Shardik

  "And this we can now put to her strongly," said Ged-la-Dan to the other members of the baronial council, "for make no mistake, she is no longer the figure we once feared in the days of Bel-ka-Trazet. She was wrong about the will of Lord Shardik, while Ta-Kominion and Kelderek were not. Her honor is as great and no greater than we are ready to accord to her, and will be commensurate with the extent of her use to us. But since many of the people still accord her honor, it will be prudent to add to our own security by bringing her here. In fact, if she will not come I will bring her myself."

  Kelderek had said nothing in dissent from this harsh assessment, since he felt sure that the Tuginda would be glad to accept her offered reinstatement, and that once she was in Bekla he would be able to help her to restore her former standing in the eyes of the barons.

  The messengers had returned without Neelith. It seemed that on Quiso she had broken off her prepared speech to kneel at the Tuginda's feet in tears, begging her forgiveness and crying passionately that she would never leave her again as long as she lived. After hearing what the rest had to say, the Tuginda had merely reminded them that she had been sent back to Quiso as a prisoner. She had, she said, no more liberty than that now accorded to Shardik to determine for herself whether or not she would go to one place or another.

  "But," she added, "you may tell them in Bekla that when Lord Shardik takes that liberty once again, I will take mine too. And you may also tell Kelderek that whatever he may think to the contrary, I am bound as he, and he is bound as I. And that he will one day discover."

  With this reply they had been obliged to return.

  "The bitch!" said Ged-la-Dan. "Does she think she is in any position to disguise her sulky mood with impudent speeches--she in the wrong of it and we in the right? I will be as good as my word, and I shall not be long about it either."

  Ged-la-Dan was absent for a month, which cost the army a serious tactical reverse in Lapan. He returned without the Tuginda and remained silent about the reason, until the tale told by his servants, under questioning from the other barons, began to make him a laughingstock behind his back. It turned out that he had made two separate and unsuccessful attempts to land on Quiso. On each occasion a stupor had fallen upon himself and those with him and his canoe had drifted below the island. On the second occasion it had struck a rock and sunk, and he and his companions had barely escaped with their lives. Ged-la-Dan lacked neither pride nor courage, but for his second attempt he had been forced to make use of fresh servants, the original paddlers having utterly refused to go a second time. Kelderek, shuddering at his own memories of the night journey to Quiso, could only marvel at the baron's stubbornness. It was plain that it had cost him dear indeed. For many months afterward, even in the field, he contrived to avoid sleeping alone and would never again travel by water.

  Was it, then, to expiate the memory of the Tuginda that Kelderek cared little what he ate and drank, remained chaste and left to others the spending of the wealth considered proper to the king's grandeur? Often he felt that this was indeed the reason, even while he wondered for the thousandth time what he could have done to help her. To have intervened on her behalf would have been to declare himself against Ta-Kominion. But despite his reverence for the Tuginda, he had passionately supported Ta-Kominion and been ready to follow him into any hazard. The Tuginda's conception of Shardik's power he had never understood, while Ta-Kominion's was plain. And yet he knew that at bottom to vindicate his own courage in Ta-Kominion's eyes he had thrown in his lot with what must surely have been the most desperate campaign that had ever proved successful. Now he was priest-king of Bekla, and he and not the Tuginda was the interpreter of Shardik. Yet how much understanding did he truly possess, and how much of the Ortelgan conquest was really due to him as Shardik's elect?

  The thought of the Tuginda was never far from his mind. As, after a few years of marriage, a childless woman cannot be free from her disappointment, reflecting, "What a beautiful morning--but I am childless," or "Tomorrow we go to the wine festival--but I am childless," so Kelderek's thoughts were troubled continually by the recollection of himself standing silent while the Tuginda was bound and led away. She had known her own mind as he had not known his: and he had deceived himself in believing that she would ever consent to become a party to Shardik's captivity in Bekla. Sometimes he felt ready to renounce his crown and return to Quiso to entreat, like Neelith, her forgiveness. Yet this would be to give up both his power and his search for the great revelation, of the imminence of which he was sometimes almost sure. Besides, he suspected that if he attempted the journey the barons would not suffer one so disloyal to themselves to live.

