Kutath

Chapter Six

Others came, across the square, up the steps, shadows out of the storm. Hlil gathered himself up to meet them. "It is safe," he said to kel Dias, who commanded them, and looked beyond her to the ones who followed, sen'ein. He set his face, assumed the assurance he did not feel, met the eyes of the gold-robes who were veiled against wind and dust "I secured the Pana first; that was my instruction.”

They inclined their heads, accepting this, which comforted him. They took charge of the Holy, one spreading his own robes to cover it, for the kel-veils blew and fluttered in tie wind.

He left them and went inside with the others, where Taz began to share his light, where knot after knot of fiber flared into life. "Haste," he urged them, "but walk lightly; there has been one collapse in here already.”

They moved, no running, but swiftly. He watched them scatter with their several leaders, one group to Kel, one to Kath, one to Sen, and another to the storerooms, and two to the she'pan's tower, so that in a brief time all the building whispered to soft, quick steps, the comings and going of those who had come to loot the House of all that was their own.

"Go," he murmured distractedly, finding Taz still by him. "If there are any proper lamps at hand, get light in that middle corridor. The rubble is unstable enough without someone falling.”

"Aye, sir," the youth exclaimed, and made haste about it

Even now some were beginning to come down with burdens, stumbling in the dark, having to choose between light and two hands to steady their loads. Hlil stationed himself to guide them to the point where they could see the doorway; the flow began to be a steady to and fro. There was no science in their plundering that he could see; he forbore to complain of it. In their haste and dread of collapse they snatched what they could, as much as they could.

Taz managed lights, two proper lamps, set in the area of the fallen shrine; and to Hlil's vast relief the essential things began to appear, the heavy burden of the tents, the irreplaceable metal poles, wrapped meticulously in twisted and braided fiber; their vessels, their stores of food and oil; a sled of offworld metal; lastly hundreds of rolled mats, the personal possessions of the tribe.

And two sen'ein came inside, gathered up one of the lamps from the hall, passed out of sight into the entry of sen-hall.

He disliked that. He walked a few steps in that direction, fretting with the responsibility he bore for them, and his lack of authority where it regarded sen-matters. He stared anxiously after them, then turned for the door, where a diminishing trickle of kel'ein tended. Shouts drifted down from the heights of the edun, that they had gotten all of it, to the very last.

Hlil walked out onto the steps and into the particle-laden wind, where the two sen'ein who had remained with the Pana struggled to load the Holy onto the sled, padding it with rolled mats below and above. Merin and Bias and Ras had charge, directing the division of goods into bearable portions. They were not going to leave any portion of it if they could help.

He stood idle, fretting with the matter, prevented by rank from lending a hand to it. Perhaps, he thought, they should all have gone back to the relief of the tribe in the storm; or perhaps he should never have divided his force, and should have trusted the she'pan and kel Seras to do the necessary. The load was no easier for the driving wind; and it was a long trek back.

Yet there seemed some lessening in the storm. Excessive optimism, perhaps; the wind would diminish for a time and then return with double force. He could see the top of the ruined building nearest, of many of the buildings, which he had not been able to do when they came. And the dead, revealed in their numbers, stretching in a line from the bottom of the steps to the far side of the square. Those he had to look on too.

"We might bury them, sir," said a young voice. He looked to his left, at Taz. The boy had lost all his kin in the rout. All.

"No. We have strength for what we do, barely that.”

"Aye," Taz said… scarless, no one yet in the Kel; but he had great grace, and Hlil was grateful for that.

"Forgive, kel Taz.”

"Sir," Taz said quietly, and turned away, for a few moments finding something essential to do with the packing.

It was that way with many of them. The Kel-born had lost most, knowing their kin in certainty. He looked on Ras, who labored with the others, and hoped, seeing that energy in her, that there might be some healing worked.

He could set his hand to none of the work; he paced back inside, restless, saw the last kel'ein returning from the storerooms. "Do not take the lamps yet," he bade them. "Ros, wait here; we have two still up in sen-tower.”

"Aye," the one of them said. Hlil walked out again with the other, counting them, counting those outside, making sure he had all their whereabouts. They were all there. He reassured himself, stood in the cold with arms folded, watching while the readied bundles were carried down the steps, piled there, a little to the side of a heap of the dead.

"Ras," one of those at the bottom called up. The kel'en gazed down at that pitiful tangle of black and lifted his face upward. "Kel Eos-”

O gods, Hlil thought, cursing that man.

