{"id":2233,"date":"2026-01-03T22:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/faded-sun-03-cherryh-c-j\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T22:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:18:07","slug":"faded-sun-03-cherryh-c-j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/faded-sun-03-cherryh-c-j\/","title":{"rendered":"Faded Sun 03 – Cherryh, C. J."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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Kutath<\/p>\n

By<\/p>\n

C.J Cherryh<\/p>\n

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The Faded Sun Trilogy Book 3<\/p>\n

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Chapter One<\/p>\n

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There was chaos about the docking bay; Galey observed it as he was coming in, heard it, a chatter of instructions in his ear, warning him to keep his distance. He held the shuttle parked a little removed from the warship, watching kilometer-long Saber disgorge a trio of small craft. Blips showed on his tracking screen, an image supplied him by Saber-com, from Sabers view of things. One blip was himself; one other was blue and likewise human that had to be Santiago . . . Saber had deployed the insystem fighter between itself and the red blip that was Shirug.<\/p>\n

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The outgoing blips were likewise red; regul shuttles in tight formation. Galey read the situation uneasily and kept his eye to the steady flow of information on the screen. There was one dead regul to be disposed of; that was likely what was in progress out there . . . the late bai Sharn Alagn-ni, ferried out to her own ship for whatever ceremony the regul observed with their dead. Sharn; ally, as all regul were allies according to the treaties . . . according to the agreement which had brought a human and a regul warship into orbit about this barren world, this home base of the mri. Regul made Galey’s skin crawl. It was a reaction he did not speak aloud; promotions in the service were politics, and politics called regul friendlies.<\/p>\n

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Mri, now mri, were near human-looking, whatever the insides of them might be like. Galey hated them with a different, dutiful hate. He was Havener, of a world lost and retaken in the mri wars. Parents, a brother, cousins had vanished into the chaos of that war-torn world and never surfaced again. It was a remote kind of grief, rehearsed guiltily in every other scene of slaughter he had witnessed, but he could not recover the intensity of it. His kin were lost, in the sense of not found, misplaced in the war and gone; dead or alive, no knowing for sure. He had not been home when the strike came, and in the years after, the service had become home, Lancet, Saber, Santiago, whatever ship received his papers, wherever his current ship took him, live or die. Mri were like that. Just soldiers behind their black robes and veils. Nothing personal. He had a friend who had gone mri . . . he had seen a different look on him after the years of absence, disdainful, remote; there was something heart-chilling in standing close to a man in that black garb, something intimidating in gazing close at hand into a face of which only the eyes were visible amazing how much of expression depended on the rest of the face, concealed behind black cloth. But for all of that, a human could understand them.<\/p>\n

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Regul . . . regul had hired the ships, the weapons, the mri themselves, and planned, and named the strikes, and profited from them. Forty years of war, bought by regul. An investment . . . Galey sound the words out in his mind, distastefully. Po-li-cy. Cash on the table. Big folk, the regul, who sat fat and safe, who made the decisions and put out the cash, sending their mri mercenaries out to war. Humans and mri killed each other, and the wise old regul, reckoning a forty-year war nothing against their centuries-long lifespans, and reckoning the tally of gain and loss kept the war going just so long as it profited them.<\/p>\n

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In the same way the regul turned up on the human side during the cleanup had turned on their own mercenaries, slaughtering them and the mri’s civilian population without warning. That was the mri’s final payoff for serving regul. A simple change of policy; regul knew the right moment to move. And, truth be told, everything human breathed a sigh of relief to know the mri were gone, and that someone else had pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n

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Regul came now, having tracked the last two survivors of the mri who had served them, to their homeworld, to Kutath, the far, far origin of their kind. Regul had rushed ahead to destroy a peace message from Kutath before humans could hear it, had fired on a quiet world and elicited answering fire before humans understood the situation. More mri were dead down there. The last remnants of dying cities were shot to ruin; the last of a dying species were made fugitives on their own world . . . the last place, the very last, that mri existed.<\/p>\n

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Something tight and unpleasant welled up in Galey’s throat when he thought of that Somehow it was Haven again, and civs getting killed. He had come very far to feel something finally. It was ironic that he felt it for the enemy, that deep-down sickness at the belly that came of seeing an unequal contest.<\/p>\n

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It would have been that kind of blind, helpless death for his own kin. It gave him nightmares now, after so many years. No fighting back; a city under fire from orbit; no ships; no hope; folk armed with handguns and knives against orbital strike.<\/p>\n

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Everything dead, and no way out.<\/p>\n

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There was a little drift in his position. It had been minor, but the shuttles were still in his path and he had to maintain a while longer. He corrected a fraction. Sweat was running down his sides. He tried to stop thinking, tried to concentrate on his instruments a time. There was no reason for uneasiness. The feeling simply grew. And in time the thoughts crept back again. His eyes traveled inexorably and unwillingly toward the outward view. Kutath’s dying surface was barely in his visual field. The rest was stars, fewer than he ever liked to see. He sweated. He had never been in a place where the goblins got to him so thoroughly, those ancient human ghosts that tagged after a man in the deep. They dogged him, kept, as proper ghosts should, just behind him . . . gone when he would look. Look back, they whispered against his nape, stirring the hairs, Look again.<\/p>\n

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The stars hung infinite in his drifting view, as deep down as up, as far on left as on right; and a near star, Na’i’in, the mri called it, which would make even Saber a mote of dust beside it. All, all those little lights which were suns, and some cloudy aggregates of suns, themselves reduced to dust motes by distance which reached out from himself, who was the center of the universe, and then not an insignificance, less than the mote of a world, far less than a sun, infinitely less than the vast galaxies, and the distance, the cold, deep distance that never stopped, forever.<\/p>\n

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Move it, he thought at the ships which held him off. He wanted in, wanted in, like a boy running for his front door and warmth and light, with the goblins at his back. It had never gotten to him, not like this.<\/p>\n

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The mri had a word for it; the Dark. Scientists said so. Anyone who had traveled the wild places in little ships had to have a word for it. Except maybe regul, who could not imagine, only remember.<\/p>\n

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Mri felt it. He understood beings who could feel it.<\/p>\n

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He worked his hands on the controls, heard the chatter in his ear, the thin lifeline of a voice from Saber, proving constantly his species was real, however far they sat now from friendly, trafficked space.<\/p>\n

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Real. Alive. Men existed somewhere. Somewhere there were human worlds, less than dust motes in the deep, but living. And that somehow affirmed his own reality.<\/p>\n

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Was it this, he wondered, for the two mri, last of all their company . . . who had run this long, desperate course home? Their little mote was dying, an old world under an old sun, and what fragile life of their kind survived here, regul refused to leave alive. Was it such a feeling, that had made home more urgent for them than survival to come in out of the Dark, even to die?<\/p>\n

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He began to shiver, catching a moving dot of light among all the others. Shirug. The regul shuttles were too far and too small to see now. It had to be regul Shirug, catching the sun.<\/p>\n

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“NAS-12, come on in,” Saber-corn said. “Shuttle NAS-12, come on in.”<\/p>\n

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He kicked the vessel into slow life and eased onward, resisting the temptation to close the interval with a wasteful burst of power. There was time. The bay was all his.<\/p>\n

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“Priority, NAS-12.”<\/p>\n

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They gave him leave to move. His heart started thudding with a heavier and heavier weight of premonition. His hands moved, throwing the little ship over into rightwise alignment and hurtling it at Saber with furious haste.<\/p>\n

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“Sir,” the intercom announced, “Lt. Comdr. James Galey.”<\/p>\n

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Adm. Koch scribbled a note on the screen, hit FILE and disposed of one piece of business, touched the intercom key in silent affirmative. A second screen showed the busy command center; Capt. Zahadi was taking care of matters there at least; and Comdr. Silverman in Santiago was currently linked to Zahadi, keeping a wary eye over the world’s horizon. Details were all Zahadi’s, until they touched policy. Policy began here, in this office.<\/p>\n

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Galey arrived, a sandy-haired, freckled man who had begun to have lines in his face. Galey looked distressed ought to be, summoned directly to this office for debriefing. The eyes nicked to the corner, where a high-ranking regul had lately died; Koch did not miss it, returning the offered courtesies.<\/p>\n

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“Sir,” Galey said.<\/p>\n

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“You set SurTac Duncan downworld in good order?”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir. No trouble.”<\/p>\n

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“You volunteered for that flight.”<\/p>\n

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Galey was masked in courtesies. The face failed to react to that probe, only the eyes, and that but slightly, betraying nothing.<\/p>\n

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“Want you to sit down,” Koch said. “Relax. Do it.”<\/p>\n

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The man looked about him, found the only chair available, drew it over and sat on the edge of it. Koch waited. Galey dutifully eased himself back and positioned his arms. Sweat was standing on Galey’s face, which might be from change of temperature and might not. Careers rose and fell in this office.<\/p>\n

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“Why?” Koch pursued him. “The man walks into this office wearing mri robes, asks for a cease-fire, then guns down a ranking regul ally. Security says he’s gone entirely mri, inside and out. Science department agrees. You imagined some long-ago acquaintance, is that it? You volunteered to ferry him back why? To talk with him? To satisfy yourself of something? What?”<\/p>\n

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“I worked with him once. And I’d flown guide for Flower’s landing, sir; I happened to know the route.” <\/p>\n

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“So do others.”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“You worked with him on Kesrith.”<\/p>\n

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“One mission, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“Know him well?”<\/p>\n

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“No, sir. No one did. He’s SurTac.”<\/p>\n

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The specials, the Surface Tactical operatives, were remote from the regul military, in all ways remote; peculiar rank, peculiar authorities, the habit of independence and irreverence for protocol. Koch shook his head, frowned, wondering if that was, even years ago, sufficient explanation for Sten Duncan. Governor Stavros, back in Kesrith zones, had trusted this wildness, enough to hand Duncan two mri prisoners and their captured navigational records. It had paid the dividend Stavros had reckoned; they were here, at the mri home world; and Duncan, with the mri contacts no one had ever been able to establish, came suing for peace. . . .<\/p>\n

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Then shot a regul in the same interview, bai Sharn, commander of Shirug, lieutenant to humanity’s highest placed ally among regul, and all plans were off.<\/p>\n

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I have done an execution, Duncan had said. The regul know what I am. They will not be surprised. You know this. I can give you peace with Kutath now.<\/p>\n

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Mri arrogance. Duncan had been acutely uncomfortable, asked for a moment to drop the veil with which he covered his face.<\/p>\n

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“You worked with the man,” Koch said, regarding Galey steadily. “You had time to exchange a few words with him in getting him back to Kutath. Impressions? Do you know him at all now?”<\/p>\n

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“Yes,” Galey said. “It’s what he was, back on Kesrith. Only it wasn’t wasn’t all the same. Now and again it’s there, the way he was; and then . . . not. But “<\/p>\n

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“But you think you know him. You . . . were in the desert together back at Kesrith, recovered the records out of that shrine . . . had a little regul trouble then on the way back, all true?”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“Hate the regul?”<\/p>\n

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“No love for them, sir.” <\/p>\n

“Hate the mri?”<\/p>\n

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“No love there either, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“And SurTac Duncan?”<\/p>\n

