At Winter's End

by Robert Silverberg

  After a long silence Taniane said, “I’ve taken such actions as I deem necessary for the security of the city, Hresh. If you disagree, you have the right to state your objections in the Presidium. All right?” Her stony glare was awful to behold. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Do you know, Taniane, that Thu-Kimnibol has gone behind my back to remove newly discovered Great World artifacts from the House of Knowledge for use as weapons?”

  “If there’s a war, Hresh, weapons will be necessary. And there’s going to be a war.”

  “But to take them from the House of Knowledge, without even telling—”

  “I authorized Thu-Kimnibol to see to it that the army was properly equipped.”

  “You authorized him to steal Great World things from the House of Knowledge?”

  She eyed him steadily and unflinchingly. “I seem to remember that you used Great World weapons against the hjjks at the battle of Yissou.”

  “But that was different! That was—”

  “Different, Hresh?” Taniane laughed. “Was it? How?”

  For Salaman it was a bad day atop the wall. Everything was unclear. A hash of harsh chattering nonsense clogged the channels of his mind. Vague cloudy images drifted to him now and then. A lofty tower which might signify Thu-Kimnibol. A flash of luminescent flame which perhaps stood for Hresh. A tough weatherbeaten tree, whipping about in a storm, which he thought might represent Taniane. And some other image, that of someone or something serpentine and slippery, impossible for Salaman to interpret at all. Things were happening in Dawinno today. But what? What? Nothing that he was picking up made sense. He tuned his second sight as keenly as he could. But either his perceptions were weak today or the transmissions from his spies were muddled beyond his ability to decode them.

  He was in his pavilion, sweeping his sensing-organ from side to side in broad arcs. Casting his mind outward along it into the rear empty spaces that surrounded Yissou, he trawled southward for news. On the far side of the wall, the whole city’s width away, stood his son Biterulve, seeking word from the north.

  The new communications network was finally in place. It had taken all the winter to build it: finding the volunteers, training them, sending them out to establish the outposts that would masquerade as farms. But now he had his agents strung like beads along a line stretching southward nearly to the City of Dawinno, and north toward hjjk territory as far as seemed safe to intrude.

  From all sides came the buzz and crackle of second-sight visions flooding toward him, relayed station by station along the line. The king concentrated the full force of his powerful mind on them. He came here every day at dawn now, to listen, to wait.

  It wasn’t easy to achieve, this mind-transmission. The messages were always blurred and difficult to interpret, and often ambiguous. But what other way was there, short of having couriers ride constantly back and forth? At best the news they brought would be weeks late. That was unthinkable, now. Events were moving too quickly. If he had a Wonderstone as Hresh did, perhaps he could let his spirit rove hither and yon as he wished, peering into anything and everything. But there was only one Wonderstone, and Hresh had it.

  Nothing was working for him today, though. The messages that were coming in were worthless. Murk and mist, darkness and fog, no clarity at all. A waste of time and energy.

  Well, so be it. Salaman let his weary sensing-organ go limp. A better day tomorrow, perhaps. He moved toward the stairs.

  Then, like an agitated voice calling to him out of the sky, the presence of his son came to him.

  —Father! Father!

  —Biterulve?

  —Father, can you hear me? It’s Biterulve!

  —I hear you, yes.

  —Father?

  —Tell me, boy. Tell me!

  There was silence then. Salaman felt fury rising. Plainly the boy had something important to tell him; but just as plainly, Biterulve’s messages and his own replies weren’t in coordination.

  Salaman swung around and inclined his sensing-organ toward the direction Biterulve’s output was coming from. It was maddening: so inexact, so imprecise, mere approximations of meaning, images and sensations rather than words, which must be deciphered, which must be interpreted. But certainly there was news from the north. Salaman had no doubt of that. He could feel the boy’s unmistakable excitement.

  —Biterulve?

  —Father! Father!

  —I hear you. Tell me what it is.

