Shardik (47 page)

Meanwhile,
Kelderek
and his train had already begun to descend the terraces in slow procession. The chanting of the priestesses rose about him with a sound that wrung his heart, for it was that same andphony
that
he had first heard in the forests of western
Ortelga
. Then, the voices of Rantzay and the Tuginda had formed part of a wall of sound encircling a summit of the spirit, sublime above the mortal world of fear and ignorance. Yet of this memory his grave, lean face showed no outward sign.
His clasped hands were untrembling and his body, beneath
the heavy robes, moved firmly on towards the appointed destination. The plant-scents of the night, thin and evanescent in the early spring air, mingled with the resinous odours of the coloured fires and the drift of torch-smoke on the bre
eze; and bemused, perhaps, by th
ese and by his fast since sunrise, by his memories and the sound of the singing, he imagined first one and
then
an
other
companion to be walking beside him towards the torch-lit garden and the dragon-reflecting lake: a dark girl wearing a broad, golden collar, who laughed and plunged the point of an arrow into her white arm before turning to him a face wan
with
fear: a tall, gaunt woman, limping exhausted on a staff, her sweating hands clutching a box where bladders lay packed in moss: and an old, red-eyed hag, who tottered at his elbow in filthy rags, bearing in her arms a dead child and imploring his help in mumbled words beyond his understanding. So real did they seem that dread and foreboding came upon him, pacing on. ‘Shardik,’ he prayed,
‘senandril,
Lord Shardik. Accept my life. Redeem the world, and begin with me.’

And now he is come to the garden, where the lords and ladies fall back before him and the barons raise their swords in salutation of
the
power entrusted by God to the priest-king. The priestesses’ singing dies away, the copper bells are silent,
the
fiery bear and the dragon have done their strife and burn low with none to regard. The people about the shore cease their shouts and cheering, so that
the
distant sound of
the
lower city’s riot rises up from below the walls. The priest-king walks forward alone, before
the
eyes of armed barons and of the envoys of his vassal provinces, towards the brink of a deep, inshore pool — the Pool of Light, Here, unhelped by man or woman, he must divest himself of his heavy robes and crown and stand naked, in the sharp night air, to thrust his feet into sandals of lead placed ready for him on the verge. Below him, deep in the pool, there burns amidst the darkness and water a single light - a light enclosed in a hollow, crystal sphere secured to a rock, fanned with air and emitting its heat and smoke
through
hidde
n vents. This is the fire of Fle
itil, devised long ago for the worship of Cran, but now made a part of the fire-festival of Shardik. Down the flight of underwater steps the king w
ill go, his feet weighted to carr
y him to
the
floor of the pool, and thence release himself and rise through the water, bearing that miraculous globe of light. Already he has moved forward, feeling for each stone step with ponderous feet and slowly descending in a silence broken only by the water lapping about his knees, his loins, his neck.

But hark!
What dreadful sound is that, breaking the reverent hush of Ortelgan warriors and Beklan lords, slicing like a sword across the crowded garden and the empty lake? Heads turn, voices break out. A moment’s silence and it is repeated - the roar of a great animal in rage, in fear and pain; so loud, so fierce and savage that women clutch the arms of their men, as at the sound of thunder or of fighting, and young boys feign unconcern, ill-concealing their involuntary fear. The lady Sheldra, waiting close to the king at the water-steps, turns about and stands tense, raising one hand to shield her eyes from the torchlight as she tries to see across the garden to the dark oudine of the King’s House beyond. The roaring ceases and is followed by heavy, vibrating thuds, as though some soft but massive object were striking against the wall of that cavernous, echoing place.

Kelderek, who had already drawn breath to submerge and drop from the lowest step’to the bed of the pool, gave an inarticulate cry and struggled to release himself from the weighted sandals. A moment more and he drew the pins, pulled himself out of the water and stood dripping on the paved verge. The murmurs about him grew louder, unfriendly and fearful. ‘What has happened?’ ‘What is he about?’ ‘To break off - unlucky!’ ‘An unlucky act — no good will
come of itl’ ‘Sacrilege!
‘ In the crowd near by, a woman began to weep with quick, nervous whimperings of fear.

Kelderek, paying them no heed, bent down, as though to dress himself again in the stiff, heavy vestments lying at his feet. In his haste his hands fumbled with the fastenings, the robe fell sideways and, flinging it down, he began to push his way, naked as he was, through the group of priestesses about him. Sheldra put her hand on his arm.

‘My lord -‘

‘Get out of the way!’ answered Kelderek, roughly flinging her off.

‘What’s the matter, Kelderek?’ said Zelda, coming forward and speaking low and quickly at his shoulder. ‘Don’t be foolis
h, man! What are you about?’

‘Shardik!
Shardik!’ shouted Kelder
ek. ‘Follow me, for God’s sake!’

He ran, twigs and stones piercing his bare feet Bleeding, his naked body shoved and forced its way between men in armour and shrieking, scandalized women, whose brooches and belt-buckles scratched his flesh. A man tried to bar his path and he felled him with a blow of his fist, yelling again, ‘ Shardik 1 Get out of the way!’

‘Stop! Come back!’ called Zelda, pursuing and trying to clutch him. ‘The bear’s
only frightened of the fire, Kelderek!
It’s the noise and smell of the smoke’s upset it! Stop this blasphemy! Stop him!’ he shouted to a group of officers a little way ahead.

