Kelderek spoke quickly. "Only put aside doubt, Rantzay, and act out of a true belief that this can be achieved, and all will be well. I am going down to meet Lord Ta-Kominion. I shall return later and you will find me here. Sheldra and Neelith, come with me."
As he strode downhill between the two silent girls, with the sound of the marching tumult coming up to meet him, he felt his inward prayers turned back upon himself. Whether or not he had been right could be revealed only by the outcome. Yet Ta-Kominion was certain that it was Shardik's divine purpose to lead the army to victory. "We'll rule in Bekla, you and I." "And when that day comes," Kelderek thought, "no doubt the Tuginda will understand that all was for the best."
18 Rantzay
ON THE EDGE OF THE FOREST, Rantzay knelt over the tracks showing faintly in the hard ground. They led westward, into thick undergrowth, and where they disappeared the bark of a kalmet tree had been slashed white, high up, by the bear's claws. She knew that it was not two hours since Shardik had deliberately lain in wait and killed a man. In this mood he might well kill again--might lie in wait for those who
tracked him or steal, elusive and silent, through the woods until he was behind them and the pursuers became the pursued.
The strain of the past month had told increasingly on the priestess. She was the oldest of the women who had followed Shardik down Ortelga and across the Telthearna strait, and though her belief in his divine power was untouched by the least doubt, she had felt also--more and more as the days went by--the hardship of the life and the continual fear of death. The young risk their lives heedlessly--often actually for sport--but their elders, even while they may grow in humility and selflessness, grow also in prudence and in regard for their own lives, those little portions of time in which they hope to create something fit to be offered at last to God. Rantzay, novice mistress and warden of the Ledges, had not, like Melathys, been caught unawares by the sudden coming of Shardik like a thief in the night. From the moment when the Tuginda's message had reached Quiso, she had know what would be required of her. Since then, day after day, she had been driving her gaunt and aging body over the rocky hillsides and through the thickets of the island, struggling with her own fear even while she calmed some near-hysterical girl and persuaded her to take part once more in the Singing, or herself took the girl's place and felt yet again the slow response of her muscles to the bear's lithe, unpredictable movements. On Quiso, Anthred, the woman struck down and killed among the trees by the shore, had been first her servant, then her pupil and finally her closest friend. Once in a dream she had embraced her as her own child and together they had dug up and burned that day in the rains, long ago, when Rantzay's disappointed father, frightened at last by her waking fits, her swoons and the voices that spoke and babbled from her at these times, had gone to the High Baron to offer to the Ledges his ugly, unmarriageable tent-pole of a daughter. She had recalled the dream as she performed the traditional rite of burning Anthred's quiver, bow and wooden rings upon her grave by the Telthearna strait.
By what means was Shardik to be brought into the open and drugged insensible? And if the means she chose were faulty, how many lives would be lost with nothing to show? She returned to the girls, who were standing together a little way off, looking down into the valley.
"When did he last eat?"
"No one has seen him eat, madam, since he left Ortelga yesterday morning."
"Then he is likely to be looking for food now. The Tuginda and Lord Kelderek say that he is to be drugged."
"Can we not follow him, madam," said Nito, "and put down meat or fish with tessik hidden in it?"
"Lord Kelderek says he must not fall asleep in the thick forest. If it can be accomplished, he is to return here."
"He will hardly return here, madam," said Nito, nodding her head toward the road below.
At the foot of the slope fires were already burning and the sounds came up of many men at work: sudden cries of urgency or warning, the flat ringing of a hammer on iron, the gushing of flame fanned by a bellows, the rasp of a saw, the tap-tap-tap of a mallet and chisel. They could see Kelderek going from one group to another, conferring, pointing, nodding his head while he talked. As they watched, Sheldra left his side and came climbing quickly toward them. Impassive as usual, she showed no excitement or breathlessness as she stood before Rantzay and raised her palm to her forehead.
"Lord Kelderek asks whether Shardik has yet gone far and what is to be done?"
"He may well ask--and he a hunter. Does he think Shardik is likely to stay near that stinking smoke and tumult?"
"Lord Kelderek has ordered that some goats should be driven higher up the valley and tethered on the edge of the forest. He hopes that if Lord Shardik can be prevented from hunting or feeding elsewhere, he may perhaps make his way toward them and that you may find means, madam, to drug him there."
"Go back and tell Lord Kelderek that if it can be done we will find a way to do it, with God's help. Zilthe, Nito, go back to the camp and bring up what meat you can find and all the tessik that is there--the green leaves as well as the dried powder. And you are to bring the other drug too--the theltocarna."
"But theltocarna can be administered only in a wound, madam, and not in food: it must be mingled with the blood."
"I know that as well as you," snapped Rantzay, "and I have already told you to bring it. There are six or seven gallbladders packed with moss in a wooden box with a sealed lid. Handle it carefully--the bladders must not be broken. I will send back one of the other girls to meet you here and bring you on to join us, wherever we may be."
