The River Wall Read online

  *HATE THIS!* his mind yelled at me. *WANT VINEH!*

  *THEN GO GET THEM!* my mind yelled back.

  I heard a whimper beside me, and realized that I was crushing Tarani’s hand as I clenched my fist. I released her, and spoke again to Keeshah. I was calmer, but no less angry. I let him see my anxiety and impatience.

  *Do what you want, Keeshah, but make up your mind, so I’ll know what to do next. If you aren’t going after the vineh, we’re wasting time we could use to go after Ferrathyn.*

  Another moment of silence, then Keeshah’s mindvoice came to me quietly and sadly.

  *Decision hard,* he said, with characteristic understatement. *Help?*

  *I wish I could help you,* I said. *But I remember what you said to me earlier—that you were going to do what you wanted. You didn’t say ‘for a change,’ but I heard that part of it too. What happened near Chizan has transformed our friendship, Keeshah. More than ever before, we’re partners now. I’ve told you what I want to do, and why. You have to decide for yourself if my reasons are good enough for you.*

  24

  I felt Keeshah’s struggle like a pain in my gut. I knew this decision was only the first—and maybe the hardest—he would ever have to deal with.

  “Keeshah is coming back to us!” Tarani said, confirming what I sensed from the big cat. She threw her arms around my neck. “Rikardon, you persuaded him.” She grew very still, then pulled away abruptly. “Yayshah’s furious,” she said. “She still hungers for revenge—Rikardon, she’s heading for Raithskar alone … no, not alone. The cubs are with her!”

  While Tarani was reciting events happening half a mile away from the viewpoint of the female sha’um, I was receiving three other views of the same scene. Koshah and Yoshah were following their mother because she was going the same way their instincts led them, but they felt a puzzled sense of loss and wrongness in Keeshah not being with them. They had picked up enough of my feelings through my exchange with Keeshah to be aware that there might be a reason not to do what they were doing—but they had not achieved the complete knowledge Keeshah could gain by our blending.

  *I will stop,* he told me grimly.

  Keeshah’s actions now frightened me.

  Frustrated in his need to fight the vineh, and now committed to the need to keep hidden from the apelike creatures, he was venting all his pent-up anger toward his family, and was racing after them with a stop-short-of-death intention of violence, if necessary, to keep Yayshah and the cubs away from the vineh.

  *Wait, Keeshah, that’s not the way to stop them,* I said. *If you and I can convince the cubs to stay, the three of you can keep Yayshah here without hurting her.*

  *Make cubs stay?* he asked. *How?*

  *I’ve blended with each of them on occasion,* I said. *I can do it now, maybe with both of them at the same time*

  I had to take a second to think through the idea that had come to mind. The cubs’ battle mode was in control, and they were in full stride in the wrong direction. There was too little time, and too little thinking available, to make a long explanation.

  What am I thinking of? I wondered suddenly. They don’t need to make the same decision Keeshah did—they only have to believe Keeshah made the right decision.

  *Keeshah, I want you to blend with me, and then I’ll blend with the cubs*

  *May not work,* Keeshah said, and I sensed he was feeling something similar to what had nearly overcome him before. Keeshah’s fighting rage had been stirred up. He wanted a fight, even if it was his own family who had to provide it. Yet he did not want his family hurt.

  *Will try,* he said at last.

  His presence surged into my mind with the keen poignancy of total sharing, and together, fighting to sustain the contact, we groped out in search of the cubs. Suddenly they were with us, two surprised presences who had an instant to express curiosity before they were melded into our union.

  If I had found such a union with only Keeshah to be unbearably sweet and sharp, the experience of sharing the minds of three sha’um simultaneously was an exercise in wonder.

  Each mind similar, each mind unique. Variance in physical perceptions of sight and touch and smell. Identical reaction to the blending with other sha’um—total and unrestrained delight. An overwhelming sense of their regard for me and the unqualified assumption that I would always be part of their lives. Their response to my affection for them—Koshah taking it for granted, Yoshah returning it warmly, a new awareness of it taking shape in Keeshah. The cubs shyly recognizing something more in their father worth respecting than merely the fact of their relationship. Keeshahs discovery of the innocence and ignorance of their young minds, and the beginning of a deep tenderness to accompany the robust affection he had always expressed to them.

