"

Her voice had risen considerably on the last sentence, and she heard in the hallway the voices of the other priestesses coming to investigate the disturbance. She threw herself from the bed, trying to reach the door, but Khryse blocked her way and pushed her against the wall. His attempts to hold her there, while largely successful, were not silent, and the room quickly filled with a crowd of women, including Charis, Phyllida, and Chryseis. Khryse turned his head so that the mask stared at the group of women.

"Leave us." His voice was deep and impressive. Phyllida first gasped, seeing the mask of the God, then, recognizing the man's voice, regarded him and Kassandra with horrified comprehension. Chryseis giggled; the rest of the women looked uncertain.

Kassandra hit him, hard, in the stomach and broke away from his grasping hands.

"Vile priest!" she said in a gasp. "You dare use the semblance of the God to satisfy your lusts! You profane that which you do not understand!" She was shaking with a mixture of rage and horror. "By the Mother of All, I wouldn't lie withyou if youwere truly possessed by Apollo!"

"Would you not, Kassandra?" A shudder passed through Khryse's body and then, unexpectedly and unmistakably - the voice was that of Apollo.You who are my chosen one—surely you cannot think I would fail to protect you from a vicious and foolish mortal ?

Kassandra heard Phyllida's cry of recognition, but the dark tide flowed over her and filled her; and she felt the surge of the Goddess rising within her. The last thing she heard was the voice of the Goddess.

Yours, Sunlord? She was given to me before ever she came to birth in this mortal world, or felt your touch!

Then she knew no more.

Her body was propped against the wall, and every inch of her skin felt as though it had been burned. Nails clawed at her cheek and continued to rip her tunic at the shoulder.

"Murderess!" Chryseis screamed in her ear. "You have killed my father! You think yourself too good for him - you think that just because you're a princess you're better than the rest of us! You act as if you were not even human! Well, you're not you're a beast and a filthy coward—"

Kassandra opened her eyes. Khryse lay on the floor, dead white and very still. Phyllida was bending over him. "He's going to be , all right, Chryseis," she said soothingly. "The God has taken him, no more."

But Chryseis was not listening. "She's a witch! She cast an evil spell on him!"

Charis pulled the hysterical girl away from Kassandra and thrust her into the arms of two of the other priestesses. "Get this senseless brat out of here!" Chryseis's screams echoed as she was dragged down the hallway, then mercifully faded into the distance.

Kassandra felt her body slide to the floor, but she could do nothing to stop it. Her eyes were open, but everything seemed far away and not quite real. Only a part of her self was in her body; the rest hovered over the scene, watching as Charis and the governess picked her up and laid her back in her bed. A novice brought a beaker of wine; Charis poured some of it down Kassandra's throat. Briefly it warmed her, and pulled her a bit further back into her body, but she felt terribly, unendurably cold, as if most of her life force had fled. She could see that Charis was holding her hand, but she couldn't feel the clasp of the woman's fingers. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by homesickness for the Amazon encampment, and for Penthesilea, who had been more of a mother to her than Hecuba ever had been or would be. Tears blurred her vision and dripped down the sides of her face.

"Hush," Charis soothed, drawing the blanket up and tucking it securely about her. "Rest now, and don't trouble yourself. Time enough to sort things out in the morning."

Behind Charis, Kassandra could see Phyllida reverently pick up the mask of Apollo. Two of the priests came in quietly, conferred briefly with the governess, then carried Khryse out. His eyes were open but he lookeddazed and uncomprehending.

The priests were talking to each other as they passed her bed; Kassandra caught the words

'genuine possession'.

But whose? Khryse's, or her own?

She woke just before sunrise, feeling as if every muscle and bone in her body had been beaten with cudgels; she lay motionless, thinking of what had happened.

One thing was certain; Khryse had - unlawfully - worn the mask of the God and had attempted to seduce her. She was not quite sure what had happened after that; she remembered Chryseis tearing at her and screaming, and then she remembered the voice of Apollo, breaking through the noise and confusion in the room, and the ill-fated words she had flung at Khryse.

"I wouldn't lie with you if youwerethe God himself —"

Had she truly said those words to her God? Khryse had deserved them; yet her whole body tightened in grief at the thought that Apollo Sunlord might have taken them to himself.

Still, beyond fear or regret, she knew now the source of the dark waters; the Goddess who had chosen her. She had given herself to the God in all the sincerity of her first love; yet she had not been free.

The door opened and Charis came in, bending over her with tenderness.

"Will you get up, Kassandra? We are all summoned to the shrine, to discuss what truly happened here last night."

Charis brought her some wine, and bread and honey, but Kassandra could not swallow; her throat clamped down and she knew that if she tried to eat she would be sick.

Charis helped her to draw on her dress and brush her hair; Kassandra pinned it loosely into a braid, and followed the older priestess to the shrine, where the priests and priestesses were assembled.

One of the older priests, who had known Kassandra since her childhood, called them to order, saying, "We must find out the truth of this unfortunate incident. Daughter of Priam, will you tell us what happened?"

"I was asleep and dreaming and woke to find a man in my room. He wore the mask of the God, but I recognized Khryse's voice. He has asked me to yield to him before," she said, "and I refused." She raised her head, looking into Khryse's eyes.

"Ask the lecherous blasphemer if he dares to deny it!"

The priest asked, "Khryse, what have you to say?"

Khryse looked straight at Kassandra. He said, "I remember nothing; only that I awakened in her

room with this wildcat clawing at me!"

"You did not deliberately put on the mask of the God in order to deceive the girl?"

"Certainly not!" said Khryse indignantly. "I call Apollo's self to witness - but I doubt he will come to accuse or defend me."

"He lies," Phyllida cried out, "I know the voice of the God -and I will swear that it was the voice only of Khryse! Kassandra has complained to me before that he had asked of her what was not lawful to give any mortal man! Later I heard him speak in the voice of the Sunlord—"

"We all heard that," said Charis,"the question now is which of them, or both, or neither, blasphemed."

"I say she was guilty of refusing the word of Apollo," said Khryse,"she blasphemed; and in the name of the God we both serve—"

"Certainly she invoked the Goddess in Apollo's own Temple," said Charis, "and this is forbidden."

"I think both of them should be sent away from here," said the old priest, "for creating a scandal."

Kassandra said, "I do not see why I should be punished for fighting a lecherous priest who would have ravished a woman who had given herself to the God he pretended to serve. As for the Goddess, I did not seek her protection; she comes and goes as she will. I am not party to her quarrel with Apollo."

"I call Apollo to witness—" Khryse began hotly.

Kassandra said sharply, "And what will you do, blasphemer, if he should come to answer you?"

Khryse said, arrogantly, "It is certain that he will not come. I sought Kassandra, yes; I serve the God, as she says she does—"

"Take care," said Charis sharply, but Khryse laughed.

"I will take that chance!"

Charis said, "We owe Kassandra protection; the maidens of the Temple are sworn to the God, and are not to be abused by a mere man, be he priest or otherwise; and certainly not by a trick of this kind."

There was murmuring in the room; Kassandra was grateful to Charis for speaking in her defense.

"One thing I ask," the old priest said. "Come here, daughter of Priam; you were heard to say to him that you would not give yourself to him even if he were Apollo in truth. Did you mean that, or did you speak in anger?"

"Since the God did not come to me, I spoke only to defend myself against one who would have raped me in Apollo's name—"

There was a blaze of light and Kassandra raised her eyes to see the brightness where Khryse had been standing.

The deep familiar voice resonated to the corners of the room.

Kassandra—

Beyond all question it was the voice of the God; Kassandra felt her knees loosen and she slid to the floor, not daring to raise her eyes or speak.

This my servant did not believe I could use him this way; but now be knows better. He shall learn my power before he is much older. Leave him to me; I shall deal with my own.

The shining form turned to Kassandra; she trembled and bowed her head.

As for you, Kassandra, you whom I have loved; you have given yourself to my ancient enemy;

yet I have claimed you and you are mine. I will not release you; yet you have offended me and from you I withdraw my divine gift of prophecy. Hear my word!

The voice was filled with throbbing sadness; Kassandra, kneeling with her head bowed, felt within herself the surge of protest and resentment.

"Sunlord, I only wish you could," she said aloud. "I want nothing more than to be freed of that gift I did not seek!"

She bowed as if buffeted with mighty winds; her body was a battleground, her eyes burning, the dark surging waters of the Goddess raging against the blasting heat of Apollo's wrath.

You too shall know my power!

Abruptly the presence was gone; Kassandra, released from the grip of the warring Immortals, slumped to the ground. Dimly, she knew Charis bent to lift her up. As if she were floating somewhere near the ceiling of the room, she saw Khryse fall to the ground, his body jerking wildly, heels drumming on the floor, and teeth chattering. Blood-flecked foam burst from his lips, and an eerie cry emptied his lungs.

And serves him right, she thought,who thought to speak with Apollo's power to deceive one of his own …

Like an echo of Apollo's voice, she heard:I shall have use even for him in the days that will come …

Shuddering with cold, she felt the dark waters withdraw, and came back as if surfacing from a very deep dive. She still could not speak; the priests were ministering to Khryse, while her own head still lay in Charis's lap.

Charis rocked her gently and whispered, "Don't cry; even if Apollo's anger is terrible, it will be good for you to be free of this dreadful curse of foresight."

How could I tell her that I wept not for the loss of the gift of prophecy, or that it was not Apollo's anger I feared but his love. I did not seek to be a battleground between the Immortals.

CHAPTER 4

If Kassandra had felt that the reprimand of Khryse would solve anything, she was mistaken; it seemed that her peace had been destroyed for nothing.

Nor was she the only one to seem troubled; Khryse looked pale and exhausted. He was still needed in the shrine, for he had not yet managed to teach anyone except herself enough of his new method of tallying in order to take his place. He had already managed to make himself all

but indispensable. Most of the priests were aging; no more than thirty, he was the only priest of the Sunlord still in the prime of his strength.

It was made no easier for Kassandra that every time she saw the sun glinting on that brilliantly gold hair she remembered the moment when he had spoken to her in the voice of the Sunlord. What a fool she had been, after all, she thought despondently. Surely he was capable of summoning Apollo… or was it she, by her appeal against the imposture, who had summoned the Sunlord to protect her against this man she so despised. He would still have been Apollo, in whatever outer form, and had she not refused him she might now have been carrying the child of the God. But was that what she wanted? Was that her destiny, and had she refused it?

All the same, done was done, and she could only rejoice, although with a certain bitterness, over the punishment of Khryse's presumption.The Immortals are not mocked , and now at least Khryse knew it.

And so do I. The Sunlord mocks me; I, who spoke in reverence against what I saw as blasphemy, infringing on Apollo's chosen ones. It is I who have been punished, as much as, the sinner.

It was no comfort that Apollo had intervened; now it was said (and of course the story had spread, first through the temple and then throughout the city) that she had refused the God himself and that in return Apollo had cursed her. The truth was known only to those who had been there that night, and, she thought almost in despair, all the truth was not known even to them.

They believed Apollo had withdrawn his gift of prophecy from her. But foresight had been hers since her earliest childhood, and the Sunlord could not withdraw it, for it was not his. He had only made it certain that her words would never be believed.

It was no satisfaction, either, to see Khryse viewed with the same half-frightened reverence as herself. At least once every day, sometimes two or three times, he would be seized and fall to the ground in the terrifying clutch of the falling sickness, to lie there shaking with convulsions. She had (though rarely) seen men and women and even children taken this way. They were usually regarded as a victim or favourite of the God. Kassandra began to wonder if this were not a sickness like any other. But why then had Khryse shown no sign of it before?

She took no satisfaction from these internal doubts and questions; if anything she longed for her old childish belief. She was still constantly forced into Khryse's company; after a time, she realized that the episode had connected them in the minds of most of the priests and priestesses as if she had actually committed the misbehaviour into which Khryse had sought to seduce her, instead of being common victims of Apollo's wrath.Or malice , she thought.

What more can the Sunlord do to met I am assured of his love… but what of that'? Is his love in any way better than his evil will'? Am I to thank him that he did not make me, too, a victim of the falling sickness?

One day she was summoned to the court by Chryseis, who had been set to carrying messages

within the shrine. "Kassandra, you have a visitor; I think it is the princess of Colchis."

She came to the court and looked around to see Andromache, her child on her shoulder, dressed in the clothing of a commoner. She hurried to embrace her.

"What is happening?"

"Oh, my dear, it is worse than you can imagine," Andromache said. "Everyone is under the Spartan woman's spell, even my own dear husband; I tried to repeat to him what you said about Helen, and he said that all women were jealous of a beautiful woman, that was all. I think you are prettier than this Helen," Andromache added, "but no one agrees!""

Kassandra said soberly, "It is as if she wore the girdle of Aphrodite—"

"Which, as we all know, makes men capable of thinking only with their loins," Andromache said with a sarcastic smile. "But women too? Do you think her so beautiful, Kassandra?"

"Yes," Kassandra blurted out,"she is as lovely as the Beautiful One herself," and then was shocked at herself. She murmured to Andromache, almost in apology, "Since childhood I have seen through Paris's eyes," and stopped. She could say nothing about the curious intensity with which she had reacted to Oenone, or Helen, not even to Andromache, who had been brought up among Amazons and would probably understand. "Some day I will tell you all—but for now, tell me what is happening."

"You did not know Menelaus had come?"

"No; what is he like?"

"No more like his brother Agamemnon than I am like Aphrodite," Andromache said. "He came, weak and stammering, and demanded that we render up Helen to him, and Priam said, laughing, that perhaps,perhaps , mind you, we would return Helen when he brought Hesione back to Troy with a dowry to pay for the years she remained unwed; and Menelaus said that Hesione had a husband, who had taken her with no dowry, perhaps impressed by the fact that she was the sister of the King of Troy, andhe at least was no stealer of women from their husbands."

"That must have pleased Father," Kassandra said, grimacing.

"Then," Andromache went on, "Menelaus told him Hesione would not return to Troy and suggested that Priam send an envoy and ask Hesione herself if she wished to return—without her child, of course, since the child was a good Spartan and belonged to Hesione's husband."

"And what said my father to that?" Kassandra asked.

"He said to Hecuba that Menelaus had played into his hands; and he sent for Helen and asked her in Menelaus's presence, "Do you wish to return to your husband, my lady?""

"And what did she answer?"

"She said No,my lord , and of course Menelaus just stood and looked at her as if she were cutting him to pieces.

"Then Priam said: "So, Menelaus, you have had your answer."

"And what said Menelaus to that?" Kassandra asked.

"He made matters worse by saying, "Will you listen to what an unfaithful whore wants? I tell you, she is mine, and I will take her," and he tried to grab her wrist and drag her away."

"And did he?" Kassandra asked, thinking that if Menelaus had indeed acted with so much resolution, it might have impressed even Priam.

"Oh, no," Andromache replied. "Hector and Paris both jumped forward and grabbedhim , and Priam said, "Thank your own Gods, Lord Menelaus, that you are my guest, or I would let my sons have their way with you; but no offense shall be offered to any guest under my roof." And Menelaus began to stammer -with rage this time - and said, "Guard your tongue, old man, or you will have no roof from which I need to drag her." Then he said something filthy to Helen - I would not repeat it in these sacred precincts," added Andromache with a superstitious gesture, "and flung down the cup he was drinking from and said he wouldn't accept hospitality from a - a pirate who sent his sons out to steal women."

Kassandra's eyes were wide; she had never seen anyone except his own sons defy Priam.

Andromache went on, "Then Priam asked "No? Then how do you Akhaians ever get wives?" And Menelaus swore at him and said I don't know what all, and yelled to his servants and stormed out, saying perhaps if Priam would not listen to him he would listen to Agamemnon. And Paris had the last word—" here Andromache began to giggle.

"Priam said, "Yes, when I was a boy I sometimes told someone who teased me that my big brother would come and beat him up." And Paris said, "If it comes to that, Menelaus, I have a big brother too; would you care to have a word with Hector?" Then Menelaus stormed out, cursing all the way back to his ship."

Kassandra, overwhelmed, had hardly heard the last few sentences; all she could think was:It has come . Already she could see the harbor blackened with foreign ships, the world she knew torn asunder by war. She could not stop herself from interrupting Andromache to cry out, "Pray to the Gods! Pray and sacrifice! I told my father he should have nothing to do with that Spartan woman!"

Andromache's voice was very gentle, ignoring the interruption. "Don't trouble yourself so, Kassandra, my dear."

Soeven she thinks that I am mad .

"What makes you think that we will not drive the Akhaians back to the islands they hold? It was one thing for those folk to defeat the simple shepherds and landless men who held their islands… but quite another for them to come up against the whole might of Troy! What I say is let those Akhaians look to themselves! Are we to let them think that they can go on stealing our women unpunished, but if we touch theirs, they can punish us?"

"Andromache, are you blind too? Can't you see that Helen is only the excuse? Agamemnon has been trying to find some such reason to come against us in war for many years, and now we have walked straight into his snares. Now we will have these iron-wearers trying to take all the lands that lie to the south of here. He will muster the full might of all these warlike people to… oh, what does it matter?" Kassandra sank down on a bench, "You can't see it because you are like Hector… you think war leads only to fame and glory!"

Andromache knelt beside Kassandra and put her arms round her, saying, "Never mind; I should not have frightened you, I should have known better."

Kassandra could almost hear her thinking:Poor thing, she is mad, Apollo has cursed her after all .

There was no way to argue with that, so she let it drop and asked Andromache, "What of Oenone?"

"She has returned to the mountain, and taken her child with her," Andromache said. "Paris wished to keep the babe - his firstborn son, after all—but Oenone said he could not have it both ways; if it washis son, and he chose to acknowledge it, then she was his lawful first wife and this foreign woman only a second concubine."

"And serves him right," Kassandra said. "It seems that Paris has neither honor nor decency; Father should have left him on Mount Ida with his sheep, if they'd have him." She was deeply disappointed in her brother, she wanted Paris to be regarded as the people of the city regarded Hector; their champion, their hero, as much for his goodness and honorable behaviour as for his handsome face.

"I must return to the palace. But tell me what will we do if there is a war, Kassandra?" Andromache asked her.

"Fight it, of course; even you and I may be glad for our weapons, if as many Akhaians rise against us as Agamemnon intends," Kassandra said, despairing. Andromache embraced her and took her leave. After she was out of sight, Kassandra went out of the highest gate of Apollo's house, climbing higher and higher, toward the Temple of Pallas Athene. As she went, sweat soaking through her tunic in the heat, she tried helplessly to form a prayer. But nothing would come, and she went on climbing.

She looked down toward the harbor, black with ships as she had seen it so many times before this. She did not know whether the ships were really there or not, but this time it did not matter.

If they were not there now, they would come soon enough.

Lord Apollo! Sunlord, beloved! If you cannot withdraw the gift and take from me this unwanted Sight, at least do not curse me that I shall never be believed!

She went up into the high Temple of Pallas Athene, at the very summit of the city, and into the shrine. recognizing her either as Priam's daughter or as a priestess of the Sunlord (or perhaps both) the guardians drew aside, letting her into the shrine, before the great image of the Goddess, shown as a young woman wearing the unbound locks and garland of a virgin.

Maiden, you who loved Troy, you who brought us your priceless gifts of grape and olive, you who were here before those arrogant Thunder-worshippers and their Sky Gods and their weapons, protect your city now.

She looked at the drawn curtains of the innermost shrine, which contained the image of Pallas, drawn from heaven, ancient and crude, and remembered the Goddess of the Amazon women.

You who are virgin like the Maiden Huntress I come to you a maiden who has known injustice from the Sunlord; am I to go on serving him in this manner when he has cast me off and derided met

She had not truly expected an answer, but deep in her mind she felt the surging motion of the dark waters of the Goddess.

Obscurely comforted she went away down the hill to the Temple, to take up her duties tallying the offerings.

Khryse was there as usual, marking his symbols on wax tablets, noting numbers of jars of oil, of grains, barley and millet; offerings of wine or honeycombs, of hares and pigeons and kids. She was still unwilling to look at him, although she told herself it was not she who should be ashamed.

A jar carried by one of the younger priestesses had been let fall and had broken another, so that a heap of barley and the sticky contents of a honeycomb intermingled, and the efforts of the young girl to clear it away had only made a worse mess; Kassandra sent her for a twig broom and a water jar, and took over the task of cleaning it up herself. She was directing the young girl to get a cage of pigeons out of the way, when she heard the familiar and hated voice.

"You should not be doing this by yourself, Lady Kassandra, this is work for a slave."

"We are all slaves in the eyes of the Immortals, you as well as I, Khryse," said Kassandra, her eyes on her broom.

"A correct statement, but when was the Lady Kassandra anything but correct - whatever it may cost her or anyone else," said Khryse. "Kassandra, we cannot go on like this with you forever afraid to look at me."

Stung, she looked up angrily into his face.

"Who dares to say I am afraid?"

"If you are not, why do you always avoid my eyes?"

Her voice was caustic. "Are you so fair an object that you think I should find pleasure in looking at you?"

"Come, Kassandra," he said. "Can there not be peace between us?"

"I bear you no particular ill will," she said, still not looking at him. "Stay away from me, and I shall return a like courtesy, if that is what you want from me."

"No," Khryse said. "You know what it is I want from you, Kassandra."

Kassandra sighed, "Khryse, I want nothing from you except to leave me in peace; is that plain enough for you?"

"No," the man said, clasping her hands in his. "I want you, Kassandra; the image of you is in my mind day and night. You have bewitched me; if you cannot love me, then at least free me of your spell."

"I do not know what to say to you," she said, dismayed. "I have cast no spell on you; why should I do such a thing? I want nothing from you, I do not desire you; I do not like you at all, and if I had my way you would be in Crete, or in one of the hells, or even further away than that. I do not know how I can make it any plainer to you, but if I could think of a clearer way to say it, I would. Is that understandable?"

"Kassandra, can you not forgive me? I do not seek to dishonor you. If it is your will, I will go, humble poor priest that I am, and ask your father for your hand in marriage. You must feel some kindness for me, for you have been kind to my motherless child—"

"I would be just as kind to any stray kitten," Kassandra interrupted. "For the last time, I would not marry you if you were the last man the Gods ever made. If the alternative was to live virgin all my life or to marry a blind beggar lying in the marketplace, or even a - an Akhaian, I would choose him before you."

He stepped away, his face as white as the marble walls of the shrine. He said through clenched teeth, "Some day you will regret this, Kassandra. I may not always be a powerless priest."

His face was drawn; she wondered suddenly if he had been drinking unmixed wine so early in the day. But the wine at the priests' table was always well watered; nor did he have the flushed look he would have had in that case. His breath did not seem to smell of wine, but there was a strange smell that seemed to cling to his clothing. She could not identify it, but supposed it was

some medicine the healer-priests had given him for his seizures.

She turned away, but he caught at her hand, and pulled her close, backing her against the wall. His body pressed hard against hers, and one of his hands gripped both of hers painfully hard. With his free hand he tried to wrench apart her gown; his mouth jamming hard against hers.

"You have driven me mad," he gasped, "and no man can be blamed for punishing a woman who has driven him to frenzy!"

She struggled and would have screamed; and finally bit down into his lip. He jerked back and she thrust at him with both her hands, so that he tripped and fell. She stumbled as he clung to her, wrenched her hands furiously free of his, and ran. He tried to raise himself and she kicked him in the ribs. She ran from the shrine and did not stop running till she was safe in her own room.

CHAPTER 5

Kassandra awakened from a dream of fire sweeping up the hill of Troy toward the palace to a smell of smoke and voices clamouring in the halls of the Sunlord's house. It was the darkest part of the night, when the moon is down and the stars are going out; but there was the smell of torches. Snatching up a cloak to cover the short tunic in which she slept, she ran out into the courtyard.

Far below in the harbor she could see dim lights from ships, and torches, presumably carried in human hands, making their way up the hill.

All she could think was:It has come . She cried out, and then she heard the clamour of the alarm, a great wooden rattle sounded from Priam's keep. It called for women and children and the old to take refuge in the main citadel and the soldiers to turn out. She stood watching the lights moving through the city below her, and watchmen running up and down, hearing the clash of weapons seized, and at last the loud voices of officers ordering soldiers to their posts.

She felt a gentle tug on her sleeve and found Chryseis standing beside her.

"What is it, Kassandra?"

"It is the Akhaians; they have come, as we foresaw," she said, and was astonished at how calm she felt. "We must make ready to take shelter in the citadel." <

"My father—"

"Hush, dear; he will have to go with the soldiers. Go quickly and dress."

"But he has the falling sickness—"

"If the Akhaians take him he will have something worse. Quickly, child." She took Chryseis's hand, and led her within, dressing her quickly in a heavy tunic against the night chill, fastening her cloak and binding sandals on her feet. As soon as Chryseis was dressed, they went into the courtyard; Charis was gathering the women around her, and telling them to go down toward the main keep of the palace.

Kassandra, the girl's hand in hers, went down the steep road. It seemed wrong to be goingtoward the torches and the clash of arms; surely the Akhaians would never come so high as this; what they sought was in the palace, not up here in the Temple. Now she could hear the chilling war cries, and the bellowing of Hector as he rallied his men.

The other women crowded around them as Kassandra led the way through the palace gates. The guards and soldiers were hurrying the women inside, each one then taking up a spear from a huge pile stacked at the entrance to the armory.

Kassandra thought of taking a spear and going down with the -soldiers; but Hector would be angry.All the same, a time may come when he does not despise my skill at arms . For the moment she decided to go with the women. They were a dishevelled crew, most of them half-dressed as if they had been roused from sleep. Many of them had not troubled to dress, or do more than clutch a blanket over their nakedness like their children; and babies howled or fretted in the arms of mothers or wet-nurses. Kassandra and the other priestesses of Apollo were almost the only ones who were properly dressed for public appearance, or who kept their composure. Most of the women were tear-stained or crying, keening and shouting for explanations or for help.

Helen too stood composed among the many hysterical women. Every lock of hair was in place and she looked as if she had this moment come from the hands of her bath^attendant. She was holding a small boy of five or six by the hand; he was neatly dressed, his hair combed into place, and though his knuckles • were white as he clung to her fingers, his face was scrubbed clean and he was not crying.

She looked across the room with great composure and her eyes met Kassandra's. Then she crossed the room, threading her way quietly through the crowding, wailing women, and came toward Kassandra.

"I remember you," she said, "you are my husband's twin sister. It is good to see someone who is not turned foolish with terror. Why are you not weeping and screaming like everyone else?"

"I don't know," Kassandra said. "Perhaps I am not as easily frightened; and perhaps I prefer not to cry until I am hurt."

Helen smiled. "Ah, good. Most women are such fools. Is there danger, do you think?"

"Why do you ask me?" Kassandra countered. "Surely they have not neglected to tell you that I am mad." a 2.

"You do not have the look of a madwoman," Helen said. "In any case I prefer to make up my

own mind."

Kassandra frowned a little and turned away. She did not want to like this woman or to find anything admirable in her. It was bad enough that when she looked at her she saw something of what Paris saw.

"Then you can make up your own mind as to whether there is danger," she said curtly. "I know only that I was awakened by the watchman's rattle, and I came down here to obey. I suppose, since I saw Akhaian ships in the harbor, that it has something to do with you; and so, though there may be something for us to fear, there is certainly nothing for you to be afraid of."

"You think not?" Helen said. "Agamemnon is certainly no friend of mine; his only thought would be to turn me over to Menelaus, and he would certainly stand by to see that I did not escape unscathed."

The unnaturally neat little boy clinging to Helen's hand flinched; Helen felt it, and looked gently down at him. Kassandra did not know why this surprised her; why had she thought that the Spartan woman could not also be a tender and concerned mother?

She asked, "How old is your son?"

"Five years old at midsummer," Helen said, and beckoned across the crowded room to a thin, aristocratic-looking woman dressed in the full skirt and low-cut bodice of a Cretan woman.

"Aithra, will you take Nikos and put him down somewhere to sleep, my dear?" She kissed the child, who clung to her; but she said gently, "Go, now, and sleep like a good boy," and he went without protest, trotting along obediently at the tall woman's side.

"Is that Menelaus's son?" asked Kassandra.

"Perhaps you would say so," Helen said indifferently. "I say he ismy son. In any case I do not choose to leave him with his father; I do not like the way he treats his children. It will not harm Hermione to be nothing but his precious gilded toy; but the only thought in Menelaus's mind is to make Nikos over in his own image—or worse yet, in the image of his wonderful brother. I sent Nikos away because someone unwisely said in his hearing that if his father came after us, he would kill us both; and Aithra also has cause to fear."

"Aithra looks more like a queen than a waiting-woman," said Kassandra.

"Sheis a queen," said Helen. "She is the mother of Theseus; and he sent her to me… she stays with me out of love. I think somehow they quarrelled; and Aithra prefers to remain with me; and she treats my son as her own grandchild, which she would not do for the son of the Horse Queen," Helen said. "Now that the child is safe, I would like to know what is going on."

Kassandra said, "There is no danger here, not now; I think it would have been more sensible to leave the women of the God's house up there. Surely they will not get higher than the palace keep." At Helen's side she went out into the courtyard room which looked down over all of Troy

and the harbor.

The sun was just rising; Kassandra could see men fighting-upward through the city.

"Look," Helen said, "your Trojan soldiers under Hector have cut off the upward path to the palace; and now the Akhaians are looting and burning in the lower city. That is one of Agamemnon's ships and I doubt not that Menelaus is with him." The indifferent tone in which Helen spoke fascinated Kassandra; had she no feeling whatever for her previous husband?

Flames were rising now from the seaside houses and buildings down below; houses of the poorer sort built of stacked logs and timbers were going up in flames. The houses built higher up on the hill were all of stone, and there was no way they could be set afire, but the Akhaian soldiers were running into the houses and carrying out everything they could find.

"They won't find much treasure or plunder down there," Kassandra said, and Helen nodded.

They leaned on the railing, watching the men below. Kassandra recognized one of the Akhaians, a big man who stood out as almost a head taller than his men, his crested helmet glittering as if washed with gold in the rising sunlight. He had once invaded the palace and borne off the struggling Hesione. That had been - how long? Seven years ago perhaps? Still she shuddered and felt her stomach clench tight.

Helen said, "That is Agamemnon," and Kassandra said, her voice only a whisper, "Yes, I know."

"Look; Hector and his men are trying to cut him off from his ship; will they burn it, do you think?"

"They'll try," Kassandra said, watching the Trojan soldiers trying to cut off the Akhaians' leader and making him fight every step of the way back to his ship. The sun was higher now and they could not see into the burning glare reflected off the ocean; Kassandra turned away, shading her eyes.

"Let's go inside; it's cold. It is not at Agamemnon's hands that Hector will meet his fate," she said. They went into the room where the other women were quieter now; the children had fallen asleep on blankets and half a dozen midwives were gathered around Creusa who was trying to tell them that she was perfectly well and was not going to go into labour just to provide them with amusement for this night.

Hecuba, wrapped in one of her oldest shawls over a ragged old house gown, had found some scraps of wool and was twirling a distaff idly; Kassandra gauged by the unevenness of the thread that it was only to pass the time.

"Oh, there you are, girls - I wondered where you had gone. What is happening down there, daughter? Your eyes are better than mine. What was it you said about Hector, Kassandra?"

"I said it is not at the hands of Agamemnon that he will meet his fate, Mother."

"I should hope not," said Hecuba irritably. "That great Akhaian brute would be well advised to avoid our Hector!"

Some of the women had gone out on the balcony and now Kassandra heard them raise a cheer.

"They are going away; they have reached their boat and are making sail! The Akhaians are gone!"

"And they cannot have got much plunder from the houses along the shore; a few sacks of olives, a few goats perhaps - you are safe, Helen," said Hecuba.

"Oh, they will surely be back again," Helen said, and Kassandra, who had been on the very point of saying the same thing, wondered how she knew. She was no fool, this Akhaian woman, and this troubled Kassandra. The last thing she wanted was to like or to respect Helen; yet she could not help liking her.

Chryseis came up to Kassandra, and whispered, "Charis has said that we may go back to the shrine; are you ready?"

"No, dear; I will stay for a while with my mother and sisters and my brothers' wives, if Charis will permit me," Kassandra said. "I will return when I can."

"Oh, they always let you do whatever you want," said Chryseis spitefully. "I am sure they would not chide you if you wanted to stay away altogether."

Hecuba had overheard this, but she was altogether too gentle a person to hear the malice in the girl's voice. She said, "Yes, they have been very good about lending you back to us, Kassandra. Be certain to tell Charis how grateful I am. I suppose with all these people sent to the palace, I should somehow find breakfast for them; will you help me, Kassandra, if your temple duties do not summon you immediately?"

"Of course, Mother," said Kassandra, and Helen volunteered at once, "And so will I."

Kassandra was startled to see Hecuba give Helen an affectionate little pat on the cheek. She said, "I will go and speak to Charis," and went quickly away.

"Of course you must stay if your mother has need of you," Charis said, "with Creusa pregnant, and Andromache with a child still at the breast. Don't trouble yourself, Kassandra, stay as long as your mother needs you."

"What is that?" Andromache quavered, and hid her child's head under her shawl as a blow was struck on the door. Others among the women trembled and cried out in fear.

"Don't be so foolish," Helen said, frowning at them in contempt. "We saw the Akhaians leave." She went and flung the door open; her face lighted, making her even more radiantly beautiful,

and Kassandra knew who stood there even before she saw her twin brother.

"Paris!"

"I wanted to be sure that you and the boy were well," Paris said, looking round the room for the child. "Surely you did not leave him below while you took refuge here?"

"Of course not; he is sleeping yonder, in Aithra's arms," Helen said, and Paris smiled; a smile, Kassandra thought, that should not have been seen outside their own chamber.

"Were you frightened, my darling?"

"Not while we knew we were so well protected, my dearest," she murmured, and he clasped her hand.

"I said to Hector that he should come with me to make certain that our wives and children were safe," Paris added, "but he was too busy worrying about wine and rations for the household guard."

"Hector," said Andromache stiffly, "would never neglect his duty to his men; and I would not wish him to."

And what is Paris doing here among the women at a time like this? Kassandra knew that Hector

had behaved properly; yet at that moment, she knew, every woman in Troy envied Helen her husband.

"Was Menelaus there?" she asked in an undertone.

"I did not see him, if he was," said Paris. "I told you he was too cowardly to come himself. And now we are well rid of Agamemnon."

"Don't think it," Kassandra burst out. "He will be back almost before he has time to gather his men, and next time you will not be rid of him so easily."

Paris looked at her with good-natured indulgence.

"Are you still prophesying doom, poor girl? You are like a minstrel who knows only one song to sing and wears out his welcome at every hearthside," he said. "But I am sorry you were frightened by these buzzards of Akhaians. Let us hope we have seen the worst of them."

I hoped it too; he did not know how much I hoped it.

"I must go and help Mother provide breakfast for all these women," she said. It seemed incongruous that out of this terror and confusion a feast should come; but the men were feasting too, celebrating that Agamemnon had—for now—been driven away.

"I would rather stay with you," Paris said, "but if I do not go and join Hector and the men, I shall never hear the last of it. Forgive me, love." He kissed Helen's hand and hurried away, and Kassandra stood without moving, until Andromache called to her and she went to help prepare the breakfast for the palace's unexpected guests.

CHAPTER 6

That was only the first of the raids; during the rest of that winter, it seemed to Kassandra that every time she looked down into the harbor, there were Akhaian ships lying there, and usually their raiders were in the streets, fighting. Eventually most articles of value had been carried up into the citadel of the palace, or even further, into the Sunlord's house, and the city was under perpetual siege.

Once the Akhaians had crept round the city, raiding Mount Ida, and before the army could be called out, they captured all Priam's cattle and most of his sheep. At the time Kassandra was at her duty in the temple, tallying jars of oil and noticing that the quantity, if not the quality, of the offerings had fallen off. Out of nowhere she was overcome with a surge of rage, grief and despair so immediate that she burst out in a great wail of mourning. She could not understand what was wrong until she recognized that special quality of strong emotion which always brought her into intimate communication with her brother's mind; she - or rather, he - was standing on the hillside, and before her, already covered with swarms of buzzing flies, lay the

corpse of the old shepherd Agelaus.

"It was as if he tried to put his single old body, fragile as it was, between Priam's herds and Agamemnon's raiders," Paris muttered, and although Kassandra had seen the old man only briefly at the games when Paris was welcomed to the city, she felt all of her brother's sorrow and fury.

"He had no other son; I should have stayed with him to guard his old age," Paris said at last, laying his own richly woven cloak gently over the body. At this Kassandra was able to detach herself enough from her brother to think:Would that you had stayed with him indeed! Better for you, for Agelaus, for Oenone ~ and better for Troy too !

Paris had the body brought within the walls of Troy, and Priam gave the honorable old man a hero's funeral (indeed he had died a hero's death protecting the King's herds) with feasting and games. A few foreigners had been caught in the marketplace on the day of the first raid. They had been buried decently in the Temple of Hermes, who was the God of travellers and strangers; but there had been none to claim their bodies, no mourners and no rites beyond what was needful to assuage their angry ghosts. The old herdsman was the first Trojan citizen to die in this war, and Paris at least would never forget; he cut his hair in mourning, and when Kassandra next saw him, at the naming-feast for Creusa's first-born, she hardly recognized her twin.

"Was this necessary? He was no more than a servant," she said,"though an old and honored one. But even so—"

"He was my foster-father," Paris said. "All through my childhood I knew no other." His eyes were red with weeping; she had not known he was capable of so much grief. "May the Gods forget me too if ever I forget to honor his memory."

"I did not mean to suggest he was unworthy of your mourning," Kassandra said, and at that moment she felt that in a sense he was more truly her brother than he had ever been. She had always been the undesired sharer of his feelings, and intruder; now she was beginning to know him for the person he was, faults and virtues too, and to understand him a little.

They were still standing side by side when the alarm sounded again, and from outside there was the rush of women and children to take shelter in the citadel; Kassandra went to deal with the women who were carrying heavy babies and toddlers, while Paris went, grumbling, to arm himself and join Hector's men at the wall. Next to the city gates there was an inner stair which led up inside the great wall, and here the men gathered; Kassandra, watching them, felt that perhaps she and her brother would both have been happier if they could have changed places.

She was busy all day helping to amuse the women and children and keep them quiet; confinement made them fractious and she wondered sometimes if the men did not have a simpler time of it out there with a target at which to shoot.It would certainly , she thought,be a pleasure to take aim at some of these wretched brats— and then she stopped herself:the children had done nothing except behave as children always did. See how wicked I am, to be provoked by these little innocents . Yet she admitted to herself that she would like to take some of them in either

hand and shake them until their little teeth rattled in their heads.

Chryseis was behaving very well; she had gathered the children round her and started them playing a romping game. And of course that was exactly what a nice young girl ought to be doing; she was playing that game so well that all the palace women petted and praised her. Yet even she left the children after a while and came up to the top of the wall of the palace where Kassandra was standing. This time the raiders had not been content to raid the lower town, but were righting in the steep streets below the palace, making for Priam's granaries and treasuries. Soon, she thought, they must fortify the walls and keep the Akhaians out of the lower city.

If only I had my bow, I am out of practice, but I could still manage to drive back some of them before they come near the palace.

Patience; that day will come. For a moment Kassandra thought someone had spoken. Chryseis touched her arm.

"Who are the chieftains among the Akhaians? Do you know any of them?"

"I know some of them; Agamemnon, that great black-bearded man there, is their leader." As always, the sight of him made her stomach clench with revulsion. But Chryseis surveyed him with open admiration.

"How strong he is, and how handsome. What a pity he is not our ally instead of our enemy."

Trying not to show her disgust and annoyance, Kassandra murmured, "Don't you ever think about anything but men?"

"Not very often," Chryseis said blithely. "What else should a woman think about?"

"But you too are one of Apollo's sworn virgins—"

"Not forever," Chryseis said, "nor have I ever ridden with the Amazons, nor pledged myself to hate men. I am a woman; I did not bid the Gods make me so, but since that is my lot whether I wish it or no, why should I not rejoice in it?"

"Being a woman need not mean behaving like a harlot," said Kassandra, annoyed.

"I do not think you know the difference," Chryseis said. "You would prefer to be a man, would you not? If the laws permitted, I think you would take a wife."

Kassandra was about to give a sharp answer, then caught herself… maybe Chryseis was right. She said stiffly, "We have all forgotten poor old Agelaus and his pyre; he must be consumed now; his bones should be put decently into an urn for burial. I will go; Paris is my brother and I will do this last office of respect for his foster-father."

All the rest of the winter and into early spring the raids continued, day after day, and eventually,

on each of the higher hills south of the city, Priam set up watch-camps so they could see the approach of the ships and light warning beacons. So the Akhaians, landing, found nothing but bare walls and well-defended heights, and they got nothing but the journey for their pains.

Then Priam's men took advantage of a long rainy spell to repair the outer walls, and reinforce the great gates; when the Akhaians began to try and fight their way up the high streets into Troy itself they could not enter. The lower city was a labyrinth of narrow steep streets built in steep steps, and easily defended by kicking an assailant's feet out from under him.

"They are not finding this city quite the ripe apple for the plucking which they thought it would be," Aeneas gloated, looking out over the palace wall at the streets black with Akhaians running up and down. Even Hector, for once, had been content to let the walls defend them, and most of the women in the city, it seemed, had come out to see the sight of the Akhaians' frustration. Andromache was there with her now-toddling son, and Creusa had her infant daughter tied into her shawl. These alarms had now become so frequent an event that Hecuba no longer troubled to provide breakfast for the unwilling guests in the citadel after a night's fighting; but when Hector issued handfuls of grain and flasks of oil to his fighting men, the rule was that any woman accompanying her husband could claim a similar share.

Kassandra stood by watching the distribution of rations and said, "Tell them to bring back the flasks."

Hector protested.

"The flasks are not worth much; why be niggardly?"

"It has nothing to do with niggardliness. The potters go out to fight with the rest of the men. If this is to go on for long, there will not be enough of them to make more for every fighting day."

"I see what you mean." Hector gave the order, and no one complained. The storehouses of Troy were still piled high with grain, and for the moment there was no shortage of food. Kassandra joined the women of Priam's house in daily refilling the little oil flasks, and pouring the rations of wine. Even at the end of winter there was plenty in the palace granaries; but Hector had begun to frown over them in concern.

"How shall we do the spring sowing if they raid us every day?" he asked one night at the palace.

"Surely they will not come during spring planting," Andromache said. "At home in my country, all wars are suspended at planting and harvest to do honor to the Gods."

"But these Akhaians do not fear the Mother," Aeneas said, "and perhaps they will not honor our Gods."

"But are not all the Immortals one?" Kassandra asked.

"You know that. I know it," Aeneas said. "Whether those Akhaians know it—that is another

story. From what I heard, it would not surprise me greatly if they felt war more important to them than any Gods." He smiled at her and said, "Don't worry about it, Kassandra. It is men's business."

"Yet if they come," she said, "it is the women who will suffer more than the men."

He looked surprised for a moment. Then he said, "Why, that's so; I never thought of that before. A man faces nothing worse than an honorable death; but women must face rape, capture, slavery—it's true; war is not for women, but for men. I wonder how a woman would conduct this war?"

Kassandra said with great bitterness, "A woman would have managed never to provoke it. Then, if the Akhaians wanted the gold and goods of Troy, they would have come against us knowing they were not fighting for "honor", but out of greed which the Gods hate."

"Remember, Kassandra, there are men who think of this war as a great playing-field, a gamesground where the prizes are no more than laurel wreaths and honor."

Kassandra nodded. "Hector runs into every battle as if he were to win a bronze cauldron and a white bull with gilded horns."

"No, you are wrong," Aeneas said. There is nothing foolish or reckless about Hector. It is only that we all must live under the rule of our chosen God; and Hector belongs to the God of battles.

But his God is not my God; war may be a part of my life, but it will never be my only chosen life." He touched her cheek lightly and said, "You look weary, sister; there cannot be so much here for which you must fatigue yourself. The Queen has many women; and any one of them could do these small services. I think the Gods have ordained something more important for you; and we men may need your special strengths before this war comes to its end; whatever end the gods have decreed for us."

He turned away, stopping beside his wife. She saw him bend to look inside the shawl, touching the baby's face with his finger; he said something laughing, and turned away to go back to the men.

How different from Khryse, Kassandra thought, watching him move down the hill.I said it at his wedding; if my father had found me such a husband, I would have been glad .

In all my life - and I am almost the only woman of my years at the court of Priam who has not yet been given a husband - I have not yet seen any man whom I would willingly wed. Save this one, and he is my half-sister's husband and the father of her child.

She straightened her back wearily and bent again to the task of filling the little flasks of oil.

"Kassandra, you are spilling oil all down the edges; don't fill the ladle so full," reproved Creusa coming to sit beside her. "What was my husband saying to you for so long?"

"He was asking how I should conduct this war if I were a soldier," Kassandra said, surprised into truthfulness. But Creusa only laughed.

"Well, don't tell me if you don't want to," she said scornfully. "I am not one of those women who are jealous if my husband says two words to another woman."

"I told you the truth, Creusa; that was one of the things he said. Also we were wondering what we should do if the Akhaians fail to observe the sowing-truce for spring planting."

"Oh, I suppose because you are a priestess, and would know about such things," Creusa said, "but even Agamemnon could not be as impious as that. Could he?" And when Kassandra did not answer immediately she demanded, "You who are a prophetess - you should know that. Could he?"

Kassandra could not answer; but she said, "I hope not. I do not know what they do, or how they serve their Gods."

CHAPTER 7

But being a prophetess was not enough; later, the whole first year of the war became a blur in her mind of fires, raids, men screaming half-burned alive from fire-arrows. A woman had-

wandered down unwitting into the Akhaian camp and been abused by a dozen men. They found her screaming in delirium; the healer-priestesses of the Sunlord's Temple fought to save her, but on the first day that she seemed well enough to be left unguarded for a moment, she flung herself from the high wall of the citadel, and someone too lowly to avoid the task had to go down and retrieve her shattered and broken body from the stones far below.

A few days before spring-sowing the priests and priestesses rose to a joyous trumpet-call from the palace below, and found the harbor empty of ships; the Akhaians had gone away, leaving only a long black strip of beach, dirty and fouled from where their tents had been.

There was rejoicing in the city, even as all Hector's men went down to clean away their filth and debris. His son, little Astyanax, came too. Running about now, and prattling - he was a great pet among the soldiers - every minute he brought up some abandoned bit of rubbish he thought a treasure: a shining bronze harness-buckle, a wooden comb broken to a stub, a bit of used vellum on which someone had scrawled a crude map of the city. Kassandra took this from the protesting child and stood looking at it for a long time, wondering what enemy of Troy had done this.

"Give it back!" shouted Astyanax, reaching up for it, and Kassandra said, "No, little one. Your grandsire must see this."

"See what?" asked Hector, taking the parchment from her hand and giving it back to the child. Kassandra bent and reclaimed it, disregarding the angry child's howls.

"What is the matter with you, Kassandra? Give it to him; they are gone, there is no reason to care what rubbish they may leave behind," Hector said. "No. Stop yelling, little son, and you shall have a ride in father's chariot."

"They are not gone for long," Kassandra said, "or, withthis , would they have given up such an advantage?"

"You are making too much of this," said Hector. "What do you want with it?"

She traced on it the familiar markings which she could not entirely read.

"Someone from Crete has done this; and I thought they were our allies. I must show it to him—" then she thought better of it and said, "Helen has a Cretan woman among her entourage; I will show this to Aithra." As both a queen and a priestess, if any woman knew this odd kind of writing it would be she.

"Well, if you wish," Hector said with a shrug. "I never knew such a woman for making much of trifles."

But Aithra looked at it without comprehension and said that she had seen such markings in Crete, indeed, but she had not been schooled to read them.

"I cannot even guess whose hand it may be," she said. "Perhaps Khryse will know," and

Kassandra was ashamed to explain to the dignified woman why she did not wish to confront the priest.

But at last she took it to Charis and explained; Charis knew why she feared and disliked Khryse, and agreed to come with her while she consulted the priest.

Khryse examined it carefully, frowning, his lips moving, tracing the symbols with his forefinger; then he looked up and said, "This is no more than a map of the city; but the names are written on it. See? This shows the Queen's chambers, the granaries, the great dining-hall, every part of the palace marked; see, and Apollo's Temple, and here the Temple of Pallas Athene."

"I though as much," said Kassandra. "Can you tell me who wrote this?"

"I cannot say who wrote this; but it was no friend to Troy. I can say only that it was probably not a Cretan," said Khryse. "For we are taught to make the letters differently, just a little, in Crete."

That much, Kassandra thought, she could have guessed. Later she took it to Priam, who paid little attention, though he at once recognized it for what it was.

"I cannot think of a dozen men outside Troy who could have drawn this; armed with this, it would be no task at all to find any place in Troy," he said. "Only one who knew the palace or the city very well could have done it, and I cannot think that one of ourselves would have done so. Only—" Priam hesitated, then shook his head. "No; he is my sworn friend and has been our

guest. I cannot believe that he would betray us."

"Father, who?" she asked, and Priam, shaking his head, said 'No. Only - no."

"Odysseus?" she asked.

"Kassandra, do you really think my old friend could be so false?"

She did not wish to think this of Odysseus; but the possibility was there. She only said, "In war men forget other oaths, Father."

"It may be. But he pledged to me that he would not be drawn into this war," Priam said. "I will not accuse him unheard. Your dreams are filled with poison, Kassandra."

"Father, it was not I who thought of such a thing," she said. "I only asked if that was your thought."

"I am still certain that I wrong my old friend with such an idea," Priam said, "and I shall wait to ask him to his face if this was his work."

In her heart Kassandra was certain; Odysseus was full of such crafts and wiles, so she had heard. Yet she did not wish, either, to think he would betray his old friendship with Priam and with Troy.

There was not long to wait; the Akhaians had not been gone ten days when the ship of Odysseus was sighted in the harbor. Kassandra had come to the palace to visit Creusa and make a healing brew for her child, who was ailing with a summer fever, and afterwards was summoned to the great hall. Aeneas went at once to greet her; as usual, he embraced her and kissed her cheek.

"Is it well with the child, sister?"

"Oh, yes; there is nothing much wrong with her; I would do better to make a potion for Creusa which would cure her anxieties. Every time the wind changes, she thinks the little one is sick to death. At least Andromache has learned that babies have little upsets and it is better not to dose them too much: they will get better by themselves, and if they do not, there is time enough to call for a healer."

"I am relieved to hear it; but be patient with Creusa, sister; she is young and it is her first child. Come and have some dinner," Aeneas said, leading her forward. Odysseus got up from the guestseat beside Priam and came to Kassandra; he embraced her so hard that she flinched, and gave her a great smacking kiss.

"So it is my beautiful best girl," he said, "and what have you been doing these months of war? I have a gift for you; a string of amber beads which matches your bright eyes exactly; I have never known anyone else whose eyes are that yellow with just a glint of red in their depths," he added, drawing out the necklace from the folds of his tunic and putting it round her neck. Kassandra

sighed, taking it off and holding it between her hands, examining the shining beads almost covetously.

"I thank you; it is very beautiful, but I would not be allowed to wear it. Should you not bestow it directly as a gift for the Sunlord?"

Odysseus took back the necklace, frowning.

"It suits you so well; and the Sunlord, though I have no quarrel with him—" he made a pious gesture, "has no need of such gifts as I can give." He looked round the room, and his eyes fell on Helen, sitting modestly in Paris's shadow.

Helen said in her gentle voice, "Dear old friend, I will keep the necklace for Kassandra, and she shall have it back whenever she wants to ask for it." She was quite obviously pregnant by now, but Kassandra saw with a sigh that it seemed to make her even more beautiful. Andromache had been strong and healthy throughout, but she had looked pale and bloated, while Creusa had been sick all during her pregnancy, unable to hold down any food, and so wasted that she looked like a rat dragging about a stolen melon. Helen looked, Kassandra thought, just like one of the carven pregnant goddesses she had seen in Colchis; or like Aphrodite if the Goddess of Love would allow herself to be seen pregnant.

She took the necklace from Kassandra's hands and said gently, almost affectionately, "Who knows, my sister, you may not always be in the Sunlord's service. I give you my word, this

necklace is yours any time you ask for it."

Against her will, Kassandra was warmed by the glow of her presence. She said, more affectionately than she intended, "Thank you, my sister," and Helen pressed her hand and smiled at her.

Priam interrupted testily, "It is all very well to stand here as my guest and bestow trinkets on the girls, Odysseus, but tell me, did I not see your ship among the raiders at the walls, and were you not among them? I thought you had promised to me that you would not be drawn into war against me with those Akhaians."

"That is true, my old friend," said Odysseus, grinning and

- draining the wine from his cup at one draught. Polyxena came to refill the cup and he smiled up at her - almost a leer - and patted her rounded buttocks. "Would that I were still unwedded, pretty thing; if your father could have given you to me - even if I am old enough to be your grandsire, and I am not given to seeking brides in their cradles - then Agamemnon could not have tricked me into coming against old acquaintances this way."

Priam looked politely skeptical.

"I confess, my friend, I do not understand."

"Well," said Odysseus, and Kassandra reflected that Odysseus would certainly make a good story of it, truth or falsehood. "You do remember that I was among the suitors for Helen when she wedded Alenelaus. Helen, I think, has forgiven me that I was not one ofher suitors - I wanted only to marry Penelope, daughter of Ikarios."

Helen smiled. "May the Gods of Truth forgive you as firmly as I have done, my friend. I only hoped I might gain a husband as faithful to me as you to your Penelope."

Odysseus continued, "And when all the suitors were fighting it was I who created the compromise that broke the deadlock; that Helen should choose for herself and that all of us should take oath to defend her chosen husband against all contenders. So when this war broke out, there was I, caught in my own trap; Agamemnon sent for me to come fulfill the oath I had taken to Menelaus."

Priam scowled, though Kassandra could tell that her father was not really angry; he wanted the rest of the story. "And what of your oath to be my guest and friend?"

"I did my best to honor it, Priam, I vow to you," said the old seaman. "I have seen enough of the world, I wanted to stay home and look after my own acres. So I had Penelope send a message that I was sick and could not come; that my wits were astray, that I was a poor madman. And when Agamemnon came, I put on my ploughman's old hat, and yoked my horse and my ox together, and started to plough a field of thistles. And do you know what that -' he hesitated, "well, there are ladies present—thatAgamemnon did?" He gave the name the force of an

obscenity, and looked round to survey the effect of his story on his rapt audience. "He picked up my little son, Telemakhos - he was just toddling—about the size of your Astyanax, Hector—and he set him down in the field right in front of where I was ploughing. So what was I supposed to do—plough right over the child? I swerved the team, and Agamemnon laughed to split his sides and said, "Come on, old fox; you're no madder than I am!" demanding I honor my oath to defend Menelaus. So I came; but believe me, it was I who sent them home to do their spring planting. They'll be back after that—I came to warn you all."

Priam had laughed as hard as anyone; then he sobered and said, "I can see how you could do no other than you have done, Odysseus. For all that, you are still my friend."

"I am," Odysseus said, and helped himself to fish and bread.

"And may you always be so," Priam replied, "as I am yours."

Kassandra narrowed her eyes, looking at Odysseus as if seeking the Sight. Try as she might, she saw only a harmless old man, genuinely torn between old friends, and unwelcome neighbours with whom he must, for the safety of his own family, keep the peace. Yes, he would be their friend - as long as it was to his advantage to do so. Unless there was a good joke or a good story to be made out of his own cleverness or even treachery. No friendship would stand against that; not for Odysseus.

She quickly finished her own meal and, rising, asked her father for permission to withdraw. He

gave it absentmindedly; she kissed her mother and Andromache, lifted little Astyanax in her arms and kissed him too, though he squirmed and insisted he was too big to be kissed, and left the hall.

After a minute she realized that someone had followed her. Thinking it was one of her sisters with a question to be asked of a priestess which was too private to ask before men, she stopped to wait. Then strong male arms went round her; and for a moment she rested in Aeneas's arms before, regretfully, she drew away from him.

"Aeneas, no; you are my sister's husband."

"Creusa would not mind," Aeneas said in a whisper. "Since our son was born, she cringes whenever I come to her bed. She has no desire for me, I swear it. She would rejoice if I found love elsewhere."

"You will not find it with me," Kassandra said, sadly. "I too am sworn, my brother; sworn to the Sunlord, and it would be a braver man than you who would contend with him for a woman."

Aeneas said, still holding her in his arms, "I will strive with him if you want me to, Kassandra. For you I would dare even his wrath."

"Oh, hush," she said, holding her fingers over his mouth. "You z did not say that. I did not hear it. But this much I will say, my dear," she went on, the endearment slipping from her lips almost

without volition, "if we were both free, I would willingly have you, as husband, or as lover whatever you would. But I have seen the wrath of Apollo Sunlord, and I would not knowingly dare it for any man; certainly not for you, whom I could well have loved."

"The Gods forbid," said Aeneas piously,"that I should contend against a God, unless you should demand it of me. If you are content to be the Sunlord's bride and no other's," he freed her and stepped back, "be it as you will. Yet I swear by Apollo himself," and he raised her slender hand respectfully to his lips, "I shall be forever your faithful friend and your brother, and should you ever desire my help, I swear you shall have it, against any man - or any God."

She said, shaken, "I thank you for that; and I shall ever be your friend and your sister, whatever happens."

He held her gently by the shoulders. "Kassandra, my dear, you do not look happy. Are you truly content in Apollo's Temple?"

"If I were," she said in a whisper, "I should have run away from you before it ever came to this."

She drew away from him and went quietly out of the palace, her heart still beating so loudly she felt that Aeneas must have heard it. As she climbed the long hall toward the Sunlord's house, she felt tears unshed pressing at her eyes.

I do not want to be false to my vows. I am sworn to Apollo, and it is he who has forsaken me; I

would never betray him with any mortal man, yet that blasphemous priest has had me disgraced in the Temple… for his sake I am defiled in their eyes when I am innocent of all wrong-doing.

Would the Goddess she had served during her time with the Amazons have taken the part of a man against her sworn priestess? Was it only that a God, when a man and a woman contended, could not take a woman's part, whatever the rights of the matter? She was the property of the God, just as if she had married a mortal man.

Yet Khryse and I both belong to Apollo and so we should have been equal in his sight.

She came through the great bronze doors, and the night Watchman bent to her in reverence.

"You are abroad late, princess."

-

"I have been at the palace with my father and mother," she said. "A good night to you."

"Good night, Lady," he said, and she went towards the rooms at the back where the women slept. She slipped out of her sandals and gown, and laid herself down to sleep.

Her eyes were still aching, and as she relaxed her muscles she felt tears stealing unbidden down her face. The memory of Aeneas's embrace returned, and for a moment she played in her mind

with the memory; if she would, she could take him from her sister, and Creusa would not even be angry with her, she would be pleased to be free of her wifely obligations to him…

Who would be harmed if she should yield to Aeneas? Should she truly forget her vows, since she had had no good from them? Or was it that foreign Goddess of lawless love sending to tempt her? Then before her eyes the face of Aeneas was lost in the blazing memory of the Sunlord's face, the soft unforgettable music of his voice as he saidKassandra …

As she drifted into sleep she wondered; how could any woman choose a mere man above a God? Perhaps it was better to be forgotten or ignored by the Sunlord than loved or cherished by any living man.

CHAPTER 8

It began to be rumoured in the city that the Akhaians had given up and would not return; Kassandra knew better than that, for there were still times when she would look down from the high-house of the Sunlord, and see for a moment the city swallowed in flames. From this she knew that the gift of prophecy had not deserted her.

It was no use to her; when she spoke of it, no one would listen.Nevertheless, O Lord Apollo, whatever may have been taken from me, a day will come when they will remember what I said

and know I did not lie .

She wondered at times:This is only a curse, since no one believes what I say; why must I suffer in knowing and being unable to speak ? Yet when she would have prayed that the Sight might be withdrawn, she thought:Oh, no! how much worse to walk blind and unknowing into whatever the Fates have decreed .

Yet if this was the fate of all men; how, then, did they manage to endure it?

Day after day the seas were free of warships or of raiders. Other ships came, bound northward to Colchis and the country of the North Wind, paying their tribute to Troy, and from Colchis Queen Imandra sent gifts and greetings to her daughter, and to Kassandra too.

One morning Kassandra found her snake lying dead in its pot; and this she took for the worst of omens. She had had but little time to spare for the creature lately, and blamed herself for not having seen that it was ailing. She asked leave to bury it in the temple grounds. When this was done, Charis sent for her and set her in charge of all the serpents in Apollo's Temple.

"But why?" Kassandra asked. "I am not worthy; I tended mine so ill that it sickened and died."

"Why do we give you this task? Because you are not happy, Kassandra; do you think us blind? You are dear to me - dear to Us all," and as Kassandra made a gesture of protest, she said,

-

"No, this is true; do you think us unaware of what Khryse has done to you? If we were free to turn him from the door, believe me, there are many who would do so. And now we have an excuse to give you a duty where you need not encounter him at every day and in every hour."

She still did not understand; why were they not free to turn him away from the temple? He had attempted to rape a virgin of the God. It was a riddle she could not read; nor did Charis give any explanation, saying no more; evidently they were not even free to explain why Khryse had this hold over them.

There was a very old priestess in the temple who had all kinds of serpent-lore; older than Hecuba - at least as much older than Queen Hecuba as Hecuba was older than her daughter. Kassandra, eager to avoid for the other serpents in the temple the fate which had befallen her own snake, took to spending many hours with the old woman. Her hair was white and mostly fallen out, and her eyes sunken into her head like a skeleton's. She suffered from a palsy of age, her hands shaking so that she could not grasp her own feeding-spoon; it was this ailment which decreed she had to be relieved of the care of the serpents.

Kassandra spent all her hours with the old woman, lifting her and feeding her, and when the priestess was strong enough to talk to her, learning all about every kind of snake and serpent, including many kinds they no longer kept in the temple. Sometimes Kassandra thought she would like to make a long journey simply to secure for the temple some of these strange

creatures for the house of Apollo: the ones who dwelt in the deserts far to the south, or one of the kind called Python, larger around than a child, and able to swallow a kid at a meal, or even a whole sheep. Kassandra was not entirely sure she believed in such a creature, but she liked hearing such tales, and would sit and listen all day to the old woman's.

After the serpents had been fed there was little to do, except for seeing to old Meliantha's needs, and Kassandra would listen and daydream, thinking of her meeting with the Goddess as Serpent Mother in the underworld and wondering how the story had arisen of Apollo Sunlord slaying the Python.

The year was advancing; belated winter rains swept softly in from the sea and on some bare branches could be seen little lumps where leaves would eventually unfold. One day she stood high atop the Sunlord's house and heard a faraway shrill crying.

"Look, the cranes are flying north again."I wonder , she thought,to what faraway lands they travel, beyond the country of the North Wind . But her companions had more practical thoughts in their minds.

"Soon it will be time for the spring planting festival," said Chryseis, and there was a greedy gleam in her eyes. "I am tired of being shut in with the women." Kassandra was struck with fear; surely with spring, the Akhaians would come. The last winter moon swelled and shrank and there came days grey with soft rains; and a few days after the northward flight of the cranes, the clouds cleared, and the narrow new moon in the sky announced the coming of spring and the

planting festival.

On the first day after the new moon, Kassandra was summoned to the palace to her mother's presence; she found her with her women, making implements for the planting rites, and a priestess of Earth Mother was there supervising the work.

Kassandra did not know what she was going to say until she heard herself saying it.

"Are you planning the festival so that the Akhaians can enjoy it? Surely to hold a festival now is only inviting them to come and despoil it!"

The priestess, an aging woman Kassandra did not know well, scowled at her.

"What would you suggest as an alternative, Lady Kassandra? We cannot refrain from planting the grain—"

"Oh, I know that the grain must be sown," Kassandra said, almost frantic, "but must we draw attention to it with a festival?"

The priestess asked, frowning, "Do you expect to enjoy the gifts of the Goddess without doing her honor?"

Kassandra, hardly knowing what to say wanted to cry. She thought,If the Goddess is so great

and benevolent, surely she would give us the grain without demanding so much. Is the Earth Goddess an old market woman to haggle with us - so much grain for so many songs and dances ? Since she could not say that, she said nothing at all, and knew the priestess was frowning at her with disapproval.

"What has the festival to do with you, who have chosen to remain a virgin in the house of the Sunlord, and do not pay her your due?"

"It was not altogether by choice," she said meekly. "The Sunlord called me, and Earth Goddess made no protest. If she had demanded of me that I serve her I would have obeyed."

And why did she not stretch forth her bow to save me from

the Sunlord, then? Am I no more than a fleeing animal before the strife of these Gods?

But the priestess was still scowling at her, seeming to demand an answer, and Kassandra said, "Since I too am fed by her bounty, I see no reason for a festival which will make the planting useless. For if the Akhaians come to destroy our festival, we will reap little from this planting."

"Are you saying to me that even the Akhaians do not pay honor to the Goddess?"

"I say only that I fear their impiety," said Kassandra. "If you believe that they pay honor to the Goddess, why not ask one of their devotees, or send a messenger to negotiate a truce and a

pledge that they will not interfere with Earth Mother's rites?"

And for that fear I am badgered as if the impiety were mine own; I should learn to keep silence.

She bowed in silence to the priestess; her warning given. It was no part of her duty to say more. Her mother had been looking on in silence, and Kassandra crossed the room to join her.

"Can you not understand my fear, Mother?"

"I trust to the goodness of the Goddess; surely she can raise her hand if she will to strike against these Akhaians," said Hecuba reprovingly. "You are too full of fears, Kassandra."

"You have served Earth Mother all these years; has she ever lifted her hand to protect you?" asked Kassandra.

Her mother looked deeply displeased and said, "Such questions are not for women to ask; you who are a priestess should know better than to say such things. The Gods are not slow to punish those who speak against or question them."

I should have been the one to say that, thought Kassandra.I have lived in the Sunlord's house and seen how he strikes - and how he protects - his own . She sighed and said no more.

Her mother said gently, "I am not reproving you, Kassandra; but if you have found no happiness

in the Sunlord's house you should return to us here. I cannot think it entirely a good thing for a girl of your years to remain this long a maiden; if you return to Priam's house, your father will find you a husband. It would please me well, to see you married and with a child in your arms. And then there would be no more of these evil dreams and prophecies to torment you."

In spite of her mother's loving tone, Kassandra felt a wave of anger so great that it choked her.Ah, that is the remedy for all things that are wrong with women - if a woman is unhappy, or if she makes a mistake, or does not do what everyone else wants her to do; then she would be better for a husband; if she had a child it would be the remedy for all her ills . She said to her mother, "Ah, you too, Mother? When you rode with Penthesilea and her women, would you have been so quick to say that was what ailed me? Would you give me to a husband or see me pregnant just so I would not speak the truth and frighten people?"

Hecuba was dismayed at her angry tone. She patted Kassandra's knotted fingers and smoothed them gently, trying to. unlock them. "Don't be angry, my dear; I don't know why you are always so angry. I only want to see you happy, my child."

"I am angry because I am surrounded by fools," said Kassandra, "and your only answer would be to make me one of them."

She stood up and flung herself out of the room. Her mother was hopeless, and yet there had been a time when she was strong and self-sufficient; Kassandra had her weapons to prove it. And why had she let her mother divert her from the real issue, which was the danger to the spring

planting? Her mother had chosen to divert her to the old issue of marriage - as if a married woman automatically gained wisdom. Andromache was certainly no wiser for her marriage to Hector, nor Creusa for being married to Aeneas.

If I thought that it could work some such great change in me, then would I be not only willing, but eager, to marry!

CHAPTER 9

A little before daybreak Kassandra heard the jingling of bells and the sounds of movement in the city below. As she raised her head a wave of sickness rolled over her; it seemed to her that the quiet room was alive with shrieks and the clash of arms. Oh, no, she thought, falling back on her pillow, and pulling the blanket over her head. For a few minutes she lay unmoving - she had vowed that if there was to be catastrophe, it would happen when she was far from it. She had delivered the warning and that was quite enough.

But outside her room, the sounds of festival went on; soon they would come and call her, and at last she rose and dressed herself, and went to care for the temple serpents, half expecting that on a day of such evil omen she would find them all hiding inside their pots and holes; but they seemed to be behaving exactly as always. She fetched food from the kitchens and fed old Meliantha bread soaked in watered wine. When all had been done that she could find to do, she

looked over the wall and saw hundreds of women streaming down from the gates of Troy and down to the fertile area between the rivers. She did not put on her holiday garment, nor stop to fashion a garland for herself; but she braided her dark hair loosely to keep it out of her eyes, then left the temple. On the path below she recognized before her a familiar figure and a head of reddish golden hair. She hurried to catch up with the woman.

"Oenone, what are you doing here? Are there no crops to be sown on Mount Ida, my sister?"

Encouraged by her words, Oenone smiled affectionately at Kassandra; but she did not speak, and after a moment Kassandra knew, as if the other woman had told her, she hoped for a glimpse of Paris. Kassandra could give her no encouragement or hope in this, so she lifted her hands to the chubby toddler riding on his mother's shoulder.

"How big he grows! Is he not heavy to ride on your shoulder this way?"

"His eyes are dark and he looks more and more like his father," Oenone said, not answering Kassandra's question. Indeed the boy's eyes, smoky blue at birth like all babies', had darkened to a glowing hazel not unlike Paris's or Kassandra's own.

Much good may that do him, Kassandra thought, so angry that she could hardly speak. Because she could not chide Oenone for this hopeless and absurd quest, she said crossly, "Go home, Oenone, tend to the crops on Mount Ida. Little good will come of this planting here. The gods are angry with Troy. Paris will not be here; this festival is for women - I should think you know

our customs well enough by now to know that."

"Still I will come and pray with the others if there is need, to turn away the anger of Earth Mother," said Oenone, and Kassandra knew that nothing she said would make the slightest difference.

So she said, "Let me carry the baby for you," and held out her arms for the child. He was heavy indeed, but she had offered and would not withdraw her help. A pity Paris would not come and carry his own son, she thought. Among the women coming down from the palace she saw her mother, and Andromache with Hector's son Astyanax, now tall enough to walk at his mother's side, clutching to her skirt.

Creusa's baby, still small enough to be tied in her shawl, was slung over her shoulders; Polyxena led the group of Priam's daughters, all wearing the traditional beribboned festival tunic of maidens, their long curls floating in the breeze. They saw Kassandra and waved to her, and she did not feel churlish enough to refuse to return the greeting. If they would not postpone the festival or hold it quietly, in a way that would not attract the catastrophe she had foreseen, they might as well enjoy themselves while they could. Up the hill someone had started the first of the planting songs:

Bring the grain, by the winter hidden,

Bring it with songs and feasting and joy…

Other women took up the song. Kassandra heard Creusa's strong, sweet voice; then the other women took up the refrain, but when she tried to sing she felt choked, and her own voice would not carry.

"Look," said Oenone, pointing,"the men are on the wall watching us. There is your father, my precious," she said, pointing and trying to attract the attention of the child to where Paris stood in his bright armor, the pale early sunlight reflecting off it in arrow-like rays.

The child twisted in Kassandra's arms, trying to see what his mother was pointing at; he was heavy enough to throw Kassandra off balance, so that she nearly fell.

"I had better take him," said Oenone, and Kassandra did not protest. She could see the crimson plumes that surrounded Hector's helmet, Priam's brilliant armor, and Aeneas, taller than any of the other men.

They had now reached the fields; the ground had been prepared days before. The women stooped and took off their sandals, for no shod foot might tread the breasts of Earth Mother in this rite. Hecuba wore a scarlet robe; she raised her hands for the invocation, then paused and gestured to Andromache; the younger woman, in her brilliant scarlet gown from Colchis, came forward to take her place.

Kassandra understood; Hecuba was an old woman, and although she had borne seventeen

children, of whom more than half had survived their fifth year - a splendid sign of Earth Mother's favour - she was now passing beyond the years of childbearing, and this rite must be performed by a fertile woman, a mother. For the last years it had not mattered so much, but now, when this year's grain was crucial to the survival of the city, no chance could be taken that a woman barren with age might affront Earth Mother by her presence in the greatest of rites.

Andromache gestured, and all maidens and virgins, as well as every woman who had never borne a living child, left the ploughed acres. Kassandra nodded farewell to Oenone and moved toward the small stone fences and grown-over hedges of thorn and rank bushes at the edge of the field. They were far from barren; she could hear concealed within them the sound of small insects, crickets and beetles, and many herbs and plants whose uses she was beginning to know grew at the margin of the ploughed fields. She observed a narrow leaf good for curing rashes on the skin of children and small animals; she stooped to cut it, murmuring a whispered prayer to the Goddess for this bounty even outside the lands given to her grace.

Now that the women were in the fields, the men were coming down; King Priam, the father of his people, in his richly dyed crimson loincloth, naked otherwise except for a string of purple stones round his neck, took the wooden plough between his hands and raised it high in the air; the cheer that went up was deafening. With his own hands he yoked a white donkey to the shafts of the plough; Kassandra knew that this animal had been chosen from all the beasts in Troy for the king's ploughing because it was without blemish and the owner had been highly paid.

Priam dug the ploughshare into the field, and again a cheer arose as the dark brown strip of

fertile loam appeared between the pale sun-dried surface of the earth. The women's voices now lifted in a new song. When Kassandra was quite a little girl she had been told that the songs were to drown the cries of Mother Earth at being thus ravished. During her sojourn with the Amazons Kassandra had been taught a more sophisticated theory: that Earth Mother gave food to her children of her free will and the songs were only praise and thanksgiving; but even now she had to repress a shudder as the plough broke through the soil.

Now all the fertile women of the city burst on to the field; all together they stripped off their upper garments, exposing their breasts, and made symbolic gestures of stripping their milk into the waiting land, to nourish the fields. Over half of them were pregnant, from young girls just swelling with their first babies, their breasts no larger than green peaches, to women Hecuba's age who had borne a child every year or so for a generation, their long flabby breasts bared to the sky and sun.

Kassandra joined in the cry which rose to heaven:

"Earth Mother, nourish your children, we cry to you…'

The baskets of seed were passed to all the fertile women, and they began passing them down the field, scattering the grain. Priam was shoved in rude haste to the edge of the field; he stumbled and measured his length on the soil, staining his robe. There were gasps at this evil omen and he was picked up and borne off tenderly to where the rest of the men were surrounding the field now, watching the sowing. The sun was high, beating down with dazzling force.

"Maybe the Earth would bear no matter what we do or don't do," a big rough man Kassandra had never seen before suggested. "I been in heathen places where they know nothing of our Gods, and crops grow there, too, just the same as here."

"You be quiet, Ajax; we don't need any of your foolish ideas," said a strong deep voice Kassandra identified as Aeneas's.

"Whether it has to do with the Gods or not, this is the way things are done for decency and custom, and why not?"

Thunder rumbled in the distance; and clouds moved across the face of the sun. Kassandra felt the insects in the hedges grow silent. Then a few drops of rain rattled against the dry branches of the hedges, and within moments the flimsy garments of the women were flattened against their bodies. They sent up a cry:

"Thanks be to Earth Mother who sends rain to nourish us!"

The songs had quieted as the rain grew hard. Now the women finished sowing the last of the seed and everyone, including the little girls and the women who were old and barren, ran out on the field to assist in covering the last of the grain. Kassandra started to run and join Oenone when a dark surge came before her eyes and she paused, dizzy, not sure that the ground had not rocked beneath her feet.

There there was a war cry and she saw men in dark tunics rushing out on the field, shouting and yelling. A man in armor seized Oenone and, flinging her over his shoulder, rushed for the dark line of ships that had appeared while all eyes were on the ploughing and sowing.

By old custom, the Trojans had brought no weapons into the field; most of them were running for the city wall where they had left their weapons. Paris was one of the first to reappear on the wall, shooting arrow after arrow into the throng of strange soldiers. The man who held Oenone fell struggling, struck through the heart, and Oenone freed herself. There were many arrow and javelin shots, and many of the Akhaians fell; most of the others dropped the women they had seized and managed to reach the ships before the hailstorm of arrows cut them down. Oenone reached Hecuba's side and looked round for her child; finding him safe, she joined the small central knot of women around the Queen. Kassandra was still in the protection of the hedge. She saw Helen beside Oenone, and wondered what, if anything, Paris's two wives found to say to one another. She noted too, that Helen's shapely body was obviously swelling in pregnancy also.

She wondered if Menelaus had seen. If so, surely Menelaus would now rather go home and leave Helen to Paris—he would not keep fighting for the mother of some other man's child.

Kassandra, choosing her moment carefully, left the hedge and raced across the field, breathlessly crowding into the circle near the Queen, taking her place beside Oenone. All the women were looking down fearfully at the Akhaians nearing their ships. She picked out the tall beaked figure of Agamemnon; he was no monster now, only a man, rougher, stronger and

crueller than most, but the sight of him still made her blood run cold.

Hecuba was looking around and counting her women. "Are you all here? Has anyone been taken?"

A group of women from the Sunlord's house were clustered together at the outskirts of Hecuba's women. Phyllida was unobtrusively counting them; she cried out, "Oh, where is Chryseis! Was she not with you, Kassandra? I thought I saw her at your side—"

"Yes, she was with me, perhaps she is still in the hedge. Shall I go back and see? All of - ofthem have got back to their ships, I think—"

"No," Phyllida said firmly, "you must not expose yourself; remember, you are Priam's daughter, and you would be a great prize to any one of the invaders. Stay here close to your mother," she admonished, as Hecuba came and grasped Kassandra's hand.

"So you are safe? I was worried about you," Hecuba said. "How did you know they would attack us?"

"I thought it likely," Kassandra said, "and so it was."

"But they have not taken any captives," Hecuba said, "and so they have had all their trouble for nothing."

"No, we did not come off untouched," Kassandra said. "They managed to take one of the maidens from Apollo's Temple."

"Oh, how dreadful!" Hecuba said with a gasp.

Kassandra thought to herself that the loss was a small one; the girl had been a troublemaker from the first, and it was not even certain that she was a maiden.

All the same, Kassandra was grateful that the attack had done so little harm. She decided to seek out Helen and ask when her child would be born - once again it seemed as if Helen was under the glamour of the Goddess, even at the most unattractive stage of pregnancy, she seemed beautiful and glowing. It was not only Paris whose eyes followed her as bits of lint follow amber.

Helen smiled at Kassandra with such intense welcome that Kassandra felt almost weak in the knees. The favour of the Goddess was to be treasured; without it, the women here might have torn the Spartan Queen to pieces; after all, she had brought the men of Troy into the dangers of this war.But I have no husband or lover for whom I must fear . Helen embraced her and Kassandra returned the greeting warmly.

Strange; when she first came here it was I who pleaded to my father and mother that they should have nothing to do with her. Now I love her well and if they sought to cast her out, I would be the first to speak in her favour. Is it the will of the Goddess she incarnates? Do I serve her in

befriending Helen? No; now, bearing a child, she must seek the favour of Earth Mother.

"When is the baby due?"

"At autumn harvest," said Helen.

"And it is Paris's child? Then perhaps," Kassandra suggested, "Menelaus will go away and be content to leave you here."

Helen smiled cynically. "If he should say it, no one would listen," she said. "Come, Kassandra, you know as well as I that my body and my adultery are only a pretext for this war; Agamemnon has been trying for years to have a good excuse to attack Troy. If I sought to return to Menelaus tonight under cover of darkness, I would wager anything you like that my dead body would be found hanging on the walls and the Akhaians would keep fighting on the pretext of avenging me."

This was so likely true that Kassandra did not bother to comment. Helen said in annoyance, "There have been many times when I felt it would be best if I had been sworn a virgin to the Moon Maiden. Even now I am tempted to forswear men forever in her shrine; would she have me, do you think?"

"How should I know?" Kassandra replied hesitantly.

"Well, you are a priestess—"

"All I know is that she denies no woman who comes before her," Kassandra said. "But it seems to me that your destiny is to become a symbol of strife among men; and no one can argue with destiny."

"It would be too good to be true, I suppose, that I should be able to seek the Goddess and in her shadow avert the known pattern of my fate," Helen said. "But how do I know it is a God who has determined this fate and not that I have simply become entangled between two willful men who care nothing for the Gods?"

"I think this is the kind of thing no one can ever know," Kassandra said. "Yet I do feel the hand of some God in this; I know how Paris was driven to seek you."

"Then you mean that this war between Troy and my people was determined by the Immortals?" Helen asked. "Why? I mean, why me and not some other?"

"If I knew that," said Kassandra, "I should then be the most favoured seer of the Gods. I can only guess that the Goddess who favoured you with such beauty had this purpose in mind."

"And I still ask: why me and not some other?"

"Ask as much as you will," Kassandra said, "and if you receive an answer come and share it

with me."

CHAPTER 10

Kassandra dreamed that the Gods were angry with the city and were fighting above Troy; they towered to the sky, their spears clashing with thunderbolts and the glare of their great swords was like lightning. She woke to a day of heavy dripping rain, and a dull ache in her eyes.

Surprisingly, she missed Chryseis; she had grown used to the girl's company and could not help dwelling with fear and disgust on what must have befallen her in the camp of the Greeks - they had after all been there for several months without their own women. Although she knew that some of the women of the town slipped out through the walls into the shoreline camp to sell their bodies, she did not suppose it was the same. However, when she thought to pity Chryseis, she found herself thinking that this had been exactly what the girl wanted; she had been eyeing the foreigners over the wall for some months now.

Dismissing the girl from her thoughts, Kassandra threw on a robe and went to care for the serpents and the old priestess.

When she entered the room set apart for the old woman and the serpents she found confusion; two or three statues had been overthrown and were lying broken about the room, and there was

not a sign of a single snake anywhere. She called out - she had heard that snakes were deaf and could hear nothing, but she was not certain about that, and calling would do no harm—and old Meliantha called out feebly from the other room.

"Is that you, Kassandra, daughter of Priam?"

Kassandra went quickly to the dark inner room where the old lady lay on her pallet.

"What ails you, Meliantha? Are you ill?"

"No," said the aged priestess, "I am dying." Kassandra saw by the dim light that her face had shrunken even further, her eyes dimmed and covered with a white film. "You need not call out to the serpents, for they have gone; all of them. They have left us and retreated deep into the earth. Those who are still here are lying dead in their pots—look and see." Kassandra went to investigate, and saw a few unbroken pots lying in place; inside the serpents lay, cold and still. She returned to the old priestess to ask what had happened.

"Did you not feel the anger of the Earthshaker in the night? Not only the pots, but all my statues are broken."

"No, I heard nothing; but I had evil dreams of the anger of the Gods," Kassandra said. "Is it Serpent Mother who is angry with us?"

"No," said the old priestess scornfully. "She would not punish her serpents to show her anger with us; rather she would slay us for the well-being of her little folk. Whichever God has done this, Serpent Mother has nothing to do with it."

The old woman looked so agitated that Kassandra wished to comfort her. "Will you have bread and wine, Mother?"

"No; I cannot think of such things at such a time as this," the old woman said. "Dress me in my priestess's robes, and paint my face, and then carry me out into the sunlight in the courtyard, so that I may look one more time upon the face of the Sunlord for whom I have spent my life."

Kassandra did as she was bidden, assisting the old woman into the elaborate robe of pleated linen dyed brilliant yellow with saffron. She found a pot of cosmetics and as the old woman wished, hesitantly painted her cheeks and lips brilliant red with dye, though she thought it looked grotesque. At last she stooped and picked up the old priestess in her arms and carried her into the brilliant light of the courtyard, where she laid her down on some cushions. The old woman, exhausted, lay back, and Kassandra could see the blue pulse in her veins beating away hard in her temple. Her breath was a hoarse, exhausted rasp.

"Shall I not summon a healer to you, Lady?"

"No; it is too late for that," Meliantha said. "I am glad I will not live to see the days that are coming to Troy. But you have been good to my little people; and I shall pray with my dying

breath that somehow you may escape what the fates have determined for this wretched city." She shut her eyes for a moment and Kassandra bent forward to hear if she still breathed. Meliantha put out a wavering hand.

"Closer, my child, I cannot see your face," she said. "Yet it shines before me like a star; the Sunlord has not forsaken you." Then she kissed Kassandra with her wrinkled lips and, opening her filmed old eyes, she cried out, "Apollo Sunlord! Let me see thy face bright before me!"

She trembled violently and fell back upon the cushions, and Kassandra knew she was gone.

Now it could not hurt her to be left alone, so Kassandra ran to tell Charis what had happened.

"She was the oldest of us all," Charis said. "I came here as a girl of twelve and already she was old then. I felt the Earthshaker in the night, and I should have gone to her; but it was just as well. I could have done her no good. Well, we must bury her as befits a priestess of Apollo," she said, and sent the women for flowers to make garlands and for honey cakes and wine.

"We do not mourn when one of our own goes to the eternal realms," she chided the sobbing girls. "We rejoice because after a long life of service the Serpent Mother has taken her and see— " she indicated the dead snakes lying in their pots, "her little friends have gone before her to welcome her into those realms; there she can see them again and play with them, as she always loved to do."

Two days later, Kassandra heard the alarm in the city announcing an Akhaian attack, and saw the men of Troy rushing down to meet them, her brother Paris among them. She was surprised at how commonplace this was beginning to seem, not only to her, but apparently to all the people of Troy. Except for the fighting men, no one seemed to pay much attention to the attack. The smooth routine of the temple didn't alter at all, and from the wall she could see townswomen going calmly to the cisterns with their water jars.

One non-fighting man, however, was still interested in the actions of the Akhaians. At the end of the wall nearest the fighting Khryse stood scowling as he watched the fight. Kassandra, not wishing to deal with him, slipped away back to the maidens' rooms.The people of Troy , she thought to herself,are starting to regard the Akhaians with all the concern they would give to a sudden hailstorm. Can't they see that this will be our destruction? But I suppose that no one can live in a state of terror for years on end. No doubt I'd feel the same complacency if I did not have the visions to unsettle me .

Shortly afterward, a messenger from the city reached her, saying that the Lady Helen was in labour and wished to see her. Since Meliantha's death, Kassandra had few or no obligations in the Sunlord's house and so she did not bother to ask leave, but went down at once to the palace. She found her mother and sisters, except for Andromache, all gathered in Helen's rooms.

Kassandra inquired about Andromache and was told that she had taken all the littlest children to her room to tell them stories and feed them sweets.

"For if there is anything we do not need in the birthing-chamber," said Creusa, "it is the babies under our feet."

Kassandra thought she was most probably right; she wondered if it were good nature on Andromache's part, or whether she shrank from remembering her own ordeal. It did not matter; in any case it needed doing and Andromache's motives were not important.

The birthing-chamber was quite crowded enough as it was, and most of the women were more obstacles to be stepped around than any kind of help to a woman in labour, but custom demanded witnesses for a royal birth. Kassandra wondered if the Akhaians had the same custom, and resolved to ask Helen when they had leisure. At the moment, however, she was surrounded with so many midwives, waiting-women insistent on curling her hair or showing her some garment or piece of jewellery she might want, priestesses bearing amulets or chanting healing spells, cooks with morsels and drinks to tempt her appetite, that Kassandra could not get near the bed and resolved to wait till Helen asked for her.

Creusa had brought a lap-harp with her, and sat in the corner producing a quiet and calming background strumming. After a time Helen noticed Kassandra in the crowd and beckoned to her.

"Come and sit here beside me, Sister; this is like a festival -and so it is for most of them, I suppose."

"Like a wedding," Kassandra said. "Great fun for everyone except the ones most concerned. All

we need in here are a few acrobats and dancing girls, and someone showing off a two-headed rabbit for coppers, and a fire-eater or a sword-swal-lower—"

"I'm sure if I wanted them, Hecuba would provide them," Helen said with a droll lift of her eyebrows. Kassandra was aware that even under these trying circumstances she was ravishingly lovely.

"Acrobats and dancing-girls, at least," Kassandra said. "Priam has several of them in the palace. I'm not sure about two-headed rabbits."

"Oh, fie, Kassandra; our royal mother would not - it would be beneath her dignity to take notice of Priam's dancing-girls or flute-girls," Creusa said, between chords. Kassandra laughed.

"Don't you believe that; Hecuba's business is to oversee the food for every person under this roof. She probably knows how many olives each of them eats at dinner - which ones are greedy for honey and cakes, and which ones are careful never to get with child."

"Of course; an acrobat can put herself out of work for a year, if she gets pregnant," Helen said. "I had two girls, sisters, in Mykenae, who used to come and dance for me." It was the first time she had spoken of her old home that Kassandra could remember. "No working girl wants to be burdened with carrying and birthing. That's for ladies of leisure - like us."

"Perhaps we work hardest of all," Kassandra said. "My mother has borne and suckled seventeen

children."

Helen shivered. "I am already three-and-twenty and I have only Hermione and Nikos; I am fortunate," she said, and then a surprised look passed over her face and she grimaced and was silent for a moment.

"That was a fierce one," she said. "I think it will not be very long now." She looked around the chamber.

Kassandra asked, "Can I fetch you something?"

Helen shook her head, but she looked sad.She is alone here , thought Kassandra.Among so many women, she has no real friend from her own country .

"Where is your lady, Aithra?"

"She has returned to Crete; I would not be the cause of her exile too," Helen said, and reached out her hand to Kassandra; Kassandra held it tight.

Helen said, almost in a whisper, "Stay with me, Sister? I do not know these women—and there is none of them I trust."

Creusa pulled a stool toward them with her free hand. Kassandra dropped on it, disposing her

cumbersome robes around her. She noticed that the other woman looked pale now, and drawn. Not now possessed by her Goddess; she was, Kassandra noted with detachment, quite a small woman, whose pale hair was her chief beauty, for even now, tired and sweat-stained, it fell into smooth dazzling bands on both sides of her face. Her eyes looked tired and a little red. Kassandra sat on the stool beside the bed letting Helen grip her hand. Creusa played softly, and music seemed to be helping - or perhaps Helen would have z had an easy time of it in any case. Kassandra was curious, but did not feel comfortable asking questions; this experience was still something which seemed to have nothing to do with her. As the afternoon sun strengthened in the room, Hecuba sent everyone away except the two senior midwives, a servant for running errands, and a priestess bearing many amulets which she came and distributed around the bed. She would have sent Kassandra away too.

"You are a maiden, Kassandra; a birth-chamber is no place for you."

But Helen clung to her hand.

"She is my friend, Mother. And she is not only a maiden, she is a priestess. No chamber of women is forbidden to a priestess of the Mother."

"Have you brought holy serpents?" Hecuba asked.

"No; the temple serpents all died in the earthquake," Kassandra said.

The priestess, tucking an amulet under Helen's breasts with a muttered spell, raised her head to say, "Speak not of evil omens here."

"I cannot see why the deaths of serpents in the Temple of Apollo should be an omen, good or evil, for my baby," Helen said. "Apollo is not my God and I have no dealings with him for good or ill. As for Serpent Mother, she is no Goddess of mine."

The priestess caught Kassandra's eye and made a sign against evil fortune. Kassandra agreed with Helen - she was accustomed to the practice which made almost any random occurrence an omen for good or bad, but she still felt it nonsensical.

The priestess went to boil a pot of water over the brazier, and the room was filled with the steamy smell of the healing herbs she cast into it. Shortly before sunset Helen gave birth to a son; small and wrinkled, to whom she gave the name Bynomosa.

Hecuba looked at the small wriggling form with a slight frown.

"How long have you been among us, Helen? He is small… never have I seen a full-term babe so small. He weighs no more than a chicken trussed for the spit."

"Nor did I," said Kassandra, "as you have told me often enough. It's likely that with all the trouble and excitement - the disruption at the festival, the earthquake - no doubt this little one comes hither some days or weeks before his time; does it matter, if he is strong and healthy?"

Helen made a face and whispered, "She simply wishes to be

- certain it is her own son's son. Wanton I may be, but not so much as that; I knew I bore Paris's son before we fled from Agamemnon's house. But I do not know how to tell her what she really wants to know without shocking her further."

Kassandra giggled, but she did not know what to say either.

Creusa came to take her turn at holding the baby. She said tactfully, "I think he will have his father's eyes; babies who will be dark-haired have eyes of a smokier blue than those who will be fair."

Kassandra was startled, she had not expected such support from her half-sister. As a child Creusa had always had a talent for making a bad situation worse, as well as a tendency to throw fits of hysteria if she felt herself ignored. Perhaps marriage to Aeneas was giving her more maturity than anyone expected.

There was a step at the door, and Kassandra, recognizing it, went to let Paris in, saying, "Brother, you have another son."

"I have a son," Paris corrected, "and if you prophesy anything of evil about him, Kassandra, I shall rearrange the bones of your face, so that people flee from you as from the Medusa."

"Don't you dare to make threats to her," cried Helen. "Your sister is my friend."

Kassandra took the child in her arms and kissed him. She said, "I have no prophecy given me for this child. He is strong and well, and what fate will be his in manhood is not mine to say."

She laid the child in Paris's arms; he bent over Helen and Kassandra put her veil over her face.

"Are you going away, sister?" Helen asked. "I had hoped you would stay and eat the evening meal with us, since Paris will not remain in the women's quarters."

"No, I must go down to the market," Kassandra said. "Did you not hear? We lost all our serpents in the earthquake, and those who did not die forsook us, and have gone deep into the ground and will not return. Apollo's Temple cannot be without serpents; I must replace them."

"What a curious omen!" Creusa said. "What do you think it could mean?"

Reluctantly—she did not want to frighten them, nor anger Paris or her mother by repeating what they were so unwilling to hear - Kassandra said, "I think the Gods are angry with the city. This is not the first evil omen we have had."

Paris laughed. "It takes no evil omen to make snakes take to the deeps in an earthquake—it is simply the way of the serpent-kind. I have seen enough of them in the mountains. But I am sorry

for the loss of your pets." He patted Kassandra lightly on the arm. "Go you to the market, sister, and choose carefully—perhaps your new snakes will prove more faithful."

"May the Gods grant it," Kassandra said fervently, quickly leaving the room.

She decided to stop briefly and see Andromache before leaving the palace.

"Kassandra!" Andromache greeted her with delight. "I knew not that you were here. Were you summoned for the birth?"

"Yes," Kassandra replied, embracing her friend. "Helen has a son, and both are well."

"I heard the child was a boy," Andromache said. "Nurse told me when she came to get the children. But," she grinned wickedly, ""Helen" has a son—not Paris? For shame, Kassandra, to even imply such a thing!"

"For shame, Andromache, to put such a meaning into my words!" Kassandra retorted. "Who was your father? You know full well that I lived among the Amazons long enough to think of a child as its mother's - particularly when I have just seen him born. Now if Paris had been lying there in labour…'

The two women clung together laughing. "That I would like to see," said Andromache, "and would he not deserve it well!"

Kassandra sobered abruptly, shivering. Before her she saw an image of Paris, lying convulsed with pain, on the pallet in the hut he had shared with Oenone. Oenone bent over him, wiping his sweating forehead with a cloth, and a golden breastplate lay on the floor beside them.

"Kassandra!" Hands grabbed her shoulders, guided her to a stool, and forced her head between her knees. "I am a fool to keep you standing here when you've doubtless not eaten since daybreak! Keep your head down until the faintness passes, and I'll get you some food." Andromache went to the door and called to a serving woman, then poured out a goblet of the wine that stood on a table at the far side of the room.

"Drink this," she ordered, "and eat at least a piece of the dried fruit." She extended a plate, and Kassandra took a bunch of raisins, put one in her mouth, and forced her jaws to start chewing on it. "For once, the children didn't eat everything in sight."

"Sight." Kassandra sighed. "I wish I didn't have it."

"They're bringing up bread and meat from the kitchens," Andromache said. "That will help close it down. My mother - always used to eat hot red meat and all the bread she could hold after a major scrying. And surely priestesses wouldn't fast before ritual work if it didn't help the Sight."

"No doubt," Kassandra agreed. "And in its own way, childbirth is a ritual."

"Verytrue," Andromache said feelingly. "Did Helen have a hard time of it?"

Kassandra shook her head.

"It would be that way for her." Andromache made a face. "Oh well, I suppose that if Aphrodite is going to lead Helen to take lovers, the least she can do is give her the art of bearing children easily. And speaking of children… did I see Oenone and her son at the spring planting?"

"You did, and so did I," Kassandra replied. "She came to catch a glimpse of Paris. I fear she still loves him."

"Much good may it do her." Andromache said.

A servant entered with food from the kitchen. When she withdrew, Kassandra continued, "Oenone was my friend. I feel guilty that I cannot help loving Helen. And now Paris forgets even that he has a son by Oenone."

"I think that everyone loves Helen," Andromache said. "Priam himself is never gruff with her, and he is well versed in the wiles of women and not easily charmed. As for Paris—well, what do you expect? If you had the Goddess of Love for your bed, would you turn away to a waternymph—and how would the Goddess deal with you if you did?"

Kassandra shivered. "I do not like this Akhaian Goddess," she said. "May she never lay her

hands on me."

Andromache looked very serious. "I would not wish for that," she said. "I would be sorry to think you should never know what it is to love."

"What makes you think that I do not?" Kassandra asked curiously. "I love my brothers and my mother, my serpents, my God—"

Andromache smiled a little sadly.

"I am fortunate," she said. "My love is for the man I was given for my husband and I cannot imagine loving another; from what little talk I have had with Helen I understand it was so with her until the Goddess laid her hand on her; and then she could think of nothing but Paris."

"Surely then such love is a curse and not a gift," Kassandra said, "and I pray it may never befall me." z6o

Andromache embraced her gently and said, "Have a care what prayers you make, Kassandra. I wished to travel forth from Colchis, and to have a husband of great honor and renown. And that prayer brought me here away from my mother and my Gods, to a city at the far corners of the Earth; in these dark times." She caught up a little of the salt that lay at hand on the tray with the meat and cast it into the air with a whispered word Kassandra could not hear. Kassandra, cutting herself a small slice of the roasted meat and laying it on a piece of bread, raised her eyebrows in

question.

"I prayed for you," Andromache said,"that your prayers might, be answered only in the way you would have it."

Kassandra embraced her friend and said impulsively, "I do not know if the Gods ever honor such requests - but I am grateful to you."

When she had finished her evening meal with Andromache, and helped her put Astyanax to bed, she left the palace. She was strolling through the darkened stalls of the evening market when she remembered that she had intended to ask Andromache what it might mean when serpents deserted a temple. Then she recalled that Adromache would have nothing to do with serpents.

She resolved to ask all the priestesses she could find if they knew of a lore-mistress or master, a priest or priestess of Serpent Mother or of the Python, before she bought a single snake for the house of the Sunlord. Somewhere in this great city of Troy there must be someone versed in such wisdom.

CHAPTER 11

Since the raid at spring planting, Khryse had fallen into a deep depression; he neglected his

assigned duties in the temple, spending much of his time standing near the high rampart which looked down on the Akhaian camp below.

"Please go and tell him to come down," Charis said to Kassandra. "He likes you; perhaps you can persuade him that life is not over."

"It is not liking he has for me," Kassandra remonstrated, but she did feel compassion for the troubled man, and later that day she joined Khryse on the high place.

"The evening meal is prepared," she said, "and they await you."

"Thank you, Kassandra, but I am not hungry," he said. He had not bathed nor shaved since the raid; he looked unkempt and dirty, and smelled of strange herbs. "How can I eat and sleep in comfort when my child has been taken? I cannot bear to think of my poor little girl down among those savage soldiers."

"You cannot improve her lot by fasting and neglecting your person," Kassandra pointed out fastidiously. "Or is it that you think that seeing you in this condition will soften the hearts of the Akhaians?"

"No, but it might soften the heart of some God," he said, surprising her with the sincerity in his voice.

"Do you really believe that?"

"Perhaps not," he said, sighing so heavily that the sound seemed ripped from the very depths of his body. "But I have no heart for food or rest when she is there…'

"She has certainly not been given to the soldiers," Kassandra said. "She will be a cherished prize for one of the leaders, perhaps even for Agamemnon himself."

"Do you think that is any comfort to me?" He sounded dis-pairing; Kassandra would have tried to speak comfort but a surge of darkness rippled before her eyes and for a moment she did not know where she was or what she had been saying.

"Why did I guard her maidenhood so carefully all those years only to bring her here? I might as well have sold her to a brothel keeper!"

Now Kassandra was angry.

"No; you sold her to Apollo Sunlord, in return for a life of comfort for yourself. As for the girl, if maidenhood dwells not in the soul it is useless to guard the body. If you wish for Apollo's protection, or for revenge, I cannot advise you. I can say only that he is unlikely to intervene when you have made yourself worthless to us all. If you want his help—or his mercy - you must first serve him well; you cannot bargain with a God."

She stared over the rampart at the thick sea-fog obscuring the Akhaian ships below. It had come to where she hated to look on the sea because of that dark fringe of ships against the ocean's edge. Khryse turned on her with such fury that for a moment she thought he would strike her; then he restrained himself, visibly sinking back into his apathy.

"You are right," he said slowly. "I will go to the evening meal -but first I will go and bathe and restore myself to the proper appearance for a priest of the Sunlord."

She said softly, "This is wise, my brother," and saw something kindled in his eyes that she would rather not have seen; cursing herself for her momentary impulse of sympathy, she went on her way.

Early the next morning there was a sound at her door, and when she went to answer it, she found one of the youngest priests, who were used as messengers within the Sunlord's house.

"You are the daughter of Priam?" he asked respectfully. "You are wanted at once in the room at the gatehouse; a man there says he is your uncle and must have speech with you at once."

Kassandra wrapped herself in her cloak, wondering what - or who - it could possibly be. She did not know any of her father's brothers and certainly Hecuba had none. Too late she began to wonder if it was a trick of some sort, and when, within the room, she had a glimpse of three men in Argive cloaks, she started back, ready to call out for help.

"It is I, Kassandra," said a familiar voice, and the man pulled back the hood concealing his face.

"Odysseus!" she exclaimed.

"Not so loud, my girl; you will get us all killed!" he implored. "I must see your father—and as things are now, I could not land among these Akhaians and walk through them up toward the gates of Troy for a parley; they'd have lynched me. My ship lies hidden in a cove I discovered when I was among pirates; I stole in last night under the cover of the fog, and I must speak with Priam and see if there is still any honorable way to avert this war. I thought perhaps, here in this temple, some way could be contrived."

"But you cannot just go out at the front gate and down to the palace either," she said. "I am sure there are Akhaian eyes and ears in the market and even here in the Sunlord's house; pilgrims, spies in the guise of petitioners. You would be recognized at once. Let me see first if I can contrive something. For you, I am sure, my father will waive the vow he has sworn, to make no civil parley with any Argive. But who are your companions?"

"Take off your cloak, Akhilles," Odysseus said, and the young man at his side put back his hood. He was not particularly tall, but had the heavily muscled shoulders of a wrestler, his fair hair was still worn long about his shoulders - he was not yet old enough to be shorn in manhood's rites. The hair was cloudy fair, almost silvery; the face had strongly marked features, fierce, but it was the eyes to which Kassandra returned. The steely eyes of a bird of prey.

He said to Odysseus, "You promised to take me to this war, with my soldiers; you promised, and now you talk of avoiding it—as if there was anything honorable about the avoiding of war. That is girl's talk, not man's talk, and I have already heard too much of that!"

"Be quiet, Akhilles," said the other young man, who was taller, and slightly built, with the long smooth muscles of a runner or a gymnast. He was a few years older than Akhilles, about twenty. "There is more to war than honor or glory; and certainly whatever Odysseus can do is guided by the Gods. If you want war, there has never been any shortage of it in any man's life. We don't need to rush to destruction - but isn't it just like you, to go into war for the fun of it!" He smiled at Kassandra and said, "That's how this wily old pirate—" he smiled affectiontely at Odysseus, "got him to come here in the first place."

"How dare you saywily , Patroklos!" said Odysseus in an offended tone. "Hera, Mother of Wisdom, was my guide at every step. Let me tell you about it, Kassandra."

"With pleasure," she said, "but you must all be hungry and weary. Let me call for breakfast, and you can tell me while we eat."

She summoned servants and had bread brought, and olive oil and wine, and Odysseus told his tale.

"When Menelaus summoned us all to keep our vow to fight for Helen," he said, "I foresaw this war, and so did others; Thetis, priestess of Zeus Thunderer—"

"My mother," Akhilles interrupted under his breath.

"Thetis sought to know from prophecy what would befall her son, and the prophecy stated—"

"I am weary of prophecies and old wives' tales," Akhilles muttered. "They are moonshine. I love my mother, but she is no more than an idiot, like all women, when it comes to war."

"Akhilles, if you will stop interrupting me, we will have this tale done," said Odysseus, dipping his bread calmly into the oil. "Thetis, who is almost as wise as Earth Mother, read the omens and was told that if her precious son fought in this war he could be killed - which takes no more of sight than forecasting snow on Mount Ida in winter. Therefore she thought to help him escape his fate, dressed him in women's garments and concealed him among the many daughters of King Lycomedes of Scyros—"

"And a pretty maiden he must have been!" exclaimed Patroklos. "With those shoulders of his! I'd have liked to see that darling with his hair curled and done in ribbons—"

Akhilles gave his friend a great thump between the shoulder blades that sent him to his knees. He growled, "Well, you've had your laugh, my friend; mention it again and you can go laugh at it in Hades! Not even you can say that to me!"

"Don't quarrel, boys," Odysseus said with unusual mildness. "It's but a sorry joke that parts

sworn friends. Be that as it may, I too sought for omens and my Goddess told me that it was Akhilles's fate to join in this war; but I thought perhaps he had been made cowardly by his woman's rearing, so I gathered up many gifts for the daughters of the King, and I spilled them all out - dresses and silks and ribbons; but among them I concealed a sword and a shield, and while the other girls were squabbling over all the pretty things, Akhilles grabbed at the sword; and so of course I brought him away."

Kassandra laughed.

"Bravo, Odysseus," she said, "but your test was not entirely sure; I too have borne weapons - I rode with the Amazons - and if I had been among that king's daughters, I would have done exactly the same. One need not be a hero to be desperately weary of the gossip of women's quarters." z

Akhilles laughed with contempt.

"Penthesilea said once," she observed,"that only those who hate and fear war are wise enough to wage it."

"A woman," said Akhilles scornfully. "What would a woman know of war?"

"As much as you," Kassandra began, but Odysseus, looking very tired, interrupted.

"Will you help us, Kassandra?"

"Gladly," she said. "Let me go and warn my father to be ready to meet with you tonight."

"You are a good girl," said Odysseus, embracing her, and she flung her arms around the old man and kissed his leathery cheek. Then, a little surprised at her own boldness, she said, "Well, you said you were my uncle—they will be expecting it."

Patroklos said, chuckling, "I will be your uncle too, if you will kiss me like that, Kassandra."

Akhilles scowled and Kassandra blushed. She said, "Odysseus is an old friend; I have known him since I was a little girl. I do not kiss any man younger than my father."

Odysseus said, "Forget it, Patroklos; she is sworn a virgin of Apollo. I know you, when you see her brother Paris you will forget her; they are as alike as two birds on a bush."

"A man with her beauty? I would wish to see that," said Patroklos, and Akhilles said angrily, "Oh, isthat one Paris? The pretty coward?"

"Coward? Paris?" demanded Kassandra.

"I saw him on the wall yesterday when Odysseus landed me with my soldiers," he said, "before I slipped away at night to join Odysseus where the boat lay hidden. I said then: these Trojans are

cowards; they stand on the wall like women, and shoot with arrows so that they need not come within range of our swords."

All Kassandra could think of to say to this was, "The bow is the chosen weapon of Apollo."

"It is still the weapon of a coward," said Akhilles, and she thought:That is simply how he sees the world, all in terms of fighting and honor. Maybe, if he lived long enough, he might grow out of that. But men who see the world that way do not live long enough to learn better. It is almost a pity; but perhaps the world is better without such men .

Kassandra's visitors were waiting for her to speak; so she summoned a messenger, and suggested that they should remain hidden during the heat of the day; then under cover of night she would lead them to the palace and to Priam.

"This goes against me," Akhilles said,"slinking about in disguise. I am not afraid of all the Trojans ever whelped, or any of Priam's horde of sons and soldiers; I will fight them all the way down to the palace and back."

"You young fool," said Patroklos with affection, touching his shoulder. No one doubts your courage; but why waste yourself on that when you can await the great battle and challenge any or all of the leaders of Priam's armies? There is enough fighting ahead of you, Akhilles, and plenty of fighting to go round. Don't be so impatient."

He smiled and put his arm through his friend's.

Kassandra thought:Can this be the greatest of warriors, a child proud of his new toy sword and shiny armor ?

And does the survival of Troy and of our world depend on this mad child?

She closed the door and left them inside the room, admonishing them to stay hidden. The sun was high and Kassandra threw a shawl over her head before she went down the hill to the palace. Seldom had she deliberately sought the presence of her father, and she could count on the fingers of one hand the times she had been alone with him and not part of a family gathering.

Odysseus would not believe this, she thought,but I who am Priam's daughter find it harder to gain access to his presence than Odysseus himself would .

She finally went to an old steward who told her that her father was reviewing the weapons issued to the soldiers, since the Akhaians had not chosen to raid today.

"After that, "Princess, he will go to the bath with his older sons, and then he will probably drink wine in his rooms; I am certain, if you went to him then he would be willing to speak with you."

She spent the intervening hours in Creusa's room, playing with the baby. Creusa warned her of the hour the men usually returned, and she went along to her father's suite, half hoping ~ and half

dreading - to find her mother there. She would find it difficult to explain her errand to Hecuba, who would not believe it suitable for a woman to have any active voice in this war.Although if this city does fall to the Akhaians, she will suffer as much as any and more than most , she thought in despair.

Kassandra found her father alone in his suite with his armorer, who was showing him some new javelins, and he broke off to look at her with displeasure.

"What are you doing here, Kassandra? If you wanted to speak with me you should have told your mother and I would have seen you in the women's quarters."

She did not bother to protest.

"Be that as it may, Father, now that I am here, will you hear me? Would you speak with Odysseus if it would help to prevent this war?"

"To do that, I would speak with Agamemnon himself," said Priam. "But among the ships of the Akhaians, I have not seen that of Odysseus."

"No, it is hidden in a secret cove," Kassandra said, "and Odysseus is in the Temple of the Sunlord, and he wishes to speak with you tonight. May I bring him and Akhilles here tonight to the palace at the dinner hour?"

"What, Akhilles too? Do you have Agamemnon, and Menelaus hiding behind your skirt ready to swarm upon us in treachery?"

"No, Father; only Odysseus and Akhilles; because Odysseus is to present Akhilles to the Akhaian leaders tomorrow but he wished to parley with you first because of your old friendship."

"True; he has been a good friend over many years," Priam said thoughtfully. "Let him come, and Akhilles and his friend too - I have heard he never takes any step without his friend."

"I will tell them, Father," Kassandra promised, and quickly made her escape before Priam could ask more questions or change his mind. She did not bother to inform her mother or any of the palace women - there was always more than enough for a dozen extra mouths at the main meal, and the very thought of entertaining Akhilles would frighten the palace women.

She returned to the Sunlord's house quite weary and had only time to change into her finest robes and to put the lapis lazuli necklace Odysseus had given her about her neck, before she went to the room where she had left her guests. Patroklos smiled at her in a friendly way, but Akhilles was restlessly pacing the floor and Odysseus looked distressed and impatient.

"I told you, Akhilles. We cannot simply charge into Priam's house, we would not get past his guards. Even if we managed to force our way in we would not then be received courteously as ambassadors; and this is crucial to our mission. Trust Kassandra, she will make a way for us."

"I trust no woman," Akhilles said sullenly. "For all I know this may be a trap while she summons the Trojan guards to take us."

"I tell you she is well disposed to us, for here she is," Odysseus said. "How went your day, Kassandra?"

"Well enough." She did not elaborate. "My father will receive the three of you as guests at the dinner hour." And now, she thought, the problem was to get them from here to Priam's great hall without encountering the spies who might be in the city.

"You must all wear the cloaks of priests of Apollo Sunlord," she said. "None would think anything of it, or question why - or whether - Priam had summoned you."

A great cloak was brought for Odysseus; in it he looked wholly unlike himself. Akhilles grumbled a bit about wrapping himself in the disguise -"As if I were afraid of any Trojan from a simple priest to Hector's self!"

"Gods on high! Does the man think of nothing else?" Kassandra demanded.

Odysseus said, "Enough, Akhilles; when I brought you on this mission you swore on your sacred lineage to be guided by me in all things, and now I bid you disguise yourself. Keep that promise."

Grumbling, Akhilles wrapped the cloak around his body, and Patroklos pulled it up over his head.

"They would know you in a moment by your hair. Cover it, now," he urged, draping the third cloak round his shoulders and drawing it up to conceal his face. "But do the Sunlord's priests really go about covered like this in this weather, Lady Kassandra? They will think we have all fallen ill with toothache!"

She could not help laughing. "Who cares what they think? The priests do what seems right in their own eyes; they may think you arc about some intrigue, but they will ask no questions, and certainly they will not demand that we show our faces. And that is all that matters. Come this way; we will go out by a little-used door, the better to support the notion that three priests are on some errand they don't wish known."

Akhilles was still grumbling under his breath, but Kassandra paid no attention. Swiftly she led them downward, under cover of the deepening twilight; it was still early enough in the year that the light did not linger long.

Torches flamed on the lower steps of the palace, and the great hall was ablaze with light. Priam sat on his high seat at the high table; but he came down a few steps and welcomed the three men ceremoniously. Kassandra he ignored; she slipped into her usual seat next to Hecuba where she could see and hear well.

Her mother patted her hand.

"I did not know we were to have you here this night," she whispered. "Is that Akhilles? He is handsome for an Akhaian, but then my mother used to say that handsome is as handsome does. Is he as young as he looks, or is it only that he's cleanshaven and looks boyish?"

"I don't know, Mother; but I'd say he's just too young for manhood rites; sixteen perhaps, or seventeen at most."

"And this pretty boy is the greatest of their warriors?"

"So they say; I haven't seen him fight, but I'm told he is possessed by their War-God when he fights," Kassandra murmured.

Odysseus came to kiss Hecuba's hand in homage.

"And all your daughters more beautiful than ever," he remarked. "Is the beautiful Helen not at table this night?"

"She is still in bed after childbirth," Hecuba told him. "And she does not really like to dine with men."

"Ah, that is a loss to us all," Odysseus said. "But if she wishes to keep to her own people's

customs, I suppose it must be allowed to her. Had she a son then?"

"Oh, yes, the finest of boys, not big, but strong and healthy; a credit to any grandmother," Hecuba said, almost purring.

Odyssus smiled and said, "If I had known, I'd have had a present for the little one. But perhaps the business we do tonight, if it comes out as we wish, will be a better present to all our sons than any string of beads." He bowed and resumed his seat as the serving women began to pass the wine and trays of food.

Custom demanded that a guest's hunger must first be satisfied; only when the roasted kid and poultry from the spit and broiled fish, the great wheels of bread and the fruits with honey had been cleared away and the household and guests were toying with nuts and wine did Priam turn purposefully to Odysseus and say, "It is always my pleasure to have you a guest at my table, Odysseus, but tonight I understand you did not come here only to share my food. What other purpose brings you here, with your friends from the Argive country and the islands?"

Akhilles had eaten hungrily, but was restless; when he had finished he had risen and was walking aimlessly about the hall examining some ancient weapons hanging on the walls. He seemed especially intrigued by a great double-bladed axe with a handle twice the length of a tall man. He looked as if he was eager to take it down and try it.

"Is this a real axe which would be wielded in battle, or is it a remnant of the Titans, Lord

Priam?"

Kassandra had been told fanciful tales of Titan warfare when she was a child, in which such weapons had played a part; she had always wondered if they were true, but had never dared to ask. She supposed it would take an Akhilles to ask such a question of her father and get an answer.

