At Winter's End

9 In the Cauldron

That was the beginning of Hresh’s true penetration into the mysteries of Vengiboneeza. The machine in the vault of the plaza of the thirty-six towers had opened the way; that and the Barak Dayir.

Everyone knew that he had made some great discovery. Haniman had spread the story far and wide. It stirred even the most sluggish imagination. Hresh was the center of all attention. People stared at him as if he were newly returned from a dinner at the table of the gods. “Did you really see the Great World?” he was asked, twenty times a day. “What was it like? Tell me! Tell me!”

But it was Taniane who saw the real truth. “You came upon something terrible when you were down in that hole. It upset you so much that you don’t want to say anything about it. But it’s changed you, hasn’t it, Hresh? Whatever it was. I can see it. There’s a darkness about your spirit now that wasn’t there before.”

He looked at her, amazed. “Nothing about me has changed,” he said tightly.

“It has. I can see it.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“You can tell me,” she said, cajoling. “We’ve always been friends, Hresh. It’ll soothe your soul to tell someone.”

“There’s nothing to tell. Nothing!”

And he turned quickly away from her, as he always did when he was fearful that someone would see the lie on his face.

Not only was he unable to bring himself to share with any of the others the agonizing truth he had discovered in the vault of the thirty-six towers, he could scarcely bear even to think about it. Now and again he felt it like a dull pain close to his heart; and now and again he heard a harsh mocking voice whispering, Little monkey, little monkey, little monkey. But the revelation of the vault was too painful for Hresh to face just yet. He put it aside; he thrust it down beyond the reach of his conscious mind.

He eased his spirit by plunging deep into the exploration of the ruins of Vengiboneeza. The pattern created in his mind by the machine and the Barak Dayir was his guide. When he wielded the Wonderstone, the points of red light that glowed on the interlocking circles that he saw gave him the clues he needed; and he began now systematically to uncover the city’s ancient caches of undamaged mechanisms, which he now knew lay all about at close hand, some in deeply hidden galleries, some virtually out in the open.

It amazed him that so many treasures of the Great World had survived the Long Winter. Even metal, he thought, should crumble to dust in so great a span of time. Yet wherever he looked — now that he knew the right places — he came up with wonders great and small. Most of the devices were far too big to remove; but many could be carried away and brought back to the settlement, where a special storeroom in the temple was set aside for them. Rapidly it filled with strange, glittering devices of mysterious function. Hresh examined them cautiously. Discovering these objects was one thing, determining how to make use of them was another. It was slow, difficult, frustrating work.

A group who became known among the People as the Seekers collected about Hresh to aid him in the task of exploration and discovery.

At first the Seekers were simply the handful of bodyguards — Konya, Haniman, Orbin — who usually went out to protect him as he roamed the city. Hresh had regarded them in the beginning as necessary nuisances and nothing more, mere spear-wielders. But before long they knew the city almost as well as he did. Though he tried to keep his map to himself, it was impossible to prevent others from learning their way around. Sometimes now they would go on expeditions of their own. It became a kind of competition for celebrity, now that they saw the fame that accrued to Hresh for having been out so often into the city. And occasionally they would actually return with some glittering little marvel out of antiquity, which they had pried out from under a fallen column, or excavated in some debris-choked undercellar.

Hresh protested to Koshmar about that. “They are ignorant,” he said. “They might damage the things they find, if I’m not there to oversee the work.”

“They’ll cease being ignorant,” Koshmar replied, “if they get into the habit of using their minds. And they can learn to be careful with what they find. This city is so big that we need all the searchers we can muster.” And after a moment she added, “They need to feel that they are doing important things, Hresh. Otherwise they’ll grow bored and restless, and that will endanger us all. I say let them wander where they want to.”

Hresh had to obey. He knew when to be wary of disputing the chieftain’s decisions.

The number of Seekers grew as time went along. There were many who were curious about the wonders of the city.

One day when he was searching with Orbin in the rich troves of the Yissou Tramassilu district, Hresh found a puzzling little container bound in intricately woven chains. He tried to open it, but the chains were too complex and delicate for his thick male fingers, or Orbin’s, to unravel. A woman’s hands, smaller and more adept at such work, were needed.

He brought the container back and let Taniane deal with it. Her fingers flew like whirling blades and within minutes she managed to get the container out of its wrappings. There was nothing inside but the dry bones of some small animal, hard as stone, and a bit of grayish powder, perhaps ash.

Taniane went to Koshmar and asked to be allowed to accompany the Seekers. “Probably they find many things like that little box,” she said. “And they break them, or they toss them aside. My eyes are sharper than theirs, my fingers are cleverer. They are only men, after all.”

“There is sense to what you say,” Koshmar replied.

She told Hresh to include Taniane in the search party the next time he went forth. He had mixed feelings about that. Taniane, who had grown tall and silken and keen-witted, had begun to fascinate him in a strange, disturbing way that he scarcely understood. It gave him a mysterious feeling of warmth and excitement when she was close to him, but at the same time she stirred powerful discomfort in him, and sometimes he felt so ill at ease that he would go out of his way to avoid her. He accepted her into the Seekers, for Koshmar had ordered him to, but he took care always to have Orbin or Haniman with him also whenever Taniane was part of the exploration group. They distracted her and kept her from asking him uncomfortable questions.

After Taniane, it was Bonlai who wanted to be a Seeker: if Taniane could go, other girls could, she insisted. And it would give her a chance to be with Orbin. Hresh saw no merit in that, and this time he prevailed with Koshmar. Bonlai, Koshmar agreed, was too young to go exploring. But Hresh could raise no such objection in the case of Sinistine, Jalmud’s mate, and she became the second woman of the tribe to join the group.

A little while later the shy and stolid young warrior Praheurt asked to be one of them, and then Shatalgit, a woman just entering childbearing age, who all too obviously was hoping to mate herself with Praheurt. So there were seven Seekers all told, almost a tenth of the entire tribe.

