Queen of Springtime (65 page)

“Then make do without the mask,” said Taniane suddenly. “And without the title, also. All things are new now. If you won’t be chieftain, Thu-Kimnibol, call yourself king!”

“
King
!”

“Your father was a king in Yissou. You will be a king now too.”

He stared at Taniane in wonder. “Do you mean this?”

“Yours was the victory. Yours is the right. You are of the same blood as Hresh; and Nialli Apuilana has chosen you to rule. Can you refuse?”

“There’s never been a king over the Koshmar tribe.”

“This is not the Koshmar tribe,” said Taniane. “This is the City of Dawinno, and it’ll be without a ruler after today. Will you be king here, or do you mean to leave us leaderless, Thu-Kimnibol?”

He paced back and forth before the high table. Then he halted and whirled and pointed at Nialli Apuilana.

“If I’m to be king, then you’ll be queen!”

She looked at him in alarm. “Queen? What are you saying? Do you think I’m a hjjk, Thu-Kimnibol? They’re the only ones who have queens.”

Laughing, he said, “They have queens, yes, but why should that matter to us? In this city you are the king’s mate; and what’s the king’s mate, if not a queen? So the hjjks have their queen, and we’ll have one too. Queen of Dawinno, you’ll be. And when we go to the unknown lands, you’ll be queen of those also, eh? Queen of everything that grows and flourishes on the face of this reborn world. The Queen of the New Springtime.” He took her hand in his. “What do you say to that, Nialli? The Queen of Springtime!” His voice went booming through the great room with overwhelming exuberance. “And when that other and far less beautiful queen sends another ambassador to us, bringing some new and troublesome proposition, which she will surely do before we are old, why, you can reply to her as her equal, one queen to another! What do you say, Nialli? Queen Nialli, is it? And King Thu-Kimnibol?”

Nialli Apuilana sits quietly, staring at the blank page in front of her. Her fingers hover above it. Chronicler? Her? And queen, too? How strange that seems! But for the moment, chronicler only. She is in Hresh’s study on the highest level of the House of Knowledge. All around her are Hresh’s things, the treasures he collected. The past is everywhere in this room.

She must set it all down, these wondrous bewildering events. What shall she say? She can barely comprehend it. Is this where she has been heading all along, all through this difficult voyage of hers? What shall she say, what shall she say?

Lightly she touches the amulet at her breast. A flicker of faint warmth goes through her hand. And it seems to her that a slight ghostly figure has passed swiftly through the room at that moment, one who is lithe and wiry, with great dark eyes in which luminous intelligence blazes forth, and that in the moment of his passage he turned to her, and smiled, and nodded, and shaped the word “queen” with his lips. The Queen of Springtime, yes. Yes. To whom will fall the task her father had begun, of attempting to discover who we really are, and what it is we must do to fulfill the intentions of the gods, how it is that we are meant to conduct ourselves in the world into which we came forth when the Long Winter ended. She smiles. She puts her fingers to the page at last, and the letters begin to form. She is entering it in the chronicles, finally, on the topmost blank page, that on the day such-and-such in the year such-and-such of the Coming Forth great changes came about, for on that day the revered Chieftain Taniane resigned her office and with her the chieftainship of ancient days at last was brought to an end for all time, and the first of the kings and queens of the city were chosen, who would preside over all that must be done in the aftermath of the great and terrible war with the hjjks. In which the People had acquitted themselves honorably and won a mighty victory.

She pauses. Looks up. Searches through the room by the faint glow of lamplight, seeking Hresh. But now she is alone. She glances back at what she has written. The chieftain, the king, the queen, the victory. She must say something about the change of chroniclers now, too. Another great change.

Many great changes, yes. With greater ones no doubt yet to come. For we are deep into the New Springtime now, and the springtime is the season of unfolding and growth. In springtime the world is born anew.

Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) is an American author best known for his science fiction titles, including
Nightwings
(1969),
Dying Inside
(1972), and
Lord Valentine’s Castle
(1980). He has won five Nebula Awards and five Hugo Awards. In 2004, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honored Silverberg with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 15, 1935, the only child of Michael and Helen Silverberg. An avid reader and writer from an early age, Silverberg began his own fanzine,
Spaceship
, in 1949. In 1953, at age eighteen, he sold his first nonfiction piece to
Science Fiction Adventures
magazine. His first novel,
Revolt on Alpha C
, was published shortly after, in 1955. That same year, while living in New York City and studying at Columbia University, Silverberg met his neighbors and fellow writers Randall Garrett and Harlan Ellison, both of whom went on to collaborate with him on numerous projects. Silverberg and Randall published pieces under the name Robert Randall. In 1956, Silverberg graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor of arts degree in comparative literature, married Barbara Brown, and won the Hugo Award for Most Promising New Author.

Following the whirlwind of his college years, Silverberg continued to write consistently for most of his life. Writing under various pseudonyms, including David Osborne and Calvin M. Knox, Silverberg managed to publish eleven novels and more than two hundred short pieces between 1957 and 1959. Having established himself as a science fiction writer by this time, Silverberg went on to show dexterity in other genres, from historical nonfiction with
Treasures Beneath the Sea
(1960) to softcore pornography under the pseudonym Don Elliot.

Silverberg continued to write outside science fiction until Frederik Pohl, the editor of
Galaxy Science Fiction
, convinced him to rejoin the field. It was in this period, from the late 1960s to early 1970s, that Silverberg’s classics, including
Tower of Glass
(1970),
The World Inside
(1971), and
The Book of Skulls
(1972), came to life. After taking a break from writing, Silverberg returned with
Lord Valentine’s Castle
in 1980.

Though they had been separated for nearly a decade, Silverberg and Barbara officially ended their marriage in 1986. A year later, Silverberg married fellow writer Karen Haber. They went on to collaborate on writing
The Mutant Season
(1990) and editing several anthologies. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Silverberg published important titles including
Star of Gypsies
(1986), and continued his established Majipoor series with
The Mountains of Majipoor
(1995) and
Sorcerers of Majipoor
(1997). In 1999, Silverberg was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

With a career that spans half a century, multiple genres, and more than three hundred titles, Silverberg has made major contributions as a writer. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife.

Silverberg at six months old with his parents.

Silverberg at summer camp in August 1952, reading the September issue of
Galaxy Science Fiction
, which featured a story by Theodore Sturgeon.

The first page of Silverberg’s manuscript for his first novel,
Revolt on Alpha C
, published in 1955.

An early rejection letter dated July 18, 1949.

Silverberg conversing with a nymph at author Brian Aldiss’s home in Oxford, England, after the 1987 Brighton Worldcon. (Courtesy of Andrew Porter.)

Silverberg with his wife, Karen, at the 2004 Nebula Awards in Seattle, where he received his Grand Master Award.

(Unless otherwise noted, all images taken from
Other Spaces, Other Times
by Robert Silverberg, courtesy of Nonstop Press.)

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