Mara and Dann

An order. And the soldier who had rescued it put it on his shoulder, holding it by the stalk. He gave a cry, and dropped the trap. Mara took it up and put it in her sack.

"If you say so," said the commander and his look at Mara was — but she could not read it. He was not angry now. She thought him sympathetic.

The company of soldiers and captives stood waiting, while the commander looked them over. The young men were sullen, the girls softly crying. They were standing with the canal behind them, where the boat was creeping slowly along between the banks, and from where now came angry voices, laments, and people wailing the names of the young people who had been kidnapped. Around them was the same savannah they had been travelling through, day after day: the dry, dull grasses of the end of the rainy season, low aromatic bushes, the occasional thorny tree.

An order. The soldiers divided into two groups, one with the men, one with the women captives. Mara was watching, when the commander said to her, "You too." And Mara fell in with the women.

They were walking westwards. Soon some ruins appeared, of stone. Then, later, more ruins, recent ones, of wooden houses where fire had left blackened beams and posts. They walked for about two hours, at an easy pace, the commander coming along behind. When Mara turned to look, she caught him looking at her. They came to a group of low brick buildings, and beyond, more ruins. On a great expanse of red dust some soldiers were marching. The commander gave an order. The soldiers with the young men went off, with Dann, who turned to give Mara such a wild, despairing look that she took a step forward, on her way to joining him, but the soldiers restrained her. Another order. Mara was pushed out of the group of young women, who were marched off by their escort. She was left standing by herself, still staring after Dann.

"Don't worry about him," said the Commander. "Now, come with me." He led the way into one of the brick houses, if it was a house. She was in a room that had brick walls, a brick floor, a low ceiling, of reeds. There was a trestle table, and some wooden chairs.

"Sit down," he said, and sat down himself behind the trestle. "I am General Shabis. What is your name?" He was looking intently at her, and she said carefully, "My name is Mara."

"Good. Now. I know a good deal about you, but not enough. You are from the family in Rustam. You were with the Kin in Chelops. You were in trouble with the Goidels, but they let you go. I shall need to hear about Chelops."

"How do you know I was there?"

"I have an efficient spy service." Then, at her look, "But you would be amazed at the different versions I've heard of you in Chelops." "No, perhaps I wouldn't be."

"No. I am going to have to hear your whole story." "That will take some time."

"We have plenty of time. Meanwhile, you would probably like to ask a few questions yourself?"

"Yes. Were you expecting me and Dann to come on that boat?"

"We were expecting you round about now, yes. We always keep an eye on the boats. Well, there aren't many of them, only one every week or so." "And you always kidnap the girls for breeding and the boys for soldiers?" "Both for soldiers. And believe me, they are better off with us than they would be with the Hennes. At least we educate ours."

At this she leaned forward and said, breathless, "And me? You'll teach me?"

At this he smiled, and then he laughed, and said, "Well Mara, you'd think I'd promised you a fine marriage." "I want to learn," she said. "What do you want to learn?" "Everything," she said, and he laughed again.

"Very well. But meanwhile, I'm going to tell you about what you'll find here. You do know, I suppose, that you are in Charad — the country of Charad — and that there are two people here, different from each other — very different: one the Hennes, and the other, the Agre — us. We fight each other. The war has been going on for years. It is a stalemate. I and my opposite number, General Izrak, are trying to make a truce. But they are very difficult people. When you think you've agreed on something then — nothing."

"They've probably forgotten," said Mara.

"Ah, I see you know them. But first of all — what was that thing you were making such a fuss about on the boat?"

Mara told him. Then she said, "Don't all the boats have them?" "No. It's the first I've seen."

"That boat that is stuck on the sandbank. The one that was attacked. It had one. It's the one we've got."

"The Hennes did that. And you don't know how it works?"

"The old woman knew — Han. At least she knew how to make it work. But it looked to me as if she is going to die. She said it was very old. There are hardly any left. One less, now." And her eyes filled with tears because she was thinking of the senselessness of it. If Han died then there was a bit of knowledge — gone.

"These things happen," he said.

"Yes, they do. And then something is gone for ever."

He was affected by her reproach to the extent that he got up, walked about, then made himself sit down.

"I'm sorry. But my soldiers weren't expecting resistance. There never is. I don't remember anyone being hurt — badly hurt — before. And it was Dann who began it."

"Yes."

"You mustn't worry about him."

"I know enough about people who fight — the soldiers will punish Dann because he fought them."

"No they won't, because I've given orders. And now, begin your story."

Mara began at the beginning, with what she remembered of her childhood, her father and mother, her lessons, told him what she knew of the feuds and changes of power, and then how she and Dann were saved. Shabis sat listening, watching her face. She had reached how Dann had come back for her to the Rock Village, when her voice seemed to her to be floating away, and Shabis said, "Enough. You must eat."

A servant brought food. It was good food. Shabis watched her, while pretending not to, working at something on the trestle — what was it? He was writing, on pieces of fine, soft, white leather. She had not seen anything like that since she was a little girl — and she could not stop looking.

"What's the matter, don't you like the food?"

"Oh yes, I'm not used to eating so well." For this was better and finer than even the Chelops food.

"In the army we get the best of everything."

She was thinking that he did not like what he was saying. And did not mind her knowing it. This captor of hers, was he going to be a friend? Was she safe? She did like him. He was what she had been happiest with in her life. He was a fine man, and now that it was not angry, his face was kind and, she was pretty sure, to be trusted. Probably Dann would look something like Shabis, when he was older.

When she had eaten, the servant took her into a room where she washed and used a lavatory unlike any she had seen. It had a lever which sent water rushing through channels below. She thought, Well, first of all you have to have water.

On an impulse she took off the old slave's robe she had been wearing day after day for weeks, and put on the top and trousers Meryx had given her. It smelled of him, and she had to fight down homesickness. When she went back Shabis said, "You look like a soldier."

She told him this is what the men of Chelops wore.

"Do you have a dress?"

"It didn't seem the right thing, a dress."

"No. You're right."

He studied her. "Do you always wear your hair like that?"

Her hair was now long enough to be held behind her head in a leather clasp. Like his: his hair was the length of hers and in a clasp. And like poor Dann's. Black, straight, shining hair, all three of them. Long-fingered hands. Long, quick feet. And the deep, dark Mahondi eyes.

She began her tale again. When she reached the Kin in Chelops he kept stopping her, wanting more detail, about how they lived; how they managed to keep some kind of independence, although slaves, about the Hadrons, and then, the drought. She knew he had got the essential point when he asked, "And you think they can't see their situation because they've lived too comfortably for too long?"

"Perhaps not everyone who lives comfortably is so blind?"

"I can hardly remember what peace was like. I was very young when the war began — fifteen. Then I was in the army. But before the war it was a good life. Perhaps we too were blind? I don't know."

She went on. There was another break, when the servant brought in a drink made of milk, and bread, about the time the sun went down. She was thinking about Dann, afraid he would try to run away — or fight, or despair.

She dared to plead, "I am so worried about Dann." "Don't be. He's going to have special training. He would make a good officer."

"How do you know?" "It's my job to know." "Because he is a Mahondi?"

"Partly. But you do know there are very few of us left now? The real Mahondis?"

"How should I know? I know nothing. I have been taught nothing. I don't know how to read or write."

"Tomorrow we'll decide what you are to learn. And I've already ordered someone to come and teach you Charad. It is spoken all over northern Ifrik. It is the one language everyone speaks."

"Until today I never thought about people speaking different languages. I've always heard Mahondi but I never had to think about it."

"Once everyone did speak Mahondi, all over Ifrik. That was when we ruled Ifrik. It was the only language. But then Charad came into the North. Now everyone speaks Charad and a few still speak Mahondi."

"I'll never forget how frightened I was when I heard people talking but I didn't understand what they said."

"You'll understand it soon. Now go on with your story."

But she did not finish that night, because he wanted to know about everyone she had met in the River Towns: the inns and the innkeepers; how people looked, how they talked, what they ate; about Goidel and the easy style of that government. She hesitated before telling him about the gaol, the two women, and what they did for her, but suspected that he knew something already. And so she did tell him, and even how hurt she felt because Meryx did not know. She could see from his face that he was sorry for her and, which she liked as much, that he was sorry for Meryx.

"That's very hard," he said. "It really is. Poor man." Then he hesitated, but said, "You didn't know there had been an uprising in Chelops?"

"No." And her heart sank, thinking first of Meryx, then of the new babies.

"There was a boat through here a week ago. The stories of travellers are not necessarily reliable, but it is clear that there was an uprising. And that is about it."

"Who rose up?"

"They said, slaves."

"Well it can't be the Kin, so it must have been the ordinary slaves." "Can you remember the names of the people you met in the River Towns?"

But it was no good, she was thinking of Chelops. And so he told her to go to bed and they would start again in the morning.

She stumbled into bed and was asleep without seeing the room she was shown; and when she opened her eyes in the morning she thought she was back on the hill near the Rock Village, looking at the pictures cut into the walls, or painted on the plaster. Then she thought, But these are different people, very different. They are tall and thin and built light, not at all like the ones she had been studying all her childhood. And the animals — yes, here were the water dragons again, and the lizards, but also all kinds of animals she had never seen. The carving was fine and precise, though the stone was so old all the edges of the carving had blunted. Once the rock carver must have used knives so delicate and fine that nothing like that was known now, and he — she? — had held in their minds images of what they carved as bright and clear as life; and those lines and shapes had travelled down into long, thin, agile fingers — here those hands and fingers were, on the rock face — on to the rock face. You could see the muscles on a leg, long clever eyes, the nails on hands and feet. Once these pictures had been tinted. There were tiny smears of pigment, red, green, yellow. There was a sound in the room behind her and she had whirled around, was across the room, and standing over the servant from last night, who was just about to slide the bag of coins she had snatched yesterday into his pocket. Mara brought down the side of her hand hard on his wrist and he dropped the bag and howled. He began to plead and gibber in Charad, while he smiled and fawned. In her own language, he knew only the words "sorry," "please" and "princess." "Get out," she said, in Mahondi. He ran out holding his wrist and whimpering.

She sat on the edge of the narrow board bed she had slept on, under a single thin cover. It was hot, but not the wet heat of the River Towns. This was a large room. The lower parts of the wall were very old, with the incised pictures on them; and above these, though irregularly, for ruins do not make for evenness, the walls continued up to a roof of reeds. The upper walls were of mud mixed with straw. The floor, from the past, was of coloured, shining, tiny stones, set in patterns. Between the lower walls and the floor, and what rose up above them — how many years? Thousands? Those old people, what would they have said to these lumpy, crude, upper walls where tiny shreds of straw glinted? Ruined cities. Cities of all kinds. What was it, why was it, this law that beautiful cities had to fall into ruins? Well, she knew one answer, because she had seen what had happened to the Rock Village: drought. But was it always drought? On the walls of old ruins, on the beams of the fallen buildings she had seen coming here were marks of fire. But fires swept across a country year after year, and the people protected their homes. If they did not keep a watch day and night through the dry season, then fire could consume everything in the time it took for a strong wind to change direction. But people did keep watch. So fires could be too strong, or people too lazy? Drought. Fires. Water? That was not something easy to imagine.

Mara went to her sack, and took out the blue and green cotton robes from Chelops. They were crumpled but they were wrong for this place, she knew, like the delicate older robes rolled at the very bottom of her sack. She brought out the brown, slippery tunic from the squashed depths, and there was not a crease in it. She put on the garments she had worn yesterday, and combed her hair, and tied it back. She checked that the rope of coins under her breasts was still in place. She went into the room next door with the bag of coins the servant had tried to steal, and the brown tunic. Shabis was eating breakfast. He nodded at her to sit down. She did and he pushed bread and fruit towards her. Then he saw the brown garment and stared.

"What is that stuff?"

She told him. "I wore this day and night for years. It never tears, or gets dirty. You shake out the dust. It never wears out." He felt the material and could not prevent a grimace. "It could be useful for the army," he said.

"Like the sun traps, no one knows how to make it now. But I was thinking, Shabis. You should send someone after the boat. If Han is alive you could make her tell you how the sun traps work."

He was silent. She realised it was because of how she had spoken. Then he said, "I can see that you are not likely to conduct yourself towards me in the proper manner."

"And what is that?" She spoke smiling. She was not afraid of him. He was treating her like — well, like one of his family.

"Never mind. But I agree with you. I sent a platoon to the boat. It hadn't gone far. The woman you call Han was dead. They were using oars, so it seems that no one knew how to keep the boat going with the sun trap. Our soldiers were just leaving when some Hennes came along. I didn't know they were so close."

"We saw them running along the bank yesterday."

"You didn't say so." He spoke sharply. She knew this was partly because she had spoken incorrectly towards him. "That was the most important thing you could have told me."

"But we hadn't reached that part of my story."

"I suppose you couldn't know how important it was. And now, shall we go on?"

"First, will you keep this safe for me?"

He looked at the leather bag, tipped out a few coins, and said, "This isn't the currency used here."

"Not at all?"

"Perhaps farther North. I hear they are more lax about what coins they use."

"We're going North."

"No, Mara, you are not going anywhere."

He was not humorous, or gentle now, but severe. His mouth was tight, his eyes — no, not unfriendly — serious.

And she was in a panic, knowing she was a prisoner again. She wanted to get up from this table and her good breakfast and run and run, and find Dann... And then?

"Mara, between here and Shari there are Hennes, there is the Hennes army. Do you really want to be a Hennes soldier? Believe me, it's not like being an Agre soldier." He pushed over her bag of coins. "No one is going to steal these. By the way, did you know you broke that boy's wrist?"

"Good. He is a thief." And at his look, which was a reproof, "I haven't done all the things I've done to let some little thief take what was so hard to get. When I grabbed this bag up yesterday from among all those feet I could have been killed. Like Han." And, as he sat silent, "Without the money we carried we wouldn't have got far from the Rock Village."

"Don't worry, no one is going to touch anything of yours, seeing what you can do."

"Good. And why did he call me 'princess'?"

"It's a way of flattery. When they want to soften me up they call me 'prince.'"

Here they sat seriously, eyeing each other, because of things that were not being said.

"Are you going to start talking about precious children and mysterious plans?"

"I could, but I've got more urgent things on my mind." "But there is a plan that involves Dann and me?"

"Not a plan. Possibilities. And I think you'd better know I am not interested." He amended this. "I am not the one who is interested." A pause. He added, "And I don't see much point in your being interested yet, because you are so very far away from any place where it matters. Far in time," he emphasised. "And far in travelling — hundreds of miles."

"Well," said Mara, having taken all this in, "it seems to me that being Prince and Princess, all that kind of thing, isn't much use — not living like this."

"I agree. And I want you to know that in my opinion the time has long gone past when it could be of any use, or of any interest. And now, can you go on with your story?"

She went on. When she got to the bit where the Hennes soldiers appeared he asked question after question. What had they worn? In what condition were their uniforms? What were the colours of the shoulder straps? What was on their feet? Did they look well fed? Were they dusty and dirty? How many were there?

She was able to answer in detail. "And they carried weapons I know aren't of any use." She described them. "The Hadrons have them."

"Why do you say they aren't of any use?" She told him. "They aren't obsolete. They are copies of something very old. Very old. Some Hennes soldier with a talent for that kind of thing saw a weapon from an ancient museum. He thought out how to replicate it. Not exactly of course. We don't have that technology. But they do work. Most of the time. At first the Hennes army had the advantage, but then we got the thing too. So we are exactly balanced again. All that has happened is that many more people get killed and wounded." "How do they work?"

"They shoot out bullets. We make bullets. You put the stuff we make matches from into a hole and light it and the bullet is shot out." He was silent, and grim. "I was taught at school that only five centuries after the ancients discovered how to make this kind of gun the whole world was in the grip of a technology that made them slaves. Luckily we don't have the resources or the people. Not yet, anyway."

There was so much information here, and she only understood part of it. She cried out, "Last night you promised I will have lessons."

"Language lessons first."

"There's always something else first." And then, seeing his grave, uneasy look, she cried out passionately, "You don't know what it's like, knowing you're so ignorant, not knowing anything."

"I thought you said that in Chelops you found out you knew more than they do — about certain things, anyhow."

"That's not saying much. And I did know more — but what I really knew more about was not the kind of thing I want to learn. I know about how to stay alive. And they don't. When I look back now they seem to me like children." And now she was weeping. She put her head down in her arms and wept. She felt Shabis's hand on her shoulder. It was a kind hand, but it was also a warning.

"That's enough, Mara. Now, stop."

Slowly, she stopped. The warm pressure on her shoulder stopped too. She lifted her head.

"You will begin the language lessons tomorrow. Today I want you to do something for us. You will tell the officers your story."

"How can I? I don't speak Charad."

"Most of them know some Mahondi. I would like them to know more. You will have to speak slowly, and don't use any long words." "I don't know any long words." "Now don't start crying again."

"Why only the officers?"

"Do you want an audience of ten thousand?"

"You have ten thousand soldiers?"

"In this part of the country, ten thousand. Over in the West, under General Chad, ten thousand. In the North, twenty thousand — that is, centred on Shari. To the East, keeping the Hennes in their place, ten thousand."

"How many people live in all of Charad?"

"Most people are in the army."

"Everyone, in the army?"

"As you know wars are hard on the ordinary people of a country. We found that all the young men were coming to us, begging to be taken into the army. Then the women. We make most of them soldiers or they work for the army in some capacity. You see, with us they get clothed and fed. Soon we found there were parts of Charad that had no ordinary citizens left. The war had been going on for twenty years. Their fields were destroyed, and their animals taken. Soon Agre was all army. Many of them have never seen a fight, or even a raid, or seen a Hennes."

"What you are saying is that the whole country is a kind of — tyranny."

"That's about it." "Who is the ruler? You?"

"There are four of us generals. We rule. And we rule well." "And are the people protesting?"

"Indeed they do."

"So what happens then?"

"What did you do to the poor lad who was going to steal your money?"

"What do they want? If they want a change, what is it?"

"Sometimes we wonder — we four. They call us The Four. They are fed. They are well fed. They are safe."

"And soon you will have your truce with the Hennes. Are they also in the army?"

"No. They have a large, discontented civilian population. Mara, you will get lessons, I promise you. And now we are going to the parade ground. There will be a thousand officers there."

"You expect me to address a thousand people?"

"Why not? You'll manage all right. If you begin now, you should be finished with your story by midday. Don't dwell on the personal aspect. I want you to tell them about the changes in the climate, about how the animals are changing, the scorpions and so on. Describe the setup in

Chelops. Tell them about the River Towns. Some of the soldiers came from there, as refugees. Tell them about the shortages of food — all that kind of thing." He was smiling, and pleased with himself — or her. "My soldiers are the best educated in Charad."

