Maia

The light was fading. The dragonflies had vanished. In an isolated pool a little way downstream, some tiny fish suddenly skittered across the surface, here and gone, like the margets in Suba. A flock of starlings flickered over on their way to roost.

"But then, quite suddenly, when this same young staff officer's at death's door himself, after suffering the most revolting cruelty and degradation at the hands of Queen Fornis, he's taken out of prison in Bekla and carried away delirious. Some days later he recovers his senses and al-

most the first thing he hears is that among those with him is this same girl-the girl he trusted, the girl who betrayed him. This makes him feel angry and perplexed-afraid, even, perhaps."

As though he were now going back to the farmhouse, Bayub-Otal stood up and stepped out onto the bank. Then, without looking round, he said, "He's not the only one. Perhaps that girl might, in fact, be better out of the way. There's no telling what she might get up to next, you see."

He had gone some yards when he found Maia beside him.

"Anda-Nokomis!"

As though at any rate unwilling to fail in propriety he halted, but did not look at her.

"Here's one thing there's no catch in it, and you'd better just know it! I'm your cousin! My mother was Nokomis's sister."

The tone in which she spoke carried immediate conviction. He looked at her, startled. After some moments he said, "We'd better sit down again, and you can tell me what makes you think that."

Thereupon he himself returned and sat down, but she was so much agitated that she could not keep still, pacing back and forth on the bank as she talked.

"Earlier this summer, while you was still in that prison, the Leopards arrested a bunch of heldro agents in Tonilda. One of them was my stepfather, Tharrin; the man as took up with my mother-or her I always thought was my mother. He'd been a secret messenger for Erketlis. Tharrin was the first man as I ever went with. That's how I come to be sold for a slave; only Morca, her I thought was my mother, she found out, see? And she tricked me and sold me while Tharrin was away."

"Go on," said Bayub-Otal.

"I talked to Tharrin in prison before he died, and it was then as he told me-"

She went on to speak of the assassins sent from Kendron-Urtah and of her true mother's desperate flight and pathetic death. When she had ended Bayub-Otal remained silent, gazing down at the brook. "Do you believe me?" she asked at length.

"Yes, of course," he answered. He nodded slowly. "You couldn't be lying about that." She winced at the emphasis. "In fact, it explains a great deal." He looked directly up

at her and for the first time she could see that he was moved.

"I can tell you your mother's name. Her name was Sheldis. I remember her in Suba when I was a child, but I never knew what became of her. Children don't think much about anyone who isn't there, of course. When I grew older, I learned that she'd married an Urtan and tried to settle down quietly, but they'd both been murdered on the orders of my father's wife. I suppose when the murderers got back to Kendron-Urtah they'd naturally have reported that they'd been entirely successful. After all, Sheldis, not her husband, was the one she really wanted dead." After a pause, he added, "The village is Kryle, in eastern Urtah. I'm afraid I can't remember her husband's name-your father-but you could easily find out."

While he was talking she had sensed a barely-perceptible softening of his earlier hostility; yet not enough to make her want to try to explain to him the truth, her truth, about what had passed between herself and Zenka at Melvda-Rain and the true reason why she had swum the Valderra. He had as good as threatened her life. That life-her life as the Serrelinda-had conferred on her a dignity and courage of which the Tonildan peasant girl would not have been capable. She would be damned if she was going to beg for it-or even to seem to be doing so-by offering unsought explanations. If he was so keen to kill a defenseless girl, Jet him. She was, of course, too young for it to occur to her that he himself might, beneath his harsh manner, feel grieved and sorrowful. In telling him of her mother, she had been concerned simply to let him know who it was he would be killing-a girl as well derived as himself, or nearly; his kinswoman, one whose resemblance to the legendary Nokomis was no mere coincidence.