Shonjir By C.J. Cherryh

“Yai!” he rebuked it softly. It settled, not quite touching, sighed.

And from the doorway appeared a blacker shadow, that glittered here and there with metal.

Niun.

The mri stood still, waiting. Duncan gathered himself to his feet and stood still, carefully at the demarcation.

It was not necessary to say overmuch with Niun the mri observed him now, and after deliberation, beckoned him to come.

Duncan walked ahead into that shadow, the dus at his heels, as Niun waited for him at the doorway; and human-wise he would have questioned Niun, what manner of thing was here, what impulse suddenly admitted him to this place. But still in silence Niun swept his hand to the left, directing his attention into the room from which he had come.

Part of the crew’s living quarters had been here. The musky smell hung thick in this shadowy place, that was draped in black cloth. The only light within was live flame, and it glistened on the ovoid that rested at the far wall of the compartment, behind a shadowed steel grating. Two conduits rose at the doorway, serving as pillars, narrowing the entry so that only one at a time might pass.

“Go in,” Niun’s voice said softly at his back.

He felt the touch of Niun’s hand between his shoulders, and went forward, not wishing to, feeling his skin contract at the shadow, the leaping flame so dangerous on the ship, the incense was thick here, cloying. He had noticed it before, adhering to the clothing of the mri, a scent he associated with them, thought even natural to them, though he had missed it in the sterile labs.

Behind them the dusei breathed, unable to enter because of the pillars.

And there was silence for some few moments.

“You have seen such a shrine before,” Niun said in a low voice, so that the prickling of his skin became intense. Duncan looked half-about at the mri, heart pounding as he recalled Sil’athen, the betrayal he had done. For a terrible moment he thought Niun knew; and then he persuaded himself that it was the first time he.had come that the mri recalled to him, when he had come with permission, in their company.

“I remember,” Duncan said thickly. “Is it for this you have kept me from this part of the ship? And why do you allow me here now?”

“Did I misunderstand? Did you not come seeking admittance?”

There was a stillness in Niun’s voice that chilled, even yet. Duncan did not try to answer looked away, where the pan’en rested behind its screen, at the flickering warm light, gold on silver. Mri.

It had no echo now, this compartment, of the human voices that had once possessed it, no memory of the coarse jokes and warmer thoughts and impulses that had once governed here. It contained the pan’en. It was a mri place. It held age, and the memory of something he had done that he could not admit to them.

“In every edun of the People,” Niun said, “has been a shrine, and the shrine is of the Pana. You see the screen. That is the place beyond which the Kel may not set foot. That which rests beyond is not for the Kel to question. It is a symbol, kel Duncan, of a truth. Understand, and remember.” “Why do you allow me here?”

“You are kel’en. Even the least kel’en has freedom of the outer shrine. But a kel’en who has touched the pan’en who has crossed into the Sen-shrine he is marked, kel Duncan. Do you remember the guardian of the shrine?”

Bones and black cloth, pitiful huddle of mortality within the shrine: memory came with a cold clarity.

“The lives of kel’ein,” Niun said, “have been set to guard this; others that have carried it have died for that honor, holding secret its place, obeying the orders of a she’pan. But you did not know these things.”

Duncan’s heart sped. He looked warily at the mri. “No,” he said, and wished himself out the door.

But Niun set his hand at his shoulder and moved him forward to the screen, there knelt, and Duncan sank down beside him. The screen was a darkness that cut the light and the shape of the pan’en into diamond fragments. Behind them the dusei fretted, barred from their presence.

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