"I do not know," he said. "For its size it might well be a relic of the warfare against the Titans, but I cannot say it is or is not." ,

"It is not a weapon, at least not for battle between mortals or even Titans," said Hecuba firmly. "It is a ritual object from the House of the Double Axe in the country of the Minoans, brought here after the great temple fell into the sea. There are such axes no longer than my little finger; but there are many of this size, and even, I was told, larger. No one now knows their true purpose, not even in Knossos; but once I was told that the priests used them for sacrifice, when a bull's head must be struck off at a single blow."

Akhilles looked calculatingly at the length of the great axe, as if trying to decide whether it could be hefted in that way; for the shaft was at least twice his own height.

"That temple must have had some rare big priests," he said, "if not Titans, then Cyclopeans. I do not think even your Hector could strike off the head of a sacrifice, man or bull, with such an axe."

Hector came down from his seat and joined Akhilles looking up at the weapon.

"I have always wanted to try and see if I could do just that," he said, "but when I was a youngster I was told it would be sacrilege to handle it. Now I am grown—and if there is a God to be offended, I know not who he is; I am tempted to try my strength at it." He glanced up at Priam for permission. "May we, Father?"

"I see no harm in it," the King said. "No God has forbidden it; if it is sacred to any God, he lies in his sunken temple a hundred fathoms below the ocean, and even if he should take offense, I doubt he could or would punish you now. Do what you wish."

Hecuba opened her mouth indignantly. "This is sacrilege; the blade is sacred to Earth Mother," she said, but not loud enough for Priam to hear, or Hector.

Hector dragged a bench over below the great axe; it took him three tries, even with his mightily muscled arms, to lift it off its hooks. He grasped it at the center of the long handle and sprang down from the bench, holding it with both hands and whirling it above his head in the open space.

Akhilles leaped forward, but Hector cried, "Get back! Clear the floor!" The blade revolved around his head faster and faster; he cried out, "Bring on your bull for sacrifice!" then slowly let it sink to the ground.

"My turn," Akhilles cried.

"Don't be foolish," Hector said sharply. "I am sure you are strong, boy, but you will rupture yourself or crack your sinews even trying to lift it; you are our guest and I wouldn't have you hurt."

"How dare you say "boy" to me in that tone, Trojan? I will make any wager you like that I am stronger than you, and whatever you can lift I can lift," Akhilles cried, grasping the axe-handle; but where Hector had had to lower it from above his head, Akhilles had to lift it up from the floor. Patroklos came and admonished him in a low voice, but Akhilles thrust him angrily away. His hands were large for his size; he clenched them round the handle and gripped hard, thrusting upward. He heaved, the veins standing out in his forehead; stopped, spit on his hands to get a better grip and heaved mightily upward again. Slowly the axe came up, till he held it balanced at arms' length over his head; then he began to spin it in the air, till it was making great sweeping circles, with a rushing sound. A cheer went up at the high table; all of Priam's sons joined in, and Hector generously led the applause.

"What God gifted you with such strength as that?" Hector asked, and without waiting for an answer he said, "I doubt it not you are stronger than I! I wish I might face you sometime in a peaceful wrestling bout; I would rather be your friend than your enemy, Akhaian."

Akhilles's lip curled in a snarling smile, but Odysseus interrupted and said, "It was for this I

brought these young men hither tonight, Priam. If Akhilles does not enter this combat, then you can still make peace with the Akhaians. So the oracles have said."

"I too would rather have you as friend than enemy," said Priam. "Must we fight, then, young man? I will make you an offer; you shall marry any one of my daughters you choose, and you shall be heir to this city on an equal footing with Hector; when I die, the people shall choose freely between you and Hector as King. Come, will you avoid this terrible war as my son and heir? For if you do not join them, the Akhaians will go home."

"Even Agamemnon? Even Menelaus?" asked Hecuba.

"Menelaus knows Helen does not want him," Paris said quietly. "He will yield to fate and to Aphrodite, knowing it is the will of the Goddess of Love."

"And Agamemnon has had evil omens," said Odysseus. "He will fight if the Gods will it, but at Aulis where his fleet lay becalmed, they persuaded him to offer his eldest daughter as a sacrifice for the winds. She was his favourite; he feels the price was too high and his wife has never forgiven him. I think he would be glad to withdraw from this war, if he could do so without loss of face. This prophecy about Akhilles would give him a perfect excuse, and we can have peace. And Akhilles will rule Troy with Hector rather than both of them being killed in battle."

Akhilles said angrily, "I do not fear being killed in battle; but perhaps there would be more renown to be won as King of Troy. As for your daughters, King Priam—" He broke off and

sought with his eyes for Kassandra, "What about that one?"

Kassandra opened her mouth to protest; but Priam said, "That one is not mine to give in marriage; she is sworn a virgin of Apollo and the Sunlord has claimed her; would you contend with Apollo?"

"By no means," said Akhilles with a pious shudder. He looked again at the bench where the women sat ranged, and walked toward them; he bowed to Andromache.

"This one surely is the most beautiful."

Hector broke in with a shout, "No, she is my wife and the mother of my son!"

Akhilles's mouth drew back in his peculiar lipless grin. "I will fight you for her," he offered.

Hector said, "By no means. She is the daughter of the Queen of Colchis."

"Come, come," said Odysseus uneasily. "This war began over one stolen wife; we can't carry it on with another one. Akhilles, choose one of Priam's virgin daughters, one who is free to marry. Polyxena, who is as beautiful as the Spartan Queen—"

"The offer was not a fair one," Akhilles said spitefully. "I chose not once but twice and was told I could not have either of the ones I wanted. Hector, why will you not fight me fairly for your

wife?"

-

Hector chuckled and said, "I will fight you for anything reasonable, whenever you say, but I will not put up my wife in any bargain whatever; she has not deserved that of me."

"So much for Priam's fine offers," said Akhilles with a snarl of rage. "Forget it, then; I shall fight you on the battlefield, and when I have taken the city, I will take your wife."

Hector stepped forward with a menacing gesture.

"Over my dead body!"

"Well, yes; that was the idea," Akhilles said. "And I am sure she would rather have me than you."

Andromache leaned forward and whispered to Hector, who smiled and gently patted her shoulder, saying, "Should that day come, Akhilles, I cannot prevent you. But that battle will be a long time in coming."

"It is ordained by the Gods," said Akhilles,"that if I join in this war, Troy will fall."

Priam said, "Then you refuse me, Akhilles?"

Akhilles snarled, "I do; I would rather be your enemy than your ally, old man, and I will take this city myself and rule it without your help, or Hector's - and with one, two or three of your daughters if I choose."

"My sister Kassandra is a prophetess," Hector said, "and I dare say she can make a better prophecy than any of yours." He turned to Kassandra and said, "Will this bantam rooster take the city, Sister, in Apollo's name?"

Kassandra felt a spiking anger at Hector for drawing all eyes to her this way. She said, "Thus say the Gods: Akhilles will win renown before Troy, but let him beware. Akhilles, when you leave Troy this night you will never enter it again, nor will you rule it."

Now all pretense of courtesy was gone from Akhilles's snarling face.

"Oh, we have prophetesses too," he growled. "For the smallest coin they will give you a dozen prophecies, doom or triumph, whichever you choose; my own mother is as good a prophetess as any, and I'll listen to her prophecy before any Trojan woman of Apollo." He dragged his sword from his sheath and cried, "Here and now, if you wish, Hector, I'll have you off the throne of Troy; why waste time with the war?"

Patroklos grabbed his arms and struggled to pin them behind his back. "Your host is sacred!" he

reproached.

And Hector strode forward, saying, "I would fight him here - and now if he wished it; but he is my father's guest."

Priam growled, "Take him out of here, Odysseus; I received him at your request."

Odysseus came to embrace Priam and said, "Forgive me, old friend, that I brought this wild man into your hall. I regret this with all my heart."

Hecuba said graciously, "You did your best for all of us, Odysseus. War or no war, you are always welcome here as our guest. I trust the day will come when you may come here again— and not in secret."

He bent again and lifted her hand to his lips.

"Lady Hecuba," he said, "may the Lady Hera bear witness I wish you nothing but good; and if ever a day should come when I may do you a good turn, I pray her She will show me how to do it."

"The Gods grant it may be so," said Hecuba, smiling kindly at him. Kassandra felt a tremor; she wanted to cry out to her mother, but the moment passed. Odysseus drew on his cloak; Akhilles and Patroklos were already striding from the hall, Hector glaring at them both. Kassandra stood

shuddering, for it seemed that the torchlight had become the colour of blood, and blood surrounded Akhilles's fair hair like a halo.

Priam beckoned Kassandra as the Akhaians passed from the hall.

"I received these guests," he said in a tone of angry reproof, "because you asked me. You are not now an Amazon; never again presume to speak to me on such matters."

Kassandra bowed her head. It seemed to her that the smell of blood and carrion flowed out from her father and that he and she stood ankle deep in blood. How was it that he neither saw nor smelled the blood? Besides he had bidden her never speak again to him about the war.

Never. Not while I live. Or after.

CHAPTER 12

For a few days after, Kassandra watched, from the heights of the temple, the arrival of Akhilles's soldiers; they were nicknamed 'Myrmidons'—ants - and from this height they seemed indeed as numerous and ugly as insects swarming over the beach. So far, however, they made no attempt to move on the city, but marched back and forth over the plain, running, drilling and performing military exercises. Akhilles was clearly visible among them, outstanding not only for his brightly

dyed cloak, but for his shining silver gilt hair and the straight posture of his body.

A few days later, she went down to visit her mother; she was troubled by the deepening lines of age on Hecuba's face. As she approached the Queen's quarters, she was shocked by the sounds of strife, she could not make out the words, only the sound of women's voices raised in anger. As she came into the main room near the great loom, she heard the sound of a ringing slap, and a muffled cry, then Hecuba's voice, crying out, "Never!"

"Then," said a young voice, "I shall go without your leave, Lady, or your blessing either."

The voices of women fell silent as they recognized Kassandra and drew back to give her room. It seemed that all the women in the palace were crowded there, surrounding Hecuba, who was wearing an old gown, her hair falling down from its usual coil in grey straggly locks, and one of her sewing women, a girl Kassandra did not know by name though she had often admired her expert work.

"Here is the princess! She is a priestess, she will know what to say to her."

Kassandra came into the circle of women, who were suddenly quiet except for a murmur or two.

"What's wrong, Mother?" she asked. "What's happening?"

The young woman, her cheek reddened from the blow, spoke up proudly. She was slender and

pretty, with soft brown hair which she had been interrupted in the middle of dressing, so it hung half curled almost to her waist, her big dark eyes shaded by long lashes.

"The God has spoken to me," she said, "and I have chosen my lord."

"This foolish girl," Hercuba said,"this stupid child, has taken it into her head - oh, I am almost ashamed to tell you! That any woman could so degrade, so demean herself - she is no servant or slave but well-born; she is one of my best embroiderers and I have treated her as my own daughter here in the palace. She has wanted for nothing—"

"Well, tell me, what has she done?" asked Kassandra. "Has she opened the gates for the Greeks to invade the city?"

"No, it has not come to that yet," Hecuba admitted.

"She's mad," Creusa said. "At the feast a few days ago she set eyes on Akhilles, and since then she's talked of nothing else; how strong he is, how skilled at arms, how beautiful - if a man can be beautiful - and now something has put it into her head to go down and offer herself—"

"To the Akhaians?" Kassandra asked in consternation.

"No," said the girl softly, her eyes glowing,"to my lord Akhilles."

"Not even King Priam would send you to him as a slave," Kassandra said.

"It could never be slavery, because I love him," the girl said. "Since first I laid eyes on him I have known there could never be any other man for me in this world."

"My mother is right; you have lost your wits," Kassandra said. "Don't you realize what an animal he is, what a brute? He thinks of nothing but war, takes pleasure in nothing but killing; certainly there is no room in his life for any woman, nor the love of a woman; if he loves any, it is his comrade-in-arms, Patroklos."

"You are wrong," said the woman, "he will loveme."

"And if he did, it would be the worse for you," Kassandra said. "I tell you, the man is deranged, mind-sick with the lust for death."

"No, I saw how he looked at me," said the young woman. "How can you say such a thing? The handsomest man the Gods ever made; such beauty must be good, too. Those eyes—"

With a shudder Kassandra remembered the woman in the Kentaurs' village, her ankles pierced with a rope; defending her mutilation as an act of love. It was quite hopeless to talk to any woman in this state.

Yet she must try, if only because they were both women and therefore sisters.

"You - what is your name?" she began.

"Briseis," said Hecuba. "She is a Thracian—"

"Briseis, listen to me," said Kassandra. "Can't you even see how you are deceiving yourself? This is some mad fancy put into your head by a demon, not by a God. You have invented a man from your own dreams, and called it by the name of Akhilles. Do you really believe that if you leave us and go down among the Akhaians you will mean any more to him than any harlot or slave?"

"I could not possibly love him so much without kindling some love in return," said Briseis.

Creusa came and shook her.

"Listento us, you mad thing! This kind of love is a silly girl's fantasy! If you are simply hungry for a man, I will speak to my father and he will arrange a marriage for you; there are soldiers and chiefs here from all over the world, and your father is a reputable man in his own country; my father will find you a worthwhile husband."

"But I don't want a worthwhile husband," said Briseis, "I only want Akhilles; I love him. You are jealous because love has not come to you this way. If it had you would know I can do nothing else - there is nothing else in the world for me but Akhilles; I cannot eat or sleep for

thinking of him - of his eyes, his hands, his voice—" The very sound of her voice as she spoke the name convinced Kassandra that they might as well be speaking to the wind blowing.

"Let her alone," she said hopelessly. "This is a fever like that of Paris for Helen, a curse of their Goddess of Love. She'll come to her senses soon enough once she's had him, but then it will be too late," she said.

"If only I can have him, I don't care what happens to me afterward," Briseis said, and Hecuba brushed the tears from her eyes.

"Poor child," she said, "I cannot prevent you. Go, if you will, and take the consequences of your folly. I will send to Priam, and you shall be carried down in a litter, with a message that you are a gift for Akhilles; and if he deigns to accept you, and does not throw you to the common soldiers to show his contempt for our gifts

For an instant the girl blanched, but then she said, "When he sees how much I love him, he must love me in return."

And if he should, you will be worse off than before, Kassandra thought, but she did not say the words aloud. She watched them making Briseis ready; Hecuba even hung her neck with a golden necklace. When she was ready Kassandra almost envied her—she looked so joyous.

Women dream of this kind of love. And then comes the rope piercing the ankles, the slavery, the

degradation.

I should be in her place; Akhilles asked for me, and he would certainly receive me as befits my rank. And then while he slept, a dagger for the throat, and perhaps an end to this war… the great Akhilles, conquered by no hero but by a woman, by his own passion where all the warriors of Troy could not bring about his doom.

Is that woman meetingmyfate , mydestiny ?

No; the Gods may sometimes give us what belongs to another, as Paris has the wife of Menelaus, but another's destiny none may live…

I trust this is so, I believe it; for if it is not true I will never know how to bear my guilt.

A few days later Kassandra descended again to Priam's palace, and found Helen in the courtyard, looking down at the Akhaian camp. Her son was running about now, and Kassandra, counting in her mind, realized that Helen had now been with them for the better part of two years. It was hard to remember the women's quarters without her, or that there had been a time when there was not war.

Three years ago I was riding with the Amazons, she thought, and wished she were back on the plains, free of city or palace walls.

Would I leave the House of the Sunlord?

He has forgotten me; he no longer speaks to me, Kassandra thought;I am no other than any woman; but it is a God I love, not a man… I suppose it is better to love a God than a man like Paris, or Akhilles …

She thought of Briseis, and sought out the tent of Akhilles below; she could see standing near it the brightly coloured hangings of the litter in which Hecuba had sent the girl down. And now, she could make out the straight slender body of the warrior standing near the doorway of the tent; and nearby the smaller, rounder, brightly clad form of a woman.Briseis ? So at least he had not scorned the gift, nor thrown her to the common soldiers. Kassandra wondered if she was happy and content.

"At least she has what she most wished for," said Helen, walking towards Kassandra and gesturing down at the girl, wrapped in her saffron-dyed veils. "So there is at least one woman in Troy who has what she most desired."

"Other than you, Helen?"

"I don't know," said Helen. "I love Paris… at least under the blessing of the Lady of Love, I loved him, but when she is not with me… I don't know."

Soshe too loves only at the will of a God… why is it that the Gods intrude into our lives?

Haven't they enough to do in their own divine realms, that they must come meddling with the lives of mortal men and women ? But she only asked, "Do you think there will be a raid today?"

"I hope so; the men are getting bored cooped up inside the walls," Helen said. "If the Akhaians do not raid us in a day or two, our men will go out and raid the Akhaians, just for something to occupy their time. Why, Kassandra, what's the matter with you? You've turned pale."

"It occurred to me," Kassandra said, speaking with difficulty,"that if this war goes on for long, no son of Troy will survive to be a warrior."

"Well, I would as soon that my son were something other than a warrior," said Helen. "Like Odysseus, perhaps, to live peacefully in his home country and be a wise judge of his people… If you had a son, Kassandra, what would you want for him?"

That she had never considered. "Anything," she said. "Whatever made him a happy man. A warrior, a king, a priest, a farmer or shepherd… anything, except for a slave to the Akhaians."

Helen turned to her child and held out her arms; he came running up to her. She said reflectively, "Before this one was born, I still had it in my power - and often I thought of it - to stop this war. To steal quietly down to the camp and to Menelaus; I think then he would have agreed to go home, and when there was nothing more to fight for - or at least no further excuse to fight - the Akhaians would have had to turn round and go back to our own islands. But now…' she shivered a little, "he would not take me back; not with another man's son at my breast—"

Kassandra said quietly, "Leave him here, then, in Troy; his father will care for him, and so will I, Helen, if that is what you truly want." After she said it, she realized that Helen was almost the only person in Troy to whom she could talk these days; her mother no longer understood her, nor her sisters. She would miss Helen, if she should return to the country of Sparta.

Helen frowned. She said, "Why should I give up my own child, because Menelaus is a fool?" After a moment she added, "To tell the truth, Kassandra - unless you are under the spell of Aphrodite, there is not much difference between one man and another; but children are not so easily set aside. I am not responsible for this war; and I think Agamemnon would have made war sooner or later, whatever I did or did not do." She sighed and let her head rest against Kassandra's shoulder. "My sister, I am not as brave as I think I am; I could summon the courage to return to Menelaus, even to leave Paris; but I cannot bring myself to leave my child." She picked up the toddler leaning against her knee, and pressed him to her heart.

"To leave your child? And why should you, after all?" asked Andromache, coming to the wall with Creusa just in time to hear her last words. "No woman could bring herself to leave a child she has borne… or if she could, she would be no better than a whore."

"I am glad to hear you say so," said Helen. "I was trying to tell myself that it was my duty to return to Menelaus—"

"Don't even think of such a thing," said Andromache, hugging Helen. "You belong to us now,

and we would not let you go for every Akhaian down there; even if Paris and Priam and all the men wanted you to go - and they do not. The Gods have sent you to us and we will keep you won't we, Creusa?" she added to the other woman, who nodded and laughed.

"The Goddess has blessed you, and we will not let you go."

Helen smiled faintly." That is good to hear. All my life men have been kind to me, but women never; it is good to have friends among you."

"You are too beautiful for women to love you much," said Andromache, "but you have been here for two years now; and unlike many beautiful women, you make no attempt to seduce our husbands."

"Why should I do that? I already have one more husband than I need; what should I want with yours?" Helen asked laughing. "I have no great love for Troy, indeed, and would willingly see more of the world; but women cannot travel…'

Whenever Kassandra heard anyone say such a thing asWomen cannot … she was always eager to do just that very thing. She said, "But I am about to travel at the will of my God; and if you wanted to come with me, Helen, I would willingly have your company."

"And I yours; but again, I cannot leave so young a child," Helen said. ""Where do you go and why?"

"To Colchis; to seek Queen Imandra and ask of her serpent-lore," Kassandra said. "A moon past, our serpents died or fled from us; I do not want to replace them until I am sure that nothing I did or failed to do was responsible…'

She told the story, and Andromache looked wistful.

"Bear my greetings to my mother; and tell her I am happily wed and that I have Hector's son."

"Why not come and bring her your own greetings? Your son is old enough to leave with Hecuba and his father."

"I wish I could," Andromache said. "If you had told me this a month ago - but I am pregnant again. Perhaps this time it will be a daughter who can be a warrior for Troy."

"A warrior?"

"Why not? You are, Kassandra, and your mother before you."

"Did you not hear what Paris said, when last I would have borne my bow to the walls?" Kassandra asked in disgust. "I could shoot now—and kill Akhilles - and end this war without sending Helen forth from us. But this would not please the men; they do not want to end this war—"

"No," said Andromache,"they want to win it; Hector has reserved Akhilles for himself and will never agree to any other way to end the fighting. Can you tell me when this will happen and how much longer must we fight?"

Kassandra smiled wryly. "Hector has forbidden me to prophesy doom," she said, "and believe me, I have nothing else to tell."

"Perhaps it is as well you are travelling to Colchis," Helen said. "Kassandra, my friend, the Gods have spoken to me as well as to you, and they have spoken to me nothing of disaster."

"Then may your Gods speak truth and mine be false," Kassandra said. "Nothing would please me more than to return and find Akhilles dead at Hector's hand, and all of them gone away again."

But it will not, it cannot be so…

CHAPTER 13

Kassandra had believed that once she made the decision to travel to Colchis it would be a simple matter of getting leave of the chief priest and priestess, gathering together the clothing she

wished to take with her, choosing a travelling companion (or perhaps two) and setting forth.

But it was not nearly so easy as that. She was reminded that there was officially a state of war between the Akhaians and Troy, so that it must be arranged (by lengthy messages sent back and forth from one Temple of Apollo to the next) that she should travel under the Peace of Apollo, being a woman and a sworn priestess and having nothing to do with the war on either side; and she was given to understand that this was more difficult because she was Priam's daughter and closely related to the main combatants of the war. Long before the official safe-conducts and permissions could be arranged Kassandra was heartily sick of the whole idea and wished she had never thought of it. In the end she swore a sacred oath by every God she had ever heard of (and some she hadn't) that she would deliver no messages relating to the war from either party, and she was declared an official messenger of Apollo and permitted to travel wherever she wished.

Khryse wished to travel with her, and she had some sympathy for him; he was still mourning the fate of his daughter in the Greek camp, and knowing that Agamemnon had chosen the girl for his own mistress did not help. However, though he swore to her that he would respect her virginity as if she were his own child, she did not trust even his oath, and refused to have him in her party. Since he was a highly respected priest of Apollo, it seemed for a time that they would not allow her to travel without his escort; but she finally appealed to Charis, saying she would remain within walls till her hair turned grey rather than travel a single step in his company; and at last the matter was dropped.

Then Priam wished to send messages to many friends along her path, and she had to swear that

they were family matters, or religious matters with nothing to do with the war; she could see reason in this because often travellers under religious immunities had taken advantage of this for spying on one side or the other. And finally her mother refused to allow her to travel without adequate chaperonage, so that in the end Kassandra, who would have preferred to travel alone or with a single companion, preferably an Amazon rider like Penthesilea, had to accept two of her mother's oldest and most timid waiting-women, and to promise that on the road she would always share her bed with one or the other of them.

"What can she be thinking of?" she asked herself, "If I wished to indulge myself in lechery, I would certainly not wish to travel to the ends of the world and do so on the hard ground after a day's riding when I could just as easily do so in my own bed."

But she knew it was her mother's way, and there was really nothing she could do about it; and so she accepted Hecuba's choice of women.

"For if I refuse," she said to Phyllida when at last it finally seemed that all the obstacles had been cleared and she would set forth the next day,"she will believe that I wish somehow to escape her supervision; and she cannot think of any reason I might wish to do so unless I wish to misbehave myself in one way or the other. What is it in women that makes them suspect such things of one another, Phyllida?"

Phyllida sighed. "Experience, I suspect," she said. "Did you not tell me that you had Chryseis watched night and day and still could not vouch for her innocence?"

Kassandra knew that was true; but it made her angry. She remembered Star saying that city women were so lecherous that they must be locked up behind walls.

Women, Kassandra thought -except the Amazons - spend their time sitting about and thinking about whom they love, only because they have nothing else to occupy their minds. If they had a flock of sheep or a herd of horses to tend they would be better off . But that had not saved Oenone from pining, she realized, when Paris deserted her.

She lay awake much of that last night thinking about this mysterious emotion which transformed otherwise sensible women into halfwits capable of thinking only of the men who had inspired them to love.

It had been determined that she should depart at daybreak; she rose as soon as light began to appear in the sky, and breakfasted on a little bread and a cup of watered wine. She had hoped to ride on a swift horse, but her companions were too old and staid for that, so she had chosen a sedate elderly donkey and to have the older women carried in chairs. Her chair-bearers and attendants—almost guards—were strong young servants of Apollo's Temple.

She had expected to slip quietly away; but as she approached the gates she saw a little group of people gathered there; Khryse, Phyllida, and a few others who wished to bid her goodbye.

Phyllida embraced and kissed her and wished her a pleasant journey and a safe return; Khryse

came and embraced her too, • rather against Kassandra's will.

"Come back to us soon and safely, my dear," he murmured with his lips close to her ear. "I shall miss you more than I can say. Say that you will miss me too."

She thought,I shall miss you as I would miss a toothache , but was too courteous to say so. "May the Gods keep you safe and bring Chryseis back to you," she said, thinking that she did not wish him ill, but she would like it if he would find himself a wife and stop troubling her. Then she clucked to her donkey and they rode forth.

Before leaving the coast they had to pass the Greek ships; here would Apollo's truce first be tested.

A watchman outside the Akhaian camp roused and called out; and one of the captains, lavishly armored with metal trimmed with gilt, came toward them.

"Who passes? Is the Trojan King trying to escape the city and the siege?" he taunted. "I knew they were cowards."

"No such thing," said the guards. "The lady is a priestess of Apollo and travels under his pledge of peace."

"Indeed?" the captain said, and looked into Kassandra's face so directly and rudely that for the

first time in her life Kassandra could see the sense of the custom bidding the Akhaian women wear veils. "A priestess, hey? Of the Lady Aphrodite? She is beautiful enough for that."

"No; she is one of the Sunlord's sworn virgins," said the leader of her guard, "and she is forbidden to any man save the God."

"A virgin, eh? What a waste," the man said regretfully, "but it would take a braver man than I to argue with Lord Apollo for one of his maidens. And what beauties hide inside the chairs?" he demanded, pulling back the draperies.

Kassandra was tired of hiding behind her guard. "Two of my mother's waiting-women," she said. "To care for me and see that no man offers me any offense."

"Quite safe from me, and I dare say from any man," said the soldier, drawing back respectfully.

"I'm sorry my ladies don't meet your approval," Kassandra said, "but they are for my convenience, not yours, sir; and I am on Apollo's business, not yours, so I beg you let me pass."

"Where are you going? And what business has the Sunlord outside his temple?"

"I am going to Colchis," she said. "And indeed I travel on the God's business; I seek a mistress of serpent-lore so that his serpents may be properly cared for in his temple."

"A little lady like you going so far alone? If you were my daughter, I wouldn't have it; but I suppose the God knows that what belongs to him is safe anywhere," said the soldier. "Pass, then, Lady, and may Apollo guard you. Give me his blessing, I beg you," he added with a reverential gesture.

That was the last thing she had expected, but she extended her hands in a gesture of blessing and said, "Apollo Sunlord bless and guard you, sir," and rode past.

She could see so far from the top of the walls of Troy that she had forgotten how long it took to travel; they camped that night and several nights thereafter within sight of the city and woke seeing the flash of sunlight on the house of the Sunlord. She remembered her trip with the Amazons; she could hardly believe that from that hour to this, she had dwelled behind the imprisoning walls of her city. Troy, her home, and her prison. Would she ever see it again?

In the long interval between proposing the trip and finally managing to leave she had had ample time for preparations and she had had two tents made: a lightweight one of oiled linen cloth, and one of leather such as the Amazons had used in rainy weather. For the first days the weather was fine and the tent under the stars was pleasantly cool at night, although her two chaperones, interpreting her mother's instructions literally, made her sleep with her blankets spread between the two of them. Kassandra, always a restless sleeper, lay awake sometimes for hours, feeling every rock and lump of ground under the tent's floorcloth dig into her hips, hating to change position for fear of disturbing one or the other of her companions. Nevertheless, she could hear the wind and feel the cool breeze outside the tent, and at least it was different from the

unchanging wind at the heights of Troy.

Day after day, their little caravan toiled without incident slowly across the great plains. They met few travellers on the road, except for one great train of wagons bringing iron bound for Troy, and when they heard that the city was under siege, they wondered if they should turn about and go northward into Thrace or even back toward Colchis.

"For the Akhaians will not trade with us for metal," said the leader. "They prefer their own kind of weapons, and most likely they will not let us pass into the city at all; then we will have to go back with only the journey for our pains; or else the Akhaians will seize our whole caravan."

Kassandra thought this was very likely indeed.

"Do you know any of the Akhaians who are there?"

"Akhilles, son of Peleus; Agamemnon, King of Mykenae, and Menelaus of Sparta; Odysseus—"

"Now that's different," said the caravan leader. "We can trade with Odysseus, same as we would with Priam; he's an honest man and an honest trader." He raised his voice to his drivers, "Looks like we'll be going to Troy after all, fellows." And then of course he wanted to know what she was doing, travelling alone and when she answered he gave the now expected reply that if she was his daughter he wouldn't permit it.

"But I suppose your father knows what he's about," he concluded, doubtfully. And Kassandra saw no point in explaining that Priam had not been asked for his permission and had been given no chance to consent or refuse.

"Can I carry any messages for you to Troy, little lady?"

"Only to let it be known in the Sunlord's house that I am alive and well. They will pass the message along to my mother and father." And with mutual expressions of goodwill and blessings they parted, moving slowly apart across the great plain like two streams in opposite directions. After a few more nights, she knew, her party would arrive within the borders of the country of the Kentaurs.

"The Kentaurs?" said Adrea, one of her chaperones.

"Oh, not the Kentaurs!" cried Kara, the other.

"Why, yes, Nurse, they live in this country and we must pass through their territories. It is almost inevitable that we shall meet one or more of their wandering bands."

But the women had been brought up on the old nursery tales.

"Are you not afraid of the Kentaurs, mistress Kassandra?" asked Kara, and Kassandra replied, "No, not at all."

She supposed that was an unwomanly answer; Kara looked as if the very fact that any woman might escape the fear of what frightened her so much actually gave offense. Kassandra sighed, and finished the wine in her cup. "We must drink this up; it is beginning to turn sour and will not keep in the heat. We can get some more at the next village, in a day or perhaps two," and the rest of the talk was of simpler things.

CHAPTER 14

True to her prediction, they saw the Kentaurs early in the next day. At first, riding the sea of endless grass, Kassandra could see nothing; then very far away, at the edge of her vision, she could-see movement and shadows, and at last made out a small form… no, two… no, three, riding, dark against the golden waving of the grasses. They seemed to see her little caravan advancing, then drew together, conferring; at one point she thought they would all flee, then they wheeled and came riding toward the Trojans.

Kassandra stopped her donkey but made no other move of withdrawal; she knew from old that one should never let a Kentaur believe you feared him or he would take ruthless advantage of it.

She said softly through the curtains of the litter where the ladies rode, "Nurses, you wanted to see a Kentaur. There is one."

"I?" said Adrea. "Not likely." But nevertheless she thrust her head out and peered between the curtains. Kara followed suit.

"What funny ugly little men they are," she whispered, "and shameless; he is naked as an animal."

"Why should they wear clothing when there is no one to see or care? When they come into cities, they have garments they can wear if they choose," Kassandra said, and looked at the approaching band. The foremost among them was grey-haired and gnarled, his legs even smaller and more bowed than the others. He wore a necklace of lions' teeth about his throat; Kassandra recognized him, shrunken and old as he was.

"Cheiron," she said, and he bowed from his horse's neck.

"Kinswoman of Penthesilea; greeting. When last we met we had honey found in the wild. Our tribe is poor, these days. Many, many travellers on the plain; scare away the game, trample down wild plants. Our she-goats give no milk even for the littlest boys. We hunger much."

"We are travelling to Colchis; can you guide us through these lands?" Kassandra said.

"With pleasure, if it is your wish," the old Kentaur said in his barbarous accent. "But how come ye to be ridingaway from Troy? The whole world's going there for this war, it seems. If not to

fight, then to sell something to the fighters, one side or the other."

This was so true there seemed no purpose in commenting on it.

She had before leaving Troy asked the kitchens for a good half-dozen loaves of bread, knowing that the Kentaurs neither grew nor ground grain and that it was a most unusual luxury for them. When it was unwrapped and given the little man's eyes gleamed - Kassandra thought it was with real hunger - and he said, "Priam's daughter is generous. Does her husband fight in the great battles before Troy? If he does I will gift him with magical arrows which will never fail to bring down her enemies even if they do not strike in a vital part."

"I have no husband," she said. "I am sworn to the Sunlord and will have none but him. And I need none of your arrows, envenomed with poison brewed from toads."

For a moment the little man looked at her and glowered; then he leaned back and broke into a great guffaw of laughter, and did something, Kassandra could not see what, that made his horse rear up and prance, and then bow down.

"Huh-huh-huh," he chortled, "Priam's daughter is clever and good; no man of all my people will harm her as she passes through my country, or anything belonging to her. Not even the old women who peer at my men lustfully from behind their curtains! But if you have no use for the old toads, give them to my men; they are no good for bang-bang—" he accompanied the meaningless syllable with a gesture which made his meaning obscenely clear, "but we could boil

them for arrow poison, huh-huh-huh?"

Kassandra struggled to keep her face straight.

"By no means; I do not want to travel without my women; they are good to me," she said, "and I would not travel through your country with young and pretty ones."

"Huh; clever," he said, wheeled his horse and rode quickly away.

She held up her hand to signal that she had not finished her parley and he wheeled and returned a little way. She asked, "Does the wise leader of the Horsepeople know where Penthesilea's women pasture her mares this summer?"

He gestured and gabbled out a quick explanation. Since it would not mean going too far out of their way, Kassandra decided she would ride in that direction. Again she took leave courteously of Cheiron, who had begun sharing out the loaves with his men and already had crumbs around his mouth.

After another long day of riding in the direction the Kentaur had indicated, Kassandra saw in the distance a mounted figure.-The stranger carried a bow, such as Penthesilea's women bore, slung across her back. Kassandra signalled to her and the woman approached.

"Who rides in our country with an escort of men?"

"I am Kassandra, daughter of Priam of Troy, and I seek my kinswoman, Penthesilea the Amazon," she said.

The woman, clad in the leather tunic and breeches of the tribeswomen, her long coarse black hair knotted atop her head, looked at her suspiciously; and finally said, "I remember you as a child, princess. I cannot leave my mares," she gestured at the scattered scrawny herd grazing across the spare grasses of the plain, "and it is not my place to summon the Queen, but I will send a signal that she is wanted, and if it seems good to her she will come."

She dismounted and kindled a small fire, throwing something into the flames which emitted great clouds of smoke, covered it, then let the smoke billow up in successive triple puffs. After some time Kassandra saw a tall figure on horseback, making its way across the plain. When the figure neared, she recognized her kinswoman.

Penthesilea's horse approached and she could see the puzzled look on the Amazon's face; after a moment Kassandra realized that her kinswoman had not recognized her. When Penthesilea had last seen her she had been a little girl, and now, older, robed and attired as a princess, a priestess, she was only a strange woman.

She called out her name. "Don't you know me, Aunt?"

"Kassandra!" Penthesilea's taut sun-browned face relaxed, but she still looked tense and old. She

came and dismounted, and embraced Kassandra with affection. Why do you come here, child?"

"Looking for you, Aunt." When she had last seen her kinswoman, Penthesilea had seemed youthful and strong; now Kassandra wondered how old she really was. Her face was lined, with hundreds of small wrinkles around mouth and eyes; she had always been thin but was now positively scrawny. Kassandra wondered if the Amazons, like the Kentaurs, were actually starving.

"How goes the war in Troy?" the older woman asked. "Will you shelter with us this night and tell us about it?"

"With pleasure," Kassandra said, "and we can talk at leisure about this war; though I am weary of it." She gave directions to the bearers to follow the Amazon, and herself rode at Penthesilea's side, toward a cave in a hillside; inside there were a scant half-dozen women, mostly elderly, and a few young girls. When last she had travelled with them there had been a good half a hundred. Now there were no babies, and no young women of childbearing age.

Penthesilea saw the direction of her glance and said, "Elaria and five others are in the men's village. I was afraid, but I knew I must let them go now or I would never dare to let them go again - that's right, you didn't know what happened, did you? Then our shame has not yet been told in Troy—"

"I have heard nothing, Aunt."

"Come and sit down. We'll talk as we eat, then." She smiled and sniffed appreciatively. "We have not eaten this well for many moons. Thank you."

Their meal had been supplemented with dried meat and bread from Kassandra's provisions. Penthesilea said, "All the same, we are not as badly off as the Kentaurs; they are starving, and soon there will be no more. Did you even meet with any of them?"

Kassandra told about her encounter with Cheiron, and the older woman nodded.

"Yes, we can always trust him and his men. In the name of the Goddess I wish—" she broke off. "Last year we arranged to go to one of the men's villages—we made an arrangement for trading metal pots, and horses and some of our milk goats, too. Well, we went as usual and it seemed that all was well. Two moons went by; some of us were pregnant, and we were ready to go. They besought us to stay another month; and we agreed. Then when we were ready to set out, they made us a farewell feast and brought us a new wine. We slept deeply and when we woke - it had been drugged, of course—we were bound and gagged, and they told us that we could not leave them; that they had decided they wished to live like men in cities, with women to tend them year round, and share their beds and their lives—" she broke off, shaking with indignation and grief. "Every animal has a proper mating season," she said. "We tried to remind them of this but they would not hear. So we told them that we would consider it if they would let us go; and they said we should cook them a meal because men in cities had women to cook for them… They even forced some of the women who were already pregnant to bed with them! So we cooked them a

meal; and you-can imagine what kind of a meal it was," she grinned fiercely. "But some women wished to spare the fathers of their children -Earth Mother alone knows where they got such ideas. And so some of them had been warned, and when they were all spewing and purging, we made ready to ride; but a few of them forced us to fight. Well, we could not kill them all; and so we lost many of our number - the traitorous ones stayed and did not return to us…"

"They stayed with the men who - who had done this to you?"

"Aye; they said they were weary of fighting and herding," Penthesilea said scornfully. "They will bed with men in return for their bread, no better than harlots in your cities—it is a perversion of those Akhaians; they say, even, that our Earth Mother is no more than the wife of the Thunderlord Zeus—"

"Blasphemy!" Kassandra agreed. "This was not Cheiron's tribe?"

"No, them we can trust; they cling, like us, to the old ways," Penthesilea said. "But when this year Elaria led the women to the men's village we made them swear an oath even they dare not break, and we made them leave with us all the weaned children. We hide here in caves because with our strong young women away we have no warriors to guard our herds…'

Kassandra found nothing to say. It was the end of a way of life which had lasted thousands of years on these plains; but what could they do? She said, "Has there been much of a drought? Cheiron told me that food is harder to find—"

"That too; and some tribes have been greedy to own too many horses, and grazed more than the plains could feed, so they would have them to sell in return for cloth and metal pots and I know not what—and so it is those of us who treat the earth well are dying… Earth Mother has not stretched out her hand to punish them. I know not - perhaps there are no Gods who care any more what men do—" Her face looked strained and old.

"I do not understand," Adrea said. "Why does it trouble you so, that some of your women have chosen to live as all women now live within the cities? You women could live well, with husbands to care for you, and look after your horses; and you could keep your sons as well as your daughters, and you need not spend all your time fighting to defend yourselves. Many, many women live so and find nothing wrong with it; are you saying they are all wrong? Why do you want to live separately from men? Are you not women like any others?"

Penthesilea sighed, but instead of the instant scornful comment Kassandra had expected, she thought for a moment; Kassandra had the feeling that she really wanted this elderly city woman who disapproved of her so much, to understand.

At last she said, "It has been our custom that we live among our own kind and are free. I do not like to live inside walls, and why should we women spin and weave and cook? Do not men wear clothes, that they should not make their own? And surely men eat; why should women cook all the food that is eaten? The men in their own villages cook well enough when there are no women at hand to cook for them. So why should women live as slaves to men?"

"It does not seem slavery to me," the woman protested, "only fair exchange; do you say men are enslaved to women when they herd the horses and goats, then?"

Penthesilea said passionately, "But the women do these things as if it were an exchange for sharing their beds and bearing their children. Like the harlots in your cities who sell themselves cannot you see the difference? Why should women have to live with men when they can care for their own herds and feed themselves from their own gardens, and live free?"

"But if a woman wishes for children, she needs a man. Even you, Queen Penthesilea—"

Penthesilea said, "May I ask without giving offense, ladies, why is it that you have not married?"

Kara spoke first, saying, "I would gladly have married; but I pledged I would remain with Queen Hecuba while she wished for my company. I have not missed marriage; her children were born into my lap, and I have shared in their upbringing. And like Lady Kassandra, I have met no man I loved enough to separate me from my beloved Lady."

"I honor you for that," Penthesilea said. "And you, Adrea?"

"Alas, I was neither beautiful nor rich; so no man ever offered for me," the old woman said. "And now that time is past. So I serve my Queen and her daughters, even to following Lady

Kassandra into this Goddess-forgotten wilderness filled with Kentaurs and other such wild folk—"

"So there are other reasons than simple wickedness why a woman might choose not to marry," Penthesilea said. "If it is well for you not to marry out of loyalty to your Queen, why should Kassandra not remain loyal to her God?"

"It is not that she does not marry," said Adrea, "it is that she does notwish to marry; how can one sympathize with a woman like that?"

This was too much for Kassandra; she exploded with words she had been repressing for days. "I have not asked for your sympathy, any more than for your company; I did not invite you to join me, and you are welcome to return to Troy, where you will be surrounded by proper women, and I shall travel to Colchis with my kinswomen and their escort!" she said hotly. "I have no need of your protection."

"Well, really," said Adrea huffily, "I have known you since you were a baby, my Lady, and what I say is no more than your own mother would say, and all spoken for your own good—"

Penthesilea said peacefully, "I beg you not to quarrel; you have a long road before you. Kassandra, my dear child, even if I were free to travel with you myself to Colchis, I could not keep you safe on your road. I pray that Priam's name and Apollo's peace will do so. Perhaps it is this war, perhaps it is the spread of the Akhaian ways now that the Minoan world has fallen. You

have not even told me why you are travelling to Colchis; is it simply that the Lady Imandra is your old friend, or has Priam decided to send even so far afield for allies?"

She told Penthesilea about the earthquake and the defection of the temple serpents, and the Amazon blenched at the omen.

"Still I will trust Apollo; I have none other in whom to trust," Kassandra said, "and if I can come safely to Colchis with no other safeguard than his blessing, I shall take that as a sign of his continued goodwill."

"May he bless you then and guide you," said Penthesilea, "and may Serpent Mother herself await you and give you blessing in Colchis—and everywhere else, my dear."

Soon after this they went to rest, but Kassandra lay long awake. When she slept, her dreams were restless; she was seeking something—a lost weapon, a bow perhaps - but whenever she thought she had found it, it was not the one she wanted, but was broken, or had a broken string, or something of that sort.

What was it that the Gods were saying to her? She was a priestess, she had been taught that all dreams were messages from the Gods, if she could only find the meaning; that she f could not interpret it meant only that she was, as she had long f suspected, unfit to receive the Sunlord's favour, that he had withdrawn from her. Try as she might, she could gain from it only a faint ill omen that whatever she sought on this quest, she would not find it.

In the morning Penthesilea bestowed gifts on her and her women - new saddles, and a warm robe of horsehide.

"You will need it, believe me, in crossing the Great Plain," she said. "The winters have been more severe latterly and there still may be snow."

As she embraced her in farewell, Kassandra felt like crying.

"When shall we meet again, kinswoman?"

"When the Gods will it; if it should ever be the will of Earth Mother that I should end my days in a city, I will come and end -f them in Troy, that I vow to you, my child. I do not think your I mother would fail to welcome the last of her sisters, nor would Priam turn me from his door. Perhaps I should come with my warriors and seek to drive forth some of these Akhaians."

"When that day comes, I will fight at your side," promised Kassandra, but Penthesilea only embraced her with great tenderness and said, "That is not your fate in this life, my love; |make no pledges you cannot keep," and rode away from them without looking back.

CHAPTER 15

The winter indeed lingered long on the Great Plain, and within four days after they had spent the night with Penthesilea and the remnant of her Amazons, the sky darkened and snow began to-fall so heavily that Kassandra wondered how her attendants could follow the narrow and ill-marked trail at all. All that day it continued to snow, and all the next, and although they continued to travel, they encountered no sign of human life. Once, far away through the snow, they saw a watching Kentaur outlined against the horizon; and when they would have signalled to him, he wheeled his horse and galloped away.

Kassandra was not surprised; from what Penthesilea had said, she knew that the inhabitants of the Great Plain, never particularly inclined to trust outsiders, were even less inclined to do so now. It was fortunate that she had no need to trade with them for food or any other commodities. Day after day they plodded across the Great Plain, their animals' hooves cutting through the soggy mud where there had been frozen grass, the snow never thick enough to be a danger, the dull rains never enough to thaw the frozen ground. The great steppes were empty and barren; they found little enough food to supplement their dreary travel rations, and Kassandra grew weary of riding over the empty lands, crawling under an endless sky which seemed as grey and hostile as the faces of her companions.

Day followed sullen day while the moon thinned and faded and then swelled again; how long could this winter endure? Then soon after a vagrant sight of a full moon through ragged clouds she woke to hear rushing winds and a heavy thick dripping rain which seemed to be carrying away the very land itself.

The new morning brought a countryside transformed, with little rivers flowing everywhere over the surface of the ground, shining in a new strong sun, and grass springing up everywhere, under warm soft winds. It soon grew so warm that Kassandra discarded her horsehide tunic and rode in her soft cloth chemise, since there was none to see her.

On one of these spring days they came to a village, no more than a cluster of round stone huts on the plain; but surrounding it were fields of greening winter grain uncovered from the fast vanishing snow. Kassandra remembered the blighted village of her journey with the Amazons years ago, where all the children, more or less, had been severely deformed. But if this was the same village they must somehow have survived the blight, for such children as she saw looked strong and healthy. Later though, she saw some of the older girls and boys who had only two fingers on a hand. Before this they had seen no human dwelling for eight or ten days, and when the headwoman of the village came out to meet them, she seemed glad to see them as well.

"The winter has lain long on the land," she said, "and we have seen no humans all this winter but a little band of marauding Kentaurs, so weakened with starvation that they made no attempts on our women, but only begged us for food of any sort."

"That seems sad," Kassandra said, but the headwoman wrinkled her face in disdain.

"You are a priestess; it is your work to have compassion even for such as they, I suppose. They have terrorized us too often for me to have any feeling save satisfaction when I see them brought

so low. With luck they will all starve, and then we need never fear them again. Have you metals or weapons for trade? No one passes through here for trade these days; such metals as they have are all bound for the war in Troy and we can get none."

"I am sorry; I have no weapons but my own," Kassandra said. "But we will buy some of your pots if you still make them."

The pots were brought out, and lengthily examined; dark fell while they were still looking them over and the headwoman invited them to dine at her table and continue the trading in the morning. She placed one of the stone huts at their disposal, and bade them to dinner in the central hut. The food was meagre indeed - meat which seemed to be some kind of ground-squirrel, boiled in a stew with bitter acorns and tasteless white roots; but at least it was freshly cooked. Kassandra, recalling the blight, was somewhat reluctant to eat here at all, but told herself not to trouble about it.

For, while I am still of childbearing age, I suppose, I am not wed, nor likely to be. And in any case while these ladies sleep one at either side of my bed, I am scarcely likely to get myself with child. If this village had not somehow recovered from the blight, she thought, it would have vanished when every soul in it died.

A few days later they sighted the iron gates of Colchis, as high and as impressive as ever, and Kassandra attired herself not in her leather riding clothes and chemise, but in her finest Trojan robes, dyed in brilliant colours, and had one of her waiting-women dress her hair in the elaborate

plaited headdress she wore in the Sunlord's Temple. At least Queen Imandra would greet her as a princess of Troy, not as a wandering supplicant.

They were welcomed at the iron gate of the city as envoys from-Troy and bidden to lodge at the palace. Kassandra, saying she must pay her respects at the Sunlord's Temple, went to his large shrine which had been built at the very center of the city, and sacrificed a pair of doves to Apollo of the Long Bow. After that, she was taken to the palace, and conducted to a luxurious guest suite, where bath-women and dressing-maids were put at her disposal. During the long process of bathing—or rather of being bathed - she reflected that during the long journey she had all but forgotten the taste of luxury. She enjoyed the steaming water, the fragrant oils, the gentle massaging of her flesh with brushes and the soft hands of the women. Then they dressed her in fine guest-garments and conducted her into the presence-chamber of Queen Imandra.

She had expected that the Queen would look older; she herself was no longer the childlike girl who had come here, shy and tongue-tied, at Penthesilea's side. But the change was more than she could ever have imagined; if she had met this woman anywhere except in this very throne-room, she would never have recognized her as the proud descendant of Medea.

Imandra had grown enormously fatter; she was imposing rather than gross, hung everywhere with gold; but she had ceased to adorn her fleshy body with the coils of living serpents. Her cheeks and lips were stained with red dye, and she wore the richly dyed robes of fine-spun thin cloth which came from the land of the Pharaohs by way of the Eastern roads. Her hair was studded with jewels as always. Amid all this splendour, only the merry dark eyes were the same,

almost lost in the folds of flesh.

As Kassandra entered the hall and paused to give her the ritual greeting, Imandra rose from her throne, and walked - or rather, waddled - forward.

"No, my dear, no prostrations from my kinswoman," she said, seizing Kassandra in a warm and scented embrace; the perfume was as familiar as the eyes. "I am more glad than I can say to see you, daughter of Priam; what a long journey you have had! No doubt you bear messages from my daughter—"

"From your daughter and your grandson; Andromache is a mother, and soon to be - no, by this time she has another child if all has gone well," Kassandra said, and Imandra beamed.

"I knew it, I knew it; did I not say, my dear, that enough time had gone by that I should be twice a grand-dam, if my daughter had done her duty?" she asked, addressing a handsomely built young man, attired in gold cloth, like an athlete or the victor of the Games, who had been given the seat near her side. "Tomorrow I must look in the pool of ink and try to see her child, and if all is well with her."

She took Kassandra's hands and drew her to the high table, seating herself between Kassandra and the richly dressed young man. "Now tell me everything which has happened in Troy these last years since you went from me, taking my dearest treasure with you. And what brings you so far without your kinswomen?"

"Perhaps," said the young man,"the Lady Kassandra has come to beseech our assistance in this war against the Akhaians."

"Not if she travelled under Apollo's truce," said Queen Imandra, "I know something of that, dear boy." She turned back to Kassandra. "Even so, you need not break your pledge if you have made it; without any asking, I will send to Priam all the soldiers I can find, men or women, and as much as wagons can carry of metals and weapons too."

"You are more than generous," Kassandra said, and explained her errand. Imandra smiled and kissed her.

"My own priestesses and masters of serpents shall be consulted early on the morrow," she said, "or as soon as they tell me it is an auspicious day for such things. I need hardly say that all the wisdom to be found in all our city is at your command and at the command of the Trojan Apollo. You shall be free to speak with them at any time; but you must promise to pay me a long visit."

"Your Majesty is gracious," Kassandra said; she was weary of travelling and at the moment desired nothing more than a long stay in Colchis.

"Not at all, kinswoman," Imandra replied. "Are you not my fellow priestess, and nearest of all in kin to my daughter? And my soothsayers say the child I bear now will be another daughter, and I find it a good omen that you should be here for the birth."

Kassandra had not had the faintest inkling that the Lady was pregnant; indeed if she had given a moment's thought to the matter she would have believed Imandra old beyond the age of bearing. But now she looked closely she saw indeed that the Queen was indeed in the early stages of pregnancy. When she had taken this in, she complimented the Queen upon her expectations, and asked, "Will this then be heir to Colchis in Andromache's place?"

"It will; Andromache cares nothing for queenship; you must have found that out by now," Imandra said, "and it is not hard to forget about the business of being a queen when a woman ishappy; even if that woman is a queen. Have I not said this to you before, Agon?" she demanded.

And the handsome young man said, "Indeed, my Lady."

Imandra's broad face was wreathed in a grin Kassandra could only describe as 'foolish' as her eyes rested on her favourite, and Kassandra, abruptly understanding the state of affairs, was shocked; the independent Queen Imandra, Lady of Colchis, besotted with a handsome boy no older than her daughter? And besotted she certainly was; the very tone of her voice said so. He shared her plate and wine-cup, and she sought out all the finest delicacies to offer to him.

When they had dined, Kassandra sent for the chests she had carried with her and brought out the gifts which Andromache had sent to her mother; embroidered hangings, bolts of richly dyed fabric, even richly decorated bronze swords and knives; several of these, the Queen, with an indifferent gesture, bestowed at once on her consort.

"But don't tell me you want to go and fight in Troy," she said firmly. "I need you at my side to help me bring up our daughter; and even more if the soothsayers are wrong and it is a son."

"I wouldn't think of leaving you, my Lady," he said, "certainly not to fight in some faraway country. If Agamemnon or any of those fellows comes here trying to take Colchis, that would be quite another matter."

Imandra turned to Kassandra. "Tell me about this war, and this Spartan Queen," she said. "Distant as we are, I know something about her family, of course. What sort of person can she be, to have touched off such a widespread war as this?"

Kassandra said slowly, "I had not expected to like her or respect her. But I do; I think the Gods dealt harshly by her when they put her in the way of my brother Paris."

"Well, she had every right to take a consort," said Imandra, with a sly smile at young Agon, "but it was her mistake that she did not dismiss Menelaus - or have the old sacrifice! These things should be done in order. Her mother was Queen by right in Mykenae, and Sparta was Helen's to rule; her crime - and it was truly a crime for a queen - was leaving Sparta for Menelaus to seize, and this has confused the issue. Have they given it over to her daughter to rule after her? I'll warrant they have not; Hermione is too young to be aware of her queenship. These Akhaian savages try to bring their prattle of "kings" into our civilized world; and their mighty talk offathering - as if any man could create life. The Goddess alone breathes life into children; yet

some of these men are arrogant enough to say that the woman is no more than an oven in which their child—theirchild, did you ever hear such nonsense—is cooked. That Agamemnon—may he be cursed by every Goddess and all the Furies!" Imandra exclaimed.

"He is the leader of the Akhaian armies from Mykenae itself—" Kassandra said.

"Yes; you knew he was married to Helen's sister, who succeeded her mother in Mykenae? Klytemnestra was the elder twin, and very beautiful, but nothing like Helen. Well, Agamemnon managed to get himself married to Klytemnestra, and they had a daughter, Iphigenia - dedicated to Serpent Mother, and of course Keeper of the Shrine and High Priestess from the time she was still a child. Well, when this war came along, Agamemnon had sworn to come to his brother's aid in all things, and so he had to leave Mykenae; and he was afraid that Klytemnestra would replace him as her consort; she was angry that he had dared to swear such an oath without her leave and so she threatened that if he left her she would take her cousin Aegisthus to her bed. Agamemnon threatened to take away their son Orestes - Klytemnestra told him he might do as he would with the boy, but if he perverted any of her children with his evil Gods she would cast his son out after him. So he made the lad a priest of Poseidon—I think it was Poseidon, the horse God, and sent him to be fostered among the Kentaurs. When his armies were gathered to sail to Troy, he was delayed on shore with poor winds, and he sent to Klytemnestra that her daughter Iphigenia should come and conduct the appointed sacrifices to the winds. So she came, as priestess; and what should he do but sacrifice Iphigenia herself, on false oracles; so that Klytemnestra could not take another consort because her younger daughter was too young to be her successor. And I have heard that this younger daughter Electra has been turned against the worship of Earth

Mother; and who could blame her? If she became a priestess like her sister, she might die too. But Klytemnestra has sworn vengeance; and Agamemnon will one day face the vengeance of Earth Mother. And, mistake me not, he will die. The Gods are not mocked in this fashion."

"So then it is all a matter of whether the land shall be ordered by kings or queens?"

"What else? Why should men rule the hearth or the city, where-woman has commanded since first Earth Mother brought forth life? The old way was best; where the king was led out every year to die for his people and there was no question of any man setting up his son to follow him. For thousands of years, until these Akhaian savages came to try and change our ways, that was the rule of life—

"And then, who knows? Perhaps there was war and a king was too skilled a leader to be made to die; or some foolish woman like myself did not wish to lose her young lover." She turned an affectionate look on young Agon. "Then these horse-folk came, and the first kings, and set up their arrogant Gods, even the Sunlord who claimed to have slain Serpent Mother." Imandra yawned. "The world is changing, I tell you; but it is the fault of the women who did not keep their men in their place."

"And you think, then, this is the cause of this war?" Kassandra asked.

"My dear, I am sure of it," said the Queen. "It could never have happened to Colchis."

CHAPTER 16

A few days later Kassandra, lodged in the suite in the palace once allotted to the royal daughters, that same room where once she and Andromache had lain awake one night watching stars falling, was wakened by Queen Imandra herself.

"My dear, the High Priestess in Serpent Mother's Temple is willing to receive you."

Kassandra awakened her waiting-women and had herself dressed in a simple unbleached tunic as befitted a suppliant.

Adrea protested: 'You are a princess of Troy and a priestess in your own right; you should go to her as an equal, my lady."

"But I go to her to seek wisdom which she possesses and I do not," Kassandra answered. "I think it is more fitting that I go to her humbly, beseeching her help."

The waiting-woman sniffed; but Queen Imandra said, "I think you are right, Kassandra. When she summons me, even I go to her with humility." Kassandra sighed with relief and bound her soft sandals on her feet. She very much disliked wearing elaborate court robes and being dressed up as a princess.

Though the sun was not very high in the sky, already the morning clouds had burned off and the heat was very strong on her head and through the shoulders of her tunic. It seemed a long walk across the city, and her feet were tired when at last they climbed the great Titan-built steps toward the shrine.

Inside, to Kassandra's relief, it was dark and cool and there was the pleasant far-off sound of falling water. A quiet dark-robed attendant showed them into a shaded tile-floored court; at the far end there was a formal high seat where sat a large fat old woman with white hair.

"The priestess Arikia," murmured Imandra.

They advanced slowly down the room. At first Kassandra thought that it was a living serpent twined about the priestess's gilt head-dress; then she realized that it was only a very realistic moulded and painted one of pottery or perhaps of carved wood.

The priestess was dressed in a sleeveless robe of crimson patterned cloth, richly ornamented with designs that looked like the scales of serpents; and around her waist was wrapped the largest snake Kassandra had ever seen; as big around as the priestess's arms, which were very fat. The snake was coiled around Arikia's waist twice, and the old woman held the serpent's head in her hand, lazily tickling it under the chin.

She said in a soft voice which sounded none the less very determined, "Greetings, Queen

Imandra; is this the Trojan princess of whom you told me?"

"It is, Lady," said Imandra. "Kassandra, daughter of Queen-Hecuba of Troy."

Kassandra felt the old priestess's eyes resting on her, as dark and flat as the serpent's eyes. "And what do you want from me, Kassandra of Troy?"

Kassandra felt compelled to kneel down before the old woman.

"I have come from Troy to learn of you, or rather of Serpent Mother," she said.

"Well, tell me what you seek," said the old priestess. "For you, Hecuba's daughter, I will do whatever lies within my powers."

So encouraged, Kassandra told her of the death or desertion of the serpents in the Sunlord's house, and her unwillingness to replace them until she knew more of their care. The old woman smiled, still stroking the great snake under its chin - or the place where it would have had a chin. At last she said:

"I should call all my priestesses, Kassandra, and have them come and look at you. For in all Colchis I cannot find a single young woman who wishes to learn this lore; and you have come all the way from Troy to seek it from me.

"Tell me Kassandra, while you dwell in this temple will you give due reverence to Serpent Mother?"

"I swear it, Lady."

Arikia smiled and held out her hand.

"So be it," she said, "I accept you. You may remain here, and none of our ancient wisdom shall be hidden from you while you dwell among us. You may leave her with us, Imandra; and you too may go," she said, casting her sharp eyes on Adrea. "She will need no waiting-woman in the Mother's Temple; such attendance as she may need will be given by priestesses."

Adrea said firmly, "I promisedher mother, my Lady, that I'd not leave her side for a single day while she was in foreign parts."

Arikia said kindly, "I cannot fault you for that, daughter. But do you truly think she needs your chaperonage when she is in the hands of the Great Mother?"

"I suppose not, my Lady. When you put it like that, where could she be safer than in the hands of the Great Goddess? But I cannot break my promise to Queen Hecuba," said Adrea reluctantly.

"Still," said Arikia, "I think you must leave her to me and the Goddess; but you may come every few days and speak with her alone and unobserved, to reassure yourself that she is safe and well,

and here of her own free choice."

Imandra said, "Must she lodge in the temple, Lady Arikia? I would be happier to have her in the palace as my guest, and she could attend at the temple services whenever you wished for her."

"No, that will not do; she must live among us and learn to live with us and our serpents," Arikia said. "Is this disagreeable to you, Kassandra?"

"Not at all," Kassandra said. "I honor the Lady Imandra as my mother's kinswoman and my friend; but I am more than willing to dwell in the house of the Mother as is seemly for a priestess."

Imandra embraced her, and Adrea, and they took their leave. When they had gone the old priestess, who had observed Kassandra's close watching of the snake that was still coiled motionless about her body, asked, "Are you afraid of the serpent folk, Kassandra?"

"Not at all, Lady." She added impulsively, "This is a very beautiful one."

"She is a true matriarch among serpents," Arikia agreed. "Would you care to hold her?"

"Certainly, if she will come to me," Kassandra said, though she had never handled such a large serpent. "She is not poisonous, I suppose?"

"Can't you tell by looking at her? Well, that is one of the first things we must teach you. But of course she is not; I would not venture to handle one of the venomous snakes like this; they are seldom so good-tempered, and they are almost never as large as this one."

Arikia held the huge snake's tail away from her body. "Look, this will make her uncoil, since she cannot brace herself against my body when I hold her like this. Hold out your hand and let her smell you." Kassandra obeyed, not flinching as the great head moved close, the forked tongue flicking in and out, just touching her hand. Then the snake moved, flowed smoothly as folds of silk along the older priestess's arm and along Kassandra's shoulders and round her waist. The big wedge-shaped head came up toward Kassandra's; Kassandra took it in her hand and began to rub gently under the chin. She was surprised to feel all the tension go out of the snake's body as the surprising weight settled round her.

"Good, she likes you," Arikia said. "It would do little good for me to accept you here if she did not. All the same, sooner or later if she is frightened or startled while you are holding her, she may bite; do you know what to do if she does?"

Old Meliantha in the Sunlord's house had taught Kassandra that.

"Yes; don't frighten her more, or try to pull away, but get someone else to unwind her, beginning with the tail," Kassandra said, and held out her hand and displayed the small scars where one of the temple serpents had chewed on her hand during her time as Meliantha's attendant. Arikia smiled.

"Good; but what have you to learn from us then?"

"Oh, all manner of things," Kassandra said eagerly. "I wish to know how to find and take snakes from the wild where they breed; how to hatch them out from eggs and train them to come and go as I have seen done; how to feed them and care for them for long life, and how to win their confidence and keep them content so they will not run away."

The old woman chuckled, holding out her hand to circle the head of the big snake.

"Good; I think here we can teach you all these things. You had better let me take her now; I am accustomed to her weight, and I do not think a slender creature like you can carry her very far. You must eat well and get fat, like me, or like Imandra, before you can be a true Serpent Mother. Although a day may come when you will sit and display her to the people; she likes to be on display, or so it seems. One more thing; some of the girls are too soft-hearted or sentimental about little animals - doves, mice, rabbits - to feed the serpents. Will that trouble you?"

"Not at all; it is not I, but the Gods who have determined that some animals shall be fed on other living things; I did not create them and it is not for me to say on what they should be fed," Kassandra replied. She had heard Meliantha say this once when a young girl in the temple had been squeamish about feeding living mice to snakes.

"Well," said Arikia, "we must find you a room of your own, and an attendant priestess, and

make you known to the rest of us who live here. You are a princess of Troy and I hope it will not be too small and mean for you."

"Oh, no," Kassandra said, "I am eager to be one of you." Arikia embraced her lovingly, and led her into the house of Serpent Mother.

CHAPTER 17

Then began for Kassandra a time like no other in her life. Since she was already a priestess, there were no wearying ordeals or trials; although as the youngest - many of the priestesses ofSerpent Mother were elderly and frail, for few young women chose to serve the Serpent shrine she had to take her turn at the more troublesome duties such as caring for the animals being raised for feeding the serpents, cleaning pots, and accepting and tallying temple offerings. She was welcomed by everyone and treated in accordance with her station; Queen Imandra herself received no more deference, and soon Arikia came to love her as a daughter.

In many ways her stay in the Serpent Mother's Temple was like her early years in the Sunlord's house, with one great difference: all the devotees of Serpent Mother were women, and she had nothing like her early troubles with Khryse; the only men in the house of the Serpent were slaves and none of them would have dared make any advances to any of the priestesses.

She learned all that the priestesses could teach her about the ways of serpents and snakes; how to tell the venomous from the harmless, how to tame and handle certain kinds of harmless serpents which looked identical to certain poisonous snakes so that any onlooker would believe that she was defying death. She herself had no fear of even the largest snakes, and soon was one of the preferred handlers; often when the enormous matriarch of serpents was carried in processions, Kassandra was one of those chosen to carry her.

No facet of serpent lore escaped her; how to find and capture them in the wild, how to feed and keep them, how to bathe them and care for them when they shed their skins. She even hatched one herself, carrying the egg between her breasts for more than a month, and sheltering the baby snake against her body when it crawled out of the egg. For this she was given the coveted title of honor among the priestesses, Snake Mother.

She seldom thought of Troy. Word came to them now and again, perhaps distorted by the long journey, of how the war went. Idomeneo of Crete, and the Minoan Kings, became Troy's allies; most of the mainlanders stood with the Akhaians. The Islanders, because of alliances forged when Atlantis still ruled the seas, held with Priam and the Goddesses of Troy and Colchis.

Sometimes at the full moon, Kassandra kindled witchfire and looked into her scrying-bowl by its light; and so she knew when Andromache bore Hector a second son who died before his navel-string was healed; she wished that night that she could have been in Troy to comfort her friend's grief.

She knew, too, when Helen bore Paris twin sons, which did not entirely surprise her; Paris, after all, was a twin—and Helen too had a twin sister. It occurred to her that if she herself ever bore children, she might produce twins, perhaps twin daughters. Helen's twins were strong and healthy children, though they hadn't the beauty of either their mother or father, and grew so fast that within half a year they were walking.

Before Paris's younger sons were weaned, Priam suffered a fall in a skirmish on the shore, and the thunderbolt stroke, during the illness that followed, left the right side of his face twisted and sagging, and he limped thereafter on his right foot. He made Hector the official commander of his armies—to no one's surprise. The soldiers, though they were loyal, and cheered Priam when on rare occasions he appeared before the armies, worshipped Hector as if he were Mars himself.

Time in Colchis slipped past without incident. She was always welcomed at the palace, and Imandra often sent for her; sometimes simply for her company, occasionally to look into a scrying-bowl and tell her how it went with the war, or sometimes to search out the Amazons to be certain it did not go too badly with Penthesilea and her band. With her days filled with study and duties, it surprised her to discover that she had been gone from Troy for more than a year. Among women, birth was always a festival and someone in the palace was always having a baby; the women sworn to Serpent Mother did not marry and most of them had taken formal vows of chastity, so there were no births in their temple. She wondered when the Queen would have her child.

Soon she heard in the city that the Queen would walk abroad to bless her subjects in the name of

Earth Mother; Kassandra vaguely remembered - it was almost her first memory - that

Hecuba had done this before Troilus was born. In Troy it was simply an old custom halfremembered and informally observed: whenever the Queen showed herself in the streets women would rush up to her and ask her blessing; in Colchis where the customs were kept in the old way, Kassandra was not surprised to find there it was a formal procession. But surely they had left it to very late; the time of birth must be imminent. Imandra would not walk the streets but would be carried in a sedan chair, and Arikia, the earthly representative of Serpent Mother, would be carried with her, the serpents of wisdom adorning her from head to foot, so that all women in the city could seek blessing not only from the pregnant queen but from the Serpent Mother.

"But why now? Do they want the Queen to fall into labour in the streets?" she asked.

"Well, it has happened before," Arikia said. "This would not be the first child of a Queen of Colchis to be born in the streets of the city. There will be many court midwives in the procession. But the Queen's astrologers have chosen this as an auspicious day; and of course, the nearer to her time Imandra is, the more blessing she can confer."

"Yes, of course." Kassandra could understand that. It was the morning of the procession, and Kassandra along with her fellow priestesses was helping to dress and adorn Arikia, winding the serpent matriarch about her waist and two smaller serpents about her arms. It would be tiring for her, for the serpents must be held up so that the people could see them. Kassandra wished that

she, who was younger and stronger, could take the older woman's place. She said so, but Arikia only said, "It is harder still on the Queen, my dear; she is as big as a python who has swallowed a cow. Perhaps next time, my dear; Imandra is an old friend and I am happy to ride in her procession. She has been more than kind to you, too. A little more of the crimson paint on my left cheek, if you please, and some of the herbal powder to be burned in the brazier; the serpents love it, and they give far less trouble when they can smell it. Will you ride with me, Kassandra? And you can feed the brazier, and stand ready to take the smaller snakes from me if they should be restless. It is not likely, but of course anything can happen."

Kassandra knew this was a privilege of which other priestesses in the temple would be envious; but they deferred to her as princess of Troy and she was entitled to these honors. She went and put on her best ceremonial robe at once, and wrapped her arms with two or three of the smaller serpents, binding two others around her brow so that they formed a crown. Thus arrayed (and thinking that perhaps the statues of the legendary Medusa might have been inspired by such a serpent crown) she went out to the street and as Arikia was lifted into the high raised chair, let herself be lifted in after her.

It was cold; a high wind was blowing through the streets between the high buildings; and all the leaves were gone from the trees and bushes. She sat holding her serpents high so that the women in the streets could see them clearly. Imandra's chair was ahead; Kassandra could see the Queen's form, heavily pregnant now, her loosened hair flowing down her back. The streets were crowded with women, many of them pregnant, rushing up to the carriages, pushing through the guards, reaching up their arms to beg for the blessing.

The wind chilled her; she was glad for the cosy weight of the serpent about her waist. The snakes were sluggish;they do not like the cold any better than I do , she thought, longing for the warm sun of her home.

She fell almost into a trance, looking at the tall figure of Imandra on her carriage, shadowed with the powerful magic and glamour of the Goddess. Women rushed to hold up their hands, crying out for good fortune, fertility, and just the good luck of touching the pregnant Queen who embodied the Goddess. Automatically holding up her serpents, she heard the women calling to Imandra and Earth Mother, to Arikia, and the Serpent Mother, and then from somewhere in the crowd she actually heard someone call, "Look, it is the Trojan priestess, the beloved of Apollo!"

That brought her to sudden awareness. Was it still true? Or had Apollo forgotten her? Perhaps it was time, she thought, that she should return to Troy and her own people and her own Gods; serving the Goddess, women were more free here, but what good was the freedom if she must dwell forever among strangers? Then her heart smote her; she was well loved here and had many friends, could she bear to abandon them and to return to a city where women were regarded as little better than prostitutes or slaves?

The sun grew hotter; she pulled her veil over her head and dipped her kerchief into a bowl of water to moisten the snakes' heads. "Soon, little ones," she murmured,"this will be over and you will be where it is cool and dark." One of the serpents was trying to crawl into the darkness of her dress; the crowds were thinning, so she did not try to prevent it.

The chair-bearers slowed; then came to a halt. Servants were carefully lifting Imandra down from her seat - not easily. She walked heavily toward the chair where the priestesses sat surrounded by their serpents.

"Kassandra, my friend, will you come this evening to the palace and look for me into your scrying-bowl?"

"With pleasure," Kassandra replied. "As soon as I have cared for my serpents - if Arikia will give me leave," she added, glancing at the senior priestess, who smiled and nodded permission.

At the temple of Serpent Mother, she helped the bearers to settle Arikia down on her bed in a darkened room; then she helped to unwind the snakes and bathe them in the fountain in the inner court. After swallowing a little fruit and bread, she dressed herself in her simplest robe and went out again into the chill of early afternoon. It was a little warmer—what heat there was in the sun was full strength now—and the noonday streets were full of people, but none of them recognized the slight dark-haired woman in her plain tunic as the priestess who had been carried, robed and crowned in her serpents, through the streets.

The Queen's women conducted Kassandra to the royal apartments. It was pleasantly warm there, with a fire in a fireplace. Imandra was lying in a hammock, her hair unbound and her huge body mounded high against the cushions. She had shed the glamour of the Goddess and now looked weary, her drawn face would have been pale, except that she had not even troubled to remove the

paint from her cheeks.

She should have kept Andromache here in Colchis instead of sending her to Troy; then she would not need to expose herself to the dangers of a belated childbearing, Kassandra thought, surprised at herself;now she needs a daughter to rule after her in Colchis . As if some hint of Kassandra's thought had reached her, the Queen opened her eyes.

"Ah, daughter, you have come to keep me company," she said. "I am glad; I think the little one—" she laid her hand across her belly, "may be born today; but at least the procession was completed and I need not give birth to their Queen in the streets. Soon I will summon the palace women—they will be cross if they are not told at once; they are entitled to their festival. Kassandra, how old are you, my dear?"

Kassandra tried to reckon up the years; in Troy they did not keep track of a woman's age once she had arrived at puberty.

"I think I shall be nineteen or twenty this summer," she said. "Mother told me I was born near to midsummer."

"A year older than my Andromache," Imandra said, "and you told me that Andromache's oldest son, is old enough for his first bronze helmet and lessons in swordplay. I do not think I know any woman of your years who is not married. Sometimes I think you should have been my daughter, since you cleave to the old ways in Colchis, and Andromache seems happy in Troy, even as an

obedient wife to Hector." Her lip curled a little, almost in scorn. "But you are Priam's daughter, and a Trojan. Is it your will to remain unmarried all your days, my dear?"

"I had thought of nothing else," Kassandra said. "I am sworn to Apollo Sunlord."

"But you are missing all that makes life worth the living," Imandra said, and sighed.

Imandra frowned and lay motionless for a time, then said, "Will you look into the scrying-bowl and let this old woman once set eyes upon my daughter's child?"

Kassandra demurred. "Perhaps just now you should think first of this child. You must save all your strength and energy until she is safely here among us, kinswoman."

"Spoken like a priestess - and they are all full of nonsense," said Imandra crustily. "I am not a maiden of fifteen in my first childbed; I am a grown woman and a Queen, and no less a priestess than you yourself, Kassandra of Troy."

"I had no thought of suggesting—" Kassandra began defensively.

"Oh, yes you did; don't deny it," Imandra said. "Do as I ask you, Kassandra; if you will not there are others who will, though not many who see so far or so well."

Everything Imandra said was true, and Kassandra knew it.

"Oh, very well," she agreed, mentally addingyou stubborn old creature . "Call your women," she said, "and let them prepare you for the birth. Hold me harmless of it if what I say gives you pain or sorrow; I am but the messenger, the wings of the bird on which such greetings fly." She knelt down, making the preparations for kindling the witchfire for the spell of sight.

Imandra's women came and went in the room, making all ready for the birthing. Among them were Kassandra's two waiting-women, who came to greet her and ask quietly out of earshot of the Queen, "Are we to stay in this foreign city forever, Princess? When shall we return to Troy?"

"That shall be as Queen Imandra wills," Kassandra said. "I shall not leave her while she has need of me here."

"How can she have more need of you than your own mother, Lady? Do you truly think Queen Hecuba does not long and grieve for you?"

Kassandra said indifferently, "You have my leave to return to Troy whenever you will; this very night if it should please you. But I have made a promise to Imandra and I will not break it." She rose and strode to the high bed where the women had placed the Queen to rest till it should be time for the birth-chair. The room was slowly filling with the women in the palace, come to witness the royal event.

"I wonder," Imandra mused fretfully, "if it ever happens that the Earth Mother sends the babe to

the wrong womb? From what I know of her, Hecuba would have thought Andromache her perfect daughter, and you were always misplaced in Troy." She clung hard to Kassandra's hand, "No, don't leave me, the Gods will wait on the Sight till our eyes are ready to see…'

"I do not know what the purposes of the Goddess may be, that sent me to the womb of Hecuba of Troy instead of Imandra of Colchis," Kassandra said, laying her cheek against the older woman's, "but whatever it may have been, kinswoman, I love and revere you as if you were my mother in truth."

"I believe you do, child," said Imandra, turning her face to kiss Kassandra. "Should the Goddess take me today, as we all come under her wing at such times as this, promise me to stay in Colchis and rear my daughter in the old ways."

"Oh, come, you mustn't talk about dying; you will live many, many years and see this daughter with her own sons and daughters at her knees," Kassandra said. One of the serving-women handed her a cup of wine and a plate of honey cakes; she sipped at the wine absently, and put the cakes aside.

"Let me look for you into the bowl," she said, and knelt again on the stones by the kindled witchlight, casting her mind to the day when Andromache's son had been born; Hector's face pale and excited, looking at the little creature…

Shadows moved in the water, flowing and congealing into Hector's face… the crimson plumes

draggled, slimed with a wet darker crimson… Kassandra gasped as a sudden pain pierced her heart.Hector ! Was he dead, or did she but see what was to come? When a city was at war it was more likely than not that the leader of the army who always was first among his troops in battle, should fall at the hands… the bloody hands of Akhilles… that sneering face, pale and beautiful, beautiful and evil. Snow drifted across the face of the water, and Kassandra knew she saw what was to come in a future year; but which year? This one, or some year in the future… Kassandra had no way of knowing.

Imandra, her eyes fixed on Kassandra's face as if desperately trying to share the vision, asked, "What did you see?"

"Hector's death," Kassandra whispered, "but for a warrior there is no other end, and we have long known already that this was to come; but'tis not yet, perhaps not for many years…'

"But the child—" Imandra whispered,"tell me of the child—"

"When last I saw he was healthy and well-grown, and had already a wooden sword and a toy helmet—" Kassandra said, reluctant to look again and see disaster, and for some reason she never doubted that this was what would come. "The omens this night are evil for the sight, Imandra; I beg you excuse me from looking again—"

"As you will," said Imandra, but her face twisted with disappointment. "I could die content if only I could see my daughter's son, even by your sight rather than my own

"Now, then," said young Agon, holding Imandra's hand tight, "I will not let you think of dying, content or otherwise; you must stay with me to teach our daughter to be Queen of Colchis."

Flickers of colour flowed across the surface of the water; firelight,flame across the gates of Troy; and she remembered Hector's teasing voice:

You have but one song, Kassandra, fire and doom for Troy, and you sing it in season and out, like a minstrel who knows but one tune…

Yes, I know Troy is to perish, but not yet… I beseech you, let me see something else…

The flames died; there was a flare of light, the bright sunlight reflecting on the white walls of Troy… melting into the angry sombre face of Khryse, distorted into the familiar lines of mourning.

Apollo Sunlord: if I see all this in your light, why must you show me nothing but what I already know?

Then glare, as if she was staring directly into the face of the sun; it seemed Khryse grew taller, and now Kassandra saw the blazing light of the God, and knew who now strode the walls and ramparts of Troy, terrible in his wrath; his shining bow drawn, the golden arrows shooting… shooting at random among Akhaians and Trojans alike, the terrible arrows of Apollo, striking…

Kassandra screamed, covering her face with her hands; the vision blurred and ran like water, was gone.

"Not upon us," she moaned, "not upon thine own people, Sunlord, not the wrath, not the arrows of Apollo…'

Then they were all round her, shaking her, trying to lift her, holding wine to her lips.

"What did you see? Try and tell us, Kassandra—"

"No, no," she cried, trying very hard to keep her voice from becoming a shriek. "We must go at once, we must return to Troy…' but dread iced her heart, thinking of the endless leagues of the journey which lay between Colchis and home.

"We must go at once, we must set out at daybreak, or even this night," she cried, reaching for her waiting-woman's hands holding her up. "We must go… we must not lose a moment…'

She pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, and made her way to Imandra's side, kneeling there, pleading, "The Gods call me at once to Troy; I beg you, kinswoman, give me leave to depart…'

"To go now?" Imandra, her whole mind and body concentrated on the birth-throes sweeping her body, stared at her without comprehension. "No, I forbid it; you promised to remain with me…'

Despairing, Kassandra realized that she could not impose her own need upon this woman gripped in the most imperative of all callings. She would simply have to wait. She wiped away the tears she had not realized were flooding down her cheeks, and turned her attention to Imandra herself.

"Did you see my Andromache's child?" Imandra pleaded.

"No," Kassandra said soothingly, blocking from her mind the sight of a child's broken body before the walls of Troy…she had seen that before … 'No, this night the Gods gave me no such sight. I saw only how ill it went with my city."

The sea black with the Akhaian ships, the walls of Troy swarmed by the storming ants of Akhilles's armies… walls breaking, flames rising… No, not yet… not that final destruction, not yet… but worse, the terrible arrows of Apollo's wrath flying against Akhaians and Trojans alike…

One of the women started one of the traditional birth-songs, and after a stunned moment of silence…How could they sing and behave as if this were an ordinary women's festival? But no, they had not seen blood or flames or the arrows of the angry god … Kassandra joined in the chant, encouraging the waiting soul of the child to come into the body prepared for it, for the Goddess to release the child's body from the Queen's imprisoning womb. Song followed song, and later some of the priestesses danced the curious dance of the soul making its way past the

guardians of the World Before. The night wore slowly away, and when the sky was paling for sunrise, the Queen at last, with a shout of triumph, gave birth; the senior palace midwife, into whose hands the child had been born, held it up, crying out:

"It is a daughter! A strong and healthy daughter! A little Queen for Colchis!"

The women broke into a triumphant chant of welcome to the infant, taking her to the window and holding her up to the rising sun, passing the little naked body around the circle of women from hand to hand that each woman might embrace and kiss the, new one. Queen Imandra finally demanded, "Let me take her; let me see that she is truly strong and healthy."

"Just a moment; we must first have her swaddled against the cold," said the court midwife, and wrapped the baby in one of the Queen's own shawls.

They put her, swaddled and washed at last, into Imandra's hands, and the Queen laid her face tenderly against the little one's cheek.

"Ah, I have waited long enough to hold you, little one; it is like bearing my own grandchild; I know no other woman who has born a child at my age and lived," she said, "yet I feel as strong and well as when Andromache was put into my arms." She was unwrapping the baby in the compulsive way of all new mothers, counting each finger and toe, then counting them all over again in case she had missed one, then giving each one a separate kiss, like a special tribute.

"She's beautiful," she said, smiling blissfully when she had finished nudging and nuzzling the baby, and drawing a beautiful ring from her finger, presented it to the court midwife. "This, in addition to your regular fee which my chamberlain will give you."

The midwife gasped thanks, and backed away, overwhelmed at such largesse. Imandra continued:

"We will name her on the first auspicious day. Until then she will be my little pearl… since she is as smooth and pink as one of the pearls the divers in the Islands bring from the depths of the sea. And I shall call her Pearl, my little pearl princess."

All the women agreed that this was a lovely name. It would be used until the princess was old enough to be given a formal name by the priestesses, and informally all her life.

Then Queen Imandra beckoned Kassandra forward.

"Your eyes are red, Kassandra, and you do not seem to rejoice, with us. Have you seen some evil omen for my child, that you do not share my joy?"

Kassandra cringed; she had been afraid that she would not be able to conceal her grief from Imandra's sharp eyes. "No, kinswoman; I truly rejoice for your happiness," she said, bending down and kissing the little princess, "and I cannot tell you how greatly I rejoice that you are safe and well. But my eyes are always red when I sleep so little as this night; and—" she hesitated,

her voice breaking,"the Gods have sent me an evil omen from Troy. I am needed there. I beg you, kinswoman, grant me leave to depart at once for my home."

Imandra looked distressed, but the pain in Kassandra's face softened her anger. She said, "In this weather? Winter is approaching, and the journey would be terrible. I had hoped you would remain to help me with raising my daughter. I had little luck in raising Andromache to be Queen after me. I put small faith in oracles or omens, but I can deny you nothing on such a day when the Goddess has sent me this beautiful daughter. Yet it is not my leave you must obtain, but that of Serpent Mother. It is to her, not to me, that you are sworn here. And you must wait at least until I can gather gifts to be sent to Troy; for Andromache and her child, and for my kinswoman Hecuba, and, not least, for you, my dear daughter."

Kassandra had known this would be required, and she told herself that the catastrophe she had foreseen could not be so imminent that a day or even a week could make so much difference. The dues of kinship and courtesy could not be ignored for one who had been so good to her as Queen Imandra, yet her heart rebelled; everything which held her back from Troy now seemed hateful to her. She was sure that Arikia would chide her for disloyalty, even for dishonor; but there was no other honorable thing to do. They had given generously of their knowledge and friendship; she could not, after all, steal away from Colchis like a thief.

So she braced herself and went to take leave of the Serpent Priestess.

During the night and the long next day, while wagons and beasts and gifts and all that she would

need on the long road to Troy were being made ready, she had time to regain some degree of calm, if only because she could not remain at that fever pitch of dread and terror. While she knew that the Gods had summoned her to Troy to meet whatever might be her destiny, it never occurred to her that remaining in Colchis might serve to avoid it; history was full of tales of those who selfishly thought to avoid their destiny by neglecting some duty, and inevitably brought upon themselves the very fate they feared.

The vision might not mean catastrophe; it might even mean that Apollo would not tolerate the war as it was being waged. Perhaps he would force them to some kind of truce, and all would be well.

So in the end, although truly sorry to part from Colchis and the freedom and honor she knew there, she set forth three mornings later with a high heart, glad—or at least not sorry—to be on the road again.

CHAPTER 18

Their journey began at the earliest daylight. Queen Imandra had loaned them a strong cart drawn by mules. As the cart trundled down through the city, all was dark except for sparks from a forge, where a burly woman blacksmith worked. Adrea and Kara were openly jubilant that they were going home, although they spoke with dread of the long miles of the journey, and the

dangers of bandits and Kentaurs as well as of mountain passes deep in snow, and roving wild men or women who might think they bore riches - or who would find their simple supplies of food and clothing riches enough.

Kassandra rode silently, already missing her friends in the temple of Serpent Mother, both human and reptile, and sorry to leave Imandra. It was hardly likely that they would meet again in this world.

As they trundled through the iron gates of Colchis, a few flakes of snow were sifting down, and the skies were grey and sullen. Light grew, though the sun did not appear, and Kassandra took a last look at the high gates of the city, gleaming red in the greyish dawnlight.

There could not be many women her age who had made such a journey twice in a lifetime; and if she could journey this road twice, why not three times or more? There might still be many adventures before her; and even if she rode back to Troy, there was no need to feel the walls of the city close about her again until she must.

The first night when she and her women prepared as usual to settle down for sleep, Adrea demanded, "Are you going to sleep with thatthing in your bed, Princess?"

Kassandra let her hand stray to the coils of the snake, warm and soft in her chemise.

"Of course, I am her mother. I hatched this snake with my own body's warmth, and she has slept

in my bosom every night of her life. Besides, it is cold at night; she would die if I did not keep her warm."

"I would do much and I have done much for your mother's daughter," said Adrea, "but I willnot share my bed with a snake! Can't it sleep by the fire in a box or a pot?"

"No, it cannot," said Kassandra, secretly filled with glee. "I assure you it will not bite, and it is a better bedfellow than a human child, for it will not wet or soil the bedclothes as a baby is likely to do. You will never sleep with a cleaner creature." She stroked the snake and said, "You needn't worry; she will stay close to me; I am sure she is more afraid of you than you are of her."

"No," Adrea said pleadingly, "no, please, Lady Kassandra, I can't do it, I can't sleep in one bed with that serpent."

"Why, how dare you! She is one of the Goddess's creatures the same as you, Adrea. You will not be so foolish, will you, Kara?"

Kara said stubbornly, "I'm not going to sleep with any slimy snake, either. She'd be sure to crawl on me in my sleep."

"She doesn't even bite—and she wouldn't hurt you if she did," Kassandra said crossly. "Her teeth aren't grown yet. What a fool you are." She lay down, idly caressing the snake's head, which stuck just a finger's breadth out of her chemise.

Kassandra said, "If you had the sense that the Gods gave ahen , and would justtouch her, you'd know she's not slimy at all, no more than a bird; she's very soft and smooth and warm." She thrust the snake, draped over her hand, at Adrea, but the woman recoiled with a squeal. Kassandra lay down, stretching out on her pillows. She said, "Well, I am weary, and I shall sleep, even if you two make fools of yourselves by sleeping on the cold floor of the wagon. Make what beds for yourselves you will, but turn out the lamp and let us all sleep, in the Goddess's name.Any Goddess."

They were soon out of sight of Colchis, riding through the winding hills and past a succession of little villages. Each day had grown progressively colder, and fine snow was beginning to sift down, melting as it fell. One morning, riding almost before the sun was up, Kassandra heard a strange, insistent wailing cry.

"Why, it's a child, and by the sound, a young one; what's a baby doing in this wilderness alone where there could be wolves or even bears?" she said, and got down from the cart, looking round through the falling snow for the source of the sound. After a time she saw a bundle of coarsewoven fabric on the hillside; a small well-made girl, its navel-string not healed, a dark fuzz covering its head.

"Don't touch it, Princess, it's just a baby been exposed from one of the villages; some harlot who can't raise a child*, or some mother with too many daughters."

Kassandra stooped down and lifted the baby. It felt icy cold in spite of its wrappings; but still kicked strongly. As Kassandra held the infant against her breast, the warmth soothed it somewhat and the wailing ceased; it began to squirm around trying to suck.

"There, there," Kassandra said, soothingly, rocking the bundle. "I've nothing for you, poor child. But I'm sure we can find something for you to eat."

Adrea said, horrified, "Why would we do a thing like that? Surely you aren't thinking of keeping it, Princess?"

Kassandra said, "You would be eager to get me married to have a baby, and now I can have one without breaking my oath of chastity, or suffering in childbirth—why should I not take this daughter that the Goddess has sent directly to me?" The baby felt warmer now, and dropped off to sleep against Kassandra's breast. "Surely it is a virtuous deed to save a child's life."

She had said it at first to tease Adrea; but now she began to think of the inconvenience and trouble, when the woman said, "How are you going to feed it, Princess? It's not big enough to chew hard food, and you'd have to get a wet-nurse somewhere, and drag her along all the way to Troy."

"Not at all," Kassandra said, thinking it over. "Go to that village there, and get a good healthy nanny-goat, fresh in milk. Babies thrive on goat's milk." Adrea's face contorted in dismay, and Kassandra said, "Go at once; such food will be good for all of us. Or keep my snake while I go—

"

Thus admonished Adrea ran for the village and came back with a young black-and-white nanny goat, strong and healthy, which at once set up a racket with its bleating. Neither of the waitingwomen knew much about milking goats, but Kassandra showed them how to do it, and when they had milked a good bowlful, she fed the baby with milk dripped off the edge of her finger. The child fed enthusiastically and collapsed again into sleep, still sucking on Kassandra's finger, a warm lump in her arms. Kassandra took a piece of cloth and rigged a sling so that the baby could travel with her on her saddle, clinging about her neck like the babies of the Amazon mothers. She decided at least for the moment to call the child 'Honey' because, clean and warm and full fed, she had a sweet smell like honeycomb.

At least it would give her something to think about on the long road to Troy. And when she got there, if it did not suit her to have a child to bring up, she would make a present of her to the Queen, or to one of the temples; young girls were always useful for the endless spinning and weaving that must be done in all households.

At first Adrea and Kara made scornful comments about 'Your roadside brat', but soon they were quarrelling over which one should carry Honey on her lap on the long stretches in the cart, singing to her and telling her stories which she was still too young to understand. She soon grew plump and pretty; they combed her curly hair into ringlets and made her dresses from their own clothes. Kassandra soon could not remember what life had been like without the little girl clinging around her neck when she rode mule-back, snuggling in her lap when she rode in the

cart, or tagging at her heels whenever she went three steps from the cart or the camp. She seemed quickly to know who was her mother; the women were kind to her, but she would always leave them (even if they were feeding her sweetmeats) to go to Kassandra's arms. She slept curled in the back of the cart on the longer stretches of the journey, with Kassandra's snake curled up beside her, and often wanted to carry it in her own dress. When the women protested, Kassandra only laughed.

"See, she has more sense than you; she is not afraid of one of the Goddess's creatures. She is born to be a priestess, and she knows it."

Days stretched into weeks on the road as they retraced the long journey. When they came to the Great Plain, they kept a sharp eye for Kentaur bands. Kassandra hoped to encounter them; she had a weakness for the riding folk, although both the waiting women and all the escort and drivers hoped they would be spared any sight of them. But they had no sight of any living Kentaur, although one evening they saw a dead horse in a ditch, and clinging to him, the thin twisted body of his rider, cold and dead; the bones, almost protruding through the skin, told them that the poor fellow had died of starvation and cold.

Kassandra's heart twisted in pity, though her driver and the women said it was good riddance and wished all his fellows a similar fate.

One evening, as they were setting up camp, Kassandra caught sight, far off, of a little group of riders: a single old man, withered and deformed from years in the saddle, and half a dozen of

what seemed to be children but were probably undernourished half-grown boys. Kassandra could not tell for certain, but she thought it might be Cheiron. She gestured to them, and called to them in their own language, but they would not approach; they kept circling slowly around the camp, too far away to see clearly, or to hear what they were saying.

"We had better set a watch," one of the drivers remarked, "or while we sleep they may approach the camp and murder us all. You can never trust a Kentaur."

"That's not true," said Kassandra. "They won't hurt us; they are much more afraid of us than we are of them."

"They should all be done away with," said Kara. "They are not civilized men."

"They are hungry, that is all," Kassandra said. "They know we have food and beasts - our nanny-goat alone would give them the best meal they have had this year."

In spite of the disapproval of her women and the escort, she would still willingly have given them gifts and food, and tried to attract them near for some time, but they kept a wary distance, circling on their horses, and did not approach the camp. So as they settled down for the night one or two of the men kept watch; and Kassandra lay awake thinking of the Kentaurs out there in the dark on their horses. In the morning, she left some loaves of barley bread and a measure or two of meal in an old cracked pot they were ready to discard.

As they rode away from the camp, Kassandra saw that the Kentaurs were approaching; at least they would get the food -which might postpone death by starvation for a little while. To Honey, she thought, they will be only a legend - and everyone will tell how evil they were. But there was wisdom there, too, and a way of life we will not see again. Will the Amazons go this way too?

After the almost-encounter with the Kentaurs, the road seemed long and empty; day after day they toiled across the Great Plain, seeing few or no travellers, the days differentiated one from another only by the waxing and waning of the moon, the changes from fine to snowy weather. In passing through the country where she would have expected to encounter tribes of the Amazons, there were no riders at all, neither men nor women. Had all the Amazons perished, or been kidnapped to serve in the men's villages? She would have liked to send a message to Penthesilea but had not the slightest idea how to get word to her, or - even if she still lived. She sought to see her in the scrying-bowl, but could not find her.

Snow lay deep on the steppes and it was bitterly cold. Kassandra feared for the life of her snakes in this weather; she and Honey stayed in their blankets, a brazier keeping them warm, sharing their heat with the serpents. Sometimes the snow was so deep that the cart could not travel and they were cooped up all day, with no light, little heat and unable to cook food. They had to keep the nanny-goat in the wagon too because she could have been lost in the deep drifts.

As the months passed there was a change, too, in Honey -there were times when it seemed to Kassandra that the little girl could be seen growing between dawn and sunrise. It seemed that every day the little girl had some new clever trick or, in growing, had developed something new

to fascinate her foster mother. A few days after the appearance of the Kentaurs, she developed her first tooth; soon after she was able to sip her milk from a cup and soon after that, she was eating bread soaked in milk, or soft-mashed foods fed to her with a spoon. Rather sooner than Kassandra had expected, she had a full set of teeth and was grabbing and chewing anything she could reach from everyone's plate; Kassandra could no longer set her down on the ground at their night halts, for she would crawl away and quickly make a game of disappearing for the fun of being called and chased. Finally a time came, fortunately after the worst of the snow was past, when they had to watch her constantly lest she crawl out of the cart, even when it was moving; and soon she was running around at every halt. She was not, Kassandra thought, a particularly pretty child, but she was a strong and sturdy one, never sick, and rarely fretful even when she was cutting her teeth.

As time wore on and travel ate up the long road, they came into country with better roads, and encountered more travellers. It seemed the whole world was bound for Troy with weapons and all manner of goods to be sold to the Trojans. (Or to the Akhaians; it seemed now that the Akhaians were blocking all goods coming into Troy, by land or by sea.) And at last, one day, they sighted the familiar outline of Mount Ida and began to travel along the Scamander toward Troy.

When they came within sight of the city, it seemed to Kassandra that another city, a spread-out city of shacks and tents and shelters, had sprung up at the foot of the great walls, and the z sea was black with ships crowded into the harbor. There was a strong stench as if the very tides had been fouled; the streets of this new-made city were clogged with carts and chariots, and as soon

as Kassandra's escort brought the cart near, Akhaian soldiers dressed in the armor she remembered Akhilles's men had borne, came at once and demanded to know her business here.

Her escort had no success in explaining, so Kassandra, who spoke the language somewhat better, got down from the cart, with Honey astride her shoulder, and explained that she was Priam's daughter, returning from a long journey to Col' chis. This news, which Kassandra did not imagine would be particularly surprising, went from mouth to mouth, and finally there was a general outcry that the commander should hear it himself.

She had supposed this might be Akhilles, but instead it was the somewhat taller, stronger, darkhaired young man she had seen in Akhilles's company. They spoke of him as Patroklos, and he came and spoke to her with a certain amount of politeness; more at any rate than she remembered in Akhilles himself.

"The old king's daughter, you say you are, then? Wait a minute; there's a girl in Lord Agamemnon's tent who was brought up in the palace up there, or so she says. She can tell us whether or not you're who you say you are. Wait here," he ordered, and went away.

Honey felt heavy on her shoulder, and Kassandra asked leave of one of the soldier-guards to set her down. "Stay close to me," she admonished; she did not suppose any of the soldiers would knowingly harm a child except perhaps in the heat of battle, but she was not certain, and she did not trust these Akhaians enough to wish to test the theory.

After a time Patroklos returned with a veiled woman; she put back her veil and looked at Kassandra. "Yes," she said,"this is Priam's daughter." To Kassandra's shock and dismay she recognized the girl as Chryseis.

Kassandra, however startled, was relieved to know that Chryseis was alive and well. She said, "Chryseis, my dear, I have worried about you and I know how troubled your father must have been." Chryseis had grown tall and heavy-bodied, but she still had the astonishing blonde hair which had given her her name.

Patroklos spoke to one of the soldiers; they seemed to be discussing the probability that they might hold her for ransom, or for exchange for one of the Akhaian prisoners.

"You cannot do that," said her main escort. "She is a priestess of Apollo and is travelling under Apollo's truce."

"Oh, is she?" Patroklos demanded. "Maybe we can do something then to silence that priest of Apollo who never stops complaining to the Lord Agamemnon or anyone else who will listen to him. Our own priests keep demanding we should make offerings to Apollo; perhaps we should consult with her about the proper sacrifice."

He turned to Kassandra and said, "Would you sacrifice to the Sunlord for us, then?"

She said, "I remember all too well the fate of the last priestess Agamemnon sent for to make

sacrifices for you. I know who and what would be sacrificed." And she could see by their faces that this answer was not at all to their liking.

Chryseis looked at her for the first time and said, "You should not speak like that of Agamemnon, Kassandra."

"He is no friend to me, nor to my family," Kassandra said. "Nor do I owe him any duty as guest to host; I will speak of him as I will. Why are you so deferential to his name?"

"Because he is my lord and the most powerful man of all the Akhaians," said Chryseis, "and you would do well not to anger him; we are all in his power here."

"Shall I try when I return to the city to arrange for your freedom?" Kassandra asked in a whisper.

Chryseis tossed her head. She said scornfully, "I have not asked for that. My father has been invoking Apollo for my return, but Apollo has no power here compared with Agamemnon, and I would rather belong to a man than a God."

Then Kassandra recalled her terrible vision. She found that she was trembling; then she looked at Patroklos and said, "You have done me no discourtesy, so I will give you an honest warning; I have seen the terrible arrows of Apollo falling on this city, on Trojan and Akhaian alike." She heard her voice rising to a cry and felt the familiar heat and blaze of the Sunlord. "Ohh, beware

his anger, beware the wrath of Apollo! Provoke not his dreadful arrows!"

Patroklos seemed to shrink slightly, but he frowned at her and said, "Yes; I heard you were a prophetess. Listen to me, woman; I'm not afraid of your Trojan Apollo, but it is always unwise to provoke another's Gods. I'd be inclined to let you go; our priests z will probably say the same thing, and I have no love for making war on women. But it's for Akhilles himself to make the final decision." He spoke to a young boy who was watching, and told him to run for the Commander.

A considerable crowd had gathered around the cart; the waiting-women came to the front, looking out of the cart. Patroklos looked up at the two elderly women and asked Kassandra, "Who are these women?"

"They are my mother's servants; my waiting-women."

"Are they, too, sworn priestesses of Apollo?"

"No, they are not; but they are under my protection and his."

Kassandra began to be uncomfortable at the way they were looking at her. She picked up Honey, who had been crawling round her feet, and held her in her arms. Patroklos said, "We have not nearly enough women in our camp to do the women's work. I will not strive with the Trojan Apollo for you, but these women are legitimately my prisoners." He went to the cart and

seized Kara by the arm.

"Get down, old lady. You're staying here."

She shook him off with a furious shrug.

"Take your hands off me, you dirty Akhaian beast."

Quite deliberately Patroklos raised his arm and slapped her, not very hard, across the mouth. "I'm not quite sure what you said, but here's your first lesson, old woman; among us you don't talk that way to men. Get inside there; you'll find some clothes to mend. If you do it well, we may feed you."

Kassandra exclaimed, "I told you these women are under my protection and that of the Sunlord! Let her go—or beware his anger!"

"And I told you," said Patroklos,"that I care nothing at all for your Trojan Apollo. I will honor his truce to the extent that I will not offer insult to his prophetess, but these women are my prisoners and there is nothing you can do about it."

Kassandra noticed that in the crowd there were a number of women, none of whom seemed to be at all surprised at Patroklos's words or actions. Kara cried out and began to run, heading for the gates of Troy; Patroklos gestured to one of the soldiers to bring her back, and said to

Chryseis, "Here, you, you speak her language; tell her what I said. No one will abuse her if she does her work well. And you might repeat what I said to Priam's daughter; she doesn't seem to understand all that well, either."

-

Chryseis began to repeat Patroklos's words to Kara, but Kassandra interrupted.

"Tell the Akhaian captain that I understand what he said perfectly well; but these women are my handmaidens, and under the protection of Lord Apollo just as I am myself; he cannot take them from me."

"Do you think you are going to stop me, Princess?" the man inquired, and dragged Adrea out of the wagon. "Now this one, she's too old for bedding, but I'll wager she can cook; Akhilles has been saying he wants some one to wait on that woman he keeps in his tent. Send her over to Briseis, somebody."

One of the men standing about said, "What about the baby? She looks strong and healthy - shall I get it?"

"Gods of Hades, no," said Patroklos, as Kassandra's hand tightened on her dagger. "She's still wetting her clothes; do you think we will hang about in Troy till the brat is beddable? Forget it." He said to Kassandra, "Be grateful that you are under Apollo's protection; I suggest you climb

into your cart and be on your way. But not quite yet." He gestured to his men and said, "Strip the cart; the food we can use, and other things."

The men at once began swarming all over the cart, hauling out provisions and throwing them down. Kassandra had nothing to say; she knew they would not listen. After a time, as she knew they would, they got into the blanket rolls, and began to unfold them on the ground; then the soldier jumped back with a shriek as the largest of the serpents unrolled before him. He grabbed at his spear, but Kassandra cried out a warning in his own language.

"No! She is sacred to the Sunlord; do not dare to touch her!"

The man staggered back, as pale as death; Kassandra had been in Colchis so long she had forgotten the terror with which the creatures were held in the Islands. Now she reached inside her dress and encouraged the serpent there to crawl slowly out. It circled her waist and flowed along her arm, as the soldiers drew back one by one, gripped by superstitious terror.

"A-aaahhhh! Look here! What has come by her sorcery—!"

"Don't be fools," said Patroklos. "In our country priestesses are taught to handle them too; but don't lay a hand on her. We don't want them here. Go," he said to Kassandra, "and take your damned pets with you."

Kassandra knew she would get no better. Kara and Adrea were kneeling and weeping;

Kassandra went to them and said softly, "Don't be too frightened; do as they say and don't make them angry. I swear by Apollo, I'll get you back." She had no great love for either of the waitingwomen; but they were under her protection, and were dear to her mother.

Now she could see reason for Apollo's anger. She would speak at once to his priests.

CHAPTER 19

As the cart clattered across the space before the walls of Troy, Kassandra realized that all the sentries on the walls must have seen what had happened to it. The plundering of a cart must not be an unusual occurrence or they would have interfered, at least by shooting arrows down into the Akhaian camp. No doubt better informed travellers with goods bound for Troy knew enough to do as she should have done, and approach from the landward side.

Kassandra still had the serpents destined for the Sunlord's Temple. She herself was unharmed, and they had not seriously threatened Honey. It could have been worse. But it meant that the level of hostilities had escalated; she should have had the forethought to inform herself of how the war was progressing.

In front of the gates an armed Trojan soldier stopped her, and after a moment she recognized Deiphobos, Priam's son by one of his palace women.

He bowed.

"The main street is too steep for the cart, Princess," he told her. "You will have to have it driven around to the landward side. But for you we will open the small gateway beside the great gate. The great gate is never opened now for fear the Akhaians will rush it; so long as it stays shut, it can't be breached unless some God or other, Poseidon perhaps, decides to break it," he added, quickly making a gesture against evil luck.

"May that day be far," Kassandra said. "Can you find someone to take the cart to the Temple of Apollo? There are serpents for the Sunlord's house in the cart, and they must not be frightened, or allowed to get too cold."

"I'll send a messenger at once to the Sunlord's house," Deiphobos promised her courteously. ""Will you go at once to the palace, Sister?"

"Yes; I am longing to see my mother," Kassandra said. "I hope she is well?"

"Queen Hecuba? Oh, yes; though like us all, she grows no younger," said Deiphobos.

"And our father? He lives still in health? I heard he had suffered some illness…'

"Word came of this as far as Colchis? He suffered the stroke of the God; he is lame, and his face

stricken on one side," the young officer told her. "And now Prince Hector leads the armies of Troy."

"Yes, this I had heard," Kassandra said, "but on the long road from Colchis I had no news at all, nor was the journey favourable for the Sight; for all I knew he might have died since then."

"No, I rejoice to say that though he grows old, he is well enough to come out every day on the wall to see what happens," Deiphobos said. "As long as Priam still leads us, Hector will not be too foolhardy. Akhilles—" he made a contemptuous gesture toward the Akhaian camp, "is always trying to lure Hector out to single combat; but my brother has more sense than that. Besides, we all know how Agamemnon played a filthy trick on his own daughter, so it's not likely they'd observe the rules of single combat; more likely they'd rush him ten or more at a time. You can't trust an Akhaian as far as you can throw him; they say, if one of 'em kisses you, count your teeth, thieving bastards. But I see they let you through safe—"

"Safe, but I encountered their thieving ways," Kassandra told him. "What they left unstolen was only because they feared Apollo's serpents—and I do not think that was from any reverence for the God, but only fear of the serpents themselves. And they have taken both of my mother's waiting-women—who were not Apollo's servants but mine, or rather Hecuba's."

Deiphobos came and gently patted her shoulder.

"Never fear, Sister, we'll get your waiting-women back. But let me send to the Sunlord's Temple

for men to unload your cart; and for you, an escort up to the palace; it isn't fitting for a princess to walk alone through the city. Better yet, let me send to the palace for a sedan chair; it's what the Lady Andromache uses when she comes down to greet Hector every day before the battles start."

Kassandra wanted to protest that she was certainly capable of walking; but Honey was heavy in her arms and she agreed to use the chair.

Before long servants in the distinctive robes of the Sunlord's house appeared, and Kassandra gave careful instructions about the serpents, promising that she would herself come to supervise their care after she had greeted her parents. Then Deiphobos conducted her through the side gate into a small guard-house. There he fetched her wine and refreshment while she awaited the chair which was to carry her to the palace.

She was unaccustomed to the sun's glare, its heat even in this season. It soon seemed frighteningly hot to her. Also, she was worrying about Kara and Adrea.

Honey was crawling on the floor of the little guard-house; Kassandra noticed that she was getting her tunic very dirty, and her knees not much less so, but she was far too tired to care. Deiphobos guided her attention to a small stairway carved out from the stone, which led up actually inside the wall.

"Would you care to have a look from the top of the wall? You can see everything that goes on in the Akhaian camp from here. The King is coming down now to have a look - he comes every day

about this time," Deiphobos said. "I hear his guards." He glanced at Honey. "The baby will be safe here," he said. "She's big enough that no one will step on her." He picked up a spear that was leaning against the wall, and slung it in his belt. "There - nothing else she can hurt herself with. Come along."

Kassandra followed him up the narrow steep stairs; he turned back at the top to give her a hand up. It was true; from here she could see all through the Akhaian camp. He pointed out to her the large ornamented tent that was Agamemnon's, the somewhat smaller but more ornamental one that belonged to Akhilles and Patroklos, the quarters of Odysseus, which looked as if he had moved a ship's cabin ashore. "And many others. There's a long roster of the ships out there which belong to the Akhaians -some bard was making a song about it," he said. "To hear them tell it, every hero from the mainland has turned up to help Agamemnon and his crew. There's a sizeable list of our allies too, but I don't suppose you're interested in that."

"Not particularly," Kassandra confessed. "I heard enough about both sides in Colchis."

"Colchis," he said thoughtfully, "come to think of it, Colchis hasn't come out for either side; why hasn't their King sent soldiers for Troy?"

"Because Colchis has no king," Kassandra informed him. "Colchis is ruled by a queen; and this last year she has been pregnant; her heir - a daughter - was born a few days before I left."

"No king, and a woman's rule? Seems a funny way to run a city." Before he had time to say

anything more, the sound of soldiers approaching interrupted them, and Priam, accompanied by several of his soldiers—many of whom Kassandra recognized as the sons of his palace women— came up on the top of the wall.

It was well she had been warned by the Sight; otherwise she might have recognized her father only by the rich cloak he wore. He had been a hale and hearty man with a fresh colour, verging on middle age; now she saw an old man, his skin greyish and wrinkled, his face fallen away at one side with a drooping eyelid, the corner of his mouth sagging. His speech too was heavy and thick.

He demanded of Deiphobos, "What was going on in the Akhaian camp this morning? Was it those Akhaians intercepting weapons again? If this keeps up, we'll be melting down our old swords to make new ones. We need a couple of wagon-loads of iron from Colchis, but we'd have to arrange special escort or bribe somebody to let it through…'

He broke off and said, "How many times have I told you; no women here unless the Queen herself is present to make certain they behave themselves? You know as well as I do, the kind of women who come here to gawk at the soldiers—"

Kassandra said, "No, Father; it is not Deiphobos's fault; he offered me shelter from the sun and a view from the wall after the Akhaians captured my wagon—"

She did not finish, but she did not need to; Priam recognized her and said, "So you have come

back like an ill omen, Kassandra! I thought you had determined to pass the rest of the war in Colchis, one less woman for me to worry about should the city fall. But your mother has missed you." He came and dutifully kissed her on the forehead. "Do you mean that the Akhaians dared to break Apollo's truce?"

When she was a small child Kassandra had found Priam's anger terrifying; now he simply sounded peevish, like an overgrown spoilt child. She said gently, "It doesn't matter, Father; no one has been hurt, and Apollo's property—including me, I suppose—is quite safe. And as soon as my chair is here I shall go and reassure my mother."

"You are strong and healthy; why should you need a chair to carry you?" he demanded crossly.

The war is not going as he wishes it, she translated to herself, and said demurely, "Yes, Father, I am sure you are right."

"Your chair is waiting for you," Deiphobos said, and Kassandra saw it drawing up inside the wall. She went down the stairs and picked up Honey, wishing she could find a way to have the baby washed and fed before bringing her to her mother; but there was no help for it now. She herself was dishevelled from long travelling, and from the interlude in the dusty Akhaian camp, as well as from holding the dirty child; but there was no help for that either.And why should I put on my finest robe and tidy my bands and face for my mother* she asked herself. But when she was brought into Queen Hecuba's presence, and saw her mother's disapproving stare, she knew.

"Well, Kassandra! My dear, dear daughter!" Hecuba exclaimed and came to embrace her, then drew back with a little grimace of dismay.

"But what have you been doing with yourself, my dear! Your dress is a disgrace, and your hair—"

"Mother, after encountering the Akhaians this morning, it is fortunate they even left me a dress to wear before you," she said with a smile. "I fear that the gifts I brought you from your kinswoman Imandra were left in the Akhaian camp."

Hecuba looked deeply distressed, "They did not - offer you insult?"

"Nobody raped me, if that's what you mean," Kassandra said, laughing.

"How can you make a joke of such a thing?" her mother demanded.

Kassandra said, kissing her, "Why, how can I do anything else? They are fools, all of them, but there is foolery enough in Troy, if it comes to that."

Hecuba's eyes fell on the child in Kassandra's arms.

"Why, what's this? A child, and such a young one - her hair - it curls like yours did when you were that age - why, what - who -how—?"

"No, Mother," Kassandra said quickly,"she is not mine - or rather, I did not bear her; she is a foundling." Hecuba still looked sceptical, and Kassandra, sighing—why was her mother always ready to think evil of her? - said, "Would it be easy to find a man who would have my bed when it was occupied with a serpent, even one so small as this?" She reached inside her dress for the one who always coiled there during her waking hours; Hecuba gave a little scream.

"A snake—and in your very bosom!"

"She is my child far more than the baby," Kassandra said laughing, "for I hatched her myself from an egg; but anyone in my train can tell you how I found Honey on a hillside in a snowstorm; cast out to die by some mother who chose not to rear a girl this year."

Hecuba came and looked closely at the child. She said, "Now I look well, she is not at all like you—"

"I told you that."

"So you did. I am sorry; I would not willingly believe…'

Not willingly, perhaps, but you would have believed it, Kassandra thought.

But then her mother asked the question she had been evading.-'And where are Kara and Adrea?"

"In the tents of Agamemnon and Akhilles," she said, "but not by choice." She explained what had befallen them.

"So we must somehow arrange to ransom them, or exchange them, perhaps for Akhaian prisoners," she said.

"Arrange to exchange them? Why should we do business with the Akhaians?" asked a familiar voice, and Andromache came into the room. "Oh, Kassandra! My dear sister!" and she flew to embrace her, ignoring the dirt on her robe. "So you have returned! I knew you were not traitorous enough to remain all through the war in Colchis! What a darling baby!" she exclaimed, staring at Honey. "Is she yours? No? Oh, what a shame!" Then she saw the snake and recoiled a little.

