LITMIR.BIZ

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in the density of the air, for they had all been ill to some extent, the day before. She went through the invisible barrier without faltering, though she was pale, and did not seem well. Inside the frontier line were the observation towers, rising up at half-mile distances from each other, bristling with soldiers and armaments. She did not stop. Jarnti and the others fled after her, shouting to the soldiers in the towers not to shoot. She went between the towers without looking at them.

      Again they were on the edge of a descent through hills and rocks above a wide plain. When she reached the edge of this escarpment she at last stopped.

      They all came to a standstill behind her. She was looking down into a land crowded with forts and encampments.

      She jumped down from her horse. Soldiers were running to them from the forts, holding the bridles of fresh horses. The jaded horses of the company were being herded off to recover. But Al·Ith’s did not want to leave her. He shivered and whinnied and wheeled all about Al·Ith, and when the soldiers came to catch him, would not go.

      ‘Would you like him as a present, Al·Ith?’ asked Jarnti, and she was pleased and smiled a little, which was all she could manage.

      Again she removed the saddle from this fresh horse, and the bridle, and tossed them to the amazed soldiers. And she rode forward and down into Zone Four, with Yori trotting beside her and continually putting up his nose to nuzzle her as they went.

      And so Al·Ith made the passage into the Zone we had all heard so much of, speculated about, and had never been in.

      Not even with the shield could she feel anything like herself. The air was flat, dispiriting. The landscape seemed to confine and oppress. Everywhere you look, in our own realm, a wild vigour is expressed in the contours of uplands, mountains, a variegated ruggedness. The central plateau where so many of our towns are situated is by no means regular, but is ringed by mountains and broken by ravines and deep river channels. With us the eye is enticed into continual movement, and then is drawn back always to the great snowy peaks that are shaped by the winds and the colours of our skies. And the air tingles in the blood, cold and sharp. But here she looked down into a uniform dull flat, cut by canals and tamed streams that were marked by lines of straight pollarded trees, and dotted regularly by the ordered camps of the military way of life. Towns and villages did not seem any larger than these camps. The sky was a greyish blue and there was a dull shine from the lines of water. A wide low hill near the centre of the scene where there seemed to be something like a park or gardens was all the consolation she could find.

      Meanwhile, they were still descending the escarpment.

      A turn in the road showed an enormous circular building of grey stone, squatting heavily between canals. It seemed recent, for rocks and earth near it were raw, broken. Her dismay that this might be where she was bound for brought her horse to a faltering stop. The company halted behind her, and she looked back to see a furtive triumph on every face. Jarnti was suppressing a smile as a leader does when he wishes to indicate he would like to join with his juniors in a show of emotion. Then as they remained there, with no sound but the horses shifting their hooves for relief, on the stony road, she saw that she had been mistaken: what she feared was not matched by the particular variety of triumph these captors of hers were showing.

      ‘When may we expect to reach the king?’ she asked, and Jarnti at once interpreted this as a reminder from her of higher authority. He rebuked his company with a strong look and adjusted his own face to obedience.

      All this she watched, understood — and it came to her what a barbarous land this was.

      They had imagined she had been intimidated by the sight of the rumoured ‘round fortress of the deadly rays’ as one of our songs described it.

      She told herself, not for the first time, or the tenth, that she was not likely to adjust herself quickly to these people with their slavish minds, and to make a test of them, moved her horse on and towards the road that led to the building. At once Jarnti was beside her, and his hand was reaching out for her horse’s head. She stopped. ‘I would like to see into one of the famed round fortresses of your Zone,’ she said.

      ‘Oh, no, no, you must not, it is forbidden,’ said he, still full of importance.

      ‘But why? Your weapons are not directed against us, surely?’

      ‘It is dangerous … ’ but at this moment, around the side of the building came some children running, and in scattering for some game, two of them darted into an open doorway.

      ‘So I see,’ she said, and rode on, without looking again at Jarnti or at the soldiers.

      When nearly at the level of the plain, there were grazing cattle near the road, and a half-grown boy attending them.

      Jarnti shouted at the boy to come forward, and the boy was already running towards them, before Jarnti said, ‘You could teach him your ways with the animals,’ and as the boy arrived at the roadside, pale and startled, Jarnti was shouting, ‘Down on your face! Can’t you see who this is we are taking to the king?’

      The lad was face down, full length on the grass, and this was no more than a half-minute since he had first been hailed.

      Jarnti was giving her half-pleading, half-commanding looks, and his horse was dancing under him, because of his master’s eagerness to learn her lore.

      ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t think we are likely to learn or teach anything in this way.’

      But he had seen himself that he had mishandled the occasion and because of it was red and angry. He shouted, ‘The lady here would like to know if your beasts are well.’

      No reply, then a whimper which sounded like, ‘Very well, yes, well, sir.’

      Al·Ith slid down from her horse, walked over to the boy, and said, ‘Stand up.’ She made her voice a command, since commands were what he understood. He slowly shivered his way to his feet, and stood, almost collapsing, before her. She waited until she knew he had seen, from his furtive glances, that she was not so frightening, and said, ‘I am from Zone Three. Our animals have not been well. Can you say if you have noticed anything unusual with yours?’

      His hands were clenched at his chest, and he was breathing as if he had run several miles. Finally he brought out: ‘Yes, yes, that is, I think so.’

      From behind them Jarnti’s voice, jocular and loud: ‘Are they having sorrowful thoughts?’ And the entire company sniggered.

      She saw there was nothing that could be done, and said to the boy, ‘Don’t be frightened. Go back to your beasts.’ She waited until he sped off, and she returned to her horse. Again, Jarnti knew he had behaved clumsily, and yet it had been necessary to him, for the sight of her, small, unarmed, standing rather below them near the defenceless and frightened boy, had roused in him a need to show strength, dominance.

      She swung herself onto her horse and at once rode on, not looking at them. She felt very low, our poor Al·Ith. This was the worst time of all. Everything in her was hurt by the way the poor boy had been treated: yet these were the ways of this land, and she could not believe then, in that bad hour, that there could be any way of communicating with these louts. And of course she was thinking of what she was going to find when she was led to Ben Ata.

      They rode on, through the middle of the day, across the plain, with the ditches and the lines of dull bunchy trees accompanying them all the way. She went first. Yori, the riderless horse, was just behind, with Jarnti, and behind them the company. They were all silent. She had not said anything about the incident of the boy, but they were thinking now that she would be soon with the king, and were not expecting she would give a good report of them. So they were sullen, sulky. There were few people on the roadside, or in the flat boats of the canals, but those who saw the little company go past reported that there was not a smile to be seen: this wedding party was fit for a funeral. And the riderless horse caused rumours to spread that Al·Ith had fallen and was dead, for the slight figure on the leading horse that they did see, had nothing about her to command their attention. She seemed to them a serving woman, or an attendant, in her plain dark blue, with her head

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