omen – would call to them and ask to return to Lak in their canoe. None would be the wiser, for no one had been told what he intended. Indeed, it was essential to his purpose that none should know.
If the Tuginda were still alive Melathys, he knew, would never leave her. She would remain in Zeray, enduring the dangers of that evil place: and if the Tuginda were later to recover, would accompany her to Lak – not now to escape from Zeray, but solely in order to be nearer to Shardik – perhaps even to seek for him herself. But if the Tuginda were to die – if she were already dead – Melathys, though no longer a priestess of Quiso, would be indissuadable from the belief that she herself must now assume the Tuginda's duty to find Shardik: yes, he reflected bitterly, to seek to divine God's will from whatever accidents might attend the last days of a savage, dying animal. This remnant of an arid, meaningless religion, which had already brought him to grief, now stood between him and any chance he might have of escape from Zeray with the woman he loved.
And such an animal! Could there ever, in truth, have been a time when he had loved Shardik? Had he indeed defied Bel-ka-Trazet for his sake, believed him to be the incarnation of the power of God and prayed to him to accept his life? Lak, which he had reached at noon of the previous day and where he had spent the night, was as full of hatred for Shardik as a fire is full of heat. There was no talk but of the mischief, craft and savagery of the bear. It was more dangerous than flood, more unpredictable than pestilence, such a curse as no village had ever known. It had destroyed not only beasts but, wantonly, the patient work of months – stockades, fences, pens, rock-pools built for fish-traps. Most believed it to be a devil and feared it accordingly. Two men, experienced hunters, who had ventured into the forest in the hope of trapping or killing it, had been found mauled to death, having evidently been taken by surprise. The fishermen who had seen it on the shore were all agreed that they had been frightened by the sense of something evil in its very presence, like that of a serpent or a poisonous spider.
Kelderek, showing the seal of Bel-ka-Trazet but saying of himself only that he had been sent from Zeray to seek help in planning a journey north for the survivors of the Baron's household, had talked with the elder, an ageing man who clearly knew little or nothing of Bekla, its Ortelgan religion or its war with the far-off Yeldashay. To Kelderek, as to a follower of Bel-ka-Trazet, he had shown a guarded courtesy, enquiring, as closely as he felt he could, about the state of affairs in Zeray and what was thought likely to happen there. Plainly, he took the view that now that the Baron was dead there was little to be gained from helping the Baron's woman.
'As for a journey to the north,' he said, grimacing as he scratched between his shoulders and signalling to a servant to pour Kelderek more of his sharp, cloudy wine, 'there's no attempting it as long as we are so afflicted. The men won't stir into the forest or up the shore. If the beast were to wander away, perhaps, or even to die -' He fell silent, looking down at the floor and shaking his head. After a little he went on, 'I have thought that in full summer – in the heat – we might perhaps fire the forest, but that would be dangerous. The wind – often the wind goes into the north.' He broke off again and then added, 'Linsho – you want to go to Linsho? The ones they let through Linsho are those who can pay. That is how they subsist, those who live there.' There was a note of envy in his voice.
'What about crossing the river?' asked Kelderek, but the chief only shook his head once more. 'A desert place – robbed and killed -' Suddenly he looked up, his eye sharp as the moon emerging from behind clouds. 'If we started taking men across the river, it would become known in Zeray.' And he threw the dregs of his wine across the dirty floor.
It was while he was lying awake before dawn (and scratching as nimbly as the elder) that his desperate and secret project entered Kelderek's mind. If Melathys were ever to become his alone, then Shardik must die. If he were simply to wait for Shardik to die, it was very possible that Melathys would die first. Shardik must be known to be dead – the news must reach Zeray – but he must not be known to have met a violent death. The chief alone must be taken into confidence before the killing was carried out. To him the condition would be secrecy and Kelderek's price, payable upon proof of success, an escort to Linsho for himself, the two women and their servant, together with whatever help might be necessary towards paying for their passage through the Gap.
A few hours later, still pondering this plan and saying nothing of where he was going, he set out northward along the shore. Whatever traces Shardik might have left, they would have to be found without a guide. To kill him, if it were possible at all, would be the most difficult and dangerous of tasks, not to be attempted without prior knowledge of the forest outskirts and the places he frequented in his comings and goings near Lak. Arriving at the first of the inlets between the island-like hillocks, Kelderek began a careful search for tracks, droppings and other signs of Shardik's presence.
