Shardik

  She put it back on the blanket.

  "The second day after we'd left Lak, in the morning, we found the body of a child--a boy of about ten--cast up on the shore. He was dreadfully thin. He'd been stabbed to death. He had a pierced ear and chain marks on his ankles. The soldiers were wild with rage. That was when I began to wonder whether you might have been murdered by the slave traders. I was frantic with worry and God help me, I thought more of that than of Lord Shardik.

  "About the middle of that afternoon I was walking up the shore with Tan-Rion and his tryzatt when two canoes came downstream, manned by a Yeldashay officer, two soldiers and two villagers from Tissarn. That was how we learned that Radu had been found and Genshed and Lalloc were dead. The officer told us how Lord Shardik had given his life to save Radu and the children, and of how he split the rock. It was like a miracle, he said, like an old tale beyond belief.

  "The Yeldashay, of course, could think of nothing but Radu, but I questioned the officer until I found out that you had been with Genshed and that Shardik had saved you too. 'Wounded, feverish and half out of his mind, the officer said, but they didn't think you would die.

  "One of the canoes went on to Zeray, but I made Tan-Rion give me a place in the other that was going back. We traveled upstream all night, inshore against the current, and reached Tissarn soon after dawn. I went first to Lord Shardik, as I was in honor and duty bound. No one had touched him; and just as the Tuginda had said, I knew then what I had to do. Tan-Rion has already set about the preparations. He made no difficulty when I asked him. The Yeldashay feel very differently now about Lord Shardik, you see.

  "But I've talked too long, my darling. I mustn't tire you any more tonight."

  "One question," said Kelderek. "One only. What of Radu and the children?"

  "They're still here. I've met Radu. He spoke of you as his friend and comrade. He's weak and very much distressed." She paused. "There was a little girl?"

  Kelderek drew in his breath sharply and nodded.

  "Elleroth has been sent for," she said. "The other children--I've not seen them. Some are recovering, but I'm told that several are in a very bad way, poor little things. At least they're all in good hands. Now you must sleep again."

  "And you too, my dearest Travel-All-Night. We must both sleep."

  "Good night, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. Look, the day-light's quite gone. I'll ask old Dirion, bless her, to bring her lamp and sit with you until she's sure you're asleep."

  56 The Passing of Shardik

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS NOW QUITE DARK he could hear, some distance away, the sounds of men working--concerted, rhythmic shouts, as though heavy objects were being lugged into place; hammering, splintering and the knock of axes. A faint glow of torchlight was discernible from somewhere near the river. Once, when a deep splash was followed by a particularly loud shouting, Dirion, sitting by her lamp, clicked her tongue reprovingly. She said nothing in explanation, however, and after a little he ceased to wonder what urgent demand of war could have come upon the soldiers in this remote place where, so far as he knew, no enemy threatened. He fell asleep, waking to see moonlit ripples reflected in the roof and Melathys sitting by the lamp. Somewhere outside, a Yeldashay sentry called, "All's well," in the expressionless, stylized tone of one who observes routine.

  "You should sleep," he whispered. She started, came over to the bed, bent and kissed him lightly and then nodded, smiling, toward the neighboring room, as though to say she would sleep there, and at that moment Dirion returned. Yet much later in the night, when he woke, crying and struggling, from a dream of Genshed, it was still Melathys who was with him. He had somehow struck his wounded fingernail. The pain was sickening and she comforted him as infants or animals are comforted, repeating the same phrases in a quiet, assured voice, "There, there; the pain will go soon, it will go soon; wait now, wait now," until he felt that it was indeed she who was making the pain subside. As the darkness began to melt into first light he lay awake, acquiescent, listening to the river and the growing sounds of morning--the birds, the clang of a pot and the snapping of sticks which someone was breaking across his knee.

  He realized that for the first time since leaving Ortelga he was taking pleasure in these sounds and that they were filling him, as once long ago, with expectancy of the coming day. To eat a meal, to complete a day's work, to come home tired to a fire, to greet a girl, talk and listen--a man free to do these things, he thought, should wear his blessings like a garland:

  Yet when he had eaten and Melathys had changed his dressings he fell asleep again, waking only a little before noon, when a random sunbeam touched his eyes. He felt stronger, in pain certainly, but no longer its helpless victim. After a time he put his foot to the floor, stood up dizzily, holding on to the bed, and looked about him.

