Like the tall woman on the beach, the priestess stared intently at Kelderek, as though weighing him in some balance of her mind. At length she nodded her head two or three times with a kind of grave, comprehending recognition, and turned once more towards the High Baron.
'It is meant, then', she said, 'that this man should be here. Who is he?'
'One whom I have brought, saiyett,' replied Bel-ka-Trazet briefly, as though to remind her that he too was a person of authority.
The priestess frowned. Then she stepped close to the High Baron, put her hand upon his shoulder and, assuming the air of a wondering and inquisitive child, drew his sword from the scabbard and examined it, the Baron making no attempt to stop her.
'What is this?' she asked, moving it so that the light of the flames flashed along the blade. 'My sword, saiyett,' he answered, with a touch of impatience.
'Ah, your -' she paused, hesitating a moment, as though the word were new to her -'sword. A pretty thing, this – this sword. So – so -so -' and, pressing hard, she drew the edge three or four times across her forearm. It made no cut and left no mark whatever. 'Sheldra,' she called to the remaining girl, 'the High Baron has brought us a – a sword! The girl approached, took the sword in both hands and held it out horizontally at the height of her eyes, as though admiring the sharpness of the edge.
'All, now I see,' said the priestess lightly. Drawing the flat of the blade against her throat and motioning the girl to hold it firmly, she made a little jump, swung a few moments by her chin on the sharp edge and then, dropping to the ground, turned back to Bel-ka-Trazet.
'And this?' she asked, plucking his knife from his belt This time he made no reply. Assuming a puzzled look, she drove the point into her left arm, twisted it, drew it out bloodless, shook her head and handed it to the girl. 'Well – well – toys.' She stared coldly at him. 'What is your name?' she asked.
The Baron opened his mouth to speak, but after a moment the twisted lips closed askew and he remained looking at her as though she had not yet spoken. 'What is your name?' she said to Kelderek in the same tone.
As though in a dream, the hunter found himself perceiving on two planes. A man may dream that he is doing something – flying, perhaps – which, even in the dream, he knows that he cannot do. Yet he accepts and lives the illusion, and thus experiences as real the effects following from the discounted cause. In the same way Kelderek heard and understood the priestess's words and yet knew that they had no meaning. She might as well have asked him, 'What is the sound of the moon?' Moreover, he knew that she knew this and would be satisfied with silence for an answer. 'Come!' she said, after a pause, and turned on her heel.
Walking before them – the grim, mutilated Baron and the bewildered hunter – she led them out of the circle of blue-flaming bowls and through the opening in the rock.
7 The Ledges
The darkness was broken only by the indirect flame-light from the terrace outside; but this was sufficient to show Kelderek that they were in a square chamber apparently cut out of the living rock. The floor beneath his feet was stone and the shadows of himself and his companions moved and wavered against a smooth wall. On this he glimpsed a painting which seemed, as he thought, to represent some gigantic creature standing upright. Then they were going on into the dark.
Feeling his way after the priestess, he touched the squared jamb of an opening in the wall and, groping upwards – for he feared to strike his head – could find no transom above. Yet the cleft, if tall, was narrow enough – scarcely as wide as a man – and to save his injured shoulder he turned sideways and edged into it, right arm first. He could see nothing – only those mysterious, faintly-coloured clouds and vaporous screens that swim before our eyes in darkness, seeming exhaled, as it were, from our own sightlessness as mists rise from a marsh.
The floor sloped steeply downwards underfoot. He stumbled on, groping against the wall as it curved away to the right. At last he could make out, ahead, the night sky and, outlined against it, the figure of the waiting priestess. He reached her side, stopped and looked about him.
It was not long after midnight by the stars. He was high up in some spacious, empty place, standing on a broad ledge of stone, its surface level but the texture so rough that he could feel the grains and nodules under the soles of his feet. On either side were wooded slopes. The ledge stretched away to the left in a long, regular curve, a quarter-circle a stone's throw across, ending among banks of ivy and the trunks of trees. Immediately below it extended another, similar ledge and below that fell away many more, resembling a staircase for giants or gods. The pitch was steep – steep enough for a fall to be dangerous. The faintly-shining, concentric tiers receded downwards until the hunter could no longer distinguish them in the starlight. Far below, he could just perceive a glimmering of water, as though from the bottom of a welclass="underline" and this, it seemed to him, must be some land-locked bay of the island. All around, on either side, great trees towered, an orderly forest, the spaces between them free from the creepers and choking jungle of the mainland. As he gazed up, the night wind freshened and the rustling of leaves became louder and higher, with a semblance of urgent repetition – 'Yess! Yess, yess!' followed by a dying fall – 'Sshow! – Sssh-ow!' Mingled with this whispering came another sound, also liquid and continuous, but unaltering in pitch, lower and lightly plangent. Listening, he recognized it for the trickling and dropping of water, filling all the place no less than the sound of the leaves. Whence might this come? He looked about.
They were standing near one end of the uppermost tier. Further along its length a shallow stream – perhaps that of the ravine he had crossed earlier that night – came whelming smoothly out of the hillside and across the ledge. Here, no doubt because of some tilting of the stones, it spread in either direction, to become at the edges a mere film of water trickling over the rough, level surface. Thence, it oozed and dripped and splashed its way downward, passing over one terrace after another, spreading all abroad, shallow as rain on the pitch of a roof. This was the cause of the faint shining of the ledges in the starlight and of the minute, liquid sounds sparkling faindy about them, myriad as windy heather on a moor or crickets in a meadow.
Struck with amazement, Kelderek realized that this vast place was an artifact. He stood trembling – with awe indeed, but not with fear. Rather, he was filled with a kind of wild and expansive joy, like that of dance or festival, seeming to himself to be floating above his own exhaustion and the pain in his shoulder.
'You have never seen the Ledges?' said the priestess at his elbow. 'We have to descend them – are you able?'
At once, as though she had commanded him, he set off down the wet slabs as confidently as though upon level ground. The Baron called to him sharply and he stayed himself against the solitary island of a bank of ivy, smiling back at the two still above him for all the world as though they were comrades in some children's game. As the priestess and the Baron approached carefully, picking their way down the wet stones, he heard the latter say, 'He is light-headed, saiyett – a simple, foolish fellow, as I am told. He may fall, or even fling himself down.'