'Well, saiyett, seems 'twas about ten days ago now that the cattle began to be attacked in the night - pens broken and beasts killed. A man was found one morning with his head beaten in and another time a tree-trunk that three men couldn't have moved had been lifted out of a gap it had been set to block. They found tracks of some big animal, but no one knew what they were and everyone was afraid to search. Then about three days ago some of the men were out fishing, upstream and just a little way off shore, when the bear came down to drink. 'Seems it was that big they couldn't believe their eyes. Thin and sick it looked, they said, but very savage and dangerous. It stared at them from the bank and they went off quick. The men I talked to were all sure it's a devil, but myself, I wouldn't fear it, because I reckon it stands to reason who it is.' Ankray paused. None of his listeners spoke and he went on, 'It was a bear hurt the Baron when he was a young fellow; and when we left Ortelga after the fighting - that was all to do with sorcery and a bear, or so I've always understood. The Baron's often said to me, "Ankray," he'd say, "I'd have done better if I'd a been a bear, that I would. That's the way to make a kingdom out of nothing, believe me." Of course, I reckoned he was joking but now - well, saiyett, if any man was to come back as a bear, that man would be the Baron, don't you reckon? Them that saw it said 'twas terrible scarred and wounded, disfigured-like, round the neck and shoulders, and I reckon that proves it. There's no one in Lak ventures far now and all the cattle are penned together and fires kept burning at night. There's none of them dares go out and hunt the bear. There's even some kind of strange rumour that it's come alive out of hell.'

The Tuginda spoke. 'Thank you, Ankray. You did very well and we quite understand why you couldn't talk to the chief. You've earned a good night's sleep. Don't do any more work tonight, will you?'

'Very good, saiyett. No trouble, I'm sure. Good night, saiyett. Good night, sir.'

He went out, taking the lamp which Melathys silently handed to him. As his footsteps receded Kelderek sat motionless, staring down at the floor like a man who, in an inn or shop, hopes by averting his face to avoid recognition by some creditor or enemy who has unexpectedly entered. In the room beyond, a log fell in the fire and faintly through the shutters came the distant, rattling sound of the night-croaking frogs. Still he sat, and still none spoke. As Melathys moved across the room and sat down on the bench beside the bed, Kelderek realized that his posture had become unnatural and constrained, like that of a dog which, for fear of a rival, holds itself rigid against the wall. Still looking directly at neither of the women he stood up, took the second lamp from the shelf at his elbow and went to the door.

'I - I'll come back - something - a little while -'

His hand was on the latch and for an instant, in an unintended glance, he saw the Tuginda's face against the shadowy wall. Her eyes met his and he looked away. He went out, crossed the room beyond and stood for a little beside the fire, watching as its caves and cliffs and ledges consumed away, crumbled and gave place to others. Now and then the sound of the women's voices, speaking seldom and low, reached his cars and at length, wishing to be still more alone, he went to the room where he slept and once there, put down the lamp and stood still as an ox in a field.

What hold, what power over him did Shardik retain? Was it indeed of his own will or of Shardik's that he had slept beside him in the forest, plunged headlong into the Telthearna deeps and at last wandered from Bekla and his kingdom, through none would ever know what terror and humiliation, to Zeray? He had thought Shardik dead; or if not already dead, then dying far away. But he was not dead, not far away; and news of him had now reached -was it by his will that it had reached? - the man whom God had chosen from the first to be broken to fragments, just as the Tuginda had foretold. He had heard tell of priests in other lands who were the prisoners of their gods and people, remaining secluded in their temples or palaces until the day of their ritual, sacrificial death. He, though a priest, had known no such imprisonment. Yet had he been deluded in supposing himself free to renounce Shardik, to fly for his life, to seek to live for the sake of the woman whom he loved? Was he in truth like a fish trapped in a shrinking, land-locked pool in time of drought, free to swim wherever he could, yet fated, do what he might, to lie gasping at last on the mud? Like Bel-ka-Trazet, he had supposed that he had done with Shardik but Shardik, or so he now suspected, had not done with him.

He started at the sound of a step and the next moment Melathys came into the dim room. Without a word he took her in his arms and kissed her again and again - her lips, her hair, her eyelids - as though to hide among kisses, as a hunted creature among the green leaves. She clung to him, saying nothing, responding by her very choice of acquiescence, like one bathing in a pool who chooses for her own delight to remain standing breathlessly under the cascade that fills it. At length he grew calmer and, gently caressing her face between his hands, felt on his fingers the tears which the lamplight had not revealed.

