The valley was a long retreat where the cliffs marked a new level of the uplands. Here the sands were red, beginning with the cliffs, in contrast to the pale lowlands, and the red rock was banded at times with white. Where rock formed a hard cap, erosion by wind and the burning rains had made strange pillars and hulking shapes that guarded the way through Sil’athen, and cast strange shadows in the setting light of ruddy Arain. A windflower had occupied one of the crags; its tendrils glistened like threads of glass, red-stained, in the sunset. On the left of the entry a burrower had laired for many years: they swung wide, avoiding this guardian.
It was shaming to stumble here, at the end: Niun felt the sand shift underfoot and caught himself, fearing at first a smaller burrower, undetected; but it was an old hole, only soft sand. He gathered himself up, dusting the knee on which he had fallen, and leaned against the ropes, shaking off the several offered hands. There was a black shadow over his vision, tinged with red; the membrane half closed, no longer responsive to conscious will. The air he breathed was salt with his own evaporating moisture.
They passed the old graves, the thousands of the old Kath, from days before the regul. Then there were the lonely twelve of their own Kath, buried westward according to tradition, facing the rising sun, dawning hope: they were the childbearers, and with them were buried the few sad children, those too gentle for Kesrith’s harsh winds, lives that should have preserved the People, had Intel not chosen Kesrith for homeworld. Many worlds the regul had offered, fair, green worlds; but Intel had desired Kesrith. She had told them this. The forge of a new people, she had said of Kesrith. But the gentle Kath had died in that forging, leaving them desolate.
Facing the sun’s setting were the Sen in their thousands, and the nineteen recent graves of their own Sen. These also, in their way, gentle and vulnerable, had failed in Intel’s refining, leaving Melein and Sathell alone to serve.
In the highest cliffs were the graves of she’panei and the kel’ein who guarded them in death. It was not certain how many she’panei had been on Kesrith. Niun knew of fifty-nine. He also knew that no kel’en knew a whole truth. He thought on this through the red and black haze of other thoughts, as they turned toward the graves of the Kel.
There were only a few hundred, to the others’ thousands, almost as few as the graves of the she’panei—on Kesrith. Their dead would many times outnumber the Sen; but very, very few found their graves in earth.
They stopped at the newest cave, where the veterans of Nisren were entombed; and Niun forced himself to stay on his feet, to help them in unsealing it, moving rock until his hands were numb, for these stubborn old men would do everything if he did not forestall them. He ached and his own blood was on the rocks with which he made place for Medai.
Kel’ein were not buried like others: other castes faced into the valley of Sil’athen; but the Kel faced outward, toward the north, the traditional direction of evil. Row on row the other dead lay in the dark. When they lit their single lamp they could see them, musty black shadows in veils and robes moldering into ruin, veiled faces turned toward the north wall of the cave.
The air inside was cold and strange with decay. The dark oppressed. Niun stood, content for a moment only to stand, and let the old men set Medai in place among the others. They stopped then and faced north, and spoke over him the Shon’jir, the Passing ritual. Niun repeated the words—spoken at birthings and burials, heralding a life of the People into the world and out of it.
From Dark beginning
To Dark at ending,
Between them a Sun,
But after comes Dark,
And in that Dark,
One ending.
The words echoed in the cavern, in darkness wrapped about them; and Niun looked at the dead, and at his companions, and considered the frailty of them that chanted of the Dark; and the fragile breath’s difference between lips that moved and those that could not. Terror possessed him, rebellion, to rush out into the open; but he did not give way. His lips continued to form the words.
From Dark to Dark
Is one voyage.
From Dark to Dark
Is our voyage.
And after the Dark
O brothers, o sisters,
Come we home.
He had never thought the words. He had mouthed them; he had never felt them. He felt them now, looking about him.
Home.
This.
He held himself still while the others filed out, forced himself to be the last, mastering his fear; but even when he had the light of stars and Kesrith’s first moon overhead, he felt that cold inside him, that many suns would never warm away.
“Seal it,” said Eddan.
He gathered up the rocks one by one, and fitted them into place, making tight their joinings, sealing them between himself and Medai. His breath came hard. He found himself with tears flooding his cheeks, for his shame before Medai.
Not like you, cousin, not like you, he kept thinking, as he set each stone in place, a determination, a wall that he built, a protection for the hallowed dead against the winds and the sands and the prying fingers of the suruin that ranged the high hills: a protection for himself, against the truth inside.
And they were done, all debts paid. The brothers blew dust upon the wind; he gathered up his handful and did likewise, bidding farewell. Then they rested a time, before beginning the long hard trek back to the edun.
Soah joined the first moon overhead, making their passage safer, and they set forth. Eddan went first, using his staff to probe for windflowers in the dark air, wary as those who walked the wilds of Kesrith dus-less had to be; but Niun lent his company to Sirain, who was half blind and very frail, and too proud to accept help. Often he gave way to exhaustion himself to slow their progress, as if the sores on his hands and the long walk and the sleeplessness had utterly undone, him; but of a sudden pride was not important to him: it was only important that Sirain’s pride be saved, that he not die. He did not flaunt his youth at them any longer. He found comradeship with them, as if they and he had finally understood a thing that he should have understood long ago.
