that great outpouring of heat and light overhead. What, he wondered, kept it up there? Why didn't it simply fall?
If it falls, he thought, it will fall on me.
Where can I hide? How can I protect myself?
For a long moment he hunkered down where he was, hardly daring to think. Then, cautiously, he opened his eyes just a slit. The gigantic blazing thing was still there in the sky. It hadn't moved an inch. It wasn't going to fall on him.
He began to shiver despite the heat.
The dry, choking smell of smoke came to him. Something was burning, not very far away.
It was the sky, he thought. The sky was burning.
The golden thing is setting fire to the world.
No. No. There was another reason for the smoke. He would remember it in a moment, if only he could clear the haze out of his mind. The golden thing hadn't caused the fires. It hadn't even been here when the fires started. It was those other things, those cold glittering white things that filled the sky from end to end-they had done it, they had sent the Flames- What were they called? The Stars. Yes, he thought.
The Stars.
And he began to remember, just a little, and he shivered again, a deep convulsive quiver. He remembered how it had been when the Stars came out, and his brain had turned to a marble and his lungs refused to pump air and his soul had screamed in the deepest of horror.
But the Stars were gone now. That bright golden thing was in the sky instead.
The bright golden thing?
Onos. That was its name. Onos, the sun. The main sun. One of-one of the six suns. Yes. Theremon smiled. Things were beginning to come back to him now. Onos belonged in the sky. The Stars did not. The sun, the kindly sun, good warm Onos. And Onos had returned. Therefore all was well with the world, even if some of the world seemed to be on fire.
Six suns? Then where were the other five?
He even remembered their names. Dovim, Trey, Patru, Tano, Sitha. And Onos made six. He saw Onos, all right-it was right above him, it seemed to fill half the sky. What about the rest? He stood up, a little shakily, still half afraid of the hot golden thing overhead, wondering now if perhaps he stood up too far he would touch it and be burned by it. No, no, that didn't make any sense. Onos was good, Onos was kind. He smiled.
Looked around. Any more suns up there?
There was one. Very far off, very small. Not frightening, this one-the way the Stars had been, the way this fiery hot globe overhead was. Just a cheerful white dot in the sky, nothing more. Small enough to put in his pocket, almost, if he could only reach it.
Trey, he thought. That one is Trey. So its sister Patru ought to be somewhere nearby- Yes. Yes, that's it. Down there, in the corner of the sky, just to the left of Trey. Unless that one's Trey, and the other one is Patru.
Well, he told himself, the names don't matter. Which one is which, unimportant. Together they are Trey and Patru. And the big one is Onos. And the other three suns must be somewhere else right now, because I don't see them. And my name's- Theremon.
Yes. That's right. I'm Theremon.
But there's a number, too. He stood frowning, thinking about it, his family code, that's what it was, a number he had known all his life, but what was it? What-was-it?
762.
Yes.
I am Theremon 762.
And then another, more complex thought followed smoothly along: I am Theremon 762 of the Saro City Chronicle.
Somehow that statement made him feel a little better, though it was full of mysteries for him.
Saro City? The Chronicle?
He almost knew what those words meant. Almost. He chanted them to himself. Saro saro saro. City city city. Chronicle chronicle chronicle. Saro City Chronicle.
Perhaps if I walk a little, he decided. He took a hesitant step, another, another. His legs were a little wobbly. Looking around, he realized that he was on a hillside out in the country somewhere. He saw a road, bushes, trees, a lake off to the left. Some of the bushes and trees seemed to have been ripped and broken, with branches dangling at odd angles or lying on the ground below them, as though giants had come trampling through this countryside recently.
Behind him was a huge round-topped building with smoke rising