  His room and another comprised the upper story of a fairly large hut: plank floor and walls, with an Ortelgan-style roof of reed thatch over zetlapa poles. The eastern side, behind the head of his bed, was a gallery, half-walled and open to the river almost immediately below.

  He hobbled to the gallery wall and leaned upon it, looking out across the Telthearna to the distant Deelguy shore. Far off, men were fishing, their net stretched between canoes. The midstream current glittered and close by, a little to his left, a few gaunt oxen stood drinking in the shallows. It was so quiet that after a time his ear caught the sound of breathing. He turned and, looking into the next room, saw Melathys lying asleep on a low, rough bed like his own. She was no less beautiful in sleep, lips closed, forehead smooth, her long eyelids curved, he thought, like waves lapping on her cheeks in dark ripples of lashes. This was the girl who for his sake had slept very little last night and not at all the night before. He had been restored to her by Shardik, whom he had once cursed and planned to destroy.

  He turned back toward the river and for a long time remained leaning on the half-wall, watching the slow clouds and their mirrored images. The water was so smooth that when two ducks flew across a white cloud, wheeled in the sky and disappeared upstream, their reflections were plain as themselves. This he saw with a sense of having seen the like before, yet he could not remember where.

  He stood up to pray, but could not raise his wounded arm and after a short time, his weakness overcoming him, was forced once more to support himself against the half-wall. For a long time his thoughts formed no words, dwelling only upon his own past ignorance and self-will. Yet strangely, these thoughts were kind to him, bringing with them no shame or distress, and turning finally to a flood of humility and gratitude. The mysterious gift of Shardik's death, he now knew, transcended all personal shame and guilt and must be accepted without dwelling on his own unworthiness, just as a prince mourning his father's death must contain his grief and be strong to assume, as a sacred trust, the responsibilities and cares of state which have fallen upon him. In spite of mankind and of all folly, Shardik had completed his work and returned to God. For his one-time priest to be absorbed in his own sorrow and penitence would be only to fail him yet again, the nature of the sacred truth immanent in that work being a mystery still to be grasped through prayer and meditation. And then? he thought. What then?

  Below him the stones lay clean on the empty shore. The world, he reflected, was very old. "Do with me what You intend," he whispered aloud. "I am waiting, at last."

  The fishermen had left the river. There appeared to be no one below in the village. So much quiet seemed strange in the early afternoon. When he heard the soldiers approaching he did not at first recognize the sound. Then, as they drew nearer, what had been one sound resolved into many--the tramping of feet, the clink of accouterments, voices, a cough, a shouted order, a tryzatt's sharp admonition. There must be many soldiers--more than a hundred, he guessed--and by the sounds, armed and equipped. Melathys still slept as they passed by, unseen by him, on the landward side of the hut.

  As their tramping died away he suddenly heard Yeldashay voices talking below. Then there was a knock; Dirion o
pened the door and spoke a few words, but too quietly for him to make out what she had said. Supposing that the soldiers must be leaving the village and wondering whether Melathys knew of it, he waited and after a little Dirion came clambering up the ladder into the far end of the gallery. When she was halfway across the room she suddenly saw him, started and began scolding him back to bed. Smiling, he asked, "What is it? What's happening?"

  "Why, the young officer, to be sure," she answered. "He's here for the saiyett--to take her down to the shore. They're ready for the burning, and I must wake her. Now you go back to bed, my dear."

  At this moment Melathys woke as silently and swiftly as the moon emerges from behind clouds, her eyes opening and looking toward them with no remaining trace of sleep. To his surprise she ignored him, saying quickly to Dirion, "Is it afternoon? Has the officer come?" Dirion nodded and went across to her. Kelderek followed more slowly, came up to the bed and took her hand.

  "What's happening?" he repeated. "What do they want?"

  She gazed gravely up into his eyes.

  "It is Lord Shardik," she answered. "I have to do--what is appointed."

  Understanding, he drew in his breath. "The body?"

  She nodded. "The appointed way is very old--as old as Quiso. The Tuginda herself could not recall all the ceremony, but what has to be done is plain enough, and God will not refuse to accept the best that we are able to offer. At least Lord Shardik will have a fitting and honorable passing."

