At Winter's End

by Robert Silverberg

  But she hovered in the doorway. She wore a green mantle casually over one shoulder and the orange sash of the highborn at her waist. “You look so strange,” she said, staring. “I’ve never seen you look this way. Mother, what’s the matter? You aren’t ill, are you?”

  “No. And nothing is the matter.”

  “They told me a rock was thrown at you in the street this morning.”

  “You know about it?”

  “Everyone knows. A hundred people saw it, and everyone’s talking about it. It makes me so furious, mother! That anyone should dare—should dare—”

  “So big a city is bound to have a great many fools,” Taniane said.

  “But to throw a rock, mother—to try to injure you—”

  “You have it wrong,” Taniane said. “The rock fell well in front of me. It wasn’t meant to hit me at all. It was simply carrying a message. Some Beng agitator thinks I ought to abdicate. I’ve stayed much too long, is what he said. It’s time I stepped aside. In favor of a Beng chieftain, I suppose.”

  “Would anyone really presume to suggest such a thing?”

  “People presume to suggest anything and everything, Nialli. What happened this morning is meaningless. Some crank, nothing more. Some agitator. I can tell the difference between an isolated crank letter and the outbreak of a revolution.” She shook her head. “Enough of this. There are other things to discuss.”

  “You dismiss it so lightly, mother.”

  “Shall I let myself take it seriously? I’d be a fool if I did.”

  “No,” Nialli Apuilana said, and there was heat in her tone. “I don’t agree at all. Who knows how far this will spread, if it’s not stopped right away? You should find the person who threw that rock and have him nailed to the city wall.”

  They stared tensely at each other. A pounding began behind Taniane’s eyes, and she felt a tightness in her stomach. Congealing juices rolled there. With anyone else, she thought, this would merely be a discussion; with Nialli it was a battle. They were always at war. Why is that? she wondered. Hresh had said something about their being so similar, that like repels like. He had been doing something with little metal bars then, studying how one of them would attract the other at one end, but nothing would happen at the other. You and Nialli are too much like each other, Hresh had said. And that is why you will never be able to exert any real force over her. Your magnetism won’t work on her.

  Perhaps so, although Taniane suspected that something else was at work too, some transformation which she had undergone while she was among the hjjks, that made her so difficult. But there was no denying her daughter’s likeness to her. The two of them were cast in the same image. It was an eerie and sometimes troubling thing. Looking at Nialli was like looking at a mirror that reflected through time. They could almost have been twins, mysteriously born some three and a half decades apart. Nialli was her one child, the child of her middle years, conceived almost miraculously after she and Hresh had long since given up hope of bringing any into the world; and there seemed to be no imprint of Hresh anywhere upon the girl, except, perhaps, her stubborn, independent mind. In all other ways she was Taniane reborn. Those elegant legs, those strong shoulders and high breasts, that splendid silken red-brown fur—yes, Taniane thought. She looked regal. She carried herself like a chieftain. There was a glory about her. Not always a comforting thing, that. Sometimes, when she saw Nialli, Taniane was all too painfully reminded of her own aging body. She felt herself already drifting downward into the earth, beckoned by the powers of decay, too soon dragged under by the mass of corroding flesh and softening bones. She heard the flutter of moth-wings, she saw trails of gray dust along stone floors. There were days when there was death in the air.

  After a long silence Taniane said, “Must we quarrel, Nialli? If I thought there was something to worry about here, I’d take action. But if someone really wanted to overthrow me, it wouldn’t be done with rocks tossed in the street. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” said Nialli Apuilana. It was barely more than a whisper. “I understand.”

  “Good.” Taniane closed her eyes a moment. She struggled to cast off fatigue and strain. “Now: if we can get down to the matter I called you here to discuss. Which is this supposed ambassador who has come to us from the hjjks, and the supposed treaty that he supposedly invites us to sign.”

  “Why all these supposeds, mother?”

  “Because everything that we really know about this comes by way of Hresh and the Barak Dayir. The boy himself hasn’t said anything coherent at all, has he?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “You think he will?”

