The Search for Kä

by Randall Garrett

  As if he could follow my thoughts, Thymas touched my knee lightly and said: “You see now that no Rider would blame you for what happened in the Darshi desert.”

  “Yes, I do see,” I said. “And I’m really ready to go now.”

  He only nodded. We leaned forward again, Thymas grasping Ronar’s back with his entire body, me clinging to the cat with my knees and to Thymas with my hands. Ronar started forward, gathered speed, and soon was running along the caravan trail that led around the tip of the Morkadahl mountains and then north to Omergol.

  The trip took us a day and a half, with frequent stops for rest and position-switching, and one night of sleeping under Gandalara’s cloud-covered night sky. While the moon was overhead, the richly colored countryside faded to gray and black and silver; the moonless part of the night was nearly pitch black. I reached for Keeshah now and then, just to confirm our contact, but I didn’t ask him for conversation. Settled in Thagorn, the two sha’um experienced a version of what they had known in the Valley. Much of Keeshah’s surface thought was taken up with mate and den and hunting. I had disrupted that for him in the Valley. I had interrupted this new, halfway version the morning I left Thagorn because I needed his fully aware consent to my riding Ronar, which he gave grudgingly. Now I tried to keep out of his life as much as possible.

  Thymas and I talked a lot during our rest periods, mostly about the trip to Eddarta. He asked me for more detail about the Valley of the Sha’um; I told him what I could, considering how little we had seen of any sha’um besides Keeshah and Yayshah.

  “Perhaps I was wrong about your helping Liden,” Thymas said, as we made ourselves comfortable for our night in the open.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You called Keeshah out of the Valley,” the boy said, shrugging. “Perhaps you could show Liden how to call Cheral.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “The circumstances were … unique.”

  “And you are unique,” Thymas said. “You and Tarani.”

  I looked at him in the quickly fading light, and felt vaguely disturbed that he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “I am no longer your rival, Rikardon,” he said.

  “And I was never yours,” I answered. “Not for Dharak or Tarani. Not intentionally.”

  “I believe that,” he said. “Good night.”

  We reached the outskirts of Omergol just at dusk. Having sent Ronar off to hunt and keep mostly out of sight, Thymas and I walked through the open gateway of the hillside city like any other two dusty travelers. Thymas’s shock of thick, pale headfur caught a lot of attention—especially from women—as we moved up the stair levels from the older, less reputable parts of the city toward the higher and newer areas.

  Omergol was built of its major export—pale green marble quarried from pits north of the city. Its beauty was dimmed in the dusky light and would return as reflected lamplight bathed the streets in a pale green glow. A lamp was already burning at either side of the doorway of our destination, the Green Sha’um Inn. It was located about halfway up the hillside, on our left.

  “You say you know this place?” Thymas asked as we passed the entrance to the noisy bar and restaurant and approached the table beside the stairway.

  “I know the owner,” I said. “And he’s a good source of information.”

  I asked the man behind the table for a room; he named a price and I paid it. With no need for discussion, Thymas and I turned back toward the bar.

  “This is where I first met Bareff and Liden,” I said, “and they were being less than courteous. My friend doesn’t like your friends much; it will be best if he doesn’t find out you—we—are Sharith.”

  We went through the open doorway and found ourselves enveloped in noise. The place was packed with people, most of them doing more drinking than eating. “I don’t understand this,” I shouted into Thymas’s ear. “It was never this crowded before.”

  “Was she here before?” Thymas shouted back, waving toward the far end of the room.

  The chaotic noise faded to a murmur, then died altogether as a young woman appeared through a doorway at the end of the long, wall-hugging bar—a doorway that had not been there on my last visit. As the noise settled down, so did the people who had been milling around, and I suddenly had a clear view of a small table against the wall across from the bar. Thymas and I made our way to it while the woman arranged herself on a chair in the middle of a small stage, and brought a flute-like instrument to her lips.

