She came out of the house of Bruikkos and Thaloin, frowning, looking around. When she saw him she put a hand over her mouth.
“What has happened to you, Salaman? I’ve never seen you like this! You’re all sweaty — covered with dirt—”
“That doesn’t matter.” He seized her by the wrist. “Come on! Come with me!”
“Have you gone insane?”
“Come! Up to the high place!”
He started to tug at her. Thaloin now emerged from the house, blinking in the sunlight, staring in bewilderment at the scene before her. The sight of her inspired Salaman to an experiment. If one twining-partner could amplify a mental message from afar, two might yield a far greater depth of perception. With a quick swoop of his hand he caught hold of her too, and began to drag both women toward the trail.
“Let go,” Thaloin cried. “What are you—”
“Just come along,” Salaman muttered. “Please. Don’t argue. It’s vital. We’re going up the hill — there—”
Grasping Thaloin with one hand and Weiawala with the other, he pulled them along behind him. The noise and furor attracted onlookers — Lakkamai, Minbain, the child Samnibolon — who exchanged mystified glances. As Salaman passed by the royal palace, Harruel came out its back door, brooding and sullen and dark of face, weaving and lurching in the last stages of drunkenness. He pointed to Salaman and laughed raucously.
“ Two,Salaman? Two at once? Only a king gets two women at once! Here — give me — give me—”
Harruel clutched at Weiawala. Salaman, cursing, butted him in the chest with his shoulder. Harruel’s eyes widened. He cried out in amazement and went toppling back, arms flailing, toward the edge of Salaman’s trench. Losing his balance then, he tumbled down into it. Salaman did not look back at him. Tightening his grip on Weiawala and Thaloin, he drew them away with him, up, up, up the rough rocky trail to the rim of the crater. He knew he was moving too fast for them: they stumbled and tripped and fell again and again, and he tugged them up, he dragged them onward. Thaloin was much shorter than Weiawala and could barely keep pace, but he paused, and paused again, to help her along. They were offering no resistance. They must have decided that they were in the hands of a madman and the safest thing was to accede to whatever he wanted.
When he reached the high place Salaman threw them down by the overlook point and dropped down beside them. All three lay for a moment, gasping, wheezing, fighting for breath.
“Now we will twine,” Salaman said finally.
Weiawala looked astonished. “You — me — Thaloin — ?”
“All three.”
Thaloin made a whimpering sound. Salaman glared at her.
“All three!” he said again, with the urgency of one who was crazed. “This is important to the security of the city! Twine, and give me your energy, and give me your second sight as well! Twine! Twine!” The two women lay as though paralyzed, trembling faintly. Salaman took Weiawala’s sensing-organ and wrapped it around his own, and put Thaloin’s atop both. In the softest, most seductive voice he could manage he said, “Please. Do as I say. Give yourselves to the twining.”
They were too frightened and exhausted to comply as rapidly as Salaman wished. But he stroked them, he caressed them, he aroused them in their sexual parts as though he meant to couple with them rather than to twine; and after a time he felt the beginning of a communion with Weiawala, and then Thaloin timidly, fearfully joining him also.
Twining with two at once? Had anyone ever dreamed of such a thing? Images flooded in upon him, confusing him at first, leaving him wholly baffled. But Salaman forced himself to sort one from the other and to make his way among them. Gradually the confusion ebbed. A godlike feeling of all-seeing vision spread in him.
“Second sight,” he urged. “Use your second sight! Yes, that’s the way—”
He saw.
With their help he could send his perceptions into the skies, and beyond, far to the south, the north, the east, the west. It was a dizzying and wondrous sensation. What had been a dull booming was now a terrible thunder, a powerful hammering drumbeat that was like an endless great earthquake. It came not from the southern hills but from the far north, he realized: what he had picked up earlier was only the reverberation of the message as it rebounded from the high land to the south.
He saw the great red animals of the Beng people, the enormous shaggy beasts they called vermilions — an immense herd of them, thousands upon thousands, a teeming scarlet sea of vermilions, an undulating red mass of huge shambling creatures that covered whole mountain ranges and filled valley after valley — on the march, a fearful stampeding multitude of the mighty beasts far away, heading south, heading toward the City of Yissou—
And with them, marching among them, driving the great beasts onward—
Hjjk-folk. A colossal army of them, the yellow-and-black insect-people advancing in uncountable numbers. He could see the glittering faceted globes of their innumerable eyes, he could hear the frightful clacking of their savage beaks.
The hjjk-folk were coming, marching with their vermilions, sweeping everything in their path to destruction. Coming this way.
It was the strangest twining she had ever had. They had done it right after they had coupled, which perhaps had been a bad idea; for Hresh, though he coupled well enough for someone who claimed never to have done it before, had seemed preoccupied with doing things the right way, and his self-consciousness had eventually become an awkward problem for Taniane. Possibly some of that had carried over into the twining. When she had opened to his spirit he had come forth to her in a breathtaking rush, but almost immediately she could feel him holding something back, setting up barriers, hiding aspects of his soul from her. That was no way to twine. And yet, and yet, despite that mysterious reticence of his it had been an overwhelming communion for her, a powerful, intense, unforgettable thing. She knew that she had experienced only a fraction of him. But that fraction had been far more than anything she had had from anyone else with whom she had ever twined.
When it was over they lay quietly in the twining-chamber, listening to the warm wind gusting through the streets.
She said, after a time, “Can I tell you something, Hresh?”
“Is it something I’ll enjoy hearing?”
“I’m not sure of that.”
He hesitated a moment. “Say it anyway.”
She ran her hand lightly along the soft fur on the inner side of his arm. “You won’t misunderstand, will you?”
“How can I say?”
“All right. All right. What I wanted to tell you is that you — well — that you set things loose inside me, Hresh, that are so strong they frighten me. That’s all.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to take that.”
“In a good way. Really.”
“I hope so,” he said. He put his hand to her arm, and stroked her in the same way; and for a while they were silent again. Her head was against his breast and she could feel his heart, drum-loud within him.
“Didn’t Torlyri teach you that you mustn’t hold anything back when you twine?” Taniane asked, after a while.
“Was I holding back?”
“That’s how it seemed to me.”
“I’m still new at this, Taniane.”
“Not much newer than I am. But I know what twining ought to be like, and I know that you were hiding yourself from me, or at least some of yourself, and that hurt me, Hresh, it made me feel as though you didn’t trust me, even that you were using me in some way—”
“No!”
“I don’t mean to upset you. I’m just trying to tell you some of my feelings — so that it’ll be better for us the next time — I do want there to be a next time, Hresh, you know I do, a next time and a next and a next—”