At Winter's End

by Robert Silverberg

  “Speak, then.”

  The guard glances uncertainly at Hresh, at Nialli Apuilana.

  “For your ears alone, lady.”

  “Then whisper it.”

  The guard pushes his helmet back, leans forward, very close to her. “No,” Taniane mutters harshly, when he has spoken only a few words. She puts both her hands to her throat for a moment. Then she begins to beat them against her thighs, angrily, in fierce agitation. Hresh, astonished, stares at her with amazement. Even the guard seems appalled at the effect the message has had on her, and he steps back, making the signs of all the gods with rapid, nervous gestures.

  “What is it?” Hresh asks.

  She shakes her head slowly. She is making holy signs too. “Yissou save us,” she says in a strange hollow tone, repeating it several times.

  “Mother?” Nialli Apuilana says.

  Hresh catches Taniane by the forearm. “By the gods, Taniane, tell me what’s happened!”

  “Oh, Nialli, Nialli—”

  “Mother, please!”

  In a voice like a voice from the tomb Taniane says, “The boy who came to us from the hjjks—the emissary—”

  In exasperation: “Mother, what is it? Is he all right?”

  “He was found a little while ago in an alleyway down the street from Mueri House. Dead. Strangled.”

  “Gods!” Hresh cries.

  He turns toward Nialli Apuilana, holding out his arms to comfort her. But he is too late. With a terrible cry of pain the girl turns and flees, bounding wildly over the side of the chieftain’s box and rushing off into the crowd, shoving people out of her way with furious force as though they are no more than straws. In a moment she is out of sight. And an instant later a second guardsman comes chugging up, running as clumsily as a cafala, breathless, wild-eyed. He clutches the side of the chieftain’s box with both his hands, trying to make the world hold still beneath him. “Lady!” he blurts. “Lady, a murder in the stadium! The guard-captain, lady—the guard-captain—”

  It was near midnight. The rain was over, and thick white mists rose from the ground everywhere, like phantoms of the dead issuing into the air. An impromptu meeting of the key members of the Presidium had been going on all evening—it had seemed the only thing to do—and they had discussed the murders interminably, going around and around, as if talking about them could bring back the dead. Finally Taniane had sent them all away, with nothing accomplished. Only Husathirn Mueri remained. She had asked him to stay behind.

  The chieftain was at the edge of collapse. This day had been a thousand years long.

  Not one murder but two. Violent death was all but unknown in the city. And on a single day, two of them, and the day of the Festival at that!

  Giving Husathirn Mueri a cold, acrid look, she said, “I merely told you to stop him from preaching. Not to have him killed. What kind of beast are you, to have a man killed like that?”

  “Lady, I didn’t want him dead any more than you,” said Husathirn Mueri hoarsely.

  “Yet you sent that guard-captain of yours off to do it.”

  “No. I tell you no, lady.” Husathirn Mueri looked as worn and ragged as she felt herself. His black fur was heavy with sweat, and the white stripes that ran through it were dulled by the day’s grime. His amber eyes had the glassy gleam of extreme fatigue. He threw himself down on the stone bench facing her desk and said, “What I told Curabayn Bangkea was nothing more than you told me: that he had to shut him up, that he had to stop him from doing any more preaching. I didn’t say anything about killing. If Curabayn Bangkea killed him, it was entirely his own idea.”

  “If Curabayn Bangkea killed him?”

  “That can’t ever be proven, can it?”

  “The very strangling-cloth he used was wrapped around his wrist.”

  “No,” Husathirn Mueri said wearily. “There was a strangling-cloth on him when he was found, I’ll grant you. But many men of Curabayn Bangkea’s sort carry strangling-cloths, more for ornament than anything else. That there was one around his wrist proves nothing. Nor can we be sure that it was the one that was used to kill Kundalimon. And even if it was, lady, there’s always the possibility that whoever killed Kundalimon killed Curabayn Bangkea also, and then put the strangling-cloth on him to throw suspicion on him. Or let me give you yet another hypothesis: that Curabayn Bangkea had discovered the murderer, and had taken the strangling-cloth from him to offer as evidence, when he was killed. By the murderer’s accomplice, perhaps.”

