The River Wall (28 page)

*Why go?*
he asked.

*We can’t possibly accomplish what we came for if you pick a fight with the vineh,*
I said.

*Cub dead!*
Keeshah shouted into my mind, outraged—with some justice, according to his logic—by the obstacle my uncooperative attitude was placing in the way of his instincts.

This time, I did not have to fake anger.
*Do you think Tarani and I were not hurt by that too?*
I demanded.
*That’s part of why we’re here. The vineh did the actual killing, Keeshah, but it was Ferrathyn who directed them to attack, Ferrathyn who really is responsible for his death. If you and the others attack the vineh, we won’t have a chance to make Ferrathyn pay for what he did*

A long hesitation. Tarani was watching my face. “Yayshah complains that the others have stopped,” she whispered, as if the sha’um could overhear us. I had the same skulky feeling. I nodded sharply, but kept on walking, drawing her with me. I was afraid that if
we
stopped, the sha’um would doubt our commitment and suspect I was trying to manipulate them.

Guide and protect
, I corrected the thought.
Not manipulate. Oh, please let this work.

Keeshah asked:
*True?*

It was the first time Keeshah had ever accused me of lying, and it hurt. It hurt partly because it was true, in a way, and pushed all my guilt buttons. It also hurt because it was evidence of the degree to which, at this moment, Keeshahs instincts outweighed his reason. Under normal conditions, it was impossible for us to lie to each other, and absurd to consider that it might be possible. I let some of that hurt show.

*Why would I tell you something that I didn’t believe to be true?*
I asked him.
*I don’t care about the vineh—surely you can tell that’s true—and have no reason to want to protect them.*

*Want to protect us
,* Keeshah said, a bit more gently. A quick surge of emotion accompanied the thought, acknowledging my good motives, and I felt him gathering himself to explain.

That’s it, Keeshah. Start to think again, and we’ll get through this.

*Protection not important
,* the sha’um said, that rage— which had both an instinctive and a logical basis—boiling up again, but in a more controlled way. *
Killing vineh important*

*Not as important as killing Ferrathyn
,* I said. I thought I used “killing” in place of “stopping” in order to make the point with Keeshah, but as I sent the thought to Keeshah, I had a chilling sense of its Tightness. Ferrathyn was fanatic and mad, beyond even the most elementary level of reasoning. There was only one way to stop him.

*You’d know that, if we blended. I think that’s precisely why you refused to blend just now. You know I’m right, and keeping words and distance between us gives you an excuse for not really understanding.*

*No!*
his mindvoice shouted. But after a moment, he spoke more thoughtfully:
*Yes.*

Another pause, during which I’m sure my heart stopped beating, and he conceded.

*I will listen
,* he said, and opened his mind to me.

My body went rigid, and part of me heard Tarani gasp.

I
was
Keeshah. I felt his fury at the vineh, the full force of the paradox of his instincts. If his family were attacked, he would defend them to the death. Yet he was willing to lead them into a fight which would endanger them, to avenge the lost cub. He was bonded to mate and cubs by instinct and conscious affection, and he fully recognized that they—and he—might die in a fight against the Raithskar vineh. He had an eager image of the fight, a foretaste of the almost transcendent state of fierceness he entered in an all-out battle. The image included Yayshah and Koshah and Yoshah fighting beside him. It accepted the possibility of their deaths, as well as his. And what Keeshah felt was not sorrow, but an overwhelming pride.

Later, when I could think again, I would remember that intense flash of feelings in connection with another event that had occurred halfway across Gandalara. I would see Thymas swinging his sword, killing a man I thought should live. I would hear him recite, as justification, a traditional litany: “Sharith kill their enemies.” And I would see that event in a more tolerant light, considering that the tradition might be less a product of history than of a secondhand instinct.

Now, however, thinking was not possible. As I shared Keeshah’s character for that moment, so was Keeshah experiencing the feelings and thoughts uppermost in my mind. I could exercise no control—shielding, choice, deception—in that communication. Whatever was in me at that moment, Keeshah learned.

