She only shook her head slowly as the tears fell and fell from her eyes.
"No," she whispered. "No. You must set out for Lak at dawn tomorrow and I must stay here with the Tuginda."
"But what am I to do?"
"That will be shown you. But above all you must keep a humble, receptive heart and the readiness to listen and obey."
"It's nothing but superstition and folly!" he burst out. "How can I, of all people, still remain a servant of Shardik--I that have abused and harmed him more than any man--more even than Ta-Kominion? Only think of the peril to yourself and the Tuginda in remaining here with none but Ankray! The place is alive with danger now. At any moment it may become as though fifty Glabrons had risen from the grave--"
At this she cried out and sank to the floor, sobbing bitterly and covering her face with her arms as though to ward off his unbearable words. Sorry, he knelt beside her, stroking her shoulders, speaking reassuringly as though to a child and trying to lift her up. At length she rose, nodding her head with a kind of weary hopelessness, as though in acceptance of what he had said of Glabron.
"I know," she said. "I'm sick with fear at the thought of Zeray. I could never survive that again--not now. But still you must go." Suddenly she seemed to take heart, as though by a forced act of her own will. "You won't be alone for long. The Tuginda will recover and then we'll come to Lak and find you. I believe it! I believe it! Oh, my darling, how I long for it--how I shall pray for you! God's will be done."
"Melathys, I tell you I'm not going. I love you. I won't leave you in this place."
"Each of us failed Lord Shardik once," she answered, "but we won't do so again--not now. He's offering us both redemption, and by the Ledges we'll take it, even if it means death!" Giving him her hands, she looked at him with the authority of Quiso in her face, even while the single, wan lamp-flame showed the tear streaks down her cheeks.
"Come, my dear and only beloved, we'll return now to the Tuginda and tell her that you're going to Lak."
For a moment he hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders.
"Very well. But be warned, I shall speak my mind."
She took up the lamp and he followed her. The fire had sunk low and as they passed the hearth he could hear the minute, sharp, evanescent tinkling of the cooling stones and dying embers. Melathys tapped at the door of the Tuginda's room, waited a few moments and then went in. Kelderek followed. The room was empty.
Pushing him to one side in her haste, Melathys ran to the courtyard door. He called, "Wait! There's no need--" But she had already drawn the bolts and when he reached the door he saw her lamp-flame on the other side of the courtyard, steady in the still air. He heard her call and ran across. The latch of the outer door was in place, but the bolts had been drawn back. On the wood, hastily traced, as it appeared, with a charred stick, was a curving, starlike symbol.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It's the sign carved on the Tereth stone," she whispered, distraught. "It invokes the Power of God and His protection. Only the Tuginda may inscribe it without sacrilege. Oh God! She couldn't help leaving the bolts drawn, but this she could do for us before she went."
"Quickly!" cried Kelderek. "She can't have gone far." He ran across the courtyard and beat on the shutters, shouting, "Ankray! Ankray!"
The moon gave light enough and they had not far to search. She was lying where she had fallen, in the shadow of a mud wall about halfway to the shore. As they approached, two men who were stooping over her made off as silently as cats. There was a broad, livid bruise at the back of her neck and she was bleeding from the mouth and nose. The cloak which she had been wearing over her hastily donned clothes was lying in the mud a few feet away, where the men had dropped it.
Ankray picked her up as though she had been a child and together they hastened back, Kelderek, his knife ready in his hand, repeatedly turning about to make sure they were not being followed. But none molested them and Melathys was waiting to open the courtyard door. When Ankray had laid the Tuginda on her bed the girl undressed her, finding no grave injuries except the blow at the base of the skull. She watched beside her all night, but at dawn the Tuginda had not recovered consciousness.
An hour later Kelderek, armed and carrying money, food and the seal ring of Bel-ka-Trazet, set out alone for Lak.