“Seven is certainly enough,” Hresh said to Koshmar. “Pretty soon there’ll be nobody left working in the vegetable fields or tending the meat-animals, and we’ll all be out prowling in the ruins.”

Koshmar frowned. “Are we here to raise crops or to find the secrets of the Great World that will show us how to conquer the world?”

“We’ve found any number of Great World secrets already.”

“And they remain secret,” said Koshmar sharply. “You don’t know how to use a single one of those machines.”

Hresh replied, trying to choke back his annoyance, “I’m working on that. But the secrets of the Great World will be of no value to us if we starve to death while trying to learn how to make use of them. I think seven Seekers is enough.”

“Very well,” said Koshmar.

Nothing more was heard from the Helmet People in all this time.

Harruel made it his special responsibility to keep watch for them. He was sure that more of the strangers were lurking in the mountainous country above the city’s northeastern flank, and sure also that they were planning an eventual murderous descent on the tribe. That there would be a war he had no doubt. In truth the People should be turning themselves into an army right now: drilling and marching, preparing themselves for the conflict to come. But nobody, not even Koshmar, was interested in that. At the moment Harruel was an army of one. By default he held all the ranks from private officer up to general. And as general he sent himself out each day on reconnaissance missions along the highland side of Vengiboneeza.

At first he went alone, telling no one where he was going. All day long he would sweep through the ruined zones of the upper city and into the wilderness beyond, looking for the glint of helmets in the distance. It was lonely work, but it provided him with a sense of purpose. He had felt a grievous lack of that since the People had settled in Vengiboneeza.

After a time Harruel realized that it was foolish to go on these missions alone. If the Helmet People did come back, they would probably come in force. Strong as he was, he could hardly hold off more than two or three at a time. He needed a companion on his marches, so that if he was attacked the other might still be able to slip away and sound an alarm.

The first he tried to recruit was Konya. Konya had been with him, after all, when he had caught the first Helmet Man. He understood the nature of the enemy they were up against.

But to Harruel’s disgust Konya now was preoccupied with this Seekers thing of Hresh’s. He spent all his time wandering in the ruins of the city, prowling for useless incomprehensible objects, instead of training and strengthening himself as a proper warrior should. And he let Harruel know that he intended to go on doing that.

“We’ll take care of the Helmet People well enough, if they come back. What’s to fear? We’ll just send Hresh out to hit them with his second sight. But meanwhile we’re recovering amazing things in the ruins.”

“You are recovering trash,” Harruel said.

Konya shrugged. “Hresh thinks they have value. He says that these are the treasures of the prophecy, which will help us to rule the world.”

“If we are all slain by the Helmet People, Konya, we’ll rule nothing but our graves. Come and help me keep watch over the city’s frontier, and forget this foraging in that dismal rubble.”

But Konya would not yield. Harruel thought for a moment of ordering him, as his king, to march on patrol with him. But then he realized that he was not yet king of anything or anyone, except in his own mind. It might be unwise to test the depth of Konya’s loyalty more severely just now. Let Konya go grubbing with Hresh for those shiny baubles; he would come to his senses soon enough.

The young warrior Sachkor was more willing to be swayed by Harruel. He was earnest and devoted, and had no interest in becoming a Seeker. Now that he had reached mating age — he seemed to have his eye on the girl called Kreun, who had also just come into her maturity — Sachkor was looking about for some way to distinguish himself in the tribe, to gain Kreun’s attention. Attaching himself to Harruel could perhaps be the way. Harruel had his doubts about Sachkor’s value as a warrior, for he was slender and did not seem very strong; but at least he was fast afoot and could be useful as a messenger.

“There are enemies hiding in the hills,” Harruel told him. “They have red eyes and wear evil-looking helmets on their heads, and one of these days they’ll try to kill us all. We must be on constant guard against them.”

Sachkor now accompanied Harruel each morning into the hill country. He seemed overjoyed to have some sort of meaningful duty to perform, and sometimes his spirit grew so buoyant that he went running wildly up the forested slopes in an exuberant outburst of speed. Harruel, bigger and heavier and older and not nearly as fleet, found this irritating, and ordered Sachkor to stay closer to him. “It’s unwise,” he said, “for us to become separated out here. If we’re attacked we must stand together.”

But they were never attacked. They saw some strange beasts, few of which appeared unfriendly; of Helmet People there were none in evidence. Still they went forth searching every day. Harruel grew weary of Sachkor’s callow babble, which centered mainly about the praise of Kreun’s thick dark fur and long elegant legs. But he told himself that a warrior must be willing to endure all manner of discomforts.

Harruel made a few more recruits among the idle young warriors: Salaman and Thhrouk. Nittin, not a warrior at all but rather one of the breeder males, also joined. He was sick of spending his days among infants, he said. And there was no reason to maintain the old caste structure of the cocoon out here, was there? That startled Harruel at first, but after a moment he came to see merit in Nittin’s offer. Ultimately, when he challenged Koshmar for control, he would need the support of as many different factions of the tribe as he could get. Nittin, with his connections among the women and other breeder males, opened new possibilities.

An attempt to recruit Staip, though, came to nothing. Staip, half a year older than Harruel, was strong and competent, but a colorless man who seemed to Harruel to have no spirit at all. He did as he was told and the rest of the time he did nothing. Therefore Harruel thought he would be easy to gather in; but when he spoke to Staip about the Helmet Man and the threat he represented, Staip merely looked at him in a blank way and said, “He is dead, Harruel.”

“That was only the first one. There are others in the hills, making ready to pounce on us.”

“Do you think so, Harruel?” Staip said, without interest.

He could not or would not grasp the importance of maintaining patrols; and after a time Harruel threw up his hands in fury and strode away.

With Lakkamai, the fourth of the senior warriors, Harruel had a similar failure. The silent, moody Lakkamai seemed barely to pay attention when Harruel approached him. Impatiently he cut in before Harruel had even finished. “This is no concern of mine. I will not go clambering around the mountain with you, Harruel.”

