Queen of Springtime (50 page)

“I was the one, sir,” said Chupitain Stuld in a very small voice.

“Where are the other four?”

Distress had turned to fright in her, now. She moved quickly back and forth in front of the desk, moistening her lips, frantically grooming herself.

Hresh gave her just a minute jab of second sight. And felt the roiling fear within her, the shame, the contrition.

“Where are they, girl?” he asked gently. “Tell me the truth.”

“Out—on—loan—” she whispered.

“On loan? To whom?”

She stared at the floor.

“To Prince Thu-Kimnibol, sir.”

“My brother? Since when is he interested in ancient artifacts? What in the name of Nakhaba does he want with them, I wonder? How would he even have known they were here?” Hresh shook his head. “We don’t loan things, Chupitain Stuld. Especially new acquisitions that haven’t been properly studied. Even to someone like Prince Thu-Kimnibol. You know that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you authorize this loan?”

“It was Plor Killivash, sir.” A pause. “But I knew about it.”

“And didn’t tell me.”

“I thought it was all right. Considering that Prince Thu-Kimnibol is your brother, and—”

Hresh waved her into silence. “He has them now?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Why did he want them, do you know?”

She was trembling. She tried to speak, but no words would come.

Through Hresh’s mind ran Chupitain Stuld’s description of the artifacts that remained, the ones that Thu-Kimnibol hadn’t bothered to take.
This one dissolves matter … This one casts a cloak of darkness … This one cuts like a knife, and its beam goes so deep we couldn’t measure it …

Gods! These were the devices that Thu-Kimnibol had chosen to leave behind. What sort of destruction were the other ones capable of working?

At this moment, he knew, Thu-Kimnibol was out drilling his army on the stadium grounds, getting ready for his war against the hjjks. It had taken him only a few days to assemble his troops.

And now he had his weapons, too.

Taniane said, “It’s not Thu-Kimnibol’s army, Hresh. It’s
our
army. The army of the City of Dawinno.”

“But Husathirn Mueri—”

“The gods confound Husathirn Mueri! He’s going to oppose us every step of the way, that’s obvious. But war is coming, beyond any question. And therefore I authorized Thu-Kimnibol to begin organizing an armed force.”

“Wait a minute,” Hresh said. He looked at Taniane as though she were some stranger, and not his mate of forty years. “
You
authorized him? Not the Presidium?”

“I’m the chieftain, Hresh. We’re facing a crisis. It’s no time for long-winded debate.”

“I see.” He stared at her, scarcely believing what he heard. “And this war? Why are you so sure it’s on the way? You and Thu-Kimnibol and Husathirn Mueri too, for that matter. Is it all agreed? Has some kind of secret resolution to start a war been passed?”

Taniane was slow to reply. Hresh, waiting, sensed the same evasiveness coming from her that had emanated earlier from Husathirn Mueri, and even from Chupitain Stuld. They were all trying to hide things from him. A web of deception had been woven here while he slept, and they were desperately eager to keep him from penetrating it now.

She said finally, “Thu-Kimnibol obtained proof, while he was in Yissou, that the hjjks intend to launch an attack against King Salaman in the very near future.”

“Proof? What sort of proof?”

The evasiveness deepened, “He said something about having gone riding out into hjjk territory with Salaman, and coming upon a party of hjjks, and forcing them to surrender secret military plans. Or something like that.”

“Which they were conveniently carrying in little baskets around their necks. Personally signed by the Queen, with the royal hjjk seal stamped on them.”

“Please, Hresh.”

“You believe this? That the invasion of Yissou that Salaman’s been fretting about since the beginning of time is actually going to happen the day after tomorrow?”

“I do, yes.”

“What proof is there?”

“Thu-Kimnibol knows what it is.”

“Ah. I see. All right, let’s say the hjjks finally are going to invade. How timely for Salaman that this is going to happen right after he and my brother have concluded a treaty of mutual defense between Dawinno and Yissou, eh?”

“You sound so angry, Hresh! I’ve never heard you this way.”

