Part 11 (1/2)

'But how will we eat?' She didn't want him to stop talking.

'We will eat.' Silence. 'I feel more at peace in the Cold World. For there, if a man is strong, he can breathe the free wind unafraid. Only the hardiest predators remain, and among them is respect.'

'What about your people?'

'They will follow the herds, as they always do.'

'Then how do you know what the winter is like? Or will you go with them?'

A hurt, disbelieving look came over him. 'NO.' He felt frustration pus.h.i.+ng back at his own will to live. 'These past three Winters I have lived alone.' He looked out, and thought he might know what she was feeling.

'I have known loneliness, too, though perhaps it is another kind.

Your sorrow is for friends and ways that have died. Mine is for companions.h.i.+p that I have never known. Because to my people I am what this world is to you: something beyond their experience. And because of that they fear it, and mistrust..... I would be your friend, Sylviana, but I don't always know how.' She turned, and in the shadows his face looked worn and grim: there was no doubting his pain. She lowered her eyes to the ground.

'I just don't understand,' she said, half in a whisper. 'I don't understand it at all. Why was I brought here and left to go on? Sometimes I think it was just to have one illusion and then another stripped away, till there's nothing left but the struggle to survive and not go crazy. And when the last of my illusions are gone..... What then, Kalus? What's left?' He thought for a moment, deeply, then raised his head and answered.

'Life.' He touched his breast. 'What is here inside us.

Perhaps that is not so much. Or perhaps it is everything.' He turned to face her. 'I cannot always let myself grieve, Sylviana. Can you see that?' She nodded. 'But if you have to cry, I will try to comfort you. . .as you once did for me.'

She felt a wall give way inside her. She didn't answer, but slowly put her head to his chest, silently begging to be held. And finally the tears came. He held her warmly, feeling so many things. At length she drew back, and held his eyes with hers. There was only one way out of this desert. Here and now.

'Kalus..... Will you sleep with me tonight? Not to make love---'

He put a finger to her lips. He knew what she meant. They stayed there by the entrance a while longer, then went together to the bed.

Akar ate solemnly, without pleasure, then returned to the isolated h.e.l.l of his thoughts.

Chapter 12

Morning came softly by the riverbed, with a cool northeastern breeze that rustled the changing willow leaves and sent long waves of golden brown across a gentle sea of gra.s.s: the Savanna. The boy stood silent on the northern bank at the meeting of the shallow, stony stream and the wider, more placid river, breathing deep the autumn air and gazing out over the pearling waters with a look of boundless wonder. For his was the magic of youth among the hill-people: man enough to take in more than the sum of his surroundings, animal enough to feel the bliss of a mind free from distraction.

He had wandered far from his sleeping comrades, just as his friend the estranged one used to do. He found himself thinking of Kalus now, and wondered vaguely, perhaps a bit sadly, if he was still alive. Not that the thought was deep or the pain acute. But it did seem unfortunate that he had to be cast out, when maybe he was not so strange after all. Shama missed him.

Hearing a twig crack behind him, he stiffened. Whirling about, he searched the sloping embankment with startled curiosity. A lone wolf stood at the crest of the hill, not forty yards away. He wondered what it was doing so far from its established hunting grounds. Even as he did so another head appeared, followed by a low, snaking body. The two did not move, but stood rather in ominous silence, peering down at him intently.

But they could not be stalking him. There was no reason.