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.”