How much she liked and admired him then! And she felt so very much at home with him. And yet he was not like the easygoing, friendly, smiling people that she was sure had been all that she had known in her early childhood. And he was not like Juba, and certainly not Meryx, whom she was seeing now in her mind's eye smiling at her, his gentle, charming smile, which faded as she looked, Goodbye Mara, goodbye — as he turned and went. This man had been a soldier for twenty years, and he never made a gesture, or a turn of the head, or of the body, he never took a step that did not fit exactly into some pattern he had been taught. And yet this discipline of his was nothing like the horrible sameness of the Hennes.

They walked through the flat, low army buildings to where they could see the officers marching on to the parade ground, all the same in their brown, baggy uniforms. The dust spurted up under their stamping feet and drifted about among their legs and began to settle as they came to a stop and stood at ease. She looked for Dann and at last saw him, unfamiliar to her as one of this mass of men, standing in a bloc of ten. She smiled at him, and he nodded, slightly, keeping his face soldierly severe.

Now she could see so many together, she felt uneasy again: they were Mahondis, most of them, and yet not. She thought that if you took any one of these men in front of her by himself, then you would think, Yes, a Ma-hondi, but perhaps not the best-built or most good-looking one I've seen. But take fifty of these, and put them beside fifty of the real Mahondis, then the difference would be seen at once. But what difference? It was not easy to see.

Shabis signalled and she began talking. She was on a little wooden platform, looking down at them. It was quiet, and she could make herself heard. What was hard for her was, because they were soldiers, their faces kept immobile, she did not know how interested she was keeping them. But from time to time Shabis nodded at her to go on, when she hesitated. Then, after about an hour, she ended with a minute description of the Hennes soldiers on the river bank, and when Shabis asked them if they would like to put questions, one after another raised his hand and it was the Hennes they wanted to know more about. Only later were the questions about drought and the River Towns.

Walking back with Shabis she asked him if there had ever been a famine here, and if so, was this why the Agre people seemed like poor copies of the Mahondis. He said that he believed there had been, but a good long time ago, and then answered her real question with, "But when their children are born, they are not like us. Not really. At first you think that this is a Mahondi baby, and then you take another look."

"So what happened? Why?"

"Nobody knows. Why are those scorpions you told me about, and the spiders and lizards, changing?"

They sat on opposite sides of the trestle table and were served the midday meal. There were cooked vegetables, and meat. She told him she had hardly ever eaten meat, even in Chelops. She would get used to it, she said, but a slab of muscle from some beast, brown on the outside and still red in the middle, made her think of Mishka and Mishkita and the milk beasts of Chelops.

He said that in these parts it was easier to feed people with meat than it was to grow enough vegetables. There were large herds of meat animals, and a good part of the women's army were appointed to look after them. These were hardy animals who thrived even when fodder was short, and they only needed to drink once a week. Now, the Hennes grew vegetables well, but were not much good with animals. If only the Agres and the Hennes could agree on a truce, there could be much beneficial trading.

Then he said that he was going to leave her, because he was going on reconnaissance.

And she said, "But first, I have something really important to ask. Do you know what my name is?" "Didn't you say it was Mara?"

"Why was it so important for me and Dann to forget our real names?" "Surely you know that there were people out looking for you, to kill you?" "Is that all it was?"

"Wasn't that enough? You do know that all your family were murdered?"

"Yes."

"As it turned out, the other side are all dead too. So you and Dann are the only ones left of the Mahondis of Rustam." "It's so sad, not knowing your real name."

He was silent for a while. "Sad but safe. What's wrong with Mara? It's a very pretty name." And now he got up, seemed ready to leave. "Shall I take your brother Dann with me on reconnaissance? He seems quick off the mark — as you are. Perhaps you'd like to be a female soldier? They are very good." But seeing her face, he laughed and said, "No, but you would be a good soldier. Don't worry. I'm going to train you to be my aide. I need one. And you get the point so quickly."

She said, and it was with difficulty, being stubborn, when he sounded so light-hearted and friendly: "We are going North, Dann and I. When we can."

"And what are you going to find there?" "Aren't things better there? Is that all just a dream?" And, exactly like Han, he said, "It depends where you find yourself." Then, seeing her face, he said, "Mara, what are you expecting? What are you dreaming?"

In Mara's mind were visions of water and trees and beautiful cities — but these were rather misty, for she had never seen a city that was not threatened — and gentle, friendly people.

"Have you been North?"

"You mean really North? North north?"

"Yes."

"I was brought up in Shari and then for a time at school north from there in Karas. But I've only heard about real North."

"Is it true that there is a place up there that has... where you can find out about. I mean, about those old people, those people who knew everything?"

"Something like that. So they say. I have friends who have been there. But you know, Mara, my life is here. I must confess I have moments when I wish I lived somewhere easier. And now I'm off."

And Mara sat on alone for a while in this room, his room, and then went into the one she slept in, and walked around it and looked carefully at the rock pictures. Those had been a more handsome and a finer people than she had ever been able to imagine. Shabis was good-looking, and his face was intelligent and good — but these people. She thought, If one of them walked in here now I'd feel even more of a clod and a lump than I usually do. Everything about them was fine. The clothes they wore were not just pieces of cloth sewn together with holes for arms and head, for that after all was the basic pattern of every garment she had ever seen. Even trousers were two lengths of cloth slit and sewn for legs, and tied at waist and ankle. These clothes the ancient people on the wall had worn were cunningly cut, with pleats and gathers and folds, and sleeves set in so cleverly she found herself smiling as she looked. And the ornaments in their ears — long, narrow ears — were so intricately made... But the dulling of paint made it impossible now to see the details. And the rings on the long, thin fingers, and the necklaces... What a brilliant show they must have made, a crowd of these — what had they been called? What did they call each other? They were a brown people, a warm, light brown, with long eyes made longer by paint, and smiling mouths, and thin noses, and short brown hair, held with circlets of — it looked like gold. And they had lived in this city — for now Mara knew that these army buildings had simply been put down in a space between miles of ruins — a city of houses that had had many layers, eight, or ten, and... But who knew now how long they had lived here? How had they lived? Scene after scene showed them dancing, or sitting around low tables eating, showed them with their familiar animals, dogs, like the ones she remembered, and others like her little pet Shera, whose gentle licks on her cheeks she could feel even now, and birds, brightly coloured, flitting about. There had been a river, perhaps the same one she had travelled on, and there were boats so large that each had on its deck something like a small house, where people sat and amused themselves. Ser-vants — slaves? — brought food on platters, and drinks in coloured cups. There was nothing here of what she had seen in the Rock Village ruins: lines of people tied to each other by the waist, or by chains around their necks.

It occurred to her that when people had said "up North" — perhaps for hundreds of years, in the cities and towns farther south — what they meant was this city here. Perhaps even for thousands of years they had talked everywhere in Ifrik about this wonderful place. No, not thousands: for some reason cities did not live so long. Cities were like people: they were born and lived and died.

Later, when the light went, the servant came in with a jug of milk and some little cakes. His wrist was bandaged. He never took his eyes off her, and sidled out of the room, terrified. He said something under his breath and it was not friendly. Well, tomorrow she would begin to learn this language and then no one would say things she could not understand.

Before she slept she went out to see the glitter of the stars... And lingered there until she saw that a soldier was watching her: he was on guard. She went in and to bed thinking about Dann and how soon she could see him.

Next morning, at breakfast, Shabis asked about the scars around Dann's waist, and she said that had happened when he was very ill in Chelops. Shabis said that there were parts of Ifrik where slaves wore chains around their waists with blunt barbs on them, making scars rather like Dann's. She said she had never heard of anything like that. He nodded, after a while; she supposed he believed her, but did not mind much. She thought, I'm not going to care about him; we'll be going North.

The Charad lessons were with an old woman, a good teacher, and Mara learned fast. Every morning lessons in Charad and every afternoon, for at least an hour, or longer, if he had time, Shabis taught her, by a simple means. She asked questions and he answered them. Only occasionally he said, "I don't know." She protested she was so ignorant and she did not know what questions to ask, but he said that when she ran out of questions then it would be time to worry.

She asked to see Dann. He said that he was in that stage of training when it would be disadvantageous to interrupt it, and Dann was doing so well, that would be a pity.

Most evenings Shabis was not there; on reconnaissance, he said, or instructing his soldiers. Then she learned he had a wife. Since he did not mention her, she did not. Would she like it if he wanted to sleep with her? At the thought, her body woke and wailed that it missed Meryx and did not want anyone else. And indeed the thought of him was so painful that she refused to let herself think of him. That time when she had lain every night in Meryx's arms, as if that was the normal thing to do, instead of being cold or hungry or exhausted, or on the run, now seemed like some other life and in another time. To wake in the dark to feel the breathing wonder of a body you loved passionately, tenderly. No, she did not want to think of it, or even remember.

Now she was glad Shabis had a wife and was not there in the evenings, for she was able to sit quietly and think of what she had learned in the day, from Shabis, and in her study of Charad.

Another boat arrived on the canal, from down South, and it was stopped long enough to get news. The drought had not broken in the South, and there had been no rain at all. Things were very bad. And Chelops? Nothing definite, only that there had been fighting. She wondered if, when the next boat came, the Chelops Mahondis would be on it, or perhaps even Hadrons? And what was happening in the River Towns? The ones farthest south were emptying, but Goidel was not too bad.

The days passed and then it was weeks. Dann came to see her. They had been sending each other messages, "I am fine. How are you?" — that kind of thing.

Mara watched him walk towards her. The army had fed him and he had lost his lean, knobbly look, like a gnawed bone at his worst. He had grown taller. He was good-looking, very, in his uniform and he moved with confidence. Once, every movement he made was of a hunted thing. They did not embrace but sat looking at each other. They were in her room, where she slept. Dann glanced at the wall pictures, then again, then was caught by them, and only with difficulty left them to sit and talk. It was a shock to see the uniformed man in this room, adding to it yet another layer of time. For she had joked with Shabis that from her shoulders down, in this room, she lived in an ancient civilisation more wonderful than anything people now could imagine, but from the shoulders up, she was a mud-hut dweller. But Dann belonged in a modern barracks.

"Mara, when are we going to leave?"

She had known he was going to say this. "How can we? How far would we get?"

"We've managed before."

"Not in a country where everybody's movements are known. And if you left the army that would be treason, and the punishment for that is death."

He began moving restlessly in his chair, the old Dann, a barely controlled rebelliousness.

Mara got up to look into the next room to see if anyone was listening. The young boy whose wrist she had broken was tidying near the door. He ran out when he saw her. Now she knew enough Charad to understand what he said: he was calling her witch, bag, hag, snake. She called after him in Charad similar epithets and saw him panic.

"What is this Shabis like?" asked Dann.

"You should know. You go out with him often enough on reconnaissance."

"All right — yes, he's brave. He never asks us to do what he won't do himself. But that isn't what I meant." "He is married."

"I know." His smile, worldly wise and cynical, was something the army had taught him.

"And I haven't forgotten Meryx."

Dann hesitated, then said gently, "Mara, Meryx is probably dead." "Why? How do you know?"

"There's been more fighting in Chelops. The people from the town went up into the eastern suburbs and massacred Hadrons and quite a few Ma-hondis."

"Who said so?"

"Kira. She came up on the last boat. She had heard about it from some refugees. She agreed to be a soldier here, but she's not much good at doing what she's told, and so she's looking after animals."

"Do you see Kira?"

He answered only the surface of her question with, "We meet in the eating house. We are friends."

She had learned what she needed to know and she was pleased. So he had a friend. She said, "Dann, I'm learning to read and write in Charad, as well as talking. And I'm learning a lot of things. It's what I've always wanted."

"It'll be useful when we go North."

"Dann, have you every wondered why we say North, North?"

"Of course I have. And it is because everyone has said that things are

better."

"They are better here."

"But this isn't what I was hoping for."

"No," she said softly, "it isn't."

"They say that North — really North — there are all kinds of things and people and we've never seen anything like them."

"Dann, you and I — we haven't seen very much, have we? Only everything drying up and fighting and."

"And poppy and murder," he said.

"And poppy and murder. Dann, are you still afraid of him — the one you said was following you?" Up he leaped from his chair, away from the question, and stood looking

out into the glare of mid-morning. "He did try to kill me. He got away." "Where was this? Here?"

"I'll tell you another time. But I want you to know — if you hear I've gone, then I'll be in Shari waiting for you. Or in Karas."

"Both are inside the Charad spy system. Dann, did you know that you're in line for a tisitch?"

Almost from the start Dann had been a platoon leader: ten men. His basic training over, he was made a cent; that is, he had a hundred men under him. If he became a tisitch, then he would be responsible for a thousand men. He would be one of fifty officers immediately under the gener-al — Shabis. And he would become part of the administration of south Charad.

He had turned himself around, and stood looking closely into her face, in his old way. "Did General Shabis say so?"

"Yes. They think very highly of you. He said you are the youngest cent they've had. And all the tisitches will be much older than you."

"I don't want to be an Agre. I don't want to stay in Charad." But she could see he was pleased. Then he said, "Everything is stagnant here, isn't it?"

"It won't go on being. They are trying to make a truce. Then all of Charad will change."

"And when is this truce going to happen?"

"Shabis is trying to get a meeting with General Izrak."

"Well, good luck. You can't trust them — the Hennes."

She knew that this was more than a professional soldier talking about an enemy — the automatic thing. "Trust? Who cares about trust? If there's a truce there will have to be safeguards, which means that both sides will lose if they break it."

"Clever Mara. But you've forgotten, the Hennes are stupid. And, I've noticed, clever people often don't understand stupid ones."

This talk was sweet to them, after such a long time, almost six months. They could have gone on, but he had to return to his duties. Shabis came in and Dann saluted and stood at ease. Shabis asked Dann about some army problem, and Dann answered well and carefully, but not at too great a length. Mara could see that Shabis was testing him. Then he nodded and said, "Right. Dismiss. You can come and see your sister again soon." Dann saluted and went out, with a look at Mara that claimed her for their plans of escape.

Shabis sat himself where Dann had been and said, "Mara, how do you like the idea of becoming a spy?" And he laughed at her dismay. "I want you to come with me when we negotiate the truce, and then stay behind to work on the details — and report to me everything you see. It wouldn't be for long."

"I should be alone? Among the Hennes?" She was really horrified. "I can't tell one from another. I wonder that they can."

"Sometimes they can't. They all wear some sort of badge or mark."

"What is wrong with them? There is something."

"I think it is that the life — you know, the stuff of life — of one person is diluted with them so that ten — or who knows, fifty? — of them are the same as one of us."

She said,

"The inward spark,

The vital flame,

Can go as quickly as it came."

"What is that?"

"I don't know. My mind is full of — things, bits of words, ideas, and I don't know where they come from. Perhaps my childhood."

"Well, that's it. Their vital spark. Perhaps they don't have it. But they are clever enough at some things. After all, one of them copied that gun and made it work."

"I don't think that makes me like them any better."

"Well, are you refusing to do it?"

"I thought I was your prisoner and had to do as I'm told?" "Is that what you are?"

"I'll think about it. The trouble is, they make my flesh creep. I don't think I ever understood that saying until I saw the Hennes."

And she did think, hard and long when she was alone in her room. In her room — alone. What a happiness it was for her, this room, and being alone when she wanted.

Shabis wanted to change the whole country into something freer, easier, and to use money now spent on fighting and raids for improvement. And yet was there so much spent on war? There were battles, but not often. There were skirmishes. Dann had been right when he said Charad — or at least this part of it — was stagnant. The armies had farms and manufactories, they built towns over old ruins that were everywhere in Charad, they educated the men and the women in the armies, and it was a pretty easy life.

Shabis wanted to dismiss half the army back into civilian life and, as war receded into the past, keep only enough soldiers for an unexpected attack. But if you took away the army, the generals would have on their hands many thousands of people who were used to discipline and order, looking for work. What work? Everyone was fed and clothed as it was. Shabis said the former soldiers would be useful rebuilding towns and digging out silted rivers. Very well. For a while the invisible bonds of old disciplines would confine them, and then there would come a time when people would have to be forced by needs now satisfied so automatically no one need think about it, to compete for work. There would have to be money and systems of exchange, and if they refused to work or earn then they would not be fed. How simple it all sounded, how easily Shabis talked about it. But there would be a great turbulence and dissatisfaction and as Mara knew, though it seemed Shabis did not, there would follow the threat of poppy. When she said this to him he replied, "There would be punishments for that." For Shabis, the soldier, had to rely on punishments and rebukes. There would follow courts and prisons and police.

And there were the Hennes, a people within the mass of the Agre, a country within a country. Mara had said, "Why not let the Hennes split off and have their own country? Why do you want them?"

"They want us," was the reply. "They want what we have. They know we are quicker and cleverer than they are. I believe they think that if they capture our part of Charad — Agre territory — then they will become like us."

"But if you have a truce, then they must agree to stop trying to take Agre land, and be content with what they have." "Exactly. We will trade and be at peace."

A likely story, Mara thought. Shabis's life, spent since he was sixteen in the army, had narrowed his mind away from — well, the kind of experience she and Dann had at their fingertips. He did not understand anarchy, disorder, and the rages of frightened people.

The best part of Mara's life was now the afternoon talks, the "lessons," with Shabis. She was still taking language lessons every morning, though she was speaking pretty well by now, and understood everything that was said. She could write, just a little. Shabis owned an ancient book of tales from the distant past, made of tree bark. It was in

Mahondi. But her writing lessons were in Charad. She tried to use what she had in her brain — the Mahondi — to puzzle out the written words. Shabis helped her. He was spending more time with her, sometimes three or four hours every afternoon. They set aside one of these hours to say what they had to in Charad, to give her practice.

What she liked best was to talk about "those long ago people from thousands of years in the past." He said that he didn't have much to tell her, but as they went on, it turned out he did know a good deal, picked up here and there. They were piecing together what they knew, from her memories of her old home, from Daima, from the Mahondis of Chelops. Shabis said that if it had ever been possible to get all the different Mahondi families into one place then a pretty good record of the filtered down knowledge would result. "The trouble is," he said, "that we all know a little but not how it fits together." For instance he had not seen anything like Candace's wall map and the gourd globe, which came from such different times, separated by — well, probably, by hundreds of years. Or thousands. He asked Mara to draw him the map that had the white blanking out the top of it, and brought her a newly prepared white animal skin, as soft as cloth, and sticks of charcoal, and some vegetable dyes. Then he wanted another, of the time before that, when there was no white covering up so much of the picture.

Sometimes it was by accident that they found out what the other knew. For instance, Shabis remarked that in those long ago times there was a period when people lived to be quite old, even a hundred years or more, while, nowadays, if someone lived to be fifty that was pretty good. "I am an old man, Mara — thirty-five. Then a thirty-five-year-old man was still a young man. And there was a time when women had one child after another and sometimes died young because of it, or were old at forty, but then they discovered some medicine or herb that stopped them having children..."

"What?" said Mara. "What are you saying?"

She was staring, she was breathless.

"What's wrong, Mara?"

