THE GLASS OF DYSKORNIS

Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron

PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS:

INPUT SESSION TWO

— Ah, you have awakened. And eaten well, I see. Do you feel well enough refreshed to begin again?

— Yes, Recorder. I am ready.

— Good. Before we start, let me review the material already entered into the Record of the All-Mind. Then you may continue. Agreed?

— Agreed, Recorder.

— You have told of your previous identity outside our world of Gandalara. Your name was Ricardo Carillo. You were an instructor of languages, sixty years of age, and a veteran of your world’s wars. You had been told you would die soon of internal disorders. You were … Is the word correct?

— Yes. I was traveling in a structure which floated on a large body of water, the Mediterranean Sea.

— Sailing then, in the company of a woman named Antonia Alderuccio, when you saw a bright light in the sky which seemed to fall directly toward you. You thought it was a skybolt, is that not true?

— My word for that is meteor. I thought it was a meteor.

— When the bright light struck, you were unconscious for a time. Then you awoke in Gandalara wearing the body of a native named Markasset alone except for a dead man and Markasset’s sha’um, Keeshah. There was a creature in your own world like Keeshah, it was called….

— A cat. But there was nothing in my world quite like the Gandalaran sha’um. Most of our cats weren’t half big enough. There was a prehistoric breed, the sabertooth that might have come close to Keeshah’s size. All the mammals in Gandalara, including the men and women, have enlarged canine teeth, but Keeshah’s tusks do not resemble the outsize fangs of earth’s sabertooth.

May I ask you a question, Recorder?

— Yes.

— You seem uncertain of the material already recorded.

— The All-Mind has perfect memory. I do not. May I go on?

— Of course. My apologies.

— You awoke in the Kapiral desert, and Keeshah saved your life by carrying you to a Refreshment House. There you learned of your new identity and first heard the name of Thanasset, Markasset’s father.

Later, you discovered that Thanasset and his son were implicated in the theft of the Ra’ira, a beautiful jewel which had become a symbol of power in Gandalara. It had played a role in the destruction of the ancient Kingdom, had it not?

— In a way. The Ra’ira had been sent from Raithskar to one of the Kings as tribute. It had become a symbol of authority for the rulers of Gandalara. As the sea called the Great Pleth had diminished, other cities had sent tribute in the form of slaves to work the fields and fight a losing battle against the salty desert that was closing in on Kä. Raithskar’s contribution to Käs support was water.

Markasset’s ancestor, Serkajon, realized that the Kings had ceased to rule Gandalara, and were merely exploiting it.

— So Serkajon stole the symbol of their power.

— Yes, Recorder. He took the Raira back to Raithskar. The King’s Guard followed him and demanded the return of the Ra’ira. But he persuaded them that he was right. They abandoned the last King of Gandalara and took a vow to support their Captain’s plan to keep the jewel surrounded and protected by honest men.

The protective system Serkajon set up, a ruling Council of twelve Supervisors, continued until Gharlas stole the gem.

— Gharlas was the master of the caravan which had departed Raithskar the day of the theft.

After an attack by the Sharith, the sha’um riders descended from the King’s Guard, the remnants of the caravan told the Chief of Peace and Security that Markasset (under the name he had given) had left his guard post on the night before the attack occurred—which gave Zaddorn good cause to confine you for questioning.

— It was fortunate, for me, that Illia had time to warn me. I couldnt help Thanasset by staying in Raithskar, and I truly didnt know where Markasset had been when the Sharith attacked. If the Ra’ira had been with the caravan, and if the Sharith had attacked the caravan….

— So you set out for Thagorn, killing a man, during your escape, whom you thought to be one of Zaddorn’s officers. You entered Thagorn in disguise, and met Dharak, the Lieutenant of the Sharith, and his son, Thymas.

Gharlas had arranged for the attack, requesting that everyone on the caravan be killed. The Lieutenant had decided, instead, to sell the survivors to an Eddartan slaver. One of the prisoners, Hural, had been involved in the theft, and he answered your questions.

— Don’t forget that Zaddorn was present, too. He had made the trip to Thagorn in record time, the last few miles in the uncomfortable cargo net of a Sharith patrol. When he realized that I was about to uncover some information, he didn’t reveal my identity to the Lieutenant.

— And his presence was a good thing, because Hural died, of his own wish, at the end of his testimony. He described the madness of Gharlas, who believed obsessively that he should be King of Gandalara. Hural said that Gharlas carried a power, long rare, to read and to influence men’s minds. Gharlas had compelled Thanasset to believe he had locked the door of the Ra’ira’s vault when, in truth, he had left it quite open.

Dharak and Thymas assured Zaddorn that such power was possible. An illusionist, Tarani, claimed and used that power for the entertainment of the Sharith. Zaddorn was convinced of Thanasset’s innocence.

— Dharak had known who I was, the moment I had walked into Thagorn. He told me, privately, that as Serkajon’s descendant—and because my loyalty to Thanasset had proved something to him—he regarded me as the new Captain of the Sharith, and would await my orders about the Raira.

— You sound as though this disturbed you.

— It did. I had accepted Markasset’s responsibilities toward his father, and his engagement to Illia, but my only interest in the Ra’ira lay in proving that Thanasset didn’t steal it. I hated to disillusion Dharak, who had been more than fair with me, but I would have told him “no” right then, if he hadn’t also told me that Thanasset was in danger.

— So you and Zaddorn returned to Raithskar, after persuading Keeshah to accept Zaddorn as a second rider. And after persuading Zaddorn to ride him. That was the hard part.

 When you reached the city, Ferrathyn heard Zaddorn’s story, and assured you that the Council would clear Thanasset of all involvement with the theft. But you inquired about the penalty for killing a peace officer, thereby alerting Zaddorn to the change in you.

— I really should have known, Recorder, that all peace officers in Raithskar wore gray baldrics. But, as I explained earlier, Markasset’s memories were not totally accessible to me. So I told everyone present what I had told Thanasset earlier. I said I was not Markasset.

— Who was present at that time?

— Zaddorn, Illia, and Ferrathyn; Markasset’s great-aunt Milda; and, of course, Thanasset and myself. Illia agreed to postpone any wedding plans until she could get to know me better. Milda was most troubled by the fact that I didn’t know what had happened to Markasset, or if he would ever return.

— Which he wouldn’t, as you found out when Thanasset presented you with the great treasure of his house, Serkajon’s sword. Markasset’s memories came to you and you knew that he had died in the desert, as he followed Gharlas away from the caravan, the night before the Sharith attack.

— I assume that the third member of the team of thieves killed Markasset by hitting his head with a rock, thrown or slung from a distance.

Keeshah killed him, Markasset’s murderer, but Gharlas simply went on his way, with the Ra’ira.

It was … difficult to tell Thanasset that his son was dead. But he accepted it well, and even offered to invoke the ancient custom of awarding a new name with the sword, so that I could be called by the more familiar name, Rikardon.

— I believe that sums up your first entry into the Record. Has anything been omitted?

— Yes, two things.

— And these are … ?

— First, the All-Mind. My understanding of it is imperfect, and somewhat different from the native Gandalaran’s viewpoint.

— Then describe it in your own words, so that it may be clear in your mind before we begin this session.

— Thanasset tried to explain it to me. I understood it to be a sort of group consciousness, accessible in different degrees to all Gandalarans. Two lines of thought prevail in Gandalara about the All-Mind: first, that it is composed of the surviving personalities of all men and women who have ever lived; and second, that only their memories have survived. In either case, the All-Mind is accepted as natural and useful, respected but not worshiped.

— Thanasset explained your appearance within this framework, did he not?

— He tried, and I thought it best to let him believe something he could accept. He said I was a Visitor, a personality of someone long dead, whom the All-Mind had sent into Markasset’s body for some purpose which I might not even know. Such Visitations had occurred before, though rarely. He thought it an honor to Markasset, and I believe it brought some ease to the pain of losing his son. I could not take that from him.

— Ferrathyn suggested that you might be Serkajon. A logical choice, certainly, since you were of his house, and were to carry his sword.

— He did suggest it, but I told him he was wrong. As I said regarding the conversation with Dharak, Markasset’s responsibilities were quite enough for me to handle.

— There was another point overlooked?

— Keeshah. You have mentioned him as an animal which carried Markasset, but you have not discussed the special bond between him and Markasset, and between him and me.

— The nature of the telepathic link between sha’um and rider is well understood in the All-Mind.

— But you asked me, in the first session, to tell everything as it happened, in the greatest detail possible, leaving nothing out. The bond may be routine in Gandalara, but it was new and wonderful to me, a sharing such as I had never known in my world. When he accepted me in Markasset’s place. Keeshah became my first and strongest tie to Gandalara

Together, we created a new bond, a deeper touching. We were more than sha’um and rider, we were friends and partners.

— You are right to include that in the review, since Keeshah was so important to you. Please accept my apology for being impatient. Is there anything more upon which we haven’t touched?

— I don’t think so… . No, wait! Worfit has been left out.

— Ah, yes, the roguelord. It was his man you killed on your way out of Raithskar. Markasset owed him a large sum of money.

— Seven hundred zaks. It was that debt which l led to Markasset’s contracting for the guard position with Gharlas’s caravan, and to all the later events. I had not yet met Worfit, but I had resolved to pay him off and be rid of him as soon as possible. The continuation of the story must begin with him.

— Are you ready, then, to continue?

— I am ready, Recorder.

—Then make your mind one with mine, as I have made mine one with the All-Mind….

WE BEGIN

1

Nobody, not even another Gandalaran, would call Worfit handsome. But nobody would tell him the truth, either. For one thing, he sat behind a big marble-topped desk and in front of two tough-looking characters whose expressions said: “Make the Chief mad and I’ll break your face.” For another, he had a certain personal trait which would make the most talkative person taciturn. In a word, that trait was meanness.

It glittered in the pinpoint eyes which lurked underneath extra-prominent supraorbital ridges. It could be seen in the way he used his thick-fingered hands. They lay still until they were needed. They didnt tap tables or crack knuckles. And when they moved, they moved fast, grasping at things as though each item were an enemy’s throat.

Just now, his right hand lay on the desk before him, palm upward. On that palm were stacked the twenty-four coins which, in sum, repaid Markasset’s debt to this man. With a sudden movement, Worfit flipped his hand over, scattering the smaller bronze and silver coins and slapping the two gold twenty-dozak pieces to the desk top.

“You owe me more than this, Markasset,” he said. His voice was high-pitched, soft, menacing.

I knew what he meant, of course. I had killed one of his men. But his manner throttled the gracious apology I had planned.

“Seven hundred zaks is the exact amount of the debt,” I said. “Enjoy it. It’s the last money you’ll see from me.”

Worfit’s head pulled back a little. He looked at me the way a dog might regard a rabbit who barked.

“You’ve said that before, Markasset, but I think you mean it this time. Don’t tell me this hoorah over the Ra’ira has finally turned you into daddy’s good little boy.”

How could Markasset stand this creep? I wondered, with an unreasonable feeling of betrayal. Relying on Markasset’s memory of Worfit as a “gentleman gamester” with a high sense of honor, I had made the .difficult choice to come to his office unarmed. Now my hand itched to hold Serkajon’s sword.

Keeshah, resting in his house in Thanasset’s back yard, sensed my uneasiness.

Need me?* came his thought. I could feel his eagerness. But there had been a number of armed men lounging around the closed gambling salon I had crossed a few minutes ago. I had the definite feeling that Worfit had expected my visit—and possibly one from Keeshah.

Thank you, I told the cat. I can handle this.

I hope, I added to myself. The exchange had taken only a fraction of a second, and Worfit was still staring at me with contempt plain on his face.

”Everybody changes sometime, Worfit,” I said. “Look at you. You used to be a lot nicer.”

He grinned.

I’d like to stuff those coins, one by one, through his digestive system in reverse, I thought.

”That was when you were a good customer, and paying on time. You’ve just said you’re quitting the tables, and I believe you. That means you aren’t worth being nice to anymore.”

DANGER! Keeshah’s mind screamed the warning as, linked with me, he heard the soft step behind me.

I ducked to the right. A double-fisted blow that might have knocked my head off struck the top of my left shoulder and spun me around. I caught my balance and faced the man who had swung at me, a big, muscular man with a patch on one eye. Marnen, Worfit’s assistant and bouncer.

“I been waiting for this a long time, Markasset. Let’s see how far your uppity manners get you now. He spread his arms and came toward me. “Like the Chief said, I don’t have to be nice.”

At least he’s not armed, I thought. Thank goodness for grudges. He wants to tear me apart, piece by piece.

He’ll do it, too, if I don’t get moving.

I bent over and lunged head-first at his midriff, which was hard as rock. But I did knock him backward, so that there wasn’t much punch to the two-handed blow he landed on my spine. We crashed against the wall near the office door. I grabbed his ankles and pulled. He sat down heavily.

His big hands caught my tunic and jerked me toward him, and I didn’t resist. When my head was near his chest, I braced my hands on the wall on either side of him, and snapped my head up under his chin. The back of his head slammed into the wall.

His grip relaxed.

My head hurt.

Oh, boy, did my head hurt.

Headaches seem to be a way of life with Markasset, I grumbled to myself as I staggered to my feet. Somewhat less than gracefully, I turned to face the desk, expecting the two plug-uglies behind Worfit to join in the fight. But they were right where they had been. One of them was even smiling.

Not too popular with the troops, are you, Marnen?

Hurt? came Keeshah’s anxious thought. I come there.

No, Keeshah, I’m all right. I’d be dead by now if that’s what Worfit wanted. I’m safe.

Slowly, Worfit stood up. He was short, his head barely clearing my shoulder. But he was heavy and solid, with wide shoulders and a barrel chest. He came around the desk, and I tensed again, certain that Worfit would be harder to handle than Marnen. But he only came up to me and pushed a stubby finger into my chest.

”You owe me, Markasset,” he said. “For the irritation and inconvenience of Zaddorn’s close interest in my affairs because of that fleabitten Ra’ira. Maybe that wasn’t your fault, but it feels that way to me.

“And you killed one of my men. You owe me a life.

“I won’t kill you today, Markasset. Not for years, yet, maybe. But I collect all the debts I’m owed. Remember that, and keep looking over your shoulder. Don’t make it easy for me.”

His eyes were gleaming, and his mouth was stretched in an ugly smile. His large canine tusks looked eager.

He hates Markasset, I realized. He has always hated him. Because of Keeshah, Worfit never had the complete power over the boy that a life-threat brings. And Worfit wouldn’t dare strike at Thanasset, because then boy and cat would come looking for him. So Worfit had to do a certain amount of play-acting to keep Markasset’s respect–-and his business.

Now he hates me, too, because I don’t have Markasset’s gambling fever. He’s lost the little power he had. A few hundred Zaks was nothing to Worfit. But now he figures it’s worth it to put time and energy into finding a way to get to me. Just to prove he can do it.

He can. He’s doing it right now, damn it.

I pushed his hand away, and then I shoved Marnen with my foot to get him clear of the door. Before I could get through it, Worfit spoke again in that sneering voice.

“Watch your back, Markasset.”

This ugly little man had belittled, threatened, and intimidated me. Worst of all, he knew he’d gotten to me, that I believed his threat. I wanted—badly—to wipe away his self-satisfied smirk.

“Markasset isn’t my name,” I said. “Call me Rikardon. Thanasset renamed me. When he gave me Serkajon’s sword.”

I left then, with a warm memory of Worfit’s unpleasant features beginning to register shock. My gloating lasted about ten paces past the outer door of the gaming house.

How stupid can you get? I asked myself, and then added: Don’t test it out.

Sure, you impressed Worfit. He knows about Markasset’s family history. He knows what Thanasset thinks of his son, to give him Serkajon’s sword.

So now he’ll be careful not to underestimate you.

That’s good?

And you gave him another reason to want you dead—that damned sword is valuable.

When Thanasset had presented the steel sword to me, I had been intrigued by its history and touched by the high regard implicit in the old man’s gesture. It wasn’t until I had all of Markasset’s memories that I realized that it was a treasure beyond price. Markasset did not know of another steel sword which existed in Gandalara. Rika, as the sword was called, was unique.

Iron was amazingly scarce in this world. Raithskar had the only known deposit of it, and its mining was a community affair, closely supervised by the Council. Steel was forged, sold, and traded at premium prices in minute quantities. Its most common use was in the scissor-like sparkers, bronze tongs with cupped tips set with pieces of flint and steel for striking fires.

In the language of Gandalara, Gandaresh, the word for both steel and its basic material, iron, was rakor. Besides the sparkers, rakor was used for other, very special purposes.

The lock mechanism of the chamber from which the Ra’ira had been stolen was a strong bar of wood with brackets and a locking pin made of rakor. That seemed to me to be another measure of the esteem in which the Council of Supervisors held the beautiful gem.

Serkajon’s sword, because of its history as well as its composition, was the second most valuable article in Raithskar. Telling Worfit I had it had been like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey.

Except it’s hard to tell which one of us is the jackass. I thought gloomily.

The thing to do, I decided, is not let it get under your skin. Worfit wants you to sweat a little. He won’t do anything for a while, at least. So cheer up, have some breakfast, take a look at the city. Do you realize this is the first chance you’ve had to relax? Enjoy it!

I had stepped out into an open court, one of four good-sized plazas which surrounded the huge central meeting area of the city. Though all these courts were square in shape, when a Raithskarian spoke of “the Square”, he meant the big one, with stone terraces stepping down to meet an elevated stage. The announcement of the Council’s judgment had been made there last night, clearing Thanasset and Markasset of any blame in the Ra’ira incident.

This plaza was smaller and level, but it, too, was paved with hand-fitted stone. Benches were placed in attractive groups, often in combination with a planting of trees and shrubs which grew tall enough to shade the benches. Although there was a specific district in the city for restaurants, a few were allowed to operate facing each plaza, for the convenience of the workers of the surrounding districts.

I followed my nose into a pastry shop, and came out with two meat pies and an earthenware drinking bowl filled with a strong herb tea.

It was still early morning, as I had timed my arrival at Worfit’s offices for just after the dawn curfew for gaming houses. I took my time over breakfast, enjoying the food, and letting the faint mist from the Skarkel Falls dampen my clothes. The three other plazas would be bustling with people on their way to work, but this one was nearly deserted at this time of day. It lay in the center of the night district, and the “rush hour” home had happened earlier, probably while I had been with Worfit.

One of the few people crossing the court was a young woman. Her golden head fur winked with sheen of mist. It reminded me of walking in Thanasset’s garden with Illia, and I thought: What better relaxation is there than the company of a lady?

I returned the drinking bowl to the restaurant, got back my deposit, and started northward. I had no trouble finding Illia’s house, and she answered the door on the first knock. A smile of welcome froze and turned shy, and her mother appeared from a doorway somewhere.

”Who is it, Illia? … Oh.” She nodded a greeting to me, even while she was speaking to her daughter. “Don’t be too long, dear; I do need your help.” Illia’s mother went back through the doorway—into the kitchen, I presumed. Both women were wearing long aprons heavily stained with a pinkish fruit juice.

“I’m sorry if I’ve come at a bad time,” I said. “I only wanted to ask—will you have dinner with me tonight?”

“I’d like that very much,” she said softly. “What time?” We set a time, and I turned to go.

”Rikardon?” she called me back. “Thank you for asking.”

Her smile thawed a little, and I left, feeling a keen anticipation of the evening. Breakfast, the walk, and the prospective dinner date had finally done away with the headache.

I walked through Raithskar, seeing it twice. Once with Markasset’s familiarity, again with Ricardo’s objectivity. I passed a party of vineh spreading a fresh coating of dark clay mud over a worn street. Markasset wouldn’t have noticed them at all, but they sent Rikardon searching through the Gandalaran’s memory for facts relating to the man-like animals.

Gandalarans aren’t human physically, though they are mammalian humanoids. They are water savers, like the kangaroo rat of the American southwest. Socially and psychologically, they are so similar to humans that identifying them as men and women is no insult to Ricardo’s humanity.

If the Gandalarans are the men of their world, then the vineh are the apes. Though the people of Raithskar had trained the beasts to perform simple tasks under close supervision, in their natural state they exhibited more ferocity than intelligence. Vineh are bigger than the men of Gandalara and their stance is more erect than that of the apes of Ricardo’s world. They are covered with a coarse and curly fleece, light tan in color.

In Raithskar, they wore shorts.

The first time I had seen vineh, I had assumed that the shorts were meant to respect the modesty of the people of Raithskar. That had seemed foolish to me, but on recalling a crusade during my former lifetime to put human-style clothes on the animals in zoos, I wasn’t about to criticize.

In any case, I had been wrong. The only surefire, ironclad, indisputable reason for one male vineh to beat the living tar out of another one is the fact that the other is male, and might someday be competition for the attentions of a female. Obscuring sight of a rival’s genitalia removed his identity as a rival.

Don’t ask me why.

The men of Raithskar had discovered this quirk, collected a colony of vineh, and put the males to work. The females were always in some breeding phase, producing three males for every female. Whether this created the fierce rivalry, or was a natural compensation for the high murder rate among males, was a “chicken or egg” problem that didn’t rate much analysis.

Beyond those facts, Markasset hadn’t known a whole lot about the vineh. Having his memory accessible to me wasn’t the blessing I had first thought it would be. For one thing, I had his understanding of facts and his impression of the events he remembered. For another, I needed always to be setting him aside to view things more objectively. Whenever I looked at anything within Markasset’s experience, it stimulated a natural search for associations that I had come to think of as Markasset’s “echo.” Worst of all, Markasset took this world, these people, this city for granted. A lot of the things I wanted to know, he had never bothered to learn.

2

It was almost noon by the time I reached home. The meat pies had worn off, and I was looking forward to lunch.

Hungry too,* Keeshah told me, as I started in the front door of the big stone house. He had been given an entire side of glith the evening before, but I could well believe he needed more food. He had carried two men almost six hundred miles in just over four days. Even though he had hunted and fed during that time, his reserves had to be just about gone.

Right after lunch, I told him. I promise.

Lunch, as it happened, was going to be delayed.

Thanasset came out of the sitting room to the right of the midhall as soon as I opened the door. He was taller than I, and his head fur was beginning to darken with age. But he always gave an impression of vigorous health and great dignity. Just now he looked relieved.

“We were beginning to wonder if something had happened to you,” he said. He didn’t mention Worfit.

”’We?’” I asked.

“Yes, Ferrathyn has been here most of the morning, waiting to see you.”

I hurried into the sitting room, where the slight old man was sipping a glass of faen, the Gandalaran equivalent of beer.

“It’s good to see you again, Chief Supervisor,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to wait. If I had known …”

He waved his hand and shook his head. “Not at all, not at all. One of the few good things that has come from losing the Raira has been my frequent visits to Thanasset’s house. He and I have spent the morning renewing a friendship long neglected.

“Anyway, it happens that I have nothing else to do. Seeing you is my assignment from the Council.”

Uh-oh, something’s up, I thought. It didn’t take much deduction. Ferrathyn was smiling up at me, wrinkles wreathing his face. And Thanasset was beaming, but not looking at me, as though I might read the secret in his eyes.

”I am empowered to invite you, Rikardon, to join the Council of Raithskar as its thirteenth member,” Ferrathyn said. “There are normally certain—uh—character tests to be passed, but these have been waived in your case, largely because the Council feels you have already proven yourself to be of excellent character. The Council will have a general meeting tomorrow, just after the luncheon hour. Please attend, and deliver your decision in person.”

He stood up and sighed. “Now that I’ve completed my mission, I must be on my way. I don’t think I need to say, Rikardon, that I hope you will decide to join us. Good day.” He turned to Thanasset. “Thank you for the refreshments and the conversation, old friend. Ill see myself out,” he added, with a chuckle, after looking at me. “You’ll be needed to answer questions.”

”There have never been more than twelve members of the Council!” I said to Thanasset as the street door closed behind Ferrathyn.

”The Council created this position just for you,” Thanasset said, and I could see he was proud of it. I didn’t attend last night’s meeting—technically, I was still under suspension until I was cleared—but Ferrathyn told me about it. The Council was very impressed with your command of the crowd outside the house. We all have so much work that there is little communication between the Council and the people. You are to be—well, a liaison, a communications link.”

A PR man, I translated. Right up there in the public eye. Where Worfit will always know where I am.

Maybe he’d be less likely to attack a public official? It sounds like the job might be interesting. And I guess it’s time I looked for a way to make a living. Guarding caravans is not a possible choice.

What else is Markasset trained to do? Trained … the boy was a fine swordsman. Maybe I could use that skill to become an instructor?

Thanasset watched me thinking about it and his pleased expression was replaced by one of unbelief. “Don’t tell me you are thinking of refusing the Council’s offer? It is an unprecedented honor.”

”I realize that, sir,” I said.

Should I tell him about Worfit? No, he’ll only send Zaddorn to harass him again, which is partly what started this in the first place.

”It’s a little sudden,” I told Thanasset. “I’m glad theyve given me a day to get used to the idea. I just want to think about it for a while.”

”Rikardon, I wish you would accept the position,” he said seriously. “As a Supervisor, you could learn … so much about Raithskar, so quickly. I have the feeling that you may need information that Markasset didn’t have.-

Your intuition is right on the money, Thanasset, I thought. And that’s a point well worth considering.

I smiled and tried to put him at ease. “I do appreciate the honor of being asked, Father, and I want to accept, but I can’t say yes or no right now.”

Someone knocked at the street door, and Thanasset went to answer it. I poured myself some faen and had the glass halfway to my mouth when Thanasset called to me. I put the glass down on the stone-and-glass shelf and went out to the door. A man in a gray baldric was standing there, and I felt my neck hairs rise.

You were cleared of all charges, I reminded myself. There’s no reason to be nervous just because a cop comes to your door.

”Zaddorn’s apologies for not calling in person, Rikardon,” said the man in the street. “He asks if you will join him at his offices as soon as possible.”

Asks?

Zaddorn?

That’s a laugh.

”Of course.I lifted my own baldric from the peg beside the door and slipped it over my head. I felt better with the weight of Serkajon’s sword at my left side. “Father, we’ll talk again before the Council meeting. Thanasset nodded, and I stepped out to the small porch beside Zaddorn’s officer. “Let’s go.”

The center of the government district—which was very close to Thanasset’s house—was marked by another plaza. The largest building in Raithskar was located here, a three-story structure that held the offices and meeting room for members of the Council. There was also a large open room which took up most of the first floor. On Commemoration Day, the holiday which honored Serkajon’s return to Raithskar, the Ra’ira had been on display in that room, mounted in a special case. The vault where the gem had been kept at all other times was located =on the top floor.

Across the plaza was a long, single-story building which was Raithskar’s jail, and headquarters for the Peace and Security Department. Zaddorn’s office was all the way at one end of the building, with a private outside entrance. The officer led me to that door, knocked, and opened the door for me at the sound of Zaddorn’s voice, oddly muffled: “Enter.”

I walked in to find him sitting at a huge desk that was covered with paper, some of it punched and bound into sheafs, some of it in neatly tied rolls, a lot of it just lying around loose. There was one small clear space right in front of Zaddorn, and in it was an empty bowl. The lingering aroma told me his lunch had been rafel, a meat and vegetable porridge I had grown to like a lot. Zaddorn was swallowing the last mouthful as I entered, and my stomach growled with envy.

”You’re looking better,” I told him. He had lost the look of pale weariness he’d had for the last two days of our trip back from Thagorn. “What can I do for you?” Without waiting for an invitation, I dropped into one of three chairs facing his desk.

Zaddorn finished his glass of faen and took the empty dishes to the inside door of his office, where someone was waiting to take them. He came back to his desk, sat down, and leaned his elbows on the clear spot.

”You can come work for me,” he said. “I’ve had the funding for an assistant for the past three years, but I’ve never found anyone I could trust, or wanted to work with.”

”You called me down here to offer me a job?” I asked. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

”Oh? Who else, if it isn’t prying?”

”Ferrathyn,” I said, and watched his eyebrows go up. -And the Council. They’ve decided to create a thirteenth Supervisor, and they want me to be it.”

He was trying hard not to be impressed.

”You haven’t accepted yet, have you?” he asked.

“No, I’m to attend a Council meeting tomorrow and give my answer then. I got the impression from Ferrathyn, however, that he regards it as a formality. I think he’s sure I’ll do it.”

”There’s not the slightest doubt of that,” Zaddorn said with a grimace. “It is becoming increasingly difficult for the Chief Supervisor to conceive of anyone opposing him.” Then he smiled. “You’ve given me another reason to hope that you’ll choose to work for the Peace and Security Department.

Ferrathyn once said something to me about your providing him with a lot of headaches.”

Zaddorn laughed out loud. “Did he now? I’m delighted to hear it.” He looked at my face and laughed again. “Youre shocked. Believe me, I show Ferrathyn all the proper respect. But since he has been Chief Supervisor—he moved up when Bromer died, shortly before I took this job—he has become increasingly insistent on having his own way. Maybe it’s his age. But on principle, I oppose pampering anyone, even our most important citizen. So I get in his way when I can.”

I see one reason why Markasset wasn’t fond of Zaddorn, I thought. He’s so sure of himself, so secure. And he’s graceful, both physically and socially. Markasset had a way of starting off on the wrong foot with people. I’ll bet that’s why Illia was so important to him—she didn’t see his social clumsiness as a handicap. Worfit took some pains to make Markasset feel like a high-class person and the boy was probably subconsciously grateful. That would have become associated with his love of gambling, and reinforced it.

And speaking of Worfit, working for Zaddorn would be no more self-concealing than being a Supervisor.

I feel like a frayed rope in a three-way tug-of-war. I’m getting out of here.

I stood up.

”You’ll have my answer tomorrow.”

Zaddorn walked over to the door with me. “Good enough. All I ask is that when you think about this, you remember the way my desk looks right now. The Council already has twelve people, but I’m only one man.”

Outside, I took a deep breath. Why can’t I just sit around this world for a while? I complained to myself. The answer was already there. Because that’s what Markasset was doing. Everybody who knows about me expects me to be different.

And I am, I guess. I’d like to do something useful here. But I was expecting some time off, first!

I still had the feeling that had brought me out of Zaddorn’s office, the need to get away from the pressure, be by myself and think things out.

Not quite by myself, I amended.

Keeshah, how would you like to go on a picnic?

The reference escaped him, but he got the general idea. Food?

And solitude, I told him. We’ll go for a run outside the city and have our lunch under a tree somewhere. Does that suit you?

I halfway expected his reaction to be “as long as there’s food, whatever you want is OK by me.” But I received a sense of complete agreement from him, as though he were as eager as I to get away from the city for a while, even though we had only returned to Raithskar yesterday.

I walked down to the market area and arranged to pick up a side of glith and a roast fowl. Then I went back home to get Keeshah.

Through the big double gate and followed the garden pathway to the outbuildings at the rear of Thanasset’s property. One of these was huge and square, its stone walls spattered with small openings for ventilation. Heavy bronze doors stood open to the garden.

Two grayish-tan paws appeared out of the shadows in the doorway. Claws as long as my fingers dug into the ground and in a moment the wide wedge of Keeshah’s head appeared. His tapering ears were laid back and his mouth wide open in a stupendous yawn. His tusks glistened. He took a few short steps forward, stretching his hind legs and arching his tail, until he was all the way out in the sunlight. I could see the muscles rippling under his skin when he stretched. He was big. Powerful. Beautiful. He was part of me.

Sleepyhead, I teased him. You almost missed lunch— hey, wait, no fooling around now …

He had jumped toward me at exactly the same moment I had caught a flash of his intention, and he was too fast for me. One forepaw whipped out and slapped my legs out from under me. Even before I hit the ground, Keeshah had my left ankle in his jaws and was dragging me toward his house.

Have you for lunch, he said.

I grabbed the trunk of a big bush, pulled against it, and snatched my foot away. He let me go, of course. By now boot and foot would have been a total loss, if he’d been the least bit serious.

Come on, you big pussycat, I said, grabbing his head and hauling myself to my feet. I ruffled the fur around his ears. Let’s get going. I’m hungry.

I knelt down by the hush, which was tilted crazily, and tried to repack the soil around the disturbed roots. I whispered an apology to Thanasset, who had planned and planted this landscaped garden himself. Then Keeshah and I went out into the street and headed for the main avenue.

The meatmonger saw us coming, and brought out my order. The roast thaka was packed in a drawstring bag of oiled canvas. I tied it to my belt and slung the glith carcass, about thirty pounds of meat and bone, across Keeshah’s shoulders. With my hand resting behind the sha’um’s left ear, we walked down the broad, packed-clay street that led directly from the Square at the center of the city to the gates in Raithskar’s ancient stone wall.

Keeshah would have had no trouble meeting me at the gates or at the meatmonger’s shop. But the riders of the house of Serkajon had always taken pains to make it clear that their sha’um were under control. When Keeshah was in Raithskar, he stayed home unless I was with him.

We walked through the caravan market area that lay just within the city gates. It was bustling with people, but everyone made sure we had plenty of room to pass through.

As soon as we were out of the city, Keeshah crouched down and I sat on his back. I tucked my feet up just ahead of his hindquarters and held down the glith carcass with the weight of my body. The sha’um stood up, moving slowly because he knew I wasn’t as securely attached to him as I usually was.

Where? he asked me.

Somewhere peaceful, Keeshah. You choose.

He set off at an easy run, following the city wall westward. We crossed the Skarkel River on a jiggling pontoon bridge that made me so queasy that I had to close my eyes. Then he turned northward, following the river on its western bank. Past the city, the eastern bank was crowded with buildings. Grain mills, refineries, a big building that housed the Raithskarian mint—the river’s power assisted most of Raithskar’s industry.

The western side of the river boasted more agriculture than industry, though we did pass a grain mill or two. When the ground began to rise toward the Wall, cultivated fields gave way to wilder country, lush grassy growth, and thick groves of the short Gandalaran trees.

The Great Wall of Gandalara was a sheer escarpment, so high that its upper edge was obscured by the ever-present cloud layer. When I had awakened, dazed and irrational, in the middle of a salty desert, I had seen the Great Wall as a faded blue line in an otherwise featureless vista. I had scrambled toward it desperately, until Keeshah had decided, finally, that I was worth saving.

The Wall ran roughly east to west, several miles north of Raithskar. Ahead of us now, striking up the thunder that had been growing louder with Keeshah’s every step, were the Sharkel Falls. A massive sheet of water poured down the rock face from the clouds above. The spray it cast around the lake at the base of the Wall formed a new, ground-hugging cloud in the hot Gandalaran air. If we had gone further north, we would have run into the misty cloud. As it was, beads of moisture were already collecting in Keeshah’s fur.

The sha’um turned aside to climb a short, steep slope that was crowned with several of the curl-trunked dakathrenil trees. These seemed to be part of an abandoned orchard, for they had been trained, at one time, to stand upright and form an umbrella-like topknot. Now branches twisted downward, intertwined between the trees, and created a perfect backrest for a man sitting on that knoll and looking out over the mist-shrouded lake.

Picnic? Keeshah repeated the strange image.

It’s perfect, Keeshah. Let’s eat.

3

What should I do, Keeshah?* I asked the sha’um. We had finished our food and drink the water I had brought in a pouch from home. Keeshah was stretched out on his side, and I was sitting propped up against his back, shredding stalks of a hardy, thick-bladed weed.

Scratch between shoulders, he suggested. I laughed and complied, enjoying the way his thick fur whispered through my fingers.

I mean, which job should I take? Or should I pass up both of them? What should I do about Worfit?

I kill?

No. At least, not unless you have to, OK?

He agreed, with the mental equivalent of a shrug. Unless Worfit actually caused me harm, or I gave Keeshah specific orders regarding him, the little roguelord meant absolutely nothing to the great cat.

You don’t want jobs, Keeshah volunteered.

Yes, I … You’re right, as usual, Keeshah. Both jobs need doing, but I’m not the one to do them. At least, not yet. Still—I have to do something to make a living for us. The idea of teaching kids to use a sword doesn’t strike me well, either.

With his stomach full and his back being scratched, Keeshah had almost fallen asleep. I assumed that I was talking to myself. But a thought from Keeshah reached me, sounding slow and sleepy in my mind.

Need time. Rest.

You or me, Keeshah?

Both.

Hadn’t I had the same thought earlier? That I needed some leave time before I could settle down to—well, to whatever career I chose in this world? And even then, I hadn’t considered Keeshah’s needs, assuming that just lying still after all that running would constitute rest for him.

I realized now that it didn’t work that way. He could always sense unhappiness or anxiety in me. As long as I couldn’t relax, neither could he.

I’m sorry I haven’t asked you before this, I said to him. Is there something you would like to do?

Yes.

He stopped there, and I sensed reluctance in him, as though he wasn’t sure whether I’d approve of what he wanted. Tell me, I urged.

Hard to say, he explained, and I felt his mind groping for the close bond we had shared on other occasions. As he had done for me then, I stilled my mind and waited for what he wanted to tell me.

An image formed slowly, at once familiar and all new. It was the night-time scene at Thagorn which had moved me so much that I had reached for Keeshah to share it. The river which cut the valley in half was murmuring nearby. Across it, dying cook fires cast glows like candle flames into the night sky. There was music, and the sound of children playing. Through Keeshah’s perception, odors I had not even noticed were distinct and plentiful.

