At Winter's End

  “He’s like this all the time.” Chham stepped forward. “Father, Prince Thu-Kimnibol has come.”

  “Thu-Kimnibol?” A faint papery whisper. “Who?”

  “Harruel’s son,” Thu-Kimnibol said quietly.

  “Ah. Harruel’s boy. Samnibolon, that’s his name. Does he call himself something else now? Where is he? Tell him to come nearer.”

  Thu-Kimnibol looked down at him. He could hardly bear to meet that burned-out gaze.

  Salaman smiled. In the same faint voice he said, “And how is your father, boy? The good king, the great warrior Harruel?”

  “My father is long dead, cousin,” said Thu-Kimnibol gently.

  “Ah. Ah, so he is.” A flicker of brightness came into Salaman’s eyes for a moment, and he tried to sit up. “They beat us, did Chham tell you? I left two sons on the field, and thousands of others. They cut us to bits. No more than we deserved, that’s the truth. What foolishness it was, making war on them, marching like idiots into their own land! It was madness and nothing but madness. I see that now. And perhaps you do too, Samnibolon. Eh? Eh?”

  “I’ve been called Thu-Kimnibol these many years.”

  “Ah. Of course. Thu-Kimnibol.” Salaman managed a kind of smile. “Will you continue the war, Thu-Kimnibol?”

  “Until victory is ours, yes.”

  “There’ll never be any victory. The hjjks will drive you back the way they did me. They’ll drown you in dreams.” Slowly, with obvious effort, Salaman shook his head. “The war was a mistake. We should have taken their treaty and drawn a line across the world. I see that now, but now’s too late. Too late for Biterulve, too late for Athimin, too late for me.” He laughed hollowly. “But do as you wish. For me the war’s over. All I want now is the forgiveness of the gods.”

  “Forgiveness? For what?” Thu-Kimnibol said, his voice rising suddenly above a sickroom murmur for the first time.

  Chham tugged at Thu-Kimnibol’s arm, as though to tell him that the king did not have the strength for such discussions. But Salaman said, his voice louder now too, “For what? For leading my warriors off to be cut to pieces in this filthy land. And for sending my Acknowledgers to their doom, and the army that followed them also, all for the sake of stirring up a war that should never have been fought. The gods didn’t mean us to strike at the hjjks. The hjjks are the gods’ creatures as much as we are. I have no doubt of that now. So I have sinned; and for that I will undertake a purification, and by the grace of Mueri and Friit I will have it before I die. I should ask the forgiveness of the Queen as well, I suppose. But how would I do that?” Salaman reached up and caught Thu-Kimnibol by the wrist with surprising strength. “Will you give me an escort home, Thu-Kimnibol? A few dozen of your troops, to help us retrace our steps across all this miserable wasteland that we’ve crossed at such cost. To bring me back to my city, so that I can go before the gods in the shrine that I built for them long ago, and pray them give me peace. That’s all I ask of you.”

  “If you wish it, yes. Of course.”

  “And will you pray for me, also, as you go onward toward the Nest? Pray for the repose of my spirit, Thu-Kimnibol. And I’ll do the same for yours.”

  He closed his eyes. Chham gestured, beckoning Thu-Kimnibol from the tent.

  Outside Chham said, “He’s beside himself with guilt for my brothers’ deaths. His soul is flooded with remorse, for that, for everything in his life that he sees now as a sin. I never knew a man could be so changed in a single moment.”

  “He’ll have his escort home, you can be sure of that.”

  Chham smiled sadly. “He’ll never see Yissou again. Two, three days—that’s all he has, so the healer tells me. We’ll put him to rest in hjjk country. As for those of us that remain—” He shrugged. “We’re willing to put ourselves under your command for the rest of the war. If you’ll have us, broken as we are. Or if you won’t, we’ll limp back to our city and wait to hear how you’ve fared.”

  “Join us, of course,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “Join us and fight alongside us, if you have the strength to go on. Why would we refuse you? We are meant to be allies always, your city and mine.”

  Darkness was coming quickly on. Nialli Apuilana knelt beside her father. Thu-Kimnibol stood well back from them, in the shadows where the glowglobes couldn’t reach.

