Queen of Springtime (10 page)

He was shy and remote, but he seemed to welcome her visits. Had he figured out yet that she too had been in the Nest? Sometimes it seemed that way; but she wasn’t yet sure. Verbal contact between them was still very uncertain. He had picked up a dozen or so words of the language of the city, and she was starting to reconstruct her knowledge of hjjk. But vocabulary was one thing and comprehension was another.

Learn his language, or teach him to speak ours.
Those were Taniane’s orders, and no maybes about them.
Do it quickly, too. And tell us what you find out.

The first part, at least, was exactly what Nialli Apuilana intended to achieve. And when she and Kundalimon were able to communicate easily with each another, and had come to know each other better, and he had begun to trust her, perhaps he would talk with her of Nest-matters: of Queen-love, of Thinker-thoughts, of Egg-plan, and all the other things of that nature that lay at the heart of her soul. Taniane didn’t need to be told anything about that. The rest, this proposed treaty, the diplomatic negotiations: oh, yes, I’ll let her know whatever I might learn about all that, Nialli Apuilana thought. But nothing about the deeper things. Nothing about the things that really matter.

The xlendi-wagon was waiting. She got in.

“Mueri House, now,” she told the driver.

In Prince Thu-Kimnibol’s grand villa in the southwestern quadrant of the city the healers had gathered once again by the bedside of the lady Naarinta. This was the fifth night running that they had come. She had been ill for many months, slipping gradually downward from weakness to weakness. But now she was passing into the critical phase.

Tonight Thu-Kimnibol was keeping watch in the narrow antechamber just outside the sickroom. The healers had refused to let him get any closer. This night only women might enter Naarinta’s room. The smell of medicines and aromatic herbs was in the air. The smell of impending death was in it, too.

His sensing-organ trembled with the awareness of the great loss that was rushing toward him.

In the sickroom the offering-woman Boldirinthe sat beside Naarinta. Whenever spells and potions were needed and the aid of the Five Heavenly Ones had to be invoked, fat old Boldirinthe heaved her vast body into a wagon and obligingly came to be of service. Old Fashinatanda, godmother to the chieftain—there was another one, blind and feeble though she was, who rarely missed an opportunity to minister to the gravely ill. Some Beng herb-doctor was there, too, a little shriveled woman wearing a dark feather-trimmed helmet flecked with rust, and two or three others whom Thu-Kimnibol could not recognize. They were murmuring to one another, chanting in low lilting voices.

Thu-Kimnibol turned away. He couldn’t bear to listen. It sounded like a chant for the dead.

Outside, in the hallway, bundles of purple flowers with dark red stalks were stacked like temple offerings. The richness of their perfume made Thu-Kimnibol sputter and cough. He walked quickly past, into the huge high-vaulted room that was his audience-chamber. A little group of men waited there in the dimness: Maliton Diveri, Staip, Si-Belimnion, Kartafirain, Chomrik Hamadel. Gaming partners, hunting companions, friends of many years. They clustered round him, smiling, joking, passing a huge flagon of wine back and forth. This was no time for long faces.

“To happier times,” Si-Belimnion said, swirling the wine in his mug. “Happier times past, happier times to come.”

“Happier times,” Chomrik Hamadel echoed. He was of Beng royal blood, a short blunt-featured man with a piercing scarlet gaze. He drank deep, throwing back his head so vehemently that he came close to sending his helmet flying.

Maliton Diveri and Kartafirain joined the toast, grinning, noisily clinking mugs: two robustly-built men, one short, the other tall. Only Staip was quiet. He was older than the others, which accounted in part for his restraint; but also he was Boldirinthe’s mate, and no doubt Boldirinthe had told him how little hope there was for Naarinta’s life. Staip had never been one for dissembling: a warrior’s simplicity, that was his style.

Thu-Kimnibol said, picking up a mug and offering it to Maliton Diveri to be filled, “Happier times, yes. Joy and prosperity to us all, and a swift recovery for my lady.”

“Joy and prosperity! A swift recovery!”