And there was the sound of sha’um.

What I had felt when I looked at that scene paled to insignificance beside the emotions it had stirred in Keeshah. I had heard growling and rumbling and roaring from the sha’um. Keeshah had heard music far more potent than the flute and harp and voice which had charmed me. He had heard the song of his own heritage, and it had stimulated long-ago memories and unrecognized needs.

The vision lasted only a short while, for this kind of sharing was both a joy and a tremendous strain for both of us. When Keeshah withdrew, he waited silently for my response, lifting his head to look over his shoulder at me.

How could it hurt me to know that you are lonely for your own kind? I asked him gently. I felt something like that, too—a kinship with those people who understood the partnership between a man and his sha’um. And I do remember saying to you that we would go back to Thagorn together someday, if it were possible. That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?

Yes. We go?

I don’t know, Keeshah. There’s a job waiting there for me, too. And I know I don’t want that one.

You don’t want job, he agreed, staring at me with unblinking gray eyes. You do want to go. Say when. with that, he lowered his head to the ground and slipped into a light sleep.

It’s an unsettling experience, having a cat tell you what you’re thinking. Especially when you’re not sure, yourself, about something. But it’s useful.

I do want to go back to Thagorn, I realized, as I lay down beside Keeshah and looked up through pointed leaves at the cloud-masked sky. I like Dharak a lot, and it seems unfair to let him believe I’m going to come back and take over the burden he’s carried all these years. If I could get there, and talk to him alone before he makes anything official… .

Boy, I would like to spend some time with the Sharith. Get to know their routine. Share the experience of riding. Relax. Be myself.

Markasset never set foot in Thagorn. I don’t believe he ever thought very much about the Sharith and their connection with his family. In Thagorn, I could be free of his “echo” for a while, and get acquainted with this world on my own.

Zaddorn doesn’t have lines of people waiting for that job. He’d accept a short delay before I stepped into it. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d let me do it. He wouldn’t have much choice.

What about Ferrathyn and the Council? I can’t know for sure, of course, but I suspect they’ll want a definite answer tomorrow. They might accept the delay if I could be confirmed, or sworn in, or whatever, before I left. But that would still require a decision right now, which is what I’m trying to avoid.

And here’s the sixty-four dollar question: if I leave Raithskar and get out of his reach, will Worfit take out his anger on the people close to me? Would I be justified in taking away their protection?

Puzzles! Always puzzles! I complained. I’m not getting anywhere.

Gharlas is responsible for all this, I thought. If he hadn’t stolen that fool gemstone, Zaddorn wouldn’t have harassed Worfit into threatening me.

But then, I’d never have gone to Thagorn. For that matter, Markasset would have had no reason to follow Gharlas away from the caravan in the middle of the night and get himself killed.

Would I be here if Markasset were still alive? I wondered. And if both our personalities were intact, in the same body, which one would dominate? Unimportant, since it didn’t happen that way, but as an intellectual exercise, I’d have to say the native, because of his familiarity with the world and the way his body worked.

I can’t buy Thanasset’s explanation of me. I’m not part of this world, wherever it is. Or I wasnt, until I died in my own. And if there was some purpose in my coming here, as Thanasset thinks, it’s my guess that I’ve already accomplished it by getting the old man off the hook over the Ra’ira’s theft. So the rest of this life is mine, and I do want it to be worthwhile. All I have to do is decide how to support myself….

I drifted off to sleep.

I woke late in the afternoon, alarmed to think I might be late meeting Illia. Keeshah was instantly alert and, as he had already buried the remains of his meal, we took off running.

I clung to his back with hands, elbows, and thighs, trying to make myself an extension of Keeshah. I closed my eyes against the wind, and reached out to form a light linkage with Keeshah’s mind. He loved to run, to stretch himself and drive the ground along underneath him. I let my problems drift away as I shared that total, physical joy with the great cat.

We stopped at the gate of the city, and I walked Keeshah home, all the way to the semi-dark house at the back of Thanasset’s yard. As I left him, I realized that he hadn’t brought up Thagorn again. I supposed he had considered his last words sufficient.

I went to the back door of the house and found it off its latch, swinging wide open. A shiver crept up my spine.

“Hilda! Thanasset!” I shouted, as I ran into the house.

The midhall was a mess. Dishes had been brought from the dining room and shattered against the fine parquet walls. The portraits and sketches which had decorated one wall had been pulled down and thrown around; not one glass frame was intact. The beautiful parquet was marred, and the floor was littered with broken crockery.

“Markasset?” The voice was old and thin, and it sounded from the dining room.

“Milda!” I ran in to find her bending over the dining table, rubbing a dark and glistening oil into white scars that crisscrossed its polished surface. “Are you all right, darling?” I asked her. I put my arm around her shoulders and turned her face toward me, pulling her gaze away from the table. Her eyes looked through me at first, and then began to focus.

“Markasset!” This time, her voice carried awareness. She moved to hug me, then drew back. “Oh, I forgot. You’re not. .

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and pulled her into my arms. The top of her bald head barely reached my shoulder. “Please tell me you’re all right.”

With a little sob, she put her arms around me and hugged me with all her strength. Gandalarans don’t weep tears except to cleanse their eyes of foreign matter; emotional tears would be a waste of water. They do have physical reactions similar to the human expression of grief. For a few seconds, Milda gasped and choked and clung to me. When she seemed to have control again, I held her away from me and was glad to see that the glaze of shock was almost gone from her eyes.

“Yes, I’m all right, Rikardon,” she said. Her voice was still shaky. “But—oh, look at this! I’m getting oil all over your tunic.” She looked down at the messy rag, and the bowl of oil resting on the ruined table. She laughed a little. “Isn’t that silly? All I could think of was fixing the table before Thanasset came home.” She chuckled again, more loudly. “Isn’t that silly?”

“Milda,” I said, shaking her to forestall the hysterics that seemed imminent. “Where is Thanasset? What happened?”

She pulled herself together. “Thanasset left the house after lunch to spend some time at his office,” she said. “He said not to expect him for dinner. I went out to do some shopping and visit Holla—she’s an old friend—and when I came back, I found this awful mess.

“Rikardon, who would do a thing like this? That dinnerware has been in our family for six generations, and it’s all … it’s all…” She seemed to sense she was on the verge of hysteria again, and she shook herself. “Well, it’s all broken, that’s what. And it needs cleaning up. I’d better get started.”

She put the rag down on the table and headed for the door into the midhall, but she paused there, reading my expression with characteristic accuracy.

“What are you thinking about, boy? Do you know who did this?”

Milda reminded me so much of Ricardo’s grandmother, Maria Constanza. She was sweet and gentle and frail—and heaven help anyone who crossed her. It was built into me, from both Ricardo and Markasset that I couldn’t lie to Milda.

“Worfit’s men did it,” I said. Then I told her everything that had happened that day, beginning at Worfit’s office. By the time I had finished, we were sitting down at the table and she was rubbing oil into the scars while I talked.

“It seems Worfit has found a safe way to get back at me. Or so he thinks. But if he believes that just because nobody was hurt …”

I stood up.

“Sit down,” Milda said.

I sat down.

She put the rag aside, cupped her elbows in her hands, and leaned on the table. “If you’ve got any thought about riding Keeshah right down Worfit’s throat, you forget them. That’s just what he wants you to do. Think about it. Worfit knows he’ll never find an assassin willing to come after you. Everybody knows about Keeshah. So he provokes you into an attack, and surrounds himself with enough men to handle ten sha’um. To defend their own lives, they’d kill you and Keeshah both.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, while I thought about what she’d said. She was right. If I hadn’t been suffering from my own sort of shock at seeing Thanasset’s beautiful things destroyed, I’d have seen it myself.

If I don’t do anything, this will happen again. And maybe somebody will get hurt next time. Ill have to leave Keeshah here all the time, to protect the house. But how will I protect Milda and Thanasset when they’re away from the house?

I was afraid to leave Raithskar for fear this would happen. But it looks like staying here will only provoke Worfit…

“I’m going to Thagorn,” I told Milda.

She nodded. “That seems the right choice to me, Rikardon. Worfit won’t trouble Thanasset and me if you’re not right here to get angry about it. And it does seem unfair of your dad—I mean, Thanasset,” she corrected quickly. I reached over and squeezed her shoulder, and she covered my hand with her own for a moment, “It does seem unfair to put so much pressure on you right away, after everything youve already done for us.

“Don’t you worry about this Captain business, either,” she said. “It will work out to whatever is right for you.”

“Milda, you … I’ll miss you a lot.”

“And we’ll miss you, Rikardon. Shall I tell Thanasset about Worfit?”

“I guess you’d better, but please ask him not to take any action on his own. I’ll leave quietly, tomorrow morning. Worfit will know I’ve gone. He might even think he’s scared me off, and that will be enough for him.”

“You won’t leave without saying goodbye to Thanasset, will you?” she asked. “He would be very sad.”

“Of course not. I promised to talk over the Supervisor’s job with him before the Council meeting tomorrow. I’ll have to do that in the morning, so that he can take my answer to the Council for me.

“Tonight … there’s someone else I have to say goodbye to.”

4

I had taken a quick bath and dressed with care in a suit I had admired on my first day in Raithskar. It was a thigh-length yellow tunic and a green, sleeveless surcoat embroidered in a matching yellow. Such color coordination was the mark of evening dress, since ordinary clothing was a jumble of bright colors. With brass-studded sandals and a heavy chain belt, I accepted Markasset’s judgment that I was very well dressed. It didn’t hurt my ego any when I passed a lady and drew a second look.

Illia’s house was located northwest of the Square, halfway across the city from Thanasset’s home. It was a modest house, with a smaller yard and grounds than Thanasset’s had. But it, too, opened directly from the street with two doors, one into the house and one into the garden. Its midhall—a long, central room which divided the house—had walls faced with smooth plaster, spotlessly white. In this house, the sitting room to the right of the entrance door was not closed off with a wall, but formed an extension of the midhall. When Illia’s mother answered the door, she led me into that parlor and we sat there for a while, exchanging slightly awkward small talk.

Her father, a big man with a lopsided grin, came home while I waited there. He worked for the city as a gardener; he said a quick hello, and then excused himself to go and get cleaned up. Just after he left, Illia appeared on the stairs which faced the parlor.

Before I had touched Serkajon’s sword, I had been plagued with a sort of double vision, especially regarding the Gandalaran people. To Ricardo, they had been apelike creatures with prominent supraorbital ridges, slightly pug noses, and outsized canine teeth that resembled tusks. To Markasset, they had looked quite ordinary, like people I had grown up with and known all my life.

Regarding Illia specifically, Markasset remembered her as inordinately pretty, but he had found more value in her unquestioning trust in him than in her looks. In Thanasset’s garden on the day I first came to Raithskar, Ricardo had recognized Illia’s beauty while accepting its alienness.

It was Rikardon who looked at her now. The alienness was gone. She was so beautiful that I stood up and stared, speechless, as she came down the stairs.

Her head fur was a dark gold. It shone in the lamplight, looking so soft that I wanted to touch it. Her face was small and delicate, her mouth a gentle curve.

She was wearing a long, sleeveless shift of lightweight linen in a soft shade of green. Glass beads in a darker green decorated the low neckline and the belt which pulled the soft folds of the gown snug to her waist. The skirt was slit up the left side, almost to her hip, to allow walking freedom. There was a single fine chain of gold around her neck.

Somehow, I said goodbye to her mother, for I suddenly found myself outside, walking beside Illia in the direction of the restaurant district. There was a tense silence that I didn’t like, and didn’t quite know how to break.

“I thought we’d eat at the Moonrise,” I suggested finally. It was a restaurant that Markasset’s memory recommended. “That sounds wonderful she agreed. She hesitated a moment, then added, “They have a way of cooking glith steaks that is delicious.”

I remember, I said softly. She caught her breath sharply. I took her hand and made her stop walking, then drew her around to face me. “Illia, are you nervous about being out with me tonight?”

“I—yes, of course I am,” she admitted. I thought she sounded relieved that she didn’t have to pretend. “It’s—well, it’s very strange, knowing you and not knowing you.”

“Please don’t be afraid of me.”

“I’m not. It’s just …” She took a deep breath. “Do you remember … everything about Markasset?”

I thought about lying to her, but I decided she deserved at least honesty from me.

“I remember every moment you and Markasset spent together.”

“Oh, dear.”

She turned away abruptly, and we walked along again. But she didn’t take her hand away, and this time the silence was more comfortable.

In a few minutes, she began to talk of ordinary things: the fruit she and her mother had been preparing for the drying oven that morning; her sewing projects; her work as a teacher in a school for young children. I realized that she wanted to deal with only the present, and not to contend with our “mutual” past or the uncertain future. That suited me perfectly, and I set myself to keep that tone in my end of the conversation.

It was one of the most enjoyable evenings I have ever spent. We had a wonderful dinner at the Moonrise, and then went on to a dance hall, where we sat at a numbered table, sipping faen, until our table’s number was called. Then we joined the other couples on the patterned dance floor and performed the stylized, intricate dances of Gandalara. There were about a hundred tables, and only twenty couples danced each dance, so we were able to rest well between sessions. Markasset had been a good and an energetic dancer, and I loved dancing with Illia.

There was one awkward moment when, after recognizing us, the band—a harp, two flutes, a clarinet-looking instrument, and bongos I might have bought in Santa Barbara— changed their schedule to play our “favorite” melody when we reached the dance floor. We studied the painted wooden tiles with great concentration while we danced, and burst out laughing as soon as we were seated again.

Just before dawn, we finally left the dance hall. As we walked back toward Illia’s house, I tried to think of a way to tell her I was leaving.

“Zaddorn stopped by my house this evening,” she said suddenly. “He told me that you’ve been asked to join the Council. He also said he wants you to work for him. Which will you do?”

“Neither one, I’m afraid. There are … circumstances Zaddorn doesn’t know about. I’ll be leaving Raithskar for a while.”

Her hand gripped mine more tightly. “How soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Did you know this when you came by this morning?”

“If I had known it then, I would have told you,” I said.

“Yes. I believe that.”

We walked together quietly, then, until we reached her home. She didn’t take me to the house door, but led me through the gate into the back yard. I followed along with her, busy with my own thoughts, until I realized where we were going. Behind her father’s bathhouse and storage shed, there was a grassy area that was hidden from all the houses nearby, but was open to the sky. It was a very private place—and very special to Markasset.

I stopped; she stopped and turned to me. Her face and hair were pale, and her eyes reflected the glow of the moon soaked clouds above us.

“You don’t owe me this kind of goodbye,” I said.

“Isn’t it more of a greeting … Rikardon?”

Markasset’s memory of his last night in Raithskar brought me tender images of Illia’s body, its sweet eagerness, its beauty in the moon glow. If I had been Ricardo, in a human world, it would have been easy and natural to accept her invitation. Or if I had been entirely Gandalaran, a new boyfriend, I’d have had no compunction about being in a place she had once shared with Markasset.

But I was an alien personality, in a body which she had known intimately. I fought for a grasp of the ethics of the situation, even while my body and my emotions were responding to Illia’s willingness.

I hesitated so long that she became embarrassed. “I thought. Dont I I… I mean, don’t you want to. .”

”Yes!” I said quickly. “Oh, yes, I want to.”

She came to me then, and put her arms around me. I could feel her fingers pressing into my back. The sight of her face, looking up at me with serious eyes, was too appealing to resist. I kissed her, tantalizing my tongue on the rounded tips of her large canine teeth. All thought was swept away in a surge of affection and gratitude, and arousal more intense than I had experienced in a long time.

She broke away from the embrace with a soft sound of contentment, and we walked to the grassy area Markasset remembered. The distant thunder of the Skarkel Falls settled over us as we lay down together.

When I kissed her goodbye at the back door of her house, she whispered: “I won’t decide about—anything. Not until you come back, Rikardon.”

Suddenly I was swept up in an “echo” from Ricardo’s life. I saw Julie, young and loving, saying: ”I’ll wait for you, Rick. No matter how long the war lasts, I’ll wait for you.”

Julie hadn’t been able to wait, and had paid a high price in guilt.

”Don’t make me any promises, Illia,” I whispered to the Gandalaran woman in my arms. “Do what seems best for you.”

She kissed me again, briefly, and then pushed herself away from me. “You’re a very gentle man, Rikardon. I do care for you. Keep safe.”

She went into the house, and I walked home under the colorful dawn sky. The first rays of sunlight, diffused by the cloud layer, marched by overhead in a parade of changing, blending color, deep red to pale yellow and all shades between.

I stepped quietly into Thanasset’s house through the front door. I turned left to climb the stairs, but a sound from the sitting room made me look that way. Through the door opposite the stairs, I could see Thanasset. He was standing by one of the tall and narrow wood-latticed windows that lined the outside wall of the room. He had one foot propped on the low stone ledge that ran along under the windows.

There was something about the way he held himself, with his arms propped on his raised knee and his shoulders hunched up, that made me cross the midhall and pause at the sitting room door.

”Father?” I said. He turned away from the windows, surprise and relief plain on his face. “Are you well?”

”Come in and sit with me for a moment, Rikardon,” he said, coming away from the window. “I need to talk with you before you leave.”

”Then Milda told you about Worfit?” I asked as I sat in one of the wood-and-fabric armchairs scattered around the center of the room.

Thanasset looked thin and strained. The small scar beside his left eye seemed whiter, and there were lines of tension around his mouth.

”She told me what happened, yes,” he said. “And she told me what you told her. I want to ask you, bluntly, if you told her the truth.” He was leaning forward in his chair, intent upon my answer.

”Yes, it was the truth,” I said, surprised by the question. “Worfit—”

He waved his hand impatiently, as though Worfit, who had threatened my life and damaged his home, were of no importance.

“Your reasons for going to Thagorn,” he said. “To rest and take some time to think. Are these your only reasons?”

“Yes.”

“But why Thagorn? Why not Omergol, or all the way to Chizan?”

I was thoroughly confused, and beginning to feel a little impatient, myself.

”Father, I don’t have any idea what you’re getting at. Why don’t you ask for the information you really want?”

Thanasset sighed and leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes for a moment, then suddenly stood up and began pacing around the room.

”Ever since we had that short talk yesterday, Rikardon, I’ve been worrying about this. When Milda said you planned to go to Thagorn, it seemed to confirm my guess.” He stopped his pacing, and leaned on the hack of a chair. “Are you taking it upon yourself to find the Ra’ira and bring it back?”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud.

“It’s rather more likely,” I told him, “that Ill swim up the Skarkel Falls. Why would I have lied to you about my motives, if that were true?”

”Two men have died, already, because of their involvement with Gharlas,” he said. “It was conceivable to me that you would want to protect me from worry for your safety. I viewed it as … considerate, rather than deceptive.

There are three men dead, I corrected him silently, sobered by the thought. Mural and the man who killed Markasset, both of whom were Gharlas’s accomplices, and the man I killed the last time I left Raithskar. The worry lines were still present in Thanasset’s face. He doesn’t just want the truth, I realized. He wants to be convinced that it’s the truth.

”I haven’t had a chance, yet, to tell you about the Sharith. Let me tell you now, so that you’ll really understand why I’m going to Thagorn.”

He nodded and sat down, and I related everything that had happened to me in the stronghold of the Sharith. I told him about Dharak’s strength, and Thomas’s impatience. I described the valley, and the call of kinship I had felt when I had looked at it that night. I told him about the huge Hall, built to hold men riding sha’um. Last of all, I told him what Dharak had said about my future place with the Sharith.

”So I’m going back to Thagorn to tell Dharak exactly what I’m telling you now, Father. Zaddorn seems confident of finding Gharlas through his contacts with other peace officers. He’s a good man, and I believe him. I have no intention of chasing Gharlas clear to Eddarta on my own.”

Milda appeared at the doorway with a big bowl of fruit and two glasses of fresh, cool water. “Thought you might want some breakfast,” she said. She stared pointedly at my clothes as she set the things down on a table within our easy reach, and asked: “Did you have a good time last night?”

I grinned at her. “None of your business.”

She laughed and went out of the room. I was relieved to see Thanasset smiling, his face smooth again. “I hadn’t noticed what you were wearing,” he said. “It’s obvious you haven’t had any sleep at all. Do you still plan to leave today?”

I was already munching on a tart, thick-skinned fruit, and I had to sip some water and swallow before I could answer. “The sooner I leave, the sooner I’ll feel that you and Milda are safe from Worfit. I’ll bathe and change clothes and pack—I should be ready to go by noon. I’ll be able to nap while I ride.”

“Then you won’t he going to the Council meeting, after all?” Thanasset asked.

I shook my head, “I’ll write a note to Zaddorn, but I hope you’ll take my answer to the Council in person.”

“What is your answer?” He was suddenly tense again.

”Only that I can’t decide right now. I’ll be back in a moon, perhaps less time. Maybe if you explain that I have some business to complete before I can commit myself—?”

”Of course. I’m sure they will make the offer again, when you return. Though Ferrathyn will be disappointed not to see you before you leave. He has taken a great interest in you. Did you know that it was he who suggested creating a special post on the Council for you?”

“No, I didn’t,” I admitted. Ferrathyn’s a nice old guy, I commented to myself. It’s too bad he and Zaddorn don’t get along better. Power politics, I suppose. But it’s no wonder Ferrathyn expected me to accept the position—I’m sure he set it up simply as a favor to me and Thanasset.

“What about you, Father? You seemed really to want me to take the job of the thirteenth Supervisor.”

“You haven’t decided not to take it, have you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well then, since you’ve convinced me that all you want is a vacation, and you’ll he coming back to us soon, I feel better about—well, about everything. We’ll find a way to handle Worfit. And I hope see a Supervisor-in-the-making when you return.”

5

It surprised the hell out of me that I could ride right up to Thagorn’s gate without being challenged. The explanation occurred to me as soon as I heard the voice bellowing from the top of the wall that filled the narrow opening to the valley.

”What in the name of Kä are you doing out of uniform outside the city gates? You’ll serve a seven-day cleaning the bathhouse or this!”

Of course, their sentries aren’t looking for strangers on sha’um! Any who may have seen me probably thought the same thing this guy does—and they probably chuckled about the reception I’d get. Latrine detail, yet!

I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked up at the man leaning over the edge of the wall. He was wearing a round-topped uniform hat. Its wide brim cast a shadow over all of his face except his mouth and jaw. His angry grimace displayed one snaggled tusk that looked awfully familiar.

”Don’t you think, Bareff,” I asked mildly, “that you ought to let me join up before you start giving me penalty duty?”

”What?” He leaned over so far that I thought he might fall. Then: “I’ll be a vlek’s daddy. Rikardon?”

I copied the gesture he had used to introduce his sha’um to me, nearly two weeks ago. I leaned forward, and drew my right hand along the side of Keeshah’s jaw.

”And Keeshah,” I said. “Will you tell the Lieutenant that we’re here?”

”Why, I’d be pleased right out of my senses to do that little thing for you, Rikardon,” he said. “The Lieutenant won’t be surprised, will he?”

I hid a smile. “No.”

”Nobody tells me nothing,” he grumbled. Before he turned away he grinned down at me. “But I’ll swear to Zanek it’s good to see you again. It’s been downright dull around here since you left.”

Keeshah moved restlessly as we waited in front of the gate. I had sensed a growing ambivalence in him as we had approached Thagorn. He was both eager and apprehensive about meeting the sha’um of the Riders.

We had made the trip from Raithskar in a week, without rushing. We had stayed overnight at the Refreshment House of Yafnaar, where Balgokh, the eldest of the family of desert-dwellers, had invited me to dine with the entire clan in an inner courtyard. Such invitations were rare, and I had accepted gladly.

In return for a wonderful meal, I had answered the questions that they were too polite to ask: about the theft of the Ra’ira, now common knowledge in broad terms, but full of rumor concerning the details; about my adventures in regaining my memory (I gave them an altered version of the truth, omitting the fact that it wasn’t my memory that I had found); and about all I knew of the history of Serkajon, his sword, and the Sharith.

Balgokh had announced that Keddan, one of the three men who were with me when I woke up at Yafnaar, had settled a marriage contract, and his bride had already set out from Kanlyr, near Eddarta. I had presented Balgokh with a gift to express my appreciation for his help, and asked that it be earmarked for the new couple, to which he had agreed with pleasure. The gift had been one of Milda’s embroidered hangings, depicting the sha’um which Thanasset had once ridden, and it had delighted Keddan.

From Yafnaar, I had gone to Omergol and hoisted a few with Grallen, the proprietor of the bar where I had unknowingly offended two Sharith, and found myself with a fight on my hands. Much later, those two men had brought me into Thagorn. Just now, one of them had gone to fetch Dharak, the Lieutenant.

During the few minutes that Keeshah and I stood there, I tried to ignore the heads bobbing up above the edge of the wall, and the whispers that ran along overhead.

They’re figuring out who I am and wondering why I walked into Thagorn last time, I speculated. I wonder if everybody here knows about the Raira, or if Dharak has managed to keep it quiet. Well, I guess I’ll find out pretty soon, now….

The massive gate was swinging inward slowly. It opened to reveal Dharak, standing beside a rangy gray sha’um. He put his hand on the cat’s neck and they started toward me.

He’s walking out to meet me! I thought. Uh-oh, I don’t like the look of that. Dharak, please dont….

”Markasset, son of the sons of Serkajon,” he began, in his rich and resonant voice, “be welcome in Thagorn as the new Captain of the Sharith.”

You did it! I groaned to myself, and closed my eyes for a moment. Now what do I do?

I knew what I couldn’t do. I couldn’t embarrass the old man by stamping my foot and shouting “no” out here in front of God and everybody. There had been a giant communal gasp from the Sharith who had gathered curiously around the gate. Dharak had pulled off the surprise of the century, and I could see, from the way his mouth was twitching at one corner, that he was enjoying the effect he had created. I couldn’t spoil it. I had to go along, at least for now.

It seemed eminently unfair to have this man, who had led the Sharith for most of his life, standing down out of respect for a newcomer, so I said: “Ride with me, Dharak.”

He smiled broadly. “It will be my pleasure, Captain.” He mounted his sha’um, brought him alongside Keeshah, and touched his cat’s jaw. “This is Doran,” he said.

I returned the introduction. Then, side by side, Dharak and I rode through the gates of Thagorn. We followed the main avenue of the city, which ran straight out from the gate between a long line of barracks buildings on the right and, atop a rise some distance away, the Hall on the left. The way led directly to the widest bridge across the river. Before we reached that bridge, we turned left toward the only family residence on this side of the river: a big, rambling house, traditionally the home of the Lieutenant and his family.

I had to struggle to keep my eyes forward in good military fashion. The exhilaration of riding with someone made me lightheaded, but full of strength. I was intensely aware of the motion of Keeshah’s body under me, of the rippling muscles of the sha’um beside me, of Dharak on his back. It was a fresh-air feeling, a sense of freedom and power. And of belonging.

I had known I wanted this, but I hadn’t suspected the depth of the need.

To belong, I reminded myself, as I dropped to the ground in front of Dharak’s house. I was trembling with reaction to the swelling pride my entry into Thagorn had stirred in me.

But not to lead. I’ll tell Dharak the truth, first chance I get.

Keeshah had been nervous, so close to a strange sha’um, but he had held his place at my request. As soon as he and Doran were free of their riders, they separated and faced each other, their nostrils distended, their tails fluffing slightly.

Will you be all right?* I asked Keeshah.

He didn’t answer specifically, but he was radiating a dont bother-me-right-now attitude. I knew I couldn’t help him, so I resolved to mind my own business and let him do things his own way. After all, unless I was in danger, Keeshah never mixed into my relations with other people.

”Welcome back, my friend,” Dharak said to me. “You couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Come in the house. We have a lot to talk about.”

We certainly do, I agreed grimly as I followed him through the door. His wife, Shola, gave me a warm greeting and led us into a small room, where two places were set and a rich stew was steaming in the bowls. She excused herself from joining us, on the grounds of having eaten earlier. I caught a meaningful glance between her and Dharak before she left, and I figured that he had asked for privacy.

”I have heard, of course, that Thanasset was cleared,” Dharak said, after we had finished eating. He had explained to me, before I left last time that the Sharith had a network of friends who provided Dharak with information about the outside world — via maufa, the fast-flying Gandalaran message birds, I presumed. “I’m glad of it. What are your plans now?”

”All I want, for the moment, is to rest here awhile and get to know you and your men better,” I said. Get it over with, I told myself. “Dharak, I’m not your Captain. I don’t want to be your Captain.”

”I saw as much in the look on your face today,” he admitted. “But I had good reasons for greeting you in that fashion, Markasset. The Sharith need a Captain right now. I managed to keep your identity to myself, but news of the Ra’ira’s loss has created a serious problem here. A faction of young men— led, I’m sorry to say, by my son, Thymas—is very close to breaking discipline and riding out after Gharlas.

”That would be a terrible mistake for three reasons. First, outsiders have an unflattering opinion of the Sharith already. I doubt that a group of headstrong youngsters—and their sha’um—would improve it any. Second, I would have no choice but to forbid their return.” His voice wavered a little.

And one of those in exile would be your son, I thought.

”It would cost us a third of our Riders,” he said. He looked out of the window and sighed. “There were a thousand Riders when we settled here. Now there are less than a hundred.

”Last and most important,” he continued more briskly, “they have little chance of success, and every opportunity to cloud the trail you’ll be following.”

”I–-I’m not going after Gharlas, either. Partly for the same reason you’ve just given. Zaddorn is working on it through his Peace and Security contacts. I figure that, if I go tramping into the middle of things, it will make finding Gharlas that much harder for him.”

The Lieutenant got up from his chair and walked over to a small window which overlooked the river. He stood there for a few seconds, then turned hack to me.

I was struck, again, by the similarity between him and Thanasset. It wasn’t physical; Dharak had a thicker, stronger body and a startling shock of snow-white head fur. But the window gesture, and now the look of uncertainty….

“I wish I knew more about the customs of Serkajon’s house,” he said. “Has Thanasset—”

The door burst open at that moment, and Thymas stomped in. He had his father’s build, on a shorter and slimmer scale. He had pushed his sand-colored hat off his head to hang by its neck string, and I could have sworn that his head fur, a little more yellow in tone than his father’s, was bristling.

“I just got back from my patrol,” he said to his father. “I heard what happened. How could you—” He caught sight of me, and whirled in my direction, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“You filth,” he spat at me. “You lied to us. You betrayed your own sha’um by riding others. And you betrayed a sacred vow by letting Gharlas get away!

“You’re a coward and a liar, Markasset! I do not accept you as my Captain!” He drew his sword. “Agree to leave Thagorn today, and never return, and I will spare your life.”

Ah, the perversity of human nature. Here I had just been ducking the Captaincy for all I was worth. Yet Thymas’s accusation that I was unfit for it made me madder than hell.

Before Dharak could move a muscle, I was on my feet and around the table. Thymas crouched back, ready for a fight, but I had enough control to know that I didn’t want that. The boy would be no real trouble for Markasset’s swordsmanship, but Thymas was so angry that I might have to hurt him to put him out of action.

“You will be lucky to get out of this room with your head still attached, if you don’t put that sword away right now!” I yelled. I took a step toward him; he backed up, still holding his sword at the ready. I had the offensive. He knew it, and didn’t like it.

“How dare you dishonor your father by baring your sword in his home?” I challenged him. “You are threatening your father’s guest.”

I pointed my finger at him for emphasis, and stepped forward again. He backed another step, and touched the wall with his heel. Dharak, who had been behind Thymas, had moved aside, and was watching us with concern,

“If you had come in here and asked for explanations, I’d have given them,” I growled. “I’d have told you that I had to go back to Raithskar to save my father’s life—would you have made a different choice? I’d have told you that Gharlas is going to Eddarta, and Zaddorn has people watching for him. I’d have told you that I had Keeshah’s permission to ride with Bareff and Liden.”

I saw his face register disbelief as I loomed over him. He placed the point of his sword against my chest, and I leaned into it until I could feel it pricking skin, and I knew he could feel my weight against his wrist.

“But since you have violated all the rules of common courtesy, I’m only going to give you one answer, plus a small warning, out of respect for Dharak.

“My name wasn’t Rikardon then,” I said, jabbing my finger at him, “but it is now. If you insist on fighting me, you’ll be facing Rika, the steel sword of Serkajon!”

I backed off. Thymas was angry, humiliated, undecided. “I’m just about out of patience,” I said. “Do yourself a favor and get out of here.”

The boy looked from me to Dharak, who wasn’t offering him any support. Then he sheathed his sword. “If this weren’t my father’s house—” he muttered. Then he stormed out the door, and Dharak and I both sighed with relief.

“Do you see?” Dharak asked. “He is nearly uncontrollable.”

“I hope you see that I wouldn’t be much help in that department,” I told him. “It was sheer luck that he wasn’t just a little bit more angry. He had a perfect opportunity to kill me just now.”

“Thymas may, very well, be past saving,” Dharak said sadly. “But the others are not. They are restless and idealistic. They are concerned for the Ra’ira and want action.

“Well, the acquisition of a new Captain is action of a sort. Where they would defy me, they will accept your authority and remain here, content under your orders, at least for a while. By the time they get restless again, perhaps Zaddorn will have found the Ra’ira and there will be no more problem.”

I sat down at the table and drained the last of the glass of faen.

“Then you agree that Zaddorn can do it without my help?” I asked. “Before Thymas burst in, I thought you were unsure. Weren’t you going to ask me something?”

He smiled. “You have answered that question for me. If Thanasset gave you Serkajon’s sword—well, I accept your judgment of how best to return the Ra’ira to Raithskar.

“We have had word that Tarani will arrive in a seven-day. Let me arrange for a formal ceremony that day, presenting the Riders to you. We’ll have a banquet that evening, and Tarani will perform for us. It will be an occasion to remember, a respite from tension and disagreement. We could all use it.

“In the meantime, you can get to know us better, and have the relaxation you need. Afterward, you can go back to Raithskar, or anywhere you wish, and we will leave the recovery of the Ra’ira in your hands—and, through your choice, in Zaddorn’s.”

I thought about it while Dharak poured more faen from the ceramic pitcher that had been left on the table. The Lieutenant hadn’t brought up how silly he would look, if I turned him down after he had acknowledged me as the Captain in public.

He seems to want me only for a figurehead, I thought. I did lie to him that first time. He knew it, and he covered for me. I owe him for that. But this … something doesn’t feel right.

“What would happen at the ceremony?” I asked.

“I’d just say a few words to the assembled Sharith—everyone will be there, not just the Riders—and introduce you. From there, you can do what you wish.” He lifted his glass to me. “Health.”

“And wisdom,” I answered the toast automatically. “There won’t be an oath of allegiance, or anything?”

Dharak laughed, nearly choking on his drink. “Certainly there will be, Mar—I mean, Rikardon. Our allegiance to you. As to your reply, I’ve said that it’s up to you. This is, after all, the first time such a ceremony has been necessary—or possible. Write the rest of it yourself.”

Something was still bothering me. “Isn’t this deceptive, Dharak? I mean, letting your people believe I’ll get the Ra’ira back, when you know I have no plans in that direction at all? And binding them to me, but asking nothing from me?”

“My conscience is clear about this, my friend. Shall I tell you why?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

He leaned on the table and reached across it to put his hand on my wrist.

“We need no oath from you, Rikardon. You’re already part of us. It’s why you came back here. You felt it, yourself, as you rode in.”

I sure felt something, I admitted to myself. I’m feeling it now, a sense of … completeness. It scares me a little.

“I felt it about you, the first time we met,” Dharak continued. “Do you realize that it has been hundreds and hundreds of years since any man of Serkajon’s descent set foot in Thagorn? And now it has happened in the wake of the Ra’ira falling into the possession of a madman. It is difficult not to see meaning in all of it. I believe that it is important, for you as well as for us, that we establish your position here.

“I know you think it’s a waste of time, and that you will never have occasion to exercise the rights of command you’ll be given. I even hope that you’re right, for all our sakes.”

“But you don’t think so, do you?” I asked him.

“No, I don’t.” He sighed. “I’m getting old, Rikardon. These changes in the world I’ve always known frighten me. I’ll admit that I want you formally named Captain as a precaution against a troubled future.”

Why, all he’s doing is buying insurance, I realized with a deep sense of relief. If all hell breaks loose because of this Ra’ira thing, he doesnt want to be the only one holding the bag. Thymas won’t be any help. In fact, Thymas might be the one to set it off, if he goes through with his screwy plan about chasing down Gharlas.

If I agree to this, the harm Thymas can do will be reduced, because fewer men will follow him—according to Dharak’s line of thinking. If Gharlas does slip through Zaddorn’s net, reach Eddarta, and begin a war to re-establish the Kingdom with him at the head of it….

Sure, it would be a mess, and the Sharith would be the strongest weapon of opposition. Yet they’ve been sitting here in Thagorn, playing military games and living off “tribute” for so many generations, that attrition has cut them way down. They aren’t the weapon they were once. I can see why Dharak wouldn’t want the duty of leading them into battle.

