At Winter's End

13 Twinings

What had been the crater of the death-star — for they were certain by this time that that was what the circular basin must be — had now become the capital city of Harruel’s kingdom. The territory of one was identical to the territory of the other, and the rim of the crater was the boundary of both. Harruel had named his kingdom Yissou, and the city City of Yissou.

They were both absurd names, so far as Salaman was concerned. “One should not name kingdoms after gods,” he said to Weiawala, in the cabin they shared. “Better to have named the kingdom for himself, which is probably what he would have done if he dared, and the city the same. At least that would be honest.”

“But giving Yissou’s name to the kingdom places it under Yissou’s special protection,” Weiawala protested mildly.

“As though Yissou were not the protector of all who love him, with or without such little favors from us.” Salaman smiled. “Well, Harruel has become very devout in these later days. Talk to him, and it’s Yissou this and Yissou that, and Emakkis be our guide and counsel, and Friit preserve us, every other word out of him! All this piety sits very poorly on the tongue of a murderous brute like Harruel, I must say.”

“Salaman!”

“I say it to you. Only to you.” And he made mock gestures of submission in the air, as though Harruel had just come into their cabin. “Good day, your majesty! Yissou’s fragrance upon you, your majesty! What a fine day in the City of Yissou this is, your majesty!”

“Salaman!”

He laughed and caught her from behind, his hands over her breasts, and kissed the soft furry nape of her neck.

City of Yissou, indeed! Foolish name devised by a foolish king!

It was not much of a kingdom yet, nor much of a city. At the green heart of the crater, that thickly wooded place where — so Salaman had argued — the death-star had come crashing down long ago, there now were seven crude, lopsided wooden shacks, laced together with vines. That was the City of Yissou. Each of the five mated couples had a rickety shack, and Lakkamai, the lone singleton, had a place of his own. The seventh building, no finer than the others, was the royal palace and house of government. Here Harruel sat in state for an hour or two every day, though there was little for him to do in the way of royal functions. Disputes requiring adjudication were rare in a commonwealth of eleven adults and a handful of children, and there had not yet been any ambassadors from far-off realms in need of formal welcome. But there he sat, playing at being king, at the center of this collection of shacks that played at being a city.

Not much of a king or a kingdom, no. And not much of a city. And yet, Salaman thought, they had done well enough for themselves in a short while. The City of Yissou was a little less than two years old now. They had cleared much of the underbrush, and built houses of sorts, and they had rounded up meat-animals that dwelled now in a large enclosure, where they could be caught and butchered as needed. A palisade fashioned from tall treetrunks was more than half complete, running around the entire rim of the ancient crater. Harruel said it was to guard against the attack of enemies or wild beasts, and perhaps that was all it meant to him. Certainly it would be useful if enemies ever came. But Salaman saw it also as a statement of sovereignty, an announcement of the extent of Harruel’s royal power.

And Salaman dreamed of the day when under his own sovereignty that wooden palisade would be replaced by one of stone. That day was far off, though. The tribe was still too small for such grand projects. Five men were not enough for building great stone walls. And Harruel was still king. For Harruel, a palisade of wood was a sufficiently impressive thing.

“Come,” Salaman said, beckoning to Weiawala. “The air in here is stale. Let’s go to the hill.”

There was a high place beyond the meadow, south of the crater wall, where Salaman often went to think. From there he could see the entire city, and the forest on the far side through which they had come in their trek from Vengiboneeza, and when he turned the other way he was able to glimpse the dark line of the far-off western sea against the horizon. Usually he went there alone, but now and then he took Weiawala with him. Sometimes they would couple there, or even twine. In that high place fresh breezes blew and he felt more keenly alive than anywhere else.

Together, without speaking, they made their way through the little city and past the animal enclosure to the twisting path that led up the southern rim of the crater.

“What are you thinking?” Weiawala asked, after a time.

“About the future.”

“How can you think about the future? The future hasn’t happened yet, so what is there to think about?”

He smiled gently and said nothing.

“Salaman,” she said a little while later, as they climbed, “will you tell me something?”

“What is it, love?”

“Are you ever sorry that you left Vengiboneeza?”

“Sorry? No, not for a minute.”

“Even though we have to put up with Harruel?”

“Harruel’s all right. He’s the king we needed.” Halting on the trail, Salaman turned and glanced back at the few pitiful scruffy shacks that were the city, and at the half-finished palisade along the rim. His hands rested lightly on Weiawala’s shoulders, stroking the rich fur. She moved backward a step and wriggled against him.

After a moment she said, “But Harruel’s so vain, and he’s so rough. You scorn him, Salaman. I know you do. You think he’s crude and pretentious.”

He nodded. What she said was true, of course. Harruel was violent and coarse and something of a blockhead, yes. But he had been the perfect man for the moment, the absolutely correct figure at this juncture of history. His soul was strong and he had shrewdness and determination and ambition, and much pride. But for him, the City of Yissou would never have come into being under any name, and they would all still be back there living the easy life among the ruined palaces of Vengiboneeza — an aimless people, waiting endlessly for the great things that destiny had in store for them to fall into their hands.

At least Harruel had had the courage to make a break with that purposeless, self-deluding existence. He had pulled free of Koshmar’s grasp and given existence to something new and vital and necessary here.

“Harruel’s all right,” Salaman said again. “Let him be king! Let him call things by whatever names he likes! He’s earned the privilege.”

He tugged Weiawala’s hand, and they resumed the climb.

Harruel would not be king forever, Salaman knew.

Sooner or later the gods would summon him to his rest, perhaps sooner rather than later. That coarseness of his, that violence, that blockheadedness, eventually must do him in. And then, thought Salaman, it would be Salaman’s turn to be the king here, if Salaman had anything to say about it. Salaman and the sons of Salaman, for ever and ever after. If Salaman had anything to say about it!

They reached the rim and went scrambling over the rounded edge. The palisade had not yet reached this part of the crater wall. Looking back, he could barely make out the City of Yissou now at the heart of the bowl below. Its few little buildings were lost in the ever-encroaching greenery.

But the city, Salaman was certain, was not destined to remain for long a mere collection of ramshackle wooden huts. One day there would indeed be a great city down there: a city as grand as Vengiboneeza, perhaps. But it would not be a hand-me-down city like Vengiboneeza, that had been built by long-gone sapphire-eyes and taken over in its ruination by an opportunistic pack of latter-day squatters. No, he told himself, it would be the proud product of the toil and sweat and foresight of its own people, who would make themselves masters of all the region about it, and then of the provinces beyond, and one day, gods willing, of the entire world. The City of Yissou would be the capital of an empire. And the sons of the sons of Salaman would be the lords of that empire.

Now that he was outside the crater he forged rapidly on toward his private high place. After a time Weiawala called, “Wait, Salaman, I can’t go that fast!” He realized that he had left her far behind, and he paused, letting her catch up. Sometimes he forgot how much stamina he had, and how eagerly and swiftly he moved when he was on this trail.

“You’re always in such a hurry,” she said.

“Yes. I suppose I am.”

He tucked his arm around her and swept her along up the hill.

This was Salaman’s time of coming into his own. He was seventeen, nearly eighteen, a strong young warrior in his prime.

In the cocoon during his boyhood he had been simply one of many, playing idly at kick-wrestling and cavern-soaring and wondering whether coupling could be as pleasurable as the older ones hinted it was. Though his mind was keen, and he saw things clearly and brightly, he had no incentive to demonstrate his intelligence to others, and more than a little to keep it hidden. So he passed the time unexceptionally through his boyhood, seeking nothing, expecting nothing. He had thought life would be like that until the end of his time, a long placid round of identical days.

Then had come the Time of Going Forth, and the long trek across the plains. In that year Salaman had passed from boyhood to manhood and attained his full strength; for though he was short of stature he was thick through the shoulders and robust in the arms, and he had great energy and endurance. Perhaps only Konya was stronger, among all the warriors, and of course Harruel. In the strange new world beyond the cocoon, Salaman underwent a flowering of his spirit. He began to look forward to a time when he would be a man of significance in the tribe. Yet he went unnoticed, because he was so quiet.

Some men were quiet, Salaman thought, because they had nothing to say. Konya was like that, and Lakkamai. Salaman’s reticence sprang from a different cause. It would be dangerous, he had always suspected, to reveal his capabilities too early, considering the general flux and violence of events these days.

The example of Sachkor was much on his mind. Sachkor had been intelligent too; and Sachkor was dead now. Intelligence was not enough — one must have wisdom too — and Sachkor, going off by himself and hunting up the Helmet People, then bringing them back and trying to set himself up as the go-between for the two tribes, had not displayed a great deal of wisdom.

Sachkor had moved too far too soon. He had shown himself to be too clever, too ambitious. His cleverness made him a direct threat to Harruel. Hresh was clever also, cleverer by far than anyone, but he was no warrior, and kept to himself, doing things that were of interest only to Hresh; no one had to fear that Hresh might one day reach for supreme power. But Sachkor was a warrior, and once he had brought the Helmet People back he had placed himself in direct opposition to Harruel. Moreover Sachkor had not had wit enough to hold back from challenging Harruel over the Kreun business. No one who went charging wildly into fights with Harruel was likely to live long enough to see his fur turn white.

In Vengiboneeza, therefore, Salaman had preferred to leave cleverness to Hresh and heroics to Sachkor. He had quietly made himself useful to Harruel, and when Harruel had made his break with Koshmar he had moved quickly to Harruel’s side. By now Harruel had come to rely on him to do most of his thinking for him. In a sense Salaman now was the old man of this new tribe that Harruel had founded. Yet Salaman took care never to seem like a rival to Harruel, only a loyal lieutenant. Salaman knew very little of history — that had been Hresh’s private field of study — but he had an idea that when sudden shifts of power happened, it was the loyal lieutenants who very often found themselves moving into the highest positions.

These thoughts were not ones that Salaman shared with anyone else. He had said nothing even to Weiawala about his hopes for the years to come, although perhaps she had picked up something of the truth in their twinings. Even there he attempted to mask his plans from her. Caution was his watchword.

They were at the high place now. Weiawala stood nestling against him as he stared off toward the sea. She seemed to have coupling on her mind.

The sun was high and bright, the air clear, almost shimmering in its clarity. The sky was a piercing blue. The breeze was from the south, strong and sweet, a warm dry wind. Perhaps it would gather intensity later and parch the land, but just now it was a loving wind, tender and kind.

All the world lay before him today.

Salaman imagined he could see everything, the ruined cities of the Great World, the pockmarks of death-star craters, the bare plains where the ice-rivers had flowed, the dreadful hives where the hjjk-folk lived. And then the young new world superimposed upon it, the world of the New Springtime, his world, his people’s world. He had a vision of it in its full complexity, everything growing, thriving, bursting with life. A wondrous recovery from the terrible time of the death-stars was under way. And he would be at the heart of it, he and his sons and the sons of his sons, the lords of the future empire of Yissou.

