The River Wall (15 page)

Ligor stood up, walked away, came back and stood over me. “I got two questions,” he said.

“So ask,” I told him.

“You wanted me to come with you because of that fleason Ferrathyn. What help can I be if I’m in Chizan?”

“If you remember, I wasn’t all that sure you could help in Raithskar,” I reminded him. “There just seemed to be a chance. I don’t think that chance outweighs the crisis in Chizan. If somebody with more on his mind than profit doesn’t take charge here soon, the city will never function the same way it did before—as a supply source for travelers. Worse, the people may just fight over the remaining water and then die of thirst. I need you here, Ligor.”

He nodded. “All right, you’ve got me convinced. Now you want to tell me how to convince them?”

I grinned. For that, I had an answer.

“Help me up,” I said, offering my hand.

Chizan was even worse than I had expected. The upheaval in the earth had shaken most of the structures apart—including the top-of-building tanks that had held the only water available in the Chizan crossing. The water had drenched the city streets, reliquefying the crystalline deposits of vlek urine which lingered everywhere.

Keeshah balked at the outskirts of the city, his sensitive nose in mortal rebellion against the stink. I was catching it only lightly, but it wasn’t just Keeshah’s violent disgust that made my stomach want to roll over. The stink itself affected me, but not as much as the noise. We could
hear
the confusion in the city: voices crying out in search or pain or grief; vleks running, bawling, being cursed for being underfoot; bricks crashing from still-collapsing buildings or being thrown from piles of debris; and the solemn, firm sound of bronze blades clashing against each other.

Keeshah crouched; Ligor got down, and then took my arm to help me dismount. I wet my headscarf and tied it around Keeshah’s muzzle.
*Try to breathe through your mouth
,* I told him.
*l promise, well do this as quickly as possible.*

Ligor watched me work with the headscarf and then spend a few seconds scratching Keeshah’s ears and stroking his neckfur.

“If I was a sha’um,” Ligor said, “I’d be fleabitten before I’d take another step into that mess.”

“He feels pretty much the same way,” I said. “Its only his loyalty to me that makes him do something so much against his natural wishes.” I looked over my shoulder at Ligor, and realized that I had never
spoken
the thought that had come so often to mind. “It’s enough to make a man feel rich.”

“Yeah,” Ligor said, and I felt he really did understand what I meant.

“Lets go,” I urged, and Keeshah crouched for us to mount.

Ligor and I rode Keeshah into the chaos that was Chizan. I think all three of us held our breath until we got dizzy. As people took notice of us, a crowd began to follow along behind Keeshah.

The people looked hurt in an especially moving way. Whether or not they carried bruises or bloody scrapes, there was a look of loss and fear in their faces that I will never forget. In the space of a few minutes, they had lost a way of life. They probably felt they had lost
everything
of value to them—and that’s why they needed Ligor.

Chizan had formed a rough semicircle against the steep wall of the valley in which it lay. We moved through its perimeter toward the rich district that would have been the center of the full circle. We were fully prepared to break up fights and, if necessary, drive everyone we met toward the area in front of what had once been the seat of power in Chizan—a large gaming house that also contained the residence of the current roguelord—now the
late
roguelord. The wide avenue in front of that building offered the only possibility of addressing a large group of people.

The avenue was less wide now. The building had collapsed, its brick and wood debris covering a larger ground area than its original foundations.

Little persuasion was necessary. Most people followed us merely because there seemed nothing else of interest to do. Two men on a sha’um were an effective distraction. Fights quit as we passed by, and we led most of the living population of Chizan into the gaming district. Keeshah climbed an unappealing pile of rubble. I brought my right leg over Keeshah’s neck and slid off to unsteady footing beside him, leaving Ligor mounted.

His speech was short.

“So you folks want to keep on fighting each other and getting nothing done, or you want to start to clean up this mess?”

From somewhere to our right, we heard the coarse voice of a woman. “For what?” she shouted. “So you can take over for Worfit? I say, fleabite this place. I’m going home to Dyskornis!”

