The Queen of Springtime

6 Difficult Weather

Thu-Kimnibol will leave for Dawinno in another day or two, or at most perhaps three, as soon as his caravan is ready to take to the road. This is the night of the farewell dinner Salaman is giving in his honor. The black wind is howling tonight. Hail rattles against the windowpanes. There was hail last night too, hard little pellets that cut and stung and burned like bits of solidified flame. Tonight it’s even wilder. And there’s a darkness to the east that hints at the possibility of snow to follow.

The season is changing. Darkness comes early now. The first storms of the oncoming winter are beginning to blow through the City of Yissou.

For Salaman the coming of the hard weather meant the beginning of a difficult time. It was like that every year, but every year it was a little worse. He was losing resilience as he aged. His spirit, melancholy by nature, darkened even more when the black winds returned, and more and more year by year. This was likely to be the worst ever. Overnight, with the change, the last shred of his patience had fled: he was all irascibility now. The brunt fell on those who were closest to him, and they walked warily. Everything and everyone annoyed him: even Thu-Kimnibol, his honored guest, his dear and cherished friend, who tonight had the seat of grace that he had coveted long ago, beside the king, above Chham, above Athimin.

“By the Destroyer, it cuts right through the wall, that wind!” Thu-Kimnibol said, as they were serving the roasted thandibar haunch. “I’d forgotten about the winter weather here!”

Salaman, red-eyed from too much wine, poured himself another glass. Thu-Kimnibol’s comment had come like a slap in the face. The king swung around and glared at him.

“You miss your easy Dawinno climate, do you? There’s no winter there at all, is there? Well, you’ll be home soon enough.”

Winter, true winter, was something the tribe had not had to cope with in the Vengiboneeza days. That city nestled between mountains and sea in a zone of privileged climate, where the cool season was short and mild, bringing nothing worse than steady rains for a time. And the City of Dawinno, far to the south, lay becalmed in soft year-round warmth. But King Salaman’s city, though sheltered by its location within the ancient death-star crater, was exposed on its eastern side to the harsh winds that blew at year’s end from the heart of the continent, where the Long Winter had not yet entirely relinquished its grip.

Yissou’s winter was brief, but it could be savage. When the black winds blew, trees were stripped of their leaves and the soil became dry and barren. Crops perished and livestock turned gaunt. Sometimes, not often, there was snow. The souls of the city’s men and women grew crabbed and sour in that time of wind. They lost all generosity, and anger was general: there were bitter disputes between friends and mates, even violence. Though it lasted only a matter of weeks, everyone prayed constantly for the season to end, as in generations now forgotten their ancestors had prayed for an end to the Long Winter.

“It’ll grow worse,” said Salaman’s mate Thaloin in bleak gloomy tones. “You’re lucky you’re leaving, prince. It’ll seem like the Long Winter come again here, in another few weeks.”

“Be quiet,” Salaman said brusquely to her.

“My lord, you know it’s true! This is only the first of it, this wind!”

“Will you be quiet, woman?” Salaman cried. He slapped the flat of his hand against the bare wood of the table so fiercely that glasses and tableware jumped, and some wine was spilled.

To Thu-Kimnibol he said, “She exaggerates. Now that she’s growing old the cold weather bothers her bones and makes her cranky. But I tell you, we have only a few weeks of trying winds here, and sometimes a little snow, and then it’s spring.” He laughed harshly, a heavy, forced laugh that cost him some aching of the ribs. “I enjoy the shifting of the seasons. I find it refreshing. I wouldn’t want to live where the weather is unvaryingly fine. But of course I regret it if you’ve been caused any small discomfort since it turned colder, cousin.”

“Not at all, cousin. I can abide some chilling.”

“Our little winter isn’t really all that harsh. Eh? Eh?” The king glanced around the table. Chham nodded, and Athimin, and then all the others, even Thaloin. They knew his moods all too well. The wind gusted wildly again. Salaman felt his temper rising another notch. He struggled to contain it.

Raising his glass, he waved it vaguely in Thu-Kimnibol’s direction. “Enough of this talk. A toast, a toast! To my dear friend and beloved cousin Thu-Kimnibol!”

“Thu-Kimnibol,” Chham echoed quickly.

“Thu-Kimnibol,” the others chimed in.

“My dear friend,” Thu-Kimnibol said, lifting his own glass. “Who’d have thought it, twenty years ago, that I’d sit here tonight, at this very table, in this very seat, by Salaman’s hearth-fire, thinking, How splendid he is, what a great friend, what a staunch ally! To you, dear Salaman!”

The king studied him as he drank. He seemed sincere. He was sincere. They had become friends. The last thing I would have expected, he thought. His eyes filled with tears. Dear Thu-Kimnibol. Good old Thu-Kimnibol. How I’ll miss you, when you leave here!

“Wine!” he called. “Wine for Thu-Kimnibol! And wine for the king!”

Weiawala hopped up at once to refill their glasses. As she came within range of Thu-Kimnibol, he slipped his hand along her waist, and down the side of her leg. He never missed a chance to fondle her and stroke her. From the moment soon after his arrival when she had begun to share his bedchamber, he’d scarcely looked at any other woman here. Good, Salaman thought. A royal mating will come of this, perhaps. There’s reason to think Thu-Kimnibol can make himself chieftain in Dawinno after Taniane’s reign is over, since there seems to be no woman there who’s fit to have the job. How useful, then, to have one of my own daughters sitting on Dawinno’s throne at Thu-Kimnibol’s side.

He took a deep pull of his wine. He was beginning to feel a little better now. The wind seemed to be dying down.

“Dear Thu-Kimnibol,” he said again, after a time.

There was a sound like the slap of a giant hand against the palace wall. The wind’s brief lull was over. The gale was back with twice the fervor of before. And with its return, Salaman’s little moment of good feelings was gone. Suddenly there was a pounding in his head, a constriction in his breast.

“What a terrible night it is,” Thaloin whispered to Vladirilka. “It’ll drive the king mad.” It was only the barest thread of a whisper. But Salaman’s hearing was unnaturally keen when the black winds were blowing. Her words reached him with the force of a shout.

“What’s that? What? You think I’ll go mad, is that what you say?” he cried, springing up. Thaloin shrank back, one arm across her face to protect herself. The room grew very still. Salaman loomed over her. “A terrible night. This terrible season. A terrible night. This terrible season. The Long Winter come again, you say. You complain all the time, woman. Can’t you ever be content with what you have? I ought to turn you out into the cold so you can see what it’s really like!” Thu-Kimnibol was staring at him. The king gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. Rage is coursing like lava through his brain. In another moment he’ll be roaring. It’s all he can do to keep from knocking Thaloin across the room. His own mate, whom he cherishes. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps he’s mad already. This damnable wind, this accursed season.