  From this dilemma his one retreat was to Shardik. Here was no undeserved reward of luxury, flattery or compliant, whispering pleasure by night, no riches or adulation--only solitude, ignorance and danger. While he served Lord Shardik in fear and suffering of mind and body, at least he could not accuse himself of having betrayed the Tuginda for his own gain. Often, during the years that had passed, he had half-hoped that Shardik would put an end to his perplexity by taking the life which was so continually offered to him. But once only had Shardik attacked him, striking suddenly as he stepped through the gate in the bars and breaking his left arm like a dry stick. He had fainted with the pain, but Sheldra and Nito, who had been at his back, had saved his life, dragging him away on the instant. The arm had set crooked, though he still had the use of it. Yet although, setting aside the pleadings of the girls and the warnings of the barons, he had continued, as soon as he was able, to stand from time to time before Shardik, the bear had never again shown him violence. Indeed, he seemed indifferent to Kelderek's approach and often, having raised his head as though to assure himself that it was he and none other, would continue merely to mope in the straw. At these times Kelderek would stand beside him, deriving comfort, as he prayed, from the knowledge that in spite of all that had passed, he and only he remained the human companion and mediator of Shardik. And thus, out of his unaccountable safety, were born his terrible visions of desolation, his conviction that he was still far wide of the mark and his belief that Shardik had some great secret to reveal.

  Yet despite his hours of solitude and austerity he was no mere recluse, brooding always upon the ineffable. During the four years since his return to Bekla with Shardik, he had played a full part in the counsels of the Ortelgans and maintained not only a number of intelligence agents, but also his own body of advisers with special knowledge of the various provinces, their features and resources. Much of the information that reached him was of military importance. A year before, he had received warnings of a daring plan to damage the iron workings at Gelt, so that Ged-la-Dan had been able to arrest the Yeldashay agents on their way north through Thettit, disguised as traders from Lapan. More recently, not three months ago, there had come from Dari Paltesh the disturbing news that a force of more than two thousand Deelguy irregulars, whose leaders had evidently realized the impossibility of crossing the mountains by the strongly guarded Gelt pass, had made their way along the north bank of the Telthearna, crossed into Terekenalt (whose king, no doubt being well paid, had done nothing to stop them), and then, by a swift march through Katria and Paltesh, succeeded in reaching the rebel province of Belishba, there being no provincial force strong enough to dispute their passage before they were gone. At this setback the Ortelgan leaders had shaken their heads, seeing at work the long and resourceful arm of Santil-ke-Erketlis and speculating on the use to which he would put this cleverly won reinforcement.

  In matters relating to trade, customs and taxation, however, Kelderek had quickly come to feel that his own insight, though faulty and inexperienced, was essentially surer than the barons'. It was, perhaps, precisely because he had never been either a baron or a mercenary living on tenants' dues and the plunder of war, but had made his rough living as a hunter and had known what it was to be dependent on iron, leather, wood and yarn for the artifacts of his craft that he perceived more pl
ainly than they the vital importance to the empire of trade. For months he had argued, against the indifference of Zelda and Ged-la-Dan, that neither the life of the city nor the war against the southern provinces could be maintained solely by spoil and that it was essential to keep open the recognized trade routes and not impress into military service every able-bodied young craftsman, merchant and caravaneer within the empire's boundaries. He had proved to them that in a year, two prosperous cattle breeders and their men, thirty tanners or twenty shoemakers could not only earn their own living but pay a tax large enough to keep in the field twice their own number of mercenaries.

