Robert Silverberg - The Queen of Springtime

Nialli Apuilana held out her hand to show him the Barak Dayir in it in its pouch.

“I have the Wonderstone,” she said. “And I have much of Hresh within me now too. You heard him say that I’m to be the chronicler? I am to be Hresh for us now, if I can. I’ll say the words for him tonight, and we’ll put what remains of him to rest. But he is already with Dawinno.”

“He was always with Dawinno, lady,” said Chham suddenly. “Or so it was reported of him, that he walked with the gods from the day of his birth. Surely it was so. I wouldn’t doubt it, though I never knew him myself. What a day of great losses this has been!”

Thu-Kimnibol said, “King Salaman has died this day also. Prince Chham — King Chham, is it now? — has just come from him.”

“Then we mourn together,” Nialli Apuilana said. “When I say the words for my father, I’ll say them also for yours.”

“If you will, lady. It would please me greatly.”

“We will lay them here side by side, in this forlorn place,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “Which will be forlorn no more, because Salaman and Hresh were buried here. They were the two wisest men in all the world.”

Taniane, resting her left hand on the Mask of Koshmar and her right on that of Lirridon, fought back the numbness that had been growing in her soul all afternoon, a strange disagreeable coldness behind her breastbone; and with such strength as she could muster she compelled herself to follow what Puit Kjai was trying to tell her.

“An insurrection, you say? Against me?”

“Against us all, lady. An uprising that’s meant to sweep away all those who hold power in the City of Dawinno.”

She gave him a weary, skeptical look. “Does anyone hold power any more in the City of Dawinno, Puit Kjai?”

“Lady! Lady, what are you saying?”

Taniane glanced away. The eerie force of Puit Kjai’s intense scarlet eyes was more than she wanted to meet this day. She had lived with this weariness of soul for what seemed like years, but today it seemed to have deepened almost to paralysis.

She stroked the masks. Once they had hung on the wall behind her; but some time back, not long after the departure of Nialli Apuilana to the war and the disappearance of Hresh, she had taken them down and put them on the desk beside her, where she could see them easily and touch them when she wished. They gave her comfort and, she thought, strength. In the time of the cocoon, Boldirinthe once had told her, there had been a certain black stone mounted in the wall of the central chamber that had been sacred to the memory of the tribe’s former chieftains. Koshmar used to touch that stone and pray to her predecessors when she was facing difficulties. That black stone had remained behind in the cocoon when the tribe made its Coming Forth. Taniane wished she had it now. But at least she had the masks.

To Puit Kjai she said, after a little while, “All right, go on. Who are the ringleaders of this insurrection?”

“That I cannot say.”

“But you’re certain that one is being planned.”

Puit Kjai shrugged. “The word comes out of the chapels, from the common people. It reaches me from the daughter of the nephew of an old groom in my son’s stables, who worships in the chapel of Tikharein Tourb.”

“The daughter of the nephew of a groom—”

“A tenuous chain, yes. What I’m told is that they mean to kill Thu-Kimnibol when he returns from the wars, unless the hjjks do it first, and that they will put you to death also, and me, and most of the rest of the Presidium, except those who they’ll keep alive to go before the city as rulers in their name. And then they’ll make peace with the hjjks and beg their forgiveness.”

“You say this as though you never wanted peace with the hjjks yourself, Puit Kjai.”

“Not this way. Not by a violent purging of the highborn. And this is no fantasy, lady, this talk of a conspiracy. They may already, I suspect, have done away with Hresh.”

“No,” Taniane said at once. “Hresh still lives.”

“Does he? Where is he, then?”

“Far from here, I think. But I know that he lives. There’s a bond between us, Puit Kjai, that transcends all distance. I feel him close beside me no matter how far away he may be. No harm has come to Hresh. Of that I’m certain.”

“Nakhaba grant that it be so,” Puit Kjai said.

They faced each other in silence for a time. The powerful old Beng leader stood so tall that his helmeted head neared the ceiling. He was gaunt and thin, but there was a majesty about his very gauntness. Dimly Taniane remembered Puit Kjai’s father, the ancient wise one of the Helmet People, Noum om Beng, to whom Hresh had gone for wisdom. Puit Kjai was coming to look like him now: that same frail but stern bearing, his great height compensating for the slenderness of his frame. His helmet today was a black one, with gnarled golden antlers rising from it.

At length Taniane said, “I’ll look into these rumors. If you hear anything more, come to me immediately.”

“You have my word on it, lady.”

He offered her a blessing of Nakhaba, and went out.

She sat quietly, her hands resting on the masks.

No doubt there was truth to the story he had brought to her. The Kundalimon creed ran wild in the city these days: why shouldn’t its leaders attempt to force an end to the war? There was no one to oppose them here. Thu-Kimnibol and the rest of his faction were off at the battlefront, Hresh had disappeared, the younger men of the city seemed all to have entered the chapels. She herself no longer even pretended to exercise authority. It seemed to her that the world had passed her by, that events had gone on far beyond her understanding. Truly it was time for her to step aside, she thought. Just as the rock-throwers had told her even before the war. But in favor of whom? Give the city over to the Kundalimon priests? She wished Thu-Kimnibol would return. But he was off killing hjjks, or perhaps being killed by them himself. And Nialli Apuilana was with him.

Taniane shook her head. She was tired of living in this chaos. She was eager for rest.

And this other thing, this strange numbness that had entered her breast today — what was that? As though she were being hollowed out from within. Some illness, was it? She remembered how in Vengiboneeza Koshmar had begun suddenly to seem easily tired, had admitted to Hresh that there was a burning in her chest, pain, fever; and soon afterward she was dead. Now her own hour might be coming around, Taniane thought. She wondered if she should go to Boldirinthe for a healing; and then she remembered that Boldirinthe was dead. One by one they were all dying. Koshmar, Torlyri, Boldirinthe—

All she felt was a numbness, though, not a burning, not a pain. She couldn’t understand it. She turned her gaze inward, searching for the cause of it.

But just in that moment it went from her, all at once: that numbness, that deepening ache that had plagued her since daybreak. She felt it go, a sudden startling cessation of discomfort, like the snapping of a tight bond. Then in its place was something even more troublesome: an absence, a bleak emptiness, sharp and painful, a terrible black void. She understood immediately what it was, and a chill ran through her that set her fur on end. Helplessly she began to weep. Wave after wave of grief swept over her. For the first time in more than forty years she could not feel the presence of Hresh within her. He was gone. Gone forever.

Under a glittering pockmarked moon the battlefield had the icy serene look of an immense glacier, even where the ground was cratered and upturned by the most recent round of fighting. Thu-Kimnibol’s warriors crept about warily on the broken earth, collecting the bodies of those who had fallen that day. Nialli Apuilana looked past them to the horizon, where she could see the bonfires of the hjjk camp. There was a respite now; but in the morning it would all begin again.