41: QUEEN FORNIS

For a good nine hours and more Maia lay sleeping in a great, soft bed, while the sunlight moved slowly across the floor until at length evening fell with a gradual melting and vanishing of the hard, black shadows of the afternoon. The unexpected lifting of the horrible fear in which she had lived since the killing of Sencho; Kembri's plan to make use of her against Bayub-Otal; the unexpected appearance of the Sacred Queen and her own sudden removal—whither and for what purpose she had no idea: these had left her as much confused and bewildered as a bird flown by chance into a lighted room.

She had not even had the self-possession to ask Queen Fornis's säiyett where they were going, but only hobbled on, leaning on the woman's arm and taking in little or nothing of their surroundings. They stopped. She found herself in a jekzha. A quarter of an hour later she could not even have said whether or not they had passed through the Peacock Gate. Two things she knew—that she was no longer a prisoner and that she longed above all for sleep.

When at length they reached their destination, she was aware—vaguely—only of a great, stone-fronted house, a flight of steps and a heavy, panelled door which was opened to the woman's knock—by whom she did not notice. Inside was coolness and two rows of green columns between which hung suspended some huge, dully-gleaming, winged effigy. She was led up one staircase, then another, and finally into a sunny, clean-smelling room with a bed. The woman undressed her, tut-tutting at the state of her tunic, which she simply threw outside the door as though to be rid of it; and thereupon Maia, all dirty as she was, climbed into the bed and was unconscious almost before the woman had left her.

When she woke, the room was in twilight. Through the windows opposite shone an afterglow sky of ochre and pale-green, and from somewhere just outside came the low cackle of birds settling to roost along a cornice—mynahs or starlings. The air smelt of evening—wood-smoke and moist herbage. She must be high up, for from where she lay she could see neither roofs nor trees. It was quiet— too quiet, she thought, for the lower city.

For some time she lay still, listening to the gentle commotion of the birds as the last light ebbed out of the sky. In spite of her complete ignorance, both about her situation and the future, she felt full of relief and even a curious kind of confidence. Whatever lay ahead, it could only be better than the horror behind. Evidently Queen Fornis had a use for her, though Maia could not remember what, if anything, she had said about it.

Well, and come to that Sencho had had plenty of use for her, too. Strange to think that she would never again feel him panting and shuddering as she did what he liked on the big couch in the fountain-room.

What would be-come of his household now, she wondered—the cooks, Jarvil the porter, Ogma and the others? No doubt the skilled ones would be able to take their skills elsewhere. Lucky Dyphna, getting out just in time! And apparently Elvair-ka-Virrion had taken Milvushina: to keep or to set free?

Suddenly, with a quick darkening of the spirit, she remembered Occula. Occula was still held in the temple for questioning. Whether she told them anything or not, a slave had no rights at law: for a slave to be condemned, only suspicion was necessary. Occula's only hope was that some influential person might speak for her.

Who might be ready to do it? Shend-Lador or some of his Leopard friends? Yet they were only young blades— not men of influence. Even Elvair-ka-Virrion did not strike her as likely to be of much help here. Suddenly she thought of Sarget. Sarget—a middle-aged, wealthy man, not prof-ligate, widely respected for his culture and good sense. Not a nobleman, true, but at least a man who had lent money to noblemen. After she had danced the senguela, Sarget had given her his arm out of the hall and praised her warmly. Could she possibly get a message to him now, begging him to intercede for Occula?

At this moment she became aware, beyond the far end of the big, shadowy chamber, of lamplight behind a curtained archway. Someone was moving quietly about in the adjoining room.

She coughed two or three times. The lamplight grew brighter, the curtain was drawn aside and the Paltes woman came in, carrying lighted lamps on a tray. Three of these she placed on stands about the room, then came across and sat down on the edge of the bed, smiling at Maia as she put down the fourth lamp on the table close by.

"Good sleep? Feeling better?"

Maia nodded. "Where am I?"

The other looked surprised. "Why, in Queen Fornis's house, naturally! Great Cran, girl, you look frightened to death! You've nothing to be afraid of, you know. You ought to be thanking the gods for your good luck!"

Maia managed to smile. "Well, only it's all a bit sudden, like; and I've had a real bad time."

"But it's over now."

"Will you tell me," asked Maia hesitantly; "well, who you are, säiyett; why I'm here and what I've got to expect, like?"

The woman laughed. "Well, for a start, I'm Ashaktis, and you can call me that; you needn't call me säiyett. But before I tell you any more—Maia, isn't it?—you'd better come along to the bath. The queen will want to see you as soon as you're fit to be seen—"

"What for?" Maia's fingers tightened on the coverlet.

"What for? Don't be silly! Are you afraid of her?" asked Ashaktis.

"Yes, I am. Reckon I'm not the only one, either."

