Rakshal stalked into the great underground room, hackles raised, ready for confrontation from his declared challenger, Jikin, or some other, more impatient male, but the mood of the males' house was much altered from the last time he had assumed the Leader's place of honor by the central fire. The males, seated in concentric rows, shifted as he passed, restive and clearly waiting. The mumbling stilled as Rakshal stepped into place and appraised the assembled black eyes. "I come before you this night to speak of a threat to the very form of our lives."
Most ears pricked toward him, indicating a modest amount of interest, though the ears of some—the older, the most experienced—flattened. He let his gaze skip over those, not deigning to see. "Isen, who sponsored me, said before Outsiders soiled Anktan with their presence, every males' house could boast at least seven or eight who heard the Voice—but who hears the Voice now?" Rakshal waited, but only the fire answered, crackling as a cubling fed gynth branches into the hungry red flames. The soothing aroma wove through the varied scent signatures of the six distinct Lines, binding them into a single aroma quintessentially male, forging them into a unified body with a single will. "I hear the Voice—and no one else. And why not?"
The green-robed males leaned forward as he caught the eyes of each in turn. "Because no one listens!" He swelled his chest and allowed a note of triumph to creep into his tone. "Now that we have allowed the Outsiders to build their Dead-smelling hold in our drylands, the cublings talk about flying through the air like jits and speaking through metal boxes and killing with sticks instead of their own claws—and no one seeks out the Voice or the patterns/in/progress anymore. Fewer and fewer even understand what the patterns are with each generation. Chaos is but a breath away. We must scourge these Dead-smelling creatures from our land and return to the ways made for us at the Beginning of things before it is too late."
Understanding glimmered in their eyes and he felt encouraged. They were listening, finally, after seasons of disregard and disappointment. Perhaps there was yet a chance to return to order. "The patterns are meant to save us as surely as young Tama was saved from the river's green water this morning." For a blink, he let them relive that instant under the hot eye of Ankt when the Voice had led him to the trapped cubling. "Without direction, we will be swept away again into random, meaningless slaughter, each hrinn's claws set against all others, so that we are no better than the witless beasts we hunt."
Yafft, who had been ancient when Rakshal had first entered the Mish River Males' House as a cubling, stood up in the flickering shadows, his age-thinned body stiff and forbidding. "I agree that these creatures are strange, but being different is not the same as committing a wrong act. They ask many questions, but they never make war upon us or hunt our territories."
Rakshal bared his teeth so they caught the firelight. "They steal the dreams of our younglings with their chaotic, off-world ways. They are randomness incarnate. Is that not war enough for you?"
"Cublings are always foolish when they come to us from the Lines." Yafft's bowed black-furred form was difficult to see in the dim light. "It is our duty to speak sense to them, and our failure if they think of Outsiders and not the Voice."
"Yes!" Rakshal tasted triumph as the older male unwittingly gave him an opening. "It is our fault if we let these creatures tempt our younglings from the patterns that should give meaning to existence—our fault, if we let Outsiders sit on our land and through their own disordered lives, tempt us to chaos!"
Yafft stiffened. "You speak nonsense!" he said, but a low muttering surged through the large chamber. He glanced at the rows of males. "I, for one, close my ears to such drivel." His nose twitched distastefully as he turned and picked his way through the closely packed rows toward a side tunnel.
"Yes, nonsense . . ." Rakshal drew himself up to his full height, seeking to regain their attention as several of the oldest and most respected males followed Yafft out. "Nonsense like the Outsiders sending an outcast Levv male to us in the guise of the Black/on/black, seeking to fool us with a mere likeness of the sacred coloration." Rakshal's handclaws sprang free as he remembered his fury when gazing at that false black-furred face. "They mock us with this imposter! What will our younglings believe if we allow this creature to live when it cannot possibly have the power of the Voice behind it?"
Young Bral rose and pushed his way to the front, his buff-colored face puzzled. "But what does it matter? The Black/on/black is gone."
