"If my Lord Deucalion thinks this a rudeness, he can give a word
to Phorenice, and I shall be whipped. If he asks it, I can be
stripped and scourged before him. The Empress will do much for
Deucalion just now."

"Girl," I said, "you are nearer to that whipping than you think
for."

"I have got a name," she retorted, looking at me sullenly from
under her black brows. "They call me Ylga. You might have heard
that as we rode here on the mammoth, had you not been so wrapped up
in Phorenice."

I gazed at her curiously. "You have never seen me before," I
said, "and the first words you utter are those that might well
bring trouble to yourself. There is some object in all this."

She went and pushed to the massive stone that swung in the
doorway of the chamber. Then she put her little jewelled fingers
on my garment and drew me carefully away from the airshaft into the
farther corner. "I am the daughter of Zaemon," she said, "whom you
knew."

"You bring me some message from him?"

"How could I? He lives in the priests' dwellings on the
Mountain you did obeisance to. I have not put eyes on him these
two years. But when I saw you first step out from that red
pavilion they had pitched at the harbour side, I--I felt a pity for