Ras left the others at the top and walked down the steps, no haste, no show of dread. Hlil watched, and after a moment followed. It was Nelan sTLlil who lay there; there was no doubting it He stood by as Ras knelt by the body of her truemother, watched Ras take from among the dusty black robes the beautiful sword which had been that of Kov her father. The ftai, Ras did not touch, the Honors which her truemother had won in her life; those passed only in defeat, and Nelan had never suffered that.

"Ras," he said. She sat still, the sword across her lap, the wind settling sand in the folds of her robes. No one moved, not she, not kel Tos'an who had summoned her. "Ras," he said again.

She straightened, rising, turned her unveiled face toward him, the sword gathered to her breast. There was no expression; to a friend even a kel'e'en might have shown something. He was consumed with the need to get her away from this place.

"Go back," he said. "We cannot attend to one lost, and not others. Duty, Ras.”

She took the fastenings of the sword in hand, carefully unhooked her own and replaced it, laid what was hers against Nelan's body.

And walked away, to stand supervising the others, having spoken no word to him.

He walked away too, up the steps, not looking back, cast a naked-faced scowl at kel'ein who had paused in their work. There was a hasty return to it. He reached the top, started to turn and look down.

And suddenly, from inside, a snap of power, a flare of lights.

Everyone stopped in that instant; and there was a heart-stopping rumble.

"Runl" he shouted; they moved, raced ahead of a cloud which billowed out from the door. But the full collapse did not follow.

The two young sen'ein outside started back up the steps running. "No!" he forbade them, and went himself, paused in the doorway, in the choking dust "All of you," he shouted back, "stay out.”

He tucked the tail of the zaidhe across his face for a veil, entered the white cloud which the wind whipped away as rapidly as it poured forth. Somewhere inside one cold light shone undamaged, giving no help in the swirling dust; no fight of theirs, but a powered lamp.

The whole center had given way. He looked at the ceiling, waded farther through the rubble, disturbing nothing he could avoid, the membrane of his eyes flicking regularly to clear the dust and sending involuntary tears to the outer corner of his eyes.

At one such clearing he saw what he had feared to see, a white-dusted bundle of black amid the rubble.

"Ros," he called, but there was no answer, no pulse to his touch, which came away wet-fingered. He looked up, heartsick, at the ruined ceiling where electric light cast a blinding haze, saw, to his left, sen-hall's access, likewise alight.

"Sen Kadas," he shouted, and obtained only echoes and the steady shifting of plaster.

He left the kel'en's body, entered the access, coughing in the dust. Cracks were everywhere in the spiral corridor. Bits of the wall crumbled to his touch. He trod carefully, ascended to sen-hall itself. The window there had given way, admitting daylight in a huge crack through which the wind swirled patterns of dust

And beyond… lights gleamed through a farther doorway.

"Sen Kadas," he called. "Sen Otha?" '

There was no response. He ventured in, within a room of row upon row of machinery… knew what he was seeing, which was the City itself, the wind, which had taught she'panei and sen'ein time out of mind. This too was a Holy, a Mystery not for a kel'en's sight. He walked farther, stopped as he realized the cracks which ran everywhere, the ruin which had plunged down through the very core of the tower, taking machinery and masonry, everything.

"Sen'ein," he called.

Light pulsed, a white light which glared down at him from the machine. He looked up at it, bunking in that blinding radiance.

"Who?" a voice thundered.

"HIU s'Sochu," he answered it, trembling creeping through him.

"What is your authorization?”

"From the she'pan Melein s'lntel.”

Lights flared, points of red and amber visible through the white glare, from somewhere beyond it.

"Where is the she'pan?" it asked.

He retreated from it in dread; the light died. With all his heart he would have fled this place, but two of his company were lost. He crept aside to the walls, trod the vast aisles of machinery amid the lights. More lights were being added constantly, places which had been dark coming alive, h'ke something stirring to renewed power.

"Sen'ein," he called hoarsely.

Suddenly the floor slipped underfoot, a tiny jolt, that penetrated to his heart. He edged back.

And gazing down into the rubbled collapse at the core, he saw what ended hope of the sen'ein, gold cloth in the slide, amid blocks larger than a man. He could not reach them; there was no means no need.

"Gods," he muttered, sick at heart, and, reckoning the disrespect of that here, shuddered and turned away.

"I am receiving," An-ehon thundered. The white eye of the machine flared. "Who?”

He fled it, walking softly, quickly as he could gained the doorway into the sen-hall and kept going, breathless, into the spiraling passage down.

A shadow met him in the turning; one-eyed Desai, who had not followed orders. He grasped the kel'en's arm, grateful for that living presence.