It was fifteen years since Thu-Kimnibol had begun to share his life with Naarinta. He had met her not long after he had come from the north to settle in the city that his half-brother Hresh had built; and they had been inseparable ever since. She was of the Debethin tribe, the chieftain’s daughter—not a great distinction, perhaps, there having been only fourteen Debethins still alive when the last survivors of that tribe’s unhappy wanderings had come marching out of the east to ask for citizenship in Dawinno, but a chieftain was a chieftain nonetheless. She was tall and graceful, with an air of quiet strength about her. They were splendid together: majestic, even, the towering Thu-Kimnibol and his stately lady. The gods had given them no children, which was his greatest regret; but he had been content with Naarinta alone, the partner of his labors, the companion of his days. And then this wasting disease had come upon her, this terrible incomprehensible decree of the Heavenly Ones, against which there seemed to be no appeal.

Chomrik Hamadel said, “Is there news, Thu-Kimnibol?”

“She’s very weak. What can I say?”

“News of the envoy from the hjjks, I mean,” said Chomrik Hamadel hastily. “They keep him locked up in Mueri House, I hear, and Taniane’s daughter runs to him every day. But what’s happening? What is this all about, this visitation from the bug-folk?”

“They want a peace treaty, so I understand it,” Kartafirain said, and laughed. He was a tall silver-furred man of Koshmar ancestry, nearly shoulder-high to Thu-Kimnibol himself, jovial and belligerent by nature. The warrior Thhrouk had been his father. “Peace! Who are they to talk of peace? They don’t know what the word means.”

“Perhaps Hresh misunderstood,” Si-Belimnion said, and rubbed the rolls of fat beneath his thick blue-gray fur. He was a wealthy man, and well fed. “Perhaps it’s a declaration of war that the boy carries, and not a message of peace. Hresh is getting old, I think.”

“So are we all,” said Chomrik Hamadel. “But do you think Hresh no longer knows the difference between peace and war? He used the Wonderstone to look into the boy’s mind, Curabayn Bangkea tells me. You have to trust what the Wonderstone says.”

“A treaty of peace,” Maliton Diveri said, and shook his head in wonderment. “With the hjjks! What will we do? Fall down on our faces and thank the gods for such mercies, I suppose!”

“Of course,” said Thu-Kimnibol gruffly, “And then scurry up and put our signatures on the treaty. I’ll be the first, if they’ll permit me. We have to show our deep gratitude. The kindness of the bug-folk! They’ll condescend to let us keep our city, I hear. And maybe even a little of the farmland outside it.”

“Are those the terms?” Si-Belimnion asked. “What I had heard was much more favorable to us: the hjjks will stay back of Vengiboneeza, is what I heard, provided we don’t attempt to expand beyond—”

“Whatever it is,” said Kartafirain flatly, “we’ll be the losers. You can bet your ears on that, and your sensing-organ too. When the Presidium meets, we’ve got to argue for rejection of this thing.”

“And when will that be?” asked Chomrik Hamadel.

“A week, ten days, maybe sooner. While Taniane’s daughter is tending this Kundalimon, she’s supposed to question him about the details of the treaty in his own language. She can speak it, you know. She picked it up while she was living with the bugs herself. She’ll tell Taniane what she finds out and then it all goes to the Presidium for general discussion, after which—”

Just then Staip, who had not said a word all the time, went suddenly from the room, holding his sensing-organ high. It was as though the old warrior had been called by some summons that no one else could hear. A strained silence fell.

Kartafirain ponderously got the conversation going again after a moment. “I don’t see the sense of involving Nialli Apuilana in this at all.” He looked toward Thu-Kimnibol. “What help can she possibly be?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she’s so strange. Friend, you know better than any of us what sort of creature she is. Do you think she’s likely to find out anything worthwhile? Or tell us if she does? Has that girl ever been willing to cooperate with anyone? Has she revealed so much as one syllable of whatever took place between her and the hjjks while she was their prisoner?”

Thu-Kimnibol said, “Be a little more charitable. She’s intelligent and serious. And she’s not a girl any more. She’s capable of changing. Perhaps the arrival of the envoy will help her start to develop a bit of a sense of responsibility to her city, or at least to her own family. If anyone can get any information out of this stranger from the north, she’s the one. And—”

He halted abruptly. Staip had come back into the room. He held himself stiffly and his expression was grim.

To Thu-Kimnibol he said quietly, “Boldirinthe wants a word with you.”

