more than an hour by the sun before he had to sleep. "That's one man that'll never come back to Ku Kuel," she said, giggling.
"You never know," I said. "Someone did that to me my first time through, and I came back."
"Oh," she said. "You're Tight-Gut. You're different." And then she started to undress, a sure sign that a Ku Kuei expects to make love, and I made her laugh uproariously when I told her I didn't want to. "That's what they said, but I didn't believe it! Only that white girl from Mueller, right? Stump, right?"
"Saranna," I said. That made her laugh all the more, and I left her and settled back to real time so that they would go quickly away from me. It was true, though. When I first reached puberty, I had spent countless hours plotting to sleep with every girl I could find who was willing. And there were few who were unwilling to sleep with the Mueller's heir. Yet without ever being conscious of deciding, I had somehow chosen to sleep with no one but Saranna. When had I decided that, and why?
Faithfulness had taken me by surprise. I wondered how long the phase would last.
When you walk in it without fear, the forest of Ku Kuei is beautiful enough. But I was bred to farmland and the riding range. When the Forest River broke out of the trees into the high hills of Jones, a tumble of land that led down to the great Rebel River plain, I sat for an hour on a hilltop, looking at the fields and trees and open land. From here I could see smoke rising from kitchen fires nearby; on the Rebel River far to the south there were sails; but in the great sweep of land men had made little difference after all. I felt philosophical for a few minutes, and then realized that one of the nearby orchards was filled with apples. I wasn't hungry. But I hadn't eaten food in so long that my teeth seemed to tingle just to think of chewing. So I walked down the hill, forgot philosophy, and joined the human race again.
Nobody was particularly glad to see me.
Chapter 9 Jones
The town had a name, but I never knew it. Just another of the villages astride the great highway between Nkumai and Mueller. Once this had been one of the many small roads that let Jones trade with Bird, Robles with Sloan, but the Nkumai empire had made it a large road, heavy with traffic. The locals said you could stand beside the road and some party of travelers would come by every five or ten minutes all day. I saw no reason to doubt them.
It was only a year since my father and I had disappeared into the Forest of Ku Kuei and never returned; already we were legend. I heard stories that I had murdered him, or that he had executed me, or that we had killed each other in some terrible duel; I also heard the prophecy that Father would return one day and unite all the nations of the western plain in a great rebellion against the Nkumai. Of course I said nothing of Father's plunge into the lake in Ku Kuei, though I couldn't help wondering if he would have chosen death, had he known the great reverence the people of the plain had for his name.
It was ironic, too, since they had once feared him, before they knew how much harder a master was Nkumai than Mueller. Or was it? I had no way to compare. We of Mueller had no particular program of mercy toward those we conquered, back when we went out a-conquering. The people would have groaned under the heel of Mueller as surely as they complained about the oppression of Nkumai.
Talk of rebellion was all dreamwork anyway. Supposedly, Dinte ruled in Mueller, but it was well known that Mueller's independence was all show. On paper, Mueller was even larger and stronger than it had been under my father, but everyone knew that Nkumai's "king" ruled in Mueller as surely as he ruled in Nkumai. Harsh as the Nkumai might be, the whole Rebel River plain, from Schmidt in the west to the Starhigh Mountains in the east, was at peace. At peace because it had been conquered, yes, but peace brings security, and security brings confidence, and confldence brings prosperity. The people complained, but they were content enough.
The king