Queen of Springtime (64 page)

Husathirn Mueri said, as they left the chapel, “You go on ahead. I need to change into my official robes.”

Chevkija Aim nodded. “I’ll see you on the reviewing stand, then.”

“Yes.” Reaching out, Husathirn Mueri caught Chevkija by the wrist and held him a moment. “One thing. Despite what Tikharein Tourb said just now, I want you to understand this: Nialli Apuilana is to be spared.”

“But Tikharein Tourb specifically wants—”

“I don’t give a gorynth’s toenail for what he specifically wants. The whole crew of them can be slaughtered, for all I care. I’ll be glad to wield the knife myself. But she lives. Is that understood, Chevkija Aim? If she turns out to be difficult afterward, she can always be killed then. But she’s not to be touched when the killing starts. Have your guardsmen protect her. Or, by the Five, I’ll see to it that any harm that comes to her is repaid fifty times over. Is that understood, Chevkija Aim?”

It seemed to Thu-Kimnibol that the entire population of the city had turned out to greet his homecoming warriors. They had built a huge wooden stand right in front of Emakkis Gate, big enough to hold all the members of the Presidium and many others besides. And all around it were hundreds, thousands, of citizens, a gigantic horde of them, just about everyone in Dawinno who hadn’t gone off to the war. His hand tightened on Nialli Apuilana’s arm. “There’s Taniane up there, do you see? And Staip, and Chomrik Hamadel, and that’s Puit Kjai, I suppose, in the enormous helmet—”

“Simthala Honginda and Catiriil, too, over there on the right, with Staip. And isn’t that Husathirn Mueri? I can hardly make him out, with that guardsman blocking the view, but those bright white stripes, that black fur—it has to be him.”

“So it is. I think he’ll be wearing a long face today.”

“Where’s Boldirinthe? She’s not there, is she?”

“We’d see her if she were. But it would be a job, hauling her up on top of that platform.”

“If she’s still alive at all.”

“Do you think—”

“She was old. She was ill.”

“I pray that it’s not so,” Thu-Kimnibol said. But in his heart he suspected that Nialli Apuilana was right. This had been a season for the falling away of the great old ones.

A helmeted figure on a noble-looking gray xlendi came riding out toward them now, carrying the banner of the city. Thu-Kimnibol recognized him after a moment as the young highborn warrior Pelithhrouk, Simthala Honginda’s protégé, who had been in his entourage during the embassy to King Salaman, what seemed like a million years ago. The memory drifted back to him now of the time Dumanka had killed and roasted the caviandis, and Pelithhrouk had spoken out so idealistically on the theme of the oneness of all intelligent creatures. To have Pelithhrouk, one of those who had argued most strongly for peace, ride out now as the official bearer of welcome was a good sign for the reconciliation that must now be brought about.

Pelithhrouk dismounted and looked up toward them.

“The chieftain sends her greetings. She bids me to escort you to the place of honor.”

Thu-Kimnibol nodded to Nialli Apuilana. Together they stepped down from their wagon. Pelithhrouk smiled and spread his arms wide, and solemnly embraced them, Thu-Kimnibol first, then Nialli Apuilana, in a formal gesture of salute.

“What a fine day this is,” Thu-Kimnibol murmured, as they followed Pelithhrouk toward the reviewing stand. Guardsmen kept the crowds back on either side. Banners fluttered everywhere. The sun, bright and warm, was high overhead. As they started up the steps to the platform above Nialli Apuilana reached out for Thu-Kimnibol’s hand. They interlaced their fingers.

A row of guardsmen waited there. Behind them were Taniane and all the city’s notables in formal array. Time had dealt with them in a heavy way. The chieftain seemed no more than a gray ember of herself now, and Staip looked withered and ancient beyond belief, and the others too had aged startlingly, Puit Kjai, Chomrik Hamadel, Lespar Thone. Thu-Kimnibol wondered how he must look to them, after the long months of marching through distant bleak lands, the battles, the wounds he had taken.

But his mood was buoyant despite all that. The battles were done for now; he was returning with victory. And more than that. Often in days gone by he had felt himself oppressed by the great weight of the world’s past, the vastness of it. Now, though, what he sensed was the exhilarating vastness of the future: its infinite possibilities, more to come than lay behind, world without end, many difficulties, many triumphs, many wonders not yet dreamed of, never imagined even in the greatest eras of the past. The world might be ancient but also it was ever new and young. The best was still to come.

