likenesses of insects, of trailing weeds and drops of water, all many times larger than the life. The hard light of noon stressed little of these fancies, accentuating rather the single, shadowed mass of the north front, grave and severe as a judge presiding above the busy streets. But at evening, when the heat of the day broke and the hard shadows fled away, the red, slanting light would soften the outline of walls and towers and emphasize instead their marvellous decoration, so that at this hour the palace suggested rather some beautiful, pleasure-loving woman, adorned with jewels and flowers, ready for a joyous meeting or homecoming beyond compare. And by the first light of day, before the gongs of the city's two water-clocks clashed one after the other for sunrise, it had changed yet again and become, in the misty stillness, like a pool of water-lilies half-opened among the dragon-flies and sipping, splashing swallows.
Some way from the foot of the Leopard Hill was the newly-excavated Rock Pit, immediately above which stood the House of the King, a gaunt square of rooms and corridors surrounding a hall -once a barracks for soldiers, but now reserved for another use and another occupant. Close by, grouped about the north side of the cypress gardens and the lake called the Barb, were stone buildings, resembling those on Quiso, but larger and more numerous. Some of these were used as dwellings by the Ortelgan leaders, while others were set aside for hostages or for delegations from the various provincial peoples, whose comings and goings, with embassies to the king or petitions to lay before the generals, were incessant in this empire at war on a debatable frontier. Beyond the cypress gardens a walled road led to the Peacock Gate, the only way through the fortified rampart dividing the upper from the lower city.
The lower city – the city itself, its paved streets and dusty alleys, its odours and clamour by day, its moonlight and jasmine by night, its cripples and beggars, its animals, its merchandise, its traces everywhere of war and pillage, doors hacked and walls blackened with fire – does the city too return out of the dark? Here ran the street of the money-changers and beyond, on either side of a narrow avenue of ilex trees, stood the houses of the jewel-merchants – high, barred windows and a couple of strong fellows at the gate to enquire a stranger's business. The torpid flies about the open sweet-stalls, the smells of leather and dung and spices and sweat and herbs, the fruit market's banks of gaudy panniers, the rostra, barracoons and blocks of the slave market with its handsome children, its cozening foreigners and outlandish tongues, the shoe-makers sitting absorbed at their tapping and stitching in the midst of the hubbub, the clinking street-walkers strolling nowhere in particular with their stylized gait and sidelong glances, the coloured flowers in the water, the shouting across a street of the news of a sale or an offer, in cryptic words revealing nothing except to their intended hearer; the quarrels, the lies, the promises, the thieves, the long-drawn crying of wares on notes that the years have turned into songs, the streets of the stonemasons, carpenters, weavers, of the astrologers, doctors and fortunetellers. The scuttling lizards, the rats and dogs, the fowls in coops and the pretty birds in cages. The cattle market had been burned to the ground in the fighting and on one of the sagging, open doors of the temple of Cran someone had daubed the mask of a bear – two eyes and a snarling muzzle, set between round cars. The Tamarrik gate, that wonder second only to the Palace, was gone for ever -gone the concentric filigree spheres, the sundial with its phallic gnomon and nympholeptic spiral of hours, the incredible faces peering through the green leaves of the sycamore, the great ferns and the blue- tongued lichens, the wind-harp and the silver drum that beat of itself when the sacred doves alighted at evening to be fed. The fragments of Fleitil's masterpiece, constructed in an age when none conceived it possible that war could approach Bekla, had been gleaned from the rubble secretly and with bitter tears, during the night before Ged-la-Dan and his men supervised the building, by forced labour, of a new wall to close the gap. The two remaining gates, the Blue Gate and the Gate of Lilies, were very strong and entirely suited to Bekla's present and more dangerous role of a city that scarcely knew friend from foe.