As always, the experience was too intense to be sustained. Keeshah and I withdrew from one another, and I took notice of my surroundings again. I was lying down, nearly buried in the narrow-leaved ground cover that floored most dakathrenil orchards. Tarani was kneeling beside me, and relief swept through her tense face when I opened my eyes to look at her.

“You stopped, and then collapsed,” she explained. “It has not been like this before. What happened?”

“He
wants
the vineh,” I said. “Intensely.”

She worried her bottom lip, with one wide tusk. “Will they attack?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said to Tarani, then spoke to Keeshah.
*What will you do?*
I asked.

*Don’t know!* he answered, with such anger that I flinched physically and startled Tarani.

*Keeshah, do you believe that Ferrathyn is really the one who killed your cub?*
I asked.

*Believe,*
he agreed, still seething with an anger I was at a loss to understand.
*Cant hunt man,*
he said.
*Can hunt vineh. Vineh easier. Everything easier, before.*

* Before?*
I asked.

*You don’t want man because of cub,*
he said.
*You want man because of society*

The tone in which his mindvoice carried the word
society
answered my question. I took Tarani’s hand and used her weight as an anchor to pull myself into a sitting position. I stared at the green leaves between my knees and concentrated my attention on the sha’um.

This is what I wanted, in the Chizan Valley,
I thought.
A rational, reasoning being inside the skin of a sha’um. But that rational sha’um—who understands that a man could murder his child through the agency of a vineh—is still at war with the instinctual one—who can remember the death cry of his son, and sha’um blood on vineh hands.

*I admit it, Keeshah. I think that stopping Ferrathyn is more important than just avenging the cub, and I would think so even if I weren’t absolutely sure—as I am—that Ferrathyn is responsible for that loss. And I see what you mean about things being easier ‘before’—when you felt no responsibility to anyone besides me, yourself, and your family.

*Believe me,*
I said fervently,
*I do understand what you’re feeling. But the fact is, Keeshah, you
have
changed, you
have
accepted responsibility for your society—which is now, more than ever before, a part of mine—and there is no going back to the time before. You have to decide whether to attack the vineh on the basis of which responsibility is more important *

He was silent for a moment, then burst out in a flash of rage.

*HATE THIS!*
his mind yelled at me.
*WANT VINEH!*

*THEN GO GET THEM!*
my mind yelled back.

I heard a whimper beside me, and realized that I was crushing Tarani’s hand as I clenched my fist. I released her, and spoke again to Keeshah. I was calmer, but no less angry. I let him see my anxiety and impatience.

*Do what you want, Keeshah, but make up your mind, so I’ll know what to do next. If you aren’t going after the vineh, we’re wasting time we could use to go after Ferrathyn.*

Another moment of silence, then Keeshah’s mindvoice came to me quietly and sadly.

*Decision hard,*
he said, with characteristic understatement.
*Help?*

*I wish I could help you,*
I said.
*But I remember what you said to me earlier—that you were going to do what
you
wanted. You didn’t say ‘for a change,’ but I heard that part of it too. What happened near Chizan has transformed our friendship, Keeshah. More than ever before, we’re partners now. I’ve told you what I want to do, and why. You have to decide for yourself if my reasons are good enough for you.*

I felt Keeshah’s struggle like a pain in my gut. I knew this decision was only the first—and maybe the hardest—he would ever have to deal with.

“Keeshah is coming back to us!” Tarani said, confirming what I sensed from the big cat. She threw her arms around my neck. “Rikardon, you persuaded him.” She grew very still, then pulled away abruptly. “Yayshah’s furious,” she said. “She still hungers for revenge—Rikardon, she’s heading for Raithskar alone … no, not alone. The cubs are with her!”

While Tarani was reciting events happening half a mile away from the viewpoint of the female sha’um, I was receiving three other views of the same scene. Koshah and Yoshah were following their mother because she was going the same way their instincts led them, but they felt a puzzled sense of loss and wrongness in Keeshah not being with them. They had picked up enough of my feelings through my exchange with Keeshah to be aware that there might be a reason not to do what they were doing—but they had not achieved the complete knowledge Keeshah could gain by our blending.

