At Winter's End

by Robert Silverberg

  Nor had he brought anything from the House of Knowledge, any of his books or charts or ancient artifacts. Those things no longer mattered. He wanted to leave everything behind: everything. This was to be the final adventure of his life, this pilgrimage. Best not to be impeded by baggage out of the past.

  With one exception: the Barak Dayir, in its little velvet pouch, tied about his waist beneath his sash. At the very last, he hadn’t been willing to abandon that.

  Day after day he rode calmly onward, allowing his path to choose itself. Constantly he scanned the horizon, hoping to catch sight of roving parties of hjjks.

  Where are you, children of the Queen? Here is Hresh-full-of-questions, come to talk with you!

  But he saw no hjjks.

  He was, he supposed, somewhere close by the lesser Nest where Nialli Apuilana had been taken by her captors years ago. But if there were hjjks hereabouts, they were keeping themselves out of sight; or else they were so sparse in these parts that he hadn’t passed near their encampment.

  No matter. Eventually he’d find hjjks, or they would find him, in good and proper time. Meanwhile he was content to wander on, this way and that, across the broken land.

  This cool windy region seemed fertile, in its way. There were great trees with thick black trunks and wide-spreading crowns of yellow leaves, each spaced far from the next as if it would tolerate no competition, choking off any of its own kind that tried to sprout within its zone of dominance. Sprawling shrubs with white woolly leaves clung to the ground like a dense coating of fur. Other plants, basket-shaped ones with tightly interwoven branches, rolled and tumbled freely as though they were beasts of the field.

  But if there were plants that looked like animals here, so also did Hresh see animals that might well have been plants. A whole grove of snaky green creatures stood on their tails in holes in the ground. They might well have been rooted where they stood. He watched them rising up suddenly to snap some hapless bird or insect from the air and coiling back down again, and never once saw one come all the way out of its den. Then there were others that were no more than huge mouths with vestigial bodies, propped immobile against rocks and uttering booming seductive cries that brought their prey to them as if in trance. He remembered having encountered some such creatures when he was a boy, on the journey from the cocoon to Vengiboneeza. They had almost lured him then; but now he was invulnerable to their sinister music.

  Hresh had told no one that he was leaving Dawinno. He had gone around to speak one last time with those he cared for most, Thu-Kimnibol, Boldirinthe, Staip, Chupitain Stuld, and, of course, Nialli Apuilana and Taniane. But he had told none of them, not even Taniane, that what he was actually doing was saying farewell.

  That had been hard, hiding the truth that way. Especially from Taniane. He had suffered for it. But Hresh knew that they’d try to stop him from going, if they were aware what he had in mind. So he had simply slipped out of the city in the mists of dawn. Now, with Dawinno far behind him, he felt no regrets at all. A long phase of his life had ended, a new phase was beginning.

  If he regretted anything, it was that he had built the city so well. It seemed to him now that he had led the People down the wrong path, that it had been a mistake to build the City of Dawinno in the image of magnificent Vengiboneeza, to try to recreate the Great World here in the New Springtime. The gods had cleansed the Great World from the Earth because it had run its course. The Great World had developed as far as it could. It had reached a standstill point. If the death-stars had not come to shatter it, its perfection would have given way imperceptibly to decay. For a civilization, unlike a machine, is a living thing, which must either grow or decay, and there is no third alternative.

  He had wanted the People to attain the grandeur of the Great World, which had been hundreds of thousands of years in the making, in one sudden leap. But they hadn’t been ready for that. They were, after all, only a single generation away from the cocoon. Under the pressures of that leap they had passed from that primitive simplicity into their own corruption and decay, with scarcely a pause for ripening into real humanity.

  This evil war, for example—

  A crime against the gods, against the laws of the city, against the essence of civilization itself. But he knew that nothing he could do would stop it.

  And so he understood that he had failed. In the time that remained to him he would do what he could to atone for that. But he refused to mourn the errors that he had made, or those that others were about to make; for he had done his best. That was the one great consolation. He had always done his best.

