"Your strange equipment, as fine as Dirdir stuff. Your garments, of a cut unknown on Tschai. Your peculiar ignorance and your equally peculiar competence. It almost might seem that you are what you claim to be: a man from a far world. Absurd, of course."

"I made no such claim," said Reith.

"The boy did."

"The question, then, is between you and him." Reith turned to watch the priestesses, who brooded over bowls of soup. Now they were joined by two more priestesses, with the captive girl between them. The first two reported their conversation with the caravan-master with many grunts, jerks of the arms, sour glances over the shoulder. The girl sat dispiritedly, hands in her lap, until one of the priestesses prodded her and pointed to a bowl of soup, whereupon she listlessly began to eat. Reith could not take his eyes from her. She was a slave, he thought in sudden excitement; would the priestess sell? Almost certainly not. The girl of extraordinary beauty was destined for some extraordinary purpose. Reith sighed, turned his gaze elsewhere, and noticed that others-namely the Ilanths-were no less fascinated than himself. He saw them staring, tugging at their mustaches, muttering and laughing, with such lascivious jocularity that Reith became annoyed. Were they not aware that the girl faced a tragic destiny?The priestesses rose to their feet. They stared truculently in all directions and led the girl from the room. For a time they marched back and forth across the compound, the girl walking to the side, occasionally being jerked into a trot when her steps lagged. The Ilanth scouts, coming out of the common-room, squatted on their heels by the wall of the caravansary. They had exchanged their war-hats with the human skulls for square berets of soft brown velvet, and each had pasted a vermilion beauty disc on his lemon-yellow cheek. They chewed on nuts, spitting the sh.e.l.ls into the dirt and never taking their eyes from the girl. There was badinage between them, a sly challenge, and one rose to his feet. He sauntered across the compound and, accelerating his steps, came up behind the marching priestesses. He spoke to the girl, who looked at him blankly. The priestesses halted, swung about. The tall one raised her arm, forefinger pointed at the sky, and called out an angry reprimand. The Ilanth, grinning insolently, held his ground. He failed to notice the burly priestess who came up from the side and dealt him a vicious blow on the side of the head.

The Ranth tumbled to the compound, but leapt to his feet instantly, spitting curses. The priestess, grinning, moved forward; the Ilanth tried to strike her with his fist. She caught him in a bear hug, banged his head with her own, lifted him, b.u.mped out her belly, propelled him away. Advancing, she kicked him, and the others joined her. The Ilanth, surrounded by priestesses, finally managed to crawl away and regain his feet. He shouted invective, spat in the first priestess's face, then, retreating swiftly, rejoined his hooting comrades.

The priestesses, with occasional glances toward the Ilanths, continued their pacing. The sun sank low, sending long shadows across the compound. Down from the hills came a group of ragged folk, somewhat undersized, with white skins, yellow-brown hair, clear sharp profiles, small slanting eyes. The men began to play on gongs, while the women performed a curious hopping dance, darting back and forth with the rapidity of insects. Wizened children, wearing only shawls, moved among the travelers with bowls, soliciting coins. Across the compound the travelers were airing blankets and shawls, hanging the squares of orange, yellow, rust and brown out to flap in the airs drifting down from the hills.

The priestesses and the slave girl retired to their ironbound dray-house.

The sun set behind the hills. Dusk settled over the caravansary; the compound became quiet. Pale lights flickered from the dray-houses of the caravan. The steppes beyond the outcrops were dim, rimmed by plum- colored afterglow.

Reith ate a bowl of pungent goulash, a slab of coa.r.s.e bread and a dish of preserves for his supper. Traz went to watch a gambling game; Anacho was nowhere to be seen. Reith went out into the compound, looked up at the stars. Somewhere among the unfamiliar constellations would be a faint andminuscule Cepheus, across the Sun from his present outlook. Cepheus, an undistinguished constellation, could never be identified by the naked eye.

The Sun at 212 light-years would be invisible: a star of perhaps the tenth or twelfth magnitude. Somewhat depressed, Reith brought his gaze down from the sky.

The priestesses sat outside their dray, muttering together. Within the cage stood the slave girl. Drawn almost beyond his will, Reith circled the compound, came up behind the dray, looked into the cage. "Girl," he said.

"Girl."

She turned and looked at him, but said nothing.

"Come over here," said Reith, "so that I can speak to you."

Slowly she crossed the cage to peer down at him.

"What do they do with you?" Reith asked.

"I don't know." Her voice was husky and soft. "They stole me from my home in Cath; they took me to the ship and put me in a cage."

"Why?"

"Because I am beautiful. Or so they say... Hush. They hear us talking.

Hide."