Weiawala said suddenly, “Nettin will have another child, do you know?”

Her words broke his reverie as a bird-screech at dawn punctures deep serene sleep. He felt a surge of anger. For a moment Salaman regretted having brought her with him to this place today; and then he calmed himself and managed a smile and a nod. Weiawala was his beloved; Weiawala was his mate; he must accept her as she was, he told himself. Even when she interrupted and distracted him.

“I hadn’t heard. It’s good news.”

“Yes. The tribe is growing fast now, Salaman!”

Indeed that was so. Already Weiawala had brought forth a boy that they had named Chham, and Galihine had borne a girl called Therista, and Thaloin had given the tribe another, Ahurimin. Now Nittin’s belly was swelling once more.

Only Minbain, to Harruel’s open displeasure, had failed to conceive since they had come to the City of Yissou. Perhaps she was too old, Salaman thought. Sometimes when Harruel had had too much velvetberry wine to drink, he could be heard loudly berating her, demanding another son from her. But one does not make sons by shouting at one’s mate, as Salaman had pointed out more than once to Weiawala.

Salaman thought it was shortsighted of Harruel to be insisting on another son, anyway. What the city needed at this stage in its growth was more women. One man all by himself could engender a whole tribe of children in a single week, if he set himself to the task. It was only the work of a moment for a man to pump a child into a woman, after all. But each woman could produce at best only one child a year. Thus the annual increase of the tribe was limited by the number of women; therefore we must beget girls, Salaman thought, so that we will have many more wombs in the next generation.

But perhaps that was too complicated a concept for Harruel. Or else he simply wanted more sons to help him guard his throne. Probably that was it. Already Harruel’s little boy, Samnibolon, was showing early promise of unusual strength: a future warrior, no doubt of it. And Harruel, perhaps growing uneasy about his old age, must be eager for a few more just like that one to see him through his declining years.

Weiawala slipped her arm through his. Salaman felt the warmth of her thigh pressing close. Then her sensing-organ lightly brushed against him.

It isn’t coupling she wants, he thought. It’s twining.

Salaman was not pleased by that. But he would not refuse her, all the same.

Up till now the twining had been the weakest link in their bond. Weiawala was a fine mate but a poor twining-partner, so simple was her soul. There was no fullness to her, no richness. If he had stayed in Vengiboneeza he would still have mated with her, in all likelihood, but for his twining he would have gone to someone like Taniane. She had fire; she had depth. But there was no Taniane here, and Harruel discouraged people from forming twining partnerships of the old kind in the City of Yissou, for the population was so small that such unions, which traditionally cut across mating lines, might lead to ill feelings and strife. Now and then Salaman had twined with Galihine, who had something of the spark he craved; but those times were rare. When he twined at all, it was usually with Weiawala, though without strong enthusiasm. He touched her now, sensing-organ to sensing-organ, to acknowledge the invitation.

But as he came in contact with her Salaman felt something strange, something disturbing, something utterly unfamiliar, reaching his awakened senses from a great distance.

“Did you feel that?” he asked, pulling away from her.

“What?”

“A sound. Like thunder. When our sensing-organs touched.”

“I felt nothing but you near me, Salaman.”

“A booming in the sky. Or in the ground, I wasn’t sure which. And a feeling of menace, of danger.”

“I felt nothing, Salaman.”

He reached for her sensing-organ again with his.

“Well? Do you—”

“Shhh, Weiawala!”

“Pardon me!”

“Please. Just let me hear.”

She nodded curtly, looking injured. In the silence that followed he listened again, drawing on the energies of her sensing-organ to enhance the range and sensitivity of his own.

Thunder in the southern hills? But the day was clear and fine.

Drumbeats?

Hooves against the ground? A vast herd of beasts on the march?

Everything was too faint, too indistinct. There was only the barest hint, a subtle vibration, a feeling of wrongness. Perhaps by second sight he could detect more. But Weiawala was losing patience. Her sensing-organ slid up and down along his, blanketing his perceptions in a torrent of desire. Perhaps it was just his imagination, he thought. Perhaps all he was picking up was the sound of ants moving in an underground tunnel nearby. He put the matter out of his mind.

Right at that moment, with Weiawala hot and trembling against him, it was impossible to worry about distant thunder on a clear day, or the imaginary sound of far-off hoofbeats. Twining, any twining, even a tepid twining with mild-souled Weiawala, was an irresistible thing. He turned to her. Together they sank to the ground. His arms enfolded her and their sensing-organs met and their minds came flooding into union.

Torlyri found Hresh in his room at the temple, poring over the books of the chronicles. She made an appropriate sound as she entered — one did not take the chronicler unawares while he had the holy books out of their casket — and he looked about at her strangely, almost guiltily, jamming the book out of sight with curious haste. As though I would presume to spy on the chronicler’s secrets! Torlyri thought.

“What is it?” he asked, sounding edgy.

“Am I disturbing you? I can come back another time.”

“Only entering some minor historical details,” Hresh said. “Nothing of any concern.” His tone was airy, elaborately casual. “Is there something I can do for you, Torlyri?”

“Yes. Yes.” She took a few steps closer to him. “Teach me the words that the Helmet People use. Show me how to speak with the Bengs.”

His eyes widened. “Ah. Of course.”

“Will you do that?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Torlyri, I will. Certainly. Only let me have another few weeks more—”

“Now,” she said.

“Ah,” he said again, as though she had struck him below the heart, and gave her such a startled look that it made her smile.

Torlyri was not in the habit of issuing orders, and plainly her brisk tone had caught him off guard. She stood watching him steadily, sternly, yielding none of the sudden advantage that she had won. Hresh, looking uncomfortable, seemed to be considering his response with unusual care, rejecting this possibility and that one. She continued to study him with uncharacteristic sternness, standing very close to him so that he could feel the size and strength of her.

Finally he said, looking a little downcast, “All right. I think I know enough of the language by now. Maybe I’ll be able to transmit it to you in a way that will make sense. Yes. Yes, I’m sure I can.”

“Now?”

“Right this minute, you mean?”

“Yes,” she said. “Unless you have urgent duties just now.”

He considered that too. “No,” he said after another long pause. “We can do it now, Torlyri.”

“I’m very grateful. Will it take long?”

“Not long, no.”

“Very good. Shall we do it in here?”

“No,” Hresh said. “In your twining-chamber.”

“What?”

“By twining, that’s how we’ll do it. It’ll be the quickest way. And the best, wouldn’t you say?”

It was Torlyri’s turn to be startled now. But as offering-woman she had twined with Hresh before; she had twined with everyone in the tribe; it was not a difficult thing for her. So she took him to her twining-chamber and once again they lay down together and embraced, and their sensing-organs interwove and their souls became one. On their other twining, his twining-day, she had felt great strangeness in him, and the intricacy of his mind, and a loneliness within him that perhaps even he did not acknowledge; and now she felt these things once again, but intensified, as if he were in pain. Forgetting her own needs, she wanted to enfold Hresh in love and warmth, and ease his sorrow. But that was not something he meant to allow. They had other purposes this day. Quickly he slammed down a barrier to screen his own feelings — Torlyri had not known it was possible to do such a thing, to cut your own self off so fully from your twining-partner; but of course Hresh was unlike anyone else — and then, hidden behind that impenetrable wall, he reached out to her and, using the twining communion as a bridge, began in a businesslike way to instruct her in the language of the Bengs.

Afterward, when the spell had ended and their souls were separate again, he spoke to her in Beng and she understood, and replied to him in the same language.

“There you are,” he said. “Now you have the language too.”

Sly Hresh! Of course he had known the Beng tongue perfectly for a long while. That was obvious to her now. Koshmar was right: Hresh had merely been holding back, feigning the need for further study of it, so that he would be the only one in possession of the secret. Torlyri had seen him cling to little secrets like that before. Perhaps it was in the nature of chroniclers to make mysteries out of the things they knew, she thought, so that the tribe would depend all the more upon them for special wisdom.

But he had not refused to teach her. And now she had achieved what she had come to him to achieve. Now she had equipped herself to do the one thing she dreaded most, which was to go to the Beng with the scarred shoulder and tell him of her need for him, of — was it real, she wondered? Could it be? — her love for him.

When he was done with Torlyri Hresh returned to his own room and sat quietly for a time, scarcely even thinking, simply letting his spirit recover from the drain on its energies to which he had subjected it. Then he rose and went outside. The plaza was empty and the late afternoon sun, still high in the west on this summer day, seemed swollen and sluggish as it dipped slowly toward the sea.

Without any goal in mind he began to walk quickly away from the settlement, to the north.

Long gone were the days when he bothered to ask Koshmar’s permission before going out into Vengiboneeza, or took the trouble to ask a warrior to accompany him. He went by himself, whenever he pleased, wherever he pleased. But it was unusual for him to leave the settlement this late in the day. He had never while alone spent a night away. Today, though, as he walked on and on and the shadows began to lengthen, he realized gradually that night was coming and he was still heading outward. That did not seem to be important. He kept walking.

Even now, after all the years Hresh had lived amidst these ruins, he had scarcely explored the whole of Vengiboneeza. The district where he was walking now — Friit Praheurt, he guessed, or perhaps it was Friit Thaggoran — was one that was almost entirely unfamiliar to him. The buildings were in poor repair, earthquake-battered and tumbled, with fallen facades and foundations awry, and he had to pick his way over heaps of chalky rubble, upturned building slabs, shapeless clumps of statuary. Now and again he saw the signs of Beng presence here: bits of colored ribbon to mark a trail, the star-shaped splotch of bright yellow paint that they put on the sides of buildings which they regarded as shrines, occasional odorous heaps of vermilion dung. But of Bengs themselves he saw none at all.

Nightfall found him squatting atop a towering pyramid-shaped mound of broken alabaster columns, which once perhaps had stood on the portico of the shattered temple with wide, sweeping wings that lay opposite him. Small furry skittering creatures with long narrow bodies and short frantic legs ran back and forth near him, altogether unafraid. They seemed harmless. One ran up onto his knee and sat there a long moment, cocking its head, peering wisely this way and that but otherwise motionless. When Hresh tried to stroke it, it ran.

The darkness deepened. He made no move to leave. He wondered what it would be like to spend the night in this place.

Koshmar will be furious with me, he thought.

Torlyri will be deeply worried. Perhaps Taniane will be, too.

