'I went north with the Yeldashay, and I went on the Tuginda's express order. She regained consciousness towards evening of the day you set out. She was very weak, and of course at that time we were still afraid that the house would be attacked by those ruffians who'd injured her. But as soon as the Yeldashay came and the fear of being murdered was off our minds, she began making her plans again. She's very strong, you know.' 'I do know – who better?'
'The night before the soldiers left Zeray she told me what I had to do. She said that with Ankray and two officers staying behind she felt perfectly safe; and I was to go north. I reminded her that there was no other woman in the house.
' 'Then perhaps you or Tan-Rion will get me a decent girl from Lak,' she said, 'but north you must certainly go, my dear. The Yeldashay are not looking for Lord Shardik; they're looking for Elleroth's boy. Yet you and I know that both Shardik and Kelderek are wandering somewhere between here and Linsho. What holy and sacred death Lord Shardik is doomed to die none can tell, but come it must. As for Kelderek, he is in great danger; and I know what is between you and him as surely as though you had told me. The Yeldashay believe both him and Shardik to be their enemies. You are needed both as friend and as priestess, and if you ask me what you are to do, I reply that God will show you.' ' 'Priestess? ' I said. 'You're calling me a priestess?'
' 'You are a priestess,' she answered. 'I say you are a priestess and you have my authority to act as such. It is as my priestess that you are to go north with the soldiers and do what you find to do.' '
Melathys paused for some moments to regain command of herself. At length she went on,
'So I – so I set out, as a priestess of Quiso. We went to Lak and there I learned first of Shardik and next that you had been there and gone. Nothing more was known of you. The day after, the Yeldashay began moving north towards Linsho, searching the forest as they went. Tan-Rion had promised the Tuginda to look after me and it was he who gave me this Yeldashay metlan. He'd got the cloth with him – he bought it in Kabin, I believe – I wonder who for? -and a woman in Lak made it up to his orders. 'You'll be perfectly all right with the men as long as you look like a Yeldashay girl,' he said. 'They know who you are, but it'll give them the idea that they ought to respect you and look after you.' He gave me this emblem too.'
She paused, smiling, and picked it up. 'Popular girl. Would you like me to throw it in the river?'
He shook his head. 'There's no need. Besides, it might excite me, mightn't it? Go on.' She put it back on the blanket.
'The second day after we'd left Lak, in the morning, we found the body of a child – a boy of about ten – cast up on the shore. He was dreadfully thin. He'd been stabbed to death. He had a pierced ear and chain-marks on his ankles. The soldiers were wild with rage. That was when I began to wonder whether you might have been murdered by the slave-traders. I was frantic with worry and God help me, I thought more of that than of Lord Shardik.
'About the middle of that afternoon I was walking up the shore with Tan-Rion and his tryzatt when two canoes came downstream, manned by a Yeldashay officer, two soldiers and two villagers from Tissarn. That was how we learned that Radu had been found and Genshed and Lalloc were dead. The officer told us how Lord Shardik had given his life to save Radu and the children, and of how he split the rock. It was like a miracle, he said, like an old tale beyond belief.
'The Yeldashay, of course, could think of nothing but Radu, but I questioned the officer until I found out that you had been with Genshed and that Shardik had saved you too. 'Wounded, feverish and half out of his mind,' the officer said, but they didn't think you would die.
'One of the canoes went on to Zeray, but I made Tan-Rion give me a place in the other that was going back. We travelled upstream all night, inshore against the current, and reached Tissarn soon after dawn. I went first to Lord Shardik, as I was in honour and duty bound. No one had touched him; and just as the Tuginda had said, I knew then what I had to do. Tan-Rion has already set about the preparations. He made no difficulty when I asked him. The Yeldashay feel very differently now about Lord Shardik, you sec.
'But I've talked too long, my darling. I mustn't tire you any more tonight.'
'One question,' said Kelderek. 'One only. What of Radu and the children?'
