"We followed his artery back and found-Aachan. We knew that no other chance would ever come. Aachan!" he sighed, with the air of rapacious sensuality that so characterized him. "Such a darkly fecund, luminous, erotic planet. How we coveted it!

"In the void we had lost our previous name. Now we gave ourselves the name Charon, for a frigid moonlet at the furthest extremity of the void, to always remind us how far we had come, and what we had come from.

"I flung myself into the indifferent void-we did so, every one. We thrashed across non-existing dimensions that extend twice five ways at once. A black whirlpool beckoned to me. I leapt toward it. It hurled me into a tarry ether that burned and choked and blinded-hurled me out again. Rejected me! Raking intangible black clots from my nose and mouth, I spat in my hand and washed my eyes. Still I could not see or feel or hear or breathe. My feet moved past my head; my head went past my feet. The very brain seemed to spiral in its socket, then with a sordid plop! I bobbed to the surface of an ebony pond and floated spread-eagled on an elastic interface.

"I rubbed my eyes. They rewarded me with Aachan. Ours. Mine! Only the Aachim between. I lay sprawled in an oily bog. The stars flamed, opals on sable. A delicious cold aroused my skin with fire; the bog moved and a thousand reeds caressed my naked loins, cool and darting as an adder's tongue. The blood pulsed sluggish in my veins, moved in viscous spurts, sighed in my head. I abandoned myself.

"Time moved, but I did not. I was lost within a lethargic, sensual dream. Before I could bring myself to rise from my bed the small sun began to stroke the sky, and the underside of the leaves above gleamed with blood. The landscape was revealed, soft and round, luscious as the bottom of a maiden at prayer. I could have mounted a tree, even a rock."

Rulke was all aglow, his handsome face alive with the memory of that far-off time. The urgent lust of his youth was like a flame, waking an echo in those that watched. The walls of the tower seemed to expand and contract. Llian stirred, uneasy. The Whelm watched, mostly impassive.

Karan, crouched behind the wall, felt the skin on her arms rise in goosebumps. How long had it been since she and Llian had made love? Months! She wanted him now with a passion that was quite reckless.

"But already our chance was fading. We were so few-we must take the surprise to them; must strike with violence! Then the chilling thought-where were the other Charon? Surely they must be near. If we had not come through together..."

Suddenly he leapt halfway across the room, crimson cape flaring out from his shoulders. "I sprang out of the bog, flung off the slime. My toes curled around the ground beneath the ooze and I was off, running through the humid cool dawn. Naked we came to Aachan, and weaponless. Clothes we could do without, but weapons we must have, for the owners of this world were many. We were but two hundred, all that remained of our species.

"Before me was one of the upright stalked things they called a tree. There had been none on our scalding rock. A part of it hung over. I smashed it off with my fist, making a snowfall of leaves in my hair." Rulke struck the construct a mighty blow; it rocked in the air. "I shaped it roughly into a club, a cruel sharp knot on the large end. But was I a beast, a thing without dignity, nobility, culture? I flung it away. Until there was a weapon to suit I would use my hands.

"The breeze sighed, plucking the leaves from my hair. How full-to-bursting life seemed! Before me was a long soft slope of grass, and at the top a structure, perhaps a dwelling, for it was small. A thing of domes, curving into one another. To you, Llian, whom I know to be a student of the whole, it might have looked like the kidney of an ox. To me it was less than the sum of its parts, and the parts had the shape of a ripe woman's behind. I was up there with no more sound than smoke in a still sky.

"The place was open. Good; they must have nothing to fear! And yet, weapons hung in a hall. I did not take them and run, as I should have; I was curious to learn about these people. It was still dark inside, but my eyes adjusted. There were many chambers in one part of it, like a hive. I went from one to the next, bringing death like a wasp; to men, to women, even to children." His eyes flared fire. Llian had to turn away from the conflagration. "Why did I do that? I often wondered, after. I would not do it now; not on the innocent. I remember the feeling though-a killing urge, a lust for death, a violent sensual thing linked to that other lust that had been strong in me since I woke, too long in the void. They were proud, those Aachim, but unused to death. Not till my hands were at their throats did they know me and why I came.

