Nisk's ears flattened as they rode down into the valley toward Jhii Hold. Two granite towers reached up into the night sky like huge blunt-tipped claws. Unlike the traditional structure of a males' house, much of this hold extended aboveground, rendering it vulnerable to attack. It was a reckless, foolish way to live, but then he had always found Jhii to be a boastful, swaggering sort of Line, far more attendant to appearance than substance.
As they descended, the night air grew warmer, filled with the richness of newly turned ground from a series of fields and the aroma of ripening grain. When they reached the well-lit main entrance flanked by the two towers, the taciturn cub-trainer gestured for them to dismount. Nisk and the Black/on/black surrendered their footsore yirn to an old scarred female, who bared her broken teeth and hissed at the unheard-of sight of two adult males in such a place. Their captor muttered an aside to the two cublings in the flickering torchlight and sent them running ahead into the hold, then motioned with her spear for Nisk and the silent Black/on/black standing behind him to enter as well.
Fur bristled along Nisk's neck and shoulders. From earliest memory, all cublings were taught no adult male ever returned to the female territory of the Lines. Forcing males to enter the very heart of Jhii was an insult of the gravest sort to all concerned. Any scout worth her meat would have questioned males found this close to the hold, but then let them go on their way. They had committed no offense, crossed no boundaries, nor approached females out of season. They had not even brought down Jhii game, though their stomachs were hollowed out with hunger. He found it insufferable to be treated with such wanton disrespect. If it had been only himself involved, he might well have fought to the death, rather than bear such an insult, but the emerging pattern he sensed here was too big for any ordinary individual to understand or control. The Black/on/black must survive to assume his role once all elements were in place, and so Nisk stayed his temper, though it grieved him sorely to be shamed in this way.
He glanced back at the Black/on/black's glazed, exhausted eyes; it was obvious he had drawn upon the Old Power with no idea of how to control or replenish it. He needed rest and food now, and then training in the near future, or he might well die in his next attempt.
The twisting stone passages were only dimly lit, interrupted by frequent doorways. The hold was scented with mountain herbs, and Nisk caught glimpses of females hunched over small tables, often with the gleam of gold, copper, or silver in their hands. Jhii had long been preeminent among the Lines for skill with metals.
A small yellowish-gray servant cowered aside at their approach, averting its face as was entirely proper. The cub-trainer passed it without a glance, but Nisk caught a flicker of dismay in the Black/on/black's weary eyes as he was forced to step around it. Following the winding hall downward, they passed room after room, taking first one fork and then another until Nisk worried that he was quite lost. Finally, the cub-trainer stopped and scratched the outside of a large arched doorway.
Something rustled within. "Come."
She looked back at them, curling her lips over teeth that gleamed in the half-light. "If you value your worthless male hides, think before you speak."
Nisk shouldered past her, mindful of his bloodstained robes hanging in shreds. In the middle of a lushly appointed room crouched the same two chastened cublings they had encountered on the ridge. The one with whom the Black/on/black had fought had not yet had her wounds tended and blood still matted her dark-brown fur.
The room possessed an air of great antiquity with its rough-hewn wooden posts and whitestone walls. Lit by sweet-smelling gyb torches, it was elegant and well ventilated, but cluttered with heaped-up carpets and piles of richly worked cushions, as well as overflowing platters of meat, fruit and breads. The aroma of freshly killed zzil tormented Nisk's empty stomach, and he saw the Black/on/black's ears twitch. At the far end of the chamber, a plump dark-brown female, robed in the rich dark purple of Jhii, reclined on a mound of pillows. An atmosphere of indolence permeated the scene, at odds with the studied industry of the other Jhii they had just passed.
Nisk recognized the scent of Beshha, present Line Mother to Jhii, although she rarely attended the Council of Lines in person. Strangely inactive to hold such a position, she preferred to send one of her direct-daughters rather than travel herself. Everyone had been shocked a handful of seasons before when she had somehow ousted the feisty old Line Mother, Menn, and taken Jhii under her claws.
Shifting her position, Beshha studied the Black/on/black with narrowed eyes. "Two lone males broaching Jhii land." She laced her fingers across her stomach and blinked thoughtfully at them. "Well, you will find no wantons among the daughters of Jhii. None here mate out of season."
Nisk stepped forward. "We had no intention of approaching your daughters. We were skirting your boundary, nothing more."
She flicked an ear at him, then picked up a handful of blue-shelled cedt nuts from the copper dish at her side. "You smell vaguely familiar."
"We met in Council," Nisk said, "some time ago."
