Shardik (97 page)

‘Glad to be going, aren’t they?’ said Shouter, in a kind of savage gasp. ‘Either they’re lucky or they’re too bloody stupid to know they’re not.’

‘Why, aren’t they going home?’ asked
Kelderek
.

‘Home? There’s half of them’s never had any home.‘If they had, they wouldn’t have been here, would they?’

‘Go on,’ said
Kelderek
, still gripping his arm. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

‘You know’s well as I do; kids whose mothers don’t want ‘em, fathers have mucked off, they live how they can, don’t they, one day someone sells ‘em for forty meld to get rid of ‘em - same as they did me - best thing ever happened some of
them
, next to being dead. Slaves - they was slaves all along, wasn’t they?’

‘Where do you think they’ll go now, then?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ bawled Shouter, with something like a return to his old form. ‘Leg by mucking Lee, I shouldn’t wonder. Why don’t you let me alone? I’m not afraid of you!’

Kelderek
, forgetti
ng his line and bait, left the boys and made his way back to Dirion’s house. Melathys met him at the door, wearing her Yeldashay
metlan
with the corn-sheaves emblem.

‘You missed Elleroth,’ she said. ‘The Ban in person. He’s invited us to dine with him tonight and says he ve
ry much hopes you won’t be too ti
red. There’ll be no one else and he’s looking forward to seeing you, which from him amounts to a pressing invitation, I should think.’ After a few moments she added, ‘He stayed here a
little
while, in case you returned, and I - I took the opportunity to tell him how things are between you and me. I dare say he knew already, for the matter of that, but he had
the
good manners to pretend he didn’t I told him how I came to be in Zeray and about Bel-ka-Trazet. He asked what we intended to do now and I explained - or tried to explain - what Lord Shardik’s death had meant to us. I told him you were quite decided that there could be no question of your ever returning to Bekla.’

‘I’m glad you told him,’ said Kelderek. ‘You talk more easily to him and his like than ever I shall. He reminds me of Ta-Kominion; and
he
was too much for me.
Elleroth
might help us, I suppose, but I don’t intend to ask him. I owe him my life, yet all the same I can’t bring myself to give any of these Yeldashay the chance to tell me that I’m lucky to be alive. But - but -‘

‘But what, my darling?’ she asked, raising her lips and kissing the pierced lobe of his ear.

‘You said, “It will be shown us what we are to do,” and I’ve a kind of inkling that something may happen before we leave Tissarn.’

‘What?’

‘No,’ he said, smiling. ‘No, it’s you that’s the clairvoyante priestess from Quiso, not I.’

‘I’m not a priestess,’ answered the girl gravely.

‘The Tuginda said differ
ently
. But you’ll be able to ask her again tomorrow night, and Ankray too for that matter.’

‘ “Well, saiyett, the Baron, now he always used to say - ”’ It was an excellent imitation, but she broke off suddenly. ‘Never mind, here comes Dirion. Now let me change that bandage on your arm. Whatever have you been doing up the river? It’s far too dirty to go out to dinner with
Elleroth
.’

It was pleasant to have so much light in the room, thought Kelderek, watching Elleroth’s servant renew the lamps and sweep up the
hearth. Not since Bekla had he seen a room so bright after dark. True, the light served to reveal no finery or display -
little
, indeed, but the poverty of the place, for Elleroth’s quarters were much like his own - a wooden, shed-like house near the waterside, with two bare rooms on each floor - but it also showed that
Elleroth
, as might be expected, liked to be generous, even lavish, to his guests; and that, too, without thought of return, for, as he had promised, no one was present besides himself,
Melathys
, Tan-Rion, another officer and Radu. The boy, though still pale and emaciated in appearance, had changed as a musician changes when he sets hand to his instrument. As in an old talc,
the
wretched slave-boy had turned back into the heir of Sarkid; a young gentleman, brought
up to be deferential to his fath
er, gracious to his father’s officers, sil
ently
attentive to the conversation of his elders and in every way equal to his station. Yet it was not all courtier, for he talked earnestly to
Kelderek
for some time about the slave children and also about the ceremony on the shore; and when Elleroth’s servant, having cut up his one-handed master’s meat, was about to do
the
same for Kelderek, Radu forestalled him, setting aside
Kelderek
‘s protest
with
the remark
that
it was less than
Kelderek
had done for him.

The dinner had been as good as competent soldier-servants could produce on active service; fish (he himself could have caught better), duck, stringy pork with watercress, hot bannocks and goat’s cheese; and an egg syllabub with nuts and honey. The wine, however, was Yeldashay, southern, full and smooth, and
Kelderek
smiled in
wardly as he thought of Elleroth
, in desperate haste to start his forced march from Kabin in response to the news that his son was alive, finding time to give orders that plenty of it was to
be brought along. That Elleroth
, for all his aristocratic detachment, had a magnanimous and sincere heart he had had ample proof and indeed could be said to be alive to testify: nor was he himself so envious or mean as to suppose that wealth and style necessarily denoted indifference to the feelings of poorer men. If Elleroth was an aristocrat, he felt an aristocrat’s obligations, and that a good deal more
warmly than Ta-Kominion or Ged-l
a-Dan. His soldiers would have followed him into the Streels of Urtah. And yet
Kelderek
, for all his real gratitude to this man, who had set aside their former enmity and treated him as a friend and guest, still found himself out of accord with Elleroth’s smooth self-possession, with the even, controlled tone of his
voice and his capacity for deftl
y converting
Kelderek
‘s rather anecdotal manner of conversation into his own style of detached, impersonal comment. He had been most courteous and considerate, but to Kelderek his talk and bearing nevertheless contained more than a suggestion of the ambassador entertaining half-civilized foreigners in the way of duty. Ha
d there, perhaps, been some unre
vealcd purpose behind his invitation? Yet what purpose could there be, now that all was resolved and setdcd? Radu was alive - and Shardik was dead. Ikat and Bekla were at peace and Melathys and he were free to go where they might. So were Shouter and the slave children - free as flies, free as autumn leaves or as wind-borne ashes. No, there could be no more strands to unravel now.

