The girls scurried out and the Tuginda, picking up her ladle, stirred the various pots and filled four bowls from them. Kelderek ate apart, standing up, and she did nothing to dissuade him, herself sitting on a bench by the hearth and eating slowly and little, as though to make sure that she would finish no sooner and no later than the rest. The bowls were wooden, but the cups into which Melathys poured wine were of thin bronze, six-sided and flat-based, so that, unlike drinking-horns, they stood unsupported without spilling. The cold metal felt strange to the hunter's lips. When the two men had finished, Melathys brought water for their hands, took away the bowls and. cups and made up the fire. The Baron, with his back against the table, sat facing the Tuginda, while the hunter remained standing in the shadows beyond.
'I sent for you, Baron,' began the Tuginda. 'As you know, I asked you to come here tonight.'
'You have put me to indignity, saiyett,' replied the Baron. 'Why was the fear of Quiso unloosed upon us? Why must we have lain bemused in darkness upon the shore? Why -'
'Was there not a stranger with you?' she answered, in a tone which checked him instantly, though his eyes remained fixed upon hers. 'Why do you suppose you could not reach the landing-place? And were you not armed?'
'I came in haste. The matter escaped me. But in any case, how could you have known these things, saiyett?'
'No matter how. Well, the indignity, as you call it, is ended now. We will not quarrel. The girls who carried my message to Ortelga – they have been looked after?'
'It is hard to reach Ortelga against the current. They were tired. I said they should remain there to sleep.' She nodded.
'My message, as I -suppose, was unexpected, and you have made me an unexpected reply, bringing me a wounded man whom I find sitting alone and exhausted on the Tereth stone.' 'Saiyett, this man is a hunter – a simple fellow whom they call -' He stopped, frowning. 'I know of him,' she said. 'On Ortelga they call him Kelderek Play-with-the-Children. Here he has no name, until I choose.' Bel-ka-Trazet resumed.
'He was brought to me tonight on his return from a hunting expedition, having refused to tell one of the shendrons whatever it was that he had seen. At first I treated him with forbearance, but still he would say nothing. I questioned him and he answered me like a child. He said, "I have found a star. Who will believe that I have found a star?" Then he said, "I will speak only to the Tuginda." At this I threatened him with a heated knife, but he answered only, "It must be as God wills." And then, in this very moment, saiyett, arrived your message. "So," thought I, "this man, who has said that he will speak only to you – who ever heard a man say this before? – let us take him at his word, if only to make him speak. He had better come to Quiso too – to his death, as I suppose, which he has brought upon himself." And then he sits down upon the Tereth stone, God help us! And we find him face to face and alone with yourself. How can he return to Ortelga? He must die.'
"That is for me to say, while he remains on Quiso. You sec much, Baron, and you guard the people as an eagle her brood. You have seen this hunter and you are angry and suspicious because he has defied you. Have you seen nothing else from your eyrie on Ortelga this two days past?'
It was plain that Bel-ka-Trazet resented being questioned: but he answered civilly enough, 'The burning, saiyett. There has been a great burning.'
'For leagues beyond the Telthearna the jungle has burned. All yesterday it rained ashes on Quiso. During the night animals came ashore from the river – some of kinds never seen here before. A makati comes tame as a cat to Melathys, begging for food. She feeds it and then, following it to the water, finds a green snake coiled about the Tereth. Of whom are these the forerunners? At dawn, the brook in the high ravine left its course and streamed down over the Ledges: but at the foot it gathered itself, flowed back into its channel and did no harm. Why? Why were the Ledges washed, Baron? For the coming of your feet, or my feet? Or was it for the coming of some other feet? What messages, what signs were these?'
The Baron slid his tongue along the jagged edge of one lip and plucked the fur of his cape between his fingers, but answered nothing. The Tuginda turned to face the firelight and remained silent for some time. She sat perfectly still, her hands at rest in her lap, her composure like that of a tree when the wind has dropped. At length she said,
'So I ponder and pray and call upon such little wisdom as I may have acquired over the years, for I know, no more than Melathys, or Rantzay or the girls, what these things may mean. At last I send for you. Perhaps, it seems to me, you may be able to tell me something that you have seen or heard. Perhaps you may give me some clue.
'Meanwhile, if he should come, how should I receive him – he whom God means to send? Not with power or display; no, but as a servant. What else am I? So in case he should come, I dress myself like the ignorant, poor woman that God sees me to be. I know nothing, but at least I can cook a meal. And when the meal is ready I go out to the Tereth, to wait and pray.' Again she was silent. Melathys murmured, 'Perhaps the High Baron knows more than he has told us.' 'I know nothing, saiyett.'
'But it did not occur to me,' went on the Tuginda, 'that the stranger whom I knew to be with you -'
She broke off and looked across the room to where Kelderek was still standing by himself, away from the light, 'So, hunter, you maintained to the High Baron's hot knife, did you, that you had a message for my ears alone?'
'It is true, saiyett,' he answered, 'and it is true also, as the High Baron says, that I am a man of no rank – one who gets his living as a hunter. Yet I knew – and know now – beyond doubt or gainsaying, that none must hear this news before yourself.'
'Tell me, then, what you could not tell to the shendron or the High Baron.'
He began to speak of his hunting expedition that morning and of the undergrowth full of bewildered, fugitive animals. Then he told of the leopard and of his foolhardy attempt to pass it and escape inland. As he spoke of his ill-aimed arrow, his panic flight and fall from the bank, he trembled and gripped the table to steady himself. One of the lamps had burned dry, but the priestess made no move and the wick remained smoking until it died.
'And then,' said the hunter, 'then there stood over me, where I lay, saiyett, a bear – such a bear as never was, a bear tall as a dwelling-hut, his pelt like a waterfall, his muzzle a wedge across the sky. The leopard was as iron on his anvil. Iron – no – ah, believe me! – when the bear struck him he became like a chip of wood when the axe falls. He spun through the air and tumbled like a pierced bird. It was the bear – the bear who saved me. He struck once and then he was gone.' The hunter paused and came slowly forward to the fire.
'He was no vision, saiyett, no fancy of my fear. He is flesh and bone – he is real. I saw the burns on his side – I saw that they hurt him. A bear, saiyett, on Ortelga – a bear more than twice as tall as a man!' He hesitated, and then added, almost inaudibly, 'If God were a bear -'
The priestess caught her breath. The Baron stood up, tipping back the bench against the table as his hand clutched at his empty scabbard.
'You had better be plain,' said the Tuginda in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. 'What do you mean, and what is it that you are thinking about the bear?'
To himself the hunter seemed like a man setting down at last a heavy burden which he has carried for miles, through darkness and solitude, to the place where it must go. But more strongly still, he felt once again the incredulity which had filled him that morning on the lonely, upstream shore of Ortelga. How could it be that this was the appointed time, here the place and himself the man? Yet it was so. It could not be otherwise. His eyes met the shrewd, intent gaze of the Tuginda. 'Saiyett,' he replied, 'it is Lord Shardik.'