“And I’ve never heard you this way, either. Dancing around my questions, talking about proof but not producing any, letting Thu-Kimnibol set up an army right here in the city without taking the trouble even to discuss it in the Presidium—”

Now she was staring at him as if
he
were a stranger. Her eyes were hooded, her expression was cold.

He couldn’t bear it, this wall of suspicion that had arisen between them suddenly, rearing as high as Salaman’s lunatic rampart. The urge came to him to ask her to twine with him, to join him in the communion that admits of no suspicion, of no mistrust. Then all would be made known between them; then once again they would be Hresh and Taniane, Taniane and Hresh, and not the strangers they had become to each other.

But he knew that she’d refuse. She’d plead weariness, or an urgent meeting an hour from now, or some other such thing. For if she twined with him she would have no secrets from him; and Hresh saw that she was full of secrets that she was determined not to share with him. He felt a great sadness. He could always find out everything he wanted to know by taking recourse to the Barak Dayir, he knew. The powers of the Wonderstone would carry him anywhere, even into the guarded recesses of Taniane’s mind. But the idea was repugnant to him. Spy on my own mate? he thought. No. No, I’ll let the city be destroyed and everyone in it, before I do that.

After a long silence Taniane said, “I’ve taken such actions as I deem necessary for the security of the city, Hresh. If you disagree, you have the right to state your objections in the Presidium. All right?” Her stony glare was awful to behold. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“Do you know, Taniane, that Thu-Kimnibol has gone behind my back to remove newly discovered Great World artifacts from the House of Knowledge for use as weapons?”

“If there’s a war, Hresh, weapons will be necessary. And there’s going to be a war.”

“But to take them from the House of Knowledge, without even telling—”

“I authorized Thu-Kimnibol to see to it that the army was properly equipped.”

“You authorized him to steal Great World things from the House of Knowledge?”

She eyed him steadily and unflinchingly. “I seem to remember that you used Great World weapons against the hjjks at the battle of Yissou.”

“But that was different! That was—”

“Different, Hresh?” Taniane laughed. “Was it? How?”

For Salaman it was a bad day atop the wall. Everything was unclear. A hash of harsh chattering nonsense clogged the channels of his mind. Vague cloudy images drifted to him now and then. A lofty tower which might signify Thu-Kimnibol. A flash of luminescent flame which perhaps stood for Hresh. A tough weatherbeaten tree, whipping about in a storm, which he thought might represent Taniane. And some other image, that of someone or something serpentine and slippery, impossible for Salaman to interpret at all. Things were happening in Dawinno today. But what? What? Nothing that he was picking up made sense. He tuned his second sight as keenly as he could. But either his perceptions were weak today or the transmissions from his spies were muddled beyond his ability to decode them.

He was in his pavilion, sweeping his sensing-organ from side to side in broad arcs. Casting his mind outward along it into the rear empty spaces that surrounded Yissou, he trawled southward for news. On the far side of the wall, the whole city’s width away, stood his son Biterulve, seeking word from the north.

The new communications network was finally in place. It had taken all the winter to build it: finding the volunteers, training them, sending them out to establish the outposts that would masquerade as farms. But now he had his agents strung like beads along a line stretching southward nearly to the City of Dawinno, and north toward hjjk territory as far as seemed safe to intrude.

From all sides came the buzz and crackle of second-sight visions flooding toward him, relayed station by station along the line. The king concentrated the full force of his powerful mind on them. He came here every day at dawn now, to listen, to wait.

It wasn’t easy to achieve, this mind-transmission. The messages were always blurred and difficult to interpret, and often ambiguous. But what other way was there, short of having couriers ride constantly back and forth? At best the news they brought would be weeks late. That was unthinkable, now. Events were moving too quickly. If he had a Wonderstone as Hresh did, perhaps he could let his spirit rove hither and yon as he wished, peering into anything and everything. But there was only one Wonderstone, and Hresh had it.

Nothing was working for him today, though. The messages that were coming in were worthless. Murk and mist, darkness and fog, no clarity at all. A waste of time and energy.

Well, so be it. Salaman let his weary sensing-organ go limp. A better day tomorrow, perhaps. He moved toward the stairs.

Then, like an agitated voice calling to him out of the sky, the presence of his son came to him.

—Father! Father!

