Faded Sun Trilogy Omnibus

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Ai,” Niun said, taking that danger into account. “Then we make sure of them.”

  “We are at your back,” said Rhian. “We follow ja’anom lead.”

  “Aye,” said Kalis: “I am senior and I say so.” There was a whispered agreement of other voices.

  “Then follow,” Niun said. He moved, first kel’anth, first to go, with the others at his back. He laid down fire and fire came back: someone by him fell, and his dus screamed rage and scrambled forward into that dark hall with a pace he could scarcely match on the polished floors. He fired where he saw fire; by his side was him, a kel’en well-accustomed to this manner of fight.

  The dusei hit glass, breached the walls into the moisture of the gardens, admitting the Kel; elee fired from cover there and then fled. More fire came from the door beyond, and of a sudden one of the dusei roared with pain and lunged forward, gone berserk, a madness the others caught, and the youth Taz with them. Taz plunged ahead, riddled with elee fire, and took several elee in the sweep of his blade before more shots brought him down.

  “Yai!” Duncan shouted at the dusei, bidding for sanity . . . Ras took a hurt: they felt it; and Taz’s maddened dus plunged into elee like the storm wind. Niun went after it, holstered the failing gun and hewed with the sword whatever opposed him, foremost of a wedge which broke and reformed around the monuments, the carven stones, the statures, sweeping the hall of life.

  There were exits; they did not take them . . . rushed, killing, as the dusei killed, after Taz’s beast, for its kel’en was dead, and it was mad. Dus-sense filled the halls, the elee fled, screaming, abandoning weapons, casting off the weight of their jeweled robes, whatever hindered them; the Kel ran over broken glass and pools of blood and the jeweled fabric of elee garments.

  “Out!” Niun cried, trying to break from the madness, that felt like desertion. The dus was dying; it wanted . . . wanted, followed the essence of Taz into the Dark, and drew the living Kel after.

  He stopped, buffeted by bodies of his own kel’ein, seized at them, turned them for the open air, for the nearest breach in the walls, and out into the clean wind and across the sands. Dusei joined them. They ceased running outside, walked, with the dusei among them. Niun walked backward a moment, taking count . . . saw the white form of Melein; felt Duncan safe, and all the others dus-linked, all alike filled with horror for the beast which still pursued its crazed way apart from them, ranging the shattered halls of Ele’et, screaming its anguish and killing. Sen Boaz was with them, half-carried by two kel’ein, her elee robes stained with dark gouts of blood, but none of it, seemingly, her own. Melein’s white was stained with more blood, as all of them reeked of it. They walked, a space apart from the city, up a slope to the carven rocks of the hills, where the hurt and the old might sink down and breathe in safety, ringed about by weapons.

  The dusei crowded together; they who were linked with them did so, and Niun sank down among the others and held to his beast, its blood on him, for it was burned and glass-cut and shuddering in its misery.

  Of a sudden there was a break, a cessation of hurt, like storm lifted.

  “It is dead,” Duncan said hoarsely, and Ras and Hlil and Rhian of the hao’nath held close to their dusei, shivering with them.

  “Miuk,” Niun said. “Dus-madness. It almost took us all into the Dark. Gods . . . gods . . . gods.”

  His mind cleared, still numb, remote. He pushed himself to his feet, the few steps to Melein’s side, to kneel and take her hand, frightened for her state of mind; but the calm came from her to him, a slight pressure of her fingers, a steadfast look. “What loss?” she asked him.

  “Kel Taz; his dus—” He looked about him in the dark, questioning with his look . . . heard names others murmured, of those left behind.

  Dias was lost, and Desai. He bit his lip, sorrowing for him in particular. A double hand of the ja’anom had perished; four hands plus two of the path’andim including the kel’anth Mada; one hand three of the patha; Kalis of the ka’anomin and two hands of her kel’ein; a hand three of the ja’ari; two hands one of the mari; four hands two of the hao’nath.

  “My blessing on them,” Melein said, looking suddenly very tired, and drawing her wounded arm more closely to her side. “Now we must see how the camp fared.”

