Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Would you be more sympathetic if I could arrange for your … release?"

  The king actually smiled. "Oh, madam, how my sympathy would wax, like moons grown fat on light. Away from here, my lips, most eloquent, would speak your cause."

  "My cause, as you put it, is simply to stop your assassins, Majesty. My ultimate cause may be something else again, but for the nonce, it's only that. The Famber lineage must not be worried by threats of assassination, not, at least, until we've found what we need concerning Bernesohn Famber."

  The king regarded his fingernails with gravity. "From all that lengthy tale you bored me with, it seems rather too late to look for him."

  "For Bernesohn, yes. For whatever information he had, possibly not. We pray not."

  "How would you think to get me out of this?" He gestured widely, including his kingdom, the planet, all the clutter and cumber of the monarchy of a dying world.

  Poracious Luv shook her head. "I don't know yet. I'll have to think on it, perhaps seek some advice. We have excellent counselors. Sometimes they can be quite Machiavellian. Assuming we can think of something that will work, you'll give me the writ?"

  "Oh, Madam Luv, I'd carry it myself."

  She brightened with sudden inspiration. "Would you, now? Then, sir, that may be the answer you are seeking! Consider. It is likely the assassins will be turned aside only by you, true? It may be no one can save our desperate inquiry except yourself? It may be, therefore, that the saving of humanity is in your hands? Including the lives of all those upon Kamir? All the mamas and sisters and children of your ministers, for example?"

  He stared at her from beneath swollen lids, startled once again from his ennui. "That would be true if ministers had kin. Reason declares that such men come from eggs abandoned by the deadly cockatrice, that they hatch forth among the desert sands, the word tradition peeping from their beaks e'en as they crack their shells. Myth has it that they strike their prey to stone, and that is true. This world will be but stone when they are through."

  She regarded him quizzically. "Your Majesty exaggerates slightly. When humans use up a world, there are usually some bacteria left, even some hardy plants. In any case, your ministers are not free agents. They are responsible to a larger constituency—to all the people of Kamir who lust for life, who have encumbrances of kindred and friendship. Such people will not willingly accept extinction, no matter how traditional it might be."

  "So much is true. I've heard that even weighty governors are wary of the people they abuse."

  "So! Use your people to gain your freedom! That is, if you're truly resolved not to return to kingship. Our Procurator says the same man who will hail a leader in time of crisis will kill him once the crisis is over."

  "Again, true," said the king with appreciation. "For though he'll play at resolution when death hangs upon a hair, once danger's passed, all his anxieties, like vicious fleas, do burrow bloodily. An itchy man is prey to discontent; he'll suage his flea bites with the blood of kings."

  "Surely the common man wouldn't want that!"

  "What common men want most is beer and sex, without disturbances."

  "So if it were necessary for you, yourself, to leave Kamir in order to save the people from disturbance … "

  "It is unlikely that the counselors would fight to keep me here. When all Kamir is threatened with despair, a king may make a kingly sacrifice!"

  "One hopes such sacrifice may be relatively painless," murmured Big Mama.

  "Even pain," said the king, with no intention of being prophetic, "even pain is preferable to dying of unrelieved ennui."

  "She has who?" the Procurator asked Poracious Luv's messenger, believing he had misunderstood her.

  "Jiacare Lostre, the king himself," the messenger replied. "He and Poracious went before his ministers and told them Kamir was in danger. The council pooh-poohed the idea. The king told them that in that case they wouldn't mind if he told the people of Kamir all about the Ularians being just next door in Hermes Sector. Poracious said the Alliance would help him publicize the matter."

  "Somewhat exceeding her authority," murmured the Procurator.

  The messenger muffled an undiplomatic snort. "As Madam herself said, it got the job done. The ministers knew there'd be widespread panic, possibly insurrection. They've let the king go. He and Madam were to have left for Dinadh the day after I left for Alliance Central."

  "Amazing."

