A great bat came hovering out of the darkness, flittered soundlessly along the edge of the fire, turned away from the crackling heat and vanished as it had come.
"Kelderek, you say I think you're a coward. Is it I that think it, or you? It's not too late for you to redeem yourself, Kelderek Play-with-the-Children: to show yourself a man. Find a way to bring Lord Shardik to the plains of Bekla--fight for him there with your own hands. Think of the prize--a prize beyond reckoning! Do this, and no one will ever call you a coward again."
"I never was a coward. But the Tuginda--"
For the first time, Ta-Kominion smiled at him.
"I know you are not. When we have taken Bekla, what reward do you suppose there will be for him to whom Shardik first appeared, for him who brought the news to Quiso? Why, there is not a man on Ortelga who does not know your name and honor it already."
Kelderek hesitated, frowning.
"How soon must we begin?"
"At once--now. There is not a moment to lose. There are two things, Kelderek, that a rebel leader needs above all. First, his followers must be filled with a burning ardor--mere obedience is not enough--and secondly he himself must be all speed and resolution. The second I myself possess. The first only you can ensure."
"It may perhaps be possible--but I shall need every blacksmith, wheelwright and carpenter in Ortelga. Let us go and speak with the Tuginda."
As Ta-Kominion rose, Kelderek offered him the support of his arm, but the baron waved him aside, staggered a few steps, hesitated, then himself put his sound arm through Kelderek's and drew himself upright, leaning hard until he found his balance.
"Are you ill?"
"It's nothing--a touch of fever. It will pass off."
"You must be tired out. You ought to rest."
"Later."
Kelderek guided him away from the fire. In the close darkness under the trees they paused, sightless after the flame-light. A hand plucked Kelderek's sleeve and he turned, peering.
"Shall I guide you, my lord? Are you returning now to Lord Shardik?"
"Is it your watch, Neelith?"
"My watch is ended, my lord. I was coming to wake Sheldra, but it's no matter if you need me."
"No, get to sleep. Who is watching Lord Shardik?"
"Zilthe, my lord."
"Where is the Tuginda?"
The girl pointed, "Down yonder, among the ferns."
"Is she asleep?"
"Not yet, my lord; she has been praying this hour and more."
They left the girl and, their eyes becoming accustomed to the dark, moved on more easily. Soon the trees grew fewer and the close growth overhead opened here and there to reveal clouds and moonlight. The white beams faded and reappeared continually between the branches as the clouds drifted eastward across the moon. The turbid heat of the forest, a single block of dense air lying all about them, seemed now to begin to be assailed, whittled, rifted, encroached upon by gusts and momentary, cooler currents coming and going like the first wavelets of floodwater lapping around a dry shoal. As the leaves and light shifted in response to the breeze outside, the mass of the hot darkness on the ground stirred, slow and heavy as a bed of weed under water. As yet unpenetrated, it felt already on its outskirts the first impulse of that appointed, seasonal force that soon would grow to split it with lightning and storm.
Ta-Kominion stopped, lifting his head and sniffing the fresher air.
"The rains can't be long now."
"A day or two," replied Kelderek.
"That's the strongest reason of all for speed. It's now or never. We can't march or keep the field in the wet and nor can they. Even Bekla lies low in the rains. The last thing they'll be expecting is any sort of attack at this time of year. If they have no warning and we get there before the rains break we shall have complete surprise."
"Have they no spies?"
"We're not worth spying on, man. Ortelga? A bunch of scavengers perched on the butt-end of an overgrown spit."
"But the risk! If the rains come first, before we can fight, that will be the end of us. Are you sure there's time?"
"Lord Shardik will give us time."