"Oh, yes—one of the male Leaders, Mimsk—or Ninnk."
"Nisk." He longed to cuff the impudence off her smug brown face. She obviously remembered him. Why pretend otherwise? "I no longer lead, but have accepted the sponsorship of this male. I am taking him into the high country for training."
"I no longer bother with Council meetings since I became Line Mother and discovered what a dreadful bore they are." She heaved to her feet and prowled closer, studying the exhausted Black/on/black. "At any rate, this one is far too old for sponsorship."
Nisk assumed a stance of readiness, muscles tensed, ears up, signalling his willingness to fight should the need arise. Why was she behaving in this way? He was no ordinary unaligned male. She knew him and he had still retained a great deal of status, despite his loss of the Leadership, and the Black/on/black deserved a certain amount of consideration simply for being what he was. "He came to maturity without the benefit of other males and so has special need of training."
Her nostrils flared. She seized hold of the other's arm and brushed his overcoat back, paying no attention as he stiffened at her touch. "Black/on/black!" Her tiny eyes stared at his undercoat. "Syll spoke of such a one after she returned from the Council, but I did not believe her." She glanced at the two cublings. "Get out!"
Ears down, they fled without looking back.
"He reeks of Levv!" Beshha released the Black/on/black's arm and wiped her hands on her purple robes. Nisk watched as she settled heavily back down onto her cushions with a trace of fear in those small dark eyes. "That problem was supposed to have been solved a long time ago." Her narrow tongue ran across her lips as she turned back to Nisk. "Is that why you have placed him under sponsorship, because of the risk of madness?"
"No." Nisk met her gaze without blinking, but an unbidden snarl rattled in his throat. "This is unpardonable! We have done nothing wrong and you have no reason to detain us."
"A bad business, Levv. Hard to forget." Bracelets clinked as she ran a hand over her ears. "I really can't allow you to go until I think about what pattern may be forming here. Skett?"
The thin dark-brown muzzle of the cub-trainer poked back into the room. "Line Mother?"
"Shut this pair up down in the servants' warrens." Beshha reached for a half-gnawed haunch. "And have more of this freshly killed zzil sent up. I may be up all night considering this matter."
Skett fingered her spear. "You two, come with me and no male tricks."
Nisk's ears flattened, but the Black/on/black was in no shape to fight, and as for himself, he was very curious as to what all this meant. Beshha had some part in this pattern as well, it seemed. The implications made the fur prickle on his back. He motioned for the Black/on/black to follow Skett's wiry dark-brown body out into the passageway.
The cave's entrance was overgrown with gyb bushes. Vexk paused outside to cut a branch for a torch, then struck a spark. The waxy bark gave off a pleasant, herbal scent that brought to mind the long evenings spent soaking in preparation to practice her craft, listening to the quiet slap of water against stone. Behind, she heard the gray-and-white cubling's labored breathing as she struggled up the talus-clogged incline. Vexk glanced back at the young face, noting the drooping ears, the downcast eyes. Despite the brief rest, Khea was exhausted. Seska must have been displeased indeed to dispatch her on two grueling trips between Vvok and the Restorers' Hold in a single day.
A faint hopefulness crinkled the corners of Vexk's eyes. She'd sensed great depth in Khea the first time she had seen her down in the stuffy Vvok servants' warrens, tending to an ailing, almost hairless, pink-skinned alien with no more fuss than if it were one of her own age-mates. But that same depth would also be her undoing. Vexk knew all too well how the empathic sensitivity required of a Restorer made life in the Lines an unending misery.
She ducked her head and led Khea inside, following the sinuous curves and branchings now as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. The sulfuric smell of the pool permeated the air as they walked and she lifted her ears, remembering her first time in this sacred place, an experience both exhilarating and profoundly terrifying. It had taught her not only what she was, but also what she might be if she left Vvok, thereby altering her life forever.
She glanced over her shoulder. "Not much farther now." The gray-and-white ears stirred, but the cubling made no answer. Vexk studied her surreptitiously; Khea might have been her child, if she had taken breeder status. The cubling was beautiful, not just in the natural grace and strength so often possessed by the young, but in the sense of potential she wore like a garment. Like her guild-sisters, Vexk would never bear a cub and had understood that from the beginning, though she had not truly felt the white-hot ache of that sacrifice until much later. Restoration/to/balance was a pattern of the highest order, but demanded far more than most females of her rank would ever willingly surrender.
