Lakkamai was waiting outside as though expecting her. Silent as ever, seemingly at ease, he leaned back against the wall and watched her draw near. His eyes, cool and solemn, held no trace now of that fierce probing stare that he had so often turned on her of late. But the corner of his mouth was moving repeatedly in a quick short tic that betrayed inner tension. He appeared unaware of that.

“Come,” Torlyri said softly. “Walk with me. The rains have relented.”

Lakkamai nodded. They started off side by side, keeping so far apart that burly Harruel would have had room easily to walk between them. Past the houses of the tribe, past the entrance to the six-sided tower of purple stone that was the temple, past the garden of shrubs and flowering plants that Boldirinthe and Galihine and some of the others now maintained with such care, past the sparkling pool of pink radiance that once had given pleasure to the sapphire-eyes. Neither of them spoke. They looked straight ahead. It seemed to Torlyri that she caught sidewise glimpses of Hresh, of Konya, of Taniane, even perhaps of Koshmar, as she walked. But no one called to her and she did not turn her head to see anyone more clearly.

Beyond the garden of the women and the light-pool of the sapphire-eyes there was a second garden, a wild one, where tangled vines and crook-armed trees and strange swollen-bellied black-leaved shrubs grew in crazy profusion above a thick carpet of dense bluish moss. Here Torlyri entered, Lakkamai walking beside her, but closer now. Still neither spoke. They went inward perhaps two dozen paces, to a place where there was an opening, almost a bower, in the undergrowth. Torlyri turned now to Lakkamai and smiled; and he put his hands to her shoulders, as if to pull her downward with him to the moss, but no pulling was necessary. They descended together.

She could not say whether it was he who entered her, or she who enfolded him; but suddenly they were pressed close upon each other with their bodies joined. From the moss beneath them came a faint sighing sound. It was heavy with the stored moisture of the many days of rain, and as they moved Torlyri imagined that they were squeezing it out into the shallow declivity in which they lay, so that it was forming a pool around them. She welcomed that. Gladly would she submerge herself in that gentle warmth.

Lakkamai moved within her. She clung to him, clasping the ridged muscles beneath the thick fur of his back.

It was not quite as it had been in her dream. But it was not at all as she remembered its having been with Samnibolon and Binigav and Moarn, either. The communion was nowhere nearly as deep or as full as was twining — how could it have been? — but it was far more profound than she had ever known coupling could be. Holding tight to Lakkamai, Torlyri thought in wonder and surprise that this went beyond coupling: this must be in fact what mating is like. And in that moment of astonished realization there arose a discordant voice within her that asked, What have I done? What will Koshmar say?

Torlyri let the question go unanswered, and it was not repeated. She lost herself in the wondrous silence that was the soul of Lakkamai. After a time she moved free of him, and they lay a short distance apart, only their fingertips touching.

She thought of touching him with the tip of her sensing-organ, but no, no, that would be too much like twining. That would be twining. Koshmar, not Lakkamai, was her twining-partner. But Lakkamai was her mate.

Torlyri turned that thought over and over in her mind.

Lakkamai is my mate. Lakkamai is my mate.

She was thirty-two years old and had been the offering-woman of the tribe for a dozen years, and now, suddenly, after so long a time, she had a mate. How strange. How very strange.

On a cool bright winter day when the last storm had blown itself out to the east and the next had not yet come sweeping in from the western sea, Hresh went once more to explore the grim building he called the Citadel. It was Taniane’s idea, and she went with him. Lately she had begun to accompany him on many of his journeys. Koshmar seemed to have no objection these days to his going into the ruins without a warrior to protect him. And Hresh had quickly come to accept Taniane’s participation in the group of Seekers. There was still something about being close to her that made him uneasy and uncomfortable; but at the same time he felt a curious giddy pleasure at being alone with her in the distant reaches of the city.

Hresh had not wanted to return to the Citadel. He thought he knew now what it was, and he feared to know that he was right. But the strange building fascinated Taniane, and she insisted again and again, until at last he agreed. He dared not tell her why he had been keeping away. And having agreed to go, he resolved to force the mystery of the Citadel to its depths, no matter what the consequences. Tell her nothing, but let her see. Let her draw her own conclusions. Perhaps the time had come, he thought, to share some of the terrible truth that he had kept pent within himself. And perhaps Taniane was the one to try to share it with.

The path to the Citadel was a difficult one, paved with blocks of gray flagstone that had been heaved this way and that by time and earthquakes and made slippery during the winter rains by a thick furry coating of green algae. Twice Taniane lost her footing and Hresh caught her, once by the upper arm, once by her haunch and the small of her back; and his fingers tingled strangely from the contact each time. There was a stirring in his loins and in his sensing-organ. He found himself wishing she would slip a third time, but she did not.

They reached the top and stepped out onto the headland where the Citadel stood in solitary majesty overlooking Vengiboneeza. Hresh crossed the carpet of short dense thick-bladed grass that surrounded the building, going to the edge and looking out. The vast sprawl of the city lay before him, shining in the pale, milky winter light. He looked down at the broken white stubs of buildings, at delicate airy bridges that had collapsed into mounds of rubble, at roadbeds of gleaming stone shot through with livid greens and blues extending to the horizon. Taniane stood close by him, breathing harshly from the climb.

“I saw all this as it was when it was alive,” Hresh said after a moment.

“Yes. Haniman told me.”

“It was absolutely amazing. So many things happening at once, so many people, such energy. Amazing. And very depressing.”

“Depressing?”

“I never understood what a real civilization was, before I saw the Great World. Or realized how far we are from having one. I thought it would be just like a cocoon, only a lot bigger, with more people doing more things. But that isn’t it, Taniane. There’s a difference in quality as well as quantity. There’s a certain point at which a civilization takes off, where it begins to generate its own energy, it grows of its own accord and not simply from the actions of the people who make it up. Do you understand me at all? The tribe is too small to be like that. We have our little things to do, and we do them, and the next day we do them all over again, but there isn’t the same sense of possibility, of transformation, of exploding growth. You need more people for that. Not just hundreds. You need thousands — millions—”

“We’ll have that someday, Hresh.”

He shrugged. “It’s a long way off. There’s so much work that has to be done first.”

“The Great World also started small.”

“Yes,” he said. “I keep telling myself that.”

“So that’s what’s been troubling your soul so much, since you came back from seeing the things you saw?”

“No,” said Hresh. “That wasn’t it. It was something else.”

“Can you tell me?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t tell anyone.”

She looked at him a long while without speaking. Then she smiled and touched him lightly on the shoulder. He shivered at the touch, and hoped she had not noticed.