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  *Stay in line,* I told the cubs, with little hope of obedience. Koshah and Yayshah were frisky, getting more excited by the minute. But they made an effort to comply, and kept their zigzag pattern closer to the center of the lane. *Thanks,* I told them. *We’ll have the chance to run soon, I promise.*

  The crowd made me nervous, and that made Keeshah edgy, and his nervousness compounded mine. Yet we gave Thanasset the show he asked for, the sha’um walking with their stately grace up to and through the huge open gate marking the entrance to Raithskar.

  Shouts of good will and joy followed us through the gate. Raithskarians knew very little about the present-day society that had grown from the Sharith, the cat-mounted army which had served the Kings. But every Gandalaran knew that only males left the Valley of the Sha’um, and only men could bond with and ride them.

  I felt no compunction about accepting the attention of the crowds. Tarani and Yayshah and the cubs were exactly what Thanasset wanted. They were an historical event in themselves.

  8

  The crowd followed us for a way outside the city, but stopped when the man in the gray baldric waved them back. The color of his baldric marked him as part of the Peace and Security Force of Raithskar. He was one of several sentries who ringed the city. All of them were armed with swords, daggers, and hollow-bone whistles.

  He waved us to a stop, and I slid off of Keeshah’s back to speak with him. He greeted me and nodded to Tarani, then spoke quietly. He looked young. I could tell he was nervous.

  “The Chief told me you would be leaving this way,” the man said. “He asked me to wish you a safe journey, and report what we know of vineh groups.”

  “Did he warn you the sha’um might stir up another vineh incident?”

  The young officer swallowed and nodded.

  “We’ll try to keep that from happening,” I told him, “by avoiding the known groups. Where are they?”

  We were still on the road. The young man pulled out his dagger and used the point to draw a sketch of the city. A nearly straight line served as the Great Wall. He talked and pointed. Most of the vineh were on the western side of the city.

  “We were returning from the west when they attacked before,” I said, looking at the diagram. “We’re headed east now; it looks as if we can get away without much trouble. Even if the vineh decide to come after us, the big groups couldn’t reach us in time.”

  I stood up and thanked the officer.

  *Yoshah,* I called the female cub to me. She trotted up, nipped insincerely at my boot, and looked at the young man curiously, drawing a smile from him. I led the cub over to Yayshah, and Tarani leaned forward to hear me.

  “There are small groups scattered to the east of the city,” I said. “The best thing seems to me to be an all-out run to get out of range as quickly as possible. The cubs can’t keep up yet—do you think Yayshah will tolerate carrying Yoshah?”

  “I shall ask,” Tarani said, closed her eyes for a moment, then nodded. “The question is, will Yoshah put up with it?”

  “My turn,” I said, and knelt beside the pale-furred kitten.

  She stood just higher than knee level. She had looked stubby and awkward at birth, but she was already gaining length to her body so that the thick legs and paws looked more in proportion. As I stroked down the fluffy fur, the darker markings, resembling her mother’s brindling, appeared more clearly.

  *I have to ask you a favor, my girl,* I said. *I know you want to run on your own, but it isn’t safe yet. Will you lie very still on Yayshah’s back until it’s safe to get down?*

  She rubbed the side of her face against my arm, turning her ear back and twitching it right again.

  Neither of the cubs had yet tried to talk to me in words. I could feel Yoshah struggling to say something, and I reached out to listen, trying to get the meaning without needing the words. When it hit me, I barely kept myself from laughing aloud.

  *Koshah will ride Keeshah,* I assured the female cub. *If he refuses, then we will all walk. Okay?*

  She agreed readily then, and let me gather her up with my arms around her chest and under her tail—which snapped back and forth. I stood up carefully, and tried to maneuver so the flipping tail wouldn’t hit Yayshah in the face.

  It’s a good thing we’re doing this today, I thought. The way they’re growing, they might be too heavy to lift tomorrow.

  “She agreed?” Tarani asked doubtfully.

  “The only problem was a touch of jealousy,” I explained.

