B'ronth the Utalian chuckled. The sound was swept up instantly and dispersed by the wind. It was a cold wind and it all but froze B'ronth to the marrow, but the Nadian sun was surprisingly warm and now seemed to beam down on him with promise of his golden reward. Shivering both from cold and delight, the invisible Utalian walked swiftly down into the snow-mantled valley. There would be a trail of footprints for the boy Lulukee to follow.... * * * * * "Cold, Hammeth?" Ylia asked her companion. "No, girl. I'll manage if you will. Is it much further?" "Half a day's march to Nadia City yet, I'm afraid," Ylia said. "We could rest if you wish." The man was extremely old by Tarthian standards, probably three hundred and fifty years old. He wore a snow-cape of _purullian_ fur which the wind whipped about his bony frame and up over his completely bald head. "I'm sorry, Ylia," he said suddenly. There were tears in his eyes which the cold and the wind did not explain. "What for? You came to the cave. You accompanied me here to Nadia." "When Retoc the Abarian almost killed the White God, I fled with the others." "If you didn't flee you too might have been slain, Hammeth." "Yet you remained behind." "He still lived. Someone had to tend him." Hammeth's breath came in shallow gasps. He once had been a strong, big man, but the life and the strength had fled his frame when Retoc destroyed Ofrid, a hundred years before. As a wayfarer on the Plains of Ofrid, he had aged in those hundred years. And he had shrunk and shriveled with approaching senility. "Tell me, Ylia," he asked, panting, "is this Bram Forest you speak of indeed the--the god of the legend? The God of the Tower come to right the ancient wrongs?" A frown marred the beauty of Ylia's matchless face. "At first," she said with a far-away look in her lovely eyes, "at first I thought he was. Hadn't he come, suddenly, from nowhere, at the ordained moment? But then when he did not slay Retoc, when instead he allowed Retoc the use of his whip-sword and was almost slain by Retoc, when he bled like any mortal, when he--" All at once Ylia was blushing. "What is it, child?" Hammeth asked. "Nothing. It is nothing." "Ylia. You were the infant daughter of a lady in waiting of the royal court of Ofrid. I was a captain of the Queen's Guards. When Retoc's legions brought their death and destruction, I fled to the wilderness with you. I raised you from infancy. I--" the old man's eyes clouded over with emotion--"you have no secrets from me, child." Ylia was still blushing. But a serene smile replaced the frown on her face. "Very well, Father Hammeth, I will tell you. There in the cave as I nursed the stranger back to health, as he grew stronger and could move about, as we conversed and came to know each other, I--I desired him." Hammeth said nothing. His face was stern.