And yet Duncan had claimed to have detected power use in that place.
Niun bit at his lip and shifted his weight, so that everyone shifted uncomfortably, and was aware, subtly, of that which had suddenly disturbed him.
Dus-presence.
“They are back,” he said softly. “Yes,” said Duncan after a moment.
Sand scuffed. There was a whuffing sound. Eventually the beasts appeared, heads lowered, absent-mindedly looking this way and that as if at this last moment they could not recall what they were doing there.
And this time they did not shy off, but came within reach. Melein moved aside and Niun and Duncan accepted the beasts that sought them.
Pleasure thoughts. Niun caressed the massive head that thrust at his ribs and ran his hand over a body gone rough-coated and thin, every rib pronounced.
“It is changed,” Duncan exclaimed. “Niun, both of them are thinner. Could they have had young?”
“No one has ever decided whether a dus is he or she.” Niun fretted at the change in them—was nettled, too, that Duncan should seize what thought he had half-shaped, Duncan, who was new to the beasts. “Some have said they are both. But the People have never seen this change in them. We have never,” he added truthfully, “seen young dusei.”
“It is possible,” said Melein, “that there are no young dusei, not as we know young. Nothing survives where they come from that is born helpless.”
Niun stood up and looked all about the moonlit land, but dusei could well conceal themselves, and if there were young thereabouts, he could not find them. But when he sat down again, the head of his dus in his lap, he had still a feeling of unease about the beast.
“It is dangerous,” said Duncan, “to loose a new species on a world, particularly one so fragile as this.”
Duncan spoke. Niun had a thought, and for love, forbore to say it.
And suddenly Duncan bowed his head, and there was discomfort in the dus-feelings.
“This is so,” said Melein gently, “but we should feel lonely without them.”
Duncan looked at her in silence, and finally put his arms about his beast’s neck, and bowed his head and rested. Niun made place for Melein between them, and they slept, all slept for the first time since the ship, for the dusei were with them to guard them, and they had the body warmth of the beasts for their comfort.
* * *
Dusei multiplied, begat other dusei, that were born adult and filled the world until all Kutath belonged to them, and they filled the streets of the dead cities and had no need of mri.
Niun wakened, disturbed at once by the dus thoughts that edged upon the nightmare, aware of sweat cold on his face, of the others likewise disturbed . . . perplexed, perhaps, what had wakened them. Duncan looked round at the hills, as if some night wanderer might have come nigh them.
“It is nothing,” Niun said.
He did not admit to the dream; the fright was still with him. He had never in his life felt exposed to the dusei, only sharing. Human presence: it was something that Duncan’s presence had fostered, suspicion, where none had existed.
Dusei, he reminded himself, have no memories. For these two dusei, Kesrith no longer existed. They would never recall it until they saw it again, and that would be never. Persons and places: that was all that stayed in their thick skulls . . . and for them now there was only Kutath. They were native, by that token, one with the land, sooner than they.
Niun closed his eyes again, shamed by the dream that he was sure at least Melein suspected, though she might falsely blame it on Duncan, and feel herself fouled to have shared a human’s night fears, dus-borne. The beast sent comfort now. Niun took it, and relaxed into that warmth, denying the fear.
The dus would not in any wise remember.
* * *
They made no great haste on the morrow: they knew Duncan’s limit in the thin air, and would not press him harder.
And they were cautious; they followed the rolls of the land in their approach, and, dus-wise, appeared no plainer to the city than they must.
But the nearer they came, the less useful such precaution seemed.
Old, old. Niun saw clearly what he had suspected: spires in ruins, unrepaired, the sordidness of decay about the whole place. None of them spoke of it; it was not a thing that they wanted to admit.