"I can't. I don't think I can take that in... do you mean to say... you're saying that those ancient women, if they took some drug, then they didn't have children?"

"Yes. It's in the Sand Records."

"That meant, those women then didn't have to be afraid of men." Shabis said, drily, "I haven't noticed your being afraid."

"You don't understand. Daima used to tell me and tell me until I sometimes got angry with her, Remember when you meet a man, he could make you pregnant. Think if you're in your fertile period and if you are, then be on your guard."

"My dear Mara, it sounds as if you are accusing me."

"You just don't know what it means, always to be thinking, Be careful, they are stronger than you are, they could make you pregnant."

"No, I suppose I don't."

"I cannot even begin to imagine what it could be like, being at ease when you meet a man. And then, when it suits you, at the time you want it, you have a baby. They must have been quite different from us, those women in ancient times. So different." She was silent, thinking. "They were free. We could never be free, in that way." Now she was remembering Kulik, how she had dodged and evaded and run away, and even had nightmares. Dreams of helplessness. That was the point. Being helpless.

She told him about Kulik, and how glad she had been when the drought stopped her flow. She said that when she had her fertile times she sometimes did not go out of the rock house, she was so afraid of him.

Her voice was tense and tight and angry when she spoke of Kulik, and Shabis was so affected by it, he at first got up and walked about the room, then came back, and sat down and took her hands. "Mara, please don't. You're safe here. I promise you, no one would dare." And then, as her hands lay limp in his, he withdrew them and said, "It's strange, sitting here talking about fear of pregnancy, when most talk now is about the opposite. Did you know that if one of our women soldiers gets pregnant, then there is a feast, and everyone makes a fuss of her? She has a special nurse assigned to her."

There was something in his face and his voice; she said suddenly, "You haven't had children?

"No."

"And you wanted them."

"Yes."

"I'm so sorry, Shabis."

She was thinking wildly, I could give him a child — and was shocked at herself. She had wanted to have a child with Meryx, to console him, to prove.

"No, I'm not like your Meryx. I'm not infertile. I had a child with a woman I met when I was on a campaign. But she was married and the child is now part of her family."

She was thinking, We go around in circles — women do. I could give Shabis a child, and then I would be stuck here in Charad, and I'd never be able to leave and go North.

Not long after that afternoon, Shabis said that his wife wanted to meet her, and invited her to supper.

Mara had not seen much more than what immediately surrounded what she lived in — Shabis's H.Q. — partly because the sentry stopped her if she showed signs of walking off and, too, because she felt Shabis did not want her to be noticed. Now, on the evening of the supper, she walked with Shabis through ruins, of the kind she knew so well, and then into an area that had been rebuilt to resemble what that long ago city might have looked like. Here were fine houses, streets of them. Here were stone figures in little, dusty gardens. The house they stopped at had a lantern hanging outside the door, made of coloured stone sliced so thin that the flame inside it showed the pink and white veining. A big vestibule was decorated with more lamps, of all kinds, and with hangings, and a door of a wood Mara had never seen, which sent out a spicy smell, opened into a large room that reminded Mara of the family meeting room in Chelops. The furniture, though, was much finer, and there were rugs on the floor so beautiful she longed to kneel down beside each one, and examine it at her leisure. A woman had come in, and at first glance Mara distrusted her. She was a large, handsome woman, with her hair piled up on her head and held there with a silvery clasp, and she was smiling — so Mara thought — as if her face would soon split. She was all smiles and exclamations, "So this is Mara, at last," and she pressed Mara's hands inside hers, and narrowed her eyes and smiled and stared into her face. "How wonderful to see you here in my house. I've been trying to get Shabis to bring you but my husband is so busy — but you know that better than I do." So she went on, smiling, and poisonous, and Mara let that flow by her, while she was thinking, vastly dismayed, that here in this fine house with this woman was Shabis's real life; it was where he spent his evenings, when he left her, Mara, in his office, and where he spent his nights, no doubt in a room as fine as this one — with this woman.

Mara was wearing the brown snake-tunic, over Meryx's trousers, because this woman, Shabis's wife, had said she wanted to see this material her husband had told her about. Now began a whole business of her feeling the stuff, shuddering Ugh, saying how she admired Mara for being prepared to wear the horrible thing — for years? Shabis had told her. How brave Mara was. And when Mara left here, as she, Panis, believed Mara intended to do, she, Panis, was asking a big favour: Please leave this garment behind so that Shabis and I may have a memento of you.

Shabis was uncomfortable, but smiling. Mara could see that this evening was something that had to be got through. Meanwhile, through a good, but fortunately short meal, the eyes of this woman who owned Shabis were suspicious, cold, moved from her to Shabis, and when one answered the other, or a joke was attempted, the black eyes in that cold face glittered with hate. How stupid this was, thought Mara, how very far she was from it all, for that life of loving or jealous looks seemed buried somewhere south in Chelops where — so reports were now coming in from the travellers — fire had raged through all the eastern suburbs.

As soon as the meal was over, Shabis said that he was sure Mara was tired, after studying so hard all day, and that he would walk back with her. Panis was so angry at this it was clear Shabis could not possibly walk back with Mara, who said it was only a short way, a few streets, and she would walk by herself. Mara could see Shabis hated this: he was pale with anxiety for her, and with anger, too. He was actually about to defy his wife and set off with Mara when Panis gripped his arm with two hands and said, "I am sure a few minutes' walk in the dark will be nothing to Mara, after all she's done and seen."

Shabis said, "The password for tonight is 'Duty,' if the sentry tries to stop you."

It was a night when the sky was black, and occluded, the clouds of the rainy season still being with them. Mara walked quietly along the centre of the restored street, where lamps hung outside every house, so that she could see everything, and then into the streets of the ruined area. She went carefully, for it was very dark. And then a shadow moved forward from a deep shadow, and she was just about to say the password, "Duty," when a hand came over her mouth and she was carried off, one Hennes holding her feet and one her shoulders, and keeping her mouth tightly covered by an enormous, sour-smelling hand. She was carried in this way through the ruins, always in the shadows that edged the already dark streets; and then a group of shadows stole forward when they were in a street in the eastern verges of the ruined town, and she was carried in a litter made by interlaced arms as solid as tree trunks until she was set down near a company of fifty Hennes soldiers. Her mouth was bound with cloth, and she was marched into Hennes territory, keeping up a steady pace all night, until the light came, and then she was in a camp made of mud-brick, and tents of thick, dark cloth. This was an army camp, unlike the towns the Agre army lived in. It was a very big camp. They took the cloth off her mouth and pushed her into a hut, set a candle down in a corner, said that there was bread and water there, in that corner, and that she would be summoned to General Izrak.

Her first thought was that now she and Dann were in two armies that were enemies. Her second was that she was separated from her sack, from which she was never apart, for she felt her life depended on it. All her possessions were in it. The two ancient Mahondi robes. Two pretty dresses from Chelops. Meryx's clothes, a whole outfit and a tunic, for she was wearing the trousers of another with this brown tunic. And a comb, a brush, soap, toothbrush. A bag of the coins she had snatched up from that boat when Han fell among those deadly feet. Not very much, but her own, and without them she possessed nothing but the trousers and tunic she wore and the light bark shoes the Agre wore. Well, what of it? She was still here wasn't she? — standing healthy and strong and not at all afraid, because she knew she was a match for the Hennes. There was a low bed, and she fell on it and slept and did not wake until late afternoon. Now she saw that the window was barred and the door did not open from inside. This prison was no more than the merest shed: she could probably be through these rough mud walls in an hour or two. There was a door into a room with a lavatory and a basin with water. She used them. More or less clean, she stood by the window to see what she could, which was only expanses of reddish earth and some more sheds and tents; and then in came a Hennes and said that the General would see her tomorrow, and meanwhile she must exercise. He did not look at her in any way she was used to: his gaze was directed towards her but did not seem to take her in. His way of speaking, monotonous, but at the same time jerky, disturbed her, as everything Hennes did, but she knew she must not give way to this.

Outside the hut an earth road went through the camp, eastward, and she was able to get an impression of the place. Hennes guards stood outside a big building, holding guns, which she knew now were not just for show, and they were outside other buildings, probably stores. The Hennes who was guarding her began a steady loping run, and she jogged along beside him. He made no effort to speak to her. She was tired, having walked all night, and wondered why it was considered necessary that she should exercise. But she understood that these were creatures of habit: prisoners must exercise every day. Having left the camp behind, and finding herself in open scrubland, she said to him, breathless, that she was tired, and he stopped, turned and began jogging back. It was as if she had reached out and turned him around by the shoulder. Late afternoon: the sun seemed to flatten the huts, sheds and tents of the camp down into the long black shadows. On a parade ground outside the camp soldiers were drilling while officers barked orders. This was the same kind of drill, the same orders, as she had been hearing in the other army. If she had not learned Charad she would be feeling very frightened now, and lost: in her mind she thanked Shabis for her mornings of language lessons.

As they passed the large building with the guards, a group of Hennes emerged and stood watching her. She thought that probably one was the General — certainly they all had the look of authority. What could they be making of her, this Mahondi female jogging slowly past them, so unlike them and unlike, too, most of the Agre they were used to? At that moment she saw, emerging from a tent, two of the race of people from the walls of Shabis's headquarters, and the room she had been sleeping in. Tall, light, with elegant long limbs, and narrow heads, creatures as far from the ugly thick Hennes as could possibly be — but they seemed to be servants of some kind, carrying food plates.

In her hut she was brought a meal by the same Hennes warder, and then, ready to sleep again, lay down; but instead was awake for a long time, thinking. What did they want her for? What had the spies told them? Breeding? Again? Well, what else did she expect? A female was for breeding, and with the fertility falling, falling — here, too, and everywhere in Charad — of course a woman with all her eggs in her. But the Hennes would not know about all that: even Shabis hadn't, until she told him. There was one thing she was sure of, and it was that rather lie with a Hennes she would kill herself. So, that solved that. No, it didn't. She would not kill herself. To have survived everything she had and then. No. But she would not breed. She would make sure there would not be sex during her fertile period: she lay thinking about the ways she could use to avoid penetration. And then, she would escape. She would run away and find Dann and... She slept, and woke thinking she was back in the Rock Village, because of the way this old slippery tunic slid about her.

She was ready when the guard came to take her to the General. He was in the large building she had seen yesterday: walls of mud and grass mix, roof of reeds, floor of stamped mud. Around a long table sat twenty or so Hennes, each in their uniform, similar to the army she had come from, of dull brown cloth. Each had exactly the same face, staring at her. She was sitting immediately opposite the General, distinguished from the others by a red tab on his shoulder. Each Hennes wore a coloured tab, or button or a badge. The large, flattish, yellowish face — it had a greasy look; the pale eyes; the large mat or bush of hair that looked greasy too. Did they put oil on their hair? Fat of some kind? All the exposed flesh and hair seemed wet, but it was grease or oil.

She had armed herself to tell her tale yet again, making it as short as possible, but this man, the General, said, "When do you expect your child?"

This was so much what she did not expect! — and she sat silent, collecting herself, and then said, "I'm not having a child."

At this, the large, flat faces turned towards each other, then back, and the General said, "You are having General Shabis's child."

"No, I am not."

"You are General Shabis's woman." "No, I am not. I never have been."

And again the faces turned towards each other to share — presumably — astonishment.

"You never have been."

This was not a question, but a statement; their statements were questions in a context, but their voices did not change — were flat, toneless, heavy. "You have been misinformed," said Mara.

"We have been misinformed. You are not General Shabis's woman. You are not pregnant by him. You are not pregnant."

This last was a question, and Mara said, "No." Then, but realising as she spoke that to joke with these creatures was a waste of time, said, "If you have captured me because of wrong information, then why not just send me back again?"

"We shall not send you back. You will be of use. We will have work for you."

At least, she thought, it had not occurred to them to use her as a sex woman. "May I ask a question?"

They looked at each other — the slow turn of the faces, then back at her. "You may ask a question."

"If I had been pregnant by General Shabis, what use would that have been to you?"

"He is a good general. He is very successful. We would rear the child to be a general. We plan to capture the children of the other three generals." "What are you going to use me for?" "That is a question. You had not asked for permission." "I am sorry."

"But I shall answer it. You have learned to speak Charad, and you know Mahondi."

Here she expected him to ask for her history, but he was not curious. Nor had any of them leaned forward to look at the tunic she wore, of that astonishing indestructible material. Yet none of them could have seen it before.

"I would like to ask another question." "You may ask another question."

"General Shabis wants a truce with you. He thinks a truce will benefit all of Charad."

"But I have not yet come to that part of the examination," reproved the General. "Before that I must tell you that you will be informed of the tasks that will be given you. It is possible you will be put in the army. Knowing Mahondi will be of use."

"In the meanwhile I have no clothes, not even a comb or a toothbrush. Perhaps you could arrange for another raid so you could fetch me my things?" As if she had not learned that to make jokes would only upset them.

"We would not be prepared to make a raid solely for the purpose of getting your possessions. It is very foolish of you to think that."

Mara now knew that whatever else she might suffer with the Hennes, boredom was likely to be the worst.

"What is the real reason behind General Shabis's demand for a truce?"

"He believes it would benefit the whole country."

"I am asking you for the real reason."

"That is the reason. He would like the war to end. He says you have been at war for twenty years and neither side has gained anything." "But we often win our battles with them."

"But the Four Generals administer the territory of the Agres, as they have done for years, and you hold this territory — nothing changes."

"It is not correct to say that," said General Izrak, apparently agitated, for his eyes seemed to twitch a little in their sockets. "We won a considerable tract of their territory a month ago. It was in the trenches that mark the division between our armies, on our western front and their eastern front. A year ago they won about as much territory as is occupied by this camp. A month ago we won it back. We lost only five hundred soldiers and they lost four hundred."

"General Shabis would consider that an unnecessary loss of life of soldiers who could be better occupied."

"Occupied doing what?" said the General, getting more and more upset. And all around the table the large, glistening Hennes faces turned this way and that, and their eyes flickered.

"Building towns. Improving farms. Clearing rivers. Making children. Growing food."

Down came the General's great fist on the table and then all the Hennes banged their fists, exactly like him, one after the other.

"We all get all the food we need. We raid them and get food, and besides our civilian populations grow food and we take what we need from them."

It was clear that Shabis's demand for a truce was not going to succeed. She wished she could tell him so. It occurred to her that he had wanted a spy in the Hennes camp and here she was. But the Hennes had a spy from the other camp — herself, for she could tell them everything she knew. And she was ready to do so. If they knew just how well organised, how satisfactory, how stable, was the rule of the Four Generals, would they then — the Hennes — be prepared to change their ideas? Did they ever change? Could they?

In came two of the tall, beautiful wall-people, carrying trays. Their elegance made these gross, ugly people even more repulsive. Did they know that long, long ago — thousands of years? — their ancestors had lived in a wonderful city that was only a night's walk away, and their civilisation had, probably, influenced all of Ifrik?

Each Hennes had in front of him a plate of food. It was nothing like as good as the food in the other camp. They began to eat. Then Mara saw that these were not all men: some were female, with flattened bulges in front. There was no other sign of their being women. They all ate slowly and methodically, while the two elegant slaves stood waiting.

"You will get your food in your own quarters," said the General. "May I ask a question?"

They all appeared to be surprised. "We do not talk and eat at the same time. This discussion is at an end. There might be things we want to ask tomorrow."

And Mara was taken to her prison hut by the guard. She tried to get him to talk to her, but he answered, "You will be informed."

She was brought food. How could she escape? If she were made a soldier, then perhaps... She was taken for the routine run that afternoon, and again saw the General and his staff on the way back. With normal people, their faces could be read as saying they had never seen or heard of her, but with the Hennes, who knew?

In the morning she was brought two uniforms, of the kind they all wore: brownish top and trousers, and a brown woollen cap, with a flap in front that could be buttoned back. Two pairs of light bark shoes, clearly not meant for marching in. Some brushwood sticks for her teeth. Soap. A small bag or pouch to be attached at the shoulders to hang at the back. This was the equipment, evidently, for a female soldier, for as well came a bag of rags and a cord to tie them on with. Also, a message from the General, that when she knew she was not pregnant, she must send him the evidence.

Her guard informed her, "You are no longer a prisoner. We shall not be locking this door."

She thought of joking, "If I am not a prisoner, would it be in order for me to walk out of this camp and go back to the Agres?" But she knew this poor man's mental apparatus would be so discommoded he would have to run to the General for instructions.

In four days she would have some blood to show the General, and meanwhile she would use the time to get what information she could by using her eyes. No one took any notice of her as she wandered about — or so it seemed. She was surprised at the apparent confusion of this camp. Then she saw there were blocks of order, unconnected with the others. A block of tents was neatly set out, with tidy paths between, but this was set at an angle to some rows of sheds, equally well arranged, and both were unrelated to an adjacent little suburb which itself was composed of rows of little boxes. To get from one part to another of this camp — but it was a town, really, since it had been here, clearly, so long — was difficult, for she found herself following the neatest of paths, hoping to achieve the next settlement, but it ended perhaps against the wall of a house, or simply stopped. Storehouses, water tanks, stood here and there, and there was a watchtower in the very centre of the camp, or town, when surely it should have been at its edge?

Finding herself looking westwards, on a well-used road — the one she had been brought on — she simply began walking, thinking she might not be noticed; but she had not reached the camp's outskirts before she heard a soft thudding of feet on dust and turned to see a graceful creature, a Ne-anthes, flying rather than walking, long delicate hands outstretched. "You must come back. You are not allowed."

They walked back together. Mara said that she wished she could have a writing stick and some writing leaves, to learn more Charad, but the girl replied that learning was not encouraged among the soldiers. "And particularly not the Neanthes. They are afraid of us, you see." And having reached Mara's hut, this Neanthes went off, seeming to dance rather than walk, sending Mara a delightful conspiratorial smile.

On the proper day, Mara sent the General a message that there was blood, and therefore no pregnancy; but back came the Neanthes to say she had been instructed to see the blood with her own eyes. "But I could have pricked my finger," Mara whispered, and the whisper came back, "You see? they're stupid." She ran off to the General with the evidence and brought back the message, "You have blood. You are therefore not pregnant. You will begin training tomorrow."

The next day she found the new recruits were not all Hennes. On the drill ground were a hundred recruits, males and females, mostly Hennes, with a few Neanthes, but about a third were people Mara had not seen before. They were small, stocky, strong, yellowish, with the knobbly look that Dann had had when he was underfed — and presumably Mara herself. These were Thores, and they had come voluntarily to the camp to join the army where they would be fed: their home province was impoverished because the Hennes had raided it for food recently. It was immediately evident that the tall, long-legged Neanthes could not drill together with the small, short-legged Thores, since the stride of one was twice that of the other, and the new recruits were sorted out into six platoons of Hennes, ten each, three of Thores, and one of Neanthes. Mara was with the Neanthes. She was not as tall, as lithe, or as slender, but she was not very different from their shortest.

