The Faded Sun Trilogy (98 page)

“What is happening?” Duncan demanded of them, knowing that they meant something by this, and not knowing even who ranked highest in this complex of skill and birth and seniority of mingled tribes. He scanned from face to face, lost and betraying it . . . settled last on old Peras, whose lean, seamed face indicated at least reverence owed, and whose eyes perhaps showed something of sympathy. “What is happening? The council . . . is that it?”

“Tsi’mri kel’en, there is division in the camp. Yonder stand other tribes; ours and others come and go. They ask us questions. And while you sit here with us in this circle—there is no one free to make a mistake.”

That disparaged him; it was also the kind of insult any without rank in the Kel had to accept as a matter of course.

“Sir,” he murmured humbly, which was always the right answer to a warrior who had won the
seta’al,
from one who had not.

“Kel’en,” Peras responded, which was more courtesy than an elder needed use.

“He speaks well,” said one of the out-tribesmen, settling near. “It is remarkable.”

Others behind him nodded, and one laughed a breath. “This is a wonder,” that one said, “to sit and talk with a tsi’mri.”

The word, Duncan reflected placidly, studying his hands in his lap, also applied to the dusei.

“He is mannered,” another said.

The old kel’en reached and touched at his sleeve. “Veil, kel’en. The air does you harm; there is courtesy and there is stupidity.”

He inclined his head in thanks and did so, headcloth and twice-lapped veil.

And now and again in the silence which followed, he glanced in the direction of the she’pan’s tent, for one by one the standing kel’ein settled; he was anxious, for himself and for what manner of maneuvering might have
encompassed Niun as well and for what passed in Council among those who had power . . . all that he had tried to do, all that he had paid his life for, and now he could not even merit to sit at the door to hear judgment passed on his offering to them. He sat, in their long silence, and fretted, aware finally of another presence responding to his distress.

It came padding across the sand toward them, his dus, anxious and hasty. He felt it; and it sensed hostility, and its presence loomed dark and ominous.

He glanced about him with a gesture of appeal, to ja’anom and to the others. “Do not hate,” he wished them.

That was like asking the wind to stop; but heads nodded after a moment. The dus came, worked quietly among them, wended its stubborn way to his back, dislodging Ras a little space. He cherished that warmth against him where Ras had been. And in the long silence that followed that shifting about, he drew from his belt the weighted cords, the
ka’islai,
and began to knot them in the star-mandala.

It was the
islan
of Pattern, which imposed order on confusion. It was the most complex he knew, which in his learning fingers would take long to complete.

He was, after a dogged fashion, committing an insolence. He was better in the
islai
than some who had the kel-scars; he had had long practice, on the ship, in idleness. He meant to defy them, for all it was unwise. He did not even look up . . . feeling their eyes on him, who aped their ways; felt a grating at his nerves, the shifting of his dus. Ras had her hand on it, which few dared.

He kept his mind to his pattern, refusing to be distracted even by that.

“Kel’en,” said Peras.

“Ai?”

“Council deliberations can be quite tedious. Do you play
shon’ai
?”

His heart began to beat rapidly. The Game of the People was one thing played among friends; he thought were Niun at hand to hear that he would be on his feet in outrage. He carefully stripped out the complex knots and looped the
ka’islai
again to his belt “I am mri,” he said softly, “for all you protest it. Yes, I play the Game.”

There were soft hisses, reaction to his almost-insolence. Old Peras took from his belt the
as-ei,
the
palm-blades.

“I will play partner to kel Duncan,” Peras said.

In the Game, Niun had taught him, one’s life relied on seating. When strong player sat opposite weak or when grudges and alliances seated themselves out of balance in the circle, someone could die. There was only the partnering of the players at one’s elbows to counsel an enemy across the circle not to throw foul. Strong beside weak was a protection, if weak were wise where he sent his own casts.

He had learned paired, only the Game of Two patternless save for the pattern of the throws themselves, high and low.

They began to form a circle of six, with the others to witness. Duncan took comfort, for it was gentle Dias, Peras’s truemate, who took the place opposing turn in the circle, and those who flanked her were young, lesser in skill than some. But then kel Ras bent down and touched the sleeve of Dias. Some words passed in low voices and short dispute, and Ras, of the second rank of the Kel, replaced kel Dias of the fourth, facing him and Peras.