I’m ruining the feast, he thinks. I’m shaming myself and my whole family before Thu-Kimnibol.

“You must excuse me,” he says to his guest in a hoarse, ragged fragment of a voice. “This wind — I’m not well—”

He looks around the room, half glaring, half apologetic. Dares them all to speak. No one does. His three mates are terrified. Thaloin is ready to fling herself down under the table. Vladirilka looks appalled. Only Sinithista, the calmest and sturdiest of them, seems in any way composed. “You,” he says, beckoning her to his side out of his group of women, and goes sweeping off with her to his bedchamber amidst the screaming of the wind.

In the depths of the night a terrible fantasy overcomes the king. Salaman imagines that he is lying not with his familiar mate Sinithista but with a female of the hjjks, whose hard scaly body is pressed close against him.

Her black-bristled fore-claws caress his cheeks. Her powerful multiple-jointed hind legs are clasped tightly about his thighs, and her mid-limbs hold him by the waist. Her huge gleaming many-faceted eyes, bulging like toadstools, stare passionately into his. She makes harsh rasping sounds of delight. Worst of all, he is pressing himself to her with equal fervor, his fingers running tenderly over the orange breathing-tubes that dangle beside her head, his lips seeking out her fierce sharp beak. And his mating-rod, stiff and immense with lust, is plunged deep into some mysterious orifice of her long rigid thorax.

He cries out in horror, a dreadful wailing bellow of pain and rage that might almost have toppled the city wall itself, and pulls himself free. In a wild bound he springs from the bed, and goes searching madly about the room for a glowberry candle.

“My lord?” Sinithista called, in a small, plaintive voice.

Salaman, standing naked and trembling convulsively beside the window, managed to find the light and uncover it. No hjjk, no. Only Sinithista, sitting up in bed and staring at him in astonishment. She was shivering. Her breasts were heaving, her sexual parts were swollen in arousal. He looked down at his mating-rod, throbbing painfully, still rigid. All a dream, then. He had been coupling with Sinithista in his drunken sleep, and had taken her for — for—

“My lord, what is it that troubles you?” Sinithista asked.

“Nothing. Nothing. An ugly dream.”

“Come back to bed, then!”

“No,” he told her sternly. If he lets himself sleep again this night the dream will seize him anew. Perhaps if he banishes Sinithista from the chamber — no, no, that would be worse, being alone. He does not dare to close his eyes a moment. Behind his eyelids the dreadful image of that monster would burst forth again.

“My lord.” The woman was sobbing now.

He pitied her. He had abandoned her in mid-coupling, after all. He had not been with her in many weeks, not since his fascination with Vladirilka had overwhelmed him, and now he appeared to be spurning her.

But he wasn’t going to return to the bed.

Salaman went to her and touched her lightly on the shoulder, and whispered, “This dream has so disturbed me that I must have some air. I’ll come to you again later, when my mind is clear. Go back to sleep.”

“My lord, your outcry was so frightening—”

“Yes,” he said. He found a robe and threw it on, and went from the room.

There was nothing but darkness in the palace. The air was frigid. A ghastly wind was ripping down out of the east, and white swirls of snow rode on it like angry ghosts. But he couldn’t stay here. The entire building seemed polluted by his monstrous nightmare. He went down and down, and out to the stables. Two grooms looked up sleepily at him as he entered, saw it was the king, and rolled over again. They were accustomed to his moods. If he wanted a xlendi in the depths of the night, well, that was nothing new to them.

He selected a mount and rode out, toward the city wall, to his private pavilion.

The storm raged above him, so strong a wind that it was a wonder it didn’t blow the Moon itself out of the sky. There was more snow with it than he could remember, already enough to encrust the ground with white to a depth of a fingertip or so, and coming down more swiftly all the time. He looked back and by the blurred moonlight he saw that the xlendi’s hooves were leaving a sharply pronounced track in the whiteness.

Tethering his mount below the pavilion, Salaman raced up the staircase to the top. His heart was hammering at his ribs. In the pavilion the king grasped the window-ledge and hung his head outside, heedless of the icy gusts. He needed to cleanse it of every vestige of the dream that had coursed through his sleeping wine-sotted mind.

The landscape beyond the city, fitfully illuminated by such moonlight as could break through the storm’s burden of snow, was white as death. A knife-blade wind scooped up the fallen crystals, swept them onward, whirled them into sinister patterns. The king was unable to get the taste of the hjjk-woman’s beak from his mouth. His mating-rod had subsided now, but it still ached with the pain of unfulfilled desire and it seemed to him that a cool fire burned along its entire shaft, the sign of some corrosive hjjk fluid that he must have come in contact with during that ghastly coupling.

Perhaps I should go out there, Salaman thought, and strip off my robe and roll naked in the snow until I’m clean—

“Father?”

He whirled. “Who’s there?”

“Biterulve, father.” The boy peered in uneasily from the vestibule of the pavilion. His eyes were very wide. “Father, you frighten us. When my mother said you’d arisen and gone rushing madly from your bedchamber — and then you were seen leaving the palace itself—”

“You followed me?” Salaman cried. “You spied on me?”

He lurched forward, seizing the slender boy, pulling him roughly into the pavilion, and slapped him three times with all his strength. Biterulve cried out, as much perhaps in surprise as pain, after the first blow, but was silent thereafter. The king saw his son’s astounded eyes gleaming into his by the light of the Moon and the reflection of that light on the whirling flakes of snow. He released the boy and staggered back toward the window.

“Father,” Biterulve said softly, went to him as though heedless of all risk, holding his arms outstretched.

A great convulsive shiver passed through the king, and Salaman gathered Biterulve in and held the boy in a hug so tight it forced a gust of breath from him. Then he let him go, and said very quietly, “I should not have struck you. But you shouldn’t have followed me here. You know that no one is permitted to come upon me in the night in my pavilion.”

“We were so frightened, father. My mother said you were not in your right mind.”

“Perhaps I wasn’t.”

“Can we help you, my lord?”

“I doubt that very much. Very much indeed.” Salaman reached for the young prince again, collecting him in the curve of his arm and pulling him tight against him. Hollowly he said, “I had a dream tonight, boy, such a dream as I won’t disclose in any way, not to you, not to anyone, except to say that it was a dream that could peel a man’s sanity from him like the skin from a fruit. That dream still afflicts me. I may never wash myself clean of it.”

“Oh, father, father—”

“It’s this beastly season. The black wind beats on my skull. It drives me crazier every year.”

“Shall I leave you by yourself?” Biterulve asked.

“Yes. No. No, stay.” Brooding, the king spun around and stared into the darkness beyond the wall again. He kept the boy at his side. “You know how much I love you, Biterulve.”

