Kelderek, who had become no stranger to humiliation, stood unresisting as the soldiers, not ungently and with a kind of rough courtesy, set about their task. They placed their findings on the window ledge - a stale crust, a strip of cobbler's leather, a reaper's whetstone which he had found lying in a ditch two days before, a handful of dried, aromatic herbs which the gate-keeper's wife had given him against lice and infection, and a talisman of red-veined stone which must once have belonged to Kavass.

'All right, mate,' said one of the soldiers, handing him back his jerkin. 'Steady, now. Nearly done, don't worry.'

Suddenly the other soldier whistled, swore under his breath and then, without another word, held out to the officer on the palm of his hand a small, bright object which glittered in the sunlight. It was the stag emblem of Santil-ke-Erketlis.

37 Lord One-Hand

The officer, startled, took the emblem and examined it, drawing the chain through the ring and fastening the clasp carefully, as though to allow himself time to think. At length, with an uncertainty that he had not shown before, he said, 'Will you be good enough to - to tell me - I am sure you will understand why I have to know -whether this is your own?'

Kelderek held out his hand in silence but the officer, after a moment's hesitadon, shook his head.

'Have you come here in search of the Commander-in-Chief himself? Perhaps you are a member of his household? If you can tell me it will make my task easier.'

Kelderek, to whom the memory was now beginning to return of much that had befallen him since leaving Bekla, sat down upon the bed and put his head in his hands. The officer waited patiently for him to speak. At last Kelderek said, 'Where is General Zelda? If he is here, I must sec him immediately.'

'General Zelda?' replied the officer in bewilderment.

One of the soldiers spoke to him in a low voice and together they went to the further end of the room.

'This man's an Ortelgan, sir,' said the soldier, 'or else I'm one myself.'

'I know that,' replied Tan-Rion. 'What of it? He's some agent of Lord Elleroth who's lost his wits.'

'I doubt he is, sir. If he's an Ortelgan, then clearly he's not a household officer of the Commander-in-Chief. You heard him ask for General Zelda. I agree it's plain that some shock's confused his mind, but my guess is that he's made his way into the middle of the wrong army without realizing it. If you come to think of it, he'd hardly be expecting to find us here in Kabin.'

Tan-Rion considered.

'He could still have come by that emblem honestly. In his case it might be no more than a token to prove who he was working for. Nobody knows what strange people may have been reporting direct to General Erketlis or carrying his messages these last few months. Suppose, for instance, that Lord Elleroth made use of this man while he was in Bekla? When is General Erketlis expected to return, have you heard?'

'Not until the day after tomorrow, sir. He got wind of a big slave-column on the move west of Thettit-Tonilda and heading for Bekla; to reach it in time meant some very hard going, so the General took a hundred men from the Falaron regiment and said he'd do the job himself.'

'Very like him. I'm only afraid he may try that sort of thing once too often. Well, at that rate I suppose we'll have to keep this man until he gets back.'

'I suggest we might ask Lord One-Hand - Lord Elleroth - to see him, sir. If he recognizes him, as I gather you yourself think may be possible, then at least we shall know where we are, even if the man doesn't come round enough to tell us anything.'

After a few more fruitless questions to Kelderek, Tan-Rion, together with his two soldiers, conducted him out of the house and up on the town walls. Here, walking in the spring sunshine, they looked down upon the town on one side and on the other upon the huts and bivouacs of the camp in the fields outside. The smoke of fires was drifting on the breeze and in the market place a crowd was gathering in response to the long-drawn, stylized summons of a red-cloaked crier.

"Must have made his fortune since we came here, eh?' said a sentry on the wall to one of Tan-Rion's soldiers, jerking his thumb to where the crier below was already climbing on his rostrum.

'I dare say,' answered the soldier. 'I know I've done well enough out of him. He hangs about our place and offers to pay for anything we can tell him.'

'Well, just be careful how much you do tell him,' snapped Tan-Rion, turning his head. 'You bet, sir. We all want to stay alive.'

They descended from the wall by a flight of steps near the gate at which Kelderek had entered the town the night before and, passing through a square, came to a large, stone house where a sentry stood before the door. Kelderek and his escort were taken to a room which had formerly been that of the household steward, while Tan-Rion, after a few words with the captain of the guard, accompanied that officer through the house and into the garden.

The garden, green and formal, was shady with ornamental trees and shrubs - lexis, purple cresset and sharp-scented planella already opening its tiny, mauve-speckled flowers to the early sun. Through the midst, murmuring along its gravel bed, ran a brook channelled down from the reservoir. Along the verge, Elleroth was walking in conversation with a Yeldashay officer, a Deelguy baron and the governor of the town. He was gaunt and pale, his face haggard with pain and recent privation. His left hand, carried in a sling, was encased to the wrist in a great, padded glove of birch bark that covered and protected the dressings beneath. His sky-blue robe, a gift from the wardrobe of Santil-ke-Erketlis (for he had reached the army in rags), had been embroidered across the breast with the corn-sheaves of Sarkid, while the silver clasp of his belt was fashioned in the stag emblem. He walked leaning on a staff and those beside him carefully suited their pace to his. He nodded courteously to Tan-Rion and the guard commander, who stood deferentially aside, waiting until he should be ready to hear them.

'Of course,' Elleroth was saying to the governor, 'I cannot tell you what the Commander-in-Chief will decide. But clearly, whether the army remains here and for how long will depend not only on the movements of the enemy but also on the state of our own supplies. We're quite a long way from Ikat' - he smiled - 'and we shan't be loved up here much longer if we eat everybody out of house and home. The Ortelgan army are in the middle of their own country -or what they call their own country. I dare say we may decide to seek them out and fight them soon, before the balance begins to tip against us. I can assure you that General Erketlis has all this very much in mind. At the same time, there are two excellent reasons why we should like to stay here a little longer, provided you can bear with us - and I assure you that you would not, in the long run, be losers. In the first place, we are doing what we intended - what the enemy supposed we could never do and what we could not have done without help from Deelguy.' He bowed slightly to the baron, a heavy, swarthy man, showy as a macaw. 'We think that if we continue to hold the reservoir, the enemy may feel driven to attack us at a disadvantage. He for his part is probably waiting to see whether we shall stay here. So we want to look as though we shall.'

'You are not going to destroy the reservoir, my lord?' asked the governor anxiously.

'Only in the very last resort,' answered Elleroth cheerfully. 'But I'm sure that with your help we shall never come to that, shall we?' The governor replied with a wry smile and after a few moments Elleroth continued.

'The second reason is that we are anxious, while we are here, to hunt down as many slave-traders as we can. We have already caught not only several who hold warrants from the so-called king of Bekla, but also one or two of those who do not. But as you know, the country beyond the Vrako, right across to Zeray and up as far as the gap of Linsho, is wild and remote. Here, we are on its doorstep: Kabin is the ideal base from which to search it. If only we can gain the time, our patrols will be able to comb out the whole of that area. And believe it or not, we have received a reliable offer of help from Zeray itself.'

'From Zeray, my lord?' said the governor incredulously.

'From Zeray,' answered Elleroth. 'And you told me, didn't you,' he went on, turning with a smile to Tan-Rion, who was still waiting near by, 'that you had information about at least one unlicensed slave-trader who is believed to be either beyond the Vrako at this moment or else making towards it from Tonilda ?'

'Yes, my lord,' replied Tan-Rion. 'The child-dealer, Genshed -a most cruel, evil man, from Terekenalt. But Trans-Vrako will be difficult country to search and he might very well give us the slip, even now.'

'Well, we shall have to do the best we can. So you see -'

'Any news of your own trouble, my lord?' broke in the Yeldashay officer impulsively.

Elleroth bit his lip and paused a moment before answering.

'I'm afraid not - for the time being. So you see,' he resumed quickly to the governor, 'we are going to need all the help you can give us; and what I would like to learn from you is how we can best feed and supply the army while we stay here a little longer. Perhaps you will be so good as to think about it and we will have a talk with the Commander-in-Chief when he returns. We sincerely want to avoid making your people suffer and as I said, we will pay honestly for your help.'

The governor was about to withdraw when Elleroth suddenly added, 'By the way, the priestess from the Telthearna island - the wise woman - you gave her a safe-conduct, as I asked you?'

'Yes, my lord,' replied the governor, 'yesterday at noon. She has been gone these twenty hours.'

'Thank you.'

The governor bowed and went away through the trees. Elleroth stood still, watching a trout that hung on the edge of the current, motionless save for the flickering of its tail. It darted upstream and he sat down on a stone bench, easing his hand in the sling and shaking his head as though at some thought that preoccupied and distressed him. At length, recalling Tan-Rion, he looked up with a questioning smile.

"Sorry to bother you, sir,' said Tan-Rion briskly. 'Yesterday evening one of our patrols brought in a wandering Ortelgan who kept talking about a message to or from Bekla. This morning we found this on him and 1 thought best to come and show it to you at once.'

Elleroth took the stag emblem, looked at it, started, frowned and then examined it more closely.

'What does he look like, this man?' he asked at length.

'Like an Ortelgan, my lord,' replied Tan-Rion, 'spare and dark. It's hard to say much more - he's pretty well exhausted - half-starved and worn out. He must have had a very bad time.'

'I will see him immediately,' said Elleroth.

1. The Streets of Kabin

At the sight of Elleroth Kelderek's memory, by this time half-restored - like the safety of a swimmer whose limp feet, as he drifts, have already touched bottom here and there; or the consciousness of an awakening sleeper whose hearing has caught but who has not yet recognized for what they are the singing of the birds and the sound of rain - cleared as immediately as the misted surface of a mirror wiped by an impatient hand. The voices of the Yeldashay officers, the starred banner floating on the walls above the garden, the cognizances worn by the soldiers standing about him - all these assumed on the instant a single, appalling meaning. So might an old, sick man, smiling as his son's wife bent over his bed, grasp in a moment the terrible import of her look and of the pillow poised above his face. Kelderek gave a quick, gasping cry, staggered and would have fallen if the soldiers had not caught him under the arms. As they did so he struggled briefly, then recovered himself and stood staring, tense and wide-eyed as a bird held in a man's hand.

'How do you come to be here, Crendrik?' asked Elleroth.

Kelderek made no reply.

'Are you seeking refuge from your own people?'

He shook his head mutely and seemed about to faint.

'Let him sit down,' said Elleroth.

There was no second bench and one of the soldiers ran to bring a stool from the house. As he returned, two or three of the guard off duty followed him and stood peering from among the trees, until their tryzatt ordered them sharply back to the house.

'Crendrik,' said Elleroth, leaning towards him where he sat hunched upon the stool, 'I am asking you again. Are you here as a fugitive from Bekla ?'

'I -I am no fugitive,' replied Kelderek in a low voice.

‘We know that there has been a rising in Bekla. You say that that has nothing to do with your coming here, alone and exhausted?'

'I know nothing of it. I left Bekla within an hour of yourself - and by the same gate.'

'You were pursuing me?'

'No.'

Kelderek's face was set The guard commander seemed about to strike him, but Elleroth held up his hand and waited, looking at him intently.

'I was following Lord Shardik. That is my charge from God,' cried Kelderek with sudden violence and looking up for the first time. 'I have followed him from Bekla to the hills of Gelt'

'And then-?'

'I lost him; and later came upon your soldiers.' The sweat was standing on his forehead and his breath came in gasps.

'You thought they were your own?' 'It's no matter what I thought'

Elleroth searched for a moment among a bundle of scrolls and letters lying beside him on the bench. 'Is that your seal ?' he asked, holding out a paper.

Kelderek looked at it. 'Yes.'

'What is this paper?'

Kelderek made no reply.

'I will tell you what it is,' said Elleroth. 'It is a licence issued by yourself in Bekla to a man called Nigon, authorizing him to enter Lapan and take up a quota of children as slaves. I have several similar papers here.'

The hatred and contempt of the men standing near by was like the oppression of snow unfallen from a winter sky. Kelderek, hunched upon the stool, was shaking as though with bitter cold. The scent of the planella came and went evanescent as the squeaking of bats at twilight.

