The Steel of Raithskar Read online

  I know, now, about the sha’um. A Rider and his sha’um are together from the time the boy is twelve and the sha’um is a year-cub. And it’s strictly a one-to-one relationship; one man, one cat. If Markasset had died in the desert, Keeshah would have returned to the wild, grieving. But Keeshah had accepted that confused, exhausted wretch in the desert as his master and had brought him here for help.

  If he doesn’t recognize Markasset in me, I thought, he’ll blame the Fa’aldu for changing me—or, rather, for causing Markasset to disappear. And he’ll avenge “me.” Probably starting with me.

  As though I were seeing it again, I remembered the way the corpse had looked in the desert. I had noticed, then, only that his clothes were torn. As I looked back now, they seemed to have been shredded by some giant animal’s claws. Keeshah?

  Damn! I wish I could understand this whole thing. I have Markasset’s memory, I can remember—not dependably, either, damn it again—what he knows. But I don’t remember being Markasset. And if I have no real sense of the identity of his master, how can I expect Keeshah to have any? To recognize me now that I know I’m strange?

  “I will take care of Keeshah,” I said. “If I am too changed, my own death will be enough for him.”

  I was more scared when I said that than I had ever been in my life. But, what the hell; you only live once.

  In the back of my mind an impish voice said, “Oh, yeah?” and I answered, Yeah! I’m not fool enough to try to parlay miracles.

  “May it not be so,” Balgokh said. There was sincerity in his voice. “We have a haunch of glith for him, and plenty of water. Keddan!”

  Keddan brought in a hunk of raw meat that seemed to be the rump and one hind leg of a sheep-sized animal, and a tanned skin that might have been the hide of the same animal. The skin was tightly sewn where the legs should have been, and thick twine tied the neck. It was stretched taut with the weight of the water inside it.

  I slung the haunch of meat over one bare shoulder and tucked the skin under my other arm. I looked a wordless, hopeful farewell at Balgokh and Keddan, and went out into the blistering heat of the compound.

  Keeshah wasn’t there.

  Far from being disappointed, I was relieved to have a moment to get my bearings. The Fa’aldu compound was a large rectangle marked at either end by a man-high wall of rock salt blocks. There were openings in the walls to permit the passing of caravans, but these were covered now with thickly-woven cloths tied through holes carefully drilled near the edges of the top and bottom blocks. They were not designed, obviously, as defensive barriers. But they were a symbol that entrance to the Refreshment House of Yafnaar required the consent of Balgokh, as eldest of his family. And they were sufficient, once a caravan had entered, to keep the contrary and exceptionally stupid vleks from wandering out into the desert.

  The sides of the rectangle were formed by seemingly identical rows of buildings, individual units sharing one side wall with its neighbor, each one opening onto the compound through a small square-cornered doorway. Markasset knew that the doors I faced across the compound led only to cubicles lined with sleeping blocks which were padded with the plainest possible pallets.

  The room I had left, however, was only the beginning of the larger compound which was the living area of the Fa’aldu. From somewhere in its private interior, the Fa’aldu brought the water. I searched Markasset’s memory as closely as I could; he had no idea how the Fa’aldu drew water from the wasteland of the desert. He did know about wells, it seemed, and was certain that they were not used here. It was a generations-old secret among the Fa’aldu clans.

  Wondering about it was pointless—and it was putting off the inevitable.

  I walked out to the watering troughs in the center of the large yard. There were three of them, the larger two almost exactly twice and three times the length of the smallest. They were made of large, semi-cylindrical tiles laid with the rounded side down and supported by short walls of brick-shaped salt blocks. The smallest trough contained only one tile, flanged at both ends and fitted with half-discs of tile. It was a darkish brown in color, and glazed to be watertight.

  The longer troughs were made of two and three of these tiles, the edge of one fitted exactly within the flanged lip of the next, the extreme edges sealed as this one was.

  I set the meat down on the edge of the trough, and untied the knot at the neck of the waterskin, carefully holding the opening closed until I had the skin in position over the trough. Then I let some of the water run out, feeling my arm indent the lower surface of the skin. I re-tied the opening, set the skin on the ground, and took a deep breath.

  “Keeshah!” I called.

  As though he had been waiting for that summons, the sha’um came easily, gracefully, over the high wall to my right. As he had done out on the desert, he kept his distance, padding back and forth along the wall, watching me and making growling noises in his throat.

  “I have brought you water, Keeshah. Come and drink.”

  He stopped pacing and came a few steps nearer, stretching out his head to sniff in my direction. Then, with a roar, he shook his head and sidled off.

  Does the water smell bad, Keeshah? I thought. Or is it me? Scratch that—it’s a silly question.

