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intently into my face. “There is honesty there,” he said, then nodded sharply. “Yes, I believe an Ancestor has touched you with wisdom.” He bowed gracefully. “You are most fortunate, Rider Markasset.”
    “Thank you, Respected Elder Balgokh.” What else could I say?
    From outside I heard again the low roar of the huge cat, and I glanced toward the outer door. When I looked back, Balgokh was staring at me.
    “I only hope,” he said, “that you are not too changed for your sha’um. If you have been too radically altered by your contact with the All-Mind, your mount will not recognize or obey you. If that is so, we are all in danger.”
    “Danger? What danger threatens the Fa’aldu?”
    Balgokh almost laughed as he gestured to the door—obviously beyond the door to the animal we had heard. “Perhaps you do not consider the rage of a sha’um dangerous? At the moment he is only restless and unsettled, waiting for you to come to him again. So far, he has done nothing, but he prowls incessantly. Our women and children are staying behind bolted doors. If you do not take command soon … If you
cannot
take command …”
    I know, now, about the sha’um. A Rider and his sha’um are together from the time the boy is twelve and the sha’um is a year-cub. And it’s strictly a one-to-one relationship; one man, one cat. If Markasset had died in the desert, Keeshah would have returned to the wild, grieving. But Keeshah had accepted that confused, exhausted wretch in the desert as his master and had brought him here for help.
    If he doesn’t recognize Markasset in me
, I thought,
he’ll blame the Fa’aldu for changing me—or, rather, for causing Markasset to disappear. And he’ll avenge “me.” Probably starting with
me.
    As though I were seeing it again, I remembered the way the corpse had looked in the desert. I had noticed, then, only that his clothes were torn. As I looked back now, they seemed to have been shredded by some giant animal’s claws. Keeshah?
    Damn! I wish I could understand this whole thing. I have Markasset’s memory, I can remember—not dependably, either, damn it again—what he knows. But I don’t remember
being
Markasset. And if I have no real sense of the identity of his master, how can I expect Keeshah to have any? To recognize me now that I
know
I’m strange?
    “I will take care of Keeshah,” I said. “If I am too changed, my own death will be enough for him.”
    I was more scared when I said that than I had ever been in my life. But, what the hell; you only live once.
    In the back of my mind an impish voice said,
“Oh, yeah?”
and I answered,
Yeah! I’m not fool enough to try to parlay miracles.
    “May it not be so,” Balgokh said. There was sincerity in his voice. “We have a haunch of glith for him, and plenty of water.
Keddan!
”
    Keddan brought in a hunk of raw meat that seemed to be the rump and one hind leg of a sheep-sized animal, and a tanned skin that might have been the hide of the same animal. The skin was tightly sewn where the legs should have been, and thick twine tied the neck. It was stretched taut with the weight of the water inside it.
    I slung the haunch of meat over one bare shoulder and tucked the skin under my other arm. I looked a wordless, hopeful farewell at Balgokh and Keddan, and went out into the blistering heat of the compound.
    Keeshah wasn’t there.
    Far from being disappointed, I was relieved to have a moment to get my bearings. The Fa’aldu compound was a large rectangle marked at either end by a man-high wall of rock salt blocks. There were openings in the walls to permit the passing of caravans, but these were covered now with thickly-woven cloths tied through holes carefully drilled near the edges of the top and bottom blocks. They were not designed, obviously, as defensive barriers. But they were a symbol that entrance to the Refreshment House of Yafnaar required the consent of Balgokh, as eldest of his family. And they were