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“Friend, sir.”<\/p>\n

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Koch nodded slowly. “You know the pack he was given has a tracer.”<\/p>\n

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“I don’t think that will last long.”<\/p>\n

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“You warned him?”<\/p>\n

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“No, sir, didn’t know. But he’s not anxious to have us find the mri at all; I don’t think he’ll let it happen.”<\/p>\n

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“Maybe he won’t. But then maybe his mri don’t want him speaking for them. Maybe he told the truth and maybe he didn’t. There are weapons on that world worth reckoning with.”<\/p>\n

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“Wouldn’t know, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“Your first run down there, you took damage.”<\/p>\n

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“Some. Shaken about. What I hear, it’s old stuff. I didn’t see anything to say different; no fields, no life, no ships. Nothing, either time. Only ruins. That’s what I hear it was.”<\/p>\n

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“Less than that down there now.”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n

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A dying world, cities decayed and empty, machines drawing solar power to live; armaments returning fire with mechanical lack of passion; and the mri themselves. . . .<\/p>\n

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Rock and sand, Duncan had said, dune and flats. The mri will not be easy to find.<\/p>\n

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If it’s true, Koch thought. If there are no ships in their control, and if all cities are machine life only.<\/p>\n

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“You think they pose no threat to us,” Koch said.<\/p>\n

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“Wouldn’t know that either, sir.”<\/p>\n

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There was Reeling of cold at Koch’s gut. It lived there, sometimes small, sometimes when he thought of the voyage behind them larger. It grew when he thought of the hundred twenty-odd worlds at their backs, a swath which marked the trail mri had followed out from Kutath to Kesrith, a trail eons old at the beginning and recent at the farther end, in human space, where the mri had been massacred. Before that, along that strip all worlds were scoured of life . . . more than desert; dead.<\/p>\n

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Mri hired themselves for mercenaries. Presumably they had done so more than once, until the regul turned on them and ended them.<\/p>\n

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Ended a progress across the galaxy which left no life in its wake, a hundred twenty-odd systems which by all statistical process should have held life, which might have supported intelligent species.<\/p>\n

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Void, if they had ever been there . . . gone, without memory, even to know what they had been, why the mri had passed there, or what they had sought in passing.<\/p>\n

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Only Kesrith survived, trail’s end.<\/p>\n

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I have done an execution, Duncan had said, black-robed, mri to the heart of him. And; The regul know what I am.<\/p>\n

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“Bai Sharn,” Koch said, “is being transported back to her ship. There is no regul authority with us now; the rest are only younglings. They can probably handle Shirug competently enough, but nothing more, without some adult to direct them. That puts things wholly into our laps. We deal with the mri, if Duncan can get their holy she’pan to come in and talk peace. We run operations up here. And if we misread signals, we don’t get any second chance. If we get ourselves ambushed, if we die here then the next thing human space and regul may know is more mri arriving, to take up the track the others left at Kesrith, and this time, this time with a grudge. The thing we’ve seen . . . continued. Is that understood, out among the crew?”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir,” Galey said hoarsely. “Don’t know whether they know about the regul, but the other, yes, it’s something I think everybody reckons.”<\/p>\n

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“You don’t want to make a mistake in judgment, do you? You don’t want to make a mistake on the side of friendship and botch a report You wouldn’t hold back information you could get out of SurTac Duncan. You understand how high the stakes are … and what an error could do down there.”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“I’m sending Flower and the science staff back down. Dr. Luiz and Boaz are friends of his. He’ll talk with them, trust them, as far as he likely trusts any human now. I have need of someone else, potentially. What we want is a substitute for a SurTac, someone who can operate in that kind of terrain.” He watched the apprehension grow, and a twinge of pity came on him. “Our options are limited. We have pilots we could better risk. You’re rated for Santiago, and you know your value . . . don’t have to tell you that. But it’s not a matter of skill in that department. It’s the land, and a sense of things you understand what I’m saying.”<\/p>\n

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“Sir-“<\/p>\n

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“I want you first of all reserved. Just prep. We keep our options open. Maybe things will work out with mri contact. If not . . . you have a good rapport with the civs, don’t you?”<\/p>\n

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“I’ve been in and out of the ship more than most, maybe.”<\/p>\n

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“They know you.”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“In some things down there, that could be valuable; and you’ve been in the desert.”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir,” the answer came faintly.<\/p>\n

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“I want you available, whenever and wherever SurTac Dun-can comes into contact with us; I want you available if he doesn’t. Willing?”<\/p>\n

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“Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n

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“You’ll have some semblance of an office, whatever scan materials we come up with, original and interpreted. Whatever you think you need.” Koch delayed a moment more, pursed his lips in thought. “It took Duncan some few days to get from the mri to groundbase; allow ten, eleven days. That’s the margin. Understood?”<\/p>\n

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It was; it very much was, Koch reckoned. He had a sour taste in his mouth for the necessity.<\/p>\n

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One covered all the possibilities.<\/p>\n

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A private office; that was status. Someone had put a card on the door, the temporary sort; LT COMDH JAMES B GALEY, BEOON & OPERATIONS Galey keyed open the lock, turned on the light, finding a bare efficiency setup, barren walls, down to the rivets; and a desk and a comp terminal. He settled in behind the desk, shifted uncomfortably in the unfamiliar chair, keyed in library.<\/p>\n

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ORDERS; the machine interrupted him with its own program. He signaled acceptance. SELECT COMPATIBLE CREW OF THREE AND RESERVE CREW, GROUND OPERATIONS, REPORT CHOICE ADM SOONEST.<\/p>\n

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He leaned back, hands sweating. He little liked the prospect of taking himself down there; the matter of selecting others for a high-risk operation was even less to his taste.<\/p>\n

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He’ made up a demanding qualifications list and started search through personnel. Comp denied having any personnel with drylands experience. He erased that requirement and started through the others, erased yet another requirement and ran it again, with the sense of desperation he began to understand Koch shared.<\/p>\n

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They were Haveners on this mission, and for all the several world-patches on his sleeve, won on this ship, there was nothing they had met like this save Kesrith itself; there was no time at which they had relied on themselves and not on their machines. Saber had not been chosen for this mission; it had gone because it was available. As for experience with mri none of them had had that, save at long range.<\/p>\n

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Devastation from orbit; that had been their function until now. Now there was the barest hope this would not be the case. He was not given to personal enthusiasm in his assignments; but this one a means of avoiding slaughter that possibility occurred to him.<\/p>\n

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Or the possibility of being die one to call down holocaust; that was the other face of the matter.<\/p>\n

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He did not sleep well. He sat by day and pored over what data they could give him, the scan their orbiting eyes could gather, the monotone reports of comp that no contact had been made.<\/p>\n

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Flower descended to the surface. Data returned from that source. Day by day, there was no reply from Duncan, no sighting of mri.<\/p>\n

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He received word from the admiral’s office; SELECTIONS RATIFIED. SHIBO, KADAHIN, LANE; MATJST MISSION. HARRIS, NORTH, BRIGHT, MAGEE; BACKUP. PROCEED.<\/p>\n

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The days crawled past, measured in the piecing of maps and vexing lapses in ground-space communication as NaYin’s storms crept like plague across its sickly face. He took what information mapping department would give him, prowled Supply, thinking.<\/p>\n

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The office became papered with charts, a composite of the world, overlaid in plastics, red-inked at those sites identified in scan, mri cities, potential targets.<\/p>\n

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He talked with the crew, gave them warning. There was still the chance that the whole project would be scrubbed, that by some miracle Flower would call up contact, declaring peace a reality, the matter solved, the mri willing to deal.<\/p>\n

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The hope ebbed, hourly.<\/p>\n

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Chapter Two<\/p>\n

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Windshift had begun, that which each evening attended the cooling of the land, and Hlil tucked his black robes the more closely about him as he rested on his heels, scanning the dunes, taking breath after his long walking.<\/p>\n

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The tribe was not far now, tucked down just over the slope by the rim, where the land fell away in days’ marches of terraces and cliffs, and the sea chasms gaped, empty in this last age of the world. Sencaste said that even that void would fill, ultimately, the sands off the high flats drifting as they did in sandfalls and curtains off the windy edges, to the far, hazy depths. Somewhere out there was the bottom of the world, where all motion stopped, forever; and that null-place grew, yearly, eating away at the world. The chasms girdled the earth; but they were finite, and there were no more mountains, for they had all worn away to nubs. It was a place, this site near the rims, where one could look into time, and back from it; it quieted the soul, reminded one of eternity, in this moment that one could not look into the skies without dreading some movement, or reckoning with alien presence.<\/p>\n

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The ruins of An-ehon lay just over the horizon to the north, to remind them of that power, which had made them fugitives in their own land, robbed of tents, of belongings, of every least thing but what they had worn the morning of the calamity. There was the bitterness of looking about the camp, and missing so many, so very many, so that at every turn, one would think of one of the lost as if that one were in camp, and then realize, and shiver. He was kel’en, of the warrior caste; death was his province, and it was permitted him to grieve, but he did not There was dull bewilderment in that part of him which ought by rights to be touched. In recent days he felt outnumbered by the dead, as if all the countless who had gone into the Dark in the slow ages of the sea’s dying ought ratter to mourn the living. He did not comprehend the causes of things. Being kel’en, he neither read nor wrote, held nothing of the wisdom of sen-caste, which sat at the feet of a she’pan alien to this world and learned. He knew only the use of his weapons, and tke kel-law, those things which were proper for a kel’en to know.<\/p>\n

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It had become appropriate to know things beyond Kutath; he tried, at least The Kel was the caste which veiled, the Face that Looked Outward. That Outward had become more than the next rising of the land; it was outsiders and ships and a manner of fighting which the ages had made only memory on Kutath, and pride and the Holy the Kel defended forbade that he should flinch from facing it, since it came.<\/p>\n

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They had a kel’anth, the gods defend them! who had come out of that Dark; they had a she’pan who had taken them from the gentle she’pan who had Mothered the tribe before her. . . young and scarred with the kel-scars on her face; fit he thought, that the she’pan of this age should bear kel-marks, which testified she once had been of Kel-caste, had once attained skill with weapons. A she’pan of a colder, fiercer stamp, this Melein slntel; no Mother to play with the children of the Kath as their own Sochil had done, to spend more time with the gentle Kath than with Sen-caste, to love rather than to be wise. Melein was a chill wind, a breath out of the Dark; and as for her kel’anth, her warrior-leader. . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Him, Hlil almost hated, not for the dead in An-ehon, which might be just; but for the kel’anth he had killed to take the tribe. It was a selfish hate, and Hlil resisted it; such resentments demeaned Merai, who had lost challenge to this Niun sTnteL Merai had died, in fact because gentle Sochil had turned fierce when challenged; fear, perhaps; or a mother’s bewildered rage, that a stranger-she’pan demanded her children of her, to lead them where she did not know. So Merai was dead; and Sochil, dead. Of Merai’s kinship there was only his sister left; of his tribe there was a fugitive remnant; and the Honors which Merai had won in his life, a stranger possessed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even Hlil. . . this stranger had gained, for kel-law set the victor in the stead of the vanquished, to the last of his kin debts and blood debts and place debts. Hlil was second to Niun s’lntel as he had been second to Merai. He sat by this stranger in the Kel, tolerated proximity to the strange beast which was Niun’s shadow, bore with the grief which haunted the kel’anth’s acts . . . which could not, he was persuaded, be distraction for the slaughter of a People the kel’anth had not time to know but which more attended the disappearance of the kel’anth’s other alien shadow, which walked on two feet<\/p>\n

