At Winter's End

  He bowed elaborately as she entered, and made the sign of Dawinno at her, and for good measure wished her joy of Nakhaba’s favor. That was bothersome, all that piety coming from him. It was no secret to her how little faith he had in any of the gods, be they Beng or Koshmar.

  Impatiently she said, not troubling to make holy signs at him in return, “Well, what is it, Husathirn Mueri?”

  “Shall we talk here? In the vestibule?”

  “It’s as good a place as any.”

  “I had hoped—someplace a little more secluded—”

  Taniane cursed silently. “Come with me, then. Hresh has a little study just off this hallway.”

  A nervous look. “Will Hresh be there?”

  “He gets up in the middle of the night and goes off to the House of Knowledge to play with his toys. Is this something Hresh isn’t supposed to know?”

  “I’ll leave that to you to decide, lady,” Husathirn Mueri said. “My sole interest is in sharing it with you, but if you think the chronicler should be informed, well—”

  “All right,” said Taniane. “Come.” She was growing more annoyed by the moment. All this bowing and shuffling, and this making of signs to honor gods he didn’t believe in, and these oily circumlocutions—

  She led the way to the study and closed the door behind them. The place was a clutter of Hresh’s pamphlets and manuscripts. Through the narrow window she saw that the drizzle was turning now to heavy rain. The Festival would be ruined. She could see herself standing up there in the chieftain’s seat at the stadium, soaking wet, tossing down the smoldering sputtering torch that was supposed to inaugurate the races.

  “So,” she said. “Here we are. A secluded place.”

  “I have two things to report,” said Husathirn Mueri. “The first comes to me from the guards of the justiciary, who have been keeping watch on the hjjk ambassador at my orders.”

  “You said this was about Nialli Apuilana.”

  “So it is. But I also said it concerns a danger to the city also. I’d prefer to tell you that part of it first, if I may.”

  “Well, go on, then.”

  “The ambassador, you know, wanders freely around the city every day. We were keeping him under house arrest, but at Nialli Apuilana’s request it was lifted. And now he is corrupting the children, lady.”

  She stared at him. “Corrupting?”

  “Spreading hjjk beliefs among them. He teaches them such concepts as Nest-truth, Queen-love, Nest-bond, Egg-plan. You know those terms?”

  “I’ve heard them, yes. Everyone has. I don’t really know what they mean.”

  “If you’d like to know, you could ask any child in the city. Especially the very young ones. Kundalimon preaches to them daily. Daily he fills their heads with this evil nonsense.”

  Taniane took a deep breath. “Are you sure of this?”

  “He is very closely watched, lady.”

  “And the children—do they listen to him?”

  “Lady, they listen and believe! Their whole attitude toward the hjjks is changing. They don’t think of them the way the rest of us do, any longer. They don’t see them as repulsive. They don’t see them as evil. Talk to one of the children, lady, almost any child at all. You’ll find out. Kundalimon’s got them believing that the hjjks are deep and wise. Godlike, almost. Or at least creatures of some special high nature. He tells them how ancient the hjjks are, how important they were during the Great World days. You know how fascinated all children are by fables and tales of the Great World. And here he is, letting them know that people of one of the six Great World races still exist in our own time, and live in some fantastic underground castle far away, and want nothing more than to spread their loving wisdom among us—”

  “Yes,” Taniane said crisply. “I see the danger. But what does he mean to do? Lead all of our little ones out of the city like a piper playing a merry tune, and dance them across the hills and valleys to the Nest?”

  “He might have that in mind, for all I know.”

  “And you say that Nialli Apuilana’s involved in this? How?”

  Husathirn Mueri leaned forward until his face was thrust practically into hers.

  “Lady, she and the ambassador Kundalimon are lovers.”

  “Lovers?”

  “You know that she goes to his room every day, lady. To bring him his food, to teach him our language.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “Lady, sometimes she spends the entire night with him. My guards have heard sounds coming from the room that—forgive me, lady, forgive me!—can only be the sounds of coupling.”

