The River Wall (19 page)

“Ri—” he began, then rushed forward, grabbed my shoulders, and turned us both so we could see each others faces. The boys expression went quickly from disbelief to relief to a grin of pure joy. He hesitated, but I decided for him and pulled him into a rough and pounding hug.

The noise of our meeting attracted the attention of the man on the nearest pallet, who raised himself on one elbow to peer at us. “Captain?” he called weakly, and I waved. His voice came more strongly then, echoing low across the tile. “The Captains back!” he called. All the attendants turned toward us, and heads lifted from pallets, and the sad murmur was transformed, briefly, into a pitiful cheer.

Thymas stepped back, still gripping my upper arms. His grin had faded to a weary smile. “They—and I—are glad you are well, Captain. Beyond that, I have encouraged the men to believe that you would find the means to make them well. If you cannot, then tell me now. I will tell them the truth, and beg your forgiveness.” He paused, groping for words, and finally released me with a shrug. “We have found no way to give comfort to their bodies,” he said, “so I tried to give comfort to their thoughts. It was all I could do.”

“It was the best thing you could have done,” I said. “Because, for one thing, its true—I
do
know what their problem is. And for another thing, their illness is centered in their thoughts, not their bodies. May I speak to them?”

“You do not need
my
permission,” he said, with a bitter laugh, and waved me toward the pallets.

I did not move. After a moment, surprised, he turned back to me.

“I’ll say this one time, Thymas,” I began, speaking quietly so that the nearest men could not hear me. “You are the Lieutenant. I am Captain by circumstance and necessity, and I guess right now it helps the Sharith to have someone extra, a symbol to cling to during a time of frightening change. I do have some special knowledge—information you could not possibly have—that will help in this crisis. But the Lieutenants have led the Sharith for generations, and you, Thymas, are not the least of them.

“Tarani told me how you pulled everyone together after the disaster, and just now I watched you talking to the Riders. I saw what you were feeling, saw the way they feel about you. You are Lieutenant by right, by training, and by instinct, Thymas. I couldn’t take your place, even if I wanted to. So quit acting like you’re ‘standing in’ for someone else. That attitude will only make you uncomfortable and less effective.”

“That attitude,” he said, “may be my only comfort—the belief that I will not be required to carry this responsibility forever.”

“Or the belief that the responsibility is really Dharak’s, and he will return to reclaim it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “In the beginning, perhaps,” he admitted. “But not now.” Thymas waved his arm toward the pallets. “He is not here—the only empty Rider not to be touched by this … malady. He is still exactly as he was when you left—quiet and compliant and unseeing. I believe he is gone forever.

“So you,” he said, smiling sadly, “were my only hope for relief. And you are denying it to me.”

“Yes,” I said, unwilling to be less blunt. “But you’ll feel less need for relief, once you’ve accepted it.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You are leading the Sharith more capably than I could,” I said, “and fully as well as Dharak would have done. I’m sorry about your father,” I said, sincerely.

I would have sworn he was coming back, the last time I saw him
, I thought.
He looked straight at me, and I’m sure I saw awareness burning in those empty eyes. Perhaps he realized that Thymas needed permanence before he could find his full potential as a leader, and he consciously chose to go away again.

“Now,
Lieutenant
, may I speak to your people?”

“I will say it again, Captain—though I thank you for your words and I understand your message—you do
not
need my permission.” But the bitterness was gone, and I felt I saw a new confidence beginning in the boy.

In roughly the center of the huge room, the massive block of marble which had served as a speaking platform was still there, if slightly canted. It was close enough to the “hospital” area that it seemed the logical place to begin. Thy mas and Tarani each took a lamp—candles mounted on tiles, with faceted glass chimneys—and stood at either side of the platform to light it while I stepped up.

When I turned back to face the men, I saw even the weakest of them struggle to raise head and shoulders to look at me.

“Please, rest yourselves,” I said. I was gratified that the disruption of the Great Hall had not totally destroyed the acoustics. I spoke in a normal voice, yet the farthest man heard me, and lay back with a sigh of relief.