They shared water and food together—sat, the six of them, in the dark after the moons had set, and broke fast; and the brothers were sorry for his hands, and offered of their own experience various advice to heal them. But Eddan cut the stalk of a young luin and rubbed the juice of it on the sores, which was a remedy counted sovereign for every wound: it eased the pain.
In the journey after that the pace was slower still, and perhaps Sirain had seen through his careful pretense from the beginning, for at last he clasped Niun’s arm in a feeble grip and admitted that this time it was himself who must rest a time.
By such degrees they came homeward.
And it was evening again when they returned, and the edun’s entry was lit for them, and the great bulk of the ailing dus still was to be seen at the door.
In the end there was no hurrying. Niun had been anxious lest he have to take up Sirain and carry him, which would have been a crushing shame to the old warrior. And for Sirain’s sake, and for Eddan’s, who labored now, they walked slowly despite their anxiety to reach the edun, their dread of things that might have gone amiss in their absence.
But there in the doorway Melein waited, and gave them gentle welcome, unveiled, as they unveiled themselves, coming home.
“Is all well?” Eddan asked of her.
“All is well,” she said. “Come in. Be at ease.”
They entered, footsore and cold and passed the long hall to the Shrine, that first of all, making their individual prayers and washing of the hands and face. And when they were done they turned toward the steps of the Kel-tower, for they were exhausted.
But Melein waited, outside the Shrine.
“Niun,” she said. “The Mother still sends for you.”
He was tired. He dreaded the meeting. He turned his shoulder to her rudely and walked out of the hall, to the step, to see how the dus fared
. He gave it a scrap of meat that he had saved from his own rations on the journey; but someone else had filled the pannikin with water.
It turned from his gift, and would have none of him. He had thought that this would be the case, but he had tried. He sank down in exhaustion on the step and stared at the dus helplessly.
Never would the beasts tolerate him, and this one, bereaved and suffering, he could not help.
He gave a great sigh that was almost a sob, and stared at his bloody hands in the light, so sensitive, so delicate to wield the yin’ein, and reduced to this. There was no warrior here, none that the dus could detect. It chose to die, like Medai. It found nothing in him to interest it in living.
He had the seta’al and the weapons and the black robes; he had the skill, but the heart in him was terrified, and angry, and the dus, being sensitive to such things, would not have him.
He swept off mez and zaidhe, bundled them into the crook of his arm, and with his right hand he gathered a handful of dust from the side of the step and smeared his brow with it, a penance for his jealousy.
Then he went inside, ascended the stairs of the inmost tower, that of the she’pan. He opened the door to the she’pan’s hall cautiously, and saw that Melein knelt at the she’pan’s left hand, arranging the cushions.
“Hush,” said Melein, accusing him with her eyes. “She has just now fallen asleep. You are too late tonight. Be still.”
But the she’pan stirred as he came near her, and her golden eyes opened and the membrane receded, leaving them clear.
“Niun,” she said very softly.
“Little Mother.” He sank down on her right, and offered his bowed head to her gentle touch, an intimacy the Kel offered no others but the she’pan or a mate. Her hands were warm against the chill of his skin.
“You are safe,” she said. “You are back safely.” And as if that were all the burden of what she desired, like a child sleeping with a favorite toy at hand, she settled back into her dreams.
Niun stayed still, leaned his head against the arm of her chair, and gradually gave himself to sleep, her hand still resting on his shoulder. His dreams were troubled. At times he woke, seeing the cave and the dark; and then he saw the golden light that surrounded them, and felt the weight of the she’pan’s hand, and knew where he was.
She dreamed, did the Mother, and reclaimed him; possibly she confused him with another. He did not know. He was kel’en, like the other. He sat at her side and slept at times, and knew that the sum of his duty to her was to live, to stay by her. She had rejected Medai, and never from her had come a word of regret, of sorrow for him.
You are safe, she had said.
The bonds, so lately slipped, ensnared him again; and at last he gave up his struggle and knew that he must serve to the service that had claimed him.
The su-she’pani kel’en a’anu.
The she’pan’s kel’en, like those in the cliffs.
In the whispered long-ago days, when there was no war, there had been such, when mri fought against mri and house against house, when she’pan contended against she’pan.
He last kel’en, the one—he foresaw with what he thought was a true vision—would never indeed know the Dark of the caves of Sil’athen: the one to seal the barrier for the others, and to remain outside, a guardian.
He slid a glance toward Melein, saw her awake also, her eyes staring into the shadows; he realized what it had surely been for her, alone here, with Intel.
For her also, he was afraid.
Chapter Nine
It was, in the Nom, the twentieth day.
It was possible finally for human nerves to adjust to Kesrith’s longer day. Duncan rose and wandered to the private bath—that luxury at least their onworld accommodations had afforded him, though he must content himself with the recycled ration of water available within the Nom’s apparatus.