"But you used to be with Sencho, didn't you? Anyway, the bath now!" said Ashaktis peremptorily. "Put this wrap round you and come with me."

Evidently the bath had already been prepared, for as they walked together along the open gallery outside, Maia could smell the perfumed steam. The bathroom, when they reached it, fairly took her breath away. It was even more luxurious than Sencho's. Half of one wall consisted of a broad stone hearth spread with glowing charcoal, and here two great caldrons of water, each with a long-handled iron dipper, stood gently bubbling. The circular bath, a good seven feet across and made of green malachite, was sunk in the floor and surrounded with glazed, crimson tiles, each bearing a different design of a bird, flower or animal. On shelves along the opposite wall were laid out any num-ber of flasks of scent and perfumed oils, smooth and rough pumice-stones, scented soaps, small files and pointed wooden spills.

To one side stood the cold-water cistern, from which a copper pipe, stopped with a wooden plug, led down into the bath. There were two carved, wooden couches covered with thick towels and rugs, and a deep, open-fronted recess stacked with wraps, slippers, brushes and at least three silver hand-mirrors.

A Deelguy slave-girl, dark-eyed and broad-nosed, her black hair in a plaited rope down her back, was kneeling to fan the charcoal. Ashaktis, dismissing her, took off Maia's wrap and hung it on a peg, gave her her hand to step down into the bath and then seated herself near-by.

Maia, used as she had become to luxury, had never experienced opulence like this. Always capable of setting aside her worries in any pleasure which the immediate moment might offer, she spent plenty of time in the water, feeling the tension and grime of days disappearing like smoke on the wind. When she had finished washing her hair, she asked Ashaktis whether she might let some of the water out and add more from the caldrons on the fire. .

"Oh, I'll see to that," said Ashaktis, getting up and plunging a bared arm into the bath to grope for the plug. "Just stand out of the way while I pour this boiling water in."

"Can you tell me what this is all about?" asked Maia, slipping back into the hot water with a wriggle of pleasure and splashing it over herself.

Ashaktis, laying aside the dipper, sat down again.

"How much do you know about the Sacred Queen?" she asked.

Maia recalled all that Occula had told her of Fornis of Paltesh; of her unscrupulous rapacity, her cruelty, her relentless and cunning tenure of power; of the admiration she inspired and the fear she was capable of inspiring when she wished; of the many men, dazzled, who had tried to gain her, and how none had been even so much as rumored to have succeeded.

"Reckon just about nothing," she answered.

"I've been with her for twenty years," said Ashaktis, "ever since she was a girl in her father's house in Dari. I was with her when she took the boat and sailed it to Quiso. You'll have heard that tale, I suppose?" (Maia nodded.) "Cran only knows what I've done for her since, and Cran'll destroy me for it one day, I dare say, for she's thumbed her nose at him and every one of the gods for years. But it'll have been worth it. Perhaps you've learnt something yourself already, have you, about the difference between scrubbing floors for the bare living and doing what rich people want done by girls who know how to stay on the right side of them and keep their mouths shut?"

"Ah, that I have," replied Maia decisively.

"Life's not easy with the queen," went on Ashaktis, "but at least it's never dull. There's times she makes your hair stand on end. You've got to look alive with her. For a long time now I've had more than enough money to buy myself free, but I never do. She's like one of those drugs the Deelguy sell: people keep saying they'll give it up, but they don't. I've become addicted to Miss Fornis. One day she'll be the death of me and that'll be that."

Maia felt emboldened by the woman's friendly loquacity. "Go on, then; tell me something you've seen her do. Something out of the ordinary, like you were saying."

Ashaktis was silent for a time, reflecting. Maia, looking this way and that to admire the serpents, porcupines, gazelles and panthers depicted on the bath-tiles, waited expectantly.

"Well, one time, several years ago now," said Ashaktis at length, "we went up into Suba. It was only about three months after we'd got back from Quiso; that's to say, before those uncles of hers had really got it into their heads that she didn't mean to marry. She'd told them she wanted to go to Suba to hunt duck and water-fowl. There weren't many of us; one of the uncles and his daughter, a girl of about twenty; a couple of huntsmen, Miss Fornis and me. The cooks and guides and the rest we hired once we'd crossed the Valderra. You've never been in Suba, have you?"

"Never," said Maia.

"It's a strange place, and the people are strange, too. It's like nowhere else in the empire—half land and half water. You travel everywhere by boat, down the water-channels; like corridors of water they are, between one village and the next, and the reeds and trees standing high all round you. You hear bitterns booming in the swamps and I've seen black turtles—oh, big as a soldier's shield-lying out on branches above the water.

"After about ten days poor old uncle was tired out, so Miss Fornis went out alone with me and four men—two Subans and our own two Dari huntsmen. We came to an island in the swamps and in the middle was a heronry. We could see the big, ramshackle nests, high up in the tops of the trees. You know the way they build?"