“And if enemies hide there, preparing to do us harm?”

“The only enemies are in your troubled mind,” said Lakkamai. “Let me be. I have things of my own to do, and they are things that must be done in the city.”

Lakkamai walked away. Harruel spat after him. Things of his own to do? What could be more important than the defense of the tribe? But Lakkamai plainly would not be swayed, nor would any of the other older men. It seemed that only the young ones, full of surging juices and unfocused ambitions, were willing to pledge themselves to the task. Well, so be it, Harruel thought. So be it. They are the ones I will need when I set out to build my new kingdom, anyway: not Staip, not Lakkamai, not even Konya.

Koshmar had by now discovered that several of the men were going on mysterious excursions into the hills every day under Harruel’s supervision. She sent for him and asked for an explanation.

Harruel told her exactly what he had been doing and why, and braced himself for a hot dispute.

But to his surprise there was none. Koshmar nodded calmly and said, “You’ve served us well, Harruel. The Helmet People may be the greatest danger we face.”

“The patrols will continue, Koshmar.”

“Yes. So they should. Perhaps some of the other men will want to join. All I ask,” she said, “is that when you organize a project of this sort, you let me know what you’re up to. There are some who thought you might be training an army of your own in the hills, with some plan to attack the rest of us and — who knows? — impose your will on us.”

Harruel glared in fury. “Attack the tribe? But that’s madness, Koshmar!”

“Indeed. I thought so too.”

“Tell me who’s been spreading such lies about me! I’ll have him skinned and stuffed! I’ll turn him into a footstool! An army of my own? Attack the tribe? Gods! Who is the slanderer?”

Koshmar said, “It was only a foolish whisper, and put forth simply as a guess. When it was told to me, I could only laugh, and then the teller laughed too, and admitted that there wasn’t much likelihood of a thing like that. No one has slandered you, Harruel. No one doubts your loyalty. Go, now: get your men together, take up your patrol. You do us all a great service.”

Harruel walked away, wondering who had put such thoughts in Koshmar’s mind.

Konya was the only one who had heard him speak of his ambition to push Koshmar from power and take control of the tribe under the name of king. And Konya had refused to join him on his patrols. Even so, Harruel found it impossible to believe that Konya could have betrayed him.

Who, then?

Hresh?

There had been that time long ago, Harruel remembered, when Hresh had first been made chronicler and he had gone to the boy with his questions about the meaning and history of kingship. Afterward Harruel had decided it could be dangerous to direct Hresh’s attention to such matters, and he had never broached the topic with the boy again. But Hresh had a peculiar, simmering sort of mind. Things stewed in it a long while, and he drew profound connections between them.

If Hresh had been whispering suspicious thoughts in Koshmar’s ear about him, though, Harruel did not immediately see what he could do about it. It was reasonable now to think that Hresh was his enemy, and to conduct himself accordingly. But this was not the time to move against him. Things had to be thought through first. You had to be wary of little Hresh: he was too sharp, he perceived things too clearly, he had great power.

It also occurred to Harruel that the reason Koshmar was so pleased that he was going out on his reconnaissance patrols every day was that it kept him out of her way. So long as he was off in the hills half the day, he was no threat to her authority in the settlement. She might think that was very obliging of him.

Harruel continued to go out daily, usually with Nittin or Salaman, less often with Sachkor. He had lost patience with hearing how wonderful and beautiful Sachkor’s beloved Kreun was.

The Helmet People remained invisible. For the first time Harruel began to think, despite himself, that they might not be there at all. Perhaps that first scout had simply been on his own, a solitary wanderer far from the rest of his people. Or perhaps the helmet-wearers, passing through the vicinity of Vengiboneeza and discovering that it was occupied by Koshmar’s people, had sent him in here to see what sort of reception he would get; and when he failed to return, they had simply moved along.

It was a hard thing to face. Secretly Harruel hoped the Helmet People would turn up, and that they would be looking for trouble. Or if not the Helmet People, then some other enemy — any enemy, any enemy at all. This placid city life had made him restless to the core. His bones ached with it. He was eager for a good lively battle, for a fierce prolonged war.

During this tense period of unbroken peace, Harruel’s mate Minbain was brought to bed and delivered of a sturdy boy. That pleased him, to have fathered a son. Hresh was summoned, and did the naming-rite. Hresh gave his new half brother the birth-name of Samnibolon, which did not please Harruel at all, for Samnibolon had been the name of Minbain’s earlier mate, Hresh’s own father. Harruel felt in some way cuckolded to have the name return to the tribe in the person of his own son.

And it is Hresh who has done this to me, he thought angrily.

But the old man of the tribe had spoken the name, in the presence of the parents and the offering-woman, and the name was irrevocable. Samnibolon son of Harruel it would have to be. The gods be thanked, it was only the birth-name. When his naming-day arrived nine years from now the boy would be able to choose his permanent name, and Harruel would see to it that it was something else. Still, nine years was a long time to be calling your firstborn son by a name that was a bitter reproach in your mouth. Harruel vowed he would pay Hresh back for that, someday, somehow.

It was a difficult time for Harruel: month after month of peace, and a son given a maddening name. Angers boiled and bubbled within him. It could not be long now before the cauldron boiled over.

There were few triumphs and many calamities as Hresh struggled to understand the things he had found in the ruins of Vengiboneeza.

The Great World folk — or the mechanicals who had been their artisans — had apparently intended to build their devices for all eternity. Most of them were simply constructed, strips of metal of different colors arranged in cunning patterns. They showed few signs of rust or other decay. Often they were inlaid with precious jewels that appeared to be part of the mechanism, rather than mere decorations.

In some cases operating them posed no difficulties. A few had intricate arrangements of pressure-points and levers, but most had the simplest of control panels, if they had any at all. Yet how could you tell what function a device was meant to have? Or what catastrophe you might cause by using it the wrong way?

