"Ogma, what's become of Occula? Have you heard anything about her?"

Ogma, limping across the room with her work over her arm, stopped and turned.

"No, not once, Miss Maia. Not since-well, not since that last evening, when you both went to the gardens with the High Counselor. But then they took her away to the temple, didn't they?"

"Yes, but is she with the Sacred Queen now, 's far 's you know?"

"With the Sacred Queen, miss?" Ogma was visibly surprised and agitated. "Oh, Cran! If she went to the Sacred Queen anything could have happened to her."

Maia stared at her, frowning.

"You didn't know, miss? The queen's got a terrible reputation that way."

"I always thought there was some as was devoted to her," said Maia, remembering Ashaktis.

"Maybe her own Palteshis," said Ogma, "and any as might just happen to suit her, like. But there's others as she's-well-got rid of, so they say."

The realization that she had been several days in Bekla without making any inquiry about Occula showed Maia more plainly than anything else how weak and shocked she must really have been. She had been sleeping badly, troubled with pain as well as with anxiety about her scars (for she had four or five gashes altogether, though none so grievous as that on her thigh). Again and again she had woken from nightmares of fire in the dark, of roaring water and the boy Sphelthon crying on the blood-drenched ground. Protean they were, these fantasies, casting themselves like amorphous nets round her distressed mind; tormentors continually emerging in new and unexpected guises. The fire would dance before her, its flames murmuring "Sha-greh, shagreh," as they refused to cook her food. The water would become an insubstantial ladder on which she dared not set foot. Or she would be placidly swimming when the wretched boy, a weeping horror, would rise up out of deep water and fasten his bloody mouth on her flinching body. One night of full moon, having lain for two hours afraid to fall asleep again, she had resorted to her old solace, gone down to the Barb and, plunging in near the outfall of the Monju brook, swum half a mile to the Pool of Light, stepping out naked into the gardens before a gaping sentry of the Lapanese regiment. (Ogma had returned his cloak next morning, and this latest story of the Serrelinda lost nothing in the telling.)

But yet another preoccupation she had, besides her own health and recovery. Incessantly she dwelt on the memory of Zen-Kurel, recalling over and over each moment of their brief hours together, from the king's supper table to the daggers lying discarded on the floor and the running footsteps receding into the moonlight. She longed for him; she missed him every hour. Where was he? What had happened to him in the fighting? Had she saved his life? Surely she must have! To have known for certain that she had saved his life would have meant more to her than the knowledge of having saved the army and the Tonildan detachment. Karnat's force had suffered no very heavy casualties in the fighting: Sendekar had told her as much before she left Rallur. The king himself, she knew, was not among the dead, and Zen-Kurel had been one of his personal aides. She imagined him wading into the water, helping to pull the king ashore as the last rope was cut, translating to the king the answers of the few Beklan pris-

oners who had been taken back into Suba; then, perhaps, sent back across the Zhairgen with dispatches for Keril-Katria. Of course he would have distinguished himself. He would no doubt be promoted-though she knew nothing about such things or what he might realistically expect. One thing, however, she was sure of. Whatever his adventures, he would not have forgotten her, any more than she had forgotten him.

The glaring inconsistency of her situation in regard to Zen-Kurel, which would naturally have been the first thing to occur to (for instance) Occula or Nennaunir if they had learned the whole story, did not strike Maia at all. It never once crossed her mind that her exploit must, of course, have come to the ears of all Suba, Katria and Terekenalt, or that Zen-Kurel-if he were still with King Kamat-had good cause not only to curse her very name and his own disclosure to her, but also, if he valued his life, to utter no word of their love to a living soul. Still more extraordinarily, if anyone (such as Occula) had pointed this out, Maia, while she would have been deeply grieved, would nevertheless have remained in no doubt that Zen-Kurel still loved her and had not renounced her in his own mind.

She, for her part, was scarcely ever free from the thought of him. She knew herself to have remained deeply in love with him. How could this be? A man whom she had known and with whom she had made love for perhaps four hours altogether: and she a girl who had, to use her own words, been in and out of bed with half a dozen men, both in the upper and lower city. Yet she herself knew why. Alone of them all, Zen-Kurel had sincerely respected her womanhood'-yes, where even Elvair-ka-Virrion had not, for all his fine words and elegant ways. And then, she had not come to him as a slave-girl, but as the magic Suban princess of the golden lilies. "He asked me to marry him-he meant it-to marry him-" she whispered, swimming down the moonlit Barb.

Yet it was not even this sincere asking that lay at the heart of the matter. Others, no doubt, given the opportunity, might well have asked as much. It was that she herself could, she knew, create so much by loving a man like Zen-Kurel. In the midst of all the danger, uncertainty and squalor of Suba, he had had the power to carry her with nun to a little island of security where they had dwelt together-for just how long was no matter. And thence

had flowed into her a joy, a power and confidence which had enabled her to save thousands of lives. This, amazingly, was Maia's own, personal view of what had happened. Within herself she seemed to carry the seed of a great tree only waiting to grow and flourish, which now could not spring up for lack of soil-his presence. And this was frustration and torment.

There had lain the promise-there for the picking up, like a jewel lying on the ground. For a few hours she had held it in her hand. And by her own deed-the deed that had made her fortune-she had cast it away from her, as she had thrown her clothes into the Valderra. "It's only the beginning, Maia-we'll meet again in Bekla." He had meant that. If she had chosen, she need have done nothing but await their reunion-whenever and wherever it might have taken place.

Why had she, then, by her own deed, made it impossible? Not for luxury, wealth and fame; that much she knew. She would gladly forgo all that to lie once more in his arms in flea-bitten Suba. No, she had done what she did out of her own womanliness-because of Gehta and her dad, because of Sphelthon at the ford, because of the Tonildans downstream of Rallur. Yes, and for Zenka's own sake, too-poor, feather-brained boy, boasting that he'd kill twenty Beklans for her sake! She'd saved his life as surely as anyone else's in the whole silly, nasty business. He might be a bit disappointed now, but if only she could have him to herself for an hour or two she'd soon make him see it different; for a week or two; for a year or two: well, say a lifetime. She could do something, make something out of life with a lad like that, as she knew she never could with a showy gallant like Elvair-ka-Virrion.

When Shend-Lador and his friends had come to see her, she had asked them what news they could give her about the Terekenalt prisoners taken in the fighting. They knew no more, however, than Sendekar had already told her; namely, that there were something like seventy prisoners altogether, Subans, Katrians and Terekenalters, foremost among whom was the traitor Bayub-Otal. All had been sent under guard to the fortress at Dari-Paltesh, where they were to remain until the Lord General could spare time to consider what was to be done with them.