'They're still here. I've met Radu. He spoke of you as his friend and comrade. He's weak and very much distressed.' She paused. 'There was a little girl?' Kelderek drew in his breath sharply, and nodded.
'Elleroth has been sent for,' she said. 'The other children – I've not seen them. Some are recovering, but I'm told that several are in a very bad way, poor little things. At least they're all in good hands. Now you must sleep again.' 'And you too, my dearest Travel-All-Night. We must both sleep.
'Goodnight, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. Look, the daylight's quite gone. I'll ask old Dirion, bless her, to bring her lamp and sit with you until she's sure you're asleep.'
56 The Passing of Shardik
Although it was now quite dark he could hear, some distance away, the sounds of men working – concerted, rhythmic shouts, as though heavy objects were being lugged into place; hammering, splintering and the knock of axes. A faint glow of torchlight was discernible from somewhere near the river. Once, when a deep splash was followed by a particularly loud shouting, Dirion, sitting by her lamp, clicked her tongue reprovingly. She said nothing in explanation, however, and after a little he ceased to wonder what urgent demand of war could have come upon the soldiers in this remote place where, so far as he knew, no enemy threatened. He fell asleep, waking to see moonlit ripples reflected in the roof and Melathys sitting by the lamp. Somewhere outside, a Yeldashay sentry called, 'All's well,' in the expressionless, stylized tone of one who observes routine.
'You should sleep,' he whispered. She started, came over to the bed, bent and kissed him lightly and then nodded, smiling, towards the neighbour room, as though to say she would sleep there: and at that moment Dirion returned. Yet much later in the night, when he woke, crying and struggling, from a dream of Genshed, it was still Melathys who was with him. He had somehow struck his wounded finger-nail. The pain was sickening and she comforted him as infants or animals are comforted, repeating the same phrases in a quiet, assured voice, 'There, there; the pain will go soon, it will go soon; wait now, wait now,' until he felt that it was indeed she who was making the pain subside. As the darkness began to melt into first light he lay awake, acquiescent, listening to the river and the growing sounds of morning – the birds, the clang of a pot and the snapping of sticks which someone was breaking across his knee.
He realized that for the first time since leaving Ortelga he was taking pleasure in diese sounds and that they were filling him, as once long ago, with expectancy of the coming day. To eat a meal, to complete a day's work, to come home tired to a fire, to greet a girl, talk and listen – a man free to do these things, he thought, should wear his blessings like a garland.
Yet when he had eaten and Melathys had changed his dressings he fell asleep again, waking only a little before noon, when a random sunbeam touched his eyes. He felt stronger, in pain certainly but no longer its helpless victim. After a time he put his foot to the floor, stood up dizzily, holding on to the bed, and looked about him.
His room and another comprised the upper storey of a fairly large hut: plank floor and walls, with an Ortelgan-style roof of reed thatch over zeilapa poles. The eastern side, behind the head of his bed, was a gallery, half-walled and open to the river almost immediately below.
He hobbled to the gallery wall and leaned upon it, looking out across the Telthearna to the distant Deelguy shore. Far off, men were fishing, their net stretched between two canoes. The midstream current glittered and close by, a little to his left, a few gaunt oxen stood drinking in the shallows. It was so quiet that after a time his ear caught the sound of breathing. He turned and, looking into the next room, saw Melathys lying asleep on a low, rough bed like his own. She was no less beautiful in sleep, lips closed, forehead smooth, her long eyelids curved, he thought, like waves lapping on her cheeks in dark ripples of lashes. This was the girl who for his sake had slept very little last night and not at all the night before. He had been restored to her by Shardik, whom he had once cursed and planned to destroy.
He turned back towards the river and for a long time remained leaning on the half-wall, watching the slow clouds and their mirrored images. The water was so smooth that when two duck flew across a white cloud, wheeled in the sky and disappeared upstream, their reflections were plain as themselves. This he saw with a sense of having seen the like before, yet could not remember where.
