It was a wide, richly furnished room on the top floor of the city's palace. The east wall was composed entirely of windows, barred by fluted, slender columns of white stone, through which streamed the bright rays of morning sun.
"Had you delayed your escape from the pits another two hours," Jaltor was saying, "all of you would have been freed without having to fight for proof of your innocence. For old Heglar's mate, the beautiful Rhoa, had been followed to Vokal's palace, and when she left there, my men picked her up and brought her to me at the palace. Strangely enough she was not at all hesitant about betraying Vokal; I think she believed he was trying to get out of taking her as his mate."
"Then instead of helping," Alurna said, smiling, "I nearly brought about Jotan's death. That should be a lesson to me not to mix in another's affairs!"
Jotan smiled at her briefly, then went back to his apparently careful examination of the earthen plate in front of him. Ever since he had seated himself across the table from Dylara and the broad-shouldered young cave man next to her he had little to say. But in his mind there was a welter of conflicting thoughts and emotions.
Fate had thrown the girl he loved into the arms of the man who long ago had claimed her as his mate. The fortunes of war had made that same man Jotan's ally during the night just past. Could Jotan, then, turn against his ally because he too loved the girl whom Jotan desired above all others?
He stole a glance at the radiant young woman who held his heart in the hollow of one slender hand. How lovely she was! And how closely she leaned toward the young giant of the caves who sat beside her. Her smiles were for the man of her own kind; as the minutes passed they seemed more and more to belong to each other.
Well, it was up to Dylara now. Soon she would be called upon to make a decision: to accompany the cave man back across the vast expanse of plain and forest and mountain range to the caves of his people ... or to remain within Ammad as the mate of Jotan, nobleman of Ammad.
Beside Jotan, no less lovely in a completely different physical appearance, was Alurna of Sephar, daughter of one king and niece of another. Often her eyes strayed to the handsome young nobleman next to her. She saw his eyes go to the girl of the caves and back to his plate again as a wave of color poured up into his cheeks. She knew what was going on in his mind—knew it as if he had spoken the words aloud! The next few hours would decide what her future life would be: Jotan's mate or a woman who had lost her bid for happiness.
In all that room, perhaps, only two men did not feel the cross currents of emotions that seemed to make electric the very air about them. One missed it entirely because he was very young and interested in only one person—that was Trakor. The other was Tharn; and while he understood what lay behind Jotan's studied preoccupation, he was indifferent to it. Dylara belonged to him—and though an entire nation might stand between them, he would claim her for his own.
As for Dylara, she smiled warmly at everyone and said little. For she too was waiting—waiting with the serenity of one whose mind is made up as to the course her life would take.