Chapter 7: Stirrings
Tull looked to Tirilee in confusion, wondering what to do. He started to bend over Scandal, to pull him from the cave, but Tirilee stared at Tull as if lost in a dream, her pupils had gone unnaturally wide, her jaw slack. She clung to him with one hand. She was such a child, just a stick of a girl.
As Tull reached down for Scandal, he suddenly felt something strange—a deep attraction for Tirilee. It was something in the way that she stood, the way she looked at him, the perfume of her scent. He longed suddenly to hold her.
Tull looked up into her face, and knew that she felt it too. She was under a spell.
She lurched forward a step, twisted an arm around his neck, and her arm felt as strong as metal bars. She drew him close, wrapped both arms behind his head.
A hot tremor pierced him, and he wanted her, wanted her more than he’d ever wanted Wisteria. Every muscle seemed to go taut.
She parted her lips slowly, and they touched his own lips. Her breath was warm and moist, scented of earth and flowers.
She pulled her whole body against him, as if to kiss him with every inch of her flesh, and he was painfully aware of the way that the hot nubs of her little breasts against his chest.
All thought left his mind. As a child he had once gotten cut severely, and Chaa had drugged him with opium, then sewed the wound closed. He felt that way now, drugged, empty of thought, unable to waken.
Yet a small corner of his mind called out, “Wisteria.” The words escaped his lips.
Tirilee pushed him away and suddenly staggered back three steps, then turned and ran from the cave.
He merely stood and tried to regain his senses.
He knew he did not love her, did not care for her any more than he did a stranger. Yet the smell of her had been so tantalizing, like the scent of honeysuckle blown on the wind. He could not resist the temptation to inhale the air, to catch that beautiful scent.
As he filled his lungs, waves of desire for Tirilee rushed over him again, and he stood alone and helpless in their wake, as if standing in the sand before the rushing waves of the ocean, knowing that they would knock him about and carry him away.
“God, if you exist,” he mouthed, unwilling to speak in the stillness of the cave, “I love my wife. Do not let Tirilee’s Time of Devotion come now.”
Yet his prayer felt empty. Dryads had been destroying the lives of the Pwi for generations. As truly as he had heard the voice of Falhalloran, Tull knew Tirilee would take him.
He stooped to pick up Scandal, and in the mud he found a ball made of brass, a simple thing with the edges of continents etched on it. Tull picked it up, looked about.
He’d asked the aspect for weapons. Was this a gift from Falhalloran?
He tucked it into his food pouch, and then pulled Scandal to the mouth of the cave, out into the sunlight.
Ayuvah stood waiting outside, pale with fear. He was shaking, stamping from foot to foot nervously. He glanced helplessly off into the brush, toward where Tirilee had run, then helped pull Scandal into the open, examining him as if to discover why he’d been struck down.
“What happened? Why did the Dryad run?” Ayuvah asked.
“She was afraid,” Tull said, unwilling to tell the whole truth.
Scandal began to rouse. He shook his head, looked up at them in surprise, peered back at the cave, and asked, “Was it a dream?”
Tull looked toward the cave. Silently, somehow the curtain of stone had drawn back in place. No one would ever imagine the wonders hid behind it. He said bitterly, “It was no dream.”
They walked back to camp in defeat. Ayuvah returned the thirty silver eagles to Scandal and would not keep even part of it. At camp, they found Phylomon awake, fixing lunch.
The Hukm milled about aimlessly or bartered in their marketplace over fruit or hides or cloth. They stood waggling their stubby tails, occasionally grunting for emphasis as they finger talked. For all their size, they were unnervingly quiet. Short Tail and Born-in-Snow quietly hooked a woolly mammoth to the wagon, guiding it back between the wooden tugs with grunts and hand movements. Short Tail was dusky red and had shaved his head of all hair but two lines that ran from his eyebrows back to the nape of his neck. Born-in-Snow was darker in color, but his winter white was coming in rapidly, so much so that his back and rump had gone nearly all white.
Phylomon grinned at them knowingly. “I hope you enjoyed your little jaunt to Falhalloran.” he said. “I hope you got what you went for.”
“I saw no city,” Scandal said in disgust.
“True, but you saw its Aspect, its personification,” Phylomon said. “I helped bury the city years ago. It was in the winter, and Captain Chu had been beheaded by the Aenthari—the first tribe of Neanderthals to be captured by Slave Lords, the first to become Thralls. Many Slave Lords in those days were mere technicians, and they wanted to break away from Anee. We were afraid that if they knew that Falhalloran had been only damaged—not destroyed—by the red drones, they would have tried to turn it into a vessel of war. They would have attacked the red drones, or at the least tried to break away from the planet, and Falhalloran would have been annihilated. So we buried it. For a thousand years, I told no one that the city even existed. Now, it doesn’t matter. Falhalloran is a city of peace, a city of creation. No one living can turn it into a weapon of war.”
“You know,” Scandal said, “there was a rock wall that turned to dust and fell to the ground, and in an instant, while our backs were turned, it rose back up!”
“The wall is made of millions of tiny machines the size of specks of dust,” Phylomon said. “Each machine has legs like a spider. They hold themselves together to form a wall. If you’d looked closely when the wall rose, you’d have seen motes crawl into place.”
“We asked the man of fire for help,” Tull said. “We asked him for weapons. Yet I found only this.” He pulled the brass ball from his pocket.
Phylomon looked at Tull for a long moment, gauging him. “Falhalloran did not leave you empty-handed. I asked him to give you what he thought best. It is a weather globe. Here …” Phylomon knelt and pulled a piece of straw from the ground. At the top of the globe was an indentation. He stuck the straw into the indentation and pushed. The ball suddenly jumped into the air and expanded until it was four feet in diameter. It hung like a moon, blue and white, with streaks of pink. Tull somehow grasped that this was a map of his world. He could see the terminus dividing night from day, and he saw the vivid blue oceans of Anee and white clouds billowing over the land.
“We are here,” Phylomon said, pointing to a speck of fire on one edge of the continent. “As you can see, we have blue skies above. Out in Hotland the sun is rising.” He pointed to a great swirl of clouds, “and thunderstorms are rolling in.”
Phylomon reached up into the air, into the heart of the globe, and the illusion disappeared. He held in his hand the brass ball.
“Tull, this is yours,” he said.
“I … might break it,” Tull said, not wanting to touch the thing. “My hands are too clumsy.”
“Take it,” Phylomon said, “This is your future. Technology is your future.” He gave the ball to Tull.
Wisteria sat on a log, still pasty-faced. She finally got up, stumbled a few feet and vomited.
Tull took a pitcher and filled a cup with water so that Wisteria could rinse her mouth.
Ayuvah asked her, “Are you still sick? It has been nearly two weeks.”
“I’m not sick,” she admitted timidly. She looked up at Tull to see his reaction. “I think I’m pregnant.”
***