'Well,' said Elleroth briskly, getting up from the bench, 'I have recovered this trinket, Crendrik, and you have nothing to tell us, it seems; so I can resume my work and you had better return to your business of seeking the bear.'

Tan-Rion drew in his breath sharply. The young Yeldashay officer started forward.

'My lord-'

Again Elleroth raised his hand.

*I have my reasons, Dethrin. Surely if anyone has the right to spare this man, it is I?'

'But, my lord,' protested Tan-Rion, 'this evil man - the priest-king of Shardik himself - Providence has delivered him into our hands - the people -'

'You may take my word for it that neither he nor the bear can harm us now. And if it is merely a matter of retribution that is troubling you, perhaps you will persuade the people to forgo it, as a favour to me. I have certain information which leads me to conclude that we should spare this man's life.'

His mild words were spoken with a firm directness which plainly admitted of no further argument. His officers were silent.

'You will go eastward, Crendrik,' said Elleroth. 'That will suit us both, since not only is it in the opposite direction from Bekla, but also happens to be the direction your bear has taken.'

From the square outside could now be heard a growing hubbub - murmuring, broken by angry shouts, raucous, inarticulate cries and the sharper voices of soldiers trying to control a crowd.

'We will give you food and fresh shoes,' said Elleroth, 'and that is as much as I can do for you. I can see well enough that you are in poor shape, but if you stay here you will be torn to pieces. You will not have forgotten that Mollo came from Kabin. Now understand this plainly. If ever again you allow yourself to fall into the hands of this army, you will be put to death. I repeat, you will be put to death. I should not be able to save you again.' He turned to the guard commander. 'See that he has an escort as far as the ford of the Vrako, and tell the crier to give out that it is my personal wish that no one should touch him.'

He nodded to the soldiers, who once more grasped Kelderek by the arms. They had already begun to lead him away when suddenly he wrenched himself about.

'Where is Lord Shardik?' he cried. 'What did you mean - he cannot harm you now?'

One of the soldiers jerked back his head by the hair, but Elleroth, motioning them to let him go, faced him once more.

'We have not hurt your bear, Crendrik,' he said. 'We had no need.'

Kelderek stared at him, trembling. Elleroth paused a moment. The noise of the crowd now filled the garden and the two soldiers, waiting, looked at one another sidelong.

'Your bear is dying, Crendrik,' said Ellerodi deliberately. 'One of our patrols came upon it in the hills three days ago and followed it eastward until it waded the upper Vrako. They were in no doubt. Other news has reached me also - never mind how - that you and the bear came alive from the Streels of Urtah. Of what befell you at the Streels you know more than I, but that is why your life is spared. I have no part in blood required of God. Now go!’

In the steward's room, one of the soldiers threw back his head and spat in Kelderek's face.

'You dirty bastard,' he said, 'burned his mucking hand off, did you?'

'And now he says we're to let you go,' said the other soldier. 'You damned, rotten Ortelgan slave-trader! Where's his son, eh? You saw to that, did you? You're the one that told Genshed what he had to do?'

'Where's his son?' repeated the first soldier, as Kelderek made no reply but stood with bent head, looking down at the floor.

'Didn't you hear me?' Taking Kelderek's chin in his hand, he forced it up and stared contemptuously into his eyes.

'I heard you,' mouthed Kelderek, his words distorted by the soldier's grip,' I don't know what you mean.'

Both the soldiers gave short, derisive laughs.

'Oh, no,' said the second soldier. 'You're not the man who brought back slave-trading to Bekla, I suppose?' Kelderek nodded mutely.

'Oh, you admit that much? And of course you don't know that Lord Elleroth's eldest son disappeared more than a month ago, and that our patrols have been searching for him from Lapan to Kabin? No, you don't know anything, do you?'

He raised his open hand, jeering as Kelderek flinched away.

'I know nothing of that,' replied Kelderek. 'But why do you blame the boy's disappearance on a slave-trader? A river, a wild beast -'

The soldier stared at him for a moment and then, apparently convinced that he really knew no more than he had said, answered 'We know who's got the lad. It's Genshed of Terekenalt.'

'I never heard of him. There's no man of that name licensed to trade in Beklan provinces.'

'You'd make the stars angry,' replied the soldier. 'Everyone's heard of him, the dirty swine. No, like enough he's not licensed in Bekla - even you wouldn't license him, I dare say. But he works for those that are licensed - if you call that work.'

'And you say this man has taken the Ban of Sarkid's heir?'

'Half a month ago, down in eastern Lapan, we captured a trader called Nigon, together with three overseers and forty slaves. I suppose you'll tell us you didn't know Nigon either?'

' No, I remember Nigon.'

'He told General Erketlis that Genshed had got the boy and was making north through Tonilda. Since then patrols have searched up through Tonilda as far as Thettit. If Genshed was ever there he's not there now.'

'But how could you expect me to know this?' cried Kelderek. 'If what you say is true, I don't know why Elleroth spared my life any more than you do.'

'He spared you, maybe,' said the first soldier. 'He's a fine gentleman, isn't he? But we're not, you slave-trading bastard. I reckon if anyone knows where Genshed is, it's you. What were you doing in these parts, and how else could he have got clean away?'

He picked up a heavy tally-stick lying on the steward's table and laughed as Kelderek flung up his arm.

'Stop that!' rapped the guard commander, appearing in the doorway. 'You heard what One-Hand said. You're to let him alone!'

'If they will let him alone, sir,' answered the soldier. 'Listen to them!' He pulled a stool to the high window, stood on it and looked out. The noise of the crowd had if anything increased, though no words were distinguishable. 'If they will let him alone, One-Hand's the only man they'd do it for.'

Sitting down apart, Kelderek shut his eyes and tried to collect his thoughts. A man may by chance overhear words which he knows to have been spoken with no malice towards himself - perhaps not even with reference to his own affairs - but which nevertheless, if they are true, import his personal misfortune or misery - words, perhaps, of a commercial venture foundered, of an army's defeat, of another man's fall or a woman's loss of honour. Having heard, he stands bewildered, striving by any means to set aside, to find grounds for disbelieving the news, or at least for rejecting the conclusion he has drawn, like an unlucky card, for his own personal fortune. But the very fact that the words did not refer directly to himself serves more than anything else to corroborate what he fears. Despite the desperate antics of his brain, he knows how more than likely it is that they are true. Yet still there is a faint possibility that they may not be. And so he remains, like a chess player who cannot bear to lose, still searching the position for the least chance of escape. So Kelderek sat, turning and turning in his mind the words which Elleroth had spoken. If Shardik were dying - but Shardik could not be dying. If Shardik were dying - if Shardik were dying, what business had he himself left in the world? Why did the sun still shine? What was now the intent of God? Sitting so rapt and still that at length his guards' attention wandered and they ceased to watch him, he contemplated the blank wall as though seeing there

the likeness of a greater, incomprehensible void, stretching from pole to pole.

Elleroth's son - his heir - had fallen into the hands of an unlicensed slave-dealer? He himself knew - who better? - how possible it was. He had heard of diese men - had received many complaints of their activities in the remoter parts of the Beklan provinces. He knew that within the Ortelgan domains slaves were captured illegally who never reached the market at Bekla, being driven north through Tonilda and Kabin or west through Paltesh, to be sold in Katria or Terekenalt. Although the prescribed penalties were heavy, as long as the war lasted the probability of an unlicensed dealer's capture was remote. But that this man Genshed, whoever he might be, should have taken the son and heir of the Ban of Sarkid. No doubt he meant to demand a ransom if ever he got him safe to Terekenalt. But for what conceivable reason, with such a grief in his heart and such a wrong to lay to the charge of the hated priest-king of Bekla, had Elleroth insisted on sparing his life? For a while he pondered this riddle but could imagine no answer. His thoughts returned to Shardik, but at last he almost ceased to think at all, drowsing where he sat and hearing, sharper than the noise of the crowd, the plangent drip of water into a butt outside the window.

The guard commander returned and with him a burly, black-bearded officer, armed and helmeted, who stared at Kelderek, slapping his scabbard against his leg with nervous impatience.

'Is this the man?'

The guard commander nodded.

'Come on, then, you, for God's sake, while we've still got them under some sort of control. I want to live, if you don't. Take this pack - shoes and two days' food - that's the Ban's orders. You can put the shoes on later.'

Kelderek followed him down the passage and through the courtyard to the gate-keeper's lodge. Under the arch behind the shut gate some twenty soldiers were drawn up in two files. The officer led Kelderek to a central place between them and then, taking up his own position immediately behind him, gripped him by the shoulder and spoke in his ear.

'Now you do as I say, do you see, or you'll never even have the chance to wish you had. You're going to walk across this blasted town to the east gate, because if you don't, I don't, and that's why you're going to. They're quiet now because they've been told it's the Ban's personal wish, but if anything provokes them, we're as good as dead. They don't like slave-traders and child butchers, you see. Don't say a word, dou't wave your bloody arms, don't do any damned thing; and above all, keep moving, do you understand? Right!' he shouted to the tryzatt in front. 'Get on with it, and God help us!'

The gate opened, the soldiers marched forward and Kelderek stepped at once into dazzling sunlight shining directly into his eyes. Blinded, he stumbled, and instantly the captain's hand was in his armpit, supporting and thrusting him on.

'You stop and I'll run you through.'

Coloured veils floated before his eyes, slowly dissolving and vanishing to disclose the road at his feet. He realized that he was bowed, neck thrust forward, peering down like a beggar on a stick. He straightened his shoulders, threw back his head and looked about him.

The unexpected shock was so great that he stopped dead, raising one hand before his face as though to ward off a blow. 'Keep moving, damn you!'

The square was packed with people - men, women and children, standing on either side of the road, crowded at the windows, clinging to the roofs. Not a voice spoke, not a murmur was to be heard. All were staring at himself in silence, each pair of eyes following only him as the soldiers marched on across the square. Some of the men scowled and shook their fists, but none uttered a word. A young girl, dressed as a widow, stood with folded hands and tears unwiped upon her cheeks, while beside her an old woman shook continually as she craned her neck, her fallen-in mouth working in a palsied twitching. His eyes met for a second the round, solemn stare of a little boy. The people swayed like grass, unaware of their swaying as they moved their heads to keep him in their gaze. The silence was so complete that for a moment he had the illusion that these people were far away, too far to be heard from the lonely place where he walked between the soldiers, the only sound in his ears their regular tread that crunched upon the sand.

They left the square and entered a narrow, stone-paved street, where their footsteps echoed between the walls. Trying with all his will to look nowhere but ahead, he still felt the silence and the gaze of the people like a weapon raised above him. He met the eyes of a woman who threw up her arm, making the sign against evil; and dropped his head once more, like a cowering slave who expects a blow. He realized that he was breathing hard, that his steps had become more rapid than the soldiers', that he was almost running to keep his place among them. He saw himself as he must appear to the crowd - haggard, shrinking, contemptible, hastening before the captain like a beast driven up a lane.

The street led into the market-place and here, too, were the innumerable faces and the terrible silence. Not a woman was haggling, not a trader crying his wares; as they approached the fountain-basin - Kabin was full of fountains - the jet faltered and died away. He wondered who it was that had timed it so surely, and whether he had had orders to do so or had acted of his own accord; then tried to guess how far it might now be to the east gate, what it would look like when they reached it and what orders the captain would give. The cheek of the soldier beside him bore a long, white scar and he thought, 'If my right foot is the next to dislodge a stone, he got it in battle. If my left, then he got it in a fight when he was drunk.'

Not that these thoughts could come for an instant between his horror of the silence and of the eyes which he dared not meet. If it were not some sick fancy of his own fear and anguish, there was in this crowd a mounting tension, like that before the breaking of the rains. 'We must get there,' he muttered. 'At all costs, Lord Shardik, we must get there before the rains break.'

A cloud of flies flew up before his face, disturbed from a piece of offal lying in the road. He thought of the gylon fly, with its transparent body, hovering among the reeds along the Telthearna.' I have become a gylon fly - their eyes pass through me - through and through me - meeting those of others that pass through me from the other side. My bones are turning to water. I shall fall.

