Now they were entering the hall. He would scarcely have recognized it, so much closer and smaller did it seem to have grown. This was no longer the echoing space of flame-shot dusk where he had kept watch so many nights in solitude and where he had leapt empty-handed upon the Kabin envoy at his evil task. Except along the line of a narrow path extending before him between two ropes, men stood pressed together from wall to wall. There was a confusion of heads, robes, cloaks, armour, and of faces turned towards him, swaying and bobbing as each sought to catch a glimpse of him over and round his neighbour. Above them, the fog hung like the smoke of bonfires in the cold air. The charred, irregular gaps in the roof showed only as lighter patches of fog. Though the clothes of the spectators were of every hue – some gaudy and barbaric as nomads' or brigands' garb – yet in this dank gloom their brightness and variety seemed soaked away, like the colours of sodden leaves in autumn.
The floor had been covered with a mixture of sand and sawdust, so that no sound came from his footsteps or from those of the women pacing before him. At the centre of the hall an open space had been left in front of the bars and here, in an attempt to clear and warm the air, a brazier of charcoal had been set. The light smoke and fume drifted one way and another. Men coughed, and patches of the heaped fuel glowed as the draught blew them brighter. Close to the brazier stood a heavy bench, on which the three soldiers who were to carry out the execution had laid their gear – a long sword with a two-handed hilt, a sack of bran to soak up the blood and three cloaks, neatly folded, with which to cover the head and body as soon as the blow had been struck.
In the centre of the space a bronze disc had been placed on the floor, and upon this Kelderek, with the women flanking him on either side, took up his position, facing the bench and the waiting soldiers. For an instant his teeth chattered. He clenched them, raised his head; and found himself looking into the eyes of Shardik.
Insubstantial the bear appeared, monstrous, shadowy in the smoky, foggy gloom, like some djinn emergent from the fire and brooding darkly above it in the half-light. He had come close to the bars and, rising on his hind legs, stood peering down, his fore-paws resting on one of the iron tics. Seen through the heat and fume from the brazier his outline wavered, spectral and indistinct. Looking up at him, Kelderek was momentarily bemused, overcome by that dream-like state, experienced sometimes in fever, in which the mind is deceived as to the size and distance of objects, so that the shape against the light of a fly on a window-sill is supposed that of a house on the skyline, or the falling of a distant torrent is mistaken for the rustle of wall-hangings or curtains. Across a great distance Shardik, both bear and mountain-summit, inclined his divine head to perceive his priest, minute upon the plain below. In those far-off, gigantic eyes Kelderek – and he alone, it seemed, for none else moved or spoke – could discern unease, danger, impending disaster grim and foreboding as the rumbling of a long-silent volcano. Pity, too, he saw, for himself, as though it were he and not Elleroth who was the victim condemned to kneel at the bench, and Shardik his grave judge and executioner.
'Accept my life, Lord Shardik,' he said aloud, and as he uttered the familiar words awoke from the trance. The heads of the women on either side turned towards him, the illusion dissolved, the distance diminished to a few yards and the bear, more than twice his own height, dropped on all fours and resumed its uneasy rambling up and down the length of the bars. He saw the oozing scab of the half-healed spear-wound in its back and heard its feet stumbling through the thick, dry straw.
'He is not well,' he thought and, oblivious of all else, would have stepped forward even then, had not Sheldra laid a hand on his arm, motioning with her eyes towards the opening from the ambulatory on his right
To the low, steady beat of a drum, two files of Ortelgan soldiers were entering the hall, their feet on the sand as soundless as his own had been. Between them walked Elleroth, Ban of Sarkid. He was very pale, his forehead sweating in the cold, his face drawn and streaked with sleeplessness: but his step was firm; and as he turned his eyes here and there he contrived to appear to be observing the scene in the hall with a detached and condescending air. Beyond him, Shardik had begun to prowl more violently, with a restless, dominating ferocity of which none in the hall could remain unaware; but Elleroth ignored him, affecting interest only in the packed mass of spectators to his left Kelderek thought, 'He has already considered how best to keep his dignity and determined upon this part to act' He remembered how once he himself, sure of immediate death, had lain waiting for the leopard to spring from the bank above; and thought, 'He is so much afraid that his sight and hearing are misted over. But he knew it would be so, and he has rehearsed these moments.' He called to mind the plot of which Elleroth was guilty and tried to recover the anger and hatred which had filled him on the night of the fire festivaclass="underline" but could feel only a mounting sense of dread and apprehension, as though some precarious tower of wrong piled upon wrong were about to topple and fall. He closed his eyes, but at once felt himself swaying, and opened them again as the drum ceased, the soldiers drew apart and Elleroth stepped forward from among them.
He was dressed plainly but finely, in the traditional style of a nobleman of Sarkid – much as he might have dressed, Kelderek supposed, to feast his tenants at home or to entertain friends at a dinner party. His veltron, pleated saffron and white, was of new cloth, embroidered with silk, and the slashed gores of his breeches were cross-stitched with an intricate, diapered pattern in silver filigree, a month's work for two women. The long pin at his shoulder was also silver, quite plain, such as might have belonged to any man of means. Kelderek wondered whether it might be a keepsake from some comrade of the slave wars – from Mollo himself, perhaps? He wore no jewels, no neck-chain, bracelet or ring; but now, as he stepped out from among the soldiers, he drew from his sleeve a gold pendant and chain, slipped it over his head and adjusted it at his neck. As it was recognized, murmurs arose among the spectators. It represented a couchant stag, the personal emblem of Santil-ke-Erketlis and his entourage.
Elleroth came to the bench and paused, looking down at what was on it. Those nearest saw him brace himself against a quick tremor. Then, stooping, he felt the edge of the blade with one finger. As he straightened, his eyes met those of the executioner with a tense, forced smile and he spoke for the first time.
'No doubt you know how to use that thing or you wouldn't be here. I shall give you little trouble and I hope you'll do as much for me.'
The fellow nodded awkwardly, evidently at a loss to know whether he should reply. But as Elleroth handed him a small leather bag, murmuring, 'That's among yourselves,' he drew the strings, looked into it and, wide-eyed, began to stammer out his thanks in words so banal and out of place as to seem both shameful and macabre. Elleroth checked him with a gesture, stepped forward to face Kelderek and inclined his head with the coldest suggestion of a formal greeting.
Kelderek had already instructed the governor that a herald was to describe the crime committed by Elleroth and Mollo and conclude by announcing the sentence of death. There was no interruption as this was now done, the only sounds to be heard besides the herald's voice being the intermittent growling of the bear and its rough, spasmodic movements among the dry straw. 'He is still feverish,' thought Kelderek. 'This disturbance and the crowd have unsettled him and will delay his recovery.' Each time he looked up, it was to meet the cold, contemptuous gaze of the condemned man, one side of his face cast into shadow by the light from the brazier. Whether assumed or real, he could not out-stare that indifference; and finally bent his head, pretending abstraction as the herald described the burning roof, the wounding of Shardik and his own frenzied onslaught upon Mollo in the hall. Whisperings of foreboding seemed all about him, intermittent and impalpable as the bitter draught from the ambulatory and the thin streams of fog trailing like cobwebs down the walls.