  “You have an abundance of hypotheses.”

  “It’s the way my mind works,” said Husathirn Mueri. “I can’t help that.”

  “Indeed,” Taniane said sourly.

  What she longed to do was send forth her second sight and try to see just how deeply involved Husathirn Mueri actually had been in this miserable thing. It still seemed to her, knowing him as she did, that very likely he had deliberately chosen to interpret her orders as instructions to have Kundalimon removed. Kundalimon had been Husathirn Mueri’s rival, after all, for Nialli Apuilana’s affections. Had won those affections beyond question, actually. How convenient for Husathirn Mueri to misunderstand her words and send his creature Curabayn Bangkea off to murder him. And then to have the guard-captain murdered too, by way of silencing him.

  It all fit together. And an aura of guilt seemed to hover like a dull stinking cloud of marsh-gas around Husathirn Mueri even as he sat here.

  But Taniane couldn’t simply go on a fact-finding expedition in his mind with her second sight. It would be a scandalous intrusion. It was beyond all propriety. She’d have to make a formal charge first, and call him to trial, for that. And if in fact he was innocent, she would have gained nothing for herself except an unalterable enemy, who happened to be one of the shrewdest and most powerful men in the city. That wasn’t a risk worth taking.

  Was it ever in my mind without my consciously knowing it, she wondered, to have Kundalimon done away with? And did I somehow convey that to Husathirn Mueri without fully realizing what I was asking?

  No. No. No.

  She hadn’t ever meant the boy any harm. She wanted only to protect the children of the city against the madness of the hjjk-teachings that he was spreading. She was certain of that. To have ordered the death of her daughter’s first and only lover—no, that had never been in her mind at all.

  Where was Nialli now? No one had seen her since her disappearance from the stadium.

  “You still suspect me?” Husathirn Mueri asked.

  Taniane stared stonily at him. “I suspect everyone, except perhaps my mate and my daughter.”

  “What assurance can I give you, lady, that I had no part in the boy’s death?”

  Shrugging, she said, “Let it pass. But it was that underling of yours, that guard-captain, I think, who took it upon himself to have Kundalimon killed, or to kill him himself.”

  “Very likely so, I agree.”

  “How do we account for the killing of Curabayn Bangkea, though?”

  Husathirn Mueri spread his hands wide. “I have no idea. Some rowdies at the games, maybe, catching him in a dark corner. With an old score that needed settling. He was captain of the guards, after all. He threw his weight around freely. He must have had enemies.”

  “But on the very same day of Kundalimon’s murder—”

  “A coincidence that only the gods could explain. Certainly I can’t, lady. But the investigation will continue until we have the answer, if it takes a hundred years. Both deaths will be resolved. I promise you that.”

  “In a hundred years nothing of this will matter. What matters now is that an ambassador from the Queen of Queens has been murdered while in our city. While in the midst of treaty negotiations.”

  “And that troubles you, does it?”

  “I don’t want us getting embroiled in a war with the hjjks until we’re ready for such a thing. Yissou only knows what goes on in the minds of hjjks, but if I were the Queen I’d regard killing her ambassador as a very serio
us provocation indeed. An act of war, in fact. And we’re very far from being ready to fight them.”

  “I agree,” said Husathirn Mueri. “But this isn’t any such provocation of that sort. Consider, lady.” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “One: His embassy was finished. He had presented his message; that was all he was sent here to do. He wasn’t a negotiator, just a messenger, and not even a very competent messenger. Two: He was a citizen of this very city, returning after a long absence brought about by his having been kidnapped. He wasn’t the Queen’s subject in any way. She had him only because her people stole him from us. What claim could she have to him? Three: There’s no sort of contact between Dawinno and the Nest, and therefore no reason to think they’ll ever find out what became of him, assuming they care in the slightest. When we make our response to their treaty proposal, if we do, we’re not obliged to say anything about where Kundalimon might happen to be at the moment. Or perhaps we won’t reply to them at all. Four—”

  “No!” Taniane snapped. “In Yissou’s name, no more hypotheses! Doesn’t your mind ever stop ticking, Husathirn Mueri?”

