Shardik Page 7

Blinking, he turned away from the sun to watch the grave, silent girls loading the canoes. On Ortelga there would have been gossip, banter, songs to lighten the work. These women moved deliberately and spoke only such few words as were needed. They were silent, he supposed, by custom and the rule of the island. What a release it would be to leave this shady, mind-bemusing place of secrets and sorcery! Then he recalled whither they were bound and felt again the clutch of fear in his stomach.

  An elderly, gray-haired woman, who had been directing the girls at their work, left the waterside and approached Melathys.

  "The loading is done, saiyett," she said. "Do you wish to check that all is there?"

  "No, I will trust you, Thula," replied the priestess absently.

  The old woman laid a hand on her arm.

  "We do not know where you are going, my dear, or for how long," she said. "Will you not tell me? Do you remember how I comforted you as a child, when you used to dream of the slave traders and the war?"

  "I know all too well where we are going," replied Melathys, "but not when I shall return."

  "A long journey?" persisted the old woman.

  "Long or short," answered Melathys, with a quick, nervous laugh, "I promise you that whoever may die, I will take good care that I do not." She stooped, plucked a red flower, held it for a moment to the other's nostrils and then tossed it into the water.

  The old woman made a restrained gesture of impatience, like a trusted servant who is privileged to express her feelings.

  "There is danger, then, my child?" she whispered. "Why do you speak of death?"

  Melathys stared a moment, biting her lip. Then she unclasped the broad, golden collar from her neck and put it into the old woman's hands.

  "At all events I shall not need this," she said, "and if there is danger I shall run faster without the weight of it. Ask me no more, Thula. It is time for us to set out. Where are the Baron's servants?"

  "He said that they were to return to Ortelga," replied the old woman. "They have already taken their canoe and gone."

  "Then go yourself now and tell the Baron that we are ready. Goodbye, Thula. Remember me in your prayers."

  She made her way across the pavement, stepped down into the nearest of the four canoes and motioned to the hunter to take his place behind her. The two girls in the stern dipped their paddles and the canoe drew away from the shore. They crossed the inlet and began to edge their way out through the narrow cleft between the rock spurs.

  The bow skirted a curtain of trailing, purple-leaved trazada and Kelderek, knowing how the little thorns tear and smart, dropped his head, shielding his face with his good arm. He heard the stiff leaves clashing against the side of the canoe, then felt a freshness of wind and opened his eyes. They were outside and rocking in a bay of slack water under the northern shore. The green shadow of the woods above them stretched upstream and across the river. Beyond, the water was blue and choppy, glittering in the sun and broken, here and there, into small, white-topped waves. Far off lay the blackened, desolate line of the left bank. He looked back over his shoulder but could no longer discern, among the tangle of green, the cleft from which they had emerged. Then the bow of the second canoe appeared, thrusting through the foliage. Melathys, following his gaze, smiled coldly.

  "There is no other landing place on the island where a canoe can come to shore. All else is cliff or shoal, like the place where you landed last night."

  "The Tuginda, then?" he asked. "Is she not coming with us?"

  The priestess, watching the two remaining canoes as they came out, made no immediate reply, but after a while said, "Do you know the tale of Inanna?"

  "Why, yes, saiyett. She went to the underworld to beg for a life and as she passed each gate they took from her her clothes, her jewels and all that she had."

  "Long ago, whenever the Tuginda set out from Quiso to seek Lord Shardik, it was the custom that she should have nothing whatever upon her when she left the island." She paused and then added, "The Tuginda does not wish it to be known on Quiso that she is leaving. By the time they learn that she is gone--"

  "But if there is no other landing place?" he blurted out, interrupting her.

  She spoke to the girls at the paddles.

  "Nito! Neelith! We will go up the shore now, as far as the quarries."

