Queen of Springtime (42 page)

He had heard about such machines. They were things of the Great World. You were supposed to report such finds to the House of Knowledge in the city. Well, so be it. The scholars of the House of Knowledge were welcome to anything they could find in that cave. He didn’t even want a reward. Let them have it all, he thought. Just so long as I don’t have to go near any of those things again—so long as they don’t ask me to go back in there myself to show them where everything is—

Suddenly, with a shudder, Nialli Apuilana imagines that her room is full of hjjks. She isn’t even holding the plaited star when they come. They simply burst into being all around her, congealing out of the air itself.

These aren’t the gentle wise creatures of her feverish recollections. No, she sees them now as others of her kind have always seen them: huge frighteningly glossy-shelled bristle-limbed things with ferocious beaks and great glittering eyes, milling in hordes about her, clicking and clattering in a terrifying way. And behind them she glimpses the immense mass of the Queen in her resting-place—motionless, gigantic, grotesque. Calling to her, offering her the joys of Nest-bond, offering her the comforts of Queen-love.

Queen-love?

Nest-bond?

What did those things mean? They were empty noises. They were food that carried no nourishment.

Nialli Apuilana trembles and draws back, pressing herself into the farthest corner of the room. She shuts her eyes, but even so she is unable to blot out the sight of the nightmare creatures that crowd up against her, clicking, clicking, clicking.

Get away from me
!

Horrid hideous insects. How she loathes them! And yet she knows there was a time once when she had wanted to be one of them. For a time she had actually thought she was. Or had all that been a dream, just a phantom of the night, just past—her sojourn in the Nest, her talks with Nest-thinker, her taste of Nest-truth? Had she really lived gladly among the hjjks, and come to love them and their Queen? Was such a thing possible, to love the hjjks?

Kundalimon. Had she dreamed him too?

Queen-love
!
Nest-bond
!
Come to us, Nialli
!
Come
!
Come
!
Come
!

Strange. Alien. Horrible.

“Get away from me!” she cries. “All of you, get away!”

They stare reproachfully. Those immense eyes, glittering, cold.
You are one of us. You belong to the Nest.

“No! I never was!”

You love the Queen. The Queen loves you.

Was it true? No. No. She couldn’t possibly have believed it, ever. They had put a spell on her while she was in the Nest, that was all. But now she’s free. They’ll never have her again.

She kneels and huddles into herself. Trembling, sobbing, she touches her arms, her breasts, her sensing-organ. Is this hjjk? she asks herself, feeling the thick lustrous fur, the warm flesh beneath.

No. No. No. No.

She presses her forehead to the floor.

“Yissou!” she calls. “Yissou, protect me!” She prays to Mueri to give her ease. She prays to Friit to heal her, to rid her of this spell.

She tries to banish that terrible sound of clicking from her mind.

The gods are with her now, the Five Heavenly Ones. She feels their presence like a shield about her. Once she had told anyone who would listen that they were nothing but silly myths. But since her return from the lakelands they had been with her. They are with her now. They will prevail. The hjjks who have come crowding into her room grow misty and insubstantial. Tears flow down her cheeks as she gives thanks, gives praise, offers blessings.

Then after a time she begins to grow calm.

As mysteriously as it has come, the convulsion that has overtaken her spirit is gone from her, and she is herself once again. The loathing, the disgust, vanishes. I am free, she thinks. But not quite. She can’t see the hjjks any more, but she still feels their pull. She loves them as she did before. Into her mind once more comes an awareness of the sublime harmony of the Nest, of the industriousness of its inhabitants, of the great throbbing waves of Queen-love that sweep constantly through it. Queen-love throbs also in her heart. Nest-truth remains with her yet.

She doesn’t understand. How can she sway from one pole to the other like this? How can it be possible to have the Five within her, and the Queen also? Is she of the city or of the Nest, of the People or of the hjjks?

Both, perhaps. Or neither.

Who am I? she wonders. What am I?

Another time Kundalimon came to her.

He appeared toward evening. She hadn’t taken the trouble to light the lamps in her little room and the early darkness of the rain-swept city was beginning to settle upon everything. She saw him standing near the wall opposite the door, where the woven-grass star that the hjjks had given her long ago was hanging.

