Maia

They reached it about two hours later, just as the day was growing hot. The bank, though rough and lonely, was fairly open. The river was about twenty yards wide and certainly deep. Despite the time of year, there was no bottom to be seen. There was indeed a good, steady current, but nothing so swift as Zen-Kurd's account had led Maia to expect.

"No crossing that, you see, Anda-Nokomis," said Zen-Kurel in a conclusive tone.

"And no point, either,' replied Bayub-Otal, "if we can reach the Zhairgen without."

They turned downstream, picking their way through gradually thickening scrub and now seeing ahead of them tiie outskirts of the forest, dark against the growing glare

of the southern sky. "It'll be cooler once we get in there," said Zen-Kurel, slashing at the flies with a broken-off branch.

The approach to the forest consisted of fairly close brush and, beside the river, wide patches of dried-up reeds and cracked mud, which at any other time of year would have been impassable. These they pressed through, putting up great clouds of gnats which tormented them, following them about in front, as Zirek put it, and settling on their necks and arms. Once Meris startled a bright-green snake, which whipped between her and Maia and was gone before either of them had time to feel afraid-of that particular one. ›

Emerging at length from the further side of this marshland, they found themselves at the foot of a long, gradual slope, so thickly overgrown that they could not really see how high it might be. To the right of this the river wound away among tangles of undergrowth until it was lost to sight.

"We mustn't lose touch with the river, Anda-Nokomis, if we can help it," said Zen-Kurel, "but the best thing will be to get up this ridge and then go down and pick up the bank again. We'll be able to see more of the lie of the land from the top."

They began to climb. Maia, who had started a menstrual period the previous morning and now had a headache, was beginning to feel thoroughly out of patience. Damn these fools who couldn't swim! There-just there-was the river- safe, smooth, cool and free from flies. She could easily have been three or four miles down it in an hour.

"Are you all right, Maia?" asked Bayub-Otal, turning back to give her his hand over a fallen tree-trunk. She nodded curtly, smacked a gnat on her arm and pushed on uphill.

An hour later, having at last topped the ridge, they found themselves gazing down on the forest proper. The prospect was formidable and worse. Maia, surveying it with something close to terror, could only suppose that either Clystis must have thought that Zen-Kurel possessed magic powers or else that she had been too nervous of him to speak out more strongly.

Ahead of and below them lay a vast, shallow dip, something like two or three miles across. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, it was compact with trees, unbroken and even as a roof in the still heat. So uniform, so

featureless was this prospect that they might have been looking out across a smoothly undulant, green lake. No tree seemed taller than another and none, one would suppose, could have moved even in a wind, so close together were they crowded. Looking at that forest, no one could tell in what millennium he might be living. The god of that place, thought Maia, was not hostile to mankind; no, he was simply indifferent, distinguishing not at all between men, beasts and the insects darting among the leaves. Once in there, their lives would have no more value than those of ants; and they themselves would be as helpless.

On the farther side of this great bowl the horizon was closed by a line of the same trees; and one could imagine the forest continuing unchanged beyond. Away to their right, below the ridge on which they were standing, they could catch, here and there, glimpses of the river.

"Jumping Cran!" muttered Zirek, staring. "It can't be done, sir!"

"Nobody has to do it who doesn't want to," replied Zen-Kurel with (so it seemed to Maia) a somewhat forced air of confidence. "Personally, I'm going to Terekenalt and that's the way. But let's have a rest and eat now, shall we?"

"I was just thinking about the eating,' said Bayub-Otal. "I think it may take us quite a long time to reach the Zhairgen through that; certainly two days. We ought to be rather sparing, I think, of what food we've got."

"We might be able to kill something," said Zen-Kurel. "I'd like a chance to try these arrows."