Kabardan Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The bed was a sea of down-filled pillows and linen heets, faintly scented with cinnamon and bayberry elixers, bordered by four cedar posts on which were carved many strange manlike figures with wings and forking tongues, laughing, killing, copulating. At the head, six white candles burned on a golden candelabra; at the foot, a marble fountain shaped like a Kabard woman copulating with a dolphin bubbled warm lavender-scented water. It was afternoon; warm sunlight flowed into the tent through six arched plastic windows, each bearing an inscription in a strange flowering script. The walls were a diorama of Humans and Kabards and Human, dozens of individual portraits, kneeling in worship before a giant Godking on a golden dais. The ceiling was embroidered with Kensor, a swirling golden sun with half-closed eyes and a forking tongue. The tent had no furnishings for the enormous bed and two-waist-high basins of steaming water. Domojon was certain he was dead, and in heaven -- surely such rooms didn't exist elsewhere.
Then a Human nurseling, a boy of about ten, entered through a tent flap. He wore a loose-fitting scarlet robe, and carried a bundle of scarlet clothing. On his forehead hung a colindon of diamond and pearl.
"If you please, mistress, you must rise now," he said a soft, musical Humanish. It was comforting to hear the language of home. He hadn't realized before how much he missed Tregonëv, the Court of the Humanqueen, even Hajat Donlüun and his erëktilit support group.
"Who are you?"
The boy seemed surprised by the question, as if Domojon had known him for years. "Forgive me, mistress -- I had heard that you would remember little of the True Place, but still it comes as a surprise. I am your valet."
True place? What was he talking about? "What is your name?"
He smiled awkwardly. Humoring her? "I have no name, mistress. But here -- " He placed the bundle near the foot of his bed. "Your clothing has been cleaned and dyed scarlet -- not scarlet like that witch-queen of the Humans, but scarlet like the burning sun. Lord Kensor wihes you to be comfortable."
Fear clutched at Domojon like the throb of the mind-call. Something about that name, something about Lord Kensor was not right. "Whom do you mean, Lord Kensor?"
The boy laughed. "It is the title of the Godking."
Now he understood. No one, not the most devout Kabard, certainly not a Human, would ever refer to the Godking as Lord Kensor, as if to identify an incarnation of the sun with the Burning Sun himself. So Gorban had descended into the final madness, and dragged the Human with him.
"What is the name of this place, boy?"
His eyes widened, and he took a step backwards, frightened by Domojon's haggard expression and the questions that he found as obvious as the number-tales of nurseling-towers. "Alurag." He turned and hurried away, almost tripping on the red-rug floor.
Domojon dressed slowly. The bundle contained a new colindon to replace the one he abandoned when he became erëktilit long ago. He set it aside. Two egg-shaped grey stones were tucked into an inner pocket of his cloak. He tried to remember what they were -- ornaments? No. . .something deadly. Miniature Terran bombs. What was he carrying them around for? The last thing he remembered. . .an inn. A Valak and a Kabard. Odd that the three should travel together! Soldiers. A window pane breaking, shattered glass making strange islands in a pool of juniper wine. No -- a pool of blood. The Kabard. . .Akrava! Then he remembered everything.
The tent flap opened again, and another Human nurseling entered, this one a few years older, almost an adult. "Pardon, mistress, but the Godking requests your presence at a meal prepared in your honor."
"Of course." Domojon smiled. Already the mistakes of the first valet had been analyzed, and new responses mandated. "But tell me. . .what city do you come from?"
By now the question was familiar. "This is Alurag, mistress."
"Yes, yes. But I asked, what city do you come from?"
He stared blankly, with cool summer-blue eyes. "Why, mistress, there are only two places in the world: the glowing presence of the Godking, and the swirling darkness outside."
"Which did you come from?" he persisted. "Which were you born in?"
"I do not know what the word born means, mistress. Now, if you please. . . ."
