Return to Eddarta (11 page)

How long have we been gone?
I wondered.
Two months? Three? Thymas has aged five years in that time.

I turned partly away from Thymas and spoke to the group of people, most of whom were non-Riders who had been at work at the many tasks necessary to support a settlement of the size of Thagorn.

“Your greeting honors me,” I said. “Tarani and Yayshah are well, and two cubs have joined us.” A clamor rose at that, the words obscured by the sheer noise of the outburst. The meaning was clear; these people whose lives were so thoroughly intertwined with sha’um, wanted desperately to see the cubs.

Thymas raised his hand, and quiet settled in quickly.

“Innis, you know the location of the Lady Tarani?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then kindly return to her. When Wortel scents the female, dismount and send him upwind, and approach Tarani on foot. Give her my greeting, and ask if she and the sha’um will consent to be settled in the clearing prepared for them.”

The Rider turned his sha’um and rode back through the gates. Thymas addressed the crowd.

“The Captain and I will consider the possibility of allowing Sharith to visit Yayshah and her cubs in small groups, but if it can be permitted, such visits will not begin until tomorrow. We must give Rikardon and Tarani a night’s rest, at least.”

The crowd began to dissipate. Thymas turned Ronar, his sha’um, and rode beside me toward the white house.

“What is this ‘clearing?’” I asked him.

“Just that,” he said, “a clearing … with a house. It is some distance from Thagorn, but sheltered in the hills, and—”

“And downwind,” I interrupted, looking at him in surprise. “Thymas, you built a house for us?”

We stopped our sha’um and faced each other. There was more sincerity than I could bear in the boy’s voice as he said, “Tarani has proven herself to be Sharith, and you are our Captain. You spared us the shame of asking you to leave us, and I swore that necessity would not arise again. That house may not be
in
Thagorn, but it is
of
the Sharith. It will serve as your—and Tarani’s—home, or as a temporary shelter for your visits. That is your choice; the house is yours, whenever it is needed.”

I was at a loss for words. I urged Keeshah on and we rode in silence, to dismount in front of the Lieutenant’s house. Shola came out, wiping her hands on her apron. She hesitated for an awkward moment, then impulsively hugged me. I returned the hug, and put an arm around Thymas as we went into the house.

Dharak was in the sitting room, arranged in an armchair, silent and motionless, staring out the window.

A shudder of tension ran through me and the two people I was touching. Shola said awkwardly, “It is the luncheon hour, Captain, and we were preparing to eat. You will join us, of course?” She was a chunky, hearty woman who could be beautiful when she wished. She was looking up at me with an air of
not
looking at her husband, and the rounded cheeks seemed hollow, the skin of her arms loose, the goldish headfur thinning noticeably.

“It has never lasted this long before, has it, Shola?” I asked her quietly.

She closed her eyes and took a breath. “It will be this way,” she said shakily, “until Doran returns. I am sure of it.”

I squeezed her shoulder. “Would I pass up one of your meals, Shola? Please go on ahead; Thymas and I will be there in just a moment.”

She left us, the boy and I, looking at the palefurred man who had led the Sharith for most of a long and capable life. We had found him in nearly the identical position when we had returned from Omergol with the note that Dharak had scrawled and sent to us. It had named Thymas as Lieutenant.

“Captain,” Thymas said suddenly, stepping away and half-turning his back on me. “Please stay in Thagorn.”

It was difficult for him to say that
, I thought.

“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” I asked.

The boy whirled. “
That’s
wrong,” he said. “I don’t want to be the Lieutenant, not this way.”

“You knew it would happen someday,” I said. “You hoped for it, didn’t you? How would it be different if Dharak were dead, instead of just … missing, as he is?”

The words shocked him, but I knew Thymas. It was like the old story with the jackass and the two-by-four; first you had to get his attention. Thymas was either learning discretion, or was getting to know me, too. He started toward me with anger in his face, but stopped, took a deep breath, and smiled wryly.

