At this, Kelderek felt a quick tremor of dread, a gaingiving of some menace which he could not define. It was as though something--some spirit inhabiting these places--had awakened, observed him and quickened at what it perceived. Yet there was nothing to be seen--except, indeed, the arched bulk of Shardik making his way toward the nearest of the three clefts. Slowly he trampled through the long grass and paused on the verge, turning his head from side to side and looking down. Then, as smoothly as an otter vanishing over the lip of a river bank, he disappeared into the concealment of the chasm.
He would sleep now, thought Kelderek; it was a day and a night since his escape, and even Shardik could not wander from Bekla to the mountains of Gelt without rest. No doubt if the plain had offered the least cover or refuge he would have stopped before. To Shardik, a creature of hills and forests, the plain must seem an evil place indeed, and his new liberty as comfortless as the captivity from which he had escaped. The ravines were clearly lonely, perhaps even avoided by the herdsmen, for no doubt they were dangerous to cattle and like enough their very strangeness made them objects of superstitious dread. The tangled twilight, smelling neither of beast nor man, would seem to Shardik a welcome seclusion. Indeed, he might well be reluctant to leave it, provided he were not forced to seek food.
The more Kelderek pondered, the more it seemed to him that the ravine offered an excellent chance of recapturing Shardik before he reached the mountains. His very spirits rose as he began to plan what was best to be done. This time he must at all costs convince the local people of his good faith. He would promise them substantial rewards--whatever they asked, in effect: freedom from market tolls, from the slave quotas, from military service--always provided that they could keep Shardik in the ravine until he was recaptured. It might not prove unduly difficult. A few goats, a few cows--water might already be there. A messenger could reach Bekla before sunset and helpers should be able to arrive before evening of the following day. Sheldra must be told to bring with her the necessary drugs.
If only he himself were not so much exhausted! He, too, would have to sleep if he were not to collapse. Should he simply lie down here and trust that Shardik would still be in the ravine when he woke? But the message to Bekla must be sent before he slept. He would have to make his way to one of the villages; but first he must find some herdsman and persuade him to keep watch on the ravine until he returned.
Suddenly he caught the sound of voices a little way off and turned quickly. Two men, who had evidently come up the slope before he had heard them, were walking slowly away from him along the ridge. It seemed strange that they should apparently not have seen him or, if they had, that they should not have spoken to him. He called out and hastened toward them. One was a youth of about seventeen, the other a tall, elderly man of solemn and authoritative appearance, wrapped in a blue cloak and carrying a staff as tall as himself. He certainly did not look like a peasant and Kelderek, as he stopped before him, felt that his luck had turned at last, to have met someone able both to understand what he needed and to see that he got it.
"Sir," said Kelderek, "I beg you not to judge me by appearances. The truth is, I am worn out by wandering for a day and a night on the plain and I am in great need of your help. Will you sit down with me--for I don't think I can stand any longer--and let me tell you how I come to be here?"
The old man laid his hand on Kelderek's shoulder.
"First tell me," he said gravely, pointing with his staff to the ravines below, "if you know it, the name of those places below us."
"I don't know. I was never here before in my life. Why do you ask me?"
"Let us sit down. I am sorry for you, but now that you are here you need wander no more."
Kelderek, so much dazed with fatigue that he could no longer weigh his words, began by saying that he was the king of Bekla. The old man showed neither surprise nor disbelief, only nodding his head and never averting his eyes, which expressed a kind of severe, detached pity, like that of an executioner, or a priest at the sacrificial altar. So disturbing was this look that after a little Kelderek turned his own eyes away and spoke gazing out over the green vale and the strange ravines. He said nothing of Elleroth and Mollo, or of the northward march of Santil-ke-Erketlis, but told only of the collapse of the roof of the hall, of the escape of Shardik and of how he himself had followed him, losing his companions in the mist and sending back a chance-found messenger with orders to his soldiers to follow and find him. He told of his journey over the plain and, pointing down the hill, of how Shardik--whose recapture was all-important--had taken cover in the cleft below, where no doubt he was now sleeping.