"Haste," he said, turning Desai about; they descended together, past the ruin at the bottom, and out, out into the anxious gathering at the door. Hlil drew breath there, coughed, wiped his face with a sleeve which was powdered white with dust

"Away," he ordered them. "Get these things away from the edun. There is nothing we can do here. Lately-dead have no more claim than the others.”

They obeyed, with small murmurings of grief. He disregarded proprieties and took burdens himself, took up one at the bottom of die steps, for kel Ros, while the remaining sen'ein prepared to draw the sled holding the Pana alone.

"Move out," he ordered them, watched them all form file and begin the journey. Ras passed him, lost in some thought of her own, bearing a burden too heavy for her; but most did. He gazed on her with a personal misery which dulled itself in other things, anxiety for all his charges. Nothing which he had touched had gone right. They had lost lives, had lost sen'ein helpless even to bury the lost ones.

His leading.

He looked back, last of those who left the city, bunked in the wind turned from the ruin which was not the city he wished to remember.

Three lives lost; and the tribe itself it was not certain that anyone survived there to need the things they had gathered. It was his decision to go on, his decision now, to take all that was theirs when they might have halved the weight and abandoned the possessions of the dead.

He understood one rule, that waste was death; that what one gave the desert it never gave back, to world's end.

He did what he knew to do, which was to yield nothing.

The bleeding had started again. The wound sealed and broke open again by turns, whenever the slope of the land put him to effort. Duncan clenched the arm against his body and tried to move it as little as possible in his walking. A cough urged at him, and that was worse much worse, if that set in. He tried desperately to pace his breathing, tasting copper in his mouth, the sky occasionally acquiring dark edges in his sight. He was followed; he knew that he was, and the slow rolls of the eternal flat gave him and them cover. He sought no landmarks, but the sun's last light, a spot of lurid flame in the west, tainted with the thinning dust.

The dus beside him radiated occasional surges of flight impulse and of anger, confused as he, driven. Occasionally small Life rippled the sand ahead, clearing their path, a surreal illusion of animate sands.

And one did not. He stepped into yielding sand, cords whipping up his leg. He snatched out his shortsword and hacked at the strands… sand-star, a smallish one, else it had been up to his face; they grew that large. This one recoiled, wounded; and the dus ate it, die while he stumbled on his way, half-running a few steps in sickened panic. Whether it had gotten above the boot or not, his flesh was too numb to feel. He walked with the blade in hand after that, finding the hilt comfort in the approach of dark. He ought to take the visor up, he reckoned, before he stumbled into worse; but the sand still blew, and when he tried it for a time his eyes stung so he was as blind without as with.

He lowered it again to save himself the misery, and trusted to the beast and to the sword.

The sun sank its last portion beyond the horizon and it was night indeed; whether stars shone or not, whether dust had cleared that much he could not tell.

He rested in the beginning of the dark; he must. After the tightness had relaxed from his chest and his head pounded less severely he began with dull stubbornness to gather himself up, reckoning that if he were to go on living he had no choice about it

And suddenly the dus sent him strong, clear warning, an apprehension like a chill wind on their backtrail. Come, he sent it, and started to move at all the pace he could.

Madness, to begin a race with mri. He had lost it already. Better sense by far to turn and fight; they would give him the grace of one-at-a-time.

And that was worth nothing if one lost in the first encounter. He gasped breath and tried to hit a steady pace.

Abruptly the dus deserted him, headed off at a tangent to the left. Panic breathed at his shoulders; he turned with it, staying with the beast, having lost control of it. It was taking him to the attack, into it; he felt the wildness surge into his brain and suddenly fragments.

It hit from all sides, dus-sense, all about him.

The others.

They had come. His skin contracted in the rage they sent; they had made a trap, the dusei. A fierceness settled into his bones, an alien anger danger, danger, danger

A dus reared up out of the dark in front of him, higher than his head; he shied from it, spun, met a kel'en a sword's length from him.

He flung his sword up, low; steel turned the blade as the kel'en closed with him, shadow and hard muscle and a dus-carried wash of familiarity that stopped him cold. A hard hand seized his arm and hurled him back.

Niun.

He gasped breath, struggled for mental balance, spun left in the sudden awareness of others on them, dus-sense warning them.

"Who are they?" Niun asked him, shortsword likewise in his hand. "What have you stirred?”

"Another tribe." He gasped for air, shifted his grip on his hilt as he tried to make figures out of the darkness .about them. Dusei were at their backs, more than their own two. He drew a shaken breath and lifted his visor, made out a dim movement in the dark before them.

"Who are you?" Niun shouted out.

"The hao'nath," the answer came back, male and hoarse. "Who are you?”

