At Winter's End

  “But you have been in the Nest.”

  “Just a minor one. The truths I learned there were minor truths. The Queen of Queens who dwells in the far north is the only source of the real revelations. I thought they were going to take me to Her when I was older; but instead they let me go and brought me back here to Dawinno.”

  Hresh blinked in bewilderment. “They let you go? You told us that you escaped!”

  “No, father. I didn’t escape.”

  “Didn’t—escape—”

  “Of course not. They released me, as they did that Beng in that chronicle of yours. Why would I have wanted to leave a place where I was completely happy for the first time in my life?”

  The words struck him like blows. But Nialli Apuilana went serenely on.

  “I had to leave. I never would have gone of my own will. Whether the Nest is a place of good or evil, one thing is true of it: while you’re in it you feel utterly secure. You know that you live in a place where uncertainty and pain are unknown. I surrendered myself completely to it, and gladly, as who wouldn’t? But they came for me one morning and said I had stayed with them as long as was necessary, and led me outside, and took me on vermilion-back to the edge of the city, and turned me loose.”

  “You told us you had escaped from them,” Hresh said numbly.

  “No. You and mother decided I had escaped from them, I suppose because you weren’t able to imagine that anyone could possibly prefer to remain in the Nest instead of coming home to Dawinno. And I didn’t contradict you. I didn’t say anything at all. You assumed I had escaped from the clutches of the evil bug-monsters, as any sensible person would have wanted to do, and I let you think so, because I knew you needed to believe that, and I was afraid you’d say I had lost my mind if I told you anything approaching the truth. How could I tell you the truth? If everyone in the city thinks the hjjks are dreadful marauding demons, and always has thought so, and I stand up and say they aren’t, that I found love and truth among them, will I be believed? Or will I simply be met with pity and scorn?”

  “Yes. Yes, I see that,” said Hresh. His shock and dismay were slowly beginning to lift. She waited in silence. At last he said, very softly, “I understand, Nialli. You had to lie to us. I see that now. I see a great many things now.” He put the ancient Beng scroll away, closed the casket of the chronicles, let his hands rest on the lid. “If I had known then what I know now, it might have been different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the hjjks. About the Nest.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I have an idea of what the Nest is like, now. The great living machine that it is. The perfection of its pattern, the way it all rotates around the tremendous directing intelligence that is the Queen, who is Herself the embodiment of the guiding force of the universe—”

  It was Nialli Apuilana’s turn to look amazed. “You sound almost like someone who’s been to the Nest!”

  “I have,” Hresh said. “That’s the other thing I had to tell you.”

  Her eyes went bright with shock and incredulity. “What? To the Nest? You?” She recoiled and stood up, bracing herself with both hands against the edge of the table, staring at him open-mouthed. “Father, what are you telling me? Is this some kind of joke? These aren’t joking matters.”

  Taking her hand in his again, he said, “I’ve seen the small Nests, like the one where you were taken. And then I approached the great one, and the Great Queen within it. But I turned back before I reached it.”

  “When? How?”

  He smiled gently. “Not in the actual flesh, Nialli. I wasn’t really there. It was with the Barak Dayir, only.”

  “Then you were there, you were!” she exclaimed, clutching his arm in her excitement. “The Barak Dayir shows you true visions, father. You told me so yourself. You’ve seen into the Nest! And so you must know Nest-truth. You understand!”

  “Do I? I think I’m very far from understanding anything.”

  “That isn’t so.”

  He shook his head. “Perhaps I understand a little. But only a little, I think. Only the beginning of the beginning. What I had was simply a fleeting vision, Nialli. It lasted just a moment.”

  “Even a moment would be enough. I tell you, father, there’s no way you can touch the Nest without experiencing Nest-truth. And therefore knowing Nest-bond, Egg-plan, all of it.”

  He searched his mind. “I don’t know what those words mean. Not really.”

  “They’re the things you spoke of a moment ago, when you talked of the Nest as a great living machine, and spoke of the perfection of its pattern.”