  One flashing instant of the four-way meld, then we could hold it no longer.

  When it broke apart, I screamed.

  Tarani caught me in her arms and held me with a fierce protectiveness while I shuddered and sobbed and clung to her. I hurt as if a piece of my brain had been sliced away. I felt it in my mind and heart and soul.

  The mental wound had been sharp and real but clean, and even while I suffered I knew I would heal. The pain had begun to ease almost immediately, the cause of my emotional shock shifting from loss to wonder.

  When I had calmed, Tarani pushed me away gently and looked into my face.

  “You succeeded, my love,” she said. “Yayshah is still angry, but she is yielding. Keeshah and Yoshah and Koshah are bringing her back here.” She studied me. “What happened?”

  Keeshah reached out for me tenderly. *Sorry hurt you,* he said.

  *It wasn’t your fault, Keeshah,* I assured him. *How do you like it?*

  *Different * he said, and I understood many things in that one word. *Glad.*

  *Are they all right?* I asked.

  Keeshah hesitated a moment, then said: *Yes. Confused. Miss you.*

  *Tell them—* I felt my shaky emotional calm flaking away.

  *Understand,* Keeshah assured me.

  Only then could I look at Tarani and answer her question. “I’ve lost the cubs,” I said. “The bond has transferred to Keeshah.”

  Tarani let out her breath slowly.

  “Oh, my love,” she said gently, and stroked my arm. “How sad for you. But it is sweet for Keeshah, is it not? What a wondrous, wondrous thing,” she breathed. Then she shook her shoulders, and smiled shakily. “And you, Rikardon? Are you well?”

  I nodded. “It hurts, but not like when Keeshah left. Koshah and Yoshah are still with us, after all, and I can sense them through him the same way the cubs knew him through me, before. I’ll be all right.”

  “You were blended with Keeshah—and the cubs?” she asked. “As it was in the fight outside Raithskar, the first time you touched them?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Only it was a deeper, stronger blending—because they’re older, I guess, and because we established the blend from desire, rather than life-and-death need. I don’t know why it happened this way. Maybe it was the shock of actually meeting their father. Maybe it was only because Keeshahs mind is more like theirs.”

  *Like yours,* Keeshah corrected me.

  *What?*

  *Made me think like you,* he said, and I suddenly understood what he meant. The idea sent my head reeling. I clutched at the ground cover beside my feet.

  “What is it?” Tarani asked.

  “I told you about my conversation with Keeshah in Chizan,” I said, and she nodded. “And we’ve talked before about the sha’um operating on a purely animal level, but possessing a latent intelligence. It’s one of the logical arguments behind the bonding of a man and a sha’um—that the sha’um gains fuller use of its mind.” Tarani nodded again.

  “I think I helped Keeshah take another step in Chizan,” I said. “From just thinking to abstract thinking. From latent intelligence to active intelligence.

  “Think of an unbonded sha’um as first-stage, and Keeshah, now, as thi
rd-stage. His mind is more like ours, capable of contemplating as well as learning, speculating as well as understanding. And he can provide the stimulation needed by a second-stage sha’um: a bonded one. Or two.”

  Tarani stared into the distance for a few seconds. “I proved that women may bond and ride sha’um,” she said, “and now there are many women Riders. Is Keeshah, too, the first of many?” She turned to me, and the look of seeing elsewhere vanished from her face.

  “Your alertness to the danger in the Valley has made it possible for us to save the sha’um, if anything can be salvaged from the coming disaster,” Tarani said. “In spite of my close contact with Yayshah, I saw the survival of the sha’um as desirable, but not essential; their loss as tragic, but not debilitating.

