“Last winter was cold and this one is colder. This summer there were no youths or fargi from Soromset seeking admission to Inegban*. When the weather was warmest I sent a party of hunters to see how the city was. It was dead. Soromset does no longer exist. It died just as Ergetpe died. The leaves of the city are dead, carrion crows peck the bones of the Yilanè who lived there. On the beaches and the warm waters of the landlocked Isegenet sea the Yilanè lived in three great cities . . .”

She broke the thought off there and Vaintè finished it for her.

“Ergetpe is dead of the cold. Soromset has followed her way. Only Inegban* remains.”

“Only Inegban* remains and each winter the cold draws closer. Our herds grow small and soon there will be hunger.”

“Alpèasak awaits.”

“Indeed it must—when the time comes. But now there is greater need to broaden the fields and increase the breeding of the animals. For our part we must breed more uruketo, but it is a slow labor that we were too late in starting. But there is hope now that the new strain will be successful. They are smaller than the creature I came in, but develop much faster. We must have enough of them to move the entire city in one summer. Now show me what they will find when they arrive in Alpèasak.”

“They will find this,” Vaintè said, indicating the trunks and veined walls and latticed floors of the city that stretched away on all sides of them. The rain had stopped, the sun emerged and glinted from the raindrops on the foliage. Malsas< signaled approval. Vaintè moved her arm in a circle.

“Beyond the city—the fields. Already filling with beasts of all kinds that please the eye and stomach.”

Vaintè signaled armed guards to precede them as they passed through meadows of grazing animals towards the outermost fields. Through the high-arched wall of thick trunks and thorns they could see the giant forms of the urukub eating green leaves at the jungle’s edge, while even at this distance they could hear the rumbling of the large rocks in their second stomachs that ground up and aided in the digestion of the immense amounts of food they consumed. Malsas< admired the sight in silence for some time before turning away and beginning the return to the heart of the city.

“You have builded well, Vaintè,” she said when their followers could hear them again. “You have all done well.”