The Search for Kä (10 page)

“This much food would see us all the way back to Eddarta,” he said, then caught his mother in a warm hug. It took her a moment to react, then she hugged him back. When she stepped away from him, her face was glowing, and she flashed me a look of thanks that transferred some of the glow.

Dharak stepped up to us and put one hand on Thymas's shoulder, one on mine. “The Sharith wish you a safe and profitable trip,” he said. “You will both be sorely missed.”

I squeezed Dharak's arm. “Five days—six at the most,” I promised.

Thymas grabbed Dharak's shoulder and said: “Father, when I get back …”

“We will do as the Captain suggests, son,” Dharak said softly. “You and I will talk to each other.”

We let Dharak go, and Tarani stepped up to take his place. Tarani and I had spoken our farewells during the night. Now she put her hands on my shoulders and kissed my cheek lightly, then repeated the gesture with Thymas—who brought his hands up as if to hold her, then lowered them without touching her.

Tarani moved around Ronar, tracing ridges of skin and patchy fur. “He is well healed,” she said, and stroked the cat's jaw. “Care for them well, Ronar,” she said, and stepped back.

At Thymas's silent command, Ronar stood up. Thymas and I rocked with the surging motion, then readjusted our positions for our own comfort and the cat's. I felt a little embarrassed that I had not even considered Ronar's recent injuries, especially since the earliest of them had been inflicted by Keeshah's claws and teeth. But the sha'um moved easily—if carefully—as he started for Thagorn's gate at a walk. Thymas and I waved at the group in front of the Lieutenant's house, then turned our faces forward.

Thagorn was busy, as usual. Repair crews worked at the wall of one of the barracks buildings that lined one side of the main avenue. Guards walked the upper level of the wall. From behind us, across the river, we could hear the noise of children playing and the barked commands of the cubs drilling their sha'um and themselves. People moved around, going to and from lunch, to and from duty stations.

All that confrontation last night was good for me, too, I
thought, as I watched the activity we passed.
I feel more at ease, now that I don't have to worry about who knows what part of the story, and I guess it's true that “confession is good for the soul.” When I finally admitted to Dharak and Thymas that it was my screw-up that lost us the Ra'ira, I stopped feeling so guilty about the past and started living frontwards again. I still haven't told anyone the truth about their “Visitor,” but at least I'm down to only one lie
—
one that isn't hurting anybody, I hope.

As Thymas and I rode toward the gate, I recaptured some of the sense of belonging I had missed the day before. As I became more in tune with the day's activities, I became aware of something not quite right, and searched through the moving people for that source of oddness. I saw it not twenty feet from the edge of the avenue—a man sprawled face-up on the ground. People were walking around him without a second look.

“Thymas, stop!” I said.

The boy turned his head in that direction, then leaned forward. Ronar started moving faster.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, leaning forward to keep my balance, but keeping my eyes on the man.

I found it hard to believe that the Sharith, who showed only fierce loyalty and caring to their own, were walking around what might be a corpse without a second look. As we passed the spot, I was relieved to see the man move his head, turning a sallow, ravaged face toward me. A scar stood out darkly on his right cheek.

“Thymas, it's Liden! He's sick.
Stop!
” I tugged at the boy's waist. Instead of calling Ronar to a stop, Thymas urged his sha'um to a faster pace, and freed one hand from Ronar's shoulders to grab tightly to my arms—effectively forestalling my half-formed plan to let go and just fall backwards.

Ronar's burst of speed took the gate guards by surprise. Though they put more muscle into swinging back the big double doors, the opening was barely big enough to let us pass when Ronar barrelled out of Thagorn.

I struggled against Thymas's hold, nearly upsetting us both. “Let it be, Captain!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Liden would not welcome your help.”

“But he's ill!” I shouted back. “Why won't anyone help him?”

“His illness is too much barut,” Thymas said. Ronar was slowing, and I had stopped struggling—but not arguing.

“That's impossible,” I snapped, remembering the times I had
wanted
to get drunk and couldn't. “His body wouldn't let him do that.”

