He caught his breath, looked up at her, his heart beating against his ribs.
The dus stirred. Duncan caught up something, vast sorrow, and stopped in mid-word, looked about at the Kel and shivered in a sudden breeze.
Others gathered it up without understanding it Duncan looked toward the door of the she'pan's tent, knowing direction, and a great fear bore down upon him.
"Kel'en," said Peras, and Peras in leaning forward touched the dus. The spilling of emotions touched him too, and the veteran's eyes nictitated, amazed and chagrinned.
"What is wrong?" asked old Da'on. "Perns?
The feeling faded, like something passing out of focus. It was hard to imagine that it had been there. Duncan stroked the velvet fur with both his hands, bowed against it, lifted his face again.
"The tsi'mri called regul," jel Ras prompted him.
"Dead," Duncan said hoarsely. "I killed her. She stirred her younglings to attack, and I killed her and gave the matter over to humans. Only " He found himself saying more than he wanted to and ceased, but the dus betrayed him, gathering up feelings and weaving them together, himself and his hearers, himself and Ras who sat against the beast. A dread was on him and they shared it, perhaps without knowing why.
"O my brothers." It was the idiom of the hal'ari, and he meant it in that moment "The Dark is very wide out there, and all about this world, there is no life, none at all. They have seen it. And they are afraid.
"We move on," said Melein, "as we have been moving. I will say no more of it; I do not bind myself with words; I do as the Now asks. Tell your she'panei we move with the dawn. A double hand of kel'ein will hunt outward from our column to feed us. If any she'pan will draw back and not lend to me, I do not permit; I challenge. If any will challenge me, well, there is honor in that, and if she will take up my robes and stand where I stand, that is well. But I do not believe the gods will permit me to fall; I shall absorb that tribe and take them for my children. The gods have not preserved me through so much to fall in tribal rivalry. If any she'pan will lend me her children in my need, I shall write her in the Holy's last table, and in the beginning of the new; and the mri who stood with me, living and dead, will mark a new beginning in the songs of their line. All things begin and end from this coming day. When I have done what I will, I shall give their children back to them with gratitude and Honors; the law prevents us of the White from standing face to face but apart, we are each a point of strength on Kutath's wide face. I am she'pan'anth, she'pan-senior of the Voyagers she'pan'anth of all mri; and I have need. Say that to them. Is there question?
Silence hung in the air, trembling with force.
"Go," she said, a whisper like a sword's slash. "And come back to me.
It was a moment before bodies stirred, before any had the temerity to move and in a thick silence the Kel stood, the kath'anth withdrawing first in the precedence of leaving. Kel'ein waited. Niun moved, realizing it was on him, and walked out into the forechamber of the tent where the Shrine was, paid shaken homage to the Holy, wishing to gather up the threads of all that had been cast him, that drank up reason and made madmen of them all.
But others swarmed about him, a dark and fearsome presence, the blackness of Kel, his own and others', crowding the Shrine and the door out of which Sen must come. It was chaos, and he stifled in it, moved for the door and daylight, to disperse them by his leaving, but a hand caught his arm, familiarity none of them ventured with him.
"Kel'anth," said Hlil.
He resisted, but Hlil was determined. "Kel'ein?" he asked, without moving or looking particularly at any of them. "Kel'anth-ein?
The hand tightened with force. "Aye," Hlil said. "You never give us your face, even when the veil is down. You have your secrets. But what the she'pan has finally said, kel'anth, we have waited to hear, and others have. She has the Seeing, is it not so?
"That may be so," Niun said hoarsely. "I have sometimes thought so.
"You are kin to her.
"Was.
"They are here, other kel'anthein, other tribes; you are kel'anth to us, and we know your manner. You go out of the fingers like sand, Niun s'lntel; you have no face, even to us, as the wind has none. We have watched you, silent with the strangers when you ought to speak, brooding over that tsfmri, apart We understand the she'pan. Perhaps we even understand you but how can they? You are her Hand. And what she gains, you bid fair to cast away.
"That may be," he said, finding breath difficult. He no more looked at them than before. "If that is so, then I deserve blame for it
"What is in you, kel'anth?
"Let go of me, Hlil.
"Once, reach out your hand and take up this Kel. Or what will they go back and say? That the kel'anth preferred other company?
He understood the gist of it then, set his face and glared at Hlil. "Ah. My orthodoxy. That I defended kel Duncan. That is at issue.
"Answer.
"I was taught kel-kw; we kept it strictly in my House. I cannot read or write and I never knew the Mysteries. Two thousand years bounded all I knew. But my House fell. My Kel died. I have carried the pan'en of the Voyagers in my own hands and crossed in my life all the Darks that ever were. Shall I shed this on you all? One kel'en was with me throughout; one kel'en knows the law that I knew and the songs as my Kel sang them; and saw what I have seen. I am arrogant, yes. I have all the faults you think I have. And you pick a poor time to quarrel with me, Hlil, kel-second.
He would have torn away, Hlil's hand clenched tighter still. "I hear you," Hlil said. "Long since, I have heard you. Now someone else does.
Heat crept to his face, resentment toward Hlil, toward witnesses of this humiliation. Then he thought; before my own Kel it would not shame me to say. And secondly; my own Kel. This was.
They were.
"Forgive me," he said. He let the restraint from his face, even to Rhian of the hao'nath, and the others, and it was worse to him than stripping naked. "Forgive me for offense." He recited apology docilely, like a child knew that there would be murmuring when they were out of hearing. That too was just He pressed Hlil's shoulder, felt the hand drop from his arm, turned from that quieted company to the outside, his eyes nictitating from the sudden sunlight. They cleared, and he saw the gathering by the tent of the Kel, the whole mass of them there, shoulder to shoulder.
His heart constricted.
"Duncan," he breathed aloud, and hastened, strode across the sand with strides which left the others who had followed him, met the mass of kel'ein about the tent and parted them, his and theirs, thrust his way ungently through their midst, foreseeing everything in shambles, bloodf eud, all ties unraveled.
And stopped, seeing most seated about the center, the whole mingled Kel, and Duncan in the midst of all, sitting with Ras against his dus's broad shoulder and talking peaceably to all of them.
He shut his eyes an instant and caught what the beast held, that was the essence of Duncan, a quiet thing, and strong, with the stubbornness of the dusei themselves.
And love, and profound desire for those about him. Duncan felt his presence and looked up, rose anxiously and stood there staring at him, casting question, question, question like the beating of a panicked heart
Niun came to him, kel'ein moving aside to give place to him and the kel'ein who came after him.
"Sov-kela," Niun said, catching him by the arm and drawing him aside from those centermost. "I was worried for you and I find you entertaining the whole Kel.
"Is it all right?" Duncan asked him. "Did it go all right?