He reached the top of the platform and halted there, facing the great ones of the city.

There was a moment when everyone stood utterly still, frozen in a solemn ceremonial tableau. Thu-Kimnibol, still holding Nialli Apuilana’s hand, bowed his head toward them all. Were they waiting for him to speak first? Surely the first word belonged to the chieftain. He remained silent. Taniane held the burnished, gleaming Mask of Koshmar in her hands. She appeared to be about to don it. No one else moved.

Finally Taniane began to speak, her voice faltering a little: “The gods have brought you safely home. We rejoice, Thu-Kimnibol, in your victorious—”

An eruption of frantic action then, sudden, bewildering. The figure of Husathirn Mueri burst into view, emerging from behind Taniane and rushing toward Thu-Kimnibol. A knife gleamed in his upraised left hand.

In that same moment Chevkija Aim, sprinting up the three steps that separated the lower platform from the one where the notables stood, came running toward Husathirn Mueri from the side. He too carried a drawn blade.

“Lady, watch out!” the guard-captain shouted. “He’s a traitor!”

And an instant later Husathirn Mueri and Chevkija Aim were tangled up together in a desperate struggle at the center of the platform. Thu-Kimnibol, too astonished to move, saw weapons flashing in the sun. There was a grunting sound of pain. A startling gout of blood spurted from Chevkija Aim’s chest and ran down over his thick golden Beng fur. The guard-captain lurched forward, his arms jerking convulsively, his knife skittering across the platform and landing practically at Taniane’s feet as he fell. Husathirn Mueri, his face contorted and wild, swung around a second time toward Thu-Kimnibol. But Nialli Apuilana stepped swiftly between them just as Husathirn Mueri raised his blade.

He gaped at her, aghast, and checked his blow before it could strike her. His eyes glazed as though he had been smitten by the gods. Recoiling from her with a moaning outcry of despair, he lowered his arm and let his weapon drop from suddenly nerveless fingers. By now Thu-Kimnibol had managed to make his way around Nialli Apuilana in the confusion and started toward him. But Husathirn Mueri had already turned and was staggering crazily toward the rear of the platform, heading for Taniane, who had picked up Chevkija Aim’s knife and was studying it in wonder.

“Lady—” he muttered thickly. “Lady—lady—forgive me, lady—”

Thu-Kimnibol reached for him. Taniane waved him back. She stared at Husathirn Mueri as though he were an apparition.

In a dark anguished voice he said, “Kundalimon’s death was my doing. And Curabayn Bangkea’s as well, and all the grief that followed.”

With a desperate sob he threw himself upon her as if to embrace her. Unhesitatingly Taniane’s arm came forward, rising swiftly toward Husathirn Mueri’s rib-cage in a single sharp jab. He stiffened and gasped. Clutching his middle, he took a couple of reeling steps back from her. For a moment he stood utterly motionless, rearing up on the tips of his toes. Blood trickled out over his lips. He took one tottering step toward Nialli Apuilana. Then he fell sprawling, landing beside the body of Chevkija Aim. He quivered once and was still.

“Guards! Guards!” Thu-Kimnibol roared.

Seizing Nialli Apuilana with one hand and Taniane with the other, he pulled them behind him and swung about to see what was happening below the platform. Some kind of disturbance was going on down there. The guardsmen were moving in to quell it. Further in the distance the warriors of Thu-Kimnibol’s own army, aware now of the strange struggle on the platform, had left their wagons and were rushing forward. At the center of everything Thu-Kimnibol saw the figure of a bright-robed boy of ten or twelve years, holding his hands high in the midst of the crowd and screaming curses of some sort in a terrifying furious voice sharp as a dagger.

“Look,” Nialli Apuilana said. “He has Kundalimon’s Nest-guardian! His Nest-bracelet, too!” Her eyes were gleaming as fiercely as the boy’s. “By the gods, I’ll deal with him! Leave him to me!”

The Barak Dayir was suddenly in her hand. Deftly she seized it with her sensing-organ. Thu-Kimnibol stared at her in bewilderment as the Wonderstone instantly worked some bizarre transformation on her: she seemed to grow in size, to turn into something huge and strange.

“I see the Queen within you,” cried Nialli Apuilana in a dark frightful tone, looking down with blazing eyes at the boy in bright robes. “But I call Her out! I cast Her forth! Now! Now! Now!
Out
!”

For a moment all was silent. Time itself hung, frozen, still, suspended by a heartbeat.