  “As our language comes back to him, he may. He’s been in the Nest for thirteen years, mother.”

  “What about your talking to him in his language?”

  Nialli Apuilana seemed uneasy. “I’m not able to do that.”

  “You can’t speak any hjjk?”

  “Only a handful of words, mother. It was years ago—I was with them just a few months—”

  “You’re the one who brings him his food, aren’t you?”

  Nialli Apuilana nodded.

  “What if you used those occasions to refresh your memories of the hjjk language? Or to teach him a little of ours.”

  “I suppose I could,” Nialli Apuilana said grudgingly.

  The obvious reluctance in her tone was maddening. Taniane felt her resistance. The girl is innately contrary, she thought. She said, perhaps a little too sharply, “You’re the only person in this city who can serve as an interpreter for us. Your help is essential, Nialli. The Presidium will meet soon to take up this entire treaty thing. I can’t rely on Wonderstone trances alone. The Wonderstone is all well and good; but we need to hear actual words from the boy. You’ll have to find some way of communicating verbally with him and learn from him what this is all about. And then give me a full report. I want to know everything that he says to you.”

  Something was wrong. Nialli Apuilana’s jaw was set. There was a cold, hard look in the girl’s eyes. She stared without speaking, and the silence stretched across too many ticking moments.

  “Is there some problem here?” Taniane asked.

  Nialli Apuilana glared sullenly. “I don’t like acting as a spy, mother.”

  A spy? Taniane thought. That was unexpected. It hadn’t occurred to her that serving as an interpreter on behalf of one’s own people could be construed as spying.

  Is it because of the hjjks? she wondered.

  Yes. Yes. It is because the hjjks are involved in this. And she sat stunned, appalled. For the first time she understood that her daughter might feel an actual conflict of loyalty.

  Since Nialli Apuilana’s return from captivity she had never said a word to anyone about her experiences among the hjjks: nothing of what they had done to her, nothing of what they had said, not a scrap of information about what life in the Nest was like. She had steadfastly deflected all inquiries, meeting every query with an odd mix of distress and steely ferocity, until the inquiries had ceased altogether. Up till this moment Taniane had assumed that the girl had simply been shielding her privacy, protecting herself against the awakening of painful memories. But if she saw a request to report on her conversations with Kundalimon in terms of spying, then it might well be that it was the privacy of the hjjks, not her own, that she felt a powerful desire to protect. That was worth some further investigation.

  Just now, though, such ambiguities of attitude were a luxury the city was unable to afford. An actual hjjk ambassador, tongue-tied and uncommunicative though he might be, was here. Guessing at his message, or relying on Hresh’s Wonderstone-assisted ability to read his mind, was insufficient. He had to be made to state his errand in words. Nialli would simply have to yield. Her assistance in this thing was too important.

  Brusquely Taniane said, “What kind of foolishness is this? There’s no spying involved here. We’re talking about service to your city. A stranger comes, bearing news that the Que
en wants to negotiate with us. But he can’t speak our language and nobody here can speak his, except for one young woman who happens to be the chieftain’s daughter, but who also seems to think that there’s something unethical about helping us to find out what an ambassador from another race is trying to say.”

  “You’re turning everything your own way, mother. I simply don’t want to feel that if I do manage to open some sort of communication with Kundalimon, I’m obliged to report whatever he says to me to you.”

  Taniane felt the beginnings of despair. Once she had thought Nialli Apuilana would succeed her one day as chieftain; but plainly that could never be. The girl was impossible. She was baffling: volatile, headstrong, unstable. It was clear now that the long line of the chieftainship, which could be traced back into the remote days of cocoon life, was destined to be broken. It was the hjjks that did this to her, Taniane thought. One more reason to despise them. But all the same Nialli Apuilana could not be allowed to win this battle.

  Summoning all the force that was within her, she said, “You have to do it. It’s vital to our security that we understand what this is all about.”

  “Have to?”

  “I want you to. You have to, yes.”

