The River Wall (14 page)

I may not be a sha’um
, I thought,
but I think I’d get the message to “stay” too.

*Go after?*
Koshah asked hopefully.

*No, you follow your mother’s orders and stay near the house. Understood?*

*How long?*
asked Koshah’s mindvoice, sounding petulant. It was hard to imagine the fear I had sensed from him only moments before.

They don’t really understand what I’ve told them about the earthquake
, I thought.
They just know that I understand it, and that’s enough for them. That means they either trust me completely, or they figure anything I can understand can’t really be worth worrying about.

*Trust,*
came Koshah’s mindvoice, surprising me. I had not realized that I was developing the same quality of rapport with them as Keeshah and I shared, and that they could occasionally follow my thoughts when we were in close contact.

*Thank you, Koshah,*
I said.*
Trust me now, and stay near the house. Hunt if you get hungry, but don’t—I mean this—do not go into the main valley unless Tarani and Yayshah come back for you. I think they’ll probably be back soon*

*You come?*
Yoshah asked.
*Father come?*

I started to reassure them, but hesitated when it occurred to me that the other end of the Chizan passage had probably been badly hit by the quake, and I had no guarantee we could get through it. As I thought about the possibility, I sat up and looked westward as if I might be able to see, from a distance of some six mandays, whether the Zantil Pass was clear.

The horizons in Gandalara were strange in the high passes. The grayish rock edged upward until it met the grayish cloud cover, so that the demarcation was often more a matter of visible texture, rather than a color difference.

Not today.

North and west of us, the gray of the rocks stood out starkly against a black stain in the sky. The edges of the stain were leaking dark trailers into the soft gray of the cloud cover. At its center—as much as I could see above the high horizon—it rolled and tumbled like a storm cloud. I was sure that, from the right vantage point, I would see a column of the blackness rising straight up into the center of the stain. I leaped to my feet, fear driving out the pain of my wound for the moment.

I had walked in that cloud. Was it memory only, or newly created winds that brought me that sulfurous smell? I had come near to dying in it while it lay, idle and isolated, in the Well of Darkness.

The volcano had been rumbling then. Had it erupted because of the earthquake, or had its eruption
caused
the earthquake? Either way, the force of its eruption was spewing forth ash and noxious gases.

Somewhere to my left, Ligor stirred and moaned. I tore my eyes from the high darkness to the west, and stumbled to where he lay. I was relieved to see him come to full consciousness quickly.

“Got a fleason of a pain in my head,” he growled, rubbing his neck lightly. “And a mighty thirst for a cool faen.” He looked at me sharply. “Looks like you’re the one needs help, my friend.”

He tugged lightly at an end of the scarf, hanging free from the knot at my thigh. Pain shot through my leg, hip to ankle, and I dropped to the ground, feeling faint. Ligor pushed at me until I was lying flat and straight.

“I’d kill that fleason Worfit myself, if you hadn’t done the job already,” Ligor muttered. He removed the soiled scarf as gently as he could, but his every touch sent stinging fire through my leg. The word
infection
lodged in my mind, then
gangrene
, then
amputation.

I passed out again.

I was alone when I woke up, with a nearly empty waterskin close to my right hand. Just seeing it made me thirsty, and I sat up.

At least, my mind did.

My body lifted head and shoulders, got very dizzy, and lay back down.

I struggled for a few seconds to get hold of the water pouch, then brought it to my lips and drank from it, lying down. The cool liquid cleared my head and, after a minute or two, I was really able to sit up.

The wound in my thigh was neatly bandaged. A length of cloth had been folded into a narrow pad and placed against the wound, then another had been tied, smooth and flat, around the thigh to hold the pad in place. My thigh ached dully and twinged when I moved about, but there was no more of the searing, stinging pain.

I sighed with relief.

Then I looked at the sky.

The black spot was spreading.

I began to feel faint again, looking at it. I lay back down.

*Keeshah, where are you?*
I demanded frantically.

*Close
,* he responded instantly and anxiously.
*Well?*

*l feel better
,* I told him.
*Do you know where Ligor is?*

*Yes.*

I waited about fifteen seconds, and in spite of the fear and pain I felt, I was laughing to myself as I gave in:
*Well? Where is he?*

Keeshah’s response surprised me. It was … guilty.

