The knots filled one cord and another and another, until all the tale was told but two.
Hlil looked eastward, and of certainty, at the mid of sunfall, there came Ras. He need not have worried, he told himself. Has would not be careless, not she kel'e'en of the Kel's second highest rank. No reasoning with her, nothing but ordering her outright, and he could not, even if it were wise.
Ras s'Sochil Kov-Nelan. Merai's truesister.
Of that too, Niun had robbed him. They had been a trio, Hlil and Merai and Ras, in happier days; and he had dreamed dreams beyond his probabilities. He was skilled; that was his claim to place; he had Merai's friendship; and because of that he had been always near Ras. He had taught her, being older; had gamed with her and with Merai; had watched her every day of her life… and watched her harden since Merai's death. Her mother, Nelan, had been one of those who failed to come out of An-ehon; of that Ras said nothing. Ras laughed and spoke and moved, took meals with the Kel and went through all the motions of life; but she was not Ras as he had known her. She followed Niun s'lntel, as once, as a kath-child, she had followed him; where Niun walked, she was shadow; where he rested, she waited. It was a land of madness, a game lacking humor or sense; but they were all a little mad, who survived An-ehon and served the she'pan Melein.
Ras arrived, in her own time, paused on the path below the rocks began, wearily, to climb up to him. When she had done so, she sank down on the flat stone beside him, arms dropped loosely over her knees, her body heaving with her breaths.
"Did you hunt well?" he asked, although he knew what game she hunted.
"A couple of darters." It was not, for her, good. And it was a long walk that brought Ras back out of breath.
Kflil looked out, and in the darkening east, there were two dots on the horizon. The kel'anth and the beast, strung far apart
"East," Has said beside him, finding breath to speak. "Always east, along the same track. He would have brought back no game at all, but the beast routs things out for him. He delays only to gather it, and he takes long steps, this kel'anth of ours.”
"Ras," he objected.
"He knows I am there.”
He gathered up another stone, rolled it between his fingers. Ras simply rested, catching her breath.
"Why?" he said finally. "Ras let him be. Anger serves no purpose; it dies unless you go on nursing it”
"And you do not”
"I am thekel'anth's second.”
"So you were," she said, which was a heart-shot; and a moment later she looked on him with something like her old fondness. "You can be. I envy you.”
"I have no love for him.”
She accepted that offering in silence. Her fingers stole, as they would, to one of the many Honors which hung from her belts. Merai's death gift, that one, from Niun's hand.
"We cannot challenge him," she said. "Law forbids, if it were revenge for Merai; but there are other causes. Just causes.”
"Stop thinking of it”
"He is very good. If I challenged him, he would kill me.”
"Do not," he said, his heart clenched.
"You want to live," she accused him. And when he did not deny it; "Do you know how many generations of Kel-birth lie behind me?”
"More than mine," he said bitterly, heat risen already to his face; his plain birth was a thing of which he was deeply conscious. "Eighteen," she said. "Eighteen generations. It comes to me, Hlil, that here I sit, last of a line that produced kel'ein and she'panei. Last. They are dead, all the rest; gods, and they would never understand such times as these. I look around me; I think
maybe I do not belong here; maybe I should go too, end it. And I think of my brother. Merai saw it standing in front of him saw just the edge of the horizon waiting for us. And I think ... he died, Hlil. He was not himself against this stranger; he missed a blow he could have turned. I know he could nave turned it. Why? For fear? That was not Merai. It was not. So what do I believe? That he stepped aside that he let himself die? And why so? At one word from these strangers that they are the Promised, the Voyagers-out? Could he stand in the way of such a thing?”
Hlil swallowed heavily. "Do not ask me what he thought.”
"I ask myself. He could not see ahead. And then I think; I see. I am here. I am my brother's eyes. Gods, gods, he died knowing it was for a thing he would never see or understand. To clear the way, because he was set where this man had to stand. And I am desperate to see Truth, Hlil; this kel'anth of ours will live under my witness; and if he cannot bear that, if he feels guilt, it is his guilt, let him bear it; and if he turns and strikes me you will know. And what you do about that I leave in your lap, Hlil-my-brother.”
