At the sight of Elleroth Kelderek's memory, by this time half-restored – like the safety of a swimmer whose limp feet, as he drifts, have already touched bottom here and there; or the consciousness of an awakening sleeper whose hearing has caught but who has not yet recognized for what they are the singing of the birds and the sound of rain – cleared as immediately as the misted surface of a mirror wiped by an impatient hand. The voices of the Yeldashay officers, the starred banner floating on the walls above the garden, the cognizances worn by the soldiers standing about him – all these assumed on the instant a single, appalling meaning. So might an old, sick man, smiling as his son's wife bent over his bed, grasp in a moment the terrible import of her look and of the pillow poised above his face. Kelderek gave a quick, gasping cry, staggered and would have fallen if the soldiers had not caught him under the arms. As they did so he struggled briefly, then recovered himself and stood staring, tense and wide-eyed as a bird held in a man's hand. 'How do you come to be here, Crendrik?' asked Elleroth. Kelderek made no reply. 'Are you seeking refuge from your own people?' He shook his head mutely and seemed about to faint. 'Let him sit down,' said Elleroth.
There was no second bench and one of the soldiers ran to bring a stool from the house. As he returned, two or three of the guard off duty followed him and stood peering from among the trees, until their tryzatt ordered them sharply back to the house.
'Crendrik,' said Elleroth, leaning towards him where he sat hunched upon the stool, 'I am asking you again. Are you here as a fugitive from Bekla?' 'I -I am no fugitive,' replied Kelderek in a low voice.
'We know that there has been a rising in Bekla. You say that that has nothing to do with your coming here, alone and exhausted?'
'I know nothing of it. I left Bekla within an hour of yourself – and by the same gate.' 'You were pursuing me?' 'No.'
Kelderek's face was set The guard commander seemed about to strike him, but Elleroth held up his hand and waited, looking at him intently.
'I was following Lord Shardik. That is my charge from God,' cried Kelderek with sudden violence and looking up for the first time. 'I have followed him from Bekla to the hills of Gelt' 'And then-?' 'I lost him; and later came upon your soldiers.' The sweat was standing on his forehead and his breath came in gasps. 'You thought they were your own?' 'It's no matter what I thought'
Elleroth searched for a moment among a bundle of scrolls and letters lying beside him on the bench. 'Is that your seal?' he asked, holding out a paper. Kelderek looked at it. 'Yes.' 'What is this paper?' Kelderek made no reply.
'I will tell you what it is,' said Elleroth. 'It is a licence issued by yourself in Bekla to a man called Nigon, authorizing him to enter Lapan and take up a quota of children as slaves. I have several similar papers here.'
The hatred and contempt of the men standing near by was like the oppression of snow unfallen from a winter sky. Kelderek, hunched upon the stool, was shaking as though with bitter cold. The scent of the planella came and went evanescent as the squeaking of bats at twilight.
'Well,' said Elleroth briskly, getting up from the bench, 'I have recovered this trinket, Crendrik, and you have nothing to tell us, it seems; so I can resume my work and you had better return to your business of seeking the bear.'
Tan-Rion drew in his breath sharply. The young Yeldashay officer started forward. 'My lord-' Again Elleroth raised his hand. *I have my reasons, Dethrin. Surely if anyone has the right to spare this man, it is I?'
'But, my lord,' protested Tan-Rion, 'this evil man – the priest-king of Shardik himself – Providence has delivered him into our hands – the people -'
'You may take my word for it that neither he nor the bear can harm us now. And if it is merely a matter of retribution that is troubling you, perhaps you will persuade the people to forgo it, as a favour to me. I have certain information which leads me to conclude that we should spare this man's life.'
His mild words were spoken with a firm directness which plainly admitted of no further argument. His officers were silent.
'You will go eastward, Crendrik,' said Elleroth. 'That will suit us both, since not only is it in the opposite direction from Bekla, but also happens to be the direction your bear has taken.'
From the square outside could now be heard a growing hubbub – murmuring, broken by angry shouts, raucous, inarticulate cries and the sharper voices of soldiers trying to control a crowd.
'We will give you food and fresh shoes,' said Elleroth, 'and that is as much as I can do for you. I can see well enough that you are in poor shape, but if you stay here you will be torn to pieces. You will not have forgotten that Mollo came from Kabin. Now understand this plainly. If ever again you allow yourself to fall into the hands of this army, you will be put to death. I repeat, you will be put to death. I should not be able to save you again.' He turned to the guard commander. 'See that he has an escort as far as the ford of the Vrako, and tell the crier to give out that it is my personal wish that no one should touch him.'
He nodded to the soldiers, who once more grasped Kelderek by the arms. They had already begun to lead him away when suddenly he wrenched himself about.
'Where is Lord Shardik?' he cried. 'What did you mean – he cannot harm you now?'
One of the soldiers jerked back his head by the hair, but Elleroth, motioning them to let him go, faced him once more.
'We have not hurt your bear, Crendrik,' he said. 'We had no need.'
Kelderek stared at him, trembling. Elleroth paused a moment. The noise of the crowd now filled the garden and the two soldiers, waiting, looked at one another sidelong.
'Your bear is dying, Crendrik,' said Ellerodi deliberately. 'One of our patrols came upon it in the hills three days ago and followed it eastward until it waded the upper Vrako. They were in no doubt. Other news has reached me also – never mind how – that you and the bear came alive from the Streels of Urtah. Of what befell you at the Streels you know more than I, but that is why your life is spared. I have no part in blood required of God. Now go!'
In the steward's room, one of the soldiers threw back his head and spat in Kelderek's face.
'You dirty bastard,' he said, 'burned his mucking hand off, did you?'
'And now he says we're to let you go,' said the other soldier. 'You damned, rotten Ortelgan slave-trader! Where's his son, eh? You saw to that, did you? You're the one that told Genshed what he had to do?'
'Where's his son?' repeated the first soldier, as Kelderek made no reply but stood with bent head, looking down at the floor.
'Didn't you hear me?' Taking Kelderek's chin in his hand, he forced it up and stared contemptuously into his eyes.
'I heard you,' mouthed Kelderek, his words distorted by the soldier's grip,' I don't know what you mean.' Both the soldiers gave short, derisive laughs. 'Oh, no,' said the second soldier. 'You're not the man who brought back slave-trading to Bekla, I suppose?' Kelderek nodded mutely.
'Oh, you admit that much? And of course you don't know that Lord Elleroth's eldest son disappeared more than a month ago, and that our patrols have been searching for him from Lapan to Kabin? No, you don't know anything, do you?' He raised his open hand, jeering as Kelderek flinched away.
'I know nothing of that,' replied Kelderek. 'But why do you blame the boy's disappearance on a slave-trader? A river, a wild beast -'
The soldier stared at him for a moment and then, apparently convinced that he really knew no more than he had said, answered 'We know who's got the lad. It's Genshed of Terekenalt.'
'I never heard of him. There's no man of that name licensed to trade in Beklan provinces.'
'You'd make the stars angry,' replied the soldier. 'Everyone's heard of him, the dirty swine. No, like enough he's not licensed in Bekla – even you wouldn't license him, I dare say. But he works for those that are licensed – if you call that work.' 'And you say this man has taken the Ban of Sarkid's heir?'
'Half a month ago, down in eastern Lapan, we captured a trader called Nigon, together with three overseers and forty slaves. I suppose you'll tell us you didn't know Nigon either?'
' No, I remember Nigon.'
'He told General Erketlis that Genshed had got the boy and was making north through Tonilda. Since then patrols have searched up through Tonilda as far as Thettit. If Genshed was ever there he's not there now.'
'But how could you expect me to know this?' cried Kelderek. 'If what you say is true, I don't know why Elleroth spared my life any more than you do.'
'He spared you, maybe,' said the first soldier. 'He's a fine gentleman, isn't he? But we're not, you slave-trading bastard. I reckon if anyone knows where Genshed is, it's you. What were you doing in these parts, and how else could he have got clean away?'
He picked up a heavy tally-stick lying on the steward's table and laughed as Kelderek flung up his arm.
'Stop that!' rapped the guard commander, appearing in the doorway. 'You heard what One-Hand said. You're to let him alone!'
'If they will let him alone, sir,' answered the soldier. 'Listen to them!' He pulled a stool to the high window, stood on it and looked out. The noise of the crowd had if anything increased, though no words were distinguishable. 'If they will let him alone, One-Hand's the only man they'd do it for.'
Sitting down apart, Kelderek shut his eyes and tried to collect his thoughts. A man may by chance overhear words which he knows to have been spoken with no malice towards himself – perhaps not even with reference to his own affairs – but which nevertheless, if they are true, import his personal misfortune or misery – words, perhaps, of a commercial venture foundered, of an army's defeat, of another man's fall or a woman's loss of honour. Having heard, he stands bewildered, striving by any means to set aside, to find grounds for disbelieving the news, or at least for rejecting the conclusion he has drawn, like an unlucky card, for his own personal fortune. But the very fact that the words did not refer directly to himself serves more than anything else to corroborate what he fears. Despite the desperate antics of his brain, he knows how more than likely it is that they are true. Yet still there is a faint possibility that they may not be. And so he remains, like a chess player who cannot bear to lose, still searching the position for the least chance of escape. So Kelderek sat, turning and turning in his mind the words which Elleroth had spoken. If Shardik were dying – but Shardik could not be dying. If Shardik were dying – if Shardik were dying, what business had he himself left in the world? Why did the sun still shine? What was now the intent of God? Sitting so rapt and still that at length his guards' attention wandered and they ceased to watch him, he contemplated the blank wall as though seeing there the likeness of a greater, incomprehensible void, stretching from pole to pole.
Elleroth's son – his heir – had fallen into the hands of an unlicensed slave-dealer? He himself knew – who better? – how possible it was. He had heard of diese men – had received many complaints of their activities in the remoter parts of the Beklan provinces. He knew that within the Ortelgan domains slaves were captured illegally who never reached the market at Bekla, being driven north through Tonilda and Kabin or west through Paltesh, to be sold in Katria or Terekenalt. Although the prescribed penalties were heavy, as long as the war lasted the probability of an unlicensed dealer's capture was remote. But that this man Genshed, whoever he might be, should have taken the son and heir of the Ban of Sarkid. No doubt he meant to demand a ransom if ever he got him safe to Terekenalt. But for what conceivable reason, with such a grief in his heart and such a wrong to lay to the charge of the hated priest-king of Bekla, had Elleroth insisted on sparing his life? For a while he pondered this riddle but could imagine no answer. His thoughts returned to Shardik, but at last he almost ceased to think at all, drowsing where he sat and hearing, sharper than the noise of the crowd, the plangent drip of water into a butt outside the window.
The guard commander returned and with him a burly, black-bearded officer, armed and helmeted, who stared at Kelderek, slapping his scabbard against his leg with nervous impatience. 'Is this the man?' The guard commander nodded.
'Come on, then, you, for God's sake, while we've still got them under some sort of control. I want to live, if you don't. Take this pack – shoes and two days' food – that's the Ban's orders. You can put the shoes on later.'
Kelderek followed him down the passage and through the courtyard to the gate-keeper's lodge. Under the arch behind the shut gate some twenty soldiers were drawn up in two files. The officer led Kelderek to a central place between them and then, taking up his own position immediately behind him, gripped him by the shoulder and spoke in his ear.
'Now you do as I say, do you see, or you'll never even have the chance to wish you had. You're going to walk across this blasted town to the east gate, because if you don't, I don't, and that's why you're going to. They're quiet now because they've been told it's the Ban's personal wish, but if anything provokes them, we're as good as dead. They don't like slave-traders and child butchers, you see. Don't say a word, dou't wave your bloody arms, don't do any damned thing; and above all, keep moving, do you understand? Right!' he shouted to the tryzatt in front. 'Get on with it, and God help us!'
The gate opened, the soldiers marched forward and Kelderek stepped at once into dazzling sunlight shining directly into his eyes. Blinded, he stumbled, and instantly the captain's hand was in his armpit, supporting and thrusting him on. 'You stop and I'll run you through.'
Coloured veils floated before his eyes, slowly dissolving and vanishing to disclose the road at his feet. He realized that he was bowed, neck thrust forward, peering down like a beggar on a stick. He straightened his shoulders, threw back his head and looked about him. The unexpected shock was so great that he stopped dead, raising one hand before his face as though to ward off a blow. 'Keep moving, damn you!'
The square was packed with people – men, women and children, standing on either side of the road, crowded at the windows, clinging to the roofs. Not a voice spoke, not a murmur was to be heard. All were staring at himself in silence, each pair of eyes following only him as the soldiers marched on across the square. Some of the men scowled and shook their fists, but none uttered a word. A young girl, dressed as a widow, stood with folded hands and tears unwiped upon her cheeks, while beside her an old woman shook continually as she craned her neck, her fallen-in mouth working in a palsied twitching. His eyes met for a second the round, solemn stare of a little boy. The people swayed like grass, unaware of their swaying as they moved their heads to keep him in their gaze. The silence was so complete that for a moment he had the illusion that these people were far away, too far to be heard from the lonely place where he walked between the soldiers, the only sound in his ears their regular tread that crunched upon the sand.
They left the square and entered a narrow, stone-paved street, where their footsteps echoed between the walls. Trying with all his will to look nowhere but ahead, he still felt the silence and the gaze of the people like a weapon raised above him. He met the eyes of a woman who threw up her arm, making the sign against evil; and dropped his head once more, like a cowering slave who expects a blow. He realized that he was breathing hard, that his steps had become more rapid than the soldiers', that he was almost running to keep his place among them. He saw himself as he must appear to the crowd – haggard, shrinking, contemptible, hastening before the captain like a beast driven up a lane.
The street led into the market-place and here, too, were the innumerable faces and the terrible silence. Not a woman was haggling, not a trader crying his wares; as they approached the fountain-basin – Kabin was full of fountains – the jet faltered and died away. He wondered who it was that had timed it so surely, and whether he had had orders to do so or had acted of his own accord; then tried to guess how far it might now be to the east gate, what it would look like when they reached it and what orders the captain would give. The cheek of the soldier beside him bore a long, white scar and he thought, 'If my right foot is the next to dislodge a stone, he got it in battle. If my left, then he got it in a fight when he was drunk.'
Not that these thoughts could come for an instant between his horror of the silence and of the eyes which he dared not meet. If it were not some sick fancy of his own fear and anguish, there was in this crowd a mounting tension, like that before the breaking of the rains. 'We must get there,' he muttered. 'At all costs, Lord Shardik, we must get there before the rains break.'
A cloud of flies flew up before his face, disturbed from a piece of offal lying in the road. He thought of the gylon fly, with its transparent body, hovering among the reeds along the Telthearna.' I have become a gylon fly – their eyes pass through me – through and through me – meeting those of others that pass through me from the other side. My bones are turning to water. I shall fall. He came, he came by night, Silence lay all about us. A sword passed through me, I am changed for ever. Senandril na kora, senandril na ro.' His thoughts, like a deserted child's, returning to the memory of loss and grief, came back to Elleroth's words in the garden. 'Your bear is dying, Crendrik -' 'Shut up and get on,' said the officer between his clenched teeth.
He did not know that he had spoken aloud. The dust whirled up in a sudden flurry of wind, yet of all the eyes around him not one seemed to close against it. The road was steeper now; they were climbing. He bent forward, dropping his head like an ox drawing a load uphill, looking down at the ground as he dragged himself on. They were leaving the market-place, yet the silence was pulling him backwards, the silence was a spell which held him fast. The weight of the thousands of eyes was a load he could never drag up this hill to the east gate. He faltered and then, stumbling backwards against the captain, turned his head and whispered, 'I can't go on.'
He felt the point of the captain's dagger thrust against his back, just above the waist.
'Ban of Sarkid or no Ban of Sarkid, I'll kill you before my men come to any harm. Get on!'
Suddenly the silence was broken by the cry of a child. The sound was like the flaring of a flame in darkness. The soldiers, who when he stumbled had stopped uncertainly, gathering about him and the captain, started as though at a trumpet and every head jerked round towards the noise. A little girl, perhaps five or six years old, running to cross the road before the soldiers came, had tripped and fallen headlong and now lay crying in the dust, less from pain, perhaps, than from the grim appearance of the soldiers at whose feet she found herself sprawling. A woman stepped out of the crowd, picked her up and bore her away, the sound of her voice, reassuring and comforting the child, carrying plainly back along the lane.
Kelderek raised his head and drew a deep breath into his lungs. The sound had broken the invisible but dreadful web in which, like a fly bound about with sticky thread, he had almost lost the power to struggle. As, when men break open at last a dry trench by the river, in which they have been repairing a canoe, the water comes flooding in, bringing back to the craft its true element and lifting it until it floats, so the sound of the child's voice restored to Kelderek the simple will and determination of common men to endure and survive, come what may. His life had been spared, no matter why; the sooner he was away from this town the better. B: the people hated him, then he had the answer – he would be gone.
Without further words to the captain he took up his pace once more, spurning the soft sand with his heels as he trudged up the hill. The people were pressing close now, the soldiers keeping them off with the shafts of their spears, the captain shouting 'Back! Keep back!' Ignoring them, he turned a corner at the top and at once found himself before the gate tower, the gate standing open, the guard turned out and drawn up on either side to prevent anyone following them out of the town. They tramped under the echoing arch. Without looking round he heard the gate grind and clang to and the bolts shot home. 'Don't stop,' said the captain, close behind him as ever.
Marching down a hill between trees, they came to a rocky ford across a torrent that swept down from the wooded hills on the left. Here the men, without waiting for orders, broke ranks, kneeling to drink or flinging themselves on the grass. The officer once again gripped Kelderek's shoulder and turned him about, so that they stood face to face.
'This is the Vrako – the boundary of Kabin province, as I dare say you know. The east gate of Kabin is shut for an hour by the Ban's orders and I shall be keeping this ford closed for the same length of time. You're to cross by this ford and after that you can go where you please.' He paused. 'One more thing. If the army get orders to patrol east of the Vrako, we shall be looking out for you; and you'll not escape again.'
He nodded to show that he had no more to say, and Kelderek, hearing behind him the growling curses of the soldiers – one threw a stone which struck a rock close by his knee – stumbled his way across the ford and so left them. Book V 39 Across the Vrako In Bekla he had heard of the country east of Kabin – the midden of the empire, one of his provincial governors had called it – a province with no estates and no government, without revenue and without one city. Forty miles below Ortelga the Telthearna turned, in a great bend, to flow southward past the eastern extremity of the Gelt mountains. South of these mountains and west of the Telthearna lay a remote wilderness of wooded ridges, of marshes, creeks and forest, without roads and with no settlements except a few miserable villages where the inhabitants lived on fish, half-wild pigs and whatever they could scratch from the soil. In such a region, to seek and find a man was all but impossible. Many a fugitive and criminal had disappeared into its wastes. There was a proverb in Bekla, 'I would kill So-and-So, were it worth the journey to Zeray.' Rough, unruly boys would be told by their mothers, 'You'll end in Zeray.' It was rumoured that from this isolated place – for town it could not be called – where the Telthearna narrowed to a strait less than a quarter of a mile wide, a man who could pay might be taken across to the eastern shore and no questions asked. In the old days, even the northern army of patrol had fixed the eastern limit of its march at Kabin, and no tax-collectors or assessors would cross the Vrako for fear of their lives. Such was the country which Kelderek had now entered and the place in which, by Elleroth's mercy, he was free to remain alive for as long as he could.
Having taken the fresh shoes from his pack and put them on, he walked fast for some while down the narrow, overgrown track. What more likely, he thought, than that, once the gate and ford were open, some might follow in the hope of overtaking and killing him? For although he knew well enough that he was likely to the in this country and indeed could find in himself little desire to save his life, yet he was determined not to lose it at the hands of any Yeldashay or other enemy of Shardik. Within an hour he came to a place where an even wilder path branched northward to his left, and this he followed, clambering for a time through the undergrowth beside it to avoid leaving traces on the track itself.
At last, a little before noon, having heard and seen no one since his crossing of the Vrako, he sat down by the bank of a creek and, when he had eaten, fell to considering what he should do. Underlying all his thoughts, like a rock submerged in a swirling pool, was the conviction that he had passed some mysterious but nonetheless real spiritual boundary, over which he could never return. What was the meaning of the adventure at the Streels of Urtah, the news of which the shepherds had heard with so much awe and fear? What had befallen him in his oblivion on the battlefield, while he lay at the mercy of the unavenged dead? And why had Elleroth spared the life of one whose rule had brought about the loss of his own son? Pondering these inexplicable happenings, he knew that they had quenched the strength and faith that had burned in the heart of the priest-king of Bekla. Litde more than a ghost he now felt himself to be, a drained thing haunting a body wasted with hardship.
Deepest bell of all that tolled in his heart was Elleroth's news of Shardik. Shardik had crossed the Vrako and was believed to be dying – in that there could have been no deceit. And if he, Kelderek, still set any value on his life, his best course would be to accept it. In a country of this nature, to look for Shardik would be only to invite such danger and hardship as neither his mind nor his body were capable of withstanding. Either he would be murdered, or he would the in the forests of the hills. Shardik, whether alive or dead, was irrecoverable; and for the least chance of life he himself ought to head south, contrive somehow to make his way into northern Tonilda and then reach the Ortelgan army.
Yet an hour later he was once more climbing northwards, holding, with no attempt at concealment or self-protection, to the track as it wound into the lower hills. Elleroth, he thought bitterly, had rated him accurately enough. 'Take my word for it, neidier he nor the bear can harm us now.' No indeed, for he was the priest of Shardik and nothing else beside. Afraid of Ta-Kominion's contempt, and influenced by him to believe that the will of God could be none other than that Shardik should conquer Bekla, he had stood by while the Tuginda was bound and led away like a criminal, and had then gone on to set himself up as the mediator of Shardik's favour to his people. Without Shardik he would be nothing – a rain-maker mumbling in a drought, a magician whose spells had failed. To return to Zelda and Ged-la-Dan with the news (if they did not already know it) that Elleroth was with the Yeldashay and Shardik lost for ever would be to sign his own death-warrant. They would scarcely lose a day in getting rid of such a figure of defeat. Elleroth knew this. Yet he knew more. He had understood, as many an enemy would not, Kelderek's passionate faith and the integrity of his belief in Shardik. As an experienced master, though privately entertaining contempt for a servant's personal values and beliefs, can nevertheless perceive that by his own lights that servant is capable of sincerity, even, perhaps, of courage and self-denial; so Elleroth, hating Shardik, had known that Kelderek, whatever gleams of hope fortune might tempt him with, would be unable to separate his own fate from that of the bear. And this was why, since he also knew – or supposed that he knew, thought Kelderek with a sudden spurt of forlorn defiance – that Shardik was dying, he had seen no harm in sparing the priest-king's life. But why had he actually gone about to impose his will in this matter upon those surrounding him? Could it be, Kelderek wondered, that he himself had become visibly marked with some sign, perceptible to such as Elleroth, of being accursed, of having passed through merited sufferings to a final inviolability in which he was now to remain, to await the retribution of God? At this thought, shuffling slowly on through the solitude, he sighed and muttered under the burden of his misery, for all the world like some demented old woman in a desolated town, bearing in her arms the weight of a dead child.
Even in this notorious no-man's land he had not expected so complete an emptiness. All day he met never a soul, heard no voice, saw no smoke. As afternoon turned to evening he realized that he would be forced to pass the night without shelter. In the old days, as a hunter, he had sometimes spent nights in the forest, but seldom alone and never without fire or weapons. To send him across the Vrako without even a knife and with no means of making a fire – had this perhaps been intended, after all, as nothing but a cruel way of putting him to death? And Shardik – whom he would never find – was Shardik already dead? Sitting with his head in his hands, he passed into a kind of waking oblivion that was not sleep, but rather the exhaustion of a mind unable any longer to grip thought, slipping and sliding like wheels in the mud of the rains.
When at last he lifted his head he at once caught sight, among the bushes close by, of an object so familiar that, although it had been carefully concealed, he felt surprise not to have noticed it earlier. It was a trap – a wooden block-fall such as he himself had often set in days gone by- It was baited with carrion and dried fruit, but these had not been touched and the trip-peg was still supporting the block.
The evening wanted no more than two hours to nightfall and, as well he knew, those who leave traps unvisited overnight are apt to find the next day that scavenging beasts have reached them first. He scratched out his footprints with a broken branch, climbed a tree and waited.
In less than an hour he heard the sounds of someone approaching. The man who appeared was dark, thick-set and shaggy-haired, dressed partly in skins and partly in old, ragged garments. A knife and two or three arrows were stuck in his belt and he was carrying a bow. He bent down, peered at the trap under the bushes and was already turning away when Kelderek called to him. At this he started, drew his knife in a flash and vanished into the undergrowth. Kelderek realized that if he were not to lose him altogether he must take a risk. He scrambled to the ground, calling, 'I beg you, don't go! I need help.'
'What you want, then?' answered the man, invisible among the trees.
'Shelter – advice too. I'm a fugitive, exile – whatever you like. I'm in trouble.' 'Who isn't? You're this side the Vrako, aren't you?'
'I'm unarmed. Look for yourself.' He threw down the pack, raised his arms and turned one way and the other.
'Unarmed? Then you're mad.' The man stepped out from the bushes and came up to him. He was indeed a ruflian of frightening appearance, swarthy and scowling, with a yellow, mucous discharge of the eyes and a scar from mouth to neck which reminded Kelderek of Bel-ka-Trazet.
'I'm in no state to play tricks or drive a bargain,' said Kelderek. 'This pack's full of food and nothing else. Take it and give me shelter for tonight.'
The man picked up the pack, opened and looked into it, tossed it back to Kelderek and nodded. Then, turning, he set off in the direction from which he had come. After a time he said, 'No one after you?' 'Not since the Vrako.'
They walked on in silence. Kelderek was struck by the complete absence of that friendly curiosity which usually finds a place in strangers' meetings. If the man wondered who he was, whence he had come and why, he evidently did not intend to ask; and there was that about him which made Kelderek think better of putting any questions on his own account. This, he realized, must be the nature of acquaintance in this country of shame for the past and hopelessness for the future – the courtesy of the prison and the madhouse. However, some kinds of question were apparently permissible, for after a time the man jerked out, 'Thought what you're going to do?' 'Not yet – die, I dare say.'
The man looked sharply at him and Kelderek realized that he had spoken amiss. Here men were like beasts at bay – defiant until they were torn to pieces. The whole country, like a brigands' cave, was divided into bullies and victims – the last place in which to speak of death, whether in jest or acceptance. Confused, and too weary to dissimulate, he said,
'I was joking. I've got a purpose, though I dare say that to you it may seem a strange one. I'm looking for a bear that's believed to be in these parts. If I could find it-'
He stopped, for the man, his mouth and jaw thrust forward, was staring at him from his oozing eyes with a mixture of fear and rage – the rage of one who attacks whatever he does not understand. He said nothing, however, and after a moment Kelderek stammered, 'It – it's the truth. I'm not trying to make a fool of you-' 'Better not,' answered the man. 'So you're not alone, then?' 'I've never been more alone in my life.'
The man drew his knife, seized him by the wrist and forced him to his knees. Kelderek looked up into the snarling, violent face.
'What's this about the bear, then? What you up to – what you know about the other one – the woman, eh?' 'What other one? For God's sake, I don't know what you mean!' 'Don't know what I mean?'
Panting, Kelderek shook his head and after a moment the man released him.
'Better come and see, then: better come and see. You mind now, I don't take to tricks.'
They went on again, the man still clutching his knife and Kelderek half minded to run from him into the woods. Only his exhaustion held him back, for the man would probably pursue, overtake and perhaps kill him. They crossed a ridge and descended steeply towards a dreary, stagnant creek. Smoke hung in the trees. A patch of ground along the shore, cleared after a fashion, was littered with bones, feathers and other rubbish. At one side, too near the water, stood a lop-sided, chimneyless hovel of poles, branches and mud. There were clouds of flies. Three or four skins were pegged out to dry, and some black birds – crows or rooks – were huddled in a wooden pen on the marshy ground. The place, like a song out of tune, seemed an offence against the world, for which the only possible remedy was obliteration.
The man again grasped Kelderek's wrist and half-led, half-dragged him towards the hut. A curtain of dusty skins hung across the entrance. The man jerked his head and gestured with his knife but Kelderek, stupid with fatigue, fear and disgust, did not understand that he was to enter first. The man, seizing his shoulder, pushed him so that he stumbled against the curtain. He pulled it aside, ducked his head and went in.
The walls surrounded a single, evil-smelling space, at the further end of which a fire was smouldering. There was little light, for apart from the curtained door and a hole in the roof, through which some of the smoke escaped, there was no opening; at the further end, however, he made out a human shape, wrapped in a cloak and sitting, back towards him, on a rough bench beside the fire. As he peered, bending forward and flinching from the knife at his back, the figure rose and turned to face him. It was the Tuginda. 40 Ruvit Suddenly to be confronted with a shameful deed from the past, a deed accomplished yet uneffaced, like the ruins of a poor man's house destroyed by some selfish lord to suit his own convenience, or the body of an unwanted child cast up by the river on the shore: to stumble unexpectedly upon an accusadon that no bravado can defy or glib tongue turn aside; an accusation made not aloud, to the cars of the world, but quietly, face to face, without anger, perhaps even without speech, to one unprepared for the surge of his own confusion, guilt and regret. The harp of Binnorie named its murderess, and the two pretty babes in the ballad answered the cruel mother under her father's castle wall. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak. Yet never a word said Banquo's ghost Though few can have touched a murdered corpse and seen the wounds burst open and bleed, yet many, coming alone upon old letters thrust into a drawer, have re-read them weeping for pardon; or again, burning with self-contempt, have learned from chance remarks how unforgotten has been the misery, how crushing the disappointment brought by themselves upon those who never spoke of it. The deeply-wronged, like ghosts, have no need to speak to their oppressors or accuse them before crowds. More terrible by far is their unexpected and silent reappearance in some secluded place, at some unguarded hour.
The Tuginda stood beside the bench, her eyes half-closed against the smoke. For some moments she did not recognize him. Then she started, jerking up her head. At the same instant Kelderek, with a sudden, sharp sob, thrust his hand between his teeth, turned and was already half-way through the entrance when he was pushed violently backwards and fell to the ground. The man, knife in hand, was staring down at him, gnawing his lip and panting with a kind of feral excitement. This, Kelderek realized on the ghastly instant, was one to whom murder must once have been both trade and sport. In his clouded mind violence hung always, precarious as a sword by a hair; by another's fear or flight it was excited as uncontrollably as a cat by the scuttling of a mouse. This was some bandit survivor with a price on his head, some hired assassin who had outlived his usefulness to his employers and run for the Vrako before the informer could turn him in. How many solitary wanderers had he killed in this place?
The man, bending over him, was breathing in low, rhythmic gasps. Kelderek, supporting himself on one elbow, tried in vain to return the maniac glare with a look of authority. As his eyes fell, the Tuginda spoke from behind him.
'Calm yourself, Ruvit! I know this man – he is harmless. You are not to hurt him.'
'Hiding in the woods, talked about the bear. "Up to tricks," I thought, "up to tricks. Make him go in, don't tell him anything, ah, that's it. Find out what he's up to, find out what he's up to -" '
'He won't hurt you, Ruvit. Come and make up the fire, and after supper I'll bathe your eyes again. Put your knife away.'
She led the man gently to the fire, talking as though to a child, and Kelderek followed, not knowing what else to do. At the sound of her voice the tears had sprung to his eyes, but he brushed them away without a word. The man took no further notice of him and he sat down on a rickety stool, watching the Tuginda as she knelt to blow the fire, put on a pot and stirred it with a broken spit. Once she looked across at him, but he dropped his eyes; and when he looked up again she was busy over a clay lamp, which she trimmed and then lit with a kindled twig. The wan, single flame threw shadows along the floor and as darkness fell seemed less to brighten the squalid hut than to serve, with its guttering and wavering in the draughts that came through the ill-made walls, as a reminder of the defencelessness of all who might have the misfortune to be, like itself, solitary and conspicuous in this sad country.
She had aged, he thought, and had the look of one who had endured both loss and disappointment. Yet she was unextinguished – a fire burned low, a tree stripped by a winter gale. In this horrible place, beyond help or safety, alone with one man who had betrayed her and another who was half-crazy and probably a murderer, her authority asserted itself quietly and surely; in part as mundane as that of some shrewd, honest farmer talking with those whom he makes feel that it will be better not to try to cheat him. But beyond this open foreground of the spirit he could perceive, as he had perceived long ago – as he knew that even poor, murderous Ruvit could sense, in the same way that a dog is aware of the presence of joy or grief in a house – the deeper, more mysterious country of her strength. She was possessed of the immunity not only of priestess, pilgrim and doctor, but also of that conferred by the mystery whose servant she was – by the power which he had felt before ever he met her, when he had sat slumped in the canoe drifting down to Quiso in the dark. No wonder, he thought, that Ta-Kominion had died. No wonder that the headlong, fiery ambition which had blinded him to the strength in her had also poisoned him beyond recovery.
He began to consider the manner of his own death. Some, or so he had heard, had dragged out their lives beyond the Vrako until the prices on their heads and even the nature of their crimes had been forgotten and nothing but their own despair and addled wits prevented their return to towns where none was left who could recall what they had done. Such survival was not for him. Shardik, if only he could find him, would at last take the life which had been so often offered to him; would take his life before the contemptible desire to survive on any terms could transform him into a creature like Ruvit.
Lost in these thoughts, he heard little or nothing of whatever passed between Ruvit and the Tuginda as she finished preparing the meal. Vaguely, he was aware that although Ruvit had become quiet he was nevertheless afraid of the fall of darkness, and that the Tuginda was reassuring him. He wondered how long the man had lived here, facing nightfall alone, and what it was that had made this life – a hard one, surely, even for a fugitive beyond the Vrako – the only one he dared to live.
After a time the Tuginda brought him food, and as she gave it to him laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder. Still he said nothing, only nodding wretchedly, unable to meet her eyes. Yet when he had eaten, as is the way, some shreds of spirit involuntarily returned to him. He sat closer to the fire, watching as the Tuginda swabbed the discharge from Ruvit's eyes and bathed them with some herbal infusion. With her he was quiet and amenable, and at moments almost resembled what he might have been if evil had not consumed him – a decent, stupid drover, perhaps, or hard-handed tapster of an inn.
They slept clothed, on the ground, as needs they must, the Tuginda making no complaint of the dirt and discomfort, or even of the vermin that gave them no peace. Kelderek slept little, mistrusting Ruvit both on his own account and the Tuginda's; but it seemed rather that the poor wretch welcomed the chance of a night's sleep free from his superstitious fears, for he never moved dll morning.
Soon after first light Kelderek blew up the fire, found a wooden pail and, glad to get into the fresh air, made his way to the shore, washed and then returned with water for the Tuginda. He could not bring himself to rouse her, but went outside again into the first sunlight. His resolve was unchanged. Indeed, he now saw in himself a gulf like that into which he had gazed from the plain of Urtah. The blasphemous wrong, in which he had participated, inflicted by Ta-Kominion upon the Tuginda, was but a part of that wider, far-reaching evil of his own committing – the sacrilege against Shardik himself and all that had followed from it. Rantzay, Mollo, Elleroth, the children sold into slavery in Bekla, the dead soldiers whose voices had flickered about him in the dark – they came thrusting, jagged and sharp, into his mind as he stood beside the creek. When the Tamarrik Gate had finally collapsed, he remembered, there had been a great central breach, from which had radiated splintered fissures and rifts, fragments of exquisitely carved wood, shards of silver sagging inwards, shattered likenesses no longer recognizable in the ruin. The Ortelgans had cheered and shouted, smashing their way forward through the wreckage with cries of 'Shardik! Shardik!'
His tears fell silently. 'Accept my life, Lord Shardik! O God, only take my life!'
He heard a step behind him and, turning, saw that his prayer was answered. A few feet away Ruvit stood looking at him, knife in hand. He knelt down, offering his throat and heart and opening his arms as though to a guest. 'Strike quickly, Ruvit, before I have time to feel afraid!'
Ruvit stared at him a moment in astonishment; then, sheathing his knife, he stepped forward with a shifty, lop-sided grin, took Kelderek's hand and pulled him to his feet.
'Ay ay, old feller, mustn't take it that way, ye know. Comes hard to start with, eels get used to skinning, know what they say, never look back across the Vrako, drive ye crazy. Just on me way to kill a bird. Some wrings their necks, I always cuts their heads off.' He looked over his shoulder towards the door behind him and whispered, 'You know what? That's a priestess, that is. Ever gets back, she's going to put in a word for me. 'Thought yesterday she wanted you dead, but she don't. Ah – put in a word for me, she says. That the truth, think that's the truth, eh?'
'It's the truth,' answered Kelderek. 'She could get you a pardon in any city from Ikat to Deelguy. It's for me she can't.'
'Got to forget it here, lad, forget it, that's it. Five year, ten year, call the lice your friends after ten year, ye know.'
He killed the bird, plucked and drew it, left the guts lying on the ground and together they returned to the hovel.
Two hours later Kelderek, having given to Ruvit what was left of the food he had brought from Kabin, set out with the Tuginda along the shore of the creek. 41 The Legend of the Streels
Still he could not bring himself to speak of the past. At last he said, 'Where are you going, saiyett?' She made no immediate answer, but after a little asked, 'Kelderek, are you seeking Lord Shardik?' 'Yes.' 'With what purpose?'
He startled, remembering her strange power of discerning more than had been spoken. If she had perceived the intention which he had formed, she would no doubt try to dissuade him, though God knew she of all people had little reason to wish to prolong his life. Then he realized of what it was that she must be thinking.
'Lord Shardik will never return to Bekla,' he said. 'That's certain enough – and neither shall I.' 'Are you not king of Bekla?' 'No longer.'
They left the creek and began to follow a track leading eastward over the next ridge. The Tuginda climbed slowly and more than once stopped to rest. 'She has no strength now for this life,' he thought. 'Even were there no danger, she ought not to be here.' He began to wonder how he could persuade her to return to Quiso. 'Saiyett, why have you come here? Are you also seeking Shardik?'
'I received news in Quiso that Lord Shardik was gone from Bekla and then that he had crossed the plain to the hills west of Gelt. Naturally I set out in search of him.'
'But why, saiyett? You should not have undertaken such a journey The hardship-'
'You forget, Kelderek.' Her voice was hard. 'As Tuginda of Quiso I am bound to follow Lord Shardik while that is possible -that is, while the Power of God is not subjected to the power of men.'
He was silent, full of shame; but later, as she was leading the way downhill, he asked,
'But your women – the other priestesses – you did not leave Quiso alone?'
'No, I received news also of the advance north of Santil-ke-Erketlis. I had known already that he meant to march in the spring and that he intended to take Kabin. Neelith and three other girls set out for Kabin with me. We planned to seek Lord Shardik from there.' 'Did you speak with Erketlis?'
'I spoke with Elleroth of Sarkid, who told me how it came about that he escaped from Bekla. He was well-disposed towards me because some time ago I cured his sister's husband of a poisoned arm. He told me also that Lord Shardik had crossed the Vrako in the foothills north of Kabin, not two days before.'
'You say Elleroth treated you as a friend – and yet he allowed you to go alone and unescorted across the Vrako?'
'He does not know that I have crossed the Vrako. Elleroth was friendly to me, but on one thing I could not move him. He would lend me no help to find Lord Shardik or save his life. To him and his soldiers Shardik means nothing but the god of their enemies and of all that they are fighting against.' She paused and then, with a momentary tremor in her voice, added, 'He said – the god of the slave-traders.' Kelderek had not thought that he could suffer more bitterly.
'He told me of his son,' went on the Tuginda, 'and after that I asked nothing more of him. He told me, too, that some of his soldiers had come upon Lord Shardik in the hills and felt sure that he was dying. I asked him why they had not killed him and he replied that they had been afraid to attempt it. So I do not myself believe that Lord Shardik is dying.' At this he was about to speak, but she went on,
'I had hoped that Elleroth might give me some soldiers to conduct us across the Vrako, but when I saw that it was useless to ask, I let him believe that we meant to return to Quiso, for he would certainly have stopped me from crossing the Vrako alone.' 'But would none of the girls come with you, saiyett?'
'Do you think that I would bring them into this country – the thieves' kitchen of the world? They begged to come. I told them to return to Quiso, and since they are bound by oath to obey me, they went. After that I bribed the guards at the ford and once across the river I turned north, as you did.' 'Saiyett, where do you mean to go now?'
'I believe that Shardik is trying to return to his own country. He is making for the Telthearna and will cross it if he can. Therefore I am going to Zeray, to seek help in watching for him along the western shore. Or if he has already swum the Telthearna, we may learn of it in Zeray.'
'Elleroth, perhaps, was right. Shardik may indeed be dying, for since leaving Bekla he has once more been wickedly and cruelly wounded.' She stopped, turned and stared up at him. 'Did Elleroth tell you that?' He shook his head.
She sat down but said no more, only continuing to look at him with eyes full of uncertainty and questioning. Seeking for further words, he burst out,
'Saiyett, the Streels of Urtah – what is their mystery and their meaning?'
At this she gave a quick, low gasp, as it were of dread and consternation; but then, recovering herself, answered, 'You had better tell me what you know yourself.'
He told her how he had followed Shardik out of Bekla and of their crossing of the plain. She listened silently until he came to the adventure at Urtah, but as he spoke of his awakening and of the wounded Shardik climbing from the Streel to scatter his attackers, she began to weep bitterly, sobbing aloud, as women mourn for the dead. Appalled by this passionate grief in one whom he had hitherto thought of as stretching out her sceptre over all ills besetting the heart of man, he waited with a hopeless, leaden patience, not presuming to intrude upon her sorrow, since he perceived that it flowed from some bitter knowledge which he, too, must presently possess.
At length, becoming calmer, she began to speak; her voice was like that of a woman who, having learned of some terrible bereavement, understands that henceforth her life will be a waiting for death.
'You asked me, Kelderek, about the Streels of Urtah. I will tell you what I know, though that is little enough, for the cult is a close secret inherited by each generation, and such is the fear of it that I never heard of any who dared to pry into those mysteries. But though, thank God, I have never seen the Streels, a little I know -the little I have been told because I am the Tuginda of Quiso.
'How deep the Streels are no one knows, for none has ever descended into their depths and returned. Some say they are the mouths of hell, and that the souls of the wicked enter them by night. They say, too, that only to look down and cry aloud into the Streels is sufficient to awaken a torment that will drive a man mad.' Kelderek, his eyes on her face, nodded.' It is true.'
'And how old the cult is no one knows, or what it is they worship. But this I can tell you. Always, for hundreds of years, their mystery at Urtah has been the bringing of retribution upon the wicked -those, that is, for whom such retribution has been ordained by God. Many are wicked, as well you know, yet not all the wicked find their way to the Streels. This – or so I have always understood – is the way of that dreadful business. The evil-doer is one whose crime cries out to heaven, beyond restitution or forgiveness; one whose life, continuing, defiles the very earth. And it is always by some accident that he appears to come to Urtah: he is in ignorance of the nature of the place to which his journey has led him. He may be attended or he may be alone, but always he himself believes that it is chance, or some business of his own, which has brought him to Urtah of his own free will. Yet those who watch there – those who see him come – they recognize him for what he is and know what they have to do.
'They speak him fair and treat him courteously, for however foul his crime it is none of their duty to hate him, any more than the lightning hates the tree. They are but the agents of God. And they will not trick him either. He must be shown the place and asked whether he knows its name. Only when he answers 'No' do they persuade him towards the Streels. Even then he must-' She stopped suddenly and looked up at Kelderek. 'Did you enter the Streel?' 'No, saiyett As I told you, I -'
'I know what you told me. I am asking you – are you sure that you did not enter the Streel?' He stared at her, frowning; then nodded. 'I am sure, saiyett'
'He must enter the Streel of his own accord. Once he has done that, nothing can save him. It becomes their task to kill him and cast his body into the depths of the Streel.'
'Some who have died there have been men of rank and power, but all have been guilty of some deed whose vileness and cruelty prey upon the very minds of those who hear it You will have heard of Hypsas, for he came from Ortelga.' Kelderek closed his eyes, beating one hand upon his knee. 'I remember. Would to God I did not' 'Did you know that he died in the Streels? He intended to escape to Bekla or perhaps to Paltesh, but it was to Urtah that he came.' 'I didn't know. They say only that he vanished.'
' Very few know what I have told you – priests and rulers for the most part. There was King Manvarizon of Terekenalt, he that was grandfather of King Karnat the Tall. He burned alive his dead brother's wife, together with her little son, his nephew, the rightful king, whose life and throne he had sworn to defend. Five years later, being on the plain of Bekla at the head of his army, he came to Urtah with a few followers, his purpose, so he thought, being to spy out that land for himself. He ran screaming into the Streel, flying from none but a little herd-boy who was driving sheep – or perhaps from some other little boy that no one else could see. They saw him draw his sword, but he flung it to the ground as he ran, and there no doubt it lies to this day, for no possession of a victim is ever taken, buried or destroyed.' 'You say that all who enter the Streels must die?'
'Yes, from that moment their death is certain. One respite only there may be, but it is very rare – almost unknown. Once in a hundred years, perhaps, it may happen that the victim comes alive from the Streel: and then they will not touch him, for that is a sign that God has sanctified him and intends to make use of his death for some blessed and mysterious purpose of His own. Long, long ago, there was a girl who fled with her lover across the Beklan plain. Her two brothers – hard, cruel men – were following, for they meant to kill them both, and she saw that her lover was afraid. She was determined to save him and she stole away by night and came upon her brothers as they slept; and for his sake, because she dared not kill them, she blinded them both in their sleep. Later -how, I do not know – she came alone to Urtah and there she was stabbed and thrown down as she lay in the Streel. But that night she climbed out alive, though wounded almost to death. They let her go, and she died in giving birth to a boy. That boy was the hero U-Deparioth, the liberator of Yelda and the first Ban of Sarkid.' 'And that is why Elleroth knows what you have told me?'
'He would know that and more besides, for the House of Sarkid has been honoured by the priests of Urtah from that day to this. He would certainly have received news of what befell Lord Shardik and yourself at Urtah.'
'How is it that I never learned of the Streels in Bekla? I knew much, for men were paid to tell me all; yet this I never knew.' 'Few know, and of them none would tell you.' 'But you have told me!'
She began to weep once more. 'Now I believe what Elleroth said to me at Kabin. I know why his men did not hurt Lord Shardik and why he spared your life also. No doubt he was not told that you yourself had not entered the Streel. He would indeed be insistent that your life must be spared, for once he knew that Lord Shardik – and you, as he supposed – had come alive from the Streels, he would know, too, that neither must be touched on pain of sacrilege. Shardik's death is appointed by God, and it is certain – certain!' She seemed exhausted with grief. Kelderek took her hand. 'But saiyett, Lord Shardik is guilty of no evil.' She lifted her head, staring out over the dismal woods.
'Shardik has committed no evil.' She turned and looked full into his eyes. 'Shardik- no: Shardik has committed no evil!' 42 The Way to Zeray Where the track was leading he did not know, or even whether it still ran eastward, for now the trees were thick and they followed it in half-light under a close roof of branches. Several times he was tempted to leave altogether the faint thread of a path and simply go downhill, find a stream and follow it – an old hunter's trick which, as he knew, often leads to a dwelling or village, though it may be with difficulty. But the Tuginda, he saw, would not be equal to such a course. Since resuming their journey she had spoken little and walked, or so it seemed to him, like one going where she would not. Never before had she appeared to him subdued in spirit. He recalled how, even on the Gelt road, she had stepped firmly and deliberately away down the hillside, as though undaunted by her shameful arrest at the hands of Ta-Kominion. She had trusted God then, he thought. She had known that God could afford to wait, and therefore so could she. Even before he himself had caged Shardik at the cost of Rantzay's life, the Tuginda had known that the time would come when she would be called once more to follow the Power of God. She had recognized, when it came, the day of Shardik's liberation from the imprisonment to which he himself had subjected him. What she had not foreseen was Urtah – the destination ordained for the bloody beast-god of the Ortelgans, in whose name his followers had -
Unable to bear these thoughts, he flung up his head, striking one hand against his brow and slashing at the bushes with his stick. The Tuginda seemed not to notice his sudden violence, but walked slowly on as before, her eyes on the ground.
'In Bekla,' he said, breaking their silence, 'I felt, many times, that I was close to a great secret to be revealed through Lord Shardik – a secret which would show men at last the meaning of their lives on earth; how to safeguard the future, how to be secure. We would no longer be blind and ignorant, but God's servants, knowing how He meant us to live. Yet though I suffered much, both waking and sleeping, I never learned that secret.' 'The door was locked,' she answered listlessly. 'It was I who locked it,' he said, and so fell silent once more.
Late in the afternoon, emerging at last from the woods, they came to a miserable hamlet of three or four huts beside a stream. Two men who could not understand him, but muttered to each other in a tongue he had never heard, searched him from head to foot, but found nothing to steal. They would have handled and searched the Tuginda also, had he not seized one by the wrist and flung him aside. Evidently they thought that whatever chance of gain there might be was not worth a fight, for they stood back, cursing, or so it seemed, and gesturing to him to be off. Before the Tuginda and he had gone a stone's throw, however, a gaunt, ragged woman came running after them, held out a morsel of hard bread and, smiling with blackened teeth, pointed back towards the huts. The Tuginda returned her smile, accepting the invitation with no sign of fear and he, feeling that it mattered little what might befall him, made no objection. The woman, scolding shrilly at the two men standing a little distance off, seated her guests on a bench outside one of the huts and brought them bowls of thin soup containing a kind of tasteless, grey root that crumbled to fibrous shreds in the mouth. Two other women gathered and three or four rickety, potbellied children, who stared silently and seemed to lack the energy to shout or scuffle. The Tuginda thanked the woman gravely in Ortelgan, kissing their filthy hands and smiling at each in turn. Kelderek sat, as he had sat the night before, lost in his thoughts and only half-aware that the children had begun to teach her some game with stones in the dust Once or twice she laughed and the children laughed too, and by and by one of the surly men came and offered him a clay bowl full of weak, sour wine, first drinking himself to show there was no harm. Kelderek drank, gravely pledging his host: then watched the moon rise and later, invited into one of the huts, once more lay down to sleep upon the ground.
Waking in the night, he went out and saw another man sitting cross-legged beside a low fire. For a time he sat beside him without speaking, but at length, as the man bent forward to thrust one end of a fresh branch into the glow, he pointed towards the nearby stream and said 'Zeray?' The man nodded and, pointing to him, repeated ' Zeray?' and, when he nodded in his turn, laughed shortly and mimicked one in flight looking behind him for pursuers. Kelderek shrugged his shoulders and they said no more, each sitting by the fire until daybreak.
There was no path beside the stream and the Tuginda and he followed its course with difficulty through another tract of forest, from which it came out to plunge in a series of falls down a rocky hillside. Standing on the brow, he looked out over the plain below. Some miles away on their left the mountains still ran eastward. Following the chain with his eye he glimpsed, far off in the east, a thin, silver streak, dull and constant in the sunlight. He pointed to it. 'That must be the Telthearna, saiyett.'
She nodded, and after a few moments he said, 'I doubt whether Lord Shardik will ever reach it. And if we cannot trace him when we get there, I suppose we shall never know what became of him.'
'Either you or I,' she answered, 'will find Lord Shardik again. I saw it in a dream.'
After gazing intently for a little towards the south-cast, she began to lead the way downhill among the tumbled boulders. 'What did you see, saiyett?' he asked, when next they rested.
'I was looking for some trace of Zeray,' she replied, 'but of course there is nothing to be seen from so far.' And he, acquiescing in the misunderstanding – whether deliberate on her part or otherwise – questioned her no further of Shardik.
From the foot of the hillside there stretched a wide marsh that mired them to the knees as they continued to follow the stream among pools and recd-clumps. Kelderek began to entertain a kind of fancy that he, like one in an old tale, was bewitched and changing, not swiftly, but day by day, from a man to an animal. The change had begun at the Vrako and continued imperceptibly until now, when he wandered, like a beast in a field, pent within land not of his own choosing and where neither places nor people had names. The power of speech was gradually leaving him too, so that already he was able, through long, waking hours, not only to be silent but also actually to think nothing, his human awareness retracted to the smallest of points, like the pupil of a cat's eye in sunlight; while his life, continued by the sufferance of others, had become a meaningless span of existence before death. And more immediate to him now than any human regret or shame were simply the sores and other painful places beneath the sweat-stiffened hide of his clothes.
Crossing the marsh after some hours, they came at last upon a track and then to a village, the only one he had seen east of the Vrako and the poorest and most wretched he could remember. They were resting a short distance outside it when a man carrying a faggot of brushwood passed them and Kelderek, leaving the Tuginda sitting beside the track, overtook him and asked once more the way to Zeray. The man pointed south-eastward, answering in Beklan, 'About half a day's journey: you'll not get there before dark.' Then, in a lower tone and glancing across at the Tuginda, he added, 'Poor old woman – the likes of her to be going to Zeray' Kelderek must have glanced sharply at him for he added quickly, 'No business of mine – she don't look well, that's all. Touch of fever, maybe,' and at once went on his way with his burden, as though afraid that he might already have said too much in this country where the past was sharp splinters embedded in men's minds and an ill-judged word a false step in the dark.
They had hardly reached the first huts, the Tuginda leaning heavily upon Kelderek's arm, when a man barred their way. He was dirty and unsmiling, with blue tattoo-marks on his cheeks and the lobe of one ear pierced by a bone pin as long as a finger. He resembled none that Kelderek could remember to have seen among the multi-racial trading throngs of Bekla. Yet when he spoke it was in a thick, distorted Beklan, one word making do for another. 'You walk from?'
Kelderek pointed north-westward, where the sun was beginning to set.
'High places trees? All through you walk?'. 'Yes, from beyond the Vrako. We're going to Zeray. Let me save you trouble,' said Kelderek. 'We've nothing worth taking: and this woman, as you can see, is no longer young. She's exhausted.' 'Sick. High places trees much sick. Not sit down here. Go away.' 'She's not sick only tired. I beg you -' 'Not sit down,' shouted the man fiercely. 'Go away!'