Marching about on the dusty drill ground, while a Hennes instructor shouted at them, was boring rather than arduous, but he kept them at it, hour after hour, in the hot sun, while the dust rose up in clouds and they grew thirsty and tired. He was trying to bring them to an extreme of physical exhaustion, but again there was the problem of their differences. The platoons of solid, stolid Hennes showed few signs of fatigue, while the Thores, in any case undernourished, were in a bad way, and the Nean-thes were falling and fainting. They could not all do the same drill. It appeared that this problem arose every time with the new recruits, but apparently the Hennes always thought that this time things would be different, and were taken by surprise that what was happening was exactly what always happened.

From now on the Hennes would begin two hours before the Thores, and then there would be an hour before the Neanthes joined in. And that set the pattern for the month of drilling that was needed to turn Mara and the others into soldiers. She neither liked it nor disliked it. Soldiers had to be trained, and a soldier was what she was now — though not for long, if she could help it.

Suddenly everything changed. There was a raid to the east one night, and there were prisoners. Mara's hut was needed and she was ousted from it, and watched while four Thores were hustled in to take her place.

She was ordered to march north with a company that was to replace watch-guards on the northern frontier. She was expecting to hear something from General Izrak before she left, but there was nothing: she had only been of interest to them for one reason.

At first they marched through grasslands broken by clumps of thorn trees; but when they camped on the first night they were on the edge of a great plain broken by hills which next day, as they marched down on to it, they could see was no longer the sandy or reddish soil around the Hennes camp, but a dark earth, fibrous, growing sparse, low plants. A wind blew straight from the north into their faces, carrying showers of this earth with it, and soon all the soldiers had tied cloths around their lower faces to breathe through. All that day they marched through low, lumpy hills with an occasional Thores village, and that night they had come up from the plain and were again on a rise, and ahead was a desolation of rough hills and broken ground. This was the last day's marching. That evening, ahead, stood a line of watchtowers, each on a rise; and around each was a camp, more of a village, since there were huts, not tents, and a great blaze of sunset lit most luridly a flatness between the towers, where earth moved and blew about, seeming to heave, like a creature, and little hills whose tops were briefly lit with a ruddy glow before the sun plunged down and there was an absolute dark; and then into the black overhead the stars came, not glittery and clear, but dim, because of the dusty air.

The company separated, moving off to different watchtowers. Mara went to the farthest, and to the very top from where the watchfires could be seen burning here and there in the darkness. This was the extreme northern frontier. Ahead was the territory of the Agre Northern General, which stretched as far as Shari, about ten days' march away. Far away was a line of answering fires, the enemy's. For all Mara knew, Dann was there — her enemy. Well, it would not be for long — and why did she think that? she questioned herself, most uncomfortably. It was because she had never stayed anywhere for long, had always been moved on by some pressure or danger; but everyone knew that the soldiers sent to the frontiers were sometimes there for years.

There were two platoons, or twenty soldiers, at this outpost. They were Neanthes and Thores, mixed — the Hennes did not like frontier-watch-ing — and under the command of a Thores woman, Roz, who had been captured as a child and had never known anything but the army. This outpost was well ordered, efficient, clean, and Mara knew she had been in very much worse situations than this one. Soon, she was in a hut by herself, and was able to be on watch-duty, usually with people she liked. Commander Roz put people together who got on, and she saw to it that her soldiers on the whole did the duties that appealed to them. Mara liked being on watch, so that was what she did. Others collected firewood, fetched water, repaired huts, or cooked. Not that there was much to cook: once a month runners came from the Hennes camp with supplies, but they lived mostly on bread, dried fruit, and vegetables. Sometimes the commander ordered a couple of soldiers to go out and see if they could snare a deer or a couple of birds, but there wasn't much wildlife now, in the dry season. This was the third dry season since Mara had left the Rock Village.

She was often on duty alone on the tower. Regulations said there must always be two on watch; but even when there were, one would usually be asleep. Along this front there had been no fighting, no raid, not even an "incident" for years. A spy was the worst they had to fear. When Mara was on duty the Commander often came up. She was fascinated by Mara, as Mara was with her. She remembered little of her life before her capture, aged eleven, had always been a soldier, had always known where her next meal was coming from, and what she was to wear and do. She was not "in" the army, she was army. She listened to Mara's tales of her vicissitudes with her hand pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide above it, and she giggled nervously when Mara laughed and said, "You don't believe a word I am saying." Whether she did or not, she would say, "Tell me about the house with the spiders," or how the sky skimmer crashed, or how people lived in the River Towns. She had not been out of the Hennes camp, ever, except on watch-duty, had never heard of sky skimmers. Particularly she wanted to know about the flash floods, and it was pleasant to talk about flowing waters while the dust storms blew from the north.

Mara stood alone on her tower and listened to the dry whine of the wind around the corners and struts of the old, shaky building, and heard the thud, thud, thud of soil hitting the base of the tower, where it piled on a bad night as high as the shoulders of the Thores soldiers — who cleared it away in the morning — or to the waists of the Neanthes. All around this tower was a thick layer of the blown, dark earth, and as soon as the rains began vegetables would be planted, which would race into maturity, because this was fertile soil. Mara stood with her back to the south lands, or "down there," and saw the dim lights of the watchfires, that went on for miles east and west and, across a hollow of dark, the answering Agre fires. She listened to the soldiers singing below: the delicate, keening songs of the Neanthes, the Thores songs, whose words, when you listened carefully, were the double-tongued complaints of a subject people afraid to speak openly. On some nights, when the winds were not blowing, these songs seemed to rise like a many-voiced plea along miles of the frontier; and on a still night, threads and shreds of song came from the enemy lines.

One night, coming off watch-duty, she saw a movement among the heaps of dirt around the base of the tower and, then, a gleam of eyes. She leaped forward and hauled out a terrified wretch who wept and begged as she held her knife at his throat. "Be quiet," she said. "Tell me, what news of the Agre Southern Army? Do you know anything about General Shabis?" "No, I don't know anything." "Do you know about Tisitch Dann?" "No, I told you, I don't know anything." "Then what is the news along your sector?" "Nothing, only that your army is going to attack Shari." "Is that what you're spying down here to find out? Well, you can go back and tell them that it's nonsense." And she let him go to creep back to his lines.

She told Commander Roz, who wondered if she should report this back to the base when the food runners came next. She decided not to, but said she would organise a reconnaissance. Mara asked if she could go by herself. She showed Roz her old robe, which changed with the light, sometimes becoming colourless, or even invisible and said she would put it on one night when the dust was blowing, and try to overhear what was said at the watch-post opposite. When the Commander saw the garment she felt it — and made a face, as everyone did.

Mara put it on over the thick underclothes they had, for cold, and ran into the dark. It was a cold night and a noisy one, for the wind buffeted and gusted. She could feel the dust rising about her legs. She crawled the last few yards and lay flat, just outside a circle of firelight. The soldiers around the fire were speaking Charad and Mahondi too, and eating and throwing bones and scraps into the fire, and talking about the boredom of this watching life, and how they longed for their replacements so they could return to Shari. The only thing of interest they said was that General Shabis was coming to take command of the Northern Army and of Shari, and that would be a fine thing. "He's the best of the lot, General Shabis, he won't let us rot out here." Then the talk turned to women.

Mara had been thinking that she would rise up from her concealment behind some low bushes, and say she was General Shabis's aide — they would welcome her as one of them, of their army and take her to... She must have been mad to think it. She was a female, alone, and fair game. These were men who had been without women for months. No, if she was going to desert then she must choose a time when she could steal some provisions and some water, and steal through the dark evading their own line of watchfires, then the enemy watchfires and forts, and run like a rabbit to. She did not believe Shabis was anywhere near Shari.

She lay quite still, and the only bad moment was when a soldier stepped out into the dark a few paces away to pee. She heard the liquid hiss in the dry soil, and saw his face — full of longing as he stared out into the dark, thinking of his home — while the firelight flickered over it. Then he returned to his comrades around the fire. Some wrapped themselves and lay down to sleep. Two kept watch. Behind them on their watchtower others were staring over their heads into the night — to the tower where Mara spent so much of her time. She wriggled back and away and ran home. For her home now was this outpost. She told Commander Roz that General Shabis might or might not be coming to Shari, but she believed it was only hopeful thinking on the soldiers' part, because Shabis was the kindest of the generals.

The dry season passed. The lightning danced around the horizons, and the thunder came crashing as the rain fell in rivers out of the sky. In the morning all the land between them and the opposing front was covered in silvery, meandering rivulets, for the soil was so dry that at first it repelled water but then, as the nets of water thickened and glistered, the wet sank in and the soil was a dark, springy sponge. There were flowers jumping up everywhere, bright, frail flowers, and birds running about among them.

Out went the Commander to plant vegetables, with her soldiers. The sun dragged up clouds of steam. The clear air transmitted the singing from the opposite lines, so that the soldiers along this front answered enemy songs with their own; and for the whole of the first week of the rains it was as if the two armies were serenading each other.

All the soldiers ran out at night into the rain naked and held up their arms into it and exulted as the streams ran down their bodies. All but Mara. She was afraid to take off her cord of coins, and could not be seen with it. When they teased her about her shyness she said she had been brought up never to show her body to anyone but a husband. This made them laugh at her even more.

Commander Roz came creeping to Mara's bed and begged to come in, like a little animal, and when Mara was unwelcoming, she said, "Don't you like me, Mara?" Mara did like her. She would have liked very much to open her arms to this companion, but she did not dare. If it were known what she wore under her uniform.

Roz was kneeling by the bed and Mara was holding her hands, and she began talking about her husband, Meryx, whom she was afraid was dead, and how she could not bear anyone to touch her, only him.

This made Roz love Mara even more, this romantic woman with a dead love, who was so faithful to him and so pure.

She went back to the soldiers and told them that Mara was not to be persuaded. The women soldiers, who of course dreamed of a love of their own — and some had found love here on the frontier — and the men soldiers, who might have wives and lovers at home, all admired Mara. She became even more of a lonely and romantic figure, and people envied her.

What she had told Roz was not far off the truth. While she would not allow herself to think at all of Chelops and his possible — no, probable — death, she often felt Meryx close to her. She had only to summon up his image, when she was alone, or in bed, to feel that he was there. So it could be said that she never thought of Meryx, refused to, and yet he was with her, like a friendly shadow.

Mara stood on the tower and looked north and thought that she had been here now six months. The soldiers sent out to the watchtowers were supposed to be relieved after six months. The ration-runners came and said nothing had been said about a relieving company. Asked, What's new? — they replied that there were rumours of a putsch north. But there were always rumours of a putsch somewhere. Mara asked if there was news of General Shabis, but they said "everyone" was saying he and the other generals had quarrelled. Who was everyone? Some spies had said so. Had they heard anything about a tisitch called Dann? One said that he thought there was a General Dann. "A general?" A deputy-general: you know, each general has a little general attached, and he trains him up the way he should go.

Life at the watch-post became pleasanter as the rainy season went on. Farmers brought in food, and asked outrageous prices, and were bargained down. Commander Roz was always present at these encounters, for often spies were with them. Mara did manage to extract from a particularly suspect farmer, who asked too many questions, that General Shabis was in Shari. He was there to counter the expected Hennes putsch.

The rainy season went on but it was patchy. The flowers of the first rain had disappeared but there was a green film over the brown. Rabbits and deer ventured from the hills and made meals for the soldiers. As always in a land where the rains mean life, there was in everyone's mind a calendar or record of the rainy seasons, thus: last season had been a good one and filled the dams; the one before that had been poor, and the dams were low; before that had been two goodish seasons, but before them a run of bad ones. This one they were in was not really good but could be worse. Now next year — everyone would be waiting to see how that one would turn out.

Mara stood on her tower and looked north. She had been here nearly a year. Then it was a year. She had been forgotten. The dry season was here again and the black earth lightened to dark grey, though it would take some time for the soil really to dry out, so the winds could begin their work of lifting and shifting and reshaping the land.

Then, unexpectedly, since no one had believed the rumours, a runner came to say the army would be marching north past here, and they, the watchers on the frontier, would be absorbed into it, and must have their equipment and weapons ready. There were guns stacked in the fort. No one used them, because they were afraid the things would blow up in their faces, as they so often did. Now they were brought forth and cleaned, and every soldier checked a little stock of explosive powder. They did this because they had to but, by now experienced old soldiers, they stuffed their satchels and bags with food and warm clothing, and sharpened their knives.

Then they waited, staring south, until the horizon began to move towards them, and then there was the Hennes army, which engulfed them. The great army — it was ten thousand strong — marched for six hours, and rested for two, marched for six and rested, and so on, day and night, for ten days. The moon was high and bright and its light filled the sky but the clouds of dust raised by all those marching feet obscured the view around them. All the way Roz the platoon commander was beside Mara, chattering about how fine it would be when they occupied Shari, and that she had never before been with an army when it took a city. Mara was wondering how to escape. When the whole great company stopped on the rise outside Shari and looked down and saw the turrets and towers shining white above trees and populous streets, there was a silence and then a spontaneous cheer. Loot and good times were in every mind. But Mara was wondering, Why is there no opposing army to stop us? Already the truth was in her mind and she was wondering why General Izrak could not see it. If there was no defence, and this army was going to be allowed to march unopposed into the city, then a trap had been set. Mara knew that in the low hills on either side of Shari, General Shabis's troops must be waiting. She knew that she herself would be an animal in a trap if she could not think of a way to escape — but she could not, and she marched with the army, positioned about a third of the way along the column, into the streets of Shari, which were finer and grander than anything she had imagined. And still all that could be seen were the desperate inhabitants — running, taking cover in buildings, shops, even up trees. The army was halted, its head in the main square. Probably General Izrak only now understood that he was trapped, and he was wondering whether to retreat or fight. The soldiers had understood by now. And this army, which had not fought a real battle for years, was in a panic. Then Mara's chance came. The ranks broke, soldiers went off into side streets and alleys, into garden squares and houses, half in a frenzy of fear, but lured by loot. Mara dived into a shop, by herself, and had her Hennes uniform off, or rather the top part of it, and pulled on the old, brown, skin-like garment she kept at the bottom of her army satchel. Then she was out of the shop and into the crowd of fleeing inhabitants, no different from them, except that she had left the army issue kitbag with her trousers in the shop. Also all her food and clothing. She now possessed nothing at all, apart from the Hennes trousers and that old indestructible tunic. The refugees were crowding north out of Shari. Shabis's army, drawn up outside the town, stood on either side of the main road to let them through. The officers were shouting, "Go to Karas — we'll have this scum out of Shari before the solstice." "You'll be back home before you know it." "You'll find food on the road." And so on. But the refugees seemed not to hear, they were haunted and hunted and were determined on one thing: to get as far away from the Hennes troops as they could. Already they all had tales of horrors: rapes, murders, muggings.

And if Mara wasn't careful she would find herself out of Shari and on the road to Karas. She stepped out of the flood of people and there, under a big thorn tree, just where the town ended, a group of Agre officers stood watching the refugees. Mara reminded herself that she was not a soldier now, she did not have the protection of a uniform, she was a young woman. She swiftly unknotted a coin from her cord of them, using an empty booth to hide her for that moment, and went up to them, saying, "I want to speak to General Shabis."

She had expected what she got: astonishment, then incredulity, and then the ritual jeer the occasion demanded.

"He knows me," she said.

"So he knows you, does he?"

Now she took a big chance: "General Dann, is he here?" "I suppose you know him too?"

"Yes, I do."

And now their faces were those of soldiers whose mental apparatus had been overloaded. It was her assurance, her self-command that confused them. And, too, that she was a Mahondi, who looked like generals Shabis and Dann.

It was touch and go; the group could have gone on with another question, but instead there was a cacophony of leers, and then one of them came forward, took her by the wrist and, to the accompaniment of laughter, pulled her into an empty place that was usually a tea house. Before he could whip off her garment and show her what he could do, she held out the gold coin, on her palm, hoping he was not one of those who did not know what gold was, and said, "You can have this if you take me to either General Shabis or General Dann. And I won't tell them you tried to rape me."

It was her manner that stopped him, her calm. He rearranged his clothing and said, "I'm on duty."

"So I can see."

His eyes swivelled about, expressions chased themselves across his face — for a moment he was tempted to rape her after all; then he reached out for the coin, and she closed her fist over it.

"Wait," he said. He ran back to the group of his comrades. She saw their expressions change as he talked. He came to her, running. "Quick," he said. And, running, the two went off, avoiding the columns of fleeing people, through increasingly grand streets to a big building that had guards outside it. "General Shabis is on the other side of the town," said the officer. "General Dann is in there." She held out the coin; he took it, and said, "If you're on the level, tell General Dann I brought you here." And he ran off.

She walked up the steps and said to the guards that she wanted to see General Dann.

"He's busy," said one, contemptuous of a civilian.

"I think you'll find he'll see me. Tell him his sister is here."

At once the guards' faces changed. One went into the building, the other stood eyeing her, frowning, trying to match what he was seeing, this dusty female in her odd-looking clothes, and the great General Dann.

She was taken in, along a central hall full of officers trying to look busy, and into a side room. There at the window, looking down at the chaotic scene, stood a young officer so handsome, so appealing to her that she experienced him as an assault to all her senses; and she had begun to say, "Where is General Dann?" when she saw it was Dann, and at the same moment he turned and said accusingly, "Mara, where have you been?"

At which she sank into a chair and laughed, but then began to cry, and she dropped her head on her arms sobbing, while her brother stood over her scolding, "Mara, we thought you were dead." And his voice, impatient, loving, Dann's — made her feel that she had come home. "Now you are here we can leave," he said. "We can go North."

At this she began laughing again and said, "Oh Dann, how I have missed you."

And now, as she lifted her head to look at Dann, she noticed sitting opposite her a young man, a boy, and his face was bitter as he smiled, Wouldn't you know it! And he was very jealous. Mara realised, as Dann did, at the same moment, they had been talking in Charad; and now they switched into their own tongue, and that for her — she had not spoken Mahondi for so long — was a coming home, a return to herself.

She stood up and the two embraced, and now Dann's eyes were full of tears too. "Oh Mara," he said, "you don't know what it has been like without you."

At this the young man got up from his place and began to exit, intending this to be seen. Dann quickly went to him, laid his hand on his shoulder, and said, "This is my sister." But with a disdainful movement the youth shook off Dann's hand and went out, shutting the door with exaggerated care.

Brother and sister sat, close, and he held her hand and looked into her face and this — his way of looking — told her how much he had changed, for it was far from the hunted, haunted, close look she knew so well, but a frank, friendly, open examination.

"Shabis sent out spies to find out where you were, but they came back and said you were dead."

She told him where she had been, while he listened. Then he said, "Let's go, Mara. I didn't believe you were dead. I was only hanging around in case you'd turn up."