Maia nodded.

"Well, we'd no sooner got to this island than Miss Fornis looks up at the trees and says 'Ah, herons! I've always fancied young herons would be good in a pie; better than pigeons. Phorbas,' she says to one of the Suban lads, 'just climb up and bring me down half a dozen, will you?' 'No, säiyett,' says the boy, 'that I won't! I value my life and that's the truth. There's no living man could reach those nests, and even if he did the herons would be at him like dragons.' 'Why, you damned, cowardly, Suban marsh-frog!' she said to him. 'I don't know why ever I hired the likes of you! Go on, then, Khumba,' she said to one of our huntsmen, 'you'd better just show him how to do it, hadn't you?' 'I'm very sorry, säiyett,' says Khumba, 'but I reckon yon Suban fellow's in the right of it. I'm no more going up there than he is. My wife wouldn't fancy me with a broken neck, that's about the size of it.'

" 'Cran and Airtha! Well, here goes then!' says Miss Fornis, as if she was stepping out of doors into the rain. 'And since you're not a man,' she said to the Suban, 'you can just give me those breeches of yours to keep my legs from getting scratched. Come on, hurry up!' And she made him take them off. They still thought it must be some joke she was up to. She was only just seventeen then, you see, and in those days her ways weren't so well-known.

"She put on the breeches and stuck a short spear in her belt and then she was up the tree like a squirrel. She'd gone something like thirty feet before any of them really understood she meant to do it. After that they just stood and watched like folk round a burning house. Khumba kept saying 'O Lespa, make her come down! O Shakkarn, what am I going to say to her uncles when she's dead? They'll hang me upside-down!' I admit I was praying my-self. It would have frightened anyone to see her.

"She got up to the nest she'd had her eye on—must have been all of eighty feet, and the upper, branches swaying under her like grass in the wind. Both the herons went for her. She killed them with her spear, and after that she wrung the necks of five young ones and carried them down— she couldn't throw them down, you see, what with all the twigs and brush below her. 'There!' she says to the Suban boy. 'And I've a good mind to make you eat one raw. The next time I tell you to do something, you damned well do it, d'you see?' He never answered a word; and he never came out with us again. But there were plenty more who were only too glad to, for the story got around, you see; and she always paid well. I don't believe there was anyone else in the empire, man or woman, who'd have climbed that tree. Bat that was nothing at all, if only we'd known what was to come."

"And you say she's got a use for me?" asked Maia, with considerable apprehension. "Only if it's along of the swimming—"

Ashaktis burst out laughing. "The swimming? Are you ready to come out now? I'll rub you down."

Maia did so, dried her face and stretched out on the couch while Ashaktis toweled her.

"What's the Sacred Queen's vocation?" asked Ashaktis after a little. "Do you know?"

"Why, she's the bride of Cran," said Maia. "She's Airtha in human form, isn't she, as makes the crops grow and the babies come?"

"Yes, that's quite right. The Sacred Queen doesn't have to be a virgin—there's never been any fixed law about that. Occasionally in the past she's been a married woman or even a shearna. It's entirely a matter of popular acclaim—or it's supposed to be. But all the same, Miss Fornis has always taken good care that in spite of all her wild ways, no one's ever been able to link any man's name with hers. That adds very much to her real power, of course."

"I see," said Maia, shuddering deliciously as Ashaktis's strong fingers massaged the muscles along her shoulders.

"But she's still flesh and blood, for all that, isn't she?"

"Flesh and blood? Well, yes, I s'pose so, kind of."

"She gets to learn a lot about almost everyone in the upper city," went on Ashaktis. "She knew a lot about Sencho, for instance. You were quite a favorite with him, weren't you? You were very good at doing what he liked— you used to put your heart into it?"

Maia felt nattered. She did not know that she had acquired so wide a reputation.

"Well, 'twasn't all that difficult; not really."

"You mean because you enjoyed it yourself?"

"Well, yes, I s'pose so. Only he'd send for me and no one else, see? And then he used to get that worked up sometimes, it made me feel—well, made me feel I was good at it."

"Well, the Sacred Queen feels you probably are, too."

Maia, rolling over on the couch, stared up at her.

"She really takes an interest in nice, spirited girls," went on Ashaktis. "Of course, some of us aren't as young as we were—that can't be helped. But I don't bear you any grudge, I assure you. All you've got to do is show her your talents—just as you did with Sencho."

Maia was about to reply when suddenly her earlier thoughts returned to her mind with force.

"Oh, säiyett—Ashaktis—there's something you've got to do for me! Please! Only it's terribly important. Do you know U-Sarget? He's a rich man in the upper city. You must know him! I've got to get a message to him—about my friend Occula!"

"Now just calm yourself, child," said Ashaktis, putting her hands on Maia's shoulders. "You obviously haven't grasped what I've been telling you. Do you realize that by tomorrow morning you'll probably be able to ask favors of the queen herself?"

