SHE RAN, FOR there was no place to hide.
Sick with terror, she hurtled through mazy back streets, across broad plazas, down endless ship-halls—and still—and still—It followed.
Its Shadow fell behind her, annihilating the street she had just traversed. Panting, she skidded around a corner, sprinted across a wide thoroughfare and ducked into the gateway of a private courtyard. She dared not rest long, yet rest she must, for her heart was near to bursting, and her sobbing gasps scarcely brought sufficient air to lungs afire with exertion.
She leaned into the warm friendly shadow of the gateway, muscles trembling. Dimly, she wondered how long she could stay this brutal pace and where in the confusion of Port-ways and corridor she might locate a weapon.
Even in the exultation of her terror, she knew that a weapon would not halt the Shadow. It was that which
cast
the Shadow against which she wished, most fervently, to be armed. A being capable of generating so horrifying an Adumbration—
that
she would not face unarmed.
Her breath shuddered through her, echoing weirdly off the close walls of her huddling place. She detected a movement at the edge of the street and pushed away from the wall, steeling herself to run again.
Exhausted muscles betrayed her. She moved one step, two, and folded to her knees at the entrance of the gateway, teeth locked to hold in the shout of despair.
The corner she had turned only moments ago—vanished, eaten by a blackness so absolute that the eyes rebelled and insisted on multicolored lights in the Shadow's depth—a road upon which it was cast.
It hesitated, the Shadow did, and seemed to look about Itself. On her knees atop the paving stones, Samiv tel'Izak held still as might be, hoping against horrified certainty that It would—this once—miss the way.
Half a mile high, It loomed, Its head a twisting mass of black limbs, Its trunk as wide as a warehouse and the wind that proceeded It was cold, carrying the stink of rotting leaves.
The Shadow turned and half the thoroughfare between It and her huddling place was eclipsed. Wind skirled around her, rank with rot, and overhead she heard a steady, ominous beat, as if enormous wings worked the sky. Samiv raised her arms above her head, pitiful shield though they made, and stared down the diminished street, into the blackness of her Enemy.
But the Shadow did not advance. Above, the beat of wings grew stronger, nearer, until at last it was thunder, driving a dust-laden wind into her inadequate shelter, so that she bent, bringing her arms down to protect her face.
The thunder of wings ceased. She straightened into shadow, blinked to clear her dust-grimed eyes.
A hand gripped her shoulder.
Samiv tel'Izak screamed.
THE HATCH CAME down, sealing him out.
Numbly, Aelliana crossed to her station, sat, reached out and triggered initial board check.
Lights flickered, screens glowed: Her ship, coming to life.
Her ship.
She could lift now, this minute; the first class license rode, safe, in her sleeve. There was nothing to tie her here, not clan, nor kin, nor—
"Daav?"
No deep, calm voice answered her whisper; no tall, silent-moving form tickled the edge of her vision. She was alone.
Odd, how badly that hurt. For so many years,
alone
had been everything she wished for.
The board chimed readiness; the screens showed ships, sleeping all around. In screen number six a slim figure walked, shoulders stooped in an attitude so alien it was not until a random light snagged along the silver earring that she knew him.
"Daav!" She snapped forward, palm slapping screen, as if she would reach through plastic, chip and ether—
He reached the top of the row and turned left, vanishing toward. . .
She didn't even know where he lived.
"Oh, gods."
The board lights blurred out of sense. She wiped at her eyes with impatient fingers, mildly surprised when they came away wet. Tears. Her husband had enjoyed tears; had found a thousand ways to wring them from her, until she refused to weep, no matter how he hurt her.
He had been a master of pain, her husband. But no effort of his genius had produced such agony as this.
The comm light glowed in the corner of her eye. She turned toward it, hope igniting its own agony.
She had his comm number.
Call me,
his voice murmured from memory,
if there is need . . .
Her hand flicked forward. She snatched it back, brought it, fisted, against her lips and merely sat there, crying in earnest now, for he was lost, sworn to wed and be of use to his clan, whatever and wherever it was. Bound, as even a Scout may be bound, by the knots of kin and duty. To call him now would surely do harm. To beg him for—
What?
