There was a silence. Then Maia said, "You're a nettle, too, aren't you?"
"You attend to your business and I'll attend to mine," replied Occula. "But I'll tell you this, banzi: it takes courage to puzzle out what Lespa's sayin'. She never tells you what to do: she tells you where you are. After that you're on your own."
Through the northern window shone for a few moments the lights of the lower city clocks telling the hour.
"Still, you woan' want to go home on your own, will you?" said Occula. "D'you think your soldier's come back by now?"
74: EUD-ECACHLON ASKS A QUESTION
Night by night the great comet poured out its hazy brightness into the northern sky, and throughout the city anxiety and wonder gradually diminished as still nothing happened and the prodigy became a thing accustomed. The priests, shrewdly no doubt, avoided committing themselves be-yond affirming that the gods had given assurance (none knew how) that the apparition portended no harm. One day a crowd of orderly and respectful suppliants succeeded in confronting the chief priest as he was entering the Tem-ple of Cran by the front portico, when to avoid or ignore them would have appeared undignified and perhaps even weak. He replied to their questions with grave self-pos-session and suavity.
"Consider," said he, "that many thousands of years ago the moon must have appeared in the sky for the first time. Can you imagine how astonished and bewildered the peo-ple of those days must have been to see it? What rumi-nation and presentiment they must have suffered--yes, suffered, for of course they were only poor, ignorant folk in those days, without the benefits of modern knowledge and of all this" (waving his hand towards the spacious precinct and the Tamarrik Gate). "To this day, how inexplicable, even if predictable, remain her phases, her waxings and waitings! Yet the moon is a blessing and no one now would dream of attributing ill-omen to the moon."
"Is the great star here to stay, then, my Guardian?" asked someone in the crowd.
"How do we know?" he replied. "Yet since you ask me, I would say not. All I am explaining to you is, that not every sign among the stars need or should be taken as the forerunner of some great change, let alone of disaster."
"So the Serrelinda was right?" called out someone else.
"Not having heard her speak, I cannot say," he answered with a sedate and condescending smile. "Our astrologers, of course, have spent many years of study in learning their expert skills. I entertain nothing against the Serrelinda--"
"Better not!" muttered someone.
"She has served the city superbly in her way. We have to serve it in ours." He spread his arms wide and raised his voice. "I will pray to Cran and Airtha to bless you all for honest and true-hearted Beklans, whom the gods surely love."
His scarlet-bordered robes swished on the pavement as he turned and ascended the steps into the noon-shadowed portico.
At about the same time Maia, who had begun--and to her credit was sticking to--a couple of hours' work a day on improving her reading and (which she found a good deal harder, since it had never really existed) her writing, was lying in the hammock in her garden, wrestling with a romance lent to her by Sarget, about the deeds of the hero Deparioth. Like nearly all people of relatively young civilizations--and certainly like virtually everyone in the Bek-lan Empire at this time--Maia found it natural to read to herself aloud, and her soft, rather pretty voice, stumbling and hesitating over the more difficult words, mingled with the lapping of the Barb and the intermittent piping of a damazin among the trees.
"Give back the--the miry--miry--solitude,
The thorns and briars--out--er--outstretched to
bless.
There lay my-- kingdom, I reckon that is--past compare.
This court's the desert--something wild--wilderness."
She knew the story well. This was Deparioth's lament for the loss of the mysterious girl they called the Silver Flower, who, having saved his life in the terrible Blue Forest, had then vanished forever. She read it through again.
"Give back the miry solitude,
The thorns and briars outstretched to bless.
There lay my kingdom, past compare.
This court's the desert wilderness."
The Blue Forest she knew by repute for a wild and savage place in northern Katria, beyond the borders of the empire; somewhere near where, so she'd heard, the Zhairgen ran into the Telthearna. She began to muse, the scroll laid aside. If she were really to put her mind to it, could she get to Katria? Might she be able to reach the Zhairgen quickly and secretly, and then somehow cross it before she was missed?
How far was it to the Zhairgen, anyway? It was, she knew, generally reckoned a good four or five days' journey to Dari-Paltesh; and the Zhairgen lay be-yond that.
