The Queen of Springtime

5 By the Hand of the Transformer

To Hresh the games seemed endless. The crowd was roaring with excitement all about him, but he longed to be anywhere else, anywhere at all. Yet he knew there was no hope of leaving the stadium until the last race was run, the last weight was tossed. He would have to sit here, bored, wet, aching with the knowledge of irretrievable loss and struggling desperately to hide the pain that he felt. Nialli Apuilana sat beside him, completely caught up in what was going on down there on the field, cheering and shouting as each race was decided, just as though their conversation of the night before had never taken place. Just as though she was unable to realize that she had struck him in the heart, a blow from which he could never recover.

“Look there, father!” she said, pointing. “They’re bringing out the cafalas!”

Yes, they were going to run the cafala race now, a comic event, each rider atop one of the plump short-legged beasts trying frantically to make his sluggish mount move forward against its will. It had always been one of Nialli Apuilana’s favorites: so silly, so completely absurd. One of his little jokes, in fact. He was simply being playful when he had added a cafala race to the original roster of games. But the others had taken him seriously, had loved the idea, in fact; and now it was one of the high points of the day.

Hresh had never cared much for games himself, not even in his boyhood in the cocoon. Sometimes he had played at kick-wrestling and cavern-soaring with the others, but never with any enthusiasm. He had been too slight, too small, too strange for such things. Spending time with gray-furred old Thaggoran the chronicler had been more to his liking, or, once in a while, wandering by himself in the maze of ancient abandoned corridors beneath the main dwelling-chamber.

But games were important all the same. They provided amusement; they held the attention of the flighty; and, what was far more significant, they focused the spirit on divine matters — the quest for excellence, for perfection. And so he had devised this annual festival in Dawinno’s honor, Dawinno being the god of death and destruction but also of mutability, of transformation, of inventiveness and wit, of a thousand channels of energy. And, having devised the games, he was stuck here whether he liked it or not, watching them to the end.

The rain came and went, now a faint misty drizzle, now a sharp slanting flurry. No one seemed to care. The stadium was covered only at its perimeter: the center sections, even the chieftain’s box, lay open to the sky. Between showers, warm drying winds blew and sometimes the sun appeared, and that was comfort enough for onlookers and contestants alike. In their fascination with the games they paid no attention to the rain. Hresh, sodden and disconsolate, feeling no fascination, suspected he was the only one it bothered.

And now the cafalas were off and away waddling down the muddy track. Usually it was a Beng who won the cafala race. The Bengs, in their wanderings at the edge of hjjk country long before the Union, had found herds of wild cafalas and domesticated them for their meat and their thick wool. They had been the great cafala experts ever since.

But that was a Koshmar lad at the head of the pack, wasn’t it? Yes. Yes. Jalmud, it was, one of Preyne’s younger sons. Nialli Apuilana was standing, waving her arms frenetically, urging him on. “Go, Jalmud! Go! You can do it!”

The boy was sitting hunched well forward on his cafala, knees dug deep into the animal’s rain-soaked bluish wool, his fingers tugging at its floppy, leathery black ears. And the dull-eyed flat-snouted cafala was responding heroically, chugging steadily forward, head bobbing, legs splaying wide. It was taking a good lead now.

“Jalmud! Jalmud!” Nialli Apuilana called. “Go! Beat those Bengs!” She was jumping about now, imitating the clumsy rhythm of the cafala, laughing as he hadn’t heard her laugh in a long while. She seemed more like a young girl at her first cafala race than like a woman who would never see one again.

Hresh, watching her watching the race, felt a sharp pang of grief. He kept looking at her as if expecting her to vanish right then and there. But there was a little time yet. There were the things she had promised to tell him, first. About the Queen, about the Nest. She was one who kept her promises.

How soon would she leave? A few days, a week, a month?

She had always been an adventuresome child, ever inquisitive, ever eager to learn. Fondly Hresh saw her now as she had been when a little girl, bright-eyed and forever laughing, stumbling along beside him through the corridors of the House of Knowledge, bubbling with questions: What is this, Why is that?

No question of it: she would go. She saw it as the great adventure of her life, a grand quest, and nothing else mattered to her, nothing. Not father, not mother, not city. It was like a spell, an enchantment. It would he impossible for him to hold her back. He had seen the glow on her. She loved Kundalimon; and, Dawinno help her, she loved the Queen. The one love was natural and much to be praised. The other was beyond his understanding, but also, he knew, beyond his power to alter. Whatever had been done to her in the Nest while she was a captive there had changed her irreparably. And so she would go to the hjjks again; and, just as surely, this time she wouldn’t return. She would never return. It seemed unreal to him: just a little while longer, and then he would lose her forever. But he was helpless. The only way to keep her here would be to lock her away like a common criminal.

“Jalmud!” Nialli Apuilana shrieks. She seems to be in ecstasy.

The race is over. Jalmud stands grinning at the altar of Dawinno, accepting his wreath of victory. Handlers are trying to round up the wandering cafalas, which have gone straying in all directions.

A helmeted figure appears just then at the entrance to the chieftain’s box, a thickset man wearing the sash of the guards of the judiciary. He inclines his head toward Taniane and says in a low voice, “Lady, I have to speak with you.”

“Speak, then.”

The guard glances uncertainly at Hresh, at Nialli Apuilana.

“For your ears alone, lady.”

“Then whisper it.”

The guard pushes his helmet back, leans forward, very close to her. “ No,” Taniane mutters harshly, when he has spoken only a few words. She puts both her hands to her throat for a moment. Then she begins to beat them against her thighs, angrily, in fierce agitation. Hresh, astonished, stares at her with amazement. Even the guard seems appalled at the effect the message has had on her, and he steps back, making the signs of all the gods with rapid, nervous gestures.

“What is it?” Hresh asks.

She shakes her head slowly. She is making holy signs too. “Yissou save us,” she says in a strange hollow tone, repeating it several times.

“Mother?” Nialli Apuilana says.

Hresh catches Taniane by the forearm. “By the gods, Taniane, tell me what’s happened!”

“Oh, Nialli, Nialli—”

“Mother, please!”

In a voice like a voice from the tomb Taniane says, “The boy who came to us from the hjjks — the emissary—”

In exasperation: “Mother, what is it? Is he all right?”

“He was found a little while ago in an alleyway down the street from Mueri House. Dead. Strangled.”

“Gods!” Hresh cries.

He turns toward Nialli Apuilana, holding out his arms to comfort her. But he is too late. With a terrible cry of pain the girl turns and flees, bounding wildly over the side of the chieftain’s box and rushing off into the crowd, shoving people out of her way with furious force as though they are no more than straws. In a moment she is out of sight. And an instant later a second guardsman comes chugging up, running as clumsily as a cafala, breathless, wild-eyed. He clutches the side of the chieftain’s box with both hands, trying to make the world hold still beneath him. “Lady!” he blurts. “Lady, a murder in the stadium! The guard-captain, lady — the guard-captain—”

It was near midnight. The rain was over, and thick white mists rose from the ground everywhere, like phantoms of the dead issuing into the air. An impromptu meeting of the key members of the Presidium had been going on all evening — it had seemed the only thing to do — and they had discussed the murders interminably, going around and around, as if talking about them could bring back the dead. Finally Taniane had sent them all away, with nothing accomplished. Only Husathirn Mueri remained. She had asked him to stay behind.

The chieftain was at the edge of collapse. This day had been a thousand years long.

Not one murder but two. Violent death was all but unknown in the city. And on a single day, two of them, and the day of the Festival at that!

Giving Husathirn Mueri a cold, acrid look, she said, “I merely told you to stop him from preaching. Not to have him killed. What kind of beast are you, to have a man killed like that?”

“Lady, I didn’t want him dead any more than you,” said Husathirn Mueri hoarsely.

“Yet you sent that guard-captain of yours off to do it.”

“No. I tell you no, lady.” Husathirn Mueri looked as worn and ragged as she felt herself. His black fur was heavy with sweat, and the white stripes that ran through it were dulled by the day’s grime. His amber eyes had the glassy gleam of extreme fatigue. He threw himself down on the stone bench facing her desk and said, “What I told Curabayn Bangkea was nothing more than you told me: that he had to shut him up, that he had to stop him from doing any more preaching. I didn’t say anything about killing. If Curabayn Bangkea killed him, it was entirely his own idea.”

“ IfCurabayn Bangkea killed him?”

“That can’t ever be proven, can it?”

“The very strangling-cloth he used was wrapped around his wrist.”

“No,” Husathirn Mueri said wearily. “There was a strangling-cloth on him when he was found, I’ll grant you. But many men of Curabayn Bangkea’s sort carry strangling-cloths, more for ornament than anything else. That there was one around his wrist proves nothing. Nor can we be sure that it was the one that was used to kill Kundalimon. And even if it was, lady, there’s always the possibility that whoever killed Kundalimon killed Curabayn Bangkea also, and then put the strangling-cloth on him to throw suspicion on him. Or let me give you yet another hypothesis: that Curabayn Bangkea had discovered the murderer, and had taken the strangling-cloth from him to offer as evidence, when he was killed. By the murderer’s accomplice, perhaps.”

“You have an abundance of hypotheses.”

“It’s the way my mind works,” said Husathirn Mueri. “I can’t help that.”

“Indeed,” Taniane said sourly.

What she longed to do was send forth her second sight and try to see just how deeply involved Husathirn Mueri actually had been in this miserable thing. It still seemed to her, knowing him as she did, that very likely he had deliberately chosen to interpret her orders as instructions to have Kundalimon removed. Kundalimon had been Husathirn Mueri’s rival, after all, for Nialli Apuilana’s affections. Had won those affections beyond question, actually. How convenient for Husathirn Mueri to misunderstand her words and send his creature Curabayn Bangkea off to murder him. And then to have the guard-captain murdered too, by way of silencing him.

It all fit together. And an aura of guilt seemed to hover like a dull stinking cloud of marsh-gas around Husathirn Mueri even as he sat here.

But Taniane couldn’t simply go on a fact-finding expedition in his mind with her second sight. It would be a scandalous intrusion. It was beyond all propriety. She’d have to make a formal charge first, and call him to trial, for that. And if in fact he was innocent, she would have gained nothing for herself except an unalterable enemy, who happened to be one of the shrewdest and most powerful men in the city. That wasn’t a risk worth taking.

Was it ever in my mind without my consciously knowing it, she wondered, to have Kundalimon done away with? And did I somehow convey that to Husathirn Mueri without fully realizing what I was asking?

No. No. No.

She hadn’t ever meant the boy any harm. She wanted only to protect the children of the city against the madness of the hjjk-teachings that he was spreading. She was certain of that. To have ordered the death of her daughter’s first and only lover — no, that had never been in her mind at all.

Where was Nialli now? No one had seen her since her disappearance from the stadium.

“You still suspect me?” Husathirn Mueri asked.

Taniane stared stonily at him. “I suspect everyone, except perhaps my mate and my daughter.”

“What assurance can I give you, lady, that I had no part in the boy’s death?”

Shrugging, she said, “Let it pass. But it was that underling of yours, that guard-captain, I think, who took it upon himself to have Kundalimon killed, or to kill him himself.”

“Very likely so, I agree.”

“How do we account for the killing of Curabayn Bangkea, though?”

Husathirn Mueri spread his hands wide. “I have no idea. Some rowdies at the games, maybe, catching him in a dark corner. With an old score that needed settling. He was captain of the guards, after all. He threw his weight around freely. He must have had enemies.”

“But on the very same day of Kundalimon’s murder—”

“A coincidence that only the gods could explain. Certainly I can’t, lady. But the investigation will continue until we have the answer, if it takes a hundred years. Both deaths will be resolved. I promise you that.”

“In a hundred years nothing of this will matter. What matters now is that an ambassador from the Queen of Queens has been murdered while in our city. While in the midst of treaty negotiations.”

“And that troubles you, does it?’

“I don’t want us getting embroiled in a war with the hjjks until we’re ready for such a thing. Yissou only knows what goes on in the minds of hjjks, but if I were the Queen I’d regard killing Her ambassador as a very serious provocation indeed. An act of war, in fact. And we’re very far from being ready to fight them.”

“I agree,” said Husathirn Mueri. “But this isn’t any such provocation of that sort. Consider, lady.” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “One: His embassy was finished. He had presented his message; that was all he was sent here to do. He wasn’t a negotiator, just a messenger, and not even a very competent messenger. Two: He was a citizen of this very city, returning after a long absence brought about by his having been kidnapped. He wasn’t the Queen’s subject in any way. She had him only because Her people stole him from us. What claim could she have to him? Three: There’s no sort of contact between Dawinno and the Nest, and therefore no reason to think they’ll ever find out what became of him, assuming they care in the slightest. When we make our response to their treaty proposal, if we do, we’re not obliged to say anything about where Kundalimon might happen to be at the moment. Or perhaps we won’t reply to them at all. Four—”

“No!” Taniane snapped. “In Yissou’s name, no more hypotheses! Doesn’t your mind ever stop ticking, Husathirn Mueri?”

“Only when I sleep, perhaps.”

“Then go to your bed, and I’ll go to mine. You’ve convinced me. The killing of that boy isn’t going to bring the hjjks down upon us. But there’s a gaping wound in our commonwealth all the same, which can be healed only by finding these murderers.”

“The one who killed Kundalimon, I do believe, is already dead himself.”

“Then there’s still at least one killer loose among us. I give you the job of finding him, Husathirn Mueri.”

“I’ll spare no effort, lady. You can count on that.”

He bowed and left. She looked after him until he turned the corner of the hallway and was gone.

The day was over at last. Home, now. Hresh was already there, waiting for her. The news of Kundalimon’s death had affected him more than she would have expected. Rarely had she seen him so distraught. And then, Nialli Apuilana — the girl had to be found, she had to be comforted—

A very long day indeed.

This is the deep tropical wilderness, where the air clings to your throat with every breath, and the ground is soft and resilient, like a moist sponge, beneath your feet. Nialli Apuilana has no idea how far she’s come from the city in her flight. She has no clear idea of anything. Her mind is choked and congested by grief. No thoughts pass through it.

