Night by night the great comet poured out its hazy brightness into the northern sky, and throughout the city anxiety and wonder gradually diminished as still nothing happened and the prodigy became a thing accustomed. The priests, shrewdly no doubt, avoided committing themselves beyond affirming that the gods had given assurance (none knew how) that the apparition portended no harm. One day a crowd of orderly and respectful suppliants succeeded in confronting the chief priest as he was entering the Temple of Cran by the front portico, when to avoid or ignore them would have appeared undignified and perhaps even weak. He replied to their questions with grave self-possession and suavity.
"Consider," said he, "that many thousands of years ago the moon must have appeared in the sky for the first time. Can you imagine how astonished and bewildered the people of those days must have been to see it? What rumination and presentiment they must have suffered-yes, suffered, for of course they were only poor, ignorant folk in those days, without the benefits of modern knowledge and of all this" (waving his hand towards the spacious precinct and the Tamarrik Gate). "To this day, how inexplicable, even if predictable, remain her phases, her waxings and waitings! Yet the moon is a blessing and no one now would dream of attributing ill-omen to the moon."
"Is the great star here to stay, then, my Guardian?" asked someone in the crowd.
"How do we know?" he replied. "Yet since you ask me, I would say not. All I am explaining to you is, that not every sign among the stars need or should be taken as the forerunner of some great change, let alone of disaster."
"So the Serrelinda was right?" called out someone else.
"Not having heard her speak, I cannot say," he answered with a sedate and condescending smile. "Our astrologers, of course, have spent many years of study in learning their expert skills. I entertain nothing against the Serrelinda-"
"Better not!" muttered someone.
"She has served the city superbly in
His scarlet-bordered robes swished on the pavement as he turned and ascended the steps into the noon-shadowed portico.
At about the same time Maia, who had begun-and to her credit was sticking to-a couple of hours' work a day on improving her reading and (which she found a good deal harder, since it had never really existed) her writing, was lying in the hammock in her garden, wrestling with a romance lent to her by Sarget, about the deeds of the hero Deparioth. Like nearly all people of relatively young civilizations-and certainly like virtually everyone in the Bek-lan Empire at this time-Maia found it natural to read to herself aloud, and her soft, rather pretty voice, stumbling and hesitating over the more difficult words, mingled with
the lapping of the Barb and the intermittent piping of a damazin among the trees.
"Give back the-the miry-miry-solitude, The thorns and briars-out-er-outstretched to
bless.
There lay my-
This court's the desert-something wild-wilderness."
She knew the story well. This was Deparioth's lament for the loss of the mysterious girl they called the Silver Flower, who, having saved his life in the terrible Blue Forest, had then vanished forever. She read it through again.
"Give back the miry solitude, The thorns and briars outstretched to bless. There lay my kingdom, past compare. This court's the desert wilderness."
The Blue Forest she knew by repute for a wild and savage place in northern Katria, beyond the borders of the empire; somewhere near where, so she'd heard, the Zhair-gen ran into the Telthearna. She began to muse, the scroll laid aside. If she were really to put her mind to it, could she get to Katria? Might she be able to reach the Zhairgen quickly and secretly, and then somehow cross it before she was missed? How far was it to the Zhairgen, anyway? It was, she knew, generally reckoned a good four or five days' journey to Dari-Paltesh; and the Zhairgen lay beyond that.
Oh, she thought, if only things could just be back as they were that night in Suba; the night he brought the daggers! We knew our own hearts then, and that was all we needed to know. "Give back the miry solitude-"
Suddenly her melancholy thoughts were interrupted by a cry of "Maia! Where are you?" It was a man's voice- one that she remembered well enough but could not instantly put a name to. She stood up, and as she did so caught sight of someone approaching from the direction of the house. As the voice called again, she realized why she had felt so much startled. It was an Urtan accent. Yet it was not-no, it was not Anda-Nokomis. For a moment she had thought it was, and now she felt disappointed that