Hresh’s early experiments led to catastrophe more often than not. There was one instrument, no longer than his arm, that began weaving a web the moment he touched a coppery node on its snout. With fantastic speed it hurled thin sticky strands of a nearly unbreakable cord from its muzzle, tossing them in wild loops for thirty paces all around. Hresh released the command node as soon as he saw what was happening, but by then he had snarled Sinistine, Praheurt, and Haniman in a tight net of the stuff. It took hours to cut them free of it and it was days before their fur was completely clean.

Another device, which fortunately he tried at some distance outside the temple courtyard, seemed to turn earth into air. With one quick blast Hresh dug a pit a hundred paces across and fifteen paces deep, leaving no trace behind of what had been there, only a faint burned smell. Perhaps it was meant for clearing away rubble, or perhaps it was a weapon. In horror Hresh hid it where no one was likely to find it again.

A long narrow box with angular projections running down its side turned out to be a bridge-building machine. In the five minutes before Hresh, with some desperation, managed to switch it off, it constructed a bizarre swaybacked bridge from nowhere to nowhere, ending in mid-air, that filled an entire avenue of the city. For a building material it employed a stonelike substance that it created out of — so it seemed — nothing at all. A similar-looking machine proved to be a wall-builder: with the same lunatic zeal as the bridge-building device, it began at the touch of a stud to throw up high walls at random all along the street. Hresh retrieved the pit-digging machine to clear away the bridge and the walls; but despite all caution he cleared away three buildings of the avenue with them. He hoped they had been unimportant ones.

Then there were the devices that could not be made to work at all — that was most of them — and the ones that somehow looked so treacherous and unpredictable that it seemed rash even to try them. Hresh put those away for such time as he might have a clearer notion of what he was doing.

Then, too, there were the ones that would function once, and almost immediately destroy themselves. Those were the most maddening of all.

One of those set up a star-map: a sphere of soft darkness that was three times as wide as a man’s body was long. On its surface all the stars of heaven were depicted in dazzling splendor. They moved as you looked at them; and if you pointed to one star with a shaft of light that came from the machine, a voice would utter a single solemn sound, which Hresh took to be the name of that star in the language of the Great World. He stared in awe and astonishment. But within five minutes curling wisps of pale smoke began coming from it and the brilliant panoply of the stars vanished in an instant, leaving Hresh gasping with the pain of irretrievable loss. He was never able to make that device work again.

Another played music: a tumultuous sky-filling music, full of heavy, clashing melodies, that brought everyone in the tribe running, as if the gods had come to Vengiboneeza and were playing in concert. It too died in smoke almost as soon as it had begun to function.

And there was one that wrote an incomprehensible message in the sky in letters of golden fire. Within moments the machine expired with a sad little sound and the wind blew the strangely fierce-looking sharp-angled characters away.

“We are ruining much and learning little,” Hresh said bleakly to Taniane, one day when there had been three such disasters. But Vengiboneeza was proving to be an incredibly rich storehouse of Great World artifacts. New treasures came back with the Seekers virtually every day. It was a pity to waste any of them, Hresh knew. But perhaps a certain amount of destruction was an inevitable part of the process of learning. He had to go on with the experiments, whatever the losses, whatever the risks. It was his task. The destiny of the tribe was at stake. And perhaps his own destiny as well: for he was here not to find mere curious toys, but to discover the secrets by which the People would rule the world.

The warm wet season came round again. That was winter, and when the cool east winds ended and the heavy rains began Torlyri went forth to do the winter-offering. The sun was low in the sky every day, which was why Hresh had named this season winter; but that seemed strange to Torlyri, because the weather was so mild. Winter was supposed to be a cold time. They had called it winter, had they not, that bitter time which was just ended, the Long Winter of the world, when everything froze and all living things had had to take refuge.

But there was a difference, Torlyri was coming to see, between the Long Winter and an ordinary winter. There were great cycles and small ones. The Long Winter had been the world’s dark calamity, brought by the falling death-stars, when dust and smoke in the sky had cut off the sun’s rays and a terrible cold descended; but that had been an event of the great cycles, which span immense periods, carrying doom at vast and distant intervals. It had been sent from the remote heavens and all the world had fallen to its knees before it. Millions of years would pass before such a thing occurred again. Whole epochs of life would rise and fall, remembering nothing of the last Long Winter that the great cycle had brought, knowing nothing of the next catastrophe that lay far in the future.

Ordinary winter, though, was simply one of the seasons of the small cycle. It was a thing which might differ greatly in intensity from one part of the earth to another. Hresh had explained how the seasons were caused, though the idea was still hazy for her. It had something to do with the movement of the sun around the earth, or the earth around the sun, she was unsure which. There was a time of year when the sun barely reached above the horizon, and that was winter. Winter was generally cold — certainly it had been when they had crossed the plains, that first year — but in certain fortunate places winter was gentle and mild. This was one such place. That was why the sapphire-eyes, who could not stand cold, had chosen to build their great city here long ago, before the death-stars came.

And so the seasons went round. It is winter again, Torlyri thought, our warm wet Vengiboneeza winter. Time passes, and we all grow older.

The tribe was increasing rapidly. All those who had come to Vengiboneeza on the great trek from the cocoon were still alive, and the settlement was full of new children now. Those who had been children before were rising toward adulthood. Taniane, Hresh, Orbin, Haniman — they were almost old enough to be initiated into the mysteries of twining. And soon after that they would be mating. And having children of their own.

Torlyri wondered what it would be like, having a child. Feeling the life growing within her day by day. Pulsing. Pushing outward. And then to be reaching her time, lying down among the women, opening her legs to let the new one out.

