Queen of Springtime (7 page)

Husathirn Mueri, though, was in constant motion. He crossed and uncrossed his legs; he shifted about uneasily as if the throne were growing icy cold beneath him, or fiery; he flicked his sensing-organ about, now curling it against his shins, now letting it arch upward behind him until the tip of it peered over his shoulder. His intense amber gaze flickered everywhere around the great room except in Nialli Apuilana’s direction; but then suddenly she caught him staring at her again in that hungry fashion of his. As soon as their eyes met, he looked away.

She felt sorry for him, in an odd way. That he was so driven, so edgy. They said that his mother Torlyri had been a saintly loving person, and his father the most valiant of warriors. But Husathirn Mueri seemed not at all saintly, and Nialli Apuilana doubted that he would be of much use on a battlefield, either. Hardly a credit to his forebears. Perhaps it’s true, she thought, the thing that the older people like to say, that in this modern era of city life we’ve become a race of confused, troubled folk, no clear sense of direction in our lives at all. Weaklings, in fact. Decadents.

But, she wondered, is it so? That we’ve gone from primitivism to decadence and weakness in a single generation? All that time pent up in the cocoon, scarcely changing in any way, and then we erupt and build ourselves a tremendous city, and practically overnight all the old virtues are lost, our godliness, our honor?

Husathirn Mueri may be a decadent, she thought. And probably so am I. But is he really a weakling? Am I?

“The chronicler! Hresh-of-the-answers! All rise for the chronicler Hresh!” came the braying voice of the bailiff who had gone to fetch him.

She looked about and saw her father entering the throne-room.

How long it had been since she had last seen him, she wasn’t sure: weeks, certainly, or possibly months. There had never been any formal estrangement between them; but her path and his simply tended rarely to cross, these days. He had his unending research into the world of the past to absorb him, while she, living her isolated and somehow suspended life in the upper reaches of the House of Nakhaba, felt little reason to come down into the central districts of the city.

The moment he entered the room Hresh turned to her, holding out his arms, as if she were the only person there. And Nialli Apuilana went quickly, eagerly to him.

“Father—”

“Nialli—my little Nialli—”

He had aged enormously in just these few months since they last had been together, as though each week had been a year for him. Of course he was at a point in his life when time galloped by. Some years past fifty now: old, as People life-spans went. His fur had long since grayed. Nialli Apuilana, his one child, born to him very late, could not remember a time when it had been any other color. His slender shoulders were bowed, his chest was hollow. Only his huge dark scarlet-flecked eyes, blazing like beacons beneath his wide forehead, still radiated the vitality that must have been his in those long-ago days when, still no more than a boy, he had led the People from the ancestral cocoon across the plains into Vengiboneeza.

They embraced quietly, almost solemnly. Then she stepped back from him and for a moment their eyes met.

Hresh-of-the-answers, the bailiff had called him. Well, that was his full formal name, yes. He had once told her that he had chosen it himself upon reaching his naming-day. Before that, when he was a boy, he had been called Hresh-full-of-questions. They were both good names for him. There was no mind like his anywhere, always probing, always seeking. Truly he must be the wisest man in the world, Nialli Apuilana thought. Everyone said so.

She felt herself drawn in, swallowed up, by those astonishing eyes of his, eyes that had looked upon such miracles and wonders as she could barely comprehend. Hresh had seen the Great World alive: he had held a device in his hand that brought it all back in visions, and showed him the mighty sapphire-eyes people and the sea-lords and the mechanicals and all the rest of those dead races—even the humans, whom the People had called by the name of Dream-Dreamers in the days when they lived in the cocoon—the baffling enigmatic humans, who had been masters of the Earth long before any of the others had come into being, so long ago that the mind was numbed merely to think of it.

Hresh seemed so mild, so ordinary, until you looked into his eyes. And then he became frightening. He had seen so much. He had achieved so much. Everything that the People had become since the Long Winter’s end, they were because Hresh had shaped them that way.

He smiled. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Nialli.”

“Husathirn Mueri sent for me. He thought I still knew the language of the hjjks. But of course it’s all gone from me now, all but a few words.”

Hresh nodded. “You shouldn’t be expected to remember. It’s been two years, hasn’t it?”

“Three, father. Almost four.”

“Almost four. Of course.” He chuckled indulgently at his own absent-mindedness. “And who could blame you for blocking it from your mind? A nightmare like that.”