  “Tell me. Tell me.”

  Her expression changed. She seemed to disappear deep within herself. “Nest-bond,” she said, in an odd high-pitched way, as though reciting a lesson, “is the awareness of the relationship of each thing in the universe to everything else. We are all parts of the Nest, even those of us who have never experienced it, even those of us who look upon the hjjks as dread monsters. For everything is united in a single great pattern, which is the endless unstoppable force of life. The hjjks are the vehicle through which this force is manifested in our times; and the Queen is its guiding spirit on our world. This is Nest-truth. And Egg-plan is the energy that She expresses as She brings forth the unceasing torrent of renewal. Queen-light is the glow of Her warmth; Queen-love is the sign of Her great care for us all.”

  Hresh stared, thunderstruck by the girl’s strange burst of eloquence. The words had come pouring out of her almost uncontrollably, almost as if someone or something else were speaking through her. Her face was aglow, her eyes were shining with absolute and unshakable conviction. She suddenly seemed swept up into some rapture of visionary zeal. She was aflame with it.

  Then the flame flickered and went out, and she was only Nialli Apuilana again, the troubled, uneasy Nialli Apuilana of a moment before.

  She sat stunned and depleted before him.

  She is such a mystery, he thought.

  And these other mysteries, those of the Nest—they were great and complex, and he knew that merely hearing of them like this could never give him a true grasp of them. He wished now that he had lingered longer when he had made his Barak Dayir voyage into the country of the hjjks. He began to see that he must before much longer make that voyage again, and experience the Nest far more deeply than he had allowed himself to do that other time. He must learn what Nialli Apuilana had learned, and he must learn it at first hand. Even if the learning of it cost him his life.

  He felt very weary. And she looked exhausted. Hresh realized that they had carried this meeting as far as it could go this day.

  But Nialli Apuilana apparently wasn’t quite ready to end it.

  “Well?” she asked. “What do you say? Do you understand Nest-bond now? Egg-plan? Queen-love?”

  “You look so tired, Nialli.” He touched her cheek. “You ought to get some rest.”

  “I will. But first tell me that you understand what I was saying, father. And I didn’t really need to say it, isn’t that true? You already knew all that, didn’t you? You must have seen it when you looked into the Nest with your Wonderstone.”

  “Some of it, yes. The sense of pattern, of universal order. I saw that. But I looked so quickly, and then I fled. Nest-bond—Queen-light—no, those terms are just words to me. They have no real substance in my mind.”

  “I think you understand more than you suspect.”

  “Only the beginning of the beginning of understanding.”

  “That’s a beginning, at least.”

  “Yes. Yes. At least I know what the hjjks are not.”

  “Not demons, you mean? Not monsters?”

  “Not enemies.”

  “Not enemies, no,” Nialli Apuilana said. “Adversaries, maybe. But not enemies.”

  “A very subtle shade of difference.”

  “Yet a real one, father.”

  Thu-Kimnibol was home at last. The jo
urney south had been swift, though not nearly swift enough for him, and uneventful. Now he walked the grand, lonely halls of his great villa in Dawinno, rediscovering it, reacquainting himself with his own home, his own possessions, after his long absence. It seemed to him that he had been away ten thousand years. He was alone as he went from one echoing room to another, pausing here and there to examine the objects in the display cases.

  There were phantoms and specters everywhere. These were Naarinta’s things, really: she was the one who had collected most of the ancient treasures that filled these rooms, the bits of Great World sculpture and architectural fragments and strange twisted metallic things whose purpose would probably never be known. As he looked at them his sensing-organ began to tingle and he felt the immense antiquity of these battered artifacts come crowding in about him, alive and vital, jigging and throbbing with strange energy, making the villa itself seem a dead place, though it had been built only a dozen years before.

  It was still early in the day, just hours after his return from Yissou. But he had lost no time setting in motion his preparations for war. He was due to see Taniane in the afternoon; but first, messengers had gone out to Si-Belimnion, to Kartafirain, to Maliton Diveri, to Lespar Thone: men of power, men he could trust. He waited impatiently for their arrival. It was not good, being here by himself. He hadn’t expected that, how painful it would be to come back to an empty house.

