“Our Ancestors,” he prayed, “receive this soul, not born of our kindred; spirits of our Ancestors, receive her, Mim h’Elas. Take her gently among you, one with us, as birth-sharing, loving, beloved. Peace was upon her heart, this child of Elas, daughter of Minas, of Indras, of the far-shining city.”
“Spirits of Elas,” prayed Kta, holding his hands also toward the fire, “our Ancestors, wake and behold us. Guardians of Elas, see us, this wrong done against us; swift to vengeance, our Ancestors, wake and behold us.”
Kurt looked on, lost, unable even to mourn for her as they mourned, alien even in the moment of her dying. And he watched as Ptas took from Kta’s hands the dragon blade. She bent over Mim with that, and this was beyond bearing. Kurt cried out, but Ptas severed only a lock of Mim’s dark hair and cast it into the blaze of the holy fire.
Aimu sobbed audibly. Kurt could take no more. He turned suddenly and fled the hall, out into the entryway.
“It is done.” Kta knelt where he found him, crouched in the corner of the entry against the door. He set his hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “It is over now. We will put her to rest. Will you wish to be present?”
Kurt shuddered and turned his face toward the wall. “I can’t,” he said, lapsing into his native tongue. “I can’t. I loved her, Kta. I can’t go.”
“Then we will care for her, my friend. We will care for her.”
“I lovedher,” he insisted, and felt the pressure of Kta’s fingers on his shoulder.
“Is there—some rite you would wish? Surely—surely our Ancestors would find no wrong in that.”
“What could she have to do with my people?” Kurt swallowed painfully and shook his head. “Do it the way she would understand.”
Kta arose and started to leave, then knelt again. “My friend,—come to my room first. I will give you something that will make you sleep.”
“No,” he said. “Leave me alone. Leave me.”
“I am afraid for you.”
“Take care of her. Do that for me.”
Kta hesitated, then rose again and withdrew on silent feet.
Kurt sat listening for a moment. The family left the rhmeiby the left-hand hall, their steps dying away into the far places of the house. Kurt rose then and opened the door quietly, shutting it quietly behind him in such a way that the inner bar fell into place.
The streets were deserted, as they had been since the Methi’s guards had taken their places at the wall-street. He walked not toward the Afen, but downward, toward the harbor.
14
Daylight was finally beginning to break through the mists, lightening everything to gray, and there was the first stirring of wind that would disperse the fog.
Kurt skirted the outermost defense wall of Nephane, the rocking, skeletal outlines of ships ghostly in the gray dawn. No one watched this end of the harbor, where the ancient walls curved against Haichema-tleke’s downslope, where the hill finally reached the water, where the walls towered sixty feet or more into the mist.
Here the city ended and the countryside began. A dirt track ran south, rutted with the wheels of hand-pulled carts, mired, thanks to the recent rains. Kurt ran beside the road and left it, heading across country.
He could not think clearly yet where he was bound. Elas was closed to him. If he set eyes on Djan or t’Tefur now he would kill them, with ruin to Elas. He ran, hoping only that it was t’Tefur who would pursue him, out beyond witnesses and law.
It would not bring back Mim. Mim was buried by now, cold in the earth. He could not imagine it, could not accept it, but it was true.
He was weary of tears. He ran, pushing himself to the point of collapse, until that pain was more than the pain for Mim, and exhaustion tumbled him into the wet grass all but senseless.
When he began to think again, his mind was curiously clear. He realized for the first time that he was bleeding from an open wound—had been all night, since the assassin’s blade had passed his ribs. It began to hurt. He found it not deep, but as long as his hand. He had no means to bandage it. The bleeding was not something he would die of. His bruises were more painfuclass="underline" his cord-cut wrists and ankles hurt to bend. He was almost relieved to feel these things, to exchange these miseries for the deep one of Mim’s loss, which had no limit. He put Mim away in his mind, rose up and began to walk again, steps weaving at first, steadier as he chose his direction.
He wanted nothing to do with the villages. He avoided the dirt track that sometimes crossed his way. As the day wore on and the warmth increased he walked more surely, choosing his southerly course by the sun.
Sometimes he crossed cultivated fields, where the crops were only now sprouting, and the earliest trees were in bloom and not yet fruited. Root-crops like staswere stored away in the safety of barns, not to be had in the fields.
By twilight he was feeling faint with hunger, for he had not eaten—he reckoned back to breakfast a day ago. He did not know the land, dared not try the wild plants. He knew then that he must think of stealing or starve to death, and he was sorry for that, because the country folk were generally both decent and poor.
The bitter thought occurred to him that among the innocent of this world his presence had brought nothing but grief. It was only his enemies that he could never harm.
Mim stayed with him. He could not so much as look at the stars overhead without hearing the names she gave them: Ysime the pole star, mother of the north wind; blue Lineth, the star that heralded the spring, sister of Phan. His grief had settled into a quieter misery, one with everything.
In the dark, there came to his nostrils the scent of wood-smoke, borne on the northwest wind.
He turned toward it, smelled other things as he drew nearer, animal scents and the delicious aroma of cooking. He crept silently, carefully toward the fold of hills that concealed the place.
There was no house, but a campfire tended by two men and a youth, country folk, keepers of flocks, cachiren.He heard the soft calling of their wool-bearing animals from somewhere beyond a brush barricade on the other side of the fire.
A snarled warning cut the night. The shaggy tilofthat guarded the cachinlifted its head, his hackles rising, alerting the cachiren,they who scrambled up, weapons in hand, and the beast raced for the intruder.
Kurt fled, seeking a pile of rock that had tumbled from the hillside, and tried to find a place of refuge. The beast’s teeth seized his ankle, tore as he jerked free and scrambled higher.
“Come down!” shouted the youth, spear poised for throwing. “Come down from there.”
“Hold the creature off,” Kurt shouted back. “I will gladly come down if you will only call him off.”
Two of them kept spears aimed at him, while the youth went higher and dragged the snarling and spitting guard-beast down again by his shaggy ruff.
Kurt clambered down gingerly and spoke to them gently and courteously, for they prodded him with their spears, forcing him in the direction of the firelight, and he feared what they would do when they saw his human face.
When he reached the light he kept his head down, and knelt by the fireside and sat back on his heels in an at-home posture. The keen point of a spearblade touched beneath his shoulder. The other two men circled to the front to look him over.
“Human,” one exclaimed, and point the point pressed deeper and made him wince.
“Where are the rest of you?” the white-haired elder asked.
“I am not Tamurlin,” said Kurt, “and I am alone. I beg you, I need food. I am of the Methi’s people.”
“He is lying,” said the boy behind him.
“He might be,” said the elder, “but he talks manlike.”
“You do not need to give me hospitality,” said Kurt, for the sharing of bread and fire created a religious bond forever unless otherwise agreed upon from the beginning. “But I do ask you for food and drink. It is the second day since I have eaten.”
“Where did you come from?” asked the elder.
“From Nephane.”