The Tuginda was about to speak to him when suddenly he turned his head and uttered a sharp cry, at which other men began to appear from among the huts. The tattooed man shouted 'Woman sick,' in Beklan, and then broke into some other language, at which they nodded, responding 'Ay! Ay!' After a few moments the Tuginda, relinquishing Kelderek's arm, turned and began walking slowly back up the track. He followed. As he reached her side a stone struck her on the shoulder, so that she staggered and fell against him. A second stone pitched into the dust at their feet and the next struck him on the heel. Shouting had broken out behind them. Without looking round, he bowed his head against the falling stones, put his arm round the Tuginda's shoulders and half-dragged, half-carried her back in the direction from which they had come.
Helping her to a patch of grass, he sat down beside her. She was trembling, her breath coming in gasps, but after a few moments she opened her eyes and half-rose to her feet, looking back down the road.
'Damn and blast the bastards!' whispered the Tuginda. Then, meeting his stare, she laughed. 'Didn't you know, Kelderek, that there are times when everyone swears? And I had brothers once, long ago.' She put her hand over her eyes and swayed a moment. 'That brute was right, though – I'm not well.' 'You've eaten nothing all day, saiyett-'
'Never mind. If we can find somewhere to lie down and sleep, we shall reach Zeray tomorrow. And there I believe we may find help.'
Wandering over the ground near by, he came upon a stack of turves, and of these made a kind of shelter in which they huddled side by side for warmth. The Tuginda was restless and feverish, talking in her sleep of Rantzay and Sheldra and of autumn leaves to be swept from the Ledges. Kelderek lay awake, tormented by hunger and the pain in his heel. Soon, now, he thought, the change would be complete and as an animal he would suffer less. The stars moved on and at length, watching them, he also fell asleep.
Soon after dawn, for fear of the villagers, he roused the Tuginda and led her away through a ground-mist as white and chill as that through which Elleroth had been brought to execution. To sec her reduced to infirmity, catching her breath as she leaned upon him and compelled to rest after every stone's throw walked at the pace of a blind beggar, not only wrung his heart but filled him also with misgiving – the misgiving of one who observes some portent in the sky, and fears its boding. The Tuginda, like any other woman of flesh and blood, was not equal to the hardship and danger of this land; like any other woman, she could sicken; and perhaps the. Contemplating this possibility, he realized that always, even in Bekla, he had unconsciously felt her to be standing, compassionate and impervious, between himself and the consuming truth of God. He, the impostor, had stolen from her everything of Shardik – his bodily presence, his ceremony, the power and adulation – all that was of men: everything but the invisible burden of responsibility borne by Shardik's rightful mediator, the inward knowledge that if she failed there was none other. She it was and not he who for more than five years had borne a spiritual load made doubly heavy by his own abuse of Shardik. If now she were to die, so that none remained between him and the truth of God, then he, lacking the necessary wisdom and humility, would not be fit to step into her place. He was found out in his pretensions, and the last action of the fraudulent priest-king should be, not to seek death from Shardik, of which he was unworthy, but rather to creep, like a cockroach from the light, into some crevice of this country of perdition, there to await whatever death might befall him from sickness or violence. Meanwhile the fate of Shardik would remain unknown: he would vanish unwatched and unattended, like a great rock dislodged from a mountainside that smashes its way downward, coming to rest at last in trackless forests far below.
Afterwards, of all that took place during that day, he could recall only one incident. A few miles beyond the village they came upon a group of men and women working in a field. A little distance away from the others, two girls were resting. One had a baby at the breast and both, as they laughed and talked, were eating from a wicker basket. Half a mile further on he persuaded the Tuginda to lie down and rest, told her he would return soon and hastened back to the field. Approaching unseen, he crept close to the two girls, sprang suddenly upon them, snatched their basket and ran. They screamed but, as he had calculated, their friends were slow to reach them and there was no pursuit. He was out of sight, had wolfed half the food, thrown away the basket and rejoined the Tuginda almost before they had decided that a silly girl's few handfuls of bread and dried fruit were not worth the loss of an hour's work. As he limped away on his bruised heel, coaxing the Tuginda to swallow the crusts and raisins he had brought back, he reflected that starvation and misery made an apt pupil. Ruvit himself could hardly have done better, unless indeed he had silenced the girls with his knife.
Evening was falling once more when he realized that they must at last be approaching Zeray. They had seen few people all day and none had spoken to or molested them, due no doubt partly to their destitution, which showed them, clearly enough, to be not worth robbing, and partly to the evident sickness of the Tuginda. There had been no more woodland and Kelderek had simply gone south-east by the sun through an open wilderness, broken here and there by sorry pastures and small patches of ploughed land. Finally they had come once more to reeds and sedges, and so to the shore of a creek which he guessed to be an inlet of the Telthearna itself. They followed it a little way inland, rounded the head and so came to the southern bank, along which they made their way. As it grew broader he could see, beyond the creek's mouth, the Telthearna itself, narrower here than at Ortelga and running very strongly, the eastern shore rocky in the distance across the water. Even through his despair a kind of dull, involuntary echo of pleasure stole upon him, a subdued lightening of the spirit, faint as a nimbus of the moon behind white clouds. That water had flowed past Ortelga's reeds; had rippled over Ortelga's broken causeway. He tried to point it out to the Tuginda, but she only shook her head wearily, scarcely able to follow even the direction of his arm. If she were to the in Zeray, he thought, his last duty would be to ensure that somehow the news was carried upstream to Quiso. Despite what she had said, there seemed little hope of their finding help in a remote, squalid settlement, peopled almost entirely (or so he had always understood) by fugitives from the justice of half-a-dozen lands. He could see the outskirts now, much like those of Ortelga – huts and wood-smoke, circling birds and in the evening air, from which the sunlight was beginning to fade, the glitter of the Telthearna.
'Where are we, Kelderek?' whispered the Tuginda. Almost her whole weight was upon his arm and she was grey-faced and sweating. He helped her to drink from a clear pool and then supported her to a little, grassy mound near by. 'This is Zeray, saiyett, as I suppose.' 'But here – this place?'
He looked about him. They were in what seemed a kind of wild, untended garden, where spring flowers were growing and trees stood in bloom. A melikon hung over the water, the peasants' False Lasses, covered with the blossoms which would later turn to golden berries dropping in the still, summer air. Everywhere were low banks and mounds like the one on which they were sitting; and now he saw that several of these had been roughly marked with stones or pieces of wood stuck in the ground. Some looked new, others old and dilapidated. At a little distance were four or five mounds of newly-turned earth, ungrasscd and strewn with a few flowers and black beads.
'This is a graveyard, saiyett. It must be the burial ground of Zeray.'
She nodded. 'Sometimes in these places they have a watchman to keep off animals at night. He might -' She broke off, coughing, but then resumed, with an effort, 'He might tell us something of Zeray.* 'Rest here, saiyett I will go and see'
He set off among the graves and had not gone far when he saw at a little distance the figure of a woman standing in prayer. Her back was towards him and both she and the raised grave-pile beside which she was standing were outlined against the sky. The sides of the grave had been faced with boards, carved and painted, giving it something of the appearance of a large, decorated chest; and, by contrast with the neglected humps all around, it possessed a kind of grandeur. At one end a pennant had been thrust upright in the soil, but the cloth hung limp, unstirred by the least wind, and he could not see the device. The woman, dressed in black and bare-headed like a mourner, appeared to be young. He wondered whether the grave to which she had come alone was that of her husband and whether he had died a natural or a violent death. Slim and graceful against the pale sky, her arms extended and hands raised palm forward, she was standing motionless, as though for her the beauty and dignity of this traditional posture constituted in themselves a prayer as devout as any words or thoughts that could proceed from her mind.
'This', he thought, 'is a woman to whom it is natural to express her feelings – even grief – through her body as well as through her lips. If Zeray contains even one woman of such grace, perhaps it cannot be altogether vile.'
He was about to go up to her when the sudden thought of how he must appear made him hesitate and turn away. Since leaving Bekla he had not once seen his own reflection, but he remembered Ruvit, like some shambling, red-eyed animal, and the ragged, stinking men who had first searched and then befriended him. Why this woman was here alone he could not tell. Perhaps young women in Zeray commonly went about alone, though from all that he had ever heard of the place this seemed unlikely. Could she perhaps be some courtesan mourning a favourite lover? Whatever the reason, the sight of himself would probably alarm her and might even put her to flight. But she would feel no fear of the Tuginda and might even take pity on her. He retraced his steps to the water.
'Saiyett, there is a woman praying not far away – a young woman. For me to approach her alone would only frighten her. If I help you, and we go slowly, can you come with me?'
She nodded, licking her dry lips and stretching out both hands for his. Helping her to her feet, he supported her faltering steps among the graves. The young woman was still standing motionless, her arms raised as though to draw down peace and blessing upon the dead friend or lover earth-wrapped at her feet. The posture, as well he knew, became a strained one in no long while, yet she seemed heedless of discomfort, of tormenting flies and the loneliness of the place, absorbed in her self-contained, silent sorrow. 'She needs neither to weep nor to utter words,' he thought. 'Perhaps loss and regret fill her life as they have come to fill mine, and she can add nothing except her presence in tins place. No doubt there are many such in Zeray.'
As they approached the tomb the Tuginda coughed again and the woman, startled, turned quickly round. The face was young and, though still beautiful, thin with hardship and marred, as he had guessed, by the lines of a settled sorrow. Seeing her eyes widen with surprise and fear, he whispered urgently, 'Speak, saiyett, or she will fly-'
The woman was staring as though at a ghost; the knuckles of her clenched hands were pressed to her open mouth and suddenly, through her rapid breathing, came a low cry. Yet she neither ran nor turned to run, only staring on and on in incredulous amazement. He, too, stood still, afraid to move and trying to recall of what her consternation reminded him. Then, even as he saw her tears begin to flow, she sank to her knees, still gazing fixedly at the Tuginda, with a look like that of a child unexpectedly found by a searching mother and as yet uncertain whether that mother will show herself loving or angry. Suddenly, in a passion of weeping, she flung herself to the ground, grasping the Tuginda's ankles and kissing her feet in the grass.
'Saiyett,' she cried through her tears, 'oh, forgive me! Only forgive me, saiyett, and I will die at peace!'
Lifting her head, she looked up at them, her face agonized and distorted with crying. Yet now Kelderek recognized her, and knew also where he had seen before that very look of fear. For it was Melathys who lay prostrate before them, clasping the Tuginda's feet.
A quick gust of wind from the river ran through the trees and was gone, tossing and opening the pennant as some passer-by might idly have spread it with his hand and let it fall again. For a moment the emblem, a golden snake, showed plainly, rippling as though alive; then drooped and disappeared once more among the folds of the dark, pendent cloth. 43 The 'Priestess's Tale – 'When he came,' said Melathys, 'when he came, and Ankray with him, I had already been here long enough to believe that it could be only a matter of time before I must die by one chance or another. During the journey down the river, before ever I reached Zeray, I had learned what I had to expect from men when I sought food or shelter. But the journey – that was an easy beginning, if only I had known. I was still alert and confident. I had a knife and knew how to use it, and there was always the river to carry me further down.' She stopped, looking quickly across at Kelderek who, replete with his first full meal since leaving Kabin, was sitting beside the fire, soaking his lacerated feet in a bowl of warm water and herbs. 'Did she call?'
'No, saiyett,' said Ankray, huge in the lamplight. He had entered the room while she was speaking. 'The Tuginda is asleep now. Unless there's anything more you need, I'll watch beside her for a time.'
'Yes, watch for an hour. Then I will sleep in her room myself. Lord Kelderek's needs I leave to you. And remember, Ankray, whatever befell the High Baron on Ortelga, Lord Kelderek has come to Zeray. That journey settles all scores.'
'You know what they say, saiyett. In Zeray, Memory has a sharp sting and the wise avoid her.' 'So I have heard. Go, then.'
The man went out, stooping at the doorway, and Melathys, before she resumed, refilled Kelderek's wooden beaker with rough wine from the goatskin hanging on the wall.
'But there is no going on from Zeray. All journeys end here. Many, when they first come, believe that they will be able to cross the Telthearna, but none, so far as I know, has ever done so. The current in midstream is desperately strong and a mile below lies the Gorge of Bereel, where no craft can live among the rapids and broken rocks.' 'Does no one ever leave by land?'
'In Kabin province, if they find a man who is known to have crossed the Vrako from the east, he is either killed or compelled to return.' 'That I can believe.'
'Northwards from here, thirty or forty miles upstream, the mountains come down almost to the shore. There is a gap – Linsho, they call it – no more than half a mile wide. Those who live there make all travellers pay a toll before they will let them pass. Many have paid all they possess to come south; but who could pay to go north?' ' Could none?'
'Kelderek, I see you know nothing of Zeray. Zeray is a rock to which men cling for a last little while until death washes them away. They have no homes, no past, no future, no hope, no honour and no money. We are rich in shame and in nothing else. I once sold my body for three eggs and a glass of wine. It should have been two eggs, but I drove a hard bargain. I have known a man murdered for one silver piece, which proved worthless to the murderer because it could be neither eaten, worn nor used as a weapon. There is no market in Zeray, no priest, no baker and no shoemaker. Men catch crows alive and breed them for food. When I came, trade did not exist. Even now it is only a trickle, as I will tell you. The sound of a scream at night goes unremarked and the possessions a man has he carries with him and never puts down.'
'But this house? You have food and wine; and the Tuginda, thank God, is in a comfortable bed.'
'The doors and windows are strongly barred – have you noticed? But yes, you are right. Here, we have a little comfort: for how long is another matter, as you will see when I have done my tale.'
She poured more hot water into Kelderek's foot-bowl, sipped her wine and was silent for a little, bending towards the fire and stretching her beautiful arms and body this way and that, as though bathing herself in its warmth and light At length she continued.
'They say women delight to be desired, and so perhaps they do – some, and somewhere else. I have stood screaming with fear while two men I hated fought each other with knives to decide which of them should force himself upon me. I have been dragged out of a burning hut at night by the man who had killed my bed-mate in his sleep. In less than three months I belonged to five men, two of whom were murdered, while a third left Zeray after trying to stab me. Like all those who leave, he went not because he wished to reach somewhere else, but because he was afraid to remain.
'I am not boasting, Kelderek, believe me. These were not matters to boast of. My life was a nightmare. There was no refuge at all – nowhere to hide. There were not forty women in Zeray all told – hags, drabs, girls living in terror because they knew too much about some vile crime. And I came to it a virgin priestess of Quiso, not twenty-one years old.' She paused a moment and then said, 'In the old days on Quiso, when we fished for bramba we used live bait. God forgive me, I could never do that again. Once I tried to burn my face in the fire, but for that I found no more courage than I had had to encounter Lord Shardik.
'One night I was with a man named Glabron, a Tonildan who was feared even in Zeray. If a man could only make himself feared enough, a band would form round him to kill and rob, to put food in their stomachs and stay alive a little longer. They would frighten others away from the fishing-places, keep watch for newcomers to waylay and so on. Sometimes they would set out to raid villages beyond Zeray, though usually it was little enough they got for their trouble. It's very small pickings here, you see. Men fought and robbed for the bare living. A man who could neither fight nor steal could expect to live perhaps three months. Three years is a good life for the hardest of men in Zeray.
"There's a tavern of sorts, down near the shore at this end of the town. They call it "The Green Grove" – after some place in Ikat, I believe; or is it Bekla?' 'Bekla.'
'Ikat or Bekla, I never heard that the drink there could turn men blind, nor yet that the landlord sold rats and lizards for food. Glabron exacted some wretched pittance in return for not destroying the place and for protecting it from others like himself. He was vain – yes, in Zeray he was vain – and must needs have the pleasure of others' envy: that they should watch him eat when they were hungry and hear him insulting those whom they feared; oh yes, and he must be tormenting their lust with the sight of what he kept for himself. "You'll take me there once too often," I said. "For God's sake, isn't it enough that I'm your property, and Keriol's body's floating down the Telthearna? Where's the sport in waving a bone at starving dogs?" Glabron never argued with anyone, least of all with me. I wasn't there for talk, and he himself was about as ready with words as a pig.
'They'd had a success that evening. Some days before, a body had been washed ashore with a little money on it, and two of Glabron's men had gone inland and come back with a sheep. Most of it they ate themselves, but a part they exchanged for drink. Glabron grew so drunk that I became more afraid than ever. In Zeray a man's life is never so much in danger as when he's drunk. I knew his enemies and I was expecting to sec one or more of them come in at any moment. It was dim enough in the room – lamplight's a scarce luxury here – but suddenly I noticed two strangers who'd entered. One had his face almost buried in the top of a great, fur cloak and the other, a huge man, was looking at me and whispering to him. They were only two to Glabron's six or seven, but I knew what could happen in that place and I was frantic to get away.
'Glabron was singing a foul song – or thought he was singing it -and I plucked at his sleeve and interrupted him. He looked round for a moment and then hit me across the face with the back of his hand. He was just going on when the muffled stranger walked across to the table. His cloak was still held across his face and only one of his eyes showed over the top. He kicked the table and rocked it, so that they all looked up at him.
4 "I don't like your song," he said to Glabron, in Beklan. "I don't like the way you treat this girl; and I don't like you either."
'As soon as he spoke I knew who he was. I thought, "I can't bear it." I wanted to warn him, but I couldn't utter a word. Glabron answered nothing for a few moments, not because he was particularly taken aback, but because it was always his way to go slowly and calmly about killing a man. He liked to make an effect – that was part of the fear he inspired – to let people see that he killed deliberately and not in a fit of rage.
' "Oh, don't you, I say," he said at length, when he was sure the whole room was listening. "I wonder whom I have the honour of addressing, don't you know?"
' "I'm the devil," says the other man, "come for your soul, and not a moment too soon either." And with that he dropped his arm. They'd never seen him before, of course, and in that dim light the face which he disclosed was not the face of a human being. They were all superstitious men – ignorant, with evil consciences, no religion and a great fear of the unknown. They leapt away from him, cursing and falling over each other. The Baron already had his sword out under his cloak, and in that moment he ran Glabron through the throat, grabbed me by the arm, cut down another man who was in his way and was out in the dark with me and Ankray before anyone had had time even to draw a knife.
'I won't tell you all the rest of the story – or not tonight. Later there'll be time. But I suppose you can well believe that nothing like Bel-ka-Trazet had ever been seen here before. For three months he and I and Ankray never slept at one and the same time. In six months he was lord of Zeray, with men at his back whom he could trust to do his bidding.
'He and I lived in this house, and people used to call me his queen – half in jest and half in earnest No one dared to show me anything but respect. I don't think they would have believed the truth – that Bel-ka-Trazet never touched me. "I doubt whether you've learned a very good opinion of men," he said to me once, "and as for me, it's little enough I've got left in the way of self-respect. At least while I'm alive I can still honour a priestess of Quiso, and that will be better for us both." Only Ankray knows that secret. The rest of Zeray must believe that we were fated to be childless, or else that his injuries -
'But though I was never in love with him, and was grateful for his self-restraint, yet still I honoured and admired him, and I would have consented to be his consort if he had wished. Much of the time he was dour and brooding. Pleasures here are meagre enough, but always he had little zest for any – as though he were punishing himself for the loss of Ortelga. He had a sharp, mordant tongue and no illusions.' 'I remember.' "Don't ask me to come out drinking with you," he said once to his men. "I might get chased downstream by a bear." They knew what he meant, for although he'd never told them the story, news had reached Zeray of the battle in the foothills and the fall of Bekla to the Ortelgans. When anything went wrong he used to say, "You'd better get yourselves a bear – you'll do better then." But though they feared him, they always trusted and respected him and they followed him without hesitation. As I said, there was no one here who was the least match for him. He was too good for Zeray. I suppose any other baron, forced to fly as he was, would have crossed to Deelguy or made for Ikat or even Terekenalt. But he – he hated pity as a cat hates water. It was his pride, and the bitter streak in him, that sent him to Zeray like a murderer on the run. He actually enjoyed pitting himself against the misery and danger of the place. "There's a lot one could do here," he said to me one evening, while we were fishing inshore. "There's some passable land on that bit of plain round Zeray, and plenty of timber in the forests. It could never be a rich province, but it could be reasonably well off, if only the peasants weren't frightened to death and there were roads to Kabin and Linsho. Law and order and some trade – that's all that's needed. If I'm not mistaken, it's here that the Telthearna runs closest to Bekla. Before we're done we'll have two good, stout ropes stretched across these straits and a raft ferry running along them. I'm not an Ortelgan for nothing – I know what can be done with rope; and how to make it, too. Easier than contriving the Dead Belt, I assure you. Think of opening a trade route to the east – Bekla would pay any money for the use of that."' ' "They'd come and annex the province," I said.
'"They could try," he answered, "but it's more secure than Ortelga ever was. Forty miles from the Vrako to Zeray, and twenty miles of it thick forest and hills, difficult going unless someone builds a road; which we could destroy whenever we liked. I tell you, my girl, we'll have the last laugh on the bear yet."
'Now the truth was that not even Bel-ka-Trazet could bring prosperity to a place like Zeray, because he had no barons or men of any quality, and could not be everywhere himself. What could be done, he did. He punished murder and robbery and stopped raiding inland, and he persuaded or bribed a few peasants to bring in wood and wool and do their best to teach carpentry and pottery, so that the town could start bartering what it made. We bartered dried fish too, and rushes for thatching and matting – anything we could. But compared even with Ortelga it was very thin-flowing, rickety business, simply because of the sort of men who come here – criminals can't work, you know – and the lack of even one road. Bel-ka-Trazet realized this, and it was less than a year ago now that he resolved on a new scheme.
'We knew what had been happening in Ikat and Bekla – there were fugitives here from both cities. Bel-ka-Trazet had been impressed by what he had heard of Santil-ke-Erketlis and finally he decided to try to drive a bargain with him. The difficulty was that we had so terribly little to offer. As the Baron said, we were like a man trying to sell a lame ox or a lopsided pot. Who would trouble to come and take Zeray? Even to a general not facing an enemy army in the field, it would hardly be worth the march from Kabin. We discussed it between ourselves again and again and at last Bel-ka-Trazet devised an offer which he thought might appeal both to Santil and to our own followers. His idea was to tell Santil that if ever he were to march north, whether or not he succeeded in taking Bekla he was welcome to annex Zeray. We would help him in any way he wished. In particular, we would help him to close the gap of Linsho in the north and then to round up all slave-traders who might have fled east of the Vrako to escape him. We would also tell him that we believed that with skilled rope-makers and carpenters, and the labour of his own pioneers working to their orders, it would be possible to construct a raft-ferry across the Telthearna narrows. Then, if all went well, he could build a road from Kabin to Zeray; and these enterprises too, if they appealed to him, we would assist in every way we could. Finally, if he were not afraid to enlist men from Zeray, we would send him as many as possible, provided that he would grant them pardons.
'The five or six men whom the Baron called his councillors agreed that this offer was our best hope of remaining alive, either in Zeray or out of it, if only the Yeldashay would agree to come. But to get a message to Santil would be difficult. There are only two ways out of this country east of the Vrako. One is northwards through the gap of Linsho; the other is west across the Vrako in the neighbourhood of Kabin. Below Kabin the Vrako is impassable, all along the Tonilda border to its confluence with the Telthearna. Desperate men find their way to Zeray, but even more desperate men cannot contrive a way out. 'It might well prove impossible, we thought, for anyone to reach Ikat Yeldashay, but at least we bad a man who was ready to try. His name was Elstrit, a lad of about seventeen who, rather than abandon his father, had joined him in his flight from Terekenalt. What his father had done I don't know, for he died before I came to Zeray and Elstrit had been living on his wits ever since, until he had the sense to throw in his lot with Bel-ka-Trazet. He was not only strong and clever, but he had the advantage of not being a known criminal or a wanted man. Clever or not, he still had to attempt the Vrako crossing at Kabin. It was the Baron who hit on the idea of forging him a Beklan slave-dealer's warrant. In Kabin he was to say that he was working for Lalloc, a known dealer in children, and had the protection of the Ortelgans in Bekla; that on Lalloc's instructions he had entered Zeray province by way of Linsho Gap and travelled through it to sec whether the country offered any prospects for a slave-raid. He was now returning to report to Lalloc in Bekla. Then, later, as soon as he approached the province of Yelda, he could destroy the forged warrant It was a thin enough story, but the seal on the warrant was a very good imitation of the bear seal of Bekla (it was made for us by a notorious forger) and we could only hope for good luck. Elstrit crossed the Vrako about three months, ago, soon after the rains, and what became of him after that we don't know – not even so much as whether he ever reached Ikat.
'It was a month after that that the Baron fell sick. Many fall sick in Zeray. It's no wonder – the filthiness of the place, rats, lice, infection, continual strain and fear, the burden of guilt and the loss of hope. The Baron had had a hard life and in spite of himself he was failing. You can guess how we nursed him, Ankray and I. We were like men in a wilderness of wild beasts, who tend a fire in the night and pray for dawn. But the fire went out – it went out.'
The tears stood brimming in her eyes. She brushed them sharply away, hid her face in her hands a moment and then, with a deep sigh, went on.
'Once he spoke of you. "That fellow Kelderek," he said, "I'd have killed him if the Tuginda hadn't sent for us that night I don't wish him ill any longer, but for Ortelga's sake I only hope he can finish what he's started." It was a few days later that he spoke to our men as best he could – for by that time he was very weak. He advised them to spare no pains to get news of Santil's intentions and if there seemed the least hope, at all costs to keep order in Zeray until he came. "Otherwise you'll all be dead in less than a year," he said, "and the place will be worse than ever it was before we started." After that, only Ankray and I were with him until he died. He went very hard. You'd expect that, wouldn't you? The last thing he said was, "The bear – tell them the bear -" I bent over him and asked, "What of the bear, my lord?", but he never spoke again. I watched his face – that terrible face – guttering down like the wax of a spent candle. When he was gone, we did what we had to do. I covered his eyes with a pad of wet cloth, and I remember how, as we were laying the arms straight, the cloth slipped, so that the dead eyes opened and I saw them staring into mine.
'You have seen his grave. There were heavy hearts – and frightened hearts – at the time when that was made. It was over a month ago, and every day since then Zeray has slipped a little further from between our hands. We have not lost it yet, but I will tell you what it is like. I remember that once, when I was a little girl, I stood watching a miller driving his ox round and round to grind corn. Two men who thought he had cheated them began quarrelling with him, and at last they dragged him away and beat him. The ox went on plodding round, first at the same speed, then slower, until at last – and anxiously, as my clear child's eye could see – it dared to try what would happen if it stopped. Nothing happened, and it lay down. Half the men in Zeray are wondering whether they dare to defy us. Any day now some will try. I know our men – the Baron's men. Without him they will never hold together. It's only a matter of time.
'Every evening I have gone to his tomb and prayed for help and deliverance. Sometimes Ankray comes with me, or perhaps another, but often I go alone. There's no modesty in Zeray, and I'm past being afraid. As long as none dares insult me, I take it as a sign that we still have some grip on the place; and it does no harm to behave as though I believed we had. Sometimes I have prayed that Santil's army may come, but more often I use no words, simply offering to God my hope and longing, and my presence at the grave of the man who honoured and respected me.
'On Quiso, the Tuginda used to teach us that real and actual trust in God was the whole life of a priestess. "God can afford to wait," she used to say. "Whether to convert the unbelieving, to reward the just or to punish the wicked – God can afford to wait. With Him, everything comes home in the end. Our work is not only to believe that, but to show that we believe it bv everything that we say and do."'
Melathys wept quietly and continuously as she went on. 'I had put out of my mind how I came to Zeray and the reason why. My treachery, my cowardice, my sacrilege – perhaps I thought that my sufferings had blotted them out, had dug a ditch between me and that priestess who broke her vows, betrayed Lord Shardik and failed the Tuginda. Tonight, when I turned and saw who was standing behind me, do you know what I thought? I thought, "She has come to Zeray to find me, either to renounce or forgive me, either to condemn me or take me back to Quiso" – as though I were not defiled forty times over. I fell at her feet to implore her forgiveness, to tell her I was not worth what I believed she had done, to beg her only to forgive me and then let me die. Now I know it's true what she said. God -' and, letting her head fall forward on her arms across the table, she sobbed bitterly – 'God can afford to wait. God can afford to wait.'
Kelderek put his hand on her shoulder. 'Come,' he said, 'we'll talk no more tonight. Let's put these thoughts aside and simply do the immediate tasks before us. Very often, in perplexity, that's best, and a great comfort in trouble. Go and look after the Tuginda. Sleep beside her, and we'll meet again tomorrow.'
As soon as Ankray had made up his bed, Kelderek lay down and slept as he had not slept since leaving Bekla. 44 The Heart's Disclosure Speck by speck, the noonday sunlight moved along the wall and from somewhere distant sounded the slow chun\, chun\ of an axe in wood. The Tuginda, her eyes closed, frowned like one tormented by clamour and tossed from side to side, unable, as it seemed, to be an instant free from discomfort. Again Kelderek wiped the sweat from her forehead with a cloth dipped in the pitcher by the bed. Since early morning she had lain between sleep and waking, recognizing neither Melathys nor himself, from time to time uttering a few random words and once sipping a little wine and water from a cup held to her lips. An hour before noon Melathys, with Ankray in attendance, had set out to confer with the former followers of the Baron and acquaint them with her news, leaving Kelderek to bar the door and watch alone against her return.
The sound of the axe ceased and he sat on in the silence, sometimes taking the Tuginda's hand in his own and speaking to her in the hope that, waking, she might become calmer. Under his fingers her pulse beat fast: and her arm, he now saw, was swollen and inflamed with weeping scratches which he recognized as those inflicted by the trazada thorn. She had said nothing of these, nor of the deep cut in her foot which Melathys had found and dressed the night before.
Slow as the sunlight, his mind moved over all that had befallen. The days which had passed since his leaving Bekla were themselves, he thought, like some Streel of time into which he had descended step by step and whence he had now emerged for a short time before death. There was no need for him, after all, to expiate his blasphemy by seeking that death, for however events might turn out it seemed certain. If Erkcdis were victorious but nevertheless sent no troops east of the Vrako, either because he had never received Bel-ka-Trazet's message or because it had found no favour with him, then sooner or later he himself would the from violence or sickness, either in Zeray or in the attempt to escape from it. But if Erketlis' troops, crossing the Vrako, were to come upon him in Zeray or elsewhere – and it was likely enough that they would be keeping their eyes open for him – he had Elleroth's word for it that they would put him to death. If Erketlis were defeated, it was possible that Zelda and Ged-la-Dan, coming to Kabin, might send soldiers across the Vrako to seek Shardik. But once Shardik was known to be dead, they would not trouble themselves about his former priest-king. And if the discredited priest-king were to attempt to return from Zeray, whether to Bekla or to Ortelga, he would not be suffered to live.
Never again would he posture and ape the part of Shardik's mediator to the people. Nor ever again could he become the single-hearted visionary who, fearless in his divinely-imparted elation, had walked and slept beside Shardik in the woods of Ortelga. Why, then, despite his resolve four days ago in Ruvit's hovel, despite his unlessencd shame and remorse, did he now find in himself the will to live? Mere cowardice, he supposed. Or perhaps it was that some remaining streak of pride, which had encouraged him to entertain the thought of a deliberate death of atonement, resented the prospect of dying on an Ikat sword or a Zeray criminal's knife. Whatever the reason, he found himself considering whether he might not attempt – however desperate the odds against him – first to bring the Tuginda back to Quiso, and then perhaps to escape to some country beyond the Telthearna. Yet mere survival, he realized as he pondered, was not the whole of the motive which had changed his earlier resolve to die.
Into his mind returned the picture of the beautiful, white-robed girl who had paced by night across the flame-lit terrace above the Ledges of Quiso, the girl whose craven fear in the woods of Ortelga had aroused in himself nothing but pity and the wish to protect and comfort her. She, like him, had found unexpectedly the self-deceit and cowardice in her own heart and, having once, no doubt, believed of herself that Shardik had no more loyal and trustworthy servant, had learned with bitter shame that the truth was otherwise. Since then she had suffered still more. Abandoning Shardik and throwing herself upon the world, she had found the world's misery but never the world's pleasure. Guilt, cruelty and fear must almost have destroyed in her the natural power to love any man or to look for any security or joy from a man's love. But – and here, releasing the Tuginda's hand, he sprang up and began striding back and forth across the room – perhaps that power was not beyond saving; not drowned beyond hope of recovery by one ready to show that he valued it above all else?
The Tuginda moaned, her face twisted as though in pain. He crossed to the bed and knelt to support her with one arm round her shoulders. 'Rest, saiyett You are among friends. Be at peace.' She was speaking, very low, and he put his car to her lips. 'Shardik! To find – Lord Shardik -' She ceased, and again he sat beside her.
His love for Melathys, he knew now, had lain dormant in his heart from the first. The girl on the terrace, her great, golden collar glinting in the flame-light; the girl who had played, immune, with the point of the arrow and the edge of the sword, as a goddess might play with cataracts or lightning; who, uninstructed and unquestioning, had divined the importance of his coming to Quiso – this memory had never left him. Of his admiration and awe for her he had certainly been conscious, but how could he, the ragged, dirty hunter who had fallen senseless to the ground for fear of the magic of Quiso, possibly have suspected, then, that desire also had sown its seed in his heart? To desire a priestess of Quiso – the very thought, entertained, was sacrilege. He recalled the events of that night – the anger of Bel-ka-Trazet, the bewitched landing on Quiso in the dark, the crossing of the swaying bridge over the ravine, the sight of Rantzay and Anthred walking among the glowing embers; and, weighing heavier than all, the burden of the news which he bore. Small wonder that he had not dwelt much upon the nature of his feeling for Melathys. And yet, unregarded, as though germinating its own life independently and alone, deep below his consuming preoccupation with Shardik, his cryptic love had taken root. In his pity for Melathys, he now realized, there had lain an unrecognized satisfaction in finding that human weakness had its part even in her; that she, like any other mortal, could stand in need of comfort and encouragement Lastly, he recalled the night when the High Baron and he had discovered her flight 'That girl had some sense,' the Baron had said. At the sardonic words he himself had felt not only resentment but also anguish that Melathys, like the golden berries of the melikon, should have proved worthless, have drifted away with the river, to be seen no more. And yet another feeling he recalled which had come into his heart – and how, he wondered, could he possibly have failed to perceive the significance of this? – a sense of personal loss and betrayal. Already, even at that time, he had unconsciously begun to think of her as in some sense his own and, though strong then and confident in his own integrity, had felt neither contempt nor anger at her flight, but only disappointment Since that night neither she nor anyone had betrayed liim so thoroughly as he had betrayed himself. If she had wept for forgiveness in the graveyard, what was his need?
He thought too, of his unforced chastity in Bekla, of his indifference both to the luxury at his command and the outward grandeur of his kingship; of his continual sense that there was some truth that he still lacked. The great secret to be imparted through Shardik, the secret of life which he had never found – this, he still knew, was no figment. This he had not confused with his unrecognized love for Melathys. Yet – and now he frowned, puzzled and uncertain – in some mysterious way the two were connected. With the help of the second he might perhaps, have succeeded, after all, in finding the first
Just as the Tuginda had warned, the conquest of Bekla had proved to have nothing to do with the truth of Shardik, had served only to impede the search and hinder the divine disclosure of that truth. Now that Shardik was lost for ever, he himself had awoken, like a drunkard in a ditch, to the recollection of folly, while the magic girl among the bowls of fire had become a disgraced fugitive, familiar with fear, with lust and violence. Error and shame, he reflected, were the inescapable lot of mankind; yet still it comforted him to think that Melathys too had a part in this bitter inheritance. If, somehow, he could save her life and bring her and the Tuginda to safety, then perhaps he might at last beg the Tuginda's forgiveness and, if Melathys would consent to come with him, journey far away and forget the very name of Shardik, of whom he had proved himself so unworthy.
Hearing Melathys call from beyond the courtyard, he went out and unbarred the door. The girl's news was that Farrass and Thrild, those followers of the Baron whom she herself felt were most to be trusted, were ready to speak with him if he would go to meet them. Asking Ankray to make the journey once again as his guide, he set out to cross Zeray.
Despite all that he had heard, he was unprepared for the squalor and filth, the sullen, half-starved faces peering as he went by, the miasma of want, fear and violence that seemed to rise out of the very dirt underfoot. Those whom he passed on the water-front were hollow-cheeked and grey-faced, sitting or lying listlessly as they stored out at the choppy water racing down the midstream channel and the deserted eastern shore beyond. He saw no shops and no one plying a trade, unless indeed it were a shivering, pot-bellied child with a basket, who waded knee-deep in the shallows, stooping and searching – for what, Kelderek could not tell. Upon arriving at his destination, like one awaking from a dream, he could recall few details, retaining only an undifferentiated impression of menace sensed rather than observed, and of hard glances which he had found himself unwilling to meet. Once or twice, indeed, he had stopped and tried to look about him, but Ankray, without presuming in so many words to warn him, had contrived to convey that they would do better to keep on their way.
Farrass, a tall, thin-faced man, dressed in torn clothes too small for him and carrying a club at his belt, sat lengthways, with one foot up, on a bench, looking warily at Kelderek and continually dabbing with a rag at an oozing sore on his check. 'Melathys says you were the Ortelgan king of Bekla.' 'It's true, but I'm seeking no authority here.'
Thrild, dark, slight and quick-moving, grinned where he leant against the window-ledge, biting a splinter of kindling-wood between his teeth. 'That's as well, for there's little to be had.'
Farrass hesitated, reluctant, like everyone cast of the Vrako, to ask questions about the past At length, shrugging his shoulders like a man deciding that the only way to have done with an awkward job is to get on with it, he said, 'You were deposed?'
'I fell into the hands of the Yeldashay army at Kabin. They spared my life but sent me across the Vrako.' 'Santil's army?' 'Yes.' 'They're at Kabin?' 'They were six days ago.' 'Why did they spare you?'
'One of their principal officers persuaded them. He had his reasons.'
'And you chose to come to Zeray?'
'I fell in with an Ortelgan priestess in the forest, a woman who was once my friend. She was seeking – well, seeking Bel-ka-Trazet. She's lying sick now at the Baron's house.'
Farrass nodded. Thrild grinned again. 'We're in distinguished company.' 'The worst,' replied Kelderek. 'I want only to save my life and the priestess's – by helping you, perhaps.' 'How?*
'That's for you to say. I've been assured of death if I fall into the hands of the Yeldashay army a second time. So if Santil accepts Bel-ka-Trazet's offer and sends troops to Zeray, it's likely to turn out badly for me unless you can persuade them to give me a safe-conduct out of here. That's the bargain I'm hoping to drive with you.'
Farrass, chin on hand, looked at the floor, frowning and pondering, and again it was Thrild who spoke.
'You mustn't over-estimate us. The Baron had some authority when he was alive, but without him we've less and less. We're safe ourselves for the time being and that's about as far as it goes. It's little regard the Yeldashay would be likely to have for any request we made of them.'
'You've already done us a good turn,' said Farrass, 'by bringing news that Santil's at Kabin. Did you hear whether he ever received the Baron's message?'
'No. But if he thinks that there are fugitive slave-traders this side of the Vrako it's quite possible that Yeldashay troops have already crossed it. Whether or not, I think you should send him another messenger at once, and at all costs try to hold things together here until you get an answer.'
'If he's at Kabin,' replied Farrass, 'our best hope, though it may not be yours, will be to go there ourselves, with Melathys, and ask him to let us go on to Ikat.'
'Farrass here never really believed in the scheme for Santil to come and take Zeray,' said Thrild. 'Now the Baron's dead I agree with him. The Baron would have had the place ready to offer – we haven't. We'd do better to get out now and go and meet the Ikats at Kabin. You must understand our position. We don't pretend to keep law and order. A man in Zeray is free to murder and steal as long as he doesn't become so dangerous that it's safer for us to kill him than let him alone. All but a few of the men in this place have committed some serious crime. If they were to learn that we'd invited Ikat soldiers to come and take the town, they'd up and go for us like cornered rats. It's not worth our while to try to carry on with the Baron's plan.' 'But there's no wealth in Zeray. Why do they kill and steal here?'
Thrild threw up his hands. 'Why? For food, what else? In Zeray, men starve. The Baron once hanged two Dcelguy for killing and eating a child. In Zeray, men eat caterpillars – dig mud-skapas out of the river to boil for soup. Do you know the gylon?' 'The glass-fly? Yes. I grew up on the Telthearna, you know.'
'Here, at midsummer, the swarms cover the river inshore. People scoop them up in handfuls and eat them thankfully.'
'It's only because those of us who supported the Baron know that we must either keep together or die,' said Farrass, 'that none of us has so far tried to take his woman. A quarrel amongst ourselves would mean the end of all of us. But that can't last. Someone's bound to try soon. She's pretty.' Kelderek shrugged his shoulders, keeping his face expressionless. 'I suppose she can choose for herself when she's ready?'
'Not in Zeray. But anyway that problem's solved now. We must set off for Kabin and she'll come with us, no doubt. Your Ortelgan priestess too, if she wants to live.' 'How soon? She's in a high fever.' 'Then we can't wait for her,' said Thrild.
'I'll take her north when she recovers,' said Kelderek. 'I've told you why it's impossible for me to go to Kabin, either now or later.'
'If you went north you'd wander until you were killed. You'd never get through the gap at Linsho.'
'You said I'd brought you good news. Isn't there anything you can do to help me?'
'Not by staying here. If the Ikats will listen to us, we'll try to persuade them to send for your Ortelgan priestess, and you can try your luck with them when they come. What more do you expect? This is Zeray.' 45 In Zeray 'The damned cowards,' said Melathys, 'and the Baron not forty days in his grave! If I were General Santil I'd send them back to Zeray and hang them on the shore. They could pcrfectly well hold this place for six days. That would be more than enough time for someone to get through to Kabin and come back with a hundred soldiers. But no, they'd rather run.'
Kelderek stood with his back to her, staring out into the little courtyard. He said carefully, 'As things are, you ought to go with them.'
She did not answer and after some moments he turned round. She was standing smiling, waiting to meet his eyes. 'Not I. It's seldom indeed that a second chance is offered to someone as undeserving as I. I don't intend to desert the Tuginda a second time, believe me.'
'If you reach Kabin with Farrass and Thrild you'll be safe. Once they're gone you won't be safe here. You must dunk of that very seriously.'
'I don't want safety on those terms. Did you think that what I said at the Baron's tomb was hysterical?'
He was about to speak again when she went to the door and called for Ankray.
'Ankray, the Baron's men are leaving Zeray for Kabin tonight or tomorrow. They're hoping to reach the army of General Santil-ke-Erketlis. I think you should go with them, for your own safety.' 'You're going, then, saiyett?' 'No, Lord Kelderek and I will be staying with the Tuginda.' Ankray looked from one to another and scratched his head.
'Safety, saiyett? The Baron always said that General Erkcdis would be coming here one day, didn't he? That's why he sent that young fellow Elstrit -'
'General Erketlis may still come here, if we're lucky. But Farrass and the rest prefer to go now and seek him wherever he is. You're free to go with them and it will probably be the safest thing to do.'
'If you'll excuse my saying so, saiyett, I doubt it, among those men. I'd rather stay here, among Ortelgan people, if you understand me. The Baron, he always used to say that General Santil would come, so I reckon he will.'
'It's as you like, Ankray,' said Kelderek. 'But if he doesn't, then Zeray's going to become even more dangerous for all of us.'
'Why, sir, the way I see it, if that happens, we'll just have to set out for Kabin on our own account. But the Baron, he wouldn't want me to be leaving Ortelgan priestesses to shift for themselves, like, even with you to help them.' 'You're not afraid to stay, then?'
'No, sir,' answered Ankray. 'The Baron and me, we was never afraid of anyone in Zeray. The Baron, he always used to say, "Ankray, you just remember you've got a good conscience and they haven't." He usually -' 'Good,' said Kelderek, 'I'm glad that's what you want. But do you think,' he asked, turning to Melathys, 'that they may try to force you to join them?'
She stared at him solemnly, wide-eyed, so that he saw again the girl who had drawn Bel-ka-Trazet's sword and asked him what it was.
"They can try to persuade me if they like, but I doubt they will. You see, I've caught the Tuginda's fever, haven't I, which shows that it must be very infectious? That's what they'll be told, if they come here.'
'Pray God you won't catch it in all earnest,' said Kelderek. He realized with a blaze of passionate admiration that, despite all she knew of Zeray, her decision to remain, taken with delight rather than determination, was affording her not fear, but an elated joy in the recovery of her self-respect. To her, the appearance of the Tuginda in the graveyard had seemed first a miracle, then an act of incredible love and generosity; and though she now knew the true story of the Tuginda's journey, nevertheless she still attributed it to God. Like a disgraced soldier whose commander has suddenly called him out of the lock-up, given him back his arms and told him to go and retrieve his good name on the battlefield, she was soaring upon the realization that enemies, danger and even death were of small account compared with the misery of guilt which, against all expectation, had been removed from her. Despite what Kelderek had seen at the Baron's tomb, he had not until now believed that all she had suffered in Zeray had caused her less grief than the memory of her flight from Ortelga.
The Tuginda seemed no better, being still tormented by a continual restlessness. As evening fell Ankray remained with her, while Melathys and Kelderek used the last of the daylight to make sure of the locks and shutter-bars and to check food and weapons. The Baron, Melathys explained, had had certain sources of supply which he had kept secret even from his followers, either he or Ankray going now and then by night to bring back a goat or half a sheep from a village up river. The house was still fairly well supplied with meat. There was also a good deal of salt and a certain amount of the rough wine.
'Did he pay?' asked Kelderek, looking with satisfaction at the haunches in the brine-tubs and reflecting that he had never expected to feel gratitude towards Bel-ka-Trazet.
'Chiefly by guaranteeing that the villagers would not be molested "from Zeray. But he was always very ingenious in finding or making things we could trade. We made arrows, for instance, and needles out of bone. I have certain skills, too. Every postulant on Quiso has to carve her own rings, but I can carve wood still better now, believe me. Do you remember this? I've taken to using it.'
It was Bel-ka-Trazet's knife. Kelderek recognized it instantly, drew it from the sheath and held the point close before his eyes. She watched, puzzled, and he laughed.
'I've reason to remember it almost better than any man on Ortelga, I dare say. I saw both it and Lord Shardik for the first time on one and the same day – that day when I first saw you. I'll tell you the story at supper. Had he a sword?'
'Here it is. And a bow. I still have my bow too. I hid it soon after I reached Zeray, but I recovered it when I joined the Baron. My priestess's knife was stolen, of course, but the Baron gave me another – a dead man's, I dare say, though he never told. It's rough workmanship, but the blade's good. Now over here, let me show you -'
She was like a girl looking over her trousseau. He remembered how once, years before, having built a cage trap for birds, he had found a hawk in it There was no market for hawks – the factor from Bekla had wanted bright feathers and cageable birds – and, having no use for it himself, he had released it, watching as it flashed up and out of sight, full of joy at the recovery of its hard, dangerous life. Having walked through Zeray that afternoon, he now believed all that he had been told of sudden, unpredictable danger, of lust and murder moving below the surface of half-starved torpor like alligators through the water of some foetid creek. Yet Melathys, who had better reason than any to know of these things, plainly felt herself in a state of grace so immune that they had for the moment, at all events, no power to make her afraid. It must be for him to see that she took no foolish risks.
The Tuginda still lay in her arid sleep; a sleep comfortless as a choked and smoking fire, of which she seemed less the beneficiary than the victim. Her face was passive and sunken as Kelderek had never seen it, the flesh of her arms and throat slack and wasted. Ankray boiled a salt meat soup and cooled it, but they could do no more than moisten her lips, for she did not swallow. When Kelderek suggested that he should go out and find some milk, Ankray only shook his head without raising his eyes from the ground.
'There's no milk in Zeray,' said Melathys, 'nor cheese, nor butter. I've seen none in five years. But you're right – it's fresh food she ought to have. Salt meat and dried fruit are no cure for a fever. We can do nothing tonight. You sleep first, Kelderek. I'll wake you later.' But she did not wake him, evidently content to watch – with a little sleep, perhaps, for herself – beside the Tuginda until morning. It was Ankray, returned from some early expedition of his own, who woke him with the news that Farrass and his companions had left Zeray during the night.
'There's no doubt of it?' asked Kelderek, spluttering as he splashed cold water over his face and shoulders. 'I don't reckon so, sir.'
Kelderek had not expected that they would go without some attempt to force Melathys to join them, but when he told her the news she was less surprised.
'I dare say each of them may have thought of trying to make me his property,' she said.' But to have me with them across the kind of country that lies between here and Kabin, slowing them down and causing quarrels – I'm not surprised that Farrass decided against that. He probably expected that as soon as I'd learned from you what they meant to do I'd come back and beg him to take me. When I didn't, he thought he'd show me how little I meant to them. They always felt resentment, you know, because they naturally supposed the Baron was my lover, but they feared him and needed him too much to show it. All the same, I wondered yesterday whether they might not try to force me to go with them. That was why I left it to you to tell them that Santil was at Kabin. I wanted to be well out of the way when they learned that,'
'Why didn't you warn me to conceal it from them? They might have come here for you.'
'If they'd learned it from someone else – and one never knows what news is going to reach Zeray – they'd have had strong suspicions that we had concealed it. They'd probably have turned against us then, and that could have been nasty.'
She paused, kneeling down before the fire. After a time she said, 'Perhaps I wanted them to go.' 'Your danger's greater now they're gone.'
She smiled and went on staring into the fire. At length she answered, 'Possibly – possibly not. You remember what you told me Farrass said – "Someone's bound to try soon." Anyway, I know where I'd rather be. Things have changed very much with me, you know.'
Later, he persuaded her to keep to the house so that people, no longer seeing her, might suppose that she had gone with Farrass and Thrild. Ankray, when told, nodded approvingly.
'There's sure to be trouble now, sir,' he said. 'It'll likely take a day or two to come to the boil, but when a wolf moves out, a wolf moves in, as they say.' 'Do you think we may be attacked here?'
'Not necessarily, sir. It might come to that and it might not. We'll just have to see how things turn out. But I dare say we'll still be here all right when General Santil comes.'
Kelderek had not told Ankray what he himself had to expect in this eventuality; nor did he do so now.
Later that afternoon, taking with him a knife and some fishing-tackle – two hand-lines of woven thread and hair, three or four small, fire-hardened, wooden hooks, and a paste of meat-fat and dried fruit kneaded together – he went down to the shore. He could observe no change from the previous day in the lack-lustre movements and aimless loitering of the men whom he saw. Although some had cast lines from a kind of spit running out into deeper water, the place did not look to him a likely one for a catch. After watching them for a time he made his way unobtrusively upstream, coming at length to the graveyard and its creek. Here, too, there were a few fishermen, but none who struck him as either skilled or painstaking. He was surprised, for from what he had heard the town to a large extent depended for food on catching fish and birds.
Retracing his steps of two days before, he went inland, up the shore of the creek, until he found a spot where, with the help of an overhanging tree, he was able to scramble across. Half an hour later he had regained the Telthearna bank and come upon what he had been seeking; a deep pool close inshore, with trees and bushes giving cover.
It was satisfying to find that he had not lost his old skill. As a man tormented by a law-suit, by money troubles or anxiety about a woman, can nevertheless derive pleasure and actual solace from a game skilfully played or a plant which he has nurtured into bloom (so accurate, despite all the mind's attempts to mislead it, is the heart's divination of where true delight is to be found), so Kelderek, despite his conviction that he would the in Zeray, despite his fears for the Tuginda, his grief for the evil he had done and the hopelessness of his longing for Melathys (for what possibility could there now be, in the time left to him in this evil place, of healing the wounds inflicted by all she had undergone at the hands of men?), still found comfort in the windless, cloudy afternoon, in the light on the water, the silence broken only by the faint breeze and river sounds and in his own ability, where a man lacking it would have wasted the time idling at one end of a motionless line. Here at least was something he could do – and a pity, he thought bitterly, that he had ever left it. Would he not, if Shardik had never appeared on Ortelga, have remained a contented hunter and fisher, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children, looking no further than his solitary, hard-acquired skill and evening games on the shore? He put these thoughts aside and set to work in earnest.
After lying prone and hidden for some time, ground-baiting the pool and fishing each part of it with watchful attention, he hooked a fish which he was obliged to play with great care on the light hand-line before at last it broke surface and proved to be a good-sized trout. A few minutes more and he contrived to snatch it with a finger and thumb thrust into the gills. Then, sucking his bleeding scratches, he cast out again.
By the early evening he had taken three more trout and a perch, lost a hook and a length of line and run out of bait. The air was watery and cool, the clearing sky feathered with light cloud, and he could neither hear nor smell Zeray. For a time he sat beside the pool, wondering whether their best course, when the Tuginda had recovered, might not be to leave Zeray altogether and, now that the summer was approaching, live and hunt in the open, as they had lived on Ortelga during the days of Shardik's cure and first wanderings. From murder they would be safer than in Zeray, and with Ankray's help he should be able to forage for them well enough. As for his own life, if Erketlis' troops came his chances of escape, even if they put a price on his head, would be better than if he were to await them in Zeray. Deciding that he would put the idea to Melathys that evening, he wound the lines carefully, threaded his fish on a stick and set out to return.
It was twilight when he crossed the creek but, peering towards Zeray through the mist which already covered the shoreward ground and now seemed to be creeping inland, he could see not one lamp shining. Filled with a sudden and more immediate fear than he had hitherto felt-of this cinder-pit of burnt-out rogues, he cut a cudgel from a tree before continuing on his way. He had not been alone outdoors and after dark since the night on the battlfield and now, as the twilight deepened, he became more and more nervous and uneasy. Unable to face the graveyard, he turned short to his right and was soon stumbling among muddy pools and tussocks of coarse grass as big as his head. When at last he came to the outskirts of Zeray he could not tell in which direction the Baron's house might lie. Houses and hovels stood haphazard as anthills in a field. There were no definable streets or alleys, as in a true town: neither loiterers nor passers-by; and although he could now see, here and there, faint streaks of light showing through the chinks of doors and shutters, he knew better than to knock. For an hour – or less than an hour, perhaps, or more – he wandered gropingly in the dark, starting at every noise and hastening to set his back against the nearest wall; and, as he crept on, expecting each moment a blow on the back of the head. Suddenly, as he stood looking up at the few stars visible through the mist and trying to make out which way he was facing, he realized that the roof outlined faintly against the sky was that of the Baron's house. Making quickly towards it, he tripped over something pliant and fell his length in the mud. At once a door opened near by and two men appeared, one carrying a light He had just time to scramble to his feet before they reached him.