Before Maia could answer, the Deelguy bath-slave drew aside the door-curtains and, palm to forehead, announced "Säiyett, the Sacred Queen!"

Maia, looking frantically round for something to put on, could find only the towels on which she was lying; and with these she was still fumbling as Fornis entered the bathroom. It did not occur to her that some few days before she had stood naked beside the queen on the shore of the Barb.

On this occasion, however, Queen Fornis was less alarming. Indeed, not only her appearance but her whole manner was altogether different. There was nothing in the least imperious or daunting in the way she came up to Maia, took her by the hand and, smiling, drew her down to sit beside her on the couch.

Her hair, now gathered behind her head, like any village girl's, with a plain green ribbon, fell nearly to her waist, flaring out on either side almost like a cloak. She wore no jewels, the lacquer was gone from her nails and she was barefooted. Her thin, white surcoat, belted with a green cord and buttoning down the front, was stitched from neck to hem with a pattern of flying dragons in minute, brilliantly-colored beads.

Neither the material itself nor the beads were of any great value. All lay in the workmanship, which must have taken months to complete.

"Well, Maia," she said, smiling and speaking as to a guest, "you're looking much better now; and feeling better, too, I hope. Has Ashaktis been looking after you properly? I always seem to meet you when you've been in the water, don't I? I didn't think that tunic thing you've been wearing was going to be much more use, so I've brought you a new robe. Are you ready to put it on?" Pulling aside the towel, she rubbed her hand up and down Maia's back from neck to thighs. "Oh, yes, you're quite dry enough. And you must be starving for some supper. As soon as you're ready we'll go and eat."

Thereupon she clapped her hands and two chubby little boys, about nine or ten years old, came in through the curtains, carrying between them a plain but very soft and finely-woven woolen robe of pale blue. Both children were exceptionally beautiful, with long hair falling over their bare shoulders, white, even teeth and the fair skin and blue eyes of Yeldashay. On their heads were crowns of scented, white tiare blossom, but otherwise they were naked.

"Aren't they lovely?" said the queen, as the two children, without a trace of self-consciousness, stood beside Maia and held up the robe for her to put on. "I only bought them a few weeks ago, but they're learning well. What is it you need—" seeing Maia glancing round the room—"a comb?"

"Well, yes, esta-säiyett—er—that's to say, if it's no trouble," faltered Maia.

"I'll do it for you, if you like," said the Queen, taking a heavy, carved comb which one of the little boys, without being told, at once brought to her from the shelved recess. "What beautiful hair! Is it your father's or your mother's?"

Maia, who was beginning to feel more relaxed, laughed. "Don't know, really, esta-säiyett. Reckon it's mine!"

"You needn't call me 'esta-säiyett' now," said Fornis, stroking her hair as she combed it. "What am I called, Shakti?"

Ashaktis smiled. "Folda. But Maia won't know what that means."

"What does it mean, Maia; do you know?"

"No, I don't, esta-sai—I mean, Folda."

"It's old Urtan for a hunting-knife. But your hair," she went on, working out a wet tangle with the comb.

"You mean you've never had to curl it; not even with all that swimming in Lake Serrelind?"

"But did I ever tell you about swimming in the lake?" said Maia, confused. She looked up into the green eyes and, as the queen's lips, prompting her, pouted to shape the word, added "Folda."

"No, you didn't," replied the queen, "but you told me you came from Serrelind, and where else would you have learned to dive and swim like that? Tikki, my sweetheart," she called to one of the little boys, "where are the nuts?" In an instant the child was beside them, offering a silver basin of serrardoes mixed with flakes of a gingery spice.

Form's, putting one arm round him, nibbled his bare neck and shoulders. "M'mm! Keep still!" Then again to Maia, "Tell me about Lake Serrelind! I've never been in Tonilda, you know."

Diffidently at first, but then with increasing confidence and freedom, Maia found herself talking about her childhood in the hovel; of the increasing burden, as she grew older, of being the eldest of four, and of how she used to escape, in summer, to the falls and the solitude of the deep water.

"Never had a stitch on, sometimes, half the day. It was the only place, you see, where I could be sure of being left alone."

"A naiad! And how did you come from that to Bekla?" asked Fornis, laying aside the comb and again fondling the little boy as he came up to take it away.

Maia, who had been chattering happily enough, hesitated and fell silent. The queen must know very well that she had come into the possession of Lalloc, who had sold her to Sencho. About this, and of her journey from Puhra to Bekla, she was perfectly ready to talk. What she did not want to speak about was her seduction by Tharrin and how her own mother had sold her to the slavers. For the first time she found herself wondering whether Morca might later have come to feel sorry for what she had done.

