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You will do as I have done, watch and step in only when a mistake would destroy the race. And you will learn that refraining from action is often more difficult than taking it." "Let it begin, then," Kranath said. "You were right, I need no prompting." "Very well. Open your mind fully to me, that we may both be fulfilled."
"If you hesitate to reveal it to your sponsor, you probably should not. You are trying to become Cor'naya, however; you must decide what honor demands of you." "Oh, hell." Tarlac didn't know what to think. He couldn't seem to feel any real emotion, only a sort of resigned fatigue. "Last night I was Kranath, when he was forced to Godhome. And for a little bit I was Godhome itself.
"Yes, sir," Tarlac admitted, unable to repress a smile and a rueful headshake. "A moment ago Lord Kranath told me you were close to the truth and asked me what I intended to do about it. Absolutely nothing, except to ask you not to make it official. If I'm being so obvious, too many people may pick up on it anyway." "It wasn't obvious, except to someone who knows you well.
That interpretation was perhaps questionable but it wasn't forbidden, because it left Kranath free to refuse. As long as that was true, Godhome felt justified. It needed the best, and Kranath was the best; there was no reason to delay the first step.
I think they tried to explain it, but the reports that have come down to our time make no sense. And they left us a promise. They said that when they were needed, they would return." Then he'd stood and stretched, the fire highlighting the four parallel Honor scars running down his chest and belly, and Kranath remembered promising himself then that he, too, would take and survive the Ordeal.
Whatever else it demanded of him would be minor. "Not true," a directionless voice said. Kranath gasped in shock as he made a fast scan of the featureless white room he now stood in. It was empty, with no trace left of the elevator door, or any other exit. Nobody was there, and he saw no loudspeakers but there had to be something! Finally it sank in. The voice had spoken in his mind!
Twenty-seven thousand Homeworld years ago, that was done." Kranath was badly disturbed by that, even though he'd braced himself to accept difficult things. Learning that his people had lost an entire world their Truehome made his spirit quail. "Were the others so powerful, then?" "Not as individuals, no. But they were so numerous you could not have resisted them.
It was a hundred years since the sporadic interclan disagreements had, for no apparent reason, turned into bloody wars instead of being settled by n'Ka'ruchaya and elders. No clan was at peace now, unless that could be said of the ones that had been destroyed. Kranath could all too easily see that happening to St'nar, his small clan overwhelmed by others that allied against it.
That's genocide, as surely as what the Empire'll do if I fail." "Are you sure that will happen?" "How can I be sure? I'm a Ranger, not a god but I know how it affected Kranath, how it affected me. There's a chance it wouldn't hurt, I guess Traiti might not believe me. That might cushion the shock, let 'em realize gradually that it is true." He paused, feeling the dilemma.
There was a brief indescribable sensation, and when he ran his tongue over sharp triangular teeth, he realized that his experience as Kranath, impressive as it had been, was only a shadow of this seeming? reality. He touched his face, ran fingertips along the scars on his chest, extended and retracted powerful claws . . . yes, this body felt as appropriate as his own.
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