At Winter's End

“Not now. If he’s awakening, I have to stay by him.”

“Can it be?” Torlyri asked. “Awakening now, do you think?”

“How would I know? You heard what I heard, Torlyri.” Koshmar realized that the boy Hresh was still in the room, silent now, motionless, frozen with awe. She glowered at him. Then her eyes went to Torlyri’s, and she saw the soft pleading there.

Torlyri made the sign of Mueri at her, gentle Mueri, Mueri the Mother, Mueri the Consoler, Mueri the goddess to whom Torlyri was particularly consecrated.

“All right,” Koshmar said at last, with a sigh of acquiescence. “I pardon him, yes. We can’t cast anyone out on the day the Dream-Dreamer awakens, I suppose. But get him out of here this minute. And make sure he knows that if he misbehaves again I’ll — I’ll — oh, get him out of here, Torlyri! Now!”

In the chamber of the warriors Staip paused in his drills and looked up, frowning.

“Did you hear something just then?”

“I hear the sound of shirking,” Harruel grunted.

Staip let the insult pass. Harruel was big and dangerous; one did not challenge him lightly. “An outcry of some sort,” he said. “Very like a howl of pain.”

“Drill now. Talk later,” said Harruel.

Staip turned to Konya. “You heard it?”

“I was at my task,” Konya said quietly. “My attention was where it belonged.”

“As was mine,” Staip retorted, with some heat. “But I heard a terrible cry. Twice. Perhaps three times. Something may be happening out there. What do you think? Konya? Harruel?”

“I heard nothing,” Harruel said. He was at the Wheel of Dawi

Staip stared bleakly at them. He saw the mockery in their eyes, and it maddened him. He had been working just as hard at his drills as they. If they hadn’t heard those three frightful screams, what fault was it of his? They had no right to jeer at him. He felt anger rising. There was a pounding in his chest. So proud of their diligent drilling, they were. Calling him a shirker, accusing him of letting his attention wander—

Was it his imagination, he wondered, or had they both been aiming little jabs at him for some weeks now? They had said things which he had let slide by, but now, as he thought it over, it seemed to him that in many ways they had been telling him that he was lazy, that he was stupid, that he was slow.

Life was more difficult these days. There was a new mood to everyone: keener, more alert, more prickly, everyone on edge. Staip had found it hard to sleep of late; so, apparently, had the others. There was more bickering than before. Tempers flared easily.

But still — these insults — they had no right—

His anger overflowed and he stepped toward them, intent on a challenge. He started toward Konya, and was already begi

Harruel seemed unperturbed. “What’s the matter with you, Staip?” he asked calmly.

“You know what the matter is. Come. Now. Fight me.”

“We have our drills to do. I have the Ladder yet to go, and the Loom, and then an hour of leaps and bends—”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“You must be out of your mind.”

“You’ve insulted me. Fight me. Your drills can wait.”

“The drills are our sacred duty, Staip. We are warriors.”

“Warriors? For what war do you prepare yourself, Harruel? If you call yourself a warrior, fight me. Fight me or by Dawi

Harruel sighed. “Drills first. We can fight afterward.”

“By Dawi

There was a sound behind him. Into the chamber of warriors came Lakkamai, a wiry dark-furred man with an austere, remote ma

“He said he heard a strange sound,” Harruel replied. “Like a cry of pain, he said, repeated two or three times.”

“And so you are going to fight?”

“He called me a shirker,” Staip said. “And there were other insults.”

“All right, Staip,” Harruel said. “Come. If you need a beating, I’ll give you one, and a good one. Come, and let’s get it over with,”

“Fools,” Lakkamai said under his breath, and thrust his arms into the coils of the Five Gods.

Staip advanced toward Harruel again. Then he paused, abashed, wondering why he was doing this. Lakkamai’s cool disdain had sent all the rage whistling from his inflamed spirit as though from a punctured air-bladder. Harruel seemed puzzled too, and they looked at each other, baffled. After a moment Harruel turned as though nothing had happened, and returned to his drill. Staip stared, wondering if he should go through with the challenge all the same, but the impulse had passed. Lamely he went back to his own drill. From the far side of the room came the sounds of Konya hard at work once more on the Loom.

For a long while the four men went at their drills, none of them saying a word. Staip still felt a dull angry throbbing in his forehead. He was not sure whether he had won or lost in his interchange with Harruel, but it had not left him with any sense of triumph. To ease his soul he worked with triple ferocity at the drilling machines. He had spent his whole life at these machines, training his body, tuning his muscles, for it was a warrior’s duty to make himself strong, no matter how peaceful the life of the cocoon might be, and peaceful it always was. A time would come, so it was said, when the People must leave the cocoon for the world outside; and when that time came, the warriors needed to be strong.

After a very long while Lakkamai said, in response to no one’s query, “That sound Staip heard was the Dream-Dreamer. He is waking up, so I hear.”

“What?” Konya cried.

“You see?” Staip said. “You see?”

And Harruel, jumping down from Yissou’s Ladder, rushed forward in amazement, demanding to know more. But Lakkamai merely shrugged and went on with his drill.

All day long Koshmar stood beside the Dream-Dreamer’s cradle, watching his eyes moving beneath his pale pink lids. How long, she wondered, had he slept like this? A hundred years? A thousand? According to the tradition of the tribe he had closed his eyes on the first day of the world’s long winter and he would not open them again until winter’s end; and it had been prophesied that the winter would last seven hundred thousand years.

Seven hundred thousand years! Had the Dream-Dreamer slept that long, then?

So it was asserted. It might even be so.

And all that time, while he slept, his dreaming mind had roved the heavens, seeking out the blazing death-stars that journeyed toward the earth trailing rivers of light and observing them through all their long trajectories; and he would sleep on and on and on, so it was said, until the last of those frightful stars had fallen from the sky and the world had grown warm again and it had become safe for human folk to come forth from their cocoons. Now he had opened his eyes, though only for a moment, and had begun to speak, or at least to make the attempt to speak. What else could be have been doing, if not proclaiming the end of winter? That strangled gurgling sound: surely it heralded the coming of the new age. Torlyri had heard it, and Thaggoran, and Hresh, and Koshmar herself. But could that grotesque sound be trusted? Was this really winter’s end? So the omens portended. There was the evidence of the ice-eaters; there was the evidence of the odd restlessness that had afflicted the tribe. Now this. Ah, let it be so, Koshmar prayed. Yissou, let it happen in my time! Let me be the one to lead the people forth into sunlight!