"But you're a general, how can you just go?"

He got up, laughing, and paced about because he was so full of elation and happiness, he could not keep still. "I'm just a trainee general. And anyway Mara, I don't care about that — do you care about that? No, of course you don't. Shabis likes me — that's the point. He said he thinks of me as his family. But this war — it's stupid. I don't want to be part of it."

He explained the plan — the Agre plan. General Shabis's troops were closing in around the southern suburbs, and General Izrak was trapped. When Shabis had cleaned up in Shari, then his army would make forced marches to the Hennes H.Q. and then take all the south part of Hennes occupied territory. Soon the whole country would be in the hands of the Four Generals. And the war would be over. As Dann outlined these plans, he spoke mockingly, and Mara agreed.

Dann ended, "A trapped boar can inflict nasty wounds."

"Cleaning up," said Mara. "That means a massacre."

"Who is going to weep for the Hennes? Or any of their kind anywhere?"

"The army isn't just Hennes. There are a lot of Neanthes and Thores people too." He was silent. "Why don't you announce an amnesty for the Neanthes and Thores? They were all taken prisoner and made into soldiers."

"Mara, this isn't our problem."

"I don't understand why Shabis agreed to this plan. It's silly. He could have stopped the Hennes getting to Shari."

"He didn't agree. You forget, there are four generals. He was outvoted. He wanted to make a stand well south of Shari. The other three wanted a trap."

"And a massacre." "And a massacre."

"I wish I could see Shabis. He was so good to me, Dann. He taught me so much."

"And me too. But Mara, are you forgetting we were captured? We are formally Agre prisoners. Well you are, anyway. Do you imagine Shabis would just say, 'Oh, you're off are you? Bless you my children.'"

"Why shouldn't he? He might."

"They've put a lot of work into me. They intend me to take Shabis's position when he takes over General Command. They're not going to waste all that."

"What are we going to do?"

"Get to Karas, first." "And then?"

"The frontier with the North Lands. It is a day's march from Karas. Once we're there, we're free."

"First we have to get to Karas." "And that is the most difficult part."

In the street outside there was a sudden tumult of shouting and running feet. The refugees were running past this building too. Dann closed the big windows, so they could hear each other. Mara had never seen windows like those: tall, from floor to ceiling, and of thick glass. She knew about glass, had seen it a little — in the windows of Shabis's house, she believed, but it had been too dark to see well — and here were sheets of glass; and she was thinking that a town with glass in its windows knows it is a safe town, because a single thrown stone can shatter glass. Well, Shari today was learning something very different.

Now Dann and she discussed difficulties. As always it was a question of details, for both knew — how well they knew — that getting one small thing wrong could mean calamity.

First of all Dann was a senior officer and could not be seen just walking off on the road north: that would be desertion. He must have the right clothes on. Then, both he and Mara were conspicuous. Here Dann took her to a wall where there was, she thought, a window beyond which was a tree; but she saw it was a glass that showed a tree which was behind them, outside the windows in the garden. She was longing to examine it, find out — but Dann said, "Quick, we must be quick." They stood in front of this glass, which reflected, and saw how alike they were: tall — Dann must have grown six inches since she saw him last — strongly built but finely made, with shining black hair and great, dark eyes. He was handsome, as she had seen in that first moment of shock; but already she was feeling him as something like an extension of herself, and she needed this little distance put by the glass that showed them to themselves, even if in a confusion of leaves and branches, so it seemed they were standing in a tree, to see just how good-looking he was. And he was smiling at her reflection. "Look how you've turned out," he said. "You're a beauty. You're going to get yourself raped if you aren't careful."

"I nearly was." And she told him what had happened. "But I bought myself off. Do you ever think that we nearly left the gold behind?" "Yes. Often. And how many have you left?"

"Fifteen."

"And I have six hidden. Apart from..." He touched his waist. "When I can get these out safely, I must. They itch sometimes. Meanwhile I'm glad to have them there."

What were they going to wear on that dangerous road?

Now he went to a cupboard and produced Mara's old sack. "I've always taken it with me. Just in case. I didn't really believe you were dead. That wouldn't be like you. And now it's going to save us."

She pulled out the two slaves' robes.

He said, "You've got to get those Hennes uniform trousers off." She pulled them off and stood in the brown tunic, reaching now to her knees.

"You've got to get that off too. People would be curious."

She was shy of him; he saw it, turned around, and she slipped on the old robe that would never be white because of the dust that had dyed it.

There was a knock. Dann went to the door, and opened it a little. A lot of noise came from the hall. He said, "Right, I'll deal with it. Meanwhile, don't disturb me until I say."

"And now we really do have to be quick." He whipped off his uniform and, as he did, said, "Goodbye, General Dann." Was he regretting it? At this last moment was he hesitating? If so, Mara could not see that he did. She caught just a glimpse of naked Dann, not ugly or starved or all ribs and bones or knobbly, but beautiful, he really was so beautiful — and then he had on the slave's robe, and she said, "What a pair of freaks we look."

"Not freaks enough. Get your hair covered." She bundled it into a piece of cloth and tied it tight. He pulled on the woollen cap Mara had kept in her sack. Into this sack he emptied some fruit and bread that had been brought in for General Dann's consumption.

"Water," she said.

"We are supplying water on the route to Karas," he said. "Water and soup, for the refugees." "Which we are now."

"Yes. Quick." This room was on the ground floor, and the windows looked into a little garden, beyond which the refugees were streaming past. Dann took his knife from the discarded uniform, put it into his knife pocket, slid in a little bag which held the coins. She took up her sack, but she had left her knife in the army satchel she had jettisoned. Dann flung open the window, admitting the sounds of shouting and anger, and leaped out, and she followed. In a moment they were across the garden and among the refugees. A sentry who had been idly watching the fleeing crowds saw the two too late, perhaps thought they were refugees who had strayed into the garden, or decided, to save trouble, that he had not seen them.

Mara and Dann, each with a sack over a shoulder, were among people who were half running, ten or twelve abreast, along the road to Karas. On each face was a stunned, disbelieving anger. All knew that when they returned to Shari their homes might not be there, would at least be looted and despoiled. Children were crying. Already people were falling out of the stream to rest a little by the side of the road, unable to keep up.

Outside the town the crowds turned for a last look: smoke was rising here and there. The trapped soldiers, careless, or drunk, or perhaps deliberately, were causing fires. There was a clamour from the besieged town, shouting and screaming but also singing.

The refugees passed through the troops that were on either side of the road, and Dann was trying to make himself inconspicuous, and held his arm across his face, as if shielding it from the sun.

Immediately beyond the town was the first feeding station set up by Shabis for the refugees, serving soup and bread and water.

Mara and Dann waited in line for some water — they had no container — drank as much as they could, and ran on. They were attracting attention because of this vigorous youthful running, and so they slowed to a fast walk. It grew dark, and some people settled for the night near the next feeding station, but most went on. The moon was now at half, but still yellow, and bright, and it illuminated the road. It was easy to walk. In the middle of the night, near a feeding station, the two ate soup and drank from the great jars that stood by the road, each guarded by a soldier. They slept a couple of hours, with a crowd of others, and felt they were reliving old times when they lay down back to back, each facing out, to be alert for thieves.

No thieves, only the restlessness, the weeping, the mourning, of the people, and the crying of the children. It was so noisy that soon Dann and Mara went on. That day's march was easy, because it was a huge, jostling crowd, though more than once someone did look closely at Dann, as if he were recognised. The feeding stations were well placed, and frequent. Now Shari was a good way behind, and whenever they reached a high point on the road, everyone turned to see what they could — but there were only columns of dark smoke, which sight brought forth more tears, imprecations, curses, impotent rage. That night was the same as the last, lit dimly by the shrinking moon, and Mara and Dann slept, but not much, for they could not lose the habit of being on guard at all times. There was one difference. Beside the road had stood a little inn, and Mara had darted in, found a knife in the deserted kitchen, and it was now safe in her robe.

Next day, at mid-morning, they saw Karas ahead, a town smaller than Shari, but pleasant enough. It was where Shabis had been educated, Mara reminded Dann, and said that here somewhere must be the school he had been at.

And now it was necessary to think carefully about what they would buy. It had been easy to feed themselves on the road here, because of the feeding stations, but now every eating place and inn would be crammed with people. They went to a public square and sat down under a tree on the paving. This was made of differently coloured stones, very attractive, arranged to make patterns and pictures. Some of the pictures were of people not unlike the Neanthes. And there were animals they had not seen, too. People were already lining up to drink from a fountain.

What were they going to wear? Dann said that in the North Lands men and women both wore long cotton robes, white or striped, cut loose with long, straight, loose sleeves. This design was to allow air to flow easily about the body, for where they were going it would be hot.

"And it hasn't been hot until now?" protested Mara.

She took out from her sack the blue and green loose dresses from Chelops that had never seemed appropriate at any place since, and which she had to associate with the easy life in the deep shade of the courtyard. They did not seem appropriate now either. Then they looked at the exquisite robes she could not bear to part with — but she replaced them at the bottom of the sack. Then the snake dress, which in this strong sunlight seemed to have lost its colour when she held it up, and looked milky and transparent. The two slave tunics were too short and skimpy. They would have to buy robes for the North Lands, so they could be inconspicuous.

They found a large clothing shop, selling what they wanted. They were called Sahar robes, and they chose two striped ones, in brown and white. The shopkeeper, when he saw the bag of coins that Mara pulled out of her sack, the ones she had snatched from Han on the boat, said he wouldn't accept them.

"But they are still currency," said Dann, with more than a touch of the young General.

The shopkeeper, an old man peevish with age, grumbled and said that he would make a loss when he changed the coins. Eventually they paid twice what the robes were worth. They bought some pieces of cloth. They bought some leather bottles, for water. Then they asked for a place to change.

"Are you running from the police?" asked the old man, but he didn't care.

"No, the army," said Mara.

"What have we done to have all these refugees landed on us?" he grumbled.

"You'll make a lot of money out of us," said Mara.

"I'd rather have peace and quiet. My wife's dead. If they turn up here expecting me to take them in, who'll be feeding them and looking after them? This old fool, that's who."

"It won't be for long," said Dann, "General Shabis has got them surrounded and everyone can go back home soon."

"And suppose they don't want to go back home, but want to stay here, in Karas? That'll be a fine state of affairs."

"They won't want to do that," said Dann, "because Shari is much nicer than Karas."

"Oh, is that so? And what's wrong with Karas, tell me that."

They changed, made sure their two knives were safely in the new robes, and went to look for an inn to rest in. They already knew what their problem was going to be: everyone, despite their miseries and worries, turned to look at them. This was a most striking young couple, and both knew they would earn trouble because of it.

In the inn they ordered a meal, and while they waited Dann, smiling, elated, triumphant, drew as large a map of Ifrik as would fit on to the table top, put a mark for Rustam, one for the Rock Village, one for Majab and one for Chelops. He made thick branchy lines for the rivers, little dots for the River Towns and for Goidel, marked Shari and Karas, and sat with the span of his long fingers stretched wide to cover the distance they had come. The two sat smiling at each other, pleased with themselves.

Dann said, "On that old gourd globe, from here to the Middle Sea was desert. Sand. Sahar. Only one river, Nilus. On the wall map, thousands of years later, no desert, but a lot of different kinds of country. But two big rivers. Nilus and Adrar. Both flow north. Both have lots of little rivers running into them. We are a long way from both of them. Nilus is away to the east and Adrar the same distance to the west. To reach either would be a major effort in itself. There are no rivers ahead of us, I think. The next town north of here is Bilma. Then Kanaz. Bilma is some days' walk from here. I know there are Thores people ahead. A spy told me. And Neanthes."

"And Mahondis? The Kin said that Mahondis were the predominant people all over Ifrik?"

"So where are they all?"

It was pleasant sitting together in this inn, pleasant in Karas, an old trading town, full of travellers from everywhere even when it was, as now, filling with refugees. So crowded and clamorous became this room that they decided to go. They filled their water bottles, bought bread and dry fruit for the road, and Mara took two of the coins off the cord, and hid them in her pocket under her knife: she did not want unfriendly eyes to watch her fumbling for the cord under her gown.

It was a long day's fast walk to the frontier. Inns and resting places close to a frontier are of particular interest to the authorities in every country, and, as the two approached the Inn at the Edge, a large building reddened by the flaring sunset, every sense was alert and they were ready to take to their heels. They had debated whether to sleep outside, under the stars, but they were tired and needed a rest. They believed that they were the first of the overflow from Karas to arrive here. As they walked through a room crowded with travellers, a sharp-eyed woman who was evidently the proprietor watched them, and they knew that not a detail escaped her.

Mara asked for a room, preferably on the ground floor, and at the back, and when she added the excuse "because we sleep badly and need quiet," the shrewd little smile on the woman's face said she heard this request often. Then she remarked that runners from Shari and from Karas were expected. They told her that Shari was under siege, but she knew that already. They saw that she was probably as well equipped with informers as any warlord or city official. "They often have interesting news," said she. "I don't always tell them what they want to know. It depends."

Now was the moment for a coin to appear. The trouble was, Mara believed that a whole coin was too much for what they wanted, which was only a warning if the runners knew about them.

"Can you change this?" said Mara.

The woman's eyes narrowed and glinted: she was certainly not one who did not know what a gold coin was. She took the coin from Mara as if she had been given it, and, resting her two hands on the counter, the coin lying between them, she looked full at Mara and then at Dann.

"Interesting news about the young General," she said. "You'd not think that General Shabis's favourite would run off, in the middle of a war." But she smiled, at Dann and then at Mara. "They are saying it was for love."

She took up the coin, deliberately, and put it deep between her breasts. Then she said, "There are ways across the frontier that avoid the roads and the guards."

Mara fetched the other coin from her pocket, and the woman took it from her.

"You rest. I'll call you if you have to run for it."

In the room she gave them, at the back, with a low window, there were two beds and they looked comfortable, but it seemed too dangerous to sleep. They lay down with their belongings close to them.

Mara thought how sweet it had been, the sharing of the time before sleep, with Meryx, the lazy chat about this and that, the intimacy, and how sweet this would be now with Dann, if their ears were not straining.

"If Shabis caught up with you — would he punish you?"

"He would have to. Death sentence. Discipline."

"Yet he loves you."

"It's not me he loves." He sounded tired and irritated. "Mara, didn't you ever think it was a bit odd, your being in his house?"

"That wasn't his home. It was where he worked."

"And did you ever wonder why the Hennes abducted you?"

"Of course. But it was all because they thought I was pregnant by Shabis. Another breeding programme."

"And how would they know you were pregnant? Shabis's wife sent a message to Izrak that you were pregnant by Shabis. She wanted to get rid of you." She was silent with the shock of it. "She was jealous. Surely you aren't surprised?"

"I didn't even know he had a wife, at first."

"And when you did?"

"I suppose I thought that if. I thought it must be all right."

"You are a funny woman. You didn't even notice he was in love with you?"

"No. All I cared about was — he was teaching me. That's all. I've never been so happy in all my life, Dann."

He laughed. She did not like the laugh. The male soldiers at the watchtower laughed like that, talking about women.

"And if I'm so strange, what about you? That boy of yours in the headquarters in Shari. You left him just like that, you didn't care."

"Mara, I told him every day, sometimes several times a day, that I was going to leave. One day I'd just walk off and leave and he had to be prepared for that."

"All the same, he was jealous; if looks could kill, then..."

"He came to H.Q. and begged me to take him as an army servant. He had run away from the Hennes. He wanted to work for me. And so he did." Again, she did not like his laugh. "He was in rags and he was starving when he came. He was fed. He was given a uniform. He'll find another officer to take him on. He's probably done that already."

"And you don't care."

"I care more about Kira, as it happens." She saw him lift his head up off the pillow, to see how she reacted. She was astonished. "Kira and I were together. I wanted her to come with me when I was posted to the Northern Army, but she likes her comforts, Kira does. She preferred her nice little house and her nice little life. And her nice poppy." He mimicked Kira's, "But I only smoke a little bit, Dann, just a teeny little bit sometimes, Dann. She's probably got someone else already too."

"And you had that boy and Kira going at the same time."

"You know what, Mara? Because you were living with Meryx all that time, all cosy and nice, you talk like an old woman."

"All that time," said Mara, fierce. "It was less than a year."

"A long time, for people like us." He yawned. "We do get about Mara, don't we?"

From the big communal room came a commotion. Voices raised sharply. Commands.

"We'd better leave," said Dann.

At this the door opened and in came the proprietor. "Time to go," she said. "They're after you, all right. Go out through the window. There's a girl there. She'll show you the way." And then, turning back to say it, "Good luck. You'll be safe when you're across." She went out.

"People like us," said Dann.

"Or very much don't like us."

"But they always like the gold. Quick." He was out of the window, and gone; and she followed him. A young girl was crouching in the bushes, her eyes glinting in the light that fell from the window. She went fast out of the garden, looking back to see if they followed. The moon was a tiny yellow slice, and the stars were brighter; the stars glittered and crowded and the starlight was strong enough to make faint shadows. In a moment the three were running through trees and a pursuer would find it hard to see them at all: birds or ghosts flying through the forest.

It was past midnight when the girl gasped, "Here it is," meaning the frontier; but there was nothing to be seen, only a line of hills where they jumped and scrambled through rocks. Then the forest continued: great, old trees with a soft litter beneath that absorbed the sounds of their running feet. Mara and Dann expected her to go back, but she ran on with them until they stopped on the crest of a rise, and pointed forward. The sky was lightening. The town they were looking down on spread widely, and as far as they could see north. The lights of the town were low and little, netting the darkness in a dim twinkling. Here the girl said, "I'm going back," and was already off when both Dann and Mara caught hold of her. They needed to know certain things. First, what language was spoken here? Charad, she said, surprised that there could be even the possibility of another language, for the foreign talk she heard at the inn was as strange to her as the night cries of the birds they had been hearing. What money did they use? Money, she said. Mara fetched out from the bottom of her sack a little handful of old coins, and the girl shook her head when she saw them, putting out her hand to touch them, disbelieving. Did things go well here? Was Bilma prosperous? Was it suffering drought? What were the people who ruled this country like? But the two saw that she was a girl whose longings had been satisfied when she got employment at that grand dynamic centre, the Inn at the Edge, the last in Charad on the road north, where travellers passed through with tales of lands she had scarcely heard of. And one day a handsome young man would come to the inn and. All this they knew about the skinny little girl whose meagre flesh was not because she had lacked food, but because she was still a child. Mara offered her some of old Han's coins, but she giggled, and said that she was only doing as she had been ordered. And off she ran, disappearing into the trees.

Which here, close to the town, stood sparse and often with a branch or two lopped off. And between the edge of the forest and the beginning of the town stretched soiled and beaten grass, where an occasional shack or hut stood.