"So you are still at your old game of playing with serpents! I should have remembered."

Honey, seeing the snake, began to cry and reach out her hands for it. Kassandra, laughing, allowed the little girl to wind it about her waist. Andromache shrank away with a glance of revulsion, but the child's delight in the snake was unmistakable.

"Why not get her a kitten, Kassandra?" Hecuba suggested. "It would be an altogether more seemly pet."

Kassandra laughed. "She is content with such pets as I give her; you should see her with our very matriarch of serpents - the one who is almost as big around as she is."

"Are you not afraid—snakes have not very good eyesight - the snake will make a mistake and swallow her by misadventure?" Andromache protested.

But Kassandra said, "They know their own; Honey has fed her with doves and rabbits. But Mother, this is not a proper subject for your rooms."

Hecuba asked, laughing, "The snake—or the baby?"

"Both," Kassandra replied, hugging her mother again. "Let me call someone to take her away for a bath and clean clothing. She will be prettier then and besides, she has had nothing to eat since early morning." Then, with a glance at Hecuba for permission, Kassandra summoned a servant to take child and snake to the house of the Sunlord.

"I too should present myself there soon, I fear," she said, "although I am sure they would gladly give me leave to pay my respects to my mother and to my family. And I would like to see Helen's sons," she added.

"Ah, Helen's sons," Hecuba said dryly. "There are jokes in the Akhaian army that Helen is raising up an army for Troy."

"As I cannot for Hector," said Andromache and her eyes were full of tears. "But that Akhaian woman, no sooner has she whelped than she is in pup again."

"What a thing to say," Hecuba protested. "You had back luck, that is all. You have borne Hector a fine son—and every man in the army knows his name and admires him. What more do you want?"

"Nothing," Andromache said, "and just between us women, I am glad enough to be spared the business of bearing every year or two; I told Hector that if he wishes for fifty sons like his father, he must get them as his father does. But so far he wishes only to share my bed and even refused one of the captured Akhaian women. Perhaps I am not as fond of children as Helen, but I would like to have a daughter before I am too old. And speaking of daughters, Kassandra, did you know that Creusa had named her second daughter "Kassandra"?"

"No, that I had not heard," Kassandra said, and wondered if it were Creusa's doing or that of Aeneas.

"And now before you go," said Andromache,"tell me of my mother."

Kassandra told Andromache of the birth of the heir to Colchis; and Andromache sighed.

"I wish that I might go to Colchis so that Hector might be the King there; perhaps when this wretched war is over that can be arranged."

"Imandra feels that her little pearl princess will be reared to be Queen," Kassandra said. "And Hector would not be content to sit at the foot of the throne, as your mother's consort does, and amuse himself with hunting and fishing with his companions."

Andromache sighed.

"Perhaps not; but he would get used to it, I suppose, as I have got used to keeping indoors and spinning until my fingers are sore," she said restlessly. "Now that you have returned, Kassandra, perhaps we can manage some excursions outside the walls…'

"If the Akhaians allow it—"

"Or if they get tired of sitting outside the walls and throwing rocks at the guards," Andromache said. "That is about all they have accomplished in the last few months; though once or twice they have tried to storm the walls, and even brought-extra-long ladders. But Hector had the idea of emptying the big soup kettle boiling for the guards' dinner over their heads, and they went down a great deal faster than they had come up, I assure you." She laughed heartily. "Now they always keep a great kettle of something boiling up there, and if it is something no worse than soup, the assailants are lucky. Last time it was oil, and they have not tried again since then; ai, the screams we heard that night from the Akhaian camp! All their healer-priests were out chanting, and sacrificing to Apollo until past dawn. That will teach them to come sneaking up the wall when they thought all the guards were sleeping!"

"You do not bear weapons now—but you have not lost your taste for warfare," Kassandra commented.

"I have a child to protect." Andromache replied, and Kassandra remembered that she herself had indeed been ready to kill when the soldiers threatened Honey.

"And I many children; but they are all of an age to fight for themselves," Hecuba said. "And now, Kassandra, tell me; when you passed through the country of the Amazons, did you encounter our kinswoman? And had Penthesilea any message for me?"

"I saw her only on the outward journey," Kassandra said, and told her mother about the meeting with the Amazons, and how many of the women had chosen to settle into villages with men. Then, more troubled, she told about the starving Kentaurs on the return journey, and that she saw no sign of any women of the tribes.

"May the Goddess be with her," said Hecuba fervently. "I have no sense that she is dead; and I think I might know. We have always been as close as if we were twins; but she is four years younger than I. It is not beyond all possibility that one day we may see her in Troy."

"May that day be far," Kassandra said, "for she told me that if the war went desperately against us, she would come and end her days in Troy." And with a curious flicker of light, as if the sun went behind a cloud, she saw Penthesilea riding through the gates of Troy… in triumph, or in

defeat? She could not tell; the vision was gone, and they spoke of other things.

At last she rose and stretched herself. "I sit like any old gossip among women," she said, "and I have duties awaiting me in the Sunlord's house. But it has been good to gossip and be idle—" and, she thought, to talk of women's matters like the raising of children. She had once thought it must be very boring, but since having a child of her own, she began to understand that such woman's talk could be absorbing.But to speak of nothing else for a lifetime …

"It is not every day that you return from a journey of such length," Andromache said. "Helen will want to see you, and show you her babes - and Creusa to show you your namesake. She is more like Polyxena, with red hair and blue eyes—and as pretty as if Aphrodite had laid the gift of beauty in her cradle. She will marry a prince, if this war leaves any of us alive to think about marriages."

"I think no one will ever call my little one beautiful," Kassandra said, "but to a mother I suppose even the plainest children are lovely. In any case I intend, if the Gods are kind, to send her to Penthesilea to be brought up a warrior. I still wish I might have been."

"Oh, you cannot mean that, Kassandra," said Hecuba, coming to embrace her in farewell.

"Can I not? Mother, if anything of Imandra's gifts has survived the Akhaians, I will send them to you as quickly as the cart can be unloaded," she said, and took her leave. Andromache said she would walk with her a little way.

"For I get out so seldom, and Hector is always very troubled if I go out alone; but he cannot refuse me the chaperonage of my own husband's sister," she said discontentedly. "I often walk with Helen, but she did not come down today: Paris took a small wound in the last fight; nothing to worry him, but enough to give him a good excuse to stay indoors and be cosseted. Otherwise I am sure she would have come to greet you."

A few steps afterwards they parted, Andromache to return to the palace and Kassandra turning up to the Sunlord's high house.

She had turned Honey over to one of the governesses, and had started across the courtyard to check on the snakes when she encountered Khryse.

He looked weary and worn; there were new lines in his once-handsome face, and lines of dull silver in his fair hair. It was hard to realize that there had been a time when in this temple there had been those who considered him nearly as handsome as the Sunlord himself.

He recognized her at once, and cried out in welcome.

"Kassandra! We have all missed you," he exclaimed, and came quickly to embrace her. She would have recoiled, but it was not unpleasant to see a familiar face and to know herself so welcomed; so she allowed the embrace and at once regretted it, though she managed to twist her face so that his kiss fell only on her chin.

Quickly disentangling herself, she retreated out of reach.

"It seems that all has gone well with you while I was absent," she remarked. "You look well and thriving." Not for worlds would she have told him that it was his face in an oracle which had prompted her to return to Troy.

"But that is not true," he said. "Never again shall I have health or joy until the Gods choose to restore to me my poor dishonored child."

"Khryse," said Kassandra gently. "Is it not near upon three years that Chryseis has been in the camp of the Akhaians?"

"I care not if it is a lifetime," Khryse said passionately. "I will mourn and protest and cry out to the Gods—"

"Cry, then," Kassandra said, "but expect not that they will hear. It is your own pride you mourn and not your daughter," she went on sharply. "I saw her this morning in the Akhaian camp; she seems well and happy and content, and when I asked if I should try to arrange for her exchange, she told me to mind my own affairs. I truly think she is content to be Agamemnon's woman, even if she cannot be his queen."

Khryse's handsome face grew dark with wrath.

"Have a care, Kassandra; you say this to hurt me, and I believe not a word of it."

"Why should I wish to hurt you?" she asked. "You are my friend, and your daughter was like my own child. Think only of her happiness, Khryse, and leave her where she is. I warn you, if you press further in this matter, you will bring down the wrath of the Gods upon our city."

His face twisted in anger.

"And I am supposed to believe you have my good at heart? You care nothing for me; I who have so long loved you…'

"Oh, Khryse," she said, holding out her hands to him in absolute sincerity, "please, please, don't begin to talk of this again. Why must you think I wish you ill because I do not desire you?"

"Then what would you do if you wished me ill? When you have destroyed any kindness I might have in my heart—"

"If such kindness is destroyed, why do you say it is my fault? Cannot a man take any woman seriously unless she is willing to lie with him?" she asked. "I speak to you in all friendship, Khryse; do not press this matter."

"You are willing to see my daughter disgraced and insult offered to Apollo—"

"In the name of all the Gods, Khryse, the question is not what you feel, but what your daughter feels," she said in exasperation, remembering Chryseis's proud look when Patroklos had turned to her for help in translation. But she did not wish Khryse's anger to make more trouble; there was already enough bitterness and this could only make it worse. She spoke with what friendliness she could summon. "If you do not believe me, why not go down to the Akhaian camp - they will honor Apollo's truce for his priest - and ask her for yourself if she feels disgraced. If she wishes to leave Agamemnon, I swear to you I shall go to Priam and leave nothing undone to have her released or exchanged. But if she is happy with Agamemnon and he with her—believe me, she is no prisoner; they were calling upon her to translate when they took my waiting-women from me, and they are elderly women who truly do not wish to remain in the camp of the Akhaians. But I promise you: if Chryseis wishes to return I will do everything I can before the King and the Queen."

"But the disgrace - my daughter to be Agamemnon's concubine—"

"Cannot you see that you are unreasonable? Why is it so disgraceful for her to be Agamemnon's woman? And if this makes you shudder so with shame, why were you so eager to convince me that it would do no harm if I should beyours ? Is it different for your daughter than Priam's daughter?" she asked harshly, losing patience at last. Now he was really angry; and she was just as well pleased; it meant she need no longer fear that he would try to grab at her.

"How dare you mention my daughter as if she were like you?" he charged her angrily. "You do

not care what happens to my daughter. As long as you can follow your own unnatural ways and refuse to give yourself, to humiliate any man—"

"Humiliate you? Is that what you think?" she asked wearily. "Khryse, there are hundreds of women on this earth who would be happy to give themselves to you. Why should you choose one - perhaps the only one - who does not want you."

"I did not choose to desire you," he said, glaring at her, "but I find I wish for no other. You have bewitched me, out of some evil wish to humble me; I…' He stopped, gulped and said, "Do you think, sorceress, that I have not tried to break this spell you have cast on me?"

For a moment Kassandra almost pitied him. She said, "Khryse, if you are under a curse, some other has done it and not I. I swear by Serpent Mother and by Earth Mother and by Apollo himself whom we both worship; I bear you no malice and no evil will, and I will entreat any God to free you from any such spell. I want no power over you, and I would bless your manhood, providing you find some other woman on whom to exercise it."

"So you still have no pity on me? Even knowing what you have brought me to, you still deny yourself to me?"

"Khryse," she said, "enough. I am awaited above, and I must show myself to Charis and to the priestesses. I wish you good night."

She turned away, but he muttered between his teeth, "You will be sorry for this, Kassandra; even if I die for it I swear you will regret this."

I travelled all the way to Colchis and back to escape this man's bitterness; and I return no better off than I left, except that his wrath has had two years to grow.

Lord Apollo, was it your will that I should have given myself to this man I dislike so much? she wondered; almost frightened at her own thought.Even if Apollo demanded it, would I have given myself to Khryse ?

But he had not demanded it. And Khryse—he was always a troublemaker; must she be part of his troublemaking?

CHAPTER 20

Kassandra lay awake much of the night, mentally going over her argument with Khryse, wondering what she should have said. Surely he would at last have seen reason, had she been able to find the right words.

Finally she decided that in his current state he probably was not capable of reason at all. Was any man, when a woman was concerned? Certainly, Paris had not showed much reason when it

was a question of Helen… and he already had a virtuous and beautiful wife who had given him a son, and from what she had heard, that was what men wanted most.

But it certainly was not only men; women too seemed to lose all reason… when it was a matter of men. Even Queen Imandra, who was strong and independent, and Hecuba, who had been brought up as an Amazon, showed little of reason when it was a matter of their husbands. Asfor Briseis, or Chryseis , Kassandra thought almost with contempt,they are like puppy dogs, rolling over with all four feet in the air if their master but gives them a pat .

Perhaps the question is not why they do so, but why do I feel no desire to do so?

She shifted her weight on the bed to make room for the serpent which coiled slowly around her waist. It was good to be sleeping in a bed rather than on the hard floor of the cart; and with her last thought she reminded herself to check the cart and make certain which of Imandra's gifts, if any, had survived the Akhaian soldiers. Their fear of serpents might have kept them from exploring the depths of the cart.

She woke at sunrise; Honey was playing on the foot of the bed, letting the serpent flow around her waist and down along her arms. She bathed the child and found her some breakfast, then went to the top of the temple where the first rays would strike the heights of Troy. She thought she should go up to the temple of the Maiden today, and greet her friends among the priestesses there, and perhaps offer thanks for her safe return to

Troy. But before she had a chance she noticed Khryse among the assembled priests come to greet the sunrise.

He looked even worse than the night before, his features swollen and his eyes reddened as if he had not slept.Poor man , she thought,I should not taunt him or expect him to be reasonable when he is in so much misery; it may not make sense for him to suffer like this, but when did that ever stop anyone from suffering ?

Charis was speaking with him; she saw Charis point to one and then another of the priests, saying 'You, and you, and you—no, not you, you cannot be spared." As Kassandra approached, them, Charis beckoned to her.

"I understand from what Khryse says that you actually saw his daughter in the Argive camp yesterday when you passed through. Are you certain it was really Chryseis? It has been some years, and she was a growing girl when she - left us."

"When she was cruelly stolen from us, you mean," Khryse added savagely.

Kassandra said, "Why, yes, I am sure; even had I not recognized her, she recognized me, she addressed me by name and warned me against angering Agamemnon."

"And did you say this to her father?"

"I did; but the message made him angry," Kassandra said. "He as much as accused me of inventing it to torment him."

Khryse said sullenly, "You know Kassandra has always had a grudge against me."

"If I were going to invent a tale to annoy Khryse I could make up a much better one than that," Kassandra said. "I tell you, it happened exactly as I have said."

"Well then, you had better go with him to the Akhaian camp," Charis said. "He is resolved to go down and in Apollo's name demand the return of his daughter from the Akhaians. They too have priests of Apollo and observe his truce."

Since this was exactly what she had suggested that he do, she was not surprised, except that he had not done it months or years ago. But she supposed that he had first exhausted all other remedies, whatever they might have been.

There were a good three dozen of them in the ceremonial robes and head-dresses of the Sunlord when at last they started down the long streets and arrived at the great gates of Troy. The guard was unwilling to open the gates, but when Khryse explained that they wished to parley with Agamemnon to arrange a prisoner's return in the name of Apollo, the guard sent a herald to arrange a meeting. Then they all stood around in the hot sun for the best part of an hour until they saw a tall, strongly built man, with thick black curly hair and an elaborately curled beard, approaching them with long, purposeful strides.

Kassandra had never been so close to Agamemnon as this before; as always, horror and revulsion flooded her body. She stared at the ground and never raised her eyes, hoping he would not notice her.

He did not. He stared belligerently at Khryse and said, "What do you want? I am not a priest of Apollo; if you wish to arrange a festival truce or some such matter, your business is with my priests, and not with me."

Khryse stepped forward. He was taller than Agamemnon, his head imposing even with his blond hair faded, his features strongly carved. His voice, deep and strong, rang out imposingly:

"If you are Agamemnon of Mykenae, then my business is indeed with you. I am Khryse, priest of Apollo; and you are holding my daughter as a prisoner in your camp; she was taken three years ago at spring planting."

"Oh?" Agamemnon inquired. "And which of my men is holding this woman?"

"Lord Agamemnon, her name is Chryseis; and I believe it is you who is holding her. In Apollo's name I declare myself ready to pay such ransom as is suitable and customary; and if you do not wish to ransom her then I demand you pay me her bride-price and that we see her married with all proper formality."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Agamemnon said. "I wondered what you wanted, all dressed up for ceremony. Well, Khryse, priest of Apollo, listen here; I intend to keep her myself; and as for marrying her, I can't, because I've already got a wife." He gave a great sarcastic bellow of laughter.

"So I suggest you and your friends march right back inside Troy before I decide that I could use a few more women in the camp." His eyes swept across the ranks of priests and priestesses. "Most of your women seem to be too old for bedding; I seem to have the only pretty one, but we could use a few cooks and wash-women."

"You deliberately persist in this insult to Apollo Sunlord, then? You continue in this insult to his High Priest?" Khryse demanded.

Agamemnon spoke slowly, as if to a young child or a simpleton.

"Listen well, priest," he said, "I worship the Sky Thunderer Zeus, and the Earth Shaker, Poseidon, Lord of Horses. I will not meddle in the affairs of Apollo; he is not my God. But by the same token, your Apollo would be well advised not to meddle with me. This woman in my tent is mine and I will neither ransom her nor pay a bride-price; and that is all I have to say to you. Now go."

Khryse controlling his anger, replied, "And I say to you that I lay my curse on you; you are a man who has broken the sacred laws, and no child of yours shall honor your grave. And if you

do not fear my curse, then fear the curse of Apollo, for it is his curse I lay upon your people, and you shall not escape it. His arrows shall fall upon you all, I so declare."

"Declare anything you like," Agamemnon said. "I have heard the rage of my foes before this, and it is of all sounds the most welcome to my heart. As for your Sunlord, I defy his curse; let him do his worst. Now get out of my camp, or I shall tell my archers to use you all for target practice."

"So be it, my lord King," said Khryse, "you shall see how long you can scorn the curse of Apollo."

One of the archers cried out, "Shall I shoot the insolent Trojan, Lord Agamemnon?"

"By no means," Agamemnon said in his rich deep voice. "He is a priest, not a warrior. I do not kill women, little boys, eunuchs, nanny-goats, or priests." The laughter from the ranks of archers robbed Khryse's exit of much of its dignity, but he strode firmly away without looking back; one by one the priests and priestesses followed him. Kassandra kept her eyes lowered, but she could feel, for some reason, Agamemnon's eyes on her. It might only be that she was the youngest of the women from Troy, almost all the other priestesses chosen being well past fifty; but perhaps it was something more. She only knew that she did not want to meet Agamemnon's glance.

And Chryseis went to this man - willingly!

They climbed through the city to the balcony of the Sunlord's house which looked down upon the plains before Troy. Khryse had disappeared briefly from among them; when he reappeared he was wearing the golden mask of the God, and bearing the ritual bow. Suddenly it appeared that he grew taller, more imposing; all the eyes of the Akhaians below were raised to where he stood. Khryse raised his bow and cried out:

"Beware, you who have offended my priest!" and Kassandra realized who stood there beneath the mask, and the voice, strong and resonant and more than human, rang throughout Troy and to the furthest corner of the Akhaian camp below.

"This is my city, Akhaians; I solemnly warn you my curse and my arrows shall strike and shall smite every man among you, if to my priest you return not the one so unlawfully taken, beware of my curse and my arrows, I warn you, you chieftains impious!"

Even Kassandra, who was familiar with the voice of the God, was paralyzed with terror. She could not have moved a muscle nor spoken a word.

Quickly the form who at once was and was not Khryse shot three arrows into the air. One of them fell directly upon the roof of Agamemnon's tent; another before the tent of Akhilles; and the third into the very center of the camp. Kassandra watched, feeling a dreadful stillness, as if she had watched all this before. It was as if she were very far away, and a thick wall of glass, or the weight of an ocean, rippled before her, cutting off what she saw and heard.

Apollo's curse! It has come upon us, O Sunlord!

Or, she thought,is this curse on the Akhaians alone ?

And yet, if the Akhaians are cursed, somehow we will suffer for it; we are at their mercy. I wonder if Priam realizes that? If he does not, I am sure Hector does.

Then slowly she began to be aware again of what was going on around her; the glare of midday, the light reflected off city walls and the plain below, the laughter and jeers of the Akhaians. They seemed to think this a charade, a gesture; it never occurred to them that perhaps Apollo himself had cursed their people and their army.

Or did I dream it?

Whatever the truth, there were things to be done. She went to the temple and was set to the task of accepting and tallying the offerings. After an hour of counting and tallying up flasks of oil, and wheaten loaves, it felt as if she had never been away from Troy.

She worked till sunset; when she had finished with the offerings, she went to care for the serpents and to see what places had been found for them. Then she went to Charis, who was still the most senior priestess and told her that alone she could not care easily for so many snakes if she had other duties as well. She asked her to recommend a young girl to train to help her with them and learn serpent-lore. Charis asked if Phyllida would be satisfactory to her.

"Yes; she has always been my friend," Kassandra replied, and Charis sent for Phyllida and asked if it was acceptable to her.

"I will teach you everything I learned in Colchis," Kassandra promised, and Phyllida seemed pleased.

"Yes, and if we work together, our children can grow up as brother and sister," Phyllida said. "It was I who bathed your little one and gave her supper yesterday. She is very quick and clever, and some day she will be pretty too."

Kassandra suspected that Phyllida had said this to flatter her, but it did not altogether displease her. When it had all been arranged, they went out again to look down into the Akhaian camp; the glare and heat that had blinded all in the daytime was subsiding a little, and a light wind sprang up at sunset; they could see blowing dust in the Akhaian camp, and the forms of many people, some of them robed in the white robes of Apollo's servants.

"So they were not quite as casual as they seemed about it," Phyllida said. She had not gone down into the camp, but she had heard all about it, and Kassandra could see it had lost nothing in the telling. "Look, they are performing rituals to purify the camp and appease the Sunlord."

"Well they might, if they scorn his curse," Kassandra said.

"I do not think it is the soldiers who scorn his curse," Phyllida said. "I think it is only Agamemnon himself; and we know already that he is a godless man."

"What are they about now?" Kassandra asked.

"They are building fires to cleanse the ground," Phyllida said, then shrank back at the great cry of mourning that rose from the Akhaians. They had dragged out a body from one of the tents, and were casting it on the flames.

It was too far to hear the words of the cries of despair, but they had heard such cries before. Phyllida gasped, "There is plague in their camp!"

And Kassandra said, in horror, "This, then, is the Sunlord's curse!"

Every morning and evening for ten days they watched plague victims being dragged out of the camp and their bodies burned; after the third day, the bodies were dragged a long way down the shore and burned there, for fear of contagion. Kassandra, who had seen the dirt and filth and disorder within the camp, was not surprised that there was sickness, though she did not even slightly belittle the Sunlord's curse, and she knew the Akhaians believed in it. At sunrise, at high noon and again at sunset, Khryse strode the battlements of Troy, wearing Apollo's mask and carrying his bow, and whenever he appeared there were cries and shrieks for mercy in the Akhaian camp.

Priam proclaimed that every Trojan soldier and citizen should appear before the priests of Apollo each morning, and that anyone who showed signs of illness should be confined alone to his own house. This isolated a few people with bad colds, and one or two men who had been undiscriminating about exploring the women's district. He also closed a filthy market and two or three brothels, but there were no signs, so far, of plague inside the walls of Troy. He declared a holiday for prayers and sacrifices to Apollo, imploring that they should continue to be spared the curse. However, when Khryse begged for audience and asked Priam also to request the return of Chryseis, he answered him sharply.

"You have called a God to your side, and if that is not enough, what more do you think a mortal man, even the King of Troy could do?"

"You mean you will do nothing to help me?"

"Why should it matter to me what becomes of your wretched daughter? I might have felt a fellow father's feeling had you asked three years ago when first she was taken, but you have not appealed to me before this; I cannot believe you are much in need of my help—except perhaps to boast that the King of Troy is your ally," Priam said.

Khryse said hotly, "If I called down Apollo's curse on the Argive camp, I can as easily curse Troy—"

Priam lifted his hand to stop him.

"No!" he thundered. "Not a word! Raise a finger or speak a syllable to curse Troy, and by Apollo's self, I swear I will myself have you flung into the Akhaian camp from the highest rampart of the city!"

"As Your Majesty wishes," Khryse said, bowed deeply and went away. Priam scowled, his feathers still ruffled.

"That man is too proud! Did you hear him—threatening to curse Troy itself!" He looked round to his counsellors and advisers in his throne room. "Should he ask audience again with me, make certain that I have no time to speak with him!"

Kassandra was not displeased with the interview. Still at the back of her mind was the old fear; once Khryse had offered to go to Priam and ask to marry her, and she had felt that her rather would be pleased to thrust her, even unwilling, into marriage - any marriage - and would find no reason for refusing an apparently respectable priest of Apollo. Now that she knew that Priam found Khryse almost as distasteful as she did herself, she breathed a sigh of relief.

CHAPTER 21

Ten days they watched the plague raging in the Akhaian camp. On the tenth day the soldiers

dragged out a noble white horse and sacrificed it to Apollo, and some time later, a messenger with Apollo's serpent staff came up to the city, and asked for a truce for the purpose of speaking with Apollo's priests.

"A delegation will come down to the camp," they were told. Khryse of course was first among them; Kassandra did not ask if she might join the group; she simply slipped away to put on her ceremonial robes and went with them.

Agamemnon, Akhilles, and several of the other leaders, among whom Kassandra recognized Odysseus and Patroklos, were drawn up in ranks behind the priests of Apollo. The chief priest among the Akhaians, a lean, sinewy man who looked like an athlete, approached Khryse.

"It seems that the Immortal is angry with us, after all," he said, "but I ask you, colleague: will you accept some gift from us?"

Khryse said, "I want my daughter back, or properly married to the man who took her, to whom she went as an innocent maiden—"

Agamemnon snorted, but said nothing; he had apparently agreed to let the priests speak for him.

"It cannot be expected that the King of Mykenae would agree to marry a prisoner of war, when he already has a queen—" began the priest.

"Very well," said Khryse. "If he will not marry my daughter, I want her back, and a proper dowry with her, since she is no longer a virgin and I cannot find a husband for her without a dowry."

The priests conferred for a moment. Finally they said, "Suppose we were to offer you the pick of all the women from all the cities we have sacked in the countryside, maiden for maiden?"

"Do you think I am a lecher?" Khryse asked, his voice simmering with indignation. "I am a grieving father, and I call upon Apollo to right the wrong done me."

"Well, Agamemnon," said the Argive priest, "it seems that there is no alternative; we must act with simple justice, and restore the man's daughter."

Agamemnon stood up to his full height and folded his arms.

"Never! The girl is mine."

"But she isn't," said the priest. "You took her when there should have been a truce, at the springplanting, and for that impiety the Earth Mother is displeased."

"No woman, even a Goddess, tells me what I may not do," contradicted Agamemnon. Kassandra noticed a visible shiver through the ranks of the men, and Odysseus in particular looked affronted.

"The Immortals," Odysseus said, "hate such pride as belongs only to them, Agamemnon. Come, give the girl back, or go into your own tents and pay the girl's father her lawful bride-price."

"If I give up the girl—" For the first time Agamemnon hesitated, noticing that his fellow chieftains were regarding him with anger. "If I give up the girl," he repeated, "why should all you others keep the prizes you have won, and laugh at me? You, Akhilles; if I am forced to give up mine, will you give up the woman in your tent?"

Akhilles snarled, "I was not fool enough to steal mine from a priest of Apollo, and bring us all under a curse, Agamemnon. My woman came to me because she liked me better than any of Priam's sons inside Troy. And since I came to Troy to please you, Agamemnon, when by right I should have been fighting at the side of my Trojan kinsfolk, I don't see why my woman should come into this at all. She is a good girl; she came to me of her free will, and she is skilled in all kinds of women's work. I had thought to take her home with me - should I ever return from this war—and make her my wife, since, unlike you, I did not have to marry some rotting old hag of a queen to get the rule of her city."

Agamemnon set his teeth; Kassandra could see that he was trying very hard to keep hold of his temper.

"As for my queen," he said, "I remind you, my queen is the twin sister of that Helen who was thought beautiful enough that her loss should start this war. And if she was also queen in her own

right of a great city, did that make her worth any less? She has borne me noble children; and let that be enough about her."

Yes," said the chief priest. "Agamemnon; you swore an oath you would do whatever was needed to save us from this plague; so we have determined that the girl Chryseis must be returned to her father. We will all make up the dowry he asks."

Agamemnon's fists were clenched and his jaw set so hard Kassandra wondered if his teeth would shatter.

"Do you all say this?" he demanded. "In spite of all I have done for you? It would serve you all right if I said, "Get another to lead your armies." You, Menelaus, do you too stand with these people to rob me?"

The slight, brown-haired man with a small curly beard, shifted uneasily from foot to foot. He said, "I would rather not suffer Apollo's wrath for your impiety—or your bad luck or bad manners in taking a girl who should have been left alone."

"How was I supposed to know the damned girl's father was a priest, or to care if I did know? Do you think we spent our time discussing her father?" Agamemnon raged.

The priestess behind Kassandra compressed her lips against a giggle and muttered softly, "It's for certain you did not spend it in learning manners," and it was Kassandra's turn to tighten her

mouth against a snicker. Agamemnon's head swivelled toward the women and he seemed angrier than ever.

"Very well," he said,"since you all connive against me that I shall be robbed, take the girl and be damned. But I shall then be repaid by having the woman in Akhilles's tent."

Akhilles sprang out from the midst of the Akhaian ranks and yelled, "No! You'll take her only over my dead body!"

"I suppose I could arrange that if you insist," Agamemnon said lazily. Tatroklos, can't you control this wild boy? He's hardly old enough to mix in men's affairs. Come Akhilles, what do you need with a woman at your age? I'll send you the box of toys I gathered for my own son."

Kassandra's eyes narrowed;Agamemnon should not have said that; Akhilles is young, but not young enough to be taunted that way without getting his own back .

The chief priest of the Trojans said, "Khryse, have you a cloak for Chryseis? With plague here, she may not bring any garment into our camp; what she is wearing must be burnt before she enters Troy, and her hair cut off."

Khryse produced a long robe and a cloak. "Burn what clothes these folk have given her," he said. "But her hair too?"

"I am sorry; it is the only way to be certain she does not carry the plague," said the priest. Agamemnon came back from his tent with Chryseis, and Khryse stepped forward to embrace her. But the chief priest stopped him.

"Let the women undress her and take her clothing to be burned, first," he said, and Charis and Kassandra moved to Chryseis, the other women making a circle about her to hide her as her Akhaian dress and over-dress were stripped away and cast to the ground. With dignity, Chryseis ignored them. But when Charis unbraided her hair and took out a knife to cut it, she moved away.

"No. I have borne all else, but you shall not make a mock of me by shorn locks; I feel no need of purification or penance!"

Charis said gently, "It is only for fear of plague; you come from an infected city into one so far clean."

"I haven't the plague nor have I been near anyone who has it," said Chryseis, weeping. "Don't cut off my hair!"

"I'm sorry; we must," said Charis. She seized the long hair and cut it off to the nape of her neck. Chryseis was sobbing inconsolably.

"Oh, look what you've done! What a figure of fun I will be, with everyone laughing and jeering!

You have always hated me, Kassandra! And now you have done this to me—"

"What a foolish child you are," Charis said brusquely. "We have done as the priests bade us, no more. Don't blame Kassandra." She laid the robe Khryse had brought over Chryseis's shoulders. "I have no pin; you will have to hold it together over your breasts."

"No," Chryseis said sullenly. "If you don't have a pin, it can fall open for all I care." Charis shrugged.

"If you want every Akhaian soldier gazing on your naked breasts, that is your affair, but it might distress your father. For his sake, hold your robe so your modesty is preserved."

She signalled to the women to open a gap in their circle so that Chryseis could approach her father. Agamemnon took a step toward her, but Odysseus held him back, speaking to him urgently in an undertone.

CHAPTER 22

The day after Chryseis had been returned to Troy, Kassandra was summoned to dine with her parents at the palace; she supposed that Priam wished to hear how the parley had gone. Priam and Hecuba dined in private tonight, rather than with all the household; besides the King and

Queen there were Creusa and Aeneas, Hector and Andromache, with their little son, and Helen and Paris with her four children. Nikos was a year or two older than Hector's son, a handsome boy; the twins were running around but were no particular trouble as each had his own nurse who kept him under reasonable control.

It seemed to Kassandra strange that the years of war had made but little change in the palace dining-room. The paintings on the walls were a little faded and cracked; she supposed that the palace servants who might have been repainting them had other duties, if they were not among the army. There was a liberal quantity of many kinds of food: roast kid, fresh fish (although indeed there was not much of this). Andromache told her that the Akhaians spent much of their time in fishing, and had dirtied the harbor so that the finest fish stayed further out at sea; and no one could be spared to go out with the fishing boats through the barricade of the Akhaian soldiers.

"And when they do," she added,"the Akhaians draw the boat on to shore and take most of the best fish."

But there was an abundance of fruits and barley bread and honey; and wine from the grapes culled from the vines that grew as plentifully as weeds all through the city.

Priam insisted that Kassandra should repeat every word exchanged in the negotiations. He shook his head angrily when he heard of Agamemnon's arrogance and said, "I have seen no more plague victims in the Argive camp; and may the Gods grant there come none to our city. So the

girl is safely back among us; what will her father do with her now?"

"I do not know; I have not asked him," Kassandra said, thinking,Nor do I have any intention of doing so and nor do I care .

"I suppose," she said, "he will find her a husband with the dowry the Akhaians gave. They seemed eager to placate the Sun-lord. And after the plague who can blame them?"

"I suppose none of the Akhaian leaders died in the plague?"

"None that I know about," said Aeneas. "Certainly neither Agamemnon nor Akhilles suffered; but they came almost to blows as soon as Chryseis left the camp; and at the end Agamemnon stalked off to his tent and Akhilles to his; it seems there was a quarrel—"

"There was," Kassandra repeated, and told them how Agamemnon had insisted that if his woman was taken from him, he would be repaid with Briseis; and what Akhilles had said to this.

"That explains what I saw later, though of course I did not know what it meant," Aeneas said. "A few of Agamemnon's soldiers went to Akhilles's tent, and there was some sort of fight between them and Akhilles's men; then Odysseus came and talked with them all for a long time. After that, Akhilles's soldiers were tearing down banners and decorations; it looked as if they were packing to go home."

"May that be what the Gods will," said Hector. "Agamemnon is an honorable enemy; Akhilles is mad. I prefer to fight sane men."

Kassandra had her namesake, Creusa's daughter, in her lap. She said, "I do not think any man who would fight in this war is sane."

"We all know what you think, Kassandra," said Hector, "and we are tired of hearing it."

"Hector, do you truly think we can win this war? If the Gods are angry with Troy—"

"I have seen no signs of their anger," said Hector. "Now it seems that the Sunlord at least is angry with the Akhaians; with Akhilles gone, I have no fear of the rest of them. We will fight them and win honorably, and then we will make a truce and live at peace with them - if we are fortunate, for the rest of our lives."

And what will happen to us?" asked Paris. He was sitting beside Helen, who was feeding one of the twins mashed fruit with a bone spoon;she looked quiet and peaceful; lovely , Kassandra thought,but without any trace of the uncanny beauty she had shown when she was inhabited by Aphrodite .

"If peace comes to us," Andromache said,"there will be peace for you as well, and you may make such lives for yourselves and your children as you desire."

"It will be a dull world without war," Hector said, yawning. Paris disagreed. "I have already had as much war as I care to see. There must be better things to do with a life."

"You sound like our sister," Hector said. "But peace will come, like it or not; if all else fails, there's peace in the grave, and an end to all fighting and talk of honor."

Kassandra said wryly, "It sounds like a heaven specially designed by Akhilles's God!"

"No heaven for me then," Paris said. "Enough to fight here; I don't intend to spend the afterlife doing it."

"You mean you wouldn'tchoose to spend the afterlife doing it," Hector remarked. "I'm not sure we will be given our choice."

At this moment there was a loud outcry; the children had been playing at the far end of the hall, and there were whacking sounds from wooden swords and loud childish shrieks; Hector and Paris saw that little Astyanax and Helen's son Nikos were sprawled on the floor, struggling and punching at each other, both shouting incoherently, their faces red and tear-stained.

Helen and Andromache each ran to reclaim their child, and when they returned, each with a wailing small boy under her arm, Hector gestured to the women to set the boys down.

"Here, here, lads, what's all this? Isn't there enough war outside the gates, must we have it at

suppertime too? Astyanax, Nikos is our guest in Troy; a guest deserves our hospitality. Besides, he is smaller than you. Why do you beat him?"

"Because he is a coward like his father," Astyanax scowled, digging his fists in his eye.

Nikos kicked out at his shins, and Astyanax muttered, "Well,you said it, father."

Hector struggled to keep his face straight. "No, Astyanax; I said that his father Menelaus was an honorable enemy; Paris is not his father, you know. And besides—" he interrupted as both boys began yelling at once, "whoever said what, there is always a truce at dinnertime. If Agamemnon himself came to this table, it would be my duty as an honorable man to feed him if he was hungry; the first duty we owe the Gods is hospitality. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir," muttered Astyanax, and Hector turned to Helen.

"Lady, I beg you to keep your son in order at dinnertime, out of respect to my father and mother, or send him away with his nurse," he commanded.

"I will try," she murmured. Paris looked like a thundercloud, but he did not venture to contradict Hector; no one did, these days.

Kassandra applied herself to the honeyed fruits which had appeared in her dish at the end of the meal, and asked Priam, "Has there been any sign that my mother's waiting-women can be

exchanged or returned?"

"Not yet," Priam growled. "That damned priest's daughter - a plague on her - for all Apollo took her part," he added with a pious gesture, "has brought all other negotiations to a stop so sudden that if it were a chariot we'd all be head over heels in the road! When we can, we'll try again, but just now I'm afraid there's no hope."

Creusa rose, cradling her child in her arms. "I must take the little one to bed," she announced to the company at large. "Helen, will you accompany me?"

Kassandra rose too.

"I too will say goodnight," she said. "Mother, Father, good night, and thank you; I have certainly dined better at your table than in the refectory of the priestesses."

"Don't see why it ought to be that way," Priam said thickly. "They get the best of everything up there."

Aeneas said, "By your leave, sir, I will walk through the city with the Lady Kassandra; it's late and there may be riff-raff about, now that all the decent able-bodied men are with the soldiers down below."

"I thank you, but really, Brother-in-law, it's not necessary—"

"Let him go with you, Kassandra," Hecuba commanded firmly. "It will ease my mind; Polyxena was not with us tonight because the Temple of the Maiden could spare no able-bodied man to escort her."

"Why, where is Polyxena?" Kassandra asked. She had noticed her sister's absence, but for all she knew, Polyxena might have been married to some king or warrior at the far end of the world.

"She serves the Maiden Goddess; it's a long story," Hecuba said in a tone indicating that long story or short, she had no intention of telling it now. Kassandra kissed her mother and the children, and let Aeneas, rather than a servant, fold her into her cloak. Hector rose too, embracing his wife and son, and at the palace doors, took leave of Aeneas and Kassandra.

"You are prettier than when you went to Colchis," he said kindly. "There is some ballad which calls you beautiful enough for Apollo to desire; if you want to come home I am sure Father could find you a husband, without all the nonsense that drove Polyxena into the Temple of the Maiden."

"No, dear brother; I am happy in the house of the Sunlord," she replied, but she returned his embrace with real warmth, knowing he meant her well.

It was not particularly dark as they moved up the steep streets, for the moon was rising, round and bright. Aeneas paused at one point to look out over the plain where the Argive army lay.

"If Agamemnon and Akhilles had not quarrelled, this is the sort of night when it would hardly be wise for Hector to dine at home with his family," Aeneas said. "Usually, on nights with a full moon, these last three years, we have had an attack from seaward. But look, everything is dark down there, except in Akhilles's tent where, I dare say, they are still arguing over their wine."

"Aeneas, what's all this about Polyxena?"

"Oh, lord," he said, "I don't know the whole story; nobody does. Akhilles - well, Priam offered her to Akhilles, hoping to make trouble in the Akhaian ranks. Your father - after that he went about saying she was as beautiful as the Spartan Helen and he would award her to the most powerful—"

"What? Polyxena, as beautiful as Helen? Is his eyesight failing with age?"

"I think he was trying to make trouble with the Akhaians; he offered her to the King of Crete—"

"Idomeneus? But I heard he was joined with Agamemnon on the Akhaian side - it's treachery of course; the Minoan folk have been our kinsmen and allies since before Atlantis sank."

"Well, however it may be, Priam tried to offer her as wife to many of the island people; but all those who wanted to accept were among the supporters of the Akhaians. And in the end Polyxena rebelled—"

"Rebelled? But Polyxena has always done whatever she was told—" Kassandra protested.

"And so she did; but she said at last she felt like a pot being hawked at the market; and a cracked pot which no one would buy at that—and vowed to serve the Maiden Goddess. Where she is to this day. Priam was angrier with her than when you went to serve the Sunlord."

"I suppose so," Kassandra said. "Since I was a very little girl,

Father always thought of me as a rebel; but when Polyxena disobeyed, it must have been as if a child's pet rabbit had turned and bitten him."

"Yes, exactly like that, I think. Your mother was very distressed."

"Yes," Kassandra said, "Mother brings us up to think for ourselves and then is shocked and upset when we do it. I'm glad she made her own decision."

They strolled quietly up the steep street. Kassandra stumbled in the darkness and Aeneas quickly caught her.

"Mind your step!" he admonished. "It's a long fall!"

His arm was round her; he was not wearing armor, only tunic and cloak, and against her body he

felt warm and strong. She let him support her for the next few steps; but when she would have drawn herself upright, he tightened the clasp of his arm around her waist, and bent his face to hers. In the dark their lips just met before she pulled away.

"No," she said, entreating, drawing herself away. "No, Aeneas. Not you too."

He did not free her at once; but he raised his head, and said softly, "Since first I set eyes on you, Kassandra, I have wanted you. And somehow I thought that this—this was not altogether distasteful to you."

She said, and discovered that her voice was shaking, "If it had been otherwise - but I am sworn to chastity, and you are the husband of my sister."

"Not by my own choice, not by Creusa's," Aeneas said softly. "We were wedded by the will of my father and yours."

"Still, it is done," Kassandra said. "I am not Helen, to abandon a pledge of honor…' but she let her head rest against his strong arm. She felt weak, as if her legs were no longer holding her firmly upright.

Aeneas said quietly, "I think too much is said of honor and duty. Why should Helen remain faithful to Menelaus? She was given to him with no thought for her happiness. Are we put on this earth only to carry out our duty to our families? Are we not given life by the Gods so that we

may create lives for ourselves tor some good to our own hearts and minds and souls?"

If you felt like that," Kassandra asked precisely, drawing herself a little upright (she felt cold away from Aeneas's arm),"why did you agree to marry her in the first place?"

"Oh, I was younger then," Aeneas said, "and all my life I had been told it was my duty to marry whatever princess was found for me; and at that time I believed still that one woman was very much like another."

"And are they not?"

"No," Aeneas said violently. "No, they are not. Creusa is a good woman, but you are as unlike her as wine to spring water. I say nothing against the mother of my children; but at that time I had never seen a woman who was more to me than any other, one I truly wanted, one who could speak as an equal, a comrade - Kassandra, I swear, if before I married Creusa I had had the opportunity to speak a dozen times with you, I would have told Priam and my father that I would marry no other woman under the skies - that I would have you or go unmarried to my grave."

She felt stunned. "You cannot mean this; you are making fun of me," she murmured.

"Why would I want to do that?" he demanded. "I did not - I do not - want to disrupt my life, or trouble your peace, or hurt Creusa, but I think that Goddess of Love who played such a cruel trick on Paris has chosen to throw discord my way as well—and I felt I must say to you, once,

what I felt."

She put out her hand, hardly knowing she was doing so, and touched his; he clasped his fingers strongly over hers. He said softly, "When first I saw you, seated among the girls with your eyes cast down modestly, I knew all at once that it was you I wanted, and that I should have stood up at once and proclaimed it to Priam and to my father…'

The thought made Kassandra smile.

"And what would Creusa have said to that?"

"I should not have let that matter to me," Aeneas said. "I was the one whose life was being cast into the balance. Tell me, Kassandra, would you have had me for a husband? If I had refused Creusa and demanded you instead - as the price of my fighting for Troy—"

Her heart was beating as wildly as his agitated words. "I don't know," she said at last. "Whatever I might have said or done then, it's too late for thinking about it now."

"It need not be too late," he said, and drew her into his arms. She did not know that she was crying until Aeneas's finger wiped away a tear.

"Don't cry, Kassandra; I don't wish to make you unhappy. But I cannot bear to think that now I have found that you are the one I love, that there can never be anything more for us than this—"

He enfolded her in an embrace so rough, so completely compelling, that nothing outside seemed to exist at all; she was drowning, suffocating, wiped away into non-existence; incapable of thought. Nevertheless after a time that seemed too long - but very short - she pulled herself upright and on to her own feet, wiping her eyes with her gown. Sothat is what it is like .

She knew her voice was shaking as she said, "You are my sister's husband; You are mybrother ."

"By my own immortal ancestress! Don't you think I have chewed on that until it sickens me?" he muttered. "I can only beg you—not to be angry with me."

"No," she said, and it sounded so foolishly inadequate for the moment between them that she began helplessly to giggle, "No, I'm not angry with you, Aeneas."

He pulled her again, into an embrace she could not and did not want to fight off; but this time there was caution too, as if he were taking great pains not to hurt or frighten her. He said against her ear, "Tell me you care for me too, Kassandra."

"Oh, Gods," she said helplessly,"do you have to ask?" Her mouth was crushed so tightly against his that she wondered how he could understand her words.

"No," he said, "I don't have to ask, but I need to hear you say it. I don't think I can stand to go on

living unless I hear you say it."

Suddenly Kassandra was filled with the most unbelievable sense of generosity; it was in her power to give him something ht wanted so much. She leaned forward again against him and whispered, "I do care for you. I think - I think I have loved you since first I saw you." And she felt him move softly against her as if it was where he had always wanted to be. He was touching only her fingers; but it was somehow closer than an embrace. She wanted him to hold her again, yet she knew that if he did, she and she alone would be responsible for whatever happened.

She said softly, "Aeneas—" and stopped.

"What, Kassandra?"

"I think—" she whispered with a sense of overpowering wonder, "I think I only wanted to hear myself say your name."

He tightened his arms round her, but gently, as if he was afraid the slightest touch would break her. He said, "My little love. I don't know - I'm not sure what it is that I want, but it is not to seduce you into my bed -that I can have from anyone, anytime. I love you, Kassandra. I wanted to tell you, to try and make you understand—"

"I do understand," she said, tightening her hand on his. Above them the moon swung so brilliant that she could see his face as if by daylight.

"Look," he said, "all the fires are out in the Akhaian camp. It is very late. You must be weary—I should let you go."

It was late; she drew a little away from him, feeling cold out of his arms, and offered him her hand. He bent over her very close, but he did not kiss her again. He whispered, "Good night, my little love, and the Goddess keep you. I will stand here till I see you safe inside the gates of the Sunlord's house."

She climbed the last steps alone, thrust at the gate, which was opened from inside.

"Ah, Princess Kassandra," said one of the temple servants, as he opened the gate, "you are returning from dining with your parents at the palace? Did you walk up alone?"

"No; the Lord Aeneas escorted me," she said, and the young man thrust out his head.

"Would the Lord Aeneas like a lighted torch for the way downward?"

"No, thank you," Aeneas said courteously. "The moon is very bright." He bowed to Kassandra. "Good night, my sister and my lady."

"Good night," she said, and when she was out of hearing, she heard herself whisper, "Good night, my love."

She was stricken with dismay. She had sworn - knowing nothing of it - that she would never serve the Goddess Aphrodite nor succumb to this kind of passion.

And now she was like any other of that Akhaian Goddess's servants.

CHAPTER 23

Akhilles's soldiers were loading their boats; the quarrel in the Akhaian camp had evidently not subsided. One of Priam's favourite agents, an old woman who sold cakes to the Akhaian camp and came back inside the walls every day about noon for a new load of cakes (and a long talk with the Captain of the Watch), reported that Akhilles had not stirred from his tent. Patroklos had tried to dissuade the soldiers from leaving, but without much effect.

Patroklos, she said, was liked by all the soldiers, but everyone felt their loyalty was to Akhilles, and if he had decided to give up the fight, they would give up too.

Halfway through the morning, Kassandra went down to the wall to see for herself, along with most of the women of Priam's house: Hecuba, Andromache, Helen and Creusa.

They listened to the old cake-woman's report and wondered what this would mean to the

Akhaian cause.

"Not much," said Paris, who this morning was the Captain of the Watch. "Akhilles is a maniac for fighting, but Agamemnon and Odysseus are the brains of the campaign. Akhilles is great in single combat, of course, and drives his chariot like Helios. Those Myrmidons of his would follow him in a charge over the edge of the world—"

"What a pity someone can't persuade them to do it—" Creusa murmured. "That would solve most of our trouble - with Akhilles at least. Does anyone know a friendly Immortal who would appear in Akhilles's form and lead his men off on an urgent mission somewhere on the other side of the world, or convince them they're desperately needed at home—"

"But the point is," Paris said, ignoring her,"that's all Akhilles has in his favour: he's crazy for the kill. He doesn't know a damned thing about strategy or war tactics. Losing Akhilles from the war, having him go home like a little boy saying, "I'm not playing any more," is no great blow to the Akhaians. It would be far worse for them, and better for us, if they lost Agamemnon, or Odysseus, or even Menelaus."

"What a pity we can't think of some clever way to get rid of one of them," said Hecuba.

"It almost happened," said Paris. "This quarrel between Akhilles and Agamemnon meant they would have to lose one or the other. Losing Akhilles distressed the soldiers - he's their idol - but the leaders knew they couldn't lose Agamemnon or the whole campaign would fall apart. Why

else do you think they let him take Akhilles's girl? They know how important Agamemnon is to the whole campaign. Why do you think Akhilles is sulking? He's been shown very clearly that he's not nearly as important -not to anyone - as Agamemnon."

"Well, something is going on down there," Helen said. "Look, there is Agamemnon - with Menelaus tagging behind him as usual - and his herald."

Kassandra had seen the herald before; a tall young man who was perhaps too slightly built to be of much use with sword or shield, but who had a splendid bass voice which he could make ring throughout the entire camp.Waste of a fine musician , Khryse had once said and indeed he would have made a splendid minstrel or singer.

Now Agamemnon was giving him orders, and the herald was striding clear across the camp and - yes - toward the foot of the wall. Paris took his tall loop-shaped shield, settled his helmet down on his head, and went out on the wall. The herald shouted:

Paris, son of Priam!

"That is I," Paris said, his voice sounding small and young after the herald's trained and resonant tones. "What do you want with me? And if Agamemnon has a message for me, why does he not come within range of the walls himself, instead of - like a coward - sending you, whom I may not lawfully shoot?"

He went on, laughing, "When will they declare an open hunting season on heralds? I think they should all be exterminated, like Kentaurs."

"Paris, son of Priam, I bear a message for you from Menelaus of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon, Overlord of Mykenae—"

"I know perfectly well who Menelaus is," Paris interrupted him. "You don't need to explain, nor rehash all our grudges against one another."

"Oh, let the poor man give his message, Paris," Helen said audibly. "You're making the poor child nervous. He wants at least to sound like a warrior if he can't fight like one. He might wet his tunic if you go on, and think how embarrassed he'd be before all these women."

"Well, if you have a message from Menelaus go on and give it," Paris said. The herald, blushing, visibly pulled himself together and straightened.

"Hear the words of Menelaus, Lord of Sparta: Paris, son of Priam, my quarrel is with you, not with Priam or with the great city of Troy. I now propose that we settle this war in a single combat challenge before all the assembled soldiers of Troy and the Akhaians. And that if you kill me or I surrender, then you-shall keep Helen and such goods of mine as you may have, and my men, including my brother Agamemnon, will be pledged not to fight further, not even to avenge me, but to take their ships and sail away from Troy forever, and this war be at an end. But if I kill you or you surrender, then Helen shall be turned over to me, with her goods and gear, and we

will take her home without asking any of the spoils of Troy other than this. How do you say? What is your answer?"

Paris stood at his full height and said, "Say to Menelaus that I have heard his offer; and I will consult with King Priam and with Hector, the leader of the Trojan armies. For it seems to me that there are many causes in this war other than Helen; but if my father and my brother wish to settle it this way, then I am agreeable."

There was a rousing cheer from both sides as Paris dropped down out of sight and came back into the little corner of the wall where the women had been watching. Helen stood up without words and kissed him.

Paris said, "Whew! What was the point of that? Menelaus knows as well as I do that there's more to this war than Helen. How did Agamemnon manage to entice him into the agreement? Or is it a trick to get me out from behind the wall?"

"I would credit Menelaus with the spite to do it," Helen said, "but not with the wit to think of it."

"Well, how do you think Priam would have me answer?" Paris asked. "Or Hector? Hector would probably welcome this chance to have me out of the way so he can run the war as he pleases."

"You wrong your brother, my boy," Hecuba said.

"May you always think so, Mother," Paris replied, "and may I always be at hand to argue the point."

"The heart of the matter is that you can't fight Menelaus," said Kassandra.

"Why not? Do you think I am afraid of him?" Paris argued.

"If you are not, you are a greater fool than I ever thought you were," Andromache said.

"But Hector will so welcome a chance to settle this war with single combat," Kassandra said,"that he will probably have Paris accept - but only on the condition that he should challenge Agamemnon instead."

"Well, he might offer to fight Menelaus in my place," Paris said. "I'll lend him my cloak, and all the armies are welcome to think it is me."

"Whatever Hector will think, you may ask him yourself, for here he comes," Andromache said.

Hector and his warriors were coming through the streets of Troy towards the gate. About a hundred and fifty armored soldiers and others dragged his chariot down the steep streets, to harness it at the gates so that Hector might mount it and ride out. He saw Paris and the women from a distance on the wall and came up to speak with them.

"What's happened? I heard some yelling in the streets—"

Hecuba told him quickly about Menelaus's challenge, and Hector frowned.

"It's probably the best we can do with Akhilles out of the picture," he said. "Are you going to fight him, Paris?"

"I'd rather not," Paris said. "I don't trust him to meet me in single combat; I think it's more likely that he's trying to lure me out to have me shot down by a dozen archers, or ambushed."

Hector scowled.

"Damn you, Paris, I never know whether you're talking cowardice, or plain common sense."

"I don't think there's that much difference," said Paris. "I take it that means you want me to get out there and fight him."

"Is there any question about that?" Kassandra could tell from Hector's expression that he could not imagine why Paris was not already eagerly strapping on his weapons.

"Well, yes," Paris said. "If I kill him, they'll all go away and you'll never have a chance at Agamemnon or Akhilles. That would spoil your fun, wouldn't it?"

"And if he kills you?"

"I was trying not to think about that," Paris said. "I doubtthat would particularly spoil your fun, but they'd certainly gloat over you while they carried off Helen and anything else they happened to fancy in Troy. And, as I say, it might not be the kind of fair fight you'd feel honor bound to give Akhilles if he challenged you."

"Helen," Hector asked, "you know Menelaus better than any of us; is he likely to abide by his word?"

She shrugged. "I would think so; I doubt he could think up a trap. Of course I have no idea what Agamemnon may have thought up;that's another matter entirely."

"Well, Paris, it's for you to choose," Hector said. "I can't force you to fight him; on the other hand, I don't want to be responsible for refusing the challenge."

Paris looked down to where Menelaus in his crimson cloak was still pacing up and down before the wall. He said, "Helen, what do you want me to do? Shall I fight him for you?"

"Hector will give you no peace unless you do," she said shrewdly. "So I think you had better. But we must manage a way of escape for you; perhaps we can persuade some Immortal to intervene."

"How will you do that?" he asked.

"You had better not know," she said, "but I do not think that the Goddess of Love and Beauty brought me here to be dragged home in disgrace at the tail of Agamemnon's cart. But as you fight keep watch, and one way or another we will get a rope ladder over the wall. If the Goddess gives you a moment to get to it - well, do not let the opportunity pass unless Menelaus is already dead at your feet."

Paris shrugged, went to the wall and shouted down to Menelaus that he would meet him in an hour, if he wished.

Then he put on his armor and went down to the field with Hector. When they saw him on the chariot, the Akhaians broke out into a cry.

"What are you going to do?" Kassandra asked, approaching Helen. Helen held out her hands and grasped Kassandra's in hers.

"You are his twin sister and a priestess," she said. "Now join me in chanting and praying that the Sea-born may send us one of her sea-fogs. Hecuba, I beg you, if you love your son, send for a strong rope ladder; we cannot ask the Goddess to do for us what any rope-maker could do for a copper coin."

She dispatched a messenger for a rope ladder, and when it came, Helen went and stood with

Kassandra at the very edge of the wall, watching Paris and Menelaus arming themselves while their heralds exchanged insults.

Menelaus and Paris paced carefully round, marking off the circle into which no other fighter on either side might approach while either of them lived. That done, they bowed ceremoniously to one another; a trumpet sounded, and they began to fight.

"Chant!" Helen urged. Tray! Beseech the Goddess to send us her sea-fog!"

The women began chanting; Kassandra was so busy watching the men swing their swords that she could hardly form the words of the prayer, though this was simple magic enough. At first the men seemed evenly matched enough, though Paris was taller and had a longer reach; and it seemed to her that Menelaus was overly fat; but for all that he was as quick as a mongoose. They circled each other exchanging blows, carefully taking one another's measure but not yet seriously joined in battle.

Kassandra's eyes ached. Was it dust in the battle square before them? Or was it actually a swirl of sea-fog drifting up from the shore? She could not be sure. Helen stepped to the edge of the wall and let the rope ladder down; she had hooked it for security around the edge of the wall's stones. Then she rose to her full height and called aloud:

"Menelaus!"

He turned his eyes upward briefly and stopped in mid-stroke. Helen slowly unfastened the neck of her garment and let it drop till her breasts were bare.

As she stood without moving, it seemed to Kassandra that the air was filled with faint glowing golden sparkles, as if the veil between the worlds grew thinner. Helen, touched with that golden shimmer, seemed to gain height and majesty and to glow from within with beauty beyond anything human. It was no woman but the Goddess herself standing on the wall.

As for Menelaus, he stood as if his feet had taken root in the earth beneath them.

Not so Paris. As his eyes fell upon Helen standing there in the form of the Goddess, he broke away, sprinting for the foot of the wall. From the ranks of the Akhaians came a great cry of awe and longing; then Paris was atop the wall and pulling up the ladder; with everyone's eyes on Helen - or rather on the Goddess - Kassandra realized that probably no one had seen him climb the ladder at all. He bundled it up and tossed it down inside.

Helen still stood unmoving, her body glowing with light. Then in the flicker of an eyelash the illusion - if it had been illusion - was gone, and it was only Helen who stood there, her face a little sunburnt, fastening up her dress. She came to Paris and said, "You are wounded."

"Nothing serious, Lady," he said, his eyes still wide; but the stripe of red just outside the edge of his leather armor was dripping now.

She said, "Come along; I'll care for it," and led him away.

There were shouts from the Akhaians now.

"Paris! Where did he go? Coward—!"

But through and beyond it all there were cries of, "The Goddess! She appeared before us on the wall! The Beautiful One, the Sea-born!"

Hector's chariot rumbled back through the gate and the next minute he was striding up the stairs built into the wall. He looked round and demanded, "Where is he, then?"

Hecuba said, her voice quavering, "Did you not see the Goddess take him?"

"That's what they said in the Akhaian ranks," said Hector, "and when I asked my own charioteer, he swore he saw Aphrodite stoop down from the walls and fling her cloak over Paris and snatch him away. As for me, I don't know what it was I saw; maybe just the blaze of the sun in my eyes. Where is Helen?"

"When the Goddess returned Paris here, she saw that he was bleeding," Andromache said, "and took him to her rooms to bandage his wound; by now they're probably in the bath."

"I don't doubt it a bit," Hector growled, "but I wish if Goddesses are going to interfere, they'd

wait till things were properly settled. If the Goddess came herself to snatch Paris to safety, I wish she'd snatched Menelaus - and Helen too - all the way back to Sparta. If she's capable of the one and notice, Immortals, I'm not impious to say she couldn't do it - she's capable of the other. Kassandra, what did you see? Areyou going to tell me fairy-tales about the Goddess on the wall snatching him away?"

For a moment Kassandra was overjoyed; Hector appealed to her as if she were a trustworthy witness.

"Not a bit of it," she said. "But it looked to me as if Menelaus had some kind of vision; he stopped fighting and stared at the wall, and Paris ran for his life."

Hector sighed and said, "Well; it's too late for any more fighting today; but wait till this gets around. But of course if the Goddess intervened—even by giving Menelaus a vision - no one can blame Paris."

But he did not sound altogether convinced.

vol_3

VOLUME THREE : Poseidon's Doom

CHAPTER 1

By twilight everyone in both armies, and most of the civilians in the city had heard the story, which of course did not grow less in the telling.

According to most of the eyewitnesses, the Goddess had appeared on the city wall and snatched Paris from under Menelaus's very sword, delivering him from a certain death-stroke; in one version Menelaus had sliced Paris in one stroke from chin to pelvis and the Goddess had healed him at a touch; she had bound up his wounds with nectar and ambrosia and transported him into Helen's very chamber.

Kassandra, when asked, replied only that she was not sure what she had seen; the sun had been in her eyes.

Privately she was certain that somehow the Goddess had intervened. But she was no longer certain quite how it had happened, although she was perfectly sure that, for a moment at least, Helen had worn the semblance of the Goddess. It would not be, after all, for the first time.

For two days the city talked of nothing but the duel, and the supposed intervention of the Gods. Hector and Aeneas came back from councils saying that the Akhaians were insisting that Menelaus had won the duel because Paris had fled, wounded.

"What did you answer them?" Priam asked eagerly.

"What do you think? We said that it was obvious that Paris had won, since the Gods themselves had intervened to save his life," Hector replied.

Kassandra, who had watched the battlefield from the walls most of the day, remembering her own arms-training and thinking that she could probably do as well as most of the Akhaian soldiers or any of the Trojans, asked, "What was that all about this afternoon? I saw two soldiers I did not know stand out for combat, and before they ever got to fighting, one of them started unarming and ended by stripping off his clothes down to his loincloth. Did they decide to wrestle instead of fighting with swords?"

Aeneas chuckled.

"Oh, no," he said. "Do you know Glaucus the Thracian?"

"I have spoken with him," Helen said. "He was the sailing-master of one of the ships which brought us here."

"Well, he stood out and challenged any Akhaian to give him a fight and Diomedes accepted. So they began calling out their lineage, in order to find out if they could meet honorably in single combat, and before they reached their great-grandfathers, they discovered they were cousins."

"So did they decide not to fight?" Kassandra asked.

"Didn't you see?" Aeneas asked.

"No; I was called away to the temple. One of the great serpents is about to shed her skin, and needed special care; they are blind at this time and cannot be handled by strangers," Kassandra said.

"They agreed they must fight for the honor of it; but they decided to exchange armor. Diomedes said that his ordinary armor was not handsome enough for an honorable gift, so he sent back to his ship for a precious set of silver armor with gold inlay, and then of course Glaucus had to trade round with his comrades for a fancy set to give him a gift of equal worth. They sounded like a couple of old men in the flea market haggling over the value of some trinket, and it went on and on—and of course they did the fighting in their old battered fighting armor, with the two fancy sets hanging up to be admired—"

"Who won?" asked Helen.

"I have no idea; I think they knocked each other down a time or two, and then it got too dark to see, so they embraced each other, thanked each other for the handsome gifts, and went off to dinner."

Hector chuckled. "No advantage, either way, I suppose, but it passed the afternoon. Of course we had nothing better to do anyway today—until the councillors on both sides have decided whether Paris or Menelaus wontheir duel, everything else is simply for amusement anyhow. Glaucus and Diomedes would have done better to make it a wrestling match - at least we could have had some bets on that one. I've been tempted to challenge Big Ajax to wrestle—he's the biggest man on the Akhaian line. I don't know if he can wrestle—"

"He can," said young Troilus. "He won the garland for wrestling at their sacrificial Games."

"Then I shall certainly challenge him," said Hector.

"Watch out you don't get an elbow in the face; his specialty is breaking teeth," Troilus said.

At dinner Hector asked Priam, "Sire, what will happen if the council decides that Menelaus won the duel?"

Priam shrugged.

"Nothing," he said, "The Akhaians will refuse to accept the decision and the war will go on. They don't want to settle; they're not going to give in till they break down the walls of Troy and sack the city."

"Why, you sound like Kassandra, Father."

"No," said Priam, "I know what Kassandra thinks." But for, once, as Kassandra raised her eyes, struck again by that terrible fear, and the actual sight of Troy in flames which came between her and the living world, Priam smiled at her, kindly, as if to try and dispel her fears. "I have heard her say it often enough that she believes that they will destroy us. But that is not true."

"Canthey break the walls of Troy, Father?" Paris asked.

"Not unless they can persuade Poseidon to help them with an earthquake," Priam stated.

Now Kassandra felt it through all her body; the walls would fall to the wrath of Poseidon, his earthquake—she should have known all along that no ordinary efforts of men could break the walls of Troy; only a God could tear down the great high citadel.

"Then we should sacrifice to Poseidon as soon as possible," Hector said, "for he is the only God who can help us."

"Yes," Kassandra said quickly, "let us make sacrifices at once to Poseidon and beseech him to aid us in our cause! Is he not one of the guardian Gods of Troy?" Not knowing what she was going to say until she heard it flooding through her mind like a scream of anguish, she said: 'Paris! You - oh, beware the earthquake! Sacrifice to Poseidon! Make him pledges, for it is you he will destroy - destroy - destroy

She stopped herself by main force, actually clamping her hands across her lips. Priam scowled at her in anger and disgust.

"Haven't we had enough of this, Kassandra?" he demanded. Even at your mother's dinner table? Can't you even make up your mind which God is to destroy the city? I really think you must be mad."

She could not speak; the lump in her throat was so great that!t took all her strength merely to breathe. She swallowed and felt rears flooding down her face. Helen came and wiped her face with her veil, and the tenderness in the gesture disarmed Kassandra so that she could only stare at her brother's wife, and whisper, "It is you he will destroy—"

"My poor girl," Hecuba said,"the Gods still torment you with these visions. Leave her alone, Helen; there is nothing you can do for her. Kassandra, get back to the temple; among your companions there, I am sure that the priests have remedies against such seizures as this."

Priam spoke firmly, "Never again prophesy here, Kassandra. I have spoken; so let it be done."

Unable to control her sobbing, Kassandra rose and ran out of the hall, fleeing up through the streets. After a time she became aware of footsteps following her upward, and she redoubled her pace, but the steps quickened to follow her, and then gentle hands seized her and brought her to a stop.

"What's the matter, Kassandra?" asked Aeneas's voice. She gasped in panic, and struggled against his grasp, wildly at first, then, realizing who held her, relaxed, and stood silent.

"Can't you tell me?" he asked. "What's really wrong?"

"You know what they say: that I am mad," she said dully.

"I don't believe that for a moment," Aeneas said. "Tormented by a God, perhaps; but not mad, nor anything like it."

"I don't know the difference," she said. "And I cannot keep silent; when the Sight comes to me, I must speak—" She heard her own voice shaking so that the words were almost indistinguishable.

"Perhaps," the man said gently, his arm round her, "all those who see farther than the rest of us are considered mad by those who can see no farther than tomorrow's breakfast. When you ran away, I was afraid for you - afraid you would fall and hurt yourself. I do not for a moment believe that your wits are astray; you seem perfectly sensible to me, nor do I see why it should be considered madness to warn our people that the Gods are eager to destroy us. Ever since I came to Troy it has seemed to me that we are under the shadow of one angry Immortal, or more, and I too seem to smell the danger of destruction on every wind."

He kissed her gently on the cheek. "Now can you tell me what it is that you see?"

She looked him straight in the eye, filled suddenly with sureness. "I have seen that you will survive the danger; I have seen you leave Troy alive and unwounded."

He patted her shoulder gently. "That is good to know, of course. But that was not why I asked you. Come, let me take you up to the Sunlord's house." They climbed silently for a moment. Then he said, "You truly feel there is no hope for Troy in this war?"

"I knew that the moment Paris brought Helen here," she said, "and, believe me, this is not malice; I have come to love Helen dearly, as if she were my own sister born. I knew it when Paris entered Troy's walls at the Games; Hector was right to wish to send him away, but for the wrong reasons. Hector feared Paris would try to make himself King, but that was not the danger—"

Aeneas stroked her cheek. He said, "I do not share your Sight, Kassandra, but I trust you; you are speaking the truth. You may be mistaken, but you are not doing this from malice or a wish to sound important - that is what they think, is it not? And if this is what you see, of course you must say what the Gods have given you to say." They had reached the temple gate; he embraced her and said, "When you speak I will listen always, I promise you."

"I think," Kassandra said,"that some Immortal began this war—but I think Aphrodite has had her chance to aid or to destroy us; and now it seems to us that it is not she, but the strife of other Gods that threatens us. When Father said that no mortal could pull down the walls of Troy, I knew he spoke the truth; it will not be to the hands of the Akhaians that we will fall, but to the

hands of the Gods; and I do not know why they should destroy our city."

"Maybe," said Aeneas,"the Gods do not need reasons for what they do."

She whispered, "That is what I am beginning to fear."

CHAPTER 2

The climate of Troy was considerably warmer than that of Colchis; the serpents she had brought from Imandra's city were more active here, and Kassandra spent much of her time caring for them.

For this reason she did not hear immediately when the council determined that neither Paris nor Menelaus had won the duel, but that a truce would be proclaimed while they considered the matter further. Kassandra knew it would make no particular difference—both sides were resolved to continue fighting—so she paid little heed. She was still concerned with the serpents when the word came that the fighting had been resumed. Later someone told her that the truce had been broken when one of the Argive captains - later claiming that the Maiden Goddess had prompted him - had shot an arrow at Priam, which pierced his best robe and came near to killing him.

A few days later, from the safety of the walls, she and the other palace women watched the gathering of Hector's forces, both chariots and armed foot soldiers.

She heard among the women that Aeneas had accepted a challenge from Diomedes, the Akhaian who had fought with Glaucus.

Creusa did not take it very seriously.

"I have not heard that Diomedes is a fighter to worry about," she said. "This nonsense about exchanging gifts - what was that except an excuse for talking instead of fighting?"

"I would not count on that too much," said Helen. "Granted; that day they were both playing a game; but I have seen Diomedes when he is really set for fighting, and I think perhaps he is stronger than Aeneas."

"Are you trying to frighten me, Helen?" Creusa asked. "Are you jealous?"

"My dear," Helen said, "believe me, I have no interest in anyone's husband but my own."

"Which one?" asked Creusa unkindly. "Two lay claim to you, and no one in Troy talks of any other woman."

"I am not to blame if they have nothing to do but mind the affairs of their betters," Helen said.

"Tell me, is there any woman in Troy who claims I have spoken one word to her husband which could not be repeated before my mother and his?"

"I do not say that," Creusa muttered, "but you seem to take pleasure in showing yourself to all men as the Goddess—"

"Then your quarrel is withher and not with me, Creusa; I am not to blame for what she does."

"I suppose not—" Creusa began, but Kassandra interrupted:

"Of course not; don't be silly, Creusa. Is it not bad enough that the men down there are at war? If we women begin to fightwith one another too, there will be no good sense left anywhere in Troy."

"If the Gods and the Goddesses are quarrelling, how are we to remain free of it?" asked Andromache. "I think perhaps the Gods take pleasure in seeing us fight, as they take pleasure in fighting themselves. I know Hector's greatest pleasure is battle; if this war stopped tomorrow, he would weep."

"What troubles me is that he seems to welcome it," Helen said. "One would think he sought to be possessed by Ares. Kassandra, you are a priestess; it is true that men can be possessed by their Gods?"

She thought of Khryse and said, "It's true enough, but I do not know how or why it happens. Not, I think, merely by their wishing for it. Helen, I have seen you overshadowed by the Goddess. How can it be brought on?"

"Why, don't tell me that you wish to show yourself as Aphrodite?" Helen said, laughing. "I thought you were one of her foes."

Kassandra made a pious gesture.

"May it be far from me to be the foe ofany Immortal," she said. "I do not serve her, for it seems to me that the Beautiful One is not a Goddess as Earth Mother and Serpent Mother and even the Maiden are Goddesses."

"When is a Goddess not a Goddess?" asked Helen with a droll smile, "I don't think I understand you, Kassandra."

"I mean that the Goddesses of your Akhaian folk are different from the Goddesses of our people," Kassandra began. "Your Maiden Goddess—the warrior, Athene—she is just such a Goddess as a man would invent," Kassandra said, "because they say she was not born of any woman but sprang in full armor from the head and the mind of Zeus; yet, for all her weapons, she is a girl with all the domestic virtues, who would make some God a good wife. She tends to her spinning and weaving and is patron of the vines, both the olive and the grape. Would not a man create a warrior maiden just like this—brave and virtuous, but still obedient to the greatest

of Gods? And your Hera—she is like our Earth Goddess, but your people call her only the wife of Zeus Almighty and say she is subject to him in all things, while to us Earth Mother is allpowerful in herself. She brings forth all things, but her sons and her lovers come and go, and she takes whom she will; when the God of Death took her daughter, she brought the very Earth to a standstill, so that it neither bore nor brought forth fruit…'

"But we too have an Earth Lady," said Helen: 'Demeter. When Hades took her daughter, she brought, they say, a winter of fearful cold and dark; and in the end Zeus said that the girl must return to her mother—"

"Exactly," Andromache interrupted. "They say that even Earth Mother is under obedience of this great Zeus. But there's no sense to it. Why should the Earth Goddess, who was before all else and all-powerful, be subject to any man or any God?"

"Well, if you are going to argue as to which of the Gods is most powerful," Helen began, "is it not the forces of love which can disrupt all else in men's lives—and women's too—and make them blind to all else—"

"Create disorder and disruption, you mean," Kassandra said.

"You speak that way only because you have never come under Aphrodite's sway, Kassandra," said Andromache, "and if you defy her, she will make you suffer for it."

Surely this was true; Kassandra remembered the shocking conflict she had felt in Aeneas's arms.You do not know she is already making me suffer . But she could not speak of that, not to any of the women here.

"May that be far from me," Kassandra said, "I defy no one -certainly no Immortal." Yet even as she spoke she remembered that Khryse had called her defiance a defiance of Apollo's self. Was it so, or was he only—like all men—vengeful against a woman who would not serve him and his lust? And she had—if only in a dream—defied Aphrodite's power.

"Even Apollo Sunlord," she said, with a little thrill of dread, as if she flung a challenge even in the Sunlord's face, "is said to have slain Serpent Mother, and taken from her her power. Yet surely of all men, he who slays the woman from whom he sprang is most wicked - and would the Immortals allow in a God what is z most wicked in man? Were this true, Apollo would be no God but the most evil of fiends - which he surely is not."

"And as for Earth Mother creating a year in which no fruit or flowers came forth, and no crops would bear," Helen said, "in the year in which Atlantis sank beneath the ocean, so my mother's father's father said, there were great earthquakes, and great clouds of ash covered the sun; in that year, it might be said, there was no summer, for the very foundations of the earth had been shaken. But whether it was the doing of any God, who can say? It would not be surprising if men thought that Earth Mother had betrayed them, and sought to put an end to her-misbehaviour by giving her an overlord who would make her serve men as she ought."

Creusa interrupted nervously, "I do not think it is well done for us to stand here questioning the ways of the Immortals. They do not look to men to make an accounting of what they do, and if we seek to question them, they may seek to punish us for it."

"Oh, nonsense!" Kassandra said. "If they are as stupid and jealous of their power as all that, why would anyone serve them at all?"

"Do you, who are sworn to serve the Gods, not fear them at all?" Andromache asked.

"I fear the Gods," Kassandra said. "Not what men say they are."

In the Sunlord's house, the serpents - so Phyllida told her when Kassandra went to see her charges - seemed unusually disturbed. Some of them withdrew and would not come to be handled or even bathed, others were drowsy and sluggish. As she went from one to the other, trying to decide what was troubling them, she remembered the earthquake when Meliantha had died. Was this warning of just such another blow from the hand of Poseidon?I should send a message to the palace , she thought; but when she had last spoken there in prophecy they had mocked and taunted her, and Priam had forbidden her to speak. They would not believe me if I did send a warning, she thought. And then she knew, without the shadow of doubt, that she must not refuse to hear the voice which sent her the warning. Not that she could do anything to avert the hand of whatever God might send the earthquake, but that some of the worst of its fury might be averted. Distraught, she caught up a cloak and cried to Phyllida to try and soothe the serpents in whatever way she could.

Phyllida had put her own son and Honey to bed, each of them hugging a restless snake. As Kassandra bent to caress each of the children, her mind filled with pictures of the roof collapsing; she swiftly gave orders that they should have a bed made up in the courtyard, where if any building should fall, they would not be crushed beneath it.

Then she ran into the courtyard and cried out:

"O Lord Apollo! Hold off the hand of thy brother who shakes the Earth! Thy serpents have given me your warning; let all your servants hear!"

People came running out at her cries; Khryse demanded, "What is happening? Are you ill? Are you smitten by the hand of the God?"

Kassandra fought to control the intolerable shaking of her body. She struggled to speak rationally, make her words even.

"The serpents in the Sunlord's house have given me warning," she shouted, knowing that she sounded distraught, or worse; "as they did when Meliantha died. They are restless and trying to escape; the earth will shake before morning. Whatever is precious must be rescued; and none should sleep beneath a roof this night, lest it fall upon them."

"She is mad," Khryse said. "We have known for many years that she raves in prophecy."

"All the same," said one of the elder priests, "whatever she may or may not know of the Gods, in Colchis she learned the ways of serpent-lore from a mistress of that art. If the serpents have given her warning—"

Charis commanded, "The warning is given; we may not disregard it. Do what you will, or suffer the consequences; as for me and mine, I will make my bed under the open sky which will not fall upon us yet, at least."

Overhead it was already dark; torches were brought and the priestesses went quickly about the task of removing out of doors anything that might be endangered by the falling of stone or walls. Khryse still grumbled; it was to his advantage, Kassandra knew, to have it thought that nothing she said was true.

She ran toward the gates. "Open the doors," she cried. "I go to warn the folk of the city, and Priam's palace!"

"No!" Khryse cried out. "Stop her." He stepped toward her, and reached out to grab her arms, to prevent her forcibly from leaving the temple. "If warning must be given, sound the alarm; that will bring the folk out of their houses without making it seem that we are all God-smitten and distraught without reason except a foolish girl's dreams."

"Touch me at your peril! I go as the Gods determined, to warn them—"

Her cry shocked him enough that he let her go, and she darted through the door before he could stop her. Once in the street, she screamed at the top of her voice:

"Take heed! The serpents of the Sunlord have given warning; the earth will shake; take such shelter as ye can find! Let none sleep beneath stone roofs, lest they fall!"

People, roused by her cries, came flooding out of the doors; driven by a terrible urgency, she ran on, calling out her warning over and over. She heard behind her cries and shouts, some saying, "Hark to the warning of Apollo's priestess," and others grumbling, "She is cursed by the God; why should we believe her?"

It was as if she were filled with fire; she was driven, burning with the heat of the warning that flamed and raged within her. She fled down the streets, shrieking her warning over and over again. When she came to awareness of where she was, she was standing in the forecourt of the palace; her throat raw, and a dozen or more of the palace folk were standing and staring at her. Hoarsely she gasped out her tale.

"Let none sleep under a roof; the God will shake the land and buildings will fall - will fall Helen, your children - Paris—" she grabbed his shoulders; he thrust her away roughly.

"Enough of this! I swear, Kassandra, I have heard too much of your evil prophecies! I will silence you with my own hands—"

His hands clasped around her neck; her consciousness wavered and almost with relief she felt the hovering darkness take her in a great burst of light exploding somewhere inside her head.

Her throat ached; she put her hand weakly to it. A gentle voice said, "Lie still. Take a little of this."

She sipped at the wine, coughed and choked, but the insistent hand stayed until she swallowed again. It cleared her head; she was lying on the flagstones, and her head felt as if it had been cloven with an axe. Aeneas bent over her and said, "It's all right. Paris tried to choke you, but Hector and I stopped him. If anyone can be called mad—"

"But I must speak with him," she insisted. "It is his children -Helen's—"

I'm sorry," Aeneas said, "Priam has ordered all the palace folk to bed; he says you have disturbed them all too many times and has forbidden anyone to listen to you. But if it is any comfort to you, I have ordered Creusa to sleep out in the courtyard with the baby; and I think Hector has heeded you, too, for he says whatever you may or may not know of the ways of the Gods, you know the ways of serpents. Now drink a little more of this and let me take you back to the Sunlord's house. Or if you will, you may stay here and share a bed with Creusa and the baby."

She wanted to weep at the love in his voice; she knew it was this, and not any great belief in her

warning, which had prompted him to this kindness. She got to her feet, feeling as if every bone in her body had been beaten with wooden cudgels. "I must go back," she said, "and see to the folk in the temple, and the serpents, and my daughter—"

"Ah, yes, Creusa told me you had a little girl. A foundling, I suppose?"

"Yes, as it happens; but how did you know?"

"I know you too well to imagine you would ever disgrace your family by having a child outside of honorable marriage," he said, and she thought:Even my own mother did not trust me as much as that .

"Well, then, will you walk up with me?"

"Gladly," he said, "but you ran out without your cloak. Let me fetch you one or you will be cold." He brought her a long thick garment which she had seen Creusa wear, and she wrapped herself up in it. The night had grown chilly, and even in the heavy cloak she shivered, less from cold than from some subtle danger which remained in the air. It was as if far beneath the ground she could hear the very earth groaning, a heaviness which weighed intolerably on her mind and heart. She could hardly summon the strength and will to put one foot before another, and she leaned on his arm; then when he bent to kiss her she moved away.

"No, don't," she said. "You should go back - you have a wife and a child at risk to care for when

it comes—"

"Don't remind me of that," he said, and drew her within the curve of his arm again. After a moment he said, "I love you, Kassandra."

He was touching her gently in that way she found so disturbing, and she drew away from him.

He said softly, "My poor little love. I swear, if only I had the right, I would beat Paris for hurting you so. If he ever touches you again, I swear he'll find it the worst day's work he ever did. It's not his place to rule you."

"He does not realize that," she said. They had reached the great bronze gates of the Sunlord's house, but she did not go inside. Sitting on a low wall she said, "I have no husband, so my brother thinks it is his right to direct me. I suppose to those who do not see and hear what I do, my prophecy must sound like madness. They try to protect themselves against it by refusing to believe. I too am just as ready as anyone else to ignore what I do not want to know."

"Yes, I have seen that," said Aeneas, gently and meaningfully, and drew Kassandra against him under his cloak. She let him kiss her, but sighed with weariness, so that he let her go. He said, "We will talk of this again tomorrow, perhaps—"

"If there is a tomorrow," she said with such exhaustion that he blinked with astonishment.

"If tomorrow should not come, I will regret even beyond death that I have not known your love—" he said, so passionately that Kassandra felt her heart clutch as if a fist had squeezed it.

She said in a whisper, "I think I would regret it too. But I am so tired—" and she began to cry.

He kissed her gently and said, "Then let us pray there will be a tomorrow, my love," and let her go. It felt as if the weight of the trembling world were about to crack and descend on her uneasy head as she watched him walk away.

Inside the Sunlord's house people wrapped in blankets were sleeping all about the courtyards. For the moment all seemed peaceful; except for the violent throbbing in Kassandra's head, which made it seem as if her every step were taken on rolling waves. She went up to the court of the serpents; there the children slept, and Kassandra lay down beside Honey, taking the child in her arms. She imagined the earth as a great serpent coiled about the waist of Serpent Mother, whom she saw as a woman, large and stately like Queen Imandra. The ground seemed gently to rock beneath her, and as she drifted into sleep she half expected the coils to wind round her too.

Instead she seemed to drift through clouds, acres and fields of cloud, and a great expanse of sky; and at last she drifted unseen to the surface of a great mountain, and knew that she stood alone on the summit of the forbidden mountain where the Gods of the Akhaians gathered, and heard the distant sound of thunder as they spoke. She saw Zeus Thunderer as a tall and imposing man in the prime of life, with a full greying beard; it seemed that little flares of lightning moved round his hair like a wreath as he spoke.

"Now that this absurdity of a duel between Paris and Menelaus is over, it is obvious that Menelaus has won; I suggest that we bring this foolish war to a close and get back to our proper business."

"How can you say Menelaus has won when he did not kill Paris?" inquired Hera. She was a tall, imposing woman, rather stout, with hair dressed in a crown about her head. "I insist that Troy must be brought to destruction. They do not properly serve me there. Also I am patron Goddess of marriage; and Paris has personally insulted me, and fled to Troy, where they have received Helen as Paris's wife without any rites or sacrifice to me."

"All the same, they pay homage to me, and I have blessed their love," said another Goddess in gleaming garments, her hair crowned with roses; Kassandra knew from her resemblance to Helen that this was the golden Aphrodite. Hera sniffed and said, "Your rites are not those of lawful marriage."

"No, and I am proud of it," Aphrodite said. "For yours are only the tiresome bonds of law and duty. Paris and Helen do honor to real love, and I am on their side."

"Youwould be," said Hera. "Nevertheless, I am Queen of the Immortals, and it is my privilege to demand the destruction of Troy."

Zeus looked distressed at her tone, as harried as Kassandra had seen Priam look when his

women were arguing. He said, "My dear Hera, no one questions your right to demand that. But it must be done properly; we cannot simply destroy the city. If the Trojans can defend their city, they cannot simply have it taken from them. Athene—"

Kassandra saw the helmeted battle maiden, with her flashing spear like an Amazon's, as Zeus beckoned to her. But it was the regal Hera who spoke:

"Go, my child, and counsel the Akhaians; they are disheartened and about to sail away; bid them resume the fighting, and tell them that I, Hera, will not allow them to be defeated."

"This seems to be against all wisdom," the tall and solemn Athene said gently, "for the Trojans have done no wrong; and the Akhaians are proud. If you give them the city of Troy, I tell you, they will commit such evil acts in their pride and wickedness that they will offend every God known to mankind. But I have no choice but to obey your voice, Royal Lady." She bowed to Hera and flew away, and Kassandra, watching the flashing light of her helmet, like a comet, found herself standing on the plain before the city of Troy, where Athene came to rest. Before her a great white stallion, blocked Athene's way to the Akhaian camp.

Athene said, "Poseidon Earthshaker, what do you do here?" and the figure of the horse rippled like an image underwater and became first a Kentaur, half man, half horse, then a tall and strong man with seaweed for hair.

Poseidon, brother of Zeus, seemed to speak with his godly brother's thundering voice.

"You have been sent to betray my city; I will not let you enter it." As he spoke he stamped his foot; a great roll of thunder followed, and the ground shook…

Kassandra awoke, in the serpent court, with the children still sleeping at her side. But the ground was rippling like water, and she could hear the sound of thunder - or was it Poseidon's stamping feet? She screamed aloud, and Honey woke and began to whimper. Kassandra sheltered the child in her arms and watched the great arch above the gates rocking back and forth in the light of grey dawn; then it crashed to the ground.

In the corner of the courtyard a lamp had been placed; it rocked and fell over, and a tongue of flame licked at the cloth on which it was placed. Kassandra leaped up, grabbed a jar of water, and extinguished it. All over the temple there were cries and shrieks of terror. The ground was still heaving upward and buckling; a great crack opened in the earth, raced across the courtyard and closed again. Kassandra watched silently, feeling the great weight in her mind dissolve. It had come, she was delivered of it.

If they had sacrificed to Poseidon, might he have held back his hand? She did not know and could not guess. She put down the jug of water with which she had doused the fire, and ran down through the courts. Several of the buildings had indeed collapsed, including the dormitory where the maiden priestesses should have been asleep; so had one of the posts which supported the bronze gates of the Sunlord's house, which now hung twisted on their hinges. The temple was a ruin. Kassandra looked down into the city from the gap at the gates; houses had fallen into rubble

and fires were springing up everywhere.

Should she go down into the palace? No; she had given them her warning, and Priam had forbidden any to heed her; neither he nor Paris was likely to be very pleased if she came saying, "I told you so'.But she had. Why were people so unwilling to hear truth spoken ?

Slowly she went back into the Temple of Apollo. At least her own people had listened to her warning; no lives had been lost, and the few fires had been quickly put out. She could do no good in Priam's palace. She went back to the children. They would have been frightened by the quake and they would need her.

CHAPTER 3

The rebuilding began almost at once in the Sunlord's house. So many buildings had been destroyed, and some on such a scale that, Kassandra thought, it would demand the fabulous reputed strength of the Titans to set the walls up again. Some of the great stones could not be restored with the labour currently at their disposal; too many of the able-bodied men in the city were out there fighting Akhaians under Hector's command.

Thanks to Kassandra's timely warning, no lives had been lost in Apollo's Temple. A few of the priests had been injured -broken legs, twisted shoulders, a shattered ankle - by falling over stones

which were no longer where they were supposed to be, and there were a good many burns incurred while extinguishing fires. One or two of the serpents had escaped in the confusion, or taken refuge under fallen stones, and had not yet been found. One of the oldest priestesses had gone mad with fright and had not spoken a rational word since; they treated her with herbal potions and played soothing music, but the most experienced healers felt it unlikely that she would ever fully recover her wits.

Still, comparatively, Apollo's household had escaped lightly. In the Temple of the Maiden, it was said, many priestesses died when the roof of their dormitory fell in. No one knew how many had been killed and Kassandra was frantic about her sister Polyxena, but had no leisure to seek news of her. She comforted herself thinking if Polyxena were dead they would send her word.

As always the poorest quarter, with their flimsy wooden houses and inadequately guarded open fires, had suffered most. If the quake had come a few hours earlier it would have been worse, but since the hour was late, fires lighted for cooking the evening meal had mostly been extinguished.

Still, a dreadful number of dead lay in the streets, except where the burning houses had given them funeral pyres. Some corpses still lay under fallen buildings which would have to be torn down to recover them, as the ghosts of the unburied dead all too frequently sent pestilence in revenge. The priests of Apollo worked night and day, but it would take time, and everyone feared the vengeance of so many unburied corpses.

Nor had Priam's palace escaped unscathed. The buildings were of Titan stone that had resisted

even the strength of Poseidon's fury, but one room had collapsed - the room where the three sons of Paris and Helen were sleeping. Most of Priam's family, including Paris himself and Helen were uninjured.

Helen's son by Menelaus, young Nikos, had been hiding with his playmate, Astyanax, from their nurses. The two children had been sleeping in a courtyard out of doors (which they had actually been forbidden to do) and both boys had escaped unhurt - and unpunished. Still, the palace was plunged into grief for Paris's sons, and the truce had been briefly extended because of the rites and burial of the children.

Kassandra went down to the women's quarters of the palace—since none of the boys had been as old as seven, the warriors would take no official notice of their deaths, little children still being under the women's care. Paris was there, attempting to comfort Helen. She looked pale and weary, and Nikos, who had been officially committed to his step-father's care only a few days before, was there too, as if to remind his mother that she still had a son.

Helen came at once to Kassandra and embraced her.

"You tried to warn me, sister, and I am grateful to you."

"I am so sorry," Kassandra said. "I only wish—"

"I know," Helen said. "This is not a new grief to me. My second daughter died; she was a year

younger than Hermione, and two years older than Nikos. She never breathed, and when Nikos was born strong and healthy, so that I had both a Queen for Sparta, and a son for Menelaus to bring up as a warrior, I swore I would bear no more children; but nothing went as I had decided."

"It seldom does, in this world of mortals," Kassandra said. Paris approached them in time to hear this and said with an angry glare at Kassandra, "So have you come to gloat at us?"

"No," she said wearily, "only to tell you how very sorry I am."

"We need not your sympathy, you crow of ill omen!" Paris said wrathfully. "Your very presence brings us more evil fortune!"

"Be quiet, Paris! For shame!" Helen said. "Have you forgotten that she came to try and warn us of Poseidon's wrath? Or what welcome she had for her pains?"

Paris only scowled; but Kassandra thought he did look somewhat ashamed. Well, she could live without his good opinion; she would rather have Helen's.

The children were duly cremated and their ashes properly entombed; the truce lasted two more days and then was broken by a Trojan captain (he, like the Akhaian who undid the truce before, said that one of the Gods had prompted him, though he refused to say which one) who let off an arrow and wounded Menelaus, painfully, but, (unfortunately, Priam said) not fatally. If Menelaus had been killed, the King said, the Akhaians would have had a good excuse to call it all off and

go home. Kassandra was not so sure; perhaps the Gods were, really eager to destroy the city as she had seen in her - had it been only a dream?

Only the women were troubled by the end of the truce. Hector, Kassandra thought, was glad to get back to the fighting. In his chariot he led forth the Trojan armies the next day, riding up and down the long line of foot soldiers, encouraging them while the Akhaians were gathering for battle. The women, as usual, watched from the wall.

"Hector is certainly the finest charioteer," said Andromache, and Creusa laughed.

"You mean hehas the finest charioteer," she said, "and I think Aeneas comes at least close to that. Who is Hector's charioteer? He drives like the wind - or a fiend."

"Troilus, Priam's youngest son," Andromache said. "He wanted to take part in the fighting, but Hector wanted the boy under his own eyes. He's worried because he is no more than twelve— and still unseasoned in battle."

"Does Hector really think Troilus will be safer in his chariot? It seems to me that is where the fighting will be thickest, and certainly Hector will have no leisure to protect him," Kassandra said, but Andromache only shrugged.

"Don't ask me what Hector thinks," she said.

Of course, Kassandra thought, Troilus was nothing to her, only her husband's youngest brother. Andromache would mourn his death, but only in the same way that she grieved for Helen's children; from family duty, no more.

Helen still looked wasted and worn with sorrow, her eyes red and burning, and her hair lustreless; she had hardly troubled to pull it back out of her eyes; much less to scent it and brush it with oil. She wore an old bedraggled gown, it was all but impossible to recall the incredible glowing beauty which had inhabited her as the Goddess of Love. Yet Kassandra remembered, with the tenderness she always felt for her sister-in-law. Is this a sign of Paris's neglect? Was it that he cared so little for his children? She could guess Helen was grateful that her Nikos had not been lost in the earthquake, yet she sensed that Paris's sons were dearer to Helen than the son she had borne Menelaus.

She turned her eyes down to the battlefield, where Aeneas, in his splendid chariot, was riding up and down the line, calling out what she imagined was a challenge. Battle among opposing armies, she had seen, usually took the form of a series of duels between champions. It was not at all like the pitched battles she had fought when she rode with the Amazons, where the battle was a muddle of fighting where you killed as many as you could, any way you could.

"There," said Creusa, "he has found someone to take his challenge. Who is that?"

"Diomedes," said Helen.

"The one who exchanged armor—?"

"The same, yes," Andromache said, "but I think Aeneas is a stronger fighter, certainly with that chariot and those horses—"

"His mother was a priestess of Aphrodite - some say Aphrodite's self," Creusa said, "and she gifted him with these horses when he came to Troy - look, what's going on?"

Below them, Diomedes had ridden like a madman at Aeneas, and managed with his spear to overturn the chariot, tumbling Aeneas out on the ground. Creusa screamed, but her husband sprang to his feet, evidently unharmed, his sword out and ready. But Diomedes had cut the harness of the horses and seized their reins; it was obvious from his gestures that he claimed horses and chariot as his prize. Aeneas shouted in protest and rage, so loudly that the women could clearly hear his voice but not the words; he turned on Diomedes, and as they watched, he seemed before their eyes to grow taller, and his head to glow with a shining aura. It flashed through Kassandra's mind,Why, I did not know his hair is the same colour as Helen's ! Then she knew that she saw before her the beautiful Goddess herself, turning on Diomedes in the fury of an Immortal. Diomedes visibly flinched; he had not been prepared for this, but his courage did not fail; he dashed at the towering form of Aphrodite and thrust with his sword, wounding the form of the Goddess in the hand.

Abruptly it was Aeneas who stood on the field, screaming like a woman, and shaking his hand from which blood was pouring.

Diomedes did not lose the advantage, but put up shield and sword in defense. Aeneas, however, attacked wildly, and after a moment Diomedes went down full length on the ground; a few seconds later, Agamemnon and four of his men were backing up Diomedes, driving Aeneas off in a fury of blows. Hector's chariot dashed by, and Hector jumped to the ground, briefly engaged Agamemnon in a wild exchange of swordplay, and lifted Aeneas into his chariot. They dashed back toward the gates of Troy, while a handful of Hector's soldiers drove off Agamemnon and his men from Aeneas's chariot and managed to recapture the horses.

"He's hurt," Creusa cried, and ran down the stairs, the other women following in haste, just in time to greet Hector's chariot. Hector swung down and motioned them away.

"Get back so we can get these gates closed, unless you want Agamemnon and half the Akhaian army in here," he said. The women surged back, and the men joined hands pushing the gates closed, cutting down one luckless Akhaian soldier who was trapped inside.

"Throw him over the wall to his friends," Hector said. "They want him, and we don't."

Creusa was holding Aeneas tight, summoning healers to bandage up his hand. He seemed dazed; but when Kassandra came and took over the bandaging, he smiled up at her and asked, "What happened?"

"If you don't know," said Hector, "how are we to tell? You were fighting Diomedes and

suddenly you stopped…'

"It was not you but Aphrodite," Helen said. "She fought through you—"

Aeneas chuckled. "Well, I don't remember anything except being in a rage at Diomedes for trying to claim my chariot and horses; the next thing I remember, my hand was bleeding and I heard someone scream—"

"That was you," Hector said, "or the Goddess—"

Aeneas laughed. "The Beautiful One," he said,"screaming all the way back to Olympos, I dare say, to sit in Zeus Thunderer's lap and tell him all about the nasty men fighting. I hope the Thunderer commands her, in no uncertain terms, to stay off the battlefield from now on; it's no place for ladies - not even when they're Goddesses," he added.

Kassandra finished tying up his hand.

His eyes smiled at her. To her he still bore the glamour of the Goddess, and her heart beat faster. If he sought her again she knew she would never be able to resist him.Is this the revenge of the Goddess because I would not serve her? Has Aphrodite conquered me when Apollo could not?

She had finished the bandaging; it was with reluctance that she let go of his hand. There was a little stall nearby where the soldiers bought bread and wine at mid-day; Hector went to it and

brought back two goblets of wine and gave one to Aeneas, who shrugged it away. Creusa said, "Drink it, you have lost blood," and he shook his head.

"I've cut myself worse and lost more blood shaving," he said, but he sipped at the wine and laughed.

"I wonder if they will tell the same mad tales as they did when the Goddess appeared when Paris fought Menelaus?"

"No doubt," Kassandra said. He was looking straight at her.

"The Akhaians seem to like that kind of story."

"Well, the Gods will do as they will, and not as we ask them to," Aeneas said. "Yet by my divine ancestress, I wish they would go away and let us get on with the war. It's not their business, it's ours."

"I think perhaps it is their business more than ours," Helen said, "and we have very little to say about it."

"But why? Why should the Gods care who wins a mortals' war?" Andromache asked.

Hector shrugged. "Why not?"

And to that not even Kassandra ventured an answer.

"There was a time when I believed that we were altogether at the mercy of the Akhaian troops," Hector said. "But now that Akhilles has abandoned them—"

"That can hardly go on for long," Helen said. "I cannot imagine the great Akhilles remaining for long sulking in his tent like a little boy…'

"But that is exactly what Akhilles is like," Aeneas said. "A cruel, arrogant schoolboy."

Hector said, without changing expression, "We must not question the decrees of the Gods."

Aeneas replied, "If the Gods make decisions which would be set aside as the decisions of the mad, perhaps they are not to be obeyed blindly. Perhaps—" But he lowered his voice and looked round fearfully as he spoke, "perhaps they are testing us to see if we have the wit to stand against them."

"Maybe they are headstrong like Akhilles," Helen said, "and if they cannot have their own way in a game they will smash all the playthings."

"I think it is like that," Hector said, "and we are the playthings."

CHAPTER 4

For the next few days Kassandra heard the war news from the old cake-woman. It seemed that Akhilles remained in his tent, never showing his face even to encourage his companions; and the war dragged on without much change. Hector fought a prolonged duel with Ajax, but they fought till it became too dark to continue, and neither had the advantage. Agamemnon tried a bluff, threatening to pull out of the war too, if Akhilles would not fight; but the Akhaians greeted this threat with so much glee, rushing for their ships and starting to pack up their gear, that he had to spend much of the next day coaxing his men to come back, offering them gifts and bribes to continue fighting.

That night Kassandra drifted in confused dreams of Olympos; Hera, tall and proud, stood and demanded help in destroying the city of Troy.

"Zeus has forbidden us to intervene," said the tall Athene, sombre and sad, "although he has allowed me to counsel the Trojans, if they will but listen to my wisdom. Why do you hate them so fanatically, Hera? Are you still jealous because Paris did not award the crown of beauty to you? What did you expect? Aphroditeis , after all, the Goddess of Beauty; I learned long ago that I could not compete with her. And why should you care what a mortal thinks?"

"Then you, Poseidon!" The proud Lady turned to the hairy sea-God, thick set, bearded, muscled

like a swimmer. "Let me have your help in destroying the walls of Troy. Zeus has ordained it, and when it is done he will not be angry."

"Not I," said Poseidon. "Not till the time ordained has come. I know better than to conspire with a woman against the will of her husband."

Thunder flashed as Hera stamped her foot and cried out, "You will regret this!" But Poseidon had taken the form of a great white stallion and galloped away along the shore; the pounding of his hooves sounded like the crash of waves along the sea-wall the Akhaians had built.

Kassandra woke in dread, hearing the sound of Poseidon's rage, wondering if it presaged another earthquake, but all was quiet in the temple, and at last she slept again. In the morning she found that a few vases and dishes had fallen from tables and shelves, and a lamp had overturned, but had burned itself out on the stone floor without setting anything arise; if there had been an earthquake it had been a very small one, hardly more than a shrug of the God's shoulders. The Immortals seemed to have the same unresolved squabbles as those inconclusive duels between the soldiers, which settled nothing. Well, they—the soldiers—were only human and could hardly be blamed for behaving foolishly; but Kassandra would have thought the Gods would have something better to do.

She resolved that this day she would stay away from the city wall; she had seen enough of these duels and she supposed with Akhilles still hiding in his tent, there would be nothing happening yet again. It was surprising, she thought, how much time she had wasted of late gossiping with

the other women watching from the walls.

Honey was outgrowing her frocks; Kassandra spent the morning looking through her own possessions and inquiring of the priestesses; perhaps there would be something suitable among the offerings that she could use to make her daughter some clothes. She was given a piece of saffron-dyed material, which she thought would look pretty with the little girl's dark curls and lively dark eyes, from which she could fashion a gown and kerchief. The child would still need sandals; she was running everywhere now, and after the big earthquake the courts were full of rubbish on which she could hurt her feet. She started to call a servant to go to the market to fetch leather for sandals, then decided to go herself and take the child.

Honey was big enough now to scamper along beside her, and to understand that she was to have sandals like a big girl; Kassandra enjoyed the feeling of the small fat hand in hers. Sagely she examined the sandals displayed for sale; the prices were not, it seemed, exorbitant. She arranged to try a sturdy pair on the child and finding them well built and satisfactorily fitting the little feet, allowed Honey to choose which pattern she liked best.

"And for you, Lady?" the sandal-maker asked. By habit Kassandra started to say no, then followed the man's gaze to her feet. Her sandals were much worn, thinning at the sole, and one strap mended and re-mended. Well, after all, she had worn them to Colchis and back.

"Well, these sandals have been halfway round the world; I suppose they deserve to be honorably put out to pasture like an old mare," she said, and allowed him to show her several pairs, all of

which were too large. At last he measured her foot and said, "The Lady has such a little foot; I must make a pair to your measure."

"I did not design my own foot," Kassandra said, "but if you will make me a pair by this pattern—" she indicated the most nearly fitting of the sandals he had shown her,"that will do nicely. Meanwhile I suppose you can simply mend the strap of these yet again."

"I don't think it will hold together; it has been sewn so often," he protested. "If the lady will be content to wait in my humble shop but half an hour, the new ones will be ready. May I send for a glass of wine for you? A slice of melon? Some other refreshment? No? Something for the child?"

"No, thank you," Kassandra said; Honey too must learn to wait patiently when necessary. She stood watching the man trimming the soles of the sandals which had been just a little too large, re-positioning the straps and stitching them with his thimble and heavy leather needle. He had an iron needle, which, she thought, must be why he did such fast work; bronze needles could not pierce the leather so readily. She wondered whether he had it smuggled in past the blockade, or whether he traded with the Akhaians. It was probably better not to know. Such commerce was forbidden; but if Priam's city wardens thrust everyone into prison who traded illegally there would be no trading at all and commerce in the city would come completely to a halt.

Already many foodstuffs were hard to come by after the long siege; what had saved the city were the gardens inside the walls, where grapes and olive trees were the sources of wine and oil,

and vegetables could be grown. Many houses had caged doves or rabbits, previously kept for sacrifice; now these were eaten, and kept away the most acute hunger. Bread was in short supply except for the soldiers' mess and the palace, though some wagons of grain had been brought in overland, avoiding the Argive ships, during the truce.

Now that the truce was officially over, would it mean a tightening of the siege? Or would the Akhaians get tired of fighting without Akhilles, and go away again? That might be the best that could happen.

But if they felt they had the Gods on their side—and there she broke off in the old confusion; why should the Gods meddle in men's affairs? Well, Hector's answer had been simply: Why not? Anyway, she had been asking that same question since the beginning of the war, and she had had no answer - except in her dreams.Dreams! what good were they ?

Yet her dreams had sent her warning of the great earthquake; she should then trust them. Anyhow, she had no choice. The dreams werethere; she ignored them at her own peril—and for all she knew, the peril of Troy and her world.

She had drifted into reverie when she heard a great commotion in the streets; Hector's chariot raced down through the city toward the lower gates. To Kassandra, watching from her bench inside the sandal-maker's shop, it seemed that half the population of Troy emptied itself into the streets to watch. After so long, one would think they would take it for granted and go on about their business. But there seemed as much enthusiasm evident as on the first day he had paraded

before his troops. Well, that was nice for Hector, she thought, not entirely without sarcasm, and would have turned away; but the sandal-maker brought her new sandals and stood watching Hector's chariot instead of helping her put them on.

"He drives his chariot like the very Battle-God himself," he remarked. "Princess, he is your brother?"

"Yes; the son of both my mother and my father," she replied.

"Tell me, what is he like? Is he truly as much a hero as he seems?"

"He is certainly brave and a valorous fighter," she said.But was it bravery or simply a lack of imagination? Paris could simulate bravery but only because he feared being thought a coward more than whatever else it was that he feared . "But more than that," she said, "Hector is a good man, apart from being a good fighter. He has other virtues than bravery." The man looked a little startled, as if he could not imagine any other virtues. "I mean he would be worthy to admire even if there were no war."

And that, she thought, could hardly be said of any of her other brothers; they seemed little more than animate weapons without much thought for what they were doing or why. Paris had some good qualities - although he seldom showed them to a sister - he was kind to Helen, showed kindness as well as respect to his aging parents, and had been a loving father to his children while they lived. He was kind even to Helen's son by Menelaus.

Aeneas, too, had this kind of character- or do I think so only because I love him ? she asked herself. The sandal-maker still lauding Hector's attributes, Kassandra said, "He will be pleased to know that he is so well thought of in the city," (which certainly was true) paid for her purchases and stepped out into the street. She immediately had to snatch Honey out from under the feet of the crowds blocking the way and surging back from the street where four chariots driven by Aeneas, Paris, Deiphobos, and the Thracian captain Glaucus were thundering down in the wake of Hector's toward the great gate.

Had Priam decided to send his best champions against the. Akhaians regardless of the fact that Akhilles was not with them - or in hopes of luring Akhilles forth? The thought revived her curiosity; Honey was already trying to run after the crowd, so Kassandra went down toward the wall and once there, up the stairs inside to the women's favourite observation point.

As she had expected, she found Helen, Andromache, and Creusa there with Hecuba. They all greeted her with affection. Helen, she observed, seemed less worn. Soon she confided to Kassandra that she believed she was pregnant again.

Andromache said, "I do not see how any woman could in good conscience bring a child into the world when there is this great war. I said so to Hector, but he only answered that this is when children are most needed."

"Children die when there is no war," Helen said. "I lost my second daughter to a midwife's

carelessness, and three of my sons died in an earthquake. They could have fallen to their death birds-nesting on the rocks, or been trampled by an escaped bull at the Games. There is no safety for children anywhere in this mortal world, but if we all decided not to bear children because of that, where would the world be?"

"Ah, you have more courage than I," said Andromache. "Just as Paris is more daring with his chariot than Hector - look, how he races out of the great gate!"

It was hard to tell which was driving the most wildly; all five chariots exploded out of the gate almost at once, Hector's foot soldiers streaming after them. The Akhaians had not yet formed any battle lines. Kassandra saw the chaos and disorder of the Argive camp as the troops sprang out between their tents, yelling, searching for weapons. The line of chariots thundered down on the camp, and on through. Now she saw that each chariot bore a brazier of coals and something else - tar? pitch? - and an archer swiftly preparing arrows by dipping them into the blazing stuff, and shooting at the lines of ships which lined the harbor beyond the camp. For a few minutes, while trying to bring down the chariots, the Akhaians did not see the objective of the attack; then a great cry of rage rang out, but by this time the chariots were actually on the beach and several of the ships already ablaze.

Hector's foot soldiers were well organized, attacking the still-surprised troops of Agamemnon.

Ship after ship, each with a blazing arrow in the folds of the furled sails, took fire, with sailors unready to fight the flames jumping overboard and adding to the confusion. Now Hector's men

turned their attention from the ships to the army's tents. There were screams, and immense confusion all through the camp as men tried half-heartedly to organize ways of fighting the inferno, and tending the wounded. One of the ships (she heard later it had a cargo of oil) had already burned to the waterline and sank. A great cheer went up from Hector's men.

The Trojan chariots were surrounded now by Akhaian foot soldiers trying to pull the riders down; but the archers continued to shoot their fire-arrows into the tents until the women on the wall could not see into the Akhaian camp at all through the smoke. Another ship sagged and settled down into the harbor, the flames subsiding in the waters.

The women cheered; then there was a commotion among the guards along the wall, and Trojan soldiers ran past them to a vantage point where some archers were stationed. There were loud yells, a combination of cheers and jeering cries, and a great crash. When the captain of archers came back, Andromache asked what had happened. Saluting her respectfully, he said, "At first we thought it was Akhilles himself and that he'd picked this time for a diversion. "Twasn't him, though; it was that friend of his - what's his name—Patroklos; climbed right up the west wall where there are stones loose from the earthquake."

"Did you get him?" Andromache asked.

"No chance, Lady; we sent a good few arrows whizzing round his head, though, and he lost his balance and slid down. Then his archers returned our fire and covered him while he showed us a good pair of legs back to their camp," the soldier replied. "Shame we missed him; if he'd wound

up with an arrow through his gullet, maybe Akhilleswould get discouraged and take off home."

"Never mind," Andromache said. "You did the best you could; and at least he didn't get into the city."

"Begging your pardon, Lady,best we could won't be good enough for Prince Hector," said the soldier pessimistically. "But I reckon you're right, nothing to do about it now, and no use worrying about what we can't mend. Maybe he'll give us another chance some day and we'll pick him off."

"May the War-God grant it," said Andromache. The women looked out over the wall again; the chariots had withdrawn now from the Greek camp and were racing back toward the gates of Troy; Kassandra, though she could not at this distance distinguish one chariot from another, counted them and noted they were all there. The raid on the ships, then, had been a total success.

Below them the watchman shouted, "Ready there to open the gates!" and they heard the creaking of the ropes that opened the great gate. Helen and Andromache went down the stairs to greet their husbands; the other women remained behind.

Hecuba approached Kassandra who asked, "The King was not with the chariots?"

"Oh, no, Kassandra," said her mother. "His hands no longer serve him to drive. The healerpriests have treated him with their healing oils and spells, but every day it grows worse. He can

hardly tie the laces of his sandals."

"I am sorry to hear it," Kassandra said, "but for old age, Mother, there are no healing spells, even for a King."

"Nor, I suppose, for a Queen," Hecuba said, and Kassandra, looking sharply at her, realized how frail her mother was, her back stooped and so thin that her bones seemed to protrude from the skin. Her complexion had always seemed fresh and bright; now it was greyish and sallow, and her hair a dirty streaked yellowish-white. Even her eyes seemed to have faded.

"You are not well, Mother."

"Well enough; I am much more troubled about your father," Hecuba said. "And Creusa; she is pregnant again, and there is likely to be a scarcity of nourishing food in the city this winter. The crops were not good, and the Akhaians burnt so much of what there was."

"There is food enough in the Sunlord's house," Kassandra said. "What is shared out for me and for Honey is always more than we can eat; I will try and see that Creusa has enough."

"You are good," Hecuba said gently, reaching out to stroke her hair; her mother had rarely caressed her since she was a very small child, and Kassandra felt warmed.

"We have not only food but healing herbs in plenty; you must always come to me if anyone at

the palace is ill or in want," she said. "It is taken for granted that we shall share what we have with our families. I will send some herbs for Father; and you must steep them in hot water, and soak a cloth, and apply the hot cloths to his hands. It may not cure him, but it will ease his pain."

Hecuba looked past her to Honey, who was sitting on the wall, playing with some pebbles. Kassandra remembered a similar game when she was very small; she and her sisters, the other daughters of the royal house, would choose nice round little stones and set them in niches on the wall to bake, as if they were buns or loaves, examining them every few minutes to see if they were cooked enough. She smiled at the memory.

The chariots were inside the walls now and the gates closing. Hecuba asked, "Will you come and dine at the palace? Though you will surely be better fed in the Sunlord's house…'

"I think not tonight," Kassandra said,"though I thank you; I will send the herbs down by a messenger. I hope they do Father good - we cannot spare his strength in these days. Not even Hector is fit to rule Troy, even if he should survive his father." She stopped herself, but Hecuba had heard and stared at her in shock.

She did not speak. Kassandra knew what she was thinking:

Soshe believes Hector will die before his father, old and ill as Priam is. What more has she seen ?

The charioteers had left their chariots; Hector and Paris, accompanied by their wives, came up the stairs, and Aeneas joined Creusa. Kassandra picked up Honey; if she did not intend to join them this night at the palace, it was time to take her leave.

Creusa came to her and said, "I will walk with you to the Sunlord's house, Sister."

"I would be glad of your company; but the sun is still high in the sky; I need no escort," Kassandra protested. "You should not tire yourself with that long climb."

"I will come," Creusa insisted, "I would like to speak with you."

"Very well, then; as I said, I am glad of your company," Kassandra said. Creusa gave her small daughter to a servant, in structing the woman to take her home, and to feed her if she had not returned by supper-time; then she joined Kassandra, who was tying on Honey's broad-brimmed hat against the sun.

"She is well-grown for her age," she said. "How old is she now? When was she born?"

"I am sure Mother has told you that I am not certain," Kassandra said, "but she cannot have been more than a few days old when I found her, and I left Colchis the day after midwinter."

"Nearly a year then; she must be close to my own daughter in age," Creusa said. "Yet she is taller and stronger, and already walking beside you like a big girl. Little Kassandra still creeps

on-all fours like a puppy."