  And yet trade had declined. Santil-ke-Erketlis, an adversary more shrewd and experienced than any of the Ortelgan leaders, had taken steps to see that it did. Bridges were broken and caravans attacked by paid bandits. Warehouses and their contents were mysteriously destroyed by fire. The finest craftsmen--builders, masons, jewelers, armorers, even vintners--were secretly approached and persuaded, sometimes at a cost equal to that of a year's pay for ten spearmen, that it would be in their best interests to travel south. The king's son of Deelguy was invited to Ikat, treated as befitted a prince and, perhaps not altogether fortuitously, found himself in love with a noble lady of that city, whom he married. The resources of the rebel provinces were less than those of Bekla, but Santil-ke-Erketlis possessed a flair for perceiving where a little extraordinary expenditure would prove effective. As time went on, merchants and traders became less and less ready to hazard their wealth in a realm so subject to the uncertainties and fluctuations of war. Taxes became increasingly difficult to collect from a people feeling the pinch and Kelderek was hard put to it to pay the contractors and craftsmen who supplied the army.

  It was in this difficulty that he had had recourse to a wide extension of the slave trade. A slave trade of sorts had always existed in the Beklan empire, but for about ten years before the Ortelgan conquest it had been restricted, having been allowed to get out of control to the point of provoking reaction throughout the provinces. It was traditionally accepted that prisoners taken in war, unless they could pay a ransom, might be sold as slaves. Sometimes these men would succeed in gaining their liberty, either returning home or else making a new life in the country to which they had been brought. Despite the harshness and suffering involved, this practice was regarded, in a hard world, as fair between peoples at war. During the latter days of Bekla's high prosperity, however, the number of large estates, households and businesses had increased and consequently the demand for slaves had grown until it became worthwhile for men to turn professional dealers and cater for it. Kidnaping and even breeding had become widespread, until several of the provincial governors had felt themselves driven to protest in the name of towns and villages living in fear--not only from raiding dealers but also from escaped slaves turned brigands--and of respectable citizens outraged. The slavers, however, had not been without their supporters, for the trade could not only afford to pay heavy taxes but also provided work for such craftsmen as clothiers and blacksmiths, while buyers visiting Bekla brought money to the innkeepers. The issue had come to the boil in the civil conflict known as the Slave Wars, when half a dozen independent campaigns had been fought in as many provinces, with and without the help of allies and mercenaries. From this confusion Santil-ke-Erketlis, formerly a Yeldashay estate owner of ancient family but no great wealth, had emerged as the most able leader on either side. Having defeated the slave trade supporters in Yelda and Lapan, he had sent help to other provinces and finally succeeded in settling matters in Bekla itself to the entire satisfaction of the Heldril ("old-fashioned people"), as his party was called. The cost to the state of extraditing the dealers and freeing all slaves who could prove themselves native to the empire had been met partly by fresh encouragement of the builders', masons' and carvers' trades for which Bekla had always been famous and partly by measures (of which the construction of the great Kabin reservoir had been one) to increase the prosperity of the peasants and small farmers.

  Nevertheless there remained, not only in Bekla itself but also in several of the towns in the western provinces, influential men who regretted the Heldril victory. It was these that Kelderek had sought out and put into local power, the bargain being that they should support the war in return for a revival of the unrestricted slave trade. This policy he defended to his own barons--some of whom could remember slave raids on the mainland country near Ortelga fifteen and twenty years before--partly as one of "needs must" and partly by emphasizing that the country was not being laid open to a totally uncontrolled trade. A fixed number of dealers were granted licenses each year to "take up" not more than their permitted quotas of women and children in particular provincial districts. Where a quota of able-bodied men was granted to any particular dealer, a fifth had to be surrendered to the army. There were, of course, no troops to spare to see that these consents were not abused and enforcement had to be left to the provincial governors. To all who complained of what he had done, Kelderek had one answer--"We will restrict the slave trade again when the war is over, so help us to win it."

  "Many of those who get taken up as slaves are local ne'er-do-wells and criminals that the dealers buy out of the jails," he had assured the barons, "and even of the children, many would otherwise have been neglected and ill-treated by mothers who never wanted them. A slave, on the other hand, always has a chance to prosper, with luck and ability." Han-Glat, an ex-slave from Terekenalt who was now in charge of the army's pioneering and construction troops, gave powerful support to Kelderek, letting it be known that any slave under his command had as good a chance of promotion as a free man.