  “I see my error now, Rikardon. The sha’um are not species but a race, capable of an even richer, more equal partnership with Gandalarans than they have yet achieved. They must be given time and means to wake fully to their potential,” she said, pounding fist on thigh for emphasis. “We must save them.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” I said. “Lets get to it.”

  The sha’um arrived while Tarani and I were shuffling our swords back and forth on the ground, concealing them in the thick ground cover. We hoped to enter Raithskar with as little use of Tarani’s illusion as possible—not only because it would tire her but because Ferrathyn might detect its use. So we hid the only two steel swords in Gandalara, and Tarani tied her desert scarf around her dark headfur.

  Yayshah wrapped herself around a dakathrenil trunk and lay down, a growl of complaint rumbling in her throat. Tarani went over to her and stroked down the restive neckfur, humming as she worked to soothe the female with her thoughts.

  Koshah and Yoshah came up to me slowly, almost shyly. I was startled to see how big they were. I guess I’ve broken free of the parents’ perspective, I thought. They’re sha’um to me now, not just Keeshah’s kids.

  I held out my hands, and the cubs sniffed tentatively, as if I were a stranger. Then the awkwardness passed, and Koshah punched me in the stomach with his nose. I grabbed his neck, both wrestling and hugging him, and reached out to scratch behind Yoshah’s ear.

  *Love you,* Keeshah said, and somehow I knew he was speaking for the cubs. *Don’t want you to go alone to city. Me neither,* he added emphatically.

  *I explained that, Keeshah.*

  *Understand,* he said. *I stay. Cubs stay. Don’t like.*

  *Me neither,* I said, and I felt amusement from him. *We’ll be careful, Keeshah. Try not to worry.*

  “Are you ready, Tarani?” I asked.

  She stood up and offered me her hand. We set out for Raithskar.

  The countryside east of Raithskar had once been its most fertile area, a garden for the water-rich city. Now it lay in a state of devastation and abandonment. The grainfields were trampled and stripped. Dakathrenil orchards were threatening to go wild. Tall training nets that once supported rich berry harvests lay tangled in the dying vines.

  Grain had been the major crop, and, as we moved toward Raithskar, Tarani and I saw several groups of vineh roaming about, efficiently stripping kernels from the few untouched grainfields with their large, strong hands.

  Vineh were large animals that fit the ecological niche in Gandalara filled by apes in Ricardo’s world. They had characteristics which resembled apes—great dexterity, highly pronounced supraorbital ridges, nearly erect posture. They were covered with coarse, curly hair, and adult male vineh were usually stronger than adult male Gandalarans. Tarani and I had never seen vineh acting “normally,” and we watched them now with interest as well as with caution.

  The moving clusters of vineh seemed to be family groups. There was usually at least one female with young vineh scampering along behind or clinging to a shoulder. Something in human—or Gandalaran—nature makes the young of any species appealing, and even with as much reason as we had to despise them, the vineh were no exception. The young animals watched us as we passed. One young female, about chest-tall, broke away from her group and followed us for a short way, comically burying herself in the broken grain stems whenever we turned to look directly at her. The mother was occupied with twin babies climbing about her head and shoulders. When she noticed her elder daughter was missing, she uttered a chattering call and clutched at her babies. The young female exploded out of her makeshift haystack and answered her mothers call. The mother dropped her babies on the ground and rushed toward us, screaming a challenge.

  The challenge was answered from behind us. Three male vineh were coming through an untouched grainfield, sounding their high-pitched, hair-lifting battle call. One male jumped out into the roadway, shrieking and feinting toward us, shaking his hands overhead. The other two males crossed the road to join the female, who had stopped her rush to clutch and sniff at her daughter. The two males touched and examined the two females, then broke away to scream and lunge in our direction.

  With as much caution and calmness as we could muster, Tarani and I backed away from the outraged group. The male in the roadway, biggest of the lot, kept challenging us aggressively, but stayed close to the others. I tried to see through the back of my head, to be alert for other vineh groups which might be attracted by the ruckus, but I was afraid to turn my head physically for fear that might be the thing to trigger the big males attack. We moved a good hundred yards off before the male quit his noise and turned to check out the mother and daughter. We were another hundred yards away before we started to breathe again, and dared to walk facing frontward toward Raithskar.

