Shon'jir

Chapter Seven

NIUN WAKENED, as at so many other wakings, a great lethargy on him. His eyes rested first upon Duncan, sitting as he had so often, patiently waiting by the side of his cot. Niun grew confused, disturbed at a vague memory.

"I thought," he said to Duncan, "that you had gone.”

Duncan reached forth a hand, laid it on his arm. Niun tried simply to move his fingers, and that effort was beyond his strength. "Are you awake?" Duncan asked of him. "Niun, wake up.”

He tried, earnestly, knowing that he was safe to do so if it were Duncan asking him; but the membrane half-closed over his eyes, hazing everything, making focus too difficult. The dark began to come back over him, and that was easier and more comfortable. He felt a touch on his mane, a mother's touch none other would touch him so; but the fingers that touched his face then were calloused. It remained something to perplex him, and hold him close to waking.

"Drink," he was told, a voice that he trusted. He felt him­self lifted Duncan's arm: he remembered. A vessel's plastic rim touched his lips. He drank, found cool water, swallowed several times. It slid to his stomach and lay there uneasily.

Duncan took the vessel away, let him back on raised cush­ions that did not let him sink back into his former peace, and the elevation of his head dizzied him for a moment. Niun be­gan to be sure that he was meant to wake in this terrible place, that there was no refuge. In his nostrils, unpleasant on the hot, heavy air, was the scent of food.

He could move his limbs. He found this a wonder. He tried to do so, began to absorb sensation again, and past and present finally merged in his mind.

He remembered fire and dark and a regul who he thought had killed him.

He lay now on a bed like a woman of the Kath, face-naked, his body naked and wasted beneath light coverings, his limbs without strength.

He was in an alien place. To this he had no wish to wake.

But there was dimly in his mind a belief that he had some­thing yet to do, that there was a duty yet undone.

Someone had told him this. He could not remember.

He tried to rise, succeeded in sitting up for an instant be­fore his arms began to shake uncontrollably and he collapsed. Duncan's arms caught him, gentle and yielding him to the mattress.

Thereafter it was easier to drift back into the Dark, where there was no remembrance at all. But Duncan would not let him. A cold cloth bathed his face, shocked awareness back into him.

"Come on," Duncan kept saying to him lifted his head once again and poured water between his unwilling lips. Then followed salt-laden meat broth, and Niun's stomach threatened rebellion.

"Water," he asked, after he had swallowed the mouthful; and receiving it, took one sip. It was all that he could bear.

He drifted away for a time then, and came back, found himself propped half-sitting. A comfortable rumbling sound filled his ears, numbed his mind for a time; he felt warmth upon his hand, a movement. He looked and saw to his confu­sion that a great dus had come to sit beside him. It pushed at the cot, making it shudder, then settled, soothing his mind with its contentment

And Duncan returned upon the instant in the dress of humans: he noticed this for the first time. Duncan had re­joined his own kind, as was proper. It was a human place. For the first time Niun began to take account of his presence not as delirium, most real and urgent of the images that peopled his wakings, but as a presence that had logical place among humans.

Whose reasons were doubtless human, and threatening.

Disturbed, the dus looked about at Duncan, then settled again, giving only a weary sigh. It tolerated the human; and this perplexed Niun frightened him, that even the incorrupt­ible dusei could be seduced. He had no protection left.

Dark crossed his mind, memory he did not want, towers falling, the she'pan's pale face in the darkness, eyes closed.

The dus lifted its head again, moaned and nosed at his hand.

"Melein," he asked, focusing on Duncan, on white walls and reality, for he had to ask. He remembered that he had trusted his human: hope surged up in him, that no guilt touched Duncan's face when he asked that question.

The human came and sat by him, touched the dus in doing so, as if he were utterly easy with the beast; but fear… fear was in him: Niun felt it. "She is here," Duncan told him. "She is well as well as you are.”

"That is not well at all," Niun said thickly, with a twist of his mouth; but it was true, then; it was true, and he had not dreamed it among the other dreams. He could not close his eyes, lest the tears flow from them, shaming him. He stared at Duncan, and fingered the velvet skin of the dus between them, a hot and comforting sleekness.

"You are free," Duncan explained carefully, distinctly, as one would talk to a child. "Both you and she. We are on a ship, headed out from Kesrith, and I am the only one besides you aboard. I've done this because I trust you. Do me the fa­vor of trusting me for a little while.”

This, incredible, mad as it was, had the simple sound of truth in it: there was no flinching in Duncan's gaze. Niun ac­cepted, bewildered as he was, and began at once to think of escort ships, of themselves surrounded, proceeding toward some human captivity, of a myriad other treacheries; but there was Duncan.