  He sensed the boy struggling. Biterulve had great sensitivity, but it was of an odd kind, more keen over long distances than close at hand. Salaman hammered his fists against the brick walkway of the wall. He raised his sensing-organ until it could go no higher, and stroked the air with his outspread arms as though that way he could pull the message more clearly from his son.

  Then came an image unquestionable in its clarity.

  Bloodied bodies lying on a plain between two streams. Hundreds of them. Zechtior Lukin’s people.

  Gaunt shadowy figures stalking among them, stooping now and then as though taking trophies.

  Hjjks.

  —They’re dead, father. The Acknowledgers. Every one of them. Can you hear me?

  —I hear you, boy.

  —Father? Father. It came through so clearly, through the northern relay posts. They’ve all been killed, in the hjjk country, in a place where rivers fork. All the Acknowledgers, completely wiped out.

  Salaman nodded, as though Biterulve were standing right beside him. With a fierce burst of mental strength he hurled toward the boy a message so vehement that he was certain it would get through, to say that he had received and comprehended the news; and after a moment came confirmation from Biterulve, and the boy’s relief that he had managed to make himself understood.

  At last, Salaman thought.

  Now the wheels begin to turn.

  The Acknowledgers had found the martyrdom they wanted. Time now to send the second force, the army of vengeance, which would probably meet martyrdom too, though far less calmly. And then to make ready for the all-out war that was sure to follow.

  The king swung about again toward the south. For a moment he stood resting, breathing easily, gathering force. There could be no ambiguities or mysteries this time. The message had to travel along the relay chain with no distortion whatever, and get through to Thu-Kimnibol in distant Dawinno untainted by error.

  He summoned the images. The bodies by the riverbank. The dark angular shapes moving among them. The new army, setting out from Yissou, bravely marching into the territory of the enemy to avenge the murder of Zechtior Lukin and his people. The violent collision of forces that was sure to come. The hjjks, aroused, issuing threats.

  And then the gates of Dawinno opening, and an immense force of warriors emerging, with Thu-Kimnibol at their head.

  Salaman smiled. He raised his sensing-organ and held it rigid. Power throbbed in it from the base of his spine and traveled to the tip. He closed his eyes and let the word burst forth from him. It soared southward from station to station in a bright blaze of energy, like a thunderbolt leaping across the vast spaces between the two cities.

  —I invoke the terms of our alliance. We are at war.

  Something is wrong. Nialli Apuilana, alone in her room in the House of Nakhaba, feels a sudden tremor, a heaving and a wrenching, as if the world has been pulled free of its base and it plummeting wildly through the heavens. She goes to the window. Everything seems quiet in the streets. But her second sight shows her the sun, suddenly huge, hanging just above her in the air with rivers of blood dripping down from it. In the blackness of the sky the icy green tails of comets whirl and spin.

  She trembles and looks away and covers her eyes with her arms. After a time she prays, first to the Five, and then to the spirit of Kundalimon. And then, without knowing why, she thinks to reach out to the Queen as well.

  Taking the hjjk star from its place on the wall, Nialli Apuilana holds it before her face, gripping it
lightly by its sides. She peers into the open place at its center, narrowing the focus of her vision down until that small open place is the only thing she can see.

  It is dark in there. Perhaps some sort of image lurks in the deepest part of the darkness, but she isn’t at all sure it is there, and, if it is, it is blurred and faded and unclear, a mere ghost of a ghost. Once the star had been able to show her the Nest, or so she had thought. But now—

  Nothing. Only dark hazy shadows that elude her gaze, try as she might to penetrate them. Of the Nest there is no trace.

  Where has it gone? she wonders.

  Was it ever there at all?

  —Do you want to see? a voice within her asks.

  —Yes.

  —What you see may change you.

  —I’ve been changed so many times already. What harm can one more do?

  —Very well. See, then, what is there to be seen.

  It seems to her then that the shadows are lifting, that the darkness at the core of the star is brightening, that once more she can look through the place at the center of the star into the familiar subterranean corridors that had for a time been her home. Figures are moving about. She grips the star more tightly, stares more intently.