  25

  “Why did they not attack?” Tarani asked.

  “I’ve got a better question,” I said. “Why don’t they attack each other?”

  She only looked at me, puzzled.

  “In Raithskar, the male vineh were used to do some menial work; you knew that. Did you ever see them working?” She shook her head. “They wore short trousers to cover their genitals, and Markasset thought it was to prevent them from fighting among themselves. I hadn’t thought of it before, but the groups which have attacked us have been mostly males fighting with good cooperation, stark naked.”

  “Then the clothing must have had some other purpose,” Tarani said. “Or their continual subjection to control through the Ra’ira made them quarrelsome and the covering did, indeed, make the temptation to fight one another less strong.” She shuddered. “They can find such control no more pleasant than a thinking person, perhaps less so,” she said. “And they would have no outlet for their anger except toward one another.”

  “The shorts may really have been a control factor, making the other male vineh sort of neutral.”

  She was quiet for a moment as we walked, keeping more alert toward our horizons than before. “I cannot find anger for the vineh in myself,” she said, “Fear, yes, and pity. There seem to be so many of them, and these have lost the skill to survive outside the society of men. Look what they have taken, and not replaced. What will they do when the easily available food is gone?”

  I merely shook my head in answer. I was shocked and awed by the changes around Raithskar, and overwhelmed by the certainty that the intellect and ambition of one man had created this havoc. It would take years to restore Raithskar to beauty and plenty, even if Ferrathyn were defeated today. The oncoming calamity made an attempt at restoration pointless, of course, but somehow I still felt a sense of loss.

  As we approached the city itself, we saw a different kind of destruction. The grain which grew on either side of the road into Raithskar had been burned off, to leave the area for five hundred yards around the walls of the city totally empty of anything except ankle-high, blackened stumps. We had seen that the grain stopped somewhere ahead, but the tall grain and the twists of the road had obscured our view until we were actually on the edge of that dark open area.

  The sight of it stunned me. It called up memories from Ricardo’s mind: scarred hillsides, defoliated forests, camps surrounded by barbed wir
e. I said nothing to Tarani, but she moved at the same time I did. We stepped off the roadway into the standing grain, and crouched down to look out over that devastation from concealment.

  It felt as if we were acknowledging a declaration of war.

  For centuries, Raithskar’s walls of mortared stone had served only as a symbol of defense, its gates long ago discarded. The gateway had stood open to the rest of Gandalara for trade and travel and good will, guarded ceremoniously and needlessly by two Peace and Security men.

  The gateway was barricaded now, and guards walked some kind of buttressing behind the wall, their shoulders visible above the gray stones. They were stationed about two hundred feet apart, and they paced continually, facing outward.

  From where we crouched, we could hear the indistinct sound of a bustling, busy city, but the only people we could see were the guards on the walls. The area between us and them was utterly, desperately empty.

  “I had no idea it would be this bad,” I said.

  “Nor I,” Tarani said. “It seems incredible that one man, even with the help of the Ra’ira, could maintain control of an entire city.”

  “We still don’t know what it’s like inside,” I reminded her. “Those guards could be keeping the people of Raithskar in as well as everyone else out.“

  “What purpose would that serve?”

  I shrugged. “None that I can see,” I said. “I’m simply making the point that Ferrathyn doesn’t have to control everyone in that city. Just a few who control all the others.”

  “The Peace and Security forces?” Tarani suggested. “And—” She turned to me, and this time there was no question in her tone. “And the Council of Supervisors. Thanasset.”

  Tarani’s gaze shifted over my shoulder, and her expression warned me before I heard her cry: “Look out!”

  I dived and rolled, and came up in the open, facing back toward the grainfield. Three male vineh loomed head-and-shoulders above the tops of the stripped grain stems. One of them caught Tarani around the waist, pinning her arms. He held her suspended off the ground while she twisted and kicked.