He took out the shinestones, too, and arranged them in patterns, and stroked them and squeezed them and murmured to them, hoping to be able to draw some wisdom from them. But they remained silent. They seemed to him to be no more than dark gleaming stones. Try as he would, they told him nothing. Sadly he realized that the People no longer would have their guidance. That was lost forever to the tribe. Whatever secret governed the shinestones’ use had died with Thaggoran.

The Barak Dayir, the Wonderstone, was the one thing in the casket that Hresh did not dare to examine at all. He left it undisturbed within its pouch of green velvet, not even daring to touch it. It would, he knew, open doors to realms of knowledge beyond even those that reading could make available to him; but he feared to do too much too soon. The Wonderstone was star-stuff, so Thaggoran had said. He had said that it had its dangers, too. Hresh chose to let it be until he had found some clue to the safe means of using it. In the privacy of his spirit he praised himself warmly for this one act of prudent renunciation, so alien to his character, and then laughed at his own absurd pride.

To the others of the tribe Hresh’s ascent to the rank of chronicler was more a matter for amusement than anything else. They had heard Koshmar’s proclamation, and they could see him every day puttering around in the baggage-train where the chronicles were kept; but they had trouble comprehending the fact that a small boy now was the chronicler. Minbain laughed and asked him, “Am I supposed to call you old man?”

“It’s only a title, Mother. It makes no difference to me whether it’s used or not.”

“But you are chronicler? You are truly chronicler?”

“You know that I am,” Hresh said.

Minbain put her hands over her breasts. Through gusts of laughter she said, in a way that seemed loving without being kind, “How could such a strange thing as you have come out of me? How? How?”

Torlyri was kinder to him, telling him that he was the proper choice and that to be chronicler was clearly what he had been born to be; but then Torlyri was kind to everyone. Orbin, who had been his playmate and friend, looked at him now as though he had grown an extra head. The others of his own age, or near to it, had never felt comfortable with Hresh to begin with. Now they kept their distance entirely, all except Taniane, who seemed utterly unimpressed with his new glory. She still would talk with him and march beside him on the trek as if nothing had changed, although lately she had begun spending a great deal of time with Haniman, of all people. What she found interesting in that oaf was hard for Hresh to see, although Haniman was at least growing less flabby as he marched, and showing signs of developing some coordination and grace, though not very much.

Anijang, who might have become chronicler in the old days simply because he was the senior tribesman now, only chuckled when Hresh went by. “What trouble you’ve saved me, lad! What a nuisance it would have been for me to have to learn to read!” He seemed honestly relieved. And the younger men, the warriors, generally ignored Hresh, all but Salaman, who sometimes paused and stared at him as though he could not bring himself to believe that a boy even younger than he was had become the chronicler and old man of the tribe. The other warriors paid no attention. For them the chronicler was a figure to revere, but they were not going to revere Hresh, and so he had no importance to them. Of them all only Harruel bothered to speak to Hresh at all, looking down from his vast height and gruffly wishing him success at his tasks. “You are very young,” said Harruel, “but customs change with changing times, and if you are to be our chronicler then I have no quarrel with that.” For which Hresh returned proper thanks, although Harruel was so huge and so strange these days — bitter over some sharp disappointment, it seemed, going about all the time with a black look in his eyes and a scowl on his lips — that Hresh preferred to stay away from him.

Naturally Hresh was supposed to keep everything that Koshmar dictated to him a secret until the chieftain was ready to divulge it to the entire tribe. But he was, after all, not quite nine years old. And so one day soon after he had become chronicler, when he was with Taniane, he said to her, “Do you know where we’re heading?”

“No one knows that but Koshmar.”

“I know it.”

“You do?”

“And I’ll tell you, if you keep it a secret.” He put his head close to hers. “We’re going to Vengiboneeza. Can you believe it? Vengiboneeza, Taniane!”

He thought the revelation would stun her. But it drew nothing from her but a blank look.

“Where?” she asked.

They marched west, on and on through a changing land, warmer every day though still far from hospitable.

Never once did they encounter other human beings, only the savage and strange beasts of the wilderness. Koshmar was of more than one mind about that. She would have liked to meet some other tribe in order to have confirmation that it had not been foolish for her to lead her people out of the cocoon before the true end of winter; and also she wished to be free of the uncomfortable possibility that her sixty souls were all that was left of the human race. And in truth she was eager to join with some other bands of wanderers with whom the People could share the risks and hardships of the journey.

But at the same time the idea of finding others was less than entirely pleasing to her. She had long been the master, absolute and unchallenged. Harruel’s surly glares and malcontent mutterings were no real threat to her: the People would never accept him in her place. But if they met another tribe and formed some kind of alliance with them there might well be rivalries, disagreements, even warfare. Koshmar had no desire to share her power with any other chieftain. To some degree, she realized, she wanted her people to be the only humans who had managed to survive the downfall of the Great World.

That way — if all went well — she would go down in the chronicles as one of the greatest leaders in history, the one who had singlehandedly engineered the revival of the human race. That was vanity, yes, she knew. Yet surely it was not an unpardonable sin to have such ambitions.

Still, the responsibilities were heavy. They were heading through a perilous land toward an unknown destination. Each day brought something new and troublesome to tax the tribe’s resolve, and often Koshmar felt herself uncertain of her course. But those doubts had to be hidden from her people.

She called them together, and told them at last that Vengiboneeza was their destination. The older ones knew the name, from stories that Thaggoran had told them in the days of the cocoon; but the young ones merely stared.

“Tell them of Vengiboneeza,” she commanded Hresh.

He came forward and spoke of the ancient city’s great towers, its shining stone palaces, its wondrous machines, its warm radiant pools and shimmering gardens. These were all descriptions that he had found by touching his hands to the pages of the chronicles and letting the images rise to his mind.

“But what good is Vengiboneeza to us?” Harruel asked, when Hresh was done.

Koshmar said sharply, “It will be the beginning of our greatness. The chronicles tell us that machines of the Great World are still to be found there and the finders will be made powerful by them. So we will enter Vengiboneeza and search it for its treasures. We will take from it what we need, and make ourselves masters of the world, and build a grand and glorious city for ourselves.”

“A city?” Staip asked. “We will have a city?”

“Of course we will have a city,” said Koshmar. “Are we to live like wild creatures, Staip?”

“Vengiboneeza has been dust for seven hundred thousand years,” Harruel said darkly. “There’ll be nothing there that’s useful for us.”