He turned and studied the Citadel for a time. Those bare massive greenish-black walls, those gigantic stone columns, that low, heavy, sloping roof: it was a building that spoke of power and strength, of arrogance, even, of colossal self-assurance. Hresh closed his eyes and saw the tall pale furless humans of his vision drifting ghostlike through these doorless walls at the touch of a finger, as though the walls were walls of mist. How had they done that? How could he?

“Turn your back,” he said.

“Why?”

“I have to do something that I don’t want you to see.”

“You’re becoming so mysterious, Hresh.”

“Please,” he said.

“Are you going to do something with the Wonderstone?”

“Yes,” he said, irritated.

“You don’t need to hide it from me.”

“Please, Taniane.”

She made a wry face and turned her back to him. He reached into his sash and drew forth the Barak Dayir, and after a moment’s uneasy hesitation he touched the tip of his sensing-organ to it, and heard its potent music rising through the chasms and abysses of the air to fill his soul. He began to tremble, He caught the force of the stone and tuned it and focused it, and thick whirls of red and yellow and white began to shine on the walls of the Citadel. Gateways, he thought.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to go inside. Give me your hand, Taniane.”

She stared at him strangely and put her hand into his. The Wonderstone so amplified his sensations that her palm was like fire against his skin, and he could scarcely endure the intensity of the contact; but he found a way of tolerating it, and with a gentle tug he led her toward the nearest of the whirls of light. It yielded to his approach and he stepped through the wall without difficulty, drawing Taniane along behind him.

Inside was an immense empty space, illuminated by a dim ghostly light that sprang up everywhere without apparent source. They might have been in a cavern half the width of the world, and half a mountain high.

“Yissou’s eyes,” Taniane whispered. “Where are we?”

“A temple, I think.”

“Whose?”

Hresh pointed. “Theirs.”

Humans were moving to and fro in the air high above them, light as dust-motes. They seemed to emerge from the walls, and they traveled across the upper reaches of the huge room by twos and threes, evidently deep in conversation, to disappear on the far side. They gave no sign that they were aware of the presence of Taniane and Hresh.

“Dream-Dreamers!” she murmured. “Are they real?”

“Visions, probably. From another time. From when the city was still alive. Or else we’re dreaming them.” He was still clutching the Barak Dayir in his hand. He dropped it back into its pouch and slipped the pouch into his sash. At once the ghostly figures overhead vanished, and there was nothing to be seen but the four rough bare stone walls, glowing dully in the faint spectral light that they themselves emanated.

“What happened?” Taniane asked. “Where did they go?”

“It was the Wonderstone that let us see them. They weren’t really here, only their images. Shining across thousands of years.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” said Hresh.

He took a few cautious steps, going to the wall at the place where they had entered and running his hand over the stone. It felt utterly unyielding, and faintly warm, like the Barak Dayir itself. A shiver ran along his spine. There was nothing in the great room, nothing at all, no shattered images, no toppled thrones, no sign of any occupants.

“I feel peculiar here,” Taniane said. “Let’s go.”

“All right.”

He turned away from her and drew forth the Wonderstone again, not bothering to hide it from her this time. She stared and made the sign of Yissou. The moment he touched it the walls began to blaze with light once more, and the eerie procession of the airborne humans was restored. He saw Taniane gaping at them in wonder. “Dream-Dreamers,” she said again. “They look just like him. Ryyig. Who were they?”

Hresh said nothing.

“I think I know,” she said.

“Do you?”

“It’s a crazy idea, Hresh.”

“Then don’t tell me.”

“Tell me what you think, then.”

“I’m not sure,” Hresh said. “I’m not sure of anything.”

“You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not.”

“We’re thinking the same thing. I’m frightened, Hresh.”

He saw her fur rising, and her breasts beginning to stir. He wished he dared to draw her close against him and hold her.

“Come,” he said. “We’ve been in here long enough.”

He took her hand again and led her through the gateway in the wall. When they were outside they looked back, and then at each other, without saying a word. He had never seen Taniane so shaken. And in his own mind that strange procession of Dream-Dreamer folk still drifted through the air above him, mysterious, tantalizing, magical, telling him once again the thing that he did not want to hear.

In silence they made their way down the slippery, tormented flagstone path. They said nothing to each other all the way back to the settlement.

As they approached it they heard angry shouts, loud cries, the high mocking cries of jungle monkeys. The place was full of them, dozens of them, swinging and capering through the rooftops.

“What’s going on?” Hresh asked, as Boldirinthe ran by waving a spear.

“Can’t you see?”

Weiawala, coming along behind her, paused to explain. The monkeys had come carrying the papery nests of insects of some sort. The nests broke when they hit the ground, releasing swarms of shining long-legged red nuisances with jagged nippers that dug deep. When they bit it burned like hot coals, and they couldn’t be pulled free, only pried out with knives. The bugs were all over the settlement, and so were the monkeys, screeching and laughing high above, and occasionally tossing down yet another nest. The whole tribe was busy trying to drive them away and to round up the stinging things.

It was hours before the settlement was calm again. By then, no one seemed to care where he had been or what he had done. Later that evening he saw Taniane sitting by herself, staring into the remote distance; and when Haniman went over to her to say something she shook him off angrily and left the room.

There was a sawtooth ridge halfway up the slope of Mount Springtime that Harruel often used as a lookout point when he was standing sentry duty over Vengiboneeza. It hung above the flank of the mountain like a terrace, so that when he looked upslope he had a view down into the saddle that any invading force would have to cross as it descended from the summit. From there also, looking the other way, he could see all of Vengiboneeza spread out below him like its own map.

There he sometimes sat, hour after hour, even in the rain, perched in the fork of an enormous shiny-barked tree with triangular red leaves. He had begun going alone to the mountain again these days. His recruits, his soldiers, had become mere annoyances to him, for he could see the impatience in them, their disbelief that invaders ever would come.

Dark thoughts came to him often, now. He felt caught in some kind of dream in which no one was able to move. The months, even the years, were passing, and he was trapped in this old ruined city the way he once had been trapped in the cocoon. Somehow in the cocoon it had not mattered to him that each day was exactly like the day before. But here, with all the world gleaming just beyond his reach, Harruel felt seething impatience. He had come to understand that he had been born for great things. When would he begin to achieve them, though? When? When?

During the long rainy spell these feelings built in him until they became all but unendurable. He spent entire days in his forked tree, drenched, soggy, furious. He glared at the tribal settlement below him at the city’s edge and roared his contempt for its dull pallid people. He glared at the mountain above him and screamed defiance at the invaders who obstinately refused to come. He grew stiff and sore. His body ached and his mind throbbed. Now and then he descended and plucked fruits from the nearby bushes. More than once he caught some small animal with his bare hands, and killed it and ate it raw.