  There was silence. Inner rebellion knotted Nialli Apuilana’s forehead. Taniane stared at her coldly, pitilessly, matching the hardness of her daughter’s glare with an even fiercer look, one meant to overpower. To enhance it she allowed her second sight to arise, and Nialli Apuilana looked at her in amazement. Taniane maintained the pressure.

  Nialli Apuilana, though, continued to resist.

  Then at last she gave ground: or appeared to. Coolly, almost contemptuously, she said, “Well, then. As you wish. I’ll do what I can.”

  Nialli Apuilana’s face, so wondrously a reflection of Taniane’s own refracted through decades of time, was expressionless, unreadable, a mask void of all feeling. Taniane felt the temptation to reach out at the most intimate level of second sight, to reach with forbidden force and penetrate that sullen mask for once. Was it anger that Nialli Apuilana was hiding, or mere resentment, or something else, some wild rebellious flare?

  “Are we finished?” Nialli Apuilana asked. “Do I have permission to leave now?”

  Taniane gave her a bleak look. This had all gone so very badly. She had won this little battle, perhaps. But she sensed that she had lost a war.

  She had hoped to reach out to Nialli in love and friendship. Instead she had snapped and snarled, and had made use of the blunt strength of her position, and had coldly issued orders, as though Nialli were nothing more than some minor functionary of her staff. She wished she could rise, walk around the desk to her, take her in her arms. But that was beyond her, somehow. Often it seemed to her that a wall higher than King Salaman’s stood between her and her daughter.

  “Yes,” she said. “You can go.”

  Nialli Apuilana went briskly toward the door. When she reached the hallway, though, she turned and looked back.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, and, to Taniane’s surprise, there seemed to be a conciliatory tone in her voice. It sounded almost gentle. “I’ll do things the right way. I’ll find out everything you need to know, and tell you. And I’ll tell it to the Presidium too.”

  Then she was gone.

  Taniane swung around and looked at the masks behind her on the wall. They seemed to be laughing at her. Their faces were implacable.

  “What do you know?” she muttered. “None of you ever had mates, or children, did you? Did you?”

  “Lady?” a voice called from outside. It was Minguil Komeilt. “Lady, may I come in?”

  “What is it?”

  “A delegation, lady. From the Guild of Tanners and Dyers of the Northern District, concerning repairs to their main water conduit, which they say has become blocked by sewage that is being illegally released by members of the Guild of Weavers and Wool-Carders, and is causing—”

  Taniane groaned.

  “Oh, send them to Boldirinthe,” she said, half to herself. “This is something the offering-woman can handle as well as the chieftain can.”

  “Lady?”

  “Boldirinthe can pray for them. She can ask the gods to unplug the water line. Or bring down vengeance on the Guild of Weavers and—”

  “Lady?” Minguil Komeilt said again, with alarm in her voice. “Do I understand you rightly, lady? This is a joke, is it not? This is only a joke?”

  “Only a joke, yes,” said Taniane. “You mustn’t take me seriously.” She pressed her fingers against her eyes, and drew three quick deep breaths. “All right. Send in the delegation from the Guild of Tanners and Dyers—”

  A veil of hazy heat shrouded the sky as Nialli Apuilana stepped into the street outside the House of Government. She hailed a passing xlendi-wagon.

  “The House of Nakhaba,” she told the driver. “I’ll be there just five minutes or so. Then I’ll want you to take me somewhere else.”

  That would be Mueri House, where the hjjk emissary had been lodged: a hostelry used mostly by strangers to the city, where he could be kept under close watch. Now it was time to bring him his midday meal. She went to Kundalimon twice a day, at noon and twilight. He had a small one-windowed room—it was more like a cell—on the third floor, facing backward into a blind plaza.

  Her confrontation with her mother had left her drained and numb. Love warred with fear in her whenever she had to deal with Taniane. There was never any telling, with Taniane, when her powerful sense of the needs of the city was going to override all other considerations, all thought of the messy little private needs and problems of private individuals, whether they happened to be her daughter or some absolute stranger. For her the city always came first. No doubt you got that way, Nialli Apuilana supposed, when you held the chieftainship for forty years: time made you hard, narrow, singleminded. Maybe the Beng who had hurled the rock was right: maybe it was time for Taniane to step aside.