  We forgot our hunger and thirst while she played. Her music was heart-wrenching and uplifting, terrifying and exalting. Markasset had heard the instrument played throughout his lifetime, but never like this. Thymas and I sat there, captivated, until the last note drifted into silence and she stood up, signalling the end of her performance. Then we joined the noise of approval, yelling, banging dishes, stamping the floor. When she had left the stage, we looked at each other as though waking from a daze. The better part of an hour had passed.

  “Saw you come in, but couldn’t get through the crowd,” said a gruff voice behind me as a hand fell on my shoulder. “Welcome back.”

  I stood up to greet Grallen, the big, tough-looking man who owned the Green Sha’um Inn, but was still wearing the apron of a bartender. I introduced him to Thymas, who could only say: “Who is that woman?”

  Grallen grinned, showing the spaces where teeth were missing in his lower jaw. “Her name is Yali—my wife’s cousin. She has turned this place from a paying enterprise to a greedy man’s dream. She will play again, later—meanwhile, we’ll have some peace and quiet.” He waved at the column of people walking—some of them unsteadily—through the doorway. “What can I get for you and your friend, Rikardon?”

  “Dinner and some information,” I said. “Dinner first.”

  “On its way,” Grallen said, slapped me on the shoulder, and headed for the kitchen.

  Grallen showed up again in a few minutes to deliver our glith steaks and two glasses of faen, which were refilled more than once through the meal. Thymas and I were leaning back from the marble-tiled table, feeling that contentment unique to having eaten a good meal, when two Sharith walked into the room.

  When those uniforms appeared in the doorway, everyone still in the dining room stood up and away from their tables.

  Everyone but Thymas and me.

  “What—?” Thymas said, and stood up, too—a few seconds after everyone else, so that the sound of his chair scraping on the floor drew everyone’s attention to him. The smug looks on the faces of the two Riders vanished when they saw Thymas. The boy moved his head slightly. The Sharith moved quietly to an unoccupied table and sat down, removing their hats. There was a common sigh of relief, and a few puzzled glances in our direction, as everyone sat down again.

  Thymas’s air of contentment was gone; he was furious. “Visiting any city in uniform is strictly forbidden,” he whispered fiercely. “And from what just happened here, I can see that this has been going on for a while. Dharak will turn to stone when he hears about this.”

  For my part, I was worried that Grallen had witnessed the exchange, and was much relieved when he came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. I put my hand on Thymas’s wrist, and the boy made an effort to compose himself.

  Grallen picked up three glasses of faen at the bar and brought them over to our table, hooking a free chair with his foot. “Meal all right?” he asked as he sat down.

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “Good. Now—what is it you need to know?” He sipped his faen.

  “I’ve heard there is a Recorder named Somil in Omergol,” I said. “That is, he was here a few days ago. Is he still here, and do you know where I might find him?”

  “I know him,” Grallen said, gruffly. “I won’t ask why you need to find the old lech.” He gave us directions.

  I gathered the old man lived in one of the better districts. Grallen drained his faen and stood up. “I need to get back to work—the secon
d show crowd is starting to come in.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I have only one piece of advice for you about Somil; count your eyeballs carefully when you leave his place.”

  We stayed for Yali’s second performance. If Thymas’s pleasure was marred by his irritation with the Riders—who had left the place after only one glass of faen—it didn’t show in the rapturous expression he wore while Yali played.

  I had seen that look before—while Tarani danced.

  We turned in and slept late the next morning. I took Thymas to Korredon’s bathhouse, and he agreed the old man had magic in his fingers. After lunch, we wandered around Omergol until we found the house Grallen had described as belonging to Somil.

  It was, as I had guessed, in the richest part of town, high on the hillside, with a small and fragrant garden lining a stone-paved walkway to the front of the house. The door was made of brass-fastened wood strips, decorative and heavy. It was opened, the second time I knocked, by a delicately beautiful girl whose head would not have reached my shoulder if she had stood on tiptoe.