BOOK VI
Genshed
48 Beyond Lak
IT WAS AFTERNOON of the following day--hot enough, even during this season of early spring, to silence the birds and draw from the forest a steamy, humid fragrance of young leaves and sprouting vegetation. The Telthearna glittered, coiling swiftly and silently down toward Lak and on to the strait of Zeray below. From a little north of Lak, a region of forest several miles across stretched northward as far as the open country around the gap of Linsho, which divided it from the foothills and mountains beyond. It was from the southern extremities of this forest, dense and largely trackless, that the bear had been attacking the sheds and herds of Lak.
The shore hereabout was broken and indeterminate, undulating in a series of knoll-like promontories. Between these, the river penetrated up creeks and watery ravines, some of which ran almost half a mile inland. The promontories, grassy mounds on which grew trees and bushes, extended back from the waterside until, among thicker undergrowth, they ended abruptly in banks standing like little cliffs above the interior swamps. Frogs and snakes were numerous and at twilight, when the wading birds ceased their feeding, great bats would leave the forest to swoop for moths over the open river. It was a desolate place, seldom visited except by fishermen working offshore in their canoes.
Kelderek was lying at the foot of an ollaconda tree, almost concealed among the thick, exposed roots curving all about him like ropes. There was no breeze and except for the hum of the insects no sound from the forest. The opposite shore, bare and rocky, showed hazy in the sunlight, almost as distant as he remembered seeing it from Ortelga. Nothing but birds moved on the river's surface.
In the hot shade, the silence and solitude, he was deliberating upon an exploit so desperate that even now, when he had determined to attempt it, he was still half-hoping that it might be delayed or frustrated by the sudden appearance of fishermen or of some traveler along the shore. If fishermen came, he thought, he would take it as an omen--would call to them and ask to return to Lak in their canoe. None would be the wiser, for no one had been told what he intended. Indeed, it was essential to his purpose that none should know.
If the Tuginda were still alive Melathys, he knew, would never leave her. She would remain in Zeray, enduring the dangers of that evil place; and if the Tuginda were later to recover, she would accompany her to Lak--not now to escape from Zeray, but solely in order to be nearer to Shardik--perhaps even to seek him herself. But if the Tuginda were to die--if she were already dead--Melathys, though no longer a priestess of Quiso, would be indissuadable from the belief that she herself must now assume the Tuginda's duty to find Shardik: yes, he reflected bitterly, to seek to divine God's will from whatever accidents might attend the last days of a savage, dying animal. This remnant of an arid, meaningless religion, which had already brought him to grief, now stood between him and any chance he might have of escape from Zeray with the woman he loved.
And such an animal! Could there ever, in truth, have been a time when he had loved Shardik! Had he indeed defied Bel-ka-Trazet for his sake, believed him to be the incarnation of the Power of God and prayed to him to accept his life? Lak, which he had reached at noon of the previous day and where he had spent the night, was as full of hatred for Shardik as a fire is full of heat. There was no talk but of the mischief, craft and savagery of the bear. It was more dangerous than flood, more unpredictable than pestilence, such a curse as no village had ever known. It had destroyed not only beasts but, wantonly, the patient work of months--stockades, fences, pens, rock pools built for fish traps. Most believed it to be a devil and feared it accordingly. Two men, experienced hunters, who had ventured into the
forest in the hope of trapping or killing it, had been found mauled to death, having evidently been taken by surprise. The fishermen who had seen it on the shore were all agreed that they had been frightened by the sense of something evil in its very presence, like that of a serpent or a poisonous spider.
Kelderek, showing the seal of Bel-ka-Trazet but saying of himself only that he had been sent from Zeray to seek help in planning a journey north for the survivors of the Baron's household, had talked with the elder, an aging man who clearly knew little or nothing of Bekla, its Ortelgan religion or its war with the far-off Yeldashay. To Kelderek, as to a follower of Bel-ka-Trazet, he had shown a guarded courtesy, inquiring as closely as he felt he could about the state of affairs in Zeray and what was thought likely to happen there. Plainly, he took the view that now that the Baron was dead there was little to be gained from helping the Baron's woman.
