Robert Silverberg: At Winter's End

“Please, Torlyri, please—”

She shook her head. Without taking her eyes from the boy, she scooped together what she needed for the inward offering. She glanced once more in each of the Five Sacred Directions. She spoke the Five Names. Then she turned to the boy and indicated with a brusque gesture that he was to precede her through the hatch. He looked terrified. Gently Torlyri said, “I have no choice, Hresh. I have to take you to Koshmar.”

Long ago, someone had mounted a narrow strip of glossy black stone at eye level along the central chamber’s rear wall. No one knew why it had been put there originally, but over the years it had come to be sacred to the memory of the tribe’s departed chieftains. Koshmar made a point of brushing her fingertips across it and quickly whispering the names of the six who had ruled most recently before her, whenever she felt apprehensive over the future of the People. It was her quick way of invoking the power of her predecessors’ spirits, asking them to enter into her and guide her to do the right thing. Somehow calling upon them seemed more immediate, more useful, than to call upon the Five Heavenly Ones. She had invented the little rite herself.

Lately Koshmar had begun touching the strip of black stone every day, and then two or three times each day, while saying the names:

— Thekmur Nialli Sismoil Yanla Vork Lirridon —

She was having premonitions: of what, she could not say, but she felt that some great transformation must be descending upon the world, and that she would stand soon in need of much guidance. The stone was comforting in such moments.

Koshmar wondered if her successor too would observe this custom of touching the stone when her soul was troubled. It was almost time, Koshmar knew, to begin thinking of a successor. She would be thirty this year. Five years more and she would reach the limit-age. Her death-day would come, as it had come for Thekmur and Nialli and Sismoil and all the rest, and they would take her to the exit hatch and send her outside to perish in the cold. It was the way, unalterable, unanswerable: the cocoon was finite, food was limited, one must make room for those who are to come.

She closed her eyes and put her fingers to the black stone and stood quietly, a husky, broad-shouldered, keen-eyed woman at the height of her strength and power, praying for help.

Thekmur Nialli Sismoil Yanla —

Torlyri burst into the chamber just then, dragging Minbain’s unruly brat Hresh, the one who was forever sneaking around poking his nose into this place and that one where he had no business. The boy was howling and squirming and frantically writhing in Torlyri’s grasp. His eyes were wild and shining with fear, as though he had just seen a death-star plummeting down toward the roof of the cocoon.

Koshmar, startled, swung around to face them. In her irritation her thick grayish-brown fur rose like a cloak about her, so that she seemed to swell to half again her true size.

“What’s this? What has he done now?”

“I went outside to make the offering,” Torlyri began, “and an instant later out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of—”

Thaggoran entered the chamber at that moment. To Koshmar’s amazement he looked nearly as wild-eyed as Hresh. He was waving his arms and sensing-organ around in a peculiar crazed way, and his voice came in such a thick blurting rush that Koshmar could make out mere fragments of what he was trying to tell her.

“Ice-eaters — the cocoon — right underneath, coming straight up — it’s the truth, Koshmar, it’s the prophecy—”

And all the while Hresh continued to whimper and yowl, and soft-voiced Torlyri went steadily on with her story.

“One at a time!” Koshmar cried. “I can’t hear anything that anybody’s saying!” She glared at the withered old chronicler, white-furred with age and bowed as though weighed down by the precious deep knowledge of the past that he alone carried. She had never seen him looking so deranged. “Ice-eaters, Thaggoran? Did you say ice-eaters?”

Thaggoran was trembling. He muttered something murmy and faint that was drowned out by Hresh’s panicky outcries. Koshmar looked angrily toward her twining-partner and snapped, “Torlyri, why is that child in here?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you. I caught him trying to slip through the hatch.”

“What?”

“I only wanted to see the river!” Hresh howled. “Just for a little while!”

“You know the law, Hresh?”

“It was just for a little while!”

Koshmar sighed. “How old is he, Torlyri?”

“Eight, I think.”

“Then he knows the law. All right, let him see the river. Take him upstairs and put him outside.”

Shock registered on Torlyri’s gentle face. Tears glistened in her eyes. Hresh began to scream and howl again, even louder. But Koshmar had had enough of him. The boy had long been a nuisance, and the law was clear. To the hatch with him, and good riddance. She made an impatient sweeping gesture of dismissal and swung back to face Thaggoran.

“All right. Now: what’s this about ice-eaters?”

In a shaky voice the chronicler launched a bewildering tale, raggedly told and difficult to follow, something about searching for shinestones in the Mother of Frost, and picking up a sense of something alive nearby, something big, moving in the rock, something digging a tunnel. “I made contact,” Thaggoran said, “and I touched the mind of an ice-eater — I mean, one can’t really speak of ice-eaters having minds, but in a manner of speaking they do, and what I felt was—”

Koshmar scowled. “How far away from you was it?”

“Not far at all. And there were others. Perhaps a dozen, all told, close at hand. Koshmar, do you know what this means? It must be the end of winter! The prophets have written, ‘When the ice-eaters begin to rise—’ ”

“I know what the prophets have written,” Koshmar said sharply. “These things are coming right up under the dwelling-chamber, you say? Are you sure?”

Thaggoran nodded. “They’ll smash right through the floor. I don’t know how soon — it could be a week from now, or a month, or maybe six months — but beyond any doubt they’re heading straight for us. And they’re enormous, Koshmar.” He stretched his arms out as far as they could reach. “They’re this wide around — maybe even bigger—”

“Gods spare us,” Torlyri murmured. And from the boy Hresh came short sharp panting sounds of astonishment.

Koshmar whirled, exasperated. “Are you two still here? I told you to take him to the hatch, Torlyri! The law is clear. Venture outside the cocoon without lawful leaving-right, and you are forbidden to enter it again. I tell you one last time, Torlyri: take him to the hatch.”

“But he didn’t really leave the cocoon,” said Torlyri quietly. “He stepped out just a little way, and—”

“No! No more disobedience! Say the words over him and cast him out, Torlyri!” Once again she turned to Thaggoran. “Come with me, old man. Show me your ice-eaters. We’ll be waiting for them with our hatchets when they break through. Big as they are, we’ll cut them to pieces as they rise, a slice and a slice and a slice, and then—”

She cut herself short as suddenly a strange hoarse sound, a rasping strangled gurgling sound, came from the far side of the chamber:

“ Aaoouuuaaah! ”

It went on and on, and then it died away into an astounded silence.

“Yissou and Mueri! What was that?” Koshmar muttered, amazed.

It was a sound such as she had never heard before. An ice-worm, perhaps, stirring and yawning just below as it made ready to smash through the wall of the chamber? Bewildered, she stared into the dimness. But all was still. Everything seemed to be as it should be. There was the tabernacle, there was the casket in which the book of the chronicles was kept, there was the Wonderstone in its niche and all the old shinestones around it, there was the cradle where Ryyig Dream-Dreamer slept his eternal sleep—