Fornis perceived her reluctance. "Sad story? They always are. I shouldn't have asked. Never mind; wouldn't want to go back, would you?" She stood up. "I've kept you talking too long, but I was so fascinated by what you were telling me. You can go on over supper. There'll be no one except you and me and Shakti here, so you can feel quite free."

The gallery, Maia now realized, as they strolled along it, with Ashaktis and the little boys following, ran entirely round the interior wall of the building, which was a hollow square. They were two floors up.

Although darkness had now fallen, she could make out below, through the trellised arcading, a garden courtyard with a carved, central fountain-basin. There was a smell of jasmine, and great moths were flitting here and there. The roosting mynahs had settled down: she could see them in the dark—little groups of darker black—crowded together under the opposite cornice.

"The whole of this upper story's private, you see," said Fornis, as they turned a corner of the gallery.

"No one ever comes up here except my personal people." She turned into a doorway. "This is my supper-room. I designed the decorations myself; it's in traditional Palteshi style—to re-mind me of home, you know."

Maia, however, although she had been virtually asked to do so, was too much startled to admire the room, for standing just inside the doorway, in the attitude of a dignified, respectful upper servant, was none other than Zuno, dressed in a gold livery embroidered across the breast with a leopard in silver thread. His hair was trimmed and curled in imitation of the style in vogue among Elvair-ka-Virrion and his friends, and in one hand he was holding a white wand almost as tall as himself. Upon the queen's entry he bowed, so that Maia recognized him a moment before he, returning to the upright, recognized her. With this advantage, she had just time to compose her features, meet his eye gravely and enjoy his startled though instantly-con-trolled reaction.

"Everything in order, Zuno?" asked the queen, looking round the tranquil, candle-lit room.

Zuno bowed again.

It plainly was. The honey-colored paneling of the little hall, which measured about twenty-five feet by fifteen, had been polished with pine-scented beeswax, so that the walls and floor, gleaming gently in the candlelight, gave off a light, resinous aroma. A single step of smooth slate, banded cream and gray, surrounded the sunk rectangle of the central floor, in the middle of which stood the flower-strewn supper-table. Beside this were two couches, spread with as many cushions as even Sencho could have wished. A charcoal brazier glowed in one corner of the room and near it stood a third, slightly older boy, as handsome as the queen's two pages now taking up their places to wait at table. Several copper vessels were standing on the charcoal, and from these came a mixture of delightful odors which made Maia realize how hungry she was.

"Come here, Vorri," said the queen, calling the lad over from beside the brazier. "M'm, getting a nice, big boy now, aren't you? Almost too big to be hanging round the Sacred Queen. I shall have to start thinking what I'm going to do with you; but just now you can pour me some wine."

"Oh, esta-säiyett," he answered, with a charming, rather coltish manner, somewhere between the studied deference of Zuno and the artless grace of the little boys, "I daren't leave the cooking, or your savory pancakes will be spoiled."

"Why, are you cooking the supper, then?" asked Fornis, surprised.

"No, esta-säiyett," interposed Zuno, again inclining gracefully from the waist ("He don't miss any chance o' doin' that," thought Maia), "the dinner itself—the trout and the boar—are being prepared in the kitchens, as usual, and the children will go down for them. But I thought the soup and the crayfish pancakes would be better if they were prepared here."

"Excellent!" said the queen, motioning Maia to one of the couches and settling herself on the other. "Then pour the wine yourself, Zuno. And you'd better get back to your pancakes, Vorri. Oh, you're like a little pancake yourself, aren't you? M'm, take care I don't eat you by mistake!"

To Maia the dinner was exquisitely enjoyable, as much for the comfort and surroundings as for the food.

Nor was conversation any problem, for she had nothing to do but lie basking in the queen's favor.

Fascinated by the charm of this extraordinary woman, who only a few hours before had Struck the fear of Cran into her, she no longer felt in the least out of her depth or nervous of her ability to reciprocate.

Fornis, with no trace of condescension, put her entirely at her ease. They might almost, she thought, have been two young women back in Meerzat, having a bit of gossip. In her pleasure and excitement, one detail escaped her notice. Ashaktis, sitting on a stool beside Fornis's couch and from time to time joining smoothly in the talk, tasted everything the queen ate before serving her.

Although Maia stuffed herself heartily (which clearly pleased the queen), she was careful not to drink more than a little of the excellent wine. "Never do 'f I was to get tipsy," she thought. "That'd be a right old mess, that would, on top of a bit of luck like this."

As the courses, carried up from below, succeeded one another and sheer appetite began to slacken, she became, as she had at Sarget's party, more aware of the elegance and style of her surroundings.

Although nothing could have been called ostentatious, no one suddenly set down in it by magic (which was just about what had happened to her, she reflected) would have had the least difficulty in at once perceiving this to be the dining-hall of a wealthy aristocrat. It resembled, she thought, one of Sencho's rooms to about the same extent as her pleasure with Elvair-ka-Virrion had resembled the kind of thing Sencho used to require of her. The truth, she now realized, was that whatever the future might hold in store, she was glad to think she had done with Sencho.

