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Then he went out into the hall, and flushed hot with sudden embarrassment, for there was Niun, at the same moment, and he hoped that kel reticence would prevent questions.
The mri, he thought, looked well-content.
"Was it well with you?" Niun asked.
He nodded.
"Come," said Niun. "There is a courtesy to be done.”
Kath-hall looked different under day-phase lighting. The mats were cleared away, and the children scurried about madly at their coming, ran each to a kath'en, and with amazing swiftness a line formed, guiding them to the door.
First was the kath'anth, who stood alone, and took Niun's hands together and smiled at him. "Tell the Kel that we do not understand the machines in this place, but there will be di
"Perhaps I could assist with the machines," Duncan suggested when the kath'anth took his hands hi turn; and the kath'anth laughed, and so did Niun, and all the kath'ein that heard.
"He or I might," Niun said, covering his embarrassment with grace. "We have many skills, he and I.”
"If the Kel would deign," said the kath'anth.
"Send when we are needed," said Niun.
And they passed from her to the line of kath'ein; Niun went first and gravely took the hands of a certain kath'en, bowed to her and took the hands of her little daughter and performed the same ritual.
Duncan understood then, and went to Sa'er, and did the same; and took the hand of her son as the boy offered his, wrist to wrist as men touched.
"He is kel Duncan," said Sa'er to her son, and to Duncan: "He is Ka'aros.”
The child stared, wide-eyed with a child's honesty, and did not return Duncan's shy smile. Sa'er nudged the boy. "Sir," he said, and the membrane flicked across his eyes. He did not yet have the adult's mane: his was short and revealed his ears, that were tipped with a little curl of transparent down.
"Good day," said Sa'er, and smiled at him.
"Good day," he wished her; and joined Niun, who waited at the door. Silence reigned in the hall. They left, and then he heard a murmuring of voices after them, knowing that questions were being asked.
"I liked her," he confessed to Niun. And then further confession: "We did nothing.”
Niun shrugged, and put on his veil. "It is important that a man have good report of the Kath. The kath'en was more than gracious in the parting. Had you offended her, she would have made that known, and that would have hurt you sorely in the House.”
"I was surprised that you took me there.”
"I had no choice. It is always done. I could not bring you into the Kel like a kel'e'en, without this night.”
Duncan tucked in his own veil, and breathed easier to know himself well-acquitted. "Doubtless you were worried.”
"You are kel'en; you have learned to think as we think. I am not surprised that you chose a resting-night. It was wise, And," he added, "if you send the kath'en the ka'islai, and she does not return them, then you must go and fetch them.”
"Is that how it is done?”
Niun laughed, a soft breath. "So I have heard. I myself am naive in such matters.”
They came to main hall, and Duncan went behind Niun as he paid his morning respects at the shrine; he stood silently there, thinking strangely of a place in his childhood, sensing in another part of his thoughts a dus that was fretting and impatient, confined in kel-hall.
And of a sudden came the machine-voice, An-ehon, deep and thundering through all the halls, through stone and flesh:
Alarm... alarm... ALARM.
He froze, dazed, as Niun thrust past him. "Stay here!" Niun shouted at him, and rushed for sen-hall access, where a kel'en had no business to be. Duncan stopped in mid-step cast about left and right, saw other kel'ein rushing down from kel-tower; and there were kath'ein; and Melein herself, descending from the tower of the she'pan, seeking sen-access at a near-run amid the frightened questions that were thrown at her.
"Let me come!" Duncan cried at her, overtaking her, and she did not forbid him. He followed her up, up into sen-hall, where alarmed sen'ein boiled about like disturbed insects, gold about Niun's black, who stood before An-ehon's flickering lights who questioned it, and obtained screens lighted with pictures the rudest kel'en could understand: the desert, and a dying glow in a rising cloud on the far horizon.
The ship.
Melein thrust her way through the sen'ein, that crowded from her path, and the while she laid hands on the panels her eyes were for the screens. Duncan tried to follow her, but the sen'ein caught at him, thrust out their hands in his path, forbidding.
"Strike was made from orbit," An-ehon droned, the while the mad alarm di
"Strike back," Melein ordered.
'Wo.'" Duncan shouted at her. But An-ehon's flicker-swat reaction showed a line of retaliation plotted, intersecting orbit
Lines flashed rapidly, perspectives shifting.
