by Gayle Greeno
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
NOTES
PRONUNCIATION
“KHAR, WHAT ARE WE MISSING?”
Doyce still had the nagging conviction that the Seeker General had not told her everything she knew about their mission, about Oriel’s death. Is the truth so fearsome that the Seeker General is apprehensive I’ll refuse if I know it? What Doyce had heard and surmised so far already gave her nightmares.
Khar’s tail twitched, the tip flickering back and forth in an angry tattoo. “They don’t expect us to succeed,’” the ghatti mindspoke. “They think that someone, that we, have to try but they don’t believe we can do it. They’re convinced something worse will happen, something terrible, but they don’t know what. They want to warn us, but they don’t even know where to begin.”
“Wonderful,” Doyce mindspoke back. “Two more sacrificial lambs. Why not stake us out somewhere and be done with it?”
Also by Gayle Greeno:
THE GHATTI’S TALE
FINDERS-SEEKERS (Book One)
MINDSPEAKER’S CALL (Book Two)
EXILES’ RETURN (Book Three)
GHATTEN’S GAMBIT
SUNDERLIES SEEKING (Book One)
THE FARTHEST SEEKING (Book Two)
Copyright © 1993 by Gayle Greeno.
First Printing, May 1993
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.
.S.A.
eISBN : 978-1-440-67305-4
http://us.penguingroup.com
This book is dedicated to two people and one cat—to my parents, Doris L. and G. Alfred Greeno, for raising me with wit, wisdom, and a sense of wonder at the world around me, and to Tulip. for nineteen years, beloved feline, literary “mews.”
“Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth”
—St. Matthew, 7: 7-8
PART ONE
The silver medallion with its eight faintly curved sides swayed from the chain around Vesey’s neck, swung closer and closer to the baby’s face as the boy leaned over Briony’s cradle, his long, quick-bitten fingers trapping each side, halting the cradle’s rocking. It glinted and glittered, sharded by sunlight, then seemed to grow larger, engulfing the space, round and glowing as a cataracted eye, and Doyce sensed that she lay in the cradle looking up and out, instead of her daughter Briony.
It unnerved Doyce, the medallion with its rhythmic back and forth swaying, but why should she be frightened of a Lady’s Medal ... or of the stepson who wore it? She started upright, throwing the rumpled blanket off her shoulders, eyes half-open to the summer-starred sky above. Barely awake, conscious enough to know that she dreamed, yet unable or unwilling to pull herself out of the dream. She collapsed, head tossing against the worn black saddle that served as her pillow, and reluctantly fell into the dream again. It was distasteful, though not entirely unpleasant. The dream people looked achingly familiar, said familiar things, did familiar things, as did she. A habitual dream, yet subtly different. Surely she was no babe in the cradle to be watched over by Vesey? The octagonal medallion swung before her face again, blindly eyeing her, and she burrowed deep in the blanket, hiding.
Khar, all silvery shadowed with dark stripes and swirls, slipped beside Doyce, touched the flickering eyelid with her pink nose and felt the lid flutter, then subside. The ghatta sat motionless, staring down at her sleeping Bondmate. She’d had to touch, to remold Doyce’s dreams more and more often lately to allow her to sleep. She knew her intrusiveness had been gentle, a careful redirection, a reemphasis of thought, but it had occurred oftener than she liked. Why, she wondered? Perhaps it was simply because they were both tired from the circuit.
But the ghatta suspected she knew the true reason: the closer they came to the capital of Gaernett, the sooner Doyce would have to reach a decision about Oriel Faltran. Would she agree to marry him or not? And the more she thought on that, the more Doyce fled backward in her dreams to her previous marriage, relived her times with Varon, their baby Briony, and her stepson Vesey, all dead now.