  “Take this amulet from around my throat,” Hresh whispered. “Put it on.”

  Nialli Apuilana’s hands tightened into fists. She knew what must be in Hresh’s mind. He had worn that amulet all his life: she had never seen him without it. To give it to her now—

  She glanced toward Thu-Kimnibol. He nodded. Do it, he said silently. Do it.

  Unfastening the cord that held the amulet, she drew it gently free. It was a little thing, just a bit of smooth green glass, or so it seemed, with signs inscribed on it that were much too small for her to decipher. It seemed very old and worn. She felt an odd chill coming from it; but when she tied it around her neck she was aware of a faint tingling, and a distant warmth.

  She stared at it, resting between her breasts.

  “What does it do, father?”

  “Very little, I think. But it was Thaggoran’s, who was chronicler before me. A piece of the Great World, is what he told me. It’s the chronicler’s badge of office, I suppose. Sometimes it summons Thaggoran for me, when I need him. You have to wear it now.”

  “But I—”

  “You are chronicler now,” Hresh said.

  “What? Father, I have no training! And the chronicler has never been a woman.”

  Hresh managed the bare outlines of a smile. “All that’s changing now. Everything is. Chupitain Stuld will work with you. And Io Sangrais and Plor Killivash, if they live through the war. The chronicles must stay in our family.” He reached for her hand and clutched it tightly. His fingers seemed tiny, she thought. He was becoming a child again. He opened his eyes for a moment and said, “I never expected to have a daughter, you know. To have any child at all.”

  “And to think, father, how much grief I’ve caused you!”

  “Never. Only joy, child. You must believe that.” His hand grew even tighter on hers. “I’ve always loved you, Nialli. And I always will. You’ll send my love to Taniane, won’t you? My partner all these years. My mate. How sad she’ll be. But she mustn’t be. I’ll be sitting beside Dawinno, asking him so many things.” He paused. “Is my brother here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought he was. Send him to me.”

  But Thu-Kimnibol was already on his way to Hresh’s side. He knelt and reached out his hand, and Hresh touched it, very lightly, fingertips to fingertips. “Brother,” he murmured. “I’ll carry your love to Minbain for you. And now you must go out. What follows must be just for Nialli and me. She can tell you afterward, if she likes.”

  Thu-Kimnibol nodded. Lightly, lovingly, he let his hand rest a moment on Hresh’s forehead, as though he hoped the wisdom would pass into him at a touch. Then he rose, and left the tent without looking back.

  Hresh said, “At my side, under my sash, you’ll find a little velvet pouch.”

  “Father—”

  “Take it. Open it.”

  She let the small piece of polished stone tumble into her palm and stared at it in wonder. She had never handled it before. No one, so far as she knew, was permitted to touch it but Hresh. She had hardly ever been allowed even to see it. In some ways it was like the amulet he had just given her, for it was very smooth, and along its edges a pattern of lines had been carved into it, lines so fine that she couldn’t clearly make out the pattern. It gave off a barely perceptible warmth. But the amulet had little mass or weight, and seemed only a flimsy thing. The Wonderstone, though scarcely any larger, felt as weighty as a world to Nialli Apuilana. It made her uneasy to hold it. The power that it contained was frightening.

  Hresh said, “Do you know what that is?”

  “The Barak Dayir, father.”

  “Yes. The Barak Dayir. But what the Barak
Dayir is, not even I can say. The old Beng prophet told me that it is an amplifier, which means that which makes something greater than it is. As I told you once, it was the humans who once ruled the Earth that made it, before the Great World ever was. And gave it to us, to protect us when they would no longer be here. That’s all I know of it. You must keep it, now. And master the art of using it.”

  “But how will I—”

  “Twine with me, Nialli.”

  Her eyes widened. “Twine—with—you, father?”

  “You must. No harm can come of it, and much good. And when we are joined, take the Barak Dayir and place it by the tip of your sensing-organ, and seize it and grasp it tightly. You’ll hear a music, then. And I’ll help you after that. Will you do that, Nialli?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Come closer, then.”

  She cradled him in her arms. He weighs almost nothing now, she thought. All that remains of him now is the husk, and the mind that burns within it.

