Kutath

Chapter Eleven

Someone stirred close by; Niun drew a sudden breath, lifted his head, remembering Duncan with slight panic. ... He looked toward him and found him sleeping.

Kel Ras was sitting on her heels just the other side of him, veiled, staring at him in the shadow, leaning on the sword which rested across her knees. "They are out there," she said. "Kel'anth, I really think you should come and see.”

The Kel had begun to rouse at the whispering. Hlil was there, and Seras and Desai and Merin, the youth Taz, Dias, others. A chill came over him, a profound sense of loneliness. He gazed down at Duncan, who remained oblivious to what passed, quietly disengaged himself from the dusei, a separation which had its own feeling of chill, physical and mental.

Whatever befell, they might leave Duncan in peace, at least until he was stronger; he was kel'en and some ja'anom might take that as a matter of honor. For himself and Melein.…

He gathered himself to his feet, shook off the concern that urged at him, bent again to gather up his sword and slung it to his shoulder. He walked outside into the beginnings of dawn, with Ras and Hlil and Desai close to him.

"Has anyone advised the she'pan?" he asked, and when no one answered he sent Desai with a gesture in that direction. It was necessary to think of no more concerns, to settle his mind for what had to be met and what had to be done. He had no feeling of comrades at his side, rather that of witnesses at his back, and the loneliness persisted.

There was no possibility yet of seeing clearly what had come. Halflight tricked the eye, made the land out to be flat when it was not. A thousand enemies could be hidden in that gentle rolling of the sands. They walked out to the rear of Kel, and Ras lifted her arm silently toward the northeast, where a faint hint of rocks marred the smoothness of the land.

No one was in sight now, and that was perhaps another of the land's illusions.

Kel'ein joined them out of Kath, rousing out in some haste; and kath'ein came in haste with bowls of offering to the Kel. The Word had spread through all the camp by now; sen'ein came, but the children were held in Kath, concealed.

A kath'en he knew brought a bowl to him, offered; he recalled another morning, when there had been the illusion of safety, and love with this gentle, plain-faced kath'en. "Anaras," he murmured her name, and took the bowl from her hands, ate a very little, gave it back, lonelier than before. He was afraid; it was not an accustomed sensation.

The kath'en withdrew; all that caste did, having no place in what might come. Sen remained, and turning, he saw Melein's pale figure among them, caught her eye. She had no word for him, only a nod of affirmation, a beckoned permission. He went to her and she touched lips to his brow, received his loss in return; and from that dismissal he went out, past the tents, with all the Kel at his back.

They stopped after a space; and he walked as far again alone, stopped on the verge of a long slope, facing the open and seemingly empty land. It was cold in the wind, which swept nnhin-dered across the land.

He had not been wise, after running so long, not to have spent all the night before in the indulgence of his own needs, forgetting Duncan; but he could not have done so, could not have rested went at least with clear conscience for the things that he had done. He veiled himself, as one must facing strangers, as all the Kel was veiled. He put aside Niun s'lntel, slipped from himself into the Law, into the she'pan's hands, and the tribe's, and the gods'. He waited.

The city depressed, the crumbling aisles of stone, the sad corpses, the alleys resounding to their footsteps and the rasp of the breathers, the whisper of the wind. Galey kept an eye to the buildings, the hollow shells which seemed long untouched by any living. It was such a place and such an hour as made him glad of the weapon under his hand and several armed companions about him, Boaz the only one of them who carried no weapon.

It was at once relief and discouragement, that there was no stir from the place, neither the attack they had dreaded nor the approach they had hoped. Nothing. Wind and sand and shells of ruins.

And the dead.

There were only kel'ein corpses at the first, black-robed; then others, gold-robes and blue, and children. The blues were without exception women and children, and babes in arms. Boaz stood over a cluster of sad husks and shook her head and swore. Shibo touched at a kel'en's body with his foot, not roughly, but in distaste.

"There's nothing alive here," Boaz said. She was hard-breathing despite the mask, overburdened with the equipment and her own weight; she hitched the breather tank to another place on her shoulder and drew a gasping breath. "I think they'd have buried them if they could have.”

"But it was inhabited," Galey said. "Duncan maintained the cities were empty." The suspicion that in other particulars Dun-can's data might have inaccuracies in it ... filled him with a whole array of apprehensions, a cowardice that wanted to go running back to the ship, pull offworld and declare failure, so that guns could blast at each other at a distance where humans had advantage. Another part of him said no ... looked at dead civs and children and turned sick inside. Kadarin, Lane, Shibo… what they felt he had no idea but he suspected it was something the same.

