“I think so, yes. But she’s never going to come to you first. You have to be the one who does the asking.”
He nodded. She could see the thoughts running wildly around behind his eyes.
“I will, then! And I thank you, Koshmar! I will twine with her! I will!”
He started swiftly away from her, glowing, impatient.
“Hresh?”
“Yes?” he said, halting.
“Ask her, but not today, you understand? Not while the idea’s still bubbling like this in your mind. Stop and think about it first. Stop and think.”
Hresh smiled. “Yes,” he said. “You’re a shrewd one, Koshmar. You understand these things so much better than I do.” He took her hands in his and squeezed them. Then he went running away across the plaza.
Koshmar watched him go. He is so wise, she thought. And yet still so young, still practically a boy, so earnest, so foolish. But everything will work out well for him.
It is so easy, she thought, to help others in these matters.
She caught sight of Torlyri standing near the corner of the temple. A Helmet Man had appeared from somewhere and was trying to talk to her, the two of them conducting an animated pantomime, with much laughter and, so it seemed, very little communication. Torlyri appeared to be enjoying herself, at any rate. She was beginning now, Koshmar saw, to come out of the deep depression that had engulfed her after Lakkamai’s departure. Her duties as offering-woman must be a great consolation to her, not only the ritual things but the giving of comfort to others, the easing of the fears and confusions that the Breaking Apart and the coming of the Helmet People had caused.
“Look at them!” Koshmar said to Boldirinthe, who had come by just then, and gestured toward Torlyri and the Helmet Man. “I haven’t seen her look that lively in months.”
“Can she speak their language now?” Boldirinthe asked.
Koshmar chuckled. “I don’t think either one has the slightest idea of what the other one’s trying to say. But that doesn’t matter. She’s enjoying herself, isn’t she? I like that. I like to see Torlyri happy.”
“Helping others lifts you out of yourself,” said Boldirinthe. “It takes your mind from your own pain.”
“Yes,” said Koshmar. “It does that.”
The Helmet Man was one she had not noticed before, a lean and sturdy one something like that first one, the scout, of long ago. Perhaps this was his brother. There was a long bare place on his right shoulder going around to his neck, as though he had had some terrible wound when he was much younger. His helmet was less frightful than most, no horns on it, no jutting blades, no glaring monsters, only a simple high-crowned bowl of gilded metal covered by thin red plates in the form of rounded leaves.
Koshmar watched them for a little while. Then she turned away.
Harruel’s voice spoke within her, as it so often did when she least wanted to hear it, saying, “The rule of women is over. From this day forth I am king. Who will join with me in founding a great kingdom far from here? Who will go with Harruel? Who? Who?”
I think I will go to my chapel now, Koshmar thought. I think I will light the fire and breathe the aromatic fumes, and speak now with Thekmur or Nialli.
It was the Barak Dayir that had opened the way between Hresh and Noum om Beng.
Obviously he had known what it was from the first moment he had seen it. That blaze of excitement, the only excitement Hresh had ever seen Noum om Beng display, was evidence of that. To the old Helmet Man the Wonderstone was a gift of the gods — was, in a way, a thing that was divine in itself. He knelt before it a long while; and then at last he turned to Hresh with a long cool inquiring look that said, as if in words, Do you know how to make use of this thing?
By way of answer Hresh pantomimed taking hold of the Wonderstone with his sensing-organ. With gestures he mimicked a sudden eruption of energy and perception in the air around his head. Noum om Beng indicated that he should do that now; and Hresh, after a moment’s hesitation, enfolded the Barak Dayir in the curling tip of his sensing-organ and felt its revelatory power immediately possess and expand his spirit.
An instant later Noum om Beng put his own sensing-organ close to Hresh’s — not touching it, but so close that there was barely a flicker of light visible in the open space between — and a joining of their minds took place.
It was not like the joining that comes of second sight, nor that of twining, nor even like anything Hresh had previously known in his experiments with the Wonderstone. Noum om Beng’s mind did not lie open to his. But he was able to took within it, the way one may look within a treasure-chamber from the outside. Hresh saw what seemed to his mind to be compartments inside, and what seemed to be sealed parcels meticulously arrayed within the compartments. He knew that these were not actual compartments, not actual parcels, only mind-images, mind-equivalents.
A bleak chill wind blew from the entrance to Noum om Beng’s mind. It was an icy place, as cold as the dark ancient caverns below the old tribal cocoon where Hresh had occasionally wandered when he was a child.
“This is for you,” said Noum om Beng. And gravely he handed Hresh one of the smallest of the neatly wrapped packages from one of the uppermost compartments. “Open it,” Noum om Beng said. “Go on. Open it! Open it!” Hresh’s trembling fingers plucked at the wrapping. Finally he managed to pull the package apart. Within lay a box carved from a single gleaming translucent green jewel. Noum om Beng gestured brusquely. Hresh lifted the lid of the box.
Jewel and wrapping and treasure-chamber and all else vanished at once. Hresh found himself squatting alone in darkness, blinking, confused. The Barak Dayir was tightly clutched in his sensing-organ. After a time he became aware of Noum om Beng sitting quietly on the far side of the room, watching him.
“Release the amplifier,” Noum om Beng said. “It will injure you if you continue to hold it.”
“The — amplifier?”
“What you call the Barak Dayir. Let go of it! Unwind your stupid tail from it, boy!”
Noum om Beng’s voice, thin and sharp and reedy, crackled and snapped like a whip. Hresh obeyed at once, uncurling his sensing-organ and letting the Wonderstone go skittering to the floor.
“Pick it up, boy! Put it back in its pouch!”
He realized that Noum om Beng was speaking in the Beng tongue, and that he was able to understand what Noum om Beng was saying, even without making use of the Barak Dayir.
He knew the meaning of the words and he knew how each word the old man uttered was related to the words about it.
Somehow Noum om Beng had sent the Helmet People’s language all at once into Hresh’s head. With trembling hands Hresh put the stone away. The old man continued to stare. His strange red eyes were cold, dispassionate, severe. There is no love anywhere in him, Hresh thought. Not for me, not for anyone. Not even for himself.
“You called it an amplifier?” Hresh said, using Beng words that came readily to his lips as he summoned them. “I have never heard that word before. What does it mean? And what is it, our Wonderstone? Where did it come from? What is it meant to do ?”
“You will call me Father.”
“How can I do that? I am the son of Samnibolon.”
“So you are. But you will call me Father. Hresh-of-the-answers, that is what you call yourself, eh? But you have few answers in your head, boy, and many questions.”
“Hresh-full-of-questions is what they called me when I was younger.”
“And so you still are. Come here. Closer. Closer.”
Hresh crouched at the old man’s feet. Noum om Beng studied him a long while in silence. Then, suddenly, astonishingly, his clawlike hand lashed out and struck Hresh across the cheek, just as Harruel had done that time on the Day of the Breaking Apart. The blow was totally unexpected, and it had unexpected force behind it. Hresh’s head snapped back sharply. Tears came to his eyes, and anger just after the tears, so that it was all he could do to keep himself from instantly returning the blow. He clenched his fists, he tightened his jaws, he clamped his knees together, until the spasm of rage had passed.