From time to time Nisk spoke, but the words were so drawn out, Heyoka could make no sense of them. He could feel nothing but his heart racing in his chest, smell nothing, nor perceive normal color. Everything was remote, hidden behind a cold, impris-oning curtain of shimmering blue, distant and unreal. From the disapproving narrowness of the other male's eyes, it was plain Nisk thought he would die, and perhaps he was right. He would probably be dead already if Nisk weren't pressing food on him whenever possible.
His entire body vibrated with the deadly electric blueness he could not dismiss any more than he had summoned it. Though Nisk insisted he should be able to control it, the bizarre blueshift came when it would, departed in the same fashion, and this time seemed determined to stay, even at the cost of his life. It was a powerful enemy, even more cunning than the flek, leaching his life away while he could do nothing to fight back. He longed to tear into the icy blueness, rend it shred from shred, and find his way back into the realm of the living, but he had no idea of how to begin.
The first time it had touched him, back on Enjas Two, he hadn't had the leisure to think about it or try to understand. Just after dawn, he and Mitsu had been sweeping the beach for flek that might have moved up on their unit's position during the night. Heyoka ranged ahead and kept his head low as he hugged the slope up to higher ground. The breeze shifted and he caught the faint scrabble of flek feet in the sand as well as their nose-burning stink. He dropped behind a hillock of spiny grass and listened; they were out there all right. His fingers tightened around the stock of his laser rifle.
Twenty feet back, he heard Mitsu hit the sand too. On his right, waves hissed against the green beach, creeping gradually closer as high tide came in. His ears twitched as everything stilled. Then, a hundred feet down the beach, a wall of pasty-white bodies erupted over the hill, laying down a deadly sheet of laser fire before them.
Trapped, he called to Mitsu to fall back while he covered her. Almost casually, one of the forwardmost flek glanced his way and fired a bolt of green that seared his right leg from ankle to knee. For a baffling second, he felt nothing, then pain exploded through his brain. The damaged leg gave way, pitching him nose-first, gasping, into the coarse sand. Through a red haze, he heard Mitsu call out that she was coming back for him.
"No!" he shouted hoarsely, trying to wrestle the muzzle of his laser rifle up out of the sand. "Retreat, dammit! That's an order!" The flek fired again, this time missing just by inches to watch him jump. Heyoka crawled toward the rise to his left, dragging his smoking leg behind him.
The flek were almost upon him now, the white sun of Enjas Two mirrored in their stomach-turning red eyes. Laser bolts sizzled over his head from behind as Mitsu tried to back the flek off, but they held their pattern of fire, taking aim with deliberate slowness, playing the sick flek game of blowing an enemy apart one bit at a time. He hoped they would finish him quickly, but that was not the flek way and he knew it.
Green fire flared again. He tensed, but the bolt of energy aimed at his shoulder slowed . . . He wrenched himself aside and saw it splash over the space he had just vacated, fusing the sand into a glassy patch. The line of flek took on a ghostly blue cast, drifting down the beach in an eerie slow motion. Gaps appeared in their pattern of fire.
Dragging himself up on his good knee, he fired through one of the gaps and saw a flek float backwards into the sand, slowly kicking. The line edged closer as he shot through another hole, taking out a second flek. When they returned fire, the bolts oozed toward him like cold tree sap and, even lamed, he was able to hop out of their way. One by one, he took sight on the remaining dozen or so and burned each of them down until he and Mitsu were the only living creatures left on the beach.
Blood thundered in his ears as he balanced there on one leg under the pale-blue sky, the silence around him cold and brittle, the pain in his leg devouring him like a living thing. Mitsu finally reached him, her face as blue as her eyes. Then suddenly without remembering how he had gotten there, he was on his face, snout-down in the sand and the world was normal colored again.
Captain Rajman came to him that evening in the Med unit, demanding to know how he had managed to penetrate a flek firing pattern that efficiently, but Heyoka's tale of blueness that slowed the world down had been dismissed as a side effect of the shock accompanying his injury. In the end, suspecting him of battle fatigue or personality dysfunction, Rajman suspended him, which turned out to be irrelevant, because the Meds said he would never be fit for duty again anyway.
Heyoka glanced down at his bad leg, dangling against the side of the yirn, still encased in the power brace. How long ago had the doctor back at the station given the brace to him? Two days . . . three? Without recharging, the power supply would last only a day or two more.
His yirn plodded to a halt and Nisk twisted around on his mount, motioning with maddening slowness for him to dismount. Heyoka slid down the yirn's shaggy side and hung there as the world spun and his legs threatened to buckle. Nisk disappeared languidly into the brush, then returned some time later and piled an armful of leaves on the ground.