“Of course I do.”

“And that when I struck you just now — it was the madness in me that was striking, it wasn’t I myself—”

Biterulve nodded, although he said nothing.

Salaman hugged him to him. Gradually the fury in his soul subsided.

Then, peering into the night, he said, “Am I mad again, or do you see a figure out there? Someone riding on a xlendi, coming up from the Southern Highway?”

“You’re right, father! I see him too.”

“But who’d come here in the middle of the night, in weather like this?”

“Whoever he is, we have to open the gate for him.”

“Wait,” Salaman said. He cupped his hand to his mouth and cried, in a voice like a trumpet, “Hoy! You out there! You, can you hear me?”

It was all he could do to make his voice carry above the storm.

The xlendi, stumbling in the snow, seemed near the end of its strength. The rider looked little better. He rode with his head down, clinging desperately to his saddle.

“Who are you?” Salaman called. “Identify yourself, man!”

The stranger looked up. He made a faint croaking sound, inaudible in the wind.

“What? Who?” Salaman shouted.

The man made the sound again, less vigorously even than the last time.

“Father, he’s dying!” Biterulve said. “Let him in. What harm can he do?”

“A stranger — in the night, in the storm—”

“He’s just one man, and half dead, and there are two of us.”

“And if there are others out there, waiting for us to open the gate?”

“Father!”

Something in the boy’s tone cut through Salaman’s madness, and he nodded and called to the rider again, telling him to head for the gate. Then the king and his son went below to throw it open for him. But it was with the greatest difficulty that the stranger managed to guide his mount inside the wall. The beast wobbled a zigzag path through the snow. Twice the man nearly fell from the staggering xlendi, and when he was finally within he let go of the reins and simply toppled over the animal’s side, landing trembling on his knees and elbows. The king signaled to Biterulve to help him up.

He was a helmeted Beng. Though swaddled in skins and pelts tied tightly about him with yellow rope, he looked nearly frozen. His eyes were glazed, and a glossy coating of ice clung to his fur, which was of an odd pale pinkish-yellow cast, very strange for a Beng.

“Nakhaba!” he cried suddenly, and a shiver ran through him so fierce that it seemed likely to hurl his head free of his shoulders. “What weather! The cold is like fire! Is this the Long Winter come again?”

“Who are you, man?” Salaman asked sternly.

“Take me — inside—”

“Who are you, first?”

“Courier. From the chieftain Taniane. Bearing a message to the lord Thu-Kimnibol.” The stranger swayed and nearly fell. Then he pulled himself erect with some immense effort and said, in a deeper, stronger voice, “I am Tembi Somdech, guardsman of the City of Dawinno. In Nakhaba’s name, take me to the lord Thu-Kimnibol at once.”

And he fell face forward into the snow.

Salaman, scowling, gathered him up into his arms as easily as if the man were made of feathers. He gestured to Biterulve to collect all three xlendis, his own and his father’s and the stranger’s, and tie their reins together so that they could be led. On foot they proceeded inward to the core of the city. There was a guardhouse a few hundred paces away.

As they approached it, Salaman saw something so strange that he began to wonder whether he had never left his bed this night, but still lay dreaming by Sinithista’s side. There was a plaza yet another few hundred paces deeper still into the city, and Salaman, standing outside the guardhouse with the unconscious stranger in his arms, was able to see down the street into it. Within the plaza some twenty or thirty capering figures were dancing round and round by torchlight. They were men and women both, and a few children, all naked, or nearly so, wearing no more than sashes and scarves, and moving in wild jubilant prancing steps, flinging their arms about, violently throwing their heads back, kicking their knees high.

As Salaman watched, astounded, they completed the circuit of the plaza and disappeared down the Street of Sweetsellers at its farther end.

“Biterulve?” he said, wonderingly. “Did you see them too, those people in the Plaza of the Sun?”

“The dancers? Yes.”

“Has the whole city gone mad tonight, or is it only me?”

“They are Acknowledgers, I think.”

“Acknowledgers? What are they?”

“A sort of people — people who—” Biterulve faltered. He made a sign of confusion, turning his palms outward. “I’m not sure, father. You’d have to ask Athimin. He knows something about them. Father, we have to get this man indoors, or he’ll die.”

“Yes. Yes.” Salaman stared toward the plaza. It was empty now. If I go down there, he wondered, will I see their footprints in the snow, or are Biterulve’s words part of my dream also?

Acknowledgers, he thought. Acknowledgers. What is it that they acknowledge? Or whom?

He carried the man inside the guardhouse.

Three blurry-eyed guardsmen, all too obviously caught sleeping, came lurching out. When they saw it was the king, they coughed and cringed in horror, and made obeisance; but he had no time to give attention to such creatures now. “Get a bed for this man, and some warm broth, and put dry clothing on him,” he ordered. To Biterulve he said more quietly, “Check the saddlebags of his xlendi. I want to see that message before Thu-Kimnibol does.”

He waited, staring at his fingertips, until the boy returned.

Biterulve came in, some minutes later, with a packet in his hand. “This is it, I think.”

“Read it to me. My eyes are weak tonight.”

“It’s sealed, father.”

“Break the seal. Do it carefully.”

“Is this wise, father?”

“Give it to me!” Salaman snapped, seizing the packet from him. Indeed it bore the red seal of Taniane, with the chieftain’s imprint in it. A secret message, for Thu-Kimnibol. Well, there were ways of dealing with seals. He shouted to the guardsmen to bring him a knife and a torch, and heated the seal until it was soft, and pried it up. The packet, when unfastened, opened into a broad vellum sheet.

“Read it to me now,” the king said.

Biterulve put his fingers to the sheet and the words sprang to life on it. At first he seemed puzzled, not having been trained in the Beng-influenced writing now in favor in the City of Dawinno; but it took him only a moment to adjust his mind to it. “It’s very short. Come home at once, regardless of whatever you’re doing, is what Taniane says. And she says, Things here are very bad. We need you. ”

“That’s all?”

“Nothing else, father.”

Salaman took the sheet from him, folded it again, carefully resealed it. “Put it in the saddlebags where you found it,” he told the boy.

One of the guardsmen appeared. “He refuses the broth, sire. He’s too weak for it. He seems starved and frozen. He’s dying, is what I think.”

“Force the broth into him,” the king said. “I won’t have him die on my hands. Well, man, don’t just stand there!”

“No use,” the second guardsman said. “He’s gone, sire.”

“Gone? Are you sure?”

“He sat up, and cried out something in Beng, and his whole body shook in a way that was fearful to watch. Then he fell down on the bed and didn’t move again.”

These southerners, Salaman thought. A few weeks of riding through the cold and they fall down dead.