He shrugged. Koshmar’s anger no longer mattered to him. If Torlyri felt any distress over his disappearance, well, it would be forgotten when he returned. As for Taniane — Taniane would probably not even notice that he wasn’t in the settlement this evening, he thought. He put them all from his mind. He put everything and everyone from his mind: the People, the Bengs, the Great World, the humans, the death-stars. He sat quietly, watching the stars begin to appear. He grew calm. It was almost a trance.

Just as true darkness fell he saw a glimmer of motion out of the corner of his eye, and at once he snapped to attention, heart pounding, breath coming in short bursts.

He rose and looked around. Yes, something was definitely moving: there across the way, near the foundation of the ruined temple. At first he thought it was a small round animal that had come out to sniff for prey, but then by the white gleam of starlight he saw the metallic sheen, the jointed legs. What was this? A mechanical of some sort? But the mechanicals were all dead! And this looked nothing like the Great World mechanicals that he had seen in his visions, or like the dead and rusting ones on that hillside during the long trek westward. Those had been huge, awesome beings. There was something almost comical about this, a small bustling thing perhaps half as tall as he was, spherical, moving earnestly and solemnly about on curious little metal rods.

He saw another, now. And another. There were half a dozen of them roving the rubble-strewn street. Quietly Hresh approached them. They paid no heed to him. Little globes that emitted bright beams of light were mounted on their upper surfaces, and they flashed these about as though looking for something. Now and then they paused, probing the ruins with metal arms that sprang like whips from their bodies. Sometimes they reached between two fallen slabs, as if making an adjustment to something hidden underneath them. Or making repairs.

Hresh caught his breath. He had long since observed evidence all over Vengiboneeza that repair work was somehow going on — that the city, ruined as it was, nevertheless was under the care of invisible powers, ghosts of some sort, Great World forces that worked behind the scenes in a foolhardy attempt to put the place back together. It stood to reason, he thought. Much of the city was in sad shape, but not so dreadfully ruinous as one would expect it to be after the passage of such a great span of time, and some districts seemed hardly damaged at all. He could easily believe that beings of some kind moved through the city trying to patch it. But there was no real proof that such beings existed. No one had ever seen one, and few among the People cared even to speculate about them, for if they were there they might well be spirits, and therefore terrifying.

Yet here they were. Little round machines, poking in the rubble!

They paid no more heed to him than the short-legged furry animals had. He came up behind them and studied them as they worked. Yes, they were definitely trying to tidy things: sucking up the clouds of stone dust, shoving great girders and slabs into orderly heaps, bolstering arches and doorframes. Then, as Hresh watched, one of them touched a metal extension to a door of red stone set at an angle in the ground and the door slid back as if on a greased track. Light came bursting from within. Hresh peered past the little mechanical and saw an underground room, brilliantly lit, in which all manner of shining machines stood in rows, seemingly in good working order. It was an exciting, tantalizing sight: another Great World treasure-trove, one that he had not known of! He leaned forward, staring intently.

A hand touched him from behind, making him leap with fear and astonishment, and he felt himself gripped and caught.

A harsh Beng voice barked, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Squirming about, Hresh beheld a burly warrior of the Helmet Men, flat-faced, scowling, nearly as awesome a presence as Harruel himself. He wore a monstrous bronze cone of a helmet from which great fanciful metal antlers sprang, rising and rising to a terrifying height. His scarlet eyes were grim and fearsome, his lips were angrily clamped. Behind him was the enormous bulk of a vermilion.

“I am Hresh of Koshmar’s People,” Hresh said in the strongest voice he could muster, though in his own ears it did not sound very strong at all.

“You have no business here,” was the cold reply.

“This is the shrine of the god Dawinno, to which I have made a holy pilgrimage. I ask you to turn back, and leave me to my prayers.”

“There is no god Dawinno. Your kind may not enter here.”

“By whose command?”

“By order of Hamok Trei, king of Bengs. I have followed you across half the city this evening, but you will trespass no more. Your life is forfeit.”

Forfeit?

The Beng carried a spear, and there was a short wide blade in a sheath dangling from his sash. Hresh stared, fighting back his distress. The Beng was twice his size; any sort of combat was out of the question, even if he were carrying a weapon, and he was not. Turning to flee seemed equally foolish. Perhaps he could dazzle this warrior with second sight, but even that was risky and uncertain. Still, to die here, alone, at the hands of a stranger, merely for having gone someplace where Hamok Trei didn’t want him to go—

Hresh lifted his sensing-organ and made ready to bring it into play. His eyes met the hard scarlet ones of the Helmet Man squarely. The Beng raised his spear.

If he touches me, Hresh thought, I’ll hit him with all the power I have. I don’t care whether it kills him or not.

But there was no need for that. With a quick brusque movement the Beng pointed to Hresh with his spear, and then pointed over his shoulder, vaguely in the direction of the settlement of the Helmet People. He intended simply to bring Hresh before Hamok Trei. “You will ride with me,” he said, indicating the vermilion. As easily as though Hresh had been made of air the Beng scooped him up with one hand and deposited him between the great creature’s ponderous humps. Then the Helmet Man leaped up beside him and touched his sensing-organ to the back of the vermilion’s head. With a slow, agonizing, lurching motion that made Hresh dizzy to the point of nausea almost at once, the huge red beast set off toward the Beng settlement.

But it was Noum om Beng and not Hamok Trei who emerged to dispense justice that night. The withered old man, summoned from his chambers by Hresh’s captor, came tottering forth, looking puzzled. But he began laughing when the situation was explained to him.

“You must not go into places where you should not go, boy,” the Beng chronicler said, and slapped Hresh lightly on the cheek. “You saw the signs?”

Hresh made no reply. He would not recognize the Beng markings as having authority over his movements through the city.

Noum om Beng slapped him again, even more lightly, a feather-blow. Then he turned away. To the warrior who had captured Hresh he said brusquely, “Take this boy back to his people.”

The chilly light of the midnight moon was glistening when Hresh returned to his own settlement. Everyone was asleep but Moarn, who was on sentry duty. He looked at Hresh without interest as the Beng warrior rode away.

Sleep was a long time coming, and when it did Hresh dreamed of glossy little mechanical creatures rolling in silent armies through endless ruined streets, and of gleaming mysterious objects hidden in the depths of the earth.

In the morning he expected the full wrath of Koshmar to descend upon him. But to his relief and also somewhat to his chagrin, no one seemed even to have noticed that he had been missing.

Torlyri had rehearsed the words a hundred times. Yet as she approached the settlement of the Helmet People they all seemed to fly from her head, and she felt completely adrift, lost in turmoil and confusions, unable to speak even her own language properly, let alone that of the Bengs.

Three days had passed since her twining with Hresh. She had not been able to find the courage to make this journey until now. The morning was hot and humid, and an obstinate sultry wind was blowing, raising gray clouds of dust in the dry streets and sending it swirling irritatingly all about her. Again and again she thought of turning back. This visit seemed utter madness to her. She would never be able to make herself understood. And even if she did, even if she managed to find the man she had come here to see, what was the use? It would bring her nothing but pain, she was certain, and she had already had pain enough.

Tense, tight-faced, Torlyri forced herself to keep going onward, down the long narrow avenue of ruined white-fronted buildings that led into the district known as Dawinno Galihine. At the entrance to the Beng settlement a helmeted sentry appeared and gave her a questioning look.

“You are expected?” he asked. “What is your business? Who are you here to see?”

He spoke in the sharp, barking Beng language. The words should have been gibberish to her. And yet she had no difficulty making out their meaning. So it had worked! True to his word, Hresh had actually taught her to comprehend their speech!

But could she speak it herself now?

No words came to her. They were trapped deep in her mind and would not rise to her lips. I have come to see the man with the scarred shoulder, that was what she meant to say. But there was no way she could bring herself to tell this sentry such a thing. She was shy as a girl today; and the man’s tone of voice seemed cold and hostile to her, and his words a rebuff and a dismissal, though probably they were meant only as a routine interrogation. Fear assailed her. The resolve that had brought her here had never been strong, and now it fled altogether. She was not here to see anyone; this was all a mistake; she had no business here. Without replying she turned to leave.

“Wait,” the Beng said. “Where are you going?”

She halted, struggling with herself, still unable to speak.

Finally she managed to say only: “Please — please—”

She realized that she had spoken in Beng. How strange that felt, using those alien words! Go on, she thought. Say the rest of it. I have come here to see the man with the scarred shoulder No, she still couldn’t say it, not to this grim-faced stranger, not to anyone. She could barely say it even to herself.

“You are the offering-woman?”

Torlyri stared. “You know me?”

“Everyone knows you, yes. You wait here. This place, right here, offering-woman. You understand me?” He pointed to the ground. “Here. Stay.”

Torlyri nodded.

I am speaking their language, she thought in wonder. I understand what he says to me. And then I open my mouth and their words come out.

The sentry swung brusquely about and disappeared into the Beng settlement.

Torlyri stood trembling. He wants me to wait, she said to herself. Wait for what? Wait for whom? What shall I do?

Wait,a voice deep within her said.

Very well. I will wait.

The minutes slipped by, and the sentry did not return. The hot dust-laden wind blew through the canyon of empty ancient buildings with such force that she had to shield her face from it. Once again she thought of going, quickly, quietly, before anyone came. But she hesitated. She wanted neither to stay nor to go. Her own indecisiveness began to amuse her. At your age! she told herself. These fears, this ridiculous shyness. Like a girl. Like a very young girl.

“Offering-woman! Here he is, offering-woman!”

The sentry had returned. And he was with him. She had not needed to ask; the sentry had known. How embarrassing that was! And yet how much simpler for her.

The sentry stepped aside and the other came forward. Torlyri saw his scarred shoulder, his beautiful searching red eyes, his high, rounded golden helmet. She began to tremble, and angrily ordered herself to stop. No one had forced this moment upon her. She had chosen it. All this was something she had brought about herself.

In another moment she knew she’d be crying. Yet she could not bring herself under control. Her fear was too great. Her soul was at risk here. So long as neither of them had been able to speak the other’s language, her little flirtation had been perfectly safe, an innocent game, a playful pastime. She could always pretend that nothing was going on between them, that nothing had been pledged, nothing had been ventured, nothing had been committed. Indeed, nothing had.

But now that she understood Beng—

Now that she could say what was in her mind—

The wind came hotter and harder, so that the heavy burden of dust it bore darkened the sky over Dawinno Galihine. It seemed to Torlyri that if it grew any stronger it would blow down these tottering buildings which had withstood the storms and earthquakes of seven hundred thousand years.

The man of the scarred shoulder was staring at her strangely, as though astounded that she had come, though she had visited the Beng settlement many times before. For a long while he did not speak, nor did she.

Then at last he said, “Offering-woman—?”