  “Well, what of it?” Taniane flicked her hand through the air in an irritated gesture. “Coupling’s a healthy thing. She’s never been much interested in it. It’s high time she developed a liking for it, and then some.”

  Husathirn Mueri’s expression turned stark, as though Taniane had begun lopping off his fingers one by one.

  “Lady—” he began feebly.

  “Nialli’s a grown woman. She can couple with anybody she pleases. Even the hjjk ambassador.”

  “Lady, they are twining also.”

  “What?” Taniane cried, caught by surprise. Twining was an altogether different matter. The thought of their souls fusing, of Kundalimon pouring feverish hjjk-fantasies into her daughter’s mind, unstable as it was already from her experiences in captivity, stunned her. For a moment she felt herself swaying, as though her legs would give out beneath her and send her toppling to the pink marble floor. She fought to regain control of herself. “How could you possibly know that?” she asked.

  “I have no proof, lady,” said Husathirn Mueri huskily. “You understand that I have compunctions about spying on them. But the amount of time they spend together—the degree of intimacy—the fact that they have a common history of captivity among the hjjks—and also that they are unquestionably lovers already, and are of twining age—”

  “You’re only guessing, then.”

  “But guessing accurately, I think.”

  “Yes. Yes, I see what you mean.”

  Taniane glanced out the window. The rain was slackening again after the sudden severe downpour, and the sky was growing bright.

  “Do you have instructions for me, lady?”

  “Yes. Yes.” Her throat was dry, her head was throbbing. Time to be on her way, time to appear at the Beng temple and perform the rite that would send Nakhaba off to the Creator’s abode. The image of Nialli and Kundalimon twining blazed in her mind. She tried to push it away, and it would not go. Tautly she said, “Keep an eye on her, the way you’ve been doing. If you can find out what’s actually going on between her and Kundalimon, I want to know about it. But make sure she doesn’t suspect she’s being watched.”

  “Of course. And how should we handle the other part, the teaching of hjjk doctrines to small children?”

  The chieftain turned to face him. “That has to be brought to a stop right away. We can’t have him subverting the young. You understand what I’m saying. Brought to a stop.”

  “Yes, lady. I understand. I understand completely.”

  The drizzly dawn of the day of the Festival of Dawinno found Hresh at the House of Knowledge, making notes on his visit to the caviandis. Later in the day he would have to show himself at the Festival, take his seat beside Taniane in the place of honor, watch the city’s young athletes go through their paces. To skip the games would be scandalous, and impious besides. The Festival had been his own invention, after all, many years ago, in homage to the clever and unpredictable god who was his special patron, and the city’s. But he still had a few hours for getting some work done.

  He heard sounds outside his half-open door. A light tapping, a gentle coughing.

  “Father?”

  “Nialli? Is it time to go to the games already?”

  “It’s still early. I wanted to talk to you before everything gets started.” A pause. “I’m not alone.”

  Hresh squinted into the d
arkness. “Who’s with you?”

  “Kundalimon. We want to talk to you together.”

  “Ah.” He pressed the palms of his hands against each other. “All right, come in, both of you.”

  They were damp from the rain, but the moisture, instead of soaking into their fur, seemed to cling in shining globules to the tips of it. And they were shining too. There was a radiance about them, a glow of rare joy. They stood before him holding hands like innocent children, brimming with evident happiness, overflowing with it.

  Hresh felt an uneasy mixture of pleasure and anxious anticipation at the sight of them. He understood only too well that glow of inner fire that emanated from them both.

  They giggled and glanced at each other, but neither spoke.

  “Well?” Hresh said. “What have you two been up to?”

  Nialli Apuilana turned away, sputtering smothered laughter into her shoulder. But Kundalimon stared levelly at him, smiling in that strange off-center way of his.

  The boy no longer seemed like a wild creature. He had gained weight, and he looked far less unworldly, far less the eerie visitor from some unknown planet, more like any other young man of the city. There was new strength and assurance in him.

