At Winter's End

  This is great folly, Hresh thought.

  The hjjks fear change because they’ve lived through so great a fall, and they dread some further descent. But change comes anyway. It was precisely because the Great World had done so well at insulating itself from change, Hresh told himself, that the gods had sent the death-stars upon them. The Great World had attained a kind of perfection, and perfection is something the gods cannot abide.

  What the hjjks who had survived the catastrophe of the Long Winter still refused to comprehend was that Dawinno would inevitably have his way with them, whether they liked it or not. The Transformer always did. No living thing was exempt from change, no matter how deep in the earth it tried to hide, no matter how desperately it clung to its rituals of life. One had to respect the hjjks for what they had made out of the shards and splinters of their former existence. It was rigid, and therefore doomed, but in its own way it was awesomely perfect.

  Building a different kind of static society wasn’t the answer. And for the first time in a long while Hresh saw hope for his own erratic, turbulent, unpredictable folk. Perhaps the world will be ours after all, he thought. Simply because we are so uncertain in our ways.

  He had no idea how much time had passed. An hour, a day, perhaps a year. He knew that he had been lost in the strangest of dreams. There was absolute silence in the royal chamber. The Queen-attendants stood still as statues beside him.

  Once more Hresh heard the tolling of the Queen’s great voice in his mind:

  “Is there anything else you wish to know, child of questions?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. I thank You for sharing Your wisdom with me, great Queen.”

  With quick fierce strokes of his spearpoint Salaman sketched a map in the dark, moist earth.

  “This is the City of Yissou”—a tight circle, unbroken and unbreakable—“and this is where we are now, three days’ march to the northeast. Here is where the land begins to rise, the long wooded ridge that leads to Vengiboneeza. You remember, Thu-Kimnibol, we rode out that way together once.”

  Thu-Kimnibol, peering intently at the sketch, grunted his assent.

  “This,” said Salaman, drawing a triangle to the right of what he had already inscribed in the ground, “is Vengiboneeza, utterly infested with hjjks. Here”—he poked the ground viciously, some distance beyond the triangle—“is a lesser Nest, where the hjjks dwell who slaughtered our Acknowledgers. Here, here, and here”—three more angry jabs—“are other small Nests. Then there’s a great open nothingness, unless we’re greatly mistaken. And here”—he strode five paces upward, and gouged a ragged crater there—“is the thing we seek, the Nest of Nests itself.”

  He turned and looked up at Thu-Kimnibol, who seemed immense to him this morning, mountainous, twice his true size. And his true size had been more than big enough.

  Last night Salaman’s spy Gardinak Cheysz had come to him to confirm what the king already suspected: that the friendship between Thu-Kimnibol and his kinswoman was more than a friendship, that in fact they were coupling-partners now. Perhaps twining-partners as well. Was that something recent? Apparently so, Gardinak Cheysz thought. At least the two of them had never been linked in gossip in the past.

  An end to all hope of mating him with Weiawala, then. A pity, that. It would have been useful linking him to the royal house of Yissou. Now Thu-Kimnibol’s unexpected romance with the daughter of Taniane made it all the more likely that he’d emerge as the master of the City of Dawinno when Taniane was gone. A king there, instead of a chieftain? Salaman wondered what that would mean for himself and for his city. Perhaps it was for the best. But very possibly not.

  Thu-Kimnibol said, “And what plan do you propose, now?”

  Salaman tipped the ground with his spear. “Vengiboneeza is the immediate problem. Yissou only knows how many hjjks are swarming in there, but it has to be a million or more. We need to neutralize them all before we can proceed northward, or otherwise there’ll be a tremendous hjjk fortress at our backs, cutting us off, as we make our way toward the great Nest.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Do you know much about the layout of Vengiboneeza?”

  “The place is unknown to me,” Thu-Kimnibol said.

  “Mountains here, to the north and east. A bay here. The city between them, protected by walls. Thick jungle down here. We came through that jungle, on the migration from the cocoon, before you were born. It’s a hard city to attack, but it can be done. What I suggest is a two-pronged assault, using those Great World weapons of yours. You come in from the waterfront side, with the Loop and the Line of Fire, and create a distraction. Meanwhile I descend out of the hills with the Earth-Eater and the Bubble Tube and blow the city to bits. If we strike swiftly and well, they’ll never know what hit them. Eh?”

