"Cargill!" she protested angrily, crimsoning, covering her bare breasts
with both hands. "Is this the place? And before a child, too!"
I hardly heard. "Look!" I exclaimed. "Rakhal, look at the symbols
embroidered into the glyph of the God! You can read the old nonhuman
glyphs. You did it in the city of The Lisse. Miellyn said they were the
key to the transmitters! I'll bet the formula is written out there for
anyone to read!
"Anyone, that is, who _can_ read it! I can't, but I'll bet the formula
equations for the transmitters are carved on every Toad God glyph on
Wolf. Rakhal, it makes sense. There are two ways of hiding something.
Either keep it locked away, or hide it right out in plain sight. Whoever
bothers even to _look_ at a conventionalized Toad God? There are so many
_billions_ of them...."
He bent his head over the embroideries, and when he looked up his face
was flushed. "I believe--by the chains of Sharra, I believe you have it,
Race! It may take years to work out the glyphs, but I'll do it, or die
trying!" His scarred and hideous face looked almost handsome in
exultation, and I grinned at him.
"If Juli leaves enough of you, once she finds out how you maneuvered
her. Look, Rindy's fallen asleep on the grass there. Poor kid, we'd
better get her down to her mother."
"Right." Rakhal thrust the precious embroidery into his shirtcloak, then
cradled his sleeping daughter in his arms. I watched him with a curious
emotion I could not identify. It seemed to pinpoint some great change,
either in Rakhal or myself. It's not difficult to visualize one's sister
with children, but there was something, some strange incongruity in the
sight of Rakhal carrying the little girl, carefully tucking her up in a
fold of his cloak to keep the sharp breeze off her face.
Miellyn was limping in her thin sandals, and she shivered. I asked,
"Cold?"
"No, but--I don't believe Evarin is dead, I'm afraid he got away."
For a minute the thought dimmed the luster of the morning. Then I
shrugged. "He's probably buried in that big hole up there." But I knew I
would never be sure.
We walked abreast, my arm around the weary, stumbling woman, and Rakhal
said softly at last, "Like old times."
It wasn't old times, I knew. He would know it too, once his exultation
sobered. I had outgrown my love for intrigue, and I had the feeling this
was Rakhal's last adventure. It was going to take him, as he said, years
to work out the equations for the transmitter. And I had a feeling my
own solid, ordinary desk was going to look good to me in the morning.
But I knew now that I'd never run away from Wolf again. It was my own
beloved sun that was rising. My sister was waiting for me down below,
and I was bringing back her child. My best friend was walking at my
side. What more could a man want?
If the memory of dark, poison-berry eyes was to haunt me in nightmares,
they did not come into the waking world. I looked at Miellyn, took her
slender unmanacled hand in mine, and smiled as we walked through the
gates of the city. Now, after all my years on Wolf, I understood the
desire to keep their women under lock and key that was its ancient
custom. I vowed to myself as we went that I should waste no time finding
a fetter shop and having forged therein the perfect steel chains that
should bind my love's wrists to my key forever.