She came to the latrine pit they'd dug at the very edge of the firelight—a hole with two branches across it to squat against. It stank of the mixed excrement of several species plus the degradant they poured over the mess. Upwind of it, she leaned against a rough boulder, trying to sort her emotions out. Behind her, voices mixed in urgent argument, shreds of Jindigar's tones cutting through the rush of the waterfall. "... was not born a Prince... father appointed King when we joined the Allegiancy... not interested in status... our situation... vote and let us know what we'll do tomorrow..."
All she could think about was how she'd edited the problem with the triad to avoid explaining the Desdinda Loop. Could it be shame at being*possessed? Or contempt for their intelligence? Or a desire to keep secrets from enemies? She couldn't relate to any of those ideas.
A bulging shadow whispered through the perimeter of the camp, disappearing into the dark. Jindigar! She'd almost lost sight of him before she knew she had to follow. She hurried around the circle of sleds to the point where he'd left, then struck out along the line he'd taken. She could barely make out the bushes, knee-high grass, and occasional tree. But as her eyes adjusted she caught flickers of movement ahead of her. Then they disappeared.
"Jindigar!" she called. "Jindigar?"
"Over here!" echoed a voice. "Krinata? What—?" He appeared again and she saw he'd gone into a side canyon. Seeing her, he came back to meet her, taking her hand. "Careful, lot of rocks here. What's happened?"
"Nothing, I just—" He was carrying something. "What's that?"
"Lelwatha's whule." He held up a long-necked, bulbous instrument gleaming even in the barely moonlit dark. Lelwatha had been zunre to Jindigar. She'd heard Jindigar play only once, while grieving over Lelwatha's death. "I shouldn't have come," she said, knowing how he occasionally craved seclusion, and not wanting to invade a private moment.
"It's all right. They don't want you back there, either. Come, look what I've found!"
There was a trickle of waterfall at the end of the small canyon. Jindigar built a fire in a rocky space just before its catch basin. The firelight danced in the ethereal spray. "Won't the dampness ruin the whule?"
He laughed. "Krinata, this instrument hasn't survived all these millennia by being sensitive to the weather!"
Here the roar of the falls was muted. They piled soft foliage into seats around their fire, and he played.
The whule was a simple stringed, resonating chambered instrument, not amplified. Yet he drew such shapes of sound out of it, weaving them with silences flooded with waterfall and the echoes of the small canyon, that the darkness had texture and the firelight danced in eternal rhythms.
Spellbound, she dismissed the nagging thought that Frey had warned her to keep away from Jindigar, She forgot being a Zavaronne, forgot her short, ephemeral life, and became one with Dushau eternity as if it were native to her identity.
Gradually his music changed, not to a dirge but to a paean to life, acknowledging pain of loss as an essential part of what made things real. He poured his deferred grieving for Rinperee and the other Dushau who'd died in the crash, for Arlai, and Truth, and all they'd known together into his music, and she cried with him, opening depths of herself she'd never suspected, finding pain she'd never known she harbored, hearing within his music the chattering voices of all those lost to them.
The music, familiar yet strange, cathartic, intimate, personal, took her on a journey through soul to confront her God at the gates of death-and-life, to confess weakness and secret failures, and to be accepted, anyway. Hours passed as she sat huddled in her cloak, oblivious to the dying fire, experiencing and wanting only to experience.
As the sun was rising she became aware of a lightness, an inner healing. The grayness of predawn revealed the small waterfall of their alcove filling her vision. The music described every plume, every eddy, every lacy spume tracing rainbows that hadn't been born yet.
To her the waterfall was the power of life, of all creation. Tingling currents of power swept down through her own body. She could not stop it. She dared not try, for it was eternal and infinite. She was caught within it, and was of it, for all time—as if she'd achieved Dushau Completion.
Once before she'd glimpsed this infinitude where all was lashing energies—once before when Jindigar, summoning his role as Aliom Priest, had shown her the symbol of Aliom—a branched lighting flash, power whipping up and down along carved channels faster than the mind could comprehend—she had known but had been unable to encompass. Now she saw the lightning and the waterfall, and knew them for the same power. It was the power that carried her to a decision-action so fast that she didn't think or feel. It was what Aliom called a "strike" and Jindigar admired in her.
She could feel his admiration, as if she were Center of an Oliat and he merely an Outreach trainee impressed with her feats of Aliom art. She gathered him in close, and with the illogic of dream, they became a duad, sharing deep resonances of the peace of Completion at the brink of death.
Into the placid euphoria billowed black clouds of fear. Suddenly she was falling, out of control, bewildered by the forces acting on her. No! she screamed out with every shred of her being. But it had no effect. Cruelly battered and buffeted, she careened into emptiness.
No. Jindigar was there—within her and without. His arms circled her, his eyes filled her vision, his perception echoed in her: the granite cliffs, the hives of native life, the networks of plants like protohives, and in the distance, the intruders' camp like a sore on the land, but over all, the smooth human warmth; tangy odor; silky strands of hair; inefficient ears; hidden, secret eyes.
"No!"
The familiar brick wall shimmered between them. She could almost count the stones mat formed it. "No," she gasped. "Not the stones, not a wall. No, don't..."
He pushed away, large hands swallowing her shoulders as he shook her, and the wall solidified. His voice echoed off it, bat it was a groan ripped from him: "Stop!"
The penetrating awareness faded. She fought double vision and disorientation as be pulled his hands away. Just as his fingers trailed over the back of her hand, his soft nap sending shivers through her, she glimpsed the ecstasy evaporating from his expression, as if he'd firmly closed a sensory door. As she caught her breath, he sat back on his heels, chest heaving. His voice made her throat ache as he said, "Such a precious gift—how could a human—no, of course, you're closer than I, and I—I'm sorry, Krinata, but sometimes it happens. It doesn't mean anything."
She had no idea what he meant, merely felt his gratitude for something she'd given him, and shame he hadn't responded properly. The duad resonance faded even as he spoke, the wall becoming so huge, she couldn't even sense it. "I could live with anything you do except that wall!"
"Wall?" He cocked his head aside, Emulating human body language like a cloaking disguise.
"When you cut me off," she explained, recounting how her whole being had clutched at the euphoria his music brought, "I'd have done anything to get back there, because I thought for a minute I'd begun to understand what you are. But I guess I overstepped somehow and touched your duad, evoking Desdinda—the wall is better than Desdinda, Jindigar. For a moment, I felt–clean—of her. But I guess I'm not."
He listened intently, then commented, "Frey was not involved. I doubt he could have survived that. But he and I perceive our duad barrier as a gulf, not a wall. I don't understand. The Loop is stronger than ever, yet I'm sure you grieved with me. Didn't you?"
"I thought that's what it might have been." If so, perhaps she now knew how to rid herself of the Loop, though the experience was already fading to a memory of a memory. "You grieved Desdinda?"