Queen of Springtime (51 page)

Nothing. Only dark hazy shadows that elude her gaze, try as she might to penetrate them. Of the Nest there is no trace.

Where has it gone? she wonders.

Was it ever there at all?

—Do you want to see?
a voice within her asks.

—Yes.

—What you see may change you.

—I’ve been changed so many times already. What harm can one more do?

—Very well. See, then, what is there to be seen.

It seems to her then that the shadows are lifting, that the darkness at the core of the star is brightening, that once more she can look through the place at the center of the star into the familiar subterranean corridors that had for a time been her home. Figures are moving about. She grips the star more tightly, stares more intently.

Figures, yes—

She sees them all too clearly now.

Monstrous. Weird. Distorted. Heads like hatchets, arms like swords. Huge cold burning eyes like mirrors of black glass that throw back a thousand malevolent refractory images at once. Glistening beaks that snap and clack and thrust themselves like daggers at her through the opening in the star. Nialli Apuilana hears the harsh hissing sound of their mocking laughter. The star itself, that simple thing of plaited grass, is covered with sharp black bristles now. Its center is a dark hairy mouth, gleaming, gaping, a wet and slippery hole that makes soft insinuating sucking noises at her.

Something is pulling at her, trying to draw her down into the heart of the little plaited star.

The temptation to yield is powerful. Return to the Nest, yes, allow the bond to be rebuilt, sit at the feet of Nest-thinker, absorb his wisdom. Be taken before the Queen to experience Her touch. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Wasn’t it what she has always wanted? And Kundalimon. The greatest temptation of all. They’d give Kundalimon back to her.
Come to us and Kundalimon will be yours again.
Was it so? How tempting it sounds. How easy it would be to surrender. How good to return to the nest… how comforting… how safe.

No. No. How can it be, any of it?

Nialli Apuilana resists with all the strength of her soul.

Still she is drawn inward. But then gradually, as she continues to struggle, the force of the pull recedes. Shuddering, she throws the star aside and watches it skitter into a far corner of the room, where it comes to rest against the wall, tipped up on end. But even from there it calls to her.
Come to us. Come. Come.

The nightmare images refuse to leave her. The beaks and claws, the bristling mouth, the myriad cold gleaming eyes. They blaze in her mind no matter how she tries to drive them from her. She thought she had fought and won this battle already, weeks ago. But no, no, the Queen’s grip is not yet fully broken.

She fights for breath. Her heart races. Her skin breaks out in cold fiery pricklings.

Her head swims with mysteries.

The walls of her little room seem to be closing in on her. Streams of blood flow across the floor. Severed limbs arise and dance wildly about her. A baleful green light comes pulsing up from the star that lies beside the wall. Thin bristly arms reach out through its center, groping for her. Harsh whispering voices, distant but seductive, call to her.

“No,” she says. “I’m not yours any more.”

She edges backward, keeping her eyes on the star as she moves slowly toward the door, fumbling behind herself to open it, then slipping hurriedly out into the hallway. She slams the door and holds it shut, leaning against it, drawing air deep into her lungs, waiting for the dizziness to go from her, for the pounding in her chest to subside.

Free. Free.

What next, though?

There is only one person in the city she can turn to.

I’ll go to my father, she thinks.

“They want to destroy the Queen, if they can,” Husathirn Mueri said. “You have my word on it.”

He was in the chapel of Kundalimon in the alleyway just off Fishmonger Street. It wasn’t one of the regular days of communion. Only Tikharein Tourb and Chhia Kreun were with him now: the boy-priest, the girl-priestess.

Somewhat to his own surprise, Husathirn Mueri had become a regular communicant of the new creed. What had begun as spying had become—was it faith? Or spying still. He was unsure. The chapel, that dingy place reeking of dried fish where sweaty lower-class folk came four times a week to cry forth their love of the Queen, had become his special refuge in the storm that was sweeping Dawinno. To Chevkija Aim he maintained that he was still conducting an investigation. Inwardly he wasn’t so clear that that was what he was doing.

The boy said, “But are they capable of such a thing? Is anyone. It seems hard to believe.”

“That the Queen can be destroyed?”

