Queen of Springtime (38 page)

The same night, in a tavern in another part of the city. Esperasagiot, Dumanka, and a few other members of the crew of the caravan that brought Thu-Kimnibol to Yissou have gotten together with some of the newcomers. The hour is late. The wine has been going down freely. They are all old friends. The men of Thu-Kimnibol’s crew had often served in the regular merchant caravans that pass between the two cities. Among those who came in today was Esperasagiot’s brother, Thihaliminion, nearly as good a hand with xlendis as Esperasagiot himself. Thihaliminion had been wagonmaster to the caravan that has just arrived.

There are some local folk in the party, too—a harnessmaker named Gheppilin, and Zechtior Lukin, a meat-cutter, and Lisspar Moen, a woman, whose trade is the making of fine porcelain dishes. Friends of Dumanka’s, they are. New friends.

Thihaliminion has been speaking for some time of the sudden rash of unusual events in the City of Dawinno: the murders, the disappearance and subsequent madness of the chieftain’s daughter, the emergence of the new cult of Kundalimon. Laughing into his wine, he says, “It’s like the end of the world. Everything is going strange at once.” He shakes his helmeted head. “But why am I laughing? It’s no laughing matter!”

“Ah, but it is,” says Dumanka. “When all else has gone foul, laughter still remains. When the gods send us disaster, what else can we do but laugh? Weeping won’t heal anything. Laughter at least buries our sorrows in merriment.”

“You were ever a mocker, Dumanka,” Thihaliminion tells the quartermaster. “You take nothing seriously.”

“On the contrary, brother,” Esperasagiot says. “Dumanka is one of the most serious men I know, behind that bawdy grin of his.”

“Then let him be serious, if he will. What’s happening in Dawinno is serious stuff, as you’ll find out when you get back there. It’s easy enough to laugh when you’re hundreds of leagues away.”

“Brother, he meant no offense! It’s only his way, don’t you see? He was only making sport with words.”

“No,” Dumanka says. “That wasn’t what I was doing.”

“No?” Esperasagiot says, frowning.

“I was being as serious as I know how to be, my friend. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll explain myself.”

“We’re all wasting our breath with this talk,” Thihaliminion says, in something like a growl. “We could be drinking instead of talking.”

“No. Give me a moment. I think this is no waste of breath at all,” Dumanka says, and the others look at him, for they have never heard the quartermaster speak so solemnly before. “I said we should laugh when the gods send us misery, rather than weep, and I think I’m right about that. Or if not to laugh, then to shrug; for what good is it to moan and grumble over the will of the gods? These people here—”

“Enough, Dumanka,” Thihaliminion says, a little too sharply.

“One or two more words, I beg you. These three here, Zechtior Lukin, Lisspar Moen, Gheppilin—do you know them? No, of course not. But I do. And there’s wisdom in them, let me tell you. They’ve plenty to teach us all on the subject of bowing to the will of the gods. Have you ever considered, good Thihaliminion, why it was that the sapphire-eyes took it so easily, when the gods threw death-stars down to destroy their world? Everyone knows the sapphire-eyes could have hurled the death-stars back, if they’d cared to, but—”

“Nakhaba! What can the sapphire-eyes possibly have to do with the lunacy that’s running rampant in our city? Will you tell me that, Dumanka?”

“Pass the wine, and I’ll explain. And then you may want to listen to Zechtior Lukin, and even to read a little book that he’s written, eh, Thihaliminion? Because there may be comfort in it for you, if you’re as troubled by the difficulties in Dawinno as you seem to be.” Dumanka nods toward the meat-cutter, a short thick-bodied man with a look of great strength and force about him. “The thing that Zechtior Lukin has taught me in our conversations,” he says, “is the same thing that I’ve practiced all my life without having a name to put to it, which is that I acknowledge the absolute greatness of the gods and the role they play in our fates. They decide everything, and we must obey cheerfully, because the only other choices we have are to obey sadly, or to obey angrily, and those simply get us to the same place, but not as merrily. So we have to accept whatever comes, be it death-stars or hjjks, be it strange new religions or bloodshed in the streets, be it anything at all. What Zechtior Lukin and his Acknowledgers believe, good friend—and these two here are Acknowledgers too, Lisspar Moen and Gheppilin, and so am I, so have I always been, though I’ve only just discovered it—is a creed that brings peace to the soul and calmness to the mind, and has made me be a better man, Thihaliminion, no doubt of it, absolutely a better man. And when I return to Dawinno, let me tell you, I will be bringing Zechtior Lukin’s little book with me, and spreading the truth it contains to everyone who’ll listen.”