  After a moment Nialli Apuilana said, “This isn’t easy, father. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “All right. Let me guess. I won’t need the Barak Dayir for this. You and Kundalimon are lovers, eh?”

  “Yes.” Barely a whisper.

  He felt no surprise at all. There had been something inevitable about it from the first, that these two should have come together.

  She said, “And twining-partners too, father.”

  That too? He hadn’t expected that, the deeper bond also. But he took it calmly enough. No wonder they were glowing!

  “Twining-partners. Ah. Very good. Twining goes so far beyond coupling, you know. Surely you know that by now. Twining is the real communion.”

  “So we’ve found out, yes.” Nialli Apuilana said. She moistened her lips. “Father—”

  “Go on. Tell me the rest of it.”

  “Don’t you know it already?”

  “You want to become his mate?”

  “More,” she said.

  He frowned. “More? What more is there?”

  She made no reply. Instead she turned to Kundalimon, who said, “I will return to the Nest very soon. The Queen calls me. My work is done here. I ask Nialli Apuilana to go with me, to the Nest, to the Queen.”

  The quiet words went through Hresh like scythes.

  “What?” he said. “The Nest?”

  Earnestly Nialli Apuilana said, the words pouring out all in a rush, “You can’t possibly know what it’s like, father. No one does who hasn’t been there. What sort of place it is, what sort of people they are. How rich their lives are, how deep. They live in an atmosphere of dreams, of magic, of wonder. You breathe the air of the Nest, and it fills your soul, and you can never be the same again, not after you’ve felt Nest-bond, not after you’ve understood Queen-love. It’s so different from the way we live here. We lead such frightening solitary lives, father. Even with coupling. Even with twining. We’re all alone, each of us, locked into our own heads, going through the meaningless round of our existences. But they see a vision of the world as a whole, as a unity, with purpose, and pattern, everything and everyone connected to everything else. Oh, father, everyone thinks of them as sinister evil bugs, as scurrying buzzing hateful machine-like things, but it isn’t so, father, not at all, they aren’t anything like what we imagine them to be! I want to go to them. I have to go to them. With Kundalimon. He and I belong together, and we belong…there.”

  Hresh stared at her, numb, stunned.

  This too had probably been inevitable ever since her return from the Nest. He should have anticipated it. But he hadn’t allowed himself to think about it. He hadn’t allowed himself to see it.

  “When?” he said, finally. “How soon?”

  “A few days, a week, something like that. Kundalimon isn’t quite finished here. He’s teaching the children Nest-truth. Teaching them Queen-love. So that they’ll understand, in a way that none of the older people possibly could. There’s still more that he wants to tell them and show them. And then we’ll go. But I didn’t want simply to slip away without telling you. I can’t tell Taniane—she’d never allow it, she’d clap me in prison to keep me from going—but you, well, you’re different, you see everything so deeply, so profoundly—”

  Hresh managed a smile, though shock waves still were rippling through him.

  “What I see is that you’ve made me a co-conspirator in this, Nialli. If I speak of it to your mother, you’ll never forgive me, is that correct?”

  “But you won’t speak of it to her, or anyone. I know that.”

  Hresh contemplated the pads of his fingers. Something cold and heavy was spreading within his chest. The full impact of Nialli’s words only now was beginning to reach him: his daughter, his only child, was lost to him forever from this moment on, and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing at all.

  “All right,” he said, at length, hoping he could hide the sadness in his voice. “I’ll keep quiet.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “But one thing you have to do for me before you go. Or else no deal, and Taniane finds out within the hour exactly what you two are up to.”

  Nialli was glowing again. “Anything you want, father. Just ask.”

