Now Tavicaught the wind, with the water sloughing rapidly under her hull. On her starboard side rose a great jagged spire against the night sky, sea-worn rock, warning of other rocks in the black waters. The waves lapped audibly at the crag, but they skimmed past and skirted one on the left by a similarly scant margin.
These were waters Kta knew. The crew stayed at the benches, ready but unfrightened by the closeness of the channel they ran.
“Get below,” Kta told Kurt. “You have been on your feet too long. I do not want to have to pull you a second time out of the sea. Get back from the rail.”
“Are we clear now?”
“There is a straight course through these rocks and the wind is bearing us well down the center of it. Heaven favors us. Here, you are getting the spray where you are standing. Lun, take this man below before he perishes.”
The cabin was warm and close, and there was light, well-shielded from outside view. The old seaman guided him to the cot and bade him lie down. The heaving of the ship disoriented him in a way the sea had never done before. He fell into the cot, rousing himself only when Lun propped him up to set a mug of soup to his lips. He could not even manage it without shaking. Lun held it patiently, and the warmth of the soup filled his belly and spread to his limbs, pouring strength into him.
He bade Lun prop his shoulders with blankets and give him a second cup. He was able to sit then partially erect, his hands cradling the steaming mug. He did not particularly want to drink it; it was the warmth he cherished, and the knowledge that it was there. He was careful not to fall asleep and spill it. From time to time he sipped at it. Lun sat nodding in the corner.
The door opened with a gust of cold wind and Kta came in, shook the salt water from his cloak and gave it to Lun.
“Soup here, sir,” said Lun, prepared and gave him a cup of it, and Kta thanked him and sank down on the cot on the opposite side of the little cabin. Lun departed and closed the door quietly.
Kurt stared for a long time at the wall, without the will left to face another round with Kta. At last Kta moved enough to drink, and let go his breath in a soft sigh of weariness.
“Are you all right?” Kta asked him finally. He put gentleness in his question, which had been long absent from his voice.
“I am all right.”
“The night is in our favor. I think we can clear this shore before Edrifrealizes it.”
“Do we still go north?”
“Yes. And with t’Tefur no doubt hard behind us.”
“Is there any chance we could take him?”
“We have ten benches empty and no reliefs. Or do you expect me to kill the rest of my men?”
Kurt flinched, a lowering of his eyes. He could not face an accounting now. He did not want the fight. He stared off elsewhere and took a sip of the soup to cover it.
“I did not mean that against you,” Kta said. “Kurt, these men left everything for my sake, left families and hearths with no hope of returning. They came to me in the night and begged me—begged me—to let them take me from Nephane, or I would have ended my life that night in spite of my father’s wishes. Now I have left twelve of them dead on this shore.—I am responsible for them, Kurt. My men are dead and I am alive. Of all of them, Isurvived.”
“I saved eachof them,” Kurt protested, “as long as I could. I did what I knew to do, Kta.”
Kta drank the rest of the soup as if he tasted nothing at all and set the cup aside. Then he sat quietly, his jaw knotted with muscle and his lips quivering. It passed.
“My poor friend,” said Kta at last. “I know. I know. There was a time I was not sure. I am sorry. Go to sleep.”
“Upon that?”
“What would you that I say?”
“I wish I knew,” Kurt said, and set his cup aside and laid his head on the blankets again. The warmth had settled into his bones now, and the aches began, the fever of burned skin, the fatigue of ravaged nerves.
“ Yhiaeludes me,” Kta said then. “Kurt, there must be reasons. I should have died; but they—who were in no danger of dying—they died. My hearth is dead and I should have died with it; but they—that is my anger, Kurt. I do not know why.”
From a human Kurt would have dismissed it as nonsensical; but from Kta, it was no little thing—not to know. It struck at everything the nemet believed. He looked at Kta, greatly pitying him.
“You went among humans,” said Kurt. “We are a chaotic people.”
“No,” said Kta. “The whole of creation is patterned. We live in patterns. And I do not like the pattern I see now.”
“What is that?”
“Death upon death, dying upon dead. None of us are safe save the dead. But what will become of us—is still in front of us.”
“You are too tired. Do your thinking in the morning, Kta. Things will seem better then.”
“What, and in the morning will they all be alive again? Will Indresul make peace with my nation and Elas be unharmed in Nephane? No. Tomorrow the same things will be true.”
“So may better things. Go to bed, Kta.”
Kta rose up suddenly, went and lit the prayer-light of the small bronze phusathat sat in its wood-and-bronze niche. The light of Phan illuminated the corner with its golden radiance and Kta knelt, sat on his heels and lifted his open palms.
In a low voice he began the invocation of his Ancestors, and soon his voice faded and he rested with his hands in his lap. Just now it was an ability Kurt envied the religious nemet—like Kta, like Mim, no longer to feel physical pain. The mind utterly concentrated first upon the focus of the light and then beyond, reaching for what no man ever truly attained, but reaching.
The stillness that had been in Elas came over the little cabin. There was the groaning of the timbers, the rush of water past the hull, the rocking of the sea. The quiet seeped inward. Kurt found it possible at last to close his eyes.
He had slept some little time. He stirred, waking from some forgotten dream, and saw the prayer-light flickering on the last of its oil.
Kta still sat as he had before.
A chill struck him. He thought of Mim, dead before the phusa,and Kta’s state of mind, and he sprang from bed. Kta’s face and half-naked body glistened with sweat, though it was not even warm in the room. His eyes were closed, his hands loose in his lap, though every muscle in his body looked rigid.
“Kta,” Kurt called. Interruption of meditation was no trifling matter to a nemet, but he seized Kta’s shoulders nonetheless.
Kta shuddered and drew an audible breath.
“Kta. Are you all right?”
Kta let the breath go. His eyes opened. “Yes,” he murmured thickly, tried to move and failed. “Help me up, Kurt.”
Kurt drew him up, steadied him on his deadened legs. After a moment the nemet ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair and straightened his shoulders.
He did not speak further, only stumbled to his cot and fell in, eyes closed, as relaxed as a sleeping child. Kurt stood there staring down at him in some concern, and at last concluded that he was all right. He pulled a blanket over Kta, put out the main light, but left the prayer-light to flicker out on its remaining oil. If it must be extinguished there were prayers which had to be said, he knew them from hearing Mim say them; but it would be hypocrisy to speak them and offensive to Kta to omit them.
He sought the refuge of his own bed and lay staring at the nemet’s face in the almost-dark, remembering the invocation Kta had made of the Guardians of Elas, those mysterious and now angry spirits that protected the house. He did not believe in them, and yet felt a heaviness in the air when they had been invoked, and he wondered with what Kta’s consciousness or subconscious had been in contact.
He remembered the oracular computers of Alliance central command which analyzed, predicted, made policy,—prophesied; and he wondered if those machines and the nemet did not perceive some reason beyond rationality, if the machines men had built functioned because the nemet were right, because there was a pattern and the nemet came close to knowing it.