But for the guardsmen’s benefit he made a few quick holy signs, and intoned a Yissou-have-mercy, and told them to summon a healer just in case there was still some life in the man after all. But also make arrangements for his burial, he ordered. To Biterulve he said, “Take that xlendi to the palace stables and bring the saddlebags to my private chamber, and put them under lock and key. Then go to the hostelry and wake up Thu-Kimnibol. Let him know what’s happened. Tell him he can collect his message when he comes to the palace in the morning.”

“And you, father?”

“To the pavilion for a little while, I think. I need to clear my mind.”

He went outside. Glancing down the street to the left, he stared into the Plaza of the Sun, to see if the Acknowledgers had come back to it to dance again. No, the plaza was deserted. He touched his hand to his throbbing forehead, bent, scooped up a few fingers’ worth of snow, and rubbed it against his brow. That was a little better.

It was almost dawn. The wind howled unabated. But the snow was ceasing, now. It mantled the ground to a surprising depth. He couldn’t recall a snowfall this heavy in thirty years. Was that why those people had come out? To dance in it, to rejoice over the strangeness of it?

Acknowledgers, he thought. Acknowledgers.

I have to speak with Athimin about them in the morning.

He ascended the wall and stood for a long while at the window of his pavilion, staring out into the bleakness of the southern plains, until his mind was utterly void of thought and his aching body had yielded up some of the tautness of its tense muscles. Eventually a pink light began to appear in the east. This whole night has been a dream, Salaman told himself. Feeling strangely unweary, as though he had passed into some state beyond even the possibility of fatigue — or as though, perhaps, he had died without noticing it, somewhere during the night — he went slowly down the stairs and rode back through the awakening city to the palace.

Athimin was the first to come to him that morning as he sat enthroned, waiting in eerie tranquility, in the Hall of State. There was something odd about the prince’s movements as he approached the throne, something hesitant, that Salaman didn’t like. Ordinarily Athimin carried himself in a burly, decisive way, as befitted the next-to-oldest of the king’s eight sons. But now he seemed not so much to stride as to skulk toward the throne, giving his father wary glances as though peeping at him over the top of an arm that was flung defensively across his face.

“The gods grant you a good morning, father,” he said, sounding oddly tentative. “They tell me you didn’t sleep well. The lady Sinithista—”

“You’ve talked to her already, have you?”

“Chham and I breakfasted with her, and she seemed troubled. She told us you’d had a profound dark dream, and had gone rushing out in the night like one who’s possessed—”

“The lady Sinithista,” Salaman said, “should keep her royal mouth shut, or I’ll shut it for her. But I didn’t ask you here to discuss the nature of my dreams.” He gave the prince a sharp look. “What are Acknowledgers, Athimin?”

“Acknowledgers, sir?”

“Acknowledgers, yes. You’ve heard the term before, have you?”

“Why, yes, father. But it surprises me that you have.”

“It was in the night just past, also, one of my many adventures this night. I was outside the guardhouse near the Plaza of the Sun, and I looked down the street and saw lunatics dancing naked in the snow. Biterulve was with me, and I said, ‘What are those?’ and he said, ‘They are Acknowledgers, father.’ And he could say nothing more about them than that. You’d be able to give me better information, he told me.”

Athimin shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. Salaman had never seen him like this before, so uncertain, so restive. The king began to smell the smell of treachery.

“Acknowledgers, sir — these dancers you saw — these people you rightly call madmen—”

“Lunatics is the word I used. Those who are driven mad by the Moon. Though there was precious little moonlight visible through the driving snow while they were dancing. Who are these people, Athimin?”

“Unfortunate strange folk is what they are, whose minds have been turned by drivel and nonsense. They are just such folk as would dance when the black wind blows, or frolic naked in the snow. Or do many another strange thing. Nothing fazes them. They hold the conviction that death isn’t important, that you should never at any time care about risk, but just do whatever seems right to you, without fear, without hindrance.”

Salaman leaned forward, gripping the armrests of the Throne of Harruel.

“So this is some new philosophy, then, you say?”

“More like a religion, sir. Or so we think. There’s a system of belief that they teach one another — they have a book, a scripture — and they hold secret meetings, which we have yet to infiltrate. We’ve only begun to understand them, you see. The sapphire-eyes folk seem to be what they most admire, because they stayed calm when the Long Winter was coming on, and were indifferent to death. The Acknowledgers say that this is the great thing taught by Dawinno the Destroyer, that we need to show indifference to dying, that death is simply an aspect of change and is therefore holy.”

“Indifference to dying,” said Salaman, musing. “Acceptance of death as an aspect of change.”

“That’s why they call themselves Acknowledgers,” Athimin said. “The thing that they acknowledge is that death can’t be avoided, that it is in fact the design of the gods. And so they do whatever comes into their heads to do, father, regardless of risk or discomfort.”

Salaman clenched his fists. He felt fury rising in him again after these hours of early morning calmness.

So the City of Dawinno wasn’t the only place plagued by an absurd new creed? Gods! It sickened him to hear that such madness was loose virtually under his very nose. This could lead to anarchy, this cult of martyrdom. People who fear nothing will do anything. And worship of death wasn’t what his city needed. What was needed here was life, nothing but life, new flowering, new growth, new strength!

He rose angrily to his feet.

“Insanity!” he cried. “How many such lunatics do we have in this city?”

“We’ve counted a hundred ninety of them, father. There may be more.”

“You seem to know a great deal about these Acknowledgers.”

“I’ve been investigating them all this month past, sir.”

“You have? And said not a word to me?”

“Our findings were only preliminary. We needed to know more before—”

“More?” Salaman bellowed. “Madness is spreading like a pestilence in the city, and you needed to know more before you could tell me even that such a thing exists here? I was to be kept in the dark about it all? Why? And for how long? How long?”

“Father, the black winds were blowing, and we felt—”

“Ah. Ah, I understand now.” He stepped forward and brought his arm up in the same instant, and struck Athimin ferociously across the cheek. The prince’s head rocked back. Sturdy as he was, he nearly lost his balance at the force of the blow. For an instant there was fiery rage in the younger man’s eyes; then he recovered, and took a step away from the throne, breathing heavily and rubbing the place where he had been struck. He stared at his father with a look of utter disbelief on his face.

