Hardan turned sharply on his heel and headed for the two wagons of the priests of Ung Roth Ka. His dehydrated body cried out for a soaking in the built-in tank in the wagon's middle. Only by frequent immersions and water-soaked outer shells of cloth could the Wetlanders endure the arid wastelands for more than a few hours. A line of wounded, bruised men were already at the wagon, the two priests in their hooded orange cloaks attending to their hurts. And with the priests worked their gentle-faced wives, the priestesses of Zo Aldan Ra, the god's beloved mate. Hardan's blood pounded fast as he caught a glimpse of the white-robed novice, Ylda Rusla, bearing a steaming basin of water in her dainty hands. "Hardan!" cried the girl, her soft green eyes lighting up, "you escaped death! You will take us back to Tarn--to safety?" The frontiersman smiled down at the lithe full-breasted woman facing him. Even the soggy vurth-padded garments and the coarse white robe could not conceal the perfection of her body and face. He shook his head. "We go into the Malsalm Range," he told her, "and beyond." "Not even to Lake Gron!" Ylda's face was ghastly. "But, I must--surely you could send me back." "Sorry," Hardan muttered, "but you cannot leave us now. The wagon train must disappear--as though the Drylanders had attacked and destroyed it." * * * * * The girl's eyes flamed. "I command you to take me back to Aba!" Her foot stamped down imperiously. "Ylda, believe me, I would if it were possible. But the lives of us all depend on absolute secrecy. No word of this train must ever reach the Consars of Tarn." Ylda's small chin lifted and she turned her back, the hot water slopping down across her robe. She headed blindly back toward the wagons. Hardan shrugged, an empty pit in his middle. Any hope that he might win the beautiful novice from her devotion to Zo Aldan Ra was gone now. He hurried past the wagons and down the blue clay slope to the fresh waters of the Gron River. For the moment he wanted no conversation with the priestly healers of the wagon train--or anyone else.... II His body soaked luxuriously in the shady pool beyond a looming jut of reddish granite. Were his lungs drinking in the moist richness of the Upper Sea, the vurth-maintained mistiness above the true seas of Osar, he might have thought he was back in Tarn. The Wetlands of Tarn were a handful of islands and a narrow thirty-mile-wide strip of foggy tropical plains and forests along the true sea of Tarn. Over the sea and back over the mainland extended the upper sea, a false sea of floating aerophyte growth, tenuous and frothy as spun threads of silvery moonbeams; yet capable of retaining a vast amount of moisture and warmth.