Where thought had been, there is only second sight now, operating in some automatic way, carrying information about her surroundings to her in dim pulsing pulsations. She is aware of the city far behind her, crouching on its hills like a huge many-tentacled monster made of stone and brick, sending out waves of cold baleful menace. She is aware of the swamps through which she is running, rich with hidden life both great and small. She is aware of the vastness of the continent that stretches before her. But nothing is clear, nothing is coherent. The only reality is the journey itself, the mad roaring need to run, and run, and run, and run.

A night and a day and a night and nearly another day have passed since she fled from Dawinno. She had ridden a xlendi part of the way, driving it furiously into the southern lakelands; but somewhere late on that first day she had paused to sip water at a stream, and the xlendi had wandered off, and she has gone on foot ever since. She scarcely ever stops, except to sleep, a few hours at a time. Whenever she does halt she collapses into a darkness that is the next thing to death, and when after a time it lifts from her she gets up and begins running once more, without goal, without direction. A fever is on her, so that she seems to be on fire everywhere, but it gives her strength. She is a molten thing, cutting a blazing path through this unknown domain. She eats fruits that she snatches from bushes as she runs. She stoops to pluck fungi with shining yellow caps from the ground, and crams them into her mouth without pausing. When thirst overcomes her she drinks any water she finds, fresh or still. Nothing matters. Flight is all.

Her body has long since slipped into that strange crystalline realm that lies beyond fatigue. She no longer feels the throbbings of her weary legs, no longer records the protests of her lungs or the pains that shoot upward through her back. She moves at a graceful lope, running swiftly in a kind of mindless serenity.

She must not allow her mind to regain awareness.

If it does, she will hear the lethal words again. Found in an alleyway. Dead. Strangled.

The vision of Kundalimon’s slender body will come to her, twisted, rumpled, staring sightlessly toward the gray sky. His hands outstretched. His lips slightly apart.

Found in an alleyway.

Her lover. Kundalimon. Dead. Gone forever.

They would have gone north to the Queen together. Together they would have descended hand in hand into the Nest of Nests, down into that warm sweet-smelling mysterious realm beneath those distant plains. The song of Nest-bond would have engulfed their spirits. The pull of Queen-love would have dissolved all disharmonies in their souls. Dear ones would have come up to embrace them: Nest-thinkers, Egg-makers, Life-kindlers, Militaries, every caste gathering round to welcome the newcomers to their true home.

Dead. Strangled.My only one.

Nialli Apuilana had never known that love such as theirs had been could exist. And she knows that such love can never exist for her again. She wants nothing now but to join him in whatever place it is where he has gone.

She runs, seeing nothing, thinking nothing.

It is twilight again. Shadows deepen, falling across her like cloaks. Gentle warm rain falls, on and off. Thick golden mists rise from the moist earth. Thick soft woolly clouds spiral up around her and take the forms of the gods, who have no forms, and in whose existence she does not believe. They surround her, looming higher than the towering smooth-trunked vine-tangled trees, and they speak to her in voices that tumble downward to her ears in shimmering harmonics richer than any music she has ever heard.

“I am Dawinno, child. I take all things, and transform them to make them new, and bring them forth into the world again. Without me, there would be only unchanging rock.”

“I am Friit. I bring healing and forgetfulness. Without me, there would be only pain.”

“I am Emakkis, girl. I provide nourishment. Without me, life could not sustain itself.”

“Me, child, I am Mueri. I am consolation. I am the love that abides and infuses. Without me, death would be the end of everything.”

“And I am Yissou. I am the protector who shields from harm. Without me, life would be a valley of thorns and fangs.”

Dead. Strangled. Found in an alleyway.

“There are no gods,” Nialli Apuilana murmurs. “There is only the Queen, holding us in Her love. She is our comfort, and our protection, and our nourishment, and our healing, and our transformation.”

In the deepening darkness, golden light encloses her. The jungle is ablaze with it. The lakes and pools and streams shimmer with it. Light pours from everything. The air, thick and torrid, swirls with the holy images of the Five Heavenly Ones. Nialli Apuilana holds her hand before her face to shield her eyes, so strong is that light. But then she lowers the hand, and lets the light come flooding upon her, and it is kind and loving. She draws new strength from it. She runs onward, deeper into that crystalline realm of tirelessness.

She hears the voices again. Dawinno. Friit. Emakkis. Mueri. Yissou.

Destroyer. Healer. Provider. Consoler. Protector.

“The Queen,” Nialli Apuilana murmurs. “Where is the Queen? Why does She not come to me now?”

“Ah, child, She is us, and we are She. Do you not see that?”

“You are the Queen?”

“The Queen is us.”

She considers that.

Yes, she thinks. Yes, that is so.

She is able to think again, now. Her eyes are open. She can see the stars, she can see the many worlds, she can see the shining web of Queen-love binding the worlds together. And she knows that all is one, that there are no differences, no gradations, no partitions dividing one form of reality from another. She had not realized that before. But now she sees, she hears, she accepts.

“Do you see us, child? Do you hear us? Do you feel our presence? Do you know us?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Shapes without form. Faces without features. Potent sonorities resonating through the descending shadows. Light, cascading from everything, coming from within. Density, strangeness, mystery. Godhood all about her. Beauty. Peace. Her mind is ablaze, but it is a cool white fire, burning away all dross. Out of the earth comes a roaring sound that fills all the sky, but it is a sweet roaring, enfolding her like a cloak. The Five Heavenly Ones are everywhere, and she is in their embrace.

“I understand,” she whispers. “The Queen — the Creator — Nakhaba — the Five — all the same, all just different faces of the same thing—”

“Yes. Yes.”

Night is coming on swiftly now. The heavy sky behind her is streaked with blue, with scarlet, with purple, with green. Ahead lies darkness. Lantern-trees are awakening into light. Creatures of the jungle show themselves everywhere, wings and necks and claws and scales and jaws shining on all sides of her.

She drops to her knees. She can go no farther. With the return of thought has come the reality of exhaustion. She digs her hands into the warm moist ground and clings to it.

But it seems for a moment, as she crouches there gasping and shivering in her great weariness, that she is alone once again, except for the creatures that screech and cackle and hiss and bellow all about her in the deepening night. She feels a tremor of fear. Where have the gods gone? Has she run so fast that she has left them behind?

No. She can still feel them. She need only open herself to them, and they are there.

“Here, child. I am Mueri. I will comfort you.”

“I am Yissou. I will protect you.”

“I am Emakkis. I will provide for you.”

“I am Friit. I will heal you.”

“I am Dawinno. I will transform you. I will transform you. I will transform you, child.”

This was Thu-Kimnibol’s fifth week in the City of Yissou. Real negotiations in the matter of the military alliance between Salaman and the City of Dawinno hadn’t yet begun: only the preliminaries, and sketchy ones at that. Salaman seemed in no hurry. He side-stepped Thu-Kimnibol’s attempts to get down to the harder issues. Instead the king kept him diverted with a constant round of feasts and celebrations as though he regarded him as a member of his own family; and the girl Weiawala shared his bed each night as if they were already betrothed. Very quickly he had come to accept and enjoy her eagerness, her passion. It had renewed his taste for life.

He was untroubled by the slow pace. It was giving the wound of Naarinta’s death a chance to heal, this far from old and familiar associations. And there were even older associations here. In an odd way Thu-Kimnibol was pleased to be back in what was, after all, the city where he had spent the formative years of his life, from his third year to his nineteenth. Vengiboneeza, his birthplace, seemed like a dream to him, nothing more, and Dawinno, great as it was, somehow insubstantial and remote. His whole life there, his princely house and his mate and his pleasures and his friends, had faded until they rarely entered his mind any longer. Here, in the dark shadow of Salaman’s bizarre titanic wall, in this dense dank claustrophobic warren of a city, he was beginning to feel somehow at home. That was surprising. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t even try. As for his mission, his embassy, the less hurry the better. An alliance of the sort he had in mind was best not forged in haste.

He went riding often in the hinterlands beyond the wall, usually with Esperasagiot and Dumanka and Simthala Honginda, sometimes with one or two of the king’s older sons. It was the king who had suggested these excursions. “Your xlendis will want exercise,” he said. “The streets of the city are too narrow and winding. The beasts won’t have room in them for stretching their legs properly.”

“What about the chance of running into hjjks out there?” Thu-Kimnibol asked. “I get the idea that they’re crawling all over the place.”

“If you stray very far to the northeast, yes. Otherwise you won’t be bothered.”

“Toward Vengiboneeza, you mean?”

“Right. That’s where the filthy bugs are. A million of them, maybe. Ten million, for all I know. Vengiboneeza boils with them,” Salaman said. “They infest it like fleas.” He gave Thu-Kimnibol a cunning look. “But even if you do meet up with a few hjjks while you’re out riding, what of it? You knew how to kill them once upon a time, so I recall.”

“Very likely I still do,” Thu-Kimnibol said quietly.

He was cautious outside the city, all the same. Usually he rode through the tame farming territories south of the city, and once or twice he and Esperasagiot went a short way into the unthreatening forests on the eastern side, but he never ventured toward the north. Not that the thought of running into hjjks troubled him much; and he cursed Salaman for that sly suggestion of cowardice. It would be good sport, slicing up a few hjjks. But he had a mission to carry out here, and getting himself killed in a brawl with the bugs would be worse than stupid: it would be irresponsible.

Then Salaman himself suggested that they go for a ride. And Thu-Kimnibol was surprised to see the king leading him toward the west, across a high plateau that gave way to a rough, ravine-crossed district where their xlendis were hard pressed to manage their footing. It was a troublesome broken region. Danger might be hiding anywhere. Salaman felt a need to test his guest’s courage, perhaps. Or to demonstrate his own. Thu-Kimnibol kept his irritation out of view. “It was here,” the king said, “that we destroyed the hjjks, the day of the great battle. Do you remember? You were so young.”

“Old enough, cousin.”

They stood a time, staring. Thu-Kimnibol was aware of the old memories, veiled as they were by time, stirring within him. First the hjjks thrown into confusion by that device of Hresh’s, which sent their vermilions stampeding into those boulder-strewn gullies. And then the battle. How he had fought that day! Cutting them to pieces as they milled around in bewilderment! Six years old, was he? Something like that. But already twice the size of any child his age. With his own sword, and not a toy sword, either. The finest hour of his life: the child-warrior, the boy-swordsman, hacking and slashing with fury and zeal. The one and only time in his life, it was, that he had tasted the true joy of warfare. He longed to feel the wine of it on his lips again.

On his second ride with Salaman the king was even bolder; for this time he headed into the high wooded lands east and north of the city, precisely the region he had warned Thu-Kimnibol against, and kept on going for hours without turning back. As they proceeded on and on during the day, it began to seem to Thu-Kimnibol that Salaman might have it in mind to ride all the way to Vengiboneeza, or some such insanity. Of course that was impossible, a journey that would take weeks, and certain death at the end of it. But the hjjks were supposed to be plentiful to the northeast even this close to the city. If it was so risky to take this route, why had the king chosen it now?

They rode in silence, deep into the afternoon, along a lofty ridge that stretched as far as the eye could see. The countryside grew increasingly wild. Once a passage of bloodbirds briefly darkened the sky just overhead. On a hot sunny knoll a sinister congregation of the large pale insects called green-claws, thick many-jointed things half the length of a man’s body, moved slowly about in the warmth. Later they rode past a place where the ground was in turmoil as though a giant auger were turning beneath it, and, looking down, Thu-Kimnibol saw scarlet eyes huge as saucers looking back at him out of the soft tumbled soil, and great yellow teeth clacking together.

At last they halted in a quiet grassy open place atop a high point along the ridge. The sky was deepening in color. It had the color of strong wine now. Thu-Kimnibol stared eastward, into the gathering shadows. Vengiboneeza was somewhere out there, far beyond the range of sight. He barely remembered it, only scattered scraps and bits, the image of a tower, the cobbled pavement of a great boulevard, the high sweep of a vast plaza. That gleaming ancient city, thick with ghosts. And its million hjjks, swarming furiously in their hive. How the place must reek of them!

After a time Thu-Kimnibol thought that he could see figures, angular and alien, moving about in the shallow canyon below the ridge, very far off.

“Hjjks,” he said. “Do you see them?”

They were very small at this distance, hardly more than specks, yellow banded with black.

Salaman narrowed his eyes, stared closely. “Yes, by Yissou! One, two, three, four—”

“And a fifth one, on the ground. With its belly in the air.”

“Your eyes are younger than mine. But yes, I can make them out now. You see how near to Yissou they venture? Forever prowling closer and closer.” He took a closer look. “The two large ones are females. Warriors, they are. Among hjjks it’s the females who are stronger. Escorting the other three somewhere, I suppose. A team of spies. The one on the ground’s badly hurt, by the looks of it. Or dead. Either way, they’ll be feasting in a little while.”

“Feasting?”

“On the dead one. They waste nothing, the hjjks. Didn’t you know that? Not even their own dead.”

Thu-Kimnibol laughed at the monstrous grisliness of the idea. But then, reconsidering, he felt himself shuddering. Could Salaman be serious? Yes, yes, apparently he was. Indeed, the quartet of distant hjjks seemed to be crouching over the body of the fallen one now, methodically pulling it apart, wresting its limbs from it and splitting them open to get at whatever meat they might contain. He watched in horror, unable to look away. Disgust made his skin crawl, his guts writhe. The busy claws, the avid beaks, the steady, diligent, efficient process of feeding — how loathsome, how hateful they were—

“Are they cannibals, then? Do they murder one another for their flesh?”

“Cannibals, yes. They see nothing wrong with eating their own dead. A thrifty folk, they are. But murderers, no. Killing their own kind is a sin they don’t seem to practice, cousin. My guess is that this one ran into something even nastier than itself. Yissou knows there’s danger all over the place in this open country, wild beasts of a hundred sorts.”

“Thrifty, you say!” Thu-Kimnibol spat. “Demons is what they are! We should exterminate them to the last one!”

