Shardik (10 page)

‘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 abs
ently
.

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 Me
lathys, ‘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
?’

Melath
ys 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. Good-bye, 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, the
n?’ 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 doe
s 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 grey 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 noti
ced 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 neare
d, 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 g
ently
towards 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 gru
ffly, ‘you startl
ed 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 Me
lathys, 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 evid
ently
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 over-lapping 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 further 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 further 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, appar
ently
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 water-line 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 Te
lthearna, realized that she was evid
ently
an experienced and skilful 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 exa
ctly
upon the tall, narrow roc
k at the western point of Ortelg
a.

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 tw
o days before, the unusual restl
essness 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
further 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 - dicsc 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 th
en 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 alread
y attained to a position of auth
ority 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-travellers 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.