The Queen of Springtime

3 Salaman Receives a Visitor

Early on a chill fog-bound midsummer morning King Salaman of Yissou, with Biterulve, his favorite of his many sons, came forth to make the circuit of the great and perpetually unfinished wall that enclosed the city.

The king went out each day without fail from his palace at the heart of the city to inspect the ongoing work of wall-building. Standing at the foot of the wall, he would stare toward the battlements and embrasures far overhead, measuring them against the burning need he felt within his soul. Then he would ascend the wall by one of the many staircases along its inner face, and prowl its upper course. The immense black rampart, lofty as it was, never quite seemed adequate to that great need of his. In feverish moments of fear he imagined hjjk scaling-ladders suddenly appearing at the top of the wall. He imagined furious hjjk legions swarming across the highest parapets and down into the city.

Ordinarily these prowling inspections of Salaman’s were carried out at dawn, always in solitude. If a citizen happened to be awake at that hour, he would avert his eyes, not wishing to intrude on the king upon the walls. No one, not even his sons, would approach him at such a time. No one would dare.

But this morning Biterulve had asked to accompany him, and Salaman had acquiesced at once. There was nothing that Salaman would deny Biterulve. He was fourteen, the sixth of the eight princes Salaman had sired, Sinithista’s only boy — a frail and gentle child so little like the others that Salaman once had doubted that Biterulve could be of his own engendering, though he had kept those doubts to himself and was glad of it now. Biterulve’s frame was slender and long-boned, whereas Salaman and all his other sons were squat and stocky; and his fur was an eerie pale hue, the color of a snowy field by moonlight, where Salaman and the rest of his brood were dark. But Biterulve’s cool gray eyes were the unmistakable eyes of the king; and his supple spirit, though its nature was less fierce than that of Salaman or any of his other sons, was one that the king recognized as kin to his.

In the hour before sunrise they rode out together from the palace. Salaman, out of the corner of his eye, watched the boy closely. He handled his xlendi well, keeping the loose-limbed beast on a tight rein as they moved through the narrow curving streets, pulling back capably when an early-morning workman with a dray-wagon came unexpectedly around a sharp corner.

One of Salaman’s great fears was that this gentle son of his was too gentle: that there was nothing at all warlike about him, that Biterulve would be unable to play a proper role when the hjjks at last made the move he had so long expected, and the great cataclysmic time arrived. It was not so much the disgrace that Salaman feared, for he had a host of other sons who would be heroic enough. But he didn’t want the boy to suffer when that dread host of unholy insects began their onslaught.

It may be that I have misjudged him, thought Salaman, as Biterulve proudly urged the clattering xlendi forward through the quiet streets.

The king spurred his own mount and caught up with him just as he emerged from the warren of inner streets into the wider outer avenues that led to the wall.

“You ride very well,” Salaman called. “Better than I remember.”

Biterulve glanced over his shoulder, grinning. “I’ve been going out with Bruikkos and Ganthiav practically every day. They’ve showed me a few tricks.”

The king felt a stab of alarm.

“Outside the wall, you mean?

The boy giggled. “Father, we can’t very well go riding inside the city, can we?”

“You have a point,” said Salaman grudgingly.

And what harm, he thought, could come to him out there, really? Surely Bruikkos and Ganthiav had more sense than to stray very far into places where hjjks might roam. If the boy wants to go riding with his older brothers, I’ll say nothing, Salaman told himself. I mustn’t overprotect him, if I want him to be a proper prince, if I want him to be a true warrior.

They had reached the wall now. They jumped down from their xlendis and tied them to posts. The first gray strands of morning were coming into the sky. The fog was scattering.

Salaman felt an uncharacteristic sense of ease. Ordinarily his spirit was dark and tense; but this morning his mind was loose and unfocused, his body poised and calm. He had spent the night just past with Vladirilka, the fourth and newest of his mates. The aroma of her was still on his fur, the warmth of her still soothed his flesh.

He was certain that he had sired a son on her in this night’s coupling. One is able to tell, Salaman believed, when a son is being made: and surely this had been a coupling for sons.

He had so many daughters that he had difficulty remembering all their names, and he needed no more of those. Women had ruled in the cocoon, and a woman still ruled, he knew, in Dawinno. But Yissou from the first had been a city for men. Salaman had respected old Koshmar and thought well of Taniane; but there would be no female kings here.

It was sons he wanted, and many of them, sons aplenty, so that the succession would be assured. A king, he thought, could never have too many sons. Building dynasties is like building walls: one must look beyond the immediate, and prepare for the worst of eventualities. Therefore Salaman had sired eight boys so far, and he hoped he had added a ninth tonight. If it wasn’t Chham who followed him to the throne, then it would be Athimin; and if not Athimin, then Poukor, or Ganthiav, or Bruikkos, or one of the even younger princes. Perhaps even the one he had engendered on Vladirilka this very night would be the next king. Or some boy yet to be conceived, by some mate not yet chosen. Only one thing was certain, that he would not give Biterulve the kingship. The boy was too sensitive, too complex. Let him be a royal counselor, Salaman felt. Let someone like Chham or Athimin handle the hard choices a king must face.

But there was plenty of time for fixing the succession. Salaman had just reached his sixtieth year. There were those who thought of him as old, he knew, but that was not an opinion he shared. He regarded himself as in the full vigor, still, of his manhood. And he suspected that soft young Vladirilka, lying now asleep with his warmth still between her thighs, would back him up on that score.

Biterulve pointed to the nearest of the staircases that led to the top of the wall.

“Shall we go up, father?”

“A moment. Stand here by me.” He liked to take it in from down here, first. To study it. To let its strength enter him and sustain his soul.

He looked up, and out, letting his gaze sweep along the wall as far as he could see. He had done this ten thousand times, and he never grew weary of it.

The immense wall that enclosed the City of Yissou was fashioned of cyclopean blocks of hard black stone, each one half the height of a man, and twice as wide as it was high, and deeper than man’s arm is long. For decades now, a phalanx of master stone-cutters had worked from dawn to twilight, every day of the year, slowly and patiently cutting those immense blocks in a mountain quarry in the steep ravine west of the city, trimming them, squaring them, dressing them smooth. Uncomplaining teams of vermilions hauled the massive blocks across the rough plateau to the edge of the wide, shallow crater in which the city lay sheltered. As each megalith reached its intended site along the constantly growing wall, Salaman’s skillful stonemasons lifted it and swung it boldly into its place, using elaborate wooden engines, and harnesses of tightly woven larret-withes.

The king nodded toward the wall. “This is the place where a block was dropped, five years back. That was the only time such a thing ever happened.”

Bitterness rose in his soul at the thought of it, as it always did when he was here. Three workmen had been crushed by the falling block, and two more were put to death for having dropped it, at Salaman’s order. His own sons Chham and Athimin had objected to the cruelty of that. But the king was inflexible. The men had been taken off and sacrificed that very day in the name of Dawinno the Destroyer.

“I remember it,” Biterulve said. “And that you had the men who dropped it killed. I often still think of those poor men, father.”

Salaman shot him a startled glance. “Ah, do you, boy?”

“That they should have died for an accident — was that really right, do you think?”

Keeping his anger carefully in check, the king said, “How could we tolerate such clumsiness? The wall is our great sacred endeavor. Carelessness in its construction is a blasphemy against all the gods.”

“Do you think so, father?” Biterulve said, and smiled. “If we were perfect in all things, we would be gods ourselves, so it seems to me.”

“Spare me your cleverness,” said Salaman, dealing him a light affectionate slap across the back of his head. “Three good men died because those masons were stupid. The foreman Augenthrin was killed. This wall had been his life’s work. That hurt me, losing him. And who knows how many more might have died if I’d let such incompetents live? The next stone they dropped might have been on my own head. Or yours.”

In truth he had wondered about the wisdom of his own harsh decree right in the moment of uttering it. Biterulve didn’t need to know that. The words had simply escaped from his lips in his first red instant of fury when he saw that fallen block, so beautifully hewn and now cracked beyond repair, and those six bloody legs jutting out pathetically from beneath it.

But decrees once spoken may not be revoked. A king must be merciful and just, Salaman knew, but sometimes a king finds himself being unthinkingly cruel, for that is sometimes kingship’s nature. And when he is cruel he must take care not to let himself be seen second-guessing his own cruelty, or the people will think he is that worst of all tyrants, a capricious one. The very injustice of that hastily uttered sentence had made it impossible for him to call it back. Thus had blood atoned for blood in the building of Salaman’s great black wall. If the people were troubled by it, they kept their discontent to themselves.

“Come,” Salaman said. “Let’s go up on top.”

At eighteen equidistant points around the perimeter, handsome stone staircases rising along the inner face gave access to the narrow brick footpath that ran along the wall’s summit. When he had first had them built, some of Salaman’s sons and counselors had found those staircases paradoxical and even perverse. “Father, we should never have built them,” said Chham, with all the gravity that he affected as the eldest of the princes. “They’ll make it all the easier for the hjjks to descend into the city if they scale the wall.”

And Athimin, Chham’s full brother, the king’s only other son by his earliest mate Weiawala, chimed in, “We ought to rip them out. They scare me, father. Chham’s right. They make us too vulnerable.”

“The hjjks will never scale the wall,” Salaman had retorted. “But we need the stairs ourselves, so we can get troops up there in a hurry if anyone ever does try to come over.”

The princes dropped the issue then. They knew better than to tangle with their father in any sort of dispute. He had ruled the city with a sure and capable hand throughout their entire lives, but in his later years he had grown increasingly irascible and stark of soul. Everyone, even Salaman himself, understood that the wall was not a topic suited for reasonable discussion. The king had no interest in being reasonable where the Great Wall was concerned. His concern was in making it so high that the question of its being scaled would be beyond all consideration.