'Fell over the cord, eh?' said the man without the light, who had an axe in one hand. He spoke in Beklan and, seeing that Kelderek understood him, continued, 'That's what the cord's for, to be sure. Why you hanging round here, eh?' 'I'm not – I'm going home,' said Kelderek, watching them closely.
'Home?' The man gave a short laugh. 'First time I heard it called that in Zeray.' 'Good night' said Kelderek. 'I'm sorry I disturbed you.'
'Not so fast,' said the other man, taking a step to one side. 'Fisherman, are you?' Suddenly he started, held up his light and looked more searchingly at Kelderek. 'God!' he said. 'I know you. You're the Ortelgan king of Bekla!'
The first man peered in his turn. 'He mucking is, too,' he said. 'Aren't you? The Ortelgan king of Bekla, him as used to talk to the bear?'
'Don't be ridiculous,' said Kelderek. 'I don't even know what you mean.'
'We was Beklans once,' said the second man, 'until we had to run for knifing an Ortelgan bastard that mucking well deserved it I reckon it's your turn now. Lost your bear, have you?'
'I was never in Bekla in my life and as for the bear, I've never even seen it.'
'You're an Ortelgan all right though,' said the second man. 'D'you think we can't tell that? You talk the same as the mucking lot of them -'
'And I tell you I never left Ortelga until I had to come here, and I wouldn't know the bear if I saw it. To hell with the bear!'
'You bloody liar!' The first man swung up his axe. Kelderek hit him quickly with his cudgel, turned and ran. The light went out as they followed and they stopped uncertainly. He found himself before the courtyard door and hammered on it shouting 'Ankray! Ankray!' At once they were after him. He shouted again, dropped the fish, gripped his cudgel and faced about. He heard the bolts being drawn. Then the door opened and Ankray was beside him, jabbing with a spear into the dark and cursing like a peasant with a bull on the pole. The oncoming footsteps faltered and Kelderek, sufficiently self-possessed to pick up his fish, pulled Ankray through the door into the courtyard and bolted it behind them.
'Thank God it was no worse, sir,' said Ankray. 'I've been out here waiting for you since nightfall. I thought like enough you might run into some kind of trouble. The priestess has been very anxious. It's always dangerous after dark.'
'It's lucky for me you did wait,' answered Kelderek, 'Thanks for your help. Those fellows don't seem to like Ortelgans.'
'It's not a matter of Ortelgans, sir,' said Ankray reproachfully. 'No one's safe in Zeray after dark. Now the Baron, he always-'
Melathys appeared at the inner door, holding a lamp above her head and staring out in silence. Coming close, he saw that she was trembling. He smiled, but she looked up at him unsmilingly, forlorn and pallid as the moon in daylight. On an impulse, and feeling it to be the most natural thing in the world, he put one arm round her shoulder, bent and kissed her cheek. 'Don't be angry,' he said. 'I've learnt my lesson, I promise you: and at least I've got something to show for it,' He sat down by the fire and threw on a log. 'Bring me a pail, Ankray, and I'll gut these fish. Hot water too, if you've got it. I'm filthy.' Then, realizing that the girl had still said not a word, he asked her, 'The Tuginda – how is she?' 'Better. I think she's begun to recover.'
Now she smiled, and at once he perceived that her natural anxiety, her alarm at the sound of the scuffle outside, her impulse to anger with him, had been no more than clouds across the sun. 'So have you,' he thought, looking at her. Her presence was instinct with a new quality at once natural, complementary and enhancing, like that imparted by snow to a mountain peak or a dove to a myrtle tree. Where another might have noticed nothing, to him the change was as plain and entire as that of spring branches misted green with the first appearing leaves. Her face no longer looked drawn. Her bearing and movements, the very cadence of her voice, were smoother, gentler and more assured. Looking at her now, he had no need to call upon his memories of the beautiful priestess of Quiso.
'She woke this afternoon and we talked together for a time. The fever was lower and she was able to eat a little. She's sleeping again now, more peacefully.'
'It's good news,' replied Kelderek. 'I was afraid she must have taken some infection – some pestilence. Now I believe it was no more than shock and exhaustion.' 'She's still weak. She'll need rest and quiet for some time; and fresh food she must have; but that, I hope, we can get Are you a sorcerer, Kelderek, to catch trout in Zeray? They're almost the first I've ever seen. How was it done?' 'By knowing where to look and how to go about it.'
'It's a foretaste of good luck. Believe that, won't you, for I do. But stay here tomorrow – don't go out again – for Ankray's off to Lak. If he's to get back before nightfall he'll need all day.' 'Lak? Where is Lak?'
'Lak's the village I told you of, about eight or nine miles to the north. The Baron used to call it his secret cupboard. Glabron once robbed Lak and murdered a man there, so when the Baron had killed him I took care that they should learn of it. He promised them they should never again be troubled from Zeray and later, when he'd got control – or as much control as we ever had – he used to send them a few men at harvest and in the hut-building season – any he felt he could trust. In the end, one or two were actually allowed to settle in Lak. It was part of another scheme of the Baron's for settling men from Zeray throughout the province. Like so many of our schemes, it never got far for lack of material; but at least it achieved something – it gave us a private larder. Bel-ka-Trazet never asked for anything from Lak, but we traded, as I told you, and the elder thought it prudent to send him gifts from time to time. Since he died, though, they must have been waiting on events, for we've had no message, and while I was alone I was afraid to send Ankray so far. Now you're here, he can go and try our luck. I've got a little money I can give him. He's known in Lak, of course, and they might let us have some fresh food for the sake of old times.' 'Wouldn't we be safer there than in Zeray – all four of us?'
'Why, yes – if they would suffer us. If Ankray gets the chance tomorrow, he's going to tell the chief about the flight of Farrass and Thrild and about the Tuginda and yourself. But Kelderek, you know the minds of village elders – half ox, half fox, as they say. Their old fear of Zeray will have returned; and if we show them that we are in haste to leave it, they will wonder why and fear the more. If we could take refuge in Lak, we might yet find a way out of this trap: but everything depends on showing no haste. Besides, we can't go until the Tuginda has recovered. The most that Ankray will be able to do tomorrow is to see how the land Kes. Are your fish ready? Good. I'll cook three of them and put the other two by. We'll feast tonight, for to tell you the truth -' she dropped her voice in a pretence of secrecy and leaned towards him, smiling and speaking behind her hand – 'neither Ankray nor the Baron ever had the knack of catching fish!'
When they had eaten and Ankray, after drinking to the fisherman's skill in the sharp wine, had gone to watch by the Tuginda while he wove a fresh length of line out of thread from an old cloak and a strand of Melathys' hair, Kelderek, sitting close to the girl so that he could keep his voice low, recounted all that had happened since the day in Bekla when Zelda had first told him of his belief that Erketlis could not be defeated. Those things which had all but destroyed him, those things of which he was most ashamed – the elder who had thought him a slave-trader, the Streels of Urtah, the breaking of his mind upon the battlefield, Elleroth's mercy, the reason for it and the manner of his leaving Kabin – these he told without concealment, looking into the fire as though alone, but never for a moment losing his sense of the sympathy of this listener, to whom defilement, regret and shame had long been as familiar as they had become to himself. As he spoke of the Tuginda's explanation of what had happened at the Streels and of the ordained and now inevitable death of Shardik, he felt Melathys' hand laid gently upon his arm. He covered it with his own, and it was as though his longing for her broke in upon and quenched the flow of his story. He fell silent, and at length she said, 'And Lord Shardik – where is he now?' 'No one knows. He crossed the Vrako, but I believe he may be already dead. I have wished myself dead many times, but now -' 'Why then did you come to Zeray?'
'Why indeed? For the same reason as any other criminal. To the Yeldashay I'm an outlawed slave-trader. I was driven across the Vrako; and once across it, where else can a man go but Zeray? Besides, as you know, I fell in with the Tuginda. Yet there is another reason, or so I believe. I have disgraced and perverted the divine power of Shardik, so that all that now remains to God is his death. That disgrace and death will be required of me, and where should I wait but in Zeray?' 'Yet you have been speaking of saving our lives by going to Lak?'
'Yes, and if I can I will. A man on the earth is but an animal and what animal will not try to save its life while there remains a chance?'
Gently she withdrew her hand. 'Now listen to the wisdom of a coward, a murderer's woman, a defiled priestess of Quiso. If you try to save your life you will lose it. Either you can accept the truth of what you have told me and wait humbly and patiently upon the outcome – or else you can run up and down this land, this rats' cage, like any other fugitive, never admitting to what is past and using a little more fraud to gain a little more time, until both run out.' 'The outcome?*
'An outcome there will surely be. Since I turned and saw the Tuginda standing at the Baron's grave, I have come to understand a great deal – more than I can put into words. But that is why I am here with you and not with Farrass and Thrild. In the sight of God there is only one time and only one story, of which all days on earth and all human events are parts. But that can only be discovered – it cannot be taught'
Puzzled and daunted by her words, he nevertheless felt comforted that she should think him worth her solicitude, even while he grasped – or thought he grasped – that she was advising him to resign himself to death. Presently, to prolong the time of sitting thus close beside her, he asked, 'If the Yeldashay come, they may well help the Tuginda to return to Quiso. Shall you return with her?'
'I am – what you know. I can never set foot on Quiso again. It would be sacrilege.' 'What will you do?'
'I told you – wait upon the outcome. Kelderek, you must have faith in life. I have been restored to faith in life. If only they would understand it, the task of the disgraced and guilty is not to struggle to redeem themselves but simply to wait, never to cease to wait, in the hope and expectation of redemption. Many err in setting that hope aside, in losing belief that they are still sons and daughters.'
He shook his head, gazing into her smiling, wine-flushed face with such a look of bewilderment that she burst out laughing; and then, leaning forward to stir the fire, half-murmured, half-sang the refrain of an Ortelgan lullaby which he had long forgotten. Where does the moon go every month And where have the old years fled? Don't trouble your poor old head, my dear, Don't trouble your poor old head.
'You didn't know I knew that, did you?' 'You're happy,' he said, feeling envy.
'And you will be,' she answered, taking his hands in her own. 'Yes, even though we die. There, that's enough of riddling for one night; it's time to sleep. But I'll tell you something easier, and this you can understand and believe' He looked at her expectantly, and she said with emphasis, 'That was the best fish I've ever eaten in Zeray. Catch some more!' 46 The Kynat Opening his eyes next morning, Kelderek knew at once that he had been woken by some unusual sound. Uncertain, he lay as still as though in wait for a beast. Suddenly the sound came again, so close that he started. It was the call of the kynat – two smooth, fluting notes, the second higher than the first, followed by a chirring trill cut suddenly short. On the instant he was back in Ortelga, with the gleam from the Telthearna reflected on the inside of the hut roof, the smell of green wood-smoke and his father whistling as he sharpened his knife on a stone. The beautiful, gold-and-purple bird came to the Telthearna in spring but seldom remained, continuing its passage northward. Despite its marvellous plumage, to kill it was unlucky and ill-omened, for it brought the summer and bestowed blessing, announcing its good news to all – 'KynatI Kynat churrrrr – ak!' ('Kynat, Kynat will tell!') Welcome and propitious hero of many songs and tales, it would be heard and blest for a month and then be gone, leaving behind it, like a gift, the best season of the year. Biting his lower lip in his stealth, Kelderek crept to the window, noiselessly lifted the stout bar, opened the shutter a crack and looked out.
The kynat, not thirty feet away, was perched on the roof-ridge on the opposite side of the little courtyard. The vivid purple of its breast and back glowed in the first sunlight, more magnificent than an emperor's banner. The crest, purple interplumed with gold, was erect, and the broad flange of the tail, each feather bordered with gold, lay open upon the grey slope of the tiles, brilliant as a butterfly on a stone. Seen thus at close quarters, it was inexpressibly beautiful, with a splendour beyond description to those who had never seen it. The river sunset, the orchid pendent in mossy shade, the translucent, coloured flames of temple incenses and gums wavering in their copper bowls – none could surpass this bird, displayed in the morning silence like a testament, a visible exemplar of the beauty and humility of God. As Kelderek gazed, it suddenly spread its wings, displaying the soft, saffron-coloured down of the under-sides. It opened its bill and called again, 'Kynat! Kynat will tell!' Then it was gone, eastward towards the river. Kelderek flung back the shutter and stood dazzled in the sun that had just cleared the wall. As he did so, another shutter opened on his left and Melathys, in her shift, her arms bare and her long hair loose, leaned out, as though trying to follow with her eyes the flight of the kynat. She caught sight of him, started for a moment and then, smiling, pointed silently after the bird, like a child to whom gestures come more naturally than words. Kelderek nodded and raised one hand in the sign used by Ortelgan messengers and returning hunters to signify good news. He realized that she, like him, felt the accident of his seeing her half-naked simply as something acceptable between them; not that it was no matter, as it might have been in the commotion of a fire or some other disaster, but rather that its significance was altered, as though in a time of festival, from immodesty to a happy extravagance becoming the occasion. To use plain terms, he thought, the kynat had taken her out of herself, because that was the kind of lass she was. And as this thought crossed his mind, he realized also that he had ceased to think of her as either the one-time priestess of Quiso or the consort of Bel-ka-Trazet His understanding of her had outgrown these images, which had now opened, like doors, to admit him to a warmer, undissembling reality within. Henceforth, in his mind, Melathys would be a woman whom he knew, and whatever front she might present to the world he, like herself, would look through it from the inside, aware of much, if not all, that it concealed from others. He found that he was trembling. He laughed and sat down on the bed.
What had taken place, he knew, involved a contradiction. After all she had suffered, she no doubt felt impatient of conventional ideas of modesty. Nevertheless, what she had done sprang from sensitivity and not from shamelessness. Carried away by her delight in the kynat, she had yet known well enough that he would understand that this was no invitation, in the sense that Thrild or Ruvit would receive it. She had been sure that he would accept what he saw simply as part of their common delight in the moment. She would not have behaved before another man in this way. So in fact there was an invitation – to a deeper level of confidence, where formality and even propriety could be used or set aside entirely as they might be felt to help or hinder mutual understanding. In such a framework, desire could wait to find its allotted place.
So much, though it was new to him and outside any experience that he had had of the dealings between men and women, Kelderek understood. His excitement grew intense. He longed for Melathys, her voice, her company, her mere presence, to the exclusion of all else. He became determined to save her life and his own, to take her away from Zeray, to leave behind for ever the wars of Ikat and Bekla, the sour vocation that had fallen upon him unsought and the fruitless hope which he had once entertained of discovering the great secret to be imparted through Shardik. To reach Lak and from there, somehow, to escape with this girl who had restored to him the desire to live – if it could be done, he would do it. If it were possible for her to love a man, he would win her with a fervour and constancy beyond any in the world. He stood up, stretched out his hands and began to pray with passionate earnestness.
A stick tapped gently upon the courtyard paving and he turned with a start to see Ankray standing outside the window, cloaked and hooded, carrying a sack over his shoulder and armed with a sword at his belt and a kind of rough javelin or short spear. He was holding one finger to his lips, and Kelderek went over to him. 'Are you off to Lak?' he asked.
'Yes, sir. The priestess has given me some money and I'll make it go far enough. You'll be wanting to bolt the gate behind me. I just thought I'd tell you without letting the priestess know – there's a dead man lying in the road – a stranger, I reckon – some newcomer, maybe: they're the ones that catch it soonest here, as often as not You'll want to be very careful while I'm gone. I wouldn't go out, sir, or leave the women at all, not if I was you. Anything could happen in the town just now.'
'But aren't you the one that needs to be careful?' replied Kelderek. 'Do you think you ought to go? '
Ankray laughed. 'Oh, they're no match for me, sir,' he said. 'Now the Baron, he always used to say, "Ankray," he used to say, "you knock 'em down, I'll pick 'em up." Well, after all, you don't have to pick 'em up, sir, now do you? So if I just go on knocking 'em down, it'll all be the same, you see.'
Apparently highly satisfied with this piece of incontrovertible logic, Ankray leant comfortably against the wall. 'Yes, sir,' he said, 'the Baron always used to say, "Ankray, you knock 'em down -"'
'I'll come and see you off,' said Kelderek, leaving the window. At the courtyard gate he drew the bolts and stepped out first into the empty lane. The dead man was lying on his back about thirty yards away, eyes open and arms spread wide. The flesh of his face and hands had a fixed, pale, waxen look. His sprawling, untidy posture, together with the few torn clothes left on the body, made him look less like a corpse than like rubbish, something broken and thrown away. One finger had been severed, no doubt to remove a ring, and the stump showed as a dull red circle against the pallid hand.
'Well, you see how it is, sir,' said Ankray. 'I'll just be getting along now. If you take my advice you'll leave it alone. There's others will take it away – you can be sure of that. If by any chance I shouldn't be back before dark, perhaps you'd be so kind as to wait in the courtyard, same as I did for you last night. But I shan't be loitering-'
He swung up his sack and set off, looking sharply about him as he went.
Kelderek bolted the door and returned to the house. Ankray had cleared and swept the kitchen hearth but lit no fire, and he was washing in cold water when Melathys came in, carrying a dark-red robe and some other garments. Kelderek, head bent over the pail, smiled up at her, shaking the water out of his eyes and cars.
'These were the Baron's,' she said, 'but that's no reason to leave them folded away for ever. They'll fit quite as well as your soldier's clothes and be far more comfortable.' She laid them down, filled a pitcher for the Tuginda and took it away.
As he dressed, he wondered whether this might be the very robe which Bel-ka-Trazet had been wearing when he fled from Ortelga. If it were not, he could only have taken it from some enemy killed since, for it was inconceivable that such a garment could have been traded in Zeray. Elleroth himself, he thought wryly, might have sported it with confidence. It was of excellent cloth, evenly dyed a clear, dark red, and the workmanship was so fine that the seams were almost invisible. It was, as Melathys had said, very comfortable, being yielding and smooth, and the very act of wearing it seemed to remove him a step further from his dismal wanderings and the sufferings he had undergone.
The Tuginda, thinner and hollow-eyed, was sitting up, propped against the wall behind the bed while Melathys combed her hair. Kelderek, taking one of her hands between his own, asked whether she would like him to bring her some food. She shook her head.
'Later,' she answered. Then, after a little, 'Kelderek, thank you for helping me to reach Zeray: and I must ask your forgiveness for deceiving you in one matter.' 'For deceiving me, saiyett? How?'
'I knew, of course, what had become of the Baron. All news reaches Quiso. I expected to find him here, but I did not tell you. I could see that you were badly shocked and exhausted, and I thought it better not to trouble you further. But he would not have harmed you; neither you nor me.'
'You don't need to ask forgiveness of me, saiyett, but since you have, it's given very willingly.'
'Melathys has told me that now that the Baron is gone there's no possibility of our finding help in Zeray/
She sighed deeply, staring down at her sunlit hands on the blanket with a look so disappointed and hopeless that he was moved, as people are apt to be by pity, to say more than he could be sure of.
'Don't distress yourself, saiyett. It's true enough that this is a place of rogues and worse, but as soon as you're well enough we shall leave – Melathys, you and I and the Baron's man. There's a village not far to the north where I hope we may find safety.'
'Melathys told me. The servant has set out to go there today. Will the poor man be safe?'
Kelderek laughed. 'There's one person who's sure of it and that's himself.'
The Tuginda closed her eyes wearily and Melathys put down the comb.
'You should rest again now, saiyett,' she said, 'and then try to eat something. I'll be off to the kitchen, for there's a fire to be lit before I can cook.'
The Tuginda nodded without opening her eyes. Kelderek followed Melathys out of the room. When he had laid the fire, she lit it with a fragment of curved glass held in a sunbeam. He was content to stand and watch as she busied herself with the food, only speaking a word occasionally or trying to anticipate her need of this or that. The room seemed as full of calm and reassurance as of sunlight, and for the time being the future caused no more anxiety to him than to the joyous insects darting in the brightness outside.
Later, as the day, moving towards noon, filled the courtyard with a heat like that of summer, Melathys drew water from the well, washed the household clothes and laid them in the sun to drv. Coming back into the shade of the house, she sat down in the narrow window-scat, wiping her neck and forehead with a rough cloth in place of a towel.
'Elsewhere, women can go and wash clothes in the river and take it for granted,' she said. 'That's what rivers are for – laundry and gossip: but not in Zeray.' 'On Quiso?'
'On Quiso we were often less solemn than you may suppose. But I was thinking of any town or village where ordinary, decent people can go about the business of life without fear: yes, and without dragging shame behind them like a chain. Wouldn't it be fine -wouldn't it seem like a miracle – just to go to a market, to bargain with a stall-keeper, to loiter in the road eating something that you'd bought fair and honestly, to give some of it away to a friend while you gossiped by the river? I remember those things – the Quiso girls came and went a good deal on the island's business, you know: in some ways we were freer than other women. To be deprived of little, common pleasures that honest people take for granted – that's imprisonment, that's retribution, that's grief and loss. If people valued such things at their worth, they'd give themselves more credit for the common trust and honesty on which those things depend.'
'You've got some compensation. Most women can't use words like that,' answered Kelderek. 'It's a narrow life for a village girl -cooking, weaving, children, pounding clothes on the stones.'
'Perhaps,' she said. 'Perhaps. Birds sing in the trees, find their food, mate, build nests. They don't know anything else.' She looked up at him, smiling and drawing the cloth slowly from side to side across the back of her neck. 'It's a narrow life for birds. But you catch one and put it in a cage and you'll soon find out whether it values what it's lost.'
He longed to take her in his arms so strongly that for a few moments his head swam. To conceal his feelings he bent over his knife and half-finished fish-hook. 'You sing, too,' he said. 'I've heard you.'
'Yes. I'll sing now, if you like. I sometimes used to sing for the Baron. He liked to hear old songs he remembered, but really it was all the same to him who sang them – Ankray would do. By the Ledges, you should hear him!' 'No – you. I can wait to hear Ankray.'
She rose, peeped in at the Tuginda, left the room and returned with a plain, unornamented hinnari of light-coloured sesttiaga wood, much battered along the finger-board. She put it into his hands. It was warped and more than a little out of true.
'Don't you say a word against it,' she said. 'As far as I know, it's the only one in Zeray. It was found floating down the river and the Baron put his pride in his pocket and begged the strings from Lak. If they break there aren't any more.'
Sitting down again in the window-seat, she plucked the strings softly for a while, adjusting and coaxing the hard-toned hinnari into such tune as it possessed. Then, looking into her lap as though singing to herself alone, she sang the old ballad of U-Deparioth and the Silver Flower of Sarkid. Kelderek remembered the tale – still told as true in that country – how Deparioth, abandoned by traitors in the terrible Blue Forest, left to wander till he died and long given up for lost by friends and servants, had been roused from his despair by a mysterious and beautiful girl, dressed like a queen in that desolate wilderness. She tended his hurts, found him fruits, fungus and roots fit to cat, restored his courage and guided his limping steps day by day through the maze of the woods, until at last they came to a place that he knew. But as he turned to lead her towards the friends running to meet them, she vanished and he saw only a tall, silver lily blooming where she had been standing in the long grass. Heart-broken, he sank weeping to the ground, and ever after longed only to recover those days of hardship that he had spent with her in the forest. Give back the miry solitude, The thorns and briars outstretched to bless. There lay my kingdom, past compare: This court's the desert wilderness.
Ending, she was silent, and he too said nothing, knowing that there was no need for him to speak. She plucked the strings idly for a while and then, as though on impulse, broke into the little song 'Cat catch a fish', that generations of Ortelgan children had known and played on the shore. He could not help laughing with delight to be taken thus by surprise, for he had neither heard nor thought of the song since he himself had left Ortelga.
'Have you lived on Ortelga, then?' he asked. 'I don't remember you when I was a child.' 'On Ortelga – no. I learnt that song as a child on Quiso.'
'You were a child on Quiso?' He had no recollection of what Rantzay had once told him. 'Then when -'
'You don't know how I came to Quiso? I'll tell you. I was born on a slave-farm in Tonilda and if I ever knew my mother I can't remember her. That was before the Slave Wars and we were simply goods to be prepared for sale. When I was seven the farm was taken by Santil-ki-Erketlis and the Heldril. A wounded captain was making the journey to Quiso to be healed by the Tuginda, and he took me and a girl called Bria, to offer us to be brought up as priestesses. Bria ran away before we reached the Telthearna and what became of her I never knew. But I became a child of the Ledges.' 'Were you happy?'
'Oh, yes. To have a home and wise, good people to love you and look after you, after being part of the stock of a slave-farm – you can't imagine what that meant It's not incurable, you know – the harm done to an ill-treated child. Everyone was kind -I was spoiled. I got on well – I was clever, you see – and I grew up to believe that I was God's gift to Quiso. That was why, when the time came, I wasn't fit for any real self-sacrifice, as poor Rantzay was.' She was silent for a little and then said, 'But I've learnt since then.' 'Are you sorry that you'll never go back to Quiso?' *Not now: I told you, it's been made plain to me-' He interrupted her. 'Not too later'
'Oh, yes,' she answered, 'it's always too late.' She got up and, passing close to him on her way to the Tuginda's room, bent down so that her lips just brushed his ear. 'No, it's never too late.' A few moments afterwards she called to him to come and help the Tuginda to a seat by the fire, while she made the bed and swept the room.
During the later part of the afternoon the sun became cooler and the courtyard shady. They sat outside, near the fig-tree by the wall, Melathys on a bench under the Tuginda's open window, Kelderek on the coping of the well. After a time, disturbed in memory by the low chuckling and whispering sounds deep in the shaft, he rose and began to gather up the clothes she had spread during the morning. 'Some of these haven't dried, Melathys.' She stretched lazily, arching her back and lifting her face to the sky. 'They will.' 'Not by tonight.' 'M'mm. Fuss, fuss.' 'I'll spread them on the roof for you, if you like. It's still sunny there.' 'No way up.' 'In Bekla every house had steps up to the roof.' 'In Bekla town the pigs all fly, and the wine in the river goes gurgling by-'
Looking up the fifteen or sixteen feet of the wall, he picked a way, scrambled up the rough stonework, got both hands on the parapet and pulled himself over. Inside there was a drop of about a foot to the flat, stone roof. He tried it cautiously, but it was solid enough and he stepped down. The stones were warm in the sun. 'Throw the clothes up and I'll spread them.' 'It must be dirty.' 'A broom, then. Can you -' He broke off, looking towards the river. 'What is it?' called Melathys, with a touch of anxiety. Kelderek did not answer and she asked again, more urgently. 'Men on the opposite side of the river.'
' What?' She stared up at him incredulously. 'That's a desert shore, no village for forty miles, or so I've always been told. I've never seen a man there since I've been here.' 'Well, you can now.' 'What are they doing?'
'I can't make out They look like soldiers. People this side seem just as much surprised as you.' 'Help me up, Kelderek.'
After a little difficulty she climbed high enough for him to grasp her wrists and pull her up. Stepping on the roof, she immediately knelt down behind the parapet and motioned him to copy her.
'A month ago we might have stood openly on a roof in Zeray. I don't think I would now.'
Together they looked eastward. Along the Zeray waterfront the rabble of loiterers were gathered in groups, talking together and pointing across the river. On the further shore, about half a mile from where they were kneeling on the roof, a band of perhaps fifty men could be seen, intent on some business of their own among the rocks. 'That man on the left – he's giving orders, do you see?' 'But what is it they're carrying?'
'Stakes. Look at that nearer one – it must be as long as the centre-pole of an Ortelgan hut. I suppose they're going to build a hut – but whatever for?'
'Heaven knows – but one thing's certain, it can't be anything to do with Zeray. No one's ever yet crossed that strait. The current's far too strong.' 'They're soldiers, aren't they?' 'I think so – or else a hunting expedition.'
'In a desert? Look, they've started digging. And those are two great mauls they've got there. So when they've sunk those stakes deep enough to be able to get at the heads, they must be going to drive them in further.' 'For a hut?' 'Well, let's wait and see. They'll probably-' He stopped as she laid a hand on his arm and drew him back from the parapet. 'What is it?'
She lowered her voice. 'Possibly nothing. But there was a man watching us from below – one of your friends of last night, I dare say. It might be better to go down now, in case he has ideas of breaking in. Anyway, the less attention we attract the better, and out of sight out of mind's a good maxim in this place.'
After he had helped her down, he closed and secured the shutters of the few windows on the outer wall, brought Ankray's heavy spear into the courtyard and remained listening for some time. All was quiet, however, and at length he returned indoors. The Tuginda was awake and he sat down near the foot of the bed, content to listen while she and Melathys talked of old days on Quiso. Once the Tuginda spoke of Ged-la-Dan, but though Melathys evidently understood well enough the terms she used in describing his fruitless attempts to reach the island, Kelderek could make nothing of them.
Nor, he thought, was there any reason why he should. Melathys had said that she would never return there and certainly he would not. Magic, mysticism, the fulfilment of prophecies and the search for meanings beyond those of hearth and home – it was little enough he had gained from them, unless indeed he could count his hard-won experience. But though he himself was disillusioned, it seemed from what she had said that Melathys was not. It was dear enough, too, that the Tuginda thought of her as healed or redeemed – if those terms had any meaning – in some sense that did not apply to himself. No doubt, he thought, this was because Melathys had begged her forgiveness. Why had he been unable to do so?
Soon it would be dusk. Still deep in his thoughts, he left the women together and went out into the courtyard to wait for Ankray.
He was leaning against the bolted gate, listening for any sound of approach and wondering whether he should climb once more to the roof when, looking up, he saw Melathys standing in the doorway. The flame light of evening covered her from head to foot and showed the long fall of her hair as a smooth, glowing shadow, like the curved trough of a wave. As a man, having stopped to gaze at a rainbow, continues on his way but then, turning to look at it once more, is immediately enraptured yet again by its marvellous beauty, as though he had never seen it in his life before, so Kelderek was moved by the sight of Melathys. Arrested by his fixed look and catching, as it were, the echo of herself in his eyes, the girl stood still, smiling a little, as though to tell him that she was happy to oblige him until he should find himself able to release her from his gaze.
'Don't move,' he said, at once bidding and entreating, and she showed neither confusion nor embarrassment, but a dignity joyous, spontaneous and unassuming as a dancer's. Suddenly, with an illusion like that which, in the hall of the King's House at Bekla, while he stood awaiting the soldiers bringing Elleroth, had shown him Shardik as both bear and distant mountain-summit, he saw her as the tall zoan tree on the shore of Ortelga – an enclosing arbour of ferny boughs by the waterside. Without taking his eyes from hc/s he crossed the courtyard.
'What do you see?' asked Melathys, looking up at him with a little spurt of laughter; and Kelderek, recalling the power of the priestesses of Quiso, wondered whether she herself had called the image of the zoan into his mind.
'A tall tree by the river,' he answered. 'A landmark for a homecoming.'
Taking her hands in his own, he raised them to his lips. As he did so, there fell upon the courtyard door a rapid, urgent knocking. This was followed immediately by an ugly sound of jeering and Ankray's voice calling,' Now then, be off with you, and look sharp about it!* 47 Ankray's News Kelderek, snatching up the spear, ran and drew the bolts and Ankray, his sword drawn in his hand, ducked his head and stepped backwards into the courtyard, slipping his sack from his shoulder as Kelderek shut the gate.
'I hope all's well, sir, with you and the priestesses,' he said, drawing the javelin from his belt and sitting down on the coping of the well to pull off his muddy leggings. 'I did my best to get back as quick as I could, but it's a fair step over that rough country.'
Kelderek, unable at once to find words, merely nodded but then, unwilling to seem churlish to this good fellow who had risked his life for their sakes, laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled.
'No, no trouble here,' he said. 'You'd better come in and have a wash and a drink. Let me take your sack – that's it. By God, it's heavy! You haven't been too unlucky, then?'
'Well, yes and no, sir,' replied Ankray, stooping to enter the doorway. '1 was able to pick up a few things, true enough. I've got some fresh meat, if the priestess could fancy a bit of it this evening.'
'I'll cook it,' said Melathys, bringing a bowl of hot water and crushing herbs into it as she put it down on the floor. 'You've done enough for one day. No, don't be stupid, Ankray: of course I'm going to wash your feet. I want to have a look at them. There's a cut, for a start. Keep still.'
'There are three full wine-skins in this sack,' said Kelderek, looking into it, 'as well as the meat and these two cheeses and some loaves. Here's some oil, and what's this – lard? And some leather. You must be as strong as five oxen to have carried this lot nine miles.'
'Mind the fish-hooks and the knife-blades, sir,' said Ankray. 'They're loose, but then I know where I put them, you see.'
'Well, whatever your news is, let's eat first,' said Kelderek. 'If this is the Yes, we may as well make the most of it before you start on the No. Come on, drink some of this wine you've brought, and here's your good health.'
It was well over an hour before the meal had been cooked and eaten. Ankray and Kelderek, after going out of the gate to look round the house, test the barred shutters from outside and make sure all was quiet, returned to find that Melathys had taken two lamps from the kitchen to add to that already in the Tuginda's room. The Tuginda welcomed Ankray and thanked him, praising his strength and courage and questioning him so warmly and sincerely that he soon found himself giving her an account of the day's adventures with as little constraint as he might have related it to the Baron. She told him to fetch a stool and sit down, and he did so without embarrassment. 'Do they still remember the Baron kindly in Lak?' asked Melathys.
'Oh yes, saiyett,' answered the man. 'There was two or three of them asked me whether I thought it would be safe if they was to come here, to pay their respects, like, at the grave. I said I'd fix a day to meet them, to make sure of them finding the right spot They've got a great opinion of the Baron, have the folk in Lak.'
'Did you get any chance to tell them about what's happened, or to find out whether we may be able to go there?'
'Well, that's just it, saiyett: I can't say as I was able to get far there. You sec, I couldn't talk to the chief or any of the ciders. It seems they're all greatly taken up with this business of the bear. They were holding some sort of meeting about it, and 'twas still going on when I had to start back.'
'The bear?' asked Kelderek sharply. 'What bear? What do you mean?'
'There's no one knows what to make of it, sir,' replied Ankray. 'They say it's witchcraft There's not a man of them but he's frightened, for never a bear's been known before in those parts and by all I can make out this one's no natural creature.' 'What did they tell you?' asked Melathys, white to the lips.
'Well, saiyett, seems 'twas about ten days ago now that the cattle began to be attacked in the night – pens broken and beasts killed. A man was found one morning with his head beaten in and another time a tree-trunk that three men couldn't have moved had been lifted out of a gap it had been set to block. They found tracks of some big animal, but no one knew what they were and everyone was afraid to search. Then about three days ago some of the men were out fishing, upstream and just a little way off shore, when the bear came down to drink. 'Seems it was that big they couldn't believe their eyes. Thin and sick it looked, they said, but very savage and dangerous. It stared at them from the bank and they went off quick. The men I talked to were all sure it's a devil, but myself, I wouldn't fear it, because I reckon it stands to reason who it is.' Ankray paused. None of his listeners spoke and he went on, 'It was a bear hurt the Baron when he was a young fellow; and when we left Ortelga after the fighting – that was all to do with sorcery and a bear, or so I've always understood. The Baron's often said to me, "Ankray," he'd say, "I'd have done better if I'd a been a bear, that I would. That's the way to make a kingdom out of nothing, believe me." Of course, I reckoned he was joking but now – well, saiyett, if any man was to come back as a bear, that man would be the Baron, don't you reckon? Them that saw it said 'twas terrible scarred and wounded, disfigured-like, round the neck and shoulders, and I reckon that proves it. There's no one in Lak ventures far now and all the cattle are penned together and fires kept burning at night. There's none of them dares go out and hunt the bear. There's even some kind of strange rumour that it's come alive out of hell.'
The Tuginda spoke. 'Thank you, Ankray. You did very well and we quite understand why you couldn't talk to the chief. You've earned a good night's sleep. Don't do any more work tonight, will you?'
'Very good, saiyett. No trouble, I'm sure. Good night, saiyett. Good night, sir.'
He went out, taking the lamp which Melathys silently handed to him. As his footsteps receded Kelderek sat motionless, staring down at the floor like a man who, in an inn or shop, hopes by averting his face to avoid recognition by some creditor or enemy who has unexpectedly entered. In the room beyond, a log fell in the fire and faintly through the shutters came the distant, rattling sound of the night-croaking frogs. Still he sat, and still none spoke. As Melathys moved across the room and sat down on the bench beside the bed, Kelderek realized that his posture had become unnatural and constrained, like that of a dog which, for fear of a rival, holds itself rigid against the wall. Still looking directly at neither of the women he stood up, took the second lamp from the shelf at his elbow and went to the door. 'I – I'll come back – something – a little while -'
His hand was on the latch and for an instant, in an unintended glance, he saw the Tuginda's face against the shadowy wall. Her eyes met his and he looked away. He went out, crossed the room beyond and stood for a little beside the fire, watching as its caves and cliffs and ledges consumed away, crumbled and gave place to others. Now and then the sound of the women's voices, speaking seldom and low, reached his cars and at length, wishing to be still more alone, he went to the room where he slept and once there, put down the lamp and stood still as an ox in a field.
What hold, what power over him did Shardik retain? Was it indeed of his own will or of Shardik's that he had slept beside him in the forest, plunged headlong into the Telthearna deeps and at last wandered from Bekla and his kingdom, through none would ever know what terror and humiliation, to Zeray? He had thought Shardik dead; or if not already dead, then dying far away. But he was not dead, not far away; and news of him had now reached -was it by his will that it had reached? – the man whom God had chosen from the first to be broken to fragments, just as the Tuginda had foretold. He had heard tell of priests in other lands who were the prisoners of their gods and people, remaining secluded in their temples or palaces until the day of their ritual, sacrificial death. He, though a priest, had known no such imprisonment. Yet had he been deluded in supposing himself free to renounce Shardik, to fly for his life, to seek to live for the sake of the woman whom he loved? Was he in truth like a fish trapped in a shrinking, land-locked pool in time of drought, free to swim wherever he could, yet fated, do what he might, to lie gasping at last on the mud? Like Bel-ka-Trazet, he had supposed that he had done with Shardik but Shardik, or so he now suspected, had not done with him.
He started at the sound of a step and the next moment Melathys came into the dim room. Without a word he took her in his arms and kissed her again and again – her lips, her hair, her eyelids – as though to hide among kisses, as a hunted creature among the green leaves. She clung to him, saying nothing, responding by her very choice of acquiescence, like one bathing in a pool who chooses for her own delight to remain standing breathlessly under the cascade that fills it. At length he grew calmer and, gently caressing her face between his hands, felt on his fingers the tears which the lamplight had not revealed.
'My love,' he whispered, 'my princess, my bright jewel, don't weep! I'll take you away from Zeray. Whatever may happen, I'll never, never leave you. We'll go away and reach some safe place together. Only believe me!' He smiled down at her. 'I have nothing in the world, and I'll sacrifice all for your sake.'
'Kelderek.' She kissed him in her turn, gently, three or four times, and then laid her head on his shoulder. 'My darling. My heart is yours until the sun burns out. Oh, can there ever have been so sorry a place and so wretched an hour for declaring love?' 'How else?' he answered. 'How else could two such as we discover ourselves to be lovers, except by meeting at the end of the world, where all pride is lost and all rank and station overthrown?'
'I will school myself to have hope,' she said. 'I will pray for you every day that you are gone. Only send me news as soon as you can.' 'Gone?' he replied. 'Where?' 'Why, to Lak: to Lord Shardik. Where else?'
'My dear,' he said, 'set your mind at rest. I promised I would never leave you. I'm done with Shardik.'
At this she stood back and, spreading her two arms wide behind her, palms flat against the wall on either side, looked up at him incredulously.
'But – but you heard what Ankray said – we all heard him! Lord Shardik is in the forest near Lak – wounded – perhaps dying! Don't you believe it is Lord Shardik?'
'Once – ay, and not long ago -1 meant to seek death from Shardik in atonement for the wrong I had done both to him and to the Tuginda. Now I mean to live for your sake, if you'll have me. Listen, my darling. Shardik's day is done for ever, and for all I know Bekla's and Ortelga's day as well. These things ought not to concern us now. Our task is to preserve our lives – the lives of this household – until we can get to Lak, and then to help the Tuginda to return safely to Quiso. After that we shall be free, you and I. I'll take you away -we'll go to Deelguy or Terekenalt – further, if you like – anywhere where we can live a quiet, humble life, live like the plain folk we were meant to be. Perhaps Ankray will come with us. If only we're resolute, we'll have the chance to be happy at last, away from such loads as men's spirits were never meant to bear and such mysteries as they were never meant to pry into.'
She only shook her head slowly as the tears fell and fell from her eyes. 'No,' she whispered. 'No. You must set out for Lak at dawn tomorrow and I must stay here with the Tuginda.' 'But what am I to do?'
'That will be shown you. But above all you must keep a humble, receptive heart and the readiness to listen and obey.'
'It's nothing but superstition and folly I' he burst out. 'How can I, of all people, still remain a servant of Shardik – I, that have abused and harmed him more than any man-more even than Ta-Kominion? Only think of the peril to yourself and the Tuginda in remaining here with none but Ankray I The place is alive with danger now. At any moment it may become as though fifty Glabrons had risen from the grave -' At this she cried out and sank to the floor, sobbing bitterly and covering her face with her arms as though to ward off his unbearable words. Sorry, he knelt beside her, stroking her shoulders, speaking reassuringly as though to a child and trying to lift her up. At length she rose, nodding her head with a kind of weary hopelessness, as though in acceptance of what he had said of Glabron.
'I know,' she said. 'I'm sick with fear at the thought of Zeray. I could never survive that again – not now. But still you must go.' Suddenly she seemed to take heart, as though by a forced act of her own will. 4 You won't be alone for long. The Tuginda will recover and then we'll come to Lak and find you. I believe it! I believe it! Oh, my darling, how I long for it – how I shall pray for you! God's will be done.'
4Melathys, I tell you I'm not going. I love you. I won't leave you in this place.'
4 Each of us failed Lord Shardik once,' she answered, 4 but we won't do so again – not now. He's offering us both redemption, and by the Ledges we'll take it, even if it means death' Giving him her hands, she looked at him with the authority of Quiso in her face, even while the single, wan lamp-flame showed the tear-streaks down her checks.
4Come, my dear and only beloved, we'll return now to the Tuginda and tell her that you're going to Lak.' For a moment he hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. 'Very well. But be warned, I shall speak my mind.'
She took up the lamp and he followed her. The fire had sunk low and as they passed the hearth he could hear the minute, sharp, evanescent tinkling of the cooling stones and dying embers. Melathys tapped at the door of the Tuginda's room, waited a few moments and then went in. Kelderek followed. The room was empty.
Pushing him to one side in her haste, Melathys ran to the courtyard door. He called 'Wait! There's no need -' But she had already drawn the bolts and when he reached the door he saw her lamp-flame on the other side of the courtyard, steady in the still air. He heard her call and ran across. The latch of the outer door was in place, but the bolts had been drawn back. On the wood, hastily traced, as it appeared, with a charred stick, was a curving, star-like symbol. 'What is it?' he asked.
4It's the sign carved on the Tereth stone,' she whispered, distraught. 4It invokes the Power of God and His protection. Only the Tuginda may inscribe it without sacrilege. Oh God! She couldn't help leaving the bolts drawn, but this she could do for us before she went,' 'Quickly!' cried Kelderek. 'She can't have gone far.' He ran across the courtyard and beat on the shutters, shouting 'Ankray! Ankray!'
The moon gave light enough and they had not far to search. She was lying where she had fallen, in the shadow of a mud wall about half-way to the shore. As they approached, two men who were stooping over her made off as silently as cats. There was a broad, livid bruise at the back of her neck and she was bleeding from the mouth and nose. The cloak which she had been wearing over her hastily-donned clothes was lying in the mud a few feet away, where the men had dropped it.
Ankray picked her up as though she had been a child and together they hastened back; Kelderek, his knife ready in his hand, repeatedly turning about to make sure they were not being followed. But none molested them and Melathys was waiting to open the courtyard door. When Ankray had laid the Tuginda on her bed the girl undressed her, finding no grave injuries except the blow at the base of the skull. She watched beside her all night, but at dawn the Tuginda had not recovered consciousness.
An hour later Kelderek, armed and carrying money, food and the seal-ring of Bel-ka-Trazet, set out alone for Lak. Book VI Genshed 48 Beyond Lak It was afternoon of the following day; hot enough, even during this season of early spring, to silence the birds and draw from the forest a steamy, humid fragrance of young leaves and sprouting vegetation. The Telthearna glittered, coiling swiftly and silently down towards Lak and on to the strait of Zeray below. From a little north of Lak a region of forest, several miles across, stretched northwards as far as the open country round the Gap of Linsho, which divided it from the foothills and mountains beyond. It was from the southern extremities of this forest, dense and largely trackless, that the bear had been attacking the sheds and herds of Lak.
The shore hereabout was broken and indeterminate, undulating in a series of knoll-like promontories. Between these, the river penetrated up creeks and watery ravines, some of which ran almost half a mile inland. The promontories, grassy mounds on which grew trees and bushes, extended back from the waterside until, amongst thicker undergrowth, they ended abruptly in banks standing like little cliffs above the interior swamps. Frogs and snakes were numerous and at twilight, when the wading birds ceased their feeding, great bats would leave the forest to swoop for moths over the open river. It was a desolate place, seldom visited except by fishermen working offshore in their canoes.
Kelderek was lying at the foot of an ollaconda tree, almost concealed among the thick, exposed roots curving all about him like ropes. There was no breeze and except for the hum of the insects no sound from the forest. The opposite shore, bare and rocky, showed hazy in the sunlight, almost as distant as he remembered seeing it from Ortelga. Nothing but birds moved on the river's surface.
In the hot shade, the silence and solitude, he was deliberating upon an exploit so desperate that even now, when he had determined to attempt it, he was still half-hoping that it might be delayed or frustrated by the sudden appearance of fishermen or of some traveller along the shore. If fishermen came, he thought, he would take it as an omen – would call to them and ask to return to Lak in their canoe. None would be the wiser, for no one had been told what he intended. Indeed, it was essential to his purpose that none should know.
If the Tuginda were still alive Melathys, he knew, would never leave her. She would remain in Zeray, enduring the dangers of that evil place: and if the Tuginda were later to recover, would accompany her to Lak – not now to escape from Zeray, but solely in order to be nearer to Shardik – perhaps even to seek for him herself. But if the Tuginda were to die – if she were already dead – Melathys, though no longer a priestess of Quiso, would be indissuadable from the belief that she herself must now assume the Tuginda's duty to find Shardik: yes, he reflected bitterly, to seek to divine God's will from whatever accidents might attend the last days of a savage, dying animal. This remnant of an arid, meaningless religion, which had already brought him to grief, now stood between him and any chance he might have of escape from Zeray with the woman he loved.
And such an animal! Could there ever, in truth, have been a time when he had loved Shardik? Had he indeed defied Bel-ka-Trazet for his sake, believed him to be the incarnation of the power of God and prayed to him to accept his life? Lak, which he had reached at noon of the previous day and where he had spent the night, was as full of hatred for Shardik as a fire is full of heat. There was no talk but of the mischief, craft and savagery of the bear. It was more dangerous than flood, more unpredictable than pestilence, such a curse as no village had ever known. It had destroyed not only beasts but, wantonly, the patient work of months – stockades, fences, pens, rock-pools built for fish-traps. Most believed it to be a devil and feared it accordingly. Two men, experienced hunters, who had ventured into the forest in the hope of trapping or killing it, had been found mauled to death, having evidently been taken by surprise. The fishermen who had seen it on the shore were all agreed that they had been frightened by the sense of something evil in its very presence, like that of a serpent or a poisonous spider.
Kelderek, showing the seal of Bel-ka-Trazet but saying of himself only that he had been sent from Zeray to seek help in planning a journey north for the survivors of the Baron's household, had talked with the elder, an ageing man who clearly knew little or nothing of Bekla, its Ortelgan religion or its war with the far-off Yeldashay. To Kelderek, as to a follower of Bel-ka-Trazet, he had shown a guarded courtesy, enquiring, as closely as he felt he could, about the state of affairs in Zeray and what was thought likely to happen there. Plainly, he took the view that now that the Baron was dead there was little to be gained from helping the Baron's woman.
'As for a journey to the north,' he said, grimacing as he scratched between his shoulders and signalling to a servant to pour Kelderek more of his sharp, cloudy wine, 'there's no attempting it as long as we are so afflicted. The men won't stir into the forest or up the shore. If the beast were to wander away, perhaps, or even to die -' He fell silent, looking down at the floor and shaking his head. After a little he went on, 'I have thought that in full summer – in the heat – we might perhaps fire the forest, but that would be dangerous. The wind – often the wind goes into the north.' He broke off again and then added, 'Linsho – you want to go to Linsho? The ones they let through Linsho are those who can pay. That is how they subsist, those who live there.' There was a note of envy in his voice.
'What about crossing the river?' asked Kelderek, but the chief only shook his head once more. 'A desert place – robbed and killed -' Suddenly he looked up, his eye sharp as the moon emerging from behind clouds. 'If we started taking men across the river, it would become known in Zeray.' And he threw the dregs of his wine across the dirty floor.
It was while he was lying awake before dawn (and scratching as nimbly as the elder) that his desperate and secret project entered Kelderek's mind. If Melathys were ever to become his alone, then Shardik must die. If he were simply to wait for Shardik to die, it was very possible that Melathys would die first. Shardik must be known to be dead – the news must reach Zeray – but he must not be known to have met a violent death. The chief alone must be taken into confidence before the killing was carried out. To him the condition would be secrecy and Kelderek's price, payable upon proof of success, an escort to Linsho for himself, the two women and their servant, together with whatever help might be necessary towards paying for their passage through the Gap.
A few hours later, still pondering this plan and saying nothing of where he was going, he set out northward along the shore. Whatever traces Shardik might have left, they would have to be found without a guide. To kill him, if it were possible at all, would be the most difficult and dangerous of tasks, not to be attempted without prior knowledge of the forest outskirts and the places he frequented in his comings and goings near Lak. Arriving at the first of the inlets between the island-like hillocks, Kelderek began a careful search for tracks, droppings and other signs of Shardik's presence.
Not that, as the lonely morning wore on, he was free for one moment from a mounting oppression both of fear and dread: the first showing him clearly his bleeding, mutilated body savaged by the bear's great claws; the second revealing nothing, but hanging like a mist upon the edges of thought and conferring an uneasy suspicion. As a thief or fugitive who cannot avoid passing some watch-tower or guard-house continues on his way, but nevertheless cannot keep from glancing out of the tail of his eye towards the walls on which there is no one actually to be seen, so Kelderek pursued his course, able neither to admit nor entirely to exclude the idea that he was observed and watched from some transcendental region inscrutable to himself.
Shardik's power was dwindling, sinking, melting away. His death was ordained, was required by God. Why then should not his priest hasten that which was inevitable? And yet, to approach him as an enemy – to intend his death – he thought of those who had done so – of Bel-ka-Trazet, of Gel-Ethlin, of Mollo, of those who kept the Streets of Urtah. He thought, too, of Ged-la-Dan setting out, high-stomached, to impose his will upon Quiso. And then, on the very point of turning back, of abandoning his resolve, he saw again Melathys' tear-stained face lifted to his in the lamplight, and felt her body clasped to his own – that vulnerable body which remained in Zeray like a ewe abandoned by herdsmen on a wild hillside. No danger, natural or supernatural, was too great to be faced if only, by that means, he could return in time to save her life and convince her that nothing was of greater importance than the love she felt for him. Fighting against his mounting sense of uneasiness, he continued his search.
A little before noon, reaching the further end of one of the island-like promontories, he saw below him a pool at the mouth of a creek. Scrambling down the bank, he knelt among the stones to drink, and on raising his head immediately saw before him, some yards away on the creek's muddy, further shore, a bear's prints, clear as a seal on wax. Looking about him, he felt almost sure that this must be the place spoken of by the fishermen. It was plainly an habitual drinking-place, bear-marked so unmistakably that a child could have perceived the signs; and certainly visited at some time since the previous day.
To have seen the prints before his own feet had marked the mud was a stroke of luck which should make it simple, a mere matter of patience, to gain sight of the bear itself. All he needed was a safe place of concealment from which to watch. Splashing through the shallows, he made his way back as far as the next inlet, a long stone's throw from the pool where he had knelt to drink. From here he once more climbed the promontory to the ollaconda tree and, having made sure that he could observe the shore of the creek, lay down among the roots to wait. The wind, as the elder had said, was from the north, the forest on his left was so thick that nothing could approach without being heard; and in the last resort he could take to the river. Here he was as safe as he could reasonably hope to be.
While the slow time passed with the movement of clouds, the whine of insects and the sudden, raucous cries and scutterings of water-fowl on the river, he fell to reflecting on how the killing of Shardik might be accomplished. If he were right, and this was a drinking-place to which the bear regularly returned, it should afford him a good opportunity. He had never taken part in killing a bear, nor had he ever heard of anyone, except the Beklan nobleman of whom Bel-ka-Trazet had spoken, who had attempted it. Certainly a solitary bow seemed altogether too dangerous and uncertain. Whatever the Beklan might have supposed thirty years ago, he himself did not believe that a bear could safely be killed by this means alone. Poison might have succeeded, but he had none. To try to construct any kind of trap was out of the question. The more he pondered his difficulties, the more he was forced to the conclusion that the business would be impossible unless the bear's alertness and strength had become so much weakened that he could hope to hold it with a noose long enough to pierce it with several arrows. Yet how to noose a bear? Other, bizarre ideas passed through his mind – to catch poisonous snakes and by some means drop them out of a sack from above, while the bear was drinking; to suspend a heavy spear – he broke off impatiently. These childish plans were not capable of being effected. All he could do for the moment was to await the bear, observe its condition and behaviour and see whether any scheme suggested itself.
It was perhaps three hours later, and he had somewhat relaxed his vigilance, leaning his sweating forehead upon his forearm and wondering, as he closed his eyes against the river glitter, how Ankray meant to set about getting more food when what was in the house had gone, when he heard the sounds of a creature approaching from the undergrowth beyond the creek. The next moment – so quietly and swiftly may the most fateful and long-awaited events materialize – Shardik was before him, crouching upon the brink of the pool.