'My love,' he whispered, 'my princess, my bright jewel, don't weep! I'll take you away from Zeray. Whatever may happen, I'll never, never leave you. We'll go away and reach some safe place together. Only believe me!' He smiled down at her. 'I have nothing in the world, and I'll sacrifice all for your sake.'

'Kelderek.' She kissed him in her turn, gently, three or four times, and then laid her head on his shoulder. 'My darling. My heart is yours until the sun burns out. Oh, can there ever have been so sorry a place and so wretched an hour for declaring love?'

'How else?' he answered. 'How else could two such as we discover ourselves to be lovers, except by meeting at the end of the world, where all pride is lost and all rank and station overthrown?'

'I will school myself to have hope,' she said. 'I will pray for you every day that you are gone. Only send me news as soon as you can.'

'Gone?' he replied. 'Where?''Why, to Lak: to Lord Shardik. Where else?'

'My dear,' he said, 'set your mind at rest. I promised I would never leave you. I'm done with Shardik.'

At this she stood back and, spreading her two arms wide behind her, palms flat against the wall on either side, looked up at him incredulously. incredulously.

'But - but you heard what Ankray said - we all heard him! Lord Shardik is in the forest near Lak - wounded - perhaps dying! Don't you believe it is Lord Shardik?'

'Once - ay, and not long ago -1 meant to seek death from Shardik in atonement for the wrong I had done both to him and to the Tuginda. Now I mean to live for your sake, if you'll have me. Listen, my darling. Shardik's day is done for ever, and for all I know Bekla's and Ortelga's day as well. These things ought not to concern us now. Our task is to preserve our lives - the lives of this household - until we can get to Lak, and then to help the Tuginda to return safely to Quiso. After that we shall be free, you and I. I'll take you away -we'll go to Deelguy or Terekenalt - further, if you like - anywhere where we can live a quiet, humble life, live like the plain folk we were meant to be. Perhaps Ankray will come with us. If only we're resolute, we'll have the chance to be happy at last, away from such loads as men's spirits were never meant to bear and such mysteries as they were never meant to pry into.' meant to seek death from Shardik in atonement for the wrong I had done both to him and to the Tuginda. Now I mean to live for your sake, if you'll have me. Listen, my darling. Shardik's day is done for ever, and for all I know Bekla's and Ortelga's day as well. These things ought not to concern us now. Our task is to preserve our lives - the lives of this household - until we can get to Lak, and then to help the Tuginda to return safely to Quiso. After that we shall be free, you and I. I'll take you away -we'll go to Deelguy or Terekenalt - further, if you like - anywhere where we can live a quiet, humble life, live like the plain folk we were meant to be. Perhaps Ankray will come with us. If only we're resolute, we'll have the chance to be happy at last, away from such loads as men's spirits were never meant to bear and such mysteries as they were never meant to pry into.'

She only shook her head slowly as the tears fell and fell from her eyes.

'No,' she whispered. 'No. You must set out for Lak at dawn tomorrow and I must stay here with the Tuginda.' 'But what am I to do?'

'That will be shown you. But above all you must keep a humble, receptive heart and the readiness to listen and obey.'

'It's nothing but superstition and folly I' he burst out. 'How can I, of all people, still remain a servant of Shardik - I, that have abused and harmed him more than any man-more even than Ta-Kominion? Only think of the peril to yourself and the Tuginda in remaining here with none but Ankray I The place is alive with danger now. At any moment it may become as though fifty Glabrons had risen from the grave -'

At this she cried out and sank to the floor, sobbing bitterly and covering her face with her arms as though to ward off his unbearable words. Sorry, he knelt beside her, stroking her shoulders, speaking reassuringly as though to a child and trying to lift her up. At length she rose, nodding her head with a kind of weary hopelessness, as though in acceptance of what he had said of Glabron.

'I know,' she said. 'I'm sick with fear at the thought of Zeray. I could never survive that again - not now. But still you must go.' Suddenly she seemed to take heart, as though by a forced act of her own will. 4 You won't be alone for long. The Tuginda will recover and then we'll come to Lak and find you. I believe it! I believe it! Oh, my darling, how I long for it - how I shall pray for you! God's will be done.'