"Isn't saying," Boaz said, walking farther among the dead, "that the city was inhabited. Just that people were killed here. Children were killed here. Duncan's mri. I think we've found them… just the way he said. He talked about dead cities; he'd seen one, been there… with the mri. He talked about a woman who died; and the children… he'd seen that too.”

"He talked about machines," said the tech Lane, a young man, and worried-looking. "Live ones.”

"I don't doubt," said Boaz, "well find that here too." She paused again in the crossing of two alleys, with the sand skirling about her feet, looked about her, looked back, made a gesture indicating the way she wanted them to go.

"Come on," Galey said to the others, who from time to time laid nervous hands on their weapons as they passed the darkened entries, the alien geometries of arches which led into ruin, or nowhere. Walk like mri, Boaz had advised them. Keep your hands away from guns. It was not easy, to trust to that in such a place.

A black line materialized out of the slow swell of the land opposite their own, grew distinct, stopped. Niun stood still, his legs numb with fatigue, waiting, silent declaration of the resolution of the ja'anom. The enemy had come, waited now for bright day. Sun-born, legend said of the People; the hao'nath had not chosen to move upon them by night. Neither would he, given choice. To face an enemy of one's own inclinations… had an eerie, homely feeling about it.

Dus-sense played at the back of his mind. The beast was quiet, far from him… would stay there. It had an instinct that would not intrude on a fight on equal terms, like mri, who would not attack in masses. It knew. It drank in the whole essence of the camp and gave it to him, drank in the presence of the enemy and fed him that too, threads complex and indefinable, a second dimension of their reality, so that the world seemed the same when it stopped, only faded somewhat, less intense, less bright.

He banished it, wishing his mind to himself.

The light grew, colors became fully distinct. In the east the sun blazed full. And with it other shapes took form, a new line of kel'ein, separate from the others, and apart from them. Niun's heart skipped a beat in alarm. Had it been his native Kel at his back he might have turned, might have betrayed some emotion; they were not, and he did not. He moved his eyes slowly, and saw with a slight turning of his head that there were yet others, a third Kel ranged to the south.

They had been herded. Runners must have gone, signals passed, messages exchanged among she'panei. Three tribes were set against them. Three kel'anthein ... to challenge.

One by one or all at once; he had his option. He saw the trap, and the warmth drained from his limbs as he thought on Melein, who would die when he fell ... flooded back again with anger when he thought of all that had been sacrificed to bring them this far, and to lose ... to lose now

A figure separated from the others before him; he knew the beginning of it then; the hao'nath came first. Another began to come out from among the tribe to the east; and another separated himself in the south. He detached his mind, drew quiet breaths, began to prepare himself.

Suddenly a line appeared at the extreme south; and another figure moved forward ... a fourth tribe; and another at north northeast, a fifth.

They knew ... all knew… that strangers had come among them, and where those strangers might be found. Niun felt again the prickling touch of his dus, the beast growing alarmed, full of blood-feelings.

No, he sent it furiously. He detached his sword, the av-kel, and held it in his hands crosswise, plain warning to those who came toward him from five directions… perhaps more still; he did not turn his head and utterly abandon his dignity. If they came also at his back, they must at least do him the grace of moving around to face him. Heat suffused his face, that he had let this happen and not know it; that he had run so blindly with dusei warning him persistently of outlying presence, that Dun-can in his ravings had felt it, and he had not conceived the truth.

That his own kind did this to him, repudiating all that he was, all that they had come to offer, blind to all but difference.… There was no talking with them under these circumstances; they could read well enough that the kel'anth of this Kel stood by himself, that not a person at his back would move to assist him.

He could see all the five at once now; tribal names, he thought, that he should have known, were he mri of this world.… Black-veiled, glittering with Honors which meant lives and challenges… they preserved decent interval from each other, separate in tribe, neither crossing the other's space. Perhaps they bore instructions from their she'panei already, as he did from Melein; that would shorten matters. They risked much, all of them; absorption ... for what tribes he took before dying himself, the kel'anth who killed him would possess, and those she'panei die ... a measure of their desperation and their outrage, that they combined to take such risk.

Near enough now for hailing. He did not, nor go out to them; it was his option to stand still, and he had had enough of walking these last days. His back felt naked enough without separating himself so far from his own tents.

There was movement behind him. It startled him… one shameful instant he tensed, thinking of ultimate treachery, tsi'mri, un-mri; steps approached him, solitary. Duncan, he thought, his heart pounding with despair ... he turned his head slightly as kel'en came to stand by him on his left.

