Far-Seer

I’ll miss her, Afsan thought. And with that, he realized there was no need for discussion. Their roles—hers here, his there—were immutable.

“I’m expected back in Capital City,” Afsan said. “I’ve got to head out this morning.”

Novato looked up. “Of course.”

Afsan started for the door. He hesitated, though, after a step or two. “Novato?”

“Yes?”

“I cast a shadow in your presence.”

She looked up. “We cast shadows in each other’s presence, Afsan. And when we’re together, there is light everywhere and no shadows fall at all.”

Afsan felt his heart soar. He bowed deeply, warmed to every corner of his body.

“I have a present for you,” said Novato. She picked up the far-seer she’d been working on and brought it over to him.

Afsan’s tail swished in delight. “I’ll treasure it,” he said.

“As I will always treasure our time together,” she replied.

If he’d had to walk the entire way, allowing time for sleeping and hunting and a little sight-seeing, it would have taken Afsan forty days to reach Carno. He managed it in twenty-three. For the first seven days, he rode with a caravan of traders whose wares included brass buttons, needles for sewing leather, and equipment for tanning hides. But Afsan had take his leave of them when their path diverged from his intended course.

The next ten days, he walked alone, thinking. His mind was constantly full of calculations. He stopped every few kilopaces and pulled out his writing leather and strings of beads to work through the more complex math.

Each evening, he used his new far-seer to observe the other moons, the rings around Kevpel, the secrets of the night.

It became clear that what he and Novato had feared was the truth. The world they were on was much, much closer to the Face of God than was any other moon in this system or any other moon around any other planet Afsan could see.

He felt a small temblor one night and an aftershock the next day.

The numbers suggested it; the quaking ground confirmed it. The world was indeed unstable, would indeed break up at some point in the not too distant future. He’d have to consult palace library to check records of increasing landquake frequency and severity and to confirm his memory of the strength of rocks, but it seemed as though the differential forces acting on the near and far sides of this moon would tear it asunder within perhaps twenty generations.

It did not make for a pleasant journey.

On the eighteenth day, he walked across a new bridge of cut stone that spanned the river marking the border between Jam’toolar and Arj’toolar.

That evening, he came upon a tributary of the Kreeb and was able to join up with a troupe of musicians traveling by raft down its winding course. They had many instruments, some with strings and intricate gold inlays, others with brass tubes and keys made from spikefrill horns. The musicians agreed to let Afsan ride with them in exchange for sharing tales of the Capital, but after the first day, the deal was modified: Afsan could ride with them so long as he didn’t try to sing along when they practiced. They took him straight to Carno, the Pack in which he was born. The rafters continued on, and Afsan bade them a safe trip.

There would be reunions here: happy meetings with his creche-mates; tales told in the merchants’ square; a time to recover from the long voyage aboard the Dasheter; a time to decide how best to deal with Tak-Saleed upon his return to still-distant Capital City.

In modern times, since the rise of the religion of Larsk, the world had been divided into eight provinces, each under its own governor. But the ancient Lubalite grouping of the Pack was still the principal social unit.

According to legend, there had been five original hunt leaders, each with her own pack. Just as Tetex had done during Afsan’s first hunt, Lubal, Belbar, Katoon, Hoog, and Mekt had each used sign language to designate the members of their hunting parties. Ten fingers, ten hunters to a pack.

Eventually each of the ten hunters in their packs had founded his or her own pack. Five original packs each with ten hunters thus gave rise to the Fifty Packs that now roamed Land.

Actually there were many more than the fifty traditional packs these days, since subgroupings had formed, but each group knew its lineage. Carno, for instance, traced itself back to Mar-Seenuk, one of the hunters comprising Belbar’s original pack of ten.

The term “pack” was still used to refer to any group of hunters. But “Pack,” emphasized with an expansive swish of the tail, written in left-facing glyphs instead of right, referred to the whole social unit: hunters and those who plied a craft, idlers and teachers and scholars, priests and administrators, the young and the old.