She looked away from him. He had never understood the truth of her stay among the hjjks. No one had. Perhaps no one ever would. Except this silent stranger here, and she was unable to communicate in any useful way with him.

Husathirn Mueri, descending from the throne, led the stranger to Hresh’s side. “He was found at midday, in Emakkis Valley, riding a vermilion. He makes hjjk-sounds, and speaks a few words of our language also. Nialli Apuilana says that these are hjjk-amulets on his wrist and breast.”

“He looks half starved,” Hresh said. “More than half. He’s like a walking skeleton.”

“Do you remember what I looked like, father, when I came back from the hjjks?” Nialli Apuilana asked. “They eat very little, the hjjks. Sparseness is what they prefer, in eating, in everything. That’s their way. I was hungry all the time, when I was with them.”

“And looked it when you returned,” said Hresh. “I do remember. Well, perhaps we can find some way to talk with this boy. And then he ought to be given something to eat. Eh, Husathirn Mueri? Something to put a little meat on his bones. But let’s see what we can do, first.”

“Will you use the Wonderstone?” Husathirn Mueri asked.

“The Wonderstone, yes. The Barak Dayir.” Hresh drew a worn velvet pouch from a pocket of his sash and tugged at its drawstring. Into the palm of his hand tumbled a tapered bit of polished stone, like a finely made spearhead. It was a mottled purple and brown in color, with a pattern of intricate fine lines inscribed along its edges. “No one must come near me,” he said.

Nialli Apuilana trembled. She had seen the Wonderstone no more than five or six times in her life, and not in many years. It was the People’s single most prized possession. No one, not even Hresh, knew what it was. They said it was made of star-stuff, whatever that meant. They said it was older even than the Great World, that it was a human-thing, an instrument out of that remote unknown world that had existed before the sapphire-eyes folk began to rule the Earth. Perhaps so. The only thing that was certain was that Hresh had learned how to work miracles with it.

He took it now in the curve of his sensing-organ, grasping it firmly. His expression grew distant and strange. He was summoning his second sight, now, unleashing all the formidable powers of his mind and focusing them through the strange device that was called the Barak Dayir.

The stranger, motionless, stood with his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Hresh. They were unusual eyes, a clear pale green, like the water in the shallows of Dawinno Bay, but much colder. The stranger too seemed to be locked in deep concentration; and once again that odd almost-smile had appeared on his face.

Hresh’s eyes were closed. He appeared not even to be breathing. He was lost in his own spell, his mind given up entirely into the power of the Barak Dayir. But after an eternity he could be seen to return. The room was very still.

“His name is Kundalimon,” Hresh said.

“Kundalimon,” Husathirn Mueri repeated gravely, as though the name had some deep significance.

“At least, that’s what he thinks it is. He isn’t entirely sure. He isn’t entirely sure even of what a name is. He doesn’t have one among the hjjks. But the traces of the name
Kundalimon
are still in his mind, like the traces of ancient foundations in a ruined city. He knows that he was born here, seventeen years ago.”

Husathirn Mueri said quietly to the bailiff, “Go to the House of Knowledge. See if there’s any record of a lost child named Kundalimon.”

Hresh shook his head. “No. Let it be. I’ll take care of that myself, afterward.” He turned to the stranger. “We have to teach you your own name. Everyone in this city has a name, a name that belongs only to himself.” And in a clear high tone he said, pointing to the boy, “
Kundalimon
.”

“Kundalimon,” the stranger repeated, nodding, tapping his chest, smiling something that was close to being an actual smile.

Hresh touched his own breast. “
Hresh
.”

“Hresh,” said the stranger. “Hresh.”

Ho looked toward Nialli Apuilana.

“He wants to know your name too,” Hresh said. “Go on. Tell him.”

Nialli Apuilana nodded. But to her horror her voice wasn’t there when she called upon it. Nothing would come from her throat but a cough and a tight hoarse rasping that could almost have been a hjjk-sound. Dismayed, embarrassed, she clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Tell him your name,” said Hresh again.

Silently Nialli Apuilana tapped her throat with her fingers and shook her head.

Hresh seemed to understand. He nodded to Kundalimon and pointed to her. “
Nialli Apuilana
,” he said, in the same clear high tone as before.

