She followed him out of the hut. “I will not allow you to go unwatched,” she said.
“I intend to make camp far enough away so that you can sleep peacefully.”
“You think I’m going to sleep with you here!”
He stood silently, bulking against the starry desert sky. God began to pass overhead. God’s Streak was always a spectacular sight, a pinsized glow of sun-orange light visibly moving across the void, brighter than any star. Oelita folded to her knees and with the traditional gesture of supplication, arms raised and crossed, head lifted back, made one fervent prayer: “Let this man be gone!”
Joesai ambled away across the ravine. She followed. He kept his promise to make camp far from her abode. She hunched down to watch him, something panicky in the glow of her eyes. “You’ll need some sleep,” he said.
“I’m not going to let you sleep,” she replied.
He curled up on his mat. She poked a stick at him. He played the game, stoically ignoring her. At intervals she poked him or threw a rock. When he heard the faintest insect signal from Eiemeni, Joesai decided it was time to be annoyed. He sat up and began to curse her the way a man desperate for sleep might curse his torturer. She hurled his invective back at him, and he learned the subtleties of Sorrow’s gutter language that had defended the Clanless One long ago. He shifted tactics and began to plead for her to be reasonable.
She never heard the cries when her children were being silenced. He gave up the argument and tried to go back to sleep again. She prodded him with irregular mercilessness. Only when the sudden distant wailing of babies caught her ear, to the west of her hut, did she startle and pass into terror. She began to run. He followed her. She flew out of the hut, wild murder in her eyes. “Have you killed them?”
“They are very safe, and probably very frightened because you are not with them.”
“You machine-made bastard!”
He could see her wavering. Should she stagger toward the west into the impossible night? She’d never find them. She’d have to be equipped to survive out there, and that would take time. Should she plead with Joesai? Should she risk everything and try to kill him so that he wouldn’t follow her?
“I will take you to them,” he said.
She slumped in anguish. “So you’ve laid your trap.”
“No. I’m taking you out of this Death’s Jaw. The Seventh Trial is over. You survived it and I’m impressed.”
“You didn’t cause me to come here!” Contempt and wild hope and suspicion were all in her voice.
“Who knows the workings of the Death Rite? It seems to affect the challenger as much as the one on trial. I’ve changed.”
“You haven’t changed! What you’ve done now just demonstrates that! You’re taking me away from my home to kill me and I have to go in blind hope for my children. You deceive me that my little haven here is the Seventh Trial. It has cherished me, protected me! My well, the abode of Death? I love this place. You will lead me from here in chains to the Seventh Trial and that will kill me.”
“The Seventh Trial though the most difficult of the trials, cannot be a death but by law must be a measure of your kalothi. This ravine could be harsher, yes, but then it would be a simple assassin. What would it tell us of your kalothi? To have settled in this place and lived is possible but not probable. You have great kalothi, Oelita, and I am bonded to you by my own foolishness in casting such a Rite of Trial upon you. I owe you a Great Favor.”
“Then you must return my children and leave me here in peace,” she said bitterly.
“The bond of kalothi does not require me to humor my friend’s madness.” He loaded her packsack. “Your twins are waiting. They have never before been separated from you. They will be suffering.”
She had no choice but to follow him. For the most part she did so silently, but sometimes she would stab invective at his back. “You’re the same long-tailed monster I’ve always known!”
“I’m a mellowed monster.”
“To sip you is to quaff the burning taste of raw whisky!”
He led her over a bridge that showed them the whole dome of the stars under the desert night. “Every life is a whisky cask with a man inside,” he said, “and the man struggles to break through the charcoal barrier of his prison but never gets out. He only grows mellower.”
“Don’t compare my life with that wooden barrel you wear for a head!”
A long pause mediated the altercation as they negotiated a razorback outcropping. On the other side he spoke to the stones in front of his feet. “I remember when I started this thing. I was going to deliver to God an inferior upstart. One of my wives asked me how we might be reconciled if, at the conclusion, you were to prove pleasing to God. I said this was no concern of mine because the only way you could survive was to kill me first — there was room in this world for only one of us. Thus I have created a problem for myself. Such is the way of life.” He chuckled.
“And I remember that you were enjoying yourself! I remember drowning in the Njarae while you watched as you might have delighted in watching a pinned spider in a carnivorous feiri hive!”
“Ho! You accuse me of enjoying your pain? It is true that every time I set a trap the grins were upon me, but every time you survived I found within myself this cancerous traitor growing in happiness. You ran from me, but in the end I, too, ran from you. I have never felt such joy as when first I saw you in my spy-eye tending your hermit’s garden.”
Oelita cried when her children were brought to her from Joesai’s tent. At her reappearance, the twins were too stunned to speak but clung to her. The three slept bundled together in the tent. When Oelita woke, she found Joesai stretched beside her, watching her, one young guard outside, and the noises of the eight-man camp. The sense of danger was gone. “What are you going to do with me?”
“I have carefully considered that. I am bonded to you.”
“That could be a nuisance to me!”
“We will be married.”
She rose to her elbows, waking sleeping infants. She breathed. “We will not!”
“Don’t say I wasn’t generous,” he said with Noe’s straight face. “I gave you seven chances to decline the offer.”
She stared at him, amazed. He was teasing her! She groped for words, intrigued by the game. How did one tickle a friendly monster who was known to have a bad temper? “Is this your Seventh Triaclass="underline" marriage? I think I’ve been very good at avoiding that one.” Suddenly she laughed.
“There was an ominous ring of no in that laugh,” he said.
“Joesai, you’re mad! Of course I shall say no!”
“The Kaiel are bargainers. I will suggest a bargain. You wish kalothi for your children. Some of that mighty stuff is beyond bargain, for part of your children’s kalothi is your own. Some of it comes from their father, and with Hoemei you have made a wise choice, for who is greater? Some of a child’s kalothi comes from within and that, too, is beyond the help of family or clan. But some of this elixir of life is the gift of strength grown under wise protection and that we can give. You saw how vulnerable you were alone? The maran-Kaiel are not alone. And we need a three-wife. Your children will thrive.”
“What of Kathein?”
“She has sold her body and her soul to Aesoe,” he said blackly.
“I was not wanted.”
“Mine was the greatest objection. We maran have a free will. We revolted at imposition from above. Aesoe’s order soured us. But Teenae always loved you, first with calm logic and then with her heart. And Gaet was at least willing to try you out on the pillows.”