  “I want you to tell me about the Nest. Describe the Queen to me, and tell me what Nest-bond is, the Queen-love, and all those other things. You’ve been keeping everything to yourself since you came back to live in the city. Do you know how eager I’ve been to know about them, Nialli? I couldn’t force you, though. And you wouldn’t open up, not for a moment. Now’s the time. Tell me everything. I need to know. You’re the only one who can teach me. And you will, as soon as the games are over today. That’s the one thing I ask of you. Before you and Kundalimon go back to the Nest. Before you leave me forever.”

  Curabayn Bangkea was busily polishing his helmet in the little cell beside the Basilica that was his office when Husathirn Mueri appeared. The guard-captain’s mood was somber, and had been for days. Nialli Apuilana haunted him, sleeping and waking. She danced for him in his dreams, naked, grinning, mocking him, hovering just out of reach. He longed for her in a way that he knew was an absurdity. She was beyond his reach in more ways than one, a woman of the city’s highest nobility, and he nothing but an officer of the justiciary guard. He stood no chance. It was ridiculous. All the same, it was eating at his soul. There was a constant metallic taste in his throat, a pounding ache behind his ribcage, all from thinking of her. These idiotic fantasies, this miserable self-torment! And hopeless, absolutely hopeless. From time to time he would see her in the streets of the city, always at a distance, and she would glare balefully at him the way she might at some creature that had come wriggling up out of a sewer.

  “There you are,” Husathirn Mueri said, entering the room.

  Curabayn Bangkea let his helmet fall clattering to the desk-top. “Your grace?” he said, almost barking it, coughing and blinking in surprise.

  “Why such an ill-tempered look this morning, Curabayn Bangkea? Does the rain jangle you? Did you sleep poorly?”

  “Very poorly, your grace. My dreams prick me awake, and then I lie there wishing I could sleep again; and when I sleep, the dreams return, no more soothing than before.”

  “You should go to a tavern,” Husathirn Mueri said, with an amiable grin, “and drink yourself a good draught, and have yourself a good coupling or two, or three, and then another round of wine. And riot the night away without trying to sleep at all. That gets rid of sour dreams, I find. When the dawn comes you’ll be a healthy man again. It’ll be a long time before your dreams give you the soul-ache again.”

  “I thank your grace,” said Curabayn Bangkea without warmth. “I’ll put it under consideration.”

  He
picked up his helmet and resumed buffing and glossing it, wondering if Husathirn Mueri had any true idea of what was troubling him. Everyone knew how hot Husathirn Mueri himself was for Nialli Apuilana—you had only to look at him when she was around, and you could tell—but did he realize that practically every man of the city felt the same way? Would it make him angry, knowing that a mere captain of the guards was just as obsessed with her as he was? Probably so. I’d do well to hide this from him, Curabayn Bangkea told himself.

  Husathirn Mueri said, “You weren’t at the temple for the Hour of Nakhaba this morning.”

  “No, sir. I’m on duty.”

  “Until when?”

  “Midday, your grace.”

  “And then?”

  “To the Festival, I thought. To watch the games.”

  Husathirn Mueri leaned close and smiled—an intimate, ingratiating sort of smile, a disturbing smile that signaled something unusual. In a soft voice he said, “I have a little work for you to do this afternoon.”

  “But the games, sir!”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get to go to the games afterward. But I need you, first. To do a little job for me, all right? Something that’s vital to the security of the city. And you’re the only one I’d trust to do it.”

  “Your grace?” Curabayn Bangkea said, mystified.

  “The hjjk envoy,” Husathirn Mueri said, perching himself casually on a corner of the guard-captain’s desk. “Taniane knows now about his—activities. I mean his preaching, his corrupting of the children. She wants all that stopped as fast as possible.”

  “Stopped how, sir? By putting him back under house arrest?”

  “More effectively than that.”

  “More effec—”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  Curabayn Bangkea stared. “I’m not sure I do. Let’s be blunt, sir. Are you telling me to have him killed?”

  Husathirn Mueri looked strangely serene. “The chieftain is deeply troubled by what’s going on. She’s ordered me to put an end to his subversion of the children. To stop it right away, and to stop it for good. That should be clear enough.”