The Gandalara Cycle I (47 page)

Lussim hadn't exaggerated. A sharp, hot wind screamed between the walls of the shallow chasm, blinding us with dust, and sucking the loose rock out from under our feet. We wore headscarves around our faces, and used spares to fashion protection for the sha'um. Lonna rode through the pass inside Tarani's tunic, to escape the dust.

We walked slowly, and rested frequently. Without needing any consultation, we didn't try to camp in the pass, but pushed on while there was moonlight. We staggered down the outside slope of the far ridge after twenty hours of grueling work.

As soon as we descended far enough to breathe more easily, we collapsed where we were, and slept through the next morning. The rest of that day, plus one more day brought us to a landmark Tarani knew, a high column of rock striated in reds and browns and grays.

As soon as Tarani and I had dismounted, Keeshah flopped on the ground and lay there, panting heavily. I brought some water. After he had licked some from my hand and rested a moment, he rolled into a crouch and drank from the bowl.

*You've worked so hard,*
I told him.

I sat beside him and began to smooth his fur with my hands, brushing out dust, scratching the skin lightly. I noticed that his ribs were easier to find.

*Can you make it to Chizan, with two of us riding?*

*How far?*
he asked.

I looked around for Tarani, and was startled to find her standing next to me, staring down at us. An expression of concern vanished from her face, just as I turned my head.

"How far to Chizan from here?" I passed along Keeshah's question.

"One day more," Tarani answered. "Our supplies are almost gone, and Ronar carries much less weight now. Tomorrow, I will ride in the cargo net, so that Keeshah's burden will he less.”

That was more than she had said, at any one time, since Relenor.

"I didn't ask -" I began.

"You should have.”

She turned away to help Thymas assemble our simple meal, and I tried to ignore my rising anger.

*Another day.*
I gave Keeshah his answer.
*Tarani will ride in the net. Can you make it?*

*Yes. Now sleep.*

The sha'um rolled over on his side, pushing me away, and closed his eyes.

I got my dinner, and took it away from camp, out of sight of Thymas and Tarani. I had made this a habit on the trip thinking to give them some semblance of privacy. Tonight I admitted that I had been doing it partly to get away from Tarani's eerie coldness. The woman still disturbed me.

And never more than right now. She had broken out of her silence - for what? To criticize the way I treated Keeshah.

If only she hadn't been right,
I groaned
. Keeshah was so grateful. Why didn't I think of it myself?

Because I've been responding to her cold-shoulder treatment with my own version of it. I never considered breaking the ice, not even to save Keeshah some hardship. That's a pretty sad state of affairs, when I let my own pride blind me to Keeshah's needs.

And when I consider the facts, whose fault is it that we're all under such strain? Sure, Tarani's doing it, but why? Because she informed the Captain of the Sharith of her impending marriage to Thymas - no more than her duty, as a future Sharith wife - and the Captain responded with a personal insult.

She's over-reacting, though,
I thought.
There might be some justice in freezing me out, but it looks as if Thymas isn't any better off than I am.

I had found a place where I could lean back against a sloping rock to eat my dinner, which was now finished. I was too comfortable to move, and so tired that I drifted off to sleep.

The landscape around me was silver and black when I woke up, and I heard Tarani humming.

What's she up to now?
I wondered.

I got up and moved, as quietly as I could, around the pile of rocks which had screened me from the camp. To my right, I saw Thymas, sprawled out, sound asleep. Near him was Tarani's pack, bunched up and with a dent in it that might fit her head.

Five yards to my left, Tarani was kneeling at Keeshah's head, facing me, but looking down at the sha'um. And this was no bleak, stony stare, such as Thymas and I endured during the day. Her face and voice were vibrant with tenderness, affection and admiration.

I began to get angry. I couldn't tell whether I was jealous of Keeshah, receiving honest emotion from Tarani, or afraid that Tarani's power might be stronger than my bond with the sha'um. I just knew that it was important to disrupt that scene, to make Keeshah aware that Tarani's power was dangerous.