  At the westward end of the bay the shore extended to form a point. Below this the sheltered water was smooth, but once they had rounded it their progress became laborious, for the head wind was troublesome and on this side of the island the current ran strongly. They moved slowly upstream, the canoes jumping and bouncing in the choppy water. At length Kelderek could see that some way ahead the steep, green slopes gave place to cliffs of gray rock. The face of these cliffs appeared to have been cut and broken into. There were several straight-sided openings, like great windows, and at the foot of the lowest he noticed a kind of sill--a flat, projecting shelf of rock, perhaps three or four times the height of a man above the water. Through these openings, as they neared, he could catch glimpses of a deep, rock-sided excavation, on the floor of which, here and there, were lying boulders and a few squared slabs of stone; but all seemed neglected and desolate.

  Melathys turned her head. "That is where they quarried the stone for the Ledges."

  "Who, saiyett? When?"

  Again she made no answer, merely gazing across at the little waves slap-slapping against the foot of the cliff. Suddenly Kelderek started, so that the canoe rocked sideways and one of the girls struck the water sharply with the flat of her paddle to recover its balance. On the flat shelf above them stood a naked woman, her hair flowing loose over her shoulders. She stepped forward to the edge and for a few moments stood looking down, moving her feet for a firm hold. Then, without hesitation, she dived into the deep water.

  As she came to the surface, the hunter realized that this was none other than the Tuginda. She began swimming gently toward the third canoe, which was already cutting across to meet her. The Baron's canoe had turned away. Confused, the hunter first closed his eyes and then, to make sure that the priestess should not rebuke him, buried his face in his hands.

  "Crendro, Melathys!" called the Tuginda, whom Kelderek could hear laughing as she climbed into the canoe. "I thought I had brought nothing with me but a light heart, but now I remember that I have two things more--their names, to be restored to our guests. Bel-ka-Trazet, can you hear me, or are you hastening out of earshot as well as out of sight?"

  "Why, saiyett," answered the Baron gruffly, "you startled us. And am I not to respect you as a woman?"

  "The breadth of the Telthearna is respect indeed. Are your servants not here?"

  "No, saiyett. I have sent them back to Ortelga."

  "God be with them. And with Melathys, for her pretty arms have been scratched by the trazada. Hunter--shy, pondering hunter--what is your name?"

  "Kelderek, saiyett," he replied, "Kelderek Zenzuata."

  "Well, now we can be sure that we have left Quiso. The girls will enjoy this unexpected trip. Who is with us? Sheldra, Nito, Neelith--"

  She began chatting and joking with the girls, who from their answers were clearly convinced that she was in excellent spirits. After a time her canoe drew alongside and she touched Kelderek's arm.

  "Your shoulder?" she asked.

  "Better, saiyett," he answered. "The pain is much less."

  "Good, for we are going to need you."

  Although the Tuginda had kept her departure secret, someone besides Melathys had evidently known what she meant to do and loaded her canoe accordingly, for she was now dressed, as though for hunting, in a tunic of stitched and overlapping leather panels, with leather greaves and sandals, and her wet hair, coiled about her head, was bound with a light silver chain. Like the girls, she was carrying a knife at her belt.

  "We will not go up the shore of Ortelga, Melathys," she said. "The shendrons would see us and the whole town would be talking within the hour."

  "How then, saiyett? Are
we not making for the western end of the island?"

  "Certainly. But we will cross to the farther side of the river and then return."

  Their journey, thus extended, lasted almost until evening. As they crossed, the current carried them downstream, especially when they were obliged to give way to avoid the heavy, floating debris still drifting here and there. By the time they had reached the desert of the farther bank, with its scorched, ashen smell, the girls were tired. There was little or no true shade and they were forced to rest as best they could, partly in the canoes and partly in the river itself--for they could all swim like otters. Only Melathys, preoccupied and silent, remained in her place, apparently indifferent to the heat. They ate selta nuts, goat's cheese and rose-pale tendrionas. The long afternoon was spent in working slowly upstream along the dead bank. It was hard going, for every reach was obstructed inshore with half-burned trees and branches, some submerged, others spreading tangles of twigs and leaves across the surface. There was a continual drift of fine, black grit through the air and the sides of the canoes above the waterline became coated with a froth of ash suspended in the slack water.

