Shardik

least, he summoned the confidence to speak firmly.

'Tell me who Rantzay is,' he said, 'and why she and those other women have been brought here.'

For a few moments Sheldra did not answer and he thought, 'She is going to ignore me.' Then she replied, 'Of those who came with the Tuginda, Melathys was the only priestess. The rest o? us are novices or servants.'

'But Melathys must have been at most as young as any,' said Kelderek.

'Melathys was not an Ortelgan. She was rescued from a slave-camp during the Beklan civil wars – the wars of the Heldril – and brought to the Ledges when she was a child. She learned many of the mysteries very early.' 'Well?' demanded Kelderek, as the girl said no more.

'When the Tuginda knew that Lord Shardik had indeed returned and that we must remain here to tend and cure him, she sent for the priestesses Anthred and Rantzay, together with the girls whom they are instructing. When Shardik recovers they will be needed for the Singing.'

She fell silent again, but then broke out suddenly, 'Those who served Lord Shardik long ago had need of all their courage and resolution.'

'I believe you,' answered Kelderek, looking down to where the bear, like a crag beside the pool, still lay in drugged sleep. Yet in the same moment there rose in his heart an abandoned elation and the conviction that to none but the Tuginda herself had it been given to feel so intensely as he the fierce and mysterious divinity of Shardik. Shardik was more than life to him, a fire in which he was ready -nay, eager – to be consumed. And for that very reason Shardik would transform but not destroy him – this he knew. As though with foreboding, he trembled for an instant in the sultry air, turned, and made his way back to the camp.

That night the Tuginda talked with him again, walking slowly back and forth along the bank above the fall, where stood burning that same flat, green-rush-shaded lantern that he had followed across the leaping tree-trunk in the dark. Rantzay, a head taller than himself, kept pace with them on the Tuginda's other side, and as he saw her checking her long stride out of deference to the Tuginda and himself, he remembered with a certain wry amusement how he had groped and clambered after her through the steep woods. They spoke of Shardik, and the gaunt, silent priestess listened attentively.

'His wounds are clean,' said the Tuginda. 'The poison has almost left them. The drugs and medicines always work strongly on any creature, whether human or animal, that has never known them before. We can be almost certain now that he will recover. If you had found him only a few hours later, Kelderek, he would have been past our help.' Kelderek felt that now at last was the time to ask her the question that had been flickering in his mind for the past three days, vanishing and reappearing like a firefly in a dark room. ' What are we going to do, saiyett, when he recovers?'

'I do not know any more than you. We must wait until we are shown.'

He blundered on. 'But do you mean to take him to Quiso – to the Ledges?'

'I mean?' For a moment she looked at him coldly, as she had looked at Bel-ka-Trazet; but then answered in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone, 'You must understand, Kelderek, that it is not for us to make schemes and put them into practice upon Lord Shardik. It is true, as I told you, that sometimes, long ago, it was the Tuginda's task to bring Shardik home to the Ledges. But those were days when we ruled in Bekla and all was ordered and sure. Now, at this moment, we know nothing, except that Lord Shardik has returned to his people. His message and his purpose we cannot yet discern. Our work is simply to wait, to be ready to perceive and to carry out God's will, whatever it may be.' They turned and began to walk back towards the fall.

'But that does not mean that we are not to think shrewdly and act prudently,' she went on. 'By the day after tomorrow the bear will no longer be drugged and will begin to recover its strength. You are a hunter. What do you think it will do then?'

Kelderek felt perplexed. His question had been returned to him without an answer. In spite of what he had heard her say to Bel-ka-Trazet, it had never occurred to him that the Tuginda had not in her mind some plan for bringing Shardik to the Ledges. What had been puzzling him was how it was to be done, for even if the bear were to remain drugged the difficulties seemed formidable. Now he realized, with a shock, that she intended simply to stand by while this enormous wild animal regained its natural strength. If this was indeed – as she evidently believed – the course of humility and faith in God, it was of a kind beyond his experience or understanding. For the first time his trust in her began to waver.

