Shadow's End (46 page)

All, that is, but Saluez, who had lain closest to Lutha during the night. At intervals she'd moaned softly, but she had not responded to Lutha's touch or voice, any more than she responded to Leelson, who bent over her in the early light, shaking his head.

“She's lost in something fearful and ugly. I sense feelings of betrayal and guilt. Hard to say what it may be.”

Lutha thought that Saluez's feelings of betrayal were much the same as her own. Even now Leelson went past Leely as though the child did not exist.

“How cruel,” said Jiacare Lostre.

Lutha turned, startled, but he wasn't talking to her. He was kneeling beside Saluez, holding her hand.

“A cruel joke on all of us,” he said with a grimace, gesturing at the rocks around them. “Perhaps Saluez simply prefers to be out of all this.”

She was lying supine, the melon swell of her belly rising above the slackness of her body.

Lutha said, “She's never mentioned how long she had left in her pregnancy. Poor Saluez.”

“Why say ‘poor Saluez'?” Mitigan demanded angrily from his corner, over the
wheep, wheep, wheep
of his sharpening stone. “She will soon have a child. All women want children. Bearing is what they are good for!”

“Thus speaketh a Firster,” Lutha growled, deeply offended. “I suppose your god came roaring out of a whirlwind to tell you the universe was made for man, and so were women!”

“I received the visitation from the Great Warrior, yes! At my coming-of-age.” He glared his disapproval, then went scrambling off among the stones in the direction Leelson had gone a few moments earlier.

Lutha muttered, “Why is it all Firsters have to talk about their visitation. Even Leelson does it, though he dresses it up in philosophical language.”

“And what did Leelson's god look like?”

“Like a Fastigat.” She laughed grimly. “Of course.”

Jiacare drew the blanket closer around Saluez's shoulders. “Mitigan was right about one thing. We can't assume she regrets her pregnancy. Most of us humans seem to find one excuse or another for increasing our numbers.”

“Oddly enough, that didn't seem to be true on Dinadh. Trompe and I were surprised to see how many vacant hives there were. Dinadh's population is evidently decreasing.”

He thought about this, his mouth pursing, his eyes squinting. “That would fit the pattern. The Ularian reproductive
cycle would start with a growing human population and few Kachis, and the proportions would reverse by the end of the cycle.”

Lutha shuddered. “Through predation?”

“It is a kind of predation,” he mused. “If Saluez is an example. She's a young woman with an unimpaired body, but as I understand Dinadhi culture, she'll never have another lover or another child.”

“Why maim her? Why not just kill her?”

“As she is, she can still work in the fields to produce food. Late in the cycle the Kachis probably get the biggest share of what food there is.”

“If it's cyclical, then some Kachis must have remained on Dinadh to start the process over. Also, we've assumed the Kachis are the young of the Ularians. Where are the Ularians on Dinadh?”

He shrugged. “Being offspring of Ularians doesn't preclude multiple parthenogenic generations. Or even sexual reproduction as immature imagos—”

He was interrupted by Snark, who darted from the tunnel through which the men had departed. “You oughta go up and watch the show. The little shaggies that came blasting out when you folks came! They're blowing each other up, like balloons!”

The lure was irresistible. Lutha tucked the blankets close around Saluez's shoulders and tied Leely's tether around a stony knob nearby, putting the knot above his reach and jerking it to be sure it would hold. He settled down next to Saluez, curling into the curve of her body, his eyes half-shut, while Lutha and the ex-king went out after Snark.

Beyond the cover of the stones, they got their first daytime look at their hiding place: a dark cleft gaping between enormous, rain-rounded boulders beneath a jackstraw tumble of huge basalt crystals, so dark a gray they were almost black. Gap-toothed shards of similar crystals fanged the ridge.

From beyond that toothy ridge came a thin shrilling, rising and falling in volume, punctuated by explosive sounds. Mitigan and Leelson lay prone at the top of the slope, and the others joined them to peer through the scraggy scarp. They saw a seething caldron of shaggies, great globules of them rising and falling, tentacles whipping like strands of flung lava, the whole punctuated by eruptions in which one or more shaggies were blown apart. The cacophony was underlain by the sodden gulp of the sea, its waves flattened beneath a mat of floating body parts. The slender crescent of rocky beach was piled with clotted, squirming fragments, and more were washed ashore with each vomitous surge.