So he’s setting me up, and I’m damned if I can get mad about it. Especially since he has admitted it, openly. And for one other reason—nothing of this scenario is ever going to happen. Zaddorn will find Gharlas, get the Ra’ira back, and I can help Dharak by just minding my own business.

Where’s the risk?

”All right,” I said out loud. “I’ll do it.”

6

Without realizing it, I had acquired preconceptions about the lifestyle of the Sharith. Most of them, as usually happens, were wrong.

I had expected an organization like the military groups of which Ricardo had been a member—the Marines during World War II, and the Marine Reserves for many years afterward. The only similarity I could find, during the week I spent learning about the Sharith, was the chain-of-command principal, and the requirement that on-duty Riders always wear their tan, desert-ready uniforms.

The Riders weren’t the only people who were given rank and assigned duties. The distribution of tasks was roughly like this:

The Riders were responsible for city security, surveillance, and “assessment of tribute.” Certain unpleasant jobs—like cleaning the mire from the fine-mesh filters that covered the bathhouse drains—were routinely assigned as punishment details.

The women of Thagorn handled the daily maintenance, including cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Wives did these chores for their own households, sometimes assisted by their youngest children or by the kids of a larger family. The older girls and unmarried women did the same things for the unmarried men.

The children were obligated to attend a school conducted by most of the adults on a rotation basis. It taught reading and writing, sewing and building skills, and the all-important history of the Sharith. Girls twelve and younger, and all boys up to age sixteen, worked in the grainfields in their off hours, and helped wherever they were needed.

There was a special category of children called “cubs.” These were boys thirteen to sixteen who had returned from the Valley of the Sha’um with two-year-old cats, after spending a year, living on their own, in that valley. Their off-school time was spent in training with the Riders and in developing precision coordination with their sha’um.

Most surprising of all, to me, was the large number of men who were not Riders—about a third of the adult males. These men were the farmers, the masons, the carpenters, the millers. They were as well trained in fighting skills as any of the Riders. They spent part of their time as guards on the wall and could, if necessary, be carried into battle as second riders on sha’um.

They were treated with no less respect than the Riders. At age twelve, every boy had to make the choice of whether to risk a trip to the Valley of the Sha’um. If he stayed, he learned some other necessary skill, and he was never faulted for his choice. It went without saying that a boy who didn’t want to go would have less chance of survival.

As it was, a fourth of the boys who went to the Valley never returned. I was sure that those losses had contributed to the declining size of the settlement.

The Riders were honored by everyone in Thagorn as the symbol and purpose of the Sharith. But men who did not ride were respected as contributors of important support functions.

A series of ranks existed within each group of the Sharith. The Riders were organized into four companies. Each company had a leader and sub-leaders, though the only title of rank belonged to the Lieutenant. Among the married women, rank corresponded, more or less, to the ranks of their husbands. Age was the general criterion for rank among the unmarried women, and among the children.

Dharak’s wife, Shola, settled disagreements among wives, unmarried women, and older girls, in the same way that

Dharak held authority over the men. But his was the ultimate authority in every case. Even children who felt they had been given unjust punishment could appeal to him for an objective decision. He, and previous Lieutenants, had discouraged abuse of these rights of appeal by upholding all prior judgments unless a bias was obvious and the penalty was grossly unfair.

This is not to say that all was peace and order in Thagorn. By no means. The Sharith had their share of wild kids and irresponsible adults. There was just an organized, on-the-spot way of dealing with problems.

This brings me around to Thymas.

Thymas was the youngest of Dharak’s and Shola’s four children, and he had been conceived almost at the end of Shola’s fertility—she had been forty-two, Dharak forty-five, when the boy was born. Of the other three, two were daughters, both of them married and with their own children now. The fourth had been a boy. He had never returned from the Valley of the Sha’um.

I spent a lot of time talking with Dharak during that week, and I began to understand Thymas better. Sharith custom did not provide for the son of the Lieutenant necessarily to replace his father. But from the time he could talk, Thymas had been determined to make it so in his case. He had worked and trained hard, demanding a great deal of himself, his sha’um and anyone who was under his authority. At thirteen, he had taken the leadership position among the cubs—an unusual achievement—and held it for three years.

Dharak loved the boy, but thought him too much of a perfectionist. Thymas had won respect among the Riders, but not many friends. Still, he had done nothing wrong, so Dharak had given him the red sash of a future Lieutenant at the ceremony when he and three other sixteen-year-olds had been accepted into the Riders.

Thymas stayed out of my way throughout the week I spent in Thagorn, and I was just as glad. I joined the combat exercises, and worked myself to exhaustion. I was pleased that Markasset’s training compared very well with the skills shown by the Sharith, but I knew that if Thymas had participated, the competition would have been much less friendly. I heard, from some of the men, that he was tough and fast, full of tricks in wrestling or sword work.

It’s a good thing he backed down from that fight, I thought then. He wouldn’t have been the easy opponent I expected. There’s going to have to be a showdown before that ceremony. But I won’t worry until it happens.

Keeshah and I rode on patrols, watched the cubs training, and occasionally accepted private lessons in mounted combat techniques, field procedures and orders, and other things a Rider learned as soon as he had a sha’um. Keeshah seemed to enjoy the training, too: he felt at home in Thagorn

Two evenings of that week. I tried to get drunk with Bareff and Liden. The first occasion had been initiated by Bareff, who had grabbed a handful of the front of my tunic and pulled me nose-to-nose with his craggy face.

“When do I get some answers about what the filth has been going on?”

“Would right now be too soon?”

“Right now would he just fine,” he said and let me go. “Liden’s got the barut poured.” Barut was Gandalaran liquor, aromatic and powerful. Thanasset had introduced me to it. Along with water. The Fa’aldu produced it in their refreshment houses and charged a high price for it.

Bareff and Liden both lived in one of the barracks buildings with several other bachelors. There were ten buildings, each built to provide private-room accommodations for forty men. Three of the barracks were still in use as bachelor’s quarters with fifteen to twenty men in each one, so that the men had plenty of room to spread out.

Bareff had obtained permission to tear down a wall and build an interior connecting door so that, instead of one good-sized room he had a huge parlor and an attached bedroom. There was a dining area in the center of the building where he took his meals with the other residents. But he and Liden usually spent their evenings in Bareffs living room playing mondea.

I joined them that evening. The explanations were quickly made, since I had no reason to tell them of Markasset’s “memory loss”. They didn’t know that I had been on the caravan, tinder a different alias, before they attacked it. So the story they heard was of a Supervisor’s son who wasn’t sure how he’d be greeted in Thagorn, as the only non-Sharith Rider in Gandalara. Bareff and Liden were suitably impressed, when I told them that Keeshah had allowed me to ride with them.

“I doubt that Poltar would have stood for it,” Bareff said. Liden shook his head. “I can’t see how it would be, living off by yourself with no other Riders”.

“Let’s just say I’m glad to be here now,” I said, and lifted my glass of barut. “Health.”

“And wisdom,” they echoed. We drained the tiny glasses, and then Bareff broke out the mondeana, the dice-like playing pieces of the game.

There were six mondeana, cubes cut from some hard wood, with different shapes carved into each two-inch-square side. The carvings had been stained or dyed with different colors to emphasize their detail, and though the surfaces showed signs of wear, the colors were still bright. The figures were men, animals, birds, trees, an image of an oat-like grain, and a symbol I had seen on the map Thanasset had given me to guide me to Thagorn. The symbol represented a Refreshment House.

The rules of the game were complex and challenging, and I understood why Markasset had been fascinated by it. Each of the thirty-six figures had a different rank, and the total score of a throw depended not only on which sides turned up, but where they were positioned. The object of the game was not to achieve the highest score, but an exact one. The player had many choices to make, and there was at least as much skill as luck involved in winning a game.

I was surprised that Bareff and Liden didn’t insist on betting. They explained, with elaborate modesty, that they wouldn’t allow me to lose my money to a pair of pros.

My first impulse was to let Markasset take over as we played, thinking his experience with the game would make for faster, surer playing. Then I recalled his record of losses in Worfit’s gaming houses, and decided I’d struggle through on my own. I had a good command of the rules, thanks to Markasset’s memory, but I tried to learn the game’s strategy from ground zero. By the end of the evening, I was winning an occasional round.

I’ve said that I tried to get drunk. Along about the fifth round of barut, I was feeling pleasantly relaxed and detached from the world. I accepted another glass to keep the high going, but found that I couldn’t make myself drink it. Something inside was saying: This is not good for you. Don’t do it.

I realized, at once, that this was another manifestation of the Gandalaran “inner awareness.”

Gandalarans are highly tuned to their own body needs and rhythms. I always knew, within minutes, what time of day it was, and when the sun or moon would rise or set. Hural, the four-fingered man Dharak and I had questioned had known that he would die, shortly, of his consumptive cough.

On the ride from Raithskar to Thagorn. I had begun to see a connection between inner awareness and the All-Mind. According to the explanation Thanasset had given me all Gandalarans were linked at least subconsciously with all the experiences of thousands of years of other Gandalarans. It seemed to me that there might be an automatic search and report hookup. The body says to the All-Mind: I feel this way, or, Light and temperature are like this. The All-Mind then locates all identical feelings among its members and tabulates the events subsequent to the conditions described by the body. It comes up with: You will hate yourself in the morning if you drink another glass of barut, or. In two hours and six minutes, it will be noon. Its naming probabilities based on similar experiences. Given a large enough sample, it’s most likely right, nearly all the time.

The inner awareness seemed to be a pretty good deal in general. But it was a handicap for me, whenever I returned to the unanswerable puzzle about where Gandalara was located. It assured a viewpoint that was incontrovertibly subjective.

I knew that there was no place like Gandalara on the Earth as I had known it. I might have conceded the possibility of an undiscovered salt desert like the Kapiral, but you could never convince me that, even with the Earth’s extensive cloud cover, our satellite surveillance could have missed the Great Wall.

The differences were acceptable. It was the similarities that caused me problems. I could tell by the movement of light across the cloud cover at night that this world had only one moon. There were human-like creatures and rat-like creahires, birds and insects and apes—all not quite the same as I had known them. How was it possible that such similar inhabitants had evolved on two different worlds?

I couldn’t tell for sure without standing a human next to a Gandalaran, but I thought these people were about the same size as humans—perhaps a little shorter, on the average. Mostly, that judgment was based on the comparative size of the shaum. Their musculature was thicker and denser than that of the tiger, which the sha’um resembled in shape. That fitted in with what I knew of the square-cube law, that the mass of a thing increases cubically as the size is squared. The bigger the cat, the more need for muscle.

There was a further coincidence in the time-keeping methods of my two worlds. The Gandalaran year had three hundred and sixty-five days; it was composed of thirteen “moons” and a “year day”—which Raithskar celebrated as Commemoration Day. I would have regarded that as tentative proof that I was, indeed, still on Earth—except for the existence of inner awareness.

I knew how long a day was, but there was no way to measure it against Ricardo’s subjective standards. The days and nights might be fifteen Earth hours long, or only three. How could I tell? And regarding this world’s single moon—I had never seen it. The cloud cover had broken only once at night. I had seen a sky with no familiar constellations, but I hadn’t seen the moon. Markasset didn’t know what the phases of his moon looked like.

Gandalarans did have a concept of objects in the sky which gave off light, but their actual words for “sun” and “moon” meant “daylight” and “nightlight.” I had developed the habit of translating automatically into my own, more familiar, terms.

I had begun doing that for distances, as well. Thanasset’s map had shown distances in “days”—a day was the distance a man could walk in one day, allowing adequate time for food and rest. I computed a day to be twelve hours of walking at an average of two and a half miles per hour, or thirty miles.

I suppose it would have been easier, in the long run, if I had just learned to use Markasset’s terminology. But Ricardo Carillo, a reasonably intelligent man who had learned to speak several languages with great fluency, had reached age of sixty, using the same set of measurements all his I… Through my frequent trips to Europe for conferences, and a conversion campaign in the United States, I had learned to live with metric measurements—but I had always needed to think about them in the terms of the English system. Markasset’s memory was with me now, but Ricardo was doing most of the thinking.

What I thought, when I got that glass of barut close enough to drink, was: I can still drink this, and suffer the consequences. But why should I?

I put the glass down, shaking my head, and Bareff poured it back into the glass pitcher and put the stopper in. “Yeah, I’ve had enough, too,’ he said.

We played mondea for another hour or so, and then I said good night and went to my own room which was located in the same barracks. Dharak had wanted me to stay at his house, but I had refused as gently as possible, saving that I wasn’t officially the Captain until after the ceremony. I wanted to be part of the group for a while.

I discovered that I liked being part of the group. As the day approached when I would be named Captain, my resistance began to increase again.

It had all sounded so simple when I had talked with Dharak. Take a title. Don’t do anything with it. Whatever I was moved by “fate” to do, even if turned out to be doing nothing that would be the right thing to do.

There had to be a catch. I knew it couldn’t have been set up deliberately by Dharak. It was clear that he believed everything he had said to me. But the feeling persisted— there was a catch.

It was to escape that feeling that I suggested another session of mondea on the night before the ceremony. Privately, I had resolved to ignore my inner awareness and get blotto. It was an impulse as rare in Ricardo as it had been in Markasset, and it worried me. As I sipped my third glass of barut, it seemed to me that this kind of make-merry-now philosophy had been the basis for bachelor’s parties in Ricardo’s world. While I regarded that as a deep truth in my fuzzy state of mind, I failed to see the parallel until the fatal sixth glass was being poured.

Then it hit me.

Of course there was a catch.

I was the catch.

No matter what I said I wanted, no matter that nothing would be demanded of me—I couldn’t go through that ceremony without being prepared to accept the responsibilities it conferred. I was none too sure what they were, or might be in the future, but I knew that if I didn’t commit myself to them, totally and honestly, I would be doing the very thing Thymas had accused me of—betraying the Sharith.

With a sigh of resignation, I handed my filled glass back to Bareff. “I’d better quit now,” I told him. “I’ll need to be sharp for the ceremony tomorrow.”

7

In the morning, I called Keeshah, and we ran up into the hills at the back of the valley. The ceremony had been scheduled for early afternoon, and I wanted some time alone before facing Dharak at lunchtime.

This slope, and the heavily wooded areas at the sides of the valley, was the hunting grounds of the sha’um. The Sharith raised herds of domestic glith, but were careful to repopulate the wild herds, when necessary. The sha’um hunted their own food, which kept them in shape and maintained their sense of freedom. Not that they were captive in any sense— they remained in Thagorn because their riders were here, and they wanted to be with them.

Keeshah picked his way carefully through the tangled brush of the hillside. Several times, his presence startled small groups of glith from their grazing. The glith were goat-sized animals with thin, graceful legs, and bilateral horns that came straight up from their skulls, and then twisted slightly to point forward.

Their fur was dark and long. In the domestic herds, the fur was salvaged when the skins of slaughtered animals were tanned. It was too fine and smooth to be woven into yarn, but it served as filling for the sleeping mats.

Except when we had trained together, I had left Keeshah pretty much to himself. Any fears I’d had about his being accepted by the other sha’um had vanished immediately. There was plenty of room in the valley, and plenty of food.

And the other traditional source of conflict between male cats wasn’t a problem.

To take my mind off the impending ceremony, I asked Keeshah a question I’d been wanting to ask ever since we arrived.

Don’t you want a female sha’um, Keeshah?*

I do not need one yet.

Markasset was twenty-three years old, so Keeshah was twelve. Markasset had known that sha’um had lifetimes as long as or longer than those of men. It was conceivable that Keeshah would undergo something akin to puberty. His use of the image “yet” indicated it.

When will you need one?

I will know.

Oh, yes, I thought, I’m sure you’ll know. To him, I said: What will you do when you need one?

Return to the Valley, he answered. Females there.

Shall I come with you?

No.

My stomach knotted up. I had to ask the next question. Will you come back from the Valley?

I do not know.

With startling suddenness, Markasset’s memory gave me an entire, tense year of his life, when Thanasset had waited for the return of his sha’um. Markasset had been ten at the time. When his father’s sha’um had not returned by the end of the year, the boy had become determined to go to the Valley himself. For his own sake, yes—but partly to bring another sha’um into the household so that his father wouldn’t be so lonely.

I wondered if Thanasset had known about the boy’s generous impulse. It was almost certain that it hadn’t borne the fruit Markasset had wanted. The sight of Markasset and Keeshah together would have brought Thanasset only pain, at first, then wistful memories.

Let’s see, Thanasset was filly-six now—why, he’s younger than I was when I left my other world let with Markasset’s perspectives, I’ve been calling him an old man. Ah. Youth.’—which meant he had been forty-five when his sha’um had left him. The cat had been thirty-four years old.

That couldn’t have been the first time his shaum had gone to the Valley. Markasset’s memory of that year includes such an air of expectancy—Thanasset thought the cat would be back. I wonder what happened to him? Killed by a rival for the same female, maybe? Or a love affair too potent to abandon?

A whimsical notion struck me. Markasset went to the Valley only two years later. It’s conceivable that Keeshah is the son of Thanasset’s sha’um!

It would be useless to ask Keeshah to verify that. To him, a sha’um’s identity was an impression of appearance, odor, and voice. His communication with them was purely physical, a matter of gesture or attitude combined with vocal pitch.

Do you understand what is going to happen this afternoon? I asked Keeshah. Do the others understand?

It doesn’t matter.

Well, I guess that told me, I thought, laughing to myself. A Rider’s only worth to a .sha’um lies in his relationship to the big cat. And I think all the Riders would agree that it’s a higher honor than any rank they might confer on one another.

Let’s get it done.

We turned back down the hill.

Dharak greeted me at his door with a glass of faen and a question: “Have you decided what your part of the ceremony will be?”

I gaped at him. “I haven’t even thought about it,” I admitted. “Something will occur to me when it’s time.”

We had a quiet homey lunch with Shola, and then Dharak offered me the use of his private bath-house. When I returned to the guest room, I found that Dharak had replaced my “civilian” clothes with a Sharith uniform.

It consisted of trousers and long-sleeved tunic, both tan and made of tightly-woven, soft linen. All the uniforms looked like this, but few were of such fine quality fabric. With the uniform was a beautiful pair of sueded leather boots which reached to my knees. On the outer sides of the boots, holes had been cut at small intervals. Groups of thin leather strips had been threaded through the holes, interlaced and knotted with one or more other of the groups, and then allowed to drape into a pointed fringe about four inches long. The knotting, besides being decorative, served to make the boot more rigid. The interior sides, which would press into a sha’um’s flanks, were left bare and smooth.

As I was stamping into the second boot, Dharak knocked and came into the room. He beamed at me when he saw the boots on my feet.

”It’s time they were worn again,” he said.

”You’re not going to tell me that these belonged to Serkajon, are you? They’re brand new.”

”They are copies of his boots, which we kept carefully for him, wrapped in oiled cloth, until they were barely recognizable, much less wearable. Since then, one of our people has crafted a new pair, whenever signs of spoiling appeared on the old ones. These were made only last year.” He smiled slyly. “I see they fit you well.”

“Yes, they fit,” I said. “But they make me uncomfortable.”

He frowned. “I have seen how much this troubles you, my friend. If you say so, I will cancel the ceremony.”

Make yourself look the fool, and foul up all the plans you’ve made, based on my new position? I believe you would do that out of friendship and I’m grateful. But I realized, last night, that it was too late to cancel, the day I agreed to it.

I stood up and gripped his shoulder. I tried to smile naturally. “You’ve convinced me that this is supposed to happen,” I told him. “And I guess I’m ready.”

”Not quite,” he said. He had brought a bundle with him, and now he unwrapped it. He unfolded an embroidered sash much like the blue one he was wearing, only this one was a silky white, stiffened and decorated with silver threads. “This, too, is a duplicate,” he explained as he helped me to arrange it around my waist in exactly the right way. Then he picked up Rika, which rested now in an ornamental scabbard, and held it out to me. “Your sword, Captain.”

I reached for it, hesitated, then grinned and took it from him.

Keeshah and Doran were waiting outside Dharak’s house. The Lieutenant and I mounted and rode, close together, up to the Hall. I could see that the rest of Thagorn was deserted; there weren’t even any guards on the wall. The great heavy gates were shut and barred a visual symbol of the security of the valley.

The Hall was a huge, square building, two stories high, but empty of a second floor. I had crossed its vastness once, walking across its marble-tiled floor. I was no less awed by its size now, as I rode into it.

Enormous double doors in the center of the south wall opened as we approached them. They closed behind us, and the men who had manipulated them went to stand with the other non-Riders, who were waiting quietly in the western quarter of the Hall.

Dharak and I rode through an aisle formed by mounted Riders. They faced toward us until we had passed by, and then turned toward the great marble block in the center of the floor, which was the Hall’s speaking platform.

As we rode up to that platform and stepped down to it, I felt a familiar tightening in my chest. It was like the feeling Ricardo had experienced, whenever he had watched a Marine company doing close-order drill. The beauty of precision, the hours of training necessary, the sensation of unity—to these were added the grace and strength of the big cats and the very special pride of the Riders. Again I was swept up in that feeling of belonging.

As we turned to address the Riders, Dharak let out a small gasp of impatience. It wasn’t hard to figure what was bothering him. The four companies of Riders were arranged in sharply dressed columns, three abreast. The companies were separated by wide aisles, and their leaders were out front. That is, three of the leaders were there, visible evidence of the chain of command. The fourth leader was missing.

So Thymus didn’t want to come to the party? I thought. I really don’t mind—but Dharak does.

The Lieutenant’s face was grim, as he called the order to dismount. When the men were standing, the cats crouched down to the floor, each to his Rider’s right. Dharak began speaking.

“Great changes have come upon Gandalara,” he said. “For the first time since the fall of the Kingdom, the Ra’ira has left Raithskar. It is in the hands of one whose ambition makes him both unworthy and dangerous to the peace we are pledged to preserve. Because of this terrible threat, the long centuries of separation between us and our leader are now at an end.”

He put his hand on my shoulder.

“This is Rikardon, the son of Thanasset of Raithskar, who is descended in direct line from our great Captain, Serkajon. I tell you, from my own knowledge, that he brings honor to the boots and the color of rank which he now wears. He carries Rika, the great sword of rakor which Serkajon carried during his lifetime.”

Dharak’s voice rose from just louder than normal, until he was shouting his last words.

“He rides!” the Lieutenant called out. “Honor Rikardon as our Captain!”

A tremendous sound surged upward from the men before me, and from the rest of the Sharith standing to the west of the platform. Stunned by the suddenness of the sound, it took me a few seconds to realize that they were shouting my name. When they repeated it twice, they quieted expectantly.

All right, smart guy, I told myself. This is where you’re supposed to wing it. Do something.

I looked out over the people and sha’um on the floor around me. I tried to see a dwindling society, desperate to maintain its heritage and traditions against pressure from the outside world and against the erosion of inaction. But the pity associated with such a vision refused to come.

I saw the Sharith. Proud of their beginnings, satisfied with their lifestyle, confident that their use would come again to the world. Sure that I was the signal and the instrument of the world’s need for what they had to offer.

I should say something about the Ra’ira, I thought. I ought to lay the groundwork for Dharak’s orders to sit still. But that—even that—seems unimportant now. Only one thing is important.

I am the Captain of the Sharith.

Every one of these men, women and children has pledged life and service to me today. I’m not sure I deserve it, but they’ve done it. And they deserve more than a disappointing speech.

I jumped down from the dais and called Keeshah to walk on the right side of me. We went up to the leader of the third company, which was the one closest to me. It was Liden. His sha’um, Cheral, stood up as Keeshah and I approached. “This is Keeshah,” I introduced him formally. Then I offered my hand to Liden. “Thanks for your friendship, Liden. And for yours, Cheral.”

As Liden grinned and accepted the handshake, I lifted my left hand, palm upward, to the cat. He dipped his head and touched my palm lightly with his muzzle. Liden copied my gesture, and Keeshah responded in the same way.

Smells good, Keeshah told me. Like friend.

I moved around Liden and walked up to the first rank of his company. The boy on its eastern edge, along the aisle I had ridden down, stood up straighter. His sha’um stood up.

“I am Raden,” the boy said, then introduced his cat: “This is Borral.”

Again I offered my hands to the Rider and his sha’um, and Keeshah greeted the man.

“Welcome, Captain,” Raden said, as he gripped my hand. His gaze strayed to Keeshah at the touch of fur and whiskers to his left hand.

“I’m glad to be here, Raden and Borral,” I said. Keeshah and I moved on.

It took time to greet each one of nearly a hundred Riders individually. Part of me was focused on the men and their sha’um, making an effort to store the names in my memory. Another part of my consciousness was congratulating me on finding precisely the right way to confirm my place with the Sharith.

The handshake wasn’t a Gandalaran custom. I had used it out of Ricardo’s habit, and out of an instinctive desire to verify the reality of the occasion by touching someone. The open-palm gesture had originated on my first arrival in Thagorn, when I had sought a way to express my thanks to Poltar and Cheral for carrying me as extra weight. Now it was giving Keeshah an opportunity to record the identities of the Riders by sight and smell, and the sha’um were receiving the same information about me.

Those sha’um were also receiving an influx of whatever emotion the Riders felt as I spoke to them. I suspected they shared what I was feeling, and projecting to Keeshah—a singing gladness and a sense of history changing at our fingertips.

When Keeshah and I had greeted all the Riders except Dharak—and the missing Thymas—we moved through the other members of the Sharith. Because I was aware of how long everyone had been standing here, I didn’t ask names, but walked through the crowd rather quickly, greeting the people I did know, and saying hello in a general way. Keeshah followed me, the crowd moving back when necessary to let him pass, and he did greet everybody. He walked with his head bent, and skimmed his nose across the hands that were held out to him eagerly.

Finally, we returned to the center of the Hall. Dharak had stepped down from the platform, and was waiting beside Doran. His eyes were shining as he gripped my hand strongly, and lifted his left hand to Keeshah. He didn’t say anything, and neither did I. I turned away and mounted Keeshah, then asked him to climb up to stand on the platform. I had a high, clear view of everyone in the Hall and all of them, from the sha’um to the smallest child, were watching me.

“You have done us great honor this day,” I forced away the constriction in my throat, and tried to project my voice clearly. “Keeshah and I thank you.

“It is not yet time for the Sharith to ride out of Thagorn and back into the affairs of the world…I must leave you tomorrow—and I am sad to go—but Dharak will continue his excellent leadership in my absence. Show him the respect you would offer to me. I will return when there is need.”

I guess that’s ambiguous enough, I thought, with a twinge of guilt. And long enough. I’ll bet the little kids are really tired of all this standing.

“I will try to be worthy of the friendship of the Sharith,” I finished off, and I could hear my voice crack, revealing how deeply I had been moved by this ceremony.

Keeshah jumped down from the platform and started down the aisle of cats and men toward the double doors. Men ran around the Riders to get to the doors and open them, and I told Keeshah to go slowly, so they would have time to get there.

Behind me, Dharak shouted: “Rikardon and Keeshah’”

The cry was taken up all around me, and this time the men’s voices were accompanied by the roaring of the sha’um. Keeshah and I moved through a horrendous, glorious noise, and I was overtaken by a fierce surge of joy.

Keeshah’s feeling it, too! I reached for him, and we merged. The sha’um are saluting him, not me. He can hear it in their voices.

I am not the Captain of the Sharith

We are.

Keeshah and I, together, rode out of the Hall into a world that was sharper and brighter than the one we had left.

8

“He has gone too far this time,” Dharak was saying. “He will pay for his insult to you. I told him, specifically, that I required his presence, in spite of his uncertain feelings about you.”

That’s mild phrasing. Thymas hates my tusks.

We were standing, with Shola, in the main avenue, facing the gates which were now open. As soon as the wall guards had returned to their posts after the ceremony, they had reported the approach of the entertainment troupe, and we had come here to greet them. The rest of the Sharith lined the avenue, leaving a broad pathway from the gate to where we waited.

“It was part of his duty. That’s exactly the way I stated it to him. It was his duty to be there to acclaim you the Captain.”

I didn’t particularly care whether Thymas accepted me or not. But I knew there was more at stake here than Dharak’s pride. The Lieutenant had based his plans for controlling an incipient rebellion on my authority, and Thymas had already, indirectly, defied that authority. It couldn’t be ignored.

“You are too angry, Dharak,” I said, using the same quiet, intense tones Dharak was using, to keep from being overheard by those nearest us. “I will judge him.”

Shola stepped between us. “Thank you, Captain,” she said.

The Lieutenant turned to face the gate. “Perhaps Thymas won’t come back to Thagorn,” he said quietly. “Perhaps that would be best.”

“Look—the acrobats!” Shola cried, with a forced show of excitement.

The first members of the troupe were, indeed, somersaulting and flipping through the somber gates of Thagorn. They were followed by a procession which reminded me delightfully of the circus parades I had seen when Ricardo had been a child. Jugglers tossed crockery around at dizzying speeds. Men and women strutted by in incredible and intricate costumes: one made up entirely of feathers, one of tiny bronze rings, another covered with tiny glass baubles, so that there was a continuous musical tinkling as the wearer walked by. Musicians were spaced throughout, to lend rhythm and continuity to this preview performance.

The entertainers moved down the line of Sharith to the shouts and laughter and applause of their audience. They stopped directly in front of us, performed a special piece of business, and then moved off to our left. The last barracks building in from the gate had been set aside for them.

Some distance behind the entertainers came the support group—vleks and carts laden with costumes, props, and travel provisions. To make things less worrisome for the vlek handlers, all the sha’um had been asked to stay on the other side of the river while the caravan remained in Thagorn.

But between the entertainers and the rest of the caravan walked a tall woman, strikingly beautiful, dressed in a black robe, and carrying a restless white bird on her right shoulder. She moved with a stately grace, seeming to ignore the cheers of greeting which rose when she came through the gate. This was Tarani, the illusionist, and she walked with her hand upon the extended arm of a man.

The man was Thymas.

The two of them approached us without speaking. I couldn’t help staring at the girl—she couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, though her height and her air of assurance gave an impression of greater age. Most Gandalarans had light-colored head fur which turned darker through the years. But Tarani’s pale, almost luminous face was crowned by head fur that was coal black. Her eyes were large and wide-set, so dark that they seemed solid enough to turn away the light before it entered. They stared back at me for a long moment before she spoke, and during that time, I began to be uncomfortable.

The strangest thing about it was that she was somehow familiar, but I couldn’t quite touch the right memory. .

Gharlas! It came to me. He was tall, too, and his facial structure was similar—flatters cheekbones and less prominent supraorbital ridges. But that’s not the real similarity. Markasset felt almost exactly this way when Gharlas stared at him with that peculiar intensity. Thymas said that Tarani has the same kind of power. I believe him now.

Thymas and Tarani stopped about two yards from us. Before Dharak or I could say anything, Tarani spoke in a low and vibrant voice that set my spine tingling.

“I am pleased to be here to help celebrate your accession, Captain,” she said, “and I give you my thanks for sending my good friend Thymas to meet me, deliver the news, and escort me to your gates. In return for this gracious courtesy, may I offer you a small gift?”

Dharak was gritting his teeth, and I sympathized with him. Thymas knew very well we wouldn’t air dirty linen in front of these outsiders by calling him down for not being at the ceremony. But if we didn’t contradict Tarani’s statement, the rest of the Sharith (at least, those who didn’t know Thymas very well) would assume that I had issued the escort orders, and punishment at a later date would confuse the issue.

Very neat, Thymas, I thought. You haven’t said a word, so you are technically innocent of lying. She has called me “Captain,” but you haven’t.

You don’t know it, but you’ve done me a big favor. It would have been tricky, awarding punishment to the Lieutenant’s son without seeming to be overly harsh or lenient. Dharak will hate me for this, but I’m .going to let you get away with it. At least for now.

“I would welcome a gift from you, Tarani,” I said. I could hear Dharak’s teeth gritting again.

Thymas dropped his arm, and didn’t try to hide his smile of triumph. Tarani’s face registered no emotion at all. She put her right hand into a hidden pocket of the robe and lifted her left hand high over her head, palm opened flat to the sky. She brought her right hand up and dropped something into the open palm.

“Lonna, please deliver our gift to … the Captain.”

Was that little hesitation a subtle gibe? I wondered. To tell me she knows the score, and is on Thymas’s side?

The bird had taken flight when she lifted her hands. Its wingspan was surprisingly large. What I had thought to be an odd-looking tail had actually been the tips of its wings, folded over its back and crossed at the base of its tail.

This was a species of bird Markasset had never seen. As a raven of Ricardo’s world was so black as to be iridescent in direct light, this bird was that white, almost silver. As we watched it fly upward, the sky’s glow was visible through the delicate edges of the wing feathers. Against the gray-white of the clouds, it nearly disappeared.

It flew upward for a few seconds, turned, folded its wings back, and dived straight for Tarani. As it got closer, we could all see its head stretched for the least wind resistance, its sharp, downward-curved beak aimed for the girl’s hand. At the last possible moment, the wings spread, the dive leveled out, and the bird breezed across us. Tarani lowered her hand to show that it was empty, and I started to breathe again.

That’s quite a show, I conceded. But if you think I’m going to give that sharp-nosed torpedo a target...

It wasn’t necessary. The bird had pulled up its high-speed flight and was coming back toward us, its wings beating the air with unbelievable slowness. It flew right up to me and hovered at my chest level, watching me with a one-eyed stare that reminded me of its mistress, carrying something shiny gold in its beak.

I realized what it wanted, and held out my hand. It dropped the gold thing into it, and then returned to Tarani. Shola came close and Dharak, for all his irritation with Thymas looked over her shoulder curiously.

“It’s a bracelet,” I said, and held it up for them to see. I did admire it. It was a soft chain made up of golden links so fine that, with five links abreast, the bracelet was only half an inch wide.

I was surprised to hear a derisive sound from Dharak. “Why, it’s nothing but a chain of mud-beads!” he said. Then, in a lower voice: “Thomas, you are behind this. Now dare you arrange a public insult to Rikardon? You’ll—”

At his first words, the bracelet had changed in my hands. It was, indeed, a string of tiny, brownish beads. But as I stared at it, I saw the glint of gold beneath them. I blinked.

“Dharak,” I interrupted the Lieutenant. “You are forgetting who gave this gift.”

Tarani looked at me, and this time, I found her gaze easier to bear. Slowly, she smiled. I swear she out-dazzled the gold bracelet.

“You have found the trick quickly, Captain.” She waved her hand. “Now see it truly.”

Shola and Dharak oohed and ahed over the golden chain, Dharak less enthusiastically because of his accusation against Thymas.

“How does it open?” Shola asked.

“The clasp is hidden,” Tarani said. “May I show you?”

“Please,” I answered, holding it out toward her. She came to me. Over her shoulder, I saw Thymas scowling.

Tarani took the bracelet in long, tapered fingers, twisted the chain inside-out, and showed me the clever clasp mechanism. She opened it, and then hesitated. I extended my left wrist, and she put the bracelet on it. For a moment, both her hands pressed the gold chain into the flesh of my arm.

“May this gift bring you only good fortune, Captain,” she said, with a return of that queer intensity.

“Thank you, Tarani. I am looking forward to the performance tonight. Perhaps, after it is over, you will join our table for some refreshment?”

“It would be my pleasure,” she said. But she didn’t smile.

Thymas hadn’t missed any of that. He flashed a look of pure hatred at me as he and Tarani turned toward the barracks.

The caravan, part of it already a good way inside the gate, began moving again, but nobody was much interested in watching a bunch of vleks plod along… I turned the bracelet around my wrist and stared in that direction, thinking. I did notice that the vlek handler in the first position of the caravan was the biggest man I had ever seen. Not just tall, but massively wide. He could have wrestled a vineh and won.

The crowd was scattering, the Riders going back to their duties, the children, free for the day, running after the troupe. Since only the Riders and their wives (or guests) would be present at the performance that evening, there would be a special daylight matinee for everyone else.

The women were on their way back to their cookstoves. Preparations had been going on all day for the banquet that was scheduled for three hours ahead.

As soon as Shola had excused herself, and there was no one within earshot, Dharak started to fume again.

“Let it go,” I pleaded. “Dharak, I want you to ask yourself something. Are you angry on my behalf, because of the insult to me, or because it was your son who caused it?” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Thymas is an adult, my friend. You are no longer responsible for his actions. He pulled a smooth trick today. It’s irritating, yes, but most of your people don’t understand what happened. Unless he flaunts it—and we both know he’s too smart to do that—it will remain a private itch, and nothing more.

“Tomorrow I’ll be gone, and things will be back the way they were, except that Thymas will have more trouble getting support for his crazy schemes.” I grinned. “At least, I hope so. That’s what today was for, wasn’t it?”

“It worked, too,” Dharak said, clamping down on his angry mood. “You made a deep impression on us, Rikardon. Can you doubt, now, that it was right?”

“No,” I said, and then changed the subject. “Tell me about Tarani.”

“I don’t know much about her,” he said. We started walking back toward his house. “She and her troupe showed up here one day—two years ago, now, and it was a smaller group—and she has been returning regularly since then.”

“Do you pay her well?”