“Torlyri is my name.”

“Torlyri. It is a very beautiful name. You understand what I say to you?”

“If you speak slowly. And you? Do you understand me?”

“You say our words very beautifully. Very beautifully. Your voice is so soft.” He smiled and put both his hands to the sides of his helmet, letting them rest there a moment, as though in indecision. Then swiftly he undid the helmet’s throat-strap and took it off. She had never seen him without it, indeed had never seen any of the male Bengs bareheaded. The transformation was an unsettling one. His head seemed oddly small this way and his stature diminished, although but for the strange color of his fur and eyes he was identical now to any man of her own tribe.

The sentry, who had remained hovering in the background, coughed ostentatiously and turned away. Torlyri realized that this removing of the helmet must be some kind of invitation to intimacy, or perhaps some even more heavily charged act of commitment. Her trembling, which somehow had halted without her noticing, began again.

He said, “My name is Trei Husathirn. Will you come to my house?”

She started to say that she would, and gladly. But she checked herself. She knew the Beng language, yes, or such a smattering of it as Hresh had been able to learn and to teach her, yet how could she know the meanings within the meanings? What did “Will you come to my house?” mean? Was it an invitation to couple? To twine? To mate, even? Yissou help me, then, she thought, if he thinks I am pledging myself to be his mate, when I know nothing more of him than his name! Or was it simply an acknowledgment that they were standing in a hot, dusty, windswept street when they could be drinking wine and eating cakes in some more comfortable place?

She stood there, searching his face, praying for guidance.

Into her silence he said — sounding hurt, she thought, although the cadence of Beng speech was so fierce that it was hard to tell — “You do not wish to come, then?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then let us go.”

“You must understand — I can’t stay long—”

“Of course. Just a short while.”

He made as though to go; but she remained where she was.

“Torlyri?” he said, reaching toward her, not quite touching her.

He looked strangely vulnerable without his helmet. She wished he would put it back on. It was the helmet that had drawn her to him in the first place, that simple shining golden dome lightly bedecked with leaves, so different from the eerie nightmarish helmets that most of his tribefellows preferred: his helmet, yes, and something about his eyes, and the way he smiled, and the way he held himself. Of the man behind the eyes she still knew nothing.

“Torlyri?” he said again, almost plaintively.

“All right. A short visit.”

“You will come! Nakhaba!” His eerie red eyes glowed like fiery suns in his delight. “A short visit, yes! Come. Come. I have something for you, Torlyri, a gift, a precious thing especially for you. Come!”

Quickly he strode past the sentry, not even looking back to see if she was following him. The sentry made a gesture that she did not understand, but that seemed friendly: perhaps a holy sign, perhaps just a bawdy one. Torlyri made the sign of Yissou at him and went rushing after Trei Husathirn.

His house, as he called it, was a single room. It was situated on the ground floor of some rambling palace of the sapphire-eyes, a structure built of a white stone with a cool yellow fire mysteriously burning within the building-blocks. Trei Husathirn’s house was a sparse place, with a pile of furs to serve as a bed, a simple upright altar of some sort in a niche, a few spears and throwing-sticks leaning against the wall, and two or three small wickerwork baskets that might contain clothing or other personal belongings.

Torlyri saw no sign of a woman’s presence anywhere about the room’s furnishings. She felt a great rush of relief at that; and then she felt abashed at feeling such relief.

Trei Husathirn knelt at his altar and whispered some words she did not hear, and laid his helmet within the altar niche with obvious reverence. Then he rose and came to her side and they stood facing each other, neither of them speaking.

She thought of all that she had planned to say to him, once they were finally alone and now that she was able to communicate properly with him, and she saw now the absurdity of the little speech she had constructed. To speak of love? How? By what right? They were strangers. In their occasional meetings when people of one tribe were visiting the other they had enjoyed eyeing one another, and winking and grinning, and pointing and laughing at things that had suddenly seemed funny to them, the gods only knew why. But nothing had ever passed between them. Nothing. She had not even known his name until a few minutes ago. All that he had known of her was that she was the offering-woman of her tribe, and even that might have had no real meaning to him. And now they were face to face, silent, neither of them with the slightest idea of what to do or say next.

To her horror she found herself reaching her hand to his right shoulder, lightly touching the long narrow scar that ran from the fleshy part of his forearm to the side of his neck. The fur was gone there and smooth silver-pink skin showed, very odd to the touch, like ancient parchment. When she realized what she was doing she pulled back from him as though she had put her hand in a bonfire.

“Hjjk-men,” he said. “When I was a boy. The beak they have, very bad. Three of them died for this.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was long ago. I never think of it.”

The trembling began again. Torlyri steadied herself. His eyes rested unwaveringly on hers, and she made herself meet his gaze. He and she were almost the same height; but she was tall, for a woman. There was great strength to him. Plainly he was a warrior, and surely a valiant one.

It was his turn now to touch her. Lightly he drew his fingers over the spiral of brilliant white fur that ran from her right shoulder over her breast to her hip, and then he ran his hand down the matching stripe on her left side.

“Very beautiful,” he said. “The white. I have never seen anything like it.”

“It’s — not common among us.”

“You have a child, Torlyri? With the same white?”

“I have no children, no.”

“A man? You have a man?”

She saw the tension on his face.

The easiest thing would be to tell him what was, after all, the truth: No, I have no man. But that was only part of the truth, and she needed to have him know more. “I had a man for a while,” she said. “He went away.”

“Ah.”

“He went far away. I will never see him again.”

“I am very sorry, Torlyri.”

She managed a flickering smile. “Are you, really?”

“Sorry that you have been hurt, yes. Not sorry that he has gone away, no, I could not say that.”

“Ah,” she said.

They were silent again, but it was a different sort of silence from the hard, awkward one of before.

Then she said, “In my tribe it was never the custom for the offering-woman to take a mate, but then things changed for us when we left the cocoon and new customs came. And I realized that I too wanted a mate like all the others, and I took one. So I had my man only for a little while, and it was very recently. You understand what I am saying, Trei Husathirn? Most of my life I was without a man, and that was all right. Then I had one, and I think I was happy with him; and then he left me and it hurt very much. There are times when I think I would have been better off never having had a man at all than to have had one and lost him in that way.”

“No,” he said. “How can you say that? You knew love, did you not? The man goes away, but the knowledge of the love that you had can never go away. Would you rather never have had love at all in your life?”

“I have had love, other than the love I had with him. The love of Koshmar, my—” She faltered, realizing she knew no Beng word for twining-partner. “My friend,” she said lamely. “And the love of all my tribe. I know I am much loved, and I love them.”

“It is not the same kind of love.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.” She took a deep breath. “And you? Do you have a woman, Trei Husathirn?”

“I had one.”

“Ah.”

“She is dead. The hjjk-men—”

“At the same time as that ?” she said, pointing at the scar.

“A later battle. Much later.”

“You have had many battles with the hjjk-men?”

Trei Husathirn shrugged. “They are everywhere. They made us suffer, and we made them suffer, I think. Although they seem not to feel pain of any kind, pain of the body, pain of the soul.” He shook his head and grimaced, as though talk of hjjk-men were nauseating to him. “I said I had a gift for you, Torlyri.”

“Yes. There is no need—”

“Please,” he said. He dug about in one of his wicker baskets and drew forth a helmet, not one of the ferocious kind but a smaller one of the sort that she had seen some Beng women wearing. It was fashioned of a shining red metal, highly polished and very bright, almost like a mirror, but it was graceful and delicate of design, a tapering cone with two rounded summits and complex patterns of interlacing lines cut into it by some master’s hand. Timidly he handed it to her. She stared at it without taking it.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “But I couldn’t.”

“You will, please.”

“It’s too valuable.”

“It is very valuable. That is why I give it to you.”

“What does it mean,” Torlyri said after a moment, “when a woman takes a helmet from a man?”

Trei Husathirn looked uncomfortable. “That they are friends.”

“Ah,” she said. She had spoken of Koshmar as her friend. “And friendship between man and woman? What does that mean?”

He looked even more uncomfortable. “It means — you must understand — it — means — oh, Torlyri, must I say, must I say? You know! You do!”

“I gave myself in friendship to a man and he hurt me.”

“It happens. But not all the time.”

“We are of different tribes — there is no precedent—”

“You speak our language. You will know our ways.” He proffered the shining helmet again. “There is something between us. You know that. You knew it from the first. Even when we could not speak with each other, there was something. The helmet is for you, Torlyri. Many years have I kept it in this box, but now I give it to you. Please. Please.”

Now he was trembling. She could not have that. Gently she took the helmet from him, and held it above her head as though trying it on, and then, without putting it on, she pressed it against her bosom and carefully laid it to one side.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I will treasure it all my life.”

She touched his scar again, lightly, lovingly. His hand went to the white stripe that began at her left shoulder, and traveled down her body as far as her breast, and paused there. She moved toward him. Then he embraced her and drew her down toward the pile of furs.

Under the hot cutting wind out of the south Taniane felt her soul stirring with yearnings both of the body and the spirit.

There was a throbbing all along her belly and thighs and inward to her sexual parts that was easy enough to understand. It would be good to couple today. Haniman was probably around somewhere, or else Orbin would do. Orbin was never unwilling.

Then, too, she felt a tension in her forehead and at the base of her neck and downward through her spine that appeared to argue in favor of a twining. She had not twined in a long time. Indeed, it was something she rarely did, for lack of a partner who touched her spirit. But today the need seemed urgent. Perhaps, she thought, she was only confusing it with coupling-need, and that other pressure would go away once she had found the pleasure her body craved.

But there was something else troubling her that was neither coupling-need nor twining-need: a restlessness, a deep sense of impatience and uneasiness, that sprang from no specific cause. She felt it in her teeth, behind her eyes, in the pit of her stomach; but she knew that those were mere outward manifestations of some ache of the soul. That was not an unfamiliar sensation for her, but it was more intense today, as if fanned to kindling-heat by the unceasing maddening gusts of the dry wind. It had something to do with the departure of Harruel and his followers — Taniane by now had come to believe that they must be undergoing the most marvelous adventures in dazzling far-off lands, while she remained trapped here pointlessly in dusty crumbling Vengiboneeza — and it had something to do also with the expanding presence of the Bengs. The Bengs pretended friendship, but it was friendship of a strange kind. In their friendly way they had slowly but steadily taken full possession of nearly every quarter of the city as though they were the masters of the place and Koshmar’s tribe a mere raggle-taggle band of amiably tolerated intruders. Taniane was bothered, too, by Koshmar’s passivity in the face of this displacement. She had not tried to deal with the Bengs at all. She had done nothing to limit the spread of their power. She simply shrugged and let them do as they pleased.

