And in time, with the sun’s lowering, kel’ein came. Hlil sat his place, sentinel to the homecoming path, and marked them in, as he had known by the fact that this post was vacant, that none had come in before him. They saw him as they passed, lifted hands in salute; he knew their names and put a knot in the cords at his belt for each—knew them veiled as they were, by their manners and their stature and simply by their way of walking, for they were his own from boyhood. Had there been one of higher rank than he that one would have come and relieved him of this post, to take up the tally; there was none, so he stayed, as they entered the perimeter of the secure area of the camp.
They came in groups as the Sun touched the horizon, appearing like mirages out of the land, so well they judged their time, to meet at homecoming after hunting apart all day: black-robed, like drifting shadows, they passed in the amber twilight, while the sun stained the rocks and touched the hazy depths of the sea basins, going down over the far, invisible rim as if it vanished in midair, drawing out shadows.
The knots filled one cord and another and another, until all the tale was told but two.
Hlil looked eastward, and of certainty, at the mid of sunfall, there came Ras. He need not have worried, he told himself. Ras would not be careless, not she—kel’e’en of the Kel’s second highest rank. No reasoning with her, nothing but ordering her outright, and he could not, even if it were wise.
Ras s’Sochil Kov-Nelan. Merai’s truesister.
Of that too, Niun had robbed him. They had been a trio, Hlil and Merai and Ras, in happier days; and he had dreamed dreams beyond his probabilities. He was skilled: that was his claim to place; he had had Merai’s friendship; and because of that—he had been always near Ras. He had taught her, being older; had gamed with her and with Merai; had watched her every day of her life . . . and watched her harden since Merai’s death. Her mother, Nelan, had been one of those who failed to come out of An-ehon; of that Ras said nothing. Ras laughed and spoke and moved, took meals with the Kel and went through all the motions of life; but she was not Ras as he had known her. She followed Niun s’Intel, as once, as a kath-child, she had followed him; where Niun walked, she was shadow; where he rested, she waited. It was a kind of madness, a game lacking humor or sense; but they were all a little mad, who survived An-ehon and served the she’pan Melein.
Ras arrived, in her own time, paused on the path below the rocks—began, wearily, to climb up to him. When she had done so, she sank down on the flat stone beside him, arms dropped loosely over her knees, her body heaving with her breaths.
“Did you hunt well?” he asked, although he knew what game she hunted.
“A couple of darters.” It was not, for her, good. And it was a long walk that brought Ras back out of breath.
Hlil looked out, and in the darkening east, there were two dots on the horizon. The kel’anth and the beast, strung far apart.
“East,” Ras said beside him, finding breath to speak. “Always east, along the same track. He would have brought back no game at all, but the beast routs things out for him. He delays only to gather it, and he takes long steps, this kel’anth of ours.”
“Ras,” he objected.
“He knows I am there.”
He gathered up another stone, rolled it between his fingers. Ras simply rested, catching her breath.
“Why?” he said finally. “Ras—let him be. Anger serves no purpose; it dies unless you go on nursing it.”
“And you do not.”
“I am the kel’anth’s second.”
“So you were,” she said, which was a heart-shot; and a moment later she looked on him with something like her old fondness. “You can be. I envy you.”
“I have no love for him.”
She accepted that offering in silence. Her fingers stole, as they would, to one of the many Honors which hung from her belts. Merai’s death gift, that one, from Niun’s hand.
“We cannot challenge him,” she said. “Law forbids, if it were revenge for Merai; but there are other causes. Just causes.”
“Stop thinking of it.”
“He is very good. If I challenged him, he would kill me.”
“Do not,” he said, his heart clenched.
“You want to live,” she accused him. And when he did not deny it: “Do you know how many generations of Kel-birth lie behind me?”
“More than mine,” he said bitterly, heat risen already to his face: his plain birth was a thing of which he was deeply conscious.