Under the last of the great, untouched forest trees — new to both of them, for neither had seen a forest like this, where trees were two or three times the height of the savannah trees — they sat down to rest, and to talk. Decisions had to be made. First they pooled what they knew, or had been told, about Bilma.

It was large and powerful, but not the main city of the North Lands. It was a trading town: several trade routes passed through it or ended here. Like all the towns of the North Lands it was governed by a military junta that had got power in a rebellion, and the central government to which they paid tribute was weak, or at least lax, and each town in its district or province was virtually self-governing. The climate was not the same as in the south, which was sharply defined rainy seasons with long periods of dryness between. Here the forests of the North Lands were watered by mild rains in the summer, but the winters were severe. Farther north still, so Dann had heard, the winters might last months

They needed now to sleep and to eat, but they were afraid to sleep. They had some bread left. They had not seen fruit as they ran but, in the dark, fruits and the big leaves of some trees had been indistinguishable. There was a small stream. They drank. The stream had thick bushes along it, and they hid in them, and did sleep a little but were startled awake thinking there were voices; but what had wakened them were birds. They lay and saw birds, so many, of all sizes and kinds, listened to their talk in so many different voices — but meanwhile it was midday and they did not know what to do next.

Mara said, "You realise that our problem has always been how to change money?"

"Our main problem might have been that we had no money."

And now Mara took the cord of coins out from under her robe, laid it down and said, "Thirteen left."

Dann laid on the earth four coins, and said, touching his waist, "Ten left here." And then, "We shouldn't use any more of yours. We might be separated again." He slid out of his long, new robe, and sat before her naked except for the little loin cloth, suddenly a slim boy, really not more than that, all the weight and importance of General Dann gone. He was so beautiful, this lithe, elegant youth, and yet Mara had to look at the savage scar around his waist. He had his knife out and the point was in his flesh just above the scar and he levered out a coin, which fell on the earth between them, shining and clean and new, though with a bit of blood on it. He was pale and his lips set, but he levered out another. Then two on the other end of the scar.

"I used two to buy presents for Kira," he said. "So I know how to do it. And it's not too bad." But he was looking sick. "Enough," she said.

"No." And he went on until there were six on the earth. "Six still inside and safe," he said. The scar was bleeding. Dann took a bit of cloth from the sack, and wetted it in the stream, and dabbed and dabbed at the blood, but it kept coming.

"I wish we had Orphne here to tell us what plants to use."

"Or Kira. She picked up a lot from Orphne. But the plants are different here."

"Perhaps not so different." Mara began searching along the banks of the stream, pulling at the plants and smelling them; and then she found one, a greyish plant with spiky leaves, whose smell was not unlike one that Orphne used to stop bleeding. She offered this to Dann. He sniffed at it, vigorously chewed a bit, then smeared the juice from his mouth on to the raw places. The bleeding stopped, but it was a real wound and looked ugly.

"Well, at least we have enough money to keep going. You, thirteen. Me, ten."

Mara put back the cord with its thirteen knots under her breasts, and wondered what it could be like to live inside a body you did not have to be conscious of, as a source of danger, never letting herself be seen undressed, always afraid the cloth of her robe might blow up or be lifted.

Dann lay among the soft grasses by the stream, his eyes shut. It was quiet: only birds and the sounds of water. And she could not resist and lay down too, and slept. When they woke it was late afternoon. He said the wound at his waist was painful. Mara said she hoped the knife had been clean. He joked that that was hardly likely, living the life it did. It was his best friend, he said, that knife.

It was time they left the forest. They walked along the paths past the shacks and huts where the very poor people lived, into the edges of the town, then nearer the centre, and found an inn, a large one, where they hoped they would not be much noticed. And it was full of every kind of person, of every colour, including some new to both of them, very pale of skin or reddish, with light eyes of blue or green. But there was such a mix of people, and most wearing the long Sahar robes, that Mara and Dann believed they were enough like them not to be noticed. They ate quickly at a general table, a vegetable stew, and some roast meat, and fruit. They asked for a room. This time the proprietor did not have the look of a spy. A lazy, indifferent man, he asked where they had come from and when they said, "From the south," he only remarked, "I hear things aren't too good down there."

The room was on the third floor, large and comfortable, and there were two beds in it. There was a great bolt on the door. They slept, and for the first time they could remember, were happy to pull over them a thick cover.

Mara woke in the night to hear Dann groan, and in the morning they inspected his waist and knew they must find some sort of medical help. But they didn't want anyone to see those concealed coins. She went down to the big general room where the owner stood, as if he had not moved since she saw him last, by a table from where he surveyed his guests. So many, such a noisy lot, so animated, so confident: Mara had not seen anything like this. Over these people was no cloud of apprehension, of threat. She said she wanted the name and address of a doctor and at once saw in his eyes the alertness that had not been there till now: he was afraid of an infectious disease. So she at once said that there was a flesh wound that would not heal but was not dangerous.

She walked, following directions, through crowded, lively streets, and heard a dozen different languages, but more than the others, Charad. Not once, Mahondi. In the doctor's house was an old woman, bent and nearly blind, who peered at her, seemed hardly to see her; and when Mara asked for a lotion to heal infected flesh, she reached down a jar off a shelf. And now it was a question of paying. Mara had with her the bag of coins she had got off Han, and put some down on the table the old woman stood behind. And now the blind old eyes peered and blinked and the old fingers fumbled, and then, "What's this? Haven't seen this money for a while." "It's legal tender," Mara said.

"I don't know about that." And she shouted in Charad into a back room and out came a young man whom Mara disliked and distrusted at first sight. He was wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He had been eating. There was a smell of spicy food. Everything about him was sharp and sly, with a conceit in each movement and look.

"Are you the doctor?" asked Mara.

He did not answer, but took up the coins and then looked at her, suspicious, curious, and said, "We don't often see these." He took a few of them, and pushed back the others. He was doing everything slowly so that he could go on examining her. She was afraid. "Who is the medicine for?" he asked, and she said, "My brother."

"Is it bad?" "Bad enough."

"If it's not better by tomorrow, come back." But he did not turn away and nor did Mara.

"I want to change some money," she said, knowing as she spoke that she was making a mistake. It was as if the words had been pulled out of her by those cold eyes of his.

"What money?"

She had a gold coin ready in her pocket, and she laid it down, and again those clever fingers went to work, testing and assessing.

"I haven't seen one of these for a long time either. Where have you come from?" "A long way."

"I can see that." He pushed the coin back at her and said, "If you come to the Transit Eating House any night, you'll change your money."

He stood watching her leave. She knew that everything that had happened with him was wrong and dangerous.

She bathed Dann's wound with the lotion, and then went down to negotiate about payment. At last she persuaded the innkeeper to accept the old coins, but knew that yet again she was paying twice what she should. And now she sat with Dann. He drank but would not eat, slept but kept waking. He was feverish and the wound was worse.

Next day she went back to the doctor's house. There the old woman at once summoned the young man, to whom she said she wanted medicine for a fever.

"I'll tell my father to come and see your brother."

"No, no, the medicine will be enough." And she knew her tone was wrong, and that he knew she was hiding something. She wondered why with this man she seemed unable to behave in any way but guiltily, nervously.

"He'd better come and see him," said the young man.

Mara walked back to the inn with an elderly man, the doctor, whom she did not much like either, but he was not as instantly unlikeable as his son. Dann was hot and the wound was nasty. The doctor did not touch it, to Mara's relief, so he did not feel the coins that were still there; but he looked at Dann's tongue, turned up his eyelids, listened to his chest and — this Mara found unpleasant — examined Dann's genitals. She knew that probably this was what doctors had to do; but it was what slavers did. And besides, the sight of that hand pushing and probing there made her flustered and uneasy. She wanted to knock the hand away. Then the doctor made Dann turn over and laid his ear to Dann's upper back, first on one side and then the other. He straightened up and said, "That's an old wound. A slave chain, I suppose? Why is it open now? Was your brother trying to scrape off the roughness of the scar?"

Mara had never heard of, or even imagined such a thing, and said so. The doctor said, "Well, that's a bit of a mystery then." He left three kinds of medicine: one for applying to the wound, the others to drink. He accepted payment in the old coins without bargaining. He then said that when her brother was better they might find the Transit Eating House an entertaining place. Mara felt that she was in a trap, but could not see what it was; and when he said, "When the wound is better I'll take a proper look at that scar. There might be an internal infection for some reason," she was saying to herself, Oh no you won't, we won't let you.

And now for several days and nights Mara nursed Dann, who at first did not seem to get better. He was delirious and shouted threats and warnings, which Mara knew were because in his mind he was back in the Tower. And he gave orders, like an army officer, and then might try to salute, as he lay, accepting orders, muttering, "Yes, sir." In the long hours of his fever Dann seemed to be reliving several different times in his past, and Mara could recognise from what he said, or moaned, or shouted, that he went back and back again to the Tower, and his suffering at these moments was terrible. Again little Dann clung to his big sister, gripped her, cried out that she mustn't let them take him... And then at last he slept and was better. With every dose of the medicine he improved, until about a week after arriving at the inn he seemed himself. And now she was able to start feeding him. The food here was nourishing and various; but there were tastes and spices new to them because, after all, through this town had for centuries passed traders and travellers from all over the North Lands and from the east where the Middle Lands were. But all they knew of these was that they were very far away.

Mara stood at the window and looked down into a quiet back street. This was a suburb. All the houses were of brick and wood and set in gardens. Over to the east rose, pale and gaunt, tall buildings, like the Towers of Chelops, clusters of them; but here they were not the haunts of criminals but were where the rich lived, the rulers of Bilma. Mara looked and wondered and wished she could go out, and felt Dann's gaze on her back, and heard, "Mara, do go out. I feel all right now." There was a peevishness here, which she was hearing often. Too often. She turned, careful to be seen smiling. She knew her anxiety annoyed him. And indeed she was saddened and worried, and much more than he knew. This was not the bright, confident, high-spirited young soldier of such a very short time ago, but a man who was tormented. Was he remembering those terrible nightmares and how he had clung and pleaded for her protection?

"Very well, I will," she said, and knew that as she went her steps quickened with pleasure and anticipation. She had been longing to see this city. She stopped herself saying, Be careful Dann. Don't do too much, too soon.

And now she was out of the quiet suburban streets and in central Bilma, where she walked, and stopped, and looked and thought, This is the first time I've seen streets like this. Bilma was busy, confident, noisy, fast, full of traders and buyers and bargainers, of shops and stalls and booths, and there were several markets, where she went for the pleasure of sharing in the energetic animation. In every other town she had been in the people seemed to be listening always for news of the dryness that crept northwards; but here they talked of "down there," "down south," "the war in the south," "the southern drought," as if they were immune from all that. And probably they were, for this was a very different country, with its capacious forests and the old rivers that had not stopped running in anybody's memory. So occupied was Mara in her enjoyment of this successful place and its polyglot people that she forgot herself and her caution until she noticed that she was getting more attention than she wanted. Then she saw that her robe, the Sahar, the long, striped garment she had bought to be like everybody else in the North Lands, was in fact worn by men. They were all in plain white, or white striped black or dark brown or blue or green, while the women were in light, clear colours, yellow and rose and blue, or patterned in ways Mara had never seen, so that she wanted to stare, and marvel over a skirt, or a sleeve, because of its wondrously subtle weave. Light, gauzy dresses. The nearest to them were the bright dresses worn by the Kin, but she knew she could not find anonymity in those, because they were full and flounced, whereas these robes were straight, so that the patterns on them could be better seen. She went to a market stall and bought a robe that was a happy miracle of delightful patternings, and she knew that in it she would be like everybody else. When she had paid for it — and she had to persuade the stallholder to accept the coins — she knew that it was essential to change a gold one, for she had so few of the others left.

Back she went to the inn, where the proprietor stopped her and said he had to warn her: he knew that customs were probably different down south, but a woman too much on her own in the streets was asking for trouble. She thanked him, went up to the room, and there Dann sat where she had left him, listless and sombre. He turned his head to watch her slip off the striped gown and put on this new one. "Beautiful," he said, meaning her as well as the dress. "Beautiful Mara." She told him about the busy streets and the markets, and he did listen, but she knew that when he looked at her he was seeing more than her. She said, not expecting that she was going to say anything of the kind, "Are you missing Kira?"

"Yes," he said. "Very much."

Daring a great deal, for he was always on the edge of irritability, she said, "And the boy?"

He said angrily, "You don't understand. He was there, that's all."

She ordered food for them both, and watched him eat until he said, "Stop it, Mara. I'm eating all I can. I don't have an appetite."

And then she was restless again, and he saw it, and he said, "Go out if you want. I'll sleep."

She descended to where the proprietor stood, a fixture, it seemed, watching his customers, and stood before him in her new robe which made her — surely? — one of the local people. "Now I'm wearing this, is it all right to go out?"

"It's all right," he said, but reluctantly. "But be careful." And added a warning, and a stern one: "You are an attractive female." "I've seen attractive females in every street." "Yes, but are they alone?"

Mara went out, thinking how surprising it was that police, police spies, the watchful, suspicious eyes she knew so well, were not in evidence here.

What did you see, Mara? What did you see? On this morning's excursion she had been too dazzled by what she saw to see it well. Now that she was alert, her wary self again, she saw that while every street held as many women as men, they were in groups, or walked two or three together, and usually with children, or they were with a man or men. If you saw a woman by herself she was old, or a servant with children, taking them somewhere, or a servant going to market, with her baskets. In these streets women did not saunter or dawdle or stand staring. And now that she was noticing everything, there was no doubt the proprietor of the inn was right. When people saw her, they looked again, and their faces were fixed in the immobility of interested surprise. So what was it about her? That she was good-looking she knew, but there was not exactly a shortage of handsome women. She was a Mahondi — was that it? She had not seen any in her wanderings here in Bilma. But there was such a variety here: people as tall and slight as the Neanthes, stubby and sturdy as the Thores, and everything in between. No Hennes, not one. And no Hadrons. And certainly no Rock People. Just imagine, she could have lived her life out in that Rock Village and never known that there could be lively, clever, laughing crowds so various that she was for ever seeing a new kind of body, or hair, or skin. But her ease in exploring these streets was gone, and she felt danger everywhere. She went back to the inn, and the proprietor said, first, that she had visitors, and then that it was time he was given more payment.

She asked if he would change a gold coin. She had seen the moneychangers in the markets, but, watching the transactions, knew she would not get a fair exchange. Those men, and women, sitting behind their little tables piled with coins, each with a guard standing beside them who was well armed with knives and cudgels, they all minutely observed every approaching trader or traveller; and Mara had taken good note of the greedy faces and looks of self-congratulation when the fleeced ones went off with less money than they should have.

"You can change money in the Transit Eating House."

She found Dann with the doctor, and the son, the young man she disliked so much. And Dann was sitting up, animated and laughing. When Mara came in, he stopped laughing.

"Your patient is doing very well," said the doctor.

"Your medicine did very well," she said.

"My father is a famous doctor," said the young man.

The two were rising from where they had been sitting, on her bed: her coming had ended the pleasantness of the visit. Dann was obviously sorry this new friend was leaving. And now Mara looked again at the youth to see if she had been unjust in disliking him, but could see only a sharp face — she thought a cunning face — with eyes that were impudent and shameless. And, too, there was a subdued anger, and she believed she knew why, remembering the tone of "My father is a famous doctor." For if his father was famous, then he was not, and if he turned out to be famous then it would not be for the kind of wholesome knowledge that gave this doctor his self-possession and his consciousness of worth.

But Dann liked Bergos, the son of the good doctor.

The two men went off. Dann said he was thinking of going out that evening, and Mara knew it would be the Transit Eating House. Oh yes, she was in a trap all right, but she did not know what it was, only that there was nothing she could do about it until it was sprung. Dann was not well enough to leave this town and move on. As he lay down on the bed again to rest, he said, "We could stay here, Mara. It's a nice town. You seem to think so."

And Mara watched him fall asleep, and thought that going North, the dangerous difficulties of always going North, could end in this town, because it was agreeable and apparently welcoming. What had going North meant if not finding something like this, which was better than anything she had imagined? Water, first of all: water that you did not have to measure by the drop or even the cup; water that stood in great barrels on street corners for people to drink out of generous wooden ladles that hung ready; water that ran in reed pipes into the houses; water splashing in the many fountains; water close by in beneficent rivers; water in the public baths that stood in every street; water that fell ungrudgingly from the skies — water that you took for granted, like air. And, because of the water, healthy people, and children everywhere, and children's voices — she could hear them playing in a garden nearby.

It was mid-afternoon, the rest hour just coming to an end. Here everyone lay in their rooms through the warm hours, or sat lazing in the shade of tea houses. In this darkened room, where the slats of the shutters made stripes over the floor and across the bed where Dann slept, so that she thought fearfully that it was as if he lay trapped in a cage, Mara sat and thought; she thought hard and carefully, and knew that she did not want to give up here in Bilma. This was not what she had been journeying to find. Well, what was she looking for? Not this: she knew that much.

That evening they went downstairs to eat, Dann for the first time, the proprietor congratulating him on his recovery; and Dann said, "Let's go to the Transit. I need a change."

In the street a couple of men strode fast towards them and then turned around to look at Mara, and Dann said, "What a lucky fellow I am, to be with such a beautiful woman."

His tone was affected, even coquettish, as if he were observing himself with a congratulating eye; and she thought, her heart heavy, its beat repeating A trap, A trap, that she would never have believed him capable of that dandyish drawl. When he had said he was not himself, that was the truth: a Dann she did not know strolled along at her side, and she could almost see in his hand a flower, holding it to his lips, teasing them with it, as some of the men — but what kind of men? — were doing as they walked, casting glances over the flowers at the women, and the men too. And in a moment Dann had reached out to a hedge and torn off a bright red flower. She was silently begging him, Don't raise it to your lips, as if his not doing it would be proof of his safety — and he did not, only twirled it between his fingers. This was not a pleasant area, the route to the Transit Eating House. Mara, who had been so captivated by this town that she had refused to see anything unpleasant, now made herself look at the ugliness of these poor streets, at a woman with her brows drawn tight and her mouth set, a child whose flesh was tight on his bones, a man with defeat written on his face.

The Transit was a large building, spilling out lights, and its customers coming and going populated the street outside. Their faces were restless and excited — like Dann's now. The room they went into was very large, brightly lit, and crammed full. Here were mostly men, and Mara saw at once that she was the only woman there wearing an ordinary garment. All the rest were young, some not much more than children, and they wore flimsy, transparent skirts, with breasts just covered or not at all. Dann and she sat down and were at once brought beakers of strong-smelling drink. It was a grain drink, of the kind she had helped make in Chelops. The place was very noisy. No point in Dann's or her even trying to speak, unless they wanted to shout. Again this was a mix of peoples, some of kinds they had not seen before, and the languages they were overhearing were strange to them. This was a place, then, not for Bilma's inhabitants, but for the traders and travellers and visitors.