  It had never occurred to me that the cat might accept me simply because I looked like the Markasset he knew. Even in the world of Ricardo Carillo, domestic cats were sensitive to personality changes and moods in the humans they chose to live with. No, Keeshah knew I was different. He had proved it already by hanging back for so long while I made my way across the desert. And if he had been confused then, when I wasn’t sure who I was, he must be even more skittish now that I had a strong conviction of an identity which was alien to him.

  I watched the huge cat pacing, and fear gave way to admiration. I had never seen such a powerful animal. His muzzle was a broader wedge than that of a tiger, the mouth cut deeper into it and, I thought, lined with even more teeth. Ridges of muscle flowed from the powerful jaw along his smooth throat to help form the wide shield of pectorals that rippled across his chest as he paced about.

  His legs were thick, his paws easily the size of my head; their claws, retracted now, must be proportionately large. His long body looked lean, but I remembered how it had felt beneath me: wide, supportive, secure.

  *Markasset?*

  At first I didn’t know what it was. A pulsing from somewhere inside me, familiar, compelling. A warm touch directly to my mind—friendly, yet wary.

  Of course: Keeshah.

  *Markasset?* came the thought again. It wasn’t really the name, simply an identifying thought and a sense of question. Uncertainty.

  I understood many things then. The special bond between a Rider and a sha’um was a telepathic link. The huge cats could not verbalize or think in exactly the same way that a man can, but they were intelligent in a feline way, and they had a low-powered type of telepathy. They could communicate with men.

  That is, one sha’um chose to link with one man. And the basis for that link was mutual loyalty, a friendship which went deeper than human friendships. When Markasset turned twelve, he had gone to live for a season in the Valley of the Sha’um. The cats had accepted him as their own; a huge gray female had allowed Markasset to take with him his “brother,” her only cub—Keeshah.

  Markasset had passed the judgment of the sha’um. That gave me a deeper impression of him than anything I had yet learned about him. Now I had to face that same judgment, and there could be no deception in this mind-to-mind relationship.

  The question came again: *Markasset?* With a growl of impatience.

  I walked toward the sha’um, and as I moved, he grew still. Only the tip of his great tail moved, barely twitching.

  I was still afraid. Not of death under the teeth and claws of a huge, dangerous cat. But of failing to win Keeshah’s trust. In Markasset’s body—as Markasset—I had shared the special, wonderful friendship of the sha’um. I was desperately afraid … th at I might lose Keeshah.

  I stopped directly in front of the sha’um and looked up into his face. Even his eyes were gray, flecked with silver, and as unreadable as any cat’s. He made no move, though he was tensed to leap in any direction.

  *No longer Markasset,* I spoke to him in a way that was automatic, a way I didn’t understand. *Not the Markasset who brought you from the Valley.*

  The big head moved then, up and down my body, sniffing.

  *Same smell. Different. Who?*

  I answered the most honest way I could. *Myself.*

  *Not Markasset?* Keeshah relaxed a little, sat in the classic cat pose. His tail curled around his feet, and its tip still twitched restively. He tilted his head and wrinkled his mouth and regarded me with a perfect look of puzzlement.

  Suddenly I laughed: a loud, raucous sound that filled the courtyard as Keeshah’s roar had done. The cat laid back its ears and fled in startled confusion. He stopped a few feet away, turned in an incredibly small circle, and crouched to the ground, watching me.

  “I don’t blame you for being mixed up, Keeshah,” I said aloud, conscious that I could choose to speak at the same time I was projecting to him mentally. I walked toward him slowly and muscles rippled along his side as he crouched even lower. The claws on his hind feet were out, digging into the sand for better traction.

  *Who?* he asked again.

  *Myself, Keeshah. Someone who is neither Markasset nor Ricardo Carillo. Someone who is both. Myself. I have had a hard time accepting it; I know the change puzzles you.

  *But I am certain of this, Keeshah.* I knelt in the sand and looked levelly into the cat’s solemn gray eyes. *I need you as Markasset did. More. Already you have helped me. And I think you—and only you—understand how strange I feel. How alone.

  *Not Markasset, Keeshah. Markasset is gone. Please let me take his place.*

  For a moment, the cat gazed at me steadily. Then his head darted forward in a light nudge to my midsection. I fell over and rolled several feet, once more tasting salty sand.

  *Not Markasset,* he said as he rose to his feet. A single bound and he was looming over me. His mouth opened, and my breath dried in my throat. The razor-sharp teeth closed gently on my shoulder. *But same friend. Keeshah’s friend.*

  He released me, and rubbed his great soft-furred head against my chest; his whiskers tickled my abdomen. I laughed and grabbed the huge head with both arms, burying my face in the fur on his wide forehead.

  Keeshah lifted me from the ground as he had done out in the desert. I released him and we walked without touching toward the water trough. I dipped my hand in the water and held it to his muzzle.

