And one white, veilless figure seated at the end, that was Melein. Golden skins, golden, membraned eyes, all alike and only the beasts and himself were alien. Duncan walked the aisle Niun and the beasts made toward Melein, his heart beating in a lost, forlorn terror, for the dusei gathered the tension they felt and cast it back to him, and he forbade it to swell to rage: no enemies these, not now.
Nor friendly to him.
The dusei came to Melein’s hand before they turned, as Niun took his place by her side and Duncan took the shadowed place behind her; the beasts began to pace back and forth, back and forth, eyeing the crowd with hostility scarcely contained.
“Yai!” Niun forbade them. The little one half-reared and came down again slowly, no play this time. The company did not flinch, but waves of fear were intense in their midst. The dusei snorted and came and settled between Niun and Duncan.
Hlil s’Sochfl, in the front rank of the Kel, rose and unveiled; so did others. Hlil came bringing a handful of small gold objects, offered them into Niun’s hands, and Niun unveiled and took them, bowed; there was an easier feeling in the company then.
J’tai. Honor medals Merai’s. Duncan listened, watched, as there came two kel’e’ein, a woman of years and another younger: to each Niun surrendered one of the j’tai kinswomen of Merai, they were, proud and fierce: they touched Niun’s hands, and bowed, and walked away, to settle again among their comrades.
More veils were put aside, all the Kel, eventually, yielding their faces to the sight of the Mother that had taken them.
Duncan kept his own, ashamed of his strangeness in this company, and hating his shame for it.
Kel’ein came, nine of them, old and young, to press the hand of Melein to their brows and give their names: Husbands, they proclaimed themselves, of Sochil.
“I accept you,” Melein said, after all had done; and then she rose and touched Niun’s arm. “This is born of a birth with me, and he is the she’pan’s kel’en, and kel’anth over my Kel. Will any challenge?”
There was an inclining of heads, and no challenge.
And to Duncan’s dismay, Melein took his hand, bringing him forward.
“There are no veils, Duncan,” she whispered.
He dropped his, and even kel-discipline could not prevent the looks of shock.
“This is kel Duncan, Duncan-without-a-Mother. He is a friend of the People. That is my word. None will touch him.”
Again heads inclined, less readily. Released, Duncan retreated into the shadows again and stood next the dusei. Challenge: if it came, Niun must answer it, would answer it. He was not competent for his own defense among them, Duncan-without-a-Mother, the man with no beginnings.
“And listen to me now,” Melein said softly, settling again to her chair, the only furniture in the tent. “Listen and I will open a Dark to the understanding of my companions; tell me Where you remember. These are the things that I know: “That from this world came mri and elee and surai and ka-lath, and in the passing of years, the elee took the surai and kalath, and the mri lived in the shadow of the elee…
“That since An-ehon has stood, mri and elee knew the same cities, and shared…
“That the elee built and the mri defended.
“That as the sun faded and wealth declined, the ships went out They were slow, those ships, but with them the mri took worlds. There was wealth…
“And war. Zahen’ein wars. Strangers’ wars.”
“This is so,” said the Sen, and the Kel and the kath’anth murmured in astonishment “We would have made the folk of Kutath masters. The elee rejected us. Some mri rejected us. We continued the war. Whether we won or not, I do not know. Some of us stayed and some of us parted this world. Slow ships, and ages. Sometimes we fought We took service with strangers eighty and more times. What we have seen in our returning… the track of People that went out, ja-anom, is desolation.
“We came home. We thought that we were the last, and we are not. Eighty-three Darks. Eighty-three. We are all that survive, of all the millions that went out.”