At the last they abandoned caution. The wind that had tugged at them gently for days suddenly swelled, kicking up sand in a veil that itself was enough to screen them, and the force of it exhausted them. The dusei went with nostrils pressed close and heads lowered, snorting now and again and doubtless questioning the sanity of them that insisted on moving. Niun’s eyes burned despite the protection of the membrane, and he lowered the visor of the zaidhe as Duncan had done from the first that the sand had begun to blow; Melein lowered the gauzy inner veil of her head-cloth, the sarahe, that covered all her face and made of her a featureless figure of white, as they were of black.
Under other circumstances, prudence would have driven them to shelter: there were places that offered it; but they kept walking, slowly, and took turn and turn about with the stubborn sled.
Sand flowed in rivers through the streets of the city. They went like ghosts into the ruins, and their tracks vanished behind them as they walked. Spires towered above them, indistinct beyond rusty streamers of dust, save where outlined by the sun that pierced the murk; and the wind howled with a demon-voice down the narrow ways, rattling sand against their visors.
Spires and cylinders spanned by arches, squarish cylinders looming against the sand-veiled sun . . . no such buildings had stood in Niun’s memory, anywhere. He gazed round at them and found nothing familiar, nothing that said to him, Here dwelled the People. Fear settled over him, a deep depression of soul.
For a time they had to rest, sheltered in the shell of a broken spire, oppressed by the noise of the wind outside. Duncan coughed, a shallow, tired sound, that ceased finally when he was persuaded to take a little of their water; and he doubled the veil over his face, which did for him what the gods in their wisdom had done for the mri, helping him breathe in the fine dust.
But of the city, of what they saw, none of them spoke. They rested, and when they could, they set out into the storm again, Duncan taking his own turn at the sled, that by turns hissed over sand and grated over stone: burden that it was, they would not leave what it bore. There was no question of it.
Melein led them, tending toward the center of the city, that was the direction that Niun himself would have chosen: to the heart of the maze of streets, for always in the center were the sacred places, the shrines, and always to the right of center stood the e’ed su-shepani, the she’pan’s tower access. In any mri construction in all creation a mri knew his way: so it had been, surely, when there had been cities.
The dusei vanished again. Niun looked about and they were gone, though he could still feel their touch. Duncan turned a blind, black-masked face in the same direction, then faced again the way that Melein led and flung his weight against the ropes. The squeal of runners on naked stone shrilled above the roar of the wind, diminished as they went on sand again.
And the spires thinned, and they entered a great square.
There stood the edun, the House that they had sought . . . slanted walls, four towers with a common base: the House that they had known had been of earth, squat and rough . . . but this was of saffron stone, veiled with the sand-haze, and arches joined its upper portions, an awesome mass, making of all his memories something crude and small . . . the song, of which his age was the echo.
“Gods,” Niun breathed, to know what the People had once been capable of creating.
Here would be the Shrine, if one existed; here would be the heart of the People, if any lived. “Come,” Melein urged them.
With difficulty they began that ascent to its doors: Duncan labored with the sled, and Niun lent a hand to the rope and helped him. The doors were open before them: Melein’s white figure entered the d
ark first, and Niun deserted Duncan, alarmed at her rashness.
The dark inside held no threat; it was quieter there, and the clouds of sand and dust did not pursue them far inside. In that dim light from the open door, Melein folded back her veil and settled it over her mane; Niun lifted his visor and went back to help Duncan, who had gained the doorway; the squeal of the sled’s runners sounded briefly as they drew inside. The sound echoed off shadowed walls and vaulted ceiling.
“Guard your eyes,” Melein said.
Niun turned, saw her reach for a panel at the doorway: light blazed, cold and sudden. The membrane’s reaction was instantaneous, and even through the hazing Niun saw black traceries on the walls that soared over them: writings, like and unlike what Melein had made, stark and angular and powerful. An exclamation broke from Melein’s own lips, awe at what she had uncovered.
“The hall floors are clean,” Duncan remarked strangely, wiping dusty tears from his face, leaving smears behind. Niun looked down the corridors that radiated out from this hall, and saw that the dust stopped at the margin of this room: the way beyond lay clean and polished. A prickling stirred the nape of Niun’s neck, like dus-sense. The place should have filled him with hope. It was rather apprehension, a consciousness of being alien in this hall. He wondered where the dusei were, why they had gone, and wished the beasts beside them now.