“So this is how it begins,” said Salaman very calmly, after some moments. “The old man is considered so unstable, so easily deranged, that during the troublesome season he has to be kept from learning of significant developments that have occurred in the city, so that he won’t become so upset by them that he’ll take unpredictable action. That’s the start of it, shielding the old man from difficult knowledge at a time of the year when he’s known to behave rashly. The next step is to shield him even from the mildly disturbing things, so that he’ll never feel any distress at all, for who knows? He might be dangerous when he’s troubled in any way, even the slightest. And a little while after that, the princes gather and conclude among themselves that he’s become so capricious and volatile that he can’t be trusted even in the times of calm weather, and so he’s gently removed from the throne, with the softest of apologies, and sent to live under guard in some smaller palace, while his eldest son takes his place on the Throne of Harruel, and—”

“Father!” Athimin cried in a strangled voice. “None of this is true! By all the gods, I swear that no such thoughts have entered the minds of any of—”

“Keep quiet!” Salaman thundered, raising his hand as though to strike him again. He gestured furiously to the throne-room guards. “You — you — convey Lord Athimin to the North Prison immediately, and have him kept in custody there until I send further word concerning his disposal.”

“Father!”

“You’ll have plenty of time to reflect on your errors while you’re sitting in your cell,” the king said. “And I’ll have writing materials sent to you, so you can prepare a full report on these deranged Acknowledgers of yours, telling me everything that you were too cowardly or too perfidious to tell me until I pulled some of it from you this morning. For there’s more: I’m certain there’s more. And you’ll tell me all of it. Do you understand me?” He made a sweeping gesture. “Take him out of here.”

Athimin threw him a stunned, bewildered look. But he said not a word, nor did he resist in any way while the guards, looking no less astonished than he, led him from the great hall.

Salaman reseated himself. He leaned back against the smooth obsidian. He drew deep, steady breaths. For all his shouting and fury, he saw that he was beginning now to glide easily back into that curious godlike calmness that had come over him in his pavilion at dawn.

But his hand was tingling from the blow he had given Athimin.

I have struck two of my sons this same night, he thought.

He couldn’t remember having hit any of them ever before, and now he’d struck two in a matter of hours, and sent Athimin to prison besides. Well, the black winds were blowing. And Biterulve had broken a rule by coming to him in the pavilion. Maybe he thought that because he’d been allowed there once, he could come at any time. Athimin, too — what audacity, keeping the news of the Acknowledgers to himself! Downright dereliction of duty, it was. Which had to be punished, even if it was one of the royal princes who was guilty of it. Especially if it was one of the royal princes.

And yet, to strike the gentle Biterulve — and the steady and capable Athimin, who might well be king here one day if anything evil befell his brother Chham—

No matter. They’d have to forgive him. He was their father; he was their king. And the black winds were blowing.

Salaman sat back and idly stroked the armrests of the throne. His mind was tranquil, and yet it was whirling at a pace almost beyond his comprehension. Thoughts, ideas, plans, swirled through it like raging gales, one after another. He made unexpected connections. He saw new possibilities. Is it martyrdom that these Acknowledgers long for? Good. Good. We’ll have a use for some martyrs around here soon. If martyrdom is what they love, well, then, martyrdom is what they will have. And everyone will be the better off for it, they and we both.

He would have to have a talk with the leader of these Acknowledgers.

There were sounds in the hall outside. “The Prince Thu-Kimnibol,” called a herald.

The lofty figure of Harruel’s son stood in the doorway.

“Almost ready to leave us, are you?” Salaman asked.

“Another few hours and we’ll be ready to set out,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “If the storm doesn’t start up again.” He came farther into the room. “I hear from your son that a messenger from Dawinno arrived during the night.”

“A Beng, yes, a guardsman. He was caught in the storm, poor man. Died practically in my arms. He was carrying a letter for you. Over there, on that table.”

“With your permission, cousin—” Thu-Kimnibol said.

He snatched it up, stared at its face intently for a moment, ripped it open without pausing to inspect the seal. He read it slowly through, perhaps several times, running his fingers carefully over the vellum. Reading did not appear to be an easy thing for Thu-Kimnibol. He looked up finally and said, “From the chieftain. A good thing I’m about ready to leave here, cousin. I’m ordered to go back to Dawinno right away. There’s trouble there, Taniane says.”

“Trouble? Does she say what kind of trouble?”

Thu-Kimnibol shrugged. “All she says is that things are very bad.” He began to pace. “Cousin, this worries me. First the murders, and then the autumn caravan comes bearing word of upheavals and confusions and a new religion, and now this. Come home at once, she says! Things are very bad! Yissou, how I wish I were there now! If only I could fly, cousin!” He paused, steadying himself. In an altogether different tone he said, “Cousin, can you tell me anything about this?”

“About what, cousin?”

“These troubles in Dawinno. I wonder if perhaps you’ve had some report from sources of your own, something that could let me know what to expect.”

“Nothing.”

“Those efficient, highly paid agents of yours—”

“Have told me nothing, cousin. Nothing whatever.” There was a sticky little moment of silence between them. “Do you think I’d conceal news of your own city from you, Thu-Kimnibol? You and I are allies, and even friends, or have you forgotten?”

A little shamefacedly Thu-Kimnibol said, after a moment, “Forgive me, cousin. I simply wondered—”

“You know as much as I do about what’s going on down there. But listen, listen, cousin: it may not be as bad as Taniane thinks. She’s had a hard season. She’s getting old, she’s weary, she has a difficult daughter. You may find things a little shaky there, but I promise you you won’t find chaos, you won’t find the place in flames, you won’t find hjjks preaching the love of the Queen in the Presidium building. Taniane’s simply decided that she needs your steadying hand close by her in these troubled times. And that’s what you’ll provide. You’ll help her do whatever’s needed to restore order, and all will be well. After all, you’re coming home with an alliance, and after the alliance comes a war. I tell you this, cousin, nothing brings a troubled land back to its senses faster than the prospect of war!”

Thu-Kimnibol smiled. “Perhaps so. What you say makes sense.”

“Of course it does.” Salaman made an elaborate gesture of farewell. “On your way, then. You’ve done all you can here. Now your city needs you. A war is coming, and you’ll be the man of the hour when the fighting begins.”

“But will it begin? We talked of the need for some incident, Salaman, some provocation, something to get the whole thing going, something I can use to persuade my people to send troops north to join forces with you—”

“Leave that to me,” Salaman said.

It had also been a season of difficult weather to the south, in the City of Dawinno: no black winds there, nor hail or snow, but the rains came daily for week after week, until hillsides crumbled into muddy streams and floodwaters ran in the streets. It was the worst winter since the founding of the city. The sky was a leaden gray, the air was cool and heavy, the sun seemed to have vanished forever.

The simpler folk began to ask each other if a new death-star had struck the Earth and the Long Winter had returned. But simple folk had been asking themselves such things ever since the departure from the cocoon, whenever the weather was not to their liking. The wiser ones knew that the world had no new Long Winters to fear in their lifetimes, that such catastrophes came to the Earth only once in millions of years and that the one that had lately afflicted the planet was over and done with. Even those wiser ones, though, chafed at the dreary days and nights of endless rainfall and suffered when the swirling waters poured through the lower floors of their splendid homes.

