Shardik

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.