'Is it not time?' he asked, and a picture of distances came to him.
'My brothers,' he said. 'I believe. The tales of the old ones had foundation. I salute you, my ancestors, my brothers. Eternal life to you.' He heard the whisperings. He had not heard them often during that long period of cold and darkness, but now he heard them and, instead of being disjointed, difficult to understand, the words were clear, simple words that caused him to thrill inside.
'All is one,' the whisperers said. 'We are all one.'
'I hear,' Duwan whispered. 'All life is a oneness.' He covered distance with difficulty, at first. He walked through a cold rain as the snows of the canopy melted and made the footing mushy. He crossed another frozen lake with melting snow cold around his feet and with Du overhead, giving him more energy now than the cold could steal. He drank the rays, blessed them, and moved ever southward until the snows became only remnants in shadowed places and new, fresh green things sprouted in the thawing earth. He ate well, always thanking the food source and never taking enough to deprive a brother of health and life. He had no means of keeping count of the days. He knew only that as his strong legs moved him ever southward Du rose higher and higher into the sky, and he remembered his grandmother's words. When Du was just below the zenith at midday he would have reached his destination.
He was constantly on the alert now, for the land had changed. There were several varieties of tall brothers now, some of them putting out new, tender, delicious life organs after a time of bareness. He saw signs of life, but only in the form of animal tracks. From the songs of the minstrels and the legends of the old ones he remembered tales of animals large enough to be dangerous. Once he'd doubted such tales, but now, having known the whispering brothers, he doubted less. If one aspect of the legends was true, who could say what else was true? Still, he spotted no large tracks, saw only small, shy creatures so eager to avoid something as large as he that he had no clear picture of them, except for one little animal, the size of his hand, that lived in the tall brothers and squeaked excitedly when Duwan came near.
He swam a wide river, making his way through floating masses of melting, fracturing ice, spent a day drying his clothing and warming himself, and then was off again with the morning light.
He rested when Du was at the zenith, but still too low in the southern sky, and as he nibbled tender, green shoots he heard a distant crash and felt, unaccountably, a moment of sadness that was actual pain. Not long after he resumed his southward trek, he discovered the cause of the crashing sound. He heard, first, the steady rhythm of two sharp sounds. They echoed and reechoed among the trunks of the tall brothers. He began to move cautiously, came nearer. He heard voices.
Drinkers!
He increased his pace, but moved from cover to cover, carefully, until he saw, in a clearing ahead, a structure built of the split trunks of tall brothers. His heart leaped. Tall brothers had died to build that hut. He moved around the edge of the clearing, following the steady, rhythmic sounds, and froze into immobility when he saw, through the tall brothers, two Drinkers using chopping instruments to attack a tall brother. Even as he watched, someone yelled a warning and, with a groan, the tall brother toppled, the fall accelerating until the dying brother struck the hard ground with a smashing of limbs and the knowledge, shared by Duwan, that he was dying.
Duwan almost shouted, but his eyes had shifted from the two Drinkers who had killed the brother to the source of a harsh voice. A Drinker struck out at one of the choppers with a whip and the lash fell across the worker's shoulder. The worker yelled out in pain and Duwan reached for his longsword, but restrained himself as other Drinkers with weapons and lashes moved into the clearing and herded Drinkers dressed in rags to begin trimming the branches off the fallen dead brother.
Never had he seen such a thing. The Drinkers with weapons were dressed in leather and fur garments. They had, Duwan realized with a flush of anger, actually taken animal life to keep their bodies warm. His every impulse was to rush forth to punish this, the greatest of crimes, for the taking of life was the ultimate wrong. He held himself back, however, telling himself that he had been given a mission. He was not thinking, at that moment, of his missing arm, and the hope—a hope that had been growing ever since he'd discovered that at least a part of the old tales was true—that he could be whole again. He thought only of the dead tall brother, of the dead animals whose skins and fur warmed the killers, of the odd situation wherein one set of Drinkers forced others to work and struck them with lashes.
While uttering a prayer to Du for the dead, he circled far, returned to his southerly direction. In the days that followed he passed another settlement, this one boasting three huts made from the split trunks of tall brothers. Fortunately, the area was thinly settled. To the west was a snowcapped mountain range. A great river ran in a southeasterly direction, then turned east. Rolling, forested hills grew taller with each ridge to the south, and little cold streams made each valley a thing of delight, but there were no more settlements; at least Duwan didn't encounter any. All was green, and Du seemed to rise right up in the middle of the sky at midday now.
The sun was so warm that Duwan was all but intoxicated with it. He found that he could almost live on sunlight alone. He drank it and drank it and praised Du and wished that all of the Drinkers of the valley were with him for a celebration, knew, too, a sense of loss, for this, long past, had been their country. Why had not the old ones ever spoken of this glory of heat and sun? But then, who, among those who knew only the dim and distant Du of the far north, would have believed them? Who would believe him when he returned to tell of this land of so many riches, of so many silent, fixed brothers, of whispering groves, of Drinkers who killed?
On a morning when the sky was cloudless and Du was climbing toward the zenith only slightly to the south of the middle of the blue, he found his place. It was a tiny clearing on the southern slope of a ridge. Rocks thrust up from the earth, leaving a pocket where no tall brothers grew, but with a space of rich, grassy earth in the center exposed to the full light of the sun. He knelt, facing the north, and sent a prayer there, greeting all those he loved by name, his father, his mother, his friends, and, lastly, Alning. Then, eyes closed, the warmth on his eyelids, he praised Du. He secreted his weapons away from possible rain in a cleft among the rocks, took one last look around, stood in the grassy spot and began to bore into the sun-heated earth with his horned toes. If there was to be a time—when legend proved to be truth, the time was now.
The earth cooled below the surface, but as tendrils began to grow from his feet he felt and tasted the goodness,
