'You have seen his grave. There were heavy hearts – and frightened hearts – at the time when that was made. It was over a month ago, and every day since then Zeray has slipped a little further from between our hands. We have not lost it yet, but I will tell you what it is like. I remember that once, when I was a little girl, I stood watching a miller driving his ox round and round to grind corn. Two men who thought he had cheated them began quarrelling with him, and at last they dragged him away and beat him. The ox went on plodding round, first at the same speed, then slower, until at last – and anxiously, as my clear child's eye could see – it dared to try what would happen if it stopped. Nothing happened, and it lay down. Half the men in Zeray are wondering whether they dare to defy us. Any day now some will try. I know our men – the Baron's men. Without him they will never hold together. It's only a matter of time.
'Every evening I have gone to his tomb and prayed for help and deliverance. Sometimes Ankray comes with me, or perhaps another, but often I go alone. There's no modesty in Zeray, and I'm past being afraid. As long as none dares insult me, I take it as a sign that we still have some grip on the place; and it does no harm to behave as though I believed we had. Sometimes I have prayed that Santil's army may come, but more often I use no words, simply offering to God my hope and longing, and my presence at the grave of the man who honoured and respected me.
'On Quiso, the Tuginda used to teach us that real and actual trust in God was the whole life of a priestess. "God can afford to wait," she used to say. "Whether to convert the unbelieving, to reward the just or to punish the wicked – God can afford to wait. With Him, everything comes home in the end. Our work is not only to believe that, but to show that we believe it bv everything that we say and do."'
Melathys wept quietly and continuously as she went on. 'I had put out of my mind how I came to Zeray and the reason why. My treachery, my cowardice, my sacrilege – perhaps I thought that my sufferings had blotted them out, had dug a ditch between me and that priestess who broke her vows, betrayed Lord Shardik and failed the Tuginda. Tonight, when I turned and saw who was standing behind me, do you know what I thought? I thought, "She has come to Zeray to find me, either to renounce or forgive me, either to condemn me or take me back to Quiso" – as though I were not defiled forty times over. I fell at her feet to implore her forgiveness, to tell her I was not worth what I believed she had done, to beg her only to forgive me and then let me die. Now I know it's true what she said. God -' and, letting her head fall forward on her arms across the table, she sobbed bitterly – 'God can afford to wait. God can afford to wait.'
Kelderek put his hand on her shoulder. 'Come,' he said, 'we'll talk no more tonight. Let's put these thoughts aside and simply do the immediate tasks before us. Very often, in perplexity, that's best, and a great comfort in trouble. Go and look after the Tuginda. Sleep beside her, and we'll meet again tomorrow.'
As soon as Ankray had made up his bed, Kelderek lay down and slept as he had not slept since leaving Bekla.
44 The Heart's Disclosure
Speck by speck, the noonday sunlight moved along the wall and from somewhere distant sounded the slow chun\, chun\ of an axe in wood. The Tuginda, her eyes closed, frowned like one tormented by clamour and tossed from side to side, unable, as it seemed, to be an instant free from discomfort. Again Kelderek wiped the sweat from her forehead with a cloth dipped in the pitcher by the bed. Since early morning she had lain between sleep and waking, recognizing neither Melathys nor himself, from time to time uttering a few random words and once sipping a little wine and water from a cup held to her lips. An hour before noon Melathys, with Ankray in attendance, had set out to confer with the former followers of the Baron and acquaint them with her news, leaving Kelderek to bar the door and watch alone against her return.
The sound of the axe ceased and he sat on in the silence, sometimes taking the Tuginda's hand in his own and speaking to her in the hope that, waking, she might become calmer. Under his fingers her pulse beat fast: and her arm, he now saw, was swollen and inflamed with weeping scratches which he recognized as those inflicted by the trazada thorn. She had said nothing of these, nor of the deep cut in her foot which Melathys had found and dressed the night before.
Slow as the sunlight, his mind moved over all that had befallen. The days which had passed since his leaving Bekla were themselves, he thought, like some Streel of time into which he had descended step by step and whence he had now emerged for a short time before death. There was no need for him, after all, to expiate his blasphemy by seeking that death, for however events might turn out it seemed certain. If Erkcdis were victorious but nevertheless sent no troops east of the Vrako, either because he had never received Bel-ka-Trazet's message or because it had found no favour with him, then sooner or later he himself would the from violence or sickness, either in Zeray or in the attempt to escape from it. But if Erketlis' troops, crossing the Vrako, were to come upon him in Zeray or elsewhere – and it was likely enough that they would be keeping their eyes open for him – he had Elleroth's word for it that they would put him to death. If Erketlis were defeated, it was possible that Zelda and Ged-la-Dan, coming to Kabin, might send soldiers across the Vrako to seek Shardik. But once Shardik was known to be dead, they would not trouble themselves about his former priest-king. And if the discredited priest-king were to attempt to return from Zeray, whether to Bekla or to Ortelga, he would not be suffered to live.
Never again would he posture and ape the part of Shardik's mediator to the people. Nor ever again could he become the single-hearted visionary who, fearless in his divinely-imparted elation, had walked and slept beside Shardik in the woods of Ortelga. Why, then, despite his resolve four days ago in Ruvit's hovel, despite his unlessencd shame and remorse, did he now find in himself the will to live? Mere cowardice, he supposed. Or perhaps it was that some remaining streak of pride, which had encouraged him to entertain the thought of a deliberate death of atonement, resented the prospect of dying on an Ikat sword or a Zeray criminal's knife. Whatever the reason, he found himself considering whether he might not attempt – however desperate the odds against him – first to bring the Tuginda back to Quiso, and then perhaps to escape to some country beyond the Telthearna. Yet mere survival, he realized as he pondered, was not the whole of the motive which had changed his earlier resolve to die.
Into his mind returned the picture of the beautiful, white-robed girl who had paced by night across the flame-lit terrace above the Ledges of Quiso, the girl whose craven fear in the woods of Ortelga had aroused in himself nothing but pity and the wish to protect and comfort her. She, like him, had found unexpectedly the self-deceit and cowardice in her own heart and, having once, no doubt, believed of herself that Shardik had no more loyal and trustworthy servant, had learned with bitter shame that the truth was otherwise. Since then she had suffered still more. Abandoning Shardik and throwing herself upon the world, she had found the world's misery but never the world's pleasure. Guilt, cruelty and fear must almost have destroyed in her the natural power to love any man or to look for any security or joy from a man's love. But – and here, releasing the Tuginda's hand, he sprang up and began striding back and forth across the room – perhaps that power was not beyond saving; not drowned beyond hope of recovery by one ready to show that he valued it above all else?