"As for a journey to the north," he said, grimacing as he scratched between his shoulders and signaling to a servant to pour Kelderek more of his sharp, cloudy wine, "there's no attempting it as long as we are so afflicted. The men won't stir into the forest or up the shore. If the beast were to wander away, perhaps, or even to die--" He fell silent, looking down at the floor and shaking his head. After a little he went on, "I have thought that in full summer--in the heat--we might perhaps fire the forest, but that would be dangerous. The wind--often the wind goes into the north." He broke off again and then added, "Linsho--you want to go to Linsho? The ones they let through Linsho are those who can pay. That is how they subsist, those who live there." There was a note of envy in his voice.
"What about crossing the river?" asked Kelderek, but the chief only shook his head once more. "A desert place--robbed and killed--" Suddenly he looked up, his eye sharp as the moon emerging from behind clouds. "If we started taking men across the river, it would become known in Zeray." And he threw the dregs of his wine across the dirty floor.
It was while he was lying awake before dawn (and scratching as nimbly as the elder) that his desperate and secret project entered Kelderek's mind. If Melathys were ever to become his alone, then Shardik must die. If he were simply to wait for Shardik to die, it was very possible that Melathys would die first. Shardik must be known to be dead--the news must reach Zeray--but he must not be known to have met a violent death. The chief alone must be taken into confidence before the killing was carried out. To him the condition would be secrecy and Kelderek's price, payable upon proof of success, an escort to Linsho for himself, the two women and their servant, together with whatever help might be necessary toward paying for their passage through the Gap.
A few hours later, still pondering this plan and saying nothing of where he was going, he set out northward along the shore. Whatever traces Shardik might have left, they would have to be found without a guide. To kill him, if it were possible at all, would be the most difficult and dangerous of tasks, not to be attempted without prior knowledge of the forest outskirts and the places he frequented in his comings and goings near Lak. Arriving at the first of the inlets between the island-like hillocks, Kelderek began a careful search for tracks, droppings and other signs of Shardik's presence.
Not that as the lonely morning wore on he was free for one moment from a mounting oppression of both fear and dread: the first showing him clearly his bleeding, mutilated body, savaged by the bear's great claws; the second revealing nothing, but hanging like a mist upon the edges of thought and conferring an uneasy suspicion. As a thief or fugitive who cannot avoid passing some watchtower or guardhouse continues on his way, but nevertheless cannot keep from glancing out of the tail of his eye toward the walls on which there is no one actually to be seen, so Kelderek pursued his course, able neither to admit nor entirely to exclude the idea that he was observed and watched from some transcendental region inscrutable to himself.
Shardik's power was dwindling, sinking, melting away. His death was ordained, was required by God. Why then should not his priest hasten that which was inevitable? And yet, to approach him as an enemy--to intend his death--He thought of those who had done so--of Bel-ka-Trazet, of Gel-Ethlin, of Mollo, of those who kept the Streels of Urtah. He thought, too, of Ged-la-Dan setting out, high-stomached, to impose his will upon Quiso. And then, on the very point of turning back, of abandoning his resolve, he saw again Melathys' tear-stained face lifted to his in the lamplight, and felt her body clasped to his own--that vulnerable body which remained in Zeray like a ewe abandoned by herdsmen on a wild hillside. No danger, natural or supernatural, was too great to be faced if only, by that means, he could return in time to save her life and convince her that nothing was of greater importance than the love she felt for him. Fighting against his mounting sense of uneasiness, he continued his search.
A little before noon, reaching the far end of one of the island-like promontories, he saw below him a pool at the mouth of a creek. Scrambling down the bank, he knelt among the stones to drink, and on raising his head immediately saw before him, some yards away on the creek's muddy farther shore, a bear's prints, clear as a seal on wax. Looking about him, he felt almost sure that this must be the place spoken of by the fishermen. It was plainly an habitual drinking place, bear-marked so unmistakably that a child could have perceived the signs, and certainly visited at some time since the previous day.
