She gripped the sides of the altar so that she would not lose her balance. A cold sweat had broken out on her, and there was a fiery pain behind her breastbone. Her throat was dry and she knew that an ocean could never quench that thirst.
“Koshmar,” Thekmur said. “Poor sad Koshmar.”
“Poor pitiful Koshmar,” said Lirridon.
“We weep for you, Koshmar,” Nialli said.
She stared at the haughty figures stalking about in front of her and shook her head angrily. The last thing she wanted was the pity of her dead predecessors.
“No,” she said, and her voice held back within her, a husky hollow rasp. “You must not say these things to me!”
“Come to us, Koshmar,” said Yanla, who had been chieftain so many years ago that nothing but her name and her mask remained to keep her memory alive. “Come lie in our arms. You have been chieftain long enough.”
“No!”
“Rest with us,” said Vork. “Sleep in our bosom and know the joy of unending peace.”
“No!”
Thekmur, who had been like a mother to her, knelt down beside her and softly said, “We reached our death-days and we went forth into the cold place and lay down to die. Why do you cling so fiercely to your life, Koshmar? You are past the limit-age. You are terribly weary. Rest now, Koshmar.”
“The winter is over. There is no longer any cold place. The limit-age is not observed here in the time of the New Springtime.”
“The New Springtime?” Sismoil said. “Has it really come, do you think? The New Springtime, really?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Sleep, Koshmar. Let another woman rule. You have lost half your tribe—”
“Not half! Only a few!”
“The Bengs encroach upon your settlement.”
“I will slaughter the Bengs!”
“A younger woman readies herself for power. Give it to her, Koshmar.”
“When her time comes and not before.”
“Her time has come.”
“No. No. No.”
“Sleep, Koshmar.”
“Not yet. Dawinno take you, I’m still alive, can’t you see? I rule! I lead!”
Rising, Koshmar waved her arms furiously about, clearing the fumes that filled the little room. The gesture was costly to her: the pain beneath her breastbone grew startlingly more intense, striking deep into her in a hard stabbing way. But she would not let her discomfort show. Flinging open the chapel’s pivoted stone door, she allowed fresh air to come rushing in, and the dim figures of the dead chieftains grew thin, grew transparent, vanished altogether. Coughing, choking, Koshmar staggered out into the daylight. She caught hold of a battered ancient cornice and hung tight to it until the spasms of dizziness passed.
I will never go to this chapel again, she told herself. Let the dead remain dead. I have no need of their wisdom.
Slowly she made her way past the six ruined arches and the five whole ones, across the plaza of pink marble flagstones, up the five flights of megalithic stairs. She went past the stump of the fallen black tower, and south and west through the city in the direction of the settlement. Occasionally Koshmar caught sight of a vermilion of the Bengs wandering by itself, grazing on the weeds that sprouted from the cracked paving-blocks. A pack of monkeys ran past her along the rooftops, screeching derisively and hurling things at her from a safe distance. She gave them a glare of loathing. Twice she saw Helmet Men at some remove, going silently about their unknowable missions; neither of them made any gesture that acknowledged her presence.
She was still some way beyond the settlement in a zone of huge fallen statues and mirror-bright pavilions that had crumbled to silvered shards when she saw the slight figure of Hresh in the distance. He was running toward her, shouting, calling her name.
“What is it?” she asked. “Why have you followed me out here?”
He perched on the shoulder of a fallen marble colossus and looked at her expectantly. “To talk with you, Koshmar.”
“Here?”
“I wouldn’t want any of the People to overhear us.”
Koshmar gave him a dour look. “If this is some fantastic new scheme that you mean to propose, you should know before you begin that you have come upon me at a time when I prefer to be alone, and you find me in a most unreceptive mood. Most unreceptive.”
“I’ll have to risk that, I suppose. I want to talk with you about leaving the city.”
“You?” Her eyes flashed in anger. “Running off to Harruel, is that what you plan to do?”
“Not to Harruel, no. And not just me, Koshmar. All of us.”
“All?” The hot stabbing pain beneath her breastbone returned. She wanted to rub at it. But that would reveal her distress to Hresh. Controlling herself with a severe effort, she said, “What foolishness is this, now? I warned you that I didn’t want you to bother me with fantastic new schemes, and—”
“May I speak, Koshmar?”
“Go on.”
“I remind you of the day we entered Vengiboneeza, years ago. When the artificial sapphire-eyes jeered at us, and called me ‘little monkey,’ and told us we were something other than true human beings.”
“We made the proper reply, and the guardians of the gate accepted us as human and let us go in.”
“Accepted us, yes. But they never agreed that we were humans of the Great World kind. ‘You are the humans now,’ is what they said. Do you remember, Koshmar?”
“This is very tiresome, Hresh.”
“What would you say if I told you that I’ve discovered unanswerable proof that the guardians were speaking the truth? That the Dream-Dreamers were the real humans of the Great World times, and that in the Great World times our kind was little more than animals?”
“Absurd, boy!”
“I have proof.”
“Absurd proof. What I said then was that there probably have been many kinds of humans, but we are the only kind that still exists. So the world is rightfully ours. We have no need to discuss this all over again, Hresh. And what does it have to do with our leaving Vengiboneeza, anyway?”
“Because,” Hresh said, “if we are human beings, as you say, and if we are the only humans who still exist, then we should go from this place and build a city of our own, as humans do, instead of living as squatters in the ruins of some ancient people.”
“This is the argument that Harruel made. It was treason and it broke the tribe apart. If you believe what he believes, then you should go to live with him, wherever he and his followers may be. Is that what you want? Then go. Go, Hresh!”
“I want us all to go. So that we can become human.”
“We are human!”
“Then we should leave here so that we can live up to our destiny as humans. Don’t you see, Koshmar, the difference between humans and animals is that animals simply live from day to day, whereas humans—”
“Enough,” said Koshmar in a very quiet voice. “This discussion is over.”
“Koshmar, I—”
“Over.” She put her hand to her breast and pressed hard, and began to rub. The pain was strong enough to make her want to double over and clutch herself, but she forced herself to sit erect. “I came out here to be alone, and think about things that are of concern to me,” she said. “You’ve intruded on my privacy, though I asked you not to do so, and you’ve dredged up all sorts of old nonsense that has no relevance to our situation today. We are not monkeys. Those gibbering things on the rooftops are monkeys, and they are no kin of ours. And we will leave Vengiboneeza, yes, when the gods tell me that our time to leave has come. When the gods tell me, Hresh, not you. Is that understood? Good. Good. Now leave me.”