A tap on Mara's shoulder. "You want to change money?" she heard, and a waiter pointed across the room to a door that was shut, unlike most doors in this place. She told Dann she would not be long, and across the room she went.

It was a small room, for transactions and business, and in it was waiting for her a fat old woman who scarcely came up to her shoulder. She was very black, so she did not come from this region. She wore a handsome, scarlet, shiny dress whose skirts seemed to bounce around her as she walked back to a chair behind a plain plank table. She sat, and pointed Mara to an empty chair.

Her examination of Mara was brisk, frank and impartial: she might have been assessing a bale of new cloth. "How much do you want to change?"

Mara took out one gold coin from her pocket, where she had it ready, and then took out another. She was remembering the recurrent anxieties about changing money.

"I shall give you more than the market-place value."

Mara smiled, meaning this old woman to see that she, Mara, did not think this was saying much. And in fact this crone — she was really old, in spite of her scarlet flounces and the glitter of earrings and necklaces — was ready to smile too, sharing Mara's criticism: it was the way of the world, her smile said.

"My name is Dalide," she said. "I have been changing money for as many years as you have lived." "I am twenty-two." "You are in the best of your beauty."

Mara could have sworn that Dalide could easily have leaned forward and opened her mouth to examine her teeth, and then pinch her flesh here and there between fingers that had many times assessed the exact degree of a young woman's toothsomeness.

Mara put down the two gold coins. Dalide picked one up, while the other hand fondled the second coin. "I have never seen these," Dalide said. "Who is this person?" — pointing at the faint outline of a face, probably male, on the coin.

"I have no idea."

"Gold is gold," said Dalide. "But gold as old as this is even better." She pulled out bags of coins from a bigger bag, and began laying out in front of Mara piles of coins of differing values, meanwhile giving emphatic glances at Mara as each new pile was completed. These were not the flimsy coins she had been carrying about, making a light mass of money that you had to pay out in handfuls. Dalide was giving her coins that would be easy to handle and be changed, yet each worth a good bit. Mara counted them. She knew roughly what she should expect, and this was not far off. She swept the coins into a cloth bag she had with her, and Dalide exclaimed, "You aren't going to walk through the streets at night with that on you?"

"Do I have an alternative?"

"If you didn't have your brother I'd send my bodyguard with you." "People are very well informed about us." "You are an interesting couple."

"And why is that?"

Dalide did not answer, but said, "Would you like me to find you a good husband?"

And now Mara laughed, because of the incongruity.

Dalide did not laugh. "A good husband," she insisted.

"Well," said Mara, still laughing, "what would it cost me? Could I buy a husband with this?" And she shook her bag of coins so they clinked.

"Not quite," said Dalide, and waited for Mara to say how much money she had.

Mara said, "I do not have enough money to buy a husband." And added, laughing, "Not a good one."

Dalide nodded, allowing herself a brief smile, as a little concession to Mara. "I can change money for you — as you know. And I can find you a husband for a price."

"I'm not flattered that you think I would have to buy myself a husband.

Not so long ago I had a husband without money ever being mentioned." And she could not prevent her eyes from filling.

Dalide nodded, seeing her tears. "Hard times," she said briskly.

"Surely not in this town. If these are hard times, then I don't know what you'd say if I told you what I've seen."

"What have you seen?" asked Dalide softly.

Mara saw no reason to be secretive and said, "I've watched Ifrik drying up since I was a tiny child. I've seen things you'd not believe."

"I was a child in the River Towns. In Goidel. I was playing with my sisters when a slaver snatched me — I was for some years a slave in Kharab. I escaped. I was beautiful. I used men and became independent. Now I'm a rich woman. But there isn't much you could tell me about hardship."

Mara looked at this ugly old thing and thought that she had been beautiful. She said, "If I need you, I'll come back." She got up, and so did Dalide. As Mara went to the door, Dalide came too, and they left the business room behind. "Are you coming with me?" asked Mara, seeing how everyone in the big room turned to look at this grotesque old woman in her scarlet and her fine jewels.

"I don't work here," said Dalide. "I only came to meet you. I wanted to have a good look at you." "And you've done that." "I've done that. So, goodbye — for now."

Dalide made her way out of the crowded room and Mara looked for Dann, but he had disappeared. Then the same waiter, seeing her standing here, pointed at another door, this time an open one. She went in. And saw a smaller room full of tables where mostly men were gambling. Dann stood by one, with Bergos, and watched the fast movement of the hands throwing dice. She went to Dann, who when he saw her said, "Let's go home." He sounded irritated. If she had not come then, he would soon have been seated among the gamblers. Dann exchanged a few low words with Bergos. Mara and he went out into the street, which was not crowded now. Mara was conscious of the heavy bag of coins which she was trying to conceal, and said, "Dann, let's go quickly." And he said, "How much did you get?"

And now for the first time in her life Mara lied to him and said she had changed one gold coin and not two.

When they got safely back to the room, Mara fiddled with the coins, so that they would not seem as many as there were, sitting half turned from Dann. She gave him half of the worth of one coin, and told him that their gold coins were not known here and probably were much more valuable than they knew.

Dann lay on his bed looking up out of the window at the moon that was coming up again to the full. His face — oh, how afraid she felt, seeing it; and then he was asleep, and she could look directly at him, and wonder, Is that the new Dann, who seemed to be her enemy, or was it the real Dann, her friend? How was it possible that a person can turn into somebody not himself, just like that... But perhaps this new person, whom she disliked and feared, was the real person, not the one she thought of as real. After all, when he had been General Dann, with that boy, what was he then?

She slept with the little bag of money under her arm, and in the morning Dann was not there. The proprietor said he had gone out for a walk with Bergos. Mara paid him what was owed, and he said, "So, how did you find Mother Dalide?" Mara merely smiled at him, meaning, Mind your own business, while feeling it was probably his business too, and felt herself go quite cold when she heard him whisper, "Be careful. You must be careful." And then, as he glanced about for possible eavesdroppers, "Leave. You must leave this town."

And now there was a lot she wanted to ask, but had to stand back as some people came to ask for rooms. She and Dann had said that there were people who liked them very much and helped them: was this man one? More people wanted to pay their bills and leave. So Mara thought, I'll ask him later, when I can get him alone, and she went out. She wanted to walk up a little hill that overlooked the town, so as to get a good view of it, spread out; but she was feeling so uneasy she sat down at a table outside an inn in the central part, where customers ate and drank under a canopy of green leaves and red flowers. They also watched people passing on the pavement, and commented on them and their clothes. And the passers seemed to know they were being discussed and did not mind, but on the contrary were self-conscious, like performers.

Mara knew that she was being observed. In this town surveillance was discreet, invisible; she did not believe it was the police who were watching her now. Who, then?

A girl passing with a tray of some kind of yellow drink, put a mug of it down in front of Mara, who was suddenly sure that this mug had been apart from the others, put there for a purpose. She put back the mug on the tray and took another. The girl gave her an offended look. Mara thought, Well, it might have been poisoned, anything is possible. I should go away from here — meaning both this place and Bilma. But having got up, she sat down again, for she had seen Dann coming along the street with Bergos and a new man, a Mahondi — a real one? Yes, he was, like herself and Dann. She liked the look of him as much as she disliked Bergos. The three men sat down at a table well away from her, but she knew Dann had seen her, and was pretending not to. They sat chatting, out of earshot.

Mara could scarcely breathe, the oppression on her heart was so great. Never could she have believed that Dann and she could be in the same place, and he pretend he had not seen her. This cheerful, noisy scene — people drinking and eating, talking and lazing, all under a little ceiling of greenery and flowers — lost its charm, and all she could see were vulgar or foolish faces, and Dann, as he talked with Bergos, seemed no better.

Her heart was hurting, her eyes hurt. Why was she trying so hard to run, always running and fighting so hard for her life and for Dann's life? What for? Now she seemed absurd to herself, this little, frightened fugitive, always glancing over her shoulder, always alert for thieves, guarding Dann or, when he was not there, worrying about him. Mara looked back down her life, from the moment when she had stood up to "the bad one" in her parents' house, and seemed to herself like a scurrying little beetle.

And now the thought arrived in her mind, as she watched Bergos, that the person who had been organising her surveillance — had been Bergos. It was he whom she had to fear. And those who employed him. Who? Dalide? But what could she be hoping to get out of her, apart from a fee as a marriage broker?

Mara thought she would get up, deliberately and slowly, to be noticed, go to where the men sat, smile prettily at all three, talk a little, then refuse their invitation that she should sit down. Then leave. But suppose they did not invite her to sit down? She quietly rose, slipped away through a side door in the leafy screen, and walked as fast as she could to the hill, not looking now to see who observed her. She did not care what happened to her. There were footsteps behind her. From their speed she understood how fast she was walking. Dann caught up with her, and took her arm. She shook him off and walked on. He was beside her. He did not speak until they were at the top of the low hill, where there was a big garden, or park, which on its north side had a tall fence, with guards along it.

"Stop, Mara, let us sit down."

There was a bench. A glance told her that here was "her" Dann, not the other one, as she now called the impostor. He was grave, affable, composed and was smiling at her. He put his hand over hers. "Mara. Don't go on being angry, please."

The angry, protesting thoughts that were filling her mind faded away.

"Who is that Mahondi?"

"His name is Darian. He has just come from Shabis. He has news. But first." He took from an inner pocket a coil of heavy, dull metal, beaten silver, and held it out to her. It was a bangle, but for the upper arm, not the wrist, meant to fit close. It was a serpent, and the head end was slightly raised, to strike. Mara slid it up on to her upper arm, easing it over the elbow joint, and saw how well it looked. Then she let the sleeve fall over it, the lovely sleeve with its delicate, shadowy patterns. "Take it off again." Mara did so. He pressed the tail of the serpent where there was a little indentation, and a knife shot out of its mouth, a mere sliver of glittering metal. Dann pressed again and the knife slid back. "It's poisoned. Immediate death." Then, because of her unease: "Shabis sent it to you."

"A loving present."

"Yes, Mara, it is. He said to Darian that if you had had this when the Hennes patrol captured you, you could have killed them all and escaped."

Mara slid it back up her arm, and let the sleeve fall.

"It's so pretty," said Dann, stroking the sleeve, and through it, her. "And now, there's news, but it isn't good. After we ran away, half of the Hennes army escaped. This is what Shabis told the other three generals would happen. Our army chased their army back to the line of the watchtowers, where the Hennes made a stand. There was a terrible battle. They held their territory. Our army retreated back to our lines. So all that happened was that thousands of people got killed, soldiers and civilians too. Neanthes, Hennes and Thores civilians."

"So everything is exactly as it was?"

"Yes. Stalemate."

"Oh no," she said, rebellious, "no, nothing stays the same." "But it has all been like that for years. What can change it?" "Drought, for one."

"Drought, drought... that's how we see everything, because of what we've seen. But here there isn't going to be drought. Floods are more in Bilma's line."

And now both of them, brother and sister, he still holding her forearm, turned to look down at Bilma spread out there, gardens and houses, parks and houses, fountains everywhere. She heard his sigh. She saw his face change, and instinctively drew her arm away. He did not notice, he was looking over to where the big, pleasant houses spread on the slopes there.

"Mara, why don't we stay here?" She shook her head, and again felt the nets of danger closing around her. "I want to show you something." He pulled her up from the bench, and they walked with their backs to the town to where the tall fence dipped down the other side of the hill. The guards watched them. "Darian showed me this, early this morning. We came here." Where the fence began to descend the hill, they could see through it down to where, at the foot of the hill, was a long, low building, with platforms on either side. Running north from the building were two parallel lines, close together, shining gently in the sunlight. From a platform, something that looked like a long, covered box was in the process of being pushed along the lines by a group of young men. The lines ran north, at first through light forest and then through grassland. The two stood silent, watching how the young men pushing the box laboured, their backs bent. Twenty of them, and then half ran past the box and picked up some ropes, or lines, invisible to them where they stood on the hill, and went ahead, pulling, as the ten behind pushed.

"That is the way out of Bilma," said Dann.

"And who is in that — conveyance?"

"Who do you suppose? Can't you see the guards? The rich use it. Those lines run north to the next town, Kanaz. Once there were machines that ran on their own power on lines like those."

"Once? Oh I suppose the usual thousands of years ago?"

"No. Two or three hundred, they are not sure. But now slaves do the work."

"I didn't know there were slaves in Bilma."

"They aren't called slaves. Mara, Darian wants me to join him as a labourer pushing the coaches — that is what they are called. And when we get to the next town, or the one after — run away." And, before he said it, she knew what she would hear. "I'd rather die, Mara. I've done that, pushing dead machines up and down hills."

"And not long ago you were General Dann." She smiled at him, meaning to tease him a little, but saw his face was dark and angry. Her Dann was not there. This Dann would not take my hand, hold my arm, so simply and nicely, out of affection for me.

"There's something else. Kira came north with Darian. He replaced me in her affections, when I left. Well, he's been after her a long time. Darian is a deserter. So Shabis would have death squads ready for more than one of his officers."

"Dann, I'm sure that Shabis wouldn't."

"Oh, you can be so stupid, Mara. An army has rules. If they caught me I'd be for it. And so would Darian. That means, if people knew here they could get a ransom for us. That is why Darian wants to go North. There is going to be trouble between the Four Generals. Now the three are blaming Shabis for the mess in Shari. There is a lot of disaffection in the army. If the Generals could have little General Dann and Major Darian publicly executed, it would buck up discipline no end."

He was staring down again. Another of the coaches was being pushed out of it along the lines. "Perhaps Kira is down there. She left Darian as soon as they got here. He was just a means of getting away. I hear she has already got another protector. So she has been here in the same town with me, but I didn't know it. Perhaps I am looking at her now."

"Oh, you do love her," said Mara, but shrank, seeing his face still dark and angry.

"That is how you would have to travel North, Mara. A protector. That's the way it's done, and I would push your coach." He turned, and took her hands, gently. This was not the other one. "I love her, yes. And you shouldn't mind that, Mara, because my heart was as small as a dried bean, before Kira. Like yours is now." Here tears flooded Mara's eyes, thinking of her cold, aching heart. "But when I loved Kira so much, I knew how much I love you. I didn't know it till then. I began to remember. I know how you looked after me and defended me, Mara. And you sang to me, kept Kulik away from me. Kulik is here, I saw him." And then, seeing her face, said, "I tell you, I saw him. You never believe me, do you?" And now, right in front of her was the other one. She felt afraid.

"I was just little Dann. And you were a big girl. We're equal now, though. I want to stay here in Bilma. I want to buy one of those houses..." he turned himself around, pulling her with him. The great, white houses stood shining in their gardens. "I want to live here in a house like that."

"Dann, we don't have the money."

He pressed her robe close in to her so that he could feel the cord of coins nestling there.

"Give me your coins, Mara."

He was gently shaking her, and then not so gently. "Give them to me." "No. You could take them by force."

His face was puckering and twitching, little convulsive tics near the eyes and mouth. It was as if the face of the other one was fighting to hold off the Dann she knew. His eyes were staring, and sombre, his mouth half open — the dreadful little convulsions of the flesh went on.

"I have ten gold coins. Did you know we could buy a house with that? We could settle down — a little house, not one of those. But I know how to get more money, I know I can. And I want yours."

His face was convulsed, briefly, and then it was over. "Right, I can manage without you, Mara. That's it. Now I know where we stand."

"There's just one thing," she attempted feebly. "If you're afraid people here would take you back to Charad to be executed, then you shouldn't stay here."

"I told you, I'm not little Dann any more. I can look after myself." And he was off, running, back into the town. He called back, "Perhaps I shall cut myself open again. That would be another six."

"Don't Dann, don't," she called after him, and heard his derisive call back, "Don't Dann, don't."

She went back to the inn, and asked for food in her room. She could not bear the pressure of hostile inspection, even if she was imagining it. The proprietor only nodded, but his eyes were concerned. Yes, he was one of the ones who liked them — or at least her. She knew Dann would not be in the room, and did not expect him back. He had taken all his things. And he had taken his share of the money Dalide had changed. She lay through the hot hours looking out of the window where the sky blazed hot, and then paled, and then flared into sunset. She did not sleep. She knew something bad was brewing. When there was a knock at the door and the proprietor called to her, she knew what she would hear. "You must go to the Transit Eating House," he said. "Your brother is there." And then, "I'll send a boy with you."

She looked around the room, thinking, What should I take? Suppose I don't come back here? But why should I think that... it's silly. All the same. And she filled her faithful sack with everything she owned.

The proprietor saw the sack, and said, "Pay me what you owe."

"I'm not leaving," she said.

"Pay me."

She paid, and he called for the boy to go with her. She was pleased to have him there, though he was an urchin of ten or so and could not defend her, and she knew his function was to report back to the proprietor what he had seen.

The big room of the Transit was jammed with people, and the noise was like a shout in her ears. She walked through to the gambling room, and there was Dann. He was flushed and wild and laughing. The room was crammed except for the area immediately around the table. Beside the man who handled the dice and the chips, stood the owner of the Transit, a usually genial host, but now he was pale and agitated — as well he might be, for in front of Dann were stacked coins in every possible denomination. A fortune. Dann called to her over the piles of money, "And now who is stupid, Mara? Look at what I've won."

"Now stop," she shouted. "Stop while you've got it." For she could see he meant to go on.

Dann did hesitate. For a few moments time slowed. Dann stood, his face stretched in a triumphant grin. The onlookers' faces were full of warnings and dismay. The big lamp hanging over the table swung gently, making the shadows move. And then Dann put his hands down on his piles of winnings and said to the owner, "I'll go on."

"Don't, please don't," said Mara and he echoed her as he did earlier, "Don't Dann, please don't."

He shook the dice, threw, shook, threw, shook — and let out an exultant yell, and began to dance where he stood. A long pause, while the owner, who was looking ill now, wrote the amount on a piece of wood. And then his name.

Dann held it up, showing it around and then thrust it forwards to Mara.

Now Mara saw Bergos, standing with his back to a wall among a press of people. Well, he would have to be here. Near him was the newcomer, Darian. Bergos was grinning, full of spiteful pleasure, but Darian was sober and concerned. Mara looked beseechingly at him. He shrugged. But then he did squeeze his way through and laid his hand on Dann's shoulder. He said something to him in a low voice. While this man whom he regarded as a friend spoke to him, Dann's face twitched and grimaced because of the conflict in him, but he shook Darian off. He stood with his hands held just above the great heap of wealth in front of him. There was so much there that people's mouths fell and they stared, looking at it. Dann's face was now a medley of emotion: he was scared, but intended to be defiant, and he nodded for the dice. He stood with his hand poised over the shaker, and at that last moment he could have stopped, and been safe, but he was driven and, his lips held tight to contain their twitching, he threw. And lost, as he was bound to.

The owner went swiftly forward and scooped all Dann's late winnings into a bag. One moment the table was piled, the next empty.

Dann stood smiling foolishly. It was absolutely silent in that room.