He led his out into a desert of mound-tents, scarlet and grey and black against a voracious white sun. Domojon wondered if Kabards everywhere had abandoned their courts and cloud-houses for tents, like the Wanderlings. Soon they came to a tent nearly as large as a Kabard court, made of white lacquered djak-skin and painted with huge gold and emerald lions (surprisingly like the Black Lion of Nuisomein, Domojon thought). The Human valet pulled open a tent flap and uhered his into a hall as broad as any built by the Val, with pillars of blue-veined marble and golden chandeliers suspended from the high arching roof. A sideboard as long as a cloud-house was cluttered with Kabard dihes: steaming roast pheasant, miced lamb in a brown spicey kavaj-sauce, exotic red and green speckled fruit, loaves of bread three feet long, porcelain jars of fruit jelly, enormous bottles of yellow moss wine. Surrounding a horseshoe-shaped table in the center of the tent were twelve Kabard warriors, all naked except for their belts and antlered helmets. Instead of datarods they carried swords -- not the small curved swords used for little more bloody than opening letters, but long double-edged rapiers with pommels of black steel, stained with copper-red cinnabar to signify blood and inscribed with Words of Power ancient before the first Pachalan horsemen stormed down from Harchi. Domojon thought, insanely, that he must be in some sort of historical film. No one spoke, no one ate or drank -- they all seemed to be waiting. For her?
At the end of the hall, on an olive-colored dais, a portly Kabard was eating a handful of plums, spitting the pits into the cupped hands of a female attendant. He was pale and dark-haired, and as naked as a god: Gorban, much changed since Domojon had last seen him. Fatter. Pale, as if not even an ounce of bronze Kabard blood flowed in his veins.
"Welcome Domojon, Daughter of the Thunder," he called, using Tilach of course. "I trust you are feeling refrehed after your long sleep?"
"Yes, thank you," said Domojon. He walked to the dais and sat at his feet. "You bring quite a few luxuries on your travels."
Gorban rose before him, now not a crazed pathetic despot, but tall, wealthy beyond all imagining, and powerful, with the enlightened but mysterious smile of a god.
"No, no -- this is the new Court of the Divine Wind. With Pelun mounting so many attacks of Chiokërang, I thought it best to move north, to Alurag in Pachala. What Human would think of searching for me here?" He laughed heartily. "But I may be moving again soon -- to Moreveq! I grow weary of the southlands."
"You. . .abducted me?"
"Abducted?" He blanched. "Not at all. I may have rescued you from the Valak and the Kabard who were dragging you north to terrible danger, but abducted -- no!"
He smiled, keeping his eyes the summer-blue of pleasure and contentment. After all that had happened, Gorban still respected him, even feared his a little. "Why have you rescued me, then?"
"Why do I ever summon you, dream-seer? Lo, I have interpreted my own dreams for many weeks, but one was a tad complex, a tad difficult to bear. So I thought, why not call for Domojon? First, though, have a drink." An attendant held out a wide-mouthed goblet with something very dark and thick and meaty-smelling inside, and suddenly Domojon felt a thirst like a spear in his throat.
"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.
Gorban laughed. "Does it matter? Any beverage you can name is forbidden to one tribe or another. Wine, milk, water, blood --all the fruits of Kensor's wide earth are forbidden to those who fear. But perhaps you would prefer dawns-milk? Or green pear wine?"
"The wine, if you please."
He whispered an order to the attendant, and he lit long white two candles which perched on the horns of his chair. Another attendant puhed Domojon onto a silver chair, and pressed a goblet of wine into his hands. A musician began to play a lazy, melodious accompaniment on a two-stringed lute. "I dreamed of the first days of Tulë," Gorban said, "When Ceraine lived softly and gently in the birch forests, and Morev lived in their fields of black lichen and tarpe, and Human burrowed deep into the earth, building cavern-cities from Moreveq to Dhusaig in the utter south. Then the Humans arrived, hunted down the Human, burying them alive in their cities, wearing clothes of Human-skin and drinking from cups made of Human skulls. Then, in a generation they deemed kinder, the Humans merely bought and sold Human as slaves, separating clans from their Queen, exchanging their gods of the night for the worship of that pale woman in the ruës dome."
The attendant began to play faster. The room gradually darkened, leaving two greasy flames burning. And Domojon saw, as Gorban spoke, the hundred bright cities of Humanan laid waste, the ten thousand thousand Human minds slaughtered and silenced. his eyes reddened with blood, with anger. "In the first days, you see, before Humans with their prohibitions, Human tasted every pleasure of eating and drinking, of killing and making love. Their language was not a decadent Elusan, not Humanish, but the secret language of the stars. They practiced the old religion, the religion old before even Kensoraj -- that which unites spirit and nature, birth and death, love and despair. They drew blood from living flesh."