A heavy, gold-worked tapestry hung across the final opening, depicting scenes from the old tale of "Hallda Third-child," the first Restorer. Holding the flickering torch high, Vexk lifted the edge and motioned to the cubling. Ears flat, Khea slid along the wall into the chamber. The brush of her fur against the stone was overloud in the stillness. Careful of the torch, Vexk allowed the tapestry to fall, sealing them into a large roughly oval chamber. At their feet, the sacred pool stretched from wall to wall. The mineral-rich water steamed up, and the sense of quiescent power was overwhelming.
Vexk lit three more torches from the supply kept in the cave, set them in sconces carved into the gray rock, then wedged the one she carried into another. She gazed into the pool, at her own shimmering paleness reflected beside the cubling's frightened gray-and-white, then knelt and let the strength of this place seep through her, the immensity of it, the trueness, until she was as still within as the surrounding stone.
"Restoration requires more than knowledge," she said quietly. "Herbs and potions and splints could be learned by any early-culled servant." Her eyes roamed the pool's jewellike colors: the white mineral deposits coating the outermost edges, the pale blue of the shallows shading to the startling, deep blue-green of the central hole, which led down into the earth's womb where all such steaming waters were born. "True Restoration requires power."
Trembling, Khea sank to her knees and closed her eyes. "Why are you telling me this? I was not born into your guild." Her voice, strained and thin, reverberated against the curving walls.
"No one is born to the Restorers." Vexk felt the deep ache of that truth, then took a slow, purposeful breath and willed herself back to the calmness of mind and spirit this task required. "Be still. If you listen in this sacred place . . . you can hear the Voice itself." She stepped into the steaming water, then lay back, feeling the tingle of power as the heat penetrated her skin. Her eyes closed and she lost all sense of place and time, no longer aware of the torrid water, or the breath in her chest . . . and it came, as it always did, building without a clear beginning as though it were always there, just waiting to be heard, a wordless strength which became louder and louder until it finally broke like a wave and swept her away to a plane where words and thoughts had no meaning.
It left as it had come, receding imperceptibly, leaving her in the hot embrace of the pool, her body vibrating with power, girded for the coming struggle against death. She opened her eyes and saw the cubling curled up into a tight ball on the rock.
A shudder ran through the gray-and-white body. "Wh-what was—that?" Khea's eyes did not open.
"The Voice." Vexk drew her knees up to her chest, the glorious sound still vibrating through her. "You have been honored. Few experience the power like that, even after many seasons."
"It was terrible—" Khea shuddered again, then opened her eyes just a crack. "And wonderful, both at the same time."
"You were born to be a Restorer." Vexk stood up in the shallows and let water stream from her fur. "I felt it the first time I saw you." She gazed down at her distorted reflection in the pool. "But restoration/to/balance is both a gift and a heavy responsibility. You will have to decide whether to take it up."
Khea rolled up to her knees. "I cannot join the guild—I was born to Vvok!"
"I too was born to Vvok." Vexk thought of the age-mates she had left behind, the cublings she would never bear. "In the end, it makes no difference. We are what we must be, no more, but certainly never any less."
Mimki's red-and-white sides heaved again as Fik watched dispassionately from the other side of the Bearing Chamber. It was too late in the warm season for the young female to be delivering this child. Too late, that is, if she had truly bred during the last Gathering, as she had said. Not late at all, however, if she had disgraced herself, and all of Qartt, by mating after the appointed time.
At any rate, the cub would be born this night, and then, after examining it, Fik would know everything. If the truth were as damaging as she suspected, she would finally have her chance to name a new pattern for Qartt, one of daring and progress and unprecedented reward. She combed the pale-ginger strands of her unbound mane with flexed handclaws, satisfaction crinkling the corners of her eyes.
Mimki, so meek and quiet that she had barely managed to fight her way out of the nursery, happened to be a direct-granddaughter of Chytt, Qartt's very proper Line Mother. Under any other circumstances, she would have been a late cull, assigned to one of the hold crafts which required nothing more than quick hands and average intelligence, but because of her lineage, she had survived every gleaning to finally enter the coveted ranks of the breeders.
Mimki writhed again, raking claws deep into the birthing pallet as the birth pains twisted her insides. Fik prowled the sparely furnished room restlessly, remembering the agony of her own birthings. She had given five living cublings to Qartt, as well as two more who had not drawn breath. This year though, she had purposefully remained barren, resisting the Call of Gathering in order to be ready to seize Qartt, should the opportunity present itself.
Gasping louder this time, Mimki struggled with her pain. Well, Fik told herself, Mimki had sought the rank of breeder, and for such, the season either began in the pain of denial, or ended in the pain of birth, there was no escaping that. Her own trial had come this past season when her body had seethed and burned, demanding that which she was determined to resist. But now, she would seize the first opportunity to take Qartt in her own claws and give the Line over to another more potent pattern, one which would bring them honor and recognition, not the weak, ineffectual one recognized by Chytt.
