Shon'jir

Chapter Thirteen

NO LONGER gold-robed, but white, Melein. She had made her­self new robes, had made herself a home from the compart­ment nearest controls, plain and pleasant one chair, hers, and mats for sitting, and upon the walls she had begun to write, great serpentines of gold and black and blue that filled the room she had taken for her own hall, that spread down the corridor outside in lively and strange contrast to the barren walls elsewhere. From her haven she had begun to take the ship, to make it home.

Out of her own mind she had resurrected the appearance of the lost edun, the House of the People. She had recalled the writings; and of her own skill and by her own labor she had done these things, this difficult and holy work.

Niun was awed when he saw it, each time that he came to attend her, and found her work advancing through the ship. He had not believed that she could have attained such knowledge. She was, before she was she'pan, youngest daugh­ter of the House: Melein Zain-Abrin, Chosen of the she'pan Intel.

He had utterly lost the Melein he had known, his true sis­ter, his comrade once of the Kel. The process had been a gradual one, advancing like the writings, act by act. He put from his mind the fact that they had been children of the Kath together, that they had played at being kel'ein in the high hills of Kesrith. Hers became the age and reverence of all she'panei. Her skills made her a stranger to him. Being merely kel'-en, he could not read what she wrote, could not pierce the mysteries in which she suddenly spoke, and he knew to his confusion how vast the gulf was that had opened between them in the six years since they had both been of the Kel. The blue seta'al were cut and stained into her face as well as his, the proud marks of a warrior; but the hands were forbidden weapons now, and her bearing was the quiet re­serve of the Sen. She did not go veiled. A Mother of an edun almost never veiled, her face always accessible to her chil­dren. Only in the presence of the profaning and the unacknowledgeable did she turn her face aside. She was alone: the gold-robed Sen should have been her servants; ex­perienced warriors of the Kel should have been her Hus­bands; the eldest of the Kath should have brought bright-eyed children for her delight. He felt the inadequacy of everything he could do for her, at times with painful force.

"Niun." She smiled and touched his offered hand. He knelt by her chair knelt, for the Kel did not use the luxury of furniture, no more than the ascetic Sen. His dus was near him, warm and solid. The little one, visitor, crowded near the she'pan's feet, adoring, dus-wise. A Sen-caste mind was said to be too complex, too cold for the dusei's taste. Niun did not know if this were true: it was strange that even when Melein had been of the Kel, no dus had ever sought her, a source of grief to her, and bitter envy of other kel'ein. Now she had none, would have none. The dus adored, but it did not come close with its mind preferring even a human to Melein s" Intel, to the calculating power of a she'pan.

He bowed his head beneath her touch, looked up again. "I have brought Duncan," he said. "I have told him.how to bear himself; I have warned him.”

Melein inclined her head. "If you judge it time," she said, stroking the back of the dus that sat by her. "Bring him.”

Niun looked up at her, to make one final appeal to her pa­tience to speak to her that he had known as a child; but he could not find that closeness with her. The disturbance passed to the dusei. His shook its head. He rose, pushed at the beast to make it move.

Duncan waited. Niun found him standing where he had left him, against the door on the other side of the corridor. "Come," he told the human, "and do not veil. You are not in a strange hall.”

Duncan refastened the mez just beneath his chin, and came inside with him, hesitated in the middle of the room until Melein herself held out her hand in invitation, and showed him where he should sit, at her left hand, where the lesser dus rested.

Duncan went, fearing the dus, mortally afraid of that beast. Niun opened his mouth to protest, but he thought that he would shame Duncan if he did so, and make question of his fitness to be here. Carefully Duncan settled where he was asked; and Niun sat down in his own place at Melein's right, within arm's reach of Duncan and the other animal. He touched the smaller dus with his fingertips, felt it settled and was relieved at what he felt.

"Duncan," Melein said softly. "Kel Duncan. Niun avows you are able to understand the hal'ari.”

"I miss words, she'pan, but I understand.”

"But then, you did understand somewhat of the mu'ara be­fore you came into our company.”

"Yes. A few words.”

"You must have worked very hard," she said. "Do you know how long you have been aboard?”

"No. I do not count the time anymore.”

"Are you content, Duncan?”

"Yes," he said, which Niun heard and he held his breath, for he did not believe it. Duncan lied: it was a human thing to do.

It was wrong thing to have done.

"You know," said Melein, "that we are going home.”

"Niun has told me.”

"Did your people surmise that?”

Duncan did not answer. The question disturbed him greatly: Niun felt it through the dusei, a shock of fear.

