“I asked you in all honor, Koshmar.”

“Did you, now? Well, then: I answer you as you ask, and tell you what you already know. There’s only one woman of the tribe who is of the proper age and the proper strength of mind. Taniane is to succeed me.”

Hresh once again caught his breath, and bit his lip, and looked away.

“Does the choice displease you?”

“No. Not at all. But it makes what’s happening more real. It makes me see more clearly than I would like to that you’ll no longer be chieftain, that someone else, that Taniane—”

“Everything changes, Hresh. The sapphire-eyes no longer rule the world. Now, a third thing: will you and Taniane be mated?”

“I’ve been searching in the chronicles for precedent that would allow the old man of the tribe to take a mate.”

“No need for further searching. No need for precedent. You are the precedent. She is your mate.”

“Is she, then?”

“Bring her to me when you return from the Beng settlement, and I will say the words.”

“Koshmar, Koshmar—”

“But tell her nothing about the chieftainship. It is not hers yet, not until you and Torlyri bestow it on her. These things must be done properly. There can be no new chieftain while the old one is still alive.”

“Let me try to heal you, Koshmar.”

“You annoy me. Go to the Bengs and beg some vermilions of them, boy.”

“Koshmar—”

“Go!”

“Allow me to do one thing for you, at least.” With fumbling fingers Hresh unfastened some small object that he had around his throat, and pressed it into her hand. “This is an amulet,” he said, “that I took from Thaggoran as he lay dead after the rat-wolves attacked us. It is very ancient, and it must have some strong powers, though I have never been able to learn what they are. When I feel that I need Thaggoran beside me, I touch the amulet, and his presence is close. Keep it in your hand, Koshmar. Let Thaggoran come to you and guide you to the next world.” He folded her fingers about it. It was hard-edged and warm against her palm. “He had great love and respect for you,” Hresh said. “He told me that many times.”

Koshmar smiled. “I thank you for this amulet, which I will keep by me until the end. And then it is yours again. You will not be long deprived of it, I think.” She gestured impatiently. “Go, now. Go to the Bengs and ask them for a few of their beasts. Go. Go, Hresh.” Then, softening, she touched her hand to his cheek. “My old man. My chronicler.”

Noum om Beng appeared to have been expecting him. At least, he showed no surprise when Hresh appeared, breathless, sweaty, having come at a trot all the way from his own tribe’s settlement to the Beng village at Dawinno Galihine. The old Helmet Man was in his bare stark chamber, sitting facing the entrance as though anticipating the arrival of a visitor.

A remorseless hammering pounded Hresh’s skull from within. His soul was aching from too great a buffeting within too small a compass. His mind whirled from all that had happened in these past few frantic days. And now he must come before old Noum om Beng in what would probably be his final opportunity to speak with him, and there was so much yet to learn. The questions kept multiplying; the answers only retreated.

“Sit,” Noum om Beng said, pointing to a place beside him on his stone bench. “Rest. Draw breath, boy. Take the air far down into yourself. Take it deep.”

“Father—”

“Rest!” said Noum om Beng sharply. Hresh thought he was going to strike him, as he had so often in the early days of his tutelage. But the old man remained perfectly still. Only his eyes moved, compelling Hresh to motionlessness with a steely glare.

Slowly Hresh drew in his breath, held it, released it, breathed again. In a little while the pounding of his heart diminished and the storm in his mind showed signs of dying down. Noum om Beng nodded. Quietly he said, “When do you leave the city, boy?”

“A day or two more.”

“Have you learned all you need to know here, then?”

“I have learned nothing,” Hresh said. “Nothing at all. I take in information, but the more I know, the less I understand.”

“It is the same with me,” said Noum om Beng gently.

“How can you say that, Father? You know everything that there is to be known!”

“Do you think so?”

“So it seems to me.”

“In truth I know very little, boy. Only what has come down to me in the chronicles of my tribe, and what I have been able to learn by myself, both in my wanderings and in the application of my thoughts. And it is not enough. It is not nearly enough. It can never be enough.”

“This is the last time we will meet, Father”

“Yes. I know.”

“You have taught me many things. But all of them indirect, all of them the things that lie behind things. Perhaps the meanings of them will burst into life in my head as I grow older, as I reflect on all you have said here. But today I pray we may speak more directly of the great matters that perplex me.”

“We have spoken very directly all the time, boy.”

“It does not seem that way to me, Father.”

In times gone past such a flat contradiction would have brought him a stinging slap. Hresh waited for one now. He would even have welcomed one. But Noum om Beng remained still. After a lengthy silence he said, as though speaking from a distant mountain, “Then tell me, Hresh: what are these things that perplex you?”

Hresh could not recall another time when Noum om Beng had called him by his name.

Out of the myriad questions that came boiling up out of his mind he sought to choose one, the most important one, before the offer should be withdrawn. But it was impossible to choose. Then Hresh saw on the screen of his mind a gray featureless sea that spread to the horizon and beyond it into the stars, a sea that covered all the universe, a sea that gleamed with a pearly light of its own amid utter darkness. There was a sudden bright spark of flame upon the bosom of the waters.

He stared at Noum om Beng.

“Tell me who created us, Father!”

“Why, the Creator did.”

“Nakhaba, do you mean?”

Noum om Beng laughed, that strange parched rasping laugh that Hresh had heard only two or three times before. “Nakhaba? No, Nakhaba is not the Creator, any more than you or I. Nakhaba is the Interceder. Have I not made that clear?”

Hresh shook his head. Interceder? What did he mean?

“Nakhaba is the highest god we know,” said Noum om Beng. “But he is not the highest god of all. The highest god, the Creator-god, is unknown, and must always be. Only the gods may know that god.”

“Ah. Ah,” Hresh said. “And Nakhaba? Who is he, then?”

“Nakhaba is the god who stands between our people and the humans, and speaks with them on our behalf when we have failed to meet the demands of our destiny.”

Hresh felt himself lost in realms beyond realms.

Despair, disbelief, confusion threatened to overwhelm him.

“A god who stands between us and the humans? Then the humans are higher than the gods?”

“Higher than our gods, boy. Higher than Nakhaba, higher than the Five. But not higher than the Creator, who made them as well as us and all else. Do you see the hierarchy?” Noum om Beng drew vast structures in the air with the tip of a finger. The Creator here, at the highest place, the great Sixth of whom Hresh had once speculated; and here the humans, some distance below; and here Nakhaba; and here the Five; and here, lower than all the others though higher than the wild beasts, at least, were the common folk of the world, the cocoon-folk, the furry-folk.

Hresh stared. He had asked for revelation, and Noum om Beng had given him revelation unstinting. But he could not absorb it; he could not digest it.

Seeking some familiar corner, he said, “So you accept the Five? They are gods for you as well as for us?”

“Of course they are. We give them other names, but we accept them, for how could we not? There must be a god who protects, and a god who provides, and a god who destroys. And a god who heals, and a god who comforts. And also a god who intercedes.”