Finders-Seekers

by Gayle Greeno

  “Talk with me after, if you feel like it,” Sarrett offered, leaving her at the door. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” Doyce shook her head, smiled her gratitude. She gripped the brass knob and clicked her tongue at Khar who turned, touched noses with T’ss in farewell, and then came to her side.

  Eight-branched candelabra, tall as a man, lit each corner of the large, mirrored Attiring Room, but no direct light shone on the bier. For that she gave thanks. She sank to her knees at the foot, Khar beside her, motionless, tail lapped tight around her, eyes unblinking. She tried to pray to the Lady, but no words came, no familiar, comforting litany.

  “I thought about letting you go, Oriel, but I didn’t mean like this,” she whispered at last. “I hope I would have gotten smart enough not to, but more than likely my pride would have gotten in the way. Leave it to me to take pride in my private shames, as if I were unique in my suffering, the only one who ever had. And you’d have said that pride was too strong a word, that I was melodramatizing again. You’d probably have been right. Regardless of what it was, I used it as a shield to avoid commitment.

  “But I promise you, Oriel, that I’ll let your memory laugh with a part of me, not let a part of me die to follow you. I can’t afford that any longer. And I promise you that if I can find an answer as to why this happened, I will, I shall, for my sake and for the sake of everyone else who loved you. Not vengeance, even if that seems called for, for that is not a Seeker’s way, but a meaning and a truth to answer and right any wrongs that have been done to you. I swear to that.”

  “... may you see with eyes of light in everdark, may your mind walk free and unfettered amongst all, touching wisely and well, may you go in peace,” Khar intoned beside her, completing the ghatti prayer for the dead. It was the prayer given only by the Bondmate of a Seeker, and Khar now spoke the farewell in Saam’s stead.

  The coldness of the slate floor crept through her knees and into her legs, her calf and thigh muscles cramping. She rose awkwardly, and raised her eyes at last to the long, still figure on the bier, its head swathed in a crown of white bandages, the broad, supple hands folded upon its breast, and in the folded hands a velvet pouch containing his Seeker earrings and Saam’s as well. They would be buried with him. Oriel was attired in formal Seeker Veritas garb, worn only for major celebrations and high halidays or for Seekings at the Hall of the Monitor. Midnight blue pantaloons tucked into short leather boots with folded tops. Deep forest green tunic covered with the formal tabard, gold-broidered against the black sheepskin, and the red waist sash tasseled with gold. His staff lay at his left, his sword at his right. Someone had spent time and effort polishing them, trying to remove the scrapes and dirt, the gouges incurred during the fall. Of course, Bard and Byrta had searched for them, had found them amongst the debris. Never let a loved one go unarmed into the next world. Despite the religious training of the Lady-oriented culture they’d been raised in, most Seekers exhibited a healthy skepticism about journeying unprotected and alone to any unknown place, including heaven. Sarrett had done the polishing, the oiling and rubbing; she knew, had seen but not realized the import of the less than perfectly manicured hands, the smears of oil and whetstone dust, when Sarrett had opened the door, lapis eyes swimming with tears.

  “Lady keep you in Her bosom, Oriel, my love.” Doyce bent and scooped Khar to her chest, hiding her eyes against the fur for a moment, then left without looking back. She had ten years of life with Oriel to remember, not this ending. Longer than she’d had with her husband and children, she realized with a start. Did her nightmares contain room for Oriel as well? She hoped so, even that was a form of contact and continuation.

  Khar pawed at her cheek, begging for release once they stepped outside the door, and Doyce gave her an abstracted look, unsure how she’d gotten there. She loosened her grip and the ghatta jumped down.

  “Saam’s in the garden.” Khar trotted down the hall, turning by the kitchen and continuing to the side entrance. She angled her head over her shoulder to make sure Doyce followed, then stretched up and rattled the door latch, nudged it with her nose. Dropping back to the floor, she delicately fished at the edge of the door with her claws, pulling it toward her. Doyce caught up with her, eased the door open farther.

  “Why isn’t he in the infirmary? He’s much too badly hurt to be outside.”