After war has swept across some farm or estate and gone its way, the time comes when villagers or neighbours, their fears aroused by having seen nothing of the occupants, set out for the place. They make their way across the blackened fields or up the lane, looking about them in the unnatural quiet. Soon, seeing no smoke and receiving no reply to their calls, they begin to fear the worst, pointing in silence as they come to the barns with their exposed and thatchless rafters. They begin to search; and at a sudden cry from one of their number come running together before an open, creaking door, where a woman's body lies sprawling face down across the threshold. There is a quick scurry of rats and a youth turns quickly aside, white and sick. Some of the men, setting their teeth, go inside and return, carrying the dead bodies of two children and leading a third child who stares about him, crazed beyond weeping. As that farm then appears to* those men, who knew it in former days, so Shardik appeared now to Kelderek: and as they look upon the ruin and misery about them, so Kelderek looked at Shardik drinking from the pool.
The ragged, dirty creature was gaunt as though half-starved. Its pelt resembled some ill-erected tent draped clumsily over the frame of the bones. Its movements had a tremulous, hesitant weariness, like those of some old beggar, worn out with denial and disease. The wound in its back, half-healed, was covered with a great, liver-coloured scab, cracked across and closing and opening with every movement of the head. The open and suppurating wound in the neck was plainly irritant, inflamed and torn as it was by the creature's scratching. The blood-shot eyes peered fiercely and suspiciously about, as though seeking on whom to revenge its misery; but after a little the head, in the very act of drinking, sank forward into the shallows, as though to keep it raised were a labour too grievous to be borne.
At length the bear stood up and, gazing in one direction and another, stared for a moment directly up at the mass of roots among which Kelderek lay in hiding. But it seemed to see nothing and, as he still watched it through a narrow opening like a loophole, me belief grew in him that it was concerned less with what it could see than with scenting the air and listening. Although it had not perceived him in his hiding-place, yet something else – or so it appeared -was making it uneasy; something not far off in the forest. If this were so, however, it was evidently not so much disturbed as to make off. For some while it remained in the shallows, more than once dropping its head as before, with the object, as Kelderek now perceived, of bathing and cooling the wound in its neck. Then, to his surprise, it began to wade from the pool into deeper water. He watched, puzzled, as it made towards a rock some little way out in the river. Its chest, broad as a door, submerged, then its shoulders and finally, though with difficulty, it swam to the rock and dragged itself out upon a ledge. Here it sat, facing, across the river, the distant eastern shore. After a time it made as though to plunge into midstream, but twice stopped short. Then a listlessness seemed to come upon it. Scratching dolefully, it lay down upon the rock as some old, half-blind dog might crouch in the dust, and covered its face with its fore-paws. Kelderek remembered what the Tuginda had said-'He is trying to return to his own country. He is making for the Telthearna and will cross it if he can.' If such a creature could weep, then Shardik was weeping.
To see strength failing, ferocity grown helpless, power and domination withered by pain as plants by drought – such sights give rise not only to pity but also – and as naturally – to aversion and contempt. Our sorrow for our dying captain is sincere enough, yet we must nevertheless make haste to leave this sunken fire before the increasing cold can overtake our own fortunes. For all his glorious past, it is only right that he should be abandoned, for we have to live – to thrive if we can – and setting aside all other considerations, the truth is that he has become irrelevant to the things that should now properly concern us. How odd it is that until now no one, apparently, should have perceived that after all he was never particularly wise; never particularly brave; never particularly honest, particularly truthful, particularly clean.
Upon Kelderek's inward eye flashed once more the figure of Melathys standing in the light of the sunset, she the once unattainable, who but two days before had held him in her arms and told him with tears that she loved him; she whose gay courage had made light of the foul danger and evil amidst which he had been compelled against his will to leave her to take her chance; she who in herself more than outweighed his lost kingdom and ruined fortunes. Hatred rose up in him against the mangy, decrepit brute on the rock, the very source and image of that superstition which had made of Melathys a brigands' whore and of Bel-ka-Trazet a fugitive; had brought the Tuginda close to death and now stood between him and his love. That this wretched creature should still have power to thwart him and drag him down together with itself! As he thought of all that he had lost and all that he still might lose – probably would lose – he shut his eyes and gnawed at his wrist in his angry frustration.
'Curse you!' he cried silently in his heart. 'Curse you, Shardik, and your supposed power of God! Why don't you save us from Zeray, we who've lost all we possessed for your sake, we whom you've ruined and deceived? No, you can't save us: you can't save even the women who've served you all their lives! Why don't you die and get out of the way? Die, Shardik, die, die!'
Suddenly there came to his ear what seemed like faint sounds of human speech from somewhere within the forest. Fear came upon him, for since the night on the battlefield there had remained with him a horror of the distant voices of persons unseen. Strange sounds were these, too, mysterious and hard to account for, resembling less the voices of men than of children – crying, it seemed, in pain or distress. He sprang up and as he did so heard, louder than the voices, a heavy splashing close at hand. Looking behind him, he recoiled in terror to see the bear wading ashore at the very foot of the bank below. It was glaring up at him, shaking the water from its pelt and snarling savagely. In panic he turned and began to force his way through the undergrowth, snatching and tearing at the bushes and creepers in his way. Whether the bear was pursuing him he could not tell. He dared not look back, but plunged on over the top of the hillock, scarcely feeling the grazes and scratches which covered his limbs. Suddenly, as he forced his way through a tangle of branches, he found no ground beneath his feet. He clutched at a branch which broke under his weight, lost his balance and pitched forward down the steep bank of the creek bounding the promontory on its landward side. His forehead struck a tree-root and he rolled over and lay unconscious, supine and half-submerged in mud and shallow water. 49 The Slave-Dealer Pain, thirst, a green dazzle of light and a murmur of returning sound. Kelderek allowed his half-opened eyes to shut again and, frowning as he did so, felt something tight and rough pressed round his head. Raising one hand, he found his fingers rubbing against a band of coarse cloth and followed it round one temple, above the eyebrow. He pressed it, and pain blazed up like a flame behind his eyeballs. He moaned and let fall his hand.
Now he remembered the bear, yet felt no more fear of it. Something – what? – had already told him that the bear was gone. The daylight – what little he could endure beneath his eyelids – was older – it must be some time since he had fallen – but it was not this that had reassured him. His mind began to clear and as it did so he became aware once more of the roughness of the cloth upon his forehead. And as an ominous sound, heard first faintly at a distance and then more loudly near by, at the moment of repetition thrusts its startling meaning upon him who originally heard it with indifference, so, as Kelderek's returning senses grew keener, the significance of the cloth forced itself upon him.
He turned his head, shaded his eyes and opened them. He was lying on the bank of the creek, close to the muddy shallow into which he had fallen. The impression of his body was still plain in the mud, and the furrows evidently made by his feet as he was dragged to the spot where he now lay. On his other, shoreward side a man was sitting, watching him. As Kelderek's eyes met his the man neither spoke nor altered his gaze. He was ragged and dirty, with bristling, sandy hair and a rather darker beard, heavy eyelids and a white scar on one side of his chin. His mouth hung a little open, giving him an abstracted, pensive air and showing discoloured teeth. In one hand he was holding a knife, with the point of which he kept idly stroking and pressing the finger-tips of the other.
Kelderek smiled and, despite the stabbing pain behind his eyes, raised himself on his elbows. Spitting out mud and speaking with some difficulty, he said in Beklan,
'If it was you who pulled me out of there and put this bandage on my head, thank you. You must have saved my life.'
The other nodded twice, very slightly, but gave no other sign that he had heard. Although his eyes remained fixed on Kelderek, his attention seemed concentrated on pressing rhythmically with the knife-point the ball of each finger in mm.
'The bear's gone, then,' said Kelderek. 'What brought you here? Were you hunting or are you on a journey?'
Still the man made no reply and Kelderek, recalling that he was beyond the Vrako, cursed himself for being so foolish as to ask questions. He still felt weak and giddy, but it might pass off once he was on his feet. His best course now would be to get back to Lak before sunset and see what he was fit for after a meal and a night's sleep. He held out one hand and said, 'Will you help me up?'
After a few moments the man, without moving, said in broken but intelligible Ortelgan, 'You're a long way from your island, aren't you?' 'How did you know I'm an Ortelgan?' asked Kelderek. 'Long way,' repeated the man.
It now occurred to Kelderek to feel for the pouch in which he had been carrying the money he had brought from Zeray. It was gone and so were his food and his knife. This did not altogether surprise him, but certain other things did. Since he had robbed him, why had the man dragged him out of the creek and bound up his head? Why had he stayed to watch him and why, since he was clearly not an Ortelgan himself, had he spoken to him in Ortelgan? He said once more, tin's time in Ortelgan, 'Will you help me up?'
'Yes, get up,' said the man in Beklan, as though answering a different question. His previously half-abstracted interest seemed to have become more direct and he leaned forward alertly. Kelderek, supporting himself on one hand and beginning to draw up his left leg, felt a sudden tug at his right ankle. He looked down. Both ankles were shackled and between them ran a light chain about the length of his forearm. 'What's this?' he asked, with a sudden spurt of alarm.
'Get up,' repeated the man. He rose and took two or three steps towards Kelderek, knife in hand.
Kelderek got to his knees and then to his feet, but would have fallen if the man had not gripped him by the arm. Shorter than Kelderek, he looked up at him sharply, straddle-legged, knife held ready. After a few moments, without moving his eyes, he jerked his head to one side. 'That way,' he said in Ortelgan. 'Wait,' said Kelderek. 'Wait a moment. Tell me -'
As he spoke the man seized his left hand, jerked it forward and with the point of his knife pierced him beneath one finger-nail. Kelderek cried out and snatched his hand away.
'That way,' said the man, jerking his head once more and moving the knife here and there before Kelderek's face, so that he flinched first to one side and then to the other.
Kelderek turned and, with the man's hand on his arm, began to stumble through the mud. At each step the chain, pulled taut between his ankles, checked the natural length of his stride. Several times he tripped and at length fell into a kind of shuffle, watching the ground for any protrusion that might throw him down. The man, walking beside him, kept up a tuneless whistling through his teeth, the sound of which, intensified suddenly at random moments, made Kelderek start in anticipation of some further attack. Indeed, had it not been for this he would probably have collapsed from weakness and the nausea induced by the wound under his finger-nail.
What kind of man might this be? From his dress and ability to speak Ortelgan it seemed unlikely that he was a Yeldashay soldier. What was the explanation of his having taken the trouble to save from a swamp, in lonely country, a destitute stranger whom he had already robbed? Kelderek sucked his finger, which was oozing blood from beneath the severed nail. If the man were a maniac – and why not, beyond the Vrako? What else had Ruvit been? – all he could do was to keep alert and watch for any chance that might offer itself. But the chain would be a grave handicap and the man himself, despite his short stature, was plainly the ugliest of adversaries.
He raised his eyes at the sudden sound of voices. They could not have walked far – perhaps not much more than a bow-shot from the creek. The ground was still marshy and the forest thick. Ahead was a glade among the trees and here he could make out people moving, though he could sec no fire or any of the usual features of a camp. The man uttered a single, wordless cry – a kind of bark – but waited for no answer, merely guiding him forward as before. They had reached the glade when the chain again tripped him and Kelderek fell to the ground. The man, leaving him to lie where he had fallen, walked on.
Breathless and caked in mud, Kelderek rolled over and looked up sideways from where he lay. The place, he realized at once, was full of a considerable number of people, and in fear that after all he had once again fallen into the hands of the Yeldashay, he sat up and stared quickly about him.
Save for the man himself, now sitting a little distance away and rummaging in a leather pack, all those in the glade were children. None appeared to be more than thirteen or fourteen years old. A boy near by, with a hare-lip and sores round his chin, was staring at Kelderek with vacant, sleepy attention, as though he had just awakened. Further off, a child with a continuous twitching of the head gazed up wide-eyed, his mouth gaping in a kind of rictus of startled alarm. As Kelderek looked this way and that he realized that many of the children were blemished or deformed in one manner or another. All were thin and dirty and had about them an air of listless ill-being, like half-starved cats on a laystall. Almost all, like himself, were chained at the ankles. Of the two he could see who were not, one had a withered leg, while above the ankles of the other the cracked weals left by the removed shackles were pustulant with sores. The children sat or lay silent on the ground, one asleep, one crouching to excrete, one shivering continually, one searching the grass for insects and eating them. They imparted to the green-lit place an eerie quality, as though it were a pool and they fishes in a world of silence, each occupied entirely with his own preservation and paying no more attention to others than this might require.
The man, then, must be a slave-trader dealing in children. The number of these permitted to work in the Beklan empire had been fixed, each being authorized by Kelderek, after enquiries made of the provincial governors, to buy specified quotas at approved prices in this place and that, a second quota not being allowed to be taken from the same place until a stated period had elapsed. The traders worked through the provincial governors and under their protection, being required to satisfy them that they had taken no more than their quotas and paid the approved prices, and in return receiving, where necessary, armed escorts for their journeys to the markets at Bekla, Dari-Paltesh or Thettit-Tonilda. It seemed likely that this man, while journeying with a party of child slaves bound for Bekla, had been cut off by the Yeldashay advance and in view of the value of his stock had decided, rather than abandon them, to flee beyond the Vrako. That would account for the children's shocking condition. But which of the dealers was this? No great number of warrants had been issued and Kelderek, who, intent on learning as much as possible about the yield to be expected and the trade's taxable worth, had himself talked to most of the traders at one time or another, now tried to recall their individual faces. Of those he was able to remember, none corresponded to this man. At no time had more than seventeen authorizations been valid in the empire and of these scarcely any, once granted, had been transferred to a second holder; for who, once he had got his hands on it, would surrender so lucrative an occupation? Out of twenty names at the most he could not recall this man's. Yet surely he must be one or other of them? Or was he – and here Kelderek felt a sudden qualm of misgiving – could he be an unauthorized slaver, one of those he had been warned about and had declared liable to the heaviest penalties, who got their slaves where they could, sometimes by kidnapping, sometimes by bluff and terror in remote villages, or again by purchasing the half-witted, deformed or otherwise unwanted from those who were prepared to sell them; and, bringing them across country as little observed as possible, sold them secretly, either to the authorized dealers or else to anyone ready to buy? That such men had been operating in the empire he knew, and had known also their reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty, for unscrupulous double-dealing and taking what they could get wherever they might find it. 'All slave-traders are dealers in wretchedness,' a captured Yeldashay officer had once said to him while being questioned, 'but there are some – those of whom you pretend to know nothing – who creep about the land like filthy rats, scraping up the very dregs of misery for trifling profits; and for these, too, we hold you answerable, for he who builds a barn knows that rats will come.' Kelderek had let him talk and later, becoming still more indignant, the officer had unintentionally revealed a good deal of useful information.
Suddenly Kelderek's recollections were broken by the most unexpected of sounds – the laughter of an infant. He looked up to see a little girl, perhaps five years old, unchained, running across the glade and looking back over her shoulder at a tall, fair-haired lad. This boy, in spite of his chain, was pursuing her, evidently in sport, for he was hanging back and pretending, as people do when playing with quite little children, that she was succeeding in escaping from him. The child, though thin and pale, looked less wretched than the boys among whom she was running. She had almost reached Kelderek when she tripped and fell forward on her face The tall lad, overtaking her, picked her up, holding her in his arms and tossing her up and down to comfort her and distract her from crying. Thus occupied, he turned for a moment towards Kelderek and their eyes met.
He who catches suddenly the lilt of a song which he has not heard for years or the scent of the flowers that bloomed by the door where once he played in the dust, finds himself swept back, whether he will or no and sometimes with tears, into the depth of time past, recovering for a few moments the very feeling of being another person, upon whom life used to press with other, lighter fingers than those which he has since learned to endure. With no less a shock did Kelderek feel himself once more the Eye of God, Lord Crendrik the priest-king of Bekla; and recall on the instant the smells of fog and of smouldering charcoal, the sour taste in his mouth and the murmur from behind him as he faced the bars in the King's House, trying to gaze into eyes that he could not meet; the eyes of the condemned Elleroth. Then the fit was gone and he was staring in perplexity at a youth tossing a yellow-haired child in his arms.
At this moment the slave-dealer stood up, calling, 'Eh! Shouter! Bled! Get moving!' Leaving his pack on the ground, he strode down the length of the glade, snapping his fingers to bring the children to their feet and, without speaking again, hustling them into a group at the further end. He stopped beside the tall youth, who stood looking at him with the little girl still held in his arms. She cowered away, hiding her face, and as she did so the youth put one hand on her shoulder.
After a few moments it became plain that the slave-dealer meant to stare the boy down and subdue him without word or blow. Tense and wary, the boy returned his stare. At length, speaking in halting Beklan with a strong Yeldashay accent, he said, 'She's not strong enough to stand this much longer and there's no profit to you if she dies. Why don't you leave her outside the next village?'
The dealer drew his knife. Then, as the boy still waited for his reply, he took from his belt an iron object in the shape of two half-circles, each bluntly barbed at either end and joined together by a short bar. The boy hesitated a moment, then lowered his eyes, pressed his lips together and, still carrying the little girl, walked away to join the other children.
At the same moment a scowling youth, a little older than the rest, with a cast in one eye and a birthmark across his face, came running up to Kelderek. He was dressed in a torn leather tunic and carried a pliant stick as long as his arm.
'Come on, you too,' said the boy in a kind of savage bellow, like a peasant cursing a beast with which he has lost patience. 'Mucking get up, come on.' Kelderek got to his feet and stood looking down at him. 'What do you want me to do?' he asked.
'Don't answer me back,' shouted the boy, raising his stick. 'Get on up there, and look sharp about it, too.'
Kelderek shrugged his shoulders and went slowly towards the group of children at the far end of the glade. There must be, he reckoned, about twenty or twenty-five of them, all boys, their ages varying, as near as he could tell, from fourteen to nine or ten, though of this it was hard to be sure, their condition being so dreadful and their appearance so much more wretched than that of even the poorest children he had ever seen in Bekla or Ortelga. A smell of stale filth came from them and a cloud of flies darted back and forth above their heads. One boy, leaning against a tree-trunk, coughed continually, doubling himself up while a mucous, dysenteric flux ran down the inside of his legs. A fly settled on his ear and he struck at it. Kelderek, following the movement, saw that the lobe was pierced by a ragged hole. He looked at another of the children. His ear, too, was pierced. Puzzled, he looked at the next and the next. In each case the lobe of the right ear was pierced.
The slave-dealer, now carrying his pack, together with a heavy bow strapped to one side of it, passed him and made his way to the head of the gang. Here a second boy was waiting. He also, like the boy who had shouted at Kelderek, was carrying a stick and dressed in a leather tunic. Short and squat, he looked more like a dwarf than a child. His back was bent by some kind of curvature and his long hair covered his shoulders, perhaps to hide this deformity to some extent. As the children began to shuffle forward, following the dealer, Kelderek noticed that all lowered their eyes as they passed this dwarfish boy. The boy for his part stood staring at each in turn, leaning towards them, his body tense, his knees a little bent, as though scarcely able to restrain himself from leaping upon and striking them then and there. Feeling a touch on his back, Kelderek turned and met the eyes of the tall lad, who as he walked was holding the little girl's ankles and carrying her over his shoulder like a sack.
'Take care not to look at Bled as you pass,' whispered the lad. 'If he catches your eye he'll set upon you.' Then, as Kelderek frowned in bewilderment, he added, 'He's mad, or as good as mad.'
Heads averted, they passed the hunched figure and followed the straggling children into the forest. The pace was so slow that Kelderek, as often as it caught, was at leisure to stoop and disentangle his chain. After a little the youth whispered again, 'It's easier if you walk exactly behind the boy in front and put your feet down one directly in front of the other. The chain's less likely to catch then.' 'Who is this man?' whispered Kelderek.
'Good God, don't you know?' answered the boy. 'Genshed – you must have heard of him?'
'Once, in Kabin, I heard that name: but where is he from? He's not a Beklan slave-dealer.'
'He is – he's the worst of the lot I'd heard of him long before I dreamt I'd ever see him, let alone fall into his hands. Did you see him threaten me with the fly-trap just now, when I was trying to speak to him about Shara here?' 'The fly-trap?' replied Kelderek. 'What's that?'
'That thing he's got on his belt. It forces your mouth open -wide open – and you can't shut it. I know, it doesn't sound bad, does it? I thought that once. My father would be ashamed of me, I suppose, but I couldn't stand it again, not another two hours of it.' 'But-' 'Careful, don't let Shouter hear you.'
They fell silent as the scowling youth ran past them to disentangle the chain of a child who had tripped and was apparently too weak to release it for himself. A little later, as they began edging their way forward again, Kelderek said, 'Tell me more about this man and how you came to fall into his hands. You're a Yeldashay, aren't you?' 'My name is Radu, heir of Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid.'
Kelderek realized that he had known from the first who the boy must be. He made no reply and after a little the boy said, 'Don't you believe me?' 'Yes, I believe you. You're very like your father.' 'Why, do you know him?' 'Yes – that is, I've seen him.' 'Where? In Sarkid?' 'In Kabin.' 'Kabin of the Waters? Why, when was he there?' 'Not long ago. In fact, he may be there now.' 'With the army? You mean General Santil's in Kabin?' 'He was, a short time ago.' 'If only my father were here, he'd kill this swine in a moment.' 'Steady,' said Kelderek, for the boy's voice had risen hysterically. 'Here, let me take the little girl. You've carried her long enough.' 'She's used to me – she may cry.'
But Shara, half asleep, lay as quietly on Kelderek's shoulder as she had on Radu's. He could feel her bones. She was very light. For the twentieth time they halted, waiting for the children in front to go on.
'I heard in Kabin,' said Kelderek, 'that you'd fallen into this man's hands. How did it happen?'
'My father was away on a secret visit to General Santil – even I didn't know where he'd gone. I heard from one of our tenants that Genshed was in the province. I wondered what my father would want me to do – what he might be glad to hear I'd done when he came back. I decided not to tell my mother anything about Genshed – she'd have told me not to stir off the estate. It seemed to me that the right thing would be to go and talk to my uncle Sildain, my father's sister's husband. We always got on well together. I thought he'd know what to do. I took my own servant with me and set out.' He paused. 'And you ran into the slave-dealer?' asked Kelderek.
'I acted like a child. I can see that now. Toroc and I were resting in a wood and keeping no look-out at all. Genshed shot Toroc through the throat – he knows how to use that bow. I was still on my knees beside Toroc when Shouter and Bled rushed me and knocked me down. Genshed hadn't any idea who I was – I hadn't bothered to put on any particular clothes, you see. When I told them, Shouter was for releasing me at once, before the whole place came round their ears, but Genshed wouldn't have it. I suppose he means to get back to Terekenalt somehow and then demand a ransom. He'd get more that way than ever he could by selling me as a slave.' 'But evidently he wasn't interested in capturing your servant.'
'No, and it's strange that he's taken you. It's well-known that he deals only in children. He has his market for them, you see' 'His market?'
'In Terekenalt. You know what he does? Even the other dealers won't touch the trade he goes in for. The boys are castrated and sold to – well, to people who want to buy them. And the girls -I suppose -I suppose it must be worse for the girls.' 'But there are no girls here – only this little one with you.'
'There were girls, earlier on. I'll tell you what happened after I was captured. Genshed went on eastwards – he didn't turn back into Paltesh. We never heard why, of course, but I think probably the whole of Sarkid was up behind him, looking for me. All the routes into Paltesh must have been watched. By the time we got into eastern Lapan he had over fifty children altogether, boys and girls. There was a girl, about my age, her name was Reva – a gentle, timid kind of girl who'd never been away from home in her life. I never learned how she came to be sold to Genshed. Shouter and Bled, they used to – you know.'
'Genshed allowed that?'
'Oh, no. They weren't supposed to, of course. But he's not quite sure of them, you see. He can't do without them while he's on an expedition and besides, they know too much – they could probably find a way to turn him in if they wanted to. Genshed doesn't employ overseers, like other slave-traders. He knows a trick worth two of that. He picks out any specially cruel or heartless boys and trains them as overseers. Once he's back in Terekenalt, I believe he often gets rid of them and picks fresh ones for the next trip. Anyway, that's what I heard.' 'Why do they work for him, then?'
'Partly because it's better to be an overseer than a slave: but there's more to it than that. The boys he chooses are those he has power over, because they admire him and want to be like him.' 'And the girl you were telling me about?' 'She killed herself.' 'How?'
'It was while Bled was actually with her, one night. She managed to get his knife out of his belt. He was too busy to notice, and she stabbed herself.' 'It's a pity she didn't stab him and then run for it.'
'Reva would never have thought of that. She was helpless and beside herself.'
'Where did you cross the Vrako?' asked Kelderek. 'And how, if it comes to that?'
'We met with another slave-trader in eastern Lapan – a man called Nigon, who had an Ortelgan warrant to trade. I heard Nigon warn Genshed that Santil's army was marching northward at a great rate and he'd better get out while he could. Nigon himself meant to get back to Bekla.' 'He didn't, though. He was taken by the Yeldashay.'
'Was he? I'm glad. Well, there was no point in Genshed trying to make for Bekla. He had no warrant, you see. So he went the only way he could – into Tonilda. We went like a forest fire, but every time we stopped we heard that the Yeldashay were closer behind us.' 'How did your little girl survive?'
'She would have died in a few days, but I've carried her almost every step – I and another boy we called the Hare. I've got a lord's sworn duty to her, you see. She's the daughter of one of our tenants at home. My father would expect me to look after her at all costs; and I have.'
The boy Bled drew level with them and for a time they edged their way forward in silence. Kelderek could see the children in front plodding and stumbling with bowed heads, speechless and apathetic as beasts. When Bled walked further up the line, making his stick whistle in the air, not one raised his eyes.
'When we got close to Thettit-Tonilda, Genshed learned that the Yeldashay were due west of us already and still going north. They'd as good as cut us off from Gelt and Kabin. At Thettit he sold all the girls except Shara. He knew they wouldn't be able to survive the journey he'd planned.'
Shara stirred and whimpered on Kelderek's shoulder. Radu leant forward, caressing her, and whispered in her ear – perhaps some joke between them, for the little girl chuckled and, trying to repeat what he had said, at once returned into her light sleep. 'Have you ever been in northern Tonilda?' asked the boy. 'No -I know it's wild and lonely.'
'There are no roads and it was bitterly cold at night. We had no blankets and Genshed wouldn't light fires for fear of Yeldashay patrols. All the same, we had some bread then, and dried meat too. Only one boy collapsed. It was in the evening, and Genshed hanged him from a tree and made us stand round it until he was dead. I don't know how much he could have got for that boy, but you'd have thought he'd have left him alone for a night's rest and waited to see whether he could go on in the morning. I tell you, it isn't the money with him. He'd give his life for cruelty, I believe.' 'He got angry, I suppose – lost his temper?'
'There's no telling whether he loses his temper. His violence is like an insect's – sudden and cold, and you feel it's natural – natural to something that's less than human, something that waits quite still and then darts like lightning. Sh!'
They had come to the bank of a creek and here Shouter was urging the children one by one into the water. As each floundered forward, Genshed, standing up to his waist in the middle, caught him by the arm and pushed him towards the opposite bank, where Bled dragged him out. Kelderek, holding the little girl in his arms, slipped in the thick slime and would have' fallen if Genshed had not gripped him. The boy overseers cursed and swore at the children almost without ceasing, but Genshed uttered neither word nor sound. When at length all were across he stretched out his hand to Bled, pulled himself out and looked round among the children, snapping his fingers. Those who had lain down struggled to their feet and after a few moments the slave-dealer set off once more into the forest.
'When we actually saw the Vrako we were very much afraid. It was a raging torrent, half a bow-shot across and full of great rocks. I couldn't believe Genshed meant to cross it with thirty exhausted children.'
'But the Vrako's impassable below Rabin,' said Kelderek. 'That's common knowledge.'
'He'd planned the crossing in Thettit. He'd sent Shouter round by Kabin, dressed as a drover's boy, and given him money to bribe the guard at the ford; but apparently they just let him through. Shouter had been told to look out for us on the bend of the river, where it turns to the east; but even so it took Genshed half a day to find him. It's a very wild, desolate place, you see.' ' But what was the plan?'
'Genshed had bought a great length of tarred twine in Thettit and a furlong of Ortelgan rope. He cut the rope into lengths and we all had to carry them on the journey. He married the lengths together again himself – it took him a day and a half. He was very thorough. When everything was ready he shot an arrow across the river with one end of the twine fastened to it. Then he bound the rope to the twine and Shouter pulled it across and made it fast. It was as much as ever he could do, though, because of the current. They made the rope as taut as they could by twisting wooden stakes into it on either side and hammering them into the ground. What with the current and the weight of the rope, it wasn't anything like taut, but that was how we crossed the Vrako.'
Kelderek said nothing, imagining the deafening sound of the torrent and the terrified, exhausted children stumbling down the bank.
'Seven of us were drowned. The Hare was drowned – he lost his hold and went under like a stone. I never saw him come up again. When I was half-way across I felt sure I was going to lose hold myself.' 'Shara?'
'That was it I had her wrists tied together round my neck. I'd made a sort of tube from a rolled-up strip of bark and put it in her mouth, to give her a chance of breathing if her head went under water. But of course she got frightened and began to struggle and that nearly finished us both. I'll take her back now.*
Kelderek gave him the child and Radu rocked her in his arms, humming very quietly, his mouth close to her ear. After some time he went on,
'What I've learned – what I've learned is how strong an evil man becomes. Genshed's strong because he's evil. Evil protects him, so that he can do its work. In a few days you'll come to see what I mean.' He paused, and then added, 'But Genshed's not the only one to blame for our misery.' 'Why-who else?' 'The enemy; the Ortelgans, who revived the slave trade.' 'They didn't give Genshed a warrant.'
'No, but what did they think would happen? If you let in dogs you let in fleas.'
Kelderek made no reply and for a long time they continued their shuffling snail's pace behind the children, stooping every few yards to free their dragging chains. At last Radu said, 'You're sure that General Santil's army's in Kabin?' 'Yes -1 came from there.' 'And you actually saw my father there?' 'Yes, I did.'
They bent their heads to pass Bled, standing with knees bent and stick half-raised in his hand. It was not until he had overtaken them and was some way ahead that Kelderek spoke again. 'It must be near sunset. When does he halt as a rule?' 'Are you tired?' asked Radu.
'I'm still dizzy from this wound in my head, and my finger's very painful. Genshed drove-his knife under the nail.'
'I've seen him do that more than once,' said Radu. 'Let me have a look. That ought to be tied up.' He tore a strip from his rags and bound it round Kelderek's finger. 'We may have a chance to wash it later. I doubt he'll go much further tonight.'
'Have you any idea why Genshed should want to keep me?' asked Kelderek. 'You told me he killed your servant and that he deals only in children. Has he taken any other grown men or women that you know of?'
'No, not one. But whatever his reason is, it will be a cunning and evil one.'
Soon after, they halted in a muddy strip of open land extending as far as the shore of the Telthearna on their right. Kelderek reckoned that since his capture they might have covered perhaps six miles. He guessed that Genshed must be making for Linsho, and that when he had bought his way through the Gap he would turn west for Terekenalt, either by water or by land. If he himself could not contrive to escape before that journey was well under way, then Melathys would be lost to him for ever and in all probability he would never even learn her fate or that of the Tuginda.
At the order to halt, almost all the children sank down wherever they happened to be. A few fell asleep immediately. One or two crouched, talking together in whispers. None except Shara showed the least energy or spirit. She had woken and was wandering here and there, picking up bright leaves and coloured pebbles that took her fancy. When she brought these back to Radu he made a kind of collar of leaves, in the manner of a daisy-chain, and hung it round her neck. Kelderek, sitting beside them, was trying to make friends with the little girl – for she seemed half-afraid of him – when suddenly, looking up, he saw Genshed approaching, with Shouter and Bled behind him. The slave-dealer was carrying some kind of implement wrapped in a handful of rags. The three passed behind Kelderek and he had already turned back to Shara when he felt himself seized by the shoulders and thrown backwards to the ground. His arms were pulled out on either side of his body and he cried out as Genshed and Bled knelt on the muscles. Bending over him, the slave-dealer said, 'Open your mouth or I'll knock your teeth out'
Kelderek obeyed, gasping, and as he did so caught a glimpse of Shouter, clutching his ankles and grinning up at Genshed. The slave-dealer forced his handful of rags into Kelderek's mouth and pulled off the bandage tied round his head. 'Right, get on with it,' he said to Bled. 'Turn his head this way.'
Bled twisted Kelderek's head to the left and immediately he felt the lobe of his right ear sharply pinched, then crushed and pierced. A spurt of excruciating pain shot down his neck and along his shoulder. His whole body convulsed, almost throwing off the two boys. When he came to himself, all three had released him and were walking away.
Kelderek pulled the rags out of his mouth and put his hand to his ear. His fingers came away bloody and blood was dripping over his shoulder. The lobe was pierced through. He bent his head, breathing deeply as the worst of the pain began to subside. Looking up, he saw Radu beside him. The boy thrust aside his long, matted hair and showed him his own pierced ear.
'I didn't warn you,' said Radu. 'You're not a child and I wasn't sure whether he'd do it to you or not.' Kelderek, biting on his hand, recovered himself sufficiently to speak. ' What is it – a slave-mark?'
'It's for si – for si – for sleeping,' muttered a white-faced, blinking boy near by. 'Yer, yer, ycr – for sleeping.' He laughed vacantly, closed his eyes and laid his head on his folded hands in a foolish pantomime.
'Goin' home s-soon,' he said suddenly, opening his eyes again and turning to Radu.
'All the way,' replied Radu, in the tone of one who takes up a catch-phrase.
'Underground,' concluded the boy. 'You hungry?' Radu nodded and the boy returned to his listless silence.
'At night they pass a chain through everyone's ears,' said Radu. 'Shouter told me once that every child who's ever been through Genshed's hands has a pierced ear.'
He got up and went to look for Shara, who had run to hide in the bushes at the slave-trader's approach.
Soon after, Shouter and Bled distributed to each child a handful of dried meat and one of dried fruit. Some of the children went as far as the river for water, but most merely drank from the dirty holes and reed patches round about. As Kelderek and Radu, together with Shara, were making their way towards the river, Shouter came up to them, stick in hand.
' 'Got to keep an eye on you,' he said to Kelderek with a kind of malicious amiability. 'Making yourself at home, are you? Enjoying yourself? That's right.'
Kelderek had already noticed that while all the children went in terror of Bled, who was obviously deranged and almost a maniac, several seemed to be on some kind of uncertain terms with Shouter, who from time to time – whether or not he was actually engaged in cruelty – assumed a certain bluffness of manner not uncommon among bullies and tyrants.
'Can you tell me why I'm here?' he asked. 'What use am I to Genshed?'
Shouter sniggered. 'You're here to be mucking sold, mate,' he said. 'Without your balls, I dare say.'
'What happened to the overseer you replaced?' asked Kelderek. 'I suppose you knew him?' 'Knew him? I killed him,' answered Shouter. 'Oh, did you?'
'He was all in when we got back to Terekenalt, wasn't he?' said Shouter. 'He'd gone to pieces. One day a girl from Dari scratched his mucking face to bits. He couldn't stop her. That night, when Genshed was drunk, he said if anyone could fight him and kill him he could have the job. I killed him all right – strangled him in the middle of Genshed's yard, with about fifty kids watching. Old Genshed was tickled to death. That's how I kept my balls, mate, see?'
They reached the river bank and Kelderek, wading in to the knees, drank and washed. Yet his body remained full of pain. As he thought of his own situation and that of Melathys and the Tuginda, despair overcame him and during their return he could find no spirit for any further attempt at talk with Shouter. The boy himself also seemed to have grown pensive, for he said no more, except to order Radu to pick up Shara and carry her.
In the half-light and rising mist Genshed stood snapping his fingers to summon one boy and another. As each approached and stood in front of him the slave-dealer examined eyes, ears, hands, feet and shackles, as well as any wounds and injuries that he came upon. Although many of the children were lacerated and two or three seemed on the point of collapse, none received any treatment and Kelderek concluded that Genshed was merely looking over his stock and assessing their capacity to go further. The children stood motionless, heads bent and hands at their sides, anxious only to be gone as soon as possible. One boy, who trembled continually, flinching at each movement of Genshed, was left to stand where he was while the dealer looked at others immediately behind his back. Another, who could not keep quiet, but kept muttering and picking at the sores on his face and shoulders, was silenced by means of the fly-trap until Genshed had done with him.
Shouter and Bled, receiving the boys as they left the slave-dealer, fastened them together in threes or fours by thin chains drawn through the lobes of their ears. Each chain was secured at one end to a short metal bar, the other being hooked to the belt or wrist of an overseer. When these preparations were complete, all lay down to sleep where they were on the marshy ground.
Kelderek, chained like the rest, had been separated from Radu and lay between two much younger boys, expecting every moment that a movement by one or the other would pull the chain-links through his wounded lobe like the teeth of a saw. Soon, however, he realized that his companions, more practised than he in making misery bearable, were less likely to trouble him than he them. They stirred seldom and had learned the trick of moving their heads without tightening the chain. After a little he found that both had moved close to him, one on either side.
'Not used to this yet, are you?' whispered one of the children in a broad Paltcsh argot that he could barely understand.* 'Buy you today, did he?' 'He didn't buy me. He found me in the forest – yes, it was today.'
' 'Thought as much. You smell of fresh meat – new ones often do, 'doesn't last long.' He broke off, coughing; spat on the ground between them and then said, 1 'Trick's to lie close together. It's warmer, and it keeps the chain slack, see, then anybody moves it don't pull.'
Both children were verminous and scratched continually at the sodden, filthy rags covering their thin bodies. Soon, however, Kelderek was no longer aware of their smell, but only of the mud in which he was lying and the throbbing of his wounded finger. To distract his thoughts he whispered to the boy, 'How long have you been with this man?' 1 'Reckon nearly two month now. 'Bought me in Darl' 'Bought you? Who from?'
'My stepfather. Father was killed with General Gel-Ethlin when I was very small. Mother took up with this man last winter and he didn't like me, only Fm dirty, see? Soon as the dealers come he sold me.' 'Didn't your mother try to stop it?' 'No,' answered the boy indifferently.' 'Suppose you had food, had you, only he took it away?' 'Yes.'
'Shouter said almost no bloody mucking food left,' whispered the little boy.' 'Said they'd reckoned to buy some before this, only there's no mucking place to buy it here.'
'Why did Genshed come into this forest, do you know?' asked Kelderek. 'Soldiers, Shouter said.' 'What soldiers?1
'Don't know. Only he don't like soldiers. That's why he put the rope across the river; get away from the soldiers. You hungry, are you?' 'Yes.'
He tried to sleep, but there was no quiet The children whimpered, talked in their sleep, cried out in nightmare. The chains rattled, something moved among the trees, Bled leapt suddenly to his feet, chattering like an ape and wrenching every chain fastened to him. Raising his head, Kelderek could see the hunched figure of the slave-dealer a little distance off, his arms clasped about his knees. He did not look like a man seeking sleep. Was he – like Kelderek himself – conscious of the danger of wild animals, or was it, perhaps, possible that he had no need of sleep – that he never slept?
At length he fell into a doze, and when he woke – after how long he could not tell – realized that the child beside him was weeping, almost without noise. He put out his hand and touched him. The weeping stopped at once.
"There's a lot can happen yet,* whispered Kelderek. 'Were you thinking of your mother?' 'No,' replied the boy. "bout Sirit' 'Who's Sirit?* 'Girl was with us.' 'What's happened to her?' 'Gone to Leg-By-Lee.' 'Leg-By-Lee? Where's that?' 'Don't know.' 'Then how do you know she's gone there?' The boy said nothing. 'What is Leg-By-Lee? Who told you about it?' 'Where they go, see?' whispered the boy. 'Only anyone goes, we say they've gone to Leg-By-Lee.' 'Is it far away?' 'Don't know.' 'Well, if I managed to run away and he brought me back tomorrow, would I have gone to Leg-By-Lee?' 'No.' 'Why not?' ' 'Cause you don't come back from Leg-By-Lee.' 'You mean Sirit's dead?' 'Don't know.'
They fell silent. A man may be forced to set out into bitter cold, and in the very act of doing so be conscious that the future is desperate and his chance of survival small. Yet this mere reflection, coming at that moment, will not of itself be enough to break his spirit or penetrate his heart with despair. It is as though he still carried, wrapped about the core of his courage, a residue of protecting faith and warmth which must first be penetrated and dispelled, little by little, hour after hour, perhaps day after day, by solitude and cold, until the last remnants are dispersed and the dreadful truth, which at the outset he perceived only with his mind, he feels in his body and fears in his heart. So it was with Kelderek. Now, in the night, with the sharp, ugly noises of wretchedness all around him and the pain crawling about his body like cockroaches in a dark house, he seemed to step down, to review his situation from an even lower level, to feel more deeply and perceive more clearly its nature, devoid of all real hope. He believed, now, in the prospect before him – the passage of Linsho and the long journey up the Telthearna, actually passing Quiso and Ortelga, to Terekenalt; and then slavery, preceded perhaps by the vile mutilation of which Shouter had spoken. Worst of all was the loss of Melathys and the thought that they would remain ignorant for ever of each other's fates. It was Shardik who had brought him to this – Shardik who had pursued him with supernatural malevolence, avenging all that his priest-king had done to abuse and exploit him. He was justly accursed of Shardik, and in his punishment had involved not only Melathys but the Tuginda herself – she who had done all she could, in the face of every obstacle put in her way, to preserve the worship of Shardik from betrayal. With this bitter reflection he once more fell asleep. 50 Radu When he woke it was sunrise: and as he stirred, a centipede as long as his hand, dark-red and sinuous, undulated smoothly away from beneath his body. Shouter was drawing out the chains and coiling them into his pack. The forest was raucous with the calling of birds. Already, where the sun shone, the ground was steaming, and everywhere flies buzzed about patches of night-soil and urine. A boy close by coughed without ceasing and all around the children raised their thin voices in foul language and oaths. Two boys lay quarrelling over a fragment of leather which one had stolen from the other, until Bled's stick brought them cursing to their feet.
Shouter gave out small handfuls of dried fruit and watched while they were eaten, his stick ready against any snatching or fighting. He winked at Kelderek and slipped him a second handful. 'Mind you eat it yourself, too,' he whispered, 'mucking quick.'
'Is that all until tonight?' answered Kelderek, appalled at the thought of the day's march.
'It's nigh all there is left anyway,' said Shouter, still keeping his voice down. 'He says there's no more to be had until we get to Linsho, and that's supposed to be tomorrow evening. I reckon he didn't know what this place was going to be like. We'll be lucky to get out alive.'
Kelderek, looking quickly to either side, whispered, 'I could get you out alive.'
Without waiting for an answer, he shuffled away to where Radu was feeding Shara from his own handful.
'You can't afford to do that,' he said. 'You've got to keep up your own strength if you want to be able to look after her.'
'I've done it before,' answered Radu. 'I'll be all right as long as she is.' He turned back to the little girl. 'We're going home soon, aren't we?' he said. 'You're going to show me the new calf, aren't you, when we get home?'
'All the way, underground,' said a boy standing near; but Shara only nodded and fell to making patterns with her stones.
Soon they began to move off, following Genshed towards the river bank. Once there the slave-trader turned upstream, making his way along the open, pebbly shore.
Now that they were no longer among the close trees and he could see the whole column, Kelderek understood, as he had not on the previous day, why their progress was so much interrupted and so slow. What he saw was an exhausted rabble, which surely could not be far from complete disintegration. Continually, one child or another would stop, leaning face forwards against a rock or bank and, when Bled or Shouter came up to threaten him, only staring back as though too much stupefied even to feel fear. From time to time a boy would fall and Genshed, Shouter or Bled would pull him to his feet and slap him or dash water in his face. The slave-dealer himself seemed well aware of the perishable condition of his stock. He was sparing with blows and called frequent halts, allowing the children to drink and bathe their feet. Once, when Bled, in a frenzy of rage, set about a boy who was fumbling and hesitating at the foot of a pile of rocks, he cuffed him away with a curse, asking where he thought he could sell a dead slave.
Later, as he and Radu lay gazing out across the glittering, noonday river, Kelderek, carefully keeping his voice low, said, 'Shouter must know that he's got all he ever can out of Genshed. Surely he must fear returning to Terckenalt? The best thing he could do would be to cut and run, and take us with him. I know how to survive in this sort of country. I could save his life and ours if only I could persuade him to trust me. Do you think Genshed's made him some promise?'
For a time Radu answered nothing, looking sideways into the shallows and stroking Shara's hands. At length he said, 'Genshed means more to him than you think. He's converted him, you see.' 'Converted him?'
'That's why I'm afraid of Genshed. I know we all fear his cruelty, but I fear more than that.'
'You mustn't let him break your spirit,' said Kelderek. 'He's nothing but a contemptible brute – a sneak thief – mean and stupid.'
'He was once,' answered Radu, 'but that was before he got the power he prayed for.' 'What do you mean? What power?' 'Where he's concerned, it's no longer a matter of thieves and honest men,' said Radu. 'He's gone beyond that. Once he was nothing but a cruel, nasty slum-creeper. But evil's made him strong. He's paid its price, and in return he's been given its power. You don't feel it yet, but you will. He's been granted the power to make others evil – to make them believe in the strength of evil, to inspire them to become as evil as himself. What he offers is the joy of evil, not just money, or safety, or anything that you and I could understand. He can make some people want to devote their lives to evil. That's what he did to Bled, only Bled wasn't up to it and it drove him mad. Shouter – he was just a poor, deserted boy, sold away from his home. It's not a question of how long he'll last with Genshed or what he'll get. He admires him – he wants to give him everything he's got – he isn't thinking about rewards. He wants to spend his life beating and hurting and terrifying. He knows he's not much good at it yet, but he hopes to improve.'
Their hunger was like a mist in the air between them. Kelderek, looking about him for Shara, caught sight of her kneeling beside a pool a little way off and pulling out long strips of bright-yellow and dark-red weed, which she laid side by side on the stones.
'All this is only your fancy, you know,' he said. 'You're lightheaded with hunger and hardship.'
'I'm light-headed, that's true enough,' answered Radu. 'But I can see more clearly for that. If you don't think it's true, you wait and see.'
He nodded towards Shara. 'It's for her sake that I've not given in,' he said. 'Genshed wanted me to become an overseer in place of Bled. Bled's become a nuisance to him – he can't be relied on not to cripple boys or kill them. He's killed three boys since Lapan, you know.'
'If you became an overseer, mightn't it give you a chance to escape?' 'Perhaps – from anyone but Genshed.'
'But did he only try to talk you into becoming an overseer? Didn't he threaten you? You told me he once used the fly-trap on you.'
'That was because I hit Shouter to stop him interfering with Shara. Genshed would never threaten a boy to make him become an overseer. A boy who's going to become an overseer has got to want to do it. He's got to admire Genshed of his own accord and want to live up to him. Of course Genshed wants the ransom money for me, but if he could persuade me to become an overseer, that would mean even more to him, I believe. He wants to feel he's had a hand in making a nobleman's son as evil as himself.'
'But as long as he doesn't threaten you, surely there's no question of your giving in to him?'
Radu paused, as though hesitating before confiding in Kelderek. Then he said deliberately, 'God's given in. Either that or He's got no power over Genshed. I'll tell you something that I shall never forget. Before Thettit there was a boy with us – a big, shambling lad called Bellin. He could never have crossed the Vrako; he was clumsy and a bit simple. Genshed put him up for sale along with the girls. The man who bought him told Genshed he wanted to make him a professional beggar. He kept several, he said, and lived off what they brought in. He wanted Bellin mutilatcd, to excite pity when he was begging. Genshed hacked off Bellin's hands and held his wrists in boiling pitch to stop the bleeding. He charged the man forty-three meld. He said that was his rate for that particular job.'
Turning aside, he tore a handful of leaves from a bush and began to cat them. After a moment Kelderek copied him. The leaves were sour and fibrous and he chewed them voraciously.
'Come on! Come on!' bawled Shouter, slapping at the surface of the shallows with his stick. 'Get on your mucking feet! Linsho -that's where the grub is, not here!' Radu stood up, swayed a moment and stumbled against Kelderek.
'It's the hunger,' he said. 'It'll pass off in a moment.' He called to Shara, who came running, with a long strip of coloured weed wound like a torque round one thin arm. 'If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that hunger's a form of torture. If there's more food for overseers than slaves when we get to Linsho, I might become an overseer yet. Cruelty and evil – they're not very far down in anyone. It's only a matter of digging them up, you know.' 51 The Gap of Linsho Later, in the afternoon, they came to a wide bend in the river and Genshed once more struck inland to cut across the peninsula. The humid heat of the forest became a torment. The children, some of whom lacked energy even to brush the flies from their faces, were ordered to come close together and to grasp each his neighbour's shoulder, so that they inched onward like some ghastly pack of purblind cripples, many keeping closed their insect-blackened eyes. The boy in front of Kelderek kept up a low, rhythmic sobbing -'Ah-hoo! Ah-hoo!' – until at length Bled flew at him, uttering a stream of curses and jabbing at his legs with the point of his sdek. The boy fell, bleeding, and Genshed was forced to call a halt while he staunched his wounds. This done, he sat down with his back against a tree, whistling through his teeth and rummaging in the depths of his pack. On an impulse Kelderek went up to him.
'Can you tell me why you've taken me prisoner and how much you hope to get out of it? I can promise you a large sum to release me – more than you'd get for selling me as a slave.'
Genshed did not look up and made no reply. Kelderek bent down, stooping over the slave-trader's sandy hair and speaking more urgently.
'You can believe what I say. I'm offering you more than you could get for me in any other way. I'm not what I seem. Tell me how much you want to let me go.'
Genshed closed his pack and rose slowly to his feet, wiping his sweating hands along his thighs. Some of the children near by looked up, waiting apprehensively for the snap of his fingers. He did not look at Kelderek, who had the odd impression that he heard and did not hear him, as a man might ignore a dog's barking while deep in thoughts of his own affairs.
'You can believe me,' persisted Kelderek. 'At Ortelga, which I suppose you mean to pass, I -'
Suddenly, with the speed of a fish taking its prey, Genshed's hand shot upwards and gripped the pierced lobe of Kelderek's ear between finger and thumb. As his thumb-nail dug into the wound Kelderek shrieked and tried to clutch his wrist. Before he could do so, the slave-dealer drove his knee into his groin, at the same time releasing his ear to allow him to double up and fall to the ground. Then, stooping, he picked up his pack, put his arms through the straps and hoisted it behind his shoulders.
Two or three of the children tittered uncertainly. One threw a stick at Kelderek. Genshed, still with an air of abstraction, snapped his fingers and, as the children began pulling one another up and Shouter set up his usual bawling, walked away to the head of the line and nodded for the first boy to lay hold of his belt. Kelderek opened his eyes to find Shara looking down at him.
'He hurt you, didn't he?' she said, speaking in a kind of Yeldashay patois.
He nodded and climbed heavily to his feet.
'He hurts us all,' she said. 'One day he's going away. Radu told me.' Pain and hunger swirled in him as stirred mud clouds a pool.
'Radu told me,' she repeated. 'Here's a red stone, look, and I've got a blue one, kind of a blue one. Arc you hungry? You find caterpillars, can you? Radu finds caterpillars.'
Shouter came up, took hold of Kelderek's hand and put it on Radu's shoulder in front of him.
An hour later they regained the shore and halted for the night, Kelderek found that he could form little idea of how far they might have gone during the day. Ten miles at the most, he supposed. Tomorrow Genshed meant to pass the Gap of Linsho. Would there be food, and would they rest? Surely Genshed could see that they must rest. Hunger closed down upon his mind as rain blots out the view across a plain. His thoughts, sliding like wet fingers, could compass nothing. Would there be food at Linsho? Would there, for a time, be no more shuffling, no more stooping to free the chain? Genshed might refrain from hurting him at Linsho, the pain in his finger would grow less. These were things to hope for – but he must try to look beyond these – consider – must consider what was best to be done – 'What are you thinking?' asked Radu. Kelderek tried to laugh, and tapped his head. 'Where I was born, they used to say, "You can tap on the wood, but will the insects run out? " ' 'Where was that?' He hesitated. 'Ortelga. But it doesn't matter now.' After a pause, Radu said, 'If ever you get back there-' 'All the way, underground,' said Kelderek. 'You know what we mean when we say that?'
Shara came running towards them along the bank. She took Radu's hand, chattering faster than Kelderek could understand and pointing in the direction she had come from. A little way off, a thick tangle of creepers, covered with gaudy, trumpet-like flowers, hung like a curtain between the foreshore and the forest. Looking where Shara pointed, they saw that the whole mass was tremulous, shaking slightly but rapidly, vibrant with some strange, unexplained energy of its own. There was no bird or beast to be seen, yet along an expanse as broad as a hut-wall the leaves and blooms quivered spasmodically and the long tendrils undulated with a kind of light, quick violence. The little girl, frightened yet fascinated, stared from behind Radu's shoulder. One or two of the other children gathered about them, also gazing curiously. Radu himself was plainly uncertain whether some strange creature might not be about to appear. Kelderek picked the little girl up in his arms.
'There's nothing to be afraid of,' he said. 'I'll show you, if you like. It's only a hunting mantis – several, probably.'
Radu followed them along the bank. At close quarters the flowers of the creeper gave off a heavy fragrance and great moths, their dark-blue wings broad as the palm of a man's hand, were coming and going in the dusky air. High up, beneath an open bloom, one of these was struggling in the grip of a mantis crouched for prey among the flowers. They could see the long, crural shape of the insect half-hidden in the leaves, its front legs clutching the moth, which it had evidently seized as it hovered at the bloom. Its head turned this way and that with an eerie suggestion of intelligence as it followed the frenzied tugging of its victim, so violent that both the mantis and the surrounding creeper to which it was clinging were shaken in a rhythm light and rapid as the beating of the wings themselves. As often as the moth weakened, the mantis would pull it towards its jaws and again the struggle would break out. As Kelderek and Shara watched, a second moth was caught beneath a bloom some yards away, but after a few seconds tore itself clear, the mantis, as its hold was broken, being jerked forward among the leaves below its perch. Meanwhile the first moth faltered, its beautiful wings ceased at last to beat and in an instant the mantis had pulled it in and begun to devour it. The severed wings, first one and then the other, fluttered to the ground.
'Come back out of there, damn you!' cried Shouter, striding towards them along the bank. 'What the hell d'you think you're doing?'
'Don't worry,' answered Radu, as they returned and joined the other children already crowding round Shouter for their handfuls of food. 'We'd hardly get far, you know.'