“Ah, you think so, cousin?”

“I do.”

Salaman smiled broadly. “Well, then we think alike. I thought you’d find this ride instructive. Do you see what we face here, now? Why my wall, which I know you all find so amusing, is of the size that it is? We journey just a short way from the city, and there they are, committing their abominations right in front of our eyes, and not caring in the slightest that we’re watching.”

Thu-Kimnibol glared. Something throbbed in his forehead. “We should go down there and kill them as they eat. Two of us, four of them — those aren’t bad odds.”

“There may be a hundred more behind those trees. Do you want to be their next meal, cousin?” The king tugged at Thu-Kimnibol’s arm. “Come. The sun has gone down, and we’re far from the city. We should turn back, I think.”

But Thu-Kimnibol was unable to take his eyes from the grim scene in the canyon below.

“A vision comes to me as I stand here,” he said softly. “I see an army, thousands of us, riding out across this land. From your city and ours, and all the small settlements between. Traveling swiftly, striking quickly, slaughtering every hjjk we find. Going right on without stopping, right into the heart of the great Nest, right into the Queen’s own hiding-place. A lightning strike that they won’t be able to withstand, no matter how many of them there are. The Queen is their strength. Kill Her and they’re helpless, and we’ll be able to wipe the rest of them out at out ease. What do you say, Salaman? Isn’t that a wondrous vision?”

The king nodded. He looked pleased. “We think alike, cousin. We think alike! Do you know how long I’ve waited for someone from Dawinno to say such things to me? I had almost given up hope.”

“You never considered launching the war on your own?”

What might have been annoyance awoke in the king’s eyes for a moment. “There aren’t enough of us, cousin. It would be certain disaster. Your city, once it took in all those Bengs — that’s where the troops I need are. But what chance is there that I’d get them? Your city’s too comfortable, Thu-Kimnibol. Dawinno’s not a city of warriors. Yourself excepted, of course.”

“Perhaps you underestimate us, cousin.”

Salaman shrugged. “The Bengs were warriors once, when they were wanderers in the plains. But even they’ve grown fat and easy down there in the warm southlands. They don’t remember how much grief the hjjks gave them long ago. Dawinno’s too far from hjjk territory for anyone down there to care about them. How often do you see hjjks roaming as close to your city as these are to ours? Once every three years? We live with their presence every day. Among you there’s some little flurry of anger when a child is stolen, and then the child comes back, or is forgotten, and everything is as it was before.”

Tightly Thu-Kimnibol said, “You make me think my mission’s pointless, cousin. You tell me to my face that I speak for a nation of cowards.”

There has been a sudden shift in mood. The two men stare at each other in a way that is very much less friendly than it was only a little while before. The rebuke hangs in the air between them for a long silent moment. Down below, the feast is still going on: harsh sounds, sounds of rending and crunching, drift upward on the cool evening air.

Salaman says, “It was weeks ago that you said you’re here to propose an alliance, that Dawinno wants to join forces with us and make war against the hjjks. Exterminate them like vermin, that’s what you said you’d like to do. Fine. Excellent. And now you put forth this pretty vision of our two armies joining and marching north. Splendid, cousin. But forgive me if I’m skeptical. I know what people are like in Dawinno. Alliance or no alliance, how can I be sure that your people will actually come up here and fight? What I want is a guarantee that you can deliver the army of Dawinno to me. Can you give me that guarantee, Thu-Kimnibol?”

“I think I can.”

“Think-you-can isn’t good enough. Take another look down there, cousin. See them gnawing and grinding their comrade’s flesh. Can you make your people see what you see now? Those are hjjks, just a few hours’ ride from my city. Every year there are more of them. Every year they get a little closer.” Salaman laughs bitterly. “What does it matter to the people of Dawinno that the hjjks are camped on our doorstep, eh? It’s the flesh of our sons and daughters, not theirs, that they’ll be feeding on one of these days, eh, cousin? Do they realize, down south, that when the hjjks are through here, they’ll go on to pounce on Dawinno? Their appetites can’t be checked. They’ll go south, sure as anything. If not right away, then twenty, thirty, fifty years from now. Are your people capable of looking that far ahead?”

“Some of us are. Which is why I’m here.”

“Yes. This famous alliance. But when I ask you if Dawinno will really fight, you give me no answer.”

Salaman’s eyes are bright with fierce energy, now. They drill remorselessly into Thu-Kimnibol’s. Thu-Kimnibol’s head is beginning to ache. Diplomatic lies are on the tip of his tongue, but he forces them back. This is the moment for utter honesty. That too can sometimes be a useful tool.

Bluntly he says, “You must have good spies in Dawinno, cousin.”

“They do a decent job. How strong is your peace faction, will you tell me?”

“Not strong enough to get anywhere.”

“So you actually think your people will go to war against the hjjks when the time comes?”

“I do.”

“What if you overestimate them?”

“What if you underestimate them?” Thu-Kimnibol asks. He stares down at the king from his great height atop his xlendi. “They’ll fight. I give you my own guarantee on that, cousin. One way or another, I’ll bring you an army.” He points with a jabbing finger into the canyon. “I’ll find a way of making them see what I see now. I’ll wake them up and turn them into fighters. You have my pledge on that.”

A disheartening look of continuing skepticism flickers across Salaman’s face. But almost immediately other things seem to be mixed into it: eagerness, hope, a willingness to believe. Then the whole mixture vanishes and the king’s expression once more becomes guarded, stony, gruff.

“This needs further discussion,” he says. “Not here. Not now. Come. Or we’ll be riding back in the dark.”

Darkness was indeed upon them by the time they reached the city. Torches blazed atop the wall, and when Salaman’s son Chham rode out from the eastern gate to greet them the look of anxiety on his face was unmistakable.

The king laughed it away. “I took our cousin out toward Vengiboneeza, so that he could smell the breeze that blows from that direction. But we were never in danger.”

“The Protector be thanked,” Chham exclaimed.

Then, turning to Thu-Kimnibol: “There’s a messenger here from your city, lord prince. He says he’s been riding day and night, and it must be true, for the xlendi he arrived on was so worn out it looked more dead than alive.”

Thu-Kimnibol frowned. “Where is he now?”

Chham nodded toward the gate. “Waiting in your chamber, lord prince.”

The messenger was a Beng, one of the guardsmen of the justiciary, a younger brother of the guard-captain Curabayn Bangkea. Thu-Kimnibol recalled having seen him on duty at the Basilica now and then. Eluthayn was his name, and he looked ragged and worn indeed, a thin shadow of himself, close to the point of breaking down from fatigue. It was all he could do to stammer out his message. Which was a startling one indeed.

Salaman came to him a little while afterward.

“You look troubled, cousin. The news must be bad.”

“Suddenly there seems to be an epidemic of murder in my city.”

“Murder?”

“During our holy festival, no less. Two killings. One was the captain of our city guard, the older brother of this messenger. The other was the boy the hjjks sent to us carrying the terms of the treaty they were offering.”

“The hjjk envoy? Who’d kill him? What for?”

“Who can say?” Thu-Kimnibol shook his head. “The boy was harmless, or so it seemed to me. The other one — well, he was a fool, but if simply being a fool is reason to be murdered, the streets would run red with blood. There’s no sense to any of this.” He frowned and went to the window, and stared off into the shadowy courtyard for a time. Then he turned toward Salaman. “We may have to break off our negotiations.”

“You’ve been recalled, have you?”

“The messenger said nothing about that. But with things like this going on there—”

“Things like what? A couple of murders?” Salaman chuckled. “An epidemic, you call that?”

“You may have five killings here every day, cousin. But we aren’t used to such things.”

“Nor are we. But two killings hardly seems—”

“The guard-captain. The envoy. A messenger racing all this way to tell me. Why is that? Does Taniane think the hjjks will retaliate? Maybe that’s it — maybe they think there might be trouble, maybe even a hjjk raid on Dawinno—”

“We killed the envoy that was sent to us, cousin, and we never heard a thing about it. You people are too excitable, that’s the problem.” Salaman stretched a hand toward Thu-Kimnibol. “If you haven’t been officially recalled, stay right where you are, that’s my advice. Taniane and her Presidium can take care of this murder business without you. We have work of our own to do here, and it’s only barely begun. Stay in Yissou, cousin. That’s what I think.”

Thu-Kimnibol nodded. “You’re right. What’s been happening in Dawinno is no affair of mine. And we have work to do.”

Alone in his chambers atop the House of Knowledge in the early hours of the night, Hresh tries to come to terms with it all. Two days have gone by since Nialli Apuilana’s disappearance. Taniane is convinced that she is somewhere close at hand, that she’s gone into seclusion until her grief has burned itself out. Squadrons of guardsmen are at work combing the city for her, and the outlying districts.

But no one has seen her. And Hresh is convinced that no one will.

She has fled to the Queen: of that he’s sure. If she reaches them safely, he thought, she’ll spend the rest of her life among them. A citizen of the Nest of Nests, that’s what she’ll be. If she thinks of her native city at all, it’ll be only to curse it as the place where the man she loved was murdered. It’s the hjjks that she loves now. It’s the hjjks, Hresh tells himself, to whom she belongs. But why? Why?

What power do they have over her? what spell did they use to pull her toward them?

He feels baffled and impotent. These events have all but paralyzed him. Thought has become an immense effort. His soul seems to be encased in ice. The murders — when had there last been a violent death in Dawinno? And Nialli Apuilana’s disappearance — he must try to think — to think—

Someone had said yesterday that a girl riding a xlendi had been seen that rainy afternoon, out by the perimeter of the city. Seen only at a distance, just at a distance. There were plenty of girls in the city, plenty of xlendis. But suppose it had been Nialli. How far could she get, alone, unarmed, not knowing the route? Was she lost and close to death somewhere out there in the empty plains? Or had bands of hjjks been waiting to receive her and lead her onward to the Nest of Nests?

You can’t possibly know what it’s like, father. 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 Nest-love.

She had promised to explain all that to him before she left. But there hadn’t been time, and now she is gone. And he still understands nothing, nothing at all. Nest-bond? Nest-love? Dreams? Magic? Wonder?

He glances toward the huge heavy casket of the chronicles. He has spent his lifetime ransacking the hodgepodge of ancient half-cryptic documents in that casket. His predecessors had copied and recopied those tattered books, and copied them again, during the hundreds of thousands of years in the cocoon. Ever since he was a child staring over Thaggoran’s shoulder, he has looked to the chronicles as an inexhaustible well of knowledge.

He opens the seals and the locks and begins to draw the volumes forth and lay them out one by one on the worktables of polished white stone that encircle the room.

Here is the Book of the Long Winter, with its tales of the coming of the death-stars. Here is the Book of the Cocoon, which tells how Lord Fanigole and Balilirion and Lady Theel led the People to safety in the time of cold and darkness. Here is the Book of the Way, containing prophecies of the New Springtime and the glorious role the People would play when they came forth again into the world. And this is the Book of the Coming Forth, which Hresh himself had written, except for the first few pages which Thaggoran who was chronicler before him had done: it tells of the winter’s end, and the return of the warmth, and the venturing of the tribe into the open plains at last.

This one is the Book of the Beasts, which describes all the animals that once had been. The Book of Hours and Days, telling of the workings of the world and the larger cosmos. This one here, with its binding hanging all in faded scraps, is the Book of the Cities, in which the names of all the capitals of the Great World are inscribed.

And these three: how sad they are! The Book of the Unhappy Dawn, the Book of the Wrongful Glow, the Book of the Cold Awakening, three pitiful tales of times when some chieftain, believing in error that the Long Winter was over, had led the People from the cocoon, only to be driven swiftly back by the icy blasts of unforgiving winds.

Concerning the hjjks, all he finds are old familiar phrases. In the dry northlands, where the hjjks dwell in their great Nest, or, And in that year the hjjks did march across the land. in very great number, devouring all that lay in their path, or, That was the season when the great Queen of the hjjk-folk despatched a horde of her people to the City of Thisthissima, and another vast horde to Tham. Mere chronicle-phrases, no real information in them.

He keeps rummaging. These books down here at the bottom have no names. They are the most ancient of all, mere elliptical fragments, written in a kind of writing so old that Hresh can perceive only the edge of its meanings. Great World texts is what they are, poems, perhaps, or dramatic works, or holy scriptures, or quite possibly all three things at once. When he touches the tips of his fingers to them, their frail vellum pages come alive with images of that glorious civilization that the death-stars had destroyed, of that splendid era when the Six Peoples had walked the glowing streets of the grand cities; but everything is murky, mysterious, deceptive, as though seen in a dream. He puts them back. He closes the casket.

Useless. The Book of the Hjjks, that’s what he needs. But he knows there’s no such thing.

“Three days,” said Taniane bleakly. “I want to know where she is. I want to know what kind of insanity came over her.”

Fury and frustration were churning her soul fearfully on this bright, windy autumn day. She hadn’t slept. Her eyes were rough and raw. She felt chills and shakes. And yet she couldn’t slow down. Restlessly she prowled the stone-floored chamber at the rear of the Basilica that she had turned into the command center for the search for Nialli Apuilana, and for the investigations of the two murders as well.

Behind her, tacked helter-skelter to a wall-board, were documents by the dozens — statements of citizens who claimed to have seen Nialli Apuilana on the fateful afternoon, wild third-hand tales of supposed murder plots overheard in taverns, vague and tentative reports from the city guards on their investigations thus far. None of it was worth a thing. She knew no more than she had on the first afternoon, which was nothing at all.

“You have to try to be calm,” Boldirinthe said.

“Calm! Yes.” Taniane laughed bitterly. “Yes, of course. Above all else I must try to be calm. Two killings, and my daughter nowhere to be found, hiding in some cellar, maybe, or more likely dead, and you want me to be calm!”

They were all staring at her. The room was full of important people just then. Hresh was there, suddenly haggard and old, and Chomrik Hamadel, the keeper of the Beng talismans, and Husathirn Mueri, and the Beng justiciar Puit Kjai, and the acting captain of the guards.

“Why would you think she’s dead?” Puit Kjai asked.

