Queen of Springtime

by Robert Silverberg

  “A blind man could see it.”

  “Well, if I am, it has nothing to do with Salaman. I’ve suffered a great loss lately. Or have you forgotten?”

  Simthala Honginda seemed abashed. “Yes, yes, of course. Forgive me, prince. The lady Naarinta, may the gods give her rest!” He made the sign of Mueri the consoler.

  Thu-Kimnibol said, after a time, “It’ll be strange, I suppose, seeing Salaman again after so long. But there’ll be no problems. However angry we may have been at each other once, what does it matter now? What matters is the hjjks. And we think alike on that subject, Salaman and I. From the beginning we were destined to fight side by side against them, and soon we will. The alliance that we’ll form is the thing that counts. Why would he want to dig up grievances decades old? Why would I?”

  He turned again to the window, and let the conversation lapse into silence. After a time he reached out and signaled to Esperasagiot to halt the caravan. The xlendis would want watering here; and it was a good place to stop for the evening meal, besides.

  The land before them was green and rich. A maze of streams, reflecting the late afternoon light, gleamed like channels of molten silver. Good productive country, this. With a little drainage work it could probably support a city the size of Dawinno. Thu-Kimnibol wondered why Salaman hadn’t yet occupied this district and put it under cultivation. It wasn’t that far south of Yissou.

  How like Salaman it was, he thought in contempt, to let this rich land lie fallow. To turn inward this way, pulling back from expansion and holing up behind his preposterous wall.

  Simthala Honginda’s right, he told himself. You do still hate him, don’t you?

  No. No, hate was too strong a term. But despite all he had said to Simthala Honginda he suspected that the old resentments still were simmering somewhere within him.

  The conventional notion in Dawinno was that he had tried to challenge Salaman somehow for the throne of Yissou. But that notion was wrong. Thu-Kimnibol had realized very early that he would never rule the city his father had founded in his father’s place. He had been much too young, when Harruel had died in the battle with the hjjks, to take the kingship for himself. Salaman had been the only possible candidate then. And once he had tasted such power, it wasn’t likely that out of the goodness of his heart he’d relinquish it when Thu-Kimnibol came of age. Everyone understood that. Thu-Kimnibol was willing from the start to recognize Salaman as king. All he wanted in return was a little respect, as was due him as the son of the city’s first king: the proper precedence, a decent dwelling, a high seat by Salaman’s side at the feasts of state.

  Which Salaman had given him, for a time. Until the king in his middle years began to change, until he started to grow fretful and unquiet of soul, a new dark Salaman, harsh and suspicious.

  It was then, only then, that Salaman had decided Thu-Kimnibol was scheming against him. Thu-Kimnibol had offered him no cause for thinking that. Perhaps some enemy of his had whispered fabrications in the king’s ear. Whatever the reason, things quickly had begun going sour. Thu-Kimnibol hadn’t minded Salaman’s favoring his son Chham at his expense: that was only to be expected. But then the second son was placed above him at the royal table, and the third; and when Thu-Kimnibol asked to have one of the king’s daughters as his mate he was refused; and after that came other slights. He was a king’s son. He deserved better of Salaman. The last straw had been a minor point of precedence, so minor that Thu-Kimnibol could no longer remember what it was. They fell to shouting over it; Thu-Kimnibol threatened the king with his fist; he came close to striking him. He knew he was finished, then, in the city of Yissou. That night he left, and he had never been back.

  To Simthala Honginda he said, “Look there, Dumanka’s been hunting up something for our dinner.”

  The quartermaster had left his wagon. Down below, on the bank of a stream just south of the route, he had speared some animal and was casting for a second one.

  Thu-Kimnibol was glad of the distraction. His conversation with Simthala Honginda had been an oppressive one, stirring up difficult old days, and impaling him in contradictions. He saw now that although he could put aside his quarrel with Salaman, forgiving and forgetting were harder, however he pretended otherwise.

  Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called out, “What are you after there, Dumanka?”

