Chapter Five

Seska heard a scratch, then glimpsed a gray-and-white face at her threshold. Vvok had bred basketfuls of daughters colored so, but the mismatched fields around these eyes could only be Khea. She lolled back on her cushions and flicked a disinterested ear. "Speak."

Padding more softly than any self-respecting youngster ought, Khea approached, then folded her body into a hesitant bow, black eyes blinking at the floor in obvious distress.

A scowl wrinkled Seska’s nose. "You have not allowed the creature to die?"

"No, Line Mother!" Ears down, the cubling gulped a breath. "But it is badly hurt and I do not know how much longer it will survive. It is so . . . delicate."

"Do not be ridiculous, child." Seska smoothed the gray overfur on her forearm, covering the white undercoat. "Nothing that hideous could be delicate." She picked up the list of the woven goods which Ghita had requested for trade.

"I think we should call in the Restorers’ Guild."

"We?" Seska glanced down sharply at the youngster. The young eyes, still cast properly at the floor, watched her from their corners. So, she thought, a little spirit appears in this one at last. She scowled. "Then summon Mela."

Khea’s breast heaved. "Th-the creature is injured, not sick," she forced out. "Mela treats disharmonies of the body." Her ears trembled. "We need a wound restorer."

"I suppose then you are referring to Vexk," she said acidly. "Well, despite her vows, even an honorless creature like Vexk would not lower herself to touch one of those loathsome Outsiders."

"She would not have to touch it." In her anxiety, the cubling looked directly at Seska. "If she could just tell me what to do . . ." Khea hurriedly returned her gaze to the floor. "I would care for it."

The fur rose on the back of Seska’s neck but, intrigued in spite of herself, she allowed the brazen liberty to pass for now. This child had never spoken up even once since she’d been assigned to her as a trainee. She stretched an arm above her head until the bones popped in her spine and shoulders. "Such services are not free." Her ears flattened at the thought of debts incurred and payments which would only be named later as she weighed the potential cost against the advantages conferred by possessing this creature, and its knowledge, alive. It was somehow connected to the strange hrinn that had fallen out of the sky yesterday, perhaps even part of a new, as-yet-unnamed pattern that was emerging far wider and more powerful than any in untold seasons. And if Outsiders were involved in the sacred purposes/in/motion which governed all life, then they were clearly more than the foolish prey-animals she had previously considered them to be. The information she might gain from this one could be invaluable.

Khea’s eyes were squeezed shut; obviously the child had run dry of arguments. "Very well." Seska leaned over and seized a handful of gray-and-white ruff, letting her handclaws prick as she pulled the cubling close to her muzzle. "But remember that when the price for this service is named, you will have to be involved in the payment."

The cubling hung in her hands without flicking so much as an ear, displaying more composure than Seska had thought she would ever develop. The old matriarch flung her to the floor. "Tell Ghita to attend me. I do not like the looks of this list." Then she fussed with the trade goods manifest until the cubling collected herself and crept away.

Fik allowed the messenger jit’s leathery brown body to crawl onto her pale-ginger arm. The sinuous flyer’s eyes, no larger than scarlet pinpoints, glittered up at her. Too bad that small triangular head had no room for sense. She would have liked to discuss this dire mistake returned unexpectedly from the past, but there was no safe place in Qartt Hold to talk, even if she could find a sympathetic listener. Although the Line Mother seemed to suspect many at Qartt had been involved, what Fik had done for Qartt, and Anktan, so long ago, she had done alone.

Shaking the jit’s tiny claws off her arm, she pushed the creature back into its wooden cage and fastened the top. This was her fault. They were all supposed to be dead, every last daughter and cubling of oh-so-proper Levv. She’d heard occasional rumors of a few Levv outcasts back up in the mountains, and whispers that some had been taken in as nonbreeding servants among the plains Lines who ranged far away from this river valley. Those might or might not be true, but she knew by the evidence of her own eyes that the majority of Levv were dead.

Her handclaws flexed in frustration. Why had it fallen to her to be the one to come across the ancient color pattern on that fateful day? Staring at the toddling handful of Black/on/black fur amid the bloody destruction of Levv, knowing full well the Line was innocent of wrongdoing, she had not been able to dash its brains out against the nearest rock as she should have. Though she had never really believed in the power of the Voice, or the great purposes/in/motion from the old tales, the appearance of the sacred coloration after so many generations had seemed the portent of an emerging dark pattern. Superstition had overwhelmed her, even as she reached for the cubling, and she found herself turning aside, allowing him to flee into the brush toward the plainsward side of the mountain, a moment of supreme foolishness for which now they would all pay.

But not if she found him first, a distant portion of her mind whispered. Not if this supposedly powerful Black/on/black died before he could ask more questions. The jit clung to its cage with all four clawed feet, its long tail curled around a wooden bar. A message, she thought, reaching through the bars to stroke the tiny head with one finger. She must communicate with her fellow conspirators. If they could overtake the Black/on/black while he was alone, they could tear his throat out and still be safe. No one ever had to know who had set the other Lines against conservative, old-fashioned Levv.