  Nialli Apuilana wondered whether she really was going to spy for Taniane, as she had so abruptly found herself agreeing to do.

  It had been a mistake, perhaps, to put the whole thing in terms of spying. She was, after all, a citizen of Dawinno and the daughter of the chieftain and the chronicler. And she did, after all, have at least a little knowledge of the hjjk language, which was more than anyone else here could claim. Why not serve as interpreter, and do it gladly, with pride in being of service? It didn’t mean that she’d have to repeat every single word of her conversations with Kundalimon to Taniane and the Presidium, or to open up her whole experience of the hjjks to their probing. She could pick and choose: she could easily enough limit what she reported to them to the basic matters of the negotiation. But it had been so frightening, the thought that they might grill her on everything she knew about the Nest and its ruler. That horrified her, that they would break through the shield of privacy which she had held in place around herself for nearly four years. She meant to cast off that shield herself, when and if she felt it was the proper time. The idea that they might in some way strip her of it before she was ready filled her with terror, though. An overreaction, perhaps. Perhaps.

  She stopped off at the House of Nakhaba only long enough to pick up the food for Kundalimon’s midday meal. Today she had a stewed loin of vimbor for him. Hjjk-food, mostly, was what she brought him: seeds and nuts and baked meats, nothing moist with sauces, nothing at all rich—but also she tempted him carefully now and then with the heartier fare of the People, a morsel or two at a time. Food could be a language too. The meals they took together were one means they had of learning to communicate with each other.

  There was one time—it was the third or fourth time she had brought him his meal—when he spent a long time thoughtfully chewing a mouthful of nuts and fruits without swallowing, and finally spat out a quantity into his hand. This he held out to her. Nialli Apuilana’s first response was surprise and disgust. But he continued to press the handful of moist pulp upon her, pointing and nodding
.

  “What is it?” she asked, bewildered. “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No—food—you—Nialli Apuilana—”

  She stared, still not comprehending.

  “Take—take—”

  Then it came back to her. In the Nest the hjjks shared partly digested food all the time. A mark of solidarity, of Nest-bond; and something more than that, perhaps, having to do with the way the hjjks’ bodies processed their food, that she could not understand. She remembered now the sight of her nestmates pressing chewed food on one another. It was a common thing among them, this sharing of food.

  Hesitantly she had taken what Kundalimon offered. He smiled and nodded. She forced herself to nibble at it, though all her instincts recoiled. “Yes,” he said. “Oh, yes!”

  She got it down somehow, struggling against nausea. He seemed pleased.

  By pantomime he had indicated then that she should take some of the People-food she had brought and do the same with it for him. She picked up a haunch of roast gilandrin and bit into it, and when she had chewed it for a time she pulled the whole wad of it from her mouth, taking care to conceal her queasiness, and gave it to him.

  He tasted it cautiously. He looked uncertain about the meat itself; but obviously he was gladdened by her having had it in her mouth first. She could feel a flood of warmth and gratitude coming from him. It was almost like feeling Nest-bond once again.

  “More,” he said.

  And so, gradually, because she was willing to adopt the hjjk custom with him, he was able to expand his range of foods. Once it became apparent to him that the things Nialli Apuilana brought him were doing him no harm, he ate them with gusto. There was new flesh on his bones, and his dark fur was thickening and had acquired a little sheen. Those strange green eyes of his no longer seemed so hard and icy.

  Communication, of a sort.

  He was shy and remote, but he seemed to welcome her visits. Had he figured out yet that she too had been in the Nest? Sometimes it seemed that way; but she wasn’t yet sure. Verbal contact between them was still very uncertain. He had picked up a dozen or so words of the language of the city, and she was starting to reconstruct her knowledge of hjjk. But vocabulary was one thing and comprehension was another.