*I will stop
,* he told me grimly.

Keeshah’s actions now frightened me.

Frustrated in his need to fight the vineh, and now committed to the need to keep hidden from the apelike creatures, he was venting all his pent-up anger toward his family, and was racing after them with a stop-short-of-death intention of violence, if necessary, to keep Yayshah and the cubs away from the vineh.

*Wait, Keeshah, that’s not the way to stop them,*
I said.
*If you and I can convince the cubs to stay, the three of you can keep Yayshah here without hurting her.*

*Make cubs stay?*
he asked.
*How?*

*I’ve blended with each of them on occasion,*
I said.
*I can do it now, maybe with both of them at the same time*

I had to take a second to think through the idea that had come to mind. The cubs’ battle mode was in control, and they were in full stride in the wrong direction. There was too little time, and too little thinking available, to make a long explanation.

What am I thinking of?
I wondered suddenly.
They don’t need to make the same decision Keeshah did—they only have to believe Keeshah made the right decision.

*Keeshah, I want you to blend with me, and then I’ll blend with the cubs*

*May not work
,* Keeshah said, and I sensed he was feeling something similar to what had nearly overcome him before. Keeshah’s fighting rage had been stirred up. He
wanted
a fight, even if it was his own family who had to provide it. Yet he did not want his family hurt.

*Will try
,* he said at last.

His presence surged into my mind with the keen poignancy of total sharing, and together, fighting to sustain the contact, we groped out in search of the cubs. Suddenly they were with us, two surprised presences who had an instant to express curiosity before they were melded into our union.

If I had found such a union with only Keeshah to be unbearably sweet and sharp, the experience of sharing the minds of three sha’um simultaneously was an exercise in wonder.

Each mind similar, each mind unique. Variance in physical perceptions of sight and touch and smell. Identical reaction to the blending with other sha’um—total and unrestrained delight. An overwhelming sense of their regard for me and the unqualified assumption that I would always be part of their lives. Their response to my affection for them—Koshah taking it for granted, Yoshah returning it warmly, a new awareness of it taking shape in Keeshah. The cubs shyly recognizing something more in their father worth respecting than merely the fact of their relationship. Keeshahs discovery of the innocence and ignorance of their young minds, and the beginning of a deep tenderness to accompany the robust affection he had always expressed to them.

One flashing instant of the four-way meld, then we could hold it no longer.

When it broke apart, I screamed.

Tarani caught me in her arms and held me with a fierce protectiveness while I shuddered and sobbed and clung to her. I hurt as if a piece of my brain had been sliced away. I felt it in my mind and heart and soul.

The mental wound had been sharp and real but clean, and even while I suffered I knew I would heal. The pain had begun to ease almost immediately, the cause of my emotional shock shifting from loss to wonder.

When I had calmed, Tarani pushed me away gently and looked into my face.

“You succeeded, my love,” she said. “Yayshah is still angry, but she is yielding. Keeshah and Yoshah and Koshah are bringing her back here.” She studied me. “What happened?”

Keeshah reached out for me tenderly. *
Sorry hurt you
,* he said.

*It wasn’t your fault, Keeshah,*
I assured him.
*How do you like it?*

*Different *
he said, and I understood many things in that one word.
*Glad.*

*Are they all right?*
I asked.

Keeshah hesitated a moment, then said:
*Yes. Confused. Miss you.*

*Tell them—*
I felt my shaky emotional calm flaking away.

*Understand
,* Keeshah assured me.

Only then could I look at Tarani and answer her question. “I’ve lost the cubs,” I said. “The bond has transferred to Keeshah.”

Tarani let out her breath slowly.

“Oh, my love,” she said gently, and stroked my arm. “How sad for you. But it is sweet for Keeshah, is it not? What a wondrous, wondrous thing,” she breathed. Then she shook her shoulders, and smiled shakily. “And you, Rikardon? Are you well?”