Robert Silverberg - The Queen of Springtime

Thu-Kimnibol laughed harshly. “A war of nightmares,” he said. “We hurl flame and turbulence at them. They throw illusions at us. We return counterillusions of our own. Enemies who can’t see one another, blindly stumbling around.”

She could feel his fatigue. He had fought ferociously this day, rallying his troops in every part of the field as phantom after phantom came toward them, even as Salaman had warned. Repeatedly he had led his forces through some field of spurting fire, or some onrushing horde of sinister monsters, through flood and avalanche, through a rain of blood, through a hail of daggers. His goal was to maneuver himself into a position where he could work real damage against the hjjks with his Great World weapons; but they understood that now, and danced about him, hiding themselves behind illusions and nibbling at his forces from ambush. She had done what she could, wielding the Wonderstone to cut through the screen of hjjk hallucinations and to confuse them with projected phantoms of her own. But it had been a difficult day, an inconclusive day. And tomorrow promised more of the same.

“Were our losses very bad today?” Nialli Apuilana asked.

“Not as bad as it seemed at first. A dozen killed, perhaps fifty wounded. Some of those who died were Chham’s people, of the few that remain. The City of Yissou will be a broken place for years. A whole generation has been destroyed.”

“And the City of Dawinno?”

“We haven’t suffered the way Yissou has. They lost virtually an entire army in a single day.”

“Whereas we’re losing ours a few at a time. But in the end it’ll be the same, won’t it, Thu-Kimnibol?”

He gave her an enigmatic look. “Shall we surrender, then?”

“What do you say?”

“I say that if we fight, they’ll whittle us away to nothing no matter how much injury we inflict on them, and if we don’t fight, we’ll lose our souls. I say that time is against us, and that I find myself lost in confusions and mysteries as never before in my life.” He looked away from her, and stared into his open hands as though he hoped to read oracles in them. When he spoke again, it was clear he had not found them. “It seems to me, Nialli, that I lead this campaign in two directions at once. I go rushing forward eager to blast the hjjks before me as we blasted Vengiboneeza, and go riding onward to destroy the Nest and everything it contains. And yet at the same time a part of me is pulling back, urging retreat, praying for an end to the war before I harm the Queen. Can you understand what it’s like to be torn in such a way?”

“I felt it myself, once. The spell of the Nest is very powerful.”

“Is that why Hresh took me there, do you think? To hand me over to the Queen?”

Nialli Apuilana shook her head. “He only wanted you to see every side of the conflict. To understand that the hjjks are dangerous but not evil, that there’s greatness in them, but of a kind very far from anything we can comprehend. But when you touch the Nest it makes itself a part of you, and you a part of it. I know. It was like that for me, far more deeply, even, than I think it is for you. Remember, I was of the Nest myself.”

“Yes. I know.”

“And freed myself. But not completely. I’ll never free myself completely. The Queen will always be within me.”

Thu-Kimnibol’s eyes flashed. “And is She within me also?” he cried, with anguish in his voice.

“I think that She is.”

“Then how can I fight this war, if my enemy is part of me, and I’m part of Her?”

She hesitated a moment. “There’s no way that you can.”

“I despise the hjjks. I mean to destroy them!”

“Yes, you do. But you’ll never allow yourself to do it.”

“Then I’m lost, Nialli! All of us are!”

She looked off into the shadows. “This is the great test that the gods have sent us, do you see? There’s no easy resolution. My father thought that we and the hjjks could enter into some sort of unity, that we could live harmoniously with them, side by side, as the sapphire-eyes and the rest lived with them in the Great World. But he was wrong, wise as he was. As I freed myself from the Queen’s spell he was starting to fall under it; and he was swallowed up in it. This isn’t the Great World, though. Assimilation of two such alien races is impossible. It’s the natural desire of the hjjks to achieve absorption, domination. The best we can hope for is to hold them at bay, as perhaps they were held at bay by the other races in the time of the Great World.”

“Why not destroy them altogether?”

“Because it’s probably beyond us to do any such thing. And because if somehow we did, it would be at a terrible cost to our own souls.”

He shook his head. “Is the best we can hope for a mere stand-off, then? A line drawn across the world, hjjks here, People there?”

“Yes.”

“As the Queen originally proposed. Why did we resist it, then? We could simply have accepted Her treaty, and spared ourselves all this outlay of lives and toil.”

“Not so,” said Nialli Apuilana. “You forget an important thing. She proposed not just a division of territory, but also to send Nest-thinkers to live among us and spread Her truths and Her plan. In time they would bring us to embrace Queen-love; and that would deliver us forever into Her power. She’d control us all, as She controlled Kundalimon, as She controlled me. She’d regulate our rate of population increase, so there’d never be so many of us that we interfered with Her designs. She would designate the acceptable locations of any new cities we might build, to keep most of the world free for Her people. That was what the treaty would have done. What we must have is the boundary line, but not the infiltration of Nest-thinkers into our lives. There has already been too much of that.”

“Then the war must go on until She is beaten. And then we have to eradicate every trace of Queen-worship in our city.” He turned away from her and began to pace the tent. “Gods! Will there ever be an end to all this?”

Nialli Apuilana smiled. “We can make an end to it for tonight, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

She moved closer to him in the darkness. “This night we can allow ourselves a little time out of war, just for each other.” Her sensing-organ rose and moved tentatively against his. He shivered and seemed almost to draw back from her, as though unable to free himself from the doubts and turmoil that had engulfed him; but she stayed close by him, easing him gently out of his disquiet and apprehension. After a moment she could feel the tension begin to leave him. He came close to her, rising like a mountain above her, and encircled her with his arms. She took his hands and placed them over her breasts. They stood that way for a time, allowing the communion to build; and then they sank down slowly together, entwined in body and soul, and lay in each other’s arms through the rest of the night.

It’s the hour before dawn, now. Thu-Kimnibol is still deep in dreams. His massive chest rises and falls evenly, his sword-arm is flung casually across his face. Nialli Apuilana kisses him lightly and slips away from his side, going to the opposite end of the tent they share.

There she kneels and whispers the name of Yissou the Protector, and makes his sign, and then says the name of Dawinno the Destroyer, who is also Dawinno the Transformer, and makes his sign as well. She feels their presence entering her and gives thanks for it.

She touches then the amulet that nestles in the thick fur between her breasts, and calls upon her father; and after a while she sees him, shining in the darkness before her, the familiar smile on his familiar sharp-chinned face. There’s someone else behind him, a much older man, white-furred and sunken-chested. Nialli Apuilana doesn’t know him, but his presence seems benign. And deeper in the darkness is still another venerable stranger, a withered old Beng so thin and tall that he seems nothing more than an elongated straw that any breeze might blow away.