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  There was a pause.

  "He refused us, my lord," persisted Taphro. "We said to him--"

  "Be silent."

  Bel-ka-Trazet paused, frowning abstractedly and pressing two fingers against the ridge beneath his eye. At length he looked up.

  "You are a clumsy liar, Kelderek, it seems. Why trouble to speak of a leopard? Why not say you fell out of a tree?"

  "I told the truth, my lord. There was a leopard."

  "And this injury," went on Bel-ka-Trazet, reaching out his hand to grasp Kelderek's left wrist and gently moving his arm in a way that suggested that he might pull it a good deal harder if he chose, "this trifling injury. You had it, perhaps, from someone who was disappointed that you had not brought him better news? Perhaps you told him, 'The shendrons are alert, surprise would be difficult,' and he was displeased?"

  "No, my lord."

  "Well, we shall see. There was a leopard, then, and you fell. What happened then?"

  Kelderek said nothing.

  "Is this man a half-wit?" asked Bel-ka-Trazet, turning to Zelda.

  "Why, my lord," replied Zelda, "I know little of him, but I believe he is known for something of a simple fellow. They laugh at him--he plays with the children--"

  "He does what?"

  "He plays with children, my lord, on the shore."

  "What else?"

  "Otherwise he is solitary, as hunters often are. He lives alone and harms no one, as far as I know. His father had hunter's rights to come and go and he has been allowed to inherit them. If you wish, we can send to find out more."

  "Do so," said Bel-ka-Trazet, and then to Taphro, "You may go."

  Taphro snatched his palm to his forehead and was gone like a candle flame in the wind. Zelda followed him with more dignity.

  "Now, Kelderek," said the twisted mouth, slowly, "you are an honest man, you say, and we are alone, so there is nothing to hinder you from telling your story."

  Sweat broke out on Kelderek's face. He tried to speak, but no words came.

  "Why did you tell the shendron a few words and then refuse to tell more?" said the High Baron. "What foolishness was that? A rogue should know how to cover his tracks. If there was something you wished to conceal, why did you not invent some tale that would satisfy the shendron?"

  "Because--because the truth--" The hunter hesitated. "Because I was afraid and I am still afraid." He stopped, but then burst out suddenly, "Who can lie to God--?"

  Bel-ka-Trazet watched him as a lizard watches a fly.

  "Zelda!" he called suddenly. The baron returned.

  "Take this man out, put his arm in a sling and let him eat. Bring him back in half an hour--and then, by this knife, Kelderek--" and he drove the point of his dagger into the golden snake painted on the lid of the chest beside him "--you shall tell me what you know."

  The unpredictable nature of dealings with Bel-ka-Trazet was the subject of many a tale. With Zelda's hand under his shoulder, Kelderek stumbled out into the Sindrad and sat huddled on a bench while the boys brought him food and a leather sling.

  When next he faced Bel-ka-Trazet night had fallen. The Sindrad outside was quiet, for all but two of the barons had gone to their own quarters. Zelda sat in the firelight, looking over some arrows which the fletcher had brought. Fassel-Hasta was hunched on another bench at a table, slowly writing with an inked brush on bark, by the light of a smoky earthenware lamp. A lamp was burning also on the lid of Bel-ka-Trazet's chest. In the shadows beyond, two fireflies went winking about the room. A curtain of wooden beads had been let fall over the doorway and from time to time these clicked quietly in the night breeze.

  The distortion of Bel-ka-Trazet's face seemed like a trick of the lamplight, the features monstrous as a devil mask in a play, the nose appearing to extend to the neck in a single, unbroken line, the shadows under the jaw pulsing slightly and rhythmically, like the throat of a toad. And indeed it was a play they were now to act, thought Kelderek, for it accorded with nothing in life as he had known it. A plain man, seeking only his living and neither wealth nor power, had been mysteriously singled out and made an instrument to cross the will of Bel-ka-Trazet.

  "Well, Kelderek," said the High Baron, pronouncing his name with a slight emphasis that somehow conveyed contempt, "while you have been filling your belly, I have learned as much as there is to be known about a man like you--all, that is, but what you are going to tell me now, Kelderek Zenzuata. Do you know they call you that?"