"Barla, little sweetheart," said Fornis at length, "do you think you could go down all by yourself to the kitchens and bring up the syllabubs? Tell them to give you another bowl of serrardoes, too, and some lipsica. Have you ever tasted lipsica?" she added to Maia, as the little boy, naked as he was, took up a silver tray and went out of the room. "It's made of fermented peaches. Ikat's the only place where they know how to make it."

"No, I haven't," said Maia. "That's something I don't think even the High Counselor went in for—not while I was with him, any road."

"What sort of things did he go in for?" As she spoke, Fornis got up, walked round the table and seated herself beside Maia.

"Well, there was one drink he particularly liked as was made of a mixture of pears and white grapes," answered Maia. She giggled. "Sometimes I had to give it to him in a spoon; that's when he'd got too full up to move, you know-—"

"I didn't mean his drinks," said Fornis. Maia, leaning back on the cushions and looking up at her, now saw again the sorceress who had gazed up through the moonlit leaves of the zoan tree. "You did other things for him as well, didn't you?"

Maia's answering smile was complicit. "Oh, ah! All sorts of funny things."

"Tell me. Come on, tell me!"

Maia, disconcerted now, looked down, picking at the gold tassel of one of the cushions.

"The candles make it rather hot in here, don't they?" said Fornis. "Let's go outside and get some fresh air."

The moon had risen, throwing, through the trellised arcading, criss-cross patterns of light over the tiled floor of the gallery. Scents of tiare and lenkista filled the cool, shadowy air. Without the least hesitation or uncertainty Maia took the Sacred Queen of Airtha in her arms and kissed her again and again. Together with gratitude for her release, she felt full of a passionate delight both in her surroundings and her good fortune. To her surprise, she realized that she genuinely desired the queen, who was responding to her with a kind of obeisant but passionate self-surrender, leaning backwards with closed eyes.

"Bite me, Maia! Harder! Harder!"

Beyond the rooftops an owl called somewhere in the trees, and the sound, agonizingly, brought back Occula to Maia's mind. At all costs she must find a way to intercede for Occula. Yet if she were to confide in the queen, might not the queen become jealous? How soon could she safely introduce the subject? She considered, even in the act of complying with the lithe, panting woman in her arms; and answered herself, sensibly enough, "After she's had what she wants."

"What sort of things did you do for Sencho, then?" whispered Fornis, releasing her. "Did you ever have to punish him?"

"Punish him, Folda?" Maia was puzzled. "How d'you mean?"

At this moment there broke out from below a sudden clamor; a crash and clatter of something falling was followed by the terrified screaming of a child, the growling and snarling of some fierce animal, stumbling feet and cries of alarm. Zuno came darting out of the supper-room, leaving the door open behind him, ran to the stairhead and vanished down the stairs.

Without the least appearance of haste or discomposure Fornis nevertheless moved very swiftly. She seemed not to run, yet Maia found herself running to keep up with her. When the noise broke out they had been some little way along the gallery, the supper-room lying between them and the stairhead.

Pausing an instant at the open door to call to Ashaktis and the two boys, "Stay where you are!", Fornis shut it and then, with a kind of rapid gliding, descended the stairs two at a time.

The staircase consisted of two short flights running one way and the other, with a small landing halfway down. As Fornis and Maia reached this and turned, they saw below them, at the foot of the stairs, a group of four or five house-slaves pointing and gabbling as they stared at something out of sight.

Becoming aware of the queen, they fell silent.

"Get out of the way!" said Fornis. Passing through them, she turned into the corridor, followed by Maia.

The little boy Barla was lying on his back on the floor. Beside him was his silver tray and the wreckage of the syllabubs and other delicacies which he had been carrying. He had stopped screaming, but was beating feebly with his hands at an enormous hound, which had him by the throat. Two youths were shouting at the hound and trying, quite ineffectively, to make it let go. One was holding a chain from which dangled a broken leather collar. The other kept repeating hysterically "It'll kill the boy! It'll kill him, for Cran's sake!"

Fornis, having paused a moment to take in the situation, went unhesitatingly up to the hound and seized it by the back of the neck. After a few moments, however, since it had no collar and she could not get a purchase, she let go and took up a stance astride it, facing its head. Then she bent forward, gripped its front legs and pulled it bodily upwards, her bare hands on either side of its jaws. Since the hound, however, did not release the child's throat, the upper part of his body was also lifted, his head hanging backwards and his long hair brushing the floor. Fornis, still holding the beast's legs and speaking to it in a low, firm voice, struck the side of its head two or three times with her elbow, whereupon it loosed its hold and the little boy fell back, to be instantly dragged clear by one of the youths.