“That they would be so evil as to attempt it?”

“They’ll kill her,” said Husathirn Mueri, “as they killed Kundalimon. There are no limits to their hatred of Nest-truth.”

“Then it was Thu-Kimnibol that killed Kundalimon?” the girl said, amazed.

Husathirn Mueri turned to her. “Surely you knew that. It was done at his orders by the guard-captain, Curabayn Bangkea. Who then was murdered also, to keep him silent.”

“You know this to be true?” asked Tikharein Tourb.

“It’s true, all right. By all the gods, it’s true!” said Husathirn Mueri.

Tikharein Tourb stared at him a long while, as if weighing and judging him. The boy’s narrowed green eyes were cold as the ice that lies at the heart of the world. Only once before had Husathirn Mueri seen eyes like those: the bleak pale ones of the emissary Kundalimon. And even Kundalimon’s gaze at its most remorseless had held some hint of compassion. These eyes were wholly icy, wholly terrifying.

The fierce roaring silence went on and on. Tikharein Tourb and the girl stood silent, statue-still. After a time Husathirn Mueri saw the boy’s sensing-organ quiver and grow rigid and steal toward the side, until its tip was touching the tip of Chhia Kreun’s. They might almost have been entering into communion right before him. Perhaps they were.

Then the boy said, “Swear to me by your love of the Queen that it was Thu-Kimnibol who had Kundalimon murdered.”

“I swear it,” said Husathirn Mueri unhesitatingly.

“And that the purpose of this war that Thu-Kimnibol has stirred up is to bring about the destruction of the Nest and the death of Her who is our comfort and our joy.”

“That’s its purpose. I swear it.”

Again Tikharein Tourb stared. What a frightening child he is, Husathirn Mueri thought. And the girl also.

“Then he will die,” said the boy finally.

Hresh was in his garden of animals, sitting with small brightly-colored beasts all about him. The two purple-and-yellow ones, the caviandis, were by his side, and he was gently stroking them. He glanced up as Nialli Apuilana came rushing in.

“Father—” she cried at once. “Father, I’ve had something strange happen—something so very strange—”

He looked at her in a bland incurious way, as though she had not said anything at all. His eyes were remote and his expression was milder even than usual. There was a great sadness about him that she had never seen before: he seemed bowed down under it, a beaten man, very old and frail.

That frightened her. Her own chaotic fears and confusions receded into the background. She had come here in terror and in need; but his need, she saw, was even greater than hers.

“Is something wrong, father?”

Hresh made a little shrugging gesture and slowly moved his head from side to side like some wounded beast. He seemed terribly far away. After a time he said, “It’s certain now. There’s going to be war.”

“How do you know?”

“I felt the signal just now, coming from the north. Perhaps you felt it too. There’ll be no holding it back. Everything is in place and the word has been given to begin.”

She stared at him blankly. “I’m not sure what you mean, father.”

“You don’t know about the alliance Thu-Kimnibol brought back with him from Yissou?”

She shook her head.

“We’ve agreed to help defend Salaman if he’s ever attacked by the hjjks. Which is about to happen—an attack provoked by Salaman himself, I suspect. Perhaps with some help from my brother. Once Yissou is invaded, our army will go north, and there’ll be all-out war.”

“Which is precisely what those two have always wanted.”

Hresh nodded. Tonelessly he said, “Much blood will flow, ours and theirs. Great sins will be committed. Hjjk armies will march through our cities putting them to the torch, or we’ll destroy the Nest, or perhaps both will happen. It makes no difference what happens in the end. Whether we win or lose, everything we’ve achieved will be destroyed.”

He looked forlorn and bereft. Nialli Apuilana wanted to hold him, to comfort him.

She said softly, “You mustn’t worry yourself like this, father. Salaman is dreaming. The hjjks won’t attack Yissou and there isn’t going to be any all-out war.”

“They invaded Yissou once,” Hresh said.

“That was different. Yissou was right on the path of a hjjk swarming-drive.”

“A what?”

“A swarming-drive. The Nest, great as it is, can hold only so many. A time arrives when the population has to divide. And then they come bursting out, thousands of them, millions sometimes, carrying a young queen with them. And they march. For a thousand leagues if they have to, or sometimes more, until they reach the place where they mean to go. The gods only know how they decide where that place is. But they let nothing stop them until they’re there. And then they build a new Nest.”