Reith, feeling craven, dropped to his knees. The girl stood holding to the bars, looking from the cage. One of the priestesses came to look in the cage and, seeing nothing amiss, returned to her sisters.

The girl called softly down to Reith. "She is gone."

Reith rose to his feet, feeling somewhat foolish. "Do you want to be free of this cage?"

"Of course!" Her voice was almost indignant. "I don't want to be part of their rite! They hate me! Because they are so ugly!" She peered down at Reith, studied him in the flicker from a nearby window, "I saw you today,"

she said, "standing beside the track."

"Yes. I noticed you too."

She turned her head. "They come again. You had better go."

Reith moved away. From across the compound he watched the priestesses thrust the girl into the dray-house. Then he went into the common-room. For a period he watched the games. There was chess, played on a board of forty-nine squares with seven pieces to a side; a game played with a disc and small numbered chips, of great complication; several card games. A flask of beer stood by every hand; women of the hill tribes wandered through the room soliciting; there were several brawls of no great consequence. A man from the caravan brought forth a flute, another a lute, another drew sonorous ba.s.s tones from a long gla.s.s tube; the three played music which Reith found fascinating if only for the strangeness of its melodic structure. Traz and the Dirdirman had long gone to their chambers; Reith presently followed.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Reith Awoke with a sense of imminence which for a s.p.a.ce he could not comprehend. Then he understood its source: it derived from the girl and the Priestesses of the Female Mystery. He lay scowling at the plaster ceiling. Utter folly to concern himself with matters beyond his comprehension! What, after all, could he achieve?

Descending to the common-room, he ate a dish of porridge served by one of the innkeeper's slatternly daughters, then went out to sit on a bench, aching for a glimpse of the captive girl.

The priestesses appeared, proceeded to the caravansary with the girl in their midst, looking neither right nor left.

Half an hour later they returned to the compound, and went to talk to one of the small men from the hills, who grinned and nodded obsequiously, eyes glittering in a fascination of awe.

The Ilanths trooped from the common-room. With sidelong glances toward the priestesses and leers at the girl, they crossed the compound, brought forth their leap-horses and began to pare the h.o.r.n.y growths which gathered on the gray-green hides.

The priestesses ended their discussion with the mountainman and went to walk out on the steppe, back and forth in front of the outcrops, the girl lagging a few steps behind, to the exasperation of the priestesses. The Ilanths looked after, muttering to themselves.

Traz came out to sit by Reith. He pointed across the steppe. "Green Chasch are near: a large party."

Reith could see nothing. "How do you know?"

"I smell the smoke of their fires."

"I smell nothing," said Reith.

Traz shrugged. "It is a party of three or four hundred."

"Mmmf. How do you know that?"

"By the strength of the wind, the smell of the smoke. A small group makes less smoke than a large group. This is the smoke of about three hundred Green Chasch."

Reith threw up his hands in defeat.

The Ilanths, mounting their leap-horses, bounded off into the outcrops, where they halted. Anacho, standing by, gave a dry laugh. "They go to plague the priestesses."

Reith jumped to his feet, went out to watch. The Ilanths waited till the priestesses strode by, then bounded forth. The priestesses sprang back in alarm; the Ilanths, cawing and hooting, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the girl, threw herover a saddle and carried her off toward the hills. The priestesses stared aghast; then, screaming hoa.r.s.ely, they all ran back to the compound.

Seizing upon Baojian the caravan-master, they pointed trembling fingers.

"The yellow beasts have stolen the maid of Cath!"

"Just for a bit of sport," said Baojian soothingly. "They'll bring her back when they're through with her."

"Useless for our purposes! When we have journeyed so far and borne so much! It is utter tragedy! I am a Grand Mother of the Fasm Seminary! And you will not even help!"

The caravan-master spat into the dirt. "I help no one. I maintain order in the caravan. I steer my wagons, I have time for nothing else."

"Vile man! Are these not your underlings? Control them!"

"I control only my caravan. The event occurred upon the steppe."

"Oh, what shall we do? We are bereft! There will be no Rite of Clarification!"

Reith found himself in the saddle of a leap-horse, bounding across the steppe. He had been activated by an impulse far below the level of his conscious mind; even while the leap-horse took him on prodigious bounds across the steppe he marveled at the reflexes which had sent him springing away from the caravan-master and up onto the leaphorse. "What's done is done," he consoled himself, with somewhat bitter satisfaction; it seemed that the plight of a beautiful slave-girl had taken precedence over his own woes.

The Ilanths had not ridden far; up a little valley to a small flat sandy area under a beetling boulder. The girl stood bewildered and cowering against the stone; the Ranths had only just finished tying their leaphorses when Reith arrived. "What do you want?" asked one without friendliness. "Away with you; we are about to test the quality of this Cath girl."