  “Caviandis, prince!” The quartermaster, a brawny, irreverent man of Koshmar ancestry who wore a battered and dented Beng-style helmet slung casually across his shoulders, had killed a second one, now. Proudly he held the pair of purple-and-yellow bodies up, one in each hand. They dangled limply, plump little arms lolling, trickles of crimson blood dripping through their sleek fur. “Fresh meat, for a change!”

  At Thu-Kimnibol’s side Pelithhrouk, a young highborn officer who was a protégé of Simthala Honginda, said, “Is it right for us to kill them, do you think, prince?”

  “Why not? They’re only animals. Meat, that’s all they are.”

  “We were only animals once,” Pelithhrouk said.

  Thu-Kimnibol rounded on him in amazement. “What are you saying? That we’re no better than caviandis?”

  “Not at all,” said Pelithhrouk. “I mean that caviandis may be more than we think they are.”

  “This is bold talk,” said Simthala Honginda uneasily. “I don’t much like it.”

  “Have you ever looked at a caviandi closely?” Pelithhrouk said, with a kind of desperate rash insistence. “I have. Their eyes have light in them. Their hands are as human as ours. I think if we touched the mind of one with second sight, we’d be surprised how much intelligence we’d find there.”

  Simthala Honginda snorted. “I’m with Thu-Kimnibol. They’re only animals.”

  But Pelithhrouk was in too deep to retreat. “Intelligent animals, though! Waiting only for a touch, to be brought up to the next level, is what I think. Instead of hunting and eating them, we ought to be treating them with respect—teaching them to speak, maybe even to read and write if they’re capable of it.”

  “Your mind is gone,” said Simthala Honginda. “This is some madness you must have caught from Hresh.” Turning to Thu-Kimnibol and looking up at him in dismay, as though such wild talk from one to whom he had been a mentor was a keen embarrassment to him, which probably it was, he said, “Until this morning I thought this young man was one of our finest officers. But now I see—”

  “No,” said Thu-Kimnibol, holding up his hand. “What he says is interesting. But the time’s too soon for us to worry about raising up other creatures to read and write,” he said to Pelithhrouk, laughing. “We have to make our own lives safer before we can go about teaching the creatures of the field how to be civilized. The caviandis will have to look after themselves, for the time being. For the time being, animals is what they are and have to remain. And if you tell me that we are animals too, well, so be it. We’re animals too. But right now we are of the eaters, and they are of the eaten, and that makes all the difference.”

  Dumanka, who had come up to them during this discussion and stood listening blankfaced to it, now tossed the caviandis down at Thu-Kimnibol’s feet. “I’ll build a fire, prince. We’ll be feasting in half an hour.”

  “Well done,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “And an end to all this talk, thanks be to the Five.”

  The caviandi meat was tasty stuff, yes. Thu-Kimnibol ate his portion without regret, though for a moment the disturbing notion passed through his mind that Pelithhrouk might be right, that these agile little creatures who hunted fish by the fast-flowing streams might in truth have intelligence, and a society, and a language, and names, and gods, and even a history of their own, for all anyone knew. Who could tell which creatures were mere animals and which intelligent beings? Not he. He put the thought aside. He noticed, though, that Pelithhrouk left his portion of the meat untouched. He has the courage of his convictions, at least, Thu-Kimnibol thought. A point in his favor.

  The next day they left the zone of streams and
marshes behind, and entered a drier district of rich dark earth and grassy meadows. At nightfall they saw lantern-trees blazing like beacons to the north. That was a good sign. It meant the caravan was getting close to the city.

  The lantern-trees were inhabited by thousands of small birds able to emit a cool but brilliant light from colored patches on their throats and chests. Tirelessly they flashed their dazzling signals in steady rhythmic pulses, visible for great distances, all the night long. By day the tiny dull-plumaged birds were quiescent, nestling quietly. Why they chose those particular trees to live in, no one knew. But once they took possession of one they appeared never to relinquish it. And so lantern-trees became valuable highway markers by night, dependable and familiar guides for travelers.

  Beyond the lantern-tree groves lay the farms of Yissou. Here, as those other farmers had done on the outskirts of Dawinno many weeks before, the farmers of Yissou came out sullenly to stand by the boundary-stones of their properties, glaring at the strangers passing by.

