Shardik (35 page)

Six miles round were the walls, rising on the south to encircle the summit of Mount Crandor, with its citadel crowning the sheer face of the stone quarries below. A breakneck flight of steps led up.
that
face, disappearing, at a height of eighty feet, into the mouth of a tunnel which ran upwards through the rock to emerge into the twilight of the huge granary cellar. The only other entry to the citadel was the so-called Red Gate in the south wall,
a
low arch
through which a chalybeate brook flowed from its source within to the chain of falls - named the White Girls - that carried
it down Crandor’s gradual south
ern slope. Under the Red Gate, men long ago had worked to widen and deepen the bed of the brook, but had left standing, two feet beneath
the
surface of the water, a narrow, twisting causeway of
the
living rock. Those who had learned
this
padi’s subaqueous windings could wade safely through the deep pool and then - if permitted - enter the citadel by
the
stairway known as the Vent

It was not Mount Crandor, however, which drew the gaze of the newcomer to Bekla, but the ridge of the Leopard Hill below, with its terraces of vines, flowers and citrous tendriona. On the crest, above these surrounding gardens, stood
the
Palace of
the
Barons, the range of its towers reflecting light from their balconies of polished, rose-coloured marble. Twenty round towers there were in all, eight by the long sides of the palace and four by the short; each tapering, circular wall so smooth and regular that in sunlight not one stone’s lower edge cast a shadow upon its fellow below, and the only blackness was that within the window-openings, rounded and slitted like key-holes, which lit the spiral stairways. High up, as high as tall trees, the circular balconies projected like the capitals of columns,
their
ambulatories wide enough for two men to walk side by side. The marble balustrades were identical in height and shape, yet each was decorated differ
ently
, carved on each side, in low relief, with leopards, lilies, birds or fish; so that a lord might say to his friend, ‘I will drink
with
you tonight on
the
Bramba tower,’ or a lover to his mistress, ‘Let us meet this evening on
the
Trepsis tower and watch
the
sun set before we go to supper.’ Above these marvellous crow’s-nests
the
towers culminated in slender, painted spires - red, blue and green - latticed and containing gong-toned, copper bells. When these were rung - four bells to each note of the scale - the metallic, wavering sounds mingled with
their
own echoes from the precipices of Crandor and vibrated over the roofs below until the citizens, thus summoned to rejoice at festival, holiday or royal welcome, laughed to feel their ears confounded in sport as the eye is confounded by mirrors face to face.

The palace itself stood within its towers and separate by several yards from their bases. Yet - wonderful to see - at the height of the roof, that part of
the
wall th
at stood behind each tower sloped outwards, supported on massive corbels, to embrace it and project a little beyond, so that the towers themselves, with their pointed spires, looked like great lances set upright at regular intervals to pierce the walls and support the roof as a canopy is
supported at the periphery.

The vol
uted parapets were carved in relief with the round leaves and flame-shaped flower-buds of lilies and lotus; and to these
the
craftsmen had added, here and there as pleased them,
the
likenesses of insects, of trailing weeds and drops of water, all many times larger
than
the
life. The hard light of noon stressed little of these fancies, accentuating rather the single, shadowed mass of
the
north front, grave and severe as a judge presiding above the busy streets. But at evening, when the heat of the day broke and the hard shadows fled away, the red, slanting light would soften the outline of walls and towers and emphasize instead their marvellous decoration, so
that
at this hour the palace suggested rather some beautiful, pleasure-loving woman, adorned
with
jewels and flowers, ready for a joyous meeting or homecoming beyond compare. And by
the
first light of day, before the gongs of
the
city’s two water-clocks clashed one after the other for sunrise, it had changed yet again and become, in the misty stillness, like a pool of water-lilies half-opened among the dragon-flies and sipping, splashing swallows.

Some way from the foot of the Leopard Hill was
the
newly-excavated Rock Pit, immediately above which stood
the
House of
the
King, a gaunt square of rooms and corridors surrounding a hall -once a barracks for soldiers, but now re
served for another use and anoth
er occupant. Close by, grouped about the north side of the cypress gardens and the lake called the Barb, were stone buildings, resembling those on Quiso, but larger and more numerous. Some of these were used as dwellings by the
Ortelga
n leaders, while
others
were set aside for hostages or for delegations from the various provincial peoples, whose comings and goings,
with
embassies to the king or petitions to lay before the generals, were incessant in this empire at war on a d
ebatable frontier. Beyond the cy
press gardens a walled road led to the Peacock Gate, the only way
through
the fortified rampart dividing the upper from the lower city.