Lutha averted her eyes from the beach and focused upon the battle. There was a certain horrid fascination in the relentless winnowing. The rain of dead and injured was continuous. Gradually the deafening noise abated. Much of the detritus was sinking. The height of the waves increased, showing patches of clear water and making a more surflike noise.

Snark said, “It's brood aggression. Sibling murder. Happens with a lot of creatures. Supposedly it maximizes reproductive output. All the rearing effort will go to the strongest.”

Jiacare muttered, “How many will they leave alive?”

“Too many,” said Mitigan and Snark, as with one voice.

“It's hard to believe they changed shape that much,” Lutha murmured, half-hypnotized by the continuing massacre. “They looked almost human on Dinadh.”

Snark turned slowly, her eyes very wide. “What did they look like. On Dinadh?”

“Small. That is, slight. Very thin, but human in form, with wings—”

“And sharp teeth,” she said. “Right? And their teeth was really poisonous! And they come out at night!”

Lutha nodded.

“We called 'em scourges,” Snark muttered. “When my people ran off from Dinadh, some of the scourges followed 'em through the gate.”

“Kachis? In their original form? What happened to them?”

She made an aimless gesture. “There weren't very many. Mother said our people hunted and killed some of 'em. The others starved, I guess.”

Above the sea, the carnage had come to an end. Some few ragged forms still floated on the waters, gradually disappearing beneath the waves, while above, the uninjured ones separated and arranged themselves in an orderly grid that stretched to the horizons. By counting how many body diameters would fit in the previously crowded but now empty space, Lutha estimated one out of a hundred of the original number had survived.

She was about to mention this when she gagged, sickened by a sudden, horrible taste.

“Down, quick!” Snark spun her around. “It's the big Rottens!”

They made it down the ridge and into the rocks before the creatures appeared—though barely. When they came to the sleeping chamber, each of them found a water bottle and a wiping rag and sat down well away from one another, each careful to look away from the others as they drooled and wiped. The few pale rays of sunlight that penetrated the piled stones now stood almost erect, disappearing one by one. All scarcely breathed as the rays reappeared.

“No clouds today,” said Snark unclearly but matter-of-factly. “That was a big Rotten goin' over. Floatin' and danglin'.”

“Is there a place we can safely watch from?” asked Leelson, wiping his lips. “I'd like to see a big one.”

Snark dug her heel into the sand and twisted it as she considered. “This rockfall piles higher the farther east you
go. Clear at the east end, it's right on the ridge. We can try working through in that direction.”

Lutha had stacked the provisions in a neat pile, away from the stove. Disregarding these efforts at order, Mitigan tumbled the stack, tore open one of the personal kits, and burrowed inside it to find a full water bottle. Snark wiped her filthy face with the back of one hand and went scrambling off with him in pursuit, looking from the rear more like four-legged creatures than two-legged ones.

“Be back,” said Leelson as he followed them into the dark.

Jiacare Lostre shook his head, muttered fragmentary phrases of fastidious annoyance, and set about picking up the scattered contents of the personal kits.

“This isn't a kit knife,” he said. “Whose knife is this?”

“What knife?” Lutha asked, swiveling toward him.

He held a knife into the light of a slanting beam. Lutha saw it, and saw beyond it, where the severed end of Leely's tether hung white against the gray stone she had tied it to. The knife belonged to Saluez. She carried it in the pocket of her underrobe and Lutha had seen her use it dozens of times. So had Leely.

Lutha scrambled across the sand toward Saluez's recumbent form, feeling frantically along her blanket-covered body. Leely wasn't there. Saluez hadn't moved. Only her covers had been shoved aside to gain access to her pocket. Leely had been lying there when Lutha and the ex-king had gone out!

“Your boy,” said the ex-king. “He did it?”

Lutha nodded, rigid and cold with tension. She hadn't thought of his using a knife. Why hadn't she thought of that! Now what? The Ularians were out there, and Leely was wandering around in this warren, or outside it. Maybe out in the open. What could she do? What dared she do?