  Now the land began to rise toward the great ridge south of the city, beyond which was Yissou itself, snug within the crater that the death-star had made.

  They went on, up the outer slope of the crater. A little way farther along they came to a halt before the vast black wall that protected the City of Yissou, a wall that seemed to block the entire horizon and rise to a height altogether beyond belief.

  The sight of it took Thu-Kimnibol’s breath away. It was one of the most astonishing things he had ever seen.

  He remembered the wall of years past, four or five sturdy courses of solid square-cut stone: how proud Salaman had been, when that new wall finally circled the city on all sides and he could at last rip down the old wooden palisade! Thu-Kimnibol knew that Salaman had gone on enlarging his wall year by year. But he had never expected to be confronted by something like this. It loomed awesomely, a thing of overwhelming mass, a terrifying pile of dark rock that nearly blotted out the sky.

  What sort of enemy did Salaman fear that he should feel the need of a wall like that? What demons had come to haunt Salaman’s soul, Thu-Kimnibol wondered, in the years since their last meeting?

  A file of perhaps a thousand spear-wielding warriors stood side by side atop it. Their spears bristled against the brightness of the sky: They held themselves stiffly, scarcely moving. The wall dwarfed them: they seemed hardly larger than ants.

  Below them was a great metal-bound wooden gate. It opened with a loud creaking and groaning as the caravan came nearer to it, and half a dozen unarmed figures, no more, stepped through, advancing a hundred paces into the open fields outside the wall. The gate swung shut behind them. At the head of the group was a short, broad-shouldered man whom Thu-Kimnibol thought at first glance was Salaman himself; but then he realized that the man was much too young to be the king. One of his sons, no doubt. Chham, was it? Or Athimin, maybe? Thu-Kimnibol felt the old angers rising in himself at the sight of him, remembering how those sons of Salaman had displaced him long ago.

  He dismounted and went forward, hand upraised in a gesture of peace.

  “I am Thu-Kimnibol,” he called. “Son of Harruel, and a prince of the City of Dawinno.”

  The broad-shouldered man nodded. Indeed he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Salaman Thu-Kimnibol remembered, the robust arms, the short stocky legs, the alert, inquisitive gray eyes set far apart in a round, strong-featured face. He was very young, too young even to be Chham or Athimin. “I am Ganthiav, son of Salaman. The king my father asks me to welcome you and conduct you into the city.”

  Some younger son, perhaps not even yet born at the time of Thu-Kimnibol’s flight. Was the sending of this Ganthiav to greet him some sort of obscure insult?

  Be calm, Thu-Kimnibol warned himself. No matter what, be calm.

  “Will you follow me?” Ganthiav asked, as the gate began to open once again.

  Thu-Kimnibol glanced once more toward the top of the wall, toward that astonishing horde of motionless armed men. There was a sort of pavilion up there also, a dome-shaped thing made of a smoother, grayer stone than the wall itself. A long window set in its face yielded a view of the plain. For a moment Thu-Kimnibol’s gaze rested on that window. He caught sight of a shadowy figure standing beside it; and then the figure moved into the light, and Thu-Kimnibol saw the unmistakable gray eyes of Salaman, King of Yissou looking back at him, somber and implacable and cold.

  Four

  The Martyr

  KUNDALIMON HAD THE FREEDOM of the city, now, by special order of Husathirn Mueri, who had been asked by Curabayn Bangkea to release him from house arrest. He could leave his little cell in Mueri House whenever he pleased, and roam into any quarter, even entering the holy buildings and the houses of government. Nialli Apuilana had made that clear to him. “No one will stop you,” she said. “No one will harm you.”

  “Even if I go into the Queen-chamber?”

  She laughed. “You know we have no queen.”

  “Your—mother? The woman who rules?”

  “My mother, yes.” Kundalimon still had trouble with such concepts as “mother” and “father.” These flesh-folk matters were only slowly becoming clear to him. The mother was the Egg-maker. The father was the Life-kindler. Coupling, the thing he did so pleasurably with Nialli Apuilana, was the means they used to kindle eggs into life among the flesh-folk. It was something similar to what was done in the Nest, and yet all so different, so deeply different. “What about her?” Nialli Apuilana asked.