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. A solitary young man, with no taste for taverns, it seems, and an unnatural indifference toward girls, but known nevertheless for a skillful hunter who often brings in game and rarities for the factors trading with Gelt and Bekla."

  "If you have heard so much, my lord--"

  "So that he is allowed to come and go alone, much as he pleases, with no questions asked. Sometimes he is gone for several days at a time, is he not?"

  "It is necessary, my lord, if the game--"

  "Why do you play with the children? A young man unmarried--what sort of nonsense is that?"

  Kelderek considered.

  "Children often need friends," he said. "Some of the children I play with are unhappy. Some have been left with no parents--their parents have deserted them--"

  He broke off in confusion, meeting the gaze of Bel-ka-Trazet's distorted eye over the ridge. After some minutes he muttered uncertainly, "The flames of God--"

  "What? What did you say?"

  "The flames of God, my lord. Children--their eyes and ears are still open--they speak the truth--"

  "And so shall you, Kelderek, before you are done. You'd be thought a simple fellow, then, soft in the head perhaps, a stranger to drink and wenches, playing with children and given to talk of God--for no one would suspect such a man, would he, of spying, of treachery, of carrying messages or treating with enemies on his lonely hunting expeditions--"

  "My lord--"

  "Until one day he returns injured and almost empty-handed from a place believed to be full of game, too much confused to have been able to invent a tale--"

  "My lord!" The hunter fell on his knees.

  "Did you displease the man, Kelderek, was that it? Some brigand from Deelguy, perhaps, or slimy slave trader from Terekenalt out to make a little extra money by carrying messages during his dirty travels? Your information was displeasing, perhaps, or the pay was not enough?"

  "No, my lord, no!"

  "Stand up!"

  The beads clicked in a gust that flattened the lamp flame and made the shadows dart on the wall like fish startled in a deep pool. The High Baron was silent, collecting himself with the air of a man repulsed by an obstacle but still determined to overcome it by one means or another. When he spoke again it was in a quieter tone.

  "Well, so far as I am any judge, Kelderek, you may be an honest man, though you are a great fool with your talk of children and God. Could you not have asked for one single friend to come here, to testify to your honesty?"

  "My lord--"

  "No, you could not, it seems, or else it never occurred to you. But let us assume that you are honest, and that something took place today which for some reason you have neither concealed nor revealed. If you had gone about with cunning to conceal it altogether, I suppose you would not have been compelled to come here--you would not be standing here now. No doubt, then, you know very well that it is something that is bound to come to light sooner or later, so that it would have been foolish for you to try to hide it."

  "Yes, I am sure enough of that, my lord," replied Kelderek without hesitation.

  Bel-ka-Trazet drew his knife and, like a man idly passing the time while waiting for supper or a friend, began to heat the point in the lamp flame.

  "My lord," said Kelderek suddenly, "if a man were to return from hunting and say to the shendron, or to his friends, 'I have found a star, fallen from the sky to the earth,' who would believe him?"

  Bel-ka-Trazet made no reply but we
nt on turning the point of the knife in the flame.

  "But if that man had indeed found a star, my lord, what then? What should he do and to whom should he bring it?"

  "You question me, and in riddles, Kelderek, do you? I have no love for visionaries or their talk, so be careful."

  The High Baron clenched his fist but then, like a man determined to exercise patience, let it fall open and remained staring at Kelderek with a skeptical look.

  "Well?" he said at length.

  "I fear you, my lord. I fear your power and your anger. But the star that I found--it is from God, and this, too, I fear. I fear it more. I know to whom it must be revealed--" his voice came in a strangled gasp--"I can reveal it--only to the Tuginda!"

  In an instant Bel-ka-Trazet had seized him by the throat and forced him to the floor. The hunter's head bent sharply backward, away from the hot knife point thrust close to his face.

  "I will do this--I can do only that! By the Bear, you will no longer choose what you will do when your bow eye is out! You'll end in Zeray, my child!"

