His brother’s words went through Curabayn Bangkea like a spear. The situation was transformed completely by this. Coupling with Kundalimon, was she? Was that what those cozy little visits were all about? He and Eluthayn were safe, then. Why shouldn’t the captain of the guards, or even his stupid younger brother, also be able to offer himself for a little coupling to the highborn Nialli Apuilana, if she was willing to roll on the floor with something out of the hjjk Nest, who could speak only in clicks and clatters?
He said severely, “Are you absolutely certain of this?”
“On our mother’s soul, I am.”
“All right. All right. This is going to be very helpful, what you’ve just told me.” Curabayn Bangkea dropped back into his chair and sat utterly still for a moment, letting the tension of the morning ease away from him. At length he said, “You understand I’ll have to transfer you to guard duty somewhere else, to pacify her. You don’t care a spider’s ass about that, naturally. And if you happen to see her in the streets, for Yissou’s sake be humble and full of respect. Bow to her, make holy signs to her, get down and kiss her toes, if necessary. No, not that. Don’t kiss her anywhere. But show respect. You’ve mortally offended her, and she has power over us that has to be taken into account.” Curabayn Bangkea grinned. “But I think I have some power over her now, too. Thanks to you, you lecherous idiot.”
“Will you explain yourself, brother?”
“No. Just get yourself out of here. And be careful hereafter when you’re around highborn women. Remember who and what you are.”
“She had no call spitting in my face, brother,” Eluthayn said sullenly.
“I know that. But she’s highborn, and she thinks differently about such things.” He waved his hands in his brother’s face. “Go, now, Eluthayn. Go.”
The landscape changed again and again as Thu-Kimnibol continued northward toward the City of Yissou. Now the caravan moved through broad plains open to the sea-breezes out of the west, and the air was moist and salty and blue-green beards of scalemoss shrouded every bush; and now the route traversed wide flat silent arid valleys walled off from the sea by stark bare mountain ridges, and the skulls of unknown beasts lay bleaching on the sandy ground; and now the travelers passed into forested highlands, where jagged leafless trees with pale spiral trunks clung to tortuous outcroppings of black earth, and strange howlings and whistlings came floating down from the even higher country that lay to the east.
He was struck by a deep awareness of the hugeness of the world, of the greatness and heaviness of the immense globe across whose face he was moving.
It seemed to him that every hand’s-breadth of it that he covered was entering into him, becoming part of him: that he was engulfing it, devouring it, incorporating it within himself for all time to come. And it made him all the more eager to go onward, on and on and on across the face of it. He knew himself to be different in this way from those of the People who were old enough to have been born in the tribal cocoon, who still harbored some urge, he suspected, to crawl back into a small, warm, safe place and close the hatch behind them. Not him. Not him. More deeply, perhaps than ever before, he understood his brother Hresh’s hunger to know, to discover, to experience.
Thu-Kimnibol had been through here once before: when he was eighteen, going southward then, in his flight from Yissou to the City of Dawinno. But he remembered very few details of that earlier journey. He had ridden all the way with his head down and his eyes veiled by anger and bitter sorrow, driving his xlendi at full gallop. That grim and fretful ride survived in his memory now, two decades and some years later, only as a hard encapsulated knot, still capable of giving pain when prodded, like the memory of some terrible loss, or of a mortal illness successfully weathered at great inner cost. He touched it no more often than he had to.
They were past the halfway point now, in territory subject to Salaman. Mostly his mood was dark these days. The turning point had come at that Great World ruin, summoning memories of Naarinta as it did, and bleak thoughts of the remote past. Now the bygone days of his own life had begun to press heavily on him: lost opportunities, false paths taken, the beloved mate snatched away.
He did what he could to conceal his state of mind. But as the caravan was descending from the hills into a fertile plain cut by a host of swift streams and rivers Simthala Honginda said abruptly, “Is it the thought of seeing Salaman again that troubles you so much, prince?”
Thu-Kimnibol looked up, startled. Was he that transparent?
“Why do you say that?”
“You and he were bitter enemies once. Everyone knows that.”
“We were never friends, I suppose. And for a time things were bad between us. But that was long ago.”
“You still hate him, I think.”
“I’ve scarcely given him a thought in fifteen years. Salaman’s ancient history to me.”
“Yes. Yes, of course he must be.” Then, delicately: “But the closer we get to Yissou, the deeper you drift into gloom.”
“Gloom?” Thu-Kimnibol forced a laugh. “You think I’ve turned gloomy, Simthala Honginda?”
“A blind man could see it.”
“Well, if I am, it has nothing to do with Salaman. I’ve suffered a great loss lately. Or have you forgotten?”
Simthala Honginda seemed abashed. “Yes, yes, of course. Forgive me, prince. The lady Naarinta, may the gods give her rest!” He made the sign of Mueri the consoler.
Thu-Kimnibol said, after a time, “It’ll be strange, I suppose, seeing Salaman again after so long. But there’ll be no problems. However angry we may have been at each other once, what does it matter now? What matters is the hjjks. And we think alike on that subject, Salaman and I. From the beginning we were destined to fight side by side against them, and soon we will. The alliance that we’ll form is the thing that counts. Why would he want to dig up grievances decades old? Why would I?”
He turned again to the window, and let the conversation lapse into silence. After a time he reached out and signaled to Esperasagiot to halt the caravan. The xlendis would want watering here; and it was a good place to stop for the evening meal, besides.
The land before them was green and rich. A maze of streams, reflecting the late afternoon light, gleamed like channels of molten silver. Good productive country, this. With a little drainage work it could probably support a city the size of Dawinno. Thu-Kimnibol wondered why Salaman hadn’t yet occupied this district and put it under cultivation. It wasn’t that far south of Yissou.
How like Salaman it was, he thought in contempt, to let this rich land lie fallow. To turn inward this way, pulling back from expansion and holing up behind his preposterous wall.
Simthala Honginda’s right, he told himself. You do still hate him, don’t you?
No. No, hate was too strong a term. But despite all he had said to Simthala Honginda he suspected that the old resentments still were simmering somewhere within him.
The conventional notion in Dawinno was that he had tried to challenge Salaman somehow for the throne of Yissou. But that notion was wrong. Thu-Kimnibol had realized very early that he would never rule the city his father had founded in his father’s place. He had been much too young, when Harruel had died in the battle with the hjjks, to take the kingship for himself. Salaman had been the only possible candidate then. And once he had tasted such power, it wasn’t likely that out of the goodness of his heart he’d relinquish it when Thu-Kimnibol came of age. Everyone understood that. Thu-Kimnibol was willing from the start to recognize Salaman as king. All he wanted in return was a little respect, as was due him as the son of the city’s first king: the proper precedence, a decent dwelling, a high seat by Salaman’s side at the feasts of state.