  At first she couldn’t see him in the dim nimbus of light from the single lamp at the far side of the fragrant, enclosed herb garden. Then ceaseless movement, a repetitive flickering motion drew her eye. Saam was pacing off a quivering figure-eight pattern along the far wall, legs stumbling like a drunk’s. Four paces, then a pivot and turn and four paces in the reverse direction; a stagger and a shift of weight. Four more paces ahead, pivot and turn back until another stagger, leftward this time, completed the figure eight in its middle like the knotting of a bow.

  Doyce stretched to unhook the lamp from its bracket and brought it over, careful not to swing it too near. She squatted and looked hard at the big ghatt. “Oh, Saam, Saam!” The ghatt continued to pace, finally registered his name and looked up, almost stumbling and falling as he lost the rhythm The bandage on his hip had been scraped off as he rubbed against the wall; she swallowed hard when she saw the darker clot of blood around the edges of the raw wound, the downy pieces of fur and more blood at hip-height against the brick wall. “Oh, Saam!”

  Puzzled, wary, the ghatt tested his memory against the word he heard. Khar pushed by and lightning-stroke swatted the ghatt twice with her front paws. Saam sat down, hard, but the third membrane across his eyes receded, and he shook his head. He raised his muzzle with effort and growled hoarsely. Khar sat unflinching while he gathered himself to attack. Panting a challenge, he controlled his shaking hindquarters and pushed off after Khar. She spoke a warning, soft and low as a mother ghatta speaks to her ghatten, and Saam stumbled into her and stood there, leaning against her, head down, whimpering sounds bubbling from his chest. Doyce knew that Khar was bearing nearly all his considerable weight.

  Avoiding any sudden moves that could be construed as dangerous, she reached out and eased her arms around him, gathering him to her. Off balance, she collapsed with an armful of ghatt sprawled across chest and lap. Saam buried his nose against her inner elbow and inhaled, did it again, lips wrinkled back to drink in her scent. Khar moved near and with infinite delicacy began to wash one ear, then the other, on the limp ghatt. She spoke between licks in scarcely audible rowls and trills. Sighing, mumbling, Saam’s eyes pinched closed and he fell into a deep sleep. Doyce had tested the mindlink several times as Khar murmured to him, but had touched only blankness, confusion, and ultimately silence.

  “Can you rise without troubling him?” Khar’s concern was evident. “He should go back to the infirmary. He was waiting for us, but he had trouble remembering why. He scratched at Twylla when she tried to give him the pain-killing grasses. He tried to tell her he had to stay awake until we came.”

  “I don’t think I can without jarring him.” Doyce struggled to get her feet under her. If she could shift him down from her chest and into her lap, perhaps she could find her balance, but the ghatt was dead weight, sprawled across her bonelessly. Or lifelessly! She panicked until she felt the faint rise and fall of his chest.

  “No matter, I’ll call. I told T’ss to stay about.” Khar nudged the big ghatt with her head, as she had when she had been a ghatten craving attention.

  Sarrett and T’ss slipped through the garden door. “Is he ... ?” Sarrett’s voice trembled.

  “No, just asleep,” Doyce reassured. “Can you get us up?” Sarrett, only slightly taller and more full-figured than the delicate-boned Doyce, stood looking down at the unwieldy pile of limbs, consternation written across her flawless features. Khar and T‘ss blinked at each other, then T’ss moved himself with infinite patience under Saam’s right hip, where it jutted beyond Doyce’s chest. Khar paralleled his movements on the other side, working her way under the a
rm that cradled Saam’s head.

  With sudden resolve, Sarrett braced herself behind Doyce, hooked her hands underneath the other’s armpits. “Well, let’s try. In two stages. First stage, shift him down into your lap so he doesn’t sprawl so much, see if you can get a leg folded under you for leverage.” They accomplished that, the ghatti bearing more weight than Doyce had thought possible, wedging themselves beneath Saam, lifting him higher. “Second stage, count of three,” Sarrett instructed. “Straight up. If you feel you’re going to fall backward, I’m behind you. Ready? One, two, three!”

  Doyce launched herself upward with the ghatt held tightly in her arms, depending on Sarrett’s tensile strength behind her. Once she found her balance, the burden was heavy but not impossible. She moved toward the light of the half-open door, Sarrett still steadying her while the two ghatti paced along beside them.

