It was sad to think of never having a mate at all. Though if that was the price of being chieftain, perhaps it wasn’t too much to pay.
“Does the chieftain really never take a mate?” Taniane asked Torlyri.
“Maybe long ago,” Torlyri said. “You could ask Hresh about it. But certainly no chieftain I’ve ever heard of has had one.”
“Is it the law, or just the custom?”
Torlyri smiled. “There’s very little difference. But why do you ask? Do you think Koshmar ought to take a mate?”
“Koshmar?” Taniane burst into laughter. The thought of Koshmar with a mate was absurd. “No, of course not!”
“Well, you asked.”
“I was just speaking generally. Now that so many of our customs have changed, I wondered if that would too. Almost everyone is mating now, not just the breeders. Maybe a time will come when the chieftain mates also.”
“Very likely it will,” said Torlyri. “But not, I think, Koshmar.”
“Would that trouble you, if Koshmar mated?”
“We are twining-partners. That wouldn’t change, if she were to mate. Or if I were. The twining bond remains strong always, regardless. But Koshmar is not at all the sort to give herself to a man.”
“No. Not at all.” Taniane paused a moment. “Are you, Torlyri?”
Torlyri smiled. “I confess that I’ve been asking myself the same thing lately.”
“The offering-woman is another one who by custom never has mated, am I right? Like the chieftain, like the chronicler. But everything’s changing so fast. The offering-woman might take a mate too now. And even the chronicler.”
Torlyri’s eyes sparkled with gentle amusement. “Even the chronicler, yes. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Taniane looked away. “I was speaking in general terms.”
“Forgive me. I thought you might have some special reason.”
“No. No! Do you think I’d have Hresh even if he asked me? That weird boy, who pokes his nose in dusty places all day long, and never says a word to anyone any more—”
“Hresh is unusual, yes. But so are you, Taniane.”
“Am I?” she said, startled. “How?”
“You are, that’s all. There’s more to you than I think most people suspect.”
“Do you think so? Do you?” She considered the idea. Unusual? Me? Taniane preened herself. She knew it was childish and foolish to react with such obvious pleasure; but no one had ever praised her before, and to hear such things from Torlyri — from Torlyri —
Impulsively she embraced the older woman. They held each other tightly a moment. Then Taniane let go and backed away.
“Oh, Torlyri, I do hope you find the mate you want, if that’s what you’ve decided to do.”
“Wait, now!” cried Torlyri, laughing. “When did I say I had decided to do anything? Only that I was beginning to ask myself if such a thing was proper for me. That’s all.”
“You should mate,” said Taniane. “Everyone should. The chieftain should — the next chieftain, the one after Koshmar. The chronicler should. In this New Springtime no one should be alone. Don’t you think so, Torlyri? Everything is changing! Everything must change!”
“Yes,” Torlyri said. “Everything is changing.”
Afterward Taniane wondered if she had been too open, too naive. Things said to Torlyri might well go straight back to Koshmar; and Taniane found that thought troubling.
She shrugged and put her hands to her body. She slipped them over her smooth strong flanks and up over the firm little new breasts nestling in her lustrous auburn fur. Her growing body ached. A horde of unanswered questions bubbled in her mind. Time would answer them all, she thought. She needed now to study the art of waiting.
7
The Sounds of the Storm
The plaza of the three dozen blue towers in Emakkis Boldirinthe never left Hresh’ mind, waking or dreaming. Often he awakened, shivering and sweaty, with that scene of Vengiboneeza alive once more glowing and throbbing in his soul, the crowded marketplace, those beings of the Six Peoples jostling against one another.
But it was many weeks before he would allow himself to return to it. He knew he was not ready. With all his strength he held himself back.
Eagerness and curiosity ate at him like a ravening worm. But he did not go to the towers. It was hard keeping away, but he did not go. He went everywhere else, anywhere, taking new turns and byways through the city. He found a terrace of radiant pools, glimmering and warm. He found an array of tall slender stone obelisks set in a diamond pattern around an onyx-rimmed pit of utter darkness, and when he dropped a rock into the pit it fell and fell and fell, without ever striking bottom. In the district of Dawinno Weiawala he found a somber brooding greenish-black edifice of enormous size that he called the Citadel, unlike any other building in the city, standing alone on a lofty greenswarded hillside and rising above Vengiboneeza like a guardian. Its length was far greater than its height, its walls were without ornament except for ten huge columns running along each of its two long sides to support its steep-vaulted roof, and it had neither doors nor windows, which made it seem blind and unapproachable, an inward-looking structure. Its function was not only unknown but, apparently, unknowable, though plainly it had been a structure of some high significance. Hresh could find no way of entering it, though he tried several times. Such discoveries as these led him nowhere useful.
“Why haven’t you gone back to that vault yet?” asked Taniane, who had heard of it from Haniman.
“I’m not yet ready,” Hresh said. “First I must master the Barak Dayir.” And gave her a look that closed the discussion.
That was the problem: the Barak Dayir. Without it there was no point in returning, for he was convinced that only through the mastery of the Wonderstone could he solve the riddle of that machine of visions in the vault beneath the tower. But the Wonderstone made him uneasy — he, Hresh-full-of-questions! — as did few other things. He had never actually seen it. Like the rest of the People he knew of it by repute, that there was some fabulous instrument that the chronicler kept, made of star-stuff, which had extraordinary properties but which would snuff the life of anyone who used it wrongly. Thaggoran had called it the key to the deepest realms of understanding; but Thaggoran had taken care not to let Hresh see him using it, careless though he sometimes was in guarding the other secrets of his office, and Thaggoran too had spoken of its perils, saying that he did not dare to resort to it often. Since becoming chronicler himself Hresh had not yet been able to bring himself even to look upon it. Unable to find in his books of chronicles any sort of guide to its function or proper use, he left it alone. When it came to the Barak Dayir his natural curiosity gave way to his fear of dying too soon, of dying before he had learned all that he hoped to learn.
Now at last Hresh took the velvet pouch from the casket of the chronicles for the first time, and held it cupped in both his hands. It was small, small enough to fit in the palm of one hand, and it felt faintly warm.
Star-stuff, they said. What did that mean?
He had not known what a star was until the Time of Coming Forth, when he had seen them for the first time in the sky, those magical bright points of light burning in the darkness. Globes of fire is what they are, Thaggoran had said. If they were closer to us they would blaze with the heat of the sun. Was the Wonderstone a piece of a star?