  The sun was nearing the horizon when the Tuginda at last gave the word to turn left and head out once more across the current. Kelderek, who knew the difficulty of judging the ever-changing currents of the Telthearna, realized that she was evidently an experienced and skillful waterman. At all events her judgment now was excellent, for with little further effort on the part of the weary girls, the river carried them across and down so that they drifted almost exactly upon the tall, narrow rock at the western point of Ortelga.

  They waded ashore, dragging the canoes between them through the reeds, and made camp on dry ground among the soft, fibrous root tangles of a grove of quian. It was a wild shore, and as their fire burned up--so that the shapes of the tree trunks seemed to waver in its heat--and outside, the sunset faded from the expanse of the river, Kelderek felt again, as he had felt two days before, the unusual restlessness and disturbance of the forest around them.

  "Saiyett," he ventured at last, "and you, my lord Baron, if I may be allowed to advise you, we should let no one wander away from the fire tonight. If any must do so, let them go to the shore but nowhere else. This place is full of creatures that are themselves strangers, lost and savage with fear."

  Bel-ka-Trazet merely nodded and Kelderek, afraid of having said too much, busied himself in rolling a log to one side of the fire and scraping it clean to make a seat for the Tuginda. On the farther side the girl Sheldra was setting up the servants' quarters and allotting them their duties. She had said nothing whatever to Kelderek throughout the day and he, unsure what his place might be, was about to ask her whether he could be of use when the Tuginda called him and asked him to take the first watch.

  As it fell out, he remained on guard half the night. He felt no desire to sleep. What sort of sentries would they make, he asked himself--these silent, self-contained girls, whose lives had been enclosed so long by the solitude of Quiso? Yet he knew that he was merely trying--and failing--to deceive himself; they were reliable enough and this was not the reason for his wakefulness. The truth was that he could not be free--had not been free all day--from the fear of death and the dread of Shardik.

  Brooding in the darkness, fresh misgivings came upon him as he thought first of the High Baron and then of Melathys. Both felt fear--of this he was sure: fear of death no doubt, but also--and it was in this that they differed from himself--fear of losing what each already possessed. And because of this fear there lay in both their hearts an actual hope, of which neither would speak before the Tuginda, that he had told them false and that this search would end in nothing: for to each it seemed that even if what he had told them were the truth, he or she stood to gain nothing from it.

  It occurred to him--troubling his heart and heightening still further his sense of loneliness--that the High Baron was actually unable to grasp what to himself was plain as flame. There came into his mind the recollection of an old, miserly trader who had lived near his home some years before. This man had amassed a competence by a lifetime of petty, hard bargaining. One night some swaggering young mercenaries, returned to Ortelga from a campaign in the service of Bekla and reluctant to call an end to a drunken frolic, had offered him three great emeralds in return for a jar of wine. The old man, convinced of some trick, had refused them and later had actually boasted of how he had shown himself too sharp for such rogues.

  Bel-ka-Trazet, thought Kelderek, had spent years in making Ortelga a fortress, and looked now to reap his harvest--to grow old in safety behind his pits and stakes, his river moat and his shendrons along the shore. In his world, the proper place for anything strange or unknown was outside. Of all hearts on Ortelga, perhaps, his was the least likely to leap and blaze at news of the return of Shardik, the Power of God. As for Melathys, she was already content with her role as priestess and her island sorcery. Perhaps she hoped to become Tuginda herself in time. She was obeying the Tuginda now merely because she could not disobey her. Her heart, he felt sure, shared neither the Tuginda's passionate hope nor the Tuginda's deep sense of responsibility. It was natural, perhaps, that she should be afraid. She was a woman, quick-witted and young, who had already attained to a position of authority and trust. She had much to lose if a violent death should strike her down. He recalled how he had first seen her the night before, asserting her dismaying power on the flame-lit terrace, discerning, among the night travelers from Ortelga, the presence of the secret lying unspoken in his heart and in none other. At the memory he was overcome by a keen pang of disappointment. The truth was that the incomparable news which he had brought she would have preferred not to learn.

