At Winter's End

4 The Chronicler

It required all the courage Hresh could summon to go to Koshmar and ask to be made chronicler in Thaggoran’s place. Not that he feared being refused so much, since, after all, he would be asking an extraordinary thing. It was being mocked that he dreaded. Koshmar could be cruel; Koshmar could be harsh. And Hresh knew that she already had cause to dislike him.

But to his surprise the chieftain appeared to receive his outrageous request amiably. “Chronicler, you say? That’s a task that customarily is given to the oldest man of the tribe, is it not? And you are—”

“I will be nine soon,” Hresh said staunchly.

“Nine. Something short of oldest.” Was Koshmar hiding a smile?

“The oldest man now is Anijang. He’s too stupid to be chronicler, isn’t he? Besides, what does my age matter, Koshmar? Everything is different for us out here. There are dangers on all sides. All the men must be on constant patrol. We have had the rat-wolves, the bloodbirds, the fireburs, the leather-wings, almost every day some new creature to fend off. And they will all be back again and again. I’m too small to fight well yet. But I can keep the chronicles.”

“Are you sure of that? Can you read?”

“Thaggoran taught me. I can write words and I can read them. And I can remember things, too. I have much of the chronicles by memory, already. Try me on anything. The coming of the death-stars, the building of the cocoons—”

“You’ve read the chronicles?” Koshmar asked, looking amazed.

Hresh felt his face grow hot. What a blunder! The chronicles were sealed; no one was permitted to open the chest that contained them except the chronicler himself. Indeed, even in the days of the cocoon Hresh had managed sometimes to study a few pages that Thaggoran had happened to leave open in his chamber, for the old man had been careless sometimes or indulgent, though Thaggoran had not seemed aware of what Hresh was doing. But Hresh had carried out most of his investigations of history since Thaggoran’s death, surreptitiously, while the older tribesfolk had been out foraging for food. The baggage was often left unguarded; there was no longer any chronicler to keep a special eye on his treasure; no one appeared to notice the boy slipping open the sacred casket, or to care.

Lamely Hresh said, hoping Koshmar would not see through the blatant lie, “Thaggoran let me see them. He made me promise never to say anything to anyone about that, but once in a while as a special favor he would—”

Koshmar laughed. “He did, did he? Does no one keep oaths in this tribe?”

Desperately improvising, Hresh said, “He loved to tell the old stories. And I was more interested than anyone else, so he — he and I—”

“Yes. Yes, I can see that. Well, it matters very little now what oaths were kept or broken in the time before we came forth.” Koshmar looked down at him from what seemed like an enormous height. She seemed lost in private musings for a long while. Then at last she said, “Chronicler, then? And not even nine? A strange idea!” And then, just as Hresh readied himself to slink away in shame, she said, “But go, get the books. Let me see how you write, and then we’ll decide. Go, now!”

Hresh rushed off, heart pounding. Was she serious? Did she actually take him seriously? Would she give it to him? So it seemed. Of course she might simply be playing some cruel joke on him; but Koshmar, though she could be cruel, was not one who was known to make jokes. Then she must be sincere, he thought. Chronicler! He, Hresh! He could scarcely believe it. He would be the old man, and not even nine!

This day Threyne was in charge of the sacred things. She was a small wide-eyed woman, vastly swollen by the unborn that sprouted in her belly. Hresh pounced upon her, crying out that Koshmar had told him to fetch the holy books. Threyne was skeptical of that, and would not give them to him; and in the end they went together to the chieftain, carrying the heavy casket of the chronicles between them.

“Yes,” said Koshmar. “I meant to let him bring the books.” Threyne stared at her in astonishment. Plainly such a thing was blasphemy to her; but she would not defy Koshmar, even in this. Muttering, she yielded the casket to Hresh.

“Go,” Koshmar said to Threyne, waving her away as if she were a mote of dust. When Threyne was out of sight the chieftain said to Hresh, “Open it, then, since you seem already to know the way it’s done.”

Eagerly Hresh put his hands to the casket, maneuvering its rounded bosses and interlocking seals this way and that. Though his fingers quivered nervously, he achieved the opening in just a moment. Within lay the Barak Dayir in its pouch, and the shinestones nearby it, and the books of the chronicles pried as Thaggoran liked to keep them, with the current volume on top and the Book of the Way lying just beneath it.

“Very well,” Koshmar said. “Take out Thaggoran’s book and open it to the last page, and write what I tell you.”

He drew forth the book, caressing it with awe. As he opened it he made the sign of the Destroyer: for it was Dawinno, he who leveled and scattered, who was also the god of the keeping of knowledge. Carefully Hresh turned through it until he came to the final page, where Thaggoran had begun in his elegant way to write the story of the Coming Forth on the left-hand leaf. Thaggoran’s account ended abruptly, incomplete, in midpage; the right-hand leaf was blank.

“Are you ready?” Koshmar asked.

“You want me to write in this book?” said Hresh, not believing her.