  “Only when I sleep, perhaps.”

  “Then go to your bed, and I’ll go to mine. You’ve convinced me. The killing of that boy isn’t going to bring the hjjks down upon us. But there’s a gaping wound in our commonwealth all the same, which can be healed only by finding these murderers.”

  “The one who killed Kundalimon, I do believe, is already dead himself.”

  “Then there’s still at least one killer loose among us. I give you the job of finding him, Husathirn Mueri.”

  “I’ll spare no effort, lady. You can count on that.”

  He bowed and left. She looked after him until he turned the corner of the hallway and was gone.

  The day was over at last. Home, now. Hresh was already there, waiting for her. The news of Kundalimon’s death had affected him more than she would have expected. Rarely had she seen him so distraught. And then, Nialli Apuilana—the girl had to be found, she had to be comforted—

  A very long day indeed.

  This is the deep tropical wilderness, where the air clings to your throat with every breath, and the ground is soft and resilient, like a moist sponge, beneath your feet. Nialli Apuilana has no idea how far she’s come from the city in her flight. She has no clear idea of anything. Her mind is choked and congested by grief. No thoughts pass through it.

  Where thought had been, there is only second sight now, operating in some automatic way, carrying information about her surroundings to her in dim pulsing pulsations. She is aware of the city far behind her, crouching on its hills like a huge many-tentacled monster made of stone and brick, sending out waves of cold baleful menace. She is aware of the swamps through which she is running, rich with hidden life both great and small. She is aware of the vastness of the continent that stretches before her. But nothing is clear, nothing is coherent. The only reality is the journey itself, the mad roaring need to run, and run, and run, and run.

  A night and a day and a night and nearly another day have passed since she fled from Dawinno. She had ridden a xlendi part of the way, driving it furiously into the southern lakelands; but somewhere late on that first day she had paused to sip water at a stream, and the xlendi had wandered off, and she has gone on foot ever since. She scarcely ever stops, except to sleep, a few hours at a time. Whenever she does halt she collapses into a darkness that is the next thing to death, and when after a time it lifts from her she gets up and begin running once more, without goal, without direction. A fever is on her, so that she seems to be on fire everywhere, but it gives her strength. She is a molten thing, cutting a blazing path through this unknown domain. She eats fruits that she snatches from bushes as she runs. She stoops to pluck fungi with shining yellow caps from the ground, and crams them into her mouth without pausing. When thirst overcomes her she drinks any water she finds, fresh or still. Nothing matters. Flight is all.

  Her body has long since slipped into that strange crystalline realm that lies beyond fatigue. She no longer feels the throbbings of her weary legs, no longer records the protests of her lungs or the pains that shoot upward through her back. She moves at a graceful lope, running swiftly in a kind of mindless serenity.

  She must not allow her mind to regain awareness.

  If it does, she will hear the lethal words again. Found in an alleyway. Dead. Strangled.

  The vision of Kundalimon’s slender body will come to her, twisted, rumpled, staring sightlessly toward the gray sky. His hands outstretched. His lips slightly apart.

  Found in an alleyway.

  Her lover. Kundalimon. Dead. Gone forever.

  They would have gone north to the Queen together. Together they would have descended hand in hand into the Nest of Nests, down into that warm sweet-smelling mysterious realm beneath those distant plains. The song of Nest-bond would have engulfed their spirits. The pull of Queen-love would have dissolved all disharmonies in their souls. Dear ones would have come up to embrace them: Nest-thinkers, Egg-makers, Life-kindlers, Militaries, every caste gathering round to welcome the newcomers to their true home.

  Dead. Strangled. My only one.

  Nialli Apuilana had never known that love such as theirs had been could exist. And she knows that such love can never exist for her again. She wants nothing now but to join him in whatever place it is where he has gone.

  She runs, seeing nothing, thinking nothing.

