“Twice.” What was it that loosened my tongue then, made me tell him the truth? “There is one abiding here who is claim-kin to me.”
“Thassa!” He seemed surprised, and I read that he looked upon my race with some of the awe which the plainsmen feel toward the Thassa.
“The Thassa,” I said bitterly, “share much of the troubles of all men. We bleed if one raises sword or knife against our flesh, we die, we suffer many ills. Do you think we are impervious to that which ails others?”
“Perhaps in a way I did,” he admitted. “Though I should have known it was not so. But what I have seen of the Thassa led me to think they were not akin to the rest of Yiktor in much.”
“There are perils which are ours alone, perhaps, just as you have those which are peculiar to your people also. What are the dangers faced by space rovers?”
“More than I have now time to tell,” he returned. “But your kin-the one who shelters here—is there nothing which can be done—”
“No!” I cut him short. To explain the why and wherefore of he who dwelt in the hall of Umphra, I could not. It hovered too close to his own present plight.
Among us those who would become Singers must undergo certain tests which reveal whether or not they have the proper gifts. And Maquad had been struck down during that time, not through any fault of his own, but because of one of those fell chances which are random shot by fate. We had surrendered what still lived into the hands of Umphra, not because we feared what he had become, as most of the plainsmen fear the deranged, but because we knew that here what life was left to his husk would be gently tended. For the Thassa no longer have fixed homes.
Once we had our halls, our cities, our rooted places. Then we chose another road and it was no longer necessary for any of us to claim a certain place for kin-clan being. There are old sites in hidden places, where we gather when there is need for council or on one of the Days of Remembering. We wander as we will, living in our vans. And thus to care for such as Maquad now was something we could not easily do. He was not the first we surrendered unto Umphra, though those had luckily been few.
“When will we know about—”
I roused out of my thoughts. “As soon as the messenger returns. Now, come, I would have you meet Orkamor.”
“Does he know?”
“I have told him as was necessary.”
But the man in the barsk body did not rise to follow as I stood, and to my surprise I read in him an emotion which I could not understand—shame. So strange was this to any Thassa that my amazement grew.
“Why do you feel thus?”
“I am a man, not a barsk. You have seen me as a man, this priest has not.”
I could not yet understand. It was one of those times when two who seem to have put aside the alien separation of their backgrounds are pulled sharply apart by their pasts.
“To some men on Yiktor this would matter, to Orkamor it does not.”
“Why?”
“Do you believe that you are the only one on this world ever to put on hide, run on four feet, test the air with a long nose?”
“You-this has been done before?”
“I—yes—also others. Listen, Krip Vorlund, ere I became a Singer and one able to company with my little people, I also ran the hills for a time in a different body. This is part of our learning. Orkamor knows this, so do others whom we visit now and then. At times we exchange parts of our learning. Now—I have told you something which you could use against the Thassa, tossing it as one might toss a firebrand into a standing yas crop to our ruin.”
“And you—you—have been an animal!” There was first shock in his thoughts, and then, because he was a man of intelligence and of a mind more open than the planet-bound, he added, “But this is indeed a way to learn!” And I sensed that he lost then some of his un-easiness, so I thought I should have said the like to him earlier. Yet I also realized that I said it now only because there might be need for some hope should Orkamor’s fears be true. Only—he must not look upon Maquad, nor know that story for the present.
We went into the inner hall of the temple and through that to the small garden where Orkamor rested his frail body, if not his compassionate mind. He sat there in a chair fashioned of hrata wood, deep-set in the earth so that the wood lived again and put forth small twiglets and branches, making a snug shield against the wind for one sitting there.
It was a place of deep peace, that garden, as was needful for the use to which it was put. For here not only came Orkamor to be renewed in spirit, but also he brought those for whom the world had ended when someone they loved had arrived to abide with Umphra thereafter. There are places where the power we all recognize under different names manifests itself in a way to inspire awe and even terror. Very few are there where it lays a comforting hand upon the afflicted. This was such a place and all who entered there were the better for it.
Orkamor turned his head and looked at us. He smiled rather than spoke his welcome. We went forward to stand beside him.
“The day is new, for us to write upon as we will,” he repeated a sentence from the creed of Umphra. “So fair a tablet should draw the best from us.” Then he spoke to Krip Vorlund. “Brother, Yiktor gives you much to write upon these days.”
“That is so,” the off-worlder replied in thought.
Orkamor had the inner language. He could not have been who and what he was without it. Few of his race, though, have developed that gift.
“It is given to any man to learn all he can during his lifetime, no limit set upon that learning. Only to refuse knowledge is our choice, and he who does so cuts himself off from much. I have never spoken with an off-worlder before—”
“We are as other men,” Krip Vorlund replied. “We are wise and stupid, good and evil, living by this code or disregarding that one. We bleed from wounds, laugh at jests, cry at deep hurts—do not all men whether they walk this world or that?”
“True. And this would be more true for those who, as yourself, see more than one world so they may make comparisons. Will you humor an old man, planet-bound, and tell him something of what lies beyond our skies and marches with the stars—”
Orkamor did not look at me, but I understood his dismissal. Why he would have the off-worlder to himself, I did not know, and it disturbed me somewhat. But that I put aside, since I could think no harm in Orkamor and perhaps it was only as he said, that curiosity moved him to do so. He was so much apart by reason of his calling that one forgot at times to remember he was also a man and had a man’s interests.
I nerved myself then to do what I could not face the night before—seek out Maquad. Of that there is no need to speak. To drag the sorrows of the past out of memory and relive them is a weak and useless thing. But I marveled anew at what they did in this place for those without hope.
At nooning I came again into the courtyard where I had left the van. My little ones napped in the shade of a tree, but roused and came to me. Krip Vorlund was not with them. And I wondered, for I did not believe that Orkamor could talk away all morning, the press of his duties was too heavy.
Then I called to one of the priests who brought us food and water. But he had seen nothing of the barsk and told me Orkamor was in the meditation chamber where he might not be disturbed.
Now I was worried. While the priests of Umphra will raise no hand against any living creature, there were others who might not think in their reaction to the sudden appearance of an animal. I was returning to the van when a secondary priest came in, his face bearing a frown.
“Freesha, there is a message from the western road, sent by a winged one. Those whom you seek never passed the gate town.”
I gave my thanks mechanically, only a small part of my mind reacting to his words. The disappearance of Krip Vorlund was my major concern.