The lower city - the city itself, its paved streets and dusty alleys, its odours and clamour by day, its moonlight and jasmine by night, its cripples and beggars, its animals, its merchandise, its traces everywhere of war and pillage, doors hacked and
walls blackened with fire - doe
s
the
city too return out of the dark? Here ran the street of
the
money-changers and beyond, on e
ither side of a narrow avenue of ilex trees, stood the houses of the jewel-merchants - high, barred windows and a couple of strong fellows at
the
gate to enquire a stranger’s business. The torpid flies about the open sweet-stalls, the smells of leather and dung and spices and sweat and herbs,
the
fruit market’s banks of gaudy panniers, the rostra, barracoons and blocks of the slave market with its hand
some children, its cozening foreigners and outl
andish tongues, the shoe-makers sitting absorbed at their tapping and stitching in the midst of the hubbub, the clinking street-walkers strolling nowhere in particular with their stylized gait and sidelong glances, the coloured flowers in
the
water, the shouting across a street of the news of a sale or an offer, in cryptic words revealing nothing except to their intended hearer; the quarrels, the lies, the promises, the thieves, the long-drawn crying of wares on notes
that
the years have turned into songs, the streets of the stonemasons, carpenters, weavers, of the astrologers, doctors and
fortunetellers. The scuttl
ing lizards, the rats and dogs, the fowls in coops and the
pretty birds in cages. The cattle
market had been burned to the ground in
the
fighting and on one of the sagging, open doors of the temple of Cran someone had daubed the mask of a bear - two eyes and a snarling muzzle, set between round cars. The Tamarrik gate, that wonder second only to the Palace, was gone for ever -gone the concentric filigree spheres, the sundial with its phallic gnomon and nympholeptic spiral of hours, the incredible faces peering through the green leaves of the sycamore, the
great ferns and the blue-tongue
d lichens, the wind-harp and the silver drum that beat of itself when the sacred doves alighted at evening to be fed. The fragments of Fleitil’s masterpiece, constructed in an age when none conceived it possible that war could approach Bekla, had bee
n gleaned from the rubble secretl
y and with bitter tears, during the night before Ged-la-Dan and his men supervised the building, by forced labour, of a new wall to close the gap. The two remaining gates, the Blue Gate and
the
Gate of Lilies, were very strong and entirely suited to Bekla’s present and more dangerous role of a city that scarcely knew friend from foe.

On this cloudy spring morning the surface of the Barb, ruffled by
the
south wind, had
the
dull, broken shine of an incised glaze. Along the lonelier, south-eastern shore, from which pasture-land, enclosed
within
the city walls, stretched away up the slopes of Crandor, a flock of cranes were feeding and squabbling, wading through
the
shallows and bending their long necks down to the weed. On the opposite side, in the sheltering cypress gardens, men were strolling in twos and threes or sitting out of
the
wind in
the
evergreen arbours. Some were attended by servants who walked behind them carrying cloaks, papers and writing materials, while others, harsh-voiced and shaggy as brigands, broke from time to time into loud laughter or slapped each
other
‘s shoulders; betraying, even while
they
tried to hide it, the lack of ease which they felt in these trim and unaccustomed surroundings.
Others
again clearly wished to be known for soldiers and, though personally unarmed, in
deference to the place and the occasion, had instructed their servants to carry their empty scabbards conspicuously. It seemed that a number of these men were strangers to each other, for their greetings, as they passed, were formal - a bow, a grave nod or a few words: yet their very presence
togethe
r showed that they must have something in com
mon. After a time a certain restl
essness - even impatience -began to show among them. Evid
ently
they were waiting for something that was delayed.

At length the figure of a woman, scarlet-cloaked and carrying a silver staff, was seen approaching the garden from the King’s House. There was a general move in the direction of the gate leading into the walled road, so
that
by the time the woman reached it, forty or fifty men were already waiting there. As she entered some thronged about her; others, with an air of detachment, idled, or pretended to idle, within earshot. The woman, dour and stolid in manner, looked round among
them
, raised in greeting her hand, with its crimson wooden rings, and began to speak. Although she spoke in Beklan, it was plain
that
this was not her tongue. Her voice had the slow, flat cadence of Telthearna province and she was, as they all knew, a priestess of the conquerors, an Ortelgan.

‘My lords, the king greets you and welcomes you to Bekla. He is grateful to each of you, for he knows that you have the strength and safety of the empire at heart. As you all know, it was
..’

At this moment she was interrupted by th
e stammering excitement of a th
ick-set, lank-haired man, who spoke with the accent of a westerner from Paltesh.

‘— Madam Sheldra — saiyett - tell us — the king — Lord Crendrik — no harm has befallen him?

Sheldra turned towards him unsmilingly and stared him into silence. Then she continued,

‘As you all know, he intended to have received you this morning in audience at the Palace, and to have held the first meeting of the Council this afternoon. He has now been obliged to alter this intention.’

She paused, but there was no further
interruption. All were listen
ing with attention. The distant idlers came closer, glancing at each other with raised eyebrows.

‘General Ged-la-Dan was expected to reach Bekla last night, together with the delegates from eastern Lapan. However, they have been unexpectedly delayed. A messenger reached
the
king at dawn with the
news that they will not be here until this evening. The king therefore asks your patience for a day. The audience will be held at this time tomorrow and the C
ouncil will commence in the
afternoon. Until then you
are
the guests of the city, and the king will welcome all who may wish to sup with him in the Palace an hour after sunset.’

A tall, beardless man, wearing a fox-fur cloak over a white, pleated kilt and purple damask tunic blazoned with thre
e corn-sheaves, came strolling e
l
egantl
y along the terrace and turned his eyes towards the crowd as though he had just noticed them for the first time. He stopped, paused a moment and then addressed Sheldra across
their
heads in
the
courteous and
almost apologetic tone of a gentl
eman questioning someone else’s servant,