"In minutes the chambered part was a charnel house. I stood there panting, looking down at my work, trying to know my enemy. They were strong beautiful people, soft of skin and rich of voice even when my thumbs were on their windpipes. The kind of beauty that does not fade with age, and slowly even in death. Here was one, naked in her bed. I might have yet... But no. No time for that!

"The other part was open, as if I was within a shell of many chambers. I went past a place where flame swirled in a box made of glass. There were rugs on the floor, beautiful in pattern and color; tapestries woven with metal threads; sculptures of metal and stone; carvings, paintings, calligraphy. I saw more beauty in this house than on the whole of that cinder that had been our world. Well, thus far it had been easy. Aachan would be ours this day.

"Perhaps the passage had drained me, or the thicker air intoxicated me. I felt exhausted, starving. And I had blundered badly, for one was left alive. Maybe she had come in from outside-I'll never know. She just appeared on the far side of that open space. She was one of the smaller ones, and quite beautiful, though her face was twisted horribly in her silent grief. Karan looks very like her," he said, turning to Llian. "Even to the color of her hair. I was moved at her grief, though I was the cause of it. I have seen her likeness more than once since. My harbinger then, but no more. Elienor, Elienor!"

Out of the corner of his eye Llian saw Idlis rise to his feet, his thin-lipped mouth hanging open.

Rulke continued. "She had her hand on a metal plate-a mirror, I later realized-and was speaking urgently at it. Was she calling to other communities? If so I had made a grave mistake and risked all. She must die. I leapt across the room and knocked her down, but she was very fast, and in the hand I could not see was a long broad knife, wickedly sharp. As I struck her she stabbed me between the ribs and wrenched the knife, cutting open my chest from front to back. The knife jammed in my ribs; she scrabbled across the tiles and was gone.

"She had killed me, surely. The air rushed out of my lung in a humid cloud. I staggered across the room and fell down on a bench, gasping for air. My side burned like acid. Pink foam oozed from the wound, and a terrible amount of blood. I lay there gasping; dying; watching the blood ebb from me to make beautiful ruby patterns on the white floor.

"I was so weak that a child could have slain me with a butter knife. I swooned, but jerked awake almost at once. Swooned again.

"Who knows how long I lay there, but the blood underneath me would have filled a drinking bowl. My feelings were indescribable. The enemy was warned. Hours I had dreamed away in the bog; more hours in this killing frenzy. The Charon were doomed and my follies were the cause, my lusts! How could two hundred overcome a million?"

"A fear rose up in me that was the worst fear of all. This day would see the Charon extinct-our species gone from the universe forever.

"But we Charon never give up. While I lived, duty must be done. If I could drag myself, I must add my weight to theirs. This was an imperative so strong that only death could stop it. That cinder in the void to which we clung had seen our ruin. Now of the once numberless Charon only a handful remained, barely enough to renew ourselves on another world. There had been other times, other chances, and we had gone out in our twos and threes and fours, trying to find a way. But none survived; none returned to lead us to a new home. This was our last chance, but only if most of us survived. Now surprise was gone; I had thrown it away. A mere thousand of them and we would be extinct. Extinguished! Expunged!" Rulke's face was wracked, the face of a man in the last throes of crucifixion. "No Charon ever more!

"I heaved the knife out in a gust of blood. Almost fainting, I pulled apart the lips of the wound to see how badly I was damaged. Very badly. There was a hole in me that you could have put your foot in. That last wrench had cut through my ribs, so sharp and heavy was her knife. Some cut-off pieces of rib floated in the wound. I put in my hand and pulled them out, feeling around in the cavity to be sure I had them all. Underneath I could see the flaccid pink thing that had been my lung."

He tore open his shirt. A thick, ugly scar extended from below the nipple, under his arm and halfway to his backbone.