  “Better than here,” said a voices, very young and female. There was a stirring from the hindmost ranks near the rocks, and an unscarred, veilless, worked her way through in haste. She knelt down by Melein and bowed for her touch . . . looked up as Melein lifted her head with her fingers.

  “You are—”

  “Kel Tuas, Mother. Kel Seras sent us, when the fire stopped; it came near, but never hit the camp; I do not think it hit it since. I ran and hid in the rocks, to see what I could learn: my true-brother . . . went in. And I do not think by what I saw—”

  “He did not reach us,” Melein said.

  “I thought that was so,” Tuas said very faintly. “I have waited—some little time. May I carry word to Seras, Mother, that you are safe?”

  Melein took her face in her hands and kissed her on the brow. “Are you able, kel’e’en?”

  “Aye, Mother.”

  “Then run.”

  The kel’e’en sprang up and returned the kiss, turned in blind haste; but Niun caught her arm, took an Honor from his own robes and pressed it into her cold hand. “Kel’anth,” she murmured. She was ja’anom; he recalled her now, an innocent like Taz. The tribe was vital; it lost lives and gained them again in the young.

  “Run,” he said, “Life and honors, kel Tuas.”

  “Sir,” she breathed, and parted their company, passed the ranks of those gathered about, serpent-quick. She was not the only messenger sped; others ran out, through the hills, shadows; young and swift of foot.

  And those of them who remained, settled, reassured for what small news they had, that Ele’et had drawn the fire and the camps gone unscathed. They caught their breath, began to bind up wounds: Niun felt a growing ache in his lower arm, and found a bad slash, which Duncan bound for him. Ras had taken a wound in the shoulder, and Hlil attended it; Rhian had taken a minor hurt on his arm; there was hardly a kel’en in all the company entirely unscathed, and the dusei moaned and keened piteously with their own hurts, burns and lacerated paws. None of them would die, neither dus nor kel’en. Dusei licked at their own wounds assiduously, and at wounds of kel’ein where they might. Niun accepted it for his own, and it helped the pain.

  Sen Boaz sat among them. “Are you hurt?” Duncan inquired of her, but she denied it, sat bowed, breathing great gasps from her mask, her elee robe wrapped about her and glittering with precious stones in the starlight.

  And it was not the only such robe in sight.

  “Look,” said Rhian of the hao’nath, pointing toward the city, where elee stirred forth, pale faces and white manes and jeweled robes showing clearly in the dark among the huge rocks about which Ele’et had its shape.

  “Let them come,” kel Kedras said, “if they have gone entirely mad. I weary of elee.”

  “Aye,” a number of voices agreed, and Niun himself sat with the blood pounding in his temples and an anger for the dead they had lost.

  But the elee below wandered the near vicinity of their city as if dazed, and some of them were small: children. The anger of the Kel fell when they realized that, and the air grew calmer. Kel’ein talked then, grimly, but not of killing.

  Niun bowed his head against his dus and felt all the aches in his body; and those of the dus; and those of the others. There were moments when dus-sense had no comfort to give, when the beasts needed, more than gave; and he comforted it such as he could, with a gentle touch and what calm of mind he could lend.

  “They do not come,” he said at last to Duncan. “Neither regul nor humans. Gods, I do not know, sov-kela; I think—” He did not dare to voice despair; the Kel was about them. He slid a glance instead to the human sen’e’en. “She says they will come; but she does not know. Ai!” he said s
harply, looking up, and all the company looked heavenward. For a moment he both hoped and feared.

  A star fell in the west, over the basins.

  That was all.

  “They will come,” Melein said.

  “Aye,” they all murmured, as if hoping could make it so.

  Duncan settled down, and Ras, and Rhian and Hlil; he did, and laid his head against the shoulder of his dus, for warmth, and for comfort of it. The dusei made a knot, all touching, spreading warmth even beyond their circle.

  Only the lightness, the shyness which had been Taz s’Sochil was gone from them. Somewhere up in the hills was the wild one, the only wild one.

  There should be one, Niun thought, one which went apart.

  * * *

  “Ai,” someone murmured toward the dawning, and Ai! Came the cry from the height where the sentries sat.

