ed at him quizzically. "I can just see him--or any other
person, monarch or no--throwing you anywhere you didn't want to go. I'd
say the throwing would be the other way."

Don laughed softly. "Oh, that." He shook his head. "Well, let's just
say I don't think I'd care to try it out on a whole clan at once.
Things might get a little complicated."

* * * * *

A short, heavily muscled man came out of the council hut. In his hands,
he held his slender sling-stick. He paused as he got to the door, then
shook out the thong. For a moment, he stood, glancing across the end of
the valley, then he wound the thong about the stick, securing it at the
end with a half-hitch.

Again, he looked in the direction of Don and Pete. Then he held up the
stick and beckoned to them.

Don pushed himself away from the bank.

"Well," he said, "here we go. They've come to some sort of a decision."

They walked through the door of the hut, stopping as they came inside.
An old man sat on a hide-covered stool, facing the entrance. Near him
stood Jasu Waern. The old man got to his feet.

"Waernpeto?" he asked.

Pete stepped forward and bowed. "I am Peto of the clan Waern," he said.

"It is good." The Korental nodded briefly, then looked at Don.

"And Michaels. I know you," he added.

Don looked at him curiously. There was that odd form of address again.
Had he suddenly come to be regarded as clanless? What was this? He
bowed.

"I know you, Korental," he said formally.

The old man before him nodded.

"We are not now sure how to address you," he explained. "Your father
may yet be alive, so we cannot regard you as clan head. But as your
father has not been found you may, therefore, be clan head in fact. The
men of clan Mal-ka have joined us in searching the gorge of the Gharu,
where his flier was shot down. Thus far, nothing has been found. It is
a long gorge, and deep."

"Dad?" Don blinked. "Shot down?"

The Korental nodded. "Two days since," he said. "A flier of the Royal
Guard fired upon him and his flier weaved and dropped into the gorge.
No man saw its landing place." He paused thoughtfully.

"Nor were there flames."

Don glanced about the hut. It was the same place he had come to
many times before, when he wanted to get beaters. It was familiar.
And yet it was now a place of strangeness. Suddenly, he felt
rootless--disassociated from people. He struggled to regain his
poise and retain