The long and dangerous search for Shardik, westward through the forest, continued until after noon, and when at last Zilthe came running between the trees to say that she had caught sight of the bear prowling along the bank of a stream not far away, Rantzay already felt herself on the point of collapse from strain and fatigue. She followed the girl slowly through a grove of myrtles and out into an expanse of tall, yellow grass buzzing with insects in the sun. Here Zilthe pointed to the bank of the stream.
Shardik gave no sign that he had seen them. He was fishing--splashing in and out of the water and every now and then scooping out a fish to flap and jump on the stony bank before he held it down and ate it in two or three bites. Watching him, Rantzay's heart sank. To approach him was more than she dared attempt. The girls, she knew, would not refuse to obey her if she ordered them to do it. But what end would it serve? Suppose they could, somehow, succeed in startling him from the brook, what then? How were they to drive or entice him to return in the direction from which he had come?
She went back to the trees and lay prone, her chin propped on her hands. The girls, gathering about her, waited for her to speak, but she said nothing. The shadows moved over the ground before her eyes and the flies settled at the corners of her mouth. The heat was intense but she gave no sign of discomfort, only now and then standing up to look at the bear and then lying down as before.
At length Shardik left the stream and stretched himself out in a patch of great hemlock plants not far from where the priestess was lying. She could hear the hollow sound of the stems as they snapped and see the white umbels of bloom toppling and falling as the bear rolled among them. The silence returned, and with it the weight of her impossible task and the agony of her determination. In her perplexed exhaustion she thought with envy of her friend, free at last from every burden--from the laborious dedication of the Ledges and the continual fatigue and fear of the last weeks. If one had power to change the past--it was a favorite fantasy with her, though one which she had never shared, even with Anthred. If she had power to change the past, at what point would she enter it to do so? At that night on the beach of Quiso, a month ago? This time she would not guide them inland, but turn them back, the night messengers, the heralds of Shardik.
It was dark. It was night. She and Anthred were standing once more on the stony beach with the flat, green lanterns between them, splashing the shallow water with their staves.
"Go back!" she cried into the darkness. "Go back, return whence you came! You should never have come here! I--yes, I myself--am the voice of God and that is the message I am sent to deliver to you!"
She felt Anthred clutch at her arm, but pushed her aside. The windless, moonless darkness was thick about them: only the sky retained a faint trace of light. Something was approaching, splashing slowly and heavily toward the shore. A huge, black shape loomed above her, its lowered head turning from side to side, the mouth open, the breath fetid and rank. She faced it imperiously. Once she and it had gone their several ways, then--ah! then she would return with Anthred to find her girlhood, to turn its course away from Quiso forever. She raised her arm and was about to speak again, but the presence, with a soft, shaggy slapping of wet feet on the shore, passed by her and was gone into the wooded island.
There was a blinding light and a noise of scolding birds. Rantzay looked about her in bewilderment. She was standing knee-deep in the dry, tawny grass. The sun was thinly covered with a fleece of cloud and suddenly a long, distant roll of thunder ran round the edge of the
sky. Some insect had stung her on the neck and her fingers, as she drew them across the place, came away smeared with blood. She was alone. Anthred was dead and she herself was standing in the dried-up, bitter forest south of the Telthearna. The tears flowed silently down her haggard, dusty face as she bent forward, supporting herself upon her staff.
After a few moments she bit hard upon her hand, drew herself up and gazed about her. Some distance away, Nito looked out from among the trees and then approached, staring at her incredulously.
"Madam--what--the bear--what have you done? Are you unharmed? Wait--lean on me. I--oh, I was afraid--I am so much afraid--"
"The bear?" said Rantzay. "Where is the bear?"
As she spoke, she noticed for the first time a broad path flattened through the grass beside her and on it, here and there, the tracks of Shardik, broader than roof tiles. She bent down. The smell of the bear was plain. It could have passed only since she had last seen it among the hemlocks. Dazed, she raised her hands to her face and was about to ask Nito what had happened, when she became conscious of yet one more bodily affliction. Her tears fell again--tears of shame and degradation.
"Nito, I--I am going down to the stream. Go and tell the girls to follow Lord Shardik at once. Then wait for me here. You and I will overtake them."
In the water she stripped and washed her body and fouled clothes as well as she could. On Quiso it had been easier; often Anthred had been able to perceive when one of her fits was coming on and had contrived to help her to save her dignity and authority. Now there was not one of the girls whom she could think of as her friend. Looking back, she caught a glimpse of Nito loitering discreetly among the trees. She would know what had happened, of course, and tell others.
They must not be too long in catching up. Left to themselves the girls would not be steady, and if by some incredible stroke of fortune Shardik were indeed to return whence he had come, nevertheless without herself they could not be relied upon to do their utmost--to death if necessary--to carry out the Tuginda's instructions.
She and Nito had not gone far when she realized that the fit had left her dulled and stupefied. She longed to rest. Perhaps, she thought, Shardik would stop or turn aside before the evening, and Lord Kelderek would be forced to allow them another day. But each time they came up with one or other of the girls waiting to show them the direction, the news was that the bear was still wandering slowly southeastward, as though making for the hill country below Gelt.