  The whole Kel came awake, and Niun scrambled to his feet as the dusei surged up, among the others. Melein stood, and the sen’ein, and the human Boaz, last and with difficulty . . . eyes lifted toward the skies.

  It began as a light, a brightening star overhead, that became a shape, and a thunder in the heavens.

  “Flower!” Boaz cried; and if the Kel did not know the name, they saw the joy. “Ai,” they cried softly, and excitement coursed through the dusei.

  The elee below had seen it. Some which had come out to spend the night at the edge of the ruin fled indoors again. Others ran for the rocks, their fine robes and white manes flitting as a pallor in the dawn.

  Then Flower came down, ponderous, ungainly, settling near the city; it extended its strange stilt legs and crouched down to the sand like some great beast. The dusei backed around behind the shelter of the line of the Kel and moaned distress, snorting in dislike of the wind it raised.

  The sound fell away; the wind ceased, and the whole ship crouched lower and lower, opened its hatch and let down the ramp.

  Waited.

  “Let me go down to them,” Boaz asked.

  There was silence.

  “If we say ‘go,’” Melein said finally, “you enter your ship and go away—and in what state are we, sen Boaz? Without ships, without the city machines, without anything but the sand. Humans would understand our thought . . . at least in this.”

  “You want to bargain?”

  There was another silence, longer than the first. Niun bit at his lips until he tasted blood, heat risen to his face for the shame that mri should face such a question.

  “No,” Melein said. “Go down. Send us out a kel’en who will fight challenge for your ship.”

  “We don’t do things that way,” Boaz protested. “We can’t.”

  “So.” Melein folded her hands before her. “Go down, then. Do what you can.”

  The sen’e’en looked uncertain, began to walk away, with more than one backward glance at the beginning, and then none at all, hastening down the slope.

  “They are tsi’mri,” Duncan said out of turn. “You should not have given her up; she would have stayed. Call her back.”

  “Go to them yourself,” Melein said in a faint voice, “if you see more clearly than I. But I think she is much like you, kel Duncan. Is she not?”

  He stood still.

  And after a little time the sen’e’en Boaz did, halfway down the slope to the ship. She looked back at them, then turned to the ship again, cried out strange words, what might be a name.

  In time a man appeared in the hatch, came out, and down the ramp. Boaz walked toward him. Others came out, in the blue of the human kel’ein.

  They stood in the open a time, and talked together, Boaz, a man who looked to be very old, and two like those who had been with the kel’en Galey.

  Then they turned, with Boaz and the old one arm in arm, and began to walk up the hill, toward the People, bringing no weapons at all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Boaz came. Duncan was glad of that, on this last morning . . . that it was Boaz who came out to them.

  He ceased his work, which was the carrying of very light stones, for the edun which should stand on the plain of the elee pillars, in this place where the game was abundant and elee machinery still provided water. He went out from the rest, dusted his hands on the black fabric of his robes, weaponless but for his small arms, as the mingled Kel generally went unburdened in this place of meeting. Ja’anom, hao’nath, ja’ari, ka’anomin, mari, patha and path’andim; and now homa’an, kesrit, biha’i; and tes’ua and i’osa, up out of the depths of the great western basin, three days’ hard climb . . . all the tribes within reach lent a few hands of kel’ein to this madness, this new edun on an old, old world; and to the she’pan’anth Melein, the she’pan of the Promised.

  Even elee, who could not leave their ruins, who languished in the sun and found the winds too harsh for their eyes and their delicate skins . . . labored in their own cause, retreating by day to shelter, coming out to work by night, peopling the plain with strange stones, statues, likenesses of themselves, setting their precious monuments out in the wind and under the eyes of mri and humans, as if to offer them to the elements, or to strangers, or simply to affirm that elee existed. They did not come near the tents of mri or the edun; would not; never would, likely; but they built, that being their way.

  Six hands of days: the edun walls stood now high as a kel’en’s head. They began to build ramps of sand to ease the work, for it would someday rise high as that of An-ehon, to stand on a plain of statues, a fortress against the Dark.