“Yes. Write.” She frowned and pursed her lips. “Write this: ‘It was decided then by Koshmar the chieftain that the tribe would seek Vengiboneeza the great city of the sapphire-eyes, for it might be possible there to find secret things that would be of value in the repeopling of the world.’”

Hresh stared at her and did nothing.

“Go on, write that down. You can write, can’t you? You haven’t wasted my time in this? Have you? Have you? Write, Hresh, or by Dawinno I’ll have you skinned and made into a pair of boots for these cold nights. Write!”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, I will.”

He pressed the pads of his fingers to the page and concentrated the full force of his mind, and sent the words that Koshmar had dictated hurtling onto the sensitive sheet of pale vellum in one furious, desperate burst of thought. And to his wonderment characters began to appear almost at once, dark brown against the yellow background. Writing! He was actually writing in the Book of the Coming Forth! His writing was not as fine as Thaggoran’s, no, but it was good enough, real writing, clear and comprehensible.

“Let me see,” Koshmar said.

She leaned close, peering, nodding.

“Ah. Ah, yes. You do have it, do you not? Little mischief-maker, little question-asker, you truly can write! Ah. Ah.” She pursed her lips and gripped the edges of the book tightly and narrowed her eyes and ran her finger along the page, frowning, and murmured, after a moment, “ ‘So Koshmar the chieftain decided that the tribe would search for the great city Vengiboneeza of the sapphire-eyes—’ ”

It was close, but the words Koshmar was reading were not quite the words that she had spoken a moment before and that Hresh had written down. How could that be? He craned his neck and stared at the book in her hands. What he had written still began, “It was decided then by Koshmar the chieftain—” Was it possible that Koshmar was unable to read, that she was quoting from her own memory of what she had dictated? That was startling. But after a bit of thought Hresh saw that it was not really so surprising.

A chieftain did not need to know the art of reading. A chronicler did.

A moment later Hresh realized a second startling thing, which was that he had just been permitted to learn the identity of the goal toward which they had marched all these months. Until this moment the chieftain had been steadfast in her refusal to divulge the destination of their trek to anyone. So intent had Hresh been on the act of writing itself that he had paid no attention to the meaning of the words Koshmar had uttered. Now it sank in.

Vengiboneeza! He felt his heartbeat quicken.

They were soon to set out in search of the most splendid city of the Great World!

I should have guessed it, Hresh thought, chagrined; for Thaggoran had spoken of such matters, how in the Book of the Way it was written that at winter’s end the People would go forth from their cocoons and find amidst the ruins of the Great World the things they would need to make themselves masters of the planet. What better place to search for such things than at the ancient capital of the sapphire-eyes folk? Perhaps Koshmar had realized that too; or, rather, Thaggoran very likely had suggested it to her. Vengiboneeza! Truly life has become a dream, Hresh thought.

He looked up at her. “Am I the new chronicler, then?” he asked.

She was studying him quizzically. “How old did you say you were? Nine?”

“Not quite.”

“Not quite nine.”

“But I read. I write. I have learned many things already, and for me it is only the beginning, Koshmar.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps this is the only way I can keep you under control, eh, Hresh? Hresh-full-of-questions? You will read these books, and they will answer some of your questions and fill you full of new ones, and you will be so busy with your books that you will no longer go stealing off, seeking new ways of making trouble.”

“I was the one who found the rat-wolves, that time I went off by myself,” he reminded her.

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

“I can be useful as well as troublesome.”

“Perhaps you can,” said Koshmar.

“This isn’t some game you’re playing with me? I really am the new chronicler, Koshmar?”

Koshmar laughed. “You are, boy, yes. You are the new chronicler. We will proclaim you today. Even if you’re not yet old enough to have had your naming-day. These are new times, and everything is different now, eh? Or almost everything. Eh, boy? Eh?”

So it was done. Hresh took up his new tasks with great zeal. As best he could, he brought Thaggoran’s unfinished account of the Going Forth up to date, telling of the tribe’s adventures at this point and that. He attempted to reconstruct the calendar of days, so that the rituals could properly be observed; but in the confusions following Thaggoran’s death no one had bothered with that duty and Hresh suspected that he had not properly made up the tally, so that henceforth perhaps naming-days and twining-days and other ritual events would not be celebrated on precisely the correct date. He did his best to remedy that, though without much confidence that his work was accurate.

Each day now Hresh would come to the chieftain and she would speak with him, and those things that seemed to be of high importance he would set down in the vast book. And whenever he had the opportunity he burrowed with the burning eagerness of a cave-mole to the deeper levels of the casket, hungry to discover all that was. He reveled in the overflowing treasure of history. It might take him half his life to read through all those books, but he meant to try. In a kind of fever of knowledge-hunger Hresh turned the pages, stroking them, absorbing them, barely allowing himself time to scan more than a few lines on this page before he went on to that, and to the one beyond it. The truths that the books held became blurred and tangled as he wandered among them, turning into mysteries even deeper than they had been for him before he knew anything of them at all; but that was not important, for he would have plenty of time to master this knowledge later. Now he wanted only to gobble it.

