cudgel from a tree before continuing on his way. He had not been alone outdoors and after dark since the night on the battlfield and now, as the twilight deepened, he became more and more nervous and uneasy. Unable to face the graveyard, he turned short to his right and was soon stumbling among muddy pools and tussocks of coarse grass as big as his head. When at last he came to the outskirts of Zeray he could not tell in which direction the Baron's house might lie. Houses and hovels stood haphazard as anthills in a field. There were no definable streets or alleys, as in a true town: neither loiterers nor passers-by; and although he could now see, here and there, faint streaks of light showing through the chinks of doors and shutters, he knew better than to knock. For an hour – or less than an hour, perhaps, or more – he wandered gropingly in the dark, starting at every noise and hastening to set his back against the nearest wall; and, as he crept on, expecting each moment a blow on the back of the head. Suddenly, as he stood looking up at the few stars visible through the mist and trying to make out which way he was facing, he realized that the roof outlined faintly against the sky was that of the Baron's house. Making quickly towards it, he tripped over something pliant and fell his length in the mud. At once a door opened near by and two men appeared, one carrying a light He had just time to scramble to his feet before they reached him.
'Fell over the cord, eh?' said the man without the light, who had an axe in one hand. He spoke in Beklan and, seeing that Kelderek understood him, continued, 'That's what the cord's for, to be sure. Why you hanging round here, eh?' 'I'm not – I'm going home,' said Kelderek, watching them closely.
'Home?' The man gave a short laugh. 'First time I heard it called that in Zeray.' 'Good night' said Kelderek. 'I'm sorry I disturbed you.'
'Not so fast,' said the other man, taking a step to one side. 'Fisherman, are you?' Suddenly he started, held up his light and looked more searchingly at Kelderek. 'God!' he said. 'I know you. You're the Ortelgan king of Bekla!'
The first man peered in his turn. 'He mucking is, too,' he said. 'Aren't you? The Ortelgan king of Bekla, him as used to talk to the bear?'
'Don't be ridiculous,' said Kelderek. 'I don't even know what you mean.'
'We was Beklans once,' said the second man, 'until we had to run for knifing an Ortelgan bastard that mucking well deserved it I reckon it's your turn now. Lost your bear, have you?'
'I was never in Bekla in my life and as for the bear, I've never even seen it.'
'You're an Ortelgan all right though,' said the second man. 'D'you think we can't tell that? You talk the same as the mucking lot of them -'
'And I tell you I never left Ortelga until I had to come here, and I wouldn't know the bear if I saw it. To hell with the bear!'
'You bloody liar!' The first man swung up his axe. Kelderek hit him quickly with his cudgel, turned and ran. The light went out as they followed and they stopped uncertainly. He found himself before the courtyard door and hammered on it shouting 'Ankray! Ankray!' At once they were after him. He shouted again, dropped the fish, gripped his cudgel and faced about. He heard the bolts being drawn. Then the door opened and Ankray was beside him, jabbing with a spear into the dark and cursing like a peasant with a bull on the pole. The oncoming footsteps faltered and Kelderek, sufficiently self-possessed to pick up his fish, pulled Ankray through the door into the courtyard and bolted it behind them.
'Thank God it was no worse, sir,' said Ankray. 'I've been out here waiting for you since nightfall. I thought like enough you might run into some kind of trouble. The priestess has been very anxious. It's always dangerous after dark.'
'It's lucky for me you did wait,' answered Kelderek, 'Thanks for your help. Those fellows don't seem to like Ortelgans.'
'It's not a matter of Ortelgans, sir,' said Ankray reproachfully. 'No one's safe in Zeray after dark. Now the Baron, he always-'
Melathys appeared at the inner door, holding a lamp above her head and staring out in silence. Coming close, he saw that she was trembling. He smiled, but she looked up at him unsmilingly, forlorn and pallid as the moon in daylight. On an impulse, and feeling it to be the most natural thing in the world, he put one arm round her shoulder, bent and kissed her cheek. 'Don't be angry,' he said. 'I've learnt my lesson, I promise you: and at least I've got something to show for it,' He sat down by the fire and threw on a log. 'Bring me a pail, Ankray, and I'll gut these fish. Hot water too, if you've got it. I'm filthy.' Then, realizing that the girl had still said not a word, he asked her, 'The Tuginda – how is she?' 'Better. I think she's begun to recover.'