Hlil. The shock of it destroyed his self-possession; the membrane flicked when Hlil looked at him straightly; and beyond Hlil, Seras came… too old, Niun thought anxiously; a Master of weapons, but too old for this. It was an act of courage more than of help to him. Steps stirred the sand on his right, and he looked that way… saw to his shock that it was Has, her eyes cold as ever; suicidal, he reckoned. They were four now. Suddenly there was another, their fifth; kel Merin of the Husbands, whom he hardly knew.

That changed the complexion of the matter. He turned again toward the five who came to challenge, his heart beating faster and faster, from wild surmises that this was somehow a trap, arranged, between his own and them; to surmises that for some mad reason these kel'ein came to defend his hold on the ja'anom. He could challenge all at once, take the strongest himself, use these four at least as a delay until he could turn his hand to the next.

They would die doing that; there was no sane reason for them to preserve the ja'anom for his possession.

The five halted before them, individually.

"Kel'anth of the ja'anomr the central one shouted. "We are the ja'ari, the ka'anomin, the patha, the mari, the hao'nath! I am kel'anth Tian sTEdri Des-Paran, daithenon, of she'pan Edri of the ja'ari. We hear reports of landings; and I ask; does the kel'anth of the ja'anom have an answer?”

"Kel'anth of the ja'anoml" shouted the one farthest right. "I am kel'anth Rhian s'Tafa Mar-Eddin, daithenon, of the she'pan Tafa of the hao'nath. And my question you well know.”

There was silence after. They had spoken in the hal'ari, not the mu'ara of tribes; and that the kel'anth of the hao'nath was alive to protest in person… here was a stubborn man.

"Kel'anthein! I am kel'anth Niun s'lntel Zain-Abrin, daithenon, of she'pan Melein of the ja'anom and of all the People." He drew in a second great breath, clenched the sword tightly hi his fists. "I am kel'anth of the Voyagers, of those who went out from the world, heir of An-ehon and LeVhaen, of Zohain and Tho'e'i-shai; kel'anth of the Kel of the People, Hand of the she'pan of the Mysteries; for she'pan Melein I took the ja'anom, and in her name I defend it if challenged, or challenge if she so decides. The path we take is our path, and I defend her right to walk it. Be warned!”

They stood still a moment. Somewhere the dus stirred, troubling, and he willed it silent.

A rustling of cloth and steps approached behind him, a breath of holy incense, a wisp of white robes in the corner of his eye that he dared not turn from his enemies.

Melein.

"Kel'anth of the ja'anom!" shouted Rhian of the hao'nath. "Ask your she'pan for a message and we will bear it.”

Any word of enemies must, by custom, pass through him. "Tell them," Melein shouted back in her own voice. "Call your she'panei here. Call them here.”

More dead lay in the great square, corpses becoming barriers to sand which drifted in waves across the pavings, the scale of everything reduced by the great edun which towered even in ruin. "Straight through the center," Galey said in a low voice, and led the way for them. Boaz insisted it was the sane thing, that mri would not attack from ambush if the approach were direct; she had that information from Duncan.

Forty years humans had been fighting mri, and all experience denied that theory; mri had fired from ambush; had done precisely the realization hit him with sudden irony what humans had done. No human had ever walked plainly up to mri. He recalled stories of mri who had advanced alone against humans, berserkers, shot to rags. Of a sudden things fit, and sickened him.

And the dead… everywhere alien; but dead infants were tragedy in any reckoning. Here a woman had fallen, her arms spread wide to shield a trio of children, covering them with her robes as if that could save them; here one of the warriors had died, bearing a blue-clad infant in his arms; or a pair of the gold-robes, embraced and tucked up still sitting, as if the flight had become too much for them and they had resigned themselves to die; an older child, whose mummified body preserved the gesture of an outstretched hand, across the sandy stones, reaching toward what might have been its mother.

Alien, and not. Regul had killed them; or perhaps he had. It was Haven, and Kiluwa, and Asgard, and Talos, and all the evils they had done to each other. It was world's end, and earnestly he wished for some stir of life within these ruins, some relief from such things.

The steps hove up before them; he kept walking, hands at his side, toward the dark inside. He knew of edunei, these places that served mri for fortresses and what else no one knew. Shrines. Holy places. Homes. No one understood. Forty years and no one understood. Forty years and no one had understood that the warrior Kel was not the whole of the mri culture; no one had known that there was Kath or Sen, that two-thirds of the mri population were strictly noncombatant.