Darkness fell and the children, lying down for the night, were once more chained through the ears. Kelderek, separated from Radu as before, found himself at the inner end of a chain, on one side of him Shouter himself and on the other the child who had been savaged by Bled during the afternoon. In the dark the latter resumed his steady, monotonous sobbing, but Shouter, if he heard, presumably thought that no entertainment could be derived from trying to stop him. After a time Kelderek stretched out his hand to the boy, but he only shrank away and, after a few moments' silence, began to sob more loudly. Still Shouter said nothing and Kelderek, afraid of what he might do and too much exhausted and dispirited to persevere with his clumsy attempts at comfort, let his pity and the other fragments of his thoughts dissolve into sleep while the mosquitoes, unhindered, fastened on his limbs.
The old woman of Gelt came hobbling slowly up the shore, her rags speckled in the half-moon's light, her feet noiseless on the stones. Kelderek watched her approach, puzzled at first but then, recognizing her, acquiescent in the knowledge that she was the creature of a dream. Gently, she drew the chain from his car and he even seemed to feel the pain as the links passed one by one through the enflamed, tender lobe. Then she remained kneeling above him, looking down and mumbling with her sunken mouth.
' 'Think no one sees, they think no one sees,' she whispered. 'But God sees.' 'What is it, grandmother?' asked Kelderek. 'What's happened?'
She was carrying the dead child in her arms, as she had carried it years before, but now it was closely wrapped, muffled from head to foot. It was nothing but a shape under her cloak.
'I'm looking for the governor-man from Bekla,' she said, 'I'm going to tell him – only it's a long time now -'
'You can tell me,' he said. 'I'm the governor-man from Bekla: and all this misery is my doing, all of it.'
'Ah,' she said. 'Ah. Bless you, sir, bless you. Look here, sir, yes, at that rate you'll want to.'
She laid her burden on the ground. The wrappings were fastened at the head with the chain from his ear, but this she unwound, coiling it away and drawing apart the covering round the face.
The eyes were dosed, the checks lustreless and waxen; but the dead child lying on the stones was Melathys. Her lips were a little apart, but nothing stirred the leaf which the old woman held to them. Weeping, he looked up, and saw under her ragged hood that she was Rantzay.
'She's not dead, Rantzay!' he cried. 'Wake her, Rantzay, you must wake her!'
Rantzay made no reply, and as her lean fingers grasped and shook his shoulder he understood that she too was dead. He writhed away from her, filled with a dreadful sense of loss and desolation. 'Wake! Come on, wake!'
It was Shouter's face above his own, whispering urgently, foetid breath stinking, itching of insect bites, stones sharp under the spine and the faint light of day stealing into the sky beyond the Telthearna. Whimpering of the children in sleep and clicking of chains against the stones. 'It's me, you mucking idiot. Don't make a noise. I've pulled the chain out your car. If you don't want to go to Terekenalt, then come on, for God's sake!'
Kelderek got up. His skin felt a single sheet of irritant bites and the river swam before his eyes. Still half in his dream, he looked round for the dead body in the shallows, but it was gone. He took a step forward, slipped and fell on the stones. Someone else, neither Rantzay nor Shouter, was speaking. 'What were you doing, Shouter, eh?' 'Nothing,' answered Shouter. 'Took his chain out, have you? Where were you going?1 'He wanted to shit, didn't he? 'Think I'm going to let him shit up against me?'
Genshed made no reply, but drew his knife and began pressing the point against the ball first of one finger and then of another. After a few moments he opened his clothes and urinated over Shouter, the boy standing still as a post while he did so. 'Remember Kevenant, do you?' murmured Genshed.
'Kevenant?' said Shouter, his voice cracking with incipient hysteria. 'What's Kevenant got to do with it? Who's talking about Kevenant?'
'Remember what he looked like, do you, when we were finished with him?'
Shouter made no answer, but as Genshed took the lobe of his ear between one finger and thumb he was seized with an uncontrollable trembling.
'Sec, you're just a silly little boy, Shouter, aren't you?' said Genshed, twisting slowly, so that Shouter sank to his knees on the stones. 'Just a silly little boy, aren't you?' 'Yes,' whispered Shouter. The point of the knife brushed along his closed eyelid and he tried to draw back his head, but was stopped by the twisting of his ear. 'See all right, Shouter, can you?' 'Yes.' 'Sure you can see all right?' 'Yes! Yes!' 'Sec what I mean, can you?' 'Yes!' 'Only I get everywhere, don't I, Shouter? If you were over there, I'd be there too, wouldn't I?' 'Yes.' 'Do your work all right, Shouter, can you?' 'Yes, I can! Yes, I can!'
'Funny, I thought perhaps you couldn't. Like Kevenant.'
'No, I can! I can! I treat 'em worse than Bled does. They're all afraid of me!'
'Keep still, Shouter. I'm going to do you a favour. I'm just going to clean under your nails with the point of my knife. Only I wouldn't want my hand to slip.'
The sweat ran down Shouter's face, over his upper lip, over his lower lip bitten between his teeth, over his slobbered chin. When at last Genshed released him and walked away, sheathing the knife at his belt, he pitched forward into the shallows, but was up again in a moment. In silence he washed himself, threaded the chain back through Kelderek's ear, fastened it to his belt and lay down.
Half an hour later Genshed himself distributed the last of the food; crumbs and fragments shaken from the bottom of the pack.
'The next lot's in Linsho, understand?' said Shouter to Radu. 'You see to it that they all understand that. Either we get to mucking Linsho today or we start eating each other.'
Kelderek was combing Shara's hair between his fingers and searching her head for lice. Although he had eaten what he had been given, he now felt so faint and tortured with hunger that he could no longer collect his wits. The figure of Melathys lying dead seemed to hover continually in the tail of his eye, and as often as it appeared he turned his head quickly, fumbling and clutching with his hands, until Shara grew impatient and wandered away up the shore.
'Someone stole her coloured stones after we were unchained this morning,' said Radu.
Kelderek did not answer, having suddenly made the important discovery of the futility of wasting energy in speech. Speech, he now realized, involved so much unprofitable effort – thinking of words, moving lips to utter them, listening to a reply and grasping what it meant – that it was an altogether foolish thing on which to squander one's strength. To stand upright, to walk, to disentangle the chain, to remember to avoid catching Bled's eye – these were the things for which energy needed to be stored.
They were moving again, to be sure, for that was his chain clicking on the stones. But this walking was not the same. How was it different? In what way had they all changed? In his mind's eye he seemed to look down on them from above as they wound their way along the shore. Hither and thither they went, like ants over a stone, but much slower; like torpid beetles in autumn, on their clambering journeys up and down the long miles of grass-stems. And now indeed he perceived plainly, though without concern, what had befallen. They had become part of the insect world, where all was simple; and from henceforth would simply be lived, untroubled by conscious volition. They needed no speech, no feelings, no hearing, no awareness one of another. For days at a time they would even require no food. They would not know whether they were ugly or beautiful, happy or unhappy, good or bad, for these terms had no meaning. Appetite and satiety, scuttling energy and motionless torpor, ferocity and helplessness – these were their poles. Their short lives would soon end, prey to winter, prey to larger creatures, prey to one another; but this too was a matter of no regard.
Still fascinated and preoccupied by this new insight, he found himself climbing over some obstacle that had almost tripped him. Something fairly heavy and smooth, though yielding. Something with sticks in it – a bundle of rags with sticks in it, no, his chain had caught, bend down, now it was free, yes, of course, the obstacle was a human body – that was the head, there – now he had climbed over it, it was gone and the stones had returned as before. He closed his eyes against the glitter of the river and set himself doggedly to the task of keeping upright and taking steps; one step, another step, another. Suddenly a cry sounded from behind him. ' Stop! Stop!'
Like a bubble out of dark ooze, his mind rose slowly into the former world of hearing, of seeing, of comprehension. He turned, to perceive Radu, with Shara beside him, kneeling over a body on the stones. Several of the boys, startled as he had been by the cry, had stopped and were moving uncertainly towards them. From somewhere in front Shouter was yelling, 'What the muck's happened?'
He limped back. Radu was supporting the boy's head on one arm and splashing water over his face. It was the boy whom Bled had savaged the day before. His eyes were closed and Kelderek could not make out whether he was breathing or not.
'You walked over him,' said Radu. 'You walked over his body. Didn't you feel it?'
'Yes – no. I didn't know what I was doing,' answered Kelderek dully.
Shara touched the boy's forehead and tried to pull the rags together across his chest.
'Tumbled down, didn't he?' she said to Radu. 'He hasn't got a chain,' she went on, in a kind of song, 'He hasn't got a chain, To go to Leg-By-Lee -' Then, breaking off as she saw Genshed coming towards them, 'Radu, he's coming!'
Genshed stopped beside the boy, stirred him with his foot, dropped on one knee, rolled back one eyelid and felt the heart. Then he stood up, looked round at the other boys and jerked his head. They moved away and Genshed faced Kelderek and Radu across the body.
As fire is stopped by the bank of a river, as the growth of the vine's tendrils is halted by the onset of winter, so their compassion faltered and died before Genshed. He said nothing, his presence sufficient to focus, like a lens, in a single point, their sense of helplessness to aid or comfort the boy. How futile was their pity, for what could it effect? Genshed lay all about them: in their own exhaustion, in this forest wilderness lacking food or shelter, in the glittering river hemming them in, the empty sky. He said nothing, allowing his presence to lead them to their own conclusion – that they were merely wasting their tiny remaining store of energy. When he snapped his fingers their eyes fell and, with Shara beside them, they followed the boys: nor did they trouble to look back. They and Genshed were now entirely of one mind.
A short distance along the shore, Shouter had called a halt. They lay down among the children, but none questioned them. Genshed returned, washed his knife in the water and then, ordering Bled to remain in charge, took Shouter with him and disappeared upstream. Returning half an hour later, he at once led the way inland among the woods.
As evening began to fall they stumbled their way up a long, gradual slope, the forest round them growing more open as they went. Between the trees Kelderek could see a red, westering sun and this, he found, awoke in him a dull surprise. Pondering, he realized that since leaving Lak he had not once seen the sun after midday. They must now be upon the forest's northern edge.
At the top of the slope, Genshed waited until the last of the children had come up before beginning to push through the undergrowth on the forest outskirts. Suddenly he stopped, peering forward and shading his eyes against the sun. Kelderek and Radu, halting behind him, found themselves looking out across the northern extremity of the evil land which they had now traversed from end to end, from the Vrako's banks to the Gap of Linsho.
The air was full of a dazzling, golden light, slow-moving and honey-thick. Myriads of motes and specks floated here and there, their minute glitterings seeming to draw the light down from the sky to the ground, there to fragment and multiply. The evening beams glanced off leaves, off the wings of darting flies and the surface of the Telthearna flowing a mile away at the foot of the slope. Directly before them, to the north, the distant prospect was closed by the mountains – jagged, iron-blue heights, streaked with steep wedges of forest rising out of the virid foothills. Looking at this tremendous barrier, Kelderek called to mind that once – how long ago? – he had possessed the strength to follow Shardik into such mountains as these. Now, he could not have limped over the intervening ground to their foot.
Clouds half-hid the easternmost peak, which rose above the Telthearna like a tower, its precipitous face falling almost sheer to the river. Between the water and the wooded crags at the mountain's foot there extended a narrow strip of flat land little more than a bowshot across – the Gap of Linsho. Huts he could make out, and wisps of evening smoke drifting towards the wilds of Deelguy on the further shore. A track led out of the Gap, ran a short way beside the water, then turned inland to climb the slope, crossed their front less than half a mile away and disappeared south-westward beyond the extremity of the forest on their left. Goats were tcthercd on the open sward and a herd of cows were grazing – one had a flat-toned, cloppering bell at her neck – watched by a little boy, who sat fluting on a wooden pipe; and an old ox, at the full extent of his rope, pulled the greenest grass he could get.
But it was not at the golden light, at the cattle or the child playing his pipe that Genshed stood staring, his hanging face like a devil's sick with the pain of loss. Beside the track, a patch of ground had been enclosed with a wooden palisade and a fire was burning in a shallow trench. A soldier in a leather helmet was crouching, scouring pots, while another was chopping wood with a bill-hook. Beside the stockade a tall staff had been erected and from it hung a flag – three corn-sheaves on a blue ground. Near by, two more soldiers could be seen facing towards the forest, one sitting on the turf as he ate his supper, the other standing, leaning on a long spear. The situation was plain. The Gap had been occupied by a Sarkid detachment of the army of Santil-ke-Erketlis.
'Bloody God!' whispered Genshed, staring over the pastoral, flame-bright quiet of the hillside. Shouter, coming up from behind, drew in his breath and stood stock-still, gazing as a man might at the burning ruins of his own home. The children were silent, some uncomprehending in their sickness and exhaustion, others sensing with fear the rage and desperation of Genshed, who stood clenching and unclenching his hands without another word.
Suddenly Radu plunged forward. His rags fluttered about him and he flung both arms above his head, jerking like an idiot child in a fit,
'Ah! Ah!' croaked Radu. 'Sark -' He staggered, fell and got up knee by knee, like a cow. 'Sarkid!' he whispered, stretching out his hands; and then, barely louder, 'Sarkid! Sarkid!'
With deliberation, Genshed took his bow from the side of his pack, and laid an arrow on the string. Then, leaning against a tree, he waited as Radu again drew breath. The boy's cry, when it came, was like that of a sick infant, distorted and feeble. Once more he cried, bird-like, and then sank to his knees, sobbing and wringing his hands among the undergrowth. Genshed, pulling Shouter back by the shoulder, waited as a man might wait for a friend to finish speaking with a passer-by in the street. 'O God!' wept Radu. 'God, only help us! O God, please help usl'
On Kelderek's back Shara half-awoke, murmured 'Lcg-by-Lee! Gone to Leg-by-Lee!' and fell asleep again.
As a man led to judgment might halt to listen to the sound of a girl singing; as the eye of one just told of his own mortal illness might stray out of the window to dwell for an instant upon the flash of some bright-plumagcd bird among the trees; as some devil-may-care fellow might drain a glass and dance a spring on the scaffold – so, it seemed, not only Genshed's inclination but also his self-respect now impelled him in this, his own utter disaster, to pause a few moments to enjoy the rare and singular misery of Radu. He looked round among the children, as though inviting anyone else who might wish to try his luck to sec what voice he might have left for calling out to the soldiers. Watching him, Kelderek was seized by a deadly horror, like that of a child facing the twitching, glazed excitement of the rapist. His teeth chattered in his head and he felt his empty bowels loosen. He sank down, barely in sufficient command of himself to slide the little girl from his back and lay her beside him on the ground.
At this moment a hoarse voice was heard from among the bushes nearby. 'Gensh! Gensh, I say! Gensh!'
Genshed turned sharply, peering with sun-dazzled eyes into the dusky forest behind him. There was nothing to be seen, but a moment later the voice spoke again..
'Gensh! Don't be going out there, Gensh! For God's sake give us a hand!'
A faint wisp of smoke curled up from a patch of undergrowth, but otherwise all was stiller than the grassy slope outside. Genshed jerked his head to Shouter and the boy went slowly and reluctantly forward with the best courage he could summon. He disappeared among the bushes and a moment later they heard him exclaim, 'Mucking hell!'
Still Genshed said nothing, merely nodding to Bled to join Shouter. He himself continued to keep half his attention upon Radu and Kelderek. After some delay the two boys emerged from the bushes supporting a fleshy, thick-lipped man with small eyes, who grimaced with pain as he staggered between them, trailing a pack behind him along the ground. The left leg of his once-white breeches was soaked in blood and the hand which he held out to Genshed was red and sticky.
'Gensh!' he said. 'Gensh, you know me, don't you, you won't leave me here, you'll be gotting me away? Don't go out there, Gensh, they'll got you same as they did me; we can't stay here, either – they'll be coming, Gensh, coming!'
Kelderek, staring from where he lay, suddenly called the man to mind. This blood-drenched craven was none other than the wealthy Deelguy slave-dealer Lalloc; fat, insinuating, dandified, with the manners, at once familiar and obsequious, of a presuming servant on the make. Over-dressed and smiling among his miserable, carefully-groomed wares, he had once been accustomed to publicize himself in Bekla as 'The high-class slave-dealer, purveyor to the aristocracy. Special needs discreetly catered for.' Kelderek remembered, too, how he had taken to calling himself 'U-Lalloc', until ordered by Ged-la-Dan to curb his impertinence and mind his place. There was little enough of the demi-mondain dandy about him now, crouching at Genshed's feet, dribbling with fear and exhaustion, his yellow robe smeared with dirt and his own blood clotted across his fat buttocks. The strap of his pack was twisted round his wrist and in one hand he was clutching the plaited thong of a clay thurible, or fire-pot, such as some travellers carry on lonely journeys and keep smouldering with moss and twigs. It was from this that the thin smoke was rising.
Kelderek remembered how in Bekla, Lalloc, coming once to the Barons' Palace to apply for the renewal of his licence, had fallen to deploring the wicked deeds of unauthorized slave-dealers. 'Your gracious Majesty will need no ashorrance that my colleagues and I, acting in the bost interests of the trade, would never have to do with soch men. To oss, profit is a secondary mottcr. We regard ourselves as your Mojcsty's servants, employed to move your own fixed quotas about the Empire as may suit your convenience. Now may I soggest -' and his rings had clicked as he placed his hands together and bowed, in the manner of the Deelguy. And whence, Kelderek had wondered, whence in truth had he obtained the pretty children who had stood on his rostrum in the market, tense and dry-eyed, knowing what was good for them? He had never enquired, for the taxes on Lalloc's turn-over had produced very large sums, all duly rendered – enough to pay and equip several companies of spearmen.
For a moment, as Lalloc's eye travelled over the children, it rested on Kelderek: but his momentary surprise, Kelderek could perceive, was due to no more than observing a grown man among the slaves. He did not recognize – how should he? – the former priest-king of Bekla.
Still Genshed stood silent, looking broodingly at the bleeding Lalloc as though wondering – as no doubt he was – in what way he could turn this unexpected meeting to his advantage. At length he said, 'Bit of trouble, Lalloc; been in it, have you?'
The other spread his bloody hands, shoulders shrugging, eyebrows lifting, head wagging from side to side.
'I was in Kabin, Gensh, when the Ikats come north. 'Thought I had plonty of time to gotting back to Bekla, but left it too late -you ever know soldiers go so fost, Gensh, you ever know? Cot off, couldn't gotting to Bekla' (one hand chopped downwards in a gesture of severance), 'no governor in Kabin – new governor, man called Mollo, been killed in Bekla, they were saying – the king kill him with his own honds – no one would take money to protect me. So I cross the Vrako. I think, "I'll stay here till it's over, me and my nice lotde boys what I bought." So we stay in some torrible village. I have to pay and pay, just not to be murdered. One day I hear the Ikat soldiers come over the Vrako, honting everywhere for the slave-dealers. I go north – ow, what 'orrible journey – rockon buy my way through Linsho. But I don't go through the forest, I come straight up the trock, walk right in among the soldiers. 'Ow I'm to know the Ikats gotting there first? Dirty thieves – take my lottle boys, all what I pay for. I drop everything, run into the forest. Then arrow cotch me in the thigh, ow my God the pain! They honting for me, not long. No, no, they don't need hont, clever bastards.' He spat. 'They know there's no food here, no shelter, no way to go onnywherc. O my God, Gensh, what we do now, ch? You go out through those trees they'll have you – they're waiting for oss – someone tell me Nigon they kill, Mindulla they kill -' 'Nigon's dead,' said Genshed.
'Yoss, yoss. You help me away, Gensh? We gotting across the Telthearna, gotting to Deelguy? You remomber how many lotde boys and girls I buy off you, Gensh, always buying off you, and I don't tell where-' Suddenly Shouter whistled and plucked Genshed by the sleeve. 'Look at the bastards!' he said, jerking his thumb.
Half a mile away, across the sunlight slope where the guard-house stood, twenty or thirty soldiers were coming towards the forest, trailing their long spears behind them over the grass. At a signal from their officer they extended their line, opening out to right and left as they approached the outskirts.
Not to one child, and to neither Radu nor Kelderek, did it occur mat they might, even now, call out or try to reach the soldiers. Had not Genshed just permitted them to prove to themselves that they could not?
His domination – that evil force of which Radu had spoken – lay all about them like a frost, unassailable, visible only in its effects, permeating their spirits with its silent power to numb and subdue. It lay within them – in their starved bodies, in their hearts, in their frozen minds. Not God Himself could melt this cold or undo the least part of Genshed's will. Kelderek, waiting until Bled was looking elsewhere and would not see his slow, fumbling struggle, lifted Shara once more in his arms, took the unresisting Radu by the hand and followed the slave-dealer back into the forest
Along the higher ground they went along the crest of the low ridge they had ascended earlier that afternoon, Lalloc hobbling beside Genshed and continually entreating not to be left behind. While he babbled, albeit in whispers and in phrases disjointed by shortness of breath, Genshed made no reply. Yet though he might seem inattentive, both to the children and to the fat purveyor of nice little boys, it appeared to Kelderek that nevertheless he remained most alert within himself; like a great fish that skulks below a ledge, at one and the same time watching for the least chance to dash between the legs of the wading netsmen and waiting motionless in the hope that its stillness may deceive them into believing it already gone. 52 The Ruined Village And now began among the children that final disintegration which only the fear of Genshed had delayed so long. Despite the fog of ignorance and dread that covered them, one thing was clear to them all. Genshed's plans had failed. Both he and his overseers were afraid and did not know what to do next Bled walked by himself, hunched and muttering, his eyes on the ground. Shouter gnawed continually at his hand, while ever and again his head, with open mouth and closed eyes, dropped forward like that of an ox unable to pull its load. From all three, despair emanated as bats come fluttering from a cave, thicker as the light fails. The children began to straggle. Several, having fallen or Iain down on the ground, remained where they were, for Genshed and his whippers-in, now sharing the same evil trance as their victims, had neither purpose nor spirit to beat them to their feet.
It was plain that Genshed no longer cared whether the children lived or died. He paid them no heed, but pressed on at his own pace, concerned only to out-distance the soldiers: and when some of those who had fallen, seeing him disappearing ahead of them, struggled to their feet and somehow contrived to catch up with him again, still he spared them not a glance. Only of Kelderek and Radu did he remain steadily watchful, ordering them, knife in hand, to walk in front of him and stop for nothing.
As, when two animals have fought, the one that is beaten seems actually to grow smaller as it slinks away, so, since turning back from the edge of the forest, Radu had regressed from a youth to a child. The pride of bearing with which he had carried his rags and sores, as though they were honourable insignia of the House of Sarkid, had given place to an exhausted misery like that of a survivor from some disaster. He moved uncertainly here and there, as though unable to pick his way for himself, and once, with hands covering his face, gave way to a fit of sobbing which ceased only when breath failed him. As he lifted his head his eyes met Kelderek's with a look of panic-stricken despair, like that of an animal staring from a trap. 'I'm afraid to die,' he whispered. Kelderek could find no answer. 'I don't want to die,' repeated Radu desperately. 'Get on,' said Genshed sharply, from behind. 'Those were my father's soldiers!' 'I know,' answered Kelderek dully. 'They may find us yet.*
'They won't. Genshed will kill us first. O God, he frightens me so much! I can't hide it any more.'
'If the soldiers find us, they'll certainly kill me,' said Kelderek. 'I was your father's enemy, you see. It seems strange now.'
Startled, Radu looked quickly at him; but at the same moment Shara, awake at last, began to struggle on Kelderek's shoulders and to set up a thin wail of misery and hunger. 'Keep her quiet,' said Genshed instantly.
Radu, with some difficulty, took her from Kelderek, but as he did so slipped, so that the little girl gave a sharp cry of fear. Genshed covered the ground between them in four strides, gripped Radu by the shoulder with one hand and silenced the child with the other over her mouth. 'Once more and I'll kill her,' he said.
Radu cringed from him, whispering to Shara urgently. She became silent, and again they limped on among the trees.
'I won't die,' said Radu presently, with more composure. 'Not as long as she needs me. Her father's one of our tenants, you know.' 'You told me.'
It was almost dark and there had been no sounds of pursuit. Of how many children now remained with them Kelderek had no idea. He tried to look about him, but first could not focus his sight and then could not remember for what it was that he was supposed to be looking. The faintness of hunger seemed to have destroyed both sight and sound. His brain swam and a feverish pain stabbed through his head. When first he glimpsed stone walls about him, he could not tell whether they might be real or figments of his splintered mind. Shouter was shaking him by the arm.
'Stop! Stop, damn you I You gone mucking deaf or something? He says stop! Here,' said the boy, with something faintly resembling human sympathy, 'you'd better sit down, mate, you need a rest, you do. Sit down here.'
He found himself sitting on a ledge of stone. Round him was what had once been a clearing, stumps of trees overgrown with creeper and weeds. There were walls of piled boulders and stones without mortar, some tumbled, some still standing: steadings and pens, all doorless, the roofs fallen in, holes exposing the smoke-blackened flues of chimneys. Near by rose a low cliff of rock, once, no doubt, quarried to build these same dwellings; and at its foot a spring trickled into a shallow pool, from which the water, flowing through an outfall in the enclosing stones, ran away downhill towards the distant Telthearna. On the opposite side of the pool, the stone surround was half-covered by the long tendrils of a trepsis vine, on which a few scarlet flowers were already blooming. 'Where are we?' asked Kelderek. 'Shouter, where are we?*
'How the hell d'you expect me to know?' answered Shouter. 'Deserted village or something, in't it? No one been here for mucking years. What's it matter?' went on the boy, with choking violence, 'We're all good as dead now. Good as any other place to die, isn't it?'
'For me,' said Kelderek. 'It is for me. It's like another place I once knew – there was a pool, and trepsis -'
'He's gone,' said Radu. 'Yes, go and have a drink, Shara dear. I'll come over in a moment.'
'Are we going home soon?' asked the little girl. "Said we'd go home, didn't you? I'm hungry, Radu. I'm hungry.'
'Going home soon, dear,' said Radu. 'Not tonight, but quite soon. Don't cry. Look, the big boys aren't crying. I'll look after you.'
Shara put her two hands on his forearm and looked up at him, her wan, dirty face grave amongst her matted hair.
'It's dark,' she said. 'Dad used to light a lamp. I think he did. "When it got dark he used to light a lamp.'
'I remember the lamps,' said Radu 'I'm hungry too. It'll be all right in the end, I promise you.' 'Genshed's bad, isn't he? He hurts us. Will he go to Leg-by-Lee?'
Radu nodded, his finger to his lips. 'The soldiers are coming,' he whispered. 'The soldiers from Sarkid. They'll take us home. But that's a secret between you and me.'
'I feel bad,' she said. 'Feel ill. Want a drink.' She kissed his arm with dry lips and stumbled across to the pool.
'I've got to look after her,' said Radu. He passed his hand across his forehead and closed his eyes. 'Her father's one of our tenants, you know. Oh, I told you. I feel ill too. Is it a pestilence, do you think?*
'Radu,' said Kelderek, 'I'm going to die. I'm sure of that The pool and the trepsis – they're sent as a sign to me. Even if the soldiers come I shall still die, because they'll kill me.'
'Genshed,' said Radu, 'Genshed means to make sure of killing us. Or the devil that's using his body now – he means to kill us.'
'You're light-headed, Radu. Listen to me. There's something I need to ask you.*
'No, it's true about the devil. It's because I'm light-headed that I can see it If a man loves hell and does hell's work, then the devils take over his body before he dies. That's what our old gate-keeper told me once in Sarkid. I didn't know what he meant then, but I do now. Genshed's become a devil. He frightens me almost to death -the mere sight of him -1 believe he could kill me with fear if he set about it* Kelderek groped for his arm like a blind man.
'Radu, listen to me. I want to ask your forgiveness, and your father's, too, before I die.'
'My father's? But you don't know my father. You're as lightheaded as I am.'
'It's for you to forgive me in your father's name, and in Sarkid's name. I've been your father's greatest enemy. You never asked my name. My name is Kelderek of Ortelga, but you knew of me once as Crendrik.' ' Crendrik, the priest-king of Bekla?' 'Yes, I was once the king of Bekla. Never mind how I come to be here. It's God's justice, for it was I that brought the slave-trade back to Bekla and licensed the slave-dealers in return for money to pay for the war against Santil-ke-Erketlis. If it's true that death settles all debts and wrongs, then I beg you to forgive me. I'm no longer the man who committed those deeds.'
'Are we really to die, are you sure? There's no help for it?' It was a frightened, staring child who looked up at Kelderek in the last light.
'A/y time has come to die – I know that now. The Ikat soldiers would have killed me in Kabin, but your father stopped them. When he sent me across the Vrako, he told me that if ever they found me again they'd kill me. So I shall die, either at the soldiers' hands or at Genshed's.'
'If my father could forgive you then, Crendrik, I can forgive you now. Oh, what does it matter? That little girl's going to die! Genshed will kill her -I know it,' cried the boy, weeping.
Before Kelderek could answer, Genshed was standing over them, silent in the darkness. He snapped his fingers and they both climbed slowly to their feet, trembling and shrinking like beasts from a crud master. He was about to speak when Lalloc approached and he turned towards him, leaving them where they stood.
'You wouldn't have gotting moch for them, Gensh,' said Lalloc. 'So don't worry, no, no. Even I couldn't be guvving you moch for those. You'll lose vorry little, vorry little indeed.' 'I'm keeping these two by me, all the same,' answered Genshed.
'No good keep onny of 'em, Gensh, not now. You novcr gotting 'cm out and if we got caught with 'em, thot's it, eh? Hard enough we gotting out at all, but we got nothing to eat, Gensh, we got to try gotting out. We try to go across to Deelguy, other side, thot's all we gotting the chonce now.'
Genshed sat down on the broken wall, staring listlessly before him. Lalloc's rings clicked as he rubbed his hands nervously together.
'Gensh, we can't try tonight. Morning we try it; soon what it's light. You come inside over there, that one got a bit of roof on. We make a fire – won't show outside. Losten, Gensh, I got some drink – good, strong drink. We stay there, by and by it's morning, then we gotting across the river, eh?'
Genshed rose slowly to his feet and stood pressing the point of his knife against the ball of one finger and then another. At length he jerked his head towards Radu and said, 'I'm keeping him by me.'
'Well, jost what you say, Gensh, yoss, yoss, but he's no good to you now, none of them's any good to you now. Jost leave them, eh, we don't want them ony more, they don't got away anywhere in the dark, they're all worn out, fonish. Morning we gotting away.' 'I'm keeping him by me,' repeated Genshed.
Shara came slowly up to Radu, one arm held across her face. As she put her hand in the boy's, Genshed stared down at her, his eyes, like those of a snake, full of a cold, universal malevolence. Radu stooped to pick her up but, too weak to lift her, dropped on one knee and in doing so encountered Genshed's stare. He half-rose, apparently about to run, but as Genshed seized him by the pierced ear he gasped, 'No! No! I won't-'
'See, you're just a silly little boy, aren't you, Radu?' said Genshed, twisting slowly, so that Radu sank to his knees. 'Just a silly little boy, aren't you?' 'Yes.'
Genshed drew the point of his knife along Radu's eyelid but then, as though suddenly weary of what he had begun, thrust it back into the sheath, dragged him to his feet and led him away towards the ruined cottage where Lalloc was already kneeling and blowing his smouldering fire-pot into a flame. Shara tottered beside them, the sound of her weeping becoming inaudible as they entered the doorway. Left alone in the darkness, Kelderek sank down on the open ground; but later – how long afterwards he could not tell – crept on his hands and knees into the nearest hut; and here he fell asleep. 53 Night Talk He had been given a bundle of child slaves to take to the Barons' Palace, but they were so heavy that he could not carry them and had to drag them behind him step by step. The way lay up a mountain and he was following Lord Shardik, up through the steep, dreary forests where the ghosts of the dead soldiers flickered and cackled among the branches. At last the way became so steep and the weight so heavy that he had to crawl on his hands and knees, and in this manner he came at last to the top. The Barons' Palace stood on the extreme summit, but drawing nearer he realized that it was nothing but flat, painted wood upon a frame, and as he stood looking at it, it broke to pieces and fell away down the back of the mountain.
Waking, he crawled into the open air and tried to get a sight of the stars. Either leaves or clouds were obscuring them. As best he could, he considered. Ii it were now very late – the middle of the night or later – both Genshed and Lalloc might be asleep: if they were, he might just possibly be able to release Radu and Shara – might even, perhaps, be able to kill Genshed with his own knife.
The night was pitch black, but from one direction he could make out a distant glow of firelight, partly obscured, or so it seemed, by some kind of curtain. He took a few steps towards it and perceived that he had misjudged the distance, for it was close – close by. A cloak had been fastened across the doorlcss gap through which Genshed had led Radu at nightfall. He reached it, knelt and put his eye to one of the slits through which the glow was showing.
Dry stone walls and a floor of cobbles – nothing else – and a low fire burning in the fire-place opposite. Who had collected the wood, he wondered. The slave-dealers must have got it for themselves while he lay asleep. In the further corner Radu and Shara were sleeping on the bare stones. Radu was lying motionless, but Shara whimpered continually, fretful and evidently ill. Beside her, on the wall, her shadow jumped and leapt, exaggerating each movement of the sick child as echoes in a ravine magnify and hurl back the cry of a man standing upon its brink.
Genshed, a long stick in one hand, was sitting on his pack, gazing into the flames and scraping moodily at a cluster of insects that had run to the top of a burning log. The fancy returned to Kelderek that he never slept, or that, like an insect, he became dormant only at certain seasons. Opposite, Lalloc was perched awkwardly on a log, with his wounded leg supported on another. A leather wine-skin was propped against Genshed's pack, and after a few moments the slave-dealer picked it up, drank and passed it across to Lalloc. Kelderek, seeing that any idea of rescue was hopeless, was about to creep away when Lalloc spoke. Curious, despite his light-headed, insect-devoured misery, he listened.
'You wasn't ollways in this line of business, was you?' asked Lalloc, bending forward to rub his leg. 'How long I know you, Gensh – three year?' 'Not always,' answered Genshed. 'What you done – soldier maybe?' Genshed leant forward and dislodged a beetle into the flames. 'I was executioner's mate in Terekenalt.' 'Thot's a good job? Good money?' 'It was a living,' said Genshed. There was a pause. ' Bit of sport, was it, eh?'
'Kids' stuff,' answered Genshed. 'Got tired of it. You learn it all quick enough and you're only allowed to do what you're told.' 'Thot's not moch, eh?'
'Well, it's all right – watch their faces when they bring them out – you know, when they sec it all laid out for their personal benefit -the clindcrs and the frags and that.' 'Frags first, ain't it?' 'Can be either,' answered Genshed, 'long as the fingers are broken. But you can't let yourself go, only now and then.' 'What's now and then?' Genshed drank again, and considered.
'If a man's condemned, all you can do is carry out the sentence. That's all right, but it's no better than boys or animals, is it? That's what I came to see, anyway.' 'Why, what more you can do, then?'
'Screaming and crying, you get tired of that,' said Genshed. 'There's a bit more to it when they want information. The real style's breaking a man's mind, so that he turns what you want and stays that way even when you've finished with him.' 'You got you can do thot?'
'Needs brains,' said Genshed. 'Of course I could have done it; I got the brains, but the bastards wouldn't give me the chance. Job like that's sold to the one who can buy it, isn't it? They don't want quality. I knew what I was worth. I wasn't going to stay hot-iron man all my life, just for the bare living. I started taking what I could get from prisoners – you know, to let 'em off light – or just take the money and not let 'em off – what could they do? That was what lost me the job. After that I was in a bad way for a time. Most people don't want to employ you when you've been in that line of trade – more fools them.'
Lalloc threw another branch on the fire and squinted into the neck of the wine-skin. In the corner Shara twisted on the floor, babbled a few words and licked her dry lips without waking. 'Ortolgans give you chonce, eh, like me?' 'They wouldn't give me a licence, the bastards. You know that.' 'Why they don't?'
'Too many children injured, they said. More like I hadn't got the money to buy the licence.'
Lalloc chuckled, but broke off as Genshed looked sharply across at him.
'Well, I don't laugh, no, no, but you need style, Gensh, to be slave-dealer, you know. Why you don't gotting proper overseers? Then don't lot your children the, don't hurt them where it shows. Make them look nice, you know, teach them act up a little for the costomers.' Genshed crashed his fist into his palm.
'All right for you, eh? I got to work on the cheap. You don't need overseers for kids. Pick out a couple of the kids themselves -get rid of them soon as they know more than you want them to know. You – you only buy from other dealers, don't you, got capital to work with? I got to go out and get 'em on the cheap, all the trouble, all the danger, no licence, then you buy them off me and sell 'cm for more, don't you?' 'Well, but you ollways spoil so monny, Gensh, ain't it?'
'You got to expect to spoil some – got to expect to lose some as well. You got to break their minds – make them so they can't even think of running away. Beat one or two to death if you have to – frighten the rest half silly. I don't have to do so much as I did once – not now I've got the trick. I've driven kids mad without even touching them – that's style, if you like.' 'Bot you can't soil them if they're gone mad, Gensh.'
'Not for so much,' admitted Genshed. 'But you can count on getting some sort of price for almost anything, and you've had a bit of sport for the difference. Loony ones, ugly ones, all the ones rich dealers like you don't take – I can still sell them to the beggar-masters. You know, chop their hands off, chop their feet off, something of that, send them out to beg. Man in Bekla used to live off eighteen or twenty, most of them he got from me. Used to send them out begging in the Caravan Market.'
'Well, thot might be your style, Gensh, but it's not big money. You got to make them look pretty, jost ontil the costomer's bought them, you know. Then you got to stoddy what the rich costomer want, you got to talk to the children, tell them it's all for their good they tickle the costomer, you know, eh?'
His voice held a barely-concealed note of condescension. Genshed slashed at the fire in silence.
'What you keeping the little girl for?' asked Lalloc. 'You gotting rod all the girls in Tonilda, you told me. Why you not soiling her?'
'Ah – to keep him in order, that's it,' said Genshed, jerking his thumb at Radu. "Ow's thot?'
'He's a funny one,' said Genshed. 'Smartest thing I ever did, biggest risk I ever took; if it comes off I'll make a fortune; and it still could. That's a young aristocrat, that is – ransom job, once I get him back to Terekenalt. Long as I keep him I can lose all the rest I can't break him – not altogether – you never can tell with that sort, even when they think they're broken themselves. The baby – she's better than anything for keeping the likes of him in order. Long as he's set himself to look after her, he won't be trying anything on, will he? The joke was he came to me of himself at Thettit and said we had to keep her – got her across the Vrako, too. That was a risk – he could have drowned – but it was worth it to have no trouble from him. That sort can make a lot of trouble. Pride – oh yes, he's too good for the likes of you and me. But I'll break him before I'm done, the fine young gentleman – I'll have him flogging boys to earn his supper and never have to raise a finger to force him – you sec if I don't,' 'Who is he?'asked Lalloc.
'AhI Who is he?' Genshed paused for effect 'That's the Ban of Sarkid's heir, that is.'
Lalloc whistled. 'Oh, Gensh, woll, no wonder the place full of Ikats, eh? You done it right, now we know why they don't stop looking, eh? We got a lot to thonk you for, Gensh.'
'Two hundred thousand meld,' said Genshed. 'Isn't that worth a risk? And you said we'd get over the river in the morning, didn't you?'
'Who's the other one, Gensh – the man? 'Thought you dodn't only go for boys and girls?'
'Don't you know?' replied Genshed. 'You ought to, you oily, creeping, bribing bastard.'
Lalloc paused in drinking, looking over the top of the wine-skin with raised eyebrows and reflective eyes. Then the wine slopped in its hollow cavern as he shook his head and the skin together.
'That's King Crendrik, that is,' said Genshed. 'Him that used to be the priest-king of Bekla. Him with the bear.'
Lalloc nearly dropped the wine-skin, caught it just in time and lowered it in slow amazement.
'Found him lying senseless in a swamp thirty mile south of here,* said Genshed. 'Don't know how he came there, but I recognized him all right. 'Seen him in Bekla, same as you have. Well, he won't run. He knows the Ikats are out to kill him.' Lalloc stared questioningly.
'It's like this, you see,' said Genshed, stabbing at the fire. 'I'm sharp. I keep him and the boy – leave the rest, but keep those two at all costs. Well now, we know the Ban of Sarkid's fighting for the Ikats. If ever the Ortelgans was to catch me – I got no licence, remember -I can tell them I've got the Ban's son, hand him over to them, very likely they'll be so pleased they'll let me go. But if the Ikats catch us, I can give them Crendrik. Same thing – they'd be glad to get him, 'might let us go. Crendrik's got no other value, of course, but the boy's got plenty if only we can get away. The way the luck's turned out, we look more like being caught by the Ikats than the Ortelgans, so I'm hanging on to Crendrik.' 'Butif the Ikats cotch you with the boy, Gensh?'
'They won't,' said Genshed. 'I'll sec to that. They won't catch me with a single child – or find the bodies, either.'
He stood up brusquely, broke two or three branches across his knee and fed the fire. Kelderek could hear the back of Shara's head thud against the cobbles as she tossed and cried in her sleep.
'What's the scheme, then?' asked Genshed presently. 'How d'you reckon to cross the Telthearna?'
'Well, it's a big rosk, Gensh, but it's only chonce we got. We got to try it, olse we're for the Ikats all right. Down below here there's a vullage – Tissarn they call it – fishing vullage – by the ruwer, you know.' 'I know -I came inland yesterday to avoid it.'
'Woll, vorry soon as day we leave owrything – go straight down there, we find some man, I pay him all I got, he govv us canoe, boat, something, before the Ikats come. We go across, gotting to Deelguy. Current's strong, we go down long way, all the same we gotting across. Onnyway we got to try it.' 'Won't the village be watched? That's why I dodged it.' 'We got to try it, Gensh.* 'We'll take the boy.'
'I don't like thot. I'm wanted man in Deelguy, you know. I don't want onnybody sec oss, maybe they gotting to know who the boy is, find out we're slave-dealers, you know? It's not legal in Dcelguy.' Genshed said nothing. 'Gensh, I'm hurt drodful bad. You my friend, Gensh, you stick by me? You holp me?' 'Yes, of course I'll help you, don't worry.'
'No, but you swear it, Gensh? Swear you're my friend, swear you stick by me, holp me always, yoss? Please swear it, Gensh.' Genshed stepped across and clasped his hand.
'I swear I'll be your friend, Lalloc, and I'll stand by you, so help me God.'
'Oh, thonk God, Gensh, thonk God I meeting you. We gotting safe all right. We sleep a time now, eh, but roddy we go fost thing what it's daylight. No time to lose, you know.'
He wrapped himself clumsily in his cloak, lay down beside the fire and seemed at once to drop, almost to disappear into sleep, like a stone thrown into a pool.
Kelderek turned to crawl away in the darkness, but the pupils of his eyes, contracted by the light of the fire, admitted not the least image from the night about him. He waited, and as he did so realized that not only did he not know where he could go, but that it mattered nothing. Genshed would not sleep – of this he felt sure. He could either crawl away, weaponless, into the forest, to starve until the soldiers found him, or remain to await the will of Genshed at daylight. Should an ox in the abattoir choose to go to the right or the left? 'We'll take the boy.' But Genshed would not take him, Kelderek, across the Telthearna – there would be no profit to him in doing so. If he did not kill him, he would leave him on the shore to await the soldiers.
A horrible despair seized him, as a beast its prey, and a panic fear – the fear of one who knows that all he has dreaded is even now at hand and inescapable; that the door is fast and the water rising. Standing up, he stretched out his arms, peering into the blackness as he tried to make out the shapes of the ruins about him. One he could perceive – a dark mass to his right, low but just discernible against what appeared to be a gap in the trees. He stooped, and then knelt, to try to sec it more clearly against the sky. As he stared, it moved, and at the same moment there came to his nostrils a smell that brought back instantly the straw, the smoky torches and brick-filled arcades of the King's House in Bekla – the rank, foetid smell of the bear.
For long moments it seemed to Kelderek that he must be already dead. The pool and the trepsis he had accepted as a portent of his death. That Genshed knew who he was – had known him from the first – and meant, if occasion offered, to profit by delivering him up to death – this had struck him full of that sense of helplessness which always accompanies the discovery that what we thought was hidden has, in fact, been known all along to our enemy. Now, in this, his last extremity, unseen, unheard, Shardik had appeared out of the miles of forest – Shardik, whom he himself had seen far to the south three days before. To wonder whether he was come in vengeance or in pity did not occur to Kelderek. Simply the terror of the incredible flooded his broken mind.
Again the dark bulk moved against the sky, and now a low growl showed that it was close – closer than it had seemed – only a few strides away. Kelderek, starting back against the wall of the slave-traders' shelter, covered his face with his hands, whimpering with dread.
As he did so a terrible shriek came from within. Another followed, and another; curses, blows, the thudding of some heavy object knocked over, convulsive struggling and finally a long, choking moan. The cloak fastened across the opening was ripped aside and the firelight gleamed out, showing for a moment two red, glowing eyes in the darkness and a great, black shape that turned and shambled away, disappearing between the ruined walls. Then silence returned, broken only by a dragging, jerking sound that finally ceased, and the laboured breathing of one who finished his work by fastening once more the cloak across the doorway. The firelight was shut in and Kelderek, conscious of nothing save that Shardik was gone and he himself alive, crept into the first crevice he found and lay there, not knowing whether he slept or woke. 54 The Cloven Rock Beneath the first light creeping into the sky, the river shone a dull, turbid grey, the surface smooth, its flow imperceptible from that height at which the migrant geese flew on their northward journey. South of Linsho Gap the forest lay motionless, clothing like a shaggy pelt the body of the earth from which it grew. As yet no darting of birds disturbed the stillness. No breeze moved, no reflection of light glittered from the trees. The wings of the great butterflies were folded close.
Here and there the forest pelt was matted brown with clusters of old, dead creeper that had twined and climbed, before dying, through even the topmost tiers; here and there, as though eaten away and mangy, it lay open, showing the dirty skin beneath, calloused with rocks, suppurating with bog, scurfy with thorn and scrub, in its illness supporting, like a dying ape full of maggots, an ugly, wriggling life, futile in its involuntary course towards death. In one such open place the grey light revealed a scabby crust, the remains of older, deeper wounds: tumbled stones, broken walls, boulders encircling a pool at the foot of a rock bare as a protruding bone. This crust, too, was crawling: with stumbling, filthy creatures – human children -creeping out of the scabs like bugs from wood, moving aimlessly here and there, disgusting in their torpor and misery: inviting cruelty, so plainly were they created helpless in order that they might be the more easily destroyed. Soon the huge creature upon whose body they crawled and fed would feel them as an irritation, scratch itself and crush out their meaningless fives. The body of Lalloc lay prone outside the doorway from which he had staggered with Genshed's knife in his back. The feet had tripped upon the step and the knees, buckling, had been pressed into the soft earth by the force of the corpulent body's fall. The arms were stretched forward, one along the ground, palm down and fingers digging into the soil; the other sticking up like a swimmer's, but stiffened in death. The head was twisted sideways and the mouth open. Two stabs had almost cut away the left cheek, which hung down below the chin in a ragged flap, exposing the clenched and splintered teeth. The clothes were so much drenched in blood, old and new, that they retained scarcely any other colour.
Genshed was kneeling beside the pool, rinsing his arms in the water and cleaning under his nails with the point of his knife. His pack lay open on the ground behind him and from it he had taken two or three ankle-chains. These he retained, but various other pieces of gear he threw to one side, evidently meaning to abandon them. Having closed the lightened pack and slung it on his back, he strung his bow, stuck five or six arrows into his belt and then picked up the still-smouldering fire-pot, which he replenished by poking in moss and green twigs.
His movements were silent and from time to time he paused uneasily, listening, in the half-light, to the sounds of the awakening forest. When at length he heard a faint noise of footsteps in the undergrowth beyond the pool he at once moved quickly aside and, with an arrow on the string, was already waiting in concealment when Shouter stepped out from among the trees.
Genshed lowered his bow and walked across to where the boy stood staring at the dead body on the ground. Shouter turned, started and backed away, one hand raised to his mouth.
'Tried to have a walk in the night, Shouter, did your' said Genshed, almost whispering. 'See any soldiers, did you? See any soldiers, Shouter?'
It was plain that Shouter was half stupefied, either with fear, hunger, lack of sleep, or all three. Though trying to reply, for some moments he uttered nothing intelligible. At length he said, 'All right, then; but I come back, didn't I? I want to mucking live, don't I?'
'So that's why you came back?' said Genshed, looking at him with a kind of pausing curiosity.
"Course I come back,' cried Shouter. 'In the forest – out there -' He stopped, pointing. 'That's no living creature,' he burst out. 'It's come for you – it's been sent for you -' He pitched forward to his knees. 'It wasn't me that killed Kevenant. You did that.' He broke off, looking quickly back over his shoulder. 'That thing – that creature – if it is a creature and not a devil – it was bigger than that rock, I tell you. It shook the mucking ground walking. I nearly come against it in the dark. God, I ran!' 'So that's why you came back?' repeated Genshed, after a pause.
Shouter nodded. Then, getting slowly to his feet, he looked round at the body and said indifferently, 'You killed him, then?'
'No good to us, was he?' said Genshed. 'Get caught in his company, that'd finish everything, that would. I got his money, though. Come on, get them up, get them moving.'
'You're taking them?' asked Shouter, surprised. 'For God's sake, why don't we just run, wherever it is?'
'Get them up,' repeated Genshed. 'Get a chain on the lot of them, wrist to wrist, and keep them quiet while you're doing it.'
His domination filled the place like flood-water, uprooting or drowning all other wills. Those children who, dizzy with hunger and privation, had spent the night in the ruins and now, unable to conceive of flight or hiding, obeyed Shouter as they had obeyed him for so long, felt pouring from Genshed, as they tottered into the open, a yet more evil power than he had yet displayed. Now, in the collapse of his fortunes, his cruelty released from the restraints formerly imposed by the hope of gain, he walked among them with an eager, bright-eyed excitement from which they shrank horrified. Kelderek, crawling from the crevice where he had lain, felt this same power draw him first to his feet and then, with faltering steps, to the edge of the pool, where Genshed stood awaiting him. Knowing Genshed's will, he stood silent while Shouter chained him, shackling him by the wrist to a lank-haired boy whose eyes went continually to and fro. This boy, in turn, was chained to another, and so on until all had been fastened together. Kelderek wondered neither why Shouter had returned nor how Lalloc had come to his end. Such things, he realized now, had no need of explanation. They and all else in the world – hunger, illness, misery and pain – came to pass by the will of Genshed.
Shouter looked up from fastening the last shackle, nodded and stepped back. Genshed, fingering the point of his knife, stood smiling in the broadening daylight. 'Well,' said Shouter at length, 'aren't we getting out now?* 'Fetch Radu,' answered Genshed, pointing.
About them the sounds of the forest were increasing, cries of birds and humming of insects. One of the children swayed on his feet, clutched at the next and then fell, dragging two others with him. Genshed ignored them and the children remained on the ground.
Radu was standing beside Kelderek. Glancing sideways, Kelderek could sec expressed in his whole posture the dread of which he had spoken on the previous day. His shoulders were bowed, his hands clenched at his sides and his lips pressed tightly together. ' Good morning, Radu,' said Genshed courteously.
The common hangman, to whom has been delivered some once-fine gentleman, now pallid with fear, broken and condemned, cannot reasonably be expected to exclude from his work all personal relish and natural inclination for sport. Into his hands has fallen a rarity, a helpless but still-sentient specimen of those whom he serves, envies, fears, flatters and cheats when he can. The occasion is an exhilarating one, and to do it justice calls for both deliberation and mockery, including, of course, a little sardonic mimicry of the affected manners of the gentry.
'Please go with Shouter, Radu,' said Genshed. 'Oblige me by putting that body out of sight.'
'Mucking hell, how much longer -' cried Shouter,- met Genshed's eye and broke off. Kelderek, turning his head by Genshed's unspoken permission, watched the two boys struggling to lift the gross, blood-soaked corpse and half-carry, half-drag it back across the threshold over which Lalloc had fallen before he died. As they returned, Genshed stepped forward and took Radu gently by the shoulders. 'Now, Radu,' he said, with a kind of serene joy, 'go and bring Shara here. Be quick, now!' Radu stared back from between his hands.
'She can't be moved! She's ill! She may be dying!' He paused a moment, and then cried, 'You know that!' 'Quiet, now,' said Genshed, 'quiet. Go and get her, Radu.'
In the clouded stupor of Kelderek's mind there were no sounds of morning, no stone hovels, no surrounding forest A ruined, desolate country lay under deluge. The last light was failing, the rain falling into the brown, all-obliterating water; and as he gazed across that hopeless landscape the little island that was Radu crumbled and vanished under lapping, yellow foam. 'Go and fetch her, Radu,' repeated Genshed, very quietly.
Kelderek heard the sound of Shara's weeping before he caught sight of Radu bringing her in his arms. She was struggling and the boy could scarcely carry her. His voice, as he tried to soothe and comfort her, was barely audible above her half-delirious, frightened crying.
'Radu, Radu, don't let me alone, Radu, I don't want to go to Leg-by-Lee!' 'Hush, dear, hush,' said Radu, clutching at her clumsily as he tried to hold her still.' We're going home. I promised you, remember?' 'Hurts,' wept the child. 'Go away, Radu, it hurts.'
She stared at Genshed without recognition, her own filth covering her as debris covers the streets of a fallen town. Dirty saliva ran down her chin and she picked weakly at the flaking crust round her nostrils. Suddenly she cried out again, evidently in pain, and passed a thin stream of urine, cloudy and white as milk, over the boy's arms.
'Come along; give her to me, Radu,' said Genshed, holding out his hands.
Looking up, Kelderek saw his eyes, bright and voracious as a giant eel's, staring on either side of his open mouth.
'She makes too much noise,' whispered Genshed, licking his lips. 'Give her to me, Radu.'
In the moment that Kelderek tried to step forward, he realized that Radu had refused to obey Genshed. He felt the sharp jerk of the chain at his wrist and heard the cursing of the boy to whom he was fastened. Simultaneously Radu turned and, with Shara's head rolling limply on his shoulder, began to stumble away.
'No, no, Radu,' said Genshed, in the same quiet tone. 'Come back here.'
Radu ignored him, moving slowly on, his head bowed over his burden.
With a sudden snarl, Genshed drew his knife and threw it at the boy. It missed, and he rushed upon him, snatched the child out of his arms and struck him to the ground. For a moment he stood motionless, holding Shara before him in his two hands. Then he sank his teeth in her arm and, before she could shriek, flung her into the pool. Shouter, running forward, was pushed aside as Genshed leapt after her into the water.
