With compensations of this kind such a life, despite its abasements and indignities, could not-to a girl like Maia- help but tend to self-satisfaction, even while Terebinthia held her across the couch for the High Counselor to slap her plump young buttocks. And this gratifying state of mind, together with the sincere affection of Occula, was more than enough to overcome any boredom she might have felt at passing all her time either in the women's

quarters or in attendance upon the High Counselor. In fact she found plenty to do, for Maia had never been inactive by nature. Encouraged by Occula, who believed strongly in the value of accomplishments, she wheedled Dyphna into giving her lessons in reading and, catching Terebinthia one day in a good mood, persuaded her to hire a skilled sempstress to improve her needlework. She also learned a little of the hinnari-"just enough to be able to accompany yourself, anyway," said Occula; but the truth was, as Maia knew, that she possessed no more than an ordinarily pleasant voice.

The dance, however, was another matter. In this, more than in anything else, she took pleasure and progressed, and under Occula's tuition would practice for hours not only the flowing, seductive sequences of the senguela but also other dances-Yeldashay, Belishban and the stamping, whirling rhythms of the Deelguy; for at the Lily Pool Occula had watched and talked to many visiting dancing-girls and picked up a great deal.

On certain evenings, when the other girls were on duty in the bath or the dining-hall and she was alone, Maia would sit pensive at a window, her hands in her lap, looking out at the falling rain; neither fretting nor melancholy but, country-fashion, letting her thoughts stray where they would. Sometimes she would choose the long, northern window looking down towards the wall bounding the upper city, the Peacock Gate and the vista of descending streets beyond, from among which soared the lower city's tall, slender towers. These she could now recognize and name at a glance. Or again, she would sit at the west window, with its prospect across the green, dripping garden and bordering grove of birches to the shore of the Barb. A mile away, on the further side of the water, rose the Leopard Hill, crowned by the Palace of the Barons with its twenty symmetrical towers. Once, when the rain chanced to cease for a short while at sunset, the western clouds parted briefly to reveal a huge, crimson sun; a heavy, glowing sphere floating as though half-submerged, borne up, dipping and rolling in a fluid sky-swimming down, she thought, among far-away lands; Katria, Terekenalt and further yet-perhaps over that city of Silver Tedzhek which Occula had spoken of, out beyond the Govig. "Happen it's shining on that Long Spit up the river, where they hold the fair," she thought. "It must just about look pretty, with that red sun

setting." For of course it did not occur to Maia that the time of day would be different in a far-off land-that in Tedzhek it would still be afternoon.

She would recall that drudging childhood she was glad to think she had left behind; of no further interest, remnant as a discarded dress or a faded bunch of flowers. Only for the rippling solitude of Lake Serrelind, and for her happy waterfall, did she still feel a pang of regret, and-yes! for Tharrin, that strolling, smiling, rather seedy adventurer. He was shallow, a rascal, of no account-this she could now see plainly. While she was daily before his eyes he had not been able to resist her; indeed, it had never occurred to him even to try-no, indeed, rather the reverse. Yet once she was gone, he had let that be the end of it. Too bad, but these things happened, didn't they? At least, they always had-to him. Easy come, easy go. "Wonder what mother said when he came back?" she thought. "Ah, and what he said an' all. Just about nothing, I dare say. All the same, he was kind and good-natured; he liked a good time; he made you laugh; we had a bit of fun. I wouldn't say no to him, not even now. Leastways he wasn't one to bite and pinch and set you crawling over the floor. Oh-" and here she gazed down pleasurably at her clothes and the jewels on her fingers and arms-"wouldn't I just about like to rub his face in this lot? 'See?' I'd say. 'This is what I've got out of you not being man enough even to try to get me back. 'Fraid I can't stop now-I've got to go and be basted by the Lord General of Bekla, for more than two hundred meld. Ta-ta!' "

Ah! The Lord General of Bekla. And thus her thoughts came sharply back to the present. Mostly, during the day, she was successful in keeping her anxiety at arm's length. Sometimes she was able to persuade herself that nothing at all would follow from what the Lord General had offered (or demanded of) her. Yet alone, in the rain-scented evening, with the thrushes singing in the green silence, the recollection of what he had said about danger would come trickling back into her mind like water under a door- indisputable evidence of worse outside. What sort of danger? When? Where? From whom? "If you survive." This, for all she knew, was probably the sort of thing generals commonly said to their soldiers. She wished Kembri had not said it to her.

Yet here, if the Lord General was to be trusted, lay the

hope of greater and quicker gain than she could expect from any other quarter. To be free, and set up as a Beklan shearna, and that before she was much older! This was the thing to dwell upon, this was the thing to hope for. "When I'm a shearna, I'll-" and as the clouds closed once more across the red sun and the rain returned, Maia's thoughts ran buoyantly on towards an indistinct but glorious future; for she was young and healthy and, like most people until they have met catastrophe face-to-face, had a vague idea that it could never really happen to her. She was lucky! Lucky Maia! Had not her very enslavement turned out, all in all, a big change for the better? As Terebinthia came in to summon her to the dining-hall she would dismiss her fears, turning from the window and unfastening her bodice to lie half-open in the way she knew the High Counselor liked.

Occula, too, though she never spoke of it, seemed by no means without anxiety. She had set up in their room the polished, black image of Kantza-Merada, and more than once Maia, returning unexpectedly, would find her prostrate before it, her face-certainly on one occasion- wet with tears. Maia became familiar with the words of that liturgy which she had first heard by the stream between Hirdo and Khasik:

"Most strangely, Kantza-Merada, are the laws of the dark world effected. O Kantza-Merada, do not question the laws of the nether world."

This and more Occula would repeat nightly, sometimes clasping the figure of the goddess between her hands as she did so; striving desperately, one might think, to wring comfort from it as juice from a fruit.

One night, as they were preparing for bed, Maia, happening to pick up the pottery Cat Colonna, saw that Occula had roughly scratched a few words-presumably with her knife-across the base. Slowly, she spelt them out. " 'Ready-do-as you wish.' What's that, then, Occula?"

"That?" For a moment Occula seemed startled. "Oh, that's-that's what we used to call an incised prayer. You know, you take the trouble to scratch it on, an' that makes the prayer-well, it sort of makes it work. That's a prayer of submission."

"Submission? To what?"

"Oh, I dunno-everythin': anythin': to whatever has to be done, that's all." She stood up, yawning and stretching smooth, black arms above her gown of white satin. "Come on, help me off with this. Cran, it's heavy! Unhook the back, banzi, and then hold it while I step out. Oh, I could sleep for days, couldn' you?"