  Kelderek's hands stretched upward, clutching at the black cloak bending over him and pressing him backward from knee to wounded shoulder. His eyes were closed against the heat of the knife and he seemed about to faint in the High Baron's grasp. Yet when at length he spoke--Bel-ka-Trazet stooping close to catch the words--he whispered,

  "It can be only as God wills, my lord. The matter is great--greater, even, than your hot knife."

  The beads clashed in the doorway. Without relinquishing his hold, the Baron peered over his shoulder into the gloom beyond the lamp. Zelda's voice said,

  "My lord, there are messengers from the Tuginda. She would speak with you urgently, she says. She requests that you go to Quiso tonight."

  Bel-ka-Trazet drew in his breath with a hiss and stood straight, shaking off Kelderek, who fell his length and lay without moving. The knife slipped from the High Baron's hand and stuck in the floor, transfixing a fragment of some greasy rubbish, which began to smolder with an evil smell. He stooped quickly, recovered the knife and trod out the fragment. Then he said quietly,

  "To Quiso, tonight? What can this mean? God protect us! Are you sure?"

  "Yes, my lord. Would you speak yourself with the girls who brought the message?"

  "Yes--no, let it be. She would not send such a message unless--Go and tell Ankray and Faron to get a canoe ready. And see that this man is put aboard."

  "This man, my lord?"

  "Put aboard."

  The bead curtain clashed once more as the High Baron passed through it, across the Sindrad and out among the trees beyond. Zelda, hurrying across to the servants' quarters, could see in the light of the quarter moon the conical shape of the great fur cloak striding impatiently up and down the shore.

  5 To Quiso by Night

  KELDEREK KNELT IN THE BOW, now peering into the speckled gloom ahead, now shutting his eyes and dropping his chin on his chest in a fresh spasm of fear. At his back the enormous Ankray, Bel-ka-Trazet's servant and bodyguard, sat silent as the canoe drifted with the current along the south bank of the Telthearna. From time to time Ankray's paddle would drop to arrest or change their course, and at the sound Kelderek started as though the loud stir of the water were about to reveal them to enemies in the dark. Since giving the order to set out Bel-ka-Trazet had said not a word, sitting hunched in the narrow stern, hands clasped about his knees.

  More than once, as the paddles fell, the swirl and seethe of bubbles alarmed some nearby creature, and Kelderek jerked his head toward the clatter of wings, the splash of a dive or the crackle of undergrowth on the bank. Biting his lip and clutching at the side of the canoe, he tried to recall that these were nothing but birds and animals with which he was familiar--that by day he would recognize each one. Yet beyond these noises he was listening always for another, more terrible sound and dreading the second appearance of that animal to whom, as he believed, the miles of jungle and river presented no obstacle. And again, shrinking from this, his mind confronted dismally another lifelong fear--the fear of the island for which they were bound. Why had the Baron been summoned thither and what had that summons to do with the news which he himself had refused to tell?

  They had already traveled a long way beneath the trees overhanging the water when the servants evidently recognized some landmark. The left paddle dropped once more and the canoe checked, turning toward the center of the river. Upstream, a few faint lights on Ortelga were just visible, while to their right, far out in the darkness, there now appeared another light, high up--a flickering red glow that vanished and re-emerged as they moved on. The servants were working now, driving the canoe across the stream while the current, flowing more strongly at this distance from the bank, carried them down. Kelderek could sense in those behind him a growing uneasiness. The paddlers' rhythm became short and broken. The bow struck against something floating in the dark, and at the jolt Bel-ka-Trazet grunted sharply, like a man on edge. "My lord--" said Ankray. "Be silent!" replied Bel-ka-Trazet instantly.

  Like children in a dark room, like wayfarers passing a graveyard at night, the four men in the canoe filled the surrounding darkness with the fear from their own hearts. They were approaching the island of Quiso, domain of the Tuginda and the cult over which she ruled, a place where men retained no names--or so it was believed--weapons had no effect and the greatest strength could spend itself in vain against incomprehensible power. On each fell a mounting sense of solitude and exposure. To Kelderek it seemed that he lay upon the black water helpless as the diaphanous gylon fly, whose fragile myriads clotted the surface of the river each spring; inert as a felled tree in the forest, as a log in the timber yard. All about them, in the night, stood the malignant, invisible woodmen, disintegrators armed with axe and fire. Now the log was burning, breaking up into sparks and ashes, drifting away beyond the familiar world of day and night, of hunger, work and rest. The red light seemed close now, and as it drew nearer still and higher above them he fell forward, striking his forehead against the bow.

