“Duncan,” Niun urged at him.
Unjust, that they would not let him walk his own way, in his own time; he began to reason like a child, and knew it, at some remote distance from his own intelligence. Niun seized his arm and pulled him up, and he stayed on his feet, moved when they did, reckoning to make it this time. He shut his eyes and simply followed dus-impulse, lost to it for a time, feeling occasionally Niun’s touch when he would falter. The coppery taste of blood grew more pronounced. He coughed, and the moisture began to trickle inward, so that he wove in his steps and began to shake in his joints . . . frightened, mortally frightened. A knee gave, and Niun had him before he fell, keeping him on his feet. There was a touch at his other side, likewise holding him. He bent and coughed and cleared his senses, dully aware of both of them, aware of dus-sense, that was roused and angry.
Kel’ein, Ahead of them, between them and the camp in the dusk, appeared a shadow like fluid rolling across the land. It moved out toward them. Dus-feelings moiled in the air like the scent of storm. “Yai!” Niun rebuked them both, and stilled it. “Send them away, Duncan. Send them off.”
It was hard. It was like yielding up a part of him. He dismissed the dus, felt suddenly cold, and clearer minded. The beasts strayed off a distance. He took more of his own weight, looking at that line of kel’ein who stopped before them, recognized the one who walked forward, saw sudden yielding in the line which flowed about them and included them. Hlil. He remembered the name as the kel’en tugged the veil down.
“She is well?” Niun asked.
“Well,” Hlil answered, and it dimly occurred to Duncan that she was Melein. “Ras,” Hlil said then, acknowledging her presence with a curious prickle of coldness in that tone. And for only a moment the kel’en stared directly at him, no more warmly.
“Hlil,” Niun said, “there are hao’nath—” He pointed northerly. “Within this range, and with blood between us, it may be. Let the Kel keep an eye to that direction.”
“Aye,” Hlil said in that same still tone.
Niun shed the pack he had borne so far into the hands of a young kel’en, reached and took Duncan again by the sleeve, urging him to walk. Duncan did so. His vision blurred, cleared again. There was silence about them, not so much as a whisper from the Kel as they walked back toward the tents that now shone light-through-black in the gathering dark.
There was a stir as they reached the tents, other castes venturing out to see, kath’ein veilless and solemn, gathering children to them as they saw what had returned to them . . . sen’ein too, who whispered together.
They went to the greatest of the tents . . . realization struck him: the she’pan; he had that before him, need of wit and sense and whatever eloquence he could summon.
Warmth hit their faces like a wall as they swept within: warmth and gold light of lamps lit the antechamber of the tent, and the smell of incense choked him. They paused there, and beyond the veil which shrouded the center light gleamed on ovoid metal, a shimmer through gauze.
The pan’en. They had gotten it back. He was numbly relieved that among their other possessions they had gained this again, this most precious thing to them. Niun paid it respect; and respect to the Mystery he reverenced. He thought that he ought, but it was not something Niun had shown him fully, this last and most secret aspect of the People. He stood back instead, intimidated by the fervor of the others, made a token gesture toward removing his veil as they had unveiled before the Holy, but he kept his head down and his alien face inconspicuous.
Then Niun came and took his arm, drawing him through the curtain at their right, into the huge area of assembly, among the others.
Gold sen-cloth was the drapery; and golden the lamplight; gold-robed sen’ein made a bow about the single white figure which was Melein. She took her chair as the shadow of the Kel flowed about the walls to left and right; and a few older kath’ein insinuated themselves next Sen like a touch of bright sky. Duncan tried to walk steadily through the parting ranks without Niun’s hand, which hovered at his elbow. Manners came back to him, recollection of courtesies which had to be paid, things told him by kel-law, though he had never been so much the center of matters.
Niun went beyond the place he should, took Melein’s hands, kissed her brow and was kissed in return, whispered low words which had to do with hao’nath and strangers. Her amber eyes flicked once with distress, and she inclined her head.
“So,” she said in a low voice, “that will come as it will.” Very slightly her hands moved, beckoning.
