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.