“Come,” said Melein. She spoke in a hushed tone, and still her voice echoed. “Bring the pan’en. You will have to carry it.”
They unbound it from the sled, and Niun gave it carefully into Duncan’s arms—one burden that he would have been honored to bear, but it came to him that his place was to defend it, and he could not do that with his arms hindered. “Can you bear it, sov-kela?” he asked, for it was heavy and strangely balanced, and Duncan breathed audibly; but Duncan tilted his head mri-wise, avowing he could, and they went soft-footed after Melein, into the lighted and polished halls.
The shrine of the House must lie between kel-access and sen-. The Kel, the guardians of the door, the Face that was Turned Outward, always came first; then the shrine, the Holy; and then the sen-access, the tower of the Mind of the People, the Face that was Turned Inward, the Veilless. Such a shrine there was indeed, a small, shadowed room, where the lamps were cold and the glass of the vessels had gone iridescent with age.
“Ai,” Melein grieved, and touched the corroded bronze of the screen of the Pana. Niun averted his eyes, for he saw only dark beyond, nothing remaining in the Holy.
They retreated quickly from that place, gathered up Duncan, who waited at the door, shy of entering there; and yet by his troubled look Niun thought he understood: that had there been any of the People here, the House shrine would have held fire. Niun touched the chill surface of the pan’en as they walked, reaffirmation, a cleansing after the desolation in the shrine.
Yet there were the lights, the cold, clean light; their steps echoed on immaculate tiles, though dust lay thick everywhere outside. The place lived. It drew power from some source. Melein paused at yet another panel, and light came to other hallways . . . the recess of the sen-tower, and on the right, that which had been the tower of some long-dead she’pan.
And most bitter of all, the access to the kath-tower, that mocked them with its emptiness.
“There could be defenses,” Duncan said.
“That is so,” said Melein.
But she turned then and began to climb the ramp of the sen-tower, where kel’ein might not follow. Niun stood helpless, anxious until she paused and nodded a summons to him, permission to trespass.
Duncan came after him, bearing the pan’en, hard-breathing; and slowly they ascended the curving ramp, past blockish markings that were like the signs of the old edun, but machine-precise and strange.
More lights: the final access to sen-hall gave way before them, and they entered behind Melein into a vast chamber that echoed to their steps. It was naked. There were no carpets, no cushions, nothing save a corroded brass dinner service that sat on a saffron stone shelf. It looked as if a touch would destroy it: corrosion made lacery of it.
But there was no trace of dust, nothing, save on that shelf, where it lay thick as one would expect for such age.
Melein continued on, through farther doorways, into territory that was surely familiar to one six years a sen’e’en; and again she paused to bid them stay with her, to see things that had been eternally forbidden the Kel. Perhaps, Niun thought sadly, it no longer mattered.
Lights flared to her touch. Machinery lay before them, a vast room of machinery—bank upon bank: like the shrine at Sil’athen it was, but far larger. Niun delayed, awestruck, then committed himself unbidden to stay at her back. She did not forbid, and Duncan followed.
Computers, monitoring boards: some portions of the assemblage he compared to the boards of the ship; and some he could not at all recognize. The walls were stark white, with five symbols blazoned above the center of the panels, tall as a man’s widest reach. In gleaming, incorruptible metal they were shaped, like the metal of the pan’en that they bore.
“An-ehon,” Melein said aloud, and the sound rang like a thunderclap into that long silence.
The machinery blazed to life, activated with a suddenness that made Niun flinch in spite of himself, and he heard the beginnings of an outcry from Duncan, one immediately stifled. The human stood beside him, knelt to set the pan’en down, and rose again, hand on his pistol.
“I am receiving,” said a deep and soulless voice. “Proceed.”
