Queen of Springtime (45 page)

Her strength and determination as she toiled over the ancient manuscript delighted him. Seeing her like this, he could see Taniane reborn in her, and it took him back to the days when he was young, when he and Taniane had roamed Vengiboneeza together in search of the secrets of the Great World.

But Nialli was something more than a mere duplicate of her mother. He could see the Hresh in her too. She was volatile and impulsive, a spooky willful child, as he had been. Before her capture by the hjjks she had been outgoing and exuberant, but also—as he had been—lonely, alienated, inquisitive, odd. How he loved her! How deeply he felt for her!

She looked up from the scroll. “It’s like the language they speak in dreams. Nothing will hold still long enough for me to find its meaning.”

“So I felt also. But not any longer.”

She gave him the manuscript. He put his fingers to it and the strange archaic phrases rose to his mind.

“It’s a document of the very early years of the Long Winter,” he said. “When all the tribes of the People were newly cocooned. There were some warriors of the Bengs who wouldn’t believe that they had to spend all their lives in hiding, and one of them made a Going Forth to see if the outer world could be reclaimed. You must realize that this was thousands of years before our own three premature departures from the cocoon, what we call the Cold Awakening, the Wrongful Glow, and the Unhappy Dawn. Most of the text is missing, but what we have is this—

“
And then I stood in the land of ice and a terrible death of the heart came upon me, for I knew that I would not live.

“
Then did I turn, and seek again the place of my people. But the mouth of the cave I could not find. And the hjjken-folk came upon me and seized me where I stood, laying their hands upon me and carrying me away, but I was free of fear, for I was a dead man already, and who can die the death more than once? There were twenty of them and very frightsome of aspect, and they did lay their hands on me and take me to the warm dark place where they lived, which was like unto the cocoon, but greatly larger, in the ground extending farther than I could see, with many avenues and side-passages going in every way.

“
And there was in this place the Great Hjjken, a monster of huge and most formidable size, the sight of which made the blood run backward in my vessels. But she touched the soul of my soul with the second sight of her, and she said unto me,
‘Behold, I give you peace and love’,
and I was not afraid. For the touch of her soul on my soul was like being taken into the arms of a great Mother, and I did marvel greatly that so huge and frightsome a beast could be so comforting. And also she said,
‘You are come to me too soon, for my time is not yet. But when the world wakens into warmth will I embrace you all.’

“
Which was all she said, and never did I speak with her again. But I did stay among the hjjken twenty days and twenty nights, the count of which I did keep most carefully, and lesser hjjken did ask of me with the voices of their inner minds a great many questions concerning my People and how we live and what we believe, and also they did tell me something of what it is that they believe, though that is all hazy in my mind, and was even as they told it me. And I did eat of their food, which is a dreadful mash that they do chew and spit forth for their companions to eat after them, and which gave me sore revulsion at first, though later hunger overcame me and I did eat of it and find it less hateful than might be thought. Then when they ceased to question me did they say to me,
‘We will take you to your nation now’,
and led me forth into the bitter cold and deadly snows, and did conduct me thenceforward—
”

Hresh laid the scroll down.

“That’s where it ends?” Nialli Apuilana asked.

“It breaks off there. But what there is of it is clear enough.”

“And what does it tell you, father?”

“It explains, I think, the taking of captives by the hjjks. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Evidently it’s so they can study us. But they care for the captives and eventually they let them go, some of them, at least, as they did with that poor foolish Beng warrior who they found wandering around on the icefields.”

“So this is what has led you to cease thinking of them as monsters.”

“I never believed they were monsters,” said Hresh. “Enemies, yes, ruthless and dangerous enemies. Remember, I was there when they attacked Yissou. But perhaps they aren’t even that. After all this time we don’t really know
what
they are. We’ve never even begun to understand them. We hate them simply because they’re unknown.”

“And they probably always will be.”

“I thought you said you understood them.”