He came, he came by night, Silence lay all about us.

A sword passed through me,

I am changed for ever.

Senandril na kora, senandril na ro.’

His thoughts, like a deserted child's, returning to the memory of loss and grief, came back to Elleroth's words in the garden. 'Your bear is dying, Crendrik -'

'Shut up and get on,' said the officer between his clenched teeth.

He did not know that he had spoken aloud. The dust whirled up in a sudden flurry of wind, yet of all the eyes around him not one seemed to close against it. The road was steeper now; they were climbing. He bent forward, dropping his head like an ox drawing a load uphill, looking down at the ground as he dragged himself on. They were leaving the market-place, yet the silence was pulling him backwards, the silence was a spell which held him fast. The weight of the thousands of eyes was a load he could never drag up this hill to the east gate. He faltered and then, stumbling backwards against the captain, turned his head and whispered, 'I can't go on.'

He felt the point of the captain's dagger thrust against his back, just above the waist.

'Ban of Sarkid or no Ban of Sarkid, I'll kill you before my men come to any harm. Get on!'

Suddenly the silence was broken by the cry of a child. The sound was like the flaring of a flame in darkness. The soldiers, who when he stumbled had stopped uncertainly, gathering about him and the captain, started as though at a trumpet and every head jerked round towards the noise. A little girl, perhaps five or six years old, running to cross the road before the soldiers came, had tripped and fallen headlong and now lay crying in the dust, less from pain, perhaps, than from the grim appearance of the soldiers at whose feet she found herself sprawling. A woman stepped out of the crowd, picked her up and bore her away, the sound of her voice, reassuring and comforting the child, carrying plainly back along the lane.

Kelderek raised his head and drew a deep breath into his lungs. The sound had broken the invisible but dreadful web in which, like a fly bound about with sticky thread, he had almost lost the power to struggle. As, when men break open at last a dry trench by the river, in which they have been repairing a canoe, the water comes flooding in, bringing back to the craft its true element and lifting it until it floats, so the sound of the child's voice restored to Kelderek the simple will and determination of common men to endure and survive, come what may. His life had been spared, no matter why; the sooner he was away from this town the better. B: the people hated him, then he had the answer - he would be gone.

Without further words to the captain he took up his pace once more, spurning the soft sand with his heels as he trudged up the hill. The people were pressing close now, the soldiers keeping them off with the shafts of their spears, the captain shouting 'Back! Keep back!' Ignoring them, he turned a corner at the top and at once found himself before the gate tower, the gate standing open, the guard turned out and drawn up on either side to prevent anyone following them out of the town. They tramped under the echoing arch. Without looking round he heard the gate grind and clang to and the bolts shot home.

'Don't stop,' said the captain, close behind him as ever.

Marching down a hill between trees, they came to a rocky ford across a torrent that swept down from the wooded hills on the left. Here the men, without waiting for orders, broke ranks, kneeling to drink or flinging themselves on the grass. The officer once again gripped Kelderek's shoulder and turned him about, so that they stood face to face.

'This is the Vrako - the boundary of Kabin province, as I dare say you know. The east gate of Kabin is shut for an hour by the Ban's orders and I shall be keeping this ford closed for the same length of time. You're to cross by this ford and after that you can go where you please.' He paused. 'One more thing. If the army get orders to patrol east of the Vrako, we shall be looking out for you; and you'll not escape again.'

He nodded to show that he had no more to say, and Kelderek, hearing behind him the growling curses of the soldiers - one threw a stone which struck a rock close by his knee - stumbled his way across the ford and so left them.

Book V

39 Across the Vrako

In Bekla he had heard of the country east of Kabin - the midden of the empire, one of his provincial governors had called it - a province with no estates and no government, without revenue and without one city. Forty miles below Ortelga the Telthearna turned, in a great bend, to flow southward past the eastern extremity of the Gelt mountains. South of these mountains and west of the Telthearna lay a remote wilderness of wooded ridges, of marshes, creeks and forest, without roads and with no settlements except a few miserable villages where the inhabitants lived on fish, half-wild pigs and whatever they could scratch from the soil. In such a region, to seek and find a man was all but impossible. Many a fugitive and criminal had disappeared into its wastes. There was a proverb in Bekla, 'I would kill So-and-So, were it worth the journey to Zeray.' Rough, unruly boys would be told by their mothers, 'You'll end in Zeray.' It was rumoured that from this isolated place - for town it could not be called - where the Telthearna narrowed to a strait less than a quarter of a mile wide, a man who could pay might be taken across to the eastern shore and no questions asked. In the old days, even the northern army of patrol had fixed the eastern limit of its march at Kabin, and no tax-collectors or assessors would cross the Vrako for fear of their lives. Such was the country which Kelderek had now entered and the place in which, by Elleroth's mercy, he was free to remain alive for as long as he could.

Having taken the fresh shoes from his pack and put them on, he walked fast for some while down the narrow, overgrown track. What more likely, he thought, than that, once the gate and ford were open, some might follow in the hope of overtaking and killing him? For although he knew well enough that he was likely to the in this country and indeed could find in himself little desire to save his life, yet he was determined not to lose it at the hands of any Yeldashay or other enemy of Shardik. Within an hour he came to a place where an even wilder path branched northward to his left, and this he followed, clambering for a time through the undergrowth beside it to avoid leaving traces on the track itself.

At last, a little before noon, having heard and seen no one since his crossing of the Vrako, he sat down by the bank of a creek and, when he had eaten, fell to considering what he should do. Underlying all his thoughts, like a rock submerged in a swirling pool, was the conviction that he had passed some mysterious but nonetheless real spiritual boundary, over which he could never return. What was the meaning of the adventure at the Streels of Urtah, the news of which the shepherds had heard with so much awe and fear? What had befallen him in his oblivion on the battlefield, while he lay at the mercy of the unavenged dead? And why had Elleroth spared the life of one whose rule had brought about the loss of his own son? Pondering these inexplicable happenings, he knew that they had quenched the strength and faith that had burned in the heart of the priest-king of Bekla. Litde more than a ghost he now felt himself to be, a drained thing haunting a body wasted with hardship.

Deepest bell of all that tolled in his heart was Elleroth's news of Shardik. Shardik had crossed the Vrako and was believed to be dying - in that there could have been no deceit. And if he, Kelderek, still set any value on his life, his best course would be to accept it. In a country of this nature, to look for Shardik would be only to invite such danger and hardship as neither his mind nor his body were capable of withstanding. Either he would be murdered, or he would the in the forests of the hills. Shardik, whether alive or dead, was irrecoverable; and for the least chance of life he himself ought to head south, contrive somehow to make his way into northern Tonilda and then reach the Ortelgan army.

Yet an hour later he was once more climbing northwards, holding, with no attempt at concealment or self-protection, to the track as it wound into the lower hills. Elleroth, he thought bitterly, had rated him accurately enough. 'Take my word for it, neidier he nor the bear can harm us now.' No indeed, for he was the priest of Shardik and nothing else beside. Afraid of Ta-Kominion's contempt, and influenced by him to believe that the will of God could be none other than that Shardik should conquer Bekla, he had stood by while the Tuginda was bound and led away like a criminal, and had then gone on to set himself up as the mediator of Shardik's favour to his people. Without Shardik he would be nothing - a rain-maker mumbling in a drought, a magician whose spells had failed. To return to Zelda and Ged-la-Dan with the news (if they did not already know it) that Elleroth was with the Yeldashay and Shardik lost for ever would be to sign his own death-warrant. They would scarcely lose a day in getting rid of such a figure of defeat. Elleroth knew this. Yet he knew more. He had understood, as many an enemy would not, Kelderek's passionate faith and the integrity of his belief in Shardik. As an experienced master, though privately entertaining contempt for a servant's personal values and beliefs, can nevertheless perceive that by his own lights that servant is capable of sincerity, even, perhaps, of courage and self-denial; so Elleroth, hating Shardik, had known that Kelderek, whatever gleams of hope fortune might tempt him with, would be unable to separate his own fate from that of the bear. And this was why, since he also knew - or supposed that he knew, thought Kelderek with a sudden spurt of forlorn defiance - that Shardik was dying, he had seen no harm in sparing the priest-king's life. But why had he actually gone about to impose his will in this matter upon those surrounding him? Could it be, Kelderek wondered, that he himself had become visibly marked with some sign, perceptible to such as Elleroth, of being accursed, of having passed through merited sufferings to a final inviolability in which he was now to remain, to await the retribution of God? At this thought, shuffling slowly on through the solitude, he sighed and muttered under the burden of his misery, for all the world like some demented old woman in a desolated town, bearing in her arms the weight of a dead child.

Even in this notorious no-man's land he had not expected so complete an emptiness. All day he met never a soul, heard no voice, saw no smoke. As afternoon turned to evening he realized that he would be forced to pass the night without shelter. In the old days, as a hunter, he had sometimes spent nights in the forest, but seldom alone and never without fire or weapons. To send him across the Vrako without even a knife and with no means of making a fire - had this perhaps been intended, after all, as nothing but a cruel way of putting him to death ? And Shardik - whom he would never find - was Shardik already dead? Sitting with his head in his hands, he passed into a kind of waking oblivion that was not sleep, but rather the exhaustion of a mind unable any longer to grip thought, slipping and sliding like wheels in the mud of the rains.

When at last he lifted his head he at once caught sight, among the bushes close by, of an object so familiar that, although it had been carefully concealed, he felt surprise not to have noticed it earlier. It was a trap - a wooden block-fall such as he himself had often set in days gone by- It was baited with carrion and dried fruit, but these had not been touched and the trip-peg was still supporting the block.

The evening wanted no more than two hours to nightfall and, as well he knew, those who leave traps unvisited overnight are apt to find the next day that scavenging beasts have reached them first. He scratched out his footprints with a broken branch, climbed a tree and waited.

In less than an hour he heard the sounds of someone approaching. The man who appeared was dark, thick-set and shaggy-haired, dressed partly in skins and partly in old, ragged garments. A knife and two or three arrows were stuck in his belt and he was carrying a bow. He bent down, peered at the trap under the bushes and was already turning away when Kelderek called to him. At this he started, drew his knife in a flash and vanished into the undergrowth. Kelderek realized that if he were not to lose him altogether he must take a risk. He scrambled to the ground, calling, 'I beg you, don't go! I need help.'

'What you want, then?' answered the man, invisible among the trees.

'Shelter - advice too. I'm a fugitive, exile - whatever you like. I'm in trouble.'

'Who isn't? You're this side the Vrako, aren't you ?'

'I'm unarmed. Look for yourself.' He threw down the pack, raised his arms and turned one way and the other.

'Unarmed? Then you're mad.' The man stepped out from the bushes and came up to him. He was indeed a ruflian of frightening appearance, swarthy and scowling, with a yellow, mucous discharge of the eyes and a scar from mouth to neck which reminded Kelderek of Bel-ka-Trazet.

'I'm in no state to play tricks or drive a bargain,' said Kelderek. 'This pack's full of food and nothing else. Take it and give me shelter for tonight.'

The man picked up the pack, opened and looked into it, tossed it back to Kelderek and nodded. Then, turning, he set off in the direction from which he had come. After a time he said,

'No one after you?'

'Not since the Vrako.'

They walked on in silence. Kelderek was struck by the complete absence of that friendly curiosity which usually finds a place in strangers' meetings. If the man wondered who he was, whence he had come and why, he evidently did not intend to ask; and there was that about him which made Kelderek think better of putting any questions on his own account. This, he realized, must be the nature of acquaintance in this country of shame for the past and hopelessness for the future - the courtesy of the prison and the madhouse. However, some kinds of question were apparently permissible, for after a time the man jerked out, 'Thought what you're going to do?'

'Not yet - die, I dare say.'