  The profit from the trade was high, especially as it became known that Bekla once more had a state-protected slave market with a wide range of goods, and agents from other countries found it worth their while to travel there, pay the market dues and spend their money. Despite his arguments in defense of what he had done--the best argument being the public accounts--Kelderek found himself keeping away not only from the market but also from the streets by which the slave consignments commonly came and went. For this he despised himself; yet setting aside the involuntary pity which he knew to be a weakness in a ruler, he had also the uneasy feeling that there might be in his policy some flaw which he was not seeking over-hard to detect. "The kind of disrupting, shortsighted expedient that one might expect to occur to a common man and a barbarian," the former Heldril governor of Paltesh had written, in a letter resigning his appointment before deserting to Yelda. "Does he think I don't know as well as he that it's an expedient?" Kelderek commented to Zelda. "We can't afford to be benevolent and generous until we've captured Ikat and defeated Erketlis." Zelda had agreed, but then added, "And equally, of course, we can't afford to alienate too many of our own people, even if they're not Ortelgans. Be careful it doesn't get out of hand." Kelderek felt himself like a man in dire need who takes care not to probe too closely the specious assurances of an affable moneylender. Though inexperienced as a ruler, he had never lacked common sense and had learned early in life to distrust fair appearances and any prize that came too easily. "But when we have taken Ikat," he told himself, "then we'll be able to cease these shifts and hand-to-mouth methods. O Lord Shardik, bring us one more victory! Then we will put an end to the slave trade and I will be free to seek nothing but your truth." Sometimes, at the thought of this great day, the tears would spring to his eyes as readily as to those of any enslaved child at the memory of home.

  27 Zelda's Advice

  KELDEREK LOOKED ABOUT HIM at the shadowy, cavernous hall--as grim and barbaric a temple of blood as had ever housed the trophies of a tyranny. Because of the dimness of the light from above, torches, fixed in iron brackets, burned continually, and these had discolored the brickwork and the stone columns with irregular, cone-shaped streaks of black. In the still air the thick yellow flames lolled hither and yon, sluggish as lobworms disturbed in winter-dug earth. Now and then a spurt of resin flared sideways or
a knot exploded with a crack. The smoke, eddying in the roof and mingling its pine scent with the smell of the bear, seemed like the rustling sound of the straw made visible. Between the torch brackets, panoplies were fixed to the walls--short swords and ear-flapped helmets of Belishba, the round, leather shields of Deelguy mercenaries and the spike-and-ball spears which Santil-ke-Erketlis had first brought north from Yelda. Here, too, was the ripped and bloody banner of the Chalice of Deparioth, which Ged-la-Dan himself had taken two years before at the battle of Sarkid, cutting his way through the enemy's hurdle-palisades at the head of twelve followers, not one of whom had remained unwounded at the fight's end. The Canathron of Lapan, with its serpent's head and condor's wings arching to stoop, stood wreathed with vine shoots and red blossoms, for it had been brought to Bekla as an enforced (though dubious) surety for the loyalty of Lapan, by hostage-priests who were permitted to continue its rites in attenuated form. Along the farther wall, domed and yellow in the torchlight, were ranged the skulls of enemies of Shardik. Little they differed one from another, save in the patterns formed by the grinning teeth, though two or three were cracked like old plaster and one was faceless, mere splinters surrounding a jagged hole from forehead to jawbone. The shadows of their eye sockets moved in the torchlight, but Kelderek had long ceased to pay any attention to these unburied remains. To him, indeed, the display was tedious--nothing more than a sop to the vanity of subordinate commanders in the field, one or another of whom would from time to time claim that he had killed enemies of rank and hence deserved the distinction of presenting the skulls to Shardik. The girls kept them in trim, oiling and wiring, as once they had busied themselves with their hoes on the Ledges of Quiso. Yet for all the accumulated mementos of this victory and that (thought Kelderek, pacing slowly down the hall and turning at the sound of a sudden, plunging movement behind the bars), the place was still what it had always been--disordered, impermanent, a repository rather than a shrine--perhaps because the life of the city itself had become that of a base behind an army, a society with few young men and too many lonely women. Had not Shardik been better served among the scarlet flowers of the trepsis beside the pool, and in the dry, twilit forest whence he himself had first stepped forward to offer him his life?