A return to the ensorcellment of the dance, when they had moved and thought as one being? To feel his body, strong and lithe, against hers? The gift of his humor and hard common sense? The certain knowledge that, whenever in her life she looked to the co-pilot's station, he would be there, keeping his serene, impeccable board?
She scrubbed at drenched cheeks, pressed the heels of both hands against her eyes in an effort to dam the tears that had become a torrent.
The tears would not be stopped. She leaned forward until her cheek was against first board and there she lay, sobbing into the chill plastic, until, at last, she fell into a gray, uneasy sleep.
IT COULD NOT BE said that Ran Eld Caylon was a man addicted to news. Where current events touched upon Ran Eld Caylon, there his interest was avid. For events centered in other spheres, his interest was—minimal.
Let Sinit ride the news-wire, exclaiming over Council on-dits, the publication of tedious professorial tomes or the undignified stunts of pilots. Enough time for Ran Eld to notice the Council of Clans when he was himself a participant in history. As for the work of professors and pilots—it was difficult to say which bored him more.
So it was by an enormous bit of very bad luck that Ran Eld Caylon on this particular morning, smarting still under his middle sister's continued elusiveness, came face-to-face with The Net.
The Net was Sinit's preferred news service. He had told her time and time over to use the house screen in the library for her viewing, but such was her passion for news that she would use Ran Eld's, in case Voni had prior claim on the communal screen. Mostwise, she remembered to return the setting to Ran Eld's Fund reporter. This morning, she had forgotten.
Ran Eld touched the on-switch and "Caylon" immediately caught his eye, as one's own name is apt to do. Frowning, he perused the story sufficiently to discover that the Caylon found thus newsworthy was one Aelliana, pilot-owner of Class A Jumpship
Ride the Luck
.
Ran Eld—carefully—sat down.
He then read the newsbit thoroughly, learning such items of interest regarding the pilot as her work upon the ven'Tura Piloting Tables at the tender age of eighteen, which revision was hailed as a boon to pilots everywhere. He learned that Pilot Caylon had owned her ship a bare relumma, having won it in a game of pikit; that her second class license, awarded a few days after her win, had been upgraded by popular acclaim and on the basis of yesterday's amazing rescue, to full first.
He learned that Pilot Caylon flew out of Binjali Repair Shop, Mechanic Street, Solcintra Port.
HIS HAIR AND FACE were soaked with dew by the time he reached the platform, high inside the Tree. At least, his hair was.
Daav reached behind his head, snatched the silver ring free and slid it into a pocket. Released, his hair hung in a snarled, sullen twist, trailing spiteful tendrils inside his jacket collar.
He sighed sharply and used rather too much force to shake his head. Thick, wet stuff lashed his cheeks before spreading into a fan across his shoulders.
All around, the Tree was quiet.
Before him, through a tunnel of leaf and branch, he could see the lights of Solcintra Spaceport, dim against the lightening sky.
"She has her first class now," he said aloud, his eyes on the distant port. "There's nothing holds her but gravity."
Everywhere the leaves hung still, disturbed by not a breath of breeze.
"Er Thom," Daav continued, watching the distant lights grow dimmer. "My brother tells me that when first he saw his Anne—a Terran woman, you know, in a room full with Terrans—that when he first saw her, it was as if there were two women standing there, one within the other. The first—the outside woman, if you like—was well enough—pretty hair and happy eyes . . . beautiful hands. A bit large, of course, and shaped just—Anne-like. But Anne-like was pleasing and Er Thom was pleased."
The red beacon came on at the Port Authority's pinnacle, signaling the change from Night Port to Day. Daav blinked and raised a hand to wipe at the—dew—drying along his cheeks.
"The second woman—he glimpsed her for a heartbeat, understand! The second woman was hardly woman at all, but music, or light, or a rhapsody of both—at once so intricate and so indescribably
correct
that my brother says he felt he could observe it for the rest of his days and neither tire of it nor find it to contain one note—one light-mote—that was not precisely as it should be." Daav sighed.
"The second woman faded in that heartbeat, leaving Anne, to whom he made his bow, and who, in Er Thom's way, he came to love." He turned, facing the Tree's center down the length of the platform.