Shara's body fell upon the surface of the pool with a sharp, slapping sound. She sank but then, lifting her head clear, raised herself and knelt in the shallow water. Kelderek saw her throw up her clenched hands and, like a baby, draw breath to scream. As she did so Genshed, wading across the pool, pulled her backwards and trampled her under the surface. Planting one foot on her neck, he stood looking about him and scratching his shoulders as the commotion, first of waves and then of ripples, subsided. Before the water had settled Shara, pressed down among the gravel and coloured pebbles on the bottom, had ceased to struggle.
Genshed stepped out of the pool and the body, face-upwards, rose to the surface, the hair, darkened by the water, floating about the head. Genshed walked quickly across to where Radu still lay on the ground, jerked him to his feet, picked up the knife and then, snapping his fingers to Shouter, pointed downhill towards the river. Kelderek heard the boy panting as he hurried to the head of the line.
'Come on, come on,' muttered Shouter, 'before he kills the mucking lot of us. Move, that's all, move.'
Of themselves, the children could not have walked a hundred paces, could not have sat upright on a bench or stripped themselves of their verminous rags. Lame, sick, famished, barely conscious of their surroundings, they yet knew well enough that they were in the hands of Genshed. He it was who had the power to make the lame walk, the sick rise up and the hungry to overcome their faintness. They had not chosen him, but he had chosen them. Without him they could do nothing, but now he abode in them and they in him. He had overcome the world, so that life became a simple matter, without distraction, of moving, by his will, to the end which he had appointed. The will of Genshed, animating to the extent necessary to its purpose, excluded hope and fear of anything but itself, together with all import from other sights and sounds – from recollections of the previous day, from the evident terror of Shouter, the curious absence of Bled and the body of the little girl floating among the trepsis at the edge of the pool. The children were hardly more aware of these things than were the flies already clustering upon the blood of Lalloc soaking the ground. It was not for them to know the times or the seasons which Genshed had put in his own power. It was enough for them to do his will.
Kelderek, shuffling downhill among the trees, could feel no more than the rest. 'The child is dead,' he thought. 'Genshed killed her. Well, such things have become commonplace among us; and by that I can be certain that my own wickedness has completed its work in me. If I had any heart left, would I not cry out at this? But I want nothing, except to avoid more pain.'
The body of Bled was lying half-concealed in the undergrowth. It was surrounded by signs of violence – trampled earth and broken branches. The eyes were open, but in death the manic glare had left them, just as the limbs no longer retained their feral, crouching posture. It was these which had increased Bled's apparent size, as a live spider is magnified, in the eyes of those who fear it, by its vigilant tension and the possibility that it will run, suddenly and very fast, on its arched legs. Now, Bled looked like a spider dead – small, ugly and harmless; yes, and messy too, for one side of his head had been smashed in and his body was limp and crumpled, as though crushed in the grip of a giant. Along the left side his jerkin was torn open and the exposed flesh was lacerated by five great, parallel scratches, wide apart and deep.
Had he been even more feverish and weak, Kelderek, of all men, could not have failed to recognize the tracks about the corpse. Faint they were, for the ground was covered with moss and creeper, but had they been fainter still he would have known them. The boy's death, he realized, must have been recent, not more than two hours ago, and in this knowledge he motioned the children to silence and himself stood listening intently.
There was, however, no silencing Shouter as he flung himself to the ground in superstitious terror. Genshed, coming up with Radu chained to his belt, could hardly drag him to his feet.
'Mucking hell,' wept the boy, struggling. 'I told you, didn't I? It's the devil, Genshed; come for the lot of us I I saw it, I tell you, I saw it in the dark-'
Genshed slapped him across the face and he fell against Radu, who stood still as a post, staring sightlessly before him as Shouter blubbered and clutched at his hands. Kelderek, who felt it more than likely that Shardik was within hearing, watched Genshed to see whether he would pay any attention to the tracks or recognize them for what they were. He expected that he would not, and Genshed's first words proved him right.
'Looks like some animal got him,' said Genshed. 'Serves him right, eh, hiding and then trying to bugger off before daylight? Here, pull yourself together, Shouter; I'm giving you a chance. I'm being good to you, Shouter. There's no devil, you're just a silly little bastard, it's Ikats you've got to look out for. We got to be quick now, see? You get out there to the left, far as you can go, that's where they'll be coming from. If you spot any coming, get back to that rock down there on the bank – the one with the crack in it, see? – I'll be there. If you feel like giving yourself up to the Ikats, don't try it. They'll hang you off a tree before you can squeal. Understand?'
Shouter nodded and at another push from Genshed slipped away to the left, taking a line parallel to the bank of the Telthearna, which was now in sight below them, the inshore water green with reflections of the overhanging trees.
Downhill, each throb of the pulse a stab of pain behind the eyeballs, hand pressed over one eye, links of chain cutting into the wrist, vision blurred, so hard the effort to focus sight. Stumbling downhill; a sound of weeping, like a girl's; that must be an illusion. Don't weep, Melathys; dear love, don't weep for my death. Where will you go now, what will become of you? And did the soldiers ever reach Zeray? A message – but he'll never leave me to the soldiers, he'll kill me himself. Lord Shardik – after all, I shall the before Lord Shardik – I shall never'know the great purpose for which God required his death. I betrayed him -1 meant to kill him. Melathys on Quiso, Melathys playing with the Baron's sword. We couldn't expect mercy, a common man and a girl thrust into things too high for them. If only I'd listened to the Tuginda on the road to Gelt Saiyett, forgive me now; I shall be dead within the hour. If the little girl could die, then so can I. This cruel man, it was I that made his work possible, it was I that brought Lalloc and his like to Bekla.
Downhill, don't slip, don't drag on the chain. The sun must have risen, dazzling down there on the inshore water, glinting under the trees. How the pain runs up my hand from the wounded finger. I misled hundreds to misery and death; and the Tuginda could have saved them all. I was afraid of Ta-Kominion; but it's too late now. It's Radu, it's Radu weeping, Genshed's broken him in the end. He'll live to murder other children, he'll be across the river when the soldiers find the little girl in the pool. Did you see it, God? Do you see what children suffer? They used to call me Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. Why did You manifest Lord Shardik to a man like me, who only betrayed him and defeated Your purpose?
The undergrowth grew thicker near the river. As Kelderek stopped, hesitating, Genshed overtook him, his bow held in one hand while with the other he gripped Radu by the shoulder. He had gagged the boy with a piece of rope. Radu's head had fallen forward on his chest and his arms were hanging at his sides. Genshed began moving through the undergrowth towards the river bank, gesturing to Kelderek and the children to follow him in silence.
Kelderek stepped out upon the bank. The sun glittered in his eyes across the water. He found himself immediately above a little bay, a half-circular inlet surrounded by a steep bank perhaps twice as high as a man. All round the verge, to a breadth of two or three paces, the undergrowth had been cut back to make a path which, on either side of the bay, led down to the water's edge. A few yards to their right, squarely across this path and half-blocking it, stood the tall, cloven rock which Genshed had observed from the forest above. On their left, moored to the bank at the upstream corner of the inlet, lay a canoe, with nets, spears and other tackle strewn aboard. There was not a soul to be seen, but some distance beyond the canoe could be glimpsed, through the trees, a cluster of huts, from some of which smoke was already rising.
'Mucking hell!' whispered Genshed, casting a quick glance round among the trees, 'Easy as that!'
From the forest there sounded suddenly a loud, fluting call, almost human in its consonantal clarity. A moment afterwards a swift flash of purple and gold darted through the trees. It was a bird, so vivid in the sunlight that even the famished, feverish children stared in wonder.
'Kynat!' called the bird, 'Kynat chrrrr-ak! Kynat, Kynat will tell!'
Glowing like an alchemist's fire, the saffron undersides of its wings alternately revealed and hidden as it flew, it circled the little bay, hovered a moment, spreading the flanged gold of its tail, and then alighted on the stern of the moored canoe.
'Kynat will tell!' it called, looking, alert and bright-eyed, towards the emaciated wretches on the bank as though it had indeed come with intent to carry its message to them and to none else.
Kelderek, hearing the call, looked about for the bird, but could make out nothing but swirling greys and greens, stabbed thiough with the golden shafts of the sunlight. Then, as it called again, he saw the courtyard in Zeray, and Melathys leaning out between the shutters. Even as he watched, she faded, and he seemed to see himself shuffling away through the dark woods, while his tears, falling as though from cliff to cliff, disappeared at last into an extreme darkness older than the world.
'Kynat will tell!' called the bird, and Kelderek, coming to himself, saw it perched close above the water and Genshed standing with bow bent and arrow drawn to the head. Sudden and clumsy as a charred log falling in the fire, he lunged forward: the chain tautened and he fell against Genshed in the act of loosing. The deflected arrow slammed into the stern of the canoe, causing it to rock and turn at its mooring, so that ripples followed one another across the pool. The bird, opening its amazing wings, rose into the air and flew away down the river.
'Four hundred meld they fetch!' cried Genshed. Then, rubbing his left wrist where the loosed bow-string had whipped it, he said very quietly. 'Oh, Mister Crendrik, I must keep a little time for you, mustn't I? I must do that.'
There was now about him a confident elation more terrible even than his cruelty – the elation of the thief who realizes that there is none in the house but a helpless woman, whom he can therefore rape as well as rob: of the murderer watching as his over-trusting companion is led away to face the charge which, thanks to his supposed friend's cunning, he cannot now disprove. He had indeed the devil's own luck but, as he well knew, luck comes to the sharp man – to the man of ability and style. The craft lay ready to his hand, the morning was windless, the water smooth. Lalloc's money was secure in his belt and chained to his wrist was a hostage worth more than the proceeds of ten slaving expeditions. At his feet, helpless but happily not senseless, lay the man who had once refused him a Beklan trading licence.
With the speed and dexterity of long use, Genshed loosed both Kelderek and Radu and, extending their chains with another which he passed through their pierced ears, secured them to a tree. Kelderek crouched, staring at the water and giving no sign that he knew what was being done. Then the slave-dealer, snapping his fingers for the last time, led the children along the path to his left and down to the upstream extremity of the inlet.
The canoe lay against the bank, moored to a heavy stone with a hole through it – the kind often used by fishermen as an anchor. Genshed, stooping down, put aboard first his pack and after that two paddles lying close by on the shore. Finally, he passed a chain through the anchor-stone and back to the wrist of the nearest child. His preparations now complete, he left the children and returned quickly up the slope.
At the moment when he reached Radu and Kelderek, Shouter came bursting out of the undergrowth. Looking wildly round, he ran up the path to where Genshed was standing, knife in hand.
'The Ikats, Genshed, the Ikats! Spread out in a line they are, coming through the wood! 'Must have started looking for us soon as it got light!' 'How soon will they be here?' asked Genshed coolly.
'Taking their time, searching the whole mucking place, beating the bushes; but they'll be here soon enough, don't worry!'
Genshed made no reply but, turning back to Kelderek and Radu, released them, at the same time unslinging the fire-pot, which he still carried in one hand, and blowing its smouldering sticks and moss to a glow. Into this he thrust the point of his knife.
'Now, Radu,' he said, 'listen to me. First you're going to put this knife into Mister Crendrik's eyes – both of them. If you don't, I'll do the same for you, understand? After that, you'll go down mere with me, unfasten the mooring-rope and then pitch that stone into the water. That'll take care of the stock we've got to leave behind. After that you and me, and perhaps Shouter, if I don't change my mind, can make a start. Time's short, so hurry up.'
Gripping Kelderek's shoulder, he forced him to his knees at Radu's feet, Radu, still gagged with the rope, dropped the knife which Genshed thrust into his hand. It stuck in the ground, sending up a wisp of smoke from some transfixed and smouldering fragment. Genshed, having retrieved and again heated it, once more gave it to Radu, at the same time twisting his left arm behind his back, pulling out his gag and tossing it down into the water below.
'For God's sake!' cried Shouter desperately, 'I tell you there's no time for this kind of sport, Genshed! Can't you wait for a bit of fun till we get back to Terekenalt? The Ikats, the mucking Ikats are coming! Kill the bastard if you're going to, only let's get onl'
'Kill the mucking lot!' whispered Genshed ecstatically. 'Come on, Radu, do it. Do it, Radu. I'll guide your hand if you want, but you're going to do it.'
As though entranced and bereft of will, Radu had already raised the knife, when suddenly, with a convulsive movement, he twisted himself out of Genshed's grasp. 'No!' he cried. 'Kelderek!'
As though wakened by the cry, Kelderek rose slowly to his feet. His mouth hung open and one hand, the split finger-nail covered with a bulbous, dirty scab, was held before him in a feeble posture of defence. After a moment, looking at Genshed but speaking uncertainly and as though to someone else, he said, 'It must be as God wills, my lord. The matter is greater even than your knife.'
Snatching the knife from Radu, Genshed struck at him, and the blow opened a long gash in his forearm. He uttered no sound, but remained standing where he was.
'Oh, Crendrik,' said Genshed, gripping his wrist and raising the knife again, 'Crendrik of Bekla-'
'My name is not Crendrik, but Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. Let the boy alone.'
Genshed struck him a second time. The point of the knife penetrated between the small bones of the elbow and dragged him once more to his knees, beating ineffectually at Genshed as he fell. At the same moment Shouter, with a cry, pointed back along the verge.
Half-way between the children chained to the stone and the higher point where Genshed stood above the centre of the inlet, the undergrowth parted and a great branch fell forward across the path, overbalanced and slid slowly into the water. A moment afterwards the gap, open still wider, disclosed the body of some enormous, shaggy creature. Then Shardik was standing on the bank, peering up at the four human beings above him.
Ah, Lord Shardik: supreme, divine, sent by God out of fire and water: Lord Shardik of the Ledges! Thou who didst wake among the trepsis in the woods of Ortelga, to fall prey to the greed and evil in the heart of Man! Shardik the victor, the prisoner of Bekla, lord of the bloody wounds: thou who didst cross the plain, who didst come alive from the Streel, Lord Shardik of forest and mountain, Shardik of the Telthearna! Hast thou, too, suffered unto death, like a child helpless in the hands of cruel men, and will death not come? Lord Shardik, save us! By thy fiery and putrescent wounds, by thy swimming of the deep river, by thy drugged trance and savage victory, by thy long imprisonment and weary journey in vain, by thy misery, pain and loss and the bitterness of thy sacred death; save thy children, who fear and know thee not! By fern and rock and river, by the beauty of the kynat and the wisdom of the Ledges, O hear us, defiled and lost, we who wasted thy life and call upon thee! Let us the, Lord Shardik, let us die with dice, only save diy children from this wicked man I
That the bear was close to death was plain enough. Its huge frame, deformed and lank with privation, was nothing but staring bones and mangy fur. One claw hung split and broken, and this evidently formed part of some larger wound in the foot, for the paw was held awkwardly and lifted from the ground. The dry muzzle and lips were cracked and the face misshapen, suggesting a kind of melting or disintegration of the features. The gigantic frame, from which the life was so clearly ebbing, was like a ruined aviary from which the bright birds have flown, those few that remain serving only to heighten the sense of loss and grief in the hearts of those that sec them.
The bear appeared to have been startled by some alarm in the forest behind it; for after turning its head this way and that, it limped along the verge of the pool, as though to continue what had evidently been a flight from intruders. As it approached the children they cowered away, wailing in terror, and at this it stopped, turned back, passed the spot where it had emerged and took a few hesitant, prowling steps up the slope. Shouter, frenzied with fear, began tearing at the thick creepers and thorns beside him, failed to force his way in and fell to the ground.
'Bloody thing!' said Genshed between his teeth. 'It's half-dead already, that is. Go on!' he shouted, waving his arms as though driving cattie. 'Go on! Get out of it!' He took a step forward, but at this the bear snarled and rose falteringly on its hind legs. Genshed fell back.
'Why don't we run?' moaned Shouter. 'Get us out of here, Genshed, for God's sake!'
'What, for that thing?' said Genshed. 'And leave the boat and any chance we've got? We'd run straight into the Ikats. We're not going to be buggered up by that bloody thing, not at this time of day. 1 tell you, it's half-dead now. We just got to kill it, that's all.'
His bow still lay where he had put it down after shooting at the kynat and, picking it up, he drew an arrow from his belt. Kelderek, still on his knees, his arm streaming blood, caught him by the ankle.
'Don't!' he gasped. 'It'll charge – it'll tear us all to pieces, believe me!'
Genshed struck him in the face and he fell on his side. At this moment there was a distant sound of voices in the forest – a man called an order and another answered.
'Don't be afraid,' said Genshed. 'Don't worry, my lad, I'll have three arrows in him before he can even think of charging. I know a trick or two, I'll tell you. He won't try to charge me.'
Without taking his eyes from the bear, he groped backwards and ripped a long strip from Radu's rags. This he quickly knotted round the shaft of the heavy arrow a little above the head, leaving the two ends hanging like those of a garland or a ribbon in a girl's hair.
At the sound of the voices the bear had dropped on all fours. For a few moments it ramped from side to side, but then, as though from weakness, ceased and once more stood still, facing the slave-trader on the path. 'Shouter,' said Genshed, 'blow up that fire-pot.'
Shouter, realizing what he intended, blew the pot into a glow and held it up with trembling hands. 'Keep it still,' whispered Genshed.
The arrow was already fitted to the string and he lowered the bow so that one end of the rag fell across and into the open fire-pot. It took instantly; and as the flame burned up, Genshed bent the bow and loosed. The flame streamed backwards and the whole shaft appeared to be burning as it flew.
The arrow pierced the bear deeply beneath the left eye, pinning the burning rag to its face. With an unnatural, wailing cry, it started back, clawing at its mask of fire. The dry, staring coat caught and burned – first the ears, then one flailing paw, then the chest, upon which fragments of the burning rag were clawed down. It beat at the flames, yelping Like a dog. As it staggered back Genshed shot it again, the second arrow entering the right shoulder close to the neck.
As though in a trance, Kelderek again rose to his feet Once more, as it seemed to him, he was standing on the battlefield of the Foothills, surrounded by the shouting of soldiers, the trampling of the fugitives, the smell of the trodden ground. Indeed, he could now plainly see before him the Beklan soldiers, and in his ears sounded the roaring of Shardik as he burst out from among the trees. Shardik was a blazing torch which would consume them all, a charging fire from which there was no escape. The wrath of Shardik filled the earth and sky, the revenge of Shardik would burn the enemy up and trample him down. He saw Genshed turn, run back down the path and force his body into the cleft of the rock. He saw Shouter hurled to one side and Radu flung on top of him. Leaping forward, he shouted, ' Shardik 1 Shardik the Power of God!'
Shardik, the arrow jutting from his face, came to the rock into which Genshed had squeezed for refuge. Standing erect, he thrust one blackened paw into the cleft Genshed stabbed it and the bear, roaring, drew it back. Then he struck and split the rock itself.
The top of the rock cracked across like a nutshell and men, as Shardik struck it again, broke into three great fragments, which toppled and fell into the deep water below. Once more he struck -a dying blow, his claws raking his enemy's head and shoulders. Then he faltered, clutched, shuddering, at the rock, and slowly collapsed across its splintered, broken base.
Watching, Kelderek and Radu saw a figure crawl out from the base of the cleft Radu screamed, and for a moment the figure turned towards him, as though it could hear. Perhaps it could: yet it had no eyes, no face – only a great wound, a pulp of bloody flesh, stuck here and there with teeth and splinters of bone, in which no human features could be discerned. Thin, wailing cries came from it like a cat's, yet no words, for it had no mouth, no lips. It stumbled into a tree and shrieked aloud, recoiling with fragments of bark and twigs embedded in its soft, red mask. Blindly, it raised both hands before it, as though to ward off the blows of some cruel tormentor; yet there was no one near it. Then it took three blundering steps, tripped, and without a sound pitched over the verge. The splash of the fall came up from below. Radu crawled forward and looked over the edge, but nothing rose to the surface. The scabbard of his knife floating in blood on the water, and the fly-trap lying smashed beside the broken rock – these were all that remained of the wicked, cruel slave-trader, who had boasted that he could drive a child mad with fear worse than blows.
Kelderek dragged himself to the rock and knelt beside it, weeping and beating upon the stone. One enormous fore-paw, thick as a roof-beam, hung down beside his face. He took it between his hands, crying, 'O Shardik! Shardik, my lord, forgive me! I would have entered the Streel for you! Would to God I had died for you! O Lord Shardik, do not die, do not die!'
Looking up, he saw the teeth like stakes, the snarling mouth fixed open and unmoving, flies walking already on the protruding tongue, the blackened pelt burned to the skin, the arrow protruding from the face. The pointed muzzle jutted in a wedge against the sky. Kelderek beat his hands on the rock, sobbing with loss and despair.
He was roused by a hand that gripped his shoulder, shaking him roughly. Slowly lifting his head, he recognized the man standing beside him as an officer of the Yeldashay army, the corn-sheaves of Sarkid blazoned upon one shoulder. Behind him stood his young, hard-bitten tryzatt, sword at the ready in case of trouble, in his wary eye a look of bewilderment and disdain as he stared uncomprehending! y at the huge carcase slumped over the rock and the three filthy vagabonds grovelling round its base.
'Who are you?' said the officer. 'Come on, answer me, man! What are you doing here and why are those children chained to that stone? What were you going to do?'
Following his gaze, Kelderek saw soldiers standing beside the children on the bank, while a little further off, among the trees, a group of villagers stood staring and muttering.
The officer smelled like a clean butcher's shop – the smell of the meat-eater to him who eats none. The soldiers stood up as effortlessly as trees in spring. Their straps were oiled, their harness glittered, their eyes travelled quickly here and there, their controlled voices linked them like gods in smooth communication. Kelderek faced the officer.
'My name is Kelderek Play-with-the-Children,' he said haltingly, 'and my life – my life is forfeit to the Yeldashay. I am willing to die, and ask only to be allowed to send a last message to Zeray.'
'What do you mean?' said the officer. 'Why do you say your life is forfeit? Are you the slave-trader who has committed these unspeakable crimes? Children we have found in the forest – sick – famished -dying, for all I know. Is this your doing?'
'No,' said Kelderek. 'No, I'm not your slave-trader. He's dead -by the power of God.' 'What are you, then?' 'I? I'm – I'm the governor-man from Bekla.' 'Crendrik, king of Bekla? The priest of the bear?'
Kelderek nodded and laid one hand on the massive, shaggy pelt that rose like a wall above him.
'The same. But the bear – the bear will trouble you no more. Indeed, it was never he that troubled you, but misguided, sinful men, and I the worst of them. Tell your soldiers not to mock him dead. He was the Power of God, that came to men and was abused by men; and to God he has now returned.'
The officer, contemptuous and bewildered, felt it best to avoid further talk with this bleeding, stinking scarecrow, with his talk of God and his expressed readiness to die. He turned to his tryzatt; but as he did so another figure plucked at his arm – a boy, his hair matted, his body emaciated, his blackened nails broken and a chain about his ankles. The boy looked at him with authority and said in native Yeldashay, 'You are not to hurt that man, captain. Wherever my father may be, please send someone at once to tell him you have found us. We..'
He broke off and would have fallen had not the officer, his perplexity now complete, caught him with one arm about his shoulders.
'Steady, my boy, steady. What's all this, now? Who is your father – and who are you, if it comes to that?' 'I – am Radu, son of Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid.'
The officer started and as he did so the boy slid from his grasp and fell to the ground, pressing his hands against the broken rock and sobbing, 'Shara! Shara!' Book VII Power of God 55 Tissarn A dry mouth. Glitter of water reflected from beneath a roof of reeds and poles. An evening light, red and slow. Some kind of woven covering rough against the body. A small, urgent, scratching sound – a mouse close by, a man further off? Pain, many pains, not sharp, but deep and persistent, the body infused in pain, finger, ear, arm, head, stomach, the breath coming short with pain. Weary, a weariness to be conscious and to feel the pain. Drained away: void with hunger; mouth dry with thirst. And yet a sense of relief, of being in the hands of people who intended no harm. Where he was he did not know, except that he was no longer with Genshed. Genshed was dead. Shardik had destroyed him and Shardik was dead.
Those about him; those – whoever they were – who had been to the trouble of putting him into this bed, would no doubt be content to leave him there for the time being. He could think no further, could not think of the future. Wherever he was, he must be in the hands of the Yeldashay. Radu had spoken to the officer. Perhaps they would not kill him, not only because – and this was very vague, a kind of child's intuition of what was and was not possible – not only because Radu had spoken to the officer, but also because of his destitution and his sufferings. He felt himself invested with his sufferings as though with a kind of immunity. What they would do with him he could not tell, but he was almost sure that they would not put him to death. His mind drifted away – he lacked all strength to pursue thought further – a clamour of duck on the river – he must be very near the waterside – a smell of wood-smoke – the throbbing pain in the finger-nail was the worst – his forearm had been bound up, but too tightly. All that was left of him was passive, fragments swept together and cast into a corner, Shardik dead, sounds, smells, vague memories, the coverlet rough at his neck, head rolling from side to side with pain, Shardik dead, the reflected evening light fading among the poles of the roof above.
Eyes closed, he moaned, licking his dry lips, tormented by his pain as though by flies. When he opened his eyes again – not from any deliberate wish to see, but for the momentary relief that the change would bring before the pain overtook it and once more crawled over his body – he saw an old woman standing beside the bed, holding a clay bowl in her two hands. Feebly he pointed to it and then to his mouth. She nodded, smiling, put one hand under his head and held the bowl to his lips. It was water. He drank it and gasped, 'More,' at which she nodded, went away and came back with the bowl full. The water was fresh and cold: she must have brought it straight from the river. 'Do you feel very bad, poor boy?' she asked. 'You must rest'
He nodded, and whispered, 'But I'm hungry.' Then he realized that she had spoken in a dialect like Ortelgan and that he had unthinkingly replied to her in that tongue. He smiled and said, 'I'm from Ortelga.' She answered, 'River people, like us,' and pointed, as he supposed, upstream. He tried to speak again but she shook her head, laying a soft, wrinkled hand on his forehead for a few moments before going away. He fell half-asleep – Genshed – Shardik dead -how long ago? – and after a time she came back with a bowl of broth made of fish and some vegetable he did not know. He ate feebly, as best he could, and she skewered the bits of fish on a pointed stick and fed him, holding his hand and clicking her tongue over his wounded finger. Again he asked for more, but she said, 'Later -later – not too much at first – sleep again now.'
'Will you stay here?' he asked, like a child, and she nodded. Then he pointed to the door and said,' Soldiers?'
She nodded once more and it was then that he remembered the children. But when he tried to ask her about them, she only repeated, 'Sleep now,' and indeed, with his thirst quenched and the hot food in his belly he found it easy to obey her, sliding away into the depths as a glimpsed trout slips from the fisherman's sight.
Once he woke in the dark and saw her sitting by a little, smoky lamp, its flame shining green through a lattice of thin rushes. Again she helped him to drink and then to relieve himself, brushing aside his hesitation and shame. 'Why don't you sleep now?' he whispered. She answered, smiling, 'Ay – happen you won't have the baby just yet' from which he guessed that she must be the village midwife. Her jest put him in mind once more of the children. 'The children?' he begged her. 'The slave children?' But she only pressed her old, soft hand once more upon his forehead. 'You know, they used to call me Kelderek Play-with-the-Children,' he said. Then his head swam – had she drugged him? – and he fell asleep again.
When he woke he could tell that it was afternoon. The sun was still out of sight, somewhere beyond his feet, but higher and further to his left than when he had first woken the day before. His head was clearer and he felt lighter, cleaner and somewhat less in pain. He was about to call to the old woman when he realized that in fact someone was already sitting beside the bed. He turned his head. It was Melathys.
He stared at her incredulously and she smiled back at him with the look of one who has brought a costly and unexpected present to a lover or a dear friend. She laid a finger on her lips but a moment after, perceiving that this would be insufficient to restrain him, she slipped forward on her knees beside the bed and laid her hand upon his.
'I'm real,' she whispered, 'but you're not to excite yourself. You're ill – wounds and exhaustion. Can you remember how bad you've been?'
He made no reply, only holding her hand to his lips. After a little she said, 'Do you remember how you came here?'
He tried to shake his head but desisted, closing his eyes in pain. Then he asked her,' Where am I?'
'It's called Tissarn – a fishing village, quite small – smaller than Lak.' ' Near – near where -?' She nodded. 'You walked here – the soldiers brought you. You can't remember?' 'Nothing.* 'You've slept over thirty hours altogether. Do you want to sleep again?' 'No, not yet' 'Is there anything you need?' He smiled faintly. 'You'd better send the old woman.'
She rose. 'If you like.' But then, smiling back at him over her shoulder, she said, 'When I arrived you were filthy – as if anyone in Tissarn would notice a thing like that. I stripped you and washed you from head to foot. All the same, I will send her if you prefer.' 'I never woke?'
'She told me she'd drugged you. I bound your arm again, too. They'd done it much too tight.'
Later, as the evening fell and the duck began their splashing and scuttering in the roof reflections – the hut, he now realized, must almost overhang the water – she came again to feed him and then to sit beside the bed. She was dressed like a Yeldashay girl, in a long blue metlan, gathered below the bosom and falling to her ankles. The shoulder was fastened with a fine emblematic brooch – the sheaves of Sarkid, worked in silver. Following his gaze she laughed, unpinned it and laid it on the bed.
'No, I haven't changed my love. It's only another part of the story. How do you feel now?'
'Weak, but less in pain. Tell me the story. You know that Lord Shardik is dead?'
She nodded. 'They took me to see his body on the rock. What can I say? I wept for him. We mustn't speak of that now – it's everything for you to rest and not distress yourself.' "The Yeldashay don't intend my death, then?' She shook her head. 'You can be sure of that.' 'And the Tuginda?'
'Lie quiet and I'll tell you everything. The Yeldashay entered Zeray the morning after you left. If they'd found you there they'd undoubtedly have killed you. They searched the town for you. It was the mercy of God that you went when you did.'
'And I – I cursed Him for that mercy. Did Farrass bring them, then?'
'No, Farrass and Thrild – they got what they deserved. They met the Yeldashay half-way to Kabin and were brought back under suspicion of being slave-traders on the run. I had to go and speak for them before the Yeldashay would release them.' 'I see. And yourself?' 'The Baron's house was commandeered by an officer from Elleroth's staff – a man called Tan-Rion.' 'I had to do with him in Kabin.'
'Yes, so he told me, but that came later. He was cold and unfriendly at first, until he learned that our sick lady was none other than the Tuginda of Quiso. After that he put everything he had at our disposal – goats and milk, fowls and eggs. The Yeldashay seem to do themselves very well in the field, but of course they'd only come from Kabin, which they seem to have milked dry, as far as I can make out.
'The first thing Tan-Rion told me was that an armistice had been agreed with Bekla and that Santil-ke-Erketlis was negotiating with Zelda and Ged-la-Dan at some place not far from Thettit. He's still there, as far as I know.'
'Then – then why send Yeldashay troops over the Vrako? Why?' He was still afraid.
'Stop exciting yourself, my darling. Be quiet and I'll explain. There are only two hundred Yeldashay all told this side of the Vrako, and Tan-Rion told me that Erketlis knew nothing about it until after they'd left Kabin. It wasn't he who gave the order, you see.' She paused, but Kelderek, obedient, said not a word.
'Elleroth gave the order on his own initiative. He told Erketlis he'd done it for two reasons: first, to round up fugitive slave-traders, particularly Lalloc and Genshed – the worst of the lot, he said, and he was determined to get them – and secondly to ensure that someone should meet the Deelguy if they succeeded in crossing the river. He knew they'd started work on the ferry.' Again she paused and again Kelderek remained silent.
'Elstrit did reach Ikat, you see. I might have known he would. He gave Erketlis the Baron's message, and it seems that the idea of the ferry appealed so much to the commander of the Deelguy with Erketlis that he immediately sent to the king of Deelguy suggesting that pioneers should be sent down the cast bank to begin work opposite Zeray and try to get the ferry started. I suppose be had the notion that any reinforcements sent from Deelguy to join the army after it had marched north might be able to avoid crossing the Gelt mountains. Anyway, those were the men you and I saw that afternoon, when we were on the roof. They're still there, but when I left no one had crossed the strait. Actually, I don't yet see how they're going to.
'But Elleroth had a third and more important reason, as Tan-Rion told me – more important to himself, anyway. He was going to find his poor son; or if he couldn't, it wasn't going to be for want of trying. There were eight officers altogether with the Sarkid company that entered Zeray, and every one of them had sworn to Elleroth, before they left Kabin, that they'd find his son if they had to search every foot of ground in the province. As soon as they'd been in Zeray twenty-four hours and found out all there was to learn – that is, that Genshed wasn't there and that no one had seen him or heard of him – they set out upstream. They'd already sent a detachment north on the way in, to close the Linsho Gap. That must have been closed two days after you left Zeray.' 'It was only just in time, then,' said Kelderek.
'I went north with the Yeldashay, and I went on the Tuginda's express order. She regained consciousness towards evening of the day you set out. She was very weak, and of course at that time we were still afraid that the house would be attacked by those ruffians who'd injured her. But as soon as the Yeldashay came and the fear of being murdered was off our minds, she began making her plans again. She's very strong, you know.' 'I do know – who better?'
"The night before the soldiers left Zeray she told me what I had to do. She said that with Ankray and two officers staying behind she felt perfectly safe; and I was to go north. I reminded her that there was no other woman in the house.
' "Then perhaps you or Tan-Rion will get me a decent girl from Lak," she said, "but north you must certainly go, my dear. The Yeldashay are not looking for Lord Shardik; they're looking for Elleroth's boy. Yet you and I know that both Shardik and Kelderek are wandering somewhere between here and Linsho. What holy and sacred death Lord Shardik is doomed to die none can tell, but come it must. As for Kelderek, he is in great danger; and I know what is between you and him as surely as though you had told me. The Yeldashay believe both him and Shardik to be their enemies. You are needed both as friend and as priestess, and if you ask me what you are to do, I reply that God will show you." ' "Priestess? " I said. "You're calling me a priestess?"
' "You are a priestess," she answered. "I say you are a priestess and you have my authority to act as such. It is as my priestess that you are to go north with the soldiers and do what you find to do." '
Melathys paused for some moments to regain command of herself. At length she went on,
'So I – so I set out, as a priestess of Quiso. We went to Lak and there I learned first of Shardik and next that you had been there and gone. Nothing more was known of you. The day after, the Yeldashay began moving north towards Linsho, searching the forest as they went. Tan-Rion had promised the Tuginda to look after me and it was he who gave me this Yeldashay metlan. He'd got the cloth with him – he bought it in Kabin, I believe – I wonder who for? -and a woman in Lak made it up to his orders. "You'll be perfectly all right with the men as long as you look like a Yeldashay girl," he said. "They know who you are, but it'll give them the idea that they ought to respect you and look after you." He gave me this emblem too.'
She paused, smiling, and picked it up. 'Popular girl. Would you like me to throw it in the river?'
He shook his head. 'There's no need. Besides, it might excite me, mightn't it? Go on.' She put it back on the blanket.
'The second day after we'd left Lak, in the morning, we found the body of a child – a boy of about ten – cast up on the shore. He was dreadfully thin. He'd been stabbed to death. He had a pierced ear and chain-marks on his ankles. The soldiers were wild with rage. That was when I began to wonder whether you might have been murdered by the slave-traders. I was frantic with worry and God help me, I thought more of that than of Lord Shardik.
'About the middle of that afternoon I was walking up the shore with Tan-Rion and his tryzatt when two canoes came downstream, manned by a Yeldashay officer, two soldiers and two villagers from Tissarn. That was how we learned that Radu had been found and Genshed and Lalloc were dead. The officer told us how Lord Shardik had given his life to save Radu and the children, and of how he split the rock. It was like a miracle, he said, like an old tale beyond belief.
'The Yeldashay, of course, could think of nothing but Radu, but I questioned the officer until I found out that you had been with Genshed and that Shardik had saved you too. "Wounded, feverish and half out of his mind," the officer said, but they didn't think you would die.
'One of the canoes went on to Zeray, but I made Tan-Rion give me a place in the other that was going back. We travelled upstream all night, inshore against the current, and reached Tissarn soon after dawn. I went first to Lord Shardik, as I was in honour and duty bound. No one had touched him; and just as the Tuginda had said, I knew then what I had to do. Tan-Rion has already set about the preparations. He made no difficulty when I asked him. The Yeldashay feel very differently now about Lord Shardik, you sec.
'But I've talked too long, my darling. I mustn't tire you any more tonight.'
'One question,' said Kelderek. 'One only. What of Radu and the children?'
'They're still here. I've met Radu. He spoke of you as his friend and comrade. He's weak and very much distressed.' She paused. 'There was a little girl?' Kelderek drew in his breath sharply, and nodded.
'Elleroth has been sent for,' she said. 'The other children – I've not seen them. Some are recovering, but I'm told that several are in a very bad way, poor little things. At least they're all in good hands. Now you must sleep again.' 'And you too, my dearest Travel-All-Night. We must both sleep.*
'Goodnight, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. Look, the daylight's quite gone. I'll ask old Dirion, bless her, to bring her lamp and sit with you until she's sure you're asleep.' 5 6 The Passing of Shardik Although it was now quite dark he could hear, some distance away, the sounds of men working – concerted, rhythmic shouts, as though heavy objects were being lugged into place; hammering, splintering and the knock of axes. A faint glow of torchlight was discernible from somewhere near the river. Once, when a deep splash was followed by a particularly loud shouting, Dirion, sitting by her lamp, clicked her tongue reprovingly. She said nothing in explanation, however, and after a little he ceased to wonder what urgent demand of war could have come upon the soldiers in this remote place where, so far as he knew, no enemy threatened. He fell asleep, waking to see moonlit ripples reflected in the roof and Melathys sitting by the lamp. Somewhere outside, a Yeldashay sentry called, 'All's well,' in the expressionless, stylized tone of one who observes routine.
'You should sleep,' he whispered. She started, came over to the bed, bent and kissed him lightly and then nodded, smiling, towards the neighbour room, as though to say she would sleep there: and at that moment Dirion returned. Yet much later in the night, when he woke, crying and struggling, from a dream of Genshed, it was still Melathys who was with him. He had somehow struck his wounded finger-nail. The pain was sickening and she comforted him as infants or animals are comforted, repeating the same phrases in a quiet, assured voice, 'There, there; the pain will go soon, it will go soon; wait now, wait now,' until he felt that it was indeed she who was making the pain subside. As the darkness began to melt into first light he lay awake, acquiescent, listening to the river and the growing sounds of morning – the birds, the clang of a pot and the snapping of sticks which someone was breaking across his knee.
He realized that for the first time since leaving Ortelga he was taking pleasure in diese sounds and that they were filling him, as once long ago, with expectancy of the coming day. To eat a meal, to complete a day's work, to come home tired to a fire, to greet a girl, talk and listen – a man free to do these things, he thought, should wear his blessings like a garland.
Yet when he had eaten and Melathys had changed his dressings he fell asleep again, waking only a little before noon, when a random sunbeam touched his eyes. He felt stronger, in pain certainly but no longer its helpless victim. After a time he put his foot to the floor, stood up dizzily, holding on to the bed, and looked about him.
His room and another comprised the upper storey of a fairly large hut: plank floor and walls, with an Ortelgan-style roof of reed thatch over zeilapa poles. The eastern side, behind the head of his bed, was a gallery, half-walled and open to the river almost immediately below.
He hobbled to the gallery wall and leaned upon it, looking out across the Telthearna to the distant Deelguy shore. Far off, men were fishing, their net stretched between two canoes. The midstream current glittered and close by, a little to his left, a few gaunt oxen stood drinking in the shallows. It was so quiet that after a time his ear caught the sound of breathing. He turned and, looking into the next room, saw Melathys lying asleep on a low, rough bed like his own. She was no less beautiful in sleep, lips closed, forehead smooth, her long eyelids curved, he thought, like waves lapping on her cheeks in dark ripples of lashes. This was the girl who for his sake had slept very little last night and not at all the night before. He had been restored to her by Shardik, whom he had once cursed and planned to destroy.
He turned back towards the river and for a long time remained leaning on the half-wall, watching the slow clouds and their mirrored images. The water was so smooth that when two duck flew across a white cloud, wheeled in the sky and disappeared upstream, their reflections were plain as themselves. This he saw with a sense of having seen the like before, yet could not remember where.
He stood up to pray, but could not raise his wounded arm and after a short time, his weakness overcoming him, was forced once more to support himself against the half-wall. For a long time his thoughts formed no words, dwelling only upon his own past ignorance and self-will. Yet strangely, these thoughts were kind to him, bringing with them no shame or distress, and turning finally to a flood of humility and gratitude. The mysterious gift of Shardik's death, he now knew, transcended all personal shame and guilt and must be accepted without dwelling on his own unworthiness, just as a prince mourning his father's death must contain his grief and be strong to assume, as a sacred trust, the responsibilities and cares of state which have fallen upon him. In spite of mankind and of all folly, Shardik had completed his work and returned to God. For his one-time priest to be absorbed in his own sorrow and penitence would be only to fail him yet again, the nature of the sacred truth immanent in that work being a mystery still to be grasped through prayer and meditation. And then? he thought. What then?
Below him the stones lay clean on the empty shore. The world, he reflected, was very old. 'Do with me what You intend,' he whispered aloud. 'I am waiting, at last.'
The fishermen had left the river. There appeared to be no one below in the village. So much quiet seemed strange in the early afternoon. When he heard the soldiers approaching he did not at first recognize the sound. Then, as they drew nearer, what had been one sound resolved into many – the tramping of feet, the clink of accoutrements, voices, a cough, a shouted order, a tryzatt's sharp admonition. There must be many soldiers – more than a hundred, he guessed; and by the sounds, armed and equipped. Melathys still slept as they passed by, unseen by him, on the landward side of the hut
As their tramping died away he suddenly heard Yeldashay voices talking below. Then there was a knock: Dirion opened the door and spoke a few words, but too quietly for him to make out what she had said. Supposing that the soldiers must be leaving the village and wondering whether Melathys knew of it, he waited and after a little Dirion came clambering up the ladder into the further end of the gallery. When she was half-way across the room she suddenly saw him, started and began scolding him back to bed. Smiling, he asked, 'What is it? What's happening?'
'Why, the young officer, to be sure,' she answered. 'He's here for the saiyett – to take her down to the shore. They're ready for the burning, and I must wake her. Now you go back to bed, my dear.'
At this moment Melathys woke as silently and swiftly as the moon emerges from behind clouds, her eyes opening and looking towards them with no remaining trace of sleep. To his surprise she ignored him, saying quickly to Dirion, 'Is it afternoon? Has the officer come?' Dirion nodded and went across to her. Kelderek followed more slowly, came up to the bed and took her hand. 'What's happening?' he repeated. 'What do they want?' She gazed gravely up into his eyes.
'It is Lord Shardik,' she answered. 'I have to do – what is appointed.' Understanding, he drew in his breath. 'The body?'
She nodded. 'The appointed way is very old – as old as Quiso. The Tuginda herself could not recall all the ceremony, but what has to be done is plain enough, and God will not refuse to accept the best that we are able to offer. At least Lord Shardik will have a fitting and honourable passing.' 'How does he pass?' 'The Tuginda never told you? ' 'No,' replied Kelderek sadly. 'No; that, too, I neglected to learn.'
'He drifts down the river on a burning raft ' Then, standing up, she took both his hands in her own and said, 'Kelderek, my dear love, I should have told you of this, but it could not have been delayed later than today, and even this morning you still seemed too tired and weak.'
'I'm well enough,' he answered firmly. 'I am coming with you. Don't say otherwise.' She seemed about to reply, but he added, 'At all costs I shall come.'
He turned to Dirion. 'If the Yeldashay officer is still below, greet him from me and ask him to come and help me down the ladder.' She shook her head, but went without argument, and he said to Melathys, 'I won't delay you, but somehow or other I must be dressed decently. What clothes do you mean to wear?'
She nodded towards a rough-hewn, unpolished chest standing on the other side of the bare room, and he saw lying across it a plain, clean robe, loose-sleeved and high-necked, dyed, somewhat unevenly, a dark red – a peasant girl's' one good dress'.
'They're kind people,' she said. 'The elder's wife gave me the cloth – her own – and her women made it yesterday.' She smiled. 'That's two new dresses I've been given in five days.' 'People like you.'
'It can be useful. But come, my dearest, since I'm not going to try to cross you in your resolve, we have to be busy. What will you do for clothes?'
'The Yeldashay will help me.' He limped to the head of the ladder as Dirion came struggling up it for the second time, lugging with her a wooden pail of cold water. Melathys said in Beklan, 'The washing's like the clothes. But she's the soul of kindness. Tell the officer I shan't be long.'
The Yeldashay officer had followed Dirion half-way up the ladder and now, looking down, Kelderek recognized Tan-Rion.
'Please give me your hand,' he said. 'I'm recovered sufficiently to come with you and the priestess today.'
'I didn't know of this,' replied Tan-Rion, evidently taken aback. 'I was told you would not be equal to it.'
'With your help I shall be,' said Kelderek. 'I beg you not to refuse. To me this duty is more sacred than birth and death.'
For answer Tan-Rion stretched out his hand. As Kelderek came gropingly down the ladder, he said, 'You followed your bear on foot from Bekla to this place?' Kelderek hesitated. 'In some sort – yes, I suppose so.' 'And the bear saved Lord Elleroth's son.'
Kelderek, in pain, gave way to a touch of impatience. 'I was there.' Feeling faint, he leaned against the wall of the dark, lower room into which he had climbed down. 'Can you – could your men, perhaps – find me some clothes? Anything clean and decent will do.'
Tan-Rion turned to the two soldiers waiting by the door and spoke in his own tongue. One answered him, frowning and evidently in some perplexity. He spoke again, more sharply, and they hurried away.
Kelderek fumbled his way out of the hut to the fore-shore, pulled off the rough, sack-like shift he had been wearing in the bed and knelt down to wash, one-handed, in the shallows. The cold water pulled him together and he sat, clear-headed enough, on a bench, while Tan-Rion dried him with the shift for want of anything better. The soldiers returned, one carrying a bundle wrapped in a cloak. Kelderek tried to make out what they said.
– 'whole village empty, sir,' he heard – 'decent people – can't just help ourselves – done the best we can -'
Tan-Rion nodded and turned back to him. 'They've brought some clothes of their own. They suggest you put them on and wear a sentry's night-cloak over the top. I think that's the best we can do at this short notice. It will look well enough.'
'I'm grateful,' said Kelderek. 'Could they – could someone – support me, do you think? I'm afraid I'm weaker than I thought.'
One of the soldiers, perceiving his clumsiness and evident fear of hurting his heavily-bound left arm, had already, with natural kindliness, stepped forward to help him into the unfamiliar clothes. They were the regulation garments of a Yeldashay infantryman. The man fastened the cloak at his neck and then drew his sound arm over his own shoulders. At this moment Melathys came down the ladder, bowed gravely to Tan-Rion, touched Kelderek's hand for an instant and then led the way out into the village street.
She was wearing the plaited wooden rings of a priestess of Quiso. Were they her own, he wondered, hidden and kept safe throughout her wanderings, or had the Tuginda given them to her pardoned priestess when she left Zeray? Her long, black hair was gathered round her head and fastened with two heavy wooden pins – no doubt the very best that Dirion could borrow. The dark-red robe, which would otherwise have fallen straight from the shoulder like a shift, was gathered at the waist by a belt of soft, grey leather with a crisscross pattern of bronze studs, and from below this the skirt flared slightly, falling to her ankles. Even at this moment Kelderek found himself wondering how she had come by the belt. Had she brought it with her from Zeray, or was it the gift of Tan-Rion or some other Yeldashay officer?
Outside, between the huts, a double file of Sarkid soldiers, in full panoply, stood waiting. Each wore the corn-sheaves on his left shoulder. They were spearmen, and at the approach of the priestess of Quiso, followed by their own officer and the limping, pallid Ortelgan priest-king who had suffered in comradeship with the Ban's son, they saluted by beating the bronze-shod butts of their spears in succession with a dull, rolling sound on the hard-trodden earth. Melathys bowed to the tryzatt and took up her place at the head of and between the two files. Kelderek, still leaning on the soldier's shoulder, stationed himself a few paces behind her. After a moment she turned and came back to him. 'You are still of the same mind, my love?' she whispered. 'If we go slowly -I can manage it.'
Giving his soldier a nod and smile of thanks, she returned to her place, looked quickly about her and then, leaving it to the tryzatt and his men to follow her lead, set off with the same solemn, gliding step. Kelderek came limping, breathing hard and leaning heavily on the soldier's shoulder. The Telthearna lay on their left and he realized that they were going southward out of the village, towards the place where Shardik had died. They passed patches of cultivated ground, a shed for oxen with a great pile of manure outside it, a frame on which nets hung drying and an up-ended canoe, patched and repaired, its new caulking shining black in the sun. Hobbling between the files of soldiers, he recalled how he had once paced the streets of Bekla with his scarlet-cloaked priestesses, the train of his panelled robe carried behind him. He could feel again the weight of the curved, silver claws hanging from the fingers of his gauntlets, hear the stroke of the gong and see about him the finery of his attendants. He felt no regret. That great city he would never, he knew, see again; and gone, too, was the false illusion which had carried him thither in bloodshed and drawn him thence, alone and friendless, to suffering and self-knowledge. But the secret – the great secret of life on earth – the secret that Shardik might perhaps have been able to impart to a humble, selfless, listening heart – must that, too, be lost for ever? 'Ah, Lord Shardik,' he prayed silently, 'the empire was pride and folly. I am sorry for my blindness, and sorry, too, for all that you suffered at my hands. Yet for others' sake, not mine, I entreat you not to leave us for ever without the truth that you came to reveal. Not for our deserving, but of your own grace and pity for Man's helplessness.'
His foot slipped and he stumbled, clutching quickly at his companion's shoulder.
'All right, mate?' whispered the soldier. 'Hold on. Comin' up now, look.'
He lifted his head, peering in front of him. The two files were opening out, moving apart, while ahead of him Melathys still paced on alone. Now he remembered where he was. They had come to that part of the shore which lay between the southern outskirts of the village and the wooded inlet where Shardik had died. That it was crowded he could see, but at first he could not make out the people who were surrounding the stony, open space into which he was following Melathys. A sudden fear came upon him. 'Wait,' he said to the soldier. 'Wait a moment.'
He stopped, still leaning on the man, and looked about him. From all sides, faces were turned towards him and eyes were staring expectantly. He realized why he had felt afraid. He had known them before – the eyes, the silence. But as though to transform the curses which he had carried out of Kabin, everyone was looking at him with admiration, with pity and gratitude. On his left stood the villagers: men, women and children all in mourning, with covered heads and bare feet. Gathered behind the file of soldiers now halted and facing inwards in extended order, they filled the shore to the water's edge. Although, from natural awe and sense of occasion, they did not press forward, yet they could not help swaying and moving where they stood as they pointed out to one another, and held up their children to see, the beautiful priestess of Quiso and the holy man who had suffered such bitter hardship and cruelty to vindicate the truth and power of God. Many of the children were carrying flowers – trcpsis and field lily, planella, green-blooming vine and long sprays of melikon blossom. Suddenly, of his own accord, a little boy came forward, stared gravely up at Kelderek, laid his bunch at his feet and ran quickly back to his mother.
On the right stood the Yeldashay troops – the entire Sarkid contingent who had marched from Kabin to close the Linsho Gap. Their line, too, extended to the water's edge, and their polished arms shone bravely in the light of the westering sun. In front, a young officer held aloft the Corn-Sheaves banner, but as Melathys passed him he dropped on one knee, slowly lowering it until the blue cloth lay broad across the stones.
With an extraordinary sense of grave, solemn joy, such as he had never known, Kelderek braced himself to go forward over the shore. Still he could not see the river, for between it and Melathys a third group were facing him – a single line, parallel with the water's edge, extending between the villagers and the soldiers. At its centre stood Radu, pale and drawn, dressed, like Melathys, in villager's clothes, his face disfigured with bruises and one arm in a sling. On each side of him were some five or she of the slave children – all, it seemed, who had been able to find the strength to stand and walk. Indeed, it appeared to Kelderek, looking at them, that there might be some who could scarcely do so much, for two or three, like himself, were leaning on companions – village boys, they looked to be -while behind the line were benches, from which they had evidently risen at the approach of the priestess. He saw the boy with whom he had talked in the night and who had told him about Leg-by-Lee. Then he suddenly started, recognizing, at one extremity of the line, Shouter, who caught his eye for a moment and looked quickly away.
As Melathys halted, soldiers took away the benches, the children moved apart in either direcdon, and now for the first time Kelderek saw the water's edge and the river beyond.
A small fire was burning on the stones, a little in front of the shoreward extremity of the soldiers' line. It was bright and clear, with hardly a trace of smoke, and above it the air wavered, distorting the distant view. Yet this he scarcely noticed, standing, like a child, with one hand raised to his open mouth, staring at what lay immediately before him.
In the shallows a heavy raft was moored – a raft bigger than the floor of a dwelling-hut, made of sapling trunks lashed together with creeper. It was covered with high piled brushwood, logs and dry faggots, over which had been sprinkled flowers and green boughs. Upon this great bed, pressing it down, as a fortress settles upon the ground where it is built, lay the body of Shardik. He was lying on one side, as naturally as though sleeping, one fore-paw extended, the claws hanging down almost to the water. The eyes were closed – stitched, perhaps, thought Kelderek, observing with what care and pains the villagers and soldiers had carried out their work of preparing for his obsequies the Power of God – but the long wedge of the muzzle, if it had once been shut, had in some way burst its binding, so that now the lips snarled open round the pointed teeth. The poor, wounded face had been cleaned and tended, yet all that the soldiers had been able to do could not obliterate, to the eyes of one who had once seen them, the marks of Shardik's wounds and sufferings. Nor could the long, careful combing, the removal of briars and thorns and the brushing in of oil disguise the starved desolation of the body. It was not possible for Shardik to appear small, but less colossal he looked; and as it were, shrunken in the grip of death. There was a faint odour of carrion, and Kelderek realized that Melathys, from the moment that she heard the news, must have grasped the necessity of speed and known that she would barely have time to carry out all that the Tuginda would wish. She had done well, he thought, and more than well. Then, as he took yet a few more painful steps forward, his line of vision became direct and he saw what had been concealed from him before.