Doyce craved the known rather than the unknown, Khar decided. Still, it puzzled the ghatta. She knew the old dreams inside and out, had experienced them time and again. These alterations were minutely different, yet there all the same. It made no sense: a dream relived, retold past history, but could not reinvent the past or change it. How could a dream form an untruth, something that had never happened like that? Every ghatt and ghatta, down to the littlest ghatten, knew better. Humans had such a strange way of mixing truth with desires, with wishes, should haves and could haves. How could they stumble forth whole from their pretending each morning? How much easier to know that a dream was truth. She sniffed again at Doyce’s forehead, rubbed her chin against the woman’s ear, and felt her shift away from the tickling whiskers. Khar moved to the end of the blanket and settled, curled her shoulders tight against the back of Doyce’s knees and slumped her chin on her chest, slitted her golden eyes. Other voices, other dreams drifted on the air as well tonight; she brushed by some, tasted at others; picked up the thread of mindspeech that Mem’now unwound toward her so invitingly and shared speech with the yellow, tiger-striped ghatt back at Seeker Veritas Headquarters in Gaernett.
Although Mem‘now sensed her presence, neither rushed their conversation, and Khar’s thoughts hovered, sharing his sensations as he paused outside the kitchens, listened, and found the quality of silence to his satisfaction. It would be rude to interrupt until he was ready. Mem’now was set in his ways, but to her thinking it gave the big yellow tom a sense of solidity, the knowledge that he could be trusted with anything. Why else would he have been chosen to lead the Tale-Telling as a way of training the ghatten in mindspeech, that unique gift that enhanced and expanded the scope of their native falanese tongue?
Pushing against the swinging door with his shoulder, he slipped his head and shoulders through the opening and stopped, rubbed against the door casing and surveyed the darkened kitchen quarters. His right hip radiated a dull ache and he grimaced as he flexed that leg. He gave a little snort, a sound of fond disgust that Khar recognized, and still without formally acknowledging her presence, Mem’now mindwalked with her. His Bond, Twylla, would insist on staying out too long to gather her medicinal herbs that morning—yesterday morning, he corrected himself pedantically—and with the sun barely risen the dew dapples weighted the plant stems, the grass blades, and shrubs as heavily as wet laundry bows a clothesline on a breezeless day. That and the coolness, plus Twylla’s insistence on scrambling up and around and down amongst the boulders and loose soil by the riverbank, slipping on damp, moss-greened rocks, had caused her old injury to flare up, muscles and improperly mended bones protesting at the ill use. Still, she’d been pleased with what she’d gathered, her marigold-haired head, fuzzy and furzy with exertion, bent as she cradled the cane-woven basket of dripping water parsley and bulbous typha roots close to her chest and hauled herself up the bank, her right leg dragging behind, useful only as a support or prop.
Khar knew it was Twylla’s pain that Mem’now felt, a pain that had become an old and familiar presence to him, just as it had to Twylla. It would always be a part of him, and Khar felt him detach himself momentarily from their sharing as he reached to caress Twylla’s dreams, felt the feather of contentment that emanated from him as he entered his Bondmate’s sleep memori
es of their gathering expedition earlier that day. Khar envied him the safe prosaicality of Twylla’s dreams.
“Greetings,” Mem’now’s mindvoice boomed in her ear and Khar started despite herself. The ghatt had incredible resonance and reach to his mindspeech; she knew it but had forgotten how near he could seem, almost as if he curled on the blanket beside her. “I hoped you’d be within range to join us tonight. Twylla and I have missed you both, though not as much as Oriel and Saam undoubtedly have missed you. Has Doyce decided anything yet?”
Khar fought a vague reluctance to share her thoughts and was shamed by her denial of Mem’now’s concern. Still, she convinced herself, they were Doyce’s thoughts, and her Bondmate had the right to privacy. It was just that Doyce’s sense of privacy sometimes seemed to exclude Khar, and the ghatta writhed with private embarrassment at the thought.
“Greetings. Will she, won’t she? Won’t she, will she? I don’t know yet, Mem’now.” She sniffed in exasperation.
The ghatt chuckled as he made his way through the darkened, still kitchen, navigating the carefully swept flagstones with their still-moist puddles from the final nightly scrubbing. “Ah, Bondmates ...” he shook his broad head from side to side, not bothering to finish the thought. “What is it that humans do with flowers? He loves me, he loves me not?”
“Mem’now!”