  "Actually, the council of ministers didn't fight as hard as Madam Luv thought they might. She felt they'd really wanted an excuse to get rid of Jiacare. He has a younger brother, Fenubel, who's much easier to get along with. They've already installed him as regent."

  "Interesting," the Procurator murmured. "You're rejoining Madam Luv?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Talk to my adjutant outside. Make whatever arrangements are necessary. Things are getting complicated. I think I'd better go with you."

  In the hostel above Cochim-Mahn, Chahdzi woke Trompe very early, before it was quite light.

  "It is not good to move before the daysong has been sung," he told the Fastigat soberly, emphasizing his words with peckish nods, like an anxious hen. "Still, we must go all in one day, and we must leave now to accomplish that."

  Trompe got Lutha and Leely up, and they made a hurried meal before taking up their packs and moving toward the canyon trail, arriving there just as the sun peeked over the farther canyon wall. They heard the dawnsong as they had heard it before during their journey, a rising smoke of melody, wavering, expanding, until all the world could hear it.

  The narrow trail led them on a winding way downward among forest trees, coming out of the trees again and again to make hundred-eighty-degree turns and move into the trees again. At the beginning of the journey, on the outer edge of one curve, they saw far off across the canyon a strange house rising above the rim, barely distinguishable from the natural rock around it. The house was laid with dry stone, without mortar, and had a pitched roof with openings beneath the eaves. It resembled several other such structures Lutha had noted on their way toward Cochim-Mahn. She put glasses to her eyes and watched an elderly woman approaching the building, head down.

  "What do you call that building?" Lutha asked, pointing it out.

  "A House Without a Name," said Chahdzi, his tone forbidding further questions.

  Lutha, who was looking back at the elderly woman, merely grunted. The woman moved in an unusual way. As though apprehensive. As though fearful. Fearful of what? What was inside?

  Trompe, picking up on her perception, followed her gaze back along the road, too late. They had come around a curve and could see the place no longer.

  Chahdzi spoke as though continuing some former conversation. "You see how this trail winds back and forth, into this side canyon and out again, each time a little farther down the great canyon but requiring much time in the walking. If we could go across, it would take only a little time, but there is no way to go across safely."

  Lutha fumed silently. If the Dinadhi were sensible and efficient, they could go across, but the Dinadhi weren't sensible or efficient, so everything was done the long way, the slow way, the laborious way.

  The patterned way, she reminded herself, cautioning against impatience. She settled the padded straps on her shoulders. When they stopped next, she would arrange the retriever at the top of her pack, set it on audio only, and listen to one of the grimy old language chips Trompe had given her the night before. No sense wasting the time entirely!

  It was noon before they came halfway down the great wall, stopping on a promontory from which they could look directly south, across a spacious canyon bottom where a lake gleamed, and into the mouths of four other canyons. These four plus the canyon in which they stood made the five points of a star, with themselves at the northeastern point. They could look down the southern arm, a little way into the eastern and western arms, but they could see only the far wall and opening of the canyon to their right.

  As th
ey took food from their packs to make a hasty lunch, Chahdzi told them the lake was called "the Gathered Waters," and was neither deep nor lasting. Present in spring and early summer, it dwindled to almost nothing in fall or early winter when there was not enough water to fill the declivity.

  The sun stood at its zenith, lighting the southmost canyon to its bottom but leaving those at either side still shaded. The sun also lighted the great stone cave eaten into the western wall of the canyon across from them, making the hive within it glow like gold.

  "There is ba h'din, the hive, of Cochim-Mahn," Chahdzi said. "There is the leasehold of Bernesohn Famber. Below, stretching toward the Gathered Waters, is the greenblessing, the farm and fruit lands of our people. And now we have rested long enough. We must walk again."

  Though Lutha saw a glimmer of water along the canyon bottom and in the shallow lake, she saw no green, blessed or otherwise. Her glasses brought it within vision: a soft fur of trees and vegetation nestled in a wilderness of red stone. Narrow ribbons of greenery, at some places only a few paces across. It seemed scarcely enough to feed the people of the looming hive.