The offering-woman had left the sickroom and was sitting in the antechamber. Boldirinthe’s huge fleshy form overflowed a wickerwork chair that seemed hard pressed to sustain her. She gestured as if to rise, but it was only a gesture, and she subsided the instant Thu-Kimnibol signaled her to remain where she was. She seemed subdued of mood, uncharacteristically so, for she was one who bubbled with life and jollity at even the darkest of times.

“Is this the end, then?” Thu-Kimnibol asked bluntly.

“It will be very soon. The gods are calling her.”

“There’s nothing you can do?”

“Everything has been done. You know that. Against the will of the Five we are helpless.”

“Yes. So we are.” Thu-Kimnibol took the offering-woman’s hand in his. Now that the news had come he was calm. He felt an obscure desire to console Boldirinthe for having failed in her lifesaving task, even as she was seeking to give consolation to him. For a moment they both were silent. Then he asked, “How much longer?”

“You should make your farewells to her now,” said Boldirinthe. “There’ll be no chance later.”

He nodded and went past her, into the room where Naarinta lay. She seemed tranquil, and very beautiful, strangely so, as though the long struggle had burned all fleshly impurities from her. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing very faintly, but she was still conscious. Old blind Fashinatanda sat beside her, chanting. As Thu-Kimnibol entered she broke off her chant and, without a word, rose and left the room.

For a little while he talked quietly with Naarinta, though her words were cloudy and disconnected and he couldn’t be sure that she understood anything he said. Then they fell silent. She seemed to have traveled more than half the distance into the next world. After a time Thu-Kimnibol saw that the unearthly beauty was beginning to go from her as the final moments approached. Softly he spoke to her again, telling her what she had meant to him; and he took her hand, and held it until everything was over. He kissed her cheek. The fur of it already seemed strangely changed, less soft than it had been. One sob, only one, broke from him. He was surprised his reaction was no more vehement. But the pain was real and strong all the same.

He left then and returned to the audience-chamber, where his friends stood in a little knotted group, no one speaking. He loomed over them like a wall, feeling suddenly cut off from them, set apart by the loss that he had suffered and the new solitude that was descending on him, falling so unexpectedly into a life that until this time had been marked only by happiness and accomplishment and the favor of the gods. He felt hollow, and knew that this strange calmness that possessed him now was that of exhaustion. A powerful sense came over him then that the life that had been his until today had ended with Naarinta, that he must now undergo transformation and rebirth. But into what? What?

He put such thoughts aside for now. Time enough later to let the new life begin to enter the drained vessel that was his soul.

“She’s gone,” he said simply. “Kartafirain, pour me more wine. And then let us sit for a while, and talk of politics, or hunting, or the benevolence of the hjjks. But first the wine, Kartafirain. If you please.”

At the service Hresh spoke first, words he had spoken often enough before, the words of the Consolation of Dawinno: that death and life are two halves of one thing, for everything that lives arises out of all that once had lived but lives no longer, and in time must yield up its life so that new life may come forth. Boldirinthe then spoke the words of the service for the dead; Taniane spoke also, just a quiet sentence or two, and then Thu-Kimnibol, holding the body of Naarinta in his arms as though it were a doll, laid her cloth-wrapped form at the edge of the pyre. The flames engulfed her and in that fierce brightness she was lost to sight.

Time now for the mourners to return to the city from the Place of the Dead. Taniane and Hresh rode together in the chieftain’s ornate wagon. “I’ve decreed seven days of public mourning,” she told him. “That gives us a little time to think about this scheme of the hjjks, before we have to take it to the Presidium.”

“The hjjks, yes,” said Hresh softly. “The Presidium.”

His spirit was still with Thu-Kimnibol and Naarinta. Taniane’s words seemed to him at first like mere empty sounds, tinny and meaningless.

They seemed to be coming to him across a vast distance. Presidium?

Hjjks? Yes.
This scheme of the hjjks,
she had said. What was that? The hjjks, the hjjks, the hjjks. He felt strangeness whispering at his mind, as it so often did when the thought of the hjjks came into it. The rustling of bristly claws. The clicking of great beaks.

She said, breaking in on him sharply, “Where have you gone, Hresh?”

“What?”

“You seem to be on the far side of the moon, all of a sudden.”

“Ah. You were saying—” He looked at her vaguely.

“I was speaking of the hjjks. Of the offer of a treaty. I need to know what you make of it, Hresh. Can we possibly abide by it? To let the hjjks isolate us in our own little province? To cut ourselves off from everything else in the world?”