Duncan came the few steps forward, settled to his knees as Niun did, head bowed; and because he did not come with favor, he reached and swept off the zaidhe in humility, baring his shoulder length hair, so unlike a mri’s bronze mane. Unshaven, bloody about the nose . . . he even Stank, and knew it. Humans smelled differently; he had always been careful of cleanliness and of shaving. He felt a nakedness in this exposure he had never felt in his life.
“Kel Duncan,” Melein said softly.
“She’pan,” he breathed, head down, hands clenched upon the veil and headcloth in his lap. The calm control of her voice made silence in which there was scarcely even the rustle of cloth in the assembly. His temples pounded, and his throat was tight.
“Where was your permission to leave us, kel’en?”
“No permission.” His voice broke. A cough prickled at his throat and he tried to swallow it, succeeded with difficulty, his eyes watering.
“And you have been—”
“To the ships, she’pan. Into them.”
For the first time there was a breath of protest from the gathering. Melein lifted her hand and it died at once.
“Kel’en?” she prompted him.
“Three ships,” Duncan pursued past the obstruction in his throat. “Regul have come with the humans; regul did the firing on you and on the city. I killed their elder. No more . . . no more regul.”
The membrane betrayed disturbance. Melein understood him if no others could. “How was this done, kel Duncan?”
“The regul was aboard one of the human ships . . . attacked when I had finished speaking to the human kel’anth. I killed her. Regul have no leader now. Humans . . . never received my message; now, now they have listened. They are offended by the regul; they asked me to bear word to you—” The name of what he was to say slipped him, untranslatable in the hal’ari. He had composed it . . . lifted a shaking hand to his brow, tried in humiliation and panic to organize what he had prepared to say. Niun moved; he brushed off the hand and stared up at Melein. “No attack; no . . . wish for attack, if the People assure humans likewise.”
There was no sound but anger gathered on naked faces about the she’pan, and on Melein’s cold face a frown appeared.
“What have mri to say to tsi’mri?”
It was inevitably the attitude. Millennia of contempt for outsiders, for other species. The hal’ari had four words for peace, and none of them meant or imagined what humans hoped for; one of them was sinister: the obliteration of potential threat. He found both hands shaking visibly, the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth, and the tang of blood.
“Kel Duncan—the Sen will consider the matter you have brought to council. Your effort has great value. The People thank you.”
He did not hear it clearly. Perhaps others in the gathering did not; there was no stir, no move. Then it dawned on him that she had not outright rejected the offer of conference . . . more, that she leaned forward, took his filthy, rough face between her hands, and kissed him on the brow as one of her own. Her fingers pressed something into his hand, a little medallion of gold, a j’tal of service.
There was a muttering in the assembly at that. And then he shamed himself thoroughly, for when she drew back from him and he sat staring at what he held in his hand, the tears slipped his control, and he had no veil to hide them. He put the Honor within the breast of his robe, trying not to show his face, trying to swallow the pain in his throat.
And coughed; b
lood stained the hand he put to his mouth and nose. There was a great deal of it. He began shaking again, and heard a murmur of distress as he lost control of his limbs. Niun seized him, held him hard against his trembling.
He was able, after a moment, to be helped to his feet—to walk, at least to the outside of the tent, into the cold night air. Niun held him. So did another. He heard his dus nearby in the dark, moaning with distress, wanting him. He shook free and tried a few steps, not knowing where he was going, save to the dus, and then he had to reach for support. Someone caught him.
“Help me,” he heard Niun say in anger. “Help me!”
Eventually he felt another touch. He struggled to bear his own weight, and then coughing came on him again and he forgot everything else.
* * *
Niun ate, only a token amount, from the common dish. He had no hunger, and allowed others his share. He sat now, unveiled, his hands in his lap, and stared across the tent to the Kel to the corner where Duncan lay with his dus, propped sitting against the beast, unconscious as he was, for he bled inside, and might strangle. He was no lovely sight, was Duncan, and there were many in the Kel who cast furtive looks at him, hoping, likely, for his death.
