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 Telthearna, realized that she was evidently 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 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 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 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-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.
'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 know 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 bought 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 nordi 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.