He slipped the amulet of Thaggoran around his neck now, and wore it day and night. It was a strange presence at first, thumping against his breastbone, but soon he grew accustomed to it and then it came to seem virtually a part of him. Wearing it, he felt the nearness of Thaggoran. Touching it, he imagined that he could feel the wisdom of Thaggoran entering into him.

He went back to the oldest books, which he could barely understand, since they were written in a strange kind of writing that would not tune itself easily to his mind. But he ran his trembling fingertips over the stiff pages and a sort of sense came up out of them after a while, though always ambiguous, elliptical, elusive. Fragmentary accounts of the Great World is what they were: what seemed to be tales of how the Six Peoples had lived in harmony on the earth, humans and hjjk-folk and vegetals and mechanicals and sea-lords and sapphire-eyes. It was dim and faint, an echo of an echo, but even that echo resounded in his soul like a clarion fanfare out of the dark well of time. Surely it had been the most astounding of epochs, the peak of Earth’s lost splendor, when all the world was a festival. He trembled just to think of it: the multitudes of people, the many races, the glittering cities, the ships sailing between the stars. He could scarcely begin to comprehend it. He felt the knowledge of it, partial though it was, swelling within him so that he feared he would choke on it. And then he skipped forward to the Great World’s tragic end, when the death-stars began to fall, as had been foretold so long before. Why did they allow it to happen, they who had achieved such grandeur? Had they been unable to turn the plummeting stars aside? Surely that would have been within their power, since all other things were. Yet nothing was done. No mention was made of any of that, only of the coming of the doom itself. That was when the sapphire-eyes perished, for their blood was cold and they could not abide freezing weather, and the vegetals died also, having been fashioned out of plant cells and being unable to bear the frost. Hresh read the noble account of the voluntary death of the mechanicals, who had not wanted to survive into the new era, though that would have been possible for them. He read it all, swallowing it down in great intoxicating gulps.

He took out the shinestones, too, and arranged them in patterns, and stroked them and squeezed them and murmured to them, hoping to be able to draw some wisdom from them. But they remained silent. They seemed to him to be no more than dark gleaming stones. Try as he would, they told him nothing. Sadly he realized that the People no longer would have their guidance. That was lost forever to the tribe. Whatever secret governed the shinestones’ use had died with Thaggoran.

The Barak Dayir, the Wonderstone, was the one thing in the casket that Hresh did not dare to examine at all. He left it undisturbed within its pouch of green velvet, not even daring to touch it. It would, he knew, open doors to realms of knowledge beyond even those that reading could make available to him; but he feared to do too much too soon. The Wonderstone was star-stuff, so Thaggoran had said. He had said that it had its dangers, too. Hresh chose to let it be until he had found some clue to the safe means of using it. In the privacy of his spirit he praised himself warmly for this one act of prudent renunciation, so alien to his character, and then laughed at his own absurd pride.

To the others of the tribe Hresh’s ascent to the rank of chronicler was more a matter for amusement than anything else. They had heard Koshmar’s proclamation, and they could see him every day puttering around in the baggage-train where the chronicles were kept; but they had trouble comprehending the fact that a small boy now was the chronicler. Minbain laughed and asked him, “Am I supposed to call you old man?”

“It’s only a title, Mother. It makes no difference to me whether it’s used or not.”

“But you are chronicler? You are truly chronicler?”

“You know that I am,” Hresh said.

Minbain put her hands over her breasts. Through gusts of laughter she said, in a way that seemed loving without being kind, “How could such a strange thing as you have come out of me? How? How?”

Torlyri was kinder to him, telling him that he was the proper choice and that to be chronicler was clearly what he had been born to be; but then Torlyri was kind to everyone. Orbin, who had been his playmate and friend, looked at him now as though he had grown an extra head. The others of his own age, or near to it, had never felt comfortable with Hresh to begin with. Now they kept their distance entirely, all except Taniane, who seemed utterly unimpressed with his new glory. She still would talk with him and march beside him on the trek as if nothing had changed, although lately she had begun spending a great deal of time with Haniman, of all people. What she found interesting in that oaf was hard for Hresh to see, although Haniman was at least growing less flabby as he marched, and showing signs of developing some coordination and grace, though not very much.

Anijang, who might have become chronicler in the old days simply because he was the senior tribesman now, only chuckled when Hresh went by. “What trouble you’ve saved me, lad! What a nuisance it would have been for me to have to learn to read!” He seemed honestly relieved. And the younger men, the warriors, generally ignored Hresh, all but Salaman, who sometimes paused and stared at him as though he could not bring himself to believe that a boy even younger than he was had become the chronicler and old man of the tribe. The other warriors paid no attention. For them the chronicler was a figure to revere, but they were not going to revere Hresh, and so he had no importance to them. Of them all only Harruel bothered to speak to Hresh at all, looking down from his vast height and gruffly wishing him success at his tasks. “You are very young,” said Harruel, “but customs change with changing times, and if you are to be our chronicler then I have no quarrel with that.” For which Hresh returned proper thanks, although Harruel was so huge and so strange these days — bitter over some sharp disappointment, it seemed, going about all the time with a black look in his eyes and a scowl on his lips — that Hresh preferred to stay away from him.

