Queen of Springtime (47 page)

“I can offer you a war,” he said.

“A war?”

“We’re in alliance now with the City of Yissou, if the Presidium will ratify it. It binds us to go to Salaman’s aid if his city is attacked by hjjks; and I tell you, no doubt of it, Yissou and the hjjks will be at war very soon. So, then, will we. And then it’ll be treason in this city to speak favorably of hjjks, for they’ll officially be our enemies. And so there’ll be an end to any talk of our accepting the Queen’s treaty, and an end also to this poisonous religion that has sprung up in our midst, and to all the rest of your troubles, sister. What do you say to that? Now, what do you say?”

“Tell me more,” said Taniane, and it seemed to Thu-Kimnibol that years had dropped from her in a single moment.

“All of us finally together again,” Boldirinthe cried. “You were gone so long, Simthala Honginda! How good it is to have you here with us at last!”

It was a joyous day for the old offering-woman, the day of her eldest son’s return from the north. Even the interminable rain had relented for once. For the first time in months her whole family was gathered about her in the warm pleasant hilltop lodgings she shared with Staip: her three sons and their mates, and her daughter and hers, and the whole horde of her grandchildren. Boldirinthe sat enfolded complacently in her own massiveness, contained by her vast body as though by a mound of blankets, and they came to her one by one to be embraced. Afterward they lifted her and led her to the dining-table, and brought the food and the wine. There were grilled scantrins, first, the fleshy-legged little creatures of the bay, not quite fish, and not quite lizard but something midway between, and then heaping bowls of steamed kiwinfruit, and finally a roasted haunch of vimbor in shells of pastry, with plenty of good strong black Emakkis wine to wash it down. When they had eaten they sang and told old tales, and Staip, as he always did, reminisced about the People’s privations during the journeys from the cocoon to Vengiboneeza and from Vengiboneeza to the southland, and one of her grandsons recited a poem he had composed, and a granddaughter played a tinkling little tune on the serilingion, and the wine flowed freely and there was much laughter. But Boldirinthe noticed that in the midst of all this joy her son Simthala Honginda, in whose honor the gathering was being held, sat silently, smiling infrequently, seemingly forcing himself by supreme effort to pay even slight attention to what was taking place about him.

To her son’s mate Catiriil, sitting beside her, she said quietly, “He says so little. What troubles him, do you think?”

“Perhaps he’s finding it strange to be home again, after so long a journey.”

Boldirinthe frowned. “Strange? To be home? How can that be, girl? He’s with his kin again, his mate, his son, his daughter—he is here in his own splendid Dawinno, and not in Salaman’s miserable dank Yissou. But where is his spirit? Where is his spark? This isn’t the Simthala Honginda I remember.”

“Nor I,” whispered Catiriil. “He seems still to be in some distant land.”

“Has he been like this all day?”

“From the first, when the caravan arrived at dawn. Oh, we embraced—warmly enough, he told me how much he had missed me, he brought out gifts for me and for the children, he told us of the disagreeable place he had been and remarked on the beauty of Dawinno, even in the rain. It was all just words, though. There was no feeling in them.” Then, with a smile, Catiriil said, “It must be only that Thu-Kimnibol kept him up there in the north so long that the chill of Salaman’s city entered his soul. But give me a day or two to warm him up, Mother Boldirinthe. That’s all it’ll take!”

“Go to him now,” Boldirinthe said. “Sit with him. Serve him with wine, and see to it that his cup is never empty. Eh, girl? You know what I mean.”

Catiriil nodded and crossed the room to take the seat beside her mate. Boldirinthe watched approvingly. Catiriil was so gentle, so good, such a graceful person in every way, a splendid mate for her sharp-edged son. And beautiful, too, as her mother Torlyri had been, that same rich black fur startlingly banded with white spirals, the same dark warm eyes. Torlyri had been very tall, and Catiriil was small and delicate, but sometimes, seeing her son’s mate from the corner of her eye, Boldirinthe imagined she was seeing Torlyri returned from the dead, and it gave her a start. And also Catiriil had Torlyri’s mild and loving nature. How odd, Boldirinthe thought, that Catiriil was so pleasing in so many ways, and her brother Husathirn Mueri so difficult to like.