“What if it’s a general conspiracy? Murder the hjjk ambassador, murder the captain of the guards, murder the chieftain’s daughter, perhaps the chieftain herself, next—”

They were staring and staring. She saw by their expressions that they had begun to think she had cracked under the strain. They might be right about that.

Softly Boldirinthe said, “Nialli Apuilana hasn’t been murdered, Taniane. She’s alive and she’ll be found. I’ve asked the Five Heavenly Ones, and they tell me that she is safe, that she is well, that she is—”

“The Five!” Taniane said. Almost a shriek, it was. “You’ve asked the Five! We should ask Nakhaba too, I suppose. Ask all the gods we know, and some that we don’t. And the Queen of the hjjks — perhaps we ought to consult Her also—”

“Perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” said Hresh.

Taniane glanced at him in astonishment. “This isn’t any time for being facetious.”

“You were being facetious. I’m serious.”

“What are you talking about, Hresh?”

Diffidently he said, “It’s something that’s best discussed between you and me only, I think. Concerning the hjjks. And Nialli.”

Her hand moved in impatient circles. “If it involves the security of the city, it ought to be brought out into the open right here and now. Unless you feel Puit Kjai is unworthy of hearing it, or Husathirn Mueri, or Boldirinthe—”

He looked at her strangely. “It involves our daughter, and where I think she has gone, and why.”

“Then it’s a security matter. Out with it, Hresh!”

“Since you insist.” Hresh sighed. But he was silent until she prodded him with a quick imperious gesture. “They were going to run off to the Nest,” he said then, bringing the words out with difficulty. “Nialli and Kundalimon. To the Nest of Nests, the great one where the Queen lives, in the far north. You know they were lovers, and twining-partners also. And they wanted no part of life in this city, neither of them. The Nest drew them like a magnet. They came to me and babbled about Nest-bond, about Queen-love, dreams and magic, how the sweet air of the Nest fills one’s soul and transforms you forever—”

His words were blades. Taniane pressed her hand to her heart. He was right that this should never have been poured out in front of all these others. It was family business, scandalous, mortifying. But too late now.

“They told you this?” Taniane said leadenly.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“The day before the games. They came to me to ask my blessing.”

Taniane said, incredulous, “You knew they were going to leave, and you kept it to yourself?”

His expression darkened. In a thin voice he said, “As I told you before, we’d have done better discussing this in private. But you insisted, remember. I kept what Nialli had told me to myself, Taniane, because I knew you’d have tried to stop her from going.”

“Which you had no objection to?”

“What was I to do? Order them thrown into prison? Even that wouldn’t have accomplished anything. You know the girl. Nothing stops her. She’s like a force of nature. She told me her plans out of love, so that I’d understand it when she disappeared. She knew I wouldn’t take any steps to prevent her.”

Taniane shook her head in disbelief. At Hresh’s stupidity, at Nialli Apuilana’s willfulness. And at her own idiocy in pushing her into Kundalimon’s arms. No, not idiocy. It had been for the good of the city. There were things she had needed to learn, and only Nialli Apuilana could have discovered them for her. She would do it all again.

“So you think that’s where she’s gone? To the Nest?”

“To the Nest, yes. The Nest of Nests.”

“Even though Kundalimon is dead?”

“ BecauseKundalimon is dead,” Hresh said. “She sees the Nest as a place of love and wisdom. When she heard he was dead, she went running to the hjjks to take refuge.”

The room was terribly silent.

Taniane trembled with rage and disbelief. “But it would take months, or years, even, to get to them. Who knows how far it is to the great Nest? How could Nialli even think of trying to do it alone?” For a moment she felt herself teetering on the brink. It was too much. Hresh’s perfidy, Nialli Apuilana’s madness. And now a room full of wide-eyed faces and gaping mouths, everyone too amazed to speak. Pitying her. Perhaps feeling contempt for her, even. Pretends to rule the city, can’t even control her own daughter. No. No. She wasn’t going to let this overwhelm her. Fiercely she said, “You’re talking foolishness, Hresh. The girl may have been crazed with love, and maybe even some sort of hjjk insanity that the boy poured into her. But she wouldn’t ever have been crazy enough to go off on a trip like that by herself. Not Nialli. No, Hresh. I still think she’s in the city somewhere. Hiding, like a wounded animal. Until she gets over her grief.”

“Dawinno grant that you’re right,” Hresh said.

“You don’t think I am?”

“I saw her with Kundalimon the day before she vanished. I talked with her. I know how she felt about him. And about the hjjks.”

Angrily Taniane said, “Then you look for her your way, and I’ll look for her mine. You’re the one with the powers. If you think she’s heading for the hjjks, send your wonderful mind after her, and track her down, and talk her into coming home, if you can. Meanwhile I’ll keep my guardsmen out searching for her.” She looked toward Husathirn Mueri, who was in charge of the murder investigations, and to Chevkija Aim, the young Beng who was the acting captain of the guards. “I want reports every four hours, day and night. Understood? The girl’s someplace nearby. She has to be. Find her. This has gone on long enough.”

Husathirn Mueri, slick and smooth as ever, smiled as though she had asked for nothing more than an extra copy of some routine report. In his most resonant way he declared, “Lady, I’m confident we’ll have her back by nightfall. Or by tomorrow at the latest. I feel sure of it. By all the gods, I’m sure of it!”

And moved his head in a slow half-circle, looking around the room at each of the others in turn, as if defying them to contradict him. With a flourish he requested permission to withdraw and get about his task.

Taniane nodded. It was time to get away from this room herself. Her shoulders quivered. She realized suddenly that she was at the end of her endurance, on the verge of tumbling down in a sobbing heap. That was new, this weakness. She battled to control herself. She couldn’t let herself break down in front of these people, whose conflicting ambitions she had held in check so long by strength, by guile, and, when necessary, by sheer force of will. Force of will was what she needed now. But she felt so weak — so drained of the power that had always been hers—

There was someone beside her, then. She heard heavy wheezing breaths. She felt soft arms, warm comforting flesh.

Boldirinthe. The enormous bulk of the offering-woman enfolded her in a steadying embrace.

“Come with me,” Boldirinthe said gently. “You need to rest now. Come. We’ll pray together. The gods will watch over Nialli Apuilana. Come with me, Taniane.”

I could pray to Dawinno, Hresh tells himself. But he doubts it would do any good. It was Dawinno, after all, who had taken Nialli Apuilana away — not Dawinno the Destroyer, but Dawinno the Transformer, the god in his higher manifestation. Dawinno seems to want her to live with the hjjks. That was why the god had allowed her to be taken the first time, so that they could fill her mind with love for them. And now he has sent her to them again. If that is what Dawinno wants — Blessed be Dawinno! Who can know his ways? — then no amount of prayer is going to bring her back. The girl has been swept from him by the hand of the Transformer, who has uses of his own for her that go beyond mere mortal understanding.

After a time Hresh’s hand reaches for the little amulet that dangles against his breastbone, the one that he took from the body of old Thaggoran when the rat-wolves killed him in the frosty plains, long ago, just a few days after the tribe had left the cocoon. It is an oval bit of what might have been polished green glass, obviously ancient, with inscriptions in its center so faint and fine that no one can make them out. Thaggoran had said it was a Great World thing. Hresh has worn it almost constantly ever since Thaggoran’s death.

He touches it now, fondling its smooth worn surface. It has no real power that he had ever been able to discover. But it was a thing of Thaggoran’s; and in those first days when Hresh became chronicler he had touched the amulet often, hoping desperately that Thaggoran’s wisdom would descend from it to him. And perhaps it has.

“Thaggoran?” he says, looking into the dimness of the darkened room atop the House of Knowledge. “Can you hear me now, wherever you are? It’s me, Hresh.”

There is silence, a silence so profound that it roars. It deepens into a stillness deeper even than any silence could be: not only the absence of any sound, but the absence even of the possibility of it. And then a murmur as of a gentle wind comes drifting in. There is a lightness in the air, a barely perceptible glow.

Hresh feels a presence entering the chamber. It seems to him that he can see gaunt grizzled bent-backed old Thaggoran before him, eyes red-rimmed and rheumy with age, his fur pure white.

“You,” Hresh says. “You, here, old man?”

“Yes. Of course. What is it, child?”

“Help me,” Hresh says softly. “Just this one last time.”

“Why, child, I thought you always insisted only on doing things by yourself!”

“Not now. Not any longer. Help me, Thaggoran.”

“If that is what you need, yes. But wait a moment. Look there, boy. There, by the door.”

There is that all-consuming roaring silence again, and then the even deeper stillness once more, and another gradual ghostly stirring in the darkness beyond the door; and then the sound of soft wind once more. A second figure has come in, just as grizzled, just as frail with age, or even more so: Hresh’s other great mentor, it is, the wise man of the Helmet People, Noum om Beng, who in the Vengiboneeza days had ordered him to call him “father,” and had taught him deep wisdom by means of oblique questions and sudden unexpected slaps in the face.

“So you’re here too, father?”

A tall gaunt figure, flimsy as a water-strider: who can it be but Noum om Beng? He nods to Thaggoran, who offers him a salute as one would to an old comrade, even though in life they had never met. They whisper together, shaking their heads and smiling knowingly, as if discussing their wayward pupil Hresh and saying to each other, “What will we do with him? The boy is so promising, and yet he can be so dense!”

Hresh smiles. To these two he would always be an unruly boy, though by now he is as old and grizzled as they, and the last tinge of color will soon be gone from his own whitening fur.

“Why do you call us?” asks Noum om Beng.

“The hjjks have taken my daughter once again,” he tells the two half-visible spectral figures who stand side by side in the shadows at the far side of the room. “The first time, they simply seized her and carried her off. She was able to escape from them, then. But now I fear something far worse. It’s her spirit they’ve captured.”

They are silent. But he feels their benign presence, sustaining him, nourishing him.

“Oh, Thaggoran, oh, father, how frightened I am, how sad and weary—”

“Nonsense!” Noum om Beng snaps.

“Nonsense, yes. You have ways, boy,” comes Thaggoran’s hoarse wispy voice. “You know that you do! The shinestones, Hresh. Now is the time at last to make use of them.”

“The shinestones? But—”

“And then the Barak Dayir,” comes the thin whisper of Noum om Beng. “Try that, too.”

“But first the shinestones. The shinestones, first.”

“Yes,” Hresh says. “The shinestones.”

He crosses the room. With quivering hands he draws the little talismans from their place of safekeeping. The shinestones are still mysteries to him after all these years. Thaggoran had died before he had any chance to tell Hresh how they were used.

Tools of divination is what they are, that much he knows: natural crystals, found deep in the Earth beneath the cocoon. They can be used in some way to focus one’s second sight and provide glimpses of things that could not be seen by ordinary methods.

Carefully he lays them out in the five-sided pattern he remembers from a day long ago when he had spied on Thaggoran in the cocoon. It seems to him that Thaggoran stands by his elbow, guiding him.

The shinestones are shining black things, bright as mirrors, which burn with some cool inner light. This one, Hresh knew, is named Vingir, and this is Nilmir, and these are Dralmir, Hrongnir, Thungvir. He stares a long while at the stones. He touches them, one by one. He feels the force that lies within them. Then, with reverence, he opens himself to them.

Tell me tell me tell me tell me—

There comes a warmth. A tingling. Hresh brings his second sight into play, and feels the stones interacting with it somehow.

“Go on,” Thaggoran says hoarsely, from the shadows.

Tell me tell me tell me—

The stones grow warmer. They throb under his hands. In fear and anguish he frames the question whose answer he is half afraid to learn.

My daughter — is she still alive?

And he conjures up the image of Nialli Apuilana with his mind.

A moment passes. The image of Nialli begins to blaze with celestial radiance. A fiery corona of white light surrounds it. Nialli Apuilana’s eyes are bright and keen. She is smiling; her hand is extended lovingly toward him. Hresh feels the vitality of her, the deep surging energy of her.

She’s alive, then?

The image comes toward him, glowing, arms outstretched.

Yes. Yes, it must be so.

Her presence is almost overpoweringly real. Hresh feels as though she were actually in the room with him, only an arm’s length away. Surely that’s proof that she lives, he thinks. Surely. Surely.

He stares in wonder and gratitude at the shinestones.

But where is she, then?

The shinestones can’t tell him that. Their warmth diminishes, the tingling ceases. The light within them seems to be flickering. The image of Nialli he has conjured up is beginning to fade. He looks toward Thaggoran, toward Noum om Beng. But he can barely find the two old ghosts. They look faint, filmy, insubstantial, in the darkness across the room.

Fiercely Hresh puts his hands to Vingir and Hrongnir. He touches Dralmir, the largest shinestone, pressing down hard. He brings the tips of his fingers to bear on Thungvir and Nilmir, and begs the stones to give him an answer. But he gets nothing from them. They have told him all they mean to tell him this day.

But Nialli is alive. He’s certain of that much.

“She’s gone to the hjjks, hasn’t she?” Hresh asks. “Why? Tell me why.”

“The answer is in your hands,” Thaggoran says.

“I don’t understand. How—”

“The Barak Dayir, boy,” says Noum om Beng. “Use the Barak Dayir!”

Hresh nods. He sweeps the shinestones into their case and takes from its pouch the other and greater talisman, the one that the tribe calls the Wonderstone, a thing older even than the Great World, which is feared by all, and which only he knows how to use.

He has come to fear it too, in these latter years. When he was a boy he thought nothing of using it to soar to the farthest realms of perception; but no longer, no longer. The Barak Dayir is too powerful now for him. Whenever he touches his sensing-organ to it now, he can feel it pulling the waning strength from him; and the visions that it gives him carry so great a freight of meaning that often they leave him dazed and stunned. In recent years he has used it only rarely.

He places the stone before him, and looks down into its mysterious depths.

“Go on,” Thaggoran says.

“Yes. Yes.”

Hresh raises his sensing-organ, coils it around the Wonderstone without actually touching it; and then, in a swift convulsive gesture, he seizes the talisman in the innermost coil and presses the tip of his sensing-organ to it.