"Well, those who know children best say that each one walks and talks when the time is right for her; some early, some late." Kassandra replied. "Mother says I was early to walk and talk, and I remember things which must have happened no later than my second summer."

"That's true," Creusa said. "Astyanax did not walk or even talk till he was past two years old; I know Andromache was beginning to wonder if he had all his wits."

"That must have been very worrying," Kassandra agreed. She felt confused; surely Creusa had not undertaken this long climb to speak with her about the growth and feeding of little children, when the palace was filled with so many nurses to consult.

Whatever it was, Creusa was finding it hard to come to the point; but just as Kassandra was beginning to wonder if Creusa had somehow found out what she had said to Aeneas (But how? Some spying servant? She would swear they had not been overheard) and to feel vaguely guilty. Creusa said, "You are a priestess and they say you are a prophetess; it was you who gave warning of the great earthquakes, was it not?"

"I thought you were there when I gave the warning," Kassandra said.

"No; Aeneas came and told me not to sleep under a roof that night, and to take the children outdoors," her sister said. "What have you foreseen?"

Creusa knows as well as I do that I have seen death, and the destruction of Troy, she thought, but she was sure her sister had some reason beyond the ordinary for asking. She said, hesitating, "Are you sure you want to know? Priam has forbidden anyone to listen to my prophecies. It might be better not to anger him."

"Let me tell you then why I ask," said Creusa. "Aeneas told me that you prophesied that he would survive the fall of Troy."

"Yes," said Kassandra, embarrassed. "It seems the Gods have work for him elsewhere; for I have seen him departing unharmed, and behind him Troy in flames."

Creusa's hands flew to her bosom in a strange gesture. "Is this true?"

"Do you believe I would lie about it?"

"No, no, of course not; but why should he be chosen to be spared when so many will die?"

"I do not know; why were you and your child spared when Helen lost three sons in the great quake?"

"Because Aeneas heeded your warning and Paris would not."

"That is not what I meant," Kassandra said. "No one can say why the Gods choose one to die and another to live; and perhaps those who live may not be the most fortunate."

wish I were sure that only death waited for me, she thought, but she did not say so to Creusa.

"Aeneas has ordered me to leave the city and take the children," Creusa said.

"Children? I thought you had only your little girl—"

"But Aeneas has a son by his earlier marriage; I am to go, perhaps to Crete, to Knossos or even further. I was thinking I should refuse to go, to say that my place was at his side, come war or death; but if it is true that he is certain to survive, then I can understand why he wants me to go… so that we may meet in safer country when the war is over."

"I am sure he is thinking only of your safety."

"He has been strange lately; I wondered if he had found himself another woman and wanted me out of the way."

Kassandra said through a dry mouth, "Even if it should be so, would it matter? Since almost everyone in the city is to die in its fall—"

"No, I suppose not; if one of them can make him happy for a little time," Creusa said, "and they

are all going to die anyway -why should I care? So you think I should go?"

"I cannot tell you that; I can say only that there are few who will survive the city's fall," Kassandra said.

"But is it safe to travel with a child so small?"

"Honey could not have been more than a few days old when I found her, and she survived and thrived. Children are stronger than we think."

"I thought only that he wished to be rid of me." Creusa said. "But you have made me understand why it is best that I should go. Thank you, Sister." Unexpectedly she put her arms around Kassandra and hugged her hard. "You too should forsake the city before it is too late. You did not make this war with the damned Akhaians, and there is no reason you should perish with the city. I will ask Aeneas to arrange that you should be sent away—"

"No," Kassandra said. "It seems that this is my destiny, and I must abide it."

"Aeneas speaks well of you, Kassandra," Creusa said. "He told, me once you were more clever than all of Priam's officers together, and that if you were in command we might even win this war."

Kassandra laughed uneasily, and said, "He thinks too well of me then. But you must go, Creusa;

gather together your possessions and be ready to depart whenever he can find you a ship, or whatever means he may find to take you and the children to safety."

Creusa embraced her again. She said, "If I am to depart soon, we may not meet again. But wherever destiny may take you, Sister, I wish you well; and if Troy truly does fall, I pray that the Gods may preserve you."

"And you," Kassandra said, kissing her cheek; and so they parted. Kassandra watched her sister out of sight, knowing in her heart that she would never see Creusa again.

CHAPTER 5

Since the battle when five of the Akhaian ships had been burnt to the waterline and others greatly damaged, the Akhaians had drawn their blockade so tight that—as Hector said - a crab could not crawl into the city. For that reason, Aeneas made no attempt to get Creusa away by sea; she was sent in a cart around to the landward side, and along the coast for many miles past the blockade, where a ship would take her first to Egypt and then to Crete. Kassandra watched her depart, and thought that if Priam had any sense he would order all the women and children out of the city. However, she said nothing; she had done her best to give warning.

Even the landward side of the city was no longer completely safe. A wagonload of iron weapons

from Colchis was intercepted and brought into the Argive camp with great celebration. Soon after, a small army of Thracians, coming overland to join Priam's forces, was waylaid by Akhaian captains—rumour said by Agamemnon and Odysseus themselves - and all the horses stolen, and the Thracian guards murdered.

"This isn't war," Hector said,"this is an atrocity. The Thracians were not yet part of Troy's armies and Agamemnon had no quarrel with them."

"And now he never will have," said Paris cynically.

This touched off another attack by the Akhaians, led by Patroklos, who again climbed the walls at the head of his own men; the Trojans managed to repel them, and Patroklos was reported wounded, although not seriously.

At Kassandra's earnest petition, the people of the Sunlord's house built an altar, and sacrificed two of Priam's finest horses to Poseidon. Another earthquake could pull down every wall and gate of Troy and leave the city open to the besieging forces of the Akhaians. This was now Kassandra's only fear; she knew it must come, but if the Trojans put all their efforts into the placating of Poseidon, he might still hold his hand.

The Akhaians forces fought without their greatest warrior;

Akhilles still remained in his tent. Now and again he would come forth - not dressed for battle -

and walk about the camp, morosely alone or in company with Patroklos, but what they talked of, no one could say. Rumours brought by spies said that Agamemnon had gone to Akhilles and offered him his first choice of all the city's spoils for himself and his men, but Akhilles had answered only that he no longer trusted any offer Agamemnon might make.

"Can't blame him," Hector said. "I wouldn't trust Agamemnon as far as I could heave him with one thumb. Damned convenient for us, though, this quarrel in the enemy camp; while they're, fighting each other, we have time to repair our walls and get our defenses together. If they ever make it up, and decide to work together, then God help Troy."

"Which God?" Priam asked.

"Any God they haven't already bribed to be on their side," Hector said. "Suppose Aeneas and I got into some sort of fight, and refused to work together?"

"I hope that we never find out," Aeneas said. "For I suspect on that day we would have doomed ourselves more quickly than the Gods could doom us."

Priam pushed restlessly at his plate, on which was only a sparse assortment of vegetables and some coarse bread.

"Perhaps we might arrange a hunt on the landward side," he said. "I would be glad of some venison or even rabbit."

"I had not thought I would hear you say that, Father; for so long we were glutted with meat when the goats had to be slaughtered for lack of fodder; we kept only a few for milk for the smallest children," Hector said. "The pigs can eat what is left from the tables, and there are still some acorns in the groves; but now there is little left. Perhaps we can hunt—"

"I think the pigs should be killed too," said Deiphobos. "This winter we will need the acorns for bread; we should set all the young people who are not old enough to fight to gathering them and laying them away. It will be a hungry winter, whatever we do or do not do."

"What is being done in the Sunlord's House?" asked Aeneas. You sit there so still and wise, Kassandra, what says Apollo's wisdom?"

"It does not matter what you do," Kassandra spoke without thinking. "By winter Troy will have no more need of food."

Paris took one great stride toward her. He roared, "I warned you, Sister, what I would do if you came here again peddling your evil news!"

Aeneas caught his arm in mid-swing.

"Strike someone your own size," he snarled, "or strike at me, for I asked the question which prompted the answer you do not want to hear!" He added gently, "Is it so bad, Kassandra?"

"I do not know," she said, staring helplessly at them. "It might even be that the Akhaians will be gone, and there will be no more need to hoard food—"

"But you do not think so," he said.

She shook her head; they were all staring at her now. "But things will not go on as they are now for long, that I know. A change will come very soon."

It was growing late; Aeneas rose. "I will go and sleep in the camp with the soldiers," he said,"since my wife and children have gone."

Hector said, "I suppose I should send away Andromache and the boy, if there is so much danger here."

Paris said, "Now you see why I feel that Kassandra should be silenced at any cost; she is spreading so much hopelessness inside Troy that before we know it all the women will have gone; and then what are we to fight for?"

"No," Helen said, "I will not go; for better or worse I have come to Troy and there is no longer any other refuge for me. I will remain at Paris's side as long as we both live."

"And I," said Andromache. "Where Hector has courage to remain, there will I remain at his side.

And where I remain, my son will remain."

Kassandra, remembering that Andromache had been reared for a warrior, thought that perhaps Imandra would be proud of her daughter after all.I wish I had her courage , she thought, then remembered that Andromache did not know what lay before them. Perhaps it was easier to have courage when you could still believe that what you feared would not come to pass. In her ears were the thunders of Poseidon, and she could hardly see across the room for the fires which seemed to rise.

Yet the room was quiet and cool, and all the faces surrounding her were kind and loving. How much longer would she have them round her? Already she had lost Creusa; who would be the next?

She knew she should stay inside the Sunlord's house; but she could not keep away from the palace, and every day she watched with the other women from the wall, so that she was one of the first to see the people exploding into the spaces between the houses so swiftly that for a moment she wondered if it was another earthquake. Then the cry went up.

"Akhilles! It is the chariot of Akhilles!"

Hector swore violently and ran up the stairs to the lookout point on the walls.

"Akhilles has come back? The worst news we could have - or is it the best?" he said roughly,

hastening to where the women stood watching. "Yes, right enough, that is his chariot—" and he shaded his eyes with his hand. Then he turned away, scowling.

"By the Battle-God! That is not Akhilles, but somebody else wearing his armor! Akhilles's shoulders are twice that wide! Maybe that boy friend of his. The armor doesn't even fit him. In the name of Ares, what is he playing at? Does he really think he can deceive anyone who has ever seen Akhilles fight?"

"I suppose it is a ruse to hearten Akhilles's men," said his charioteer, young Troilus.

Hector said, "Whatever it is, we'll make short work of him. I might hesitate to face Akhilles, even on a propitious day; but the day never dawned when I would be afraid to face Patroklos; perhaps, youngster, I should put my armor on you and set you in my chariot and send you out to take him on."

"I will do it gladly if you will allow it," said the boy eagerly, and Hector laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "I dare say you would, lad; but don't underestimate Patroklos as much as that. He is not at all a bad fighter; not in my class or Akhilles's it's true, but you're not ready for him yet; not this year and probably not next year either."

He called his armorer who came and strapped on his best armor, then they heard the creaking of the gate as Hector rode out.

"This frightens me," Andromache said, hurrying to the best vantage point for watching. "Great Mother, how that wretched boy drives his chariot! Has Hector taught him neither caution nor good sense? They will both be flung out in a moment!"

The two chariots rushed together like rutting stags coming together in the height of the season. Troilus was kept busy with the Myrmidons who rushed against the chariot. He fought one after another back while Hector awaited the champion. Then he sprang out along the axle of the chariot, leaving Troilus to defend it, and faced the man decked in the brilliant gold-decorated armor of Akhilles.

Hector's sword swung up to meet the Akhaian, who rushed at him, swinging. One swift step and Patroklos was down; but as Hector rushed in to finish him off, the youth scrambled up as if the heavy armor were a feathered cloak and backed away. The men exchanged a flurry of blows so rapid that Kassandra could not see that either of them had the least advantage. A small shriek from Andromache told her that her husband had taken a wound; but when she looked she saw that Hector had recovered himself at once and was thrusting violently enough that Patroklos was retreating toward his chariot. His sword drove hard into the place where the armor met the armpiece; then came free in a shower of blood. Patroklos staggered back; one of the Myrmidons caught him around his waist and lifted him bodily into the chariot; he was still standing, but swaying and white-faced. His charioteer - or was it Akhilles's charioteer?—slapped at the horses and they galloped back toward the beach and the Akhaian tents with Hector in hot pursuit.

Troilus loosed an arrow which struck the leg of Patroklos, who lost his balance and fell; only the

quick grab of the charioteer kept him from being flung out of the chariot. Hector waved to Troilus to abandon the pursuit; Patroklos was either dead or wounded so gravely that it was only a matter of time before he died. Hector's chariot turned back toward Troy. Andromache started to dash down the stairs as she heard the creaking of the ropes that opened the great gate, but Kassandra held her back and they waited until Hector came up the stairs. His arms-bearer came and began to help him out of his armor, but Andromache took his place.

"You're wounded!"

"Nothing serious, I assure you, my dear," Hector said. "I've had worse wounds in play on the field." There was a long gash in his forearm, which had not injured the tendon. It could be dealt with by cleansing with wine and oil and a tight bandage. Andromache, not waiting for a healer, began at once to care for it, and asked, "Did you kill him?"

"I'm not sure whether he's dead yet, but I assure you, nobody really ever recovers from a thrust to the lungs like that one," Hector said, and almost at the same minute they heard a noise from the Akhaian camp; a great howl of rage, and grief.

"He's dead," Hector said. "That's one in the eye for Akhilles, at least."

"Look," said Troilus,"there he is himself."

It was indeed Akhilles himself; wearing only a loincloth, his great shoulders bare and his long

pale hair flying. He strode from his tent and toward the walls of Troy. Just out of bowshot he paused and, raising his clenched fist, shook it at the walls. He shouted something, lost in the distance.

"What did he say, I wonder?" Hector asked.

Paris, who was unarming close by, said: "I suppose some version of 'Hector, son of Priam - with a few choice remarks about your ancestry and progeny - come down here and let me kill you ten times over!"

"Or, more likely, ten thousand times," agreed Hector. "I-couldn't quite make out the words, but the tune is clear enough."

"So now," said Paris,"shall we celebrate?"

"No," Hector said soberly, "I do not rejoice; he was a brave man and, I think, an honorable one. He may have been the only one to keep Akhilles's insanity within bounds. I am sure that the war will go the worse because he is no longer among them."

"I can't understand you," Paris said. "We've done away with a great warrior, and you're not delighted. If I'd killed him, I'd be ready to declare a holiday and a feast."

"Oh, if all you want is a feast, I'm sure we can arrange that somehow," Hector said. "I'm sure

many will rejoice; but if we kill off the decent and honorable foes among the Akhaians, we will be left to fight the madmen and rogues. I fear no sane man, but Akhilles—that is another matter. I probably mourn Patroklos as much as any man save Akhilles himself."

Aeneas went and looked over the wall. "Where is Akhilles? He's gone—"

"Probably back in his tent trying to get Agamemnon to call off the fighting for a few days of mourning."

"This would be the time to hit them hard," said Paris, "before Akhilles recovers: while they're still disorganized."

Hector shook his head.

"If they ask a truce, we are honor bound to give it," he said. "They gave us a truce to mournyour sons, Paris."

"I didn't ask for it," Paris snarled. "This isn't war, this careful exchange of honors; it's some kind of dance!"

"War is a game with rules like any other," Priam said. "Wasn't it you, Paris, who complained that Agamemnon and Odysseus had broken these rules when they seized the Thracian horses?"

"If we're going to fight," Paris said, "let us try to win; I see no point in exchanging courtesies with a man when I'm trying to kill him and he's doing his best to return the favour."

Both Hector and Aeneas started speaking at once. Priam demanded, "One at a time," and Hector shouted loudest.

"These "courtesies", as you call them, are all that make war an honorable business for civilized men; if we ever stop extending these courtesies to our enemies, war will become no more than a filthy business, run by butchers and the lowest kind of scoundrels."

"And if we are not going to fight," Paris said, "why do we not settle our differences with an archery contest, or games such as boxing and wrestling? It seems to me that competition would make more sense than a war; we are competing for a prize."

"With Helen as the prize? Do you think she would be willing to be the prize in an archery contest?" scoffed Deiphobos.

"Probably not," said Paris, "but women are usually disposed of as prize to someone's greed, and I don't see why it should make so much difference."

It was early the next day when Agamemnon, in the white robes of a herald, came under a peaceflag to Priam's palace, and as a peace-offering brought Hecuba's two waiting-women, Kara and Adrea, who had been taken from Kassandra when she entered the city. Then Agamemnon asked

Priam, in honor of the dead, to grant a seven days' truce because Akhilles wished to hold funeral games to honor his friend.

"Prizes will be given," he said, "and the men of Troy are welcome to compete and will be considered for prizes on even terms with our own people." He added after a moment that Priam would be welcome to judge any contests for which he felt qualified—chariot racing perhaps, or archery. Priam thanked him gravely, and offered a bull as a sacrifice to Zeus Thunderer, and a metal cauldron as a prize for the wrestling.

After Agamemnon had soberly accepted the gifts and gone away with courteous expressions of esteem, Paris asked disgustedly:

"I suppose you're going to compete in this farce, Hector?"

"Why not? Patroklos's ghost won't begrudge me a cauldron or a cup, or a good bellyful at his funeral feast. He and I have no more quarrels now; and if I'm killed at the final sack of Troy, if there is one, we'll have something to talk about in the after-world."

CHAPTER 6

Deathly silence hungover Troy all the next day; and over the Akhaian camp. At mid-afternoon

Kassandra went down to the city wall; she could see into the camp and as far as the beach full of ships from the high edge of the wall of the Sunlord's house, but she could not hear anything or tell what was happening.

Andromache was there with Hector and others of Priam's household. They welcomed Kassandra and made room for her where she could see what was happening. "This would be the best time to attack them and burn the rest of their ships," Andromache suggested, but at Hector's fierce look she drew back.

"I was joking, my love; I know you are incapable of breaking a truce," she said.

"'Theydid," Paris reminded them. "If I had been killed and we were giving them a truce for my burial, do you really think they would not storm us at the very height of the feast? Odysseus and Agamemnon are probably urging them right now to make an attack when we least expect it."

"The camp looks almost deserted," Kassandra said. "What are they doing?"

"Who knows?" Paris said. "Who cares?"

"I know," Hector said. "The priests are laying out Patroklos's body for burial or burning; Akhilles is mourning and weeping; Agamemnon and Menelaus are plotting some way to break the truce; Odysseus is trying to keep them from fighting loudly enough for us to hear; the Myrmidons are setting up for the Games tomorrow - and the rest of the army is getting drunk."

"How do you know that, Father?" asked Astyanax.

Hector said, laughing, "It's what we would be doing if the shoe were on the other foot."

At this moment a young messenger, in the dress of a novice priest of Apollo, came up inside the wall.

"Your pardon, nobles; a message for the Princess Kassandra," he said, and Kassandra frowned. Had one of the serpents bitten someone, or one of the children fallen into a fever? She could think of no other reason she should be summoned. Her temple duties for the day, never very pressing, had been performed and she had been given leave to absent herself.

"I am here," she said, "what is wanted?"

"Lady, guests have arrived at the Sunlord's house; they came by the mountains to avoid the Akhaian blockade, and they seek you. They say the matter is of very great urgency and cannot be delayed."

Puzzled, Kassandra bowed to her father and withdrew. As she climbed to the temple, she wondered who it might be, and why they should seek her out. She went into the room where visitors were entertained; in the darkness of the room after the sun the strangers were only a half dozen indistinct forms.

One among them rose and came toward her, opening her arms.

"It rejoices my heart to see you, child," she said, and Kassandra, her eyes adapting to the dimness of the room, looked into the face of the Amazon Penthesilea.

Kassandra fell into her enthusiastic embrace.

"Oh, how glad I am to see you all! When I came from Colchis there was no sign of you, and I believed you were all dead!" she cried.

"Yes, I heard you had been seeking us; but we had gone to the Islands, seeking help and perhapsa new home country," Penthesilea said. "We found it not, so we returned, and I had no way to send word to you."

"But what are you doing here? How many of you are here?"

"I brought with me all of us who remain and who have not chosen to go and live in cities under the rule of men. We have come to defend Troy against her enemies," Penthesilea said. "Priam told me once, many years ago, that before he would send to women to help in the defense of his city, Troy would indeed be fallen on evil times. Perhaps by now I know better than he how evil is the case in which Troy finds itself."

"I do not know if my father would agree with you," Kassandra said. "The army is rejoicing because Hector has just killed the second most dangerous fighter in the Akhaian army."

"Aye; they told me in the Sunlord's house," Penthesilea said. "But I do not think Troy any the nearer safety because Patroklos lies dead."

"Kinswoman," Kassandra said gravely, "Troy will fall, but not to the hand of any man. Do you think then that we can contend with the hand of a God?"

Penthesilea smiled in her old way and said, "It is not the destruction of the walls which we need fear, but the destruction of our defenses; Troy could be defeated and sacked, and if it is the will of the powers above that this should happen—" She broke off and held out her arms to Kassandra, who went into them like the child she had been.

"My poor child, how long have you been alone with this? Is there no one in Troy, soldier or king or priest, to trust your Sight?" she asked, holding her like a child against her meager old breast. "None of your kinsmen or brothers? Not even your father?"

"They least of all," Kassandra murmured. "It angers them when I even speak doom for Troy. They do not want to hear. And perhaps, if I can offer no way to avert this fate, but can only say it must come… perhaps they are right not to dwell on it."

"But to make you suffer all this alone—" Penthesilea began, then broke off and sighed.

"But I should present myself with my warriors to Priam, and greet your mother, my sister."

"I will take you to the palace that he may welcome you," said Kassandra.

The old Amazon chuckled. "He will not welcome me, my darling, and the more desperately he needs the righting skills of my women, the less welcome I will be," she said. "The best I can hope for is that he will not refuse us; perhaps I have waited late enough that he will know how badly he is in need of even a few good warriors. Mine number twenty-four."

"You know as well as I that Troy cannot afford to spurn any help from any source whatever, even had you brought an army of Kentaurs," Kassandra said.

Penthesilea sighed and shook her head. "There will never be such an army again," she said sadly. "The last of their warriors are gone; we took in half a dozen of their youngest boy children, after their horses died. Now villagers scratching the ground for a harvest of barley and turnips pasture their goats and swine where once the herds of Kentaurs roamed with their horses; our mares too are perished, save these last pitiful few. There are few horses now on the plains near Troy, I see. The wild herds have been captured by the Akhaians or by the Trojans themselves."

"Apollo's sacred herd still roams free on the slopes of Mount Ida; none has ventured to touch them," Kassandra reminded her. "Even the priestesses of Father Scamander have not ventured to

lay a bridle on their heads." But this made her think of Oenone and she wondered how she fared. It had been years since she had caught sight of the girl; now the women of Mount Ida never came down to the city even for festivals. Paris never spoke of her and as far as Kassandra could tell, never thought of her; even though, now that Helen's children had been killed, Oenone's child was his only living son.

She said, "You and your women must be weary from travel; I offer you the hospitality of the Sunlord's house. Let me bring you servants who will conduct you to a bath, and if you wish for guest robes—"

"No, my dear," Penthesilea said. "A bath would be more than welcome, but my women and I will present ourselves in our armor and riding leathers; we are what we are and will not pretend to be otherwise."

Kassandra went to make the arrangements, then went to prepare herself to dine at the palace. She sent word that she would be bringing guests, but only to Queen Hecuba did she disclose their identity. As kinswomen she knew they would be welcomed, but she knew Priam had no love for the Amazons. Even so, the laws of hospitality were sacred and she knew Priam would never violate them.

In defiance, she thought of robing herself in her old riding leathers and bearing weapons; Priam would be angry, but she wished to identify herself with the Amazons. But when she took the old clothes from her chest the soft undertunic would not even go over her head; it had been made for

the girl she had been when she rode with the Amazons. The leathers were old and cracked, and would not fit her either; why had she kept them all these years? The girl she had been was gone forever.

Lying at the bottom of the chest was her bow of wood and horn; she could still draw that, she supposed, and she had kept her sword and dagger bright and free of rust.I could still ride, and I am sure I can still fight if I must , she thought,even though I now have no Amazon garments; perhaps before my city falls I may still draw weapons in her defense. It is not clothing but weapons and skill that make an Amazon . She saw and felt herself—though she had not moved a muscle—fitting an arrow to the great bow, drawing the cord back and back, letting the arrow fly…but at whom? She could not see the target where the arrow sped …

Nevertheless it heartened her to think she would not stand helpless in the final defense of Troy. Kassandra put away her weapons in the chest—the leathers she would throw away, or better yet, keep them for Honey one day. She dressed herself in a fine gown of woven linen from Colchis, and put her best golden earrings - they were made in the form of serpent heads - in her ears. She added a golden bracelet and the necklace of blue beads from Egypt; and went down to meet her guests.

They had been joined by a tall armored man; with surprise she recognized Aeneas.

"I came to escort you, Kassandra," he said, "but I have been talking with your guests. We will be grateful to have the Amazon archers to defend the main tower; we will station them on the

walls—"

"I am at your disposal," Penthesilea said, "and I have an old grudge against the father of Akhilles; once at least I will ride out against the son—•'

Kassandra felt again the clamping darkness squeezing its fist around her throat, so that she could neither speak nor cry out.

"No!" she whispered, but she knew that none of them could hear her. Aeneas said in a friendly manner, "Well, Hector is our commander; it will be for him to say where he wishes you to fight. We can settle that in a day or two. Shall we go?" He offered his arm courteously to the Amazon Queen, and they left the room walking down towards the palace. It was not yet quite dark, and Penthesilea looked with dismay at the rubble still blocking the streets. A few wooden shelters had been hastily flung up, but the town still looked as if a giant's child in a fit of temper had kicked over a box of his toys.

Aeneas said, "My father has told me many tales of the wars between the Kentaurs and the Amazons. There was a minstrel at our court who used to sing a ballad about them—" He hummed a few phrases. "Do you know the song?"

"I do indeed; if your minstrels cannot sing it, I will sing it for you myself," Penthesilea said,"though my voice is not what it was when I was girl."

Moving through the courtyards, Kassandra studied the small band of Amazons; Penthesilea had aged more than a year or two since their last encounter on the road to Colchis. She had always been tall and thin; now she was gaunt, her arms and legs all taut ropy sinew with no remaining ounce of softness anywhere. She still had all her own teeth, strong and white; one could hardly have described her as 'an old woman'.

None of the others were as old as Penthesilea; the youngest, Kassandra reckoned, was hardly into her teens, a slight girl who looked as strong and dangerous as her own bow.

This is what I could have been; what I should have beenKassandra regarded the young warrior with ill-concealed envy…At least she need not sit idly while the defenses of her city fell apart ,

"But you have not been idle," said Aeneas softly, and she wondered—though she never knew for sure—whether he had read her thoughts or whether she had whispered them aloud. "You are a priestess, a healer. It is not only the fighters who serve a city at war." He slid his arm around her waist and they walked entwined the rest of the distance. When they entered into Priam's great hall, the herald called out their names:

"The Princess Kassandra, daughter of Priam; the Lord Aeneas, son of Anchises; Penthesilea, warrior Queen of the Amazon tribes, and two dozen of her ladies - er -' the herald coughed to cover his confusion, "of her warriors - how shall I say it, my Lady—"

"Peace, donkey," said Penthesilea. "None of us have more wit than the Gods have given us.

Your king and queen know who I am." But she was smiling and good-natured even while the herald fumbled to dry his sweaty palms on his tunic.

Hecuba came down from her high seat, bustling toward her sister, and took her into her arms.

"Dearest Sister," she said, and Penthesilea returned her embrace.

Priam rose too and took several steps from the high seat, embracing Penthesilea exactly as his wife had done.

"You are most welcome, Sister-in-law; every hand which can raise a weapon is welcome to us this day. You shall have your choice of all the booty of the Akhaian camp with the other warriors, that I promise to you; anyone who gainsays this is no friend to me," he said, with a sharp and meaningful look at Hector.

"Father, have we come to this?"

"I would welcome the Kentaurs themselves to fight against Akhilles's army," said Priam. "Tell me, Sister, what weapons have you brought?"

"Two dozen warriors and we are all armed with swords of iron from Colchis," Penthesilea said. "Every one of us skilled with the bow as well; not one of my women but will shoot out the eye of a running stallion at a hundred paces."

"Will one of you enter the archery contest in the funeral games tomorrow?" Paris asked. "Akhilles has offered the best of the captured chariots, and to the best archer, the great bow of Patroklos himself."

"He would not award that to a woman," Hector said, "not though she outshot Patroklos himself."

"He is sworn to award the prizes to the victor."

"Nothing is sacred to Akhilles," Penthesilea said. "I would be willing to compete if only to show that to all his men; but he, might surprise me. But I have neither wish nor need for a chariot; and my own bow is sufficient to my needs." She laughed. "I am not in this war for gold or booty; what would I do with a woman captive?"

"If you win enough booty in this war you could re-establish your cities," Andromache said, "or go and found a city of your own somewhere, as my mother's people did with Colchis."

"There are worse thoughts," said Penthesilea. "I will consider that. If I win this great chariot, then, Priam, will you ransom it for gold?"

"If he does not," Hecuba said, "I will. You will be well paid -you and all your warriors."

The wine cups went round again, the men laughing and joking, each saying in which contest he

would enter and compete, and what he would do with the prize if he won it.

"You should seek to win one of the women, Aeneas," said Deiphobos. "Someone to warm your bed while Creusa is in Crete."

"No," said Aeneas, raising his cup. "Should I win a captive woman, I will send her to Crete as a maid to wait on Creusa and help her care for the children. She will be paid an honest wage that some day she may be able to purchase her freedom. I like not this passing round of women as prizes. No more than Penthesilea would I desire any woman who does not come to me of her free will."

Over the rim of the golden cup his eyes met Kassandra's; and she knew what he was asking of her and what her answer would be.

They moved slowly up the hill toward the house of the Sunlord; there was no moon, and the streets were dark except for the occasional spilled light from the inside of one of the houses along the street. Kassandra stumbled over a loose stone, and Aeneas put his arm round her, steadying her steps - or perhaps, she thought, seeking an excuse to hold her; she was not certain she had not stumbled for an excuse to cling to him. Although the night was warm he wrapped his cloak round them both; and she was overwhelmingly aware of the warmth from his body.

She was not precisely frightened; but she was nervous and a little troubled. For so many years her life had been the life of a priestess, and virginity had been at the very center of that life. She

found herself remembering all the arguments she had mustered against Khryse, and wondered if she were behaving like a hypocrite; now that she had resolved to surrender, and she was surrendering to her sister's husband. But she had Creusa's own word that it did not matter; she need have no scruples on Creusa's part.

And as for the God? She had long lost the belief that it would matter to Apollo Sunlord what she did. He had abandoned her; but if he had spoken to forbid this step, even now, she knew she would not defy him. There was within her a small glowing center of angry desolation;be did not care , it did not even matter to him that one of his chosen was to abandon her pledge to him.

But that thought was buried very deeply indeed; on the surface of her mind there was room for nothing except Aeneas.

They were approaching the great gates; a priest stood there to guard entrance and exit, and she stopped and turned away so that he would not see her.

"We cannot go in there," she said. "If I bring you inside and do not take you out again at once— "

He understood at once.

"No, indeed," he said. "You must take care of your reputation - I would not endanger it, Kassandra. Perhaps we should have remained in the palace this night—"

"No," she said softly, "I would not want that. I am not ashamed—it is not that—"

"But you must not cause a scandal," he said, and walked toward the low wall where it fell away to the streets below. Kassandra felt awkward; she had not thought of this till this moment. She had brought out Akhilles and Odysseus in the cloaks of novice priests; but she could not do that with Aeneas, even if she could somehow lay hands on the cloaks. She frowned, trying to think of a way to bring him in unseen; letting him depart again in the morning was no particular problem. She said in an undertone, "There is a place where the wall crumbled away in the great earthquake; even the little children can climb it. It has not been repaired because all the attention of the workmen has been put to repairing the city gates, down below. This way," she said and led him along the outer wall. It was nowhere very high, and this had once been a door at the side; it had been blocked up only a generation or two ago, and when the old arch had crumbled it left a pile of easily scaled rubble which no one thought it necessary to guard or observe. Even in her long skirt Kassandra found it easy to climb, though the sound of the stones turning, under her feet and Aeneas's behind her rattled loudly.

She thought she was probably not the first of the temple women to bring a lover in this way; it was the sort of thing she would have expected of Chryseis. She did not want to think of herself on the same terms as that alley-cat girl; but she must accept it, she was no better. She gave Aeneas her hand to steady him as she stepped down and felt her breath catch in her throat; she had so often chided Chryseis in her mind for this kind of thing.

If Creusa does not object—and if the Lord Apollo does not speak to prevent it—then there is no one, man or woman or God, who has any right to object, she told herself firmly. She led him along the deep shadows at the edge of the wall; and rather than conducting him to the door of the priestesses' dormitory and through the corridor to her room, took him to the window which opened into the street, and stepped through.

Inside it was dark and still, a single rushlight burning on a platter - just enough to see her bed and the pallet where Honey usually slept. As she approached the bed, Kassandra saw the little girl's dark head on the pillow; and as she bent to lift her, the long blunt form uncoiled upward, eyes gleaming like two flat pebbles. She saw Aeneas recoil and said softly, "She will not harm you; she is not poisonous."

"I know," Aeneas said. "My mother was a priestess of Aphrodite, and shared her bed with stranger things than snakes. Your pet will not trouble me—"

"I can put her in the child's bed if you like," Kassandra said, lifting Honey and laying her in the pallet; the child whimpered and Kassandra sat with her crooning softly to soothe her back to sleep.

"It does not matter to me," Aeneas said, "but I am a stranger to her; perhaps she will spend a quieter night in the child's bed." Kassandra felt heat rising in her cheeks as she rose and picked up the snake, laying her down close to Honey; the serpent glided down, wrapping her coils close around Honey's waist. Reassured by the familiar touch, Honey slept, and Kassandra came back,

taking Aeneas's cloak and laying it aside.

"I did not know your mother was a priestess of Aphrodite," she said, and Aeneas replied, "When I was a child, they told me my mother was Aphrodite's self. Later, I knew who she really was and came to know her as a mother. I am not surprised if she seemed like the Goddess herself to my father; she was very beautiful. I think the priestesses of Aphrodite are chosen for their beauty."

"And if they serve the Goddess," Kassandra said,"she would certainly lend them her beauty."

"It cannot be only that," Aeneas said, "or you would long ago have been chosen to her service."

The remark made her shiver. Was she then being deceived into the service of that Goddess who thrust the disorderly worship of carnal love into the lives of men and of women? Was it then that despised Goddess who had sought now to lay a hand on her and win her away from the pledge she had made to Apollo?

Already she had seen how Aphrodite disrupted the lives of those who worshipped her. Aeneas was her child; did he worship her too?

She could not ask him these things. He sat on the edge of her narrow bed, drawing off his sandals. She came to him and he reached for her, with a single gesture pulling the pin from her hair and letting it fall free to hide her face and all her questions. It no longer mattered. All the

Goddesses, whatever their name, were one and she should serve them as every woman served them.

She heard the rustle of the snake as she shifted her coils. Aeneas reached for her, his arm around her waist.

"It is no wonder you have remained so long a virgin, with such a guardian of your chastity," he murmured, laughing. "Have all of the Sunlord's maidens such chaperones to safeguard them?"

"Oh, no," she said, laughing and lay back in his arms. Then she raised herself to extinguish the rushlight. Darkness filled the room and she heard him laugh again, softly. Beyond the laughter she heard, very far away, a ripple of thunder; then the sudden rush and rattle of rain outside.

"Shining Aphrodite, if I must serve you as all women, after so many years of refusing your service, lay then some of your gifts on me," she whispered, and felt a shimmer of light round her -or was it only a random flicker of the lightning outside as Aeneas touched her in the dark?

At dawn she slipped quietly from her bed, to sit at the window, remembering and savouring every detail of the night. She sat overlooking the pearly mists below. Soon the winds at the summit would blow the mists away. At the highest point of the Sunlord's house the wind already roared noisily around the walls;, and Aeneas stood not yet armed.

"There is no reason for arming, if I am to compete in wrestling and boxing," he said. "I will take

on any contestant save Akhilles himself. I dreamed last night—"

Kassandra asked, "Did the God send you a lucky dream?"

"Whether lucky or unlucky I do not know," said Aeneas. "My good fortune, it seems to me, I have already won." He bent and kissed her. "Promise me; you have no regrets, my beloved?"

"None," she said; it no longer mattered to her; so many years she had waited to give herself, refusing even, as she thought, the Sunlord's self; and here in the midst of war, in the shadow of death, she had found love and knew it could not last.

When Honey at the far end of the room stirred and cried with some nightmare, she moved quickly to quiet the child. She soothed her gently, rocking, crooning to her, and saw Honey's eyes turn to the unfamiliar person in the room; and was suddenly, confusedly glad that the little girl was too young to voice her surprise or curiosity.

Now as they stood close together, she thought of all the other women of Troy who for all these years had been fastening on their men's armor and sending them out to fight -or to die— and that for once she shared the concerns and fears of these women.

She helped him to buckle the final strap on his breastplate; the rest of his armor would be donned in the field. The trumpet which blew at dawn to summon the men had not yet sounded; and this morning it was uncertain whether it would be heard at all; only those who were

competing in Patroklos's funeral games need rise or go out this day, although a careful watch would be kept in case the Akhaians attempted to break the truce.

Come, kiss me, love, I must go," he said, holding her tight in a last embrace, but she protested: 'Not yet; shall I find you some bread and a little wine?"

"I must breakfast with the soldiers of my mess, sweetheart; don't trouble yourself." He hesitated and held his face against her cheek. "May I come to you again tonight?"

She did not know what to say, and he mistook her silence. "Ah, I should not have - your brothers are my friends, your father my host—"

"As for my father or brothers, there is no man in all of Troy to whom I must account for my doings," Kassandra said sharply. "And your wife, my sister, said to me when we parted that she grudged you nothing that would make you happy."

"Creusa said that? I wonder - well, I am grateful to her, then. I could have told you that, but better you should hear it from her—" Impulsively he caught her to him again. "Let me come," he begged. "We may not have much time… and who knows what may happen to either of us; but these days of the truce—"

All over Troy, she thought, women fresh from their men's beds were fastening on armor, using these last little delaying moments and kisses, trying not to think of the vulnerability of the flesh

they had caressed.

Aeneas stroked her hair. "Even with Aphrodite I have now no quarrel - for it was she, I think, who brought you to me. I shall sacrifice a dove to her as soon as I can."

There were doves enough in Apollo's shrine; but Kassandra felt a certain reluctance to suggest he buy one of them. Aeneas in one way had stolen something belonging to Apollo - though she did not know now and had never known why it should have belonged to anyone but herself. Then she told herself sharply not to be foolish; she was certainly not the first of the Sunlord's maidens to take a man to her bed, and would hardly be the last. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him and said, "Until tonight then, my dearest love."

She went to the high railing to watch him as he went down through the city. It was hardly full light yet; the clouds were blowing across the plain before Troy, and there were only a few figures astir in the streets; soldiers, gathering for the morning meal.

She was weary; she should go back to bed. But she wondered how many of the women in the city who had just sent their lovers or husbands to battle - or, today the mock-battle of the Games—could calmly go and sleep. She dressed herself swiftly, and went into her room, finding Honey still buried in her blankets. She did not want to walk about the courts; for some reason she was certain that she would encounter Khryse and she felt that he would be instantly aware of what had happened and that she could not endure his gaze. She had lately allowed Phyllida to take over the care of the serpents, so there was no reason to go to the serpent court.

With surprise she realized that what she felt was loneliness; she had always been so solitary, and in general so accustomed to that state that it was rare for her to crave company. Then she remembered that there was now one person in the Sunlord's house to whom she could actually say all that was in her heart.

Penthesilea and a few of her women had been assigned a room not far from Kassandra's; the mass of them were in a courtyard nearby, where they were sleeping on rolled blankets. One or two were awake, and breakfasting on bread and the harsh new wine that was made within the Temple. Penthesilea, as befitted their Queen, was in a little room alone at the far end of the hall; Kassandra traversed the ancient mosaic, laid down in a pattern of seashells and spirals, tiptoeing quietly so as not to wake the sleepers. She tapped lightly at the door; the old Amazon opened it and pulled her inside.

"Good morning, dear child. Why, how worn and sleepless you look!" She held our her arms, and Kassandra went into them, weeping without knowing why.

"You needn't cry," Penthesilea said, "but if youwill cry, I would say you have reason enough; I saw you leave the banquet with Aeneas last night. Has that rogue seduced you, child?"

"No, it is not like that at all," Kassandra said angrily, and wondered why Penthesilea smiled.

"Oh, well, if it is a love affair, why do you weep?"

"I - don't know—I suppose because I am a fool, as I always knew women were fools who play these games with men, and talk of love, and weep—"And now , she thought,I am no better than any of them .

"Love can make fools of any of us," Penthesilea said. "You have come later to it than most, that is all; the time for weeping over love affairs is when you're thirteen, not three-and-twenty. And because when you were thirteen you werenot weeping and bawling over some handsome young slab of manhood, I thought you would be such a one as would seek lovers among women, perhaps—"

"No, I had no thought of that," Kassandra said. "I have known what it is to desire women—" she added thoughtfully, "but I thought perhaps it was only that I had seen them through Paris's mind and his eyes." She remembered Helen and Oenone and how deeply she had been aware of them; something in her, whatever happened, would always feel a strong affection for Helen. This was something altogether different and not at all welcome; it enraged her that she could make such a fool of herself over a man to whom she could never even seek to join her life.

She was crying again, this time with rage. She tried to put something of this into words, but Penthesilea only said, "It is better to be angry than to grieve, Kassandra; there will be time enough to grieve if this war goes on. Come, help me arm, bright-eyes."

The old pet name made her smile through her tears.

Kassandra picked up the armor, made of overlapping boiled and hardened leather scales and reinforced with plates of bronze; it was decorated with coils and rosettes of gold. She pulled it over the old Amazon's head, turning her gently to fasten the laces.

"Should any harm come to me in this war," Penthesilea said, "promise me my women will not be enslaved nor forced to marry; it would break their hearts. Pledge me they will be free to leave unharmed, if your city survives."

"I promise," Kassandra murmured.

"And should I die, I want this bow to be yours; see, I even have a few Kentaur arrows, here at the bottom of the quiver. Most of my women now use metal-tipped shafts, because they can pierce armor like mine; but the arrows of the Kentaurs—you know the secret of their magic, Kassandra?"

"Aye, I know they use poison—"

"Yes; little known poisons brewed from the skin of a toad," said Penthesilea. "And they will kill with even a slight wound. Few of your foes will wear armor head to toe, even among the Akhaians. They are - shall we say - a way of evening the disadvantage that we women have in the way of size and strength."

"I shall remember that," said Kassandra, "but I pray the Gods I shall not inherit your women nor your bow, and that you shall bear your weapons till they are laid in your grave."

"But my bow will do no good to anyone," said Penthesilea. "When I am gone, take it, Kassandra; or lay it on the altar of the Maiden Huntress. Promise me that."

CHAPTER 7

The Akhaians made no effort to break the truce during the seven days of funeral games for Patroklos, nor during the next three days which were devoted to a feast at which the prizes weredistributed. Kassandra attended neither the Games nor the feast, but heard about them from Aeneas. He won the javelin-casting, and gained a gold cup. Hector was disgruntled because he had entered the wrestling, and had been beaten by the Akhaian captain called Big Ajax, but was a little comforted by the fact that his son Astyanax won the boys' foot-race, though he was smaller than any other boy in the contest. "What did he win?" Kassandra asked.

"A silken tunic from Egypt, dyed crimson; it's too big for him, and too fine to be cut up for a child but he can wear it when he is grown," Aeneas said. "And at the end of the feast, they thanked us for our company at the games and said they'd meet us on the battlefield in the morning. So let us sleep, love, for they will blow the horn to rouse us an hour before daylight."

He stretched out and drew her into his arms, and she put her arms around him joyfully. But after a moment she asked, "Was Akhilles there?"

"Aye; Patroklos being killed has made him even more angry than any insult from Agamemnon," Aeneas said. "You should have seen him look at Hector; it was as if he were the Gorgon and could turn your brother to stone. You know I'm no coward, but it's just as well it's not my fate to go up against Akhilles."

"He's a madman," Kassandra said with a shudder, then stopped further talk by pulling Aeneas's head down to her own and kiss-mg him. They fell asleep in one another's arms, but after a time it seemed to Kassandra that she woke and rose - no, for, looking back, she could see herself still in the bed, still lying entwined in Aeneas's arms.

Light as a ghost, she drifted through the temple, hovering where the Amazons still sat wakeful in their rooms, sharpening their weapons; drifted down toward the palace; in the rooms where Paris and Helen lived, Paris sleeping heavily, Helen with tear-stained cheeks wandering through the room where her children had been killed. She still has Paris; but is this enough? If we are defeated, what will become of her? Will Menelaus drag her back to Sparta, only to kill her? For a moment it seemed to her that she saw the Akhaian captains casting lots for the conquered women, dragging them on board the black ships which filled the harbor so full of filth and dread…

No; that was no more than a dream; it might never happen after all. The death of Patroklos and

the return of Akhilles had changed some tide in the currents of what might befall, she knew that; now even the Gods must make new plans. The night appeared to sparkle with glimmers of moonlight, and it seemed, as she drifted ghostlike down toward the Akhaian camp, that great forms drifted through the dark. No mortal thing, she knew, could see her in this form, but the Gods might catch sight of her as she spied in this world of ghosts…

She had no idea where she was going, but for some unknown reason a firm sense of purpose drove her on. She lingered a moment in Agamemnon's tent; he lay sleeping—he was not really larger than life-size, only a narrowly built, mean-looking man with a troubled look on his face. This man was married to Helen's sister, and had offered his own daughter as sacrifice for a fair wind… did the Gods of the Akhaians truly demand such hideous things or did they have priests who said so to suit their own corrupt purposes? She supposed that an evil man was evil everywhere, and among the Akhaians it must be easier. As she lingered, he rolled over on his back and opened his eyes; it seemed to Kassandra that he could see her, and perhaps if he was dreaming he could.

He said in a whisper - though she did not think he actually spoke - 'Have you been sent to tempt me, maiden?"

She replied, "You are only dreaming I am here. I am the spirit of the daughter whom you sent to death, and may the Gods send you evil dreams." She drifted through the wall of the tent, but behind her she heard him wail in sudden terrified waking. She would not wish to be he this night.

She moved on and found herself in the tent of Akhilles. The Akhaian prince was awake, stretched on his back, his eyes wide open; and lying on a stretcher at the other side of the tent lay the body of Patroklos. Kassandra did not understand; he should surely have been burned, or buried or even exposed to the great scavenger birds, as some of the tribes of the great steppes did. Yet the body had been embalmed; and Akhilles kept vigil beside it. His strange pale eyes were swollen as if he had been weeping for a long time; and he was crying inaudibly.

"Oh, Mother!" he cried out through his sobs, and Kassandra had no idea whether he was invoking his earthly mother or calling upon a Goddess. "Oh, Mother, you told me that Zeus Thunderer had promised me honor and glory, and look what has happened to me; taunted by Agamemnon and now my only friend is gone from me!"

She thought,You should have been the kind of person who-could have more than one friend in a lifetime . She heard him moan wordlessly again and then cry out to Patroklos:

"How could you leave me? And what shall I say to your father? He told you to stay at home and mind the affairs of your own kingdom; but I pledged to him that no harm should come to you, and that I would bring you home covered with honor and glory! Aye, I will bring you home - but there is no honor or glory for you now." His sobbing became uncontrollable.

For a moment Kassandra almost pitied the Akhaian prince's grief, but she had heard too much of his mad battle-lust. He killed without mercy, inflicting as much suffering as he could; but when it came his turn to suffer he had little bravery. And if he had come out and fought for himself this

would never have happened; Patroklos had been killed for being where Akhilles should have been. Suddenly she knew what she had come to do.

"Akhilles," she called softly, imitating the accent she had heard in the Akhaian camp.

He sat up, staring around him, his eyes rolling with terror.

"Who calls me?"

"Ghosts have no names," she said, deepening her voice. "I am numbered among the dead."

"Is it you, Patroklos? Why have you come to haunt me, my friend? Why do you stay here rather than passing to your rest?"

"While I remain unburied I cannot rest; my spirit remains to haunt those who compassed my death."

"Then go and haunt the Trojan Hector," Akhilles cried in terror, his eyes almost starting from his head. "It was his spear cast out your life, not mine!"

"Alas," Kassandra wailed, "I remain here for I was killed in your armor, and in that place which should have been yours in battle—" and then, with sudden inspiration, "Do you love me no more because I have passed the doors of death?"

Akhilles wailed, "The dead have no more place among the living; reproach me not, or I shall die of grief—"

"I do not reproach you," Kassandra moaned in the sepulchral voice. "I leave that to your own conscience; you know I died the death that should have been yours—"

"No!" Akhilles cried out. "No! I will not hear this! Help! Guards!"

What the devil! she thought.Does be truly believe that his guards can cast out a ghost ? Four armed men rushed into his tent.

"You called us, my prince?" asked the first of them, avoiding looking at the body of Patroklos where it lay.

"Search the tent and the camp," Akhilles commanded. "Some intruder has entered unseen and spoke dreadful things to me in the voice of Patroklos. Find him and drag him here - and I will have his eyeballs on sticks to roast! I will tear out his gizzard and fry it before his eyes! I will but find him for me first!" He shook his fist and the men rushed out.

Her mission finished, Kassandra drifted after them, and heard one of them say, "I knew it. He's been mad since he shut himself up in his tent and it's driven him further out of his senses, it has."

"Do you think there's a spy?"

"I wouldn't wear meself out looking, lad," said the first speaker cynically. "Inside his poor sick brain, that's where ye'll find your ghost."

Kassandra would have laughed if she had been capable of it. Like a wraith of fog she moved up the long hill to the windswept heights of Troy, and silently slipped downward and merged with her body, still wrapped in Aeneas's arms.

She slept without dreams.

Now that she had a man among the warriors, she told herself she understood the impulse which sent the women down to the wall to watch the fighting. She left Phyllida to care for the serpents, and the other priestesses to the task of healing the wounded. This morning the line of chariots seemed more brilliantly painted and polished, weapons shining with a more terrible menace that ever before. Hector was leading, flanked by Aeneas and Paris, armored and imposing as if they were the

Gods of war in person. Behind the line of chariots came long lines of foot-soldiers in their polished leather armor with their javelins and spears. She thought, if she were among the Akhaians and saw this formidable host approaching, she might well run away.

The Argive troops, already lined up along the earthworks they had built between the plain and

the shoreline where their ships were beached, did not flinch even when Hector gave the command to charge, and the Trojan war cry rang out. The chariots thundered forward, toward the unbreaking Argive line. The Akhaians loosed a flight of arrows and, as if in one concerted movement, the Trojan shields went up; most of the arrows fell harmlessly on the roof thus formed by the shields of the Trojans. A second flight of arrows quickly followed the first; one or two soldiers in the ranks fell, or stumbled out of line back toward the walls; but this did not interrupt the charge of the chariots.

A great cry went up from both ranks; at the top of the earthworks stood a great bronze chariot ablaze with golden wings and a rayed sun, and in it a glittering figure; Akhilles had joined the battle, dominating the line of Akhaians as a rooster dominates a henyard; everyone on either side of the battle seemed smaller and drabber by contrast.

Shouting, he raised his mighty shield, and charged down the earthworks at Hector like a fury. Jumping out of the chariot he cried his challenge. Hector was ready to oblige him. He cast his javelin which rebounded from Akhilles's shield, then, sword in one hand and shield in the other, swiftly engaged Akhilles in combat. Even where she stood Kassandra could feel the shock of that first blow, from which they both reeled back, staggering, several feet.

She knew that Andromache was beside her, clutching at her arm so strongly that her nails dug into Kassandra's skin. This battle had been inevitable from the moment Patroklos was killed.

Kassandra shrieked with excitement. Behind the foot soldiers, who swept along to catch the

Akhaian soldiers between the chariots, came the horses of the Amazons. Their arrows and swords dispatched many of the foot soldiers. Hector, engaged with Akhilles, now seemed taller and more formidable; Kassandra felt it was not her brother, but the shining War-God himself. Hector wounded Akhilles and the Akhaian went down; a cheer from the Trojan ranks seemed to revitalize him, and he was up again, beating Hector back toward his chariot. The Trojan prince jumped up and was fighting Akhilles from the step of the chariot, then pivoted the wheels and knocked Akhilles down as he rode almost over him. Akhilles recovered and flung his javelin. It rebounded from Hector's armor, but he followed it up with a mighty sword-slash that struck Hector in the neck.

Hector slumped in the chariot. Troilus grabbed the reins, and, knocking Akhilles down again, made a dash for the walls. Then the Amazons with their spears swept toward Akhilles but he was surrounded by at least two dozen of his own Myrmidons, who made a solid wall of shields around him. The Amazons were forced to retreat, for although they cut down ten or twelve of Akhilles's men there were always more.

The Myrmidons reached Hector's chariot when it was already under the walls of Troy, then storming after them came Akhilles in his own chariot, with only one horse - he had cut the other loose. He crashed his chariot deliberately into Hector's, spilling young Troilus out on to the ground. The boy landed on his feet and went down beneath the swarming Myrmidons. Andromache was screaming; Kassandra turned to quiet her, and when she looked back again, Akhilles had the reins of Hector's chariot and was racing back toward the Akhaian lines with Hector—or his body—still inside.

Troilus was fighting for his life. One of the Amazons swept up to him, killed three of Akhilles's men and snatched Troilus into her saddle. Paris and Aeneas were in hot pursuit of Akhilles but the men atop the earthworks repelled them with what seemed a wall of javelins on which their horses were impaled. The Amazon charge cut down the javelin wall, and rescued Paris and Aeneas, but their overturned chariots were in Akhaian hands. Akhilles with Hector and his chariot, had vanished from sight.

It took a hard-fought hour for the Trojans to make their way back to the gate, even covered by arrow-fire from the walls; and Andromache met them.

"You couldn't even recover his body?" she shrieked. "You left it in their hands?"

"We did our best," said Paris; he had lost most of his armor, and was leaning on his charioteer, bleeding from a great sword-cut across the thigh. "But with Akhilles leading his men—"

"Akhilles! Curse him forever! May his bones rot unburied on the shores of the Styx!" Andromache broke into a high wild scream of lamentation.

"Hector is dead! Now let Troy perish indeed!"

Hecuba joined in the keening, "He is dead! Our greatest of heroes is dead! Dead or in Akhaian hands—!"

"Oh, he's dead all right," Aeneas said grimly.

"Galls me to admit it, but without the Amazon charge we wouldall have been dead," said Deiphobos, who had lifted down Troilus from the Amazon saddle and was half carrying him, examining his wounds. Hecuba hurried to him and took him in her arms, beckoning for a healerpriest.

"Ah, my sons! My Hector, my first-born and my last-born in a single hour! Ah, most fateful of all battles! It has begun," Hecuba wailed, and crumpled senseless. Kassandra ran to kneel by her, suddenly terrified that the shock had killed her mother too.

"No, Troilus is alive," said Aeneas, lifting the old woman gently. "You must be strong, Mother, he will need your good care if you are not to lose him too." He turned Troilus over to the healerpriest, who restored him to consciousness with a sip of wine, then examined his wounds. Women were handing round wine; Aeneas took one of the cups and gulped.

"I think tomorrow I will take careful aim at Akhilles from the walls and try to get him off the field before we even venture out."

"He can't be killed that way," Deiphobos said. "That armor of his is God-forged; arrows bounce off it like twigs!"

"Not God-forged," said Penthesilea, "forged of solid iron. Have you any idea what it must weigh? Even my women's metal-tipped Skythian arrows cannot penetrate it."

Paris said in disgust, "There's an old tale that Akhilles is protected by spells so that no wound inflicted by a mortal can bring him down."

"Let me but get a weapon into his flesh," said Aeneas. "I'll guarantee to kill him. But we must go up and break the news to Priam; the worst news of all this year."

Kassandra said between her teeth, "We should have expected this. Hector killed Patroklos; Akhilles was ready for him the minute he put a foot outside the wall. This was not war but murder." And silently she wondered if there was that much difference.

"We must go to Akhilles at once," Aeneas said, "perhaps even before we tell our father; and ask a truce to bury and mourn our brother."

"Do you really think they will give it?" asked Paris sarcastically. "You think too well of them."

"Theymust grant it," said Aeneas. "We gave a truce for Pat-roklos's funeral games."

"If it comes to that," said Andromache, "I will go myself and kneel to Akhilles and beg back the body of my husband."

"They will return it," said Aeneas. "Akhilles is always talking of honor."

"Only his own, I notice," Kassandra said.

"Well then, his own honor will prompt him to do the honorable thing," Aeneas said. "They know me; let me go then with a delegation of Hector's own guard to bring home his body."

"We must tell Father first," said Troilus, rising from the healer's ministrations, very pale, his head wrapped in bandages. "If you wish it, I will tell him; I am to blame; I let him fall into Akhilles's hands—"

Hecuba embraced him fiercely. "No blame to you, my love. I rejoice that you did not follow him into death." She added, "But yes, go to Priam; nothing could comfort him for the loss of our firstborn but the knowledge of the son we still have to bless us—"

"I will go and tell him," Paris said. "But first gather all my brothers; all of us who live still shall stand before him and be ready to comfort him."

"And I," said Kassandra, "I will go to the Maiden's Temple, and tell Polyxena; she and Hector were close in age and they loved each other well."

They had begun to set off on their various errands when Andromache went to the wall and let out a high wild shriek.

"Ah, the fiend, the monster! What is he doing now?"

"Who?" Kassandra asked, but she already knew;fiend, monster could be only one person. She rushed to the wall.

The sun was high; it was not yet noon. It had only seemed that they had watched the great battle for half of a day. There was a great cloud of dust on the plain before Troy; it cleared a little and she could see the chariot of Akhilles, with Akhilles himself standing upright, driving his matched horses. And in the dust at the tail of the chariot, a figure whose armor revealed clearly its identity.

"Hector! But what is he doing?" she demanded.

It was all too clear what he was doing; he was dragging

Hector's corpse in the dust behind his chariot, as he raced fiercely in circles around the plain. The Trojans watched, frozen in horror.

"Why," said Kassandra, "heis mad, then. I thought—" she had thought they called him mad rhetorically; but surely a man who could thus abuse the fallen corpse of an enemy - even an enemy who had slain his dearest friend - must be mad in truth.Why, he is not fit to be let out without a keeper , she thought with a shudder.

Aeneas said, "Why, this goes beyond even revenge; the man is inhuman."

"Demented with grief, perhaps," said Kassandra. "He loved Patroklos beyond reason - and when his friend died he lost the last of all ties to sanity—"

"Still, this must be stopped," Aeneas said. "We must send to the Greeks - Odysseus at least is a reasonable man - and get back Hector's body before this comes to his father's ears—"

"So," said Andromache, with clenched fists, "I am to stand here and watch this and not go mad myself with grief, but Priam, a man and a king, must be shielded from the very word, let alone the sight—" She flung back her head and began to scream; "I will go down myself, if I must, and I will persuade that man, with a horsewhip, that he cannot do this thing before all of Hector's kin—"

"No," Paris said, embracing her gently. "No, Andromache, he would not listen to you. I tell you, he is mad—"

"Is he? Or is he feigning madness so that we will offer him a greater ransom for Hector's body?" Andromache asked. Kassandra had not thought of that.

At last Troilus, taking with him two or three of Priam's other sons, went up to tell the King that Hector was dead; while Paris and Aeneas armed themselves and drove forth in a chariot with

Priam's favourite herald. They tried in vain to make Akhilles hear them, but he simply went on whipping up his horses into a frenzy and refused to listen to a word the herald said.

After a time they stopped and conferred and went on to the main Akhaian camp to speak with Agamemnon and the other captains. Eventually they returned to Troy looking discouraged; Andromache rushed at them.

"What did they say?" she demanded, though it was obvious they had had no success; down on the plain, Akhilles's chariot was still dragging the body around in circles. It seemed he meant to go on at least till sunset, perhaps longer.

Aeneas said, "They will do nothing to stop Akhilles; they said that he is their leader, and he must do as he will with his own captives and prisoners. He killed Hector and the body is his, to ransom or not as he chooses."

"But that's monstrous," Andromache said. "You hesitated not a minute to grant a truce for burying and mourning Patroklos! How can they do this?"

"They didn't want to," said Paris. "Agamemnon could not look me in the eye. He knows they are violating all the rules of warfare - rules they themselves made and we agreed to honor. But they know they have no chance of triumphing without Akhilles; they angered him once, and they will not risk making him angry again."

The sun had slanted down considerably and the plain of Troy was now partly in the long shadow of the walls. Paris said, "There is nothing for it but this, then. We must go out and fight for his body." He called his arms-bearer and started putting on his armor.

"Summon the Amazons; their charge and their arrows can cover us. They are fierce fighters, fiercer than any man," Aeneas said. "I will vow my best horse to the War-God if he grants us to win Hector's body."

"I'll vow more than that if he grants me Akhilles," said Paris. "Hector and I were not always close; but he was my elder brother, and I loved him; and even if I had not, kinship's dues would forbid me to stand by and see his corpse dishonored. Even Akhilles can have no quarrel with the dead."

Kassandra said, "I remember how Hector said he and Patroklos would have much to talk about in the afterworld."

"Aye," said Aeneas sombrely. "If Akhilles paused to think, he would know that Hector and his friend would feast side by side as comrades in the halls of the afterlife."

"I trust it is no God's will I meet Akhilles as a comrade on the other side of death," said Paris grimly. "Or, I swear, unless I learn something there that I have not been given to know in this life, I shall disrupt the peace of that world itself when I meet Akhilles there."

"Oh, hush," said Aeneas, "none of us know what we shall think or do past that gate; but in this world, we all have been properly taught that enmity ends at death, and what Akhilles now does is an outrage and an atrocity—as well as being plain bad manners. He should show respect for a fallen foe; you know that, I know it, the other Akhaians know it. And I give you my word, if Akhilles does not know it, I shall be happy to give him a lesson, here and now. Are the soldiers armed and ready?"

"Yes," called Paris, "open the gates."

Priam came slowly through the ranks and went to the wall where the women stood. He himself was as white as death, Kassandra thought, and he had been weeping.

"If you rescue the body of my son for honorable burial," he said, as Aeneas passed him on his way down to the gate, "it needs no saying that you may ask whatever reward you will."

Aeneas knelt for a moment before him and kissed the old man's hand.

"Father, Hector was my brother-in-law and my brother in arms; I want no reward to do for him what I know well he would be the first to do for me."

"Then the blessings of every God I know how to call be upon you," said Priam, and as Aeneas rose, embraced him quickly and kissed his cheek. Then he let him go and the men went down to the gate.

As Troilus would have joined them, Hecuba cried out, "No! Not you too!" and caught at his tunic; but Troilus pulled away, and Priam gestured to the Queen to let him go. Hecuba collapsed weeping.

"Cruel old man! Unnatural father! We have lost one son today; will you lose another?"

"He is no child," Priam said. "He wishes to go; I will not forbid him. I would not make him go if he wished any excuse to stay; but you should be proud of him."

"Proud!" she raged, looking down on the chariots as they raced out through the gates. "There is more than one madman here!"

CHAPTER 8

Kassandra had seen the Amazons fight many times before; she wished that she were riding forth with them. Yet if she had thought the morning's battle was fierce, that was nothing to the ferocity of this battle for Hector's body.

Time after time the Trojan soldiers made what seemed like a suicidal dash at Akhilles's chariot trying to overturn or crash it and cut free the body; but the joined forces of Hector's soldiers and

the Amazons could not come near him. It seemed that the War-God himself rode with Akhilles and more than a dozen of the soldiers and seven of the Amazon warriors died in these charges before Agamemnon's charioteers, led by Diomedes and the strongest of the Spartan archers, came and drove them off a final time.

When it was almost too dark to see, at last the Trojans retired and when Troilus fell to an arrow shot by Akhilles himself, Aeneas finally yielded and called off the attack, carrying Troilus inside the walls.

"He didn't want to live," Hecuba wept over his body. "He blamed himself—I heard him—that his brother died—"

In the flaming sunset, the cloud of dust behind Akhilles's chariot was undiminished. "It looks as if he means to keep that up all night," said Paris. "There is nothing else we can do."

"I can probably see better in the dark than his horses," said Aeneas. "We might try again by moonlight—"

"There is no reason to do that," said Penthesilea. "You have one brother to bury and to mourn; tomorrow will be time to think again about Hector."

Hecuba, kneeling before Troilus's corpse, raised her face, swollen with tears, looking suddenly twenty years older.

"If I must, I will go to Akhilles and beg him, for the love of his own mother, to let me bury my son," she said. "Surely he has a mother and pays honor to her."

"Do you truly think anything human gave birth to that monster?" wept Andromache. "Surely he was hatched from a serpent's egg!"

"As a keeper of serpents, I resent that on their behalf," Kassandra said. "No serpent was ever wantonly cruel; they kill only for food or to defend their young, and no serpent ever made war against another, whatever God they may serve."

"Let us leave it for tonight," Andromache said. "Perhaps a new day may bring him reason." She turned away from the wall, deliberately looking away from the sight of Akhilles's chariot and the cloud of dust where Hector's body was hidden. She raised Hecuba up gently by the arm taking, Kassandra noted, a good deal of the older woman's weight. Together the two went up the steep street toward the palace.

Kassandra bent over the lifeless body of Troilus. She remembered when he had been born, what a sweet red round-faced baby he had been, squalling and thrusting out his little fists. How her mother had prayed for a son, and how happy she had been when he had arrived, her fourth or fifth actually. But then she had always been happy with every son born in the palace, even those born to the concubines; the Queen was always the first to have every baby in her arms, however humble the mother.

Well, she had promised to tell Polyxena; she went slowly up the steep streets of the city toward the Maiden's Temple. The winds at that height dragging against her cloak and hair, she reached the outer court, where the statue of the maiden stood.

She had now spent so many years as a priestess that she had almost ceased to trouble herself about the nature of Gods or Goddesses, whether they were truly from some place beyond humanity, or whether they were from some soul of humankind seeking to worship the greater virtues and the divine within. Yet now, looking at the serene face of the Maiden in the outer court, where her statue stood, she wondered again; could anything, human or divine, be brought unmothered to birth and was not that very concept a blasphemy against all that was divine? She herself had brought no child to birth; yet within her the unfed passion for motherhood had brought Honey into her arms and she knew she would protect her with her very life, as any other mother would do.

With her own mother she now shared a passionate grief. She had been guilty of underestimating Akhilles; she should have known that his madness made him ever more dangerous; as even a house dog may turn vicious and untrustworthy.

Yet if she had warned them they would never have listened.

One of the attendants of the shrine recognized her and came to ask deferentially how she could serve the daughter of Priam.

"I would speak with my sister Polyxena," she said, and the servant went at once to fetch her.

Before very long, she heard a step and Polyxena came into the room, knowing at once from Kassandra's face and crying out, "You bear evil news, sister! Is it our mother, our father—"

"No; they live still, though I know not what this news will do to them in the end," Kassandra said. Polyxena was now a tall woman in her late twenties; but she had still the soft face of a child. She came and embraced Kassandra, weeping.

"What do you mean? Tell me—"

"Hector," Kassandra said, and felt herself almost at the edge of tears.

"The worst," she said. "Not only Hector, but Troilus." Her throat closed and she could hardly speak. "Both dead in a single hour, at Akhilles's hands, and that madman drags Hector's corpse behind his chariot and will not hear of giving up his body for burial—"

Polyxena burst into sobs and the sisters clung to one another, united as they had not been since they were little children.

"I will come at once," Polyxena said. "Mother will need me; let me but fetch my cloak." She hurried away, and Kassandra reflected sorrowfully that this was true; she could not comfort her

mother. Even Andromache was closer to Hecuba than she was. All her life it had been so: that of all their children Hector was closest to her parents, and Kassandra had been the least loved. Was it only that she had always been so different from the others?

It broke her heart that even in this dreadful moment she could not turn to her mother. Because she could always retain her composure and because she was not beside herself with grief, it would never have occurred to anyone that she was in need of consolation. Her bottomless, tearless sadness seemed to her mother, she knew, cold and inhuman; quite unlike the aspect of a woman at all.

Polyxena returned, in the pale cloak of a priestess, with something tied in a cloth at her waist. Her eyes were red, but she had stopped crying; however, Kassandra knew she would weep again at the sight of her mother's tears.

I wish I could; Hector is worthy of all the tears we might all shed for him. And she wondered despairing, "What is wrong with me, that for all my grief I cannot weep for my dearest brothers—

Yet in her heart a small rational voice said,Hector was a fool; he knew Akhilles was a madman who did not abide by any civilized rules for warfare, and nevertheless for something he called honor he rushed to his death. This honor was dearer to him than life, or Andromache or his son, or the thought of the grief his parents would feel . And for all the horror of it, she could not feel any additional disgust or dismay at what Akhilles had done to his corpse. Hector was dead, and

that was bad enough. What would make it worse?

And we are all going to die anyhow; and few of us as quickly or mercifully; why do we not rejoice that he is spared further suffering?

Polyxena handed her the cloth; she felt something hard within it.

"What jewels I have," she said. "Father may need them to ransom Hector's body; Akhilles is just as greedy for gold as for what he calls glory; perhaps this will help."

"He is welcome to mine, too," said Kassandra,"though I have few; only my pearls from Colchis."

Together they went down the hill toward the palace. It was growing late; the low sun was hidden behind a heavy bank of cloud, and the brisk wind held a smell of rain. On the plain, there was no sign of Akhilles's chariot. He had given up his gruesome work, at least for the night.

"Perhaps they will make a foray in the dark to rescue him," Polyxena said. "And if it rains, Akhilles may agree to accept a ransom; he will not want to drive a chariot all day in a storm."

"I don't think it will make any difference to him," Kassandra said. "It seems to me that the sensible thing to do would be to accept this and do what he does not expect; let him keep Hector's corpse. Muster all our forces tomorrow and throw everything we have into an all-out

attempt to kill Akhilles and Agamemnon and perhaps Menelaus as well."

Polyxena stared at her in utter dismay, the beginning rain mingling with the tears on her cheek.

"I beg of you, sister, say nothing like that to our mother or rather," she said. "I did not think even you could be so heartless as^to leave Hector unburied in the rain."

It is not Hector who lies unburied," Kassandra said fiercely. It is a dead body like any other."

I do not know if you are very stupid, or simply very malicious," Polyxena said, "but you speak like a barbarian and not a civilized woman, a princess and a priestess of Troy." She turned away her eyes and Kassandra knew she had only made things worse. She looked away from Polyxena to hide the tears in her eyes, while knowing perversely that Polyxena would think better of her for them. They did not speak again.

When they reached the palace, a servant (Kassandra noticed that the old woman's eyes were as swollen and red as her mother's - everyone down to the kitchen drudges had loved Hector, and all the palace women remembered Troilus as a small petted child) took their soaked cloaks, dried their hair and feet with towels, and showed them into the main dining hall.

It looked almost the same as always, a roaring fire casting light around the room and branched candlesticks spreading brilliance by which the paintings on the walls wavered as if seen underwater. The carved bench where Hector habitually sat was empty, and Andromache sat

between Priam and Hecuba, like a child between her parents.

Paris and Helen were nearby, clinging to one another's hands. They came to greet Polyxena, who went to kiss her parents; Kassandra sat down in her accustomed place near Helen, but when the servants put food on her plate she could not swallow and only nibbled at a dish of boiled vegetables and drank a little watered wine. Paris looked sad, but Kassandra knew that he was very well aware that he was now Priam's eldest son and commander of the armies.If there is to be any hope for Troy, someone must disabuse him of that notion , she thought,he is no Hector . Then she was astonished at herself; she had known so long that there was no hope for Troy, why did these unconquerable thoughts of hope keep rising again and again?

Did this mean her visions of doom were simply hallucinations or brain-sickness, as everyone said? Or did it mean that somehow with Hector gone there was new hope for Troy? No,that was certainly madness; he was the best of us all, she thought, and knew that someone - Paris? Priam? - had actually said it aloud.

"He was the best of us all," Paris said, "but he is gone, and somehow we must manage the rest of this war without him. I have no idea how we will do it."

"It is in essence your war," Andromache said. "I told Hector he should have left it to you all along."

Someone sobbed aloud; it was Helen. Andromache turned on her in sudden rage.

"How dare you! If it were not for you he would be alive, and his son not fatherless!"

"Oh, come, my dear," Priam said in a conciliatory tone. "You really mustn't talk like that to your sister - there is enough grief in this house this night."

"Sister? Never! This woman from our enemies, from whom all our troubles have arisen - look, she sits and gloats because now her paramour will command all Priam's armies—"

"The Gods know I do not gloat," Helen said, stifling her tears. "I grieve for the fallen sons of this house which has become my house, and for the grief of those who are now my father and my mother."

"How dare you…" Andromache began again, but Priam took her hand and held it, whispering to her.

"How would you have me prove my grief?" Helen stood up and came to Priam's high seat. Her long golden hair was unbound, hanging over her shoulders; her blue eyes, deep-set in her face and shadowed with weeping, were luminous in the candlelight.

"Father," she said to Priam, "if it is your will I will go down to the Greek camp and offer myself to the Akhaians in return for the body of Hector."

"Yes, go," said Hecuba swiftly, almost before Helen had finished speaking, and before Priam could answer. "They will do you no harm."

Andromache chimed in, "It might be the one good act of a lifetime and atone for all else you have done to this house."

Kassandra was riveted to her seat, though her first impulse was to rise up and cry out, "No, no!" Nevertheless she remembered what she had prophesied when Paris first stood at the gates of Troy: he was a firebrand who would kindle a fire to burn down all the city; a prophecy repeated when he had brought Helen here. That was long ago; she no longer blamed Helen for what would come to the city; that was the fate ordained by the Gods. And her father and brothers - no, even Hector himself -they had not heeded her then; and whatever she said they would certainly do exactly the opposite. Better to keep silent.

Priam said gently, "Helen, it is a generous offer, but we cannot possibly allow you to do this. You are not the only cause of this war. We will ransom Hector's body—with all the gold of Troy if we must. Akhilles is not the only captain of the Akhaians. Surely there are some there who will listen to reason."

"No." Andromache rose and stood looking at Helen with a sombre gaze; Kassandra realized that some people would think her more beautiful than Helen, though her beauty was of a different kind, dark where Helen was fair, lean where Helen was rounded. "No, father, let her go, I beg of you. You owe me something too; I have borne Hector's son. I beg you, let her depart, and if she

does not, drive her forth with whips. This woman has never been anything but a curse to all of us in Troy."

Paris rose to his feet. "If you drive out Helen, I go with her."

"Go then," cried Andromache wildly. "That too would be a blessing to our city! You are no less a curse than she! Your father did well when he sought to send you away!"

"She is raving," Deiphobos said roughly. "Helen shall not go from us while I live; the Goddess sent Helen to us, and no other roof shall shelter her while my brothers and I live."

Priam looked down the hall. "What shall I do?" he asked half aloud. "My Queen and the wife of my Hector have said to us—"

"She must go," Andromache cried. "If she remains here, I will depart this night from Troy - and I call upon all the women of Priam's house to go forth with me; shall we remain under one roof with her who has cast our city down into the dust?"

"And yet the walls of Troy stand firm," Paris said. "All is not lost." He rose and came to Andromache, taking her hand gently and raising it to his lips.

"I bear you no grudge, poor girl," he said. "You are distraught with your grief, and no wonder. I'll answer that Helen shall hold no malice toward you."

Andromache jerked away.

""Women of Troy, I call on you, come forth from the accursed roof that shelters that false Goddess, who would bring us all to ruin and slavery—" Her voice had risen, high and hysterical; she picked up a torch and cried, "Follow me, women of Troy—"

Priam rose in his place and thundered, "Enough! We have trouble enough without this! My child," he said to Andromache, "I understand your pain; but I beg of you, sit down and listen to us. Nothing would be solved by driving Helen forth. Soldiers have fallen in battle long before Hector was born - or I." He reached out to embrace Andromache, and after a moment she collapsed against his breast, sobbing. Hecuba came to enfold her in her arms.

"Peace," she said sombrely. "We have Troilus to mourn and to bury before the sun rises; and you women, collect your jewels to offer for Hector's ransom."

Kassandra, joining the women as they gathered together to assemble by Troilus's body, found herself wondering whether Andromache had been justified. Andromache alone among the women did not follow Hecuba; she remained at Priam's feet, crying out desolately, "I have not even a body over which to mourn." Then she raised her voice and called after the women, "Let not Helen touch Troilus's body, Mother! Know you not the old tale - a corpse will bleed if his murderer touches it - and he has little blood left to spare, poor lad!"

CHAPTER 9

All night Kassandra heard the rain and wind, beating and tearing around the high palace of Priam, as the women of Priam's household gathered together, wailed for Troilus. They washed and dressed his corpse, covered it with precious spices and burned incense to cover the sickly smell of death. In the grey lull between darkness and sunrise they ceased their nightlong mourning to drink wine and listen to a song from one of the minstrels in the room. She praised the beauty and bravery of the dead youth, singing that he had been felled because his beauty was such that the War-God desired him, and took the form of Akhilles in order to possess him.

As the song ended Hecuba cried out, "Since he had no wife and no child, only my daughters and I may mourn him!" She called the musician to her and gave her a ring as a memento of her noble elegy, and one of the women persuaded her to sit down and rest, and to drink a cup of warmed wine with spices. Helen, who had also accepted a cup, came and sat beside Kassandra.

"I will go and sit somewhere else if you do not want to be seen talking to me," she said, "but it seems I am not welcome anywhere among the women now." Her face looked thin, even haggard, and pale - she had lost weight since the deaths of her children, and Kassandra noted dulled strands among the gilt of her hair.

"No, stay here," Kassandra said. "I think you know I will always be your friend."

"All the same," Helen said, "my offer was sincere; I will return to Menelaus. He will probably kill me, but I might have a chance to see my only remaining daughter once before I die. Paris thinks we will have other children; and indeed I had hoped—but it is too late for that. I think he wanted our son to rule Troy after us."

She looked half-questioning at Kassandra, and Kassandra nodded, with a shocking sense that by agreeing with what Helen had said, it was as if she willed that the doom be so.

In the last years she had grown accustomed to this feeling and knew its foolishness; the guilt, if guilt there must be, belonged only to the Gods, or whatever forces there were which made the Gods act as they did. She raised her cup to Helen and drank, feeling the heaviness of the wine strike her hard at this unaccustomed hour; and she had eaten but little the day before. Helen seemed to echo her thoughts, saying, "I wonder if the Queen is wise to serve so strong a wine unmixed when we are all half fainting with grief or hunger; these women will all be raving drunk in half an hour."

"It is not a question of wisdom but of custom," Kassandra said. "If she served less than her best, they would question her love and respect for the dead boy."

"It's odd," Helen said reflectively,"the way people think, or refuse to think about death. Paris for one - it seems as if he thinks that since our children have died, perhaps the Gods will accept the sacrifice of their lives and spare ours!"

"If a God would accept the innocent to expiate the sins of the guilty I could have no reverence for her, and yet there are some peoples who do believe in Gods who accept the sacrifice of innocent blood," Kassandra said. "Perhaps it is an idea the Gods—or fiends - put into all men's heads; did not Agamemnon sacrifice his own daughter on the altar of the Maiden for a fair wind to bring his fleet to Troy?"

"It is so," said Helen, softly,"though Agamemnon will not now hear it named, and says the sacrifice was of his wife's - my sister's—doing, a sacrifice to her Goddess. The Akhaians fear the old Goddesses, saying they are tainted. The bravest of men flee in terror from women's mysteries."

Kassandra looked round the shadowed room, where the women were drinking and talking in little groups.

I wish somehow we could inspire them with this terror now," she said, and remembered how she had visited Akhilles's tent in a trance - or only in dream? The thought stirred in her mind that perhaps she still might have some such access to the mind of the Akhaian hero; she would attempt it at the first opportunity. She raised her cup silently and drank; Helen, meeting her eyes over the rim, did the same.

There was a sudden strong draught in the room; the door opened and Andromache stood there, holding a torch with long flaming streamers blowing in the strong wind from the corridor. Her

long hair was dripping with rain and her dress and cloak were soaked. She came through the room like a walking ghost, softly chanting one of the funeral hymns. She bent over Troilus's wrapped body and kissed the pale cheek.

"Farewell, dear brother," she said in her clear reedy voice. "You go before the greatest of heroes, to speak to the Gods of his eternal shame."

Kassandra went quickly to her, and said softly, yet audibly, "Shame done to the brave is shame only to the one who commits the crime, not to the one who suffers it." Yet Hector willingly fought Akhilles, playing this game of scoring on one another.He did only what his whole life had taught him to do .

She poured out a cup of the spiced wine—it was heavy now, even less diluted than what had been in the pitcher when it was fuller. Perhaps it was better; Andromache would go from here to sleep and some ease of her horror, if not of her grief. She set the cup in her cousin's hand, smelling on her breath the heaviness of wine—wherever she had spent the night, she had been drinking.

"Drink, my sister," she said.

"Ah, yes," Andromache said, tears spilling down her face, "with you I came to Troy when we were girls, and you told me, as we came here, so many stories of how brave and handsome he was - my child was born into your hands - you are my dearest friend for all our lives." She

embraced Kassandra and clung to her, swaying, and Kassandra realized that she was already drunk. Kassandra herself was not unaffected by the cup of wine she had drunk; she sensed Andromache's restlessness and her seeking.

Andromache bent again to kiss the dead face of Troilus. She said to Hecuba, "You are fortunate, my mother, that you can adorn his corpse and weep; my Hector lies mouldering in the rain, unmourned, unburied."

"Not unmourned," said Kassandra gently. "All of us mourn for him. His spirit will hear your tears and lamentations, whether his body rests here, or yonder with Akhilles's horses." Her voice broke; she was thinking of a day soon after Andromache had come to Troy, when Hector had forbidden her to bear weapons and threatened to beat her. She had spoken to try and comfort Andromache, but suddenly she wondered if she had made things worse; Andromache's eyes were cold and tearless. She drew Andromache toward the seat, but when Andromache saw Helen there, she drew back, her lips drawing back over her teeth in a dreadful mask-like grimace which transformed her face almost into a skull.

"You, here, pretending to mourn?"

"The Gods know I pretend nothing," said Helen quietly, "but if you prefer it, I will go - you have the better right to be here."

"Oh, Andromache," Kassandra said,"don't speak so. You came both to this city as strangers, and

found a home here. You have lost your husband, and Helen her children; at the hands of the Gods. You should share sorrow, not turn and rend one another. You are both my sisters and I love you." With one hand she drew Helen close; with the other arm embraced Andromache.

"You are right," said Andromache. "We are all helpless in their hands." She snuffled and drank the last of her wine; her voice was unsteady as she said drunkenly, "Sister, we are both victims in this war - the Goddess forbid this madness of men should sep—separate us." Her tongue stumbled clumsily on the words and they were both weeping as they embraced. Hecuba came to enfold all three of them in her arms; she was crying too.

"So many gone! So many gone! Your precious children, Helen! My sons! Where is Hector's son, my last grandchild?"

"Not the last, mother; have you forgotten? Creusa and her children were sent to safety; they risk nothing," Kassandra reminded her. "They are all out of range of Akhilles's madness or the Akhaian armies."

Andromache said, "Astyanax is too old for the women's quarters; I cannot even comfort him, nor seek to find comfort seeing his father in his face." Her voice was sadder than tears.

"When I lost - the little ones," Helen said shakily,"they brought Nikos to me for comfort; I will go, Andromache, and bring your son to you."

"Oh, bless you," Andromache cried.

Kassandra said, "Let me take you to your room; you do not want him here among all these drunken women."

"Yes; I will bring him to you there," Helen said. "You still have your son, and that is the greatest of all gifts."

One by one, or in twos and threes, the women, exhausted with grief and the strong wine, were slipping away to their beds. Only Hecuba, and Polyxena in her priestess's robes, took their station at Troilus's head and feet, there to remain until those came who would give his body to the fire. Kassandra wondered if she too should remain; but they had not asked her, not even to do the service of a priestess in purifying the chamber of death.

Andromache and even Helen needed her more; she knew she was as alien among the women of Troy as were the Colchian and the Spartan woman.

She stayed with them until Helen had slipped into Paris's rooms and found Nikos and Astyanax; they had both been crying. Astyanax's face was filthy and smudged with tears. They had evidently told him about his father's death but had been able to offer the child no solace. Helen took both boys to the well at the center of the courtyard, and washed their faces with the corner of her veil.

Astyanax fell gratefully into his mother's arms, then said, bewildered, "Don't cry, Mother. They told me I must not cry because my father is a hero. So why are you crying?"

Helen said gently, "Astyanax, if you cannot cry for your father, at least you can help to dry your mother's tears; it is now your business to care for her, since your father cannot."

At the child's touch Andromache dissolved drunkenly into tears again; Helen and Kassandra took her to her room, put her to bed and tucked the boy in at her side.

"Nikos will stay with me," Helen said. "Oh, why do they take them from us so young?" But when she took Nikos in her arms, he pulled indignantly away.

I'm not a baby, Mother! I shall go back to the men."

Smothering her sobs, Helen said, "As you like, child; but embrace me first."

Grudgingly Nikos complied, and ran away; Helen, tears streaming down her face, watched him go, unprotesting.

"Paris has done no better with him than Menelaus," she observed. "I do not like what men make of boys; making them like themselves. Thanks to the Gods Astyanax has not yet become ashamed to stay with his mother," she said, staring out into the hard grey rain that howled outside the palace.

"Kassandra!" Her voice was so filled with dread and she clutched at the other woman so suddenly that Kassandra almost dropped the torch. "If we fall into the hands of the Akhaians, what will happen to my son? Perhaps the Trojans will stop at nothing to make sure Menelaus cannot reclaim him—"

"Are you saying that you think my father or brothers would kill the child to stop him being taken back to Sparta?" Kassandra could hardly believe her ears.

"Oh, I cannot really believe it, but—"

"If you believe that, then perhaps you should indeed return to Menelaus, and take the child to safety," Kassandra said. "Surely he would welcome you if you came with his son—"

"And I thought he would be so much better off in Troy; that Paris would make a better father to him than Menelaus," Helen said sadly. "And he was, Kassandra, he was; but now - he seems to hate him because he is alive when our own sons died—" Her voice broke and for a moment, clinging to Kassandra, she wept.

"Then you will go—?"

"I cannot," Helen said numbly. "I cannot persuade myself to leave Paris - I tell myself that it is the will of the Gods that I shall stay till this is all played out between us. He no longer loves me,

but I would rather be in Troy than Sparta—" she let her voice trail away into silence, then said, "Kassandra, you are weary; I must keep you no longer from your bed. Or will you return and watch by Troilus?"

"No, I do not think they want me there," Kassandra said. "I will return to the Sunlord's house."

"In this rain? Listen to this storm," Helen said. "You are welcome to sleep here if you will; you can sleep in my bed - it is less than likely Paris will come in now: they will all have drunk so much in honor of Hector's spirit that they would lose their way on the stairs. Or I will have the maids make up a bed for you in the other room."

"You are very kind, Sister, but the servants will all be sleeping by now; let them rest," Kassandra said. "The rain will clear my head." She picked up her cloak and put the hood over her head, then embraced Helen and kissed her. She said, "Andromache did not mean what she said— "

"Oh, I know that; in her place I should feel the same," Helen said. "She is afraid; what will become of her now, and Astyanax? Paris has already decided that he will succeed Priam, and leave no place for Hector's son - and if Paris should somehow bring this war to a good end—"

"There is no chance of that," said Kassandra. "Yet you must not be afraid, Helen; Menelaus has not fought all these years for revenge."

"I know that; I have spoken with him," Helen said, surprising her. "I know not why, but it seems he wants me back."

"You've spoken with him? When?" She started to ask how, but remembered that as Paris's wife Helen could go where she would, even down into the Akhaian camp. But why should she go and confer with the captains among the enemy? she thought suspiciously, then mentally absolved her friend of treason: it was no more than reasonable that Helen should wish to bargain for her own fate and that of her son.

She said, "If you speak with him again, ask him if there is something we can do to influence Akhilles and have Hector's body returned to us."

"Believe me, I have tried and will try again," Helen said. "Listen, the rain is slacking a little; if you go now perhaps you will be home before it starts to come down hard again."

She kissed Kassandra again, and went down to the heavy front gate of the palace with her; Kassandra went out into the icy rain. Before she had climbed half a flight of the long stairs the rain began to beat down with renewed fury, and the wind tore at her cloak like a wild beast's claws.

She thought for a moment, regretfully, that she should have accepted Helen's offer of a bed. Aeneas would be feasting and drinking with the men, and would be unlikely to join her tonight. But there was no point in turning back now; she struggled upward against the storm.

As she turned into the street of the Sunlord's house, she heard a light step in the street behind her. After so many years of war she was nervous of strangers, and turned to see, in the pale light of the torches hung up over the gateway, the face and cloaked form of Chryseis. Even in the torchlight she could see that the girl's dress was crumpled and stained with wine, and the cosmetics on her face were smeared. She sighed, wondering in what strange bed the girl had spent much of the night and why she had bothered to leave it in such a storm.She looks like a cat after a night of wandering—except that a cat would have washed her face .

The watchman at the gates of the Sunlord's house greeted them with amazement ('You are abroad late in this cruel weather, Ladies'), but no one had ever shown curiosity about Kassandra's comings and goings; she reflected that she might have had as many lovers as Chryseis, and no one would have known or cared. As they climbed the steep courtyards toward their rooms, located near the highest part of the temple, she slowed her steps to match the girl's.

"It is growing so late that it is almost early," she said. "Do you want to come into my room and wash your face before you are seen like this in the temple?"

"No," Chryseis said. "Why should I? I am not ashamed of whatever I do."

"I would spare your father the sight of you like this," she said. "It would break his heart."

Chryseis's laughter was brittle as breaking glass.

"Oh, come, surely he cannot still cherish any illusions that I came from Agamemnon's bed a virgin!"

"Perhaps not," Kassandra said. "He cannot blame you for the fortunes of war; but to see you like this would distress him—"

"Do you think I care for that? I was well content where I was, and I wish he had minded his own affairs, and left me there."

"Chryseis," Kassandra said gently,"do you have any idea how dreadfully he grieved for you? He thought of little else—"

"Then the more fool he."

"Chryseis—" Kassandra looked at the girl, wondering what was in her heart or indeed if she had one. She asked at last curiously, "Doesn't it shame you at all, to stand before all men in Troy, and know that all men know and recognize you for having been Agamemnon's concubine?"

"No," Chryseis said, defiantly, "no more than it shames Andromache to have all men know she is Hector's, nor Helen to have it common knowledge that she belongs to Paris."

There was a difference, Kassandra knew, but she could not muster her thoughts to tell this

confused girl what it was.

"If the city should fall," Chryseis said, "all of us will be given into the hands of some man or other; so I give myself where I choose while I still can. Will you, Kassandra, keep your own maidenhood so that it may be taken by a conqueror by force?"

For that I cannot fault her at all. Kassandra could not speak, she only turned and went into her own room.

Inside, some neglectful servant had left the shutters wide open; the rain and wind were beating in through the window. Honey's bed was soaked with rain and the child had rolled off the quilts and on to the stone floor against the wall under the window to escape the rain. Even so she was soaked.

Kassandra closed the shutters, and lifted the child into her own bed. Honey felt as cold as a little frog and whimpered when Kassandra lifted her, but did not wake. Kassandra wrapped her in blankets and rocked her, holding her close against her breasts until she felt the icy little feet and hands beginning to warm and at last Honey was sleeping the heavy sleep of any healthy child.

She put the little girl down, and laid herself beside her, wrapping them both in her warm cloak. The noise of the storm outside the closed windows was muffled, but still rattled the shutters with its force. She closed her eyes, trying to move her spirit forth from where she lay.

To her surprise, once she had slipped free of her body, moving her consciousness away from the bed and through the window, she had no awareness of the storm, only a deep silence; on the level where her spirit now moved there was no weather. As swiftly as thought she glided down the hill into clear moonlight, flying over the plain between the gates of Troy and the earthworks which guarded the Akhaian camp.

Under that impossible moonlight, shadows lay sharp and black on the plain, silent and untenanted except by a single drowsing night watchman. Paris was right, she thought, they should have flung all their forces at the camp by night. Then she remembered that in the physical world the Akhaian earthworks were better guarded by the pouring rain than by all the watchmen in the world. She could see a dark-shadowed structure which she recognized for Akhilles's chariot, and a blurred shape which had to be Hector's bound body. Her first thought was gratitude that in this analogue of the afterworld—and how had she come to walk so handily in this world of the dead when she was still among the living?—Hector's body was not battered by rain and howling wind. And as she thought of him he was standing there before her, smiling.

"Sister," he said, "it is you. I might have expected to see you here."

"Hector—" She broke off. "How is it with you?"

"Why—" he stopped and seemed to consider. "Better than I ever expected," he said. "The pain is gone, so I suppose I am dead; I only remember being wounded, and thinking this must be the end; then I woke and Patroklos came and helped me to rise. He was with me for a while, and

then he said he had to stay with Akhilles; and went away. After that I went to the palace tonight, but Andromache could not see me. I tried to speak with her and then with Mother, to tell them I was all right, but neither of them seemed to hear me at all."

"Well, when you were living, did you ever hear the voice of the dead?"

"Well, no, of course not; I never learned how to listen for it."

"Well, then; that is why they could not hear. What can I do for you, my brother? Do you want sacrifices or—"

"I can't imagine what good it would do," Hector said. "But do tell Andromache not to cry; it feels very strange not to be able to comfort her. So tell her not to mourn, and if you can, tell her I will come soon and take Astyanax with me; I would like to leave him to take care of her; but I have been told—"

"By whom?"

"I don't know," Hector said. "I can't seem to remember; perhaps it was Patroklos - but I know well that my son will come to me very soon, and Father, and Paris. But not Andromache; she will stay there a long time." He advanced to her and she felt the faint touch of his lips against her forehead.

"I will bid you farewell too, sister," he said, "but have no fears; there will be much to suffer, but I promise you, all will be well with you."

"And Troy?"

"Ah, no; it is already fallen," he said. "See?" And he turned her round, with gentle insubstantial hands, and behind her she saw a great heap of rubble, with flames rising, where once Troy had stood. But the sound of such destruction… how could she not have heard it?

"There is no time here," he said. "What is, and what is to be, are all one - I do not understand all these things," he said fretfully. "For tonight I walked in the halls of my father's palace where they were feasting, and now look, the city has been fallen for a long time. Maybe when I was on earth I should have inquired of those who know these things, but there never seemed to be time. But now I see Apollo and Poseidon—look, they are striving with one another for the city—" he said, and pointed to where above the fallen walls it seemed that two monstrous figures, spanning the clouds, stood and battled, their flesh glowing like lightning.

She shivered at the sight of the beloved face of the Sunlord, crowned by brilliant golden curls; would he turn and see her walking in the forbidden realms? Resolutely she turned back to Hector's shadowy form.

"What of Troilus? Is it well with him?"

"He was with me for a little; he came running out just a little behind me," Hector said. "But he remained at the palace with Mother; he was trying to tell her not to grieve. He would not believe that he could not make her hear him. Perhaps she would listen to you if you told her; she knows you are a priestess and wise in such things."

"Ah, I do not know if she will listen to me, either, dear brother," Kassandra said. "She has her own opinions and no room for mine. But for the sake of our parents and their peace of mind—" she stopped to consider. "I came here to try to perhaps frighten Akhilles into releasing your body for ransom; perhaps you would do better than I at that."

"Do you think he'd be afraid of ghosts? He has killed so many, he must live with them surrounding him at all times," Hector said. "But I will go and see what I can do. Go back, Sister; back to your own side of that wall which now rises between us, and tell Mother and Father that they should not waste time grieving; they will be with me soon enough. And be certain to tell Andromache not to grieve; I will be waiting here for our son, and tellhim not to be afraid; I will be ready to greet him. She would not want him to live in the days that are coming now."

Hector turned away from her, and drifted toward the tent of Akhilles. After a moment he turned again and already, she thought, he looked distant and strange, a man she did not know. "No, do not follow, Sister; our ways part here. Perhaps we may meet again, and understand each other better."

"Am I not to join you and Troilus, and our mother and father?"

"I don't know," he said. "You serve other Gods; I think if you pass death you may go elsewhere. But it is given to me to know that here our ways part, for a long time if not forever. May it always be well with you, Kassandra." He embraced her, and she was surprised to feel his strength in the embrace. This was no ghost, but as real as she was herself. Then he was gone, even his shadow vanishing on the plain.

CHAPTER 10

Toward morning the rain stopped, and was replaced by strong winds. Kassandra drifted in and out of sleep where again and again she dreamed she tried to follow Hector's ghost toward thetents of Akhilles where the Akhaian roused up to stare and gibber in terror at the sight of Hector walking in and out through the walls of his tent, laughing at him, or found herself in Agamemnon's tent. The King stared wildly up at her and tried to seize her, but she drifted out of his arms as if she were made of mist, and he shouted with rage and lunged after her, howling with frustration.

When at last she woke faint sunlight was coming through the shutters and Honey was staring at her in amazement. She wondered if she had been talking or crying out in her sleep. She seldom slept this late, but of course she had been awake till almost dawn. Dressing quickly, she tried to cling with her memory to the messages Hector had told her to give. She knew how quickly, like

half-remembered dreams, these experiences faded. She was just tying the belt of her dress when Phyllida ran in.

"Kassandra, come at once; the serpents—"

"I cannot; I have a message to deliver," Kassandra said. "I trust that you can do whatever needs to be done."

"But—"

"Well, quickly then - have they run away or all crawled into their homes?" she demanded, suddenly afraid that this would be the dreaded earthquake warning - it was sure to come soon, only, please the Gods, not today, not today!

"Well, no, but—"

"Then don't trouble me; I have weighty matters on my mind and cannot stay to talk. Take Honey with you; dress her and give her some breakfast - I'll come and tend to her when I can," she said, and ran out of the chamber and down the hill.

As she went downward, she stopped briefly to look over the wall; once again Akhilles's chariot was circling on the plain, his horses whipped to their greatest speed. The inert bundle of Hector's body was being dragged behind; yet her sight was now so clear between worlds that she could

see him, a bright shadow standing at the edge of the field, laughing at the foolish thing the Akhaian captain was trying to do. She knew what he found so funny; and as she came down to her parents, standing on the wall in the usual place above the gates, she laughed aloud.

Hecuba's eyes, almost swollen shut with crying, turned to her angrily.

"How can you laugh?"

"But can't you see, dearest Mother, how foolish it all is? Look, there in the shadow of the earthworks; Hector is laughing at his foolishness - look at the sun shining on his hair—"

Hecuba gave Kassandra her resignedBut of course, she is mad and cannot be expected to feel anything like a normal person look, but Kassandra seized her mother's arms.

"Mother, what I tell you is true; last night I spoke with Hector in the Land Beyond Death and I tell you all is well with him."

"You dreamed it, my darling," said Hecuba gently.

"No, Mother dear, I saw him as I see you, and touched him."

"I wish I could believe you—" Tears gathered slowly and dropped from the old woman's eyes.

"Mother, truly, you must believe me! And he said to tell you that you must not grieve—-'

"Last night I could almost have believed it - I thought once that I heard Troilus's voice—"

"You did, Mother, I tell you you did," Kassandra cried out, in excitement, full of her message. "I did not see or speak with Troilus, because Hector said that he stayed with you, trying to comfort you, trying to make you hear him—"

Hecuba said slowly, "When Polyxena and I were too weary to watch longer - already the sun was rising—I stepped into the garden for a moment, and I thought I felt Troilus touch my hair as he did when he grew too tall to kiss me except on the top of the head. He was such a sweet little boy, the dearest of all my sweet boys—" her eyes filled and spilled over again, and Kassandra hugged her mother close.

"He was certainly at your side," she said, "I swear it to you."

"And Hector - you say he too is at peace - but how can his spirit be free when we have not his body to give it decent burial and pay honor to his spirit," Hecuba demanded. "And if it be so, then why have funeral rites been ordained?"

"I know only what I have seen, Mother."

"It is no use," said Hecuba despairing, after considering this for a time. "I cannot think of his

spirit as free while I see his poor body - look how the dust rises, even after a full night of heavy rain!" she exclaimed, and began to cry again.

Kassandra tried to dry her mother's tears with her veil, chiding her. "It would break Hector's heart to see you cry like this. Akhilles cannot hurt him now, whatever he might do. Even if he should cut up Hector's body and feed it to his dogs, it would not harm the part of Hector we knew, not at all."

Hecuba cringed and looked sick. "How can you say such things, Kassandra?"

"I am sworn by Apollo to speak the truth; to those who will not hear it I can only say that this does not excuse me from speaking it," Kassandra replied, wondering why only her mother could make her this angry even—or especially - when she was trying to say nothing which could upset her.

"But here you are saying that we could feed our Hector to the dogs—"

"Mother, I said no such thing!" Kassandra was furious now, but with an effort she kept her voice steady and calm. "You did not hear me aright! I said only that if Akhilles in his madnesss should do such a thing it would make no difference to Hector, but only to us."

"But you were saying - I heard you—that we did not need to give him funeral rites—" Hecuba repeated, and Kassandra sighed as if she were dragging a very heavy weight uphill.

"Mother, I do not think funeral rites matter at all to Hector or to the Gods, but only to us," she repeated, as if she were trying to explain to Honey why she could not eat a dozen cakes.

Hecuba thrust out her chin. "And I say this is only one of your wild notions," she said, and turned away.

"Yes, very likely, Mother," Kassandra said, stifling her rage.She is old; I cannot expect her to understand anything which is new to her .

"But I beg you to say nothing like that to Andromache, Kassandra; she has already enough grief to bear without that."

"Without what?" asked Andromache, stepping up to the wall in time to hear the last words.

"I was saying to her," Kassandra began, and Hecuba flashed an angryDon't you dare glance at her; Kassandra realized that the argument with her mother had made her forget the exact words she had intended to speak.

She said wearily, "Only that in a vision last night I spoke to Hector and he bade you be comforted, because he is content and at peace, whatever they may do to his body." There was more; Hector had bidden her to say to Andromache - what? That he would come to take his son…but no! I can't say to her that her son will die, when she has lost Hector too… I can't say

that she… what was it… that she wouldn't want her son to live in the days that are coming …

Andromache was watching her with arched-brow skepticism; Kassandra said, "He bade me say that—that he would remain to watch over his son."

"Much good that does either of us," Andromache said, with the wide-open eyes of suppressed tears, "when he has left us—"

"But he does not want you to cry and grieve," Kassandra said. "It cannot help him now."

"Every seer and soothsayer tells us that," Andromache said, and she sounded bitter. "I had hoped for something better from you, Kassandra, if indeed you can see beyond death."

"I speak as the God bids me speak in such words as people are willing to hear," Kassandra said, and turned away. Out on the field Akhilles went on whipping his horses to an ever more maniacal fury.

All day, as the sun rose and declined over Troy, this went on. Twice Paris led out a party to try and capture Akhilles's chariot and Hector's body, and twice the troops of Agamemnon drove them off again; three of Priam's lesser sons by his palace women were killed, and at last they realized Akhilles was simply too well protected.

"No more," Priam said after the third attack. "The sun is setting; when it is dark, I will myself go

down to Akhilles and try to bargain with him to ransom my son's body."

How foolish, Kassandra thought,and how useless; Hector is not in that lump of rotting flesh out there tied behind Akhilles and his damned chariot . Why could she see this when her parents could not? Should they not be wiser than she was? It frightened her that they were not.

She felt ill and faint; she had stood all day by her mother and had not even partaken of the hard bread and oil portioned out to the soldiers at noon. She went and ate a little bread, washing it down with a few sips of watered wine, then went with Hecuba, who was assisting Priam's bodyservants to dress him in his richest robes.

"If I go to Akhilles without robing myself in my finest," he said, "he may believe I do not think him worthy of honor. I don't, of course, but I don't want him to think so."

"I'm not so sure, Father," Paris said; he was standing beside his father, trimming his beard meticulously with the scissors Helen used for her tapestry. "Perhaps that madman's vanity would be more flattered if you went to him robed simply in mourning, as a suppliant."

"Yet showing him the gold of Troy may arouse his greed if we cannot appeal to his honor," Andromache said.

"We can hardly appeal to his honor," said Paris. "It seems obvious to me that he has none." He shook his head impatiently. "I'm not at all concerned with his honor," he said. The question is

how can we best persuade him to give us Hector for burial."

"I will go to him as a suppliant," Priam said. Already he was energetically tearing off his robes. "Bring me the plainest garment I own. Also I will go to him alone—"

"No!" Hecuba cried, falling to her knees before him in an agony of despair. "We have already seen he has no respect for customary honor, or Hector would even now be upon his funeral pyre! If you go within his reach, he will certainly kill you or mistreat you, and perhaps offer the same kind of insult to your corpse that he has offered to Hector's. You cannot go to him unguarded."

"If I must I will go first to our old friend Odysseus, who will bring me safely to Akhilles," Priam said, "and we know he wants the good opinion of Odysseus; he will offer me no insult in his presence."

"That's not enough," Hecuba declared, clinging tightly to his knees. "If you are bent on this folly you shall not take a single step; for I will not let you go at all."

Priam tried to shake her loose, but she would not be dislodged. He stood scowling crossly.

"Come, my lady," he said at last. "What would you have me do, then? If I go to Akhilles with armed men, he will only think I am challenging him to single combat; is that what you want?"

"No!" Hecuba cried, but she refused still to loose her hold.

"Well, then, what do you want me to do? Why can a woman never be reasonable?" Priam demanded.

"I don't know, my lord and my love; but you're not going down to that madman alone!"

"Let me go," said Andromache with quiet dignity. "Let him explain to Hector's widow and to his child why he will not ransom him."

"Oh, my dear—" Priam began, but Hecuba started up in indignation.

"If you think I'd let you take my grandson within a league of that fiend—"

"A better thought," Helen said,"take a priest—if only as a witness before the Gods; Akhilles fears the Gods—"

"Better yet," said Priam, "I will take two priestesses; Kassandra and Polyxena. One serves Apollo and one the Maiden, so whichever Immortal Akhilles fears may bear witness of his impiety."

He turned to Kassandra and said, "You are not afraid to go with your old father into Akhilles's presence, are you, girl?"

"No, Father," she said, "and I will go unarmed if you will, or weaponed; have you forgotten I was trained as a warrior?"

"No," Polyxena said in her childish voice, "no weapons, Sister; we go barefoot with our hair unbound, praying for his mercy. It will flatter his vanity to have us kneeling at his feet. Go and robe yourself in an unadorned white tunic without embroidery or bands, and comb out your hair or better yet," she added, seizing the scissors from Paris, "cut it in token of mourning." She hacked vigorously at her long brown curls, disregarding her mother's cries of protest. Then she began to cut away Kassandra's, and as Kassandra looked, shocked, at the waist-length tresses lying on the floor, she exclaimed, "Do you grudge your vanity for Hector?"

I wouldn't if I thought it would make a fingernail's worth of difference to Hector, Kassandra thought, but was wise enough not to say the words aloud. She let Polyxena take off her rings and the necklace of pearls she wore; her sister then stripped off her own jewels. Priam kept only one large and beautiful emerald ring on his finger - a gift for Akhilles he said - and removed his own sandals. Kassandra took a torch in her hand, and Polyxena another; and with their father went down from the palace. At the gates of Troy Priam bade his servants turn back.

"I know you do not want to desert me," he said, "but if we cannot do this alone it probably cannot be done at all. If Akhilles will not listen to a grieving father and sisters, he would not listen to the whole armed might of Troy. Go back, my children."

Most of them wept, and cried out with grief and fear for him; but at last, one by one, they turned

back, and the three suppliants went through the opened gates, and began moving, deliberately, by the light of their two torches, across the plain.

The ground was still muddy underfoot from last night's rain; and it was very dark, for the sky was covered with thick clouds which now and then opened to show a withering moon. Kassandra shivered in her plain robe, the cold rising up through her muddy feet, and wondered if the sky would open for a further downpour. Such a useless errand; and yet if it gave peace of mind to her father, how could she refuse?

Priam moved slowly, she noticed with a pain at her heart, as if his legs would hardly carry him and he was borne along by his strength of will alone.Will this then be his death? Oh, damn Hector for having the bad luck and the bad sense to go and get himself killed ! she thought, stumbling along behind Polyxena with her eyes so full of tears that she could hardly see where she was going.

Was Hector still here on this plain, bound somehow to that lump of decaying flesh tied behind Akhilles's chariot? Why did he not come and speak with them, forbid his father to humble himself to Akhilles? No, Hector had bidden her farewell and said they would not meet again. If she had told her father and mother that she had seen the ruin of Troy, would they have believed her? Or would it have made them even more eager to see all things done in order while there was still time enough?

A solitary watchman challenged them:

"Who goes there?"

Priam's voice sounded thin and quavering; Kassandra had never realized quite how old and feeble he sounded.

"It is Priam, son of Laomedon, King of Troy; I seek a parley with the Danaan lord Akhilles."

There was a muttering of voices, and after a time a lantern flashed on them.

"My lord of Troy, you are welcome, but if you have an armed guard you must leave them here."

"No guard at all, armed or unarmed," Priam said. "I come only as a suppliant to Akhilles; my only company is my two young daughters."

It made them sound, Kassandra thought, as if they were little girls, not grown women past twenty. As if explaining this, Priam added, "They are both sworn priestesses; one of Apollo and one °r the Maiden; not the wives of warriors." k

"Why are they here, then?"

"Only to support our father if his steps should stumble by the way," said Polyxena, as the torch flashed in their faces.

Kassandra added, "I am known to the Akhaian captains; I was present at the negotiations for the return of Chryseis, daughter of Apollo's Priest." After she said this she wondered if she should have mentioned it; Akhilles had not come out of that encounter so well that he would wish to be reminded of it.

But the watchman evidently didn't know, or didn't care about that. He said, "Let them come, then," and lowered the torch, saying, "Follow me."

He led the way across the ground, rutted by chariot wheels, toward the light that streamed from the tent of Akhilles. Inside was warmth and even a certain degree of comfort; chairs covered with furs and skins, tapestry hangings, and a table spread with fruits and wine. Akhilles sat at the center of the tent, looking as if he had arranged himself to give audience. At the far end of the tent, in the shadows between the light of half a dozen lamps, stood the shrouded and mummified figure of Patroklos, just as Kassandra had seen it in her vision. Nearer the door stood Agamemnon and beside him Odysseus with a cup of wine in his hand; they looked as if they had been set up for a tableau. Akhilles was apparently just fresh from his bath; he looked very clean, his skin as pink as a little child's; his hair, which had been cut short, silver-gilt in the light, was being combed by a slave, whom Kassandra recognized as her mother's woman Briseis. As his gaze fell on Priam, he put up his hand to stop the combing, and the woman drew back.

"Well, my lord of Troy," he said, his thin lips stretching back in what Kassandra thought of as a grin of contempt, "what brings you out into a dark night like this?"

As if he didn't know perfectly well! But it was obvious to all of them that Akhilles was all set to enjoy this. Priam came forth into the lantern light; Kassandra and Polyxena drew together, watching him. Priam knelt clumsily down, extending his hands in a pleading gesture toward the younger man.

"Oh, my lord Akhilles, I am sure I need not say to you why I have come; I beg you to yield up to me what is customary and proper, and give me the body of my fallen son Hector for proper burial."

Akhilles's face did not move a muscle, he only smiled very slightly. Priam rushed on, "You are so valiant, sir; you have fought long; but all these years of battle, we have returned your dead to you that their bodies may be given to the fire and their spirits sent off properly to the afterworld."

"Hector angered me," Akhilles said. "He really should not have had the arrogance to go up against me, whom the Gods have sworn to protect."

Priam stopped and swallowed; he could not think what to say to that. Kassandra clenched her fists under her hanging sleeves.

And he dares speak of arrogance?

Priam said at last, "My lord Akhilles, a warrior challenges the finest opponent he can. And he

has fallen; you who are so • powerful, cannot you be merciful to Hector's wife and child as well?"

"No," said Akhilles, "I can't."

He stopped and Kassandra could hear them all listening for his next word; but he was so silent for so long that she thought he intended to leave it at that. But then he said, "I have sworn that I will have the revenge that has been given to me."

Priam leaned forward and laid his hands on Akhilles's knees. His words rushed out of him.

"Prince Akhilles, you must have had a father once; can you not for your own father's sake be merciful? Hector was the eldest of my sons; I was proud of him as your father must have been of you. And when the gallant Patroklos fell in battle, Hector did not seek to keep his body; he honored a brave fallen foe! He came to the funeral games for Patroklos, because, he said, Patroklos would not grudge him a good dinner; and he said that he looked forward to having much to talk about with Patroklos in the afterlife; they were both warriors and when the battles of this world were over he trusted they would be friends as fellow warriors. Let us lay Hector to rest as you will bury Patroklos."

Akhilles looked toward the shadowed corner of the tent and Kassandra saw that his eyes were suddenly filled with tears. She could see a dozen emotions chasing themselves over his features: hatred, scorn, pity, sorrow; but the sorrow predominated. Her father had evidently found the one

thing that might cut through the arrogance and scorn. Akhilles said slowly, "You are right, my lord of Troy; Patroklos has a friend then in the afterlife. Guard!" he snapped out, "go out and bring us the body of royal Hector!"

The soldier bowed to the ground and fled.

Akhilles said, "You spoke of a ransom? What ransom do you offer me, then?"

Priam muttered, "That is for you, noble Akhilles, to say." He drew the ring from his finger and set it on Akhilles's finger. "First I offer this as a gift to you with my thanks."

Akhilles stroked it consideringly. He said with his cruel smile, "I suppose Hector is worth more to you than a few captured chariots."

The madman is enjoying this. It was obvious to Kassandra that he was contemplating something outrageous. Priam mumbled, "I have sworn that I will pay without haggling whatever you ask, Prince Akhilles."

Akhilles rubbed his chin, evidently intending to extort the most drama he could from the scene. "Agamemnon - what should I ask for ransom?"

"Get a good one," Agamemnon said carelessly. "The King of Troy can afford anything you ask; his city has half the riches of the world within its walls."

Odysseus interrupted and said clearly, "Your nobility will be measured by generosity, Akhilles; will you allow a Trojan to outdo you in generosity?" His face was turned away; Kassandra thought that he was ashamed. She wished that they could have dealt with Odysseus alone.

"It's easy to see what a friend to the Trojans you have always been, Odysseus," said Agamemnon. "I have not forgotten how we hardly persuaded you to fight on our side at all."

"Half the riches of the world," murmured Akhilles, looking greedily at the ring. "But still, I do not want to be too greedy; what would I do with half the wealth of the world? I will ask, then, only the weight of Hector's body in gold."

"You shall have it," said Priam, unflinching. "I have sworn."

But this was insufferable, Kassandra thought,no such ransom had ever been asked or paid in the whole history of warfare . Only Akhilles would have ventured such a thing. Odysseus made a sharp movement as if he were about to protest; but he did not speak. Kassandra knew why; a wrong word might touch off his madness - and then there would be no ransom at all.

Priam said, "It shall be weighed out before your eyes at dawn before the walls of Troy, Prince Akhilles, to the last ounce."

Priam bowed so that Akhilles could not see the stonelike contempt on his face.

Akhilles smiled; he had what he wanted, and he had it before his allies.