  "How does he pass?"

  "The Tuginda never told you?"

  "No," replied Kelderek sadly. "No; that, too, I neglected to learn."

  "He drifts down the river on a burning raft." Then, standing up, she took both his hands in her own and said, "Kelderek, my dear love, I should have told you of this, but it could not have been delayed later than today, and even this morning you still seemed too tired and weak."

  "I'm well enough," he answered firmly. "I am coming with you. Don't say otherwise." She seemed about to reply, but he added, "At all costs I shall come."

  He turned to Dirion. "If the Yeldashay officer is still below, greet him from me and ask him to come and help me down the ladder." She shook her head, but went without argument, and he said to Melathys, "I won't delay you, but somehow or other I must be dressed decently. What clothes do you mean to wear?"

  She nodded toward a rough-hewn, unpolished chest standing on the other side of the bare room, and he saw lying across it a plain, clean robe, loose-sleeved and high-necked, dyed, somewhat unevenly, a dark red--a peasant girl's "one good dress."

  "They're kind people," she said. "The elder's wife gave me the cloth--her own--and her women made it yesterday." She smiled. "That's two new dresses I've been given in five days."

  "People like you."

  "It can be useful. But come, my dearest, since I'm not going to try to cross you in your resolve, we have to be busy. What will you do for clothes?"

  "The Yeldashay will help me." He limped to the head of the ladder as Dirion came struggling up it for the second time, lugging with her a wooden pail of cold water. Melathys said in Beklan, "The washing's like the clothes. But she's the soul of kindness. Tell the officer I shan't be long."

  The Yeldashay officer had followed Dirion halfway up the ladder and now, looking down, Kelderek recognized Tan-Rion.

  "Please give me your hand," he said. "I'm recovered sufficiently to come with you and the priestess today."

  "I didn't know of this," replied Tan-Rion, evidently taken aback. "I was told you would not be equal to it."

  "With your help I shall be," said Kelderek. "I beg you not to refuse. To me this duty is more sacred than birth and death."

  For answer Tan-Rion stretched out his hand. As Kelderek came gropingly down the ladder, he said, "You followed your bear on foot from Bekla to this place?"

  Kelderek hesitated. "In some sort--yes, I suppose so."

  "And the bear saved Lord Elleroth's son."

  Kelderek, in pain, gave way to a touch of impatience. "I was there." Feeling faint, he leaned against the wall of the dark, lower room into which he had climbed down. "Can you--could your men, perhaps--find me some clothes? Anything clean and decent will do."

  Tan-Rion turned to the two soldiers waiting by the door and spoke in his own tongue. One answered him, frowning and evidently in some perplexity. He spoke again, more sharply, and they hurried away.

  Kelderek fumbled his way out of the hut to the shore, pulled off the rough, sacklike shift he had been wearing in the bed and knelt down to wash, one-handed, in the shallows. The cold water pulled him together and he sat, clearheaded enough, on a bench, while Tan-Rion dried him with the shift for want of anything better. The soldiers returned, one carrying a bundle wrapped in a cloak. Kelderek tried to make out what they said.

  "--whole village empty, sir," he heard--"decent people--can't just help ourselves--done the best we can--"

  Tan-Rion nodded and turned back to him. "They've brought some clothes of their own. They suggest you put them on and wear a sentry's nightcloak over the top. I think that's the best we can do at this short notice. It will look well enough."

  "I'm grateful," said Kelderek. "Could they--could someone--support me, do you think? I'm afraid I'm weaker than I thought."

  One of the soldiers, perceiving his clumsiness and evident fear of hurting his heavily bourd left arm, had already, with natural kindliness, stepped forward to help him into the unfamiliar clothes. They were the regulation garments of a Yeldashay infantryman. The man fastened the cloak at his neck and then drew his sound arm over his own shoulders. At this moment Melathys came down the ladder, bowed gravely to Tan-Rion, touched Kelderek's hand for an instant and then led the way out into the village street.