“I understand very little, father. I may have thought I did, but I was wrong. Who understands why the Five send us storms, or heat or cold, or famines? They must have their reasons, but how can we presume to say what they are? So it is with the Queen. She’s like a force of the universe. It’s impossible to understand Her. I know a little of what the Nest is like, its shape and smell and how life is lived there. But that’s mere knowledge. Knowledge isn’t understanding. I’ve started to see that no one who is of the People can even begin to understand the Queen. Except—just possibly—someone who has been in the Nest.”

“But you have been in the Nest.”

“Just a minor one. The truths I learned there were minor truths. The Queen of Queens who dwells in the far north is the only source of the real revelations. I thought they were going to take me to Her when I was older; but instead they let me go and brought me back here to Dawinno.”

Hresh blinked in bewilderment. “They
let you go
? You told us that you escaped!”

“No, father. I didn’t escape.”

“Didn’t—escape—”

“Of course not. They released me, as they did that Beng in that chronicle of yours. Why would I have wanted to leave a place where I was completely happy for the first time in my life?”

The words struck him like blows. But Nialli Apuilana went serenely on.

“I had to leave. I never would have gone of my own will. Whether the Nest is a place of good or evil, one thing is true of it: while you’re in it you feel utterly secure. You know that you live in a place where uncertainty and pain are unknown. I surrendered myself completely to it, and gladly, as who wouldn’t? But they came for me one morning and said I had stayed with them as long as was necessary, and led me outside, and took me on vermilion-back to the edge of the city, and turned me loose.”

“You told us you had escaped from them,” Hresh said numbly.

“No. You and mother decided I had escaped from them, I suppose because you weren’t able to imagine that anyone could possibly prefer to remain in the Nest instead of coming home to Dawinno. And I didn’t contradict you. I didn’t say anything at all. You assumed I had escaped from the clutches of the evil bug-monsters, as any sensible person would have wanted to do, and I let you think so, because I knew you needed to believe that, and I was afraid you’d say I had lost my mind if I told you anything approaching the truth. How could I tell you the truth? If everyone in the city thinks the hjjks are dreadful marauding demons, and always has thought so, and I stand up and say they aren’t, that I found love and truth among them, will I be believed? Or will I simply be met with pity and scorn?”

“Yes. Yes, I see that,” said Hresh. His shock and dismay were slowly beginning to lift. She waited in silence. At last he said, very softly, “I understand, Nialli. You
had
to lie to us. I see that now. I see a great many things now.” He put the ancient Beng scroll away, closed the casket of the chronicles, let his hands rest on the lid. “If I had known then what I know now, it might have been different.”

“What do you mean?”

“About the hjjks. About the Nest.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I have an idea of what the Nest is like, now. The great living machine that it is. The perfection of its pattern, the way it all rotates around the tremendous directing intelligence that is the Queen, who is Herself the embodiment of the guiding force of the universe—”

It was Nialli Apuilana’s turn to look amazed. “You sound almost like someone who’s been to the Nest!”

“I have,” Hresh said. “That’s the other thing I had to tell you.”

Her eyes went bright with shock and incredulity. “
What
? To the Nest? You?” She recoiled and stood up, bracing herself with both hands against the edge of the table, staring at him open-mouthed. “Father, what are you telling me? Is this some kind of joke? These aren’t joking matters.”

Taking her hand in his again, he said, “I’ve seen the small Nests, like the one where you were taken. And then I approached the great one, and the Great Queen within it. But I turned back before I reached it.”

“When? How?”

He smiled gently. “Not in the actual flesh, Nialli. I wasn’t really there. It was with the Barak Dayir, only.”

“Then you
were
there, you were!” she exclaimed, clutching his arm in her excitement. “The Barak Dayir shows you true visions, father. You told me so yourself. You’ve seen into the Nest! And so you must know Nest-truth. You understand!”

“Do I? I think I’m very far from understanding anything.”

“That isn’t so.”

He shook his head. “Perhaps I understand a little. But only a little, I think. Only the beginning of the beginning. What I had was simply a fleeting vision, Nialli. It lasted just a moment.”

