as the fat
woman nibbled at nuts and cast their shells into the brazier. Even the
child on the steps had abandoned her game with the crystal dice, and sat
looking up at me with her mouth open. Finally Kyral demanded, "Your
stakes?"

"Tell me all you know of Rakhal Sensar and keep silence about me in
Shainsa."

"By the red shadow," Kyral burst out, "you have courage, Rascar!"

"Say only yes or no!" I retorted.

Rebuked, he fell silent. Dallisa leaned forward and again, for some
unknown reason, I thought of a girl with hair like spun black glass.

Kyral raised his hand. "I say no. I have blood-feud with Rakhal and I
will not sell his death to another. Further, I believe you are Terran
and I will not deal with you. And finally, you have twice saved my life
and I would find small pleasure in torturing you. I say no. Drink again
with me and we part without a quarrel."

Beaten, I turned to go.

"Wait," said Dallisa.

She stood up and came down from the dais, slowly this time, walking with
dignity to the rhythm of her musically clashing chains. "I have a
quarrel with this man."

I started to say that I did not quarrel with women, and stopped myself.
The Terran concept of chivalry has no equivalent on Wolf.

She looked at me with her dark poison-berry eyes, icy and level and
amused, and said, "I will bet _shegri_ with you, unless you fear me,
Rascar."

And I knew suddenly that if I lost, I might better have trusted myself
to Kyral and his whip, or to the wild beast-things of the mountains.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I slept little that night.

There is a tale told in Daillon of a _shegri_ where the challenger was
left in a room alone, where he was blindfolded and told to await the
beginning of the torment.

Somewhere in those dark hours of waiting, between the unknown and the
unexpected, the hours of telling over to himself the horrors of past
_shegri_, the torture of anticipation alone became the unbearable. A
little past noon he collapsed in screams of horror and died raving,
unmarred, untouched.

Daybreak came slowly, and with the first streamers of light came Dallisa
and the white _chak_, maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his way through
the shabby poverty of the great hall. They took me to a lower dungeon
where the slant of the sunlight was less visible. Dallisa said, "The sun
has risen."

I said nothing. Any word may be interpreted as a confession of defeat. I
resolved to give them no excuse. But my sk