Sleep. Heyoka walked stiffly over to the makeshift bed, then sank onto the pungent blue-tinged leaves and closed his eyes.
Wading into the current, Rakshal dipped cool water from the living heart of the river and bathed the half-healed wounds on his chest. The water sheared around his legs, full of its own confident power. He watched it, musing that in nine more days he would face Jikin's lawful challenge. Since the old male had never shown the slightest inclination toward Leadership previously, this turn of events could only be explained in terms of an arising pattern, not death/in/longing, as he had originally thought, after the appearance of the false Black/on/black, but something bolder, a testing to draw forth the brave and resourceful, storm/against/stone perhaps, or even something else never before named and all the more powerful for it.
Shouts erupted and he glanced downriver at cublings running along the shore, playing at "Dako and Zzil," a youthful game of predator and prey, healthy activity to strengthen their muscles and teach them to hunt as a unit. Because he had been called by the Voice quite young, he'd had little of such games before devoting himself to training with Isen, the old priest who had heard the Voice in this area before him.
Born just after the Outsiders arrived, he had watched his whole life as those around him ignored the patterns that should have shaped their lives. It was a scandalous and well-known fact Outsiders never heard the Voice, nor knew anything of the great patterns, and yet—look at their wealth. They came and went as they pleased from this planet and boasted they held countless other worlds in their clawless fingers. Now the younger males asked why any hrinn should pay heed to the ways of the Voice since it had made no difference in the fortunes of Outsiders. It was obvious the Outsiders had to be scoured from the land so there was no trace they had ever existed. Only then could the people return to their pious ways and avoid the shattering chaos of the before times.
Suddenly the shouts from the game shrilled into alarm. Rakshal splashed toward them as agitated cublings in the shallows pointed downriver. Already several older males were searching the current.
Ears down, a wild-eyed cubling met Rakshal's gaze. "Tama slipped and fell under the water!"
Rakshal appraised the searching males as they waded into the deeper currents without success. They would never find the lost cubling that way. He dropped to his knees on the sand and threw his head back, eyes closed. "Greatness," he whispered, "show these disbelievers the power of your patterns from which they have turned away. Speak of where I may find this child."
Ankt's rays danced hotly on his face as he waited, acutely conscious of the lost cubling, no doubt already drowning. Then suddenly he saw the place clearly in his mind and leaped to his feet, pushing through the searching cublings and older males, struggling to reach the snag of driftwood at the far end of the slippery rocks. He probed under the jammed logs and brushed water-soaked fur. Unable to get a firm grip, he ducked under the clear green water and began to work the cubling's leg out from between the two rocks. Just when he thought his lungs would burst, the leg came free and he surfaced with the youngling's limp body in his arms.
Two males rushed to take the cubling from him and lay the small body on the warm sand, leaving Rakshal to struggle back to shore alone. The other cublings crowded close as old Fihht pressed the water out of the youngster's lungs.
Long blinks later, the cubling coughed, then spit up more water. Wet and breathless himself, Rakshal crouched on the sand, watching as the cubling opened his eyes and blinked weakly up at him. "Never forget," he said, staring down at the cubling's frightened face, "how this day the Voice spoke to save your life." Then he looked up and accepted the weight of the astonished eyes all around him.
The blood-soaked blue carpet had been removed and the flagstone floor scrubbed with fresh sand, but the fragrance of Chytt's blood lingered. Fik punched the thick pile of cushions, rearranging them over and over, fur still on end, unable to settle. The elimination of Chytt had been but the beginning. Now that her blood was up, she burned for the satisfying release of more action, but it was important to choose her battles, as she thrashed this ragtag hold into obedience and eliminated everyone, from the breeders on down, who did not offer bared throats to her.
With her ascension, she and her fellows had achieved a long-awaited majority in the Council of Lines. Soon they would be free to openly accept all the Outsiders offered—boxes that spoke over great distances, machines which carried one over land and even through the air, strange metal things that could heal the body or plant grain, the list was endless. Why should the Lines be forced to chase after obscure, elusive patterns for guidance and hunt their food like simple-minded animals when Outsiders knew more efficient ways? Fik stretched a pale-ginger arm behind her head, remembering how foolishly terrified she had been on that day when she had stumbled into the Outsider's trap.
The red eye of Ankt had hung low in the sky as she rode her weary yirn back from a solitary hunt, one half-starved kikinti, more a heap of bones than meat, tied over the beast's hump in front of her. If the hunting didn't improve, Qartt would have to abandon its ancient hold by the river and move up into the mountains in search of more game, and of course, Jhii and Levv would protest, if it came to that. Fik, with several gleanings yet to pass, feared to return with so little, even though she had ridden halfway to Kendd on her search.