Rakshal raised his nose as though sampling the wind. "Yes, he has fled—coward that he is—with Nisk, who used to be an honorable male and a good Leader. You must see how he has disrupted the current pattern/in/progress; in the normal flow of things, Nisk should have remained here for many more seasons, sharing his wisdom with younglings yet to be born. Instead, he has gone off on a mad journey to sponsor this fraud, abandoning the males' house to younger, less experienced heads." His lips curled back from his teeth. "We must watch for the return of the false one and then feed its blood to the earth, just as we should tear down the white hold and sow the Outsiders' torn bodies into the lifeless sand. When they are gone, the patterns will be apparent again and we will be spared further abominations like Levv."
All around him, eager black eyes reflected the fire's flames and a chorus of low snarls signalled growing assent.
Thunder cracked, startling Heyoka from a deep and claustrophobic sleep. He bolted up in the darkness, heart pounding. Cold rain spattered his muzzle as he floundered to his feet, thinking he was back on Earth again, then he caught the herbal tang of vegetation characteristic to Anktan and sank back on his heels. For a second, memories flickered through his mind, blurred images, smells, sounds. He had stood on this hillside before, smelled this particular combination of plants. There had been screaming, and blood. He must have been here when Levv fell, as Nisk theorized, and he would never understand himself, what he had been then, and what he was now, until he fully remembered that terrible day.
Earth had never really been his home. When Ben had died, the Oglala people asked him to leave tribal land. For Ben's sake, they had tolerated him, but although some thought him a manifestation of the spirit world, the majority had regarded him as little more than a savage, half-sentient alien beast bought out of the flek slave pens. When they looked at him, they saw an animal, and his greatest fear had always been that they might be right. If he could not find out who he was here, where it had all started, he would spend his life as an outcast, roaming the edges of human society, never really part of anything.
Lightning snaked lazily across the sky, slowed by his distorted senses, still stained with the blueness that overlay everything. Despite his effort to sleep it off, he was still mired in the bewildering blueshift. He made out Nisk's huddled shape, stretched out a few feet away, and beyond him, the dark bulks of the two yirn. Thunder growled, vibrating the ground beneath him as rain pelted down more thickly. Heyoka tilted his head and let the fresh cold drops fall on his tongue. The rain, at least, felt real.
High above, another light flared, small and coherent, obviously artificial, lingering when a falling meteor would have faded. Staring at it, he felt the dim stirrings of having seen something similar before, but he was too tired to remember when or where. When the blue-black storm clouds swallowed it, he checked Nisk, but the older hrinn was so exhausted that even the thunder and rain did not wake him. The wind picked up, driving the rain sideways, filling the air with the odor of wet yirn wool and sodden hrinnti fur. Soaked and miserable, Heyoka turned—
A sharp metallic point jabbed the hollow of his throat. He froze as dark shapes loomed in the blackness, then reflexes took over. He rolled down a small ledge, landing on a jagged boulder that drove the breath out of his claw-marked chest. Feet squished after him in the mud as his attackers no longer took any pains to be silent. One of the yirn snorted, then leaped in slow motion, following him off the same ledge, narrowly missing his head as it drifted past him, careening on down the rock-studded hillside. He crouched in the darkness, gasping for breath and trying to get his bearings. The trackers from Jhii must have found them.
He heard Nisk's voice, still too distorted for him to make out. Heart racing, Heyoka dug his claws into the mud and climbed back up over the ledge. Another bolt of lightning illuminated the hillside, revealing a dozen or more dark-furred hrinn gathered around Nisk's fallen body while, a few feet away, several more strained to anchor the remaining frightened yirn.
One of them turned and spoke to him, slowly brandishing a spear that reflected the blue lightning like a torch. Slow, he thought. Although it would probably kill him shortly, he still had the bewildering advantage of blueshift speed. Diving for Nisk, he shoved the attacker with the spear aside and kicked another over the ledge before any of the attackers even managed to twitch.
As the lightning flash faded, he seized Nisk's slippery wet fur with desperate fingers. Thunder rumbled again and rain sheeted down as the surrounding hrinn moved sluggishly toward him. Gathering Nisk's limp weight in one arm, he tried to stand, but his weak leg slipped in the muddy grass.