4Melathys, I tell you I'm not going. I love you. I won't leave you in this place.'

4 Each of us failed Lord Shardik once,' she answered, 4 but we won't do so again - not now. He's offering us both redemption, and by the Ledges we'll take it, even if it means death' Giving him her hands, she looked at him with the authority of Quiso in her face, even while the single, wan lamp-flame showed the tear-streaks down her checks.

4Come, my dear and only beloved, we'll return now to the Tuginda and tell her that you're going to Lak.'

For a moment he hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders.

'Very well. But be warned, I shall speak my mind.'

She took up the lamp and he followed her. The fire had sunk low and as they passed the hearth he could hear the minute, sharp, evanescent tinkling of the cooling stones and dying embers. Melathys tapped at the door of the Tuginda's room, waited a few moments and then went in. Kelderek followed. The room was empty.

Pushing him to one side in her haste, Melathys ran to the courtyard door. He called 'Wait! There's no need -' But she had already drawn the bolts and when he reached the door he saw her lamp-flame on the other side of the courtyard, steady in the still air. He heard her call and ran across. The latch of the outer door was in place, but the bolts had been drawn back. On the wood, hastily traced, as it appeared, with a charred stick, was a curving, star-like symbol.

'What is it?' he asked.

4It's the sign carved on the Tereth stone,' she whispered, distraught. 4It invokes the Power of God and His protection. Only the Tuginda may inscribe it without sacrilege. Oh God! She couldn't help leaving the bolts drawn, but this she could do for us before she went,'

'Quickly!' cried Kelderek. 'She can't have gone far.' He ran across the courtyard and beat on the shutters, shouting 'Ankray! Ankray!'

The moon gave light enough and they had not far to search. She was lying where she had fallen, in the shadow of a mud wall about half-way to the shore. As they approached, two men who were stooping over her made off as silently as cats. There was a broad, livid bruise at the back of her neck and she was bleeding from the mouth and nose. The cloak which she had been wearing over her hastily-donned clothes was lying in the mud a few feet away, where the men had dropped it.

Ankray picked her up as though she had been a child and together they hastened back; Kelderek, his knife ready in his hand, repeatedly turning about to make sure they were not being followed. But none molested them and Melathys was waiting to open the courtyard door. When Ankray had laid the Tuginda on her bed the girl undressed her, finding no grave injuries except the blow at the base of the skull. She watched beside her all night, but at dawn the Tuginda had not recovered consciousness.

An hour later Kelderek, armed and carrying money, food and the seal-ring of Bel-ka-Trazet, set out alone for Lak.

Book VI

Genshed

48 Beyond Lak

It was afternoon of the following day; hot enough, even during this season of early spring, to silence the birds and draw from the forest a steamy, humid fragrance of young leaves and sprouting vegetation. The Telthearna glittered, coiling swiftly and silently down towards Lak and on to the strait of Zeray below. From a little north of Lak a region of forest, several miles across, stretched northwards as far as the open country round the Gap of Linsho, which divided it from the foothills and mountains beyond. It was from the southern extremities of this forest, dense and largely trackless, that the bear had been attacking the sheds and herds of Lak.

The shore hereabout was broken and indeterminate, undulating in a series of knoll-like promontories. Between these, the river penetrated up creeks and watery ravines, some of which ran almost half a mile inland. The promontories, grassy mounds on which grew trees and bushes, extended back from the waterside until, amongst thicker undergrowth, they ended abruptly in banks standing like little cliffs above the interior swamps. Frogs and snakes were numerous and at twilight, when the wading birds ceased their feeding, great bats would leave the forest to swoop for moths over the open river. It was a desolate place, seldom visited except by fishermen working offshore in their canoes.

Kelderek was lying at the foot of an ollaconda ollaconda tree, almost concealed among the thick, exposed roots curving all about him like ropes. There was no breeze and except for the hum of the insects no sound from the forest. The opposite shore, bare and rocky, showed hazy in the sunlight, almost as distant as he remembered seeing it from Ortelga. Nothing but birds moved on the river's surface. tree, almost concealed among the thick, exposed roots curving all about him like ropes. There was no breeze and except for the hum of the insects no sound from the forest. The opposite shore, bare and rocky, showed hazy in the sunlight, almost as distant as he remembered seeing it from Ortelga. Nothing but birds moved on the river's surface.