On this cloudy spring morning the surface of the Barb, ruffled by the south wind, had the dull, broken shine of an incised glaze. Along the lonelier, south-eastern shore, from which pasture-land, enclosed within the city walls, stretched away up the slopes of Crandor, a flock of cranes were feeding and squabbling, wading through the shallows and bending their long necks down to the weed. On the opposite side, in the sheltering cypress gardens, men were strolling in twos and threes or sitting out of the wind in the evergreen arbours. Some were attended by servants who walked behind them carrying cloaks, papers and writing materials, while others, harsh-voiced and shaggy as brigands, broke from time to time into loud laughter or slapped each other's shoulders; betraying, even while they tried to hide it, the lack of ease which they felt in these trim and unaccustomed surroundings. Others again clearly wished to be known for soldiers and, though personally unarmed, in deference to the place and the occasion, had instructed their servants to carry their empty scabbards conspicuously. It seemed that a number of these men were strangers to each other, for their greetings, as they passed, were formal – a bow, a grave nod or a few words: yet their very presence together showed that they must have something in common. After a time a certain restlessness – even impatience -began to show among them. Evidently they were waiting for something that was delayed.
At length the figure of a woman, scarlet-cloaked and carrying a silver staff, was seen approaching the garden from the King's House. There was a general move in the direction of the gate leading into the walled road, so that by the time the woman reached it, forty or fifty men were already waiting there. As she entered some thronged about her; others, with an air of detachment, idled, or pretended to idle, within earshot. The woman, dour and stolid in manner, looked round among them, raised in greeting her hand, with its crimson wooden rings, and began to speak. Although she spoke in Beklan, it was plain that this was not her tongue. Her voice had the slow, flat cadence of Telthearna province and she was, as they all knew, a priestess of the conquerors, an Ortelgan.
'My lords, the king greets you and welcomes you to Bekla. He is grateful to each of you, for he knows that you have the strength and safety of the empire at heart. As you all know, it was..'
At this moment she was interrupted by the stammering excitement of a thick-set, lank-haired man, who spoke with the accent of a westerner from Paltesh.
'- Madam Sheldra – saiyett – tell us – the king – Lord Crendrik – no harm has befallen him?
Sheldra turned towards him unsmilingly and stared him into silence. Then she continued,
'As you all know, he intended to have received you this morning in audience at the Palace, and to have held the first meeting of the Council this afternoon. He has now been obliged to alter this intention.'
She paused, but there was no further interruption. All were listening with attention. The distant idlers came closer, glancing at each other with raised eyebrows.
'General Ged-la-Dan was expected to reach Bekla last night, together with the delegates from eastern Lapan. However, they have been unexpectedly delayed. A messenger reached the king at dawn with the news that they will not be here until this evening. The king therefore asks your patience for a day. The audience will be held at this time tomorrow and the Council will commence in the afternoon. Until then you are the guests of the city, and the king will welcome all who may wish to sup with him in the Palace an hour after sunset.'
A tall, beardless man, wearing a fox-fur cloak over a white, pleated kilt and purple damask tunic blazoned with three corn-sheaves, came strolling elegantly along the terrace and turned his eyes towards the crowd as though he had just noticed them for the first time. He stopped, paused a moment and then addressed Sheldra across their heads in the courteous and almost apologetic tone of a gentleman questioning someone else's servant,
'I wonder what might have delayed the general? Perhaps you can be so kind as to tell me?'
Sheldra made no immediate reply and it seemed that her self-possession was not altogether equal either to the question or to the questioner. She appeared to be not so much considering the question as hoping that it might go away, as though it were some kind of pestering insect. She betrayed no actual confusion but at length, keeping her eyes on the ground, she turned, avoiding the tall man's gaze in the manner of some governess or duenna in a wealthy house, out of countenance to find herself required to respond graciously to unsought attention from friends of the family. She was about to leave when the newcomer, inclining his sleek head and persisting in his kindly and condescending manner, stepped smoothly through the crowd to her side.
'You see, I am most anxious to learn, since if I am not mistaken, the General's army is at present in Lapan province, and any misfortune of his would certainly be mine as well. I am sure that in the circumstances you will excuse my importunity.'
Sheldra's muttered answer seemed appropriate less to a royal messenger than to some gauche and sullen waiting-woman in a yeoman's kitchen.
'He stayed with the army, I think -I heard, that is. He is coming soon.'
'Thank you,' replied the tall man. 'He had some reason, no doubt? I know that you will wish to help me if you can.' Sheldra flung up her head like a mare troubled by the flies.