"Will you drink with me to the bargain then, my Lord of Troy?"

"Thank you," Priam said; it was all too obvious he would rather have spit in Akhilles's face, but he took the cup the prince set in his hand, and took a few swallows, after which he passed the cup to Polyxena and then to Kassandra, who put the cup to her lips without drinking; she knew it would choke her.

"May I then have Hector's body that his mother and sisters may ready it for the pyre?"

"It shall be returned to you washed and decently shrouded, anointed with oil and spices, at dawn before the walls, when the • ransom is paid," Akhilles said.

"Akhilles, in the name of Zeus Thunderer!" Agamemnon burst out, "The King of Troy makes no niggling bargain! Give him what he came for!"

"I did not think a father would wish to look on the body as it is now," said Akhilles, deliberately, watching Priam's face as he spoke.(A cruel child, pulling the wings off flies.) 'I would have it made seemly for his mother to look upon."

"My Lord Akhilles is as kind as we believed all along he was noble," said Kassandra

quickly.Yes, just exactly as we believed . "Let it be so. At dawn then, Lord Akhilles," and she pulled at her father's sleeve; Priam's head was bent and he was weeping. She steadied him, and Polyxena took his other arm, as they went out of the tent - quickly, so that Priam would not hear the laughter of Akhilles behind him.

CHAPTER 11

As soon as they returned to Troy, Priam set all the people of the household to frenzied activity, stripping the palace of golden ornaments, demanding the golden necklaces, earrings and rings of the women; and gold cups from the table even before he opened the treasure room and had the gold carried up to the walls.

Priam sent for a priest from the Sunlord's temple to rig up a pair of scales. It was Khryse, and for once he was genuinely too busy to take the slightest notice of Kassandra as he worked with pulleys and weights. She watched him work, understanding the principles of what he was doing, but knowing she had not the skill with her hands or knowledge to do it herself. When he had the strange-looking balance strung up he asked her to lie on one of the platforms so that it could be tested.

"Just pretend you are a dead weight," he said.

"As you like." She took her place, watching as the people of the household piled gold on the other part of the scale. She was surprised at the smallness of the heap which balanced her, lifting her slowly into the air. He saw her look and said, "Gold is heavier than most people think."

She was sure Akhilles knew to the ounce how much gold he would be getting. She began to sit up as they took off the gold and piled it up.

"Your weight in gold, Kassandra," Khryse said. "If it were mine I would offer it all to you for a bride-price."

She sighed and said, "Do not begin that again, my brother."

He looked crestfallen, "Must you always destroy any hopes I might have for happiness in this world?"

"Oh, if what you want is a wife," she said with an angry laugh,"there are women enough and to spare in Troy."

"You know that for me there is no woman save you alone—" Khryse said.

"Then I fear you will live and die unwed," Kassandra said firmly, "even if yonder gold were your own and youcould dower me with it." She slid to her feet, looking at the heap of gold which equalled her weight. She had never cared for jewellery, and she could only marvel that this cold

stuff excited so much greed in so many people. Somehow, even knowing Akhilles as she did, she had not thought he could be swayed with gold alone; she had thought he might attempt some additional humiliation on the royal house of Troy.

Above them, lighting the top of the stones, the sun was rising; Kassandra stepped to the top of the wall and extended her arms silently in the morning salutation to the Sunlord.

"Sing the morning hymn, Kassandra," Khryse urged. "Your voice is sweet but we so seldom hear it lent to us now, even for Apollo's sake."

Stubbornly she shook her head; if she sang, he would accuse her again of trying to entice him. "I prefer to sing but in the presence of the God alone," she murmured and was silent.

Priam, coming with his servants and another basketful of gold - even though the precious stuff barely covered the bottom of the basket it was so heavy that it had to be carried between two men - said, "Well, priest, are the scales ready?"

"They await your pleasure, my lord."

"My pleasure? You fool, do you think I take any pleasure in this business?" Priam demanded crustily. He was still wearing the white robe of a suppliant, streaked with mud from the earthworks; his bare feet were caked with mud.

Polyxena whispered to him, but Priam said aloud, "Are you saying that for that villain Akhilles I should bathe and comb my hair and put on fair garments, as if this were a wedding and not a funeral? And I care not if this is the chief among the Sunlord's priests, he is no less a fool for all that!"

Kassandra covered her mouth with her fingertips; it would be unseemly to smile at this moment. Surely there was little to smile about, except the discomfiture on Khryse's face; it seemed to her that her father spoke with the peevish sound of senility.

Priam motioned to the servants to put the basket down by the rest of the gold. "Now we await Akhilles's will. It would be like him to make such a degrading bargain as this and make us wait all^day - or not to come at all."

He made the bargain before witnesses," Polyxena reminded her father."Theywill make him come. They are eager to get on with this war, now they don't have Hector to face."

There was silence while the King's household slowly gathered below the wall; Hecuba and Andromache stood on either side of the King.

Kassandra was not sure exactly what it was that she expected; perhaps Akhilles's chariot galloping at his usual breakneck speed toward the walls. She looked into the rising sun till her eyes ached.

Khryse stood at her side and put his arm under hers as if to lend her support; she was exasperated but did not want to draw attention to herself by moving away. The priest said, "They are astir in the Argive camp; what are they waiting for?"

"Perhaps to humble my father further by seeing him faint with exhaustion from the heat," she murmured. "I swear to you, Khryse, compared to Akhilles, Agamemnon is noble and kindly."

"I know little of him," Khryse said, "but enough to know I would not willingly see the fate of Troy in his hands; and Priam's health and strength are now all the hope we have for Troy."

Little hope that is, she thought, but remained silent. She had no wish to discuss her fears for her father with anyone, and certainly not with a man she distrusted.

"Look," Polyxena said, and pointed, barely raising her arm. Far out on the plain, figures were moving; as they came nearer, Kassandra made out Akhilles, his pale hair shining in a blinding streak of sunlight. He was walking at the head of a small procession; behind him, eight of his soldiers carried a body on a pallet - it could only be that of Hector - and behind them came a half dozen Akhaian chieftains, in full armor, but bearing no weapons.

At least for once Akhilles has kept his word. She let out her breath, only now realizing that until she saw Hector's body she had not for a moment expected him to do so.

They were nearer now; she could make out individual faces and even see the details of the

embroideries on the pall that covered Hector's body. Akhilles bowed before Priam and said, "As I promised, my Lord of Troy, behold the body of your son."

"The ransom awaits you, Prince Akhilles," Priam said, and went to the pall, folding back the heavy covering to expose the face. "First let me make certain that it is truly the body of my son—"

Hecuba came to stand beside him as he rolled back the pall, with Penthesilea ready beside her should she need support. Kassandra was braced to hear her mother break into wailing or shrieking, but she simply nodded gravely and bent to kiss the cold white forehead. Priam said, "The scales have been set up by a priest of Apollo Sunlord who is skilled in such things. If you would like to check the weights for yourself—"

"No, no," said Akhilles with a bizarre geniality, "I know very little of such things, my lord."

Khryse said, conducting Akhilles to the edge of the scales. "You worked against your own best interest, Prince Akhilles, when you allowed Hector's body to become so mangled; in perfect condition it would have brought you more gold." The jest seemed gross and inappropriate. Kassandra wondered, looking at Khryse's shaking hands and the over-brilliant pupils of his eyes, if he had been drinking unmixed wine, or a brew of wine and poppy-seeds so early in the day that he had forgotten in whose presence he was.

Priam turned pale and said stiffly, "Let's get on with this." He gestured, and the body of Hector

was hoisted up to lie on the platform. Priam's slaves began to scoop out the gold on to the other platform, a few pieces at a time. Akhilles watched, barely smiling, as the platform bearing the body trembled and began to rise from the ground. Kassandra wondered if the other watchers found the scene as grotesque as she did.

The scale quivered and briefly, shook hard so that the bound corpse slid to one side, but it did not fall off. On the heights above Troy the wind was rising, but here below the walls the air was agonizingly still—still enough to smother breath. It occurred to Kassandra that nowhere in the city did she hear the sound of a single bird's song. Was this a part of the warning such as she had been given before? Was Poseidon about to strike? Let him strike then and end this obscenity, this travesty of decency and honor. She fixed her gaze firmly on one of the pulley ropes and would not look away. The rope trembled as she watched, and a few gold ornaments fell off;oh, come, Poseidon, is that the best you can do for Hector ?

One of Priam's slaves scooped up the ornaments and replaced them. He added a heavy gold breastplate, and the platform containing the gold sagged down, now obviously outweighing the body.

Too heavy," Priam said and removed it, replacing it with a multistranded gold necklace.

"A hair too light now," said Akhilles, his eyes dwelling covetously on the breastplate. Polyxena stepped forward, pulled her long gold-wire earrings from her earlobes and flung them on the platform. The scales trembled, then stopped still, evenly balanced.

"There," she said, "it is enough. Take your gold, and go."

Akhilles looked from the gold to Polyxena, his eyes brightening as he looked.

"For the gold, a golden girl would suffice," he said. "King Priam, I will forgive you half the ransom for this woman, even if she is one of your slaves or concubines."

"I am Priam's daughter," Polyxena said, "and I serve the Maiden, who is no friend to lust even in a king or a king's son. Be content with your gold and your pledged word, Prince Akhilles, and leave us with our dead."

Akhilles clenched his lips tight, and Kassandra saw a vein throbbing in his forehead. He said between clenched teeth, "Is it so? Then will you give her to me—honorably, in lawful marriage—in return for a three days' truce to bury your son? Otherwise, the war will resume at noon—"

"No," the voice of Odysseus boomed out from among the silent ranks of Akhaian chieftains,"this is too much. Akhilles; honor your word, as you have sworn, or you will find yourself fightingme at noon. We pledged Priam three days' truce for Hector's funeral, and so it shall be."

Akhilles glowered, but said, "So be it," and raised his hand to his men. They shared out the gold

in baskets, each carrying one, and marched away across the plain the same way they had come.

Kassandra did not stay to hear the planning of the funeral games, pleading duties in the temple she must go at once and see what the serpents portended. No one else had apparently noted the touch of the hand - or the fingertip - of Poseidon. She went up quickly the long steep way toward the Sunlord's house; after a moment she was aware that Khryse was following her. Well, let him follow, he had just as much right to enter the Sunlord's house as she did herself. But he did not approach her or speak until they had passed through the great gates.

"I know what is in your mind, Princess," he said. "I felt it too. The God is angry with Troy." He looked pale and haggard, whathad he been drinking so early? Something perhaps to sharpen his visions, if not his ordinary wits?

"I was not certain that I felt it," she began. "I was not sure I did not dream or imagine it."

"If you did, then I too dreamed," he said. "It is now only a question of time; how long can Apollo Sunlord delay the full fury of Poseidon's blow? I too have seen them struggling for Troy—"

Recalling her own vision, she said, "It is true. No mortal can break the walls of Troy. But if a God should breach them—"

"There is an army outside more powerful than all the might of Troy," Khryse said. "And our

greatest champion awaits the funeral pyre, while they have at least three warriors greater than our best."

"Three? I grant you Akhilles, but—"

"Agamemnon, who could best Paris and Deiphobos together if he must, and Odysseus and Ajax are the equal of Hector, though neither ever bested him."

"Well," said Kassandra, wondering where this was leading, "while our walls stand it does not matter; and if it is foreordained that they must fall—well, we will meet that fate when it comes."

"I do not want to remain and see the city fall; if I were a warrior I would stay and fight, but I was never trained to use weapons and I would be no help even to defend myself—far less the ones I love. Will you come away with me, Kassandra? I do not want you to die when the city falls."

"I wish I had only death to fear."

"I mean to go to Crete in the first ship I can find, and I have heard there is a Phoenician ship standing out to sea down beyond the cove," Khryse said. "Come with me and you need fear nothing."

"Nothing, that is, but you."

"Can you never forgive me that moment of folly?" Khryse demanded. "I mean you all honor, Kassandra; I will marry you if you will, or if you are still resolved not to marry, I will swear any oath you like that we shall travel as sister and brother, and I will lay not so much as a finger's weight on you."

But I would not even trust your oath, not if you swore by your own mother's virtue, she thought, and shook her head, not unkindly.

"No, Khryse. Believe me, I thank you for the thought. But the Gods have decreed that I have something more to do in Troy. I do not know yet what they have ordained for me, but no doubt they will tell me when it lies before me."

"You certainly will be of no use as one more spear when the city falls," said Khryse. "Are you staying to comfort your mother and sister when they are carried off as captives of the Argive captains? What good will that do them?"

Kassandra looked sharply at him. He looked as if he had not touched food for a long time, yet he had not quite the look of starvation alone. Her heart ached for him; she did not love him as he wished, but she had known him for a long time, and no longer wished him ill.

A moment's touch of the God now would kill him, she thought, and was saddened.

"If that is the only task the Gods lay on me," she said firmly,"then that is the one I will fulfill."

"It seems hardly worth going alone to Crete or Thera," said Khryse. "You could come with me as you went to Colchis, to study serpent-lore; or to Egypt, where they always welcome priestesses. In Egypt there is always much building going on, and always work—as at Knossos for a man who is handy with weights and measures. I have heard they will rebuild the palace which was reduced to rubble with the last touch of Poseidon Earthshaker."

"Then don't go alone," Kassandra said. "Take Chryseis with you. She has never been happy here, and you do not want her to fall captive again to Agamemnon's bed, do you?"

"It is not Chryseis that Agamemnon wants," said Khryse, "and you know it as well as I do."

Kassandra shivered, hearing the sound of truth in the priest's voice; but she said, "I abide my fate as you, my brother, abide your own; go then to Knossos or Egypt, or wherever your fate leads you, and all the Gods keep you safe there." She moved her hand in a gesture of blessing. "I wish you nothing but good; but we part here, Khryse, and forever."

"Kiss me but once," he pleaded, dropping to his knees before her.

She bent and lightly laid her lips against his wrinkled forehead, like a mother kissing a small child.

"May you bear the Sunlord's blessing wherever you go; and remember me with kindness," she said.

She climbed up past him, leaving him still kneeling and dumb.His wits are no longer sound , she thought;perhaps it is a mercy . He will suffer less when his fate strikes him; it cannot be long now.Not for any of us .

In the hall of the serpents she found the priestesses all running about half dressed, struggling to recapture the snakes; this morning quite a number of them had deserted their proper places and taken refuge in the garden. One or two of the most docile, on being rounded up and carried back to their places, had bitten the handlers. Kassandra was dismayed. Phylhda had indeed tried to tell her of this, but she had not listened. The omen was bad indeed, but the time to be afraid had passed.

"The Sunlord did not send his people a false warning," she said. "The hand of Poseidon Earthshaker did in fact strike us; but only the lightest of blows. Listen, the birds are singing once more; the danger is past, at least for this day."

Nevertheless some of them looked troubled.

"The Great Snake, the Mother of Serpents, has not come forth ' for her food for three days," said Phyllida. "We have tempted her with mice and newborn rabbits, then a young pigeon, and even with a saucer of fresh goat's milk." (This last was a rare delicacy now in Troy. So many goats

had had to be slaughtered for lack of fodder; what milk remained was kept only for young babies, or for women in early pregnancy who could tolerate no other food.) 'What does this omen portend, Kassandra? Is the Mother angry with us? And what can we do to turn away her anger?"

"I do not know," she said. "I have not been given any message from the Goddess to say she is angry with us. I think perhaps we should all put on festival robes and sing to her." (That at least could do no harm.) 'And then we shall all go down and perform a dance of devotion at Hector's funeral feast."

This brought exclamations of pleasure from the women; as she had supposed, it quickly banished their fears about the omen. But Phyllida, who had learned from Kassandra much of the serpent-lore of Colchis, delayed for a moment when the others had gone to change into their robes.

"This is all very well, my dear; but what if the Great Serpent refuses to feed again?"

"I suppose we must simply accept it as the most evil of omens," Kassandra said. "Even the Mother of Serpents is but a beast after all; and no beast starves itself without reason. I have force-fed smaller serpents; but I do not feel equal to the task of force-feeding this one; do you?" Phyllida silently shook her head and Kassandra nodded. "So all we can do is to offer her such food as may tempt her most, and pray she will see fit to take it."

"In short, exactly what we would do with one of the Immortals," Phyllida said with a cynical

smile. "I wonder more and more; what good are the Gods?"

"I don't know either, Phyllida; but I beg you not to say that to the other girls," Kassandra said, "and I suppose we had better go and put on our dancing robes too."

Phyllida patted her cheek; she said, "Poor Kassandra, you cannot feel much like dancing and feasting when Hector lies dead."

"Hector is better off than most of us still living in the city," Kassandra said. "Believe me, my dear, I rejoice for him."

"None of my kin are fighting," said Phyllida, "and it is so long since I feasted that I would be joyful about it even if the feast were in honor of my own father. So we will dance for Serpent Mother and in memory of Hector, and I hope one gets as much out of it as the other." She slipped away and Kassandra bent before the great artificial cave in the wall which had been built for the Great Snake.

She hesitated, to be certain that Apollo would not speak to forbid her entry, then crawled inside with a lighted torch in her hand to investigate. The ancient serpent knew her smell and would not harm her, but she would not willingly approach a lighted torch either. Inside the cave, in the semi-dark, she smelled the ancient smell, fear to the very center of the bones of humankind; but she had been trained to ignore that.

She crawled on, avoiding a patch of filth in the cave; snakes were cleaner than cats under normal conditions; this one would not have fouled her own place if all was well. She began to make out the great heap of scaled coils, and murmured soothingly and crawled on. She put out a hesitant hand and stroked gently; but in place of the warm scales she anticipated, she touched what felt like cold pottery. She pressed more firmly. Unstirring beneath her hand; the Great Serpent lay dead.

Sothat's why she didn't come out to eat. The omen was worse than the girls knew , Kassandra thought, sighing and lying for a moment quietly at the side of the dead creature.

She found herself wondering: if she went out on the grey plain of death where Hector lingered awaiting his son, would she find the Serpent Mother there, and would the snake speak to her priestess in a human voice?

Well, it would make no difference; if she had occasion to cross that plain again, maybe she would find out; there were so many questions to be answered about death, she could never understand why anyone should fear it or face it with anything except eager curiosity.

She crawled backward out of the cave and placed the lighted torch in a stand before it, a signal not to disturb the occupant. Phyllida came back and asked, "Did you go into the cave? Is it well with her?"

"Very well," Kassandra said steadily. "She has cast her skin and must not be disturbed."

Phyllida was relieved. "Oh, but you haven't changed your robe - nor put on your dancing shoes."

"Oh, Hector will not care about my robes," she said 'and I can dance barefoot as well as in my sandals."

As the girls gathered again in the shrine, she led them through the steps of the dance, which was older than Troy. At the finish,-she cried out the final wailing cry, murmuring under her breath a prayer for the old Snake, then wondered; was it proper to pray for the soul of a beast who probably had none? Well, if she had a soul she was welcome to the prayer, and if not, at least it would do her no harm.

"And now for the feast," she said, and led the women down the hill to the palace.

Priam had not expected them, but they were welcomed anyway, and Hecuba was pleased that they had come for this tribute to Hector. Kassandra stood at the center of the dance, watching as the long spiral of the women with their white robes fluttering wound round her and then led the unwinding of the coils of the ancient dance of the labyrinth. When the dance and song came to its end Kassandra signalled the priestesses to help in filling the cups of the guests before they sat down, and herself poured a cup of wine and bore it to Penthesilea. Weary and heart-sore, she felt there was no one else in this hall to whom she could speak except the old Amazon. Not even to Aeneas, though he smiled and beckoned to her, could she bear to speak.

Penthesilea did not trouble her with questions; she simply pulled her down on the couch beside her and shared her cup of wine. Not till then did she ask:

"What is it, little one? You look so weary. It is not only grief for Hector—?"

Kassandra felt tears welling up in her eyes. To everyone else in Troy she was the priestess, the bearer of burdens, the answerer to whom all questions must be brought. It never occurred to anyone that she might have fears or questions of her own.

"There are times when I wish I too had chosen to be a warrior," she blurted. "I cannot see what use it is to anyone that I am a Priestess."

Penthesilea's voice was stern. "Our lives are often chosen for us, Kassandra—"

"Then why is it some people are able to choose?"

"I think perhaps some of us have the choices made for us by the choices we have already made if not in this life then in another," Penthesilea said.

"Do you really believe that?" demanded Kassandra.

"Oh, my dear, I don't know what I believe; I only know that like all of us, I do the best I can with the choices offered me at any moment," said Penthesilea, "and so do you. But you should

not sit here discussing all the ins and outs of life's vagaries with an old woman; look, Aeneas has been trying and trying to catch your eye. A few minutes with your lover will do more to cheer you than all of my philosophy."

It might be so, thought Kassandra, but she resented it. Nevertheless she looked at Aeneas and returned his smile. He rose and came to her, and accepted another cup of wine -although she noted that it was so diluted that it was more water than wine.

"The dance was lovely; I have never seen anything like it before," he said. "Is it one of the old dances of Troy?"

"Yes, it is very old," she told him, "but I think it may be from Crete; it is the labyrinth dance the spiral of the coils of the Earth Snake. It has been danced in the Sunlord's house since before he slew the Great Serpent, they say."

And once again, the Great Serpent lies dead, and the Sunlord gave us no warning or omen, she thought, overwhelmed by her dread… what could all this mean? Surely the death of Hector was only the beginning of a procession of evils…

Aeneas was bending over her anxiously, troubled by her distress. She did not want to frighten him too; with him she might even find some surcease from this endless despair.

"Let me bring you something," he said. "You have hardly tasted of the feast; and there is roast

kid and lamb—Priam has spared nothing, and Hector would not want you to be miserable; wherever our dear brother may be, we can be sure it is well with him, and will be none the better for our mourning."

This sounded so near to what she had been trying to say that she was overjoyed;at least Aeneas understands when I speak, I need not try to fight my way through a mountain of fear and superstitious nonsense about death ! His face seemed to glow in the torchlight; she remembered that she had seen him coming undamaged from the ruin of Troy; he was going to live, and the light in his face was simply the light of life, where the pallor of death lay over everyone else.

"I want nothing to eat," she said, though a little while ago she had been hungry.

"Well, then, let us get out of this hall of mourning. All the Gods may witness I loved Hector, but I do not see how his fate or our understanding of it can be bettered by everyone sitting around and eating till they can hardly move, and drinking themselves into a stupor," he said, and slipped his arm round her; enlaced, they went out on to the balcony and looked down into-the dark expanse of the Argive camp; there were a few scattered lights but all else was dark.

"What are they doing down there?" Aeneas asked.

"I don't know; I may be a prophetess, but I cannot see that far," she said. "Building an altar to Poseidon, I should think. But it is too late for that, and they should know it."

"Perhaps their soothsayers,are not as good as you are," he said, holding her tightly. "Kassandra, let me come to your room—"

She hesitated; but finally said, "Come then." Tomorrow would be enough time to deal with dead serpents and dying cities.

On their way up the steep street, a star fell, with such a dizzying sweep across the sky that for a moment it felt as if it was the earth that tipped; and she clutched Aeneas's arm, remembering how she and Andromache had watched falling stars in Colchis when she was only a young girl. Since that night, though she had watched the skies diligently, she had not seen another falling star until this moment. Was it a portent of some kind? Or did it mean anything at all?

"What is it?" Aeneas asked, bending over her and speaking with great tenderness.

"Only the star—"

"Star?" he asked, "I saw nothing, my love."

Now I am imagining things. Enough, then, for tonight, she said firmly to herself, and drew Aeneas into her room, knowing with a sudden stab of pain that it would be the last time.

CHAPTER 12

The truce rather to Kassandra's surprise, was not broken by the Akhaians. None of them competed in Hector's funeral games - except for an anonymous Myrmidon who entered the wrestling, threw four successive opponents (ending by pinning down Deiphobos), pocketed the golden cup given as a prize, and vanished without revealing his name. Gossip in the city later credited him with being one of the Immortals in disguise, but he wasn't. Paris said he had seen him in the ranks and he was just a common soldier. Trojans and Akhaians both stood watching the various events and applauding the winners in a fine sportsmanlike way.

Penthesilea insisted on competing for the prize in archery, which caused some trouble when she won handily against all comers, including Paris, who had obviously marked out that prize for himself. He protested, but no one upheld his objection; since Paris had been heard often to say that no man alive could best him at archery, several of Priam's younger sons (who were not at all sorry to see their brother beaten for once) insisted he had no right to complain at being beaten by a woman.

On the third morning Kassandra woke early, hearing with relief the sounds of many birds singing loudly in the gardens of the Sunlord's house; at least there would be no substantial earthquake this day.

She went early to the rooms in the palace—Penthesilea had moved from her quarters in the Sunlord's house—and helped arm the Amazon in her armor of hardened leather with metal

plates.

"All of us will be fighting, and this day we - we Amazons, that is - will throw all our forces against Akhilles," she said. "We have fought for many years. One warrior, be he never so fierce, cannot lay us all low."

"I wish you would set yourselves to attack someone less formidable," Kassandra said, troubled, "There are enemies enough; such as Menelaus and Idomeneos need killing too. Why not go against Agamemnon? Why must you challenge the pride of the Akhaians?"

"Because, if Agamemnon or Menelaus is killed, Akhilles is still there to inspire them, but when Akhilles is dead, the whole crew of them will be like a hive when the queen is gone," Penthesilea said. "The Myrmidons at least will be completely demoralized; remember when Akhilles was still sulking, they hardly fought at all, and they certainly did not fight like the well-disciplined army they are now."

"Oh, I can understand why you feel this way," Kassandra said, "but this is not even your war. I wish you would all leave before this day's fight."

Penthesilea looked her straight in the face. "Have you had an omen, bright eyes?"

"Not really," Kassandra said, then realized she should have said yes; maybe the Amazon would have believed her. She flung her arms around Penthesilea and began to cry.

"I wish you wouldn't," was all she could say. She clung to the older woman weeping, and Penthesilea scowled.

"Come, now, where's the warrior I myself trained?" she asked, "You are behaving like a weak house-bred woman! There—that's right - dry those bright eyes, my love, and let me go."

Reluctantly, Kassandra wrenched herself free, trying to stifle her tears. "But Akhilles is invulnerable; they say a God protects him and no man can kill him."

"Well, Paris boasted that no man could beat him at archery," Penthesilea said with a droll smile. "Perhaps that only means it is reserved for a woman to kill him. And if I am not ordained to do it, perhaps another of my women may do so to avenge me. Darling, no mortal man is invulnerable; and if any God protects such a monster, then such a God should be ashamed. We have given too much power to Akhilles; he is a man like any other."

Nevertheless he did kill Hector, Kassandra thought, but there was nothing to say, for Penthesilea was right. They walked together, surrounded by the other Amazons, to where the horses and chariots were forming up for the attack.

Penthesilea put her arm round Kassandra's waist.

"Why, child, you are still shaking!"

"I can't help being afraid for you," Kassandra said in a muffled voice.

Penthesilea frowned at her, then her voice altered to tenderness. "This can be no part of a warrior's life, bright-eyes. I don't want anyone to see you weeping like this. Come, darling, let me go-"

I can't bear to see her go! She will never return… but Kassandra reluctantly unwound her arms from her kinswoman's waist. Penthesilea kissed her and said, "Kassandra, whatever may happen, know that to me you have been more than a daughter, and dearer than any of my lovers. You have been my friend."

Kassandra stood aside, watching through a blur of tears as her aunt swung up into her saddle; the Amazons closed ranks about her, talking in low tones of battle strategies; then the gate swung open and they rode out.

Kassandra knew she should go to her mother in the palace, or to the temple to oversee the serpents - all was in confusion there now that the death of the Great Snake was known—but instead she went up on the wall to watch as Penthesilea and her group rode forth against the Akhaians. Half a dozen of the Trojan chariots rode out first, directly engaging the massed forces with spears and swords. Then like thunder the charge of the Amazon horses raced down on Akhilles and his men.

They came together with a shock of spears clearly heard by the women on the wall. When the dust subsided, two of the Amazons were lying on the ground, their horses fallen. One scrambled to her feet and cut her assailant down with her spear, the other lay motionless, her fallen horse struggling and rolling away, trying to rise. An Akhaian soldier saw its struggles and quickly cut its throat, then knelt over the fallen woman to wrench off her fine armor. Kassandra saw that Penthesilea had survived the first charge; her horse had taken a spear wound, but was still on its feet.

The Amazon Queen swung her animal and charged right through a cluster of Akhilles's soldiers, knocking them aside, killing more than one with her spear-thrusts. Kassandra saw the very moment when Akhilles became aware of her: when she cut down a man who must have been one of his own personal bodyguard. She saw the leap he made, facing the Amazon as if inviting her to get down and fight him face to face.

Penthesilea straightened her body to face him head on, sword to sword. She was actually taller than he was, and had a longer reach with the sword. They clashed together, with a flurry of sword-strokes too swift to follow. Akhilles reeled backward and for a moment went down on his knees. He made some signal so that his men rushed in and immediately engaged all the other warrior women. Then, swiftly as a striking snake, he was up, his sword moving almost too quickly to be seen; Penthesilea retreated a few steps until she stood against her horse's flank. But his relentless sword pressed her until she went down. Kassandra heard the breath sob out of her as Akhilles fell to the Amazon's side. What was the madman doing? He tore at her clothes in a frenzy, leaned forward and as they watched in horror, violently raped the corpse.

Monstrous, she thought,if only I bad my bow ! Akhilles had finished and was fighting off the four Amazons who had come to attack him. He cut down two of them at once, then took, down another with a spear, wounding her so that, reeling away, she was cut down by one of his soldiers. The remaining women made a desperate rush to recover Penthesilea's body, but they were hopelessly out-numbered and within a few more minutes not a single Amazon warrior remained alive. The soldiers rounded up and led away their surviving horses. In a single hour of battle, an entire tribe with all their culture and their memories had been wiped out, and that fiend Akhilles had carried out the final insult to a warrior who dared challenge him. She did not believe for a single moment that he had been overcome by lust; it was a cold-blooded act of contempt.

It would have been fitting if Apollo had let fly his arrow at that moment to take him in the very act of overweening pride. The God who loathed excess in revenge or even in war would have been the perfect avenger. Akhilles no longer qualified as an honorable opponent in battle, she realized; he was like a mad dog.

But the Gods stand by and will do nothing. If Akhilles were a mad dog, someone would come and kill him, not to avenge the dead but to protect the living, and to put the poor maddened beast out of its misery.

And if Apollo will not act, it was not for nothing that I am sworn to serve him - if only by doing what a more innocent priest would expect the God to do. For the first time since she had knelt

and prayed as a young girl to the Sunlord to accept her, she knew clearly why she had come to the Sunlord's house. She looked one last time at the body of Penthesilea lying shamefully stripped and bared on the field, then turned away; she had done all her weeping that morning when she begged Penthesilea not to go, and had no more tears.

She went up into the Sunlord's house and to her room; from the chest there she took her bow, a gift from Penthesilea, elaborately gilded and inlaid with ivory like the Sunlord's own. She strung it with a plain arrow—she might need to get the range, and into her quiver she put the last of the envenomed arrows which the old Kentaur Cheiron had made.

Kassandra realized she was shaking from head to foot; she went down into the kitchens and found herself some stale bread and a little honey, forcing herself to eat. The women were gathered there, baking fresh bread for the funeral feast of the Great Snake, and besought Kassandra to wait for the fresh baking, but she refused everything except a mug of watered wine. They were all astonished at seeing their priestess armed, but they forbore to ask her questions; as an elder priestess her doings were assumed to have a good purpose, no matter how mysterious or obscure, and could not under any circumstances be challenged.

Then, deliberately, she went down into the most secret room of the temple, and from a chest to which only a few of the high priests and priestesses had the keys, she took a certain robe adorned with gold, and the golden sun-mask. With hands schooled to steadiness, she put them on and tied the strings.

She was not entirely sure whether what she did was the highest of sacrileges - she thought of Khryse putting on these things in an attempt to cajole an inexperienced girl into serving a lust he could not satisfy any other way - or whether she was serving the honor of Apollo by doing what the God ought to be doing and would not.

Sandals were a part of the costume; gilded sandals with small golden wings attached to the heels. She laced them on, wishing they were really winged so that she could fly down over the Akhaian camp. Silently she climbed to the balcony which overlooked the battlefield, remembering how Khryse had stood here in the aspect of Apollo to shoot down the arrows of plague into the Akhaian camp. He had cried out, too, in Apollo's voice.

The bodies of the Amazons lay at the center of clustering clouds of flies. The horses were gone; the Trojan chariots and foot soldiers who had marched out this morning had retreated within the walls of Troy. Akhilles strutted in the midst of his own guards, apparently waiting for someone to come and challenge him to a fight. Couldn't his own soldiers see that the man had gone outside every limit of sanity and decency? Yet they still respected him as their general!

She did not cry out as Khryse had done; Apollo had given her nothing to say, even though he was the God of song. Perhaps someone else would make a song about this, but it would not be with her words. She simply strung the bow, took careful aim at Akhilles and let fly. The arrow fell a little short; but now she had the range. The Akhaian hero had not seen the arrow and continued his strutting between the chariots. Now where to shoot, when the iron armor covered so much of his body? She looked up and down to see that though the helmet covered face and

hair, on his feet he wore sandals which were no more than a couple of narrow strips of leather. So be it then; she let fly at his feet.

The arrow struck his bare heel; he evidently thought it no more than an insect bite, for she saw him bend to brush it away. Then he drew out the shaft, and looked about to see where it had come from. One by one the Trojan soldiers looked up at the walls to see what Akhilles's Myrmidons were staring and pointing at. Kassandra stood motionless - she was probably out of ordinary bowshot when it had to be directed straight upward, even if anyone had the courage to shoot an arrow at what could have been the God. She felt completely invulnerable, and even if an arrow had come out of the blinding noon, she had accomplished what she set out to do.

Akhilles was still standing, gazing upward at the source of the arrow, apparently unaware of the nature of the wound; but after a time she saw him reach down and claw at his foot, signalling one of his men to bind it up. Well, let them try; she knew that even if they should now cut his foot off - and that had been tried for small localized wounds such as this - the poison had entered his blood, and Akhilles was already a dead man.

For a few more minutes he strode arrogantly about the field, then stumbled and fell; he was on the ground now in convulsions. There was confusion in the Akhaian camp - and then a great cry of rage and despair went up, not unlike the death-cry raised over Patroklos. Down lower at the wall where the other women were watching there were cries of jubilation, and at last a great shout of thanksgiving to Apollo. But by this time Kassandra had slipped down from the wall and was in the secret room returning the mask and robe to their locked chest. When she came out

again everyone was crowding to the wall, pushing and shoving to find out what had happened.

"One of the Akhaian leaders is dead," someone told her. "It might even be Akhilles. Apollo himself appeared, they say, high on the walls above Troy, and shot him down with his arrows of fire."

"Oh, did he?" she replied, sounding skeptical, and when they repeated the story, said no more than, "Well, it's about time."

CHAPTER 13

Now that Akhilles was gone, a mood of confidence swept through Troy, everyone was looking forward to a swift end to the war. There was no formal period of mourning, and no funeral, games; Kassandra suspected that there was little genuine mourning, though some ritualized wailing arose around the funeral pyre. She remembered Briseis, who had gone to Akhilles of her free will and wondered if the girl mourned the lover she had idealized. She almost hoped so. Even for Akhilles, it was not just that there should be no one to mourn.

Yet Agamemnon, who had assumed command of all the Akhaian troops, and even commanded the Myrmidons to go on fighting, seemed to have no doubt of the final outcome of this war. The Akhaians began building an enormous earth-rampart to the south, from which they might assault

the wall partially tumbled in the last earthquake. It was a few hours before the Trojans noticed what they were doing, and when they did Paris ordered all available archers to the highest wall to shoot the soldiers down. The Akhaians worked for a considerable time under cover of extra-large shields held over their heads, but as the shield-bearers were shot down one after the other, faster than they could be replaced, the Akhaians finally gave up the attempt and withdrew the builders.

Kassandra had not watched Akhilles's funeral pyre, nor the battle of the archers, though the women in the Sunlord's house reported every move to her. The temple was in mourning for the Great Serpent, and would continue to be so for a considerable time. Serpents of this variety were not found on the plains of Troy and they must send forth to the mainland or to Colchis or even to Crete for another one. Privately she believed that the death of the serpent was an omen, not only of the death of Akhilles which it so briefly preceded, but of the fall of Troy which could not now be long delayed.

She spoke of this one night in the palace when she had gone down to see her mother.

Hecuba had never really recovered from the death of Hector. She was appallingly frail and thin now, her hands like a bundle of sticks; she would not eat, saying always, "Save my portion for the little children; old people do not get as hungry as they do' -which in fact sounded sensible enough - but there were times when Kassandra thought her mother's mind had gone. She spoke often of Hector, but seemed not to realize that he was dead, she talked as if he were out somewhere about the city, overseeing the armies.

"What are the Akhaians doing now?" she asked Polyxena.

"They have felled a good many trees along the shoreline, and are hacking them into lumber; I spoke with the woman who sells honey cakes to the Akhaian soldiers, and she said they spoke of a plan to build a great altar to Poseidon and sacrifice many horses to him."

Poseidon would indeed be a friend to those Akhaians, if they should persuade him to break our walls. And their soothsayers know it, if they have persuaded the attackers to invoke the Earthshaker.

She rose from Polyxena's side and went to speak with Helen. She had learned long ago that Paris would not listen to her but he could sometimes be approached through his wife. Helen greeted her with her usual affectionate embrace.

"Rejoice with me, Sister; the Goddess has heard my grief and will send us another child for the ones I lost in Poseidon's blow." When Kassandra did not smile, she begged, "Oh, be glad for me!"

"It is not that I am not glad for you," Kassandra said slowly, "but at this particular time—is it wise?"

Helen's pretty smile was full of dimples. "The Goddess sends us children not as we will but as she wills," she reminded Kassandra; "but you are not a mother, so perhaps you do not yet

understand that."

"Mother or not, I think I would try and choose my time better than the end of a siege," Kassandra said, "even if it meant sending my husband to sleep among the soldiers when the moon was full or the wind blowing from the south."

Helen blushed and said, "Paris must have a son; I cannot ask him to take Nikos as his heir and set the son of Menelaus upon the throne of Troy."

"I had forgotten that particular foible," Kassandra said, "but I had believed that Andromache's son was to rule after Hector. Has Paris then resolved to usurp that place?"

"Astyanax cannot rule Troy at eight years old," Helen said. "It goes ill with any land where the king is a child; Paris would have to rule for him for many years at least."

"Then perhaps it would be better for Paris to have no son," Kassandra said,"so that he would not be tempted to overthrow the rightful heir." Helen looked indignant, so Kassandra added, "In any case, Paris already has a son, by the river-priestess Oenone, who dwelt with him here as his wife till you came from Sparta. It is not right that Paris should refuse to acknowledge his first-born."

Helen frowned and said, "Paris has spoken of her; he says-there is no way to be certain that he fathered Oenone's child."

Kassandra saw the frown behind Helen's eyes and decided not to pursue this further.

"This is not what I came to say. Have they more horses in the Akhaian camp than are needed to draw Agamemnon's chariots and the chariots of the other kings?"

"Why, I've no idea; I know nothing of things like that," Helen said, and leaned across the table to touch Paris's arm. She repeated the question to him and Paris stared.

"Why, no; I don't think so," he said. "They've been trying to capture the horses from our chariots, even at the cost of leaving gold, or the chariots themselves."

Kassandra said urgently, "If they are building an altar to Poseidon, you don't suppose the Kings are going to sacrifice the horses that drew their own chariots, do you? I beg you to set a double watch on all the horses of Troy, wherever they are stabled."

"Our horses are all well within our walls," Paris said negligently, "and the Akhaians can no more get at them than if they were in the stables of Pharoah of Egypt."

"Are you certain? Odysseus, for instance, is crafty; he might by some ruse inveigle his way inside the walls, and get the horses out," she said, but Paris only laughed.

"I don't think he could get inside our gates even if he could manage to disguise himself as Zeus Thunderer," Paris said. Those gates will not open to man or Immortal; even for King Pnam or

myself it would be difficult to persuade anyone to open them after dark. And if he did get in somehow, how do you think he would get out again? If Agamemnon wants horse-sacrifices, he will have to sacrifice his own, for he'll get no Trojan ones."

Kassandra thought he was dismissing the possibility a little too lightly, but there was no way to continue; Paris would not admit the fallibility of his defenses, certainly not to his sister. If he would be the only one to suffer from this casual attitude, she would have said no more, but if he was wrong all Troy would pay; so she urged, "I beg you, set extra guards around your horses for a while at least," and repeated what Polyxena had told her.

"Sister," Paris said, not altogether unkindly,"surely there is enough women's work for you to do that you need not concern yourself with the conduct of the war."

Kassandra pressed her lips together knowing that whatever she said would only harden Paris's decision to ignore her advice. She could hardly set guard on the horses herself, but she did speak to the priests in the Sunlord's house, and they agreed to set a watch themselves upon the royal stables. Late that night the alarm was sounded from the walls, and Paris's soldiers, roused, caught half a dozen men, led by Odysseus himself, leaving the royal stables. The guards, who had not recognized the Argive general, said that he had come into the stable with a royal signet and an order to take a dozen horses to the palace. They had believed him a messenger from Priam himself, and had given up the horses without protest. Only when they had gone did one of the priests of Apollo notice the Akhaian sandals that they were wearing, suspect a trick and sound the alarm.

Paris had the deceived guard hanged, and when Odysseus was brought before him, said to him:

"Is there any reason I should not hang you from the topmost wall of Troy for the horse-thief you are?"

Odysseus said, "In my country, we hang woman-stealers, Trojan. If you had not shown us all how fast you could run, you would now be nothing but bare bones hanging outside the great walls of Sparta, and none of us would have had to leave our homes and come and fight here for all these years."

Priam had been hastily roused from sleep; he looked unhappily at his old friend and said, "Well, Odysseus, you're still a pirate, I see. But I see no reason to hang you. We've always been willing to ransom captives."

"What ransom do you want?" Odysseus asked, looking only at Priam and ignoring Paris.

"A dozen horses," Paris said.

Odysseus waved a hand. "There they are," he replied, and Paris scowled at his effrontery.

"Those are our horses already. We will have a dozen of yours."

Odysseus said, "Have you no piety, friend? Those horses have already been dedicated to Poseidon; they are not mine to give back, they belong already to the Earthshaker."

Paris sprang up, ready to aim a blow at him; Odysseus deflected it easily.

"Priam, your son is lacking in the manners of diplomacy; I would rather deal with you. You can take those horses back if you are willing to risk angering Poseidon Earthshaker with your stinginess; but I swore to sacrifice those horses to him. Do you really think he will favour Troy if you rob him of his sacrifice?" •

Priam said, "If you have vowed those horses to Poseidon, they are his. I will not be more stingy than you with a God. These horses are for Poseidon then, and a dozen more from your people to ransom you."

"So be it," Odysseus agreed, and Priam called for his herald to send the message to the Akhaian army.Agamemnon would not be pleased, though , Kassandra thought. She wished Odysseus no harm; in spite of his place with the enemy host, she could not help thinking of the old pirate as a friend - as he had been in her childhood. She still had, in one of her boxes, the beautiful string of blue beads he had given her years ago.

As Odysseus took his departure to arrange for the actual exchange and delivery of the ransom, Paris said to his father, "You fool! Are you really going to give those horses for sacrifice? What are Odysseus's promises to you? You don't believe he was going to sacrifice them, do you?"

"It may well be," Priam said, "and what have we to lose? We need Poseidon's good will too; and we will be getting a dozen more for Odysseus's ransom, so we have lost nothing."

"I don't think they will do the God half as much good as they would do our armies," Paris still grumbled; but when Priam made up his mind there was nothing to be done.

The next morning, before the walls of Troy, the horses were sacrificed to Poseidon; Kassandra watched the slaughter, troubled; Priam hardly seemed strong enough. She remembered such sacrifices in her childhood, when Priam had been strong and vigorous enough to strike off the head of a bull with a single blow. Now his shaking hands could scarcely close on the axe, and after he blessed the weapon a strong young priest took the axe and completed the sacrifice, chanting invocations to the Earthshaker.

As the halfway mark was reached and the sixth horse fell to the ground, there was a small sound like a very distant thunderclap, and the ground beneath them rolled slightly. An omen? she wondered. Or was Poseidon simply acknowledging his sacrifice?

Apollo Sunlord, she implored,cannot you save this city which has been yours for so long, even if you first took it from Serpent Mother ?

The glare of the sun was bright in her eyes, and the well-known voice seemed to crash like the distant surf in her ears.

Even I cannot contend with what the Thunderer has decreed, child. What is to come must come.

The sacrifice went on, but she was no longer watching. What was the use of sacrificing to Poseidon if he was bound by the Thunderer -who is no God of mine, and no God of Troy - to break the people who sacrificed to him, while Apollo Sunlord stood helplessly aside as the Earthshaker ravaged the city -his own city}

If this was all ordained anyhow, why sacrifice and petition the Immortals? Defiance struggled in her, never again to be wholly silent; the old cry, still unanswered,What good were these Gods ?

It seemed now that high above the city, as she had seen once in her vision, two mighty figures, fashioned of cloud and storm, stood toe to toe like wrestlers, struggling and casting blows of lightning and thunder at one another. The sound seemed to slam through her consciousness. She swayed, her eyes fixed on the battling Immortals.

Then she stumbled and fell, but lost consciousness before she touched the ground.

When she woke she was lying with her head in her mother's lap.

"You should have stayed out of the midday sun," Hecuba reproved gently. "It was not right to make a disturbance at the sacrifices."

"Oh, I don't think the Gods cared that much," said Kassandra, pulling herself upright through the stabbing pain behind her eyes. "Do you?" But seeing the faintly bewildered look on her mother's face, she was sure the Queen did not understand what she was talking about; she was not sure, herself. "I am sorry; I meant no disrespect to the Gods, of course. We are all here to do them honor; do you think they will feel in honor bound to return the courtesy?" But all she saw in Hecuba's eyes was the old look - the look that saidI don't understand you .

"What in the name of all the Gods are they doing out there?" Helen asked.

"Polyxena heard that they are building an altar to Poseidon."

Down below, on the open space which had been so long a battlefield, what looked like the whole Akhaian army was lugging lumber, and under the protection of a veritable wall of lashedtogether leather shields, hammering and sawing frantically.

"Their priests drew up the plans," said Khryse, strolling up to join the women.

Paris came toward them, and bent down to kiss his mother's hand.

"It looks unlike any altar I have ever seen," he said, "more like some form of siege machine; look, if they build it this high they could shoot down over the walls, or even climb over into the city, like boarders on a ship."

Hecuba seemed troubled by the tone of his voice. She demanded, "Have you spoken to Hector about this?"

Paris bent his head and turned away, but not before Kassandra could see that his eyes were filled with tears. " How can you bear it when she talks like that?" he murmured.

"The question is not how we can bear it, but that she must," Kassandra said sharply. "You at least can go out and try to avenge the ills that have broken our mother's mind and are breaking down our father's. Tell me, can they really build that thing high enough to climb into the city?"

"Probably; but they shall not while I live," said Paris. "I must send to rally all the remaining chariots and archers." He kissed Helen, and went down the stairs. Soon after they heard the battle cry as Paris and the remaining chariots dashed breakneck at the structure, shooting flights of arrows that all but darkened the sky. The wild charge actually knocked down one corner of the structure, sending it down with a crash, and half a dozen men fell screaming to the ground.

The Akhaian soldiers broke and began to run, with the Trojan chariots in hot pursuit, cutting them down as fast as they could. When they were in full retreat and looked like running as far as the ships, Paris called off the chase and rode back to the unprotected structure. Finding a barrel of tar on the site and sloshing it liberally about, he set the whole construction alight.

As it burned, they heard the cries of Agamemnon uselessly trying to rally his men, and they rode back inside the walls before Agamemnon could assemble the Akhaians for a renewed attack.

The Trojans on the walls were cheering wildly. It was the only battle they had clearly won since the burning of the Akhaian ships. Paris came up and knelt before Priam.

"If they want to build an altar to Poseidon, they will not build it on Trojan ground, sir."

"Well done," said Priam, embracing him heartily, and Helen came to help him out of his armor.

"You're wounded," she said, seeing him flinch as she removed the vambrace from his upper arm.

Paris shrugged; the movement made him flinch again.

"An arrow wound. It didn't touch a bone," he said.

"Kassandra," Helen said, "come and look at this; what do you think?"

Kassandra came and folded back the sleeve of Paris's tunic. It was a flesh wound, a small depression just above the elbow. Purple and puffy, like pouting lips, it had already closed, and from it a drop or two of blood oozed.

"It is not, I think, too serious," she said, "but it should be washed in wine and bathed with very hot water and herbs; if a puncture wound closes too quickly, it can be serious. At all costs it must

be kept open and made to bleed freely to cleanse it."

"She is right," said Khryse, bringing a flask of wine which he began to pour over the wound; but Paris grabbed the flask.

"A waste of good wine," he said, and poured it into his mouth instead, making a wry face. "Ugh, not even fit for that. Might be good to wash my feet with."

Khryse shrugged. "There is better wine for the drinking, in the Sunlord's house, Prince Paris; this is a poor vintage kept for cleansing wounds. Come and have some of the better vintage while we tend you."

"Better yet, come to our rooms in the palace and let me tend you," Helen said. "You have had enough fighting for one day -and there is nobody left to fight."

"No," Paris said, walking to the wall, "I hear Agamemnon; he's got some of those archers of his to attack again; let's go down and drive them off. Already they say I spend too much time in your boudoir being cosseted, my Helen; I am weary of a coward's reputation. Here, tie this up with your scarf and let me go." He pulled his armor together over the bound wound, and was off down the stairs. They heard him shouting to his men.

"Oh, why did he have to have a damned attack of heroism right now?" Helen said, smiling angrily. "And if it was really an altar to Poseidon, do you think the God will be angry because he

burned it down?"

"I don't see what else he could have done, whether the God is angry or not," Kassandra said. "Perhaps the Earthshaker will remember all those nice fat horses that we gave him courtesy of Odysseus a couple of days ago."

"I pray it does not hamper his riding and shooting," Helen said. "When he comes back - if he survives this charge—I will take him off to be tended by the best of the healers."

"I will go and send our best healer-priests to the palace for him, Lady Helen," Khryse said, and went off up the hill. Kassandra watched the charge; Paris fought like a madman, as if the War God's self inhabited him, and she lost count of how many of the Akhaian soldiers he cut down and left bleeding on the ground.

"I have never seen him fight like this before," Helen said.

Pray you never do again, was Kassandra's reaction.

"Maybe the wound is as slight as he says; he seems not to be favouring the arm at all."

"He rides like Hector himself," said Priam, watching him from the wall. "We have all been unjust to the boy, thinking him less heroic than his brother."

Helen shut her eyes as a sword came down toward Paris; he parried the blow at the very moment when it seemed it must strike his head from his shoulders. It was the last blow; a moment later Agamemnon's men broke and ran, running as if they did not mean to stop until they reached their ships. Paris yelled as if he were going to chase them into the water, but before long he called off his men.

"If there is a bullock, have it killed for the men's dinner," he said to Hecuba, as he came up the stairs to the waiting women. "I have never seen such fighting."

"Praise to Aphrodite that you are safe still!" Helen hurried to embrace him.

"Yes, she is still watching over us; she did not bring us here to Troy only to abandon us now." Paris looked down at the ashes of the structure the Akhaians had been trying to build.

"If this is dedicated to any God, I pray he will forgive me.

Now, if you will find that healer, my Helen, I will be glad of his good offices; my arm aches." He leaned on her as they went down into the palace and Kassandra looked after them with dread.

"You had better go," said Khryse. "You are as good a healer as any in the Sunlord's house." She had not heard Khryse come back.

Kassandra was not sure of that, but did not know how to say so. "You saw the wound closer

than I; you know how bad it is," he added. "I do not like such wounds even when they look harmless." She hurried off to Paris's and Helen's chambers, only to be told that her services were not required.

That night was quiet, but in the morning, the scaffolding had been raised again and the Akhaians were hammering and sawing away again as if they had never been interrupted.

"Well, we'll make short work of that, as we did yesterday," said Deiphobos, who had come out this morning with Priam, the old man leaning heavily on his son's shoulder. "Where's Aphrodite's gift to womankind this morning? Still hiding behind Helen's frilled skirts?"

"Be quiet," Priam said sharply. "He had a wound yesterday; perhaps it is worse or he has taken cold in it." He summoned one of the younger messengers and said, "Go to Prince Paris if you please, and ask why he is not here with his army."

"A wound," said Deiphobos scornfully, "I saw that wound; a cat-scratch or more likely, a lovebite."

The boy hurried away and came back looking pale. He bowed to Priam and said, "My lord, the Lady Helen asks that the priestess Kassandra will come and look at her brother's wound; it is beyond her power to cure."

"My father," Deiphobos said, "have I your leave to take out the chariots and drive off these ants

as Paris did yesterday?"

"Go," Priam said, "but when Paris is healed you will give over command to him again; nothing that is his will ever belong to you."

"We'll see," said Deiphobos, saluted Priam and went.

Kassandra went down into the palace, through the halls which seemed, this morning, dank and cold and still, with wisps of sea-fog hanging in the halls themselves. In the rooms allotted to Paris and Helen, Paris, half-clad and very pale, was lying on a pallet, muttering. Helen, at his side, trying to bathe the wound with steaming water scented with herbs, sprang up and came to Kassandra.

"Aphrodite be praised that you have come; perhaps he will listen to you when he will not to me," she said. Kassandra came and drew back the veil with which the wound had been covered. The whole upper arm was grossly swollen, the puncture still obstinately closed and weeping clear fluid; the arm looked purplish, with red streaks fanning down toward the wrist.

Kassandra drew breath; she had never seen an arrow wound quite like this. She said, "Have the priests of Apollo seen this?"

"They were here twice in the night; they told me to bathe it with hot water, and said it should probably be burned with a hot iron, but I had not the heart to make him suffer that, when they

could not promise that it would cure him," Helen said. "But just in the last hour he seems worse, and he does not knowme now; until a few minutes ago he was yelling to the servants to bring his armor, and threatening them with a beating if they would not help him get up and put it on."

"That is not good," Kassandra said. "I have seen worse wounds heal, but—"

"Should I have let them burn him?"

"No; if I had been there I would have said, dress it with wine and sweet oil; and sometimes I have known a poultice of mouldy bread, or of cobwebs, to cleanse a puncture wound," she said. "The healers are too quick with their hot irons; I might have cut it last night to make it bleed more freely, but nothing more. Now it is too late. The infection has taken hold, and either he will live or he will die. But don't despair," she added quickly. "He is young and strong, and as I told you, I have seen worse wounds heal."

Is there nothing that can be done?" Helen asked wildly. "Your magic—"

"Alas, I have no healing magic," Kassandra said. "But I will pray; I can do no more." She hesitated and said, "The river priestess Oenone, she was skilled in healing magic."

Helen sprang up in excitement.

"Can you not send for her?" she implored. "Beg her to come and heal my lord! Whatever she

asks, it shall be hers; I promise it."

But the only thing she wishes for, you have already taken from her, Kassandra thought. She said, "I will send a message to her; but I cannot promise that she will come."

"But if she loved him once, could she be cruel enough to refuse him her help, if it meant his death?"

"I don't know, Helen; she was very bitter against him when she left the palace," Kassandra said.

"If I must, I - Queen of Sparta - will kneel before her with ashes in my hair," Helen said. "Should I go to Oenone, then?"

"No; I know her, I will go," Kassandra said. "You pray and sacrifice to Aphrodite, who favours you." Helen embraced her, and clung to her.

"Kassandra, surely you do not wish me evil? So many of these women of Troy hate me - I can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices—" Helen's voice sounded almost like a pleading child's, and Kassandra touched her cheek gently.

"I wish you nothing but good, Helen; that I swear to you," she said.

"But when first I came to Troy you cursed me—"

"No," Kassandra said. "I foretold truly that you would bring sorrow on us. Because I saw the evil, it does not mean that I caused it. It was the doing of the Immortals, and no more of your doing than mine. No one can escape the working of fate. Now I will go to the headwaters of the Scamander and find Oenone, and implore her to come and heal Paris," Kassandra said.

Khryse greeted her as she left the palace. She looked at him in surprise; this morning she had forgotten, and simply taken his presence for granted.

"I thought by now you would be on a ship bound for Crete or Egypt," she said. "Why have you not gone?"

"There may still be something I can do for the city which has sheltered me, or for Priam who has been my King," Khryse said, "or, who knows, even for you."

"You should not stay for me," she said. "I would be glad to know you are safe from what will come."

"I want nothing," he said in a queerly sober tone, "except that you should know at last, before the end comes for us all, that my love for you is true and unselfish, desiring nothing except your good."

Why, that's true, she thought, and said gently, "I believe you, my friend, and I beg you to go to

safety as soon as you can. Someone must remember and tell the truth about Troy for those who come after; it troubles me that in legends, our children's children should come to think of Akhilles as a great hero or a good man."

"It is not likely to do us any harm, or Akhilles any good either, whatever they may say or sing of us in times to come," Khryse said. "Yet if I survive I swear I will tell the truth to anyone who will listen."

Kassandra climbed quickly to the Sunlord's house and took off her formal robe; she put on an old dark tunic, in which she could come and go unheeded, solid leather sandals, and a heavy cloak which would keep off wind or rain. Then she went quietly out of the small abandoned side gate and took the road up toward Mount Ida, along the drying stream of the Scamander. The track was beaten now into a road; many horses and men had come this way and the water which had once run strong and clean was muddied and fouled. When last she had taken this path - how many years ago now?—the water had been clear, the path almost untrodden.

Even now, had her errand been less urgent and desperate, she would have enjoyed the journey; the sun was hidden by clouds, the tops of the tree-clad hills lost themselves in thick rolls of mist and the light winds promised rain and probably thunder. She went up quickly; but although she was a strong woman, the gradient was so steep that she was soon out of breath and had to stop and rest. As she climbed, what had been a river ran clearer here, and no man nor horse had polluted the pathway or the water. She knelt and drank, for in spite of the clouds and wind, it was hot.

At last she reached the place where the water sprang forth from the rock guarded by a carved image of Father Scamander. She struck the bell which summoned the river priestesses, and when a young girl appeared, asked if she might speak with Oenone.

"I think she is here," the girl said. "Her son was ill with a summer fever; she did not go down to the sheep-shearing festival with the others."

Kassandra had forgotten that it was so near to shearing-time.

The child went away, and Kassandra sat down on a bench near the spring and enjoyed the silence; perhaps when Honey was older she might come here to serve among the priestesses of the River God. A pleasant place for a young girl to grow up -not perhaps as pleasant as riding with the Amazons, but that was no longer possible. She began to understand that she had hardly begun yet to feel her grief for Penthesilea. She had been so busy with vengeance and then with other deaths that her grief had had to stand aside for more leisure to mourn.

It will be a long time before I can mourn for my brother, she thought, and wondered what she had meant by it.

She heard a step behind her and turned; at first she hardly recognized Oenone. The slender young girl had become a tall and heavy woman, deep-breasted, her dark curls coiled low on her neck. Only the deep-set eyes were the same, but even so Kassandra hesitated when she spoke the

name.

"Oenone? I hardly recognized you—"

"No," Oenone said. "None of us are as young and pretty as we once were. It's the princess, is it not - Kassandra?"

"Yes," she said. "I suppose I have changed too."

"You have," Oenone said,"though you are still beautiful, Princess."

Kassandra smiled faintly. She said, "How is my brother's son? They told me he has been ill—"

"Oh, nothing serious, just one of those little disorders that come to children in the summer. He will be recovered in a day or two. But how may I serve you, Lady?"

"It is not for me," Kassandra said, "but my brother Paris. He lies dying of an arrow-wound and you have such skill in healing - will you come?"

Oenone raised her eyebrows. At last she said, "Lady Kassandra, your brother died, for me, on the day when I left the palace and he spoke not one word to acknowledge his son. All these years, for me, he has been dead. I have no wish now to bring him back to life."

Kassandra knew in her heart that she should have anticipated this answer; that she had had no right to come here and ask anything of Oenone. She bowed her head and rose.

"I can understand your bitterness," she said, "and yet - he is certainly dying - can your anger be still so great? In the face of death?"

"Death? Do you not think it was like death for me, to be sent forth without a word, as if I were a penny harlot in the streets of Troy? And all those years not a word to his son—no, Kassandra, you ask if my anger is so great? You have not begun to know anything about my anger, and I do not think you want to know. Go back to your palace, and mourn your brother as I mourned him all these years." Her voice softened. "My anger is not for you, Lady, you were always kind to me and so was your mother."

"If you will not come for Paris's sake, or for mine," Kassandra pleaded, "will you not come for my mother's sake? She has lost so many of her sons—" her voice broke and she bit her tongue hard, not wishing to weep before Oenone.

"If it would make any difference," Oenone began, "but now, with the city about to fall into the hands of an angry God - ah, it surprises you that I know that? I am a priestess too, Lady. No, go home and care for your child—send her to safety if you can -it will not be long now. I bear no ill will even to the Spartan Queen, but I can do nothing for Paris. When he deserted me, he outraged Father Scamander - who is one with Poseidon."

It had never occurred to Kassandra before that the River God, Scamander, should be an aspect of Poseidon Earthshaker. But Paris had forsaken the River God's daughter for the daughter of Zeus Thunderer—and he had presumed to judge in a controversy' between the Immortals, abandoning his own country's Gods to serve the Akhaian Aphrodite.

"I bear no guilt for his death," Oenone continued. "His fate is on him as yours and mine are. May your Gods guard you, Lady Kassandra." She raised her hand in a gesture of blessing, and Kassandra found herself walking away down the hill, feeling like a peasant woman dismissed from the royal presence.

Downhill, her return took less time, and when she returned to the palace, she heard the sound of wailing. Paris was dead. Well, she had expected it. Despite her encouraging words to Helen, she had been sure that with such a wound he could not survive long. Moving to the balcony to look out over the plain where the Akhaian armies were building, she could now see the rough outline of what the scaffolding surrounded. It rose, huge, clumsy, unmistakable; the great wooden form of a horse.

So this is their altar, she thought; the very form of Poseidon Earthshaker himself. Do they think this horse will kick down the walls of Troy, or that it will summon the God to do so for them? How childish.

Then, without knowing why, she was seized with a sharp fit of shivering, so that she had to wrap her cloak round her in spite of the brightness of the sun. The figure of the horse - or of the God -

struck her through with terror, although she was not sure why.

CHAPTER 14

Even before Paris was laid on his pyre, Deiphobos went to Priam and demanded command of the Trojan armies; when Priam protested, he said, "What choice have you, sir? Is there anyone else in Troy, save perhaps Aeneas? And he does not belong to the royal house of Troy, and is not Trojan born."

Priam only stared, embarrassed, at the ground.

"Perhaps you would like to give the armies to your daughter Kassandra, who was once an Amazon?" Deiphobos asked, sneering.

Hecuba spoke up clear and almost loud, for the first time since Hector's death.

"My daughter Kassandra would command the armies of Troy no worse than you," she said. "You were a cruel and greedy child, and you are a proud and greedy man. My Lord and King, Priam, I beg you to find some other to command the forces of Troy, or it will be the worse for all of us."

But they all knew there was no other. None of Priam's other surviving sons was old enough, or experienced enough, to lead the armies. When Deiphobos was called out before the troops and Priam formally handed over the command to him, Deiphobos said, "I will take this command only if I am given Paris's widow Helen for my wife."

"You are mad," Priam said. "Helen is by right Queen of Sparta, not a prize to be handed from man to man like a concubine."

"Is she not?" asked Deiphobos. "Have you not had enough of the trouble a woman can make when she is left to choose with which man she will share her bed? Helen will marry me and be cheerful enough about it, won't you, Lady? Or would you rather go back to Menelaus? I could arrange that if you prefer it."

Kassandra saw Helen shudder; but she only said to Priam in a low voice, "I will marry Deiphobos if you wish me to, sire."

Priam looked embarrassed. He said, "If there were any other way I would not ask this of you, daughter."

She threw herself into the old man's arms and embraced him. "It is enough that this is what you wish for me, Father," she said.

He held her gently, and there were tears in his eyes. He said, "You have become one of us, child.

There is no more to say."

"Well, if that is settled," Deiphobos said loudly,"set forth the marriage feast."

Hecuba protested. "Is this any time for feasting, with Paris lying dead and not yet laid to rest?"

"There may be no time for feasting hereafter," Deiphobos insisted. "Should I alone of all Priam's sons go to my wedding unfeasted and unhonored?"

"There is little enough to honor here," said Priam, under his breath; only Hecuba and a few of the women heard him. Nevertheless he called the servants and ordered the stores of wine to be brought out and a kid killed and roasted, and such foods as could be prepared quickly be set forth.

Kassandra went with the palace women, including Deiphobos's mother, to choose any fruits ready for harvest and set them out on platters. She agreed with Helen and Hecuba that this was no time for feasting, but if this wedding had to be, it should be made to look like a matter of choice rather than coercion. If Helen could put a good face on it, who was she to complain.

But for all the food and the hastily summoned minstrels, the wedding was joyless enough. The knowledge that Paris lay dead above cast gloom over the palace. Long before the bride and groom were put to bed together, Kassandra excused herself and withdrew. Looking down at the lights, she thought that perhaps the common folk of Troy, enjoying the gifts of food and wine

sent down to them from Priam's palace, actually believed that this was a genuine festival. If they criticized Helen it was only for her willingness to be given again in marriage before her husband was properly given his funeral rites. Well, she thought, let them enjoy themselves. There may not be much more for them to enjoy.

Just before dawn the funeral pyre for Paris in the back court of the palace was set alight; Kassandra went down with the priests of the Sunlord and watched as veiled Helen, grave and pale, set the torch to the pyre then stood with the nine-year-old Nikos small and serious at her side.

He had insisted on cutting his hair for mourning. "I know he was not my father," he said, "but he was the only father I have ever known and he was kind to me." His attempt not to cry tore at Kassandra's heart.

Once the pyre blazed up, Deiphobos, standing at Helen's side, said with a look of relief, "Now that's done we'll go down and deal with that horse as Paris did. Start with a barrel of good hot tar or some pine-pitch and a few fire-arrows. We'll make short work of it. What do you think of that, my wife?"

Helen's voice was barely audible, "You must do as seems best to you, my husband."

She looked submissive and quiet, like any of the Trojan soldiers' wives, with little trace of the Goddess-given beauty they all had come to take for granted. The words were submissive too, the

very ones she might have spoken to Paris, but it occurred to Kassandra that she was mocking him with this obedience. Deiphobos did not seem to think so; he looked at her with satisfaction and pleasure - now he had what he had always envied, Paris's wife and Paris's command. Well, if this marriage had brought happiness to at least one person, then it was not all bad.

They had not demanded this of Andromache, but were willing to allow her a decent time to mourn Hector. Why could Helen not be allowed that same privilege?

Yet Helen had acted to show all women that they can do as she did; they should be grateful to her and admire her.

Deiphobos was gathering his charioteers, briefly discussing strategy with them. Kassandra watched Helen say farewell and bid him take care in battle, exactly as she had done with Paris.

Was it that she was so accustomed to catering to a man's will that it made no difference to her who the man was. Or was she only so stricken dumb with grief that nothing mattered any more?I love Aeneas well; but when he is gone from me, I remain myself. If he were to die, rather than leaving me to return to Creusa's side, I would mourn his death beyond measure; but it would not destroy me as Hector's death destroyed Andromache . Was Andromache mourning Hector then, or only the loss of her place as Hector's wife?

The charioteers rushed forward, making a charge through the workers who were pulling down the scaffolding around the monstrous wooden horse; they scattered and ran, falling under the

wheels of the chariots. There was a queer bitter smell in the air which Kassandra could not identify, and as the charioteers came close to the horse, their flights of fire-arrows went toward it, but they did not ignite.

Agamemnon's soldiers attacked from the shadow of the scaffolding. The charioteers fought strongly, but were driven back to the walls. As the gates were opened for them to retreat to within Troy, there was a battle at the gates to prevent Agamemnon's men and what looked like a host of Akhilles's now-leaderless Myrmidons from crowding in and flooding the streets. A few came in but they were cut down in the narrow streets behind the gate, and Deiphobos's men got the gates shut.

"It looks as though we will have a siege again," Deiphobos declared. "At all costs now we must keep them out of the city, which means these gates must not be opened. The one thing that monstrosity out there does is keep us from a good view of what's happening in their camp and field. We can't even burn it; they've soaked it in something so it won't burn; maybe a mix of vinegar and alum. Burning the scaffolding before may have been a mistake; it warned them what was the first thing we'd try and do."

"If it is intended to be our God Poseidon," Hecuba said, "would it not be a sacrilegious act to burn it?"

"I think I'd burn it first and make my peace with the Earth-shaker afterward," Deiphobos said, "but it won't burn now."

"But we can burn it eventually?" asked Priam.

"Well, sire, I'm certainly going to try my best," Deiphobos answered. "We can try shooting arrows covered with pitch and hope enough of the stuff will stick. I keep wondering if they've put this thing up here to give us something to think about so that we'll not notice what else they might be doing, like trying to tunnel under our walls from the landward side, or climb to the Maiden's Temple and attack from up there."

"Do you think they could do that?" Hecuba asked fearfully.

"I'm sure they'll try, Lady. It's up to us to keep ahead of whatever tricks that Master of Sneaks, Odysseus, might be thinking up while we've got our eyes and our minds on that wretchedthing out there." He looked at the horse with loathing and shook his fist at it.

The image of the wooden horse wandered that night through Kassandra's dreams. In one nightmare it came alive, rearing like a stallion and pawing at the ground; then it kicked out, and the stroke of its mighty hoof battered down the main gate of Troy, while from the horse an army poured, raging and pillaging in the streets. Its head rose black and dragonlike above the flames that consumed the city. When she woke, so intensely real had the dream seemed that she went out in her night-shift to the balcony where she looked down over the plain below, and saw

° the horse solid and wooden and lifeless as ever in the pallid moonlight. It was not even nearly

so large as it had seemed in her dream.It's just a thing of wood and tar , she thought,harmless as that statue by the Scamander . A few pale torches burned before it - homage to Poseidon? She recalled the vision in which she had seen Apollo and Poseidon battling hand to hand for the city, and went inside to the shrine to kneel and pray.

"My Lord Apollo," she implored, "can you not save your people? If you cannot, why are you called a God? And if you can and will not, what kind of God are you?"

And then, terrified at the form of the prayer, she fled the shrine. She was suddenly aware that she had asked the last question anyone ever asked of a God, and the one which would never be answered. For a moment she was afraid she had committed blasphemy; then she thought,If he is not a God, or if he is not good, then what is there to blaspheme? He is said to love truth; and if he does not, then all of what I have been taught is false .

But if he is not a God, what was it I saw battling for the city? What is it that overshadowed Helen, or Khryse?

If Immortals are worse than the worst of men, small and petty, and cruel, then whatever they are, they are not for mankind to venerate. She felt bereft; so much of her life had been spent in the intense passion for the Sunlord.I am no better than Helen, but I chose to love a God who is no better than the worst of men .

She went back to the walls and stood there, numb with horror, as the sun rose for the last time

over the doomed city.

CHAPTER 15

Before her lay the plain of Troy in the early sunlight. Within the city no one was stirring; outside, a few torches sputtered weakly against the sunrise.

The silence was absolute. Even the distant line of the sea beyond the Akhaian earthworks lay dead calm and molten as if the very tide itself had ceased to pull upon the land. The reddish overcast of the sky was like faraway flames swallowing the last dim flicker of the setting moon. It was again as in her dream—the wooden horse before the walls seemed to rear upward, pawing with monstrous hooves at the city. She screamed, hearing her own voice die unheard in her throat, and then screamed again, pressing against the silence until at last she could hear her own voice tearing at her throat.

"O, beware! The God is angry and will strike the city!"

It was as if behind the dead silence she could hear great rolling waves of sound, as if Apollo and Poseidon, toe to toe in their struggle for the city, had broken the deadlock and Poseidon had thrown the Sunlord down.

Her screams had not been unheard; already women were flocking out of the buildings in all stages of undress.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

Kassandra was dimly aware of what they were saying.

It is Kassandra, Priam's daughter. Don't listen to her, she is mad.

No, heed what she says, she is a prophetess, she sees—

"What is it, Kassandra?" asked Phyllida calmly, coming up to speak to her soothingly. "Can you not tell us quietly what it is that you have seen?"

She was still screaming out words. She tried to listen to her-self—for she was as confused as her hearers, and it seemed as if her head had been cloven with an axe—and she thought,If I were listening, I would believe I was mad, too . Yet in spite of the confusion, one part of her mind was clear, with the icy clarity of despair, and she struggled to bring that part into focus and to ignore the part that was a chaos of panic and terror.

She heard herself crying out, "The God is angry! Apollo cannot conquer the Earthshaker, the city walls will be destroyed! Our own God will do what the Akhaians could not do in all these years! We are lost, we are destroyed! Hear and flee!"

But what use was a warning? It was upon her that no one would escape, that she could see only death and disaster. She became aware that she was fighting Phyllida's restraining hands and her friend was saying gently to one of the priestesses, "Give me your sash to tie her, lest she do herself some hurt. Look, her face is bleeding where she has scratched herself." She passed the cloth carefully round Kassandra's hands.

Kassandra said desperately, "You need not tie me; I will not hurt anyone."

"But I fear you will harm yourself, my dear," Phyllida said: 'Go, Lykoura, bring me wine mixed with syrup of poppy seeds, it will calm her—"

"No," Khryse said, striding toward them. He roughly shoved Phyllida away, and he pulled the sash from Kassandra's hands. "She needs no drug; no soothing draught can calm her now. She has had a vision. What is it, Kassandra?" He laid his hands on her brow and said in a strong stern voice, looking compellingly into her eyes, "Say what the God has given you to say; I pledge by Apollo, none will lay hands on you while I live."

But you are as powerless now as your Sunlord, she thought frantically.

"Listen, then," she said, trying to silence her beating heart with the pressure of her clasped hand at her bosom. "The Earthshaker has overthrown the Sunlord as he will overthrow our city. We will feel Earthshaker's rage more strongly than we ever have before. Not a wall, not a house, not

a gate, not the palace itself will escape.

"Warn the people to flee, even into the arms of the Akhaians! Cover the cooking fires, make sure no lamp is near to the stores of pitch or oil - let no one remain within doors lest his body be broken by falling stone."

Khryse said sternly, turning toward the women. "We may still have a little time. Go quickly and release the serpents, any that have not taken flight already. Then two of you go to the palace and inform the King and Queen that we have had evil omens and bid them flee to open ground. They may not heed, but we must do what we can."

"It will avail nothing," Kassandra cried out, trying to stop herself even as she spoke. "None can escape the wrath of Poseidon! Let the women take refuge in the Temple of the Maiden; she may have some pity on us."

"Yes, go," Khryse said to the women. "Take the children there, and remain beneath the open sky till the quake subsides; there perhaps you can hide from our foes if they break into the city. There will be spoils to loot in Troy and they may not climb that far." He held Kassandra as she began to recover her senses; in her head there was sharp pain and a drowning sensation as if she looked out at the world from deep under water. "I must go Kassandra, and do what I can to spread the warning. Do you want that soothing draught? Will you take shelter in the Sunlord's courts or will you go down to the town? What can I do to aid you?"

She found that Khryse's voice came to her as if across the plains and legions of the dead, but when she spoke her voice was calm.

"Thank you, elder brother, I need nothing. Go and do what you must, and I will go and make certain my child is safe."

Khryse walked away and Kassandra went to her room. Honey slept there, still curled in blankets, but Kassandra noted that the snake was gone. Wiser than humans she had sought refuge in some secret place known only to the serpentkind. Kassandra bent and gently shook the child, waking her. Honey put her arms up to be lifted and Kassandra dressed her quickly. Somehow she had to get the child safely out of Troy before the invaders broke through the walls.

She said, "Come, darling," and took her hand. "We must go quickly."

Honey looked confused, but obediently trotted along beside Kassandra as they crossed the compound. Hurrying up toward the Maiden's Temple with Honey's hand in hers she stumbled, and strong hands picked her up.

"Kassandra," said Aeneas, "it has come. This was your warning?"

"I thought you had left the city," she said, trying to steady her voice.

"Surely you cannot stay now," he said. "Come with me; I shall find a ship bound for Crete—"

"No," she said. "Come - quickly. The Gods have forsaken Troy—"

She led him swiftly into the innermost shrine of the Maiden's Temple; there were a few priestesses there, and she cried out to them:

"Quickly, extinguish all the torches—yes, even the Sacred Flame! The Gods have deserted us!"

She herself took the last torch and crushed out the fire that burned before the Maiden; and as the priestesses were rushing out of doors, she tore down the curtain.

"Aeneas, this is the most sacred object in all of Troy; take it." She drew forth the ancient statue, the Palladium, and wrapped it in her veil. "Carry it across the seas, wherever you may go. Build an altar to the Goddess and establish the Sacred Fire. Tell the truth of Troy." He moved as if to remove the veil and look at it, but she stayed his hand.

"No, no man must look upon it," she said. "Swear you will carry it to a new temple and there consign it to a priestess of the Mother—Swear!" she repeated, and Aeneas looked into her eyes.

"I swear," he said. "Kassandra, there can be no further reason to remain. Come with me - a priestess should be the one to take this beyond the seas."

He bent to embrace her; she kissed him wildly, then drew back.

"It cannot be," she said; "my fate lies here. It is yours to leave Troy unwounded and alive. But go at once, and all our hopes and all our Gods go with you."

"You must not stay here—" he began.

"I swear to you, I shall leave Troy before the sun rises again," she said. "It is not death that awaits me; but I am not free to go with you; the Gods have decreed otherwise."

He kissed her again and took the wrapped bundle.

"I swear it by my own divine lineage," he said. "I will do your will - and hers."

Her eyes blurred with tears as he hurried out of the temple.

She had hardly crossed the court when inside her head she heard a great roar. The ground swayed beneath her feet; she stumbled and fell with Honey in her arms, and lay still, her body pressed against the suddenly unstable earth which rippled and bounced beneath them. Her only emotion was not fear but rage:Earth Mother, why do you let your sons play this way with what you have made ?

The movement seemed to go on forever, through the frightened sobs of the child in her arms. Then it subsided, and she realized that the sun was still only a fraction above the horizon; the

quake could hardly have lasted more than a few moments. Honey's crying had subsided to a soft hiccoughing.

Kassandra looked behind her; the sound she had heard had been the walls of the Sunlord's house collapsing inward. Hardly a building in the enclosure was still standing. Of the main building where they dwelt no more than a heap of rubble was left. Certainly nothing could be salvaged from there. There was a muffled screaming; someone had been trapped inside under the fallen stones. Kassandra looked helplessly at the pile - she could not with all her strength have budged a single stone—and very soon the sound ceased.

Somewhere in the gardens, an unconcerned bird began to sing.

Did this mean it was over?

As if in answer, the ground seemed to shudder and rock again, and then was still. Stunned, Kassandra walked toward the vantage point where last night she had looked down on the plain.

The great gate and front wall of Troy had fallen, and in the midst of the battered rubble of wall and gate, Kassandra saw the wooden Horse lying, one leg raised grotesquely as if it had indeed kicked the wall down with its great hooves. The torches had set the scaffolding on fire and it was burning fiercely; but against the horse itself, the flames licked in vain. Flames were rising, as expected, from the poorer quarter with its wooden houses. It was the vision she had seen first as a child, the vision no one had believed - Troy was burning.

Through the gap in the fallen wall, Akhaian soldiers were already pouring in in floods, rushing into still unfallen houses and leaving laden with everything they could carry. Where could she hide? More important, where could she take Honey? One building within the compound of the Sunlord's house was still standing; the shrine. There might be food there, remnants of the offerings of the day before. She was conscious, to her own shock, of a sudden fierce hunger. She went inside, and paused. If there should be another quake, the building might fall. The statue of the Sunlord had fallen, and beneath it, crushed, lay a human figure. Approaching with a numb curiosity - there was nothing to be done - she saw that it was Khryse who lay there.

At last, she thought,now the God has truly struck him down .

She knelt beside the fallen man, closing the wide-open eyes, then rose and passed on.

In the room behind the statue, where the offerings were kept, she found loaves of bread, quite stale, but she ate one, dividing it with the little girl, who seemed stunned and did not cry. She thrust another into the fold of her robe - she might need it—and stopped to consider. The Akhaians were already plundering the lower town. Had the palace fallen? Had they all been killed: her parents, Andromache, Helen? Were there any Trojan soldiers left alive to halt the sack? Or were she and her child the only ones left alive to watch the devastation?

She listened for any sound that would prompt her to think that someone else remained living in the Sunlord's house but there was only silence. Perhaps someone still lived in the palace below.

Had the warning reached them in time to get out into the courts or gardens?

Although the sun was now quite warm, she shivered. Her warm shawl, and every stitch of her clothing except the shift she stood in, was buried in the ruins of the Sunlord's Temple.

She should go down to the palace; although she was aware of the Akhaian soldiers in the city, she was desperately anxious to know if her mother still lived. She picked up Honey and began to run down the street.

The way was blocked with rubble and the debris of partially fallen houses; the people were mostly stunned-looking women, like herself half-clad and barefoot, and a few half-armed soldiers who had risen early to join Deiphobos. When they saw she was heading for the palace, they followed her.

The palace had not collapsed. The front doors had, and some of the carvings had fallen away, but the walls were still standing, and there was no sign of fire. As she approached she heard a loud wailing, and, recognizing her mother's voice, began to run. On the flagstones of the forecourt, heaved up and uneven now, she saw Priam lying, dead or senseless; she could not tell. Hecuba bent beside him, wailing; Helen wrapped in a cloak, Nikos at her side, and Andromache, clutching Astyanax in her arms were with her.

Andromache raised her eyes to Kassandra and said fiercely, "Are you content, Kassandra, that the doom you prophesied has come on us?"

"Oh, hush!" said Helen. "Don't talk like a fool, Andromache. Kassandra tried to warn us, that is all. I am sure she would rather have left all this unspoken. I am glad to see you unharmed, Sister." She went and embraced Kassandra, and after a moment, Andromache followed suit.

"How is it with Father?" asked Kassandra. She went and bent over her mother, gently lifting her up. "Come, Mother, we must take refuge in the Maiden's Temple."

"No! No, I will stay with my Lord and King," Hecuba protested, her wails turning to sobbing.

Andromache came and embraced her, while Astyanax came and put his arms around Hecuba, saying, "Don't weep, Grandmother; if any harm has come to Grandfather the King, then I will look after you."

"Hush, love," Helen said, as Kassandra knelt beside her father, taking the cold hand in hers, and raised a closed eyelid. There was not the faintest stir of motion or life; the eyes were already filmed over. She knew she should have joined Hecuba in ritual keening, but she only sighed and let his hand fall from hers.

"I am sorry, Mother," she said. "He is dead."

Hecuba's cries began again. Kassandra said urgently, "Mother, there is no time for that; Akhaian soldiers are in the city."

"But how can that be?" Hecuba asked.

"The walls were broken in the earthquake," Kassandra explained, desperately wondering if they were all lacking in wits, or senseless with shock - had they heard nothing? 'Already they are plundering in the streets, and they will surely lose little time coming here. Where is Deiphobos?"

"I think he must be dead," Helen said. "We heard Mother cry out that Father had fallen down in a fit, or a faint. We came at once, and Deiphobos carried him out of his room into the court here, then ran back seeking his own mother. Then the first shock came and the floors fell in and I think some of the roof as well. I had snatched up Nikos and ran out with him after Deiphobos."

"And so we six are alive," said Kassandra, "but we must hide somewhere, unless we wish to fall into the hands of the soldiers. I do not know what is the Akhaian custom with captive women and I do not think I wish to."

"Oh, Helen has nothing to fear from them," said Andromache, staring fixedly at the Argive woman. "Her husband will soon be here to claim her, I am sure, and deck her in all the jewels of Troy and lead her home in triumph. How fortunate for you that Deiphobos died just in time - not that you care."

Kassandra was appalled at her spite.

"This is no time to quarrel, Sister; we should be glad if one of us need not fear capture. Shall we take refuge in the House of the Maiden? That is where we sent the women from the Sunlord's house and I am sure it is still whole." She put her arm round Hecuba, and said, "Come, let us go."

"No, I stay with my King and my Lord," said the old woman stubbornly, dropping again to her knees beside Priam's body.

"Mother, do you truly believe that Father would want you to stay here to be captured by some Akhaian lord?" Kassandra asked in exasperation.

"He was a soldier to his death; I will not abandon him the moment he has fallen," Hecuba insisted. "You are a young girl; go and take shelter somewhere they will not find you, if there is such a place in Troy. I stay with my Lord; Helen will be with me. Even the Akhaians would offer no insult to the Queen of Troy. We have fallen to a God and not to them."

Kassandra wished she felt half that sure. But they could already hear the soldiers approaching, and she seized Honey's hand. Andromache seized her other hand. Astyanax was in her arms, protesting, struggling to get down, but Andromache paid no attention.

"Let us hide in one of these mean houses along here; they would never think of looking in here, where there would be nothing to plunder," Andromache suggested, but Kassandra shook her head.

"I will entrust myself and my daughter to the Maiden of Troy. If our Gods have deserted us, perhaps the Goddesses will not."

"As you wish," Andromache murmured. "I no longer believe in any Gods. Farewell, then. Good fortune to you." She wedged herself into the smallest and dirtiest of the houses, and Kassandra ran on up the hill, to the highest point of Troy, where the Maiden's Temple stood untouched, the statue in the forecourt still unfallen. Kassandra flung herself down at the feet of the statue; surely no man, not even an Akhaian barbarian, would venture to trespass on any woman who took refuge here.

She heard the voices of the other women in one of the inner rooms. In a moment she would join them. She put Honey down and knelt before the altar.

"Ah, there she is!" It was a cry of triumph in the barbarian tongue of the soldiers. Two armored men burst in the door. "I wondered where all the women had gone."

"This one will do for me; it's the princess, Priam's daughter.

She's a prophetess and a virgin of Apollo—but if Apollo wanted to protect his virgins, he'd have done it. You want to check in the inside room for some more of them?"

"No," replied the other. I'll take the little one. When people think they're big enough, they're too old for my taste. Come here, little girl, I've got something nice for you—"

Kassandra turned in horror, to see a giant soldier beckoning to Honey. "No," she shrieked,"she's only a baby! No, no—"

"I like them that way," said the big soldier, grinning, and made a lunge at the child, ripping away her dress. Kassandra flew at him, using nails and teeth to tear Honey from his arms; a savage kick sent her flying half senseless into a corner of the room. She heard Honey screaming, but could not move; her limbs were so heavy she could not stir a finger. She felt the other man seize her and struggled violently; a blow across the face from the man's arm sent her back as all the strength poured out of her like sand from a torn sack.

She kept on hearing Honey's helpless cries until, even more terribly, they stopped. She was aware - though she could neither move nor speak—when the man tore away her dress and shoved her down onto the marble paving.

Goddess! Will you let this happen in your very shrine before your eyes? she implored, then in shock remembered; she no longer believed, why should the Maiden protect her?

But Honey has done no wrong, she is a baby! If the Maiden sees this and cannot prevent it she is no Goddess. And if she can and will not—

Then fierce pain ripped her apart as the man thrust violently into her, and she felt darkness closing in on her.

She felt herself step out of her pain-racked body, conscious of the man still jerking away at her limp form, of Honey naked and torn, bleeding on the stone, still moving a little, whimpering through bruised lips. She rose and moved away, stepping over the flat and featureless plain. The sun had dimmed into the greyness that was all that was here. She walked down through the plain that was, and wasnot , the city of Troy where the wooden horse had kicked down the walls and rose still whole and nightmarish over the dead city.

She saw others on this plain: Akhaian soldiers, a few of the Trojans. They seemed confused, looking about for a leader. Then she saw Deiphobos, half clad, still carrying his mother in his arms; his face and hands singed with fire. So they had died together as Helen had suspected.

He tried to call to her, but she had no wish to speak to him. She turned and hurried the other way, wondering what had happened to Andromache.

There was Astyanax, his head bleeding, his clothing torn. He looked stunned, but as she watched his face brightened, and he began to run across the plain, crying out in joy. She saw him swept up into Hector's arms and smothered in kisses. So Hector had claimed his son; she was not surprised that the Akhaian soldiers had not let him live. Andromache would grieve; she did not know that her son was with his father as Hector had promised. She hoped the child had not known too much terror before he met his end on an Akhaian spear - or had they hurled him from the walls?

Then she saw Priam, standing tall and imposing as she remembered him from when she was a little girl. He smiled at her and said, "The city's gone, isn't it? I suppose we're all dead, then?"

"Yes, I think so," she said.

"Where's your mother, my dear? Not along yet? Well, I'll wait for her here…' he said, gathering himself together to look round. "Oh! There's Hector and the boy—"

"Yes, Father," she said, feeling a lump in her throat; he sounded so happy.

"I think I will go and join them; if your mother comes, tell her, will you, love?"

But this can't be all there is to being dead, she thought.There must be more to it …

She looked up and standing directly before her, she saw Penthesilea, unwounded, smiling, her face shining, surrounded by half a dozen of the warrior women who had fought with her on that last day. Laughing for joy, she ran into the Amazon's arms. She was surprised to find that her kinswoman felt as solid and strong and warm as on the day she had embraced her when she went out to fight before Troy and to die at Akhilles's hands. She spoke her surprise aloud.

"Then I suppose Akhilles must be here somewhere too—"

"I would have thought so," said Penthesilea, "but he seems to have gone to his own place,

wherever that may be."

Beyond Penthesilea the plain of the dead faded away, and Kassandra could see what looked like blinding light; twice the brilliance of the Sunlord as she had seen him in her first overpowering vision, and through the light, she made out the form of a great temple, larger than the one where she had served in Colchis, and even more beautiful.

She whispered in awe, "Is that where I am to go?"

Beyond the light she began to hear music; harps and other instruments swelling, and filling the air with harmony like a dozen - no, a hundred - voices, all joined together in song, clear and high and coming closer. This was what she had thought the Sunlord's house would be. Khryse was standing in the doorway, beckoning to her; his face was free of the dissatisfaction and greed she had seen in it, so that he was at last what she had always believed him. He held out his arms, and she was ready to run into them, as Astyanax had run to Hector.

But Penthesilea was standing in her way - or was it the Warrior Maiden herself, wearing the armor of the Amazon? She held Honey laughing and unwounded by the hand.So she is dead too .

"No," Penthesilea said, "no, Kassandra; not yet."

Kassandra struggled to form words. It was the place she had seen in her dreams, the place she had always known she belonged. And not only Khryse, but everyone she had loved was there,

awaiting her, waiting for her voice to fill the place lacking in that great blended choir.

"No," Penthesilea's voice was sorrowful, but inflexible, and she held her back as one restrains a small child. "You cannot go yet; there is still something you must do. You could not leave with Aeneas; you cannot come with me. You must go back, Kassandra; it is not time for you."

The beautifully moulded face under the shining helmet was beginning to break up into a sunburst of brilliant sparkles. Kassandra fought to keep it in focus. "But I want to go - the light— the music—" she said. The light was fading; and around her was darkness; she was aware of a ghastly smell, like death, like vomit; she was lying on the dirt floor of some kind of rough shelter.

Then I'm not dead after all. Her only emotion was bitter disappointment. She tried to hold on to the memory of the light, but already it was disappearing. She was conscious of pain in her body. She was bleeding and part of what she smelled was her own blood on her face and covering her dress. The man who had raped her was lying half across her body. It was his vomit she smelled, and slowly, as if surfacing from a very deep trance, she heard a familiar voice and saw a face— hook-nosed, black bearded - that had haunted her nightmares for years.

"I told you she was the one I wanted," said Agamemnon. "Look, she's breathing again. If you'd killed her I'd have had you flayed alive; you knew she fell to me in the casting of lots, but you had to try and get ahead of me. You always were spiteful, Ajax."

Kassandra felt agony through her whole body; agony mingled with despair.

SoI am not dead after all; the Maiden saved me. For this !

CHAPTER 16

She lay still, too miserable to try and move.

"Honey?" she whispered painfully, through the rawness in her throat. But there was no answer. She remembered seeing the little body, bleeding and broken, flung aside by the man who had used her.

She must be dead now. I hope she is dead now. Yes, she is with Penthesilea.

She will be looking for me there.

I don't want to live. I want to be back there with Penthesilea, and Father… and the music…

But she could feel her own breathing, the loud intrusive beating of her own heart. She would live. What was it Penthesilea had said? 'You still have something to do…'Had it been to care for Honey, I would have gone back - not willingly, but without complaint. But she is gone, I cannot

help her now. Why am I here, and everyone I love gone before me ?

She dimly made out that she was lying on the floor of a small building, and around her were boxes and bundles and bales of piled-up goods: silks, rich cloaks, tapestries, vases and pottery, sacks of grain and jars of oil, all the riches of the plundered city. Andromache lay close to her, face down, covered with a coarse blanket. Kassandra made out her face in the dim light. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying. She opened them and looked at Kassandra.

"Oh," she said, "you are awake; they said when they brought you here that you were dead and Agamemnon would not admit it."

"I was sure I was dead," Kassandra said. "I wanted to be dead."

"And I," Andromache said. "They took - Astyanax."

"The Akhaians? Yes, I know; I saw him - running to his father's arms."

Andromache considered this for a moment. She said, "Yes, if anyone could see beyond death I suppose it would be you." 'Believe me, he is free, and happy, and with his father."

Kassandra repeated. Her voice caught at the memory. "They are better off than we are; I wish I were where they are now."

After a moment she said, "Why are we being held here? What is to become of us? Where is this place?"

"I am not sure; I think it is where the Akhaian captains are making ready to load the ships," Andromache said.

"Listen," Kassandra said, cringing,"someone is coming." She could hear the fall of heavy footsteps on the ground. But she had lost the preternatural sight of the trance state; she felt dull and sick, locked into her ordinary mortal senses. There was a foul taste in her mouth. "Is there any water here?"

Andromache sighed and stirred, then sat erect. She reached for a jar and carried it carefully to Kassandra, who drank till she was no longer thirsty. She had to sit up to drink, and felt as if her head would split off and roll away. She helped Andromache to replace the jar and lay down again, exhausted by only that small movement.

Kassandra said, in a whisper, "Honey is dead too. They tore her from me in the very shrine of the Maiden; and raped her, baby that she was—" Her voice broke.

Andromache's hand closed over hers. "I know how you must feel, even though she was not your own child."

Kassandra said dully, "She was my own, as much as any child could have been."

"You say that because you have never borne a child," Andromache said. She pulled her cloak over her face again.

"Are you all right? Have you been harmed?" Kassandra persisted, trying to break through Andromache's lifeless despair.

Andromache turned over to face her. "No, they did not lay a hand on me. I suppose they have taken me because it helps their pride to think of Hector's wife a slave," she said. "As for my child—if he had been the son of a lesser man they might have let him live—" After a moment she asked, "But what of you? You have been hurt—" She reached out, stopping short of touching the bleeding cut on Kassandra's forehead. "Were you—beaten as well as—"

"Raped? Yes," she said. "I thought - I hoped that I was dead. But for one reason or another, I was sent back."

She remembered painfully Penthesilea's words,You still have something to do among the living . But what? They would not have sent her back simply to comfort Andromache and tell her that her son was safe with his father. But what else? Could she somehow avenge herself on Agamemnon? Ridiculous; all the armies of Troy could not cast him down and she was no more than a single woman, wounded and ravished.

A dark form blotted out the light through the door, and a rough voice said, "All right, you, in

there with the others," and someone was pushed inside, stumbled and fell at Kassandra's side: a woman, small and frail. She moaned and raised her head painfully.

"Kassandra? Is it you?"

"Mother!" Kassandra sat up and embraced her. "I thought you were dead—"

"And I heard Agamemnon had taken you—"

"He has claimed me," Kassandra said, trying to speak steadily, "but they have not loaded the ships yet; so at least we have a few moments to say farewell—"

"They are still quarrelling over the spoils," Andromache said bitterly, sitting up to embrace Hecuba. "Including us—"

"I do not know where I am to go," Hecuba said, "nor what good I should be, old as I am, as a slave—"

"At least, Mother, you need not fear being made a concubine," Andromache said.

"But you two are young; even as slaves, you may still find something good left in life."

"Never," Andromache said. "Oh, let us not begin to quarrel about which of us has suffered

most!"

Kassandra froze, whispering, "Someone is coming."

It was Odysseus; his broad body seemed to fill the whole doorway. The guard at the door asked him, "What do you want, my lord?"

"One of the women in here belongs to me. I lost at the draw, but maybe it isn't all loss; my wife Penelope would be angry with me if I brought home a young and pretty slave."

"Oh, misery," Hecuba whispered, clutching at Kassandra's hand. "And he was so often a guest at our fireside. I cannot bear this humiliation!"

Odysseus came in and bent over the women. His voice was not unkind.

"Well, Hecuba, it seems you're to come with me. Don't be afraid; I have no quarrel with you, and my wife has less." He gave her a hand to help her rise, which she did stiffly. Then he bent over Kassandra and whispered, "Don't be afraid for your mother; I'll take good care of her, she'll never be homeless while

I live. I'd have been willing to take you home too, Kassandra, but Agamemnon was bound and determined he'd have you, so it looks as if you'll be a king's mistress."

"Who is to take Andromache?" Kassandra asked.

"She goes to the country of Akhilles to his father, as part of his estate."

"It could be worse," said Andromache grimly.

Hecuba asked, "And Polyxena?"

Odysseus looked down. He said, "She is a companion to Akhilles himself."

"What barbarian custom is that?" Hecuba demanded, but Odysseus cast down his eyes and would not meet her gaze. He said, "I do not know all these Akhaian customs. I am only an old pirate, remember."

Kassandra, however, had seen it in his eyes, and blurted it out. "She is dead, sacrificed, her throat cut on Akhilles's tomb like some animal—"

Odysseus flinched; Hecuba demanded, "Is this true?"

Odysseus said, "I would have spared you that knowledge. Akhilles had offered to marry her; so they sent her to join him in the afterworld."

Kassandra said gently through Hecuba's cry, "Don't grieve, Mother; she is better off than most

of us, and you will be with her soon."

Hecuba dried her eyes with her dress.

"Aye, better off than any of us," she said. "The afterworld cannot but be better than this, and soon I shall be with my Lord and King and the father of my sons. Well, lead on, Odysseus." She stooped quickly to embrace Kassandra. "Goodbye, my daughter. May we meet again soon."

"It cannot be too soon for me," said Kassandra, as they parted. She lay down, trying to rest her aching head on a bundle of canvas. She knew she would not see her mother again this side of death; but at least Penthesilea was waiting and Hecuba would not be alone there. The light moved slowly across the floor; it must be past noon. Had it been only this morning the city had fallen? It seemed like weeks—no, years.

The light was growing duller when she heard an Akhaian voice saying apologetically, "You don't have to wait in there with them, Lady," and a soft, courteous protest in a familiar voice.

Then a slender form stepped inside the shelter, saying softly, "Who is there?"

"Helen?" Kassandra sat up. "What are you doing here?"

"I would rather be here than thrust aboard Menelaus's ship for all the sailors to gape at," said Helen. "He will come and fetch me when the ship is ready to sail."

Kassandra lay down again. She knew she should feel some resentment toward this woman, but Helen had only followed her own destiny as she, Kassandra, followed hers. Helen stared, appalled, at Kassandra's still-bleeding head.

"Oh, how awful!"

"It's all right, I'm not much hurt," Kassandra said.

"And you, who deserve the worst of all, haven't been touched," Andromache said bitterly. "Why, you're even properly dressed." She looked with resentment at the fresh rust-coloured gown, the neatly fastened cloak with gold clasps and belt.

Helen's smile was faint. "Menelaus insisted. And he sent Nikos away with the soldiers, saying I wasn't fit to have the care of a child."

"At least your son still lives," Andromache muttered.

"But he is lost to me," Helen said. "And Menelaus has sworn that if this one lives—" and Kassandra remembered that Helen had confided to her that she believed herself to be pregnant again, "he will expose it. Believe me, Andromache, I would rather be going into the hands of a stranger, even if the men threw dice for me. Menelaus will doubtless make me feel his fury for the rest of my life; I would rather be buried peacefully here at the side of Paris, whom I loved."

"I do not believe that," said Andromache grimly. "I am sure you would rather have some new man to captivate with your beauty." She turned away from Helen and did not speak again.

Kassandra held out her hand to Helen and the other woman held it. She said, "I wonder if all the women in Troy hold me responsible…?"

"I don't," Kassandra said.

"No. And I found friends in Troy," Helen said, bending down to kiss Kassandra. "I wish I had never come here to destroy you all—"

"It was Poseidon who did that," said Kassandra, and they were silent, holding hands like young girls. It was not very long before steps sounded outside and Menelaus stooped to come in the low door.

"Helen?" he said.

"I am here," she said meekly, and Kassandra looked up into the blaze of light that seemed to fill the little hut. Helen's hair was brilliantly golden, and about her was the radiance she had borne when she stood upon the walls of Troy; the very aura of the Goddess.

Menelaus blinked as if his eyes were dazzled. Then, unwillingly, he bent and murmured, "My

Lady and my Queen." As if he were afraid to approach her, he offered his arm and she stepped slowly toward him.

They left the hut, Menelaus following Helen a half pace behind.

It was growing dark outside when at last the familiar form of Agamemnon thrust his head inside the hut.

"Priam's daughter," he said, "you are to come with me; the ship is ready to sail."

Now what am I to do? Submit? Fight? There is no help for it. It is fate.

She rose and he took her arm, not cruelly, but with a certain proprietorial pride. He said, smiling tentatively, "I asked for you alone, from all the spoils of Troy; believe me, I will not ill-treat you, Kassandra. It is no small thing to be the beloved of a King of Mykenae."

Oh, I believe it, she thought. It occurred to her that Priam might, if Agamemnon had not already been wedded to Helen's sister, very well have given her in marriage to this man. What lay before her now, except for a few formal rites and the blessing of her kin, would not be much different than that. A wife to any Akhaian was no less a slave than any slave in Troy. She shivered; and he turned to her solicitously.

"Are you cold?" he asked. He bent and picked up a cloak from a pile of plundered garments that

were stacked in the hut; a blue one she had never seen before.

"Wear this," he said magnanimously, draping it round her shoulders. He guided her over the rough ground; down to the water's edge, and held her hand as she stepped into the boat. The deck swayed as he led her across it; it was bigger than it had looked from the walls of Troy. The rowers at their oars looked up at her curiously as she tried to walk without tripping over the cloak. On deck there was a small tent, something like the tents in which the Akhaians had camped during the war. He lifted the flap for her to step inside. There were soft rugs and a lamp burning.

"You will have privacy here," he said ceremoniously. "We will sail with the tide, two hours before dawn." He left her, and she let herself fall on the rugs, feeling the gentle up-and-down sway of the deck. She wondered if she could slip to the other side of the ship, slide off into the water and drown. But no, surely she was watched, and they would seize her before she got to the water. Besides, she had been told that she was not to die, so she would only be sent back again.

She lay back, trying to resign herself to the moment when Agamemnon would come to her.

He could not be worse than Ajax. And she had lived through that. She would live through this too.

CHAPTER 17

At least she was no longer retching. Kassandra dragged herself out of the tent on deck and into the fresh evening air. She still could not bear the thought of food; the very idea gave her a warning spasm, but she managed to stay upright this time, on her knees - the motion of the ship made it unthinkable to stand without an undignified fall - and looked curiously at the shoreline and the small rocky islands they were passing.

It seemed they had been at sea forever; last night she had seen the new moon, slim and pale and welcome because she knew it appeared in the southwest and gave some direction - now that she could note directions at all - to the trackless, directionless sea. She thought that her confusion had added to the sickness; there was nothing but a sick and whirling body in the center of a vortex of heaving ocean and lurching deck. At first she had been so ill nothing had mattered - not the smells of the sea or the sounds of the rowers, not Agamemnon's use of her uncaring body, not the food she regularly refused. At first, she had believed it was mostly the aftermath of the blow she had had from Ajax—head injuries often caused both nausea and confusion, and when it did not subside in a reasonable time she thought that it was the motion of the ship.

Now - counting time from the moon—she had begun to wonder - with dismay and revulsion - if she might be pregnant. When she had first taken Aeneas to her bed, she had not thought much about it. The priestesses were taught ways to avoid such things if they chose, but these arts often failed and aboard the ship she had been too ill to heed them. She had been resigned to the fact that sooner or later she would find herself with child by Aeneas. But the possibility that this

might be Aeneas's child was very small indeed; since the blow on the head she had a certain amount of trouble remembering exactly when he had last been with her, or when she had last seen evidence that she was not pregnant. So it was probable that this was the child of Agamemnon - or worse, of Ajax, who had taken her first. Kassandra rarely listened to girls' gossip, but she had heard them saying often enough that one was not likely to get pregnant the first time with any man. But she had seen evidence, whatever they believed or hoped, that once was quite enough. If she had to choose, she would hope it was Agamemnon's child: she detested him, but it was not he who had taken her by force over the body of her dead child. The fact that she was recognized as his chattel and prize of war was not pleasing to her.All my life I feared him , she thought, remembering her first vision when she was a child, but at least he had behaved no worse than custom allowed in such cases.

It was an evil custom certainly, but he had not invented it, and it would hardly be reasonable to blame him. If she had been given by her parents in marriage to this man he would have used her no worse, and probably no better.

He was, she supposed, no worse than any other Akhaian; as they were reckoned, she supposed he was considered a good man. She even realized that he had actually been frightened by her continuing sickness; at first he had tried to gentle her out of it, reassuring her that it was always this way at the beginning of a voyage and that she'd soon grow used to it, encouraging her to get into the fresh air; when it did not subside, he left her alone a good deal, for which she was dimly grateful.

She thought sometimes that he might be trying to show her kindness. Once when she had vomited all over him (without apology; she had not asked him, nor given him leave, to bring her on this voyage at all) he had not beaten her - as she half expected (she had seen him beat one of his servants for spilling his clean shaving water) but had called for fresh water to rinse her mouth, and had held her in his arms, covering her with a fresh cloak and trying to soothe her to sleep again.

That had been early in the voyage, while she was still in a mad confusion and rage of hatred; she would not look at him nor speak, and he had soon stopped trying to engage her in conversation about the lands they passed. Now she wished she had encouraged him in this talk - it might be useful if she should ever escape. She could not return to Troy - there was nothing to return to but she might go to Colchis - Queen Imandra, or any priestess in the House of Serpent Mother, would welcome her; or to Crete, and in the Islands there were many temples where a priestess skilled in the healing arts or the lore of serpents might find shelter.

She was not closely guarded, perhaps because at first it had been so obvious that between the head wound and seasickness she was incapable of walking, let alone attempting any kind of rebellion or escape.

Now, lying on the sun-flooded deck outside the tent she shared with Agamemnon, listening to the slow drum-beat which kept time for the rowers, she thought.It is more than that. It would never occur to them that a woman might think of escape . A week ago when they had gone ashore on a little island to find fresh drinking water, they had left her unguarded. She had not

tried to escape then - she could see that the island was so small that she could not possibly have hidden anywhere or found shelter. If anyone had lived there, to ask for shelter would have been to bring down the wrath of Agamemnon on the hapless peasant who might take pity on her. Only if there had been a shrine of the Maiden - or of the Sunlord - would she have dared claim sanctuary.

She might do that still, if she could find such a shrine, although she supposed Agamemnon might legitimately claim her as a fair prize of war. Scant sympathy was shown to runaway slaves, and she could no longer claim to be a princess, since Troy had fallen. Everyone who spoke of her (she had overheard Agamemnon's soldiers and servants) seemed to think there was no reason she should not be content with him for the rest of her life.

She realized that she was allowing her mind to wander to keep from thinking seriously about the fact that she was probably carrying Agamemnon's child; should she tell him? Not at once; it would please him too much, and he might think she was making some kind of claim to his sympathy or kindness.

Agamemnon was at the stern of the ship, standing beside the man who held the steering-oar. He was dressed, as were all of his men, in a simple loincloth of bleached coarse linen; but the gold torque round his neck and the ornaments he wore, no less than his military bearing and air of command, made it obvious who was King and who were the servants.

He saw her seated in the shadow of the sail and strode across the deck.

"Well, Kassandra, I am glad to see you awake," he said. "The sea is calm and the sun will do you good. When we went ashore for drinking water this morning" - she had been asleep and only dimly aware of the cessation of motion—"men gathered some fresh grapes; perhaps you would like some of them?" Without waiting for her answer he shouted to the four serving women who spent most of their time huddled together at the stern gossiping, "You there—" Kassandra had no idea of the women's names because Agamemnon never spoke to them by any name except 'girl' or 'you' - 'Bring us some of those grapes - you greedy little beasts haven't eaten them all, have you?"

"Oh, no, my lord," murmured the oldest of them, and rose. From an enormous basket she seized four or five bunches of small wild grapes, laid them on a silver tray (Kassandra had seen it in the palace; Hecuba had used it for grapes too because it was etched with vines) and brought them across the deck.

The girl knelt before Agamemnon; he gestured for her to offer them to Kassandra first. She looked familiar; had she seen her in the streets of Troy somewhere in that other life?

"Princess—" she whispered, her eyes humbly cast down. It made Kassandra wonder what had happened to Chryseis when the city fell. She reached out and broke off a few grapes from a bunch, and bit into one. The juicy tartness was pleasant, and she swallowed, hesitantly, half expecting the queasiness to break over her again. Agamemnon had taken a bunch and was eating them with relish. His teeth were large and white and strong -just like a horse's , Kassandra

thought with fascinated revulsion. She had to turn away to avoid a convulsive spasm; but she managed to swallow a few grapes, and did not feel immediately compelled to vomit.

"I am glad to see you eating again," Agamemnon observed. "Seasickness seldom lasts this long; and when you are in health you will be as beautiful as when I first saw and desired you."

She realized that he thought it would please her; he was trying to be friendly. Well, she seemed to be bound to him for a time at least; certainly if she was pregnant she must put aside all thought of escape until after the child was born. And it would be foolish to force him to consider her an enemy and perhaps keep closer watch on her, as he would certainly do if he thought she was considering escape.

But does he really believe that I will love him and obey him as a husband when he has murdered my brethren and my parents and my city?

It appeared to be exactly what he thought.

"Will you have more grapes?" he asked, and selected a bunch from the tray. She nodded and ate a few more. After a moment she started to speak, but she had not spoken a word since she came aboard and now her voice failed her. She had to clear her throat twice before speaking.

"How much longer will we be aboard this ship?"

He looked startled; as if he had grown so used to her refusal to speak that he half believed shecould not. But he said amiably enough, "I can well believe you are weary of travel. It is never possible to tell how long the journey will take; if we have fair winds and fair weather, we might arrive before the moon has fulled twice more. If we have bad weather and the winds are against us, we might not arrive before the worst of the winter."

She wished she had not asked; the thought of two more months on shipboard appalled her. And what would happen to her when they came to Mykenae?

That thought must have passed visibly across her face, because he said reassuringly, "You must not be frightened. My wife Klytemnestra is a gracious lady, and she would never treat badly one who had been a princess in Troy. She does not think she must prove her own royalty by treating others as her inferiors. Everyone in our house, servant or slave, is treated as custom demands; neither better nor worse."

It would not have occurred to Kassandra to be afraid of Klytemnestra. She was the twin of Helen and she had loved Helen and found her a friend, and that was enough. Now it occurred to her that Agamemnon himself was afraid of his wife and that was why he thought she might be.

Was he afraid because she was the Queen of the land and he became King only as her consort? She still might cherish her anger with him over the evil trick he had played in sacrificing her daughter Iphigenia to the God of the winds - after all, Iphigenia had been her eldest daughter, and Klytemnestra would have thought of her as her heir.

Kassandra remembered old crude jokes about shrewish country-women greeting faulty or drunken husbands with blows over the head from a winnowing fan or a dough roller; did Agamemnon fear some such greeting?

She looked at him and saw that the fear was deeper and blacker than that. For an instant it seemed as if there was blood smeared on his face that would never wash away; she told herself it was only the light of the setting sun. And if she truly saw blood, what wonder? He was a bloody man, a warrior who had slain hundreds in his long career.

She put the grapes aside, and shifted her weight; the roiling nausea, which had subsided for a little while, came back. She sighed and dragged herself back into the deck-tent, glad to be again at rest. No, there was no way now to hide from the knowledge. She was with child, whether by Agamemnon or another, and sooner or later he would have to know it.

That night the weather broke; the North wind rose and battered the ship so hard that even after the sail was lowered, high waves swamped the tent on deck and Agamemnon gave orders for everything to be lashed down. Kassandra was too sick with the rolling and pitching of the ship even to be terrified; she lay clutching a safety rope which Agamemnon had made fast about her, vomiting and at intervals wishing that the ship would be cast on the rocks or the tent washed overboard so that she could drown and be at peace.

The storm continued many days and even when it subsided she wanted nothing more than to lie

on deck and pretend she was dead. Her one hope was that the violence about her would bring on a miscarriage. This did not come to pass. Rage alternated with despair; what would she do with a child in captivity, bring it up as another of Agamemnon's slaves?

The day finally came when, as she had known he eventually must, Agamemnon looked at her and said, "You're carrying."

She nodded sullenly, not looking at him, but he smiled, and stroked her hair. He said, "My beautiful, have you forgotten my promise, that you are not my slave but my lawful consort?" He had indeed said something like that, but she had paid no more attention than she did to anything else he had said while she was still vomiting every hour or so. "You must not be afraid for our child; I pledge you my word that it will not be a slave but will be acknowledged and brought up as my son. I do not trust the children of Klytemnestra. Our son will be shown how much I value his mother, who was a princess of Troy."

She was dimly conscious that he was trying to please her; that he considered himself very generous and indulgent. Did he actually believe she could be led to thank him for treating her as a human being?

She supposed some women might be grateful not to have been treated worse because he had power to do so. She raised her eyes and said, unsmiling, "That is kind of you, my Lord." For the first time afraid of what he might do, she spoke the words she had promised herself never to say.

They pleased him, as she had known they would; men were so easily deluded and flattered. He smiled and kissed her. Going to one of the many great chests in which he kept the spoil of Troy, he took from it a gold necklace with four strands, each formed of many small links and engraved plates.

He stooped and put it about her neck.

"This befits your beauty," he said. "And if your child is a son, you shall have another to match it."

She had wanted to fling it back in his face. What arrogance, to give her as a gift some small part of what he had stolen from her family! Then she thought:If I escape him, this necklace, with the links prised off and sold one at a time, would bring me to Colchis or even to Crete. Creusa is there, and perhaps Aeneas; she has only daughters; and might be glad of a son, even if Agamemnon had fathered it .

How will he feel if instead of the son he wants he has only a daughter?That would almost please her , she thought,to give him what he does not want; but then she asked herself,Who would willingly choose to have any child born as a girl into this world, to suffer at the hands of men what all women suffer ?

But at the thought of a little girl like Honey, even one fathered by Agamemnon, her heart softened. If this child were a girl she would take her to Colchis, so she might be reared where she

need never be a slave.

Days passed; and as she had seen in other women who were in the hands of the life forces, she grew sluggish and heavy on her feet, unwilling to rise; though Agamemnon, now that he knew of her pregnancy, was gentler with her. Every day when weather permitted he escorted her about the deck, insisting that she must have some air and exercise. Once he expressed a hope that they would reach Mykenae before she was delivered.

"We have excellent midwives there, and you would be safe in their hands," he told her. "I do not know if any of these women on the ship know anything about such things."