  “Boz,” he greeted her as she came, and they walked together, khaki clothing and kel-black, casting disparate shadows. His dus moved in, nudged at Boaz, and she spared a caress for it, stopped, gazing at the work.

  “Galey should have seen this,” she said.

  “I will tell you a thing,” he said, “not for your records: that, among things in the Pana of the mri, in the tables . . . there are three human names. His is one.” He folded his hands behind him, walked farther with her, past the lines of children of the Kath, who carried their loads of sand for the ramps. “Yours is another.”

  She said nothing for a space. Beyond them, the tents of the camp were set, shelter until the edun should rise, and that was their direction.

  “Sten. Come back with us.”

  “No.”

  “You could argue the mri’s case . . . much better than I. Have you thought of that?”

  “The she’pan forbids.”

  “Is that final for you?”

  “Boz,” he said, and stopped. He loosed his veil, which kel’ein still would not, before humans . . . met the passing shock in her eyes, for the scars on his face, which had had time to heal. And perhaps she understood; there was that look too. “Between friends,” he said, “there is no veil. Truth, Boz: I’m grateful she refused.”

  “You’ll be alone.”

  He smiled. “No. Only if I left.” He started again toward the tents, put down a hand to touch the dus which crowded close to his left as they walked. “You’ll do well for the People. I trust that.”

  “We’re going to set markers up there; you’ll not be bothered by visitors until we can get through.”

  “Human visitors, at least.”

  “Regul didn’t get the tapes, only the chance to tag us, and that information died here so far as they’re concerned, along with their chance. I don’t think, I truly don’t think human authorities are going to make free of mri data where regul are concerned. It was unique circumstance that brought them with us. It won’t be repeated.”

  “We will hope not.” He veiled himself again, half-veil, for they walked among the tents, among kath’ein and children. They were expected at the tent of the she’pan; sen’ein and kel’ein waited there, and walked in behind them, through the curtain.

  Melein sat there, with a few of the sen’ein about her; and with Niun, and Hlil, and Seras, with two more of the dusei.

  Hlil rose as they walked in, inclined his head.

  “You do not have his service
,” Melein said to Boaz, “but he will be under your orders as regards his presence on your ship. He is my Hand reached out to humans. He is Hlil s’Sochil, kel-second; and the beast that is Hlil’s: it goes with him too.”

  “We thank you,” Boaz said, “for sending him. We will do all we can to make him welcome.”

  “Kel Hlil,” Melein said, kissed him and received his kiss, dismissal; and from that distance: “Good-bye, sen Boaz.”

  It was dismissal. Formalities between mri and tsi’mri were always scant. Boaz gave him one look, a touch of the hand, walked away alone, and Hlil summoned his dus to him, paused to embrace Niun, and walked after.

  Only beyond him he paused yet again, at the curtain, to look on a certain kel’e’en. “Life and honors,” he bade Ras, lingered a scant moment, walked on, with wounding in the dus-sense. By Melein’s side, Niun gathered himself to his feet. But Hlil had gone, with brief reverence to the Holy.

  “Permission,” Ras said, a thin, faint voice. “She’pan.”

  “You ask a question, kel Ras?”

  “I ask to go.”

  “It is not,” said Melein, “a walk to the rim and back. And do you serve the People, kel’e’en—or why do you go?”

  “To see,” she said; and after a long moment: “We are old friends, she’pan, Hlil and I. And I ask to go.”

  “Come here,” Melein said; and when she had done so, took her hand. “You know all that Hlil knows. You can agree with my mind. You can do what I have bidden Hlil do.”

  “Aye,” Ras said.

  Melein drew her down, kissed her, was kissed in turn, let her go, with a nod toward the door. “Haste,” she said.

  Ras went, her dus after her, with a respect to the Holy and a quiet pace: she would surely have no difficulty overtaking a small, plump human.

  Melein sank back in her chair, looked at Niun, looked out at Duncan, and suddenly at other kel’ein, with a quick frown. “Ask among all the Kels,” she said. “Quickly: whether there is not one in all this camp, a kel’e’en who will go with them, that they can have a House. Kel Ras is right; they ought not to be alone among strangers.”