Nialli Apuilana rarely left her room high up in the House of Nakhaba. With the help of Boldirinthe’s potions and aromatic herbs and prayers, she had driven out the fevers and pestilences that had entered her as she lay exhausted in the swamp, and regained her strength. But doubts and confusions assailed her, and there were no potions for those. She spent most of her time alone. Taniane came to see her once, a strained and unsatisfactory visit for both of them. Not long afterward Hresh paid a call, and took her hands in his, and held them and smiled, and stared into her eyes as though he could ease her of all that troubled her with a glance.

Other than Hresh and Taniane, she saw no one. A note came from Husathirn Mueri, asking if she’d care to dine with him. She let it pass unanswered.

“You’re a smart one,” the young Beng priest who had the room just down the hall from her said one day, meeting her as she came out to get her tray of food. “Staying holed up in there all the time. If I could, I’d do the same thing. This filthy rain goes on and on.”

“Does it?” Nialli Apuilana asked, without interest.

“Like a scourge. Like a curse. Nakhaba’s curse, it is.”

“Is it?” she said.

“Whole city washing away. Better off staying indoors, is what I say. Oh, you’re a smart one!”

Nialli Apuilana nodded and smiled faintly, and took her tray, and retreated into her room. Afterward she made a point of looking out before going into the hall to make certain that no one was there.

Sometimes, after that, she went to the window and watched the rain. Most often she sat crosslegged in the center of the room, absentmindedly grooming herself hour after hour while letting her thoughts drift without direction.

Now and again she would take the hjjk star down from the wall, the amulet of plaited grass that she had carried back with her from the Nest years ago. Would hold it, would stare into the open place at its center, would let her mind drift. Sometimes she could see the pink glow of Nest-light coming from it, and dim figures moving about: Militaries, Egg-makers, Kindlers, Nest-thinkers. Once she thought she even had a glimpse of the Queen-chamber itself, of the great unmoving mysterious bulk within it.

But the visions were vague ones. Most of the time the star showed her nothing at all.

She had no clear idea of where to go next, or what to do, or even who she was. She felt lost between worlds, mysteriously suspended, helpless.

Kundalimon’s death had been the death of love for her, the death of the world. No one had understood her as he had; and she had never felt such an understanding of anyone else. It hadn’t been just the twining, and certainly not the coupling, that had bound them together. It was the sense of shared experience, of knowledge held in common. It was Nest-bond. They had touched the Queen; the Queen had touched them; the Queen then had stood as a bridge between their souls, making it possible for them to open themselves to one another.

It had only been a beginning, though. And then Kundalimon had been taken away. And everything had seemed to end.

What didn’t end was the rain. It fell on the city and on the bay, on the hills and on the lakes. In the farming district of Tangok Seip, on the eastern side of the Emakkis Valley where the inner range of coastal mountains began to rise, it fell with such force that it peeled the soil from the slopes in torrential mud-slides such as had never been seen since the founding of the city. Whole hillsides sheared away and flowed down into the bottomlands.

A Stadrain farmer named Quisinimoir Flendra, taking advantage of a lull in the latest storm to chase after a prize vimbor bull that had broken free from its compound, was crossing the rain-soaked breast of a hill when the earth gave way practically at his feet. He dropped down and dug his fingers into the sodden earth, sure that he’d be swept over the edge into this newly formed abyss and buried alive. There was a terrible sickening sound, a kind of sucking roar, a liquid thunder.

Quisinimoir Flendra held tight and prayed to every god whose name he could remember: his own first, the All-Merciful, and then Nakhaba the Interceder, and then Yissou, Dawinno, Emakkis. He was struggling to remember the names of the other two Koshmar gods when he realized that the hill had stopped collapsing.

He looked down. The earth had broken away in a crescent just in front of him, revealing a sheer face of brown earth laced with exposed roots.

Other things were showing too. A great tiled arch, for one; a row of thick columns, their bases hidden somewhere deep in the earth; a scattering of shards and fragments of ruined structures strewn over the newly exposed face of the shattered hillside like so much trash. And also there was the mouth of a stone-vaulted tunnel, leading into the hill. Quisinimoir Flendra, hanging head-down, was able to make out the beginnings of a cave. He peered in astonishment and awe into its mysterious depths.

Then the rain started up again. The hill might collapse a little further, and take him down with it. Hastily he scrambled down the back face of the hill and headed for his house.

He said nothing about what he had seen to anyone.

But it remained with him, even entering his dreams. He imagined that the Great World people still lived inside that hill: that slow solemn massive sapphire-eyes folk were moving about in there with reptilian grace, speaking to one another in mystic poetry, and with them were pale fragile long-limbed humans, and the little flowery vegetals, and the dome-headed mechanicals, and all the other amazing beings of that splendid era, living on and on in a kind of cocoon much like the cocoon that Quisinimoir Flendra’s own tribe had inhabited all during the Long Winter.

Why not? We had a cocoon. Why not them?

He wondered if he dared to investigate the place again, and decided that he didn’t. But then it struck him that there might be treasure in that cave, and that if he didn’t go in there to look for it someone else sooner or later would.

When there had been three straight days without rain he went back to the broken hillside, carrying a rope, a pick, and some clusters of glowberries. He let himself down very carefully over the edge of the cave-in and wriggled into the tunnel. Paused, listened, heard nothing, warily went deeper.

He was in a stone-vaulted room. Another one lay beyond. A rockfall blocked access beyond that. There was no sign of any life. The silence had a weight of thousands of years. Quisinimoir Flendra, prowling cautiously, saw nothing useful at first, only the usual bits and fragments that these ancient sites contained. But toward the back of the inner room he found a box of green metal, half buried in the detritus on the floor of the cave, that came apart like wet paper when he poked it.

There were machines inside: of what kind, he had not the slightest idea. There were eleven of them, little metal globes, each one larger than his fist, with little studs and projections on their surfaces. He picked one up and touched one of the studs. A beam of green light burst from an opening in the thing and with a little whooshing sound it cut a round hole the size of his chest in the wall of the cave just opposite him, so deep that he couldn’t see how far it went. Hastily he let the globe drop.

He heard pebbles falling in the new opening. The hillside creaked and groaned. It was the sound of rock masses shifting about somewhere far within.

All-Merciful save me! It’s all going to fall in on me!

But then everything was still again, except for the faint dry trickle of falling sand in the hole he had so inadvertently carved. Quisinimoir Flendra, scarcely daring to breathe, tiptoed to the mouth of the tunnel, pulled himself up quickly and frantically to the safety of the hilltop, and ran all the way back to his house.

