After she had repeated the question three times, each louder than the last, and had finally been hushed by Garth, while the King remained obdurately silent, she gave up. Instead, she asked Garth, "Why didn't they kill us?"

"Why should they?"

"We might have been spies."

"We weren't."

"But we might have been."

Garth shrugged.

"I think they should have killed us."

"You would prefer to be dead?" Garth inquired politely.

"I didn't mean it that way-though I don't know, really. Maybe when I die I'll see Saram again."

Garth did not like the trend of that thought. "They did not kill us because it was not worth their trouble. Koros and I would have put up a good fight, and they would have lost several warriors before they could kill us-if they could kill Koros at all," he said, hoping to direct Frima away from thoughts of an afterlife. Even though he had come to believe in the existence of gods, or at any rate of supernatural powers, he had not accepted the human superstition of life after death. He did not want to risk saying anything that might tempt Frima to commit suicide or to permit herself to be killed at what might be an inopportune moment.

"I suppose that's true," Frima agreed. There was a brief silence before she asked, "Who were those people?"

"Yprians," Garth replied.

"What were they doing there?"

Garth explained the situation, repeating points every so often, clarifying what Frima did not immediately comprehend, and admitting ignorance when she asked questions he could not answer.

When at last she was satisfied with his explanation and convinced that the whole camp had not been put there by the cult of Aghad, she fell silent.

Garth glanced back and noticed that the sky was beginning to lighten in the east. They would be resting soon.

That, he was sure, would do them all good.

He had been thinking over recent events while answering Frima's questions; one subject was Frima herself. She was talking again, as much as she ever had. Garth took that as a sign that she was getting over the shock of Saram's death and wondered whether she still grieved.

She was certainly more entertaining, if sometimes exasperating, as her normal talkative self than she had been during her long spell of silence. Traveling by night could be boring, with the scenery obscured by darkness, if one's companions refused to speak.

He began looking for somewhere they could take shelter for the day. It would not do to be caught unawares by another party of Khofros, or by any other Yprian tribe.

They found an abandoned, partially burned farmhouse shortly after sunrise, its former owner's skull on a stake by the door. A message was scratched on the wall with charcoal: "This is the fate of our enemies. This land belongs to the Khofros."

Frima was reluctant to enter the ruin, but Garth was insistent, despite the ash and odor. It was shelter, burned or not.

They spent the day sleeping peacefully; no one found them. Garth awoke in midafternoon and found the King sitting, fully awake, on the one intact chair at the unscathed kitchen table. The overman smiled at the familiar pose in the incongruous setting. He said nothing, but roused Frima, and the party set out anew.

Having learned from their first encounter, Garth carefully avoided all contact with humans or overmen thereafter, circling wide around the camps and outposts they encountered, sleeping in ruins, caves, or other places of concealment, and stealing supplies rather than buying them. They passed several Yprian encampments of varying sizes, and Garth tried to distinguish the various tribes by the differences in their armor and accouterments; he was fairly certain of some identifications, less confident of others. Since they were avoiding contact, they never learned the names of the five tribes between the Khofros and the Dyn-Hugris, but Garth was reasonably sure he saw representatives of at least three of them.

The sword's gem remained black throughout, to Garth's relief. He had no desire to defend Nekutta by destroying the invaders; after all, many of the Yprians were his own species, which the Nekuttans were not.

As well as the invading armies, they came across camps of ragged humans, mostly unarmed, whom Garth guessed to be refugees. Many of the inhabitants of these camps wore the traditional hooded robes of Dыsarra; others wore the homespun tunics of farmers.

Checkpoints had been set up at several places along the road; circling around them became enough of a nuisance that, Garth gave serious consideration to Frima's suggestion of abandoning the road altogether, before finally rejecting it. He had traveled this route once before, but he was by no means sure that he would be able to find Dыsarra if he left the highway.

They were, by Garth's estimate, about a day's travel-or rather, a night's-from Dыsarra, with the mountains visible on the western horizon, when their rest was interrupted early one afternoon.

They had taken shelter in an orchard, hidden from view by the thick foliage of the apple trees. Garth did not expect anyone to trouble them unless the owner of the grove should turn up, and a farmer or two was a threat the overman knew he could handle easily.

It was not a farmer, however, who coughed politely to awaken him. He rolled over, reaching automatically for the Sword of Bheleu, and found himself looking up at a man of indeterminate age, muscular in build, and clad in a gray robe and hood.

There was something familiar about him, Garth realized as his hand closed on the hilt of the sword.

"Greetings, Garth of Ordunin," the man said. "I come in peace; you will not need the sword."

The fact that the man recognized him somehow did not surprise Garth; he was certain that they had met before, though he could not recall when or where.

"Greetings, man," he said.

"You don't recognize me?"

"No."

"I am the Seer of Weideth; we met three years ago, on two occasions."

"I recall only one," Garth replied. He had run afoul of illusions sent by the Seer and the village elders of Weideth when first he traveled to Dыsarra. He remembered the incident well and saw that this man was indeed the one who had called himself Seer on that occasion. On the way back to Skelleth he had passed through Weideth without incident, and without meeting the Seer again.

"I was one of the Council that fought you in the hills north of Skelleth," the gray-robed man explained.

"Oh, yes." Garth had not realized that the Seer had been included in that group, along with Shandiph, Chalkara, and a score or so of others whose names he did not know. There had been so many in robes, the traditional garb for a wizard, that he had not noticed the Seer among them. "Why are you here?"

"I have not come to interfere; it's far too late for that. You need not worry. I just wanted to see you and look at the sword that has caused so much destruction and meet the King in Yellow while we both still live."

There was a sadness in the Seer's tone, and something else Garth did not recognize; overmen were not prone to wistfulness, so Garth was not familiar with it. He saw no harm in the man.

"Here I am," he said, "and here is the sword. The King is the old man in rags over there."

"I know." The Seer looked down at the sword Garth held and remarked, "It's hard to believe that that thing can hold so much power."

The overman shrugged.

"And you have the book and the mask, as well. Do you know how long the spell will take?"

"I know nothing about it," Garth replied.

"O King, do you know?"

The old man had been sitting quietly, ignoring their visitor, but he answered, "Three days."

"And you have a day's travel remaining-four days in all. Why, then, can I not foresee my death? Is my gift that weak?"