Still, the others moved so slowly that he was up again before they could react. Nisk's hand twitched and Heyoka knew he must be alive. Bracing, he balanced on the good leg and swept the other under an attacker who was closing in. It fell in slow motion as he turned for the ledge, planning to follow the yirn back down the hillside until he could catch it and ride them both out of here.
Lightning cracked again, this time very near, filling the air with an electricity that stood his fur on end. Pulling Nisk's arm over his shoulder, he saw a dark figure pursuing him, only a few strides away and moving at normal speed as though he finally had a companion in this lonely blue realm. The face was so similar to his, it was like looking at a doppleganger. He dropped Nisk and tried to counter the spear point descending at his head, but it was moving even faster than he could. His arm rose to block it, but he saw he would be too late. At the last instant, the attacker changed his angle and caught him with the shaft full across his skull.
Just as Beshha drifted off into a languorous sleep, something squawked like a zzil with its tail caught between two rocks. Ears flattened, she scrambled out of her cushions and retrieved the small black box from behind a tapestry depicting Jhii First-Mother, then punched the button to silence it. One of these days, she thought crossly, the stupid thing was going to wake the whole hold, not that it was going to matter much longer if it did. "What?" she demanded.
"I've done it!" a voice said.
Beshha picked at a front tooth with a clawtip. "Who is this?"
"Fik, Line Mother of Qartt."
Beshha's ears pricked. "Is that just more loose talk, or have you finally found the nerve to jump into this pattern and get your claws bloody?"
"I'll shred your ears for that, you old yirn!" Even distorted by the tinny tones of the box, Beshha could discern the cold fury in Fik's voice.
"So you always say." Beshha arched her neck and preened the fur on her throat. "But of course you would have to come all the way up here to Jhii to do it."
"Don't think I won't! Now that I hold Qartt, I have no intention of hiding behind my daughters. I'll do my own fighting."
What an idiot. Beshha's eyes crinkled with annoyance. No wonder it had taken that ginger-haired moron so long to do in old Chytt. Such crudities as teeth and claws were part of the past. Those lovely Outsider weapons signalled a new pattern, one that employed the mind, not the body, to achieve the good things in life. She set the speaking box down on the carpet and groomed her rib fur. "Well, if you're so keen for action, why didn't you take care of those two scruffy males before they got all the way up here?"
"What are you talking about?"
"That Black/on/black male showed up nosing around Jhii with old Nisk." Beshha leaned back against her cushions. "I thought you and that lop-eared bunch from Vvok were going to take care of him." She reached for a leftover joint of kikinti, sniffed it, then pushed it away. Something freshly killed would have to be brought up.
"He got away from us. Just hold him and we will deal with him as soon as we can."
"Surely you don't think I'm stupid enough to keep them here?" Beshha's lip curled with distaste. "I sent them on, then dispatched a party of four to finish them—well away from Jhii." Pulling the cord out of her mane, she shook the dark-brown mass out over her shoulders. "Unfortunately, only two of the incompetent idiots lived to return and tell me of their defeat."
"You should have killed him while you had the chance!"
"And have every female in the hold telling the most outrageous tales at the next Gathering? You know how such things get around." She lay back on cushions worked with looping designs in golden thread, blinking thoughtfully at the ceiling. "If they are stupid enough to come back, they deserve to die and we will kill them then. For now, we'll call a Council meeting and exercise our new majority." Beshha closed her eyes and snuggled down into the gynth-scented softness. "We are going to have our way at last and there is nothing Kendd, or Rebban, or any of those ridiculous males can do about it."
When Khea returned, the sleeping Outsider cradled in her arms, she could see in Fitila's outraged posture that the scout had not agreed to the Restorer's demand. Her own ears sank and she felt unutterably foolish. Access to such power as Vexk possessed was part of an immense, never-ending pattern, intertwined with the sacred matters of life and death themselves, vastly beyond her ability to even perceive, much less be a part of. A cull-face like herself could never hope to be worthy of anything like that.
The waxy smell of burning torches filled the air as the flickering shadows danced across the sand, adding to the atmosphere of restless agitation. Fitila gestured at two Vvok servants waiting with a litter. Her bared teeth glimmered like raw bone through the dimness. "Take your place and be quick about it!"
