“What’s a machine?” Haniman asked.
“A machine,” Hresh said, “is a device that performs work. It is a metal thing with a mind, and strength, and purpose, and a kind of life that is not like our life.” That was the best he could manage. They accepted it. But when someone else asked why something that had life, even if it was not like our life, would be willing without struggle to yield up that life when the death-stars came, Hresh could not say. That was beyond his understanding, willingly to yield up life.
Koshmar prowled among the horde of dead mechanicals, thinking that she might find one that still had life enough in it to be able to tell her how to reach the city of Vengiboneeza; but their blind rusted faces mocked her with silence. They were dead beyond hope of awakening, every one of them.
After that there was an awful sandy wasteland worse than any of the dry places they had passed through before. Here there was no water at all, not even a rivulet. The ground crackled and crunched when the weight of a foot pressed against it. Nothing would grow here, not the slightest tuft of grass, and the only animals were low coiling yellow things that left blade-sharp tracks as they slithered through the sand. They stung Staip and Haniman, raising painful purple swellings on their legs that did not go down for several days. They stung some of the livestock, too, and the animals died of it. There were very few beasts left to the marchers by this time. They had had to slaughter for food most of the ones they had brought with them out of the cocoon, and many of the others had strayed and vanished, or had been killed by creatures along the way. In this dry place throats were parched and eyes became sunken, and the tribesfolk said over and over again that they would be glad now to have some of the rain that they had found so bothersome not long ago.
Then they left the dry place behind and entered a green land broken by chains of lakes and a turbulent river which they crossed on rafts of light wood, bound by the bark of a slender azure creature that seemed half serpent, half tree. Beyond the river was a range of low mountains. One day during the journey across that range keen-sighted Torlyri had a glimpse of a huge band of hjjk-folk far away, a whole enormous army of them, marching toward the south. By the coppery glint of twilight they looked no larger than ants as they made their way along a rocky defile; but there must have been thousands of them, a terrifying multitude. If they noticed Koshmar’s little band they gave no sign of it, however, and soon the insect-people were lost to view beyond the folds of the mountains.
The days grew longer again. The air became warmer, and then much warmer. Now and again new wintry blasts came out of the north, but they were fewer, and came ever more rarely. No one could doubt that the death-grip that winter had held on the world was easing, had eased, no longer was a significant thing. There was still winter in the world somewhere, but this was a springtime land, and the farther west they went, the gentler the weather became. Koshmar felt vindicated. The god of seasons smiled upon her.
Where, though, was great Vengiboneeza? According to the chronicles, the lost capital of the sapphire-eyes was in the place where the sun goes to rest; but where was that? In the west, surely. But the west was a huge place that went on and on without end. Each night the tribe was many weary leagues farther westward, and when the sun vanished beyond the end of the world at the day’s close it was evident that all their marching had brought them no nearer to its resting-place.
“Search the books again,” Koshmar said despairingly to Hresh. “There is some passage you have failed to find that will tell us how to reach Vengiboneeza.”
He ran his hands again and again over the pages. He sought through the dustiest and most ancient of the books, those that spoke only of the Great World. But there was nothing. Perhaps he was looking in the wrong places. Or perhaps the writers of the chronicles had not seen any need to set down the location of that great city, so famous had it been. Or possibly the information had simply been lost. These oldest chronicles were not the original texts, he knew. Those had crumbled to dust hundreds of thousands of years ago; the ones he possessed were the copies of copies of copies, made from tattered earlier versions by generations of chroniclers during the long night within the cocoon, and who knew how much of the text had been changed by error, or discarded altogether, in that constant process of recopying? Much of what they contained was impossible for him to understand; and what was there, though often quite clear, sometimes had the deceptive eerie clarity of a dream, where everything seems orderly and straightforward but in fact nothing makes sense at all.
It might be time, Hresh thought, to risk using the Barak Dayir. But he was afraid. He had never been afraid of anything before, even when he had tried to sneak out of the cocoon. No, that was a lie. He had been afraid then that Koshmar would kill him; death did frighten him, he would not deny that. But death was the only question that contained its own answer, and when you asked the question and had the answer you were gone, you were nothing. So that was the one answer he feared. The question of how to use the Wonderstone might well be the same as the question of understanding death; and the answer, if he did not protect himself properly, might also be the same. He left the Barak Dayir in its velvet pouch.
“Tell me how to reach Vengiboneeza,” Koshmar said again.
“I continue to search,” said Hresh. “Give me another few days and I’ll tell you what you wish to know.”
Harruel came to Hresh while he searched the books. He loomed above him as Harruel always did, and said, “Old man! Chronicler!”
Hresh looked up, startled. Automatically he turned the book he was reading away from Harruel, and shaded it with his hand. As though Harruel could possibly be able to read it!
“Sit down, if you want to talk to me,” Hresh said. “You stand too far above me and it hurts my neck to see you.”
Harruel laughed. “You are a bold one!”
“Is there something you want to know from me?”
Harruel laughed again. It was a harsh laugh that burst from him with a sound like that of rocks tumbling down a mountainside, but his eyes were twinkling. Indeed Hresh knew he was playing an absurd game, if not a dangerous one. A boy not yet nine years old was giving orders to the strongest man of the tribe: how could Harruel not laugh, or else hurl him angrily across the field? But I am the chronicler, Hresh thought defiantly. I am the old man. He is only a fool with muscles.
The warrior knelt down beside him and came close, too close for Hresh’s comfort. There was a sharp biting smell about Harruel, and the sheer size of him was disturbing.
In a low voice Harruel said, “I need knowledge from you.”
“Go on.”
“Tell me about the thing called kingship.”
“Kingship?” Hresh echoed. That was an ancient word, one that he had never heard spoken aloud in his life. It was strange hearing it now from Harruel. “You know of kingship?”
“Some,” he said. “I remember Thaggoran spoke of it once, when he was reading from the chronicles. You were a babe, then. He talked of Lord Fanigole and Lady Theel and Belilirion, and the other founders of the People in the time of the coming of the death-stars. They were men, all but Lady Theel, and they ruled. I asked if men had often ruled, in those old days. That day Thaggoran said that in the time of the Great World there were many kings who were men like me, and not only among the humans — the sapphire-eyes had kings too, said Thaggoran — and he told me that when the king spoke, his words were obeyed.”
“As a chieftain’s words would be today.”