Maia recalled all that Occula had told her of Fornis of Paltesh; of her unscrupulous rapacity, her cruelty, her relentless and cunning tenure of power; of the admiration she inspired and the fear she was capable of inspiring when she wished; of the many men, dazzled, who had tried to gain her, and how none had been even so much as rumored to have succeeded.
"Reckon just about nothing," she answered.
"I've been with her for twenty years," said Ashaktis, "ever since she was a girl in her father's house in Dari. I was with her when she took the boat and sailed it to Quiso. You'll have heard that tale, I suppose?" (Maia nodded.) "Cran only knows what I've done for her since, and Cran'U destroy me for it one day, I dare say, for she's thumbed her nose at him and every one of the gods for years. But it'll have been worth it. Perhaps you've learnt something yourself already, have you, about the difference between scrubbing floors for the bare living and doing what rich people want done by girls who know how to stay on the right side of them and keep their mouths shut?"
"Ah, that I have," replied Maia decisively.
"Life's not easy with the queen," went on Ashaktis, "but at least it's never dull. There's times she makes your hair
stand on end. You've got to look alive with her. For a long time now I've had more than enough money to buy myself free, but I never do. She's like one of those drugs the Deelguy sell: people keep saying they'll give it up, but they don't. I've become addicted to Miss Fornis. One day she'll be the death of me and that'll be that."
Maia felt emboldened by the woman's friendly loquacity. "Go on, then; tell me something you've seen her do. Something out of the ordinary, like you were saying."
Ashaktis was silent for a time, reflecting. Maia, looking this way and that to admire the serpents, porcupines, gazelles and panthers depicted on the bath-tiles, waited expectantly.
"Well, one time, several years ago now," said Ashaktis at length, "we went up into Suba. It was only about three months after we'd got back from Quiso; that's to say, before those uncles of hers had really got it into their heads that she didn't mean to marry. She'd told them she wanted to go to Suba to hunt duck and water-fowl. There weren't many of us; one of the uncles and his daughter, a girl of about twenty; a couple of huntsmen, Miss Fornis and me. The cooks and guides and the rest we hired once we'd crossed the Valderra. You've never been in Suba, have you?"
"Never," said Maia.
"It's a strange place, and the people are strange, too. It's like nowhere else in the empire-half land and half water. You travel everywhere by boat, down the water-channels; like corridors of water they are, between one village and the next, and the reeds and trees standing high all round you. You hear bitterns booming in the swamps and I've seen black turtles-oh, big as a soldier's shield-lying out on branches above the water.
"After about ten days poor old uncle was tired out, so Miss Fornis went out alone with me and four men-two Subans and our own two Dari huntsmen. We came to an island in the swamps and in the middle was a heronry. We could see the big, ramshackle nests, high up in the tops of the trees. You know the way they build?"
Maia nodded.
"Well, we'd no sooner got to this island than Miss Fornis looks up at the trees and says 'Ah, herons! I've always fancied young herons would be good in a pie; better than pigeons. Phorbas,' she says to one of the Suban lads, 'just
climb up and bring me down half a dozen, will you?' 'No, saiyett,' says the boy, 'that I won't! I value my life and that's the truth. There's no living man could reach those nests, and even if he did the herons would be at him like dragons.' 'Why, you damned, cowardly, Suban marsh-frog!' she said to him. 'I don't know why ever I hired the likes of you! Go on, then, Khumba,' she said to one of our huntsmen, 'you'd better just show him how to do it, hadn't you?' 'I'm very sorry, saiyett,' says Khumba, 'but I reckon yon Suban fellow's in the right of it. I'm no more going up there than he is. My wife wouldn't fancy me with a broken neck, that's about the size of it.'
" 'Cran and Airtha! Well, here goes then!' says Miss Fornis, as if she was stepping out of doors into the rain. 'And since you're not a man,' she said to the Suban, 'you can just give me those breeches of yours to keep my legs from getting scratched. Come on, hurry up!' And she made him take them off. They still thought it must be some joke she was up to. She was only just seventeen then, you see, and in those days her ways weren't so well-known.