One of them had been her mother's waiting-woman and the chief of the palace's midwives; but she did not tell Agamemnon that. She did, however, contrive secretly to speak to the woman and tell her what had happened.

"Oh, well, Princess," the woman said, "now you'll be more content, and if you give him a son he'll cherish you all the more; you'll be safe in Mykenae as mother of the King's son."

Secretly Kassandra had been hoping the woman would share her outrage, and she had intended to ask if the old woman could manage to secure for her a herb potion which would cause her to miscarry. It confirmed her belief that women everywhere conspired with their own oppressions.

Once when Agamemnon was sitting beside her, speaking of their son, she asked, "But do you

not have a son by Klytemnestra? And being the eldest, would he not take precedence?"

"Oh, yes," Agamemnon said with an evil smile, "but my Queen values only her daughters; she pretended to believe that one of them would follow her as Queen. She even sent our son to be fostered away from the palace, so that I could not school him in the ways of king-craft."

That was, Kassandra thought, the best thing she had ever heard of Klytemnestra. She had wondered how Helen's sister could ever have brought herself, even for reasons of political expediency, to marry a man like Agamemnon. But perhaps her people had given her no choice, or had wanted a king, who commanded iron, to rule over their war parties.

"Our son, Kassandra, might rule after me over the city of Mykenae," he said to her. "Does that not please you?"

Please me?

But she only smiled at him; she had learned that if she smiled, he took it for agreement and was better pleased than if she spoke.

There was at this season no good weather on the sea; but endless rain and wind, and every time they sailed a little way toward where they wanted to go, the winds would rise and beat them back so that they were always in danger of being driven on to the rocks.

Frequently Agamemnon had to head out into the open water to avoid a shore which would destroy the ship; it seemed that with days and months of sailing, they were no nearer to where they wished to go. One day, after a fearful hard-driven wind had blown them about for many days out of sight of land, a morning calm left them drifting. A sailor came to Agamemnon saying they had sighted a stream of green water like a separate current in the sea. Agamemnon went on deck cursing, and she heard him shouting at his men; when he came back he was furious, his face drawn and darkened with outrage.

"What is the matter?" she asked him. She was lying on the deck, trying desperately to keep down the little bread and fruit she had eaten for breakfast.

He scowled and said, "We have sighted the outpourings of the

Nile—the great river of the country of the Pharaohs. Poseidon, who rules the sea as well as the earthquake, has driven us far from home, and on to the shores of Egypt."

"That does not seem a catastrophe," she said. "You were saying that we were gravely in need of fresh food and fresh drinking water. Can they not be had here?"

"Oh, yes; but the word of Troy's fall has been spread all about the world now, and they will expect much gold for supplies," he muttered. "And everyone has told a different tale about what happened—"

"They do not know that Troy fell not to might of arms and soldier-craft, but to the earthquake," Kassandra said. "You can tell them what tale you will and they will not be rude enough to doubt it."

He scowled at her; but at that moment a cry came from the lookout forward that land had been sighted; Agamemnon went forward and soon returned to say that indeed they had reached Egypt.

Some of the men were sent on shore and eventually returned, bearing an invitation from Pharaoh to dine at the palace. Kassandra had hoped to lie alone in the tent, simply enjoying the cessation of the sea's motion, but it was not to be. Agamemnon drew from his chests an assortment of silken robes.

"Wear any one of these that pleases you, my dear; and I will send one of the women to dress you and braid your hair with jewels; you must be beauiful - yes, as beautiful as Helen herself - to honor me at the court of Pharaoh."

For the first time she pleaded with him. "Oh, no, I beg of you—I am ill, I cannot bear it—I have asked nothing of you, but for the sake of the child I am to bear you, spare me this; it will be easy to tell them that I am ill—do not parade me as a slave before this foreign monarch—"

"I have told you again and again," he said, sounding less angry than sorrowful,"that you are not a slave but my consort. Kly-temnestra has never pleased me, and when you bear my son you shall be my Queen."

She wept in despair; he argued, cajoled and finally stormed out of the room, saying in a tone of command, "I'll not argue with you further; dress yourself at once, and I'll send a woman to you."

She lay helplessly weeping, and only roused when the woman who had been one of Hecuba's midwives came into the tent.

"Now, now, Princess, you mustn't go on crying like this, you'll hurt the baby. I've brought you this." She held out a clay cup with a potion that steamed with fragrance. "Drink it, it'll settle your stomach and you'll be beautiful to dine at the palace."

"You are a wicked woman," Kassandra flung at her. "Why should Agamemnon have his way always? Why have you come to be his most loyal servant? Can't you give me something that would make me so sick that even he knows I cannot go?"

The woman looked shocked.

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that; the King would be very angry," she said. "Mustn't make the King angry, mistress."

Enraged, but knowing there was no help for it, Kassandra let the woman dress her; she refused to choose a gown and let the woman put her into a striped dress of crimson and gold silk which she had seen her mother wear at palace banquets. She drank the potion, which did make her feel

better - or maybe it was only her anger. Let Agamemnon parade his captive princess - what did it matter? If Pharaoh - who, she had heard, had well over a hundred wives—knew anything about the fall of Troy, he would know she was not here of her own free will; and if not, it would not matter.

CHAPTER 18

"There is no relying on the winds at this season," said the bald man who called himself Pharaoh, and was regarded as a God incarnate by his court. "It would please us if you remained as our guest until the seasons change and the winds can be relied on to bear you to Mykenae, or wherever you wish to go."

"The Lord of the Two Lands is gracious," Agamemnon demurred, "but I had hoped to make my way home before that."

"Pharaoh gave this advice to the noble Odysseus, when he guested with us and Odysseus ignored it," said one of the courtiers. "Now word has come that bits and pieces of Odysseus's ship have been cast up on the rocks of Aeaea; he will never be heard from again."

"Well, well, I suppose it is better to come late home than to arrive early on the shores of nowhere," said Agamemnon, "and I accept your gracious invitation, for myself and my men."

Kassandra knew he was annoyed; this meant that he would have to ransack his chests for worthy guest-gifts for Pharaoh, and if they stayed too long he would not get any of his plunder home at all. They were not the first from Troy to be cast on these shores; Pharaoh's hall already displayed recognizable spoils from the city, including the statue of the Sunlord from the shrine.

In the next few days Kassandra discovered that a few of the priests and priestesses of the Temple of Apollo had taken refuge here; although none of her closest friends to whom she might have appealed. She would have been overjoyed to know that Phyllida, or even Chryseis, was alive.

Egypt was hot and dry, and filled with bitter winds from the desert, which could wipe out all signs of life if people did not take shelter at once; even in Pharaoh's great stone palace the damage could be seen.

Nevertheless, at least it was on land, and better than being daily battered by wind and sea.

Kassandra was glad of the respite. The Egyptians gossiped about Agamemnon and one of the waiting-women told her secretly that everyone in Egypt knew that after the death of Iphigenia, Klytemnestra had sworn vengeance and had openly taken a lover, a cousin of hers named Aegisthos, and was living with him in the palace at Mykenae.

Kassandra's attitude was simply, "Well, why shouldn't she? Agamemnon, away in Troy, was no good to her as a husband."

But these Egyptians also worshipped male Gods and felt a man's wife must do what he bade her, and that the worst thing that could happen was for a wife to lie with anyone but her husband. If it was a King's wife then the Queen's behaviour brought disgrace upon the whole country. Kassandra could only hope that Agamemnon would not hear the story and have another grievance. He spoke often of putting Klytemnestra away and making Kassandra his lawful Queen, and that was the last thing Kassandra wanted.

She even heard that Klytemnestra, feeling young again when she had taken Aegisthos to her bed, had to all purposes disinherited her remaining daughter by marrying her off to a lowborn man who had been the palace's swineherd or something of that sort. The people of Mykenae believed that, following the old custom, Klytemnestra, who was past the age of childbearing, should have married Aegisthos off to her daughter Elektra and allowed Elektra to take her place as Queen. At least everyone agreed that Elektra's marriage was to a man no one could possibly have accepted as King.

Agamemnon finally heard the story—not about Klytemnestra's lover, everyone was careful that no breath of that should reach his ears - but about Elektra's marriage. And about that he was angry.

"Klytemnestra had no right to do that; it was as if she had presumed my death. Elektra's marriage was mine to make, a dynastic marriage which would have bought me allies. Odysseus had spoken of marrying her to his son Telemachus, and now that Odysseus's ship is lost,

Telemachus will need powerful allies if he is to hold Ithaca against those who would like to take it," he said.

"Or I might have married her off to the son of Akhilles—he was never formally married to his cousin Deidameia, but I heard he seduced the girl and she bore him a son after he went to fight in Troy. Well, when I come home, Klytemnestra will learn that I mean to set my house in order and that her rule is at an end," he said. "Elektra as a widow will be just as valuable a marriage pawn; the girl cannot be more than fifteen or so. And it is your son and not Klytemnestra's son Orestes who will sit on the Lion Throne when I am gone."

Kassandra had noted that the Akhaians thought much of their sons coming after them; it seemed to be how they coped with the thought of death, for they seemed to have no concept of an afterlife. No wonder they had no code of decency; they seemed not to believe that their Gods would hold them responsible in the next life for anything they did in this one.

The days in the calm Egyptian land were all so much alike that Kassandra was hardly aware of the passing of time; only by the growth of the child within her did she have any awareness of the days that were hastening by. At last the season was sufficiently advanced that Pharaoh said they might set sail; but that very night Kassandra fell into labour, and at sunrise the next morning she gave birth to a small male child.

"My son," Agamemnon said, picking up the baby and looking carefully at him. "He is very small."

"But he is healthy and strong," said the midwife, eagerly. "Truly, Lord Agamemnon, such small children often grow up as big as those who are larger at birth. And the princess is a narrow woman; it would have gone hard with her to bear a son of a proper size to be yours."

Agamemnon smiled at that and kissed the baby. "My son," he said to Kassandra, but she looked away from him and said, "Or Ajax's."

He scowled, not liking to be reminded of that possibility, and said, "No; I think he has a look of me."

Well, I hope you enjoy thinking so, she thought;it will not make the poor child prettier .

"Shall we name him Priam for your father then? A Priam on the Lion Throne?"

She said, "It is for you to say."

"Well, I will give it thought," Agamemnon said. "You are a prophetess; perhaps we can think of a name full of good omen." He stooped and laid the baby back to her breast.

But there are no good omens for a son of Agamemnon, she thought, remembering that Klytemnestra and her new king awaited Agamemnon at home. This son, no more than Agamemnon, would never sit on the Lion Throne of Mykenae.

She felt a familiar far-off humming in her head; the sun blinded her eyes. The child seemed to weigh less in her arms - or was it that her arms had released him? She had believed the Sight was gone from her forever; she had not managed to save her people or her loved ones with her prophecy, and had thought herself free of it at last.

Now she saw the great double-bladed axe that cleft the head of the great bulls in Crete, and Agamemnon, staggering with his eyes full of blood.

She clasped her hands to her eyes to shut out the sight.

"Blood," she whispered. "Like one of the bulls of Crete - go not to the sacrifice—"

He leaned down to stroke her hair.

"What did you say? A bull? Well, for this fine gift no doubt I should give a bull to Zeus Thunderer; but not here in Egypt; we will wait for that till we reach my country, where I have bulls in plenty and need not pay the outrageous amounts of gold the priests here demand for sacrificial animals. I think Zeus can wait till then for the proper sacrifices; but when you can get up you may take a couple of doves to their Earth Mother in thanksgiving for this fine son."

Maybe that was all I saw, a sacrifice somehow gone wrong -she thought, but all at once her malice was gone; she had hated and despised him, but now she saw him among the dead, and

wondered if after death he must face all the men he had slain in battle. Hector had said that when he crossed the gate of death he was first greeted by Patroklos—but it would be different for Agamemnon, as it had been somehow different, she knew, for Akhilles.

She lingered abed, knowing that as soon as she could walk, Agamemnon would set sail for the port of Mykenae. And she had been so sick every day of the voyage which had brought them here that now she was in terror of the sea.

She finally decided to call her son Agathon. Before his birth, she could not imagine loving a child conceived like this one, and she had begun to suspect that a good part of her sickness during pregnancy was just revulsion against the very thought that this parasite of rape had fastened on her from within and would not be cast forth. If he had turned out to have been poisoned by her loathing, with two heads or a marred face, she would have thought it only fitting.

And yet he lay on her breast so small and innocent; and she could not see anything about him that was like Agamemnon. He was just like any other newborn child, very small indeed, but everything about him was perfectly formed, down to hands and full-formed little fingernails, and tiny toenails on every toe.

How strange to think that this soft little being, who could lie at the center of his father's great shield and leave room for a good-sized dog, might grow up to bring down a mighty city. But for now he was all softness and milky fragrance, and when he nuzzled at her breast she could not

help thinking of Honey helpless in her arms. Why should this perfect little creature be blamed for what his father had done?

But she knew that, like Klytemnestra, she would be sure to send this son away so that Agamemnon could not school him in king-craft. She found no pleasure in the thought that her son might one day sit on the Lion Throne. She did not wish her son to be brought up as the Akhaians brought up their sons.

She supposed that Helen by now had borne Paris's last son; and she wondered if Menelaus had carried out his threat to expose the child. It was the sort of thing he would do; these Akhaians seemed only to care for theirown sons; as if a child could be anyone's except the mother's who bore it.

Even Agamemnon had no idea whether this child was his or Ajax's—or, for that matter, Aeneas's. She would take care not to remind him again of that. This washer son; and no man's. But she would hold her peace and let Agamemnon think it his if he wished, for its safety.

She gathered the babe up in the swaddling clothes that had been provided in Pharaoh's palace, and went through the streets of the city with one of the women of the royal household who had borne a child the day before. In the temple of the Goddess—a repulsive statue of a woman with huge breasts like a cow, and the head of a crocodile—she sacrificed a pair of young doves, and kneeling before the statue, tried to pray.

She was a stranger in this land and a stranger to their Goddess. She supposed there was not so much difference between the Goddess of crocodiles and the Goddess of snakes; but no prayers would come, nor could she look even a little way into the future and see whether it would be well with her child.

She should seek the Sunlord's house; here in Egypt, the Sunlord was their greatest God, and they called him by the name of Re; but she still feared the God who had been unable—or unwilling to save her city, and would not approach him.

If he could not save us, he is not a God; if he could and would not, what son of God is he?

The next day Agamemnon's goods were prepared and loaded; he gave final guest-gifts to Pharaoh, and they departed.

Kassandra had been in terror of renewed seasickness; but this time she felt only a little queasy the first night they lifted the anchor. The next morning she felt perfectly well. She ate fruit and the hard ship's bread with good appetite, and sat on deck with the baby at her breast. The illness, then, had been a side effect of head injury and then of her pregnancy.

She knew nothing of ships and sailing, but Agamemnon seemed pleased with the strong winds that day after day drove them across the clear blue waters. The baby proved as good a sailor as his father. He suckled strongly, and it seemed that she could see him growing every day; his small hands becoming more formed, his nose and chin, from mere blobs, taking a real shape. She

felt that perhaps, considering the shape of his chin, he might be Agamemnon's child after all. His father liked to hold him and joggle him in his arms, trying to make him laugh. This was the last thing she had expected. Well, Hector and even Paris had enjoyed playing with their children. Painful as it was to admit it, Akhaians were not all that different from other men.

One morning, just as it was getting light, she had gone on deck to rinse the child's swaddlings in a bucket of sea water and spread them to dry. The ship was silent except for a single steersman at the stern, for the winds were strong enough that the rowers were not needed except for maneuvering at close quarters to land.

She looked from horizon to horizon; the sea was peaceful, and they were passing between two shores, one a high mountain rising steeply above them, its shadow reaching almost to the ship itself. On the other side was a long, low, treeless headland; there, suddenly on the side of the mountain a streak of fire flared upward to the sky, like a flower of flame blooming there. The steersman let out a shout of exultation and yelled for one of his fellows to come and steer.

Agamemnon appeared on deck and shouted to the crew, "There it is, my brave lads! The beacon on our own headland! After all these years, we've come home at last! A bull to Zeus Thunderer!"

The sunlight glinted in his eyes - as red as blood, Kassandra thought. Her own eyes felt strained and dry and it struck her that he should hardly be so overjoyed at coming home—who knew what he would find there!

She came to the rail, the child in her arms, and stood beside him.

"What is it?"

"When I left home," he said, "I gave orders that a great pile of wood should be made on the headland, and a watchman kept there at all times. When I set sail, I sent a message by a swift courier that a watch should be kept for my ship; they have sighted us and word will be sent to the palace; they will prepare a feast and a welcome for us.

"It is good to be home again. I am eager to show you my country and the palace where you will be Queen, Kassandra." He took the child from her, bending over the little face, and saying, "Your country, my son; your father's throne. You are silent, Kassandra."

"It is not my country," she said, "and it is certain Klytemnestra will have no joyful welcome for me, eager as she may be to see you again. And I am afraid for my child; Klytemnestra—"

"You need not fear anything like that," he said arrogantly. "Among the Akhaians, our women are dutiful wives. She will not dare say a word of protest. She has had a free rein while I was away; she will soon learn what I expect of her, and she will do as she is told or be the worse for it, believe me."

"It is cold," she said. "I will go and fetch my cloak."

"It seems warm and fine to me," he said, "but perhaps it is because this is the port of my native city. Look, now you can see the palace on the hill, and the walls, built by Titans centuries ago. The port here is called Nauplia."

She went to fetch a cloak and stood beside Agamemnon at the prow, letting the woman who had been her mother's servant take the baby.

The great sail had been lowered; and the rowers had taken their places to maneuver the ship in the harbor; it glided smoothly along inside the sheltered waters in the lee of the headland.

Now she could see a number of people collecting along the pier. As the boat drew in close, one man raised a cheer, and Agamemnon's soldiers, clustered along the sides of the boat, began waving and yelling to people they recognized on shore.

But for the most part the crowd was silent as the boat drew slowly closer to the pier. To Kassandra the silence seemed ominous. She shivered, although the rich cloak she wore was warm, and took the baby back from the serving woman, to clutch him close against her body.

The prow of the ship bumped gently against the land. Agamemnon was the first to step ashore; at once he fell to the ground and solemnly kissed the stones of the pier, crying in a loud voice, "I give thanks to the Thunder Lord who has returned me safe to my own country!"

A tall red-haired man with a gold torque about his throat stepped up to him and said with a bow,

"My Lord Agamemnon, I am Aegisthos, a kinsman of your Queen; she has sent me with these men to escort you with great honor to the palace."

The men closed in around Agamemnon; and marched away. It looked to Kassandra as if he were a guarded prisoner rather than a king with an escort of honor. Agamemnon was scowling—she could see he had little liking for this.

Nevertheless he went with them, unprotesting. One of the men on the pier climbed aboard and came to Kassandra.

"You are the daughter of Priam of Troy? My master sent word you would be coming and you were to be shown all regard," he said. "We have a cart for you and your child, and your woman."

He gave her his hand and helped her ashore, settling her in the cart with the baby on her knees and the serving woman crouched at her feet.

In spite of this luxury—and the road up to the palace was so steep that she had dreaded climbing it on foot - Kassandra felt uneasy. The stone walls of the great palace, almost as massive as the fallen walls of Troy, seemed to frown above her, deep in shadow. They passed under a great gate above which two lionesses, painted in brilliant colours, kept watch face to face. As the cart trundled through the Lion Gate, she wondered if they represented the ancient Gods of the place, or were Agamemnon's private emblem? But they were lionesses, not lions, and anyhow Agamemnon had come here as consort of the Queen in the old way. Klytemnestra's symbol,

then?

Ahead of the cart marched Agamemnon and his honor guard with Aegisthos. Just inside the Lion Gate was a city built on the same pattern as Troy on the hillside: palace, temples, gardens, above one another, the walls rising in many terraces and balconies. It was beautiful; yet it seemed shadowed darkly, the depths of the shadow falling on Agamemnon where he walked at the center of the soldiers.

On the steps of the palace, a woman appeared; tall and commanding, her hair elaborately dressed in ringlets fresh from a curling iron, flaming gold in the morning sun. She was dressed richly in the Cretan style: a laced bodice low across her breasts, a flounced skirt dyed in many colours, one for each flounce.

Kassandra saw at once the close resemblance to Helen. This would be her sister Klytemnestra. The Queen came through the escort and bowed low to Agamemnon; her voice was sweet and clear.

"My Lord, a great joy to welcome you to these shores and to the palace where once you ruled at my side," she said. "We have long awaited this day."

She held out her two hands to him; he took them ceremoniously and kissed them.

"It is a joy to return home, Lady."

"We have prepared a celebration and a great sacrifice suitable to the occasion," she said. "I can hardly wait to kill you."

No, Kassandra thought in shock;that could not have been what she said; but it is what I heard .

What Klytemnestra had actually said was:I can hardly wait to see you take the place we have prepared for you .

"All is prepared for your bath and the feast," Klytemnestra said. "We are entirely ready to—to see you lying dead among the sacrifices." Once again Kassandra had heard what Klytemnestra was thinking, not what her lips had actually spoken. So again foresight, undesired, had come upon her.

Klytemnestra gestured Agamemnon toward the palace steps.

"All is prepared, my Lord; go in and officiate at the sacrifice."

He bowed and began to walk up the steps. Klytemnestra watched him go with a smile which made Kassandra shudder. Couldn't hesee' ?

But the King moved without hesitation; just as he reached the great bronze doors at the top of the stairs, Aegisthos, armed with the great sacrificial axe, flung them open and thrust him inside.

The door closed after him.

Klytemnestra came down the stairs to the cart. She said, "You are the Trojan princess, Priam's daughter? My sister sent word to me that you were the one friend she had found in Troy."

Kassandra bowed; she was not sure that Klytemnestra's next move would not be to thrust a knife through her heart.

"I am Kassandra of Troy, and in Colchis I was made a priestess of Serpent Mother," she said.

Klytemnestra looked at the baby on her breast. She said, "Is that Agamemnon's child?"

"No," said Kassandra, not knowing whence came the courage which bade her speak so boldly. "He ismy son."

"Good," said Klytemnestra, "we want no king's sons in this land. He may live, then."

At that moment, a great shout arose from within the bronze gates; someone thrust them open from inside and Agamemnon appeared on the top of the steps with Aegisthos behind him, bearing the great double-bladed sacrificial axe. He whirled it high and brought it down into the fleeing king's skull. Agamemnon staggered and tripped over the edge of the stairs, falling and rolling down the steps almost to Klytemnestra's feet.

She screamed, "Witness, you people of the city; thus the Lady avenges Iphigenia!"

There was a tremendous cheer and cry of triumph; Aegisthos came down with the bloody axe and handed it to her. A few of Agamemnon's soldiers started a cry of outrage, but Aegisthos's guard quickly struck them down.

Klytemnestra said fiercely to Kassandra, "Have you anything to say, princess of Troy who thought perhaps to be Queen here?"

"Only that I wish I could have held the axe," replied Kassandra, gasping in a wild joy. She bowed to Klytemnestra, and said, "In the name of the Goddess, you have avenged wrongs done to her. When a woman is wronged, she is wronged too."

Klytemnestra bowed to her and took her hands. She said, "You are a priestess, and I knew you would understand these things." She looked into the face of the sleeping child. "I bear you no grudge," she said. "We will have the old ways returned here. Helen has not the spirit to do so in Sparta, but I do. Will you remain here and be the Lady's priestess then? You may enter her Temple if you will."

Kassandra was still breathing hard, her heart pounding at the suddenness of her release. Through Klytemnestra's features she still saw the hunger for destruction; this woman had avenged the dishonor offered the Goddess, but Kassandra still feared her. The Goddess took many forms, but in this form Kassandra did not love her. Never before had she faced a woman so strong: princess

and priestess. For once she had encountered a force stronger than her own.

Or did she but see in Klytemnestra the ancient power of the Goddess as she had been before male Gods and kings invaded this land? She could not serve this Goddess.

"I cannot," she said, as calmly as she could. "I - this is not my country, O Queen."

"Will you return to your own country, then?"

"I cannot return to Troy," Kassandra said. "If you will give me leave to depart, Lady, I will seek my kinswomen in Colchis—"

"A journey like that, with a baby still at the breast?" Klytemnestra asked in astonishment.

Then a curious change came across Klytemnestra's face. An unearthly peace relaxed the sharp features; and she seemed to glow from within. A voice Kassandra knew well said,Yes, I call you home; depart at once from this place, my daughter .

Kassandra bowed to the ground; the word had come. Still she had no idea how she would travel or what would become of her; but she was once again under the protection of the voice which had called her first when she was no more than a child.

Truly had the priestess in Colchis said,The Immortals understand one another .

"I beg leave to depart at once," she said.

And Klytemnestra replied, "Whom a God has called we must not detain. But will you not have rest, fresh clothing, food for yourself and the babe?"

Kassandra shook her head. "I need nothing," she said, knowing that with the gold Agamemnon had given her she was well provided. She wished to accept nothing from Klytemnestra - or from the Goddess of this place.

She departed within the hour.

She went to the harbor, her child tied in her shawl, where she would find a ship to take her and the baby on the first step of the arduous journey halfway to the world's end, which would bring her at last to her kinswoman Imandra and the iron gates of Colchis. And above all, she was no longer blind and deprived of sight; she was herself again and after all the sufferings she knew the Goddess had not yet forsaken her.

On the docks a woman approached her, clad in a ragged earth-coloured tunic, her face covered by a ragged shawl.

"Are you the Trojan princess?" she asked. "I am bound for Colchis—and I have heard you are going there—"

"Yes, I am, but why—"

"I too seek Colchis," the woman said. "A God has called me there; may I bear you company?"

"Who are you?"

"I am called Zakynthia," the woman said.

Kassandra stared at her and could see nothing; perhaps the woman was bound to her by fate; in any case no God forbade it. And even Klytemnestra had doubted her ability to make this long journey alone with an unweaned child. With a sigh of relief she unslung the shawl in which she had tied her son, and passed him over.

"Here," she said. "You can carry the baby till I need to feed him again."

EPILOGUE

The woman was soft-spoken and obedient, even submissive; she cared for the baby, rocking him and keeping him quiet. Kassandra, prey to renewed seasickness, had little opportunity to pay much attention to her child or the woman, though she did watch unobserved for several days to

make certain that the servant - about whom, after all, she knew nothing—could be trusted not to ill-treat or neglect the baby when no one was watching. But she seemed conscientious, attentive to the baby, singing to him and playing with him as if she were really fond of children. After a few days Kassandra decided that she had been fortunate in finding a good servant to care for her child, and relaxed her vigilance somewhat.

And yet Kassandra began to suspect her companion was not what she professed to be.

Underneath the ragged garments the woman seemed strong and healthy; Kassandra could only guess her age - perhaps thirty or even more. When Kassandra was near she was modest in her manner, but her voice was rough and hoarse, and her manners with the sailors and crew were free as an Amazon's. And one morning she was washing herself on the deck when a stray wind blew aside her shawl; her bosom was flat and hard, more like a man's than a woman's, and her legs hairy and muscular. Her face looked as if it had never known cosmetics or smoothing oils. Finally it struck her that Zakynthia might very well be not a woman, but a man.

Why would any man, she wondered, have sought her out in woman's guise? If he was a man, she thought, he might try to have his way with her—although, catching a glimpse of her own reflection in a basin of water, she could not imagine that any man would desire her as she was now: pale from seasickness, dressed in ragged garments, her body still shapeless after childbirth. Even so, she took to sleeping with Agathon in her arms; if the suckling at her breast did not deter a ravisher, probably nothing would, except her knife.

One night of storm, when the ship was tossed about like a cork on the heavy waves, Zakynthia spread her blanket close to Kassandra's, and offered to take the baby into her bed. The waves slammed their blanket-rolls together, sliding first uphill and then downhill in the cramped little cabin, until at last Zakynthia, who was larger and heavier, took Kassandra in her arms.

Kassandra, sick and weary, felt nothing except relief at the shelter her companion's body offered against the constant battering.

After this incident some of her fears subsided. Surely no ordinary man would have ignored such an opportunity. She began to consider other possibilities. Perhaps he was a eunuch, or a healerpriest under vows of chastity. But why then did he wear women's garments and profess himself a woman? Finally she decided that it did not matter, and after a time it occurred to her that she no longer cared whether her companion was a woman or a man. He/she was simply a friend she trusted and was beginning to love. The baby loved her companion too, and was willing to leave his mother's arms to be held and rocked by Zakynthia.

When at last the ship came to shore and they disembarked, she sought through the market for horses.

"But surely, Lady," said the merchant, "you will not travel overland, with a baby and a single servant, into the country of the Kentaurs?"

"I did not know any of them remained alive," Kassandra said, "And I am not afraid of them."

She almost hoped that on their journey they would meet some of that vanished race. She bartered a single link of gold for a horse, and food for the journey; she also bartered for a cloak for herself which could double as a blanket for sleeping, or as a tent.

"We should also have another tunic for you, Zakynthia," she said, turning over in her hand a remnant of woven cloth which might make a cloak for the child. "You are so ragged that you might be a street-sweeper. And as for me, I have been thinking that before we go on, I should cut my hair and wear a man's garment. The babe can soon be weaned. Surely they raise goats hereabouts—it might be somewhat safer for travelling in this wild country. What would you think of that? You are taller and stronger than I; you would perhaps be more convincing as a man."

Her companion stood very still, but she had heard the caught breath of consternation before the other said quietly, "You must do as you think best, Lady; but I cannot put on a man's garment nor travel as one."

"Why not?"

Zakynthia did not meet her eyes.

"It is a vow. I may say no more."

Kassandra shrugged. "Then we shall travel as women."

Kassandra looked up at the gates of Colchis and remembered the first time as a young girl in the Amazon band of Penthesilea she had seen them. She had changed and the world had changed; but the great gates were just the same.

"Colchis," she said quietly to her companion. "The Gods have brought us here at last."

She set Agathon on his feet, he was beginning to toddle at last. If the journey had not been so long, she thought, he might have been really walking already but she had been forced to carry him much of the time instead of letting him crawl or walk around. He was almost two years old now and she could see in the strong development of his little chin, in his dark eyes, the dark curly hair, that he was Agamemnon's son.

Well, at least he would not be trained into Agamemnon's version of manhood.

It had been a long road; but not, she knew now, endless as it had seemed. They had travelled overland mostly at night, hiding by day in woods and ditches. She had worn out several pairs of shoes and the clothing she wore was threadbare and she had had little opportunity to replace it.

There had been encounters on the road with soldiers—veterans of the sack of Troy—but she had seen and heard nothing of the Kentaurs; most of the people to whom she spoke of them believed they were only a legend, and either frankly accused her of telling tales or secretly smiled with contempt when she said she had seen them in her youth.

They had hidden from wandering bands of men, bribed themselves free, used their wits, and sometimes their knives to get out of danger. They had gone cold and hungry - sometimes food was not to be had even for gold—and had stopped once or twice for a whole season to find work as a spinner, or as handlers of animals.

Once they had travelled for a time with a man who was exhibiting'dancing' serpents. They joined once or twice with other lone travellers, and had lost their way for long distances.

And after so many adventures that Kassandra knew she would never dare to try and recount them, they had arrived safely in Colchis.

She picked up the child again as they walked through the gates. She knew she looked like a beggar woman. Her cloak was the same one with which Agamemnon had covered her on board his ship - it had once been crimson, but was now faded to a greyish colourlessness. Her gown was a shapeless tunic of undyed wool; her hair loosely bound with a scrap of leather thong which had once been used to tie a sandal. Zakynthia looked even worse, if possible; less like a beggar woman than some kind of ruffian. Her sandals were worn almost through and she would have had to find another pair in Colchis even if it had not been her destination.

But they had managed to keep the child well and warmly dressed. His tunic - though he was outgrowing it—was from a good piece of wool which she had bought two towns ago and was fastened with a pin made from one of her last bits of gold, and his sandals were stout and strong.

Sometimes she thought he looked less like Agamemnon than like her brother Paris.

"Now we are at journey's end," she said to her companion.

She asked a passer-by the way to the palace, and asked if Queen Imandra still reigned here.

The woman said, "Yes, though she is growing old; there was a rumour from the palace that she was mortally ill, but I do not believe it." She stared at Kassandra's threadbare cloak and asked, "And what can the likes of you want with our Queen?"

Kassandra merely thanked the woman for her help and did not answer. She set off for the palace. After a time Zakynthia picked up the child and carried him. Climbing the palace stairs, she nervously smoothed her hair with her fingers. Perhaps she should have stopped in the market and provided herself with proper clothing to visit the Queen.

She spoke to the guard on duty - one of the old woman guards whom Kassandra actually recognized from her stay in Colchis.

"I would like audience with Queen Imandra."

"I'm sure you would," said the woman, sneering, "but she doesn't see every ragtag and bobtail who comes looking for her."

Kassandra called the woman by name. "Don't you know me? Your sister was one of my novices in the House of Serpent Mother."

"Lady Kassandra!" the woman exclaimed. "But we heard you were dead - that you had perished at Mykenae - that when Agamemnon died, Klytemnestra murdered you too."

Kassandra chuckled. "As you see, I am here alive and well. But I beg you to take me to the Queen."

"Certainly; she will rejoice to know you survived the fall of Troy," the woman said. "She mourned for you as for her own daughter."

The woman wished to take her to a guest chamber and make her ready for her audience; but Kassandra refused. She would have bidden Zakynthia await her, but her companion shook her head.

"I too was bidden here by the hand of the Goddess," her companion said. "And I can reveal only to Imandra why I have come."

Kassandra was eager to know her fellow traveller's story, so she agreed. A few moments later, Kassandra was in her kinswoman's arms.

"I thought you dead in Troy," Imandra said, "with Hecuba and the others—"

"I thought Hecuba went with Odysseus—" Kassandra said.

"No; one of her women made her way here and said Hecuba died - of a broken heart, she said as the ships were loading. It is just as well; Odysseus was shipwrecked, and no one has heard of him since, and'tis now close on three years. Andromache was taken back to one of the Akhaian kings; I cannot remember his barbarian name, but I heard that she lives. And this is your child?" Imandra picked up the little boy and kissed him. "So some good came of all your sorrows?"

"Well, I have survived and made my way here," Kassandra said, and they fell to talking of other survivors of Troy. Helen and Menelaus were still reigning in Sparta, it seemed, and Helen's daughter Hermione was betrothed to the son of Odysseus. Klytemnestra had died in childbirth a year ago and her son Orestes had killed Aegisthos and taken back Agamemnon's Lion Throne.

"And have you heard anything of Aeneas?" Kassandra asked, remembering, with a sweet sadness, starlit nights in the last doomed summer of Troy.

"Yes; his adventures are widely told; he visited in Carthage and had a love affair with the Queen. They say, when the Gods called him away, she killed herself in despair, but I believe it not. If any Queen was fool enough to kill herself over a man, so much the worse for her. She cannot be much of a woman and still less of a Queen. Then the Gods called him far to the North, where, they say, he took the Palladium from the Trojan Temple of the Maiden, and founded a city."

"I am glad to hear he is safe," Kassandra said. Perhaps she should have gone with Aeneas to his new world, but no God had called her. Aeneas had his own fate; and it was not hers. "And Creusa?"

"I fear I do not know her fate," Imandra said. "Did she even escape Troy?"

Kassandra began to wonder. She remembered parting from Creusa, but it had been so long ago she wondered if she had dreamed it. All things surrounding the fall of the city were like dreams to her now.

"And you remember my daughter Pearl—" Imandra said. "Come here, child, and greet your kinswoman."

The child came forward and greeted Kassandra with such poise that Kassandra did not kiss her as she would have done with any other child her age. "How old is she now?" she asked.

"Nearly seven," Imandra said, "and she will rule Colchis after me; we still keep to the old ways here. With good fortune that will never change."

"There is not that much good fortune left in the world," Kassandra said, "but it will not change tomorrow nor the day after."

"So you are still gifted with the Sight?"

"Not all the time, nor for many things," Kassandra said.

"So what do you want of me, Kassandra? I can give you gold, clothing, shelter—you are my kinswoman, and you are welcome to remain in my house as a daughter - that would be most welcome to me. I know the temple of Serpent Mother would welcome you as the chief of their priestesses."

Klytemnestra had offered her this; but she knew it was too late to spend her life within walls.

"Or if you wish," said Imandra, "I will do as your father should have done long since, and find you a husband."

Kassandra said fiercely, T am as little inclined as ever to be some man's property. In less than a year with Agamemnon I had a lifetime's worth of that."

Zakynthia suddenly interrupted, came forward and fell prostrate before Imandra.

"O Queen," the rough voice entreated, "it was laid on me by the Goddess to come to this city for your help. The Gods have calledme to found a city, and I cannot do it alone. At first I thought the Goddess had sent me here to know if any of the Amazons yet survived; for the Goddess sent me a vision that only such a woman could assist me in this task."

"And who are you?" asked Imandra.

"My name is Zakynthos," said the one Kassandra had known as Zakynthia. "Is there none left of the Amazon women who could help me to found a city where the Goddess is served without Gods or kings? I would not have an ordinary wife after the fashion of the Akhaians, but one who can serve as a priestess in the city. Yet I have heard there are no more such women—"

"No," Kassandra said. "No Amazon outlived that last battle, where Penthesilea died."

"I cannot accept that," Zakynthos said, putting back the veil he had worn as a woman. "Now I am free of my vow, I will search the world over if I must—"

"What was your vow?" Imandra asked.

"To live as a woman until I came here to Colchis, so that I might know the life women must lead," he said. "Before I had worn women's garb three days, I knew why women must go in fear, and so I sought protection from the Trojan princess - and in her company as we travelled I discovered why women seek to be free of men; she needed no man's protection or help—"

"Yet," Kassandra said warmly,"the protection you gave me—sharing my journey and my burdens—"

"But it was not because I was a man," Zakynthos said, "and again and again, I swore I would search the world over, if I must, for a woman in whom the Amazon's spirit still lived."

"And so," Imandra said, "have you not found one?"

"I have," said he, and turned to Kassandra, "and I have come to know her well."

Kassandra laughed and said, "I have long outlived any desire for weapons, Zakynthos. Yet— how will you found your city?"

"I will sail far to the west into the great sea and there find a place where a city can be built," he began. "Outside these accursed isles where men worship gods of iron and oppression—"

Listening, Kassandra could not but remember Aeneas; this had been his desire too. She would willingly have helped him fulfil it, and Zakynthos seemed to have been fired by that same spirit.

"I seek a world where Earth Mother will be worshipped in the old ways," he said with enthusiasm. "It is she who has given me this vision,a dream of a city where women are not slaves, and, where men need not spend their lifetimes in war and fighting. There must be a better way for both men and women to live than this great war which consumed all my childhood and took the lives of my father and all my brothers—"

"And of mine," Kassandra said.

"And of yours."

Zakynthos turned and knelt again before Imandra. "I beseech you as this woman's kinswoman, give me leave to take her in marriage—"

Imandra said, "But marriage is one of the evils which came with the new ways; who am I to give her to you, as if she were a slave?"

Zakynthos said with a sigh, "You are right. Kassandra, we have travelled far together; you know me well. Will you continue to travel with me—to build a world better than Troy?"

She said slowly, thinking of their long journey together, "But, like other men, you will want a son—"

"I have carried your son at least half this long way in my arms," he said. "If I can be a mother to your son, do you doubt I can be a father to him too? For I think if I sought the world over I could not find a woman more suited to my purposes. And I think perhaps it would suit your purposes too," he added, smiling. "Do you wish to sit here at Imandra's court and spin thread?"

"It does not trouble you that I was forced to be Agamemnon's concubine and that I bore him a child? All men will know," she said. He smiled very gently and again she thought of Aeneas.

"Only as much as it troubles you," he said. "And as for the boy, he isyour son, and you have seen how well I love him. Some day we may have others for whom I can be both father and mother as well—" His voice was very tender as he added, "I would like to have a daughter like you."

She had spent too much of her life with the idea that she could never marry, yet this war had taken all her kindred and she had no place of her own. And the Amazons too were gone, as Troy was gone.

Their new city might be one where men and women need not be enemies, where the Gods were not the implacable enemies of the Goddess…

If Troy could not last forever, there was no assurance that the new city would. But if for her lifetime's work she could have a share in building a city where men did not deform their sons into fighters so that they need not follow cruel Gods into battle or their daughters into men's playthings, then her life would be well spent.

She remembered the young girl she had been, seated in the Sunlord's house and dealing out wisdom to the petitioners. What had she said then?

I give such answers as they could give if they could trouble themselves to use such wits as the Gods gave them, she remembered. But she had added,Before I speak, always, I pause and wait in case the God has another answer to be given .

She listened within her heart, but there was only silence, and the memory of a God's burning smile. Might a day come when like any dutiful wife she would see the face of the God in her husband? She looked at Zakynthos. He was no Sunlord, but his face was honest and kind. She could hardly imagine a God speaking through him, but at least what he said would not be cruel or capricious. Agamemnon had been no worse than Poseidon, Paris had set Troy aflame at the bidding of a Goddess more cruel and capricious than any man. The worst of men, in her lifetime, had been no worse than the best of Gods, and what evil they had done, they had done at the bidding of Gods made in their own image.

She listened, but no God's voice spoke to forbid her; she knew at that moment what her answer would be, and already her heart was racing forward across the great sea to a new world which, if it was no better than the old, would at least be as much better as men and women could make it.

"Let us go, Zakynthos, to search for our city. Perhaps one day those who come after us will know the truth of Troy and its fall," she said, and took his hand in her own.

Somewhere, a Goddess smiled. She did not think it was Aphrodite.

POSTSCRIPT

TheIliad had nothing to say of the fate of Kassandra of Troy. Aeschylus in hisAgamemnon presents her as a sharer in his death at the hands of Klytemnestra; it was regarded as perfectly permissible to introduce characters from theIliad if their fate had not become a part of that poem. Euripides shows Kassandra as one of the Trojan captives; interestingly she is the one woman who suggests revenge on their captors, but it is also made clear that she is insane. Yet another dramatic appearance shows Kassandra as leading the women of Troy in a heroic mass suicide.

However, tablet number 803 in the Archaeological Museum in Athens reads as follows:

Zeus of Dodona, give heed to this gift

I send you from me and my family;

Agathon son of Ekhephylos,

The Zakynthian family,

Consuls of the Molossians and their allies,

descended for 30 generations

From Kassandra of Troy.

Hunters 1 Hunters of the Red Moon (1973)

COPYRIGHT 1973, BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

All Rights Reserved. Cover art by Carl Lundgren

DEDICATION

Grateful thanks and acknowledgments are due to PAUL EDWIN ZIMMER

Marshal and Weapons Consultant of the Society for Creative Anachronism who kindly supplied me with information about the nature and use of all the weapons used in the Hunt, and provided continuity for all the fighting scenes. However, the reader is urgently requested not to blame him for any feckless mistakes which I may have made in using the material which he supplied.

Whatever is good or accurate in what I say of weapons is my good brother's; whatever is wrong or misinformed is certainly my own.

-M.Z.B.

CHAPTER ONE

That speck of light had been hanging in the same part of the sky, it seemed, for a long time.

Dane Marsh lounged on the prow of the Seadrift, naked except for trunks and a loose shirt flung over his sunburned shoulders, and watched the unmoving point of light. Sun on the wing of a plane, he thought Sign of life, the first in days. Human life, that is; plenty of flying fish,dolphins; depends how far you want to go down the scale to call life; billions and billions of shrimp and plankton.

But we're off the regular jet plane routes, and way off the shipping lanes. The last ship I sighted was that tanker nineteen days ago.

He wondered if it was a plane.

He entertained himself briefly with the thought of men in business suits, women in nylons and furs, seated in orderly rows, maybe even watching a movie, eighteen hundred miles from the nearest coast. Out here, where two hundred years ago, Captain Bligh and twenty-two men sailed

for weeks and months in an open boat, starving and burned up by the sun; and now Pan American Airlines flew over the same area in a few hours, just time enough for an American first-run movie and a couple of drinks.

I wouldn't mind one of those drinks, right now, with ice in it, Dane thought. Seadrift did pretty well, all things considered, in the food and drink department, what with freeze-dried chow mein and beef stroganoff, but he would like a long cool drink with ice in it, served to him by one of those pretty stewardesses. A refrigerator on a thirty-foot boat would be stretching things a little.

Damn it, that plane doesn't seem to be moving. It's just hanging there. One place.

Obviously, then, Dane told himself without moving from his idle vantage point, it couldn't be a plane. Reflection on a cloud, or something.

For miles around, in every direction, the Pacific was quiet, slow ripples moving, almost imperceptibly, out of the east and dying away toward the sunset. Seadrift was ghosting along, her vast acreage of spinnaker set to catch the lightest of airs-a light breeze usually sprang up about sundown-but for the moment, even the solitary crew was superfluous. Dane Marsh knew he should get up, check the self-steering, go below and make himself a pot of tea, put out a fishline for any stray overnight catch, but the cumulative effect of sun and sea and silence held him half hypnotized, staring at the distant and unmoving light which looked more and more like the typical circular flash of sunlight on bright metal, the wing of a distant plane. He liked the idea that it was a plane, that there were other human beings within sight, if out of reach. Stewardesses

in miniskirts.

It's been two hundred and eighty-four days, by actual count, since I saw a woman who could speak English. Or even one who couldn't. Why the hell did I ever get this notion, anyway? Sailing around the world- alone in a small boat-it's not as if I'd be the first. Or even the fastest.

It seemed a good idea at the time, that's all.

So what if he wasn't the first? These days, everything worth doing, in the adventure line, had already been done. Climbing Everest Sailing around the Horn alone. Reaching the North Pole. Everything except going to the moon, and that took a kind of education and sponsorship he never could manage.

I envy the first guy to hike around it on foot. Now there's an adventure for some lucky bastard, someday. . . .

Reluctantly, Dane Marsh hauled himself up from his lazy perch. Work to be done. The sails were slamming in the first wisps of the oncoming night breeze; he adjusted the jib and the poledout spinnaker slightly, and set a new tack, then went down to root out some supper. Belowdecks the cabin was stifling in the heat; he had debated taking advantage of the quiet sea to cook something hot, but the steambath effect discouraged him. He opened a packet of rye crackers and a tin of cheese, dumped lemon crystals into drinking water and stirred in sugar, and carried the food and drink on deck, to catch the breeze.

The light lingered long in these latitudes at this time of year, and the sun lingered, low and red on the horizon, making a crimson and scarlet track across the barely moving sea. A tiny crescent of moon, a mere scrap of silver, hung low and dim above the setting sun. High above, a glimmer of the evening star-

No, Dane Marsh thought incredulously, it's the same damn light!

He knitted his brows, determined to solve the puzzle. A plane? Hell no; the oldest prop plane would have been miles out of sight-range by now. A jet would have been long gone while he was watching it. Satellite? No; they move. Weather balloon? Well, maybe one could drift this far off an inhabited coast, possibly with the wind from Australia, but it would be a real freak.

He bit into his crackers and cheese, watching the strange light which hung, seeming to brighten, in the slowly fading red twilight. It seemed self-luminous, and was now the apparent diameter of a golf ball.

Some weather phenomenon, no doubt, but one I've never seen in fifteen years spent mostly at sea.

Oh, well, he told himself, if there was one thing you learned at sea, it was that you've always got more to learn. This old world still had plenty of surprises left for people who kept their eyes and ears open, Dane thought, munching at his crackers.

It was getting bigger. Now it was the apparent size of a small dinnerplate, and had elongated somewhat from round to oval.

I wonder if this is what people are seeing when they report seeing flying saucers-excuse meUnidentified Flying Objects! This was sure as hell some kind of flying object, and it was about as unidentified as he ever saw!

Now he could see that it was definitely solid, although without any idea as to its actual1 distance he could not judge its size. He watched, in growing wonder and wild surmise, as it settled slowly down toward the surface of the water and grew ever greater, greater, more huge and unbelievably contoured.

Flying saucer? Flying skyscraper, more like it!

It was bigger than an ocean liner; bigger than a tanker.

No plane ever built was this size. Not even the Russians ...

Fear surged over him. Not, yet, the obvious fear of the great vessel, but-to a man of Dane Marsh's type-a deeper, more compelling fear.

Have I freaked out? Loneliness does weird things to people. . ..

He fought for calm, setting his teeth and reaching out to grip the familiar mast of the Seadrift. The smooth white paint he had just renewed two months ago, already specked with the relentless eroding of the salt. His own hand, calloused with handling ropes and spars. His pulse, a little elevated with fright, was still perceptible and pounding steadily away, and his eyes were clear, for when he moved his head and blinked the huge strange thing had not moved.

Well, I'm not nuts, anyway. Not dreaming or hallucinating.

Therefore, even if there isn't any such thing, that thing is definitely there. If I'm seeing it, and there's nothing wrong with my eyes, it must exist.

And therefore-his breath caught in his throat at the next, inescapable step of his logic-if no country on Earth has ever built anything remotely like this, it must somehow come from outside.

He discovered that his arms and legs were ridged, in the heat of the tropical sunset, with gooseflesh. Outside. In one great step, his awareness had transcended the slow steps of scientists toward the stars. There was something out there.

And it swept over him, with a shuddering thrill. Did I think there weren't any adventures left?

Hard on the heels of that came a sudden icy fear. All this time, and they had kept their very existence secret; what would happen to him if they happened to notice him watching them? He

did not yet believe they were malicious. Why should they be? A spaceship capable of traveling interstellar distances (what strange metal was that hull, pale with a shimmer like a peacock's wing?) would pay no more attention to a little ship like the Sea-drift than he, Dane Marsh, paid to a flying fish. (But then, what did he do when a flying fish landed on his deck in the morning? Sometimes he threw it back. But if he happened to be hungry, he fried it for breakfast.)

Dane Marsh began, moving swiftly and steadily, to tack his ship to wear around. He was curious, yes, but he'd rather watch from a safer distance. He had no desire to end up in a sort of galactic frying pan.

His arms felt heavy and clumsy as he lifted them to haul on the ropes; then a curious buzzing sound, a tingling, began to ring in his ears. He was possessed with a sense of frantic urgency, but it seemed as if he were wading through a sticky pool of molasses; it was an effort to lift his foot from the deck, and the growing sense of unreality swept him with renewed terror.

Is this all a hallucination, then? A bad dream turning into a nightmare?

With savage effort, he twisted his head around so that he could see the great looming ship. Slowly, slowly, a hatchway was opening, and a blinding light shining from inside, but Dane Marsh hit the deck and lay there, clawing faintly as he struggled to rise.

By the time the deck swayed under the strange alien step, he was unconscious, still struggling in his dreams.

They were off the jet routes and way off the shipping lanes, and no other eye on Earth saw the great ship before it winked out of normal space five miles above the central Pacific Ocean. The Seadrift was found, empty, drifting, five weeks later by a yacht bound for Hawaii . . .

CHAPTER TWO

Dane Marsh came up to awareness with a savage pain in his throat, rising up out of confused nightmares of wild beasts clawing at his jugular vein, of spurting blood and smells which somehow roused an atavistic terror (lions, fresh blood, the faint rottenness of something dead), and then, all at once, he was conscious. His eyes, flicking open, took in all at once the white cold surroundings, the two forms (nightmare! Man-tall, but flat-faced, furred-a lion's mane!) bending over him. The needles still in his throat. He ripped, tensed swelling muscles, straggled to cry out, but only a tearing numbness lanced with split-second prickles of agony burst his throat

He was strapped down. Tied, hand and foot, not a muscle to move-

Tortured!

He squeezed his eyes shut again, hi spasmodic horror, then, fighting for calm, slowly opened them. His throat was numb, now, without pain; had they tried to remove his vocal cords? The

two lion-faced creatures had hands not too unlike human hands, working delicately about his throat, but now he felt no pain at all, only an odd numbness. Well, whatever the hell they were up to, he couldn't have moved an eyebrow to stop them, so they couldn't mean him all that much harm if they went to this much trouble to anesthetize him.

He looked around. Odd metallic things hanging from smooth bulkheads; unidentifiable, but they'd have been equally baffling, he supposed, in a really up-to-date hospital. He studied the two lion-faced things. They had hands with, he realized, a double thumb, moving with extreme deft suppleness, and the hands were encased in thin cloth of some sort. They both wore coverall garments of gray-blue fabric. He wished he could see what they were doing with his throat. There was a sudden wrench as one of them twisted and adjusted something there, then he felt the painless prick and tug; they were sewing him up. One of them touched him briefly with a long light-tipped wand, and spoke aloud,

"You'd think sooner or later some of these savages would realize we're not trying to hurt them, but they all fight like fiends," the first one said. "This one's not as bad as most. Is he hooked up yet?"

Dane Marsh blinked. Were they speaking English? No, if he listened carefully he could hear the curious guttural syllables, but they made sense....

"I think so, I'll try him," the second, slightly taller one said, and bent over Dane Marsh. "Please don't struggle, and we will let you go; we don't want you to injure yourself. We have simply

equipped you with an implanted translator disk. See, now you can understand what is said to you. Please tell me if you can hear and understand what I am saying."

Dane Marsh found that the straps holding him to the table were slackened slightly so that he could sit up, although his wrists were still strapped down. He ran Ms tongue over dry lips. He felt parched. His voice felt hoarse and strange as he said, "Yes, I can hear you all right. Whatwhere am I? How did I get here? What do you want with me?"

"All right," said one to the other. "Successful. I don't like the ones where they never do understand, and we have to treat them like cattle. Nice work."

"Mmm, yes. Not much area for the disk in this one. I was afraid I'd cut a nerve. I haven't had much luck with proto-simians. Okay, take him back to the rest, then."

Dane shouted, "Answer me, damn you! What do you want with me? How did I get here? Who are you people, anyway?"

One of the lion-faced things said, "This is the part that always gets me. When they start asking for answers. It's a lousy job, all things considered." He prodded Dane with the light-tipped wand; Dane flinched with the sharp, painful electric shock.

The other creature said, "No need for that, Ferati, he isn't one of the dangerous kind. Anyway, there's a tangler field up there if we need it." He looked at Dane, warily loosing his wrist straps

and said, "It isn't our duty to answer your questions, but they will be answered in due time. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by being patient. In a few minutes someone will come to take you back to your quarters. Now if you will go peacefully, perhaps we can make you a little more comfortable. Is your mouth dry? That's only the aftereffects of the anesthetic and the tangler field they used when they brought you on board. Here, try this." He handed Dane a disposable cup of some liquid; Dane found he could move one hand. He sipped it gingerly and found it was sour but remarkably thirst-quenching.

Over his head one of them said, "I wonder if he's going to be one of the more intelligent and tractable ones."

"Hope so. The Old Man is always talking about getting a couple of real wild ones, but last time"

A speaker on the wall buzzed and one of the lion-faced creatures said without looking up, "Right away," and, taking the cup from Dane, indicated that he should stand up. "Go over to that door. Someone will be there to take you to your quarters...."

Dane dug in his heels stubbornly. "Not until I get a few questions answered," he said. "I know I'm on board a spaceship. But why? Where do you come from? What are you going to do with me?"

The being who had shocked him with the wand made a threatening gesture. "I already told you;

it is no part of our duty to answer your questions. Do as you're told and you won't get hurt."

Dane put Ms head down and rushed. He actually seized the lion-headed creature with one outstretched hand, giving a sharp judo twist

And the roof fell in on him and he disappeared.

When Dane Marsh woke again he was in. a cage.

That was his first impression; shadows of slanting bars running up and down between him and the light, which was bluish-white and pale. A cage.

He stirred, sat up, dizzily clutching his head.

On second look, more prison than cage. A large barred room, lined on one wall with sleeping bunks, netting crisscrossed in front of them-he supposed, to keep the occupants from falling out during fast maneuvers. In the large room there were about a dozen people.

People; loosely. About half of them were human like himself, or with differences too minor for him to see at once. None were the lion-faced breed he had met hi the place where he had awakened before, which he supposed was a sort of ship's hospital. But about half of the occupants of the room where he found himself were very much like himself. The others weredifferent.

There was a being at least eight feet tall, who reminded him strangely of a spider; gray and fuzzy and with strange large- eyes; and he had a confused impression of more arms and legs than there ought to be, although he couldn't quite figure out why. There was one who was squat and powerfully built with leathery skin or leathery clothing and a face-mask of the same. It was too much for Dane Marsh to take in all at once.

My God, am I in a zoo? Just one of the animals?

"Not a zoo," said a woman, standing by his bunk, and Dane realized he had spoken aloud. The words sounded strange but Dane seemed to "hear" them resonating against the disk which the lion-things had implanted in his throat He supposed it was a mechanical translator of some sort; he couldn't even begin to imagine the technology which had created such a thing. "No, you're not in a zoo. Not quite. You'd probably be better off if you were. This is a Mekhar slave ship."

He started to swing his legs over the bunk; the woman bent and helped unstrap the webbing from the front. He said, "How long was I out?"

"A couple of hours. They must have used a tangler set to stun-they have one in the hospital, and I imagine they captured you with one."

Dane thought back to the last moments on the deck of the Seadrift. "Yes. My arms and legs kept moving slower and slower and I finally must have passed out. It was a nightmare."

"It was real enough," the woman said somberly. She was about Dane's age, with red hair waving loosely, uncombed, and wearing a sort of loose shirt and trousers which looked like what a Russian or Israeli girl soldier would wear. "Are you from one of the worlds of the Unity? Slaving is forbidden in any of the Unity star-systems, but the Mekhar ships do it anyway; it pays well enough for them to risk it."

Dane said, "I'm sorry. This is too much for me to take in. You mean your ship really does come from the stars?"

She said, "As nearly as I can figure out, we've covered about thirty star-systems. The slave quarters are almost full; I expect they'll be heading for the Mekhar marts quite soon now. It's rare for them to pick up only one person on a planet; does your world have good guard systems against slave raids?"

"None of us on my world have any idea such things exist," Dane said wryly. "People who talk about ships from the stars are usually locked up-or laughed at anyway, as lunatics. I was sailing alone in a small boat"

"Out of sight of land? That explains it, then; they just swooped down and grabbed you up, probably expecting to find eight or ten people aboard," the redheaded woman said. "Somebody in the control room is probably getting a clawing-out right now."

"The Mekhars? Are they the lion-faced things I saw?" He hesitated, reflecting that she might not know what a lion was, but evidently the mechanical translator provided her with the nearest equivalent, for she said, "Yes, they're proto-felines, and I personally think they're the most savage people in the Galaxy. They've been five times refused membership in the Unity, you know. You-oh, excuse me, if your world is a Closed world, you probably don't even know what the Unity is. Do you have space travel?"

"Only on a small scale. We're exploring our own moon and have had two or three manned expeditions to Mars-our fourth planet," Dane said.

"Well, the Unity is-I suppose you'd say it's a loose Peace-and-Trade Federation. It was the Unity which first formulated the concept of Universal Sapience; before that the proto-felines looked down on us-the proto-simians-and proto-reptilians on both. And so forth and so on. You can catch up on that some other time. Tell me, what's your name?"

He told her. "And yours?" he asked. "How did you happen to be captured? Doesn't your world believe in starships either?"

She shook her head. "No. I took a calculated risk. I'm an anthropologist and I was exploring a deserted artificial satellite, under permit, for traces of a prehistoric technology. I was warned that there had been a Mekhar raid in the next star-system but it seemed to me a very small chance they'd make it their next stop. I took the chance-and lost. They killed my brother, and one of my three colleagues. One of the others is over there"-she pointed to where a heavyset man, with a

strong ethnic resemblance to the woman, was deep in conversation with a tall frail-looking girl"and the other was wounded in the raid and he's still in the ship's hospital. Unless they've killed him, too, as damaged merchandise." Her tone was indescribably bitter. Dane didn't blame her. "My name is Rianna. For all the good it does me now."

She fell silent, and Dane looked around. Beyond the cage where he was, there were further cages, equally barred and half open, all filled with people as far as he could see. He said, "How can it possibly pay them to stop on a planet for one person?"

She shrugged. "Normally it doesn't Slaves are luxury merchandise and they usually take more. Before we were luxury goods, I gather we were not so well-treated, but now they go to great pains to keep us well and happy. They even equip us with translator disks, in spite of the fact that it permits us to talk and possibly even plot against them, because-they say-when we can't communicate with our fellow prisoners it's bad for our morale."

There was a stir down the open corridor between the rows of barred cages, and a loud clanging sound. Rianna said, with a wry grimace, "Feeding time for the animals."

Two of the lion-faced creatures were wheeling a large cart down the hallway. As they drew even with each door, one of them leveled a narrow black tube-evidently a weapon of some sort-at the doorway while the other unloaded several flat packaged trays from the cart, each tray in a different color, and carried them into the cell-or cage. Dane watched the proceeding without moving. When they had finished, the clanging sound came again and Rianna said, "We can go

now and get the food. If anyone moves while they're unloading, he gets shot with the nerve-gun. It might not kill you, but it's set to maximum pain-stimulation and it's like being dipped in boiling oil." She shuddered. "I got in the way when we were captured; it was three days before I could move without wanting to scream."

Dane had wondered about that; why all the prisoners in any one cage didn't rush the guards at once. He said, "Doesn't anyone ever try to get loose?"

"Not twice," she said with a wry face. "And if you did get loose, where would you go? There are eighty Mekhars, all with nerve-guns, loose on this ship-maybe more." She moved to where the other cell-mates were taking up the food. Rummaging through the stacked trays, she found two color-coded with blue and green stripes. "This is Universal coding for proto-simian food. In a pinch you can eat the plain green or the plain blue. Never touch red-coded or orange-coded stuff; it hasn't the right vitamins. And the yellow-coded stuff will poison you; it's coded for insectivores."

The redheaded man with the strong ethnic resemblance to Rianna came over to them, tray in hand. They dropped on the floor to eat. He said to Dane, "Welcome to the fellowship of the damned," as he tore open his package. "My name is Roxon. I see Rianna has been welcoming you."

"Dane Marsh," Dane said. He slowly opened the package. Heated by some internal mechanism, the food was smoking hot, and, when he began to spoon it up, surprisingly tasty; some kind of

mush, slightly sweet, some kind of crisp textured stuff, slightly salty; a soup-like liquid, somewhat bitter, but good. "At least these Mekhars, or whatever you call them, don't mean to starve us."

"Why should they?" The squat creature with the leathery skin-at close range Dane could see that it was skin-came and hunkered down beside them. "Welcome, fellow thinker, in the name of Universal Sapience and Peace." His package was coded in yellow and red stripes. Dane caught a whiff of it; it smelled slightly sulphurous and decaying, but the leathery-skinned creature began to eat it with gusto, using his long prehensile fingers with extreme fastidious delicacy, allowing the food to rest only on the tips, and tearing it up with long strong teeth. "Why should they not treat us well? We are their profit My world is a poor one and I am seldom this well-fed, but what does the Voice of the Egg say? May his wisdom live till the suns burn out. Surely it is better to hunt flies in a stinking swamp, and live at peace, than to feast on fine foods in a great house torn by war and strife"

Dane almost chuckled. To hear calm philosophy spoken by a huge and savage reptile-the giant, squat being turned, his teeth bared.

"Do you laugh at the wisdom of the Divine Egg, stranger?" His voice was very soft and gentle.

"By no means," Dane said, drawing back slightly. "There is a similar proverb in my own-er-my own race's Great Book of Wisdom; it says, 'Better to live in a corner of the housetop than to dwell in a broad house with a brawling woman."

"Er, hmmm," rumbled the lizard-man, "Surely all wisdom is one, my proto-simian friend. Even in slavery one may find material for philosophy, then. Yet share your laughter, friend."

Dane said, fumbling for words, "Among my people, it is thought amusing when words of peace are spoken by-by anyone of-of a warlike and fierce aspect, and by my standards you look-erfierce. No offense meant."

"None taken," he said gently, "although surely it is the large and fierce person who needs to look and speak with peaceful wisdom, in order not to affront others, while the small and weak person proclaims his peaceful nature with his very appearance."

"It doesn't always work that way on my world," Dane said. Not in his wildest dreams had he ever thought of discussing philosophy over a shared meal with a giant reptile-no; he was obviously a man of some sort. But it was mind-boggling, certainly a Mad Tea Party if there ever was one.

"My name is Aratak," the leathery lizard-man said.

Dane told the man his name, and he repeated it thoughtfully. "I know not what a Dane may be, but a Marsh is my homeplace name, and we are therefore home-brothers, friend Marsh. Let us be brethren in misfortune, then, since all marshes are one marsh, as all seas are one sea, and all swamps are one swamp within the Cosmic All."

Dane Marsh scratched his head. There was an element of madness about this giant philosopher that he liked. "It suits me," he said.

"We shall explore one another's spiritual philosophy at leisure," Aratak said. "As for me, I have proved what I knew, but never fully believed before; that Universal Sapience is a truth and not only a spiritual philosophy. I have learned in these weeks of slavery that true brotherhood can exist between men and humanoids. I had paid only lip service to it before; it seemed to me that no true intelligence could exist in proto-simians, for they must spend so much of their metabolic cycle enslaved to their reproductive needs. Simians on my planet are only good for pets, and I had never known one in the Fellowship of the Unity before. So to all of you"-Dane and Rianna ducked as his large-clawed gesture took them all in-"my eternal thanks for an enlargement of my spiritual growth."

Roxon said somberly, "Let's hope we live long enough for the spiritual growth to do us some good in what's left of our lives," and they all fell silent again. Dane scraped his tray clean of the last morsel of food and put it aside. He felt better now. He knew where he was, and there was no immediate prospect of death or torture.

Nevertheless the prospect was anything but pleasing. All his life Dane Marsh had been a man of action, in a modern world where that takes some doing. In modern society most men walk an orderly path from the cradle to the grave, not acting so much as being acted upon; Dane had spent his whole life breaking out of that mold, and now the enforced helplessness weighed upon

him with an almost personal rage. Caught up without warning, caged, equipped against his will with the damned translator disk which made a thin painless lump against the skin of his neck-it made things easier, but still it was something that had been done to him against his will.

Now that the food was restoring his strength, the infuriating sense of helplessness was turning rapidly to anger. These people, these citizens of a great Galactic civiliza tion, might sit in their cages and wait for whatever the Mekhar slave ships did to them; he didn't intend to.

He heard, outside, the clanging sound which he had heard first when the Mekhar came into the corridor to distribute the food. He filed it away for future reference; evidently a single mechanism unlocked all the cage doors when the feeding cycle began and locked them again when it was completed. The Mekhar were evidently pretty confident in their weapons and the terror they inspired .in their prisoners, to leave the cages unlocked so long,, That knowledge might be useful later, but for the moment Dane decided to bide his time.

The other captives in their cell-the hairy creature who gave the impression of more arms and legs than he should have had (Dane decided it was the curious way the limbs were segmented and jointed), a couple of ordinary-looking men and women, a tall narrow-faced creature who seemed covered with dark fur-were finishing their trays of food. One tray had not been touched, and Dane noticed it had the green-and-blue coding that identified human food. He looked around the cell. Yes; on a low bunk beside the wall, a slender form lay motionless, enveloped in a long white robe, the face turned away from them.

Dane said, "What's the matter with that one? Hurt, sick, dead?"

"Dying," Rianna said quietly. "She has refused food for ten meal-periods now. She is an empath from Spica Four; they prefer to die, when away from their worlds. It won't be long now. It's all we can do for her now-to let her die in peace."

Dane looked at the redheaded woman with a throb of revulsion. "And you're all just sitting here and letting her starve herself to death?"

"Of course," Rianna said indifferently. "I told you, they always die, away from their own world and their own people."

"And it doesn't bother you!" Dane burst out passionately.

"Oh, it bothers me." Her voice was quiet "But why should I interfere with her chosen fate? Sometimes I think she is wiser than we."

Dane's face set in lines of disgust. He scrambled to his feet and picked up the extra packet of food. He said, "Well, I'm not going to sit here and watch a woman die.

if I can do anything about it." He strode across the room to where the woman lay. He was fuming. Just sit there and let her starve herself to death!

She did not move as he approached her, and for a moment he wondered if she was already dead, or too far gone to be within his reach. He stood for a few moments over her bunk, looking down in a sort of wonder at the beauty of the girl who lay there.

Formless thoughts cascaded through his mind: This is what I seem always to have been seeking, that elusive something I always thought must be just over the next mountain peak . . . beyond the next wave . . . at the end of the rainbow. I didn't know it could be a woman ... or take a woman's form....

And she's lying here dying, and we're both hopeless and in prison. Do I see her as all beauty only because it's too late . . .? Does the impossible dream come within reach only when it's forever out of reach?

In a wonder that was beyond pain, he stood motionless, the food tray forgotten and hanging from his hand; then some faint, imperceptible movement like a soft breath made him aware that she was still alive. And at once his formless thoughts of impossible beauty receded in a wash of hard, practical sanity. Forget all that! She was just a girl, lying here slowly dying, but maybe not too far gone yet. The wonder and awe died away in a surge of purely human pity. He knelt down beside her and reached out, lightly, to touch her shoulder.

Before his hand -actually touched her, as if the very clamor of his thoughts disturbed her, she stirred and turned slightly toward him. Her eyes, deep-set beneath feathery dark brows, opened.

She was so pale that somehow he had expected the eyes to be blue; instead they were deep russet-brown, the wide eyes of a forest animal. Her lips moved slightly as if she were trying to speak, but her voice was too weak to be heard; it was only a faint murmur of protest, of curiosity.

He said in a gentle voice, "Here, I've brought your food. Try to eat"

A murmured negative.

"Now listen," Dane said firmly. "This is nonsense. While you're alive you have a duty to all of us; to keep up your strength, in case we have a chance for escape or something like that Suppose we were rescued, or es caped, and you were too weak to move, and we had to carry you, and we were all recaptured because we had to stop and help you along? Wouldn't that be a dreadful thing to do to all of us?"

Her lips moved again and somehow he had the impression of a faint smile, although the limp and strengthless features did not actually move. The words were so quiet that Dane had to bend low to hear.

"Why should any of you ... drink my cup...?"

"Because we're all human and all in this together," he said firmly. But he wondered, were they really? None of them had cared enough to keep the girl alive, and maybe it was that knowledge that had made her want to die. . . .

"Well, anyway, I care," he said, and his fingers sought her hand. "Come on. If you're too weak to feed yourself, I'll feed you." He tore open the package, watching the self-heating element gradually permeate it with steaming heat. He spooned up a little of the soupy liquid and put it to her lips. "Come on, swallow," he said. "Start with this, it's easy."

For a moment he thought she would keep her lips obstinately shut; then she relaxed them and let the soup slip inside, and after a moment he saw her throat move and knew she had swallowed it. He felt a vast, wild sense of elation, but he was careful not to show it, only withdrawing the spoon and raising another careful spoonful to her lips. After two or three more reluctant mouthfuls she stirred as if she wanted to raise herself, and Dane put his arm around her and supported her shoulders; he fed her the soup and a little of the mush, then withheld the spoon when she nodded for more.

"Not just now. You shouldn't eat too much right away after such a long fast; wait a little before you take any more," Dane advised, and she smiled faintly in comprehension as he let her slide down on her pillow. "Yes, try to sleep again now, and next time you'll be stronger."

Her eyes were closing with weakness, but she opened them again with effort and whispered, ". . . are you?"

"Just another prisoner," he said. "My name's Dane Marsh. We'll get acquainted when you're stronger. And your name is-"

"Dallith," she whispered, and abruptly dropped into sleep again, as completely withdrawn from him as if she were dead.

Dane stood for a few more moments watching her, then straightened, reclaiming what was left of the food tray and laying it on a piece of furniture.

Dallith. How lovely, and how it suited her delicate face and wild-creature eyes. For the moment it was enough to know that she lived, that she had chosen to live. He turned away, seeing that the other prisoners had broken up into separate groups; but Rianna was still watching him. As he came away she said with a deep bitterness, "You fool! What have you done?"

Dane said, "I think she'll live. It only needed someone to care whether she did or not. Any of you could have done it."

Rianna said with inexpressible wrath, "How could you do that to her? After she had given up, to wake her again to hope-and suffering-oh, you meddlesome fool!"

Dane said, "It's not in me, to sit and let anyone die. While there's life, there's hope. You're alive, aren't you? And by choice?"

She only sighed and turned away from him. She said, not looking back, "I only hope you never know what you've done."

CHAPTER THREE

There was no way to measure time, in the Mekhar slave ship, except by meal-periods and by the periods when the ship, or at least the slave quarters, were darkened for sleep. Nevertheless Dane Marsh estimated afterward that some three weeks, by his own reckoning, passed without any major incident.

The main event of this time, by his own awareness, was the slow return of Dallith from willful death to life. She slept, that time, for some hours, and when she woke Dane fed her again. The next time he encouraged her to sit up for a few minutes and, when she was able to stand and move around, he asked Rianna to help her to the bathing quarters set apart for the females in their section. He had made the request with some qualms-after all, Rianna had expected, almost wanted the girl to lie there and die, and he had halfway foreseen that she would refuse to involve herself at all-but to his surprise she agreed and thereafter she took over a good part of Dallith's daily care, with an almost motherly concern. Dane didn't try to understand it, but he accepted it gratefully.

For a long time Dallith was not strong enough to talk much, and he did not press her. He was content to sit by her side and let her hold his hand . . . almost, he thought, as if in some way he could give her some of his own strength and vitality. But she was growing in strength daily, and

one day she smiled at him and asked about him.

"And you're from a world none of us have ever heard of. Strange, that they should risk so much to come there. Or perhaps not, if all your people are as strong as yourself."

He shrugged. "I've spent most of my life hunting new adventures. This is just a little more bizarre than most, that's all. I got hooked early on the idea that nobody would willingly pass up any kind of experience that was-what do they say-neither illegal, immoral, nor fattening."

She laughed a little. Her laugh was enchanting, as if all the gaiety in the world dwelt within her voice. "Are all your people like that?"

"No, I guess not A lot of them settle down early and never do anything. But the adventurer strain keeps coming back. I guess it's a pretty durable part of our makeup." He remembered then that Rianna had told him that Dallith's people invariably died, away from their home world, and bit his lip to keep from asking questions about that But as if she followed his thoughts, a shadow passed over her face. Her sadness seemed as all-pervasive as her gaiety, as if her small slight body held room for only one emotion at a time and it wholly possessed her. She said, "I only hope your strength and bravery don't mean that the Mekhars have some especially fearful fate planned for you."

"All I can do is wait and see what happens," he said, "but like I told you, while there's life, there's hope."

The shadow lay deep on her. She said, "I could not imagine, could not even dream, of hope or anything good ahead, away from my world and my people." Her voice was desolate. "Oh, others have left our world, but with some purpose, and never-never alone."

Dane said, "It's like a miracle that you came back. But it's a miracle I still can't completely understand."

She said simply, "You reached me. I felt your strength, and your will to live, so that I could believe in life again. It was that which fed me ... your own hope and your belief in life ahead as well as behind. And with so much will to live, there was no room in me for death, and so death took his hand away from me and I began to live again. The rest was"-a small disinterested shrug"only mechanics. The important thing was that you still believed in life, and you could share your belief with me."

He clasped her small hand in his. The fingers were as soft as if they were boneless, completely pliant, molded to his. "Come, Dallith, are you trying to tell me that you read my mind, or my emotions, or something?"

"Of course," she said, surprised. "What else?"

Well, how can I say it isn't true? It seems to have happened, and anyway she believes it, Dane thought, but he still felt a little disquieted; uncanny. Still, he was content, for as her strength

grew, Dallith clung to him more and more. Sometimes it almost frightened him, that she should be so completely dependent on his will-what would she do if they were separated? he thoughtbut mostly it did not trouble him, for she was not obtrusive or demanding. Most of the time she was content to sit quietly at his side, without speaking, almost like a shadow, while, during the next days and weeks, he took the measure of his fellow prisoners.

He seemed to be the only one-at least in their separate cell-from an isolated world. All of the others were, more or less, from the same interstellar civilization as Rianna. They were a mixed crew. The spider-thing was from a hot, wet world where his race was in a minority, and his name was an incomprehensible mangle of sibilants. And even the enormous lizard-man, Aratak, found his mental processes inaccessible, although he tried. He told Dane kindly, "He is very bewildered. I do not think he is sure what has happened; his mental processes have been shocked." Dane was less charitable; orivatelv he didn't believe the spidery alien had any mental processes worth noticing. All he seemed able to do was huddle in a corner, hissing at anyone who came near, and when food was brought sidle out in a rush, take it, and retreat with it. Dane wrote him off as probably being of no use in their present trouble.

Rianna and Roxon, the two sturdy red-headed anthropologists, were far more congenial. Dane kept forgetting that they were not Earthmen like himself, unless one of them happened to allude to some commonplace of their lives which to him, was straight out of a science fiction movie . . . Rianna offhandedly saying that she had served a four-year apprenticeship in alien technology surveying an asteroid belt for fragments of the civilization on the exploded world; Roxon complaining that the main axis of the civilization was interested only in proto-feline technologies

and tended to ignore the proto-simians (or humans) as being superficial. "Just because the damned proto-felines invented the extra-light drives, they think they own the Universe," he grumbled more than once.

As for Aratak, the lizard-man quickly became a companion, then, surprisingly, a friend. The immense alien seemed quickly more human than any of the others. His gray, rugose skin, his huge claws and teeth, were quickly forgotten; his mind worked, Dane swiftly found out, very much like Dane's own. His philosophy reminded Dane very much of the Hawaiians and Filipinos he had met on his first voyage to the Pacific; a calm acceptance of life, a willingness to take whatever came, not exactly submitting to it, but going along with it until something better came along, and incidentally getting what was good out of it. He never left a crumb of his food, he slept long and well, and he tended to fill every lull in the conversation with some excerpt from the Wisdom of the Divine Egg-who had been, Dane gradually gathered, the Confucius, Lao-Tzu, Hillel, and Hiawatha of his race. On the surface he seemed content and even complacent in their captivity, enough so as to be infuriating.

But Dane was sure it was not quite what it seemed. At first this was only a suspicion; on the eighth or ninth "day" of their captivity, the suspicion ripened into certainty.

That was the day when a man in the next cage, or cell, went mad. Dane saw him crouch, when the clanging sound came which meant that the Mekhars were on the way with food, tense and huddled within himself and all one purpose which could almost be seen. And the instant that the food-cart came into sight around the curve of the corridor he rushed the door, flung it open, and

threw himself against the edge of the cart, sending it careening back and knocking the Mekhar who pushed it off his feet.

For an instant Dane tensed, thinking, Now! Now, if they all rush him at once, at once, he couldn't kill more than one or two of them-

He actually began to spring; and then the man at the cart began to yell, incoherently, a hoarse half scream.

"Come on, you bastards! Kill me all at once, not by inches! Come on, everybody get them, better to die fighting than sit here waiting-" He grabbed the end of the food-cart and ran it over the prostrate body of the Mekhar, by now howling gibberish and screaming. Dallith shrieked and hid her face in her hands. Aratak gripped his claws on the bars, and as Dane tautened his muscles for a rush the lizard-man reached out one hand and grabbed him. His claws dug into Dane's shoulder, tearing his shirt.

"Not now," he said. "Don't throw your life away like this. Not now!"

The loose prisoner was still howling and raging, charging up and down with the runaway foodcart. The other Mekhar raised his weapon and gestured; the madman did not seem to see him. He ran right up against him and in the instant before the food-cart ran him down the Mekhar with the weapon raised it-almost, it seemed to Dane, reluctantly-and shot him.

The man screamed, a terrible tearing sound. He dropped to the floor, writhing, convulsing, froth coming from his mouth as his muscles went into spasm after spasm of shuddering. He screamed and screamed, fainter and fainter, and at last he lay still, twitching and still convulsing. The Mekhar bent and dragged him into his cell, gesturing at his cell-mates with the drawn weapon. They all edged back before it, with horrified gasps and murmurs.

The feeding went on without further incident; but Dane could not eat, until Dallith, white as her own loose robe, refused food and faltered into the women's area to vomit; then, with hard selfdiscipline, Dane forced himself to pick up his food and chew it, doggedly. He should have known. Dallith was so much a reflection of his own moods....

With the new knowledge of this, he ate, refusing to think about the would-be escapee; when Dallith, gray and shaking, came back, he pulled her down beside him and gently fed her little pieces from his own tray until the color began to come back into her cheeks, then sat by her until she slept. The wounded man in the next cell moaned and twitched and foamed and screamed more and more faintly, although his cell-mates tended him, until some time that night he died. The next morning at feeding-time the Mekhars hauled his body away.

The rows of cells were very quiet as the man's body was taken away. But when the Mekhars disappeared again and the clanging sound of the cell-block lock assured them all that the Mekhars were gone, the quiet tension of horror broke and everyone began talking at once.

Dane found Aratak by his side; the lizard-man's great scaled paws, claws flicking in and out,

rested lightly on his shoulder. He said to Dane, "For a moment, yesterday, I thought you were going to throw your life after his."

"For a moment I thought of it. But it isn't in me to commit suicide, and I realized in time that was what he was doing. If everyone had joined him, of course, we probably could have done it"

"Yes," Aratak said. "This has been on my mind. But it must be carefully planned and decided. A mad rush, even with the wild hope that the others will join us, is not the way to begin such an effort. The Divine Egg has said that a man is a fool who holds his life too dear-but twice a fool is he who holds it cheap enough to throw away."

Dane glanced guardedly around. Dallith was sleeping, and he was glad; already the fear of frightening her was a daylong preoccupation with him. (He asked himself then: was it love? Certainly not in a sexual sense, at least not yet. But a constant, living preoccupation, so that her welfare was more to him than his own, so that she lived somewhere in the innermost core of his being . . . yes; call it love.) Then he said, "I take it you go along with me-that it ought to be possible to escape, with care and cooperation. I think these Mekhars underrate us. They probably think no one but themselves is clever enough to think it out But have you noticed that the doors are unlocked, and virtually unguarded, for the best part of half an hour, twice a day?"

"I've noticed," Aratak said. "For a time I thought it seemed almost too easy. As if they were trying to tempt us to escape, for some unknown reason of their own. But why would they do that? Sheer blood-lust? They could have one of us up to kill every day, if that were their

pleasure. So I have come around to the conclusion you seem to have reached; that it is their arrogance. They simply do not believe that anyone except themselves could take advantage of such an opportunity; they believe we simply fear them and their weapons too much."

He stopped; his normally placid voice was fierce.

"Would you like to teach those damned cat-things their mistake?"

Dane thrust out his hand in a spontaneous gesture of camaraderie. "I'm with you!" Only when the scaly paw, claws carefully retracted, closed gingerly over his hand, did he recall that his new comrade was not what most people would call a man.

Agreed, they sat down in a corner of the cell to make their plans. "We can't do it alone, just the two of us. And it's going to need time-and planning."

"True. The Divinely Wise Egg has told us that an act of folly can be successful only if it is planned twice as wisely as an act of wisdom."

The basis of the plan was simplicity itself and hardly more complex than that of the man who had died; to take advantage of the early unlocking and late closing of the cell to slip out, rally other prisoners to join them, knock the weapon from the hands of the Mekhar guard and force their way out of the slave quarters. The Mekhar might kill one or two of them before they were disarmed-Dane faced the possibility that he might be one of the first ones killed, probably, in

fact, would be-but certainly the Mekhar couldn't kill them all, and the rest would escape.

Once they were out of the slave quarters, what then? They would have to face the rest of the crew; in the hospital area there were tangler fields, and perhaps in other areas of the ship too.

"We can't do it alone," he said to Aratak.

"I never thought we could."

"But we can't even plan it alone. I don't know enough about the Mekhars; I don't know enough about your spaceships; I don't know enough about your civilization or weapons or even your Unity. We need help, and quickly, even to make sensible plans."

"I think you are right," the great lizard-man said. "We must decide which of our colleagues we can approach for help, and which of us would go mad like that poor creature and give us away with rashness or panic, or even betray us to the Mekhars in return for some small advantage-oh, yes, some of us in here, even, might do that." The edges of his leathery gray jaws began to glow slightly, luminous. "I will consult the wisdom of the Egg. And I suppose you will break it first to Dallith."

Dane felt his throat close with a spasm of sudden fear; not for himself, but for the girl. He had tried so hard to keep all upsetting thoughts away from her; and the man who had gone berserk had upset her so greatly that he had been afraid, for a moment, that she would drop back into that

deathly, death-seeking lassitude. "I think not," he said hoarsely. "First I will speak to Rianna." Perhaps Dallith could be kept free of this, protected until all the danger was over....

He was beginning, now, to be able to distinguish subtle changes of expression on Aratak's leathery countenance; but he did not, yet, know what emotion ridged the rugose forehead and made the small wattles around the amphibian's gill-slits glow luminous. Aratak was moved; but whether by sympathy, disagreement, or annoyance Dane Marsh could not yet tell. His voice was as flat as ever when he said, "Well, you proto-simians know one another as I never could, so perhaps you are right. I will inquire carefully and seek wisdom; speak to Rianna if you will."

Dane waited until the next meal period, and when all the inmates of then" particular cell had seized their coded food trays and were seeking places to eat, he laid a hand on Rianna's arm.

"I want to talk to you," he said in an undertone. "Sit here beside me, in this corner, and eat." As they tore open the strips of their trays, he outlined what he had noticed about the locking and unlocking of the cell doors, and saw her dark eyes light up fiercely.

"I've wondered if anyone else saw that! It seems that everyone else here is either a coward, or insanely rash! You're right, something could be done, but what could I, a woman, do alone? I'm with you, Dane, even if I'm the first one shot down!"

He grinned a little sourly. "I thought you were the one preaching the virtues of resignation. You were feeling hopeless enough to let Dallith die."

I was doing what seemed best on the basis of what I knew of her people," Rianna said stiffly. "Anyone can act in ignorance. I'm enough of a scientist, I hope, to change my theories as I acquire more facts. After observing the Mekhars for a few periods-and the quality of our fellow prisoners-I feel a little more optimistic."

"You do know," Dane said slowly, "that if we take the lead, you and I may very well be the first ones to be shot down? It's not a pleasant death."

"But at least when it's over, I won't have to worry about what happens next, would I? But just in case we should survive long enough to have that particular worry, what happens after that? I take it you don't mean to stop at letting us out of the cages. What next?"

"I don't know," Dane said frankly. "That's why I came to you. I'm no good as the leader of this enterprise. I might be able to help us bust out of the cages. But once we're out, I'm about as much use as sails on a spaceship. I'm the one from the backward world, remember. What I know about spaceships could be painlessly engraved on my thumbnail in large block letters. I'd kind of thought that we might hold the Mekhar guards hostages for our own freedom; arrogant races usually hold the lives of their own kind very precious, even if they treat other races as expendable. But I don't know the Mekhars. And even if we could manage to kill off or subdue every damned lion-face on the ship, we'd still be out of my element, I wouldn't know how to get us to a safe port, or even how to hit the distress button and yell for help if we started to crashland or fall into a sun."

"Oh, as far as that goes, Roxon has a pilot's certificate," Rianna said. "I don't think he's ever handled anything this size-he certainly isn't licensed to-but the ultralight drives are standard all through the known Galaxy. Once the Mekhars are out of the way, he could land us somewhere inside the Unity."

Dane reflected that this wouldn't help him much, but after all, that was a small point. He couldn't help being better off inside a civilized government-no matter how strange or alien-than outside it The Unity at least didn't deal in slaves.

"I suppose the next step is to enlist Roxon as part of our plan, then," he said, "if you're sure we can trust him. You know him. I don't."

Rianna said, in disgust, "What do you take him for? He's a civilized citizen."

"Presumably, so is that poor chap who rushed the nerve-guns," Dane said. "I wasn't impugning his standards of decency. I simply don't know him at all. How can I be in a position to judge how brave he is? How likely he is to panic? How well he holds up hi a crisis? Or even how well he can hold his tongue and keep from talking to the wrong people? Why in hell do you think I asked you first?"

Her mouth lifted in a small smile and suddenly she looked younger and prettier. "I think I've just had a compliment," she said. "Thank you, Marsh. I'll talk to Roxon. I've known him for a long

time, and I'd trust him with my life, my personal fortune, and my scientific reputation, if that's any indication."

"Look. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend-"

She shrugged. "Forget it You have no reason to trust him, nor has he any reason to trust you. He has a prejudice against inhabitants of habitable worlds which haven't joined the Unity."

"How in-how could I join your what's-it, Unity, when nobody on our world was ever given any inkling that it even existed?"

"I didn't say Roxon's prejudice was rational," Rianna said coldly. "I said he had such a prejudice. I was stating a fact, not making a value judgment. But Roxon would probably say there must be some good and sufficient reason why your world has never been offered the Unity."

That sobered Dane a minute; but it was pointless to get involved in discussing that right now. As Rianna was turning away he stopped her a moment, and said suddenly, "Why is it, then, that you trust me?"

Another small shrug. "Who knows? Maybe it's just your pretty blue eyes. Or maybe I'm using Dallith as a barometer. And speaking of Dallith, she's staring at you with that wistful look. Maybe she can't eat unless you hold her hand. You'd better go and cheer her up while I talk to Roxon. None of us ought to behave in any strange ways while we're plotting, or the Mekhars

might get wise."

She went off, and Dane glanced around for Dallith; but she was not looking at him, and Dane did not at once make a move toward Dallith, following Rianna with his eyes. What were her real feelings? Did he know her well enough to judge even the most elementary ones?

Rianna knelt beside Roxon where he sat alone with his empty food tray still on his lap; she put her head close to his and Dane watched anxiously. The one thing that must not happen is that any of them should seem to be plotting or conspiring. Or would the Mekhars even notice? But surely it would be dangerous, for people to begin to gather in groups, talking secretly, whispering, trying to avoid being overheard-

As he watched, Roxon dropped the food tray, put his arms around Rianna, and drew her down beside him. Dane thought, suddenly a little shocked, Like this? Right in front of everyone? In a cage? Then he told himself sternly not to impose his own standards-one little corner of one little planet-on others; even on some parts of Earth this behavior might be quite natural; some South Sea islanders not only made love in public but expected you to join in and got offended if you didn't. He forced himself to look away, as they drew closer together.

Dallith said quietly in his ear, "It is not what you think. Does it matter to you?"

He turned, startled and a little abashed. He said defensively, "Remember, I'm the guy from the backwoods planet who doesn't know the local customs-or rather, knows only his own local

customs-"

"It is not the custom of my people either, but you know what I am, I can sense emotions, and I tell you again, there is no desire between them-if that matters to you."

"I don't give a hang what they do," Dane muttered, His ears were red and he was furiously angry at himself because she could read his embarrassment "Why should it matter to me?"

"My people never ask ourselves why other people are as they are," Dallith said coolly, "since we cannot escape the emotions which make them behave as they do, it would be only an added trouble to ask ourselves why. I am embarrassed only because you are, but there is no reason for it They are pretending it and if you think a moment you will surely understand the sensible reason for their pretense."

"No. That I can't understand. Why should they-oh. You mean, so the Mekhars won't think they are conspiring?"

"Of course. Rianna is very clever," Dallith said. Her large dark eyes dwelt a moment on the two closely intertwined bodies, half clothed, heads together, whispering, and she smiled. "It is, of course, the one thing they could pretend to do which the Mekhars would never trouble themselves to suspect or to interrupt. It is part of their arrogance, you understand. This, perhaps, you do not know-how proto-felines look down on us proto-simians because-how can I say this? You are embarrassed and I cannot help feeling what you feel-"

She looked at the floor and moved her foot restlessly. "Well, to put it very simply: we protosimians are supposed to be continual slaves to our sexual appetites. So when you look at Rianna and Roxon, and you think they are talking privately, and perhaps it is suspicious; the . Mekhars would look at them and think, oh, yes, just like those ape-people, whatever else they might be doing, how like them to stop and-and fornicate. You see? Rianna is clever."

"She is," Dane said. "I'd never have thought of that." He felt ruffled and on edge. Even Aratak had said something like that, You proto-simians are involved so much of the time with your reproductive cycle. ... It was a little humiliating to be thought of as part of a race which thought of nothing but sex.

Welcome, fellow, to the monkey house at the zoo-female monkeys always in heat. Watch the show. Oh hell, probably other-other races?-couldn't care less. Did he get any charge out of watching a couple of dogs in the street, or a couple of pigeons courting on the windowsill? Dane turned his eyes away from the all-too-realistic spectacle of Rianna and Roxon. No one else seemed to be paying the faintest attention, even among the humans.

Let's hope Rianna's giving him a full run-down on the plan-and that he likes the idea. Because, without it, I'm not going to know where to begin. Aratak and I couldn't do much, alone. And, damn it, I've got plenty on my mind-like an escape attempt-without worrying about somebody else's sex life! As the thought of the escape crossed his mind again he remembered, with some unease, that he had been afraid to break this to Dallith. Now, it seemed, she knew-or did she? It

was hard to tell whether she read his thoughts, or only mirrored his emotions. Now, as if mirroring his own deep disquiet, her small slender fingers groped for his and clung to them. Her hand felt cold. Dane squeezed it, hard, trying to keep calm and reassuring.

He had always thought of himself as an adventurer. But a solitary one. He knew his own limits, his abilities, what he could trust himself to accomplish and what he couldn't do. He had been accused, once, of taking risks, and had denied it firmly. "I do dangerous things, sure," he'd said, "but unless I get struck by lightning-and that could happen when I'm home in bed-I know so well what I can and can't do that by the time I decide to do it, it isn't taking a risk anymore."

But that was only true when he was relying on his own known abilities. Now he must put all his faith in strangers, some of them not even human. Aratak had a reassuring strength and solidity, and Rianna's bravery and resourcefulness had given him some confidence. But the others? They were all unknown quantities, and the habit of being self-reliant didn't help you at all when it was a question of doing dangerous things with other people. Rather the reverse.

He let go of Dallith's hand, knowing that as she sensed his fear her own would grow, and said, "We'll talk about this later. I want to be sure what I think."

As usual, she did not protest, or challenge him, but accepted his mood quietly as if it were her own, and went away to her own bunk. Rianna and Roxon had moved apart now and Dane wondered what she had said to him, what he had replied. It would be dangerous to go and ask. Of course he could also pretend to be overcome by a lustful mood-he dropped that line of thought,

fast. It led nowhere, and could provide a hell of a lot of complications he didn't need. Hadn't Dallith asked, Why does it matter to you?

He couldn't answer that one, and didn't want to try.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rianna did not approach him until the next meal-period, when as they were taking up their trays she sorted his out for him and said, in an undertone, "Roxon agrees. He cannot pilot this ship alone, but he can handle the communication equipment and the Navigation Central will help him, of course. He will speak to another, in the next cell, who is known to him. You can trust him; he is a good judge of men. He was surprised that it was you who made this plan, but that is his prejudice, and he admits it."

"Damn nice of him," Dane said, a little grumpily. He realized it was unworthy of him. He'd known he couldn't do it all himself. He ought to be grateful that Roxon was willing to take over.

She did not stay near him for more than a moment then-he felt she was being cautious now about the appearance of conspiring-but some time later, as she passed Mm, she murmured, "Put your arms around me, try to hold me a minute-Dane, have you told Dallith anything yet? I saw you talking together but I didn't have a chance to ask her."

Dane complied. She felt soft and strong in his arms, rounded and feminine, yet firm-muscled and far from passive. He said, "No, I haven't. I was a little afraid to. Anyway, we got off the subject, she was explaining some things to me about-er-Galactic customs and the way the Mekhars-that is, the way all proto-felines-think of us humans."

Is she expecting me to pretend to make love to her?

As if she had caught the thought, Rianna firmly freed herself from his arms and pulled away. She said hi an undertone, "Tell her, as quickly as you can. Remember, she's an empath. If you're too indecisive, she'll pick that up from you, and the Mekhars might have enough sense to watch her-to see whether they ought to be suspicious of us. It also might be-I don't know all that much about empaths, but it could be possible-that she could tune in on the Mekhars and find out how they're reacting to us; when they're off guard, how near we are to where they're taking us, and so on."

"That would be almost too good to be true."

"It would. I've never trusted psi talents, anyhow. But we can't afford to waste any chances, however small," Rianna said. "However small. So you talk to Dallith. And soon."

Dane knew she was right, and he hardened himself to awareness of what he must do. But what if this plunged her, again, into the suicidal fear and hopelessness? What then?

The routine of the slave quarters was familiar to him, now, and he waited on it. About an hour (he estimated, having no timepiece) after the final meal of each "day," the long corridor of cages was darkened, except for dimly glowing night-lights in the long corridors between, and small pale marks at the doors of the toilet areas. Dane went to the bunk now generally regarded as his, at the appointed time. How quickly, he thought, we grow used to almost anything! Already one bunk here is "mine" and I am accustomed to getting into it at a specific and regular time. Are all sapient species such creatures of habit, or is it only us humans-or proto-simians?

He gave the cell an hour to settle down and for his cell-mates to sleep. Above him, an unknown man, dark-skinned and flat-faced, snuffled and cried out in uneasy dreams. Aratak, in the bunk next to his, made odd snoring noises, and as Dane let himself quietly down from his bunk he noticed that the lizard-man was glowing faintly all over in the darkness. At the far end, surrounded by empty bunks on either side, the long loose-jointed spidery creature hunched, his eyes huge and red and reflecting light; the eyes swiveled to follow Dane, and Dane found himself cringing . . . was it a hungry look? Would the Mekhars, if it came to that, cage a cannibalistic species with its natural prey?

Dallith lay in the lower bunk, her face turned away as he had first seen her lying her hair scattered and loose. She was sleeping deeply, and when Dane lowered him self gently beside Dallith, to sit on the edge of her bunk, she did not at once waken but made a soft, accepting movement and murmured in her sleep, a drowsy and peaceful sound.

She knew him, even in sleep, and there was no fear now in her. ... A wave of tenderness went over him; he touched his lips to the back of her cool hand, and she woke and smiled in the dimness. She looked so peaceful that for a moment he forbore to disturb her. She seemed unsurprised and did not question his presence. Putting off what he must say, Dane asked her, for the first time:

"What is your world like, Dallith?"

"How can I answer you, Marsh?" Her voice was only a whisper, accurately tuned to his ear. "It is my home. Can you say anything of your home world, except that it is beautiful? My people rarely leave our world-and almost never of our free will-and so we have no way to compare it with others, except from what we have read. I think it must be the same with you."

A spasm of homesickness, so violent that it was pure pain, passed through Dane Marsh. Never to see Hawaii again, or the great arching span of the Golden Gate Bridge, or the skyline of New York with its thrusting towers, or the blossom of a rhododendron in spring....

Her hands pressed his gently. She said, "I did not mean to make you sad. Dane, why did you come here? You are more than welcome, but I know enough about the kind of person you are to know why you did not come. You have something to say to me?"

He nodded silently, and carefully stretched himself out along the edge of her bunk. He told himself that the Mekhar guards passed through the hall once or twice during a night and if they

saw him there they would think-what they always thought, damn them. And why not? He told her, in muffled tones with his mouth close to her ear, about the plans for escape. She heard him out in silence, tensing only slightly when he told her that the Mekhars might very well kill some of them, but she made no outcry. At last she said, "I knew it must be something like this. I have seen you and Aratak together, but I was not sure exactly what. But if it is physical force you want, I am probably not strong enough to disarm a Mekhar. What can I do?"

Her voice was so calm that he asked, "Aren't you afraid? I thought you'd panic."

"Why? I faced the worst when they tore me from my home and my people. Now there is nothing worse to fear. Tell me what I can do for you."

"I don't know anything much about empaths," Dane said. He remembered Rianna's words, I've never trusted psi talents. . . . "But perhaps you can find out for us how long we have. Are the Mekhars getting ready to land us already? Maybe you can find out what defenses we may have to face. That sort of thing."

A spasm of disgust passed over her face. "I don't know. I have never tried-to read the minds or emotions of another race. They are so fierce-but I will try. Don't expect too much, but I will try."

"That's all I ask," he said. He stirred as if to return to his own place, but Dallith's arms tightened around him, "No. No. Alone, I'm afraid again. Stay close to me-"

He said, wryly, "You put a considerable strain on human nature, Dallith." But he did not move to go, and after a time, stretched out close to the girl, he fell asleep there, dropping from wakefulness into strange blurring dreams of lions, of curious colors and ambushes lurking behind strange ruined walls, starting awake again to hear Dallith whimpering with fear and protest in unquiet dreams, dropping again into the restless dreams of hunter and hunted, of ambush and fear and the smells of blood and death.

A day or two later, Dallith joined him, Rianna, Roxon, and Aratak at a mealtime, as the Mekhar moved out of sight down the corridor with the food-cart, and said in an undertone, "We must be quick. We must make our plans quickly. They are hard to read"-her face twisted strangely and she clenched her hands-"and it is hard not to share their-their arrogance. I was afraid-afraid of becoming entangled in their ideas. But we must be very quick."

Aratak asked gently, "Why, child?"

"Because they are going to take us somewhere, unless"-again the look of strain-"unless something happens-I don't know exactly what, but they are expecting something and will be disappointed-oh, I don't know," she burst out, twisting her slim hands and biting her lip. "I don't know, I don't know! I'm. afraid to come close enough to know-"

Dane looked at her in deep disquiet. It's as if they wanted us to attack them. But that's ridiculous.

He asked Roxon:

"Has the word been passed along? How many can we trust to join us? We could manage with a dozen, I expect, if we're very well coordinated. But it would help to have more."

Roxon said, "The five of us here. Three in the next cell. They tell me that in the area beyond, there are four or five who will join us. After that, it is all a guess. But I am sure we will have enough-and when others see that it is a well-planned, concerted action, they are sure to join."

Rianna asked, "What about the tangler fields?"

"Good point," Aratak said. "The guards wear those belts with their nerve-guns. I think there is a control in the belts which makes them able to move inside a tangler field. After we disarm the guards, we must get their belts. Two or three of the strongest of us, physically, must be ready to put them on, until someone can get to the bridge area and cut out the tangler controls. Roxon, can you do that?"

"I'm not sure," Roxon said, "but I can try."

Marsh said, "Roxon mustn't be risked. He knows how to pilot a ship. Let me take any risks that have to be taken. That sort of risk, anyway." He wished the revolt were today. Now the plans were made, further delay would only let them sit around, worrying, getting nervous. Also, at any moment the Mekhar ship might stop somewhere and take on a new load of slaves who might be dumped in among them, new ones still stunned by sudden captivity, to go mad or impede their

plans for escape. He said, "The sooner the better. Let's make it next mealtime, now we all know what we're going to do."

He found it hard to swallow; but as he would have put down the rest of his uneaten food, Rianna looked across the circle at him. She said, low and tense, "Finish up, everybody. We have to act exactly as usual, or they'll know something's going on."

The interval till the next meal-period seemed to crawl past. Dallith sought Marsh and sat beside him, holding his hand. Roxon went to the bars separating them from the next cage area, and talked in an undertone to his colleague there. Rianna, disregarding her own directive, prowled nervously until Dallith gave her an angry stare, when she went to her bunk and lay there, pretending to sleep. Only Aratak seemed calm, seated with his huge legs crossed, his closed gillslits vibrating faintly and glowing blue. But Marsh knew that this was only an outward appearance; he could not tell whether Aratak was as calm as he looked, meditating further on the wisdom of his eternal Divine Egg, or whether the impassiveness of his nonhuman face was due to its form and configuration and inwardly Aratak was as restless, as tightly clamped against revealing anything, as Rianna herself.

Time seemed to crawl, to stretch itself out interminably. It was Dallith, with a quick indrawn breath, who warned them all; her eyes gleamed and she sat abruptly upright, her face drawn and pale. Rianna had evidently been watching her beneath half-closed lids; she sprang off her bunk and took up her place near the bars. Aratak went into a tense crouch. The word, in a whisper, was running up and down through the rows of cages, more than a full minute before the first loud

clang marked that down at the far end the Mekhar had thrown the switch which controlled all the cage locks.

Dane, moving slowly toward the doors, saw and felt the air of tension in their own area, and thought, The others, everyone, must know that something's happening. We can't keep them from knowing now, we'll simply have to hope that no one alerts the Mekhars.

The two Mekhar guards were coming down the corridor now. They shoved the coded food packages into one cage area after another, and withdrew. Now they were about to unload it inside the area where Dane and his friends waited, tensed to the breaking point. The Mekhar with the food-cart, moving exactly as usual, trundled it in through the unlocked door and began to unload the coded trays. Behind him his colleague, with a drawn nerve-gun, covered the cage inhabitants. The Mekhar with the cart finished the unloading, turned to trundle it out again, and at the moment when the cart momentarily blocked the door, Dane and Aratak leaped at his back.

Dane made one vicious karate chop across the lion-thing's neck; he went down, sprawling, roaring an ear-hurting howl, and the Mekhar behind him fired with the drawn nerve-gun; Dane felt the hiss of the bolt behind him, ducked. Someone shrieked, but by that time the Mekhar he had knocked down was coming to his feet again, hissing, roaring, and Dane, taking a fighting stance, was ready for him. He kicked out, a vicious kick that would have thrown any human, paralyzed, to the floor; the Mekhar roared and went for him with claws bared. Behind him, he saw that men from the next cage were pouring out, swarming over the Mekhar with the nervegun. They had his gun; they were kicking him; he lay unconscious on the corridor floor. Aratak's

huge arms swiped the second Mekhar from behind; he went down, struggling, and Dallith darted in, hauled the nerve-gun from his belt, moving swiftly as a cat herself; the Mekhar made a wild swipe, his claws raking blood from Dallith's arm, and the girl exploded into a biting, kicking fury; she threw the nerve-gun to Rianna and flew at the prone Mekhar, screaming, clawing at his eyes.

Dane hauled her off him with both hands. "No need to kill him," he said. At his touch Dallith quieted and began to tremble. "Unfasten his belt, there. That's right. Aratak, you're the strongest, you put it on; you can do more than the rest of us if we get into a tangler field." He buckled the other Mekhar's belt around his waist, thinking, It takes two people, skilled in unarmed combat, to disarm one Mekhar. Let's hope they don't throw eighty crew members at us all at once.

"Come on," he said, between his teeth. "Out, everybody. Out of the cells. We don't know how long we have before somebody notices these two haven't come back from feeding the animals, and comes down to see what's keeping them."

They emerged from the cell area into the corridor and Dane stood for a moment, confused. He had been brought here unconscious and had no idea which way he should go to the bridge, to the area where the other crewmen were, to the ship's controls. He shot a quick question to Roxon, who was marshaling the captives in the hall and giving them quick low-voiced orders.

"We were all brought in unconscious," Roxon said. "It's their policy. But I think we're at the lower levels; we have to keep going up as far as we can." He led the way along a long ramp,

which led upward and upward, curving blindly now and then. The other prisoners swarmed behind him, and Dane thought, apprehensively, We, who are the ringleaders, should stay together! These others, who've just joined in and don't know what we're doing, may be pretty badly in the way when we start acting! He pushed and thrust forward through them, to ward the lead, Dallith hurrying at his shoulders. Rianna caught Dallith's arm.

"Quick! Which way are the Mekhars? Where?"

Dallith hardly seemed to hear. Her face was set and twisted. Abruptly she cried out in horror, and simultaneously Dane saw Rianna stumble; struggle to rise. The prisoners began to drop, one by one, moving slowly, thickly. The tangler field, thought Dane. He himself, thanks to the Mekhar guard's belt, felt nothing, but Dallith clutched at him, struggling to pull herself along.

Dallith shrieked, "They know, they know, they're waiting for us-"

The door at the top of the ramp burst open. Half a dozen Mekhars, armed with nerve-guns, stood there, and at the sight the prisoners stopped, surged forward. Aratak, like Dane unhindered by the tangler field, sprang forward; he knocked one Mekhar sprawling, back broken, laid another out, screaming in a thin high whine, before he went down under a shot Roxon fell, writhing and convulsing.

Dane fought on, struggling through the prisoners, grimly determined, before they got him, to kill one or two of the Mekhars; he saw Dallith struggling like a wild thing between a pair of them.

Then something struck him a killing blow on the head and he went down into darkness, thinking, I was right all along; they expected us to attack and they were glad. But why?

He screamed, "Why?" into the darkness, but the darkness did not answer, and after a million years he stopped listening for the answer....

CHAPTER FIVE

His head ached, and his arms felt as if they had been broken off at the wrists. Dane Marsh opened his eyes, and found that he was in a cell he had never seen before. One arm was fastened in a tight cuff to the wall, by a chain about six feet long. Across the cell from him, Aratak was manacled with a similar arrangement Rianna lay asleep on the floor; Dallith sat hunched over, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring fixedly at him. As he opened his eyes she said, "You're alive!" and her face was suffused with surprise and joy. "I wasn't sure, you were so far away...."

"I'm alive, for what that's worth," Dane said. "I see you are, too. What happened; to the others?"

Rianna opened her eyes. "Roxon was the first one they killed," she said. "They killed half a dozen others, too, I think. As for the others, they unloaded them-and I heard them say it was at the Gorbahl slave mart-three days ago. I expect they have something special in mind for us, but

as for what it is"-she smiled bitterly-"your guess is as good as mine. My personal notion is that they're saving us for dinner. We killed two of the Mekhars, and that's not something they're going to sit back and accept"

"It isn't bad," Dallith said stubbornly. "There's something hopeful about it They were pleased at what we did."

"How can you tell?" Rianna shouted. "This is all your fault If Dane hadn't saved your life we'd all have gone to the Gorbahl slave mart, but Roxon would be alive, and there might have been a chance for some of us-*'

Aratak said in a commanding rumble, "Quiet, child. None of this is Dallith's fault, any more than yours. You, too, were eager to take part hi the escape, and as for Roxon, perhaps he too felt he would rather die than live as a slave. In any case he is dead and beyond your pity or your help, and Dallith is not The four of us are all together in trouble, and if we begin to quarrel, there is truly no chance."

"There's none anyway," Rianna said bitterly, and rolled over, hiding her face beneath her bright hair.

"Rianna-" Dane said, but she turned her back again and would not look at him.

She blames me for Roxon's death, and the death of the others, he thought

But there was nothing he could say to that Perhaps it was true. Perhaps he, having less to lose than the others

-whatever happened, his own world was irrevocably lost-had been indifferent to life or death.

Aratak said, "At least you three are of one people, creatures of one blood. None of my kind remain on board this ship. Must I find myself alone?"

Dallith went slowly toward him and slipped her small delicate hand into his huge clawed paw. She said gently, "We are brothers and sisters in misfortune, Aratak, under the Universal Law. I know that. Dane knows it. And Rianna will know it again, sooner or later."

Dane nodded. He felt very close to the huge lizard-man at whose side he had nearly been killed. "We made a good fight of it, anyway," he said. "Between us, we accounted for a couple of those damned cat-faced things! Whatever happens to us now, it was worth it."

Aratak gave an emphatic nod and his gills glowed blue.

Dane found himself wondering, What now? "Do they feed us?"

Rianna sat up, flinging her red hair back. She said, "Who cares? If you do, yes; if anything they feed us better than ever, though they shove our food in through the bars-no one comes near us

now."

Dane said, 'Then they certainly aren't going to torture us to death, and if they were going to kill us I think they'd have done it. Cats aren't subtle creatures. They'd have torn us to pieces right then, if they were going to."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Dallith said. "I don't know what's in store for us-I can't read their minds without going-berserk-as I did then, when I tried-I tried-" She suddenly shuddered. "For a moment, I was the Mekhar. I went for him with teeth-and claws-"

She was silent. Then, firmly, dismissing the thought, she said, "But this I know. They are not going to kill us, and we have become even more valuable to them. So it is my turn to say: don't think about dying, Rianna. Keep up your strength and your hopes. We'll find out now, very soon, what is going to happen. We're alive, and we're all together. There's no need to despair."

It was at least evident that their status had changed and that they were now regarded as dangerous. Food was thrust through the bars-from a safe distance-by Mekhars who never spoke to them and seemed wary even of coming close to the bars. Three times a day, the chains on Dane and on Aratak were lengthened-by loosening a staple from outside the cell-so that they could enter a small shower-toilet area. At all other times they were left strictly to themselves to entertain whatever guesses, conjectures, or thoughts they might devise about their eventual fate or fates.

This went on, Dane later surmised, for about two weeks. There was nothing for the captives to do except to exchange life histories, if they chose, to tell each other about their home worlds, and, in general, to get to know one another. Dane told them all he could about the social and political history of Earth, although he suspected part of their interest was wonder and amazement that even a partially civilized world could so far have been missed by the Unity. Only Rianna hazarded a guess as to why this might have been.

"You have a certain degree of scientific and technological advancement," she agreed, "but in other fields you're far behind, probably because you are so cut oft For instance, you say that never in your known history have you been visited even by observer or guest teams from other planets."

"Not in our known history, no. Although some scientists have suspected that some of our religious myths may be garbled memories of such visits before written history."

"That seems unlikely," Dallith protested. "Scientist and observer teams from the Unity, at least, are usually very careful to make certain that the planets they visit don't get any such notions!"

"But there's no way of telling that the visitors were from the Unity-if there were any such visitors," Rianna said. "They might have been from anywhere. No, the most likely thing is that they simply overlooked your solar system. There are so very many uninhabited worlds that one, or two, or two hundred, could simply be overlooked in cataloguing. Didn't you say that only one world in your system is habitable by ordinary animal life? That's very unusual; the most likely

thing is that they visited one or two planets, found them uninhabitable, and gave up on the system. Sloppy scientific work, of course, but it does happen."

Dallith suggested, "Perhaps your Earth was visited at a time before sapient life had developed. Or while your men were still living in treetops."

Aratak rumbled, "That wouldn't stop them. My world entered the Unity before the Divine Egg had gifted us with the wheel!"

This made Dane Marsh remember a favorite theory of science fiction writers. "People used to suggest that visitors from space had avoided us, or put us under a sort of Cosmic quarantine, because of our atomic wars and such."

"If total and permanent peace were a qualification," Rianna said dryly, "the Unity might possibly be made up of as many as two dozen worlds, mostly inhabited by empaths. Instead of, as we now have, several hundred. The Unity will do anything possible to help member planets resolve their internal differences-and sometimes even the presence of the Unity helps the people of a planet to develop a feeling of solidarity and internal harmony with one another. But the way the Unity is set up, it simply serves as a total barrier to interplanetary or interstellar war. Most planets settle the war problem earlier in their history than yours, but then yours seems to have a history torn by climatic changes, natural cataclysms, and the like, which typically cut off small groups of people from other small groups, and exaggerated their ethnic, cultural, social, and linguistic differences. The result would, naturally, be a prolonging of the 'war' period in planetary

history. Although I admit it's a little freaky for wars to be prolonged past the Industrial Revolution stage of development."

Dane was glad to get away from discussion of his "freaky" culture and to hear about the others. Dallith came from a highly homogeneous world which had, after a long period of ice ages followed by periods of flood and then of tropical growth, placed so high a value on psi powers for survival that ESP and clairvoyance were firmly established in the racial germ plasm. They were a peaceful people, few in number due to rigorous natural selection, with small technology but highly developed sciences of philosophy and cosmology. Rianna's people were more like what Dane had always believed that Earth-men might be someday-a scientific civilization with a highly developed technology and a tradition of endless exploration and scientific curiosity.

Aratak's world couldn't have been more the reverse. Here the dominant race, descended from giant saurians and amphibians, virtually without natural enemies, and vegetarian, had briefly experimented with technology, found that its rewards did not compensate them for its troubles, and peacefully turned their backs on it to live, as a race, a contemplative life in a food-gathering culture. They imported a few-not many-artifacts from their companion world, a highly technological race of people who called themselves by a name which the mechanical translator embedded in Dane's throat rendered as the Salamanders. In return they supplied them with raw minerals, certain foodstuffs, and philosophy, which was evidently regarded as a marketable commodity like any other. In fact, Dane gathered that men of Aratak's lizard-like race traveled all over the known Galaxy as teachers of philosophy, and were highly regarded, and treated with lavish hospitality, in return for the great sacrifice of leaving their beloved and peaceful swamps.