She had never given much thought to mating or motherhood when she was a girl. But she had been toying with it for at least a year now. It was not an uncommon thing to think about, here in the New Springtime. There had been any number of matings among the People since the change of customs, and nearly all those who had not actually mated yet had at least flirted with the idea. Even Koshmar had joked about Torlyri’s sudden playfulness with this man or with that one. But Koshmar did not seem to be seriously concerned. It was not the custom for the offering-woman to take a mate; and as for coupling, Koshmar knew that Torlyri had never had any great interest in that.

Torlyri had been chosen early to be the next offering-woman, when she was barely more than a girl. Thekmur had been chieftain then, and Gonnari the offering-woman. Those two were virtually the same age, so they would reach the limit the same month and go out the hatch within weeks of each other. Thekmur picked Koshmar to succeed her, and Gonnari chose Torlyri. For the next five years Koshmar and Torlyri, who had already become twining-partners, had undergone preparation for the great responsibilities that would be theirs; and then the death-days arrived for Thekmur and for Gonnari, and the lives of Koshmar and Torlyri changed forever.

That had been twelve years ago. Torlyri was thirty-two now, almost thirty-three. If they still were living in the cocoon, her own death-day would be only a couple of years away, and she would be busy training her own successor now. But no one spoke of limit-ages or death-days any longer. Torlyri would be offering-woman until death came to take her. And instead of thinking of dying, she was thinking of mating.

Strange. Very strange.

She had experimented with coupling now and then — almost everyone did, even those who had not been designated as breeders — but not very often, and not in a long time. There was said to be high pleasure in it, but Torlyri had never managed to find it. Nor displeasure, either: it had seemed merely an indifferent thing to her, a series of movements to perform with one’s body, about as rewarding as kick-wrestling or armstanding, perhaps not even that.

Her first experience of it had come when she was fourteen, soon after her twining-day, the usual age for such initiations. Her partner was Samnibolon, later to be Minbain’s mate. He came upon her in a far corner of the cocoon and beckoned to her, and held her, and stroked her dark fur, and at last she understood what it was he wanted to do. There seemed to be no harm in it. As she had seen older women do, she opened herself to him and let him put his stiff mating-rod inside her. He moved it swiftly and they rolled over and over in a tangle, and some impulse told her to draw her legs up and press her knees against his sides, which seemed to please him. After a time he grunted and released her. They lay still in each other’s arms for a while. Samnibolon told her how beautiful she was and what a passionate woman she would be. That was all. He never approached her again. Not long afterward he and Minbain were mated.

A year or two later old Binigav the warrior drew her aside and asked her to couple with him; and because he was kindly and getting near to the limit-age, she did. He was tender and gentle with her, and once he had entered her he remained there a very long time, but all she felt was a vague warmth, pleasant but unexciting.

The third time was with Moarn, father of the Moarn who was a warrior of the tribe now. Moarn was already mated, so it surprised Torlyri when he reached for her after a feast. He had had too much velvetberry wine, and so had she. They grappled and embraced. Torlyri was never certain later whether they had truly coupled or not: she remembered that there had been some difficulties. Either way, it made little difference. Certainly it had not been memorable. And those were her three coupling-partners, Samnibolon, Binigav, Moarn. They were all long since dead; and she, once she had been chosen in her eighteenth year to be the next offering-woman, had never again ventured to explore such matters.

But now — now—

For weeks now, Lakkamai had been staring at her oddly. That quiet, intense, remote man: what was on his mind? No one had ever stared at her like that. His gray eyes were marked with flecks of lustrous green, which made him appear mysterious, unfathomable. He seemed to be trying to see deep inside her soul.

Whenever she glanced around suddenly, there was Lakkamai, peering toward her out of the distance. Hastily looking away, pretending he was busy with something, with anything. Sometimes she smiled at him. Sometimes she simply turned away; and when she turned toward him again, five or ten minutes later, there he was peering at her again.

She began to understand.

She found herself often looking at Lakkamai to see if he was looking at her. And then she found herself looking at Lakkamai for the sake of looking at Lakkamai, even when his back was turned to her. He was sleek and graceful and he looked strong: not strong in the thick-bodied manner of Harruel, but with a wiry, resilient power to him that reminded her of that poor Helmet Man who had died while he was being questioned by Koshmar and Hresh. Lakkamai was one of the older men of the tribe, a senior warrior, but his fur, a deep purple-brown, had not yet begun to show any gray. His face was long and sharp of chin and muzzle, his eyes were deep-set. Throughout all his days he had said very little. Small as the tribe was, intimate as life in the cocoon had been, Torlyri nevertheless had the feeling that she hardly knew him.

One night she dreamed that she was coupling with him.

It took her by surprise. In actuality she was lying with Koshmar. As it happened, they had twined that evening, for the first time in many weeks. Her mind should have been full of Koshmar while she slept. Instead Lakkamai came to her and stood silently over her, studying her intently. She beckoned to him and drew him down — he seemed to float to her side — and Koshmar disappeared and there were only the two of them on the sleeping-mat, and Lakkamai was inside her, and she felt sudden heat within her womb and knew that he had fathered a child upon her.

She gasped and woke, sitting up, trembling.

“What is it?” Koshmar asked at once. “A dream, was it?”

Torlyri shook her head. “A passing chill,” she said. “The winter air brushing across my face.”

She had never lied to Koshmar before.

But she had never desired a man before, either.

The next day, when Torlyri saw Lakkamai outside the temple, she could not bear to meet his eyes, so powerful was her feeling that she actually had coupled with him the night before. If the dream had been so vivid for her, he must also have felt it. It seemed to her that he must already know everything about her, the feel of her breasts in his hands, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her breath; and, old as she was, Torlyri felt suddenly like a girl, and a foolish girl at that.

That night she dreamed of Lakkamai again. She gasped and moaned and throbbed in his arms, and when she awoke Koshmar was staring at her, eyes bright in the darkness, as though she thought Torlyri was losing her mind.

On the third night the dream came again, even more real. She did things with Lakkamai that she had never seen others do while coupling, that she had never even imagined anyone would think of doing; and they gave her delight of the deepest and most intense kind.