In the hot shade, the silence and solitude, he was deliberating upon an exploit so desperate that even now, when he had determined to attempt it, he was still half-hoping that it might be delayed or frustrated by the sudden appearance of fishermen or of some traveller along the shore. If fishermen came, he thought, he would take it as an 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-awaited events materialize - Shardik was before him, crouching upon the brink of the pool.

After war has swept across some farm or estate and gone its way, the time comes when villagers or neighbours, their fears aroused by having seen nothing of the occupants, set out for the place. They make their way across the blackened fields or up the lane, looking about them in the unnatural quiet. Soon, seeing no smoke and receiving no reply to their calls, they begin to fear the worst, pointing in silence as they come to the barns with their exposed and thatchless rafters. They begin to search; and at a sudden cry from one of their number come running together before an open, creaking door, where a woman's body lies sprawling face down across the threshold. There is a quick scurry of rats and a youth turns quickly aside, white and sick. Some of the men, setting their teeth, go inside and return, carrying the dead bodies of two children and leading a third child who stares about him, crazed beyond weeping. As that farm then appears to* those men, who knew it in former days, so Shardik appeared now to Kelderek: and as they look upon the ruin and misery about them, so Kelderek looked at Shardik drinking from the pool.

The ragged, dirty creature was gaunt as though half-starved. Its pelt resembled some ill-erected tent draped clumsily over the frame of the bones. Its movements had a tremulous, hesitant weariness, like those of some old beggar, worn out with denial and disease. The wound in its back, half-healed, was covered with a great, liver-coloured scab, cracked across and closing and opening with every movement of the head. The open and suppurating wound in the neck was plainly irritant, inflamed and torn as it was by the creature's scratching. The blood-shot eyes peered fiercely and suspiciously about, as though seeking on whom to revenge its misery; but after a little the head, in the very act of drinking, sank forward into the shallows, as though to keep it raised were a labour too grievous to be borne.

At length the bear stood up and, gazing in one direction and another, stared for a moment directly up at the mass of roots among which Kelderek lay in hiding. But it seemed to see nothing and, as he still watched it through a narrow opening like a loophole, me belief grew in him that it was concerned less with what it could see than with scenting the air and listening. Although it had not perceived him in his hiding-place, yet something else - or so it appeared -was making it uneasy; something not far off in the forest. If this were so, however, it was evidently not so much disturbed as to make off. For some while it remained in the shallows, more than once dropping its head as before, with the object, as Kelderek now perceived, of bathing and cooling the wound in its neck. Then, to his surprise, it began to wade from the pool into deeper water. He watched, puzzled, as it made towards a rock some little way out in the river. Its chest, broad as a door, submerged, then its shoulders and finally, though with difficulty, it swam to the rock and dragged itself out upon a ledge. Here it sat, facing, across the river, the distant eastern shore. After a time it made as though to plunge into midstream, but twice stopped short. Then a listlessness seemed to come upon it. Scratching dolefully, it lay down upon the rock as some old, half-blind dog might crouch in the dust, and covered its face with its fore-paws. Kelderek remembered what the Tuginda had said-'He is trying to return to his own country. He is making for the Telthearna and will cross it if he can.' If such a creature could weep, then Shardik was weeping.

To see strength failing, ferocity grown helpless, power and domination withered by pain as plants by drought - such sights give rise not only to pity but also - and as naturally - to aversion and contempt. Our sorrow for our dying captain is sincere enough, yet we must nevertheless make haste to leave this sunken fire before the increasing cold can overtake our own fortunes. For all his glorious past, it is only right that he should be abandoned, for we have to live - to thrive if we can - and setting aside all other considerations, the truth is that he has become irrelevant to the things that should now properly concern us. How odd it is that until now no one, apparently, should have perceived that after all he was never particularly wise; never particularly brave; never particularly honest, particularly truthful, particularly clean.