That the kel’anth at least grieved … it was a mortality which bridged one alienness between them, him and his new kel’anth. They shared something, at least; if not love . . . loss.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hlil gathered up a sandy pebble from the crumbling ridge on which he rested, cast it at a tiny pattern in the sands downslope. It hit true, and a nest of spiny arms whipped up to enfold the suspected prey. Sand-star. He had suspected so. His hunting was not so desperate that he must bring that to the women and children of Kath. It wriggled away, a disturbance through the sand, and he let it. A pair of serpents, a fat darter, a stone’s weight of game; he had no cause to be ashamed of his day’s effort, and there was a stand of pipe growing within the camp, so that they had no desperate need of moisture, certainly not the bitter fluid of the star. It nestled into safety next to some rocks, spread its arms wide again, a pattern of depressions in the sand. He did not torment it further; it was off the track so, and offered no threat Kel-law forbade excess.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 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 then; 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The knots filled one cord and another and another, until all the tale was told but two.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hlil looked eastward, and of certainty, at the mid of sunfall, there came Ras. He need not have worried, he told himself. Has 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ras s’Sochil Kov-Nelan. Merai’s truesister.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 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’lntel, as once, as a kath-child, she had followed him; where Niun walked, she was shadow; where he rested, she waited. It was a land 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Did you hunt well?” he asked, although he knew what game she hunted.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“A couple of darters.” It was not, for her, good. And it was a long walk that brought Ras back out of breath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kflil looked out, and in the darkening east, there were two dots on the horizon. The kel’anth and the beast, strung far apart<\/p>\n

“East,” Has 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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ras,” he objected.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He knows I am there.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He gathered up another stone, rolled it between his fingers. Ras simply rested, catching her breath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Why?” he said finally. “Ras let him be. Anger serves no purpose; it dies unless you go on nursing it”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And you do not”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I am thekel’anth’s second.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I have no love for him.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We cannot challenge him,” she said. “Law forbids, if it were revenge for Merai; but there are other causes. Just causes.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Stop thinking of it”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He is very good. If I challenged him, he would kill me.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Do not,” he said, his heart clenched.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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<\/p>\n

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 nave 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?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hlil swallowed heavily. “Do not ask me what he thought.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ras-<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I leave it there, I say.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They sat still, staring alike at the shadowing land.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another gift of the kel’anth, this creature.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Go on,” he said to Ras. And when she delayed still; “Go on back.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

She muttered soft agreement and rose, slipped away down the rocks, vanished into the shadows.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No!” he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It stopped, a silence like sudden nakedness, devoid of warmth. Small, glittering eyes lifted to him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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<\/p>\n

He did not He sat still, let Niun walk up the stony way to his perch among the rocks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Is someone still out?” Niun asked, hard-breathing and in a manner of some concern.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 Df 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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The beast rose up, shambled out to rub against Niun as he started down; Hlil walked as close to it as he must.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You walked far,” Hlil said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ai,” Niun muttered as he walked, evading him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So did Ras.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That stopped him. Niun turned a veiled face toward him, looking up on the shadowed slope. “Your sending?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“She wants a quarrel does she not, kel Hlil?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Perhaps. Perhaps she is only curious where you go … daily.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That too, it may be. I beg you intervene.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I do,” he said. “What more can I do?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ras and I,” Hlil said, “have little more to say to each other. You speak to her if you like. I cannot.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. “Yail” he snapped at it then, and it fell back, turned aside from the trail into camp; it rarely did come in.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Tell the sentry we are in,” Niun turned to bid him. “Here, I will take your pouch.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was Has, who committed slow suicide . . . Ras’s eyes were on him too, surrogate for Merai.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those two things had never diverged, save now.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One strike from above, only one, and they were done. He much feared so.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 db’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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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, unpar-tkapant. 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even on Kutath it was done, the deliberate 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ships which went out, they sang of his kind, With the World at their backs . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Not our range,” objected Seras, eldest of the Husbands.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Then we take it,” he said in a small and bitter voice.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

You cannot hold this tribe well, they were thinking. What power have you to hold two at once?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The she’pan’s word?” Seras asked.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That too was challenge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I have not talked with her. I am going to.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So,” said Seras.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was silence after that, no murmur of suggestions, no expressions of opinion. Their faces, alike scarred with the kel-scars, regarded him, waited on him, set as stone. He considered asking again for their free discussion, reckoned that he would have only silence for answer. He brushed at his robes, gathered himself up and walked through their midst as they rose, perforce, a respect which might be omitted, which they never omitted, which began, to him, to have the flavor of mockery.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They would do their talking after he was gone, he reckoned. Hlil and Seras and the rest of the Husbands led them, in truth; him they only obeyed. He veiled himself, walked out along the narrow trail which followed the curving of the cliffs in the dark, back farther in the cliffs where in places not even starshine reached. A sandfall sheeted down, daily building at a large cone of sand with a constant, hissing whisper. He walked between it and the cliff, ducked his head from the windblown particles. He missed the dus, which probably hunted somewhere above, in the rocks; well that it had not come in with him, this night, with resentments smoldering in the Kel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And on that thought he looked back, half expecting Ras to be there. She was not.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the sharp bend of the cliff he walked across the open center, past the stand of pipe, which rose at an assortment of angles, its greater segments thick as a man’s waist. Good fortune that it grew here, making far easier their existence with its reliable moisture; it was the only good fortune they had to their account.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Faint light showed in Sen’s retreat. Gold-robes who sat in contemplation at the entry looked up in mild inquiry, scrambled up in haste when they recognized him, and stood aside in respect for the kel-first. He walked farther, into the shadow and lamplight of the inner sanctuary, disturbing more of them from their evening’s meditations. He unveiled out of respect to their elders, and one went ahead while he waited, to ask permission, and returned with a gesture bidding him pass.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He rounded the turning into the last secrecy, where a few gold-robes sat about the piled stones which served Melein for her chair of office, in this little recess which served as the she’pan’s hall, primitive and far from the honor she was due. Her robes were white, her face always unveiled; Mother, the tribe ought to call her, and she’pan, keeper-of-Mysteries, the Holy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Truesister, Niun thought of her, with a longing toward that companionship they had once had. Often as he had seen her in the white robes and surrounded by sen’ein, he could not forget kinship.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

She motioned dismissal of the others, summoning him; he bowed his head and waited as the sen’ein passed, murmured courtesy to the sen’anth, old Sathas received back a grumbled acknowledgment, but that was Sathas’s way with everyone.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Come,” Melein said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He did so, took the offered place at her feet.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You look tired,” she said. <\/p>\n

He shrugged.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You have some trouble?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“She’pan Kel does not admit this is a safe place to be.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So. Are not others worse?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was a drawing question; impatience. “Others require taking. But perhaps that is what we have to do.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Kel agrees?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Kel offers no opinion.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ah.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The Holy, the things we lost in the city. … I think by now if there were ships we would have seen them. Give me leave to go in. I think we can get them out. And for the rest maybe it is not something in which Kel should have an opinion.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You have begun to stop waiting.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He looked up at her, made a small gesture of helplessness, disturbed more than he wanted her to see. “I know the old kel’ein say weather change is a little distance off yet… on the average of years. But we ought to prepare our choices. This cut will be headed for the basins when the wind starts up; I believe that We have to do something; I have been trying to think what Chance is lying heavier and heavier on our shoulders.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You have talked with the Kel.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He shrugged uncomfortably. “I have told them.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And they have no opinion.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“None they voiced.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So.” She seemed to stare past him, her eyes focused on something on the ground beyond him, her face half in shadow, gold-lit by the oilwood flames. At last her eyes flickered, the membrane passing twice before them, betraying some inner emotion.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Which way would you go?” she asked. “Down, into the basins? They tell me tribes range there too, that the air is warmer and moisture more plentiful; we would find larger tribes, likely, or smaller ranges. You would win challenge. I have no doubt that you would. Your skill to theirs is far more than they would want to meet; nine years with the finest masters of the Kel I have no dread of that at all. We could, yes. Even seize upon a Holy to venerate, take their supplies, if our own are lost. . . the gods forbid. And what more?” <\/p>\n

“I am kel’en; how should I know?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You were never without opinions in all your life.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Say that I find no better hope in them.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You are missing one of your ftai.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

His hand went to his chest belt before he caught her meaning, touched the vacant place among his Honors.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was one of your first,” she pursued him. “A golden leaf, a leaf, on Kutath. Surely it would not have dropped away and you not notice it I have for many days.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Duncan has it.” It was no confession; she knew; he knew now she always had.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We do not discuss a kel’en who left without my blessing.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He went with mine,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Did he? Even the kel’ein of this tribe consult me; even with the example of you and Duncan before them. I have waited for you to come to me to tell me. And I have waited for you to come to speak for the Kel. And you do neither, even now. Why?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He met her eyes, no easy matter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Niun,” she murmured, “Niun, how have we come to such a pass, he and you and I? You taught him to be mri, and yet he could defy my orders; and now you follow after him. Is that the trouble I hear from the Kel? That they know where your heart is?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Perhaps it is,” he said faintly. “Or that theirs is constantly with Merai,”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Because you constantly push them away.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was long silence after.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I do not think so,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But that is part of it.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Yes. Probably that is part of it.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Duncan went back,” she said, “of his own choice. Was it not so?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He did not go back. He went to the humans, yes, but he did not go back. He still serves the People.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So you believed … or you would never have given him your blessing. And have you talked of this with<\/p>\n

“No.” <\/p>\n

“Humans would surely not let him go again, if he even lived to reach them.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He has reached them.” Niun made a gesture which included An-ehon, northward, the wide sky above the rocks. “There have been no ships, no more attacks. She’pan, I know that he has reached them, and they have heard him.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Heard him say what?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That struck him dumb, for all his faith in Duncan did not bridge that gap of realities, that could span what was mri and what was human with a request to go away.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And you talk of regaining the means to move,” she said. “So I have thought in that direction too, but perhaps with different aims. You always hunt eastward. I have heard so.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He nodded, without looking at her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You hope to stay close hereabouts,” she said. “Or to move east, perhaps. Do you hope, even after so many days that he will find us?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Some such thing.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I shall send Hlil to An-ehon,” she said. “He may arrange his own particulars; he may take whatever of the Kel he needs, and a hand of sen’ein.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Without me.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You have other business. To find Duncan.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

On two thoughts his heart leaped up and crashed down again. “Gods, go off with the Kel in one place and yourself left with no sufficient guard “<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I have waited,” Melein said, as if she had not heard him. “First, to know how long this silence in the heavens would last. We need what is in An-ehon, yes; a hand of days or more; Hlil will need a little time in the city, and more returning if they are successful, and carrying then; limit. But alone, with no burden at all I daresay you could search even to the landing site and reach us again here in that time.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Possibly,” he said. “But-“<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I have weighed things for myself. I doubt you will succeed; Duncan surely went with his dus, and if it were still with him, he could have found us by now … if he were coming. But I loved him too, our Duncan. Take it at that value, and find him if you can; or find that we have lost him, one or the other. And then set your mind on what you have to do for this tribe.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You need not send me, not to satisfy me.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Lose no tune.” She bent, took his face between her hands, kissed his brow, delayed to look at him, “It may be, if you are too late getting back you will not find us here. There are other cities, other choices.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Gods, and no more defense there than we had in An-ehon. You know, you know what humans can do “<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Go. Get moving.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