Catiriil was doing her best to cheer Simthala Honginda up. She had gathered a little group around him—his brother Nikilain, and Nikilain’s mate Pultha, who was an absolute well of laughter and high spirits, and Timofon, his close friend and hunting companion, the mate of Simthala Honginda’s sister Leesnai. They were joking with him, teasing him a little, centering all their attention and love on him. If a group like that couldn’t lift Simthala Honginda from his bleakness, Boldirinthe thought, then no one could. But it seemed to be working.

Abruptly Simthala Honginda’s voice rose clearly over the sounds of singing and merriment.

“Shall I tell you a story?” he said, in an oddly strained tone. “You have all told stories: now I’ll tell you one, or several.” He gulped the last of his wine and said without waiting for a response, “At one time in the hills east of Vengiboneeza there lived a bird with one body and two heads. You never saw it, did you, father? I didn’t think so. But this is a tale. It seems that one of the heads once noticed the other head eating some sweet fruit with great enjoyment, and became envious, and it said to itself, ‘I will eat poison fruit, then.’ And so it did; and the whole bird died.”

The room was completely quiet. There were some awkward attempts at laughter when Simthala Honginda was done speaking, but they died away as quickly as they were born.

“You liked that story, eh?” he cried. “Another one, then? Wait. Wait, let me have some wine.”

Catiriil said, “Perhaps you’re tired, love. We could—”

“No,” said Simthala Honginda, refilling and draining his cup almost at once. “Another story. The story of the serpent whose head and tail quarreled with each other as to which should be the front. The tail said, ‘You’re always in the lead. That isn’t fair. Let me lead once in a while.’ And the head replied, ‘How can I change places with you? The gods have decreed that I am the head.’ But the quarrel went on and on, until the tail, in anger, wrapped itself around a tree, and the serpent could not proceed. Finally the head relented, and allowed the tail to go first, whereupon the serpent fell into a pit of flame and perished. Which is to say that there is a natural order to things, and when that order is disturbed, everything will go to ruin.”

The silence this time was even more tense.

Staip, half rising from his seat, looked toward his son and said, “I think perhaps you should put your wine-cup away now, boy. What do you say?”

“I say that I haven’t had nearly enough, father! But you don’t like my stories, I take it. I thought you would, but it seems that I’m wrong. Well, then. No more stories. Only straightforward speech will it be, then. Direct and plain. Do you want to hear about my journey to the north? Do you want to know what our embassy achieved in Salaman’s kingdom?”

Softly Catiriil said, “You’re upsetting your mother, you know. You don’t want to do that, do you? Look how pale she’s become. Perhaps we should go out for a little fresh air, love. The rain has stopped, and—”

“No,” Simthala Honginda said fiercely. “No, she should hear this too. She’s still the offering-woman, isn’t she? She’s a high official of the tribe, is she not? Well, then. She must hear it.” His hand trembled as he reached for yet another cup of wine. “What I have to tell you is that there will be a war soon,” he cried. “With the hjjks, it’ll be. Salaman and Thu-Kimnibol have arranged it between them, some provocation, some pretext that’ll touch it off, and we’ll be plunged into the full fury of it, like it or not. This I know from what I heard, and what I overheard, and what I found by prowling about. There will be war! Thu-Kimnibol and Salaman will have it no other way! And we’ll all blindly follow them over the edge of the cliff!” He took a deep draught of the wine. More moderately he said, “They’re mad, those two. And their madness will infect all the world. Or perhaps it’s the world’s madness that has infected them. Perhaps we’ve already gone so far down the wrong road that this is the inevitable outcome, that Thu-Kimnibol and Salaman are the appropriate leaders for our time.”

Boldirinthe stared, horror-stricken. She felt her heart beating furiously in the depths of her immense body.

Catiriil rose now and took the cup from Simthala Honginda, and whispered in his ear, trying desperately to calm him down. He responded angrily at first, but something she said appeared to reach him, and he nodded and shrugged, and spoke more gently to her, and after a moment she slipped her arm through his and led him quietly from the room.

Quietly Boldirinthe said to Staip, “Can what he said be true? Will there be war, do you think?”

“I’m no confidant of Thu-Kimnibol’s,” said Staip impassively. “I know no more than you do of any of this.”

“There must be no war,” she said. “Who will speak for peace in the Presidium. Husathirn Mueri will, I know. And Puit Kjai. And Hresh, perhaps. And certainly I will, if they give me a chance. And you? Will you speak?”

