The lights were out here, and faintly there was the reek of something musky that the filters had not entirely dispersed. A vast brown shape, and a second, sat in the shadows before an open doorway: the dusei Niun's presence, he thought.
There was humanish stubbornness; and there was stubbornness mri-fashion, which he had also learned, which, in Niun, he respected.
There was the simple fact that, challenged, Niun would not back away.
But there were ways of pressing at the mri.
Silently, respectful of the barrier, Duncan gathered his robes between his knees and sank down crosslegged, there to wait. The dusei, shadows by the distant doorway, stood and snuffed the air nervously, pressing at him with their uncertainties. He would not be driven. He did not move. In time, the lesser dus came halfway and lay down facing him, head between its massive paws. When he stayed still it rose "up again, and halved that distance, and finally, much against his will, came and nosed at his leg.
"Yai!" he rebuked it softly. It settled, not quite touching, sighed.
And from the doorway appeared a blacker shadow, that glittered here and there with metal.
Niun.
The mri stood still, waiting. Duncan gathered himself to his feet and stood still, carefully at the demarcation.
It was not necessary to say overmuch with Niun the mri observed him now, and after deliberation, beckoned him to come.
Duncan walked ahead into that shadow, the dus at his heels, as Niun waited for him at the doorway; and human-wise he would have questioned Niun, what manner of thing was here, what impulse suddenly admitted him to this place. But still in silence Niun swept his hand to the left, directing his attention into the room from which he had come.
Part of the crew's living quarters had been here. The musky smell hung thick in this shadowy place, that was draped in black cloth. The only light within was live flame, and it glistened on the ovoid that rested at the far wall of the compartment, behind a shadowed steel grating. Two conduits rose at the doorway, serving as pillars, narrowing the entry so that only one at a time might pass.
"Go in," Niun's voice said softly at his back.
He felt the touch of Niun's hand between his shoulders, and went forward, not wishing to, feeling his skin contract at the shadow, the leaping flame so dangerous on the ship, the incense was thick here, cloying. He had noticed it before, adhering to the clothing of the mri, a scent he associated with them, thought even natural to them, though he had missed it in the sterile labs.
Behind them the dusei breathed, unable to enter because of the pillars.
And there was silence for some few moments.
"You have seen such a shrine before," Niun said in a low voice, so that the prickling of his skin became intense. Duncan looked half-about at the mri, heart pounding as he recalled Sil'athen, the betrayal he had done. For a terrible moment he thought Niun knew; and then he persuaded himself that it was the first time he.had come that the mri recalled to him, when he had come with permission, in their company.
"I remember," Duncan said thickly. "Is it for this you have kept me from this part of the ship? And why do you allow me here now?”
"Did I misunderstand? Did you not come seeking admittance?”
There was a stillness in Niun's voice that chilled, even yet. Duncan did not try to answer looked away, where the pan'en rested behind its screen, at the flickering warm light, gold on silver. Mri.
It had no echo now, this compartment, of the human voices that had once possessed it, no memory of the coarse jokes and warmer thoughts and impulses that had once governed here. It contained the pan'en. It was a mri place. It held age, and the memory of something he had done that he could not admit to them.
"In every edun of the People," Niun said, "has been a shrine, and the shrine is of the Pana. You see the screen. That is the place beyond which the Kel may not set foot. That which rests beyond is not for the Kel to question. It is a symbol, kel Duncan, of a truth. Understand, and remember." "Why do you allow me here?”
"You are kel'en. Even the least kel'en has freedom of the outer shrine. But a kel'en who has touched the pan'en who has crossed into the Sen-shrine he is marked, kel Duncan. Do you remember the guardian of the shrine?”
Bones and black cloth, pitiful huddle of mortality within the shrine: memory came with a cold clarity.
"The lives of kel'ein," Niun said, "have been set to guard this; others that have carried it have died for that honor, holding secret its place, obeying the orders of a she'pan. But you did not know these things.”
Duncan's heart sped. He looked warily at the mri. "No," he said, and wished himself out the door.
But Niun set his hand at his shoulder and moved him forward to the screen, there knelt, and Duncan sank down beside him. The screen was a darkness that cut the light and the shape of the pan'en into diamond fragments. Behind them the dusei fretted, barred from their presence.
There was silence. Duncan slowly let go his breath, understanding finally that there was no imminent threat. A long time Niun rested there, hands in his lap, facing the screen. Duncan did not dare turn his head to look at his face.
"Do you understand this place?" Niun asked of him finally, without moving.
"No," Duncan said. "And you have not taught me words enough to ask. What do you honor here?”
"First of Kel-caste was Sa'an.”
" .., . Giver of laws," Duncan took up the chant in silence that Niun left, "which was the service that he gave to Sarin the Mother. And the law of the Kel is one: to serve the she'pan ...”
"That is the Kefes-jir," Niun said. "The high songs each have a body, that is first learned; then from each major word comes a limb, that is another song. In the e'atren-a of Sa'an are twenty-one major words, that lead to other songs. That is one answer to your question: here kel'ein learn the high songs. Here the three castes meet together, though they keep to their places. Here the dead are laid before the presence of the Pana. Here we speak to the presence of Sa'an and the others who have given to the People, and we remember that we are their children." There was a long silence. "Sa'an was not your father. But bend yourself to kel-law and you may come here and be welcome. The kel-law I can teach you. But the things of the Pana, I cannot. They are for the she'pan to teach, when she will. It is a law that each caste teaches only what it best knows. The Kel is the Hand of the People. We are the Face of the People that outsiders see, and therefore we veil. And we do not bear the high knowledge, and we do not read the writings: we are the Face that is Turned Outward, and we hold nothing by which outsiders could learn us.”
It explained much.
"Are all outsiders enemies?" Duncan asked.
"That is beyond kel-knowledge. The lives of the Kel are the living of the People. We were hired by the regul. It is sung that we have served as mercenaries, and those songs are very old, from before the regul. That is all I know.”
And Niun made a gesture of respect and rose. Duncan gathered himself up and followed him out into the outer corridor, where the dusei waited. Pleasure feelings came strongly from them. Duncan bore it, trying to keep his senses clear, aware fearfully aware that his defenses were down, with the mri and with the dusei.
In kel-hall they shared a cup of soi. Niun seemed in an unusually communicative mood, and expressions played freely through his eyes, which could be dead as amber glass.
As if, Duncan thought, his seeking out the shrine had pleased Niun. It occurred to him that the long silences were lonely not only for himself, but perhaps for Niun too, who shared living space with a being more alien to him than the dusei, who could less understand him and of whom Melein disapproved.
They talked, quietly, of what little was immediate, when they reckoned that jump might occur, and what was to be done on the morrow. There was a vast area of things they did not mention, that lay in past and future. There were things that Duncan, finding Niun inclined to talk, would have asked another human, things that he might have said questions of the past, to know the man: What was it to live on Kesrith, when there were only regul and mri? Where did you come from? What women did you know? What did you want of life? But Kesrith had to be forgotten; and so did the things that he himself remembered, human and forbidden to mention. The past was gone; the future was full of things that a kel'en must not ask, must not question, must not see, save in dim patterns as beyond the screen.