The man looked sharply at him and Kelderek realized that he had spoken amiss. Here men were like beasts at bay - defiant until they were torn to pieces. The whole country, like a brigands' cave, was divided into bullies and victims - the last place in which to speak of death, whether in jest or acceptance. Confused, and too weary to dissimulate, he said,

'I was joking. I've got a purpose, though I dare say that to you it may seem a strange one. I'm looking for a bear that's believed to be in these parts. If I could find it-'

He stopped, for the man, his mouth and jaw thrust forward, was staring at him from his oozing eyes with a mixture of fear and rage - the rage of one who attacks whatever he does not understand. He said nothing, however, and after a moment Kelderek stammered, 'It - it's the truth. I'm not trying to make a fool of you-'

'Better not,' answered the man. 'So you're not alone, then?'

'I've never been more alone in my life.'

The man drew his knife, seized him by the wrist and forced him to his knees. Kelderek looked up into the snarling, violent face.

'What's this about the bear, then? What you up to - what you know about the other one - the woman, eh ?'

'What other one? For God's sake, I don't know what you mean!'

'Don't know what I mean?'

Panting, Kelderek shook his head and after a moment the man released him.

'Better come and see, then: better come and see. You mind now, I don't take to tricks.'

They went on again, the man still clutching his knife and Kelderek half minded to run from him into the woods. Only his exhaustion held him back, for the man would probably pursue, overtake and perhaps kill him. They crossed a ridge and descended steeply towards a dreary, stagnant creek. Smoke hung in the trees. A patch of ground along the shore, cleared after a fashion, was littered with bones, feathers and other rubbish. At one side, too near the water, stood a lop-sided, chimneyless hovel of poles, branches and mud. There were clouds of flies. Three or four skins were pegged out to dry, and some black birds - crows or rooks - were huddled in a wooden pen on the marshy ground. The place, like a song out of tune, seemed an offence against the world, for which the only possible remedy was obliteration.

The man again grasped Kelderek's wrist and half-led, half-dragged him towards the hut. A curtain of dusty skins hung across the entrance. The man jerked his head and gestured with his knife but Kelderek, stupid with fatigue, fear and disgust, did not understand that he was to enter first. The man, seizing his shoulder, pushed him so that he stumbled against the curtain. He pulled it aside, ducked his head and went in.

The walls surrounded a single, evil-smelling space, at the further end of which a fire was smouldering. There was little light, for apart from the curtained door and a hole in the roof, through which some of the smoke escaped, there was no opening; at the further end, however, he made out a human shape, wrapped in a cloak and sitting, back towards him, on a rough bench beside the fire. As he peered, bending forward and flinching from the knife at his back, the figure rose and turned to face him. It was the Tuginda.

40 Ruvit

Suddenly to be confronted with a shameful deed from the past, a deed accomplished yet uneffaced, like the ruins of a poor man's house destroyed by some selfish lord to suit his own convenience, or the body of an unwanted child cast up by the river on the shore: to stumble unexpectedly upon an accusadon that no bravado can defy or glib tongue turn aside; an accusation made not aloud, to the cars of the world, but quietly, face to face, without anger, perhaps even without speech, to one unprepared for the surge of his own confusion, guilt and regret. The harp of Binnorie named its murderess, and the two pretty babes in the ballad answered the cruel mother under her father's castle wall. Stones have been known to move and trees to speak. Yet never a word said Banquo's ghost Though few can have touched a murdered corpse and seen the wounds burst open and bleed, yet many, coming alone upon old letters thrust into a drawer, have re-read them weeping for pardon; or again, burning with self-contempt, have learned from chance remarks how unforgotten has been the misery, how crushing the disappointment brought by themselves upon those who never spoke of it. The deeply-wronged, like ghosts, have no need to speak to their oppressors or accuse them before crowds. More terrible by far is their unexpected and silent reappearance in some secluded place, at some unguarded hour.

The Tuginda stood beside the bench, her eyes half-closed against the smoke. For some moments she did not recognize him. Then she started, jerking up her head. At the same instant Kelderek, with a sudden, sharp sob, thrust his hand between his teeth, turned and was already half-way through the entrance when he was pushed violently backwards and fell to the ground. The man, knife in hand, was staring down at him, gnawing his lip and panting with a kind of feral excitement. This, Kelderek realized on the ghastly instant, was one to whom murder must once have been both trade and sport. In his clouded mind violence hung always, precarious as a sword by a hair; by another's fear or flight it was excited as uncontrollably as a cat by the scuttling of a mouse. This was some bandit survivor with a price on his head, some hired assassin who had outlived his usefulness to his employers and run for the Vrako before the informer could turn him in. How many solitary wanderers had he killed in this place?

The man, bending over him, was breathing in low, rhythmic gasps. Kelderek, supporting himself on one elbow, tried in vain to return the maniac glare with a look of authority. As his eyes fell, the Tuginda spoke from behind him.

'Calm yourself, Ruvit! I know this man - he is harmless. You are not to hurt him.'

'Hiding in the woods, talked about the bear. "Up to tricks," I thought, "up to tricks. Make him go in, don't tell him anything, ah, that's it. Find out what he's up to, find out what he's up to -" '

'He won't hurt you, Ruvit. Come and make up the fire, and after supper I'll bathe your eyes again. Put your knife away.'

She led the man gently to the fire, talking as though to a child, and Kelderek followed, not knowing what else to do. At the sound of her voice the tears had sprung to his eyes, but he brushed them away without a word. The man took no further notice of him and he sat down on a rickety stool, watching the Tuginda as she knelt to blow the fire, put on a pot and stirred it with a broken spit. Once she looked across at him, but he dropped his eyes; and when he looked up again she was busy over a clay lamp, which she trimmed and then lit with a kindled twig. The wan, single flame threw shadows along the floor and as darkness fell seemed less to brighten the squalid hut than to serve, with its guttering and wavering in the draughts that came through the ill-made walls, as a reminder of the defencelessness of all who might have the misfortune to be, like itself, solitary and conspicuous in this sad country.

She had aged, he thought, and had the look of one who had endured both loss and disappointment. Yet she was unextinguished - a fire burned low, a tree stripped by a winter gale. In this horrible place, beyond help or safety, alone with one man who had betrayed her and another who was half-crazy and probably a murderer, her authority asserted itself quietly and surely; in part as mundane as that of some shrewd, honest farmer talking with those whom he makes feel that it will be better not to try to cheat him. But beyond this open foreground of the spirit he could perceive, as he had perceived long ago - as he knew that even poor, murderous Ruvit could sense, in the same way that a dog is aware of the presence of joy or grief in a house - the deeper, more mysterious country of her strength. She was possessed of the immunity not only of priestess, pilgrim and doctor, but also of that conferred by the mystery whose servant she was - by the power which he had felt before ever he met her, when he had sat slumped in the canoe drifting down to Quiso in the dark. No wonder, he thought, that Ta-Kominion had died. No wonder that the headlong, fiery ambition which had blinded him to the strength in her had also poisoned him beyond recovery.

He began to consider the manner of his own death. Some, or so he had heard, had dragged out their lives beyond the Vrako until the prices on their heads and even the nature of their crimes had been forgotten and nothing but their own despair and addled wits prevented their return to towns where none was left who could recall what they had done. Such survival was not for him. Shardik, if only he could find him, would at last take the life which had been so often offered to him; would take his life before the contemptible desire to survive on any terms could transform him into a creature like Ruvit.

Lost in these thoughts, he heard little or nothing of whatever passed between Ruvit and the Tuginda as she finished preparing the meal. Vaguely, he was aware that although Ruvit had become quiet he was nevertheless afraid of the fall of darkness, and that the Tuginda was reassuring him. He wondered how long the man had lived here, facing nightfall alone, and what it was that had made this life - a hard one, surely, even for a fugitive beyond the Vrako - the only one he dared to live.

After a time the Tuginda brought him food, and as she gave it to him laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder. Still he said nothing, only nodding wretchedly, unable to meet her eyes. Yet when he had eaten, as is the way, some shreds of spirit involuntarily returned to him. He sat closer to the fire, watching as the Tuginda swabbed the discharge from Ruvit's eyes and bathed them with some herbal infusion. With her he was quiet and amenable, and at moments almost resembled what he might have been if evil had not consumed him - a decent, stupid drover, perhaps, or hard-handed tapster of an inn.

They slept clothed, on the ground, as needs they must, the Tuginda making no complaint of the dirt and discomfort, or even of the vermin that gave them no peace. Kelderek slept little, mistrusting Ruvit both on his own account and the Tuginda's; but it seemed rather that the poor wretch welcomed the chance of a night's sleep free from his superstitious fears, for he never moved dll morning.

Soon after first light Kelderek blew up the fire, found a wooden pail and, glad to get into the fresh air, made his way to the shore, washed and then returned with water for the Tuginda. He could not bring himself to rouse her, but went outside again into the first sunlight. His resolve was unchanged. Indeed, he now saw in himself a gulf like that into which he had gazed from the plain of Urtah. The blasphemous wrong, in which he had participated, inflicted by Ta-Kominion upon the Tuginda, was but a part of that wider, far-reaching evil of his own committing - the sacrilege against Shardik himself and all that had followed from it. Rantzay, Mollo, Elleroth, the children sold into slavery in Bekla, the dead soldiers whose voices had flickered about him in the dark - they came thrusting, jagged and sharp, into his mind as he stood beside the creek. When the Tamarrik Gate had finally collapsed, he remembered, there had been a great central breach, from which had radiated splintered fissures and rifts, fragments of exquisitely carved wood, shards of silver sagging inwards, shattered likenesses no longer recognizable in the ruin. The Ortelgans had cheered and shouted, smashing their way forward through the wreckage with cries of 'Shardik! Shardik!'

His tears fell silently. 'Accept my life, Lord Shardik! O God, only take my life!'

He heard a step behind him and, turning, saw that his prayer was answered. A few feet away Ruvit stood looking at him, knife in hand. He knelt down, offering his throat and heart and opening his arms as though to a guest.

'Strike quickly, Ruvit, before I have time to feel afraid!'

Ruvit stared at him a moment in astonishment; then, sheathing his knife, he stepped forward with a shifty, lop-sided grin, took Kelderek's hand and pulled him to his feet.

'Ay ay, old feller, mustn't take it that way, ye know. Comes hard to start with, eels get used to skinning, know what they say, never look back across the Vrako, drive ye crazy. Just on me way to kill a bird. Some wrings their necks, I always cuts their heads off.' He looked over his shoulder towards the door behind him and whispered, 'You know what? That's a priestess, that is. Ever gets back, she's going to put in a word for me. 'Thought yesterday she wanted you dead, but she don't. Ah - put in a word for me, she says. That the truth, think that's the truth, eh?'

'It's the truth,' answered Kelderek. 'She could get you a pardon in any city from Ikat to Deelguy. It's for me she can't.'

'Got to forget it here, lad, forget it, that's it. Five year, ten year, call the lice your friends after ten year, ye know.'

He killed the bird, plucked and drew it, left the guts lying on the ground and together they returned to the hovel.

Two hours later Kelderek, having given to Ruvit what was left of the food he had brought from Kabin, set out with the Tuginda along the shore of the creek.

41 The Legend of the Streels

Still he could not bring himself to speak of the past. At last he said, 'Where are you going, saiyett?'

She made no immediate answer, but after a little asked,

'Kelderek, are you seeking Lord Shardik?'

'Yes.'

'With what purpose?'

He startled, remembering her strange power of discerning more than had been spoken. If she had perceived the intention which he had formed, she would no doubt try to dissuade him, though God knew she of all people had little reason to wish to prolong his life. Then he realized of what it was that she must be thinking.

'Lord Shardik will never return to Bekla,' he said. 'That's certain enough - and neither shall I.'

'Are you not king of Bekla?'

'No longer.'

They left the creek and began to follow a track leading eastward over the next ridge. The Tuginda climbed slowly and more than once stopped to rest. 'She has no strength now for this life,' he thought. 'Even were there no danger, she ought not to be here.' He began to wonder how he could persuade her to return to Quiso.

'Saiyett, why have you come here? Are you also seeking Shardik?'

'I received news in Quiso that Lord Shardik was gone from Bekla and then that he had crossed the plain to the hills west of Gelt. Naturally I set out in search of him.'

