“Niun.” She smiled and touched his offered hand. He knelt by her chair knelt, for the Kel did not use the luxury of furniture, no more than the ascetic Sen. His dus was near him, warm and solid. The little one, visitor, crowded near the she’pan’s feet, adoring, dus-wise. A Sen-caste mind was said to be too complex, too cold for the dusei’s taste. Niun did not know if this were true: it was strange that even when Melein had been of the Kel, no dus had ever sought her, a source of grief to her, and bitter envy of other kel’ein. Now she had none, would have none. The dus adored, but it did not come close with its mind preferring even a human to Melein s” Intel, to the calculating power of a she’pan.
He bowed his head beneath her touch, looked up again. “I have brought Duncan,” he said. “I have told him.how to bear himself; I have warned him.”
Melein inclined her head. “If you judge it time,” she said, stroking the back of the dus that sat by her. “Bring him.”
Niun looked up at her, to make one final appeal to her patience to speak to her that he had known as a child; but he could not find that closeness with her. The disturbance passed to the dusei. His shook its head. He rose, pushed at the beast to make it move.
Duncan waited. Niun found him standing where he had left him, against the door on the other side of the corridor. “Come,” he told the human, “and do not veil. You are not in a strange hall.”
Duncan refastened the mez just beneath his chin, and came inside with him, hesitated in the middle of the room until Melein herself held out her hand in invitation, and showed him where he should sit, at her left hand, where the lesser dus rested.
Duncan went, fearing the dus, mortally afraid of that beast. Niun opened his mouth to protest, but he thought that he would shame Duncan if he did so, and make question of his fitness to be here. Carefully Duncan settled where he was asked; and Niun sat down in his own place at Melein’s right, within arm’s reach of Duncan and the other animal. He touched the smaller dus with his fingertips, felt it settled and was relieved at what he felt.
“Duncan,” Melein said softly. “Kel Duncan. Niun avows you are able to understand the hal’ari.”
“I miss words, she’pan, but I understand.”
“But then, you did understand somewhat of the mu’ara before you came into our company.”
“Yes. A few words.”
“You must have worked very hard,” she said. “Do you know how long you have been aboard?”
“No. I do not count the time anymore.”
“Are you content, Duncan?”
“Yes,” he said, which Niun heard and he held his breath, for he did not believe it. Duncan lied: it was a human thing to do.
It was wrong thing to have done.
“You know,” said Melein, “that we are going home.”
“Niun has told me.”
“Did your people surmise that?”
Duncan did not answer. The question disturbed him greatly: Niun felt it through the dusei, a shock of fear.
‘K)ur outward journey,” Melein continued softly, “was long ago, before such ships as this were available to us, no such swift passage, no; and we delayed along the way that brought us to you, sometimes a thousand years or two. Usually there is time that the People in truth do forget, that in the Dark between suns there are generations born that are not taught the Pana, the Forbidden, the Holy, the Mysteries and they step out onto a new earth, ignorant of all they are not told. But this time, this time, kel Duncan, we carry our living past with us, in your person; and though this is against every law, every wisdom of she’panei before me, so is this voyage different from other voyages and this Dark from other Darks. I have permitted you to remain with us. Did your people surmise, Duncan, that we are going home?”
There was a forbidden game the children of the Kath would play, the truth-game: touch the dus and try to lie. When the Mothers knew it, they forbade it, though the great beasts were tolerant of the children, and the children’s innocent minds could not disturb the animals.