"What did we know about the Aachim and their world? Only that their most important city and seat of governance was in this part of the country. We had directed ourselves to it, as near as the unstable void and our own imperfect knowledge would allow. But something had separated me from my fellows. Perhaps that streak in me, that has always directed me to strike out alone, sent me to this place instead. Distantly I could sense the other Charon and their peril. A vast threat was building against us, a force of overwhelming strength. We were unarmed. I felt the pain again, the surety that our kind would be annihilated. I could not allow it. That pain was worse than the agony in my side.

"I forced the pain down, considered what to do. Probably the others had come out together to move on the capital in darkness. That had been our plan-to seize their most sacred place, and their leaders. But I had violated the plan, given away the surprise. I sensed that things had gone wrong from that moment. I must act as if I was our only hope. I must allow nothing to stop me. Nothing!

"First, the wound. About the lung I could do nothing, only hope that time would heal it. It must weaken me greatly. But the gash needed to be held together, and the bleeding stopped. I had no needle or thread, nor wits to search for either, but necessity made a way. In the large room of shells was a sculpture of gold wire, a most beautiful thing, as fine as gossamer. I smashed it apart, wove wire together to make a golden thread, seared this in a flame, punched holes in myself with a sliver of metal and sewed the wound together again with the wire. I felt some pain before that was done," he said in a profound understatement, "and the wound bound up with strips of cloth until no blood came through.

"Among the dead there were ones that were almost of a size to me, and I took the robes from one, the boots from another and strapped the knife that had so damaged me to my leg. I took no other weapons; I had no strength to carry them. The woman I had lusted after lay there, one hand flung out toward her child, and she was as beautiful as before, and as dead. But now my passion was spent, as if the knife had cut much lower.

"There was no room for pity but I did regret. I picked up the dead child and gave it back to the mother, covering her nakedness with a sheet before I went out. I can still see her face, and the child's." He shook his head as though to clear the memory, then bowed it in a minute's silence for his victims.

"The killing lust was gone and has never returned. I have killed since then, in self-defense or in the heat of battle. Necessity makes us what we are, not nature. But no more for the joy of it. Never after.

"I went out of that place to the top of the hill and looked down. Would that I had done so before. Below was a city which I knew to be their greatest, though it was not a big place. The Aachim never made cities like the fecund cesspools of Santhenar. But a metropolis nonetheless, many thousands. On the uphill side was an open space with five sides, and behind that a great public building. A strange beautiful subtle place, unlike any I have ever seen. But you know of their genius in that way.

"The eyes of the Charon are keen. As I came down the hill I saw fighting in several places. We had been split into groups, each surrounded by a multitude of the enemy. The warning had come in time for them to rally. Need was for a daring stroke, and it could not wait. We were being slaughtered in battle. What if they put the prisoners to the sword? I could not bear to think about it.

"I went down the hill as quickly as I could without attracting attention. I am not dissimilar in looks to an Aachim, though bigger than most. You wonder, Llian? Ah, but the Aachim were bigger then. In robes and boots I was not challenged, even after I came into the streets of the city. But I could feel the agony of my people. The tide had turned against us; the Aachim, despite that they had no enemies, were well prepared. As soon as the warning was given they flocked to their posts, while most of us were still naked and weaponless.

"Often that day I felt the death cry or the sudden absence of a friend, as if a part of myself had been erased. At last I reached the center. With each breath I could feel the blood turning to foam in my chest, bubbling horribly. The pain was unbearable; I felt that I was slowly drowning. No matter how deep I breathed, the air was not enough. Blood poured down under my robes into my boot, squelching as I ran."

Rulke relived that moment as if he was actually back there. "I must rest. It feels as if I am dying. The air is turning the color of blood, the people before me breaking into strands and streaks. I sit down. But my people are dying every minute-I may not rest! I get up, force myself a step, then another. Each yard is my world; my past and my future. Nothing exists but the next."

He stared blankly at Llian, then recovered and reverted to the teller. "That was hard, but to do it without looking like a madman, a white-faced, staring, jerk-limbed puppet, that was much harder yet. But I did it, making my gait smooth, knuckling my cheeks to bring the color into them.