He had heard about such machines. They were things of the Great World. You were supposed to report such finds to the House of Knowledge in the city. Well, so be it. The scholars of the House of Knowledge were welcome to anything they could find in that cave. He didn’t even want a reward. Let them have it all, he thought. Just so long as I don’t have to go near any of those things again — so long as they don’t ask me to go back in there myself to show them where everything is—

Suddenly, with a shudder, Nialli Apuilana imagines that her room is full of hjjks. She isn’t even holding the plaited star when they come. They simply burst into being all around her, congealing out of the air itself.

These aren’t the gentle wise creatures of her feverish recollections. No, she sees them now as others of her kind have always seen them: huge frightening glossy-shelled bristle-limbed things with ferocious beaks and great glittering eyes, milling in hordes about her, clicking and clattering in a terrifying way. And behind them she glimpses the immense mass of the Queen in Her resting-place — motionless, gigantic, grotesque. Calling to her, offering her the joys of Nest-bond, offering her the comforts of Queen-love.

Queen-love?

Nest-bond?

What did those things mean? They were empty noises. They were food that carried no nourishment.

Nialli Apuilana trembles and draws back, pressing herself into the farthest corner of the room. She shuts her eyes, but even so she is unable to blot out the sight of the nightmare creatures that crowd up against her, clicking, clicking, clicking.

Get away from me!

Horrid hideous insects. How she loathes them! And yet she knows there was a time once when she had wanted to be one of them. For a time she had actually thought she was.

Or had all that been a dream, just a phantom of the night just past — her sojourn in the Nest, her talks with Nest-thinker, her taste of Nest-truth? Had she really lived gladly among the hjjks, and come to love them and their Queen? Was such a thing possible, to love the hjjks?

Kundalimon. Had she dreamed him too?

Queen-love! Nest-bond! Come to us, Nialli! Come! Come! Come!

Strange. Alien. Horrible.

“Get away from me!” she cries. “All of you, get away!”

They stare reproachfully. Those immense eyes, glittering, cold. You are one of us. You belong to the Nest.

“No! I never was!”

You love the Queen. The Queen loves you.

Was it true? No. No. She couldn’t possibly have believed it, ever. They had put a spell on her while she was in the Nest, that was all. But now she’s free. They’ll never have her again.

She kneels and huddles into herself. Trembling, sobbing, she touches her arms, her breasts, her sensing-organ. Is this hjjk? she asks herself, feeling the thick lustrous fur, the warm flesh beneath.

No. No. No. No.

She presses her forehead to the floor.

“Yissou!” she calls. “Yissou, protect me!” She prays to Mueri to give her ease. She prays to Friit to heal her, to rid her of this spell.

She tries to banish that terrible sound of clicking from her mind.

The gods are with her now, the Five Heavenly Ones. She feels their presence like a shield about her. Once she had told anyone who would listen that they were nothing but silly myths. But since her return from the lakelands they have been with her. They are with her now. They will prevail. The hjjks who have come crowding into her room grow misty and insubstantial. Tears flow down her cheeks as she gives thanks, gives praise, offers blessings.

Then after a time she begins to grow calm.

As mysteriously as it has come, the convulsion that has overtaken her spirit is gone from her, and she is herself once again. The loathing, the disgust, vanishes. I am free, she thinks. But not quite. She can’t see the hjjks any more, but she still feels their pull. She loves them as she did before. Into her mind once more comes an awareness of the sublime harmony of the Nest, of the industriousness, of its inhabitants, of the great throbbing waves of Queen-love that sweep constantly through it. Queen-love throbs also in her heart. Nest-truth remains with her yet.

She doesn’t understand. How can she sway from one pole to the other like this? How can it be possible to have the Five within her, and the Queen also? Is she of the city or of the Nest, of the People or of the hjjks?

Both, perhaps. Or neither.

Who am I? she wonders. What am I?

Another time Kundalimon came to her.

He appeared toward evening. She hadn’t taken the trouble to light the lamps in her little room and the early darkness of the rain-swept city was beginning to settle upon everything. She saw him standing near the wall opposite the door, where the woven-grass star that the hjjks had given her long ago was hanging.

“You?” she whispered.

He made no reply. He merely stood before her, smiling.

There was something shimmering and golden about him. But within that luminous aura he looked just as he had in the final few weeks of his life, slender almost to the point of frailty, yet sturdy enough in his wiry way, with warm radiant eyes. At first Nialli Apuilana was afraid to look too closely at him, fearing that she would see the signs of violence on his body. But then she found the courage to do it, and saw that he was unharmed.

“You aren’t wearing your amulets,” she said.

He smiled and said nothing.

Perhaps he’s given them to someone, she thought. To one of the children with whom he used to speak in the streets. Or he has returned them to the Nest, now that his embassy is over.

“Come closer,” she said to him. “Let me touch you.” He shook his head, smiling all the while. Waves of love continued to stream from him. All right. No need to touch him. She felt a great calmness; she felt total assurance. There was much in the world that she did not understand, and perhaps never would understand. But that didn’t matter. What mattered only was to be calm, and loving, and open, and accepting of whatever might befall.

“Are you with the Queen?” she asked.

He said nothing.

“Do you love me?”

A smile. Only a smile.

“You know that I love you.”

He smiled. He was like a great bower of light.

He stayed with her for hours. Finally she realized that he was beginning to fade and vanish, but it happened so slowly that it was impossible to tell, moment by moment, that he was leaving her. But at last he was altogether gone.

“Will you come back?” she asked, and heard no answer.

He came again, though, always at nightfall, sometimes standing beside her cot, sometimes by the star of grass. He never spoke. But always he smiled; always he filled the room with warmth, and that same profound sense of ease and calmness.

Thu-Kimnibol was almost ready to set out for home now. He looked down at Salaman’s daughter Weiawala and felt the waves of fear and sadness and loss coming from her. Her chestnut-hued fur had lost all sheen. Her sensing-organ rose at a tense angle. She seemed forlorn and desperately frightened. And she looked terribly small, smaller than she had ever seemed to him before; but from his great height all women looked small, and most men.

“So you’re going now, are you?” she asked, her eyes not quite meeting his.

“Yes. Esperasagiot has the xlendis groomed, Dumanka’s got the wagons provisioned.”

“This is goodbye, then.”

“For now.”

“For now, yes.” She sounded bitter. “Your city is calling you. Your queen.”

“Our chieftain, you mean.”

“Whatever she’s called. She says come, and you hop to it. And you’re a prince, they say!”

“Weiawala, I’ve been here for months. My city needs me. I’ve had a direct command from Taniane to return. Prince or not, how can I refuse to obey her?”

“I need you too.”

“I know,” Thu-Kimnibol said.

