aging craven wayfarer. 
"We'll have to flee," Hammeth said breathlessly. 
Behind them was the frozen wave of snow. To the right, far away across the snows, Abaria and the Plains of Ofrid. To the left, not half a day's journey, Nadia City. Ahead of them, the advancing footprints. 
"Your whip-sword!" Ylia cried. "Quickly." 
"I carry it, but I can't use it now," Hammeth protested. "I'm an old man, Ylia. An old man." 
"Then let me have it." 
"You? But you're just a girl. You couldn't--" 
"Don't you see, Father Hammeth? It's only a man. An Utalian. It can't be anything else. If he comes in peace, well enough. Otherwise ... here, give me that sword." 
But Hammeth shook his head with unexpected pride and pulled the weapon from its scabbard. 
Just then the footprints became wider spaced and appeared more quickly in the snow. The invisible Utalian was running toward them. Awkward, cursing at his own impotence, Hammeth fumbled with his weapon. 
_You who call yourself Bram Forest_, Ylia thought, _White God or whatever you are--help us, help us_! Then she hated herself for the unbidden thought. Bram Forest had deserted her once, hadn't he, after she had saved his life? What help could she expect from a man like Bram Forest? Or was Father Hammeth right? Perhaps Bram Forest had fled so that Ofrid might one day live again to see the wrath of the gods fall on Retoc and his Abarians. 
Or, Ylia thought with an abrupt flash of insight, perhaps Bram Forest's flight had been out of his control. Perhaps he was as yet a pawn in a game he barely understood.... 
_Bram Forest, we need you!_ 
The running footprints were almost upon them. 

CHAPTER XII 
_Volna the Beautiful_ 

Bram Forest had been day-dreaming. 
Ylia? Hadn't Ylia been calling his name? But how could that be? Ylia was almost two hundred million miles away. Clearly, as long as they kept the magic disc away from him, he could never see Ylia again. And besides, now that he had been vouchsafed a vision of his dead mother, the former queen of Ofrid, and now that that vision had conjured up the entire tragic past for him, why was it that when he shut his eyes and allowed the bright sun to beat down on the lids through the cell window he saw an image of the sun-browned maid, Ylia? 
Could it be, he asked himself, wondering if somehow he were profaning the memory of the mother he had never known, that Ylia stood not for the past but for the present and the future, and that it was in the present and the unknown future that Bram Forest must live and do his life's work and perhaps perish, although he was motivated from the past? 
A guard brought food on a tray. The cell door clanged open, the tray was delivered, the cell door 

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