The Baron slid his tongue along the jagged edge of one lip and plucked the fur of his cape between his fingers, but answered nothing. The Tuginda turned to face the firelight and remained silent for some time. She sat perfectly still, her hands at rest in her lap, her composure like that of a tree when the wind has dropped. At length she said,
'So I ponder and pray and call upon such little wisdom as I may have acquired over the years, for I know, no more than Melathys, or Rantzay or the girls, what these things may mean. At last I send for you. Perhaps, it seems to me, you may be able to tell me something that you have seen or heard. Perhaps you may give me some clue.
'Meanwhile, if he should come, how should I receive him – he whom God means to send? Not with power or display; no, but as a servant. What else am I? So in case he should come, I dress myself like the ignorant, poor woman that God sees me to be. I know nothing, but at least I can cook a meal. And when the meal is ready I go out to the Tereth, to wait and pray.' Again she was silent. Melathys murmured, 'Perhaps the High Baron knows more than he has told us.' 'I know nothing, saiyett.'
'But it did not occur to me,' went on the Tuginda, 'that the stranger whom I knew to be with you -'
She broke off and looked across the room to where Kelderek was still standing by himself, away from the light, 'So, hunter, you maintained to the High Baron's hot knife, did you, that you had a message for my ears alone?'
'It is true, saiyett,' he answered, 'and it is true also, as the High Baron says, that I am a man of no rank – one who gets his living as a hunter. Yet I knew – and know now – beyond doubt or gainsaying, that none must hear this news before yourself.'
'Tell me, then, what you could not tell to the shendron or the High Baron.'
He began to speak of his hunting expedition that morning and of the undergrowth full of bewildered, fugitive animals. Then he told of the leopard and of his foolhardy attempt to pass it and escape inland. As he spoke of his ill-aimed arrow, his panic flight and fall from the bank, he trembled and gripped the table to steady himself. One of the lamps had burned dry, but the priestess made no move and the wick remained smoking until it died.
'And then,' said the hunter, 'then there stood over me, where I lay, saiyett, a bear – such a bear as never was, a bear tall as a dwelling-hut, his pelt like a waterfall, his muzzle a wedge across the sky. The leopard was as iron on his anvil. Iron – no – ah, believe me! – when the bear struck him he became like a chip of wood when the axe falls. He spun through the air and tumbled like a pierced bird. It was the bear – the bear who saved me. He struck once and then he was gone.' The hunter paused and came slowly forward to the fire.
'He was no vision, saiyett, no fancy of my fear. He is flesh and bone – he is real. I saw the burns on his side – I saw that they hurt him. A bear, saiyett, on Ortelga – a bear more than twice as tall as a man!' He hesitated, and then added, almost inaudibly, 'If God were a bear -'
The priestess caught her breath. The Baron stood up, tipping back the bench against the table as his hand clutched at his empty scabbard.
'You had better be plain,' said the Tuginda in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. 'What do you mean, and what is it that you are thinking about the bear?'
To himself the hunter seemed like a man setting down at last a heavy burden which he has carried for miles, through darkness and solitude, to the place where it must go. But more strongly still, he felt once again the incredulity which had filled him that morning on the lonely, upstream shore of Ortelga. How could it be that this was the appointed time, here the place and himself the man? Yet it was so. It could not be otherwise. His eyes met the shrewd, intent gaze of the Tuginda. 'Saiyett,' he replied, 'it is Lord Shardik.'
There was dead silence. Then the Tuginda answered carefully, 'You understand that to be wrong – to deceive yourself and others – would be a sacrilegious and terrible thing? Any man can see a bear. If what you saw was a bear, O hunter who plays with children, for God's sake say so now and return home unharmed and in peace.'
'Saiyett, I am nothing but a common man. It is you that must weigh my talc, not I. Yet as I live, I myself feel certain that the bear that saved me was none other than Lord Shardik.'
'Then,' replied the Tuginda, 'whether you are proved wrong or right, it is plain what we have to do.'
The priestess was standing with palms outstretched and closed eyes, praying silently. The Baron, frowning, paced slowly across to the further wall, turned and paced back, gazing down at the floor. As he reached the Tuginda she laid her hand upon his wrist and he stopped, looking at her from one half-closed and one staring eye. She smiled up at him, for all the world as though no prospect lay before them but what was safe and easy.
'I'll tell you a story,' she said. 'There was once a wise, crafty Baron who pledged himself to guard Ortelga and its people and to keep out all that could harm them: a setter of traps, a digger of pits. He perceived enemies almost before they knew their own intents and taught himself to distrust the very lizards on the walls. To make sure that he was not deceived, he disbelieved everything; and he was right. A ruler, like a merchant, must be full of craft; must disbelieve more than half he hears, or he will be a ruined man.
'But here the task is more difficult. The hunter says, 'It is Lord Shardik,' and the ruler, who has learned to be a sceptical man and no fool, replies, 'Absurd.' Yet we all know that one day Lord Shardik is to return. Suppose it were today and the ruler were in error, then what an error that would be! All the patient work of his life could not atone for it.' Bel-ka-Trazet said nothing.
'We cannot take the risk of being wrong. To do nothing might well be the greatest sacrilege. There is only one thing we can do. We must discover beyond doubt whether this news is true or false; and if we lose our lives, then God's will be done. After all, there are other barons and the Tuginda does not die.'
'You speak calmly, saiyett,' replied the Baron, 'as though of the tendriona crop or the coming of the rains. But how can it be true
'You have lived long years, Baron, with the Dead Belt to strengthen today and the tax to collect tomorrow. That has been your work. And I – I too have lived long years with my work – with the prophecies of Shardik and the rites of the Ledges. Many times I have imagined the news coming and pondered on what I should do if ever it were to come indeed. That is why I can say to you now, 'This hunter's talc may be true,' and yet speak calmly.'
The Baron shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, as though unwilling to argue. 'Well, and what are we to do?' he asked.
'Sleep,' she replied unexpectedly, going to the door. 'I will call the girls to show you where.' 'And tomorrow?' 'Tomorrow we will go upstream.'
She opened the door and struck once upon a bronze gong. Then she returned and, going across to Kelderek, laid her hand on his sound shoulder.
'Good night,' she said, 'and let us trust that it may indeed be that good night that the children are taught to pray for.'
9 The Tuginda's Story
The narrow passage from the land-locked inlet to the Telthearna bent so sharply that it was only just possible for a canoe to negotiate it. The rocky spurs on either side overlapped, closing the inlet like a wall, so that from within nothing could be seen of the river beyond.
The little bay, running inland between its paved shores, ended, among coloured water-lilies, at the outfall of the channel by the Tereth stone. Waiting with Melathys while the servants loaded the canoes, Kelderek gazed upwards, past the bridge which he had crossed the night before, to where the Ledges opened above, their shape like that of a great arrow-head lying point downward on the hillside between the woods. The stream, he saw, was no longer flowing over them: it must have returned, during the night, to its normal course. High up, he could make out the figures of girls stooping over hoes and baskets, weeding and scouring among the stones.
When the loading of the canoes had begun, the sun had not yet reached this north-facing shore, but now it rose over the Ledges and shone down upon the inlet, changing the opaque, grey water to a depth of slow-moving, luminous green. Sharp shadows fell across the pavements from the small stone buildings standing here and there along the edges, some secluded among the trees, others in the open among grass and flowers.
He wondered how old these buildings might be. There was none such on Ortelga. The whole place could be the work only of people long ago. What sort of people could they have been, who had constructed the Ledges?