"I haven't finished," he said.

Mara knew that he meant the six gold pieces under his scar, but at that moment Bergos said softly, "You could stake your sister." There was a groan, or a moan, around the room.

Dann said, "I'll stake Mara. I'll stake my sister." Darian again put his hand on Dann's shoulder and it was shaken off. "Don't worry, Mara," called Dann, but now his grin was foolish and weak, and his hand shook. "This is my winning night."

Again Darian attempted to stop him, but Bergos had come forward and stood beside Dann. Dann reached for the shaker and the dice — threw, and lost.

And now Dann howled; he howled like a dog, and pulled his hair with both hands, and moaned, "Mara, Mara, Mara."

But already Mara felt a hand on either of her arms, and she was being turned around, and then pushed out through the people, and then into the big room, where they had heard of the drama being played out in the gambling room, and were standing to watch her being pushed through, but fell back, away from the touch of this unfortunate one. In the street she was not surprised to see on one side of her the grinning face of Bergos. The other man she did not know.

She was thinking of Dann as she was hustled through the streets. Dann had gambled away all his money, including the six gold coins. What is he going to do? Is he going to cut out the others? Without anyone to help him?

It was not far to where they were going. She asked, "What is this house?" And Bergos said, "Dalide's house."

She thought, If she wanted me why didn't she just kidnap me? She said to Bergos, "Wouldn't it have been easier to just capture me?"

"Against the law," he said.

They were in a large, dimly lit hall. Ahead hung a voluminous dark red curtain.

"Not against the law to gamble a woman away," she said, and found herself being pulled through the curtain's large folds; and she was in a large, brightly lit room full of women, and girls, most fancifully dressed and some half naked. They stared at Mara. Their faces, their eyes, were some curious, some resentful. There was the smell of poppy. At this point the man she did not know dropped her arm, and went off to where a big, ugly man lounged near a wall, guarding the women. The two conferred, watching as Bergos pushed her through a door into a sober and dark corridor, where stairs went up. These she ascended, while Bergos held tight to her arm. At the top was another corridor, and Bergos pushed her into a room, and she heard the door lock as he shut it.

It was a large room, well furnished, with pleasant colours, not like the room where the women were downstairs. There was a wide, low bed in a recess, a round table, and chairs that were carved and cushioned. She had not seen furniture like this, nor ornamental lamps, nor a floor covered with soft rugs, since she was in Shabis's house. But she felt that the room was closing around her and she ran to the window and pushed back heavy curtains. Outside was the sky, a glitter of stars, and beneath her a shadowy garden; and there was a small fire and around it men crouched. She could hear them talking, in low voices, but she did not know what language they used.

Her heart was pounding. Perhaps it was her beating heart that was suffocating her. She began a fast, frantic walk up and down, up and down, her hand pressing her heart, trying to silence it; and then a sound alerted her and Dalide stood in the doorway, a fantastic sight: a white flounced dress, with ribbons and bows of scarlet, and then the old, brown wrinkled face with its withered mouth, and small black eyes in webs of wrinkles. This apparition swayed over the carpet on black heels, and sat itself at the table. Dalide signalled Mara to sit. Mara sat. Dalide clapped her hands. The same big, ugly man Mara had seen downstairs came in with a jug and two beakers. He also carried Mara's sack, which he set down. He did not look at Mara. He went out.

Dalide said, "You forgot your sack in the Transit."

Mara said, "I'll kill the first man who touches me."

Dalide cackled with laughter, and reached out a claw of a hand, pointed at the snake visible under Mara's thin sleeve and said, "Yes, I've seen these toys before. And very useful they can be." And then, seeing that Mara's hand was held protectively over the coil of metal, "I'm not going to take away your little snake."

She poured yellow, frothy liquid into two beakers, and began at once to sip from hers, so Mara felt safe to drink.

"And I'm not going to poison you."

"Or drug me?"

"Well, who knows?" said Dalide.

"What do you want then? What did you do with my brother?"

"Why should I do anything with him?"

"He has gambled away everything. He has nothing."

"I don't deal in men, I deal in women."

Mara felt that her body, her face, her heart, were quietening. She trusted Dalide, she decided. Or perhaps it was relief because of this silent room, the comfort, the soft colours.

"I shall come to the point," said Dalide. "I'm going to sell you for a very good price — a very good price indeed — to a man who will know how to value you. But he's not here at the moment. He's up in Kanaz. When he comes back he'll want to have a good look and then I know what he'll decide."

"What makes you think I won't kill him? I'm not going to be anyone's property."

"Why don't you wait and see?"

"Who is this man?"

"He is one of the Council — a leading member."

"And they run Bilma?" "And all this country."

"Why should such an important man be interested in — a runaway slave?"

"You forget, I was a runaway slave myself. The condition makes for cleverness. And I have a hunch — it is my business to know men and the women who will suit them."

She got herself up, with difficulty, from her chair. "You'll be sleepy soon. I have shared my sleeping draught with you. In the morning we can talk — if you want. But it doesn't matter. You don't like me, but you need me. You may go anywhere in this house and the garden. Don't try to run away. You will be watched. And if you use that little snake of yours on any of my people, I'll hand you over to the police. I never break the law, nor do I connive at lawbreaking." And she tottered out, the ridiculous white dress swaying over little black shoes like hooves.

Mara was assaulted by the need to sleep. She pulled off her dress and, as she was about to throw herself on the bed, was arrested by the feeling that someone was watching her. She saw, among a confusion of shadows and deeper shadows, and gleams and rays of light from the lamp, a tall figure standing by a wall, spying on her. She shrieked. The door at once opened and her gaoler was there, the big brutal-looking man. "What's wrong?" he asked in clumsy Charad.

She pointed at the watcher, who pointed at her. The truth of the situation rushed into her mind, but she was so shocked, she was trembling. The man looked where she was pointing, then disbelievingly at her, shook his head meaning, She's mad. And went out, laughing.

Mara, half asleep, managed a few steps to the wall, and watched Mara come towards her. Menacing, silent, an enemy... But she was about to slide to the floor. She reached the bed and collapsed on it.

She woke late. The room was full of light. Mara had dreamed of a journey where at each turn she was confronted by different Maras: Mara the little child; Mara crouching over a drying waterhole and peering to see her small monkey face in the dust-filmed water; Mara with the Kin — with Juba, with Meryx, her arms around his neck, laughing; Mara in her slave's dress, running, always running.

She got out of bed and stood naked in front of the part of the wall that reflected what was in front of it. This was a very different affair from Ida's wall, where she had seen herself dimly through what seemed to be a net of little cracks, or the window glass in Shari, where she had hardly been able to see herself for leaves and branches. She put out a hand and saw hand touching hand — a cool, hard surface like solidified water. Hard to tell which was the image and which was the one that breathed and could move away. Mara saw a tall, slim woman, with full breasts that half concealed what she hid under them. A peering, staring woman, and behind her the bed and a good part of the room. Moving a little, this magical water-wall included a window sill and sky where clouds sailed by. She could not make what she saw fit with her sense of herself. She thought, All the time people see that, but they don't see this — meaning what she felt as Mara, her sense of herself. And she went close to the water-wall and peered into her eyes, dark eyes in her serious face. They look into my face and then eyes, as I look into faces and eyes, hoping I will see who is there; they hope they will reach me, Mara, Mara inside here. But Mara is not my real name. For years I waited to hear my real name, but now I know it wouldn't matter. When I hear it at last, I'll think, Is that my real name, after all? Mara is my name. Yet Mara is not the name of what I feel myself to be, inside here; it is the name of that person looking back at me. They say she is beautiful. She is not beautiful now, she is so nervous and staring. And Mara tried to smile and let herself be beautiful, but she seemed to herself more like a snake about to strike. And she nearly took off the metal coil from her upper arm with its raised snake's head, ready to strike, for that is how she seemed to herself. And then, as she turned from the water-wall, she caught a glimpse of someone different, smiling, because of her thoughts about herself, the runaway slave.

Her mouth was dry. She felt a little sick. She found a room next to this one where there were toilet arrangements and she washed, and slowly, because the sleeping drug had made her shaky, brushed her hair and put on the dress that looked as if it had butterflies woven into it. Back she went to the water-wall, to see herself, dressed. Well, that was better. As she stood there, the door opened and in came the man from last night, with a tray. He grinned as he saw her there and made a gesture: You see, you were foolish.

She saw he did not mean her harm, was merely stupid. She looked carefully at him, so as to know him later, in an ambush, or a fight. He was tall and powerfully built, all muscles and strong flesh. The neck was thick. A large, ugly face. Yellow: he was a yellow man. He went to her sack and started taking out her clothes and she went forward to stop him. He made the motions of washing.

"What's your name?" she asked, in Mahondi. He shook his head. "What's your name?" in Charad.

"Senghor."

"Where are you from?"

"Kharab. Mother Dalide's servants are Kharabian. She was a slave there, and now we are her slaves." He smiled, offering this is as a jest. She could see that this was a general joke in the household, among the servants. He called himself a slave, though. "It is good for us that no one knows our language. We can say what we like." And he began roaring with laughter and thumping himself on the chest. Then he went out with her dresses over his arm.

She stood at the window. Down there in the big garden was the low pile of ash where last night the watchmen had crouched and gossiped — in Kharabian, which no one else understood. Except Dalide, of course. Then she looked at the tall, slim, white towers where the rich lived, and around them great mansions in their gardens. For a few moments last night Dann had the money to buy one of those houses, and to live there as a rich man.

Dann would have gone back to the inn, where everybody already knew what had happened, and where they would shrink away from him — from the bearer of so much ill luck. The proprietor would have said that his sister had paid the bill until now, but how did Dann propose to pay the next bill? Dann would have stood there, silent, still stunned by the shock. What would he have said? Did he bluff? He might still have had a few bits of money in his pockets, but not enough for more than a night or two, and a little food.

Food — again food, the need to eat. For the time she had been here, she had not been anxious about eating — food was arriving in front of her when she wanted it. But food would not be there for Dann, quite soon.

She went to the tray waiting on the table. This was better than anything she had eaten: soft, light cakes, and honey, and the drink was frothy and brown and fragrant. Presumably, as long as she was in this brothel she would not be worrying about what she was going to eat next.

Would Dann be tempted to cut out another gold coin or two? He wouldn't dare. If it went bad he would have to call the doctor again. And how long would Dann live, if they knew of what lay hidden under that scar? It was so astonishing a thing that they would not easily believe it. And she, now, sitting over that breakfast tray, eating the delicate food, thought that what was simply good sense in one condition was lunacy in another. Dann, with the criminals in the Tower, who would have killed him for even one of those coins, hid them in his own flesh, crouching somewhere in a corner by himself, cutting, pushing in the coins, tying cloth around to stop the bleeding. And all that was the merest good sense and it had kept him alive. But now, in this pleasant town, this safe town — well, not for everybody — it was simply mad. How could she get a coin to him, unobserved? She couldn't. She was being observed every minute.

Oh, she was so tired, so sleepy. She lay on her bed and slept again and when she woke her midday meal was on the table untouched, and it was evening. She went to the door, which was unlocked, and saw Senghor squatting just outside, his back against the wall, and if he had been asleep he woke quickly enough to spring up and put out a hand to stop her.

"Tell Dalide not to give me any more sleeping potion. It makes me ill. I'm not used to it. And tell her if I find myself drugged again I shall starve myself."

Senghor nodded. He motioned her back inside the room, locked it from outside so that she stood angry and trembling, just inside it, and then in a few minutes she heard it being unlocked. He said that Mother Dalide had given her the sleeping potion because she could see Mara was so tired that she probably would not sleep without it. But Mara could be sure that Dalide would give her no more potions of any kind.

"When can I see Dalide?"

"Mother Dalide is leaving tonight to visit her other house in Kanaz."

"When will she be back?"

"I don't know. Sometimes she goes for seven days, perhaps thirty." And now Mara was tempted to fall into despair. Dalide was in no hurry with her plans to sell Mara profitably. "Did she send me a message?" "Yes. No more medicines." "No, about her going away?"

He stared, and sneered. "Why tell you? You are only one of the house women. She feed you well because she sell you well."

So that comfortable room, which she already felt as a home, a refuge, often had in it a woman whom Mother Dalide would sell well.

"I'm going to look at the garden."

"You will stay in the house."

"Dalide said I could go where I liked, in the house and the garden."

"She did not tell me so."

"If she has not left, go and ask her."

Again she was pushed into the room, and the door locked. She waited, and he came back.

"You may be in the house and the garden."

Mara went down the stairs and through the curtain into the room the girls used. They were sitting about, in their half nakedness and their finery. As she went through, a little, fat, pretty girl caught at her hand and said, "Stay with us. Talk to us."

They were bored, so bored. She could feel their boredom in the air of that sad room. Twenty girls, waiting. Clearly this house was well patronised.

Mara went to the front of the house, and opened the door, Senghor immediately behind her. When she reached it he sprang in front of her and held his thick arm across. Over it she saw Dalide, not in frills and flounces now, but in a brown leather costume that made her look like a stout parcel tied in the middle, sitting in a flimsy carriage. Between the shafts were two horses. She waited for the old woman to recognise her, and send a signal of some kind, but Dalide pretended not to see her. The carriage was already moving off.

Mara looked into the rooms on either side of the hall. They were all furnished with couches and sofas as well as tables and chairs. In one a servant was moving soiled linen from a great sofa like a bed, and putting on clean.

Mara went back through the big room, smiling all around, to show friendliness, and evading the reaching hands of the little plump girl, who was sitting in the embrace of a woman who gave Mara something of a fright. She was so pale she was almost green, with straight, pale hair and green eyes. Mara had never seen anything like her, and was repulsed. She opened a door and saw that in this room was a bed, and chairs, and on a small table were set jugs of the yellow drink, and cakes. Another room had in it only a bed, and another water-wall, like the one in her room. She did know now that these reflecting surfaces were called mirrors, but could only think, when she saw one, of clear, deep water.

She went to the back of the house and there were rooms she supposed must be Dalide's, solidly furnished, comfortable, with the pretty lamps standing about and sending out their soft light, which seemed to beckon you towards them. Then she stood on the back steps, looking into the garden, which was already shadowy with evening. The watchmen were making their fire. One was putting meat and vegetables into a pot. Others squatted, waiting, singing a sad, homesick song. Big yellow men, like Senghor. She took a step down into the garden, and as Senghor did the same, lost interest. His presence there, so close, that big, ugly body, the smell of him, an acrid, dry, powerful smell, made her feel encompassed, imprisoned, even without the immediate fact of her imprisonment.

When she returned to the great room where the women waited, men had already come in, and were talking to the girls they had chosen. These girls were all flirtatious looks and pretty little laughs, and animation. The others sat watching. The men were traders, visitors to the town, and seemed elated because of the generosity of the hospitality, the drinks and the food and the willing servants. Well, Mara would have seen this room as splendid, once. One of the men saw her and pointed, but Senghor shook his head and hurried her through. But she had time to see another group come in. These she recognised as the same as the Hadrons, not physically, because they were a mix, like most of the people to be seen in the streets, but because she recognised the self-satisfied conceit of the consciousness of power: gross, indulged men, and certainly brutal. They saw her as she was going out, and let out cries like hunting cries, and were about to come after her; but Senghor put his arm across to bar them, and when they were through the curtain, and the door, locked it. Now she was glad to have him there. Those men — how well she knew them. So, Bilma's danger was not that it was drying up, or likely to, but that it was corruptly governed. But if these were the rulers of Bilma, as Senghor's demeanour said they were — he had shown none of the cringing humility at the sight of the traders — then was it the same here as in Chelops, which had a layer of apparent subordinates who in fact ran the place? Those faces — Dalide had said that the man she planned to sell Mara to was one of them. She reached her room trembling with fear at her probable future.

As Senghor was about to shut the door on her, she said, "I want some information."

"What?"

"Do you know anything about my brother, Dann?" "Your brother? Why should I know?"

"I am very unhappy about my brother. If you hear where he is then."

"My orders are not to talk to the house women about outside." And then she saw in his face a genuine curiosity, which softened it. He came closer and said in a low voice, but not looking at her, "It is a strange thing when a brother gambles away his sister and the sister is not angry."

"I didn't say I am not angry. But he is my brother. If you hear."

Now he did look at her, and said, "I have been in Mother Dalide's house for twenty years. She is good to me. I shall not go against her orders."

"Then tell me this: are there other women here who were gambled away in the Transit Eating House?"

"Yes."

"And was it Bergos who brought them here?" But he shook his head at her and went out.

She was alone. She stood at the window and saw that in the garden the watchmen's fire was burning, and their shadows flickered over the earth and the shrubs as the flames danced. They were eating and the smell of food rose up to her and made her hungry. Her supper tray arrived, and she sat and ate and thought that already she took all this for granted: food, good food, better than anything she had eaten in her life. But the really strange thing was that she was not eating every mouthful with the thought, It is a miracle, a wonder, that this food should be here, and that I should be eating it, good food and clean water, as if it is a right, and I am entitled to all — I, Mara, who spent so many years watching every scrap of food and mouthful of water. And soon would she forget that Mara and see food without ever thinking about the hard work and the skills that had made it? Where was Dann?

Again she stood at the window, mentally mapping out the house. A very big, square house, made of large, square bricks, not easy to dislodge or break through. The house was in two layers, rooms above rooms. In front was a street, and there was a guard there. At the back, the garden she was looking into — guarded. The rooms on the ground floor had thick wooden bars — not Dalide's, but all the others. This window was not barred, but if she jumped down she would break a limb, and the watchmen would stop her. All the servants, judging by Senghor, were devoted to Dalide. That meant, unbribable. And she could not let it be known that she had money, because Dalide would have it off her. So all that meant that if she was going to get news it must be from the men who came to the house.

Later that night she heard Senghor in argument with men outside her door: they were demanding to come in. The girls downstairs had talked about her to their customers.

Next day, but not till the afternoon, she went down to the big room. The women had just got up, and were lolling about, yawning. The little plump girl was sitting inside the arms of the tall white one, with her straight, pale hair; she was stroking and playing with the hair, but when she saw Mara, she reached out, took Mara's hands with little cries of pleasure, and pulled her down. So Mara was sitting within touching distance of this white female, who was so alien and so disturbing; and when the little girl said, "Talk to us, Mara, tell us something," she found it hard to compose herself. She told her story again, because what else could she tell them, when they were so curious about her? They took it as a tale, an invention, for what she said was so far from their experience, and this even though some were from the country regions of Bilma, sold by their parents to Dalide, because of hard times. None had known real hunger and could not conceive that there might not be water to drink. So Mara told her own tale and marvelled at it with them, particularly as she left out all references to the gold coins that had saved her and Dann. So the central thread of the story was not there and sometimes in the tale it sounded as if the brother and sister's successful flight had been due to supernatural interventions, instead of the slog of endurance backed by the little store of gold that had spent years hidden inside a battered floor candle.