"She's too good for Belishba!" shouted a gray-haired man with the look of a veteran and a golden fountain embroidered across his robe. "Kabin shall have her! Four thousand five hundred!"
"Six!" answered one of the Belishbans immediately.
"Four thousand seven hundred!"
It was at this instant that Maia, in the act of bending forward to accept a goblet which one of the young men was holding up to her, became once more aware of Ran-dronoth. The governor of Lapan was seated on the end of a near-by couch, elbow on knee and chin on hand, gazing at her as though there were no one else in the hall. A slave who was going round with a full wine-jar, stopping beside him, spoke to him twice, but Randronoth appeared neither to see nor hear him. There was no companion or girl with him, and this isolation emphasized and heightened the intensity with which he was regarding her. After a moment, with no movement or alteration of his gaze, he said quietly, "Five thousand meld."
No sooner had he spoken than Maia felt certain that she had been continually in his thoughts ever since the night which he had spent with her; and that if that encounter were to have taken place now-many long months, several
men and much garnered insight and experience later-she would certainly have recognized it for what it was; the inception of nothing less than an all-absorbing physical obsession. He was a man whose thoughts ran continually upon coupling, dominated by an inward concept not of ideal womanhood, of companionship or even of a girl able to amuse him or do him credit in public, but simply of a certain visual semblance and certain physical characteristics which excited him beyond all measure. And to this fantasy she-and in all his experience she alone-conformed entirely. This she could now perceive as plainly as if he had told her in so many words. What had haunted him since that night had been simply his physical recollections of her-visual, tactile; possibly even olfactory, too, for the matter of that. And despite-or perhaps because of-his ready opportunities for pleasure elsewhere, these had set up in him a relentless craving which her subsequent renown and exaltation had only served to inflame, for they had made him suppose the chance of actually basting her again to be gone for ever. Yet tonight, at the barrarz, it had suddenly reappeared, like a hunter's quarry given up for lost but now come wandering randomly, unexpectedly back out of the forest. At whatever cost, he was not going to let it go again.
He would be a procurer's dream, she thought: a man utterly in the grip of a specific and compulsive desire. There were no lengths to which he might not go.
Ah, but was there anyone else, any competitor to push him as far as she was hoping? His bid seemed to have altered the entire tone of the proceedings. The laughter and ribald gaiety had now drained away entirely, as though Randronoth had cracked a fountain-basin. Plainly many of those present-the provincial soldiers if not the Beklan girls-were feeling a shade uneasily that things had gone beyond anything they were used to or had ever experienced. Five thousand meld for a night with a girl-even the Serrelinda! Well, they'd heard tell of the extravagances of the Leopards and the vices of the upper city. Here they were, in all reality. And what, pray, might be going to happen next?
"Five-thousand-meld," said Elvair-ka-Virrion slowly and deliberately. "Well, of course that's not a trug more than Maia's worth, ladies and gentlemen-she's as far beyond value as the Tamarrik Gate-but at the same time
it's a good deal by the standards of simple human beings like you and me. So from now on I shall be taking bids in thousands. As you know, that's the custom in Bekla when bidding reaches this sort of level, whether for jewels or gold or anything else. Now, who'll offer-"
He was interrupted by the crash of an overturned bench and a sudden commotion from the dimness beyond the lamplight. A cry of protest was followed by a snarling reply; "Well, get out of the way, then!" and a moment later Ged-la-Dan came striding forward, his hand clenched on his goblet. Raising it towards Maia, he drank off the contents, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and, looking directly at Randronoth, said, "Six thousand meld!" as though striking a blow.
Randronoth, who had never once taken his eyes off Maia, did not even turn his head. Outwardly he appeared entirely calm, his hands lightly clasped between his open knees as he remained seated on the end of the couch, tapping one foot to the rhythm of the barely-audible hin-naris. Turning her head to meet his gaze, Maia suddenly felt as though, after looking out across the glittering surface of a lake, she had leaned over the gunwale to stare directly down into the depths below; a place of predatory silence, its nature utterly distinct from the windy, sunny world of the Belishbans and of Ta-Kominion. To this man there was no passion so serious as lust.
Randronoth took his time-partly, perhaps, with the intention of riposting to Ged-la-Dan's outburst with a pose of deliberate nonchalance. Yet also, Maia felt, he was savoring the moment inwardly and enjoying it for its own sake. She was in no doubt at all that he would continue to bid. Now that he had taken the vital step; had surrendered all prudence, jumped, into the raging cataract of his own desire and left all else behind him on the bank, he had become like a man lost in music or prayer. To himself his surroundings were as nothing. He had, of course, heard Ged-la-Dan, but felt him as a stimulus rather than an obstacle.
Looking inquiringly at him, Elvair-ka-Virrion waited. A deeper silence fell. At length Randronoth, as though deliberately dropping a pebble into a pool, said quietly, "Seven thousand," and fell to examining his fingernails.
In the same instant Maia felt Elvair-ka-Virrion's hand on her shoulder. Before she could guess his intention he
had loosed and pulled the cord at her neck. The cherry-colored robe slid to her waist and then to her ankles, dropping as smoothly and readily as on the night when she had danced the senguela. She was standing in her diamonds, her shift of transparent muslin and a pair of silver sandals.
If there was one girl in Bekla able to take this kind of surprise in her stride it was Maia. Nennaunir-even Oc-cula-would probably have felt impelled to respond provocatively, or perhaps to simulate embarrassment as a trick to tantalize her audience still further. Maia appeared not even to notice that the robe had fallen. Her hands did not move, nor did she turn her head to look at Elvair-ka-Virrion standing behind her. Only, she shrugged slightly and then smiled, as though on balance amused and relieved to find herself disencumbered of the robe, which seemed to have fallen from her as naturally as autumn leaves from a tree, disclosing more clearly its essential, pliant grace.
Serene and natural indeed she looked. Yet human desire is also natural, and Maia, standing as good as naked before two hundred men, could no more have failed to disturb them yet further than the smell of approaching thunder can fail to make uneasy the beasts of the wild. The young soldiers, unmindful of their own girls, pressed forward, jostling and staring, some in their excitement stumbling over benches or into one another. Maia, still smiling, gazed calmly down upon the throng of upturned faces bobbing and dodging hither and thither below her as men moved sideways or stood on tiptoe, instinctive and self-forgotten as children in their eagerness to see her more closely.
Randronoth, however, neither moved nor altered his expression. One might almost have supposed that he had been expecting the robe to fall. Either he was in no haste to gaze at her nakedness, so clearly was its recollection fixed upon his mind, or else-and more probably, thought Maia-to him, the sight was one not to be diluted by being shared with others. He could not stop this display, yet he would have no part of it. He meant to feast alone, in his own good time. Although she felt no desire or affection for him, she could not but be moved by so consuming an infatuation. If she were not much mistaken, he was ready to ruin himself for her. A more hardened girl might have felt contempt, but what Maia felt was something akin to fear. To be the possessor of such power was frightening;