Between Shardik's front paws lay the body of Shara. The extended paw covered her feet, while her raised head rested upon the other. She was bare-headed and dressed in a white smock, her hands clasped about a bunch of scarlet trepsis. Her fair hair had been combed over her shoulders and round her neck had been fastened a string of pierced and coloured stones. Although her eyes were closed, she did not look as though she were asleep. Her thin body and face were those of a dead child, drained and waxen: and cleaner, stiller and more tranquil than ever Kelderek had seen them in life. Dropping his head on the soldier's arm, he sobbed as uncontrollably as though the shore had been deserted.
'Steady now, mate, steady,' whispered the kindly, decent fellow, ignoring everything but the poor foreigner clinging to him. 'Why, they ain't there, you know. That ain't nothing, that ain't. They're off somewhere better, you can be sure of that. Only we got to do what's right and proper, 'aven't we?'
Kelderek nodded, bore down on the supporting arm and turned once more to face the raft as Melathys passed close to him on her way to speak to Tan-Rion. Despite their debt to the Yeldashay she spoke, as was right, out of the authority conferred upon her and not as one asking a favour.
'Captain,' she said, 'by the ancient rule of Quiso no weapons must be brought into any place sacred to Lord Shardik. I tell you this, but I leave you, of course, to order the matter as you think best.'
Tan-Rion took it very well. Hesitating only a moment, he nodded, then turned his soldiers about and marched them back a little distance along the shore. There each man grounded his spear and laid beside it his belt, short sword and knife. As they returned, halted and dressed their line, Melathys stepped forward into the shallows and stood motionless before the raft, her arms outstretched towards Shardik and the dead child.
How many times has that scene been depicted – carved in relief on stone, painted on walls, drawn with brush and ink on scrolls, scratched with pointed sticks in the wet sand of the Telthearna shore? On one side the fishermen and peasants, on the other the unarmed soldiers, the handful of children beside the fire (first, the very first, of all those to bless the name of Lord Shardik), the Man supported on the soldier's arm, the Woman standing alone before the bodies on the floating pyre? The sculptors and the painters have done what was required of them, finding ways to reflect the awe and wonder in the hearts of people who have known the story since they were little children themselves. The fisher-folk – handsome, strong young men, fine old patriarchs and their grave dames – face the resplendent soldiers in their red cloaks, each a warrior to conquer a thousand hearts. The Man's unhealed wounds bleed red upon the stones, the Woman is robed like a goddess; light streams from Lord Shardik's body upon the kneeling children, and the little girl smiles as though in her sleep, nestling between the strong, protecting limbs. The fire burns lambent, the regular wavelets lap white as wool upon the strand. Perhaps – who can tell? – this is indeed the truth, sprung like an oak from an acorn long vanished into the earth: from the ragged, muttering peasants (one or two already edging away to the evening chores), the half-comprehending soldiers obeying orders, their clothes and armour, conscientiously mended and burnished, showing every sign of a hard campaign and a forced march; from Shouter, trying for dear life to squeeze out a few tears; from Kelderek's uncontrollable trembling, Melathys' weary, dark-ringed eyes and homespun robe, from the grubby village flotsam bobbing in the shallows and the sorry huddle on the raft. These things were not remarked or felt at the time and now they have long disappeared, mere grains succeeded by the massive trunk above and the huge spread of roots below. And lost too – only to be guessed at now – are the words which Melathys spoke.
She spoke in Ortelgan, a tongue largely unknown to the Yeldashay, though understood well enough by the Tissarn villagers. First she uttered the traditional invocation of Quiso to Lord Shardik, followed by a sequence of prayers whose archaic and beautiful periods fell from her lips without hesitation. Then, turning to face her listeners and changing her voice to an even tone of narration, she spoke of the finding of Shardik on Ortelga and the saving of his life by the priestesses of Quiso; of his coming alive from the Streel; of his ordained suffering, and of the sacred death by which he had saved the heir of Sarkid and the enslaved children from the power of evil. Kelderek, listening, marvelled, less at her self-possession than at the authority and humility present together in her voice and bearing. It was as though the girl whom he knew had relinquished herself to become a vessel brimmed with words old, smooth and universal as stones; and by these to allow mankind's grief and pity for death, the common lot of all creatures, to flow not from but through her. Out of her mouth the dead, it seemed, spoke to the unborn, as sand pours grain by grain through the waist of an hour-glass. The sand was run at last and the girl stood motionless, head bowed, eyes closed, hands clasped at her waist.
The silence was broken by the voice of the young flag-officer beginning, like a precentor, the beautiful Yeldashay lament sometimes called 'The Grief of Deparioth', but more widely known, perhaps, as 'The Tears of Sarkid'. This, which tells of the sacred birth and the youth of U-Deparioth, liberator of Yelda and founder of the House of Sarkid, is sung to this day, though perhaps it has altered through the centuries; just as, they say, the shapes of the constellations undergo change, no man living long enough to perceive it. The soldiers took up the lament, their solemn chanting growing louder and echoing from the Deelguy shore. Among the standing corn-sheaves she lay down, In bitter grief the friendless girl lay down, Wounded, alone, the curse of the Street upon her, She bore the hero Deparioth, when Yelda lay in chains.
The soldier beside Kelderek was singing with the rest, the words, coming to him unthinkingly, expressing for him his sense of forming a part of things greater than himself, his people, his homeland and those memories, his and no other man's, that made up his little share of human life. He knew neither his father nor his mother, Among strangers he laboured as a slave, An exile, in a country not his own, The Lord Deparioth, God's appointed sword.
The flag-officer stepped forward, holding the Corn-Sheaves banner before him, and was met from the opposite line by a villager carrying a fishing-net in his arms. Together they turned river-ward and walked towards Melathys, passed her on either side, waded into the shallows and placed their burdens on the raft. Radu, following them, laid his hand for a moment first on Shardik's grey claws and then on Shara's forehead. Returning up the shore, he drew a brand from the fire and stood waiting, holding it upright before him. If I could meet thee, thou mighty Lord Deparioth, If I could meet thee and clasp thy hand in mine, I'd tell thee thy deeds are not forgotten in Yelda, That the tears of Sarkid fall to honour thee still.
The chanting sank and died away. As it did so, Melathys raised her head with a long, ululating cry that recalled instandy to Kelderek the city of Bekla lying silent in sacred darkness, the weight of his heavy robes and the sudden, upward leap of flame into the night sky. 'Shardik! Lord Shardik's fire!' 'Lord Shardik's fire!' responded the villagers.
Radu approached slowly across the stones and held out to Kelderek the burning brand.
For a few moments Kelderek, confused by the vividness of his memories, stood hesitant, unable to grasp what it was that he was being asked to do. Then, as his mind cleared, he started and took a step backwards, one hand raised as though in refusal. Radu dropped upon one knee, still offering the fire.
' 'Seems they think you're the one that's got to do it, sir,' whispered the soldier. 'Reckon you're up to it?'
In the silence Kelderek could hear only the crackling of the flame and beyond, the lapping of the water. Fixing his eyes on the raft, he stepped forward, took the brand from Radu and so came down the shore to where Melathys still stood waiting, with bowed head.
Now he was standing alone in the water, none between him and the dead child, closer to Shardik than at any time since the day when he had come alive from the Streel. The bodies lay before him, the bear's, massive as a mill-wheel seen against the wall of a mill, marked by the ropes with which it had been dragged into place and by the arrow's gash in the starved, pinched mask.
He wondered whether they expected him to speak or to pray: then saw that he had no time, for the brand had burned low and must be used at once.
'Senandril, Lord Shardik!' he cried. 'Accept our lives, Lord Shardik Die-for-the-Children!'
Up to his waist in the water, steadying himself against the edge of the raft with his wounded left hand, he thrust the brand into the pile of twigs and shavings before him. It caught immediately, burning up in the opaque, yellow flames of kindling. Withdrawing the brand, he lit again and yet again among the logs and sticks. Finally, as the butt began to crumble and to scorch his fingers, he tossed it, in a shower of sparks, to the top of the pyre. It lodged, burning, a few feet above the spot where Shara lay.
The raft was pivoting slowly away from him. He let go of it clumsily, wincing to feel the pain shoot up his arm as he pushed himself upright. The soldiers behind him had released the mooring-ropes, which now trailed past him on either side, rippling but invisible in the lurid shallows. For now the whole shoreward side of the pyre was burning, blazing in a wall of hot, translucent flames, green, red and black-flecked orange. The fire ran back into the heart of the pyre, disclosing its depth as sunlight shows the distance between forest trees; and as it burned higher, up into the green branches and flowers where Shardik lay, a thick, white smoke began to fume and drift to the shore, almost blinding Kelderek and those behind him.
He choked, and gasped for breath. His eyes smarted, pouring water, but still he stood where he was. 'Let it be so,' he thought. 'This is best, for I could not bear to see the bodies burn.' Then, even as he felt himself about to faint in the smother, the heavy raft began to turn more swiftly, so that the bodies and the whole of the side along which he had lit the fire faced upstream. Four or five of the young fishermen had fastened the upstream mooring-rope to a canoe and were drawing the raft out towards the centre of the river.
As it began to gather way, a storm of flames poured backward through the pyre. The sound of crackling changed to a hot, windy roaring and sparks and cinders raced upward, wavering and dodging like escaping birds. Logs began to shift and fall, and here and there a burning fragment dropped hissing into the water. Presently, cleaving through the noise of dissolution like a ploughshare through heavy soil, there rose once again the sound of singing. The villagers upon the shore were encouraging and urging on the young men at the paddles, who were labouring now as they drew further out and began to be carried downstream with the current-borne raft. At dawn we come to the shore and loose our boats. If luck is with us none will be hungry tonight. Who has his net and who has skill with a spear? Poor men must live by any means they can.
The raft was half a bowshot from land now and as far downstream from where Kelderek stood, but still the paddlers dug rhythmically into the water and the plume of smoke blew shoreward as they toiled to pull it further out. Buying wisdom dear is the lot of men, And learning to make the most of what they've got. What I call luck's a fire and a bellyful, A girl for your bed and children to learn your craft.
They clapped and stamped as they sang, in the rhythm of the paddles, and yet it was a grave and not unfitting sound; of a minor cadence, homely and shrewd, the single music of folk whose solemnity is but their wit turned inside out to serve the occasion and mood of the day. The raft was a long way out now and far downstream, so far that the distant paddles could be seen striking behind the beat of the song. The young men had turned the bow half-upstream into the current, so that the raft was below them and the side on which the bodies had lain was once more turned towards the shore. Kelderek, gazing, could discern nothing on top of the burning pyre. It had fallen inwards at the centre, the two glowing halves spread on either side like the wings of a great butterfly. Shardik was no more.
'Twice,' he cried, 'I followed you into the Telthearna, Lord Shardik. Now I can follow you no longer.' Returning at dusk we see the fires on shore. If one is yours then you're a lucky man. No one ought to be left alone in the dark. If you die, brother, your children shall share my fire.
The paddlers cast off the rope and turned away, making for the shore downstream and an easy return in slack water under the bank. The raft could no longer be seen, but far-off, a point on the surface of the river itself seemed to be burning, emitting smoke and covering the watery expanse with a wide, drifting cloud. We gut the fish and the children spit them to cook. 'Hullo, my son, my tall young zoan tree! What have you got to say to your dad tonight?' 'When I'm a man, I'll paddle a boat like you!'
The pouring smoke was gone. Trees hid it from view. Kelderek, closing his eyes as he turned away, found his soldier beside him, felt his arm under his shoulders and allowed himself to be lifted almost bodily through the shallows to the shore. Tan-Rion called up his men and turned them about to recover their arms. Then they marched away: and the villagers, too, began to disperse, two matronly women shepherding Radu and the other children with them. Yet several, before they went, came forward – some a little hesitantly, for they stood in awe of Kelderek – to kiss his hands and ask his blessing. Any holy man may have the power to confer good luck, and a chance is not to be missed. He stood hunched and silent as a heron, but nodded back at them and looked in the eye each one that passed before him – an old man with a withered arm, a tall young fellow who raised his palm to his forehead, a girl who smiled shyly at the priestess standing near by and gave her the flowers she was carrying. Last of all came a ragged old woman, with a child lying asleep in her arms. Kelderek started and almost backed away but she, showing neither hesitation nor surprise, took his hand in her own, kissed it, spoke a few words with a smile and was gone, hobbling away over the stones. 'What did she say?' he asked Melathys. 'I couldn't catch it.' 'She said, "Bless me, young sir, and accept my blessing in return." ' He lay on his bed in the upper room, watching the elastic reflections widening, merging and closing among the roof-poles. Melathys sat beside him, holding his good hand in both her own. He was tired out and feverish again, shivering and numb-cold. There was nothing left remarkable in the world. All was empty and cold, stretching away to the horizon and the blank sky.
"Hope you didn't find our singing out of keeping, sir,' said Tan-Rion. 'The priestess said it would be all to the good if we could manage a song, but the job was to think of something suitable that the lads could sing. They all know "The Tears", of course.'
Kelderek found some words of thanks and praise, and after a little the officer, seeing that he was exhausted, took his leave. Presently Radu came, wrapped in a cloak from throat to ankles, and sat for a time opposite Melathys.
'They say my father's on his way,' he said. 'I'd hoped he might be here before this. If only he'd known, he'd have wished to be on the shore this afternoon.'
Kelderek smiled and nodded like an old man, only partly taking in what he said. But indeed Radu said little, sitting silent for long minutes and once biting on his hand to still the chattering of his teeth. Kelderek slipped into a half-doze and woke to hear him answering Melathys.
'- but they'll be all right, I think.' And then, after a pause, 'Shouter's ill, you know – quite badly, they say.' 'Shouter?' asked Melathys, puzzled. 'Is he?' said Kelderek. 'But I saw him on the shore.'
'Yes, I dare say he thought he'd better be there at all costs – not that it makes any difference – but he's in a bad way this evening. I believe it's fear as much as anything. He's terrified: partly of the other children; but partly of the villagers as well. They know who he is – or who he was – and they won't do anything for him. He's lying by himself in a shed, but I think he'd run away if he could.' 'Who's Shouter?' asked Melathys again.
'Will they kill him?' said Kelderek. Radu did not answer at once and he pressed him. 'What do you want to do with him?'
'No one's actually said anything; but what would be the good of killing him?' 'Is that really what you feel – after all you've suffered?'
'It's what I feel I ought to feel, anyway.' He was silent again for some time and then said, 'No one's going to kill you. Tan-Rion told me.'
'I'll – I'll come and talk to Shouter,' said Kelderek, groping to get up. 'Where is the shed?'
'Lie down, my love,' said Melathys. 'I'll go. Since no one tells me about him, I must see this Shouter for myself – or hear him.' 5 7 Elleroth's Dinner Party When he woke, his Yeldashay soldier was sitting near by mending a piece of leather in the fading light. Seeing Kelderek awake, he grinned and nodded, but said nothing. Kelderek slept again and was next wakened by Melathys lying down beside him.
'If I don't lie down I'll fall down. I'll be off to bed soon, but it means so much to be alone with you again for a little. How are you?'
'Empty – desolate. Lord Shardik – I can't take it in.' He broke off, but then said, 'You did well today. The Tuginda herself could have done no better.'
'Yes, she could: and she would have. But what happened was ordained.' 'Ordained?'
'So I believe. I haven't told you something else the Tuginda said to me before I left Zeray. I asked her whether, if I found you, I should give you any message from her; and she said, "He's troubled because of what he did years ago, at moonset on the road to Gelt. He hasn't been able to ask forgiveness, although he wants it. Tell him I forgive him freely." And then she said, "I'm guilty too -guilty of pride and stupidity." I asked, "How, saiyett? How could you be?" "Why," she said, "you know, as I do, what we have been taught and what we have taught to others. We were taught that God would reveal the truth of Shardik through two chosen vessels, a man and a woman: and that He would break those vessels to fragments and Himself fashion them again to His purpose. I had supposed, in my stupid pride, that the woman was myself, and often I have thought that I was indeed suffering that breaking. I was wrong. It was not I, my dear girl," she said to me. "It was not I, but another woman, that He chose to be broken and whom He has now fashioned again.'"
Melathys was crying and he put his arm round her, unable to speak for the shock of surprise that filled him. Yet he was in no doubt and, as perception began to come upon him of all that her words imported, he felt like one looking out towards an unknown country half-hidden in the twilight and mist of early morning. Prcsently she said,
'We have to return to the Tuginda. She will need a message sent to Quiso and help with preparing for her journey. And Ankray -something must be done for him. But that wretched boy out there -' 'He's a murderer.' 'I know. Do you want to kill him?' 'No.'
'It's easier for me to pity him -I wasn't there. But he was a slave like the rest of them, wasn't he? I suppose he has no one at all?'
'I think we may find there are several like that. It's the unloved and deserted who get sold as slaves, you know.' 'I should know.' 'So should I. God forgive me! O God, forgive me!'
She checked him with a finger held to his lips. 'Fashioned again to His purpose. I believe I'm at last beginning to see.'
They could hear Dirion climbing the ladder. Melathys got up, bent over him and kissed his lips. Still holding her hand, he said, 'Then what are we to do?'
'Oh, Kelderek! My darling Kelderek, how many more times? It will be shown us, shown us, shown us what we are to do!' Next day his wounds were once more cnflamed and painful. He was feverish and kept his bed, but the following morning felt well enough to sit looking out over the river in the sunlight while he soaked his arm in warm water with herbs. The herbal smell mingled with wood-smoke from Dirion's fire, and some children below played and scuffled over their task of spreading nets to dry on the shore. Melathys had just finished binding his arm and tying a sling for it when suddenly they heard cheering break out some distance away on the edge of the village. There are as many kinds of cheering as of children's weeping; the sound tells plainly enough whether the cause be deep or shallow, great or small. These were not ironical cheers of derision, nor yet of sport nor of acclamation for a comrade or hero, but deep, sustained cries of joy, expressive of some long-held hope attained and relief conferred. They looked at each other; and Melathys went to the head of the ladder and called down to Dirion. The cheering was spreading through the village and they could hear feet running and men's voices shouting excitedly in Yeldashay. Melathys went down and he heard her calling to someone further off. Noise and excitement were blazing round the house like a fire and he had almost determined to try to go down himself when she returned, climbing the ladder as lightly as a squirrel. She took his good hand and, kneeling on the floor beside him, looked up into his face.
'Elleroth's here,' she said, 'and the news is that the war's over: but I don't know what that means any more than you.'
He kissed her and they waited in silence. Melathys laid her head on his knee and he stroked her hair, wondering to find himself so indifferent to his fate. He thought of Genshed, of the slave-children, of Shara and her coloured stones, of the death of Shardik and the burning raft. It seemed to matter little what might follow upon diese, except that come what might he would not leave Melathys. At length he said, 'Have you seen Shouter this morning?'
'Yes. At least he's no worse. Yesterday I paid a woman to look after him. She seems honest.'
Some time later they heard men entering below, and then Tan-Rion speaking quickly in words they could not catch. A few moments afterwards he appeared at the head of the ladder, followed by Radu. Both stood waiting, looking down at someone who was following them. There was a pause and then Elleroth climbed awkwardly into the room, stretching out his ungloved right hand for help before stepping off the rungs.
Kelderek and Melathys rose and stood side by side as the Ban of Sarkid and his companions came forward to meet them. Elleroth, who was as clean and impeccably dressed as when Kelderek had last seen him in Kabin, offered his hand and after a moment's hesitation Kelderek took it, though returning the other's look uncertainly.
'We meet as friends today, Crendrik,' said Elleroth. 'That is, if you are willing, as I am.'
'Your son is my friend,' replied Kelderek. 'I can truly say that. We suffered much together and believed we had lost our lives.'
'So he tells me. I have heard little about it as yet, but I know that you were wounded defending him and that you probably saved his life.'
'What happened,' replied Kelderek hesitantly, 'was – was confused. But it was Lord Shardik who laid down his life – it was he who saved us all.' 'That too Radu has told me. Well, I see that I have much still to hear; and perhaps something to learn as well.' He smiled at Melathys.
'Lord Kelderek has been gravely ill,' she said, 'and is still weak. I think we should sit down. I am only sorry that these are such rough quarters.'
'Mine have been worse these two nights past,' answered Elleroth cheerfully, 'and it seemed no hardship in the world, I can assure you. You are a priestess of Quiso, I take it?' Melathys looked confused and it was Kelderek who replied.
'This is the priestess Melathys, whom the Tuginda of Quiso sent as her deputy to conduct the last rites of Lord Shardik. The Tuginda was injured in Zeray and is still lying sick there.'
'I am sorry to hear it,' said Elleroth, 'for she is honoured as a healer from Ikat to Ortelga. But even she was taking too much danger on herself when she crossed the Vrako. Had I known, when she came to see me in Kabin, that she meant to go to Zeray, I would have prevented it. I hope she will soon be recovered.'
'Pray God she will,' replied Melathys. 'I left her out of danger and better than she had been.'
They sat together on the rough benches, in the gallery overlooking the Telthearna, while one of Tan-Rion's soldiers brought nuts, black bread and wine. Elleroth, who looked tired almost to the point of collapse, expressed concern for Kelderek's wounds and went on to enquire about the last rites of Shardik.
'Your soldiers did everything they could to help us,' answered Kelderek. 'They and the village people.' Then, wishing to avoid being questioned about the details of the ceremony, he said, 'You've marched from Kabin? You must have made great speed. Surely this is only the fourth day since Lord Shardik died?'
'The news was brought down the river to Zeray that evening,' replied Elleroth, 'and reached me in Kabin before noon of the next day. To march sixty miles in two and a half days is slow for a man whose son and heir was dead and is alive again, but then it's rough country and heavy going, as you'll know yourself.'
'But you have hardly been in Tissarn an hour,' said Melathys. 'You should have eaten a meal and rested before troubling yourself to come here.'
'On the contrary,' rejoined Elleroth, 'I would have come here sooner, but such is my vanity that I'm afraid I stopped to wash and change my clothes, though I confess I did not know that I was going to meet one of the beautiful priestesses of Quiso.'
Melathys laughed like a girl accustomed to be teased and to tease in return.
"Then why the haste? Are Yeldashay nobles always so punctilious?'
'Yeldashay, saiyett? I am from Sarkid of the Sheaves.' Then, gravely, he said, 'Well, I had a reason. I felt that you, Crendrik, deserved to receive my thanks and to hear my news as quickly as I could bring both to you.'
He paused, but Kelderek said nothing and after a few moments Elleroth went on, 'If you still feel any anxiety on your own account, I hope you will set it aside. When I told you in Kabin that we should kill you if we came upon you again, we were not to know that you would share the misery of slavery with the heir of Sarkid and play a part in saving his life.'
Kelderek rose abrupdy, walked a few steps away and stood with his back turned, looking out at the river. Tan-Rion raised his eyebrows and half-rose, but Elleroth shook his head and waited, taking Radu's hand and speaking quietly to him, aside, until Kelderek should have recovered his composure.
Turning at length, Kelderek said roughly, 'And do you bear in mind also that it is I who brought about your son's sufferings and the little girl's death?' 'My father has heard nothing yet of Shara,' said Radu.
'Crendrik,' said Elleroth, 'if you feel contrition, I can only be glad for it. I know that you have suffered – probably more than you can ever recount, for true suffering is of the mind and regret is the worst of it. I, too, have suffered grief and fear – for long weeks I suffered the loss of my son and believed him lost to me. Now we are all three released – he, you and I – and whether or not it was indeed a miracle, I am not so mean-spirited as to withhold gratitude from the poor bear, who came alive from the Streel, like the Lord Deparioth's own mother; or to retain any grudge against a man who has befriended my son. I say all debts are cleared by Shardik's death – his sacred death, for this we must believe it to have been. But I have another reason also for friendship between us – a political reason, if you like. There is now peace between Ikat and Bekla and even while we speak all prisoners and hostages are returning home.' He smiled. 'So it really wouldn't be at all appropriate, would it, for me to feel vindictive towards you.'
Kelderek sat down on the bench. From the shore outside came the cries of three or four young fishermen who were launching their canoes.
'At the time when you were in Kabin,' went on Elleroth, trying rather unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn of sheer exhaustion, 'General Santil-ke-Erketlis was personally leading some of our troops to overtake and release a slave-column travelling westwards from Thettit. He succeeded, but it brought him very close to the Beklan army, which, as I dare say you know, had followed us north from the Yeldashay frontier. It was while General Erketlis was returning with the slaves he had freed that he came upon a party of Beklan officers, who were also making for Kabin – to negotiate with us. They were headed by General Zelda and their purpose was to propose an immediate truce and the discussion of terms of peace.
'Three days ago I was taking part with Erketlis in that discussion with the Ortelgans, when news arrived from Zeray of what had happened here. I left for Tissarn at once, but nevertheless I'm sure that the terms will have been agreed by now. I needn't weary you with all the details – not until later – but the main is that Yelda, Lapan and Belishba will become independent of Bekla. The Ortelgans are to retain Bekla and the remaining provinces in return for an undertaking to abolish the slave trade and to help in returning all slaves to their homes.'
Kelderek nodded slowly, staring down into his wine-cup and tilting it this way and that. At length he looked up at Elleroth and said,
'I'm glad the war's over and more than glad that they'll abolish the slave trade.' He put a hand over his eyes. 'It's good of you to have come here to tell us so promptly. If I can't make you any better answer, it's because I'm still weak and my mind's confused. I hope we can talk again – tomorrow, perhaps.'
'I shall be here for some days yet,' answered Elleroth, 'and we'll certainly meet again, for I've one or two other notions in my head – just notions at the moment, but they might come to something. Dear me -' he craned his neck – 'those piscatorial boys out there are certainly slicing up the Telthearna – I suppose it keeps them warm, poor fellows, in these bitter northern climes. And who knows? They might even catch a fish in a minute.' Soon after, he took his leave and Kelderek, finding that the meeting had left him tired, uncertain and disturbed, slept for several hours, not waking until the late afternoon.
After a few days he felt stronger and his wounded arm became somewhat less painful. He took to walking on the shore and about the village, once going almost a mile north, as far as the open country round the Gap. He had not realized what a poor village it was – thirty or forty hovels and twenty canoes clustered about a shady, unhealthy patch of shore below a wooded ridge – that same ridge down which he had tottered on the morning of Shardik's death. There was little cultivated land, the villagers living for the most part on fish, half-wild pigs, water fowl and any forest beasts that they could kill. There was almost no trade, the place was largely isolated and the effects of years of in-breeding were all too plain. The villagers were friendly enough, however, and he took to dropping in to their homes and talking to them about their skills and needs and the troubles of their hard, rough lives.
One afternoon, as he and Melathys were walking together outside the village, they came upon five or six of the former slave children, who were idling about among the trees. They looked warily at Kelderek, but none approached or spoke. He called out to them, went closer and did his best to talk to them as comrades – for so indeed he felt them to be – but it was not that day nor for several days after that he had the least success. In their silence and curt, unsmiling answers they differed much from the children he remembered on Ortelga. Little by little he began to understand that for nearly all, their sufferings with Genshed had been only the most recent in miserable lives of desertion, neglect and abuse. Parentless, friendless and helpless, they had been enslaved before ever they met Genshed.
From Shouter, after one or two visits, he judged it best to keep away for the time being. The boy had been injured when Shardik charged upon Genshed and neglect of his hurts had brought on a delirious fever of which, until a few days ago, he had been expected to die. He was consumed with fear and convinced that the Yeldashay intended him some cruel death; and the sight of any of those whom he had himself ill-treated intensified his guilt and panic. Kelderek left him to Melathys and her village woman, but nevertheless found himself wondering more than once what would become of him. Would he, perhaps, succeed in wandering back to Terekenalt, there to shift for himself and find a new criminal master? Or would he, before that, as he himself so clearly expected, be killed in Tissarn by those who had cause enough to hate him?
The Sarkid contingent also remained, some quartered in Tissarn and some where he had first seen them, guarding the approaches to the Linsho Gap. Tan-Rion, asked the reason, explained that the Yeldashay were still patrolling the province for fugitive slave-traders, from the confluence of the Vrako and Telthearna to the Gap itself, the Sarkid troops forming the heel of the net. The following evening two more slave-traders were brought in, each alone and in the last stages of want and exhaustion, having fled north for days before the advancing curtain of soldiers. Next morning the patrolling troops themselves reached Linsho and the hunt was over.
A few days later Kelderek was returning with Melathys from an hour's fishing – he could manage no more – when they met Elleroth and Tan-Rion not far from the place where Shardik's funeral raft had lain. Despite what Elleroth had said at their last meeting, he and Kelderek had not talked together since. It had not occurred to Kelderek, however, to regard this as a lapse on Elleroth's part The Ban of Sarkid had been absent for several days among his various outposts and bivouacs, but in any case Kelderek was well aware that he himself was in no position to expect warmth from Elleroth or any repetition of the punctilious courtesy shown on the morning of his arrival. By chance it had so happened that the ex-king of Bekla had suffered in company with Elleroth's son and helped to save his life. This had saved his own; but nevertheless he was now of no use or value whatever to the Ban of Sarkid, who had already done fully as much as anyone would consider incumbent upon him.
Elleroth greeted them with his usual urbanity, enquired after Kelderek's recovery and expressed his hope that Melathys did not find life in the village unduly rough and comfortless. Then he said, 'Most of my men – and I too – are leaving for Zeray the day after tomorrow. I suppose you'll both wish to come? I personally am travelling by river and I'm sure we can find places for you.'
'We shall be grateful,' answered Kelderek, conscious, despite himself, of his sense of inferiority to this man and of his utter dependence on his goodwill. 'It's time now that we were returning to Zeray, and I'm afraid I'm not strong enough to march with the troops. You say "most of your men". Aren't they all going?' *I should have explained to you earlier,' replied Elleroth. 'Under the terms agreed with the Ortelgans, we are taking control of this province – all land east of the Vrako. That is perfectly just and reasonable, as Bekla certainly never controlled it and the last – indeed the only – Baron of Zeray, the Ortelgan Bel-ka-Trazet, specifically invited us to annex it only a few months ago. For some little while, until we have the place settled, there will be a force of occupation, with outposts at suitable places.'
'I'm only surprised you think it's worth your while,' said Kelderek, determined to express some view of his own. 'Will there be any profit at all?'
"The profit we shall owe to Bel-ka-Trazet' answered Elleroth. 'I never knew him, but he must have been a remarkable man. If I'm not mistaken, it was he who first conceived what I believe is going to prove an innovation of the greatest importance.'
'He was a remarkable man,' said Melathys. 'He was a man who could pluck advantage from an acre of ashes.'
'He advised us,' said Elleroth, 'that it would be practicable to construct a ferry across the Zeray strait, and even outlined to us how it might be done – an idea entirely of his own devising, as far as I can make out. Our pioneers, together with men from Deelguy, are engaged on the work now, but we have sent to ask for the help of some Ortelgan rope-makers. That will be most important. No one understands the uses and qualities of ropes like Ortelgans. When the ferry is complete, Zeray is bound to become a commercial town of importance, for there will be a new and direct route, both for Ikat and for Bekla, across the Telthearna and on to the east. Whatever countries may lie there, the ferry is bound to open up entirely new markets.' He paused. 'If I recall, Crendrik, you were interested in trade, weren't you, when you were in Bekla? No, no -' he held up his hand – 'I didn't intend any malice, or to wound your feelings, I assure you. Please don't think that. Isn't it true, though, that you played a large part in directing the empire's policy in commerce?'
'Yes, that's true,' answered Kelderek. 'I'm not an aristocrat, as you know. I've never owned land: and to those who are neither farmers nor soldiers, trade's vital if they're to thrive at all. That was what I could understand about Bekla that our generals couldn't. It was from that that the evil came – 'he paused – 'but there was good as well.'
'Yes, I see,' said Ellcrodi rather abstractedly, and began to talk to Melathys about the probable needs of the Tuginda.
The villagers learned with regret that the soldiers were leaving, for on the whole they had behaved well and paid honestly enough for whatever they had had. Besides, they had brought welcome change and excitement to the normal squalor of life in Tissarn. There was the usual bustle as arms and equipment were got together and inspected, quarters relinquished, loads apportioned and an advance party despatched to prepare the first night's camp (for only Elleroth and a few other officers, with their servants, were to go by water, available canoes being scarce).
During the afternoon Kelderek, weary of the racket and commotion, took a line and some bait and set off along the waterside. He had not gone far when he came upon nine or ten of the slave children splashing about the shore. Joining them, he found them in rather better spirits than he had come to expect, and even began to derive some pleasure from their company, which now reminded him a little of old days on Ortelga. One of the boys, a dark, quick-moving lad about ten years old, was teaching them a singing game from Paltesh. This led to others, until at length Kelderek, being teased and challenged to contribute something, showed them the first Ortelgan game that came into his head. Cat catch a fish in the river in the foam; Cat catch a fish and he got to get it home. Run, cat, run, cat, drag it through the mire-
As he scratched out the lines with a stick and laid down a green branch for the fish, he felt once more, as he had not for years, the exhilaration of that spontaneity, directness and absorption that had once led him to call children' the flames of God'. Take it to the pretty girl that's sitting by the fire
And away he went, hobbling and shuffling slowly enough, for as he had told Elleroth, he was still far from healed; yet in his heart he went as once in the days when he had been a young simpleton who would rather play with the children than drink with the men.
When it was no longer his turn to be the cat, he dropped out. He was resting unobtrusively behind a rock when he realized that the boy loitering near him was Shouter, but so haggard and pale that at first he had not recognized him. He was playing no part in the game, but staring moodily at the ground, pacing one way and another and jabbing viciously at the stones with a stick. A second glance showed Kelderek that if he was not actually weeping, he was probably as close to it as was possible for any boy who had spent several months in the service of Genshed.
'Are you feeling better?' asked Kelderek as Shouter came a little nearer. ' 'be mucking stupid,' answered Shouter, barely turning his head.
'Come here!' said Kelderek sharply. 'What's brought you out here? What's the matter?' The boy made no reply and he took him by the arm and said again, 'Come on, tell me, what's the matter?'
'Glad to be going, aren't they?' said Shouter, in a kind of savage gasp. 'Either they're lucky or they're too bloody stupid to know they're not.' 'Why, aren't they going home?' asked Kelderek.
'Home? There's half of them's never had any home.'If they had, they wouldn't have been here, would they?'
'Go on,' said Kelderek, still gripping his arm. 'Why wouldn't they?'
'You know's well as I do; kids whose mothers don't want 'em, fathers have mucked off, they live how they can, don't they, one day someone sells 'em for forty meld to get rid of 'em – same as they did me – best thing ever happened some of them, next to being dead. Slaves – they was slaves all along, wasn't they?' 'Where do you think they'll go now, then?'
'How the hell should I know?' bawled Shouter, with something like a return to his old form. 'Leg by mucking Lee, I shouldn't wonder. Why don't you let me alone? I'm not afraid of you!'
Kelderek, forgetting his line and bait, left the boys and made his way back to Dirion's house. Melathys met him at the door, wearing her Yeldashay metlan with the corn-sheaves emblem.
'You missed Elleroth,' she said. 'The Ban in person. He's invited us to dine with him tonight and says he very much hopes you won't be too tired. There'll be no one else and he's looking forward to seeing you, which from him amounts to a pressing invitation, I should think.' After a few moments she added, 'He stayed here a little while, in case you returned, and I – I took the opportunity to tell him how things are between you and me. I dare say he knew already, for the matter of that, but he had the good manners to pretend he didn't I told him how I came to be in Zeray and about Bel-ka-Trazet. He asked what we intended to do now and I explained – or tried to explain – what Lord Shardik's death had meant to us. I told him you were quite decided that there could be no question of your ever returning to Bekla.'
'I'm glad you told him,' said Kelderek. 'You talk more easily to him and his like than ever I shall. He reminds me of Ta-Kominion; and he was too much for me. Elleroth might help us, I suppose, but I don't intend to ask him. I owe him my life, yet all the same I can't bring myself to give any of these Yeldashay the chance to tell me that I'm lucky to be alive. But – but -'
'But what, my darling?' she asked, raising her lips and kissing the pierced lobe of his ear.
'You said, "It will be shown us what we are to do," and I've a kind of inkling that something may happen before we leave Tissarn.' 'What?'
'No,' he said, smiling. 'No, it's you that's the clairvoyante priestess from Quiso, not I.' 'I'm not a priestess,' answered the girl gravely.
'The Tuginda said differently. But you'll be able to ask her again tomorrow night, and Ankray too for that matter.'
' "Well, saiyett, the Baron, now he always used to say – "' It was an excellent imitation, but she broke off suddenly. 'Never mind, here comes Dirion. Now let me change that bandage on your arm. Whatever have you been doing up the river? It's far too dirty to go out to dinner with Elleroth.' It was pleasant to have so much light in the room, thought Kelderek, watching Elleroth's servant renew the lamps and sweep up the hearth. Not since Bekla had he seen a room so bright after dark. True, the light served to reveal no finery or display – little, indeed, but the poverty of the place, for Elleroth's quarters were much like his own – a wooden, shed-like house near the waterside, with two bare rooms on each floor – but it also showed that Elleroth, as might be expected, liked to be generous, even lavish, to his guests; and that, too, without thought of return, for, as he had promised, no one was present besides himself, Melathys, Tan-Rion, another officer and Radu. The boy, though still pale and emaciated in appearance, had changed as a musician changes when he sets hand to his instrument. As in an old talc, the wretched slave-boy had turned back into the heir of Sarkid; a young gentleman, brought up to be deferential to his father, gracious to his father's officers, silently attentive to the conversation of his elders and in every way equal to his station. Yet it was not all courtier, for he talked earnestly to Kelderek for some time about the slave children and also about the ceremony on the shore; and when Elleroth's servant, having cut up his one-handed master's meat, was about to do the same for Kelderek, Radu forestalled him, setting aside Kelderek's protest with the remark that it was less than Kelderek had done for him.
The dinner had been as good as competent soldier-servants could produce on active service; fish (he himself could have caught better), duck, stringy pork with watercress, hot bannocks and goat's cheese; and an egg syllabub with nuts and honey. The wine, however, was Yeldashay, southern, full and smooth, and Kelderek smiled inwardly as he thought of Elleroth, in desperate haste to start his forced march from Kabin in response to the news that his son was alive, finding time to give orders that plenty of it was to be brought along. That Elleroth, for all his aristocratic detachment, had a magnanimous and sincere heart he had had ample proof and indeed could be said to be alive to testify: nor was he himself so envious or mean as to suppose that wealth and style necessarily denoted indifference to the feelings of poorer men. If Elleroth was an aristocrat, he felt an aristocrat's obligations, and that a good deal more warmly than Ta-Kominion or Ged-la-Dan. His soldiers would have followed him into the Streels of Urtah. And yet Kelderek, for all his real gratitude to this man, who had set aside their former enmity and treated him as a friend and guest, still found himself out of accord with Elleroth's smooth self-possession, with the even, controlled tone of his voice and his capacity for deftly converting Kelderek's rather anecdotal manner of conversation into his own style of detached, impersonal comment. He had been most courteous and considerate, but to Kelderek his talk and bearing nevertheless contained more than a suggestion of the ambassador entertaining half-civilized foreigners in the way of duty. Had there, perhaps, been some unrevealcd purpose behind his invitation? Yet what purpose could there be, now that all was resolved and setdcd? Radu was alive – and Shardik was dead. Ikat and Bekla were at peace and Melathys and he were free to go where they might. So were Shouter and the slave children – free as flies, free as autumn leaves or as wind-borne ashes. No, there could be no more strands to unravel now.
It was fortunate, he thought, that Melathys, at any rate, had some stomach for the party. Even remembering all that she had suffered, yet in one way she had been lucky, for despite her devotion to the Tuginda and her determination to vindicate her long-ago treachery to Shardik, she was not and never had been made for the seclusion of an island priestess. She was flirting with Tan-Rion at this moment – embroidering upon some banter of how she would visit Sarkid and reveal all that he had done while he had been on active service. Kelderek felt no jealousy, but only gladness. He knew her to be warm-hearted, mercurial, even passionate. She was working out her own way of overcoming the evil that had been done to her and meanwhile he could be patient, despite the kindling of desire which told him that his body at least was recovering.
Yes, he reflected, his body was recovering. His heart would hardly do so. He had seen into the depth of a Streel lower than Urtah, a devil's hole where Shara lay meaninglessly murdered and Shouter loitered cursing in the wasteland. That was the human world – the world which Elleroth saw primarily in terms of a ruler's problems of law and order – the world in which Lord Shardik had given his sacred life to save children condemned to slavery by human selfishness and neglect.
Elleroth was speaking again now, of the balance of power between Ikat and Bekla, of the prospects for peace and the need to overcome all remaining feelings of enmity between the two peoples. Prosperity, he was saying, was a great warmer of hearts and hearths, and to this self-evident truth Kelderek felt safe in nodding assent. Then, pausing, Elleroth gazed downwards, as though deliberating with himself. He swirled the remains of his wine round and round his cup, but waved aside the attentive soldier who, misunderstanding, stepped forward to refill it; and a few moments later gave him leave to go. As the man went out, Elleroth looked up with a smile and said,
'Well, Crendrik – or Kelderek Zenzuata, as Melathys tells me I ought to call you – you've given me a great deal to think about: or at all events I have been thinking, and you have much to do with it.'
Kelderek, at something of a loss but fortified by the Ikat wine, made no reply; yet was at least able to return his host's gaze with courteous expectancy and some degree of self-possession.
'One of our problems – and that not the least – is going to be first, establishing proper control over Zeray, and then developing this whole province. If you were ever right about one thing, Kelderek, it was when you spoke of the necessity of trade to the prosperity of ordinary people. Zeray is going to become an important trade route, bodi for Bekla and for Ikat. We couldn't monopolize it even if we wished, for the trade will have to come through Kabin as well and the Kabinese don't want to become independent of Bekla. So we're going to need someone to look after Zeray, preferably not a complete foreigner, but one who favours neither Bekla nor Ikat; someone who's keen on trade and understands its great importance.' 'I see,' said Kelderek politely.
'And then, of course, we really need someone with personal experience of the Telthearna,' went on Elleroth. 'You might not be aware of this, Kelderek, being so familiar with it yourself, but it's not everyone who knows how to pay the necessary attention and respect to the ways of a great river, its droughts and floods and fogs and currents and shoals – a river where a vital trade ferry crosses a swift and dangerous strait. That calls for experience, and knowledge that's become second nature.'
Kelderek drained his wine. His cup was wooden, of peasant workmanship, almost certainly turned, he thought, here in Tissarn. In the bowl, someone had taken a good deal of trouble over a very passable likeness of a kynat in flight
'Then, again, it would be highly desirable for this governor to have had some previous experience of ruling and exercising authority,' resumed Elleroth. 'Even with military help, Zeray's likely to be a tough business for a time, considering its present state and that of the whole province. And I think the appointment really calls for someone who knows something about fairly rough people at first hand -someone who's knocked about, as you might say, and knows how to rough it a bit himself. I doubt whether we'd find a land-owning aristocrat, or even a professional officer, prepared to take the job on. They almost all despise trade, and anyway who would be ready to leave land and estates, to go to Zeray? And what existing provincial governor would want to make the move? Difficult, Tan-Rion, isn't it?' 'Yes, sir,' said Tan-Rion. 'Very.'
'The place needs colonizing, too,' said Elleroth. 'Willing hands, that's going to be the great need. I suppose we ought to look for young people with nothing much to lose – people who need to be given a chance in life and aren't going to be too particular. It wouldn't be any good just dumping them down in Zeray, though; they'd find it too much for them, and only add to the criminal population. They'll need an eye kept on them by a kindly sort of governor who feels sympathetic and knows how to get something out of people that nobody else has much use for. Someone who's suffered a bit himself, I suppose. Dear me, it is a problem. I really cannot imagine where we are likely to unearth a person who fulfils all these different requirements. Melathys, my dear, have you any notion?'
'Oddly enough,' answered Melathys, her eyes bright in the lamplight, 'I believe I have. It must be clairvoyance – or else this excellent wine.'
'I will write to Santil-ke-Erketlis from Zeray,' said Elleroth, 'but I feel sure that he will accept my recommendation. Radu, my dear boy, it's time you were in bed; and Kelderek too, if I'm not presuming. You've both been ill and you look quite tired out. We ought tc start several hours before noon tomorrow, if we possibly can.' 58 Siristrou '- this being now the commencement of the tenth day that we have been travelling westwards from the western borders of Your Majesty's kingdom, through some of the most inhospitable country I have ever seen. At first, while we remained close to the shore of the river Varin (which our guide calls, in his tongue, "Tiltharna") tiicre was forest and rocky scrubland – a continuation, in fact, of the kind of country found on Your Majesty's western borders, but wilder and, as far as we have seen, uninhabited. There are, of course, no roads and we ourselves did not come upon a single track. For much of the way we were obliged to dismount and lead the horses together with the pack-mules, so stony and treacherous was the ground. Neither did we see any craft upon the river; but this did not surprise us since, as Your Majesty knows, none has ever arrived in Zakalon from upstream. The guide tells us that below his country there lies a gorge (which he named Bercel), full of rapids and half-submerged rocks, so that it is not possible to travel thence to us by way of the river. That this man and his followers should have made the entire journey on foot, their nation being altogether ignorant of the use of horses, shows partly, I think, that this unknown country for which we are bound breeds a tough and resolute people and partly that the inhabitants – or some of them – must be most eager to develop trade with us.
'We forded two tributaries of the Varin, each – since we encountered both near the confluence – with some difficulty. Indeed, at the second crossing we lost a mule and one of our tents. That was the day before yesterday; and soon afterwards we left the forest wilderness and entered upon the desert through which we are now travelling. This is a country of thorn-scrub and fine, blowing sand * bad going both for horses and mules – and of black rocks, which give it a forbidding appearance. There is a kind of flat-bodied, spiny-legged creature, something between a crab and a spider, about as big as a man's fist, which crawls slowly over the sand. It does no harm that I can perceive, yet I could wish that I had not seen it. Drinking-water of a sort we can get from the Varin, but it is sandy and warm, for the desert peters out into pools and flats and the true, flowing river is more or less inaccessible behind these. This country is said by our guide to form the southern extremity of a land called Deelguy * so far as I can understand, a semi-barbarian kingdom of warrior-bandits and cattlc-thieves, living among forests and hill-valleys. Inhabited Deelguy, however, lies a good fifteen leagues to the north. The truth seems to be that this desert, being land that nobody wants, is allowed to remain in name part of the territory of the king of Deelguy, a monarch whose frontiers (and authority) are in any case vague in extent.
'Your Majesty will recall that when the man Tan-Rion, who is now our guide, managed to convey in audience with you that he came from a country beyond the Varin possessing resources for trade, Your Majesty's councillors, including, I admit, myself, found it hard to believe that such a country could exist without our prior knowledge. However, the difficulty of this journey, together with the circumstance that the inhabitants have succeeded only during the past year in establishing a reliable crossing of the Varin at a point within reach of Zakalon, now make this more credible to me: and in short, I have become convinced that, as you yourself said, this may well prove to be a land with resources worth our attention. Tan-Rion has described – if I have followed him – the mining both of iron and of several kinds of gems: also the carving of wood and stone – though into precisely what kinds of artefact. I confess I do not know. He has also talked of corn, wine and cattle. Much of the possible trade, I think, will have to await either the construction of a road, or else the development of a water-route. (It has not escaped me that it might later prove practicable to bring goods across the Varin and then to embark them again from some suitable point on this shore, below the rapids.) As to what we may barter, I have only to remind Your Majesty that apparently the entire country knows nothing of horses and that none of these people has ever seen the sea.
'As to their language, I am happy to say that I seem to be making some little progress. In fact there are, it appears, two languages in general use beyond the Varin; the first, called Beklan, being commoner in the northern parts while the second, Yeldashay, is spoken, more generally in the south. They have similarities, but I am concentrating on Beklan, in which I can now rub along after a fashion.' Writing they use very little and it seems to fascinate my soldier-instructor when I write down the sound of what he says. He tells me that it is but three years since the end of a civil war – something to do with the invasion of Bekla by a foreign tribe who apparently went in for slavery – I confess that I could not altogether make it out. But now they are at peace, and since relations between north and south have improved, the prospects for our embassage seem very fair, coming at the present time.
'Today we shall – if I have not been deceived – actually cross the Varin to a town from which it will be possible to travel inland to Bekla. I shall, of course, continue to keep Your Majesty informed
Siristrou, son of Balko, son of Mereth of the Two Lakes, High Councillor of His Ascendant Majesty King Luin of Zakalon, glanced through the unfinished letter, gave it to his servant to pack with the rest of the baggage and made his way out of the tent to where the horses were picketed in a patch of scrub. Heaven only knew how or when the letter would get delivered anyway. It would, however, look well to have kept a fairly continuous record, as showing that he had the king and his interest constantly in mind. He had allowed himself a mention of the nasty drinking-water, though saying nothing of his disordered stomach and of the flux which he daily feared might turn to dysentery. A discreet suggestion of hardship would be more telling than too much detail. He would not mention his blood-blisters: and still less the nervous anxiety that grew upon him the further they travelled from Zakalon towards the unknown country on the other side of the river. Knowing the king's own hopes, he had taken care to express confidence in the prospects for trade. Indeed, these now seemed reasonable, and even if they turned out otherwise it would do no harm to have seemed initially hopeful of better things. In his heart, however, he wished that the king had not selected him to lead this expedition. He was no man of action. He had been surprised to be chosen and, disguising his misgivings as modesty, had enquired the reason.
'Oh, we need a detached, prudent man, Siristrou,' the king had answered, laying a hand on his arm and walking him down the length of the long gallery that overlooked the beautiful Terrace of the Bees. 'The last thing I want is to send some quarrelsome soldier or greedy young adventurer on the make, who'd only upset these strangers by trying to grab all he could for himself. That would be the way to get bad blood at the outset. I want to send a learned man with no craving for personal gain, someone who can make a detached assessment and bring back the truth. Do that, and I assure you that you won't be a loser by me. Those people, of whatever kind they are – things ought to be handled so that they can trust and respect us. By the Cat, they've sent far enough to find us! I don't want to see them merely exploited.'
And so, to the murmur of the bees in the golden rod, he had accepted his appointment.
Well, that was fair enough; and to give him his due, Luin was a man of just and sound judgment – if you like, a good king. The trouble lay, as usual, in giving practical effect to his excellent ideas. When it came to the point, quarrelsome soldiers and greedy young adventurers on the make would have been so much better at crossing wildernesses and deserts and would have felt so much less afraid than a detached, prudent councillor of forty-eight, a schoolman with a taste for metaphysics and the study of ethics. There'd be precious little in that line where he was going. The manners and customs of half-civilized peoples had a certain interest, to be sure, but this was ground which he had covered quite sufficiently as a younger man. Now, he was primarily a teacher, a student of the writings of the sages, perhaps even shaping to be a sage himself – if he survived. It was all very well for the king to say that he would not be a loser. He did not really need anything which the king had to give. Luin, however, was not a man whom one disobliged and it would not have been safe to thwart his wishes by refusal or even by seeming too hesitant.
'I don't so much mind being cut to pieces by barbarians,' he said aloud, slashing with his whip at a thorn-bush, 'I do object to being bored1 (slash),' wearied'' (slash), 'condemned to tedium' (slash) -
'Sir?' said his groom, appearing from the picket-lines. 'Did you call?'
'No, no,' said Siristrou hastily, feeling self-conscious as he always did when caught talking to himself. 'No, no. I was just coming to see whether you're ready to start, Thyval. We're supposed to reach the crossing today, as I think I told you. I don't know how far it is, but I should prefer to reach the other side in daylight, so that we can get some idea of the place before darkness sets in.'
'Yes, sir, I reckon that's sense right enough. The lads are just getting their things together now. How about the mare, sir? Lead her with the mules?'
'You'll have to, if she's still lame,' answered Siristrou. 'Come and tell me as soon as you're ready.'
In fact they reached the east bank a little before noon, after no more than five hours' march. Upon setting out, they had at first struck almost due north, turning away altogether from the pools and flashes marking the southern confines of the desert and filling the broad, treacherous flat which comprised the shore of the river beyond. Tan-Rion, after struggling to be understood, at length took a stick and drew a plan on the ground. Pointing first to this and then south-westward over the sand, he managed to convey to Siristrou and his companions that in that direction the river made a great bend, so that its course half-encircled them, lying not only to the south but also to the west of where they now stood. Some way above the bend on his plan he scratched a line to represent their intended crossing; and once more pointed, this time north-westward, to show the direction in which it lay.
In these parts spring had not yet turned to summer, but nevertheless the day soon grew hot and the wind freshened enough to blow the sand about unpleasantly. Siristrou, trudging beside the lame mare, dropped his head, half-closed his eyes and, as the sand gritted between his teeth, tried to think about his metaphysics pupils in Zakalon. One had to count one's blessings. At least there was no lack of tepid water to wash the sand down. Tan-Rion was in excellent spirits at the prospect of return and led his men in singing Yeldashay songs. It was good, boisterous stuff, but hardly music to Siristrou's taste.
Suddenly he was aware – and felt pleased to have been the first to see them, for his eyes were not all they had been – of distant figures on the sand. He stopped and looked ahead more intently. The country, though still desert, was no longer flat. There were slopes and long, steep dunes, speckled with the shadows of the white stones lying on them, motionless and timeless in the sun as only desert hills can appear. At a point to the left was a cluster of huts – a kind of shanty town, raw and new in appearance; and it was here that the moving figures could be seen. Beyond, the ground fell away invisibly and there seemed to be a kind of reflected glitter in the air. Through the still-more-distant horizon-haze – and he screwed up his eyes, but could see no better – there loomed a greenness which might be forest.
An hour later they halted on the left bank of the river and looked across to the town on the western side which Tan-Rion called Zeray. About them gathered a wonder-struck crowd of soldiers and Deelguy peasants, inhabitants of the shanty town and labour-force of the ferry on this bank. All evidently realized that these strangers had in truth come from a distant, unknown country, brought back by Tan-Rion, whom they had seen set out three months before. The shrill jabbering grew, and the shoving, and the pointing, and the exclamations of astonishment as it was grasped that the long-nosed beasts wore man-made harness and were obedient to men, like oxen.
