p there."

"Queer business it must be," Regis said curiously, and as we walked
along the mossy, needly forest floor, I told him something of the
trailmen's lives. I had lost my fear. If anyone came at us now, I could
speak their language, I could identify myself, tell my business, name my
foster-parents. Some of my confidence evidently spread to the others.

But as we came into more and more familiar territory, I stopped abruptly
and struck my hand against my forehead.

"I knew we had forgotten something!" I said roughly, "I've been away
from here too long, that's all. Kyla."

"What about Kyla?"

The girl explained it herself, in her expressionless monotone. "I am an
unattached female. Such women are not permitted in the Nests."

"That's easy, then," Lerrys said. "She must belong to one of us." He
didn't add a syllable. No one could have expected it; Darkovan
aristocrats don't bring their women on trips like this, and their women
are not like Kyla.

The three brothers broke into a spate of volunteering, and Rafe made an
obscene suggestion. Kyla scowled obstinately, her mouth tight with what
could have been embarrassment or rage. "If you believe I need your
protection--!"

"Kyla," I said tersely, "is under _my_ protection. She will be
introduced as my woman--and treated as such."

Rafe twisted his mouth in an un-funny smile. "I see the leader keeps all
the best for himself?"

My face must have done something I didn't know about, for Rafe backed
slowly away. I forced myself to speak slowly: "Kyla is a guide, and
indispensable. If anything happens to me, she is the only one who can
lead you back. Therefore her safety is my personal affair. Understand?"

* * * * *

As we went along the trail, the vague green light disappeared. "We're
right below the Trailcity," I whispered, and pointed upward. All around
us the Hundred Trees rose, branchless pillars so immense that four men,
hands joined, could not have encircled one with their arms. They
stretched upward for some three hundred feet, before stretching out
their interweaving branches; above that, nothing was visible but
blackness.

Yet the grove was not dark, but lighted with the startlingly brilliant
phosphorescence of the fungi growing on the trunks, and trimmed into
bizarre ornamental shapes. In cages of transparent fibre, glowing
insects as large as a hand hummed softly and continuously.

As I watched, a trailman--quite na