  He sensed trouble even before Thu-Kimnibol spoke.

  “A good plan,” said the bigger man slowly. “But the Great World weapons have to stay in my possession.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t share them with you. They’re mine only on loan, and I’m responsible for their safety. They can’t be offered to anyone else. Not even you, my friend.”

  Salaman felt a burst of hot fury like molten rock flooding his veins. Bands of fire were tightening around his forehead. He wanted to bring his spear up in a single heedless gesture and bury it in Thu-Kimnibol’s gut; and it took all the strength within him to restrain himself.

  Trembling with the effort to seem calm, he said, “This comes as a great surprise, cousin.”

  “Does it? Why, then, I’m sorry, cousin.”

  “We are allies. I thought there would be a sharing of the weapons.”

  “I understand. But I’m obliged to protect them.”

  “Surely you know I’d treat them with care.”

  “Beyond any doubt you would,” said Thu-Kimnibol smoothly. “But if they were taken from you somehow—if the hjjks of Vengiboneeza managed to ambush you, let’s say, and the weapons were lost—the shame, the blame, all that would fall upon me for having let them out of my hands. No, cousin, it’s impossible. You create the seaside distraction, we’ll destroy Vengiboneeza from above. And then we will go on together, in all brotherhood, to the Nest.”

  Salaman moistened his lips. He forced himself to stay calm.

  “As you wish, cousin,” he said finally. “We approach the city by the water. You descend through the hills, with your weapons. Here: I give you my hand on it.”

  Thu-Kimnibol grinned broadly. “So be it, then, cousin!”

  Salaman stood for a time, watching as the hulking figure of the prince dwindled in the distance. The king shivered with rage. From the back, Thu-Kimnibol looked just like his father Harruel. And, Salaman thought, he was just as obstinate as Harruel had been. Just as vainglorious, just as dangerous.

  Biterulve approached and said, “Trouble, father?”

  “Trouble? What trouble, boy?”

  “I can see it in the air around you.”

  Salaman shrugged. “We’re not to have any of the Great World weapons, that’s all. Thu-Kimnibol must keep them for himself.”

  “None for us? Not even one?”

  “He says he doesn’t dare let them out of his hands.” Salaman spat. “Gods, I could have killed him where he stood! He wants all the glory of killing the enemy and winning the war—while sending us naked into the field against the hjjks.”

  “Father, the weapons are his,” said Biterulve softly. “If we’d been the ones who found them, would we have offered to share them with him?”

  “Of course we would! Are we animals, boy?”

  Biterulve made no reply. But the king knew from the look in the boy’s gentle eyes that he was skeptical of what Salaman had said; and Salaman very much doubted that he believed it either.

  Father and son regarded each other steadily for a moment.

  Then Salaman, softening, put his arm over Biterulve’s thin shoulders and said, “It makes no difference. Let him keep his toys to hims
elf. We’ll manage well enough by ourselves. But I tell you this, boy, and I vow it before all the gods as well: that it’ll be the army of Yissou, and not that of Dawinno, that’ll be first into the Nest, if it costs me everything I have. And I’ll kill the Queen myself. Before Thu-Kimnibol so much as sets eyes on Her.”

  And, the king added silently, I’ll see to it that I square things with my cousin Thu-Kimnibol when the war is over. But for the time being we are allies and friends.

  It was Husathirn Mueri’s turn once more this day for judiciary throne-duty in the Basilica. With Thu-Kimnibol gone from the city again, he shared the task day by day with Puit Kjai. Not that there was much in the way of litigation for any of them to handle, with the city virtually deserted except for the very young and the very old.