"She put on the breeches and stuck a short spear in her belt and then she was up the tree like a squirrel. She'd gone something like thirty feet before any of them really understood she meant to do it. After that they just stood and watched like folk round a burning house. Khumba kept saying 'O Lespa, make her come down! O Shakkarn, what am I going to say to her uncles when she's dead? They'll hang me upside-down!' I admit I was praying myself. It would have frightened anyone to see her.
"She got up to the nest she'd had her eye on-must have been all of eighty feet, and the upper, branches swaying under her like grass in the wind. Both the herons went for her. She killed them with her spear, and after that she wrung the necks of five young ones and carried them down- she couldn't throw them down, you see, what with all the twigs and brush below her. 'There!' she says to the Suban boy. 'And I've a good mind to make you eat one raw. The next time I tell you to do something, you damned well do it, d'you see?' He never answered a word; and he never came out with us again. But there were plenty more who were only too glad to, for the story got around, you see; and she always paid well. I don't believe there was anyone else in the empire, man or woman, who'd have climbed
that tree. Bat that was nothing at all, if only we'd known what was to come."
"And you say she's got a use for me?" asked Maia, with considerable apprehension. "Only if it's along of the swimming-"
Ashaktis burst out laughing. "The swimming? Are you ready to come out now? I'll rub you down."
Maia did so, dried her face and stretched out on the couch while Ashaktis toweled her.
"What's the Sacred Queen's vocation?" asked Ashaktis after a little. "Do you know?"
"Why, she's the bride of Cran," said Maia. "She's Air-tha in human form, isn't she, as makes the crops grow and the babies come?"
"Yes, that's quite right. The Sacred Queen doesn't have to be a virgin-there's never been any fixed law about that. Occasionally in the past she's been a married woman or even a shearna. It's entirely a matter of popular acclaim-or it's supposed to be. But all the same, Miss Fornis has always taken good care that in spite of all her wild ways, no one's ever been able to link any man's name with hers. That adds very much to her real power, of course."
"I see," said Maia, shuddering deliciously as Ashaktis's strong fingers massaged the muscles along her shoulders.
"But she's still flesh and blood, for all that, isn't she?"
"Flesh and blood? Well, yes, I s'pose so, kind of."
"She gets to learn a lot about almost everyone in the upper city," went on Ashaktis. "She knew a lot about Sencho, for instance. You were quite a favorite with him, weren't you? You were very good at doing what he liked- you used to put your heart into it?"
Maia felt nattered. She did not know that she had acquired so wide a reputation.
"Well, 'twasn't all that difficult; not really."
"You mean because you enjoyed it yourself?"
"Well, yes, I s'pose so. Only he'd send for me and no one else, see? And then he used to get that worked up sometimes, it made me feel-well, made me feel I was good at it."
"Well, the Sacred Queen feels you probably are, too."
Maia, rolling over on the couch, stared up at her.
"She really takes an interest in nice, spirited girls," went on Ashaktis. "Of course, some of us aren't as young as
we were-that can't be helped. But I don't bear you any grudge, I assure you. All you've got to do is show her your talents-just as you did with Sencho."
Maia was about to reply when suddenly her earlier thoughts returned to her mind with force.
"Oh, saiyett-Ashaktis-there's something you've got to do for me! Please! Only it's terribly important. Do you know U-Sarget? He's a rich man in the upper city. You must know him! I've got to get a message to him-about my friend Occula!"
"Now just calm yourself, child," said Ashaktis, putting her hands on Maia's shoulders. "You obviously haven't grasped what I've been telling you. Do you realize that by tomorrow morning you'll probably be able to ask favors of the queen herself?"
Before Maia could answer, the Deelguy bath-slave drew aside the door-curtains and, palm to forehead, announced "Saiyett, the Sacred Queen!"
Maia, looking frantically round for something to put on, could find only the towels on which she was lying; and with these she was still fumbling as Fornis entered the bathroom. It did not occur to her that some few days before she had stood naked beside the queen on the shore of the Barb.
On this occasion, however, Queen Fornis was less alarming. Indeed, not only her appearance but her whole manner was altogether different. There was nothing in the least imperious or daunting in the way she came up to Maia, took her by the hand and, smiling, drew her down to sit beside her on the couch.