"Ras-
"I leave it there, I say.”
They sat still, staring alike at the shadowing land.
The beast arrived far in advance, a great warm-blooded animal, down-furred, pug-nosed and massive. Its feet turned in when it walked, its head wandered from side to side close to the ground as if it had lost something and forgotten what it was. It was probably nearsighted. Ras hissed a soft sound of distaste when it came up the rise toward them. Hlil felt a crawling at his gut whenever it was by him, for the length of those claws (venomed, the kel'anth had warned them) and the power of those sloping shoulders argued its way wherever it went, and something in the creatures set nerves on edge when they were disturbed. It came now, nosed wetly at each of them. Ras cursed it and pushed it, and Hlil set his hand at the side of its head and heaved to turn it aside, for all that those great jaws could take the hand entire. It moved, rebuffed finally. It put fear into him, and no beast Kutath had bred had ever done that; it consumed, gods, it surely must; it rolled with fat and moisture. On hungrier days Hlil had looked at it resentfully… but the thought of eating warm-blooded flesh nauseated him, like cannibalism.
Another gift of the kel'anth, this creature.
"Go on," he said to Ras. And when she delayed still; "Go on back.”
She muttered soft agreement and rose, slipped away down the rocks, vanished into the shadows.
The beast made to follow her, snorted and came back again, nosed about and found the sand-star with uncanny accuracy. The star had not a chance. The beast dus, its name was lay down with the tendrils wrapped about one massive paw and ate with noisy relish. The sound became a rumbling, mind-dulling, pervasive.
Contentment weighted Hlil's limbs, at odds with the distress that tugged at him from another direction. It was as if he grew two minds, one warring with the other. The dus he connected the sensations, the slow purring, felt his senses dulled.…
"No!" he said.
It stopped, a silence like sudden nakedness, devoid of warmth. Small, glittering eyes lifted to him.
"Go away," he told it. It did not. He sat and watched Niun come, weary and limping more than a man should from a day's ordinary hunting. He ought to walk down to the path, signaling to the kel'anth that he might simply take the way into camp, being the last
He did not He sat still, let Niun walk up the stony way to his perch among the rocks.
'Is someone still out?" Niun asked, hard-breathing and in a manner of some concern.
The accent with which he spoke was also different; they had in common only the hal'ari, the high tongue, preserved changeless in the city-machines, and the kel'anth struggled badly in what he had learned Df the mu'ara, the tribe speech. "No," Hlil said, rising, ignoring the kel'anth's vexation. "You are last; I will walk down with you.”
The beast rose up, shambled out to rub against Niun as he started down; Hlil walked as close to it as he must.
"You walked far," Hlil said.
"Ai," Niun muttered as he walked, evading him.
"So did Ras.”
That stopped him. Niun turned a veiled face toward him, looking up on the shadowed slope. "Your sending?”
"No.”
"She wants a quarrel does she not, kel Hlil?”
"Perhaps. Perhaps she is only curious where you go ... daily.”
"That too, it may be. I beg you intervene.”
That was not the answer he had expected to provoke. He slipped his hands into the back of his belt, far from his weapons, evidencing reluctance for quarrel. "I beg you, kel'anth… bear with her.”
"I do," he said. "What more can I do?”
Hlil regarded him, the alien fineness of him, the familiar Honors which winked among his robes; easy to hate this too-fine, too-skilled stranger. The dus laid its ears back and rumbled an ominous sound, stilled as Niun touched it.
"Ras and I," Hlil said, "have little more to say to each other. You speak to her if you like. I cannot.”
The kel'anth did not answer him turned and picked his way to the bottom, walked onto the sandy track toward camp, the great dus ambling along behind him. "Yail" he snapped at it then, and it fell back, turned aside from the trail into camp; it rarely did come in.