Thymas was silent for a moment while Ronar came to a complete stop. There was sadness in the boy's voice when he said: “Cheral left for the Valley during the night. Liden's mind is—you probably understand better than I what he is going through. He is suffering, potentially violent. No one will help him until he asks—in a day or so. The shock has overcome his instincts for the moment, but they will not let him totally destroy himself.”

During my last visit to Thagorn, I had met one or two “absent” Riders—men whose sha'um had left for the Valley, and who had taken residence and duty among the work crews for that year. They had been sad and subdued, haunted by the fear their sha'um would not return. I thought of Liden—tough and scrappy, full of laughter and pride—caught up in that despair, and shuddered.

How odd that I didn't remember those men while I was in Eddarta and Lingis, struggling with the same feelings,
I thought.
I guess I expected more of myself
—
maybe I was lucky to have a real need for action to pull me out of that emotional morass.

As if he could follow my thoughts, Thymas touched my knee lightly and said: “You see now that no Rider would blame you for what happened in the Darshi desert.”

“Yes, I do see,” I said. “And I'm really ready to go now.”

He only nodded. We leaned forward again, Thymas grasping Ronar's back with his entire body, me clinging to the cat with my knees and to Thymas with my hands. Ronar started forward, gathered speed, and soon was running along the caravan trail that led around the tip of the Morkadahl mountains and then north to Omergol.

The trip took us a day and a half, with frequent stops for rest and position-switching, and one night of sleeping under Gandalara's cloud-covered night sky. While the moon was overhead, the richly colored countryside faded to gray and black and silver; the moonless part of the night was nearly pitch black. I reached for Keeshah now and then, just to confirm our contact, but I didn't ask him for conversation. Settled in Thagorn, the two sha'um experienced a version of what they had known in the Valley. Much of Keeshah's surface thought was taken up with mate and den and hunting. I had disrupted that for him in the Valley. I had interrupted this new, halfway version the morning I left Thagorn because I needed his fully aware consent to my riding Ronar, which he gave grudgingly. Now I tried to keep out of his life as much as possible.

Thymas and I talked a lot during our rest periods, mostly about the trip to Eddarta. He asked me for more detail about the Valley of the Sha'um; I told him what I could, considering how little we had seen of any sha'um besides Keeshah and Yayshah.

“Perhaps I was wrong about your helping Liden,” Thymas said, as we made ourselves comfortable for our night in the open.

“What do you mean?”

“You called Keeshah out of the Valley,” the boy said, shrugging. “Perhaps you could show Liden how to call Cheral.”

“I don't think so,” I said. “The circumstances were … unique.”

“And
you
are unique,” Thymas said. “You and Tarani.”

I looked at him in the quickly fading light, and felt vaguely disturbed that he wouldn't meet my eyes.

“I am no longer your rival, Rikardon,” he said.

“And I was never yours,” I answered. “Not for Dharak or Tarani. Not intentionally.”

“I believe that,” he said. “Good night.”

We reached the outskirts of Omergol just at dusk. Having sent Ronar off to hunt and keep mostly out of sight, Thymas and I walked through the open gateway of the hillside city like any other two dusty travelers. Thymas's shock of thick, pale headfur caught a lot of attention—especially from women—as we moved up the stair levels from the older, less reputable parts of the city toward the higher and newer areas.

Omergol was built of its major export—pale green marble quarried from pits north of the city. Its beauty was dimmed in the dusky light and would return as reflected lamplight bathed the streets in a pale green glow. A lamp was already burning at either side of the doorway of our destination, the Green Sha'um Inn. It was located about halfway up the hillside, on our left.

“You say you know this place?” Thymas asked as we passed the entrance to the noisy bar and restaurant and approached the table beside the stairway.

“I know the owner,” I said. “And he's a good source of information.”

I asked the man behind the table for a room; he named a price and I paid it. With no need for discussion, Thymas and I turned back toward the bar.