"And be sure of this, sir," he ended, meeting the unwavering eyes once more and forcing himself to return their gaze. "Any harm done to Lord Shardik or myself would be most terribly revenged, once discovered--as discovered it would certainly be. But the help of your people--for I take you to be a man of some standing here--in restoring Lord Shardik to Bekla--that will be acknowledged with the greatest generosity. When that task is done, you may name any reasonable reward and we will grant it."
The old man remained silent. To Kelderek, puzzled, it seemed that although he had heard him with attention, he was nevertheless unconcerned either with the dread of revenge or the hope of reward. A quick glance at the youth showed only that he was waiting to do whatever his master might require.
The old man rose and helped Kelderek to his feet.
"And now you need sleep," he said, speaking kindly but firmly, as a parent might speak to a child after hearing his little tale of the day's adventures. "I will go with you--"
Impatience came upon Kelderek, together with perplexity that such slight importance should apparently have been attached to his words.
"I need food," he said, "and a messenger must be sent to Bekla. The road is not far away--a man can reach Bekla by nightfall, though I assure you that long before that he will be bound to meet with some of my soldiers on the road!"
With no further word the old man motioned to the youth, who stood up, opened his scrip and put it into Kelderek's hands. It contained black bread, goat's cheese and half a dozen dried tendrionas--no doubt the end of the winter's store. Kelderek, determined to retain his dignity, nodded his thanks and laid it on the ground beside him.
"The message--" he began again. Still the old man said nothing and from behind his shoulder the youth replied, "I will carry your message, sir. I will go at once."
While Kelderek was making him repeat two or three times both the message and his instructions, the old man stood leaning on his staff and looking at the ground. His air was one less of abstraction than of a detached, self-contained patience, like that of some lord or baron who, during a journey, waits while his servant goes to ask the way or question an innkeeper. When Kelderek paid the youth, emphasizing how much more he would receive, first when he delivered the message and secondly when he had brought the soldiers back, he did not look at the money, expressed his thanks only with a bow and then at once set off in the direction of the road. Kelderek, suspicious, sat watching until he had gone a long way. At last he turned back to the old man, who had not moved.
"Sir," he said, "thank you for your help. I assure you I shall not forget it. As you say, I need sleep, but I must not go far from Lord Shardik, for if by chance he should wander again, it will be my sacred duty to follow him. Have you a man who can watch beside me and rouse me if need should be?"
"We will go down to that eastern cleft," replied the old man. "There you can find a shady place and I will send someone to watch while you sleep."
Pressing one hand over his aching eyes, Kelderek made a last attempt to break through the other's grave reserve. "My soldiers--great rewards--your people will bless you--I trust you, sir--" he lost the thread of this thought and faltered in Ortelgan, "lucky I came here--"
"God sent you. It is for us to do His will," replied the old man. This, Kelderek supposed, must be some idiomatic reply to the thanks of a guest or trav
eler. He picked up the scrip and took his companion's offered arm. In silence they went down the slope, among the small domes of the anthills, the grassy tussocks and coneys' holes, until at length they came to the tall grass surrounding the ravines. Here, without a word, the old man stopped, bowed and was already striding away before Kelderek had grasped that he was going.
"We shall meet again?" he called, but the other gave no sign that he had heard. Kelderek shrugged his shoulders, picked up the scrip and sat down to eat.
The bread was hard and the juice long gone from the fruit. When he had eaten all there was, he felt thirsty. There was no water--unless, indeed, there might be a pool or spring in one of the ravines; but he was too tired to go and search all three. He decided to look into the nearest--it seemed unlikely that Shardik would be alert or attack him--and if he could neither see nor hear water he would simply do without until he had slept.