*Man rides,*
he said,
*You need water, help. Man rode to city. Comes back. All right?*

A sha’um has only one Rider. Others may ride with the tolerance—and in the company—of the Rider. For the sake of my health, Keeshah had violated a trust to which he had been committed since Markasset had brought him out of the Valley of the Sha’um. Clearly, it was a possibility in his mind that I might be angry.

I was not angry.

I was amazed.

*Of course it’s all right,*
I told Keeshah.
*I know it was a hard decision. I’m proud of you for it. Thank you.*

I felt Keeshah’s relief just as he and Ligor appeared at the crest of one of the stony mounds that marked the center route of the Chizan passage. In a few seconds, they were beside me. Keeshah crouched, and Ligor stepped off his back to stand on the ground. As the sha’um stood up again to his full height, Ligor, who had half-turned in my direction, turned back to Keeshah. Hesitantly, he put his hand on the cat’s jaw and stroked the fur back along the thickly muscled neck.

“Thanks, my friend.”

Keeshah moved past the man, letting Ligor’s hand trail along the whole length of his side. Then he moved off, jumped to the top of a miniature mesa of stone, and lay down.

“He says ‘You’re welcome,’” I said.

Ligor whirled around, then came over to me, grinning.

“Say, I’m glad to see you looking so alive,” he said. “I was some worried about you.” He knelt beside me and set down a packet wrapped in his neckscarf. The lower edge of his tunic was ragged and unhemmed—the source for my bandage. He helped me drink from his water pouch, then untied his scarf. There was a fresh loaf of the nutty-tasting bread of Gandalara, some fruit, and a few strips of dried meat.

“Thank you,” I said fervently, after I had eaten half of what he had brought. As he started in on the rest of the provisions, I looked at him carefully. His tunic was torn in several places besides its hem, and his face was bruised. “Wasn’t easy to get, was it?”

Ligor paused in his eating, and looked suddenly afraid. He focused his attention on the food, and said: “Yeah, there was a bit of a fuss.”

“Ligor,” I said, “listen to me.”

He looked up, alerted by the tone of my voice.

“I know how you found Chizan. Most of the city was built of clay brick; the earth movement must have shaken it apart. That means the water reservoirs are all broken, lots of people are dead or buried in rubble, and the unhurt ones are fighting for the food and water that can still be used.”

Ligor looked startled, then glanced at Keeshah.

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t see it through Keeshah’s eyes—I was unconscious until just before you got back. I just know that Chizan is in total chaos because I’ve—well, its logical.”

I had been on the brink of saying that I had seen it before—but I had caught myself in time.
It would have been a lie, anyway
, I comforted myself.
Earthquakes may be a common part of Ricardo’s history, but not of my personal experience. I lived in California and felt the earth shiver now and then, and I watched the television coverage of major earthquakes, but I was never actually exposed to the aftermath of a big one.

Well
, I thought,
it looks like I get my chance now.

“Ligor, you know how important Chizan is to the people who need to cross through here. And you know the character of the people who settled here. Not exactly your natural leaders, would you say?”

Ligor snorted. “Not exactly your natural followers, either, I’d say. Folks looking out for themselves, mostly. It took somebody like Molik or Worfit to convince them that they could make more by working together than by cutting each other’s throats.” He took a drink of water, swallowed the mouthful of food he had been talking around, and squinted at me. “What are you getting at, son?”

“I want you to stay in Chizan,” I said.

He was silent for a moment. “Me?” he asked. “Not us? You want a natural leader? I’d say you’re it, boy.”

“Have you looked at the sky lately?” I asked.

Ligor was sitting with his back to the east. I knew by the way he turned around immediately that he had already noticed the dark anomaly. With his back half-turned toward me, he said: “I should have guessed you’d know what that is. Just looking at it scares the fleas off me. I ain’t sure I want to know any more about it.” He turned back to me. “But then again, I ain’t sure I just want to wonder, either.”

