When Sessendris was gone and Ogma had brought in the lamps, Maia asked her to bring her needlework and sit with her for company. Yet although Ogma (who had never in her life been five miles from Bekla) did her best, talking of this and that and from time to time asking Maia to thread her needle-for her sight was poor-Maia herself was but indifferent company, preoccupied as she was with all that Sessendris had said. At last Ogma, perceiving that her mistress was not herself, but attributing it merely to fatigue and her state of health, suggested bed; and for some reason this homely proposal at last drew from Maia what was really in her heart.
"Ogma, what's become of Occula? Have you heard anything about her?"
Ogma, limping across the room with her work over her arm, stopped and turned.
"No, not once, Miss Maia. Not since-well, not since that last evening, when you both went to the gardens with the High Counselor. But then they took her away to the temple, didn't they?"
"Yes, but is she with the Sacred Queen now, 's far 's you know?"
"With the Sacred
Maia stared at her, frowning.
"You didn't know, miss? The queen's got a terrible reputation that way."
"I always thought there was some as was devoted to her," said Maia, remembering Ashaktis.
"Maybe her own Palteshis," said Ogma, "and any as might just happen to suit her, like. But there's others as she's-well-got rid of, so they say."
The realization that she had been several days in Bekla without making any inquiry about Occula showed Maia more plainly than anything else how weak and shocked she must really have been. She had been sleeping badly, troubled with pain as well as with anxiety about her scars (for she had four or five gashes altogether, though none so grievous as that on her thigh). Again and again she had woken from nightmares of fire in the dark, of roaring water and the boy Sphelthon crying on the blood-drenched ground. Protean they were, these fantasies, casting themselves like amorphous nets round her distressed mind; tormentors continually emerging in new and unexpected guises. The fire would dance before her, its flames murmuring "Sha-greh, shagreh," as they refused to cook her food. The water would become an insubstantial ladder on which she dared not set foot. Or she would be placidly swimming when the wretched boy, a weeping horror, would rise up out of deep water and fasten his bloody mouth on her flinching body. One night of full moon, having lain for two hours afraid to fall asleep again, she had resorted to her old solace, gone down to the Barb and, plunging in near the outfall of the Monju brook, swum half a mile to the Pool of Light, stepping out naked into the gardens before a gaping sentry of the Lapanese regiment. (Ogma had returned his cloak next morning, and this latest story of the Serrelinda lost nothing in the telling.)
But yet another preoccupation she had, besides her own health and recovery. Incessantly she dwelt on the memory of Zen-Kurel, recalling over and over each moment of their brief hours together, from the king's supper table to the daggers lying discarded on the floor and the running footsteps receding into the moonlight. She longed for him; she missed him every hour. Where was he? What had happened to him in the fighting?
oners who had been taken back into Suba; then, perhaps, sent back across the Zhairgen with dispatches for Keril-Katria. Of course he would have distinguished himself. He would no doubt be promoted-though she knew nothing about such things or what he might realistically expect. One thing, however, she was sure of. Whatever his adventures, he would not have forgotten her, any more than she had forgotten him.