“Very well,” he said, without hesitation. “And she earns it. You will see, tonight.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eve. “You’re thinking of Thymas? Does she come here because of him?” He shrugged. “‘That’s a possibility. Thymas believes it.”

“Don’t you?”

”Thymas thinks she’ll stay, one of these days.”

“Marriage?” I suggested. Dharak only chuckled at my astonished reaction. “How did this get started between them?”

We had reached the house, and we settled down in armchairs which overlooked the opposite bank of the river. It was peaceful, with the sound of rushing water nearby and the conversation of sha’um in the distance.

I really will be sad to leave, I thought.

“It began the first time Tarani came here,” Dharak said. “The troupe stayed for a few days. Our people so seldom see outsiders, and the members of the company were very… obliging, except for Tarani. Thymas had just been accepted into the Riders. The red sash made him eager for new challenges and, well …” The Lieutenant sighed. “Everyone else thought of the troupe’s visit as a pleasant diversion. Thymas of course, began immediately to make wedding plans.”

She may have been his first girl, I was thinking. It’s a cinch he’s scared everyone else away, and because she sees only him while she’s here, he thinks she wants it that way.

No wonder Thymas looked daggers at me this afternoon. Is an invitation to table taken to be an invitation to bed?

Did I mean it that way?

Dharak and I chatted away the rest of the daylight, then dressed for dinner and went down to the barracks building that had been converted into a huge meeting room. Tonight there were several tables, each twelve feet by four feet, set up around a large, waist-high platform that must have been carried in pieces on the vleks. It was supported by lots of thin wood strips, bracing apart three layers of frames.

Four tables stood parallel to one another along each short wall of the room, their ends toward the platform. Between the last pair, and directly in front of the platform, was another table. The best seats in the house.

Dharak and I were the last men to arrive, and everyone stood up as we entered, waited until we sat down, then resumed their noisy conversations. There were four chairs at that head table. Thymas was occupying the one at the end nearer the door.

He had stood up, too, but it was clear to everyone that the honor was meant for his father, only. I touched Dharak’s arm, hoping he wouldn’t make a scene. He didn’t speak a word, but walked right by his son. I took the chair at the other end of the table, and Dharak sat next to me.

I guess Thymas means to make sure Tarani is well-chaperoned, I laughed to myself. Well, he needn’t worry. She’s beautiful, but … there’s something really disturbing about her. And I’m leaving tomorrow. I don’t need any one-night stands that might generate a murder.

But I will enjoy having that drink with her. She’s a fascinating woman. Strange, but intriguing.

In a few minutes, the women arrived. They had finished preparing the food, and had taken some time to prepare themselves. Shola came to our table, dressed in a full-skirted gown of pale orange, wearing a necklace and headband of copper. She made a gracious comment about my new gift— still on my wrist—being finer than her own jewelry, then seated herself silently, tactfully, between her husband and her son.

The older girls served the meal, and it was a proper feast.

Roast glith, hundreds of small birds served whole, large bowls brimming with fruit, fresh-baked bread, and plenty of faen.

When the dishes had been cleared away the lamps which had lit the tables were all moved to line the edges of the platform in a regular pattern. Three edges that is. The fourth edge, farthest from the head table, was left open for the entrance of the players. The rearrangement left the stage brightly lit, and the rest of the room in shadow. The room grew quiet.

The dancers came first, creating complex patterns with the location and positions of their bodies, moving with stylized grace to the music of the harps and flute. The jugglers appeared next, with a really remarkable display of skill and timing. Some of the stunts were done with swords and knives, and I applauded wildly with the rest of the crowd.

It was a great show—well paced, with excitement balanced against beauty. I began to admire Tarani for her showmanship. She had assembled a talented group of people.

The illusionist herself appeared once, early on in the show, still wearing her black robe. It was instantly clear that this was not her spot, but the bird’s. She asked it questions, which it answered in “yes” or “no” fashion, either spreading its wings or remaining still. There were math problems on the order of “Two plus two are five, right?” which the bird always answered correctly catching every apparent trick. By the time that segment of show was over, I was willing to grant that Lonna was a pretty smart bird, and I joined in the polite applause.

That must be the hit of the show in other towns, I thought. But when you’ve lived with a sha’um inside your head, a clever bird isn’t much of a novelty.

After a long time of sitting in those un-padded, armless, wood-and-tile chairs, the troupe gave us a break, and we stretched and laughed and discussed the show.

After about ten minutes, I caught sight of Tarani, climbing the rear steps of the stage. There was a peculiar darkness hovering over center stage, and she walked into it without anyone taking notice of her.

It’s one of her illusions. She’s diverting everyone’s attention until she gets into place.

This confirms what I’ve been thinking, ever since this afternoon, I thought, touching the gold bracelet with the fingers of my right hand. I’m not susceptible to her power.

I leaned forward eagerly, making the table creak. She looked, for a brief instant, in my direction.

I’m going to enjoy this show.

9

Tarani threw her arms out wide. A yellowish powder fell from her hands, and the lamps flared up with a hissing noise. At that exact instant, the shroud of darkness vanished, and the crowd gasped, then applauded madly. I joined in, but I wasn’t applauding the trick as much as the lady herself.

The long, shapeless black robe was gone. Tarani was wearing a shimmering blue gown she must have designed for herself. Certainly no other women I had ever seen could have worn it. Where most women’s garments draped and flowed, clinging only incidentally, this was tailored to cling to her upper body and display curves which were more impressive for having been hidden away in the black robe.

A glittering band of blue circled her neck, supporting a tight bodice which left her arms bare. From her small waist, a full skirt flowed over her hips and nearly to the floor. The fabric was so soft that her legs were outlined at every step. A semi-circular white cape, fastened to her arms with jewelled bands at shoulders, elbows, and wrists, set off the blue of the gown. The cape also had a tall, stiff collar which stood up behind her head, creating a dramatic background for her black head fur.

I blinked twice.

None of that is illusion. That’s all Tarani. No wonder Thymas is crazy for her.

Tarani stood perfectly still for a long moment. I became aware of a barely audible sound. It was her voice, humming a soft, deep-toned melody. The sound gave me the same thrill along my spine as I had felt when she first had spoken to us that afternoon.

She began to sway to her own music. Soon she was moving around the stage in an irregular pattern, approaching each lighted edge, and then veering back. Her arms were held out from her sides a little way’ to silhouette her gown against the white of the cape. She seemed to glide without moving her feet. Only by blinking frequently could I detect the quick, tiny steps with which she moved.

That humming is hypnotic, I realized. Is that all her power is, a talent for hypnosis? Or is this a bonus that makes her real talent more effective?

She glided to the front of the stage, opposite our table, and she broke from her rigid posture to kneel before us. The music of her voice rose in pitch and increased its pace. She lifted her right arm above her head. In her left hand, she held a thin strip of wood; she extended it toward a lamp. The end of the wood caught, and she carried the tiny fire upward….pressed it. into her palm. Her right hand burst into flame. She clapped her hands together, and the left caught fire. She brought her hands down behind her head, and she wore a brilliant crown of flame.

She began to dance. Beautifully, rhythmically, moving always in time with the eerie melody…. leaving streams of sparkling fire, lingering in the air behind her.

It was fascinating. I could shift my perception from the gorgeous illusion to the reality beneath it, where she carried three long strips of burning wood, one in each hand and one mounted in the stiff collar of her cape. They burned so slowly that they must have been specially treated and prepared for her act.

And what an act. In either version, the dance was wonderful to watch. Tarani’s tall body, its outlines plain against the cape’s light background, moved continuously and with a grace that seemed effortless. When the illusion was in effect, she drew intricate and ever-changing patterns in the air with the trailing flames.

If Gandalarans could perspire, she’d be all over sweat by now. I thought. Such energy! She doesn’t even need the illusion to make this a great show. But look at her face—eyes nearly closed, expression rapt. She loves it. The dance transports her. She’ll never give this up to stay in Thagorn. Poor Thymas.

I did feel a real twinge of sympathy for the boy. And a surge of affection for Illia, who wanted a normal life and seemed to want me to be part of it. She might not be as glamorous, or as challenging a personality, as Tarani, but at that moment, I felt a warm appreciation for Illias more simple charms.

It might have been because I was thinking of Illia—and, by association, Raithskar and Worfit—right then. Whatever the reason, when I heard the soft creak of leather behind me, I reacted instantly. If I had been as entranced by Tarani’s performance as the rest of the audience, I would have missed hearing it.

And I would have died.

It was a near thing, anyway. As I toppled my chair into the open space between tables on my right, 4.saw the faint glint of lamplight on a dagger blade that plunged through the air, just where my heart would have been. I could barely see the man who held the dagger—he was bending over in reaction to his unresisted downward swing—and another man behind him. The huge bulk of the other man told me that I had seen him before. The vlek handler, in Tarani’s caravan.

At the sound of the chair falling, the humming had stopped. Just as I rolled back on my shoulders and aimed a double-leg kick at the nearer, smaller man, the lights went out.

My feet connected with the side of the man’s head, and I heard him fall. I rolled to the right, trying to put the table between myself and the big guy, but he was too fast. A huge hand grabbed my foot. I felt myself dragged across the floor like a rag doll, and then another huge hand touched my face.

”Dharak! Assassins!” I yelled. I brought my arms up to deflect an expected blow. I kicked out with my feet, with little effect. Instead of hitting me, that hand closed on my throat, and the big man leaned on my neck.

A different darkness, full of spinning lights, began to close in on me. With an odd detachment, I wondered whether my larynx would collapse, or my neck crack, before I passed out from lack of air.

Not close enough to help!* Keeshah’s wail of frustration reached me, steadied the wheeling blackness. Don’t die, he pleaded.

The pressure on my neck vanished suddenly, and I gulped in a painful, delicious draft of air. I opened my eyes to faint light. Some of the lamps had guttered hack to life, not quite extinguished by whatever Tarani must have thrown at them… ,

Keesha, I’m all right. Find Tarani.

In the flickering light, Dharak had seen me struggling, and had thrown himself at the man-mountain. They had rolled together, and now it was Dharak who was pinned, his arms entangled with his attacker’s. Over the milling confusion around us, I heard the sound of bone snapping, and a yell of pain. From outside, a scream of rage sounded from a sha’um—Doran.

“Father!” Thymas was yelling, as he ran around the far end of the table.

“There’s another man, Thymas!” I croaked, my throat still aching. “He had a dagger. Get it!”

Thymas checked his forward rush, grabbed up one of the lamps, and dashed hack around the table. I staggered up and got the big man around the neck, then lifted with all my strength. The man grunted and released Dharak, only to reach backward and grab my right leg. He pulled me off balance and we fell, the big man knocking my breath away as he landed on top of me.

Thymas ran up with the dagger. He glanced at his father, lying still on the floor, and then turned toward us with the most savage expression I have ever seen on the face of a Gandalaran.

The knife blade sank into the man’s side. Once. Twice. Three times. Blood ran out of the wounds, soaking my clothes as the man quit struggling.

I pushed myself out from under the corpse, fighting hack a wave of nausea. “You didn’t have to kill him!” I panted, then stopped short. Thymas still held the dagger, and he was ready to use it again … on me.

“He’s a piece of filth!” the boy shouted in a strained voice. “And so are you. My father may be dead because he was trying to save your fleabitten life. And if he is,” Thymas threatened, waving the dagger, “if Dharak is dead . . His voice choked off.

“I’m far from dead,” said a weak voice. Behind Thymas, Dharak straightened out a leg. The boy whirled, and dropped to his knees beside his father. Blood still dripped from the dagger.

My knees went weak with relief, and I moved to lean on the table. Thank God! I prayed, sincerely. Thank God Dharak didn’t die for any sake. How did Worfit know where I would be? How could he arrange for this so quickly?

In Thagorn, surrounded by sha’um and soldiers … I quit looking over my shoulder. Mistake. Worfit must have more connections than Zaddorn does. I’ll have to settle with him, one way or another, when I get back to Raithskar.

But first, I want to be sure that nobody—but nobody—tries this and gets away with it.

“Bareff,” I called, coming to my feet.

The banquet hall had been full of confusion for a while, with the sudden darkness and the sounds of a nearly invisible fight. It hadn’t helped anything that Doran had squeezed through the human-sized door, and trampled a few people in the darkness, trying to get to Dharak. But now Dharak was calming the sha’um, stroking the cat’s jaw with his right hand, while he talked to Thymas to allay his son’s concern.

Old Snaggletooth had taken things in hand, and was creating some order out of the mess. He was beginning to get the dead lamps relighted when he heard my call. He came running.

“I heard you yelling,” Bareff said, “but with the darkness …” , In one quick glance, he took in the huge corpse, my bloody tunic, Dharak lying prone, Thymas and Doran beside him. “Great Zanek!” was all he said.

“The Lieutenant is alive,” I assured him. “There’s a man on the other side of the table. If he’s alive, have him guarded. Round up the troupe and find out what they know about all this … and where Tarani is.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, nodded, and moved around the table. I went over to Dharak, but before I could speak to him, I heard the thud of a falling body, and Bareff yelled.

The man I had kicked was leaping over the table, which had miraculously remained upright through all the scuffling. I whirled to face the assassin, but he went past me to the edge of the stage, and caught up one of the lamps. He brought the faceted glass chimney down on the edge of the stage, knocking out the thick candle and breaking the glass down to a jagged shard.

He didn’t try to kill me with it.

He drove it into his own stomach, and ripped it sideways.

Bareff had followed him over the table, and we stood side by side, watching the man die. -My fault,” Bareff said gloomily. “I got too close … how could anybody do that to himself?”

Ritual suicide? I wondered. The Japanese samurai used to do that routinely, if they failed at something, or were dishonoured. But the Japanese believed there was another life on their earth waiting for them after death. The Gandalarans believe they’ll live forever in the All-Mind . Same thing? Somehow, I wouldn’t think so.

Get hold of yourself, “Captain.” This is no time to be studying comparative religion. Two men are dead, and Dharak injured, because of you.

“Bring Tarani,” I told Bareff. Something he heard in my voice sent him sprinting for the door, shouting names and orders.

Keeshah, I called. Have you seen her?

Hmmm? came a lazy, contented thought.

For a few seconds, I stood there and swore at myself.

He’s seen her, all right, I thought bitterly. Why didn’t I think to warn him about her? But she’s been in Thagorn before, and has probably practiced on sha’um before, too. Keeshah might not have been able to resist, anyway.

The thought made me feel a strange sadness. I suppose I had come to rely so completely on Keeshah that finding him vulnerable was a shock. But there was something else. I was vaguely disappointed in Tarani, too. She was so beautiful, so skilled…

And so treacherous. Something else in her like Gharlas. Maybe it’s that power they both have. Political power was a corruptive influence in Ricardo’s world and that was only indirect influence. How much more potent direct mind control must he!

But she won’t get away with this.

Keeshah, where are you?

Outside the gate, he answered, becoming more alert. I groaned inwardly. Come inside.

Dharak had convinced Doran to go back outside the building, and Shola had taken charge of Dharak. She was working over his left arm, holding it gently, and wrapping it with length of cloth. Lamps had been brought and arranged close to Dharak’s head to give her more light, and Thymas had stood up to give her room. I knelt down at Dharak’s right side, ignoring a look hatred from Thymas. The Lieutenant was pale, but he smiled at me.

“Told you I was getting old,” he said. “Bones brittle. What happened?”

I hesitated.

Shola spoke, without looking up. “The arm is broken in two places, Captain,” she said. Her voice was carefully neutral. “Otherwise, he is well. I, too, want to know what happened.”

He means: what happened to the assassins? She means: why was Dharak hurt, trying to protect me?

I answered Shola first. “There is a man in Raithskar—a dangerous man—who wants me dead. I thought I had left him behind. I never thought he would dare send anyone into the stronghold of the Sharith.” I put my hand on Dharak’s good shoulder. “My carelessness has cost you much, my friend,” I said softly. “Forgive me.”

He made a sound of impatience. “The assassins?”

“Two are dead. The one who hurt you was killed by your son. The other took his own life. I will be leaving shortly to go after the third one.”

“You know who this third is?” he asked.

“Tarani.”

“You’re lying!” accused Thymas, who had edged closer to us.

Bareffs voice cut off whatever else Thymas would have said.

“Where’s Rikardon?”

I called to him, and he ran up into the lamplight.

“Tarani is gone, Captain. We found the gates open, and eight members of the troupe wandering near it in a daze. They can’t remember how they got there, and I don’t think they’re faking it. It looks like she forced them to open the gate for her.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought this of her.”

“It isn’t true!” Thymas said.

Had I felt a flash of sympathy for Thymas, earlier? It vanished now in a wave of annoyance.

“Thymas, she brought these killers here in her caravan, for the one occasion when, all the Riders would be unarmed. She put out the lights when all the trouble started. Now she has run away.”

“These were vlek-handlers,” he insisted stubbornly. “She hires new ones every trip. And for the lights—perhaps she did realize what was happening, and was trying to give you a better chance.

I resisted the impulse to laugh in his face. “Then why didn’t she stick around for a while?”

“Because …” If I hadn’t been so irritated, I might have admired his loyalty, as he groped for a plausible reason. “Because she knew we would think—I mean, you would think—that she knew those men were assassins. She’s afraid.”

“She needs to be,” I said grimly, and turned back to the Lieutenant. “Dharak, I’m going.”

“No,” Thymas said. This time, he wasn’t challenging me, but appealing to his father. “I am the one who must go. She won’t be afraid of me. I can persuade her to return and explain everything.”

“Of course she won’t be afraid of you,” I said. “She can probably make you believe that vleks climb trees.”

“She never uses her power on me without my consent,” he said angrily. “It is a matter of honor between us.”

Just in time, I remembered how Thymas felt about Tarani, and I cut back the scornful reply I was ready to make. Instead, I said: “That may be true, Thymas. But she can’t use her power against me. It doesn’t work.”

Complete silence greeted that announcement. I was touched again with the warmth I had felt in the Hall. Nobody doubted the truth of what I said. They were surprised, but if I had said it, were true.

“So I am the only logical one to go,” I continued, “and the more time I waste here, the farther away she is getting.”

“Go, then!” Thymas shouted. “And so will I. We will see who finds her first.”

“Thymas!” Dharak said, in a ringing tone of command. His son turned to him quickly, out of long habit. Without looking at me, Dharak said: “Captain, have I your permission to rule on this request?”

That was a request? I wondered. Aloud, and with some uneasiness, I gave him permission.

Shola helped Dharak to sit up, and then to stand. His face twisted with pain, but he was steady on his feet. She had finished binding his arm—not stiff and straight, as I would have done it, but with separate bindings on forearm and upper arm, and a sling supporting the bent arm.

“Thymas, in the presence of these Riders, offer your allegiance to our Captain.” Dharak’s voice rang out, releasing all the suppressed rage of a disappointed father. Shola flinched back from him, and it was a tossup who was more startled, Thymas or me.

“This isn’t necessary right now,” I said to Dharak.

“You gave me permission to handle this, Captain,” he said coldly. “Now stay out of it.”

I shut up. Your son’s not the only tricky one in your family, I thought.

”I will never call this man ‘Captain’!” came Thymas’s predictable answer.

“Do you want to go after Tarani?” the Lieutenant asked.

“Yes, but—”

“I agree that she may be more willing to return if you are present,” Dharak said. “So you may go with Rikardon and assist him. You will make public, here and now, your acceptance of him as Captain. And you will make another promise, personally to me as your father, that you will respect him properly, and obey him in all this.”

Wow. “I prefer to travel alone.’ I said. They both ignored me.

“I refuse!” the boy said icily.

“Then you have two choices,” Dharak said, his voice rolling out like an inexorable force. “Go … and never return to Thagorn.” The watching people gasped. Shola lifted a hand to her mouth, hit into her clenched fist. “Or stay … give up the red sash, and ride with the cubs for the rest of your life.”

Another sound of amazement, then a waiting silence. In the circle of the lamps, I could see Thymas’s hands trembling. His face was ashen. I thought of all I had learned about him—his devotion to the traditions of the Sharith, his conviction that he would lead them one day. I thought, too, of what my coming had meant to him. As Captain, I had taken away the very thing he had aimed for all his life. “Father—” Thymas began. Dharak interrupted, lashing the boy with his words.

“I remind you that these are official orders, backed by authority delegated to me, in front of witnesses, by the man whom everyone else has accepted as Captain. You have been given three paths to follow. Choose!”

Thymas looked at me, and his hand clenched around the handle of the dagger he still held. Then, with a truly extraordinary display of self control, Thymas shrugged back his shoulders and made his face blank of all expression.

“Only one way may be ridden with honor,” he said levelly, his gaze still fixed on me. “The son of Dharak can choose no other. You have the promise you asked for, Father.

“I am ready to leave immediately, Captain.”

10

Bareffs investigation turned up the remains of an early dinner in Tarani’s quarters. The Sharith girl who had served it was brought in, and she confirmed that whatever could be carried easily was gone from the tray. Nothing else had been touched.

One of the women dancers was asked to examine the dressing room. Scared and confused, she identified several articles of clothing that were missing, among them a pair of heavy walking boots.

“So she didn’t just run off in a panic, wearing nothing but that impractical gown,” I said to Bareff and Thymas, after the dancer had left the room. Thymas was glaring at me, daring me to gloat over being right. Whatever he had promised to Dharak, he couldn’t hide his hatred of me. I tried to hide the fact that it bothered me.

“What about weapons?”

“All visible weapons were turned in when the troupe came through the gate,” Bareff answered. “But if the assassin smuggled one in, Tarani could have done it, too. The dancer might not have known about it.”

“She has that bird with her, too,” Bareff continued. “It will warn her of being followed. I don’t think you’ll have much luck finding her in the dark, even while the moon is up. She’ll head either for Omergol or the Refreshment House at Relenor. We’ll notify our friends in Omergol to watch for her—but the Fa’aldu at Relenor won’t be any help.”

“Then we’ll search the trail to Relenor first,” I decided. “She can’t get very far in the dark, even with the bird to guide her. Thymas, we’ll leave at dawn. Don’t wear your uniform, and pack food and water for a seven-day, just in case.”

As we rode through the gates the next morning, I was glad we hadn’t rushed off the night before. I had bathed away the big man’s blood, and slept for several hours. Thymas was stone-faced and formal in the presence of Dharak, but he looked rested. I hoped the night had brought him nearer to accepting the truth about Tarani.

He might be a pain in the kazoo, I thought, but he’s young, and he’s had a series of shocks these past few weeks. That was a nasty trick of Dharak’s, forcing Thymas to accept me in order to protect Tarani. But if Thymas could pull himself together last night the way he did, he ought to be able to handle everything, given enough time.

We followed the road south that day, travelling slowly and watching the sky for sign of the bird. By nightfall, we were certain we had come farther than Tarani could have traveled since the end of the show. We moved away from the road, found an area free of brambles, ate a cold meal in silence, and stretched out to sleep. In the morning, we would ride back to Thagorn, and follow the caravan trail north toward Omergol.

Thymas seemed to fall asleep instantly. I stared up at the silver clouds for a while, remembering the fire dance.

It’s obvious why her illusions don’t work on me, I thought. She is trained to affect Gandalaran minds. I have the brain of a native, but the mind, the cognitive faculty, of an alien. Perception—analysis of stimuli—is not as automatic for me. I require a second, conscious interpretation of data before the data is entirely assimilated.

If Tarani can’t manipulate me, maybe I’m immune to Gharlas, too.

Suddenly I was awake. An odd, scary feeling crept over me.

If I were the All-Mind, trying to preserve a world threatened by a single madman, what better way than to create his opposite? Someone who is insane in such a way as to cancel out the dangerous craziness?

In Gandalara, where the only two kinds of weather were hot and hotter, I felt a positive chill at that moment.

And wouldn’t it be convenient if the new fool were in a position of power, at least potentially? Like a son of Serkajon’s house, who logically could be named to the Captaincy of the Sharith, provided he didn’t turn out feeble-minded?

Well, that lets me out, I laughed, trying to shake off the disturbing mood. I must be feeble-minded to think of such a thing. First things first. Tomorrow we find Tarani.

I had strange dreams, filled with the sound of Tarani’s humming. When I woke, just after dawn, my eyes focused on the point of a sword, about four inches from my face.

There was a person, tall and slim, dressed in desert garb, on the other end of that sword. A head cloth was tied to cover her head and drape one corner down her back. But even without the distinctive dark head fur showing, I had no difficulty recognizing Tarani.

That’s one way to find her. That’s some weapon she smuggled into Thagorn Or maybe she stole it from a house before she left. Looks like she knows how to use it too. How the hell did she sneak in here… the humming.’ Stupid, the humming!

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Thymas and his sha’um, both of them sound asleep. I reached for Keeshah with Inv mind, but he was out cold, too.

Tarani was staring down at me with those compelling and disturbing eves. Her face and hands showed tiny scratches, evidence that she had fought her way through the choked brush, rather than follow the road. She held Rika, point to the ground, in her left hand.

She must have some effect on me, I decided, or I would have felt her take the sword from my baldric.

“May I sit up?” I asked.

She nodded and stepped hack. I sat up and stretched my shoulders, moving slowly. “I have to …”

“Go ahead,” she said in her low-pitched voice. “I’m not shy.”

I stood up and turned my back on her, and did what I had to do. Then I turned around slowly. When I was almost facing her, I stepped forward and kicked out at the hand which held my sword. Her grip loosened, and Rika skidded away. She lunged at me, but I dived beneath her blade and rolled, coming to my feet with the satisfying weight of Serkajon’s sword in my hands—just in time to block a vicious overhand cut.

Tarani recovered quickly, and swung her sword around in an arc to slice across my midsection. I blocked that, too, then feinted a lunge to drive her backward. She dodged around my sword, swinging low to keep me off balance.

Before she could set herself for another slash, I threw my weight against her, dropping Rika and grabbing her sword wrist as we fell.

She struggled against my grip with less strength than I had expected. We rolled a couple of times, crushing the tart-smelling ground cover, then I put my full weight on her to hold her down, and forced her to release her sword.

With no warning, no transition, I found myself lying across the meanest, ugliest female vineh Markasset had ever seen.

It was sudden enough, and effective enough, to make me jump with surprise. Then I caught the trick, and blinked away the ugly brute.

As Tarani’s face re-formed, it took on an expression of despair. The dark eyes closed in defeat, and she whispered: “So it is true. I cannot make you see, as I can others.”

I slid off of her to relieve her lungs of my weight, but I could still feel her chest moving against me as she took short, heavy breaths. Looking at her face more closely now, I could see hollows under her eyes. Creases of tension surrounded her mouth and lined her brow, crisscrossed by the tiny, blood-crusted scratches.

“How did you know?” I asked her.

“I sensed it when we met,” she said. “And I heard you say so.”

“But that was after you left … no, it was after we found the gate open. You just slipped hack into the banquet hall and hid yourself in the crowd. Clever.”

“Not clever. Necessary. That was the first time in years I have tried to make someone do instead of merely see. Eight at once—I had barely enough strength left to cast away sight.”

“When did you leave Thagorn?”

“A few hours before dawn. I stayed in the banquet hall, ate all the food I had, and then climbed the east wall of the valley.

That’s where she got the scratches. I have to give her credit for making it through that wilderness.

“You heard what went on. You know Dharak was hurt.”

She was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally. “And I witnessed Thymas’s humiliation.

“That’s why I have given Thomas sleep. I wanted the chance to convince you to let me go. Thymas would want to help, and he …”

“He might do more harm than good? You’re probably right.”

Speaking of Thymas, if he wakes up and finds us in this clinch, neither one of us will score many points with him.

I rolled away from her and stood up, picking up the swords. She sat up, a little shakily.

“Where is your bird?”

“Hunting. She knows where I am.”

“When she shows up you control her, or Keeshah will have her for breakfast. Clear?”

She nodded, her eyes bright.

“Now,” I said, putting Rika away and tossing Tarani’s sword to one side of the clearing, “I’ll listen. No promises.”

She sighed. “I had no choice in what I did, Captain. I know you won’t believe it, but I was glad the Living Death failed. I—I’d have grieved for your death.”

“And I’m sure I’d have appreciated it,” I said. Her shoulders twitched. “The Living Death must be those assassins. Are there more where they came from?”

“There are many of them, yes, but the danger came from these two, only. Molik was paid for one attempt. Unless he is paid again, there will be no other.”

I wonder how much Worfit thinks I’m worth, I thought bitterly.

“Who is this Molik?”

“A powerful roguelord. He owns most of Chizan, and charges outrageous trade fees from the caravans passing through. He runs all the gaming houses, and controls the water that comes into the city. But his most profitable operation is the Living Death.

“They are people who know they will die in a year or less. They come to him, and he sets them up to live extremely well for part of the time left to them. In return, they swear to do anything he asks of them, including suicide if they are in danger of capture.

“Most of them come from Eddarta’s copper mines. I think Molik pays the mine guards to recruit for him.”

Molik sounds like just the type of friend Worfit would have. That’s not a bad setup, a crime ring that is completely untraceable to its leader.

I wonder if I can believe her. She’s admitted she was in the banquet hall when that guy killed himself. She could be making this up out of whole cloth, to save her own skin.

“Are you one of them? The Living Death? You look healthy enough to me.”

“Molik forced me to take two of his men into Thagorn,” she said ignoring my sarcasm. “I have an uncle, Volitar. He is a glassmaker who lives in Dyskornis.”

Markasset’s none-too-certain geographical knowledge placed Dyskornis somewhere east of Chizan.

“He is my only living relative,” she continued, and now her voice faltered. He raised me. My parents died when I was very young. He is the only family I have, and I—he is very important to me.”

She paused a moment, then went on in a business-like tone. “I was on my way to Thagorn for my regular visit. I had left Volitar in his workshop in Dyskornis. When I reached Chizan, Molik’s men were waiting for me. They took me to Molik, and he said that the Living Death had Volitar and were bringing him to Chizan. At a signal from Molik, they would kill him.”

“And you just accepted his word for that?” I asked.

“I am not that stupid,” she retorted scornfully. “I sent Lonna to see, and she reported Volitar traveling south toward Inid, in the company of two men she had never seen before. It was not an idle threat. Molik had Volitar, and he would have killed him.” Her voice sank to a whisper.

“I couldn’t let Volitar die because of me. I agreed to bring the assassins to Thagorn.”

“I never thought to hear that from you, Tarani,” said Thymas. He picked himself up from the ground. “Until just now, I hoped there would be some other explanation.”

I watched Tarani’s face as she looked at Thymas. The eerie and powerful woman I had seen on stage vanished completely under the boy’s punishing stare. She was a girl, sitting cross-legged on the ground, shamed and repentant and vulnerable….

She’s a trained actress! I reminded myself sharply. She may not be able to cast her illusions for me, but that doesn’t restrain other, more common forms of deception.

“You must know it all, then, Thymas,” she said softly. “I did not know that Rikardon would be in Thagorn. When I accepted Molik’s demand, I thought—” She swallowed hard. “I thought the assassins were meant for your father.”

“What’s that?” I broke in.

She stood up from the ground and faced me squarely, and once again she was Tarani the illusionist, with the great presence and aura of power. I was conscious of a sense of loss.

Don’t be a fool, I warned myself sternly. First, you don’t trust her. Second, Thymas is hurting right now but he still loves her. There’s enough friction between you and him already. Third, you have a lovely lady waiting for you in Raithskar.

So stick to business.

“Molik’s instructions,” Tarani was saving, “were to bring those two men into Thagorn and identify ‘the leader of the Sharith.’ I did think he meant Dharak—until Thymas told me about you.”

“When did you leave Chizan?” I asked.

“Krydu twice ago.”

Two weeks and two days ago. The same day I left Raithskar.

“I hadn’t even reached Thagorn by that time,” I told her.

“I knew that, from what Thymas said. But it seemed possible to me that Molik knew you would he there. I followed his instructions. I placed the two Living Death at the front of the caravan, and told them that …” Here she hesitated.

“That the man who got the gold bracelet was their target,” I finished for her. She nodded. I began to do a slow burn. “Weren’t you relieved to find out about me? It meant you didn’t have to make things difficult with Thymas by getting his father killed. I can see the ethics of it—better to kill the stranger than someone vow know.”

By the time I finished, I was shouting. She drew herself up and shouted hack at me. “You have no right to—”

“No right?” I interrupted. “You set me up for a pair of killers!”

“But I didn’t want you dead! I only wanted my uncle to live.”

“It was a fair trade, I suppose, his life for mine?”

“I didn’t know about you!” she cried. “I was willing to trade Dharak’s life for Volitar’s. That should tell you how deeply I care about my uncle!”

“It’s great that I could give you such a bargain. Kill me and get something for nothing, right?”

”Yes, that’s right!” she screamed. Her eyes were blazing. Thomas stepped between us, a look of alarm on his face. I turned away abruptly and left the camp.

I found Keeshah, and nudged him awake with my foot. He yawned and blinked up at me.

Some sentry you are!* I fumed at him. Tarani walked right past you into camp.

Woman? No harm, he said.

No harm? I asked, outraged. I woke up with a sword only inches from my nose!

Woman hurt you? he asked, with little concern, since the answer was obvious.

No, but that’s no thanks to you! I said angrily, and stomped back toward the camp. Keeshah’s thought followed me.

Grumpy.

11

Grumpy? I was in a towering fury, and I didn’t dare go back to camp in that mood. I turned aside, and pushed my way through the brush, getting some relief from the physical struggle.

Bad enough that she tried to knock me off, I thought angrily. And that she was able to befuddle Keeshah on the night of the show. Now she seems to have enough pull with him to override my suspicions of her.

He wasn’t the least bit surprised when I told him she was here. He let her come into the camp.

I stopped where I was, with one hand lifting a ground-crawling branch of a dakathrenil tree. Ordinarily, I would trust Keeshah’s instincts, but these were no ordinary circumstances. I felt jealous of Keeshah’s trust in Tarani, and of her power to command that trust. I felt betrayed.

It’s not Keeshah’s fault, I reminded myself.

I pulled up the branch, walked past it, let it fall.

Ricardo always had tried to see every side of an argument before choosing sides. I resisted the impulse as long as I could, enjoy my sulk, but all too soon I was thinking: She’s right about one thing. No matter that I was the target I’m not in any position to sit in judgment.

I made much the same deal when I killed Worfit’s man, getting out of Raithskar. His death, and Worfits persecution, is the price I paid for saving Thanasset. Knowing that would I change things now?

No.

So she fingered me for the killers, instead of Dharak? At the show, Dharak was completely under her spell. If they had attacked him, he’d be dead now. I don’t want that on my conscience.

So what’s really bothering me?

The way she did it, came the answer. She put that bracelet on my wrist and pressed it there, and wished me good fortune of it. And when I asked her for that drink, she said: It would be my pleasure. Would. Conditional. She meant: “If you’re still alive by then.-

I really hate it that the tram touch of her hands on my skin was really the touch of death. One thing is clear. If I wouldn’t let Dharak judge Thymas—or tried not to let him— because he was too personally invoked, I’d better let him judge Tarani because I’m the one who can’t think straight in this case.

Site disturbs me.

I was still far from calm, but I wandered back toward camp. Thomas had brought out our supplies, and he and Tarani were sitting far apart, eating breakfast in an awkward, angry silence. I sat down and ate a piece of fruit and a chunk of bread, washing it down with water from one of the waterskins.

The bird showed up, and settled down on Tarani’s ankle after she finished eating. Lonna was about the size of a large falcon, with the downward-hooked beak of a hawk. She made a soft, hollow sound of pleasure as Tarani stroked her back and the tips of her wings.

When I was nearly through with my meal, Tarani literally threw the bird away, casting it up into the air to let it spread its enormous wings and settle on a high branch. Tarani came to stand in front of me.

“I want to go back to Chizan, Captain. After I settle with Molik, and get Volitar out of danger, I will return to Thagorn to be judged for what I have done. You have my promise.”

It was on my tongue to tell her what I thought her promise was worth, but somehow I couldn’t say it.

“You failed your assignment. How can you save your uncle now?”

“It was one of the terms that Volitar would be released, no matter what the outcome.”

“What if Molik refuses?” I asked.

“He is a businessman; he keeps his bargains,” she said. Her fists clenched. “But if he refuses … I have learned, again, how to compel.”

“Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?”

One hand started beating her thigh; she didn’t seem to be aware of the action. “Volitar would not have wished it,” she said. “As long as I can remember, he has told me that every person deserves a measure of respect, and a fair chance to make his way in the world. He called my skills a special advantage, and said I had a special obligation to respect other people. It took me a long time to convince him that my entertainment illusions were harmless.

“No, he would not have wanted that kind of help, not even to save his life. He still won’t want it, and I don’t want to do it. That kind of control is a violation of those used, and a degradation of the user,” she declared. “I would not have done it in Thagorn, if it hadn’t been so important to misdirect vou. But if there is no other way to free Volitar….

“May I go to Chizan?”

I stood up. “Dharak was the one hurt; he will be the one to judge. We’ll go back to Thagorn.”

Thymas had listened to all this in silence, and now he spoke up from his side of the clearing. “Let her go to Chizan first,” he said. “I will go with her, to make sure she comes back to Thagorn when her business is finished.”

“No!” Tarani said. “Captain, I must go alone, or Volitar will die—because of me!”