"Chain!" said Fornis, holding out one hand and snapping her fingers without looking round. The other youth put the chain into her hand. Having secured one end round the dog's neck, she mutely held out the other to be taken from her. Then she straightened up and looked about her.

"Is the child much hurt?"

"No, Cran be praised, esta-säiyett," replied the first youth, who was holding the little boy in his arms.

"Nothing serious, as far as I can see. But it—"

"Then put him to bed. And as for you," she said, turning to the other youth, "what the hell do you suppose you were doing? You're in charge of the dog, aren't you?"

"Esta-säiyett, I was patrolling the house as usual with the dog on its chain. When it saw the little boy it turned savage. Those children very seldom leave the top floor, you see, so it doesn't know them. I did my best to hold it, but it broke its collar and got the child down."

"And why did it break its collar? Isn't that part of your business, to see that the collar's sound?" The youth made no reply and she slapped him hard across the face. "Why should I have to drag your damned dog off my page with my own hands? You'll get a good whipping for this. Well," she said, turning sharply round upon the watching house-slaves, "why are you all standing there like a pack of fools? Clear this mess up, and then get back where you belong! And where have you been?" she added, as Zuno appeared at the far end of the corridor, followed by a man wearing a leather coat and knee-boots.

"Esta-säiyett, I went to fetch the kennel-man."

"And a damned lot of use that would have been by this time!" said Fornis. With this she took Maia's arm and led her back up the staircase.

"You can come with me tomorrow and watch him whipped, if you like. This man I've got now does it really splendidly."

Maia, who was feeling a good deal shaken, made no reply. The queen turned towards her with shining eyes.

"Would you like to whip me? You would, wouldn't you?"

Without waiting for an answer she called through the door of the supper-room, "Shakti! Send the boys! We're going to bed!"

"You need them, do you, to see to the lamps and that?" asked Maia. "Only I can easy do that, and we can be alone."

"Oh, no, Maia," replied Fornis, putting her arm round her as they walked together down the moonlit gallery. "I don't need them for the lamps! They're going to stay with us all night."

The mynahs were moving and rustling outside the windows, uttering their liquid whistles in response to the first light. On cushions strewn upon the floor the little boys lay sleeping as only children sleep—with the appearance of having been absorbed into a higher state of existence, a better world where they abide perfect as summer leaves or pebbles in a clear brook. And a right old job it'd be to wake them and all, thought Maia enviously, recalling how often she had had to shake and pummel Kelsi and Nala out of bed in the mornings.

Fornis, sprawled beside her, stirred and muttered a few words in her sleep. "They'll never taste it, Shakti." She was no sort of sleeper, thought Maia; a kind of intruder or fugitive in that country which the little boys entered as of right. She had been in and out of sleep all night, dragging Maia behind her like a beast on a rope.

Ah, and some right old tricks they'd been up to an' all, thought Maia glumly; and none of them had really worked. To her it had been as though Fornis were seeking to satisfy hunger with hay, flowers, reeds—anything but food. Short though her amatory career had been, Maia could tell when mutual accord was present and when it was not. Some people, like Sencho, were incapable of it anyway and one therefore left it out of account when dealing with them. But Fornis, lacking it, was like a bird with an injured wing; flying lopsided for a spell; alighting perforce, yet almost at once impelled to try to fly once more. All this Maia knew well enough because she had felt it no less in herself. They just hadn't hit it off.

Her racking anxiety for Occula might have had something to do with it, but apart from that she knew that what Fornis wanted she, Maia, didn't like—to say the least—and was unable to give. It was a more than disappointing outlook for a girl in her situation.

Fornis rolled over, clutching at Maia in her sleep, but then started, as though frightened at finding another's body in her arms. She struggled a second and opened her eyes, staring into Maia's for some moments before recognizing her. Maia kissed her and stroked her shoulders.

"Is it morning?" asked Fomis.

"Just about."

"O Cran and Airtha! Did you sleep?"

Maia, shaking her head, could not suppress her chagrin. "You always that restless?"

Fornis smiled. "Some people I've slept with have said I chased them up and down the bed. I hate sleep, anyway: it's a waste of time."

She got up, naked as she was ("and she's all they say, no danger," thought Maia), walked across to the window, stepping over the sleeping children, and opened one of the shutters. The first light glinted on her hair and the creamy skin of her shoulders.

"You're right, it's dawn." She shivered a moment. "Chilly, too."

Once again Maia set herself, as convincingly as she could, to simulate eagerness and renewed appetite.

"Come back to bed, Folda." She opened her arms. "Come here and kiss me."

The queen blew out the lamp, lay down beside Maia and gazed into her face, cupping it between her hands.

"I took a fancy to you that night by the Barb because you're so pretty and beautifully made. I dare say there's not a prettier girl in the empire."

Maia, sensing more to come, made no reply.

