some of the passion gone from his voice.
He would never forget the sight of the iron-thewed young man, who once
had almost strangled him, growing suddenly, incredibly transparent,
then disappearing. He had stood there, whip-sword in hand, mouth
agape, while the brown girl ran past him and--according to what Hultax
had told him later--mounted his own stad and vanished across the
Ofridian plain.

"But lord, don't you see?" Hultax demanded. "The brown girl knows what
happened to Jlomec, prince of the royal Nadian blood. If she attends
the royal funeral. She will--"

Retoc laughed. Hultax blanched. He had heard such laughter when
enemies of Retoc and thus of Abaria had died in pain. "Fool, fool!" he
heard Retoc say now. "Think you a bedraggled wayfaring maid of the
Ofridian desert will be invited to the funeral of a prince of the
Nadian royal blood?"

"Nevertheless, sire," Hultax persisted, "that day at the cave I took
the liberty to send three of our best stadsmen after the girl with
orders to capture her or kill her on sight."

Slowly, as a thaw spreads in spring over the broad Nadian ice fields,
Retoc smiled at his second in command. Hultax too let his face relax
into a grateful grin: until now he had been teetering on the brink of
violent death, and he knew it.

"You may mount," Retoc said.

* * * * *

Hastily Hultax climbed astride his stad. Retoc lifted his arm overhead
and made a circular motion with his outstretched hand. The first of
the Abarian stads advanced with some reluctance into the swift cold
shallow water of the stream.

"What about the white giant?" Hultax asked unwisely when the entire
party had reached the other side and Retoc was urging his stad up the
slippery bank.

"Have your scouts been able to find the wayfarers who saw him?"

"No, sire. Only the girl nursed him back to health. The others fled."

"And wisely. They have learned to hold their tongues, as you should
learn, Hultax. They will give us no trouble. As far as they are
concerned, there is no white giant."

"But there is talk of what happened at the Tower, and of Portox'
wizardry, and a god who would return, full-grown in exactly a hundred
years--"

"Shut up!" Retoc cried, almost screaming the words.

But that night at the Abarian encampment a day and a half's march
from Nadia city, Retoc dreamed of Queen Evalla, the lovely Ofridian
ruler whose slow death by torture he had relished as the fi