Shardik Page 5

  The sound came to Kelderek sharp as the cry of a moorhen. Looking up, he saw the wavering green light reflected in the splashed water inshore. He was no longer afraid. As the weaker of two dogs presses itself to the wall and remains motionless, knowing that in this lies its safety, so Kelderek, through total subjection to the power of the island, had lost his fear.

  He could hear the High Baron stirring behind him. Bel-ka-Trazet muttered some inaudible words and dashed a handful of water across his face, yet made no move to wade ashore. Turning his head for a moment, Kelderek saw him staring, as though still bemused, toward the dimly shining turbulence in the shallows.

  The woman's voice called again, "Come!" Slowly, Bel-ka-Trazet climbed over the side of the canoe into the water, which reached scarcely to his knees, and waded toward the light. Kelderek followed, splashing clumsily through the slippery pools. Reaching the shore, he found confronting him a tall, cloaked woman standing motionless, her face hidden in her cowl. He too stood still, not daring to question her silence. He heard the servants come ashore behind him, but the tall woman paid them no heed, only continuing to gaze at him as though to perceive the very beating of his heart. At last--or so he thought--she nodded, and thereupon at once turned about, stooped and passed the pole through the iron ring on the lantern. Then she and her companion took it up between them and began to walk away, unstumbling over the loose, yielding stones. Not a man moved until, when she had gone perhaps ten paces, the tall woman, without turning her head, called, "Follow!" Kelderek obeyed, keeping his distance behind them like a servant.

  QUISO

  Soon they began to climb a steep path into the woods. He was forced to grope among the rocks for handholds, yet the women went up easily, one behind the other, the taller raising the pole above her head to keep the lantern level. Still they climbed and still he followed breathlessly in the dark until, the way growing less steep and at last level, he thought that they could not be far below the very summit of the island. The trees grew thickly and he could no longer see the light ahead. Groping among the ferns and drifts of leaves he could hear--louder as he went on--the sound of cascading water and suddenly found himself standing on a spur of rock overlooking a ravine. On the opposite side lay a stone-paved terrace, in the middle of which were glowing the embers of a fire. This, he felt sure, must be the source of that light, high up, which he had seen from the river --a beacon lit to guide them. Beyond, a wall of rock rose into the dark, and this he could see plainly, for around the edges of the terrace stood five tripods, each supporting a bronze bowl from which rose translucent flames, yellow, green and blue. There was little smoke, but the air was filled with a resinous, sweet scent.

  More disturbing and awe-inspiring than the empty terrace, with its basins of flame, was the square opening cut in the rock wall behind. A carved pediment overhung it, supported by a pillar on either side, and to him it seemed that the black space between was gazing upon him inscrutably, like the unseen face of the cowled woman on the shore. Disturbed, he turned his eyes away, yet still, like a prisoner standing in a crowded court, felt himself watched, and, looking back once more, saw again only the flame-lit terrace and the opening beyond.

  He stared downward into the ravine. A little to his right, scarcely visible in the flickering darkness, he could make out a waterfall, not sheer, but cascading steeply over rocks until lost in the deep cleft below. In front of this, close to the falling water and gleaming wet with spray, a felled tree trunk, no thicker than a man's thigh, spanned the ravine from bank to bank. The upper side had been roughly planed, and upon this, with no handrail, the two women were now crossing as easily as they had walked over the shore. The pliant trunk sprang beneath their weight and the lantern tossed upon its pole, yet they moved with an unhurried grace, like village girls at evening carrying their pitchers from the well.

  Slowly Kelderek descended from the spur. Coming to the nearer end of the bridge he began, fearfully, to put one foot before the other. The cascade at his elbow showered him with its cold spray; the invisible water below sent up its echoes about him; after a few steps he crouched upon his knees, fumbling one-handed along the undulating tree trunk. He dared not raise his eyes to look ahead. Staring down at his own hand, he could see nothing besides but the grain of the wood, knot after knot coming into his circle of vision and disappearing under his chin as he edged forward. Twice he stopped, panting and digging his nails into the curved underside as the trunk swayed up and down.

