Suddenly she saw that the door of her house was standing wide open. Lamplight shone from within. She stopped- she was about forty yards away-but there was nothing to be heard. As she stared, puzzled, at the open doorway, she began to make out beyond it signs of confusion and disorder. A big, painted vase which had had its place in the porch was fallen and smashed to fragments, and a long, white splinter was projecting from the woodwork of the

inner door. Near it, on the floor, she could glimpse something which looked like a bundle of old clothes tossed down all anyhow.

What could this mean? Robbers? Some violence between Randronoth and Eud-Ecachlon, informed of his presence in her house? She approached the door cautiously, but there was nothing more to be seen, and still she could not hear a sound.

Suddenly, at the very foot of the steps, she stopped short with a scream. What had looked like old clothes on the floor of the porch was in fact the dead body of Jarvil. His eyes were fixed, his teeth clenched and the hilt of a knife, which one of his hands was clutching, protruded from his chest.

To Maia's enormous credit her first thought was for Ogma. Sickened and terrified though she was, she did not run away, and hesitated for no more than a moment as she listened once more for any sound from within the house. There was none. As quietly as she could she entered the porch, stepped over the body and opened the inner door into the entrance hall.

Here, as was customary of an evening, three or four lamps were burning. She looked about her in the silence, wondering whether or not to call out to Ogma. Jarvil, she remembered, used to keep a club in his lodge by the door. She went and got it, and with this in one hand stole up to the open door of the parlor.

The room was frighteningly devastated. One of the silken wall-hangings had been ripped down.Both the small tables lay overturned and broken, and the ornaments and artifacts from them were scattered over the floor. A jug and two goblets were lying in a pool of spilt wine. The silver mirror, too, had fallen from the wall: as she moved, it caught the lamplight, flashing a moment in her eyes. Two of the cushions on the big couch had burst open, and their flock stuffing was strewn across the room.

Maia, however, noticed little or nothing of this in detail, for there was worse to be seen. On the far side of the room, in the shadow beyond the lamplight, were stretched the bodies of Randronoth's two soldiers. A dark, glistening expanse of blood, half-dried, covered the tiles around them. One had had time to draw his sword, which lay beside him-a typical Gelt short-sword, the broad blade tapering to a point. The other must simply have been trying to

escape: he was stretched prone, one arm extended, the hand apparently dragged or fallen from the latch of the door leading into the garden. His dead face was turned towards her.

She ran out quickly into the hall but then, turning faint, stood leaning dizzily against the newel-post at the foot of the staircase.

Now, after some moments, she could indeed hear a noise-a kind of low, suppressed whimpering and moaning from upstairs. The voice was Ogma's. She listened intently, but could hear no one else. She called out, "Ogma! It's Maia!"

The whimpering stopped on the instant, but there was no reply. She called again, "Can you hear me?" This time, after a pause, Ogma's voice answered faintly, "Miss Maia?"

"I'm in the hall: can you come down?"

"I'm-I'm hurt, miss," replied Ogma in a weak, tremulous voice.

Maia ran upstairs. Lamplight was shining from her bedroom and she went in. The first thing she saw was the body of Randronoth, dressed in nothing but a pair of breeches, lying across her bed. It was the most appalling sight imaginable. His throat had been cut-the head, indeed, almost severed-while across his chest and stomach were three or more ragged, gaping stab-wounds. Coverlet, sheets, pillows-all were drenched in blood.

Ogma was half-lying near the door, her back against the wall. She was bleeding from eight or nine cuts, each about two inches long, in her shoulders and upper arms. In one hand she held a blood-stained towel, with which she was weakly dabbing at these wounds.

"Oh, Miss Maia," she cried faintly, "I'm that bad!"

Maia knelt, raised the girl to her feet and then, herself desperate to get out of the room and away from the horror on the bed, supported her to the bathroom. Here she set about washing her cuts and binding them up. Although she was scarcely capable of coherent thought, the wounds nonetheless struck her as odd; all were of more or less the same length and depth-almost like surgical incisions-as though inflicted deliberately and, as it were, at leisure. Little as she knew about wounds, these seemed hardly of a kind likely to be inflicted by violent men in an attack.

The cold water made Ogma flinch and cry out, but after

a while, when Maia had bandaged her as best she could, she began to recover herself a little.

"There isn't-there isn't anyone else in the house now, miss, is there?" she faltered.

"Poor JarviFs dead," replied Maia. "And so are the two soldiers."

"Then they must have gone, miss." Ogma stood up hesitantly, clutching Maia's arm.

"You'd be the better for some djebbah," said Maia. "Come downstairs with me." It was clear to her now that Ogma, though badly shocked, was able to walk and in no danger of bleeding to death.

Together they went down to the kitchen. The fire was still in: Mai put on more wood. It did not occur to either of them to leave the house or run away. Maia, indeed, was beyond all deliberation and hardly knew what she was doing. She searched through two or three cupboards for the djebbah before catching sight of it in full view on an open shelf. The bite of the liquor cleared her head and partly pulled her round. She poured some for Ogma and made her sip it until it was all gone. The girl still sobbed and whimpered, fingering her bound-up cuts. Once, when a wood-knot exploded in the fire, she leapt up with a cry of fear.

Maia fetched a stool, sat down facing her and took her hands.

"Now; tell me what happened, Ogma." There was no pause in the girl's weeping and Maia shook her gently. "Come on, dear, pull yourself together! You must tell me!"

"Oh, Miss Maia-Lord Randronoth-" She stopped.

"What about him? Come on, Ogma, tell me!"

"Well, I'd just lit the lamps, miss, and put them round the house like I always do, when he came in from the garden, dressed just in his breeches. He seemed-oh, ever so angry and put out, like. So I asked him were you coming in to supper now, but he never answered me: he just went up to your bedroom and shut the door. So then I didn't know what to do, miss, and I went down the garden to look for you, but I couldn't find you: just your clothes, like, laying on the ground. I didn't know what to think. I was frightened."

Ogma stopped as though she had no more to say. She was clearly still in a state of shock, ready to retreat into stupor from her own recollections. Maia shook her again.

"Ogma! You can't go to sleep now? Go on!"

Ogma rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. "When I came back-when I came back into the house, miss, the soldiers-the soldiers asked where you were and I said I didn't know. So then they said Lord Randronoth had told them to watch from the roof and wake him when the soldiers came-"

"The Lapanese soldiers, you mean? Count Seekron?"

"I don't know, miss. They didn't say-just 'the soldiers'. But then they said, 'We'll have a drink first. Bring us some wine in the parlor,' they said. Well, I knew that was wrong, Miss Maia, but I was frightened of them, you see, and I didn't know where you were or when you was coming back, like, so I did what they told me. I'm sorry, miss-"