The tangled grass and weeds grew almost to his waist. In summer, he thought, the place must become almost impassable, a veritable thicket. He had gone only a few yards when he stumbled over some hard object, stooped and picked it up. It was a sword, rusted almost to pieces, the hilt inlaid with a pattern of flowers and leaves in long-blackened silver--the sword of a nobleman. He swung idly at the grass, wondering how it came to be there, and as he did so the blade tore across like an old crust and flew into the nettles. He tossed the hilt after it and turned away.
Now that he saw it at close quarters, the lip of the ravine looked even more sharp and precipitous than from a distance. There was indeed something sinister about this place, unhusbanded and yieldless in the midst of the abundant land all about. There was something strange, too, about the sound of the breeze in the leaves--an intermittent, deep moaning, like that of a winter wind in a huge chimney, but faint, as though far off. And now, to his sleep-starved fancy, it seemed that the sides of the cleft lay apart like an open wound, like the edges of a deep gash inflicted by a knife. He reached the edge and looked over.
The tops of the lower trees were spread beneath him. There was a hum and dart of insects and a glitter of leaves. Two great butterflies, newly awakened from winter, were fanning their blood-red wings a yard below his eyes. Slowly his gaze traveled across the uneven expanse of the branches and back to the steep slope at his feet. The wind blew, the boughs moved and suddenly--like a man who realizes that the smiling stranger with whom he is conversing is in fact a madman who means to attack and murder him--Kelderek started back, clutching at the bushes in fear.
Below the trees there was nothing but darkness--the darkness of a cavern, a darkness of sluggish air and faint, hollow sounds. Beyond the lowest tree trunks the ground, bare and stony, receded downward into twilight and thence into blackness. The sounds that he could hear were echoes--like those in a well, but magnified in rising from some greater, unimaginable depth. The cold air upon his face carried a faint, dreadful odor--not of decay, but rather of a place which had never known either life or death, a bottomless gulf, unlit and unvisited since time began. In a fascination of horror, lying upon his stomach, he groped behind him for a stone and tossed it down among the boughs. As he did so, some dim memory came rising toward the surface of his mind--night, fear and the bringer of an unknown fate moving in the dark; but his present terror was too sharp, and the memory left him like a dream. The stone tore its way down through the leaves, knocked against a branch and was gone. There was no other sound. Soft earth--dead leaves? He threw another, pitching it well out into the center of the concave leaf-screen. There was no sound to tell when it struck the ground.
Shardik--where was he? Kelderek, the palms of his hands sweating, the soles of his feet tingling with dread of the pit over which he lay, peered into the gloom for the least sign of any ledge or shelf. There was none.
Suddenly, half in prayer, half in desperation, he cried aloud, "Shardik! Lord Shardik!" And then it seemed as though every malignant ghost and night-walking phantom pent in that blackness were released to come rushing up at him. Their abominable cries were no longer echoes, they owed nothing to his voice. They were the voices of fever, of madness, of hell. At once deep and unbearably shrill, far-off and squealing into the nerves of his ear, pecking at his eyes and clustering in his lungs like a filthy dust to choke him, they spoke to him with vile glee of a damned eternity where the mere spectacle of themselves in the gloom would be torment unbearable. Sobbing, his forearms wrapped about his head, he crawled backward, cowered down and covered his ears. Little by little the sounds died away, his normal perceptions returned and as he grew calmer he fell into a deep sleep.
For long hours he slept, feeling neither the spring sun nor the flies settling upon his limbs. The amorphous forces active in sleep, profound and inexpressible, moving far below that higher, twilight level where their fragments, drifting upward, attract to themselves earthly images and become released in the bubbles called dreams, caused in him not the least bodily movement as, without substance, form or mass they pursued their courses within the universe of the solitary skull. When at last he woke, it was to become aware, first, of daylight--the light of late afternoon--and then of a confused blaring of human cries, which faintly resembled the terrible voices of the morning. Yet, whether because he was no longer lying over the chasm or because it was not he himself who had cried out, these voices lacked the terror of those others. These, he knew, were the shouts of living men, together with their natural echoes. He raised himself cautiously and looked about him. To his left, out of the southerly end of the ravine, where Shardik had disappeared that morning, three or four men were clambering and running. Little, shaggy men they were, carrying spears--one cast his spear away as he ran--and plainly they were in terror. As he watched, another tripped, fell and rose again to his knees. Then the bushes along the lip were torn apart and Shardik appeared.