Then the boy staggered as if he had been struck. He twisted about and made a dry chuttering sound, a sound almost like one a hjjk would make, and his face turned gray and then black; and he fell forward and was lost to sight in the surging crowd.

Calmly Nialli Apuilana restored the Barak Dayir to its pouch.

“All’s well now,” she said, taking Thu-Kimnibol once more by the hand.

It was hours later, after general quiet had been restored. They were in the great chamber of the Presidium.

Taniane said, “So there is to be peace, of a sort. Out of the madness of the war comes a kind of victory. Or at any rate a truce. But what have we accomplished? At any time, at the Queen’s mere whim, it could all begin again.”

Thu-Kimnibol shook his head. “I think no, sister. The Queen knows better now what we’re like, and what we’re capable of doing. The world will be divided now. The hjjks will leave us alone, I promise you that. They’ll keep to their present territory, and we to ours, and there’ll be no more talk of Nest-thinkers setting up shop in our cities.”

“And how will it be in territories that are neither theirs nor ours? That was what troubled Hresh so much, that the hjjks would keep us from the rest.”

“The rest of the world will remain open, mother,” said Nialli Apuilana. “We can explore it as we choose, whenever we’re ready. And who knows what things we will find? There may be great cities of the People on the other continents. Or the humans themselves may have returned to the world from wherever it is they went when the Great World died, and are living there now, for all we know. Who can say? But we’ll find out. We’ll go wherever we want, and discover everything that is to be discovered, just as my father hoped we would. The Queen understands now that there’ll be no penning us up in our little strip of coastline. If anyone has been penned up, it’s the hjjks, in the godforsaken lands they’ve always inhabited.”

“So it is a victory, then,” Taniane said. “Of a kind.” She did not sound jubilant.

“A victory, sister,” said Thu-Kimnibol sternly. “Make no mistake about that. We’ll be at peace. What else is that but victory?”

“Yes. Perhaps it is.” After a moment Taniane said, “And Hresh. You were with him when he died, Thu-Kimnibol has told me. What was it like for him, at the end?”

“He was at peace,” said Nialli Apuilana simply.

“I’ll want you to tell me more about that later. Now we have other matters to deal with.” Turning, she took the dark, gleaming mask of Koshmar from the high table of the Presidium, where she had placed it when they entered. She held it forth. It was boldly carved: a powerful, indomitable face with strong full lips, a jutting jaw, wide flaring cheekbones. To Nialli Apuilana she said, “This was Koshmar, the greatest woman of our tribe. Without her vision and strength none of us would be here today. Without her we would have been nothing. Take her mask, Nialli.”

“What am I to do with it, mother?”

“Put it on.”

“Put it on?”

“It’s the mask of chieftainship.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“This is the last day of my forty years of rule. They’ve been telling me for a long while now that it’s time I stepped aside, and they’re right. Today I resign my office. Take the mask, Nialli.”

Amazement and uncertainty flared in Nialli Apuilana’s eyes.

“Mother, this can’t be. My father has already named me chronicler. That’s what I’ll be. Not chieftain.”

“Chronicler?”

“So he told me, in his last moments. It was his special wish. I have the Wonderstone. I know how to use it.”

Taniane was silent a long while, as if she had withdrawn into some distant world.

Then in a quiet voice she said, “If you are to be chronicler and not chieftain, then the old way is at its end. I felt that you were ready, that at last it would be possible for you to succeed me. But you will not have it; and there’s no one else to whom I would give this mask. Very well. There will be no more chieftains among the People.”

She looked away.

Thu-Kimnibol said, “Is there no way you could be chronicler and chieftain both, Nialli?”

“Both?”

“Why can’t the titles be joined? You’d have the mask and the Barak Dayir also. The mask makes you chieftain, the Wonderstone makes you chronicler. You’ll hold both and you’ll rule with both.”

“But the chronicles—the work of the House of Knowledge—it’s too much, Thu-Kimnibol.”

“Chupitain Stuld can have charge of the House of Knowledge. She’ll do the work, but she’ll report to you.”

“No,” Nialli Apuilana said. “I see a different way. I’ll keep the Wonderstone, yes, because my father intended it that way. But I’m not the one who should sit at the head of the Presidium. Mother, give him the mask. He’s won the right to wear it.”

Thu-Kimnibol laughed. “I, wear Koshmar’s mask? Go before the Presidium in it, and call myself chieftain? This is a fine strong face, Nialli, but it’s a woman’s face!”