The place afflicted all of them. From time to time the regs had stared at some sight worse than the others, stared longer than they might from curiosity, shook their heads. They were bom to the war; anyone under forty could say that, but this was not a thing they had had to see first hand.

No one spoke. Boaz paused at the top of the steps to take a picture of the way they had come, of the square with its dead. Then the dark of the interior took them in, and their footsteps and the suck and hiss of the breathers echoed in great depth.

Galey took his torch in hand and switched it on, played it over the rubble which blocked most of the accesses to the towers. "Hey!" he shouted, trying the direct approach to the uttermost; and winced at the echoes.

"Left tower," Boaz said.

"Place is like to fall in on us," Galey objected, but he went, the others with them, into the left-hand access, up a spiraling passage dark before their light and dark after, a place for ambushes if any existed anywhere in the city.

Light shone at the top; the great room there had a split wall; and beyond, through another doorway he walked in that direction, to anticipate Boaz, who was sure to go without their protection. His heart beat fearfully as he saw the rows of machines. He had seen the like before, on Kesrith.

"Shrine," he said aloud.

Boaz paused in the doorway and looked back at him, advanced again carefully. The whole center of the floor was gone, a pile of rubble and twisted steel.

And lights burned on the panels, far into the dark.

"Don't touch anything," Lane said. The tech pushed himself to the fore, looked about him, pulled Shibo and Kadarin aside from a circle marked on the flooring. Galey's own foot had crossed that line. He took it back.

"Weapons," Lane said, "very likely controlled from here.”

And the last word was choked into hush, for there was a gleam of light from above, the circle suddenly drowned in glare.

"An-hi?" a mechanical voice thundered. Boaz shook her head in panic, denying understanding; it asked again, more complexly, and again and again and again.

Weapons, Galey thought in sick terror. O God, the skips up there… We've triggered it.

Lane moved, thrust himself into the circle, into the light that bathed him in white unreality. He looked up at the source of it, at screens that flared with mri writings.

"Hne'mH" he cried at it; Friend! It was one of the only words they knew.

It hurled words back, complex and then simple, repeating, repeating, repeating.

And struck. Lane sprawled, still, glaze-eyed from the instant he hit the floor. "No fire!" Galey cried, seeing a gun in Shibo's hand. Every board was alight, the screens alive, the light flaring blue. Boaz reached for Lane's outflung hand… changed her mind and drew back; all of them froze. Galey shifted a glance toward the door, to Shibo and Kadarin, whose faces were stark with fright, to Boaz, whose face was fixed toward the machine, the white light turning her to shadow and silver to Lane, who was quite, quite dead.

Eventually there was silence again. The light faded. Galey chanced a quick move, herding the two men, dragging at Boaz. They all ran, into the sunlight of the room outside, with the machine flaring to life again, thundering its questions.

"Go," he urged them. "Get out of here." He hastened them to the access, down, into the lower hall. They pelted across it, a flight close to panic; he seized at Kadarin and stopped when they reached the open air, listening.

There was only the sunlight and the square, unchanged. They stood there, their breaths hissing into the breathers, their eyes mutually distraught

"We couldn't help him," Galey said. "There's nothing to be done for him. We get out of this we come back for him.”

They accepted that. . . seemed to.

"It was what Duncan said," Boaz broke the silence after a moment. "Machines. What he described.”

There had been no firing aloft, no hostile act from the city. The holocaust had come close to them, but it had not happened. It waited, perhaps, on orders. Mri orders. Perhaps that was what it had asked of them.

Who are you?

What am 1 to do?

An idiot power seeking instruction.

"If there's a link between the cities," Galey said, "we may just have sent a message.”

Shibo and Kadarin said nothing, only looked at Boaz, at plump, fragile Boaz, who had become their source of sanity; a mri world, and they needed mri answers.

"I'd say that's likely," she agreed. "Maybe it has; but they haven't fired yet.”

"And we get out of here," Galey said. "Now.”

He strode down the steps, the others behind him, past a knot of kel'ein corpses, out across the open square. His mistake, his responsibility. It had been a brave act on Lane's part, to try to deal with the machine. He could have done something; he was not sure what. . . pulled Lane out, it might have been.

"Mr. Galey," Boaz said, her breath wheezing in her mask; she pulled it down a moment, gasped as they walked. "We have nothing to report. We can't go back with this.”

He said nothing for a long space of walking, trying to think in the interval, to draw his mind back from Lane and onto next matters. He stopped when they had cleared the square, among the ruined buildings, looked at the faces of Shibo and Kadarin. "We get back to the shuttle," he said. "We try another site.”