Naturally Hresh was supposed to keep everything that Koshmar dictated to him a secret until the chieftain was ready to divulge it to the entire tribe. But he was, after all, not quite nine years old. And so one day soon after he had become chronicler, when he was with Taniane, he said to her, “Do you know where we’re heading?”

“No one knows that but Koshmar.”

“I know it.”

“You do?”

“And I’ll tell you, if you keep it a secret.” He put his head close to hers. “We’re going to Vengiboneeza. Can you believe it? Vengiboneeza, Taniane!”

He thought the revelation would stun her. But it drew nothing from her but a blank look.

“Where?” she asked.

They marched west, on and on through a changing land, warmer every day though still far from hospitable.

Never once did they encounter other human beings, only the savage and strange beasts of the wilderness. Koshmar was of more than one mind about that. She would have liked to meet some other tribe in order to have confirmation that it had not been foolish for her to lead her people out of the cocoon before the true end of winter; and also she wished to be free of the uncomfortable possibility that her sixty souls were all that was left of the human race. And in truth she was eager to join with some other bands of wanderers with whom the People could share the risks and hardships of the journey.

But at the same time the idea of finding others was less than entirely pleasing to her. She had long been the master, absolute and unchallenged. Harruel’s surly glares and malcontent mutterings were no real threat to her: the People would never accept him in her place. But if they met another tribe and formed some kind of alliance with them there might well be rivalries, disagreements, even warfare. Koshmar had no desire to share her power with any other chieftain. To some degree, she realized, she wanted her people to be the only humans who had managed to survive the downfall of the Great World.

That way — if all went well — she would go down in the chronicles as one of the greatest leaders in history, the one who had singlehandedly engineered the revival of the human race. That was vanity, yes, she knew. Yet surely it was not an unpardonable sin to have such ambitions.

Still, the responsibilities were heavy. They were heading through a perilous land toward an unknown destination. Each day brought something new and troublesome to tax the tribe’s resolve, and often Koshmar felt herself uncertain of her course. But those doubts had to be hidden from her people.

She called them together, and told them at last that Vengiboneeza was their destination. The older ones knew the name, from stories that Thaggoran had told them in the days of the cocoon; but the young ones merely stared.

“Tell them of Vengiboneeza,” she commanded Hresh.

He came forward and spoke of the ancient city’s great towers, its shining stone palaces, its wondrous machines, its warm radiant pools and shimmering gardens. These were all descriptions that he had found by touching his hands to the pages of the chronicles and letting the images rise to his mind.

“But what good is Vengiboneeza to us?” Harruel asked, when Hresh was done.

Koshmar said sharply, “It will be the beginning of our greatness. The chronicles tell us that machines of the Great World are still to be found there and the finders will be made powerful by them. So we will enter Vengiboneeza and search it for its treasures. We will take from it what we need, and make ourselves masters of the world, and build a grand and glorious city for ourselves.”

“A city?” Staip asked. “We will have a city?”

“Of course we will have a city,” said Koshmar. “Are we to live like wild creatures, Staip?”

“Vengiboneeza has been dust for seven hundred thousand years,” Harruel said darkly. “There’ll be nothing there that’s useful for us.”

“The chronicles say otherwise,” Koshmar retorted.

There was grumbling on several sides. Staip continued to murmur, and Kalide, and a few of the other older ones. Koshmar saw Torlyri looking at her in sorrow and distress, and knew that her power over the tribe was in the deepest jeopardy. She had asked too much of them in making this doleful trek. She had taken them from the comfort of the cocoon into hard winds and bitter cold. She had exposed them to the cruel glare of the sun and the chilling light of the moon. She had given them over to a world of bloodbirds and fireburs and things whose mouths gaped like caverns. Patiently they had abided all these strangenesses and ordeals, but their patience was coming to an end. Now she must promise them rewards if she wished them to follow her farther.

“Listen to me!” she cried. “Do you have any reason to doubt me? I am Koshmar daughter of Lissiminimar, and you chose me your chieftain in Thekmur’s time, and have I ever failed you? I will bring you to Vengiboneeza and all the wonders of the Great World will be ours! And then we will go forth again and make ourselves masters of everything! We will sleep in warm places and drink sweet drinks, and there will be food and fine robes and an easy life for everyone! That I pledge you: that is the pledge of the New Springtime!”

Still the sullen eyes, here and there. Staip shifted his weight restlessly. Koshmar saw Konya whisper something to him. Kalide too looked uncertain, and turned to say a word or two to Minbain. Harruel seemed far away, lost in brooding. But no one spoke out openly against the idea. She sensed a turning-point in their sentiments.

