ast look toward the closed doorway through
which Tharn had passed not long before. He had been her last tie with
the old life. Now she was about to leave all that behind, to go into a
new world at the side of a man she greatly admired. Why was her heart so
heavy? Was it because she would never again see the caves of her
people--the face of her father? Or was it because Tharn was lost to her,
forever? Even should he come through the Games alive, she would be
gone--separated from him by the vast distance between Sephar and the
country Jotan called home.

Jotan had told her something of the long stretches of untracked jungles
and waterless plains between Sephar and Ammad. From others of the
visitors she had heard stories of savage beasts and wild tribes of men
that haunted the mountain trails and forest-cloaked ravines to the
south. And beyond the mountains began a level monotony of grasslands
that reached to still more mountains forming the boundary to Ammad
itself.

The street before the building allocated to the visitors swarmed with
hurrying figures bearing a wide assortment of articles to be bound into
individual packs for easy handling.

Jotan took active charge. Quickly the line of march began to take form.
Broad-shouldered men swung compact bundles to their backs; well-armed
warriors took up their positions; and last of all, strongly made litters
of animal skins stretched between long poles, arrived for use of the two
female members of the party.

Dylara, following the example set by Alurna, seated herself in the exact
center of the sheet of skins as it lay in the street. Two brawny
attendants stepped forward, bent, one at either end of the wooden poles,
and in perfect unison swung the rods to their shoulders.

From his position at the column's forefront, Jotan looked back and waved
a greeting to the two girls. Satisfied that all were in place, he
shouted a command and the safari got under way.

Across the city they marched, through wide-flung gates in the great
walls, and on across the cleared space beyond. Before them rose the
majestic trees and thick matted foliage of the forbidding jungle; and
here, leading directly southward through a tangled maze, was the
beginnings of a well-beaten trail, the first of many such roadways the
little cortege must follow before far-off Ammad could be reached.

Just before the marchers entered the forest, Dylara turned to look back
at Sephar's walls, grim and impressive u