She let him go, and he rose up, bent to press a farewell kiss to her cheek. His hand touched hers, fingers held a moment, panic beating in him. He was skilled enough to fend challenge from her; Hlil was; she was parting with both of them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“My blessing,” she whispered at him. He went, quickly, past the wondering eyes of the sen’ein, averting his face from their stares. He was halfway back to the Kel before he recalled the veil.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And suddenly, by the sandfall, a shadow startled him, kel-black and somber. Ras. He finished tucking the veil in place, met her. “Ras?” He acknowledged her courteously, attempting comradeship.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But she said no word. She never did. She walked behind him, a coldness at his back<\/p>\n

Silence fell in Kel, at his coming. They waited, a ring of black, of gold-limned faces. He came among them and through their midst with Ras in his wake as far as the ring of the second rank; they stayed seated when he motioned them to do so. He dropped to his knees nearest the lights, across from Hlil; and he removed both veil and headdoth, mez and zaidhe, in token of humility, of request.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Kel’ein,” he said in that silence. “Yes at least to the matter of recovering our belongings from the city.” He leaned his hands on his knees and drew breath, gazing at their shadowed faces, row on row, to the limits of the recess. “Hlil will be in charge of that party; Hlil, surely the she’pan will give you some advice in the matter. If not, seek it of her.” <\/p>\n

“Aye,” Hlil muttered with a quizzical look on his broad face.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I warn you this much; be wary. A kel’en should go in ahead, searching for any traces of landing. There could be machines set to sense your presence, very small. Anything that does not seem to belong there O gods, kel Hlil, be suspicious, of every small thing. And if you should see ships aloft, do not lead them; go astray, lose them, until the wind has blotted your trail. They do not depend on eyes, but on instruments.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You refuse leading, kel’anth?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I am sent elsewhere.” His heart set itself to beating painfully. “Kel Seras, be in charge over the Kel that stays in camp; Hlil, I have said. Good evening to you.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They did not question him; he desperately did not invite it. He rose, gathered up an empty pouch for food, slipped on the headcloth again and veiled himself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And turned to face kel Ras, who had risen among the others, whose cold face was veilless, eyes hard above the kel-scars. “Ras,” he said in a voice he wanted to carry no farther than it had to. “Ras, in this go with Hlil.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If Hlil wills,” she said likewise quietly; but in the silence of the Kel it surely carried. It was more reasonable in her than he had expected, which itself made him suspect some tangled motive.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Thank you,” he said, and started away, through their midst.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Kel’anth,” Hlil called out; and when he stopped and looked back; “Will you take nothing with you?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Kath and Sen will be short of hunters. The dus and I will manage.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That beast-“<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“cares for me,” he said, knowing their disapproval of it “Life and honors.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hlil omitted any wish to him in return. Only Ras came and with irony watched him out onto the path. She did not follow. He looked back to be sure, and once again; and then put her from his concerns and walked on, the long corridor outward.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He alarmed the sentry, coming out at such an hour. He gave the signal, a low whistle, and passed, hearing the kel’en high in the rocks settle back to his place. Dus, he called when he had reached the outside, the level of the plain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was there. He kept walking and felt it before he heard it, a heavy shape moving among the rocks, a whuff of breath suddenly at his heels as he passed a boulder. He sensed disturbance in it, an echo of his own troubled mind, and tried to calm himself, as a man must who walked with dusei. He took the way he had taken daily, from which he had come this same evening. He was footsore even in starting out; day after day he had pushed himself farther than he ought. Sense said he should rest now; but he could do that on the journey, when he must. Time was precious life itself, if one ran out of it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And anxiously as he walked he scanned all the heavens, to be sure that they were empty of watchers, gazed over all the flat horizons, the rounded hills. The night-bound desolation dismayed him, starker than it was by day. Dead stars above. And enemies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A soft surge of strength came into him then, beast-blank; dus mind, offered to his need. It wished to comfort, brushing against him in its waddling stride.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He took the gift, bearing eastward.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The place where their own ship had landed; that was surely where Duncan had gone, to the first place humans would have come in trying to locate them. He walked steadily did not dismiss the dus from his side to hunt, not now; he needed it by him to find a safe way, exhausted as he was, for the open sands held ugly surprises.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It made him no complaints. Dusei were night walkers by preference. It tossed its massive head and ranged either at his side or a little ahead of him, snuffing the wind, panting a little at times from the pace he set.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Duncan . . . had never been able to match his stride. Always he had had to shorten his steps when Duncan was by him; and the very air of Kutath was hostile to a human’s lungs. It was madness that Duncan had ventured this desert alone.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The chance was he admitted it to himself that the odds had overtaken Duncan, coming back, if not going. Only one thing Duncan had had in his favor, that he might have been mri enough to handle; the company of his dus.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Find it, he willed his own, casting it the image. Dusei, it was said, had no memory for events, only for persons and places. He shaped Duncan for it; he shaped the other dus, so long its companion. Find them; hunt.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whether it understood clearly or not he could not tell; on the following day it began to radiate something in answer, which prickled at the nape and tightened the skin behind his ears.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Friend, he shaped.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It tossed its head and kept casting about anxiously, making occasional puffs of breath. Its general tendency was eastward, but it had no track, no more than in all the other treks they had made, only a vague, persistent nervousness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He slept by snatches, day or night, whenever he could go no farther, curled up against the dus’s warmth until he could regain his strength. He was by now out onto the wide flat, where the land went on forever, save for the rim and the void beyond, world’s edge. He drove himself, not madly, as one who did not know his limits, but as one who did, and thought he might pass them by a margin.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He caught a darter or two in his path, and for all he hated raw flesh, he ate, and shared with the dus, which persisted in its distress.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And finally he looked back, at the west, where the sun set with a shadow on it, amber and red and darker tones.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not moisture-bearing cloud, not on Kutath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dust across the sun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He stared at it, and beside him the dus flicked its ears uneasily and moaned.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chapter Three<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The weather had held steady for days, out of Kutath’s eternally cloudless sky, but the west bore a murkiness this dawn which boded trouble.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the back trail . . . daylight showed nothing, no hint of movement.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Duncan kept moving, looking frequently over his shoulder; it was the land’s deceptive roll, a trick of the eye on his side for once. He made what time he could, looking to the storm with hope.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cover, he desperately needed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And again and again he sought the presence of his dus. The beast ranged out at times, hunting, perhaps, exercising a little fear-warding on those who followed, kel’ein, strangers. He was full of dread whenever it was parted from him, that it might try to attack his pursuers, that they might loll it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here, he ordered it, but it did not touch his mind, so that he went alone, blind in that sense he needed. He walked steadily . . . cut off a bit of the blue pipe which he carried among his other supplies, and slipped it into his mouth beneath the veils. Doubled, he wore them, like the robes, for although he had become acclimated, he had no business carrying the smallish pack he bore, no business doing anything that taxed his breathing. We are not bearers of burdens, mri were wont to say, disdaining manual labor and any who would perform it; and he had long since understood the common sense in that attitude, in which a mri kel’en walked the land with no more burden than his weapons, often taking not so much as a canteen, where no free water existed. He pushed himself too hard. He knew it, in the rawness of his throat the headaches which half blinded him. He played just beyond the convenient reach of his mri shadows curious, he reckoned them, keeping an eye on a stranger, and it was not to his advantage to increase the pace. He kept himself constantly alert to the horizons and the sand underfoot, stayed to sandstone shelves and domes where he could, not alone to avoid leaving tracks, but to avoid the dangers of the sand. Mez and zaidhe, veil and visored headcloth, and the several layers of the kel-robes; these be had chosen, although others had been offered; and a pistol and the ancient yinein, the weapons-of-honor . . . these he had by similar choice. He reckoned he might try a shot to dissuade his followers, but firing at them … all the kel-law abhorred such a thing; he had more than the robes to mark him mri, and he would not.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dust began to lack up in discernible clouds, wave fronts borne on the wind. The sand ran in moving serpentines like water across the broad shelf of sandstone which he followed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He turned his head yet again, half-blinded by the sand, lowered his visor against the dust.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And when he looked back again before him there was a black figure on the northwest horizon, nearer by far than he had expected, and in a different quarter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Panic tugged at him, bidding him swing away south, and perhaps that was what they wanted him to do. He glanced to that horizon and saw nothing but naked land and naked, sand-fouled sky. There was an incline; his eye had learned to pick variations out of the vast sameness, the incredible flat expanses. Ambush was possible there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He bore west, summoning his dus with all his might, apprehensive now of every quarter of the horizon. They might cut him off to question him; and even a stone’s-throw sight of him would tell them he did not belong here, that some connection might be made between ships and destroyed cities and a stranger-kel’en.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Only the dusei, if they had not killed them, his own and the wild ones which were its offspring, might set fear enough into them, sendings of nameless dread. But time would come when that fear itself drove them to attack, for kel’ein were trained to caution, not cowardice. They would fight the fear as readily as they would an enemy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

His heartbeat hammered in his temples; there came times when he walked bund, sight blurred, numbed by want of air. He dared not, as he wanted desperately to do abandon the pack. They would come on it, know by the alien things of it that here was a mystery they could not leave unsolved. A sand-laden gust rocked him, rattled off his lowered visor, stinging his hands, the only part of his flesh exposed. He leaned into it, hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his robes. The battering gusts made him stagger, and after a time he was less and less sure that he remained true to west. The rock underfoot was uneven, and dipped and rose, misguiding him when he needed to catch his balance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dus, he sent, desperate, cursing it for its tendency to be elsewhere when it was most needed. The wind blasted body heat away from him, weakened his limbs. He began to be afraid, wondering whether to take shelter for fear of the wind itself, or to keep walking, trying to lose his pursuers while the wind erased tracks and obscured vision.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He slipped suddenly, rock peeling under his feet; he hit soft sand, caught his balance, tried to retreat onto the sandstone shelf, but it had run out. He tried vision without the visor, a mistake; he lowered it again, and in that little time he stopped to clear his eyes bis limbs were chilled to the bone, shaking so that it tore his joints.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was blind, and out on open sand; and of a sudden he began to be very much afraid, that he was making wrong choices, that he should have stayed on the rock surface. It was not panic fear, only deep dread; he kept moving, into the wind, the only means he had of determining west<\/p>\n