"Unsuccessful," An-ehon droned.
And the panels all flared, and the air filled with sound that began too deep to hear and finished like thunder. The floor, the very foundations shook.
"Attack has been returned," said An-ehon. "Shields have held.”
"Stop it," Duncan shouted, pushed sen'ein brutally aside and broke through to Melein, stopped when Niun himself thrust a hand in his way. "Listen to me. That will be a class-one warship up there. You ca
Melein's eyes were terrible as they met his: suspicion, anger ... in that moment he was alien, and close to the edge of her rage.
The thunder came again. The mri held their sensitive ears, and Melein shouted another order for attack.
"Target is passing out of range," An-ehon said when the noise had faded. "Soon coming up over Zohain. Zohain will attack.”
"You ca
"You see what good your signal from the ship did," said Niun. "That is their answer to your signal of friendship. That is their word on it.”
"Zohain has fallen," said An-ehon. "Shields did not hold. I am receiving alarm from Le'a'haen… There is another attack approaching this zone. Alarm… alarm… ALARM ... ALARM....”
"Get your people out!" Duncan shouted at them.
Terror was written in the eyes of Melein and Niun, nightmare repeated: the floor shook. There was a rumbling crash outside the edun.
"Go!" Melein cried. "The hills, seek the hills!”
But she did not, nor Niun, while the Sen broke for the door, for outside, abandoning possessions, everything. Even over the sounds of An-ehon cries could be heard elsewhere in the edun.
"Get out, get out both of you," Duncan pleaded. "Wait for a break hi the attack and get out of here. Let me try with the machine.”
Melein turned to Niun, ignoring him. "Kel'anth, lead your people." And before Niun could move, she looked up at the banks that were An-ehon. "Continue to fight. Destroy the invaders.”
"This city is holding," droned the machine. "Outer structures may be drained of shielding to protect the edun complex. When this city falls, there are others. We are coordinating defenses. We are under multiple attack. We advise immediate evacuation. We advise the she'pan to secure her person. Preservation of her person is of overriding importance.”
–"I am leaving," Melein said; and to Duncan, for Niun had gone: "Come. Haste.”
He thrust past her, to the console. "An-ehon,?' he said, "give me communication “
"Do not permit it!" Melein shouted, and the machine struck, a force that lit the air and hurled him numb and cold against the floor.
He saw her robes pass him, and she was ru
The floor bucked.
"Alarm… ALARM… ALARMLLL…" cried An-ehon.
He rolled his head, dragged a shoulder over, saw areas of the banks going dark.
And the floor shook again, and the lights began dimming.
There was a time of quiet.
He found it possible finally to move his legs, arms, to drag himself up, and he staggered through littered sen-hall into the winding corridor down to main hall. A great shadow met him there, his dus, that almost threw him off his feet in the pressure of its body: he used it then, leaning on it, and staggered past the litter that confused the hall, and out into the light, the open city there began to see the dead, old sen'ein, children of the Kath a kel'en, crushed by a toppling wall.
He found Sa'er, a huddled shape in blue at the bottom of the ramp, a golden hand clenched about a stone, a face open-eyed and dusty with the sand of Kutath.
"Ka'aros!" he called with all the strength in him, remembering her son, and there was no answer.
The People's trail was marked with dead, the old, the fragile, the young: all that was gentle, he thought, everything.
He heard a sound of thunder, looked up and saw a flash, a mote of light. Something operating in-atmosphere. He expected, even while he ran with all the speed that was in him, the white flash that would kill him, as he left the protective zone.
But it went over the horizon. The sound died.
Beyond the city, beyond the pitiful ruin, there stretched a line of figures, alive and moving. He made haste to follow, desperate, exhausted. The dus moved with him, blood-feelings stirred in it, that caught up his rage and fear and cast it back amplified.
He overtook the last of the column finally, his throat dry, his lungs wracked with coughing. Blood poured from his nose and tasted salt-coppery in his mouth.
"The kel'anth?" he asked. A narrow-eyed kel'e'en pointed toward the head of the column. "The she'pan?" he asked again. "Is she well?”
"Yes," one said, as if to answer him at all were contamination.
He kept moving at more than their pace, seeking the column's head, passed kel'ein that carried kath-children, and kath'ein that carried infants, and kel'ein that supported old ones of any caste, though few enough of the old were left them.