But then what she was saying had degenerated into chaotic babble, and Nialli Apuilana herself had veered toward hysteria and collapse before them all.
Now she was plainly about to fall.
Without hesitating, almost without thinking, Husathirn Mueri rushed forward, vaulted to the platform, and caught her by both elbows, lifting her, steadying her.
The girl shook her head wildly. “Let — go—”
“Please, Come down from here.”
She glared at him — but was it in hatred, he wondered, or simple confusion? Gently he tugged, and she surrendered to him. Slowly he led her from the podium and with his arm around her protectively he drew her toward the side of the room. He eased her into a seat. She stared up at him out of eyes that seemed to be seeing nothing at all.
Taniane’s voice rang out like a trumpet behind him.
“Here is our decision. There’ll be no vote today. The treaty will be neither rejected nor accepted, and we will make no reply to the Queen. The entire matter of the treaty is tabled indefinitely. Meanwhile what we intend is to send an envoy to the City of Yissou, for the purpose of discussing with King Salaman the terms of an alliance of mutual defense.”
“Against the hjjk-folk, do you mean?” someone called.
“Against the hjjks, yes. Against our enemy.”
3
Salaman Receives a Visitor
Early on a chill fog-bound midsummer morning King Salaman of Yissou, with Biterulve, his favorite of his many sons, came forth to make the circuit of the great and perpetually unfinished wall that enclosed the city.
The king went out each day without fail from his palace at the heart of the city to inspect the ongoing work of wall-building. Standing at the foot of the wall, he would stare toward the battlements and embrasures far overhead, measuring them against the burning need he felt within his soul. Then he would ascend the wall by one of the many staircases along its inner face, and prowl its upper course. The immense black rampart, lofty as it was, never quite seemed adequate to that great need of his. In feverish moments of fear he imagined hjjk scaling-ladders suddenly appearing at the top of the wall. He imagined furious hjjk legions swarming across the highest parapets and down into the city.
Ordinarily these prowling inspections of Salaman’s were carried out at dawn, always in solitude. If a citizen happened to be awake at that hour, he would avert his eyes, not wishing to intrude on the king upon the walls. No one, not even his sons, would approach him at such a time. No one would dare.
But this morning Biterulve had asked to accompany him, and Salaman had acquiesced at once. There was nothing that Salaman would deny Biterulve. He was fourteen, the sixth of the eight princes Salaman had sired, Sinithista’s only boy — a frail and gentle child so little like the others that Salaman once had doubted that Biterulve could be of his own engendering, though he had kept those doubts to himself and was glad of it now. Biterulve’s frame was slender and long-boned, whereas Salaman and all his other sons were squat and stocky; and his fur was an eerie pale hue, the color of a snowy field by moonlight, where Salaman and the rest of his brood were dark. But Biterulve’s cool gray eyes were the unmistakable eyes of the king; and his supple spirit, though its nature was less fierce than that of Salaman or any of his other sons, was one that the king recognized as kin to his.
In the hour before sunrise they rode out together from the palace. Salaman, out of the corner of his eye, watched the boy closely. He handled his xlendi well, keeping the loose-limbed beast on a tight rein as they moved through the narrow curving streets, pulling back capably when an early-morning workman with a dray-wagon came unexpectedly around a sharp corner.
One of Salaman’s great fears was that this gentle son of his was too gentle: that there was nothing at all warlike about him, that Biterulve would be unable to play a proper role when the hjjks at last made the move he had so long expected, and the great cataclysmic time arrived. It was not so much the disgrace that Salaman feared, for he had a host of other sons who would be heroic enough. But he didn’t want the boy to suffer when that dread host of unholy insects began their onslaught.
It may be that I have misjudged him, thought Salaman, as Biterulve proudly urged the clattering xlendi forward through the quiet streets.
The king spurred his own mount and caught up with him just as he emerged from the warren of inner streets into the wider outer avenues that led to the wall.
“You ride very well,” Salaman called. “Better than I remember.”
Biterulve glanced over his shoulder, grinning. “I’ve been going out with Bruikkos and Ganthiav practically every day. They’ve showed me a few tricks.”
The king felt a stab of alarm.
“Outside the wall, you mean?
The boy giggled. “Father, we can’t very well go riding inside the city, can we?”
“You have a point,” said Salaman grudgingly.
And what harm, he thought, could come to him out there, really? Surely Bruikkos and Ganthiav had more sense than to stray very far into places where hjjks might roam. If the boy wants to go riding with his older brothers, I’ll say nothing, Salaman told himself. I mustn’t overprotect him, if I want him to be a proper prince, if I want him to be a true warrior.
They had reached the wall now. They jumped down from their xlendis and tied them to posts. The first gray strands of morning were coming into the sky. The fog was scattering.
Salaman felt an uncharacteristic sense of ease. Ordinarily his spirit was dark and tense; but this morning his mind was loose and unfocused, his body poised and calm. He had spent the night just past with Vladirilka, the fourth and newest of his mates. The aroma of her was still on his fur, the warmth of her still soothed his flesh.
He was certain that he had sired a son on her in this night’s coupling. One is able to tell, Salaman believed, when a son is being made: and surely this had been a coupling for sons.
He had so many daughters that he had difficulty remembering all their names, and he needed no more of those. Women had ruled in the cocoon, and a woman still ruled, he knew, in Dawinno. But Yissou from the first had been a city for men. Salaman had respected old Koshmar and thought well of Taniane; but there would be no female kings here.
It was sons he wanted, and many of them, sons aplenty, so that the succession would be assured. A king, he thought, could never have too many sons. Building dynasties is like building walls: one must look beyond the immediate, and prepare for the worst of eventualities. Therefore Salaman had sired eight boys so far, and he hoped he had added a ninth tonight. If it wasn’t Chham who followed him to the throne, then it would be Athimin; and if not Athimin, then Poukor, or Ganthiav, or Bruikkos, or one of the even younger princes. Perhaps even the one he had engendered on Vladirilka this very night would be the next king. Or some boy yet to be conceived, by some mate not yet chosen. Only one thing was certain, that he would not give Biterulve the kingship. The boy was too sensitive, too complex. Let him be a royal counselor, Salaman felt. Let someone like Chham or Athimin handle the hard choices a king must face.
But there was plenty of time for fixing the succession. Salaman had just reached his sixtieth year. There were those who thought of him as old, he knew, but that was not an opinion he shared. He regarded himself as in the full vigor, still, of his manhood. And he suspected that soft young Vladirilka, lying now asleep with his warmth still between her thighs, would back him up on that score.