“If Thu-Kimnibol wants war, there will be war,” said Staip, sounding as though he spoke from the other side of the grave. “What of it? Will you have to go to battle? Will I. No, no, no, this is no affair of ours. The gods determine everything. This is no affair of ours, Boldirinthe. If there is to be war, I say, let it come.”

“War?” Husathirn Mueri said. He looked at his sister in astonishment. “A secret understanding with Salaman? A trumped-up provocation?”

“So Simthala Honginda insisted,” said Catiriil. “So he said, in front of Staip, in front of Boldirinthe, in front of the whole family. It was bubbling inside him all day, and finally it came out. He’d been drinking heavily, you understand.”

“Would he say the same things to me, if I went to see him?”

“He’s never been really close to you, you know.”

Husathirn Mueri laughed. “How kind you are! What you mean, but aren’t willing to say, is that he dislikes me intensely. Eh, Catiriil?”

She shrugged almost imperceptibly. “I’m aware that you and he have never been friendly. What he said at dinner is something he really had no right to reveal. It’s almost treasonable, isn’t it, blurting out state secrets like that? He may not want to take you into his confidence.”

“No right to reveal that we’re being tricked into fighting a war that’ll ruin us, simply to gratify Thu-Kimnibol’s lust for battle? You call that treasonable? It’s Thu-Kimnibol who’s committed the treason, Catiriil.”

“Yes. So I think also. That’s why I’ve brought this to you.”

“But you doubt that I can get Simthala Honginda to give me the details of it himself.”

“I doubt it very much, brother.”

“All right. All right. This is valuable enough for now, simply knowing what Thu-Kimnibol and Salaman have cooked up together. I’ll take it from there.”

“And may the gods be with us, whatever may come,” Catiriil said.

“The gods,” Husathirn Mueri said softly to himself, with a little chuckle, when his sister was gone. “Yes. May the gods be with us, indeed.”

To me they are nothing at all, they are only names.
Those were Nialli Apuilana’s words, that astounding time when she had raved in such frenzy before the Presidium.
Our own inventions, to comfort us in our difficult times.
Husathirn Mueri had never forgotten that moment, nor those words.

Nothing but names. His own view exactly. In truth he knew himself to be a worse case even than Nialli Apuilana, for he had no beliefs at all, other than that life was nonsense, a cruel joke, a series of random events, that there was no reason for our being here other than that we are here. She at least had swallowed the hjjk myth that a cosmic plan governs the world and that everything is part of a preordained pattern. He had never seen evidence of that. And so he had no moral center, and knew it; he was capable of taking any position that seemed useful to the moment, favoring war one day and opposing it the next, as circumstances required. All that mattered was attaining power and comfort in his own lifetime, for that one lifetime was all there was, and everything was a joke in any case.

Husathirn Mueri had tried once to expound on these things to Nialli Apuilana, hoping to prove to her that they shared a set of common beliefs. But she had looked at him in shock and dismay, and had said to him in the coldest voice he had ever heard, “You don’t understand me at all, Husathirn Mueri. You don’t understand a thing about me at all.”

So be it. Perhaps he didn’t.

But he did understand the implications of the astonishing tale Catiriil had brought to him this day. He was surprised to see how little surprise he felt. Of
course
Thu-Kimnibol had gone north to stir up a war with the hjjks; of
course
the bellicose Salaman would gladly conspire with him to bring it about. And doubtless Taniane would lend what was left of her waning energies and all of her still considerable power to the task of mobilizing the Presidium’s approval.

But possibly there was still a way to head them off. Just possibly, he thought. Or, if a war couldn’t be avoided, at least to expose the perfidious role Thu-Kimnibol had played in bringing it about. The city could only suffer, if it went to war against the insect-folk. The losses would be terrible, the disruption of the fabric of life perhaps irreparable. And in the aftermath, those who had fomented the war would be brought down by it, and those who had tried in vain to prevent it would rise to greatness.

Husathirn Mueri smiled.

I’ll see what I can do, he thought.

And may the gods be with me indeed.

They had marched for weeks, going northward all the time. Behind them the world was gliding happily onward once again into spring, but in these forlorn lands on the far side of Vengiboneeza an iron winter still seemed to prevail. To Zechtior Lukin that made no difference. The chill of winter and the hot blasts of summer were all the same to him. He scarcely noticed the change of seasons, except that the hours of darkness lasted longer at one time of year than at another.