Oh, she thought, if only things could just be back as they were that night in Suba; the night he brought the daggers! We knew our own hearts then, and that was all we needed to know. "Give back the miry solitude--"
Suddenly her melancholy thoughts were interrupted by a cry of "Maia! Where are you?" It was a man's voice-- one that she remembered well enough but could not instantly put a name to. She stood up, and as she did so caught sight of someone approaching from the direction of the house. As the voice called again, she realized why she had felt so much startled. It was an Urtan accent. Yet it was not--no, it was not Anda-Nokomis. For a moment she had thought it was, and now she felt disappointed that it wasn't. Fancy that! she thought. A moment later Eud-Ecachlon came running down the grassy path to the hammock and took her hands.
To Maia Eud-Ecachlon, a man in his mid-thirties, had always seemed old--certainly much older than any of his friends in Bekla. Though he associated with Elvair-ka-Virrion and other young Leopards on equal terms, she had always thought of him as a man nearer to the generation of Kembri, Sendekar or Sarget--as indeed he was. She recalled his rather slow, stolid ways, his diffidence and the contempt with which Occula had once referred to him as "a one-balled Urtan goat". Yet she well remembered, too, the last time they had been together--how long ago it seemed! during that afternoon in Melekril last year, when, standing in for Occula, she had given him the time of his life. That had been great fun and she had enjoyed it herself-- at least to the extent of feeling that she had done a good job and a bit more besides.
She recalled, too, how warmly she had spoken of their meeting again on his next return to Bekla from Uriah; for she had been quite carried away by her own skill and success that afternoon. No, she thought, she had never disliked Eud-Ecachlon.
To her eyes he was looking, if anything, even older. There was more gray in his beard and somehow his thick-set body had about it an impalpable air of bearing a bur-den. Yet here he was, greeting her with warmth and cordiality--no trace of constraint or self-consciousness now-- and obviously delighted to see her again.
She was pleased enough to see him, too; invited him to stay to dinner and felt glad when he accepted.
He spoke, naturally, of the Valderra and of her celebrity in the em-pire. "Urtah would die for you," he said. "Do you know that? If Karnat had over-run Urtah--" And she, of course, let pass the awkward topic of Urtah's present loyalty to Bekla and thanked him graciously, wondering how much he was not telling her about the dissidents who were doing their best to stir up trouble in the province.
They spoke, too, of the murder of the High Counselor and the strangely unsuccessful search for the killers. Eud-Ecachlon inquired after Occula and seemed distressed when Maia replied that she could not tell what might have be-come of her after the arrests.
"Poor girl!" he said. "I suppose they must have done away with her. What a shame! She had such style, hadn't she? I don't mind telling you, that night when she made Ka-Roton stab himself I was terrified; but I must admit he had asked for it. Got a bit more than he bargained for, didn't he?"
Later, when dinner was over, she showed him Randronoth's miniature, carved cabinet; for she remained continually delighted by it and could not resist showing it off, though she said nothing about where it ha
d come from. Eud-Ecachlon took it in his hands and admired it politely, though without any very close examination, so that she perceived what she could have guessed--that such things did not mean much to him and were rather beyond his powers of appreciation. Well, but all the same, they'd come her way a lot less than his, she thought. Although she'd not been brought up among beautiful things, she could nevertheless feel naturally thrilled by something as rare and marvelous as this. She thought of the Thlela and their dance of the Telthearna on the night of the Rains banquet in Kembri's house. She had never before seen the Thlela, yet she had needed no teaching that night.
It was while Eud-Ecachlon was still holding the cabinet in his hands and at any rate giving the appearance of examining it that he remarked, with no particular alteration of expression or manner, "My father's ill, you know."
"The High Baron, Euda? I'm very sorry to hear it. I hope it's not serious?"
He closed the little doors and latched them. "Well, he's old, you know: I'm afraid he may not recover. Everyone in Urtah thinks the same, really."
"I know you both love him--you and Bayub-Otal. And you're the heir, of course. It must be a worrying time for you, as well as a sad one." And then, in her way of often coming straight out with anything that entered her mind, "What's brought you back to Bekla, then, at such a time as this? I s'pose you have to see Kembri and the Council, do you, on behalf of your father?"
"Yes, well--that, I suppose." He put the cabinet back in its place and sat down. "Urtah's not an easy province to govern, you know."
"Well, you can't very well try another one, can you?"