  Still he sat obligingly under the great cupola, ready to dispense justice if anyone required it of him. In the idle hours his mind roved to the north, where even at this moment the war that he despised was being fought. What was happening up there? Had the hjjks overwhelmed Thu-Kimnibol yet? It gave Husathirn Mueri some pleasure to imagine that scene, the hordes of shrieking clacking bug-folk streaming down from the northern hills in implacable torrents, hurling themselves upon the invaders, cutting them to pieces, Thu-Kimnibol going down beneath the onslaught of their spears and perishing just as his father before him had—

  “Throne-grace?”

  Chevkija Aim had entered the Basilica while Husathirn Mueri sat dreaming. The guard-captain had chosen a helmet today of black iron plates, with two shining golden claws rising to a great height from its sides.

  “Are there petitioners?” Husathirn Mueri asked.

  “None so far, throne-grace. But a bit of news. Old Boldirinthe’s taken to her bed, and they say it’ll be for the last time. The chieftain has gone to her. Your sister Catiriil’s there also. She’s the one who sent me to tell you.”

  “Should I go also? Yes, yes, I suppose I should: but not until my hours are done in the Basilica. Whether there are litigants or not, my duty is here.” Husathirn Mueri smiled. “Poor old Boldirinthe. Well, her hour was long overdue, in truth. What do you say, Chevkija Aim? Will it take ten strong men to carry her to her grave, do you think? Fifteen?”

  The guard-captain seemed not to be amused.

  “She’s the offering-woman of the Koshmar folk, sir. It’s a high office, they tell me. And she was a kind woman. I’d carry her myself, if I were asked.”

  Husathirn Mueri looked away. “My mother was offering-woman before her, did you know that? Torlyri. It was in the old days, in Vengiboneeza. Who’ll be offering-woman now, I wonder? Will there even be a new one? Does anyone still know the rituals and the talismans?”

  “These are strange days, sir.”

  “Strange indeed.”

  They fell silent.

  “How quiet the city is,” Husathirn Mueri said. “Everyone gone to fight the war except you and me. Or so it seems.”

  “Our duties prevented us, sir,” said Chevkija Aim tactfully. “Even in wartime, there has to be a justiciary, there have to be guardsmen in the city.”

  “You know I oppose the war, Chevkija Aim.”

  “Then it’s best that your duties here kept you from having to go. You wouldn’t have been able to fight well, feeling as you do.”

  “And would you have gone, if you could?”

  “I attend the chapels now, sir. You know that. I share your hatred of the war. I yearn only for the coming of Queen-peace to bring love to our troubled world.”

  Husathirn Mueri’s eyes widened. “Do you? Yes, you do: I forgot. You follow Kundalimon’s teachings now too. Everyone does, I suppose, who’s still here. The warriors have gone to war and the peace-lovers stay behind. As it should be. Where will it all end, do you think?”

  “In Queen-peace, sir. In Queen-love for all.”

  “I surely hope so.”

  But do I? Husathirn Mueri wondered. His surrender to the new faith, if surrender was what it really was, still mystified him. He went regularly to the chapel; he chanted in rote, repeating the scriptures that Tikharein Tourb and Chhia Kreun recited; and it seemed to him that he felt something close to a religious exaltation as he did. That was an experience entirely new to him. But he had never been sure of his own sincerity. It was only one of the many strangenesses of these days, that he should find himself kneeling to chant the praises of the Queen of Queens, that he should be praying to the monstrous hjjks to deliver the world from its anguish.

  He looked toward the hall, as if hopeful that some gaggle of angry merchants would burst in, waving a clutch of legal papers and crying curses at each other. But the Basilica was quiet.

  “An empty city,” he said, as much to himself as to the guard-captain. “The young men gone. The old dying off. Taniane wanders about like her own ghost. The Presidium never meets. Hresh is gone, who knows where? Hunting for mysteries in the swamps, I suppose. Or flying off on his Wonderstone to the Nest to have a chat with the Queen. That would be like him, something like that. The House of Knowledge empty except for the one girl who hasn’t gone off to war. Even Nialli Apuilana’s gone to the war.” Husathirn Mueri felt a pang of sadness at that thought. He had watched her ride away, the day the troops departed, standing proudly beside Thu-Kimnibol, waving excitedly. The girl was mad, no doubt of that. First telling everyone what wondrous godlike beings the hjjks were, and involving herself in that affair with the envoy Kundalimon after rejecting every logical mate the city had to offer, and then joining the army and going off to fight against the Queen: it made no sense. Nothing that Nialli Apuilana had done had ever made sense.