Not that, as the lonely morning wore on, he was free for one moment from a mounting oppression both of fear and dread: the first showing him clearly his bleeding, mutilated body savaged by the bear's great claws; the second revealing nothing, but hanging like a mist upon the edges of thought and conferring an uneasy suspicion. As a thief or fugitive who cannot avoid passing some watch-tower or guard-house continues on his way, but nevertheless cannot keep from glancing out of the tail of his eye towards the walls on which there is no one actually to be seen, so Kelderek pursued his course, able neither to admit nor entirely to exclude the idea that he was observed and watched from some transcendental region inscrutable to himself.
Shardik's power was dwindling, sinking, melting away. His death was ordained, was required by God. Why then should not his priest hasten that which was inevitable? And yet, to approach him as an enemy – to intend his death – he thought of those who had done so – of Bel-ka-Trazet, of Gel-Ethlin, of Mollo, of those who kept the Streets of Urtah. He thought, too, of Ged-la-Dan setting out, high-stomached, to impose his will upon Quiso. And then, on the very point of turning back, of abandoning his resolve, he saw again Melathys' tear-stained face lifted to his in the lamplight, and felt her body clasped to his own – that vulnerable body which remained in Zeray like a ewe abandoned by herdsmen on a wild hillside. No danger, natural or supernatural, was too great to be faced if only, by that means, he could return in time to save her life and convince her that nothing was of greater importance than the love she felt for him. Fighting against his mounting sense of uneasiness, he continued his search.
A little before noon, reaching the further end of one of the island-like promontories, he saw below him a pool at the mouth of a creek. Scrambling down the bank, he knelt among the stones to drink, and on raising his head immediately saw before him, some yards away on the creek's muddy, further shore, a bear's prints, clear as a seal on wax. Looking about him, he felt almost sure that this must be the place spoken of by the fishermen. It was plainly an habitual drinking-place, bear-marked so unmistakably that a child could have perceived the signs; and certainly visited at some time since the previous day.
To have seen the prints before his own feet had marked the mud was a stroke of luck which should make it simple, a mere matter of patience, to gain sight of the bear itself. All he needed was a safe place of concealment from which to watch. Splashing through the shallows, he made his way back as far as the next inlet, a long stone's throw from the pool where he had knelt to drink. From here he once more climbed the promontory to the ollaconda tree and, having made sure that he could observe the shore of the creek, lay down among the roots to wait. The wind, as the elder had said, was from the north, the forest on his left was so thick that nothing could approach without being heard; and in the last resort he could take to the river. Here he was as safe as he could reasonably hope to be.
While the slow time passed with the movement of clouds, the whine of insects and the sudden, raucous cries and scutterings of water-fowl on the river, he fell to reflecting on how the killing of Shardik might be accomplished. If he were right, and this was a drinking-place to which the bear regularly returned, it should afford him a good opportunity. He had never taken part in killing a bear, nor had he ever heard of anyone, except the Beklan nobleman of whom Bel-ka-Trazet had spoken, who had attempted it. Certainly a solitary bow seemed altogether too dangerous and uncertain. Whatever the Beklan might have supposed thirty years ago, he himself did not believe that a bear could safely be killed by this means alone. Poison might have succeeded, but he had none. To try to construct any kind of trap was out of the question. The more he pondered his difficulties, the more he was forced to the conclusion that the business would be impossible unless the bear's alertness and strength had become so much weakened that he could hope to hold it with a noose long enough to pierce it with several arrows. Yet how to noose a bear? Other, bizarre ideas passed through his mind – to catch poisonous snakes and by some means drop them out of a sack from above, while the bear was drinking; to suspend a heavy spear – he broke off impatiently. These childish plans were not capable of being effected. All he could do for the moment was to await the bear, observe its condition and behaviour and see whether any scheme suggested itself.
It was perhaps three hours later, and he had somewhat relaxed his vigilance, leaning his sweating forehead upon his forearm and wondering, as he closed his eyes against the river glitter, how Ankray meant to set about getting more food when what was in the house had gone, when he heard the sounds of a creature approaching from the undergrowth beyond the creek. The next moment – so quietly and swiftly may the most fateful and long-
