Maia

In the midst of the dry, tawny plain Bekla, at the foot of Crandof's slope, lay like a tilted stone on the bed of a pool. For weeks the pool had been land-locked; the air inert, unstirring, so that no flow (one might imagine), even the most sluggish, could take place above its towers or across the long walls. Sometimes, indeed, it seemed to move a little, back and forth, with a turgid languor caused by no wind; perhaps by the jostling of sweating bodies or the babel of voices, just as still water round a stone might momentarily be troubled, before settling once more, by the passing of some weary, trapped fish.

Beyond the city, harvest was ended and summer hung dry and empty as a husk. The little herd-boys lay in the shade, paying no heed to cattle too listless to stray from the banks of shrunken rivers where the baked mud could afford them no relief. The work of the world was to wait for rain, and weary work it was-heavier even than the thundery cloud-banks piling up, day after day, above the Tonildan mountains a hundred miles to the east.

Slowly, as though their mass were too great for even the gods to move without exertion, these clouds began to

advance westward above the plain; and below them went a mist white as wool, creeping through the treetops of the Tpnildan forest, moving silently on across the expanse of Lake Serrelind, thickening among the hovels of Puhra and Hirdo. And behind the mist, at first indistinguishable from it, came rain; a rain that joined the mist to the clouds, so that everything-villages, roads, huts in fields, boats on rivers-was isolated first by mist, then by rain, and at last by mud. Yet villagers, travelers, farmers, fishermen-all were prepared, forewarned by the fleecy mist, its approach visible for miles as it billowed up and over the low saddles between the ridges of the plain and flowed down to fill the hollows below. This isolation was relief, deliverance at last from the arid remnant of summer, a warrant to sit idle and cool under a roof while outside, far and wide, further than the eye could see, the gods went about their share of the world's work so that in time man might return to plow, sow and graze cattle once more.

The rain, advancing out of the mist, fell with a quiet hissing upon dried grass, trees and dusty roads. At last the soft, slow wind which bore it reached and flowed over Bekla itself, spilling currents of cool air through its streets and alleys. Everywhere sounded pattering and trickling. Soon the gutters were flowing, the winking surface of the Barb was almost visibly rising and fountains which had stood dry for weeks began to spout water. Householders, opening their windows, sat by them silently, watching and smelling the rain in rapt contentment, while the homeless beggars, gathering in the colonnades, spat and nodded together, their sores and scabs eased by the moist coolness. Sencho, drowsing in the bath, woke at the long-awaited sound and, erecting with pleasure, sent for Occula and Meris to join him. Fleitil and his journeymen-assistants, having made their wedges and blocks firm round the base of the new statue of Airtha by the Tamarrik Gate, covered it with a canvas tarpaulin, packed their tools and set off for the nearest tavern, there to drink to the prospect of two months' profitable studio work under cover.

As evening began to fall Durakkon, standing at one of the east-facing windows of the Barons' Palace, watched the mist top the low ridge four miles away and inch down the slope, obliterating yard by yard the highway to Thettit. He could make out no single traveler on the road, but this was not surprising. Travelers would be unlikely to have

delayed leaving Naksh for Bekla as late as the afternoon, for they too would have seen the mist, which often advanced faster than a man could walk; and as the roads were now, a wayfarer overtaken by it might well find himself at the mercy of worse than rain. Just as Senda-na-Say, waking by night at Puhra in the crackling fume, had encountered not only smoke but the death that lay within it.