"Kel'anth of the ja'anom. Get off my trail, hao'nath! You have no rights here.”

There was long silence.

And then there was nothing, neither shadow nor response. Dus-sense went out like a lamp flame, and Duncan shivered convulsively, gasped for the air that suddenly seemed more abundant.

Steel hissed into sheath. Niun tugged down his veil, giving his face to him; Duncan sheathed his sword and did the same, and Niun offered him his open hands.

Duncan embraced him awkwardly, aware of his own chill and the mri's fever-warmth, his own filthiness and the mri's fastidious cleanliness.

"Move," Niun said, taking him by the shoulder and pushing him; he did so, and about them the shadows of dusei gave way, scattered, save his own and the great dus which was Niun's. He struggled to keep Niun's pace, no arguments or breath wasted. That was trouble at their backs, only gone back to report; Niun's long strides carried them off southerly, to rougher land broke at times into a run, which he matched for a while. It ended in his coughing, doubled up, trying only to walk.

Niun kept him moving, down a gentle roll of the land, an ill dream of pain and dus-sense, until his knees began to buckle under him in the sand and he sank down before a joint should tear and lame him.

Niun dropped to his heels beside him, a hand on his shoulder, and the dusei, his and the other, made a wall about them. "Sovkela?" Niun asked of him; my-bother-of-the-Kel? He caught his breath somewhat and gripped Niun's arm in return.

"I reached them. Niun, I have been up there, in the ships.”

Niun was silent a moment; disturbance jolted through the dus sense. "I believed," Niun said, "you had gotten through when there were no more attacks; but not that you would have gone among them. And they let you go. They let you go again.”

"Regul have come," Duncan said, and felt the shock fed back to him. The membrane flashed across Niun's eyes. A human might have cried aloud, so intense that feeling was.

"Regul and not humans?”

"Both.”

"Allied," Niun said. Anger fed through. Despair.

"No more firing. Regul did the firing; humans have realized by now… Niun, they have listened. The she'pan they sent a message. She can contact them. Talk with them.”

Again the membrane flashed across. Duncan shivered in that feeling.

"Have you taken hire?" Niun asked. It was a reasonable question, without rancor. The Kel was mercenary.

"I take no hire.”

The dusei caught that feeling too, and wove them together. Niun reached out and caught the wrong arm, let it go at his flinching… rubbed at the blood on his fingertips.

"I thought," Duncan said, "I could reason with someone. The hao'nath kel'anth came up on me. He knew something was wrong. Knew it; and he or die dus moved before I did.”

"Dead?”

"I left him against the pipestalks; dus poison, broken bones or not I stayed to keep him out of the sand; no more than that.”

"Gods," Niun spat. He faced him away, took the pack from him, hooked a strap over his own shoulder and started them moving. Duncan blinked, blear-eyed with relief at having that weight gone, and tried to keep his pace, staggering somewhat in the loose sand. Niun delayed and flung a fever-hot arm about him, hurrying him.

"What are they likely to do?"

"I would challenge," Niun said. "But that would suit them. It is the tribe that is in danger now.”

"Melein-”

"I do not know." Niun pulled at him, for all his efforts to keep stride. "Gods know who is with the she'pan at the moment. I am here; Hlil, in the city… The hao'nath have gone back to their own she'pan; they will not challenge the kel'anth of a tribe without her consent, not if she is available.… But they will not stop that long. If " He caught his breath. "If they take us here, I can challenge, aye, but one after the other. The meeting of she'panei... is different. The she'pan is our protection; we are hers.”

He said nothing else, hard-breathing with a human burden. Duncan took his own weight, cupped the veil to his mouth with his hand to warm the air, went blindly, by sound, by dus-sense, at last with Niun dragging at him.

They found a place to rest finally, hard ground, a ridge which stretched a stone's cast along the sands. Duncan flung himself down in an aching knot and fumbled anxiously after the canteen, trying to ease his swollen throat. . . offered to Niun, who drank and put it away. The dusei crowded as close to them as possible as if themselves seeking comfort, and for the time at least there was no intimation of pursuers. Duncan leaned against his dus, his sides heaving harder than those of the beast, wiped at his nose beneath the veils and wanted nothing more than to He still and breathe, but Niun disturbed him to see to his wound, soaked a strip torn from his veil in the saliva of his dus and bandaged it Duncan did not question; it felt better, at least.

"These tsi'mri in the ships," Niun said. "You know them?”

"I know them.”

"You talked with them a very long time.”

"No. A day and a night.”

"You walk slowly, then.”

"Far out of my way. Not to be followed; and I walk slowly, yes.”

