Puzzled and daunted by her words, he nevertheless felt comforted that she should think him worth her solicitude, even while he grasped--or thought he grasped--that she was advising him to resign himself to death. Presently, to prolong the time of sitting thus close beside her, he asked, "If the Yeldashay come, they may well help the Tuginda to return to Quiso. Shall you return with her?"
"I am--what you know. I can never set foot on Quiso again. It would be sacrilege."
"What will you do?"
"I told you--wait upon the outcome. Kelderek, you must have faith in life. I have been restored to faith in life. If only they would understand it, the task of the disgraced and guilty is not to struggle to redeem themselves but simply to wait, never to cease to wait, in the hope and expectation of redemption. Many err in setting that hope aside, in losing belief that they are still sons and daughters."
He shook his head, gazing into her smiling, wine-flushed face with such a look of bewilderment that she burst out laughing; and then, leaning forward to stir the fire, half-murmured, half-sang the refrain of an Ortelgan lullaby which he had long forgotten.
Where does the moon go every month
And where have the old years fled?
Don't trouble your poor old head, my dear,
Don't trouble your poor old head.
"You didn't know I knew that, did you?"
"You're happy," he said, feeling envy.
"And you will be," she answered, taking his hands in her own. "Yes, even though we die. There, that's enough of riddling for one night; it's time to sleep. But I'll tell you something easier, and this you can understand and believe." He looked at her expectantly, and she said with emphasis, "That was the best fish I've ever eaten in Zeray. Catch some more!"
46 The Kynat
OPENING HIS EYES NEXT MORNING, Kelderek knew at once that he had been woken by some unusual sound. Uncertain, he lay as still as though in wait for a beast. Suddenly the sound came again, so close that he started. It was the call of the kynat--two smooth, fluting notes, the second higher than the first, followed by a chirring trill cut suddenly short. On the instant he was back in Ortelga, with the gleam from the Telthearna reflected on the inside of the hut roof, the smell of green-wood smoke and his father whistling as he sharpened his knife on a stone. The beautiful, gold-and-purple bird came to the Telthearna in spring but seldom remained, continuing its passage northward. Despite its marvelous plumage, to kill it was unlucky and ill-omened, for it brought the summer and bestowed blessing, announcing its good news to all--"Kynat! Kynat churrrrr--ak!" ("Kynat, Kynat will tell!") Welcome and propitious hero of many songs and tales, it would be heard and blessed for a month and then be gone, leaving behind it, like a gift, the best season of the year. Biting his lower lip in his stealth, Kelderek crept to the window, noiselessly lifted the stout bar, opened the shutter a crack and looked out.
The kynat, not thirty feet away, was perched on the roof ridge on the opposite side of the little courtyard. The vivid purple of its breast and back glowed in the first sunlight, more magnificent than an emperor's banner. The crest, purple inter-plumed with gold, was erect, and the broad flange of the tail, each feather bordered with gold, lay open upon the gray slope of the tiles, brilliant as a butterfly on a stone. Seen thus at close quarters, it was inexpressibly beautiful, with a splendor beyond description to those who had never seen it. The river sunset, the orchid pendent in mossy shade, the translucent, colored flames of temple incenses and gums wavering in their copper bowls--none could surpass this bird, displayed in the morning silence like a testament, a visible exemplar of the beauty and humility of God. As Kelderek gazed, it suddenly spread its wings, displaying the soft, saffron-colored down of the undersides. It opened its bill and called again, "Kynat! Kynat will tell!" Then it was gone, eastward toward the river.