Koshmar barely seemed to be Koshmar any longer. It seemed to Taniane that the secession of Harruel must have broken her. And there were problems of some sort between Koshmar and Torlyri, evidently; Torlyri was hardly ever to be found in the settlement now, but spent most of her time off among the Bengs. The rumor was that Torlyri had taken a Beng lover. Why did Koshmar tolerate that? What was wrong with Koshmar? If she lacked the strength to be chieftain any longer, why didn’t she step down, and let someone with a little vigor take over? Koshmar was past the old limit-age now. If the tribe still lived in the cocoon, Taniane thought, Koshmar would have gone outside to her death, and very likely I would be chieftain now. But there was no longer a limit-age and Koshmar refused to relinquish power.

Taniane had no desire to overthrow Koshmar by force, nor did she think the People would support her if she attempted it, even though she was the only woman of the tribe who was of the proper age and the proper spirit to be chieftain. But something had to be done. New leadership is what we need, she thought, and soon. And the new leader, Taniane told herself, must find some way of halting the encroachments of the Bengs.

She crossed the plaza and entered the storehouse where the Great World artifacts were kept. She hoped to find Haniman there, and deal with the simplest of the needs that were assailing her this morning.

But instead of Haniman she found Hresh, morosely prowling among the mysterious ancient devices that he and his Seekers had collected, which had largely been neglected since the coming of the Bengs. He looked up at her but did not speak,

“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.

“Not especially. Is there something you want?”

“I was looking for — well, it doesn’t matter. You look unhappy, Hresh.”

“So do you.”

“It’s this filthy wind. Will it ever stop blowing, do you think?”

He shrugged. “It’ll stop when it stops. There’s rain in the north and this dry air is rushing to meet it.”

“You understand so much, Hresh.”

Looking away, he said, “I understand hardly anything at all.”

“You really are unhappy about something.”

She moved closer to him. He stood with shoulders slumped, saying nothing, idly toying with some intricate silvery device whose function no one had ever been able to determine. How thin he is, she thought. How slight. Suddenly her heart surged with love for him. She saw that he might actually be afraid of her, he whose great wisdom and mysterious skills of the mind had been so frightening to her. She wanted to put her arm around him as Torlyri might do, and comfort him, and draw him into a warm embrace. But he was hidden away behind a curtain of distress.

She said, “Tell me what troubles you.”

“Did I say that anything did?”

“I can see it on your face.”

He shook his head irritably. “Let me be, Taniane. Are you looking for Haniman? I don’t know where he is. Possibly he and Orbin went down to the lakefront to catch some fish, or else—”

“I didn’t come here looking for Haniman,” she said. And then to her own great surprise she heard herself saying, “I came here looking for you, Hresh.”

“Me? What do you want with me?”

Desperately improvising, she said, “Can you teach me some words of the Beng language, do you think? Just a little of it?”

“You too?”

“Has someone else asked you that?”

“Torlyri. That Beng of hers, the one with the scar that she’s always laughing and flirting with — she’s in love with him, do you know that? She came to me a few days ago with a funny look in her eye. Teach me Beng, she said. You have to teach me Beng. Teach me right away. She insisted. Have you ever heard Torlyri insist on anything before?”

“What did you do?”

“I taught her how to speak Beng.”

“You did? I thought you didn’t yet know enough of it yourself to teach anyone anything except a few words.”

“No,” Hresh said in a very small voice. “I was lying. I know Beng like a Beng. I used the Barak Dayir to learn it from the old man of their tribe. I was keeping it all to myself, that was all. But I couldn’t refuse Torlyri when she asked like that. So now she knows Beng too.”

“And I’ll be the next one to learn.”

Hresh looked flustered and immensely ill at ease.

“Taniane — please, Taniane—”

“Please what? It’s your responsibility to teach me, Hresh. To teach us all. Those people are our enemies. We have to be able to understand them if we’re going to cope with them, don’t you see?”

“They aren’t our enemies,” said Hresh.

“So they keep trying to get us to believe. Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but how are we supposed to know what they are if we can’t figure out what they’re saying? And you are the only one who knows — except Torlyri, now, I guess. What if something happens to you? You can’t withhold it any longer, Hresh. Now that you’ve admitted you can teach it. We all need to know Beng, and not just so we can run off and be with Beng lovers, like Torlyri. Our survival depends on it. Or don’t you agree?”

“Maybe. I suppose.”

“Then teach it to me. I want to start today. If you think I need to get Koshmar’s permission, then let’s go to Koshmar right now. You ought to be teaching Koshmar, too. And then everybody else that matters in this tribe.”

Hresh was silent. He seemed lost in anguish.

“What’s wrong?” Taniane asked. “Is it such a terrible thing that I want to learn Beng?”

In a low dismal voice Hresh said, not looking at her, “The way to learn it is by twining.”

Taniane’s eyes flashed. “So? Where’s the difficulty?”

“I asked you once to twine with me, and you refused.”

So that was it! She felt a moment of embarrassment; and then, seeing that he was even more embarrassed than she, she smiled and said, as gently as she could, “It was because of the way you asked, Hresh. Simply running right up to me the minute Torlyri had taught you how to do it, and saying to me, ‘Let’s go, Taniane, let’s get right to it this minute.’ I was offended by that, didn’t you realize that? We spent thirteen years growing up together, both of us waiting for the day when we’d be old enough to twine, and then you spoiled it, Hresh, you spoiled it with your silly clumsy—”

“I know,” he said dolefully. “You don’t have to tell me all over again.”

She gave him a lively flirtatious glance. “But even though I said no that one time, it didn’t necessarily mean that I’d refuse you the next time you asked.”

Hresh seemed not to have noticed the glance. “That’s what Koshmar said too,” he replied, in the same leaden tone as before.

“You discussed this with Koshmar?” Taniane said, fighting back her laughter.

“She seemed to know all about it. She said I should ask you again.”

“Well, Koshmar was right.”

Hresh stared at her. Coldly he said, “You mean, now that you have something special to gain from twining with me you’re willing to do it, is that it?”

“You’re the most infuriating person I’ve ever known, Hresh!”

“But I’m right.”

“You’re utterly wrong. This has nothing to do with your teaching me Beng. I’ve been waiting ever since that first day for you to show some interest in me again.”

“But Haniman—”

“Dawinno take Haniman! He’s just someone I couple with! You’re the twining-partner I want, Hresh! How can you be so stupid? Why must you make me say all these obvious things?”

“You want me for me ? Not just because I can teach you Beng if we twine?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you say so, Taniane?”

She threw up her hands in despair. “Oh! You!”

He was silent a long while. There seemed to be no expression on his face at all.

At last he said quietly, “I’ve been very stupid, haven’t I?”

“Very stupid indeed.”

“Yes. Yes, so I have.” He looked steadily at her for another long silent moment. Then he said, “Couple with me, Taniane.”

“Couple? Not twine?”

“Couple, first. I’ve never coupled with anyone, do you know that?”

“No. I didn’t know that.”

“Will you, then? Even if I don’t do it very well?”

“Of course I will, Hresh. And you’ll do it just as well as anybody else.”

“And afterward I’d like to twine with you. Yes, Taniane?”

She nodded and smiled. “Yes,” she said.

“Not just to teach you Beng. Just to twine for the sake of twining. And later — the next time — I can teach you Beng then, all right?”

“You promise?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“Now?” she said.

“Oh, yes. Yes, now.”

In the bright clear morning Salaman went down to his trench to dig. He had long since given up any real hope that the trench was going to yield anything useful, but working in it had the merit of concentrating his thoughts.

He had been digging for no more than five minutes when a long shadow fell across him, and he looked up to see Harruel, hands on hips, peering down at him. The king was wobbling back and forth in a troublesome way, as though about to topple into the open ditch. It seemed very early in the day for Harruel to be this drunk, Salaman thought.

“Still at it, are you?” Harruel asked, and laughed. “By Dawinno, you’d better take care, or you’ll dig up an ice-eater down there!”

“Ice-eaters are all gone,” Salaman said, without breaking his rhythm. “Too warm for ice-eaters these days. Grab a shovel, Harruel! Come down here and do some digging. The work’ll do you good.”

“Pah! You think I have nothing better to do?”

Salaman did not reply. Teasing Harruel was always a risky game. He had gone as far as he dared. He bent himself to his task, and after a time he heard the king go lurching slowly away, grunting and wheezing.

Salaman’s trench was a long, winding thing that cut back and forth through the center of the City of Yissou like an immense dark serpent, running along the back of the royal palace, then between the house of Konya and Galihine and that of Salaman and Weiawala, and then in an undulating line that went curving around past the place where Lakkamai lived. It was deeper than a man was tall, and about as wide across as a man is through the shoulders.

He had dug most of it himself, with occasional help from Konya and Lakkamai, in his continuing search for some remnant of the death-star that he believed had struck here. Since the first days of the city’s existence he had managed to put in an hour or two nearly every day. He would dig for a while, carefully, meditatively, then carry the upturned earth back to fill in at the earlier end of the trench, so that it would not totally obstruct foot traffic in the city. As it was, it made him the butt of much humor and more than a little grumbling. But he went on steadily digging.

Salaman told the others that a piece of an actual death-star would be a holy talisman that could ward off any sort of peril. After a time he came to believe that himself. But his main purpose in digging was to prove to himself that the crater had indeed been formed by the impact of a plummeting star. Theories must have verification, Salaman told himself. One must not rely on guesswork alone. And so he dug on. He dreamed of striking shovel against metal, and finding some great mass of congealed iron lying in the ground just beyond the city’s edge, and shouting to the others to come and see, come and see.

He had found nothing so far, however, but stones and the thick roots of trees and occasional scraps of dead animals that some scavenger had buried. Perhaps the death-star lay so deep in the ground that he could not hope to dig down to it in five lifetimes; or perhaps, as he had suspected from the start, the death-stars had been made of some material that did not last, balls of fire or balls of ice, which did their terrible damage but left no remnant behind. The one hypothesis Salaman would not accept, because he was convinced it was false, was that this huge circular crater, so regular in form, so obviously an intrusion on the smoothness of the bland valley, could have been formed by anything other than a death-star. An entire civilization had perished under the impact of those falling stars; Salaman had no doubt that they would have left horrendous scars behind, and that the scars would be in the form of such craters as this one where Harruel had chosen to build the City of Yissou.

But death-stars were not uppermost in Salaman’s mind as he dug this morning. Today he was obsessed with that strange message from afar — if a message is what it was — which had come to him while he and Weiawala were touching their sensing-organs together on the high place south of the crater.

