Страница 105 из 116
He watches until he can bear to watch no more. To the end, the sapphire-eyes show indifference to their doom.
At last he presses the stud with a trembling finger and the vision ceases, the music dies away. He falls to his knees, stu
He knew that he did not understand a thing of what he had seen.
As never before, his soul churned and bubbled with questions; and he had no answers for them, not one, nothing at all.
In the morning when Koshmar tried to rise from her couch a powerful unseen hand pressed itself between her breasts and hurled her back down. She was alone. Torlyri had gone to the temple the night before to continue her task of packing the holy things, and she had never returned. Gone off to her Beng, Koshmar thought. She lay quietly for a moment, panting, wincing, rubbing her breastbone, making no effort to get up. Something was burning within her chest. My heart is on fire, she thought. Or it could be my lungs. I am consumed in fire from within.
Carefully she attempted to sit up again. This time no hand pushed her back, but still it was a slow process, with much shivering and shaking, and several long pauses while she balanced herself on the tips of her fingers and struggled not to slip backward. She felt very cold. She was grateful that Torlyri was not here to see her weakness, her illness, her pain. No one must see; but especially not Torlyri.
By second sight she groped outside her house and became aware of Threyne passing by, with her boy Thaggoran. Shakily Koshmar called to her, and stood in her doorway, grasping the frame, holding her shoulders back, fighting to make it seem that all was well with her.
“You summoned me?” Threyne said.
“Yes.” Koshmar’s voice sounded husky and quavering in her own ears. “I need to speak with Hresh. Will you find him and send him here to me?”
“Of course, Koshmar.”
But Threyne hesitated, not going off to do as Koshmar had bidden her. Her eyes were veiled and troubled. She sees that I am ill, Koshmar thought. But she doesn’t dare ask me what the matter is.
Koshmar glanced at young Thaggoran. He was a sturdy boy, long-limbed, bright-eyed, shy. Though he was past seven he stood half-hidden behind his mother, peering uncertainly at the chieftain. Koshmar smiled at him.
“How tall he’s grown, Threyne!” she exclaimed, with all the heartiness she could manage to muster. “I recall the day he was born. We were just outside Vengiboneeza, then, near the place of the water-strider, when your time came. And we made a bower for you and Torlyri saw you through your time of delivery, and Hresh came to give the boy his birth-name. You remember that, do you?”
Threyne gave Koshmar a strange look, and Koshmar felt a new stab of pain.
She must think my mind has softened, Koshmar thought, to be asking her if she remembers the day her own firstborn came into the world. With a hand that she struggled desperately to keep from shaking she reached out and stroked the boy lightly along his cheek. He shrank back from her.
“Go,” Koshmar said. “Get me Hresh!”
Hresh was a strangely long time in coming. Maybe he is off rummaging in the ancient ruins one last time, Koshmar thought. Desperately trying to grab whatever he can still find before the tribe leaves Vengiboneeza. Then she reminded herself that Hresh was mated now, or almost so, and perhaps he was simply deep in coupling or twining with Taniane just now and unwilling to be disturbed. It was odd to think of Hresh as being mated, or twining, or doing any of the things that went with those things. For her he would always be that wild boy who had tried to slip out of the cocoon for a look at the river valley one morning long ago.
Finally he came. He had a rough-eyed, ragged look about him, the look of one who has had no sleep at all. But the moment he saw Koshmar he caught his breath and became suddenly alert, as though the sight of her had shocked him into full wakefulness.
“What has happened to you?” he demanded instantly.
“Nothing. Nothing. Come inside.”
“Are you ill?”
“No. No!” Koshmar swayed and nearly fell. “Yes,” she said, half-whispering it. Hresh seized her by the arm as she tottered, and guided her to a stone bench covered with furs. For a long while she sat there with her head down, while waves of pain and fever went rolling through her. After a time she said, very quietly, “I’m dying.”
“It can’t be.”
“Step inside my spirit for a moment and feel what I feel, and you’ll know the truth.”
Hresh said, agitated, “Let me go for Torlyri.”
“No! Not Torlyri!”
“She knows the healing arts.”
“I’m aware of that, boy. I’m not interested in having her practice her arts on me.”
Hresh crouched before her and tried to look her in the face, but she would not meet his eyes.
“Koshmar, no! No! You’re still strong. You can be healed, if you’ll only allow—”
“No.”
“Does Torlyri know how sick you are?”
Koshmar shrugged. “How can I say what Torlyri knows or does not know? She’s a wise woman. I’ve never spoken of this with anyone. Certainly not with her.”
“How long have you been like this?”
“Some time,” said Koshmar. “It has come upon me slowly.” Now she did raise her head, and summoned some of the vigor that once had been hers. In a louder voice she said, “But I didn’t summon you here to talk about my health.”
Angrily Hresh shook his head. “I know some healing arts myself. If you don’t want Torlyri to know, fine. Torlyri doesn’t have to know a thing. But let me cast the disease from you. Let me invoke Mueri and Friit and do what you need to have done for you.”
“No.”
“No?”
“My time has come, Hresh. Let it be as it must be. I won’t be leaving Vengiboneeza when the tribe departs.”
“Of course you will, Koshmar.”
“I command you to cease telling me what I will do!”
“But how can we leave you behind?”
“I will be dead,” Koshmar said. “Or nearly so. You will say the death-words over me and you will put me in a peaceful place, and then you will all march away. Is that understood, Hresh? It is my last order, that the tribe is to go forth from this city. But I give it knowing that I will not be among you when you leave. You have spent your entire life disobeying me, but perhaps this one time you’ll grant me the right to have my own wishes followed. I want no grief and I want no noise made over me. I am at the limit-age; I am at my death-day.”
“If only you would tell me what troubles you, so that I could do a healing—”
“What troubles me, Hresh, is being alive. The cure will soon be offered me. One more word from you of this sort and I’ll dismiss you from your post, while I’m still chieftain. Will you be quiet now? There are things I must tell you before I lose the strength.”
“Go on,” Hresh said.
“The journey the tribe will be taking will be a very long one. That I foresee with death-wisdom, that it will carry you to the far places of the world. You can’t make such a journey bearing everything on your backs, as we did when we came here from the cocoon. Go to the Bengs, Hresh, and ask them for four or five young vermilions to be beasts of burden for us. If they are our friends, as they claim so loudly to be, then they’ll give them. If they won’t give them to you, then ask Torlyri to have her Beng lover steal some, and so be it. Be sure that the ones you get are both male and female, so that in times to come we can propagate our own.”
Hresh nodded. “That shouldn’t be very difficult.”
“No, not for you. Next: there must be a new chieftain. You and Torlyri will choose her. You should pick someone fairly young, and strong-willed, and strong-bodied as well. She will have to guide the tribe through many difficult years.”
“Is there anyone you would suggest, Koshmar?”
Koshmar contrived a flickering smile. “Ah, Hresh, Hresh, you are sly to the end! With such respect you ask the dying Koshmar to make the choice, when I know already that the choice is made!”