Kelderek flung back the shutter and stood dazzled in the sun that had just cleared the wall. As he did so, another shutter opened on his left and Melathys, in her shift, her arms bare and her long hair loose, leaned out, as though trying to follow with her eyes the flight of the kynat. She caught sight of him, started for a moment and then, smiling, pointed silently after the bird, like a child to whom gestures come more naturally than words. Kelderek nodded and raised one hand in the sign used by Ortelgan messengers and returning hunters to signify good news. He realized that she, like him, felt the accident of his seeing her half-naked simply as something acceptable between them; not that it was no matter, as it might have been in the commotion of a fire or some other disaster, but rather that its significance was altered, as though in a time of festival, from immodesty to a happy extravagance becoming the occasion. To use plain terms, he thought, the kynat had taken her out of herself, because that was the kind of lass she was. And as this thought crossed his mind, he realized also that he had ceased to think of her as either the one-time priestess of Quiso or the consort of Bel-ka-Trazet. His understanding of her had outgrown these images, which had now opened, like doors, to admit him to a warmer, undissembling reality within. Henceforth, in his mind, Melathys would be a woman whom he knew, and whatever front she might present to the world he, like herself, would look through it from the inside, aware of much, if not all, that it concealed from others. He found that he was trembling. He laughed and sat down on the bed.
What had taken place, he knew, involved a contradiction. After all she had suffered, she no doubt felt impatient of conventional ideas of modesty. Nevertheless, what she had done sprang from sensitivity and not from shamelessness. Carried away by her delight in the kynat, she had yet known well enough that he would understand that this was no invitation, in the sense that Thrild or Ruvit would receive it. She had been sure that he would accept what he saw simply as part of their common delight in the moment. She would not have behaved before another man in this way. So in fact there was an invitation--to a deeper level of confidence, where formality and even propriety could be used or set aside entirely as they might be felt to help or hinder mutual understanding. In such a framework, desire could wait to find its allotted place.
So much, though it was new to him and outside any experience that he had had of the dealings between men and women, Kelderek understood. His excitement grew intense. He longed for Melathys, her voice, her company, her mere presence, to the exclusion of all else. He became determined to save her life and his own, to take her away from Zeray, to leave behind forever the wars of Ikat and Bekla, the sour vocation that had fallen upon him unsought and the fruitless hope which he had once entertained of discovering the great secret to be imparted through Shardik. To reach Lak and from there, somehow, to escape with this girl who had restored to him the desire to live--if it could be done, he would do it. If it were possible for her to love a man, he would win her with a fervor and constancy beyond any in the world. He stood up, stretched out his hands and began to pray with passionate earnestness.
A stick tapped gently upon the courtyard paving and he turned with a start to see Ankray standing outside the window, cloaked and hooded, carrying a sack over his shoulder and armed with a sword at his belt and a kind of rough javelin or short spear. He was holding one finger to his lips, and Kelderek went over to him.
"Are you off to Lak?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. The priestess has given me some money and I'll make it go far enough. You'll be wanting to bolt the gate behind me. I just thought I'd tell you without letting the priestess know--there's a dead man lying in the road--a stranger, I reckon--some newcomer, maybe: they're the ones that catch it soonest here, as often as not. You'll want to be very careful while I'm gone. I wouldn't go out, sir, or leave the women at all, not if I was you. Anything could happen in the town just now."
"But aren't you the one that needs to be careful?" replied Kelderek. "Do you think you ought to go?"
Ankray laughed. "Oh, they're no match for me, sir," he said. "Now the Baron, he always used to say, 'Ankray,' he used to say, 'you knock 'em down, I'll pick 'em up.' Well, after all, you don't ha
ve to pick 'em up, sir, now do you? So if I just go on knocking 'em down, it'll all be the same, you see."
Apparently highly satisfied with this piece of incontrovertible logic, Ankray leaned comfortably against the wall. "Yes, sir," he said, "the Baron always used to say, 'Ankray, you knock 'em down--'"
"I'll come and see you off," said Kelderek, leaving the window. At the courtyard gate he drew the bolts and stepped out first into the empty lane. The dead man was lying on his back about thirty yards away, eyes open and arms spread wide. The flesh of his face and hands had a fixed, pale, waxen look. His sprawling, untidy posture, together with the few torn clothes left on the body, made him look less like a corpse than like rubbish, something broken and thrown away. One finger had been severed, no doubt to remove a ring, and the stump showed as a dull red circle against the pallid hand.
