“The gods will not speak to me,” she told Thekmur. “I send the boy Hresh out and he finds nothing, and now he has found something and nothing so far has come of it. And there was a terrible storm, and during the storm the sky split and the lightning was frightful. What does all this mean? What is it that we are waiting for here? Answer me, O Thekmur. Answer me just this once.”
The smoke curled upward and the faint image of Thekmur swirled in the darkness. But Thekmur did not speak; or if she did, Koshmar was unable to hear her words.
Only gradually over the past months had Koshmar come to realize that she was sliding into gray despair, or something as close to despair as she was capable of feeling. Life had lost its forward thrust here in Vengiboneeza. Everything seemed to be standing still. And the happiness that she had felt in the first busy time of organizing the new life in the city had all melted away now.
In the cocoon you expected everything to stand still forever, unchanging, static. No one questioned that. You grew up, you did the things you were told to do, you kept the commandments of the gods, and you knew that in your proper time you would die and others would take your place; but you understood all the while that your life would be contained from first to last by the stone walls of the cocoon and that it would not be different in any fundamental way from the life of your grandparents or of your grandparents’ grandparents, back for thousands upon thousands of years. Your purpose was only to continue the life of the People, to be a link in the great chain of the eons that stretched from the epoch of the Great World to the hoped-for coming of the New Springtime. You did not expect to see the New Springtime yourself; you did not think that you would ever have a life outside the cocoon.
But now — whatever the occasional doubts that arose — the New Springtime had arrived. The world was unfolding like a flower. The tribe had gone forth into it. But the predestined first stage in the Going Forth was the sojourn in Vengiboneeza; and so far nothing had come of that sojourn except restlessness, uneasiness, dismay. Even their humanity itself had been brought into question, thanks to those lying, despicable sapphire-eyes artificials at the gate. And though Koshmar was certain that what the three strange guardians had tried to assert about their not being human was complete nonsense, she suspected that for some of the others the question still stood unresolved, a great anguished discord of the soul.
“How can I make things happen?” Koshmar asked the woman who had ruled before her. “My life is going by; I wish to embrace the world, now that it is ours; I feel impatient, Thekmur, I feel as trapped as though I were still in the cocoon!” Some part of her longed to leave this place and move on, though she knew not where; and yet she felt the powerful spell of Vengiboneeza and feared going from it, even while she yearned for new ventures far away.
Many of the tribesfolk, Koshmar knew, were quite content here. But they were people who would be content anywhere. Instead of the cramped and intense environment of the cocoon, they had an entire huge city to serve as their stage. They lived well — there was abundant food to be had from the gardens that they had planted here, and from the meat that the warriors brought back from the slopes of what Hresh had named Mount Springtime, where animals of all kinds abounded and the hunting was easy. For them it was a happy time. They twined, they sang, they played. They were mating and beginning to bring forth young. Already the numbers of the tribe were past seventy and more children would be arriving before long. They could look forward to rich and comfortable lives untroubled by the grim promise of the limitage.
But others were not fashioned of that placid stuff. Harruel, Koshmar saw, was seething with impatience and the hunger for change. Konya and a few of the younger men like Orbin seemed to be drifting toward Harruel and coming under his influence. Hresh, as he grew toward manhood, was more of an enigma to her than ever. And the girl Taniane was suddenly turning into a schemer, a whisperer, a hatcher of dreams. You could see the glint of ambition in her eyes. But ambition for what?
Even Torlyri seemed distant and strange. Torlyri and Koshmar twined rarely now, and when they did it was a strained, unrewarding thing. Koshmar knew that Torlyri wanted to mate; but she was keeping herself back from doing so, perhaps because she felt it would injure her relationship with Koshmar, perhaps because as offering-woman of the tribe she did not know how she could become mate and mother as well. Or perhaps she believed that there were no men in the tribe with whom she could mate as an equal, after having been their priestess so long. Whatever it was, it was causing trouble within Torlyri; and trouble within Torlyri was trouble for Koshmar.
“What can I do to make you speak?” she asked Thekmur. “Shall I make a special offering to one of the gods? Shall I go on a pilgrimage? Shall I bring Torlyri here, and twine with her, and approach you when we are twined?”
A small creature appeared through some opening in the wall, a slender blue animal with shining scaly skin, long fragile limbs, bright golden eyes. Seeing Koshmar, it paused, sniffing the air, balancing high up on its thin legs. It studied her intently. There was something calm and gentle about it, and its liquid gaze was steady and untroubled.
“Have you been sent?” Koshmar asked.
The animal continued to study her and to sniff.
“What creature are you? Hresh would know; or he would pretend to, and give you a name. But I can name you myself. You are the thekmur, eh? Do you like that name? Thekmur was a great chieftain. She was frightened of nothing, just like you.”
The thekmur seemed to smile in agreement.
“And she was one who withstood anything, just as you must,” Koshmar went on. “For you lived through the Long Winter, eh? You look frail but your kind must be tough. The sapphire-eyes died and the sea-lords died and all those other great peoples died too, but here you still are. Nothing frightens you. Nothing is too much for you. I will follow your example, little thekmur.”
The ground began to rock suddenly, a sidewise swinging motion that made the entire chapel sway. Another time, Koshmar might have made a dash for the safety of the open ground; but the thekmur held its place on the far side of the altar, and she held her place too, waiting without alarm for the earthquake to end. It was over in a moment or two. With great dignity the little creature strode from the room. Koshmar followed it outside. There had been little damage, only a few overhanging cornices of a ruined building thrown to the ground.
It is an omen, Koshmar said to herself. It speaks of the watchfulness of the gods, who have put their hands to the earth to remind me that they are there and that they are almighty, and that their plan is good and that in the fullness of time they will let their wishes be known.
The earthquake, following so soon upon the storm, left Hresh with no doubt that the time had come to return at last to the plaza of the thirty-six towers. These omens were too powerful, too urgent, to ignore. The gods were pressing upon him. It behooved him now to make use of the Wonderstone to gain the knowledge stored in that underground vault.
“Make yourself ready,” he said to Haniman. “This is the day. I mean to go down into the hidden vault again.”
Off they marched toward the district of Emakkis Boldirinthe. The morning was sunny and cloudless, with immense flocks of great-winged, long-necked purple birds, evidently bound on some vast migration, screeching far overhead. Haniman capered and whooped all the way, so eager was he to experience once again the mysteries of the vault.
They entered the tower of the black stone slab. At once Haniman ran toward the center and crouched down on the slab as he had done before, so that Hresh could mount him and strike the metal strut overhead that would cause the slab to descend. But Hresh waved him aside. He had brought a staff with him this time, so that there would be no need for him to clamber up on Haniman’s back to reach the strut.