  Figures, yes—

  She sees them all too clearly now.

  Monstrous. Weird. Distorted. Heads like hatchets, arms like swords. Huge cold burning eyes like mirrors of black glass that throw back a thousand malevolent refractory images at once. Glistening beaks that snap and clack and thrust themselves like daggers at her through the opening in the star. Nialli Apuilana hears the harsh hissing sound of their mocking laughter. The star itself, that simple thing of plaited grass, is covered with sharp black bristles now. Its center is a dark hairy mouth, gleaming, gaping, a wet and slippery hole that makes soft insinuating sucking noises at her.

  Something is pulling at her, trying to draw her down into the heart of the little plaited star.

  The temptation to yield is powerful. Return to the Nest, yes, allow the bond to be rebuilt, sit at the feet of Nest-thinker, absorb his wisdom. Be taken before the Queen to experience Her touch. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Wasn’t it what she has always wanted? And Kundalimon. The greatest temptation of all. They’d give Kundalimon back to her. Come to us and Kundalimon will be yours again. Was it so? How tempting it sounds. How easy it would be to surrender. How good to return to the nest…how comforting…how safe.

  No. No. How can it be, any of it?

  Nialli Apuilana resists with all the strength of her soul.

  Still she is drawn inward. But then gradually, as she continues to struggle, the force of the pull recedes. Shuddering, she throws the star aside and watches it skitter into a far corner of the room, where it comes to rest against the wall, tipped up on end. But even from there it calls to her. Come to us. Come. Come.

  The nightmare images refuse to leave her. The beaks and claws, the bristling mouth, the myriad cold gleaming eyes. They blaze in her mind no matter how she tries to drive them from her. She thought she had fought and won this battle already, weeks ago. But no, no, the Queen’s grip is not yet fully broken.

  She fights for breath. Her heart races. Her skin breaks out in cold fiery pricklings.

  Her head swims with mysteries.

  The walls of her little room seem to be closing in on her. Streams of blood flow across the floor. Severed limbs arise and dance wildly about her. A baleful green light comes pulsing up from the star that lies beside the wall. Thin bristly arms reach out through its center, groping for her. Harsh whispering voices, distant but seductive, call to her.

  “No,” she says. “I’m not yours any more.”

  She edges backward, keeping her eyes on the star as she moves slowly toward the door, fumbling behind herself to open it, then slipping hurriedly out into the hallway. She slams the door and holds it shut, leaning against it, drawing air deep into her lungs, waiting for the dizziness to go from her, for the pounding in her chest to subside.

  Free. Free.

  What next, though?

  There is only one person in the city she can turn to.

  I’ll go to my father, she thinks.

  “They want to destroy the Queen, if they can,” Husathirn Mueri said. “You have my word on it.”

  He was in the chapel of Kundalimon in the alleyway just off Fishmonger Street. It wasn’t one of the regular days of communion. Only Tikharein Tourb and Chhia Kreun were with him now: the boy-priest, the girl-priestess.

  Somewhat to his own surprise, Husathirn Mueri had become a regular communicant of the new creed. What had begun as spying had become—was it faith? Or spying still. He was unsure. The chapel, that dingy place reeking of dried fish where sweaty lower-class folk came four times a week to cry forth their love of the Queen, had become his special refuge in the storm that was sweeping Dawinno. To Chevkija Aim he maintained that he was still conducting an investigation. Inwardly he wasn’t so clear that that was what he was doing.

  The boy said, “But are they capable of such a thing? Is anyone. It seems hard to believe.”

  “That the Queen can be destroyed?”

  “That they would be so evil as to attempt it?”

  “They’ll kill her,” said Husathirn Mueri, “as they killed Kundalimon. There are no limits to their hatred of Nest-truth.”

  “Then it was Thu-Kimnibol that killed Kundalimon?” the girl said, amazed.

  Husathirn Mueri turned to her. “Surely you knew that. It was done at his orders by the guard-captain, Curabayn Bangkea. Who then was murdered also, to keep him silent.”