“Just what we need,” Thihaliminion says, staring broodingly into his wine-cup. “One more new religion.”

Thu-Kimnibol knocked and entered. Salaman, half dozing over a nearly empty bottle of wine, came instantly awake.

“You wanted to see me, cousin?”

“I did. You’ve had a chance to catch up on the news from your city, have you?” Salaman asked. “Taniane’s daughter going mad? And Taniane herself so upset over it that she couldn’t be bothered to govern her city for a time?”

Thu-Kimnibol’s fur flared, his eyes grew bright. Tightly he said, “Yes. So I’ve heard.”

“And have you heard also of the new hjjk-loving religion which has sprung up down there? It was the murder of the envoy Kundalimon that got it going, I’m told. My agents tell me that they’re speaking of him in Dawinno as a holy prophet, who died for love of the People.”

“Your agents are very efficient, cousin.”

“They’re paid to be. What they inform me is that the Kundalimon-worshippers are in favor of signing the Queen’s treaty. Is it true that they want to invite hjjk missionaries to Dawinno to teach them the mysteries of hjjk wisdom?”

“Cousin, why are you asking me these questions?”

Crisply Salaman said, “Because you promised me that your people would fight, when the time comes. Instead this is what they do. This foolishness. This idiocy.”

“Ah,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “So that’s it.”

“It
is
idiocy, cousin.”

“But useful idiocy, I think.”

The king looked up, wonderstruck. “Useful?”

Thu-Kimnibol smiled. “Of course. The peace faction’s playing right into our hands. They’re carrying things to the extreme that will destroy them. Can you imagine what it would be like, cousin, with Dawinno full of hjjk preachers, clicking and hissing on every street-corner, and everyone down there walking around with talk of Nest-bond and Queen-love and such on his lips, and the hjjks marching up and down the coast in droves, free as you please, going to visit their new colony in the south?”

“A nightmare,” Salaman said.

“A nightmare indeed. But one that can be put to good use, provided there are still a few in Dawinno who haven’t yet lost their minds, and I think there are.” Thu-Kimnibol leaned close. “What I need to do is make them see the picture I’ve just sketched for you. Show them how the hjjks are trying to subvert us from within. Don’t you realize, I’ll say, that the new religion’s designed to deliver us all into the clutches of the bugs? The Queen’s love is a worse thing than the Queen’s hatred, I’ll tell them. At least we know where we stand with hatred. And in fact Queen-love and Queen-hate are the same thing wearing different masks. Friends, I’ll say, this is a deadly threat. Accepting the treaty means opening our arms to our enemies. Do you want hjjks overrunning Dawinno the way they did in Vengiboneeza? And so on and so forth, until this new cult is driven underground, or put out of business altogether.”

“And then?”

“And then we begin to sing the praises of war,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “The virtues of carrying the attack to our foe, making the world safe for the People. War against the hjjks! Our only salvation! A war which you and I, cousin, must plan very carefully before I leave here. And then I’ll go back to Dawinno and tell them that Salaman’s our loyal ally, that he’s waiting for us to join him in this holy endeavor, that our two cities must stand together against the bugs. After that, we simply need to arrange to start the war. Almost any sort of small incident ought to do it. What do you think, cousin? Isn’t this new religion of hjjk-worship precisely the thing we’ve been waiting for?” Salaman nodded. Then he began to laugh.

The boy Tikharein Tourb touched the shining Nest-guardian talisman that hung around his neck and said, “If only it would show us the Queen, Chhia Kreun! Maybe we could see Her with it, eh? If we used the talisman and our second sight at the same time, let’s say.”

“She’s too far away,” the girls aid. “Second sight won’t reach that far.”

“Well, we could try twining, then.”

Chhia Kreun stifled a giggle. “What do you know about twining, Tikharein Tourb?”

“Enough. I’m nine, you know.”

“Thirteen’s the twining-age.”

“You’re only eleven. But you act as though you know it all.”

She groomed herself elaborately, plucking and smoothing. “I know more than you, at any rate.”