  While among men, a sha’um always eats or drinks first from the hand of his Rider.

  5

  The caravan trail led north across the salt wastes, toward the base of the Great Wall, where Raithskar lay. The Respected Elder had offered me simple directions, as well as a pouch of dried meat and a small leather canteen of water, assuring me that it was but three days’ trip for a sha’um. I soon found that directions were unnecessary; once Keeshah knew where we were going, he knew the way. I lay my head upon the wide back and dozed as he moved with long, seemingly effortless strides across the desolate land. He did not gallop headlong, as I fuzzily remembered him doing in his urgency to bring me to the Refreshment House, but fell into an easy lope which ate up distance without tiring him. An easy, rhythmic, soothing motion—I drifted in and out of sleep as the distance passed.

  At first I had been hesitant about riding the sha’um. Especially was I hesitant about mounting him. I remembered the scorn I had felt as a kid, watching a cowboy comedy and laughing as the greenhorn tried to swing into the saddle from the horse’s right. There was no one watching, as by custom I would not ride my sha’um within the walls of the Refreshment House. But Keeshah was there, and I most certainly didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of him.

  There was no saddle to give me a clue. The sha’um is the only animal in Gandalara big enough for a man to ride, and the great cats would not have put up with a saddle. Even the cargo-carrying vlek, with hardly enough mind to get mad, threw a fit every time a pack-harness was tightened around its low-slung belly. It could carry only as much weight as that of a ten-year-old child, but it was untrustworthy as a child’s pet. So there was no such thing in Gandalara as a riding saddle.

  But I need not have worried. My body behaved in an almost automatic fashion. Keeshah lay upon the ground, and I sat astride his back, seating myself near the base of his spine. Then I lay forward, drew my knees up against his sides, and reached up with my hands to grasp his huge shoulders. My knees were just below his rib cage, my feet tucked up just forward of his thighs. I could direct him with slight pressure from my hands or my knees—but, as I have said, Keeshah needed no directing.

  We traveled for some hours across the desert, the only sound in that vastness the pad-pad-pad of Keeshah’s thickly calloused paws against the hard-baked bed beneath us. Occasionally I would hear the cry of a bird, and look up to see a flash of wings, or a distant, almost stationary soaring form. But there seemed to be nothing larger than the sand-ants alive on the desert floor except for Keeshah and me.

  I had accepted the leather canteen of water from Balgokh with formal thanks and unspoken skepticism. Keeshah would need no water in that time—he could go for several days without it. But the canteen contained, at a guess, somewhat less than a pint of water, four or five hundred milliliters. Hardly enough for a man for three days in the desert. I felt it wouldn’t be politic to ask for more; I decided I would have to make it last.

  I soon found that it would be plenty. In the first place, I didn’t feel thirsty very often—not nearly as often as I should have in this heat. In the second place …

  I was a water saver.

  We had been on the road for some hours when I noticed a pressure in my lower abdomen which indicated a need that should be taken care of. *Stop,* I directed Keeshah, and when he did, I sat up and swung my right leg over his back, sliding down to the ground. I walked a few paces from the smoothly worn area that was the road and urinated.

  I passed very little liquid. As it touched the dry, hot desert floor, the dark urine crystallized rapidly, leaving a little heap of yellow crystals. I stared at them for so long that Keeshah walked over and nosed my back, anxious to get going again.

  *Wait,* I told him. *Just a little while.* Absently I rubbed his jaw and moved my hand up to his ear to scratch lightly. He agreed with some impatience, and lay down by the side of the road.

  You find truth in the oddest places, I was thinking to myself. The concentration of organic and inorganic salts in that urine solution must have been high. Very high! Like the kangaroo rat of the American southwest, my kidneys were designed to save every possible drop of water.

  With a concentration like that, a human being would have died of kidney stones or other renal failure long since. And here was the truth I had found in a simple, natural act.

  I am not Homo sapiens. Whatever I am, wherever Gandalara is, I am not a man as I knew men.

  Keeshah growled, and obediently, almost in a daze, I mounted him and we set off again. For a long time I simply clung tightly to his back—as though he were my own humanity and I wanted to hold it as long as possible. I pressed my face into his fur and closed my eyes and tried not to think. But by the time I detected Keeshah’s complaining thought—I was pinching his shoulders, and he could sense my distress and was worried—I had accepted it.

  I was not human.

  I apologized to Keeshah and rode more lightly, turning things over in my mind. The whole situation made less and less sense. And this last twist was cruel. The problem wasn’t so much that I knew I wasn’t human, but that I was so damned nearly human. I had already speculated that Gandalara might be, fantastically, on some world that orbited Alpha Centauri or Procyon. If that were true, I wouldn’t really expect to be human—but it was far less likely that I would look human.