Fear grew. He looked behind him and the bleared eye of Na’i’in showed through the storm and the visor like the ghost of a sun, wan and sickly hued. In all the world there was neither up nor down, neither horizon nor sand underfoot, only the sun strong enough to penetrate the murk. He swung about again, sucked dusty air through the veils, weary with the battering. If he went down, he thought, he would die.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Dus,” he muttered aloud, wishing, pleading it back to him. The wind drowned all sound, the demon voice becoming an element in itself. His knees tottered under him, his joints wearied from the slipping sand and the force of the gusts, until at last he slipped to his knees and hunched away from the wind, fumbling with shaking hands after the bit of pipe he carried. His fingers were stiff; he bit the piece instead of using the knife, stuffed the rest back. His mouth was so dry it stuck, and his eyes stung with the dryness. “Dus,” he murmured again, despairing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A curious paralysis had settled on him, the cessation of pain. The wind vibrated into his very bones, masked every other sound, and became no-sound. He had no more force at his back; sand was piling up there, sheltering him, making an arc about him, drifting into his lap.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And fear grew. Sweat prickled on his skin, sucked dry before it could run. He began to think of something creeping up on him, something better adapted than he to the wind and storm-it seeped into him, so that slowly he moved, stirred himself, thrust himself to his feet and staggered farther against the wind. Panic drove him, a dread so strong he tore his knees with his driving strides.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dus-fear, not his own; he recognized it suddenly; not his own beast, but another, and near. It drew on the images of the rational mind, shaped itself. Ha-dus, wild one, wild-born, of the tame pair the mri had brought here . . . and dangerous without his own to fend it back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He moved; it was all he could do.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And suddenly a shadow came at him on the other side.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He snatched at the shortsword, staggering aside knew suddenly, recognized it<\/p>\n

His dus. It materialized out of the murk, pressed against him, and he sank down with its great body between him and the wind. It wove this way and that between him and the gusts; and another shape and another joined it, slope-shouldered, massive, weaving him a circle of protection. He knew his own, flung his arms about its hot, fat-rolled neck, and the beast heaved itself down beside him, five hundred kilos of velvet-furred devotion, venom-clawed, radiating a ward-impulse that meant business.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other dusei, the wild ones, settled about him so that among the three he was warm and sheltered from the wind. Sand built up about them too, but each time they rose and shook it off, their great strength untroubled by the effort He lay against the shoulder of his own, breathing in great gasps found strength enough finally to shrug out of the pack, to fumble out packets of dried food. He put bits in his mouth, sipped at the canteen, holding water there to moisten them, and finally gained control enough to chew and swallow.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

His dus nudged at him, begging; he offered it a piece of dried meat The massive head pushed at his hand, flat face inclined; the prehensile upper lip picked the tidbit off so delicately he felt nothing but the hot breath on his hand. The other dusei crowded him, and for one and then the other he offered the remainder, in either hand, fingers carefully out of the way, for the jaws could crush bone. The bits vanished as daintily as the other. He tucked down again, hands within sleeves, conscious of vibration, first from his own dus and then from the others, pleasure-sound, inaudible in the shriek of the wind. Eyes shut, ears down, nostrils opening only slightly, filtering through fringed internal hairs and membranes, the dusei were not suffering in the least<\/p>\n

Duncan snugged down between, wiped what he reckoned was a trace of blood from his nose and bit himself off another bit of pipe, as safe as any man could be in Kutath’s wild, companioned by such as these.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chapter Four<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The younglings huddled, muttered in hissing whispers. Occasionally one looked up, shifted weight uncomfortably.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suth loathed them, once companions. They came near the bed when they must, offering food rich and elaborate. They trembled until it was accepted. They mourned one elder on the ship; another was in the making. Suth Horag-gi clenched degh’s bony lips and groaned in the agony of Change.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suth; it, neuter until the hormonal shifts had begun to course hot and cold through degh’s body, until appetite increased and temper shortened to the verge of madness. The ship Shirug moved far apart from human ships orbiting Kutath, and ignored inquiries. There was the Wrapping of the departed elder; there was mourning; there was ag-arhd, the Consuming. These were secret things, in which Suth felt an instinctive vulnerability. Degh was not capable of full function in degh’s hormone-tormented state, moving toward Change. Humans inquired, offered help, doubtless deviously motivated, hoping to learn enough to gain control . . . offered regret, soliciting information in the process. Degh commanded degh’s attendants to silence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degh ate. Already the pallor of youngling skin was diminishing, and each move freed tissue-thin sheets of former skin, exposing elder-dark new skin beneath, a complete skin change twice since the Consuming. Suth was sore, sensitive new skin like a bleeding wound. The joints of degh’s facial plates ached, aggravated by the need to eat, to drink, constantly. Degh burned with fever, heightened metabolism, and most of all those parts which had not yet determined function burned, swollen, maddening with pain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A youngling ventured near with mul, water-soaked, to ease the skin. Suth sugered it, sucking on a straw from a mug of soi, occasionally reaching to a platter for a sweet<\/p>\n

Suddenly there was pain, and Suth screamed and flung the platter and struck. Something cracked, and when the grayness cleared, other younglings were bearing away the dead one and cleaning up the spilled sweetmeats. Suth hissed satisfaction, annoyance departed. Another took up the washing, more carefully.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Report,” Suth breathed, clenching degh’s hand about a new mug of soi. Degh sucked at it, looked at the frightened younglings. “Witless, the news; report.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Favor, Honored, there is no report available; storm is covering the land.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Storm.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“A vast and violent storm, Honored, 687.78 koingh across. We attempted to penetrate it, but at this range, and with the dust “<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suth breathed a sigh of weary pleasure. “Perhaps the human Duncan will die.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Perhaps, Honored.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degh wished this earnestly. This human had killed the reverence bai Sharn, in command of Shirug. Human elders on Saber had then dismissed this Duncan as if this act were inconsiderable to them. Degh had been only youngling then, neuter, confused, horrified by the death as all the younglings had been horrified.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now degh yearned toward the death of this human; it was anomaly, perverted; it no longer knew what it was, this Sten Duncan. It had killed younglings, it and its mri allies, and now it killed an elder. Its kind excused this . . . threatened now even to treat with mri, through this mri-imprinted youngling. The very thought set Suth’s hearts to hammering and made deghn short of breath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Forty-three years the mercenary Kel had served regul against humans, and now at war’s end came a new arrangement to trouble regulkind; mri, intriguing with humans.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adult authority was desperately needed in this crisis, a mind to make decisions on which the survival of other elders might rest, back at Kesrith, even on homeworld itself. Sharn was dead; elder Hulagh was years removed, on Kesrith. Someone had to make the decisions.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pain . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Honored, Honored, be easy,” a youngling murmured, sponging gently with the mul. Suth panted and strove to rise, fell back again, amazed at the feel of degh’s own body, the increase in girth. The bony carapace which covered the face ached maddeningly. Degh closed degh’s eyes and breathed in great gasps, aching in degh’s lower belly until the pain was intolerable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Degh is in crisis,” a youngling moaned. “Days, days of this; it must end, it must end, or degh will die.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Silence!” degh shouted, and shouting helped; the pain ebbed somewhat. Muscles contracted. The hearts sped and the temperature rose.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was true. Degh was in deep trouble. Degh had served bai Hulagh, male, and approached Impression; degh had looked to the time of Change, knowing degh’s future gender with smug certainty, female to Hulagh’s male . . . ambition, to mate the Eldest of great doch Alagn; security, and vast power.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But to Suth’s lasting dismay there had been transfer; Suth, most honored of Hulagh’s youngling attendants, passed as special favor to bai Sharn, who undertook a mission on which but one elder could be risked; Sharn, female, on a voyage years in length. Maleness tempted; Sharn herself was very high in doch Alagn.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sharn, female, fourth eldest of one of the greatest of the docha, and murdered by a deranged human youngling.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degh had been Impressed in witnessing that incomprehensible act. To replace bai Sharn … to foe Sharn . . . that desire came with the Consuming.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And degh could not complete the Change, poised between, for days neither Hulagh’s nor Sham’s, neither female nor male.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degh screamed aloud and cursed the human who had done this thing, who allied with mri and tried to lure others of his species after. A hundred twenty-three stars, a hundred twenty-three . . . dead . . . lifeless . . . systems. And even after seeing the deadly track the mri had cut through the galaxy . . . humans approached these killers and spoke of peace.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degh must live. Species demanded. Life demanded. More than personal ambition, more than doch, than the chance of elevating degh’s little doch of Horag, allying to powerful Alagn at its highest levels; these things were motivation . . . but this touched something at depth Suth had never felt, which perhaps no regul had ever had to feel, for no regul had ever confronted such a possibility, death on such a scale. Degh must live, generate, produce lives to deal with this threat, innumerable lives.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There came another touch at degh’s body, faint, tremulous. It was Nagn, an older youngling. And it tore back with a shriek of dismay.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Honored,” it cried, “I burnl”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It had happened; next eldest had gone prematurely into Change. Suth cried out with relief and shut degh’s eyes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pain moved lower. Muscle contractions began at last, fever increasing, skin sloughing and peeling. The younglings brought food, and bathed deghn, and applied unguents to the swollen parts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scarcely supported by the younglings, the Honored Nagn moved again to degh’s side, touched, shuddering in degh’s own pain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The choice was Suth’s. Suth’s body was making it The swelling continued as one vestigial set of organs was absorbed, and the other began, in convulsive heaves of Suth’s body, to press down into the membrane covering the aperture . . . descended, evident as it would never be henceforth save in mating.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Male!” a youngling declared.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nature’s logic. Suth smiled, a tightening of the muscles beneath his eyes, and this despite the pain. Elsewhere Nagn writhed in the throes of Change, but Nagn’s choice was set, and swifter, Tiag cried out in agony, and Morkhug, the hysteria of Change settling upon all the eldest<\/p>\n

The pain ebbed in time. Suth moved, supported by younglings. Never again would he stand long unaided. His bulk, already increased by his appetite, would increase twice more. His legs, once strong, would atrophy until little muscle lay under the abundant fat, although his arms, constantly exercised by the operation of the prosthetic supports, would remain strong. Senses would dim hereafter, save for sight. The mind dominated. Regul memory was instant and indelible; he would live, barring accident or murder, for three hundred years more, remembering every chance moment and every minute detail to which he paid attention.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had lived to be adult, and only thirty percent of regul did so; he was, by virtue of being the first adult on the ship, remote from others of greater age … an elder, in command of Shirug and of whatever other adults matured; only one percent of regul reached such status.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And by the Change which had come on him he could not now meet his old bai Hulagh as mate . . . but as a rival of another doch. He was senior to Nagn and Tiag and Morkhug, who were Alagn, and therefore this great Alagn ship, the pride of the doch, became Horag territory. Hulagh of Alagn had miscalculated, reckoning every eventuality but Sham’s premature death and a Horag sexing ahead of the others. Suth smiled.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then he looked on the three who were in the throes of Change, … on Nagn, who was flushing with the swift completion of agonies which had held him for days.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Out!” he shouted at the other younglings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They fled. He struck at those who supported him, and they joined the others in flight. He could not long stand, but sank down on his weakened legs, panting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Honor, reverend Nagn,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Honor, bai Suth.” She struggled to sit. He had deprived her of younglings to help her, but she was female and would always be more mobile than he save in the final stage of carrying.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And she had not near attained his dignity of bulk, nor suffered the several skin changes. Those were, for her, only beginning.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Favor,” said Suth, “Nagn Alagn-ni.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Favor, Suth Horag-gi.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

