Hresh would have a brother. She would have a second son. She was sure of it, that it was a son; Harruel’s seed could bear nothing but sons, that much seemed obvious to her. She would be the first woman in thousands of years to bear two sons. Would the new one be anything like Hresh, she wondered?

No. There could never be anyone else like Hresh. Hresh was unique.

Nor had she ever known anyone rise like Harruel. She loved him and she feared him, and some days it was the love that was stronger, and some days the fear, and there were times like this when both were mixed in equal measure. He was so strange. The gods had given her a strange child for her son and now a strange man for her mate: why was that? Harruel was so huge, so powerful, so far beyond all the others in strength — he was unusual in his strength, yes. He had the force of a falling mountain. But there was something else. He had a darkness in his soul. He had an anger. Minbain had never really seen that when they all lived in the cocoon, but once they had begun the trek it had become obvious. Some turbulent force roiled his soul day and night. He yearned for something — but what? What?

Harruel walked down one street and up another, not knowing where he was going and scarcely caring. He felt the cold sharp moonlight upon him like a scourge, driving him onward. He had promised Minbain he would return, and so he would. But not before dawn. There was no sleep in him.

The city was a prison for him. He had borne cocoon life easily enough, never imagining there was an alternative to it. But now that they were free of the cocoon and he had come to know what it was like to walk boldly under the open sky, it galled him to live penned up in this sleek dead place, which in his mind reeked with the stench of the extinct sapphire-eyes folk. And it galled him also, it stung him like a firebur against his skin, that he would live under the commands of the woman Koshmar to the end of his days.

This was the time to end the rule of women. This was the time to restore the power of kings.

But it seemed to Harruel that Koshmar would be his chieftain until he was old and bent and white of fur. For there were no more death-days. Koshmar was older than he was, but she was healthy and strong. She would live a long time. Nothing would ever rid him of her, unless he did it himself; and there Harruel drew the line. To kill a chieftain was beyond him. It was almost beyond his comprehension. But he could not bear living under her rule much longer.

Of late he had taken to roaming the city frequently, going off alone on long wanderings, seeking to come to know it. The city was his enemy, and he believed that it is important to know your enemy. But this was the first time he had gone forth by night.

Everything looked altered. The towers seemed taller, the lesser buildings seemed more squat. Streets hooked away at strange angles. There was menace in every shadow. Harruel walked on and on. He had his spear. He was unafraid.

Some of the streets were paved with immaculate flagstones, as if the city had been abandoned by the sapphire-eyes only the day before yesterday. Others were cracked and rutted, with coarse grass rising through the paving-blocks, and still others had lost their pavements entirely and were mere muddy tracks bordered by crumbling buildings. This city made no sense to him. He detested it. It sickened him to think that his son would be born in it, in this hateful alien place, this place that had nothing human about it.

There were ghosts here. As he walked he kept watch for them.

Harruel was certain that ghosts hovered everywhere about. They were the ones who were making the repairs. It happened by night, though not when anyone could see it. Randomly, so it seemed, buildings that had fallen were shored up, given new facades, cleansed of debris. He saw the changes afterward. Some of the others had noticed it too — Konya, Staip, Hresh. Who was responsible?

He was wary, too, of creeping, crawling, stinging creatures of the night. Most of the pests that afflicted Vengiboneeza vanished with the coming of the darkness, except the ones that lived inside the buildings. But that did not mean that he could regard himself as altogether safe from them.

Early one evening not long before, wandering restlessly as he was tonight, Harruel had found himself at the edge of the warm sea that lapped the city on its western flank, and he had watched an invading army of ugly gray lizard-things come crawling up out of the water. They were evil little creatures with slim tubular bodies the length of his forearm and thick fleshy legs and wrinkled green wings folded back behind their necks, and they had a sinister glint in their bright yellow eyes. From them came a low growling hum of a sound, menacing and nasty, as if they were threatening him by name: “Harruel! Harruel! Harruel! We’ll make a meal of you tonight!”

Jaws snapping, they advanced like a horde of insects in tight formation until they were no more than thirty paces from him, and he began to look around for something to defend himself with. Backing away, he scooped up handfuls of pebbles and pelted them with those, without halting them. But when they reached a row of square-hewn blocks of green stone, set into the seawall just below where he was standing, that had tiny mysterious faces carved into them, they pulled up short as if they had hit an invisible barrier. Then they turned, baffled, glum, and headed back toward the water. Perhaps they had picked up the scent of a swarm of some even nastier beast on the far side of those shattered columns, he thought. Or maybe they just didn’t like my smell. Whichever it was, he knew he had been lucky to get off so easily.

Another time he saw clouds of flying creatures crossing overhead, so thick a flock that they darkened the sky at midday. It seemed to him that they were the fierce white-eyed things that were called bloodbirds, which had plagued the tribe far back when they had crossed the plains. He stood poised, ready to run to the settlement and give the alarm. But though they circled and circled far above the city, the birds never descended below the tops of the highest towers.

He was near the green stone pillars now where the three sapphire-eyes guardians sat. A short distance before him was the avenue that fronted the jungle.

Without any clear purpose in mind he began to walk toward the southern gate. But after a minute or two he halted abruptly. He heard a faint sound behind him: someone breathing, someone moving about. He grasped his spear. Had Minbain followed him? Or was this one of the ghosts that patrolled the city in the secrecy of the night? He whirled and peered into the shadows.

“Who’s there?”

Silence.

“I heard you. Come out where I can see you.”

“Harruel?” A man’s voice, low and steady, familiar.

“Who else do you think it would be? Is that you, Konya?”

Laughter came from the darkness. “You have a good ear, Harruel.”

Konya emerged and walked slowly forward. He was a tall man, though only shoulder-height to Harruel; but because he was so deep through his chest and back he did not seem as tall as he actually was. By the tribe he was regarded as the second-ranking warrior, generally deemed to be Harruel’s rival, a man smoldering with envy for Harruel’s preeminence. Only the two of them knew how untrue that was. Konya was strong enough to realize that it was all right not to be strongest. His nature was a calm, remote, quiet one. What he felt for Harruel was a respect growing out of the natural order of things, not envy; and what Harruel felt for him was an equal respect, though he knew Konya was not an equal.

“So you’re out wandering tonight too,” Harruel said.

“Sleep wouldn’t come. The moon was too bright in my eyes as I lay in bed.”

“In the cocoon that wasn’t a problem.”