After another silence Konya said, “You would have slain them? When they have magic in their hands?”
“There’s magic in this spear, Konya.”
“But how can you slay what isn’t alive? The boy Hresh says they’re just artificials in the guise of sapphire-eyes, and not sapphire-eyes themselves.”
Harruel nodded distantly. He had lost interest in this debate. Narrowing his eyes against the moonlight, he stared at the frolicking monkeys, thinking thoughts of slaughter.
After a time he said, “This city is full of mysteries. I find it a troublesome place.”
“I find it hateful,” said Konya, with sudden surprising vehemence. “I hate it the way you hate the monkeys of the jungle.”
Harruel turned to him, eyes widening. “Do you?”
“It is a dead place. It has no soul.”
“No, it lives,” Harruel said. “It’s dead, I agree, but somehow it lives. I hate it as much as you, but not because it is dead. It has a strange kind of life that is not our kind of life. It has a soul that is not a soul like ours. And it’s for that that I hate it.”
“Dead or alive, I’d be glad to leave it tomorrow, Harruel. I would have been glad never to have seen it at all. We shouldn’t have come here in the first place.” Something in Konya’s tone made it seem as though he were seeking Harruel’s approval.
But Harruel shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not so, Konya. It was right to come. This city holds things that are important for us. You know what the chronicles say. In Vengiboneeza we will find ancient things of the sapphire-eyes that will help us to rule the world.”
“We’ve been here many months, and we’ve found nothing.”
With a shrug Harruel said, “Koshmar’s too timid. She lets only Hresh search, and no one else. A vast city, one small boy — no, we should all be out there every day, everyone seeking in the hidden places. The things are here. Sooner or later we’ll find them. And then we must take them and get out of this place. That’s the important thing, to leave once we have achieved what we came here to achieve.”
Konya said, “It seems to me that Koshmar is thinking of staying here forever.”
“Let her stay, then.”
“No. I mean she would have us all stay here. The city is becoming a new cocoon for her. She has no thought of leaving.”
“We must leave,” Harruel said. “The whole world is awaiting us. We are the new masters.”
“Even so, I think Koshmar—”
“Koshmar doesn’t matter any longer.”
Sudden amazement gleamed in Konya’s eyes. “What are you saying, Harruel?”
“What I’m saying is that we’ve come to this city for a purpose, which is to learn how to rule the world in the New Springtime, and we must strive with all our might to achieve that purpose. And then we must go forth so that we may continue to fulfill our destiny elsewhere. You hate this place. So do I. If Koshmar doesn’t, she can make it her home forever. When the time comes — and it must come soon — I will lead the way out of here.”
“And I will follow you,” Konya said.
“I know that you will.”
“Will you take all the others?”
“Only those who want to go,” said Harruel. “Only the strong and the bold. The others can stay here to the end of their days, for all I care.”
“So you will make yourself chieftain, then?”
Harruel shook his head. “Chieftain is a title out of the cocoon life. That life is ended. And chieftains are women. Koshmar can remain chieftain, if she likes, though she’ll have precious little tribe to be chieftain over. I will call myself by another name, Konya.”
“And what name will that be?”
“I will be called king,” said Harruel.
The mild weather that the tribe had enjoyed since first coming to Vengiboneeza ended abruptly, and there were three days of heavy winds out of the north and cold, sweeping rains. The sky turned black and stayed that way. Creatures of the sky were seen beating raggedly against the wind, vainly trying to journey to the westward and constantly being driven far to the south.
“A new death-star has struck the earth,” said Kalide to Delim. “The Long Winter is returning.”
Delim, carrying this to Cheysz, said that the rain, so she had heard, would soon turn to snow.
“We will all freeze,” said Cheysz to Minbain. “We need to seal things up the way the cocoon was sealed, or we will die when the Long Winter comes again.”
And Minbain, summoning Hresh, asked him what he knew of these things. “Has this been nothing but a false spring?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t we be storing food in the caverns beneath Vengiboneeza to tide us through the time of freezing?” Life in Vengiboneeza had been too easy, she said, a trap laid by the gods: now the sun would be blotted out for months or even years and they would all perish if they failed to take immediate steps. There was no way to return to the old cocoon; Vengiboneeza would have to be their refuge now. Even Vengiboneeza, grand though it was, might not be a fitting hiding place if the Long Winter were to fall upon the world once more. The sapphire-eyes folk had been unable to survive here; would the tribe fare any better?
Hresh smiled. “You worry too much, Mother. There’s no danger of freezing. The weather has changed for the worse just now, and after a little while it will change for the better again.”
But the rumor had traveled even to Koshmar, growing more ominous along the way. She too sent for Hresh. “Is this truly the coming of the Long Winter again?” she asked him, looking somber, grim, head drawn in close against her shoulders, eyes hooded and hard. “Is it true that the sun will not shine again for a thousand years?”
“It is only a bad storm, I think.”
“If it’s like this in sheltered Vengiboneeza, it must be much worse elsewhere.”
“Perhaps. But in a few days it’ll be warm here again, Koshmar. So I do believe.”
“You believe! You believe! Can you be sure, though? There must be some way of finding out.”
He gave her an uneasy look. Koshmar had built a fine nest for herself and Torlyri in this solid little building in the shadow of the great tower. There were fragrant hangings of woven rushes on the walls, and thick carpets of skins, and dried flowers everywhere. And yet the bitter wind now came whipping against the windows and down the air vents and brought a chill into the room. From the first, Koshmar had insisted that the Long Winter was over. She had invested all her soul in the abandonment of the cocoon and the making of the great trek to Vengiboneeza. It occurred to Hresh that something might crack within Koshmar if it turned out that she was wrong.
She wanted reassurance from him, her chronicler, her staff of wisdom. What could he tell her? He knew no more of winds and storms than anyone else. He had grown up in the cocoon, where no winds blew. Thaggoran, perhaps, might have read the portents and given Koshmar the truth of the situation. Thaggoran, steeped in the lore of the chronicles, had been equal to almost any situation. But Thaggoran had been old and wise. Hresh was young and clever, which was not at all the same.
There must be some way of finding out, Koshmar had said.
There was. The Barak Dayir might tell him; but in the weeks since he first had found the courage to pull the shining stone from its pouch and touch his sensing-organ to it, he had proceeded with unusual caution, extending his mastery over it in minute stages. He had learned how to bring it to life, and how to liberate the potent sweep of its music, and how to let its force approach the borders of his mind. But that was as far as he had dared to go. It was easy to see how the Wonderstone might engulf him, how it might submerge his mind entirely within the torrent of its incomprehensible power. Once he let himself be lost in that torrent there might be no returning. And so he had forced himself to resist the irresistible. He kept his mind alert, agile, defensive: he leaped back quickly whenever the song of the Barak Dayir became too guileful and tempting. Though he went a little deeper into it each time he drew forth the stone, he took care not to let it possess his spirit as he thought it was capable of doing; and therefore he knew that he was still far from attaining command of the mysterious instrument.