That insistent drumbeat throbbing. That pounding, rumbling sound. That frightening undercurrent of menace. His imagination, merely? No. No. The signal had been faint; the distance must be great; but Salaman was certain that he had not dreamed it. It had been subtle but it had been real. There was some movement out there, some stirring in the vastness of the continent. Perhaps there was a threat to the city. Perhaps there were precautions that could be taken.

Fearful, trembling, drenched in his own sweat, he dug like a madman for more than an hour, hacking through the ground as though all answers lay buried there. Bits of muddy sand clung to him everywhere. His fur became gritty with it. He felt it grinding between his teeth, and spat and spat without ridding himself of it. He dug with such lunatic force that the soil went spraying out in a wide arc behind him. He scarcely cared where he flung it. After a time he paused, heart thumping, eyes blurred with fatigue, to lean on his shovel and think.

Hresh would know what to do, he told himself.

Suppose you are discussing this with Hresh. What advice would Hresh give? I have received a message, but it is indistinct. It may be a message of great import, but I am unable to tell, because I cannot read it clearly. Tell me how you would proceed.

And Hresh would say, If a message is indistinct, Salaman, why, hold it to a brighter light!

Yes. Hresh always had a clever answer.

Salaman threw down his shovel and clambered from his ditch. In amazement he looked back at the ragged work he had done this morning, the wildly uneven cut, the dirt scattered everywhere all around. He shook his head in disapproval. Later he would have to mend it, he thought. Later.

Weary as he was, he forced himself to run. He circled past Lakkamai’s house, nearly bowled over an astounded Bruikkos, and sprinted up the trail that led toward the south rim of the crater. A demonic energy guided him. He felt Yissou perched on his right shoulder and Dawinno on his left, pouring their force into him; and there was the healing god Friit running just ahead of him, smiling, beckoning him on. Scrambling, stumbling, gasping, Salaman staggered to the crater’s edge, vaulted it, found new wind, went running madly on up the trail to his high place, his private viewing-point.

The earth in all its green majesty lay spread out before him.

He looked toward the sunlit southern hills, and paused a moment to gather his breath and collect his strength. Then he raised his sensing-organ and sent forth his second sight, that special perceptive skill that lay in reserve within all his kind. His sensing-organ became as rigid as a mating-rod. He aimed it toward the bright horizon and poured all the energy he had into it.

Once again he heard the throbbing sound: a low dull booming, resonating through the hills far away.

By second sight Salaman found himself at the edge of an understanding of that sound — but only at the edge. He saw a flash of color, a swatch of brilliant screaming scarlet. What did that mean? And then other colors: yellow, black, yellow, black, yellow, black, pulsing, pounding, alternating and repeating, over and over and over.

With those sensations came a profound feeling of terror that sent him down to the ground, crouching, quivering, digging his fingers deep into the rich loamy soil as if to anchor himself.

Something is coming this way, something frightening. But what? What?

He had held the message to a brighter light, and still the light was not bright enough. But he was aflame with resourcefulness now. Twining alone had not brought him clarity of vision; second sight alone had not, though the perception had been a deeper one. But twining and second sight, both at once—

Instantly Salaman was on his feet and running down the slope of the crater back into the city. In his frantic headlong plunge he dislodged all manner of pebbles and even larger rocks, so that a tiny avalanche accompanied him, and more than once he turned an ankle, though he let it slow him only for a moment. He knew that a kind of madness was upon him, that the fire of the gods had entered into him.

“Weiawala!” he called, as he burst into the center of the little city. “Where are you? Weiawala! Weiawala!”

She came out of the house of Bruikkos and Thaloin, frowning, looking around. When she saw him she put a hand over her mouth.

“What has happened to you, Salaman? I’ve never seen you like this! You’re all sweaty — covered with dirt—”

“That doesn’t matter.” He seized her by the wrist. “Come on! Come with me!”

“Have you gone insane?”

“Come! Up to the high place!”

He started to tug at her. Thaloin now emerged from the house, blinking in the sunlight, staring in bewilderment at the scene before her. The sight of her inspired Salaman to an experiment. If one twining-partner could amplify a mental message from afar, two might yield a far greater depth of perception. With a quick swoop of his hand he caught hold of her too, and began to drag both women toward the trail.

“Let go,” Thaloin cried. “What are you—”

“Just come along,” Salaman muttered. “Please. Don’t argue. It’s vital. We’re going up the hill — there—”

Grasping Thaloin with one hand and Weiawala with the other, he pulled them along behind him. The noise and furor attracted onlookers — Lakkamai, Minbain, the child Samnibolon — who exchanged mystified glances. As Salaman passed by the royal palace, Harruel came out its back door, brooding and sullen and dark of face, weaving and lurching in the last stages of drunkenness. He pointed to Salaman and laughed raucously.

“ Two,Salaman? Two at once? Only a king gets two women at once! Here — give me — give me—”

Harruel clutched at Weiawala. Salaman, cursing, butted him in the chest with his shoulder. Harruel’s eyes widened. He cried out in amazement and went toppling back, arms flailing, toward the edge of Salaman’s trench. Losing his balance then, he tumbled down into it. Salaman did not look back at him. Tightening his grip on Weiawala and Thaloin, he drew them away with him, up, up, up the rough rocky trail to the rim of the crater. He knew he was moving too fast for them: they stumbled and tripped and fell again and again, and he tugged them up, he dragged them onward. Thaloin was much shorter than Weiawala and could barely keep pace, but he paused, and paused again, to help her along. They were offering no resistance. They must have decided that they were in the hands of a madman and the safest thing was to accede to whatever he wanted.

When he reached the high place Salaman threw them down by the overlook point and dropped down beside them. All three lay for a moment, gasping, wheezing, fighting for breath.

“Now we will twine,” Salaman said finally.

Weiawala looked astonished. “You — me — Thaloin — ?”

“All three.”

Thaloin made a whimpering sound. Salaman glared at her.

“All three!” he said again, with the urgency of one who was crazed. “This is important to the security of the city! Twine, and give me your energy, and give me your second sight as well! Twine! Twine!” The two women lay as though paralyzed, trembling faintly. Salaman took Weiawala’s sensing-organ and wrapped it around his own, and put Thaloin’s atop both. In the softest, most seductive voice he could manage he said, “Please. Do as I say. Give yourselves to the twining.”

They were too frightened and exhausted to comply as rapidly as Salaman wished. But he stroked them, he caressed them, he aroused them in their sexual parts as though he meant to couple with them rather than to twine; and after a time he felt the beginning of a communion with Weiawala, and then Thaloin timidly, fearfully joining him also.

Twining with two at once? Had anyone ever dreamed of such a thing? Images flooded in upon him, confusing him at first, leaving him wholly baffled. But Salaman forced himself to sort one from the other and to make his way among them. Gradually the confusion ebbed. A godlike feeling of all-seeing vision spread in him.

“Second sight,” he urged. “Use your second sight! Yes, that’s the way—”

He saw.

With their help he could send his perceptions into the skies, and beyond, far to the south, the north, the east, the west. It was a dizzying and wondrous sensation. What had been a dull booming was now a terrible thunder, a powerful hammering drumbeat that was like an endless great earthquake. It came not from the southern hills but from the far north, he realized: what he had picked up earlier was only the reverberation of the message as it rebounded from the high land to the south.

He saw the great red animals of the Beng people, the enormous shaggy beasts they called vermilions — an immense herd of them, thousands upon thousands, a teeming scarlet sea of vermilions, an undulating red mass of huge shambling creatures that covered whole mountain ranges and filled valley after valley — on the march, a fearful stampeding multitude of the mighty beasts far away, heading south, heading toward the City of Yissou—

And with them, marching among them, driving the great beasts onward—

Hjjk-folk. A colossal army of them, the yellow-and-black insect-people advancing in uncountable numbers. He could see the glittering faceted globes of their innumerable eyes, he could hear the frightful clacking of their savage beaks.

The hjjk-folk were coming, marching with their vermilions, sweeping everything in their path to destruction. Coming this way.

It was the strangest twining she had ever had. They had done it right after they had coupled, which perhaps had been a bad idea; for Hresh, though he coupled well enough for someone who claimed never to have done it before, had seemed preoccupied with doing things the right way, and his self-consciousness had eventually become an awkward problem for Taniane. Possibly some of that had carried over into the twining. When she had opened to his spirit he had come forth to her in a breathtaking rush, but almost immediately she could feel him holding something back, setting up barriers, hiding aspects of his soul from her. That was no way to twine. And yet, and yet, despite that mysterious reticence of his it had been an overwhelming communion for her, a powerful, intense, unforgettable thing. She knew that she had experienced only a fraction of him. But that fraction had been far more than anything she had had from anyone else with whom she had ever twined.

When it was over they lay quietly in the twining-chamber, listening to the warm wind gusting through the streets.

She said, after a time, “Can I tell you something, Hresh?”

“Is it something I’ll enjoy hearing?”

“I’m not sure of that.”

He hesitated a moment. “Say it anyway.”

She ran her hand lightly along the soft fur on the inner side of his arm. “You won’t misunderstand, will you?”

“How can I say?”

“All right. All right. What I wanted to tell you is that you — well — that you set things loose inside me, Hresh, that are so strong they frighten me. That’s all.”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to take that.”

“In a good way. Really.”

“I hope so,” he said. He put his hand to her arm, and stroked her in the same way; and for a while they were silent again. Her head was against his breast and she could feel his heart, drum-loud within him.

“Didn’t Torlyri teach you that you mustn’t hold anything back when you twine?” Taniane asked, after a while.

“Was I holding back?”

“That’s how it seemed to me.”

“I’m still new at this, Taniane.”

“Not much newer than I am. But I know what twining ought to be like, and I know that you were hiding yourself from me, or at least some of yourself, and that hurt me, Hresh, it made me feel as though you didn’t trust me, even that you were using me in some way—”

“No!”

“I don’t mean to upset you. I’m just trying to tell you some of my feelings — so that it’ll be better for us the next time — I do want there to be a next time, Hresh, you know I do, a next time and a next and a next—”

“I wasn’t holding myself back, Taniane.”

“All right. Maybe I didn’t understand.”

He pulled away, sitting up on one elbow, and looked straight at her. “If I was holding anything back,” he said, “it was the things that I’ve been discovering about the world, about the People, about the Bengs, about the Great World — things that I’m still sifting through, things that have shaken me like an earthquake, Taniane — such gigantic things that I’m only beginning to comprehend them. They’re lying right here at the edge of my soul, and maybe I didn’t want to pass them along to you when we twined, because — because — I don’t know, because I thought it might hurt you to know some of those things, and so I held them back—”

“Tell me,” she said.

“I’m not sure I—”

“Tell me.”

He studied her. After a moment he said, “That time I used the Barak Dayir to take us into the long building of dark green stone where we saw the Dream-Dreamer ghosts moving around — do you remember that, Taniane?”