A sudden twist in the breeze brought the scent of zzil. Her nose twitched as she pinpointed it up ahead, under a stand of dense blue-black bushes well back from the river. Sliding down the yirn's side, she flexed her handclaws and crept toward the scent, using the rocks and foliage for cover.
As she squeezed through thickly interlocked branches, leaving behind strands of pale-ginger fur, she glimpsed a fresh haunch lying on the ground. A few iridescent-green meat-nits buzzed around it. She brushed them away, then sat back on her heels, puzzled. Who could have been foolish enough to leave this here? In this exceptionally lean year, no Line or males' house had food to spare. She grasped the shank and lifted and the air came alive with an eerie, buzzing redness that stood her fur on end. Dropping the bone, she whirled to face her enemy and met instead a wall of glimmering, transparent red.
Panicking, she ran straight into it, hardly comprehending when it bit and threw her back to the ground, dazed. She lay there for a few breaths, her nose burning and head whirling, then rose and examined it more carefully. The angry redness enclosed her on all sides, extending even over her head.
Ears flattened, Fik broke off a branch and poked it into the shining redness. She heard the same snapping buzz as before, accompanied by the stench of burning. When she drew back the branch, the leaves were black and smoking. This was obviously a trap, complete with bait. Retreating as far from the meat as she could, Fik began digging, but no matter how deep she dug, the redness was always waiting, biting her claws when she ventured too close. Ears limp with exhaustion, she finally stretched out on the displaced sand and closed her eyes. The rest of the afternoon and then the night passed in a weary haze. The river maddened her thirst; she could both hear and smell the water flowing just out of reach. The sight of the meat so close was another sort of torment, but ravenous as she was, she feared to touch it again.
Sometime before morning, she heard a soft whirring, which ended finally with a whump somewhere out of sight. Fur prickling along her shoulders, she flexed her handclaws. Footsteps crunched across the sand, then she heard the rattle of someone pushing through the stiff-branched bushes. There was a smell, too, strange and unidentifiable . . . acrid.
"What this?" Speaking in strangely accented Hrinnti, an upright two-legged creature holding a small light in its hand stood just outside the red field and studied her with bizarre gray eyes.
Fik snarled. Even though she had never actually seen one before, she knew this flat-faced thing had to be an Outsider. The Council of Lines had decreed such creatures dangerous and ordered them killed on sight.
"Regret no before come." The creature had a nasty pushed-in, naked face and soft pale skin. Bending over, it dug into the sand, then lifted out a small silver box.
With a pop, the redness died away. Fik's head swiveled as she took a deep breath of night air untainted by the field's peculiar odor. Then she stood, towering over the Outsider, which was not as tall as her chest, though she was not yet fully grown.
It wrinkled its disgusting face at her. "Blue—good. Need Qartt contact." Then it pointed a slim silver tube at her—
—she and the Outsider sat on the sand, with Ankt just peering over the horizon in the east and the river gurgling over the rocks only a few steps away. She glanced around wildly; what had happened to the bushes . . . the haunch of meat . . . the trap? She felt disoriented, dizzy.
"Now . . ." The Outsider placed a small metal box into her hand.
Her ears flattened, then she realized the creature was quite friendly, indeed, that it could be extremely useful to a young female who still faced several gleanings in the coming seasons. Her fingers tightened around the box.
"You no have trouble," the Outsider said. "Simple." It showed her the box's functions, which ranged from summoning the strange white hold in the drylands, to calling the females of other Lines who apparently wanted the same miracles for Anktan that she now did. Holding the box, she had been overcome by a sudden sense of comradeship with this creature. She and it might well have been hunt-mates or even Gathering companions to sit so close and talk in that way.
That had been but the first of many meetings. Nestling deeper into Chytt's plump warm cushions, Fik closed her eyes. There was still so much to do. Tonight, when the hold was shrouded in sleep, she would speak through the box to her allies among the other Lines and they would at last make final plans.
When Khea reentered the shadowy dimness of the guest chamber, steaming bowl in hand, the Outsider was able to turn its head and look at her. "Food?" it said in mangled Hrinnti, then tried weakly to sit up.
"Yes, food." Khea pushed it back gently as she had seen Vexk do. Its oddly jointed bones felt fragile beneath her hand, the skin wasted and thin beneath the overlarge robe in which they had wrapped it, but sense gleamed now in those strange eyes. It was much improved. She studied the smooth gleam of its cheek, no longer flushed with fever, the tousled short dark mane, marveling at the renewal of life in a body where there had been almost certain death before. This was a miracle, part of some wondrously buoyant pattern never before pointed out to her. She had known in a vague way that Restorers drove out sickness and mended bodies, spending their lives in the pursuit of return/to/balance, but had not understood the reality of it, that they actually restored life to that which would otherwise perish. Restorers possessed power over death itself, a heady concept. And headier still was the fact Vexk seemed to think she had some potential for Restoration herself.