She came to him, the order of their age of Change, although it was established by mere moments. He mated her, with dispatch and twice, for honor to her precedence of the others. She was next eldest and would hold that rank while he held the ship. He moved then, necessity, and mated the other two, which likely would produce no young, but which would Impress them with more haste, painful as it was for them. He would mate them until all three were with as many young as they could carry. These were his officers; it was economical, his maleness. There was need of rapid reproduction of Horag young; eldest claimed all young in any mating. As other younglings aboard Shirug sexed, they would sex under his Impress, female.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Horag young would increase on the ship at first by the factor of the litters these three would bear; and more, with more females. Had he sexed female as he had first tended, the Alagn youngling Nagn would have sexed male in complement, and the next two would have sexed randomly, with himself bearing three to five young as female, some by Nagn, some by any other young male that might develop, and though he could claim such young as Horag, as female he could make only a small nest of Horag young on an otherwise Alagn ship.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was indeed nature’s logic and politics but Suth was smug in it, suffused with a feeling of power and tightness after his long suffering. There would be a new order on this ship, his ship. And for Horag to succeed in an operation where great Alagn had failed miserably. . . . Ambitions occurred to him, incredible in scope.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It is not necessary,” he said, “that humans know we exist.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No,” Nagn agreed, “but until they realize we have an elder on this ship, they will be continuing on their own course of action. They will do what pleases them without consulting us.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If all witnesses die,” said Suth, ” there is no event”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Eldestr<\/p>\n

“We are far from human bases; we can do what pleases us.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Strike at elders?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Secure ourselves.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nagn considered this, her nostrils flaring and shutting in agitation. Finally they remained open. “With their rider ship and their probe as well, they have mobility we do not”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Mri could even the balance.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Even mri have some memory, eldest They will not hire to us.” <\/p>\n

“On that world, Nagn Akgn-ni, there is power. It struck back at our ship; we experienced it and we know the sites of it. If both mri and human witnesses perish then regul worlds are freed of an inestimable danger; and humans can ask questions but regul need give no answers.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nagn grinned, a slow relaxation of her jaws and a narrowing of her eyes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chapter Five<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet again the beasts shifted position, not to be buried, shaking the sand off with a vengeance. The gale had fallen off markedly, and Na’i’in shone brighter this morning than it had yesterday noon. Duncan stumbled to his feet, muscles aching. He had slept finally, when the dusei no longer roused so often; and he was stiff, the more so that the great beasts had pressed on him and leaned on him; instinct, he reckoned, to keep his chilling body up to their fever warmth. They milled about now, blew and sneezed wetly, clearing their noses. Duncan shivered, folding his arms about him, for the cold wind threatened to steal what warmth he had gathered.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Time to move. Anxiety settled on him as he realized he could see horizon through the curtain-like gusts; if he could see, so could others, and he had lingered too long. He should have been on his way in the night, when the sand had ceased to come so heavily; he should have realized, and instead he had settled down to sleep.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stupidity, his mri brother had been wont to tell him on other occasions, is not an honorable death.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Hai,” he murmured to the dusei, gathered up bis pack, shrugged into it, started off, with a protest of every muscle in his body, making what haste he could.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He took a little more of the dried food, with a last bite of the pipe, and that was breakfast, to quiet his hunger pangs. The dusei tried to cajole their share, and he gave to his own, but when he offered to the others, his began a rumbling that boded trouble.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He at once flung the handful wide, and die two stranger dusei paused, themselves rumbling threats, letting the pace separate them. After a moment they lowered their heads and took the food, and the curtaining sand began to come between. The storm-night was over, truces broken. His heart still beat rapidly from the close call, the injudiciousness of his own dus to start a quarrel while he had his hand full of something the others wanted. He glanced back; one of them stood up on its hind legs, a towering shadow, threatening their backs; but his own whuffed disgust and plodded on, having evidently dismissed the seriousness of the threat. His was tame only in the sense it wanted to stay with him, which dusei had done with the mri of Kesrith for two thousand years, coming in out of their native hills, choosing only kel-caste, bonding lifelong; and not even the mri knew why. Kath’ein had no need and sen’ein minds were too complex and cold for the dusei’s taste; so the mri said. But for some mad reason, this one had chosen a human its only existing choice, perhaps, when mri on Kesrith had perished.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had a dread of it someday departing his side, deserting him for the species it preferred; truth be told, that parting would be painful beyond bearing, and lonely after, incredibly lonely. He needed it, he suspected, with a crippled need a kel’en of the mri might never have. And perhaps the dus knew it<\/p>\n

He walked, his hand on the beast’s back, looked over his shoulder. The other two were only the dimmest shadows now. They would choose, perhaps, other kel’ein. … He hoped not the kel’ein who followed him now; that was a dread thought<\/p>\n

His rumbled with pleasure, blowing at the sand occasionally, shambling along at his pace, turning its face as much as might be from the wind.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But after a time that pleasure-sound died, and something else came into its mood, a pricklish anxiety.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The skin contracted between his shoulders. He looked back, searching for shadows in the amber haze coughed, bund for a moment.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dus had stopped too, began that weaving which accompanied ward-impulse, back and forth, back and forth between him and some presence not far distant<\/p>\n

“Hush,” he bade it, dropped to his knees to fling his arms about its neck and distract it, for a determined pursuer could use that impulse to locate them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A mri who pursued . . . could well do that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The impulse and the weaving stopped; the beast stood still and shivered against him, and he scrambled up and started it moving again, facing the wind, blind intermittently in the gusts, and with the beast’s disturbance sawing at his nerves like primal fear.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The land did not permit mistakes. He had made one, this morning, out of weakness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Turn, he thought, and meet his pursuers, plead that he carried a message that might mean life or death for all the mri?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One look at his habit and his weapons and his human-brown eyes . . . would be enough. Mri meant the People; outsiders and higher beasts were tsi’mri; not-People. He and the dus were equal in their eyes; it was built into the hal’ari that way, and no logic could argue without words to use.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a stranger behind him, no one of the tribe he knew; they would have showed themselves long since if that were the case; there was more than curiosity involved, if pursuit continued after the storm. He was sure of it now, with a gut-deep knowledge that he was in serious trouble.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kel’ein did not walk far alone, not by choice. There was a tribe somewhere about, and a Kel which had set himself to trail an invader.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hlil stopped with the sand-veiled shadow of the city before him, sank down on his heels on the windward side of a low dune and surveyed the altered outlines of the ruin tsi’mri had left.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

An-ehon. His city. He had never lived in it; but it was his by heritage. He had come here in the journeyings which attended the accession of a she’pan, when he was very young; had sat within walls while the Sen closed themselves within the Holy and the Mother gained the last secrets she had to know, which were within the precious records of the city. No more. It was over, the hundred thousand years of history of this place ended, in his sight, in an instant He had seen the towers falling, comrades slain on right and on left of him, and for so long as he lived he would carry that nightmare with him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What he had to do now . . . was more than to recover the tents, the Things, which concerned only life; it was to retake the Holy, and that . . . that filled him with fear. The stranger-she’pan had laid hands on him, giving him commission to handle what he must; perhaps she had the right to do so. He was not even certain of that. An-ehon was destroyed, the means of teaching she’panei gone with it, and they must trust this stranger, who claimed to hold in herself the great secrets. It was all they had, forever, save what rested here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Merai, he had thought more than once on this journey, with even the elements turning on them, Merai, o gods, what should I do?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He did so now, thinking of the city before them, of the tribe-gods, of the tribe, pent within that narrow cut and the sand moving. In his mind was a vision of them being overwhelmed in it by sandfalls, or the sandslip building all down the cut, gravity bearing them in a powdery slide into the basin, a fall which turned his stomach to contemplate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had sent five hands of kel’ein back when the storm began, to aid if they could. That far he went against the she’pan’s plans, dividing his force. Perhaps she would forgive; perhaps she would curse, damning him, cutting him off from the tribe for disobedience. That was well enough, he thought, tears welling up in his throat, if only it saved the rest of the children. There was following orders and there was sanity; and the gods witness he tried to choose aright… to obey and to disobey at once.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sand slipped near him. Ras had caught up with him, came over the crest and slid down to a crouch at his side. In a moment more came Desai, third-rank kel’en, blind in one eye, but the one that saw, saw keenly; a quiet man and steady, and after him came Merin, a Husband, and the boy Taz … an unscarred, who had begged with all his heart to come. There were others, elsewhere, lost in the rolls of the land and the gusting wind. He took to heart what the kel’anth had said of ambushes and ships, and kept his forces scattered.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He waited a moment, letting the others take their breaths, for beyond this point was little concealment Then he rose up, started down the trough, keeping to the low places where possible, while his companions strayed along after him at their own rate, making no grouped target for the distance-weapons of tsi’mri.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when they neared the buildings and crossed the track by which they had fled the city, and came upon the first of the dead, anger welled up in him, and he paused. Black-robe; this had been a kel’en. He gazed at the partially buried robes, the mummy made of days in the drying winds, ravaged by predators; they must have held feast in An-ehon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The others overtook him; he walked on without looking at them. Ahead were the shells of towers, geometries obscured in sand, horizonless amber in which near buildings were distinct even to the cracks in their walls and the distant ones hove up as shadows. And everywhere the dead.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This was Ehan,” Desai said of the next they came to; and “Bias,” said Merin of another, for the Honors these dead wore could still distinguish them, when wind and dryness had made them all alike.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

