She keeps a tight guide rope, thought Yorgh, and tried to smooth things over by telling one of his stories.
He thought the company about the table seemed impressed at the tale of his latest adventure in the desert, but it might have been the flickering light of the torches.
"I think you must have taken that from an old legend," said Ueln. "We, too, have half-remembered stories of people who rode out from the shrine in self-moving wagons, in the old days when there were more men in The World."
"What shrine?" asked Yorgh, for it was a tale he had not heard, although he knew it was widely told of the Raydowers that they held mysterious beliefs.
"On the mountain top," said Ueln. "You might have seen it any morning when you went with us to swim—"
He stopped abruptly, and Yorgh was aware of a peculiar hush around the table. Then Jayn quickly asked him to describe again how the Hunters made their powerful horn bows famous for their loud twang and swift arrows, and how they got such strength without making them as long as the wooden ones of the mountain people.
Yorgh answered sketchily, not failing to notice Ueln shrug defiantly under the severe stares of several diners near him at the great table.
After the dinner, Jayn called upon some of her girls to sing. Since the procedure had been much the same on previous nights, Yorgh deliberately showed little enthusiasm until he found an opportunity to beg Jayn herself to sing for them.
The Raydower with the neatly curled brown mustache who had paid her this compliment on preceding evenings, as Yorgh had carefully noted, glared and muttered something about "nomad upstarts." Jayn smiled at Yorgh more warmly than he liked, but he had to admit to himself that she sang well.
The next morning, returning from the small lake in which the men swam, he asked Ueln for permission to walk about the village.