  "They are both far above me," he thought, pacing slowly across the grove, his ears full of the incessant croaking of the frogs along the shore. "Yet I--a common man--can see plainly that each is clinging--or trying to cling--to that which they fear may now be changed or swept away. I have no such thoughts, for I have nothing to lose; and besides, I have seen Lord Shardik and they have not. Yet even if we find him again and do not die, still, I believe, they will try by some means or other to deny him. And that I could never do, come of it what might."

  The sudden, harsh cry of some creature in the forest recalled him to the duty he had undertaken, and he turned back to his watch. Crossing the clearing once more, he threaded his way among the sleeping girls.

  The Tuginda was standing beside the fire. She beckoned, and as he approached, looked at him with the same shrewd, honest smile which he had first seen at the Tereth stone, before he had known who she was.

  "Surely, Kelderek, your watch is long over?" she asked.

  "If another were to take my place, saiyett, I could not sleep, so why should I not watch?"

  "Your shoulder hurts?"

  "No--my heart, saiyett." He smiled back at her. "I'm ill at ease. There's good cause."

  "Well, I'm glad you're awake, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children, for we need to talk, you and I." She moved away from the sleepers and he followed her until she stopped and faced him in the gloom, leaning against a quian trunk. The frogs croaked on and now he could hear the waves lapping in the reeds.

  "You heard me say to Melathys and the Baron that we ought to act as though your news were true. That was what I said to them: but you yourself, Kelderek, must know this. If I were unable to perceive the truth that flows from a man's heart into his words, I would not be the Tuginda of Quiso. I am in no doubt that it is indeed Lord Shardik that you have seen."

  He could find no reply and after a little she went on, "So--of all those countless thousands who have waited, we are the ones, you and I."

  "Yes. But you seem so calm, saiyett, and I--I am full of fear--ordinary coward's fear. Awe and dread I feel indeed, but most, I am afraid simply of being torn to pieces by a bear. They are very dangerous creatures. Are you not afraid too?"

  She replied to his question with another.

  "What do you kn
ow of Lord Shardik?"

  He thought for a time and then answered, "He is from God--God is in him--he is the Power of God--he departed and he is to return. Nay, saiyett, one thinks he knows until another calls for the words. Like all children, I learned to pray for that good night when Shardik will return."

  "But there is such a thing as getting more than we bargain for. Many pray. How many have really considered what it would mean if the prayers were granted?"

  "Whatever may come of it, saiyett, I could never wish that he had not returned. For all my fear, I could not wish that I had never seen him."

  "Nor I, for all mine. Yes, I am afraid too; but at least I can thank God that I have never forgotten the real, the true work of the Tuginda--to be ready, in all sober reality, night and day, for the return of Shardik. How often, by night, have I walked alone on the Ledges and thought, "If this were the night--if Shardik were to come now--what should I do?" I knew I could not but fear, but the fear is less--" she smiled again--"less than I feared. Now you must know more, for we are the Vessels, you and I." She nodded slowly, holding his eyes among the shadows. "And what that means we shall learn, God help us, and in His good time."

  Kelderek said nothing. The Tuginda folded her arms, leaned back once more against the tree and went on.

  "It is more than a matter of the people falling flat on their faces--much, much more." Still he said nothing.

  "Do you know of Bekla, that great city?"

  "Of course, saiyett."

  "Have you ever been there?"

  "I? Oh no, saiyett. How should a man like me go to Bekla? Yet many of my skins and feathers have been brought by the factors for the market there. It is four or five days' journey to the south, that I know."

  "Did you know that long ago--no one knows how long--the people of Ortelga ruled in Bekla?"

  "We were the rulers of Bekla?"

  "We were. Of that empire which stretched north to the shores of the Telthearna, west to Paltesh and south to Sarkid and Ikat-Yeldashay. We were a great people--fighters, traders and, above all, builders and craftsmen--yes, we who now skulk on an island in thatched sheds and scratch for a living with ploughs and mattocks on a few pebbly miles of the mainland.