Upon Kelderek's inward eye flashed once more the figure of Melathys standing in the light of the sunset, she the once unattainable, who but two days before had held him in her arms and told him with tears that she loved him; she whose gay courage had made light of the foul danger and evil amidst which he had been compelled against his will to leave her to take her chance; she who in herself more than outweighed his lost kingdom and ruined fortunes. Hatred rose up in him against the mangy, decrepit brute on the rock, the very source and image of that superstition which had made of Melathys a brigands' whore and of Bel-ka-Trazet a fugitive; had brought the Tuginda close to death and now stood between him and his love. That this wretched creature should still have power to thwart him and drag him down together with itself! As he thought of all that he had lost and all that he still might lose - probably would lose - he shut his eyes and gnawed at his wrist in his angry frustration.

'Curse you!' he cried silently in his heart. 'Curse you, Shardik, and your supposed power of God! Why don't you save us from Zeray, we who've lost all we possessed for your sake, we whom you've ruined and deceived? No, you can't save us: you can't save even the women who've served you all their lives! Why don't you die and get out of the way? Die, Shardik, die, die!'

Suddenly there came to his ear what seemed like faint sounds of human speech from somewhere within the forest. Fear came upon him, for since the night on the battlefield there had remained with him a horror of the distant voices of persons unseen. Strange sounds were these, too, mysterious and hard to account for, resembling less the voices of men than of children - crying, it seemed, in pain or distress. He sprang up and as he did so heard, louder than the voices, a heavy splashing close at hand. Looking behind him, he recoiled in terror to see the bear wading ashore at the very foot of the bank below. It was glaring up at him, shaking the water from its pelt and snarling savagely. In panic he turned and began to force his way through the undergrowth, snatching and tearing at the bushes and creepers in his way. Whether the bear was pursuing him he could not tell. He dared not look back, but plunged on over the top of the hillock, scarcely feeling the grazes and scratches which covered his limbs. Suddenly, as he forced his way through a tangle of branches, he found no ground beneath his feet. He clutched at a branch which broke under his weight, lost his balance and pitched forward down the steep bank of the creek bounding the promontory on its landward side. His forehead struck a tree-root and he rolled over and lay unconscious, supine and half-submerged in mud and shallow water.

49 The Slave-Dealer

Pain, thirst, a green dazzle of light and a murmur of returning sound. Kelderek allowed his half-opened eyes to shut again and, frowning as he did so, felt something tight and rough pressed round his head. Raising one hand, he found his fingers rubbing against a band of coarse cloth and followed it round one temple, above the eyebrow. He pressed it, and pain blazed up like a flame behind his eyeballs. He moaned and let fall his hand.

Now he remembered the bear, yet felt no more fear of it. Something - what? - had already told him that the bear was gone. The daylight - what little he could endure beneath his eyelids - was older - it must be some time since he had fallen - but it was not this that had reassured him. His mind began to clear and as it did so he became aware once more of the roughness of the cloth upon his forehead. And as an ominous sound, heard first faintly at a distance and then more loudly near by, at the moment of repetition thrusts its startling meaning upon him who originally heard it with indifference, so, as Kelderek's returning senses grew keener, the significance of the cloth forced itself upon him.

He turned his head, shaded his eyes and opened them. He was lying on the bank of the creek, close to the muddy shallow into which he had fallen. The impression of his body was still plain in the mud, and the furrows evidently made by his feet as he was dragged to the spot where he now lay. On his other, shoreward side a man was sitting, watching him. As Kelderek's eyes met his the man neither spoke nor altered his gaze. He was ragged and dirty, with bristling, sandy hair and a rather darker beard, heavy eyelids and a white scar on one side of his chin. His mouth hung a little open, giving him an abstracted, pensive air and showing discoloured teeth. In one hand he was holding a knife, with the point of which he kept idly stroking and pressing the finger-tips of the other.

Kelderek smiled and, despite the stabbing pain behind his eyes, raised himself on his elbows. Spitting out mud and speaking with some difficulty, he said in Beklan, 'If it was you who pulled me out of there and put this bandage on my head, thank you. You must have saved my life.'

The other nodded twice, very slightly, but gave no other sign that he had heard. Although his eyes remained fixed on Kelderek, his attention seemed concentrated on pressing rhythmically with the knife-point the ball of each finger in mm.

'The bear's gone, then,' said Kelderek. 'What brought you here? Were you hunting or are you on a journey?'