Hresh looked up, his eyes alive for an instant with sudden interest in the old Hresh manner.

“And is this is what was happening when they attacked Harruel’s settlement?”

“Yes. They probably didn’t have any specific intention of harming the settlement. But when they swarm they go marching blindly straight ahead, and nothing will turn them. Nothing.”

“Well, and if they swarm in the same direction again?”

“It won’t happen. They never swarm twice in the same direction. I know how eager Thu-Kimnibol is to have a war, and Salaman too. But they’ll be disappointed.”

“Let’s pray that they are.”

“Unless a war with the hjjks is something that the Five intend for us to have,” Nialli Apuilana said. “In which case, may Dawinno help us all. I tell you, though, father, that there’ll be no war.”

He stared at her, smiling in that strange new sad way of his. The caviandis turned also to look at her. There was a curious bright glow of—what? Sadness also? Compassion?—in their big gleaming violet eyes.

Hresh said, in a voice so soft she could barely hear him, “Despite all you say, I feel the war rushing toward us like a great storm, Nialli. Who can stop a storm?”

“I’ve lived in the Nest, father. I know the hjjks won’t ever arbitrarily launch a war against us. That isn’t their way.”

“And if we begin the war? We have an army now, do you know that?”

She caught her breath. “Since when?”

“It’s brand new. Thu-Kimnibol organized it. They’re at the stadium right now, marching and drilling. Once armies exist, wars are easy to bring about.”

“Does Taniane know about this?”

“Yes. And approves of it.” Hresh smiled ruefully. “They have Great World weapons, taken from the House of Knowledge without my awareness or consent. Taniane finds that acceptable also.”

“She wants war?”

“She expects it, at least. Is resigned to it. Will give her wholehearted support to it.”

Nialli Apuilana stared at Hresh, horrified.

She could see the People’s armies streaming northward into the land of the hjjks, and hordes of hjjk Militaries coming forth to meet them.

A terrible clash, frightful carnage. Thu-Kimnibol unleashing his purloined Great World weapons and working great devastation. Whole legions of Militaries blown into vapor at the touch of a button. The hjjk forces, vast though they were, driven back, ever back, the invaders advancing triumphantly into the dark northern territories. Swarm after swarm of Militaries sent to meet them, called in from every Nest of the north, each in turn destroyed by the inexorable drive of the attackers.

The Nest in danger! The Queen!

Yes, the Nest of Nests besieged. Everything in confusion there, Nest-plenty lost, Nest-truth denied, Egg-plan set awry, the wise Nest-thinkers scurrying to take cover in the dust, Egg-makers and Life-kindlers trying to flee and hacked down as they ran, and at last, the most terrible assault of all, even the Queen of Queens Herself rooted out of Her deep chamber and put to death—

Unthinkable. For the second time that day the world swayed and reeled about Nialli Apuilana.

This war must not be, she thought.

She wanted to cry out, to rage and scream her defiance of the war-makers, to send warning to the Nest of the treachery of her people, send it by dreams or second sight or Barak Dayir or any other means she could find. And more. To throw herself in the path of the forces of Thu-Kimnibol and Salaman as they set forth into the sacred territories of the Queen, and by her own will and strength hold them back from this unlawful strife. She would prevent it if it cost her her own life.

She clenched her fists fiercely. She would do anything to defend the Queen and the Nest. She would—

She would—

She would do—

What?

Nothing.

Nothing.

It was all gone. She felt only a void where, a moment before, there had been white-hot wrath.

In one bewildering instant all her fury, all her indignation, had died away, leaving her in a strange suspended state, empty, baffled. Why should she care what happened to the Nest? Why was she so eager to sacrifice her life for the sake of the Queen?

And then, stunned, she realized that all those fierce and desperate thoughts that had come welling up so spontaneously out of her soul had had no substance behind them.

They were shams. Mere automatic responses, empty of true feeling. The last flicker of the old loyalty to the Queen that once had burned within her. But
these
were her people, here.
This
was her city.