"My brother tells me that now—now he hears that perfect music all the time—in his heart, so he has it. And when he closes his eyes, he can see that flawless, intricate, maze of brightness that is Anne—that is Anne's inner self. It comforts him, he tells me, in those times when they must be apart, to feel—to know—that he never is alone."
Silence, dead air; a faint, far sense of something—waiting.
"Anne," said Daav, moving one bare step forward. "Anne tells a like tale. Wherever she is, wherever he is, she feels Er Thom's presence, his passions—the universe is not wide enough to dim her perception. He's like music, she says, being a musician. Like a work in progress and a revered masterwork being played both at once. Powerful, she says. Like a heartbeat. She gives me permission to say that Er Thom is become part of her heartbeat—part of her lifeforce, I suppose she means. But it doesn't seem to frighten her. It's joy, she says—they both say. And Er Thom says, 'I wish . . . '"
Absolute stillness. A silence into which no bird song dared intrude.
Daav took another step forward; stood at the platform's center, hands fisted at his side, trembling badly at the knees.
"At least tell me if it is true," he said, and his voice was trembling, too, "that I am formed as one-half of a wizard's match."
Above, a sharp rustle of leaf, as if a flying mouse had landed. A seed-pod plummeted, striking the planks between his boots with peevish precision. Daav took a breath.
"We danced and it was as if we had been born dancing in each other's arms. I held her and it was sweet—past sweet! And she was caught as tightly as I!
Van'chela
, so she said to me—beloved friend." He went forward another step; another would bring him to the trunk.
"In all of this there was nothing such as my kin describe me—no beautiful mazes, no soul-songs. Even now, she may have lifted—have Jumped!—and I never the wiser, til Clonak called to tell me." He took the last step, raised his fists and lay them, palm-flat, against the trunk.
"Aelliana Caylon," he said. "Clan Mizel."
The bark was rough against his palms, grainy and a little damp. Somewhere in the branches below, a dawn-swallow began to sing.
Daav sagged forward, pressing his cheek against the Tree.
"Samiv tel'Izak does not please you," he whispered. "Aelliana excites no interest. Must I be alone, because Er Thom is not? Shall I tell Bindan that the marriage is canceled, because I have chanced upon one I might love? What shall I do when they cry breach of contract and demand ships and stocks and payments? How shall we keep Cantra's Law, when our ships are gone and we are turned out of our valley? How shall we stay vigilant for the passengers? How will we protect the Tree?"
Nothing, save bark and damp and bird song.
"I should have stayed with Aelliana," Daav whispered, and for an instant it was so: They had the day before them to lay plans and hustle cargo; a course laid Out, and far away. . .
Madness.
He pushed away from the Tree, walked back and picked up the seed-pod. He stood for a moment, holding it in his hand, then went to the edge of the platform and threw it, as hard and as far as he could.
The pilot's care shall be ship and passengers.
The co-pilot's care shall be pilot and ship.—From the Duties Roster of the Pilots Guild
A TALL SHADOW crossed Clonak's light. He lay down his wrench and looked up.
"Master Frad! I hardly expected to see you about so early after such a round of merrymaking!"
The lanky cartographer grinned. "Snatched the words from the tip of my tongue, rascal! What's this you're about? Work? Never say so!"
"I'm a changed man, since my goddess touched my life," Clonak told him piously. Frad laughed.
"Then you're out, comrade. Or wasn't it Daav who escorted the Caylon to her bed last evening? I admit to being a glass or two over-limit, but hardly giddy enough to mistake length for girth."
"Some of us," Clonak said with great seriousness, "worship from afar."
"All of us, unless I misread the matter badly. I've rarely seen Daav so conformable. One might almost think him tame. And the pilot wears her heart on her face."
"Yes, well." Clonak picked up his wrench. "The devil's in the brew, there, old friend. Daav's betrothed."
"No, is he?" Frad stared, then moved his shoulders, answering himself. "Well, but he must be, mustn't he? Korval is none too plentiful, despite the yos'Galan's contribution. Daav's a sensible fellow—full nurseries are certain to be a priority with him. Merely, he had held himself aloof such a time . . . Well. Who is the intended?"