There is a sharp sensation of dislocation and shock, as though he is plunging down an infinite shaft. But with it comes the familiar celestial music that he associates with the device, descending about him like a falling veil, enfolding him, sustaining him. He knows there is nothing to fear. He enters that music, as he has done so often before, and allows himself to be dissolved by it and swept aloft by it, and carried upward into a world of light and color and transcendental forms where all things are possible, where the entire cosmos is within his grasp.

Northward he soars, traversing the great breast of the planet, flying high over dark land scaled and crusted with the myriad deposits of the Earth’s long history, the rubble and debris left behind by the world that had been before the world.

The City of Dawinno is below him, white and grand and lovely, nestling in its lush hills beside its sheltered bay. To the west he sees the immense ominous black shield of the sea lying with monstrous weight across half the Earth, concealing deep mysteries beyond his comprehension. He goes higher and higher yet, and onward, northward, over the zone where the city gives way to scattered outer settlements, and then to farms and forest.

As he climbs he seeks the hot bright spark that is the soul of Nialli Apuilana. But he feels no trace of her.

He is well to the north, now, looking down on tiny farming villages, bright specks of white and green against the brown of newly tilled fields, and beyond them into the land that hasn’t yet been resettled in the New Springtime, where the wild beasts of the Long Winter still roam free in the forests and the parched and eroded relics of abandoned Great World cities lie shriveling like shards of bone on the dry windy uninhabited plateaus. From them, dead as they are, the formidable resonant presence of the Six Peoples whose domain all this once had been still radiates.

No Nialli. He is mystified. Had they come for her in a magic chariot, and carried her in the twinkling of an eye across the thousands of leagues to the Nest?

He continues northward.

Now the City of Yissou slides into view far to the north, huddling like a wary tortoise behind its immense wall; and then in another moment he is past it, and coming over Vengiboneeza now, its turquoise and crimson towers all aglow with swarming insect life. There is a Nest here, above the ground, sprawling like a strange gray growth over the ancient Great World structures, but no Nialli. He has reached so great an altitude that he can make out the sweeping curve of the shoreline moving sharply to his right as he advances into the north. The entire coast of the continent slants notably eastward as it goes from south to north, so that the City of Yissou can lie far to the east of Dawinno and nevertheless be near the sea, and Vengiboneeza be farther eastward still, but also have its easy access to the water.

Onward. Beyond Vengiboneeza, into territory he has never dared enter except in imagination.

This is the land of the hjjks. They had ruled it in Great World days and they had never relinquished command of it, not even in the brutal worst of the Long Winter, when rivers and mountains of ice covered everything. Somehow they endured; somehow they provided for themselves when all other creatures were forced to flee to the milder south.

Now the ice is gone, laying bare the sorry barren land. Hresh looks down on red buttes and mesas, on knobby terraced promontories rising above dismal gray-brown wastes where no grass would grow, on empty riverbeds streaked with white saline outcroppings, on a chilly desolate landscape of forbidding aridity.

And yet there is life here.

The Barak Dayir brings him incontrovertible impulses of it. Here, here, here: the unmistakable blaze of life. No more than isolated sparks far from one another in this miserable netherworld over which he hovers; but they are sparks with a terrible intensity that nothing could quench.

They are hjjk sparks, though, only hjjk sparks, no trace here of anything but hjjks.

He senses insect souls by twos and threes, or tens and twenties, or a few hundreds, little bands of hjjks and some not so little, moving across the bleak face of these northlands on errands which even the Wonderstone can’t interpret for him. The scattered traveling bands move with a determination stronger than iron, less pliant than stone. Nothing, Hresh knows, would halt them, neither cold nor drought nor the wrath of the gods. They could have been planets, journeying on unswervable orbits across the sky. The strength that comes from them is terrifying.

These, Hresh thought, are the inhuman bowelless hjjks his people have always dreaded, the invulnerable and implacable insect-men of myth and fable and chronicle.

Is it to these monsters that his daughter has gone, seeking Nest-bond, seeking Queen-love? How could she have done it? What love, what mercy can she expect from them?

And yet — yet—

He tunes his perceptions, he extends and deepens the range of the Barak Dayir, and in amazement he tumbles through the net of his own preconceptions, he falls like a plummeting star into a new realm of awareness, and just as he has seen life behind the lifelessness it seems to him now that he sees souls behind the soullessness. He feels the presence of the Nest.

Many nests, actually. Widely spaced across the land, settlements largely underground, warm snug tunnels that radiate in a dozen directions from a central core, so that they remind him of nothing so much as the cocoon in which his own people had passed the seven hundred thousand years of the Long Winter. They teem with hjjks, uncountable multitudes of them, moving with the purposefulness and singlemindedness that the People regard with such horror. But it isn’t a soulless purposefulness. There is a plan, a central organizing principle, an inner coherence; and each of those millions of creatures moves in accordance with its part in it. It is as Nialli Apuilana had said, that day she spoke before the Presidium: they are no mere vermin. Their civilization, strange though it might be, is rich and complex, even great.

In each Nest lies a slumbering Queen, a great somnolent creature, swaddled and guarded, about whom the entire intricate life of the settlement revolves. Hresh, sensing the Queens now, is powerfully tempted to touch the mind of one of them with his own, to sink down into that sleeping vastness, to enter its powerful spirit and attempt to comprehend it. But he doesn’t dare. He doesn’t dare. He holds back, uneasy, uncertain, gripped by the timidities of age and fatigue, telling himself that that is not what he came here for, not now, not yet.

His roving mind seeks his daughter. Does not find her.

Not here? Not even here?

Farther north, then, perhaps. These are only subordinate Nests, subordinate Queens. Seek elsewhere, then. He feels the lodestone pull of the huge capital that lies beyond them, the home of the Queen of Queens, to which these great quiescent creatures are mere handmaidens.

Nialli? Nialli?

On and on he goes. Still no hint of her presence. Now he feels his disembodied consciousness approaching the Nest of Nests, ablaze on the northern horizon like a second sun. A terrible irresistible warmth comes from it. From it comes the incandescent all-loving soul-embrace of the Queen of Queens, calling to him, drawing him in.

No Nialli here. I have misled myself. She didn’t go to the Nest after all. I’ve gone in the wrong direction. Taken myself thousands of leagues away from where I should have looked.

Hresh halts his flight. The bright radiance on the horizon grows no closer. Time for him to return. He’s traveled as far this day as he can. The Queen of Queens is calling, but he won’t answer that summons, not now. It’s a powerful temptation: to enter the Nest, to fuse his soul with Hers, to learn more of what the world within this great hjjk-hive is like. The Hresh of the old days, wild little Hresh-full-of-questions, wouldn’t have hesitated. But this Hresh knows that he has responsibilities elsewhere. Let the Queen wait a little longer for him.

The warmth of the Nest burns in his flesh. The heat of Queen-love courses through his spirit. But with a powerful effort he makes himself turn, pulls away, begins the homeward journey.

Southward now he flew, past the barren lands, past radiant Vengiboneeza, past Yissou, past the dry plateaus of ruined fragmentary cities. The familiar warm greenness of his own province came into view. He could see the bay, the shore, the hills, the white towers of the city that he himself had built. He saw the parapet of the tall narrow House of Knowledge, and saw himself within the building, sitting sightless at his desk, the Barak Dayir clutched in his sensing-organ. A moment later he was united with himself once more.

“Thaggoran?” he called, looking around the room. “Noum om Beng? Are you still here?”

No, they’re gone. He’s alone, dazed, shaken, dumb-founded by the voyage he has just made. Somehow the night has fled while he journeyed. Golden light out of the east floods the room.

And Nialli — he has to find Nialli—

Surely she’s somewhere nearby, as Taniane had argued all along. Certainly she lives; the shinestones wouldn’t have deceived him about that. The life-impulses he had detected had been unmistakably hers. But where, where? In exhaustion he contemplated the Barak Dayir, wondering if he could muster the energy for another excursion.

I’ll rest a little while, he told himself. Ten minutes, half an hour—

He became aware of the sounds of shouting in the street far below.

An uprising? An invasion? With an effort Hresh rose and went outside, to the parapet. People were running and calling to one another down there. What were they saying? He could make nothing out — nothing—

A gust of wind blew him a few syllables only: “Nialli! Apuilana!”

“What is it?” Hresh called. “What’s happened?”

His voice would not carry. No one could hear him. Fearfully he rushed down the endless winding staircase to the ground floor, and out into the street. He stood clinging to the gate of the building, gasping for breath, his legs trembling, and looked around. No one there. Whoever had been shouting had moved along. But then others came, a band of boys on their way to school, tumbling and leaping, tossing their notebooks about. When they saw him they halted, adopting a more sober demeanor as befitted an encounter with the chronicler. Their eyes, though, were bright and jubilant.

“Is there news?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Your daughter, sir — the lady Nialli Apuilana—”

“What of her?”

“Found, sir. In the lakelands. The hunter Sipirod found her. They’re bringing her back right now!”

“And is she—”

He couldn’t get the whole question out soon enough. The boys were on their way again already, scampering and cavorting.

“ — all right?”

They called something back to him. Hresh was unable to make out the words. But their tone was cheerful and the sense of it was clear. All was well. Nialli lived and was returning to the city. He gave thanks to the gods.

“You must come with me, Mother Boldirinthe,” the earnest young guardsman said. “The chieftain requires it. Her daughter is in great need of healing.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” the offering-woman said, smiling at the guardsman’s solemnity. He was a Beng, like most of the guards, blocky and thick-tongued, with a heavy manner about him. But he was very young. Much was forgivable, on that account. “Don’t you think I knew I’d be summoned? Four days lying in those vile swamps — what a shape the girl must be in! Here, boy, help me up. I’m getting as big as a vermilion.”

She extended her arm. But the guardsman, with unexpected diligence and courtesy, rushed around behind her chair and slipped his own arm around her to lift her to her feet. She tottered a bit. He steadied her. It was hard work for him, strong though he was. Boldirinthe chuckled at her own unwieldiness. Flesh was accumulating on her with the force of an avalanche, new layers of it every day. Soon she’d be entombed within herself, virtually unable to move. Her legs were like pillars, her belly was a rippling massive mound. That was a matter of little concern to her, though. She was grateful to the gods for having let her live long enough to undergo this transformation, and for having provided her with the sustenance out of which she had created her vastness. Many others hadn’t been so fortunate.

“Over there,” she said. “That satchel on the table — hand it to me—”

“I can carry it for you, mother.”

“No one must carry it but me. Hand it here. There’s a good boy. You have a wagon waiting?”

“In the courtyard, yes.”

“Take my arm. That’s it. What’s your name?”

“Maju Samlor, mother.”

She nodded. “Been in the guards long?”

“Almost a year.”

“Terrible thing, your captain’s murder. But it won’t go unpunished, will it?”

“We seek the slayer day and night,” said Maju Samlor. He grunted a little as she swayed and lurched, but held her steady. At a cautious pace they proceeded into the courtyard. This was twice in two days that she had left her cloister, now, for only yesterday she had attended the meeting that Taniane had called at the Basilica. That was unusual for her, in these days, to go out so often. Movement was so difficult. Her thighs rubbed together with each step, her breasts pulled her groundward like weights. But perhaps it would do her some good, she thought, to bestir herself more frequently.

The long satchel she carried was more of a burden to her than she had expected. She had loaded it that morning with the things she would need in caring for Nialli Apuilana — the talismans of Friit and Mueri, of course, but also the wands of healing, which were carved of heavy wood, and an array of herbs and potions in stone jars. Too many things, maybe. But she managed to hobble out to the wagon without dropping it.

Her hillside cloister was near the head of the steep street known as Mueri Way. Just a hundred paces or so farther uphill was Mueri House. The alleyway in which Kundalimon had been murdered lay midway between Mueri House and her cloister.

It angered Boldirinthe that blood — innocent blood — had been shed so close to her holy precinct. How could anyone, even a madman, have dared violate this place of healing by casting an aura of violent death over it? Each morning since the killing she had sent one of her junior priestesses to the site to perform a rite of purification. But she hadn’t gone to it herself. Now, as Maju Samlor tugged at the reins and the xlendi moved forward into the street, she turned to look toward the fatal place.

A crowd seemed to have gathered. She saw thirty or forty people, or perhaps more, bustling about the narrow entrance to the alley. The ones going in carried string-bags bulging with fruit, and others bore bunches of flowers, or armloads of greenery of some sort — boughs pulled from trees, so it looked. The ones coming from the alley were empty-handed.

Boldirinthe turned to Maju Samlor, frowning. “What’s going on there, do you think?”

“They’re bringing offerings, mother.”

“Offerings?”

“Nature-offerings. Branches, fruits, flowers, things like that. For the one who died, you know, the boy from the hjjks. It’s been going on two or three days.”

“They place offerings on the spot where he died?” That was strange. Her priestesses had said nothing about it to her. “Take me over there and let me see.”

“But the chieftain’s daughter—”

“She can wait another few minutes. Take me over.”

The guardsman shrugged and pulled the wagon around, and drove it up the street to the mouth of the alley. At closer range, now, Boldirinthe realized that there were only a few adults in the crowd. Most were boys and girls, some of them quite young. From where she sat it was hard for her to get a good view of what was going on, nor did she want to dismount and investigate directly. But she could see that someone had set up some kind of shrine in there. At the far end where the line of offering-bearers terminated the green boughs were piled higher than a man’s head, and they were draped with bits of cloth, glittering metallic ribbons, long bright-colored paper streamers.

For a long moment she sat there watching. Some of the children noticed her, and waved and called her name, and she smiled to them and returned their greetings. But she did not leave the wagon.

“Would you like a closer look?” Maju Samlor asked. “I could help you out, and—”

“Another time,” Boldirinthe said. “Take me to Nialli Apuilana now.”

The guardsman turned the wagon and headed it down the hill.

So now they’re worshiping him, Boldirinthe thought in wonder. The one who died: they are making him a god. Or so it would appear. How strange. It’s all so very strange, everything that has happened that is in any way connected to that boy.