"Sir," said Kadarin, "no argument, but what could we have done that we didn't? What can we do with a thing like that? Mri maybe, but that thing “

"I got another worry," said Shibo, "what happens when we try to move that shuttle with that thing stirred up.”

"Mri," Boaz said, "are in open country; Duncan gave us truth in what he told us. We should take the rest of it look for mri, not the machines.”

"We're near enough the rim," Galey said, Til slide for it and stay low, and that's the best we can do. We've got no help but that. But we can't go off cross-country. We've got our corridors set up, Boz, to get us from one point to the other without crossing what we figure for defense zones, and that doesn't give us much space in this region for any search. But I figure we keep this mission going; another site, maybe in better condition." He looked at the ground, hands in pockets, a cold knot in his belly, looked up at them after a moment. "I reckon not to include Lane in the report; it goes quick, no space for explaining; they have enough excuse for canceling us off this business and going some other route. If I were Lane I wouldn't want that That's my feeling on it; that we keep trying.”

"While we do," Boaz said, looking straight at the others, "we hold out hope of another solution. Of stopping what we've seen here. We go back… and what else are they going to do? We stay out here; just by that we prove there's hope in an approach to these people. We remove fear… and we bring sanity to this situation.”

The two regs nodded. Galey did, reckoning plainly it was court martial. "Come on," he said. "It's a long walk.”

It took time, that the she'panei should come from their tribes to that sandy slope; some were very old, and all reluctant Niun stood still, aching from the long strain of standing, watching with a sense of unreality five white-robed figures advancing from separate points of the horizon, each accompanied by her kel'anth and several sen'ein.

Melein started forward eventually, to meet them on equal ground at the bottom of the slope. He walked with her, slowly, with sen'anth Sathas joining them. He offered no words; if she wanted to speak, she would. Doubtless her mind was as full as his; doubtless she had some clear intention in this madness. He hoped that this was the case.

To challenge them all, perhaps, after giving them her ultimatum. So she had done with the she'pan of the ja'anom.

They stopped; the others came to them, as close as warriors might come to one another, a stone's easy toss; such also was the distance for she'panei in the rare instance that they must meet. Kel'ein remained veiled; she'panei and sen'ein met without, elder faces, masked in years. One by one they named themselves, Tafa of the hao'nath; Edri of the ja'ari; Hetha'in of the patha; Nef of the mari; Uthan of the ka'anomin. Tafa and Hetha'in bore the kel-scars, and only Nef was as young as middle years.

"Your kel'anth has used powerful names," said Tafa, when the naming came to Melein herself. "What do you use?”

"I am Melein s'lntel, Melein not-of-the-ja'anom, out of Edun Kesrithun of the last standing-place of the Voyagers, heir of the cities of Kutath and of the edunei of Nisren, of Elag called Haven, and of Kesrith. For names I begin with Parvet'a, who led us out, and who began the line of which we two are born; and I say that we are home, she'panei. Ja'anom met us and would not acknowledge my claim. I took the ja'anom.”

Eyes nictitated. There was not a glance or a word among them.

"Will you challenger Melein asked. "Or will you hear?”

There was the sound of the wind whipping at their robes, the whisper of sand moving. Nothing more.

"I need kel'ein," Melein said, "the service of forty hands of kel'ein from each Kel; lend them. Such as survive I shall send back again with Honors which those who did not go will envy.”

"Where will you take them?" asked Hetha'in. "To what manner of conflict, and for what purpose? You have brought us attack, and tsi'mri, and the wasting of our cities. Where will you take them?”

"I am the foretold," Melein said. "And I call on you for your children and their strength, for the purpose for which we went out in the beginning, and I shall build you a House, she'panei.”

There were small movements, a glancing from one to the other, who ought never to look on one another, who were never united.

"We have trailed a tsi-mri among you," Tafa said.

"That you have," Melein answered her. "See, and trust your Sight, she'panei; by the Mystery of the Mysteries, by the Seeing… give me kel'ein who have the courage to fight this fight and sen'ein to witness and record it in your shrines.”

"With tsi'mri?" cried Tafa. "With walking-beasts?”

"By them you know that I am not Kutathi; and by that you know what I am, Tafa of the hao'nath. Seel We are at a point, she'pauei, of deciding. Our ship is gone; our enemies are many; of the millions who went out, my kel'anth and I are the last alive. We two made it home, and do you by your suspicion destroy us, who have survived all that tsi'mri have done? Sit down and die, she'panei; or give me the forces I need.”