There was Duncan, on whom all hopes rested, who alone of human enemies and regul had understood him with honor, whose heart was honorable, a kel'en of the human folk.

He flexed his hands, trying their strength, found the numbness that had blanked his mind and weakened his limbs so long now retreating. Drugs: he recognized the probability of it; but they were losing their grip on his senses, leaving them increasingly clear. Duncan gave him water to drink again, and he drank; and more of the horrid broth, and he drank that too, and clamped his jaws and fought his stomach to keep his meal down.

The she'pan was alive: his true sister Melein, Mother of the People. She was his duty. He was kel'en, a warrior, and the sickness and the wound and the drugs had taken from him his strength and his quickness and his skill, which were all the possession he had ever owned, for the only purpose of his life, which was to serve the she'pan.

He did not let himself think of what had become of him, only of the necessity of standing on his feet, of finding again the strength to walk and go to her, wherever she was.

Until then he would bear with anything.

Duncan returned after a dark space; and in his hands he bore a black bundle of cloth, that he laid on the table by the bed.

"Your clothes," Duncan said. "If you will let me, I will help you.”

And Duncan did so, carefully, gently, helping him to sit for a moment that his senses spun and went gray, then settled him back again, wrapped in the familiar comfort of a kel'en's i

Duncan sat beside him, waiting until he had his breath again. "The she'pan is doing well," he said. "She took food and demanded her belongings and told me to go away. I did.”

Niun slipped a hand within his robe, where a scar crossed his ribs, and knew that he should have died: they both should have died. "Tsi'mri medicines," he objected, his voice trem­bling with outrage; and yet he knew that these same forbid­den things had kept them both alive, and he was, guiltily, unwilling to die. He was twenty-six years old; he had expect­ed to die before this: most kel'ein did, but most kel'ein had had honors in plenty by this time. Niun had gained nothing wherewith he was proud to go into the Dark. All that he had almost won, he had lost, being taken captive, allowing the she'pan to be taken. He should have died.

But not here, not like this.

"It was not your fault," Duncan said.

"I have lived too long," Niun answered him, which was the truth: both he and Melein had outlived their kind, outlived the People; and that was bitter fact. He did not know what she would choose to do when she found him again, or what she would bid him do. He looked on Duncan with regret. Duncan's eyes were, Niun saw, shadowed with weariness, his person unkept, as if he had slept little. At the moment he looked distraught.

"The regul would have taken you," Duncan said hoarsely. "I had the chance to put you among my people, and I took it. The she'pan did not object. She knew what I did.”

The assertion shook at his confidence of things trustworthy. Niun stared at Duncan for a moment, and at last put down his pride, asked questions as he would of a brother of the Kel.

"Where are my weapons?”

"Everything you own is here," Duncan said. "I will bring you your weapons now if you insist; but you've been half asleep and you've been sick, and I thought you might not know where you are or understand what's going on. I'd hate to be shot in a misunderstanding.”

This was at least sensible. Niun let go a carefully con­trolled breath, reminding himself that this human tended to tell the truth, contrary to the experience of the People with tsi'mri in general. "I am not sick anymore," he said.

"Do you want me to go and bring your weapons?”

Niun considered the matter, staring at Duncan's naked face; he had challenged… Duncan had answered with an offer, though his truth had been doubted, insulting him. "No," Niun said, making an effort to relax. "You go and come much; when you come again, you will bring them.”

"I would prefer," said Duncan, "to wait until I am sure you are well. Then I will bring them.”

Niun glanced aside unhappily: face-naked, he felt the help­lessness of his wasted limbs and lay still, compelled to accept the situation. The dus stirred, uncomfortable in his distress. He moved his hand and comforted it.

"I have brought some food," Duncan said. "I want you to eat.”

"Yes," Niun agreed. He thrust himself up against the cush­ions as Duncan went out into the corridor to fetch what he had brought; he took the moment to catch his breath, had steadied himself by the time Duncan returned, and deter­mined to feed himself, though his hand shook when he picked up the bowl.

There was cold, offworld fruit, of which delicacies he had heard, but never eaten; there was a sort of bread, too soft for his liking, and thick, but it was easy to eat; and soi, for which he had a fondness. He took the bittersweet cup in both hands and drank it down to the bitter last, for it was the only famil­iar, Kesrithi thing, even if it were regul, and he knew that it was good for him. He had eaten a great deal for his abused stomach to absorb; he rested very still when he had eaten, reckoning that to remain very still was the only means of keeping it down.