“Imehei has but recently arrived from Entoban*” Nadaske said. “Not I. I was here when Alipol was first in the hanalè, before he went to the beach.”
“Alipol worked with his thumbs to make things of great beauty. Do you know of them?”
“We all know of them,” Imehei broke in. “After all — we are not rough/crude/strong and female. We know of beauty.” He turned as soon as he had finished speaking and pulled some of the ornate drapes aside to disclose an opening in the wall. Standing on claw-tip he reached up and took out the wire sculpture, turned and held it out to Kerrick.
A nenitesk — perhaps the very one that Alipol had showed to him on that distant, warm day. The carapace curled high, the three horns sharp and pointed, the eyes gleaming jewels. Imehei held it out proudly and Kerrick took it, turned it so that it caught the light. He felt the same joy that he had felt when Alipol had first revealed his sculpture. There was unhappiness along with the joy — for Alipol was long dead. Sent to certain death on the beach by Stallan. Well, she was dead as well; there was some satisfaction in that.
“I will take this,” Kerrick said — then saw their horrified gestures. Imehei was even bold enough to add a suggestion of femaleness to the movements. Kerrick understood. They had accepted him as a male, all the city knew of his maleness and had marveled, but he was now acting brutally female. He tried to make amends.
“Misinterpretation of intent. I want to take this thing of beauty but it must remain here in the hanalè where Alipol meant it to be. The esekasak who cared for the hanalè is gone so now the responsibility is yours. Guard it and keep it from harm.”
They could not conceal their thoughts, made no attempt to. Hidden away, deprived of responsibility, treated like fargi speechless and fresh from the ocean — how could they be anything but what they were? Now they took in the new thought, recoiled from it, then accepted it, then showed pride. When Kerrick saw this he began to have some understanding why they had to be kept alive. Not only for their own sakes — but for his. For his own selfish reasons. He was Tanu — but was Yilanè as well. With these males he could face that fact, not flee from it nor feel ashamed of it. When he talked with them his thoughts came to life, those parts of his thinking that were Yilanè. Not only thinking, being.
He was what he was: Kerrick of the Tanu; Kerrick of the Yilanè.
“You have water — I will bring more food. Do not leave this chamber.”
They signed agreement and acceptance of instructions. With the private expressions of male-to-male. He smiled at their subtle strength. A single suggestion that he had been acting like a female had put him quickly in his place. He was beginning to like them as he understood some of what lay beneath their complaisant exteriors.
The discarded bones were cracking in the cooking fire; the Sasku, bellies full, were dozing in the sun. Sanone looked up when Kerrick reappeared, went over and sat by him.
“There are things I wish to talk about, mandukto of the Sasku,” Kerrick said formally.
“I listen.”
Kerrick ordered his thoughts before he spoke again. “We have done what we came here to do. The murgu are dead, their threat is no more. Now you will take your hunters and return to your valley and your people. But I must stay here — though the reasons for this are just now becoming clear. I am Tanu — but I am also of the Yilanè, who are the murgu that grew this place. There are things here of great value, of value to the Tanu. I cannot leave without looking at them, thinking about them, considering them. I think of the death-sticks without which the murgu could never have been defeated.” He stopped as Sanone raised his hand for silence.
“I hear what you say, Kerrick, and begin to understand a little of the many thoughts that have been troubling me. My way has not been clear, but it is becoming more so. What I can understand now is that when Kadair took the form of the mastodon and shaped the world he stamped hard upon the rock and marked his track deep into the solid rock. What we need is the wisdom to follow that track. That track led you to us and you brought the mastodon to show us where we came from — and where we are destined to go. Karognis sent the murgu to destroy us, but Kadair sent the mastodon to guide us over the ice mountains to this place to wreak his vengeance upon them. And they are destroyed while this place has been burnt but not burnt. You seek wisdom here, which means you are following the mastodon’s tracks just as we are. Now I can see that our valley was just a stop along the track while we waited for Kadair to stamp out his path for us. We will remain in this place and the rest of the Sasku will join us here.”
While Kerrick had difficulty in following Sanone’s reasoning, the depths of the mandukto’s knowledge was great and well beyond him, he welcomed the decision enthusiastically.
“Of course — you have said what I was trying to say. There is more here in Alpèasak than one person could understand in a hundred lifetimes. Your people who make cloth from green plants, hard rock from soft mud, you will know about these things. Alpèasak will still live.”
“There is a meaning to the sounds and movements you make? Has this place been named?”
“It is called the place of the warm, the shining — I don’t exactly know how to say it in Sesek, the sands that lie along the ocean’s edge.”
“Deifoben, the golden beaches. It is well named. Although it is sometimes difficult, even for myself who has been trained in mysteries and in the unraveling of mysteries, to understand that murgu can speak — and that those sounds you make are in reality a language.”
“It was not easy to learn.”
Kerrick, his thoughts filled with the Yilanè, could not keep all of the pain from his mouth. Sanone nodded with understanding. “That was also a footprint on Kadair’s path — and not the easiest part. Now speak to me of the captive murgu. Why do we not kill them?”
“Because we do not war on them — nor do they wish us any harm. They are males, and have rarely left that building, are in reality prisoners of the females. I can talk with them and they give me a… companionship that is different from the ways of the hunters. But that is how I feel inside myself. What is more important is that they can aid us in knowing this city for they are more a part of it than I am.”
“Kadair’s path; all creatures are upon it, even murgu. I will speak to the Sasku. No harm will come to your murgu.”
“Sanone is the wisest of the wise and he has the thanks of Kerrick.”
Sanone nodded and accepted the praise as was his due. “I will now speak so that the murgu will be safe. Then you will show me more of Deifoben.”
They walked until it was too dark to see the path ahead, then returned to the welcoming fire by the hanalè. That day the Sasku who had accompanied them had marveled at the fields of animals — were pleased to discover that only a small portion of them had been destroyed. They ate the fruit until they were sticky with juice, gazed in awe at the nenitesk and the armor-plated onetsensast, swam in the warm waters off the golden sands. While they admired the living model of the city — unharmed, although some of the protecting, transparent ceiling had been burned — Kerrick looked in wonder at how it had grown in the few years that he had been away. His head so filled with memories and visions that, for the first time since they had left the sammads, he did not think once about Armun and the encampment in the snow, so far away in the distant north.
The encampment was the familiar one in the bend in the river. Once again the too-early snows blanketed the ground, covered the ice upon the river as well. There were more tents here than there had ever been before, while all the mastodons of the different sammads made a small herd. They trumpeted in the cold air and dug for the grass that was not there. But they were full-bodied and well fed despite the lack of grazing for they had had their fill of the young branches gathered in the autumn. The Tanu were well fed as well. There was smoked meat and dried squid, even the preserved murgu meat if it were needed. The children played in the snow and carried bark buckets of it into the tents to be melted for water. All went well, although the women, children too, felt the absence of the hunters. The sammads were not complete. Yes, there were the old men and the handful of younger hunters who had been left behind to guard the sammads. But the others were gone, far to the south where anything could have happened to them. Old Fraken tied knots in his strings and he knew how many days had passed since they had parted company, but this meant nothing. Had they done what they had set out to do?