Tafa of the hao'nath turned her back, walked away and stopped by her kel'anth. A coldness settled at Niun's belly. For a moment he had hoped… that five she'panei who could unite against an intruder could see farther than most.

The kel'anth of the hao'nath walked forward; Rhian sTafa; Niun moved out to meet him, met the eyes above the veil, of an older man than he, and worn with hurt and dus-poison and the march that had worn them both. There was nothing of hate there now, only of regret. There had been such in Merai's eyes when they had met, that sorrow. He wished to protest; it was double suicide, Tafa's madness… but in challenge they were held even from speaking.

The kel'ein of two tribes should ring them about, shield the other castes from such a sight; here kel'anthein did that office, too few to do more than make the token of a ring.

They drew, together, a long hiss of steel; Khian's blade lifted to guard; he lifted his own, waited, slipped his mind into hand and blade, nothingness and now.

A pass; he turned it and returned, cautiously; countered and returned. He was not touched; Rhian was not. The blades had breathed upon each other, no more. This was a Master, this Rhian. Another pass and turn, a flutter of black cloth, cut loose; his eyes and mind were for the blade alone; a fourth pass; he saw a chance and a trap, evaded it

"Stop!”

Tafa's sharp command; they paused, alike poised on guard. He thought of treachery, of the insanity of trusting strangers. Rut not tsi'mri; mri. Eyes amber as his own regarded him steadily beyond the two blades.

"Kel'anth of the hao'nath," Tafa cried. "Disengage!”

Niun stayed still as the kelanth retreated the one pace which took them out of sword's-distance. "Disengage," Melein bade him. "The hao'nath have asked.”

He stepped his pace back, stood until the hao'nath kel'anth had sheathed his sword; then he ran his own into sheath, steadily enough for all the tautness of his nerves. It was challenger's prerogative, to stop the contest without a death; challenge then might be returned from the other side, without mercy.

It dawned on him slowly that he had won, that this man had gotten out alive, and he was glad of that, for his bravery. He did not relax. They might all try his measure, one after the other. He tried to subdue the pulse which hammered in his veins; one thing to fight well; the greater matter was discipline, not to be shaken by any tactic, fair or foul.

"We lend you your two hundred," Tafa said, "and our kel'anth with them. You might demand more; but this we offer.”

There was a moment's silence. "Acceptable," Melein said. The breath left Niun's lungs no more swiftly, but the pounding of bis heart filled his ears.

"And we lend," said the she'pan of the patha, "our kel'anth and two hundred to stay if they bring fair report of you. We cannot sit under one tent, she'pan; but let our kel'antnein do so, and bring us word again what they have seen, whether to do what you ask or to challenge. This is fair, in our thinking.”

"So," said mari and ja'ari almost at one breath.

"We ka'anomin are out of Edun Zohain, far out of our range. Our allegiance is to the ma'an mri, but we agree unless the ma'an send to recall us. For a hand of days let them observe; and that long we will wait for answer.”

"Agreeable," said Melein, and other heads bowed. "A hand of days or less. Life and Honors.”

She turned away; the other she'panei did so, with their sen'ein. Kel'anthein remained a moment, covering the retreat.

Niun cast a glance at Bhian. A bit of cloth ky on the sand; his, Rhian's, he was not sure. He took down his veil and gave his face to the kel'anthein lately strangers, feeling naked and strange in doing so ... glanced from face to face as they did the same, memorizing them, the fierce handsomeness of Bhian of the hao'nath; the plainness of Tian of the ja'ari; Kedras of the patha was one of the youngest, his mouth marked with a scar from edge to chin; mari's Elan was broad-faced and elder; but oldest of the lot was Kalis of the ka'anomin, her eyes shadowed by sun-frown and the kel-scars much faded with years.

He turned to follow after Melein, and they went their separate ways for the time. He looked up at the slight rise on which his own Kel waited, before the tents, where the four who had come to his support still stood ... for the tribe's sake, he persuaded himself in clearer reason; for pride of the ja'anom and its Holy, that they would not have merged with another tribe in defeat, though much the same distress would attach to merging as the consequence of winning. It was pride. Ras's line in particular… had long defended the ja'anom. It was duty to her dead brother. He understood that And Hlil was kel-second and Seras fen'anth, and Merin a friend of Hlil's. They had their reasons; and their reasons had been fortunate for him and for Melein; he took even that with gratitude.