In his dawn perambulations he chose a different staircase every day, and invariably descended via the second staircase to the left of the one he had ascended, so that it took him six days to complete the full circuit of the rampart. It was a ritual from which he never deviated, winter or summer, rain or heat. It seemed to him that the safety of the city depended on it.

Biterulve went skipping up to the summit. Salaman followed at a more stately pace. At the top he stamped his feet against the solid brick of the footpath, which lay above the huge black stones like a tough layer of skin above a mighty musculature.

Salaman laughed. “Do you feel the strength of it, boy, beneath your legs? There’s a wall for you! There’s a wall to be proud of!”

He slipped his arm over the boy’s shoulders and stared out into the misty lands beyond the city’s bounds.

Yissou lay in a pleasant fertile vale. Dense forests and high ridges flanked it to the east and north, gentler hills rose to the south, and there was harsh broken country in the westlands leading off toward the distant sea.

The huge crater which the city itself occupied lay at the center of a broad shadow thickly carpeted with grasses, both the green and the red. It was perfectly circular, and surrounded by a high, sharply delineated rim. Salaman believed, though he had never been able to prove it, that the crater had been created by the force of a death-star’s impact, plummeting into the breast of the Earth during the early dark days of the Long Winter.

The crater’s rim, lofty as it was, offered little protection against invaders. And so the Great Wall of Yissou had been under continuous construction for the past thirty-five years.

Salaman had begun it in the sixth year of the city, the third of his own reign after the death of the turbulent dark-souled Harruel, Yissou’s first king. During his long span of power he had seen the wall rise to a height of fifteen courses in most places, forming a gigantic fortification that completely encircled the city along the line of the crater’s rim.

In Yissou’s earliest days a simple wooden palisade had guarded that perimeter, not very effectively. But Salaman, who had been only a young warrior then but already was dreaming of succeeding Harruel as king, had vowed to replace it one day by an unconquerable wall of stone. And so he had.

If only it were high enough! But how high was high enough?

There had been no hjjk attacks thus far during his reign, for all his fears. They wandered through the outlying countryside, yes. Now and then some small band of them, ten or twenty of them straying for some unfathomable hjjk reason out of their outpost at Vengiboneeza, might approach the city. But they came no closer than the edge of visibility — nothing more than black-and-yellow specks, seemingly no larger than the ants who were their distant kin. Then they would turn and swing back toward the north, having satisfied whatever urge it was that had brought them this way in the first place. There is never any understanding hjjks, Salaman thought.

So what the hjjks called Queen-peace prevailed, year upon year. But Queen-peace might be no more than a trap, a lie, a hallucination, an accident of the moment. The hjjks could end it whenever they chose. War might come at any time. Sooner or later it certainly would.

How could he convince himself that a wall fifteen courses high was high enough? In his mind’s eye he saw invading hjjks building longer ladders, and longer ones yet, topping his wall no matter how high he built it, even if it reached through the roof of the sky.

“We will take it higher, I think,” Salaman often would say, with a sweeping gesture of both his hands. “Another three courses, or perhaps four.”

And the builders and masons would sigh; for as Salaman’s rampart continued to rise, all the battlements and parapets and guardhouses and watchtowers that existed presently along the highest level had to be ripped away to make room for the new rows of stone blocks, and rebuilt afterward, and then ripped away once more as Salaman’s insatiable hungers led him to demand yet another course or two, and so on and so on.

But they were used it. The wall was Salaman’s obsession, his cherished plaything, his monument. It would continue growing ever higher, everyone knew, so long as he was king. They wouldn’t have known what to do or say, if Salaman were to tell them some afternoon, “The wall is finished now. We are safe against any conceivable enemy. Go to your homes, all of you, and take up some new employment tomorrow.”

Small chance of that. The wall would never be finished.

The king stamped his feet again. He imagined the wall sending down deep massive roots and anchoring itself in the depths of the Earth. He laughed. To Biterulve he said, “Boy, do you know what I have done here? I’ve built a wall that will stand a million years. A million million, even. The world will grow old, and enter into a time of greatness someday beside which the Great World will seem like nothing at all, and people will say then, seeing the wall, ‘That wall is Salaman’s, who was king at Yissou when the world was young.’”

Biterulve said, with a sly look coming over his face, “And is the world young now, father? I thought it was very old, that we live in the latter days.”

“So we do. But to those who come after us, these will seem like early times.”

“Then how old is the world, do you think?”

The king smiled to himself. The boy reminded him of Hresh, sometimes, young Hresh, Hresh-full-of-questions. With a shrug he said, “The world is at least two million years old. Perhaps three.”

“Is it, do you think? But if seven hundred thousand years have gone by since the Great World lived, and there was a time before the Great World when the humans ruled everything, and there must have been a time before that, when even the humans were simple folk — can that all have happened in only three million years?”

“Perhaps four, then,” said Salaman. It amused him to be quibbled with in this way: but only by Biterulve. “Even five. The world is ever-renewing, boy. First it’s young, and then it grows old, and then it becomes young again. And when it’s old the next time, people look back and think of that early time barely remembered that came just before their time, and say that that was when it was young, not knowing that it had been old before that. Do you follow me, boy?”

“I think I do,” said Biterulve, but there seemed to be more slyness in his tone. Salaman gave him a rough caress.

They moved southward along the wall, toward the domed pavilion of shining smooth-hewn gray stone that rose atop the wall above the southernmost of the eighteen staircases. The sky continued to brighten.

The pavilion was for Salaman’s use only, his private place. He often lingered there, sometimes for hours, during his dawn meditations and at other times as well

The wall here — and only here — diverged from the route of the old crater rim. Here it extended some way out to the south, in order to climb a ridge so high that the distant western sea and the eastern forests could be seen from it, as well as the southern hills.

In the early days, when Harruel was king and even the wooden palisade was still incomplete and the city nothing more than seven lopsided wooden shacks held together by vines, Salaman had gone frequently to that high ridge, usually alone, sometimes with his mate Weiawala. There he would sit dreaming of glorious times to come. The same vision would come to him again and again: the City of Yissou grown to greatness and splendor, greater even than old Vengiboneeza of the sapphire-eyes folk: a mighty city, capital of a mighty empire spreading to the horizon and beyond, ruled not by the descendants of uncouth Harruel, but by the sons of the sons of Salaman.

Some of that had come to pass. Not all.

The city had expanded beyond its original bounds, though not exactly as far as the horizon. With the hjjks now in Vengiboneeza to cut off his dreams of empire to the north and east, and the sea forming an impassable barrier on the west, nothing but the south remained. New little farming villages had lately begun to spring up out there, but only those closest at hand acknowledged Salaman’s sovereignty. The others maintained a hazy independence, or, in the farthest south, regarded themselves as tributaries to Taniane’s Dawinno.

Salaman suspected and feared that his city was not as great by half as the City of Dawinno that Hresh and Taniane had built in the far south. But he had plenty of time left for empire-building. Still he would stand in the pavilion that he had caused to be constructed on the site of his dreaming-place of long ago, and he would look out over the land, imagining the grandeur of the realm that would someday be.

As they approached the pavilion now, Biterulve said abruptly, “I feel a strangeness, father.”

“A strangeness? What sort of strangeness do you mean?”

“Coming from the south. Approaching us now: a force, a power. I felt it all night, and all through the dawn. And now it’s stronger yet.”

Salaman laughed. “I felt a strangeness in this place myself once, do you know? An afternoon of bright sunlight: I was here with Weiawala. Long ago, when I was just a few years older than you are now. And I felt the drumming sound of an army on the march, heading toward us. An onrushing force of hjjks it was, a vast company of them, driving herds of their shaggy vermilions before them, sweeping down out of the north. Is that what you feel, boy? An army of hjjks?”

“No, nothing like that, father. Not hjjks.”

But Salaman was lost in reminiscence. “A great migration, it was, heading our way. A sound like thunder, the booming of a thousand thousand hooves. And then they came. But we beat them, we drove them away. You know that story, do you?”

“Who doesn’t? It was the day Harruel was killed, and you became the king.”

“Yes. Yes. That was the day.” Salaman thought for a moment of Harruel, brilliant in battle but too brutish and brooding and violent to be a successful king, and how he had perished valiantly that day of a hundred wounds, during the battle with the hjjks. So long ago! When the world was young! He slipped his arm around Biterulve again. “Come with me. Into the pavilion.”

“I thought you didn’t ever allow anyone to—”

“Come,” Salaman said again, a little roughly. “I ask you to stand by my side. Will you refuse me, when I invite you this way? Come, stand by my side, and we’ll see what this strangeness is that you say you feel.”

They moved quickly around the curve of the wall and entered the little pavilion. Side by side they stood by the long window, resting their hands on the beveled window-ledge. It was very odd, having someone in here with him. He couldn’t remember ever having done this before. But he’d make an exception in anything, for Biterulve, only for Biterulve.

He looked outward, toward the south, and let his soul rise and rove. But he felt nothing out of the ordinary.

His mind began to wander, backward into the night. He thought of Vladirilka, lying asleep now in the palace with his newest son — he was sure of that — already growing in her womb. Only sixteen, she was, soft of flesh, lively of spirit. How lovely, how tender! Nor will she be the last mate I will take, thought Salaman. Kingship carries great burdens. Therefore there must be great rewards. Nowhere had it been decreed by the gods that a king could have only one mate. And therefore—

Your mind drifts foolishly, he told himself in annoyance.

To Biterulve he said, “Well? Do you feel it here?”

The boy was straining forward, nostrils flickering, head held high, like some trembling highbred beast restrained on a leash.

“Even stronger, father. In the south. Don’t you?”

“No. No, nothing.” Salaman focused his concentration more intently. Reaching out, probing into the lands beyond the wall. “No — wait!”

What was that?