As when villagers have taken away the calf from a strong cow she bellows with rage, breaks the rails of the stockade and tramples her way through the village, afraid of none and filled only with distress and anger at the wrong she has suffered; the villagers fly before her and in her fury she smashes through the mud wall of a hut, so that her head and shoulders appear suddenly, to those within, as a grotesque, frightening source of destruction and fear--so Shardik burst through the tall weeds and bushes on the edge of the ravine and stood a moment, snarling, before he fell upon the kneeling man and killed him even as he cried out. Then, at once, he turned and began to make his way along the verge, coming on toward the place where Kelderek was lying. Kelderek lay prostrate in the long grass, holding his breath, and the bear passed not ten feet away. He heard its breathing--a liquid, choking sound like that made by a wounded man gasping for air. As soon as he dared, he looked up. Shardik was plodding away. In his neck was a fresh, deep wound, a jagged hole oozing blood.
Kelderek ran back along the edge of the ravine to where the men were gathered about the body of their comrade. As he approached, they picked up their spears and faced him, speaking quickly to each other in a thick argot of Beklan.
"What have you done?" cried Kelderek. "By God's breath, I'll have you burned alive for this!" Sword in hand, he threatened the nearest man, who backed away, leveling his spear.
"Stand back, sir!" cried the man. "Else tha'll force us--"
"Ah, kill him now, then!" said another.
"Nay," put in the third quickly. "He never went into the Streel. And after what's come about--"
"Where's your damned headman, priest, whatever he calls himself?" cried Kelderek. "That old man in the blue cloak? He set you on to this. It was him I trusted, the treacherous liar! I tell you, every village on this cursed plain shall burn--Where is he?"
He broke off in surprise as the first man suddenly dropped his spear, went to the edge of the ravine and stood looking back at him, pointing downward.
"Stand away, then," said Kelderek. "No--right away--over there. I don't trust you murderous dirt-eaters."
Once more he knelt on the edge of the pit. But here th
e first yards of the slope below him inclined gently. Not far down, half-concealed among the trees, was a level, grassy ledge with a little pool. Shardik, lying there, had flattened and crushed the grass. Half in the pool, face down, lay a man's body, wrapped about with a blue cloak. The back of the skull was smashed open to the brains and nearby lay the bloody head of a spear. The shaft was nowhere to be seen. It might, perhaps, have fallen into the abyss.
Hearing a movement behind him, Kelderek leapt about. But the man who had returned was still unarmed.
"Now ye must go, sir," he whispered, staring at Kelderek and trembling as at the supernatural. "I never seen the like of this before, but I know what's appointed if ever they comes alive from the Streel. Now that ye've seen, ye'll know that the creature's passed beyond us and our power. It's the will of God. Only, in His name, sir, spare us and go!"
Upon this all three fell to their knees, clasping their hands and looking at him with such patent fear and supplication that he could not tell what to make of it.
"There's none will touch ye now, sir," said the first man at last, "neither we nor any others. If ye wish, I'll go with you, any way ye please, as far as the borders of Urtah. Only go!"
"Very well," replied Kelderek, "you shall come with me, and if any more of you dung-bred bastards try to betray me, you'll be the first to die. No--leave your spear and come."
But after some three miles he turned loose his wretched, abject hostage, who seemed to fear him as he would a risen ghost, and once more went on alone, following warily the distant form of Shardik wandering northward across the vale.