“Will you take all the others?”

“Only those who want to go,” said Harruel. “Only the strong and the bold. The others can stay here to the end of their days, for all I care.”

“So you will make yourself chieftain, then?”

Harruel shook his head. “Chieftain is a title out of the cocoon life. That life is ended. And chieftains are women. Koshmar can remain chieftain, if she likes, though she’ll have precious little tribe to be chieftain over. I will call myself by another name, Konya.”

“And what name will that be?”

“I will be called king,” said Harruel.

The mild weather that the tribe had enjoyed since first coming to Vengiboneeza ended abruptly, and there were three days of heavy winds out of the north and cold, sweeping rains. The sky turned black and stayed that way. Creatures of the sky were seen beating raggedly against the wind, vainly trying to journey to the westward and constantly being driven far to the south.

“A new death-star has struck the earth,” said Kalide to Delim. “The Long Winter is returning.”

Delim, carrying this to Cheysz, said that the rain, so she had heard, would soon turn to snow.

“We will all freeze,” said Cheysz to Minbain. “We need to seal things up the way the cocoon was sealed, or we will die when the Long Winter comes again.”

And Minbain, summoning Hresh, asked him what he knew of these things. “Has this been nothing but a false spring?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t we be storing food in the caverns beneath Vengiboneeza to tide us through the time of freezing?” Life in Vengiboneeza had been too easy, she said, a trap laid by the gods: now the sun would be blotted out for months or even years and they would all perish if they failed to take immediate steps. There was no way to return to the old cocoon; Vengiboneeza would have to be their refuge now. Even Vengiboneeza, grand though it was, might not be a fitting hiding place if the Long Winter were to fall upon the world once more. The sapphire-eyes folk had been unable to survive here; would the tribe fare any better?

Hresh smiled. “You worry too much, Mother. There’s no danger of freezing. The weather has changed for the worse just now, and after a little while it will change for the better again.”

But the rumor had traveled even to Koshmar, growing more ominous along the way. She too sent for Hresh. “Is this truly the coming of the Long Winter again?” she asked him, looking somber, grim, head drawn in close against her shoulders, eyes hooded and hard. “Is it true that the sun will not shine again for a thousand years?”

“It is only a bad storm, I think.”

“If it’s like this in sheltered Vengiboneeza, it must be much worse elsewhere.”

“Perhaps. But in a few days it’ll be warm here again, Koshmar. So I do believe.”

“You believe! You believe! Can you be sure, though? There must be some way of finding out.”

He gave her an uneasy look. Koshmar had built a fine nest for herself and Torlyri in this solid little building in the shadow of the great tower. There were fragrant hangings of woven rushes on the walls, and thick carpets of skins, and dried flowers everywhere. And yet the bitter wind now came whipping against the windows and down the air vents and brought a chill into the room. From the first, Koshmar had insisted that the Long Winter was over. She had invested all her soul in the abandonment of the cocoon and the making of the great trek to Vengiboneeza. It occurred to Hresh that something might crack within Koshmar if it turned out that she was wrong.

She wanted reassurance from him, her chronicler, her staff of wisdom. What could he tell her? He knew no more of winds and storms than anyone else. He had grown up in the cocoon, where no winds blew. Thaggoran, perhaps, might have read the portents and given Koshmar the truth of the situation. Thaggoran, steeped in the lore of the chronicles, had been equal to almost any situation. But Thaggoran had been old and wise. Hresh was young and clever, which was not at all the same.

There must be some way of finding out, Koshmar had said.

There was. The Barak Dayir might tell him; but in the weeks since he first had found the courage to pull the shining stone from its pouch and touch his sensing-organ to it, he had proceeded with unusual caution, extending his mastery over it in minute stages. He had learned how to bring it to life, and how to liberate the potent sweep of its music, and how to let its force approach the borders of his mind. But that was as far as he had dared to go. It was easy to see how the Wonderstone might engulf him, how it might submerge his mind entirely within the torrent of its incomprehensible power. Once he let himself be lost in that torrent there might be no returning. And so he had forced himself to resist the irresistible. He kept his mind alert, agile, defensive: he leaped back quickly whenever the song of the Barak Dayir became too guileful and tempting. Though he went a little deeper into it each time he drew forth the stone, he took care not to let it possess his spirit as he thought it was capable of doing; and therefore he knew that he was still far from attaining command of the mysterious instrument.

This storm is the punishment of the gods upon us for my sloth and my cowardice, he thought. And if the storm causes Koshmar to become angry in her panic, the gods will guide her to direct her anger against me. Therefore I must act.

He said, “I’ll consult the Wonderstone, Koshmar. And it will tell me the meaning of this storm.”

“Yes. That’s what I hoped you would do.”

He hurried into the six-sided tower that was now the holy temple, and into the chamber where he kept the casket of the chronicles, and where he now slept much of the time, for he felt out of place in the dormitory where the other unmated young people lived. Unhesitatingly he drew the Wonderstone from its pouch. Thunder cracked terrifyingly overhead.

He put his sensing-organ to the stone and quickly brought his second sight to bear on it. Delay could bring only failure now. From it, at once, came the strange intense music that he had experienced on a dozen or more other occasions. But this time, because he knew he dared not falter, he opened himself to it in a way that was new to him. He let the music possess him; he let himself become the music.

He was a column of pure sound, rising without resistance to the roof of the world.

He climbed above the storm. He towered over Vengiboneeza like a god. The city seemed a toy model of itself. The lofty mountain ranges that sheltered the city looked to him now like mere low ridges. The great sea west of the city was no more than a leaden wind-tossed puddle, half hidden by swirls of black cloud that clustered at his ankles. He saw land on the far side of it, and an even mightier sea beyond, a gleaming sea that stretched so grandly around the curve of the world that even he, colossal though he now was, could not make out its farther shore.

He saw the sun. He saw the sky, blue and radiant above the storm. He looked to the east, where the great river was and their old cocoon, and saw that the air was clear there and the warmth of the New Spring-time still prevailed.

There was nothing to fear. The Barak Dayir had told him what he needed to know. He could descend now and bear the good tidings to Koshmar.

But he remained longer than was needful. The splendor of this ascent was not something he could relinquish easily. The music that was his new self crashed in majesty across the world, falling upon sea and upon land, upon mountains and upon valleys, with terrible grandeur. He looked toward the moon and reached a tendril of sound toward it as easily as in his old life he might have reached toward a ripe fruit hanging on a low branch. It would be simple, he knew, to encircle the moon with music and move it in its course, or bring it closer to the earth, or shatter it altogether. Or he could bypass it entirely, and send himself surging out into the depths of the void, and swim among the stars. He had never imagined such power. The stone could make you a god.