"Your pardon, Most-High," said a humble-sounding voice, "but a visitor, bearing your personal talisman, insists on seeing you at once." "It must be that fool Sitab," Dylara heard the nobleman mutter. He threw open the door, then stepped back suddenly as the cloaked form of a woman pushed her way into the room. "Rhoa!" he gasped. "What are you doing here?" "I want to talk to you. Send the guard away and close the door." Her voice, deep for a woman, sounded muffled through the folds of cloak shielding her face. Vokal obeyed, and when the door was shut she slipped from the wrap and dropped it across the back of a nearby chair. She was a woman past thirty, taller than average and beautifully formed. Her hair was a dull black and she wore it long, framing the delicate features of her olive-skinned face. Her eyes were large and very black and at this moment there was anger in them. "What are you doing here?" Vokal said again. "It is fairly simple," she said imperiously. "I am tired of waiting, Vokal. For half a moon now old Heglar has been missing. I do not doubt for a moment but that he is dead. Why should we delay this thing any longer. You promised me that once the old fool was dead I could take my rightful place as your mate. I say the time for that is now!" "But you don't understand, Rhoa. To acknowledge our love now would play directly into Jaltor's hands. Once our names are linked together he will realize Heglar attempted to assassinate him because I hired him to do so." "I have given this a great deal of thought," Rhoa said coldly, "and I think you're being overly cautious. Let the good people of Ammad talk; the mere fact that we take no trouble to conceal our love will prove to them you had no hand in old Heglar's disappearance." "You're not making sense!" Vokal cried. "The minute Jaltor hears we are together he will put enough of the threads in place to see the real picture. He will guess that it was I who hired Heglar to attempt that mock assassination in an effort to usurp Garlud's position in Ammad." He threw his hands wide in a gesture of despair. "In the name of the God," he pleaded, "don't upset everything this short of success! Go back to your home, Rhoa. Give me a few suns--seven; no more than seven--and I promise you I will have things worked out the way we both want them. Do this for me because I love you and you love me and we can be together without fear of Jaltor." "How can you know seven days will be time enough?" she asked doubtfully. "In a few minutes I am expecting a visit from Sitab, a high-ranking guard of Jaltor's court," he explained. "He is in my employ, secretly, and will do as I wish. I shall instruct him to learn if Heglar and Garlud are held in the pits beneath Jaltor's palace. If they are, he will arrange the deaths of both; if they are not there we can assume both are already dead and act accordingly. But first I must _know_, Rhoa." * * * * *