She found it bothersome that such things should be going on. That there should be a shrine in the alleyway, that the children should be bringing offerings to Kundalimon as though he were a god, seemed improper to her.

Perhaps it’s not so serious, though, she told herself.

She thought of all the unorthodoxies that she’d seen arise during her long life. Had any of them done any real harm? These were unstable times. The coming of the New Springtime had shaken the People out of the narrow ways of the cocoon by sending them out to face the unknown mysteries of the larger world; and it wasn’t surprising that they would grasp at new salvations when the old ones didn’t appear to be producing immediate gratification.

Some of the novelties had been short-lived. Like that odd cult of human-worship that had sprung up during the last days in Vengiboneeza, when a few of the simpler folk had met secretly to dance around a statue of a human that they found somewhere in the old city, and had made prayers and sacrifices before it. But that had died out in the time of the second migration.

On the other hand, the worship of the alien god Nakhaba had been integrated into the life of the tribe after the union with the Bengs, and that seemed to be permanent. And other creeds had come into fashion from time to time, centering around the stars, the sun, the great ocean, and even less likely things. Boldirinthe had heard it whispered around that Nialli Apuilana was a worshiper of hjjks, and kept some holy talisman of theirs in her room in the House of Nakhaba.

Well, so be it, thought Boldirinthe. She was a godly woman, devout enough to understand that there is godliness in everything. The Five Heavenly Ones weren’t necessarily the only repositories of the sacred. They were simply the ones that she had sworn to serve. It wasn’t that they were true and the other gods false: just that to her they were the most efficacious, the ones who partook most fully of the holy. If these children wanted to make offerings to the memory of Kundalimon, so be it. So be it. Worship is worship.

“Hurry,” Boldirinthe said to the guardsman. “Can’t you make that xlendi of yours go any faster? Nialli Apuilana is very weak, you know. She needs me urgently.”

“But you just said—”

“If you won’t use the whip, give it to me. You think I’m afraid to hit with it? Go faster, boy. Faster!”

Nialli Apuilana lay on a pallet in one of the upstairs rooms of the chieftain’s residence, her eyes closed, her breathing slow and shallow. Her fur was matted and damp. Now and then she muttered something unintelligible. She seemed lost in some realm beyond consciousness, farther than sleep but just this side of death. Seeing her thus entranced, Boldirinthe was reminded of something out of her distant youth, out of the cocoon days: the strange being — Hresh said he was a human — whom the tribe had called the Dream-Dreamer, who had lain for years deep in unending sleep, only to awaken and die on the day when the People received the omens of the Going Forth. He had slept the same way, as if he were more in another world than in this one.

A somber little group surrounded Nialli Apuilana’s bedside. Taniane was there, of course, looking taut and drawn, as though about to crack. Hresh, too, seemed to have aged years in a few days. And also Husathirn Mueri and Tramassilu the jewelry-maker, and Fashinatanda, Taniane’s blind and doddering old mother, and the architect Tisthali and the grain-merchant Sturnak Khatilifon and his mate Sipulakinain, who was ill, a mere charred ember of herself, with death’s hand practically at her shoulder. And there were still others, some of whom the offering-woman couldn’t place at all.

What such a mob as this was doing in a sickroom was beyond Boldirinthe’s comprehension. No doubt they all wanted to offer help. But they were pressing too close on the poor girl, overheating the air, draining the room of vitality. With quick impatient flutterings of her hands Boldirinthe cleared them all out, all but Taniane and Sipulakinain, whose presence seemed somehow significant. She let old Fashinatanda stay also, silent in a corner, seemingly unaware of anything that was going on.

“Where was she found?” Boldirinthe asked.

“In the lakelands,” said Taniane. “Lying on her face in the mud beside a little pond, according to Sipirod, with a bunch of animals grouped around her and watching her closely, some caviandis and stinchitoles, a little herd of scantrins, a couple of gabools. Sipirod said it was the most amazing thing she had ever seen, those animals gathering around her. It was almost as if they were guarding her. She must have been there two days or so. Burning with fever, said Sipirod. She must have been drinking the pond water. And of course she had no food.”

“Has she been conscious at all?”

“Delirious, only. She babbles sometimes — the Queen, the Nest, all of that. And calls Kundalimon’s name. They were lovers, did you know that? They were going to elope to hjjk country together, Boldirinthe!”

“Poor girl. No wonder she ran.” But then the offering-woman made a grunting sound of dismissal. None of that mattered now.

“Bring that table over here, will you? Set my satchel on it. There, where I can get at it. And give me something to sit on, beside the bed. It’s all I can do to keep myself on my feet, you know.”

She lifted Nialli Apuilana’s arm and ran her fingers along the length of it, feeling for the life-currents. They were very feeble. The girl was warm but her soul-river was flowing sluggishly, like quicksilver beginning to congeal. Boldirinthe turned her face away from Taniane, not wanting the chieftain to see the extent of her concern. Another few hours in that swamp and there’d have been a dead girl here. It was possible that they would lose her yet.

No. I won’t allow it, Boldirinthe thought.

From her satchel she drew the two great wands of healing and laid them alongside Nialli Apuilana, who barely stirred. She took out her herbs and ointments, and set them in a row on the table. She placed the talisman of Friit the healer at Nialli Apuilana’s head and that of Mueri the comforter at her feet.

To Sipulakinain she said, “Bring me that brazier. We’ll burn the leaves of Friit in it, and see to it you breathe the smoke yourself. It’ll do you some good too.”

“I’m on the mend, Boldirinthe,” said Sipulakinain.

The offering-woman gave the grain-merchant’s mate a skeptical look. “Yissou be praised for that,” she said without conviction.

Together they worked to light the aromatic herb. Taniane watched, silent, motionless. In the far corner the old woman Fashinatanda prayed in a toneless mumble, seeing nothing. Purplish smoke curled upward.

“More,” Boldirinthe said. “Another five sprigs.”

Sipulakinain’s hands trembled. But she fed the herbs to the blaze. Boldirinthe took Nialli Apuilana’s ankles and held them. She felt the congestion in the girl’s lungs, the weariness in her heart. Her soul-center was chilled and enfeebled. Nialli Apuilana was strong, though. These weaknesses could be driven from her.

The smoke grew thick in the room.

Now the gods became visible.

Boldirinthe had long had the skill of seeing the Five Heavenly Ones clearly. It was not something she ever spoke of to others, for she knew that the gods, real though they were, had never appeared to anyone else in actual manifestations, only as powerful abstract presences. It was different with her. They had forms and faces, familiar ones. Mueri the Consoler was much like Torlyri to her, a tall strong handsome woman whose dark fur was marked with white. Dawinno the Destroyer had the look of Harruel, a fierce red-bearded giant. Yissou was wise and remote, sparse of fur, almost like a human. The Provider, Emakkis, was fat and jolly. Friit the Healer was very serious, and frail, a little like Hresh. They stood now by her side. She indicated the sleeping girl, and they nodded, and Friit told her what must be done, and Boldirinthe, though she felt a stab of uneasiness, made ready unhesitatingly to do it.

“You have to leave the room now,” she said to Taniane.

“I—”

“There’s too much strength in you. We want only the sick and the old and the fat in here now.”

Taniane’s mouth opened, and closed again. She gave Boldirinthe a look of astonishment and, perhaps, anger. But she went out without a word.

Boldirinthe applied the ointments of healing now, one to Nialli Apuilana’s lips, another to her breasts, a third to the place between her thighs. Nialli Apuilana stirred and murmured as the heat of these herbal creams began to penetrate her skin.

“Get the old one,” she said to Sipulakinain. “I want her sitting on the bed, with her hands on the girl’s feet. You sit up there, and take her head against your bosom. I’m going to twine with her.”

Sipulakinain nodded. Though she was weak and uncertain on her feet herself, she slipped her arm around the shoulders of the trembling old grandmother and led her to the bedside, and placed her in the position Boldirinthe had requested. She lay down then and cradled Nialli Apuilana’s head.

Ponderously Boldirinthe maneuvered her cumbersome body about until her sensing-organ was within reach of Nialli Apuilana’s. There was no question of her lying down beside the girl on the pallet in the usual twining position, but twining might be accomplished in other ways. She looked up and saw Mueri smiling at her, saw Friit holding his hand high in approval. Yissou himself helped to move her into position.

Now came a moment of uncertainty and unease.

Boldirinthe was too old to feel fear, but she was not beyond apprehensiveness. She had twined with Nialli Apuilana once before, years ago, on the girl’s twining-day — on the very eve, as it had turned out, of her capture by the hjjks — when she had come to Boldirinthe for the traditional instruction in the art. Boldirinthe hadn’t forgotten what that twining had been like.

That other time Boldirinthe had been expecting nothing more than the usual childish chaos of a first twining, the soft unformed vulnerable young soul struggling painfully to focus itself amidst the embarrassment of the new intimacy; but instead Nialli Apuilana, when the union of their two souls had been achieved, had revealed herself to be strong and fierce, as hard and as firm-edged as some machine, a thing of shining metal and driving force. That was frightening, to encounter such strength in one so young. Boldirinthe had been exhausted by their twining. She hadn’t expected ever to repeat that experience. Nor was she eager to.

But the Five had commanded it. Boldirinthe touched her sensing-organ to that of the unconscious girl, and began to enter into communion with her.

The girl’s soul was remote and elusive. There were moments when Boldirinthe felt she would be unable to reach it; there were moments when she felt Nialli Apuilana’s spirit slipping away entirely, separating from the girl’s body. But Fashinatanda and Sipulakinain served as barriers to prevent her soul’s departure. They contained it. And, little by little Boldirinthe was able to surround it and take it into her capacious embrace.

Now Nialli Apuilana’s sleeping self opened gladly to her.

Her soul was infinitely deeper and stranger and richer than it had been that other time, four years earlier. Nialli Apuilana had been a girl, then; now she was a woman, with all that that implied of depths of understanding. She had coupled; she had twined; she had loved.

And she had accepted the Five Heavenly Ones.

What a surprise that was! There hadn’t been a shred of belief in Nialli Apuilana the other time. Not unusual, such godlessness, among the modern young ones. But Nialli Apuilana hadn’t simply been indifferent to the goodness of the gods before: she had sealed herself up against it, she had rejected it outright.

Now, though, to her vast amazement, Boldirinthe felt the essence of the Five within the girl’s soul. There was no doubt of their presence, new and fresh. The auras of all of them were there, Friit and Emakkis, Mueri and Dawinno, and preeminently Yissou the Protector, casting a glow of godliness through the corridors and channels of her soul. Boldirinthe had not remotely expected that. Their holy fire burned in her, and it was all, or almost all, that was keeping her alive. Perhaps they had come to her as she lay close to death in that swamp.

But the Nest was present within her also. The Queen was present within her.

Boldirinthe could feel the great massive alien power of the insect monarch, surrounding and infiltrating every aspect of the girl’s spirit, interpenetrating even the auras of the Five in a manner as blasphemous as it was improbable. Hjjk-light blazed like an angry fire. Hjjk-mists swathed Nialli Apuilana’s soul. Tenacious claws clung everywhere. Surely this was something that had befallen her during her captivity. The offering-woman had to struggle to keep herself from recoiling from these mysteries, or from being drawn down into them.

But she knew what to do. She was here to heal. With the help of the gods she would drive out the evil.

Unhesitatingly she set about her work. She grappled with the dark thing within the chieftain’s daughter. She hacked at it, she speared it, she slashed it to its heart. It seemed to weaken. Its claws flailed and thrashed. The offering-woman pulled one claw free, and another, and another, though they sprang back nearly as quickly as she ripped them away. The thing fought back with cold malevolent fury, lashing her with lattices of force, showering her with torrents of icy flame. She stood her ground against the onslaught. She had spent all her life in preparation for this moment. Again and again the sluggish invincible monster stirred and rose and leaped, and each time Boldirinthe fought it down, and again it leaped and again it was cast down, and the offering-woman forged new weapons and went forward, battling with all her strength.

Slowly, grudgingly, the thing retreated to the depths of the girl’s soul and crawled into the lair that it maintained there. Not that it had yielded; but it had given ground. There was hope now that Nialli Apuilana could fight the rest of the battle herself. Boldirinthe had done all she could.

To Friit the offering-woman said, “Take command of her now, I beg you, and give her strength.”

“Yes, I will do that,” the god replied.

“And you, Dawinno. Emakkis. Mueri. Yissou.”

“Yes,” said each of them in turn.

Boldirinthe made a passageway for them, and the gods entered her, uniting themselves with the auras of themselves that were already within her. They bolstered Nialli Apuilana where she was flagging, and restored her where she was weakened, and filled her where she had been drained.

Then, one by one, they departed.

The last of them to leave was Mueri, who paused and touched Boldirinthe’s own soul, embracing it most tenderly as Torlyri might have embraced her long ago. Then Mueri too was gone.

Nialli Apuilana stirred. Her eyes opened. She blinked several times, very quickly. She frowned. She smiled.

“Sleep, girl,” Boldirinthe said. “You’ll be strong again when you wake.”

Nialli Apuilana nodded dreamily. Turning to Sipulakinain, Boldirinthe said, “Send in Taniane. Only Taniane.”

The chieftain brought a cloud of worry in with her; but it dissipated the moment she saw the change in Nialli Apuilana. At once her own vigor returned, and the light flooded back into her eyes. Boldirinthe was too tired for gratitude. “Yes, the job’s done, and done well,” she said. “Keep that crowd out of here, now. Let the girl rest. Afterward, warm broths, the juice of fresh fruits. She’ll be up and around in a couple of days, good as new, I promise you.”

“Boldirinthe—”

“Not necessary,” the offering-woman said. The girl’s eyes were closed again. She had slipped into a deep, healthy, healing sleep. Auras glowed around her. But Boldirinthe still could see the wounded Nest-creature crouching deep behind the outer aspect, the hidden hjjk within, glowing like an angry red sore, and she shivered a little.

She knew, though, that she had dealt it a terrible blow. The rest was up to Nialli Apuilana. And to the Five.