  “I remember the day you were born,” Thu-Kimnibol said in wonderment. “Hresh and I stayed up all night together, the night before, and—”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t talk about what you remember. Don’t talk about when I was young.”

  He laughed. “But am I just supposed to pretend, Nialli, that I’m not—”

  “Yes. Pretend, if that’s what you have to do. Just don’t remind me that you were already grown up when I was born. All right? All right, Thu-Kimnibol?”

  “But—Nialli—”

  Then he laughed.

  “Come here,” she said.

  She pulled him close. He enveloped her in his arms. He was all over her, hands, lips, sensing-organ, touching, stroking, nibbling, murmuring her name. He was like a great river, sweeping over her, carrying her away. And she was letting herself be carried away. She had never expected anything like this. Nor had he, she guessed.

  She wondered if she’d ever get used to the immensity of him. He was so huge, so powerful, so very different from Kundalimon. How strange that was, to be swallowed up in him this way. But also very pleasing. I think I can get used to it, given a little time. Yes, she thought, as she felt him trembling against her, and began to tremble herself. Yes, I definitely can get used to it.

  The shape of the land was beginning to change. For the past few days he had had a ridge of low hills to his left and another to his right, with what seemed like an endless plain stretching between them. But now the two ridges were converging to form a narrow enclosed valley with no exit at its far end. Hresh halted beside a stream bordered with thick gray rushes to consider what he should do. It seemed pointless to proceed into that apparent cul-de-sac. Best to fall back, perhaps, and look for some way across the hills to the east.

  “No,” came a voice that was not a voice, speaking words that were not words. “You will do better to go forward.”

  “In truth, yes. It is the only way.” A second voice, addressing him in the silent speech of the mind.

  Startled, Hresh looked around. After these days of unbroken solitude the voices had the impact of sudden thunder.

  At first he saw nothing. But then he detected a flash of purple in the depths of the streamside rushes. The slender tapering snout of a caviandi, and then another, rose into view. Coming now from their hiding places, the lithe little fish-hunting creatures walked toward him unafraid, holding up their hands with delicate fingers outspread.

  “I am She-Thikil,” said one.

  “I am He-Kanto,” the other declared.

  “Hresh is my name.”

  “Yes. We know that.” She-Thikil made a soft small sound of friendship and put her hand into his. Her fingers were thin and hard, quick fish-catching fingers. He-Kanto took his other hand. And from them both came the invitation to communion of the sort that he had had in his own garden with the other pair, his captives, He-Lokim, She-Kanzi.

  “Yes,” Hresh said.

  Their souls came rushing toward his, and a surge of warmth and friendship leaped from them to him.

  So kindness to one caviandi was kindness to all. When he had opened himself in communion to the two caviandis in his garden he had unknowingly enrolled himself in league with the entire caviandi race. These two had followed his wagon for days, secretly prodding the xlendi along the right path, the one that led to th
e Nest. Steering him away from places where perils lay hidden, guiding him toward grazing-grounds where beast and master could find fresh water and provender. His journey, Hresh realized, had been far less random than he had thought.

  And now he knew he must not turn aside. The true path was ahead of him, into the narrowing valley.

  Gravely he thanked the caviandis for their help. He had one last glimpse of their great dark shining eyes, gleaming at him from the tops of the rushes. Then the sleek little creatures sank down into that dense thicket of reeds and disappeared.

  He returned to the wagon. He nudged the xlendi forward with a quick touch of second sight.

  As the canyon narrowed, the stream that ran down its center grew swifter, grew wild and fierce, until by twilight it was sweeping along beside Hresh with a steady pounding roar. Looking ahead, he saw that the canyon was indeed open at the far end, but the opening was a mere slit through which the stream must be hurtling with cataract force.

  Had the caviandis betrayed him? It seemed impossible. But how could he pass through that crack of an opening with his wagon?

  He went onward, all the same.