“Not because of you,” I said. I began clearing away the fruit leavings. “From what you said, you are a victim, as well as your uncle. We II go to Thagorn. If Dharak says you can go to Chizan, sha’um can carry you partway there to make up for the time you will have lost.”

She didn’t say anything, and in a few seconds, I looked up from my work to see her studying me. Her face, her posture, the way her tongue worried her right tusk—everything about her bespoke indecision. I straightened up.

“Thomas, go away,” I said. “I’d like to speak to Tarani alone for a few minutes.” I glanced at him. It took no special talent to know what he was thinking. “It’s business, Thomas. I won’t touch her.” When he still didn’t move, I added: “You have my word. Now do it.”

“Tarani?” he said, still uncertain. I held back from reminding him that he had promised obedience, and waited for her answer.

“I will be safe, Thomas,” she said. “Lonna will come to you when we are through talking.”

Defeated and angry, he called to his sha’um, mounted him, and rode off.

When he was out of earshot, I said: “This isn’t your first dealing with Molik, is it?”

The corners of her mouth lifted in a small, bitter smile. “You read people well, Captain.”

I wish that were true, I thought. The few intuitions I hare about you conflict with the visible evidence. You tried to kill me. The last thing I should do is trust you. But I can’t help it. I believe every word you’ve said.

“Yes, I have known Molik for several years,” she admitted. “Because of me, Volitar is in danger, Dharak was injured, and you were nearly killed.”

She came closer to me. “I have said that when we met, I sensed that you were … different. There was also something almost familiar about you. I can’t quite describe it. But I had the feeling that you wouldn’t let death surprise you. I’m glad I was right.”

I felt that, too—strangeness mixed with a vague feeling of recognition. It’s back, now. I feel … drawn to her.

We were standing so close that I seemed to be leaning toward her. It would be a short reach to—

Watch it! Watch it! I nearly panicked. If she’s not dangerous enough in herself, think about Thymas. You promised him hands off.

As though the same reminder had crossed her mind, we each stepped back a pace, tripling the distance between us. “You were telling me about Molik?” I prompted.

“Yes. I—thank you for sending Thymas away.” She sighed. “I’ve never talked to anyone else about this. I don’t quite know where to start.”

I gestured for her to sit down. She perched on a ground-hugging branch, and I plopped down in the soft-bladed ground cover. I felt more secure with half the clearing between us.

“My uncle sent me to a Recorder’s school when I was a child,” Tarani said. “I was the youngest there; I remember one of the teachers saying that Volitar had been very alert, to recognize my skill so quickly. I missed my uncle while I was at school, but I enjoyed the training. I went home fairly often, so that I was reasonably content.

“Until I turned fifteen. Then, all of a sudden, I felt .. bored. I avoided classes, and went walking in the hills around the school. Nothing seemed challenging anymore; I began to experiment with my skill. I found I could call wild animals to me.

“One day, terrified and excited all at once, I tried to call one of my teachers. She came. I learned, later, that her face had gone blank in the middle of a class, and she had walked away without a word. I know that when I saw her, I—I loathed myself. And I despised the power I had discovered. It was a violation of all that Volitar had taught me.”

She shuddered with the memory.

“I left school that day. I wanted to go back to Volitar, to spend the rest of my life in his workshop, isolated from people. But I’d have had to give some explanation for returning in the middle of a school session. I couldn’t lie to Volitar, and I was too ashamed to tell the truth. So I just wandered around the hills for a few days, eating what I could find.

“One night, there were four boys traveling along together. They saw me near the road. They chased me. They caught me, and held me down, and—” She took a breath, coughed, and then continued. “That is, they tried to.

“I made them see a female vineh.”

Having had a brief encounter with that particular illusion, I could imagine the result. Total rout. But she had been only fifteen. It must have been rough for her.

“I wasn’t hurt,” she said, “but I was in shock for a while, I think. I came back to myself in a wild part of the hills. The first thing I saw was a bird, trapped in a thorn vine, and a dralda getting ready to attack it.”

Markasset’s memory wasn’t much help here. He had heard of a dralda, but had never seen one. It was a small carnivore, something like a dog, from what I could tell.

“I soothed the bird, and frightened the dralda, by sending images,” she said. “Of course, the bird was Lonna.”

I heard the bird’s odd call from somewhere above us, and I knew it had recognized its name.

“I lived in those hills for a while. Lonna shared her kills with me, when I needed meat; otherwise, there was wild fruit and rooted plants that I learned to eat. Lonna seemed to want to stay with me, and she was so smart, that the idea of performing with her came to me easily. I had kept track of the time, so that I know that I thought of it on the day after my sixteenth birthday.

“I told Lonna about my plan, and she agreed. She can understand a lot of words, and she can read the images I send. She has even learned to cast them, to a small extent. I’ve never seen another creature like her.”

“Except sha’um,” I said.

She leaned forward eagerly, diverted from her story for the moment. “Thymas has tried to tell me what its like,” she said. “But I’m sure I don’t really know how a Rider feels.”

“Let’s stick to the subject right now,” I said. “You had the idea for the show.”

She settled back again, disappointed. “The entertainment you saw is very close to the vision I had that day,” she said.

“The first version was much smaller, of course, and I didn’t have much experience on stage—but it was well-received in Chizan, and along the caravan trails.

“But before I could assemble even that tiny group, I needed money, she continued.I never considered asking Volitar for it. He makes a comfortable living, but he works alone, producing small things. I knew he wouldn’t have any money to lend me, even if he approved of the idea.

“So I went to the Refreshment House of Inid and from there to Chizan. There was only one source of money in Chizan.”

“You borrowed what you needed from Molik?” I guessed.

She looked at the scratched hands in her lap. “That’s what I told Thymas, when he, too, asked me how I came to be involved with Molik,” she said. “But the truth is I earned that money.”

I couldn’t believe what I thought she meant. Prostitution was hardly unknown in Gandalara. It was a percentage of Worfit’s business, and I supposed a crossroads like Chizan would have a booming red light district. But there wasn’t as much demand for it, generally, as there had been in Ricardo’s world.

This was another byproduct of the Gandalaran inner awareness. Women knew when they were vulnerable to pregnancy. At any other time, they made decisions based on their own desires. There seemed to be no venereal disease in this world, and without the threat of unwanted pregnancy, sexual activity was considered part of a normal life, even of very young people. A father would be more upset if his daughter liked an unapproved suitor than if she slept with him.

With that atmosphere of freedom prevalent, prostitutes served the strangers in town, or the men or women with tastes so bizarre they couldn’t find willing partners. Sometimes a prostitute was especially good at something …

Holy jumping Harthim!

“But—” I stammered, unable to hide the shock I felt. “But a man in Molik’s position could have all the women he wanted!”

Again, that hitter little smile. “With my skills, I could be all the women he ever wanted. I walked into his office and told him so, proved it, and agreed to stay with him for six moons, if he would finance the show at the end of that time.”

You were sixteen years old! I was thinking. And Markasset seems to think a Recorder’s school is a pretty sedate and sheltered place. Something doesn’t jibe here….

She shrugged her shoulders, her thoughts running parallel to mine. “It seemed strange to me that I knew just what to do. I was—I hadn’t been with a man before that time. I understood that it wasn’t the most honorable way to earn money, but it seemed the only way to raise the quantity I needed in a fairly short time.

“Those six moons weren’t unbearable. Molik is a presentable man, and he was always lavishly grateful … until the time was up. I discovered, much too late, that illusion in certain circumstances is dangerous. Molik had begun to be … needful.”

Psychological addiction, I thought. Not surprising.

Tarani had picked up a waterskin, and was tossing it lightly between her hands.

“I will say Molik this much good—he honored our agreement,” she said. “He let me go. But he has never stopped trying to find a way to possess me again.”

“You may be right, and he will release your uncle—this time,” I said. “But now that he’s found the right lever, what makes you think that Volitar will ever be safe from him?”

One hand grabbed the half-empty waterskin and squeezed hard. “What makes you think he will live long, after he releases my uncle?”

I sat quietly, considering what she had said. Finally I asked: “Why have you told me all this?”

“To convince you to let me go. Alone. I thought, if I told you everything ..”

“Is this everything?”

“Yes. I swear it. And now that I have told you so much, will you tell me one thing?”

“I don’t know. You can ask.”

“Molik gloated over the high fee he charged, to send his men into Thagorn. Why does someone hate you that much?”

“There’s a certain roguelord in Raithskar,” I said. “He and Molik would make a good pair. I killed one of his men—it was unavoidable. I have no idea how he knew that I would be in Thagorn. You left Chizan about the same time I left Raithskar. Even if Worfit’s spies had overheard when I was going, and even if a mania could make it to Chizan in one day—”

“Worfit?” she interrupted my speculation. “Who is Worfit?”

“The roguelord who wants to kill me,” I explained, with exaggerated patience.

“But … I told you that Molik boasted in front of me. He even let slip the name of the man who paid him, and he was angry with himself for doing it. I’m sure that Worfit wasn’t the name I heard.”

Great day in the morning! I felt thoroughly exasperated. I no more than get one thing figured out …

“All right,” I sighed. “Who did pay Molik to threaten Volitar to force Tarani to take hired killers into the house that Jack built?”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

”Who hired Molik?”

“I’ve never heard of the man. But his name was Gharlas.”

12

“THYMAS!”

I yelled it at the top of my voice, scaring Tarani into a quick retreat, and sending the bird fluttering up. The girl ordered: “Lonna, bring Thymas.” The white bird circled a few turns, then took off westward.

“If it took that loaded caravan of yours two seven-days to get to Thagorn, we should be able to ride to Chizan from here in about a third of that time …”

I was talking to myself, mostly; as I tied together the packs I couldn’t help thinking of as “saddlebags.” A Rider held their joining rope across his thighs when he traveled, so that the heavy rope would not chafe his sha’um’s back.

“My only chance to save Volitar is by facing Molik alone,” Tarani cried. “If you come with me, you’ll be killing Volitar!” I kept working, ignoring her.

She came over to me and grabbed my arm. “If you don’t care about Volitar, what about Thymas. What do you think it will do to him, to learn the truth about Molik?”

“Thymas claims to be an adult,” I snapped, “though he doesn’t show it much when he’s around you. If youre so worried about shocking him, maybe you’d better tell him yourself, before Molik rubs it in his face.

“I am going to Chizan,” I told her. “And you are going with me, because you are my key to Molik. If you want me to order Thymas to stay behind, I’ll do that. I’m sure he’ll be glad to ride hack to Thagorn and leave us alone together.”

I shrugged off her hands.

“Sure he will,” I said. “Thymas will be behind us all the way. He’ll disobey my orders, break his promise to his father, and effectively exile himself from Thagorn. He will think it’s worth it, too, if he can have you at that price.

“You can have a wonderful, wandering life together,” I continued savagely. “And that should suit you just fine. You’ll have a sha’um for the star of your show.”

I had finished tying my packs and Thymas’s too. Looking around, I found the backpack Tarani had used. I picked it up and tossed it to her. “Thymas will be here in a minute.” I said. “Get ready to go.”

She caught the bag awkwardly, and then threw it to the ground.

“No!” she yelled. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes were gleaming slits of black. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth, exposing the canine tusks.

“Put that travel bag on,” I said. I kept my voice soft, but I was in no mood to accept interference, and I tried to make that clear to her.

“There is nothing you can do to force me,” she said. “Without me, you’ll never get close to Molik. That’s not a threat—it’s the truth.”

Molik has her uncle, I thought. And Thymas has her affection, or trust, or maybe even love. But I don’t have any hold on her, is that it? I’ve already wasted the only thing that might have worked—the chance of telling Thymas about Molik.

There’s always physical force, I considered briefly. But look at the way she’s standing—like she expects something like that.

First, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of being predictable. Second, she’s got her strength back, and she’s mad as hell. Besides, it wouldn’t be easy.

Third, neither Ricardo nor Markasset was the sort of man to bully people. Rikardon, Captain of the Sharif, isn’t about to start.

“You want us tromping all over Chizan, looking for Molik?” I asked. “Maybe we won’t find him. But he’ll know we’re there. He’ll have plenty of time to give orders about Volitar.”

“You are despicable!” she hissed. “You’d throw away the life of a good man like Volitar—”

“I don’t even know Volitar,” I said. “My interest is in finding Gharlas.”

“And I don’t give a fleabite about this Gharlas!” she shouted.

“What about Gharlas?” Thymas cried, as he slid off his sha’um’s back.

I turned on him so fast that he flinched back.

“You have a positive talent for popping up at a critical moment,” I snarled. “Now stay out of this.”

To Tarani, I said: “Are you coming with us, or not?”

She thought for a moment, visibly calming down. “On condition that you’ll see Volitar safe, before you chase this Gharlas,” she said. “In return, I will do all I can to help you find him. Who is Gharlas, anyway?”

“A thief,” I said. “He has—” I caught a look of warning from Thymas. His message was clear: the Ra’ira was Sharith business. Tarani didn’t need the information, and I didn’t need to antagonize Thymas any further. I recovered as best I could. “—tried to kill either Dharak or me. I have a condition, too. A dead Molik can’t give us any answers about Gharlas.”

“Molik will tell you what you want to know, before he dies. But Volitar’s freedom is to be our first priority. Agreed?”

I sighed. “All right, Tarani, it’s a deal. Now get ready to go.”

She started to strap on her pack.

“Wait,” I interrupted her. “Can your bird take a written message to Dharak?”

She nodded, dropped the bag again, and started digging in it. She brought out some thin strips of leather and a small glass bottle of ink wrapped in padded fabric. The cork stopper of the bottle had the three-inch handle of a brush pushed through it, and she used the brush to take down the few words I had to say to Dharak.

“Gharlas hired assassins. Going to Chizan in pursuit.”

I signed the message, having less trouble than I expected with the many-lined Gandalaran characters. She tied the strip to Lonna’s leg, and then tossed her up into the air with one word of instruction. “Dharak.”

He’s going to read that and say, “I told you so.” Why am doing this? The trail will be two weeks old before we get there. It was the suddenness, I guess, the surprise. It’s almost as though I were meant to….

I’m sounding like Dharak. I know why I’m doing this. Because I believe Tarani. Gharlas gave me an excuse to change my mind, and try to help her.

I called Keeshah, and looked around the camp to see if anything had been left. That was when I noticed that Thymas had untied his pack. He was shaking out a rope net, and laying it down on the ground. As I watched, he pulled a tightly rolled pad from the open pack, and began to spread it across the net.

The first time I had seen one of those things, Zaddorn had been rolled up in it like a rag doll. The nets were designed to carry supplies when the Riders wanted to move fast. They opened flat to a size of about six feet by four, and the short ends were tied off onto a series of bronze rings. Such nets would be loaded, the ropes at each corner threaded through the rings, then the ropes looped around a Rider’s hips and fastened in a sliding-ring catch. Two Riders hauled one net, dividing the extra weight between their sha’um.

I remembered how Zaddorn had looked when he rolled out of that Sharith cargo net. His clothes had been worn through in places, and his skin abraded by the thick, rough rope.

“At least you’re padding it for her,” I said sarcastically. Tarani’s worried gaze left the net to rest on me, but Thymas missed the point.

“I knew we would have to carry her back to Thagorn,” he answered steadily, still unrolling the pad. “I planned to make her as comfortable as possible.”

“You don’t really propose to cart her all the way to Chizan in that thing, do you?” I asked him. “If she doesn’t suffocate in the padding, she’ll be too stiff to move!”

“She has to come with us,” he said, looking puzzled.

“Of course, she has to come with us,” I repeated impatiently, thinking: We aren’t communicating. Either he’s missing something, or I am. “But not like that. Let her ride.”

Very slowly, his lips formed a single, silent question. Ride?

“No female sha’um has ever come out of the Valley,” he said, looking around behind him, as though I had suddenly seen one appear.

“Ride with you,” I said. I looked at his sha’um, a little smaller and a darker gray than Keeshah, who had settled down at the edge of the clearing. “Ronar can carry you both.”

“Ronar will not carry a woman,” he said flatly.

Well, I wanted to get outside of Markasset’s experience, I thought. And here I am. Standing on the sensitive toes of an ancient Sharith custom. Maybe I should just let it go … no, I can’t see making Tarani flop around in that contraption, if there is any other way.

“Have you asked Ronar?” I said.

“Why don’t you ask Tarani?” he suggested. “She knows that it is unseemly for a woman to—”

He was looking at Tarani.

“We discussed it only once, Thymas,” she said hurriedly. “You were so positive that it couldn’t be done, that I haven’t mentioned it since. But a hundred times, I have wanted to ask—has any woman ever tried?”

“No Sharith woman would even think it!” he said.

“I may never be Sharith, if we don’t get to Chizan,” Tarani answered.

“The net will take you there,” he said coldly. He took out another pad, began unrolling it. “You will be comfortable.”

It’s possible that male sha’um really won’t accept female riders, I speculated. Then, too, it’s possible that, because the King’s Guard was all male originally, it has simply “always been” this way.

“Thymas.” I tried to imitate Dharak’s command tone.

The boy stopped his work and waited his cheeks red with anger.

“Try, Thymas,” I said. “It can cost us only a few minutes now,and it might save us from fooling with that net all the wa.”

Thymas threw down the pad, and walked over to Ronar. He mounted the sha’um and brought him over near Tarani. The cat settled down into a crouch, but his head was turned toward the girl, and his lips twitched back from his teeth.

“Sit behind me,” Thymas ordered gruffly. “Be very still.” His body and face were tense. He was fighting to control the sha’um.

Something tells me this may not have been a good idea…

Tarani approached the sha’um slowly. She put her hand on Thymass arm, and was preparing to swing her leg over the cat’s hips. I doubt she was even breathing. I wasn’t.

With a headache-quality roar, Ronar surged up, scraped Thymas off against a tree, and started to advance on Tarani. Thymas was up instantly, panic in his eyes. It would do no good to try to control the sha’um physically. He had to do it with his will, and he was failing.

Tarani backed away from the creeping, snarling sha’um. She looked less frightened than Thymas did, and I guessed she was trying to calm Ronar with her power.

It wasn’t working.

The cat charged.

It had happened so fast that I had not had time to absorb it. Now it was too late to do anything. I thought with horror, that it would all be over in a matter of seconds.

A tan shape hurtled into the clearing and knocked aside the charging sha’um. A tangle of fur and claws and teeth wrestled back and forth on the ground in front of Tarani, making ear-splitting and terrifying sounds.

Keeshah! Enough!* I ordered, when I came out of that shocked paralysis. To Thymas, I yelled: “Call Ronar, and control him.”

We both ran over to the free-for-all, but stayed clear of the snarling cats. We struggled to separate them through their habit of obedience to us. It was Keeshah who rolled to his feet and backed off, his ears tight to his skull the fur on his neck bristled into a mane, and his tail twice its normal size.

Ronar had gotten the worst of it. He was bleeding from deep scratches along his flank, and a hunk of flesh and fur had been scraped away behind one ear. But he wasn’t ready to quit, yet. He feinted at Keeshah, and got a claws-out slap across the nose for his pains. He fell back, then, and Thymas regained control. I wasn’t sure how long he could hold it.

“Tarani, take off that pack,” I said. She obeyed me without question.

You saved her, Keeshah, I said, as I transferred some of the food from my saddlebags into Tarani’s pack. Will you carry her?

He was panting heavily, watching the other sha’um. You want her. I will carry her.

Thanks.

I strapped on the pack and, pulling it high on my shoulders, tightened the fasteners.

“You’ll have to ride first position, Tarani,” I said. “You saw where Thymas was sitting. Sit there and lie forward, tucking up your knees and holding Keeshah’s shoulders.”

Still watching Ronar, Keeshah crouched down. Even after a sha’um had nearly killed her, Tarani went up to Keeshah with no trace of fear. She lay on his back with her eyes closed. Keeshah waited calmly while I checked her position on both sides.

I settled on Keeshah’s hindquarters and leaned forward across Tarani’s back. Keeshah stood up, lifting both of us easily, and I asked him to turn so that I could see Thymas.

The boy was spluttering with outrage.

“We need to keep the sha’um apart for a few hours,” I said, “so I’m going to ride ahead. How far is Relenor?” I asked Tarani. I could see one side of her face. Her eyes opened, but her expression reminded me of the way she had looked when she was dancing.

“A day and a half, walking,” she answered.

“We’ll meet you at the Refreshment House tonight, then,” I told Thymas. “Bring my packs, too, after you get Ronar calmed down. And repack that cargo net.

“We may need it for something else.”

13

“Two are here who request shelter and water,” I called, as Tarani and I stood in front of Relenor’s gateway, about an hour before nightfall. Relenor sat in the middle of a wide valley that would narrow and climb until it became the Zantil Pass. The Refreshment House looked just like the one at Yafnaar, with the entire compound surrounded by a man-high wall made of whitish blocks of rock salt.

The only opening in that wall was covered by a strip of yellow cloth, to remind travelers that staying here meant obeying the laws of the Fa’aldu. The desert-dwellers were called by that word as a single group; it meant “bringers of water.” The Refreshment Houses took individual names based on the first person to settle in each location.

“I am Lussim, Elder of Relenor,” said the man who appeared in the gateway, when the cloth harrier was dropped. He was wearing the traditional long white robe. He was younger than Balgokh, but he carried the same air of authority the Yafnaar elder possessed. “No quarrel shall enter here,” he said. “Put aside your weapons, and be welcome to any service we can provide.”

He stood aside, and Tarani moved through the gateway, removing her baldric and placing the sheathed sword in the Elder’s outstretched hands. He turned and handed it to one of the two boys who had lowered the harrier cloth while he was doing that, Tarani was speaking her own formula.

I have a weapon which cannot be surrendered,” she said. “I give you my oath that it shall not he used while Relenor shelters me.”

“Your oath is accepted,” Lussim replied, with a smile. “As always, it is a pleasure to see you, Tarani.”

She stopped aside, and I moved in, holding out Serkajon’s sword. “I am Rikardon, Respected Elder, and I must ask for food and water for my sha’um, as well as for myself.”

He had been in the act of handing the sword to the kid when he heard my name. He pulled it back, held it gently before him as he spoke to me.

“I know the value of this sword, Rikardon, and I will guard it, myself, while you shelter here. In the name of my cousin Balgokh, you may enter Relenor only as the guest of the Fa’aldu.”

I bowed slightly. “I am honored, Respected Elder. If you please, I will see to my sha’um before I enter.”

Lussim signaled to the boys, who went running off, staring at me over their shoulders. One bounced against a wall before he found a door and disappeared.

There has been time, since I left Yafnaar, for a letter to get here, I was thinking, even if it came with a caravan instead of a bird. I wonder what Balgokh said about me.

I untied Tarani’s pack, slipped it off, and handed it to her. She looked tired. She had been running from us, and following us, for two days without sleep. “I’ll wait for the supplies I said. Go ahead and get settled.”

Lussim led Tarani off toward the line of cubicles on one side of the crowded courtyard. There was an enormous stack of goods in one corner of the yard, and twenty or thirty vleks were stamping around nervously, their low-slung bellies nearly dusting the floor of the courtyard.

Stay downwind, Keeshah,* I said. Did Tarani ride well?

Yes, he answered. He sounded almost as tired as Tarani had looked.

There will be fresh meat soon, I told him. I hadn’t realized how much of this trip would be uphill. Will you be able to carry us both over the mountains?

Try. Let woman ride behind.

That made sense, putting the lighter person where the rider’s weight had to be less evenly distributed, right over Keeshah’s hips. I voted for it, too, because I had been very uncomfortable all day. Keeshah’s movement had been bad enough while I was sitting nearly upright. But the inevitable movement of Tarani’s body undermine had created a different kind of discomfort, and the continual need to think of other things.

Mostly, I had thought about Gharlas. Why had he hired those assassins? To kill Dharak? His power might have let him learn that Dharak didn’t fulfill his agreement to kill everyone on that caravan. Revenge is always a good motive.

But what if I were the target? How had he known that I would be in Thagorn? More use of that power? He had hired Molik sometime after I had decided to go to Thagorn. Could he have known about that decision?

But why kill me? Because I had been the one to track down Hural and prove to Zaddorn that Gharlas has the Ra’ira?

What if he tried to read my mind, and couldn’t do it? I wondered, as I waited for the boys to bring out meat for Keeshah. Another motive enters the picture. Fear of the unpredictable, maybe the uncontrollable. But then he couldn’t have known where I would be. Maybe he had Molik send assassins to Raithskar, too. Expensive insurance. Would peace of mind be worth it to him?

The boys came back, lugging a haunch of glith and a large waterskin. They wouldn’t let me take the things, but insisted on carrying them outside the gate for me. There were water troughs along the wall like the ones in the center of the yard—large semi-circular tiles, braced by a frame of salt blocks. The boy with the waterskin poured the smallest trough half full.

Keeshah came around a corner when I called him, and the boy next to me—I thought he was the younger of the two— staggered backward under his load of meat when he saw the cat. I grabbed hold of the glith to steady the boy.

Here’s dinner, Keeshah, I said. Try not to scare the kid to death

The boy hung on, wide-eyed and fascinated, as the big cat approached, and sank his teeth into the fresh meat. Tiny rivers of blood oozed out around Keeshah’s tusks as he lifted the weight from the boy’s hands. The blood dripped on the ground, as the sha’um carried his dinner to one of the empty troughs and set it down.

Thirsty, he told me. Drink first.

He came over to the water trough. I lifted a palm full of water for him to lap up. This was part of the tradition of Serkajon’s house that a sha’um would not feed or drink among men, unless his rider offered him his first taste.

The other boy was watching us. Looking at the boys closely, I was sure they were brothers.

What’s fair for one …

Will you drink from the boy’s hand, Keeshah?

Why? the thought was complaining; he wanted a drink, not a sip.

It would please me. And the boy would like it.

Yes.

“Your turn,” I said to the boy and waved him into my place by the trough. He turned pale and started to stammer, but I grabbed his shoulder and nudged him forward. “Go ahead. He won’t hurt you.”

He let the waterskin fall to the ground, and scooped up a double handful of water from the trough. He held it up to Keeshah’s muzzle. I saw him shiver when the raspy tongue flicked across his hands. Then he stepped away, and Keeshah lowered his head to the trough.

“Keeshah thanks you for your service,” I told the boys. “If you’ll leave the water with me, I’ll return what he doesn’t drink.”

I could see they wanted to stay, but they knew a dismissal when they heard one. They backed through the gate without a word, and then ran across the yard again, chattering excitedly.

As I turned to watch them, I saw Lussim waiting beside the gate.

“That was generous of you, Rikardon,” he said. “You have given them a precious memory. The Sharith patrols stop by here now and then, so that the boys have seen sha’um before. But not so closely. The Sharith are not … thoughtful, as you are.”

The Sharith encourage everybody to see their cats as dangerous creatures. To them, a sha’um is also a weapon. That’s true. But I like it better, my way.

“I should tell you, Respected Elder—”

“My name, please,” he requested.

“Since I was last at Yafnaar, Lussim, I have become part of the Sharith. Another Rider will be arriving soon.”

“Tarani has told me that Thymas would join you.”

“You know Thymas?”

“Slightly,” he said, noncommittally. “Um … it was my intention to ask you to dine with us this evening.”

You’re wondering what the situation is among the three of us, aren’t you? It’s plain that you like Tarani, but if Thymas has to be included, you’d rather not offer the invitation.

“I am not required by courtesy to dine with Tarani and Thymas,” I said, to get him off the hook. “In fact, I think they would prefer to take their meal alone. I would be very pleased to dine in the inner court.”

“Oh.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Well … Tarani … We’re very crowded, as you can see. Tarani assured me that one room for the three of you …”

“It will be sufficient,” I assured him. He gave me the dinner hour, identified our room, then went into the family buildings.

Keeshah had taken the glith haunch off somewhere. I poured out another portion of water and took the skin inside. Behind me, two different boys hauled up the cloth barrier.

The room we had been assigned was about fifteen feet square, with man-sized blocks along three walls. Plain pallets and folded blankets rested on each of the three beds. One corner was screened off by wood-framed tapestries to provide a private dressing area.

Tarani was sitting on one of the beds, letting her head rest against the wall, when I came in. She sat up straight.

“Thymas is probably no more than an hour behind us,” I said.

“I wanted the chance to talk to you, before he arrives.”

“Oh?” I said. I unrolled the pallet of the bed opposite hers, bunched up the blanket for a pillow, and stretched out. “What about?”

“About Thymas. The scene you described this morning Thymas travelling with me, Ronar performing—you said that would make me happy. Do you really believe that?”

“It shouldn’t matter to you what I believe.”

“Thymas is Sharith,” she said stiffly. “You are the leader of the Sharith. Your opinion matters to us, naturally.”

Thymas probably loves latrine detail a lot more than he cares about my opinion, I thought. You’re just worried that what I think will influence what he thinks. See previous thought, and quit worrying.

But, for the record…

“I was impatient and angry when I said that.” I told her. “I can’t have watched you mount Keeshah and think that you would ever demean a sha’um in that way.”

“Thank you.” she said. The long, fine fingers of her hands were interlacing and pulling apart, twisting together and separating. She noticed them, closed her hands into fists, and dropped them into her lap.

“I am to marry Thymas.” she announced suddenly. I felt as though I had swallowed an iceberg.

“Does Dharak know this?” I asked.

“Not yet. Thymas brought his betrothal gift to my dressing room, just before the performance.”

“Just before he found out you were involved in a plot to murder his father,” I corrected. She winced.

“I offered to return the sword to Thymas today, while you were gone—” she began heatedly.

“Thymas gave you a .sword for a betrothal gift?” I demanded.

“Yes, why not?” she flared back. “He has taught me sword work. I go through Chizan so often—he believes I need the protection.”

Like a porcupine needs a shotgun, I thought. Thymas knew she had that sword, and that she could use it. If she hadn’t been so tired this morning…

And he didn’t say a word about it. Some cooperation.

“I see you still have the sword,” I said drily. “After you told Thymas about borrowing money from Molik.” I knew it was cruel, but there was a queer pain blocking my kindness channel. “You needn’t worry about how he’ll feel after he learns the truth. There are a lot of things Thymas lacks, but a sense of honor isn’t one of them. He will keep his promise to marry you.”

Her eyes blazed. “Will that be his only reason for the marriage, because it was promised?”

“Of course not,” I answered. “By now, he probably needs you very much.”

She sat up as though I had slapped her.

“Do let me know if Thymas wants a dose tonight,” I went on, cringing away from my own nastiness. “I’ll sleep in the yard.”

She was on her feet, her fists clenched.

“If that is all you think Thymas wants of me, rest easy,” she said, her low voice trembling. “I have sworn not to use my power in Relenor. I, too, keep my promises.”

She left the room.

Should I go after her? She needs sleep more than I do. She knows what she needs, I told myself gruffly. And it’s a little late for gallantry now.

I turned to my left side, facing the wall, and tried to sleep. An hour later, I gave it up, and went into the yard to wash my face and hands before dinner. Water was too precious for bathing. At least, for the travelers. The Fa’aldu themselves lived a life of considerable comfort.

It had become dark, and lamps had been lit along the walls of the courtyard. Sitting on the ground under one of those lamps were Thymas and Tarani. I walked over there quietly Tarani was sound asleep, with her head on the boy’s shoulder. I had another unsettling glimpse of the girl within the powerful, hardened woman.

“Have you eaten?” I asked Thymas. He nodded, tightening his arm around Tarani’s shoulders. “Do you know where our room is?” Another nod. “I will be with the Fa’aldu until late.” I said. “Then I think it would be best for all of us if I slept outside. Do you need help to carry her in?”

“I need no help from you,” he said shortly, keeping his voice low. Unspoken, the word “ever” hung between us for a moment. “Tarani told me about Molik. But she refused to tell me why she wouldn’t go in the room while you were there. She didn’t say it, but I’m sure she knew I would kill you, if I knew the reason.”

The lamplight from above him gleamed off his forehead, but left his eyes invisible in the shadow of his brow ridge. I didn’t need to see his eyes. My skin was sizzling under his gaze.

“For Dharak’s sake,” he said softly, “doesnt ever let me find out what you said—or did—to Tarani tonight.”

14

Dinner was served for the twenty-odd Fa’aldu—and their only guest—after all of Relenor’s visitors had been given their meals. The inner court was lit by the glow of two cook fires, and by several of the glass-and-candle lamps. All the food was put on the table, and everyone seated in order of age except for me. Lussim and I sat side by side at one end of the wide long table.

After dinner, I found myself the center of attention, and I started talking. The Fa’aldu never asked questions, but they were rapt listeners. I knew Balgokh had already told them about me, but I repeated the story I had given at Yafnaar, omitting any mention of Ricardo.

I continued the story from there, describing Thagorn and the lifestyle of the Sharith. The two boys who had served Keeshah were seated at the far end of the table. When I spoke of the ceremony that had made me Captain, I saw them straining forward to hear better.

Then I started lying.

“Tarani happened to mention to Thymas that she saw Gharlas in Chizan,” I said. “When she found out we were looking for him, she offered to come with us. She has friends in Chizan who may help us trace him.”

“Gharlas,” Lussim said, shaking his head. “You know, of course, that our oath of neutrality forbids our helping you to find Gharlas.”

I nodded. Balgokh, too, had told me this.

“The Refreshment Houses owe their existence to the Kings,” Lussim went on. “But Gharlas is a fool to think he can re-unite Gandalara. The desert has claimed too much land. The cities have moved to the Wall to get enough water to survive. If he offered to share Eddarta’s water, he might have a chance. But from all I know of him, he will wish to conquer, not befriend, his neighbors.”

“That’s my guess, too,” I said. “If I’m not being rude, may I ask about the history of the Refreshment Houses? You said they were established during the Kingdom …”

“During the time of Harralen, the third King. Until then, merchants had carried water to posts along the caravan routes, and sold it for extortionate prices. Travelers appealed to Harralen, and he sent an unarmed envoy into the desert beyond Chizan, to the place of the Fa’aldu. It was a daring risk for the man who came to us, but his courage impressed us. We were … barbarians.”

Lussim picked up a fragment of tile, broken away from the tabletop, and rolled the angular chunk between his fingers.

“We could bring the water, even then,” he said, watching the movement of his hand. “But we didn’t have much else. We guarded our water ferociously, and terrorized passing caravans, stealing whatever was left unguarded, sometimes attacking them.”

No wonder you hesitated to ask Thymas to your table, I thought. The tribute demanded by the Sharith reminds you of your own beginnings.

“The envoy—a man named Stester—brought us Harralen’s proposition. If we would settle along the caravan trails, and agree to trade water for goods at a reasonable rate, he would make such trade our exclusive monopoly. We would be asked to trade only what we did not need for ourselves, and never to turn away anyone truly in need.

“It was a difficult decision,” Lussim continued. “The Fa’aldu had lived in that place for many generations. But in all that time we had been desperately poor, and never at peace. be accepted the King’s offer, and his Guard drove off all the opportunists along the caravan trails—except in Chizan. Chizan was a city, not a collection of vleks with waterskins. Harralen was forced to be content with requiring reasonable prices for Chizan s water, a control long since forgotten.

“Relenor was the second Refreshment House to be established,” he finished, with obvious pride.

“And the oldest one? Is it Yafnaar?” I asked.

“Oh, no, there was no need for Yafnaar until later,” he answered, “when the Great Pleth had become much smaller. No, the first Refreshment House was at Inid on the other side of the Korchi Mountains. Here, let me show you.”

He went through a door and came out again with a folded parchment. He brought a lamp close, and opened out a map.

It was about the same size as the one Thanasset had given me to help me find Thagorn. Like that one this map had a solid black line to represent the Great Wall. It trailed across one long edge of the rectangle. The relative location of Thagorn, and a fragment of the Morkadahl Mountains, told me that this map would not fit edge-to-edge with the first one, and that the Great Wall made a turn southward, past the Morkadahls.

The central feature of this map section was the Korchi mountain range. With the Great Wall “north”—that is placing the rectangle so that the side with the Great Wall shown on it was at the top—the Korchis filled most of the right-hand side of the map. They were roughly triangular, with one point meeting the Wall. There was a slim corridor shown near the bottom of the map, forming the base of the triangle. The mountains below that corridor didn’t show a name; they might have been a continuation of the Korchi.

West of that corridor was Relenor. East of it was Inid. Smack in the middle of it where it widened considerably, was Chizan. In that first glance, I noticed two other features. Dyskornis was north of Inid, halfway up the eastern edge of the Korchi triangle. And north of Relenor, on the western side of the mountain range, was an area marked “Well of Darkness.”

What the …?

But Lussim was talking about the trail to Chizan, and I brought my attention back to him quickly. The Zantil Pass was a stretch about forty miles long (figured roughly from Lussim’s description and the estimated passage time shown on the map). It lay fifty miles from Relenor, and about a hundred from Chizan. There was another pass between Chizan and Inid, called the Zantro, and the distances were about the same in reverse.

“You’ll find that the Zantro is the easier passage,” Lussim said, “because, though it is a little higher, it is more level. The Zantil has high points here and here.” He pointed to the beginning and end of the pass. “There is so much loose rock and blowing dust, that even the downslope is slow travel. Climbing back up, with the air so thin, is the hardest part of the journey.”