She could not bear this any longer.

In the morning the rains that had been pelting the city for many weeks finally halted, and the bright blue winter sky burst through the clouds with the force of a trumpet-blast. Torlyri performed the sunrise-offering as she always did; and then, in utter calmness, she went to the house where the unmated warriors lived. There was a cage hanging on the porch at the corner of the building, with three small harsh-eyed black creatures in it that the warriors had caught, running around and around and crying out in angry, piercing, high-pitched tones. Torlyri gave them a sad compassionate smile.

Lakkamai was waiting outside as though expecting her. Silent as ever, seemingly at ease, he leaned back against the wall and watched her draw near. His eyes, cool and solemn, held no trace now of that fierce probing stare that he had so often turned on her of late. But the corner of his mouth was moving repeatedly in a quick short tic that betrayed inner tension. He appeared unaware of that.

“Come,” Torlyri said softly. “Walk with me. The rains have relented.”

Lakkamai nodded. They started off side by side, keeping so far apart that burly Harruel would have had room easily to walk between them. Past the houses of the tribe, past the entrance to the six-sided tower of purple stone that was the temple, past the garden of shrubs and flowering plants that Boldirinthe and Galihine and some of the others now maintained with such care, past the sparkling pool of pink radiance that once had given pleasure to the sapphire-eyes. Neither of them spoke. They looked straight ahead. It seemed to Torlyri that she caught sidewise glimpses of Hresh, of Konya, of Taniane, even perhaps of Koshmar, as she walked. But no one called to her and she did not turn her head to see anyone more clearly.

Beyond the garden of the women and the light-pool of the sapphire-eyes there was a second garden, a wild one, where tangled vines and crook-armed trees and strange swollen-bellied black-leaved shrubs grew in crazy profusion above a thick carpet of dense bluish moss. Here Torlyri entered, Lakkamai walking beside her, but closer now. Still neither spoke. They went inward perhaps two dozen paces, to a place where there was an opening, almost a bower, in the undergrowth. Torlyri turned now to Lakkamai and smiled; and he put his hands to her shoulders, as if to pull her downward with him to the moss, but no pulling was necessary. They descended together.

She could not say whether it was he who entered her, or she who enfolded him; but suddenly they were pressed close upon each other with their bodies joined. From the moss beneath them came a faint sighing sound. It was heavy with the stored moisture of the many days of rain, and as they moved Torlyri imagined that they were squeezing it out into the shallow declivity in which they lay, so that it was forming a pool around them. She welcomed that. Gladly would she submerge herself in that gentle warmth.

Lakkamai moved within her. She clung to him, clasping the ridged muscles beneath the thick fur of his back.

It was not quite as it had been in her dream. But it was not at all as she remembered its having been with Samnibolon and Binigav and Moarn, either. The communion was nowhere nearly as deep or as full as was twining — how could it have been? — but it was far more profound than she had ever known coupling could be. Holding tight to Lakkamai, Torlyri thought in wonder and surprise that this went beyond coupling: this must be in fact what mating is like. And in that moment of astonished realization there arose a discordant voice within her that asked, What have I done? What will Koshmar say?

Torlyri let the question go unanswered, and it was not repeated. She lost herself in the wondrous silence that was the soul of Lakkamai. After a time she moved free of him, and they lay a short distance apart, only their fingertips touching.

She thought of touching him with the tip of her sensing-organ, but no, no, that would be too much like twining. That would be twining. Koshmar, not Lakkamai, was her twining-partner. But Lakkamai was her mate.

Torlyri turned that thought over and over in her mind.

Lakkamai is my mate. Lakkamai is my mate.

She was thirty-two years old and had been the offering-woman of the tribe for a dozen years, and now, suddenly, after so long a time, she had a mate. How strange. How very strange.

On a cool bright winter day when the last storm had blown itself out to the east and the next had not yet come sweeping in from the western sea, Hresh went once more to explore the grim building he called the Citadel. It was Taniane’s idea, and she went with him. Lately she had begun to accompany him on many of his journeys. Koshmar seemed to have no objection these days to his going into the ruins without a warrior to protect him. And Hresh had quickly come to accept Taniane’s participation in the group of Seekers. There was still something about being close to her that made him uneasy and uncomfortable; but at the same time he felt a curious giddy pleasure at being alone with her in the distant reaches of the city.

Hresh had not wanted to return to the Citadel. He thought he knew now what it was, and he feared to know that he was right. But the strange building fascinated Taniane, and she insisted again and again, until at last he agreed. He dared not tell her why he had been keeping away. And having agreed to go, he resolved to force the mystery of the Citadel to its depths, no matter what the consequences. Tell her nothing, but let her see. Let her draw her own conclusions. Perhaps the time had come, he thought, to share some of the terrible truth that he had kept pent within himself. And perhaps Taniane was the one to try to share it with.

The path to the Citadel was a difficult one, paved with blocks of gray flagstone that had been heaved this way and that by time and earthquakes and made slippery during the winter rains by a thick furry coating of green algae. Twice Taniane lost her footing and Hresh caught her, once by the upper arm, once by her haunch and the small of her back; and his fingers tingled strangely from the contact each time. There was a stirring in his loins and in his sensing-organ. He found himself wishing she would slip a third time, but she did not.

They reached the top and stepped out onto the headland where the Citadel stood in solitary majesty overlooking Vengiboneeza. Hresh crossed the carpet of short dense thick-bladed grass that surrounded the building, going to the edge and looking out. The vast sprawl of the city lay before him, shining in the pale, milky winter light. He looked down at the broken white stubs of buildings, at delicate airy bridges that had collapsed into mounds of rubble, at roadbeds of gleaming stone shot through with livid greens and blues extending to the horizon. Taniane stood close by him, breathing harshly from the climb.

“I saw all this as it was when it was alive,” Hresh said after a moment.

