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“No, Torlyri. Look more closely. Or use your second sight.”
Torlyri stared. She rested her hand a moment on Koshmar’s chest. Then she seized Koshmar by both her shoulders and pressed her cheek where her hand had been, calling the dead chieftain’s name over and over. Hresh stepped back, wondering if he should leave but fearing the extent of Torlyri’s grief. After a while he came forward again and delicately lifted Torlyri from Koshmar’s body, and stood holding her, letting her sob.
The offering-woman grew calm sooner than Hresh expected. Her sobs ceased, her breathing became regular again. She lifted her head and nodded at Hresh, and smiled.
“Is Taniane outside?” she asked.
“She was. I think she’s still there.”
“Get her,” Torlyri said.
Hresh found her waiting on the porch, still standing in that odd huddled way. “It’s over,” he said.
“Gods!”
“Come in. Torlyri wants you.”
They entered the house together. Torlyri stood by the wall where the masks of the chieftains were hung. She had taken down Koshmar’s own mask, made of a shining gray wood with the eye-slits painted dark red, and held it in her left hand. In her right was Koshmar’s wand of office.
“We have much to do today,” Torlyri said. “We must devise a new rite, for this is the first time in memory that a chieftain has died other than by coming to her limit-age, and we will need words to send her on to the next world. I will attend to that. And also we must invest a new chieftain. Taniane, this wand is yours. Take it, girl! Take it!”
Taniane looked dazed. “Shouldn’t there be — an election?”
“You have already been chosen. Koshmar herself accepted you as her successor, and made that known to us. This is your crowning-day. Take Koshmar’s mask and put it on. Here, take it! And the wand. And now we must go forth, all three of us, so that everyone will know what has happened, and what will happen next. Come. Now.”
Torlyri looked back quickly at Koshmar. Then she slipped one hand into the crook of Taniane’s arm and the other into Hresh’s, and drew them both from the death-chamber. She moved briskly, with an assurance and a firmness that Hresh had not seen in her for a long while. They stepped outside into the brilliant midday sunlight, and instantly all work stopped, all eyes turned toward them. There was an eerie silence in the plaza.
And then the tribesfolk came ru
But after a little while she released them and pushed Taniane forward to move among the tribe.
Taniane was glowing.
“There will be a ceremony this evening,” Torlyri said in a strong, clear voice. “Meanwhile your new chieftain accepts your loyalty, and thanks you for your love. She will speak with you, one by one.” To Hresh she said more quietly, “Let us go inside again,” and drew him toward her. They reentered the cottage. Koshmar seemed merely asleep. Torlyri bent to scoop up Thaggoran’s fallen amulet, and put it in Hresh’s hands. It had not been gone from his possession more than a few hours.
“Here,” she said. “You’ll want this on the trek.”
“We should postpone the departure,” Hresh said. “Until the rites are done, until Koshmar has been decently laid to rest.”
“All that will be dealt with this evening. There should be no postponement.” Torlyri paused. “I have been teaching Boldirinthe as much as I can of the offering-woman’s duties. Tomorrow I will teach her the highest mysteries, the secret things. And then you must go.”
“What are you telling me, Torlyri?”
“That I mean to stay behind, and cast my lot with the Bengs. With Trei Husathirn.”
Hresh’s mouth opened, but there was nothing he could say.
“I might have gone, if Koshmar had lived. But she is gone and I am released, do you understand? So I will stay. The Helmet Man ca
“Torlyri—”
“Don’t. Everything is very clear, for me.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand. But it will be hard, without you.”
“Do you think it will be easy for me, without all of you?” She smiled and beckoned to him, and he stepped into her arms, and they embraced like mother and son, or perhaps even like lover and lover, a long intense embrace. She began to sob again, and then her sobbing ceased, just in time, for in another moment he would have started too.
Releasing him, Torlyri said, “Let me be alone with Koshmar a little while now. And then we must meet, and devise the rites that need to be devised. At the temple, in two hours. Will you be there?”
“At the temple, yes. In two hours.”
He left the cottage once again. Taniane, far away across the plaza, was surrounded by fifteen or twenty of the tribe. They were close to her and yet hanging back, as if fearing the flame of her sudden exaltation. Taniane still wore Koshmar’s mask. All the plaza now was bathed in fierce noon light that devoured all shadow, and the heat still seemed to be rising. Behind him Koshmar lay dead, and Torlyri beside her bowed in grief. Hresh glanced to his left and saw four immense vermilions plodding down the road into the settlement, with Trei Husathirn riding atop the lead male. Tomorrow we will leave this place, Hresh thought, and I will never see Koshmar again, or Torlyri, or Noum om Beng, or the towers of Vengiboneeza. Somehow it all seemed right to him. He had passed beyond weariness into a place of utter calm.
He went to his room. He drew the Barak Dayir from its pouch and fondled it, and asked it to give him strength. A human-thing, it was. Not a star-thing. So Noum om Beng had said. Older than the Great World, it was.
Hresh studied it, trying to read the signs of its great age in its sheen, in its pattern of intricately carved lines, in the warm glow of the light that dwelled within it. He put his sensing-organ to it and its music rose up like a column around him. It carried his mind easily and smoothly upward and outward, so that he had a view of everything that surrounded Vengiboneeza. He saw here, and he saw there, and at first it was all a marvel and a mystery to him, but then he came to see how to contain his wonder and look upon only a portion of the overwhelming whole; and then he was able to find meaning in what he beheld. He looked to the south, and saw the rim of a perfect circle rising in a meadow, and a little settlement within that circle. He saw Harruel in that settlement, and Minbain his mother, and Samnibolon who was his half brother, and all the others who had gone with Harruel on the Day of the Breaking Apart. This was their settlement, which they called the City of Yissou. Hresh knew all that by seeing with the Barak Dayir. Then Hresh looked the other way, far to the north, toward the place where he knew he must look in order to see what he must see, and he beheld a great herd of vermilions on the march, heading south, making the ground shake as though the gods were pounding it; and with the vermilions were hjjk-folk, a countless army of them, heading south also, taking a route that would bring them inevitably to the City of Yissou. Hresh nodded. Of course, he thought. The gods who rule us have devised things so this will come to pass, and who can hope to understand the gods? The hjjk-men are on the march, and Harruel’s settlement lies in their path. Very well. Very well. That was only to be expected.