  She looked us over so carefully that I became worried she had figured out I had a fortune in gold coins in my belt. At last she spoke, clearly and softly. “Somil does not know you. What is it you wish?”

  “I need the services of a Recorder,” I said. “I am Rikardon; this is Thymas.”

  “Do you both wish to pay Somil for his services?”

  The girl had large eyes and she tilted her face up to look directly at me.

  “If he can do what I wish, I will pay him,” I said.

  “Then only you may enter,” she said. She turned her dark gaze on Thymas. “You must go away.”

  I wouldn’t want to be the one to say that to Thymas, I thought as I watched the boy’s face darken.

  “Thymas will stay with me,” I said. “The information I seek is important to him, as well.”

  “But only one may seek,” she said, as patient as a teacher with a child. “The one who pays.”

  The room behind the girl was the midhall which ran straight through to the back of the house, with rooms and stairways opening from it into the other parts of the house. A shadow moved on the part of the wood-panelled wall I could see.

  “Then we will find another Recorder,” I said, dragging Thymas away from the doorway, “to help us find Kä.”

  Thymas nearly had apoplexy, but the ploy worked. A tall and thin old man, his head totally bald, snatched the front door away from the girl and stepped up to the sill.

  He smiled ingratiatingly and said: “Kä will cost you.”

  9

  I reached into my pouch and brought out two of the Eddartan gold pieces, which I had earlier removed from my belt. I held them up, spread so that he could see that there were two.

  “This is the price I’ll pay,” I said. “No haggling.”

  I knew full well, from the flash of eagerness the old man had let me see when he came to the door, that he would have done it for nothing. Ricardo was familiar with the passion of the educated for more knowledge. He was also familiar with the need of a shrewd businessman to maintain that image.

  “Agreed,” Somil said, and held out his hand.

  I took Thymas’s hand and put the coins in it.

  “He will pay you—after I get the information I came for.”

  Somil drew his hand back, his wide-set dark eyes flashing from under his supraorbital ridge. “Who has told you I am a thief?” he demanded. His indignation was so sincere that I was taken aback.

  “No one,” I said, wondering if Grallen hadn’t meant just that. “But someone has told me that not all Recorders have equivalent skills. Would you commission a set of dishes from a potter whose work you’ve never seen—and pay in advance?”

  He made a choking sound, repeated it, then burst out laughing. He stepped aside. “Come into my home, gentlemen, please. It is rare that I face a challenge and have a good laugh on the same day. A potter,” he said again, laughing as we stepped through the doorway. “Indeed, a potter.”

  He led us through the midhall to the last door on the right, leaving the tiny girl to close the door. The room we entered was small and bare of any furniture besides four armchairs surrounding a small, tile-inlaid table. A second doorway, hung with a heavy tapestry, opened in the wall nearer the front of the house.

  The three of us sat down in the chairs, and another young woman, dressed as the first was in a plain dark gown of a clingy fabric, brought us a cool drink flavored with herbs. As she bent over the table to place the third glass in front of Somil, his hand stroked her side, hip and thigh. She suppressed a giggle, looked at him with adoration, and fled the room.

  I stared after her. Neither she nor the other girl could have been over fifteen years old.

  I looked back at Somil and found his gaze directly on me.

  “Whatever you may think of my lifestyle,” he said pointedly, “I am a Recorder and I take the actual work of my profession as seriously as any of those who make the pretentious claim that virtue and skill are equivalent. There are operational rules which I will not violate. Only the Recorder and the seeker may be present,” he said, a slight movement of his head indicating the tapestried doorway behind him. “Your friend may wait out here, if he likes, as long as he understands that to interrupt our session may be fatal to both of us.”

  “What do you mean, ‘fatal?’” Thymas demanded.

  “I mean fatal, as in dead or dying,” Somil answered. “A Recorder builds a bridge, makes a connection with the All-Mind, and leads the seeker across. Both of us will be gone for the duration of the session. An interruption destroys the bridge, and the All-Mind has grown by two, do you see?”