I struggled for a way to present concepts which were totally alien to this man’s—this race’s—experience.

“It’s poisoned air,” I said at last. “It used to be in the Well of Darkness.”

“Now, that’s one place I never been, and never wanted to go.” He paused, trying to understand. “You mean to tell me that the ground-shaking we felt went all the way over there and shook the ‘darkness’ into the sky?”

“I’d guess everybody felt that shaking, from Raithskar to Eddarta,” I said. The words struck a chord somewhere in the depths of my mind, but the thought was ephemeral and vanished before I could grasp it. “It was more than just the shaking that drove the ‘darkness’ into the sky, but the shaking caused it.”

Ligor twisted around to look at the eastern sky, and spoke with his back to me. “The shaking threw it up,” he said. “But it ain’t going to stay there, right?” He turned back to me. “And it ain’t going to settle all peaceful back into the Well, right? Will it come over here?”

I shook my head, thinking:
Not unless there’ll be a whole lot of shaking going on.

The phrase was straight out of Ricardo’s past, and I felt a wild urge to laugh.

This is no time to get hysterical
, I told myself sternly.
The sooner you convince Ligor to stay in Chizan, the sooner you can let that responsibility go, and be on your way to Thagorn, and Tarani and Yayshah and the cubs.
Another inner voice said:
You don’t even know if the Zantil is passable after the earthquake.
I took a deep breath and clamped down on the anxiety rising in me.

“That stuff is too heavy to go very far,” I said. “But you’re right—it won’t settle back where it was. It will probably come down all around the Well—and bring a lot of smoke and ash and new poisons with it.”

Ligor relaxed visibly. “Well, that’s a relief, anyway. There ain’t nothing around the Well to get hurt by it.”

At first, I was appalled by the man’s callousness. Then I realized that, unlike the Sharith, the minds of most Gandalarans did not turn first to the well-being of sha’um.

“The Valley of the Sha’um is close by the Well of Darkness,” I said quietly. “I don’t know how much danger the sha’um are in, but I’ve got to get over there and find out.”

“You don’t look real confident that they’re safe.”

“I’m not,” I said. “In fact, I think they’re all going to die—if not from breathing that stuff, then from starvation, because the animals they eat will die.”

I had not tried to hide the thought from Keeshah. First, it would have taken a lot of effort. Second, it was not fair for the truth to be hidden from him. Third, it would not have worked, anyway.

Keeshah sensed my concern about his reaction, but he did not move from where he rested.

*Know already
,* he assured me, with a calmness that puzzled me.
*Ready to go.*

Ligor was staring at me, horrified. “But—son, what can you do about it?”

“Roughly a third of the Sharith sha’um are in the Valley right now. Normally they wouldn’t come out for the better part of a year. But Keeshah left the Valley early for my sake. I’m hoping that other Riders will be able to call their sha’um out of the Valley. If some come out, maybe others will follow. But I can’t be sure the Sharith recognize the danger. I’ve
got
to get over there—or at least try.”

Ligor nodded sharply, signaling a decision. “And you don’t need extra weight to hold you back. I understand, son—I’ll stay behind.”

I slapped my hand against the ground beside me, stirring up dust and provoking a satisfying sting in my palm. “Will you tell me,” I nearly shouted, “why a man as competent and capable as you are would be ready to believe he’s worthless?” Ligor stammered and scooted back from me, astonished by the outburst.

“Fleabite it, man,” I said. “Don’t you see that I can’t leave Chizan in that state with a clear conscience? This passage is a river of life for both sides of Gandalara. Somebody has to take charge, get everybody to work together, clear the passes, salvage what water there is, arrange to get more. Sure, these people are rough. You know that better than I do—you know
them
better than I do. I could stay—yes, I could get the work done. But my heart wouldn’t be in it, and it wouldn’t be as easy for me as it will be for you.

“You came from among them, Ligor.” I saw him flinch, and I hurried on. “As a vlek handler, you were part of the force that built Chizan and made it prosper. But you stepped out of that, and you’ve gained the habit and the manner of authority. Ligor, you can win these people, lead them, convince them that it’s not just Chizan—all of Gandalara needs their help now.”