The River Wall (18 page)

I saw flashes of movement as men passed across the breached wall, stretching and tying a huge, semirigid sheet made of tanned and closely stitched hide. It filled an area nearly as large as the courtyard itself, and formed a tentlike structure, slanting from a rounded high point about ceiling-high to salt-block anchors the height of a man’s waist.

Well, I’ll be damned
, I thought.
A still. That explains a lot of things. Why the Fa’aldu compounds, both the family and the visitor courtyards, are always so clean. The vlek waste gets dumped into the bottom of that still with all the Gandalaran-produced garbage—and body waste, too, I’d imagine. The last drop of moisture is baked out of it, rises with the hot air into that domed area, condenses, and drips into some kind of cistern. Slow—but steady enough, I guess. Lomir said they had reserves set aside, so they must gain back slightly more water from their visitors than they serve.

A man moved away from the opening in the wall, and a flash of pale green caught my eye.
Grain?
I wondered.
In the middle of the desert? Oh—of course, that dehydrated waste would be perfect compost. After years of tilling and mixing, the once-sandy ground around the still is probably ideal growing soil by now. They give the grain just enough water to grow, grow and harvest just enough grain to feed the family, and then contribute the husks and stalks to the still. Neat
,
I thought, appreciating the cleanness and wastelessness of the cycle.

A hand touched my shoulder, and I turned to find Lussim beside me. He peered at me narrowly. “I believe you understand what you are seeing, Rikardon.” There seemed little point in denying it, so I nodded. “I—I would like—May I know?”

He was struggling mightily against the ages-long, mind-your-own-business tradition of the Fa’aldu, but he was losing the battle. I helped him as best I could.

“No Fa’aldu has shared your secret with me, Lussim,” I answered his unspoken question. “You know that I …” It was my turn to hesitate, but he only watched me expectantly. For some reason, I was reluctant to speak the lie again that I was a Visitor from an earlier time in this world. Yet I was not ready to confront this crisis-weary man with the truth, either. “I have not always lived in this time,” I said, finally. “I have memories, and knowledge that I can’t quite account for.”

His hand tightened on my shoulder. “I had no fear of your silence, my friend. But I am relieved to know that no one here was so distressed by this disaster as to forget himself entirely. Come, I have your provisions ready.”

I resisted taking the half-filled water pouch, but Lomir insisted. Keeshah had eaten well, and was deeply asleep when I reached out for his mind. He roused quickly, however, and was waiting for me outside the Refreshment House gate. Lussim returned Rika to me with as much ceremony as he had done before falling salt blocks had left the top of the compound wall looking like an irregular sine wave. I accepted it in the same manner.

After all
, I thought,
it’s not the home that makes the man.

The path from Relenor to Thagorn took us south of the Well of Darkness, and in the flat bed of this desert, the column of blackness that fed the gray stain was clearly visible. I had hoped that the volcano would be content with one explosive cough, and that the poison inside it would rise once, settle again, and be done with it.

I had known it was a slim hope. The violence of the quake had been evidence that the volcano was doing more than throwing a quick tantrum. The curling black column confirmed my worst suspicions. I knew what must be happening at the bottom of what had once been called the Well of Darkness. A fissure had opened, and molten rock was forcing its way out, releasing a noxious mixture of gases. However, the pressure pushing those gases seemed less; the column rose to a height, now, that I was sure I would not be able to see from the Chizan Valley.

That was the good news.

The high cloud I had first seen had mostly dispersed; only a small amount of the airborne sediment could have been carried across the high mountains which cupped the Well of Darkness against the Great Wall. This lower cloud would spread no farther than those mountains, and settle in a relatively contained area.

That was the bad news.

The Valley of the Sha’um lay well within the area I guessed would be affected by the volcanic fallout. I had a queasy feeling such as might be caused by breathing air infected by the cloud north of us. But I knew what caused it. Dread.

Keeshah felt it, too—not just my fear but his own. Our conversation in the Chizan Valley had changed something essential about the big cat. I felt him questioning, as well as sensing. I felt him actively probing to find the reasons for my concern, to touch my mind as well as my feelings.