“Eighteen,” she said. “Eighteen generations. It comes to me, Hlil, that here I sit, last of a line that produced kel’ein and she’panei. Last. They are dead, all the rest; gods, and they would never understand such times as these. I look around me; I think—maybe I do not belong here; maybe I should go too, end it. And I think of my brother. Merai saw it standing in front of him—saw just the edge of the horizon waiting for us. And I think . . . he died, Hlil. He was not himself against this stranger; he missed a blow he could have turned. I know he could have turned it. Why? For fear? That was not Merai. It was not. So what do I believe? That he stepped aside—that he let himself die? And why so? At one word from these strangers that they are the Promised, the Voyagers-out? Could he stand in the way of such a thing?”
Hlil swallowed heavily, “Do not ask me what he thought.”
“I ask myself. He could not see ahead. And then I think: I see. I am here. I am my brother’s eyes. Gods, gods, he died knowing it was for a thing he would never see or understand. To clear the way, because he was set where this man had to stand. And I am desperate to see—Truth, Hlil: this kel’anth of ours will live under my witness; and if he cannot bear that, if he feels guilt, it is his guilt, let him bear it; and if he turns and strikes me—you will know. And what you do about that—I leave in your lap, Hlil-my-brother.”
“Ras—”
“I leave it there, I say.”
They sat still, staring alike at the shadowing land.
The beast arrived far in advance, a great warm-blooded animal, down-furred, pug-nosed and massive. Its feet turned in when it walked, its head wandered from side to side close to the ground as if it had lost something and forgotten what it was. It was probably nearsighted. Ras hissed a soft sound of distaste when it came up the rise toward them. Hlil felt a crawling at his gut whenever it was by him, for the length of those claws (venomed, the kel’anth had warned them) and the power of those sloping shoulders argued its way wherever it went, and something in the creatures set nerves on edge when they were disturbed. It came now, nosed wetly at each of them. Ras cursed it and pushed it, and Hlil set his hand at the side of its head and heaved to turn it aside, for all that those great jaws could take the hand entire. It moved, rebuffed finally. It put fear into him, and no beast Kutath had bred had ever done that; it consumed, gods, it surely must: it rolled with fat and moisture. On hungrier days Hlil had looked at it resentfully . . . but the thought of eating warm-blooded flesh nauseated him, like cannibalism.
Another gift of the kel’anth, this creature.
“Go on,” he said to Ras. And when she delayed still: “Go on back.”
She muttered soft agreement and rose, slipped away down the rocks, vanished into the shadows.
The beast made to follow her, snorted and came back again, nosed about and found the sand-star with uncanny accuracy. The star had not a chance. The beast—dus, its name was—lay down with the tendrils wrapped about one massive paw and ate with noisy relish. The sound became a rumbling, mind-dulling, pervasive.
Contentment weighted Hlil’s limbs, at odds with the distress that tugged at him from another direction. It was as if he grew two minds, one warring with the other. The dus—he connected the sensations, the slow purring, felt his senses dulled . . . .
“No!” he said.
It stopped, a silence like sudden nakedness, devoid of warmth. Small, glittering eyes lifted to him.
“Go away,” he told it. It did not. He sat and watched Niun come, weary and limping
more than a man should from a day’s ordinary hunting. He ought to walk down to the path, signaling to the kel’anth that he might simply take the way into camp, being the last.
He did not. He sat still, let Niun walk up the stony walk to her perch among the rocks.
“Is someone still out?” Niun asked, hard-breathing and in a manner of some concern.
The accent with which he spoke was also different; they had in common only the hal’ari, the high tongue, preserved changeless in the city-machines, and the kel’anth struggled badly in what he had learned of the mu’ara, the tribe speech.
“No,” Hlil said, rising, ignoring the kel’anth’s vexation. “You are last; I will walk down with you.”
The beast rose up, shambled out to rub against Niun as he started down; Hlil walked as close to it as he must.
“You walked far,” Hlil said.