“On to Vengiboneeza!” Koshmar cried.

“On to Vengiboneeza!” Torlyri echoed. “Vengiboneeza!” Hresh called.

An uneasy moment, then. The others were still silent. The eyes were still sullen. She saw weary people, troubled, rebellious. Only Torlyri and Hresh had spoken for her; but Torlyri was her twining-partner; Hresh was her creature, her servant. Would anyone else take up the cry?

“Vengiboneeza!” finally, a high strong voice: Orbin, that good robust boy. And then, surprisingly, from Haniman too, and then a few of the older ones, Konya, Minbain, Striinin, and then all of them, even Harruel, even the reluctant Staip. They were a tribe once more, speaking with one voice: “Vengiboneeza! Vengiboneeza!”

They went onward. But how long, Koshmar wondered, before she would have to win them to her side all over again?

There were more losses as they marched. On a day of strange hot gusty winds the young man Hignord was carried off by something green and writhing and many-legged that came hurtling out of a concealed pit in the ground. A few days later the girl Tramassilu, who had gone off to snare little tree-dwelling yellow toads, was speared by a huge lunatic hopping thing with a long red beak that came bouncing down upon her like an avalanche and danced babbling over her body until Harruel smashed it with a club.

That made four deaths now, out of sixty that had begun the trek. The bellies of the breeding pairs were swelling with replacements for the lost ones, but a birth took a long time and death was quick out here. Koshmar fretted over the dwindling of the tribe, fearing that their numbers might become dangerously low if more women perished. Two of their dead so far had been fertile females. One male was all it took to impregnate an entire tribe, Koshmar knew; but it was the females who bore the children, and they were a long time in carrying them.

The heavy clouds opened and it rained for ten days and ten nights, until everyone was sodden and reeking from the wetness. There had been no rain before on the trek. But the sight of water falling from the sky quickly lost its fascination. Rain ceased to be a novelty and became a burden and a torment.

“Vengiboneeza,” they began to say. “How long until Vengiboneeza?”

There were those who insisted that a new death-star had struck the earth far away, too far away for the impact to have been heard here, and that the rain was the beginning of yet another time of darkness and cold. “No,” said Koshmar vehemently. “This is only something that happens in this particular place. It was dry where we were before, and here it is wet. Do you see how thick the grass is here, how heavy the foliage?” Indeed that was so. They went on, bowed and soggy, smelling of damp fur. And after a time the rain stopped.

Then the days began to grow shorter. Ever since they had left the cocoon, each day had been a little longer than the one before it; but now, beyond any dispute, the sun could be seen to drop below the western horizon earlier and earlier every afternoon.

“Vengiboneeza?” the tribesfolk began to mutter again.

Koshmar nodded, and pointed to the west.

“I think we are entering a land of eternal night,” said Staip. He had always been a jovial man, to whom doubt and pessimism were unknown. Not now. “A dark land will be a cold land,” he said.

“And a dead one,” said Konya, who no longer laughed and sang. His natural reserve of spirit had returned in recent weeks and had deepened greatly, so that he seemed now not merely aloof and private, but bleak and lost in some terrible realm of his soul. “Nothing can survive in such a place,” he said. “We should turn back.”

“We must go onward,” Koshmar insisted. “What is happening now is normal and natural. We have entered a place where the darkness is stronger than the light. Beyond it things will change for the better.”

“Will they?” Staip asked.

“Have faith,” said Koshmar. “Yissou will protect us. Emakkis will provide. Dawinno will guide us.”

And they went on.

But inwardly the chieftain was not so sure that her confidence was justified. In the cocoon the day and the night had been of identical lengths. Out here things were different, obviously. But what did it really mean, this dwindling of the hours of daylight? Perhaps Staip was right and they were marching into a realm where the sun never rose and they would meet their death of freezing.

She wished she could consult Thaggoran, who would have known the explanation or at least invented something reassuring. But she had no Thaggoran now, and her old man was a child. Koshmar sent for him anyway, and, taking care not to let him see how baffled she was, said to him, “I need to know an ancient name, chronicler.”

“And what name is that?”

“The name that the ancients gave to the changing of the times of light and dark. It must be in the chronicles somewhere. The name is the god: we must call the god by his rightful flame in our prayers, or the sunlight will never return.”

Hresh went off to examine the archives. He looked through the Book of the Way, the Book of Hours and Days, the Book of the Cold Awakening, the Book of the Wrongful Glow, and many another volume, including very old ones that were without names. He found a part of the answer in this book and another part in that one, and after three days he came to Koshmar and said, “It is called the seasons. There is the season of daylight and it is followed by the season of darkness and then the daylight season comes ‘round again.”

“Of course,” said Koshmar. “The seasons. How could I have forgotten the word?” And she summoned Torlyri and ordered her to pray to the god of seasons.

“Which god is that?” the gentle offering-woman asked.

“Why, the god who brings the time of light and the time of the dark,” said Koshmar.