“Yes. Haniman told me.”

“It was absolutely amazing. So many things happening at once, so many people, such energy. Amazing. And very depressing.”

“Depressing?”

“I never understood what a real civilization was, before I saw the Great World. Or realized how far we are from having one. I thought it would be just like a cocoon, only a lot bigger, with more people doing more things. But that isn’t it, Taniane. There’s a difference in quality as well as quantity. There’s a certain point at which a civilization takes off, where it begins to generate its own energy, it grows of its own accord and not simply from the actions of the people who make it up. Do you understand me at all? The tribe is too small to be like that. We have our little things to do, and we do them, and the next day we do them all over again, but there isn’t the same sense of possibility, of transformation, of exploding growth. You need more people for that. Not just hundreds. You need thousands — millions—”

“We’ll have that someday, Hresh.”

He shrugged. “It’s a long way off. There’s so much work that has to be done first.”

“The Great World also started small.”

“Yes,” he said. “I keep telling myself that.”

“So that’s what’s been troubling your soul so much, since you came back from seeing the things you saw?”

“No,” said Hresh. “That wasn’t it. It was something else.”

“Can you tell me?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t tell anyone.”

She looked at him a long while without speaking. Then she smiled and touched him lightly on the shoulder. He shivered at the touch, and hoped she had not noticed.

He turned and studied the Citadel for a time. Those bare massive greenish-black walls, those gigantic stone columns, that low, heavy, sloping roof: it was a building that spoke of power and strength, of arrogance, even, of colossal self-assurance. Hresh closed his eyes and saw the tall pale furless humans of his vision drifting ghostlike through these doorless walls at the touch of a finger, as though the walls were walls of mist. How had they done that? How could he?

“Turn your back,” he said.

“Why?”

“I have to do something that I don’t want you to see.”

“You’re becoming so mysterious, Hresh.”

“Please,” he said.

“Are you going to do something with the Wonderstone?”

“Yes,” he said, irritated.

“You don’t need to hide it from me.”

“Please, Taniane.”

She made a wry face and turned her back to him. He reached into his sash and drew forth the Barak Dayir, and after a moment’s uneasy hesitation he touched the tip of his sensing-organ to it, and heard its potent music rising through the chasms and abysses of the air to fill his soul. He began to tremble, He caught the force of the stone and tuned it and focused it, and thick whirls of red and yellow and white began to shine on the walls of the Citadel. Gateways, he thought.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to go inside. Give me your hand, Taniane.”

She stared at him strangely and put her hand into his. The Wonderstone so amplified his sensations that her palm was like fire against his skin, and he could scarcely endure the intensity of the contact; but he found a way of tolerating it, and with a gentle tug he led her toward the nearest of the whirls of light. It yielded to his approach and he stepped through the wall without difficulty, drawing Taniane along behind him.

Inside was an immense empty space, illuminated by a dim ghostly light that sprang up everywhere without apparent source. They might have been in a cavern half the width of the world, and half a mountain high.

“Yissou’s eyes,” Taniane whispered. “Where are we?”

“A temple, I think.”

“Whose?”

Hresh pointed. “Theirs.”

Humans were moving to and fro in the air high above them, light as dust-motes. They seemed to emerge from the walls, and they traveled across the upper reaches of the huge room by twos and threes, evidently deep in conversation, to disappear on the far side. They gave no sign that they were aware of the presence of Taniane and Hresh.

“Dream-Dreamers!” she murmured. “Are they real?”

“Visions, probably. From another time. From when the city was still alive. Or else we’re dreaming them.” He was still clutching the Barak Dayir in his hand. He dropped it back into its pouch and slipped the pouch into his sash. At once the ghostly figures overhead vanished, and there was nothing to be seen but the four rough bare stone walls, glowing dully in the faint spectral light that they themselves emanated.

“What happened?” Taniane asked. “Where did they go?”

“It was the Wonderstone that let us see them. They weren’t really here, only their images. Shining across thousands of years.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” said Hresh.

He took a few cautious steps, going to the wall at the place where they had entered and running his hand over the stone. It felt utterly unyielding, and faintly warm, like the Barak Dayir itself. A shiver ran along his spine. There was nothing in the great room, nothing at all, no shattered images, no toppled thrones, no sign of any occupants.

“I feel peculiar here,” Taniane said. “Let’s go.”

“All right.”

He turned away from her and drew forth the Wonderstone again, not bothering to hide it from her this time. She stared and made the sign of Yissou. The moment he touched it the walls began to blaze with light once more, and the eerie procession of the airborne humans was restored. He saw Taniane gaping at them in wonder. “Dream-Dreamers,” she said again. “They look just like him. Ryyig. Who were they?”

Hresh said nothing.

“I think I know,” she said.

“Do you?”

“It’s a crazy idea, Hresh.”

“Then don’t tell me.”

“Tell me what you think, then.”

“I’m not sure,” Hresh said. “I’m not sure of anything.”

“You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not.”

“We’re thinking the same thing. I’m frightened, Hresh.”

He saw her fur rising, and her breasts beginning to stir. He wished he dared to draw her close against him and hold her.

“Come,” he said. “We’ve been in here long enough.”

He took her hand again and led her through the gateway in the wall. When they were outside they looked back, and then at each other, without saying a word. He had never seen Taniane so shaken. And in his own mind that strange procession of Dream-Dreamer folk still drifted through the air above him, mysterious, tantalizing, magical, telling him once again the thing that he did not want to hear.

In silence they made their way down the slippery, tormented flagstone path. They said nothing to each other all the way back to the settlement.

As they approached it they heard angry shouts, loud cries, the high mocking cries of jungle monkeys. The place was full of them, dozens of them, swinging and capering through the rooftops.

“What’s going on?” Hresh asked, as Boldirinthe ran by waving a spear.

“Can’t you see?”