As he spoke they came suddenly upon a broad slab of rock rising upright from the ground like a wall. It was flat, about as thick as a man's body, and rose irregularly to a blunt apex an arm's length above their heads. In the faint light the two sides appeared almost smooth, though as Kelderek groped wonderingly across one of the planes he could feel that it was rougher than it looked, flawed here and there and ridged with excrescent mosses and lichens. The rock was set deep in the soft earth of the forest like a wedge hurled down and hammered in by a giant long ago. Beyond, they could make out another, also flat but larger, slightly tilted and of a different shape. This, when they came to it, they saw was half-covered on one side with rusty-red lichen like a stain of dried blood. And now they found themselves peering and wandering between numbers of these tall, flat-sided masses--some, like fences, long and no higher than a man's shoulder, others rising in steep, conical blocks or cut, as it seemed, into flights of steps vanishing upward in the dark, but all worked to an even thickness and sheer-sided like gigantic axeheads, with never a broadening at the foot to anything resembling a base or plinth. Among them grew the ferns of which the girl had spoken--some huge, like trees, with moss hanging from the undersides of their fronds, others small and delicate, lace-fronded with tiny leaflets that trembled like aspen leaves in the still air. From hidden places among the rocks there came, even at this time of year, thin tricklings out of the peaty mold, scarcely enough to form anywhere a pool bigger than a man's cupped hands; though they shone, where the moonlight caught them, in faint streaks along the stones and the moist, dim fern-boughs. A snatch of breeze brought for an instant the minute pattering of drops blown across the shallowest of surfaces.
"Have you never been here before?" asked Ta-Kominion, as Kelderek stared up at the outline of a rock that seemed to be toppling forward between his eyes and the moving clouds above. "These are the Two-Sided Rocks."
"Once, many years ago, I came here; but I was not old enough then to wonder how the rocks were brought--or why."
"The rocks were here from the beginning, as I was told. But the men who made the Ledges on Quiso--they worked them, as others might trim a hedge or shape a tree, to strike wonder into the hearts of pilgrims approaching Ortelga. For it was here that the pilgrims used to assemble to be guided down to the causeway."
"This place is Lord Shardik's then, as Quiso is, and that is why he has led us here."
The Tuginda was standing a little way off, in an open place among the ferns. Her back was half-turned, her hands clasped at her waist and her head inclined as she gazed into the moonlit distance. Her bearing recalled to Kelderek the moment when she had stood on the edge of the pit, filled with the knowledge that it was none other than Shardik lying among the trepsis below. Plainly she was not withdrawn into contemplation, but seemed rather to have attained to some heightened state of alertness, in which she was aware with rapture of all that lay about her. Yet just as evidently, her eyes passed through the fern grove as they might have passed through water to perceive--or partly perceive--the moving life within it, the silence of the pool. For an instant Kelderek understood that not only now, but always, his own eye was filled with reflections from a surface through which her sight passed unimpeded. She seemed to be gazing into the sultry gloom as though at some marvelous spectacle, a dance of light and flowers. Yet still there remained about her that air of plain directness and shrewdness that had both deceived and reassured him by the Tereth stone on Quiso. If her prayer had had words, she might have been speaking of leather, wood and bread.
Ta-Kominion stopped, withdrew his arm from Kelderek's and leaned against one of the rock slabs, pressing his forehead against the cool stone.
"Is that the Tuginda?"
"Yes." He was surprised for a moment, before remembering that Ta-Kominion could never have seen her unmasked--might neve
r, perhaps, have seen her at all.
"Are you sure?"
Kelderek made no reply.
"The girl said she was praying."
"She is praying."
Ta-Kominion shrugged his shoulders and pushed himself upright. They went on. While they were still a little distance away the Tuginda turned toward them. Her face, in the moonlight, was full of a calm, tranquil joy which seemed to embrace and sanctify rather than transcend the dark forest and the danger and uncertainty surrounding all Ortelga. To Kelderek's eye, faith streamed from her as light from a lantern.
"It is she," he thought, in a swift access of self-knowledge, "she, not I, through whom the power of Shardik will be transmuted and made a blessing to us all. Her acceptance and faith--his force and savagery--they are one and the same. He is weak as a dumb creature without knowledge. She is strong as the shoots of the lilies, which great stones cannot prevent from breaking through the earth."
They stood before her and Kelderek raised his palm to his forehead. Her smile in reply was like the answering step in some happy dance, an exchange of mutual respect and trust.
"We interrupted you, saiyett."
"No, we are all doing the same thing--whatever it is. I came here because it's cooler among the ferns. But we'll go back to the fire now, Kelderek, if you prefer."
"Saiyett, your wishes are mine, and always will be."
She smiled again.
"You're sure?"
He nodded, smiling back at her.
"This is the High Baron of Ortelga, Lord Ta-Kominion. He has come to talk about Lord Shardik."