There was a chorus of sounds, both in agreement and in scorn, from the rest of the crowd. I made a quick effort to count heads and came up with a rough estimate of three to four hundred people. I was sure I had heard no more than twenty voices. But as I looked, the vague expressions were leaving the faces of the people around me. The discussion was capturing their attention, forcing them to react.

“What makes you think Dyskornis is in any better shape?” Ligor shouted over the murmuring voices. “Or that you could get there if you tried? We were in the Zantro Pass when the shaking started: the Zantro split plain in half, and the walls collapsed inward. It will be gamer’s luck whether anybody gets through there, ever again.”

He paused, waiting for the murmur to crescendo into a roar of fear and confusion. It seemed that I had called it right—these people, totally ignorant of the real nature of this calamity, had assumed that only Chizan had been hurt by it.

There were no more vague faces now—just scared ones. Ligor lifted both arms, and the crowd gradually quieted.

“There’s nothing we can do about the Zantro now,” Ligor said. “Our business is to save what we can out of the buildings, help those who are hurt, and see about sharing the food and water we do have. Then we can send our strongest to the Zantro to find out if it’s passable.”

“What about the Zantil?” somebody shouted.

“Probably in the same shape,” Ligor answered. “But we’ll know soon enough if anybody can get through it.” Because he couldn’t ask Keeshah to crouch, he swung his leg across the cat’s back, and slid down beside me. The rubble gave a little, and I caught his arm to steady him. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

“You want me to lead these folks?” he demanded in a whisper. I nodded. “Then give me room to do it my own way, son. If I need a sha’um to bring them into line, I ain’t going to lead them for long.”

He moved cautiously around me, to stand in front of Keeshah and face the crowd. “This here is Rikardon,” he said.

I groaned inwardly, closed my eyes, and laid my head against Keeshah’s side.

“I know you know the name, because Worfit would have moved the Walls to find this man and kill him. Worfit
found
Rikardon,” Ligor said, and paused for emphasis, “in the Zantro Pass. Worfit’s dead—as dead as the past of Chizan. I tell you that in case there’s somebody out there thinks Worfit’s reward still stands, and is stupid enough to value gold above water.

“Rikardon and his sha’um have to go west, through the Zantil. He’ll be leaving just as soon as we quit this talking and start working to put things back together. If we see him again in a couple of days, we’ll know the Zantil’s blocked too. If we don’t, we’ll know it’s clear.

“Now, you all understand that? Worfit’s dead, Rikardon and Keeshah are leaving, and I’m staying. My name’s Ligor.”

The way he said his name, it was a blatant challenge, and it was a sure bet somebody would take him up on it. From close to the front of the crowd, a man shouldered his way out into the open. He was a big man, hard, with a sword scar where his right eye should have been.

“What makes you think you deserve to say what’s what in Chizan?” he said. “Seems like one of our own ought to be the one who gives the orders.”

“Seems to me one of your own should have been doing it already,” he said, and stared the man down. For a heart-stopping few seconds, I thought the man was going to attack Ligor, but just as his arm twitched toward his sword, a scream rang out from the back of the crowd.

“Help, please help!” the voice cried. “My little boy—I found him, but he’s trapped under all that brick. Somebody help me, please!”

Ligor looked at the man and pointed in the direction of the voice.

“There’s your first assignment,” he said. “Pick six men, tell them each to find five others, and spread your teams over the city to search the rubble for people who may still be trapped.” The man hesitated, and the distraught mother wailed again. “What’s your name?” Ligor asked.

“Hiben,” the man growled.

“Do it, Hiben,” Ligor said. “You got a quarrel with me, we’ll settle it when things are back in order.”

Hiben decided. He slapped his half-drawn sword back through his baldric, turned, and marched through the crowd, calling names as he went. The crowd closed in behind him and the men he took with him, and people came forward eagerly, asking for help or direction. In the space of a bare half hour, Ligor set up teams to build a water reservoir, locate and gather food, set up a first-aid station, corral the vleks, and begin clearing streets. Then he told the rest of the people to go to their own homes, salvage what they could, and come back in two hours to take a turn on one of the teams.