Something had touched the periphery of his soul, just then. Something unexpected, something powerful. Gripping the window-ledge tightly, Salaman leaned far out, staring into the mists that still covered the southern plains.

Then, raising his sensing-organ, he sent forth his second sight.

Movement, far away. Only a hazy gray blur, a little ground-hugging cloud, a smudge on the horizon, near the place where the valley floor began to rise toward the southern hills. Gradually it grew larger, though he was still unable to make out detail.

“You feel it, father?”

“I feel it now, yes.”

Hjjks? Not likely. Even at this distance Salaman was sure of that. He could detect no hint of their dry, bleak souls.

“I see wagons, father!” Biterulve cried.

Salaman grinned dourly. “Ah! Young eyes.”

But then he saw them too, and gawky long-legged xlendis pulling them in their loose-jointed clip-clopping way. The hjjks didn’t use xlendi-wagons. They traveled on foot, and when they had heavy loads to transport they used vermilions. No, these must be members of the People, coming out of the south. Merchants from Dawinno, were they?

No Dawinno caravan was due at this time of year. The caravan of early summer had already been here and gone; the one of autumn wasn’t expected for another two months, nearly.

“Who are they, can you say?” Biterulve asked, excited.

“From Dawinno,” Salaman said. “See, the red-and-gold banners flying from the roofposts? One, two, three, four, five wagons, coming up the Southern Highway. A real strangeness, boy — you spoke the truth!” But were they merchants, he wondered? Why would merchants come out of season, when there’d be no goods ready for them to buy?

Had the Dawinnans acquired a sudden whimsical liking for conquest? Hardly. Warfare wasn’t Taniane’s style, and certainly not Hresh’s, and in any case those absurd xlendi-wagons didn’t look like military vehicles.

“There’s someone very powerful in that caravan,” said Biterulve. “It’s his spirit that I’ve felt getting closer, all this night past.”

“This must be an embassy,” Salaman murmured.

There’s trouble somewhere, he thought, and they’ve come here to entangle me in it. Or if there’s no trouble yet, there soon will be.

He signaled to Biterulve, and they descended from the wall. Quickly they rode back to the palace. The hour was still very early. The king went to awaken his sons.

The struggle to win appointment as Dawinno’s ambassador to King Salaman had been much like the frenzy that occurs when a slab of tender meat is tossed into a cage of hungry stanimanders or gabools. The ambassador would be gone many months; he would have ample time to forge a close bond with the powerful Salaman; he would be one of the prime figures in whatever alliance of the two cities ultimately emerged. And so the great men of the city circled fiercely around, vying for the rich morsel: Puit Kjai, Chomrik Hamadel, Husathirn Mueri, Si-Belimnion, and others besides.

But in the end it was Thu-Kimnibol whom Taniane picked to make the journey northward.

It was a choice she made with no little uncertainty and hesitation, for Thu-Kimnibol and Salaman had quarreled famously, long ago, when Thu-Kimnibol still lived in the city that his father Harruel had founded and Salaman now ruled. Everyone knew that. They had angry words, an exchange of threats, even, and finally Thu-Kimnibol had fled, taking refuge in Hresh’s new city in the south. There were many, Husathirn Mueri and Puit Kjai among them, who felt that sending Thu-Kimnibol on a diplomatic mission to his old enemy was a strange thing to do, and unwise.

But Thu-Kimnibol argued his case eloquently, saying that he understood the nature of the King of Yissou better than anyone, that he was the only plausible man for the task. As for the quarrel he had had with Salaman, he said, that was something ancient, an episode of his hotheaded youth, a matter of foolish pride, long put aside by him and certainly of no moment to Salaman after so many years. And also Thu-Kimnibol made it known with great force that he longed to serve his city now in some new and strenuous high capacity, to ease the grief that he still felt over the loss of his mate. Pouring his energies into this mission to Salaman would distract him from his pain.

Ultimately it was Hresh who tipped the decision toward his half-brother. “He’s the right one,” he told Taniane. “The only one who can stand face to face with Salaman. The others who’ve put themselves up for the job are small-spirited men. Nobody can say that of Thu-Kimnibol. And it seems to me he’s grown even stronger since Naarinta’s death. There’s something about him now that I’ve never seen before — a kind of greatness growing in him, Taniane. I can feel it. He’s the one to send.”

“Perhaps so,” said Taniane.

Thu-Kimnibol’s journey began in prayers and fasting, and a lengthy consultation with Boldirinthe; for he was in his way a devout man, loyal to the Five Heavenly Ones. There were those who said he was simple for holding such faith in these modern times. What such people said mattered nothing at all to Thu-Kimnibol.

“I’ll invoke Yissou for you, of course,” Boldirinthe said, wheezing as she reached into her cupboard for the talismans. She was a broad sturdy woman, very old now: cocoon-born, in fact, one of the last ones left who had been alive at the time of the Coming Forth. Boldirinthe had gone heavily to fat in recent years: she looked like a barrel, now. “Yissou, for your protection,” she said. “And Dawinno, to help you to smite any enemies you may encounter.”

“And also Friit, to heal me if they do the smiting first,” said Thu-Kimnibol, with a grin.

“Yes, Friit, of course, Friit.” Boldirinthe laughed, setting the little stone figurines out on the table. “And the goddess Mueri to console you, if you grow homesick in the northland. And Emakkis to provide for you. We’ll ask the benefits of all the Five for you, Thu-Kimnibol. It’s the wisest course.” Her eyes twinkled. “And should I invoke Nakhaba for you, too?”

“Am I a Beng, Boldirinthe?”

“But their god is a mighty one. And we accept him as our own, these days. We’ve become one tribe.”

“I’ll make my way without Nakhaba’s help,” said Thu-Kimnibol stolidly.

“As you wish. As you wish.”

Boldirinthe lit her candles, sprinkled her incense. Her hands trembled a little. Age was lying more burdensomely on her these days. Thu-Kimnibol wondered if she might be ill. A kindly old woman, he thought. A little mischief in her, perhaps, but not of any malicious sort. Everyone loved her. He wasn’t old enough to have clear memories of Torlyri, who had been offering-woman before her, but those who did said that Boldirinthe was a fitting successor, as warm and kind as Torlyri had been. Which was high praise, for even now, so many years later, the older people spoke of Torlyri with great love. Torlyri had been the offering-woman of the People in Koshmar’s time, first in the cocoon and then in Vengiboneeza after the Coming Forth. But when the People had left Vengiboneeza to make their second migration she had stayed behind, for she had fallen in love with the Beng warrior Trei Husathirn, and hadn’t wanted to leave him. That was when Boldirinthe had become the offering-woman in Torlyri’s place.

Hard to understand, Thu-Kimnibol thought, how a woman as widely beloved as Torlyri had been could have brought forth a serpent like Husathirn Mueri as her son. It was the Beng blood in him, perhaps, that had made Husathirn Mueri what he was.

Boldirinthe said, “How long will the journey take you, do you think?”

“Until I get there. No more than that, but no less.”

“I remember the City of Yissou. Seven miserable wooden huts is all the place was, every one of them very crudely made, even the one they called the royal palace.”

“The city is somewhat bigger now,” said Thu-Kimnibol.

“Yes. Yes. I suppose it is. But I remember it when it was next to nothing. I was there, you know, once. We passed through it, on our way from Vengiboneeza to here. I saw you there, then. You were a little boy. Not so little, in truth. You were always large for your age, and warlike. You killed hjjks in a great battle that was fought at Yissou around that time.”

“Yes,” Thu-Kimnibol said indulgently. “I remember that too. Shall I kneel beside you, Mother Boldirinthe?”

She gave him a sly look. “Why is Taniane sending you to be the ambassador?”

“Why not?”

“It seems strange. There’s bad blood between you and King Salaman, I understand. Isn’t it true that you were his rival for the throne of Yissou? And now you come back to him as an envoy, but I wonder if he’ll trust you. Won’t he think you’re still trying to push him aside?”

“All that was very long ago,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “I don’t want his throne. He knows that. And I couldn’t take it from him even if I did. Taniane is sending me because I know Salaman better than anyone else, except perhaps Hresh and Taniane themselves, and they can hardly be the ones to go. Pray me a safe journey, Mother Boldirinthe, and pray with me also for my mate Naarinta, whose soul is on a journey of its own. And then let me be on my way.”

“Yes. Yes.”

She began the Yissou invocation. But after a moment she halted, and disappeared for a moment into a long silence, so that Thu-Kimnibol thought that she might have fallen asleep. Then she giggled.

“I coupled with Salaman once. It was in the cocoon. He was younger than I was, four or five years younger, just a boy, ten or eleven. But full of lust, even then, and he came to me — he was very quiet, then, a short dark boy, very broad through the shoulders, and so strong you wouldn’t believe it. He came to me and took me by the breasts—”

“Mother Boldirinthe, please. If you would—”

“And we did it, Salaman and I, right on the floor of the growing-chamber. Rolling around and around under the velvetberry vines. He didn’t say a word. Not before, not during, not after. He never said much in those days. It was the only time we coupled, the only time I had anything to do with him, really. Afterward it was all Weiawala for him, and I was with Staip, anyhow. If I had known Salaman was going to be a king some day — but of course how could I, we had no kings, the word itself meant nothing to us—”

“Mother Boldirinthe,” said Thu-Kimnibol, more urgently.

