Maia

Maia, little though she knew of soldiering, could not help being impressed by the practiced ease with which the Sarkidians cleaned up and cleared the camp site. Having no axes for a pyre or spades for burial, they could only commit the two dead men to the river. Both were young and not ill-looking, though sadly gaunt and famished. One, so Maia thought, a little resembled Sednil. She felt full of pity for them. At her request (she doubted whether it would have been done otherwise), the tryzatt brought her some grain, salt and wine to fling after them into the river. She picked an armful of flowers, too-thy dis and marjoram, bartsia and planella-sprinkled them on the current and as they drifted away offered a prayer that the young men might meet with Sphelthon and share his peace.

"You didn't feel in any danger?" she asked Zen-Kurel as they were setting out. She felt able, now, to address him directly, though still avoiding any suggestion of warmth or particularly friendly feeling. He, for his part, seemed to have eome to regard their relationship as one between two people working with mutual respect towards a common end, without seeking or expecting more.

"No one need have felt in any danger," he replied. "It should never have been allowed to come to blows at all." Then, as Tolis came up, he shrugged and broke off with the air of one refraining from criticism of colleagues, however well justified.

It was no more than nine or ten miles to Nybril, which they reached about noon. Unconsciously, Maia had entertained in her mind a picture of a place something like Meerzat-a little, riparian town, with regular trade and boats coming and going as on Lake Serrelind. The reality was disappointingly-indeed, dauntingly-different. Nybril Point, the rocky bluff rising above the confluence of the Flere and the Zhairgen, possessed no harbor remotely resembling Meerzat's sheltered, south-facing bay. Almost the sole advantage of the place lay in its virtual impregnability, a narrow triangle of which two sides were rivers. Long ago, some baron had built a castle there, but for many years past no baron had wished to live in so uninviting a spot, whose only mercantile value was as a stop-ping-off point for wool- and timber-laden rafts coming down the Flere from Yelda. (There was a depot on the upper Flere about ten miles south of Ikat.) In years to come Sarkid was to develop Nybril, constructing a mole and introducing ferries to either shore, but at this period of the empire's history it was still little more than a windy rock where a largely hereditary community of about two thousand souls were content to eke out a living in the knowledge that they were at least secure from pillage. Strangers, apart from the raft-men and occasional pedlars, were rare and not particularly welcome, since their reasons for coming were suspect.

The arrival of Tolis and his men, whose approach had of course been observed and reported an hour earlier, was watched by a fair-sized crowd from the walls on either side of the gates. His authority from Elleroth having been duly accepted, he was accorded a reserved welcome by the Elder, who nevertheless unbent slightly upon being told that the soldiers were to leave before nightfall.

A man appointed to act as guide escorted Maia, Zen-Ku-rel and Anda-Nokomis half-way down the steep, western slope of the headland to "TheWhite Roses," one of the two or three inns in the town, which was also a fishing-tackle store and a corn chandler's. It hardly measured up to "The Safe Moorings," and although Maia had never had any great

opinion of Frarnli, she was in no doubt that Frarnli would have been able to keep the place a deal cleaner, tackle store or no. She had not sat down for long on the little upstairs balcony before the warmth of her body brought a swarm of ticks out of the woodwork of her chair.

They were eating fish broth with black bread when Tolis came in to tell them, with aloof but self-conscious cor-rectnessr that he was now leaving. If he had been expecting any sort of protest he was disappointed. Zen-Kurel, having ordered up a bottle of wine to drink to Elleroth's fortunes and a speedy heldro victory (which Tolis could hardly decline) thanked him most courteously for all he had done for them and then insisted on accompanying him to the town gates to bid farewell to tryzatt Miarn and the men.

Anda-Nokomis went too but Maia, who felt angry, stayed behind. Having slept until the cool of the evening, she washed in a pail of tepid river water and then went out onto the balcony, taking with her a stool which she hoped would prove to be without inhabitants.