  “Your sensing-organ, close to mine—”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  It was a communion Nialli Apuilana had never expected to have. But the moment her sensing-organ touched his, all fear and uncertainty went from her; and it was with almost unimaginable joy that she felt the rich torrent of his spirit come flooding into hers. It was a joy so great that it dizzied her and for a moment it swept her away; but then she remembered the Wonderstone, and carefully she curled the tip of her sensing-organ around it and gripped it with all her strength. The world turned to mist. A column of music rose beneath her. A great overwhelming chord of love buoyed her upward, carrying her soul toward the sky.

  But Hresh was beside her, smiling at her tenderly, serenely, holding her, steadying her, guiding her. Together they soared across the vault of the heavens. A great golden glow was streaming from the west, a brilliant outpouring of dazzling radiance, darkening now into a stunning crimson, and then into rich deep scarlet, and then to silky purple. The darkness was beginning to reach out for him. But as they journeyed toward that waiting realm, he offered her a final sharing, the gift of his light, his love, his wisdom. He told her in a single unbroken flow all that she must know, until he could tell her no more.

  So now it begins, Hresh thinks. The last journey of all. The world is growing dark around him.

  Nialli, he thinks. Minbain. Taniane.

  The vortex comes whirling up to claim him. He stares into it.

  Is that where I’m going? What will it be like? Will I feel anything? Will I be able to taste and smell? If only I could see a little more clearly—

  Ah. That’s better, now. But how strange it looks in there. Is that you, Torlyri? Thaggoran? How strange it all is!

  Mother. Nialli. Taniane.

  Oh, look, Taniane! Look!

  When she emerged from the tent she found Thu-Kimnibol with Chham. The two men broke off their conversation as she approached, and looked at her strangely, as though she had been transformed into some unworldly creature of a kind they had never before beheld.

  “How is it with your father?” Thu-Kimnibol asked.

  “He’s with Dawinno now.” She was dry-eyed and oddly calm.

  “Ah.” A shiver passed through Thu-Kimnibol’s massive frame, and he made the Five Heavenly Signs, slowly and deliberately, twice through, and Dawinno’s sign a third time afterward. “There was no one like him ever,” he said after a while, in a splintered voice. “We had the same mother, but I tell you I never truly felt myself his brother, because he was what he was. His mind was almost like a god’s. How will it be for us without him, I wonder?”

  Nialli Apuilana held out her hand to show him the Barak Dayir in it in its pouch.

  “I have the Wonderstone,” she said. “And I have much of Hresh within me now too. You heard him say that I’m to be the chronicler? I am to be Hresh for us now, if I can. I’ll say the words for him tonight, and we’ll put what remains of him to rest. But he is already with Dawinno.”

  “He was always with Dawinno, lady,” said Chham suddenly. “Or so it was reported of him, that he walked with the gods from the day of his birth. Surely it was so. I wouldn’t doubt it, though I never knew him myself. What a day of great losses this has been!”

  Thu-Kimnibol said, “King Salaman has died this day also. Prince Chham—King Chham, is it now?—has just come from him.”

  “Then we mourn together,” Nialli Apuilana said. “When I say the words for my father, I’ll say them also for yours.”

  “If you will, lady. It would please me greatly.”

  “We will lay them here side by side, in this forlorn place,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “Which will be forlorn no more, because Salaman and Hresh were buried here. They were the two wisest men in all the world.”

  Taniane, resting her left hand on the Mask of Koshmar and her right on that of Lirridon, fought back the numbness that had been growing in her soul all afternoon, a strange disagreeable coldness behind her breastbone; and with such strength as she could muster, she compelled herself to follow what Puit Kjai was trying to tell her.

  “An insurrection, you say? Against me?”

  “Against us all, lady. An uprising that’s meant to sweep away all those who hold power in the City of Dawinno.”

  She gave him a weary, skeptical look. “Does anyone hold power any more in the City of Dawinno, Puit Kjai?”

  “Lady! Lady, what are you saying?”

  Taniane glanced away. The eerie force of Puit Kjai’s intense scarlet eyes was more than she wanted to meet this day. She had lived with this weariness of soul for what seemed like years, but today it seemed to have deepened almost to paralysis.