—Biterulve?

—Father, can you hear me? It’s Biterulve!

—I hear you, yes.

—Father?

—Tell me, boy. Tell me!

There was silence then. Salaman felt fury rising. Plainly the boy had something important to tell him; but just as plainly, Biterulve’s messages and his own replies weren’t in coordination.

Salaman swung around and inclined his sensing-organ toward the direction Biterulve’s output was coming from. It was maddening: so inexact, so imprecise, mere approximations of meaning, images and sensations rather than words, which must be deciphered, which must be interpreted. But certainly there was news from the north. Salaman had no doubt of that. He could feel the boy’s unmistakable excitement.

—Biterulve?

—Father! Father!

—I hear you. Tell me what it is.

He sensed the boy struggling. Biterulve had great sensitivity, but it was of an odd kind, more keen over long distances than close at hand. Salaman hammered his fists against the brick walkway of the wall. He raised his sensing-organ until it could go no higher, and stroked the air with his outspread arms as though that way he could pull the message more clearly from his son.

Then came an image unquestionable in its clarity.

Bloodied bodies lying on a plain between two streams. Hundreds of them. Zechtior Lukin’s people.

Gaunt shadowy figures stalking among them, stooping now and then as though taking trophies.

Hjjks.

—
They’re dead, father. The Acknowledgers. Every one of them. Can you hear me?

—I hear you, boy.

—
Father? Father. It came through so clearly, through the northern relay posts. They’ve all been killed, in the hjjk country, in a place where rivers fork. All the Acknowledgers, completely wiped out.

Salaman nodded, as though Biterulve were standing right beside him. With a fierce burst of mental strength he hurled toward the boy a message so vehement that he was certain it would get through, to say that he had received and comprehended the news; and after a moment came confirmation from Biterulve, and the boy’s relief that he had managed to make himself understood.

At last, Salaman thought.

Now the wheels begin to turn.

The Acknowledgers had found the martyrdom they wanted. Time now to send the second force, the army of vengeance, which would probably meet martyrdom too, though far less calmly. And then to make ready for the all-out war that was sure to follow.

The king swung about again toward the south. For a moment he stood resting, breathing easily, gathering force. There could be no ambiguities or mysteries this time. The message had to travel along the relay chain with no distortion whatever, and get through to Thu-Kimnibol in distant Dawinno untainted by error.

He summoned the images. The bodies by the riverbank. The dark angular shapes moving among them. The new army, setting out from Yissou, bravely marching into the territory of the enemy to avenge the murder of Zechtior Lukin and his people. The violent collision of forces that was sure to come. The hjjks, aroused, issuing threats.

And then the gates of Dawinno opening, and an immense force of warriors emerging, with Thu-Kimnibol at their head.

Salaman smiled. He raised his sensing-organ and held it rigid. Power throbbed in it from the base of his spine and traveled to the tip. He closed his eyes and let the word burst forth from him. It soared southward from station to station in a bright blaze of energy, like a thunderbolt leaping across the vast spaces between the two cities.

—
I invoke the terms of our alliance. We are at war.

Something is wrong. Nialli Apuilana, alone in her room in the House of Nakhaba, feels a sudden tremor, a heaving and a wrenching, as if the world has been pulled free of its base and it plummeting wildly through the heavens. She goes to the window. Everything seems quiet in the streets. But her second sight shows her the sun, suddenly huge, hanging just above her in the air with rivers of blood dripping down from it. In the blackness of the sky the icy green tails of comets whirl and spin.

She trembles and looks away and covers her eyes with her arms. After a time she prays, first to the Five, and then to the spirit of Kundalimon. And then, without knowing why, she thinks to reach out to the Queen as well.

Taking the hjjk star from its place on the wall, Nialli Apuilana holds it before her face, gripping it lightly by its sides. She peers into the open place at its center, narrowing the focus of her vision down until that small open place is the only thing she can see.

It is dark in there. Perhaps some sort of image lurks in the deepest part of the darkness, but she isn’t at all sure it is there, and, if it is, it is blurred and faded and unclear, a mere ghost of a ghost. Once the star had been able to show her the Nest, or so she had thought. But now—