  Tarani reached down to help, and we draped Yoshah across her mother’s shoulders. Her head was up and she peered around curiously, but for the moment the kitten was doing as she had promised—lying still. Tarani slid her hips toward the big cat’s, pulled the kitten toward her, and lay forward over the cub’s body. She nodded to me.

  “It will work if she stays still,” she said.

  *All right, Yoshah?*

  She found some words. *Yes. Go?*

  *In just a minute,* I promised.

  Something hit my leg—once, twice—as another voice hit my mind.

  *Memememememe,* it called.

  I knelt beside the male cub and petted him while I explained what we had to do. He didn’t care about the danger; he only wanted what his sister had been given, the privilege of riding a parent.

  Sometimes, I thought, as I struggled to lift the slightly heavier male, jealousy is a useful thing.

  I asked Keeshah to crouch, and I straddled him carefully. Koshah was still, but trembling with excitement. His raspy tongue lashed out and caught my ear, making me nearly drop him. I guided his movements through our link, and got him settled on Keeshah’s back. The big sha’um twisted his head around to stare at me, and the mood in his mind was one of exaggerated patience.

  *All right, Keeshah,* I told him. *We’re nearly ready *

  Keeshah surged to his feet. I moved back and settled Koshah into position under my torso, and gripped Keeshah’s shoulders. I checked Tarani again, where she lay across the hind legs and twitching tail of Yoshah, and she nodded.

  *East,* I said. *Run*

  Tarani must have given the same message to Yayshah, for the two sha’um leaped forward at the same instant. I felt a double “whoop” of joy from the two kittens, and Koshah’s body shifted a bit as he clenched himself around Keeshah.

  *Tell cub no claws,* Keeshah complained.

  I passed the word to both cubs, and then turned my attention to riding.

  A rider doesn’t ride on his sha’um; he rides with his sha’um, distributing his own weight as evenly as possible along the cat’s spine. He has to cling tightly enough to keep from bouncing, but keep his body flexible enough to flow with the stretch-and-close movement of the leg action, and the up-and-down effect on the cat’s back.

  The effort becomes automatic with practice. The rider learns the sha’um’s rhythms, and his muscles accommodate the cat’s patterns. The sha’um can alert the man to any discomfort through their mindlink, so they develop a riding style that is comfortable for both of them.

  Adding a second rider—or a hundred pounds of sha’um cub—changes the combination and defeats that natural, automatic style. We ran for nearly an hour, carrying the cubs, and it was hard work. I judged we were twenty miles or more east of Raithskar when the cubs began to get restless. I called us to a halt. Keeshah and Yayshah crouched low, and Tarani and I let the cubs scramble off their parents. As soon as Tarani stepped away from Yayshah, she flopped over on her side and lay there, panting. Keeshah, accustomed for some time to carrying two people, was barely breathing hard. He kept his crouch and watched the cubs sniffing and prowling through the underbrush.

  “I was about to ask to stop,” Tarani said. “It was her first run in so long.” Her face glowed as she looked at the darkly marked female. “It was hard for her, Rikardon, but she loved it. Not just the run. Running while I was with her. She loved it.”

  I heard the awe in Tarani’s voice, and I sympathized. Apart from any emoti
onal motives, there were sound, logical reasons why a person might want to bond to a sha’um: the defensive strength of the huge cat, faster travel time. There seemed to be no logical advantage to the sha’um in the deal. A sha’um left his home and put the quality of his life—if not his very existence—in the hands of a weak and confused creature, and he seemed to do it solely for the sake of companionship with his bonded friend.

  Yayshah was an exception. Before she had left the Valley, she had been promised that she would continue to have the protection of her lifemate, Keeshah, as well as our company. Yet she had made it clear that Tarani, not Keeshah, was the reason she made the choice to leave.

  I had learned that the sha’um did get something from their association with people—they shared new sensory experience, and their own native intelligence was stimulated by the need to communicate through the mindlink. But that was a long-term effect, unknown to the sha’um (if they ever realized it) until long after they made their choice.