  “Your grace?” His majordomo, Gyv Hawoodin, an old Mortiril who had been with him for years. “Your grace, Kartafirain and Si-Belimnion are here.”

  “Send them up. And then set out some wine for us.”

  Solemnly Thu-Kimnibol embraced his friends. Solemnity seemed the appropriate mood of the day: Si-Belimnion wore a dark mantle that emanated a bleak funereal glow, and even the ebullient Kartafirain was somber and subdued. Thu-Kimnibol offered them wine and they drained their cups as though it were water.

  “You won’t believe what has happened here while you were away,” Kartafirain began. “The common folk sing hymns to the Queen of the hjjks. They gather in cellars and children lead them in nonsensical catechisms.”

  “This is the heritage of the envoy Kundalimon,” muttered Si-Belimnion, peering moodily into his cup. “Husathirn Mueri warned us that he was corrupting the young, and indeed he was. A pity he wasn’t killed even sooner.”

  “It was Curabayn Bangkea that did it?” Thu-Kimnibol asked.

  Kartafirain replied, with a shrug, “The guard-captain, yes. So everyone says, at any rate. Someone killed him too, the same day.”

  “I heard about that up north. And who was it that killed him, do you suppose?”

  “Very likely whoever it was that hired him to kill Kundalimon,” said Si-Belimnion. “To silence him, no doubt. No one knows who it might have been. I’ve already heard twenty different guesses, all of them absurd. In any case the investigation’s just about forgotten, now. The new religion’s the only thing that anyone thinks about.”

  Thu-Kimnibol stared. “But isn’t Taniane attempting to stamp it out? That’s what I heard.”

  “Easier to stamp out wildfire in the dry season,” said Kartafirain. “It was spreading faster than the guards could close the chapels. Eventually Taniane decided that trying to eradicate it was too risky. There might have been an uprising. The common folk profess to see great blessings in the teachings of the Queen. She is their comfort and their joy, the prayer goes. She is the light and the way. They think everything will be love and peace here, once the kindly hjjks are among us.”

  “Unbelievable,” Thu-Kimnibol murmured. “Utterly unbelievable.”

  “There was love and peace aplenty in the days when our parents lived in the cocoon!” cried Maliton Diveri, who had just entered the room. “Perhaps that’s what they really want. To give up all this city life, and go back into the cocoon, and spend their days sleeping, or kick-wrestling, or munching on velvetberries. Pah! What this city has become disgusts me, Thu-Kimnibol. And it’ll disgust you too.”

  “The war will put an end to all this foolishness,” Thu-Kimnibol said brusquely.

  “The war?”

  “I’ve spent these months speaking with Salaman. I sense that he believes the hjjks are restless and angry, that our failure to accept their treaty has offended them, that they’re going to launch war against us all. The first move will be to attack Yissou, within the year. If the Presidium ratifies, we’ll be pledged by treaty to go to his aid in that case.”

  Maliton Diveri chuckled. “Salaman’s been having nightmares of a hjjk invasion for thirty years. Isn’t that why he’s hidden Yissou behind that preposterous wall? But the invasion never comes. What makes him think it’ll happen now? And why do you believe he’s right?”

  “I have good reason to think he is,” Thu-Kimnibol said.

  “And then?” Si-Belimnion asked. “Is this city of sudden hjjk-lovers that we have here going to lift so much as a finger to save far-off Yissou?”

  “We have to help them to see the importance of honoring our new alliance,” said Thu-Kimnibol quietly. “If there’s an attack and Salaman beats the hjjks without our help, he’ll lay claim to Vengiboneeza and everything north of it. Can we allow him to grab all that? On the other hand, if Yissou falls to the hjjks, it won’t be long before we see armies of the bug-folk marching through our own lands. Which is even less acceptable. We’ll make the citizens here understand that. They’ll have to realize that a hjjk invasion of Yissou is an act of war against all the People of every city. Surely not everybody in this city has become a worshipper of the Queen. We’ll find enough who are loyal. The rest, if they like, can stay behind and pray to their new goddess. While we’re marching north to destroy the Nest.”