“You?” she whispered.

He made no reply. He merely stood before her, smiling.

There was something shimmering and golden about him. But within that luminous aura he looked just as he had in the final few weeks of his life, slender almost to the point of frailty, yet sturdy enough in his wiry way, with warm radiant eyes. At first Nialli Apuilana was afraid to look too closely at him, fearing that she would see the signs of violence on his body. But then she found the courage to do it, and saw that he was unharmed.

“You aren’t wearing your amulets,” she said.

He smiled and said nothing.

Perhaps he’s given them to someone, she thought. To one of the children with whom he used to speak in the streets. Or he has returned them to the Nest, now that his embassy is over.

“Come closer,” she said to him. “Let me touch you.”

He shook his head, smiling all the while. Waves of love continued to stream from him. All right. No need to touch him. She felt a great calmness; she felt total assurance. There was much in the world that she did not understand, and perhaps never would understand. But that didn’t matter. What mattered only was to be calm, and loving, and open, and accepting of whatever might befall.

“Are you with the Queen?” she asked.

He said nothing.

“Do you love me?”

A smile. Only a smile.

“You know that I love you.”

He smiled. He was like a great bower of light.

He stayed with her for hours. Finally she realized that he was beginning to fade and vanish, but it happened so slowly that it was impossible to tell, moment by moment, that he was leaving her. But at last he was altogether gone.

“Will you come back?” she asked, and heard no answer.

He came again, though, always at nightfall, sometimes standing beside her cot, sometimes by the star of grass. He never spoke. But always he smiled; always he filled the room with warmth, and that same profound sense of ease and calmness.

Thu-Kimnibol was almost ready to set out for home now. He looked down at Salaman’s daughter Weiawala and felt waves of fear and sadness and loss coming from her. Her chestnut-hued fur had lost all sheen. Her sensing-organ rose at a tense angle. She seemed forlorn and desperately frightened. And she looked terribly small, smaller than she had ever seemed to him before; but from his great height all women looked small, and most men.

“So you’re going now, are you?” she asked, her eyes not quite meeting his.

“Yes. Esperasagiot has the xlendis groomed, Dumanka’s got the wagons provisioned.”

“This is goodbye, then.”

“For now.”

“For now, yes.” She sounded bitter. “Your city is calling you. Your queen.”

“Our chieftain, you mean.”

“Whatever she’s called. She says come, and you hop to it. And you’re a prince, they say!”

“Weiawala, I’ve been here for months. My city needs me. I’ve had a direct command from Taniane to return. Prince or not, how can I refuse to obey her?”

“I need you too.”

“I know,” Thu-Kimnibol said.

He studied her, feeling perplexed. It would be no great task to sweep her up in his arms and go to Salaman with her and say, “Cousin, I want your daughter as my mate. Let me take her to Dawinno with me, and in a few months we’ll return and hold the formal ceremony in your palace.” Certainly that was what Salaman had had in mind from the first moment, when he had offered this girl to him “to warm your bed tonight,” as the king in his cheerfully crude way had put it.

It was not as a concubine but as a potential mate that Salaman had given Weiawala to him. Thu-Kimnibol had no doubt of that. The king wanted nothing more than to atone for the old breach between them by linking his family in marriage to the most powerful man in Dawinno. And the prospect had obvious merit for Thu-Kimnibol, too. A king’s son himself, mated to the daughter of that king’s successor—he’d have a strong claim to the throne of Yissou, if that throne became vacant and for some reason no son of Salaman was in a position to take it.

But two obstacles lay in the way.

One was simply that it was too soon after Naarinta’s death for him to be taking a new mate. He was of the highborn class; there were proprieties to observe; there were the feelings of Naarinta’s family to consider. Of course he’d mate again, but not now, not so swiftly.

But beyond that was a deeper chasm. He felt no love for Weiawala, at least not the kind of love that led to mating. They had been inseparable, yes, since his arrival. They had coupled again and again, eagerly, passionately. But never once had they twined. Thu-Kimnibol hadn’t felt the desire for such intimacy, and she had shown no sign of interest in it either. That was significant, he thought. Without twining a marriage is hollow.

