“Twine with me,” Torlyri said, and opened fully to him.

Afterward Hresh rose and stood for a time looking down on the sleeping Torlyri. She was smiling as she slept. He had feared that he might have injured her when his mind went rushing with full power into hers. But no: she would sleep a little while, and then she would awaken.

He made his way by himself up the winding ramp and out of the temple. Better that he let her awaken alone. She might be abashed when she awoke to find him still lying beside her, as if they were twining-partners. She would need some time to return to herself, to regain her equilibrium. He knew that the unexpected intensity of their communion had had great impact on her.

For his part Hresh had found his first twining a pleasure and a revelation.

A pleasure, certainly: to lie in Torlyri’s warm embrace, to feel her gentle soul mingling with his, to enter into that odd and delicious state of communion. Now at last he understood why twining was so highly regarded, why it was considered a delight more powerful even than coupling.

A revelation, too: he had known Torlyri all his life, but he saw now that until today he had known her in only the most general way. A good woman, a kindly woman, a gentle and loving presence in the tribe — she who performed the rites and spoke with the gods and gave comfort to all in need, a kind of mother to everyone. Yes: that was Torlyri. But now Hresh knew that there were other aspects to her. There was great strength in her, an astonishing toughness of spirit. He should have expected that, remembering how strong she was physically, nearly as strong as a warrior and in some ways stronger. That kind of strength usually reflected inner strength, but he had been so deceived by her warmth, her softness, her motherliness, that he had not noticed it.

Then too there were ordinary human, things about Torlyri. She was not just a doer of rites and a giver of comfort, but also a person, with a private existence, with a private person’s fears, doubts, needs, pains. He had not taken the trouble to consider that. Twining with her just now, he had detected the urgency of her desire for some warrior of the tribe — Lakkamai, he supposed; Torlyri and Lakkamai were always together these days — and the complexity of her relationship with Koshmar, and something else, an emptiness, a lonely place within her, that had to do with the fact that she had not borne a child. She was mother to all the tribe and yet not mother to anyone, and that seemed to trouble her, perhaps on such a deep level that she was not aware of it herself. Hresh saw it now, and seeing it had changed him. He was coming to realize what a difficult and intricate thing it was to be adult. There were so many aspects of life that refused to fit neatly into any compartment, but kept squirming about and causing subterranean disturbances, when you were adult. That was, perhaps, the main thing that his first twining had taught him.

A pleasure and a revelation. And had it been something of a disappointment, too? Yes, that too. It had not been as awesome an experience as he had hoped. It had fallen short of his vision of what it might be, but only because he possessed the Wonderstone. When you twined you could reach the soul of only one other person; with the Barak Dayir you could reach the soul of the world. Already in his early uncertain experiments with the Wonderstone he had risen above the clouds, he had looked across seas, he had peered into the time before the coming of the death-stars. What was twining compared with that?

He realized that he was being unfair. The Barak Dayir offered him an almost incomprehensible reach. Twining was intimate, personal, small. Yet one did not negate the other. If he had found some disappointment in twining, it was only because the Wonderstone had shown him already how to step beyond the boundaries of his own mind. Had he not had that experience, twining would probably have seemed overwhelming. The Wonderstone, it seemed, had spoiled him for that. But there was little reason, all the same, to take twining lightly. It was an extraordinary thing. It was an astonishing thing.

He wanted to twine again as soon as he could.

He wanted to twine with Taniane.

That thought, the thought of twining with Taniane, leaped into his mind with such force and such suddenness that he was stunned by it, as if he had been struck a terrible blow between the shoulders. His throat went dry, his breath came short. His heart began to pound, making a loud thumping sound like that of a drum, loud enough, he thought, for others to hear.

Twining with Taniane! What an amazing idea!

She was a mystery to him. He had long felt some sort of connection with her, some kind of attraction. But he had feared it as a distraction from his real work; and he feared also that it would lead him to something bad.

She was a woman now, a beautiful one, and one of unusual intelligence. And ambition. She dreamed of taking Koshmar’s place as chieftain one day: no question of that. Anyone with any sense could see that, just from the envious way she looked at Koshmar. Sometimes also Hresh caught her looking at him from a distance, staring in that curious way that women use when they are interested in a man. And sometimes, too, he looked closely at her from far away, when he thought she was unaware of him. Often she was giddy and flirtatious with him. She followed him about, she demanded to go with him on his explorations in the ruins, she plied him with questions whose answers seemed to be of the highest importance to her. He was not sure how to interpret that. Sometimes he suspected that she was only toying with him, that it was Haniman who really interested her.

That would be agonizing, to be rejected in favor of Haniman. That was one risk he did not care to take.

But today everything seemed changed. He had twined, now. The whole world of adult complexities lay open to him. He might be the old man of the tribe but he was a young man, too. And he wanted Taniane.

He went in search of her.

It was midafternoon, and the day had become sunny and clear. The roof of the sky appeared to be twanging back and forth as though on strings. The edges of everything Hresh saw were peculiarly sharp, with knife-keen boundaries between one object and another. Colors were vibrant and throbbing. It was as if the twining had opened his soul to a host of powerful new sensory impressions.

Orbin emerged from a nearby passageway, whistling, sauntering.

Hresh halted him. “Have you seen Taniane?”

“Over there,” said Orbin, pointing to a building where some recent finds of the Seekers were being stored. He began to saunter on. Then he paused for a second look at Hresh. “Is anything wrong?”

“Wrong? Wrong?” Hresh felt flustered. “What do you mean, anything wrong?”

“You’ve got a strange look in your eye.”

“You’re imagining things, Orbin.”

Orbin shrugged. “Maybe I am, yes.”

He began whistling again. He strolled away, smiling in a way that seemed disagreeably knowing and supercilious.

Am I that transparent? Hresh wondered. One glance at me, and Orbin can read everything that’s in my mind?

He hurried to the Seeker storehouse, where he found Konya and Praheurt and Taniane, but not Haniman, to his great relief. They all were bending over some unfamiliar piece of machinery with jutting odd-angled metal arms and legs, prodding it in a gingerly way.

“Hresh!” Praheurt called. “Come and see what Konya and Haniman brought back from—”

“Another time,” Hresh said. “Taniane, may I speak with you?”

She glanced up. “Of course. What is it, Hresh?”

“Outside?”

“Can’t we talk in here?”

“Please. Outside.”