Stunned and numbed, Hresh stared somberly at the dead man, unable even to cry. The loss was too great. He felt almost as if his own throat had been ripped out. After a time he managed a little dry choking sound, and then a sort of a sob. He could not move. He dared not even breathe. He wanted time to unhappen itself, this day to roll backward upon its foundations.
Finally he knelt and tremblingly touched the old man’s forehead, as if hoping that the knowledge that was packed so deeply behind it might leap from Thaggoran’s spirit to his at a touch, before Thaggoran had cooled. But Thaggoran’s spirit was gone.
It was beyond belief. Hresh had never known such a loss. His own father, Samnibolon, had been only a name to him, dead long ago. But this— this—
“Dawinno—” he began uncertainly.
Then the dammed flood of his feelings broke through. A terrible cry came welling up out of the depths of his body and he let it come forth, a great curdled furious wailing sound that almost tore him apart as it erupted from him. Tears poured down his cheeks, plastering his fur into damp spikes. He shook, he moaned, he stamped his feet.
For a long moment after the worst spasm had passed, he crouched, trembling and sweating, thinking of all that was lost to the People, all that had slipped through his own hands, by the death of this wise old man.
This was more than the death of one man: everyone had to die someday, after all, and Thaggoran had lived a long while already. But this was the death of knowledge. An immense vacant place in Hresh’s soul could never now be filled. There was so much he had hoped to learn from Thaggoran about this strange world into which the tribe had plunged, and he would never learn it now. Some things were in the chronicles, many things, yes, but some had been passed down only by spoken words, from one chronicler to the next across the hundreds of thousands of years, and now that line of transmission was broken, now those things were lost forever.
But I will learn all I can nevertheless, Hresh told himself.
I will make myself chronicler in Thaggoran’s place, he said boldly to himself, in that moment of grief and shock and intolerable loss.
He reached down and coolly probed the bloodied fur just below Thaggoran’s torn throat. There was an amulet that looked like a piece of green glass there, a small oval thing, very old, with tiny signs inscribed on it, something that Thaggoran once had told him was a piece of the Great World. Carefully Hresh slipped it free. It seemed to burn with a cold glow against his palm. He held it, heart pounding, tightly clenched in his hand for a time. Then he popped it into the little purse he carried on his hip.
He was not willing to put it around his own throat: not yet. But he would, someday soon.
And he resolved: I will go everywhere upon the face of this world and see everything that exists and learn everything that can be learned, for I am Hresh-full-of-questions! I will master all the secrets of the times gone by and the times to come, and I will fill my soul with wisdom until I nearly burst of it, and then I will set all my knowledge down in the chronicles, for those who are to follow after us in this the New Springtime.
And, thinking those things, Hresh felt the pain of Thaggoran’s death beginning to ebb.
All night long the whole tribe chanted the death-chants over their two fallen tribesfolk, and at dawn’s first light they carried the bodies eastward a little way into the hills and said the words of Dawinno for them and the words of Friit and Mueri for themselves. Then Koshmar gave the signal, and they broke camp and headed out into the broad plains to the west. She would not say where they were going: only that it was the place where they were destined to go. No one dared to ask more.
3
The Place Without Walls
A scouring wind cut across the dry plains, lifting the thin sandy soil and whirling it into dark clouds. Here scarcely anything grew: it was as if the surface of the world had been cut clean by a great blade passing close across it, stripping away all topsoil and every seed.
To the right of the marchers, not far away, lay a line of low rounded hills, blue-gray and barren. To the left an endless flatland stretched away toward the horizon. There was a sharp edge to the air, and its flavor was an acrid one. Yet the day was significantly warmer than any that had preceded it. This was the third week of the march.
In the stillness of the afternoon came a strange grunting sound, a distant dull noise like none that anyone of the People had ever heard.
Staip turned to Lakkamai, who marched beside him. “Those hills are talking to us.”
Lakkamai shrugged and said nothing.
“They’re saying, Go back, go back, go back, ” said Staip.
“How can you tell that?” Lakkamai asked. “It’s just a noise.”
Harruel had noticed it too. He paused and turned, shading his eyes against the glare. After a moment he leaned forward into the wind and shook his head and laughed, and pointed to the hills.
“Mouths,” he said.
His eyes were extraordinarily keen. The other warriors shaded their eyes as he had done, but they saw only hills. “What do you mean, mouths?” Staip said.
“In front of the hills. Big peculiar animals sitting there, making that barking sound. They don’t have any bodies,” Harruel said. “Just mouths. Can’t you see?”
Koshmar by now had seen also. Coming to Harruel’s side, she said, “Look at those things. Do you think they’re dangerous?”
“They just sit there,” said Harruel. “If they don’t move from the spot they can’t hurt us, can they? But I’ll go over and check them out at closer range.” He turned. “Staip! Salaman! Come with me!”
“May I go too?” Hresh asked.
“You?” Harruel chuckled. “Yes. We’ll toss you in, and see what happens to you.”
“No,” said Hresh. “But may I come?”
“Keep back out of harm, if you do.”
They went loping across the plain toward the hills, the three warriors and Hresh, who was hard pressed to keep up with them. At close range the grunting, barking sound was oppressively loud, sending a shivering vibration through the ground, and it was clear to everyone now that Harruel was right about its origin. At the foot of the line of hills sat a row of perhaps a dozen immense blue-black hump-shaped creatures spaced equidistantly at wide intervals. They seemed to have no limbs or bodies at all, but were mere immobile giant heads with dull staring eyes. In a steady, regular rhythm they opened the vast caverns of their mouths and emitted their booming, croaking cries.
All across the plain, small animals were moving toward them as though gripped with hypnotic fervor by those dull flat sounds. One by one they strode or crawled or hopped or slithered unhesitatingly toward the great heads, and up over the rims of their dark red lower jaws, and into the black maw beyond.
“Keep back,” Harruel said sharply. “If we get too close we may be drawn in like that too.”
“I don’t feel any pull,” said Staip.
“Nor I,” said Salaman. “Just a little tickle, maybe. But — Hresh! Hresh, come back!”
The boy had edged forward until he had moved out in front of the warriors. Now he was walking out across the plain toward the heads in an odd jerky way, shoulders twitching, knees rising almost to his waist with each step. His sensing-organ was twisted around his body like a sash.
“Hresh!” Harruel yelled.
Hresh was no more than fifty paces from the nearest of the heads now, moving as if in a dream. The rhythm of the booming sounds picked up. The ground shook violently. With an angry toss of his head Harruel rushed forward and caught the boy around the middle, snatching him off the ground. Hresh stared at him with unseeing eyes.