Torlyri hesitated. “Friit, do you think? Friit is the Healer. He would bring light after darkness.”

“But Friit would not bring the darkness,” said Koshmar. “No, it is another god.”

“Tell me, then. For I have no idea which one to make my offerings to.”

Koshmar had hoped that Torlyri would know; but she saw now that Torlyri, rather, was looking to her. “It is Dawinno,” Koshmar said shortly.

“Yes, the Destroyer,” Torlyri replied, smiling. “The darkness and then the light: that would be Dawinno’s way. He holds everything in balance so that it will be right in the end.”

Each day at midday, then, when the sun stood straight overhead, Torlyri made an offering to Dawinno the Destroyer, god of seasons. She would burn some scraps of old fur and a bit of dried wood in a fine ancient bowl of polished green stone shot through with golden veins. The smoke rising toward the sun was her message of gratitude to the god whose subtlety was beyond human comprehension.

Though the days continued to grow shorter, Koshmar would hear no further discussion of the phenomenon. “It is the seasons,” she said, waving her hand imperiously. “Everyone knows that! What is there to fear? The seasons are natural. The seasons are normal. They are Dawinno’s gift to us.”

“Yes,” muttered Harruel, not so quietly that Koshmar could not hear him. “And so were the death-stars.”

The land was changing too. It was flat for a long while; then it became broken and wild, with ridges of blazing scarlet rock that were as sharp as knives along their summits. Just on the far side they found a strange sight: a dead thing of metal, twice as wide as a man but not half as tall, standing by itself on a bare stony slope. Its head was a broad one-eyed dome, its legs were elaborately jointed. Once it must have had a thick, gleaming metal skin, but now it was rusted and pitted by the rains of an uncountable number of years. “It is a mechanical,” Hresh announced, after studying his books. “This must be where they came to die.” And indeed in the lowlands a little way beyond that there were many more, hundreds, thousands, of the squat metal creatures, a forest of them, an ocean of them, covering the land in all directions, each standing upright in a little zone of solitude, a private empire. All were dead and rusting. They were so corroded that they dissolved at a touch, and toppled into a scattering of dust. “In the time of the Great World,” said Hresh solemnly, “these creatures lived in the mighty cities of great kingdoms where everyone was a machine. But they did not care to go on living once the death-stars began to fall.”

“What’s a machine?” Haniman asked.

“A machine,” Hresh said, “is a device that performs work. It is a metal thing with a mind, and strength, and purpose, and a kind of life that is not like our life.” That was the best he could manage. They accepted it. But when someone else asked why something that had life, even if it was not like our life, would be willing without struggle to yield up that life when the death-stars came, Hresh could not say. That was beyond his understanding, willingly to yield up life.

Koshmar prowled among the horde of dead mechanicals, thinking that she might find one that still had life enough in it to be able to tell her how to reach the city of Vengiboneeza; but their blind rusted faces mocked her with silence. They were dead beyond hope of awakening, every one of them.

After that there was an awful sandy wasteland worse than any of the dry places they had passed through before. Here there was no water at all, not even a rivulet. The ground crackled and crunched when the weight of a foot pressed against it. Nothing would grow here, not the slightest tuft of grass, and the only animals were low coiling yellow things that left blade-sharp tracks as they slithered through the sand. They stung Staip and Haniman, raising painful purple swellings on their legs that did not go down for several days. They stung some of the livestock, too, and the animals died of it. There were very few beasts left to the marchers by this time. They had had to slaughter for food most of the ones they had brought with them out of the cocoon, and many of the others had strayed and vanished, or had been killed by creatures along the way. In this dry place throats were parched and eyes became sunken, and the tribesfolk said over and over again that they would be glad now to have some of the rain that they had found so bothersome not long ago.

Then they left the dry place behind and entered a green land broken by chains of lakes and a turbulent river which they crossed on rafts of light wood, bound by the bark of a slender azure creature that seemed half serpent, half tree. Beyond the river was a range of low mountains. One day during the journey across that range keen-sighted Torlyri had a glimpse of a huge band of hjjk-folk far away, a whole enormous army of them, marching toward the south. By the coppery glint of twilight they looked no larger than ants as they made their way along a rocky defile; but there must have been thousands of them, a terrifying multitude. If they noticed Koshmar’s little band they gave no sign of it, however, and soon the insect-people were lost to view beyond the folds of the mountains.

The days grew longer again. The air became warmer, and then much warmer. Now and again new wintry blasts came out of the north, but they were fewer, and came ever more rarely. No one could doubt that the death-grip that winter had held on the world was easing, had eased, no longer was a significant thing. There was still winter in the world somewhere, but this was a springtime land, and the farther west they went, the gentler the weather became. Koshmar felt vindicated. The god of seasons smiled upon her.

Where, though, was great Vengiboneeza? According to the chronicles, the lost capital of the sapphire-eyes was in the place where the sun goes to rest; but where was that? In the west, surely. But the west was a huge place that went on and on without end. Each night the tribe was many weary leagues farther westward, and when the sun vanished beyond the end of the world at the day’s close it was evident that all their marching had brought them no nearer to its resting-place.