For the end of both of them, it might be, if their enemies called them out in the morning. It was a dire thing, the merging of two tribes; they had not wanted it . . . but perhaps many existed in this tribe who would count it better to accept that, and gain another kel’anth, another she’pan. He ought to clear his mind, to take food, to sleep, against such an event; he knew these things clearly.
He made attempt, and the food stack in his throat; he swallowed that, and no more, sitting still again.
There came a slow silence in the Kel. Movements grew quieter and less. Voices hushed. No hand now reached for the bowls; no one spoke. He knew that they were staring at him, and eventually he grew as quiet within as without, remote from his pain.
Challenge me, he wished certain of them, not excluding Ras. I will kill, and enjoy the killing.
“Kel’anth,” Hlil said.
Niun paid no attention to him.
Hlil sat silent a moment, offended, doubtless; and finally Hlil leaned closer to the fen’anth Seras, who sat next him; and then to Desai. There was some muttering together, and Niun removed his mind from all of it, letting them do what they would, reckoning that it would come to him when it was ready.
He rose instead, and withdrew to Duncan’s side, sat down there, against the dus. The beast rumbled its sorrow and nosed at him, as if begging solace or help. Duncan breathed with a slow bubbling sound, and his eyes were open a slit, but they were glazed, dimly reflecting the lamplight.
The others resumed their meal, but for a small cluster about Hlil who withdrew together to talk in the opposite corner of Kel-tent, and for Ras, who came and sat down against one of the great poles, her face no more angry, only very weary, eyes shadowed.
She had, at the last, helped; he was mortally surprised for that . . . practicality, perhaps, that Duncan slowed them too much. He had long since ceased to try to account for what Ras did. He watched the others in their group, and anger moiled in him for that; he remembered the dus and stilled it . . . put a hand on Dun-can’s shoulder and pressed slightly, obtained a blink of the eyes.
“I know you are there,” Duncan said, a faint, congested voice. “Stop worrying. Is there word yet—about the hao’nath?”
“No sign of them. Do not worry for it.”
“Dus thinks they are still out there.”
“Doubtless they are. But they have to think about it now.”
“More . . . more than one. Back . . . side . . . front . . . .” Coughing threatened again. Niun tightened his hand.
“Save this for later.”
Duncan’s strange eyes blinked, and tears fell from inner corners, mixed with the dirt and the blood, trailing slowly into the hair of his face. “Ai, you are worried, are you? So am I. There are many . . . Dusei, maybe.”
“You are not making sense, sov-kela.”
“Life, I tried to show them life. I think they understood.”
“Dusei?”
There was movement; a sudden apprehension came into Duncan’s eyes, focused beyond him. Niun turned on one knee as a shadow fell on them, a wall of black robes about them. The dus stirred; but those foremost moved to kneel, restoring a little of the lamplight, and Niun moved his hand ashamedly from his weapons. Hlil—Desai, Seras, and young Taz. Niun frowned, thrust out his hand in confusion when Taz set a smoldering bowl near Duncan.
“The smoke will help,” Seras said.
It was some portion of the oil-wood, which they used for lamp fuel, a greasy smoke with the cloying sweetness of some other herb added. Niun held his hand from striking it away at once, distracted between the harm it might do and his failure to have comprehended their honest intent. He settled his hand on Duncan’s shoulder instead, with the other hand poised to refuse their further intervention.
“Kel’anth,” said Hlil coldly, “we know some things you do not. We were born on this world.”
Duncan feebly reached for the smoldering bowl. Taz edged it closer and Duncan inhaled the smoke fully. It was true. Niun felt his own raw throat eased by the oily warmth. The smoke offended the dus, which turned its great head the other way with a deep whuff of displeasure, but of a sudden the beast caught up feelings utterly naked and wove them all together uninvited, Kutathi mri and Kesrithi.
“Yai!” Niun rebuked it, and faces averted slightly one from the other in embarrassment. He looked on Duncan, who breathed deeply of the fumes, and then gazed at Hlil until Hlil looked up at him.