He studied her, feeling perplexed. It would be no great task to sweep her up in his arms and go to Salaman with her and say, “Cousin, I want your daughter as my mate. Let me take her to Dawinno with me, and in a few months we’ll return and hold the formal ceremony in your palace.” Certainly that was what Salaman had had in mind from the first moment, when he had offered this girl to him “to warm your bed tonight,” as the king in his cheerfully crude way had put it.

It was not as a concubine but as a potential mate that Salaman had given Weiawala to him. Thu-Kimnibol had no doubt of that. The king wanted nothing more than to atone for the old breach between them by linking his family in marriage to the most powerful man in Dawinno. And the prospect had obvious merit for Thu-Kimnibol, too. A king’s son himself, mated to the daughter of that king’s successor — he’d have a strong claim to the throne of Yissou, if that throne became vacant and for some reason no son of Salaman was in a position to take it.

But two obstacles lay in the way.

One was simply that it was too soon after Naarinta’s death for him to be taking a new mate. He was of the highborn class; there were proprieties to observe; there were the feelings of Naarinta’s family to consider. Of course he’d mate again, but not now, not so swiftly.

But beyond that was a deeper chasm. He felt no love for Weiawala, at least not the kind of love that led to mating. They had been inseparable, yes, since his arrival. They had coupled again and again, eagerly, passionately. But never once had they twined. Thu-Kimnibol hadn’t felt the desire for such intimacy, and she had shown no sign of interest in it either. That was significant, he thought. Without twining a marriage is hollow.

And, after all, she was hardly more than a child — no older, he suspected, than his niece Nialli Apuilana. How could he mate with a child? He was past forty. An old man, some might say. No. Weiawala had been a fine companion for him these months in Yissou, but now it was over. He had to leave her behind, and put her from his mind, however she wept and begged.

None of this seemed remotely honorable to Thu-Kimnibol. But he wasn’t going to take Weiawala home with him to Dawinno, all the same.

As he stood there uncomfortably searching for the words that would pacify her, or at least to allow him to make a graceful escape, the king’s son Biterulve of the pale fur came up to them, that handsome, quick-witted boy. He put out his hand and took Thu-Kimnibol’s in a firm and confident way.

“A safe journey to you, cousin. May the gods watch over you.”

“My thanks to you, Biterulve. We’ll meet again before long, that I know.”

“I look forward to it, cousin.” Biterulve glanced quickly from Thu-Kimnibol to Weiawala, and back to Thu-Kimnibol again. For an instant the unasked question hung in the air between them; then it was gone. Biterulve appeared to be sizing things up: the distance between them, the look in her eyes.

It was another awkward moment. Biterulve was Weiawala’s full brother: their mother was Sinithista. He was the king’s favorite, that was very obvious. Of all the young princes he seemed the cleverest, and the gentlest by far, with little of the haughtiness that marked Chham and Athimin or the boisterousness of the other sons. Here was his sister being abandoned before his eyes, though. Gentle as he was, he might find that hard to swallow. Was he going to force the issue and create an embarrassment for everyone?

Apparently not. With sublime tact Biterulve turned to Weiawala and said, “Well, sister, if you and Thu-Kimnibol have made your farewells, come with me now to our mother. She’ll be glad to have us breakfast with her.”

Weiawala stared at him dully.

“And then afterward,” Biterulve said, “we’ll all go to the top of the wall, and watch as our cousin from Dawinno sets out on his journey. So come. Come.” He slipped his arm around the girl’s shoulders. He was hardly any taller than she was, and scarcely more sturdy. But in a smooth and persuasive fashion he drew her away. Weiawala turned back once, giving Thu-Kimnibol a panicky look over her shoulder; and then she was gone from the room. Thu-Kimnibol felt a surge of gratitude. How wise the boy was!

Salaman, though: would he be so understanding, would he be helpful?

Well, he’d repair matters with him later, somehow. It shouldn’t be hard to make the king see that the time hadn’t been ripe for him to take a mate from the royal family of the City of Yissou. Making Weiawala understand that would probably be more difficult. But she was young. She’d forget. She’d fall in love with someone else.

And if ever I become king of this place, he thought, I’ll give a high position to this princely Biterulve, and keep him by my side. And if I’m never granted a son, he’ll be king after me in Yissou. We’ll alternate the dynasties, a son of Salaman’s following the son of Harruel.

He laughed at his own foolishness. He was looking a great many steps ahead. Too many, perhaps.

Esperasagiot had the wagons waiting in the courtyard outside. The wagonmaster was studying the gray heavy sky with displeasure. Anger made his bright golden fur stand out full and thick. He gave Thu-Kimnibol a scowling glance. “If my say ruled, I’d say it was no weather for journeying.”

“It could be better, yes. But today’s the day we leave this place.”

Esperasagiot spat. “They say these winter storms are likely to last only another week or two.”

“Or three, or four. How can anyone know? The chieftain has summoned me, Esperasagiot. Do you love this bleak city so much that you want to wait here for spring?”

“I love my xlendis, prince.”

“Won’t they be able to withstand the cold?”

“Their kind withstood worse in the Long Winter. But it’ll do them no good to be out there. As I’ve told you: these are city-bred animals. They’re accustomed to warmth.”

“We’ll keep them warm, then. Ask King Salaman’s grooms for extra blankets. And we’ll take care not to push them too hard. We’ll go at a steady pace, the kind you like. If this miserable season is almost over, well, we’ll only have to cope with the cold for a matter of days. But by the time it lifts, we’ll be far along on the road to Dawinno.”

Esperasagiot smiled frostily. “As you wish, prince.”

He went off toward the stables. Thu-Kimnibol caught sight of Dumanka at the far side of the courtyard, inventorying the provisions that were to be loaded on the wagons. The quartermaster waved cheerfully without interrupting his work.

It was midday when all the preparations at last were done and they rode out through the southern gate. The sun was bright and the wind was barely blowing. But the landscape beyond the wall was a forbidding one. Leafless trees rose like dead things everywhere, and a dusting of frost clung to the north-facing slopes. Toward late afternoon the east wind intensified, sweeping across the dry plateau like a scimitar. The only sign of life came from the lantern-trees that lay just south of the city, for even in this hard season they hadn’t been abandoned by the tiny birds responsible for their glow. As the early night came on they began to send forth a blinking, feeble light, but that was nothing to inspire any great degree of cheer.

Thu-Kimnibol looked back. Tiny figures watched them from the top of the wall. Salaman? Biterulve? Weiawala? He waved at them. A few of the figures, not all, waved back.

The wagons moved onward. The City of Yissou vanished behind them. Slowly, warily, the ambassadors from the City of Dawinno wended their way south across the forlorn wintry land.