“O my sacred forebears, now integrating with earth,” cried the young kzahhn, in the thick tongue of his kind, “at last I go to avenge him who should be standing now between you, my valorous grand-stallun, Great Kzahhn Hrr-Tryhk Hrast, who was killed by the peltless Sons of Freyr. Years of trial lie ahead. Strengthen my arm, warn us of danger, hold horns high.”
His great-grandstallun appeared to be standing deep inside Rukk-Ggil. The keratinous image said, “Go, hold horns high, remember enmities. Beware friendship with the Sons of Freyr.”
This remark was useless to Hrr-Brahl Yprt. He scarcely thought himself likely to feel other than hatred for the traditional enemy. Those in tether were not always wiser than those in air.
The keratinous image of his father was larger than that of the great-grandstallun since he had entered tether more recently. The image bowed to his son and spoke, sketching a series of pictures in his son’s harneys.
Hrr-Anggl Hhrot showed his son an image which the young kzahhn understood only in part. To a human, it would have been incomprehensible. Yet it was a view of the known universe, as pictured by the ancipital race, a view that largely conditioned their approach to life.
A busy organ pumped lustily, expanding and contracting. It consisted of three parts, each somewhat resembling a human fist clenched tight. The parts were interdependent, and of different colours. The grey third was the known world, the dazzling white third Batalix, the mottled black third Freyr. When Freyr puffed itself large, the other parts shrank; when Batalix grew, so did the known world.
This busy organ was surrounded by steam. Through the steam ran yellow threads, the air-octaves. The air-octaves wavered as if in flight from Freyr, yet nevertheless curled about it in some instances. The Freyr-third put forth black exopodites which tugged at the air-octaves, drawing it closer to the known world. It frothed. It grew.
These images were familiar to the young kzahhn and intended to reassure him before be set forth. He understood also the warning that the pictures conveyed: that the air-octaves the crusade would have to follow were becoming more chaotic, and that the perfect sense of direction he and all his kind possessed would be disturbed. The crusade would make slow progress, taking many air-turns, or years.
He thanked the keratinous image with deep churring in his throat.
Hrr-Anggl Hhrot revealed more pictures. These had the scent of ancient things. They were drawn from a well of remembered wisdom, from the heroic ages when Freyr was negligible. An angellike army of keratinous predecessors could be seen, confirming the images.
Hrr-Anggl Hhrot showed what would happen when air-turns to near a stallun’s number of toes and fingers had lapsed across the triple organ. Slowly, mottled black Freyr would drag itself into concealment behind Batalix. Twenty times in successive air-turns would it behave so. This was the terrifying paradox: that though the Freyr-part grew larger, it would hide itself behind the shrinking Batalix-part.
The twenty concealments marked the beginning of Freyr’s period of cruel dominance. From the twentieth concealment onwards, the ancipital component nations would fall under the power of the Sons of Freyr.
Such was the warning—but it contained hope.
The poor ignorant Sons would become terrified by the concealments of Freyr, who whelped them. The third concealment would demoralise them most. That was the time to strike against them, that was the time to arrive outside the town where the great kzahhn, Hrr-Tryhk Hrast, had been destroyed. That was the time of revenge. The time to burn and kill.
Remember. Be valiant. Hold horns high. War has begun!
Hrr-Brahl Yprt behaved as if he had received the flow of wisdom for the first time. He had received it many times. It was unalterable. It served him for thought. All of his component with ancestors in tether had received the same images many times over previous quarters. The images came from the known world, from the air, from the long dead.They were incontrovertible.
All component decisions were the result of such flows of wisdom from keratinous ancestors. Those who made the past outnumbered the living. The old heroes lived in an heroic age, when Freyr waxed puny.