He walked among them, spared a nod of thanks to either side as they closed behind him and the black ranks of the Kel flowed back into the camp, where anxious kath'ein and sen'ein waited to know the fate of the tribe, lustering about Melein.

"There is agreement," Melein said aloud, so that all might hear. "They will send kel'anthein into our Council; and they may lend us help. Challenge was declined.”

It was as if the whole camp together drew breath and let it go again ... no vast relief, perhaps; they still sat in the possession of a stranger, led to strange purposes. But the ja'anom still existed as a tribe, and would go on existing.

His dus ventured out of kel-tent, radiating disturbance. Niun met it and touched it, tolerating its interference as he stood for a moment staring after the figure of Melein, who retreated among the Sen.

Reaction settled on him like a breath of cold wind. He turned away, the dus trailing him, went into the tent of the Kel, dull to the looks which surrounded him… missed the four to whom he owed some expression of spoken gratitude; perhaps, they thought, they turned away from it. He did not seek them out, to force it on them. He went instead to Duncan's side, settled there, concerned that Duncan slept still, unmoved from the shoulder of his dus, bis face peaceful as death in the faint light which reached them from the wind vents.

Niun touched the beast, recoiled from the numbing blankness the dus contained, nothingness, void that drank in sense. His own settled down, apart from that touch, and he leaned against it, unwilling to invade that quiet the dus had made for Duncan. He rested cross-legged, hands in his lap, bowed his head and tried to rest a little.

Footsteps disturbed the matting near him. He looked up as Hlil crouched down by him and tugged his veil down.

"You took no wound.”

"No," he said. "I thank you, kel Hlil.”

"Kel-second belonged there. For the tribe.”

"Aye," he agreed. It was clearly so. "Where is Ras?”

"Wherever she wills to be. I am not consulted in her wanderings." Hlil looked down at Duncan, frowning. Niun looked and found Duncan's eyes open a slit, regarding them both; he watched Hlil reach and touch his sleeve as if touching him at all were no easy thing. "The sight of him will be trouble," Hlil said, "with the other kel'anthein.”

Niun moved his own hand to Duncan's shoulder, lest HUl's cold touch should disturb him; he felt contact with the dus, which had the same leadenness as before, mind-duUing if he permitted. Duncan was conscious, but only partially aware.

"They are coming now," Hlil said to him. "Watch has them in view. I do not think since the parting… such a thing has ever happened in the world." His eyes strayed back to Duncan, glanced to him again. "He is yours; no stranger will touch him. But best surely if he is not the first thing they see.”

Duncan blinked; perhaps he had heard.

"No," Niun said. "Bring them here when they reach camp.”

Hlil frowned.

"Let them see me as I am," Niun said. "I make no pretenses otherwise.”

"This is not yourself," Hlil exclaimed. "You are not not what the eye of strangers will see here. You are not this.”

The outcry both angered and touched his heart "Then you do not know me. Look again, Hlil, and do not make me what I am not. This is my brother; and the beast is a part of my mind. I am not Kutathi, and I am not Merai. Bring them here, I say.”

"Aye," Hlil said, and rose up and walked away in evident distress.

They came, eventually, a soft stirring outside, a whisper of robes… kel'anthein of the five tribes with each several companions, sixteen in all, a blackness in Hlil's wake; and Hlil returned to sit by him and by Duncan.

Niun moved his upturned hand, offering them place on the mats. They sat down and unveiled; the tent stirred behind them with the arrival of ja'anom kel'ein, for it was the business of all of them, this opening of the tent to strangers.

Niun put out a hand to the dusei, one and the other, soothed them, deliberate demonstration ... let them all look on him and them as long as they would, Rhian most of all, whose face betrayed nothing. After a moment Niun reached to his brow and swept off the headcloth in a gesture of humility, equaling their disadvantage on strange ground.

"I welcome you," he said. "I warn you against strong passions; the beasts sense them and spread them if you are not wary of what they do; bid them stop and they will do so. Sometimes one can be deceived by them into feeling their anger; or strangers share what strangers would rather not. The Kel from which I came knew such things, valued them, learned to veil the heart from them; and what hurt they have done, lay to my account; I brought them. They are as devoted companions as they are enemies; Rhian s'Tafa, it was a moment's misfortune and confusion; I beg your pardon for it.”

The others, perhaps, did not understand. The hao'nath's eyes met his with direct force, slid deliberately to Duncan's sleeping form.

"He is ja'anom,” Niun answered that look.

There was long and heavy silence. The dusei stirred, and Niun quieted them with a touch, his heart pounding with dread, for they could lose it all upon this man's pride.