It sounds as though the Zantil and Zantro are as high as the Khumbar Pass, which twelve-year-old Markasset had to cross on his way to the Valley of the Sha’um. Thanasset hadn’t told the boy what to expect, but I suppose the Pass was an endurance test. Markasset toughed it through, and he learned. When he took Keeshah back across that, he went slow and easy, walking the sha’um across the worst part.

The Zantil has to be passable for sha’um, or Zanek could never have sent the Guard across to convince everybody on the other side to join the Kingdom. But it’s a long trip, and Keeshah will be carrying two of us through most of it.

“Is there game along the way?” Lussim looked blank. “Wild glith, birds, meat for the sha’um?”

“Oh! I’m afraid I don’t know that, Rikardon. I’ve never been through there myself, and the people who have given me this information didn’t have that need.” He stared thoughtfully at the map. “I have never heard anything to make me think it likely, though. From all accounts, there isn’t much more than barren rock, most of the way. It would please us to send some live glith with you for your sha’um, if you wish it.”

“That’s a generous offer, Lussim, and I thank you for it,” I answered slowly, thinking it over. “But just getting across the pass will be trouble enough, without trying to lead a herd of glith, half-crazed with fear of the sha’um.”

I studied the map. The pass itself will be the hardest part. We’ll walk, of course. It will take us a day and a half to cross it, maybe longer. But we ought to make it to the pass in only a day, even cutting our speed in half to allow for Keeshahs extra load. Past the high crossing, it’s all downhill. If we take enough meat with us to let the cats feed well, just before we enter the pass…

“If I may trouble you for one fresh-killed glith,” I said. “I think that will get us through. Well need supplies for ourselves, as well—”

We discussed more details, and Lussim agreed to have everything ready for dawn the next day. He walked with me into the courtyard, expressing his thanks for my company through the evening. I stood thoughtfully for a minute wondering if I’d be able to sleep outdoors. The ground would be comfortable enough, but the milling vleks were too stupid not to step on me.

Lussim cleared his his throat. “It is late, Rikardon, and you might disturb your friends by retiring now. You are welcome to sleep in one of our family guest rooms.”

“That would be very kind,” I accepted his tactful offer. Then, because I felt he deserved some sort of explanation, I said awkwardly: “It has been only two days since Thymas and Tarani were betrothed.”

Lussim raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He conducted me to the guest room in the family quarters, wished me a pleasant sleep, and then left me.

I didn’t rest well. Tarani haunted my dreams. I saw her stalk out of our room, hurt and angry, as she had been that night. I watched her sleeping peacefully against Thymas’s shoulder, her breath coming slowly, and her face incredibly young.

I saw Tarani dance again, only this time the hanging darkness of her illusion didn’t dissipate it flowed behind her, and formed a human shape. A shadow woman danced on the heels of the real one.

I should have been pleased; I knew that no one else could see the shadow, or witness the dramatic pas de deux. But I was frightened, and all the more so because the shadow did nothing frightening. It just followed Tarani, clinging to her, and imitating her movements.

The dance reached the point at which the assassins had interrupted it in Thagorn, and I was almost relieved to see the knife descending. It seemed to explain that strange dread I had been feeling.

Just at that moment, the shadow-shape changed and solidified. It was a real person, a man. He continued to dance with Tarani; it should have been ludicrous, but it wasn’t. He danced with a sinuous, sinister grace, and the same rapt expression Tarani wore, except that his eyes glittered with reflections of the trailing flame.

He had more purpose, and a higher pleasure, than the dance itself. I knew it. I was the only one who knew it. Tarani was in terrible danger.

I had a choice. I could save myself from the knife, or could take the time to warn her, and let myself die. In the dream, the split second of the knife’s descent slowed to give me time to think about it. I decided.

Just as the knife pierced my heart with an awful pain, I shouted: “Tarani, look out! Gharlas is behind you!”

I jumped awake, staring wildly into the darkness. I felt an anxious, puzzled query from Keeshah, and, automatically, I sent him a reassuring response. After a moment’s disorientation, I recognized where I was, and that the terror I had just experienced had come from my own subconscious. It was nearly dawn, so I got up and began to dress. I shivered, as though I could shake off the lingering strangeness with physical action.

When I met Tarani and Thymas at the gateway, I saw that the bird had caught up with us again. Lonna stood on Tarani’s shoulder, watching curiously as Thymas packed away the bread, salted meat, and fresh fruit that Lussim had ordered for us. A dead glith, blood still seeping from its cut throat, lay beside the gate.

“Did Lonna bring a message from Dharak?” I asked. Tarani shook her head.

Thymas finished tying up my saddlebags, and hefted both his and mine over one shoulder. Tarani’s pack, he handed to me. I took it, but gave it to Tarani.

“Keeshah has asked if you will ride second,” I said. “You weigh less than I do.”

She took the pack without comment, and began to fasten it on. The bird fluttered to the top of the wall and waited there.

Lussim came out to say goodbye. I was glad that he didnt congratulate Tarani and Thymas. I had wondered—too late, of course—whether I had any right to spread the news.

I shouldered the glith, which weighed about seventy pounds, and we carried our returned weapons out beyond the walls of Relenor. The sha’um came at our call, one around each corner of the enclosure.

The few scratches Keeshah had endured during the brief fight the day before were clean and almost hidden by his fur. Ronar’s wounds shone black against his gray fur. His muzzle twitched into a snarl. He dropped into a fighting crouch, and Keeshah advanced on him slowly, tail lashing and ears laid back.

No more fighting!* I commanded.

Tell the other one, Keeshah snapped back at me. But he stopped.

“Thymas—”

“I’m trying, fleabite it!” His jaw bulged as he clenched his teeth with the effort.

Ronar began to calm down, glancing from Thymas to Keeshah. At last, he relaxed a little, and let Thymas approach. The boy smoothed the standing fur on the cat’s neck. When the sha’um’s ears came forward. I started to breathe again.

“Let’s get going.” I said,

It’s going to be a long trip to Chizan

15

Ronar snarled at Keeshah. Thymas snarled at me and Tarani moved and spoke, when necessary, as though she were animated stone. Most of her words were for Thymas but she delivered them in the same disinterested monotone that she used the few times she addressed me. The only time I saw a flicker of life in her eyes was in the moment before she mounted Keeshah each time.

Tarani tried twice more to mount Ronar. I couldn’t decide— was she showing courage, or merely dislike for her dependence on me? Thymass sha’um was less violent in these refusals, but he made it clear that he would not accept her. So she rode with me in second place, and didn’t complain of being tired, even when she could hardly stand up at the end of a ride.

Thymas suffered more, physically, than either Tarani or me. The Zantil Pass was easier than I had expected; I decided it had to be a lot lower than the Khumbar. Tarani had made the crossing many times. But Thymas had been able to reach the Valley of the Sha’um merely by following the eastern edge of the Morkadahls northward from Thagorn; he hadn’t experienced the Khumbar. Apparently, the information network developed by the Sharith had made it unnecessary for Riders to cross the Chizan Passage for many generations. Tarani must have warned Thymas, but hearing about shortness of breath, and living with it, are two very different phenomena.

Emotionally, Thymas was a wreck. He knew Tarani was riding with me purely in the interest of faster travel, but the sight of her clinging to me upset him so badly he insisted on riding ahead of us. He was probably less jealous than angry with himself and Ronar for forcing the situation.

The timing of the trip worked out fairly close to my estimate. We camped just below the pass on the first night. The sha’um grumbled and growled, next morning, as they shared the glith that Thymas and Ronar had carried up. At dawn, we started the long walk across the Zantil Pass. We had run across two caravans the day before, one going toward Chizan and the other just out of the pass, headed for Relenor. But there was no traffic in the pass itself.

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 gruelling 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 greys.

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 gulley 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 gulley. 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.”

Nobody tried to talk me out of it.

“Leave Chizan well before sunset,” Tarani advised. “It is a vicious place, after dark. Lonna will watch for you, and guide you, if necessary.”

“Thanks. See you in a couple of hours.”

I set off at a trot, really glad of the way the exercise eased the pain in my legs.

16

Chizan was an education in Gandalaran profanity. Chizan might have inspired it. Most of the city was “fleabitten” in the literal sense.

The city had no wall and no specific marketplace, vleks stayed in pens near the inns where their handlers were staying. The outer streets of Chizan were littered with trickles and heaps of yellow crystal, left over from passing vleks. It was impossible to avoid stepping on them, and the crushed waste gave off a pungent odor that flavored the air.

You could tell the natives by the way they wore their headscarves—wrapped securely around their faces—and by their total silence out-of-doors.

I stopped one of these, took my scarf away from my face long enough to croak: “Water?” The man pointed to a tall building, set away from the rest of the town. I slapped his shoulder in thanks, and went over there.

The building itself was a single story; its entire upper floor was a water tank. The first floor had doorless openings at the short ends of the rectangle, and the inside looked like a tavern, with bars along both long walls. Along those same walls, on the outside of the building, were watering stalls for vleks.

Caravan masters came inside; paid for the water they needed, and were directed to take their vleks through stalls identified by numbers. The “bartender” then opened cocks, from inside the building, that filled each separate drinking bowl outside’ with the specified amount of water.

Men were served across the bars, at an exorbitant price per, cup of water. But I didn’t begrudge the four Zaks six that I dug out of my pouch. After five days of allowing myself only a. sip of water at a time, that drink of tepid liquid, served in a rough clay bowl, tasted delicious.

I filled two of my waterskins, and shoved my way out through the thirsty crowd to look for a place to stay. I really wanted a good night’s sleep in a quiet, comfortable room, before we tried to tackle Molik.

No such luck.

I was carrying over four hundred zaks—what remained of the twelve hundred zaks Markasset had stolen from Thanasset, the morning he had left Raithskar with the illfated caravan. Thanasset had insisted I keep everything left over after I paid Worfit.

I kept one hand on my money pouch as I walked through Chizan. It was immediately clear that we would need that money.

The Green Sha’um Inn in Omergol had charged me ten Zaks for a night’s rest in a private room. In Chizan, the medium fee was twenty Zaks per person, for part of a room’s floor that was crammed full with pallets laid head to foot. I got one entire room, after some haggling, for a hundred Zaks. I watched the clerk’s head fur jump with tiny brown bodies, and I resolved to sleep on the bare floor.

Next, I set out to find some food for the sha’um, and to do some exploring. Tarani had told me that Chizan consisted of three semi-circular layers. I was in the first of these, a district devoted to the maintenance and entertainment of the vlek handlers who traveled here from all points, and stayed until their money ran out.

I wandered through the second district, where there were residences and support businesses for the people who worked in Chizan and better class inns (at much higher prices) for the caravan masters and more discriminating travelers.

Then, because I was running close to the deadline I had set myself for heading back to camp, I allowed myself only a quick stroll through the third, elite district: the rogueworld.

Here were restaurants, gaming houses, rented sex partners, and bathtubs. I walked through to the center of the city, where a large and luxurious gaming house overshadowed all other structures. In that building, in a well-guarded apartment, lived Molik.

Tarani said that Molik owns Chizan, down to the last stone of the last building. He can hire people to work here, give them a .small percentage of the take, and let them set prices so high that they can make themselves a fortune. Then he probably acquires their fortunes through his gaming houses. Slick.

Tomorrow, Molik, I promised silently, we’ll have a long talk about hired killers and kidnapping. I’m looking forward to meeting you.

I went back to the second district, and visited several meat shops, busing small to medium portions of glith in each one. It might ‘have been an unnecessary precaution, but I was determined that Molik shouldn’t have any idea that Tarani was hack in Chizan until she told him herself.

A caravan master might buy bulk lots of fresh meat for his crew, but all the masters were known in these shops. For a single man to make such a purchase or to March out of the city with a live glith on a leash, would be unusual. I was sure that anything unusual would be reported to Molik. If he couldn’t make the connection between a lot of meat and a sha’um, sha’um and Sharith, Sharith and Tarani—then we were wasting our time worrying about the girl’s uncle.

I made several trips to our room, leaving the small purchases in a corner cleared of the flea-infested pallets. When I had the equivalent of a glith—at four times its cost in Raithskar—I packed all the bundles in oiled canvas and stuffed them into Tarani’s knapsack. Then I bought a couple of meat pies to eat on the way, and set out, glad indeed to leave Chizan behind me for a while.

I reached camp shortly after dark, my shoulders badly cramped from the weight of the meat. Lonna had appeared when I was ten minutes or so away from the clearing. I got the impression that the bird had been sent, not to guide me but to warn Thomas and Tarani of my approach. They looked stubborn and unhappy.

Terrific. They finally start talking to each other and the first thing they do is argue. Now who does that remind me of?

“See what you can do to make our bags look like Tarani’s travel bag,” I said to Thymas, as I unwrapped a chunk of meat and tossed it toward the cats. Keeshah reached it first and crouched over it, snarling. Ronar backed off, his ears flat to his head. I tossed another chunk to him, and then unpacked the rest of it.

“Tarani, it may be best if you ask Lonna to stay with the shaum. If somebody spots her, Molik will know for sure you’re back.”

“Tarani will be staying, also,” said Thymas.

I sighed. “Tarani?”

She stood up. “Lonna has her instructions, Captain. I am ready to go.”

“Tarani is to be my wife, Captain,” Thymas said, stressing the title just a little. “This is my decision to make. I demand that you order her to obey me.”

I almost laughed out loud at the image of me ordering Tarani to do anything. But it wasn’t laughable.

He was serious.

She was determined.

I was so tired of it all.

“I can’t command Tarani’s actions,” I said, “and neither can you, until you’re actually married.” If then, I added silently. “Besides, we need her. I just got a look at the outside of the building where Molik is. I saw a lot of people going in. Nobody had to turn in their weapons. If Molik feels that secure, we’ll have to fight an army to get to him without Tarani’s help.”

“But—”

“If you don’t want to see her with Molik, and then stay here,” I snapped. “And if you come with us, you’d better keep quiet and follow orders—especially those regarding Molik.”

“Tarani is—”

“Do you understand the terms, Thymas?”

“Yes, Captain.”

I grabbed my saddlebags out of his hands. The ropes had been re-tied to serve as a shoulder harness, and I arranged them as I walked away.

In a few minutes, I looked back to see Tarani following me and, some five paces behind her, Thymas.

He might not want to see Molik and Tarani together. I thought. But neither does he want them to be together while he’s not there.

I’ve seen some jealousy in my time, but Thymas takes the prize. I can’t see what’s bothering him, since it’s more than clear that Tarani despises Molik, and Thymas has everything she gave to Molik, plus a promise of marriage…

Oho.

Everything?

She told Thymas she had borrowed her grubstake from Molik. She didn’t tell him the truth until she was forced to. And whenever I’ve mentioned the “pleasure illusions,” Tarani has gone off like a firebomb. Embarrassment over the business arrangement may have been only part of it. Compulsion is degrading, she said, What about this other talent? The idea of using her power like that again probably disgusts her.

So of course she recoiled when I made that crack about Thymas being addicted to her illusions. And when I implied that the only thing about her worth wanting was that pleasure she hated to give…

I sucked in my breath.

How I hurt her. My God, how I hurt her.

She was sixteen when she went to Molik, and she admitted that she was a virgin then. The onset of sexuality coupled with unusual control over how that sexuality is used—that makes the ordinary pain and problems of growing up look like a trip to Disneyland.

She would have been eighteen when she went to Thagorn for the first time. There probably hadn’t been any men since Molik; anybody who knew Molik still wanted her wouldn’t have dared to cross him. She probably identified sex with misuse of power—until she met a young man who had never heard of Molik, and was in the mood to celebrate a big day in his life.

I turned my thoughts away from what it must have been like for her, having her physical needs awakened early, and then repressed for so long.

Now I understand why Tarani consented to marry Thymas. She’s grateful to him, maybe she really does lore him. But beyond that, Thagorn must seem like a sanctuary to her, a place where Molik and his memories can never reach.

Or couldn’t reach, until the roguelord kidnapped Volitar. Her uncle must really mean a lot to her, if she agreed to contaminate the one place she felt free of her past.

Poor kid. Her whole world has crashed around her. These last three weeks. Her uncle is in danger, the show she went through hell to get is probably ruined, and Thymas knows about a time she wants to forget … .

Hoohoohoohoohoo.

I recalled the way Thymas and Tarani had acted, after spending the night together at Relenor. Tarani’s stiffness, had attributed to my own clumsiness—I winced again as I thought of what my words had done to her. But Thymas, too, had been gloomy and snappish and generally peeved about something

Could Thymas have resented it, that she had never to him about that particular talent and given him a chance to choose for himself whether he wanted it? Could that hot-headed, jealous s.o.b. have been stupid enough to ask Tarani for a sample?

Man, we both clobbered her that night.

Of course, all this might be a total crock, resulting from an overactive imagination. But I doubt it. Ricardo Carillo used to be a shrewd judge of character. Besides, it all fits together too well. I’d bet my shirt that I’m right.

Which means that I’ll have to watch Tarani and Thymas both, every minute we’re with Molik—or he’ll be dead before he can tell us anything about Gharlas.

Molik may be something unmentionable, but it was Gharlas who pulled the strings. Now, I may not be as convinced as Dharak that Gharlas is a world danger, but I’m sure as hell fed up with the way he messes into other people’s lives. Thanasset could have been killed, Dharak, too. Not to mention yours truly. And now Tarani and Thymas…

Scratch that. I don’t approve of the method, but I think that those two kids will be better off, in the long run, for knowing these things about one another. So you’re off the hook for that one, Gharlas.

But only for that one.

17

Tarani was sure that Molik would be holding Volitar in one of the rich homes in the third district. Several of these were reserved for use by the Living Death, until their time ran out one way or another. I thought it might be possible for Tarani to reach into Molik’s mind from a distance, and find out where Volitar was. But I didn’t ask her to do that.

First, I guessed she would be so anxious about Volitar that she wouldn’t think to get the information I wanted about Gharlas.

Second, Molik was no dummy. If he thought Tarani might be able to do that, he’d have arranged things so that he didn’t know where her uncle was—only who to contact to find him.

Third, Molik was a living memory of something Tarani wanted to forget. I didn’t know whether she could project a compulsion strong enough to kill him, but I didn’t want to take the chance of tempting her.

So it was necessary for us to get close to Molik physically. It had taken a lot of heated discussion, the night before, to agree on a plan which would get all of us close to him with as little risk as possible.

Molik, like Worfit, kept dusk-to-dawn office hours. The last hour before sunrise was the slowest time for the never-closed rogueworld, and Tarani, Thymas, and I had chosen that time to come to Molik’s gaming house, the Lonely Caravan. I was standing beside a mondea table in the second-floor salon, not ten feet from Molik’s office door. Two uglies were guarding it. I was losing what remained of my bankroll and trying to look cheerful about it.

Thymas came running up the stairs. He paused at the wide doorway, looked over the people in the room then came straight for me. He panted as he ran up, making a good show of excitement.

“Lakad!” he said. “Remember that show we saw in Dyskornis—the girl who lit her hands on fire while she danced? Well—” he paused and took a breath. Out of corner of my eye, I could see the two guards listening, almost leaning toward us. “Well, I could swear I just saw her downstairs. I went over to talk to her, but she saw me coming and moved off into the crowd. You remember her, Lakad. What was her name?”

I pretended to search my memory. “Tarra? Torelli?”

“Tarani!” Thymas crowed, the loudness of his voice quite in keeping with the act he was putting on.

One of the guards knocked on the door.

“Yes, that’s it,” I agreed. “Great show. Wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Is she performing in Chizan?”

“Let’s go ask her,” Thymas urged. “I’m sure she’s still down there somewhere, wearing a desert rig with yellow tunic and trousers. With two of us, we ought to find her.”

The door had opened a crack. One man was talking into it; the other was saying something now and then out of the corner of his mouth. He was watching us closely.

“Later, maybe,” I said. “Right now, I’m more interested in getting my money back from this table.”

“Losing, are you? How much have you dropped so far?” The guard lost interest.

“A hundred zaks,” I told Thymas, keeping up the act. “Here, why don’t you try your luck for a while? Mind if I just watch for a round or two?” I asked the table attendant, who indicated it would be all right. Thymas took the dice, and I tried to watch the door and the table at the same time.

When a man came out of the office and headed for the stairs with one of the guards in tow, I began to breathe again. We had counted on Molik wanting to see for himself.

As the round ended, Thymas gave up his bet with a shrug.

“That’s all I can afford to lose,” I told the attendant. “See you next trip.”

“Health and wisdom to you, sir,” the man said.

Thymas and I strolled slowly toward the stairway, idly watching the tables, waiting…

Someone in the far corner said: “Why, these mondeana are made of gold!”

“Let me see those,” said a voice which had to be an attendant’s.

“Fleabite you,” came the response. “I’m taking these with me for a souvenir. Some repayment for all I’ve lost in this filthy place.”

“Those are the property of …”

“Let him have em. He’s right about this place. Hey are they really gold?”

“Yeah, they just changed ..”

“Maybe I’ll take some, too ..”

It was in character for us to stop to watch the incipient riot. When the door guard, along with the other heavies stationed around the wall of the salon headed toward the trouble. Thymas and I made a dash—to the door and through it.

Thymas flattened himself to the wall on the hinge side of the door. I knelt on the far side of the big desk. Behind me was the door into Molik’s living suite.

We waited for five long, tense minutes before the outer door opened. Tarani lurched through it as though she had been pushed from behind. Molik sauntered in. holding Tarani’s sword and baldric. He swung the door shut behind him and turned to fasten the bar-and-pin lock.

He froze when he saw Thymas. By then I was behind him. I got one hand over his mouth and the other arm locked around his throat, before he could recover.

“I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to talk to us quietly and tell us what we want to know. If you call for help, you’ll be dead before it gets here. Understood?”

If he hadn’t sensed that I could kill him with my hare hands—Ricardo’s combat training, as well as Markasset’s wrestling skill—he would have been convinced by the point of Thomas’s sword which was pricking his chest. My hand felt the movement as he tried to nod agreement.

I released him slowly, staying ready to grab again if he started to yell. The first thing he said was: “Somebody will die for letting this happen.”

He turned around, and I stepped back trying to get a good look at him. He was about my size but slimmer. He had the look of a man who had once been tough, but lately had gone soft—at least, physically. His head fur was a pale brown. His eyes were set deeply, wide apart under jutting supraorbital ridges and his mouth was a thin line, never quite still.

Tarani had called him “presentable.” and I approved her choice of words. A smile, a spark of laughter in the eyes—these might have made him handsome. But they weren’t there.

Molik looked me over with the same close attention a bird pays a worm.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want to know?”

“We’re Tarani’s friends,” I answered sharply. “We want the location of Volitar, plus instructions from you to free him—with no tricks. And we want to know where Gharlas is.”

Molik’s gaze shifted to Tarani, who was standing behind me and to my right, leaning against the desk. When he looked at her, there was something in his eyes. It wasn’t laughter.

“Volitar is a matter to be settled between the two of us, my love,” he said, caressing her with his voice.

“Thymas,” I cautioned the boy, as I saw his face darken.

“Why have you brought outsiders into our small quarrel?” Molik continued. He had a soft, smooth voice.

“Be glad they are here, Molik,” Tarani said. “If I had come alone, I’d have killed you by now, and taken my chances of finding Volitar alive.”

“Oh, why so violent, darling?” he asked. His lip corners twitched upward in a mockery of a smile. “We have been … many beautiful things to one another. Why spoil that memory now?”

Thymas made a choked sound. Molik heard it, and stepped aside so that he could see Thymas as well as me.

“I see this one has enjoyed you,” he sneered. “Well, I don’t mind having shared you for a while, my dear, now that you’ve come back … to … to …”

Molik’s voice shrank to a whisper, and then faded altogether. His eyes strained open and his mouth began to work frantically. He wasn’t trying to talk—he was trying to breathe. He fell to his knees.

“Tarani!” I cried, whirling. She stood in a fighting crouch, her fists and jaw clenched. She was focused entirely upon Molik, who was crawling toward her, lifting a hand in supplication. She backed away, hatred almost tangible in the air around her.

“Stop it, Tarani!” I ordered.

“Let her do it,” cried Thymas. “Let her kill the fleason.”

“He hasn’t told us anything, yet!” I said.

Tarani had backed up against the connecting door to Molik’s apartment and Molik was clawing weakly at her legs. His face had a bluish cast he couldn’t last much longer.

I dragged him out of the way, stood in front of Tarani and slapped her hard across the face. Her head snapped aside and I heard a huge, raspy gulping sound from Molik as her concentration broke. Tarani’s face came front again and that look of hatred focused on me. I began to feel a constriction in my throat. I grabbed the girl’s shoulders and shook her and the pressure at my throat relaxed.

Tarani stared at me, and slowly sanity returned to her dark eyes. She put her hands over her face, sat down in one of the big armchairs, and curled up into a small, shaking ball.

Molik was still on the floor, but he was beginning to breathe almost normally again. I grabbed his fancy tunic near his throat and hauled him up into a chair. Then I knelt beside him so that our eyes were almost level.

“Answers,” I said.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. He stopped, coughed and started again, speaking in a high strained tone. “I don’t know where either of them are.”

He saw what I thought of that answer so he hurried on.

“It’s the truth, I tell you. When I arranged things with Tarani, two of my men were on their way here with N’olitar. They didn’t show up on time so I sent out a search group. They found the two men in the Zantro Pass—dead. There was no sign of the old man.”

“Are yon telling me that you don’t have Volitar any more?”

He nodded, swallowing. “He’s not in Chizan—I would know if he had made it here.”

“What about Gharlas? Where was he headed?”

“I’d tell you if I knew. That creepy-eyed—I swear I don’t know where he is. He left Chizan the day after he paid for Taranis job.”

“Did he know Tarani would be involved?”

“Of course not,” he said, his voice regaining its smoothness. “My clients pay for results, not methods. In this case, I would accept commissions only for an attempt since the odds were so high against success. What happened anyway?”

“Your killers missed their target, whichever one it was.” I said. “Were they after Dharak, or me?”

“I’ll ask again: who are you?”

“Rikardon is my name.”

Molik’s eyes narrowed and he pulled himself into a straighter sitting position. “If I had known it was you Gharlas wanted, I might have charged him less. The reward Worfit is offering for your tusks would have made up the difference nicely.”

“Am I the one he wanted?”

“Are you the ‘leader of the Sharith’?” Molik retorted. “Those are the words Gharlas used, and I passed them on to Tarani.”

So I still don’t know which one of us Gharlas wanted dead.

I went over to Tarani. When I touched her shoulder, she jumped slightly, and then uncurled. Her face was calm but strained; her eyes were clear.

“I heard what he said about Volitar,” she said.

“Can we believe him?” I asked her.

“I—I don’t know, Rikardon.”

“Well, can’t you … uh, reach into his mind, and find out whether he’s telling the truth?”

“That’s preposterous,” she said flatly. “What made you think I could do that?”

“Oh—just a guess.”

Maybe Tarani’s power wasn’t as much like Gharlas’s as we had thought. The idea was oddly comforting.

Tarani stood up and followed me over to Molik. He flinched back from her, but the gleam of lust was even stronger in his eyes.

Thymas saw it, too. He lifted his sword.

“Thymas wait,” I said. The sword stopped, ready for a cross-cut that would slice through Molik’s neck.

The roguelord looked fully into Thymas’s face, and saw his death there.

“Have you told us the truth, Molik?” I asked.

“Yes. I swear it’s the truth.”

“Then we don’t need him anymore,” Thymas growled.

“We don’t need to kill him, either,” I said. “You know the plan—knock him out so that we can get away from Chizan.”

“And you know I never liked that plan,” Thymas retorted. “He can send word to Dyskornis to stop us.”

“Molik,” I said, and the frightened eyes turned to me. “Will you guarantee to leave us—and Volitar—alone, in exchange for your life? Will you stop harassing Tarani?”

“Yes. Anything.”

“You expect a roguelord to keep his word?” Thymas asked. He lifted the sword slightly.

“He will keep it,” Tarani said softly. ”I know him that well. And our association is over now. Forever, isnt that right, Molik?”

The fear faded from Molik’s eyes, and was replaced with new as he looked at Tarani. Tenderness.

“I regret it,” he said. But I do accept it. Goodbye, Tarani.”

“This fleason has come between us!” Thymas exploded at the girl. “You told me you hated him. You wanted him dead. Prove it now. Say to kill him, and I’ll do it. Say Molik’s death,” he challenged her. “For us, Tarani.”

“Rikardon … “Tarani said uncertainly.

Years of hating him, and hating what she did for him. I thought myself.

“I’ll step aside, Tarani. The decision is yours.”

There was a full minute of silence. Molik seemed frozen in his chair, his gaze locked to the girl’s face. Then Tarani said: “Let him live.”

Molik slumped back.

Thymas let out an angry roar … and swung his sword.

Molik’s headless trunk slid down into the blood-soaked chair.

I grabbed Thymas’s sword wrist and squeezed until I felt the bones grinding together. The sword fell to the carpeted floor. Then I buried both my hands in the boy’s tunic and shoved him hard against the wall.

“If you weren’t Dharak’s son, I’d tie you to that corpse and leave you for the Living Death to find. Now, we are going to continue with the plan as scheduled. After we’re safely out of Chizan we’ll ride for Inid and see if we can trace Volitar from there. And if you so much as blink when I’ve told you not to, I’ll cut off your ears and feed them to you. Got that?”

Thymas swallowed, and nodded.

I looked over my shoulder at Tarani, who had one hand pressed over her mouth. She looked ready to go into shock. “Do you know where Molik keeps his cash?” I asked. She nodded numbly. “We’ll need some travelling money.”

She went over to a corner of the room and began to fiddle with the stones in a section of the wall.

I turned hack to Thymas. “Tell Ronar to come to the outskirts of the city, grab the first vlek or glith he sees, and eat it. We’ll meet the sha’um an hour or so out, toward the Zantro Pass.”

I let Thymas go as Tarani came up with a small, heavy, brass chest. We took a handful of coins each.

“Are you all right?” I asked Tarani. “Can you manage the illusions?”

“Yes. Let’s please …”

I wanted out of that blood-stinking room, myself. I opened the door and called in both the guards. They saw me, and heard me, as Molik—until they lay unconscious on the floor. Then Thymas, Tarani, and I walked out of Molik’s office.

Everyone in the salon saw Molik, the girl he had taken to his office a few minutes earlier, and one of the guards. We even got a salute from the Living Death beside the stairway. On the first floor, I ordered two men to watch Molik’s door, saying that I had assigned the others elsewhere.

It wouldn’t be too long before they got to wondering why Molik had gone out during his habitual sleeping hours. But it was the best we could do, and we had to hope for an hour’s grace, at least.

Outside, it was growing light. As soon as we were out of range of the gaming house, Tarani let the illusions fade, and we scattered, each of us to find water and food for ourselves. In our room, half an hour later, we packed our supplies, and then checked out of the inn.

Less than two hours after we’d left Molik’s office, Tarani and I were astride Keeshah, riding beside Thymas toward the Zantro Pass. I was glad enough that the boy hadn’t spoken a word to either one of us; I was still seething over Molik’s death. I didn’t want to think of the chaos Chizan would be in a few hours.

Tarani’s hands rested on my shoulders. Every now and then, they tightened for a few seconds, then let go.

She didn’t want him dead, I thought. But he’s gone, now, for good. His memory can’t hurt her any more, unless she lets it.

18

“It is not our habit to speak of one traveler to another,” said the Elder of Inid. He was standing in Inid’s gate, stiff with the affront to his ethics.

“Respected Elder Nerral,” I said, moving Tarani aside, “I am called Rikardon. I hope that, in respect for my friendship with Balgokh, you will allow this one exception. The man we seek is Tarani’s uncle, and he has been in serious danger. Tarani is eager to know if he is well. Please tell us if he has been here.”

At the sound of my name, the man had thawed. I reminded myself to thank Balgokh, sometime, for the good press.

“In that case, I would help you if I could but the truth is no one named Volitar has come through this refreshment house.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry if that is unplesant news.”

Tarani made a soft sound. Thymas started to put his arms around her, but she stepped away from him.

“It may not be had news.” I said suddenly. “Molik’s men would have planned things so they wouldn’t have to stop here—or maybe only one of them came in. and got water for all three of them. If Volitar got away and was running he couldn’t have been sure of not being followed. Probably he would have given a false name—to protect his life, Respected Elder.”

“But how can I know, then, whether he has been here?” Nerral asked. “In the past three seven-days, I have seen a hundred men traveling alone. He could be any of those.”

“Tarani, can you show him what Volitar looks like?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “With your permission, Respected Elder?” She pointed at Thymas. “If you look closely, you will see my uncle, Volitar.”

I tried to see the illusion, too. I’m sure it was not as solid and real-looking as it was for Nerral, but I was able to see it. Volitar was a small man with brown head fur that almost seemed reddish. He had lines of tension around his eyes, but his mouth seemed ready to smile. His hands were finely molded, with strong fingers. The entire image gave me an impression of neatness and precision.

“Why, yes, I have seen that man,” Nerral said happily, as the illusion faded. “But he wasn’t traveling alone, not any of the three times he has been through here.”

“Who was with him the last time?” I asked. Simultaneously, Tarani was saying: “Was he all right? How did he look?”

“Uh—” the Elder began, confused. “I should say he was all right,” he said then. “At least, he wasn’t injured in any way, though he seemed … distant, preoccupied. In fact, it was his companion who introduced him. The name he was given was Shandor, I believe. Yes, Shandor.”

“And his companion?” I asked, exchanging a look of total bewilderment with Tarani.

“His companion I know well,” Nerral said, with the neutral tone I had begun to recognize as passive disapproval among the Fa’aldu. “It was the caravan master, Gharlas.”

Tarani started to say something, but I put a hand on her arm and squeezed. “You say the man you know as Shandor had been here twice before? Was Gharlas with him then?” Nerral nodded. “How long ago?”

“Oh, it has been moons,” he said, “since I last saw him— though Gharlas, of course, comes through here regularly. I’m sorry I can’t give you a more precise answer, but I would say it has been over a year ago, and then his visits were two or three moons apart, as I remember.”

With my hand still tight on Tarani’s arm, I thanked Nerral, and went through the formal request for shelter for the night. Again, I was asked to be the guest of the Fa’aldu, but this time I protested. We had two sha’um to feed, I said, as well as ourselves. I admitted we had nothing to trade, but would he not bend the rules far enough to accept coin payment, only this once?

Tarani broke away from me at that point. “We do have something to trade,” she said, and slipped her travel bag off her shoulders. She rummaged in it for a moment, and brought out the beautiful gown she had worn on stage at Thagorn. Nerral caught his breath as the soft blue fabric spread out in the breeze, and sunlight glinted from the hundreds of tiny beads which decorated the collar and armbands.

“The dress will be useless to your women as it is,” Tarani said. “But the fabric is fine quality and these beads—” she ran her thumb across the glittering surface of one of the armbands “—were made for me by Volitar, after he finally accepted the idea of the show.” Abruptly, she extended the dress toward Nerral. ”Take it, please, she urged. “I will not need it again.”

The elders hands enfolded the soft stuff carefully. This is part of your life, Tarani. I thank you, and I hope that the giving of it brings you good fortune. Come in, and be welcome, all of you.”

We gave him our swords and a boy led Thymas and Tarani away, while I made arrangements for meat and water to be left outside the wall for the sha’um.

It’s all right to start without me this time, Keeshah. I need to talk to Tarani.

Inid was twice the size of Relenor and twice as crowded, a fact I might have predicted by the number of caravans traipsing across the Zantro Pass. We had been able to buy meat for the sha’um out of one of the supply herds.

There was no question of private rooms at Inid. Tarani and Thymas and I would be sharing again. I hoped we’d all make it through the night alive.

As I approached our room, I could hear voices through the door. I hesitated with my hand on the latch. I told myself that it might be best not to interrupt. Nobody wants to admit to a desire to eavesdrop.

“—Gharlas?” I caught the end of Thomas’s question.

“I don’t know any Gharlas,” Tarani said. “I told vou. I heard his name for the first time in Molik’s office after he had taken Volitar.”

“In his office?” the boy sneered. “Not in his bedroom? I saw the way he looked at you—that was not a passion two years dead.

“And you lied to me,” Thymas went on. “First you had `borrowed money from him.’ Then he had ‘taken advantage of you.’ You ‘hated him.’ Hate? A Sharith kills his enemies, Tarani. You spared Molik when you had the chance to see him dead.”

“Don’t think that was an easy decision, Thymas,” Tarani retorted. “I did hate him—enough to kill him, myself, if Rikardon hadn’t stopped me.

“In that moment when my word could destroy him, I had to see things clearly. Molik did nothing except agree to a business deal. He was weak, and that was unfortunate. But I have been blaming myself for his weakness, and then blaming him for my guilt. I was making him more important than he was. His passion was fresh, yes—because he knew he still had a hold on me.

“When I faced Molik’s death, I finally put him where he belonged—in the past. You were wrong to kill him, Thymas. I am free of him now. To let him live, wanting me, and knowing I was out of reach—that would have been a more severe punishment.”