“The difference is, I haven’t had the training I expected,” he said. “Oh, I can assign duty and plan sentry patterns and supervise a work crew. If people have to do things, I can see that they work at it. But I don’t know a thing about how to control the way people
feel.
And—Rikardon, you don’t know what it is like now. The Riders are all right on the surface, but there’s not a one of them who goes to sleep with the assurance that his sha’um will be there in the morning. The others function, they do their work, but all they think about—they don’t even talk about it, mind you, for fear it will make things worse—is how things have changed, and how they might change tomorrow.”

Thymas lifted his arms and dropped them, in a gesture of futility.

“I can
direct
people,” he told me. “I can’t
lead
them. I never knew the difference until …” He waved a hand in the direction of his father.

“How can my staying be of help?” I asked. “And what did you mean by ‘training’? What training have you missed?”

“I was a cub the last time Doral went to the Valley,” Thymas said. “My father was shocked and upset for a few days, but he came back to himself. He had to step down from being Lieutenant, of course. Only a Rider can lead the Riders. So he appointed someone to take his place temporarily—it was Bareff, in fact.”

Bareff had been one of the first two Sharith I had met, and had become and remained a friend. I felt a surge of pride for him.

“Bareff led the Sharith for that year—but not
alone
, Captain. He did the planning, assigning, and supervising—the same kind of things I can do. But the
authority
, the settling of arguments, the award of punishment, the … the
leadership
continued to be Dharak’s in action and responsibility. Bareff worked with him, learned from him.”

“Are you saying,” I asked, “that if things had happened normally, Dharak would be doing that for you? That you and he would share the position of Lieutenant?”

“I am saying exactly that, Captain,” he said, and seemed relieved that I understood.

“And you want me here to fill Dharak’s place?” I demanded. “Thymas, you can do this alone.”

To my surprise, he nodded. “I know that. I also know that I will do it better, with help. And there is something else I fear.”

I waited.

“You were right about this being the wrong season for the sha’um to leave. They will be in the Valley for more than a year.” He ran a hand through the thick, startling white headfur he had inherited from his father. “By the time Doral comes back, Rikardon, I might be … accustomed to being Lieutenant. It may be hard for me to release that authority—or, rather, to live here happily, once it has been released.

“If you are here during that time, the authority transfer will be from you to Dharak. I feel I could live with that much more easily. Will you stay?”

“I can’t, Thymas,” I said. “You know why.”

The wry smile returned. “You would not begrudge me the power to wish, would you?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “Shall we go have lunch?”

As we walked through the doorway into the dining area, I looked back over my shoulder at the quiet, white-haired man sitting by the window, and felt a thrill of shock.

Dharak was no longer staring out the window. His hands remained limp and unmoving on the arms of the chair, but his head had turned, and his eyes were focused on Thymas’s back.

I said nothing to Shola or Thymas about the change I had seen in Dharak.
No use getting their hopes up,
I thought.
But I’m sure the Lieutenant heard that plea for help, and is working as hard as he can to come back
—
for his son’s sake.

I remembered watching Thymas’s face in Eddarta, when he had attacked me under Gharlas’s mindcontrol, resisting that control and finally breaking it.

Thymas got his physical strength naturally,
I thought,
but he got his character strength from his fathers example, not his genes. Dharak has made a start
—
he’ll pull out of it in his own time.

Throughout lunch, I had the pleasant sensation of knowing someone else’s happy secret and saving it as a surprise for my friends. After lunch, I called Keeshah and we followed Thymas’s directions to the house he had built for us.

South of Thagorn’s wall, a narrow trail broke away toward the northwest. It had the look of being well-traveled recently, and the ground bore the tracks of wheels and evil-tempered vleks. Obviously, the trail had been used to haul building materials from Thagorn to the site of the house.

It was a large stone house, set slightly off center in a nearly circular clearing some fifty yards in diameter and, incredibly, beside a small, chattering brook. The rivulet was a ground spring, obviously the surface extension of an underground branch of Thagorn’s river, which seemed not to have a name.

Around the house was wild country—some of the wildest I had seen. Fed by the plentiful ground water, dakathrenil twisted everywhere, rising even taller than orchard height. I heard movement in the brush, and the touch of Yoshah’s mind, stalking. The sha’um would break their own trails through that growth-choked wilderness, and love every minute of it.