But such stories as they could interchange from their planetary history filled up only part of the time. They had all too much time for brooding, worrying about their eventual fate. It seemed that time dragged endlessly; there were times when it seemed, at least to Dane, that he had been a prisoner for many years.

Abruptly, it came to an end.

One morning-or at least what Dane called morning, for it was the first meal following a period of sleep-their cell was entered by three Mekhars with drawn nerve-guns and a portable tangler field, which they took the precaution of turning up to full force before entering, and unchaining Dane or Aratak.

One of the Mekhars said tersely, "Make no mistake. You will be given-now-no single chance to escape. Even a single unauthorized move, and you will be instantly shocked into total unconsciousness. You will not be killed and you will not be tortured, but you will not be allowed to escape, so you may as well preserve your energies. This is the only warning you will receive, so move carefully. Believe me, you will not be given the benefit of the doubt."

Dane made no sudden moves. He had no desire to try out for himself what a nerve-gun felt like; he still remembered the screams of the man who had died. His curiosity was caught by one unexpected phrase, You will be given-now-no single chance to escape. Did that mean that later, they would be given some single chance? It was worth thinking about. (The mechanical

translator was almost unbelievably literal; on one occasion when

Rianna, infuriated by Dallith's calm, had thrown some kind of colloquial insult at her, the translator had rendered it, simply, to imply that Dallith was a bringer of food to children. Which certainly was no insult by Dane's terms, and probably, judging by Dallith's expression, none by hers either-which hadn't made Rianna any calmer!)

Evidently the other three prisoners had reached the same conclusion on their own, for they went peacefully with the Mekhars along the winding corridors and up the ramps, until they reached what looked like a small conference room in which half a dozen of the Mekhars, uniformed like ship's personnel, were waiting; there were what looked like television screens and receivers, various other equipment, and a variety of seats. The Mekhars motioned their four captives into seats in what looked like a jury-box, or musician's gallery, along one side of the room; as soon as they were in then- seats, restraints (automatically operated, perhaps by their weight) immediately gripped them around the waist and held them fast

The jury-box arrangement already had one inhabitant; and he was a Mekhar, but he was held by the same kind of restraints as Dane and his companions. To Dane, all the Mekhars looked quite a bit alike, but it seemed there was something familiar about this one; and no sooner had he come to this conclusion than Dallith, next to him, leaned over and whispered, "It's the Mekhar you disarmed-the guard from the cell. I thought we had killed him."

"No such luck, evidently," Dane whispered back.

"The prisoners will be silent," one of the Mekhars said unemotionally.

Dane looked around the room where he found himself, his attention immediately gripped by what looked like an enormous vision-screen. Reception was wavy and ridden with what, on Earth-type TV, would have been called "ghosts," but it was evidently a live transmission. The picture on the screen was nothing very startling, for none of the other captives gave it even a second glance, far less watching it closely; but to Dane it was an incredible marvel. It was neither more nor less than a planet, seen from out in space, vaguely brick-red, with blue-green areas which looked like oceans and dull brown spots which might have been mountain ranges or deserts. In the sky behind it-or, more properly, in the dark star-flecked space behind it-hung a huge moon, or satellite, fully half the size of the parent planet, and partially eclipsed by it.

One of the Mekhars in uniform was seated before a prosaic-looking console and was talking into it, in a low voice, just monotonous background noise, too low for Dane's translator to function. This went on for some time; the planet, and its half-eclipsed satellite, grew larger and more definite in the viewing screen. Evidently they were approaching some planet. Were they going to land on it, Dane wondered, and was it the Mekhars' home world? And what was going to happen to them there? The extreme caution with which they had been treated seemed like a good signthey evidently weren't going to be killed out of hand-but were they going to have to stand trial for something or other? For killing a Mekhar, perhaps?

Abruptly the monotonous undertone of the Mekhar speaking into the console stopped-

interrupted by a series of soft, but high-pitched beeps, clicks, and mutterings from the console. The Mekhar seated there moved various dials and levers. A speaker on the console came to life, and a curiously low, steady voice-almost, Dane thought, a mechanical voice-remarked:

"Central Station, Second Continent, speaking to the Mekhar ship. We acknowledge your message and stand ready to receive your offer."

The Mekhar at the console said-his voice was now amplified, for evidently he had thrown some control which made it come over the speaker as well, "We have five for you, Hunters. They are special prime dangerous ones, and we will not sell them cheaply."

The mechanical voice retorted, with its curious expressionless quality, "You Mekhars have done business with us before, and you know our requirements. Have these been pretested?"

"They have," said the Mekhar. "They are the four survivors of six ringleaders of the usual test escape mechanism-the ones who were intelligent and resourceful enough to see a very small loophole left for escape, brave enough to take it in the face of nerve-guns, md strong enough to keep fighting after we showed them that we were aware of the plot. You will not be disappointed in them. We had hoped to have all six for you, but we were forced to kill two others before they could be subdued."

The mechanical voice said, "You spoke of five Quarry for us."

"The fifth is one of our own," the Mekhar captain said. "He allowed the prisoners to disarm him and to seize his weapon. The other guard, when given the usual choice, chose to commit suicide rather than face his trial on Mekhar. This one exercised the other option-to sell himself as Quarry to the Hunters. His price will be given to his surviving relatives on Mekhar, so that he is free of obligations and can legally take this single chance of survival."

"We are always glad to accept a Mekhar as Quarry," the mechanical voice said. "We repeat the offer we have made before this, to accept your desperate criminals as Quarry at any time."

"And we repeat," the Mekhar at the console-communicator said, "that our people's honor will not allow us to be represented in the Hunt by criminals; but the guard was bested in an honorable duel, since we deliberately left a chance for the prisoners to escape; he has the legal option to choose his own death, and he has the right to choose to die at your hands if he so wishes, honorably."

"We bow to your rules of honor," said the mechanical voice. "We suggest a bonus of ten percent over our usual price; if this is acceptable to you, you may land the prisoners at once."

"That is acceptable to us," the Mekhar confirmed, but Dane's attention was drawn to Rianna, who had drawn in a great gasping sob.

'The Hunters," she whispered. "Then they're not just a legend! A chance for escape-yes, a chance-but oh, Gods, what a chance!"

Dane twisted in his seat, but before he could say another word to her, the Mekhar captain approached them.

"Prisoners," he said quietly. "Your chance of escape, or honorable death, is upon you. You have proven that you are too brave, too courageous, to be sold as slaves; it is, therefore, our honor and our pleasure to provide you this alternative. Do not be afraid. You are about to be given a small dose of a mild anesthetic gas, which will have no lasting side effects, so that you need not be harmed by struggling in the transit to the Hunters' World. Let me congratulate you, and wish you all an honorable escape, or a bloody and honorable death."

CHAPTER SIX

When the mists of the anesthetic gas began to clear from Dane's mind, he found himself lying on a low, soft bed, with a silky-smooth covering. Rianna lay unconscious beside him; Dallith on a similar couch nearby. Aratak was stretched on the floor; as Dane sat up the great grayish lizardman stretched painfully, yawned, and sat up too. He looked around him and his eyes met Dane's.

"About one thing, at least, our captors told the truth," he said quietly. "We have not been harmed. How is it with the women?"

Dane leaned over Rianna; her breast was rising and falling naturally, as with sleep. Dallith began to stretch sleepily; sat up, looking around in quick panic; saw them and relaxed, smiling.

"So here we all are again," Dane said.

The room in which they lay was very large, with high ceilings and pillars and columns, and had at one time been painted a sort of terra-cotta color; but the paint seemed faded and old, and there were spiderwebs and dust in the high corners, though the place seemed clean enough otherwise. Long windows, unglazed but partially shuttered with narrow bamboo-like slats, admitted a strange reddish sunlight. Outside the arched windows there were voices and sounds of falling water. Dane got up and walked to the windows, peering through the slats.

Outside was a wilderness of garden; flowering bushes, long stony paths, low trees with goldencolored cones or long red seed-pods; everywhere the pervasive green, although no single tree looked familiar to him.

Unearthly, he thought, and that is a very exact description. The sky was lowering and reddish, with great grayish masses of sunset cloud, and in the sky the huge moon he had seen from space hung low, glowing reddish and seeming to cast its own fiery-red light over the trees, the paths, the flowers, and the fountains of falling water which seemed to flow and gurgle everywhere in the enormous garden.

There were people on the paths. People, as Dane had begun to think of them from his days on

the Mekhar slave ship; not a mixture of people and strange animals, just different kinds of people. They were all dressed in tunics of the same terra-cotta red as the walls of the room; human and nonhuman alike. There were people who seemed to Dane all but human, human as he was himself; there were some who reminded him vaguely of the Mekhars; there was at least one covered with fine woolly hair who looked like a taller, more alert gibbon or ape; there were too many to see and classify all at once. Another slave mart? No, the Mekhar had said, at last, that they were "too brave and courageous for slaves," whatever that meant. But the uniform brick-red tunics, and the close enclosure of the garden, told him that they had not yet reached freedom.

The variety of beings in the garden reminded him that when they left the ship their number had been five; and he looked about for the Mekhar who had, at the last, been imprisoned with them. He found him curled up, his head hidden between his hands, on another of the soft silken couches, evidently still sleeping.

"The gas wears off quickest on my kind," said Aratak from where he squatted before the window. "I was conscious again even before the small shuttle-ship landed us here. I repaid them by not resisting; I did not want to be separated from you, my companions. Now you are waking; and the Mekhar still sleeps. Evidently their metabolism differs from ours in some way. I hope he is not dead. Perhaps we should examine him and see-"

"I don't care if he's dead or not," Rianna said, "but probably no such luck; the Mekhars must know what dosage of anesthetic would work on their own kind."

"Anyway, he's breathing," Dallith said. Dane walked a step or two toward the sleeping cat-form. He was not only sleeping-he was purring in his sleep. If it had not been so incongruous, Dane would have laughed; the great fierce Mekhar, purring like a child's pet kitten.

"Well, he'll either wake up or he won't," Dane said. "Let's hope he doesn't start his new day trying to get revenge on us for landing him here! I'm going to keep an eye on him, anyway. Meanwhile, here we are, but where's here? Rianna, before we left the ship you acted as if you knew something about the Hunters. Suppose you tell us."

Rianna sat up, swung her bare legs over the edge of the couch, and came toward the window. The reddish light made her flame-tinged hair and sultry skin glow. She said, "Most people think they're a legend. When I was doing research I found out that they weren't. They call themselves by a name which means, simply, Hunters; and they think, of themselves, evidently, that way. They've refused to join the Unity-not that the Unity would let them in as they are, of course; but they've preferred staying outside the Unity to changing their ways."

Dallith came straight to the heart of the matter. "Why are they called Hunters? What do they hunt?"

Rianna said bluntly, "Us."

Aratak raised himself to his full height. "I had begun to suspect this. We were sold to them, then, for their hunting pleasure?"

Rianna nodded. "From all I have heard, and seen, in the libraries of the Unity-and it's not a great deal, for they have refused to let any outsiders land-hunting has become their one diversion, their one pleasure-their religion. They never stop seeking for some Prey which can give them a fair fight. For hundreds of years, I understand, they have had no dealings with anyone from off their world except for this-they will buy Quarry for their Hunts."

Dane said, watching the sleeping Mekhar out of the corner of his eye, "I had a funny feeling that it was almost too easy; that for some reason they -wanted us to try to escape. And evidently that's how they weed out the slaves from the ones they might be able to sell to the Hunters!"

Rianna gave a mirthless little laugh. "Their test doesn't work very well, then. Brave is the one thing I'm not."

Dallith said quietly, "Perhaps what they want is not so much the brave as the desperate."

"This explains why they spoke of a chance for escape, then," Dane said. "But what chance is that?"

The sleeping Mekhar suddenly stretched, with a great yawn, and sprang instantly upright; when he saw the four gathered near the windows, he came into a wary crouch.

Dane tensed for attack. But the Mekhar took a step backward.

"We would not be allowed to fight here." His voice was a deep, purring rumble. "Our skill and strength now belong to the Hunters. Very well; we have been enemies, we may be enemies again. But for the moment I ask a truce."

Dane glanced at Aratak; the giant lizard-man relaxed, with something like a bow. He said, "We are, at least, companions in misfortune; a truce it shall be. If you will, I swear by the Divine Egg that so long as our truce lasts I will not harm you waking or sleeping; will you give the same oath?"

The Mekhar growled, "Oaths are for those who can envision breaking their word; I say I will not harm you without taking my word back, nor any of you who give me a like undertaking. But if there is any who will not give me that word, I will fight him-or her-here and now, with or without weapons, to death or to surrender."

Rianna and Dallith glanced at Dane. He said, "I'll speak for all of us. We're all in too much trouble to fight among ourselves. I have no quarrel with you. Your people had no right to steal any of us from our home worlds, but fighting you won't put that right. Your own people seem to have played you a dirty trick, anyway-putting you in the same category with us!"

"Don't dare to say that," the Mekhar said. "I chose to redeem my honor this way of my own free will!" His long curved fingernails, like claws, contracted and retracted with rage.

Dane said hastily, "Well, be that as it may, I won't debate points of honor with you, since you and I probably use different meanings for the word." He thought to himself that anyone whose code of honor permitted the stealing of slaves probably couldn't have a meaningful discussion with him on the subject anyway, translator or no translator. "Anyway, if you let us alone, we'll let you alone; and I speak for the women too."

The Mekhar eyed them warily, his yellow eyes narrowed to slits; then he relaxed and dropped on the floor. "Be it so; while our word runs we hold a truce. Since you are no longer slaves but have proven your courage, I accept your word as good."

Rianna said, "I know very little about the Hunters; your race evidently deals with them. Can you tell us what they're like?"

The Mekhar stretched his lips in what could have been anger or irony. "You know as much as I; they do not let themselves be seen by outsiders," he said. "The Hunter is seen only by the Quarry he is about to kill."

Rianna shivered. Dallith came close to Dane and slipped her hand into his. Even Aratak seemed momentarily taken aback. "Does that mean they're invisible?"

"Visible or invisible, I know not," said the Mekhar. "I know only that no one I know of has seen one, and lived to tell."

He fell silent for a moment, and Dane thought about frying pans and fires. He was off the Mekhar slave ship, but it seemed he had escaped slavery only for what sounded like certain death at the hands of terrible, unknown Hunters. He thought, even the man who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death," had had the kindness to preface it by saying that he knew not what course others might take. Besides, Dane hadn't been given the choice between liberty and death, but between slavery and what sounded like certain death anyway.

Dallith, her now-familiar trick of reading his mood, said angrily, "Why, then, did the Mekhar captain speak of honorable escape as an alternate to honorable and bloody death?"

The Mekhar looked startled. "I thought you knew," he said. "Surely you did not think we would condemn any brave creatures to a certain death! The Hunt-as ail those who know of the Hunters should know-runs from Eclipse to Eclipse of the Red Moon. Those who still live when the Eclipse comes again-go free. Free, and with a great prize, and great honor. Why else would I be here?"

The Mekhar turned his back on them, whiskers twitching, and Dane stood watching him, trying to take this in.

A chance for escape-but from fierce people, so fierce that they had no other name than Hunters, feared even by the Mekhars. An enemy no one had seen except in the moment of being killed by them. So that they must fight, or flee, or somehow escape them, for the period of Eclipsehowever long that was-never knowing what form their enemy would take, or if he might come,

invisible, out of the air.

For a moment, ignobly, he wished he were back on the slave ship. He'd been looking for adventure all his life, but a journey across the Galaxy, even as a slave, was enough adventure for one lifetime!

Then, for no good reason at all, he found himself more cheerful. If the Hunters made a quasireligious ritual out of the Hunt, part of their fun would probably be in the risk involved. Hunters on Earth didn't get ail excited about going out to shoot rabbits. Fox-hunters made a big thing about not shooting the fox. The real mystique about hunting, for those who got involved in it, even on Earth, seemed to be the stalk, the danger, the thrill of running a risk. Therefore, the humans involved-or whatever races their Quarry might be-would somehow be given something like a fair chance.

I've gone soft, Dane thought, I'm out of condition, I used to be in fair fighting trim-those lessons in Japan in aikido and karate, the strenuous night-and-day hard •work of solo sailing-but three weeks of complete inactivity have softened me up. Aratak might make it; he's huge and tough. The women-well, if it was physical strength that counted, Dallith at least would have to be protected-although she'd been fierce enough, fighting the Mekhar, to scare him! But the Mekhars hadn't tested them for physical strength, Dane realized. The Mekhars had tested them for desperation, courage, willingness to take risks, and the ability to think out the loophole left for escape. So these must be the qualities the Hunters wanted in their Quarry, to give them a good fight He said aloud, "Maybe we've got a chance, after all Not a good one. But a chance."

Dallith gasped and clutched his arm, for the door at the far end of the long room was sliding open; Dane turned, wondering if they were to see the first of the mysterious Hunters. Instead what he saw was a tall, narrow metal column, which seemed to glide forward as if on invisible wheels. It had small slits covered with metal mesh, and small blinking lights or lenses, and after a moment Dane decided that it must be some sort of robot, even before it began to speak in the same sort of mechanical voice he had heard from the Mekhar ship's console.

"Welcome to this House of the Sacred Prey," it said, in that flat, metallic voice. "Food will be brought to you of whatever kind you desire, if you will state your preferred nutritional requirements. We have also for you"-the metal column whirred, turned slightly, and extruded a long metal arm-" garments suitable to the sacredness of your condition. Please to bathe in one of the pools or fountains, as you desire and as your custom suggests to your mind, and clothe yourselves in them." The clothing extended on the metal arm was of the same brick-red color that Dane had seen on the others in the great garden. Then they, too, were among the-what was that word the robot had used-the Sacred Prey? All of them? Dane suddenly wondered if the Hunters would hunt them down singly, or all together?

The Mekhar turned on the robot and snarled, "You metal nothing, it is not the custom of my people to wear any garments other than our own!"

The robot said passionlessly, "It is impossible to insult a creature constructed of metal by describing him as such, but we deduce that this was your intention, and the intended insult is

registered and acknowledged as such."

The Mekhar scowled and said, "You mean if I insult you, your masters the Hunters will regard it as an insult to them?"

"Oh, no." The robot's inflection did not change. "However, we have been informed that it is frustrating for a sapient being to insult another creature if the one insulted is not aware of the intended insult. We wish deeply to avoid giving cause for frustration to any of the Sacred Prey, so we were only reassuring you that we are aware of the intention to insult. Pray do not be frustrated."

Dane burst into a gurgle of laughter. He couldn't help it. The robot glided toward him and inquired anxiously, "Are you in distress?"

Dane, managing to get his face and voice straight, reassured the featureless robot that he was quite all right. The robot returned to the Mekhar who turned his back and the robot calmly glided around to face him again. The Mekhar, with a long sigh, remained still; and as if he had never been interrupted the robot continued. "As for your unwillingness to assume the garments of the Sacred Prey, it is customary that they shall be worn. Clad in the color assigned to the Sacred Prey, you will be admitted to any portion of the Hunting Preserves, and you will not be killed by accident or for any disciplinary action."

"You can't win, old fellow," said Dane to the Mekhar, trying hard to control his laughter.

"Customs of the country, and all that Here, you-" He turned to the robot, and the inexpressive voice said, "You may address me as Server."

"Give me your customary garments, or whatever; I'll wear them."

Aratak said in an undertone to Dane, "If I am going to be hunted, I want to be in decent condition. Let's see if this-Ahem! I have a problem. Server-" he said hesitantly.

The robot who called himself Server wheeled noiselessly toward him. "We are here to serve you."

"Server, your presence proposes a problem to me," Aratak said. "Are you a sapient being?"

Server was motionless before the huge lizard-man. "The question neither interests us nor makes sense to us," he said

Aratak said, "Then let me rephrase your question. Do you partake of Universal Sapience? Shall I regard you as an independently intelligent being? It is obvious that your answers are responsive to unforeseen and unprogrammed happenings. Therefore, how shall I regard you?"

"It is not necessary to regard us as anything in particular," said Server. "You are Sacred Prey, therefore transient, and we represent a permanence. But if you will forgive a suggestion, Honored Prey, we would prefer to delay any possible discussions or disputations or philosophical

questions as to the nature of our being until your material wants have been met. Have you a material request which we may honor, or have we leave to wait upon your companions?"

"I have a material request," Aratak said. "You spoke of bathing. In traveling one bathes as one can or must, in whatever way will serve the needs of sanitation, but can you provide me, for the repair of my integuments, with a bath of warm mud?"

Server's answer was instantaneous. "If you will proceed through that door beside the archway and travel along the path in the direction of the shadows, you will find a pool of mud for bathing. If the temperature proves unsuited to your integuments, report this to us tonight and we will duplicate whatever conditions are most suitable to you." He wheeled to the others and said, "There are water baths both hot and cold, ice baths, steam baths, and dry sand baths, as you prefer; make yourselves free of them. Now, if you would state your food requirements-"

He happened to be standing beside Rianna at that moment, and after a moment of thought she said, "I require a diet suitable for proto-simians, and am accustomed to a mixture comprising roughly a third of protein, a half of mixed carbohydrate and vegetable bulk, and the remainder of fat. My preferred flavors are either sweet or salty, with no objection to mild sournesses; I dislike great sourness or bitterness. Is this stated adequately?"

"We applaud your explicitness," said Server, "and will do our best to comply. Will this combination adequately nourish your other proto-simian companions?"

Dane said, "That's fine by me." After Rianna's scientific analysis of the human diet he'd have felt foolish asking for a steak dinner, although he did wonder how Server would have reacted to such a request.

Dallith said, "It is suitable for me also, with the reservation that I dislike salty flavors, but have no objection to mildly bitter ones. Also, it isn't customary for my race to feed on animal flesh."

Server acknowledged this with a little blink of lights, and turned to the Mekhar, who said harshly, "I'm a meat-eater."

"You prefer to consume a diet almost exclusively of animal protein or analogues thereof?" Server said. "It shall be provided for you. As for you, Honored Philosopher-"

Aratak's gill-ruffs glowed faintly blue as he bowed to the metal creature. He said politely, "The philosophical man consumes what nature sends his way. Fortunately our metabolism has adapted to the point where I can digest nearly anything, provided there is enough of it. An advantage to a harsh world where survival depends upon flexibility."

"We will attempt to please not only your digestion but your palate," Server said, and rolled away, while Dane stood marveling at a metal robot which could-almost-match Aratak in courteous philosophizing!

Aratak was evidently troubled. "I must speculate upon the place in Universal Sapience occupied

by intelligent beings who are nevertheless constructed, rather than evolved by the grace of the Divine Egg. If you will forgive me, I will assume the customary garments and go to repair my integument in a pool of hot mud."

He stumped away toward the door which Server had indicated.

Rianna said to Dallith, "A hot bath sounds marvelous. Shall we go and look for one?"

Dallith turned to Dane, hesitantly. "Shouldn't we stay together?"

"I guess we're pretty safe here. Go and get your bath before supper." He didn't know if mixed bathing was customary in either of the women's worlds, but it wasn't anything he cared to bring up just now. Left alone with the Mekhar, he asked, "What sort of bath do you generally use? You-I can't just keep calling you 'you'; what is your name?"

The Mekhar growled, "I am known as Cliff-Climber; you may call me Cliff for the sake of brevity. And I prefer a bath of cool water, preferably in a stationary pool where swimming is possible."

Well, Dane thought, there's that one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. I never imagined I'd find anything in common with a giant sapient cat. He said aloud, "I could do with a swim myself. Let's go look for one out there."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Outdoors, the Hunter's World was cold; the great red moon, obscuring much of the sky, cast down a fiery light which seemed to suggest warmth, but Dane was glad of the woolly-textured tunic, and Cliff-Climber was shivering before they had gone a hundred yards from the building. Cats liked heat, Dane thought; they were all jungle creatures originally. The Mekhar ship had been steamy hot

The path led away between green lawns and gardens; it was apparently a vast park, garden, or forest preserve.

Before they had gone very far they passed a vast pool which looked like yellow mud and smelled to high heaven of sulfur; little plops and gurgles all over its surface proclaimed volcanic action beneath, and small wisps of odoriferous steam escaped in gusts from them. A long, reptilian snout emerged from the mud, surmounted by two oddly familiar eyes; then the creature heaved itself up, and Dane recognized Aratak.

"Most comfortable," he rumbled, "Will you join me?"

Dane pantomimed clothespin-on-nose. "If that's your idea of a comfortable bath, old fellow, I wish you joy of it, but I'm going to find something that smells a little better!"

"Suit your own tastes, of course," Aratak said, settling himself comfortably back in the stinking yellow mud, neck-deep. "But I cannot imagine how this delightful fragrance can displease you. Well, I rejoice with you in the infinite diversity of Creation."

Dane looked at Cliff-Climber. "Feel free to join him, if you'd rather!"

The Mekhar grimaced expressive disgust, and they moved on. They passed a bubbling spring whose waters were so icy that Dane shuddered when he stuck a careful toe into them, moved on to an area where a natural hot spring had been diverted so that the water flowed into a large bathing pool surrounded by a variety of small stone-circled round pools or tubs. In one of these Rianna lay at length, naked, her red hah* curling with the steam and surrounding her body with floating rings. She lifted a hand in greeting to Dane, quite unabashed.

Why, she's beautiful I didn't realize it; I've never thought of it. But she's a beautiful woman.

In the central hot pool, a variety of men and women were bathing or swimming; seven or eight who seemed as human as himself, with five or six others of varying alien species. Dane had grown used to this on the Mekhar slave ship, and no longer stared with goggle-eyed wonder at their strangeness.

Yeah, quite the blase sophisticated Galactic traveler . , . he told himself sourly. Just another spider-man, another proto-canine or proto-feline species-

Wonder what the hell the Hunters are like!

At the far end of the pool he spotted, close together, two beings who closely resembled the Mekhar at his side.

Cliff-Climber saw them at almost the same instant, and his claws contracted and relaxed.

"I must go and see if they are people of my own world," he said, and moved away, circling the pool with his quick, bounding run.

Dane was not sorry to see him go. The close proximity of the Mekhar-word or no word-had been disconcerting. The hot water looked good, and it was too cold for a swim, so he decided to enter the pool himself.

He hesitated a moment before dropping his garment, but evidently there were no modesty taboos here. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, he told himself, stripping off the warm tunic and dropping it on the stone rim. He stuck in one foot, found that the water was as pleasantly warm as a heated swimming pool at home, and deepened toward the center for swimming, although at the edges it was no more than ankle-deep. He struck out toward the center and swam around for a few moments, enjoying the warmth after the chilly air.

The warm water seemed to ease the kinks from his muscles, aching and sore from the long

confinement. I'm out of condition, he thought. I hope I get a chance to limber up before the Hunt!

He turned on his back to float, and someone beside him spoke his name.

"Dane?"

He turned to see Dallith floating beside him.

"I thought you were probably soaking in a hot tub like Rianna."

"I was, for a time," she said. "The water in the smaller pools is much hotter than this, and very"she sought for a word-"very comforting. Then I felt you coming and swam out to speak to you."

They floated side by side for a moment, Dane looking up at the enormous red moon in the sky.

"Calling it a moon is really not quite right," Dallith said. "It must be another planet, and almost the twin of this one."

"It looks larger than this planet's sun," Dane agreed. The sun was an undistinguished yelloworange ball, the apparent size of a dinner plate; the moon covered almost a sixth of the visible sky. "The man in the moon is a giant here," he said humorously, looking at the strange markings on the full red face.

Dallith said soberly, "We will soon be the men in the moon."

"What do you mean, Dallith?"

"There are two men here from a world in the Unity," she said. "They know my world and know of my people, although they have never been there. They were, of course, surprised to see one of my race away from our home world-when we must travel we do so in groups, for we cannot be alone, as you know-and they asked me many questions, and in return they told me what they knew of the Hunt." She gestured with one hand at the great red disk above. "The Hunt takes place on the moon."

She explained. The planet of the Hunters, and the Red Moon, revolved around one another in a stable path, so that eclipses of the sun were frequent on the Hunters' World, and eclipses of the moon almost as common. During the next eclipse of the sun--as seen from the moon-the Prey would be taken to the moon, and there, as the light returned, would be hunted. The Prey's only task was to survive until the darkness of the next eclipse-at which time the Hunt would end. The Hunters who had been victorious, and successfully killed their Prey, would bring the bodies back to the Hunters' World for ceremonial feasting, and great ceremony; the Prey who had managed to survive would be honored, rewarded, and given safe passage back to wherever they wished to go.

Dane asked, "Do they know what the Hunters are like?"

Dallith said, "No. I'm told no one knows that. They quoted the same thing Cliff-Cumber said:

The Hunter is seen only by the Prey he kills.'"

"That's ridiculous," Dane said. "Some people must have fought a Hunter and lived to tell about it"

"Maybe they're unkillable," suggested Dallith, in all seriousness. "Some races are said to be. When wounded, they simply regenerate their own parts."

"I don't think so," Dane said slowly. "If the Hunt is virtually a religious ritual for these people, Hunters, it must be associated with some genuine danger and risk for them. Most religions emphasize, one way or another, a conquest over death. A people who made a religion out of hunting, and went to such lengths to secure really dangerous prey, must be vulnerable. If they just wanted the fun of killing things, they could pick and choose among all the slave races, but they pay enormous sums and go to enormous amounts of trouble to get brave and des perate people for their Prey. So it hardly stands to reason that they'd make it a massacre. We must have some chance-maybe not a good chance, but a chance of some sort-at killing them right back."

Dallith did not reply. She struck out for the shore; Dane followed her. Near the edge of the pool he overtook her. She was standing knee-deep in the water, and for the first time he saw her wholly naked,, without the all-enveloping loose white robe of her home planet.

She is beautiful too, he thought. When I first saw her she seemed all beauty to me, incomparable. Yet he did not react to her nakedness with the immediate sensual response as he

had felt for Rianna. Is it only the habit of protecting her, caring for her, sparing her all trouble and fear? He quickly stifled the automatic response, knowing she would-with that eerie empathic sensitivity-pick it up from his mind and emotions.

I love her. And yet she doesn't appeal to me-sexually-half as much as Rianna. I look at Rianna lying naked in her bath, and I revert to the barbarian-I could jump on her right there, the way all proto-simians are supposed to do. And! don't even particularly like her!

The air struck icy and chill after the hot water, and Dane made haste to get into his warm tunic, belting it around him. He looked down at his bare legs and thought, It's funny how much we depend for our self-image on our clothes. If you'd asked me, say a year ago, I'd have said I didn't give a hang about clothes, they were just something to keep off the cold, and keep the cops from running me in for indecent exposure. But being without pants does funny things to Western man. We even define our masculinity that way-we talk about a man wearing the pants in his family.

He joined Dallith at the edge of the pool. The light was dimming, and the other swimmers were leaving the baths. In the long, loose terra-cotta tunic, her light straight hair falling like a curtain over her shoulders and nearly to her waist, Dallith looked shy and lovely.

"It is strange-to feel that people are looking at me.'8

"Me too," Dane said. "Nude bathing isn't done in the part of the world I come from, though of course I've traveled where it is customary and it doesn't bother me. We have a proverb, though,

'When in Rome'-Rome is a city on my world, a big one-'do as the Romans do,''"

Dallith smiled. "We have a similar saying. 'When traveling on Lughar, eat fish.'"

"Probably Aratak could find a proverb from the Wisdom of the Divine Egg to match it," Dane said wryly. "Human nature seems to run in the same channels. . .

"Human nature?"

"Universal Sapience," Dallith corrected him gently. "But you're right; most sapient beings do discover the same truths and put them down in their proverbs. . . ."

Dane's mouth twisted. "Where do the Mekhars fit into that?" he asked, and Dallith said slowly, "They are surely sapient beings. They seem to have their own strict codes of ethics. But they have not yet accepted the Unity. . . ."

Her words fell, as if of their own weight, and trailed into silence. Then she said, "Before we began talking of proverbs and sapience-I was saying, it feels strange to think people are looking at me."

"Nude bathing is not customary for you, then?"

"Oh, no. It is customary-in fact, we seldom wear clothes at all on our own world, unless it is

snowing, or we have to travel in very wet and thorny woods-but we seldom look at one another. It's easier to react to other people of my own kind by the way they feel to our minds. It was so strange to feel people thinking about my body, my outside image, rather than what I was like inside-am I very ugly, Dane?" It sounded rather pathetic, and Dane, taken aback, said simply, "No. No. To me you seem beautiful."

"And do-do men of your world judge women by their beauty?"

"I'm afraid so. Sometimes. The more sensible ones, of course, try to judge women by their other qualities-their intelligence, their good manners, kindness, gentleness, good nature-but I'm afraid too many men do judge women by whether or not they're good-looking."

"And women judge men that way too?" Suddenly Dallith blushed, turning away, but Dane could see that she was almost as red as her tunic. She said, still not looking at him, "Let's go and find Rianna. See, the others are all coming out of the water."

Dane went with her, feeling oddly confused, wondering how much of his own indecision and sexual awareness she had picked up. Rianna joined them in a minute or two, her hair drying in a frizzy copper-colored cloud around her head, her tunic tucked up to her knees. She said, "Aratak has gone to wash off that damnable yellow slime; I gather he considers it a precious perfume and meant to wear it to supper, but I managed to convince him that probably none of the rest of us could manage to eat much unless he got rid of the sulfur stink. Where's the Mekhar?"

"He found a couple of compatriots, and went off to join them."

"I hope he stays with them," Rianna said emphatically. "I don't trust him. I've never liked any of the proto-feline species-they're stealthy sneaks, and you can't trust any of them, any more than you can a pet mouse-catcher!"

"That's a very prejudiced attitude for a scientist," Dallith said in her grave way. "It's like blaming a proto-simian for being curious; it's a survival mechanism. Proto-felines evolved from hunting carnivores; stealth is a survival mechanism for them, too. Would your house-mouser be any good at hunting if he didn't catch his dinner quietly?"

Rianna shrugged. "Anyway, our Mekhar is welcome to the society of his own kind-but no such luck, for here he conies."

Cliff-Climber joined them, Aratak lumbering along behind, as they reached the building in which they had been lodged. The giant saurian said, "I have disposed of the stench which was inimical to your metabolism, Rianna." He managed to sound pitiful. She chuckled.

"Thank you, Aratak. I'm aware of the sacrifices you philosophers have to make when traveling with us hypersensitive simian types!"

Cliff-Climber was sleek and shining under his brick-red tunic, his lionlike mane of hair and beard combed into smooth and elaborate ringlets. Dane said, "I had expected you to remain with

your kindred, Cliff."

"My kindred?" Cliff-Climber made a hissing, spitting noise, halfway between derision and annoyance. "Common criminals! Common thieves who escaped from Mekharvin one pounce ahead of the Stalkers, fled here and sold themselves to keep from paying the price of their crimes! These are the folk who give the Mekhars a bad name all over the Galaxy!"

"Of course," Rianna said with heavy irony, "slave stealers aren't in a class with common thieves."

Cliff-Climber took her literally. "Of course not. I could not possibly join with such people. In the first place, I have given my word not to harm you, as my companions. In the second, honor will not permit me to associate with such beings. I prefer to keep my wrath and my killing for the Hunters."

Dane asked-not with sarcasm, he was actually interested-"Does honor permit you to associate with proto-simians and slaves?"

"Not usually," Cliff-Climber replied, as they passed into the building which was their temporary quarters, "but you are beings of proven bravery, and furthermore you are to be, it seems, my companions in the Hunt. So it is necessary that I cultivate a feeling of kindliness toward you, so that we may cooperate against our mutual foes."

Dane murmured, "We must hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately."

Cliff-Climber said, "Let us hope no such dishonorable fate awaits us."

Aratak asked, "Did you manage to find out anything about exactly what fate does await us-and when?"

"I did," Dallith said, and repeated what she had been told about the eclipses and that the Hunt would take place on this planet's satellite, the Red Moon. Cliff added, "We were brought here too late in the day to join the other Prey in the armory. But, I am told, tomorrow morning we will be taken there."

They were interrupted by the robot, Server, returning through the long door at the end of the hall. His extensible arms-five of them, this time-held a variety of covered trays of food.

"If you will arrange yourselves conveniently for your preferred style of dining," Server's mechanical voice informed them, "it will be our pleasure to serve you."

The Mekhar brought a cushion from his couch, dropped to the floor; after a minute of thought Dane did likewise and the others, except Aratak, followed suit. The great saurian simply stretched out, half reclining.

"It is good to dine in civilized surroundings again," he said.

Server rolled noiselessly to Dallith. "Honored Prey, that it was you who requested food of vegetable origin. It is our pleasure to inform you that the proteins in this meal are entirely of leguminous origin, baked or boiled, and the fats are from the seeds of a tree." He extended a tray to Dallith.

To Dane, and to Rianna, he gave slightly similar trays, whose contents, he informed them, were of mixed animal and vegetable origin. Dane, tasting it, decided it wasn't the steak dinner he had thought about, but it wasn't bad either. There was something like mushrooms, a salad of mixed greens, and a kind of meat loaf. There were also some mixed fruits, very sweet. Dallith had the same kind of fruits and salad but instead of meat loaf she had some kind of dark-red baked grains. The tray given to Cliff-Climber smelled strange and unpleasant, but the Mekhar made a soft purring growl of appreciation and began to tear at it with his claws. Aratak ate delicately, with the tips of his claws; his food looked and smelled almost as bad, to Dane, as the perfumed mud which was his delight, but Aratak positively glowed-blue around the gills, that same luminescence-and said to Server, "You have kept your promise to delight my palate as well as my metabolism. My deepest thanks. I have not been fed so well in a hundred light-years."

Dane muttered, "The condemned man always gets a hearty meal."

Cliff-Climber twitched his muzzle and murmured, "A hearty meal to one creature is garbage to his brother."

Dane laughed, and at Rianna's inquiring glance said, "One man's meat is another man's poison. We were talking earlier of proverbs."

Aratak asked Server, "Are you the same creature who came to serve us before?"

"The question neither interests us nor has meaning."

Dallith-Dane was seated on cushions between her and Rianna-murmured, "He always speaks of himself in the plural."

"I noticed," Dane whispered. "Now, is he using the royal we, the editorial we, or the we of people with tapeworms?"

Dallith giggled. "Could a robot have a tapeworm?"

"Of course," Rianna chuckled, "a parasite that eats computer tapes."

Aratak was cogitating, as Server rolled noiselessly away. "I must think about this. I asked him if he had Universal Sapience, and he did not, or could not, answer. There are many of these Server creatures, for I saw at least four in the confines of the park. Now the question before us at the moment is this." He paused as if he were addressing a seminar in philosophy. "Can a being with no individual sense of identity partake of Universal Sapience?"

Dane was glad to have something to think about besides the impending Hunt. "Does sapience necessarily depend on a sense of identity?"

"It seems to me it does," Aratak said. "For sapience evolves, it seems to me, when a creature begins to regard himself as individual rather than simply following the mass instincts of his species. When, in short, he leaves the general and begins to regard himself as being one of the particular."

"I'm not sure it matters," said Rianna, "If Server is only one of a centralized intelligence, then wouldn't that centralized intelligence of which Server is part, partake of Universal Sapience? And if he can speak for all of them, or it, isn't any one of Server's parts, or bodies, a part of such sapience?"

Aratak looked troubled. "I have always defined sapience as a sense of one's unique individuality. How do you define it, Rianna?"

"The ability for time-binding," she replied promptly. "When any species reaches the point where it can pass along accumulated knowledge to its progeny, so that each generation does not recapitulate the whole race experience in itself, but can pass along history, I believe at that point a race is sapient"

"Hmmm, possibly," murmured Aratak, picking his enormous teeth. "Cliff-Climber, how does your race define sapience?"

The Mekhar did not hesitate. "A sense of honor-a code of ethics. We regard any race without such a code as animal, and any race which displays it as sapient." He bowed to them and said, "Naturally we so regard you all."

Aratak said, "And you, Dallith? How does your race define sapience?"

"Empathy, I think. I don't mean the developed psi talent, but the ability to think oneself into the other being's place. Maybe I simply mean imagination. No non-sapient animal has it, and every sapient species has it."

"These are all very good answers," Aratak said. "Dane, we have not heard from you, and coming from a planet with only one known sapient species, has your race even evolved a concept of what constitutes sapience?"

Dane said slowly, "It's a common enough point of philosophical speculation. We have two or three species-dolphins, great apes-who appear to have some, if not all, of the earmarks of sapience, and people have thought about it. Some people have suggested that the ability to create art, the aesthetic sense, is a mark of sapience." In his wildest dreams he had never thought he would sit around a dinner with two girls from alien stars, a lion-man and a lizard-man, discussing the possible sapience of a robot. Suddenly he felt ludicrously cheerful. "Probably the mark of sapience," he said, "is nothing more nor less than the ability to ask oneself what it is; in short, the ability to take part in philosophical discussions about sapience. That would cover everything."

He raised his glass, full of some kind of faintly bitter and alcoholic drink. "I'll drink to that!"

Once the sun had set the sky darkened quickly, and since there were no artificial lights inside the quarters, only the reddish moonlight, the five captives sought their beds. Dane could not sleep for some time. Once he went noiselessly to the door and tested it, simply to verify a theory he had. It was not locked. But where could they go? In any case, escape now would just mean the Hunters would hunt them down now, rather than later. And later, they would have weapons, or so CliffClimber had indicated with his talk of armories.

Returning to his bed, he passed the two sleeping women. Rianna lay flung out on her back, naked and covered only with a thin blanket; Dane hurriedly turned away. Just like all the rest of the proto-simians. I've got other things on my mind, right now, though.

Dallith slept quietly, her face half hidden in her long streaming hair, and Dane paused beside her, looking down in an agony of love and regret.

I saved your life, Dallith-but only to bring you here. Rianna was right all along. He turned hastily away and stumbled toward his own bed. But it was a long time before he slept.

CHAPTER Eight

The next morning, after a meal very like-in quantity-the evening meal, but entirely different in flavors and textures, the five captives were led through the great park, or preserve, by the mechanical Server, at last reaching a great windowless building. It was constructed of the same terra-cotta colored brick as everything else in this part of the planet.

"This is the Armory," Server told them, ushering them over the threshold. "Here you may practice, every day, with the weapons of your personal choice."

The idea brought Dane up short. Weapons. Armory. He realized that despite his brave words last night, he had been thinking more or less in terms of big game, or safari hunting back on Earth, where the game had no defense except to run and hide, or to charge with such natural weapons as claws, teeth or tusks, or sheer size and weight might give him. While the hunters, on the other hand, might be equipped with the most modern and dangerous weapons-guns, darts, special windowed shooting wagons-that science could provide. When he had spoken about a genuine risk for the Hunters, here, he had been thinking in terms of Earth's own game laws, aimed more at limiting the take, and preserving the breeding powers of the game, rather than giving them a better chance for life. Such things as the laws against shooting underage, or breeding females; laws against jacklighting deer, or using explosive bullets against big game.

But what he had said just might be literally true; in which case the Hunt laws were more analogous to the formalized, quasi-religious sport of the bullfight; a pageant of death, involving a serious combat, a duello of death. ...

He followed Server into the great building.

Inside, it was evenly lighted, padded underfoot, and divided into huge areas. It reminded Dane, very faintly, of a big gymnasium or practice field on Earth. Four or five Olympic teams could have worked out hi it without ever coming close enough to study one another's styles.

And all along the walls, lining them, up and down, for what seemed like acres and acres of space, were weapons.

Weapons. Dane had never seen so many weapons.

There were swords of every make and kind he had ever envisioned, from great two-handed Crusader and Viking swords to short slim rapiers to curved Persian-style sabers. Some were so tiny and slim that they would not have burdened a four-year-old child, and he found himself speculating curiously about the race which could grasp and hold their tiny hilts. Others, on the other hand, were so huge that he doubted if Aratak could have lifted them with both paws.

With the swords there were daggers, and knives, again of every conceivable shape, form, or material. There were huge spears and smaller narrow ones. There were shields, great square or round or triangular ones, small light round ones of leather and wicker, oddly-shaped ones evidently meant for no human anatomy since they had at least three handles and could not conveniently be lifted with fewer hands. There were maces, and clubs. There were weapons Dane had never seen before and did not know how to describe.

Aratak asked Server, "What are the rules of the Hunt about these weapons?"

"You may choose what weapons you like, and practice with them from now until the day of the Hunt," Server said. "Then you may take with you whatever weapons you can carry."

Dallith's hand slid into Dane's. She asked the question in his thoughts.

"What sort of weapons do the Hunters carry?"

Server's voice was expressionless, as always: "Some carry one weapon, some another. Each Hunter has his favorite."

Rianna said, "Do they carry any other weapons? Nerve-guns, for instance, or explosivepropulsion weapons?"

"They do not," Server said. "The rules of the Hunt, which are said to be older than their very race itself, prohibit the Hunter from carrying any weapon denied to the Sacred Prey themselves."

That, thought Dane, was a great relief. "Then you mean no weapons will be used against us except those which are displayed here?"

"None whatsoever. The Armory contains a full assortment of every permitted weapon."

He rolled away toward another group of people in terra-cotta tunics who were working out, at the far end of the Armory. Dane thought he recognized a couple of Mekhars among them; he wondered if they were the same with whom Cliff-Climber had arrogantly declined to associate, the day before. They seemed to be working out with something that looked, at this distance, like kendo sticks or short, blunt quarterstaffs.

He went toward the walls of the Armory, looking closely at the array of weapons displayed there. A weapons collector would go mad in here, he thought To say nothing of the curator of an arms museum!

"I wonder if all these weapons were made by the Hunters for their Prey," Rianna said at his elbow, "or whether they were collected from all corners of the Galaxy?"

"The question had crossed my mind also," Aratak rumbled, "but I do not suppose we will ever know."

Dane smiled grimly. "As it happens, I think I can answer it," he said, staring with close attention at one long curved sword on the wall, in a polished black lacquer wooden sheath. "It's likely that some, at least, have been collected or kept in honor of some unusually dangerous or daring Prey." He reached up and took down the sheath.

"Look," he said. "This particular sword, for instance."

"It's not unique," Rianna said. "I can name four planets where this type of sword is used-the same general type, that is; I'm not a weapons specialist."

"But on this, I am," Dane said, sliding the blade from its scabbard with what seemed exaggerated care, and holding it at arm's length. He looked along the bright, highly polished blade. "Note that the curve runs all along the length of the sword-in fact, it's bow-shaped. That may be common enough all over the Galaxy-it probably is, it's an efficient enough design. Curved swords are common even on my planet But this particular blade-well, look. It's made of two kinds of metal; the core of soft iron which will bend without breaking; the outside of tempered steel Do you see that wavy line?" Carefully, he pointed to where the metal changed color. "That's where the steel was specially hardened, so it would take a razor edge-although, to be exact, the usual razor is dull by comparison. I've seen an expert cut a silk kimono off a human body, without harming the wearer. Notice the mirror finish-how highly polished it is. And of course, every culture decorates and finishes off their swords in some characteristic way, and this one is unmistakable. Look at the hilt; the grip of sharkskin, wrapped with silk cord in that particular pattern. This sword was made on Earth," he concluded. "It can't be coincidence. But if you want absolute proof-" Carefully he slid a tiny wooden peg out of the handle, and with a few deft movements he removed the grip entirely and stood examining the exposed tang. He turned the blade so they could see the markings. "This is a Japanese samurai sword, made by Mataguchi in 1572-and probably one of the finest ever made; I've seen other Mataguchi swords, but none this perfect"

Dallith's breath caught. "Made on your world?"

"On my world," he said grimly, "four hundred years ago. The samurai were a caste of the fiercest swordsmen who ever existed. And someone-or some thing-must have landed on Earth and taken at least one of them back here, to fight against the Hunters."

He glanced caressingly down the length of the blade before replacing the grip; Rianna reached out as if to touch the blade and he stretched his hand to prevent her. "Do that and you'll be picking up your finger off the floor," he said. "I told you; a razor is dull by comparison. This one's been hanging here a long time, it's a little weathered, but still-those robots, or something, have been taking good care of it."

He slid it carefully into the lacquered sheath.

"I don't envy any Hunter-and I don't care what kind of creatures they are-who runs up against a samurai with this particular sword in hand. He may have been killed-he probably was killed-but he certainly didn't give up his life cheaply."

"Perhaps he was one of those who escaped," Rianna suggested, "and they hung the sword in the Armory to honor him."

"Not if I know anything about samurai," Dane said quietly. "If he'd lived, he would have taken the sword with him, wherever he went afterward. "The sword of the samurai is the soul of the

samurai.' They'd have had to kill him to get it."

He stood for a moment with the sheath in his hand. The Mataguchi sword-it would have been a priceless museum-piece on Earth, or the cherished heirloom of an old Japanese family-was a little longer and heavier than any he had ever actually practiced with. And it had been years since he had studied the Japanese style of fencing. He should probably test half a dozen swords of the same general type, until he found one of the perfect weight for his arm.

But he felt strangely drawn to the nameless, unknown Japanese swordsman of the sixteenth century who, at some unguessable moment in history, had been kidnapped, like himself, and taken like himself halfway across the known Universe to face unbelievable opponents. "I think I've found my weapon." he said. "Maybe it's a good omen."

He turned to Cliff-Climber and said, "Are there weapons here to suit your people?"

He was growing used to the arrogant curl of the Mekhar's upper lip. "Weapons? I need only these," said the lion-man, flexing his great paws and flicking out long, curved claws razor-sharp and glittering as if-No; they had been artificially tipped with gleaming metal.

Like capping a tooth, Dane thought, but a lot more dangerous.

"I will meet any creature alive with these. It would be beneath me to use lesser weapons."

Dane raised an eyebrow. "Your motto seems to be, be prepared. But I noticed on shipboard you carried a nerve-gun."

"For herding animals," said the Mekhar with contempt. "But I am a member of the fighting caste and I have blooded an enemy in a hundred duels. These"-one sneering nod took in the enormous array of weapons which lined the walls-"are for races ungifted by Nature with weapons of their own. Your weak claws and teeth developed when you abandoned Nature's weapons, and see, your people are paying for it"

Dane shrugged.

"Each to his own weapons."

"As a matter of history," Rianna said tartly, "proto-simians never were, as you put it, gifted with Nature's weapons. We were given brains to make up for the deficiency."

"That, of course, is your own version," Cliff-Climber said, quite unruffled.

"Well, it's none of my business," Dane told him seriously, "but suppose they come at you with a long spear or something of the sort?"

Cliff-Climber thought about that for a moment. He said, "I will trust to their honor-and their wish for sport."

"I wish I had your confidence," Dane muttered. Aratak was studying the long rows of weapons, looking dissatisfied.

"We are a peaceful people," he said. "I know little of weapons. A knife is for peeling fruits or skinning prickle-fishes. I must think about this." He looked down the long room, where the strangers who vaguely resembled the Mekhar had hung up their long sticks and gone away. "Perhaps I will confine myself to the heaviest club I can conveniently lift. With my weight behind it, it should crush almost any attacker within reason. If not, then I suspect I have been designated by the Cosmic Egg as ripe to give up this life and join its own infinite wisdom, and it will be useless for me to struggle to master strange weapons."

Dane suspected he was right. The thought of Aratak weilding "the heaviest club he could lift" was a fearsome one indeed-he imagined the great, powerful lizard-man could crush a rhinoceros with one, if he happened to hit it foursquare between the eyebrows-and anything Aratak couldn't kill that way probably couldn't be killed.

Cradling the samurai sword on his arm, Dane turned to the girls. He said, "It doesn't seem real. Swordplay is a sport, a game, on our world. No one expects to have to fight for his life with a sword, these days."

"I thought your world was full of wars," Rianna said.

"There are wars enough. But most of them are fought, now, with bombs, or at least with rifles. Even bayonets have gone out of style. And policemen carry guns for when their nightsticks aren't enough to keep the peace." He frowned in dismay. "At that I'm probably better qualified than the average Earthman, who never handled anything more lethal than the Watt Street Journal."

Rianna shook her head in dismay. She said, "On my world women never did much fighting, even before we did away with wars for good. I used to carry a knife in case I was attacked out on an archaeological dig-thieves and rapists still turn up now and then in the wilder areas-and once or twice I've had to use it. But usually it was enough to show that I had it; your average rapist is a coward. I wonder if I can find one light enough for me."

Dane grinned a little. "If you can't, it probably doesn't exist. They've got knives up there from six inches long to three feet, and Weighing everything from two ounces to ten pounds."

Rianna finally selected a long, thin, leaf-shaped dagger, and a small second blade which could be tucked inside her skirt pocket. She blinked as she belted the longer one around her waist, and said, "It takes some getting used to. The idea of having to use this on a-a sapient creature, or having it used on me-" She rubbed her eyes fiercely, but Dane realized that behind her hard courage she was trembling with fear.

He said, "Let's hope it won't come to that, Rianna. I understand that what we have to do is survive-and if we can do it by running, I'm going to run, and hide, the best I can. I'm not eager to fight these Hunters, either." It was just as well, he thought, that they were being given some time

to accustom themselves to the idea of a fight to the death. It wasn't anything a civilized person could readily assimilate. And although some people said that civilization was only a veneer, the veneer was thicker in some people than in others. He'd seen it during his brief Army service-in Vietnam. Some recruits took readily to the idea of killing. Civilization peeled off them in seconds when the drill instructor put a bayonet in their hands and told them to charge. Too many of that kind in one division, and you got a My Lai massacre, where killing erupted and couldn't be stopped until men, women, old people, and little children all lay dead. Other recruits couldn't be taught to kill, went into battle and fired into the air or squeezed their triggers at random, not wanting to die but unable to face the idea of an actual human target.

A friend of his in the police force had told him it was the same there. Some men killed readilymaybe too readily. Others discovered the ability to kill only when their own lives hung in the balance. And some could never bring themselves to shoot at all, and unless they were lucky and got assigned to a desk job or directing traffic in a playground, they were likely to get shot on the job before they could bring themselves to draw their own guns.

He had never knowingly killed anyone. He had studied the martial arts-kendo, karate, aikido-in the same spirit that he had climbed mountains and participated in solo sailing races; for the sport and for the sake of the skills involved. Could he kill? He wasn't sure. But I'll damn well have to make a good stab at it-no pun intended!

He had a few days to talk himself into it, anyhow. He remembered the time when he had goneas an alternate, who never got a chance to appear on the field-with the Olympic fencing team.

He'd gotten to know one of the distance-running champions, a gold-medal winner from England, who had told him that everything-winning, losing, competing-was all in the mind. "You psych yourself into winning, or into losing," he had said, "into finishing up with the feeling that you're going to drop dead, or into actually dropping dead-some people have."

So you could probably psych yourself into killing.

Cliff-Climber probably didn't need it, he thought. His race seemed to be killers; he had talked about fighting duels. Aratak? A peaceful people, but when angered he could be formidable. He'd seen Aratak in action against the Mekhars. As for Rianna-well, her people were pretty civilized, but if she could use a knife against a thief or would-be rapist, probably when the crunch came she'd be prepared to kill an attacker.

But Dallith?

Her people were peaceful. She was even a vegetarian. She'd come to pieces with terror-

And she'd been fiercer than any of us, against the Mekhars. Aratak had had to pull Dallith off one of them bodily, to prevent her from killing him then and there. . . .

He looked around for her, but she was examining a row of strange-looking, probably nonhuman weapons far down the room, and something in the determined way she had her back turned to him kept him from joining her.

I want to protect her, he thought. And I can't. I'll have all I can do to keep myself alive.

Firmly, summoning all the mental discipline he could manage, he put that right out of his mind. His fears could do nothing for Dallith except to rouse her own. Cliff

Climber had gone halfway down the long room and was doing an elaborate, solitary form of shadowboxing against the wall

He disdains weapons. But those other Mekhars -were using something like kendo sticks.

He wondered if the Hunters were like the Mekhars. Cliff-Climber seemed to understand them pretty well.

There were, it seemed, several groups practicing with various weapons. He wondered if it was permitted to watch others, and seeing Server-or another mechanical robot exactly like himrolling toward their group, he put the question. He was told that the honored Sacred Prey could go wherever he chose within the confines of the Hunting Preserve (he wondered what would happen if he went outside, but he wasn't exactly eager to find out), and that if he had firmly made a choice of weapon, for the duration of the Hunt it would be reserved for him and no one else allowed to use it.

Dane hesitated only a moment before saying that he had. It might be folly, there might be some

weapon better suited to his hand, but the lure of a sword from his own world was something he could not resist. If it was pure sentiment, he was prepared to risk his life on it.

He spent the rest of the short day accustoming himself to the feel of the hilt and sword in his hand, to the way it balanced and felt As the sun was declining, Server came to direct them again to the baths before the evening meal.

Still preoccupied with the discovery of the samurai sword, he separated from the others without exchanging any word, and lay neck-deep in one of the volcanic pools for about half an hour, thinking this over. From time out of mind, stories had circulated-Charles Fort had collected thousands-of mysterious disappearances. "Flying Saucer" contactees told all sorts of tales about ships from outer space. There was the old story of the Mary Celeste-the ship found floating in the Atlantic Ocean, all lifeboats intact, the ship in perfect, seaworthy condition, the men's breakfast laid ready in the galley and the coffee still warm-but without a soul on board, living or dead. Now, in his hand, Dane Marsh had held proof of where some of these mysteriously-disappeared men had gone.

Did it matter? No one on Earth would ever know, after all. Even if he survived the Hunt, if these mysterious Hunters honored their promises that survivors would be set free, it was past all belief that he would be, or could be, returned to Earth. And if he did somehow get back, and tried to tell his story-well, no one would believe him. Maybe that chap who claimed he'd been taken to Venus aboard a spaceship hadn't been so wacky, either-and maybe it hadn't been Venus.

Ahead of him, like a great door blocking off all view to the future, lay the Hunt. Lying submerged in the boiling hot pool, looking up at the great Red Moon that covered more than a quarter of the sky today, he realized that until this was over and done he could not begin to imagine what life would be like. And if I get killed it won't make any difference, he thought grimly. Why plan for a future which probably won't come?

No. That way lay despair and certain death. The only way to insure that there would be any future to plan for lay across the barrier of the Hunt, and he meant to survive it if he could.

The unknown samurai whose sword he bore had probably believed that he had been brought beyond the world's end to fight with demons. But whatever they were, the Hunters were not demons, and they would not meet him with some monstrous unknown weapon. They must be fallible. All the odds might be rigged in their favor-but so was a bullfight rigged in favor of the torero, and just the same the bull sometimes killed his man.

The hot water had seeped into every pore of his body and he felt pliant, comfortable, and relaxed. He thumbed his nose at the Red Moon and got out of the hot pool, plunging swiftly, before the air could chill him, into the cooler swimming bath.

He swam around for some time, until his whole body felt alive and tingling, then hauled himself out, dried himself sketchily with the terra-cotta tunic, and, naked on the rim of the pool, began to go through the kata exercises.

"You've been doing that all day," Rianna said at his side. "It looks like a sacred dance. I thought you didn't belong to any religion with rituals."

Dane laughed without halting his rhythm, going on with the quick, dancelike movements, which mimicked attack and defense postures; sliding rhythmically from one to the other. "Just getting limbered up," he said. "After today's workout, and a long hot bath, I could easily get stiffened up."

He finished, stopped, bent, and drew on his tunic, aware that Rianna was watching him closely as he fastened it. She said, "You seem to have some unexpected skills you never mentioned."

"I never thought it would do me the slightest good. I studied the martial arts the way a girl might study dancing even if she didn't intend to go on the stage."

"It is beautiful to watch," Rianna said with a smile. "Is it an art in itself?"

Dane shook his head. "No, the exercises are from karate-a form of unarmed combat; you saw me use it on the Mekhar ship." He came closer to her, exhilarated and excited. He was very conscious of the way she was looking up at him, flushed, her eyes dilated, her hair a frothing coppery cloud around her face, the tunic slipping from one shoulder. Without any preliminary, he reached out for her and drew her close into his arms, feeling her respond and melt against him.

He thought, the merest glimmer of thought at the back of his mind, This isn't love, it isn't caring, it's simple rut. It's instinct, in the face of imminent death . . . to breed, to leave something of the self. . . . But at that moment Dane could not have cared less for the voice of his mind. He looked quickly around the pool (Did I notice this subconsciously, before? Was I planning this?) where small enclosed groves or thickets of trees fell nearly to the ground, screening them from view.

"This way," he said to Rianna, his voice roughened with urgency, and pulled her into the grove. He seized her and bore her with his weight to the grass.

It was wholly instinctive, and so was her response. Sometime, somewhere, he heard himself mutter to her, "I shouldn't-not like this-"

She clasped him closer, murmuring against his mouth. "What does it matter? What have we to lose?"

It seemed a long time afterward, and the light from the Red Moon had intensified considerably, so that she seemed to lie bathed in a crimson glow, that she stirred, chuckling softly deep in her throat.

"As our dear Aratak would say, no doubt quoting his beloved Cosmic Egg-what could you expect of a couple of proto-simians, so deeply hi the grip of their instinctive drives?" She bent over and kissed him quickly. "Dane, Dane, don't look so wretchedly apologetic! It's a common reaction-of course it is. Why should you and I be exempt from it?"

He sat up and drew his tunic about him, smiling at the woman.

"I suspect we'd better get back for our supper. Otherwise that damned robot, or one of his computerized brothers, is likely to come looking for us, and I'd hate to have to explain to some blasted servomech what kept us!"

She said serenely, "I'm sure he's used to it."

It was dark enough now so that lights were gleaming from inside the building which was their temporary home and, when Dane and Rianna came inside, the others were already beginning their meal. Cliff-Climber looked up, briefly, with a satirical curl of his whiskered lips, and turned to his food again. Dallith, looking very small and fragile, was bending over her plate. As they came hi, she raised her head and began to smile at Dane (relief at his return; had she missed him?), and it hit Dane like a ton of bricks.

Dallith, oh God. She'll know. I love her, I love her and here I am fooling around in the bushes with Rianna. . .. Damn all proto-simian instincts-

The smile abruptly slid off Dallith's face; she colored deeply and bent again over her plate, and Rianna's smile went taut, but she gripped Dane's hand almost painfully, and Dane, for very shame, could not draw his hand away. Instead, he put his arm around her waist and drew her reassuringly against him.

She deserves nothing but kindness. But oh God, Dallith . . . have I hurt her? He looked with deep misery at the bent head.

Aratak, sensing the tension in the room, looked up in kindly inquiry, and Rianna said harshly, defensively, "Well, has the Divine Egg no wisdom for this moment?

Aratak rumbled, "There are times when wisdom seems misplaced, child. The only wisdom to which I can lay my tongue at this moment is that when all else fails, it is well to give comfort to one's belly. Eat your dinner, Rianna, before it gets cold."

"Sounds like a damn good idea," Dane said. He started to go to his usual place beside Dallith, but Rianna was still clinging to his hand and he could not bring himself to pull free. He bent and scooped up the tray and slid to the ground beside Rianna.

As they ate he kept raising his eyes across the circle they made, trying to catch Dallith's eyes, but every time he looked at her she was bent over her tray, doggedly eating something that looked like rice with gravy or peeling a great pale yellow fruit, her face half hidden between the loose waves of her fair hair. Before Dane had half finished his meal she laid aside her tray and went off to her couch, where she turned her back to them all and lay motionless, asleep or pretending it. Once during the evening Rianna went to her side and bent over her as if to speak, but Dallith lay with her eyes closed and did not move or take any notice of her.

They had kept, half unaware, to the sleeping arrangement they had assumed on first being brought there: Dane slept at Rianna's side on a wide bed; Dallith beyond them; Aratak curled in comfort on the stone; the Mekhar coiled like a cat on the softest of the beds. Dane had thought last night of asking the women if they would prefer to share the wide bed and give him the other, but he had been held back by the calmness with which they had accepted the arrangement. It occurred to him now that perhaps to the Hunters, the gender differences between human male and human female were not of any significance.

When they lay down to sleep, Rianna laid her head in the curve of his arm. She said softly, "Dane, Dallith is so unhappy. Can she be jealous?"

Dane had been trying hard to avoid just this conclusion. What right had he to think Dallith cared? "I don't know, Rianna. She may simply be-embarrassed because I was. I told you a little about the-well, the sexual customs of my world. She picked up my embarrassment when you and Roxon-on the Mekhar ship-"

"But then she knew that Roxon and I were pretending," Rianna said shrewdly. "Dane, are you sorry about this?"

"How could I be?" He put his arms around her and held her close. She had been generous in his need-had shared it-and however he felt about her, it created a bond. He had no right to resent it She drew closer to him, and after a few moments she fell deeply asleep.

But Dane lay wakeful, aware beyond sight or hearing of Dallith's unhappy stillness and withdrawal. It reminded him, all too graphically, of how she had looked, and acted, when she was letting herself die on the Mekhar slave ship.

Does she feel I've withdrawn from her? Does she feel too alone?

Stop flattering yourself, Marsh. There's no girl alive who's going to go off and die because you make love to someone else. Not even Dallith, special as she is.

But she has no one else. And that is why she wanted to die before. Goddamn it, I wish she'd turn over in her sleep or something. . . .

Finally he could bear the quiet no longer. He rose and made his way quietly across the floor. Aratak, glowing blue as always when he slept, stirred, opened one eye, and nodded as if in approval, and Dane felt himself coloring with embarrassment again, but he did not hesitate.

The reddish light made barred colors through the drawn slatted blinds, falling in stripes across Dallith's scattered fair hair. Dane lowered himself to her side, bending over the girl.

"Dallith," he said gently. "Look at me. Please, darling, look at me."

For a moment she was still, and Dane's heart turned over-had she withdrawn again beyond his reach?-but then, as if sensing and answering his fear, she rolled over, her dark eyes wide and

unreadable, and lay looking straight up at him.

"Don't flatter yourself," she said quietly. "It isn't that important, is it?"

He felt an unreasonable surge of anger, directed half at Rianna, half at Dallith, and all, by some incomprehensible arithmetic, at himself-his own clumsiness. He said, "Maybe not. I thought you might think so and I wanted to be sure-" His voice suddenly caught. He was the product of a society where men did not weep; but tears suddenly stung his eyes and flooded them, and he knew, in agonized outrage, that he was going to cry. He bent down close to the girl and caught her against him, burying his face in her soft tunic. For a moment she softened and held him close; then she loosened her hands and said, in a tone of gentle scorn, "Me too?"

It was like a dash of cold water. (He did not stop to think that she might be learning at last, painfully, to protect her own vulnerability.) He said clumsily, "Dallith, I-I was afraid-oh, what can I say to you? You seem to know it all. You're so damn sure of yourself now."

"Is that what you think?" She lay back, her great wounded fawn eyes dark against the pallor of her cheeks and hair.

He said, stumbling, "I love you. I want you. You know how I feel, you do, you know you do. And yet-what can I say to you? You don't have to blame Rianna, do you? It isn't her fault, and you've frightened her too."

"I'm sorry about Rianna," Dallith said gently. "She was kind to me, too. I behaved very badly. I know that. Dane, it"-for the first time she sounded a little unsure-"it doesn't matter to me-not that. I knew. I even-I guess I expected it."

He put his arms around her and said miserably, hiding his face against her, "I-I wish it had been you-"

She tipped his face up so that their eyes met. She said very quietly, "No. It was reflex, Dane. You know that, I know that-Rianna knows it. The difference is, that I felt it too, and I fought it, because with my people-I wouldn't have wanted it like that, a mindless grab at each other in the face of death, blind, instinctive-"

Desolation broke through then, and Dallith began to cry softly.

"But if you couldn't fight it-if you couldn't-I can't bear it that you didn't come to me-"

He held her, helpless against the storm of her grief, knowing that any move he made now must be a mistake. After a long time she quieted. She even laughed and comforted him, telling him it did not matter, and sent him back to Rianna's side. "I don't want to hurt her again; I don't want you to hurt her." She kissed him, before she made him go, warmly and lovingly. But there was still something wrong and they both knew it.

CHAPTER NINE

"This place," Dane said, only half to the others, "is incredible."

"Credibility is not a concept applicable to any actual event, but only to speculative ones," Aratak rumbled at him. They were standing in the Armory, in the dull reddish light of midmorning; the Red Moon now seemed to obscure a good quarter of the sky. "If an event has actually occurred, it is by its very occurrence credible."

Dane chuckled. He wondered, not for the first time, exactly how his question had come to Aratak through the translator disks. He said, "I take it one would have trouble suggesting to you that one should practice believing six impossible things before breakfast?"

"Surely the essence of an impossible thing is that it is unsuitable for belief," Aratak began, then broke off in rumbling laughter. "What event has taxed your credibility just now, Marsh?"

Dane gestured toward the back of the robot Server, who was trundling away toward the door of the Armory, and displayed what he held in his hands. "A few minutes ago," he said, "it occurred to me that I ought to have the proper materials for taking care of the edge on this sword. I told Server that I didn't suppose he'd have the exact things I wanted, but if he could approximate them, I'd be grateful; that I needed some finely powdered limestone-only a few ounces-some soft cloth, some loosely woven cloth, a short stick, and a piece of string. I expected he'd come back

with some peculiar makeshifts but he simply rolled off and came back with all of them. Every one." Dane shook his head. "You'd think he heard requests like that every day or two."

"Maybe he does," Cliff-Climber said. "There cannot be more than a few ways of caring for what amounts, in the long run, to a simple piece of steel which happens to have a cutting edge. The savage mind is seldom devious or particularly inventive."

Dane ignored the Mekhar. He was getting good at that. He sat down cross-legged and began tying one of the bits of cloth into what looked like a powder puff on the end of a stick. CliffClimber watched him for a moment, then went away and began practicing his shadow-dance exercise before a long strip of mirror. (When asked about it, he had told them that there was a legendary Mekhar duelist who had grown so agile that he could throttle his reflection in a mirror before the reflection could raise an arm.)

"When you have finished," Aratak said, "I would be appreciative if you would show me a little about your skills at unarmed combat. From what you have told me, you are an expert in this field."

"Far from it," Dane said. "I never even reached full Black Belt stage in karate-which is a good long way from being an expert. But I can show you a few of the basics. We won't have time for too much, but I can make a start." Even a few basics in karate, he thought, will make our scaly friend here a formidable opponent. "Rianna has taught me something," Aratak said. "I understand that in order to be prepared against would-be thieves and rapists, women on her world are

routinely taught something which she calls by a name meaning something like 'The Art of Making an Attacker Defeat Himself.' It is most useful, from what she has shown me, and based upon a philosophy I find thoroughly ethical; that a violent attacker's own strength shall be turned upon himself." He went on to explain the essentials of judo in his own inimitable fashion, while Dane thought, Of course, it's a normal discovery. But it's damn lucky Rianna has that kind of training. I wish to Heaven that Dallith did.

Disquieted by the thought, he finished caring for his sword, replaced it on the wall, and went to find Dallith. He found her listlessly examining a wall display of some incomprehensible and probably nonhuman weapons. She took no notice of him, and Dane felt again the mixture of anger and unexplainable guilt.

Something was wrong. Something was deeply wrong between them still. . . .

"Dallith," he said, "have you chosen a weapon? You must have something to protect you-"

She turned on him almost fiercely and said, "Do you think I am expecting you to protect me?"

I only wish I thought I'd be able to, Dane thought with a spasm of fear. He said soberly, "Whether you expect it or not, Dallith, I will as much as I can. But I'm not sure. For all I know, they'll come and take us away, one by one, each of us to face the Hunters alone." He did not realize until that very moment how deeply the analogy of the bullfight had penetrated his thoughts; the image of the arena, the mental concept of yelling spectators, egging the combatants

on, faceless creatures whose very evolutionary stock he could not even guess. ...

As if the picture in his mind had reached her, Dallith went pale. "Are we to go out alone?"

"I don't know. I hope to God we can stay together," he said. I could work the four of us-no, the five of us-into a reasonably efficient fighting unit. "We'll have to hope for the best, but we've also got to be prepared for the worst."

Fools, choosing Dallith for their prey, just because in a mad panic she fought like a tiger. . . . But if she has to fight alone they could tear her to pieces. He looked, in a sort of anguish, at the frail and girlish body, the pale cheeks, the thin wrists, the neck so delicate that her poised head looked like a flower on a narrow stem. How could he protect her? She looks like one of the Christians ready to be thrown to the lions, he thought, then firmly controlled his thoughts-they could only exaggerate her defenselessness.

"I know very little about most of these weapons," she said, with a limp gesture at the wall displays, the swords and shields and knives and spears. "My people do not fight with one another, except now and then in sport or trials of strength. And even there we are-careful. You see, the one who killed another-or even inflicted injury in a trial of strength-would share the experience of death, or pain, with his victim...."

The gift, or curse, of empathy would have several side effects and that would be, probably, the most important It had produced a timid culture, at least where inflicting the slightest pain or

distress was concerned, since everyone else's pain would be as important and accessible as one's own....

She took down a sling from the wall and spun it lightly around her head. "I thought," she said hesitantly, "that I might use this. My people use them, sometimes, to drive away pests from the fields and flower gardens. Or, sometimes, to shoot at marks in competition, for prizes. It does not matter, now that my world is gone-" Her eyes were full of tears.

Dane put his arms around her, and said softly, "What is it, Dallith?"

The sling was loose in her hand. She said, "It is only fair; it is my fate, I suppose-I am here because of a weapon like this-"

He looked at her in startled question.

She said in a stifled voice, "I was reckoned a good shot; twice I had won a silk scarf in the competitions. I was vain of my skill and I did not want to lose my-my name. A few days before, I was practicing with my sling in a distant part of the garden, and I was so intent on my practice that I did not know anyone had entered the garden. Then I heard a cry and felt-oh, such pain-and I saw my best friend among the women lying senseless on the ground." She was shaking and crying. "I knew-I knew the sling could kill; I had not been careful enough. No, she did not die, but she suffered shock and concussion and days of unconsciousness, and we all thought she would die. I loved her. I would rather have killed myself than her. She was my own father's

daughter-and so when she was out of danger I was sentenced to a season of exile from the places where people live."

"It seems to me," Dane said, holding her gently against him, "that you'd been punished enough already."

"There is never enough punishment for such an offense," Dallith said, rebukingly. "But since she did not die, and spoke for me-she said she too had been careless, not to realize that I was not aware of her presence-I was sent away only for a season and not for a full year. But while I was alone in the place of exile-the Mekhar slave ship came and took me. And the rest you know." Resolutely, she dried her tears. "And so it seems to me," she said, "that if a sling could nearly kill my dear friend and sister, it should serve against the Hunters. Since I have decided to live, there is no sense in letting them kill me now."

"It ought to do," Dane said thoughtfully. In the Roman arena, hadn't one of the major spectacles been the sight of a slinger from the Balearic isles, pitted against a man with a net and trident? Of course, the Romans who arranged gladiatorial combats hadn't always been at pains to be fair about it-the important thing seemed to be bloodshed-but most of them hadn't gone in for massacres, either. They were the kind of fighters who would have had more fun in seeing a fight where the contestants were reasonably matched, if only to make the fight last longer, and see more blood shed. There was also the story of David and Goliath. "But how accurately can one shoot with a sling? I'm not at all familiar with them."

Dallith picked up the sling and fitted a small round ball into it. It looked like an ordinary pebble. "Look," she said, pointing to a small pale mark on the Armory wall, a projecting bit of brickwork. It was only three or four inches square and about forty feet away. She spun the sling around her head and let it go; almost simultaneously something struck the pale mark with a sound like a rifle shot and the projecting bit of brick broke away and clattered to the floor.

"If that had been the head of a Mekhar," Dallith said, "I do not think he would have much to purr about."

Dane knew she was right. She was better protected than he had thought possible. Of course, they did not know what the Hunters were like; if they were huge boneheaded creatures like some of the saurians, her pellet might not be of much use, but that was just one of the chances they all had to take, and Dallith probably knew it as well as he did.

"Just the same," he said grimly, "I think you ought to learn something about using a knife. In case-well, in case you need something at close quarters."

A grimace of revulsion passed over her features, but she said soberly, "I suppose you're right. Rianna has chosen to use knives, and perhaps her techniques would be more suited to a woman."

"Perhaps. And she has had serious training," Dane said. In any case, teaching Dallith would sharpen up Rianna's own technique, and he would keep a damn close eye on both of them.

If they could all stay together. . .

He spent much of that day watching as Rianna demonstrated to Dallith the kind of training she had had in close-quarter knife play. (Dallith was slightly appalled at the thought of a rapist and Dane reflected that this would be one problem no woman would have on a world of empaths.)

He remembered what Aratak had said about Rianna's skill at unarmed combat; judo had never been his own field of interest-although, like most people who have studied karate, he knew some of it-and he wondered how good she was at it. But when he put the question she gave him her crooked grin and said, "Try, if you want to."

He picked up one of the "kendo sticks"-he had asked Server to bring him one about the same weight as the samurai sword, and Server had taken him so literally that there was probably less than an ounce of difference between its weight and the sword's-and said, "Anyone coming at you will probably be armed, Rianna. You don't think you can take me with a sword, do you?"

"Probably not," she said. "Your big razor there might cut my hand off before I could get my knife out. But with the stick, certainly. Or a club. Or a short knife. Come on. Try."

He said, "I don't want to hurt you. But you asked for it." Take a little of the conceit out of her now and save her worst trouble later, he thought and was surprised at his own sense of resentment. He lifted the stick-it was made of some light wood not too unlike bamboo-and rushed at her.

He never knew exactly what happened, but he abruptly found himself shoved backward, the stick thrust into his stomach harshly enough to knock all the breath out of him; he recovered himself in an instant, jerked the stick free, raised it again-and once again found himself wrenching it from Rianna's hands. Her foot kicked his ankle and he nearly went down.

She stepped back quickly and said, "I don't want to hurt you, Dane. But as you can see, I'm not really afraid unless they do come at me with something like your razor-edge there."

He shook his head ruefully; but the experiment had taught him a great deal in a short lesson, nevertheless: He could not count on the Hunters using any known weapon or technique. It was literally a case of having to be prepared for anything. After some thought, he added to the sword a short curved knife. It wasn't much like the dagger a samurai would have had as the normal accompaniment to his sword-briefly he wondered what had happened to the samurai's knife and other gear-but it was going to be damn helpful in close-range fighting.

As he was caring for the sword that night before putting it away-tapping it all along its length gently with his powder puff of powdered limestone, wiping it gently with the cloth-he looked at the blood-etching near the curved end of the blade and wondered. Had it been made on Earth? Or here. . .? And what strange creature's blood had discolored the steel?

During the next few days he concentrated on regaining old skills and reflexes, and spent some time thinking about welding them into a matched group. Of course, until he knew for certain that

they would be allowed to go out together, there was not much use in concentrating on that. Each of them should first reach optimum level for individual survival.

The task of teaching Dallith close-quarter fighting was none too easy; she had a horror of hurting any of them and would withdraw at the last split second before making a stroke even with the breakable bamboo stick they had found for teaching her knife skills. But remembering how she had suddenly gone berserk when she faced the Mekhar, he supposed that if someone came at her with murder on his mmd, she'd react as she'd done then; by picking up her attacker's murderous rage. And so he concentrated on getting the basics of attack into her head.

I can't teach her vulnerable points, though. We don't know what vulnerable points the Hunters have-or if they have any!

During all this time it struck him as strange that they never came close enough to other groups of the "Sacred Prey" to work out with them. Whether it was an unwritten law of the Hunters that they should not or by sheer coincidence, he wasn't sure. He suspected that the Hunters, though, discouraged any such pooling of survival skills, and this gave him some hope that their five would be sent out together, since they had not been separated and forced to wait for the Hunt individually.

He suspected sometimes that Server-or the whole complex of robot mechanisms which went by that collective name-watched over them at a distance and would intervene if they showed any signs of being too curious about the other prisoners. He realized, after five or six days of this

unobtrusive surveillance, that he had not even any idea of how many other prisoners dwelt in the huge park-complex; he could still only surmise as he had done the first day, by seeing the others at a distance, or from brief and interrupted encounters in Armory or baths, that there might be between a dozen and thirty humans, and about as many more assorted aliens of other biological types.

It was a few days later, in the Armory, when he noticed again a pair of proto-felines, very much (at least in the distance, and to him) like the Mekhar, once again working out with a pair of something like kendo sticks. He asked Cliff-Climber about them.

"Are those the two you called common criminals? You seemed to feel that it was beneath the dignity of your kind to use weapons. Do those two use them because they do not share your standards?"

Cliff-Climber looked at them curiously. "They are not the same ones," he said. "I think I will go and see. If some members of my own clan should be here-"

He bounded away, at his curious loping run, but some time later he came back, looking puzzled. To Dane's question he answered, "I did not see them or speak to them." He looked quickly toward the far end of the Armory, with one of those movements that reminded Dane of a caged tiger, and said angrily, "This place maddens me! Mirrors, and reflections, and people who disappear and walk through walls when you try to come near them!" He stalked away, giving Dane the impression that if he had actually had a tail (he didn't) he would have been switching it

angrily from side to side.

Not too much later, though, he came to Dane carrying one of the kendo sticks. He said, "I notice you do not use these seriously as weapons. But for footwork and agility they seem a sensible training device." He said no more, and Dane, quite unexpectedly feeling a strange kind of sympathy for the Mekhar's alienation said, "You want to try working out with them?"

"It would seem a sensible precaution," Cliff-Climber said stiffly, "to accustom myself emotionally to the thought that I shall be facing an opponent of some other biological type than my own. For this you are probably the most suitable one against which to test myself."

"Damn right," Dane agreed. "For me, too." For all he knew, he might be facing something more difficult to guard against than Cliff-Climber with his artificially steel-tipped claws! It was all part of the business of arming himself psychologically, of psyching himself to kill.

He found Cliff-Climber appallingly fast on his feet; but against him, the old karate reflexes began to come back fast. It made him realize, too, that Aratak-or anyone of his proto-saurian species-would be a most formidable opponent, and that night, with Cliff-Climber's concurrence, they persuaded the giant saurian to take turns working out against both of them. At the end of these sessions, Dane had bruises and scrapes which had to be lengthily soaked out in the hot volcanic pools-he even accepted Aratak's offer of the hot sulfur-smelling mud for a poultice, and discovered that in spite of the smell it had remarkable healing qualities-but he felt a lot better prepared to meet his invisible opponents.

They initiated then a regular series of workouts; Rianna welcomed the chance to try her unarmed combat skills against Cliff-Climber, and the ensuing combat reminded Dane of nothing so much as an old Avengers TV show on Earth, with the redoubtable Emma Peel fighting against a variety of any kind of antagonist from tiger-cats to robots.

After each of them had come to a gasping draw, Cliff-Climber (looking at her with wonder and respect) apologized to Rianna for the bloody scratch on her arm. "I forgot myself," he said, extending his claws and their razor-steel tips. "But I think you have sprained my foot, so we are equal."

Watching Rianna and Aratak was also something of a revelation; although by sheer weight and size the enormous proto-saurian had the advantage, and eventually demonstrated that when all else failed he could trip Rianna up and sit on her, she was by no means helpless.

Dallith could not be persuaded to take part, and finally Dane, remembering how she had exploded into instinctive violence, realized that this was what she feared; this, or hurting one of those she now considered friends and allies.

At last he accepted Aratak's advice to leave her alone. "She knows best what is safe for her," he said. Dane was afraid that it might, once again, be a withdrawal into willed death; but if it was there was nothing he could do.

CHAPTER TEN

Even during the day, the red light of the moon was brighter than the sun; the Red Moon seemed to obscure half the sky now, when, one evening, Rianna said to him near the baths, "There are men here-I mean humans, proto-simians very like us-who do not belong to the Unity."

"Of course. There's me. Why do you think the Hunters would confine themselves to raiding just your group of worlds in the Unity?"

"I don't mean that. I went and greeted them and they did not-or could not-answer. They evidently did not have translator disks."

"Poor bastards," Dane said. "They must be pretty confused."

"If so, they certainly didn't act it. I went to talk to them," Rianna said. "I've been taught nonverbal communication techniques. But they slipped away before I could come near them. I don't know where they went-of course this place is confusing, but still, it was like something done with mirrors."

Cliff-Climber had had an experience something like that.

"I wonder if it ever occurred to you," Dane said soberly, "that they might have been Hunters-or their servants."

"Hardly servants, when Server and all his pack are around. Dane! Do you mean the Hunters might be-human?"

He nodded. "It seems reasonable," he said. "There seem to be as many humans here as all other biological types put together."

"Would men hunt men?"

"They do," he said with a shrug, and explained his theory that possibly the Hunters preferred prey who could give them a good, equal fight. "And it would be a good way to size us up, observe us for the Hunt, decide what weapons we'll be carrying. Maybe even, now and then, take on one of us for a workout, though so far no one's come near enough for that."

Or pick out which of us would make the best trophies. . . . His mind refused to put away a gruesome picture which had come to him, one night, in a nightmare: the head of a Japanese samurai, still in armor and preserved four hundred years by some unguessable technique, hanging on the wall of a Hunter's dwelling....

Involuntarily, Dane shuddered, and Rianna reached for him and held onto him, hard. He clasped her in his arms, feeling her warmth and closeness as the only comfort on this strange, cold, red,

mysterious world.

It was a bond. Unwanted. Undesired. But a bond. If he lived, he and Rianna would always belong to one another. .. .

Over their meal that night, looking across at Aratak, Rianna brought that up again,

"If the Hunters are human, would they really want to take on someone the size and-and fierceness of Aratak?"

"Even on my world, big game hunting is regarded as more of a sport than shooting rabbits," Dane said. "A man who kills a tiger is considered braver than one who kills a deer." Once again he wondered how the words were coming across to the others through their translator disks.

He asked them, curious, and Rianna said with a shrug, "On my world, as on most, there are large fierce predators and small gentle ones regarded mostly as a source of food. If you'd given the scientific name of the creatures probably it would have come through as a strange sound and you'd have had to explain it. But normally the translator gives the nearest equivalent in your own language."

He accepted it at that. He had to; the technology which could evolve such a device was as far beyond Earth's best as a linear computer was beyond a spinning wheel.

Cliff-Climber said roughly, "I don't believe a race could acquire such a legendary reputation for ferocity if they were proto-simian. It is more likely that they are proto-felines, not too unlike the Mekhars. There are also a great many members of my own kind here-or, I should say, of biological types not altogether different from my own."

"That doesn't prove anything," Rianna flared, "except that we're both members of dangerous species!"

Aratak mused, "What you have said is interesting. My own species are of a peaceful habit, and if any of us proto-saurians are renowned for ferocity, I should be surprised, and yet-"

Dane interrupted. "I find that hard to believe. The most terrible predator in my planet's historytyrannosaurus rex-was of saurian origin."

Aratak had no eyebrows but gave the impression of raising them anyhow. "Were they sapient, though?"

"No," Dane confessed, "they had no brain to speak of."

"Oh, well. Animal species of proto-simian type are often fierce," Aratak said, "And the fierce ones are extinct, which proves the wisdom of the Divine Egg, in that those who seek for blood meet only bloody death. But when saurians develop sapience they usually display a peaceful manner of life. I can give you only philosophical reasons why this should be so, but I assure you

I know of no exceptions within the Unity, at least."

"He's right, Dane," Rianna said. "As far as anyone knows, there aren't any, except in old legends."

Aratak bowed. "To resume. As I said, we are peaceful creatures; I am here almost by accident, as one might say. And yet, watching as we exercise, I have seen one of my own kind, and when I went to salute him in the name of the Divine Egg, believing him a fellow prisoner, he vanished quite suddenly and I could not find him again. For a moment it occurred to me that I had been the victim of some sort of optical illusion, but now I have another theory."

"Let's have it," Dane said. He had the highest possible opinion of the giant saurian's intelligence.

"This; that the Hunters are not a single race, but a clan or conglomeration; that they collect to themselves members from the renegades, the outlaws, the outcasts, and fierce mavericks of all peoples. A madman of my people, or an outlaw, might find himself here, one way or another. Most of us are peaceful people, and one who was not might find himself everywhere an outcast. As I said, I saw at least one, who has been tested presumably as we were tested, for desperation and courage; but if he had been a fellow prisoner he would not have tried to elude me."

"That doesn't follow," Dallith said unexpectedly. "He might be-ashamed to be found here. A peaceful creature who had-when tested-discovered strange and frightening ferocity in himself. He would hardly want to face someone who knew what he should be like...."

Dane realized that Dallith was speaking of herself; it was the first time it had occurred to him that she might deeply regret her outburst of wild fury on the Mekhar ship.

Aratak courteously considered Dallith's theory for a moment before shaking his head. "No," he said, "for he would know that I was in like case and would come to condole with me. So I conclude that he was one of the Hunters watching me, and that the Hunters are not one species but many. That would also explain why they choose Prey of such varying forms."

It was a valuable theory, Dane thought. It deserved consideration. It would explain why the Hunters had no recognizable form in legend; it would also explain why they did not show themselves to their Prey, but let all contact, even with the slave ships bringing their Quarry, come through the robot Servers. That way they could be certain no hint of their secret escaped.

And yet... he wasn't convinced. Could a conglomerate of renegades develop so formalized, so ritualistic an approach to the Hunt? And even more; would not some hint of their recruitment have stolen out into the Galaxy? They argued it far into the night, but went to bed unconvinced.

The shape and form of the Hunters! It obsessed him now, night and day. As the Red Moon grew in the sky toward the full, they took shape after shape in his nightmares, terrifyingly formless. He found a nonsense rhyme from Earth repeating itself again and again at odd moments in his consciousness:

I engage with the Snark, every night after dark, In a dreamy delirious fight. . . .

But instead of hunting the Snark, it was hunting HIM . . . and there was every possibility that he would, indeed, "Softly and silently vanish away, and never be heard of again."

At times like this he would draw the samurai sword and look grimly at its edge before putting it away again. Not so softly and not so silently, he promised himself.

Later he thought that if this period of uncertainty had been prolonged much more he probably would have gone insane; as it was, Rianna shook him awake out of nightmare once or twice every night. (But they all suffered from nightmares. Once Dallith woke screaming wildly, rousing them all; and once Cliff-Climber staggered up in his sleep, roaring and fighting, and by the time they managed, by throwing cold water over him, to get him awake, both Aratak and Dane had long bleeding scratches from his razored claws.

Abruptly the period of waiting ended.

The great Red Moon had grown day by day; when it was all but full it seemed to hang low and suspended over them with a bloody light, cutting away almost all normal sunshine, ghastly and luminous and so large that Dane hated to look up at it; it was like walking under a great floating disk suspended by invisible means. It gave him claustrophobia; knowing it was ridiculous, he still could not banish the image of the moon somehow slipping, plunging down, crushing them all beneath it. ... He had wondered what would happen when it was completely full, and on this

night, as they were returning from the baths, he looked up, seeing the shadow beginning to creep across the great red disk. Of course, the moon was half the size of the primary planet; when the Hunter's World came between moon and sun, the Red Moon would be wholly eclipsed, darkened....

With startling rapidity the shadow crept over the face, blotting out the red and luminous disk, etching away more and more of the huge red face. Around them the whole color of the landscape changed, growing darker and stranger; there were odd rustlings, and from somewhere a strong rushing wind sprang up.

The five prisoners stood close together, Dane between Rianna and Dallith, knowing they were both clinging to him in the eerie darkness, as the Red Moon slowly faded from crescent to slim fingernail-paring to a pale red glimmer along one edge. And then, for the first time on this world, there was total darkness. Behind the great blot on the sky, dim stars sprang out.

"The Hunt is over," Dallith whispered. "With the moon in eclipse-the Hunt is over."

In the darkness Cliff-Climber's rough voice muttered, "There are dead Hunters there, and dead Prey. And soon it will be our turn."

"But when?" Rianna said into the darkness. No one answered her. They stood there for hours, watching the Red Moon slowly emerge from darkness, the stars fade again into the background of crimson light. Finally, when it was glowing in its accustomed place again, they went silently

to their quarters, but none of them ate much, and Dane, at least, slept little. Was it their turn next?

The next morning, when Server brought their morning meal, he told them, "Last night was the night of the eclipse; last night, the Hunt ended. Today, the Sacred Prey who survived the Hunt-if there were any-will be rewarded and released; and you are bidden to the feast." None of them had much appetite for breakfast after that. As the sun drew higher in the sky-a strange bright sun with the Red Moon invisible, far away on the other side of the planet-they went briefly to the Armory, and to the baths. But none of them did much in the way of training.

Dane said at one point, "I sometimes wonder. The survivors of the Hunt-we'll see them being feasted and rewarded, so they say, and freed. But I wonder if they are really freed, or if their feasts and rewards aren't for our benefit, to encourage us, and if perhaps they'll be quietly put out of the way afterward."

"That's a nice thing to bring up," Rianna said in disgust. "What are you trying to do to us, Dane?"

Aratak said soberly, "The possibility had occurred to me, as well."

Cliff-Climber turned from his shadow-dance before the mirror. He said, "No, they're freed, true enough. There is a man on my world-he is a distant connection to my clan-who returned from the Hunter's World, rich and successful. He founded an Arms Museum with his prize money; I have

seen the museum, though the man died when I was still young."

"But he said nothing about the Hunters? He left no word about them?" Rianna said incredulously. "Scientists have been searching for centuries for some reliable knowledge of the Hunters; most people think of them as legends! He should have written up the account of his experiences!"

Cliff-Climber said indifferently, "Why? Why should anyone care?"

Rianna looked indignant, but Dane nodded. He was getting used to Cliff-Climber's lack of what most people would call scientific curiosity. He said to Rianna, "The old proverb on my world says that curiosity killed the cat, and Cliffs people seem to have taken it to heart. Let's face it; scientific investigation is a proto-simian characteristic, at least curiosity for its own sake. Evenordinary cats seldom show much curiosity about anything unless they can eat it or play with it, or they think it's a danger to them."

Dallith said peacefully, "The important thing is that survivors are freed." She sorted out an assortment of small, round, completely smooth stones for her sling and tied them into a sack at her waist. They were all looking over their weapons, knowing the hour was at hand. Rianna had sharpened one of her knives to a slashing edge and the other point for a thrusting edge; Dane lifted a long spear off the wall and handed it to her. He said, "Carry this. It's not so much that you have to use it, but there should be one long-distance weapon."

She lifted it, balanced it, saying, "This one is too long for me," and chose a shorter one. Dane, watching her completely absorbed in the weapon, had no particular qualms for her. His attempt to work her into a fighting machine had succeeded better than he had hoped.

Briefly, he explained his plan to them, if it turned out that they could stay and fight together instead of singly. Rianna, at the center of a wedge with her long spear, would present a formidable front to an attacker, with her knives and Cliff-Climber's razor-claws for close-quarter attack; Dane and Aratak to either side, Dane with the samurai sword, Aratak with his great club and the short ax he had tied to his belt; and Dallith bringing up the rear with her sling to pick off anyone trying to rush them from behind.

Cliff-Climber frowned, and Dane knew that the Mekhar was the weak link. Cliff-Climber preferred to think of this as a series of duels against individual attackers.

"Can't you see," Dallith said patiently, "that is what the Hunters will be expecting-that we will fight singly. If we remain a unit, and back one another up, we may all have a better chance."

Cliff-Climber frowned again, as if he smelled something bad, and Dane wished Dallith had let Rianna speak to him. Cliff-Climber had come to respect Rianna as a fighter against whom he himself needed to be seriously on guard; Dallith, to him, was a nonentity. The cat-man looked now to Rianna as if expecting that she would back him up, but she said firmly, "Dallith is right," and he shrugged.

"I gave you my word; you have none of you given me cause to break it, so for now I will not withdraw. I warn you, however, that I refuse to compromise my honor."

With that, they had to be content.

Dane held the samurai sword on his knee for some time, thinking about the unknown long-dead Earthman. He did not know how the samurai warrior had died, but he knew he must have done it valiantly. But Dane was a man of another century and another life, and he wanted main ly to live. The samurai would probably have understood Cliff-Climber better than Dane himself. CliffClimber was concerned to die with honor; Dane intended, if he must die, to sell his life as dearly as possible, but mostly he intended to stay alive-he intended that all of them should stay alive!

The bright day was shortening toward afternoon, and the sun dropping, when Rianna clutched Dane's arm and said, in a tense undertone, "Look!"

At the far end of the Armory, a small procession was entering, and a strange one. There was a whole small army of the mechanical servomechs of Server's type, surrounding a single living creature. He wore the terracotta tunic of the Sacred Prey. He was hung heavily with garlands of green leaves and flowers. Servers bore his weapons-a long spear, a round spiked shieldceremoniously on trays of precious metal, and as the prisoners looked on, hung the weapons in a prominent place on the Armory wall.

Cliff-Climber said, low-voiced, "He must be the survivor of the Hunt."

"An only survivor," Aratak said grimly, and his gills glowed blue.

Dane said, "A spider-man," in surprise. There had been one of them aboard the Mekhar slave ship, and he had spent all his time huddled, hissing, in a corner. The spider-things were certainly the last race Dane would have thought of as fierce enough to survive a Hunt! And yet one of them had done so, for here he was, being honored. . ..

He said, half to himself, "He met the Hunters, and lived. I'd like to have a word with him. . . ." But, the weapons hung, the victorious survivor was being carefully shepherded out of the Armory again, encircled by his guard of attentive and solicitous robot Servers.

Well, well, thought Dane. You never know. If that thing could live through eleven days of a Hunt, there's certainly plenty of chance for us.

"That's by no means certain," Dallith said close to his ear, and Dane realized she was picking up his thoughts again. "Maybe he was lucky, or maybe he managed to spend all eleven days in hiding."

Dane nodded. "Maybe." But that meant it was not an arena, it meant there was some cover and some place to hide if necessary.

It meant that somehow or other he, Dane, must manage to get a word alone with the victor....

The sun was beginning to go down when Server returned to direct them to the baths. He brought fresh clothing for them all-the same terra-cotta color dedicated to the Sacred Prey, but this was definitely fighting gear. The tunics provided for the women were short and could be tucked up even shorter. For Dane, Rianna, and Dallith there were new strong-soled sandals, although neither Cliff-Climber nor Aratak needed any protection for their feet.

"You are to adorn yourselves for the feast of reward and victory, so that you may see what may be in store for you," Server said. "Gird yourselves with your chosen weapons, for you will be taken directly from the feast to the place of the Hunt."

Dane said to the robot, voicing a thought that had come to him as a dim suspicion more than once, "You seem pretty involved hi all this, Server. Answer me one question, will you?"

"A dozen, if it is necessary," the servomech said in his flat mechanical voice. "We are here to serve and to instruct and aid you."

"Are you people-you robots-are you yourselves the Hunters?"

It would explain so much. It would explain the fact that they were the only ones who contacted the Mekhar ship. It would explain the way they cared for their Prey. It would explain the way they clustered around to protect and honor the victor.

But the thought of facing a group of abnormally knowing servomechanisms, in duel, was horrifying. . . . These thoughts raced through his brain as he awaited Server's answer. It actually seemed, insofar as a faceless metal mechanism with no features except small metal-mesh apertures could express anything, that Server had expected any question but that one and perhaps, even, that Dane had found at last a question that the robot was not programmed to answer!

At last, however, Server said, in the same flat and inexpressive mechanical tone, "As we have told you, we are Servers, You will meet with the Hunters at the appointed time. May we assist you now to your baths?" Dane went with him. There was nothing else he could do. He didn't really answer, he thought grimly. He said, We are Servers. He didn't say, We are not Hunters.

He caught up with Dallith and Rianna as they were separating from Cliff-Climber and Aratak, and said hastily, "Cover for me if that metal monstrosity comes around snooping. I'm going off and see if I can get a line on where they're keeping the victor stashed until this fancy feast. If I could have ten minutes when he's not being surrounded, I estimate our chances for life would be roughly doubled."

Rianna nodded. "If they come looking for you here, I'll tell them you went for a mud bath with Aratak, and, Aratak, if they look for him there, tell them he's swimming."

Dane hurried off across the garden-park. He had observed the direction in which the procession of Servers had taken the garlanded spider-man.

I hope to hell he's got a translator disk; Rianna said some of them didn't, he thought, as he went warily through the gardens and clustered flowering bushes. The sun was sinking fast, and on the horizon was a strange blood-red light which showed where the full Red Moon was rising again.

I'll be up there by morning, he thought. It's the payoff. His throat felt tight and he reached in the dusk for the grip of the samurai sword which hung girded at his side.

Near the high wall of shrubbery that marked the outer limits of the game preserve, or park, dedicated to the Sacred Prey, he had noticed once before a smaller building than most, and seeing the survivor garlanded with flowers he now suspected what it was; for the door of this small building was garlanded with similar flowers. Cautiously, Dane slipped up to one of the bamboo-slatted windows and peered in.

The spider-man sat hunched on the floor, looking solitary and dejected. He had been robed in long garments and was still hung about with garlands. Dane whistled softly, hoping to attract his attention. He had to repeat the sound twice before the spider-man tilted his head and looked around.

"Over here," Dane whispered hoarsely. "I'm a prisoner too. Come over by the window; I can't come in."

The spider-man heaved himself to his feet, moving with a quick, scuttling agility. He darted

quick glances from side to side, and Dane, watching his fantastic alertness, thought, It would take some Hunter even to get near him! Maybe it isn't so surprising he survived. . ..

His voice sounded rusty and hissing. "Who isss it? Who sssspoke there?"

Dane shrank against the shadows of the building. "I'm up against the Hunters tomorrow, friend. What are they like? What weapons do they carry?"

But before the question had more than left his mouth, he was seized in a firm grip from behind and jerked backward. He gripped at his sword, whipping it partway from the sheath.

His wrist was seized in a steel grip-quite literally; metal clamped over it, and Server's expressionless voice said, "It would be a pity to break your excellent blade. It is forbidden for the Prey to come here. Please permit us to escort you back to the feast, honored Prey; you are awaited there."

As Dane told Rianna and Dallith later, seated between them at one of the long tables while a whole conglomerate of robots-all exactly like Server, and each one of them answering each and every question or request just as if it had been he, individually, who had last spoken to the questioner-passed out the food:

"I halfway expected they wouldn't let me get near the victor. There is something damn funny about these Hunters; damn funny."

"I find it the reverse of amusing," Aratak rumbled. Dane repeated his theory that the Servers were, in fact, the Hunters.

"In that case," Cliff-Climber said harshly, swiveling his head toward them, "I'm with you, and I remain with you throughout the Hunt! I sold myself to the Hunt, willing to meet in combat any creature of flesh and blood! But I did not volunteer to fight nothing-men who hide behind shielding of metal!"

Thai's another thought, Dane's mind jumped quickly. Maybe they're giant amoebas or something hiding behind all that metal; maybe they're not robots at all. I never thought of that. But at least it had Cliff-Climber with them again.

He looked around, wondering if-as in the Armory-Hunters mingled with Prey. It was hard to tell; the feasting hall was not well lighted.

"Almost," Dallith said, "as if they didn't want us to get too good a look at our fellow Prey."

"Or as if they're afraid we'd gang up on them," Rianna ventured. "I wonder if it's ever happened before and they don't want to take any more chances."

He did see what looked like one or two Mekhars; an enormous ursine creature with a hairy and shaggy pelt; if there were any proto-saurians of Aratak's type they were hidden in the darkness.

Again, humans of his own general type-man almost as he might appear on Earth-outnumbered all other races almost two to one. They were badly illuminated, and located at some distance-while the five of them had been seated all at one table-but he noticed that their general types ranged from enormous and fair-skinned to huge and Negroid, while there were a few ethnic stocks he did not recognize as having any counterpart on Earth; two tall thin men with red skins, not the reddish-brown of the American Indian, but the very color of sunburn; a tiny creature with bluishgray skin and long white fluffy hair, whose very sex was indeterminate. They bore all kinds of weapons he had ever heard of and some he hadn't.

The food was incredibly good, and there was a very great deal of it. Dane ate well, although not stuffing himself; he didn't know what arrangements had been made for feeding them during the Hunt, nor where his next square meal would come from, but on the other hand he didn't want to be overstuffed and drowsy when it began, which looked as if it might be fairly soon. He encouraged the others to do the same.

They had reached the end of the meal-apparently celebrated with something like a sweet soup and piles of fruits, nuts, and various confections-when one of the various incarnations of Server trundled into the center of the banquet hall and led in the garlanded and robed spider-thing.

"Give honor to the Masters of the Hunt!" Server proclaimed, and for once the metallic voice seemed to quiver with something like emotion.

Dane said nothing. Did they expect him to applaud? The other prisoners-Sacred Prey-around the

hall evidently reacted with much the same attitude, for although there was a slight stir and rustle all around, there was no particular reaction.

"Give honor to the Hunters! In the nine-hundred-and sixty-fourth Hunt in our illustrious history, forty-seven individuals hunted gallantly from Eclipse to Eclipse and nineteen have gone to join their illustrious ancestors!"

"I'd like to applaud to that," Rianna whispered fiercely. Dane held her hand. "The point would probably be missed anyhow."

"Give honor to the Sacred Prey! Seventy-four fought us valiantly and provided us with a splendid Hunt, and for the three-hundred-and-ninety-eighth time, there was at least one survivor, who has been brought here so that you may see the rewards which await a successful Prey!"

The spider-man came forward. He still looked awkward in his long sagging garlands, and his figure was stooped and apprehensive.

How the hell did THAT survive all this? Dane's mind picked at the statistics; seventy-four fought valiantly (and there may have been a few who didn't); one survived. There were fortyseven Hunters; roughly two to a Hunter. And there's one survivor. What kind of creatures are they anyhow?

He paid little attention as the Servers loaded down the spider-thing with gems and precious

metals and stated that he would be taken off by a Mekhar ship under bond to deliver him wherever, within a hundred light-years, he chose to go.

Rianna said grimly, "That would put him well within the Unity. I happen to know what planet he comes from."

Dallith murmured, "That means-if we live-I can return to my own world...."

She was trembling with emotion; Dane clasped her hand. It was long odds and a big if, but the incentive was there. She could go home ... so could Rianna, Aratak, Cliff-Climber.

Could he? Did he even want to?

He set aside the thought. It was a long road and the way home, if there was one, lay past the Hunt . . . past the Hunt, and the Eclipse, and the Red Moon.

CHAPTER Eleven

The multitude of Servers had prepared Dane for a high level of technology; therefore he was prepared, as they went out into the night, for the small ship which stood waiting for them, to take them aboard. In any case, even Earth's moon had been reached long ago. However, this moon

was evidently no airless hulk, but a planet capable of sustaining the lives of these assorted Prey.

He never saw who was at the controls of the little ship. But he had a strong impression that it was Server-or one of him. He sat between Dallith and Rianna, holding a hand of each, but they didn't talk. It was either too late or too early for that. He tried, at least partly for Dallith's sake, to keep his thoughts calm and confident; she'd pick up his attitude. On the other hand there was no sense in pretending a complete calm he didn't feel; she'd know it was phony.

Aratak put his thoughts into words, as he had a habit of doing sometimes.

"The man who feels fear without cause is a fool; but the man is twice a fool who does not feel fear when there is cause."

"That may all be true," Cliff-Climber muttered, "but to speak of fear often gives it form and substance."

Rianna said wryly, "Looks like this one has plenty of form and substance already."

Dane wondered if the Hunters were on this ship; he looked inquiringly at Dallith but she shook her head. "I don't feel anything one way or the other. But then-so many alien presences and most of them hostile to us; it would be hard to tell."

Dane looked around the semidarkened cabin, wondering a little grimly if these were all

prisoners or if some of them, mingled among them, were the Hunters, observing the Prey at close quarters; but he did not like to mention the thought again.

It seemed a long time of waiting-although he supposed it was not more than an hour-before the view-screen flared to life with a picture of the Red Moon, growing and growing and apparently hurtling straight at them. About the same time the speaker at the front of the cabin made a few metallic, premonitory rasping noises. Dallith grasped Dane's hand, painfully hard, in the darkness.

"Honorable and Sacred Prey." The voice was not unlike that of the Servers, but somehow held a different quality. . . the original, perhaps, from which the voice of the Servers had been designed? Dane felt a queer atavistic stirring and knew that the hair along his arms was bristling; Cliff-Climber jerked alert, his whiskers and the elaborately curled topknot he had brushed up for the feast jutting up spikily.

"Honorable and Sacred Prey, we welcome you to the nine-hundred-and-sixty-fifth cycle of hunting of this recorded era," the strange voice said. "Very soon now you will be released upon the Hunting Grounds which have been, since the very beginning of recorded time, sacred to our Hunt. You will have the period of time until the dawn to scatter and find for yourselves the most advantageous stance; you have our word, which has not been broken for seven hundred and thirteen cycles of the Hunt, that you will not be pursued until the sun stands completely clear of the horizon."

Dane whispered, "Wonder what happened seven hundred and thirteen cycles ago?"

Rianna said urgently, "Hush!"

"The Hunt will be suspended every evening at dusk in order that Hunters and Hunted may feed and refresh themselves; the areas lighted by yellow lights and patrolled by Servers are neutral areas, and from dusk until midnight no Hunter may approach them closer than four thousand yards." Dane's translator disk evidently had given the closest equivalent; evidently all the others comprehended the measurement. "Other areas are set aside for the Hunters and no Prey will be permitted to enter them on pain of instant and dishonorable death."

That was something. It indicated that the Hunt was formalized and ritualized to the extent where it seemed unlikely that Hunters would wait outside the neutral areas to pick them off as they came out, either.

The voice paused a moment, then continued: "In a few moments, the ship will come to rest. The Hunt will commence at dawn. Until we meet you in mortal combat, then, we salute you, and we honor you, our Sacred Prey. Those who live shall see how generously we reward the valiant among you; we wish you all an honorable survival and reward-or a bloody and honorable death."

The voice crackled into silence; and at that moment there was a slight jar, as if the ship had come completely to rest. There was a short hiss as of pressure chambers, and a deep murmur as the doors glided slowly open.

Dane grasped the hilt of his sword and moved toward the door, following in Aratak's wake. He could see the great proto-ursine, bearlike creature, lumbering toward the doorway. Dallith was grasping his elbow, Rianna and Cliff-Climber moving behind. Dallith said in a wavering voice, "Panic-every single identity going his own way-hang onto me, Dane. I-I want to run, to scatter-"

"Easy." He grasped her hand firmly in his. "It's not yours. You've nothing to panic about. You're picking it up from the others."

"But suppose-suppose I can't free myself from it...?"

They were emerging through a narrow corridor at the top of a flight of steps; Dane paused for a moment before the crush of others at his back forced him down, to look out on the surface of the Red Moon.

He stood a few feet above a dark and ruined landscape, broken and hilly and, in the neardarkness, covered with a thick blackish underbrush. Dark hills rose behind him, and overhead a dark-blue sky lowered, with thinly scattered pale clouds barely perceptible across the face of the huge orb that hung above them: the Hunter's World, glowing brick red in the sky, and more huge, more crimson-lighted, more enormous than the Red Moon itself upon which they stood. In the glowing red world-light, brighter than the brightest Earthly moonlight, Dane saw dark forms, fleeing from one corner to another of the landscape. Dallith made a stumbling step away from the ship and he grabbed her by the hand; he found his other hand grasping Cliff-Climber's hairy

forearm. He said tensely:

"Don't run! There's no percentage in that! Stop here and think! Think! Remember what we decided!"

Aratak was glowing faintly blue all over in the darkness. Calmly, Dane led his group of five until, moving at a slow and steady pace, they were about a quarter of a mile from the Hunters' ship.

"It's a good idea to get well away," he said calmly. "If it takes off again-well, I don't know what kind of fuel their ships use, but breathing it isn't likely to be very healthy. Now let's sit down here and decide what to do. We've got till dawn to work out strategy for the Hunt; judging by the way everybody else is taking off in all directions at once, I'd say we already had a good edge. There are five of us, not one; any Hunter who comes at us is going to find himself in trouble. Dallith-"

Her voice trembled, but she replied quite steadily, "I'm here, Dane. What can I do?"

"We found out too late, on the Mekhar slave ship, that it was a trap. If I'd listened to you, I might have known; you kept insisting that for some reason they -wanted us to attack them. I think your main weapon for us is going to have to be your sensitivity. Do you think you'll be able to tell if someone's stalking us, and ready to attack?"

She said, "I'll try."

"Tell me. Did you ever sense anything-any kind of emotion or personal awareness-from any of the Servers?" If they were indeed the Hunters, Dallith should have been able to discover it, it seemed.

She shook her head. "They felt just about like any other robots. The thought of telepathic or emphatic contact with a robot-" She shook her head. "I can't even begin to imagine it, so I didn't try to pick up anything."

It was probably too late now in any case, so Dane let it pass, saying, "All right, then; Dallith is our early warning signal and long-range dispatch. Dallith, if you're aware of anyone definitely beginning an attack, don't wait; pick them off with your sling. Disable, if you can't kill.

"Aratak, you're the heavyweight fighter; anyone who gets past Dallith's warning, try to crush them by sheer weight, and I'll have the sword to cut down anyone who comes closer. Rianna and Cliff-Climber are there for close-in fighting, hand to hand. Among us, we should be able to match damn near anything they throw at us. Did you all stock up with something portable to eat, at the banquets?" Dane had put some sweets into the capacious pocket he had found in his tunic; he had advised the others to do likewise.

Suddenly there was a roar and a rush of crimson flame and the small ship which had brought them there rushed upward and was gone, briefly blinding them; but afterward, as their eyes adapted, they studied the brilliantly world-lit landscape. Hills, underbrush, valleys; at the edge of

vision, a waterfall, gleaming with light as it rushed downward; and far out on the horizon, some dark and oddly regular structures. Dane wondered if they were buildings and if they were the Hunter areas into which no Prey could come on pain of instant-and-dishonorable death.

Strange that they should have used the Mekhar phrase, he thought. (Or was it entirely the same?) In any case if these Hunters had a concept of honorable death and dishonorable, maybe there was more of a chance than he thought.

Aratak said, "Are we going to wait here till dawn?"

"I don't know that one place has any advantage over another," Dane said slowly. "I suspect all the obvious bits of cover as being the places where the Hunters will wait to pick off their least wary Prey. This is a test too, remember. They probably kill off the easier Prey first, to leave more time and energy for an elaborate duel of strength-or brains-with the more dangerous ones; remember they paid something extra for us because we'd already been pretested and positively certified dangerous. Even on Earth, hunters differ in their approach to sport There are probably a few here who just want to make an easy catch and go home with a trophy." He wondered, wildly and absurdly, what the game laws were and if there was some sort of "bag limit" for each Hunter. "Let me think. Aratak, what is your suggestion?"

The big saurian said, "There is no wisdom in weariness. I suggest that we sleep or rest until an hour or so before dawn, watching in turns so that the light will not take us unawares. When there is a somewhat stronger light-but well before sunrise,-we can look about intelligently for a kind of

cover which is not an obvious stakeout."

That struck them all as a good idea. Aratak volunteered to take first watch. "Since," he said, "it is purely formality; the beginning of the Hunt is hours away."

"And I will watch with him," Cliff-Climber said, "since my species is at least partly nocturnal and I am wakeful now."

Dane and Rianna and Dallith wrapped themselves in the warm cloaks which had been supplied with the fighting tunics and lay down. The ground beneath them just here was covered with an alternation of rocks and soft moss, rather more rocks than moss, and it took them a while to find comfortable resting places, but at last they stretched out side by side, Dane between the women. Rianna quickly slept, relaxing and breathing deeply, but Dane was too tense to rest. He trusted Aratak entirely-there were times when he forgot that the giant saurian was not a man in every sense of the word-but Cliff-Climber was another matter.