  They negotiated the narrow back hallways and stairs to the infirmary and slipped Saam onto his folded blanket on the floor. Twylla entered, bright hair tousled as if roused from an unplanned nap, her short leg giving her walk a hesitating stutter, and went directly to the ghatt, feeling his pulse, thumbing back an eyelid. “I don’t know,” she confessed vaguely to the room at large, her hands already darting up and down shelves, selecting, rejecting various jars and vials, intent on her seeking. “We’ll try, but it’s unlikely, so unlikely. Even if we save his body—and that’s not so difficult—I don’t know how his mind will react.” She ranked the bottles and vials on the table, chose, discarded some, rubbed an index finger over her front teeth as she considered.

  The response came as one from T’ss and Khar: “Just save his body. We will take care of the rest.”

  Twylla’s Bond Mem’now sauntered into the room, back from his rounds. “We will take care of the rest. I’ve spread the word.”

  The three ghatti ringed the sleeping Saam and stood, concentrating. Mem‘now circled his yellow tiger-striped body around the sleeping ghatt, close enough to brush his fur, but not so close as to cause pain to the wounded animal. Mem’now purred breathily, and Saam’s ragged breathing began to even out, rising and falling in time to Mem‘now’s steady rumble. Mem’now’s eyes, half-lidded, watched.

  Sarrett swung lightly into the saddle on her Appaloosa gelding and hooked her arm to help Doyce mount behind her. With T’ss and Khar trotting on either side, they rode at a slow, deliberate walk through the dark streets toward Myllard’s. The moon and her eight disciples hung hazy and obscure to Doyce’s sight as she rested her cheek against Sarrett’s shoulder, sheepskin tabard wool-scented and warm. A funeral march of sorts, she decided. Tired, so very tired. Thank the Lady that Sarrett didn’t feel the need for chatter either. Putting Savoury into a mincing walk that made no sounds on the cobbles in the courtyard, Sarrett slipped past the locked front door and stopped by the path to the side entrance.

  “The Lady with us all,” she murmured as Doyce slid down from Savoury. Doyce echoed the phrase, then surprised herself as she stretched to hug Sarrett’s slim waist. She dropped back, awkward and embarrassed, and trailed a hand along T’ss’s spine in farewell.

  “Peaceful morn to us all,” Khar’s soft contralto echoed in their minds, and no one dared question if it were a farewell, a greeting, or a statement to come true as the sun rose.

  They tiptoed up the shadowed stairs together to the third floor, Doyce blindly tapping with her hands to seek out the steps, blundering clear of any potential obstructions in the dark. Khar chirruped and bounded ahead, waiting at the top of each landing. A silvered crack of light spilled from under the door of the chamber that Myllard now saved for her, the one his youngest daughter had laid claim to until she ran off with a peddler nearly eight octants ago. She hoped no one had waited up for her because she couldn’t bear any more talk.

  But Myllard, she realized as she unlatched the door, had done one of his rare extravagances—left an oil lamp burning for her. One didn’t become a well-to-do (which Myllard would have strenuously denied) innkeep by needlessly burning oil or indulging in such excesses for patrons never destined for riches. A note stood propped against the lamp. “Enough hot water in the cistern for a bath if you’ve the strength to pump it. No charge.”

  Khar looked suitably impressed and so did Doyce. Myllard’s was one of the few places other than the Monitor’s Hall, the Hospice, and a few other well-appointed establishments to boast even a modicum of indoor plumbing. An outrageously pink porcelain flusher with copper water tank was strictly for family use at Myllard’s; clientele used the privies with their terra cotta drainage system in the yard out back. And two, yes, two enormous porcelain shells nestled in wooden frames; one ensconced next door to the family flusher, the other reposing in a chamber beyond that, ready to be rented out to those fastidious enough for a complete wash and with the wherewithal to pay for the luxury. And fastidiousness was something Doyce had learned from the eumedicos.