From time to time they spoke names of those they saw among the passages between the ruined buildings; and the dead were not only kel’ein but old sen’ein, gold-robes, scholars, whose drying skulls had held so much of the wisdom of the People; young and old, male and female, they lay in some places one upon the other, folk that they had known aU their lives; among them were the bodies of kath’ein, blue-robes, the saddest and most terrible the child-rearers and children. Walls had fallen, quick and cruel death; in other places the dead seemed without wound at all. There were the old whose bronze manes were dark and streaked with age; many, many of their number, who had not been strong enough to bear the running; and in many a place a kel’en’s black-robed body lay vainly sheltering some child or old one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Name after name, a litany of the dead; kath Edis, one of his own kath-mates, and four children, two of whom might be his own; that hit him hard; and sen’ein, wise old Rosin; and kel Dom; they had come into the Kel the same year. He did not want to look, and must, imposing horrors over brighter memories.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the others, who had lost closer kin, Kel-born, who had kin to lose; Taz, who mourned trueparents and sister and all his uncles; and Ras Ras passed no body but that she did not look to see.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Haste,” he said, having his fill of grieving. But Ras trailed last, disobedient, still searching, almost lost to them in the murk.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said nothing to that; matters were thin enough between them. But he looked at no more dead; and the others grew wise, and did not, either, staying close with him. Chance was, he thought, that they could run head-on into members of their own party, if they were not careful in this murk, come up against friends primed to expect distance-weapons and primed to attack … an insanity; he had no liking at all for this kind of slipping about.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suddenly the square lay before them, vast, ribboned with blowing sand which made small dunes about the bodies which lay thicker here than elsewhere in the city. At the far side hove up the great Edun, the House of the People, Edun An-ehon, sad in surrounding ruin. It was mostly intact, the four towers, slanting together, forming a truncated pyramid. The doorway gaped darkly open upon steps which ran down into the square. The stone of the edun was pitted and scarred as the other buildings; great cracks showed hi the saffron walls, but this place which had been the center of the attack had also held the strongest defense, and it had survived best of any structure in the city. Hope welled up in him, hope of success, of doing quickly what they had come to do and getting away safely.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He moved and the others followed, on a course avoiding the open square, taking their cover where they could find it among the shattered buildings and the blowing sand. Finally he broke away at a run, up the long steps, toward that ominous dark within, hard-breathing with the effort and thinking that at any moment fire might blast out at him. It did not. He slid through the doorway and inside, against the wall, where dust slipped like oil beneath his feet, where was silence but for the wind outside and the arriving footsteps of the others. They entered and stopped, all of them listening a moment. There was no sound but the wind outside.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Get a light going,” he bade Taz. The boy fumbled in the pouch he carried and knelt, working hastily to set fire in the oil-wood fiber he had brought. Ras arrived, last of them, “Stay out there,” Hlil ordered her, “visible; others will be coming soon.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Aye,” she said, and slipped back out again into the cold wind, a miserable post, but no worse than the dark inside.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The flame kindled; Taz shielded it with his body and lit a knot of fiber impaled on an oilwood wand. They all, he, Merin, and Desai, kept bodies between the fire and the draft from the door. Mervin lit other knots and passed them about. Outside, Ras’s low voice reported no sight of the others.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hlil took his light and walked on. The inner halls echoed to the least step. Cracks marred the walls, ran, visible once eyes had adjusted to the dim light, about the higher walls and ceilings, marring the holy writings there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The entry of kel-tower was clear, and that of Sen, the she’pan’s tower and Kath . . . affording hope of access to their belongings. But when he looked toward the shrine his heart sank, for that area of the ceiling sagged, and the pillars which guarded that access were damaged. He felt of them and stone crumbled at his least touch on the cracks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had to know; he went farther into the shrine, thrust his light-wand into a cracked wall and passed farther still.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Hlil,” Merin protested, behind him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He hesitated, and even as he stopped a sifting of plaster hit his shoulders and dimmed the light.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Go back,” he bade Merin and the others. “Stand clear.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Holy was there, that which they venerated and the Holy of the Voyagers; his knees were weak with dread of the great forbidden; but in his mind was the hazard of losing them once for all, these things which were more than the city and more than all their lives combined.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He moved inward; the others disobeyed and followed; he heard them, saw the lights moving with him, casting triple shadows of himself and the pillars and the inner screen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Beyond that the stranger-she’pan had given him her blessing to go; that first, she had bidden him. He was shaking unashamedly as he put but a hand and moved the screen aside.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A tiny box of green bronze; figures of corroding metal and gold; a small carven dus and a shining oval case as large as a child; together they were the Pana, the Mysteries, on which he looked, on which no kel’en ought ever to look. He thrust out a hand almost numb, gathered up the smallest objects and thrust them, cold and comfortless, within the breast of his robes. He passed the box to Merin, whose hands did not want to receive it Last he reached for the shining ovoid, snatched it to him in a sifting of dust and falling plaster. It was incredibly heavy for its size, staggered him, hit a support in a cascade of plaster and fragments. He stumbled back at the limit of his balance, hit the steadying hands of Desai who snatched him farther, outside, as dust rolled out at them and they sprawled, shaken by the rumble of falling masonry. It stopped.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Sir?” Taz’s voice called.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We are well enough,” Hlil answered, holding the pan’en to him, bowed over it, though the chill seemed to flow from it into his bones. Other hands helped him rise with it; the light of the door showed in a shaft of dust, and the figures of Taz and Ras within it, casting shadows. He carried his burden to the doorway, past them and out into the light and the storm, knelt down and laid the pan’en and the other objects on the top of the steps. Merin added the ancient box, stripped off his veil to shield the Holy objects … so did he, and Ras and Desai too. He looked up into the faces of the others, which were stark with dread for what they had in hand. He looked from one to the other, chilled with a sense of separation … for kel’ein died, having touched a pan’en; such was the law. Or if they lived, then forever after they were known by it; pan’ai-khan, somewhere between Holy and accursed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I have dispensation,” he said. “I give it you.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They crouched down, huddled together, he and the others, protecting the Holy as if it were something living and fragile, that wanted mortal flesh between it and the elements.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The boy Taz was not with them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taz are you well?” Hlil shouted into the dark<\/p>\n

“I am keeping the fire,” the boy said. “Kel-second, the dust is very thick, but there is no more falling.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The gods defend us,” Hlil muttered, conscious of what he had his hand on, that burned him with its cold. “Only let it hold a little while longer.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Duncan paused, where a scoured ridge of sandstone offered a moment’s shelter from the wind, flung his arms about the thick neck of the dus and lowered his head out of the force of the gusts. He coughed, rackingly; his head ached and his senses hazed. The storm seemed to suck oxygen away from him. He uncapped the canteen and washed his mouth, for the membranes were so dry they felt like paper. … He swallowed but a capful. He stayed a moment, until his head stopped spinning and his lungs stopped hurting, then he found the moral force to stand and move again.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was a bright spot in the world, which was the sun; in the worst gusts it was still all that could be seen. The dus moved, guiding him in his moments of blindness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then something else grew into reality, tall shadows like trees, branched close to the trunk and rising straight up again, gaunt giants. Pipe. He went toward it, consumed with the desire for the sweet pulp which could relieve his pain and his thirst better than water. The dus lumbered along by him, willingly hurrying; and the.shadows took on more and more of substance against amber sky and amber earth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dead. No living plants but pale, desiccated fiber materialized before him, strands ripped loose, blowing in the wind, a ghostly forest of dead trunks. He touched the blowing strands, drew his av-tlen to probe the trunk closest, to try whether there might be life and moisture at the core.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And suddenly he received something from the dus, warning-sense, which slammed panic into him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He moved, ran, the beast loping along with him. He cursed himself for the most basic of errors; Think with the land, the mri had tried to teach him; Use it; flow with it; be it. He had found a point in the blankness. He had been nowhere until he had found a point, the rocks, the stand of dead plants. He was nowhere and could not be located until he made himself somewhere.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And childlike, he had gone from point to point. The dus was no protection; it betrayed him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Think with the land, Niun had said. Never challenge beyond your capacity; one does not challenge the jo in hiding or the bur-rower in waiting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or a mri in his own land.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He stopped, faced about, blind in the dust, the shortsword clenched in his fist. Cowardice reminded him he was tsi’mri, counseled to take up the gun and be ready with it. He came to save mri lives; it was the worst selfishness to die, rather than to break kel-law.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Niun would.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He sucked down mouthfuls of air and scanned the area around about, with only a scatter of the great plants visible through the dust. The dus hovered close, rumbling warnings. He willed it silent, flexed his fingers on the hilt.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dus shied off from the left; he faced that way, heart pounding as the slim shadow of a kel’en materialized out of the wind.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What tribe?” that one shouted.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The ja’anom,” he shouted back, his voice breaking with hoarseness. He stilled the dus with a touch of his hand; and in utter hubris; “You are in the range of the ja’anom. Why?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was a moment’s silence. The dus backed, rumbling threat.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I am Rhian sTafa Mar-Eddin, kel’anth and daithon of the hao’nath. And your geography is at fault.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

His own name was called for. They proceeded toward challenge by the appointed steps. It was nightmare, a game of rules and precise ritual. He took a steadying breath and returned his av-tlen to its sheath with his best flourish, emptying his hands. He kept them at his sides, not in his belt, as Bhian had his. He wanted no fight<\/p>\n

“Evidently the fault is mine,” he said. “Your permission to go, kel’anth.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You give me no name. You have no face. What is that by you?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Come with me,” Duncan said, trying the most desperate course. “Ask of my she’pan.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ships have come. There was fire over the city.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ask of my she’pan.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Who are you?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dus roared and rushed; pain hit his arm even as he saw the mri flung aside. “No!” Duncan shouted as the dus spun again to strike. The dus did not; the mri did not move; Duncan reached to the numb place on his arm and felt the hot seep of moisture.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two heartbeats and it had happened. He trembled, blank for the instant, knowing what had hit, the palm-blades, the as-ei, worn in the belt. The dus’s attack, the mri’s reflex both too quick to unravel; dusei read intent.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He shuddered, staggered to the dus and found the other blade, imbedded in the shoulder . . . fatal to a man, no serious thing to the dus’s thick muscle. He was shaking all over . . . shock, he thought; he had to move. It was a kel’anth who lay there, a whole Kel hereabouts . . .<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He leaned above the prostrate form, still shaking, put out a hand to probe for life, bis right one tucked to him. Life there was; but the kel’en had dus venom in him, and sand already covered the edges of his robes. Duncan gasped breath on his own, started away cursed and shook his head and came back, seized the robes and tugged and struggled the inert form to the stand of pipe, left him sitting there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Dus,” he called hoarsely, turned, veered off into the wind again, running, the dus moving with lumbering haste at his side.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They would follow; he believed that beyond question. Blood feud if the kel’anth died and someone to tell the tale of him if he did not. He coughed and kept running, sucked in dust with the air despite the veils, slowing when he could no longer keep from doubling with pain. Dus-sense prickled about him, either the animal’s alarm or its sense of a new enemy. He held his injured arm to him, running a little, walking when he could not run, making what speed he could. Two mistakes on his own; the dus had accounted for the third.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Storm is diminishing,” the voice from Flower reported. “No chance yet to assess conditions outside.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Don’t,” Koch said, passed a hand reflexively over the stubble on his head. “Don’t risk personnel, in any limited visibility.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We have our own operations to pursue.” Flower’s exec was Emil Luiz, chief surgeon, civ and doggedly so. “We know our limitations. We have measurements to take.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We copy,” Koch muttered. The civs were indeed under his command, but they were trouble and doubly so since they were the potential link to the SurTac. “We are dispatching Santiago to a survey pattern. We wish you to observe unusual cautions for the duration. Please do not disperse crew or scientific personnel on outside research. Keep everyone within easy jump of the ship, and no key personnel out of reach of stations. This is a serious matter, Dr. Luiz. We fully sympathize with your need to gather information, but we do not wish to have to abandon personnel onworld in case of trouble. Understood?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We will not disperse personnel outside during your operation. We copy very clearly.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Your estimation of mission survival down there?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was long silence. “Obviously natives survive such storms.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Unsheltered?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We don’t know where he is, do we?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Koch tapped his stylus nervously against the desk. “Code twelve,” he cautioned the civ; they used scramble as standard procedure, but there was a nakedness, sending information back and forth after this fashion. He misliked it entirely.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We suggest further patience,” Luiz said. “Anything will have been dekyed in this storm.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We copy,” Koch said. <\/p>\n

