“I know,” said Boldirinthe gently. “It’s not my wish to trouble you at your work, Torlyri. But I bring a message for you, and I thought you would want to have it.”
“From whom?”
“Your Helmet Man. He is here and wishes to see you.”
“Here?”
“Just outside the temple. In the shadows.”
“No Beng may enter this building,” said Torlyri, growing flustered. “Tell him to wait. I’ll come out to him. No, no, I don’t want anyone to see us together tonight.” She knotted her hands tensely and moistened her lips. “You know where the storehouse is, on the other side of the building, where Hresh keeps the things he’s dug up in the city? See if there’s anyone in there now, and if it’s free, take him there. Then come back and let me know.”
Boldirinthe nodded and disappeared.
Torlyri attempted to return to her work, but it was hopeless; she fumbled things, she nearly dropped them, she could not remember the blessings she was supposed to utter as she lifted them from their places. After a few minutes she gave up entirely and knelt at her little altar, elbows forward on its edge, head downward, praying for calmness.
“He’s waiting for you,” Boldirinthe said softly behind her.
Torlyri closed the cabinet of holies and snuffed the candle. In the darkness she paused to give Boldirinthe a tender embrace and a light kiss, and to whisper her thanks. Then she stepped through the passageway that led to the plaza, and went around the side of the many-angled building to Hresh’s storeroom.
It was a warm mild night, with no breeze stirring, and bands of bright-edged clouds lying across the moon. Yet Torlyri shivered. She felt a tightness in her belly.
Trei Husathirn, a single glowberry cluster in his hand to light his way, was pacing like a caged creature in the storeroom when Torlyri entered. He was wearing his helmet, and he seemed bigger than Torlyri remembered. She had not seen him for some days now; there was simply too much work to do at the settlement. He prowled about, poking here and there at the collection of devices that Hresh and his Seekers had assembled. Hearing Torlyri, he whirled and threw up his arms as if to defend himself.
“It’s only me,” she said, smiling.
They rushed toward each other. His arms encircled her and he pulled her tight, nearly crushing the breath from her. She felt his body quivering. After a moment they parted. His face looked drawn and tense.
“What are these machines?” he asked.
Torlyri said, shrugging, “You’d have to ask Hresh. He uncovered them all over the city. They’re Great World things.”
“Do they work?”
“How would I know?”
“And will he take them with him when you leave?”
“As many as he can, if I know Hresh.” Torlyri wondered if it had been wrong to allow Trei Husathirn to enter here. Perhaps he should not see these things. He was her mate, yes, or something like her mate, but still he was a Beng, and these were secret things of the tribe.
His voice, hard and anxious, troubled her also. He seemed almost frightened.
She reached for his hand and held it.
“Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” she asked.
“You could have come to me.”
“No. No. It was impossible. Everything must be properly packed — there are blessings to say — it’s a job that should take weeks and weeks. I don’t know how I can ever finish it in time. You shouldn’t have come tonight, Trei Husathirn.”
“I had to talk to you.”
That sounded wrong. He should have said, I had to see you, I wanted to see you, I couldn’t stay away from you. But he had to talk to her? About what?
She released his hand and drew back, uncertain, uneasy.
“What is it?” she asked.
He was silent a moment. Then he said, “Has there been any change in the day of departure?”
“None.”
“So it is just a few more days.”
“Yes,” Torlyri said.
“What shall we do?”
She wanted to look away, but she kept her eyes steadily on him. “What do you want to do, Trei Husathirn?”
“You know what I want. To come with you.”
“How could you?”
“Yes,” he said. “How could I? What do I know of your ways, your gods, your language, your anything? All I know of your people is you. I would never fit in.”
“In time you might,” she said.
“Do you think so?”
Now she did look away.
“No,” she told him, barely able to make the single word emerge from her lips.
“So I conclude, after asking myself the question a thousand times. I have no place with Koshmar’s tribe. I would always be a stranger. An enemy, even.”
“Surely not an enemy!”
“An enemy, to Koshmar, and to others, I think.” Suddenly he crushed the glowberry cluster in his hand and threw it to the floor. In the darkness Torlyri felt unexpected fear of him. What did he have in mind? To kill them both, out of thwarted love? But all he did was take her hands in his and draw her close again, and hold her in a tight embrace. Then he said, in a hollow, distant voice, “And also I would have to leave my helmet-brothers, my chieftain, my gods. I would have to leave Nakhaba!” He was shivering. “I would leave everything. I would no longer know myself. I would be lost.”
Her hand stroked his ear, his cheek, the bare scarred place along his shoulder. By some strand of fugitive light she saw his face, and a track of tears glistening on it. She thought that the sight would make her own tears flow, but no, no, she had no tears at all any longer.
“What shall we do?” he asked again.
Torlyri caught hold of his hand and pressed it to her breast. “Here. Lie down with me. On the floor, in front of all these preposterous machines. That is what we will do. Lie down. Here, Trei Husathirn. With me. With me.”
Morning had come. Hresh looked down lovingly at Taniane, who lay sleeping deeply, exhausted by their night’s foraging. Quietly he went from their room into the open. All was still. There was a rich heavy sweetness in the air, as if some night-blooming flower had opened just a little while before.
It had been a night of wonder. The last barriers to the departure from Vengiboneeza had fallen. The little ball of golden-bronze metal ensured that.
Now Hresh held in one hand a different ball, the silvery sphere that they had found some nights earlier. He had not managed to find time before this to examine it properly, but in this misty dawn, after a night without sleep, a night when sleep had been unthinkable, a night of heroic endeavor, the small sphere weighed profoundly upon his soul. It seemed to be calling to him. He looked around, but no one was in sight. The settlement still slept, Hresh hid himself away in a crevice between two mighty alabaster statues of sapphire-eyes who had lost their heads and touched the stud that activated the sphere.
For a moment nothing happened. Had he burned the sphere out, that one time that he had used it? Or perhaps he had not pressed the stud hard enough just now. He cupped it in his palm, wondering. Then there came from it that sharp high sound that it had made before, and pulses of cool green light shot from it again.
Hastily he put his eye to its tiny viewing hole, and the Great World once again was made visible to him.
This time there was music as well as vision. Out of nowhere came a slow, heavy melody, three strands wound one about another, one that was of a dull gray tonality, one that reached his soul in the hue of deep blue, and the third a hard, aggressive orange. The music had the character of a dirge. Hresh understood that it was music fit to signify the last days of the Great World.
Through that tiny hole Hresh found that he had access to a vast and sweeping panorama of the city.
All Vengiboneeza was displayed to him in its final hours. It was a fearful sight.
The sky over the city is black, and terrible black winds sweep through it, creating patterns of turbulence that are black on black. A shroud of dust chokes the air. Feeble beams of sunlight dance erratically through it, falling weakly to the ground rather than striking it. A faint rime of frost is beginning to form on the tips of plants, on the edges of ponds, on windows, on the air itself.