"Well, you see how it is, sir," said Ankray. "I'll just be getting along now. If you take my advice, you'll leave it alone. There's others will take it away--you can be sure of that. If by any chance I shouldn't be back before dark, perhaps you'd be so kind as to wait in the courtyard, same as I did for you last night. But I shan't be loitering."
He swung up his sack and set off, looking sharply about him as he went.
Kelderek bolted the door and returned to the house. Ankray had cleared and swept the kitchen hearth but lit no fire, and he was washing in cold water when Melathys came in, carrying a dark red robe and some other garments. Kelderek, head bent over the pail, smiled up at her, shaking the water out of his eyes and ears.
"These were the Baron's," she said, "but that's no reason to leave them folded away forever. They'll fit quite as well as your soldier's clothes and be far more comfortable." She laid them down, filled a pitcher for the Tuginda and took it away.
As he dressed, he wondered whether this might be the very robe which Bel-ka-Trazet had been wearing when he fled from Ortelga. If it were not, he could only have taken it from some enemy killed since, for it was inconceivable that such a garment could have been traded in Zeray. Elleroth himself, he thought wryly, might have sported it with confidence. It was of excellent cloth, evenly dyed a clear, dark red, and the workmanship was so fine that the seams were almost invisible. It was, as Melathys had said, very comfortable, being yielding and smooth, and the very act of wearing it seemed to remove him a step further from his dismal wanderings and the sufferings he had undergone.
The Tuginda, thinner and hollow-eyed, was sitting up, propped against the wall behind the bed while Melathys combed her hair. Kelderek, taking one of her hands between his own, asked whether she would like him to bring her some food. She shook her head.
"Later," she answered. Then, after a little, "Kelderek, thank you for helping me to reach Zeray--and I must ask your forgiveness for deceiving you in one matter."
"For deceiving me, saiyett? How?"
"I knew, of course, what had become of the Baron. All news reaches Quiso. I expected to find him here, but I did not tell you. I could see that you were badly shocked and exhausted, and I thought it better not to trouble you further. But he would not have harmed you, neither you nor me."
"You don't need to ask forgiveness of me, saiyett, but since you have, it's given very willingly."
"Melathys has told me that now that the Baron is gone there's no possibility of our finding help in Zeray."
She sighed deeply, staring down at her sunlit hands on the blanket with a look so disappointed and hopeless that he was moved, as people are apt to be by pity, to say more than he could be sure of.
"Don't distress yourself, saiyett. It's true enough that this is a place of rogues and worse, but as soon as you're well enough we shall leave--Melathys, you and I and the Baron's man. There's a village not far to the north where I hope we may find safety."
"Melathys told me. The servant has set out to go there today. Will the poor man be safe?"
Kelderek laughed. "There's one person who's sure of it and that's himself."
The Tuginda closed her eyes wearily and Melathys put down the comb.
"You should rest again now, saiyett," she said, "and then try to eat something. I'll be off to the kitchen, for there's a fire to be lit before I can cook."
The Tuginda nodded without opening her eyes. Kelderek followed Melathys out of the room. When he had laid the fire, she lit it with a fragment of curved glass held in a sunbeam. He was content to stand and watch as she busied herself with the food, only speaking a word occasionally or trying to anticipate her need of this or that. The room seemed as full of calm and reassurance as of sunlight, and for the time being, the future caused no more anxiety to him than to the joyous insects darting in the brightness outside.
Later, as the day, moving toward noon, filled the courtyard with a heat like that of summer, Melathys drew water from the well, washed the household clothes and laid them in the sun to dry. Coming back into the shade of the house, she sat down in the narrow window seat, wiping her neck and forehead with a rough cloth in place of a towel.
"Elsewhere, women can go and wash clothes in the river and take it for granted," she said. "That's what rivers are for--laundry and gossip: but not in Zeray."
"On Quiso?"
