Torlyri looked back quickly at Koshmar. Then she slipped one hand into the crook of Taniane’s arm and the other into Hresh’s, and drew them both from the death-chamber. She moved briskly, with an assurance and a firmness that Hresh had not seen in her for a long while. They stepped outside into the brilliant midday sunlight, and instantly all work stopped, all eyes turned toward them. There was an eerie silence in the plaza.
And then the tribesfolk came running, Threyne and Shatalgit and Orbin, Haniman and Staip, Kreun and Bonlai, Tramassilu, Praheurt, Thhrouk, Threyne and Thaggoran, Delim, Kalide, Cheysz, Hignord, Moarn, Jalmud, Sinistine, Boldirinthe — everyone, the oldest and the youngest, some with tools in their hands, some carrying babes, some clutching their midday meals, and threw themselves down before Taniane, calling her name as she held her wand of office high. Torlyri did not relinquish her hold on Taniane and Hresh. She clung with all her strength, and her grip was a painful one. Hresh wondered if she held this tightly to keep from falling.
But after a little while she released them and pushed Taniane forward to move among the tribe.
Taniane was glowing.
“There will be a ceremony this evening,” Torlyri said in a strong, clear voice. “Meanwhile your new chieftain accepts your loyalty, and thanks you for your love. She will speak with you, one by one.” To Hresh she said more quietly, “Let us go inside again,” and drew him toward her. They reentered the cottage. Koshmar seemed merely asleep. Torlyri bent to scoop up Thaggoran’s fallen amulet, and put it in Hresh’s hands. It had not been gone from his possession more than a few hours.
“Here,” she said. “You’ll want this on the trek.”
“We should postpone the departure,” Hresh said. “Until the rites are done, until Koshmar has been decently laid to rest.”
“All that will be dealt with this evening. There should be no postponement.” Torlyri paused. “I have been teaching Boldirinthe as much as I can of the offering-woman’s duties. Tomorrow I will teach her the highest mysteries, the secret things. And then you must go.”
“What are you telling me, Torlyri?”
“That I mean to stay behind, and cast my lot with the Bengs. With Trei Husathirn.”
Hresh’s mouth opened, but there was nothing he could say.
“I might have gone, if Koshmar had lived. But she is gone and I am released, do you understand? So I will stay. The Helmet Man cannot leave his people, so I will become one of them. But I will still say the morning prayers for you, as though I made the journey with you. Wherever you go, you will know that I am watching over you, Hresh. Over you and all the tribe.”
“Torlyri—”
“Don’t. Everything is very clear, for me.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand. But it will be hard, without you.”
“Do you think it will be easy for me, without all of you?” She smiled and beckoned to him, and he stepped into her arms, and they embraced like mother and son, or perhaps even like lover and lover, a long intense embrace. She began to sob again, and then her sobbing ceased, just in time, for in another moment he would have started too.
Releasing him, Torlyri said, “Let me be alone with Koshmar a little while now. And then we must meet, and devise the rites that need to be devised. At the temple, in two hours. Will you be there?”
“At the temple, yes. In two hours.”
He left the cottage once again. Taniane, far away across the plaza, was surrounded by fifteen or twenty of the tribe. They were close to her and yet hanging back, as if fearing the flame of her sudden exaltation. Taniane still wore Koshmar’s mask. All the plaza now was bathed in fierce noon light that devoured all shadow, and the heat still seemed to be rising. Behind him Koshmar lay dead, and Torlyri beside her bowed in grief. Hresh glanced to his left and saw four immense vermilions plodding down the road into the settlement, with Trei Husathirn riding atop the lead male. Tomorrow we will leave this place, Hresh thought, and I will never see Koshmar again, or Torlyri, or Noum om Beng, or the towers of Vengiboneeza. Somehow it all seemed right to him. He had passed beyond weariness into a place of utter calm.
He went to his room. He drew the Barak Dayir from its pouch and fondled it, and asked it to give him strength. A human-thing, it was. Not a star-thing. So Noum om Beng had said. Older than the Great World, it was.
Hresh studied it, trying to read the signs of its great age in its sheen, in its pattern of intricately carved lines, in the warm glow of the light that dwelled within it. He put his sensing-organ to it and its music rose up like a column around him. It carried his mind easily and smoothly upward and outward, so that he had a view of everything that surrounded Vengiboneeza. He saw here, and he saw there, and at first it was all a marvel and a mystery to him, but then he came to see how to contain his wonder and look upon only a portion of the overwhelming whole; and then he was able to find meaning in what he beheld. He looked to the south, and saw the rim of a perfect circle rising in a meadow, and a little settlement within that circle. He saw Harruel in that settlement, and Minbain his mother, and Samnibolon who was his half brother, and all the others who had gone with Harruel on the Day of the Breaking Apart. This was their settlement, which they called the City of Yissou. Hresh knew all that by seeing with the Barak Dayir. Then Hresh looked the other way, far to the north, toward the place where he knew he must look in order to see what he must see, and he beheld a great herd of vermilions on the march, heading south, making the ground shake as though the gods were pounding it; and with the vermilions were hjjk-folk, a countless army of them, heading south also, taking a route that would bring them inevitably to the City of Yissou. Hresh nodded. Of course, he thought. The gods who rule us have devised things so this will come to pass, and who can hope to understand the gods? The hjjk-men are on the march, and Harruel’s settlement lies in their path. Very well. Very well. That was only to be expected.
He descended from the heights and released the Barak Dayir from his sensing-organ, and sat quietly for a time, thinking only that this had been a very long day, and even now it had barely reached its midpoint. Then Hresh closed his eyes, and sleep took him swiftly, like a falling sword.
Salaman had seen the assault on the City of Yissou so many times now in visions that the actual event, as it descended upon the city, seemed overfamiliar to him and roused little emotion at first in his breast. Some weeks had passed since the sudden attack by that small advance troop of hjjk-folk, that ill-fated band of forerunners; and every day since then Salaman had gone up on the high ridge with Weiawala and Thaloin to twine and cast forth his mind so that he could observe the advance of the oncoming army. Now they were almost here; and now they could be seen without the aid of second sight.
Bruikkos was the first to spy them — for lately Harruel had had sentries watching all day and all night on the rim of the crater.
“Hjjks!” he cried, running pell-mell down the crater trail into the city. “Here they come! Millions of them!”
Salaman nodded. There might have been a cold stone in his breast. He felt nothing. No fear, no joy of battle, no sense of prophecy fulfilled. Nothing. Nothing. He had lived through this moment too many times already.
Weiawala, trembling against him, said, “What will happen to us? Will we all die, Salaman?”
He shook his head. “No, love. We will each kill ten thousand thousand hjjks, and the city will be saved.” He spoke in a flat, unemotional way. “Where is my spear? Give me some wine, sweet Weiawala. Wine makes Harruel fight better; it may be the thing for me also.”
“The hjjks!” came the hoarse cry from without. Bruikkos was banging on doors, pounding on walls. “The hjjks are coming now! They’re here! They’re here!”
Salaman took a deep pull of the dark, cool wine, strapped his sword about his waist, seized hold of his spear. Weiawala too picked up weapons: there was no one who would not fight today, except the small children, who had been put in one place to look after each other. Together Salaman and Weiawala left their little house.