  When at last he reached the farther end, he continued groping blindly along the ground on his hands and knees, until by chance he caught and crushed a handful of creeping locatalanga and with that pungent scent about him, came to himself and realized that he was no longer clutching and tossing above the water. He stood up. Ahead, the women were crossing the center of the terrace, one behind the other as before. Watching, he saw them reach the edge of the heap of embers within their fleece of ash. Without a pause they stepped into it, lifting the hems of their cloaks exactly as though wading a ford. As the hindmost raised her hem he glimpsed for a moment her bare feet. Ash and sparks rose in a fine dust, as chaff rises about the feet of a miller. Then they were pacing on beyond, leaving behind them an exposed, dull-red track across the circle of the dying fire.

  Kelderek, moaning, sank to the ground and buried his face in the crook of his arm.

  This, then, was the manner of his coming to the Upper Temple upon Quiso of the Ledges--this bringer of the tidings that generations had awaited but never heard: injured, drenched, groveling and half-hysterical, shutting out what lay before his eyes, determined--strange determination--only upon the surrender of whatever shreds of will power the island had left him. When at length the High Baron and his servants came to the edge of the ravine and in their turn tottered like cripples along the leaping tree, they found him lying prone on the edge of the terrace, cackling and gasping with a sound more dreadful than the laughter of the deaf and dumb.

  6 The Priestess

  AS KELDEREK BECAME QUIET and seemed to fall asleep where he lay, a light appeared within the opening in the rock wall. It grew brighter and two young women came out, each carrying a burning torch. They were sturdy, rough-looking girls, barefooted and dressed in coarse tunics, but no baron's wife could have matched the half of their ornaments. Their long earrings, which swung and clicked as they walked, were formed of separate pieces of carved bone, strung together in pendants. Their triple necklaces, of alternate penapa and ziltate, shone rose and tawny in the firelight. On their fingers were wooden rings, carved to resemble plaiting and stained crimson. Each wore a broad belt of bronze plates with a clasp fashioned like the head of a bear, and on the left hip an empty dagger sheath of green leather, whorled like a shell, in token of perpetual virginity.

  On their backs they carried wicker baskets filled with fragments of a resinous gum and a black fuel hard and fine as gravel. At each tripod they stopped and, taking handfuls from each other's panniers, threw them into the bowls. The fuel fell with a faint, ringing sound, lingering and overtoned; and the girls, as they worked, paid no more attention to the waiting men than if they had been tethered beasts.

  They had almost finished their task and the terrace was bright with fresh light, when a third young woman came pacing slowly from the darkness of the cave. She was dressed in a pleated, sheathlike robe of white cloth, finer than any woven in Ortelga, and her long black hair hung loose at her back. Her arms were bare and her only ornament was a great collar of fine links, more than a span broad, which completely covered her shoulders like a vestment. As she appeared the two girls slipped their baskets from their backs and took up places side by side upon the edge of the ashes.

  Bel-ka-Trazet raised his eyes to meet those of the young woman. He said nothing, however, as she returned his look with an impassive air of authority, as though every man had a face like his and they were all one to her. After a few moments she jerked her head over her shoulder and one of the girls, coming forward, led the servants
away, disappearing into the darkness under the trees near the bridge. At the same moment the hunter stirred and rose slowly to his feet. Ragged and dirty, he stood before the beautiful priestess with an air less of callowness than of simple unawareness either of his appearance or his surroundings.

  Like the tall woman on the beach, the priestess stared intently at Kelderek, as though weighing him in some balance of her mind. At length she nodded her head two or three times with a kind of grave, comprehending recognition, and turned once more toward the High Baron.

  "It is meant, then," she said, "that this man should be here. Who is he?"

  "One whom I have brought, saiyett," replied Bel-ka-Trazet briefly, as though to remind her that he too was a person of authority.

  The priestess frowned. Then she stepped close to the High Baron, put her hand upon his shoulder and, assuming the air of a wondering and inquisitive child, drew his sword from the scabbard and examined it, the Baron making no attempt to stop her.