“About twining, maybe. But not Nest-truth. Anyway, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Look, what if I were to hold the Nest-guardian in my sensing-organ, and you and I were to twine, right here in front of the altar—”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am! I am!”

“It’s forbidden to twine until we’re old enough. Besides, we don’t know how. We may think we do, but until the offering-woman shows us, we—”

“Do you want to see the Queen or don’t you?” Tikharein Tourb asked scornfully.

“Of course I do.”

“Then what do you care about what’s forbidden, or what the offering-woman is supposed to show us? The offering-woman doesn’t mean anything to us. That’s the old way. Nest-truth is everything. And this thing on my chest is the repository of Nest-truth.” He ran his hand over the bit of hjjk-shell as if caressing it. “Kundalimon said so himself. If I hold it, and we twine—and maybe everyone else stands by us, chanting the chants at the same time—maybe then the Queen will appear to us, or we’ll appear to the Queen—”

“Do you think so, really?”

“It’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

“But—twining—”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll find someone who’s old enough to teach me how to twine. And then she and I will see the Queen together, and you can do as you please.”

He turned as if to go. Chhia Kreun made a little gasping sound, and reached out toward him.

“No—wait—wait, Tikharein Tourb—”

T
HU-KIMNIBOL WILL LEAVE
for Dawinno in another day or two, or at most perhaps three, as soon as his caravan is ready to take to the road. This is the night of the farewell dinner Salaman is giving in his honor. The black wind is howling tonight. Hail rattles against the windowpanes. There was hail last night too, hard little pellets that cut and stung and burned like bits of solidified flame. Tonight it’s even wilder. And there’s a darkness to the east that hints at the possibility of snow to follow.

The season is changing. Darkness comes early now. The first storms of the oncoming winter are beginning to blow through the city of Yissou.

For Salaman the coming of the hard weather meant the beginning of a difficult time. It was like that every year, but every year it was a little worse. He was losing resilience as he aged. His spirit, melancholy by nature, darkened even more when the black winds returned, and more and more year by year. This was likely to be the worst ever. Overnight, with the change, the last shred of his patience had fled: he was all irascibility now. The brunt fell on those who were closest to him, and they walked warily. Everything and everyone annoyed him: even Thu-Kimnibol, his honored guest, his dear and cherished friend, who tonight had the seat of grace that he had coveted long ago, beside the king, above Chham, above Athimin.

“By the Destroyer, it cuts right through the wall, that wind!” Thu-Kimnibol said, as they were serving the roasted thandibar haunch. “I’d forgotten about the winter weather here!”

Salaman, red-eyed from too much wine, poured himself another glass. Thu-Kimnibol’s comment had come like a slap in the face. The king swung around and glared at him.

“You miss your easy Dawinno climate, do you? There’s no winter there at all, is there? Well, you’ll be home soon enough.”

Winter, true winter, was something the tribe had not had to cope with in the Vengiboneeza days. That city nestled between mountains and sea in a zone of privileged climate, where the cool season was short and mild, bringing nothing worse than steady rains for a time. And the City of Dawinno, far to the south, lay becalmed in soft year-round warmth. But King Salaman’s city, though sheltered by its location within the ancient death-star crater, was exposed on its eastern side to the harsh winds that blew at year’s end from the heart of the continent, where the Long Winter had not yet entirely relinquished its grip.

Yissou’s winter was brief, but it could be savage. When the black winds blew, trees were stripped of their leaves and the soil became dry and barren. Crops perished and livestock turned gaunt. Sometimes, not often, there was snow. The souls of the city’s men and women grew crabbed and sour in that time of wind. They lost all generosity, and anger was general: there were bitter disputes between friends and mates, even violence. Though it lasted only a matter of weeks, everyone prayed constantly for the season to end, as in generations now forgotten their ancestors had prayed for an end to the Long Winter.

“It’ll grow worse,” said Thaloin in bleak gloomy tones. “You’re lucky you’re leaving, prince. It’ll seem like the Long Winter come again here, in another few weeks.”

“Be quiet,” Salaman said brusquely to her.

“My lord, you know its true! This is only the first of it, this wind!”

“Will you be quiet, woman?” Salaman cried. He slapped the flat of his hand against the bare wood of the table so fiercely that glasses and tableware jumped, and some wine was spilled.