By the name of the city Melein had called it: Niun’s skin prickled, first at the realization that he had seen a symbol and heard it named, a forbidden thing . . . and then that such a creation had answered them. He saw Melein herself take a step back, her hand at her heart.
“An-ehon,” she addressed the machine, and the very floor seemed to pulse in time with the throb of the lights. It was indeed the city that spoke to them, and it had used the hal’ari, the High Language, that was echoed unchanged throughout all of mri time, “An-ehon, where are your people?”
A brighter flurry of lights ran the boards.
“Unknown,” the machine pronounced at last.
Melein drew a deep breath—stood still for several moments in which Niun did not dare to move. “An-ehon,” she said then, “we are your people. We have returned. We are descended from the People of An-ehon and from Zohain and Tho’ei’i-shai and Le’a’haen. Do you know these names?”
There was again a flurry of lights and sounds, extreme agitation in the machine. Niun took a step forward, put a cautioning hand toward Melein, but she stood firmly, disregarding him. Bank after bank in the farthest reaches of the hall flared to life: section after section illumined itself.
“We are present,” said another voice. “I am Zohain.”
“State your name, visitor,” said An-ehon’s deeper voice. “Please state your names. I see one who is not of the People. Please state your authority to invoke us, visitor.”
“I am Melein s’Intel Zain-Abrin, she’pan of the People that went out from Kutath.”
The lights pulsed, in increasing unison. “I am An-ehon. I am at the orders of the she’pan of the People. Zohain and Tho’e’i-shai and Le’a’haen are speaking through me. I perceive others. I perceive one of the not-People.”
“They are here with my permission.”
The lights pulsed, all in unison now. “May An-ehon ask permission to ask?” the machine began, the ritual courtesy of one who would question a she’pan; and the source of it sent cold over Niun’s skin.
“Ask.”
“What is this person of the not-People? Shall we accept it, she’pan?”
“Accept him. He is Duncan-without-a-Mother. He comes from the Dark. This, of the People, is Niun s’Intel Zain-Abrin, kel’anth of my Kel; this other is a shadow-who-sits-at-our-door.”
“Other shadows have entered the city with you.”
“The dusei are likewise shadows in our house.”
“There was a ship which we permitted to land.”
“It brought us.”
“There is a signal which it gives, not in the language of the People.”
“An-ehon, let it continue.”
“She’pan,” it responded.
“There are none of the People in your limits?”
“No.”
“Do any remain, An-ehon?”
“Rephrase.”
“Do any others of the People survive, Ah-ehon?”
“Yes, she’pan. Many live.”
The answer struck; it went uncomprehended for several heartbeats, for Niun had waited for no. Yes. Yes, many, many, MANY!
“She’pan,” Niun exclaimed, and tears stung his eyes. He stood still, nonetheless, and breathed deeply to drive the weakness from him, felt Duncan’s hand on his shoulder, offering whatever moved the human, and after a moment he was aware of that, too. Gladness, he thought; Duncan was glad for them. He was touched by this, and at the same time annoyed by the human contact.
Human.
Before he had heard An-ehon speak, he had had no resentment for Duncan’s humanity; before he had known that there were others, he had not felt the difference in them so keenly.
Shame touched him, that he should go before others of the People, drawing this with them—self-interest shame and dishonorable, and hurtful. Perhaps Duncan even sensed it. Niun lifted his arm, set it likewise on Duncan’s shoulder, pressed with his fingers.
“Sov-kela,” he said in a low voice.
The human did not speak. Perhaps he likewise found nothing to say.
“An-ehon,” Melein addressed the machine, “where are they now?”
A graphic flashed to a central screen: dots flashed.
Ten, twenty sites. The globe shaped, turned in the viewer, and there were others.
“There were no power readings for those sites,” Duncan murmured. Niun tightened his hand, warning him to silence.
Melein turned to them, hands open in dismissal. “Go. Wait below.”
Perhaps it was because of Duncan; more likely it was that here began sen-matters that the Kel had no business to overhear.