'But why, saiyett? You should not have undertaken such a journey The hardship-'

'You forget, Kelderek.' Her voice was hard. 'As Tuginda of Quiso I am bound to follow Lord Shardik while that is possible -that is, while the Power of God is not subjected to the power of men.'

He was silent, full of shame; but later, as she was leading the way downhill, he asked,

'But your women - the other priestesses - you did not leave Quiso alone?'

'No, I received news also of the advance north of Santil-ke-Erketlis. I had known already that he meant to march in the spring and that he intended to take Kabin. Neelith and three other girls set out for Kabin with me. We planned to seek Lord Shardik from there.'

'Did you speak with Erketlis?'

'I spoke with Elleroth of Sarkid, who told me how it came about that he escaped from Bekla. He was well-disposed towards me because some time ago I cured his sister's husband of a poisoned arm. He told me also that Lord Shardik had crossed the Vrako in the foothills north of Kabin, not two days before.'

'You say Elleroth treated you as a friend - and yet he allowed you to go alone and unescorted across the Vrako?'

'He does not know that I have crossed the Vrako. Elleroth was friendly to me, but on one thing I could not move him. He would lend me no help to find Lord Shardik or save his life. To him and his soldiers Shardik means nothing but the god of their enemies and of all that they are fighting against.' She paused and then, with a momentary tremor in her voice, added, 'He said - the god of the slave-traders.'

Kelderek had not thought that he could suffer more bitterly.

'He told me of his son,' went on the Tuginda, 'and after that I asked nothing more of him. He told me, too, that some of his soldiers had come upon Lord Shardik in the hills and felt sure that he was dying. I asked him why they had not killed him and he replied that they had been afraid to attempt it. So I do not myself believe that Lord Shardik is dying.'

At this he was about to speak, but she went on,

'I had hoped that Elleroth might give me some soldiers to conduct us across the Vrako, but when I saw that it was useless to ask, I let him believe that we meant to return to Quiso, for he would certainly have stopped me from crossing the Vrako alone.'

'But would none of the girls come with you, saiyett?'

'Do you think that I would bring them into this country - the thieves' kitchen of the world? They begged to come. I told them to return to Quiso, and since they are bound by oath to obey me, they went. After that I bribed the guards at the ford and once across the river I turned north, as you did.'

'Saiyett, where do you mean to go now?'

'I believe that Shardik is trying to return to his own country. He is making for the Telthearna and will cross it if he can. Therefore I am going to Zeray, to seek help in watching for him along the western shore. Or if he has already swum the Telthearna, we may learn of it in Zeray.'

'Elleroth, perhaps, was right. Shardik may indeed be dying, for since leaving Bekla he has once more been wickedly and cruelly wounded.'

She stopped, turned and stared up at him. 'Did Elleroth tell you that?' He shook his head.

She sat down but said no more, only continuing to look at him with eyes full of uncertainty and questioning. Seeking for further words, he burst out,

'Saiyett, the Streels of Urtah - what is their mystery and their meaning?'

At this she gave a quick, low gasp, as it were of dread and consternation; but then, recovering herself, answered, 'You had better tell me what you know yourself.'

He told her how he had followed Shardik out of Bekla and of their crossing of the plain. She listened silently until he came to the adventure at Urtah, but as he spoke of his awakening and of the wounded Shardik climbing from the Streel to scatter his attackers, she began to weep bitterly, sobbing aloud, as women mourn for the dead. Appalled by this passionate grief in one whom he had hitherto thought of as stretching out her sceptre over all ills besetting the heart of man, he waited with a hopeless, leaden patience, not presuming to intrude upon her sorrow, since he perceived that it flowed from some bitter knowledge which he, too, must presently possess.

At length, becoming calmer, she began to speak; her voice was like that of a woman who, having learned of some terrible bereavement, understands that henceforth her life will be a waiting for death.

'You asked me, Kelderek, about the Streels of Urtah. I will tell you what I know, though that is little enough, for the cult is a close secret inherited by each generation, and such is the fear of it that I never heard of any who dared to pry into those mysteries. But though, thank God, I have never seen the Streels, a little I know -the little I have been told because I am the Tuginda of Quiso.

'How deep the Streels are no one knows, for none has ever descended into their depths and returned. Some say they are the mouths of hell, and that the souls of the wicked enter them by night. They say, too, that only to look down and cry aloud into the Streels is sufficient to awaken a torment that will drive a man mad.'

Kelderek, his eyes on her face, nodded.' It is true.'

'And how old the cult is no one knows, or what it is they worship. But this I can tell you. Always, for hundreds of years, their mystery at Urtah has been the bringing of retribution upon the wicked -those, that is, for whom such retribution has been ordained by God. Many are wicked, as well you know, yet not all the wicked find their way to the Streels. This - or so I have always understood - is the way of that dreadful business. The evil-doer is one whose crime cries out to heaven, beyond restitution or forgiveness; one whose life, continuing, defiles the very earth. And it is always by some accident that he appears to come to Urtah: he is in ignorance of the nature of the place to which his journey has led him. He may be attended or he may be alone, but always he himself believes that it is chance, or some business of his own, which has brought him to Urtah of his own free will. Yet those who watch there - those who see him come - they recognize him for what he is and know what they have to do.

'They speak him fair and treat him courteously, for however foul his crime it is none of their duty to hate him, any more than the lightning hates the tree. They are but the agents of God. And they will not trick him either. He must be shown the place and asked whether he knows its name. Only when he answers 'No' do they persuade him towards the Streels. Even then he must-'

She stopped suddenly and looked up at Kelderek.

'Did you enter the Streel?'

'No, saiyett As I told you, I -'

'I know what you told me. I am asking you - are you sure that you did not enter the Streel ?'

He stared at her, frowning; then nodded. 'I am sure, saiyett'

'He must enter the Streel of his own accord. Once he has done that, nothing can save him. It becomes their task to kill him and cast his body into the depths of the Streel.'

'Some who have died there have been men of rank and power, but all have been guilty of some deed whose vileness and cruelty prey upon the very minds of those who hear it You will have heard of Hypsas, for he came from Ortelga.'

Kelderek closed his eyes, beating one hand upon his knee.

'I remember. Would to God I did not'

'Did you know that he died in the Streels? He intended to escape to Bekla or perhaps to Paltesh, but it was to Urtah that he came.' 'I didn't know. They say only that he vanished.'

' Very few know what I have told you - priests and rulers for the most part. There was King Manvarizon of Terekenalt, he that was grandfather of King Karnat the Tall. He burned alive his dead brother's wife, together with her little son, his nephew, the rightful king, whose life and throne he had sworn to defend. Five years later, being on the plain of Bekla at the head of his army, he came to Urtah with a few followers, his purpose, so he thought, being to spy out that land for himself. He ran screaming into the Streel, flying from none but a little herd-boy who was driving sheep - or perhaps from some other little boy that no one else could see. They saw him draw his sword, but he flung it to the ground as he ran, and there no doubt it lies to this day, for no possession of a victim is ever taken, buried or destroyed.'

'You say that all who enter the Streels must die?'

'Yes, from that moment their death is certain. One respite only there may be, but it is very rare - almost unknown. Once in a hundred years, perhaps, it may happen that the victim comes alive from the Streel: and then they will not touch him, for that is a sign that God has sanctified him and intends to make use of his death for some blessed and mysterious purpose of His own. Long, long ago, there was a girl who fled with her lover across the Beklan plain. Her two brothers — hard, cruel men - were following, for they meant to kill them both, and she saw that her lover was afraid. She was determined to save him and she stole away by night and came upon her brothers as they slept; and for his sake, because she dared not kill them, she blinded them both in their sleep. Later -how, I do not know - she came alone to Urtah and there she was stabbed and thrown down as she lay in the Streel. But that night she climbed out alive, though wounded almost to death. They let her go, and she died in giving birth to a boy. That boy was the hero U-Deparioth, the liberator of Yelda and the first Ban of Sarkid.'

'And that is why Elleroth knows what you have told me?'

'He would know that and more besides, for the House of Sarkid has been honoured by the priests of Urtah from that day to this. He would certainly have received news of what befell Lord Shardik and yourself at Urtah.'

'How is it that I never learned of the Streels in Bekla? I knew much, for men were paid to tell me all; yet this I never knew.'

'Few know, and of them none would tell you.'

'But you have told me!'

She began to weep once more. 'Now I believe what Elleroth said to me at Kabin. I know why his men did not hurt Lord Shardik and why he spared your life also. No doubt he was not told that you yourself had not entered the Streel. He would indeed be insistent that your life must be spared, for once he knew that Lord Shardik - and you, as he supposed - had come alive from the Streels, he would know, too, that neither must be touched on pain of sacrilege. Shardik's death is appointed by God, and it is certain – certain!' She seemed exhausted with grief.

Kelderek took her hand.

'But saiyett, Lord Shardik is guilty of no evil.'

She lifted her head, staring out over the dismal woods.

‘Shardik has committed no evil.' She turned and looked full into his eyes. 'Shardik- no: Shardik has committed no evil!’

42 The Way to Zeray

Where the track was leading he did not know, or even whether it still ran eastward, for now the trees were thick and they followed it in half-light under a close roof of branches. Several times he was tempted to leave altogether the faint thread of a path and simply go downhill, find a stream and follow it - an old hunter's trick which, as he knew, often leads to a dwelling or village, though it may be with difficulty. But the Tuginda, he saw, would not be equal to such a course. Since resuming their journey she had spoken little and walked, or so it seemed to him, like one going where she would not. Never before had she appeared to him subdued in spirit. He recalled how, even on the Gelt road, she had stepped firmly and deliberately away down the hillside, as though undaunted by her shameful arrest at the hands of Ta-Kominion. She had trusted God then, he thought. She had known that God could afford to wait, and therefore so could she. Even before he himself had caged Shardik at the cost of Rantzay's life, the Tuginda had known that the time would come when she would be called once more to follow the Power of God. She had recognized, when it came, the day of Shardik's liberation from the imprisonment to which he himself had subjected him. What she had not foreseen was Urtah - the destination ordained for the bloody beast-god of the Ortelgans, in whose name his followers had -

Unable to bear these thoughts, he flung up his head, striking one hand against his brow and slashing at the bushes with his stick.

The Tuginda seemed not to notice his sudden violence, but walked slowly on as before, her eyes on the ground.

'In Bekla,' he said, breaking their silence, 'I felt, many times, that I was close to a great secret to be revealed through Lord Shardik - a secret which would show men at last the meaning of their lives on earth; how to safeguard the future, how to be secure. We would no longer be blind and ignorant, but God's servants, knowing how He meant us to live. Yet though I suffered much, both waking and sleeping, I never learned that secret.'

'The door was locked,' she answered listlessly.

'It was I who locked it,' he said, and so fell silent once more.

Late in the afternoon, emerging at last from the woods, they came to a miserable hamlet of three or four huts beside a stream. Two men who could not understand him, but muttered to each other in a tongue he had never heard, searched him from head to foot, but found nothing to steal. They would have handled and searched the Tuginda also, had he not seized one by the wrist and flung him aside. Evidently they thought that whatever chance of gain there might be was not worth a fight, for they stood back, cursing, or so it seemed, and gesturing to him to be off. Before the Tuginda and he had gone a stone's throw, however, a gaunt, ragged woman came running after them, held out a morsel of hard bread and, smiling with blackened teeth, pointed back towards the huts. The Tuginda returned her smile, accepting the invitation with no sign of fear and he, feeling that it mattered little what might befall him, made no objection. The woman, scolding shrilly at the two men standing a little distance off, seated her guests on a bench outside one of the huts and brought them bowls of thin soup containing a kind of tasteless, grey root that crumbled to fibrous shreds in the mouth. Two other women gathered and three or four rickety, potbellied children, who stared silently and seemed to lack the energy to shout or scuffle. The Tuginda thanked the woman gravely in Ortelgan, kissing their filthy hands and smiling at each in turn. Kelderek sat, as he had sat the night before, lost in his thoughts and only half-aware that the children had begun to teach her some game with stones in the dust Once or twice she laughed and the children laughed too, and by and by one of the surly men came and offered him a clay bowl full of weak, sour wine, first drinking himself to show there was no harm. Kelderek drank, gravely pledging his host: then watched the moon rise and later, invited into one of the huts, once more lay down to sleep upon the ground.