*Keeshah,*
I called. I had to repeat his name several times before he answered me.

*Yes.*
Slow and lazy.

*Tarani is using her power on you, Keeshah. I don't know what she wants -*

*Wants to help,*
he interrupted.
*Feels good. See?*

With no more warning than that, Keeshah melded his mind with mine. I felt relaxed, unworried. There was no tiredness or pain. No hunger. Only a great gathering sleepiness. I wanted that sleep I longed for it .. .

I broke the bond with Keeshah, and wrenched myself awake - but not before my relaxing muscles had let me lean against the rock pile and dislodge some pebbles. Tarani looked up at the small sound, and the humming stopped. She showed a flash of recognition, and then her face closed down again.

"Walk away from camp with me," I said, as she stood up. "If we're going to reach Chizan tomorrow, I need to know what to expect."

She nodded, stepped around Keeshah quietly, and followed me back down the narrow gullet' where I had eaten and napped. I asked her questions about the city, and she answered them exactly, completely, but with no elaboration beyond a direct answer.

I listened to what she said, for it was true that I needed the information. But another part of me realized that the questions were only an excuse, a stall. I had seen a glimpse of the sensitive woman inside the shell. Now the barricade was unbearable, and as we walked along, I was searching for a way to break through it again.

If all else fails, tell the truth,
I thought.

"Wait," I said suddenly, catching her arm to make her stop with me, nearly at the end of the gullet'. We were some fifty yards from camp. Her arm tensed under any hand, and I felt the solid, elastic muscle of a dancer. I let go. The last thing I needed was to make her afraid of me.

"All I really wanted to say is . . . thank you for what you did for Keeshah. I thought, at first - well, I'm not very clear on exactly what I was thinking, but it wasn't flattering. I apologize for that."

"My power is good for something besides giving pleasure," she said shortly. "If you wanted to say this, why didn't you just say it, and let us both get some rest?"

Anger - at least it's an emotion. Hallelujah.

"Habit," I said. "For some reason, it's easy to say things to you that I don't really mean."

Except for that first, direct glance across Keeshah, she hadn't looked up from the ground. Now she faced me, and the rage she had suppressed for four days blazed out of her dark eyes.

"For example?" she hissed.

I recoiled, bristling. Then I reminded myself that I had invited this encounter. I had admitted to myself that she had a right to be angry. It was time I admitted it to her.

"I can't account for why I suggested that Thymas needs - that your illusions are -" I fumbled to a stop, tried again. "Thymas loves you. I find that easy to understand."
Very easy
. "But I confess to wondering . . ."

"Why I want to marry him?" she finished for me. "Isn't it possible that I return his love?" she demanded. "Does there have to be something else I might gain by marrying Thymas?"

I grabbed her shoulders, angry in spite of all my resolution. "Why do you always put the worst possible meaning to my words?" I growled. "I didn't say that. I didn't
mean
that."

She glanced down at my hands, and then smiled up at me with a bitter wisdom much older than her years.

"Do you want me for yourself, then?"

I released her as though my hands had been scalded. I was horrified to hear myself saying: "You forget that your illusions don't work on me."

Her face went gray. She turned around and started back toward the camp, hugging her arms to her as though I had delivered a body blow,

I ran after her and caught her arm again. She stopped, but kept her face turned away from me. I took a deep breath, and ordered myself to keep control of my tongue.

"Of course I want you," I said quietly. "There's no man in the world who could get within touching distance of you, and not want you. But that has nothing to do with what I mean about you and Thymas.

"Sharith women live simply, with regulation and conformity and duty a daily part of their lives. They are trained to it from birth, and I'm not the one to find fault with it.

"But you wouldn't be able to stand living in Thagorn, Tarani. You're too strong, too complex, too skilled, too much an individual. Your power - that's extra. You don't need it to make you . . . special.

"I know I've said some vile things to you," I went on, relieved to be expressing all this at last. "It was reaction to - well, when I thought of you among the Sharith, I had this terrible feeling of something being wasted. I don't mean any insult to them, or to Thymas," I added, hurriedly. "And I see, now, that it's none of my business anyway. I have no right to judge you, or your choices. I'm just trying to explain .. .

