Maia

shot, its wide nostrils dilated, lips parted and speckled with beads of foam. It slunk on and disappeared. Then, not ten seconds after, out of the same shadow emerged a different being-the huntress, wild with terror, tripping and falling, clambering up again, dropping her spear as she staggered and rocked on the brink of the dark pool. The drums closed in upon her as in desperation she slid into the water, slipping under without a sound, reappearing on the further side as a glistening shape which dragged itself through the reeds and was gone once more between the trees.

Now there were only the drums in the dark-the ripple of the water, the heavy, squelching tread of the pursuing beast in the swamp-shallows. Maia felt ready to scream vwith terror. If only this dread had been disclosed in a picture, or at a distance-if only it had not been spread like a net round one's feet, if the very walls had not been dissolved, in the gloom, by the ceaseless booming and knocking of the drums-if only the drums would stop! From behind her came the quick, frightened sob of some other girl. Nennaunir was sitting still as stone, her knuckles white against the table.

Yet it was no beast or huntress who finally reappeared, but a third being, neither brute nor human; one the very sight of whom was enough to wither the hearts of any encountering her in that solitude. Like a snake she rose up from the forest floor, swaying and ghastly. Blood dribbled from her mouth. Her unblinking eyes, fixed and staring like those of a corpse, yet held in them a malevolent intelligence more dreadful than any human hatred. The rolling of the drums poured from her outstretched hands, from her shuddering loins and thighs. She quivered, exultant with the power of evil. As she slowly raised one black arm they saw-they all saw-in her hand the gleam of a knife, reflective yet transparent; a horrible, spectral knife, which she tossed and caught, plunged into her arm and left hanging there as she bobbed and nodded grotesquely, bent-kneed and grinning. She drew it out bloodless and it disappeared in her hand; yet an instant later, as she stretched out her arm, it seemed to leap towards her out of the dark, out of the stench and blackness of the swamp.

And now she was advancing, step by silent step across the floor, and as she did so the young Urtan Ka-Roton, powerless to resist, stood up to meet her; the bridegroom

of death, his lips smiling, his arms outstretched towards her arms. Onward he moved in a trance, pace by pace, never taking his eyes from hers. Coming to the edge of the pool, he received the knife from her hand. Yet in the very moment that he plunged it into his breast, it once more vanished and he fell forward, prone on the ground as the drums at last faded and ceased.

Eud-Ecachlon, leaping to his feet, ran forward, knelt and lifted Ka-Roton's head on one arm. All across the hall men and girls were crying out and starting from their places. The slayer had disappeared in the tumult, by the very act of her departure dissolving her own spell. The drums were a quenched fire. By the pool there was no one to be seen but Eud-Ecachlon, dashing water into his friend's face as he repeated his name again and again.

Elvair-ka-Virrion called for lights and little by little the secure, familiar hall was disclosed. Supported by Eud-Ecachlon, Ka-Roton stood up, wiping the sweat from his face and gazing about him dazedly. It was obvious that he could recall little or nothing of what had happened. Slowly he walked back to his place and sat down, but seemed either not to hear or not to comprehend the questions of his friends. After a few minutes Elvair-ka-Virrion came over to inquire after him and, seeing how matters stood, suggested to Eud-Ecachlon that someone had better take him home. Then, turning to Maia and speaking as though he were angry, he said, "Where's your friend?"

"I don't know, my lord."

"Did you know she meant to do this?"

"No, my lord: I thought as she'd spoken to you about it. Didn't she say-"

But as Maia uttered these last words, Elvair-ka-Virrion simultaneously began, "Didn't she say-": whereupon neither of them was able to suppress a smile. He, turning quickly back to Eud-Ecachlon, said, "I'm sorry: I hope your friend'll soon be feeling himself again. I assure you I had no idea beforehand how this was going to turn out."

Eud-Ecachlon nodded, murmuring a few polite words, and Elvair-ka-Virrion returned to his own table.

Maia was feeling sick, as much with nervousness on Occula's account as with the fear and excitement which she herself had undergone. Wiping her sweating forehead, she leaned forward and closed her eyes. As she remained thus, trying to breathe slowly and deeply, Bayub-Otal's voice

beside her said, "Perhaps you'd be the better for some fresh air. Shall we stroll outside for a minute or two?"