  “I see that if there is such danger, I should be the seeker,” Thymas said flatly.

  “No, I must go,” I said, astonished that I had come to think of this mental exercise as a physical journey.

  “There is another condition,” Somil said. “If you knew precisely what you seek, you would have no need to seek it. Therefore you cannot tell me, precisely,” he emphasized, “what you want, and if I do not know it, I cannot guarantee it. I will do what you ask of me, and I will be paid, in good faith, for doing only what you ask of me. Any error in the request is your own responsibility.”

  “We agree to your terms,” I said.

  “Rikardon,” Thymas protested. “I do not like this.”

  “Trusting, is he not?” Somil said. “Decide. Will you seek?”

  His manner changed again in those last three words. When he had come to the door, he had been a showman. On entering this room, he had become a nuts-and-bolts professional. Now he was almost mystic, the holder of secrets, the guardian of truth.

  The All-Mind may not be a god to the Gandalarans, I thought, but the Recorders hold a place equivalent to that of “high priest” in Ricardo’s world.

  I felt myself responding to the sense of ritual, and from Markasset’s memory came the words which acknowledged Somil’s transformation. “I will seek, Recorder,” I said.

  The old man rose silently and held back the tapestry for me to enter the inner room. Thymas grabbed at my arm, but I pressed his hand reassuringly, then removed it. I went into the dim room, which fell into near blackness when the door curtain swept back into place. I stood still until my eyes adjusted. The room was fairly small, with dark-paned lattice windows along one wall—the sole source of light. Against the doorway and inner walls were wide ledges with thick pallets. Somil was seated on one; he motioned me to the other.

  “What do you seek?” he asked.

  I remembered what he had said about asking the right question, so I thought a moment before I said anything. “Show me where Kä was built,” I said, “and where it is today.”

  “One may follow from the other,” he said, “but be warned: the All-Mind knows only what men have known. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Recorder.”

  He waved slightly, and lay full-length on his pallet. I followed suit,
fighting a wave of panic. I had come this far because some instinct had told me that Somil could do this, but suddenly I had second thoughts.

  “What troubles you?” Somil asked, and I jumped.

  “How do you know I am troubled, Recorder?”

  “You breathe shallowly; I see your hand clenching the edge of the pallet. You must be calm when we enter the All-Mind. Speak your fears, that I may put them to rest.”

  There was a richness to his voice, a timbre that was familiar—I had heard it in Tarani’s voice while she worked for healing. It was strongly hypnotic, and I felt myself becoming more calm as Somil spoke.

  I could resist this, I thought, just as I can resist Tarani’s skill. But if I let my non-Gandalaran mind resist this, I might make it impossible for Somil to make his link. I have chosen to use this Gandalaran power; I must let myself be Gandalaran.

  I let the peace wash over me.

  “What do you fear?” Somil asked again.

  “I fear being in your power,” I said.

  “I use my power only in your service,” he said, and I believed him. “What else do you fear?”

  “That you will see secrets in my mind,” I said. I was vaguely conscious that my voice was slurred with relaxation. Part of me was surprised that I was speaking so frankly, but the lethargy had settled in too far to allow me to be alarmed.

  “I will share with you what I see in the All-Mind, but I will not share your thoughts. What I learn of the All-Mind in your seeking is mine to keep or to give. Whatever I may learn of you will remain yours.” He paused for a moment. “You are still afraid. Tell me.”

  “I fear the All-Mind will not admit me,” I said.

  “That has never happened,” he replied, “but there is no danger in it. We would merely stop the seeking. Are you feeling more calm now?”

  “Yes, Recorder.”

  “Then make your mind one with mine, as I have made mine one with the All-Mind …”

  I stared into the darkness behind my closed eyelids and waited. There was a sliding sensation, a wrenching tug, and then I seemed to be in the midst of a network of brilliance.