“Kin brother do, do as easily as oryxen kill,” he assured me.
I was too tired to protest. My exultation had faded. All I wanted was rest and I pulled back into the shadows of a rock spur which was nearly wide enough to be a cave and there fell almost instantly asleep.
I dreamed—but this was a dream which had no problems—nor did I see Ravinga. Rather I roamed the land freely, with no burden of duty laid upon me. Murri bounded at my side and there was a sense that this world was ours together and always would be. The feeling of well-being which that gave me carried over into waking.
The sun rays were already in the west. There was an ache in my middle which I recognized, after an eye blink or two, as hunger. The dried cakes of algae in my pack had little taste, but I chewed them slowly, dividing that Murri might have his share. I did not want to return to the camp of my escort, yet once more the pattern of duty held me fast.
I found them waiting—Murri had disappeared discreetly before the sentry challenged. When I came into the direct firelight, the Chancellor of Kahulawe stood waiting me. There was no lighting of countenance in greeting, and once more the old soreness of being one not counted as profit to House or clan haunted me.
Not speaking, I rammed my staff point down into the earth and held out my hands so that she and those hard-faced guards behind her could see the signs I now bore.
“So be it.” No congratulation in her voice, only a murmur from those gathered there. I wondered, first dully and then with growing anger, if they had been willing for me to fail and that my success was only to be recognized grudgingly.
So be it, my mind answered that thought. Now there was born a determination in me—I would no longer be swept into this by custom, an unwilling participant in this time of trials—rather there would come a day when I would reach for the crown and my hands would close upon it! These who still looked upon me as nothing— they would learn!
We were five nights of travel away from the border of the land where my next ordeal waited. But only one day were we in open camp. Instead we were given hospitality by various House-clans, and the last night we approached the isle owned by one of my out-kin—the sister of my father.
She was older than he and even in my childhood I had counted her ancient and kept away from her. For her sharp remarks and piercing looks always weighed and discarded me, or so I thought. But as we came to her guesting house at sunrise, one of her serving maids waited with the message that I was to come to her.
Though I had no robe of presence to wear, being less well clad than her servants, still I was enough in awe of her to answer that summons after I had done no more than clean the sand dust of travel from my face and hands.
The woman I had remembered as majestic as our Queen in her person sat now in a pillowed chair. At her feet was a grey-furred kotti—its color the same as that of my hostess, for not only had her hair dulled to the color of fas-sand but her skin had paled. Still there was the same vibrant life in the eyes she turned upon me.
“So, Hynkkel, you come as a stranger—after all these years. Also you come as one who attempts much.”
Those were statements which needed no answers. I had only murmured the conventional greeting before she had spoken. Now she leaned forward a little among her cushions. Out of the dusk behind her quickly moved a maid with a cup she held ready for her mistress. The clawlike ringers of my aunt curled about that and to my deep astonishment she held it forward in a gesture which meant I must accept it.
Never had I been offered the guesting cup which was the greeting between equals. That she should do this now—
Part of me wanted to put my hands behind me and refuse to accept what had never been so offered before. Another and stronger part took the offered goblet.
“To the House, the clan, to she who rules here, may all good fortune come. May the Essence of all be hers—” I said.
As I took the ceremonial sip and returned the cup to her, she accepted it with one hand, but her other shot forward. Those claw ringers braceleted my wrist, turned up my hand so that the marks the globe had set upon me could be clearly seen.
“To he who comes with the favor of the Essence.” Still holding my hand in that grip, she drank from the cup which the maid then took from her. Now she peered up at me.
“Judgment may be made too quickly at times,” she observed. “You are far more than you have ever been thought to be, brother’s son. May you prosper in days to come.”
Her eyes fell from my face to the mark on my palm and then she ran her fingers over the scar which I wore as a bracelet.
For a very long moment she stared at that. The kotti at her feet suddenly reared as if some morsel of food was dangled just out of its reach. I saw that her tongue tip ran across her lips.
“You have danced, you have sung.” There was a note of awe in her voice. “So it has not been with any for ten generations, and never with one of our House. Truly you have a strange path to follow.”
I asked then:
“Have others known the Great Cats?”
She nodded. “There are tales. But who can sift the truth in such ancient matters? Go you, brother’s son, to your destiny, and may it be that of the Old Ones long before you.”
She sank back again in her nest of cushions and her maid came forward hurriedly, raising a hand as imperious as her mistress’s to wave me out.
However, I was left a new thought to chew upon. So one of my own blood knew of the sandcats, and said that in the past others had also danced under the stars and watched the great beasts actually take to the air, and heard them raise their voices in song. Yet never in all my life had I ever heard of such a thing until it happened to me. Ravinga’s half revelations, which had certainly never gone far enough, returned to my mind. Her belief that I was part of a pattern— What I truly wanted was the freedom I had dreamed of.
I was ready to go on the next night, impatient to do so. For it seemed to me that the farther I traveled into this maze before me, the quicker I might learn of why it was so.
When we came to the border we met with another company. There rode the guards of Thnossis and with them one of the candidates, he whose homeland it was. We had no speech with one another but the very fact that we had met was assurance that he had completed his task and was eager for the next.
Thnossis was a land of raw violence, or so it seemed to me after the quiet of our own sand desert and rock islets. There were rocks here also but they were tortured into grotesque shapes, uplands showing against the sky before us where trails of smoke twisted from the tips of certain heights. This was where there was no peace. The inner fires of our world were still alive and now and then broke forth to send waves of sluggish streams of molten rock wending down their sides. The sky was overcast and the sun was overveiled in haze. While the air one breathed carried with it the stuff of chemicals which led to fierce coughing.
The people of Thnossis had long ago mastered both the use of these sullen undying fires and the metals found in the mountains wherein the earth fires lay. Their work was such as no other race could equal. My own staff with its skillfully planted deadly edges had been cast here. And those ingots of gold, silver, and copper upon which Kura depended for her fine work with gems had been mined and melded within the hills ahead.
Truly it was a harsh land and those who lived there were a rough-and-ready people, far more aggressive than my own kin.
There was far less ceremony practiced among them and I knew that a man was judged here for strength and courage above all else.
We were three days reaching the foothills of the mountains. I found it difficult to slip outside the camp with food for Murr.i and it seemed to me that the cat was growing gaunt and finding this trail a hard one. We had come to rocks underfoot and these chafed my boots. How much worse were they for Murri’s pads? Yet when I suggested that he stay behind he violently refused—as if he, too, were being put to some test he must face.