She read his thoughts. 'We are not buying rope in the market, Kelderek. or selling skins to the factor. Nor are we labouring for the High Baron by digging a pit in the forest; or even choosing a wife. We are offering our lives to God and Lord Shardik and pledging ourselves humbly to accept whatever He may vouchsafe to give in return. I asked you – what is the bear likely to do?'

'It is in a strange place that it does not know, saiyett, and will be hungry after its illness. It will look for food and may well be savage.' 'Will it wander?'

'I have been thinking that soon we shall all be forced to wander. We have little food left and I cannot hunt alone for so many.'

'Since we can be sure that the High Baron would refuse to send us food from Ortelga, we must do the best we can. There are fish in the river and duck in the reeds, and we have nets and bows. Choose six of the girls and take them out to hunt with you. There may be little enough to share at first, but there will be more as they learn their business.' 'It can be done for a time, saiyett -' 'Kelderek, are you impatient? Whom have you left in Ortelga?' 'No one, saiyett. My parents are dead and I am not married.' 'A girl?' He shook his head, but she continued to gaze at him gravely.

'There are girls here. Commit no sacrilege, now of all times, for the least ill to follow would be our death.' He broke out indignantly, 'Saiyett, how can you think -'

She only looked steadily at him, holding his eyes as they paced on and turned about once more under the stars. And before his inward sight rose the figure of Melathys on the terrace; Melathys, dark-haired, white-robed, with the golden collar covering her neck and shoulders; Melathys laughing as she played with the arrow and the sword; trembling and sweating with fear on the edge of the pit. Where was she now? What had become of her? His protest faltered and ceased.

Next day began a life which he was often to recall in after years; a life as clear, as simple and immediate as rain. If he had ever doubted the Tuginda or wondered what was to come of her humility and faith, he had no time to remember it. At first the girls were so awkward and stupid that he was in despair and more than once on the point of telling the Tuginda that the task was beyond him. On the first day, while they were driving a kedana towards open ground, Zilthe, a mere child and the youngest of his huntresses, whom he had picked for her quickness and energy, mistook his movement in a thicket for that of the quarry and loosed an arrow that passed between his arm and body. They killed so little all day that he felt compelled to spend the night fishing. In the starlit shallows they netted a great bramba, spine-finned and luminous as an opal. He was about to spear it when the ill-fixed anchor- stake carried away and the fish, plunging heavily, took half the net down with it into the deep water. Nito bit her lip and said nothing.

By the second evening the whole camp was hungry and the thin, ragged bear was kept half-drugged and fed with scraps of fish and ill-spared flour-cakes baked in the ashes.

But necessity brings out a desperate skill in the clumsiest. Several of the girls were at least passable shots and on the third day they were lucky enough to kill five or six geese. They feasted that night by the fire, telling old stories of Bekla long ago, of the hero Deparioth, liberator of Yelda and founder of Sarkid, and of Fleitil, immortal craftsman of the Tamarrik Gate; and singing together in strange harmonies unknown to Kelderek, who listened with a kind of tremulous uncase as their voices followed each other round and down, like the fall of the Ledges themselves between the woods of Quiso.

Soon, indeed, he had forgotten everything but the life of the moment – the wet grass of early morning, when he stood to pray with hands raised towards the distant river; the smell of the trepsis as they searched beneath its leaves for the little gourds that had ripened since the day before; the green light and heat of the forest and the tense glances between the girls as they waited in ambush with arrows on the string; the scent of jasmine at evening and the chunk chunk, regular as a mill-wheel, of the paddles as they made their way upstream to net some likely pool. After the first few days the girls learned quickly and he was able to send them out by twos and threes, some to fish, some to follow a trail in the forest or hide in the reeds for wildfowl. He was kept busy making arrows – for they lost far too many – until he had taught Muni to make them better than he could himself. Ortelga he put from his mind, and his fear of Bel-ka-Trazet's revenge. At first he dreamed vividly of the Baron, who rose out of the ground with a face of broken stones and beckoned him to follow into the forest, where the bear was waiting; or