“Ai,” Niun muttered as he walked, evading him.
“So did Ras.”
That stopped him. Niun turned a veiled face toward him, looking up on the shadowed slope. “Your sending?”
“No.”
“She wants a quarrel—does she not, kel Hlil?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps she is only curious where you go . . . daily.”
“That too, it may be. I beg you—intervene.”
That was not the answer he had expected to provoke. He slipped his hands into the back of his belt, far from his weapons, evidencing reluctance for quarrel. “I beg you, kel’anth . . . bear with her.”
“I do,” he said. “What more can I do?”
Hlil regarded him, the alien fineness of him, the familiar Honors which winked among his robes: easy to hate—this too-fine, too-skilled stranger. The dus laid its ears back and rumbled an ominous sound, stilled as Niun touched it.
“Ras and I,” Hlil said, “have little more to say to each other. You speak to her if you like. I cannot.”
The kel’anth did not answer him—turned and picked his way to the bottom, walked onto the sandy track toward camp, the great dus ambling along behind him. “Yai!” he snapped at it then, and it fell back, turned aside from the trail into camp: it rarely did come in.
Hlil followed, seething with resentment, as if the kel’anth abandoned him equally with the beast . . . followed the kel’anth’s straight figure in among the shadows of overhanging cliffs, and out into light again . . . the rim itself suddenly on the left hand, a dizzying drop to the cut which gave them refuge from the kel’anth’s enemies aloft.
“Tell the sentry we are in,” Niun turned to bid him. “Here, I will take your pouch.”
The dismissal further angered him. He shed the pouch containing his day’s take into the kel’anth’s outstretched hand and left the trail, going up into the high rocks.
It was a reasonable order. Had Merai ordered, he would have felt no least resentment; he argued so with himself, through the heat of anger. To claim my hunting for yours? he wondered, a petty suspicion, when in fact the kel’anth did him a great courtesy, to offer to bear his burden that little distance: rank forbade. It was always like that between them, that bitterness underlay whatever dealings they had one with the other, that they could not speak the simplest words without offense; that they could not take loyalty for granted between them, which they ought to be able to do, for the tribe’s sake.
It was Ras, who committed slow suicide . . . Ras’s eyes were on him too, surrogate for Merai.
It had been so when Merai was alive, that Merai’s was the greater soul, the higher-tempered, the quicker—a great prince of the People, kel Merai; and he was only Hlil s’Sochil, born of Kath-caste and no special father—no shame, but no great distinction; no particular grace, nor handsomeness—weapons-scars had not improved him in that; never quickness of tongue. Only skill, and stubborn adherence to the kel-law and what seemed right.
Those two things had never diverged, save now.
* * *
Niun hesitated at the bottom, in the shadows, staring into the camp. Ras was not waiting for him. He had thought she might be; she had, then, gone her way to Kel. Mad she was, but not enough to discommode herself, sitting out in the dark. He summoned a little of that cold-bloodedness of hers and slung the two pouches of game over his shoulder, walked his unhurried course in the shadow of the cliffs.
It was a place which offered at least the hope of concealment from humans, this deep maze of eroded overhangs . . . a stream course, perhaps, while water had flowed the high plain and seas had surged from rim to rim of the great basins. The cut ran down and down the vast terraces, more and more steeply, to lose itself in the evening murk. Between these cliffs was a sandy floor, dangerous at the rimside, the seam of a sandslip running a good stone’s throw up the center; farther along the sands were stable. Infrequent gusts carried clouds of sand down into the cut, making veils necessary even for children on windy days. It was no comfort, but it was shelter of a sort, a bad place in storm, on which account the seniors of the Kel had objected; but he had overridden them. They had experienced fire; they knew the theory of machines and strike from orbit; but they still did not realize how thorough an enemy’s scan might be. There were deep places within the maze, decent separation for the castes, Sen to the north, with the she’pan; Kel to the south, nearest the entry, to protect it, if it were a question of enemies who dared face them; and farthest back, deepest, the Kath, the child-rearers and children: the strongest place of all for the children, of whom they had lost most in An-ehon, in the ruin of the city.
