"Here," he called, and her form emerged, a shadow in shadows, and he took her hand and pulled her down beside him. Neither spoke for a long time.
"This is a good place," Jai said, at last. "There is no cold. I hate the cold so."
"There is no sun, no eternal life. They have voted to let the ancient victory of the enemy stand, and it is not just the pongs of the south who will continue to be punished, but we, ourselves, for we are denied the bounty of the land, the Du-given right to go back to the earth after our time as mobiles."
"Don't try to contest their decision, Duwan," she whispered.
"No. They are free, just as I am free to do what I choose to do."
"What will that be?"
He mused for a long time. "I told Tambol I would return."
"He could well be dead by now," Jai said.
"I gave my word. If you think this is a good place, stay."
"I meant that it is a good place for you," she whispered.
"And not for you?"
"Your mother and your grandmother have been kind."
"Have others been unkind?"
She was reluctant to speak.
"Speak," he ordered. "Who has been unkind to you?"
"No one in particular. When I was with the young unmated females I made the mistake of exposing my bud point."
"So?"
"It's nothing," she said.
"Something was said?"
"You can imagine."
He could. In this valley a female's budpoint was unopened until her first coloration. He could imagine the talk among the females, for the word would have spread throughout the valley that this Jai, this outsider, had grafted and had no proper mate. He rose and took her hand and led her back to the village, entered the house of his parents and spoke, his face stern. "This is my mate. I speak for her, and I take her." His mother leaped to her feet and embraced both of them. His father clasped Duwan's right arm with his own.
"We will make the announcement," his mother said. "A celebration enlivens things so during the darkness."
So it was done. The square blazed with light. Visitors came from several villages, as if eager to atone in some small way for the vote against going back to the Land of Many Brothers. Duwan moved unsmilingly through the ceremonies, spoke for Jai before many witnesses, and, to the cries and shouts and laughter of the gathering, carried his new mate into his father's house. Without light it was not possible to grow a new house, so they would occupy his old room until Du came again. He did not carry Jai to the room immediately. He waited until his parents and his grandmother came into the room and listened as the older women talked about the ceremony and the various people who had attended. When his father went off to bed his mother looked at him questioningly and he took Jai's hand and led her into the privacy of his room.
She came to his bed displaying some new shyness and he moved over to give her room. She lay on her back beside him.
"Wherever I am, if I am with you, I am happy," she said.
"Ummra," he grunted.
"Now I will be warm again as I sleep," she whispered, putting her arm across his chest.
"They have as little shame, my people, as those who live in the pongpens, and those who call themselves free runners but do not have the courage to fight," Duwan said.
"They fear the unknown," she told him. "Duwan, am I really your mate now?"
"Yes, of course," he said.
"Thank you," she whispered.
He felt her warmth against him and shuddered inwardly. His body warmed to her, begged him to relax, to turn to her and embrace her, but he was among civilized people now, and civilized people did not graft promiscuously as did the slaves and the enemy.
She was quiet for a long, long time, until he thought that she had gone to sleep. But then she whispered, "Duwan, was I wrong, when I fought Noo, to give him such a blow to the belly?"
"No, you were not wrong."
"I did it for you," she said.
"For me?"
"Because he took Alning from you."
"Uramm," he said.
"If it was within my power I would give her to you."
"Don't be stupid," he said.
"I know. You Drinkers have your own odd ways, but I wish that I could give her to you, put her in your bed. I wouldn't mind being your slave, and slave to your mate, not if it would make you happy." He turned. There was total darkness in the room, but as his fingertips touched her cheeks he felt the wetness of tears.
"I understand. She is so beautiful, and she was the love of your youth. Just let me stay with you, Duwan, and serve you. That's all I ask."
"You ask too little, small fool," he said, for, suddenly, as if a cloud of steam had been wafted away by an errant breeze, leaving everything dearly visible, he felt the warmth and softness of her and drew her to him so fiercely that the breath was forced from her lungs. "You are more beautiful."
By Du, it was true. Jai had longer legs, a more sweetly proportioned body, and her face—he pictured it in his mind, and it was smiling and sunny and so dear that he kissed it and kissed it until, forgive him, Du, they were one.
Chapter Three
Manoo the Predictor had said that the first feeble beams of Du would light the southern sky after a dozen more sleep periods. Duwan was at the forge, fashioning iron, barbed arrowheads. He looked up as someone entered, and nodded respectfully to his father.
"You spend much time making weapons," the Elder said.
"Yes."
"You'll go with the first light of Du?"
Duwan was surprised. He had not stated his intentions, not even to Jai.
"Don't you think we have known this?" his father asked. "Did you not say that you gave your word to a friend?"
Duwan tried to play it lightly. "Perhaps, if you try, father, you can talk me out of this foolishness."
The elder man laughed. "Yes, your task must seem impossible." Duwan finished sharpening the point of an arrowhead and put it aside. He looked at his father. "If I go to my death I must go. Perhaps, after much time, I can train some few of them to fight."
"We can but try," his father said.
Duwan snapped his head around to look into his father's eyes. "We?"
"There was a Duwan with the Great Alon, when he led the Drinkers into the snows. He, too, made a promise. He, too, promised to return. He made this promise to Alon, it is said, before the great one hardened, here in this lightless place. It is time a Duwan kept that promise, and I will not let you do it alone."
"But mother—"
"She will go with me, of course. Will not your mate go with you?" Duwan grasped his father's right arm. "We can go into the west," he said. "For I will not lead two Duwans to death." His father nodded.
Four Drinkers, two of them females, would not be able to carry much. By the time the southern horizon was showing lightness at times, preparations were complete. Jai had accepted Duwan's decision without comment. She practiced her swordplay with Belran's young warriors. She had colored again, and they had, for the same reasons that had made sense during the last winter, abstained.
Duwan felt that he was no longer a part of the Drinkers of the valley. Somehow, what he had done and what he had seen in the Land of Many Brothers had made him a different Drinker. His own people seemed as alien to him as the Enemy now, and although he did not enjoy that feeling, he accepted it. There had been times when he'd suffered through periods of self pity and of condemnation for the Drinkers. Now it no longer seemed to matter. Each Drinker was the master of his own fate, and he had chosen his. He had made up his mind, after his father's decision to join him, to avoid Enemy population centers, to travel into the relatively unpopulated areas of the mid-continent, and there to live out his life with Jai, no longer withholding himself from her during her fertile period. There he would see his mother and his father, when the time came, return to the earth, and he would live near them in their fixed, honorable, immortal state to protect them from any chance enemy.