He was afraid the old woman would go on to recount her entire life’s history, every coupling and twining of the last fifty years. But she was done with her recollections. Her mind was on her work now. Lightly she touched him with her sensing-organ. She made the Five Signs, she uttered the words, she handled the talismans, she brought the gods into the room and opened Thu-Kimnibol’s soul to them. They were vivid before him, so real that he knew them each by sight, even though they had no shapes, only auras. They were bright clouds of light, encircling him in the darkness. This was loving Mueri, this was fierce inexorable Dawinno, and this was Emakkis who provides, and this was Friit, and this was Yissou, who would protect him. In the sanctuary of Boldirinthe’s offering-chamber he reached out to them and found them, the Five Heavenly Ones who ruled the world, and mantled his soul in their warm protective presences. It was a deeper communion than he had ever known, or so it seemed to him at that moment. A great satisfaction came over him, and a deep and abiding peace.

He felt ready to undertake his departure. The gods were with him, his gods, the ones he understood and loved. They would guide him and shelter him as he made his way north.

Thu-Kimnibol had no use for the more complex theologies that had sprung up among the People. There were some who worshiped the vanished humans — who believed that the humans were gods higher than the Five. Others knelt before the Beng god Nakhaba, saying that he too held a rank in heaven above that of the Five, that he was the Interceder who could speak with the humans on the People’s behalf.

And then there were those — mostly University people, they were, old Hresh’s crowd — who spoke of a god superior to all the rest, above the humans, and Nakhaba, and the Five. The Sixth, that one was called. The Creator-God. Of him, or it, nothing was known, and they said that nothing ever could be, that he was fundamentally unknowable.

Thu-Kimnibol had no idea what to make of any of this profusion of gods. It seemed needless to him to have any but the Five. But he could understand a willingness to pray to these others more easily than he did the position of those few, like his impossible niece Nialli Apuilana, who seemed not to believe in any gods at all. What a bleak existence, to walk godless beneath the unfriendly sky! How could they bear it? Weren’t they paralyzed with fear, knowing that they had no protectors? To Thu-Kimnibol it seemed crazy. Nialli Apuilana, at least, had an excuse. Everyone knew that the hjjks had tampered with her mind.

Slowly he came up out of his communion, and found himself sitting slumped at Boldirinthe’s rough wooden table, while she went puttering about, putting the gods back in her cupboard. She seemed pleased with herself. She must know the intensity of the communion she had created for him.

Silently he embraced her. His heart overflowed with love for her. Gradually the power of the communion faded, and he made ready to go.

“Be wary of King Salaman,” Boldirinthe said, when Thu-Kimnibol was about to leave her chamber. “Salaman’s a very clever man.”

“I know that, Mother Boldirinthe.”

“Cleverer than you.”

Thu-Kimnibol smiled. “I’m not as stupid as is generally thought.”

“Cleverer than you, all the same. As clever as Hresh, Salaman is. Believe me. Watch out for him. He’ll trick you somehow.”

“I understand Salaman. We understand each other.”

“They tell me he’s grown wild and dangerous in his old age. That he’s had power so long that he’s gone mad from it.”

“No,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “Dangerous, yes. Wild, perhaps. But not a madman. I knew Salaman a long time, when I lived in Yissou. You can tell who has madness in him and who doesn’t. He’s a steady one.”

“I coupled with him once,” Boldirinthe said. “I know things about him that you’ll never know. Fifty years, and I’ve never forgotten. Such a quiet boy, but there was fire inside him, and in fifty years the fire burns through to the surface. Be wary, Thu-Kimnibol.”

“I thank you, Mother Boldirinthe.”

He knelt and kissed her sash.

“Be wary,” she said.

As Thu-Kimnibol descended from the offering-woman’s cloister his path crossed that of Nialli Apuilana, who was coming toward him up steep cobblestoned Minbain Way. The day was bright and golden, with a perfumed wind blowing out of the west, where groves of yellow-leaved sthamis trees were blooming on the hills above the bay. Nialli Apuilana carried a tray of food and a flask of clear spicy wine for Kundalimon.

Her mood was brighter, though still not bright enough. After her startling breakdown at the Presidium she had gone into hiding, more or less, keeping out of sight for days, going out only for the sake of making her twice-daily journeys to Mueri House and hurrying back to her room as soon as Kundalimon had had his meal. Some days she hadn’t gone at all, but left it up to the guardsmen to feed him. Yissou only knew what they brought him. Most of her time she spent alone, meditating, brooding, going over and over everything she had said there, wishing she could call half of it back, or more than half. And yet it had seemed so important finally to speak out: all that talk of the hjjks as bugs, the hjjks as cold-blooded killers, the hjjks as this, the hjjks as that. And they knew nothing. Nothing at all. So she had spoken. But she had felt edgy and exposed ever since. Only now was she starting to realize that scarcely anyone in the city had heard about her outburst at all, and most or perhaps all of those who had witnessed it had chosen to see it as nothing more than a little show of hysteria, the sort of thing that one would expect from someone like Nialli Apuilana. Not very flattering, really: but at least she didn’t need to worry about being jeered at in the streets.

She was happy to see Thu-Kimnibol. She knew that she disagreed with him about practically everything, especially where the hjjks were concerned; but yet there was a strength about her imposing kinsman, a dignity, that she found steadying. And a certain warmth, too. Too many of these warrior princes liked to strike ostentatious poses, Thu-Kimnibol had a simpler style.

She said, “Are you coming from Boldirinthe, kinsman?”

“How can you tell that?”

With a toss of her head Nialli Apuilana indicated the offering-woman’s cloister at the top of the hill. “Her house is right up there. And the light of the gods is still in your eyes.”

“You can see that, can you?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.”

She felt a sharp pang of envy. There was such tranquility on his broad face, such a sense of self-assurance.

Thu-Kimnibol said, grinning down at her, “I thought you were godless, girl. What do you know about the light of the gods?”

“I don’t need to believe in Yissou and the rest of them in order to see that you’ve touched another world just now. And I’m not as godless as you think. I tell you, the light of the gods is in your eyes. Shining as brightly as the light of a lantern-tree on a night without a moon.”

“Not godless?” Thu-Kimnibol repeated, frowning. “You say you aren’t godless, after all?”

“I have my own sort of worship,” she said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable at this turn in the conversation. “After my own fashion, a kind of worship, yes. At least I look upon it as worship, though others around here might not. But I don’t like talking of such things. Faith’s an extremely private matter, don’t you think?” She managed a dazzling smile. “I’m happy for you, that Boldirinthe was able to give you the comfort you needed.”

“Boldirinthe!” he said, and laughed a little. “Boldirinthe lives now with one foot in the past and the other in the next world. It wasn’t easy for me to keep her attention on the task. But finally she got to it, and I felt the presence of the gods, indeed. They were there right in front of me, the Five were. A great comfort they’ve been to me, too, in my time of mourning. A great comfort they’ve always been to me, and always will. I wish the joy of them upon you also some day, Nialli Apuilana.” Thu-Kimnibol indicated the tray and flask she carried. “Going to visit your hjjk, are you? Bringing him some special treats?”

“Kinsman!” she cried, chiding him. “Don’t call him a hjjk!”

“Well, if he isn’t a hjjk, they say he sounds like one. He speaks only in gargles and spittings, or am I wrong?” In an amiable way Thu-Kimnibol made harsh rough noises far back in his throat, a crude parody of hjjk speech. “To me somebody’s a hjjk if all he speaks is hjjk. And wears hjjk talismans around his neck and thinks hjjk thoughts and carries himself hjjk-style. You know, walking around as though he’s got a long pole rammed up his rump.”

“If living as a captive among the hjjks makes a person a hjjk, well, then I’m a hjjk too,” Nialli Apuilana said, putting some severity into it. “Anyway, Kundalimon has started to learn our language very nicely indeed. The words come back to him. He’s beginning to remember that he was once one of us. It’s wrong of you to mock him. Or me, through him.”

“Indeed.”

“Thu-Kimnibol, why do you hate hjjks so much?”

“Do I?” Thu-Kimnibol said, as though the idea were new to him. “Perhaps I do. But why is that? Let me think.” A look of irritation flickered in his eyes. “Could it be because they’d like to pen us down in a small part of the world, when we should have the whole thing? And that I resent this restraint that they put upon us? Perhaps that’s it, eh? Or is it, maybe, a simpler matter, a personal thing, having to do with the fact that one day long ago a band of hjjks came to the place where I was living, in the north, the very place I’ll be setting out for in just a little while, and fell upon the handful of innocent people who lived there, and killed some of them. My own father was one of those they killed, you know. Maybe that’s it, eh, Nialli Apuilana? A petty little grudge of mine, a simple hankering for revenge?”

“Oh, no, Thu-Kimnibol. I didn’t mean to say—”

Thu-Kimnibol shook his head. He reached down from his great height and let his hands rest tenderly on her shoulders for a moment. “I understand, Nialli. All that happened long before you were born. Why should you have given it a thought? But let’s keep the peace between us, shall we? We oughtn’t to bicker this way. Go to your friend, and bring him his wine and meat. And pray for me, will you? Pray to whatever god it is you pray to. I’m leaving for the northland tomorrow. I’d like to have your prayers go with me.”

“They will,” she said. “And my love also, kinsman. A safe journey to you.”

If she hadn’t been so laden with burdens she would have embraced him. That surprised her. She had never felt such warmth toward him before: until this moment he had been only her great robust mountain of a kinsman, half as big as a vermilion and scarcely any brighter; or so he had always seemed to her. Suddenly she saw Thu-Kimnibol now in a different way, as someone rather more complex than she had imagined, and more vulnerable. Suddenly now she feared for him and wished him well.

It must be the god-light flowing from him that does this to me, she thought. Perhaps I should go to Boldirinthe for a communion too. I might finally find the gods speaking even to me.

“A safe journey, yes,” she said again. “And a happy outcome, and a swift return.”

Thu-Kimnibol thanked her, and went on his way. Nialli Apuilana continued up the hill toward Mueri House.