  She stroked the masks. Once they had hung on the wall behind her; but some time back, not long after the departure of Nialli Apuilana to the war and the disappearance of Hresh, she had taken them down and put them on the desk beside her, where she could see them easily and touch them when she wished. They gave her comfort and, she thought, strength. In the time of the cocoon, Boldirinthe once had told her, there had been a certain black stone mounted in the wall of the central chamber that had been sacred to the memory of the tribe’s former chieftains. Koshmar used to touch that stone and pray to her predecessors when she was facing difficulties. That black stone had remained behind in the cocoon when the tribe made its Coming Forth. Taniane wished she had it now. But at least she had the masks.

  To Puit Kjai she said, after a little while, “All right, go on. Who are the ringleaders of this insurrection?”

  “That I cannot say.”

  “But you’re certain that one is being planned.”

  Puit Kjai shrugged. “The word comes out of the chapels, from the common people. It reaches me from the daughter of the nephew of an old groom in my son’s stables, who worships in the chapel of Tikharein Tourb.”

  “The daughter of the nephew of a groom—”

  “A tenuous chain, yes. What I’m told is that they mean to kill Thu-Kimnibol when he returns from the wars, unless the hjjks do it first, and that they will put you to death also, and me, and most of the rest of the Presidium, except those who they’ll keep alive to go before the city as rulers in their name. And then they’ll make peace with the hjjks and beg their forgiveness.”

  “You say this as though you never wanted peace with the hjjks yourself, Puit Kjai.”

  “Not this way. Not by a violent purging of the highborn. And this is no fantasy, lady, this talk of a conspiracy. They may already, I suspect, have done away with Hresh.”

  “No,” Taniane said at once. “Hresh still lives.”

  “Does he? Where is he, then?”

  “Far from here, I think. But I know that he lives. There’s a bond between us, Puit Kjai, that transcends all distance. I feel him close beside me no matter how far away he may be. No harm has come to Hresh. Of that I’m certain.”

  “Nakhaba grant that it be so,” Puit Kjai said.

  They faced each other in silence for a time. The powerful old Beng leader stoo
d so tall that his helmeted head neared the ceiling. He was gaunt and thin, but there was a majesty about his very gauntness. Dimly Taniane remembered Puit Kjai’s father, the ancient wise one of the Helmet People, Noum om Beng, to whom Hresh had gone for wisdom. Puit Kjai was coming to look like him now: that same frail but stern bearing, his great height compensating for the slenderness of his frame. His helmet today was a black one, with gnarled golden antlers rising from it.

  At length Taniane said, “I’ll look into these rumors. If you hear anything more, come to me immediately.”

  “You have my word on it, lady.”

  He offered her a blessing of Nakhaba, and went out.

  She sat quietly, her hands resting on the masks.

  No doubt there was truth to the story he had brought to her. The Kundalimon creed ran wild in the city these days: why shouldn’t its leaders attempt to force an end to the war? There was no one to oppose them here. Thu-Kimnibol and the rest of his faction were off at the battlefront, Hresh had disappeared, the younger men of the city seemed all to have entered the chapels. She herself no longer even pretended to exercise authority. It seemed to her that the world had passed her by, that events had gone on far beyond her understanding. Truly it was time for her to step aside, she thought. Just as the rock-throwers had told her even before the war. But in favor of whom? Give the city over to the Kundalimon priests? She wished Thu-Kimnibol would return. But he was off killing hjjks, or perhaps being killed by them himself. And Nialli Apuilana was with him.

  Taniane shook her head. She was tired of living in this chaos. She was eager for rest.

  And this other thing, this strange numbness that had entered her breast today—what was that? As though she were being hollowed out from within. Some illness, was it. She remembered how in Vengiboneeza, Koshmar had begun suddenly to seem easily tired, had admitted to Hresh that there was burning in her chest, pain, fever; and soon afterward she was dead. Now her own hour might be coming around, Taniane thought. She wondered if she should go to Boldirinthe for a healing; and then she remembered that Boldirinthe was dead. One by one they were all dying. Koshmar, Torlyri, Boldirinthe—