"Now I heard angry voices in front of me. A great militia surged forward, herding my people into a tight knot. I could do nothing here. Were they to be slaughtered I would die with them, for there can be no greater pain than to be the last of your kind. I prepared to hurl myself forward. But no, these Aachim were folk bound by codes, or at least rituals, and there was to be a trial. So I gathered from what was happening, though I could not understand their speech. Two guards took hold of each prisoner and they were led into the vast hall. I followed.

"Inside, my small hope became no hope. There were more than a thousand Aachim in the room and many times that number outside. How few we were-a hundred gone already; only a hundred left in the universe. No hope! My exhaustion and pain suddenly came down on me. I clung to the wall in a shadowed alcove, sucking in air, every breath agony. Were it not that many of the Aachim were in a similar state it would have given me away.

"Nothing happened for a long time, then the angry buzz of talk died away. Over the heads of the crowd I saw two people, a woman and a man, come onto the dais behind the prisoners. They entered without a retinue, but with great formality. I saw what we had understood from our spying, that they were greatly reverenced. Both were quite old, but moved regally. The room was absolutely still. They sat down and the proceedings began.

"The woman spoke, and the man. Then the woman again. Though I could not understand their words, I found a sudden hope. This pair were too greatly reverenced by the Aachim. Their weakness, my opportunity! I knew not how, but that I would leave to the instant.

"Now my people were being called to account, one by one. In turn each of them was led forward, a charge read out, witnesses spoke briefly, each had a turn to speak in their defense, and many did, defiantly, though surely their words meant nothing to the Aachim. After that the two on the dais conferred, the woman signaled and the prisoner was taken to the other side of the room and held under guard. This was done with deliberation. The whole proceedings might take another three hours, I calculated, though perhaps it would be quicker at the end. I allowed myself but two.

"I slipped back out the door, too hastily, for one man looked at me curiously as I passed. Perhaps I had committed an error of discourtesy, or protocol. I went around the further side of the hall, which was a huge building of metal and stone, and found that at the rear there were smaller buildings attached. Even walking up that gentle slope wearied me, but only when I tried to climb onto the roof did I appreciate the toll that the wound had taken of my strength.

"Only will drove me now, an urge so primitive that it could not be stopped save by my death. I reached the roof of the smaller building, my heart threatening to burst out through the hole in my side. Each gasp for the air that would not come whistled in my chest. I sat down on the roof. Once more the world took on a rarefied view, as if I observed it from a distance. I saw myself take off my boot and shake out quivering clots of blood the size of placentas; they went splat! on the roof. I stared at the horrid splashes, unable to imagine that they had been a part of me.

"A man, the one who had noticed me in the doorway, was creeping up onto the roof. I stared at myself staring at him, willing my arm to move. The man must have thought I was mad, standing there with my blood and my boot. A woman appeared beside him. From their looks they were brother and sister, and she the younger. She was in no doubt as to what I was. Her hand dropped to the knife on her belt.

"I willed my arm; it heaved one of those bloody jellyfish at her face. It shocked her, the red mess wobbling in the air toward her; she slipped and I kicked her in the belly with my bloody foot. Not a hard kick, but she fell backwards off the roof and didn't return. The brother cried out and flung himself forward, onto my knife. I let him come until he sagged down, then I turned away to the higher roof.

"By the time I reached it I'd lost all sense of time-all how, all why, all when, as if my conscious mind had passed the quest on to a deeper, less articulate, more dogged self.

"I had become a machine, blindly carrying out each task until it was finished, then supplied with a new one until it in turn was done.

"Eventually I reached the roofs above the dais, as near as I could judge. These were made of thick metal, which in my state I could not shift, but the valleys between the roofs were lead that I could cut with my knife.

"From there I was able to gain access to the space inside. I clambered in, creeping along beams of metal and timber until I judged that I was above the dais. It was dark inside the roof, but not pitch dark.

"The ceiling of the hall was made of metal panels, pressed into intricate patterns. I prised up the edge of one with the knife and put my eye to the sliver of light.

"The judging seemed to be nearly complete; there were only a handful of Charon on the near side. But I was some distance from where I needed to be.