Her hair, now gathered behind her head, like any village girl's, with a plain green ribbon, fell nearly to her waist, flaring out on either side almost like a cloak. She wore no jewels, the lacquer was gone from her nails and she was bare-footed. Her thin, white surcoat, belted with a green cord and buttoning down the front, was stitched from neck to hem with a pattern of flying dragons in minute, brilliantly-colored beads. Neither the material itself nor the beads were of any great value. All lay in the workmanship, which must have taken months to complete.
"Well, Maia," she said, smiling and speaking as to a guest, "you're looking much better now; and feeling better, too, I hope. Has Ashaktis been looking after you properly? I always seem to meet you when you've been
in the water, don't I? I didn't think that tunic thing you've been wearing was going to be much more use, so I've brought you a new robe. Are you ready to put it on?" Pulling aside the towel, she rubbed her hand up and down Maia's back from neck to thighs. "Oh, yes, you're quite dry enough. And you must be starving for some supper. As soon as you're ready we'll go and eat."
Thereupon she clapped her hands and two chubby little boys, about nine or ten years old, came in through the curtains, carrying between them a plain but very soft and finely-woven woolen robe of pale blue. Both children were exceptionally beautiful, with long hair falling over their bare shoulders, white, even teeth and the fair skin and blue eyes of Yeldashay. On their heads were crowns of scented, white tiare blossom, but otherwise they were naked.
"Aren't they lovely?" said the queen, as the two children, without a trace of self-consciousness, stood beside Maia and held up the robe for her to put on. "I only bought them a few weeks ago, but they're learning well. What is it you need-" seeing Maia glancing round the room-"a comb?"
"Well, yes, esta-saiyett-er-that's to say, if it's no trouble," faltered Maia.
"I'll do it for you, if you like," said the Queen, taking a heavy, carved comb which one of the little boys, without being told, at once brought to her from the shelved recess. "What beautiful hair! Is it your father's or your mother's?"
Maia, who was beginning to feel more relaxed, laughed. "Don't know, really, esta-saiyett. Reckon it's mine!"
"You needn't call me 'esta-saiyett' now," said Fornis, stroking her hair as she combed it. "What am I called, Shakti?"
Ashaktis smiled. "Folda. But Maia won't know what that means."
"What does it mean, Maia; do you know?"
"No, I don't, esta-sai-I mean, Folda."
"It's old Urtan for a hunting-knife. But your hair," she went on, working out a wet tangle with the comb. "You mean you've never had to curl it; not even with all that swimming in Lake Serrelind?"
"But did I ever tell you about swimming in the lake?" said Maia, confused. She looked up into the green eyes
and, as the queen's lips, prompting her, pouted to shape the word, added "Folda."
"No, you didn't," replied the queen, "but you told me you came from Serrelind, and where else would you have learned to dive and swim like that? Tikki, my sweetheart," she called to one of the little boys, "where are the nuts?" In an instant the child was beside them, offering a silver basin of serrardoes mixed with flakes of a gingery spice.
Form's, putting one arm round him, nibbled his bare neck and shoulders. "M'tnm! Keep still!" Then again to Maia, "Tell me about Lake Serrelind! I've never been in Tonilda, you know."
Diffidently at first, but then with increasing confidence and freedom, Maia found herself talking about her childhood in the hovel; of the increasing burden, as she grew older, of being the eldest of four, and of how she used to escape, in summer, to the falls and the solitude of the deep water.
"Never had a stitch on, sometimes, half the day. It was the only place, you see, where I could be sure of being left alone."
"A naiad! And how did you come from that to Bekla?" asked Fornis, laying aside the comb and again fondling the little boy as he came up to take it away.
Maia, who had been chattering happily enough, hesitated and fell silent. The queen must know very well that she had come into the possession of Lalloc, who had sold her to Sencho. About this, and of her journey from Puhra to Bekla, she was perfectly ready to talk. What she did not want to speak about was her seduction by Tharrin and how her own mother had sold her to the slavers. For the first time she found herself wondering whether Morca might later have come to feel sorry for what she had done.