“I want you to listen carefully, and believe what I tell you. Not just because I am your Captain, but because I have experienced something like what you are feeling now. Like you, I thought that my sha’um had returned to the Valley and abandoned me totally. I could not reach him, speak to him, feel with him. At least, I thought I couldn’t.

“But you know, too, that when I needed Keeshah, he came out of the Valley to help me. He
knew
I needed help. The instincts of the sha’um demanded that his conscious awareness of me be forgotten—but nothing could truly break that bond. It was there when we needed it, when it was important enough.”

I could not prevent the flash of memory: hiding in a damp earthen cellar with Tarani, our coming together in something more than love, something animalistic, freeing and frightening. Only later had we realized that something in Tarani’s special powers had allowed her to begin a bonding, long distance, to the female Keeshah had chosen as mate, and that our physical experience had been changed and enhanced by a concurrent experience between the sha’um. I felt the rushing thrill of the memory, then set it aside.

“In much the same way, each of you still has a bond with your sha’um. The illness proves it.”

I heard Thymas gasp beside me, and knew he had understood the implication. From several pallets, however, heads lifted and I saw only expressions of puzzlement.

“Surely you have wondered why there is no physical reason for your illness,” I said. “You are not ill—but your sha’um are. You are feeling what they feel.”

One man tried to sit up, but had to fall back to a propped elbow.

“It
is
real,” he gasped.

“Of course its real,” I replied grimly. “The sha’um are in terrible danger—and so are you. If they die, you may be released from the illness—or you may die with them.”

A wordless clamor rose around me, and I knew what was running through their minds. I would have the same thought—that death might be preferable to living on without the friendship bond of a sha’um.

A hand gripped my arm, and I looked down to see Thymas climbing up beside me.

“Silence!” he commanded, and obedience was startlingly immediate. “The Captain brings us understanding, but he has brought hope, as well. If there is such danger, then there is no time to waste in worry. Listen to him, help him, obey him.”

The boy stepped back down, and everyone in the room looked at me expectantly. As always, their trust frightened me. But this time, as never before, I realized that I represented their only hope of help, and the cost of failure could be no worse than the cost of failing to try.

“Bareff!” I called. “Are the others out there?”

A silhouette appeared in the doorway through which Tarani and I had entered what was left of the Great Hall.

“We’re all here, Captain,” Bareff assured me, in his deep voice.

“Ask them to come in—warn them of the uncertain footing.”

While the others filed into the Hall and stepped carefully over the irregular floor to distribute themselves around the marble dais, I squatted down and spoke quietly to Thymas. He, in turn, spoke quietly to one of the Riders, then returned to the dais to report.

“Dharak is here,” the boy told me, nodding to the left. I looked, and saw Shola, Thymas’s mother, moving slowly and leading a man with thick white hair and a totally blank expression. When I looked back at Thymas, the boy asked me: “Is Doral already dead?”

“I have no way of knowing about Dharak’s sha’um,” I answered. “Have you seen any change at all in your father since the—” Not for the first time, I stumbled over the Ricardo concept for which there was no word in Rikardon’s language. “Since the ground shook?”

Thymas shook his head. “There is no difference that I can see,” he said.

“Then there is no reason to believe that Doral is dead,” I answered.

“Can you help Dharak?” Thymas asked, glancing at me only briefly before staring off in the direction of the door.

“I don’t know whether he is still within reach.” I put my hand on the young Lieutenant’s shoulder. “You know I’ll do whatever I can.” He nodded, and I stood up.

With the entire contingent of Sharith occupying it, the big room was only about a quarter full. The Hall had been built to accommodate sha’um as well as men, but only people were attending this meeting. Everyone fell silent as I stood up.

Briefly, I explained to the people who had just arrived what I had already said to the ill Riders—that the sha’um were in danger, and that their danger was causing the illness. There was fear in the faces I could see in the flickering lamplight as I finished the briefing.

