Maia

"We won't discuss it tonight. It's high time, now, that I left you to sleep. But it did just cross my mind that we can't be too far from the upper Zhairgen. If only we could reach it and get hold of a boat, that might be the answer."

Clystis came in, clicking her tongue.

"It's not my place to say it, sir, but you shouldn't keep the poor young man talking any more. We don't want him bad again, do we, just when he's begun doing so well?"

"You're quite right and very kind, Clystis," replied Ba-yub-Otal. "I'm just going. Boats cost money, you know, Zenka. But put it out of your mind now and go to sleep."

88: MEMS IS MISTAKEN

A week passed. Zen-Kurel steadily regained his health. He was a difficult invalid, with all the impatient restiveness of a young man not used to restraint on his bold, forceful character. He fretted to be up and about. Zirek remarked one day to Maia that he could not imagine how he had survived imprisonment at Dari-Paltesh. "You'd wonder he hadn't knocked those damn' walls down, wouldn't you?" These days were among the most unhappy Maia had ever known. She had, of course, foreseen-had not Sednil stressed it plainly enough in Bekla?-that Zenka was bound to be angry over what she had done. But in her youth and inexperience, and in the ardor of her love for him, she had

entirely under-estimated that anger. She bad supposed that she would be able to explain matters. It is a common error of the young and sincere, when they know that they have at least an arguably valid point of view and have acted from honest and justifiable motives, to feel that others will surely understand if only there is a fair chance to make everything clear. The discovery that even friends and loved ones can misconceive, can remain deaf to explanations; or worse still, receive them with frigid courtesy and a humiliating assurance that to be sure they quite understand- this is perhaps the most painful of all steps on the road to maturity. Ever since Melvda-Rain there had never been far from Maia's mind the memory of the passionate, heartfelt promises which she and Zenka had exchanged. He had made them as ardently as she. In her heart, nothing had superseded those promises-not her new-found wealth, the city's adulation, the advances of any number of rich admirers or Eud-Ecachlon's offer of an outstanding marriage. The only man who had bedded her since parting from Zenka was Randronoth, whom she had accepted solely in order to save poor Tharrin's life. By her reckoning, she had sacrificed enough to her love for Zenka to convince anyone of her sincerity. Hadn't she lived, for his sake, in almost daily danger of being put out of the way by Kembri or Fornis? And finally, hadn't she unhesitatingly entered the very doorway of death to release him and Anda-No-komis, her liege lord, from prison in Bekla?

Of course he would come to realize that she had swum the river only to stop the bloodshed and save the Tonil-dans! Nasada had grasped it. So, obviously, would Zenka, in whose arms she had known herself entirely understood and fulfilled.

What-in the light of her own memories-had never once occurred to her, was that he would have concluded that all the promises, all the joy, the choosing of the daggers and every other happy delight, had been nothing but deliberate, cold-hearted deception-that he had been the dupe of the Leopards' cleverest agent. As often as she thought of that, tears of mortified disappointment sprang to her eyes.

It had also not occurred to her-and it hurt her very much that his memory should (so she felt) be at fault in this respect, since she herself remembered every whisper, every touch, every kiss and look-that he would believe

that she had gone about to worm Karnat's plan out of him. Why, he himself had begun the talk of it, and insisted on telling it to her-or anyway, that was how it appeared to her in recollection. Nor did she for one moment regret- and she wasn't going to say she did-what she had done to prevent the whole silly, nasty business of the fighting. Given, of course, that he thought she had acted cold-heart-edly from the outset, it didn't make much difference what he thought about that particular detail. Yet it added still further to her grief.

Furthermore, she thought-remembering her talk with Bayub-Otal on the bank-she had unimaginatively underrated how dreadfully Zenka had suffered. The months of foetid twilight, anxiety, bad food and near-madness, with the deaths of his comrades and his own self-reproach gnawing at him night and day-all this, in his mind, was attributable to her alone. He was only too well aware of the dreadful things he had suffered on her account. He did not know, and there was no one to tell him-least of all herself-what she had suffered on his.