Yes--of course, Domojon thought, in a sudden joyful realization. The first Human hed blood! Wasn't that the chief means of fertilizing the earth -- to sprinkle it with blood from a healthy human? Didn't every religion demand blood sacrifice in some form to appease its gods? Wasn't blood itself the stuff of life, a commodity to be treasured, to be sipped as new wine, savoured as the kisses of a maiden or a youth not yet twenty? Already he longed to dip a sacred knife into a young warm body, to feel the joy of parting a body and soul in orgasmic disunion.
"And, curiously, in that world there were two gods, one of the day, one of the night. One to lead the Kabards, one to lead the Human." His gaze was open and friendly. "And, good Domojon, I dreamed that I was the god of the Kabards. Strange, isn't it?"
"And. . .was I the goddess of the Human?" He wanted that. Never had he wanted anything more. It felt good to finally admit it.
"Ah, you are clever. So clever, even, that you know how you may achieve your dream."
Your dream. . .something was wrong. It was Gorban's dream, not Domojon's. But he could no longer reason. "I know," he said slowly. "The Colindon of Aramkai."
"Very good. You are truly clever. "And you know where it is hidden?"
Domojon suddenly felt very tired, too tired to think. "I know where it is hidden," he repeated.
"And we could go there, you and I alone, in my airship?"
"We could go there, you and I," he began in a thick stupid voice. "No -- wait. It is hidden in Aramkai Roham, the City called Morningstar."
"The city hidden for a hundred generations?" Gorban asked. "And you know how to reach Aramkai Roham as well?"
"No, but Akrava does."
"Who?"
"The Kabard. . .my companion." Domojon jerked his head back spasmodically. The room was awash with misty red light, and attendants leapt up and down in a strange acrobatic dance. It seemed that they were boiling in a cauldron, dancing and making love and slaying each other and being resurrected amid frothing waters. He remembered Akrava, his sword drawn, his teeth bared, ready to fight or die in that guesthouse in Pachala.
"I wil not submit!" he shouted in his mind, and the room was again bright with yellow lamps, and the dance was ended, and the others rubbed their eyes and murmured.
"You fell asleep, Domojon," Gorban said, smiling, "I didn't mean to bore you with my dream."
"Not at all." He would pretend to submit, and find time to plot an escape. "I'm just a little dizzy."
"Your fatigue is natural. But you seem worried about your companion, Akrava. Is he dear to you?"
"We are traveling companions," he lied, "Nothing more."
"But you share things. The Dance of Love's Solitude, perhaps? Intimacies. . .secrets?"
Suddenly the tent flap opened, and a Kabard warrior strode in, wearing the now-traditional antlered helmet, and carrying swords in both his hands. Domojon thought he saw -- or perhaps it was just wishful thinking -- the golden eyes and bright full mane of Akrava.
"This is a private gathering!" Gorban cried. "A celebration -- now get out!"
"I beg your pardon, Lord Kensor, but my news couldn't wait. It concerns the Human troops amassed in Hizoran. We have just received a dispatch. . . ."
At Lord Kensor, Gorban smiled. "Approach me, then -- but lay down your swords, please. You have nothing to fear."
Then a portion of the hide-wall fell in, revealing air and dark sky -- and Etlzonat the Valak, his eyes gleaming, holding out a Val cutting-spear. "Are you ready to go?" he asked.
Akrava tossed a sword toward Domojon; it clattered at his feet. He had never carried a sword before. . .he had no idea how to go about it. But he knew how to run.
In a moment the three were through the hole in the djak-skin and running across the wet predawn grass. Three moons were gleaming over the tent-city of Alurag, which now seemed merely a cluster of oversized tents. They crossed a row of tall latrines, jumped over a ditch, and crahed through a field of waist-high grass. Etlzonat pulled them down onto the mud, and they crawled away on their bellies.
"Do not kill them!" Gorban shouted. "The Kabard or the Human -- I need both!"
A row of Kabards arrived to methodically beat the grass with long wooden sticks.
"How did you escape?" Domojon asked.
"Etlzonat," Akrava whispered.