And I felt him understand.

It was night when we reached Thagorn. The flat desert, though cracked and humped by the force of the earthquake, presented much easier terrain for Keeshah than we had found in the high crossings. He had run from Relenor at a steady pace about one notch higher than was comfortable for him, so that he was panting heavily as we approached the little house, south of Thagorn, which Thymas had built for Tarani and me.

I had called ahead to the cubs, and had been surprised by their joy at hearing me so close. They had seen neither Tarani nor Yayshah since their mother had given them such explicit orders to stay put, just after the earthquake. They had obeyed her—and my—instructions and stayed near the house, venturing only far enough to hunt. The stream had provided them water, and they had suffered nothing but loneliness in the interim.

As Keeshah stepped from the narrow pathway into the cleared area around the house, Koshah appeared from behind a hidden corner, stretching his forelegs, pulling his torso forward, then stretching his hind legs and tail until they quivered. Yoshah appeared from the bushes at the edge of the clearing, turned aside to the small stream, and drank.

Their minds, however, belied their lazy show of indifference. The cubs were angry and haughty, affronted that they had been left alone so long, and they were ignoring us to prove they did not care. Yet curiosity and loneliness bubbled just below the surface of their masquerade, so that when I slid down from Keeshah’s back and called to them with my voice, they abandoned all pretense.

Koshah hit me first, his weight slamming me to the ground. Yoshah was right behind him, and the two of them dragged and wrestled me around until I cried for mercy. I hugged and petted them for a while, enjoying their company and our bond as never before. Then I sat with my back propped against the house, Koshah’s head across my knees, Yoshah curled up against my side. Keeshah lay in the center of the clearing, resting. All of us were dozing, contented, bathed in the silvery glow of the cloud-covered moon.

It was a moment of pure peace in a world full of upheaval and fear. It is a memory I treasure.

It was interrupted by another memory I treasure. One minute I heard the crashing sounds of a sha’um moving fast through thick undergrowth, and in the next moment Yayshah had appeared in the clearing, leaping out from a newly made pathway.

Tarani nearly fell from Yayshah’s back, and was on the ground before the sleepy cubs had barely raised their heads. They came alert instantly and bolted for their mother, their claws kicking dirt into my face. I was still spluttering and wiping my face, trying to stand up, when Tarani pulled me upright and threw her arms around me so tightly I had trouble breathing.

Not that I minded.

I hugged her for a long time, both of us leaning against the wall of the house. She was breathing in little gasping sobs. Had Tarani been human and not a Gandalaran, with a physiology that permitted no unnecessary water loss, she would have been weeping. I felt sort of the same way myself—I had been too busy to realize, consciously, how much I had missed the woman. The truth hit me now, as I held Tarani and rubbed my cheek against her dark headfur. We belonged together.

At last Tarani unclenched her arms and looked up at me.

“When Yayshah told she scented Keeshah, I—I could not quite believe it. It seems as if we have been apart for lifetimes, my love. Let us never suffer such distance between us again.” She touched my face, her long fingers tracing the line of my jaw. “I have been afraid for my sanity these past days, out of worry for you.”

“Relenor was in such disarray, I didn’t feel right asking them to send a message to you,” I said. “A maufa couldn’t have reached you much before we got here, anyway.”

“You look weary,” she said, moving back to look me up and down. She saw the bandage on my thigh, and stretched out her hand. “Oh, no—you must rest, my love, and let me help you heal.”

I caught her hand, and brought it to my lips to kiss it. “Time enough for that later,” I said. “I stopped here to see Koshah and Yoshah and give Keeshah a rest, but I need to get to Thagorn, to talk to Thymas and the Riders.”

She looked at me intently.

“The illness,” she said. “You know what it is?”

“I think so,” I said. “The Riders who are stricken—their sha’um are in the Valley, aren’t they?”