“Of course.”

“What did you think that building was?”

“A temple,” she said. “A Great World temple.”

“Whose temple?”

She frowned. “The Dream-Dreamers’ temple.”

“And who were the Dream-Dreamers?” Hresh asked.

She did not reply at once. “You want to know what I really thought, that day?” she said hesitantly.

“Yes.”

“Don’t laugh at me when I tell you.”

“Absolutely not.”

She said, “I thought that the Dream-Dreamers were the humans the chronicles talk about. Not us. That it’s just as the sapphire-eyes artificials said, when we first came into Vengiboneeza — that we’re wrong to think of ourselves as humans, because all we are is some kind of clever animals. We weren’t part of the Great World at all. That’s what I’ve believed ever since we went to that building. But I know that I’m wrong. It can’t be true, can it? It’s all a lot of crazy nonsense, isn’t it, Hresh? The Dream-Dreamers are probably people who came from some other star. And we’re human beings, just as we’ve always believed we were.”

“No. We aren’t humans.”

“We aren’t?”

“I’ve seen the proof. There’s no way to hide from it. All over the Great World ruins you see statues of the Six Peoples, and we’re not among them. The Dream-Dreamers are. And there was a place in old Vengiboneeza — I’ve seen it, Taniane, once in a vision that a Great World machine gave me — where they kept all sorts of animals, not civilized beings, just wild creatures. They had one cage with our ancestors in it. Almost like us, they were — and in a cage. On display. Just animals.”

“No, Hresh.”

“Very intelligent animals. So bright that they built cocoons for us when the Long Winter came — or maybe we built the cocoons ourselves, I’m not sure of that — and left us to wait the winter out. And Dawinno changed us, and made us more intelligent, so intelligent that we misunderstood the chronicles and thought we were the humans. We weren’t. I know that. The old man of the Bengs knows it too. His people never thought for a moment that they were the same as the humans who lived in Great World times.”

“But if the humans are supposed to inherit the earth, as it says in the chronicles, now that the winter’s over—”

“No,” Hresh said. “The humans are all gone. I suppose they died in the Long Winter, except for Ryyig Dream-Dreamer, who may have been the last one. We’re supposed to inherit the earth. But in order to do that we have to make ourselves human, Taniane.”

“I don’t follow you. If we aren’t human, how can we—”

“By living like humans. We almost do, now. We have language, we have writing, we have history. We can build. We can teach our children. Those are human things, not animal things. Animals work by instinct. We work by knowledge. You see? It isn’t only the Dream-Dreamers who were human, Taniane! All the Six Peoples of the Great World were! The human humans, and the sapphire-eyes, and the vegetals—”

“The hjjks too? Human?”

Hresh hesitated. “If ‘human’ means civilized, yes. If it means possessing the ability to learn, and create things, and transform the world. Even the hjjks are human by that standard. A different kind of human, that’s all. And we’ll be human too. The new humans, the newest humans. If we continue to grow, and build, and think. We have to get ourselves away from Vengiboneeza, first, and create something that’s really ours — not just hide here in these ruins. Build a Vengiboneeza of our own, a civilization that isn’t just put together out of the rubble of the one that came before. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Yes. I do. I think I do, Hresh. It’s almost the same thing Harruel was saying.”

“Yes. Somehow he understood, and he went off to do the thing that we have to do. However crude and rough he is, at least he’s begun to build. Which is our task too. We have to touch the past and the future both. That’s what humans are — people who continue things, who create links between what was and what is to come. That’s why it’s important for us to finish exploring these ruins, and find whatever we can from the Great World that still can be used. And take it with us when we leave Vengiboneeza, and put it to our own uses, to build what we need to build.” He was smiling now. “We haven’t gone looking much since the Bengs came, have we? But I was out by myself, the other night. I found a whole new storehouse of things, far across the city. The Bengs caught me before I could go in — I’m not sure they know what’s there themselves, but they want to keep us out anyway. We can’t allow that. Let’s go back there, you and I. Let’s see what’s in there. All right? All right, Taniane?”

“Of course,” she said. “When?”

“A day, two days. Soon.”

“Yes. Soon.”

He reached for her, and she thought it was to twine again; but all he wanted was an embrace, and then he jumped to his feet, reaching a hand to her to pull her up too. He had to find Koshmar, he told her. These matters must be discussed. And then there were other important things to do. Always things to discuss, things to do. Off he went, leaving her standing by herself, shaking her head.

Hresh, she thought. How strange you are, Hresh! But how wonderful.

Her mind was spinning. Not human — we must make ourselves human — we must build — we must touch the past and touch the future both—

She wandered into the plaza and stood by herself, trying to make herself calm. Someone came up behind her. Haniman.

“Twine with me,” he whispered.

“No.”

“You keep saying no.”

“Let me alone, Haniman.”

“Couple with me, then.”

“No!”

“Not even that?”

“Let me be, will you?”

“What’s the matter, Taniane? You sound so bothered.”

“I am.”

“Tell me what’s troubling you.”

“Go away,” she said.

“I’m trying to make you feel better. It’s an old human tradition, you know. Woman in distress, man tries to offer comfort.”

She glared at him in exasperation. “We aren’t humans!” she cried.

“What?”

“Hresh says so. He has proof. We’re just animals, the way the guardians of the gate said we are. The Dream-Dreamers were the humans, and they’re all dead. You’re just a monkey with a big brain, Haniman, and so am I. Go ask Hresh, if you don’t believe me. Now get away from me, will you? Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

Haniman stared at her, astounded.

Then he backed away from her. Taniane looked after him, one hand over her mouth.

In the darkness of the chapel, amid the smoke of the smoldering fire, Koshmar saw masked figures moving before her. This, with the terrible warlike beak, was Lirridon. This was Nialli, with the black-and-green mask armed with blood-red spikes. This was Sismoil, featureless, enigmatic. This was Thekmur. This was Yanla. This was Vork.

She gripped the sides of the altar so that she would not lose her balance. A cold sweat had broken out on her, and there was a fiery pain behind her breastbone. Her throat was dry and she knew that an ocean could never quench that thirst.

“Koshmar,” Thekmur said. “Poor sad Koshmar.”

“Poor pitiful Koshmar,” said Lirridon.

“We weep for you, Koshmar,” Nialli said.

She stared at the haughty figures stalking about in front of her and shook her head angrily. The last thing she wanted was the pity of her dead predecessors.

“No,” she said, and her voice held back within her, a husky hollow rasp. “You must not say these things to me!”

“Come to us, Koshmar,” said Yanla, who had been chieftain so many years ago that nothing but her name and her mask remained to keep her memory alive. “Come lie in our arms. You have been chieftain long enough.”

“No!”

“Rest with us,” said Vork. “Sleep in our bosom and know the joy of unending peace.”

“No!”

Thekmur, who had been like a mother to her, knelt down beside her and softly said, “We reached our death-days and we went forth into the cold place and lay down to die. Why do you cling so fiercely to your life, Koshmar? You are past the limit-age. You are terribly weary. Rest now, Koshmar.”

“The winter is over. There is no longer any cold place. The limit-age is not observed here in the time of the New Springtime.”

“The New Springtime?” Sismoil said. “Has it really come, do you think? The New Springtime, really?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Sleep, Koshmar. Let another woman rule. You have lost half your tribe—”

“Not half! Only a few!”

“The Bengs encroach upon your settlement.”

“I will slaughter the Bengs!”

“A younger woman readies herself for power. Give it to her, Koshmar.”

“When her time comes and not before.”

“Her time has come.”

“No. No. No.”

“Sleep, Koshmar.”

“Not yet. Dawinno take you, I’m still alive, can’t you see? I rule! I lead!”

Rising, Koshmar waved her arms furiously about, clearing the fumes that filled the little room. The gesture was costly to her: the pain beneath her breastbone grew startlingly more intense, striking deep into her in a hard stabbing way. But she would not let her discomfort show. Flinging open the chapel’s pivoted stone door, she allowed fresh air to come rushing in, and the dim figures of the dead chieftains grew thin, grew transparent, vanished altogether. Coughing, choking, Koshmar staggered out into the daylight. She caught hold of a battered ancient cornice and hung tight to it until the spasms of dizziness passed.

I will never go to this chapel again, she told herself. Let the dead remain dead. I have no need of their wisdom.

Slowly she made her way past the six ruined arches and the five whole ones, across the plaza of pink marble flagstones, up the five flights of megalithic stairs. She went past the stump of the fallen black tower, and south and west through the city in the direction of the settlement. Occasionally Koshmar caught sight of a vermilion of the Bengs wandering by itself, grazing on the weeds that sprouted from the cracked paving-blocks. A pack of monkeys ran past her along the rooftops, screeching derisively and hurling things at her from a safe distance. She gave them a glare of loathing. Twice she saw Helmet Men at some remove, going silently about their unknowable missions; neither of them made any gesture that acknowledged her presence.

She was still some way beyond the settlement in a zone of huge fallen statues and mirror-bright pavilions that had crumbled to silvered shards when she saw the slight figure of Hresh in the distance. He was running toward her, shouting, calling her name.

“What is it?” she asked. “Why have you followed me out here?”

He perched on the shoulder of a fallen marble colossus and looked at her expectantly. “To talk with you, Koshmar.”

“Here?”

“I wouldn’t want any of the People to overhear us.”

Koshmar gave him a dour look. “If this is some fantastic new scheme that you mean to propose, you should know before you begin that you have come upon me at a time when I prefer to be alone, and you find me in a most unreceptive mood. Most unreceptive.”

“I’ll have to risk that, I suppose. I want to talk with you about leaving the city.”

“You?” Her eyes flashed in anger. “Running off to Harruel, is that what you plan to do?”

“Not to Harruel, no. And not just me, Koshmar. All of us.”

“All?” The hot stabbing pain beneath her breastbone returned. She wanted to rub at it. But that would reveal her distress to Hresh. Controlling herself with a severe effort, she said, “What foolishness is this, now? I warned you that I didn’t want you to bother me with fantastic new schemes, and—”

“May I speak, Koshmar?”

“Go on.”

“I remind you of the day we entered Vengiboneeza, years ago. When the artificial sapphire-eyes jeered at us, and called me ‘little monkey,’ and told us we were something other than true human beings.”

“We made the proper reply, and the guardians of the gate accepted us as human and let us go in.”

“Accepted us, yes. But they never agreed that we were humans of the Great World kind. ‘You are the humans now,’ is what they said. Do you remember, Koshmar?”

“This is very tiresome, Hresh.”

