But as he came in contact with her Salaman felt something strange, something disturbing, something utterly unfamiliar, reaching his awakened senses from a great distance.
“Did you feel that?” he asked, pulling away from her.
“What?”
“A sound. Like thunder. When our sensing-organs touched.”
“I felt nothing but you near me, Salaman.”
“A booming in the sky. Or in the ground, I wasn’t sure which. And a feeling of menace, of danger.”
“I felt nothing, Salaman.”
He reached for her sensing-organ again with his.
“Well? Do you—”
“Shhh, Weiawala!”
“Pardon me!”
“Please. Just let me hear.”
She nodded curtly, looking injured. In the silence that followed he listened again, drawing on the energies of her sensing-organ to enhance the range and sensitivity of his own.
Thunder in the southern hills? But the day was clear and fine.
Drumbeats?
Hooves against the ground? A vast herd of beasts on the march?
Everything was too faint, too indistinct. There was only the barest hint, a subtle vibration, a feeling of wrongness. Perhaps by second sight he could detect more. But Weiawala was losing patience. Her sensing-organ slid up and down along his, blanketing his perceptions in a torrent of desire. Perhaps it was just his imagination, he thought. Perhaps all he was picking up was the sound of ants moving in an underground tunnel nearby. He put the matter out of his mind.
Right at that moment, with Weiawala hot and trembling against him, it was impossible to worry about distant thunder on a clear day, or the imaginary sound of far-off hoofbeats. Twining, any twining, even a tepid twining with mild-souled Weiawala, was an irresistible thing. He turned to her. Together they sank to the ground. His arms enfolded her and their sensing-organs met and their minds came flooding into union.
Torlyri found Hresh in his room at the temple, poring over the books of the chronicles. She made an appropriate sound as she entered — one did not take the chronicler unawares while he had the holy books out of their casket — and he looked about at her strangely, almost guiltily, jamming the book out of sight with curious haste. As though I would presume to spy on the chronicler’s secrets! Torlyri thought.
“What is it?” he asked, sounding edgy.
“Am I disturbing you? I can come back another time.”
“Only entering some minor historical details,” Hresh said. “Nothing of any concern.” His tone was airy, elaborately casual. “Is there something I can do for you, Torlyri?”
“Yes. Yes.” She took a few steps closer to him. “Teach me the words that the Helmet People use. Show me how to speak with the Bengs.”
His eyes widened. “Ah. Of course.”
“Will you do that?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Torlyri, I will. Certainly. Only let me have another few weeks more—”
“Now,” she said.
“Ah,” he said again, as though she had struck him below the heart, and gave her such a startled look that it made her smile.
Torlyri was not in the habit of issuing orders, and plainly her brisk tone had caught him off guard. She stood watching him steadily, sternly, yielding none of the sudden advantage that she had won. Hresh, looking uncomfortable, seemed to be considering his response with unusual care, rejecting this possibility and that one. She continued to study him with uncharacteristic sternness, standing very close to him so that he could feel the size and strength of her.
Finally he said, looking a little downcast, “All right. I think I know enough of the language by now. Maybe I’ll be able to transmit it to you in a way that will make sense. Yes. Yes, I’m sure I can.”
“Now?”
“Right this minute, you mean?”
“Yes,” she said. “Unless you have urgent duties just now.”
He considered that too. “No,” he said after another long pause. “We can do it now, Torlyri.”
“I’m very grateful. Will it take long?”
“Not long, no.”
“Very good. Shall we do it in here?”
“No,” Hresh said. “In your twining-chamber.”
“What?”
“By twining, that’s how we’ll do it. It’ll be the quickest way. And the best, wouldn’t you say?”
It was Torlyri’s turn to be startled now. But as offering-woman she had twined with Hresh before; she had twined with everyone in the tribe; it was not a difficult thing for her. So she took him to her twining-chamber and once again they lay down together and embraced, and their sensing-organs interwove and their souls became one. On their other twining, his twining-day, she had felt great strangeness in him, and the intricacy of his mind, and a loneliness within him that perhaps even he did not acknowledge; and now she felt these things once again, but intensified, as if he were in pain. Forgetting her own needs, she wanted to enfold Hresh in love and warmth, and ease his sorrow. But that was not something he meant to allow. They had other purposes this day. Quickly he slammed down a barrier to screen his own feelings — Torlyri had not known it was possible to do such a thing, to cut your own self off so fully from your twining-partner; but of course Hresh was unlike anyone else — and then, hidden behind that impenetrable wall, he reached out to her and, using the twining communion as a bridge, began in a businesslike way to instruct her in the language of the Bengs.
Afterward, when the spell had ended and their souls were separate again, he spoke to her in Beng and she understood, and replied to him in the same language.
“There you are,” he said. “Now you have the language too.”
Sly Hresh! Of course he had known the Beng tongue perfectly for a long while. That was obvious to her now. Koshmar was right: Hresh had merely been holding back, feigning the need for further study of it, so that he would be the only one in possession of the secret. Torlyri had seen him cling to little secrets like that before. Perhaps it was in the nature of chroniclers to make mysteries out of the things they knew, she thought, so that the tribe would depend all the more upon them for special wisdom.
But he had not refused to teach her. And now she had achieved what she had come to him to achieve. Now she had equipped herself to do the one thing she dreaded most, which was to go to the Beng with the scarred shoulder and tell him of her need for him, of — was it real, she wondered? Could it be? — her love for him.
When he was done with Torlyri Hresh returned to his own room and sat quietly for a time, scarcely even thinking, simply letting his spirit recover from the drain on its energies to which he had subjected it. Then he rose and went outside. The plaza was empty and the late afternoon sun, still high in the west on this summer day, seemed swollen and sluggish as it dipped slowly toward the sea.
Without any goal in mind he began to walk quickly away from the settlement, to the north.
Long gone were the days when he bothered to ask Koshmar’s permission before going out into Vengiboneeza, or took the trouble to ask a warrior to accompany him. He went by himself, whenever he pleased, wherever he pleased. But it was unusual for him to leave the settlement this late in the day. He had never while alone spent a night away. Today, though, as he walked on and on and the shadows began to lengthen, he realized gradually that night was coming and he was still heading outward. That did not seem to be important. He kept walking.
Even now, after all the years Hresh had lived amidst these ruins, he had scarcely explored the whole of Vengiboneeza. The district where he was walking now — Friit Praheurt, he guessed, or perhaps it was Friit Thaggoran — was one that was almost entirely unfamiliar to him. The buildings were in poor repair, earthquake-battered and tumbled, with fallen facades and foundations awry, and he had to pick his way over heaps of chalky rubble, upturned building slabs, shapeless clumps of statuary. Now and again he saw the signs of Beng presence here: bits of colored ribbon to mark a trail, the star-shaped splotch of bright yellow paint that they put on the sides of buildings which they regarded as shrines, occasional odorous heaps of vermilion dung. But of Bengs themselves he saw none at all.