"I am running very fast, getting here soon after Gorban's men could be walking. Then I am hiding in the camp, listening -- and you are thinking Val shyness is not good for anything? I can hide well, so that none notice. I am finding Akrava, then crunching the heads of two Kabards so that I may take their swords. Then a little slit, and Akrava is free!"
"You were a bit more difficult to rescue," said Akrava. "It was a great help to discover that Gorban and his warriors are baffled by anyone who wants to start trouble. They're as docile as. . . ."
"As Human?" Domojon offered with a grin.
"Hey!" called a voice. "I saw someone move here in the grass!"
The Kabards ruhed up like hounds on an antelope, but they ran faster, across a little ravine and through the rough grass northward. In the distance they could see a wide glittering river.
"Good enough for me," Etlzonat panted. He pulled a cloth bag of powder from his belt and quickly sprinkled it on the ground behind them. "Numb knees and calves are stopping the most zealous trackers, yes?"
They ran north, parallel to the river but not across, since the Kabards would reason that they had crossed. Rough grass bruhed against their legs, making blood trickle to the ground; once Domojon came very near to stepping on a poisonous toad three feet across, but Etlzonat's powder made it scamper off.
They had run no more than two miles when the band chasing them turned back; even in his madness Gorban had evidentally recognized that it was unwise to risk his troops in an unprotected wilderness trek, when there were alternate methods of finding the Colindon.
When dawn came, they were still walking, north along the hills that bordered Pachala and Elaku and Valmarkum. Far in the west they could just detect the Sea of Salt, a shimmering line of blue; to the east were mountains.
"Mnapragár, the highest mountain in the world," Etlzonat exclaimed. "And the border between Kabards and my Val. We'll be safe now."
In the afternoon Etlzonat finally let them stop in a patch of shade formed by two boulders and an alder tree. They had a cold, uncomfortable rest, since their tents and heating-coil were safely stored back in Alurag. Domojon hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday, so his stomach growled and complained even after he performed the breathing exercises taught his long ago to stave off hunger; and much worse was the face of Gorban the Godking, hovering over his in a ghostly half-dream, speaking the dark language of the mind-call.
"No longer will I spare you, Domojon Dreamseer, to haunt my dreaming!" he seemed to say. "The next time we meet, you will die!"
The bed was a sea of down-filled pillows and linen heets, faintly scented with cinnamon and bayberry elixers, bordered by four cedar posts on which were carved many strange manlike figures with wings and forking tongues, laughing, killing, copulating. At the head, six white candles burned on a golden candelabra; at the foot, a marble fountain shaped like a Kabard woman copulating with a dolphin bubbled warm lavender-scented water. It was afternoon; warm sunlight flowed into the tent through six arched plastic windows, each bearing an inscription in a strange flowering script. The walls were a diorama of Humans and Kabards and Human, dozens of individual portraits, kneeling in worship before a giant Godking on a golden dais. The ceiling was embroidered with Kensor, a swirling golden sun with half-closed eyes and a forking tongue. The tent had no furnishings for the enormous bed and two-waist-high basins of steaming water. Domojon was certain he was dead, and in heaven -- surely such rooms didn't exist elsewhere.
Then a Human nurseling, a boy of about ten, entered through a tent flap. He wore a loose-fitting scarlet robe, and carried a bundle of scarlet clothing. On his forehead hung a colindon of diamond and pearl.
"If you please, mistress, you must rise now," he said a soft, musical Humanish. It was comforting to hear the language of home. He hadn't realized before how much he missed Tregonëv, the Court of the Humanqueen, even Hajat Donlüun and his erëktilit support group.
"Who are you?"
The boy seemed surprised by the question, as if Domojon had known him for years. "Forgive me, mistress -- I had heard that you would remember little of the True Place, but still it comes as a surprise. I am your valet."
True place? What was he talking about? "What is your name?"
He smiled awkwardly. Humoring her? "I have no name, mistress. But here -- " He placed the bundle near the foot of his bed. "Your clothing has been cleaned and dyed scarlet -- not scarlet like that witch-queen of the Humans, but scarlet like the burning sun. Lord Kensor wihes you to be comfortable."
Fear clutched at Domojon like the throb of the mind-call. Something about that name, something about Lord Kensor was not right. "Whom do you mean, Lord Kensor?"
The boy laughed. "It is the title of the Godking."