“What would you say if I told you that I’ve discovered unanswerable proof that the guardians were speaking the truth? That the Dream-Dreamers were the real humans of the Great World times, and that in the Great World times our kind was little more than animals?”

“Absurd, boy!”

“I have proof.”

“Absurd proof. What I said then was that there probably have been many kinds of humans, but we are the only kind that still exists. So the world is rightfully ours. We have no need to discuss this all over again, Hresh. And what does it have to do with our leaving Vengiboneeza, anyway?”

“Because,” Hresh said, “if we are human beings, as you say, and if we are the only humans who still exist, then we should go from this place and build a city of our own, as humans do, instead of living as squatters in the ruins of some ancient people.”

“This is the argument that Harruel made. It was treason and it broke the tribe apart. If you believe what he believes, then you should go to live with him, wherever he and his followers may be. Is that what you want? Then go. Go, Hresh!”

“I want us all to go. So that we can become human.”

“We are human!”

“Then we should leave here so that we can live up to our destiny as humans. Don’t you see, Koshmar, the difference between humans and animals is that animals simply live from day to day, whereas humans—”

“Enough,” said Koshmar in a very quiet voice. “This discussion is over.”

“Koshmar, I—”

“Over.” She put her hand to her breast and pressed hard, and began to rub. The pain was strong enough to make her want to double over and clutch herself, but she forced herself to sit erect. “I came out here to be alone, and think about things that are of concern to me,” she said. “You’ve intruded on my privacy, though I asked you not to do so, and you’ve dredged up all sorts of old nonsense that has no relevance to our situation today. We are not monkeys. Those gibbering things on the rooftops are monkeys, and they are no kin of ours. And we will leave Vengiboneeza, yes, when the gods tell me that our time to leave has come. When the gods tell me, Hresh, not you. Is that understood? Good. Good. Now leave me.”

“But—”

“Leave me, Hresh!”

“As you wish,” he said, and turned and walked slowly back toward the settlement.

When he was out of sight Koshmar huddled down, shivering, while wave after wave of agony swept through her. After a little while the spasm passed, and she sat up, drenched in sweat, her pounding heart gradually calming.

The boy means well, she thought. He is so serious, so deeply concerned with high matters of destiny and purpose. And very likely he is right that the People should leave this place to seek the fulfillment of their destiny somewhere else. Whether we are humans or monkeys, Koshmar thought — and she had no doubt of which the People were — it can do us no good to remain in Vengiboneeza for many years more. That was clear. Eventually we must go forth, we must make a place of our own.

But not now. To leave now would be giving in to the Bengs. The tribe’s departure must not seem to have come about under pressure from them, for that would be a stain on the courage of the People and on her own leadership throughout all the rest of time. Hresh must be made to see that. And anyone else who was impatient to leave. Taniane? She might have put Hresh up to this, Koshmar thought. Taniane was an impatient girl, full of hot ambition. It might even be that she was ready to lead a second secession. Taniane and Hresh were in close league these days. Perhaps, Koshmar speculated, Hresh came here just now with the hidden warning that I must begin to countenance a change in policy, or else a change would be imposed against my will.

Nothing will be imposed against my will, thought Koshmar, in rage. Nothing!

Then she closed her eyes and crouched down again.

I am so very tired, she thought.

She rested, letting her mind go empty, letting her spirit drift in the soothing darkness of the void. After a long while she blinked and sat up once more, and saw that yet another visitor was approaching. The distinctive white-striped figure of Torlyri came into view, walking toward her, waving, smiling.

“There you are,” Torlyri called. “Hresh said you had gone this way.”

You too? Koshmar thought. Coming to plague me with this business?

“Is there some problem?” she asked.

Torlyri seemed surprised. “A problem? No, nothing at all. The sun shines brightly. All is well. But you’ve been gone half a day. I missed you, Koshmar. I longed to be with you, to feel you close to me again. To enjoy the pleasure of being near you, which has been the highest joy of my life.”

Koshmar could find no delight in Torlyri’s words. They had a leaden ring to them, the ring of insincerity, of outright falsehood. It was hard to think of warm good Torlyri as insincere, she who had always been the soul of love and truth; but Koshmar knew that Torlyri spoke now out of guilt and uneasiness, not out of the feelings she once had had for Koshmar. That was ended now. Torlyri had changed. Lakkamai had changed her and her Helmet Man had finished the job.

She said, “I had some heavy thinking to do, Torlyri. I went off alone to do it.”

“I was worried. You’ve seemed so weary lately.”

“Have I? I’ve never felt better.”

“Dear Koshmar—”

“Do I look sick? Has my fur lost its sheen? Is the glow gone from my eyes?”

“I said you’ve seemed weary,” Torlyri said. “Not that you were ill.”

“Ah. So you did.”

“Sit here awhile with me,” said Torlyri. She sank down on a smooth slab of rose-pink marble that rose at its far end in the form of a grinning sapphire-eyes face, all jaws and teeth, and beckoned Koshmar down beside her. Her hand rested lightly on Koshmar’s wrist, rubbing back and forth.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Koshmar asked, after a while.

“I want only to be with you. See, what a brilliant day this is! The sun rises higher and higher as we move deeper into the New Springtime.”

“It does, yes.”

“Kreun is carrying an unborn, the child of Moarn. Bonlai bears Orbin’s child now too. The tribe grows.”

“Yes. Good.”

“Praheurt and Shatalgit will have their second one soon. They have asked Hresh to name it for your mother, Lissiminimar, if it’s a girl.”

“Ah,” Koshmar said. “I’ll be glad to hear that name again.”

She wondered how it went between Torlyri and her Helmet Man these days. She never dared ask. Somehow Koshmar had managed to withstand Torlyri’s involvement with Lakkamai, even her mating with Lakkamai; but a man like Lakkamai, who hardly ever spoke and seemed to have nothing within him, could not have been any threat to her. It was all bodily pleasure between Torlyri and Lakkamai. But this, with the Helmet Man — the animated look about Torlyri whenever she and he were together, the way she moved, the light in her eyes — and the long hours she spent off at the Beng settlement — no, no, it was different, it was a deeper thing by far.

I have lost her to him, Koshmar thought.

Torlyri said, after another silence, “The Bengs offer us another of their feasts one week from now. I bear the word of that from Hamok Trei this day. They want us all to come; and they’ll open their oldest wines, and kill their best meat-animals. It is to celebrate the high day of their god Nakhaba, who I think is the greatest of their gods.”

“What do I care what the Bengs call their gods?” Koshmar snapped. “Their gods don’t exist. Their gods are fantasies.”

“Koshmar—”

“There will be no feasting with the Bengs for us, Torlyri!”

“But— Koshmar—”

She swung around sharply to face the offering-woman. An idea came to her, so suddenly that it made her head spin and her breath go short, and she said, “What would you say if I told you that we’re going to leave Vengiboneeza in two or three weeks, a month at most?”

“What?”

“And therefore we’ll need all the time we have between now and then to get ready for our departure. We can’t spare any of it for Beng feasts.”

“Leaving — Vengiboneeza—”

“There’s nothing but trouble here for us, Torlyri. You know that. I know that. Hresh came to me and said, ‘Leave, leave.’ I wouldn’t hear of it. But then my eyes saw the truth. Then my path became clear. I asked myself what we must do to save ourselves, and the answer came — we must go away from this place. It is death here, Torlyri. Look, do you see the stone sapphire-eyes grinning at us there? The joke’s on us. We came here just to dig around and find some useful things of the former world, and we have stayed — how many years is it, now? In a city that never belonged to us. In a city that mocks us in its very stones. And now a city that is full of arrogant strangers who wear absurd costumes and worship imaginary gods.”

Alarm flickered in Torlyri’s dark eyes. Koshmar saw it and realized miserably that her ruse had succeeded, that she had drawn from Torlyri the truth, that which she had dreaded but which she had desperately needed to know.

“Are you serious?” Torlyri said.

“I’m having the order drawn up, and I’ll announce it very shortly. We’ll take everything with us that may be of value to us, all the strange devices that Hresh and his Seekers have collected, and off we’ll go, into the warm southland, as we should have done years ago. Harruel was right. There is poison in this city. He couldn’t get me to see that, and so he left. Well, Harruel is rash, and Harruel is a fool; but in this case he saw more clearly than I. Our time in Vengiboneeza is over, Torlyri.”

Torlyri looked stunned.

With rising energy now Koshmar reached for her. A passion that she had not felt for weeks, for months, had begun to burn in her. Hoarsely she said, “Come, now, beloved Torlyri, dear Torlyri! We are alone here. Let us twine — it’s been so long, hasn’t it, Torlyri? — and then we’ll go back to the settlement.”

“Koshmar—” Torlyri began, and faltered.

“Shall we twine?”

Torlyri’s lips and nostrils were quivering. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.

In a low muffled voice Torlyri said, “I will twine with you, yes, if that is what you want.”

“Isn’t it what you want? You said you had gone looking for me so that you could enjoy the pleasure of being near me. Is there any better way of being near me than to twine?”

Torlyri looked toward the ground. “I’ve already twined once this day,” she said. “It was — my duty, you understand — someone came to me in need of the offering-woman’s consolation, and I must never refuse that, and — and—”

“And you’re too tired to do it again so soon.”

“Yes. Precisely.”

Koshmar looked at her squarely. Torlyri flinched away.

She will not twine with me, Koshmar thought, because then her soul will be open to me and I will see the depths of her love for the Helmet Man. Is that it?

No. No. For we twined not that long ago, and I have already seen what she feels for the Helmet Man, and she knows that I have seen it. It’s something else that she wishes to hide from me, then. Something new, something even more serious. And I think I can guess what it is.

“Very well,” Koshmar said. “I can live without a twining this afternoon, I suppose.”

She rose, and signaled to Torlyri that she should do the same.

“Koshmar, are we truly going to leave Vengiboneeza in a few weeks?” Torlyri asked.

“A month, perhaps. Six weeks, maybe.”

“A moment ago you said a month at most.”

“We’ll leave when we’re ready to leave. If it takes us a month, then we’ll leave in a month. If it takes two months, then two months.”

“But we will definitely leave?”

“Nothing could alter my resolve in that.”

“Ah,” Torlyri said, turning away as though Koshmar had struck her. “Then everything is ended.”

“What do you mean?”

“Please. Let me be, Koshmar.”

Koshmar nodded. She understood everything now. Torlyri would not twine with her because there was one thing Torlyri dared not tell her, which was that if the People were actually to leave Vengiboneeza she would not be leaving with them. She meant to stay behind with her Helmet Man; for she knew that Koshmar certainly would not permit the Helmet Man to come with the tribe, even if he might wish to do such a thing.

Torlyri is lost to me forever, then, Koshmar thought.

Together they walked back to the settlement in silence.