Waking in the night, he went out and saw another man sitting cross-legged beside a low fire. For a time he sat beside him without speaking, but at length, as the man bent forward to thrust one end of a fresh branch into the glow, he pointed towards the nearby stream and said 'Zeray?' The man nodded and, pointing to him, repeated ' Zeray ?' and, when he nodded in his turn, laughed shortly and mimicked one in flight looking behind him for pursuers. Kelderek shrugged his shoulders and they said no more, each sitting by the fire until daybreak.

There was no path beside the stream and the Tuginda and he followed its course with difficulty through another tract of forest, from which it came out to plunge in a series of falls down a rocky hillside. Standing on the brow, he looked out over the plain below. Some miles away on their left the mountains still ran eastward. Following the chain with his eye he glimpsed, far off in the east, a thin, silver streak, dull and constant in the sunlight. He pointed to it.

'That must be the Telthearna, saiyett.'

She nodded, and after a few moments he said, 'I doubt whether Lord Shardik will ever reach it. And if we cannot trace him when we get there, I suppose we shall never know what became of him.'

'Either you or I,' she answered, 'will find Lord Shardik again. I saw it in a dream.'

After gazing intently for a little towards the south-cast, she began to lead the way downhill among the tumbled boulders.

'What did you see, saiyett?' he asked, when next they rested.

'I was looking for some trace of Zeray,' she replied, 'but of course there is nothing to be seen from so far.' And he, acquiescing in the misunderstanding - whether deliberate on her part or otherwise - questioned her no further of Shardik.

From the foot of the hillside there stretched a wide marsh that mired them to the knees as they continued to follow the stream among pools and recd-clumps. Kelderek began to entertain a kind of fancy that he, like one in an old tale, was bewitched and changing, not swiftly, but day by day, from a man to an animal. The change had begun at the Vrako and continued imperceptibly until now, when he wandered, like a beast in a field, pent within land not of his own choosing and where neither places nor people had names. The power of speech was gradually leaving him too, so that already he was able, through long, waking hours, not only to be silent but also actually to think nothing, his human awareness retracted to the smallest of points, like the pupil of a cat's eye in sunlight; while his life, continued by the sufferance of others, had become a meaningless span of existence before death. And more immediate to him now than any human regret or shame were simply the sores and other painful places beneath the sweat-stiffened hide of his clothes.

Crossing the marsh after some hours, they came at last upon a track and then to a village, the only one he had seen east of the Vrako and the poorest and most wretched he could remember. They were resting a short distance outside it when a man carrying a faggot of brushwood passed them and Kelderek, leaving the Tuginda sitting beside the track, overtook him and asked once more the way to Zeray. The man pointed south-eastward, answering in Beklan, 'About half a day's journey: you'll not get there before dark.' Then, in a lower tone and glancing across at the Tuginda, he added, 'Poor old woman - the likes of her to be going to Zeray' Kelderek must have glanced sharply at him for he added quickly, 'No business of mine - she don't look well, that's all. Touch of fever, maybe,' and at once went on his way with his burden, as though afraid that he might already have said too much in this country where the past was sharp splinters embedded in men's minds and an ill-judged word a false step in the dark.

They had hardly reached the first huts, the Tuginda leaning heavily upon Kelderek's arm, when a man barred their way. He was dirty and unsmiling, with blue tattoo-marks on his cheeks and the lobe of one ear pierced by a bone pin as long as a finger. He resembled none that Kelderek could remember to have seen among the multi-racial trading throngs of Bekla. Yet when he spoke it was in a thick, distorted Beklan, one word making do for another.

'You walk from?'

Kelderek pointed north-westward, where the sun was beginning to set.

'High places trees? All through you walk?' . 'Yes, from beyond the Vrako. We're going to Zeray. Let me save you trouble,' said Kelderek. 'We've nothing worth taking: and this woman, as you can see, is no longer young. She's exhausted.'

'Sick. High places trees much sick. Not sit down here. Go away.'

'She's not sick only tired. I beg you -'

'Not sit down,' shouted the man fiercely. 'Go away!'

The Tuginda was about to speak to him when suddenly he turned his head and uttered a sharp cry, at which other men began to appear from among the huts. The tattooed man shouted 'Woman sick,' in Beklan, and then broke into some other language, at which they nodded, responding 'Ay! Ay!' After a few moments the Tuginda, relinquishing Kelderek's arm, turned and began walking slowly back up the track. He followed. As he reached her side a stone struck her on the shoulder, so that she staggered and fell against him. A second stone pitched into the dust at their feet and the next struck him on the heel. Shouting had broken out behind them. Without looking round, he bowed his head against the falling stones, put his arm round the Tuginda's shoulders and half-dragged, half-carried her back in the direction from which they had come.

Helping her to a patch of grass, he sat down beside her. She was trembling, her breath coming in gasps, but after a few moments she opened her eyes and half-rose to her feet, looking back down the road.

'Damn and blast the bastards!' whispered the Tuginda. Then, meeting his stare, she laughed. 'Didn't you know, Kelderek, that there are times when everyone swears? And I had brothers once, long ago.' She put her hand over her eyes and swayed a moment. 'That brute was right, though - I'm not well.'

'You've eaten nothing all day, saiyett-'

'Never mind. If we can find somewhere to lie down and sleep, we shall reach Zeray tomorrow. And there I believe we may find help.'

Wandering over the ground near by, he came upon a stack of turves, and of these made a kind of shelter in which they huddled side by side for warmth. The Tuginda was restless and feverish, talking in her sleep of Rantzay and Sheldra and of autumn leaves to be swept from the Ledges. Kelderek lay awake, tormented by hunger and the pain in his heel. Soon, now, he thought, the change would be complete and as an animal he would suffer less. The stars moved on and at length, watching them, he also fell asleep.

Soon after dawn, for fear of the villagers, he roused the Tuginda and led her away through a ground-mist as white and chill as that through which Elleroth had been brought to execution. To sec her reduced to infirmity, catching her breath as she leaned upon him and compelled to rest after every stone's throw walked at the pace of a blind beggar, not only wrung his heart but filled him also with misgiving - the misgiving of one who observes some portent in the sky, and fears its boding. The Tuginda, like any other woman of flesh and blood, was not equal to the hardship and danger of this land; like any other woman, she could sicken; and perhaps the. Contemplating this possibility, he realized that always, even in Bekla, he had unconsciously felt her to be standing, compassionate and impervious, between himself and the consuming truth of God. He, the impostor, had stolen from her everything of Shardik - his bodily presence, his ceremony, the power and adulation - all that was of men: everything but the invisible burden of responsibility borne by Shardik's rightful mediator, the inward knowledge that if she failed there was none other. She it was and not he who for more than five years had borne a spiritual load made doubly heavy by his own abuse of Shardik. If now she were to die, so that none remained between him and the truth of God, then he, lacking the necessary wisdom and humility, would not be fit to step into her place. He was found out in his pretensions, and the last action of the fraudulent priest-king should be, not to seek death from Shardik, of which he was unworthy, but rather to creep, like a cockroach from the light, into some crevice of this country of perdition, there to await whatever death might befall him from sickness or violence. Meanwhile the fate of Shardik would remain unknown: he would vanish unwatched and unattended, like a great rock dislodged from a mountainside that smashes its way downward, coming to rest at last in trackless forests far below.

Afterwards, of all that took place during that day, he could recall only one incident. A few miles beyond the village they came upon a group of men and women working in a field. A little distance away from the others, two girls were resting. One had a baby at the breast and both, as they laughed and talked, were eating from a wicker basket. Half a mile further on he persuaded the Tuginda to lie down and rest, told her he would return soon and hastened back to the field. Approaching unseen, he crept close to the two girls, sprang suddenly upon them, snatched their basket and ran. They screamed but, as he had calculated, their friends were slow to reach them and there was no pursuit. He was out of sight, had wolfed half the food, thrown away the basket and rejoined the Tuginda almost before they had decided that a silly girl's few handfuls of bread and dried fruit were not worth the loss of an hour's work. As he limped away on his bruised heel, coaxing the Tuginda to swallow the crusts and raisins he had brought back, he reflected that starvation and misery made an apt pupil. Ruvit himself could hardly have done better, unless indeed he had silenced the girls with his knife.

Evening was falling once more when he realized that they must at last be approaching Zeray. They had seen few people all day and none had spoken to or molested them, due no doubt partly to their destitution, which showed them, clearly enough, to be not worth robbing, and partly to the evident sickness of the Tuginda. There had been no more woodland and Kelderek had simply gone south-east by the sun through an open wilderness, broken here and there by sorry pastures and small patches of ploughed land. Finally they had come once more to reeds and sedges, and so to the shore of a creek which he guessed to be an inlet of the Telthearna itself. They followed it a little way inland, rounded the head and so came to the southern bank, along which they made their way. As it grew broader he could see, beyond the creek's mouth, the Telthearna itself, narrower here than at Ortelga and running very strongly, the eastern shore rocky in the distance across the water. Even through his despair a kind of dull, involuntary echo of pleasure stole upon him, a subdued lightening of the spirit, faint as a nimbus of the moon behind white clouds. That water had flowed past Ortelga's reeds; had rippled over Ortelga's broken causeway. He tried to point it out to the Tuginda, but she only shook her head wearily, scarcely able to follow even the direction of his arm. If she were to the in Zeray, he thought, his last duty would be to ensure that somehow the news was carried upstream to Quiso. Despite what she had said, there seemed little hope of their finding help in a remote, squalid settlement, peopled almost entirely (or so he had always understood) by fugitives from the justice of half-a-dozen lands. He could see the outskirts now, much like those of Ortelga - huts and wood-smoke, circling birds and in the evening air, from which the sunlight was beginning to fade, the glitter of the Telthearna.

'Where are we, Kelderek?' whispered the Tuginda. Almost her whole weight was upon his arm and she was grey-faced and sweating. He helped her to drink from a clear pool and then supported her to a little, grassy mound near by.

'This is Zeray, saiyett, as I suppose.'

'But here - this place?'

He looked about him. They were in what seemed a kind of wild, untended garden, where spring flowers were growing and trees stood in bloom. A melikon hung over the water, the peasants' False Lasses, covered with the blossoms which would later turn to golden berries dropping in the still, summer air. Everywhere were low banks and mounds like the one on which they were sitting; and now he saw that several of these had been roughly marked with stones or pieces of wood stuck in the ground. Some looked new, others old and dilapidated. At a little distance were four or five mounds of newly-turned earth, ungrasscd and strewn with a few flowers and black beads.

'This is a graveyard, saiyett. It must be the burial ground of Zeray.'

She nodded. 'Sometimes in these places they have a watchman to keep off animals at night. He might -' She broke off, coughing, but then resumed, with an effort, 'He might tell us something of Zeray.*

'Rest here, saiyett I will go and see'

He set off among the graves and had not gone far when he saw at a little distance the figure of a woman standing in prayer. Her back was towards him and both she and the raised grave-pile beside which she was standing were outlined against the sky. The sides of the grave had been faced with boards, carved and painted, giving it something of the appearance of a large, decorated chest; and, by contrast with the neglected humps all around, it possessed a kind of grandeur. At one end a pennant had been thrust upright in the soil, but the cloth hung limp, unstirred by the least wind, and he could not see the device. The woman, dressed in black and bare-headed like a mourner, appeared to be young. He wondered whether the grave to which she had come alone was that of her husband and whether he had died a natural or a violent death. Slim and graceful against the pale sky, her arms extended and hands raised palm forward, she was standing motionless, as though for her the beauty and dignity of this traditional posture constituted in themselves a prayer as devout as any words or thoughts that could proceed from her mind.

'This', he thought, 'is a woman to whom it is natural to express her feelings - even grief - through her body as well as through her lips. If Zeray contains even one woman of such grace, perhaps it cannot be altogether vile.'