“Nialli—Apuilana,” Kundalimon repeated carefully, staring at her. The supple vowels and liquid consonants did not seem to rise easily to his lips. “Nialli—Apuilana—”

She looked away, as if scalded by his gaze.

Hresh took the Barak Dayir and closed his eyes again, and disappeared once more into his trance. Kundalimon stood statue-still before him. There was utter silence in the room.

Shortly Hresh seemed to return, and after a time he said, “How strange his mind is! He’s been with the hjjks since he was four. Living in the great main Nest, the Nest of Nests, far in the north.”

The Nest of Nests! In the presence of the Queen of Queens Herself! Nialli Apuilana felt a surge of envy.

She found her voice and said softly, “And do you know why he’s come here, father?”

In a curious muffled tone Hresh said, “The Queen wants to make a treaty with us.”

“A
treaty
?” Husathirn Mueri said.

“A treaty, yes. A treaty of perpetual peace.”

Husathirn Mueri looked stunned. “What are the terms? Do you know?”

“They want to draw a line across the continent, somewhere just north of the City of Yissou. Everything north of the line is to be considered hjjk, and everything south of it will remain the territory of the People. No one of either race will be allowed to enter territory belonging to the other.”

“A treaty,” Husathirn Mueri said again in wonder. “The Queen wants a treaty with us! I can’t believe it.”

“Nor can I,” said Hresh. “Almost too good to be true, isn’t it? Hard and fast boundaries. A no-trespass agreement. Everything clear, everything straightforward. In one stroke, an end to the fear of war with them that’s been dangling over us all our lives.”

“If we can trust them.”

“If we can trust them, yes.”

“Have they sent an emissary to the City of Yissou also, do you know?” Husathirn Mueri said.

“Yes. They’ve sent them to each of the Seven Cities, so it appears.”

Husathirn Mueri laughed. “I’d like to see King Salaman’s face. Out of nowhere, peace breaks out! Perpetual peace with the great insect enemy! What then becomes of the holy war of extermination that he’s been aching to launch against them for the past ten or twenty years?”

“Do you think Salaman was ever serious about a war with the hjjks?” Nialli Apuilana asked.

Husathirn Mueri looked at her. “What?”

“It’s all politics, isn’t it? So he can go on building his great wall higher and higher and higher. He keeps saying the hjjks are about to invade his city, but in fact the last time they did was before most of us were born. When Harruel was king up there, and Yissou had just been founded.”

He turned to Hresh. “She has a point. Despite all of Salaman’s fretting, there haven’t been any real hostilities between the hjjks and the People in years. They have their lands, and we have ours, and nothing worse than a few border skirmishes ever takes place. If all the treaty does is ratify the status quo, what meaning does it have? Or is it some kind of trap?”

“There are other conditions beside the one I spoke of,” Hresh said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“That had best be saved for discussion in the Presidium, I think,” said Hresh. “Meanwhile we have a weary stranger here. Give the boy a place to stay, Husathirn Mueri. See if you can find something for him that he’s willing to eat. And make sure that his vermilion is cared for, also. He’s very worried about his vermilion.”

Husathirn Mueri signaled to one of the bailiffs, who came lumbering forward.

“No,” Nialli Apuilana said. Her voice was a harsh croak again, but she managed to make herself heard. “Not you.” She held out her hand to the stranger. “I’ll take charge of getting him his food. I know what kinds of things he eats, better than anyone else here. Don’t forget I’ve been in the Nest myself.” She glanced defiantly around the room. “Well? Any objections?” But no one spoke.

“Come,” she said to Kundalimon. “I’ll look after you.”

As it should be, she thought. How could I let anyone else? What do they know, any of them? But we are both of the Nest, you and I. We are both of the Nest.

A
FTERWARD, WHEN HE IS
alone again, Hresh closes his eyes and lets his soul rove forth, imagining it soaring in a dream-vision beyond the bounds of the city, far across the windy northern plains, into that unknown distant realm where the hordes of insect-folk scurry about within their immense subterranean tunnels. They are a total enigma to him. They are the mystery of mysteries. He sees the Queen, or what he imagines to be the Queen, that immense remote inscrutable monarch, lying somnolent in her heavily guarded chamber, stirring slowly while acolytes chant harsh clicking hjjk-songs of praise: the hjjk of hjjks, the great Queen. What hjjk-dreams of total world domination is she dreaming, even now? How will we ever learn, he wonders, what it is that those creatures want of us?