“Help me up,” she said, wheezing a little, patting her brow. “Or get one or two of the others, if you can’t do it alone.”

Taniane laughed. And raised her easily from her bench, as though Boldirinthe were no bigger than a child.

Outside, in the gray stone hallway where green glowglobes flickered, Husathirn Mueri approached her and took her by the arm. He looked edgy and forlorn.

“Will she live, Boldirinthe?”

“Of course she’ll live. Never any doubt about that.”

She tried to move on. This day she had gone down into the deepest abyss and returned from it, a costly business, hard on the soul. She had no wish to stand here chattering with Husathirn Mueri now.

But he was holding her. Wouldn’t let her go. A warm insincere grin starting to spread across his face.

“You’re too modest,” he said. “I know a little of the healing arts myself. That girl was dying until you came here to treat her.”

“Well, she’s not dying now.”

“You have my deepest gratitude.”

“I’m sure that I do.”

She stared at him a long moment, trying to see behind his words. There were always meanings behind his meanings. Even when he sneezed it seemed somehow devious.

Finding Husathirn Mueri likable was something that Boldirinthe had never managed to do, which troubled her, for she disliked disliking anyone; and he was Torlyri’s son, which made the matter worse. She had loved Torlyri as she loved her own mother. And here was Husathirn Mueri, quick and clever and handsome, and warmhearted, after a fashion, and looking a good deal like Torlyri with those brilliant white stripes running through his black fur; and Boldirinthe couldn’t like him at all. It was his slyness, she thought, and his unbridled ambition. Where had those traits come from? Not from Torlyri, certainly. Nor from his father, that hard and austere Beng warrior. Well, she told herself, the gods have their mysteries. Each one of us is a special mystery of the gods.

Softly Husathirn Mueri said, “You know that I love her.”

Boldirinthe shrugged. “So do we all.”

“I meant in another fashion.”

“Yes. Of course you do.”

His foolishness saddened her. She had no wish to see anyone hurt himself this way. Wasn’t Husathirn Mueri aware how strange she was, the girl he claimed to love? He must at least suspect by now that she had taken Kundalimon as her lover. And that after refusing the best young men the city had to offer. Well, Kundalimon was dead; perhaps Husathirn Mueri no longer regarded him as important. But what would he say if he knew that he had another and greater rival, no less than the Queen of Hjjks? How he would turn away in horror! But he’d have to twine with Nialli Apuilana to find it out, and Boldirinthe doubted that he had much chance of that.

She moved on, slowly, toward the outer door.

“May I have a few more words with you?” Husathirn Mueri asked.

“If you walk with me. Standing in one place is unpleasant for me, now that I’m so huge.”

“Let me carry your satchel.”

“The satchel is my holy burden. What do you want to say to me, Husathirn Mueri?”

She thought it would be something more about Nialli Apuilana. But instead he said, “Are you aware, Boldirinthe, that some sort of cult is already beginning to spring up around the murdered ambassador from the hjjks?”

“I know there’s a shrine of some sort in his memory, yes.”

“More than just a shrine.” He licked his lips nervously. “I have the guardsmen’s reports. The children are praying to him. And not only the children, but it started with them. They’ve got some little bits of his clothing, and things from his room, hjjk things that somehow were taken after he died. Boldirinthe, they’re making him into a god!”

“Are they?” she said indifferently. “Well, such things happen from time to time. As they please. It’ll change nothing for me. The Five remain sufficient for my needs.”

Sourly he said, “I didn’t expect you to start worshiping Kundalimon. But doesn’t this trouble you at all?”

“Why does it trouble you?”

“Don’t you understand, Boldirinthe, they’re setting up a boy who was half hjjk by spirit, or more than half, as a figure of power in the city! They want favors from him. They want guidance. And they’ll confer favors in return. Do you really want to see a new religion get started here? A new priesthood, new temples, new ideas? Anything could come out of that. Anything. While Kundalimon was alive he went around preaching Nest-stuff to them, and suggesting to them that they follow him back to the Nest. And the children loved it. They ate it up. I have absolute proof of that. What if this — this cult — falls under the control of someone who can build on what Kundalimon was starting? Will we all find ourselves loving the hjjks, and begging them to love us? Will Nakhaba and the Five be swept away? You’re too casual about it, Boldirinthe. This will grow only worse, and very rapidly, like fire spreading in the drylands. I can feel it. I’m not without a certain shrewdness in these matters, you know.”

His face was flushed and disquieted. His amber eyes, gleaming with feverish excitement, were like polished glass beads. Something was at work in him, no doubt of that. She could not remember having seen him so agitated, it wasn’t much like Husathirn Mueri to display such open emotion.

It was the last thing she needed right now, this frantic outburst. She was still shaken by the shock of what she had seen in Nialli Apuilana’s soul. What she needed was to return to her cloister and rest. A quiet dinner with dear old Staip, a few bowls of wine, and bed — yes—

Let come what may, she thought. New cults, new gods, anything. I’ve worked hard today. I’m tired. I long for my couch.

Coolly she said, “Perhaps you’re making a great deal out of very little. The children liked Kundalimon, yes. He amused them. He told them interesting stories. Now they mourn him. They bring offerings to his spirit. I saw them at it as I came here today. A harmless gesture, a memorial, nothing more. And in a few days it’ll all blow over. He’ll become part of history, something for Hresh to enter in his chronicles, and that’ll be the end of it.”

“And if you’re wrong? If there’s a revolution here instead? What then, Boldirinthe?” He waved his hands excitedly.

But she had had enough.

She said, “Speak to Taniane if these things bother you, Husathirn Mueri. I’m fat and old, very fat, very old, and whatever changes will come, if they do, will probably come when I’m no longer here to see them. Or if I still am, well, I’ve seen more changes than you can imagine in my lifetime already. I can stand to see some more. Let me go, now. May Mueri give you peace, eh? Or Nakhaba, if you prefer. All gods are one, to me.”

“What? But you are sworn to the Five!”

“The Five are my gods. But all gods are godly.” She made a sign of Mueri at him, and moved slowly onward past him to the door, and down the steps to the waiting wagon.

The boy’s name was Tikharein Tourb. He was nine. He wore the black-and-yellow Nest-guardian talisman on his breast.

The girl was Chhia Kreun. She had the wrist-amulet.

They stood before a congregation of eleven children and three adults. Aromatic boughs were piled high in the little rough-walled basement room, so that the pungent odor of sippariu sap mingled with the sweetness of dilifar needles to make the air almost intoxicatingly strong.

“Hold hands,” said Tikharein Tourb. “Everyone, touch together! Close your eyes.”

Chhia Kreun, standing next to the boughs, was virtually in a trance. She began to chant, unknown words, thick and harsh. Perhaps they were hjjk words. Who could say? They were sounds that Kundalimon had taught them. What they might mean, no one knew. But they had a holy sound.

“Everyone,” Tikharein Tourb cried. “Come on! Everyone, say the words! Say them! Say them! It is the prayer to the Queen!”

The negotiations, such as they were, were stalled. Since the news had come of those murders in Dawinno, Thu-Kimnibol had fallen into some sort of black pit of brooding. Salaman watched him with surprise and growing uneasiness. All day long he paced the halls of the palace like some huge beast, and at the royal feasts each night he said practically nothing.

What was bothering him, so he said, was the lateness of the autumn caravan from the City of Dawinno. It was nine days late arriving at Yissou. “Where is it?” Thu-Kimnibol kept asking. “Why isn’t it here?” He seemed obsessed by its failure to arrive. But there had to be more to it than that. For a caravan to be a few days late wasn’t sufficient cause for so much fretting.

“There must be bad weather somewhere down south,” Salaman said, trying to soothe him. Thu-Kimnibol was too explosive, too unpredictable, when he was this troubled. “Heavy storms along the way, flooding on the highway, some such thing.”

“Storms? We’ve had nothing but one golden day after another.”

“But perhaps to the south—”

“No. The caravan’s late because there’s trouble in Dawinno. Once killing begins, where does it stop? There’s some upheaval going on there.”

So that’s what’s worrying him, Salaman thought. He still thinks he should have gone home the moment he got word of the murders. He feels guilty because he’s up here doing nothing while Dawinno may be in an uproar. If Taniane had wanted him to come home, though, Taniane would have asked him to come home. The fact that she didn’t must mean there’s no problem there.

“My prayers go with you, cousin,” Salaman said unctuously. “Yissou grant that all is well in your city.”

But the days went by, five more, six, seven, and still no caravan. Now Salaman too was puzzled. The caravans were always punctual. In winter and spring Yissou sent caravans south, and in summer and autumn they came northward from Dawinno. They were important to the economic life of both cities. Now Salaman found himself plagued with fretful merchants and manufacturers whose warehouses were piled high with goods ready to offer. Who would they sell them to, they asked him, if the caravan didn’t come? And the marketplace vendors who dealt in goods from Dawinno had the opposite problem. They needed to restock; but where was the caravan? “Soon,” Salaman told them all. “It’s on its way.” Yissou! Where was it? He was getting as edgy as Thu-Kimnibol.

Was something really wrong down south? He did, of course, have a few spies in Dawinno. But he hadn’t heard from them in weeks. The distance between the two cities was so great, the time of travel so long. We need some better way of getting news from abroad, the king told himself. Something faster, something that doesn’t involve asking couriers to travel hundreds of leagues. Something using second sight, maybe. He made a note to give the matter some thought.

Thu-Kimnibol continued to pace and scowl. Salaman found himself beginning to do it too.

Gods! Where was that caravan?

Husathirn Mueri said, “I trust your daughter’s recovery is proceeding well, lady.”

“As well as can be hoped for,” said Taniane, in a dull, toneless way.

He was astounded to see how tired she looked. Her shoulders were slumped, her hands lay limply in her lap, her fur was faded and without sheen. Once she had seemed to him more like Nialli Apuilana’s older sister than her mother, but no longer.

Maybe the state of Nialli Apuilana’s health had been the wrong topic to open with. He went on quickly to something else.

“As you requested, lady, I have the latest report on the search for Curabayn Bangkea’s murderer. The report is that no progress has been made.”

Taniane stared at him balefully. “There won’t ever be any progress there, will there, Husathirn Mueri?”

“I think not, lady. It was such a casual crime, it seems—”

“Casual? Murder?”

Suddenly there was cold fire in her eyes.

He said, “I meant only that it must have been a sudden brawl, something that came up out of nowhere, perhaps even without reason. Of course, we’ll continue the investigation in every way possible, but—”

“Forget the investigation. It isn’t leading anywhere.”

Her brusqueness was startling. “Just as you wish, lady.”

“What I want you to get your guardsmen thinking about is this new religion we have. This cult. It seems to be traveling through the city like a pestilence.”

“Chevkija Aim is leading a vigorous program of suppression, lady. In the past week alone we’ve uncovered three chapels, and we have—”

“No. Suppression isn’t going to work.”

“Lady?”

“I’m hearing disturbing news. Men like Kartafirain, Si-Belimnion, Maliton Diveri — property-holders, men who get around and know what’s going on. They say that as fast as we close down one chapel, two more open. Everyone out there is talking about Kundalimon. A prophet, they call him. A holy prophet. Queen-love’s spreading among the workers faster than a new drink. It’s becoming obvious very quickly that the policy of suppression’s going to cause more trouble than it cures. I want you to tell Chevkija Aim to call off his campaign.”

“But we have to suppress it, lady! The thing is outrageous heresy. Are we simply going to allow it to spread?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you so godly, Husathirn Mueri?”

“I know a danger when I see it.”

“So do I. But didn’t you hear what I just said? Suppressing it may prove to be more risky than letting it thrive.”

Perhaps so, he thought.

“I don’t like this new religion any more than you do,” she said. “But it could be that the best way of controlling it just now is by not trying to control it. We need to learn something about it before we can decide how dangerous it really is. It may be simple foolishness of the common people, or perhaps it’s active subversion by the hjjks, and how can we know which it is, eh? Except by looking at it. What I want you to do is drop everything else and find out what’s really taking place. Send guardsmen to snoop around in those chapels. Infiltrate them. Listen to what’s being said.”

Husathirn Mueri nodded. “I’ll see to it personally.”

“Oh, and one more thing. Check up on the people who are about to go with the caravan to Yissou, will you? Make sure none of them are cultists. That’s the last thing we need, to have this business infect Yissou also.”

“A very good point,” said Husathirn Mueri.

The Dawinno caravan had arrived at last, more than two weeks overdue: eleven xlendi-drawn wagons with red-and-gold banners, clip-clopping up the Southern Highway amid clouds of tawny dust.

That night there was a grand celebration: bonfires burning in the plazas, street musicians playing until dawn, feasting and carousing galore, little sleep, much revelry. The coming of the caravan was always a signal for unfettered rejoicing in Yissou, where the prevailing mood was more often one of constraint and caution: it was as though the arrival of the merchants from the south caused the great stone wall of the city to swing apart and warm sultry winds out of the tropics to blow through the narrow winding streets. But the lateness of the caravan, the uncertainty about whether it would get there at all, made its arrival an even bigger occasion than usual.

To Salaman, in his private palace chamber, came the merchant Gardinak Cheysz, the most useful of his agents in Dawinno. He was a plump but somber man, with fur of a curious grayish-yellow cast, and a mouth that drooped on one side from some weakness of the facial muscles. Though born in Yissou, he had lived most of his life in Dawinno. Salaman had employed him for years.

“There’s much confusion in Dawinno,” Gardinak Cheysz began. “That’s why we were late. Our departure was delayed by it.”

“Ah. Tell me.”

“You know that a boy called Kundalimon, who had been taken from Dawinno many years ago by the hjjks, returned to the city in the spring, and—”

“I know all that. I also know that he was murdered, and the captain of the city’s guards was also. This is old news.”

“You know these things, do you?” Gardinak Cheysz paused a moment, as if to reorder his thoughts. “Very well. Very well, sire.” From a courtyard outside the palace came wild skirling sounds, some kind of discordant piping, and the sound of laughter. “Do you know also, sire, that on the day of the two murders the daughter of the chieftain Taniane went mad, and disappeared from the city?”

