Looking into those eyes, Maia knew that she was afraid. This was not Folda, the woman with whom she had eaten and drunk and whom she had failed to gratify. This was the legendary Queen Forms, who carried within her the power to confront warriors, to outface monarchs and barons, subdue the priesthood and set at nought-with impunity, as it seemed-the very gods themselves. Princess of Paltesh she might have been born, and Sacred Queen of Airtha she might have become; yet ultimately her power stemmed not from these titles, but from some inscrutable, transcendental source compared with which mere human attributes were trifles; a source whose servants, once sent into the world, were authorized to stick at nothing. This power-so it appeared to Maia now-must have grown in Fornis like a tree. She had not always been thus; yet the seed had been born with her. Now it was full-grown. Ah; so tall that men-and women, too-could hang upside-down from the branches.
"Good morning, Maia," said the Sacred Queen, somehow contriving, by her near-nakedness and casual pursuance of her cosmetic activities, to reduce to vain, pretentious triviality Maia's silk dress and diamond necklace. "I trust you've been enjoying yourself since your return to Bekla."
"Yes, thank you, esta-saiyett," replied Maia, by the queen's tone put beyond doubt that there was to be no sort of renewal of a friendly relationship between them.
She was about to go on to inquire after the queen's health and well-being when she became aware of a kind of struggling commotion taking place further down the room. Looking over Fornis's shoulder, she now saw Ashaktis seated astride a bench, beside which was standing a dark, hirsute young man in a leather jerkin.
It was not at either of these, however, that Maia looked
for more than a moment, but at the figure between them; a dark-haired, big-built girl, stripped to the waist, who was kneeling on the floor. Ashaktis, leaning forward and gripping her wrists, was holding her prone along the length of the bench. The girl's back was criss-crossed with bloody weals; and in the moment that Maia took in the scene, the young man struck her again with a thin, pliant stick on which blood was glistening. At this the girl flung back her head, showing a plain, rustic face contorted with pain, and Maia saw that she had a marked cast in one eye. She recognized her then, in spite of the distortion caused by the gag in her mouth. It was Chia, the Urtan girl with whom she and Occula had fought and then made friends in Lalloc's slave-hall.
"Oh, esta-saiyett, please!" Maia, who from the first had felt all embarrassment at standing beside the queen lolling in undress, now fell on her knees at her feet.
"Whatever's the matter?" Fornis, peering in the mirror while with one finger she rubbed the rouge in just below her eye, spoke with an air of slightly irritated surprise.
"I beg you-please spare that girl, esta-saiyett, as-as a favor to me. I don't know what she's done, but-"
"My dear Maia, neither do I: I haven't the faintest idea. That's a kitchen-maid, or something of the kind, I believe."
"But I knew her once, esta-saiyett: that's why I'm asking."
"Yes, esta-saiyett; when I was a slave, I knew her."
"Oh, when you were a
At that moment Maia felt certain that either Ashaktis or Fornis herself had known-probably the poor girl had boasted about it in the kitchens-of her own acquaintance with Chia, and that the beating had been deliberately arranged as soon as Fornis had learned that Maia was downstairs and asking to see her.
As Ashaktis pulled the girl to her feet, threw her clothes round her and nodded to the young man to drag her out of the room, Fornis turned back to the dressing-table and
began polishing her nails with a strip of bone bound in soft leather. Maia waited for her to speak, but she said nothing and after a minute or two laid the bone aside, stood up, opened a wardrobe and began looking through the gowns hanging there.
I'm the Serrelinda, thought Maia: I'm the Serrelinda. If I could swim the Valderra- Yet in her heart she knew that such thoughts had no real validity. If Fornis wanted the Valderra swum, she would simply order two people to go and do it; and if they drowned, two more.
"Esta-saiyett," she said, "I've come to ask you-to talk to you, if you'll very kindly hear me, about a man called Tharrin."
"A man called
Maia, momentarily startled and discomposed, hesitated. The green eyes rested upon her with a cool yet expectant stare.
