"Excuse me, gentlemen. I don't know whether you're interested, but I'm told the king is approaching. He'll be crossing the market in a few moments. I thought as you gentlemen seem to be visitors to the city--"
The landlord was standing beside them, smiling obsequiously and pointing out through the entrance.
"Thank you," replied Elleroth. "That's very good of you. Perhaps--" he slid another gold piece into the landlord's hand--"if you could contrive to find some more of this excellent stuff--charming girl, your daughter--oh, your niece? Delightful--we'll return in a few minutes."
They went out into the colonnade. The square had become hotter and more crowded and the market servants, carrying pitchers and long aspergilla of bound twigs, were walking hither and thither, laying the glittering, sandy dust. At a distance above, the north front of the Barons' Palace stood in shadow, the sun, behind it, glinting here and there upon the marble balustrades of the towers and the trees on the terraces below. As Mollo stood gazing in renewed wonder, the gongs of the city clocks sounded the hour. A few moments afterward he heard, approaching by the street down which he and Elleroth had come that morning, the ringing of another gong, softer and of a deeper, more vibrant pitch. People were drawing aside, some leaving the square altogether or slipping into the various doorways around the colonnade. Others, however, waited expectantly as the gong drew nearer. Mollo edged his way between those nearest to him and craned his neck, peering over the beam of the Great Scales.
Two files of soldiers were coming down the hill, pacing slowly on either side of the street. Although they were armed in the Beklan style, with helmet, shield and short sword, their dark eyes, black hair and rough, unkempt appearance showed them to be Ortelgans. Their swords were drawn and they were looking vigilantly about them among the crowd. The man bearing the gong, who walked at the head of and between the two files, was dressed in a gray cloak edged with gold and a blue robe embroidered in red with the mask of the Bear. The heavy gong hung at the full extent of his left arm, while his right hand, holding the stick, struck the soft, regular blows which both announced the king's approach and gave their step to the soldiers. Yet the beat was not that of marching men, but rather of solemn procession, or of a sentinel pacing on some terrace or battlement alone.
Behind the man with the gong came six priestesses of the Bear, scarlet-cloaked and adorned with heavy, barbaric jewelery--necklaces of ziltate and penapa, belts of inlaid bronze and clusters of carved wooden rings so thick that the fingers of their folded hands were pressed apart. Their grave faces were those of peasant girls, ignorant of gentle ways and accustomed to a narrow life of daily toil, yet they carried themselves with a dark dignity, withdrawn and indifferent to the staring crowd on either side. At their center walked the solitary figure of the priest-king.
It had not occurred to Mollo that the king would not be carried--either in a litter or on a chair--or drawn in a cart, perhaps, by caparisoned and gilt-horned oxen. He was taken unawares by this curious lack of state, by this king who walked through the dust of the marketplace, who stepped aside to avoid a coil of rope lying in his path and a moment after tossed his head, dazzled by a flash of light reflected from a pail of water. In his curiosity he climbed precariously on the plinth of the nearest column and gazed over the heads of the passing soldiers.
The train of the king's long cloak of blue and green was raised and held behind him by two of the priestesses. Each blue panel bore in gold the mask of the Bear and each green panel the emblem of the sun as a lidded and radiant eye--the Eye of God. His long staff, of polished zoan wood, was bound about with golden filigree; and from the fingers of his gauntlets hung curving silver claws. His bearing, that neither of a ruler nor a warrior, possessed nevertheless a mysterious and cryptic authority, stark and ascetic, the power of the desert-dweller and the anchorite. The dark face, haggard and withdrawn, was that of a man who works in solitude, the face of a hunter, a poet or a contemplative. He was young, yet older than his years, going gray before his time, with a stiffness in the movement of one arm which suggested an old injury ill-healed. His eyes seemed fixed on some inward scene which brought him little peace, so that even as he looked about him, raising his hand from time to time in somber greeting to the crowd, he appeared preoccupied and almost disturbed, as though his thoughts were struggling in disquiet with some lonely anxiety beyond the common preoccupations of his subjects--beyond riches and poverty, sickness and health, appetite, desire and satisfaction. Walking like other men through the dusty marketplace in the light of morning, he was separated from them by more than the flanking soldiers and the silent girls: by arcane vocation to an ineffable task. As Mollo watched, there came into his mind the words of an old song:
What cried the stone to the chisel?
"Strike, for I am afraid!"
What said the earth to the ploughman?
"Ah, the bright blade!"
The last soldiers were receding at the far end of the square, and as the sound of the gong died away, the business of the market resumed. Mollo rejoined Elleroth and together they returned to The Green Grove and their place on the settle. It was now less than an hour to noon and the tavern had become more crowded but, as is often the way, this added to their seclusion rather than otherwise.