That was something new. “Nialli, is that her name?”

“Nialli Apuilana, yes. A difficult and unruly girl.”

“What else could be expected but unruliness and difficulty, from the child of Taniane and Hresh?” Salaman smiled grimly. “I knew Hresh when he was a boy, when we were in the cocoon. A mad little child he was, forever doing forbidden things. Well, so this Nialli Apuilana went insane and vanished. And the delay in your setting out, then — a period of mourning, was it?”

“Oh, she’s not dead,” said Gardinak Cheysz. “Though I hear it was a close thing. They found her raving and feverish in the swamps east of the city, a few days later, and the offering-woman nursed her back to health. But it was touch and go for days, they say. Taniane could deal with nothing else. Not a shred of government business transacted all the while the girl lay ill. Our permit to depart lay on her desk, and lay there, and there it lay, unsigned. And Hresh — he nearly went out of his mind himself. He locked himself up in the tower where he keeps all his old chronicles and hardly came out at all, and when he did he said nothing to anyone about anything.”

Salaman shook his head. “Hresh,” he muttered, with mingled respect and contempt. “There’s no mind like his in all the world. But a man can be brilliant and a fool all at once, I suppose.”

“There’s more,” said Gardinak Cheysz.

“Go on, then.”

“I mentioned the dead hjjk emissary, Kundalimon. They’ve begun to make him into a god in Dawinno. Or at least a demigod.”

“A god?” the king said, blinking several times very quickly. “What do you mean, a god?”

“Shrines. Chapels of worship, even. He’s considered a prophet, a bearer of revelation, a — I can hardly tell you what. It goes beyond my understanding. There’s a cult, that’s all I can tell you, sire. It seems absurd to me. But it’s caused tremendous commotion. Taniane, when she finally would turn her attention to something other than her daughter, sent out word that the new religion was to be suppressed.”

“I’d have credited her with more sense than that.”

“Exactly. They thrive under persecution. As she quickly discovered. The original order for suppression has already been rescinded, sire. The guards were trying to find the places where this Kundalimon is worshiped — there’s a new captain of guards, by the way, one Chevkija Aim, a young Beng, very ambitious and ruthless — and they were attempting to eradicate them. They’d desecrate the shrines, they’d arrest the worshipers. But it was impossible. The people wouldn’t stand for it. Therefore the persecutions have been called off, and the cultists’ numbers are growing from day to day. It’s happened so fast you wouldn’t believe it. Before we could leave for Yissou we had to take an oath that we weren’t believers ourselves.”

“And what’s this new faith all about, can you say?”

“I tell you, sire, such things are beyond me. The best I can make it out, it calls for surrender to the hjjks.”

“Surrender — to — the — hjjks?” Salaman said, slowly, incredulously.

“Yes, sire. Accepting Queen-love, sire. Whatever that may mean. You may know, the boy Kundalimon came bearing a proposal of a treaty of peace with the hjjks that would have divided the continent between us and them, with the boundary—”

“Yes. I know about that.”

“Well, the cult leaders are calling for immediate signing of the treaty. And more than that: for establishment of regular peaceful contact between the City of Dawinno and the land of the hjjks, with certain hjjks known as Nest-thinkers invited to live among us, as the treaty requires. So that we can come to understand their holy teachings. So that we can come to comprehend the wisdom of the Queen.”

Salaman stared. “This is madness.”

“So it is, my lord. And that’s why the caravan was delayed, because everything’s up in the air in the city. Perhaps it’s a little quieter by now. By the time we finally left, the chieftain’s daughter had apparently recovered — the story is going around that she’s become a leader of the new cult, by the way, but perhaps that’s only a story — and that gave Taniane time for government affairs again. And Hresh has reappeared too. So it may be that things are getting back to normal. But it was a hard few weeks, let me tell you, sire.”

“I imagine so. Anything else?”

“Only that we’ve brought eleven wagons full of fine goods, and look forward to a happy visit in your city.”

“Good. Good. We’ll talk again tomorrow, perhaps, Gardinak Cheysz. I want to hear all this a second time, by daylight, to see if it seems any more real to me then.” He grimaced and threw his hands high. “Make peace with the hjjks! Invite them to Dawinno so that they can teach their philosophy! Can you believe it?” He reached under his sash, pulled out a pouch filled with exchange-units of the City of Dawinno, and tossed it to Gardinak Cheysz. The spy caught it deftly and saluted. His drooping mouth jerked upward in what might have been an attempt at a smile, and he went from the room.

The same night, in a tavern in another part of the city. Esperasagiot, Dumanka, and a few other members of the crew of the caravan that brought Thu-Kimnibol to Yissou have gotten together with some of the newcomers. The hour is late. The wine has been going down freely. They are all old friends. The men of Thu-Kimnibol’s crew had often served in the regular merchant caravans that pass between the two cities. Among those who came in today was Esperasagiot’s brother, Thihaliminion, nearly as good a hand with xlendis as Esperasagiot himself. Thihaliminion had been wagon-master to the caravan that has just arrived.

There are some local folk in the party, too — a harness-maker named Gheppilin, and Zechtior Lukin, a meat-cutter, and Lisspar Moen, a woman whose trade is the making of fine porcelain dishes. Friends of Dumanka’s, they are. New friends.

Thihaliminion has been speaking for some time of the sudden rash of unusual events in the City of Dawinno: the murders, the disappearance and subsequent madness of the chieftain’s daughter, the emergence of the new cult of Kundalimon. Laughing into his wine, he says, “It’s like the end of the world. Everything is going strange at once.” He shakes his helmeted head. “But why am I laughing? It’s no laughing matter!”

“Ah, but it is,” says Dumanka. “When all else has gone foul, laughter still remains. When the gods send us disaster, what else can we do but laugh? Weeping won’t heal anything. Laughter at least buries our sorrows in merriment.”

“You were ever a mocker, Dumanka,” Thihaliminion tells the quartermaster. “You take nothing seriously.”

“On the contrary, brother,” Esperasagiot says. “Dumanka is one of the most serious men I know, behind that bawdy grin of his.”

“Then let him be serious, if he will. What’s happening in Dawinno is serious stuff, as you’ll find out when you get back there. It’s easy enough to laugh when you’re hundreds of leagues away.”

“Brother, he meant no offense! It’s only his way, don’t you see? He was only making sport with words.”

“No,” Dumanka says. “That wasn’t what I was doing.”

“No?” Esperasagiot says, frowning.

“I was being as serious as I know how to be, my friend. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll explain myself.”

“We’re all wasting our breath with this talk,” Thihaliminion says, in something like a growl. “We could be drinking instead of talking.”

“No. Give me a moment. I think this is no waste of breath at all,” Dumanka says, and the others look at him, for they have never heard the quartermaster speak so solemnly before. “I said we should laugh when the gods send us misery, rather than weep, and I think I’m right about that. Or if not to laugh, then to shrug; for what good is it to moan and grumble over the will of the gods? These people here—”

“Enough, Dumanka,” Thihaliminion says, a little too sharply.

“One or two more words, I beg you. These three here, Zechtior Lukin, Lisspar Moen, Gheppilin — do you know them? No, of course not. But I do. And there’s wisdom in them, let me tell you. They’ve plenty to teach us all on the subject of bowing to the will of the gods. Have you ever considered, good Thihaliminion, why it was that the sapphire-eyes took it so easily, when the gods threw death-stars down to destroy their world? Everyone knows the sapphire-eyes could have hurled the death-stars back, if they’d cared to, but—”

“Nakhaba! What can the sapphire-eyes possibly have to do with the lunacy that’s running rampant in our city? Will you tell me that, Dumanka?”

“Pass the wine, and I’ll explain. And then you may want to listen to Zechtior Lukin, and even to read a little book that he’s written, eh, Thihaliminion? Because there may be comfort in it for you, if you’re as troubled by the difficulties in Dawinno as you seem to be.” Dumanka nods toward the meat-cutter, a short thick-bodied man with a look of great strength and force about him. “The thing that Zechtior Lukin has taught me in our conversations,” he says, “is the same thing that I’ve practiced all my life without having a name to put to it, which is that I acknowledge the absolute greatness of the gods and the role they play in our fates. They decide everything, and we must obey cheerfully, because the only other choices we have are to obey sadly, or to obey angrily, and those simply get us to the same place, but not as merrily. So we have to accept whatever comes, be it death-stars or hjjks, be it strange new religions or bloodshed in the streets, be it anything at all. What Zechtior Lukin and his Acknowledgers believe, good friend — and these two here are Acknowledgers too, Lisspar Moen and Gheppilin, and so am I, so have I always been, though I’ve only just discovered it — is a creed that brings peace to the soul and calmness to the mind, and has made me a better man, Thihaliminion, no doubt of it, absolutely a better man. And when I return to Dawinno, let me tell you, I’ll will be bringing Zechtior Lukin’s little book with me, and spreading the truth it contains to everyone who’ll listen.”

“Just what we need,” Thihaliminion says, staring broodingly into his wine-cup. “One more new religion.”

Thu-Kimnibol knocked and entered. Salaman, half dozing over a nearly empty bottle of wine, came instantly awake.

“You wanted to see me, cousin?”

“I did. You’ve had a chance to catch up on the news from your city, have you?” Salaman asked. “Taniane’s daughter going mad? And Taniane herself so upset over it that she couldn’t be bothered to govern her city for a time?”

Thu-Kimnibol’s fur flared, his eyes grew bright. Tightly he said, “Yes. So I’ve heard.”

“And have you heard also of the new hjjk-loving religion which has sprung up down there? It was the murder of the envoy Kundalimon that got it going, I’m told. My agents tell me that they’re speaking of him in Dawinno as a holy prophet, who died for love of the People.”

“Your agents are very efficient, cousin.”

“They’re paid to be. What they inform me is that the Kundalimon-worshipers are in favor of signing the Queen’s treaty. Is it true that they want to invite hjjk missionaries to Dawinno to teach them the mysteries of hjjk wisdom?”

“Cousin, why are you asking me these questions?”

Crisply Salaman said, “Because you promised me that your people would fight, when the time comes. Instead this is what they do. This foolishness. This idiocy.”

“Ah,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “So that’s it.”

“It is idiocy, cousin.”

“But useful idiocy, I think.”

The king looked up, wonderstruck. “Useful?”

Thu-Kimnibol smiled. “Of course. The peace faction’s playing right into our hands. They’re carrying things to the extreme that will destroy them. Can you imagine what it would be like, cousin, with Dawinno full of hjjk preachers, clicking and hissing on every streetcorner, and everyone down there walking around with talk of Nest-bond and Queen-love and such on his lips, and the hjjks marching up and down the coast in droves, free as you please, going to visit their new colony in the south?”

“A nightmare,” Salaman said.

“A nightmare indeed. But one that can be put to good use, provided there are still a few in Dawinno who haven’t yet lost their minds, and I think there are.” Thu-Kimnibol leaned close. “What I need to do is make them see the picture I’ve just sketched for you. Show them how the hjjks are trying to subvert us from within. Don’t you realize, I’ll say, that the new religion’s designed to deliver us all into the clutches of the bugs? The Queen’s love is a worse thing than the Queen’s hatred, I’ll tell them. At least we know where we stand with hatred. And in fact Queen-love and Queen-hate are the same thing wearing different masks. Friends, I’ll say, this is a deadly threat. Accepting the treaty means opening our arms to our enemies. Do you want hjjks overrunning Dawinno the way they did in Vengiboneeza? And so on and so forth, until this new cult is driven underground, or put out of business altogether.”

“And then?”

“And then we begin to sing the praises of war,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “The virtues of carrying the attack to our foe, making the world safe for the People. War against the hjjks! Our only salvation! A war which you and I, cousin, must plan very carefully before I leave here. And then I’ll go back to Dawinno and tell them that Salaman’s our loyal ally, that he’s waiting for us to join him in this holy endeavor, that our two cities must stand together against the bugs. After that, we simply need to arrange to start the war. Almost any sort of small incident ought to do it. What do you think, cousin? Isn’t this new religion of hjjk-worship precisely the thing we’ve been waiting for?”

Salaman nodded. Then he began to laugh.

The boy Tikharein Tourb touched the shining Nest-guardian talisman that hung around his neck and said, “If only it would show us the Queen, Chhia Kreun! Maybe we could see Her with it, eh? If we used the talisman and our second sight at the same time, let’s say.”

“She’s too far away,” the girl said. “Second sight won’t reach that far.”

“Well, we could try twining, then.”

Chhia Kreun stifled a giggle. “What do you know about twining, Tikharein Tourb?”

“Enough. I’m nine, you know.”

“Thirteen’s the twining-age.”

“You’re only eleven. But you act as though you know it all.”

She groomed herself elaborately, plucking and smoothing. “I know more than you, at any rate.”

“About twining, maybe. But not Nest-truth. Anyway, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Look, what if I were to hold the Nest-guardian in my sensing-organ, and you and I were to twine, right here in front of the altar—”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am! I am!”

“It’s forbidden to twine until we’re old enough. Besides, we don’t know how. We may think we do, but until the offering-woman shows us, we—”

“Do you want to see the Queen or don’t you?” Tikharein Tourb asked scornfully.

“Of course I do.”

“Then what do you care about what’s forbidden, or what the offering-woman is supposed to show us? The offering-woman doesn’t mean anything to us. That’s the old way. Nest-truth is everything. And this thing on my chest is the repository of Nest-truth.” He ran his hand over the bit of hjjk-shell as if caressing it. “Kundalimon said so himself. If I hold it, and we twine — and maybe everyone else stands by us, chanting the chants at the same time — maybe then the Queen will appear to us, or we’ll appear to the Queen—”

“Do you think so, really?”

“It’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

“But — twining—”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll find someone who’s old enough to teach me how to twine. And then she and I will see the Queen together, and you can do as you please.”

He turned as if to go. Chhia Kreun made a little gasping sound, and reached out toward him.

“No — wait — wait, Tikharein Tourb—”