Chapter twelve
The Jiktar and the HikdarWas it truly Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains?
How could it be? A slave, in the gray breechclout, was that my Delia? I was back in my little wooden room behind the ornate facade lining one of the tilting roofs of Princess Natema’s opal palace. I groaned. Delia, Delia, Delia...
It must have been a girl who in that sudden lamplit illumination had reminded me of Delia. Then why had she turned from me with tear-filled eyes, why had she run from me, sobbing with anguish — or choking back her anger and scorn? In truth I did not know, so tumbled were my thoughts, just how this girl had reacted.
An over-man-size statue of a Talu, one of those mythical, as I thought, eight-armed people of the sloe-eyes and the bangles and the dances, carved