Now he understood. No one, not the most devout Kabard, certainly not a Human, would ever refer to the Godking as Lord Kensor, as if to identify an incarnation of the sun with the Burning Sun himself. So Gorban had descended into the final madness, and dragged the Human with him.
"What is the name of this place, boy?"
His eyes widened, and he took a step backwards, frightened by Domojon's haggard expression and the questions that he found as obvious as the number-tales of nurseling-towers. "Alurag." He turned and hurried away, almost tripping on the red-rug floor.
Domojon dressed slowly. The bundle contained a new colindon to replace the one he abandoned when he became erëktilit long ago. He set it aside. Two egg-shaped grey stones were tucked into an inner pocket of his cloak. He tried to remember what they were -- ornaments? No. . .something deadly. Miniature Terran bombs. What was he carrying them around for? The last thing he remembered. . .an inn. A Valak and a Kabard. Odd that the three should travel together! Soldiers. A window pane breaking, shattered glass making strange islands in a pool of juniper wine. No -- a pool of blood. The Kabard. . .Akrava! Then he remembered everything.
The tent flap opened again, and another Human nurseling entered, this one a few years older, almost an adult. "Pardon, mistress, but the Godking requests your presence at a meal prepared in your honor."
"Of course." Domojon smiled. Already the mistakes of the first valet had been analyzed, and new responses mandated. "But tell me. . .what city do you come from?"
By now the question was familiar. "This is Alurag, mistress."
"Yes, yes. But I asked, what city do you come from?"
He stared blankly, with cool summer-blue eyes. "Why, mistress, there are only two places in the world: the glowing presence of the Godking, and the swirling darkness outside."
"Which did you come from?" he persisted. "Which were you born in?"
"I do not know what the word born means, mistress. Now, if you please. . . ."
He led his out into a desert of mound-tents, scarlet and grey and black against a voracious white sun. Domojon wondered if Kabards everywhere had abandoned their courts and cloud-houses for tents, like the Wanderlings. Soon they came to a tent nearly as large as a Kabard court, made of white lacquered djak-skin and painted with huge gold and emerald lions (surprisingly like the Black Lion of Nuisomein, Domojon thought). The Human valet pulled open a tent flap and uhered his into a hall as broad as any built by the Val, with pillars of blue-veined marble and golden chandeliers suspended from the high arching roof. A sideboard as long as a cloud-house was cluttered with Kabard dihes: steaming roast pheasant, miced lamb in a brown spicey kavaj-sauce, exotic red and green speckled fruit, loaves of bread three feet long, porcelain jars of fruit jelly, enormous bottles of yellow moss wine. Surrounding a horseshoe-shaped table in the center of the tent were twelve Kabard warriors, all naked except for their belts and antlered helmets. Instead of datarods they carried swords -- not the small curved swords used for little more bloody than opening letters, but long double-edged rapiers with pommels of black steel, stained with copper-red cinnabar to signify blood and inscribed with Words of Power ancient before the first Pachalan horsemen stormed down from Harchi. Domojon thought, insanely, that he must be in some sort of historical film. No one spoke, no one ate or drank -- they all seemed to be waiting. For her?
At the end of the hall, on an olive-colored dais, a portly Kabard was eating a handful of plums, spitting the pits into the cupped hands of a female attendant. He was pale and dark-haired, and as naked as a god: Gorban, much changed since Domojon had last seen him. Fatter. Pale, as if not even an ounce of bronze Kabard blood flowed in his veins.
"Welcome Domojon, Daughter of the Thunder," he called, using Tilach of course. "I trust you are feeling refrehed after your long sleep?"
"Yes, thank you," said Domojon. He walked to the dais and sat at his feet. "You bring quite a few luxuries on your travels."
Gorban rose before him, now not a crazed pathetic despot, but tall, wealthy beyond all imagining, and powerful, with the enlightened but mysterious smile of a god.
"No, no -- this is the new Court of the Divine Wind. With Pelun mounting so many attacks of Chiokërang, I thought it best to move north, to Alurag in Pachala. What Human would think of searching for me here?" He laughed heartily. "But I may be moving again soon -- to Moreveq! I grow weary of the southlands."
"You. . .abducted me?"
"Abducted?" He blanched. "Not at all. I may have rescued you from the Valak and the Kabard who were dragging you north to terrible danger, but abducted -- no!"