"Ai." Niun sat still a moment, nudged finally at the pack he had carried. It was question.

"Food." Duncan reached for it, to show him. Niun caught his wrist, released it

"Your word is enough.”

Duncan took it all the same, opened it and pulled out an opened packet of dried meat. He put a bit in his mouth, tugging the veil aside, offered the packet to Niun. "Tsi'mri, you would say. But if they were offering I took. Food. Water. Nothing else.”

Niun accepted it, tucked a large piece into his mouth, put the packet into his own pouch; and by that small action Duncan realized what he had perceived in deeper senses, that Niun himself was almost spent, quick-tiring… hungry, it might be. That struck panic into him. He had thought the tribe a reachable walk away. If what they had yet to face had undone Niun, then for himself

He chewed and forced the tough bits down a throat almost too raw to swallow. "Listen to me. I will tell you what happened. Best both of us should know. The beacons I left when we landed ... to say that there was no reason of attack regul came in first, took out the beacons and our ship; humans never heard the message. Regul were determined they should not”

Niun's eyes had locked on his, intent.

"Regul attacked," Duncan said, "and city defenses fired back; humans came in and were caught in it, and believed the regul; but now they know… that they were used by the regul, and they do not like it The regul elder tried to silence me; I killed her. Her younglings are disorganized and humans are in command up there. They are warned how they were misled.”

The membrane flashed.

"I told them, Niun, I told them plainly I no longer take their orders, that I am kel'en. They sent me with a message to the she'pan; come and talk. They want assurance there will be no striking at human worlds.”

"They ask her.”

"Or someone who would be her voice. They are reasoning beings, Niun.”

Niun considered that in silence. There was perhaps a desire in Niun's expression that he would never have shown a human.

"The landing site," Duncan urged at him. "They will be waiting there for an answer. An end to this, a way out.”

"The hao'nath," Niun said hollowly. "Gods, the hao'nath.”

"I do not think," Duncan said, "that humans will go outside that ship. At least not recklessly.”

"Sov-kela the comings and goings of ships, the firing over An-ehon are the tribes deaf and blind, that they should ignore such things? They are gathering, that is what is happening. And every tribe on the face of the world that has seen cities attacked or passings in the skies will look to its defenses. An-ehon is in ruins; other cities may not be. And now the hao'nath know it centers on this plain; and that its name is ja'anom.”

City armament. Duncan bit at his lip, reckoning what in his dazed flight he had never reckoned… that some city in the hands of a desert she'pan might strike at warships.

That through the city computers, messages could pass from zone to zone with the speed of comp transmission, not the migration of tribes.

He had rejected everything, everything security might have tampered with; cast gear into the basins, kept only food and water, only the things he could assure himself were safe and light enough to carry. He made a tent of his hands over his mouth, a habit, that warmed the air, and stared bleakly into the dark before him.

"Your thought?" Niun asked.

"Go back; get to that ship you and I. Put machines on our own side. And I know we cannot.”

"We cannot," Niun said.

Duncan considered, drew his limbs up, leaned against the dus to push himself to his feet. Niun gathered up the pack and also rose, offered a hand for support. Duncan ignored it. "I cannot walk fast," he said, "But long I can manage. If you have to break off and leave me, do that. I have kept ahead this far.”

Niun said nothing to that; it was something that might have to be done; he knew so. He doubled the veil over his lower face, left the visor up, for the wind had slacked somewhat; there were stars visible, the first sky he had seen in days.

And after a time of walking; "How far?" he asked.

"Would that I knew," Niun said. A moment more passed. They were out on open sand now, an occasional borrower rippling aside from the dusei's warding. "Cast the she'pan for the dusei. The storm, sov-kela ... I am worried. I know they will not have stayed where I left them; they cannot have done that”

"The tents-”

"They are without them.”

Duncan drew in a breath, thinking of the old, the children, sick at heart. He shaped Melein for the dusei, with all his force. He received back nothing identifiable before them, only the sense of something ugly at their backs.

"I sensed you," Niun said. "And trouble. I thought to turn back in the storm; but there was no getting there in time to help anything… and this… the dus gave me no rest. Well it did not. Even the wild ones. I have never felt the like, sov-kela.”

"They are out there," Duncan said. "Still. They met me on the way." An insane memory came back, an attempt to reach them, to show them life, and choices. Survival or desolation. He shuddered, staggered, felt something of his own dus, a fierceness that blurred the senses. Both beasts caught it. Somewhere across the flat a cry wailed down the wind, dus.

Melein, Duncan insisted.

Their own beasts kept on as they were heading; it could be answer; it could be incomprehension. They had no choice but to go with them.