She knelt at the creature's side with the bowl of warm mash, then dipped a clean cloth in the thick meat-and-grain concoction and raised it to the creature's mouth to feed it as the youngest cublings were fed. It reached up and took the cloth in its own oddly made hand, piercing her with those unnerving eyes that were the same color as the very center of the sacred pool. She averted her gaze and tried not to shudder. How could these creatures allow such an unnatural trait in their breeders? Didn't they have the sense to cull themselves?
It licked the mash from the cloth, bared its teeth and passed the cloth back to Khea. "Good." It gazed at the steaming bowl. "More?"
Khea dipped the cloth again into the warm golden-brown mixture, then passed it back.
The creature ate another mouthful and sank back, closing its eyes. When Khea eased the cloth from its small hand though, it looked at her again. "You?"
The word was very strange in its flat mouth, as though that short pink tongue couldn't make the sounds properly. Khea glanced at the bowl. "More?"
"No." Its voice was faint. "You. You!" Its undamaged arm pointed at her, then fell back across its chest.
"Me . . ." Khea twisted the cloth in her hands.
"You." The creature moved its head up and down, then put one hand on its own chest. "Mit—su. You?"
Suddenly Khea understood. "Khea." The exchange of names warmed her, as though an age-mate had suddenly deferred to her judgement on a hunt or a full-fledged hunter had stepped aside to let her make the kill. "And you are called Mit-su."
The dark-maned head moved again in the same motion, only more wearily this time. There were dark splotches beneath its eyes.
"Sleep, Mitsu." Khea watched its eyelids descend. "Tomorrow, we must return to Vvok." Suddenly, from the front of this aboveground level, she heard angry voices. She glanced down at the creature, but it seemed to be sleeping now, its breathing even. Laying the cloth aside, she tracked the argument through the dim stone passageways.
"The creature is Vvok's, to do with as the Line Mother will! If she chooses to rip out its life with her own teeth, that is her right."
Fur rose along Khea's shoulders as she recognized the angry tones: Fitila, the Vvok scout who had dragged the half-dead Outsider back to the hold just a few days before. Dread prickling along her spine, Khea searched until she saw familiar buff-colored fur through a doorway. "Elder-Sister," she murmured.
Fitila scowled as she turned from Vexk and a knot of several other Restorers to face her. "This is as much your fault as theirs. Why are you delaying here? The Line Mother has been commanding your return since yesterday!"
Khea knelt at Fitila's feet, the breath painfully short in her chest. "Forgive me, Elder-Sister, I did not know you had sent for us until this morning, and the creature has been so ill, we had no opportunity to come back."
"Fool!" Fitila's claws sprang free. "Seska no longer cares whether it survives or not! Now go and fetch it!"
Khea hesitated, remembering how hard the pale-furred Restorer had struggled against the Outsider's imminent death this morning. It was a wonder that it might live now. Surely this fragile life, won back with the sacred power of the Voice itself, was to be cherished and preserved? Without thinking, she looked up and gazed directly into Fitila's narrowed black eyes. "Could we wait a bit longer? It has just fallen asleep."
Fitila's claws raked her to the floor. She sprawled at the scout's feet, a strange roaring in her bloodied ears and a dark mist rising behind her eyes.
Someone shoved between them and hovered over her, examined her clawed face before turning back to Fitila. "Enough! Such displays defile this hold and the sacred pattern we follow! Take your temper elsewhere!"
Khea tried to rise from the floor, then slipped back.
"Seska contracted for a Restoration, which we have performed." It was Vexk speaking, she realized, Vexk interposing her own body between herself and Fitila's claws. "Now we shall name our price."
Khea dabbed at the warm blood dripping down her muzzle. Strange to realized the pale-gray Restorer had been bred out of Vvok, the same as Fitila and herself. She'd always thought nothing but anger and claws were bred there.
"Go ahead." Fitila's voice was arrogant and cold. "When has Vvok done other than honor her debts?"
A hand slipped under Khea's arm, braced her to stand. "Fetch the Outsider, youngling," Vexk said quietly in her ear.
Khea stumbled out of the room, then caught herself against the whitestone wall just outside, her vision still fogged.
Vexk's voice followed her into the hall. "Our price is that cubling."
Fitila snarled. "Breed your own cublings!"
"You know we cannot." Vexk's voice was clear and firm. "The Outsider is your property. By law, we may not prevent you from taking it back to Seska's claws, but we name the cubling ours to be trained as a Restorer."