  Wordlessly, they got the straps of their packs across their shoulders once more. From this point on, the trail was much grown up with small thorny shrubs and tough grasses, and Chahdzi led the way.

  "No one uses this trail much, do they?" Lutha asked.

  Chahdzi took time to reflect before answering. "When Bernesohn Famber was there, people came again and again, as he chose, to bring equipment and supplies that were unavailable in Cochim-Mahn. Once his wife came here to him, also. The animals go up in spring and come down in fall. Other people come, now and then."

  Chahdzi seemed to feel this explained the situation fully, for he offered nothing more. Lutha soon found this understandable. The way had steepened; the footing was intermittently treacherous. It was sensible to avoid conversation in order to give all one's attention to where one stepped and what one was holding on to.

  During the morning and for the first hour after their noon stop, Leely scampered along behind them or between them, interrupting his journey to stare at a flying bird or the shape of a cloud. In early afternoon, however, he sat down with a sighing "Dananana," and refused to move farther.

  "Here's where I earn my fee," said Trompe, picking the child up and placing him on his shoulders.

  "I will take him when you are tired," said Chahdzi. "We cannot stop for him to rest."

  Light now came from the west, glaring into their eyes as they wound their way down and down.

  "Some of the canyons don't get enough light to be habitable, do they?" Lutha asked, suddenly aware of differences among the various chasms.

  "They must be wide enough to let the sun in," agreed Trompe. "Best of all are the wide east-west canyons with a sloping southern wall. Worst are the narrow north-south ones, with steep walls. In those the evening song would follow hard upon the song of morning. In those Lady Day finds little pleasure and shadow breeds."

  Lady Day would take little comfort from the canyon beyond the Gathered Waters, south of them. Already its western wall threw heavy shadow halfway up the eastern precipices, leaving the depths in darkness. Each day it would be lit for a short time at midday. The rest of the time it would be a dim and forbidding region. Lutha stared into its shadows and shivered, turning her attention elsewhere.

  "Trompe and I saw many abandoned hives on our way here. Why so many?"

  Chahdzi cleared his throat. "H'din ha'disha. Empty hives, yes, they become … vacant when the Dinadhi move about. From one place to another."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "Perhaps a spring dries up." His tone shut off further discussion.

  Trompe cast a quick glance at Lutha, pursing his lips, shaking his head. Chahdzi was uncomfortable with the question.

  She read his expression and let the matter drop, turning her attention to the landscape below her, where the delicate green of new leaves sprouted beside the transient water, a silver shoestring of oasis in this rocky land. They were close enough now that she could identify fruit trees, the branches almost hidden behind a flourish of blossoms.

  When they stopped to drink from their flasks, Chahdzi took Leely, who was by now asleep, fastening him to his back with crossed belts that might have been made for the purpose. They went on, more quickly as the day waned and the sun fell, climbing downward until Lutha thought she would drop from the pain in her legs where the muscles rebelled at every step. She told herself another thousand steps and she would rebel, danger or no. She began counting, storing up her pain against the explosion she intended. She had reached eight hundred and something when the trail leveled and they debouched upon the level gravel soil of the canyon bottom.

  "Now"—Chahdzi sighed—"it will be easier." He was sweating and pale.

  "Let me take Leely," said Trompe.

  "Let Leely walk," said Lutha. "He's awake. He's just being lazy."

  The boy screamed at being put down, and when the three adults started ruthlessly off without him, he ran after them, raging incoherently. Lutha stopped his mouth with a cookie, which occupied him until they were almost at the stream. The sun had sunk below the rim of the canyon above them, and the great cave with its hive was deep in shadow.

  Chahdzi took a small stoppered bottle from his pack and directed them to take a small mouthful each, even Leely. Then, while they sputtered at the acrid taste, he said, "Take a deep breath and go fast. Only a little more now, but the darkness comes swiftly."

  "I'm ready to drop," said Lutha.

  "You may not," he said softly. "Not yet. Only a little more. Quickly."

