Shadow's End

  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 i
t 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."

  Lutha knew he was staying to keep an eye on her so she wouldn't do anything motherly! She was so angry the blood hammered in her ears.

  "We're being sensible," said Leelson, his forehead wrinkled in apparent concern. "We really are, Lutha."

  "I know you think you are!" she cried at him, hating him. "Stop feeling at me!"

  He only held her closer. "I can't stop feeling you. I do feel you, Lutha. I've felt you since the moment I first saw you. I was high up in that library, all by myself, quite contented, and I … heard a summons. I tried not to answer it. And when I'd met you, that first time, I went away, fully intending never to see you again."

  She laughed shortly, wrenching herself away from him. "You did? I did too. When I told Yma about you, we both decided you were like a case of the plague, better avoided and very hard to cure!"

  "More or less what my mother said."

  She flushed angrily. "Damn your mother."

  "She's a product of her heritage. If you damn her, you'll have to go on damning former generations, all the way back to Bernesohn's time or earlier."

  "You're just like her! You and Limia are so much alike I can't figure out why she can't understand about … about us."

  He shook his head. "Why should she understand? I don't. I've been with other women. I've loved some of them. But when I've decided to go, I've always gone."

  "You went from me! Damn it, Leelson, you went!"

  "I went." He laughed in wry amusement. "But I wasn't gone. Or rather, you weren't. You were there, love. Every morning when I woke, like an invisible rope, tying us together. Every night when I was alone, I felt it tugging. Even when I wasn't alone, you were there, between me and whoever."

  She tried to laugh, tried to pretend he was lying, knowing all the time that Fastigats didn't lie. It was one of the infuriating things about them. They might not see the truth the way others saw it, but they really couldn't misrepresent what they thought was true.

  "Why? Why did you go?" she demanded, a question she'd been wanting to ask for years.

  "I told you why. In the note."

  "You call that a note? Five words! 'I can't get to him.' "

  "I couldn't get to him. And I couldn't … couldn't bear to see you … "

  "See me what?"

  "Wasting all that caring."

  "Wasting? On my own child!"

  He threw up his hands. "That's why I went, Lutha. This is why I'll go again, when this is done. If this is ever done."

  "Don't say it." Lutha banged her fist against the stone, hurting herself. "We can't change each other. We can hammer and hammer, and in the end we'll be the same. Things happen. We can't go back and make them unhappen."

  Lutha saw Leelson's lowering expression and laughed out loud. "This is ridiculous! We're marooned, we're in danger of death, we're sitting in a rock cavern with nothing but a few blankets and a rather modest stack of food, my child is missing, and you and I are—"

  "Are doing exactly what I wanted to avoid," he said firmly. "But you're right. We won't change our views in this matter. The more we talk, the more pain we'll cause, but we won't change."

  "But he's—"

  "Lutha!" Leelson glared at her. "Don't talk about what Leely is!"

  Then a voice from among the stones! "Dananana. Dananana."

  He danced into the cavern as though Leelson had summoned him, shining as brightly as one of those vagrant rays of sun.

  Lutha gasped. He was bleeding! Round wounds on his arms, on his face. No. Perhaps not. Not wounds exactly. There was blood, but not … not so much. "He's been bitten," she cried.

  Though maybe he'd only scratched himself on the stones. His little shirt was torn, a fragment of the striped fabric missing, his skin abraded beneath. But already the redness was paling, the rough edges of skin were smoothing.

  "Can't get lost," breathed Saluez, from some great distance.

  "He's not hurt," Leelson said in an ugly tone. "Look at him, he's not hurt."

  "Can't get hurt," said Saluez, her voice fading into silence.

  Lutha held Leely close, he waving his hands, kicking his feet, caroling the way he did when he was contented. "Dananana."

  Leelson turned his back on them and slowly moved in the direction the others had taken. "Be back," he said, the same words, the same tone as before. Definite. Dismissive.

  Lutha heard the sounds of his going away, the tumble of small stones, the crunch of his feet.

  "Poor Lutha," breathed Saluez.

  "My own damned fault," she mumbled. "Maybe you're right. Maybe Leely can't get hurt, or lost. People used to believe strange ones like Leely were protected by the gods."

  There was no response. Saluez was gone, back to wherever she'd been since the omphalos. Lutha tucked the blankets around her once more, then sat quietly by while Leely drew pictures in the sand, saying over and over, "Dananana. Dananana." When he tired of this, he curled up beside Saluez and went to sleep.

  Eventually the others returned to the cavern and, unaccountably so far as Lutha was concerned, set about making ready for an excursion.

  Now, Leelson said, they would go out and look around.

  Lutha stared at him in wonderment. He didn't notice. Mitigan raided the supply pile once again for mottled gray-green overgarments he said would hide them among the bracken. Snark suggested that they smudge their faces with dust so as not to show up pale or dark against some contrasting background. Lutha went along with all this for a time, though all the preparations seemed rather melodramatic
, but finally she could stand it no longer.

  "Will someone please tell me why we're going outside?"

  Leelson cast her a lofty glance. "Anything Snark experiences feeds back to Simidi-ala, where the Procurator is no doubt even now planning our rescue. The feedback includes not only what Snark sees and hears but anything she sees us do or hears us say. We've had no chance to look around in daylight. One of us might come up with some insight that may be useful in planning the rescue attempt. Even the scanty information we have now is more than the Alliance has known previously!"

  Mitigan, busy checking his own armament, raised the subject of weapons for the others, and Snark suggested they go first to the camp to pick up heat guns like the one she carried. These were tools used by the shadow team to sterilize soil before planting homo-norm crops, but they would serve to discourage attack as well.

  While Snark demonstrated this device to the others Lutha checked her arrangements for Leely once more. Saluez's knife was put away in Lutha's own pocket so he couldn't get at that. His tether was tight—she checked it for the third or fourth time—so he couldn't get loose. While she did this Snark was instructing the others: " … turn it on … press the button." Even distracted as Lutha was, she thought she would be able to manage that.

  They went down the slope into the camp, exploring from building to building, Mitigan, Leelson, and Snark half-crouched, looking in all directions at once, the ex-king and Lutha shambling along, feeling faintly ridiculous. Lutha was reminded of the vacated world the Procurator had showed her, where Mallia had lived. Here, as there, was clothing out of which bodies had been stripped. Here, as there, were artifacts, tools, games left behind when their users had been taken away. Through open doors the wind keened softly, a chill murmur that never ceased. In a window a tuft-eared, short-nosed animal sat quietly, staring at us interlopers.

  "Is that a live cat?" Lutha asked, disbelievingly.

  "Left behind when the real team was evacuated," Snark said. "Her name's Zagger. There's another one somewhere. Zigger."

  "Animals? Real animals? Left behind? The Procurator told me the Ularians left nothing alive!"

  "I know what he said," snarled Snark. "I was there, pouring your damn tea!"

  Lutha fell silent. The cat jumped down from the window and came to rub itself against her legs. A strange sensation. It looked up intelligently. Lutha realized that it, like the gaufers, knew things. Not as humans knew them, but in its own way. She saw language in its movements. Not her own language, not a spoken language, but … Smells, maybe? A combination, perhaps, of smells and gestures and sounds.