Still the man made no reply and Kelderek, recalling that he was beyond the Vrako, cursed himself for being so foolish as to ask questions. He still felt weak and giddy, but it might pass off once he was on his feet. His best course now would be to get back to Lak before sunset and see what he was fit for after a meal and a night's sleep. He held out one hand and said, 'Will you help me up?'

After a few moments the man, without moving, said in broken but intelligible Ortelgan, 'You're a long way from your island, aren't you?'

'How did you know I'm an Ortelgan?' asked Kelderek. 'Long way,' repeated the man.

It now occurred to Kelderek to feel for the pouch in which he had been carrying the money he had brought from Zeray. It was gone and so were his food and his knife. This did not altogether surprise him, but certain other things did. Since he had robbed him, why had the man dragged him out of the creek and bound up his head? Why had he stayed to watch him and why, since he was clearly not an Ortelgan himself, had he spoken to him in Ortelgan? He said once more, tin's time in Ortelgan, 'Will you help me up?'

'Yes, get up,' said the man in Beklan, as though answering a different question. His previously half-abstracted interest seemed to have become more direct and he leaned forward alertly.

Kelderek, supporting himself on one hand and beginning to draw up his left leg, felt a sudden tug at his right ankle. He looked down. Both ankles were shackled and between them ran a light chain about the length of his forearm.

'What's this?' he asked, with a sudden spurt of alarm.

'Get up,' repeated the man. He rose and took two or three steps towards Kelderek, knife in hand.

Kelderek got to his knees and then to his feet, but would have fallen if the man had not gripped him by the arm. Shorter than Kelderek, he looked up at him sharply, straddle-legged, knife held ready. After a few moments, without moving his eyes, he jerked his head to one side.

'That way,' he said in Ortelgan.

'Wait,' said Kelderek. 'Wait a moment. Tell me -'

As he spoke the man seized his left hand, jerked it forward and with the point of his knife pierced him beneath one finger-nail. Kelderek cried out and snatched his hand away.

'That way,' said the man, jerking his head once more and moving the knife here and there before Kelderek's face, so that he flinched first to one side and then to the other.

Kelderek turned and, with the man's hand on his arm, began to stumble through the mud. At each step the chain, pulled taut between his ankles, checked the natural length of his stride. Several times he tripped and at length fell into a kind of shuffle, watching the ground for any protrusion that might throw him down. The man, walking beside him, kept up a tuneless whistling through his teeth, the sound of which, intensified suddenly at random moments, made Kelderek start in anticipation of some further attack. Indeed, had it not been for this he would probably have collapsed from weakness and the nausea induced by the wound under his finger-nail.

What kind of man might this be? From his dress and ability to speak Ortelgan it seemed unlikely that he was a Yeldashay soldier. What was the explanation of his having taken the trouble to save from a swamp, in lonely country, a destitute stranger whom he had already robbed? Kelderek sucked his finger, which was oozing blood from beneath the severed nail. If the man were a maniac - and why not, beyond the Vrako? What else had Ruvit been? - all he could do was to keep alert and watch for any chance that might offer itself. But the chain would be a grave handicap and the man himself, despite his short stature, was plainly the ugliest of adversaries.

He raised his eyes at the sudden sound of voices. They could not have walked far - perhaps not much more than a bow-shot from the creek. The ground was still marshy and the forest thick. Ahead was a glade among the trees and here he could make out people moving, though he could sec no fire or any of the usual features of a camp. The man uttered a single, wordless cry - a kind of bark - but waited for no answer, merely guiding him forward as before. They had reached the glade when the chain again tripped him and Kelderek fell to the ground. The man, leaving him to lie where he had fallen, walked on.

Breathless and caked in mud, Kelderek rolled over and looked up sideways from where he lay. The place, he realized at once, was full of a considerable number of people, and in fear that after all he had once again fallen into the hands of the Yeldashay, he sat up and stared quickly about him.

Save for the man himself, now sitting a little distance away and rummaging in a leather pack, all those in the glade were children. None appeared to be more than thirteen or fourteen years old. A boy near by, with a hare-lip and sores round his chin, was staring at Kelderek with vacant, sleepy attention, as though he had just awakened. Further off, a child with a continuous twitching of the head gazed up wide-eyed, his mouth gaping in a kind of rictus of startled alarm. As Kelderek looked this way and that he realized that many of the children were blemished or deformed in one manner or another. All were thin and dirty and had about them an air of listless ill-being, like half-starved cats on a laystall. Almost all, like himself, were chained at the ankles. Of the two he could see who were not, one had a withered leg, while above the ankles of the other the cracked weals left by the removed shackles were pustulant with sores. The children sat or lay silent on the ground, one asleep, one crouching to excrete, one shivering continually, one searching the grass for insects and eating them. They imparted to the green-lit place an eerie quality, as though it were a pool and they fishes in a world of silence, each occupied entirely with his own preservation and paying no more attention to others than this might require.

