Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

"Yes, he has," said Bayub-Otal, "and after all you've risked and suffered, both you and Meris are fully entitled to whatever he'll give you. Well, that's clear, then."

With a certain air of embarrassment he continued, "And have you thought, Maia, about where you're going?"

She had indeed. She wanted and intended to go wherever Zen-Kurel went; and if she could not, she did not care what became of her.

"It's all one to me, Anda-Nokomis," she said. "Perhaps I may think of something later."

"But do you want to try to reach the Zhairgen with us?" He was just perceptibly impatient.

"That'll do as well as anything else. Will you excuse me if I go to bed now? I'm very tired." And she turned away without waiting for a reply.

When they came to set out the following morning, it was clear that Zen-Kurel must have been giving thought to the importance of maintaining at least a civil working relationship with the two girls. He greeted both of them courteously if rather distantly, and went on to say that he thought they could hope to reach the Zhairgen that evening.

"Of course it won't be like twelve miles in open country," he said. "It'll be rough going in the forest, I dare say, but we can make sure of keeping our direction by following the Daulis downstream. Even if we do have to spend a night in the forest, we shall be able to manage all right. A fire's the great thing. I was once three nights in the Blue Forest in Katria, and that was quite bearable."

They had become his soldiers, thought Maia, with se-cret, fond amusement. He felt it his responsibility to look after them, to show no favorites, to set an example and raise everyone's confidence. In some respects she felt so much older than he. Probably it was as well that for now things should remain as they were; impersonal and matter-of-fact. Anyway, he should have all the loyalty and help he would permit her to give him. She would act her part of the dutiful follower, even though she suspected that in his courage and ardor he might very well be leading them all into grave danger. Reckon I've caught love like I was ill, she thought. I couldn't stop loving him whatever happened, whatever he did. I've got to suffer it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to show it.

Bayub-Otal was his usual chilly, composed self. His great virtue, thought Maia--one more likely to appeal to men than women--was his consistency. He could always be relied upon to be much the same, whether in good fortune or bad, in danger or out of it. She could well imagine that he must have been a tower of strength to his friends in the prison at Dari-Paltesh.

Meris seemed subdued--even anxious to please. That was the pathetic thing about Meris, thought Maia.

It was as though she really couldn't help the things she did. So then someone hit her or humiliated her and she became quite a nice girl--for a while. She wondered how deeply Zirek felt about her. Despite all they had undergone, she was still very beautiful; and obviously, as Zen-Kurel had conceded, indisputably possessed of courage and endurance.

Zirek himself struck Maia as being in a mood of well-masked apprehension, when Zen-Kurel's back was turned he winked at her and mimed the action of tossing a coin, catching it in his palm and turning it over on the back of the other hand. Then, pretending to uncover and look at it, he stared up at her with an expression of comical dismay.

Their farewells were brief but sincere. Kerkol and Blarda wished them luck and Clystis gave them what food she could spare. Maia gave her an extra hundred meld, embraced her and wished her the perpetual favor of the gods. Then they set off across the pasture in the direction of the river.

They reached it about two hours later, just as the day was growing hot. The bank, though rough and lonely, was fairly open. The river was about twenty yards wide and certainly deep. Despite the time of year, there was no bottom to be seen. There was indeed a good, steady current, but nothing so swift as Zen-Kurd's account had led Maia to expect.

"No crossing that, you see, Anda-Nokomis," said Zen-Kurel in a conclusive tone.

"And no point, either,' replied Bayub-Otal, "if we can reach the Zhairgen without."

They turned downstream, picking their way through gradually thickening scrub and now seeing ahead of them tiie outskirts of the forest, dark against the growing glare of the southern sky. "It'll be cooler once we get in there," said Zen-Kurel, slashing at the flies with a broken-off branch.

The approach to the forest consisted of fairly close brush and, beside the river, wide patches of dried-up reeds and cracked mud, which at any other time of year would have been impassable. These they pressed through, putting up great clouds of gnats which tormented them, following them about in front, as Zirek put it, and settling on their necks and arms. Once Meris startled a bright-green snake, which whipped between her and Maia and was gone before either of them had time to feel afraid--of that particular one. > Emerging at length from the further side of this marshland, they found themselves at the foot of a long, gradual slope, so thickly overgrown that they could not really see how high it might be. To the right of this the river wound away among tangles of undergrowth until it was lost to sight.