The guard on duty at the gate was Curabayn Bangkea’s youngest brother, Eluthayn, a meaty flat-faced man wearing a gaudy, preposterous helmet. As Nialli Apuilana approached him he said to her, “He’s been waiting for you, the one from the hjjks. Been asking all morning why you’re so late today. At least, I think that’s what he’s been saying. Not that I can make much sense out of that arglebargle way he speaks.” Eluthayn Bangkea loomed toward her, so close that she could smell on his breath the sharp kharnigs he had had for his morning meal. Astonishingly, he leered at her in an offensively intimate way. “I can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t mind being locked up in there all afternoon with you myself.”

“And what could we possibly say to each other, if we had to spend a whole afternoon in each other’s company?”

“It isn’t what we’d say, Nialli Apuilana.”

And he leered again, more exaggeratedly than before, rolling his eyes, whipping his sensing-organ about, thrusting his face practically into hers.

He was too much the fool to be taken seriously. This sort of ponderous unasked attention must be more of a joke than anything else. But if it was a joke, it was a coarse one. How dare he? He’d be grabbing her, next.

Her anger rose abruptly and she spat at him with sudden ferocity, leaving a gobbet between his wide-set eyes.

Eluthayn Bangkea gaped at her incredulously. Slowly he wiped his face. His forehead was furrowed with consternation and barely contained wrath.

“Why did you do that? You didn’t need to do that!”

She drew herself up. “Your kind is tiresome to me.”

“My kind ? What do you mean, my kind? I’m me. The only me there is. And I meant you no harm. There was no call for your doing that.” He lowered his voice. “Listen, would it be such a terrible thing if we went off and coupled for an hour, Lady Nialli? A guardsman can give pleasure even to a chieftain’s daughter, you know. Or don’t you think coupling’s a pleasure? Could that be it? Too proud to couple, are you? Or too frightened? Which is it?”

“Please,” she said in disbelief. It was as though she were dreaming this. How humiliating it all was! She was angry and stunned and close to tears, all at once. But it was important to remain strong in the face of this kind of thing. She glared at him. “Enough. What a vulgar clown you are.”

“You’ll have me punished, I know. Won’t you? But I’ll tell them you spat in my face. And I never laid a hand on you. I never did anything but wriggle my eyebrows at you.”

“Get out of my way and let me go upstairs,” Nialli Apuilana said fiercely. “And may I never see you again!”

Giving her a sullen bewildered stare, he opened the gate for her. She brushed past him, eyes averted, and passed within the building. Once she was safely beyond him she paused, shivering. She felt shaken, she felt soiled and violated, as though he had been the one to spit on her, and not the other way around. Her whole body was taut with fury and shock. She took a couple of deep breaths and felt her pulse begin to slow a little. In a calmer state, she ascended the stairs to Kundalimon’s third-floor room and knocked.

Instantly the door opened. Kundalimon peered out. He smiled shyly. His green eyes, which often were so icy and remote, seemed bright and warm today; and Nialli Apuilana felt such a rush of innocence and sweetness coming from him that it went a long way in only a moment to wipe away the stain of that sorry encounter down below.

“So you come to me at last!” Kundalimon cried, with a tremor of joy in his voice. “Good. Very good. At last you come. I miss you, Nialli Apuilana. I miss you very much. I wait the hours all the time.”

Slipping his hand around her wrist, he drew her gently into the room and closed the door. He took the tray of food from her, and the flask of wine, and knelt to set them on the floor. When he rose, he stood in silence a moment, his eyes trained steadily on hers. Once again he put his hand on her wrist.

There’s something different about him today, she thought. Something new, something strange.

Hesitantly he said, “I am thinking. How I feel, you know? I am so much alone. Nest is — so far away. Nest-thinker. Queen. So far. Flesh-folk everywhere about me.”

Compassion for his loneliness overflowed in her. Impulsively she told him, “You mustn’t worry, Kundalimon. You’ll be going back soon.”

“I will? I will?”

He seemed thunderstruck by her words. She was surprised by them herself. Was there any plan to release him? She had no idea. Thu-Kimnibol had talked of sending him back to the Nest carrying a rejection of the treaty, true, but Taniane had given no indication that she’d go along with that. More likely she had it in mind that Kundalimon, his captivity ended, would now simply set about living a normal life in the city of his birth, as though he had been absent only a matter of weeks or months.

But he seemed so needy today. The consoling words had just popped from her mouth. Might as well follow through, Nialli Apuilana thought. Tell him the things he wants to hear.

“Of course you’ll go back. You’ll be carrying a message to the Queen, from our chieftain. They’ll be sending you in just a little while. I’m sure of that.”

Kundalimon’s hand tightened on her wrist.

“You come with me, then?”

She hadn’t been expecting that.

“I?”

“We go together. This no place for you. You have Nest-truth in you! I know this. You have felt Queen-love!” He was trembling. His sensing-organ was moving in slow arcs from side to side behind him, and his tongue flicked out again and again to moisten his lips. “You and I — you and I, Nialli Apuilana — we — we are of the Nest — oh, come close, come close—”

Mueri guide me, she thought desperately. Does he want to twine with me?

Perhaps so. Over the past weeks, as his command of the language had grown, they had begun to enter some new phase of rapport, which today suddenly seemed to be approaching a kind of culmination. Certainly he was far more outgoing than he had ever been with her before; certainly there was an imperative need in him today, an urgency, that was new. Everything about him, the way he stood, the expression of his eyes, the movements of his sensing-organ, even the sharp bitter scent that was rising from him, argued that.

But — twining?

She wondered, It had aroused such fear and even horror in him, that other time early in their friendship when she had touched her sensing-organ to his and begun to lead him into the first stage of the communion. As though he couldn’t bear even the idea of the oneness that she was offering; as though the thought of such union with one who was not of the Nest was repugnant beyond any hope of acceptance.

On the other hand, they knew each other much better now. Apparently Kundalimon had come to realize that she was indeed of the Nest: not to the same degree that he was, but Nest-touched all the same, a Nest-soul within a flesh-body, just as he. And therefore no longer saw her as alien, a member of the enemy. And in that case—

He looked at her imploringly. She smiled and raised her sensing-organ, and brought it into the most grazing of contacts with his.

“No,” he said at once, quickly whipping his sensing-organ beyond her reach. “Not — twine. No. Please — no.”

“No?”

“Frightens. Still. It is too much, the twining.” He shook his head. A deep quiver ran through him. He seemed to brood. But then his face grew sunny again. “You and I — you and I — oh, come close! Will you come close?”

“What do you want?” she asked, baffled.

He made an inarticulate sound, a hjjk-noise, not even a word: simply a noise, like that of a rusty gate resisting the pressure of a hand. A rush of emotions, nearly all of them unreadable, fluttered across his features in wild succession. Nialli Apuilana imagined that she saw sheer terror there, and embarrassment, and something that might have been Nest-love, and a kind of desperate yearning, and also something else, far more familiar, that she had seen only a little while before in the dull lust-ridden Beng-red eyes of Eluthayn Bangkea.

His hands went to her shoulders, her forearms, her breasts. He stroked her with frantic eagerness and pressed himself against her. His mating-rod was stiff.

Mueri and Dawinno and Yissou! she thought, in amazement and dismay. It’s coupling that he wants!

No question of it. His breath was hot against her cheek. He was muttering to her, still inarticulately, in a muzzy mixture of hjjk-clicks and People-grunts. He seemed dazed, lost in a swelter of desire.

It was almost funny. But it was alarming, too. Nialli Apuilana had never coupled with anyone. She was as frightened of coupling as Kundalimon seemed to be of twining. To her it had always meant the breaching of a mysterious barrier that she dared not surrender.

Others, she knew, did it at the snap of a finger, some of them beginning when they were no older than nine or ten. They casually flung their bodies together for a quick sweaty joining and thought nothing of it. But Nialli Apuilana had held herself fastidiously aloof from all that when she was younger, and now that she was well on her way into womanhood she had begun to think that she had held back too long, that she had by her very denial raised coupling to an act of such significance that she would need the most overwhelming imaginable reason ever to do it at all. That reason had never presented itself: certainly she hadn’t seen it in the sniggering eye-rollings of an Eluthayn Bangkea, nor the subtler hungry stares of a Husathirn Mueri.

But now — now—

Kundalimon was all over her, pawing, snorting, just the way she had always thought men did. He could barely control himself. And yet she felt no revulsion, only compassion. Penned up here alone day after day in this little single-windowed cell, he must have been overwhelmed by his solitude, his separation from the Nest, until the anguish had reached flood level in his spirit, and now it was flowing over. Nialli Apuilana saw no way of holding him back.

“Wait,” she said. “Please.”

“I — want—”

“But — please, Kundalimon, please—” He paused, just a moment, as if he really understood what she was trying to say. Or perhaps he simply felt the fearful agitation of her unwilling body. But he was still eager to proceed. How to stop him? In sudden wild inspiration she said, “I must not. Coupling is forbidden to me.” And in the hjjk language she told him, “I have yet to undergo Queen-touch.”

There was a chance, just a chance, he might yield to that argument. In the Nest, there was no mating until the Queen had brought you to maturity and fertility, in a rite the nature of which Nialli Apuilana didn’t know, but which marked the transition into adulthood for every hjjk.

Kundalimon, in the full grip of his own undeniable and no longer denied fleshhood, might not understand why a woman of the flesh-folk would not want to give herself up gladly to the powerful craving that now was sweeping through him. Shouldn’t she feel the same desires that he did, since she too was of the flesh? Well, yes: but he wasn’t able to comprehend her fears. Not even she could. But perhaps he might respond to that other argument for virginity that was unique to the Nest.

His fleshly aspect, though, was in the ascendant. No argument was going to sway him.

“I have not yet had Queen-touch either,” he said. “But we are — not in the Nest now—” He sucked his breath in deeply, and a look of mingled torment and passion blazed in his eyes. He was as virgin as she was. Of course. Who would he have coupled with, in the Nest? But now he was swept by need, flesh-need, the need inborn in everyone of his true race.

