him to smell, at the same time pushing towards Maia a tubular, silver vessel with a bulbous base and pointing towards the foot of the couch. Maia, uncomprehending, stood looking uncertainly at the vessel, which was engraved all round with a stylized pattern of chubby little boys making water on each other's buttocks. Meris, fuming with impatience, had to tell her what to do. Thrusting her trembling hands under the gold-embroidered cloth, she groped among the folds of sweating fat and at length, having achieved what was required of her, felt the High Counselor respond with shuddering relief to the sensation of the cool rim. A household slave, attracting her attention with a touch on the elbow, passed her a clean cloth for the conclusion of her task, took the vessel from her, covered it with a towel and carried it away.
She had already turned to go back to her stool when Meris, snapping her fingers to attract her attention, picked up one of the bowls filled with perfumed oil. Thereupon she nodded to Maia to stand opposite her on the other side of the couch and draw back the cloth to bare the High Counselor's belly. As the Belishban girl held the bowl towards her, Maia understood that she was to rub her master with the oil.
After some moments, however, Sencho began to stir and shake his head in irritation. Meris, giving the bowl to Maia, herself undertook the task of rubbing, working smoothly with her finger-tips as the High Counselor relaxed pleasurably under her more practiced ministrations.
"What does it do?" whispered Maia.
"Helps his belly to distend and hold still more," answered Meris. "Now wipe off what's left with that towel there-no, gently, Maia!-and put some fresh cushions that side while I help him to turn over."
Sencho, however, now wished to be supported into a half-sitting posture, and in this position gave instructions to a slave who had brought to the couch a small carving-table. Maia supposed that he would carve and then retire, but instead the High Counselor ordered him to cut up all the meat on the board-fowls, pork, beef and venison- and then to remain standing by the couch while he ate, Meris holding at his elbow a tray of sauces and vegetables.
During the next half-hour several guests, well aware of the power and wealth of the High Counselor, left their places below and made their way up to the dais to speak
a few words to Sencho and-insofar as it was possible to pierce his preoccupation-ingratiate themselves. Receiving little response some of these, to keep themselves in countenance, began chatting with the girls and paying them compliments. Maia, praised and flattered by one man after another-and even by two or three of the shearnas, who were rather taken with her child-like beauty and ingenuous replies-began to feel admiration for her master and, for the first time, pride in belonging to a man whom rich nobles went out of their way to propitiate and whom she had seen, with her own eyes, consume more rich food than her entire family could have eaten in a week, as well as having drunk over half a gallon of wine.
"Will he be sick?" she whispered to Meris, seeing the Belishban girl bend down for a pottery basin as Sencho, gulping the last of the meat, lay back, clutching his belly, over which he could barely clasp his hands.
"The High Counselor very seldom cares to vomit," replied Meris in a matter-of-fact tone, as though Maia had asked her whether he liked to sleep after dinner. "If he needs to he'll tell you." Thereupon she began picking fragments of meat and vegetables out of the cushions and putting them in the basin, which she handed to a slave to be removed.
A second interlude had now begun. The windows were again opened for a time, but fewer guests left the hall, since most felt little inclination-or, indeed, ability-to move from where they lay. Ten or twelve slaves carried round silver vessels like that used by Sencho, while others followed with incense-burning censers and aspergills for sprinkling rose-water. Here and there men had already fallen asleep, and one or two of these, whom their girls knew from experience were unlikely to revive for some hours, were carried out, lying on their couches.
After about half an hour eating was resumed, but now the intensity of greed was succeeded by a kind of frivolous toying with sugared delicacies and sweet things. The formal seating broke up. Many of the guests formed small groups, joining friends at other tables or gathering about some shearna whom they admired. Round the flat-topped, marble parapet of the pool the servants placed trays of little cakes, syllabubs, custards, fruit, cream pancakes, jellies, junkets, caramels and the like. To these the slave-girls went and helped themselves, bringing back to their masters
whatever they fancied. Meanwhile Durakkon and Kembri left the dais and began to wander among the company, making themselves agreeable and receiving congratulations and praise.
Sencho, having sent Meris to fetch a bowl of peaches in sweet wine, allowed her to feed him for a time, but then became petulant, pushing the bowl aside and sending her back several times for other delicacies, none of which served to revive the all-absorbing ardor of greed which had engrossed him hitherto. Having rinsed his mouth and called for fresh cushions, he ordered Meris once more to pull the cloth off his body in order that he might drowse at greater ease; for torpor and indolence, following upon satiety, formed a very real and conscious part of the High Counselor's pleasure. Now that he was fully glutted, to lie naked in the presence of nobles and free women who thought it more prudent to hide whatever distaste they might feel- or who might even feel admiration-afforded him peculiar satisfaction; him who had once begged for scraps outside a merchant's back door and subsequently, knowing what was good for him, pretended to enjoy gratifying that merchant and his greasy, foul-breathed friends. He thrust a hand under Meris's skirt but then, reflecting that perhaps even he had better, in accordance with custom, wait until after the kura, closed his eyes and in a minute or two had fallen asleep.
Maia, relieved to have carried out her duties so far without any serious blunder, felt free to relax. Meris, she noticed, seemed now to have become possessed by a kind of panting animation rand excitement. The detached professionalism with which she had concentrated on ministering to Sencho had been replaced by a quick-glancing alertness and response to everyone around them. She sat smiling boldly at each guest who strolled past; and when a tall young man, wearing the Fortress cognizance of Paltesh, offered her his goblet, she almost snatched it from him, drained it dry, flung her arms round his neck and kissed him warmly on the lips. Emboldened by this example, Maia called a passing slave-boy and asked him to bring her some more wine. It was of beautiful quality, cool and deliriously refreshing-"Wonder what Tharrin'd say to this?" she thought-and as it mounted to her head she stood up, walked over to one side of the dais and stood
looking out over the lamp-lit hall, from the center of which the rippling pool glittered up at her like an open eye.
The scent of jasmine and lilies was now stronger still on the warmed air. On impulse she picked up a crown of tiare blossom, four inches deep, which one of Kembri's guests had left lying on the table, and placed it on her own head. Mingled with the perfumes Ming the hall were smells of wine, of lamps, of the sweating slaves and the resinous polish in the warmed panelling, and beyond all these the fresh, cool smell of the rain outside-that same rain which she knew was falling, mile after mile, across the solitude of Lake Serrelind. "Only I'm not there now, see?" she remarked happily to a passing noble with a slim, graceful shearna on his arm. The girl glared haughtily at her, but the young man, obviously in a mood to be delighted by everything and especially by such a pretty lass, replied "Well, wherever it is, I should think you soon will be, if you go on looking like that," and gave her hand a quick squeeze before passing on.