  They pushed themselves into an exhausted stagger that accelerated into a heart-pumping plunge, fueled by Chahdzi's stimulant, as they splashed through the narrow stream, tending a little southward to a place immediately below the great cave. Now they were in shadow. Now they could see the hive itself, see the few people assembled upon the lip of stone, peering down at them.

  "Ladders!" said Lutha, disbelievingly.

  "Only a few," said Chahdzi, gesturing her to climb first. "Go, rest, go, rest. Keep moving."

  They climbed. They climbed forever. Leely screamed. Lutha cursed under her breath. One ladder led to another, led to another yet. A few were slimy with spray. And then they were on the flat, sagging with exhaustion.

  A high tenor voice soared:

  "See our Lady depart. See her dance westward, upon the rock-rimmed mountains, beautiful her feet among the trees … "

  A tiddle of bone flutes, a rattle of little drums sounded from the wide-windowed loft of a tower nearby. Seemingly the rush was over. People were moving about purposefully, with no appearance of panic, men and women both, difficult to tell what sex they were in the loose robes, their hair cut alike, their faces painted this way or that. Some wore only the underrobe, the back hem pulled between their legs and up over the belt in front. Others' robes flowed free. A few had put on leather outer robes, these evidently for ceremonial reasons, for the singer and the musicians were among those so clad.

  "Now what?" breathed Trompe.

  "The leasehold of Bernesohn Famber is at the back," said Chahdzi, sounding more cheerful than he had at any time during the day. "Only a few steps."

  He led them along the south side of the great hive, past numerous pore windows and a few skin doors, each made of a drum-tight hide lashed to a frame of poles. Then there were no more windows and doors in the walls, and they entered upon Bernesohn Famber's private space: limited on the north by the featureless wall of the hive, on the south by the curving wall of the cave, on the west by his own living space, a small, single-story wing extruded from the hive: mud-colored, dome-roofed, softly rounded. Unlike the doors of our people, the annex door was made of planks, heavily strapped, hinged, and latched. The door had a lock. The single window was shuttered from inside.

  "Is there a key?" Trompe asked, trying the door.

  The latch rattled beneath his hand, and I, Saluez, opened the
door from within.

  They stared at me, Lutha and Trompe and the child.

  I stood before them, my face veiled, holding a broom.

  "What in hell?" demanded the tall, golden-haired man who came up behind me. "What in the hell are you doing here?"

  "Dananana," cooed Leely.

  "Leelson," gasped Lutha, surprise warring with fury on her face. "Leelson! Damn it all to hell, what are you doing here!"

  We expected these people. We had been told to prepare for their arrival, so I had been inside the leasehold, cleaning it. I had fetched extra sleeping pads, extra blankets. I had brushed down all the walls and benches and had swept all the dust into a pile just inside the outer door. I had my hand upon the latch when it rattled, so I opened it. Lutha stood there, with Trompe and her child. I knew at once who they were, for we had been expecting them and I had seen them on the trail across the canyon earlier in the day. My father, Chahdzi, stood with them, but when he saw me, he turned and went away without speaking.

  I stepped out of the way, drawing my pile of dust aside with my broom.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" demanded Trompe, moving aggressively toward the man, who had been with us for some time.

  Lutha scooped up Leely and came inside. Her face was twisted with effort; she was trying to scream or curse, but her voice would not come. She managed only a snarling croak, only a step or two inside the door, before she slumped against the wall, her face going blank. I knew at once they had been given the emergency drink, the one we carry when we are out in the world and need to reach the hive before darkness. The drug does that, when it wears off. It leaves bodies limp and minds shut down. I took her arm and helped her sit down, and behind us the darkness came, as though a blanket had been dropped across the light.

  I had a pot of tea already prepared as a restorative. I filled a cup and held it to Lutha's lips. After a moment's hesitation, she drank.

  "Let's get the door shut," said Leelson, suiting his action to the words before opening the inside shutters to let the last of the dusk seep in between the bars.