“We request an answer,” Luiz said. “Flower staff recommends further patience.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Recommendation noted, sir.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Admiral, we request you take official note of that recommendation. We ask you cease flights down there. These are clearly reconnaissance and they’re provocative. Our personal safety is at stake and so are our hopes of peaceful contact. You may trigger something, and we are in the middle. Please discontinue any military operations down here. Do you copy that, sir?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Koch’s heart was speeding. He held his silence a moment, reached and coded a number onto his desk console. The answer flashed back to his screen, negative.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We will look into the matter,” Koch said. “Please code twelve that and wait shuttled reply.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now there was silence for a few beats on the other end.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We copy,” Luiz said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Any other message, Flower? We’re moving out of your range. Santiago should be in position soon to serve as relay and cover. Ending transmission.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We copy. Ending transmission.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The artificial voices and crawl of transcription across the second screen ceased. Koch wiped sweat from his upper lip and punched in Silverman of Santiago. The insystem fighter was in link at the moment, riding attached to Saber’s flank as she had ridden into the system. “Commander, Koch here. Report personally, soonest”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He received immediate acknowledgment. With matters as they were, key personnel kept communicators on their persons constantly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He punched up security next, Del Degas. The man was in the next office and available, there as soon as four doors could open.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Sir.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Someone’s overflying Flower’s scan down there. Who?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degas’s thin face went tauter still. “We have no missions downworld right now.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I know that. What about our allies?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Til find out what I can.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Del if they’re regul . . . theoretically younglings can’t take that kind of initiative. If someone’s data is wrong on that point, if Shirug can function in their hands that’s a problem. Theoretically those shuttles the agreement allows them aren’t armed.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Like ours,” Degas said softly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Want Santiago out there where she has a view, Del; scan operations have to be subordinated to that for the time being. They won’t let us inside; we do what we can.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regul could not lie; that was the general belief. Their indelible memories made lying a danger to their sanity. So the scientists said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Likewise regul were legalists. To deal with them it was necessary to consider every word of every oral agreement, and to reckon all the possible omissions and interpretations. Regul memory was adequate for that kind of labyrinthine reckoning. Human memory was not.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degas nodded slowly. “Try again to open contact?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Don’t. Not yet. I don’t want them alarmed. Santiago’s maneuvering is enough.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And if they’re not regul doing those overnights?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I consider that possibility too.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And act on it?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Koch frowned. Del Degas had his private anxiousness in that matter. Conviction, perhaps … or revenge. A man who had lost both sons and a wife to mri might harbor either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The SurTac,” Degas pursued uninvited, “is a deserter. That may have been planned by the office that sent him; but his attitudes are not a calculation; the attitude that dumped that tractor and the transmitter into the canyons . . . was not carelessness. His behavior is clear; he’s no human; he’s mri; he says there are no mri ships. But the psychological alteration he must have undergone, years alone with them on that ship. . . . Those who think they know him may recognize a role he’s playing, if he’s playing at being SurTac Duncan.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Duncan had refused to debrief to security, only willing to talk to Flower staff, with Degas to frame the essential questions and take notes. Degas had been outraged at the order that permitted it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The SurTac is a fanatic,” Degas said. “And like all such, he’s capable of convolute reasoning in support of his cause. There’s also the possibility he saw only what the mri wanted him to see. I strongly urge an attempt to get direct observation down there. Military observation. Galey’s mission “<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Will not be diverted to that purpose.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Another, then.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Do you want an objection to policy put on record? Is that what you’re asking?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degas drew a deep breath, looked down at the floor and up again in silent offense. They had grown too familiar, he with Degas; neighbors, card players; a man had to develop some human associations on a voyage years in duration. They were not of the same branch of the service. He had found Degas’s quick mind a stimulation to his own. Now there were entanglements.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We don’t use Galey,” Koch said. He considered a moment, weighing the options. “The regul matter first; it may not be youngling shyness that keeps them over-horizon from us. If they can operate, they have powerful motivation for revenge. That’s a motive you’re not reckoning.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Assuming human motives. That may be error.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Who’s our regul expert now?” It had been Aldin, Koch recalled, Aldin was dead; old age, like Saber’s former captain, Me the translations chief. Repeated jump stresses took it out of a man, put strain on old hearts. “Who’s carrying that department?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Dr. Boaz is Xen head.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boaz, Duncan’s friend, the mri expert Koch bit at his lip. Til not pull her up. She’s important down there.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Degas shrugged. “Dr. Simeon Averson specialized in language under Aldin; ran the classification system for library on Kesrith. He would be the likely authority in the field after Aldin and Boaz.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The man’s knowledge of the unbreachable intricacies of Flower’s departments did not surprise him. Del Degas was a collector of details. Pent in a closed system of humanity for the years of the voyage, he doubtless had turned his talents to the cataloging of everyone aboard. Koch dimly recalled the little man in question. He tried to call on Flower personnel as little as possible, disliking civs operating underfoot, delving into military records and files. Kesrith’s civilian governor had saddled him with Flower, and Mel Aldin had once been useful in the early stages of the mission, conducting crew briefings and studies, settling matters of protocol between regul elder and humans unused to regul. But the years of voyage had passed; things had found a certain routine, and Aldin had diminished in necessity and visibility. Flower held its own privacies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You’ll want him shuttled up?” Degas asked.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Do it.” Koch leaned back impatiently, rocked in his chair. “Galey moves down; Harris. Two shuttles. Every time we drop a rock into that pond we risk stirring something up. I don’t like it We don’t know that machinery’s dead. We’ll draw ourselves a little back. I don’t want us a sitting target”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I can have armaments moduled in, and scan; a very short delay. As well have several shuttles downworld as two; while we’re making one ripple in the pond, so to speak, we might as well take utmost advantage of it. Your operation with Galey might benefit by the information.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Koch expelled a slow breath. A long voyage, a mind like Degas’s . . . security had gone incestuous in the long confinement. “Everything,” he said, “every minute detail of those flight plans will be cleared with this office.” He tapped the stylus against the desk, looked at Degas, turned and keyed an order into the console.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chapter Six<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Aye, sir,” the youth exclaimed, and made haste about it<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No. We have strength for what we do, barely that.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Aye,” Taz said . . . scarless, no one yet in the Kel; but he had great grace, and Hlil was grateful for that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Forgive, kel Taz.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Sir,” Taz said quietly, and turned away, for a few moments finding something essential to do with the packing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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-“<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

O gods, Hlil thought, cursing that man.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Go back,” he said. “We cannot attend to one lost, and not others. Duty, Ras.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

She took the fastenings of the sword in hand, carefully unhooked her own and replaced it, laid what was hers against Nelan’s body.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And walked away, to stand supervising the others, having spoken no word to him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And suddenly, from inside, a snap of power, a flare of lights.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everyone stopped in that instant; and there was a heart-stopping rumble.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Runl” he shouted; they moved, raced ahead of a cloud which billowed out from the door. But the full collapse did not follow.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

At one such clearing he saw what he had feared to see, a white-dusted bundle of black amid the rubble. <\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Sen Kadas,” he shouted, and obtained only echoes and the steady shifting of plaster.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

And beyond . . . lights gleamed through a farther doorway.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Sen Kadas,” he called. “Sen Otha?” ‘<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Sen’ein,” he called.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Who?” a voice thundered.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“HIU s’Sochu,” he answered it, trembling creeping through him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What is your authorization?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“From the she’pan Melein s’lntel.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lights flared, points of red and amber visible through the white glare, from somewhere beyond it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Where is the she’pan?” it asked.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

“Sen’ein,” he called hoarsely.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suddenly the floor slipped underfoot, a tiny jolt, that penetrated to his heart. He edged back.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Gods,” he muttered, sick at heart, and, reckoning the disrespect of that here, shuddered and turned away.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I am receiving,” An-ehon thundered. The white eye of the machine flared. “Who?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

His leading.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He understood one rule, that waste was death; that what one gave the desert it never gave back, to world’s end.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He did what he knew to do, which was to yield nothing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

He lowered it again to save himself the misery, and trusted to the beast and to the sword.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that was worth nothing if one lost in the first encounter. He gasped breath and tried to hit a steady pace.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It hit from all sides, dus-sense, all about him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The others.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Niun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He gasped breath, struggled for mental balance, spun left in the sudden awareness of others on them, dus-sense warning them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Who are they?” Niun asked him, shortsword likewise in his hand. “What have you stirred?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Who are you?” Niun shouted out.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The hao’nath,” the answer came back, male and hoarse. “Who are you?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Kel’anth of the ja’anom. Get off my trail, hao’nath! You have no rights here.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was long silence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Duncan embraced him awkwardly, aware of his own chill and the mri’s fever-warmth, his own filthiness and the mri’s fastidious cleanliness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I reached them. Niun, I have been up there, in the ships.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Regul and not humans?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Both.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Allied,” Niun said. Anger fed through. Despair.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Again the membrane flashed across. Duncan shivered in that feeling.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Have you taken hire?” Niun asked. It was a reasonable question, without rancor. The Kel was mercenary.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I take no hire.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Dead?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“What are they likely to do?” <\/p>\n

“I would challenge,” Niun said. “But that would suit them. It is the tribe that is in danger now.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Melein-“<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“These tsi’mri in the ships,” Niun said. “You know them?”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I know them.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You talked with them a very long time.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“No. A day and a night.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You walk slowly, then.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Far out of my way. Not to be followed; and I walk slowly, yes.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ai.” Niun sat still a moment, nudged finally at the pack he had carried. It was question. <\/p>\n

“Food.” Duncan reached for it, to show him. Niun caught his wrist, released it<\/p>\n

“Your word is enough.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Niun’s eyes had locked on his, intent.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The membrane flashed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They ask her.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Or someone who would be her voice. They are reasoning beings, Niun.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Niun considered that in silence. There was perhaps a desire in Niun’s expression that he would never have shown a human. <\/p>\n

“The landing site,” Duncan urged at him. “They will be waiting there for an answer. An end to this, a way out.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The hao’nath,” Niun said hollowly. “Gods, the hao’nath.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I do not think,” Duncan said, “that humans will go outside that ship. At least not recklessly.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That through the city computers, messages could pass from zone to zone with the speed of comp transmission, not the migration of tribes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Your thought?” Niun asked.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Go back; get to that ship you and I. Put machines on our own side. And I know we cannot.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We cannot,” Niun said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And after a time of walking; “How far?” he asked. <\/p>\n

“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”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The tents-“<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They are without them.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melein, Duncan insisted.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chapter Seven<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Luiz appeared in the doorway of Flower’s lab offices, leaned there, his seamed face set in worry. “Shuttle’s down,” he said. “Two of them. They’re coming in pairs.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The dispatch is nearly ready.” Boaz made a few quick notes, sorted, clipped, gathered her materials into the pouch and sealed the coded lock; Security procedures, foreign to her. She found the whole arrangement distasteful. In her fifty-odd years she had had time to learn deep resentment for the military. Most of her life had been wartime, the forty-three-year mri wars. Her researches as a scientist had been appropriated to the war in distant offices; on Flower they had been directly seized. She had to her credit the decipherment of mri records which had led them here, which had led to the destruction of mri cities, and the death of children; and she grieved over that. A pacifist, she had done the mri more harm with pick and brush and camera than all of Saber’s firepower and all the ships humans had ever launched; she believed so; and she had had no choice had none now that she was reduced to writing reports for security, reckonings of yet another species for military use.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

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Book Preview \u00a0 \u00a0 Kutath By C.J Cherryh \u00a0 The Faded Sun Trilogy Book 3 \u00a0 Chapter One \u00a0 There was chaos about the docking bay; Galey observed it as he was coming in, heard it, a chatter of instructions in his ear, warning him to keep his distance. He held the shuttle parked a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[138],"class_list":["post-2233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-c-j-cherryh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}