“S’Sochil,” Niun said very quietly, “I thank you; I should have said that; forgive.”
“Ai,” Hlil muttered, and soured the moment with a scowl and a gesture of contempt toward Duncan.
There was an explosive breath at the door. Niun looked about, saw his own dus, which had decided at last to come in out of the dark, drawn by some inner impulse. Kel’ein moved out of its path in haste as it came across the mats, head down and seemingly preoccupied; and when it had come to him, it nosed at him and sank down against Duncan’s beast.
Niun rested an arm on its shoulder, tugged at its ear to distract it, lest it reach his mind and Hlil’s together. For a long moment he stared at Hlil’s scarred, unlovely face, fearing that the dus did indeed broadcast what moved in him. Or perhaps it came from both sides, that longing: even one who knew dusei could not always tell. Beside him Duncan rested, breathing in larger breaths, as if the smoke had taken the pain away.
Niun loosed one of his own Honors, offered it, his hand nigh trembling. He thought surely that Hlil would reject it, offending and offended; but he was obliged to the offering.
“For what service?” Hlil asked.
“That I find the tribe . . . well in your keeping. You and Seras . . . if you would.”
Hlil did take; and Seras too . . . of the Honors which had been Merai’s, which were his to give away; of the friend for whom, Niun thought with a sudden pang, Hlil would always grieve. It surged through the dusei unasked, the desolation and the loneliness.
“We have watchers out,” Hlil said. “You did not seek this, with the hao’nath. This was not your purpose.”
“No,” Niun said, dismayed to realize how things had fit such a thought. “You do not know me, kel Hlil, to have wondered that.”
Hlil’s eyes wandered briefly to Duncan, up again.
“They tracked him,” Niun said.
“They have come to the cities,” Hlil said. “So should we . . . if we had not already. Kel’anth—it will not stop with the hao’nath. You understand that. Word will spread . . . of this . . . stranger with us.”
“I know,” he said.
Hlil nodded, glanced down, rose, excusing himself as if there were nothing more he could say; so, one by one, did the others. Taz lingered last silently produced a small handful of dried roots and pale fiber from the breast of his robe, alon
g with a small leather sack.
“Sir,” Taz said, laying it beside the pot “I can find more, if need be: Kath surely has to spare.”
The boy went away. Niun started to speak to Duncan, to ask if he was comfortable; and looked, and saw Duncan’s eyes shut and his breathing eased.
He leaned against the dus, with the knot that had been so long at his belly somewhat less taut, watching all the Kel settle for the night, each to their mats that composed the flooring of the tent. The lamps were put out, all but the one that hung nearest them, and the little bowl of smoldering fibers curled up smoke about them.
Only Ras remained, sitting; she stirred finally, and he reckoned that she too would seek her mat and sleep; but she returned after a moment, a shadow in the haze of smoke and the lamps, came close and knelt down by them with something in her arms, a roll of matting, which she set down by him.
“What is it?” he asked of her. “Kel Ras?”
She said nothing . . . withdrew to the shadows, lay down finally and seemed to sleep.
He drew the matting into his lap, unrolled it, uncovering the cho-silk bindings of his longsword, the coarser work of Duncan’s, left behind in An-ehon. He bit his lip, fingered the ancient work of the hilt, drew the fine steel a little distance from the leather sheath, eased it back again. It was precious to him, the solitary vanity of his possessions: he had counted it lost.
Challenge, he thought, to hold what he had taken. It will not stop, Hlil had said, with the hao’nath.
Time after time, while Kutath bled its strength out, and tsi’mri waited for answers.
He laid the swords beside him, settled back again. In the quiet which had settled, Duncan’s breath still bubbled, and now and again he stirred and coughed and blotted at his mouth with the soiled veil. But much of the time he did sleep, and at last the bubbling ceased.
At that sudden silence Niun roused anxiously—but Duncan’s chest rose and fell with peaceful regularity, and the blood which stained his lip was dried.