"Suddenly the pain was back, a terrible desperate pain that would not allow me to think. It went, then it came back again. I could not even remember who I was.

"By the time it receded I was too weak to crawl the few paces that I needed. My boot had filled with fresh blood. Inspiration took me! I tore off the boot.

"I poured the blood onto the panel. It made a small pool there, about as much as a full tea bowl. I forced a corner of the metal down and the blood began to drip through the ceiling, right onto the table, the papers and the presiding Aachim.

"I did not look down, but the sudden silence, and the tumult that followed, told me what I needed to know. Later I learned the sensation that the blood had caused-a symbol of doom and disaster. The diversion gave me the minute's rest that I needed.

"I dragged myself along until I was directly above the spot that I wanted. The panels were soldered with lead. I sawed it away from three sides.

"I judged the fall once more. It was a long way, five or six spans at least. Wounded as I was, the fall might well kill me. Certainly I would break bones.

"I swung myself up above the panel and clung there. My side wailed in agony; my head swam; my stomach heaved. I spewed there on the beam. No time to rest; they were hurrying through the judging, upset by the omen.

"I dropped, crashed through the panel and fell like a stone, down and down, onto the center of the long table. It split beneath me and the legs at one end collapsed. I felt the most shocking pain that I have ever felt, and looked down to see the shattered ends of my thigh bone protruding through the flesh. The golden stitches along my side burst open; red foam sprayed across the table. I wept bloody tears. The two venerable Aachim stared at the gruesome wreck before them. They were too shocked to move. With the last vestige of will my body could summon, I swept them into one arm and put my knife to their throats.

"The Aachim were staring all, their agony seemingly as great as my own. My eyes picked out a single face in the crowd, the red-haired woman who had wounded me that morning. Her eyes were sunken as craters; her face as blanched as the white of an egg. I had obliterated her house. Elienor! I pity her now. I spat blood on the floor and spoke to her, to all the Aachim. My voice was a whisper, but that was enough.

"'Throw down your arms!' I cried. 'The Charon have come to Aachan, and it is ours."

"To my surprise they made no resistance. The rest took only a minute, and then-blessed oblivion."

Rulke came back to himself slowly. He looked to Llian. "So it was that a hundred captured a world. The Hundred! So the Charon survived. That is my tale. Every word of it is truth.'

THE REPLY.

Llian bowed to Rulke. His face was austere, but inside he was exultant. Rulke's had been a masterly tale, a barbaric splendor, and none who heard it were unmoved. But for all that, it was a simple tale, a performance. A tale told too well, too truthfully, and to his challenger rather than his audience. Or rather, he had told his tale as if the audience was Llian, perhaps unconsciously seeking to impress the great teller. And he had, but watching the faces of the Whelm, Llian had noticed that they were shocked and disturbed by something Rulke had described.

I know what moves them, Llian thought. It was Rulke's selfindulgence that had put the Charon in such a dire extreme, necessitating his heroic acts, and this jarred against the rigid codes that were everything to the Ghashad. To them duty was all, but Rulke had failed that duty. He had put his lust, his glory, his honor before the survival of the Charon, and his reckless courage had not redeemed him in their eyes.

Llian threw out the tale he had been mentally rehearsing and began to construct another. At the same time he worked to suppress his personality as much as possible. The Ghashad were an ascetic, sober folk who frowned on pleasure and frivolity. The message, not the telling! No rhetoric, just a plain tale with a meaning that they could not fail to understand.

"My tale begins long afterwards," he said in a soft, neutral voice, "almost at the time of the Forbidding. And the subject of my story is an entirely different people: not great, not proud. Their vision had a smaller compass. Theirs was to serve. Duty, loyalty, honor that was what their lives were made for. And they were called Myrmide, a word which in their tongue meant to serve and to obey without question.

"Where they came from, no one knows. They settled in the southeast of Lauralin, beyond the land of Ogur and the Black Sea. A small, slender, black-haired people they were, and at first the cold troubled them terribly, for the place they had been driven to was under snow for six months of the year, and the sea covered in ice for four. The Ghash Peninsula, that place was called, and still is."