  It’s hard for a rational mind to accept an act of love with no gain motive at its base. Being on the receiving end of a sha’um bond is humbling and exalting, and a little frightening—for if you accept that a sha’um is with you by his own choice, you must also accept that he may choose to leave at any time. The end result is that you return his loyalty and love as truly and completely as you can—not because you fear he will leave, but because you admire his innate nobility and want to emulate it.

  “I think we’re well past the danger from the vineh,” I said. “I saw only five groups. Did you spot any others?”

  She shook her head. “They seemed to take little notice of us, other than to move away if they were close,” she added. “We might have walked in safety—though I agree that the speed of our departure was a wise precaution.”

  “There were young animals in those groups, and the largest one I saw had only twelve individuals. They seemed to be just minding their own business, but it’s hard to tell how they would have reacted if the sha’um had been around longer.”

  I stretched my arms above my head.

  “In any case, I think we’ve left the vineh danger behind. From here on out, we’ll match our pace to what the cubs can manage comfortably. There should be enough wild game in the Morkadahl foothills for Yayshah and Keeshah to have ample opportunity to take the cubs hunting along the way.” I brought my arms down, and put one around her shoulders to hug her briefly. “I guess I was getting impatient, without realizing it,” I admitted. “It feels really good to be moving again.”

  9

  The Morkadahls are a high range of mountains that slash southward from the Great Wall to subdivide the western half of Gandalara. Behind Raithskar, the Great Wall does, indeed, resemble a wall—a sheer escarpment vanishing into the cloud cover above. Gandalarans named the entire northern border of their world the Great Wall, even though the escarpment quickly became more gentle, but still impassable, slopes that seemed indistinguishable from the mountains in the Morkadahls or the Korchis.

  It was difficult to believe that the Kapiral Desert and the slopes of the Morkadahls were part of the same environment. It was not difficult to understand the value of water in this world, or why Gandalarans had evolved as water savers who did not sweat at all or weep unnecessarily. The key to the tremendous landscape difference was the presence of water.

  Rivers of fresh, cool water descended from the mountains in varied styles of waterfall, from the nearly vertical, thundering Sharkel Falls in Raithskar to the Tashal, whose many widespread branches cascaded and flowed down the River Wall around Eddarta. Where there was a visible and usable water source, there was also a city or a town.

  There were some foothills in Gandalara that were as arid and scratchy as the deserts themselves. More often, however, the mountains seemed to soak moisture from the cloud cover. The Morkadahl foothills were fertile and busy with life. To the east, they sheltered a unique triangle of what I thought of as “true forest”—tall trees, rich undergrowth, a darkish and sheltered place that was the exclusive territory of the sha’um.

  We followed the western slopes of the Morkadahls, angling northward and then traveling south. There were two major settlements along the way: Alkhum, which footed the painfully high Khumbar Pass across the Morkadahls into the Valley of the Sha’um; and Omergol, a city built almost exclusively of the beautiful green marble its people quarried for export.

  We stopped at the cities, Tarani and I leaving the sha’um briefly to indulge in a bath and a hot meal, and to sleep on a fluffy pallet instead of the ground. We bought more “trail” food—dried meat and fresh fruits, and flattish, savory bread—and refilled the eight water pouches we carried between us.

  In Omergol, we stayed at the Green Sha’um Inn, and I introduced Tarani to Grallen, the inn’s owner and a man I considered my friend. He greeted Tarani with a quiet word and a smile broad enough to display the gap in his lower teeth—the earmark of a rough road to success—and winked at me as he left the table to order our meal. The girl who had drawn such a crowd when I had been here last—in the company of Thymas, the son of the leader of the Sharith—performed that night, as well. Tarani was as fascinated as we had been by the music that issued from the flutelike instrument, guided by the skill of the player.

  The following morning, someone knocked on the door of our room just as we were shouldering our “saddlebags” and getting ready to leave. I opened the door, and could not conceal my shock.

  “Somil?” I gasped.

  The tall, nearly bald, old man smiled, crossed his arms, and leaned on the doorsill.

  “I heard you were here, and suspected you would not stay long,” he said, nodding at the travel bag suspended from my shoulder. “I would have the answer to at least one of your mysteries, my friend: did you find Kä?”