She reached underneath her cushions and brought out the rectangular talker-box. She still marveled at the strange black metal, so different from anything a hrinn had ever produced. She and the others had been right to make a deal with these Outsiders, who knew so much more about the way the world worked than hrinn were ever likely to discover alone. As the Line Mothers were gradually defeated by the original conspirators in lawful challenge, they would use such devices and many more to make life easier and more interesting, and no one ever had to know such progress had been bought with the blood of Levv.

Rakshal sauntered into the subterranean chamber and his bristling, disapproving presence immediately crowded Nisk, even though the two of them were still separated by a fair amount of space. Several younger males gave way without protest as he approached, but Nisk turned his back, both to avoid a direct confrontation and to demonstrate disdain. There were all too few priests left among the people these days, and he failed to understand why this one was so abrasive. He should be spreading the wisdom of the Voice to males’ houses up and down the river, creating structure and strengthening association, not sowing dissention among those already bonded.

He squatted before the fire, feeding gynth leaves into its glimmering red heart and studying the shifting flames. The soothing scent filtered through the air, settling his nerves and making it possible to consider all aspects of the emerging pattern carefully, even the seemingly erratic influence of Rakshal, who might have his own part to play. Were events shaping into patience/in/illusion, as he suspected, or something darker and altogether less malleable to the desires of hrinn? He feared the latter, having encountered occasional patterns so destructive, one could only pin one’s ears back and endure until they dissipated.

Rakshal loomed behind him and Nisk’s nostrils flared at his altered scent; he stank of power. He had been to the pool. Fury kindled within Nisk. Rakshal was clearly spoiling for a fight, but something immense and far-reaching was developing and this was not the time. "Don’t interfere with what you obviously lack the ability to understand," he said. "This pattern is an old and slow-growing one that began back with the demise of Levv, and I have always felt the true name of that day has never been known." Nisk rose to face the dark-gray priest.

"The Council named it death/in/longing." Rakshal prowled around Nisk, heedless of where he placed his feet or whose path he crossed, forcing the other males to give way. They backed off with rumbling growls. "It could be nothing else. Levv had to know how it would end when they slew without trespass, or blood-debt, or even challenge."

Taking a life outside established rituals was the worst of transgressions, cutting across all patterns, large and small, sowing chaos in the midst of order. Nisk’s stomach turned at the very thought. The desire to rend and slay simmered just below the surface of every waking moment, indeed, burned through him now with the same urgency with which his heart sought to beat, his lungs to breathe. That need had to be controlled and channeled, made to serve order, rather than destroy it. If not, the old times would return when every hrinn’s claws were turned against all others. Chaos would again rule and civilized cooperation would be but a fool’s dream. He stared into the fire. "I never saw any evidence that Levv slew without reason. Did you?"

Rakshal’s ears flattened. "You know very well I had not yet drawn breath then. I am part of this new day, which calls for younger, stronger teeth."

Nisk shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet and sheathed his handclaws only by sheer exertion of will. The smell of Rakshal’s insolence battered at him until it was all he could do to hold onto rational thought and not leap at that dark-gray throat. "I was quite young, but had already been accepted into the males’ house." Nisk forced reasonableness into his own voice. "I never saw Levv to be less than honorable. This house accepted many males born of that Line before—"

"‘Before.’" Rakshal’s eyes glittered. "Before they slaughtered, before they fell, before they betrayed us all! Before!"

For the first time, Nisk felt his age pressing in, whispering he might not win in an all-out fight with this brash youngster. He glanced uneasily around the circular chamber, the sound of his own breathing loud.

"If this Outsider insists on knowing his Line, then he aligns himself with Levv and all that means." Rakshal stalked back to the whitestone wall and stopped before the frieze of painstakingly maintained scent-glyphs. "Either he drops this matter and applies for membership in a males’ house, or shares Levv’s end." Extending a foreclaw, he retraced the winding shape of death/in/longing with a line of brilliant blue sacred fire.

A hint of light approached around a corner in the blacker-than-black darkness. Mitsu shifted, then stiffened as pain shot through her right side. All-Father, she was thirsty, and it was so damnably cold in this hole. Hadn’t these fur-faces ever heard of blankets? Then a weak laugh shook her, bringing even more pain. What need had hrinn for blankets? Blackeagle had slept unprotected through every kind of weather their unit had encountered.

Helplessly watching the faint light grow brighter, she wondered what had happened to him. Had the beasts in that underground pit killed him? The breath caught in her throat, turned into an agonizing tickle, then a wracking cough that jarred her wounds and enveloped her in pain.

The light turned one last corner, then two hrinn entered her small chamber, the solemn gray-and-white which had tended her earlier, and another, whose white fur was edged with just a hint of gray.