“A Sharith kills his enemies,” Thymas repeated.

“I am not Sharith,” Tarani said. “I won’t he going back to Thagorn with you, Thymas.”

I caught my breath and held it. You fool, go away, I told myself. This is none of your business, remember? I didn’t move.

Thymas’s voice was hard. “We’ll talk about this after we have your uncle safe again. You’re upset now, because I killed Molik in spite of what you said.”

“We have been playing Molik’s game without realizing it,” Tarani said. “In Thagorn you wanted to see—and I let you see—only the part of Tarani which might fit into the Sharith life. I didn’t deceive you deliberately. I told myself that it was what I wanted, too. I was trying to run from a past that I, myself, was keeping alive.

“I have great respect for the Riders and the women of the Sharith, Thymas, but I don’t belong there.

“If you don’t believe me, ask Ronar”

“Ronar? But he doesn’t hate you, Tarani,” Thymas said. “He only … doesn’t want you … to ride.” His voice slowed, stopped.

The silence stretched out until I was about ready to go in, just to end it. Then Tarani said gently: “You understand now, don’t you? Ronar doesn’t accept me because you can’t accept me. Not the whole person. Not the real Tarani.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand,” Thymas said angrily. “Someone has come between us, all right, but it wasnt Molik. Keeshah lets ‘the real Tarani’ ride. So Rikardon—”

I’d heard enough; I opened the door. Both of them looked at me when I entered the room. I didn’t bother pretending that I hadn’t heard anything.

“Thymas, for once in your life, listen to what somebody says,” I ordered. “Tarani rides with me because she can’t ride with you. It’s that simple.

“Now, Tarani what, in the name of Zanek, is Volitar doing with Gharlas?”

‘That’s what I want to know, Captain,” she said “Who is Gharlas? Is Volitar still in danger?”

“Gharlas stole—”

“Tarani is not Sharith!” Thomas interrupted.

“You sit down and keep quiet, Thymas.” The boys face clouded, and he headed for the door. “Do as I say!” He stopped, considered, then walked back to sit sullenly on one of the blockbeds.

”Gharlas stole a gemstone called the Ra’ira from Raithskar.” I resumed the story. “Have you heard of it?”

”Only that it is beautiful, and highly regarded by the rulers of a city.”

“The Council of Supervisors.” I supplied. “The Ra’ira is a symbol, historically, of the right to rule. Gharlas is convinced that he can re-create the Kingdom and rule it from Eddarta, with that stone as proof that he is the rightful King.”

“He sounds mad,” Tarani said. “And dangerous.”

“Very dangerous. He has the same kind of power you do. Tarani, but without your conscience. What did Nerial’s description of Volitar remind you of?”

She saw it immediately. “Compulsion?” She shivered. “It would he necessary, to involve him in something dishonest. Volitar has a high sense of honor. The compulsion—it must be terrible for him.” She shuddered. “But what use can Volitar he to Gharlas?”

“Just what does Volitar do?” I asked. “I mean, what kind of glass objects does he make?”

“You saw the beads on my gown,” she said. “He delights in fine work like that, and he has won a reputation for brilliant, precise colors in his glass. Sometimes, for his own amusement, he creates glass pieces that look exactly like gemstones . .”

Her voice trailed off.

“What does the Ra’ira look like?”

“It’s an unfaceted blue stone about this big,” I said, shaping it with my hands. “The color seems to darken toward the center, and there is a suggestion of a crystalline pattern as you look through it.”

“I have seen something like that,” she said. “Wait, let me think this through—” She paced around the room for a few seconds, then began talking as though she were explaining something to herself.

“The nervousness I’ve thought to be a sign of age—could it have meant that he was frightened of someone? That’s been going on for two years now, at least. And I knew he took a trip, but he didn’t mention going to Raithskar with anyone.”

“He went to Raithskar? A year ago?” I demanded.

She stopped pacing. “Yes, he left with no warning at all. I found a note from him on one of my visits to his workshop. There were other incidents this past year. I always send Lonna ahead with a message for Volitar, when I know I’ll be in Dyskornis by nightfall. Three times, he sent a return message saying not to come see him, he was too busy. Two of those times, I respected his wishes, though it was very unusual, and it worried me. The third time, I decided to go anyway.

“As I arrived at the workshop, I saw someone leaving hurriedly. I got only a glimpse of him, but he was standing in the light of the doorway for a second or two. What does Gharlas look like?”

“Tall,” I said, pulling out Markasset’s memory. “His features are a lot like yours, actually, except his eyes are set closer. There is an intensity about him—”

“What color is his head fur?” Tarani asked.

“I’ve no idea,” I answered. “I’ve never seen him when he wasn’t wearing desert head covering. Thymas? Do you know?”

“Dark,” muttered Thymas. “His head fur is almost as dark as Tarani’s.”

Tarani was nodding. “Yes, that fits the man I saw. I remember noticing the head fur particularly, since it is so uncommon. To be sure … Thymas, look at Rikardon, and see the man, who was running from Volitars workshop.”

I felt nothing as Tarani cast the illusion, but Thymas s eyes widened. “Yes, that is Gharlas.”

“Volitar was beside himself when he saw me,” Tarani continued her story. “He wouldn’t calm down until I assured him that the man could not have seen me well enough to recognize me again. Then he refused to say anything else.

“He also covered up something hastily when I walked in and surprised him,” she added. “It looked like the blue gem you’ve described.”

I felt as though I had lost my step on a treadmill. “How long ago was this?” I asked.

“Three moons ago, more or less.”

“Then it couldn’t have been the Ra’ira itself,” I mused. “And if it was a duplicate—that was long before the theft. Why didn’t Gharlas take the thing with him, and use it to replace the real one? It might have given him some extra time.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t a good enough copy?” Tarani suggested. “I still don’t understand how Volitar could have gotten involved in this. He couldn’t have made a duplicate—if that’s what it was I saw—under compulsion. A compelled person surrenders will and initiative, and all creative thought. Any artistic effort would fail.”

“Let’s get down to the big question,” I said. “Where are Gharlas and Volitar right now?’

“I’ve sent Lonna to Dyskornis.” Tarani answered. “It is an easy trip for her from here, since she doesn’t have to cross the mountains. She will be back by morning.”

“If Volitar is in Dyskornis, well go there tomorrow,” I decided. “If he isn’t, we’ll assume that Gharlas—for whatever reason—rescued him from Molik’s men in order to take him to Eddarta. Well head in that direction.

“Either way, Tarani, we’ll find Volitar and ask him what the kingdom has been going on.”

19

In the morning, Lonna was back. Tarani spent a few minutes in silent communication with the bird, and then turned grimly to Thymas and me.

“Volitar is at his workshop in Dyskornis,” she announced.”Gharlas is there, too. Lonna’s images … Gharlas wants some information from my uncle.”

He’s torturing the old man, I translated. Can’t he use his power to find out whatever he wants to know?

We walked to the gateway with Nerral, accepted the return of our weapons, and said goodbye. Ronar and Keeshah were waiting for us, not too close together. Ronar was edgy and threatening, Keeshah quietly suspicious.

Tarani said our sha’um reveal how we feel about her. They certainly speak for the way Thymas and I feel about each other, too.

“Keeshah looks so thin,” Tarani said. “Should I not ride in the net again?”

“Let me ask him, first.” I did, and he assured me that he was feeling strong and fit.

Not much exercise in the city,* he explained. Running feels good. Even with two.

“He says he’s fine,” I told Tarani.

I didn’t mention that I didn’t want to trust her to the cargo net. I wasn’t sure I could count on close cooperation between the sha’um today. Thymas was quiet. I couldn’t read his mood.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Molik may not have been much help regarding Gharlas or Volitar, but that tidbit about Worfit’s reward for me was invaluable. I hadn’t wanted Molik’s death, but I had to admit that I was breathing easier because of it. If he had decided to break his word, one message to Dyskornis would have had every rogue in the city waiting for us; we’d have had to fight our way to Volitar’s workshop.

That kind of reception was still a possibility. There was a lot of traffic on the trail between Dyskornis and Inid, and almost every caravan carried a cage or two of maufa. In the interest of not being recognized, we traveled across country, at some distance from the trail.

Coming down the steep slope from the Zantro Pass toward Inid, we had been treated with a view of a desert vaster than the Kapiral, but the point of the Korchi triangle had blocked our view northward. As we rode toward Dyskornis, the countryside changed dramatically.

Most of the morning was spent in that desert, which crawled right up to the barren foothills of the Korchi. There wasnt much to see—salty emptiness of to our right. and the mountains to our left. I fell to wondering about the map I had seen at Relenor.

That map showed the Great Wall ‘way north of us. I thought. But the Korchis are so high that their tops are masked in cloud. From out in the desert, wouldn’t these steeply climbing foothills look just like a wall? The mountains south of the Kapiral desert—they must be the same range that dform the south wall of the Chizan passage, and they could all be part of the Korchi—were like this, too. They got so tall, so suddenly, that they’d look like a wall from a distance.

It’s a wonder I didn’t head in the wrong direction when I woke up in the desert. But I seem to remember only one wall … I’ll bet that was Markasset’s inner awareness taking care of me.

Gandalaran maps are just for reference about distance and direction. They show how to get from here to there. The cartographers must merely draw that line to represent the Great Wall, and trust to the All-Mind to help anybody relying on a map to be able to distinguish a mountain range from the wall.

The desert, which seemed even hotter than the Kapiral, ended at last by changing into a Gandalaran version of the American southwest. Short, woody hushes dotted the landscape at first, and then were joined by small plants, some of them flowering, which resembled some of the friendlier cacti of Ricardo’s world.

All we need now are a prairie dog and a coyote, I thought. Here we are, the cowboy riding his trusty steed to rescue the little lady’s poor old uncle from the villain. Beside him is his trusty sidekick….

Oh, no, I thought, chuckling to myself. The day I hear any variation of “kemo sabe” from Thymas, I’ll eat my baldric.

But—hold on there, maybe I’ve got the characters reversed. Maybe I ought to practice saying: “Oh, Cisco.”’

With that pale head fur of his, we could even call Thymas the white hat and Gharlas the black hat….

Get hold of yourself, Rikardon.

We made a brief stop for lunch. After the desert, which had seemed oppressively hot and close after the high country we had just crossed, a drink of water was most welcome for all of us. We were soon on our way again, and in no more than two hours, the edge of the “sage” country, as I had come to call it, blended into the first forest I had seen, outside of the Valley of the Sha’um.

The trees weren’t the giants that grew in Keeshah’s native territory, but they were tall enough for us to ride beneath them. They seemed to be a greener variety of the sage scrub, and their open branches cast a lacy shade that we all appreciated—until the sun set. Then it was so dark that even the sha’um, with their better night vision, had to slow considerably. I called a halt.

“There ought to be something in this forest the sha’um can eat,” I said, sliding down off Keeshah’s hack and reaching up to catch Tarani’s shadowy form. “We’ll walk awhile, and let them hunt. Can Lonna guide us?” I asked Tarani.

The answer came from the bird herself, who called to us from a tree branch a few yards ahead. We left Ronar and Keeshah to their own devices, and began to walk through the darkness, hands linked to prevent one of us getting separated.

I led the way, my free arm out in front of me to brush aside low branches, and Thymas brought up the rear. Tarani’s hand held tightly to mine. There were sounds all around us—birds and insects and small animals—and sometimes it was hard to tell which call was Lonna’s. If I started moving in the wrong direction, Lonna would come diving through the branches to scold me.

No one had suggested that we just camp until morning. Each of us had special reasons for wanting to get to Dyskornis as fast as possible. Tarani feared for her uncle’s life. Thymas was anxious to get to Gharlas and, no doubt, to be free of his association with me. I—well, I wanted answers.

I felt as though my decision to leave Raithskar had bought me a ticket on a roller coaster ride through an endless maze. And the fellow who had pulled the starting lever was Gharlas.

We had walked for about five hours, and the strain was telling on all of us, when we stepped out into brightness. We were in a field of the bush-trees, all of them small enough to step over.

“It is a yearling lot,” Tarani explained. “The glassmakers have set aside much of the forest around the city as fuel for their furnaces. They harvest only the full-grown lots, and replant them as they are used.”

“How long does it take a lot to reach full growth?” I asked, starting out across the field.

“Less than ten years.” she answered, following. We had released our holds on one another when we had come into the light Thymas trudged along behind Tarani, lost in thought and paying little attention to us.

I thought about the European glassmakers. In his study languages. Ricardo had become familiar with hits and peeves of history. and he had always been impressed with the skill. knowledge and physical endurance of the glassblow

I seem to recall that some glassworks had to because they used up all the fuel in one area I guess the Gandalaran glassmakers have had time to learn that lesson. Then, too, I doubt that they have the same methods, or the same need for high production. Most of the table service l’ve seen here is ceramic.

I tried to remember where I had seen glass used. Barut is always served in those tiny glasses. It’s always kept in glass decanters, too, come to think of it. Probably eats through anything else.

I’ve drunk faen from glasses and out of earthenware mugs, depending on the surroundings.

A lot of Raithskar’s buildings—including Markasset ‘s house— had glass windows. But they were all lattice style, as I recall, small glass shapes mounted in frames of thin wood strips. The frames were fastened together to make the large windows.

Let’s see—oh, the lamps, with their faceted chimneys. Glass beads as jewelry and as decoration on clothes, including Tarani’s costume. And. unless we re going down another blind alley, at least one imitation gemstone.

But all these things are fairly small—though the decanters and lamp chimneys probably take an enormous amount of skill. In Ricardo’s world, a glassblower used a long iron tube. That would hardly be practical here, with iron so scarce.

To pass the time, I asked Tarani about her uncle’s work. She said, at first, that she didn’t know much about it, but memories surfaced as we talked. Putting her information together with my earthly memories of the glassmaking process gave me an understanding of Volitar s profession.

The glass furnace of Gandalara were double-walled cylinders made of ceramic bricks. They were built first, on level ground cut away from hillsides, and then buildings were erected around them. The downslope side of each workshop was supported by fill rock, mortared together with rock salt. A corridor was left open in this foundation that was just wider than the diameter of the furnace, so that the hillside could be hollowed out for the fire bowl.

This was a replaceable unit made of sun-hardened clay, fitted to the bottom of the furnace and supported by the repacked soil. If it cracked, it could be cooled and removed, and a new one put in. Tarani said that they usually lasted through at least one work season and it had become the practice to replace them every year.

The glassmakers spent part of each year accumulating the supplies they needed, another part producing the raw glass pieces, and the rest of the time applying artistic finishing details.

”Don’t they split up that work?” I asked, “With one person gathering material, another doing the basic article, and vet another doing the finishing?”

”Sometimes, but not often,” Tarani said. “The finished piece depends upon the beginning materials. Every glassmaker is trained in all phases of the work before he is allowed to sell his creations.”

“Creations” is the right word, too, I thought. The glass recipe is a touchy thing; the glass can be too brittle, the color can go haywire. If one man starts with silica sand and winds up with a lamp chimney, which is creation indeed.

Sand is no problem in Gandalara; there are at least two entire deserts of it. But what else goes into glass? Something to help the sand melt. They probably retrieve the ashes from the firebowl for part of that. And they’d need lime—limestone caves, chalk deposits. I seem to have the impression that the “Great Pleth” was on the other side of the Korchi Mountains, but I might he wrong. Probably it would have left a layer of lime in old seashells—

If Gandalara has or had shellfish. Quit thinking in earth terms.

”It must have taken Volitar a long time to learn his craft,” I commented. We had crossed almost all of the yearling lot, and were approaching a taller section of the trees.

“Less time than most,” she said, “but he worked hard to learn. Old Kardin used to joke about Volitar trying to squeeze every ounce of knowledge from him before he died.”

“Kardin?”

“The glassmaker who trained Volitar. He died when I was ten years old. I remember him saying that Volitar had learned more, and faster, than any glassmaker’s son. It’s very rare, you know,” she said proudly. “For anyone not connected with a glass family to be awarded an apprenticeship. And it’s almost unknown for a full-grown man to be accepted for training.”

“You mean, Volitar hasn’t always been or wanted to be, a glassmaker?”

“No. He came to Dyskornis when I was born, to care for me. He has never spoken of his life before then. It was always his way to say that I … was … his life.” Suddenly she was choking up. I put my arm around her shoulders to guide her to the edge of the taller trees.

“Thomas,” I called softly. He was ten paces or so behind us, veering off to the right. He looked over at the sound of my voice, and then came toward us when I motioned to him.

“We’ve got to get some rest, or we’ll be useless to Volitar. Make Tarani comfortable, and stay with her. I’m going to ride ahead a little way to see what’s coming. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Thymas put his arm around Tarani as I removed mine, and she turned to his embrace. I walked away, calling Keeshah, who popped out of the half-grown forest ahead of us. I mounted and rode away, glancing hack to see them still where I had left them.

She’s had that bottled up inside her ever since Molik first told her Volitar was in danger, I thought. And she is bone-tired. We all are. She needs the kind of comfort a stranger can’t give. Thymas, please do it right. Just be there for her now.

I had intended to do exactly what I had told Thomas—ride ahead far enough to give Tarani the time she needed to break down and pull herself together again. But I found, on moving out of that next lot of trees, that I had reached Dyskornis.

More or less.

The city, surrounded by the traditional wall, sat atop a hill about half a mile away. Coming toward me down the slope of that hill was another small town, a hundred buildings or so sprawled out with no particular design. It was brightly lit and humming with activity; the trees had screened us from the noise of it. Some distance from the buildings themselves, there was a huge corral that was three-quarters full of vleks.

This must be the transient section of Dyskornis, I decided. Look how dark and somber the actual city is by comparison. Probably the city fathers are trying to exclude the rowdy element from the city. I wonder how many city fathers are out here, whooping it up?

I wouldn’t mind a glass of faen right now, myself. It would give Tarani and Thymas a little more time. I might learn something about Gharlas or Volitar or….

Quit kidding yourself. You want a glass of faen.

Wait here, Keeshah, I ordered, as I dismounted. Don’t go, the sha’um urged me, causing me to turn around and stare into his gray-flecked eyes.

Don’t tell me you can see the future, I teased him. What will happen if I go?

Serious, he scolded me. Place smells bad.

I laughed.

You didn’t get very close to Chizan, or you wouldn’t say that about Dyskornis. Don’t worry, I added, scratching behind his left ear. I’ll be careful. One glass of faen, and I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.

I walked toward the nearest row of buildings, and I felt my skin creep with much the same feeling Keeshah had tried to describe. There was a tension in the air here that had been absent in Chizan. For all his faults, Molik had kept an iron-handed order in his city. In these outskirts of Dyskornis, the high spirits were uncontrolled, the complaining loud, and the competition fierce.

I walked down the street, looking for a quiet bar tucked into a corner somewhere. It was soon evident that I wouldn’t find one unconnected to a gaming room. Because I really hadn’t planned to be long—and because that feeling of standing near a stack of dynamite wouldn’t go away—I finally just turned into the next door I found open.

It was a place called Pemor’s, and it was so crowded that I almost changed my mind again.

Get your faen and go back to Keeshah, I told myself.

I pushed my way up to the bar and yelled my order to one of the two busy bartenders. While I was waiting for it to arrive, I felt my left elbow jostled. I looked down to see a short, slender man reaching to pick up his glass of faen. He smiled, shouted something I couldn’t hear, and took his glass out of the mob. My order arrived, and I reached for my money pouch to pay for it.

There were only the leather thongs which had fastened it to my money belt. The dangling ends had been sliced through cleanly.

I saw the little guy, just getting through the door into the street. I started after him, yelling for somebody to stop him, but the bartender’s big hand claimed my right forearm and wouldn’t let go.

“You owe me nine zaks, stranger. No credit.”

“Somebody just stole my pouch!” I yelled at him, struggling to free my arm. “He’ll get away, if you don’t let me go.”

“I’ve heard that before,” the man said drily, and gave a twisting nod of his head.

Uh-oh, he’s calling in the bouncers, I thought. Probably the thief gives all of them a cut. I’d better count Molik’s money well lost, and concentrate on getting the hell out of here.

I jerked my arm out of the man’s hold, and the force of my movement sent my elbow into my neighbor’s ribs.

“Hey! Watch it!” he complained—but I was already trying to push my way to the door.

Through the crowd, I caught glimpses of two heavyweights converging on the doorway. It was going to be close.

I made it through the door with only seconds to spare. And there, across the street, stood the little man who had taken my pouch. He was counting.

The two bouncers had followed me out. I should have run for it, but my temper got the better of me, and I launched myself at the thief. He looked up at a call from one of the uglies, dropped the coins back in the pouch, and whipped out a thin-bladed dagger. I swerved my charge far enough to get room to draw my sword.

“You drop that pouch, and you can keep your life,” I said. He looked at the sword, then my face. He dropped the pouch and ran off down the street.

I whirled to face the two bouncers. By this time, one had his sword out, and the other was holding a big, sharp knife. Behind them, the gaming room was emptying into the street. I heard bets being made. The odds weren’t in my favor.

Coming, Keeshah told me.

Not down the main street, I ordered, as I blocked the sword and dodged the knife. Don’t let them see you. But make some noise.

Noise, I had asked for? Keeshah started with a roar of anger, and ended with a climbing wail of frustration. He must have been just outside the light at the end of the street where I was standing, because that hair-lifting sound bounced between the buildings, froze every person in place, turned every head toward its invisible source. By the time they shook off the eeriness of it and turned back to me, I had snatched up my pouch and was long gone.

I slipped through the darker streets toward the edge of town. Keeshah met me, and we wasted no time in putting distance between us and Dyskornis.

The next time you give me advice, Keeshah, I promise I’ll take it.

20

Thymas stepped out of the shadows as I was getting down from Keeshah’s back. He was holding a drawn sword. The trees couldn’t have blocked off Keeshah’s cry.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I found Dyskornis,” I answered shortly. “How is Tarani?”

“She’s asleep. She’s very worried about her uncle.”

“So am I. People who help Gharlas don’t live very long. The two men who helped him steal the Ra’ira are both dead.”

“Two men?” Thymas said. “Who beside Hural?”

Wups. Thymas doesn’t know that Markasset got himself beaned out in the desert by the other henchie, who was then killed by Keeshah. The end result of all that was my arrival—something else Thymas doesn’t know about.

This is beginning to be a hassle, trying to remember what I’ve told to whom.

“Thanasset said there were two men,” I said. “I suppose the other was killed in the caravan raid—which was what Gharlas planned for Hural, too.”

I thought that sounded pretty glib, but I had hesitated a heartbeat too long.

“You’re lying about something,” Thymas accused. “Just the way you lied to my father, the first time you came to Thagorn How did you force Dharak to name you Captain?”

“It was Dharak’s idea in the first place, if you want to know,” I said. “Just like it was his idea to send you moping along with me. You and Ronar have been more trouble than help.”

“I have kept my promise. Except for Molik. A Sharith—”

“Kills his enemies, I know,” I finished for him. “You broke your promise before we left Thagorn. Why didn’t you tell me you had given Tarani a sword, that very afternoon?”

“You asked Bareff about weapons,” he said. “if you had asked me, I would have told you.”

This was getting us nowhere.

“After we find Volitar …” I didn’t have to finish.

“I look forward to it,” Thymas said, keeping his tense voice low, out of consideration of Tarani’s sleep.

“Right now, we need some rest, too.”

He nodded, and we found ourselves grassy spots to sleep.

We were all awake again by dawn, and we ate a light breakfast. We hurried into Dyskornis, leaving the sha’um to prowl restlessly through the forest, and Lonna to fend for herself.

We had to walk right down the street I had visited the night before in order to get to the main gate of the city. Tarani and Thymas wore their headscarves tied desert fashion, but I wrapped my scarf around my face like a Chizan native. Tarani was in the lead, walking at a brisk pace, her head thrust forward.

We moved through the main area of the city fairly fast, crossing one of the many bridges across the Nisa River. Then we turned toward a series of small hills with odd-looking buildings, set well apart from one another. The road climbed steadily up the steep slopes. Its surface was imbedded with stones, and the grassy areas on either side were crisscrossed with wheel ruts.

Tarani was nearly running up one of the ramps which connected the level sections of the road. I caught up with her and held her back. I could almost smell her fear.

“Which place is Volitar’s?” I asked.

“That one,” she said, pointing to our left. “The second in the next row of workshops.”

“All right, now, hang on to your good sense,” I said.’ “Where are the doors?”

The building was only half workshop, Tarani explained. An open porch ran around five sides of the hexagonal building, and on that porch were bins which held raw materials. Each side of the workshop had a door onto that porch, because the shops were designed to allow five glassmakers to share the furnace in each one.

The house was a two-story structure. Its upper floor had an outside entrance from the hillside, as well as a door which connected to the workshop through its sixth side. The lower floor was built against the mortared stone which surrounded the fire-howl corridor and served as foundation for the hexagonal workshop and porch. A door led into the house from the lower slope of the hillside.

“Kardin had the workshop all to himself, so he lived in the house year-round, instead of only when the furnace was burning,” Tarani said. “We lived with him until he died, then Volitar took it over.”

“I’ll go in the top floor of the house. Thymas, try the lower level. Tarani, you get into the workshop. Be careful.”

We went uphill to the crossroad and followed the stone-paved road that ran in front of all the workshops on that level. We ran as quickly as we could, keeping to the shelter of the nearer workshop for as long as possible. In a few minutes, we were all in position.

My door was locked from the inside. It had a lattice-glass window; I broke one of the panes, reached through to move the bar, and went into the house with my sword ready.

I was in a big room that seemed to serve as bedroom, parlor, and office. Except for the sparse furniture, it was empty. A noise made me turn toward the corner on my right, and Thymas jumped out of the stairwell. We headed for the door on my left, which had to open into the workshop.

I opened it a crack, first, and looked in. The door straight across the room opened on a porch rail and a view of the workshop we had passed. Tarani was on her knees near the furnace, frantically removing a gag from the mouth of an old man.

I’ll be damned. He’s alive! Wonder how long he’s been tied up like that…

“Tarani!” the man gasped in a cracking voice, the instant his mouth was free. “Get out of here! Leave Dyskornis. Gharlas must not find you here!”

I stepped through the door. “Gharlas is still in Dyskornis?”

Volitar twisted around at the sound of my voice. He looked like the image Tarani had cast of him, except that he was even thinner, and his intelligent, thoughtful face had changed shape. There wasn’t a square inch of it that wasn’t bruised and swollen. It looked as though his nose might be broken.

“You,” the sick old man gasped, squirming so that Tarani couldn’t get hold of the ropes which tied him. “Leave me, and take Tarani out of here. I beg it of you. If you have any spark of kindness …”

“Well go Uncle,” Tarani said. “But not without you. Now hold still.” She drew her sword, and sliced through the rope that bound his wrists behind his back. Volitar’s arms flopped apart, uncontrolled. His hands were bloated and bluish. Tarani made a whining sound, and put the sword through the bonds around her uncle’s ankles.

Volitar was still looking at me and Thymas, who had followed me into the room. ”I can’t travel,” he said. “Please, I ask it for her sake—take her out of here. Force her to go, if vou must, but do it, I beg you. Gharlas may return any minute!”

Tarani had Volitar’s legs free, but it was evident that they were no more useful than his arms. “Help me,” she said, trying to lift him by herself. I hesitated.

“He said Gharlas might be here soon— “I began.

Thymas dashed past me, and he and Tarani got a still-protesting Volitar on his feet, slung between them. “You’re so worried about promises!” Thymas snarled. “You gave your word to see Volitar safe.”

“I only meant—”

A tall, thin shape filled the open doorway behind Tarani, Thvmas and Volitar.

“—that we ought to watch for him,” I finished, reaching for Rika. Thymas released Volitar and drew his sword, spinning around into a fighting crouch. Volitar’s dead weight crashed to the floor, pulling Tarani with it.

Thymas crowed with triumph, and aimed a deadly thrust at Gharlas, who was still a mere silhouette against the outdoor brightness.

Gharlas didn’t move.

After one forward step, neither did Thymas.

He stood frozen in position, except for the bewildered widening of his eyes. I tried to charge across the room, but I couldn’t even take a step. I was saying “go” to my muscles, but someone else, more imperatively, was saying “stop.”

Is this compulsion? I wondered. What happened to my theory about Gharlas’s power not working on me? Wait a minute—I can still think; I’m not the zombie Tarani described. There must be some way ..

While I was working to break the compulsion—and to stay calm—I watched Gharlas.

He walked into the room. He was very tall; he topped me by a good six or seven inches. Markasset remembered him wearing a desert headscarf, but his head was bare now, showing the dark head fur. It was longer than usual, and it lay back smoothly, making a thick, dark frame for his narrow face.

The intensity of his close-set gaze hadn’t changed, except for one thing. The gleam of fanaticism was no longer hidden. It shone out of his eyes, his face, his bearing, that this man was not quite sane.

He stood over Volitar and Tarani, looking down at them.

“You must be the niece Volitar has been hiding all these years,” he said in a soft, silky-smooth voice. Tarani was picking herself up from the floor. The old man had been knocked out in the fall; he made a moaning sound, and Tarani turned to him, still on her knees.

“How do you do, my dear?” Gharlas continued. “Your name, please?”

She didn’t answer him, and his lips twitched into a smile.

“At a later time, you will speak when I ask you a question, my dear. Indeed, you will. For now, however, do tend to your uncle. I need him alive for a while yet. As for your friends,” he said, strolling over to the statue that was Thymas. “I can’t say much for your taste. This one is opinionated and tactless. The other one—ah, the other one …”

He walked over to stand in front of me, and stared down into my face. My eyes could turn to watch him, but my voice was mute. Inside, I was screaming and straining apinst the holding spell:

“You,” he said softly, almost affectionately, “have been an endless trouble to me. If you hadn’t first lied to me about your name, then come snooping after me when I left the caravan, Yolim would have lived a little longer. Not much, to be sure, but long enough to do another service I had planned for him.

“If you hadn’t found Hural in Thagorn, Zaddorn would still be circling around Thanasset instead of looking for me. I don’t know how you found your way here, my double-minded friend, but killing you permanently will be a high pleasure.”

Double-minded? That’s the key! Think about Ricardo. Remember things that hate no connection to Gandalara. The Marines. Oceans. Sailing, swimming, diving off a board into cold , clearwater ..

I moved my hand! Did Gharlas notice? No, he’s turning back to Tarani and Volitar. All right, now, keep it up. Playing tennis, riding horses, snow skiing. Driving a car. Electricity…

“I see Volitar is awake,” Gharlas said. “Now, my dear, you will answer a question for me.”

Volitar said: “Don’t tell him—aachkk-k-k.” His eyes went wide, and his hand came up to his throat in a wide, floppy arc.

“We don’t want to be interrupted, do we?” purred Gharlas. “I can keep him from talking. I can keep him from breathing. Do vou understand?”

“I understand,” Tarani said, and I thought of Molik. “What do you want?”

“A simple thing. Such a simple thing, to cause so much pain,” he said, spreading his hands. “Somewhere in this house and workshop, your uncle has a special hiding place. He has been … insufferably stubborn about telling me where it is.” Gharlas’s voice wavered a little with frustration.

He wouldn’t even let you draw it from his mind! I translated gleefully. Good for you, Volitar. Good for you!

I had been straining against the paralysis, wearing at it the way I’d work against a physical bond. Tense and release. Tense and release. Knowing that Volitar had resisted Gharlas’s power for two weeks or more was such encouragement that my entire right arm moved, lowering the sword about four inches.

Gharlas still had his back to me, but Tarani had seen the jerky movement.

“I think that is a poor show of gratitude to the man who rescued him from two very unpleasant men. He has also refused to tell me why they were holding him prisoner, though that is unimportant. I was merely curious. But I am most serious about finding your uncle’s hiding place. Where is it?”

“I will tell you,” Tarani answered. She made no attempt to hide the contempt in her voice. “If you will first tell me what this is all about. What have you forced Volitar to do?”

While she was talking, I felt … something.

It’s Tarani! I realized. She’s stalling Gharlas, and trying to help me break free.

Now I was applying constant pressure against the constraint. I worked alone as Ricardo, and when I tired, Markasset and Tarani took over. It was weakening, we were gaining. It was slow work, but that was an advantage in itself. Gharlas didn’t seem to take any notice of the step-by-step erosion of his control.

“Do not think you can set terms for me,” Gharlas told Tarani, but he was more amused than angry. “I will answer your questions, purely for the vexation to Volitar, who has tried so desperately to shelter you from the truth.”

The old man got agitated, tried to talk, tried to move. Tarani pulled him back to the floor so that his head rested on her knees. Gharlas had his back to me. But I knew he was smiling.

I wanted to kill him.

“Your uncle, my dear, belongs to no less a personage than the High Lord of Eddarta himself, Pylomel.” He sneered the name. “Volitar was a gemcutter, highly skilled. I wouldn’t demean his work, not I, who have so profited by it! After Volitar disappeared from Eddarta—he had some foolish notion that he, and not his landpatron, should be paid for the work he did—nothing was heard of him until I saw him, quite by accident, selling his glass beads in the Dyskornis marketplace.

“Ah, how well I remember Pylomel’s fury at the loss of Volitar,” Gharlas chuckled, a nasty sound. “He raged more over that, even, than over missing his latest, most beautiful, and least loving bride-to-be, who disappeared around the same time. It was appropriate, as it turned out; the woman came back, but the gemcutter was lost for good The High Lords frustration was a keen delight to watch.”

Gharlas began to pace slowly around the room, but I noticed that he was careful to keep Tarani and her uncle in his line of sight. He walked over to one of the tile-topped worktables located around the walls, between the porch doors. He picked up a small, truncated pyramid made of clay—it looked like a mold for a barut glass, which could be broken out of the cooled glass and discarded. He turned it around and around with his fingers as he talked.

“Naturally, Pylomel would be delighted to find Volitar after all this time. But I owe him nothing!” Gharlas suddenly shouted. He threw the mold to the floor; it shattered with a snapping sound. He paused to recover his bland, patronizing manner, and then continued, “I spoke too hastily, my dear I do owe Pylomel something—repayment for his arrogance. Thanks to your uncle, that debt is nearly repaid.

“Through the years of Volitar’s service, Pylomel collected a magnificent array of jewelry. I called upon Volitar, who had learned this new skill of coloring and forming glass, to duplicate some of the stones he had cut for Pylomel. Where his memory failed him, I put into his mind a picture of the finished pieces, as I had last seen them. Volitar did this for me, because he did not care to return to Eddarta to face Pylomels anger. I learned much later—only a few moons ago, in fact, after I caught the barest glimpse of you, my dear—that Volitar had another reason for his cooperation. He didn’t want his lovely niece to learn that he was merely pretending to be a free artisan.”

He began his pacing again. Tarani watched him, but I felt her power in my mind, working against Gharlas.

“I took Volitar’s glass duplicates to another, um, friend of mine, who—again, with the help of my images—reproduced the correct setting. In cheaper materials, of course.” He chuckled drily. “The finished pieces were perfect copies to the casual glance, and the jewelry is rarely displayed. Pylomel hoards his wealth jealously.

“Long ago, I found the vault he believes to be impregnable. I have visited that vault on almost every trip to Eddarta, since I relocated Volitar, and each time, I have left it a wealthier man. In Raithskar, or Omergol, or even here in Dyskornis, such fine jewelry commands a rich price.”

He walked by Thymas, who was still lunging stiffly. The sight amused Gharlas, and he laughed out loud. “And how is your traitorous father, Thymas?” he asked. “In poor health, I hope? I must remember to let you live long enough to tell me if Molik did his job properly.”

While his attention was distracted, Tarani looked directly at me. Slowly, I nodded my head, and she flashed a quick smile of satisfaction. She looked down at Volitar again, as Gharlas came toward her. I was in his line of vision, so I kept perfectly still. Internally, I was doing the hardest work I could remember ever doing. I was nearly free.

”Your uncle has given me much, my dear. A great deal of profit from the sale of the replaced jewelry. A great deal of private satisfaction. And, indirectly, a great deal of knowledge.”

Gharlas took a bundle of cloth out of a pouch tied to his belt. He began unfolding layers of cloth.

”On one of my visits to Pylomel’s vault, I found a book that is intended for reading by the High Lords only. It spoke of the Kings of Gandalara, their history, their power. It revealed the secret of that power.” His voice shook with emotion. “And now I possess that secret.”

He held his hand low, to show Tarani what he had unwrapped. Resting on the palm of his hand was the Ra’ira.

21

“Is it not beautiful?” Gharlas asked, stroking the blue gem. “But small, so small, to have so much importance.

“Veytoth was the first King to write about this. It is called the Ra’ira. It was sent to the Kings from Raithskar, where it had been found in their rakor mines. Veytoth was practical. When he became King, he inquired about breaking the pretty bauble into jewellery-sized pieces. But his gem cutters warned that, if it could be cut at all, the lines within it indicated that it might shatter.

“In time Veytoth grew fond of it, and kept it near him. He quickly learned that in its presence, his mindpower—the thoughts of people who were days away from him, were made clear. People around him obeyed his wishes, as well as his spoken orders.