  He felt no pain from the blow, and to himself he seemed to have become deaf, for he could no longer hear the lapping of the water. Bereft of perceptions, of will and identity, he knew himself to have become no more than the fragments of a man. He was no one; and yet he remained conscious. As though in obedience to a command, he closed his eyes. At the same moment, the paddlers ceased their stroke, bowing their heads upon their arms, and the canoe, losing way entirely, drifted with the current toward the unseen island.

  Now into the remnants of Kelderek's mind began to return all that, since childhood, he had seen and learned of the Tuginda. Twice a year she came to Ortelga by water, the far-off gongs sounding through the mists of early morning, the people waiting silent on the shore. The men lay flat on their faces as she and her women were met and escorted to a new hut built for her coming. There were dances and a ceremony of flowers; but her real business was, first, to confer with the barons and, secondly, in a session secret to the women, to speak of their mysteries and to select, from among those put forward, one or two to return with her to perpetual service on Quiso. At the end of the day, when she left in torchlight and darkness, the hut was burned and the ashes scattered on the water.

  When she stepped ashore she was veiled, but in speaking with the barons she wore the mask of a bear. None knew the face of the Tuginda, or who she might once have been. The women chosen to go to her island never returned. It was believed that there they received new names; at all events their old names were never spoken again in Ortelga. It was not known whether the Tuginda died or abdicated, who succeeded her, how her successor was chosen, or even, on each occasion of her visit, whether she was, in fact, the same woman as before. Once, when a boy, Kelderek had questioned his father with impatience, such as the young often feel for matters which they perceive that their elders regard seriously and discuss little. For reply his father had moistened a lump of bread, molded it to the rough shape of a man and put it to st
and on the edge of the fire. "Keep away from the women's mysteries, lad," he said, "and fear them in your heart, for they can consume you. Look--" the bread dried, browned, blackened and shriveled to a cinder "--do you understand?" Kelderek, silenced by his father's gravity, had nodded and said no more. But he had remembered.

  What had possessed him, tonight, in the room behind the Sindrad? What had prompted him to defy the High Baron? How had those words passed his lips and why had not Bel-ka-Trazet killed him instantly? One thing he knew--since he had seen the bear, he had not been his own master. At first he had thought himself driven by the power of God, but now chaos was his master. His mind and body were unseamed like an old garment and whatever was left of himself lay in the power of the numinous, night-covered island.

  His head was still resting on the bow and one arm trailed over the side in the water. Behind him, the paddle dropped from Ankray's hands and drifted away, as the canoe grounded on the upstream shore, its occupants slumped where they sat, tranced and spell-stopped, not a will, not a mind intact. And thus they stayed, driftwood, flotsam and foam, while the quarter moon set far upstream and darkness fell, broken only by the gleam of the fire still burning inland, high among the trees.

  Time passed--a time marked only by the turning of the stars. Small, choppy river-waves chattered along the sides of the canoe and once or twice, with a rising susurration, the night wind tossed the branches of the nearest trees: but never the least stir made the four men in the canoe, huddled in the dark like birds on a perch.

  At length a nearer, smaller light appeared, green and swaying, descending toward the water. As it reached the pebbly shore there sounded a crunching of footsteps and a low murmur of voices. Two cloaked women were approaching, carrying between them, on a pole, a round, flat lantern as big as a grindstone. The frame was of iron and the spaces between the bars were paneled with plaited rushes, translucent yet stout enough to shield and protect the candles fixed within.

  The two women reached the edge of the water and stood listening. After a little they perceived in the dark the knock of the water against the canoe--a sound distinguishable only by ears familiar with every cadence of wind and wave along the shore. They set down the lantern then, and one, drawing out the pole from the ring and splashing it back and forth in the shallows, called in a harsh voice, "Wake!"