The breath stopped-Spence wanted to gasp for air himself-and then it was released. The small chest sank. It seemed like an age before the chest rose again.

Slowly the breathing continued, becoming steadier, stronger, and more regular. Spence's mind reeled as he saw color seeping back into the boy's cheeks and the pulse in the throat beating rhythmically.

He knew then that the boy would live and not die. The miracle was complete.

Spence threw himself on the frail body and hugged it to him. He placed a hand on the boy's forehead and felt the warmth of life returning. But the fever was gone.

When Spence raised himself up, dashing tears from his eyes once again, two dark eyes were watching him with curiosity. They blinked at him and then a little hand reached out for his. Spence grabbed it and held it tightly.

He was sitting there, looking into those bemused young eyes, clutching the small hand, when a commotion arose outside the tent. He heard voices, shouts, half-angry cries, and then suddenly the tent was filled with people.

Foremost among them was the goonda chief. Spence glanced around as the crowd tumbled in with a rush. By the expression on Chief Watti's face Spence knew the moment should have been his last-the man held a long dagger in his hand ready to strike. The mother of the boy crouched at his elbow biting the back of her hand. The others hung back-mostly women, already raising a lamentation for the dead boy, and other goondas with their rifles at the ready.

But the bandit leader took one look at his son, lying there With a feeble smile on his lips, holding the hand of his physician, and let out a whoop of jubilation. The dagger spun from his hand. His wife leaped to her son and cradled his thin figure to herself.

Spence stood slowly and looked around. Adjani and Gita, staring and blinking at the confusion around them, rose up and came to stand beside Spence.

"What happened?" said Gita, eyeing the rifle-toting goondas warily. These stared back at the prisoners and shook their heads incredulously.

"You wouldn't believe me," said Spence. "I scarcely believe it myself."

"Did we miss something?" asked Adjani.

Spence turned to regard the boy, now completely enveloped in the embrace of his father.

"No; nothing much."

13

… ARI SAT ON THE small balcony of her room in the tower. The sunlight bathed her upturned face with its warm light and touched her golden hair, transforming it into spun sunbeams. She looked an angel wearing a mortal cloak, but dreaming of its celestial home.

Her thoughts were far from angelic. She had, in the days since Hocking first enlisted her aid, begun to fall into reverie and melancholy. Her father watched her withdraw into herself by degrees until she hardly spoke at all and sat daydreaming for hours at a time on the balcony.

When he ventured to move her from these fits of solitary introspection she would smile wistfully and say, "Oh, don't worry about me, Daddy. I was just thinking…" Though what she was thinking about she would never say. The elder Zanderson had begun to believe that she herself did not know.

He also believed, and rightly so, that it had to do with the visits Hocking paid her, and their trips to who knew where, to do who knew what. She did not speak to him of what went on, and increasingly she resented his continued asking about those secret sessions.

So, he had become a silent worrier. He held his tongue, though it crushed him to see his daughter's spirit withering before his eyes. To fend off the growing sense of dread and doom he felt encircling them he had begun a course of conversation designed to keep her mind occupied and centered on the present.

But even his ebullient monologue failed to prevent the girl's odd moodiness. She would get up in the middle of a sentence and go out on the balcony to sit and stare out into the courtyard or, as she sat now, with her face toward the sun in an attitude of reverence.

His worst fears of a lifetime were taking flesh before his eyes: his daughter seemed to be slipping into the same strange malady that had claimed her mother. And that was almost too much to bear.

"Ari," he said gently, coming to stand beside her on the balcony. "What are you thinking about, dear?"

"Oh, hi, Daddy. I didn't hear you come out."

"I asked what you are thinking about." "Oh, nothing really. I don't know."

"It must be something. You've been out here a long time." A sad smile played on her lips. "Have I? I'm sorry. I left you sitting alone again, didn't I? Oh, well… "

"Ari, look at me." The girl rolled large languid eyes toward him. "I don't want you to go with him when he comes." "Who, Daddy?"

"Hocking. He's putting you under some kind of spell. He's stealing your mind."

"Nonsense!" She laughed, and the sound pattered down like light rain into the courtyard below. "Why would anyone want to do that? It's impossible besides."

"I'm not so sure anything is impossible anymore. But if he hasn't put you under a spell, you tell me what he has been doing. Where do you go? What do you do?"

"We don't go anywhere, really. A room, I think. We don't do anything. Honestly, I have to go… I am helping."

The last was added almost as an afterthought. Zanderson pounced on it like a hungry cat. "Helping? Who are you helping?"

Ari turned her eyes away and gazed out across the wall to the green hills beyond. "I'm… helping…" She could not say more.

"Ari! Look at me! Don't you see what's happening to you? You don't remember why you're doing it. You're not helping, Ari. You're being used. He's using your mind-you're becoming a a vegetable!"

The outburst brought a wispy smile to Ari's lips. She raised her hand to her face and rubbed her cheek distractedly. "I do feel a little funny sometimes. It's so strange…" She turned away again. Her father brought her back, taking her shoulders and turning her around.

"What is strange? What do you remember? Tell me!"

"It's so strange-I feel so sleepy inside, like my head is stuffed with cotton."

"Ari"-he took her hands and pressed them in his own- "promise me you won't go with him any more. You have to stop now before there's nothing left. Will you promise?"

"All right, Daddy. If you like."

"No, darling. It's not for me. It's for you-do it for your own sake. He's destroying you. Don't let him. Resist."

She looked at him vaguely; he wondered if she heard him at all. He decided to try a new approach to make her understand.

Remember when you said that we'd be rescued soon? I believe it now. I do."

"Rescued?"

"You said that Spence knew where we were and he'd come and free us. Well, I think you were right. I think he's coming now.

He'll be here soon."

"Who's coming, Daddy?"

"Spence! That's what I'm telling you. Spence is coming." Ari regarded her father with blank, uncomprehending eyes, as if he suddenly started speaking a foreign language. "I don't think I know who you're talking about."

"Spence! Your Spence-Dr. Reston. Don't you remember" "I don't know him," she replied slowly and turned away again, closing her beautiful blue eyes-now the color of shallow ice pools-and turning her face once more toward the sun. Her father staggered back into their room like a man stunned by a blow; he collapsed, dazed, on a bed of cushions. Then he raised clenched fists to his temples and began to weep. …

THE SUN ROSE A liery red gong above a green hillscape. Three tired travelers witnessed the sunrise with burning eyes. They had been marching through thick forest undergrowth all night and were exhausted and hungry, not having eaten anything substantial for nearly two days-since being expelled from the goonda camp as sorcerers.

The spectacle of the red sun casting its bloodly glare over the thickly forested, steeply undulating hills brought but little cheer to the party. The relatively commonplace sight of the hard – beaten, rock-strewn, crumbling road did, however, improve their spirits somewhat.