Mitsu blinked up at the fierce long-muzzled faces through the tears brought on by the coughing. "Why don’t you just kill me and be done with it?" she whispered hoarsely in Standard.

The white hrinn’s lips pulled back over huge teeth, then it leaned down and sniffed at her. The smaller gray-and-white, with its almost comical one gray eye and one white, wedged itself in the corner, cocking its head to one side as Mitsu had seen Blackeagle do many times. Blackeagle . . . Her eyes fluttered closed. He had told her not to go to the males’ house, warned her they would smell her out. It was so irritating that he was always right.

A finger brushed her cheek. She tried to open her eyes again, but could not.

"You have —— waited —— long. It is ——," a voice said in Hrinnti. "—— body —— smells quite different —— ours. I cannot —— our —— work —— its blood."

Damnation, despite the deepsleep course, she was getting only one word in every two or three. A deep chill seeped through her and she fought the urge to cough again.

"Then —— die?" a second voice said from very far away.

"Perhaps." The first voice was calm. "Perhaps not. We ——. I —— do what —— can here."

Leave me alone! Mitsu wanted to tell them. Let me die in peace! But she could not find the energy. She felt the sting of bandages being eased away from her arm and side.

"Perhaps —— help?" the first voice asked. "Healing —— strong in Vvok ——"

The second hrinn did not answer. Mitsu heard the crackle of flames, smelled smoke, then drifted, seeing Blackeagle’s black-furred face in her mind as he watched her with his ears pricked forward, ready to tell her what a stupid, wet-behind-the-ears boot she was.

"I’m sorry," she whispered.

"What —— say?" one of the hrinn asked.

"Nothing," the other answered. "Very —— this —— hurt. Hold —— still —— soak —— a Restoring —— and watch —— teeth."

A fiery liquid drenched Mitsu’s clawed side and arm, burning the raw flesh. She gasped, trying not to cry out, then darkness swept her away.

The fat red sun glimmered down through the unfamiliar pale-amber sky as Heyoka trudged across the hard-baked desert floor, skirting occasional patches of sand. Although the brace stiffened his gait, he found he could walk without limping for the moment. The extra gravity dragged at him though, making every movement, no matter how small, more strenuous.

In a black duraplas backpack, he carried concentrates for two weeks and what little information he had been able to pry out of the research station’s database—a few sketchy maps and details on local kin-groups, surprisingly sparse for a study that had been in progress for over forty Standard Years. He suspected someone had locked out the more pertinent information. Still, he had the maps and the scrap of red cloth he had found. According to the database, that shade of red dye designated a local, mostly female kin-grouping known as Vvok. The map had indicated a stream just ahead which he needed to cross and then climb to the higher ground overlooking the eastern shore of the river. Vvok Hold was located in the middle of that plateau. With luck, he would reach it soon after nightfall.

Falling rock rattled down the hillside. Heyoka listened, his body rigid with concentration. Unhealed claw marks stung along his ribs. Listening intently, he heard it again, the click of a dislodged rock somewhere behind him. Someone was back there, perhaps even trailing him. He abandoned the boulder and waded across the stream.

On the opposite bank, he sniffed the breeze for a clue as to who was following him, but the wind was out of the west and brought no answers. The ground ahead of him rose sharply now, strewn with broken sandstone boulders. He wove upward, using the rocks for cover, gritting his teeth against the renewed ache in his leg. Finally, he reached down and thumbed the power brace to a higher setting, then pushed on as fast as he could manage.

To his disgust, he found himself panting. Too much time on Med-leave, he told himself. Using a broken chunk of sandstone for cover, he studied the drylands below, finally spotting a band of tiny figures retracing the route he had just taken, mounted on the humpbacked riding beasts called yirns.

The fur rose across his shoulders. Sliding back behind the boulder, he tried to think. His best clue indicated Vvok had taken Mitsu, but this group rode from another direction. Who were they and what did they want?

Glancing down at his aching leg, he realized he had few options, since he could not outrun mounted trackers. Seething at the loss of time it entailed, he worked his way back down the hillside, angling downstream of the spot where he had crossed before and hugging the lengthening shadows.

Several of the hrinn urged their mounts into the water, then plodded up the hillside, following his scent with apparent ease, while two remained on this side of the stream. Trapped, Heyoka listened with growing frustration as the broad flat feet of the yirn picked their way up the hill. Why in the bloody hell weren’t they all going on? Just as he decided to risk crossing the stream again, he heard the faintest brush of softness against rock—from behind.

Flek! his combat reflexes shouted, and his handclaws flexed automatically before he got hold of himself. This was not Enjas Two. His lips wrinkled back over his teeth. He drew the steel-bladed knife from the sheath at his waist, whirling to face the rocks. Without warning, a tawny streak leaped onto his shoulders and swept him to the ground.