Weiawala, coming along behind her, paused to explain. The monkeys had come carrying the papery nests of insects of some sort. The nests broke when they hit the ground, releasing swarms of shining long-legged red nuisances with jagged nippers that dug deep. When they bit it burned like hot coals, and they couldn’t be pulled free, only pried out with knives. The bugs were all over the settlement, and so were the monkeys, screeching and laughing high above, and occasionally tossing down yet another nest. The whole tribe was busy trying to drive them away and to round up the stinging things.

It was hours before the settlement was calm again. By then, no one seemed to care where he had been or what he had done. Later that evening he saw Taniane sitting by herself, staring into the remote distance; and when Haniman went over to her to say something she shook him off angrily and left the room.

There was a sawtooth ridge halfway up the slope of Mount Springtime that Harruel often used as a lookout point when he was standing sentry duty over Vengiboneeza. It hung above the flank of the mountain like a terrace, so that when he looked upslope he had a view down into the saddle that any invading force would have to cross as it descended from the summit. From there also, looking the other way, he could see all of Vengiboneeza spread out below him like its own map.

There he sometimes sat, hour after hour, even in the rain, perched in the fork of an enormous shiny-barked tree with triangular red leaves. He had begun going alone to the mountain again these days. His recruits, his soldiers, had become mere annoyances to him, for he could see the impatience in them, their disbelief that invaders ever would come.

Dark thoughts came to him often, now. He felt caught in some kind of dream in which no one was able to move. The months, even the years, were passing, and he was trapped in this old ruined city the way he once had been trapped in the cocoon. Somehow in the cocoon it had not mattered to him that each day was exactly like the day before. But here, with all the world gleaming just beyond his reach, Harruel felt seething impatience. He had come to understand that he had been born for great things. When would he begin to achieve them, though? When? When?

During the long rainy spell these feelings built in him until they became all but unendurable. He spent entire days in his forked tree, drenched, soggy, furious. He glared at the tribal settlement below him at the city’s edge and roared his contempt for its dull pallid people. He glared at the mountain above him and screamed defiance at the invaders who obstinately refused to come. He grew stiff and sore. His body ached and his mind throbbed. Now and then he descended and plucked fruits from the nearby bushes. More than once he caught some small animal with his bare hands, and killed it and ate it raw.

He stayed crouched in his tree all one night long, though the rain came without a break in great heavy drops. What was the use of going home? Minbain was busy with her little one; she had no interest in coupling these days. And the rain, at least, cooled his anger somewhat.

In the morning sunlight struck him suddenly, like a slap across the mouth. Harruel blinked groggily and stared and sat up, wondering where he was. Then he remembered that he had slept in the tree.

For one startled moment he thought he saw golden-spiked helmets all along the jagged rim of the ridge to his left. The invasion at last? No. No. Only the morning light, low along the horizon, cutting through the droplets of water that glistened on every leaf.

He swung himself to the ground and went limping off toward the city to see about something to eat.

A figure came into view when he was about halfway down the mountain. He thought at first it might be Salaman or Sachkor, coming to look for him now that the rain had ended. But no: this was a woman. A girl. She was tall and slim, with fur of an unusual deep black hue. Harruel recognized her after a moment as young Kreun, Sachkor’s beloved, the daughter of old Thalippa. She was waving to him, calling.

“I’m looking for Sachkor! Is he with you?”

Harruel stared, making no reply. He had coupled once with Thalippa, many years ago. A hot one, Thalippa had been, back then. After all this time the memory of it came gliding up out of the depths of his mind. She had scratched him with her claws, Thalippa had. He remembered the strong sweet musky odor of her. Amazing, after fifteen years, remembering that. Half his life ago.

“Nobody knows where he is,” Kreun said. “He was here yesterday morning, and then he vanished. I went to the place where all the young men stay, but he wasn’t there. Salaman thought he might be up here on the mountain with you.”

Harruel shrugged. At another time all that might have mattered. But now a strange spell gripped his spirit.

“It’s been such a long time, Thalippa.”

“What?”

“Come here. Come closer. Let me look at you. Thalippa.”

“I’m Kreun. Thalippa’s my mother.”

“Kreun?” he said, as if he had never heard the name before. “Oh. Yes. Kreun.”

He felt red heat between his legs, and a terrible numbing ache. Days and days in that tree, and now a whole night too, sitting up there in the rain. Guarding these foolish people, these silly heedless people. Protecting them against an enemy they refused even to believe in. While the days of his life went idly ticking by, and all the world was waiting for his embrace.

“Is something wrong with you, Harruel? You look so peculiar.”

“Thalippa—”

“No, I’m Kreun!” And now she was backing away from him, looking frightened.

Sachkor was right to babble so much about her. Kreun was very beautiful. Those long slender legs, that deep rich fur, the bright green eyes now sparkling with fear. Odd that he had never noticed that, how good-looking Kreun was; but of course she was young, and one paid no attention to girls until they had reached twining-age. She was a marvel. Minbain was warm and good and loving but she had left her beauty years behind her. Kreun was just growing into hers.

“Wait,” Harruel called.

Kreun halted, frowning, uncertain. He stumbled down the path toward her. As he drew near she gasped and tried to run, but he reached out with his sensing-organ and caught her about the throat. There was a tingling coming from her: he felt it and it redoubled his frenzy. Easily he pulled her toward him, grabbed her by the shoulder, threw her facedown on the wet ground.

“No — please—” she cried.

She tried to crawl away, but she stood no chance against him. He fell on top of her and gripped her arms from behind. The heat in his loins was unbearable now. Somewhere deep within his mind a quiet voice insisted that what he was doing was wrong, that a woman must not be taken against her will, that the gods would exact a price from him for this. But it was impossible for Harruel to fight the fury, the rage, the need that had overwhelmed him. He pressed his thighs against her smooth furry rump, and thrust. She uttered a thick cry of pain and horror. “It is my right,” Harruel said to her, over and over, as he moved against her. “I am the king. It is my right.”