"But now I'll tell you something, my child," said Fornis, "seeing that I've been at it for years. If two people like us fancy each other for their looks but aren't actually in love, it only works if they like the same things. You're as pretty as a lily in a pool, but you don't come with me, do you, to where I want to go?"

Still Maia said nothing.

"Tickle, tickle," went on Fornis, "anyone can do that. The little boys can do it: but that's not what I wanted from you. The truth is, my nasty tastes Simply aren't yours, are they, however hard you try? In fact, they disgust you— No!" (holding up a hand) "you needn't try to tell me they don't."

She flicked one of Maia's nipples with her fingernail, hard enough to hurt.

"I thought Sencho would have turned you into a real, depraved little beast. From what you said to me, I believe you yourself even thought he had. So let me tell you, dear, that whatever you may have thought, he hasn't. I am depraved and I know. You're not even cruel, are you? Cran only knows how or why, but you've remained naturally decent." (She uttered the word contemptuously.) "One day it'll catch up with you, I expect—if you live that long. You'll end up dull as a cow in a field."

Maia spoke at last. "I done my best, Folda."

"Oh, I know: but I'm talking about natural inclination— and you haven't got it."

"Well, not for—" Maia hesitated. "No."

There was a pause. "As a rule," said Fornis at length, "when anyone's been with me like this, and I find they don't suit me, I get rid of them for good."

Maia turned cold: she felt her bowels loosen. "You've— you've done that?"

"Oh, yes!" replied Fornis lightly. "It would never do, you see, to have people around who could repeat scandal about the Sacred Queen. So one way or another they have to disappear. That's part of the fun, actually. Now and then it might be Zeray, but sometimes even Zeray isn't far enough."

Maia clutched at her, sobbing. "Oh, esta-säiyett, please! I didn't mean—"

"Quiet!" said Fornis quickly. "You'll wake the boys. But I've decided not to put you out of the way, Maia, because of this plan that Kembri's got for you: and if you and he think I don't know what it's all about, you must be even bigger fools than I took you for. I agree with him that if only you can bring it off, it could be very valuable. In my opinion Bayub-Otal's a most dangerous man; and since he's taken this fancy to you—which is perfectly understandable—you're probably the only person who can bring it off. I hope you do."

"Oh, Folda—thank you—thank you! I'm. sorry—I'm ever so sorry I couldn't—"

"You think it's blasphemy, don't you?" flashed the queen suddenly, gripping her upper arms and digging her nails in so hard that Maia cried out.

"I never said so!"

"No, but you were thinking it. 'What am I doing, polluting the Sacred Queen?' That's what you were thinking."

Since the truth was that Maia had begun thinking exactly this from the moment when she realized that she and the queen were not sensually at one, she could find no reply. As she hesitated, the child Tikki stirred in his sleep, and this distracted Fornis, who turned her head to look at him.

It was at this instant that Maia was seized with a sudden, desperate inspiration. There was no time to consider it, the idea that had leapt into her mind. She knew only that it offered a chance to save Occula from torture.

"Folda, please don't be angry. You see, I can still do you a very good turn—better 'n what you can imagine. Now that I've been with you and realized what you like, I know someone who'd suit you right down to the ground— someone as might 'a been made for you."

Fornis laughed. "Maia, you're simple, aren't you? I know you mean well, but even I can't reach out and help myself to other people's property just as I've a mind to. Some other girl you know in someone's house, is it? I can't go taking any slave-girl in the city. Apart from anything else, I have to be very discreet about my pleasures. That's why I have the little boys."

"I know all that, Folda: but as it happens, this girl's your own property. She's down in the temple of Cran at this minute. It's my friend, Occula. She never killed Sencho, I can promise you that. She didn't know anything about it. Did, she'd 'a told me."

"You mean the black girl who was with Sencho that night?"

"Yes, esta-säiyett. Occula—she's exactly what you want, believe me."

"How very interesting!" said Fornis. "What makes you so sure?"

"Because we was months together at Sencho's and I know what she likes: her tastes an' that."

"I see." Fornis paused. "Well—and yet you say she didn't kill him?"

"I know it, esta-säiyett."

"What a pity!" said Fornis unexpectedly. "Sencho'd lived too long. He wasn't useful to us anymore. Perhaps I killed him, did I?" She laughed again. "No, I didn't, as it happens; but I rather wish I had. Well, we'd better start thinking what we're going to do, hadn't we? I'll write to the chief priest under my personal seal, saying that I've decided after all that you're available to be used as Kembri wishes, but he's to send me Occula instead. Then Shakti can take you down to the temple this morning and bring Occula back with her." She paused. "But mind this, Maia, and make very sure you don't forget it! One word about last night to anyone at all, and that gorgeous body of yours will be hanging upside-down by the road for the flies to blow. Have you got that? Now let's go and bathe, and if that Deelguy girl hasn't got the water hot I'll have her whipped as well as the dog-boy."