Rulke sat bolt upright on his stool, frowning. He knows what I'm up to, Llian thought. I'm not going to get away with this.

"The full name was Ghash-ad-Nash, that is to say, fume-and-fire, for the long extension of that land into the Kara Nashal (the Smoking Sea) was dotted with vents from which liquid rock flowed, and steam, smoke and ash blasted into the sky. But later they found this place much to their liking, for there were secret valleys where the springs stayed hot even when the sun had set for the long winter and the ground froze as hard as iron.

"One peculiarity these Myrmide had, and that was this: they must have a master and a purpose, else they were nothing. Their whole lives, pride and worth were invested in such service. Their master at the time of my tale was Bandiar, a minor necromanter but an important person on the peninsula though the world would never have heard of him if it had not been for Shuthdar.

"After Shuthdar fled to Santhenar with the stolen flute," Llian glanced at Rulke, who was watching him keenly, "he was ever hunted. Eventually he fled to backward places where the people were uncouth and spoke strange languages, but the result was always the same. Toward the end he ended up in the Ghash Peninsula, and even there he was harried. Shuthdar was old, tired and crippled now. His life had been one bitterness piled on another until he came to hate all things, including life. The only thing in his life was his beautiful flute."

"My flute," said Rulke, almost inaudibly.

"He took refuge in a cave on that frozen shore, where one day Bandiar found him and brought him back to his fastness. Why did Bandiar do so? He too lusted after the flute, though he was clever enough not to show it. If he treated Shuthdar kindly, asking nothing of him, Shuthdar would in the end come to rely on him utterly.

"But Shuthdar, though decrepit beyond imagining, had a mind as mad and sharp as a pin. In his life he had known many kinds of people, but they had all wanted the one thing. He knew that Bandiar was no different.

"From the moment Shuthdar arrived he caused trouble. He was paranoid and cunning, wicked and malicious; a creature of perverse and deadly lusts. In the dark corners of the castle none was safe from him: neither girl nor crone, old man nor boy, nor beast neither. Though he was crippled and moved with a crabwise scuttle, when hot in his lusts he could scuttle with frightening speed, and those withered arms were strong as spring steel.

"But Bandiar would not stay Shuthdar in any way. He excused all these crimes as the small failings of a genius, so that Shuthdar took delight in each new and sordid escapade that went unchecked. His excesses became marvels of theater and exhibitionism, and soon all learned to keep clear of the dreadful thing."

Llian saw on the faces of the judges only contempt for such a master, for as the servants had a duty to the master, so the master's duty was equally sacred. Now to draw the next link.

"The Myrmide were a people inclined to melancholy. Outside duty their only pleasure was music. Their music was beautiful but doleful, like dry wind among ruins; like tapping on icicles. Apart from music they wanted but one thing: to meet their master's purpose as best they could, and never question it, not even when it became clear that the one Bandiar fawned upon was a malicious creature who considered nothing but his own desires; who took all and gave nothing.

"Time wore on and still Shuthdar stayed, for Bandiar had power to protect him from the wolves that had tormented him in every other place, and wealth to gratify even his most sordid whims. But the absence of any check and the gratification of every whim gave Shuthdar license to think of excesses so abominable that eventually not even the most degraded would come to him.

"What can Bandiar have thought each time Shuthdar came whining and accusing him? Let us be charitable and imagine that he thought: 'Just this once will I indulge him, and surely he will give me what I want.' Whatever, events took a nasty new turn. Young people began to disappear, taken by force. At first they turned up again afterwards, after a day; a week; or a month. Some told tales of unspeakable degradation, but others could not speak at all.

"Bandiar's subjects beat on the great doors of the stronghold, demanding Shuthdar's head. Bandiar refused them, coldly. The Myrmide, who were servants, soldiers, spies all, remained loyal to their master. They drove the peasants away with fire and terror, out into the snow. Even little children they struck down, for this showed best how committed they were to their master's purpose.

"Then the people did the only thing they could. All power and wealth resided with Bandiar, while they had none. They would not risk their children any more. Weeping and wailing they abandoned their lands and homes and withdrew into the mountains, and many died there in the winter. But theirs is another tale.