“This is where I first met Bareff and Liden,” I said, “and they were being less than courteous.
My
friend doesn't like
your
friends much; it will be best if he doesn't find out you—we—are Sharith.”

We went through the open doorway and found ourselves enveloped in noise. The place was packed with people, most of them doing more drinking than eating. “I don't understand this,” I shouted into Thymas's ear. “It was never this crowded before.”

“Was
she
here before?” Thymas shouted back, waving toward the far end of the room.

The chaotic noise faded to a murmur, then died altogether as a young woman appeared through a doorway at the end of the long, wall-hugging bar—a doorway that had not been there on my last visit. As the noise settled down, so did the people who had been milling around, and I suddenly had a clear view of a small table against the wall across from the bar. Thymas and I made our way to it while the woman arranged herself on a chair in the middle of a small stage, and brought a flute-like instrument to her lips.

We forgot our hunger and thirst while she played. Her music was heart-wrenching and uplifting, terrifying and exalting. Markasset had heard the instrument played throughout his lifetime, but never like this. Thymas and I sat there, captivated, until the last note drifted into silence and she stood up, signalling the end of her performance. Then we joined the noise of approval, yelling, banging dishes, stamping the floor. When she had left the stage, we looked at each other as though waking from a daze. The better part of an hour had passed.

“Saw you come in, but couldn't get through the crowd,” said a gruff voice behind me as a hand fell on my shoulder. “Welcome back.”

I stood up to greet Grallen, the big, tough-looking man who owned the Green Sha'um Inn, but was still wearing the apron of a bartender. I introduced him to Thymas, who could only say: “Who is that woman?”

Grallen grinned, showing the spaces where teeth were missing in his lower jaw. “Her name is Yali—my wife's cousin. She has turned this place from a paying enterprise to a greedy man's dream. She will play again, later—meanwhile, we'll have some peace and quiet.” He waved at the column of people walking—some of them unsteadily—through the doorway. “What can I get for you and your friend, Rikardon?”

“Dinner and some information,” I said. “Dinner first.”

“On its way,” Grallen said, slapped me on the shoulder, and headed for the kitchen.

Grallen showed up again in a few minutes to deliver our glith steaks and two glasses of faen, which were refilled more than once through the meal. Thymas and I were leaning back from the marble-tiled table, feeling that contentment unique to having eaten a good meal, when two Sharith walked into the room.

When those uniforms appeared in the doorway, everyone still in the dining room stood up and away from their tables.

Everyone but Thymas and me.

“What—?” Thymas said, and stood up, too—a few seconds after everyone else, so that the sound of his chair scraping on the floor drew everyone's attention to him. The smug looks on the faces of the two Riders vanished when they saw Thymas. The boy moved his head slightly. The Sharith moved quietly to an unoccupied table and sat down, removing their hats. There was a common sigh of relief, and a few puzzled glances in our direction, as everyone sat down again.

Thymas's air of contentment was gone; he was furious. “Visiting
any
city in uniform is strictly forbidden,” he whispered fiercely. “And from what just happened here, I can see that this has been going on for a while. Dharak will turn to stone when he hears about this.”

For my part, I was worried that Grallen had witnessed the exchange, and was much relieved when he came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. I put my hand on Thymas's wrist, and the boy made an effort to compose himself.

Grallen picked up three glasses of faen at the bar and brought them over to our table, hooking a free chair with his foot. “Meal all right?” he asked as he sat down.

“Wonderful,” I said.

“Good. Now—what is it you need to know?” He sipped his faen.

“I've heard there is a Recorder named Somil in Omergol,” I said. “That is, he was here a few days ago. Is he still here, and do you know where I might find him?”

“I know him,” Grallen said, gruffly. “I won't ask why you need to find the old lech.” He gave us directions.

I gathered the old man lived in one of the better districts. Grallen drained his faen and stood up. “I need to get back to work—the second show crowd is starting to come in.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I have only one piece of advice for you about Somil; count your eyeballs carefully when you leave his place.”