He bowed his head in mock supplication, let his ears furl dejectedly, and searched for inspiration. “Saam may mindwalk with us later as well. Would you like me to link you?” The Seeker’s circuit that Saam and his Bondmate Oriel rode ranged too far from Khar and Doyce’s circuit for the ghatti to mindlink with each other, but with Mem’now positioned between them as an intermediary link, it was possible.
She mentally shook her head. “No, just give him my Greetings. We’ll see each other soon enough. Ghatti don’t plot, you know that.”
“Not even in a good cause, such as romance?” Mem‘now shot back and then winced at the emphatic negation Khar ’spoke at him. He licked at his ruff, considering. “There’s a surprise for tonight, you know. Something special for the ghatten—and us as well. Might make it worth your staying awake.” He courteously neglected to add that he sensed she’d be awake all night, monitoring Doyce’s dreams.
“You already ’speak the best ghatti Tales that could ever be told. Your guidance in the mindwalk is a treasure. Isn’t that enough for the lucky youngling?”
He was pleased with her commendation, she could sense it, but didn’t allow it to go to his head. “And your Tales, my lovely ghatta, have delighted many as well. But be that as it may regarding both our skills, I’ve someone special for tonight.”
Pointing her nose toward the stars, Khar sensed and sought the essence of Doyce’s dream, then settled back, satisfied, and gave Mem’now her attention once more. “Who?”
“You hardly do credit to the curiosity of the ghatti race if all you can manage is a simple ‘who.’ ” He wound his way around the legs of the work-scarred trestle tables, past stools high and low, and brushed his tail against the long, fire-blackened ladle that swung, along with toasting forks and other implements, from a row of hooks and hangers. There was the slightest jangle, and that amused him, because it was precisely the amount of sound he meant to set off. He sat at last, compact and sturdy, back to the banked fire, gold earhoop reflecting a circlet of light, and waited, sniffing with contentment at the yeasty smell of fresh bread rising beneath tucked linen towels.
She considered saying nothing, outwaiting him, falling back on ghatti politesse to override the insatiable inquisitiveness, the need to know. But she liked Mem’now far too much not to let him have his satisfaction, especially when she could sense him fractionally shifting from foreleg to foreleg, eagerness barely suppressed.
“Mem’now, who is it? Don’t keep me in suspense. Is it Ghra’m? I’d heard that he and Selwa Alun were coming to visit. We haven’t seen him since they retired and moved so far south. Selwa was always lonely when she lived here, too far distant from the sea. But it’s too far for Ghra’m to mindspeak—there aren’t enough others to join with him. Is it Ghra’m?”
“Ghra’m would be deeply welcome, but it’s someone who visits even more infrequently than Ghra‘m,” Mem’now allowed. His claws flexed in and out of their sheaths, the faintest of scraping sounds against the flagged floor.
She thought, thought hard, and a distant sensation riffled the delicate hairs within her ears, a brief memory of mindspeech from another, someone so far removed and so seldom heard from that she could scarcely credit it. She shook her head to clear it and nearly pounced on Mem’now with the answer, then halted, remembering decorum, refusing to spoil his pleasure. And were she wrong, he’d think her half daft. “Who, beloved ghatt-friend, who?”
Mem’now looked down shyly, green eyes squinted shut. “One of the Eldest.”
Exhaling a breathy little pleasure purr, Khar pulled herself into a more upright position, claws heedlessly kneading the blanket with excitement. Doyce winced in her sleep as a claw struck home through the blanket, and Khar apologized, soothed. “Which one, Mem? Who? W’han? Or Reux? She hasn’t mindspoken us in the longest time. Some thought she might have finally passed on.”
“Even Elder than W‘han and Reux,” Mem’now hinted. “It’s Mr’rhah.”
“Mr‘rhah ...” she sighed her pleasure, turning the name in her mind. Mem’now told the truth, no doubt of that ... but Mr‘rhah! The thought stunned her, and still threatened to overwhelm Mem’now as he contemplated the enormity of the honor of such a visit.