"Now the Myrmide began to feel an agonizing doubt-that the master they served so loyally was a fool who was made a fool of. But this doubt, this disloyalty, they suppressed."

Llian paused to grasp a mug of water. The trials of the past week were catching up. He barely had the strength to stay on his feet. What was worse, he could feel his control of the tale going. He crashed the mug down, then continued.

"All Bandiar's ends were now directed to getting the flute, or the secret of it, from Shuthdar, and in this Shuthdar played with him most cunningly, and took much amusement from his game. Every now and again he would give Bandiar a clue-a word, a scroll, once a lengthy book full of strange diagrams and descriptions of alarming or abstract processes. But the clues only led into a maze of intersecting puzzles and paradoxes, for Shuthdar had made them all up. When Bandiar complained, Shuthdar would insult him or mock him for being a fool, and then, apparently relenting after days or weeks, would give another teasing clue that seemed to offer a resolution of the puzzle, but in fact led ever deeper into the morass.

"The Myrmide were caught up in their master's great project. They saw the researches, the collaboration (as they thought) with Shuthdar, the steady accumulation of work, the ever more intricate models and devices that Bandiar made, all having the appearance of working, with parts that moved and even the production of strange though transitory effects. But in the end-nothing!

"Then in their innermost minds a little germ of doubt flowered-that they were made fools of. And this led to a heretical thought, that it was not right to use such means to gain his end; that Bandiar was corrupt. But after all he was their master, and without him they were nothing. And he had a good and noble purpose, this secret of the flute, worth any sacrifice. They put aside their doubts and continued to serve."

Llian looked to his three judges. Jark-un's face was hard as stone. Clearly he thought the whole business was a nonsense. Llian knew that he would never sway him. Yetchah had a mobile face for a Ghashad, reacting each time he highlighted the Myrmide's dilemma. What could he say to play upon her sensitivity? And Idlis-he looked as though he had been put on the rack, but Llian judged that it would take a most exceptional tale for him to go against his master. So be it.

"Now among the Myrmide was one called Nassi, a young woman, and she was accounted the least of them, for she was neglectful of her duty, and this brought shame on her and on all the Myrmide. She was not wicked, though they said that of her; nor lazy-they accused her of that too. She tried to be a good Myrmide, a good servant, but her work was never done for dreaming, or fretting about right and wrong, or just sitting in a warm hidey-hole reading the stories of other lands and other peoples.

"She had a ready smile and a warm heart; she was generous and laughed a lot. In short, a thoroughly wicked, wilful and unpleasant Myrmide. The others set a better example: they were very stern. Occasionally one or other of them would smile a thin smile but they never laughed. Yet they had a duty to her too, and they never tired of beating her, to teach her her duty. This went on even after she became a woman taller than many of them. But she was big and plump, with a cheerful round open face, and though the beatings hurt her they did not curb her spirit.

"One task she did well, and that was maintaining Bandiar's workrooms, though there she found an interest in his work that went beyond the duty of a servant. The Myrmide rebuked her for this; then, realizing that Bandiar was pleased to have her help and liked her for her good humor, they saw that it was, on the whole, a good thing. Bandiar often talked about his project to her with barely a hint of condescension, for she had a quick mind.

"As time went by the two became closer than may be wise between servant and master. Nassi came to revere her master, yet she would never share his bed. The Myrmide took her aside again. Was there nothing she could do right? She treated Bandiar as a friend, and that was wrong, but when he wished her to do her duty in his bed she refused. There were more beatings, which Nassi endured with good grace, and life went back to what it had been before."

Llian knew that in his weariness he was losing his train of thought. The tale was rambling. He forced it back on track.

"Shuthdar disliked Nassi, for she was the one person he could not fool, and his suggestions to Bandiar that he be given her had been curtly rejected. Even Bandiar would not agree to that. Shuthdar began to lurk in dark passages through which she might pass, hoping to waylay her, but after her first escape she kept to the lighted ways and took great care of herself.