“I want you to understand this clearly,” I said. “These men are suffering because a few sha’um are ill—but
all
the sha’um are in danger. The poison in the air is a temporary thing, and even the sick sha’um may recover. But the ash and dust that are drifting into the Valley will destroy the plants and small animals, which will mean that the animals hunted by the sha’um will not be able to survive. In a very short time, the sha’um will have no food, no shelter, most likely poisoned water. There will be no more Valley. There will be no more sha’um, except those which are living here, with us.

“The solution is obvious—the sha’um need to abandon their Valley and live somewhere else. Here. If not with us, then in the hills around us. But the sha’um don’t understand their danger, they only know they are ill. If you don’t feel well, what do you do? You go home, to your own bed, and find some comfort in familiar surroundings.

“The sha’um will cling to the Valley in their illness, and that clinging will destroy them.
We
know the truth.
We
have to help them.”

I held out my hand to Tarani. She hesitated only a moment before handing her lantern to someone close by and climbing up to stand beside me on the marble block.

“In the past, only one thing has persuaded a sha’um to leave the Valley—a bond between a male sha’um cub and a Sharith boy. It is my feeling that the most effective means of persuasion is for as many of us to attempt bonding with sha’um as can be done. Tarani’s bond to Yayshah has proved two things. First, adults—both sha’um and Sharith—can achieve a bond. Second, those adults do not have to be male.”

I did nothing to forestall the murmur of response to that statement, which quickly grew to a roar. I heard, and could sense, in that response a rich mixture of attitude and mood: question, challenge, denial, fear, acceptance, bewilderment, approval. It was the sound of people accepting paradox, and learning that the only way to maintain a cherished custom—more than that, the only way to continue their way of life—was to change it, utterly and permanently.

After a moment, I lifted my hand, and the Sharith quieted.

“Do you believe what I have told you?” I asked.

“The danger, yes!” someone called out.

“But not the solution?” I demanded. “Because you don’t think it’s possible? Or,” I added with emphasis, “because you don’t think it’s
right
?”

Tarani’s hand tightened on mine. I took the signal, and stepped aside to allow her to take the center place on the dais.

“Or because half of you are afraid?” she asked, her voice ringing out. “Not of being killed, but of becoming different, of changing from what you have been?”

Some people moved, and a woman stepped out into the cleared area in front of the gathered Sharith.

“You were able to bond with Yayshah because you are mindgifted,” the young woman said. “I have no such gift.” The words were more a question than a challenge, the girl’s whole attitude more hopeful than despairing.

“Ulla, is it?” Tarani asked. The girl nodded. “Are you not wed to a Rider, Ulla?”

“Yes,” Ulla said, reaching back into the crowd and dragging out a man in Sharith uniform, a young man. “Virram and I are wed, and …”

“And?” Tarani prompted.

“And … our child grows within me.”

I almost burst out laughing at the double take the boy did at that announcement. The crowd did laugh, and both Virram and Ulla blushed. Virram stepped closer to Ulla, and put his arm around her.

“Then she must take more care of this new life,” he said, with a serious firmness, “and not take the risk you propose.”

“Is that not her own choice, Virram?” Tarani asked, but did not wait for an answer. “And what of your child, a son perhaps? Would you deny him the chance to bond to a sha’um of his own?”

It was Tarani’s turn to reach out to me, and I took her hand and came closer.

“You are right, Ulla, in saying that my bond with Yayshah was achieved because I have a special gift. Yet it was not mindgift that brought me Yayshah’s trust. It was the caring and trust and experience of this man, whose bond to Yayshah’s mate insured my protection against physical assault. It was that which gave me the opportunity, and the time, to win Yayshah’s regard. Look at Virram. Has he any mindgift?”

“Not a trace,” she answered promptly, bringing another ripple of laughter from his fellow Riders.

“If a man needs no mindgift to bond with a sha’um,” Tarani asked, “then why should a woman have need of one?”

Tarani’s explanation of her own bonding had surprised me, but it made a lot of sense. I felt sure her mindgift
had
been involved during the at-a-distance, subconscious bonding she had experienced, but there was a lot of logic to the idea that a female would bond more readily to the mate of her own mate’s Rider.