“Search the books again,” Koshmar said despairingly to Hresh. “There is some passage you have failed to find that will tell us how to reach Vengiboneeza.”

He ran his hands again and again over the pages. He sought through the dustiest and most ancient of the books, those that spoke only of the Great World. But there was nothing. Perhaps he was looking in the wrong places. Or perhaps the writers of the chronicles had not seen any need to set down the location of that great city, so famous had it been. Or possibly the information had simply been lost. These oldest chronicles were not the original texts, he knew. Those had crumbled to dust hundreds of thousands of years ago; the ones he possessed were the copies of copies of copies, made from tattered earlier versions by generations of chroniclers during the long night within the cocoon, and who knew how much of the text had been changed by error, or discarded altogether, in that constant process of recopying? Much of what they contained was impossible for him to understand; and what was there, though often quite clear, sometimes had the deceptive eerie clarity of a dream, where everything seems orderly and straightforward but in fact nothing makes sense at all.

It might be time, Hresh thought, to risk using the Barak Dayir. But he was afraid. He had never been afraid of anything before, even when he had tried to sneak out of the cocoon. No, that was a lie. He had been afraid then that Koshmar would kill him; death did frighten him, he would not deny that. But death was the only question that contained its own answer, and when you asked the question and had the answer you were gone, you were nothing. So that was the one answer he feared. The question of how to use the Wonderstone might well be the same as the question of understanding death; and the answer, if he did not protect himself properly, might also be the same. He left the Barak Dayir in its velvet pouch.

“Tell me how to reach Vengiboneeza,” Koshmar said again.

“I continue to search,” said Hresh. “Give me another few days and I’ll tell you what you wish to know.”

Harruel came to Hresh while he searched the books. He loomed above him as Harruel always did, and said, “Old man! Chronicler!”

Hresh looked up, startled. Automatically he turned the book he was reading away from Harruel, and shaded it with his hand. As though Harruel could possibly be able to read it!

“Sit down, if you want to talk to me,” Hresh said. “You stand too far above me and it hurts my neck to see you.”

Harruel laughed. “You are a bold one!”

“Is there something you want to know from me?”

Harruel laughed again. It was a harsh laugh that burst from him with a sound like that of rocks tumbling down a mountainside, but his eyes were twinkling. Indeed Hresh knew he was playing an absurd game, if not a dangerous one. A boy not yet nine years old was giving orders to the strongest man of the tribe: how could Harruel not laugh, or else hurl him angrily across the field? But I am the chronicler, Hresh thought defiantly. I am the old man. He is only a fool with muscles.

The warrior knelt down beside him and came close, too close for Hresh’s comfort. There was a sharp biting smell about Harruel, and the sheer size of him was disturbing.

In a low voice Harruel said, “I need knowledge from you.”

“Go on.”

“Tell me about the thing called kingship.”

“Kingship?” Hresh echoed. That was an ancient word, one that he had never heard spoken aloud in his life. It was strange hearing it now from Harruel. “You know of kingship?”

“Some,” he said. “I remember Thaggoran spoke of it once, when he was reading from the chronicles. You were a babe, then. He talked of Lord Fanigole and Lady Theel and Belilirion, and the other founders of the People in the time of the coming of the death-stars. They were men, all but Lady Theel, and they ruled. I asked if men had often ruled, in those old days. That day Thaggoran said that in the time of the Great World there were many kings who were men like me, and not only among the humans — the sapphire-eyes had kings too, said Thaggoran — and he told me that when the king spoke, his words were obeyed.”

“As a chieftain’s words would be today.”

“As a chieftain’s words would, yes,” said Harruel.

“Then you already know about kingship,” Hresh said. “What more can I tell you?”

“Tell me that such a thing existed.”

“That there were men who were kings in the Great World?” Hresh shrugged. He had not studied these things. And even if he had, he doubted that he should be giving information about such matters to Harruel, or to anyone but Koshmar. The chronicles were here mainly for the guidance of the chieftain, not for the amusement of the tribesfolk. “I know little about kingship,” he said. “What you have said is perhaps the extent of it.”

“You can find more about it, can’t you?”

“There may be more in the chronicles,” said Hresh cautiously.

“Search it out, and tell me, then. It seems to me that kingship is something that should not have been forgotten. The Great World will be born again; and we must know how it was in the time of the Great World if we are to bring it to life a second time. Search your books, boy. Learn about the kings, and teach them to me.”

“You must not call me boy,” Hresh said.

Harruel laughed again, and this time his eyes were not twinkling.

“Search your books on these matters,” be said. “And teach me what you learn — old man. Chronicler.”

He stalked away. Hresh looked fearfully after him, thinking that this meant nothing but trouble, and probably danger. Worriedly he fondled Thaggoran’s amulet. That day he began to search out the meaning of kingship in the casket of books, and what he found confirmed what he had guessed.