"We mustn't lose touch with the river, Anda-Nokomis, if we can help it," said Zen-Kurel, "but the best thing will be to get up this ridge and then go down and pick up the bank again. We'll be able to see more of the lie of the land from the top."

They began to climb. Maia, who had started a menstrual period the previous morning and now had a headache, was beginning to feel thoroughly out of patience. Damn these fools who couldn't swim!

There--just there--was the river-- safe, smooth, cool and free from flies. She could easily have been three or four miles down it in an hour.

"Are you all right, Maia?" asked Bayub-Otal, turning back to give her his hand over a fallen tree-trunk.

She nodded curtly, smacked a gnat on her arm and pushed on uphill.

An hour later, having at last topped the ridge, they found themselves gazing down on the forest proper.

The prospect was formidable and worse. Maia, surveying it with something close to terror, could only suppose that either Clystis must have thought that Zen-Kurel possessed magic powers or else that she had been too nervous of him to speak out more strongly.

Ahead of and below them lay a vast, shallow dip, something like two or three miles across. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, it was compact with trees, unbroken and even as a roof in the still heat. So uniform, so featureless was this prospect that they might have been looking out across a smoothly undulant, green lake. No tree seemed taller than another and none, one would suppose, could have moved even in a wind, so close together were they crowded. Looking at that forest, no one could tell in what millennium he might be living. The god of that place, thought Maia, was not hostile to mankind; no, he was simply indifferent, distinguishing not at all between men, beasts and the insects darting among the leaves. Once in there, their lives would have no more value than those of ants; and they themselves would be as helpless.

On the farther side of this great bowl the horizon was closed by a line of the same trees; and one could imagine the forest continuing unchanged beyond. Away to their right, below the ridge on which they were standing, they could catch, here and there, glimpses of the river.

"Jumping Cran!" muttered Zirek, staring. "It can't be done, sir!"

"Nobody has to do it who doesn't want to," replied Zen-Kurel with (so it seemed to Maia) a somewhat forced air of confidence. "Personally, I'm going to Terekenalt and that's the way. But let's have a rest and eat now, shall we?"

"I was just thinking about the eating,' said Bayub-Otal. "I think it may take us quite a long time to reach the Zhairgen through that; certainly two days. We ought to be rather sparing, I think, of what food we've got."

"We might be able to kill something," said Zen-Kurel. "I'd like a chance to try these arrows."

Having eaten, they descended the ridge, making once more for the river, and now entered in earnest the forest depth. Within half an hour Maia was almost as frightened as though Fornis herself, innumerably multipl

ied, were lying in wait behind every tree. There was no true light; only a murky, green gloom filtering down from far above, so dim that neither they themselves nor the trees cast shadows. They could not see more than twenty or thirty yards ahead, partly for the gloom and partly for the undergrowth all around. The humidity was like damp felt clinging to skin and clothes; a thick, resistant film which they seemed to thrust apart with their bodies in pushing on. There were weird, disturbing noises--sudden cries and chatterings, and sometimes the squawking of alarmed birds in the confined stillness--but the creatures making them remained unseen.

She felt diminished, shrunken as though by an evil spell, a minute creature walking between the legs of a giant. And the giant was vigilant. He, she now knew, was the god: a god unknown to man; nameless--what were names?--infinitely remote and old. He was watching them as he watched everything in the forest, yet their fate was nothing to him. Nor would propitiation be of the least avail. He was lord of a world in which prayer had no meaning and death itself very little; a world in which the frog sat impassively as the snake approached closer to devour it.

After a time they had lost all sense of direction. There was, of course, no telling where the sun might be.

Zen-Kurel, using Maia's knife--the only one they had--tried to maintain a line by marking successive tree-trunks, but the undergrowth, in many places so impenetrable as to force them to turn this way and that, rendered the scheme futile. After a long time they came upon a tree already marked and realized that they must have returned to it. Of the river there was neither sight nor sound.