“Oh, here and there. Benart is making a list. You’re supposed to sleep here this morning until we find you a place. This is Rimon’s room,” he said opening a door. “I just brought in a bucket of warm water, and I’ll be getting another as soon as it’s hot, so go ahead and bathe. Rimon said you should find something of his to change into. Just chuck your clothes out here and I’ll see they’re burned.”
Solamar gazed down at what he was wearing. Blood caked and crusted sleeves and thighs. Rips sliced this way and that, often joining two or more wear holes he’d grown used to on the trail. A few cuts, bruises, and some scrapes adorned his exposed skin. His hair felt like greasy spikes.
A little stunned at the efficiency and hospitality of it all, Solamar nodded. It had been months since he’d stood inside a building, and then it had been hardly more than a ruin. “Thank you very much. I’ll get cleaned up.”
“Benart said to send Kahleen in to you as soon as she wakes. Is that all right?”
“Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.”
The boy cocked his head to one side. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a channel. Would you teach me?”
Taken aback, Solamar could only smile. “Well, if the Farrises want me to, I will do all I can.”
“You think you should do what a Farris says?”
“Well, usually, but certainly where training a channel is concerned.”
Suddenly the child grinned more brightly than ever. “Welcome to Fort Rimon. I’m BanSha. We’re going to be great friends.”
He scampered away laughing.
Solamar gazed after him, feeling his own smile fade slowly as he puzzled over that odd conversation. Then he went into the comfortably appointed room.
Though he understood this was not Rimon’s home, but only the room where he slept when he had to be close to the infirmary, it felt like a home. There was a magnificent quilt hung on the wall over the head of the bed, an ingenious thing created from what appeared to be a baby’s quilt in the center, surrounded by tightly woven ultra fine silky black angora fabric. By touch, it seemed the quilt had been stuffed with wool fibers and stitched to a backing just as fine as the front.
The only image on the quilt was a long triangle topped with the arc of the moon’s horns with an odd third peak in the middle. It was made of a single piece of bright blue cloth on a field of what had probably been white at some time. The baby’s quilt was worn, scuffed and much mended while the rest of the quilt was newer. The material was top quality, the stitching perfect and the thing had to be worth a fortune beyond its sentimental value. Just touching the corner infused him with a sense of awe.
Aware of the passing of time, he went to rummage through Rimon Farris’s closet and drawers and make himself presentable, feeling decidedly awkward about invading the privacy of his generous host. It was as if the symbol on that quilt was a ward, guarding the man’s privacy.
He became very sure he shouldn’t be here at all when he found a gorgeous jeweled belt of familiar expert workmanship tucked into Rimon’s sock drawer. He trusts strangers so easily. He ran the supple leather through his fingers and examined the stitching. It could easily have been made by Solamar’s grandfather. His father would have been able to say for certain. Solamar’s own skills at reading objects had never equaled his father’s. He returned the belt and took some heavy wool socks.
He changed into the awkwardly fitting clothes. He’d have to find the Tanhara people and discover who was left alive, find the Dispensary and get to work, find—well, Kahleen probably knew all the answers.
CHAPTER FOUR
RELUCTANT FAREWELL
Rimon didn’t see or speak to Solamar again until the funerals. The Tanhara channel had been gone from Rimon’s room when Rimon arrived to wash up, gone from the Dispensary when he arrived to check on things, gone from the hospital when Rimon came to follow up on those he’d treated. Someone said they’d seen him heading for the stables with Kahleen in tow, and Rimon imagined her silent protests. She hated horses. Or rather, they hated her.
So, just before noon, when he saw Solamar standing on the boulder they used for a podium at the edge of the cemetery, Kahleen nowhere evident, Rimon barely recognized the man. He was clean, well barbered, neatly dressed in clothes that almost fit, clothes from Rimon’s own closet, boots from someone else and a wide-brimmed hat he didn’t recognize.
Rimon climbed the steps carved into the side of the boulder and took his place beside the top channels from each of the Forts whose refugees now lived in Fort Rimon. Their Companions and the three people from the Fort Rimon Council who had survived the Freeband attack made a crowd.
Everyone turned toward him as he slid into the group’s complex nageric field. Bruce was late, but that was just as well. Rimon didn’t relish the idea of Bruce’s grief pounding into the ambient nager. Bruce’s nageric field was the only one that could pierce Rimon to the core. He looked around, waiting for Lexy.
It was not noon as originally planned. The sun was lowering swiftly in the leaden winter sky. Might snow before dawn, Del Rimon thought bleakly.
Jhiti moved up behind Rimon and offered, “Losing Aipensha is a terrible blow. Everyone loved her.”
He drew Jhiti up beside him. Jhiti was one of the three surviving Fort Council members. He was a renSime with organizational talent who had taken charge of their defenses. “Yes, her loss is a very serious blow,” Rimon answered steadily. I never should have ventured out of the shelter. She only followed my lead. “Still, overall we were very lucky this time, thanks to your endless drills.”
Rimon carried three large slates with the names of the dead which he would have to read, some of whom had been the leaders of the group so adamantly opposed to letting him direct the channeling staff transfer schedule, sparing Clire and her unborn child on his own judgment. If I hadn’t let them vote—vote!—on Clire’s medical condition, she wouldn’t have been in Need. She wouldn’t have Killed.
Rimon knew, all the channels knew, that even if they got her back now, they could only hope to save her child. She herself would be doomed to a horrible death.
He sucked his gloom in and hid it deeply inside. “Jhiti, your crew did a remarkable job on the cisterns or we’d have nothing but ashes for walls now if any of us even survived. Whoever heard of Raiders using fire-arrows!”
“They must have picked it up from some town, maybe from Gen Territory. It isn’t just that they want our Gens. They hate us. They all hate us.”
Jhiti looked back at the Fort where a stream of people still trudged down the steep hillside toward the gathering group. “We’ll have to build new walls anyway. Have to enlarge the compound. With Tanhara here we’re in a bad way for shelter, stables, water, everything.”
Rimon heartily agreed. Part of the acrimony he’d been facing from the various factions was from simple overcrowding. Simes, sensitive to the life-energy fields of others, the emotions of others, were never meant to live so close together. “I want to get the foundation for a new wall dug before the first bad freeze. We can cut logs and erect them even during the winter, but we can’t expect to dig efficiently after the ground freezes.”
Jhiti agreed with a flick of his nager. “I’ll want to put the new wall at the very edge of the drop-off to the valley floor even though that may be an irregular oval. It will be a little easier to defend, and it appears we’ll grow to fill the whole space and have enough people to defend that much wall. People were sleeping under the weavers’ looms today.”
“We’ll have to hold Fort Council elections again,” replied Rimon heavily.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Jhiti. “But if you say so, Benart will get it organized. With all these new people, it’ll be complicated.”
“Benart