Perhaps I should tell Koshmar about this, he thought.

But he did not; nor did he report anything back to Harruel on his research. Harruel made no further inquiries just then into the matter of kingship. The conversation remained a private matter between them, secret, festering.

Koshmar felt the beginning of defeat. If only Thaggoran were here to guide her! But Thaggoran was gone and her chronicler was a boy. Hresh was quick and eager, but he lacked Thaggoran’s depth of wisdom and familiarity with all the ages that had gone before.

She was coming to face the truth that she could not hope to sustain the trek much longer. The grumbling had begun again, and this time it was more heated. Already there were those, she knew, who said they were marching to no purpose. Harruel had emerged the leader of that faction. Let us settle down in some good fertile place and build us a village: so he was saying behind Koshmar’s back. Torlyri had overheard him haranguing four or five of the other men. In the cocoon it was unthinkable that the tribe would even consider countermanding a chieftain’s word, but they were no longer in the cocoon. Koshmar began to imagine herself cast down from power: not the savior of the reborn world but merely an overthrown chieftain.

If they deposed her, would they even let her live? These were all new thoughts. There were no traditions about the deposing of chieftains, or what to do with a deposed one afterward.

Koshmar had left behind, in the cocoon, that strip of glossy black stone that contained the spirits of the chieftains who had gone before her. All she had brought with her were their names, which she recited again and again; but perhaps the names had no strength without the stone, just as the stone had no strength without the names.

Thekmur,she thought. Nialli. Sismoil. Lirridon. If you still are with me, guide me now!

The departed chieftains did not make themselves known to her. Koshmar turned to Hresh for counsel. With him, though with no one else, she had ceased to pretend that she was following the clear mandate of the gods.

“What can we do?” she asked.

“We must ask for help,” the boy replied.

“Of whom?”

“Why, of the creatures we meet as we go along.”

Koshmar was skeptical. But anything was worth trying; and so from that day onward, whenever they encountered some being that seemed to have a mind, no matter how simple, she would have it seized and would soothe it until it grew calm, and then, by second-sight and sensing-organ contact, she would strive to get from it the knowledge she needed.

The first was an odd round fleshy creature, a head with no body and a dozen plump little legs. Vivid ripplings of excitement ran through it when Koshmar plumbed its mind for images of Vengiboneeza, but those ripplings were all that was forthcoming from it. From a trio of gawky stilt-legged blue furry things that seemed to share a single mind came, when they were asked about cities in the west, a pattern of thought that was like an intense buzzing and snorting. And a hideous hook-clawed forest creature twice the height of a man, all mouth and jutting nose and foul-smelling orange hair, gave a wild raucous laugh and flashed the image of lofty towers wrapped in strangling vines.

“This is of no use,” the chieftain said to Hresh.

“But how interesting these animals are, Koshmar.”

“Interesting! We’ll die a hundred deaths in this wilderness and you’ll find that interesting too, won’t you?”

All the same, she had Hresh give each of these creatures names before they were released, and had him write the names down in his book. The giving of names was important, Koshmar believed. These must all be new beings, beasts that had come into existence since the time of the Great World, which was why there was nothing in the chronicles about them. Giving them names was the beginning of attaining power over them. She still clung to the hope that she, and her tribe through her, would be the masters of this New Springtime world. Thus the giving of names. But even as Hresh spoke the names, each time after deep cogitation, she felt a sense of the futility of the act. They were lost in this land. They were without purpose or direction.

The deepest pessimism invaded Koshmar’s soul.

Then, as the tribe was going around the rim of a huge black lake in the midst of a zone of dank boggy land, the dark waters stirred and boiled wildly and out of the depths a bizarre colossus began slowly to rise, a thing of enormous height but so flimsily constructed that it seemed a gust of wind could shatter it — pale limbs that were no more than thin struts, a body that was only a filmy tube interminably extended. As this thing rose up and up until it half blotted out the sky in front of them Koshmar threw her arm across her face in astonishment, and Harruel roared and brandished his spear, and some of the more timid members of the tribe began to flee.

But Hresh, holding his ground, called out, “This must be one of the water-strider folk. It’s harmless, I think.”

Higher and yet higher it mounted, erupting from the lake to a height ten or fifteen times that of the tallest man. There it halted, hovering far above them, balancing with wide-splayed feet on the surface of the water, which it seemed barely to disturb. It peered down out of a row of glaring green-gold eyes, surveying them in a melancholy way.

“You! Water-strider!” Hresh shouted. “Tell us how to find the city of the sapphire-eyes!”

And, amazingly, the huge creature replied at once in the silent speech of the mind, saying, “Why, it lies just two lakes and a stream from here, in the sunset direction. Everyone knows that! But what good will it do you to go there?” The water-strider laughed in horrible clangorous tones, a shrill hysterical laugh, and began to fold itself, section upon section, down toward the lake. “What good? What good? What good?” It laughed again; and then it disappeared beneath the black water.