And suddenly Duncan minded himself what Niun had always told him of death by stupidity.

They would kill him if they wished. He suddenly realized that he did not know the limits of his skill. He had played only Niun, and Niun was his friend.

Ras . . . was no one’s. At Duncan’s left there was another substitution, an old kel’en, on whom the scars were well-weathered.

The dus drew back a little, rested head on paws, puffed slightly and followed all this insanity with darting moves of its eyes.

The Game; it was a means of passing time, as Peras had said. An amusement.

But the Kel amused themselves with blades, and amusements were sometimes—even unintended—to the death.

They gave their names, those Duncan did not know well; one did not play with strangers save in challenge. Duncan dropped his veil, for it was no friendly act to play veiled. There was hazard enough without that.

Kel Peras began, being eldest . . . threw to Ras. Hands struck thighs, the rhythm of the Game; and; on the
name-beat of the unspoken rhyme, the blades spun across the circle again.

They played about him, from man to man and woman to man and youth to youth, back and forth, weaving patterns which became established, excluding him, a Game of Five, oddly seated. Mri fingers, slim and golden and marginally quicker than human, snatched spinning steel from the air and hurled it on at the next name-beat.

At no time did he relax, knowing that the rhythm could increase in tempo and that some impulse might send the blades spinning his way, from the youths, from Ras, any of those three.

Suddenly he had warning, a flicker of the membrane as Ras stared at him. Next time: he nodded, almost unnerved by her warning, whether courtesy or reflex.

The blades spun to her, shining in the sun, and she snatched them, waited the beat and hurled them at the steady time of the Game, no deception or change of pace.

He made the catch, hurled them of our in his time, to a young kel’en. Now a new lacery began, which wove itself star-patterned like the
islan,
the mandala of the Game, the Game of Six, as each Game was different by every factor in it.

The pattern varied, and beside him kel Peras laughed, catching the treachery of Ras: the blades, missed, might have killed; Ras’s eyes danced with amber merriment, and the blades came back at her, cunningly thrown, low-and-high. She cast them again to Peras, left-slant; he threw to her; again left; back to elder Da’on, right; and he threw to young Eran and he to young Sethan.

Tempo altered, making again a safer rhythm, the moment’s sport among Masters tamed again, beating slower for lesser players.

It came back, from Ras to himself; he caught, and threw to the youngest, Sethan, tacit recognition of his status.

It returned, evenly paced; he cast back; it went to Da’on on his left, to Ras, to Peras—

And stopped. Peras signaling halt. The rhythm of the hands ceased. Duncan drew a great breath, suddenly coughed from the chill air and realized that that reflex a moment ago might have killed him.

“Veil,” Da’on advised him. He did so, holding the cloth to his mouth and nose until the chill left his lungs.
The dus edged up to him, settled against his back, offering him its warmth.

“An unscarred,” said Da’on, “should never play the Six.”

“No, kel’en,” he agreed. “But when a scarred asks, an unscarred obeys.”

Breaths hissed softly between teeth. Heads nodded.

“You play the game,” Peras said, “in all senses. That is well, human kel’en.”

He leaned against the dus, caressed its neck, for his heart was still pounding and the dus shivered in reaction.

The tent flap stirred. Another kel’en came out and sat down on the sand, out of the wind. He looked up and two more followed, and four and three, not all of their own Kel. The black assembly widened, Veils dropped, so that he felt he should take his own down, and did so, trying to breathe carefully.

He must not be afraid. The dus would catch it up and cast it to them. He must not be angry. The dus would rouse and they would sense that too. The mri of Kutath could not veil their emotions, not generally. He received a touch of resentment, and some rare things warmer, pure curiosity. It was not attack, not yet. He soothed the dus with his touch, himself master of it and not the other way about, making it feel what he wished it to feel, quiet, quite.

Shon’ai,
the mri of Kesrith said: the Game-throw is made.

No calling it back, no mending it now.

Shon’ai:
it is cast!

Throw your life, kel’en; and deserve to live, for joy of the Game.

They had been there all along, and more came now, until all in the kel-tents must be there, and he was the center of it.