  Just as well, Husathirn Mueri thought, that she and I never became lovers. She might have pulled me down into her madness with her.

  But it still made him ache to think of her, mad or not.

  Chevkija Aim said, “I think we could close the Basilica, sir. No one came yesterday when Puit Kjai was here, and I think no one will come today. And you’d be able to pay your respects to Boldirinthe before it’s too late.”

  “Boldirinthe,” Husathirn Mueri said. “Yes. I ought go to her.” He rose from the justiciary throne. “Very well. The court is adjourned, Chevkija Aim.”

  Ascending the spiral path from the Queen-chamber should have been more taxing than the descent; but to his surprise Hresh found himself oddly vigorous, almost buoyant, and he strode briskly along behind Nest-thinker, easily keeping pace step for step as they rose from that deep well of mysteries toward the by now familiar domain of the upper Nest.

  Strange exaltation lingered in him after his meeting with the Queen of Queens.

  A formidable creature, yes. That pallid gigantic thing, that quivering continent of monstrously ancient flesh. Hundreds of years old, was She? Thousands? He couldn’t begin to guess. That She had survived from the time of the Great World he doubted, though it was possible. Anything was possible here. He saw now more deeply than ever before how alien the hjjks were, how little like his own kind in nearly every respect.

  And yet they were “human,” he thought, human in the peculiar special sense that he had long ago conceived: they maintained a sense of past and future, they understood life as a process, an unfolding, they were capable of the conscious transmission of historical tradition from generation to generation. The little flitting garaboons gibbering in the forest added nothing to nothing, and ended with nothing. That was true of all the beasts below the human level, the gorynths wallowing in their oozy swamps, the angry chattering samarangs, the jewel-eyed khut-flies, and the rest. They might as well be stones. To be human, Hresh thought, is to be aware of time and seasons, to gather and store knowledge and to transmit it, above all to build and to maintain. In that sense the People were human; even the caviandis were human; and in that sense the hjjks were human too. Human didn’t simply mean one who belonged to that mysterious ancient race of pale tailless creatures. It was something broader, something far more universal. And it included the hjjks.

  To Nest-th
inker he said, “That was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I thank the gods I could live long enough to reach this day.”

  The hjjk made no reply.

  “Will I be summoned to Her again, do you think?” Hresh asked.

  “You will be if you are,” said Nest-thinker. “That is when you will know.”

  There seemed to be a surliness to Nest-thinker’s tone. Hresh wondered if the hjjk envied the depth of the communion he had achieved with the Queen. But there was danger in attributing People emotions to things that hjjks might say.

  They were near the upper level now. Hresh recognized certain artifacts set in niches in the wall, a smooth white stone that looked almost like a huge egg, and a plaited star like the one Nialli had had, but much larger, and a small red jewel that burned with a brilliant inner flame. He had noticed them when he began his descent. Holy hjjk talismans, perhaps. Or perhaps mere decorations.

  Since coming to the Nest Hresh had lived in an austere cubicle in an outlying corridor, structure—a kind of isolation ward, perhaps, for strangers from outside. It was a round chamber with a low flat ceiling and a thin scatter of dried reeds on its hard-packed earthen floor to serve him as a bed; but it was comfortable enough for his undemanding needs. He looked forward to it now. A time to rest, a time to think about what he’d just undergone. Perhaps later they’d bring him a meal of some sort, the dried fruit and bits of sun-parched meat that seemed to be the only fare in this place and to which he had adapted without difficulty.

  Now they had reached the head of the spiral ramp, the place where they re-entered the upper level. Nest-thinker turned here, not to the left where Hresh’s cubicle was, but in the other direction entirely. Hresh lingered behind, wondering if his sense of direction had misled him again, as it had so many times during his stay here. This time he was sure, though. His chamber lay to the left. Nest-thinker, by now a dozen paces away, swung about and looked back, and gestured brusquely to him.