  Clearly now Hresh heard the thousand echoing and answering voices of the cataract. Overhead a great blue star had appeared in the sharp cool air and its reflection glittered in the stream. The path was so narrow now that there barely was room for the wagon beside the turbulent water. Here the ground trended slightly upward, which must mean that the bed of the stream cut ever deeper as it approached the opening ahead.

  “Here he is at last,” said a dry voice that was like a whitening bone, a silent voice, a mind-voice. “The inquisitive one. The child of questions.”

  Hresh looked up. Outlined against the deepening darkness of the sky was the angular figure of a hjjk, standing motionless and erect, holding in one of its many hands the shaft of a spear longer even than itself.

  “Child?” Hresh said, and laughed. “A child, am I? No, friend. No. I’m an old man. A very weary old man. Touch my mind more carefully, if you doubt me, and you’ll see.”

  “The child denies that he is a child,” said a second hjjk, appearing on the opposite side of the cliff that loomed above him. “But the child is a child all the same. Whatever he may think.”

  “As you wish. I am a child.”

  And indeed he was: for suddenly time fell inward on itself, and he was little wiry Hresh-full-of-questions again, scrambling hither and yon around the cocoon, plaguing everyone with his need to know, driving Koshmar and Torlyri to distraction, vexing his mother Minbain, irritating his playmates. All the weariness of the latter days dropped away from him. He was alive with his old furious energy and fearlessness, Hresh the chatterer, Hresh the seeker, Hresh the smallest and most eager for knowledge of all the tribe, who had hovered again and again by the hatch of the cocoon, dreaming of darting through one day into the unknown wonderful world that lay outside.

  The hjjks began to descend the cliff, picking their way toward him over the jagged rock. He waited serenely for them, admiring the agility with which they moved and the way the light of the great blue star, which he realized now was only the moon, glinted on their rigid, shining yellow-and-black shells. Five, six, seven of them came scrambling down. Not since his childhood had he seen a hjjk. He had thought them fearsome and ugly then; but now he saw the strange beauty of their lean, tapered forms.

  The xlendi stood quite still, as if lost in xlendi dreams. One of the hjjks touched it lightly along its long jaw with a bristly forearm, and it turned at once and began to go forward. There was a dark cavern here, a mere crevice that Hresh had not noticed, which led through the heart of the cliff. Starlight was visible ahead. Hresh could hear the distant roar of the cataract as the xlendi plodded onward.

  After a time they emerged onto a ledge on the cliff’s outer face. To Hresh’s right the stream, a milky torrent now, erupted through the crack in the rock and went plunging outward into space to land in a foaming basin far below. To his left a winding path led down the side of the cliff into a broad open prairie in which, in the darkness, nothing of consequence could be seen.

  “The Queen has been expecting you,” a dry silent hjjk-voice said, as the wagon began its descent into that dark realm beyond.

  9

  To the Nest of Nests

  All week long the messages had been coming to Salaman with rising urgency and intensity from the relay stations to the north and to the south.

  Thu-Kimnibol was advancing at the head of a vast army from Dawinno. He was close to Yissou now, no more than a few days’ march away, perhaps less. Every relay agent along the road had underscored the awe he felt at the size of that oncoming force. Had Thu-Kimnibol brought everyone of fighting age in Dawinno with him? It almost seemed that way.

  On the northern front the army of the king, four hundred strong, had pressed deeper and deeper day by day into the hjjk lands, following the route the little colony of Acknowledgers had taken.

  We have found them, came the report finally. All dead.

  And then:

  We’ve been attacked by hjjks ourselves.

  And then:

  There are too many of them for us.

  And then silence.

  “Twice now the insect-folk have attacked our people without provocation,” Salaman told the people of Yissou, speaking from his pavilion atop the wall to the great horde of citizens in the plaza below. “They have slaughtered the innocent settlers whom Zechtior Lukin led into unoccupied territory. And now they have massacred the army we sent forth to rescue Zechtior Lukin’s people. There can be only one policy now.”