  "What is this?" she asked, moving it so that the light of the flames flashed along the blade.

  "My sword, saiyett," he answered, with a touch of impatience.

  "Ah, your--" she paused, hesitating a moment, as though the word were new to her "--sword. A pretty thing, this--this sword. So--so--so--" and, pressing hard, she drew the edge three or four times across her forearm. It made no cut and left no mark whatever. "Sheldra," she called to the remaining girl, "the High Baron has brought us a--a sword." The girl approached, took the sword in both hands and held it out horizontally at the height of her eyes, as though admiring the sharpness of the edge.

  "Ah, now I see," said the priestess lightly. Drawing the flat of the blade against her throat and motioning the girl to hold it firmly, she made a little jump, swung a few moments by her chin on the sharp edge and then, dropping to the ground, turned back to Bel-ka-Trazet.

  "And this?" she asked, plucking his knife from his belt. This time he made no reply. Assuming a puzzled look, she drove the point into her left arm, twisted it, drew it out bloodless, shook her head and handed it to the girl.

  "Well--well--toys." She stared coldly at him.

  "What is your name?" she asked.

  The Baron opened his mouth to speak, but after a moment the twisted lips closed askew and he remained looking at her as though she had not yet spoken.

  "What is your name?" she said to Kelderek in the same tone.

  As though in a dream, the hunter found himself perceiving on two planes. A man may dream that he is doing something--flying, perhaps--which, even in the dream, he knows that he cannot do. Yet he accepts and lives the illusion, and thus experiences as real the effects following from the discounted cause. In the same way Kelderek heard and understood the priestess's words and yet knew that they had no meaning. She might as well have asked him "What is the sound of the moon?" Moreover, he knew that she knew this and would be satisfied with silence for an answer.

  "Come!" she said, after a pause, and turned on her heel.

  Walking before them--the grim, mutilated Baron and the bewildered hunter--she led them out of the circle of blue-flaming bowls and through the opening in the rock.

  7 The Ledges

  THE DARKNESS WAS BROKEN only by the indirect flame-light from the terrace outside; but this was sufficient to show Kelderek that they were in a square chamber apparently cut out of the living rock. The floor beneath his feet was stone and the shadows of himself and his companions moved and wavered against a smooth wall. On this he glimpsed a painting which seemed, as he thought, to represent some gigantic creature standing upright. Then they were going on into the dark.

  Feeling his way after the priestess, he touched the squared jamb of an opening in the wall and, groping upward, for he feared to strike his head, could find no transom above. Yet the cleft, if tall, was narrow enough--scarcely as wide as a man--and to save his injured shoulder he turned sideways and edged into it, right arm first. He could see nothing--only those mysterious, faintly colored clouds and vaporous screens that swim before our eyes in darkness, seeming exhaled, as it were, from our own sightlessness as mists rise from a marsh.

  The floor sloped steeply downward underfoot. He stumbled on, groping against the wall as it curved away to the right. At last he could make out, ahead, the night sky and, outlined against it, the figure of the waiting priestess. He reached her side, stopped and looked about him.

  It was not long after midnight by the stars. He was high up in some spacious, empty place, standing on a broad ledge of stone, its surface level but the texture so rough that he could feel the grains and nodules under the soles of his feet. On either side were wooded slopes. The ledge stretched away to the left in a long, regular curve, a quarter-circle a stone's throw across, ending among banks of ivy and the trunks of trees. Immediately below it extended another, similar ledge and below that fell away many more, resembling a staircase for giants or gods. The pitch was steep--steep enough for a fall to be dangerous. The faintly shining concentric tiers receded downward until the hunter could no longer distinguish them in the starlight. Far below, he could just perceive a glimmering of water, as though from the bottom of a well, and this, it seemed to him, must be some landlocked bay of the island. All around, on either side, great trees towered, an orderly forest, the spaces between them free from the creepers and choking jungle of the mainland. As he gazed up, the night wind freshened and the rustling of leaves became louder and higher, with a semblance of urgent repetition--"Yess! Yess, yess!" followed by a dying fall--"Sshow!--Sssh-ow!" Mingled with this whispering came another sound, also liquid and continuous, but unaltering in pitch, lower and lightly plangent. Listening, he recognized it for the trickling and dropping of water, filling all the place no less than the sound of the leaves. Whence might this come? He looked about.