  Behind me, Tarani grabbed the laminated-wood door and pulled it open wider.

  “It is the way of the Record to serve,” she said, sounding as if she were quoting a maxim, “not to question.” The words were severe, but her tone was curious.

  Somil pulled himself upright and inclined his head toward the girl. His supraorbital ridge arched slightly, giving him a built-in arrogant look which he reinforced with arrogant behavior. His eyes twinkled as he looked at Tarani.

  “Have you not heard, Tarani, that Somil is a renegade Recorder, who regularly betrays tradition?”

  Tarani showed no surprise that Somil knew her name, but smiled with her own look of mischief. “I have heard much worse things of the notorious Somil,” she said, then grew serious. “The only source I trust completely,” she said, touching my shoulder lightly, “speaks highly of your skill and discretion.” She stepped forward; I edged aside to give her room in the doorway. Tarani extended both of her hands and bowed. “I am honored to meet you, Recorder.”

  Somil grasped her hands and returned the bow. “And I you, Recorder,” he echoed.

  “The answer to your question,” I said, “is yes. But—”

  He raised a hand and waved it.

  “Say no more,” he urged me. “I will not hold you from your journey to hear the tale, though I would listen eagerly. To know that you had some profit from our seeking is enough for now.”

  He stood away from the doorway and invited us through it with a gesture. Tarani picked up her travel bags, and the three of us walked downstairs. At the door of the inn, Somil spoke again.

  “I trust you realize,” he said to me, “that you have done something I thought impossible—you have made me more interested in the events of the present than in those of the past. It would be cruel to leave that interest, once stirred, unsatisfied.”

  “If you’re asking us to come back and tell you the whole story someday, that’s a promise,” I said. “When it will be—”

  Again, he waved his hand. “Before my death is all I ask,” he said. He bowed to Tarani again, wished us a fair journey, and walked away without looking back.

  Tarani and I turned to move down the broad, ste
pped avenue leading through the center of Omergol.

  “He knew me through his contact with you while you were seeking,” she said. “I would give a great deal to know what he saw of me in your mind.”

  I reached for her hand and twined my fingers between hers. “What he saw, you know. Haven’t we agreed to be honest with one another from now on?”

  Outside of Omergol, we rejoined the sha’um, who were snoozing in an “orchard”—a cultivated field of dakathrenil trees. On the wild hillsides, the trees curled and twisted close to the ground, each tree looking more like a waist-high bush. Where the trees crowded together, younger ones had to reach higher for the light. We had seen clumps of dakathrenil yards long and several tiers high, rising taller than a man’s head. The trees had needle-shaped leaves, bore a nutlike fruit, and provided shelter and food to an astounding variety of small animals.

  Gandalarans cultivated the dakathrenil to grow straighter and taller. The trees were short-lived, grew fast, and reproduced plentifully. Their fruit was a major crop, but the real profit to a farmer was in the wood of the dead trees. Converting the zigzag trunks into functional articles was a task that involved many skills and supported many trades: cutting and smoothing small pieces from the trunks, laminating the largest pieces to form tools or doors or furniture, using the smaller pieces in artful decoration.

  Koshah, the male cub, was the first to wake as we approached. He yawned, laying his ears back and stretching his front legs, one at a time, out in front of him. Then he dug his claws into the ground and dragged his body forward and up, stretching out his hind legs and arching the tail, half as long as his torso, which was never still while he was awake.

  We had made it a leisurely trip, taking many breaks for naps and hunting lessons for the sha’um, and covering about the same distance each day that a man could walk. Still, barely two weeks had passed since we had left Raithskar, and the development of the cubs during that time had been phenomenal. Yayshah had begun the weaning process by pre-chewing meat from Keeshah’s kills, and the cubs’ teeth—including the two upper tusks characteristic of most Gandalaran mammals, but especially prominent in the sha’um—were fully visible and usable now. The cubs had begun to lose the long, fluffy, silver-tipped fur that had overlaid and masked their markings, and were emerging as miniatures of their parents.