He smiled, keeping his eyes the summer-blue of pleasure and contentment. After all that had happened, Gorban still respected him, even feared his a little. "Why have you rescued me, then?"
"Why do I ever summon you, dream-seer? Lo, I have interpreted my own dreams for many weeks, but one was a tad complex, a tad difficult to bear. So I thought, why not call for Domojon? First, though, have a drink." An attendant held out a wide-mouthed goblet with something very dark and thick and meaty-smelling inside, and suddenly Domojon felt a thirst like a spear in his throat.
"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.
Gorban laughed. "Does it matter? Any beverage you can name is forbidden to one tribe or another. Wine, milk, water, blood --all the fruits of Kensor's wide earth are forbidden to those who fear. But perhaps you would prefer dawns-milk? Or green pear wine?"
"The wine, if you please."
He whispered an order to the attendant, and he lit long white two candles which perched on the horns of his chair. Another attendant puhed Domojon onto a silver chair, and pressed a goblet of wine into his hands. A musician began to play a lazy, melodious accompaniment on a two-stringed lute. "I dreamed of the first days of Tulë," Gorban said, "When Ceraine lived softly and gently in the birch forests, and Morev lived in their fields of black lichen and tarpe, and Human burrowed deep into the earth, building cavern-cities from Moreveq to Dhusaig in the utter south. Then the Humans arrived, hunted down the Human, burying them alive in their cities, wearing clothes of Human-skin and drinking from cups made of Human skulls. Then, in a generation they deemed kinder, the Humans merely bought and sold Human as slaves, separating clans from their Queen, exchanging their gods of the night for the worship of that pale woman in the ruës dome."
The attendant began to play faster. The room gradually darkened, leaving two greasy flames burning. And Domojon saw, as Gorban spoke, the hundred bright cities of Humanan laid waste, the ten thousand thousand Human minds slaughtered and silenced. his eyes reddened with blood, with anger. "In the first days, you see, before Humans with their prohibitions, Human tasted every pleasure of eating and drinking, of killing and making love. Their language was not a decadent Elusan, not Humanish, but the secret language of the stars. They practiced the old religion, the religion old before even Kensoraj -- that which unites spirit and nature, birth and death, love and despair. They drew blood from living flesh."
Yes--of course, Domojon thought, in a sudden joyful realization. The first Human hed blood! Wasn't that the chief means of fertilizing the earth -- to sprinkle it with blood from a healthy human? Didn't every religion demand blood sacrifice in some form to appease its gods? Wasn't blood itself the stuff of life, a commodity to be treasured, to be sipped as new wine, savoured as the kisses of a maiden or a youth not yet twenty? Already he longed to dip a sacred knife into a young warm body, to feel the joy of parting a body and soul in orgasmic disunion.
"And, curiously, in that world there were two gods, one of the day, one of the night. One to lead the Kabards, one to lead the Human." His gaze was open and friendly. "And, good Domojon, I dreamed that I was the god of the Kabards. Strange, isn't it?"
"And. . .was I the goddess of the Human?" He wanted that. Never had he wanted anything more. It felt good to finally admit it.
"Ah, you are clever. So clever, even, that you know how you may achieve your dream."
Your dream. . .something was wrong. It was Gorban's dream, not Domojon's. But he could no longer reason. "I know," he said slowly. "The Colindon of Aramkai."
"Very good. You are truly clever. "And you know where it is hidden?"
Domojon suddenly felt very tired, too tired to think. "I know where it is hidden," he repeated.
"And we could go there, you and I alone, in my airship?"
"We could go there, you and I," he began in a thick stupid voice. "No -- wait. It is hidden in Aramkai Roham, the City called Morningstar."
"The city hidden for a hundred generations?" Gorban asked. "And you know how to reach Aramkai Roham as well?"
"No, but Akrava does."
"Who?"
"The Kabard. . .my companion." Domojon jerked his head back spasmodically. The room was awash with misty red light, and attendants leapt up and down in a strange acrobatic dance. It seemed that they were boiling in a cauldron, dancing and making love and slaying each other and being resurrected amid frothing waters. He remembered Akrava, his sword drawn, his teeth bared, ready to fight or die in that guesthouse in Pachala.
"I wil not submit!" he shouted in his mind, and the room was again bright with yellow lamps, and the dance was ended, and the others rubbed their eyes and murmured.
