A few moments later a cheer went up as it became clear that Otavis's total number of cushions could not now be beaten. The few remaining to make up the fifty were flung into the embrasure and two girls, climbing up, spread them evenly over the sill. As they slid down again a brief silence fell. Then into the pool of lamplight stepped the strikingly beautiful girl in the pale-gray robe embroidered with corn-sheaves, whom Maia had noticed on the staircase. She was smiling, but Maia could see tears glistening in her eyes and

it was plain that she was half-overcome with excitement and delight. Amidst cries of acclamation and a hammering of goblets she raised her arms to the company, placed both hands on the window-sill and vaulted up into it as lightly as a leaf, turning, as she did so, to sit facing the hall. In this position, whUe the music became louder and its rhythm more marked and insistent, she slowly and deliberately loosened her robe at the throat and, drawing up her shoulders in a kind of smooth, graceful shrug, caused it to subside like gray foam about her, until she was sitting naked to the thighs. Then, as she held out one slim foot, a broad-shouldered young man, clad only in a pair of leather breeches, came forward, drew off her sandals and laid them side by side on the floor.

"Spelta-Narthe!" whispered Meris. "I wondered who she'd have lined up."

"Who's he?" asked Maia.

"Well, he is a slave-strictly speaking-but a very privileged and senior one. He's Elvair-ka-Virrion's huntsman. He's well-known to be able to do it anywhere. He's been invited into quite a few Leopard ladies' beds, so they say."

Otavis, now completely naked and so beautiful that the sight drew fresh murmurs of admiration from every man in the hall, rose slowly to her feet, stepping out of the tumble of gauze about her ankles and letting it fall to the floor. Then, laughing as she bent down and gave him her hand, she helped her partner up into the embrasure and, kneeling before him in the posture with which a kura customarily began, swiftly and deftly made him as naked as herself.

Ever since Occula had told her what a kura was, Maia had had at the back of her mind a feeling of distaste and aversion. She had, she now realized, unconsciously been imagining other people watching herself and Tharrin forced against their will to exhibit that which they would have wished to keep private between themselves. What she saw now, however, was altogether different in mood. The beauty and her partner, who knew very well what they were doing and were obviously proud of it, went about their business with a light-hearted, jocund gaiety and entire lack of shame which, she realized after a minute or two, had already brought to her own lips a smile of complicit enjoyment. This outrageous behavior, pursued with a kind of sportive warmth which involved and was meant to involve the

watchers, was marked by the one quality essential to prevent it from being sordid or disgusting: it was frivolously playful. The tone of the love-making was very light, the emphasis all on provocation, amusement and ingenuity rather than on any pretended depth of passion which, by being plainly insincere, would have struck a false note. "This is not passion," the participants seemed to be saying. "This is sport-bird-song to awaken you in the garden of pleasure." Maia's response was unforced and spontaneous. Indeed, at one point, when Otavis, facing the company and leaning back in her partner's arms as she sat astride his lap, looked down for a moment, feigning shocked astonishment, and then once more opened her arms to the onlookers with a dazzling smile, as though delighted to find herself thus flagrantly displayed, Maia felt so deeply excited that she could only stand gazing silently amid the general laughter and acclamation.

After some six or seven minutes it became clear that most of the watchers no longer needed any further stimulation or example, even of so expert and charming a nature. In the dim light, men lay in the arms of their girls, who openly caressed them in front of others similarly engaged and too much preoccupied to pay heed. From all sides came cries of tension and excitement, with here and there a quick squeal of protest or half-hearted remonstra-tion. Otavis and her huntsman, their task complete, slipped down unnoticed from the window embrasure, picked up their clothes and stole away together.

As the sport intensified, Meris sprang suddenly to her feet.

"Baste it!" she cried, turning to Maia and speaking with such fury that Maia jumped, supposing for a moment that she must have done something wrong. "What are we sodding well supposed to be made of-cream cheese?"

In an instant she had loosened the neck-cord and belt of her robe and stepped out of it even more swiftly than Otavis. Rather as a flowering shrub may look somewhat the worse for wilting in strong sunshine yet still strikingly beautiful, so Meris, plainly off-balance with wine and inflamed lust, was none the less a sumptuous sight, standing in nothing but her sandals and bracelets. Even Maia, who had of course seen her naked more than once, found herself looking with admiration at the lithe, taut flow of her limbs and body, informed now with a kind of questing

voracity. No wonder, she thought, that all those wayfarers had gone to their grief on the Herl-Dari highway; and no wonder, either, that the tryzatt had spared the girl to blame for it.

"Maia," said Meris with lofty dignity, "jus' look aft' that till I get back!"

Picking up her robe from the floor, she folded it, with a kind of lunatic precision, across the High Counselor's belly, stepped down from the dais and was immediately lost to view in the shadowy hall, which to Maia now resembled nothing so much as Lake Serrelind at windy nightfall-a blurred, tossing expanse, noisy with fluid babbling and cries not unlike those of unseen birds. Reckon this must be one bit as got left out of that dance, she thought.

She had just retrieved Meris's robe and laid it by her stool when she felt a touch on her shoulder. Turning, she caught her breath to recognize Elvair-ka-Virrion. He was alone and plainly sober. She stood up, palm to forehead. "My lord!"

Without hesitation Elvair-ka-Virrion drew her to him and kissed her.

"I'm not a lord, I'm a man. Maia, do you know you're by far the most beautiful girl in the room? I've never forgotten you from the moment I saw you in the Khalkoornil that day. You've conquered me, Maia! Come and make love with me! You'll make me the happiest man in Bekla- and the luckiest!"

Maia, thrown for the moment into utter confusion, shrank back as though scorched from this blaze of ardor. As Elvair-ka-Virrion waited for her reply, gazing passionately into her eyes, she recalled what Occula had impressed so emphatically upon her.

"I can't, my lord: I'm attending on the High Counselor."

Elvair-ka-Virrion gave the sleeping Sencho a brief glance of contempt and turned back to her. "That pig? He won't stir. Maia, do you know what it is that's made it impossible for me to forget you? You're real-you're unspoiled- you're like some marvelous lily out on the plain that no one knows about, no one's picked; that no one had even seen until I found it. You're natural, you're honest." He waved his hand towards the hall. "You feel disgusted by all this, don't you? I don't like it, either. Let me take you to my own rooms. I only want to be good to you! You've

stolen my heart, Maia!" Then, as she made no reply, "It's true! Don't you believe me?"

Maia's eyes filled with tears. "I'm a slave-girl, my lord! My master-"

"Oh, I'll make it all right with him," said Elvair-ka-Virrion. Yet this was spoken with less conviction than anything he had yet said: even Maia could perceive that it was bravado. The High Counselor, as Occula had already pointed out to her, had all the touchy, humorless pride of a parvenu. A young gallant like Elvair-ka-Virrion would no more be able to placate his vindictive anger, if it were aroused, than a child could hold a bull. In her mind's eye she seemed to see Occula silently shaking her head.