When everything had been set in motion, he turned to me. I reached out and took his hand in both mine. “I’m sorry to leave you like this, Ligor. There’s no telling what your resources are—”

“We’ll manage,” he said. “And for what it’s worth, Rikardon—thanks for convincing me. Feels like I’m doing good here.”

“Better than I could, my friend,” I said.

He grinned. “I know better than that, my friend, but thank you all the same. Keep that wound clean, and take care of yourself.”

When Keeshah and I had escaped the revolting miasma of Chizan, I dismounted and rested while Keeshah did his own version of rounding up vleks. I lifted the water pouch beside me and wondered, suddenly, where Ligor had found water to fill the pouch on his earlier visit to Chizan.

I didn’t see a single reservoir intact
, I thought.
But he must have found one, at least, not entirely shattered.
I hefted the water pouch.
I wouldn’t wonder that I have a majority of Chizan’s water supply with me
, I thought, and felt a twinge of guilt. Then I saw Keeshah on a rise of land some hundred yards from me, running with a long, loping stride, stretching himself easily to cross a gap or mount a ridge in the rocky ground.

He was scouting, not yet hunting, and the sight of him stirred a tactile memory in chest and thigh of being astride him while he ran. A deeper memory stirred, and I slipped into a daydream version of
sharing
such a run with the big cat, our minds blended so that I felt his strength and sureness, and my pleasure compounded his joy.

I might have reached out for Keeshah then, for a true sharing rather than merely the memory, but I resisted. Instead, I cast my thoughts back to the time when I had been without him, when he had answered the call of his instincts and returned to the Valley to mate and continue his species. Until now, I had avoided any close examination of that time, for I remembered only a shadow of the pain—confusion, loss, grief, loneliness. I let it sweep over me to drive away the guilt, and prepare me for what, even at best, would be an ordeal.

Of all the beautiful things in Gandalara
, I thought,
the exquisite glass, the gifts of the maufel and the Recorder, the intricate dancing, the detail of parquetry and mosaic, the simple and basic dignity of these people—of all these, there is nothing more precious than the partnership of a Gandalaran and a sha’um. Ricardo had much in common with these people, but the friendship I’ve found with Keeshah is outside Ricardo’s experience, unique to Gandalara.

I’ve got the feeling in my gut that Tarani hasn’t seen the danger, even though she has Antonia’s memory and knowledge. If I can’t get to Thagorn, the sha’um in the Valley will die. The Riders linked to those sha’um will suffer worse than I suffered in Keeshah’s absence. Even though our link seemed broken to me, Keeshah had submerged that conscious connection under an overwhelming weight of animal instinct. The Riders will truly lose their sha’um
—I shuddered.
I don’t even want to think about it.

Nor do I want to think about the other sha’um who will have no Valley and no families to return to—no females….

I paused, stunned by a new and terrifying thought.
There are two females outside the Valley,
I reminded myself.
Yayshah and Yoshah. How often have I felt—have Tarani and I discussed—the sense of destiny we feel about Yayshah coming out of the Valley with us? Don’t tell me—please, God, don’t tell me—that part of that destiny was to ensure the survival of the sha’um after this disaster.

I reached out for Keeshah. I sensed a mood of satisfaction, an aftertaste of both the hunt and the vlek—not Keeshah’s favorite meal, but adequate when we both knew that food of any kind was the main necessity.

*Ready soon
,* he told me.

I realized my heart was racing, and I was clenching the ground with my hands. I tried to relax.

*Sorry,*
I said.
*I didn’t mean to rush you, Keeshah. I’m just …*

*Worried
,* the sha’um finished for me, when I hesitated.
*For others like me. Why?*

*The poison
—* I began, then stopped to consider. Keeshah could, if he wished, share all my knowledge and understanding. Surely he knew what I feared, the consequences of the volcanic eruption so close to the Valley.
*Why what?*
I asked him.

*Why worry about others?*

I was still confused, so I went back to the beginning.

*Keeshah, you know the sha’um in the Valley may be in danger?*

*Know
,* he answered, a little impatiently.

*Then why aren’t
you
worried about them?*