Tarani came out of the house as I rode up and slid down from Keeshah’s back. The male sha’um drank from the stream and pushed his way out into the brush, seeking his family.

Tarani lifted her arms. ‘This is wonderful, is it not? The. Rider who directed me here—Innis, I believe his name was—spoke of it proudly. The Sharith seem sure that, enclosed as this place is by higher hills, Yayshah’s scent will not reach Thagorn.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “it is well planned. And, as you might have guessed, it was Thymas’s idea.”

For a moment her eyes went out of focus, and I recognized the fond look on her face. She and Thymas had been more than friends at one time, and I had finally learned to accept that the closeness that continued between them was based on the fact that they had grown and changed away from a very special relationship, and was not a continuation of that relationship.

“Everyone wants to see the cubs, of course,” I said. “Thymas has proposed that a few people at a time might visit here—on foot—to meet them. Will Yayshah allow that?”

Her eyes focused on me briefly, then looked over my shoulder as she spoke to the female sha’um.

“She agrees,” Tarani said, sighing. “She loves it here, Rikardon. She is planning a den—has already started shaping it, in fact.”

“Let her build it,” I said, waving at the house behind Tarani. “After all, we have a home waiting for us now, whenever we need it.”

Her smile was sad. “It seems we have many homes,” she said, “and none that we can enjoy for very long.”

“It won’t always be this way, Tarani,” I said. “Someday, we’ll have time—” My voice trailed off as Tarani raised her hand and shook her head.

“It is this way, for the present,” she said, “and we have both accepted it. To dream of a change is to focus beyond a task that has not yet been accomplished, and thus distract us from it.”

Her voice was sharp, her manner tense.

“Afraid you’d
like
the quiet life?” I asked.

Her head snapped up, but she bit back what would have been an angry reply when she saw my face. She even smiled.

“I could bear it as easily as you could,” she said.

Touch
é, I thought, and had the odd, unsettling feeling of a man who has just examined his life goal and wondered whose it was.
I could have had the “quiet life” with Illia. Maybe when I turned my back on her, I rejected it for good and all?

I covered my sudden uncertainty by putting my arm around Tarani and moving toward the open doorway.

“I take it back,” I said. “If you’re there, life couldn’t possibly be quiet.”

We stayed for six days. In that time, nearly everyone in Thagorn came for a visit, and the cubs grew sleek from the plentiful game and spoiled by all the attention. Yoshah and Koshah were able to stalk and hunt small game themselves, and were eagerly curious about our visitors. Keeshah and Yayshah took advantage of their break from educating the cubs to sleep a lot.

Yayshah benefited greatly from the long rest. Her darkish fur began to look healthier than it had since she had left the Valley, and the skin of her belly, thinned and stretched by the weight of the cubs during her pregnancy, shrank up and flattened out. Tarani took her out for long runs—always
away
from Thagorn, and with plenty of warning to the Sharith. Woman and sha’um both came back glowing from the exercise and the closeness.

Thymas was at our house on the evening of the sixth day, sharing an after-dinner glass of barut with Tarani and me. We had brought armchairs out of the house, to sit and watch the sha’um while we talked.

Only there were no sha’um to watch; they were out of sight beyond the edge of the clearing. We had only a few minutes before the sun went down and the world went dark, and I already knew—though I had not told Thymas as yet—that this would be our last night in Thagorn.

Thymas ought to have a chance to say goodbye to the cubs,
I thought, then called: *
Yoshah. Koshah. Come here for a second, please.
*

We heard a slight rustling, and a dark-colored head popped out of the brush to our left. The cubs had created a warren of tunnels through the tangled brush, their openings cunningly hidden.

Yoshah stepped out, jumped (I could feel her surprise and flash of anger), and whirled to clout the paw Koshah had used to swat her tail. Koshah lunged out of the brush and tried to tumble her with a rush into her side, but she kept her feet, sidestepping to absorb the shock of his head connecting with her flank. She twisted around and nipped at his shoulder (I felt the pinch, and Koshah’s anger).