Her tone was threaded with menace and she could see how Fitila detested her for not being of the top rank, grudged even the air she breathed. Trembling, Khea settled the Outsider on the litter, taking care with its head, then wished for a blanket to cover the poor furless creature against the chill of the night breeze, but none had been provided, and she was reluctant to ask. She took up one of the litter poles, while the scout snatched up the other and stalked beside her in bristling silence. Reading beyond the anger in the stiff carriage of the older female, Khea realized Fitila must have fallen under the Line Mother's displeasure. Even in the dark, she could distinguish fresh welts and scabs on the scout's arms and neck.
As they struggled up the twisting path back to the red-orange cliffs, Fitila maintained her angry silence, only snarling when one of the slight-bodied servants lost its footing and endangered the litter. It was well into the hollow quietness of night by the time they reached the top and their tethered mounts.
Fitila turned to Khea. "Can that thing ride?"
"Not in this condition." Khea glanced down at the small sleeping body, lying very still on the litter. "But it weighs very little. I can take it up in front of me."
Relief flashed across Fitila's face. Khea realized just a few days ago, she had felt the same reluctance to touch it herself, but Outsider skin was not disgusting, was in fact much the same as hrinnti, only softer, more like a newborn's. She mounted the yirn, then reached down for Mit-su. The two servants handed the fragile body up and she took it in her arms, settling it against the yirn's hump. It mumbled in its strange language and turned to regard her sleepily.
Khea tightened her arm around it, then took up the reins. "Fitila is very angry," she whispered. "You must be quiet." The Outsider murmured a little more as Khea urged the yirn after the others, then it relapsed back into sleep. It was still so weak, Khea thought uneasily, gazing down at the small flat face.
Riding across the evenness of the plateau, the remainder of the journey went much faster. Her mount trotted after the others without direction, while she balanced Mit-su's dead weight and attempted to process the new concepts she had seen and heard since leaving Vvok. She'd had no idea of the immense power Restorers wielded. To preserve life, to actually snatch it back from the Gates of Death—she shivered and studied Mit-su's still face. Without Vexk, this creature would now be dead.
Just as they were nearing Vvok, the party breasted a small rise and turned aside at the sight of several torches burning yellow-green in the darkness. "Does it yet live?" a voice demanded.
It was Seska. Khea ducked her head respectfully. "Yes."
"Then pass it to a servant and return to the hold." The dark gray of the Line Mother's face was barely visible in the shifting light as the breeze twisted the torch flames.
"It is very weak." Khea clutched the frail body closer as a servant reached up for it.
"I do not care if it dies before Ankt looks on it tomorrow as long as the disgusting thing tells me what I want to know now." The Line Mother prowled closer, her ears pinned. "Hand it down!"
Mit-su stirred as Khea passed it into the servant's hands. "Khea?"
"The Line Mother wants to—talk to you." Khea's mouth felt very dry. "You must tell her anything she asks."
"Now go back to Vvok!" Fitila urged her yirn between Khea and the Outsider. "Your duties with this thing are at an end!"
The two servants who had accompanied Fitila, as well as the two who had been waiting with the Line Mother, started off for Vvok, which was just visible as a black outline against the lighter night sky up ahead. Khea's mount, anxious for home, trotted after theirs eagerly. She glanced back over her shoulder, twisting the stiff harness in her hands. What did the Line Mother mean to do with Mit-su? And why had she come out here to do it under the cover of darkness?
As the path to the outlying buildings curved, she suddenly urged her mount to lengthen its stride and come abreast of the others. "Take my yirn back to the pen," she said to the startled servants as she slid down the yirn's side. "And say nothing of this to anyone, or I will claw your noses off!"
Amazed at her uncharacteristically severe tone, the servants glanced fearfully at her, but said nothing. Khea watched them ride on toward the pen driving the extra yirn before them, then turned back. Her ears trembled at the magnitude of her disobedience as she slipped through scrubby brush.
Whatever the Line Mother intended for Mit-su was surely dishonorable, or she would not have chosen to do it away from the eyes of the hold. This was a dark pattern, disturbing in its implications. Khea had no idea what part a lowly youngling like herself could play, but she knew even a Line Mother was not free to disgrace the Line.