“Why—yes. But how did you—
oh
!” She stopped herself, and whirled to look in the direction of the Well of Darkness. The dark cloud was totally invisible against the starless Gandalaran sky. “Antonia knew of this, Rikardon. The gases and debris given off by the eruption.” The Gandalaran word she used was not quite
eruption
, but I understood what she meant. She looked back at me, and I saw the horror of realization in her moonlit face. “The darkness is falling in the Valley of the Sha’um,” she whispered. “The Riders are sick because their sha’um are breathing poisoned air.”

Miraculously, the high stone wall which filled the narrow mouth to Thagorn’s valley had escaped the earthquake virtually unharmed. So had the routines of the Sharith—the big double gate was closed when Tarani and I rode up to it. The guard on top of the wall could not have recognized us in the dimness, but the outline of sha’um was all the identification he needed. The gates swung open, and it was only after we had ridden through, into the bright circle of lamplight, that someone shouted my name.

“Rikardon!” said a gruff, familiar voice. Bareff, the veteran Rider who had been my first enemy—and then my first friend—among the Sharith, came down the narrow climbing ledges at breakneck speed, jumping the last ten feet to the ground. “By the First King, Captain,” he said, coming to Keeshah’s side and extending his hand with a grin for the handshake greeting he had learned from me, “we’ve had some bad moments wondering where you were when the ground started dancing.”

I shook his hand warmly. “The worry was mutual, my friend. Tarani tells me that no one was badly hurt—I’m so glad.”

“No. There were some close calls with collapsing walls, but no one was hurt—at least, not while stones were falling.”

He frowned and sighed, and I said: “I know about that, too. Where’s Thymas? I need to talk to him right away.”

“I’ll send someone,” Bareff began, looking around.

“No, don’t,” I urged him, before he had located a messenger. “I’ll go to him—where is he?”

“In what’s left of the Great Hall,” Bareff said.

“They have made that a care center for the Riders affected by the—for the ill Riders,” Tarani said.

“That’s perfect,” I said, and began to turn away from Bareff.

But the scar-faced man had noticed Tarani’s hesitation. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s happening to them?”

“I want to talk to the sick men first,” I said. “Then I want to talk to all the Sharith. Spread the word, Bareff. Ask everyone to gather outside the Great Hall in a quarter hour.”

“I’ll do it, Captain,” Bareff said, stepping back from Keeshah. “See you then.”

I nodded, and directed Keeshah toward the huge building to the left of the road. Tarani rode beside me, and, even though the doorways had been designed to admit a man riding a sha’um, we left Keeshah and Yayshah outside.

We entered through the south doorway, which had been thrown so badly out of plumb that one of its double doors had come completely off and lay on the ground outside. The other door had been jammed into place by the shifting stone; we passed through the remaining opening, out of moonlight and into lamplight.

The walls of the Great Hall had survived the upheaval, but the floor had suffered greatly. Green marble tiles, perfectly fitted and aligned, had formed a smooth, cool pavement for the huge Hall. The earthquake had rippled across the floor, lifting the tiles out of place, and had done a less than perfect job of putting them back. In some places the floor was at least flat; either those tiles had been lucky, or the Sharith had done some restoration. In other spots, the tiles were piled and propped at such crazy angles that walking across those areas might be hazardous.

The usable areas of the floor were filled with men stretched out on pallets, and a soft murmur of distress filled the echoing vastness of the Hall. There were several people attending the sick men, moving with the disturbing quiet of people awaiting death to end their duties.

A laugh rang out suddenly in the quiet, and I saw Thymas standing beside a pallet. He reached back down to take and press the forearm the sick man lifted to him, then he moved to the next bed.

“He is nearly finished,” Tarani said. “Can we not wait a moment more?”

I nodded and watched the young Lieutenant move from man to man, speaking to and touching each man. He was not aware of us until he moved away from the last pallet in the irregular pattern, paused, and stretched his back. We were far enough outside the circle of lamps that he must have been able to see only our silhouettes, for he said: “Tarani? What are you doing back here?” He came toward us, and sounded more weary than angry. “You must rest, Tarani—who is that with you?”

The lamplight behind him glowed through his pure-white hair, giving him a halo and throwing his features into shadow.

“I am not the only one who requires rest,” Tarani said, “but time will permit that later. Rikardon has returned.”