Doyce stirred again, thrashed a bare arm free of the covers, and whimpered, a tear streaking down her cheek. With scant farewell Khar exited from her mindwalk with Mem‘now and spirited herself into Doyce’s dream, stalking stealthy and silent, waiting to surprise and entrap any tiny bit of untruth that had slipped into Doyce’s sleep tales. She prowled back and forth within the unguarded thoughts of her beloved Bondmate, tested each tendril of memory for the traitor. Each piece rang true and whole, simply another vision of Doyce’s past life before Khar had ’Printed with her. It was not a happy dream, Khar had replayed it too often, for the memory visitors lived only in the dream now, but it accurately depicted her past life. She whispered reassurance of her presence, of her love, and pressing tight against Doyce’s legs, hummed lullaby purrs.
Still, Khar stayed on guard, alert for the slightest change. She’d slip back and rejoin Mem‘now later when the other ghatti had arrived, if Doyce stayed fast asleep. To miss the opportunity to hear Mr’rhah Tale-Tell was almost more than she could bear; it might even be enough to raise Khar into the next spiral of cognizance, to formally mindwalk the path of a Major Tale told by an Elder of Mr‘rhah’s standing—if Mr’rhah would permit the ultimate sharing, allow Khar the flawless imprinting of the Tale in her memory. It was an Elder’s duty to guide younglings through the spirals of knowledge-lore, the sharing of level upon level of enlightenment, each as different as commencing a new life.
But then Khar had to face the harsh and unpalatable truth: with or without Mr’rhah’s Elder pattern of the Tale etched in her mindspeech, she was unlikely to ascend higher on the spiral until she and Doyce merged as a totality in the sharing of thoughts. Was she to blame? Was Doyce? Their Bonding linked sound and true, a match of minds, and yet somehow a very intimate part of Doyce always eluded her. “Please,” Khar mindwalked, mindspoke as hard as she could to any who might hear, any who might care, and prayed the Elders of the Race listened tonight. Listened and felt inclined to do something about it, not simply record her as a ghatta Bondmate not quite capable of reaching the core of her beloved’s being, doomed constantly to repeat the same spiral, learning and relearning the same lesson yet never achieving perfection. “Perhaps attaining another spiral will mean I have the capacity to reach her.” She closed her amber, slanted eyes in humility. “You know I ask it for both of us, to use the wisdom to make us both more perceptive.”
But no answer whispered
on the tentative summer breeze, just the sound of a nightjar’s wings swishing, feathered mouth gaping wide to entrap a moth. She waited, every iota of her being alert, warding Doyce’s dream, waiting for an answer. That there was no answer was an answer in itself; Khar acknowledged the bitter truth of that. She must strive with what she had, with all she had.
Near dawn soon, the moons had traversed the sky, fading to ghost-white cauls insubstantial as a worn nightshift. Had she missed the Tale-Telling, missed passing a greeting to Saam? She spun a delicate guard into Doyce’s dreams and soared outward with the rest of her being, mindwalking, her thoughts sliding without effort down the mindpath Mem‘now had so considerately left open for her. She entered the kitchen quietly, not wishing to disturb the tale or the listeners. Two tiny ghatten, almost ready to ’Print, sat spellbound at Mr‘rhah’s feet where once, long ago, Khar had sat, so young. so tiger-striped bold and promising. Might they rise more swiftly and surely through the turnings than she had. Another ghatten, barely an oct old, eyes not even open, ears still pinned tight to its head, nursed with innocent greed, drinking in the Tale with his mother’s milk. Murmurous greetings echoed from the other adults although not a slitted eye shifted from Mr’rhah’s spellbinding. Khar felt the Tale-patterns meshing, mindwalking the past in the middle of one of her favorite Tales, Newcomers to Methuen....
“We quivered with vibrations of delight as we directed our mindthoughts at these strange visitors from the sky-ways, so like and yet so unlike the Erakwa. We could read these beings’ thoughts, even though we could not fully comprehend them. We trilled with curiosity—asked question after question—and oh, the disappointment so strong that our tails drooped as we accepted at last that they could not seem to hear us though we could hear them so dearly. So many more tantalizing potentialities than the Erakwa, prickle-burred tight that we could never force open to seed, impervious to our questing and our questioning, shielding themselves from our search for truth.....”