  “You know this to be true?” asked Tikharein Tourb.

  “It’s true, all right. By all the gods, it’s true!” said Husathirn Mueri.

  Tikharein Tourb stared at him a long while, as if weighing and judging him. The boy’s narrowed green eyes were cold as the ice that lies at the heart of the world. Only once before had Husathirn Mueri seen eyes like those: the bleak pale ones of the emissary Kundalimon. And even Kundalimon’s gaze at its most remorseless had held some hint of compassion. These eyes were wholly icy, wholly terrifying.

  The fierce roaring silence went on and on. Tikharein Tourb and the girl stood silent, statue-still. After a time Husathirn Mueri saw the boy’s sensing-organ quiver and grow rigid and steal toward the side, until its tip was touching the tip of Chhia Kreun’s. They might almost have been entering into communion right before him. Perhaps they were.

  Then the boy said, “Swear to me by your love of the Queen that it was Thu-Kimnibol who had Kundalimon murdered.”

  “I swear it,” said Husathirn Mueri unhesitatingly.

  “And that the purpose of this war that Thu-Kimnibol has stirred up is to bring about the destruction of the Nest and the death of Her who is our comfort and our joy.”

  “That’s its purpose. I swear it.”

  Again Tikharein Tourb stared. What a frightening child he is, Husathirn Mueri thought. And the girl also.

  “Then he will die,” said the boy finally.

  Hresh was in his garden of animals, sitting with small brightly colored beasts all about him. The two purple-and-yellow ones, the caviandis, were by his side, and he was gently stroking them. He glanced up as Nialli Apuilana came rushing in.

  “Father—” she cried at once. “Father, I’ve had something strange happen—something so very strange—”

  He looked at her in a bland incurious way, as though she had not said anything at all. His eyes were remote and his expression was milder even than usual. There was a great sadness about him that she had never seen before: he seemed bowed down under it, a beaten man, very old and frail.

  That frightened her. Her own chaotic fears and confusions receded into the background. She had come here in terror and in need; but his need, she saw, was even greater than hers.

  “Is something wrong, father?”

  Hresh made a little shrugging gesture and slowly moved his head from side to side like some wounded beast. He seemed
terribly far away. After a time he said, “It’s certain now. There’s going to be war.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I felt the signal just now, coming from the north. Perhaps you felt it too. There’ll be no holding it back. Everything is in place and the word has been given to begin.”

  She stared at him blankly. “I’m not sure what you mean, father.”

  “You don’t know about the alliance Thu-Kimnibol brought back with him from Yissou?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’ve agreed to help defend Salaman if he’s ever attacked by the hjjks. Which is about to happen—an attack provoked by Salaman himself, I suspect. Perhaps with some help from my brother. Once Yissou is invaded, our army will go north, and there’ll be all-out war.”

  “Which is precisely what those two have always wanted.”

  Hresh nodded. Tonelessly he said, “Much blood will flow, ours and theirs. Great sins will be committed. Hjjk armies will march through our cities putting them to the torch, or we’ll destroy the Nest, or perhaps both will happen. It makes no difference what happens in the end. Whether we win or lose, everything we’ve achieved will be destroyed.”

  He looked forlorn and bereft. Nialli Apuilana wanted to hold him, to comfort him.

  She said softly, “You mustn’t worry yourself like this, father. Salaman is dreaming. The hjjks won’t attack Yissou and there isn’t going to be any all-out war.”

  “They invaded Yissou once,” Hresh said.

  “That was different. Yissou was right on the path of a hjjk swarming-drive.”

  “A what?”

  “A swarming-drive. The Nest, great as it is, can hold only so many. A time arrives when the population has to divide. And then they come bursting out, thousands of them, millions sometimes, carrying a young queen with them. And they march. For a thousand leagues if they have to, or sometimes more, until they reach the place where they mean to go. The gods only know how they decide where that place is. But they let nothing stop them until they’re there. And then they build a new Nest.”