To have seen the prints before his own feet had marked the mud was a stroke of luck which should make it simple, a mere matter of patience, to gain sight of the bear itself. All he needed was a safe place of concealment from which to watch. Splashing through the shallows, he made his way back as far as the next inlet, a long stone's throw from the pool where he had knelt to drink. From here he once more climbed the promontory to the ollaconda tree and, having made sure that he could observe the shore of the creek, lay down among the roots to wait. The wind, as the elder had said, was from the north, the forest on his left was so thick that nothing could approach without being heard, and in the last resort he could take to the river. Here he was as safe as he could reasonably hope to be.
While the slow time passed with the movement of clouds, the whine of insects and the sudden, raucous cries and scutterings of waterfowl on the river, he fell to reflecting on how the killing of Shardik might be accomplished. If he were right, and this was a drinking place to which the bear regularly returned, it should afford him a good opportunity. He had never taken part in killing a bear, nor had he ever heard of anyone, except the Beklan nobleman of whom Bel-ka-Trazet had spoken, who had attempted it. Certainly a solitary bow seemed altogether too dangerous and uncertain. Whatever the Beklan might have supposed thirty years ago, he himself did not believe that a bear could safely be killed by this means alone. Poison might have succeeded, but he had none. To try to construct any kind of trap was out of the question. The more he pondered his difficulties, the more he was forced to the conclusion that the business would be impossible unless the bear's alertness and strength had become so much weakened that he could hope to hold it with a noose long enough to pierce it with several arrows. Yet how to noose a bear? Other, bizarre ideas passed through his mind--to catch poisonous snakes and by some means drop them out of a sack from above while the bear was drinking; to suspend a heavy spear--he broke off impatiently. These childish plans were not capable of being effected. All he could do for the moment was to await the bear, observe its condition and behavior and see whether any scheme suggested itself.
It was perhaps three hours later, and he had somewhat relaxed his vigilance, leaning his sweating forehead upon his forearm and wondering, as he closed his eyes against the river glitter, how Ankray meant to set about getting more food when what was in the house was gone, when he heard the sounds of a creature approaching from the undergrowth beyond the creek. The next moment--so quietly and swiftly may the most fateful and long-awaited events materialize--Shardik was before him, crouching upon the brink of the pool.
After war has swept across some farm or estate and gone its way, the time comes when villagers
or neighbors, their fears aroused by having seen nothing of the occupants, set out for the place. They make their way across the blackened fields or up the lane, looking about them in the unnatural quiet. Soon, seeing no smoke and receiving no reply to their calls, they begin to fear the worst, pointing in silence as they come to the barns with their exposed and thatchless rafters. They begin to search, and, at a sudden cry from one of their number, come running together before an open, creaking door, where a woman's body lies sprawling face down across the threshold. There is a quick scurry of rats and a youth turns quickly aside, white and sick. Some of the men, setting their teeth, go inside and return, carrying the dead bodies of two children and leading a third child who stares about him, crazed beyond weeping. As that farm then appears to those men, who knew it in former days, so Shardik appeared now to Kelderek: and as they look upon the ruin and misery about them, so Kelderek looked at Shardik drinking from the pool.
The ragged, dirty creature was gaunt as though half-starved. Its pelt resembled some ill-erected tent draped clumsily over the frame of the bones. Its movements had a tremulous, hesitant weariness, like those of some old beggar worn out with denial and disease. The wound in its back, half-healed, was covered with a great liver-colored scab, cracked across and closing and opening with every movement of the head. The open and suppurating wound in the neck was plainly irritant, inflamed and torn as it was from the creature's scratching. The bloodshot eyes peered fiercely and suspiciously about, as though seeking on whom to revenge its misery; but after a little the head, in the very act of drinking, sank forward into the shallows, as though to keep it raised were a labor too grievous to be borne.
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