Shon'jir

"They are of a world no less hard," Niun said finally, "and they are likely ranging out in search of their own meal.”

But he frowned and still watched the horizon.

And a strange thing began to happen as the sun declined. Through the gentle haze in the air, mountains leaped into being that had not been visible before, and the land grew and extended before them, developing new limits with the sun be­hind the hills.

On the shores of the dying sea rose towers and slender spires, only a shade darker than the apricot sky.

"Ah!" breathed Melein, rising; and they two rose up and stood gazing at that horizon, at that mirage-like city that hung before them. It remained distinct only for a few mo­ments, and then faded into shadow as the rim of Na'i'in slipped beneath the horizon and brought them dusk.

"That was surely what the instruments sensed," said Duncan.

"Something is alive there.”

"Perhaps," said Niun. Surely he yearned to believe so, but he evinced no hope, no anxiousness. He accepted the worst first: he had constantly done so; it seemed to keep the mri sane, in a history that held little but destructions.

Melein settled again to her mat on the sand, and locked her arms about her knees and said nothing at all.

"It could be very far," Duncan said.

"If it is the source of what you sca

Duncan shrugged. "A day or so.”

Niun frowned, slipped the mez lower to expose most of his face. "Tell me truth: are you able to make such a walk?”

Duncan nodded, mri-fashion. "The air is thin, but not be­yond my limits. Mostly the cold troubles me.”

"Wrap yourself. I think that we will rest in this place tonight.”

"Niun, I will not be a burden on you.”

Niun considered this, nodded finally. "Mri are not bearers of burdens," he said, which Duncan took for kel humor, and the precise truth. He gri

The veils were replaced. Duncan settled to rest in a ther­mal sheet with rather more peace at heart than he knew was rational under the circumstances. In the chill air, the blanket and the robes together made a comfortably warm rest, deli-ciously so. Overhead, the stars, strangely few in a clear sky, observed no familiar patterns. He made up his own, a trian­gle, a serpent, and a man with a great dus at his heels. The effort exhausted his fading mind, and he slept, to wake with Niun shaking his shoulder and advising him he must keep his turn at watch: the dusei had not yet returned.

He sat wrapped in warmth the remaining part of the night, gazing at the horizon that was made strange by the growth of pipes atop the plainsward ridge, watching in solitude the rise of Na'i'in over their backtrail, a heart-filling beauty.

It was more than a fair trade, he thought.

As the light grew, the mri began to stir; they took a morn­ing meal, leisurely in their preparations, content to say little and to gaze often about them.

And on the rising wind came a strange, distant note that made them stop in the attitudes of the instant, and listen; and then Niun and Melein laughed aloud, relieved.

The dusei were a-hunt, and nearby.

They packed up, and loaded the sled: Duncan drew it. Niun, kel'anth, senior of the Kel, could not take such work while there was another to do it; this had long been the order of things, and Duncan assumed it without question. But the mri watched him, and at the first rise they approached, Niun silently set his hand on the rope and disengaged him from it, looping it across his own shoulder.

It was not hard work for the mri, for the land was rela­tively flat and the powdery red sand glided easily under the metal ru

During a rest stop, one of the dusei appeared on the hor­izon, stood for a time, and the other joined it. Ever and again the beasts put in an appearance and as quickly vanished; they had been gone some time in this last absence. Duncan willed his back, concerned for it and distressed at its irrational be­havior, but it came only halfway and stopped. It looked dif­ferent; he would not have recognized it, but that there were only two on all Kutath, and the larger one was still hanging back at the crest of the slope. Both looked different.

Leaner. The sleek look was gone, overnight.

The dus swung about suddenly and joined its partner on the ridge. Both went over that low rolling of the land; Duncan watched to see them reappear going away, and blinked, for it seemed impossible that something so large could vanish so thoroughly in so flat a land.

"What is the matter with them?" he asked of Niun; the mri shrugged and resumed his course behind Melein, meaning, Duncan supposed, that Niun did not know.

And soon after, as their course brought them near some of the blue-green pipe, Niun cut a bit of it with his av-tlen and watched it fill with water in the uncut portion.

"I would not sample that," Duncan said uneasily.

But the mri took a little into his mouth, a very little, and spat it out again in a moment. "Not so bad," he said. "Sweet. Possibly the pulp is edible. We shall see if I sicken from it. The dusei did not think so.”

This was a mystery still, that there could be communica­tion of such precise nature between dus and man; but Duncan remembered the feeling they had had in the first dis­covery of the plants an intense pleasure.

Niun did not sicken. After midday he sampled a bit more, and by evening pronounced it acceptable. Duncan tasted, and it was sweet like sugared fruit, and pleasant and cold. Melein took some last of all, after camp was made and after it was clear that neither mri nor human had taken harm of it.

The sun slipped to the rim of the chasm and shredded into ribbons, lingering for a last moment. Their city returned amid the haze.

It was large; it was firmly grounded on the earth, and no floating mirage. The towers were distinctly touched by the light before it vanished.

"It is written in the pan'en," Melein said softly, "that there was a city of towers yellow-towered Ar-ehon. Other cities are named there: Zohain, Tho'e'i-shai and Le'a'haen. The sea was Sha'it, and the plains had their names, too.”

There was the wind, and the whisper of the sand grains moving. It was all that moved, save themselves, who came as strangers, and one of them strange indeed.

But Melein named them names, and Kutath acquired sub­stance about them, terrible as it was in its desolation. Niun and Melein talked together, laughed somewhat in all that stillness, but the stillness settled into the bones, and stopped the breath, and Duncan found difficulty in moving "for a mo­ment until Niun touched his wrist and asked him a question that he must, in embarrassment, beg the mri to repeat.

"Duncan?" Niun asked then, sensing the disturbance in him.

"It is nothing," Duncan said, and wished for the dus back, to no avail. He gazed beyond the mri into the darkening chasm of the dying sea, and wondered that they could laugh in such a place.

And that Melein in her mind saw the vast waters that had lapped and surged in that nakedness: that more than any­thing else thrust home to him the span of time that these two mri had crossed.

Niun pressed his arm and withdrew, wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down to sleep, as Melein likewise settled for the night.

Duncan took the watch, wrapped in his thermal sheet and warm in the ah that frosted his breath. The moon was aloft, gibbous. A wisp of high clouds appeared hi the north, not enough to obscure the stars.

He felt the presence of the dus once. It did not come close, but it was there, somewhere near them, reassurance.