Fornis perceived her reluctance. "Sad story? They always are. I shouldn't have asked. Never mind; wouldn't want to go back, would you?" She stood up. "I've kept you talking too long, but I was so fascinated by what you were telling me. You can go on over supper. There'll be no one except you and me and Shakti here, so you can feel quite free."
The gallery, Maia now realized, as they strolled along it, with Ashaktis and the little boys following, ran entirely round the interior wall of the building, which was a hollow square. They were two floors up. Although darkness had
now fallen, she could make out below, through the trellised arcading, a garden courtyard with a carved, central fountain-basin. There was a smell of jasmine, and great moths were flitting here and there. The roosting mynahs had settled down: she could see them in the dark-little groups of darker black-crowded together under the opposite cornice.
"The whole of this upper story's private, you see," said Fornis, as they turned a corner of the gallery. "No one ever comes up here except my personal people." She turned into a doorway. "This is my supper-room. I designed the decorations myself; it's in traditional Palteshi style-to remind me of home, you know."
Maia, however, although she had been virtually asked to do so, was too much startled to admire the room, for standing just inside the doorway, in the attitude of a dignified, respectful upper servant, was none other than Zuno, dressed in a gold livery embroidered across the breast with a leopard in silver thread. His hair was trimmed and curled in imitation of the style in vogue among Elvair-ka-Virrion and his friends, and in one hand he was holding a white wand almost as tall as himself. Upon the queen's entry he bowed, so that Maia recognized him a moment before he, returning to the upright, recognized her. With this advantage, she had just time to compose her features, meet his eye gravely and enjoy his startled though instantly-controlled reaction.
"Everything in order, Zuno?" asked the queen, looking round the tranquil, candle-lit room.
Zuno bowed again.
It plainly was. The honey-colored paneling of the little hall, which measured about twenty-five feet by fifteen, had been polished with pine-scented beeswax, so that the walls and floor, gleaming gently in the candlelight, gave off a light, resinous aroma. A single step of smooth slate, banded cream and gray, surrounded the sunk rectangle of the central floor, in the middle of which stood the flower-strewn supper-table. Beside this were two couches, sprea
d with as many cushions as even Sencho could have wished. A charcoal brazier glowed in one corner of the room and near it stood a third, slightly older boy, as handsome as the queen's two pages now taking up their places to wait at table. Several copper vessels were standing on the char-
coal, and from these came a mixture of delightful odors which made Maia realize how hungry she was.
"Come here, Vorri," said the queen, calling the lad over from beside the brazier. "M'm, getting a nice, big boy now, aren't you? Almost too big to be hanging round the Sacred Queen. I shall have to start thinking what I'm going to do with you; but just now you can pour me some wine."
"Oh, esta-saiyett," he answered, with a charming, rather coltish manner, somewhere between the studied deference of Zuno and the artless grace of the little boys, "I daren't leave the cooking, or your savory pancakes will be spoiled."
"Why, are you cooking the supper, then?" asked Fornis, surprised.
"No, esta-saiyett," interposed Zuno, again inclining gracefully from the waist ("He don't miss any chance o' doin' that," thought Maia), "the dinner itself-the trout and the boar-are being prepared in the kitchens, as usual, and the children will go down for them. But I thought the soup and the crayfish pancakes would be better if they were prepared here."
"Excellent!" said the queen, motioning Maia to one of the couches and settling herself on the other. "Then pour the wine yourself, Zuno. And you'd better get back to your pancakes, Vorri. Oh, you're like a little pancake yourself, aren't you? M'm, take care I don't eat you by mistake!"
To Maia the dinner was exquisitely enjoyable, as much for the comfort and surroundings as for the food. Nor was conversation any problem, for she had nothing to do but lie basking in the queen's favor. Fascinated by the charm of this extraordinary woman, who only a few hours before had Struck the fear of Cran into her, she no longer felt in the least out of her depth or nervous of her ability to reciprocate. Fornis, with no trace of condescension, put her entirely at her ease. They might almost, she thought, have been two young women back in Meerzat, having a bit of gossip. In her pleasure and excitement, one detail escaped her notice. Ashaktis, sitting on a stool beside For-nis's couch and from time to time joining smoothly in the talk, tasted everything the queen ate before serving her.
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