And so, she understood suddenly, was she.

Almost without realizing what was happening, she was warming to his touch. As he stroked her, sensations were arising in her that she had never known before. She felt hot, she felt itchy, she felt eager. Muscles strained and throbbed along her thighs, her belly, her chest. Her breath came in gusts.

They were the sensations of pleasure. And somehow she knew that greater pleasure still was within her grasp. All she had to do was let it sweep over her.

It came upon her unanswerably that this was the moment, this the time, this the place, this the man. The barriers fell away. She smiled and nodded. He reached for her again, uttering hjjk-sounds, and she responded to them in hjjk and in inchoate wordless People-sounds, and together they slipped down to the floor, knocking over the flask of wine, scattering the tray of food she had brought. That didn’t matter. His hands were everywhere on her. He seemed to have no real idea of what to do, only vague guesses and approximations, and she knew barely more than that herself; but somehow they found an alignment that was right, and she drew him to her and parted her thighs, and he slipped inside.

So this is what it is like, she thought.

So this is what it is, the great thing over which so much is made. The bodies fit together and they move. That’s all there is to it. But how good it feels! How simple, how right!

And then she ceased thinking at all, except to wonder vaguely whether they had fastened the door securely. Even that thought went from her mind. They rolled about and about, laughing and crying out in both their languages, clutching at each other and nipping and clawing, and gasping in the strange excitement of it, until Nialli Apuilana heard him make a hoarse heavy sound that she had never heard from him before, and a kind of convulsion swept him. And, to her astonishment, she became aware of a warm welling-up of feeling within her, almost as if she would burst, and she heard a sound not unlike the one he had made erupting suddenly from her own lips a moment later. It was, she realized, the sound of joy, the sound of ecstasy, the sound of release from a self-imposed penance.

They lay in silence, in wonder, now and again looking at each other. Then he reached for her once more.

Afterward, long afterward, when they were calm again, passion giving way to quiet tenderness, Kundalimon said, “Is one other thing I want.”

“Tell me. Tell me.”

“Is too sad here, always in one room for me,” he said, as he ran the tips of his fingers fondly across the fur of Nialli Apuilana’s back. “You get them let me go outside? You get them let me walk in city like free man? You do that for me, Nialli Apuilana? You do that?”

Thu-Kimnibol had five handsome well-made wagons, each drawn by a pair of xlendis that he had selected personally for their spirit and vigor, and a quartet of equally fine animals as spares, in case any of the others fell by the wayside. He had no intention of making this journey the way a merchant would, plodding placidly along northward for month after month. No, he meant to race northward in one single furious burst, like a shooting star streaking across the heavens, halting only when he must, driving the xlendis and his companions to the limits of their capacity. He longed to hurl himself quickly into this enterprise, to come before King Salaman swiftly and sit down with him to bring into being the alliance that was so long overdue.

But for all his high resolve the trip went slowly, and he saw very quickly that there was little he could do to hasten things. Esperasagiot was his wagonmaster, a bright golden Beng of the pure blood who knew xlendis the way he knew the name of his own father; and Esperasagiot drove the animals to their limits, but he knew where those limits were.

“We should stop now and rest,” he said on the first evening out from Dawinno, when the sun was still high in the west.

“So early? Half an hour more,” said Thu-Kimnibol.

“The xlendis will die of it.”

“Just half an hour.”

“Prince, do you want to kill the beasts on our very first day?”

Something about the man’s tone told Thu-Kimnibol to take him seriously. “Will they actually die, if we ask them to carry us just a little way farther?”

“If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after. This is where we must halt. I’ll stake my helmet on it, that if we go any farther tonight, and try to do as much tomorrow, we’ll have some dead xlendis within three days. There’s delicacy behind their strength. These aren’t lumber-wagon xlendis. You’ve chosen high-spirited beasts, that carry us swiftly enough when they’re fresh. But when they’ve begun to weary—” Esperasagiot pulled off his helmet, an artful one with five plumes of a silvery metal sweeping straight back, and put it in Thu-Kimnibol’s hands. “I stake my helmet on it, Prince Thu-Kimnibol. Against your sash. Two dead ones in three days, at this pace.”

“No,” Thu-Kimnibol said, “We’ll stop when you say.”

The summer was still high, and the air was thick and heavy. Rain fell often. This was fertile land, out here north of Dawinno, with many farms Sometimes Thu-Kimnibol saw little knots of farmers standing uneasily by the borders of their property, perhaps wondering whether he meant to raid them.

Soon the caravan was climbing into the hill country, though. Here it was much drier, and there were no more farms. The land was brown and rocky and bleak and the wind came from the north, with an edge on it. Some wild beasts, which had become scarce closer to the settled territories, roamed here. Flights of beaky wide-winged carrion-birds passed ominously overhead. At night the great scarred silver eye that was the Moon, dark with the wounds the death-stars had inflicted on it, lit the bare terrain with a cold gleaming glare.

The xlendis, under Esperasagiot’s expert handling, performed well. Each day they seemed to scamper with greater zeal. They were slender gray beasts, slender-flanked and proud-necked, with aristocratic round heads and flaring nostrils, and they snorted and pranced as they went.

Thu-Kimnibol understood now why Esperasagiot had been so sparing with the xlendis in the early days of the trip. These were city-trained animals, accustomed to pulling the chariots of princes, and they had no experience of long hauls in open country. If he wore them out at the beginning, when provender was easy to come by, what reserve of energy would they have in the harder days to come? Let them grow tough gradually, and be fully inured by the time the journey’s most difficult work was upon them, that was Esperasagiot’s theory.

“I owe you an apology,” Thu-Kimnibol told the wagon-master, when they had been on the road ten days. “Your way with the xlendis is the right one.”

Esperasagiot only grunted. He had no use for apologies, or praise, or anything else but xlendis.

They were in the great windswept coastal plateau now that lay between Dawinno and Yissou. Small twisted gray plants grew here in pale pebbly soil. There were ruined Great World cities along the route. But all that remained of them were faint white lines in the ground, the merest sketchy traces of foundations and pavements. Hresh had sent crews of University students here to dig for more, but there was nothing more to find.

Thu-Kimnibol ordered a halt at the first of these ancient sites that they came to, and looked around. He imagined a host of sapphire-eyes living in this place once, great meaty long-jawed reptilian things with big heads and heavy thighs, strolling slowly about like philosophers with their huge tails propped behind them as a sort of crutch, and the light of genius ablaze in their bulging blue eyes.

At another time he would have made a point of searching such a site as this for a trinket or two of the Great World to bring back for Naarinta. Things of that sort had always cheered her, a bit of fossil bone, some snippet of a mysterious instrument. She had decorated the halls of their villa with an odd and haunting collection of gnarled and twisted fragments of antiquity, and spent many an hour contemplating them.

He poked at this ruin now for sad memory’s sake, and, perhaps, to amuse himself. Thinking that he might stumble on some shining machine of the ancient days that could work miracles, something simply lying there for the taking in the ground that no one else had noticed. A weapon, perhaps, that might be used to obliterate the hjjks. Or even the bones of a sapphire-eyes. No one had ever found any of those. He scuffed at the chalky soil with his boot. But there was nothing.

On a whim he ordered a trench driven a short way into the ground. The diggers worked for an hour or more; but all they brought him was a clump of brown rust, which turned to loose powder in his hand. He shrugged and cast it aside.

A powerful sense of the ancientness of the world came over him, of former worlds that lay upon this one like a film, a crust.

There were echoing traces of history here, and of lost magics, and of magics that still lived, but were beyond his grasp. An abiding melancholy began to take hold of him. His mind dwelt on the Great World, on all that it had been. Why had it perished, for all its greatness? Why did great civilizations perish, even as living people did?

He was struck by the inadequacy of his knowledge: the inadequacy of his mind itself. Hresh knows these things, Thu-Kimnibol thought. We are of one flesh, or almost so, he and I, and yet he knows everything, and I — I know nothing at all. I am merely great strong Thu-Kimnibol, whom others wrongly think stupid, though I am not. Ignorant, yes. But not stupid.

I must speak with Hresh about these matters, when I return.

“I wonder why it is,” Thu-Kimnibol said to Simthala Honginda, who was his lieutenant-ambassador, “that Vengiboneeza survived over the years, or at any rate a good deal of it, enough so that we were able to walk in and take up lodgings there. But there’s nothing left of these cities except streaks of dust and rust.”

Simthala Honginda was of Koshmar blood, a wiry, quick-tempered man of high family connections, the eldest son of Boldirinthe and Staip, linked also to the line of Torlyri by way of his mating with Husathirn Mueri’s sister Catiriil. He kicked idly at the ground. “Vengiboneeza was a sapphire-eyes city. Those old crocodiles had clever machines to do all the work for them, my father tells me. And the machines stayed there, continuing to repair everything, thousands of years after the Long Winter killed off all the sapphire-eyes.”

“They must have been miraculous things, if they could last so long.”

“The sapphire-eyes had machines to repair the machines. And machines to repair the machines that repaired the machines. And so on and so on.”

“Ah. I see.” Thu-Kimnibol scratched a comic face in the dry soil with his heel. “And this place, it had no such machines, you think?”

“Maybe it was a city of the vegetals,” Simthala Honginda suggested. “They must have been very delicate, the plant-people, and froze to death and dried up and blew away like flowers. And so did their cities, I suppose, when the cold weather came. Or a human city, maybe. The humans are beyond our understanding. They mightn’t have cared to build cities as substantial as those of the sapphire-eyes. It could be that their cities were mere things of mist and film, and when the humans went away, nothing but the faint traces of their cities stayed behind. But how can I say? It was all so long ago, Thu-Kimnibol.”

