It was easy enough for Hresh to learn the names of things: all Noum om Beng had to do was point and speak. But when it came to abstract concepts Hresh found the going much harder. He began to think that Sachkor’s claim of possessing knowledge of the Beng language had been one part easy words, three parts guesswork, and six parts boastfulness.
The Beng language and theirs were related, Hresh was sure. Phrases were put together in similar ways, and certain Beng words seemed like dreamlike distortions of words in the People’s language. Perhaps both languages were descended from a single tongue that everyone had spoken in the world before the coming of the death-stars. But it seemed that during the many thousands of years of isolation when the tribes had taken refuge from the Long Winter in cocoons, each tribe had begun subtly to alter the way that it spoke, until one little alteration and another and another had produced, in time, entirely different vocabularies and grammatical forms.
Hresh felt agonies of despair over his slow progress. He had abandoned nearly all of his other research so that he could devote his full time to the study of Beng. But after many weeks he understood very little. Speaking with Noum om Beng was like trying to see when you had a thick black cloth wrapped around your head. It was like trying to hear the sound of the wind when you were buried in a dark pit far underground.
He knew fifty or sixty simple words, but that was not speaking their language. He still had no way of putting those few words together usefully to transmit information, or to gain it. And the rest of the language was so much smoke and dust to him. Noum om Beng’s dry whispery voice went on and on and on, and for all Hresh knew he was speaking of things of the highest importance, but Hresh was unable to grasp more than one word in a thousand. The old man was courteous and patient. But he seemed unaware of how little Hresh actually understood.
“You might try twining with him,” Haniman suggested one day.
Hresh was thunderstruck. “But I don’t even know whether they twine at all!”
“They have sensing-organs, don’t they?”
“Well, yes, but suppose they use them only for second sight? Suppose twining is considered an abomination among them?”
The whole topic of twining was a sensitive one for Hresh. The memory of his disastrous attempt to twine with Taniane still burned in his soul. Since that day he had not been able to speak more than a few hasty words with her, or to look her in the eye, or to think of twining with anyone else. Nor did Hresh see how he could possibly find the audacity to offer to twine with old Noum om Beng. It was such an intimate thing, such a private thing! Maybe three or four years ago he might have tried to suggest such a crazy scheme; but he had less appetite for the outrageous now that he was older.
“You ought to try it,” Haniman insisted. “Who knows? It might give you the way into their language that you’re looking for.”
The prospect of lying down in the embrace of gaunt and withered Noum om Beng, of feeling his stale dry breath against his cheek, of making sense-organ contact with him, did not fill Hresh with joy. If that was what he needed to do in order to gain the key to the mysteries of the language of the Bengs, though—
But Hresh could not bring himself to make the bizarre request directly. It seemed too embarrassing, too blatant. Instead, fumbling with his little stock of Beng words, he tried to explain that he wished he could find some quicker and more direct way to learn to speak the language. And he looked toward Noum om Beng’s sensing-organ, and then toward his own. But the old Helmet Man seemed not to notice the broad hint.
Perhaps there was some other way. Second sight? Now and then Hresh had tried a cautious little probe of some Helmet Man’s mind, never pushing very deeply. But he had never dared to probe Noum om Beng at all. Hresh remembered all too well how that first Beng scout long ago had taken his own life when Hresh had tried to use second sight on him. Noum om Beng was too shrewd for Hresh to think he could probe him unawares, and he had no way of knowing how the old man would react to a mental intrusion.
That left the Barak Dayir. His talisman, his magic key to everything. Very possibly that was his one real hope of attaining any significant knowledge of the Beng language.
The next time Hresh went to pay a call on Noum om Beng, the Wonderstone went with him, snug in its worn old velvet pouch.
He sat at Noum om Beng’s feet for an hour or more, listening to the old man’s incomprehensible monologue. The few words that he understood floated maddeningly by, like bright bubbles in a dark cloud of gas, and as usual he could make no sense out of anything Noum om Beng said. Finally the emaciated old Helmet Man halted and looked toward Hresh as if expecting him to make an equally long speech in return.
Instead Hresh drew forth the Barak Dayir and let it tumble from its pouch into the palm of his hand. Golden light and faint warmth came from it. He murmured the names of the Five and made the signs with his other hand and held the tapered piece of polished stone out where Noum om Beng could see it.
The old man’s reaction was immediate and dramatic, as if thirty or forty years had been stripped from his age in a moment. His red eyes glowed with sudden scarlet brilliance and blazing vigor. He made a harsh coughing sound and rose from his chair, and dropped down on his knees before Hresh’s outstretched hand so suddenly that the long purple wings of his helmet came close to striking Hresh in the face.
Noum om Beng looked awed and astounded. A stream of babbling words poured from his lips, of which Hresh was able to understand only one, which Noum om Beng repeated many times.
“Nakhaba! Nakhaba!”
Great God! Great God!
Often in those strange early weeks after the departure of Harruel from the tribe Taniane found herself wishing that she had gone with him.
She surely would have, if Hresh had chosen to go. In that moment when Harruel, glaring so fiercely, had ordered Hresh to choose between his tribe and his mother, Taniane had held her breath, knowing that her own fate was being decided. But Hresh had refused to go; and Taniane, letting her breath out slowly, had wiped from her mind the declaration that she would have made a moment later, the one renouncing her people and her life in Vengiboneeza.
So she was still here. But why? To what purpose?
If she had gone, a new and difficult life would have unfolded for her. She already knew about the hardships of the world outside the city. She could imagine what new hardships the reign of King Harruel would bring.
He was rough, crude, cruel, dangerous. He was cold of soul and hot of temper. Perhaps he had not always been that way, but she had watched him change since the Time of Going Forth, more and more becoming a law unto himself. Growling and scowling, objecting to all of Koshmar’s decisions, setting out into the hill country on solitary journeys whenever he pleased, organizing his own little army of defense without even asking Koshmar’s permission, finally challenging the chieftain outright — and forcing Kreun, that too, simply throwing her down and using her against her will—
Well, that was the way Harruel was. Probably now out there in the wilderness he was coupling with all the women who had gone, not just his mate Minbain but Thaloin too, and Weiawala, and Galihine, and Nittin. He was king now. He could do as he pleased. He would be coupling with me, Taniane thought, if I had gone. But you could do worse than couple with a king.
She wondered why Kreun had refused him. Probably because her head was so full of Sachkor, that was why. Forcing someone was not right, but ordinarily no one needed to be forced. One needed only to be asked in a courteous way. Taniane would have coupled with Harruel in the settlement, if he had asked. But he had never asked. He had always kept to himself, forever muttering and glowering. It struck her that perhaps he had thought she was too young, though she was not much younger than Kreun, and Kreun had caught his fancy. Kreun is very beautiful, Taniane thought; but they say I am beautiful too.