  “To destroy the Nest?” Lespar Thone asked. He was the most cautious of these princes, a man of great property and slow, wary ways. “Will that be so easy, do you think? The hjjks are ten to our one, or perhaps a hundred to one. They’ll fight like the demons they are to keep us from getting anywhere near the Nest. How are we going to overcome such numbers?”

  “I remind you that I’ve faced those numbers before,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “We routed the hjjks long ago at the battle of Yissou, and we’ll rout them again now.”

  “At the battle of Yissou the People had the aid of some Great World weapon, wasn’t that so?” Lespar Thone observed.

  Thu-Kimnibol gave him a sour look. “You sound like Puit Kjai. Or Staip. We won that battle by our own valor.”

  “Yet Hresh had some ancient thing that was of great help, so I understand,” Lespar Thone insisted. “Sometimes valor alone isn’t enough, Thu-Kimnibol. And against such an immense horde of hjjks, desperately determined to defend their Queen—”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “The same thing Husathirn Mueri did, when we discussed all this at the Presidium. Before we can attack the hjjks with impunity we need to have some new weapons.”

  “Perhaps the ones found a little while ago in the countryside will fill that need,” said Kartafirain.

  Every head turned toward him.

  “Tell me more,” said Thu-Kimnibol.

  “The story’s been circulating by way of the House of Knowledge. I think there’s something in it. It seems that during the storms there was a great mudslide in the Emakkis Valley, and some farmer who was trying to catch some of his beasts that had escaped stumbled on the mouth of a tunnel leading into a hill. In which he found certain ancient artifacts that have since been brought to the House of Knowledge. A member of Hresh’s staff believes that they’re Great World devices of war, or, at any rate, of destruction. I have this from someone who works there, a Koshmar, Plor Killivash by name. His sister’s in my service.”

  Thu-Kimnibol smiled triumphantly at Lespar Thone. “There you are! If there’s any substance to this, we have exactly what we need.”

  Si-Belimnion said, “Hresh is known to be cool to the idea of a war with the hjjks. He may not cooperate.”

  “Cool or not,
the war will come. He’ll help us.”

  “And if he chooses not to?”

  “He’s my brother, Si-Belimnion. He won’t hold vital information back from me.”

  “All the same,” Si-Belimnion said, “you might consider approaching one of Hresh’s subordinates instead of Hresh himself. This Plor Killivash, for example. I hardly need to tell you, of all people, how unpredictable Hresh can be.”

  “A good point. We’ll work around him. Kartafirain? Will you have another talk with your friend at the House of Knowledge?”

  “I’ll see what I can manage.”

  “See what you can do. These weapons are just what we need. If weapons is what they really are.” Thu-Kimnibol filled the wine-cups once again, and drank deep. “It troubles me,” he said after a while, “that Taniane hasn’t been willing to take action against this new cult of hjjk-worship. Don’t tell me that she’s come to love the Queen these days as much as her daughter does!”

  Kartafirain laughed. “Hardly. She loathes them as much as you do.”

  “Then why are these chapels allowed to flourish?”

  “It’s as Kartafirain said,” Si-Belimnion replied. “She was afraid there’d be an uprising if she continued the suppression.”

  “Taniane never lacked for courage in the old days.”

  “You’ll find that she’s much changed,” said Si-Belimnion. “She looks old. She’s hardly ever seen at the Presidium, and doesn’t say much when she’s there.”

  “Is she ill?” Thu-Kimnibol asked, thinking of Naarinta.

  “Weary, only. Weary and sad. She’s been chieftain longer than most of us have been alive, my friend. It’s taken a terrible toll on her. And now she sees the city falling apart in her hands.”

  “Things can’t be that bad!”