"This came from the alien ships," Rhian said. "We tracked it. And you met with it. And that is a question I ask, kel'anth of the ja'anom."

"I am Duncan-without-a-Mother." The hoarse voice startled them all, and Niun looked, found Duncan's eyes slitted open. "I came on a mri ship; but I had gone to speak with the tsi'mri, to ask them what they wanted here.”

"Sov-kela." Niun silenced him with a touch, glanced up at Rhian. "But it is truth, all the same. He does not He.”

"What is her asked Kalis.

"Mri," Niun said. "But once he was human.”

What the dusei picked up disturbed, brought a shifting of bodies in instinctive discomfort all about the tent.

"It is a matter among us," Hlil said, "with respect, kel'anth of the ka'anomin of Zohain.”

There was long silence.

"He is sickly," said Rhian with a wave of his hand.

"I shall mend," Duncan said, which he had the right to say, passed off in so contemptuous a manner; but it was desperately rash. Niun put out his hand, silencing further indiscretions; all the same he felt a touch of satisfaction for that answer.

And Rhian's haggard face showed just the slightest flicker of expression; not outright rage, then, or he would have been as blank as newlaid sand. "So be it," Rhian said. "We discuss that matter later.”

"Doubtless," said Kalis of the ka'anomin, "we are different; gods, how not? Some we accept, at least while we observe. But what have you brought us? We have seen the coming and going of ships. The hao'nath say that An-ehon is totally in ruins. We do not know the fate of Zohain. This is not the first coming of tsi'mri to this world, but, godsl never did mri bring them.”

"Of the People who went out," Niun said, "we are the last; we were murdered by tsi'mri who bought our service, not by Dun-can's kind. And they come to finish us here. Bring them, no. But that is the she'pan's matter, not mine. Share food and fire with us; share Kath if it pleases you; they will take honor of you. For the rest, suspend judgment.”

"When will the she'pan speak to us?" asked Elan of the mari.

"I do not know. I truly do not know. She will send. We will lodge you until then.”

"Your tent cannot hold us," said Kedras of the patha.

"We will do it somehow. If each caste yields a little canvas we can run cord between our poles and Sen.”

"Possible," Kedras said, resting hands on knees. There was a small silence, and Kedras hissed a short breath. "Gods, all under one canvas.”

"In the Kel of my birth," Niun said slowly, "we fought at the hire of tsi'mri; and went from world to world on tsi'mri ships; and it was done, that kel'ein onworld were sheltered by strange she'panei and edunei not of their birth, until their hire took them away again. Perhaps it was so on Kutath once, in the days of the great cities.”

"This Kel does not remember," Kedras confessed, and others moved their heads no.

"We will bring our kerein," said Tian of the ja'ari. "Perhaps each of us can spare a little of canvas.”

Others assented.

"Keranthein," Niun gave them murmured courtesy, watched as they rose and departed, filing out of the tent, as all about them, ja'anom rose in courtesy, settled again. Hlil followed them out, gathering a band of kel'ein to serve what needed to be done.

Niun sat still a moment, replaced the headcloth, sat staring at the empty doorway.

"Strangers," Duncan said beside him, and he realized that of all that had changed, Duncan knew none of it. "More than hao'nath.”

"I will tell you later. Rest, be still. All is better than it was.”

He rubbed at the dus's shoulder to soothe it, looked out over the faces of his kel, at eyes which were fixed on him in strange concentration… with distress, it might be; or simple bewilderment Ras was there; she had come in, and Seras, and Merin. There was a curious thing in the air, a sense of madness that quivered through the dus-sense; so a man might feel with his feet on the rimsands.

"Deal with them as with our own," he said to them. He put off the kel-sword, laid it again on the matting, looked up as Taz appeared with a bowl which he offered, a small portion of liquid, a delicacy reserved for honor, and for those in need. "Kath sends," Taz told him; and he drank, though he would rather have yielded it to Duncan, who needed it more. He gave the bowl back, thought on kath Anaras, thought that this evening would be well spent in Kath, where he might take pleasure, and ease. Rhian's skill had made him think on dying, and Kath was a place to forget such thoughts. He had much neglected them, owed Anaras courtesy which he had never paid. She was fortunate, her child had survived the flight, but the kel'anth had never come a second time to her.

Tonight there were strangers in camp, and duty, and he could not. He shut his eyes, exhaled, opened them again. "I will return it," he said.

"Sir," Taz objected; it was not custom.

He rose up, taking the small bowl with him, and walked out