“Even a moment would be enough. I tell you, father, there’s no way you can touch the Nest without experiencing Nest-truth. And therefore knowing Nest-bond, Egg-plan, all of it.”

He searched his mind. “I don’t know what those words mean. Not really.”

“They’re the things you spoke of a moment ago, when you talked of the Nest as a great living machine, and spoke of the perfection of its pattern.”

“Tell me. Tell me.”

Her expression changed. She seemed to disappear deep within herself. “Nest-bond,” she said, in an odd high-pitched way, as though reciting a lesson, “is the awareness of the relationship of each thing in the universe to everything else. We are all parts of the Nest, even those of us who have never experienced it, even those of us who look upon the hjjks as dread monsters. For everything is united in a single great pattern, which is the endless unstoppable force of life. The hjjks are the vehicle through which this force is manifested in our times; and the Queen is its guiding spirit on our world. This is Nest-truth. And Egg-plan is the energy that She expresses as she brings forth the unceasing torrent of renewal. Queen-light is the glow of Her warmth; Queen-love is the sign of Her great care for us all.”

Hresh stared, thunderstruck by the girl’s strange burst of eloquence. The words had come pouring out of her almost uncontrollably, almost as if someone or something else were speaking through her. Her face was aglow, her eyes were shining with absolute and unshakable conviction. She suddenly seemed swept up into some rapture of visionary zeal. She was aflame with it.

Then the flame flickered and went out, and she was only Nialli Apuilana again, the troubled, uneasy Nialli Apuilana of a moment before.

She sat stunned and depleted before him.

She is such a mystery, he thought.

And these other mysteries, those of the Nest—they were great and complex, and he knew that merely hearing of them like this could never give him a true grasp of them. He wished now that he had lingered longer when he had made his Barak Dayir voyage into the country of the hjjks. He began to see that he must before much longer make that voyage again, and experience the Nest far more deeply than he had allowed himself to do that other time. He must learn what Nialli Apuilana had learned, and he must learn it at first hand. Even if the learning of it cost him his life.

He felt very weary. And she looked exhausted. Hresh realized that they had carried this meeting as far as it could go this day.

But Nialli Apuilana apparently wasn’t quite ready to end it.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you say? Do you understand Nest-bond now? Egg-plan? Queen-love?”

“You look so tired, Nialli.” He touched her cheek. “You ought to get some rest.”

“I will. But first tell me that you understand what I was saying, father. And I didn’t really need to say it, isn’t that true? You already knew all that, didn’t you? You must have seen it when you looked into the Nest with your Wonderstone.”

“Some of it, yes. The sense of pattern, of universal order. I saw that. But I looked so quickly, and then I fled. Nest-bond—Queen-light—no, those terms are just words to me. They have no real substance in my mind.”

“I think you understand more than you suspect.”

“Only the beginning of the beginning of understanding.”

“That’s a beginning, at least.”

“Yes. Yes. At least I know what the hjjks are not.”

“Not demons, you mean? Not monsters?”

“Not enemies.”

“Not enemies, no,” Nialli Apuilana said. “Adversaries, maybe. But not enemies.”

“A very subtle shade of difference.”

“Yet a real one, father.”

Thu-Kimnibol was home at last. The journey south had been swift, though not nearly swift enough for him, and uneventful. Now he walked the grand, lonely halls of his great villa in Dawinno, rediscovering it, reacquainting himself with his own home, his own possessions, after his long absence. It seemed to him that he had been away ten thousand years. He was alone as he went from one echoing room to another, pausing here and there to examine the objects in the display cases.

There were phantoms and spectres everywhere. These were Naarinta’s things, really: she was the one who had collected most of the ancient treasures that filled these rooms, the bits of Great World sculpture and architectural fragments and strange twisted metallic things whose purpose would probably never be known. As he looked at them his sensing-organ began to tingle and he felt the immense antiquity of these battered artifacts come crowding in about him, alive and vital, jigging and throbbing with strange energy, making the villa itself seem a dead place, though it had been built only a dozen years before.