  “Is she not queen of the city?”

  “Taniane’s title is chieftain, not queen,” Nialli Apuilana said. “It’s an old title, from when we were just a little tribe living in a hole in the side of a mountain. She rules the city—with the advice of my father and the offering-woman and the whole council of princes—but she’s not our queen. Not as you and I understand Queen-nature. She’s my mother, that’s true. But not the mother of the entire city.”

  “Then if I go into her chamber, no one will stop me?”

  “It depends on what she’s doing. But ordinarily, yes, you can go in. You can go anywhere you like. They’ll be watching you, I suppose.”

  “Who will?”

  “The guards. They don’t trust you, Curabayn Bangkea’s whole crowd. They think you’re a spy.”

  He didn’t quite comprehend. Much of what Nialli Apuilana said was a mystery to him. Even now, after weeks of daily lessons, when his mind was flooded with the language of the flesh-folk and he even found himself at times thinking in their words and not with Nest-words, he often was puzzled by the substance of what she told him. But he listened, and tried to remember, and hoped that in time he would understand.

  In any case he was achieving his purpose, here, and that was the important thing. He had come to bring Queen-love, and he was doing it. First to Nialli Apuilana, in whom Queen-love was already awake, for she had spent time in the Nest; and now, now that he was finally free to go out into the city, he was bringing it to all the others, those who were entirely without Nest-awareness.

  He had expected that he would be frightened, the first time he went outside alone. Nialli Apuilana had taken him out a few times to show him the main thoroughfares and explain the pattern of the streets to him; but then one morning he had risked going out without her. It was a test, to see whether he’d be able to take more than a few timid steps without wanting to rush back into the safety of the building.

  So huge a city, so many streets, such hordes of flesh-folk everywhere about! The thick clinging humid southern warmth, so different from what he had been accustomed to in the dry cool north. The strange sweet alien aromas of the place. The utter absence of Nest-bond. The possibility that the people of this place might look on him with hatred or disdain.

  But he felt no fear at all. He walked down past the jeering, sour-faced guards and down cobbled Minbain Way, and turned left into an open-air marketplace on a side street he hadn’t traveled with Nialli Apuilana, and moved from stall to stall, looking at the
fruits and vegetables and the dangling slabs of meat. He was altogether calm. And when it seemed to him that the outing had lasted long enough, he found his way back to Mueri House without difficulty.

  After that he went out almost every day. He had never known such excitement. Simply to stand at a street-corner, listening to a ballad-singer or a preacher or a peddler of little toys—how different that was from the life of the Nest! To step into a restaurant and stare in wonder at the sizzling meat on the griddle, and then point and smile, and be smiled at in return, and be handed some strange tender bit of flesh-folk food to eat—how wonderful, how transfiguring that was! It was like moving through the most vivid of dreams.

  A steady diet of the food of the flesh-folk was having a profound effect on him. His fur was much thicker, darker, now. His body was becoming almost plump: he could pinch his skin and there would be a thick strip of flesh between his fingers, as never before. And also this new rich nourishment was entering his soul. He felt a fresh access of vigor. He was restless, almost jumpy with unfamiliar energy. Sometimes, when Nialli Apuilana entered his room, he seized her almost before she had had a chance to say a word and drew her down with him to the floor or to his couch. In the streets, too, he moved in long forceful strides, enjoying the jolt of the pavement against his feet. That was new, too, to be walking on paved streets. Everything was new, everything was exciting.

  They all seemed to know who he was. People pointed and whispered. A few spoke to him, courteously but with some uncertainty, as if they weren’t sure how safe it was to approach him. With the children it was different. Platoons of them followed him about. There were children everywhere here; sometimes it seemed to Kundalimon that scarcely anyone but boys and girls lived in this city. They capered after him, shouting and whooping, calling out to him.

  “Hjjk! Hjjk! There goes the hjjk!”

  “Say something to us in hjjk-speak, hjjk!”

  “Hey, hey, hjjk! Where’s your beak?”