  She was wearing the plaited wooden rings of a priestess of Quiso. Were they her own, he wondered, hidden and kept safe throughout her wanderings, or had the Tuginda given them to her pardoned priestess when she left Zeray? Her long black hair was gathered round her head and fastened with two heavy wooden pins--no doubt the very best that Dirion could borrow. The dark red robe, which would otherwise have fallen straight from the shoulder like a shift, was gathered at the waist by a belt of soft gray leather with a crisscross pattern of bronze studs, and from below this the skirt flared slightly, falling to her ankles. Even at this moment Kelderek found himself wondering how she had come by the belt. Had she brought it with her from Zeray, or was it the gift of Tan-Rion or some other Yeldashay officer?

  Outside, between the huts, a double file of Sarkid soldiers in full panoply stood waiting. Each wore the corn sheaves on his left shoulder. They were spearmen, and at the approach of the priestess of Quiso, followed by their own officer and the limping, pallid Ortelgan priest-king who had suffered in comradeship with the Ban's son, they saluted by beating the bronze-shod butts of their spears in succession with a dull, rolling sound on the hard-trodden earth. Melathys bowed to the tryzatt and took up her place at the head of and between the two files. Kelderek, still leaning on the soldier's shoulder, stationed himself a few paces behind her. After a moment she turned and came back to him.

  "You are still of the same mind, my love?" she whispered.

  "If we go slowly--I can manage it."

  Giving his soldier a nod and smile of thanks, she returned to her place, looked quickly about her and then, leaving it to the tryzatt and his men to follow her lead, set off with the same solemn, gliding step. Kelderek came limping, breathing hard and leaning heavily on the soldier's shoulder. The Telthearna lay on their left and he realized that they were going southward out of the village, toward the place where Shardik had died. They passed patches of cultivated ground, a shed for oxen with a great pile of manure outside it, a frame on which nets hung drying and an upended canoe, patched and repaired, its new caulking shining black in the sun. Hobbling between the files of soldiers, he recalled how he had once paced the streets of Bekla with his scarlet-cloaked priestesses, the train of his paneled robe carried behind him. He
could feel again the weight of the curved, silver claws hanging from the fingers of his gauntlets, hear the stroke of the gong and see about him the finery of his attendants. He felt no regret. That great city he would never, he knew, see again; and gone, too, was the false illusion which had carried him thither in bloodshed and drawn him thence, alone and friendless, to suffering and self-knowledge. But the secret--the great secret of life on earth--the secret that Shardik might perhaps have been able to impart to a humble, selfless, listening heart--must that, too, be lost forever? "Ah, Lord Shardik," he prayed silently, "the empire was pride and folly. I am sorry for my blindness, and sorry, too, for all that you suffered at my hands. Yet for others' sake, not mine, I entreat you not to leave us forever without the truth that you came to reveal. Not for our deserving, but of your own grace and pity for Man's helplessness."

  His foot slipped and he stumbled, clutching quickly at his companion's shoulder.

  "All right, mate?" whispered the soldier. "Hold on. Comin' up now, look."

  He lifted his head, peering in front of him. The two files were opening out, moving apart, while ahead of him Melathys still paced on alone. Now he remembered where he was. They had come to that part of the shore which lay between the southern outskirts of the village and the wooded inlet where Shardik had died. That it was crowded he could see, but at first he could not make out the people who were surrounding the stony, open space into which he was following Melathys. A sudden fear came upon him.

  "Wait," he said to the soldier. "Wait a moment."

  He stopped, still leaning on the man, and looked about him. From all sides, faces were turned toward him and eyes were staring expectantly. He realized why he had felt afraid. He had known them before--the eyes, the silence. But as though to transform the curses which he had carried out of Kabin, everyone was looking at him with admiration, with pity and gratitude. On his left stood the villagers: men, women and children all in mourning, with covered heads and bare feet. Gathered behind the file of soldiers now halted and facing inward in extended order, they filled the shore to the water's edge. Although, from natural awe and sense of occasion, they did not press forward, yet they could not help swaying and moving where they stood as they pointed out to one another, and held up their children to see, the beautiful priestess of Quiso and the holy man who had suffered such bitter hardship and cruelty to vindicate the truth and Power of God. Many of the children were carrying flowers--trepsis and field lily, planella, green-blooming vine and long sprays of melikon blossom. Suddenly, of his own accord, a little boy came forward, stared gravely up at Kelderek, laid his bunch at his feet and ran quickly back to his mother.