Siristrou, determined to show no nervousness in the close-pressing hubbub, not one word of which he could understand, stood silently beside his horse's head, ignoring everything until Tan-Rion, approaching, requested him to follow and began literally beating his way through the crowd with the flat of his scabbard. They scattered, laughing and gabbling, like children, in a fear that was half pretence and half real, and then fell in behind the newcomers, dancing and chanting as Tan-Rion led the way to a larger hut which did duty for the Deelguy officers' quarters. He gave a single bang on the door and strode inside. Siristrou heard him shout a name and then, himself wishing to show detachment as the crowd once more closed round him, turned to gaze across the river at the town on the other side.
It lay beyond a strait of turbid, yellowish water about a quarter of a mile across and running, as far as he could judge, too swiftly in the centre for any craft. He watched a great, leafy branch go rocking downstream almost as fast as though it were sailing through the air. He could not see the lower end of the strait, but upstream, on the opposite side, the river bent back into a bay where he thought he could make out what looked like a graveyard among trees at the mouth of a creek. The town itself lay nearer, directly opposite him, filling a blunt promontory downstream of the bay. In all his life he had never seen a town with such an utterly God-forsaken appearance. It was clearly not large. There were several old houses, both of stone and of wood, but none of any size or of graceful or pleasing proportions. The newer houses, of which there seemed to be more than the old, both finished and half-finished, had a utilitarian, quickly-run-up look, and had certainly not been sited or designed in accordance with any plan. There was a number of trees, some thriving and some not, but clearly nothing like a public garden anywhere. Near the waterside, people – and even at this distance they looked oddly small people – were working on two nearly-completed, larger buildings, which looked like warehouses. In front of these stood a landing-stage and also, both in and beside the water, a complex of stout posts and ropes, the use of which he could not guess. The whole was framed in a grey sky and green, wild-looking country, dotted here and there with patches of cultivation.
Siristrou groaned inwardly and his spirits fell still further. It was worse than he had expected. Tan-Rion had struck him as an intelligent and reasonably cultivated man, the product at least of an ordered society with settled values. The town he was now looking at resembled something a giant's children might have thrown together with sticks and stones in play. Setting aside that it was a safe bet that no book or civilized musical instrument could be found from one end to the other, would he and his men be even safe in such a place? However, fear was unworthy of a metaphysician and High Councillor of Zakalon, and after all, his death would matter little – except, he thought bitterly, to his wife and children, the youngest a little girl of five whom he loved dearly. A big workman stepped forward and began to finger the cloth of his sleeve. He drew it away with a frown and the man laughed disconcertingly.
Tan-Rion reappeared at the door, followed by two men with heavy black moustaches and long hair, who were dressed and armed as though they were going to take part in a play as wandering bandits. Perhaps that was approximately right, thought Siristrou, except that this was no play. They stood looking him up and down, hands on hips. Then one spat on the ground. Siristrou returned their stare, considered smiling and offering his hand, decided against both and bowed coldly. At this, the one who had not spat also bowed, then laid an enormous, dirty hand on his shoulder and said, in what he recognized as excruciating Beklan,
'Ho, yoss, yoss! Nover mind! Nover mind!' And then, with great emphasis, shaking a forefinger, 'You – most – pay!'
Tan-Rion broke in, expostulating in an indignation too fast to be followed. 'Envoys,' Siristrou heard. 'Trade mission – important foreigners – not to be insulted.' And finally, more slowly and emphatically, so that he followed it fully, 'Lord Kelderek will pay you, if you insist. You can cross with us and see him.'
At this the two bandits shrugged their shoulders and conferred. Then one nodded and pointed, remarking, 'Furry roddy,' and both began to lead the way upstream, the native crowd trailing behind as before. They left the shanty town and found themselves once more walking in the empty sand, but now along the waterline beside the river. Siristrou noticed how unnaturally straight and regular this waterline was, and saw also that the edge of the shore had been levelled and paved almost like a road – in some places with stones and elsewhere with thick, round, wooden billets, laid and trodden in side by side. There were numerous prints of ox-hooves. Pointing to these, he shook his head and smiled to Tan-Rion to convey his bewilderment, but the latter only nodded and smiled in reply.
They had not been going very long before they reached their destination. In slack water against the bank lay a flat raft of heavy logs topped with plank decking, some twelve or fourteen feet square and having a pointed bow or cut-water on the side facing out into the stream. There was no rail or parapet of any kind, but down the centre three thick, upright posts were fastened into the logs with wooden struts and crude iron brackets. Bolted to the top of each post was a hinged iron ring and through all three of these a stout rope ran the length of the raft. From the stern it continued to the shore, where it was secured to an iron bar driven into the ground. Before reaching this, however, it passed through a kind of pen or shuttering containing several free-ended stakes, round some of which it was hitched. A panel of this shuttering was open, and three men were straining as they twisted the stake inside to increase tension on the rope. Siristrou, watching as the dripping cable rose little by little out of the water beyond the raft and inched its way back through the rings, realized with something of a shock that it evidently stretched across and downstream to Zeray on the other side – not much less than three-quarters of a mile, as near as he could estimate. It was on this cable that their lives were about to depend. The raft was going to be warped across, with the force of the current at a highly acute angle behind it.
Thyval plucked at his sleeve. 'Excuse me, sir, do they reckon they're going to take us over on that there thing?'
Siristrou looked him in the eye and nodded slowly and gloomily, two or three times.
'Well, the horses won't stand for it, sir, and anyway there ain't the room for them.'
'Not just one horse, do you think, Thyval? These people know nothing whatever of horses and I'd like to arrive with one, if we can.'
'Well, sir, I'd chance it alone, but trouble is, if it's rough – and I reckon it looks real nasty out there – we're all crowded together and there's no rail nor nothing -'
'Yes, yes, of course,' said Siristrou hurriedly, finding the picture too much for his already wambling stomach. 'The best thing will be if you come with me, Thyval, and Baraglat here – you're not afraid, are you, Baraglat? – no, of course not, excellent fellow – and the rest will have to stay here with the horses until tomorrow. I'll come back – heaven knows how, against that current, but I will -and see to everything. Now about the baggage – how can we best divide it? – and some of Tan-Rion's men must be told to stay with ours – we can't leave our people alone with those bandit fellows -and they'll have to be given a hut for stabling – we won't stand for any nonsense – Tan-Rion, one moment, please -'
Metaphysician or no metaphysician, Siristrou was not lacking in decision and practical ability, and his men trusted him. There is much difference between being incapable of doing something and merely disliking having to do it, and King Luin had always been a good, though somewhat unorthodox, picker. In half an hour the baggage had been divided, Tan-Rion had acceded to demand and detailed three reliable Yeldashay, one of whom spoke Declguy, to remain with Siristrou's men and the horses; the Deelguy officers had been told what they were to provide in the way of quarters, and those who were to cross had embarked.
In addition to the travellers there was a crew of six Deelguy labourers, whose task was to stand shoulder to shoulder and haul on the rope. This they set about, chanting rhythmically behind their shanty leader, and the raft, sidling out almost directly downstream, came little by little into the central race.
For Siristrou the crossing was a most nerve-racking experience. Apart from the rope and its ring-crowned stanchions, beside which there was room for only the crew to stand, there was nothing whatever to hold on to as the heavy raft, with the current almost full astern, danced like the lid of a boiling pot. He crouched on the baggage, holding his knees and trying to set a reassuring example to his men, who were plainly terrified. Tan-Rion stood beside him, legs astride, balancing himself as the deck tilted and swung. The water poured across the planking as though from overturned buckets. What with the chanting, which was maintained steadily, and the ceaseless knocking and blitter-blatter of the river under the timbers, talk was possible only intermittently and by shouting. As they got well out, a cold wind began to throw up spray. Siristrou, soaked, slapped himself with his arms to keep from shivering, in case anyone should think he was afraid – which he was. Even after it had become plain that they were going to complete the crossing safely and suffer nothing worse than discomfort, he could not keep himself from biting his lip and tensing at every lurch as he watched the shores moving up and down on cither side, so horribly far away. One of the Zakalon party, a lad of sixteen, was sick but, with a boy's ashamed indignation, threw off Siristrou's comforting arm, muttering, 'I'm all right, sir,' between his chattering teeth. 'What is it they're singing?' Siristrou shouted to Tan-Rion.
'Oh, the shanty-man just makes it up – anything that keeps them going. Actually I have heard this one before, I believe.'
'Shardik a moldra konvay gow! chanted the leader, as his crew bent forward and took a fresh grip. 'Shar-dik! Shar-dikl' responded the crew, giving two heaves. 'Shardik a lomda, Shardik a pronto!' 'Shar-dik! Shar-dik!'
'What docs it mean?' asked Siristrou, listening carefully to the reiterated syllables.
'Well, let's see; it means "Shardik gave his life for the children, Shardik found them, Shardik saved them" – you know, anything that suits their rhythm.' 'Shardik – who's he?'
Another terrific lurch. Tan-Rion grinned, raised either hand in a gesture of helplessness and shrugged his shoulders. A few moments later he shouted, 'Nearly there!'
Gradually they came into slack water. Over the last hundred yards the men stopped chanting and pulled the raft in more easily. A coiled rope was thrown from the landing stage and a few moments later they had touched. Siristrou gripped an offered hand and for the first time in his life stepped ashore on the right bank of the Varin.
The raft had been drawn into a kind of dock made of stout stakes driven into the shallows. It was the sight of this from the opposite bank which had perplexed him earlier that morning. As the Deelguy labourers clambered to shore six or seven boys, the eldest no more than about thirteen years old, jumped aboard, unloaded the baggage and then, having opened the hinged rings, released the rope and began poling the raft down the dock towards a similar rope at the further end. Siristrou, turning away, saw Tan-Rion pointing back at himself and his party. He was standing a little way off, talking to a black-haired youth who seemed to have some kind of authority on the landing-stage, for he suddenly interrupted Tan-Rion to call out an order to the children aboard the raft. A crowd was gathering. Those working on the half-finished, warehouse-like sheds near by had apparently downed tools to come and stare. Siristrou stared back with a certain perplexity, for most of them were mere boys. However, he had no further opportunity to speculate, for Tan-Rion came up to him, together with the black-haired youth, who bowed rather formally and offered his hand. He was ugly, even forbidding, with a cast in one eye and a birthmark across his face; but his manner, as he uttered a few words of greeting, was courteous and welcoming enough. He was wearing some kind of badge or emblem – a bear's head between two corn-sheaves – and Siristrou, unable to understand his Beklan (which did not sound native), smiled, nodded and touched it with his forefinger by way of a friendly gesture.
'This young fellow's in charge of the harbour lads,' said Tan-Rion. 'His name's Kominion, but most of us just call him Shouter. I've sent a man to tell the governor of your arrival and ask for a house to be put at your disposal. As soon as we know where it is, Shouter will get your baggage up there – you can leave it quite safely with him. It'll take a little while, of course, and I'm afraid you may find your quarters rather rough: this is a frontier town, you see. But at least I can make sure that you get a meal and a fire while you have to wait. There's quite a decent tavern up here, where you can be comfortable and private – a place called "The Green Grove". Now come on, stand back, you lads,' he shouted. 'Leave the foreigners alone and get back to work!'
Glad at least of firm ground after the flood-race in the strait, Siristrou, walking beside his guide, led his men across the waterfront and up towards the town, which looked as busy and ramshackle as a rookery. '- obliged to leave the horses on the eastern bank, and upon my re-crossing intend to despatch this letter by two or three horsemen: though I shall miss them, for all those with me have done well under hard conditions, and I commend them to Your Majesty's favour.
'For the Varin ferry crossing that these people have developed, it is ingenious and gives me hope that we may profit by commerce with so resourceful a people. The Varin here is relatively narrow, the strait being perhaps four and a half hundred yards directly across, from this town of Zeray to the opposite shore. The current, accordingly, flows very fast, too fast for navigation, while below lies the dangerous gorge known as Bereel, of which I have already written and which they greatly fear. Yet this current they have turned to account, for from Zeray they have contrived to stretch two ropes across the river, one to a point on the opposite bank some thousand yards upstream, while the other is secured a similar distance downstream. This, I am told, was effected with great difficulty in the first place by conveying one end of each rope across the river several miles upstream, in safer water, and then man-handling either end downstream along the banks, little by little, to their present anchoring points. Each rope is about twelve hundred yards long and took several months to make.
'There are three ferry rafts, each perhaps five or six paces square, which make a circuit of three journeys. First, the crossing-rope having been secured through iron rings, it is drawn from Zeray across the river, the opposite point being so far downstream that it goes almost with the current. Upon its arrival they release the raft from the rope and then, once unloaded, it is drawn upstream by oxen in the slack water under the shore. The distance must be about a mile and a quarter and over this whole length they have dredged and cleared the inshore water, straightened the shore and paved it for the beasts' hooves. At the upstream point, a thousand yards above Zeray, the raft is secured to the second rope and thus makes the return crossing, once more having the current behind it.
'The ropes, I am told, will need to be renewed once a year, and this means that a principal labour of upkeep is the making, each year, of well over a mile of stout rope. The rafts – the first they have made – are as yet clumsy and precarious, but serve their purpose. The main impediment, I learned, is from floating branches and the like which, drifting down river, foul the ropes and have to be disengaged or cut loose; but these can be avoided to some extent by leaving the ropes slack when not in use.
'We are now installed in a house here: poor enough, for the whole town is but a rough place, but at least sound and clean. Later this afternoon I am to meet the governor and shall, of course, present Your Majesty's message of goodwill. Soon after, I believe, we are to travel westwards some thirty or forty miles to a town called Kabin where, if I have understood correctly, there is a reservoir supplying the city of Bekla. It is here, and in another city which they call Igat or Ikat, that we hope to speak with the rulers about trade with Zakalon.
'There is one feature of this town which Your Majesty, I am sure, would find as puzzling as I, and that is the great number of children who seem to work, sometimes without any grown man in charge, and to carry out on their own account much of the business of the place. Where a task requires skilled direction as, for example, the building of the new warehouses on the waterfront, they work under the bidding of the masons, but in other, simple tasks they seem often to have their own foremen, older children who direct them without other supervision. Their work, though serviceable, is, from what little I have seen, rough, but for this place it does well enough, and certainly the children seem for the most part in good spirits. In this house we are looked after by three grave lasses of no more than eleven or twelve years of age, who take their task very seriously and clearly feel it an honour to have been chosen to tend the foreign strangers. My men stare, but the girls are not to be put out of countenance. They speak an argot and I can understand little of what they say, but it is no matter.'
There was a light knock at the door. Siristrou looked up and, not calling to mind the Beklan for 'Come in', made a noise which he hoped was expressive of encouragement and assent. One of the serving-children opened the door, raised her palm to her forehead and stood aside to admit the biggest man Siristrou had ever seen. His leather jerkin, which bore the emblem of the Bear and Corn-Sheaves, seemed ready to split across his massive chest, and his skin breeches – apparently made for a man of more normal size – reached about half-way down his calves. Over one shoulder he was carrying easily a large and extremely full-looking sack. He grinned cheerfully at Siristrou, raised his palm to his forehead and said, 'Crendro.'
This word was unknown to Siristrou, but as it was evidently a greeting he replied 'Crendro' and waited expectantly. His visitor's next utterance, however, beat him altogether and he could only conclude that he must be speaking in some strange tongue or dialect.
'Can you speak Beklan?' he asked haltingly. 'I understand – a little Beklan.'
'Why, me too, my lord,' answered the giant, dropping into mangled but comprehensible Beklan with another amiable smile. 'Living here, you can't help picking it up after a fashion. Ah, it's a strange town, this is, and that's the truth. So you're the foreign prince, eh, that's come over on the ferry? 'Going to make all our fortunes, I dare say – or so they tell us. Best respects, my lord, sir.'
By this time Siristrou had perceived that his visitor was evidently some kind of servant – from his manner, a privileged one; but one also who would need keeping in check if he were not to become garrulous to the point of presumption. Without a smile, therefore, and in a business-like manner, he said, 'You have a message for me?'
'Why, that's so, my lord,' replied the man. 'My name's Ankray -I look after the governor and his lady. Governor got back from Lak an hour or two after noon and heard you were here; so he says to me, "Ankray," he says, "if you're going down to the water-front you can just bring me back a sackful of those thick blocks they're using down there – the ones that came in from Tonilda the other day – and on your way home you can step in, like, to that there foreign prince gentleman and tell him I'll be happy to see him whenever it suits him to come." So if it's quite convenient to you, my lord, you might just be stepping along with me now, as you don't know the way, and I'll take you up there.'
'It sounds as though it's convenient to you, at all events,' said Siristrou, smiling in spite of himself. 'My lord?'
'Never mind,' answered Siristrou, who had now, with kindly shrewdness, grasped that his man was something of a simpleton. 'I will be ready to come with you directly.'
It was not the kind of summons to the governor that he had been expecting: but no matter, he thought; this was a small town; there was nothing of importance to be heard or done here; the real diplomacy would come later, in the cities to the westward. Nevertheless, one must be courteous to this governor, who might even be the man responsible for designing and constructing the ferry. As he thought of the probable number of such interviews ahead of him – to say nothing of all the uncomfortable travelling – he sighed. King Luin, in his way, had paid philosophers a compliment in sending one to find out about trade. Yet for all the King's notions, it was not trade, but ideas, that truly advanced civilization: and of those, in this country, there were likely to be about as many as stars in a pond. He sighed again, folded and pocketed his unfinished letter to the king, and called to Thyval to bring him his good cloak and make ready to attend him to the governor's house.
The giant led the way, conversing easily in his atrocious Beklan without apparently worrying in the least whether Siristrou understood him or not, and carrying his bulging sack as lightly as if it had been a fisherman's keep-net,
'Ah, now, this town's changed a great deal, my lord, you see. Now, the Baron, he always used to say, "Ankray," he used to say, "that ferry, once we get it put across the river, that ferry'll bring in a deal of foreigners, coming over for what they can find -" begging your pardon, my lord. "They'll bring all manner of things with them and one will be our prosperity, you mark my words." Of course, the Baron, very likely he'd be surprised out of his life to see all the children here now; though myself, I like them, and there's no denying they can often do very well with anything, once they understand what's to be done. I'd never have thought it possible, but it's these new-fangled ideas, you see, of the governor's. Now only the other day, down at the water-front -'
At this moment they became aware of a band of eight or nine quite young children, who were running after them and calling out to attract their attention. Two were carrying thick, heavy wreaths of flowers. Siristrou stopped, puzzled, and the children came up, panting.
'U-Ankray,' said one, a dark-haired girl of about twelve, putting her hand into the giant's, 'is this the foreign stranger – the prince who's come over the river?'
'Why, yes, that's so,' answered Ankray, 'and what of it? He's on his way to see the governor, so just don't you be hindering of him, now, my dear.'
The little girl turned to Siristrou, raised her palm to her forehead and addressed him in Beklan with a kind of confident joy, which both arrested and startled him.
'My lord,' she said, 'when we heard you were here we made wreaths, to welcome you and your servants to Zeray. We brought them to your house, but Lirrit told us you had just set out to see the governor. "But you run," she said, "and you'll catch him," so we came after you to give you the wreaths, and to say, "Welcome, my lord, to Zeray."'
'What are they saying, sir?' asked Thyval, who had been staring at the children in some bewilderment. 'Are they trying to sell us these flowers?'
'No, they're a gift, or so it seems,' answered Siristrou. Fond of children as he was, the situation was outside his experience and he found himself at something of a loss. He turned back to the dark-haired girl.
"Thank you,' he said. 'You're all very kind.' It occurred to him that he had probably better try to discover a little more. Some further acknowledgement of this rather charming courtesy might well be expected of him later by whoever was behind it. 'Tell me, who told you to bring the wreaths? Was it the governor?'
'Oh, no, my lord, we picked the flowers ourselves. No one sent us. You see, we were gardening not far from the water-front and then we heard -' and she ran off into a chattering, happy explanation which he could not follow, while two of her companions stood on tip-toe to hang the wreaths round his neck and Thyval's. Most of the flowers were of one kind, small and lavender-coloured, -with a light, sharp scent 'What do you call these?' he asked, smiling and touching them.
'Planella,' she answered, and kissed his hand. 'We call them planella. And these are trepsis, the red ones.'
'Let's sing to them,' shouted a limping, dark-skinned boy at the back of the little crowd. 'Come on, let's sing to them!'
And thereupon he began and the others took up his song, rather breadilessly and in several different keys. Thyval scratched his head. 'What are they singing, sir, can you make it out?'
'Hardly at all,1 replied Siristrou. 'They're singing in some other language, not Beklan – although a word or two here and there seems the same. "Something or other – pulls out – a fish" (I think) "along the river -" Oh, well, you know the kind of songs children sing everywhere.'
'They'll be wanting some money in a moment, I suppose,' said Thyval. 'Have you managed to get hold of any of their money yet?' 'No, sir.'
But the song ended and the children, taking each other's hands, ran away, laughing and waving and carrying the lame boy along with them and leaving Siristrou staring after them in the sunshine, with the scent of the planella all about him from the wreath round his neck.
'Funny sort of a go,' muttered Thyval, making to remove his wreath.
'Don't take it off,' said Siristrou quickly. 'We mustn't risk doing anything that might offend these people.'
Thyval shrugged his scented shoulders and they set off again, Ankray pointing the way up the slope to a stone house at the top. Although newly-built, it was not very large or imposing, thought Siristrou, looking at the upper storey visible over the surrounding wall. In Zakalon such a house might do well enough, perhaps, for a prosperous merchant, a market-governor or some such man. It was not a nobleman's house. However, from what Ankray had said, it was plain that the town had begun to grow only recently, no doubt upon the completion of the ferry. The governor, perhaps, if not himself the ferry-designer, might be an old soldier, or some similar kind of practical man appointed to get through the early, rough task of building up the working port. Whoever he was, he certainly had little idea of style.
The gate in the wall – a heavy, cross-ply affair, studded with the broad heads of iron nails – was standing half open and Siristrou, following Ankray as he turned in without ceremony, found himself in a courtyard half-resembling that of a farmer and half that of a builder's merchant Materials of one kind and another were stacked all round the place – sacks of what appeared to be seed-corn, raised off the ground on slatted boards, several newly-turned ox-yokes and some leather straps, an iron rain-water tank half-full, two heaps of stones, sorted large and small, a plough, a stack of logs and another of long poles, ten or twelve rough-cut paddles and a mass of caulking material, some coils of rope and a pile of planks. On the north side of the courtyard, against the south wall of the house itself, stood a carpenter's bench, and here a grizzled, ageing man, with something of the look of an old soldier, was holding up an arrow in one hand while with the other he carefully fixed a trimmed goose-quill below the notch. A younger man and a small crowd of rather ragged-looking boys were standing round him and it was plain that he was instructing them in fletching, for he was both speaking and illustrating his meaning by thrusting forward the arrow held between his finger and thumb, to demonstrate the effect of this particular style of fixing the flights. One of the lads asked a question and the man answered him, pointing to some feature of the arrow and then patting the boy's shoulder, evidently in commendation.
As Siristrou came further into the courtyard, still following Ankray and feeling uncommonly self-conscious with the great wreath tickling the lobes of his ears, they all looked round at him, and at once the younger man stepped out of the little group and approached, clapping saw-dust off his hands and calling over his shoulder, 'All right, Kavass, just carry on. When you've finished, have a look at those thick blocks that Ankray's brought, will you?'
Since Ankray did not seem to be going to say anything to announce their arrival Siristrou, summoning his faulty Beklan, said carefully, 'I am here to see the governor.'
'I'm the governor,' replied the man, smiling. He inclined his head, raised his hand to his forehead and then, as though a little nervous, wiped it on his sleeve before offering it to Siristrou, who took it instinctively but with a certain sense of bewilderment. Perhaps the word he had used for 'governor' was the wrong one? He tried again. ' The – er – ruler – the ruler of the town.' 'Yes, I'm the ruler of the town. Aren't I, Ankray?'
'Yes, my lord. I've brought the thick blocks and this here foreign prince, just like you said. And that young fellow Shouter, he says to, to tell you -'
'Well, tell me that later. Will you let the saiyett know that the prince is here; and then ask Zilthe to bring some nuts and wine into the reception-room? See everything's as it should be; and take the prince's servant with you and look after him.' 'Very good, my lord.'
Walking beside his host into the house, Siristrou murmured, 'If I have the meaning of that word correctly, I ought to tell you that I am not a prince.'
'Never mind,' replied the governor cheerfully. 'If the people here think you are, it will please them and help you as well.' For the first time in several days Siristrou laughed and, able now to look directly at his host without seeming over-curious or unmannerly, tried to size him up. At first glance he looked about thirty, but of this it was hard to be sure, for in spite of his cheerful demeanour there was in his manner a kind of gravity and responsibility which suggested that he might be older. Nor was it easy to guess whether he was primarily a practical or a thinking man, for his face suggested to the perceptive Siristrou experience both of danger and – if words must be found – of grief; of suffering, perhaps. To come down to less fanciful matters, he was almost certainly not a nobleman. To begin with he was not, to tell the truth, particularly clean, although his roughened hands, his sweat and streaks of grime suggested the craftsman, not the oaf. But there was something else about him – a kind of grave ardour, an air suggesting that the world was not yet altogether as he wished it to be and meant to see it become – that was less aristocratic than any amount of dirt. Altogether, thought the diplomatic Siristrou, a somewhat cryptic and paradoxical character, who might need careful handling. The lobe of one of his cars was pierced by an ugly, ragged hole which contained no earring, and his left arm was carried stiffly, as though affected by an old injury. What might his past be and how had he become governor of Zeray? He seemed neither a rough man lining his pocket nor an ambitious man eager to rise. An idealist? The only man who could be found to take the job? Oh well, thought Siristrou, one knew nothing about this entire country anyway and the man, whatever his history, was too small a fish for the net King Luin had sent him to spread. Later there would be others who mattered more, though no doubt the impression he made here would precede him inland.
They entered a plain, clean room, stone-floored and rush-strewn, where a fire was palely burning, dimmed by the afternoon sunlight. The governor, with another smile, gently lifted the wreath from Siristrou's shoulders and put it on the table beside him. It had not been very soundly made, and was already beginning to fall to pieces.
'Some of your townspeople's children came up and gave that to me while I was on the way here,* said Siristrou.
'Really – do you happen to know which children they were?' answered the governor.
'It was little Vasa, my lord,' said a girl's voice, 'so Ankray tells me, and some of her Ortelgan friends. Shall I pour the wine now?'
A young woman had entered, with silver cups and a flagon on a tray. As she set them down and, turning towards Siristrou, raised her palm to her forehead, he perceived, with a quickly-concealed frisson of pity, that she was not entirely in her right mind. Her wide, smiling eyes, meeting his own with a disconcerting directness out of keeping both in a servant and in a woman, passed, without change of expression, first to a butterfly fanning its wings on the sunny wall and then to the governor, who reached out and took her two hands affectionately in his own.
'Oh, Vasa, was it? The prince was lucky, then, wasn't he? Thank you, Zilthe, yes, by all means pour the wine at once. But I'll delay mine for a while – I'm going to wash first, and change my clothes. You see, I mustn't disgrace your visit,' he said, turning to Siristrou. 'Your arrival in Zeray is of the greatest importance to all of us – to the whole country, in fact. I've already despatched a messenger to Kabin with the news. Will you excuse me for a short time? As you can see' – and he spread out his hands – 'I'm not fit to receive you, but my wife will look after you until I come back. She'll be here directly. Meanwhile, I hope you'll find this a good wine. It's one of our best, though you probably have better in your country. It comes from Yelda, in the south.'
He left the room and the girl Zilthe turned away to mend the fire and sweep up the hearth. Siristrou stood in the sunlight, still smelling the sharp, herbal scent of the planella in the wreath and hearing for a moment, at a distance, the rather arresting call of some unknown bird – two fluting notes, followed by a trill cut suddenly short. It certainly was a surprisingly good wine, as good as any in Zakalon: no doubt King Luin would be delighted with any trade agreement that included a consignment. He must bear it in mind. He looked up quickly as a second young woman came into the room.
Middle-aged or not, Siristrou retained an eye for a girl and this one caught it sharply. Upon her entry he was aware only of her remarkable grace of movement – a kind of smooth, almost ceremonial pacing, expressive of calm and self-possession. Then, as she came closer, he saw that, though no longer in the first bloom of youth, she was strikingly beautiful, with great, dark eyes and a rope of black hair gathered loosely and falling over one shoulder. Her deep-red, sheath-like robe bore across the entire front, from shoulder to ankle, the rampant figure of a bear, embroidered in gold and silver thread against a minutely-stitched, pictorial background of trees and water. Forceful, almost barbaric in style, the design, colouring and workmanship were so arresting that for a moment Siristrou was in danger of forgetting the sword for the scabbard, as the saying goes. Work like that, imported to Zakalon, would beyond doubt find a more than ready market. Meanwhile, however, what might be the conventions of this country with regard to women of rank? Free, evidently, for the governor had sent his wife to keep him company alone and therefore no doubt expected him to converse with her. Well, he was not complaining. Perhaps he had misjudged the country after all, though from what little he had seen of Zeray, it would be strange to find a cultured woman here.
The girl greeted him with grace and dignity, though her Beklan seemed a little halting and he guessed that she, like the gigantic servant, must speak some other as her native tongue. From the window embrasure where they were standing could be seen the sheds and landing-stage a quarter of a mile below, fronting the swiftly undulant water of the strait. She asked him, smiling, whether he had felt afraid during the crossing. Siristrou replied that he certainly had.
'I'm a great coward,' she said, pouring him a second cup of wine and one for herself. 'However long I live here, they'll never get me across to the other side.'
'I know this side is called Zeray,' said Siristrou. 'Has the place on the opposite side a name, or is it too new to have one?'
'It hardly exists yet, as you've seen,' she answered, tossing back her long fall of hair. 'I don't know what the Deelguy call it – Yoss Boss, or something like that, I expect. But we call it Bel-ka-Trazet.' 'That's a fine-sounding name. Has it a meaning?'
'It's the name of the man who conceived the idea of the ferry and saw how it could be made to work. But he's dead now, you know.' 'What a pity he couldn't have seen it complete. I drink to him.'
'I, too,' and she touched her silver cup to his, so that they rang faintly together.
'Tell me,' he said, finding the words slowly and with some difficulty, '- you understand I know nothing of your country, and need to learn as much as I can – what part do women play in – er -well, life; that is, public life? Can they own land, buy and sell, go to – to law and so on – or are they more – more secluded?'
'They do none of those things.' She looked startled. 'Do they in your country?'
'Why, yes, these things are certainly possible for a woman – say, one with property whose husband has died – who wishes to stand on her rights and conduct her own affairs, you know.' 'I've never heard of anything like that.'
'But you – forgive me – I lack the word – your way suggests to me that women may have a good deal of freedom here.'
She laughed, evidently delighted. 'Don't go by me when you reach Bekla, or some husband will knife you. I'm a little unusual, though it would take too long to explain why. I was once a priestess, but apart from that I've lived a – very different sort of life from most women. And then again, this is still a remote, half-civilized province, and my husband can do with almost anyone, man or woman -especially when it comes to helping the children. I act freely on his behalf and people accept it, partly because it's me and partly because we need every head and every pair of hands we've got.'
Could she once have been some kind of sacred prostitute? thought Siristrou. It did not seem likely. There was a certain delicacy and sensitivity about her which suggested otherwise. 'A priestess?' he asked. 'Of the god of this country?'
'Of Lord Shardik. In a way I'm still his priestess – his servant, anyway. The girl you saw here just now, Zilthe, was also his priestess once. She was badly injured in his service – that's how she came to be as you see her now, poor girl. She came here from Bekla. She feels safer and happier with us.'
'I understand. But Shardik – that's the second time today I've heard his name. "Shardik gave his life for the children, Shardik saved them."' Siristrou had always had an excellent phonetic memory. She clapped her hands, startled. 'Why, that's Deelguy you're speaking now! Wherever did you hear that?' 'The ferrymen were singing it on the raft this morning.' 'The Deelguy? Were they really?' 'Yes. But who is Shardik?' She stood back, faced him squarely and spread her arms wide. 'This is Shardik.'
Siristrou, feeling slightly embarrassed, looked closely at the robe. Certainly the workmanship was quite unusual. The huge bear, red-eyed and rippling like a flame, stood snarling before a man armed with a bow, while behind, a group of ragged children were crouching upon what appeared to be a tree-lined river-bank. It was certainly a savage scene, but to its meaning there was no clue. Animal worship? Human sacrifice, perhaps? He feared he might be getting drawn into deep water; and his command of the language was still so deficient. One must at all costs avoid wounding the susceptibilities of this high-spirited girl, who no doubt had great influence with her husband.
'I hope to learn more about him,' he said at length, 'That is certainly a splendid robe – most beautiful workmanship. Was it made in Bekla, or somewhere nearer here?'
She laughed again. 'Nearer here certainly. The cloth came from Yelda, but my women and I embroidered it in this house. It took us half a year.' ' Marvellous work – marvellous. Is it – er – sacred?'
'No, not sacred, but I keep it for – well, for occasions of importance. I put it on for you, as you see.'
'You honour me, and – and the robe deserves the lady. There – in a language I've been learning for only two months!' Siristrou was enjoying himself.
She answered nothing, replying to him only with a glance sharp, bright and humorous as a starling's. He felt a quick pang. Injured arm or no injured arm, the governor was younger than he.
'Robes like this – not so fine as yours, of course, but of this kind -could they be traded to my country, do you think?'
Now she was teasing him, rubbing her hands and bowing obsequiously, like some greasy old merchant flattering a wealthy customer.
'Why, surely, kind sir, not a doubt of it. Very most delighted. How many you like?' Then, seriously, 'You'll have to ask my husband about that. You'll find he can talk to you most knowledgeably about anything that's made or sold from Ortelga to Ikat. He's mad about trade – he believes in it passionately – he calls it the blood that circulates in the body of the world; and many other terms he has for it – especially when he's drinking this Yeldashay wine. Have some more.' And again she picked up the flagon. 'What is the name of your country?'
'Zakalon. It's very beautiful – the cities are full of flower-gardens. I hope one day you'll visit it, if only you can overcome your reluctance to crossing the strait.'
'Perhaps. It's little enough travelling I've ever done. Why, I've never even been to Bekla, let alone to Ikat-Yeldashay.'
'All the more reason to become the first woman to go to Zakalon. Come and make our ladies jealous. If you like ceremony, you must come for the great – er – midsummer festival, if those are the right words.' 'Yes, they are. Well done! Well, perhaps – perhaps. Tell me, sir-' 'Siristrou – saiyett.' He smiled. He had just remembered 'saiyett'.
'Tell me, U-Siristrou, do you intend to remain here for a few days, or are you going to press straight on to Kabin?'
'Why, that's really for the governor to say. But in the first place, obviously, I shall have to sec to bringing my men and – and beasts over from – from – er – Belda-Brazet -' 'Bel-ka-Trazet.'
'- from Bel-ka-Trazet. And then I myself am not altogether in the best of health after the journey. It will be a few days, I think, before we're ready to start for Kabin. The wilderness and desert were very trying and the men need rest and perhaps a little -I don't know the word – you know, play, drink -' 'Recreation.' "That's it, recreation. Excuse me, I'll write it down.' Smiling, she watched him write, shaking her head. "Then if you are here five days from now,' she said, 'you and your men will be able to see our spring festival. It's a very happy occasion – there'll be any amount of – recreation', and a most beautiful ceremony on the shore – at least, it means a lot to us, especially to the children. Shara's Day – that's the time to see the flames of God burning bright as stars.' 'The flames of God?'
'It's a kind of joke of my husband's. He calls the children "the flames of God". But I was speaking of the ceremony. They decorate a great wooden raft with flowers and green branches, and then it floats away down the river, burning. Sometimes there may be three or four rafts together. And the children make clay bears and stick them all full of flowers – trepsis and melikon, you know – and then at the end of the day they put them on flat pieces of wood and float them away downstream.' 'Is it some kind of commemoration?'
'Why, yes – it commemorates Lord Shardik and Shara. This year an old and dear friend of ours is making the journey to be here – if all goes well, she'll be arriving in two or three days' time. She taught me, long ago, when I was a child -' 'Not very long ago.'
'Thank you. I like compliments, particularly now I have two children of my own. If you've not been well, I'd certainly advise you to stay, for then you can ask her help. She's the greatest healer in all this country. Indeed, that's partly why she's coming – not only for the festival, but to see our sick children – we always have a number by the end of winter.'
Siristrou was about to ask her more when the governor returned to the room. He had changed his rough clothes for a plain, black robe, embroidered across the breast alone with the bear and corn-sheaves in silver; and this, so severe by contrast with the brilliance of his wife's garment, emphasized his grave, lined features and almost mystic air of composure. Siristrou studied his face as he looked down to pour his wine. This, too, he realized suddenly, was a metaphysician by temperament, even though he might have no fluent speech, no articulate ideas. Curiously, there came into his mind those lines of the Zakalonian poet Mitran which are spoken by the hero Serat to his consort in the time after making love -'I desire nothing, I lack for nothing, I am at the centre of the world, where sorrow is joy.' In a moment, however, the governor looked up, the cups clattered and rang on the tray and the charm was snapped.
Siristrou made a complimentary remark about the wine. The lady excused herself and left them and the governor, inviting him to sit, began at once to speak of trade prospects as a betrothed might speak of his approaching marriage. If Siristrou had expected little or nothing from the hickory constable of a frontier town, he now found himself compelled to think again. The governor's questions fell like arrows. How far away was Zakalon? How many permanent camps or staging-forts would be needed to service a regular trade-route? How could Siristrou be sure that there were no hostile inhabitants of the wilderness? Given that the Telthearna might be used for downstream transport, what about upstream? The language problem – he could, if desired, send forty older children to Zakalon to be educated as guides and interpreters. Children learned more quickly than men; some of his would jump at such a chance. What goods could Zakalon offer? Horses – what exactly were they? He looked puzzled as Siristrou began to explain, and they both became confused over language and ended by laughing as Siristrou tried to draw a horse with his finger in spilt wine. Then he promised the governor that the very next day, on one side of the river or the other, he should see a man ride a horse more than twice as fast as he could run. If that were true, replied the governor, then Zakalon need look no further for wares to offer for some years to come. But what did Siristrou think, quite non-committally, might be the trade value of these horses – making a fair allowance, of course, for the cost and effort of transporting them from Zakalon? They began trying to estimate the equivalent values of consignments of wine, of iron and of products of fine craftsmanship such as that of the robe which he had just adrnircd.
The governor called for more wine and the deranged girl served them, sensing their excitement and smiling like an old friend to see the governor busy and happy. Siristrou drank to Zeray. The governor drank to Zakalon. They congratulated one another on their propitious meeting and went on to envisage fancifully a future in which men would travel as freely as the birds of the air and goods would pass through Zeray from the ends of the earth. The governor obliged Siristrou with a verse of the song which the children had sung, explaining that the tongue was actually his own – Ortelgan – and that the lines were part of a singing game about a cat that caught a fish.
'But as to your journey to Bekla,' said the governor, coming back to reality with something of a bump, 'the road between here and Kabin's not finished yet, you know. Twenty miles of it's sound enough, but the other twenty's still only a muddy track.'
'We shall manage it, don't worry. But I'd like to stay for your festival first – Shara's Day, I believe you call it? Your wife was speaking of it. She told me about the burning raft – for Lord Shardik, isn't it? Also, I think I should benefit by meeting your friend, the wise woman – I've not been well during the journey, and your wife says she's a great healer.' 'The Tuginda?' 'I don't think I heard her – her name. Or is it a title?' 'It's both, in her case.' 'Will she come by the half-finished road you were speaking of?'
'No, by water. We're lucky in this-town to have the river as a highway from the north. Much of the province is still half-wild, though not as wild as it was. We're making new settlements here and there, although we never risk children in the remoter parts. But there's a child village on the road to Kabin: you'll pass through it on your way to Bekla. It's not very big yet – ten old soldiers and their wives are looking after about a hundred children – but we mean to make it bigger as soon as the land's in any state to support more. It's in a safe place, you see.'
'I'm puzzled by the children,' said Siristrou, 'what little I've seen of them. Your town seems full of children – I saw them working at the landing-stage and on your new warehouses. Two-thirds of the inhabitants seem to be children.' 'Two-thirds – that's about right.' 'They're not all the children of people here, then?'
'Oh, no one's told you about the children?' said the governor. 'No, of course, there's hardly been time. They come from many different places – Bekla, Ikat, Thettit, Dari, Ortelga – there are even a few from Terekenalt. They're all children who've lost parents or families for one reason or another. A lot of them have simply been deserted, I'm afraid. They're not compelled to come here, although for many it's better than destitution, I suppose. It's still a hard life, but at least they can feel that we need them and value them. That in itself helps them a great deal.* 'Who sends them?'
'Well, I'm in touch with all manner of people – people who worked for me and used to send me news and so on, in the days when I – er – lived in Bekla: and the Ban of Sarkid has helped us a great deal.'
Siristrou could not help feeling a certain distaste. Apparently this young governor, in his enthusiasm for trade, was developing his province and building up Zeray as a port through the labour of destitute children. 'How long are they compelled to remain?' he asked.
"They're not compelled. They're free to go if they want to, but most of them have nowhere to go.' 'Then you wouldn't say they were slaves?'
"They're slaves when they come here – slaves of neglect, of desertion, sometimes of actual cruelty. We try to free them, but often it's anything but easy.'
Siristrou began to sec a connection between this and certain things which the young woman had said to him in their earlier conversation. 'Has it something to do with Lord Shardik?'
'What have you heard, then, about Lord Shardik?' asked the governor with an air of surprise.
'Your wife spoke of him, and about the festival too. Besides, the ferrymen on the raft this morning had a chant – "Shardik gave his life for the children." I should be interested to hear a little more, if you would care to tell me, about the cult of Shardik. I have an interest in such matters and in my own country I have been a – well, a teacher, I think you might say.'
The governor, who was gazing into his silver cup and swirling the wine in it, looked up and grinned.
'That's more than I am, or ever shall be. I'm not particularly handy with words, though fortunately I don't need them to serve Lord Shardik. The teaching, as you call it, is simply that there isn't to be a deserted or unhappy child in the world. In the end, that's the world's only security: children are the future, you see. If there were no unhappy children, then the future would be secure.'
He spoke with a kind of unassuming assurance, as a mountain-guide might speak to travellers of passes and peaks which, for all their lonely wildness, he knows well. Siristrou had not understood all that he said and, finding it difficult to formulate questions in the other's language, fell back on the repetition of words which he had heard him speak. 'You said slaves of neglect and desertion? What does that mean?'
The governor rose, paced slowly across to the window and stood looking out towards the harbour. His next words came hesitantly, and Siristrou realized with some surprise that apparently he had seldom or never had occasion to try to express himself on this subject before.
'Children – they're born of mutual pleasure and joy – or they ought to be. And God means them to grow up – well, watertight, like a sound canoe; fit to work and play, buy and sell, laugh and cry. Slavery – real slavery's being robbed of any chance of becoming complete. The unwanted, the deprived and deserted – they're slaves all right – even if they don't know it themselves.'
Siristrou felt no wish to become too much involved. To show a polite interest in foreign beliefs and customs was one thing; to become a target for the fervour of an uncultivated man was another.
'Well, well – perhaps there are some deserted children who don't mind too much.'
'Which one of them told you mat?' asked the governor, with so droll a simulation of genuine interest that Siristrou could not help laughing. However, he was wondering, now, how best to bring this part of their conversation to an end. He had himself begun it by asking for information, and it would not be civil simply to change the subject. The better way would be first to move on to some other aspect of the matter and thence slide to less tricky ground. Diplomacy was largely a matter of not upsetting people. 'Shardik – he was a bear, you say?' 'Lord Shardik was a bear.' 'And he was – er – coming from God? I'm afraid I don't know the word.' 'Divine?' 'Ah, yes. Thank you.' 'He was the Power of God, but he was an actual bear.* 'This was long ago?' 'No -I myself was present when he died.' 'You?'
The governor said no more and after a few moments Siristrou, now genuinely interested, hazarded, 'A bear – and yet you speak of his teaching. How did he teach?'
'He made plain to us, by his sacred death, the truth we had never understood.'
Siristrou, mildly irritated, refrained from shrugging his shoulders, but could not resist asking, though in a tone of careful sincerity and self-depreciation,
'Wouldn't it be possible for some foolish person to try to argue – of course it would be foolish, but perhaps it might be said – that what took place was all a matter of chance and accident – that the bear was not sent by God -?'
He broke off, somewhat dismayed. Certainly he had said more than he need. He really must be more careful.
The governor was silent for so long that he feared he must have given offence. To have done so would be a nuisance and he would have to set to work to repair the damage. He was just about to speak again when the governor looked up, half-smiling, like one who knows his mind but must needs laugh at his own difficulty in expressing it. At length he said, 'Those beasts of yours that you spoke of – the ones we're going to buy from you – you sit on their backs and they carry you swiftly -' 'The horses. Yes?' 'They must be intelligent – cleverer than oxen, I suppose?' 'It's hard to say – perhaps a little more intelligent Why?'
'If music were played in their hearing and in ours, I suppose their ears would catch all the actual sounds that yours and mine would catch. Yet for all that it's little they'd understand. You and I might weep; they wouldn't The truth – those who hear it are in no doubt Yet there are always others who know for a fact that nothing out of the ordinary took place.'
He stooped and threw a log on the fire. The afternoon light was beginning to fade. The wind had dropped and through the window Siristrou could glimpse that the river was now smooth inshore. Perhaps if tomorrow's crossing were to take place in the early morning it might be less hair-raising.
'I've wandered very far,' said the governor after a little. 'I've seen the world blasphemed and ruined. But I've no time nowadays to dwell on that The children, you see – they need our time. Once I used to pray, "Accept my life, Lord Shardik"; but that prayer's been answered. He has accepted it*
At this, Siristrou felt that at last he was on familiar ground. To remove the burden of guilt was in his experience the function of most, if not of all, religions. ' You feel that Shardik takes away – er – that he forgives you?'
'Well, I don't know about that' answered the governor. 'But once you know what you have to do, forgiveness matters much less – the work's too important God knows I've done much wrong, but it's all past now.'
He broke off at a sound of movement near the door of the darkening room. Ankray had entered and was waiting to speak. The governor called him over.
'There's some of the children waiting to see you, sir,' said the man. 'One or two of them new ones that come in yesterday – Kavass brought them up here. And that young fellow down at the landing-stage, that Shouter-' 'Kominion?'
'Well, there's some calls him that' conceded Ankray. 'Now the Baron, he wouldn't have -'
'Anyway, what does he want?' 'Says he wants some orders for tomorrow, sir.' 'All right, I'll come and see him, and the rest of them too.'
As the governor turned towards the door, a little boy, aged perhaps six, came wandering uncertainly through it, looked round and came to a halt, staring gravely up at him. Siristrou watched in some amusement.
'Hullo,' said the governor, returning the child's gaze. 'What are you after?' 'I'm looking for the governor-man. The people outside said -'
'Well, I'm the governor-man, and you can come with me if you like.' He swung the child up in his arms just as Melathys came back into the room. She shook her head, smiling.
'Haven't you any dignity, my dearest Kelderek Play-with-the-Children? What will the ambassador think?'
'He'll think I'm one of those swift animals he's going to sell us. Look!' And he ran out of the room with the child on his shoulders.
'You'll dine with us, won't you?' said Melathys, turning to Siristrou. 'It'll be about an hour, and there's no need to leave us. How can we entertain you until then?'
'Why, madam, please don't trouble,' answered Siristrou, happy to find himself once more in the company of this charming girl, whom privately he considered rather too good for her husband, however keen on trade he might be. 'I have a letter to finish to the king of Zakalon. Now that we have really reached your country at last, I mean to send a messenger tomorrow, with an account of our arrival and of all that has befallen. It will be entirely convenient to me to occupy the time until dinner in finishing it. Our king will be anxious for news, you understand.' He smiled. 'I can sit anywhere you like and be in nobody's way.' She looked surprised. 'You're actually going to write the letter? You yourself?' 'Well – yes, madam – if I may.'
'You may indeed – if we can find you anything to write on and with. And that I rather doubt. May I watch for a little while? The only people I ever saw write were the Tuginda and Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid. But where are we to find what you need?'
'Don't put yourself out, madam. My man is here. He can go to my lodgings.'
'I'll sec that he's sent in to you. It will be most comfortable for you to stay in this room, I think. It's turning cold outside and the only other fire's in the kitchen, though Zilthe will be lighting another later, in the further room. When there's company, you see, we can do quite as well as any old village elder. But you're going to make us all rich, aren't you?' – and again she smiled at him as though their lack of luxury were the best of jokes. 'You have children, madam, you told me?' 'Two – they're only babies yet. The eldest isn't three years old.'
'Will you not take me to see them, while my man is on his errand?'
…have been pleasantly surprised to find the young governor of the town most knowledgeable about our trade prospects. He assures me that the principal cities will be able to offer us several commodities: metals, certainly iron, and perhaps some gold also, if I have understood him correctly, together with their wine – which is excellent, if only it will travel – and, I rather think, some kinds of jewels, but whether precious or semi-precious, I cannot be sure. In return we should, in my opinion, offer principally horses. For these, I am in no doubt, they will pay well, since they have none and as yet know nothing of them. Indeed it will, I rather think, be necessary to consider how best to regulate such a trade, for it is bound to effect a profound change in their way of life and there will be, for the foreseeable future, an almost unlimited demand.
'The people themselves, what little I have yet seen of them, I like rather than otherwise. They are, of course, semi-barbaric, ignorant and illiterate. Yet their art, in some forms at all events, seems to me accomplished and striking. I have been told that Bekla has some fine buildings and this I can believe. Some of their artifacts – for example, the embroidered needlework which I have seen – would undoubtedly be in great demand if sold in Zakalon.
'Your Majesty is aware of my interest in religious and metaphysical matters, and you will understand me when I go on to tell you that I am not a little intrigued to have come upon an odd cult which has undoubtedly had a great influence, not only on the life of this province but also, as far as I can ascertain, on that of the more metropolitan lands to the west. I can best describe it as a mixture of superstition and visionary humanitarianism, which I would certainly have discounted were it not for the results which it seems to have achieved. These people, if I understand the governor correctly, worship the memory of a gigantic bear, which they believe to have been divine. There is, of course, nothing unique about barbaric worship of any large and savage animal, whether bear, serpent, bull or other creature, nor yet in the concept of benefit from a divine death. In their belief, however, the death of this bear somehow availed – I have not yet learned how – to free certain enslaved children, and on this account they consider the security and happiness of all children to be of importance to the bear, and their well-being a sacred duty. One might say that they regard children as a ripening crop, of which no part ought to be wasted or lost. For parents to harm a child, for example by separation from one another, by deserting it or in any other way damaging its security and power to respond to life, is regarded as a wrong equivalent to selling it into slavery. All adherents of Shardik, as they call the bear, have the duty to care for homeless or deserted children wherever they may find them. In this town there are many such children, orphans or derelicts brought from the provinces further west and more or less conscientiously looked after. The governor – a capable fellow on the whole, I think, though of no great standing in his country and perhaps a little strange in his ways – and his young wife are both very forward in the cult, and have in effect organized the town round the children, who actually outnumber the men and women by about two to one. They work under the supervision partly of grown men or women and partly of their own leaders, and although much of their work is, as one might expect, unskilfully, partially or clumsily performed, that matters little in a province such as this, where the great demand is for quick results and polish comes a long way behind utility and the meeting of immediate needs. No one could deny that this astonishingly benevolent cult demands generosity and self-sacrifice, in which the governor and his household certainly set an example, for they seem to live almost as plainly as the rest. Conditions for the children are rough and ready, but the governor shares the like and certainly seems to do a good deal to promote a sense of comradeship. I cannot help feeling that despite the superstitious worship of the bear, there may well be value in this idea. It is interesting to observe reason emerging from legend, just as this community is itself emerging from the forests that surround it into a state faintly approaching that of your Majesty's own country, the lack of whose civilized comforts your Majesty will, I am sure, understand that I feel most keenly.'
Siristrou paused, stretched his fingers and looked up. The light was almost gone. He got up, pushing back the bench on which he was sitting, walked across to the window and stood looking out towards the west. The governor's dwelling stood almost on the edge of the town, and between it and the open country beyond lay nothing except a narrow lane and a stockade that apparently did duty for a town wall. The yellow afterglow showed a land of forest and marsh stretching away into the darkening distance. Here and there in the foreground were small patches of ploughed land, a few irrigation channels, wide tracts of reeds and random strips of water shining with a yellow paler than the sky. It was turning cold. Inland, the wind must be rising again, for he could just make out the shaggy woods moving in the far-off, dreary solitude. Night was falling, bleak and shelterless, and in all the prospect he could see neither light nor smoke. He shivered, and was about to turn back into the room when his ear caught the slap-slapping of feet approaching along the lane. In idle curiosity he waited, and after a few moments an old woman appeared, black-clad, with a bundle of sticks tied on her back. Her bare feet slapped the earth as she jogged homeward, the bundle tossing up and down on her shoulders. In her arms she was carrying a little, fair-haired girl, and Siristrou could hear her murmuring to the child in a quiet, unhurried rhythm, meaningless and reassuring as the sound of a mill-wheel or the song of a bird. As they passed under the window the little girl looked up, caught sight of him and waved her hand. He waved back, and as he did so realized that someone was standing behind him in the room. A little embarrassed, he turned and saw the girl Zilthe, who came up to him and spoke a few words he could not understand. Seeing him at a loss she smiled, held up the tray of unlighted lamps she was carrying and nodded towards the fire.
'Oh, yes, by all means light them,' he replied. 'You won't be disturbing me.'
She took a burning twig and kindled the wicks one by one, trimming and placing several lamps until the room was bright and well-lit. The rest she carried away and Siristrou, left once more alone, sat down before the fire, holding out his hands to the warmth and, just as when a boy, looking into its heart for pictures and shapes -an island, a glowing knife, a barred cage; the likeness of an old woman, a deep ravine, a shaggy bear. The fire flamed in its warmth with a gentle murmur and a wood-knot popped sharply. The logs moved, the ash crumbled and fell, the pictures were gone.
Melathys came hurrying in, carrying a joint of pork on a spit, her fine robe changed for a long, grey kitchen-smock. As she approached he stood up and smiled. 'Can't I work too?' he asked.
'Later, perhaps – another evening, when you've become an old friend, as you surely will. You see what a splendid occasion your visit gives us for a feast. U-Siristrou, are you warm enough? Shall I put on some more logs?'
'No, please don't trouble,' answered Siristrou. 'That's a beautiful fire.'