  It is twilight again. Shadows deepen, falling across her like cloaks. Gentle warm rain falls, on and off. Thick golden mists rise from the moist earth. Thick soft woolly clouds spiral up around her and take the forms of the gods, which have no forms, and in whose existence she does not believe. They surround her, looming higher than the towering smooth-trunked vine-tangled trees, and they speak to her in voices that tumble downward to her ears in shimmering harmonics richer than any music she has ever heard.

  “I am Dawinno, child. I take all things, and transform them to make them new, and bring them forth into the world again. Without me, there would be only unchanging rock.”

  “I am Friit. I bring healing and forgetfulness. Without me, there would be only pain.”

  “I am Emakkis, girl. I provide nourishment. Without me, life could not sustain itself.”

  “Me, child, I am Mueri. I am consolation. I am the love that abides and infuses. Without me, death would be the end of everything.”

  “And I am Yissou. I am the protector who shields from harm. Without me, life would be a valley of thorns and fangs.”

  Dead. Strangled. Found in an alleyway.

  “There are no gods,” Nialli Apuilana murmurs. “There is only the Queen, holding us in Her love. She is our comfort, and our protection, and our nourishment, and our healing, and our transformation.”

  In the deepening darkness, golden light encloses her. The jungle is ablaze with it. The lakes and pools and streams shimmer with it. Light pours from everything. The air, thick and torrid, swirls with the holy images of the Five Heavenly Ones. Nialli Apuilana holds her hand before her face to shield her eyes, so strong is that light. But then she lowers the hand, and lets the light come flooding upon her, and it is kind and loving. She draws new strength from it. She runs onward, deeper into that crystalline realm of tirelessness.

  She hears the voices again. Dawinno. Friit. Emakkis. Mueri. Yissou.

  Destroyer. Healer. Provider. Consoler. Protector.

  “The Queen,” Nialli Apuilana murmurs. “Where is the Queen? Why does She not come to me now?”

  “Ah, child, She is us, and we are She. Do you not see that?”

  “You are the Queen?”

  “The Queen is us.”

  She considers that.

  Yes, she thinks. Yes, that is so.

  She is able to think again, now. Her eyes are open. She can see the stars, she can see the many worlds, she can see the shining web of Queen-love binding the worlds together. And she knows that all is one, that there are no
differences, no gradations, no partitions dividing one form of reality from another. She had not realized that before. But now she sees, she hears, she accepts.

  “Do you see us, child? Do you hear us? Do you feel our presence? Do you know us?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Shapes without form. Faces without features. Potent sonorities resonating through the descending shadows. Light, cascading from everything, coming from within. Density, strangeness, mystery. God-hood all about her. Beauty. Peace. Her mind is ablaze, but it is a cool white fire, burning away all dross. Out of the earth comes a roaring sound that fills all the sky, but it is a sweet roaring, enfolding her like a cloak. The Five Heavenly Ones are everywhere, and she is in their embrace.

  “I understand,” she whispers. “The Queen—the Creator—Nakhaba—the Five—all the same, all just different faces of the same thing—”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Night is coming on swiftly now. The heavy sky behind her is streaked with blue, with scarlet, with purple, with green. Ahead lies darkness. Lantern-trees are awakening into light. Creatures of the jungle show themselves everywhere, wings and necks and claws and scales and jaws shining on all sides of her.

  She drops to her knees. She can go no farther. With the return of thought has come the reality of exhaustion. She digs her hands into the warm moist ground and clings to it.

  But it seems for a moment, as she crouches there gasping and shivering in her great weariness, that she is alone once again, except for the creatures that screech and cackle and hiss and bellow all about her in the deepening night. She feels a tremor of fear. Where have the gods gone? Has she run so fast that she has left them behind?

  No. She can still feel them. She need only open herself to them, and they are there.

  “Here, child. I am Mueri. I will comfort you.”

  “I am Yissou. I will protect you.”

  “I am Emakkis. I will provide for you.”

  “I am Friit. I will heal you.”

  “I am Dawinno. I will transform you. I will transform you. I will transform you, child.”