They stared irresolutely and Kelderek broke through them, tripped and fell, got up and again dashed forward, his wet body smeared from head to foot with dirt, blood and the leafy fragments of the garden. Grotesque in appearance, as dirty and lost to dignity as some wretched butt of the barrack-room stripped, pelted and chased by his loutish comrades for their mean sport, he ran on, heedless of everything but the noise from the hall now close in front of him. As he reached that same terrace on which he had joined
Zelda
the day before, he stopped and turned to those following him.

‘The roof! The roof’s on fire! Get up there and put it out!’

‘He’s out of his mind!’ cried Zelda. ‘Kelderek, you fool, don’t you realize there’s a fire burning on every roof in
Bekla
tonight? For God’s sake -‘

‘Not up there! Do you think I don’t know? Where are the sentries? Get them up there — send men to search round the far side!’

Alone, he rushed through the south door, along the ambulatory and into the hall. The place was dim, lit by no more than five or six torches fixed along the smoke-streaked
walls. By the cage-bars in
the
centre of the hall Zilthe
was sprawled face-down, her head lying in a puddle of blood that oozed over the stones. From the roof above came sounds of crackling and burning, and something heavy shifted and slipped with a rending noise. A sudden spurt of flame came and went and sparks floated down, dying as they fell.

Shardik, swaying from side to side like a fir-tree when woodmen rock it at the base to loosen the roots, was standing erect at the further end of the hall, beating with his huge paws on the closed gate and roaring with rage and fear as the fire burned more strongly above him. In his back was a jagged gash as long as a man’s forearm and near him lay a bloody spear which, evid
ently
torn from one of the panoplies on the wall, must have fallen out of the wound as he rose on his hind legs.

Before the bars, with his back to Kelderek, stood a man armed with a bow. This also he must have snatched from the wall, for
from e
ither end
still
dangled the broken leather thongs by which it had been fastened. A heavy-headed arrow lay on the string and the man, no doubt unaccustomed to the weapon, was fumbling as he drew it.
Kelderek
, naked an
d unarmed as he was, rushed forw
ard. The man, turning, dodged quickly, drew his dagger and stabbed him in the left shoulder. The next moment Kelderek had flung himself upon him, biting, kicking and clawing, and borne him to the ground. He did not feel whatever wounds he
received, nor the pain in his th
umbs as he pressed them, almost to breaking, into the man’s throat and beat the back of his head a
gainst the floor. He sank his teeth
in him like a beast, released his hold an instant to batter him, then clutched him once more and tore him, as a savage guard-hound tears a robber whom he has caught in his master’s house.

When
Zelda
and
those
with him entered the hall, bearing the dead body of a sentry and holding under guard
Elleroth
, Ban of Sarkid and envoy of Lapan, whom they had overpowered in
the
act of climbing down from the roof, they found the king, covered from head to foot in blood and dirt, bleeding from five or six stab-wounds and weeping as he bent over the young priestess on the floor. The lacerated body beside him was that of Mollo, envoy of Kabin, who had been actually torn and battered to death at the king’s bare hands.

30
‘Elleroth Condemned

With a flow of relief like that felt by a child when light is brought into the dark room where he is lying afraid,
Kelderek
realized that he had been dreaming. The child desists from frightening himself with
the
fancy that
the
oak chest might be a crouching animal, and accepts that the grotesque face peering down upon him is nothing but a pattern of lines in
the
rafters; and at once other, true proportions, not actually revealed by, but nevertheless consequent upon the bringing of the light, are plain. The distant sound outside the window, though unaltered from a few moments before, is now, clearly, not faint, evil laughter but
the
croaking of frogs: while, by a
subtle
shift of emphasis,
the
smell
of new-sawn wood, of penned cattl
e or of drying skins, which just now seemed so menacing, the very smell of fear, alters in its effect as it becomes linked with familiar people and bright, diurnal th
ings. But with those things
return almost at once the shadows which they cast Will he be scolded because he cried out in his fear? Or has someone perhaps discovered that yesterday he did what he should not? He has only exchanged one kind of anxiety for another.

In
Kelderek
‘s wakening mind,
the
misty topography of thought seemed to turn as though upon a pivot; dream and reality took up their proper places and he recognized the true aspect and features of his situation. He had not, he realized, been summoned to the presence of Bel-ka-Trazet — that
was a dream — and therefore, th
ank God, he need no longer try to devise how best to defend himself. The aching pain in his body was certainly real, but was due not to blows received from the High Baron’s men, but to his fight with the intruder in the hall. He was not, after all, in danger of death, yet instead
there
now returned to him the recollection of all
that
he had forgotten in sleep -
the
wounding of Shardik,
the
burning hall, Zilthe lying on the stones and his own injuries. How long had he been asleep? Suddenly, as a wall crumbles at the point where it is most vulnerable, the drowsy, undiscriminating progress of his awakening was broken by the realization that he did not know what had become of Shardik. At once he cried out ‘Shardik!’, opened his eyes and tried to start up.

It was daylight and he was lying in his own bed. Through the southern window, with its view over the Barb, a pale sun was shining. It seemed an hour or two after dawn. His left hand was bound up - his shoulder too, he could feel, and the opposite thigh. Biting his lip
with
pain, he sat up and put his feet to the floor. As he did so Sheldra came into the room.

‘My lord -‘

‘Shardik! What has become of Lord Shardik?’

‘My lord, General
Zelda
has come to speak with you. He is in haste. He says it is important.’

She hurried out, while he shouted feebly after her, ‘Shardik! Shardik!’ She returned with Zelda, who was cloaked and booted as though for a journey.