Robert Silverberg: At Winter's End

Hresh walked away from them, to be by himself for a time before the feasting began.

This has been a strange day, he thought; but, then, every day has been strange, since that first day of strangeness long ago when I took it into my head to sneak outside the cocoon, and the ice-eaters began to rise under our cavern, and the Dream-Dreamer awoke and cried out. And now Harruel is dead and Koshmar is dead and Torlyri is a Beng and Taniane is a chieftain and Salaman is a king, and I am Hresh-full-of-questions who is also Hresh-of-the-answers, the old man of our tribe. And I will continue my Going Forth, until the ends of the earth, and Dawinno will be my guardian.

The cool wind of this high country blew refreshingly about him. His mind was clear and open and peaceful. A vision arose in it as he stood by himself, a vision of the Great World, achieved now without the aid of any of the machines he had brought with him out of Vengiboneeza. He simply saw it before him, as though he had been transported to it by magic. It was a vision once again of the Great World on its last day, with darkness in the air and black winds blowing and frost overtaking everything; and he was not an observer this time, but a citizen of that lost world, a sapphire-eyes, in fact. He felt the heaviness of his great jaw, and the ponderousness of his immense thighs and tail. And he knew that this was the last day of the Great World, did that sapphire-eyes who was Hresh-full-of-questions. No sapphire-eyes would survive the time that was drawing nigh. The gods had sent a death upon their world.

And Hresh as Hresh understood that it was Dawinno the Destroyer whose day it was that day, while Hresh as sapphire-eyes waited peacefully for his end. The chill that was entering his body would travel inward until it took his life. Dawinno, yes. The god who brought death and change, and also renewal and rebirth. At last Hresh understood what Noum om Beng had been trying to tell him. It would have been a sin against Dawinno to attempt to deflect the death-stars that were heading toward the world. The sapphire-eyes had known that. They abided by the law of the gods. They had not tried to save themselves because they knew that all cycles must run their course, and they must go from the world to make room for those who were to come.

Yes. Yes, of course, Hresh thought. I should have realized that without needing so many slaps from Noum om Beng. I am very clever, he thought, but sometimes also I am very slow. Thaggoran might have explained all these matters to me, if he had lived. But Dawinno had called Thaggoran also to himself; and so I had to learn all this on my own.

He smiled. Another vision was coming alive within his soul: a shining city on a distant hillside, glowing in all the colors of the universe, blazing in light so radiant that it stunned the soul to see it. Not a city of the Great World, this one, but a new city, a city of the world yet to come, the world that he would bring into being. Deep surging music rose from the earth and enveloped him. It seemed to him that Taniane stood beside him.

“See, there,” he said. “That great city.”

“A sapphire-eyes city, is it?”

“No, a human city. Which we will build, to show that we too are human.”

Taniane nodded. “Yes. We are the humans now.”

“We will be,” Hresh said.

He thought of the golden ball of quicksilver, and the machines it controlled. Miracles, yes. And not our miracles. But we will use them in forging a miracle of our own. For us, he thought, it will be an endless Going Forth. Now the task begins, the struggle to prevail, the mastery of ancient skills and new ones, the long upward climb. He would lead the way, and he would say to the others, “Follow me there,” and they would follow.

Hresh looked toward the south. In one of the nearest hills there he made out a disturbance on one slope. He saw something huge struggling there, emerging from the earth. It looked almost as though an ice-eater was breaking through from the depths. Could it be? An ice-eater? Yes. That was what it was. An ice-eater, perhaps one of the last to get the word that the New Springtime truly had come. The monstrous creature was breaching the surface now, tossing trees and earth and great slabs of rock to this side and that. Hresh saw its blind face, its black-bristled body. And now it had broken through; and now it lay gasping in the sunlight, dying. Hresh watched, and as he watched the vast bulk of the subterranean creature split apart, and tiny creatures — or at least they seemed tiny at this distance — came from it by the dozens, by the hundreds, little shimmering things, coiling and wriggling busily, an army of small serpents born out of the great dead thing of the former world. Its young, yes. Not hideous like their colossal progenitor, but delicate and strangely beautiful, bright gleaming creatures, blue and glossy green and velvet black, moving in tracks of shining light. Rushing off into the sunlit day to take up the life that was offered them here at winter’s end. Renewal and rebirth, yes. Renewal and rebirth everywhere.

So even the ice-eaters would survive, after a fashion, in the new world. The prophecy had said they would die when the long winter ended, but the prophecy had been wrong. They would not die. They would only be transformed. Out of winter’s bleak decay new life and beauty could come. Hresh offered them a blessing, the blessing of Dawinno.

How he wished he could tell Thaggoran that!

He laughed, and took Thaggoran’s amulet in his hand.

“Oh, Thaggoran, Thaggoran, if I started telling you everything that I have learned since the night the rat-wolves came, it would take me as many years to tell you as it has taken me to live it,” he said aloud. “See? The ice-eaters — that’s what they become. And the Great World — I’ve seen it, Thaggoran, and I know why it let itself die in peace. And the Bengs — let me tell you about the Bengs, Thaggoran, and about Vengiboneeza, and—” He clutched the amulet tightly. “I’ve not done so badly, have I, Thaggoran? I’ve learned a thing or two, eh? And someday, I promise you, you’ll hear it all from me. Someday, yes. But not soon, eh, Thaggoran? We’ll sit and talk as we did in the old days. But not soon!”

Hresh turned and began to walk back toward the City of Yissou. It would be time soon for the feast. He would sit with Taniane on his right hand, and Minbain on his left, and if these people of Harruel’s had any wine in their city he would drink all he could hold, and then some more, for this was a night of celebration such as had scarcely ever been seen. Indeed. He walked more briskly, and then he began to trot, and then to run.

Behind him, ten thousand thousand newborn ice-eaters, glistening with life, glided away to celebrate their birth into the New Springtime of the world.

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