On a cool bright winter day when the last storm had blown itself out to the east and the next had not yet come sweeping in from the western sea, Hresh went once more to explore the grim building he called the Citadel. It was Taniane’s idea, and she went with him. Lately she had begun to accompany him on many of his journeys. Koshmar seemed to have no objection these days to his going into the ruins without a warrior to protect him. And Hresh had quickly come to accept Taniane’s participation in the group of Seekers. There was still something about being close to her that made him uneasy and uncomfortable; but at the same time he felt a curious giddy pleasure at being alone with her in the distant reaches of the city.
Hresh had not wanted to return to the Citadel. He thought he knew now what it was, and he feared to know that he was right. But the strange building fascinated Taniane, and she insisted again and again, until at last he agreed. He dared not tell her why he had been keeping away. And having agreed to go, he resolved to force the mystery of the Citadel to its depths, no matter what the consequences. Tell her nothing, but let her see. Let her draw her own conclusions. Perhaps the time had come, he thought, to share some of the terrible truth that he had kept pent within himself. And perhaps Taniane was the one to try to share it with.
The path to the Citadel was a difficult one, paved with blocks of gray flagstone that had been heaved this way and that by time and earthquakes and made slippery during the winter rains by a thick furry coating of green algae. Twice Taniane lost her footing and Hresh caught her, once by the upper arm, once by her haunch and the small of her back; and his fingers tingled strangely from the contact each time. There was a stirring in his loins and in his sensing-organ. He found himself wishing she would slip a third time, but she did not.
They reached the top and stepped out onto the headland where the Citadel stood in solitary majesty overlooking Vengiboneeza. Hresh crossed the carpet of short dense thick-bladed grass that surrounded the building, going to the edge and looking out. The vast sprawl of the city lay before him, shining in the pale, milky winter light. He looked down at the broken white stubs of buildings, at delicate airy bridges that had collapsed into mounds of rubble, at roadbeds of gleaming stone shot through with livid greens and blues extending to the horizon. Taniane stood close by him, breathing harshly from the climb.
“I saw all this as it was when it was alive,” Hresh said after a moment.
“Yes. Haniman told me.”
“It was absolutely amazing. So many things happening at once, so many people, such energy. Amazing. And very depressing.”
“Depressing?”
“I never understood what a real civilization was, before I saw the Great World. Or realized how far we are from having one. I thought it would be just like a cocoon, only a lot bigger, with more people doing more things. But that isn’t it, Taniane. There’s a difference in quality as well as quantity. There’s a certain point at which a civilization takes off, where it begins to generate its own energy, it grows of its own accord and not simply from the actions of the people who make it up. Do you understand me at all? The tribe is too small to be like that. We have our little things to do, and we do them, and the next day we do them all over again, but there isn’t the same sense of possibility, of transformation, of exploding growth. You need more people for that. Not just hundreds. You need thousands — millions—”
“We’ll have that someday, Hresh.”
He shrugged. “It’s a long way off. There’s so much work that has to be done first.”
“The Great World also started small.”
“Yes,” he said. “I keep telling myself that.”
“So that’s what’s been troubling your soul so much, since you came back from seeing the things you saw?”
“No,” said Hresh. “That wasn’t it. It was something else.”
“Can you tell me?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t tell anyone.”
She looked at him a long while without speaking. Then she smiled and touched him lightly on the shoulder. He shivered at the touch, and hoped she had not noticed.
He turned and studied the Citadel for a time. Those bare massive greenish-black walls, those gigantic stone columns, that low, heavy, sloping roof: it was a building that spoke of power and strength, of arrogance, even, of colossal self-assurance. Hresh closed his eyes and saw the tall pale furless humans of his vision drifting ghostlike through these doorless walls at the touch of a finger, as though the walls were walls of mist. How had they done that? How could he?
“Turn your back,” he said.
“Why?”
“I have to do something that I don’t want you to see.”
“You’re becoming so mysterious, Hresh.”
“Please,” he said.
“Are you going to do something with the Wonderstone?”
“Yes,” he said, irritated.
“You don’t need to hide it from me.”
“Please, Taniane.”
She made a wry face and turned her back to him. He reached into his sash and drew forth the Barak Dayir, and after a moment’s uneasy hesitation he touched the tip of his sensing-organ to it, and heard its potent music rising through the chasms and abysses of the air to fill his soul. He began to tremble, He caught the force of the stone and tuned it and focused it, and thick whirls of red and yellow and white began to shine on the walls of the Citadel. Gateways, he thought.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to go inside. Give me your hand, Taniane.”
She stared at him strangely and put her hand into his. The Wonderstone so amplified his sensations that her palm was like fire against his skin, and he could scarcely endure the intensity of the contact; but he found a way of tolerating it, and with a gentle tug he led her toward the nearest of the whirls of light. It yielded to his approach and he stepped through the wall without difficulty, drawing Taniane along behind him.
Inside was an immense empty space, illuminated by a dim ghostly light that sprang up everywhere without apparent source. They might have been in a cavern half the width of the world, and half a mountain high.
“Yissou’s eyes,” Taniane whispered. “Where are we?”
“A temple, I think.”
“Whose?”
Hresh pointed. “Theirs.”
Humans were moving to and fro in the air high above them, light as dust-motes. They seemed to emerge from the walls, and they traveled across the upper reaches of the huge room by twos and threes, evidently deep in conversation, to disappear on the far side. They gave no sign that they were aware of the presence of Taniane and Hresh.
“Dream-Dreamers!” she murmured. “Are they real?”
“Visions, probably. From another time. From when the city was still alive. Or else we’re dreaming them.” He was still clutching the Barak Dayir in his hand. He dropped it back into its pouch and slipped the pouch into his sash. At once the ghostly figures overhead vanished, and there was nothing to be seen but the four rough bare stone walls, glowing dully in the faint spectral light that they themselves emanated.
“What happened?” Taniane asked. “Where did they go?”
“It was the Wonderstone that let us see them. They weren’t really here, only their images. Shining across thousands of years.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” said Hresh.
He took a few cautious steps, going to the wall at the place where they had entered and running his hand over the stone. It felt utterly unyielding, and faintly warm, like the Barak Dayir itself. A shiver ran along his spine. There was nothing in the great room, nothing at all, no shattered images, no toppled thrones, no sign of any occupants.
“I feel peculiar here,” Taniane said. “Let’s go.”
“All right.”
He turned away from her and drew forth the Wonderstone again, not bothering to hide it from her this time. She stared and made the sign of Yissou. The moment he touched it the walls began to blaze with light once more, and the eerie procession of the airborne humans was restored. He saw Taniane gaping at them in wonder. “Dream-Dreamers,” she said again. “They look just like him. Ryyig. Who were they?”