  Creeping back down a level to the bathing chamber, Doyce began to pump, resting after every few strokes, massaging her arm, not conscious of her action. Khar perched on the rim of the tub and watched with interest as the hot water finally gushed out, careful that none of it splashed on her. Myllard or his wife, Fala, she suspected, had bequeathed her a small saucer of bath salts beside the tub, and she tilted them into the steaming water and kept pumping until a final gasp, a gurgle, and the absence of water told her the hot water cistern had emptied. Sandalwood scented the steamy air as she stripped off her travel-stained burgundy tunic and brown pantaloons, making a sound of helpless dismay when she realized she’d forgotten to take her boots off first and was fairly entangled. That was how weary she was.

  Easing by cautious degrees into the hot water, she sat with knees drawn up to her chin. A knot caught tight in her chest, and she tried to loosen it, a small sound like a cross between a cough and a sneeze working its way past her constricted throat, and then she was crying, sobbing hard for Oriel, for Saam, for everyone she had ever known and loved and lost, and most of all, for herself. Blood flowed in lazy rivulets between her thighs, a bright strand of red fanning out to rosy pink as the water diluted it—so she wasn’t pregnant. Not even that left as a way to remember Oriel. Khar balanced her way around the rim and licked a tear from Doyce’s cheek.

  “Hello?” The mindvoice brushed through the air, whisper soft as a baby tap on a silver chime bar. “Hello? Does anyone hear me?” The sound echoed bell-sweet to anyone who knew how to listen, who was awake to hear as a fingernail paring of dawn edged the horizon, eastern facades of building showing the barest lightening of night dark.

  “Hello, I’ve caught your mindpattern. You’re reaching over to the east quarter.” T’ss’s ears twisted back and forth, trying to focus on the pattern more explicitly. “Can you hear me clearly? I can read you, but I can’t identify your voice yet, your sending’s ragged.” The stone steps stung damply against his rump and he shifted, wished for sunlight against his pale fur. A cling of early morning moisture jeweled his coat, set him shimmering in the faint light of the one torch lamp still burning. He had been waiting for some time, still and listening.

  “L’wa here.” The mindvoice answered him, stronger and more assured this time, the unspoken fear of further pain dissipating.

  He gave an unconscious wriggle of relief, twisted nerve-stiffened neck backward until he heard a little pop, then dipped forward fast and hard. “Greetings, L‘wa. How is the ghatten? Fine after last night’s troubles, I hope. So very, very young to have been caught in that.” He heard a murmured reassurance, a relieved sound. “So you’re ’speaking from Headquarters? Mem’now asked you to commence the testing?”

  “I volunteered. We must reassemble the patterns. I won‘t, I can’t leave the little one, but I can do my part from here. Mem’now said when I ‘spoke you that you were supposed to try to ’speak him.”

  “Well, wish me luck. Here it goes.” T‘ss concentrated, overrode a frantic desire to shy away from the possibility of renewed anguish, legacy o
f last night’s disaster. He made a little mewling sound deep in his throat, then, shamed, tried harder, swept his mindspeech in a careful, concise overlay from one quadrant to the next. If L’wa, with so much to lose as a new mother, could try, so could he. He’d do it, do it for himself, do it for Saam. He pressed harder and harder, gasped in relief at the lack of pain, joy dancing through his mind as his distance increased, waiting to intercept the pattern he knew so well as Mem’now’s. Ah! The edge of something, wait! He backtracked, then homed in on the familiar vibrations. “Hello!”

  “Hello, yourself. A little imprecise, too scattered on the sending, but not badly done at all. It’s frightening to try again when we’ve all been burned like that.”

  T‘ss jumped, stiff-legged, back arching, then sat again. “Mem’now! Have mercy! Don’t shout like that, you know you always over-project! It still stings like a wasp’s nest to hear anyone, let alone you. Where are you?”

  “Northern quadrant, nearly at the Ring Wall. Stay ready, I’m going to try a rondelet, see who’ll pick up the repeats.”

  Mindvoices began to shimmer and dance, raindrop soft and hesitant at first as if after a long drought, then pattering harder, more certainly through the air, absorbed by thirsty, waiting minds. They bounced off T‘ss, Chak’s basso rumble from one direction, Per’la’s languid tones from another. He drank in each one, traced their mindvoices, firefly bright, winking on and off across the city. Ghatts and ghattas moved with quiet purpose on night-dark streets, across wall tops, over roofs pointed and flat, testing position after position, sounding after sounding, restoring the mindnet patternings. “Yes, here!” “Here!” “Hello!”