"On Quiso we were often less solemn than you may suppose. But I was thinking of any town or village where ordinary, decent people can go about the business of life without fear: yes, and without dragging shame behind them like a chain. Wouldn't it be fine--wouldn't it seem like a miracle--just to go to a market, to bargain with a stall-keeper, to loiter in the road eating something that you'd bought fair and honestly, to give some of it away to a friend while you gossiped by the river? I remember those things--the Quiso girls came and went a good deal on the island's business, you know. In some ways we were freer than other women. To be deprived of little, common pleasures that honest people take for granted--that's imprisonment, that's retribution, that's grief and loss. If people valued such things at their worth, they'd give themselves more credit for the common trust and honesty on which those things depend."
"You've got some compensation. Most women can't use words like that," answered Kelderek. "It's a narrow life for a village girl--cooking, weaving, children, pounding clothes on the stones."
"Perhaps," she said. "Perhaps. Birds sing in the trees, find their food, mate, build nests. They don't know anything else." She looked up at him, smiling and drawing the cloth slowly from side to side across the back of her neck. "It's a narrow life for birds. But you catch one and put it in a cage and you'll soon find out whether it values what it's lost."
He longed to take her in his arms so strongly that for a few moments his head swam. To conceal his feelings he bent over his knife and half-finished fishhook.
"You sing, too," he said. "I've heard you."
"Yes. I'll sing now, if you like. I sometimes used to sing for the Baron. He liked to hear old songs he remembered, but really it was all the same to him who sang them--Ankray would do. By the Ledges, you should hear him!"
"No--you. I can wait to hear Ankray."
She rose, peeped in at the Tuginda, left the room and returned with a plain, unornamented hinnari of light-colored sestuaga wood, much battered along the fingerboard. She put it into his hands. It was warped and more than a little out of true.
"Don't you say a word against it," she said. "As far as I know, it's the only one in Zeray. It was found floating down the river and the Baron put his pride in his pocket and begged the strings from Lak. If they break there aren't any more."
Sitting down again in the window seat, she plucked the strings softly for a while, adjusting and coaxing the hard-toned hinnari into such tune as it possessed. Then, looking into her lap as though singing to herself alone, she sang the old ballad of U-Deparioth and the Silver Flower of Sarkid. Kelderek remembered the tale--still told as true in that country--how Deparioth, abandoned by traitors in the terrible Blue Forest, left to wander till he died and long given up for lost by friends and servants, had been roused from his despair b
y a mysterious and beautiful girl, dressed like a queen in that desolate wilderness. She tended his hurts, found him fruits, fungus and roots fit to eat, restored his courage and guided his limping steps day by day through the maze of the woods, until at last they came to a place that he knew. But as he turned to lead her toward the friends running to meet them, she vanished and he saw only a tall, silver lily blooming where she had been standing in the long grass. Heartbroken, he sank weeping to the ground, and ever after longed only to recover those days of hardship that he had spent with her in the forest.
Give back the miry solitude,
The thorns and briars outstretched to bless.
There lay my kingdom, past compare:
This court's the desert wilderness.
Ending, she was silent, and he too said nothing, knowing that there was no need for him to speak. She plucked the strings idly for a while and then, as though on impulse, broke into the little song "Cat Catch a Fish," that generations of Ortelgan children had known and played on the shore. He could not help laughing with delight to be taken thus by surprise, for he had neither heard nor thought of the song since he himself had left Ortelga.
"Have you lived on Ortelga, then?" he asked. "I don't remember you when I was a child."
"On Ortelga--no. I learned that song as a child on Quiso."
"You were a child on Quiso?" He had no recollection of what Sheldra had once told him. "Then when--"
"You don't know how I came to Quiso? I'll tell you. I was born on a slave farm in Tonilda and if I ever knew my mother, I can't remember her. That was before the Slave Wars and we were simply goods to be prepared for sale. When I was seven the farm was taken by Santil-ke-Erketlis and the Heldril. A wounded captain was making the journey to Quiso to be healed by the Tuginda, and he took me and a girl called Bria, to offer us to be brought up as priestesses. Bria ran away before we reached the Telthearna and what became of her I never knew. But I became a child of the Ledges."