  They were standing near one end of the uppermost tier. Further along its length a shallow stream--perhaps that of the ravine he had crossed earlier that night--came whelming smoothly out of the hillside and across the ledge. Here, no doubt because of some tilting of the stones, it spread in either direction, to become at the edges a mere film of water trickling over the rough, level surface. Thence it oozed and dripped and splashed its way downward, passing over one terrace after another, spreading all abroad, shallow as rain on the pitch of a roof. This was the cause of the faint shining of the ledges in the starlight and of the minute, liquid sounds sparkling faintly about them, myriad as windy heather on a moor or crickets in a meadow.

  Struck with amazement, Kelderek realized that this vast place was an artifact. He stood trembling--with awe indeed, but not with fear. Rather, he was filled with a kind of wild and expansive joy, like that of dance or festival, seeming to himself to be floating above his own exhaustion and the pain in his shoulder.

  "You have never seen the Ledges?" said the priestess at his elbow. "We have to descend them--are you able?"

  At once, as though she had commanded him, he set off down the wet slabs as confidently as though upon level ground. The Baron called to him sharply and he stayed himself against the solitary island of a bank of ivy, smiling back at the two still above him for all the world as though they were comrades in some children's game. As the priestess and the Baron approached carefully, picking their way down the wet stones, he heard the latter say, "He is light-headed, saiyett--a simple, foolish fellow, as I am told. He may fall, or even fling himself down."

  "No, the place means him no harm, Baron," she replied. "Since you brought him here, perhaps you can tell why."

  "No," replied the Baron shortly.

  "Let him go," she said. "On the Ledges, they say, the heart is the foot's best guide."

  At this, Kelderek turned once more and bounded away, splashing sure-footed down and down. The dangerous descent seemed a sport, exhilarating as diving into deep water. The pale shape of the inlet below grew larger and larger and now he could see a fire twinkling beside it. He felt the steep hillside ever higher at his back. The curves of the ledges grew shor
ter, narrowing at last to little more than a broad path between the trees. He reached the very foot and stood looking round him in the enclosed gloom. It was indeed, he thought, like the bottom of a well--except that the air was warm and the stones now seemed dry underfoot. From above he could hear no sound of his companions and after a little began to make his way toward the glow of the fire and the lapping water beyond.

  It was irregular, this shore among the trees, and paved with the same stone as the ledges above. As far as he could discern, it was laid out as a garden. Patches of ground between the paving had been planted with bushes, fruit trees and flowering plants. He came upon a clustering tendriona, trained on trellises to form an arbor, and could smell the ripe fruit among the leaves above him. Reaching up, he pulled one down, split the thin rind and ate as he wandered on.

  Scrambling over a low wall, he found himself on the brink of a channel perhaps six or seven paces across. Water lilies and arrowhead were blooming in the scarcely moving water at his feet, but in the middle there was a smooth flow and this, he guessed, must be the regathered stream from the Ledges. He crossed a narrow footbridge and saw before him a circular space, paved in a symmetrical pattern of dark and light. In the center stood a flat-topped stone, roughly ovoid and carved with a starlike symbol. Beyond, the fire was glowing red in an iron brazier.

  His weariness and dread returned upon him. Unconsciously, he had thought of the waterside and the fire as the end of the night's journey. What end he did not know; but where there was a fire, might one not have expected to find people--and rest? His impulse on the Ledges had been both foolish and impertinent. The priestess had not told him to come here; her destination might be elsewhere. Now there were only the starlit solitude and the pain in his shoulder. He thought of returning, but could not face it. Perhaps, after all, they would come soon. Limping across to the stone, he sat down, elbow on knee, rested his head on his hand and closed his eyes.