Now she smiled, and at once he perceived that her natural anxiety, her alarm at the sound of the scuffle outside, her impulse to anger with him, had been no more than clouds across the sun. 'So have you,' he thought, looking at her. Her presence was instinct with a new quality at once natural, complementary and enhancing, like that imparted by snow to a mountain peak or a dove to a myrtle tree. Where another might have noticed nothing, to him the change was as plain and entire as that of spring branches misted green with the first appearing leaves. Her face no longer looked drawn. Her bearing and movements, the very cadence of her voice, were smoother, gentler and more assured. Looking at her now, he had no need to call upon his memories of the beautiful priestess of Quiso.
'She woke this afternoon and we talked together for a time. The fever was lower and she was able to eat a little. She's sleeping again now, more peacefully.'
'It's good news,' replied Kelderek. 'I was afraid she must have taken some infection – some pestilence. Now I believe it was no more than shock and exhaustion.' 'She's still weak. She'll need rest and quiet for some time; and fresh food she must have; but that, I hope, we can get Are you a sorcerer, Kelderek, to catch trout in Zeray? They're almost the first I've ever seen. How was it done?' 'By knowing where to look and how to go about it.'
'It's a foretaste of good luck. Believe that, won't you, for I do. But stay here tomorrow – don't go out again – for Ankray's off to Lak. If he's to get back before nightfall he'll need all day.' 'Lak? Where is Lak?'
'Lak's the village I told you of, about eight or nine miles to the north. The Baron used to call it his secret cupboard. Glabron once robbed Lak and murdered a man there, so when the Baron had killed him I took care that they should learn of it. He promised them they should never again be troubled from Zeray and later, when he'd got control – or as much control as we ever had – he used to send them a few men at harvest and in the hut-building season – any he felt he could trust. In the end, one or two were actually allowed to settle in Lak. It was part of another scheme of the Baron's for settling men from Zeray throughout the province. Like so many of our schemes, it never got far for lack of material; but at least it achieved something – it gave us a private larder. Bel-ka-Trazet never asked for anything from Lak, but we traded, as I told you, and the elder thought it prudent to send him gifts from time to time. Since he died, though, they must have been waiting on events, for we've had no message, and while I was alone I was afraid to send Ankray so far. Now you're here, he can go and try our luck. I've got a little money I can give him. He's known in Lak, of course, and they might let us have some fresh food for the sake of old times.' 'Wouldn't we be safer there than in Zeray – all four of us?'
'Why, yes – if they would suffer us. If Ankray gets the chance tomorrow, he's going to tell the chief about the flight of Farrass and Thrild and about the Tuginda and yourself. But Kelderek, you know the minds of village elders – half ox, half fox, as they say. Their old fear of Zeray will have returned; and if we show them that we are in haste to leave it, they will wonder why and fear the more. If we could take refuge in Lak, we might yet find a way out of this trap: but everything depends on showing no haste. Besides, we can't go until the Tuginda has recovered. The most that Ankray will be able to do tomorrow is to see how the land Kes. Are your fish ready? Good. I'll cook three of them and put the other two by. We'll feast tonight, for to tell you the truth -' she dropped her voice in a pretence of secrecy and leaned towards him, smiling and speaking behind her hand – 'neither Ankray nor the Baron ever had the knack of catching fish!'
When they had eaten and Ankray, after drinking to the fisherman's skill in the sharp wine, had gone to watch by the Tuginda while he wove a fresh length of line out of thread from an old cloak and a strand of Melathys' hair, Kelderek, sitting close to the girl so that he could keep his voice low, recounted all that had happened since the day in Bekla when Zelda had first told him of his belief that Erketlis could not be defeated. Those things which had all but destroyed him, those things of which he was most ashamed – the elder who had thought him a slave-trader, the Streels of Urtah, the breaking of his mind upon the battlefield, Elleroth's mercy, the reason for it and the manner of his leaving Kabin – these he told without concealment, looking into the fire as though alone, but never for a moment losing his sense of the sympathy of this listener, to whom defilement, regret and shame had long been as familiar as they had become to himself. As he spoke of the Tuginda's explanation of what had happened at the Streels and of the ordained and now inevitable death of Shardik, he felt Melathys' hand laid gently upon his arm. He