Jiacare Lostre put his hand on her shoulder, forced her
down, sat before her, taking her hands in his. “Be still,” he said.

“Got to—”

“Don't. Don't do anything. If he's inside, he's as likely to come back here as we are to find him. If he's outside, anything you do might endanger him more.”

“I could go to the entrance and call to him!”

“If you did, would you want those creatures to hear you? Listen to me, Lutha. The best thing you can do is nothing. Just wait. Besides, the others are looking out. If they see him outside, they'll come back and tell us so.”

She thought that Leelson wouldn't. Leelson wouldn't give it a second thought. She shivered. Jiacare put a blanket around her, then his arms around that, and they sat so for a long time.

Time went by. The patches of sunlight shifted nearer the stone, crawling amoebalike on the sand. The taste went away, but Leely hadn't returned.

“What?” demanded Leelson from the edge of the cavern.

“Leely,” said the ex-king. “He's gone.”

“Oh, tsssss.” Leelson hissed, grimacing at Lutha, at the world. “How long?”

Jiacare said, “He was gone when you left. We just didn't notice until afterward.”

Lutha put her face in her hands. He meant that she hadn't noticed. She would have, if it hadn't been for that horrible taste….

Leelson was suddenly beside her in the ex-king's place, his arms tight around her. “Oh, damn it, Lutha,” he whispered. “Why did you have to come out here. Why.”

He wasn't asking for information. She gave him none.

“I have to find him.”

“No. Not until it's safe. Snark says they haven't really gone. I came back to tell you to be careful.”

“Leely could have gone out there!”

“He could have. But likely he didn't.”

Saluez moaned. They looked up. She had lifted one hand to her forehead as she made whining, hurt noises. Leelson got up and went to her.

“Saluez?” Leelson raised her up.

Jiacare had already filled a cup, and Leelson put it to her lips. She drank, only a little.

“Hurt,” she said, putting her hand on her chest. “Hurt.”

Leelson laid her down once more. She breathed deeply, experimentally, her expression unchanging. “Not broken,” she whispered. “Don't think it's broken.”

It was not clear what she had decided wasn't broken. A rib, perhaps. Her collarbone. Her heart.

“Maybe you got a bump on the head,” Lutha said, forcing herself not to scream. It wasn't Saluez's fault that Leely had stolen her knife.

“Not in heaven?” Saluez asked, one side of her mouth twisting in a pathetic attempt at a smile.

“Not noticeably, no,” Lutha agreed, tucking the blanket back around her shoulders. “Are you cold?”

She ignored the question. “Who's here?”

“You and me and Leelson. And the former King of Kamir, Jiacare Lostre.”

“Your servant, ma'am,” said Jiacare, with a bow.

Saluez tried the smile again. “Where's Trompe?”

“Gone,” Lutha said flatly, tears starting in her eyes. She had been trying not to think about Trompe.

“The other one who's here,” Saluez said faintly. “That warrior. He killed Trompe.”

“Mitigan,” said Leelson. “Yes, he's here, too.”

“Leely?” she asked.

Lutha tried desperately for calm. “He seems to have gotten himself lost.”

“No, no,” Saluez murmured, squeezing her hand. “Can't get hurt. Can't get sick. Can't get lost.” Her eyes fell shut. She was gone again.

“Why?” Lutha demanded. “Why does Leely keep doing this?”

“Doing what?” asked Mitigan, emerging from the shadows with Snark close behind him.

“He's disappeared,” said Leelson.

“He's gone exploring. Kids do that,” Mitigan said offhandedly.

“I've suggested we not draw attention to ourselves,” the ex-king offered.

“If we go looking, we'll have to be careful,” Snark said, nudging Lutha, not unsympathetically. “It'd be dangerous to go running around out there. Sometimes they come out right on top of you.”

“Stupid to go out at all,” said Mitigan, with a warning glare at Lutha.

She felt a scream welling up! They were full of what they could or must do, which was everything but go out and find her son!

Leelson picked up on her panic. He tightened his hold on her and said, “We're not at all certain he is outside. Let's search the rock pile first. I'll stay with Lutha and Saluez. If he isn't found in a reasonable amount of time, we'll decide what to do next.”