He drifted after a time into a dark and unreal daze, shot with nightmares, but never more than half asleep. It must have been a couple of hours later when, starting awake again (the head of a samurai, fixed in a hideous nightmare grin, looked down from the wall of a Frankenstein laboratory; Hunters, with a thousand shifting shapes flowing into one another like water, saluted it with upraised goblets), he felt Dallith trembling, as if with cold. He drew a fold of his cloak around her, carefully so as not to disturb her sleep, but she turned and murmured, "I'm not asleep," and he drew her protectively against his shoulder.

"You should rest," he said softly. "Tomorrow's likely to be a rough day." He was conscious of the ridiculous understatement of the words as he said them and felt from somewhere an idiot laughter bubbling up, which he recognized as hysteria and quickly suppressed.

"I'm glad Rianna can sleep," she said, and they were silent. Dane lay still, racing images moving through his mind, very conscious of the girl's soft body, warm inside the cloak, against his. I want her. I love her. This is a hell of a time to be thinking about that. What did Rianna say? Blind instinct in the face of death. Why should I be any different than any other proto-simian? Dallith wouldn't want it to be this way, she said so . . . clutching at each other like animals in the face of death.

Her arms went around him in the darkness, gently and with infinite compassion. "What I want is what you want," she whispered. "I can't help it. Maybe it's not what I would want on my own. But it's real, Dane, it's real." He strained her close to him, losing himself in her pliant yielding, and for a little while, for the first time in days, he forgot the great brick-red orb of the Hunter's

World, forgot the samurai sword and the shadow of death and the Hunters themselves. Later she pillowed his head against her slender breasts and whispered tenderly, "Sleep a little, now, Dane. Sleep while you can," and he tumbled down a dizzying, bottomless abyss of silence and sleep.

The darkness had deepened considerably and the red Hunter's World was low on the horizon when Aratak's hand on his shoulder roused him. "Sorry to disturb you, Dane," he muttered, "but

I'm half asleep. Cliff-Climber's been napping for a couple of hours."

He sat up, gently disengaging himself from Dallith, who slept quietly, encircled in his arms, and, covering her with her cloak, nodded to Aratak. "Good. Get some rest"

He took Aratak's place at the highest point on the slope; the great saurian lay down, covering his head with his cloak, and was still. Cliff-Climber was curled up, only a dark snoring ball. After a few minutes a dark form moved in the shadows; Dane was instantly alert but Rianna whispered, "I've slept enough. Let Dallith sleep; I think she was awake most of the night..."

He nodded and the girl lowered herself at his side and sat there, silent. After a time her handsmall and firm and slightly calloused-stole out and clasped his; he returned the pressure, gently, and they sat there in the thinning darkness, watching for the glow on the horizon which would mark the coming dawn. Once Rianna, looking across at Aratak, who had thrown off his cloak and was glowing blue all over in the dimness, said, "That could be dangerous. Before dark tonight, we've got to do something about it," and Dane nodded. But most of the time they sat silently, side by side and watchful.

"It's strange," she said once, into the complete darkness and silence, as the Hunter's World sank below the edge of a faraway hill. "I'm a scientist. I've spent most of my life studying the remnants of other people's lives, and I've been happy doing it. It never occurred to me that I could be so deeply involved in-in a struggle for my very life, I would have been horrified at the thought. I wonder if I'm less civilized than I thought?"

"Someone in my culture said, civilization is only a thin veneer over the primordial ape."

"I'm afraid the layer in my case is pretty thin. I'm not really unhappy about this, Dane. Not-well, not the way Dallith is. She's really civilized."

Dallith. The feel of her was still on his skin. He said, "I wonder. She reacts so to what's around her. Perhaps she's civilized because she's with civilized people-"

"Maybe. Dane, how do you feel about this?"

"The Hunt?" He paused to consider. It occurred to him that he hadn't really thought about it. He'd been angry, scared, reluctantly conceding necessity. And yet, down at the bottom, beneath everything else, he became aware that from the very first, there had been a core of deep response. . . . All his life he had been an adventurer, kicking away from civilizations to immerse himself in one far-out interest after another. The martial arts. Mountain climbing alone. Solo round-theworld sailing. And wasn't this the ultimate adventure, the last risk, a game played in deadly earnest, with his very life as the stake, and an opponent not blind and unaware like the storms at sea or the North Face, but alert, alive, wary, and playing the other side-an opponent worthy of himself?

"I guess," he said slowly, "I'm not very civilized either."

And they were silent again.

It was another hour before the brightening light in the sky-they could see one another's faces clearly, now-made Dane say reluctantly, "We'd better wake the others." In an odd way he was sorry to bring this interval of quiet to an end, not entirely because of the urgent fear of the Hunt, but because, in the last couple of hours, in his own growing awareness of his own feelings, and Rianna's admission of her own deep response to the Hunt, he had realized that they had shared a deeper intimacy than the sexual contact of the last few weeks.

Rianna was right, he thought, and so was Dallith; it's human in the face of danger, it's natural and even inevitable and therefore nothing to feel guilt about. I was a fool about that. But it isn't all thai important either.

Not now.

Just now, nothing exists except-the Hunt!

Cliff-Climber stretched, with a deep snarl in his throat, and woke. He flexed his claws and sprang up, briefly falling into a fighting stance. Then he relaxed and looked around with a fierce grin.

"There's water there," he said. "I'm for a quick wash and a drink and then-bring on the Hunters!" He bounded off toward the sound of the falling waterfall, and Dane, following slowly, glancing

back to see Dallith rise and fasten her tunic and cloak, felt a sharp surge of kinship. CliffClimber was also a good one to have on his side.

He thrust his head under the waterfall, feeling the icy sharpness of the water like a pleasant shock, and realized that his system was flooded with adrenalin. Good, I'll need it. He looked with positive affection on Aratak as the ten-foot-tall saurian joined them. Everything looked very clear and sharp in the growing light, etched sharply on consciousness and with bright clean new edges, as if everything was new from the hand of Creation, himself included; new and just a little unreal.

Dane looked at all his comrades with something very akin to love before he said briskly, "We've got about an hour before full dawn. Let's start thinking about some kind of cover."

CHAPTER TWELVE

The day broke slowly, light growing on the horizon and the orange sun sliding up from behind a bank of cloud. The increasing light revealed a broken and desolate landscape, sharp treeless hills rising from valleys filled thickly with heavy spiky underbrush; rock-strewn slopes opening here and there in dark cave-mouths. Far away on the horizon were the dark regular shapes which Dane had identified by moonlight as buildings. But now in the light he could see that it was a city in ruins: the tall towers broken, the roofs gaping open to the sky.

It would be easy enough to take cover, Dane thought; what would be hard would be to avoid being trapped hi whatever cover they chose. For that reason he vetoed immediately Rianna's suggestion that a cave-mouth would provide shelter in darkness and that the narrow entry could be easily defended. After nine-hundred-and-what ever-it-was Hunts, he told her grimly, he'd bet even money that the Hunters knew the caves like the very in-sides of their own pockets. Most caves had more than one entrance-and more than one exit. Maybe they could defend the cavemouth where they were-but they would be wholly vulnerable to an attack from behind. The same was true of the ruined buildings. They would be no better than traps.

From the waterfall they moved cautiously down through the valley, keeping the defensive pattern Dane had worked out; Aratak going in front with his great knobbed club, and the short ax-he called it a short ax, Dane didn't-girded at his belt Dane thought of it as Paul Bunyan's Boy Scout Ax; the shaft was so thick that Dane could barely have gotten both hands around it, and it was so heavy that all Dane could have done with it was to lift it over his head and drop it. Although anything he dropped it on probably wouldn't get up again.

Dane went warily a few feet away from him, sword loose in its scabbard, and behind them, holding the center, Rianna with her long spear and knives. Just behind her right shoulder, CliffClimber moved softly, alert to either side; and at the left, Dallith brought up the rear with her sling. He had warned them all to avoid the thickest of the underbrush; only Rianna and the Mekhar were equipped for really close-in fighting. "Aratak and I need sword-room; and Dallith needs a clear field for a shot. But if they come at us, we've got to be prepared for for anything."

So they moved across the deserted land, weapons at the ready, nerves drawn tight, scouting out for a piece of high ground-possibly the top of a steep slope-where nothing could come at them unseen. Dane had half expected that with the rising of the sun the land would explode into violence, battle cries, bloodshed; instead they moved through country that might have never known the print of any living creature, except themselves.

The Hunt lasts eleven days. Dane told himself. That's the hell of it. We can't relax for a minute.

Far from it. The longer we go unmolested, the more chance that they'll spot our defense formation and be prepared to meet it.

Hour after hour moved by. The sun reached its height and began to angle downward; the short day drew near its close and as yet there was no sign of Hunters or of any other Prey. In midafternoon they stopped near a heap of rocks, where water gushed in a spring from a split outcrop of stone, and ate the sweets and confections they had brought with them. Rianna began to step behind the rocks and Dane said. "No. We all stay together."

She lifted her brows and said, "I completely see your point, but what does one do about what one could modestly refer to as a call of nature?"

"Take Dallith with you," Dane said shortly, "and stay within earshot. Until the sun sets, and we find one of the neutral feeding areas, we don't relax-or lay our weapons down-for even five

minutes."

Cliff-Climber said with a feral grin. 'There's where I have the advantage over you proto-simians. My weapons are always ready to my hands." Nevertheless, as Dane walked away from the group to urinate, he noted that the great cat stayed braced and alert, and kept his eye on where Aratak awaited them with his great club.

The Hunters could be watching us, of course, even now; tracking us. Trying to get some idea of our weapons and fighting style, Dane thought.

Finishing, and fastening his clothes, he looked around and decided to scout a little farther ahead. They were in a long, steep valley, heading in a roughly northerly direction toward the long range of hills at the foot of the ruined city.

We ought to head up the slopes, he thought; they could hunt us into the tip of the valley and trap us there. Besides, we've got to locate a hilltop near sundown, and look for those areas of yellow lights. For all I know, the Hunters may treat them like salt licks, and station themselves outside to pick us off as we come out, but we can't get along for eleven days without food and sleep.

He had come a considerable way from the others, although he could still see them below; the women had rejoined Aratak, and were standing on the rock, looking warily around, and Cliff Climber was coming up the slope to join him. Dane reached a level spot, and awaited the Mekhar, stepping out toward Cliff-Climber.

It wasn't Cliff-Climber, he realized in a split second lurch of awareness. He's got a sword!

Almost before the thought had fully reached conscious awareness, his own blade slid free of his scabbard; he stepped back automatically into fighting stance, staring at the Mekhar's throat past the tip of his own blade. The lion-man stopped, raising his weapon to a guard position.

Dane's throat was dry, and the sound of his heart was loud in his own ears. This was it!-but his training was paying off, and he could listen to the pounding of his heart with a detached calm.

But was this Hunter or Prey?

Maybe there aren't any real Hunters. Maybe they get their kicks by watching us slaughter each other. . . .

"Who are you?" he shouted, and was surprised that his voice did not waver. "What do you want? Are you after me?"

With a feline scream of rage the Mekhar leaped, and Dane had barely time to catch a vicious cut at his head. The creature's body twisted in midair and Dane's answering cut fell short as the catman hit the ground, landing on his feet lightly, and bounded back out of range.

Dane held his ground, studying his opponent.

That stance is almost like a saber stance, he thought; but the Mekhar's blade was long and straight, much lighter than his own. He forced his right hand to relax, to let the left hold most of the weight. He'll have reach on me, he thought; that stance should give him the same extension as a foil-fencer. And those jumps! But of course the gravity here is lighter; the moon is only about half the size of his own world. ...

But there was no more time to think. The long straight blade drove in a long lunge toward Dane's chest. He parried and stepped in as the Mekhar's sword glanced harmlessly over his right shoulder, Dane's amis swinging up for the cut.

The lion-man spun away, drawing his sword back over his head, and with a ring of steel the force of Dane's blow drove the back of the straight blade into the Mekhar's scalp.

Then it was Dane's turn to jump back, away from a low sweeping cut at his leg. The Mekhar snarled, a low harsh sound, wordless.

The two faced each other at a distance of about three paces. The cat-man crouched, his blade outstretched before him. Blood was oozing from the slight scalp-wound. But Dane's blade no longer pointed at the Hunter's throat; instead it was fixed skyward, behind him, held firmly over his head with both hands. Chudan no Kamae, Jodan no Kamae; technical terms and explanations flowed through his head in a meaningless stream; but his body, unconcerned, was doing its own thing, gracefully shifting into the perfect dancelike posture, carefully turning the sword-edge to

the exact angle-

The cat-man slashed at his unguarded belly.

Dane stepped forward, and the old samurai blade caught the Hunter's arm at the elbow. Hand and sword fell to the ground.

The cat-man screamed, a hideous sound neither feline nor human, that turned to a choking gurgle as Dane's point found his throat But he bent on, down, across the point, toward the severed arm; he snatched it up, and jerked free of Dane's sword-point, and ran, scrabbling up the slope, dodging, shifting from side to side.

Surprise-dismay-prisoned Dane for a second before he could follow. From the arm wound alone, the creature should be bleeding to death! And the stab in the throat-there was no question about it. That would have finished him. That had finished him. And yet-and yet-there he was, running up the slope, not even slowed down.

The creature-the Hunter?-dodged behind a rock. Warily, sword still unsheathed in his hand, Dane followed, braced for an ambush.

But there was nothing behind the rock. Nothing. No cat-creature. No severed arm. Nothing.

No blood. Not a bloodstain on the ground. Dane walked back to the scene of the fight, his lips

pursed, whistling faintly in wonder and astonishment. He'd seen the thing bleed from the scalp. Blood-blood that looked exactly like ordinary blood-had spurted from the severed hand and arm.

There was blood on the ground here, too. But not much. Less that five feet away from the spot where Dane had lopped off the thing's arm, the blood-spots dwindled to a few drops and stopped.

Thoughtfully, Dane sheathed his sword. First blood, he thought. What was that thing? It sure as hell wasn't a Mekhar. He'd seen Cliff-Climber bleed. But equally sure as hell, it had looked like a Mekhar.

A variant species of proto-feline?

Was that what the Hunters were, just variant proto-felines?

Yeah, sure. Proto-felines. Sapient cats which could pick up an arm you'd lopped off-after being stabbed right through the juglar veins-and run off with it, and then vanish into thin air.

He began slowly to climb down the slope to where he had left his friends. Aratak and Rianna were running toward him; evidently they had heard the thing's final yell. With a dazed feeling, he realized that he had left them less than five minutes ago.

Rianna demanded, "What was it? A Hunter? I thought for a moment it was Cliff-Climber-"

"So did I, at first," Dane said grimly, "until I saw he had a sword."

"And I saw Cliff-Climber -still with us. We began to ran-Dane, did you kill him?"

"I should have." Dane told them the story. One by one they came up to look at the blood; but none of them had any explanation. Cliff-Climber was openly scatching; it was evident that he didn't believe a word of Dane's story.

"Your last stroke missed him, obviously," he said, "and he simply ran behind the rock and-"

"And walked straight through the rock wall?"

"Probably he hid behind some of the bushes. There might be a cave-mouth there somewhere, and he worked his way down to it when you weren't watching."

Dane looked grimly at the Mekhar. "Could you pick up your arm and run away with it if I lopped it off, Cliff?"

Cliff-Climber shook his head. "Perhaps you only thought you cut off his hand. It was your first fight Maybe you were overexcited," he said patronizingly. "If you killed him, his body would be there. It's as simple as that."

Dane didn't answer. He couldn't afford to fight with Cliff-Climber, and he knew if he answered

this time, he would. In silence, he turned away and gestured to them to come along. "In any case I think we'd better get out of this valley," he said. "If one of the Hunters is here, there are likely to be others."

But they saw no other living thing as they toiled up to the lip of the valley and came up into a long, level, rock-strewn plain. The sun was setting behind the ruins of the city, and the shadowy shapes rose against the light like jagged teeth protruding from a broken skull-bone.

"What's that?" Dallith asked, and pointed to a light against the horizon.

"The moon-excuse me, the Hunter's World-coming up," Rianna said. Dane shook Ms head.

"No. The light's yellow," he said. "Neutral zone, and the sun's set The Hunt's off till midnight We'd better go down there and see what we can get to eat."

Wearily, they turned toward the lights. Dane was very tired, and Rianna was stumbling with weariness; even Aratak dragged his club behind him instead of carrying it jauntily over his shoulder. The lights seemed very far away, and even the knowledge that safety lay beyond those lights hardly kept Dane moving. He wondered if they would reach them before he fell in his tracks.

The great brick-red disk of the Hunter's World was high over the ruined city before they reached the first of the lights. The whole area was brilliantly lighted with great yellow globes raised high

on enormous metal poles; within the great circle-three or four acres at least-enclosed by the poles, Servers moved, imperturbable; gliding back and forth as smoothly here amid rocks and moss and underbrush as they did in the Armory itself. There was no other living creature within the circle of the lights except the huge proto-ursine creature, who slept in a furry huddle with the remnants of a large meal beside him.

Of course. There are other neutral areas; other prisoners must have found those. We will, too, if we live long enough, Dane thought

At the very center of the ring of lights, there was an assortment of food in great bins, colorcoded as food had been coded on the Mekhar slave ship.

It was, Dane thought, a symbol of how well this day had welded them together in adversity that they all turned to Dane before touching the food. He said, "Eat what you can, and sleep for a little while. But not too long. I want to be well away from here before midnight-and that's when the Hunt's on again."

"I want sleep even more than food," Dallith said, but dutifully she went and ate some fruit before wrapping herself in her cloak and casting herself down on the thick moss. The others followed her example. Dane said to Aratak, "Get a couple of hours of sleep, and then you stay awake while I do the same."

"You don't think we're safe here? You don't trust the Hunters?"

"I trust them to be Hunters," Dane said. "I think we're safe here. But I don't want to walk out straight into their arms. Get some sleep, Aratak. Til tell you all about it afterward."

The giant saurian lay down and soon was glowing blue all over as he slept Dane watched him, moodily thinking over his plans. He let Aratak sleep for a couple of hours, then awoke him and lay down to rest himself.

When he woke, as if his plan had been maturing in his sleep, he knew exactly what he meant to do. Quietly he woke Cliff-Climber and the women.

"Each of you make up a small portable pack with food for two or three days," he directed. "Maybe they do call the Hunt off every night at dusk; for all I know they're sleeping the sleep of the unjust-or holding the Hunter equivalent of a campfire and singsong-over in their own rest areas. But remember how the Mekhars tested us, on the ship, for thinking ahead? I'm willing to bet this is the same thing here; maybe for the first night, or the first two or three nights, it will be safe to sleep till midnight and then come out, but I'm betting that sooner or.later anyone who gets into that nice safe routine, and trusts it, will find himself being cut down to make Hunter soup. From now on we camp in the open-standing watches for each other-and go in very briefly, just after dusk, once in two or three days to get food."

"That makes sense," Cliff-Climber agreed. "I was thinking roughly along those lines."

"Good." Dane went and began to select food which would keep-nuts, dried fruits, hard wafers of some dried grain. When he had seen this laid out among the more perishable food (and, he supposed, its equivalent for non-humans) he had realized that here was another test; if the Hunters intended them to be safe every night for mealtimes, they would have provided only food to be eaten at once. Once again, they were sorting out the more intelligent and wary of their prey, providing them with opportunity-if they were intelligent enough to seize the opportunity-to prolong their lives and even to evade capture until the Hunt ended.

I don't imagine they're doing it for our benefit, Dane thought, or even out of any exaggerated sense of fair play. They want to prolong the Hunt-stalk us longer. And if we give them a really good time, they don't mind letting one or two of us go.

His mind leaped. If I could bring all five of us through . . . No. That was looking too far ahead. Concentrate on surviving through the day-on getting through this night.

He saw Dallith wrapping herself up in her cloak, the sack of dried fruit and nuts tucked inside the front of her tunic; she had knotted her hair into a single long plait He came up beside her and said quietly, "Do you have a hairpin or something to screw that up on top of your head? Just now, hanging down like that, anyone who came after you would find that braid of yours a damn good thing to grab you by."

She smiled waveringly. "I never thought of that One doesn't I'll cut it off if you want me to."

He touched it, a gentle regretful touch, with the tip of his fingers. "It is beautiful hair," he said and on an impulse kissed the fine ends of the braid. "But if we live, it will grow again, and I'd feel safer about you if you didn't have any-handles for easy grabbing."

She drew her knife out of the light leather sheath; with a quick movement she cut through the pale braid and let it fall to the ground. She smiled at him and moved away. Dane stood looking after her for a moment, then bent, on a strange impulse, and lifted the long silky coil in his hands. It clung there, fine and smooth and springy! he coiled it into a roll and thrust it inside his tunic next to his skin. A favor from my lady, he thought

Seeing that the others were girded up and ready, he gestured to them and led Ms little group into the darkness. Long before the Hunter's World swung at zenith, the yellow lights of the neutral area had receded to a twinkle and then vanished far behind them.

They slept again, in turns, for a few hours, hidden in a fold of the hills; and at dawn moved on up through the foothills, going in the general direction of the ruined city. Once, shortly after the light broke, they heard from far off a sharp clashing as of swords and shields and a high, screaming bellow: a death-cry; but it faded into silence and the landscape was once again as still as death.

As still as death. As still as all the death it's seen. How true these old cliches can be....

It was late afternoon again when they reached a long rock-strewn hill and paused for a break, to

eat a few mouthfuls of food and drink from one of the streams of water that flowed from the rocky cliffs.

It was the suspense and tension that was getting him, Dane realized No one could keep the bowstring at full tension for days on end. So the game was rigged, after all, and rigged in favor of the Hunters, he thought, because they could stalk their Prey, tire them out, come at them at leisure. They could take a break without danger; the Hunted were unlikely to come up on them unawares or take them by surprise, chewing something that looked like strings of dried beef jerky; but probably wasn't. Dallith said to Dane, "If I live through this, I will never hunt for sport again."

Dane felt just the same way. Not that he'd ever been much of a hunter, except with a camera, but he'd always appreciated the mystique of the chase.

He looked at Rianna, who was resting with her head on her arm. Dallith had finished eating and was standing on a rock, her cropped head tilted to one side as if she were listening for some distant sound. He called softly to her, "Did you hear something?"

"No-I don't think so-I'm not sure," she said, and her thin face looked drained and drawn.

If she looks like this on the second day of the Hunt, what's it going to do to her? How long can she keep up?

He let them all rest for another half hour before calling them all together again and starting up the long slope. The top of the hill might be a good place to spend the night, if they were going to spend it in the open. They could sleep fearlessly the first part of the night, and keep watch the rest of the time without worrying about anyone sneaking up on them.

"Be careful at the top of the hill," he warned, as they started upward. "It's about the same time of day that the Hunter attacked us yesterday. Maybe they prefer to attack shortly before sunset."

He began to take his place in line, but Cliff-Climber thrust forward. "I claim the right to lead," he said proudly. "Yesterday you were at the fore, and you took the first blood. This is my turn! Do you want all the glory?"

Glory be damned, friend, Dane thought, but he didn't say the words aloud. He was beginning, slowly, to understand a little about how the Mekhar's mind worked. A human strategist thought in terms of efficiency. But Cliff-Climber wasn't human and he cared no more for efficiency than he did for the advancement of science. He was, in general, cooperating almost incredibly well with them; but if Ms morale sagged, he wouldn't. If it made him happy to lead and take the risks sometimes, Dane felt he shouldn't fight with him about it.

Cliff-Climber said eagerly, "In any case, my ears are the sharpest. Let me scout ahead."

Dane shrugged. "Lead on, MacDuff. But back him up with the spear, Rianna."

They started up the rocky slope, Cliff-Climber bounding eagerly ahead of them. The path was steep and Rianna fell farther and farther behind; the cat-man leaped nimbly over the same soil which slipped and slithered away under Dane's feet and started little showers of rocks below. Rianna's feet went from under her and she fell, just missing getting her feet tangled in the spear; Dane braced his hand under her elbow. She recovered her feet quickly and said, "Help Dallith," picking her way deftly through the stones.

Dane lingered to give Dallith a hand, noting that Aratak was falling farther and farther behind. A fine fighting group we make, he thought, strung out all over this hillside. He raised his head to shout at Cliff-Climber to wait.

Dallith gave a strangled gasp; for an instant he wondered if she had picked up his fear, but at that same moment the Mekhar hissed sharply, throwing himself down behind a boulder and gesturing with his arm for the others to take cover.

Dane half pulled Dallith, then Rianna, into the shadow of a huge rock nearby and flattened himself against its side. Aratak had thrown himself flat. There was no cover nearby in which he could hide but, motionless, he blended into the rocky slope like another rock.

Above them Dane saw Cliff-Climber go up the side of his boulder quickly and quietly and crouch, more catlike than ever, at the top. They certainly gave him the right name, he thought. At Dane's side Dallith gave a low moan, and above Mm he saw the lion-man stiffen. Whatever it is, it's coming, Dane knew.

He saw it, then. A proto-feline, like the Mekhar. Dane remembered the cat-man he had killed-or failed to kill-and Ms hand tightened about his sword hilt He tensed, ready to draw.

There was a sudden peculiar change in Dallith's breathing, but before he could analyze or understand it, he saw Cliff-Climber leap to Ms feet, to stand atop the rock, silhouetted against the sky, in plain view of the newcomer.

That crazy Mekhar! He's going to challenge him to single combat!

The other cat-man had not stopped at the sight of Cliff-Climber, but came straight down the slope toward the Mekhar. And then, insanely, Cliff-Climber turned toward them and waved.

"It's all right," he called down to them, and there was joy in his voice. "He wears the topknot of my clan. He is one of my kindred!" He leaped down from the rock and ran toward the other, calling out to him what sounded like a ritual greeting:

"Hearth-sharer and Hunt-helper-"

Dallith came to her feet, screaming. "No! No! Cliff-Climber, no, no, it's-" She gripped Dane's arm, her nails digging painfully into his forearm. "Stop him! Help him! It's a trick, a trap-" Suddenly she bent to the ground and fitted a stone quickly to her sling.

Confused, Dane looked up the hill, to see Cliff-Climber bound up to the other Mekhar with every evidence of joy and trust-and to see the sun glint on the razor-steel of tipped claws that flashed for Cliff-Climber's unguarded throat

Then Dane was shouting and his sword was out, and dirt and small stones were sliding out from under his feet as he charged recklessly up the hill, expecting any moment to fall and skewer himself on his own sword. Above him he saw Cliff-Climber reel back, blood spurting from a wound in his throat, and then, staggering, close with his attacker.

From below came a deep, rumbling bellow that could only have been Aratak. Dane shouted again, and fought for balance on the treacherous slope.

The two great cats rolled down the hill toward him, locked together in a death-struggle, both covered in blood: red blood streaming from Cliff-Climber's throat, smearing his opponent's claws; Cliff-Climber's own claws raking down for eyes, entrails. But Cliff-Climber was weakening, and as Dane came panting past the boulder where the Mekhar had crouched, CliffClimber gave a sudden convulsive shudder and lay still, blood still gurgling from his torn throat.

The other proto-feline crouched over the body, raised his eyes to glare at Dane. One of CliffClimber's hands was still entangled in his mane at the throat-No! Startled, Dane saw that the dead Mekhar's claws were still sunk deep in his killer's throat, frozen there in a death-grip.

At least he gave as good as he got, Dane thought He took the bastard with him!

And then, incredibly, the cat-man gripped Cliff-Climber's dead arm with both hands, and leaned back. Dane saw the Mekhar's stiffening claws pull through the neck of the other. Blood welled out briefly, then stopped. The cat-man rose, apparently unwounded, and stood facing Dane, crouched in a fighting stance, as the Earthman ran toward him.

Something hit the Hunter on the shoulder and spun him around. One of Dallith's sling stones, Dane realized. And from behind came such a crashing and sliding of rock as could only be Aratak forcing his great bulk up the slope.

Another sling stone cracked on the rock behind the Hunter, and for a moment he hesitated, gripping Cliff-Climber's body as if to carry it away. But as Dane came into striking range the creature wheeled and leaped away up the slope, moving at a speed Dane could not match. He paused on the crest, and a great boulder came loose from its bed and clattered down, forcing Aratak to leap out of its way; then he vanished over the brow of the hill.

Dane clambered stolidly on, cresting the hill. But, as he had halfway expected, Cliff-Climber's killer was nowhere in sight

He vanished just the way the other one did. And he climbed that slope with his throat torn out.

That probably means the one I killed isn't dead either....

He turned back down the slope. Dallith crouched by Cliff-Climber's body. He thought for a moment that she was weeping, but she turned a white tearless face up to him.

"That was a Hunter?"

"That," he said grimly, "was a Hunter, God help us all."

Rianna bent by Cliff-Climber's blood-smeared corpse. Tears were falling on his matted fur as she gently closed the staring yellow eyes.

"His captain wished him an honorable escape, or a

11*7

bloody and honorable death," she whispered. "Well, he got it. He got it. Rest in peace, friend."

Dane looked down at the body of their dead ally, and his thoughts were grim. "Do you want all the glory?" Cliff-Climber had asked, and instead he'd got all the death, the first to die, running headlong toward death. "It should have been me," Dane said aloud.

But there was no time to mourn, not even time to bury their dead friend.

On this hillside, if that Hunter has any little pals around, we'd be sitting ducks, Dane thought,

and grimly gave orders to move on. Rianna protested, sobbing, and he said gently, "We can't do him any good by getting ourselves killed along with him, Rianna. Let's hope that Hunter's caught the bag limit for one day, and doesn't come back for seconds."

Aratak added, taking Rianna gently by the arm and leading her away, "He is one with all wisdom now, Rianna-or else he is dust returning to dust. Either way, your duty now is to us, as ours is to you. Come, my child."

She let the huge saurian lead her away, but she was still shaken with sobs. Dane, too, felt saddened. He had not realized how deeply the Mekhar had grown into a part of their group. It was not only the gap he made in their line of defense; it was Cliff-Climber himself he knew he would miss. His courage, his cheerfulness under pressure-even his insuppressible arrogance, his sharp, offhand insults.

One gone. Four to go, and they were beginning to know what the Hunters were like-and the picture wasn't pretty.

Can those damned things be killed at all?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The worst of the Hunt, Dane thought, was the way one tended to lose track of time.

He was not sure whether it was the fifth or the sixth day of the Hunt. Time seemed to melt into endless stretches, endlessly braced against attack and kill. They were endlessly alert for the sudden appearance of someone-or something-on slaughter bent. But since the death of Cliff Climber-was it three or four or even five days ago?-they had met no other Hunters, or at least had been attacked by none. Once indeed Dallith had brought them all to a halt, with a harsh warning; they had taken cover in the underbrush, and far away they had heard the clash of steel and something, a far-off dying scream somewhere. Crouching there, hidden against the growing red moonlight-or rather, world-light from the gibbous Hunters' World above-they waited for attack; but there was nothing, and after a long time Dallith went limp and let her sling fall to the ground.

"It's gone," she said. "Really gone."

"Dead?" Rianna asked, and Dallith sighed and said, "How do I know?"

Now, by daylight, Dane could see that the Hunt was telling on her, perhaps, worst of all. They were all sunburned and dusty with exposure, but under her tan Dallith looked every day a little more pale and drawn; every day her dark eyes sunk more deeply into her face. Rianna sometimes cried with weariness; Dallith neither wept nor complained, but every day she seemed more wasted and haggard.

She needs rest, Dane thought, and uninterrupted sleep, and freedom from fear.

We all do, but Dallith worst of all. She seems able to

feel those damned things even in her sleep, and it's probably kept us all alive this long.

They sat resting in the lee of the far range of hills they had seen that first night, beneath the ruins of the city. It stood far up on the top of the bluff, and the worn and eroded cliffsides leading up to it were strewn with dark cave-mouths and long ruined stairs and passageways.

Rianna, looking up at the buildings, said, "I'd like to explore them someday. Under better conditions."

"Not I," Dane said. "If we get off this damned moon alive, I've had enough of it for two or three lifetimes."

"You don't understand," Rianna said. "If the Hunt has taken place here for centuries, the Hunters may even have built this city-"

"Or, more likely, hunted down and killed off whatever did build it," Aratak suggested, "and when all their Prey were dead, could not stop hunting...."

"Stranger things have happened, " Dane said, thinking of Earth's history and the long insanity of

the Crusades.

Aratak seemed the least touched by the days of toil and fear; but Dane could see that even he looked weary. He was smeared with gray mud from head to foot-early in the Hunt they had realized that in the long midnight-to-dawn stretches, when they camped in the open, Aratak's habit of glowing blue while he slept could lead the Hunters down on them; and they had adapted this method of controlling his indiscreet luminescence. Fortunately Aratak enjoyed mud; but he had admitted that there was a big difference between the pleasant warmth of wet mud and the wearing of dried mud. Now he scratched absentmindedly at the grayish smears and said, "I think with pleasure of the bathing pools of the Game Preserve. I hope there will be water somewhere in the rains. The Voice of the Egg, may his wisdom endure forever, once remarked that a banquet was pleasant in hunger, but that the truly wise man, unless he was starving, would refuse a banquet for a bath. Alas, I have verified all too many of his divinely wise sayings in adversity of late."

"I envy your philosophy, friend," Dane said, and hauled himself wearily to his feet. "I think we'll have to go into the ruins to find water; we have food for a day or so, but we need drinking water and you need a bath."

"I thought you were worried about being trapped there," Rianna said.

"I am. But between sunset and midnight we might risk it. The moon-oh hell, it's a moon to us now-the world up there is giving enough light now so that we can probably find our way around

well enough for that, But we should be well away by midnight. I suspect the Hunters take a great deal of pleasure hi playing hide-and-seek in there, if any of the Prey think it might be a good place to hide."

Rianna looked up at the sky. "Near sunset. Thank goodness."

Dallith nodded grimly. "But we're overdue for an attack. I suspect they like to attack just before sunset because then their Prey are tired from a day of running, and are ready to let their guard down."

"I suspect you're right," Dane said, "which means it's the best time to keep our guard at top pitch. Well-let's go. I'd like to reach the ruins just after sunset-and avoid having to fight our way inside."

Days of traveling, on the alert for attack, had perfected the best lineup; but every time they formed for march Dane still missed Cliff-Climber's alertness. Now, as they crested the brow of a small hill, Dane saw a stirring in the underbrush beneath them, and the flash of brownish-gold. A Mekhar-or one of the catlike things they had fought twice now. He gestured to the others behind him. They halted, falling into their defensive formation; Rianna knelt and planted the butt of her spear against a boulder behind her; Aratak and Dane took up positions to either side. Dallith leaped to the top of the rock, her sling ready.

The lion-man looked out at them for a moment, then turned and ran, melting away into the

underbrush. Dane gave a sigh of relief and lowered his blade.

"I don't think that was a Hunter," Dallith said, behind him. "He seemed too frightened. I think he was Prey. Like ourselves."

"We can't be sure of that," Dane said. Damn near anything, he thought, would be frightened at the sight of that five-foot club of Aratak's. Even a Hunter might prefer easier prey. The knob at the club's end was nearly twice the size of Dane's head.

Dallith jumped down from the rock. "It didn't feel like that thing that killed poor Cliff-Climber," she in sisted. "It felt"-she hesitated, groping for words-"a little like Cliff himself. Only not so brave."

"Probably one of the Mekhars-the ones he called common thieves," Dane said, and felt in himself a curious mixed reaction: on the one hand a desire to find the poor scared Mekhar, who was, after all, of Cliff-Climber's kind if not of his class; on the other a strange aversion to association with someone Cliff-Climber had evidently felt beneath him. "But we could use a Mekhar's eyes and ears now," he said, "if only to give you a rest, Dallith."

Rianna let her spear drop. "I've no reason to love the Mekhars," she said grimly; "they brought us here. As far as I'm concerned, the Hunters can have them, and welcome. They're all pretty much of a kind, as far as I'm concerned."

Dane said no more. After all, he thought, it could still have been a Hunter. Dallith might have been wrong.

I'm tired of being Prey, he thought I'd tike to start hunting them down instead. But that was foolish and he knew it. For one thing, they didn't even know if the Hunters could be killed. Anything which could run away with its throat torn out was no ordinary proto-feline. Next time, damn it, I'll cut the head right off and see if the critter's still so frisky!

"Shall we keep moving?" Aratak suggested. "Even if that feline was Prey, it might have a Hunter after it." Slowly they moved on down the slope and began to follow the valley at the bottom, taking the easiest path to avoid tiring themselves, but alert to the possibilities of the place for ambush.

Dane was thinking over the various encounters they had had. "Even if we may be wronging some of our fellow Prey," he said at last, "we have some idea of what sort of creature we should avoid at all costs. Both of the Hunters we've actually faced have been Mekhars-or at least protofelines, and near enough to the Mekhar type to fool Cliff-Climber into thinking he was one of his own clan. If we avoid anything that looks even slightly like a Mekhar, we ought to be safe."

"I'm still not convinced," Aratak said stubbornly. "Remember the other proto-saurian at the Armory, which did the same kind of disappearing trick which the imitation Mekhar did. I still believe the Hunters are more than one species."

The sun angled downward. Furtive figures sometimes watched them from a distance, and once Dallith said she felt sure that one of the stalkers was near, but no one approached.

"The very fact that we're traveling together may be some protection," Aratak said. "Most of the other Prey might feel that any organized group must be Hunters."

"And the Hunters," Dane said, "are probably picking off the easy ones first Or the ones they can trick-like poor Cliff-Climber."

Aratak said grimly, "If I'm right, and there are more than one species, then if I were you, Dane, I would be very careful of anything that looks like a man and tries to get too near."

"Damn it," Rianna said suddenly. "I have this feeling that I ought to know the answer. But I can't put my finger on it. It makes my brain itch."

"Save your breath," Dane said gently. "Tell us later. We're within an hour or so of sunset, and then we can rest"

They moved along for some time in silence; suddenly, as she emerged from the lengthening shadow of a rock, Dallith started as if she had been stung, and called softly for them to wait

They stood still and tense as deer scenting the wind, until she spoke. "One of them is very close, and it's stalking . . . it's on some kind of scent . . . but I think it's after someone else.... I can feel.

.."

She stopped as there came a shriek from nearby, then sounds as of metal striking metal. "They're fighting-over there, beyond that pass-"

She pointed ahead where two pillars of stone rose, forming a narrow, gate-like cleft Dane suddenly whipped out his sword.

"To the devil with this! They're just waiting to kill off some of the other poor suckers before coming after us! They want to kill us off one by one, and we're not cooperating, so they're saving us for last Let's turn the tables on them if we can-and start by helping that poor devil in there!"

"You're crazy," Rianna said flatly, but Aratak shouldered his giant club and started toward the cleft "There is wisdom in cooperation," he said. "If we can get there in time to help-and if we can tell Hunter from Hunted." He broke into his lumbering run; Dane hurried after him. Dallith stood frozen a moment, than ran after them and Rianna, reluctantly, brought up the rear.

But as he threaded his way through the cleft Dane's rage began to cool. Maybe this was crazy! His entire being revolted at the thought of standing by, not getting involved, while a fellow creature was done to death almost within earshot; but he was risking Aratak's life as well, and the lives of both the women, to help someone they didn't know, couldn't trust, probably couldn't save anyway; and to kill something which might not even be kill-able in the first place. . . . We've still got four or five days to go; we should save our strength, he thought.

He thrust through the cleft and stood looking down into a little round natural amphitheater below. Behind him Rianna cried out softly with dismay.

One of the cat-men lay apparently dead, off to one side. Another, brandishing what looked like a European two-handed sword, stood facing a spider-man-one like the survivor of the last Hunt, like the one they had seen feted and honored in the Game Preserve back on the Hunters' World. And now he could tell how that spindly, frail-looking creature had managed to survive, alone, through an entire Hunt.

The spider-thing scuttled in and out on four of its curiously-segmented limbs, deftly avoiding the slashing thrusts of the cat-man, while its other four limbs-Dane stared. One arm was always occupied with holding the small metal shield with which it parried the Mekhar's, or pseudoMekhar's, attacks. The other three limbs were twirling a long, sharp-bladed lance, the head of which was almost sword-length. And at least once Dane saw the creature shift the shield from one arm to another with incredible swiftness. The creature was juggling with its weapons!

And how deadly that style was they saw almost at once; even before they had fully come out of the pass they saw the butt-end of the spear swing down to catch the pseudo-Mekhar behind the leg, tripping him; as he fell, the blade of the spear was already slashing toward his head. The lion-man caught it on his heavy sword, but only barely, and staggered to his feet. Then the buttend drove in again and this time Dane saw the cat-creature doubled over as the shaft drove into his mid-section. The shield bashed against the two-handed sword, pushing it aside, and then the

spearhead swept around; and suddenly the lionlike head was rolling on the ground. The body swayed for a moment, blood gushing from its severed neck, and crumpled to the ground, where it convulsed briefly and lay still.

Behind him he heard Dallith gasp with horror and shock, but he could not hold back a moment of wild elation. He got one of the devils-no! Two of them! Wonder what kind of price the Mekhars get for these spider~ things?

Aloud he said, "If we can get him to join up with us, we ought to be damn near invincible." He looked down and saw the spider-man wiping his weapon. "Let's go down."

"Remember how timid these creatures are," said Aratak. "Let me go down alone, first, and greet him in the name of Universal Sapience. Perhaps he will not fear me." The huge lizard-man lowered his club and began walking down the hill, his hands spread open and empty in front of him. Dane sheathed his sword. Rianna came up behind him, half supporting Dallith, who seemed to be in shock. Of course-she had sensed the death of the Hunter. He turned toward her, concerned, taking her hands in his. They were cold and strengthless and for a minute he thought she would fall over in a faint.

Through his preoccupation with Dallith he heard Aratak's deep rumbling voice, and, glancing quickly over his shoulder, glimpsed the spider-man backing away, his shield raised and his long lance balanced, menacing.

"Do not be afraid. I am no Hunter, but Prey like yourself," they heard Aratak say. Dallith shook her cropped head and seemed to come a little more to herself, listening, alert and tense, to Aratak's words.

"I salute you hi the name of Universal Sapience and Peace," Aratak said. "If we can join together against our enemies, our chance for survival will be greatly increased. Can you understand what I say? Can you answer me?"

Dallith stirred. "What's he doing down there?" she asked in a faint voice, and then suddenly her eyes grew very wide; she pulled away from Dane and Rianna, fumbling for her sling.

"Aratak, watch out!" she screamed, "That's the Hunter!"

Dane whirled and saw the spider-man scuttling forward, his spear aimed at the saurian's unprotected chest.

Dane shouted encouragement, drawing his sword as he raced down the hill. Aratak's left arm came up in a karate block that Dane had taught him and he knocked the spear to one side, his other hand clutching at the ax in his belt.

One of Dallith's sling stones hissed through the air, and struck the spider-thing's abdomen with an audible thud. The spider-man scuttled back, unhurt but startled; he recovered at once, but Aratak had his ax in hand; he roared, a huge earthshaking bellow, and the monster ax hurtled

down, to be blocked unerringly by the shield. Whatever the metal was, it was tough.

But Aratak had to dodge back against a return thrust from the spear, and Dane realized that the shield alone gave the spider-man a major advantage, even without the deadly effectiveness of the three-armed twirling spear. It was like trying to walk into the spinning blades of a helicopter.

It would be deadly enough, just spinning; it could break the bones of any ordinary living thing. But it's got that long-edged blade on the end. . . . Dane ran on down the hill, not certain what actual aid he could give his friend except to die with him.

With his club, Aratak might have had a chance; at least he'd have reach. As it was, the length of the spear gave all the advantage to the Hunter; the lizard-man couldn't use his ax unless he could get within arm's reach of Ms foe, but anywhere within fifteen feet he'd be within the range of that deadly whirling spear. A normal lance technique, depending on straight thrusts, would have given Aratak the advantage if he could get inside the spear-range; but with all those hands, the spider could probably spin the spear down to cut a fly off his nose if he wanted to.

Another sling stone whirred through the air and struck the spider-man in the midsection, on the gray and hairy thorax. The spider staggered, with a wailing sort of scream; only an instant, but it interrupted the even spin of the spear. It whirled down, and struck Aratak a blow that sent him sprawling-and would have crushed the skull of anything but a proto-saurian-but it had been a glancing blow, and Aratak managed to roll out of range before the spider-man could regain complete control of his weapon. Dane was there by that time, darting to one side to try to come

in on the spider-man's rear.

The Hunter saw him; the lance spun menacingly in his direction and only the crash of another sling stone against one of the gray and fuzzy arms kept Dane from being annihilated; he danced out of the way barely in time. His move had been pure distraction, of no possible use as an attack; but it worked this time, for Aratak was climbing painfully to his feet.

But dodging wouldn't work. The thing was too fast.

Another of Dallith's sling stones smashed into the creature's side; this one must have hurt him, for he jumped away, startled by the impact, and Dane ran in close and sliced at the fuzzy gray skin of the thing's abdomen.

It was like slicing cheese. The blade sheared through easily, but no blood ran; the only reaction was the sudden spear-thrust that drove into the ground as Dane sprang away, only the lighter gravity saving him. There was something gray and sticky on Dane's blade. Another stone crashed against the creature's side as Dane backed frantically away from a second thrust. He yelled to Aratak, "Now, while he's dazed-before he gets that spear whirling again," but the great saurian was weaving slowly from side to side, trying to haul out his ax but still dizzied by the blow he'd taken.

And suddenly Dane saw Rianna, spear down and extended in bayonet style, running toward them. Good girl, maybe that's the answer-Oh, God, no, her spear isn't long enough and he's got

the shield! She's gone, unless I can distract him-fast!

He ran in yelling, his blade back against his shoulder in the traditional guard against spear attack. What good it'll be against that damned airplane propellor I don't know. And at the same instant Aratak roared again and charged.

The spear whirled into a disklike blur. It drew a red line across Aratak's chest, struck Rianna's spear contemptuously out of her hands to fly, broken, into the darkness, and whipped down toward! her leg,

Dane heard her scream of agony through a darkening blur; he jumped at one of the spider-thing's legs and hewed with all his might.

That worked. He should have thought of it before. The great bulk collapsed backward. The thing turned the spear on Dane, thrusting straight back with his two rearmost arms; but a thrust Dane could handle. His sword whipped across his body with the full force of his shoulders behind it, and as the spear slid harmlessly past he swung at the other leg on that side. Cripple him enough to get away-

But the leg moved away from his cut with lightning speed. Over the hunched back of the creature he suddenly saw Aratak, his ax lifted for a terrible stroke at the thing's midsection.

The spear snapped back; the butt caught Aratak near the shoulder, knocking him backward; the

creature jumped straight up into the air on its three good legs and twisted in midair, landing in a ball at some distance and bringing himself up in a crouched, scuttling heap. Great red eyes swiveled to watch them.

Dane spared a quick glance back to where Rianna lay, moaning, on the ground. She was still alive, but one arm lay crumpled beneath her, and the side of her tunic was dyed red with blood. Aratak seemed unhurt, although he was holding his shoulder where the lance butt had struck at it.

Is it going to run? Or attack again?

From the spider-thing came a high wail-almost like the sound that cat-thing made when Dane got his arm-followed almost a once by Dallith's shriek from the hill.

"Get away quick! He's calling for help-I Watch out!"

And the spider-man attacked.

He had dropped one of the "arms" to the ground to serve in place of the severed leg, and had four limbs to walk on; he scurried at them at alarming speed, whirling the spear with two arms while with the third he covered his head and upper body. Aratak and Dane had no time for anything but to draw together, weapons ready. A sling stone struck one of the spider's legs; he caught a second with a deft motion of the shield. But his head must be vulnerable, or he wouldn't bother with the shield! Dane thought

Then he was upon them, and the whirling lance-point forced them to give ground before him. But Dane was counting the strokes, trying to time the spin. If he could jump in fast enough, get the spider's head before the shaft caught him-

Dallith's sling stones were still whizzing around the creature's head, although most of them landed with a crack against the shield.

She's caught on about the head. . . . Oh, good girl, Dane thought.

Suddenly there was a sharp crack! The thing shud dered and one of his arms went limp; the spear-spin slackened, out of control.

Dane leaped.

But the shield thrust out at the end of the long shaggy arm, and suddenly Dane's blade was being forced back against his body, pinned by the pressure on the guard. Hopelessly, he saw the lancepoint driving at his throat.

And then the spider-thing's head exploded into a fountain of jetting blood as one of the sling stones crashed directly into his skull; at the same moment Aratak's ax hewed off the arm holding the spear. The thing collapsed, blood still pumping from his shattered head.

Dane staggered back. Was it really dead? Aratak evidently shared his doubts, for he heaved up the great ax and sheared through the juncture of upper body and abdomen. More blood poured out; slowed to a trickle; stopped.

"Hurry!" Dallith was shouting at them. "They're coming! This way, quick!" And indeed, figures were appearing over the far crest of the hill.

Dane, sheathing his sword, ran to Rianna's side. She gasped with pain as he lifted her, but threw her uninjured arm around his shoulder; he saw her bite down on her lip to keep from crying out as he heaved her up and ran with her in his arms for the stone cleft, Aratak close on his heels.

They ran up toward the cleft where Dallith stood waiting, her sling still whirling around her head, interrupted every moment or two for the fitting of another stone. Aratak stooped to retrieve his club and Dane saw he had also picked up the dead Hunter's spear.

"Where now?"

"The ruins. What other chance have we?' We can't run far and carry Rianna," he said, gasping, "but we can hide there." Rianna was a small woman, but she seemed to weigh a ton; he suspected that in normal gravity he couldn't have carried her at all.

"Here." Aratak slung his club over his shoulder and bent to lift Rianna from Dane's arms. "Bring the spear," he said, and broke into a lumbering run with Rianna in his arms, Dane and Dallith

hurrying behind. He looked back, briefly, as they came under the shadow of the city wall. Aratak had evidently been right. A group of Hunters-they must be Hunters-were climbing up the slope behind them. There was a catman of Mekhar type.

There were one or two forms that looked human. And Dane's hair felt as if it were standing straight on end as he saw one of the spider-creatures.

My God, we killed that one, I was sure we killed it, or was there another one? I thought they were rare. . . .

The group of Prey were slowed by Rianna's weight, and behind them the Hunters were gaming. Aratak jogged along the ruined wall, looking for a gap. Rianna was limp in his arms-dead or unconscious, Dane could not even guess-and Dallith was stumbling.

"Here," Aratak said, his breath coming in great sobbing gasps. He set Rianna on the ground, and thrust against a fallen stone which blocked a gap in the wall. Dallith stumbled through. Dane picked up Rianna's apparently lifeless body and followed Dallith through into the semidarkness. Aratak, behind them, heaved the rock back into place. And behind them the sun sank and was gone.

Aratak dropped, panting, to the ground. "Sunset," he said grimly. "Look. They're going away."

'Talk about being saved by the bell," Dane agreed.

Dallith murmured, "I'm surprised. I thought they'd follow us-so close-" Now that it was all over, she was sobbing in reaction.

Dane, too, was surprised-it seemed that they were near enough that the Hunters would have finished them off, sunset or no sunset. He felt grim. He bent over Rianna, prepared to discover that she was dead.

But she was breathing, and he explored her injuries, Dallith kneeling at his side.

Her arm was limp and she moaned when he touched the shoulder; he suspected the arm was broken or at least dislocated. The blood on her tunic came from a long, angry gash which began high on her buttock and ran down her thigh; it had cut nearly to the bone, but when he examined it in the fading light it seemed mostly to be a flesh wound, for already the blood had clotted to an ooze.

Aratak tore several long strips from his tunic, saying quietly, "I can spare them better. My hide needs less protection than yours." This was so obviously true that neither Dane nor Dallith protested; Aratak normally wore no clothing at all, and had put on the tunic only at Server's insistence. He bandaged Rianna's leg wound and explored the damaged arm. "A tendon in the shoulder is torn," he said. "She won't use it for a while. But better her arm than her leg. She can still walk if she has too."

Dallith went off to look for water and returned saying that there was a stone pool, with running water which had evidently once been a fountain, not far away. They carried Rianna there by the last of the light, and laid her on her own cloak and Aratak's; then they sat on the rim of the stone pool, resting and eating some of their stored provisions.

"We're safe till midnight," Dane said, "but after that there's nothing to keep them from breaking down that wall and coming in after us. I don't know why they didn't."

Aratak said thoughtfully, "I think I know. Remember what high value they put on courage and skill? We're evidently something special and they'll play by the rules just because of that. Remember, too, they probably think they've killed Rianna."

"We seem to have done some killing too," Dane said. "If those things can be killed at all," he added. "Do they come back to life again? I looked back and saw that same spider-thing, or his twin brother, following us."

"We can't rule out the possibility," Aratak said. "They are certainly no form of life I know."

Dane was thinking it over. He had killed a Hunter who looked like a Mekhar, and the thing had run away with his throat torn out. They had had to cut the spider-man's head from his body to kill him. "You said they were more than one species," he said. "Have the Hunters simply learned how to give their recruits the power of regenerating lost parts?"

Aratak said grimly, "Perhaps this is the Happy Hunting Ground; there is a legend in the folklore of the Salamanders-as in most warlike races-that somewhere there is a great Hunting Ground where every good hunter goes after death, to live in eternal battle-to fight every day, and then every night to feast while his wounds heal again to fight the next day. Needless to say it is not my idea of heaven, but the Salamanders seemed content with it."

Dane said, "We have that legend too. We call it Valhalla." His skin prickled, but he said firmly, "I refuse to believe that all the dead heros of the Galaxy come here after death to enjoy fighting through all eternity."

"I didn't say I believe it," Aratak said. "But we seem to be faced with an analogous situation. Perhaps it is hypnotism-the Hunters are all one form but can work on our minds to make us see them in any form we fear most."

Dallith said, "I don't think so. If they broadcast fear into our minds to make us see them one way or the other, why would we all see them in the same way? Cliff-Climber would have felt no fear of the Mekhar-in fact he rejoiced to meet him. He took that form to trap Cliff!"

Dane said, "Are you seriously telling me that you think those things change their shape?"

"I can't prove it," she said. She was chewing a piece of dried fruit; she finished, swallowed it, and discarded the stone. "But I believe it."

Aratak said, "It may be that they cannot be killed at all ... that even at the end of the Hunt, the game is simply for us to keep killing them until the Eclipse frees us. If we are still alive, we have won the game."

"No, they can be killed," Dane said. "Remember the feast? Nineteen have gone to join their illustrious ancestors. . .. They're not easy to kill, but I'll bet that one we fought is dead."

Dallith said hesitantly, "When they were following us, I had the sense that some terrible catastrophe had been averted-for them, that is. That somehow they were terribly afraid of something we could do to them."

"Wish to hell I knew what it was," Dane said morosely "I'd love to do it."

But before he could say more, Rianna moaned slightly, opened her eyes, and tried to sit up. Dallith went quickly to her.

"Don't move," she said. "You'll be all right But try to rest while you can."

Rianna's voice sounded low and dazed. "I was sure you were all dead," she said, "and I'd be waking up alone with your bodies all around me-what happened? Did you kill that thing?"

Among them they gave her a quick fill-in about the end of the battle. She looked around at the shadowy ruins, the brick-red Hunters' World just rising over them.

"Here I am in the city," she said. "I wanted to know more about it. And I'm not in any shape to go exploring, worse luck!" Carefully, she moved her arm and leg. "I

seem to be reasonably well in one piece, but I'm half dead of thirst. I hear running water; can I have a drink?"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

By midnight there was no chance of moving out of the city, for Rianna's wounded leg had swollen so that it would not bear her weight Her face was hot and Dane wondered if she had developed a fever or the wound had become infected from the far-from-sanitary bandage which they had used for lack of a better one. There was no way to tell, but no matter what happened they could not move her just at this moment They could, perhaps, carry her a little way, but they certainly could not carry her as far as one of the neutral zones. Nor, if they were attacked at the gates of the city-and it seemed likely, after last night, that they would be-could they fight off an attacker with Rianna, helpless, to protect.

"It looks pretty bad," Dane said to Aratak, moving out of earshot of the women-why, he didn't really know; Rianna was to weak to pay any attention; Dallith knew how he was feeling anyway.

The saurian nodded in. agreement. He had washed the dried mud from his body and was glowing again in the dark, and Dane realized that if there were Hunters around it would draw them. Well, if there were Hunters around they'd probably be found even without Aratak; there was no point in making him uncomfortable when all their lives might depend on his fighting trim.

They stayed in the open square near the pool and the ruined fountain until dawn. Dane slept little, though he made Aratak lie down and rest. Although Dallith wanted to watch with him, he said soberly that she should lie down by Rianna and try to keep her warm. It was the one thing they could do for Rianna now. He thought of changing the bandages from the partially mudstiffened ones they had made from Aratak's tunic, but Dallith vetoed that She said gravely that the one thing they could be sure of was that any bacteria, or fungi, which might be harbored in Aratak's clothing certainly would not get into Rianna's wounds to infect them. "Cross-infection almost never goes from biological stock to biological stock," she said. "And Aratak isn't even warmblooded. Disease organisms harmful to him are probably completely innocuous in a protosimian bloodstream; whereas anything we might be carrying could transfer quite happily from us to Rianna."

While his companions slept, Dane sat with his back to the ruined fountain, looking up at the strange world glowing high in the sky, seeming to obscure at least a quarter of it. Strange, strange, to think that three months ago he had been peacefully sailing in Seadrift, alone and content to be so; in fact, if you'd asked him he would have had to say he was not involved with another human being on Earth. Well, he wasn't on Earth, now, but he was certainly involved,

with not one woman but two depending on him for care and support. And for the first time in his Me he had a deeply loved friend of his own sex, and it wasn't a man but a proto-saurian ten feet tall!

He watched the red world sink when the sky was already flushing with dawn, and thought to himself that on Earth the moon wouldn't be more than a few days off full. And the month was shorter here. But could they last even three or four days? They had food enough, at a pinch-after the last hasty visit, a few days ago, to a neutral zone-to last for the rest of the Hunt; he'd gone without food for five or six days at a time in the mountains on Earth, once or twice. They had plenty of drinking water. Could they somehow manage to hide in the ruins until Rianna was able to walk?

Could they, hell! Whether they could or not, they'd have to.

So when dawn broke, he let the women sleep until the sun was high-since all seemed quiet-then had Aratak carry Rianna inside one of the larger buildings, with Dallith to look after her. Toward sunset, when the chance of an attack was maximum, maybe Dallith could get up on the roof and keep a lookout, picking off any attackers with her sling. Meanwhile he and Aratak would patrol by turns.

The building where they laid Rianna was huge enough to have been an amphitheater, with enormous rows of columns all built of an odd sun-dried reddish brick, and the remnants of stone couches and platforms scattered at odd intervals. They all had curious disk-shaped hollows in the

stone, and Dane found himself wondering what unimaginably strange form had made them. Rianna might know, but she was in no shape to be asked. That inevitably brought his mind back to speculation about the Hunters; and that led nowhere, although by now he'd had a damned severe object lesson: a Hunter might turn up looking like anything.

If in doubt, it's probably a Hunter, so kill him. That would have to be their motto if they wanted to survive, and damn the ethics of maybe killing innocent Prey.

He slept during the morning for an hour or so, since Dallith reported that the city was quiet, with no alien feel of anything near. He hardly allowed himself to think that maybe they were safe here, maybe this was a taboo place to the Hunters, an unmarked safety spot in this odd game which might be Tag.

Later he went out to take a cautious look from the walls. If Hunters were approaching the city, he might be able to see them coming. He left the women with Aratak and cautiously skirted the square of the fountain, threading a long wide street between ruined, and partially fallen-in, buildings.

The strangest thing to him was how little strangeness there seemed in the city. It seemed no more alien, no more removed from him, than the time he'd walked through Stonehenge; or the night he'd spent in the Valley of the Kings before they flooded it for the great dam. Those were removed from him in time; this city only in space. But they were unmistakably houses, and what did it matter what kind of beings had built them? Proto-simian, proto-feline, proto-saurian, or

whatever strange stock, they were people who had lived and suffered and rejoiced and then died, and not only human nature but what Aratak called Universal Sapience never changed-

He realized suddenly that without conscious thought he had his hand on his sword. What sound, outside the threshold of ordinary conciousness had roused his alert

ness? Yes; now he heard it again. It was soft, like a cat rustling in the stones.

Something dark flashed across the outer edges of his vision and rushed him from behind; but Dane had the samurai sword ready. He whirled, slashed, and only then did he see the collapsing, convulsing body of a Mekhar, which fell, slashed half through, and lay still.

Dane looked at it with a certain amount of regret as he sheathed his sword. Not a Hunter, then. They don't kill that easy.

But evidently something was after the Mekhar, and if it was coming after him, it probably wouldn't mind a bit changing direction and killing Dane instead. Or maybe they were hunting Dane and scared the Mekhar out of hiding.

Or maybe, even, the poor devil thought this was a good place to hide and, hearing Dane, thought he was a Hunter.

But if there are Hunters here, stalking either him or us, we'd better find a good safe place to

make a stand. That building where I left the women isn't safe.

He turned to retrace his steps, and then, half expected, heard Dallith's shrill scream.

He broke into a run, pounding through the brick-paved street, jogging unevenly on its broken stones. His sword was out again; he burst out of the end of the street into the fountain square, and saw her; and, at the far edge of the fountain, where the running water still trickled from the broken lip, a man, dressed like himself in brick-red tunic, swayed and pitched to the ground, his face covered in blood. But Dane's first concern was for her.

She was standing with the sling hanging idle at her side, a look of utter horror on her face; but when she saw Dane she cried out in relief and threw herself, weeping, on his shoulder.

"It wasn't your body . . . oh, Dane, Dane, I was afraid I'd killed you too. . . ." He could hardly make out her words through her wild and uncontrollable sobbing.

"Tell me, darling," he urged, holding her close. Then he let her go and whirled around, sword in hand again, thrusting her violently away at a sudden sound; but it was only Aratak coming warily into the square, his club raised, and Rianna, limping at his side, leaning on the spear they had taken from the spider-man Hunter.

He turned his attention to Dallith, holding her against him, dismayed.

If she's beginning to break up, he thought, we're probably all as good as dead. She hasn't cried, but now-

Her hysterical weeping finally began to calm a little and her sobs became coherent words. "I came here for water-to bathe Rianna's wound. She wanted to come with me but I said if there was any danger I had my sling and I could cope with it better than she could. I came out into the square here by the fountain, and I looked up, and I saw you, Dane. Only a minute, of course, and I knew it wasn't you, that it was-it was just that thing that killed Cliff-Climber. And that it meant to do the same thing to me. Only-only I wasn't afraid. I felt the same •way he did! Do you understand? He stood there, trying to lure me away and kill me, and I was working out how I was going to trap him! Oh, I felt so clever-and so cruel!" She shuddered with the memory. "I waved and smiled, just as if I really thought it was you, and all the time I was turning so that I could load my sling without his seeing. And I gestured for him to come closer, and waited while he crossed the square, and I smiled at him sweetly-and then when he got just where I wanted him, when I had an absolutely clear shot, I let him have it right between the eyes!" Her expression of horror deepened. "He saw the sling, of course, at the last minute when it was too late. And that was the worst part. I wanted him to see it! I wanted him to know that I'd outdone him in craftiness, that I was cleverer than he was, more stealthy-that I'd won-I was proud of it!"

She strained herself to Dane and cried harder than ever. "Oh, Dane, I don't like these people; I don't ever want to be part of anything like that again, to think like that or feel like that. It isn't just that they want to kill me. I can stand that. The Mekhars were fierce, they were savage, but it wasoh, how can I say it-it was clean compared to this! Cliff-Climber-I really got to like him, at the

end; he fought everything so fairly and honestly. He would never, ever have done anything like that-he'd have called it cowardly and dishonorable-" Once again, sobbing drowned out her words.

Through the sound of her sobs, Dane heard Aratak's voice.

"Dane," the big lizard-man said quietly, "when you can, when she'll let you, come here for a minute. There's something over here that you should see-and that Dil lith definitely should not" And Dane heard, clearly, the sound of ripping cloth.

Dallith's sobs had lessened, and it was plain that she had heard what Aratak had said. Her own voice was low and stifled. "After the-the thing died, it all went away," she said, "I didn't feel like that anymore. That was when I screamed. Because I was afraid that some-some bodiless thing had got into your body, taken over your mind, and when I'd killed it, I'd killed you-I'd have died if that had happened." And Dane knew that she was speaking the literal truth.

"Here, I'll look after her, Dane," Rianna said gently, and unclasped Dallith's arms from his neck. Dallith, coming to herself a little, said, "I'm all right, Rianna; I ought to be looking after you-" but she let Rianna hold her. Dane left them and went to where Aratak was standing, leaning on his club and looking down at the dead body of the Hunter.

The thing had had the form of a man. Dane's own form. But now, looking down at what lay on the paving-stones, under the tunic which Aratak had ripped down, Dane, in one moment of

astonishment and comprehension, saw the secret of the Hunters.

The thing which lay on the pavement was vaguely globular; only swiftly shrinking buds, like tentacles, showed where it had had arms, and legs, which were no longer even remotely human. The head was round, encased in a rounded skull, cracked open by Dallith's sling stone, and the horror was that hair, and Dane's features, still clung like a thin skin over the front of the gray spilling brain. As he watched they flattened and smoothed and there was only the round shattered skull with strange flat black eyeholes deadly staring at the sky. Attached by a thinning stalk to the head and shattered skull was a pulsing, slowing glob of almost transparent flesh, enclosing great blood vessels and oddly colored organs just visible through the membrane that surrounded the thing.

Dane whistled slowly. Aratak had apparently ripped off the tunic to observe the process as the dead Hunter reverted to what must have been its original form.

So they didn't use hypnotism. They didn't come back to life after they were killed, and they didn't reanimate the bodies of their fallen enemies. With that kind of organs they'd be hard to kill, but once they were really killed they were dead. But if you didn't hit a vital spot-the brain, the great pulsing internal system which must be the creature's heart and lungs-if you only sliced the budding organs which had differentiated out of the transparent flesh, then the thing could simply reconstitute its original form.

He should have known. The thing ran away with a severed arm and again with a torn throat. The

spider-thing could handle cut off legs but when Dallith got his head he was dead, and only the arrival of reinforcements had kept them from seeing his body change back like this.

So they'd badly wounded one Hunter, and now they'd killed at least two. And knowing the creatures' vital spots meant they had a fair chance of killing more of them.

And yet-the Hunter is never seen except by the Quarry he kills. No rumors of this had come back then, that the Hunters were shape-changers. Perhaps the only survivors of most Hunts were those who never encountered true Hunters, but hid, or killed off other Prey?

And were the Hunters going to let them live to take the story back?

Oh, God. Suppose they had a group consciousness like the Servers? They'd programmed the Servers; maybe they had no sense of individuality. What one knew, maybe all knew, and, in that case, if one of them found out that they now knew the real shape-We're going to be prime targets for every Hunter on the Red Moon, he thought

He said something of this to Aratak, but the great lizard only said, "Why borrow trouble? We don't know they have group consciousness. And if they did, how could they have such a fierce, individual sense of triumph in the Hunt? Remember what Dallith told you."

That was true, yet Dane wasn't convinced. Wasps and bees could sting individually, even though there was ample evidence their consciousness was a group one.

But wasps and bees weren't sapient. Aratak seemed to think sapience depended on a sense of individuality, and who was to say he was wrong? And the Hunters were certainly sapient. Aratak's right. Why borrow trouble? We have plenty to be going on with.

"Rianna, can you walk? We've got to get out of the city before they all hit us at once. If they know we're here-and I'm sure they do, otherwise how could they take Dane's form?-it's going to be nothing but a trap."

She said, "I can do anything I have to do." Her face was pale, but she looked resolute.

There was little to carry, except their weapons and a small residue of food. Aratak said, "We should reach a neutral zone tonight, and replenish our supplies."

Dane said, "Well, we'll see." He tied his cloak over Ms shoulders. "I don't really trust the Servers-and they do have group consciousness, so anything one Server knows the whole gang knows. And who knows? Maybe they tell the Hunters where the game's moving."

"Would that fit their concept of honor?" Rianna asked.

"How the hell do I know?" Dane yelled, startling her her into a shocked silence. "Let's get moving."

In silence they moved toward the gates. Dane said curtly, "Dallith, keep a lookout. You're the psychic. Tell us if any of those things are coming."

She whirled toward him, her face drawn and rebellious. "No!" she said harshly. "I won't, I can't I can't bear it! I can't bear touching those-those things!"

Dane felt her anguish, but he dared not allow himself to feel pity for the girl or he would come apart. He strode angrily toward her and looked down, his face hard as rock.

"You want to live, don't you?"

Her voice was a dreary monotone. "Not particularly. But I want you to-all of you. All right, Dane; I'll do what I can. But if I get too close to them, if I become part of them, I might lead younot away from them, but into them."

Dane's face twisted spasmodically. He had never thought of that-that she might pick up not only the fear of the Hunted, but the craft of the Hunter. He touched her shoulder gently. "Do what's best," he said. "But try to give us a few seconds' warning before we're attacked." He turned away without touching her again, He didn't dare. "Let's go," he said, and strode away in the general direction of the city gates.

They had to cross the fountain square yet again, and Dane's skin prickled. He knew, he knew someone was watching them-

The attack, when it came, was sudden and so disorganized that to the day of his death Dane never could remember anything except dark forms-three or four of them-suddenly all around them, Dallith screaming wild ly, Rianna stumbling backward, bracing herself on her spear and whipping out her knife with her good arm, Aratak's huge club crunching down. Dane was slashing with his sword, aiming at the belly of a great thing which could have been the Hound of the Baskervilles. It howled and spouted blood and fell; Dallith snatched up Rianna's fallen spear and thrust something through the chest; he saw Rianna flee into the darkness of a building. At one point during the fight Dane was lying on the ground and slashing up at something which blotted out the light.

Then there were dead dissolving forms all over the ground, cut to bits, and the Hunters were gone.

And so was Rianna.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

They searched for her all through the ruined city, until darkness fell; disregarding caution and crying her name aloud, shouting for her, searching the nearest of the buildings and finding only blind passages and cul-de-sacs, with no sign of Rianna. Sunset fell; Dane remembered remotely

that they had intended to be in a neutral zone by now, but it didn't seem to matter. They ate the last of their food as they searched, and rested for a few hours before moonrise, but Dane could not sleep, and his thoughts were bitter.

He had hoped to bring his group all through alive. I've lost Cliff-Climber and now Rianna. Dallith lay close to him, holding him in her arms; she was crying, too, and Dane knew that she shared his own agonized grief and sense of loss as if it were her own. He clung to the knowledge that they had not found her body, or so much as a drop of blood. But where can she go, wounded, alone, without food or water, for all we know dying?

Maybe dying alone, while we lie here waiting, he thought Finally, since he could not rest, as soon as Dallith and Aratak had rested a little, he got up and made them search the ruins by moonlight.

This would be a fine time for them to hit us. Who cares?

As the sun came up, bathing the ruins with clear light, Aratak finally called a halt. "Dane, my dear, my very dear friend," he said gently, "we cannot search every old building in this city. If she could have heard us, she would have answered. If she could move, she would have come back to us. Dallith says she does not feel Rianna's presence anywhere. I fear, my dear friend, we must bow to the inevitable. Rianna is dead, and the dead are beyond our pity or our help. We must save our strength now for ourselves."

"I can't give up like that," Dane said, despairing. "We should all live, or all die, together!"

Dallith was drowned in tears. Aratak came and embraced them both, a giant arm around each of their shoulders, as if they were little children clinging to an adult. He said in his deepest voice, "Believe me, I share your grief. But would Rianna want you to die?"

"No," Dallith said, wiping her face on a corner of her cloak. "Rianna would tell me to stay alive and look after both of you. I'm sorry, Aratak. We'll go."

Dane grimly summoned his strength. Rianna was gone-maybe. But Dallith was alive and she still needed his protection. "Let's not go back to the fountain square," he said. "Let's get through the ruined wall somewhere else."

"It will mean climbing down that long cliff-" Aratak demurred.

"So much the better," Dane said. "It's too steep for anything to come on us unawares. If they come at us from below, we can hold the slope. If they come at us from above, we can push them down."

But there was no need for either attack or defense. The sun shone brilliantly over the broken walls and abandoned buildings and on the slope below the city, but no living forms moved except their own.

We must have killed four of them last night. I wonder how many Prey ever bag six Hunters at a clip? Dane thought.

It's no price for Rianna. But it's better than nothing.

At the last Hunt there were forty-seven Hunters and eighty or ninety Prey. And nineteen Hunters kitted, and one surviving Prey.

We're not doing so badly. But then, they said they had a hard time getting dangerous ones. I guess they got their money's worth on us.

It occurred to Dane that possibly, in a day of Universal Sapience and the like, a barbarian from a world with a warlike history had a better chance. The Hunters wanted a fair fight, maybe, and not just mass slaughter. But a race which could take literally any form-Yes, they would have trouble finding Prey fierce enough to give them a good game. . . . Maybe a few hundred years ago there were more fighters in the Galaxy. Now there seemed to be the Mekhars, the spider-men, and not much else that was tough enough to fight Without his help, Dallith and Rianna would probably have been killed off first thing. Dane had organized their defense. Hell-without his help maybe the others would all have gone peacefully enough to the Gorbahl slave mart-and Dallith would have peacefully died.

Maybe that would have been better. For all of us. But what's done is done.

At the foot of the long hill, where the boulders lay strewn like vast tumbled giants' heads, Dane gave the signal for extra caution; this was all too good a place for an attack. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, taking a long last look at the city. Rianna had wanted to explore it; now she would lie there forever.

At the edge of his vision a solitary figure caught his eye; small, slight, sturdy, crowned with a cloud of curling red hair. Dane's grief and rage exploded in wild fury and he ran forward, sword whipped out, ready to run the Hunter through, the foul thing that had taken Rianna's shape as one of them had taken his own before Dallith. He ran, swinging his sword, until Dallith's shriek caught him.

"Dane! No, no, no, it's Rianna, it's Rianna, it's really Rianna-"

Momentum carried Dane on so that he could only turn aside, at the last moment, gasping. He lowered the sword and spun around, looking at Rianna in suspicious, disbelieving amazement

"It's really me," Rianna said hoarsely. "Don't run me through, Dane."

Then he believed her. Never yet had he heard any Hunter utter any sound except the characteristic wailing scream when wounded. Dallith ran to clasp the other girl in her arms.

"I thought we'd lost you for good," she said shakily, and Rianna said, "I thought so too. I was sure you'd have gone away by midnight; I only hoped to find you at one of the neutral zones-"

"What happened? What happened?" Dane caught her close, in surprise and relief. Too good to be true, too good . . . but don't question it, accept it, this fantastic gift of their luck. It was really Rianna, returned to them beyond hope.

"I'll tell you, but let's move along," she said soberly. "I think perhaps there aren't many Hunters around. There's something very funny about this place-"

They clustered together, moving across the rock-strewn plain and beyond the cleft where they had fought the spider-man, Dallith keeping a defensive lookout to the rear; but none of them wanted to let Rianna out of reach.

"I ran into the building," she said. "I heard one of them behind me, I thought I tried to turn around and make a stand, but I couldn't see anything; I'd come beyond daylight. I wandered in the dark, trying to find my way out, getting more and more lost in the darkness, and then they came."

"They came? Who are they?"

"I don't know. I never saw them clearly," she said, and she looked and sounded puzzled. 'They couldn't have been Hunters. In the first place-I told you I've been taught nonverbal communication techniques for peoples without translator disks-they made it clear to me that that meant me no harm. They gave me food-it wasn't good, some kind of fungus, but they evidently

knew I could eat it without being harmed. And they rebandaged my wounds, cleaned them, set my elbow; it wasn't broken, just dislocated. Look." She showed them her arm, fixed in a careful sling of some dark-red fiber, quite unlike the terra-cotta tunic material. "But even at the best it was semidark-there are miles and miles of caves and tunnels under the city. There aren't many of them . . . the people, I mean; they must be the old inhabitants of the city. But I suspect that's why there are as many survivors of the Hunt as there are; evidently helping the Hunted is nothing new to them."

She was silent, puzzling it out Finally she said, "In the morning they led me down, through the caves, and showed me an entrance-an exit, I should say-at the foot of the cliff below the city. But I never got a look at them."

They journeyed in silence for some time, each of them thinking over this new factor in the Hunt. If there were only some way to find out what they could do . . but probably the Hunters came near enough to exterminating them, ages ago....

Aratak said quietly, "On my own planet's satellite-our world's twin, as this one is the Hunters' World-we had a like civilization, and they came near to wiping us out. But in the end they learned enough of our philosophy to realize that one hand cannot clap alone; and now they are our brothers. This tells me again what might have become of our world without that-"

They left the rock-strewn plain and began to traverse again the hilly land, cut through by streams and underbrush. Dane figured, roughly, that the nearest neutral zone lay about six miles away,

now. If they weren't delayed by fighting they could reach it before sunset Since the Hunters liked to attack at sunset it was very likely they'd use it as a salt lick-waiting here for the Prey to come for rest or refreshment-but that was a chance they had to take. Maybe they could stand them off until sunset again. When, when, when was that damned Eclipse? Dane tried to reckon up how many days they had come, but he found he had untraceably lost track of time. He kept trying to add up days and nights and coming up with different sums. Let's see, was that the night we slept in the neutral zone? Did this happen before or after we lost Cliff-Climber? Was that the seventh or the ninth day we fought the spider-man?

It's getting toward afternoon and the Hunters? World isn't in the sky yet. That means it's near full, and when it's full, the Eclipse comes; it's near, but God, how near? The Eclipse could be tomorrow night or even tonight-if it is, we might, we just might make it....

Is it tonight? And again he began the obsessive counting up. The first night when we slept here and the Hunt began at dawn and Dallith and I were together,

and we spent one or was it two nights in the city. , . . The night -we forded the stream . . .

No use. His brain, half dazed by fatigue and stress and emotion, completely refused to focus on time. The Hunt was all there was and he could not tie it to time at all

The last mile's always the hardest. Aboard the Sea-drift the worst stage of the voyage had always been when he was actually within sight of land.

Dallith touched his arm. She said in an undertone, "Hunters. Along that rise and beyond-in the underbrush." Damn, Dane thought. I meant to go that way. He nodded, tight-lipped, and said, "Right. Don't stay hi contact any more than you have to," and beckoned to Aratak to change his course. It would mean a long detour, but they could still make the neutral zone by nightfall. Better yet, just after. I'd hate to have to fight our way in.

After a time Dallith nodded in agreement and Dane relaxed a little, knowing they were at least temporarily out of range.

God, when is that damned Eclipse? Rianna was walking better. Evidently food and rest, and the tending of her wounds, had done her a lot of good. I only wish Dallith looked as good, poor kid! Rianna's arm was still in the bandage, but it wasn't her knife-arm.

The neutral zone shouldn't be more than a few miles, across that ridge-

"Hunters," Dallith said in a shaky whisper, "It's us they're hunting. Oh, Dane, Dane, they have a picture of us ... I saw it-"

"Easy. Easy." He put his free arm around her. "Get out as fast as you can. Here. Hang onto me if you want to. Here, down this way. . . ."

Rianna said, low-voiced, "I think they're herding us, Dane. Trying to trap us down in the wedge

of the hills here. Look-" She drew a quick diagram with the spear-point. "Hills to the right. Hills to the left. The neutral zone down here, off sunward, but they're driving us down away from it."

Dane considered that for a minute. By now the Hunters must surely know that they were traveling in a pack and sooner or later the Hunters were sure to gang up and attack them that way. "We'll avoid them while we can," he said, "but if we have to make a stand, better to do it before sunset than after midnight. I'm not eager to fight those critters in the dark-not even by moonlight"

"The Divine Egg has told us; it is well to see one's enemy by daylight," Aratak said.

Dane said sourly, "I'll bet you'll quote the Divine Egg on your deathbed."

"If I am fortunate enough to have one, what better place?" Aratak retorted. And that was so incontrovertibly true that Dane only said, "Let's start looking for a place to make a stand."

If the Hunters were herding them, they flushed out one or two other of the Prey; once Dane saw a fleeing form far away, another indescribably strange one pursuing it; a distant bellow of triumph or rage, a clash of swords as they turned and faced one another. Something died, and lay motionless, and since the survivor did not flee but quietly melted into the underbrush again, Dane surmised that another Hunter had his catch for the day.

"Dallith. Can you tell if they're still following us?"

She nodded wordlessly. He thought, If they hit us, she's exhausted, and finally made a decision.

They were finally coming out of the hills laden with underbrush that they had traveled all afternoon, and into the bottom of the valley. To the left lay a deep stream, or perhaps a shallow river; over it hung a dark cliff shadowed with caves.

"We don't want to get trapped between the cliff and the stream," Dane said. "Let's ford the stream before it gets any deeper, and make for the underbrush. The neutral zone is that way. If we can hold them off till dark-"

Rianna held him back, and pointed. On the far side of the stream stood a tall figure. Dane's instant reaction was, "Is that a bear, or a Russian, or what?" Rianna, literal as always, said, "It's a Hunter. In proto-ursine shape-he probably killed the proto-ursine we saw on the ship."

Dane had his sword out. Dallith said, uneasily, "Why doesn't he attack?" She had her sling out, but the Hunter was out of range. "He just doesn't want us to cross the stream-"

Dane said grimly, "Maybe he's already picked his own choice of fighting grounds. Or maybe he's waiting for reinforcements." He thought, if it's as near the end as I think, there may be no other Prey left alive-and they're

free to concentrate on us. One survivor last time, one survivor last time, pounded in his head.

Prime targets, that's us. Good sport.

Dane looked around. To the left the stream flowed; at their back the cliff was sheltered by an overhang, and to the right there was a flat place, hard and rock-strewn; Dane's mind, trained to crisis, thought, Fighting room.

"We'll wait here," he said briefly. "We're all tired from that forced march. If they keep driving us, we're playing right into their hands-tire us out, then pick us off. If we stand here until his reinforcements arrive, we get some rest."

Rianna demurred. "I don't like it. We're boxed in."

"We could be boxed in tighter," Dane said, "if we let him herd us into his own favorite fighting grounds." He didn't like the way the Hunter was regarding them; his skin prickled. Is he measuring me for a spot on his wall? Does he have a grudge? Is he, maybe, the one I fought before and drove off, in pseudo-Mekhar shape, twice? He did not need Dallith's half unconscious nod of agreement to know he had guessed right, and that this must be the leader, if there was a leader, to the Hunt.

At least the wait here was letting them get their breath back. Dane felt that he could do with a good dinner, but instead he knelt by the stream cupping up water, drinking. His skin prickled as if he were expecting a blow, or an arrow, but none came, and he thought, Maybe they don't use bow and arrows. Maybe they like to feel the blade go in. The water tasted cool and surprisingly

good.

Tonight, if 1 get to the neutral zone, I'm going to ask old Server for that steak dinner, and see what he says.

He repeated this to Rianna, and she smiled faintly. "I was thinking about that myself. That victory feast, if we get that far, is going to taste awfully damned good."

Dallith was twisting her hands nervously. "Why don't they attack? He wants to attack, he wants"

Aratak laid his huge paw on her shoulder. "Calm, my dear one, calm. Every moment they do not attack is a moment we have to regather our strength. I beg you to rest yourself as much as possible."

"Think I'll do the same," Rianna said hi an undertone. "My leg could use it." She sat down, carefully keeping the spear at hand.

Dane looked at her bandaged leg, but it seemed not too swollen and she had no signs of fever. It will be all over soon and we can rest. Wonder if they intend to polish us off for a final tidbit before the Eclipse?

We probably can't stand them off. It's hope that hurts,

He rested, sword in hand and alert but his body relaxed, between Dallith and Rianna. Whatever happens to us now, I've loved them both. His mind persisted hi grinning behind his back at that. Just like a proto-simian to be thinking about that now. Once again his mind had the acid-etched, fatigue-sharpened, awareness of reality of the first morning of the Hunt He thought, What better time?

I thought all my life I was looking for adventure, and now at the edge of death I've found out what I was really looking for. I was looking for reality-the two realities that are never found in twentieth-century civilization with Us emphasis on sex, not love, and cruelty, not death.

And here I've found them-maybe too late, but I've found the two things which are the only things worth coming to terms with: love and death. Once you've come to terms with those, you know what life is. Everything else is just the trimmings.

Love-Rianna and Dallith by his side. And Aratak.

And Death-that Hunter across the hill, and all his little brothers in every shape and form. For an instant, half in a dream, he radiated a mad love toward the Hunter as well, the Hunter who had taught him about Death as Rianna and Dallith had taught him about Love. . . . He knew he was fey, and tried consciously to grasp reality, the physical situation. The cliff. The fighting ground. The rocks. The hilt of the sword in his hand. But some insane atom of his brain persisted in telling him that this was reality. Each man kills the thing he loves.,. *

Loves any man the thing he would not kill..".

Love thine enemies....

Liebestod. . ..

Dallith suddenly flung her arms around him and kissed him. Her mouth was scalding hot and her face flushed, and he strained her tight in his arms, but he kept his voice low and calm, through the bursting excitement.

"Take it easy. It's going to be OK." But he kept wondering, Is she fey too?

Rianna's hand was hard on his. She was breathing deeply.

"Dane-if anything happens-"

"No," he interrupted. "Don't say it! Don't say it! Say it afterward!"

And at that moment Dallith cried a wordless warning, and then the Hunters were on them.

There was no way to tell how many there were. They came in suddenly from all sides, bursting out from the underbrush so quickly that there was barely time to form their defensive line.

Dallith dropped one and then another with her sling while she was running to take up her place, atop a small pile of stones that lay against the overhang. Aratak stepped toward the stream, his great club raised.

Dane came to his feet and even as his fingers found the sword hilt a Mekhar-no! A Hunter in Mekhar form!-came running at them through the rocks at their right, sword upraised; behind were three human shapes.

On impulse Dane waited until his enemy was almost upon him, then whipped his blade from the scabbard in a cut that brought it across his foeman's eyes. Before the cat-thing could recover he clapped his left hand to the hilt and, swinging the blade two-handed, brought it down in the "pear-splitting" stroke, cleaving the leonine head. It gouted blood and fell two ways. Freeing his blade, Dane stepped to meet the first of the human shapes-

And found himself staring into a face indisputably Japanese. A lean and hawk-nosed face, dark eyes alert and watchful, short whipcord body in the garb of a samurai of four centuries before. And his long curved blade was rising hi the classic Men cut to the head, and Dane knew, in a flash, that this was the face of the man whose sword he bore.

For an instant the recognition froze him where he stood, and then the same face again, in perfect duplication, behind the other's shoulder, showed him that he faced no ghost, but a Hunter who, as a knight might wear the armor of a gallant, fallen foe, chose to wear the face of a man dead four centuries.

The pseudo-samurai's sword was raised above his head; as it fell; Dane's old samurai blade-the original?-rose to meet it. The sides of the two blades brushed in passing, diverting the downward stroke so that it whistled harmlessly past Dane's elbow; then Dane's own blade snapped down sharply. For half a second he thought his stroke had missed, but then a thin red line appeared on the forehead where the razor-keen blade had bitten. Blood came pouring out, and the manlike form swayed and fell on its borrowed face.

Do they live that long? Dane wondered in a rush. Or do they film the Hunts; do they somewhere have films four hundred years old showing how one brave, lost Earthman died? Behind him he heard splashing sounds and Aratak's deep roaring bellow, but he was too hard-pressed to turn.

As his blade rose to meet the second ersatz samurai, he saw the flaws in the man's, the pseudoman's, basic technique, the slight unsureness in stance and grip. They're copying movements they've seen, he thought, and only the simplest at that. With my training, I'm a better imitation samurai than they are.

The Hunter charged, blade brandished over his head, exactly as the other had. Dane sidestepped in a long lunge to the right, his sword dropping across his body in the classic Doh cut, the blade's razor-sharp tip shearing the other's body just below the ribs. Bright arterial blood spurted and hoarse breathing stopped with a choked gasp; the Hunter fell without a cry. It would have taken a human hours to die from that cut. I must have hit whatever it uses for a heart.

He felt a sudden, fierce exultation, an almost painful stab of hope. They're vulnerable. God damn them, they're vulnerable after all, they're even easy to kill when you know how. But God! It's hard to learn howl

Even as his blade snapped out to the end of the stroke he was already sizing up his fourth opponent and found himself, without surprise, looking into his own face. Whatever effect it might have had on him before, now it seemed only the natural thing, even obvious. Maybe they thought while the samurai types polished me off, this one could get Rianna or Aratak. As the one that took Cliff-Climber off guard did. But as this thought streamed through his head his body did not even pause in its flowing motion; a sharp snap of the wrists reversed the direction of his edge. The pseudo-Dane came in warily, his own blade at the center of the body approximating Dane's guard position; but the point was too low. Dane's blade lashed down in the Priest's-robe stroke, through the left shoulder and deep into the chest; and as the Hunter hit the ground, Dane turned on his heel and ran back toward the others. The Hunters he had killed were already regaining their original semblance, flesh flowing like water. Does anyone ever live to tell about it? he wondered. Is that why they like to attack near dark?

Aratak stood on the bank of the stream, spear and club both bloodied; there was blood on the slope and and already formless bodies were floating in the stream, showing where they had been at work. A few man-shaped and Mekhar-shaped bodies were in the water, weapons on guard, but for the moment they were keeping their distance. One of the dead bodies in the water was much bigger than the others; it was already dissolving, but Dane could see that it had been enormous and hairy. He wondered how they managed size.

On the opposite bank, dripping as if he had started to wade across and changed Ms mind, was a miniature copy of Aratak; only eight feel tall, but armed with club and ax almost as big as the real Aratak's and carrying a shield as well. Beside him, also dripping, stood the huge proto-ursine Dane had momentarily identified as the leader of the Hunt,

There were what looked like a dozen-perhaps more pseudo-men and perhaps as many more pseudo-Mek-hars. Some of the cat-men, he noticed, had tails-and so did some of the humanoid types. Copies, he wondered, of slightly differing species? But men and Mekhars were still in the majority. There were a couple of things, he saw in a flash, that looked as if then- ancestors had been wolves or raccoons, and a creature rather like a man-sized octopus, only it had ten limbs instead of eight and each brandished a different weapon. And at the back of the crowd of Hunters in all shapes, Dane saw a huge spider-man twirling its deadly spear. A chill touched him. That other spider-man had come so close to killing them all single-handed, and now they had all these to fight But then he saw the spider-man fumble with his spear and drop it The first imitation spider-man had been a natural, or maybe had practiced more, but even he had been slower than the real spider-man aboard the Mekhars' slave ship.

He and Aratak had killed everyone in the first wave and the others had not yet crossed the stream. He spared an instant to look back at the girls. Bodies in the water showed where Dallith had been at work; Rianna stood leaning again on her spear, backed against the cliff. Two dissolving Hunter corpses were at her feet.

But no smell of blood. Their blood must evaporate as soon as its shed, almost. . . . Dane stood, getting his breath, readying himself for the next attack. Matter of time, he thought, but they've got to kill us. They can't let four survivors get back to spread rumors about their real shape-or lack of it.

Not too far to sunset. Will even that stop them now? They're throwing everything at us.

He noticed that they had, as well as the pseudo-Aratak and the pseudo-Dane he'd killed, a false Dallith and an imitation Rianna. "Dallith" even bore a sling. Suddenly that frightened him, badly.

They must have been mimics, once, like some insects, hiding from-or trapping-their enemies by resembling them. Had he met one of those during the first wave of the battle, rattier than the samurai, he might well have hesitated, unmanned, just long enough to be finished off. He tried to steel himself to the thought of slicing off "Dallith's" lovely head, or running his sword through "Rianna's" soft body-a body he'd held in his arms so often-but even while he reminded himself that they were just Hunters, his horror grew and he knew his nerve would break. I'm no empath, I could never be sure it wasn't the real one-

His agony and distress must have reached Dallith, and its cause; for an instant later he heard the whirring of her sling stone through the air; the false-Rianna crumpled, her face a mass of blood. The false-Dallith, maybe guessing what was happening, whirled her own sling, but the shot flew wide-so wide there was no way of knowing who she had aimed at, though Dane suspected it was himself. The real Dallith's answering stone took her in the temple, and Dane momentarily closed

his eyes to avoid seeing her fall.

He opened them quickly, knowing that this would bring the others across the stream for the attack; and already they were splashing in the shallow water. One of the manlike ones (only it looked like a woman, with brick-red skin and long blue-black hair) came wriggling up the bank; Rianna's spear pierced the vital sac from the back and the thing gouted blood and lay still. One of the pseudo-Mekhars made it halfway up the bank before Aratak's club crunched down and crushed in his skull.

Dane waited, sword raised, but no more of them climbed the bank. The huge proto-ursine called, with that wailing cry he had heard before, and they fell back and stood waiting, clustered in the center of the stream. Dallith's sling cracked an unprotected skull open, and they fell back a little.

Dane threw a puzzled glance at the great leader. He's holding them back. Why? Surely he knows we couldn't hold the bank if they rushed it all at once-

An arrow arched over the stream and sank quivering in the ground, followed by another; both flew wide. Dane picked out the archer, a tall gray-skinned creature with a prehensile tail that fitted the arrows while he held the bow two-handed. That could be a mean one, but I guess they don't practice much with projectile weapons, or those pseudo-limbs can't handle them somehow. Maybe they lose interest when they don't get the kick of feeling the blade go in-

One of Dallith's stones made a crater in the mud on the far bank; another splashed between the

archer and another man. What's wrong? She usually shoots better than that. . . . Dane turned swiftly to look. Dallith's face was pasty white, and her eyes were blinded with tears; her lip bled where she had bitten it through. Her hands were shaking.

Oh, God. I knew it would come. She's breaking down, killing that thing with her own face must have been the last straw. . . . He started to run toward her, to comfort her, if only by taking a stand near her, when suddenly, along the stream to his left, he saw a flicker in the underbrush. So that's what they're waiting for....

Swiftly he ran back toward Rianna. "Fall back by the Cliff," he ordered. "Aratak, hold the bank if you can, but don't wait too long; get back to the cliff if you have to. Dallith may not be able to help much-" He raised his voice, shouting with a cheerfulness he was far from feeling: "Dallith! Save your stones for the spider-man! We'll handle the rest of them!"

And at that moment the Hunt leader gave another of those strange wails Dane saw them surge forward, and ran to meet the horde of Hunters who boiled toward them from the path along the stream.

If I'd stood there gawking another minute, they'd have cut us off from the cliff-and from Dallith. Oh, God, Dallith. Poor, tortured darling....

Two pseudo-Mekhars had bounded ahead of Mm; She dodged as one cut at him, jumped away from the other, his sword dipping for the Doh stroke and slicing through the Hunter's body. The

falling corpse blocked the second cat-thing's stroke just long enough; Dane split its head open and ran on.

Even though he knew now, with absolute certainty, that they were all going to die, that nothing could save them now, Dane felt a wave of elation sweep through him, and a curious light-headed giddiness. Is this the battle-joy they used to write about-Viking sagas?

Then he saw the second spider-man. Pseudo-humans-with long spears surrounded him and his own long lance flickered and twirled in the slanting sunlight. He loomed ominously huge among his man-shaped kindred.

As they burst out of the narrow way, Dane flung himself upon them, seeing no other course but headlong attack. There were still splashings from the stream and the crunch, crunch, crunch of Aratak's great club. He had no idea how long Aratak could hold the stream; he knew he should retreat to the cliff so that he and Rianna could cover one -another, but first he must kill some more. God, it was satisfying to attack instead of run; he was going to kill every one who came within reach of his sword.

Let the Hunters beware! Before they hung his head on the wall, he'd send as many as he could to tell their God damned illustrious ancestors that they could raise fee price for humans these days, the Prey was getting rougher. And when he and the old samurai were hanging side by side on some Hunter's wall, he could tell his fellow Earthman that he'd kept his sword well-fed while it was in his keeping!

The two leading spearmen lunged at his chest; with a snap of his shoulders he drove one lance aside so that it fouled the other; his sword came flashing down on his foreman's spine, and as the blood spurted from the first one's severed neck Dane reached over the falling body to kill the other spearman with a slash to the head. And then the spider-thing was upon him, its shield pressed against his sword, and he saw the deadly lance whirling down.

Time seemed to have disappeared, to have stretched itself out into endless consecutive fragments. He threw himself slowly to the ground-but in his insane mood he seemed to move in slow motion-somehow managing to keep the razor-edge of his blade away from himself as he rolled. The spinning lance missed him twice by bare inches, striking sparks from the rock. Somewhere along there he became aware of Hunters in human form, with long spears stabbing at him; he curled his knees up over his belly and was amazed to find that he could fend off the spears easily with the sword from this position, snapping his blade across his body. Then one spearman came too close and Dane smashed his kneecap with a karate kick; the spearman fell across two of his own kind's spears and in the confusion-the Hunter with the smashed knee was impaled on his friend's spear-Dane rolled to his feet. He slashed one through the throat, remembered just in time he couldn't kill him that way, and brought the blade down on his head. Nine, by God, nine, or is it ten? Who's counting?

He swatted one spear aside a fraction late and the cloth of his tunic ripped; pain slashed along his arm and the sting of of it cleared his head-God in Heaven! What was happening to the others? The spider man had gone right past him. He raised his sword and yelled, and as the remaining

spearmen braced themselves for his new attack he turned and ran like hell for the cliff.

Aratak was falling back from the stream, his club pounding down again and again on the shield which sheltered the octopus-thing, which crawled along the bank slashing at Aratak's ankles with its various weapons; up the now undefended bank came a wave of the Hunters, led by the great proto-ursine and the pseudo-Aratak, and the larger of the spider-things.

The other spider-man stood poised between Aratak and the cliff; the long lance spun menacingly as the great red eyes moved from Aratak to the girls and back again. Arrogance was stamped in every line of the spindly gray body, so different from the stooped and crouching stance of the real spider-man he'd seen. A sling stone whirred past his head; he did not even turn. Aratak's going to be trapped between the spider-man and that octopus-critter! Dane opened his mouth to shout a warning, but his voice would not carry.

Another stone struck the spider-man where the upper body joined the abdomen; the Hunter whirled with lightning speed and scuttled toward Dallith and Rianna.

Dane ran, although he knew he could never match that thing's speed. He saw Rianna brace her spear to meet the thing and saw more clearly than anything else, sharp-edged as if etched in acid, Dallith's white, tear-drenched face as stone after stone flew from her sling without a pause. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aratak sink back into a sudden crouch, then hurl his great bulk in the air, over the weapons slashing at his feet, to come down on top of the octopoid. One great paw gripped the shield; shield and tentacle went flying through the air, torn from the Hunter's

body; the club smashed down and the octopoid squashed into a formless mass. The lizard-man turned and ran toward the cliff.

Dallith straightened, flung her sling away, and stared with horror, her hand clapped over her face. The spider-man had reached the cliff now; Rianna lunged for him with the spear, but the Hunter's shield brushed it aside and at the same instant two of his arms snapped his spear into a straight thrust that passed over Rianna's lunging head and pierced Dallith's slender body between the breasts.

Dane screamed her name; his one thought now was to kill that thing and throw away his sword and hold her in his arms.

But Aratak was there before him, and before the spider-thing could draw his lance back from Dallith's crumpling body Aratak's great paw gripped two of his spindly arms and heaved the creature over on his side. The terrible club crashed once and both vital spots splattered blood for yards around; the powerful lizard-man heaved the dead Hunter up in his arms and hurled the great body into the oncoming pack.

Dane's mind was numb. Dallith! It -wasn't true! Dallith-He screamed her name again, without conscious thought; a cat-thing came lunging at him with a sword and Dane killed him. It was automatic. He wasn't thinking. He was just a killing machine, screaming. Aratak and Rianna were fighting desperately over Dallith's fallen body, and a little part of him stirred and woke.

Her body is mine. Not theirs to eat, or stuff, or hang on a wall. Dead or alive, she's mine; they won't get her even if I have to kill every Hunter on this accursed moon....

With a tiny fragment of his brain he knew he was completely mad, but his body, undistracted by thought, exploded into a deadly ballet of death. The nearest spearman went down with his chest shorn open; a Mekhar-type swordsman lost his head. He was half conscious of Aratak fighting at his side, ax and club alternating in a deadly rhythm. Long spears were smashed aside or shattered and their owners died; swordsmen died before they came into reach. Rianna crouched behind them against the wall, her lance thrusting from the level of Aratak's knees. The man-sized Hunters clustered around Dane, getting in one another's way; he cut down a couple of them. It was automatic by now. Over Aratak's head he saw that the disk of the sun had touched the edge of the horizon. Who cared, now? Kill them all or die trying!

A bearded man-shape ran toward Dane, a round metal shield raised before his body, a straight heavy sword whirling over his head. A fleeting memory of the way the spider-man had trapped his sword made Dane lunge to the left, drawing his blade away from the shield, pivoting while his own sword flashed in a great circle that sheared through the man's right shoulder and into his chest.

The next few instants were confused, impossible to sort out. Aratak somehow sent the bearlike Hunt leader flying through the air, his blade broken by a blow from the lizard-man's club; stooping, he began to search for another weapon through the globular, dissolving bodies of his dead; Dane and Aratak rushed him together and the false lizard-man, rushing up to join battle,

struck Aratak on the knee with a replica of his own great club. He went down with a grunt, but his ax whirled out and, as the Hunter's shield went out to intercept it, Rianna's lance drove in under his rim and the pseudo-Aratak went down. For a moment Dane thought it was his friend who had fallen; real Aratak and false one lay together on the ground. The great proto-ursine had picked up a lance like Rianna's and came rushing on, but stumbled over one of his own men, the gray-skinned archer. All around him, the Hunters were falling back, toward the stream, and Dane, looking around through a mist of blood over his eyes, realized that the last scrap of the sun had vanished.

Sunset. The battle was over.,..

The Hunters who still lived-there could hardly be a dozen of them left, Dane thought in a dreamlike despair-were splashing back through the water. The great bear-thing shouted, as if to rally them, raised his club, as if to urge a final attack; one or two of the Hunters paused, fingering their weapons, but the others kept on going and, after a minute, dejected, the giant proto-ursine turned away, brandishing his weapons in a final menace, and retreated.

Aratak and I must have kitted more than half of them. I'll bet every Hunter on this planet was here-there were only forty-seven in the whole Hunt last time.

But the price was too high. Even if they'd exterminated the whole breed, it would have been too high....

He turned and ran to where Dallith lay among the rocks. Behind him he saw what he thought for a moment was the pseudo-Aratak rising to his feet, but at that moment he didn't care. Then he knew it was the real one, and he didn't care about that either.

Dallith lay on her back across the heap of rocks where she had made her final stand, her arms flung out to both sides, her great dark eyes-eyes of a wounded fawn-staring up blindly into the darkening sky.

Love and death. Love and death,

He cradled her cold body in his arms; then slipped down and lay unmoving, half unconscious, his head resting against her lifeless breast.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Hunters' World was high in the sky, round and full and glowing brick-red, apparently obscuring most of the sky. Again Dane had that sense of claustrophobia, of moving under a lowering brightness that could come crashing down on him. (Who cared? Let the sky fall; Chicken Little was right all along. .. .)

He hadn't wanted to leave Dallith's body. Neither Aratak nor Rianna could help him carry her,

and he finally had realized that it wasn't just that they didn't

want to, as he'd screamed at them. ("You want to leave her here, for some damn Hunter to stuff for some kind of obscene trophy!') Then he'd realized that they were both wounded, Rianna's leg slash broken open again, Aratak's leg so badly twisted that he had to lean heavily on his club. Dazed and apathetic, Dane went along with them toward the neutral zone. He heard Rianna say something about battle fatigue and knew with some small fragment of himself that she was right, heard Aratak say that the Eclipse couldn't be far away now (but whenever it came it would be too late). But he walked in the dazed, dreamlike knowledge of Dallith's death and nothing else mattered.

Her braid of hair is still inside my tunic, he thought He fumbled at it in an agony of grief, and only then realized that he was bleeding from a wound on the forearm and another slight one on the scalp.

He walked in a dark dream until Rianna gave a slight moan and collapsed, her wounded leg crumpling under her; then, forcing himself to care, to pick her up again, he tore a strip from his own tunic and bandaged it up with robotlike efficiency. He let her lean on his shoulder; he would have picked her up and carried her if she hadn't protested. He himself would have collapsed right there and slept, but remotely and without the slightest awareness that it had anything to do with him, he realized that the girl needed food and rest hi safety. It could not have been more than a half hour that they walked before reaching the lights of the neutral zone, but to Dane it was a great amorphous stretch of time longer than the battle before it, longer than the Hunt, an abyss

cleaving his life in two. He still had his life. For what that was worth.

Inside the neutral zone he smelled food, but the smell somehow made his stomach turn over. Rianna brought him a plateful, and he said, "I'm not hungry, I couldn't eat," but when she put it into his hand he began automatically shoveling it into his mouth without tasting it. He finished it all and she brought him some more, and suddenly his head cleared. The dark nightmare was gone but at the same time it was more real. Dallith was dead, and he sat here eating the steak dinner he'd planned to ask for-In sudden horror he put down the remnants of the second plateful. There wasn't much left.

He wanted to vomit. He said in a sort of dazed wonder, "How I can sit here eating-"

Rianna didn't say anything. She simply laid her small hard hand over his without a word, and he saw that her own eyes were streaming with tears. She hadn't sobbed, she didn't wipe them away, she simply went on eating and crying at the same time, and Dane's mind and emotions awoke, aching. He took her plate away and put his arm around her. He wiped her face with his tunic and said, "Darling, if you keep on stuffing yourself, you'll be sick."

"What a pig I am, he thought She's wounded and she had to look after me. He looked with amazement at the amount of food they had devoured. Of course, after a hell of a fight like that. How many did I kill, anyhow? I guess I'll never know, but I doubt if the old Samurai would be ashamed of me. He must have put up a damn good fight himself, if they still remember him well enough to wear his face after three hundred years.

Again he wiped Rianna's wet face, tenderly. Dallith was gone, and nothing in the world seemed worth living for, but Rianna was alive and she still needed him.

She said, beginning to sob at last, "I loved her too, Dane. But she couldn't have gone on living, with the memory of that The Hunt had destroyed her, had been worse than death for her-"

Aratak came close to them. He said in Ms gentle rumble, "She feared to go on living when her whole being had absorbed part of the Hunters. Rianna was right, Dane; empaths of Spica Four always die, away from their world alone. She began to die when she left her world, but she stayed with you while she could, because you needed her so terribly and she knew it..."

Dane bowed his head. He had thought Dallith had lived because he had taught her to want to live. Maybe, for a little while, she had shared his own desire to live, as she had shared so much with him in that little while. But he realized that what Aratak said was true. He had saved Dallith's life not for her own sake but for his; while he fed her will to live he was holding at bay ids own fear of coming too close to her death.

Life and death, love and death-I thought I understood them. But perhaps no one ever knows everything about them....

They were the only ones in the neutral zone; probably, he thought, the only Prey left alive at all. The Servers, moving silently about the area and not speaking, nevertheless seemed to convey to

them a certain sense of awe.

We're still the Sacred Prey, he thought.

He and Rianna lay down at last to rest, deathly weary, wrapped in a single cloak; desire stirred and flickered briefly in his body, but in the very thought exhaustion took him, and his weary body and exhausted mind fell down a bottomless cliff of deathlike sleep.

When he awoke the dawn had come and the sun was rising, and for an instant, realizing that they had all long overslept the time of safety, he wondered why they had not been slaughtered in their sleep. And then, seeing the Servers ranged around him, and a scant half dozen Hunters standing inside the neutral zone, he understood. After such a fight as this they respected the sleep of the gallant fighter. Rianna awoke at the same instant and shrank against Mm at the sight of the Hunters. Aratak reached for his club, wincing as he tried to put his weight on his foot

And at the same moment Dane realized that above the sun the great brick-colored, crimsonglowing Hunters* World hung in the sky, a round and untouched disk, and the sun was rapidly rising to meet it....

The great proto-ursine Hunt leader strode toward him. Dane rose to his feet, reaching instinctively for his sword.

The Hunt leader gestured to him to leave his weapon, but Dane grasped it anyway. He himself

was weaponless, although his sword was in the hands of one of the metal Servers and the tall, featureless robot rolled quickly toward Dane.

The proto-ursine spoke. Dane could not understand him; but the Server's flat, expressionless voice rolled out.

"Our leader has a personal score to settle with you. You have killed five of his hive-brethren, but so gallant a Prey, who has made this Hunt greater sport than in the last seven-hundred-andeighteen cycles, deserves some special attention to his end. The hour of the Eclipse is upon us. If you are willing, since your two companions are wounded and they too have fought with a truly Sacred bravery, we offer them their lives; had you not slain his five brethren of the hive, he would offer yours as well and see to your rewarding. As it is, he asked that you grant him a final bout in single combat. If you are the survivor, all of you shall be released; if you die, your companions will be freed in your memory."

"We fight to death?" Dane asked.

"Unless the Hour of the Eclipse frees us first," said the Server.

Dane looked around at Rianna and Aratak. Without consulting them, he said, "I'll do it."

"Dane-" Rianna protested, and Aratak said, "Don't be a fool They've got to kill us. They won't let us live and tell their secret-how easy they are to kill."

But strangely Dane still trusted to their word. Maybe because fee had no choice. He said to Server, 'Tell him I accept"

Maybe the communication was telepathic, for Server said nothing he could hear, but the leader took his vast shield and sword, and Dane drew his own. The leader's left side was turned to him, vast shaggy chest almost hidden with the shield; the deep bend of the legs kept the lower body covered as well. The sword was hidden behind the body, probably straight back.

It's a fencing stance in reverse, Dane thought; he can strike and guard at the same time. I can't.

But he'll have to move the shield in order to cut. Go for his shoulder....

Watch it, Marsh, he warned himself. Don't get over-confident. Every time you've faced a shield, you've had friends to help. This is single combat.

The Hunter advanced by cautious sliding steps that kept his body turned and covered by the shield. It looked like the Hunter wasn't too confident either and wasn't going to oblige Dane by rushing to trap his sword, so Dane could use the sidestep that had won the other fight. Dane ran forward, leaping into the air for a cut to the head. The Hunter lunged to meet the attack, shield snapping up to catch the sword and press it back, and as Dane jumped back he saw the tip of the broad blade as it arched across his thigh. The hack that would have taken his leg off only scratched the skin. The shield clung to his blade as if glued there, hindering Dane's movements;

the broadsword was whistling toward Dane's temple and he sidestepped quickly.

Dane's long lunge back and to the left took him under Ms enemy's cut, though the wind of it stirred his hair, and at last he could free his sword from the shield. He spun to cut at the other's shoulder, but the bear-man pivoted to face him, shield rising to catch the blow. Dane's sword was pressed back against his left shoulder and the Hunter's blade was coming down at his head.

Like lightning Dane let his left knee crumple under him, managing to get his blade over his head; he took the shock in his wrists as the other's blade struck, the cold steel of his own sword striking him lightly and snapping back. He slashed out at the giant's thick shaggy knees.

There's no way to get at his head or chest with that shield. A leg blow won't kill him, but will weaken him-the pseudo-Mekhar howled and ran away when I lopped off an arm. If he traps my sword again, I'm dead. He's damned good-too good. But he knows a leg blow won't kill him, so he might be careless-

They circled one another slowly and deliberately for a minute. Then Dane shouted and leaped forward, his blade rising up over his head, drawn back until it rested between his shoulder blades. The ursine's shield lifted; Dane threw himself to the left, his blade falling away to the right in a great circling slash that sheared through the leg at the knee, came up without pausing to block the broadsword blow that Dane had half expected.

But it never came. He whirled, blade lifted, but the Hunter had rolled to a sitting position,

balancing himself with the uninjured leg, shield raised over him and sword-arm raised to strike.

Good God! Now all he has to do is guard his head and chest; it's a draw; I can't hurt him but he can't attack. All I have to do is stay out of his reach, until-

Rianna shouted and Dane, flicking a glance upward, realized that the shadow was sweeping over the land; the disk of the sun, seeming tiny, was already half gone behind the huge mass of the Hunters' World. Below his astonished glance the leader was crumpling, collapsing; the severed leg flowed into shapelessness; the sword fell from a paw which could no longer grasp it As the light lessened and was darkened, a wind sprang up and the shield crumpled down on the Hunter's body, fast liquefying.

Of course, Dane thought. That's the secret. They turn back to their own shape when they die-or in darkness. But by bright moonlight they can attack. But the Eclipse ends the Hunt.

They all go back to globblies...,

Two servers rolled up, trundling a third between them, and, while Dane and Rianna watched in the dying light, they gently lifted, on their extensible arms, the globular and transparent form of the Hunter. They packed it tenderly into the metal shell, and closed down the lid, and at once the strange metal voice of a Server spoke from it.

"My most gallant foe. In these last moments before I return to the hive-knowledge of my

resting-life I pledge to you that you shall go free, whatever the cost. If I live another thousand cycles I shall know no such Hunt Now I must spend another half year in the dormant stage, with no individual knowledge of self, before I emerge again, but I pledge myself to fight only in your shape for a hundred cycles in your memory...."

Oh, God. They spent half their time in those metal cans, as Servers. Not robots at all, no wonder the Servers tended and cherished the Sacred Prey . . . they represented the only individual life and awareness the Hunters knew. . . . Only during the Hunt were they alive as individuals, and at no other time were they, perhaps, truly sapient Was a hive-consciousness sapience? Dane wondered.

"Again I salute you-in my last moments while I am self, I-we-"

The Hunt leader's voice vanished; from another of the metal Servers came, without interruption, the unbroken breath.

"We honor you. And yet you may have ended our Hunt for all time, if we release you, as honor demands, to tell our secret throughout the Galaxy."

"Not a bit of it," Dane said, sheathing his sword. "Remember the Mekhars kept running away to volunteer? Once it's openly known that you do exist, that it's not a meaningless slaughter but a duel, and that you reward the survivors richly-the tougher citizens of the Galaxy will be lining up on your doorstep; you can pick and choose your own Prey, instead of buying or stealing them!

Do you wonder a lot of them have no will to live, facing only formless fear? But give them a chance-and you'll have so many volunteers that you'll have to put them on a waiting list!"

Server's flat voice somehow managed to convey joy. "Perhaps it will be so. In any case, Honorable and Sacred Survivors, let us now serve and refresh you. The next Prey await your victory banquet to give them cour age and hope, and our brethren who have spent the last moon readying for the oncoming Hunt are even now boarding the ship to come here and make all ready."

The Servers couldn't do enough for them. They were conducted to baths and fed again lavishly, and clothed in fresh clothes and garlands of flowers. Rianna clung to Dane and it seemed like a dream to him.

"Riches," she murmured," enough to start a scientific foundation-maybe to come back here and explore the old city and find out about the old race that saved my life-"

Aratak said quietly, "The Divine Egg has seen fit to preserve my Me; he must have work for me somewhere in the Unity. But before I go and do it, I will journey to Spica Four and tell Dallith's people how she died-and Cliff-Climber's. I have no other use for wealth."

Dane stroked the scabbard of the samurai sword. Had the old Samurai been the only survivor ever to commit suppuku when he realized he must give up his sword to his victors? I'd like to keep it, but probably I'll never use a sword seriously again.

Rianna said, "Dane, you can go home!"

"What-and spend the rest of my life sounding like a flying saucer contactee?" he demanded, and drew her tightly into his arms.

First-Dallith's world, with Aratak, to tell her people how she died. And then-well, it was a big Galaxy, and he had a lot of the rest of his life to live, and this was going to be the biggest adventure of all.

He hugged Rianna exultantly to him, and laughed aloud.

Love and Death. For the rest of his life he would carry Dallith in the innermost core of his heart as he carried her braid of hair next to his skin; but he had no longer any fear either of love or death.

He had mastered them both and come out alive, and he would keep learning about them until he mastered his own death someday.