The Nom depended entirely on life-support systems like those of a ship: regul did not find surface existence comfortable, although it was tolerable.
Neither was it, he suspected, comfortable for humans.
Filtered air, recycled water, and that originally reclaimed from a sea so laden with alkali that nothing would live in it. The world’s little animal life was confined to the uplands, and from what information he had obtained from the translated regul advisories on that score, there was little born of Kesrith that was harmless.
The interior of the Nom held gardens that somewhat humidified their air and provided pleasantness, but the alien harshness of the foliage and the accompanying scent of regul made the gardens less pleasant than they might have been.
He was, he reckoned, growing used to regul. He was learning to tolerate a number of things he had once thought impossible to accept, and that in twenty days of close contact.
It was close contact. There were no restricted hours, no confinement to quarters, but the regulations forbade them to leave the Nom at any time. Stavros, of course, would not do so as long as regul remained on Kesrith—a reasonably brief time to wait: ten days until the first human ships should come in and replace the regul.
Duncan reckoned, at least, that their sanity might hold that long. He had a mental image of their first encounter with those humans incoming: that the landing party would find them both changed, bizarre and altered by their stay on Kesrith. He was not the man that had begun the voyage; SurTac Sten Duncan on Haven had been capable of far more impulsive behavior than Sten Duncan, aide to the new governor of Kesrith. He had acquired patience, the ability to reckon slowly; and he had acquired something of regul manners, ponderous and unwieldy as their conventions were. They began to come as naturally as yes, sir and no, sir: Favor, my lord; and, Be gracious, elder.
They had promised him retirement after five years; but five years in this sullen environment would make him unfit for human company: five years from now he might find clean air a novelty and Haven daylight strange to the eyes—might find human manners banal and odd after the stark, survival-oriented settlement that men would have to make of Kesrith. He was in the process of adapting: any world, any climate, any operation in hostile terrain that wanted human hands directly at work onworld was a SurTac’s natural job, and he was learning the feel of Kesrith.
Stavros was doing the same thing in his intellectual way, absorbing every oddity within his reach—like the regul, never seeming to need notes, simply looking and listening, on his rare excursions from his room to the gardens.
This morning he had an appointment in Hulagh’s offices. It was an important occasion.
Something rumbled outside, different from the accustomed thunder of departing ships. Duncan switched the view to let light through the Nom’s black windows. They had a view of the whole horizon from the sea at the right to the hills at the left, save that they could not see the mri edun and could not see the port, the two things in which they had the greatest interest: it was of course no accident that they were arranged as they were. Nothing in that desolation had changed in twenty days; but now above the hills there was a change. A storm was moving in, the clouds grey, red-tinged, shadowing the sea in one quarter. Lightning flashed with impossible rapidity.
The weather, said the prepared statements of the bai’s staff, is unpredictable by season, and occasionally violent. The rain is mildly caustic, especially in showers following duststorms. It will be desirable to bathe if one is caught in the rain. Above all it is necessary to seek suitable cover at the earliest indication of a storm. The winds can achieve considerable violence. If fronts converge on the seaward and hillward sides, cyclonic action is frequent.
The red light in the ceiling mount flared, summoning him. Stavros was awake. Duncan quickly obtained a cup of soi from the wall dispenser—soi being the regul liquid stimulant, and only mildly flavored, unlike most regul foods. It was one of the few regul graces they had come to enjoy. A touch of sweetener made it completely palatable. He added the two drops, set the cup on a small tray, gathered up the morning dispatches from the sl
ot, and carried the offering in to Stavros’ quarters—again accessible only from his own apartment.
“Good morning, sir,” he murmured, courtesy which was regularly answered with only a civil nod, and that sometimes belated. Stavros was in exceptional spirits this morning. He actually smiled, a gesture which made his thin mouth the tighter.
“Do the windows,” Stavros said. It was thundering again.
Duncan switched them over and let in the day’s sullen light.
The first drops began to spatter the dust on the panes. A crack of thunder made the glass bow and rattle, and Stavros walked over to enjoy the view. Duncan himself felt a heightening of senses, a stimulation unaccustomed in their carefully controlled environment. This was something the regul could not schedule or censor, the violence of nature. He could see it sweep down on the sea, where the waves white-capped, dyed pink. The whole day was enveloped in reddish murk, and fitful with lightning.
“This,” said Stavros, “is going to be one of the major obstacles to settlement here.”
Duncan felt he was called on to discuss the matter. He did not know precisely how; his training was not in civilizing worlds, but in taking them. “The regul gave us an edge there,” he said, “with this city for a base.”
“There’s considerable attrition in machinery on Kesrith, so I’m told; and for some idiotic reason they’ve followed the mri example and built a number of outposts out of rammed earth and binder, cheap but remarkably unsuited for the climate.”
“If you have a lot of labor you can keep rebuilding, I suppose.”
“Humans can’t run a colony that way.” Stavros went off on another tangent of thought, sipping at the warm drink. Thunder rattled at the glass again. Wind tit with a force that sent a sheet of water between them and the world, obscuring everything. Duncan swore in surprise and awe.