He was about to go up to her when the sudden thought of how he must appear made him hesitate and turn away. Since leaving Bekla he had not once seen his own reflection, but he remembered Ruvit, like some shambling, red-eyed animal, and the ragged, stinking men who had first searched and then befriended him. Why this woman was here alone he could not tell. Perhaps young women in Zeray commonly went about alone, though from all that he had ever heard of the place this seemed unlikely. Could she perhaps be some courtesan mourning a favourite lover? Whatever the reason, the sight of himself would probably alarm her and might even put her to flight. But she would feel no fear of the Tuginda and might even take pity on her.

He retraced his steps to the water.

'Saiyett, there is a woman praying not far away - a young woman. For me to approach her alone would only frighten her. If I help you, and we go slowly, can you come with me?'

She nodded, licking her dry lips and stretching out both hands for his. Helping her to her feet, he supported her faltering steps among the graves. The young woman was still standing motionless, her arms raised as though to draw down peace and blessing upon the dead friend or lover earth-wrapped at her feet. The posture, as well he knew, became a strained one in no long while, yet she seemed heedless of discomfort, of tormenting flies and the loneliness of the place, absorbed in her self-contained, silent sorrow.

'She needs neither to weep nor to utter words,' he thought.

'Perhaps loss and regret fill her life as they have come to fill mine, and she can add nothing except her presence in tins place. No doubt there are many such in Zeray.'

As they approached the tomb the Tuginda coughed again and the woman, startled, turned quickly round. The face was young and, though still beautiful, thin with hardship and marred, as he had guessed, by the lines of a settled sorrow. Seeing her eyes widen with surprise and fear, he whispered urgently, 'Speak, saiyett, or she will

fly-'

The woman was staring as though at a ghost; the knuckles of her clenched hands were pressed to her open mouth and suddenly, through her rapid breathing, came a low cry. Yet she neither ran nor turned to run, only staring on and on in incredulous amazement. He, too, stood still, afraid to move and trying to recall of what her consternation reminded him. Then, even as he saw her tears begin to flow, she sank to her knees, still gazing fixedly at the Tuginda, with a look like that of a child unexpectedly found by a searching mother and as yet uncertain whether that mother will show herself loving or angry. Suddenly, in a passion of weeping, she flung herself to the ground, grasping the Tuginda's ankles and kissing her feet in the grass.

'Saiyett,' she cried through her tears, 'oh, forgive me! Only forgive me, saiyett, and I will die at peace!'

Lifting her head, she looked up at them, her face agonized and distorted with crying. Yet now Kelderek recognized her, and knew also where he had seen before that very look of fear. For it was Melathys who lay prostrate before them, clasping the Tuginda's feet.

A quick gust of wind from the river ran through the trees and was gone, tossing and opening the pennant as some passer-by might idly have spread it with his hand and let it fall again. For a moment the emblem, a golden snake, showed plainly, rippling as though alive; then drooped and disappeared once more among the folds of the dark, pendent cloth.

43 The 'Priestess's Tale -

'When he came,' said Melathys, 'when he came, and Ankray with him, I had already been here long enough to believe that it could be only a matter of time before I must die by one chance or another.

During the journey down the river, before ever I reached Zeray, I had learned what I had to expect from men when I sought food or shelter. But the journey - that was an easy beginning, if only I had known. I was still alert and confident. I had a knife and knew how to use it, and there was always the river to carry me further down.' She stopped, looking quickly across at Kelderek who, replete with his first full meal since leaving Kabin, was sitting beside the fire, soaking his lacerated feet in a bowl of warm water and herbs. 'Did she call?'

'No, saiyett,' said Ankray, huge in the lamplight. He had entered the room while she was speaking. 'The Tuginda is asleep now. Unless there's anything more you need, I'll watch beside her for a time.'

'Yes, watch for an hour. Then I will sleep in her room myself. Lord Kelderek's needs I leave to you. And remember, Ankray, whatever befell the High Baron on Ortelga, Lord Kelderek has come to Zeray. That journey settles all scores.'

'You know what they say, saiyett. In Zeray, Memory has a sharp sting and the wise avoid her.'

'So I have heard. Go, then.'

The man went out, stooping at the doorway, and Melathys, before she resumed, refilled Kelderek's wooden beaker with rough wine from the goatskin hanging on the wall.

'But there is no going on from Zeray. All journeys end here. Many, when they first come, believe that they will be able to cross the Telthearna, but none, so far as I know, has ever done so. The current in midstream is desperately strong and a mile below lies the Gorge of Bereel, where no craft can live among the rapids and broken rocks.'

'Does no one ever leave by land?'

'In Kabin province, if they find a man who is known to have crossed the Vrako from the east, he is either killed or compelled to return.'

'That I can believe.'

'Northwards from here, thirty or forty miles upstream, the mountains come down almost to the shore. There is a gap - Linsho, they call it - no more than half a mile wide. Those who live there make all travellers pay a toll before they will let them pass. Many have paid all they possess to come south; but who could pay to go north?'

' Could none ?'

'Kelderek, I see you know nothing of Zeray. Zeray is a rock to which men cling for a last little while until death washes them away.

They have no homes, no past, no future, no hope, no honour and no money. We are rich in shame and in nothing else. I once sold my body for three eggs and a glass of wine. It should have been two eggs, but I drove a hard bargain. I have known a man murdered for one silver piece, which proved worthless to the murderer because it could be neither eaten, worn nor used as a weapon. There is no market in Zeray, no priest, no baker and no shoemaker. Men catch crows alive and breed them for food. When I came, trade did not exist. Even now it is only a trickle, as I will tell you. The sound of a scream at night goes unremarked and the possessions a man has he carries with him and never puts down.'

'But this house? You have food and wine; and the Tuginda, thank God, is in a comfortable bed.'

'The doors and windows are strongly barred - have you noticed? But yes, you are right. Here, we have a little comfort: for how long is another matter, as you will see when I have done my tale.'

She poured more hot water into Kelderek's foot-bowl, sipped her wine and was silent for a little, bending towards the fire and stretching her beautiful arms and body this way and that, as though bathing herself in its warmth and light At length she continued.

'They say women delight to be desired, and so perhaps they do — some, and somewhere else. I have stood screaming with fear while two men I hated fought each other with knives to decide which of them should force himself upon me. I have been dragged out of a burning hut at night by the man who had killed my bed-mate in his sleep. In less than three months I belonged to five men, two of whom were murdered, while a third left Zeray after trying to stab me. Like all those who leave, he went not because he wished to reach somewhere else, but because he was afraid to remain.

'I am not boasting, Kelderek, believe me. These were not matters to boast of. My life was a nightmare. There was no refuge at all — nowhere to hide. There were not forty women in Zeray all told - hags, drabs, girls living in terror because they knew too much about some vile crime. And I came to it a virgin priestess of Quiso, not twenty-one years old.' She paused a moment and then said, 'In the old days on Quiso, when we fished for bramba we used live bait. God forgive me, I could never do that again. Once I tried to burn my face in the fire, but for that I found no more courage than I had had to encounter Lord Shardik.

'One night I was with a man named Glabron, a Tonildan who was feared even in Zeray. If a man could only make himself feared enough, a band would form round him to kill and rob, to put food in their stomachs and stay alive a little longer. They would frighten others away from the fishing-places, keep watch for newcomers to waylay and so on. Sometimes they would set out to raid villages beyond Zeray, though usually it was little enough they got for their trouble. It's very small pickings here, you see. Men fought and robbed for the bare living. A man who could neither fight nor steal could expect to live perhaps three months. Three years is a good life for the hardest of men in Zeray.

"There's a tavern of sorts, down near the shore at this end of the town. They call it "The Green Grove" - after some place in Ikat, I believe; or is it Bekla?'

'Bekla.'

'Ikat or Bekla, I never heard that the drink there could turn men blind, nor yet that the landlord sold rats and lizards for food. Glabron exacted some wretched pittance in return for not destroying the place and for protecting it from others like himself. He was vain - yes, in Zeray he was vain - and must needs have the pleasure of others' envy: that they should watch him eat when they were hungry and hear him insulting those whom they feared; oh yes, and he must be tormenting their lust with the sight of what he kept for himself. "You'll take me there once too often," I said. "For God's sake, isn't it enough that I'm your property, and Keriol's body's floating down the Telthearna? Where's the sport in waving a bone at starving dogs?" Glabron never argued with anyone, least of all with me. I wasn't there for talk, and he himself was about as ready with words as a pig.

'They'd had a success that evening. Some days before, a body had been washed ashore with a little money on it, and two of Glabron's men had gone inland and come back with a sheep. Most of it they ate themselves, but a part they exchanged for drink. Glabron grew so drunk that I became more afraid than ever. In Zeray a man's life is never so much in danger as when he's drunk. I knew his enemies and I was expecting to sec one or more of them come in at any moment. It was dim enough in the room - lamplight's a scarce luxury here - but suddenly I noticed two strangers who'd entered. One had his face almost buried in the top of a great, fur cloak and the other, a huge man, was looking at me and whispering to him. They were only two to Glabron's six or seven, but I knew what could happen in that place and I was frantic to get away.

'Glabron was singing a foul song - or thought he was singing it -and I plucked at his sleeve and interrupted him. He looked round for a moment and then hit me across the face with the back of his hand. He was just going on when the muffled stranger walked across to the table. His cloak was still held across his face and only one of his eyes showed over the top. He kicked the table and rocked it, so that they all looked up at him.

4 "I don't like your song," he said to Glabron, in Beklan. "I don't like the way you treat this girl; and I don't like you either."

'As soon as he spoke I knew who he was. I thought, "I can't bear it." I wanted to warn him, but I couldn't utter a word. Glabron answered nothing for a few moments, not because he was particularly taken aback, but because it was always his way to go slowly and calmly about killing a man. He liked to make an effect - that was part of the fear he inspired - to let people see that he killed deliberately and not in a fit of rage.

' "Oh, don't you, I say," he said at length, when he was sure the whole room was listening. "I wonder whom I have the honour of addressing, don't you know?"

' "I'm the devil," says the other man, "come for your soul, and not a moment too soon either." And with that he dropped his arm. They'd never seen him before, of course, and in that dim light the face which he disclosed was not the face of a human being. They were all superstitious men - ignorant, with evil consciences, no religion and a great fear of the unknown. They leapt away from him, cursing and falling over each other. The Baron already had his sword out under his cloak, and in that moment he ran Glabron through the throat, grabbed me by the arm, cut down another man who was in his way and was out in the dark with me and Ankray before anyone had had time even to draw a knife.

'I won't tell you all the rest of the story - or not tonight. Later there'll be time. But I suppose you can well believe that nothing like Bel-ka-Trazet had ever been seen here before. For three months he and I and Ankray never slept at one and the same time. In six months he was lord of Zeray, with men at his back whom he could trust to do his bidding.

'He and I lived in this house, and people used to call me his queen - half in jest and half in earnest No one dared to show me anything but respect. I don't think they would have believed the truth - that Bel-ka-Trazet never touched me. "I doubt whether you've learned a very good opinion of men," he said to me once, "and as for me, it's little enough I've got left in the way of self-respect. At least while I'm alive I can still honour a priestess of Quiso, and that will be better for us both." Only Ankray knows that secret. The rest of Zeray must believe that we were fated to be childless, or else that his injuries -

'But though I was never in love with him, and was grateful for his self-restraint, yet still I honoured and admired him, and I would have consented to be his consort if he had wished. Much of the time he was dour and brooding. Pleasures here are meagre enough, but always he had little zest for any - as though he were punishing himself for the loss of Ortelga. He had a sharp, mordant tongue and no illusions.' 'I remember.'