It was fortunate, he thought, that Melathys, at any rate, had some stomach for the party. Even remembering all that she had suffered, yet in one way she had been lucky, for despite her devotion to
the
Tuginda and her determination to vindicate her long-ago treachery to Shardik, she was not and never had been made for
the
seclusion of an island priestess. She was flirting with Tan-Rion at
this
moment - embroidering upon some banter of how she would visit Sarkid and reveal all that he had done while he had been on active service. Kelderek felt no jealousy, but only gladness. He knew her to be warm-hearted, mercurial, even passionate. She was working out her own way of overcoming the evil that had been done to her and meanwhile he could be patient, despite the kindling of desire which told him
that
his body at least was recovering.

Yes, he reflected, his body was recovering. His heart would hardly do so. He had seen into the depth of a Streel lower than Urtah, a devil’
s hole where Shara lay meaningle
ssly murdered and Shouter loitered cursing in the wasteland. That was the human world - the world which
Elleroth
saw primarily in terms of a ruler’s problems of law and order - the world in which Lord Shardik had given his sacred life to save children condemned to slavery by human selfishness and neglect.

Elleroth was speaking again now, of the balance of power between Ikat and Bekla, of the prospects for peace and the need to overcome all remaining feelings of enmity between the two peoples. Prosperity, he was saying, was a great warmer of hearts and hearths, and to this self-evident truth
Kelderek
felt safe in nodding assent. Then, pausing, Elleroth gazed downwards, as though deliberating with himself. He swirled the remains of his wine round and round his cup, but waved aside the attentive soldier who, misunderstanding, stepped forward to refill it; and a few moments later gave him leave to go. As the man went out, Elleroth looked up with a smile and said,

‘Well, Crendrik - or Kelderek Zenzuata, as Melathys tells me I ought to call you - you’ve given me a great deal to think about: or at all events I
have
been thinking, and you have much to do with it.’

Kelderek
, at something of
a
loss but fortified by the Ikat wine, made no reply; yet was at least able to return his host’s gaze with courteous expectancy and some degree of self-possession.

‘One of our problems - and that not
the
least - is going to be first, establishing proper control over Zeray, and then developing this whole province. If you were ever right about one thing, Kelderek, it was when you spoke of the necessity of trade to the prosperity of ordinary people. Zeray is going to become an important trade route, bodi for Bekla and for Ikat. We couldn’t monopolize it even if we wished, for the trade will have to come through Kabin as well and the Kabinese don’t want to become independent of
Bekla
. So we’re going to need someone to look after Zeray, preferably not a complete foreigner, but one who favours neither Bekla nor Ikat; someone who’s keen on trade and understands its great importance.’

‘I see,’ said Kelderek politely.

‘And
then
, of course, we really need someone with personal experience of the Telthearna,’ went on Elleroth. ‘You might not be aware of this, Kelderek, being so familiar with it yourself, but it’s not everyone who knows how to pay the necessary attention and respect to the ways of
a
great river, its droughts and floods and fogs and currents and shoals - a river where a vital trade ferry crosses
a
swift and dangerous strait. That calls for experience, and knowledge that’s become second nature.’

Kelderek drained h
is wine. His cup was wooden, of peasant workmanship, almost certainly turned, he thought, here in Tissarn. In
the
bowl, someone had taken a good deal of trouble over
a
very passable likeness of a kynat in flight

‘Then, again, it would be highly desirable for this governor to have had some previous experience of ruling and exercising authority,’ resumed Elleroth. ‘Even with military help, Zeray’s likely to be
a
tough business for a time, considering its present state and that of
the
whole province. And I think the appointment really calls for someone who knows something about fairly rough people at first hand -someone who’s knocked about, as you might say, and knows how to rough it a bit himself. I doubt whether we’d find
a
land-owning aristocrat, or even a professional officer, prepared to take
the
job on. They almost all despise trade, and anyway who would be ready to leave land and estates, to go to Zeray? And what existing provincial governor would want to make the move? Difficult, Tan-Rion, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Tan-Rion. ‘Very.’

‘The place needs colonizing, too,’ said
Elleroth
. ‘Willing hands, that’s going to be the great need. I suppose we ought to look for y
oung people with nothing much to
lose - people who need to be given a chance in life and aren’t going to be too particular. It wouldn’t be any good just dumping
them down in Zeray, though; the
y’d find it too much for them, and only add to the criminal population. They’ll need an eye kept on them by a kindly so
rt of governor who feels sympath
etic and knows how to get something out of people that nobody else has much use for. Someone who’s suffered a bit himself, I suppose. Dear me, it
is
a problem. I really cannot imagine where we are likely to unearth a person who fulfils all these different requirements. Melathys, my dear, have you any notion?’