'K)ur outward journey," Melein continued softly, "was long ago, before such ships as this were available to us, no such swift passage, no; and we delayed along the way that brought us to you, sometimes a thousand years or two. Usually there is time that the People in truth do forget, that in the Dark be­tween suns there are generations born that are not taught the Pana, the Forbidden, the Holy, the Mysteries and they step out onto a new earth, ignorant of all they are not told. But this time, this time, kel Duncan, we carry our living past with us, in your person; and though this is against every law, every wisdom of she'panei before me, so is this voyage different from other voyages and this Dark from other Darks. I have permitted you to remain with us. Did your people surmise, Duncan, that we are going home?”

There was a forbidden game the children of the Kath would play, the truth-game: touch the dus and try to lie. When the Mothers knew it, they forbade it, though the great beasts were tolerant of the children, and the children's i

Find where I have hidden the stone.

Is it near? Is it far?

Touch the dus and try to lie.

But not among brothers, not within the Kel or the Sen. "Melein," Niun protested. "He fears the beast.”

"He fears," she echoed harshly. "Tell me, Duncan, what they supposed of the record they put within this ship.”

"That it might be that it might be the location of mri bases.”

The feeling in the air was like that before a storm, thick and close and unreal. The great dus shivered, lifted its head. "Be still," Niun whispered in its blunt ear, tugging at it to distract the beast.

"Ah," said Melein. "And humans have surely duplicated this record. They will have taken this gift that was in the pan'en, that rested within then: hands. And to make us trust it, they gave us you.”

The dus cried out suddenly, moved, both of them. It hurled Duncan aside, away he rolled to the wall, sprawled at the impact and both dusei were on their feet, their panic tangible. "Yai!" Niun cried at his own, clapped his hands, struck it. It reacted, threw its weight against its lesser companion, and kept the confused dus at bay, constantly shifting to remain between it and him; and Niun flung himself to Duncan's side, forcing his dus to shield them both.

The panic crested, subsided. Duncan was on his knees, holding his arm against his body, shuddering convulsively; his face was white and beaded with sweat. Niun touched him, dragged the arm outward and pushed up the sleeve, exposing the ugly, swelling wound.

Dus-poison.

"You will not die of it," Niun told him, holding him, try­ing to ease the sickly shuddering that wracked the human. He was not sure that Duncan could understand him. Melein came, bent down, touched the wounded arm; but there was no pity in her, only cold curiosity.

The dusei crept back. The little one, abused, hung back and radiated distress, blood-feelings. The greater one nosed at Duncan, snorted and drew back, and the human flinched and cried aloud.

"You have hurt them both," Niun said to Melein, thinking that she would feel remorse for one or the other, the dus or the man.

"He is still tsi'mri," she said. "And Niun, he has lied to us from the begi

"You do not know what you have done," said Niun. "He feared the dusei, feared this one most especially. How could you expect to get truth from him? The dus is hurt, Melein; I do not know how far.”

"You forget yourself.”

"She'pan," he said, bowed his head, but it did not appease her. He took Duncan's good arm and helped him to stand, and flung his arm about him, holding him on his feet. The human was in utter, deep shock. When Niun began to move, the dus came, and slowly, slowly they left the presence of the she'pan.

Sometimes the human fought his way out of the fever, be­came for a moment lucid; at such times he seemed to know where he was, and his eyes wandered his surroundings, where he lay against the dus, in the corner of the kel-hall. But it did not last. He could not hold, and retreated again into his delir­ium. Niun did not speak to him, did not brighten the lights too much; it was best to keep both man and dus as free of sensation as possible.

Finally, when by night-cycle there was no improvement, Niun went to Duncan, and, as a kath'en might undress a child, took from him his mez and zaidhe, and his robes too, so that he might take warmth from the dus. He bedded him between his own dus and the afflicted one, and covered him with a doubled blanket.

The poison was strong in him; and a bond had been forced between two creatures that had not been able to bear each other. The wound was a deep puncture, and Duncan had taken more venom from the hollow dewclaw than was good even for a mri who was accustomed to it. But the old ways said (and being kel'en, Niun did not know whether this was truth or fable) that a dus knew its man by this thereafter, that once the substance had gone into a man and he had lived, then he would nevermore be in danger from the venom or the anger of that particular dus, which would never part from him in life. This was not entirely so,' for a man who handled dusei frequently received small scratches from the dewclaw; and occasionally deeper ones, which might make him fevered. But it was also true that a man not accustomed to a particular dus might react very stongly, even fatally, to a bad wound from it.