"Don't ask me to come out drinking with you," he said once to his men. "I might get chased downstream by a bear." They knew what he meant, for although he'd never told them the story, news had reached Zeray of the battle in the foothills and the fall of Bekla to the Ortelgans. When anything went wrong he used to say, "You'd better get yourselves a bear - you'll do better then." But though they feared him, they always trusted and respected him and they followed him without hesitation. As I said, there was no one here who was the least match for him. He was too good for Zeray. I suppose any other baron, forced to fly as he was, would have crossed to Deelguy or made for Ikat or even Terekenalt. But he - he hated pity as a cat hates water. It was his pride, and the bitter streak in him, that sent him to Zeray like a murderer on the run. He actually enjoyed pitting himself against the misery and danger of the place. "There's a lot one could do here," he said to me one evening, while we were fishing inshore. "There's some passable land on that bit of plain round Zeray, and plenty of timber in the forests. It could never be a rich province, but it could be reasonably well off, if only the peasants weren't frightened to death and there were roads to Kabin and Linsho. Law and order and some trade - that's all that's needed. If I'm not mistaken, it's here that the Telthearna runs closest to Bekla. Before we're done we'll have two good, stout ropes stretched across these straits and a raft ferry running along them. I'm not an Ortelgan for nothing - I know what can be done with rope; and how to make it, too. Easier than contriving the Dead Belt, I assure you. Think of opening a trade route to the east - Bekla would pay any money for the use of that."'

' "They'd come and annex the province," I said.

'"They could try," he answered, "but it's more secure than Ortelga ever was. Forty miles from the Vrako to Zeray, and twenty miles of it thick forest and hills, difficult going unless someone builds a road; which we could destroy whenever we liked. I tell you, my girl, we'll have the last laugh on the bear yet."

'Now the truth was that not even Bel-ka-Trazet could bring prosperity to a place like Zeray, because he had no barons or men of any quality, and could not be everywhere himself. What could be done, he did. He punished murder and robbery and stopped raiding inland, and he persuaded or bribed a few peasants to bring in wood and wool and do their best to teach carpentry and pottery, so that the town could start bartering what it made. We bartered dried fish too, and rushes for thatching and matting - anything we could. But compared even with Ortelga it was very thin-flowing, rickety business, simply because of the sort of men who come here - criminals can't work, you know - and the lack of even one road. Bel-ka-Trazet realized this, and it was less than a year ago now that he resolved on a new scheme.

'We knew what had been happening in Ikat and Bekla - there were fugitives here from both cities. Bel-ka-Trazet had been impressed by what he had heard of Santil-ke-Erketlis and finally he decided to try to drive a bargain with him. The difficulty was that we had so terribly little to offer. As the Baron said, we were like a man trying to sell a lame ox or a lopsided pot. Who would trouble to come and take Zeray? Even to a general not facing an enemy army in the field, it would hardly be worth the march from Kabin. We discussed it between ourselves again and again and at last Bel-ka-Trazet devised an offer which he thought might appeal both to Santil and to our own followers. His idea was to tell Santil that if ever he were to march north, whether or not he succeeded in taking Bekla he was welcome to annex Zeray. We would help him in any way he wished. In particular, we would help him to close the gap of Linsho in the north and then to round up all slave-traders who might have fled east of the Vrako to escape him. We would also tell him that we believed that with skilled rope-makers and carpenters, and the labour of his own pioneers working to their orders, it would be possible to construct a raft-ferry across the Telthearna narrows. Then, if all went well, he could build a road from Kabin to Zeray; and these enterprises too, if they appealed to him, we would assist in every way we could. Finally, if he were not afraid to enlist men from Zeray, we would send him as many as possible, provided that he would grant them pardons.

'The five or six men whom the Baron called his councillors agreed that this offer was our best hope of remaining alive, either in Zeray or out of it, if only the Yeldashay would agree to come. But to get a message to Santil would be difficult. There are only two ways out of this country east of the Vrako. One is northwards through the gap of Linsho; the other is west across the Vrako in the neighbourhood of Kabin. Below Kabin the Vrako is impassable, all along the Tonilda border to its confluence with the Telthearna. Desperate men find their way to Zeray, but even more desperate men cannot contrive a way out.

‘It might well prove impossible, we thought, for anyone to reach Ikat Yeldashay, but at least we bad a man who was ready to try. His name was Elstrit, a lad of about seventeen who, rather than abandon his father, had joined him in his flight from Terekenalt. What his father had done I don't know, for he died before I came to Zeray and Elstrit had been living on his wits ever since, until he had the sense to throw in his lot with Bel-ka-Trazet. He was not only strong and clever, but he had the advantage of not being a known criminal or a wanted man. Clever or not, he still had to attempt the Vrako crossing at Kabin. It was the Baron who hit on the idea of forging him a Beklan slave-dealer's warrant. In Kabin he was to say that he was working for Lalloc, a known dealer in children, and had the protection of the Ortelgans in Bekla; that on Lalloc's instructions he had entered Zeray province by way of Linsho Gap and travelled through it to sec whether the country offered any prospects for a slave-raid. He was now returning to report to Lalloc in Bekla. Then, later, as soon as he approached the province of Yelda, he could destroy the forged warrant It was a thin enough story, but the seal on the warrant was a very good imitation of the bear seal of Bekla (it was made for us by a notorious forger) and we could only hope for good luck. Elstrit crossed the Vrako about three months, ago, soon after the rains, and what became of him after that we don't know - not even so much as whether he ever reached Ikat.

'It was a month after that that the Baron fell sick. Many fall sick in Zeray. It's no wonder - the filthiness of the place, rats, lice, infection, continual strain and fear, the burden of guilt and the loss of hope. The Baron had had a hard life and in spite of himself he was failing. You can guess how we nursed him, Ankray and I. We were like men in a wilderness of wild beasts, who tend a fire in the night and pray for dawn. But the fire went out - it went out.'

The tears stood brimming in her eyes. She brushed them sharply away, hid her face in her hands a moment and then, with a deep sigh, went on.

'Once he spoke of you. "That fellow Kelderek," he said, "I'd have killed him if the Tuginda hadn't sent for us that night I don't wish him ill any longer, but for Ortelga's sake I only hope he can finish what he's started." It was a few days later that he spoke to our men as best he could - for by that time he was very weak. He advised them to spare no pains to get news of Santil's intentions and if there seemed the least hope, at all costs to keep order in Zeray until he came. "Otherwise you'll all be dead in less than a year," he said, "and the place will be worse than ever it was before we started." After that, only Ankray and I were with him until he died. He went very hard. You'd expect that, wouldn't you? The last thing he said was, "The bear - tell them the bear -" I bent over him and asked, "What of the bear, my lord?", but he never spoke again. I watched his face - that terrible face - guttering down like the wax of a spent candle. When he was gone, we did what we had to do. I covered his eyes with a pad of wet cloth, and I remember how, as we were laying the arms straight, the cloth slipped, so that the dead eyes opened and I saw them staring into mine.

'You have seen his grave. There were heavy hearts - and frightened hearts - at the time when that was made. It was over a month ago, and every day since then Zeray has slipped a little further from between our hands. We have not lost it yet, but I will tell you what it is like. I remember that once, when I was a little girl, I stood watching a miller driving his ox round and round to grind corn. Two men who thought he had cheated them began quarrelling with him, and at last they dragged him away and beat him. The ox went on plodding round, first at the same speed, then slower, until at last - and anxiously, as my clear child's eye could see - it dared to try what would happen if it stopped. Nothing happened, and it lay down. Half the men in Zeray are wondering whether they dare to defy us. Any day now some will try. I know our men - the Baron's men. Without him they will never hold together. It's only a matter of time.

'Every evening I have gone to his tomb and prayed for help and deliverance. Sometimes Ankray comes with me, or perhaps another, but often I go alone. There's no modesty in Zeray, and I'm past being afraid. As long as none dares insult me, I take it as a sign that we still have some grip on the place; and it does no harm to behave as though I believed we had. Sometimes I have prayed that Santil's army may come, but more often I use no words, simply offering to God my hope and longing, and my presence at the grave of the man who honoured and respected me.

'On Quiso, the Tuginda used to teach us that real and actual trust in God was the whole life of a priestess. "God can afford to wait," she used to say. "Whether to convert the unbelieving, to reward the just or to punish the wicked — God can afford to wait. With Him, everything comes home in the end. Our work is not only to believe that, but to show that we believe it bv everything that we say and do."'

Melathys wept quietly and continuously as she went on. 'I had put out of my mind how I came to Zeray and the reason why. My treachery, my cowardice, my sacrilege - perhaps I thought that my sufferings had blotted them out, had dug a ditch between me and that priestess who broke her vows, betrayed Lord Shardik and failed the Tuginda. Tonight, when I turned and saw who was standing behind me, do you know what I thought? I thought, "She has come to Zeray to find me, either to renounce or forgive me, either to condemn me or take me back to Quiso" - as though I were not defiled forty times over. I fell at her feet to implore her forgiveness, to tell her I was not worth what I believed she had done, to beg her only to forgive me and then let me die. Now I know it's true what she said. God -' and, letting her head fall forward on her arms across the table, she sobbed bitterly - 'God can afford to wait. God can afford to wait.'

Kelderek put his hand on her shoulder. 'Come,' he said, 'we'll talk no more tonight. Let's put these thoughts aside and simply do the immediate tasks before us. Very often, in perplexity, that's best, and a great comfort in trouble. Go and look after the Tuginda. Sleep beside her, and we'll meet again tomorrow.'

As soon as Ankray had made up his bed, Kelderek lay down and slept as he had not slept since leaving Bekla.

44 The Heart's Disclosure

Speck by speck, the noonday sunlight moved along the wall and from somewhere distant sounded the slow chun\, chun\ of an axe in wood. The Tuginda, her eyes closed, frowned like one tormented by clamour and tossed from side to side, unable, as it seemed, to be an instant free from discomfort. Again Kelderek wiped the sweat from her forehead with a cloth dipped in the pitcher by the bed. Since early morning she had lain between sleep and waking, recognizing neither Melathys nor himself, from time to time uttering a few random words and once sipping a little wine and water from a cup held to her lips. An hour before noon Melathys, with Ankray in attendance, had set out to confer with the former followers of the Baron and acquaint them with her news, leaving Kelderek to bar the door and watch alone against her return.

The sound of the axe ceased and he sat on in the silence, sometimes taking the Tuginda's hand in his own and speaking to her in the hope that, waking, she might become calmer. Under his fingers her pulse beat fast: and her arm, he now saw, was swollen and inflamed with weeping scratches which he recognized as those inflicted by the trazada thorn. She had said nothing of these, nor of the deep cut in her foot which Melathys had found and dressed the night before.

Slow as the sunlight, his mind moved over all that had befallen. The days which had passed since his leaving Bekla were themselves, he thought, like some Streel of time into which he had descended step by step and whence he had now emerged for a short time before death. There was no need for him, after all, to expiate his blasphemy by seeking that death, for however events might turn out it seemed certain. If Erkcdis were victorious but nevertheless sent no troops east of the Vrako, either because he had never received Bel-ka-Trazet's message or because it had found no favour with him, then sooner or later he himself would the from violence or sickness, either in Zeray or in the attempt to escape from it. But if Erketlis' troops, crossing the Vrako, were to come upon him in Zeray or elsewhere - and it was likely enough that they would be keeping their eyes open for him - he had Elleroth's word for it that they would put him to death. If Erketlis were defeated, it was possible that Zelda and Ged-la-Dan, coming to Kabin, might send soldiers across the Vrako to seek Shardik. But once Shardik was known to be dead, they would not trouble themselves about his former priest-king. And if the discredited priest-king were to attempt to return from Zeray, whether to Bekla or to Ortelga, he would not be suffered to live.

Never again would he posture and ape the part of Shardik's mediator to the people. Nor ever again could he become the single-hearted visionary who, fearless in his divinely-imparted elation, had walked and slept beside Shardik in the woods of Ortelga. Why, then, despite his resolve four days ago in Ruvit's hovel, despite his unlessencd shame and remorse, did he now find in himself the will to live? Mere cowardice, he supposed. Or perhaps it was that some remaining streak of pride, which had encouraged him to entertain the thought of a deliberate death of atonement, resented the prospect of dying on an Ikat sword or a Zeray criminal's knife. Whatever the reason, he found himself considering whether he might not attempt - however desperate the odds against him - first to bring the Tuginda back to Quiso, and then perhaps to escape to some country beyond the Telthearna. Yet mere survival, he realized as he pondered, was not the whole of the motive which had changed his earlier resolve to die.