Another one gave a coa.r.s.e laugh. "She will need instruction for the Female Mysteries!"

Reith displayed his gun. "I'll kill any or all of you, with pleasure." He motioned to the girl. "Come."

She looked wildly around the landscape, as if not knowing in which direction to run.

The Ilanths stood silently, black mustaches a droop. The girl slowly clambered up on the horse in front of Reith; he turned it about and rode off down the valley. She looked at him with an unreadable expression, started to speak, then became silent. Behind, the Ilanths mounted their own horses and bounded off past, yipping, hooting, cursing.

The priestesses stood by the entry to the compound, gazing across the steppe. Reith halted the horse and considered the four black-clad shapes, who at once began to make peremptory signals.

The girl spoke frantically: "How much did they pay you?""Nothing," said Reith. "I came of my own accord."

"Take me home," begged the girl. "Take me to Cath! My father will pay you far more-whatever you ask of him!"

Reith pointed to a moving black line at the horizon. "I suspect those are Green Chasch. We'd best go back to the inn."

"The women will take me! They will put me in the cage!" The girl's voice quavered; her composure-or perhaps it was apathy-began to disintegrate.

"They hate me, they want to do their worst!" She pointed. "They come now!

Let me go!"

"Alone? Out on the steppe?"

"I prefer it!"

"I won't let them take you," said Reith. He rode slowly toward the caravansary. The priestesses stood waiting at the pa.s.sage between the rock juts. "Oh n.o.ble man!" called the Grand Mother. "You have done a fine deed! She has not been defiled?"

"It is no concern of yours," said Reith.

"What's this? Not our concern? How can you say so?"

"She is my property. I took her from the three warriors. Go to them for rest.i.tution, not to me. What I have taken, I keep."

The priestesses laughed hugely. "You ridiculous c.o.c.kbird of a man! Give us our property, or it will go poorly with you! We are Priestesses of the Female Mystery."

"You will be dead priestesses if you interfere with me or my property,"

said Reith. He rode past, into the compound, leaving the priestesses staring after. Reith dismounted, helped the girl to the ground, and now he understood why his instinct had sent him in pursuit of the Ilanths, all the urging of good judgment to the contrary.

"What is your name?" he asked.

She reflected, as if Reith had asked the most perplexing of riddles, and answered with diffidence. "My father is lord of Blue Jade Palace." Then she said, "We are of the Aegis caste. Sometimes I am announced as Blue Jade Flower, at lesser functions Beauty Flower, or Flower of Cath ... My flower- name is Ylin-Ylan."

"That is all somewhat complicated," stated Reith, to which the girl nodded, as if she too found the matter overly profound. "What do your friends call you?"

"That depends on their caste. Are you high-born?"

"Yes, indeed," said Reith, seeing no reason to claim otherwise.

"Do you intend me to be your slave? If so, it would not be proper to use my friend-name."

"I've never owned a slave," said Reith. "The temptation is great-but I think I'd rather use your friend-name.""You may call me the Flower of Cath, which is a formal friend-name, or, if you wish, my flower-name, Ylin-Ylan."

"That should do, temporarily at least." He surveyed the compound, then, taking the girl's arm, led her into the common-room of the caravansary, and to a table at the back wall. Here he studied the girl, Ylin-Ylan, the Beauty Flower, the Flower of Cath. "I don't quite know what to do with you."

Out in the compound the priestesses were expostulating with the caravan-master, who listened with gravity and politeness.

Reith said, "The problem may be taken out of my hands. I'm not sure of my legal footing."

"There are no laws here on the steppe," the girl said. "Fear alone rules."

Traz came to join them. He appraised the girl with disapproval. "What do you intend with her?"

"I'd see her home, if I could."

"You would want for nothing, if you did so," the girl told him earnestly.

"I am the daughter of a notable house. My father would build you a palace."

At this Traz showed less disapprobation, and looked off to the east as if envisioning the journey. "It is not impossible."

"For me it is," said Reith. "I must go to find my s.p.a.ce-boat. If you want to conduct her to Cath, by all means do so, and make a new life for yourself."

Traz looked dubiously out at the priestesses. "Without warriors or weapons, how could I convey one like her across the steppes? We'd be enslaved or killed out of hand."

Baojian the caravan-master entered the room, approached. He spoke in an even voice: "The priestesses demand that I enforce their claims, which I will not do, since the transfer of property occurred away from my caravan.

However, I agreed to put the question: what are your intentions in regard to the girl?"

"It is no concern of theirs," said Reith. "The girl has become my property. If they want compensation, they must approach the Ilanths. I have no business with them."

"This is a reasonable statement," remarked Baojian. "The priestesses understand as much, although they protest their misfortunes. I am inclined to agree that they have been victimized."