One strike from above, only one, and they were done. He much feared so.
He turned in at the shelter which served for kel-hall, walked deep within. The glitter of weapon hilts and Honors pierced the gloom, shadowy faces showed in the light of oilwood flame. One came to him, a kel’en who had not yet won the kel-scars: Taz, his name was; on such as he fell the burden of all labor in the Kel. Niun slung the game pouches into his hand. “Mine and Hlil’s. Carry it to Kath.”
His eyes located Ras, inevitably, among those who stood to welcome him. He slid his glance aside from her and the others, unveiled and turned to make the token respect to the empty shrine, the three stones piled in symbol of the Holy, which they had lost in their flight. The whole place smelled of oilwood, the fiber of which served for incense.
The others had settled at his dismissal; he walked among them, sank down nearest the small fire which served them. On a square of leather which served them for a common-bowl, was supper, an ab’aak Kath had contrived out of other days’ hunting—the pulp of pipe and whatever flesh could be spared: more pipe than meat, truth be told, and done without salt or utensils or other amenities. They had fared worse, and better. He ate, in the others’ silence.
Hlil returned, sat with him, took his own share. There was idle talk finally, a muttering of small matters, the sort of things passed among folk who had spent all their lives in each other’s company, but self-consciously, in the hal’ari and not in the more natural tribe speech. It faltered. Constantly there was a silence ready to enfold them, as every evening. Niun sat staring into the fire, letting the chatter flow through him, about him, unparticipant. He scarcely knew their names, let alone those of the dead, who figured all too often in their rememberings; old jokes were lost on him; too much had to be explained. In truth his mind was elsewhere, and perhaps they knew it.
He remembered, when he let himself. Memory was where his own Kel lived; his House; his friends and companions. He remembered the ship: that was most vivid. Reminiscence could become a disease with him, and he did not permit it often, for even the most unpleasant things involved the familiar, and home, and past pains were duller. Wise, he thought, that the law of the People had commanded them to forget, in each between-worlds voyage . . . even to cease to speak the language or think the old thoughts. To go into the Dark was to return to the center of things, where only the hal’ari was spoken, where worlds were not important, where no past existed, or future.
Even on Kutath it was done, the delibera
te forgetting, by all but the scholars of Sen-caste. It was, he suspected, the sanity of a world so very old. Sen remembered, No kel’en might, save in the chants of legends, of which he was one.
The Ships which went out,
they sang of his kind,
With the World at their backs . . .
The noise of their voices oppressed him as silence. He looked up, realizing his lapse, looked about him, at Hlil, and the several survivors of the first rank of the Kel, the Husbands of the she’pan.
“We—” he said, and silence fell, flowing to the rearmost ranks. “We should consider a matter. Our supplies . . . in An-ehon. And what we do next.”
“Send us,” a young kel’en exclaimed from the middle ranks, and voices seconded him. “Aye,” another said. “Day by day, we could bring them out, if we hunt that way.”
“No,” he said shortly. “It is not that simple. Listen to me. Putting a limb of the Kel into An-ehon . . . gods know what we could stir up. Ships may have landed there. The place may be watched, and not alone with eyes. Rubble may have buried what is left . . . no knowing; and if we go to the open land again—chances are we will be seen. What hit An-ehon could come down on us when we have only canvas over our heads. We need the supplies; I am sick of seeing Kath struggle to make do with what little we have. And I agree with you, we are pressing luck staying here. But I prefer rock between us and them for now. I am thinking of moving up into the hills.”
“Not our range,” objected Seras, eldest of the Husbands.
“Then we take it,” he said in a small and bitter voice.
The fusion of tribes, the merging of Holies . . . oil and water. It was trouble; he saw their faces, and it was the hardness he expected to see.
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