Queen of Springtime (37 page)

“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 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 of 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 market place 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.

The 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 or 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 worshipped—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 worshippers. 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’ll 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 that she’s become a leader of the new cult, by the way—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 it if 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.