“Yes. I suppose it was.” He knelt and scooped up a handful of dirt, and tossed it into the wind. “A miserable sad place. There’s nothing for us in it. We waste our time stopping here.”

He ordered the caravan onward. Staring morosely ahead across the dry tawny landscape, he felt himself sinking into an uncharacteristic mood of gloom and irritation.

Thu-Kimnibol had known since boyhood that there had been a world before the present one, when all the Earth had been a radiant paradise and six very different races lived together in splendor and magnificence. Great Vengiboneeza had been their capital then, the chronicles said. He had never seen it himself, but he had heard tales of it from his brother Hresh. The things that Hresh had told him of those sky-high towers of turquoise and pink and iridescent violet that had somehow survived out of distant antiquity, and all the wondrous machines that still could be found in them, had stayed vivid in Thu-Kimnibol’s mind ever since. What marvels! What astonishments! In those ancient times when the world had belonged to the slow heavy bright-eyed crocodilian sapphire-eyes folk, whose minds were ablaze with such powerful intelligence, the People, or the creatures who would one day become the People, had been no more than frisky jungle beasts. And Vengiboneeza had been the hub of the cosmos, visited by travelers from many lands and even, magically, other stars.

In those days also had lived the delicate vegetals, beings with petaled faces and hard knotty stems. And the brown-furred flipper-limbed sea-lords, who dwelled in the oceans but could come up on land and move about in clever chariots. And the dome-headed mechanicals, an artificial race, but something more than mere machines.

And hjjks, of course: they had been part of the Great World too, their lineage went back that far. And lastly the humans, the high mystery, that sparse race of arrogant regal creatures not unlike the People in form, but hairless and without sensing-organs. They had been the masters of the world before the coming of the sapphire-eyes to greatness, so it was said. And had chosen to resign all power to them.

Thu-Kimnibol found that a hard thing to understand, the resigning of power. But stranger yet than that to him was the passive way that the entire Great World had allowed itself to die when it became known that the terrible death-stars would crash down out of the sky, raising such clouds of dust and smoke that the sun’s light would be unable to reach the Earth, and all warmth would depart for a period of uncountable centuries.

Hresh said that the Great World had been aware for at least a million years that the death-stars were going to come. And yet its people had chosen to do nothing.

That willingness of the Great World to die without a struggle was infuriating to Thu-Kimnibol. It was irrational; it was incomprehensible. Thinking about it made his muscles grow taut and his soul begin to ache.

If they were as great as all that, he asked himself, why didn’t they blast the death-stars from the sky as they fell? Or string some sort of net across the heavens? Instead of doing nothing. Instead of simply letting the death-stars come.

The sapphire-eyes and the vegetals had frozen to death in their cities; so too, probably, had the sea-lords, when the oceans turned icy; the mechanicals had allowed themselves to rust and decay; the humans had disappeared, no one knew where, though they had taken the trouble to help such simpler creatures as the People to save themselves, first, by leading them into the cocoons where they were to wait the Long Winter out.

Only the hjjks, who were untroubled by cold and ignored most other discomforts, had survived the cataclysm. But even they had slipped a long way back from the peak of greatness they had attained in the former age.

Simthala Honginda, riding beside Thu-Kimnibol in the lead wagon, noticed his mood after a time.

“What troubles you, prince?”

Thu-Kimnibol gestured toward the dry plain. “This place where we’ve just been.”

“It’s nothing but a ruin. Why should a ruin disturb you so?”

“The Great World disturbs me. The death of it. The way they made no attempt to protect themselves.”

“Perhaps they had no choice,” Simthala Honginda said.

“Hresh thinks that they did. They could have kept the death-stars from falling, if they’d wanted to. Hresh says that there’s an explanation for why they didn’t; but he won’t say what it was. You must work it out for yourself, says Hresh. You won’t understand, he says, if I simply tell it to you.”

“Yes. I’ve heard him say something along the same lines when that question came up.”

“What if he’s lying? What if he simply doesn’t know the answer himself?”

Simthala Honginda laughed. “There’s very little that Hresh doesn’t know, I think. But in my experience, when Hresh doesn’t know something, he usually admits it, without pretending otherwise. Nor have I ever known him to lie. Of course, you know him far better than I do.”

“He’s no liar,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “And you’re right: he’ll say straight out, ‘I don’t know,’ if he doesn’t know. Therefore there has to be an answer to the question, and Hresh must know it. And it ought to be easy enough to work out, if you give it a little thought.” He was silent a time, kneading a sore place in the muscles of his neck. Then he turned to Simthala Honginda and said, smiling, “In truth, I think I know the answer myself.”

“You do? What is it, then?”

“Suddenly it’s all quite clear to me. You don’t need to be one tenth so wise as Hresh to see it, either. Do you want me to tell you the reason the sapphire-eyes allowed themselves to die without a struggle? It’s that they were a race of fools. Fools, that is all they were, without sense enough to try to save themselves. Do you see? Nothing more complicated than that, my friend.”

Curabayn Bangkea was at his desk in the guard headquarters, shuffling documents about, when Nialli Apuilana appeared without warning, stepping through the doorway unannounced. He looked up in surprise, flustered at the sight of her. A host of excited fantasies blossomed instantly in his soul as his eyes traveled the length of her tall, slender figure, so supple, so regal in bearing.

He had always lusted after her, though he knew he was only one of many who felt that way.

She is as skittish as a xlendi, he thought, looking at her now. She eludes everyone who would harness her. But all she needs is the right hand to bring her into line. And why should that hand not be mine?

Curabayn Bangkea was well aware of how absurd these fantasies of his were. The chances that she would come here to offer herself in lovemaking to the captain of the city guard were very small. If he had any doubt of that, he only had to look at her face. Her expression was entirely businesslike, cold and formal.

He rose hastily. “Well, lady, to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure?”

“You have Kundalimon under what amounts to house arrest. Why is that, Curabayn Bangkea?”

“Ah, does it trouble you?”

“It troubles him,” she said. “This is the city where he was born. Why should he be treated as a prisoner?”

“He comes to us from the hjjks, lady.”

“As an ambassador. Entitled to diplomatic courtesies, in that case. Either he should have the run of the city because he’s a citizen of this place, or else because he’s a representative of a sovereign nation with whom we’re not at war.”

Her eyes were bright with anger, her nostrils flaring, her breasts agitated. Watching her, Curabayn Bangkea found himself growing agitated also. She wore nothing but a sash and some ornamental ribbons across her shoulders. Not an unusual costume in this season of warm weather, but scantier in general than was typical of unmated women nowadays. That kind of near-nakedness might have been acceptable in the cocoon era, Curabayn Bangkea thought, but we are more civilized now. Why did she have to be so provocative?

He said cautiously, “The rule is that all strangers are sent to Mueri House for a period of observation, until we know whether they’re spies or not.”

“He’s no spy. He’s an ambassador from the Queen.”

“There are those who’d argue — your kinsman Prince Thu-Kimnibol is among them, let me say — that that’s simply two ways of saying the same thing.”

“Be that as it may,” said Nialli Apuilana. “He’s complained to me of being held in what amounts to captivity. He thinks it’s unkind and unfair, and I do also. I remind you that his welfare is my responsibility. He was given into my particular charge, you know, by the chronicler himself.”

Curabayn Bangkea’s eyes widened a trifle at that. “If it were up to me, I’d release him from all restraint in a moment, lady. But Husathirn Mueri’s the one who has jurisdiction over him. He was the holder of the judicial throne the day the stranger was remanded to custody. You ought to be addressing your request to him, not to me.”

“I see. I thought it was a matter for the guard-captain.”

“I don’t have any authority in this. But if you like, I’ll speak to Husathirn Mueri about it on your behalf.”

“On Kundalimon’s behalf, you mean.”

“As you say. I’ll try to get the order changed. You’ll be sent word when I do, later today, I hope. You’re still at the House of Nakhaba, right?”

“Yes. Thank you. I’m grateful for your help, Curabayn Bangkea.”

She didn’t sound particularly grateful. Her look was a flinty one, not the least flicker of warmth about it, and the anger was still there, too. Something was definitely wrong, and his offer of cooperation had not repaired it.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, lady?”

Nialli Apuilana was silent a moment. She allowed her eyes briefly to close. Then she said, “Yes, a very foolish one, which I’m almost unwilling to speak of, it was so offensive. There’s a brother of yours, who is on guard duty at Mueri House — Eluthayn, I think that’s his name — he is your brother, isn’t he?”

“Eluthayn, yes. My youngest brother.”

“Yes. A few days ago, when I was paying a regular call there, this brother of yours attempted to interfere with me. There was an ugly incident.”

Curabayn Bangkea said, mystified, “To interfere with you, lady?”

Her nostrils flared again. “You know what I mean. He made a crude offer to me, this brother of yours. Without warning, without the slightest provocation, he approached me, he breathed his stinking breath in my face, he — he—”

She didn’t go on. Curabayn Bangkea felt a surge of alarm. Had Eluthayn really been idiotic enough to do such a thing? There probably was provocation aplenty, he thought, staring at Nialli Apuilana’s uncovered breasts, at her long silken thighs thickly thatched with sleek red-brown fur. But if Eluthayn had dared to put his hands on the chieftain’s daughter uninvited—

“He touched you, lady? He made overtures ?”

“Overtures, yes. In another moment he’d have been touching me too.”

“Yissou!” Curabayn Bangkea exclaimed, throwing his hands out to his sides. “The stupidity of him! The effrontery!” The guard-captain bustled across the room toward Nialli Apuilana, so hastily that he came close to clanging his helmet into the lamp fixture dangling overhead. “I’ll speak to him, let me assure you, lady. I’ll investigate fully. He’ll be disciplined. And I’ll send him to you to apologize in a proper way. Overtures, you say? Overtures?”