"Well, what did you think of the kingly boy?" enquired Elleroth.
"Not what I expected," answered Mollo. "He didn't strike me as the ruler of a country at war, that's the size of it."
"My dear fellow, that's merely because you don't understand the dynamic ideas prevalent down on the river where the reeds all shiver. Matters there are determined by resort to hocus-pocus, mumbo jumbo and even, for all I know, jiggery-pokery--the shades of distinction being fine, you understand. Some barbarians slit animals open and observe portents revealed in the steaming entrails, yum yum. Others scan the sky for birds or storms. Ebon clouds, oh dear! These are what one might term the blood-and-thunder methods. The Telthearna boys, on the other hand, employ a bear. It's all the same in the end--it saves these people from having to think, you know, which they're not terribly good at, really. Bears, dear creatures--and many bears are among my best friends--have to be interpreted no less than entrails and birds, and some magical person has to be found to do it. This man Crendrik--you are right, he could neither command an army in the field nor administer justice. He is a peasant--or at all events he is not of noble birth. He is the wonderful What-Is-It who stepped out of the rainbow--a familiar figure, dear me, yes! His monarchy is a magical one: he has taken it upon himself to mediate to the people the power of the bear--the Power of God, as they believe."
"What does he do, then?"
"Ah, a good question. I am glad you asked it. What, indeed? Everything but think, we may be sure. I have no idea what methods he employs--possibly the bear piddles on the floor and he observes portents in the steaming what-not. How would I know? But a crystal ball of some kind there must surely be. One thing I know about the man--and this is genuine enough, for what it's worth. He possesses a certain curious ability to go near the bear without being attacked; apparently he has been known even to touch it and lie down beside it. As long as he can go on doing that, his people will believe in his power and therefore in their own. And that no doubt accounts, my dear Mollo, for his having the general air of one finding himself in a leaking canoe with a vivid realization that he cannot swim."
"How so?"
"Well, one day, sooner or later, the bear is fairly sure to wake up in a bad temper, yes? Growl growl. Biff biff. Oh dear. Applications are invited for the interesting post. That, in one form or another, is the inevitable end of the road for a priest-king. And why not? He doesn't have to work, he doesn't have to fight: well, obviously he has to pay for it somehow."
"If he's the king, why does he walk through the streets on his own two feet?"
"I confess I'm not sure, but I conceive that it may be something to do with his being different in one respect from others of his kind. As a rule, among these roughs, th
e priest is himself the manifestation of God. They kill him now and then, you know, just to keep him in mind of it. Now here, the bear is the divine creature and the gentleman we have just been admiring represents, as long as he can keep on going near it, a proof that the bear means him, and therefore his people, good and not harm. The bear's savagery is working on their side and against their enemies. They have cornered it until it, as it were, corners him. It may well be the whole point that he is plainly vulnerable and yet remains unharmed--a magic trick. So he takes pains to show that he is indeed a real and ordinary human being, by walking through the city every day."
Mollo drank and pondered in silence. At last he said, "You're like a lot of men from Ikat--"
"I come from Lapan, from Lapan, jolly man: from Sarkid, actually; but not from Ikat."
"Well, like a lot of the southerners. You think everything out, trust in your minds and in nothing else. But people up here aren't like that. The Ortelgans have established their power in Bekla--"
"They have not."
"They have, and principally for one reason. It's not just that they've fought well, and it's not that there's already been a great deal of intermarriage with Beklan girls--those are just things that follow from the real reason, which is Shardik. How is it that they've succeeded against all probability, unless Shardik is really the Power of God? Look what he did for them. Look what they've achieved in his name. Everyone who knows what happened--"
"It's lost nothing in the telling--"
"Everyone feels now what S'marr felt from the outset--they're meant to win. We don't reason it all out like you; we see what's before our eyes, and what's before our eyes is Shardik, that's it."
Elleroth leaned forward with his elbows on the table and bent his head, speaking earnestly and low.
"Then let me tell you something, Mollo, that you evidently don't know. Are you aware that the whole worship of Shardik, as carried on here in Bekla, is knowingly contrary to the Ortelgans' traditional and orthodox cult, of which this man they call Crendrik is not and never has been the legitimate head?"
Mollo stared. "What?"
"You don't believe me, do you?"
"I'm not going to quarrel with you, Elleroth, after all we've been through together, but I hold authority under these people--they've made my fortune, if you like, that's it--and you want me to believe that they're--"
"Listen." Elleroth glanced around quickly and then continued.