“Tell us,” said Peras, “kel’en-who-has-shared-in-Kath, make us all to understand this thing of ships and enemies.”

He cast an anguished glance toward the she’pan’s tent, hoping against hope to see Niun and the others, some indication even that the Council might be near an end, that he might delay. It was a vain hope.

“Shall an unscarred of this kel know more,” asked Peras, “than the seniors of it, who sit in Council? Things
are out of balance here, young kel’en of the ja’anom. That is one disease here. Remedy it.”

“I am from the other side of a Dark,” he protested, “and I am forbidden to remember.”

“So is this brother I have gained for my brother,” said Ras in a harsh voice, “who calls you brother to him. We are by that . . . 
kin,
are we not? Answer. We kel’ein, are we not the Face that Looks Outward? Our eyes are used to the Dark. And the trouble has come here, to us, has it not, tsi’mri brother? Has the she’pan silenced you on that matter—or is it for your own sake you keep your secrets, ai? What arrangement did you and my brother-by-death have, that he knew where to find you?”

A muscle jerked in his face. He fought for control. “Hlil arranged this.”

“Hlil would not,” she said. “I. My kindred.
I
ask.”

He gazed at her, kel’e’en of the second rank; daithe, kin of the last kel’anth and blood-tied to no knowing how many kindreds. A chill settled into him.

“I hear you,” he said, understanding. He bowed his head then, soothing the restive dus with the touch of his fingers . . . felt her touch against the other side of it, so that the animal shivered.

It was a mutual trap, that contact. There were no lies possible, no half-truths. He laid his hand firmly against the beast.

And yielded, point by point.

“There have been arguments,” the she’pan conceded, facing the Council. Niun sat nearest her, cross-legged on the mats, no Husband, but the she’pan’s, own kel’en, and kel’anth at once, doubly owning that place of honor. The Husbands of ja’anom sat ranged nearest, and the several highest of the five tribes settled by them, a black mass. The ja’anom kath’anth was there, Anthil; and the whole ja’anom Sen, in a golden mass, beneath the lamps which they used in Council even in daytime. Sen’anth Sathas was foremost of them, but there were sen’ein of the five strange-tribes there too, who had come in yestereve with the kel’ein.

“There have been strong dissensions,” Melein continued, “within the ja’anom . . . for the losses we have suffered, for the choices we face. But Sen, has agreed in my choices. Is it not so, sen’anth?”

“So,” Sathas echoed, “Sen has consented.”

“Not easy, to come home. The pan’en which is holy to us . . . what can it mean to you? A curiosity, full of strange names and things which never happened to you? And the holy relics of your wanderings on Kutath . . . how shall my kel’anth and I understand them? We struggle to do so, you with us and we with you. We of the Voyagers, we who went out . . . we want a place to stand; and you who stayed to guard Kutath so many millennia ago—perhaps you look about you and hate us, that we were voyaged out at all. Is that not part of it? Is that not a little part, that you blame us two, that of all Kutath sacrificed . . . we are all that have come home, all who will ever come home?” Her eyes moved to the Kel, traveled down to Niun. “Or is it perhaps for what we brought home with us, for what we call one of us?”

Niun glanced down. “Perhaps. It is many things, she’pan, but both may be so.”

“And the ja’anom Kath?”

“Kath,” said Anthil’s soft voice, “blames no one. We only mourn the children, she’pan; those lost and those to come.”

“And the songs you have taught those children over the ages . . . look for what, kath’anth? For the returning of those who went out when the world was younger and water flowed?”

“Some songs—hoped for that.”

“When our ancestors were one,” Melein, said, “not alone the tribes, but yourselves and my ancestors . . . that was a great age of the world; and there had been many before. The cities were standing, already old, built on the ruins of others, and our ancestors walked on the dust of a thousand civilizations and forgotten races. The four races who walked the world at the beginning of that age dwindled to two, and them you know. After so long there was building again: elee cities were standing, already old, built on the ruins of others, green of an olds old plant that the sands had long buried . . . but its roots were deep and it stood in the winds again. It was the last of everything that nourished it; it took from all else, so that it was the last greening . . . mri saw this; and we who had loved the land . . . knew. We built . . . the great edunei; and the great machines of the elee we appropriated to our own purposes.