The lightest of quivers crossed her shoulders, a disgusted shudder, making her breasts tremble. She looked away from him. In a softer voice than she had been using, as though distress and shame were gaining the upper hand over anger in her, she said, “Punish him any way you see fit. I don’t want any apologies from him. I don’t want to set eyes on him again.”

“I assure you, lady—”

“Enough. I’d just as soon not discuss any of this further, Curabayn Bangkea.”

“I understand, lady. I’ll handle everything. I would not have you insulted in such a way, by my own brother or by anyone else.”

Did she soften a little, then? For the first time since she had come in she smiled. A faint smile, but a smile all the same. It could be that her anger was going from her, now that she had said what she had come here to say. Curabayn Bangkea thought he even saw gratitude in her eyes and perhaps something more than that: that something had leaped across the gap that separated him from her. He had seen that look often in the eyes of other women to whom he had offered aid, or other things. He was sure that he had seen it just then. Curabayn Bangkea was a fundamentally self-confident man. A great swell of confidence overcame him now, verging on boldness. Where Eluthayn, young and raw and foolish, had failed, he himself might very well succeed. This could be the fulfillment of his wildest fantasy. Unhesitatingly he reached for Nialli Apuilana’s hands and took them fondly in his.

“If I can venture to make amends, lady, for my brother’s unfortunate boorishness — if perhaps you would do the courtesy of sharing dinner with me, and wine, this evening or the next, I’ll endeavor to show you that not all the men of the house of Bangkea are such crass and unthinking—”

“What?” she cried, snatching her hands away from him as though his were covered with slime. “You too, Curabayn? Are you all insane? You denounce your brother for effrontery, and then you put your hands on me yourself? You invite me to dinner? You offer to prove to me that — oh, no, no, no, guard-captain, no!” She began to laugh.

Curabayn Bangkea stared at her in shock.

“Do I have to go around encased in armor? Must I assume that every soldier of the guards in this city will slobber and leer at me if I happen to come within his reach?” Her eyes were flinty again. She had become the image of her mother. Curabayn Bangkea shrank back before her fury as though he stood before the chieftain herself. Coldly Nialli Apuilana said, “Speak to Husathirn Mueri about the matter of the house arrest, if you will. As for your brother, I want him transferred to other duties far from Mueri House. Good day, Curabayn Bangkea.”

She went storming from the room.

He sat frozen a long while, dumbfounded by the thing he had so brazenly dared to attempt.

How could I have been so foolish? he asked himself.

Even though she had come in here wearing only ribbons and a sash. Even though she had given him that warm, melting smile of gratitude. Even though he had been overcome by the fragrance of her, and by the closeness, and by his own lunatic self-assurance. For all of that, he had ventured into territory he should never have permitted himself to enter. He wondered how much harm he had done to himself. He wondered if he had ruined himself. He trembled in unaccustomed fear.

Then anger, unfocused and wild, directed at the universe in general rather than at any specific target, welled up in him and swept the fear away. In a loud voice he called to his aide in the hall, “Get me my brother Eluthayn.”

The young guardsman came in wearing a cheerful, jaunty expression, but it faded the moment he saw the look on his older brother’s face.

Coldly Curabayn Bangkea said, “You moron, is it true you tried to rape the chieftain’s daughter?”

“Rape? What are you talking about, man?”

“She was just in here, talking about your interfering with her. Making overtures to her. She was furious with me, you simpering little bastard. I tried to calm her, and perhaps I did. But maybe not. By the time she’s done with this, she might bring me down as well as you. What in the name of Nakhaba did you try to do, anyway? Grab her rump? Stroke her breasts?”

“I made an innocent little suggestion, brother. Well, not so innocent, perhaps, but playful. There she was, just about naked, the way she goes around all the time, you know, getting ready to go upstairs to that boy who came from the hjjks, and I said something to the effect that I wouldn’t mind being shut up in a room with her myself for a little while. That was all.”

“That was all?”

“I swear to you by our mother. Just a little come-on, you understand, nothing serious — though I’d have become serious in a moment, let me tell you, if she’d gone for the bait. You never can tell, with these highborns. But instead she went crazy. She began to rant and scream. She spat at me, Curabayn.”

“Spat?”

“In my face, right here. A good healthy wad of it it was, too, that left me feeling filthy for hours. You’d think I’d offended her to the depths of her soul, the way she was raging. To spit at me like I was an animal, or worse than an animal, brother! Who does she think she is?”

“She’s the daughter of the chieftain, in fact. And of the chronicler,” said Curabayn Bangkea heavily.

“I don’t care whose daughter she is. She’s just a spread-legged slut like all the rest of them, brother.”

“Careful. It’s risky to slander the highborn, Eluthayn.”

“What slander? Is she such a model of virtue? She and that boy in Mueri House, they couple like rutting xlendis. The two of them go at it for hours at a time, brother!”

Curabayn Bangkea rose from his seat, grunting in surprise. “What’s that? What are you saying?”

“Only the truth. That day she spat at me, I went upstairs and listened at the door, to see if she had any right being so high and mighty. And I could hear them thumping around. On the floor, they were, like animals. I’m sure of it. And there was no mistaking the sounds they were making. I’ve heard it since, other times. You think Hresh would be amused, knowing she’s coupling with him? Or the chieftain, if she knew?”

His brother’s words went through Curabayn Bangkea like a spear. The situation was transformed completely by this. Coupling with Kundalimon, was she? Was that what those cozy little visits were all about? He and Eluthayn were safe, then. Why shouldn’t the captain of the guards, or even his stupid younger brother, also be able to offer himself for a little coupling to the highborn Nialli Apuilana, if she was willing to roll on the floor with something out of the hjjk Nest, who could speak only in clicks and clatters?

He said severely, “Are you absolutely certain of this?”

“On our mother’s soul, I am.”

“All right. All right. This is going to be very helpful, what you’ve just told me.” Curabayn Bangkea dropped back into his chair and sat utterly still for a moment, letting the tension of the morning ease away from him. At length he said, “You understand I’ll have to transfer you to guard duty somewhere else, to pacify her. You don’t care a spider’s ass about that, naturally. And if you happen to see her in the streets, for Yissou’s sake be humble and full of respect. Bow to her, make holy signs to her, get down and kiss her toes, if necessary. No, not that. Don’t kiss her anywhere. But show respect. You’ve mortally offended her, and she has power over us that has to be taken into account.” Curabayn Bangkea grinned. “But I think I have some power over her now, too. Thanks to you, you lecherous idiot.”

“Will you explain yourself, brother?”

“No. Just get yourself out of here. And be careful hereafter when you’re around highborn women. Remember who and what you are.”

“She had no call spitting in my face, brother,” Eluthayn said sullenly.

“I know that. But she’s highborn, and she thinks differently about such things.” He waved his hands in his brother’s face. “Go, now, Eluthayn. Go.”

The landscape changed again and again as Thu-Kimnibol continued northward toward the City of Yissou. Now the caravan moved through broad plains open to the sea-breezes out of the west, and the air was moist and salty and blue-green beards of scalemoss shrouded every bush; and now the route traversed wide flat silent arid valleys walled off from the sea by stark bare mountain ridges, and the skulls of unknown beasts lay bleaching on the sandy ground; and now the travelers passed into forested highlands, where jagged leafless trees with pale spiral trunks clung to tortuous outcroppings of black earth, and strange howlings and whistlings came floating down from the even higher country that lay to the east.

He was struck by a deep awareness of the hugeness of the world, of the greatness and heaviness of the immense globe across whose face he was moving.

It seemed to him that every hand’s-breadth of it that he covered was entering into him, becoming part of him: that he was engulfing it, devouring it, incorporating it within himself for all time to come. And it made him all the more eager to go onward, on and on and on across the face of it. He knew himself to be different in this way from those of the People who were old enough to have been born in the tribal cocoon, who still harbored some urge, he suspected, to crawl back into a small, warm, safe place and close the hatch behind them. Not him. Not him. More deeply, perhaps than ever before, he understood his brother Hresh’s hunger to know, to discover, to experience.

Thu-Kimnibol had been through here once before: when he was eighteen, going southward then, in his flight from Yissou to the City of Dawinno. But he remembered very few details of that earlier journey. He had ridden all the way with his head down and his eyes veiled by anger and bitter sorrow, driving his xlendi at full gallop. That grim and fretful ride survived in his memory now, two decades and some years later, only as a hard encapsulated knot, still capable of giving pain when prodded, like the memory of some terrible loss, or of a mortal illness successfully weathered at great inner cost. He touched it no more often than he had to.

They were past the halfway point now, in territory subject to Salaman. Mostly his mood was dark these days. The turning point had come at that Great World ruin, summoning memories of Naarinta as it did, and bleak thoughts of the remote past. Now the bygone days of his own life had begun to press heavily on him: lost opportunities, false paths taken, the beloved mate snatched away.

He did what he could to conceal his state of mind. But as the caravan was descending from the hills into a fertile plain cut by a host of swift streams and rivers Simthala Honginda said abruptly, “Is it the thought of seeing Salaman again that troubles you so much, prince?”

Thu-Kimnibol looked up, startled. Was he that transparent?

“Why do you say that?”

“You and he were bitter enemies once. Everyone knows that.”

“We were never friends, I suppose. And for a time things were bad between us. But that was long ago.”

“You still hate him, I think.”

“I’ve scarcely given him a thought in fifteen years. Salaman’s ancient history to me.”

“Yes. Yes, of course he must be.” Then, delicately: “But the closer we get to Yissou, the deeper you drift into gloom.”

“Gloom?” Thu-Kimnibol forced a laugh. “You think I’ve turned gloomy, Simthala Honginda?”

“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 protйgй 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. “ Intelligentanimals, 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.