The man, then, must be a slave-trader dealing in children. The number of these permitted to work in the Beklan empire had been fixed, each being authorized by Kelderek, after enquiries made of the provincial governors, to buy specified quotas at approved prices in this place and that, a second quota not being allowed to be taken from the same place until a stated period had elapsed. The traders worked through the provincial governors and under their protection, being required to satisfy them that they had taken no more than their quotas and paid the approved prices, and in return receiving, where necessary, armed escorts for their journeys to the markets at Bekla, Dari-Paltesh or Thettit-Tonilda. It seemed likely that this man, while journeying with a party of child slaves bound for Bekla, had been cut off by the Yeldashay advance and in view of the value of his stock had decided, rather than abandon them, to flee beyond the Vrako. That would account for the children's shocking condition. But which of the dealers was this ? No great number of warrants had been issued and Kelderek, who, intent on learning as much as possible about the yield to be expected and the trade's taxable worth, had himself talked to most of the traders at one time or another, now tried to recall their individual faces. Of those he was able to remember, none corresponded to this man. At no time had more than seventeen authorizations been valid in the empire and of these scarcely any, once granted, had been transferred to a second holder; for who, once he had got his hands on it, would surrender so lucrative an occupation? Out of twenty names at the most he could not recall this man's. Yet surely he must be one or other of them? Or was he - and here Kelderek felt a sudden qualm of misgiving - could he be an unauthorized slaver, one of those he had been warned about and had declared liable to the heaviest penalties, who got their slaves where they could, sometimes by kidnapping, sometimes by bluff and terror in remote villages, or again by purchasing the half-witted, deformed or otherwise unwanted from those who were prepared to sell them; and, bringing them across country as little observed as possible, sold them secretly, either to the authorized dealers or else to anyone ready to buy? That such men had been operating in the empire he knew, and had known also their reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty, for unscrupulous double-dealing and taking what they could get wherever they might find it. 'All slave-traders are dealers in wretchedness,' a captured Yeldashay officer had once said to him while being questioned, 'but there are some - those of whom you pretend to know nothing - who creep about the land like filthy rats, scraping up the very dregs of misery for trifling profits; and for these, too, we hold you answerable, for he who builds a barn knows that rats will come.' Kelderek had let him talk and later, becoming still more indignant, the officer had unintentionally revealed a good deal of useful information.

Suddenly Kelderek's recollections were broken by the most unexpected of sounds - the laughter of an infant. He looked up to see a little girl, perhaps five years old, unchained, running across the glade and looking back over her shoulder at a tall, fair-haired lad. This boy, in spite of his chain, was pursuing her, evidently in sport, for he was hanging back and pretending, as people do when playing with quite little children, that she was succeeding in escaping from him. The child, though thin and pale, looked less wretched than the boys among whom she was running. She had almost reached Kelderek when she tripped and fell forward on her face The tall lad, overtaking her, picked her up, holding her in his arms and tossing her up and down to comfort her and distract her from crying. Thus occupied, he turned for a moment towards Kelderek and their eyes met.

He who catches suddenly the lilt of a song which he has not heard for years or the scent of the flowers that bloomed by the door where once he played in the dust, finds himself swept back, whether he will or no and sometimes with tears, into the depth of time past, recovering for a few moments the very feeling of being another person, upon whom life used to press with other, lighter fingers than those which he has since learned to endure. With no less a shock did Kelderek feel himself once more the Eye of God, Lord Crendrik the priest-king of Bekla; and recall on the instant the smells of fog and of smouldering charcoal, the sour taste in his mouth and the murmur from behind him as he faced the bars in the King's House, trying to gaze into eyes that he could not meet; the eyes of the condemned Elleroth. Then the fit was gone and he was staring in perplexity at a youth tossing a yellow-haired child in his arms.