Nelson laid his rough wolf's head on his paws and let his eyes drop shut. The heat of the day made it easy to relax. Almost he dropped into a half doze.
And then his mind was touched by another. A wise mind, wiser far than Asha's because it was far older, a mind whetted and honed to razor sharpness by the upper air, keen as the eagle's curving beak and sharp as his talons — able to grip and tear and worry a thought until its inner bones lay bare and truthful.
Once again Nelson had the strange experience of seeing the world through the eyes of another being.
He saw the whole valley of L'Lan spread out below him, so far down that the great trees of the forest appeared as a mere roughness of texture, like a tapestry thrown over the knees of the mountains. He saw the high crags of the barrier cliffs, leaping and thrusting up into the sky, tossing the cold winds from their shoulders in flying clouds of snow, exulting in the sun.
In imagination his lungs were filled with air that was thin and pure and more intoxicating than wine. He felt the surging strength of mighty wings and flung himself headlong into the buffeting, swirling gales that swept among the high peaks and fought them joyously as a swimmer fights the surf. He knew the long whistling rush of the swoop, the exquisite precision of the tilting wing, the excitement of the strike and kill.
All this, and much more. The gossip and the quarrels of the eyries, the time of mating and the young. The first flight, when the young untried wings plunge out into the blue gulf and beat and stagger and hold. And the long silent times when Ei and the others like him would perch on the high crags and brood, thinking-thinking with minds like those of men, there among the vast upper reaches, where thought must be as broad as the heavens and as clean as the snow.
Here again, more clearly and strongly than before, in the older wisdom of Ei's thought, Nelson felt the power of the Clan law and the Brotherhood. L'Lan was a world unto itself. No matter how the social order ran between man and beast in the outer world, here the Brotherhood was right. The rough but obvious parallel of tyranny and democracy occurred to him.
He began suddenly to detest Shan Kar. As for Sloan and Piet Van Voss and himself, he was filled with loathing. Not for the first time he thought back over the years of his life and was conscious of bitter regret.
He thought somberly, "The wolf and the tiger of the outer world, who have only the minds of beasts, are worthier than I."
Ei answered quietly, "Not one of us lives who is without shame at one time or another. It is not the end of the world."