And, after all, she was hardly more than a child—no older, he suspected, than his niece Nialli Apuilana. How could he mate with a child? He was past forty. An old man, some might say. No. Weiawala had been a fine companion for him these months in Yissou, but now it was over. He had to leave her behind, and put her from his mind, however she wept and begged.

None of this seemed remotely honorable to Thu-Kimnibol. But he wasn’t going to take Weiawala home with him to Dawinno, all the same.

As he stood there uncomfortably searching for the words that would pacify her, or at least to allow him to make a graceful escape, the king’s son Biterulve of the pale fur came up to them, that handsome, quick-witted boy. He put out his hand and took Thu-Kimnibol’s in a firm and confident way.

“A safe journey to you, cousin. May the gods watch over you.”

“My thanks to you, Biterulve. We’ll meet again before long, that I know.”

“I look forward to it, cousin.” Biterulve glanced quickly from Thu-Kimnibol to Weiawala, and back to Thu-Kimnibol again. For an instant the unasked question hung in the air between them; then it was gone. Biterulve appeared to be sizing things up: the distance between them, the look in her eyes.

It was another awkward moment. Biterulve was Weiawala’s full brother: their mother was Sinithista. He was the king’s favorite, that was very obvious. Of all the young princes he seemed the cleverest, and the gentlest by far, with little of the haughtiness that marked Chham and Athimin or the boisterousness of the other sons. Here was his sister being abandoned before his eyes, though. Gentle as he was, he might find that hard to swallow. Was he going to force the issue and create an embarrassment for everyone?

Apparently not. With sublime tact Biterulve turned to Weiawala and said, “Well, sister, if you and Thu-Kimnibol had made your farewells, come with me now to our mother. She’ll be glad to have us breakfast with her.”

Weiawala stared at him dully.

“And then afterward,” Biterulve said, “We’ll go to the top of the wall, and watch as our cousin from Dawinno sets out for his journey. So come. Come.” He slipped his arm around the girl’s shoulders. He was hardly any taller than she was, and scarcely more sturdy. But in a smooth and persuasive fashion he drew her away. Weiawala turned back once, giving Thu-Kimnibol a panicky look over her shoulder; and then she was gone from the room. Thu-Kimnibol felt a surge of gratitude. How wise the boy was!

Salaman, though: would he be so understanding, would he be helpful?

Well, he’d repair matters with him later, somehow. It shouldn’t be hard to make the king see that the time hadn’t been ripe for him to take a mate from the royal family of the City of Yissou. Making Weiawala understand that would probably be more difficult. But she was young. She’d forget. She’d fall in love with someone else.

And if ever I become king of this place, he thought, I’ll give a high position to this princely Biterulve, and keep him by my side. And if I’m never granted a son, he’ll be king after me in Yissou. We’ll alternate the dynasties, a son of Salaman’s following the son of Harruel.

He laughed at his own foolishness. He was looking a great many steps ahead. Too many, perhaps.

Esperasagiot had the wagons waiting in the courtyard outside. The wagonmaster was studying the gray heavy sky with displeasure. Anger made his bright golden fur stand out full and thick. He gave Thu-Kimnibol a scowling glance. “If my say ruled, I’d say it was no weather for journeying.”

“It could be better, yes. But today’s the day we leave this place.”

Esperasagiot spat. “They say these winter storms are likely to last only another week or two.”

“Or three, or four. How can anyone know? The chieftain has summoned me, Esperasagiot. Do you love this bleak city so much that you want to wait here for spring?”

“I love my xlendis, prince.”

“Won’t they be able to withstand the cold?”

“Their kind withstood worse in the Long Winter. But it’ll do them no good to be out there. As I’ve told you: these are city-bred animals. They’re accustomed to warmth.”

“We’ll keep them warm, then. Ask King Salaman’s grooms for extra blankets. And we’ll take care not to push them too hard. We’ll go at a steady pace, the kind you like. If this miserable season is almost over, well, we’ll only have to cope with the cold for a matter of days. But by the time it lifts, we’ll be far along on the road to Dawinno.”

Esperasagiot smiled frostily. “As you wish, prince.”

He went off toward the stables. Thu-Kimnibol caught sight of Dumanka at the far side of the courtyard, inventorying the provisions that were to be loaded on the wagons. The quartermaster waved cheerfully without interrupting his work.