Mimki cried out in a long shuddering wail. Fik's ears flattened. No doubt Chytt had heard that, even in the middle of the night on another level! Her lips curled over her teeth. Such weakness was too shameful, even if this was Mimki's first time. But even more shameful was the knowledge that Chytt had spared her when other, better females had been culled, never to leave their more deserving mark on the coming generations.
Feet scraped in the passageway, then Gitl poked her yellow-furred head into the room. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Without taking her eyes off Mimki, Fik wrinkled her nose. "Everything goes just as it should."
Gitl hesitated, then crossed to the pallet, her graceful height contrasting with Fik's more compact build. Mimki's eyes clenched shut as another violent contraction wracked her swollen belly. She hung on for several seconds, then released another echoing wail.
If this continued, Fik thought, they would have half the Line down here. This soft-head sounded as though she were dying instead of simply bearing a child!
"Not much longer now." Gitl's yellow-furred hand rested on Mimki's great belly. "Try to be silent so the rest of the hold will not worry." Mimki stared at her with pain-glazed eyes, then tensed as another spasm came. "Good," Gitl said. "Hold on."
Fik watched sourly as Mimki struggled through the contraction without a sound this time. No one had needed to soothe her when her cublings came.
"Almost!" Gitl cried. "Once more and then you will be done!"
Mimki's claws ripped the pallet through another long contraction, then Gitl took the circle of Qartt-blue cloth from Fik's hands and wrapped a tiny red cubling in it. "Solid red!" Her voice was jubilant. "Small, but red as Ankt above, and perfect! No danger of this one being an early cull."
Fik took the bundle into her own hands. As Head Breeder, it fell to her to determine if each cubling was fit to receive its first feeding of warmed blood-and-meat paste, already prepared in a small bowl. Looking down into the tiny pushed-in face, she checked its features: all there. Then she unwrapped the cloth to count limbs and fingers and toes and check proportions. Everything seemed to be in its proper place. Unfortunately, there was no way to tell if it were male or female yet, but a few seasons of the proper diet would resolve that. Just as she was about to wrap it back up, she leaned closer and sniffed, recognizing the familiar musk of Qartt and . . .
Fur rose along her spine as she sniffed again, then whirled upon Mimki with narrowed eyes. "Fool!" She set the tiny cubling on the floor and tried to force Mimki to meet her eyes. "What did you think you were doing? You had to know!"
Exhausted, Mimki only gazed at the wall. Gitl picked the cubling up and folded it to her own body. "What are you talking about? Even if it was bred out of season, it is still a perfect child for Qartt."
Fik sneered at Gitl's stupid yellow face. "Smell it."
Gitl dropped her head and sniffed the cub, then sniffed again, finally raising a stricken face. "Mimki!"
Mimki huddled on the birthing pallet, arms wrapped around her empty belly, straw stuck in her claws.
Fik snarled. "How could you even consider accepting a Qartt male!"
Laying the infant beside its mother, Gitl studied it with shocked eyes. "Our own Line, Mimki, double Qartt! That's—abomination."
"I didn't know," Mimki said softly to the wall, "not at first. I was so ashamed I hadn't conceived at the Gathering, and then later, when I saw him hunting up in our hills, and he was so big and red, the Call came upon me again. I decided it would be better to bear late, than not at all." She closed her eyes. "I was not thinking clearly, and didn't recognize his scent until—after."
Fik scowled. "Take this mistake and dispose of it at once!"
Mimki tried to sit up, but her inner nictitating eye membranes closed and she slumped back.
"Just as I thought." Fik's ears flattened. "Useless in every way. I will do it, and then the Line Mother must be told."
Drawing a forefinger along the cubling's tiny red jaw, Gitl gazed at Fik with naked sorrow. "Why not wait until dawn?"
"You were taught better than that." Fik took the child and thrust it under her arm like a piece of firewood. "The presence of abomination in this hold shames us all."
Well, she told herself, as she followed the maze of corridors up to the outside, Mimki had certainly played into her hands far better than she'd had any right to expect. She had suspected an out of season birth, but not one bred by a male of their own Line as well. Chytt would never recover from the shame.
The cubling whimpered under her arm. Fik stared stonily ahead. The sooner she finished this, the better.
Her free hand stole up to the tender claw tracks across her cheek and ear. She couldn't wait to see Chytt's face upon her return.