"I'm sorry," I finished, and took my hand from her arm. She didn't move a muscle.

"That's finally, really, all I wanted to say," I told her after a moment. "Except that I won't try to interfere between you and Thymas again. And please think about this - we need to be a team, when we face Molik."

Still she stood there, immobile.

"It's time we got some rest, as you said."

Tarani walked away.

Did I get through to her?
I wondered.
Or did I make things worse? At least I tried.

I followed her into camp, stretched out on the ground near Keeshah, and fell asleep.

Nothing much was changed, the next morning. There was no more conversation than usual: we packed up and got ready to leave camp in about the same way we had done it every day.

But the tension was gone.

I saw Thymas glance at me, and then Tarani, and I knew he was wondering what he had missed during the night. He was subdued and thoughtful as he laid out the net and padding and we rolled up Tarani in it like a long sack of grain.

Ronar and Keeshah crouched down at either end of the net. Thymas and I buckled on the end ropes and mounted. The sha'um stood up and sidled apart until Tarani was clear of the ground; then we started forward.

I had made an easier trip, so far, than Thymas or Tarani. The boy had carried all the supplies in our four saddlebags, draped across his thighs. Tarani had worn her own pack, and suffered the discomfort of the second position. All I had been doing was hugging Keeshah. Now since Thymas carried all the packs to relieve Keeshah of as much weight as possible, and since Tarani had volunteered to be hauled around in that net, I still had the easiest job. All I had to do was support half the girl's weight, and keep myself balanced on Keeshah.

I had ridden in several training sessions with the cargo net while we had stayed in Thagorn. But by the time Lonna sounded her hooting call - a signal pre-arranged to tell us when we were a mile or so from Chizan - every muscle in my body was cramped.

We turned aside from the trail, which was now well marked. The desolation of the pass had given way to a flattish, high-walled valley with its floor covered with growth. Not the fertile green of the Morkadahl hillsides, fed from rivers flowing down out of the mountains. And not quite the stubborn scrubby brush that clung to the dunes of the Kapiral Desert. There were humps of growth on the ground that waved feathery arms in all directions, some of them reaching higher than a trained dakathrenil tree. A hardy species of the narrow-leaved plant that filled the ecological niche of grass covered the ground between the great, fluffy domes. Its blade looked similar to the other "grass" I had seen, but its color was a sickly yellow-green.

We dropped Tarani in a clearing. While I fell off Keeshah, Thymas - hardened by years of training with loaded cargo nets - unrolled the girl. She emerged from the net on hands and knees, groaning with the effort of making her stiff muscles move. We hadn't stopped, except for brief rests to take care of compelling physical needs, and now it was midafternoon. She had been wrapped up in that contraption for almost nine hours.

The first thing she did was crawl over to Keeshah, who lay crouched beside me, and wrap her arms around his neck.

"I didn't know -" she said, her words muffled by the fur on his neck. "Oh, Keeshah, thank you for carrying me alone."

She pushed herself away from him, and sort of plopped down into a sitting position beside me.

"Does he understand?" she asked.

"Not the words," I said, without needing to ask him. "But the feeling. Yes, he understands."

"I owe you thanks, too, Rikardon," she said. "I give them now, and . . . and I ask that the hard words we have exchanged be forgotten."

"What hard words?" I asked. She responded to my smile with an honest-to-goodness dazzling Tarani smile.

It felt good.

But Thymas was glowering at us suspiciously. I got to my feet, and offered my hand to help Tarani up. She took it, but had so much trouble rising that Thymas rushed to help, too.

I untied my last waterskin, took a long sip, and poured the rest of the water into a bowl for Keeshah.

"There are enough supplies left for you two to have dinner," I said. “I'll go into Chizan and bring back some water and meat for the sha'um, and find us a place to stay. It will be safer if Tarani doesn't show up in the daylight."