“It was the then that the Kings began to breed for the mindpower, a custom continued to this day in Eddarta.” His hand closed around the blue stone, and began to tremble. “The High Lord of Eddarta must be a child of Harthim’s descent, the product of a legal union between the last High Lord and a woman of the family of a Lord. If none of those children have the mindpower, the children of the High Lord’s siblings may be considered—provided they are the products of a legal union.”

He was shouting again, staring at the ceramic curved-brick furnace, but not seeing it.

“I am cousin to Pylomel,” he said, “his father’s sister’s son. And I have the mindpower. I have it! When we were tested, as children, even then my skill was greater than Pylomels, and it has grown even more these past few years. Now Pylomel is puny by comparison.

“But am I Eddarta’s High Lord? No. Those self-righteous fleasons declared me ineligible, because my mother loved a servant. She had only one opportunity to lie with him, and she took it, knowing she would conceive from the union. I have despised her for that, yes, despised my own creation. But no longer.

“I am a bastard!” he shouted, shaking his fist in the air. “But I am also the new, the next, King of Gandalara!’”

He seemed to recall where he was, then, and spent a moment calming down. Tarani chanced a quick glance at me, and I shook my head slightly. I was free now, but a little dazed by what I had been hearing.

Why didn’t Thanasset tell me? Because I told him I wasn’t going to get involved with this crackpot. I convinced him that I just wanted a vacation to think about the Council’s offer….

The Council! Of course, the true nature of the Ra’ira has to be top secret, available to confirmed Supervisors only. What was it Thanasset said? “You may need information Markasset didn’t have.” He meant about the Ra’ira. He wanted me to join the Council so he could tell me the truth.

“But I am wandering from my purpose,” Gharlas said, his voice oily again.

He changes so quickly. There’s not a doubt in the world that he’s as nutty as an almond grove. Let’s get the timing just right….

“The Lords have grown soft and self-satisfied, resting in comfort in Eddarta. There hasn’t been a High Lord for generations who has suggested seriously a plan to re-establish the Kingdom. When I found that book, I knew that it was my destiny to possess the Ra’ira and rule Gandalara.

“So I came to your uncle and persuaded him to make a duplicate. We went together to Raithskar, to view the stone on Commemoration Day, which honors that despicable traitor, Serkajon.

“I came to pick up the duplicate a few moons ago—that was the evening we nearly met, my dear—and found that Volitar had constructed two copies. They were slightly different from one another, but even at close viewing, either would have passed for the real gem. To those who do not know its special quality, that is. And those fools in Raithskar are sworn never to use it—how could they discover that the real Ra’ira had been replaced?

“I chose one of the copies, and took it to Raithskar. By fortuitous accident, I lost that duplicate before I could complete my original plan. It was only then that I realized the folly I had been about to commit.

“It must be clear to everyone in Gandalara that I, and only I, have the Ra’ira. As before, no one shall know its true power, but it has a strength and a charm of its own. It carries its own feeling of history, of grandeur. Some people will follow me, simply because I have it.

“So there must be no one else who might have the stone,” he said. He leaned toward Tarani. “I needn’t worry about the copy I lost in Raithskar. It was disguised as a clod of dirt; the street sweepers probably gathered it up and dumped it outside the city that very day, and it is well buried by now.

“But I want the other duplicate,” he said, getting to the point at last. “And you will tell me where it is. Now.”

Gently, Tarani laid her uncle’s head on the floor. He flopped his arms and kicked his legs weakly in protest. To comfort him, she kissed his bruised forehead. She stood up and moved around Volitar. Gharlas fell back to give her room. He was just outside my sword range.

“Yes,” said Tarani. “Now.”

I lunged forward, aiming for Gharlas’s back. But he had caught something—a change in Tarani’s expression, perhaps, or even her thought. An instant before I lunged, and Tarani reached for her sword, Gharlas threw himself sideways and down to the floor. He rolled over Volitar and came fare up with the old man in front of him as a shield. He was pressing the blade of a knife against Volitar’s throat.

“You are a most uncooperative man, he said scornfully. “How interesting that you can break my command. Must be the doubleness of yours.”

“Let Volitar go,” Tarani said. “I’ll give you your filthy copy. Let him go!”

She was standing to one side, her sword shaking in her hand. I was looking right down at Volitar’s face. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, looked at me, and said four words. In the confusion, Gharlas hadn’t maintained his silence control on Volitar.

“Take care of Tarani,” the old man said. Then, his arms and legs still nearly useless, he bucked his body violently upward, driving the knife blade deep into the bruised flesh of his throat.

Tarani screamed.

I lifted my sword for an overhand slash. Gharlas was trying to scramble out from under Volitar’s body, and I had a flash vision of the way Molik’s head had bounced when it fell of the lifeless trunk of the roguelord. The face changed to Gharlas’s narrow features.

Off with his head, I thought, amazed at the savagery of my hate. Off with the sonofabitch’s head.

I put all my strength into that death stroke—but a sword came out of nowhere to block it, and Gharlas slipped out of reach.

Furious and frustrated, I jumped back to get room to fight this new threat. My stomach started to churn when I saw what it was. Thymas was coming after me, his face contorted with self-disgust. Gharlas was controlling him; it probably amused him to see Thymas’s reaction to what he was being forced to do. The boy’s face was a pathetic plea for help—but how could I help him?

It was all I could do to stay alive.

Dharak hadn’t exaggerated his son’s fighting skills. He must have been a little slower, a little clumsier, than usual, moving under the control of another man’s mind. But he was still a strong and cunning fighter.

I backed away from him, blocking when I had to, trying desperately to think of a way to avoid hurting him and still save my own skin.

I couldn’t find one. I had to fight back.

I aimed a two-handed swing to his midsection. He blocked it, slid his blade across mine, and brought his sword down hard, slashing at my left shoulder. I ran out from under it; he changed it to a diagonal cut at my legs. I dodged his blade, and managed to score a cut across his left forearm. I backed away, facing him, waiting.

I tripped over Volitar, and landed flat on my back. The wind was knocked out of me, and my vision blurred for a moment. When it cleared, Thymas had kicked away Rika and was standing over me, arms and sword raised in almost the same position I had held over Gharlas.

Thymas didn’t move. His face was a mask of sickness and fury.

I lifted my head and looked around. Across the room, Tarani was standing stiffly, awkwardly. Gharlas was beside her. He grinned, and came toward me, holding Tarani’s sword. He stopped beside the furnace and lifted a square ceramic tile out of the floor. He dropped Tarani’s sword into a hole; we could hear it sliding into the fire bowl underneath the furnace.

Keeshah!* I called.

Coming, Keeshah answered, impatient and anxious. City big. Can’t smell.

I’ll show you, I said, and we merged for an instant, into that closeness that required no images for complete communication. Do you know it now?

Yes, Coming.

Bring Ronar.

His reply was the equivalent of a snort of derision, as if to say that Ronar could find his own way; Keeshah didn’t have time to fool with him right now.

I broke the contact, which had taken only a few seconds, to find Gharlas standing over me, still grinning.

“Well, my dear,” he said, over his shoulder, “now that you are safely tied down, I wonder if this meddling fool means as much to you as your uncle. I offer the same trade—his life for the duplicate Raira. I think I’ll let you speak, so that you may agree.”

“You’ll kill us all, anyway, you bastard,” she said.

Gharlas’s face turned dark, and a pulse beat visibly at his temple. He strode over to her, struck her across the face. She glared at him, her limbs frozen awkwardly.

“Bastard,” she said softly.

He hit her again, so hard that I winced. Her headscarf was knocked loose; it twisted so that its trailing edge fell across her right shoulder.

What the hell is she doing? Did Volitar’s suicide send her over the edge? Or … could she be stalling Charles again?

I looked at Thymas. There was a fierce light, joy or fury, shining in his eyes.

She’s leaving herself trapped, and helping Thymas break Charles’s control. The girl has courage. It will be tougher with Thymas, but she’s had practice now, and she’s madder.

“There is more than one way to die,” Gharlas hissed at Tarani. “Volitar’s death will look easy, compared to this one, I promise you. Now, where is that duplicate?”

She hesitated just long enough to irritate him into lifting his hand again and then she spoke out in a hurry. “Under the workbench behind Thymas. Where the table joins the wall, there is a loose tile with a compartment behind it.”

“Show me,” he said, and grabbed her arm. She walked with him, jerkily, toward the table. As she passed me, she looked down. Again, I nodded. There was no smile in reply this time, only a grim determination.

She knelt on the floor and crawled under the worktable. Gharlas bent down to see what she was doing. Thymas gave a violent start, then grinned savagely and turned toward Gharlas and lifting his sword for a killing blow.

Either Gharlas had heard something, or he had sensed the abrupt break of his control. Before Thymas was halfway turned and Gharlas surged up from his bent-over position. His knife was in his hand, and he drove it to the hilt into the boy’s side. He released the knife to catch Thomas’s sword hand, as the boy struggled to bring the sword to its target. Then Thomas’s face went blank suddenly, and he sagged to his knees. He fell over and lay still on the floor.

Gharlas held the sword and stood over me, his face growing dark with rage.

“Is this more of your doing?” he accused me. “For yourself, I could see it. But for this one—how—?”

“I am the one who did that, Gharlas,” Tarani said. As she stood up, the edge of the worktable caught her loosened headscarf and pulled it clear off. Ever since we had come into the workshop, she had been kneeling, crouching, fighting. Now she raised herself to her full height, and gathered around her the regal bearing she had worn at our first meeting. The dark head fur was startling, revealed so suddenly, and Gharlas stepped back a pace in surprise.

“My name is Tarani,” she said. Strength seemed to reverberate in the low voice. “I see now why Volitar so hated the misuse of power. You will pay for what you did to him, Gharlas!”

Seeing them face to face this way pointed up the similarities between them: their height and general slimness, the unusual head fur, the glow behind their eyes. Gharlas seemed to see it, too, for he fell back further, and his face went pale.

“You look like—your name—Tarani? Where have I heard it—the illusionist!” he gasped. “The dancer who can cast images!”

“Do you think only Eddartans can carry power?” she challenged. She stepped forward, following him, but aiming her steps toward Rika, which had skidded toward the furnace, and lay across another of the fuel doors in the floor.

“But you—” He stopped suddenly. He cringed—physically cringed—away from Tarani. “Great Zanek, you’re her daughter. I thought Volitar was trying to hide his past from his niece. But he was hiding you from me. He knew I’d see the resemblance at once.

“The old fool succeeded, too, may his tusks rot! Not until this very moment did I connect Tarani the illusionist with his phantom ‘niece.’”

A derisive laugh exploded from him, and was quickly choked of “And I thought I had played a fine trick on Pylomel. I give Volitar credit. I never thought to hide the child of the High Lord’s promised wife!”

He had been backing toward the workshop door that opened directly out on the road. Thymas’s sword was in his right hand; his left hand clutched the pouch that held the Raira. Tarani had moved within reaching range of Rika. Gharlas was facing the girl, now, with a shaky confidence. He spared a glance for me, but looked quickly back at Tarani.

“You will both have to die,” he said matter-of-factly. “But not today. We will settle this another time.”

He dashed out the door.

I threw myself across the floor and caught up Rika, even as Tarani was reaching for it. She struggled with me until I said, “Keeshah.” She understood, and let go.

I saw her kneel beside Thymas, as I went out the door. Keeshah, how close are you?

Almost there.

As I came outside, I saw Gharlas running around the hexagonal stone foundation of the workshop, heading down the slope. I ran after him, with too little caution. I skidded and fell in the slick grass. I grabbed the stone wall and hauled myself to my feet, slipping and swearing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of color at the left hand edge of the wall.

Gharlas—waiting for me! I thought. I tried frantically to get my balance, but the slope was steep and uneven, and my feet kept striking it wrong. A figure ran out, away from the wall, and behind me.

There was a sharp, piercing pain in my back, just above my right shoulder blade. A knife. It pulled out, struck again.

I let myself fall and slide down the steep slope. I skidded to a halt, a few feet past the lower edge of the workshop. I pulled myself up on one knee and brought Rika around to face Gharlas.

It wasn’t Gharlas.

It was the little man who had tried to steal my money pouch the night before.

Rikardon?

Don’t let Gharlas get away, Keeshah, I ordered. No matter what happens to me. Understand?

Yes.

The thief skidded to a stop a safe distance away from my sword point. He grinned at me.

“Handsome sword,” he said. “Even in the poor street lighting, I could tell it wasn’t bronze. Only one sword in the world made of rakor. Only one man who’d have it.”

He was moving back and forth in front of me, the knife ready in his hand. I kept the sword between us, fighting the weakness creeping into my bones.

If I pass out, he’ll kill me. Why is this happening now, of all times? Damn you and your reward, Worfit! In the back of my mind, I could picture Gharlas walking away, without a care in the world. No—Keeshah will get him.

“Thought you’d be safe, hiding inside your headscarf?” the thief sneered, lunging in on my left side. I slashed at him; he ducked and retreated. “I wasn’t looking at faces,” he said, moving back and forth again. “I was watching for that sword. When I saw you with Tarani, I knew where you’d be—I only needed to wait for you.”

He moved in close on the right, and I made the sword follow him. I had to hold it with both hands, now.

He moved further right; I twisted to face him. Then, suddenly, he leaped to the left and lunged in past my guard. As though I were watching a slow-motion film, I saw the dagger drawn back in the man’s fist, ready to gut-stab me.

Something white flashed in front of the man, and he screamed. He brought his free hand up to his face, but not before I had seen the livid, bleeding wound that crossed his face diagonally, exposing bone at cheek, nose, and chin.

Lonna pulled up her dive, flew back to attack the man with claws and bloody beak. The gentle, hooting call was silent now; she uttered a piercing shriek as her claws sank into the man’s forearm. He dropped the knife.

I staggered up and followed the struggling pair. “Lonna, enough,” I said. My voice was barely a whisper, but the bird understood. She disengaged, flew upward, hovered over us, beating her wings slowly in the air.

I fell forward, driving Rika straight through the man’s midsection. I landed on the grass and rolled a few feet downhill, leaving wet red spots where I passed.

What’s happened to Gharlas? I wondered urgently. Where is he?

I propped myself up on my left elbow, and forced my vision to focus as I searched the downslope for his running form. I spotted him, running across the grassy field between this row of workshop and the next one. He hadn’t reached road were two large-size cats, one on the heels of the other, both of them making a riotous noise. I felt such a sweeping relief that I could spare the energy for a small chuckle at the confusion the sha’um must have left behind them in the congested downtown area of the city.

But the next minute, I wasn’t laughing

Ronar was chasing Keeshah. Mad with rage and grief, lacking even Thymas’s insincere control, Ronar was giving free rein to his old grudge against my sha’um. He didnt care about Gharlas. Considering how suddenly Thymas had been wounded, and how quickly he had lost consciousness it was possible that Ronar didn’t even know about Gharlas. To Ronar’s perception, the last danger Thymas had faced might have been me. That would amplify his fury toward Keeshah.

Keeshah angled away from the road toward Gharlas, who skidded and scrambled on the hillside, trying to stop his headlong run. When Keeshah was barely thirty feet from the terrified man—three strides for the huge cat—Ronar made a tremendous leap, and landed half across Keeshah’s back. His claws caught Keeshah’s side and back, and his teeth sank into Keeshah’s tan haunch.

I felt it.

Keeshah roared with pain, dragged Ronar a few steps toward Gharlas, and then couldn’t stand it anymore. He threw himself over on the ground and brought his hindclaws up under Ronar’s belly. Ronar let go his hold and hacked away. Keeshah leaped to his feet, and the two cats circled warily, heads down, teeth bared, neck fur flared. They grumbled and challenged, the terrible sound of their voices floating out across the city and drawing a crowd of people up the hill.

Gharlas edged around the angry sha’um, moving downhill again. I saw him go with a despairing acceptance. Keeshah’s fighting instincts had been roused by Ronar and he needed them, undistractedly, to defend himself against the other sha’um.

The world started to wheel slowly through my blurry eyesight. I remembered what Gharlas had said, and I believed it. One day, it would be settled. There would be another chance.

I began to yield to the faintness; my supporting arm slipped out from under me. I lay on the ground and watched as the sha’um closed again, teeth and claws of each cat finding targets in the other animal. I heard the angry roaring dimly.

I reached out for Keeshah’s mind, gently. I didn’t want to distract him, but I needed to speak to him before I lost consciousness.

I will not die, I told him. And Thymas may not he dead. For his sake, spare Ronar if you can. But oh, God, please take care of yourself. Please

22

In the instant I was awake, I was running with Keeshah. His mind held me with him, as he slipped through the shadows of a tall orchard, then broke free into the bright daylight of a yearling lot. He ran right over the young trees; they scratched at his belly.

I didn’t try to think. I accepted Keeshah’s joyous welcome, and let myself share his strength and contentment. It was a gentle awakening. Sharing those first moments with the sha’um was a cushion from reality. At first I thought we were back in Raithskar, returning to the city from our picnic. Gradually, I sorted out what had happened. I became aware of the pain in my right shoulder, and of the stinging of Keeshah’s many wounds—along his flanks, across his back, most painfully across his chest—as he stretched his muscles in the run.

What happened, Keeshah?* I asked finally. Is Ronar alive?

Yes.

And Thymas?

Him, too.

What about Gharlas?

Gone, Keeshah told me with some embarrassment Sorry.

It’s not your fault. You tried. Were you hurt badly?

Could I run? he snorted. Stupid.

I laughed out loud, ignoring the pain in my shoulder. “That’s a welcome sound,” Tarani said. I opened my eyes to see her kneeling at my right side, smiling gently, sadly. One side of her face was a dark bruise.

”Tarani, I’m so sorry about Volitar,” I said.

”We did our best to save him,” she said, shrugging. “If only he had told me the truth long ago!”

Say that once for me, too, I thought. If only Thanasset had told me what the Ra’ira is. Or Dharak. Surely Serkajon had to tell his Lieutenant about the stone’s powers, in order to persuade him to abandon the Kingdom. If Serkajon’s boot design has been passed through all these generations, surely such an important secret…

Dharak was trying to decide whether to tell me, that first day, I realized. Just before Thymas burst into the room. Then he found out that Thanasset had given me Serkajon’s sword and he assumed that Thanasset had told me everything.

Two near misses. Such near misses. Oh, well.

I brought my mind back to the present.

“Volitar did his best for you, too,” I said to Tarani. “He was a remarkable man. I wish I’d had a chance to get to know him.”

“Yes, you would have liked each other,” she said. She made a choking sound, and turned her face away.

“How long have I been unconscious?” I asked, changing the subject with little subtlety. My inner awareness told me it was morning, but I couldn’t be sure which morning.

“Only a day.” She faced me, composed again. “I cleaned and wrapped your wounds, but I couldn’t tell how bad they were. I—”

There were deep creases across her brow, and shadows under her eyes. “You’ve been worried about me. And Thymas,” I added. “How is he?”

“Hurt badly, I think,” she said. “He hasn’t awakened, yet.”

I lifted my head and looked around. We were in the upper room of Volitar’s residence. Thymas lay on a pallet not far from me. His skin was pale and waxy. He didn’t look at all good.

“How did you get me up here?” I asked.

“Keeshah helped. I wouldn’t let anyone touch you, after that man tried to kill you. Keeshah has stayed nearby most of the time; you are safe here.”

“You sent Lonna to me,” I said. “She saved my life.”

“Fair payment,” she said, awkwardly, “of a debt long overdue.”

“At Inid, you told Thymas you had put Molik in the past, where he belonged. The incident in Thagorn belongs there, too.” I brought my left hand across my body and opened it to her. “Agreed?”

She caught my fingers tightly with both her hands and smiled shakily. “Agreed.” She let me go, and my hand dropped to my chest. Its weakness surprised me.

I must have lost a lot of blood.

“Do you think you could eat something?” she asked, noticing my sudden alarm.

“Now that you mention it, I think I could eat a lot of something.”

She brought me a thin rafel, and helped me to sit up and lean against the wall. A folded pallet protected my injured shoulder. My right arm was useless, my left hand weak and awkward. I didn’t object when she offered to manage the fork-tined spoon for me. The rafel was hot and filling; I had to quit after only a few bites. I felt stronger, but very tired.

“Keeshah said he didn’t kill Ronar,” I said, as Tarani helped me to lie down again. “I’d expect him to be howling to get to Thymas.”

“He was doing that, last night,” she said. “He was in a lot of pain, I’m sure. I tried to help him clean the deeper wounds, but he wouldn’t let me near him. I think he might have attacked me again, if Keeshah hadn’t been right there with me.

“This morning, he was gone.”

“Couldn’t you have just put him to sleep,” I asked, “and fixed him up, whether he liked it or not?”

“A sha’um?” She actually laughed. It was a rich, deep sound. I liked it. “A sha’um won’t do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

“But—Keeshah in Thagorn—Ronar and Keeshah both, the morning you came into our camp—”

“And when Ronar tried to kill me? How effective was my power then? I had shocked Thymas by wanting to ride, and Ronar had stopped trusting me. So I was helpless against him.”

I stared at her, thinking about it.

Is she saying that if a rider is susceptible to her power, so is his sha’um? I wondered. No, that doesn’t work. I’m immune, but she can charm Keeshah. And her illusions worked for Thymas, even when Ronar continued to be unmanageable.

She said “trust.” Certainly Thymas’s devotion had a large dent in it, after Tarani and rode off together, but his trust didn’t get damaged until we reached Chizan. Now does that apply to Keeshah, though? After the performance in Thagorn I really thought that Tarani was in Wofit’s pay. Didn’t I?

Keeshah, Tarani says her power doesn’t work on you unless you want it to. Is that true?

Yes.

Why did you let her put you to sleep in Thagorn?

You said to find her. I found her. Sleep felt good.

I counted to ten, slowly. Could he really have taken my instructions that literally?

I thought she was a criminal! I insisted.

No, you didn’t.

I started to argue, but stopped myself. The day of our picnic, Keeshah had read my feelings on a deeper level than I could reach consciously.

What did I think of her? I asked him.

You knew her. You wanted her.

So he had sensed what I had felt on meeting Tarani, that strange feeling of recognition and immediate interest. Probably those had been no more than her resemblance to Gharlas and my fascination with her power—but they had been sincere at the time.

But—after the assassination attempt—

Did I trust her, Keeshah?

Yes.

I accepted it. I had kept reminding myself not to believe her, while she was telling me about Volitar and Molik. I had never once taken my own advice.

I sighed, and smiled at Tarani, who had watched me steadily through the few seconds my conversation with Keeshah had taken.

“I think I understand,” I said.

“Good. Because I believe you’re like the sha’um. My power will work if you let it. You’ll need deep rest to heal properly. Will you let me give you sleep?”

Thymas will be awake soon, I thought. That is, if he’s going to wake up at all. It will be easier for her, if there is only one of us to care for at a time. I remember how Keeshah felt—so peaceful.

”I’ll try,” I told her. I closed my eyes.

The humming started, and I focused all my attention on it. The tones vibrated through my body, draining the tension from the muscles, pulling away the pain, slowing my mind.

My body was heavy, relaxed, and peaceful. My mind floated in blankness, listening. There was almost a melody to the sounds Tarani was making. If I listened closely, I would be able to find it, remember it. I searched for the melody … searched for it … searched… .

The first sensation to greet me, when I woke up this time, was intense hunger. I sat up, amazed that my shoulder flexed easily, though it twinged mightily.

Tarani had her back to me. She was giving Thymas small spoonfuls of soup.

“Hey!” I said. “Welcome back to the living!”

Tarani jumped at the sound of my voice, splashing soup on Thymas’s bare chest. His middle was wrapped in bandages.

“Good morning,” Tarani said, laughing and mopping up the mess. “Hungry?”

”Starving,” I said. “But I can wait.”

Thymas turned his head toward me. There was color in his skin again. There were also deep lines around his mouth, and a shadow in his eyes.

`I’m glad you’re still with us,” I said gently, sobered by his pain. “How is Ronar?”

He took a shallow, careful breath. “Hurt, but healing,” he panted. “Like me.” Suddenly he burst out: “Why aren’t we dead? Because of us, Gharlas got away!” His shoulders had come off the pallet, but they fell back now, and his arms folded across the bandage. He closed his eyes, and suffered in silence.

When his breathing became even again, I said: “Thymas, listen to me.” He opened his eyes. “Nothing that has happened can be changed now. Don’t agonize over it. Concentrate on getting back your strength.”

His eyelids flickered, and then closed. Tarani put her hand on his forehead, hummed a single tone, and he was sleeping deeply.

Tarani fed me, helped me take care of some necessary functions and put down a fresh pallet, hanging the old out on the porch to air, then put me back to sleep.

I was able to get up and around on my own the next morning. After Tarani had tended to Thymas, I insisted that she get some rest, herself. She curled up in the corner and slept for the rest of the day. I was glad to see, when she got up, that the hollow look around her eves was gone. She woke up Thymas to give him some dinner. I helped her lift him and put down a fresh pallet.

Two days later, three of us walked down the hill to the nearest public bathhouse. Dyskornis wasn’t like Raithskar, with water supplied through pipelines and tanks to even house. Water had to be delivered in velk-drawn carts, and nobody in Dyskornis would come near Volitar’s house. We— and Keeshah—were major celebrities. There was usually a small crowd of curious people, looking up at the workshop from a safe distance down the hill.

Tarani had walked into town once to get water and supplies, and again to arrange for her uncle’s cremation. But she had been anxious about us, and in a hurry to get back. Now we made the trip together, moving at a pace comfortable for Thymas, who still hurt a lot. We were glad of the fresh air, and of the prospect of being clean again. It surprised me to think that it had been more than two weeks since we had left Thagorn, but it seemed a much longer time since I had last bathed.

Free, at last, of the dust we had carried out of the Zantil Pass, we walked back up the hill. Keeshah, who had planted himself conspicuously outside the bathhouse, ran across the fields around us, rolling in the grassy plants and jumping around like a kitten. His wounds were no more than dark, thin lines. Tarani’s skill had helped all of us to heal ourselves much faster than usual.

All at once, Keeshah stiffened up, and his neck fur began to rise.

Ronar was limping toward us across the field. He was skinny and bedraggled.

I had put Thymas’s right arm across my shoulders to help support him, when he had admitted to being tired. Now he pushed me away and moved out, slowly, on his own.

Stay back, Keeshah, I warned.

Tarani and I watched as Thymas went out to meet Ronar.

The boy’s pale golden head fur stood out sharply against the cat s blood-darkened shoulder as he hugged his sha’um. Then they walked together toward Keeshah, who crouched defensively.

Steady. Wait and see what they want.

Thymas stopped and stood unsupported, weaving slightly, while Ronar moved closer to the other sha’um. Ronar stopped about three yards from Keeshah, and looked back at Thymas. Then he took two more steps forward, and lowered himself stiffly to the ground. He flopped over on his side, and stretched out his neck, exposing his throat to Keeshah.

“No!” Tarani gasped.

But Keeshah didn’t close in for the kill. He lifted his head; he lifted his head and sounded a high-pitched roar of triumph, an acceptance of Ronar’s surrender.

Thymas collapsed to the ground. Tarani and I rushed over to him. He hadn’t passed out; he’d just lost the strength in his legs.

“Keeshah would have killed Gharlas,” Thymas gasped, as we reached him, “if Ronar hadn’t interfered. My sha’um hated yours, because I hated you … Captain. I never kept the spirit of my promise to Dharak. And now I have let the Ra’ira escape.”

I couldn’t stand the misery in his face, his voice.

“Not for long, Thymas,” I said. “We’ll be going after him, as soon as you’re well.”

“As soon as I—but he has four days’ head start already!” Thymas protested. “You and Keeshah are healed—go after him now, before he gets away again!”

“Here, look at the sha’um,” I said, lifting his shoulders from the ground. Ronar had rolled up into a crouch, and Keeshah was licking a nasty-looking wound just behind the other sha’um’s head, where Ronar couldn’t possibly reach. “We’re a team, Thymas. When we go after Gharlas, we’ll go together.”

23

After Tarani and I had helped Thymas, back up the hilt, and he was resting, Tarani put Ronar to sleep in the shade beside the workshop. She came back in and found me sitting at one of the work table, working with brush and parchment.

“What are you doing?”

“Writing letters,” I said. “When I left Raithskar, I had planned to get back by now. There are people there who will worry.”

“Family?” she asked.

My mind was still on the letter, so I answered absently: “Yes, Markassets father and aunt.”

“Thymas told me that you were Markasset, before your name was changed.”

Ooops

I looked up at her. She was standing with her arms folded over her chest, her hip braced against the table. She was looking at me speculatively.

“‘Double-minded’?” she said. “I think I’ve suspected it all along. You’re a Visitor, aren’t you?”

I had a strong urge to tell her the absolute truth, to explain to someone that I was alien to this world. But I checked it.

“Yes,” I said. “And, before you ask, you’ve never heard of me. I’m not Serkajon.”

She laughed, and again I thought how much I enjoyed the sound of her laughter. “I was thinking exactly that,” she admitted.

“My being a Visitor—does it bother you?”

She sobered, and looked at me directly with those expressive, dark eyes. “It’s why we’re here right now, isn’t it?”

I sighed. “I can’t help but think so, Tarani. A moon ago, I was making plans to settle down in Raithskar, and let Zaddorn—the Chief of Peace and Security—take care of Gharlas. Then things started happening.

“First, I was running from Worfit. Then I was chasing you. Then I was trying to help Volitar. But all of it led me to one place—this workshop, face to face with Gharlas. It just seems that I was meant to find out what the Ra’ira is, and how dangerous it can be. Gharlas will turn the world upside down, if I don’t stop him.”

“If you don’t stop him,” she repeated thoughtfully. “You— because you can resist his power, even as it is increased by the Ra’ira. Thymas—he is part of it, too, I sense that. And me, Rikardon. You have been led to me, because I am a weapon of opposition. I will be coming with you, won’t I?”

I held out my hand, and Tarani placed hers in it, briefly. “I didn’t feel I could speak for you, Tarani, but I hoped you would want it this way. We won this battle, by virtue of surprise. He must have learned about me through the Ra’ira’s thought-reading power, but he didn’t see the significance of my ‘doubleness’ until we tested one another. He won’t underestimate me again. And he still has every reason to want that duplicate stone—

“It is here, isn’t it?”

She jumped slightly, startled.

“I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve been back in the workshop since I took Volitar out … just a minute.” She went to her knees on the floor, and crawled under the table.

“The hiding place is exactly where you told Gharlas it was?” I asked.

“Surely,” she said, her voice sounding odd through the wood and tile of the tabletop. “I was afraid he would know it, if I lied.” I heard something scrape, then Tarani backed out from under the table and sat on the floor. In her hands, she held a brass-hinged wooden box.

“Volitar told me where this was, many years ago,’ Tarani said. “He wanted me to know about it, in case of sudden death, but I’ve never seen what is in it. I suppose, now, that he was in constant fear of being recognized and killed or, worse, sent back to Eddarta.”

I tried not to sound impatient. “Open it.”

She did. She lifted out a gorgeous blue stone.

“If I didn’t know that wasn’t real . .” I said, extending my hand. Tarani put the large, irregular, blue chunk of glass on my palm. I held the thing up to the light, looked through it. The interior flaws were there, the color was perfect—as well as I could remember it.

“I don’t know much about glassmaking, I said, but I do know this must have and taken hours and hours of work. Layers of glass, heated and cooled unevenly to make stress lines, reheated so the next layer would bond without a mark 

”You know a lot about glassmaking,” Tarani said. ”Look, here is one that failed.”

She held up another glass the same size as the one I held. But it, piece, the same size and shape hers, the blue color was visible faintly, deep down in the centre. The outside of the copy was crazed, all different colors spreading around the surface in random distribution.

“Why, there is something else in here,” she said setting the damaged copy on the floor. “A pouch and— it looks like an old letter.”

She opened the pouch, and poured coins out into her hand. She drew a startled breath at their quantity. Some of them spilled over, rolled and bounced on the floor. I picked one up that had come to rest near my foot. It was a gold twenty-dozak piece.

“How could he have saved all this?” she wondered. “He never, seemed to sell more than he needed to, to keep us going.”

“It looks to me like he’s had these awhile,” I said, holding out the coin to her. “This is an Eddartan coin, graced with a picture of Gharlas’s pal, Pylomel.” The face was sensuous and arrogant, with some resemblance to Gharlas. “Maybe the letter—?”

She poured the coins back into the pouch, spilling some more. But she didn’t bother picking them up; she was opening the folded parchment carefully. She made a soft sound, then began reading aloud, hesitating now and then over the faded ink.

” ‘I have only a moment and I must take this chance to let you know that I am well. Pylomel was angry when his informants brought me back to Eddarta, but I have convinced him that my going was the whim, soon regretted, of a headstrong girl. It suits his self-esteem to believe that only my pride has kept me from him. There has been a public reconciliation between our families. He and I are to marry in three days.

” ‘I have accepted my fate, and so must you, dear one. I will not try to escape again, for then even dense Pylomel would guess the truth—that I was not alone when I ran away the first time. I cannot leave, and you must not return; the secret, cherished knowledge that you and Tarani are free of this hateful life is all that makes the prospect of my imminent marriage bearable. The High Lord must never suspect never—that I bore a child during the blessed year we spent together.

” ‘Let Tarani believe that her parents are both dead, darling. Though it will hurt you to say it, it will quiet her questions.

” ‘My body is lost to you, but not my love. That will be yours always. Zefra.’ “

She folded the parchment again, pressed it to her chest, and closed her eyes. “He was my father,” she said after a moment. “Not my uncle. My father.”

“That’s the way it looks,” I said. “I guess this changes things a little.”

Her eyes opened. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the letter,” I said, waving my hand at the parchment. “All that punishment Volitar took from Gharlas before we got here—he wasn’t hiding a chunk of glass, Tarani, he was hiding that letter.”

“Yes, I see that,” she said impatiently. “He was protecting me from Gharlas. But I don’t understand—”

“He was protecting Zefra. Assuming she’s still alive, what do you suppose Pylomel would do; if he found out she’s been deceiving him for twenty years?”

She worried her right tusk with her tongue as she thought about it. “You’re trying to tell me that I should stay away from Eddarta to keep my mother safe? But Gharlas does know about me, Rikardon. She’s already in danger.”

“Not as much as if you took your look-alike face back home, Pylomel can’t be too fond of Gharlas; he’d be a fool to accept such an accusation without proof.”

“And I’d be all the proof he needed,” she concluded. She picked up the scattered coins and sat quietly for a moment, letting them sift through her fingers and rattle into the box. Suddenly she dumped them all in, set the parchment on top of them, and clapped the lid down. “There’s something you’ve overlooked,” she said, getting to her feet. ”Two things, in fact.”

“I’m listening.”

“First, Volitar’s death. Gharlas had seen me; Volitar must have known the truth would occur to him—sooner or later, with or without the confirmation of the letter. The cause he had protected with his body, with his … pain … was already lost. Why did he kill himself?”

I started to say something but she cut me answering her own question. She had begun pacing about, thinking out loud as she walked.

“I’ve told you what Volitar taught me. What he believed with all his being  that no man has the right to impose his will on another person. When Gharlas had him pinned down as a shield against your sword, Volitar was a toll being used to control us—to control me. He destroyed himself, rather than be used that way. He might have done the same thing when Molik’s men took him, if he had realized what was happening.

“He must have hated it that thought of our safety kept my mother in Eddarta—but for my sake, he he accepted her choice. Now Gharlas has the capability of using me against her and her against me. If she is still alive, which we don’t know for sure. I have no more liking for being someone else’s weapon than Volitar had, Rikardon. And I’m tired of my family being used against me. I want to find my mother if I can, and free her from Pylomel, if I can.”

She paused, and turned toward me.

“The other thing you’ve overlooked is something we’ve just discussed. I’m part of your team. I’m going with you. Rikardon.”

I felt the return of the sensation I’d had, the night it had occurred to me that I might be immune to Gharlas’s power. It didn’t frighten me, now. I welcomed it, drew it in, let it fill me.

I had told Thanasset in my letter—in cautious terms—that I had discovered what he had wanted to tell me. He would know what was happening, and he’d tell Ferrathyn and Zaddorn to look for other job applicants. I’d have to write a letter to Illia, too, and tell her to stop waiting. I’d do it partly because though I had this need to try to stop Gharlas, I didn’t have any intuition of what the outcome would be.

But partly, I would tell Illia goodbye because I knew I had turned a corner in this new life of mine. A tranquil, domestic scene in Raithskar just wasn’t in my future. l was headed in the opposite direction.

“You and I and Thymas,” I agreed softly. “And Keeshah and Ronar and Lonna. Well go all the way to Eddarta, if necessary.”

End PROCEEDINGS:

INPUT SESSION TWO

—I can go no further, Recorder.

—We will separate our minds from the All-Mind … and I shall withdraw my mind from yours… You seem to be in pain.

—My right shoulder hurts.

—That is the lingering memory of your stab wounds. It is regretful that you must suffer through every injury again.

—But I may relive the joys, as well. It is a good balance. I found the Recording easier, this time. But I am tired.

—We will continue later. Rest now. Sleep…