  “War! War!” came the cry from a thousand throats.

  “War, yes,” Salaman replied. “All-out war, by all the People against this implacable enemy. The hjjks have threatened the existence of this city since its earliest days: but now, with the help of our allies from Dawinno, we will bring the fire to their own domain, we will cut them to mincemeat, we will drag forth their loathsome Queen into the light of day and put an end at last to Her unspeakable life!”

  “War! War!” came the cry again.

  And later that afternoon, when Salaman had returned to the palace and had taken his seat upon the Throne of Harruel, his son Biterulve came to him and said, “Father, I want to go with the army when it sets out into the hjjk country. I ask your permission for this, as I must. But I beg you not to withhold it.”

  Salaman felt a hand tightening about his heart. He had never expected anything like this.

  “You?” he said, staring amazed at the pale slender boy. “What do you know of warfare, Biterulve?”

  “I feared you’d say that. But you know I’ve been riding with my brothers in the lands outside the wall for a long time now. I’ve learned some skills of fighting from them as well. You mustn’t keep me from this war, father.”

  “But the danger—”

  “Would you make a woman of me, father? Worse than a woman, for I know that there’ll be women in our fighting brigades. Am I to stay at home, then, with the old ones and children?”

  “You’re no warrior, Biterulve.”

  “I am.”

  The boy’s quiet insistence carried a force Salaman had never heard from him before. He saw the anger in Biterulve’s eyes, the injured pride. And the king realized that his gentle scholarly son had put him in an impossible situation. Refuse permission and he robbed Biterulve forever of his princeliness. He’d never forgive him for that. Let him go, and he might well fall victim to some thrusting hjjk spear, which Salaman himself could scarcely bear to contemplate.

  Impossible. Impossible.

  He felt his anger rising. How dare the boy ask him to make a decision like this? But he held himself in check.

  Biterulve waited, expectant, unafraid.

  He gives me no choice, Salaman thought bitterly.

  At length he said, sighing, “I never thought you’d have any appetite for fighting, boy. But I see I’ve misjudged you.” He looked away, and made a
brusque gesture of dismissal. “All right. Go. Go, boy. Get yourself ready to march, if that’s what you need to do.”

  Biterulve grinned and clapped his hands, and ran from the room.

  “Get me Athimin,” the king said to one of his stewards.

  When the prince arrived, Salaman said to him dourly, “Biterulve has just told me he plans to go with us to the war.”

  Athimin’s eyes brightened in surprise. “Surely you’ll forbid him, father!”

  “No. No, I’ve given permission. He said I’d be making a woman of him, if I forced him to stay home. Well, so be it. But you’re going to be his protector and guardian, do you understand? If a finger of his is harmed, I’ll have three of yours. Do you understand me, Athimin? I love all my sons as I love my own self, but I love Biterulve in a way that goes beyond all else. Stay at his side on the battlefield. Constantly.”

  “I will, father.”

  “And see to it that he comes home from the war in one piece. If he doesn’t you’d be wise to stay up there yourself in the hjjk wastelands rather than face me again.”

  Athimin stared.

  “Nothing will harm him, father,” the prince said hoarsely. “I promise you that.”

  He went out without another word, nearly colliding as he did with a breathless messenger who had come scampering in.

  “What is it?” Salaman barked.

  “The army of Dawinno,” the runner said. “They’ve reached the lantern-tree groves. They’ll be in the city in a couple of hours.”

  “Look yonder,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “The Great Wall of Yissou.”

  Under a sky of purple and gold a massive band of the deepest black stretched along the horizon for an impossible distance, curving away finally at the sides to disappear in the obscurities beyond. It might have been a dark strip of low-lying cloud; but no, for its bulk and solidity were so oppressive that it was hard to understand how the earth could hold firm beneath its impossible weight.

  “Can it be real?” Nialli Apuilana asked finally. “Or just some illusion, some trick that Salaman makes our minds play upon ourselves?”