Robert Silverberg - The Queen of Springtime

“Gods! How merciless you can be! You know what I mean, Nialli. I’ll always cherish Naarinta’s memory, yes. But she’s long gone. What I’m trying to tell you is that it continues to amaze me that I should have found such love with you, you, my half-brother’s own child, that strange wild girl whom no one in Dawinno was able to tame—”

“And have you tamed me now, Thu-Kimnibol?”

“Hardly. But I no longer see you as anyone’s child. Or strange. Or wild.”

“Ah, and how do you see me, then?” she asked, smiling.

“Why, as the most—”

“Sir? Lord prince?” came a deep familiar voice from outside the tent.

Thu-Kimnibol muttered a curse. “Is that you, Dumanka? By all the gods, this had better be important, that you come interrupting me in my tent when—”

“Sir, it is! It is!”

“I’ll have him flayed if it isn’t,” he said to Nialli Apuilana under his breath. “I promise you that.”

“Go to him. Dumanka’s not one to bother you over nothing.”

“Yes. I suppose.” Thu-Kimnibol put down his wine and made his way to the tent entrance, a little creakily, for his muscles were still sore from the last battle. He peered out.

Dumanka looked as astonished as if he’d just seen the sun moving backward through the sky. Thu-Kimnibol had never seen him in such a state.

“Lord prince—”

“Gods, man! What is it?”

“Hresh, sir. Hresh the chronicler?”

“Yes, I know who Hresh is. What of him? Is there a message from him?”

Dumanka shook his head. Hoarsely he blurted, “Sir, he’s here.”

“Here?”

“Plor Killivash just brought him in. Found him, sir, wandering around in a xlendi-wagon out in the patrol area. We’ve got him in the medic tent. He seems to be all right, just a little woolly in the head. He’s been asking for you, and I thought—”

Thu-Kimnibol, stunned, waved him into silence. He turned to Nialli Apuilana. “Did you hear that?”

“No. Trouble?”

“You might call it that. Your father’s here, Nialli. My lunatic brother. Dumanka says he just came wandering in out of the open country. Mueri and Yissou and Dawinno, what’s he doing here? On the front line of the war, no less. Just what we need. Gods! Gods!”

Quietly Hresh said, “Come with me to the Queen, brother. Let me show you what She is like.”

It was an hour after his arrival. He had been bombarded with surprises: Thu-Kimnibol and Nialli Apuilana sharing a tent like mates, Vengiboneeza destroyed, the hjjks being pushed back on every front. But, spent and drained as he was by his journey, startled and dismayed as he was by these developments, he kept his mind and strength focused on his purpose.

“To the Queen?” Thu-Kimnibol said. He seemed bewildered. Then he flashed a brief flickering smile, a look of patronizing indulgence. “You and I. The Queen of Queens, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“To speak with Her. Not to kill Her, only to have a chat with Her.”

“Yes,” said Hresh.

“And how will we get there? In your little wagon?”

“I have this,” Hresh said, and brought forth in his hand the little pouch that contained the Barak Dayir.

A grunt of amazement. “You’ve taken the Wonderstone with you?”

“The Barak Dayir is mine, brother. As were the weapons with which you destroyed Vengiboneeza.”

Thu-Kimnibol made no attempt to parry that. “Let me understand you. You’re proposing that we visit the Nest, but not in our actual bodies, just by using the Wonderstone to send our souls there?”

“That’s right.”

“And why, brother, do you want me to put myself in my enemy’s power?”

“So you can begin to understand your enemy’s nature: not just Her greatness, which I think you underestimate, but also Her vulnerability, which I don’t think you see at all.”

“Her greatness. Her vulnerability.” Thu-Kimnibol frowned. “Of Her greatness I’ve already heard far too much. But Her vulnerability? What are you talking about?”

“Come with me, if you want to know.”

Hresh’s serenity was an unassailable armor. Thu-Kimnibol shot a glance at Nialli Apuilana as though begging for help.

Hresh saw now the healing wounds here and there beneath his brother’s thick brick-hued fur, at least half a dozen of them. He wondered what prodigies of heroism Thu-Kimnibol had managed in battle, how many scores of hjjks he had already sent to their deaths.

Nialli Apuilana said, “What risk is there in this, father?”

“Only the risk that we’ll fall under Her spell, which as you know is potent. But I think we can defeat it. I know we can. I’ve been able to escape from Her grasp once already.”

“Are you saying that you’ve already made the voyage to the Nest yourself?” Thu-Kimnibol asked.

“To a minor Nest, yes. I was there for weeks. And went from there to the great one with the help of the Barak Dayir. The Queen of Queens has a Wonderstone also, one that once belonged to the Bengs. It’s inside Her body. I spoke with Her, Wonderstone to Wonderstone. After which, the hjjks of the Nest where I was living sent me on my way. And guided my xlendi, I think, until I could be found by one of your men.”

“Then all this is a trap,” said Thu-Kimnibol.

“All of it is part of Dawinno’s plan,” Hresh replied.

Thu-Kimnibol fell silent. Hresh watched him patiently. He felt that he had infinite patience, now. He had never known such tranquility of spirit before. Nothing could shift him from his path.

He had noticed immediately the signs all over the tent that his brother and Nialli Apuilana were living together in intimacy. That had jolted him, but only for a fraction of an instant. Thu-Kimnibol and Nialli Apuilana each had greatness in them. That they should finally have come together in this troubled time seemed appropriate. Yes, even inevitable. Let them be.

Learning of Vengiboneeza’s destruction had been a shock too, of a different sort. Vengiboneeza had been a place of wonder and majesty since time’s early days. For it to be gone, that treasury of ancient miracles where he had spent his youth, ruined more completely now by this war than it had ever been by the Long Winter, was painful news.

But then he had put his regret aside. Nothing was eternal except Eternity itself. To mourn the loss of Vengiboneeza was to deny Dawinno. The gods provide, the gods take away. The flux of change is the only constant. The Transformer sweeps everything away in its time, and replaces it with something else. There had been cities greater than Vengiboneeza upon this Earth, Hresh knew, of which not a scrap remained, not even their names.

Thu-Kimnibol was staring at him. After a long while he said, “I think you need to rest, brother.”

Hresh laughed. “Are you telling me that I’m senile, or simply out of my mind?”

“That you’re exhausted from Yissou knows what kind of an ordeal. And that the last thing either of us needs to do right now is fly off into the clutches of the Queen.”

“I’ve been in Her clutches already, and here I am to tell the tale. I can get free of Her again. Before this war goes any further, brother, there are things you need to know.”

“Tell me about them, then.”

“You have to see them for yourself.”

Thu-Kimnibol stared. Another silence. An impasse.

Hresh said, “Do you trust me, brother?”

“You know I do.”

“Do you think I’d lead you into harm?”

“You might. Without meaning to. Hresh-full-of-questions, you are. You poke your nose everywhere. You’ve always been fearless, brother. Too fearless, maybe.”

“And you? Thu-Kimnibol the coward, is that who you are?”