“I remember the day you were born,” Thu-Kimnibol said in wonderment. “Hresh and I stayed up all night together, the night before, and—”
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk about what you remember. Don’t talk about when I was young.”
He laughed. “But am I just supposed to pretend, Nialli, that I’m not—”
“Yes. Pretend, if that’s what you have to do. Just don’t remind me that you were already grown up when I was born. All right? All right, Thu-Kimnibol?”
“But — Nialli—”
Then he laughed.
“Come here,” she said.
She pulled him close. He enveloped her in his arms. He was all over her, hands, lips, sensing-organ, touching, stroking, nibbling, murmuring her name. He was like a great river, sweeping over her, carrying her away. And she was letting herself be carried away. She had never expected anything like this. Nor had he, she guessed.
She wondered if she’d ever get used to the immensity of him. He was so huge, so powerful, so very different from Kundalimon. How strange that was, to be swallowed up in him this way. But also very pleasing. I think I can get used to it, given a little time. Yes, she thought, as she felt him trembling against her, and began to tremble herself. Yes, I definitely can get used to it.
The shape of the land was beginning to change. For the past few days he had had a ridge of low hills to his left and another to his right, with what seemed like an endless plain stretching between them. But now the two ridges were converging to form a narrow enclosed valley with no exit at its far end. Hresh halted beside a stream bordered with thick gray rushes to consider what he should do. It seemed pointless to proceed into that apparent cul-de-sac. Best to fall back, perhaps, and look for some way across the hills to the east.
“No,” came a voice that was not a voice, speaking words that were not words. “You will do better to go forward.”
“In truth, yes. It is the only way.” A second voice, addressing him in the silent speech of the mind.
Startled, Hresh looked around. After these days of unbroken solitude the voices had the impact of sudden thunder.
At first he saw nothing. But then he detected a flash of purple in the depths of the streamside rushes. The slender tapering snout of a caviandi, and then another, rose into view. Coming now from their hiding places, the lithe little fish-hunting creatures walked toward him unafraid, holding up their hands with delicate fingers outspread.
“I am She-Thikil,” said one.
“I am He-Kanto,” the other declared.
“Hresh is my name.”
“Yes. We know that.” She-Thikil made a soft small sound of friendship and put her hand into his. Her fingers were thin and hard, quick fish-catching fingers. He-Kanto took his other hand. And from them both came the invitation to communion of the sort that he had had in his own garden with the other pair, his captives, He-Lokim, She-Kanzi.
“Yes,” Hresh said.
Their souls came rushing toward his, and a surge of warmth and friendship leaped from them to him.
So kindness to one caviandi was kindness to all. When he had opened himself in communion to the two caviandis in his garden he had unknowingly enrolled himself in league with the entire caviandi race. These two had followed his wagon for days, secretly prodding the xlendi along the right path, the one that led to the Nest. Steering him away from places where perils lay hidden, guiding him toward grazing-grounds where beast and master could find fresh water and provender. His journey, Hresh realized, had been far less random than he had thought.
And now he knew he must not turn aside. The true path was ahead of him, into the narrowing valley.
Gravely he thanked the caviandis for their help. He had one last glimpse of their great dark shining eyes, gleaming at him from the tops of the rushes. Then the sleek little creatures sank down into that dense thicket of reeds and disappeared.
He returned to the wagon. He nudged the xlendi forward with a quick touch of second sight.
As the canyon narrowed, the stream that ran down its center grew swifter, grew wild and fierce, until by twilight it was sweeping along beside Hresh with a steady pounding roar. Looking ahead, he saw that the canyon was indeed open at the far end, but the opening was a mere slit through which the stream must be hurtling with cataract force.
Had the caviandis betrayed him? It seemed impossible. But how could he pass through that crack of an opening with his wagon?
He went onward, all the same.
Clearly now Hresh heard the thousand echoing and answering voices of the cataract. Overhead a great blue star had appeared in the sharp cool air and its reflection glittered in the stream. The path was so narrow now that there barely was room for the wagon beside the turbulent water. Here the ground trended slightly upward, which must mean that the bed of the stream cut ever deeper as it approached the opening ahead.
“Here he is at last,” said a dry voice that was like a whitening bone, a silent voice, a mind-voice. “The inquisitive one. The child of questions.”
Hresh looked up. Outlined against the deepening darkness of the sky was the angular figure of a hjjk, standing motionless and erect, holding in one of its many hands the shaft of a spear longer even than itself.
“Child?” Hresh said, and laughed. “A child, am I? No, friend. No. I’m an old man. A very weary old man. Touch my mind more carefully, if you doubt me, and you’ll see.”
“The child denies that he is a child,” said a second hjjk, appearing on the opposite side of the cliff that loomed above him. “But the child is a child all the same. Whatever he may think.”
“As you wish. I am a child.”
And indeed he was: for suddenly time fell inward on itself, and he was little wiry Hresh-full-of-questions again, scrambling hither and yon around the cocoon, plaguing everyone with his need to know, driving Koshmar and Torlyri to distraction, vexing his mother Minbain, irritating his playmates. All the weariness of the latter days dropped away from him. He was alive with his old furious energy and fearlessness, Hresh the chatterer, Hresh the seeker, Hresh the smallest and most eager for knowledge of all the tribe, who had hovered again and again by the hatch of the cocoon, dreaming of darting through one day into the unknown wonderful world that lay outside.
The hjjks began to descend the cliff, picking their way toward him over the jagged rock. He waited serenely for them, admiring the agility with which they moved and the way the light of the great blue star, which he realized now was only the Moon, glinted on their rigid, shining yellow-and-black shells. Five, six, seven of them came scrambling down. Not since his childhood had he seen a hjjk. He had thought them fearsome and ugly then; but now he saw the strange beauty of their lean, tapered forms.
The xlendi stood quite still, as if lost in xlendi dreams. One of the hjjks touched it lightly along its long jaw with a bristly forearm, and it turned at once and began to go forward. There was a dark cavern here, a mere crevice that Hresh had not noticed, which led through the heart of the cliff. Starlight was visible ahead. Hresh could hear the distant roar of the cataract as the xlendi plodded onward.
After a time they emerged onto a ledge on the cliff’s outer face. To Hresh’s right the stream, a milky torrent now, erupted through the crack in the rock and went plunging outward into space to land in a foaming basin far below. To his left a winding path led down the side of the cliff into a broad open prairie in which, in the darkness, nothing of consequence could be seen.
“The Queen has been expecting you,” a dry silent hjjk-voice said, as the wagon began its descent into that dark realm beyond.