"You fell asleep, Domojon," Gorban said, smiling, "I didn't mean to bore you with my dream."
"Not at all." He would pretend to submit, and find time to plot an escape. "I'm just a little dizzy."
"Your fatigue is natural. But you seem worried about your companion, Akrava. Is he dear to you?"
"We are traveling companions," he lied, "Nothing more."
"But you share things. The Dance of Love's Solitude, perhaps? Intimacies. . .secrets?"
Suddenly the tent flap opened, and a Kabard warrior strode in, wearing the now-traditional antlered helmet, and carrying swords in both his hands. Domojon thought he saw -- or perhaps it was just wishful thinking -- the golden eyes and bright full mane of Akrava.
"This is a private gathering!" Gorban cried. "A celebration -- now get out!"
"I beg your pardon, Lord Kensor, but my news couldn't wait. It concerns the Human troops amassed in Hizoran. We have just received a dispatch. . . ."
At Lord Kensor, Gorban smiled. "Approach me, then -- but lay down your swords, please. You have nothing to fear."
Then a portion of the hide-wall fell in, revealing air and dark sky -- and Etlzonat the Valak, his eyes gleaming, holding out a Val cutting-spear. "Are you ready to go?" he asked.
Akrava tossed a sword toward Domojon; it clattered at his feet. He had never carried a sword before. . .he had no idea how to go about it. But he knew how to run.
In a moment the three were through the hole in the djak-skin and running across the wet predawn grass. Three moons were gleaming over the tent-city of Alurag, which now seemed merely a cluster of oversized tents. They crossed a row of tall latrines, jumped over a ditch, and crahed through a field of waist-high grass. Etlzonat pulled them down onto the mud, and they crawled away on their bellies.
"Do not kill them!" Gorban shouted. "The Kabard or the Human -- I need both!"
A row of Kabards arrived to methodically beat the grass with long wooden sticks.
"How did you escape?" Domojon asked.
"Etlzonat," Akrava whispered.
"I am running very fast, getting here soon after Gorban's men could be walking. Then I am hiding in the camp, listening -- and you are thinking Val shyness is not good for anything? I can hide well, so that none notice. I am finding Akrava, then crunching the heads of two Kabards so that I may take their swords. Then a little slit, and Akrava is free!"
"You were a bit more difficult to rescue," said Akrava. "It was a great help to discover that Gorban and his warriors are baffled by anyone who wants to start trouble. They're as docile as. . . ."
"As Human?" Domojon offered with a grin.
"Hey!" called a voice. "I saw someone move here in the grass!"
The Kabards ruhed up like hounds on an antelope, but they ran faster, across a little ravine and through the rough grass northward. In the distance they could see a wide glittering river.
"Good enough for me," Etlzonat panted. He pulled a cloth bag of powder from his belt and quickly sprinkled it on the ground behind them. "Numb knees and calves are stopping the most zealous trackers, yes?"
They ran north, parallel to the river but not across, since the Kabards would reason that they had crossed. Rough grass bruhed against their legs, making blood trickle to the ground; once Domojon came very near to stepping on a poisonous toad three feet across, but Etlzonat's powder made it scamper off.
They had run no more than two miles when the band chasing them turned back; even in his madness Gorban had evidentally recognized that it was unwise to risk his troops in an unprotected wilderness trek, when there were alternate methods of finding the Colindon.
When dawn came, they were still walking, north along the hills that bordered Pachala and Elaku and Valmarkum. Far in the west they could just detect the Sea of Salt, a shimmering line of blue; to the east were mountains.
"Mnapragár, the highest mountain in the world," Etlzonat exclaimed. "And the border between Kabards and my Val. We'll be safe now."
In the afternoon Etlzonat finally let them stop in a patch of shade formed by two boulders and an alder tree. They had a cold, uncomfortable rest, since their tents and heating-coil were safely stored back in Alurag. Domojon hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday, so his stomach growled and complained even after he performed the breathing exercises taught his long ago to stave off hunger; and much worse was the face of Gorban the Godking, hovering over his in a ghostly half-dream, speaking the dark language of the mind-call.
"No longer will I spare you, Domojon Dreamseer, to haunt my dreaming!" he seemed to say. "The next time we meet, you will die!"
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