“As a chieftain’s words would, yes,” said Harruel.
“Then you already know about kingship,” Hresh said. “What more can I tell you?”
“Tell me that such a thing existed.”
“That there were men who were kings in the Great World?” Hresh shrugged. He had not studied these things. And even if he had, he doubted that he should be giving information about such matters to Harruel, or to anyone but Koshmar. The chronicles were here mainly for the guidance of the chieftain, not for the amusement of the tribesfolk. “I know little about kingship,” he said. “What you have said is perhaps the extent of it.”
“You can find more about it, can’t you?”
“There may be more in the chronicles,” said Hresh cautiously.
“Search it out, and tell me, then. It seems to me that kingship is something that should not have been forgotten. The Great World will be born again; and we must know how it was in the time of the Great World if we are to bring it to life a second time. Search your books, boy. Learn about the kings, and teach them to me.”
“You must not call me boy,” Hresh said.
Harruel laughed again, and this time his eyes were not twinkling.
“Search your books on these matters,” be said. “And teach me what you learn — old man. Chronicler.”
He stalked away. Hresh looked fearfully after him, thinking that this meant nothing but trouble, and probably danger. Worriedly he fondled Thaggoran’s amulet. That day he began to search out the meaning of kingship in the casket of books, and what he found confirmed what he had guessed.
Perhaps I should tell Koshmar about this, he thought.
But he did not; nor did he report anything back to Harruel on his research. Harruel made no further inquiries just then into the matter of kingship. The conversation remained a private matter between them, secret, festering.
Koshmar felt the beginning of defeat. If only Thaggoran were here to guide her! But Thaggoran was gone and her chronicler was a boy. Hresh was quick and eager, but he lacked Thaggoran’s depth of wisdom and familiarity with all the ages that had gone before.
She was coming to face the truth that she could not hope to sustain the trek much longer. The grumbling had begun again, and this time it was more heated. Already there were those, she knew, who said they were marching to no purpose. Harruel had emerged the leader of that faction. Let us settle down in some good fertile place and build us a village: so he was saying behind Koshmar’s back. Torlyri had overheard him haranguing four or five of the other men. In the cocoon it was unthinkable that the tribe would even consider countermanding a chieftain’s word, but they were no longer in the cocoon. Koshmar began to imagine herself cast down from power: not the savior of the reborn world but merely an overthrown chieftain.
If they deposed her, would they even let her live? These were all new thoughts. There were no traditions about the deposing of chieftains, or what to do with a deposed one afterward.
Koshmar had left behind, in the cocoon, that strip of glossy black stone that contained the spirits of the chieftains who had gone before her. All she had brought with her were their names, which she recited again and again; but perhaps the names had no strength without the stone, just as the stone had no strength without the names.
Thekmur,she thought. Nialli. Sismoil. Lirridon. If you still are with me, guide me now!
The departed chieftains did not make themselves known to her. Koshmar turned to Hresh for counsel. With him, though with no one else, she had ceased to pretend that she was following the clear mandate of the gods.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“We must ask for help,” the boy replied.
“Of whom?”
“Why, of the creatures we meet as we go along.”
Koshmar was skeptical. But anything was worth trying; and so from that day onward, whenever they encountered some being that seemed to have a mind, no matter how simple, she would have it seized and would soothe it until it grew calm, and then, by second-sight and sensing-organ contact, she would strive to get from it the knowledge she needed.
The first was an odd round fleshy creature, a head with no body and a dozen plump little legs. Vivid ripplings of excitement ran through it when Koshmar plumbed its mind for images of Vengiboneeza, but those ripplings were all that was forthcoming from it. From a trio of gawky stilt-legged blue furry things that seemed to share a single mind came, when they were asked about cities in the west, a pattern of thought that was like an intense buzzing and snorting. And a hideous hook-clawed forest creature twice the height of a man, all mouth and jutting nose and foul-smelling orange hair, gave a wild raucous laugh and flashed the image of lofty towers wrapped in strangling vines.
“This is of no use,” the chieftain said to Hresh.
“But how interesting these animals are, Koshmar.”
“Interesting! We’ll die a hundred deaths in this wilderness and you’ll find that interesting too, won’t you?”
All the same, she had Hresh give each of these creatures names before they were released, and had him write the names down in his book. The giving of names was important, Koshmar believed. These must all be new beings, beasts that had come into existence since the time of the Great World, which was why there was nothing in the chronicles about them. Giving them names was the beginning of attaining power over them. She still clung to the hope that she, and her tribe through her, would be the masters of this New Springtime world. Thus the giving of names. But even as Hresh spoke the names, each time after deep cogitation, she felt a sense of the futility of the act. They were lost in this land. They were without purpose or direction.
The deepest pessimism invaded Koshmar’s soul.
Then, as the tribe was going around the rim of a huge black lake in the midst of a zone of dank boggy land, the dark waters stirred and boiled wildly and out of the depths a bizarre colossus began slowly to rise, a thing of enormous height but so flimsily constructed that it seemed a gust of wind could shatter it — pale limbs that were no more than thin struts, a body that was only a filmy tube interminably extended. As this thing rose up and up until it half blotted out the sky in front of them Koshmar threw her arm across her face in astonishment, and Harruel roared and brandished his spear, and some of the more timid members of the tribe began to flee.
But Hresh, holding his ground, called out, “This must be one of the water-strider folk. It’s harmless, I think.”
Higher and yet higher it mounted, erupting from the lake to a height ten or fifteen times that of the tallest man. There it halted, hovering far above them, balancing with wide-splayed feet on the surface of the water, which it seemed barely to disturb. It peered down out of a row of glaring green-gold eyes, surveying them in a melancholy way.
“You! Water-strider!” Hresh shouted. “Tell us how to find the city of the sapphire-eyes!”
And, amazingly, the huge creature replied at once in the silent speech of the mind, saying, “Why, it lies just two lakes and a stream from here, in the sunset direction. Everyone knows that! But what good will it do you to go there?” The water-strider laughed in horrible clangorous tones, a shrill hysterical laugh, and began to fold itself, section upon section, down toward the lake. “What good? What good? What good?” It laughed again; and then it disappeared beneath the black water.
5
Vengiboneeza
On the afternoon of the day of the water-strider Threyne came to Torlyri, holding her hands to her sides, and announced that her time was upon her. Indeed Torlyri could see that it was true: the unborn was moving eagerly against the girl’s distended belly, and there were other signs of imminent birth.