Which Salaman had given him, for a time. Until the king in his middle years began to change, until he started to grow fretful and unquiet of soul, a new dark Salaman, harsh and suspicious.
It was then, only then, that Salaman had decided Thu-Kimnibol was scheming against him. Thu-Kimnibol had offered him no cause for thinking that. Perhaps some enemy of his had whispered fabrications in the king’s ear. Whatever the reason, things quickly had begun going sour. Thu-Kimnibol hadn’t minded Salaman’s favoring his son Chham at his expense: that was only to be expected. But then the second son was placed above him at the royal table, and the third; and when Thu-Kimnibol asked to have one of the king’s daughters as his mate he was refused; and after that came other slights. He was a king’s son. He deserved better of Salaman. The last straw had been a minor point of precedence, so minor that Thu-Kimnibol could no longer remember what it was. They fell to shouting over it; Thu-Kimnibol threatened the king with his fist; he came close to striking him. He knew he was finished, then, in the City of Yissou. That night he left, and he had never been back.
To Simthala Honginda he said, “Look there, Dumanka’s been hunting up something for our dinner.”
The quartermaster had left his wagon. Down below, on the bank of a stream just south of the route, he had speared some animal and was casting for a second one.
Thu-Kimnibol was glad of the distraction. His conversation with Simthala Honginda had been an oppressive one, stirring up difficult old days, and impaling him in contradictions. He saw now that although he could put aside his quarrel with Salaman, forgiving and forgetting were harder, however he pretended otherwise.
Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called out, “What are you after there, Dumanka?”
“Caviandis, prince!” The quartermaster, a brawny, irreverent man of Koshmar ancestry who wore a battered and dented Beng-style helmet slung casually across his shoulders, had killed a second one, now. Proudly he held the pair of purple-and-yellow bodies up, one in each hand. They dangled limply, plump little arms lolling, trickles of crimson blood dripping through their sleek fur. “Fresh meat, for a change!”
At Thu-Kimnibol’s side Pelithhrouk, a young highborn officer who was a protйgй of Simthala Honginda, said, “Is it right for us to kill them, do you think, prince?”
“Why not? They’re only animals. Meat, that’s all they are.”
“We were only animals once,” Pelithhrouk said.
Thu-Kimnibol rounded on him in amazement. “What are you saying? That we’re no better than caviandis?”
“Not at all,” said Pelithhrouk. “I mean that caviandis may be more than we think they are.”
“This is bold talk,” said Simthala Honginda uneasily. “I don’t much like it.”
“Have you ever looked at a caviandi closely?” Pelithhrouk said, with a kind of desperate rash insistence. “I have. Their eyes have light in them. Their hands are as human as ours. I think if we touched the mind of one with second sight, we’d be surprised how much intelligence we’d find there.”
Simthala Honginda snorted. “I’m with Thu-Kimnibol. They’re only animals.”
But Pelithhrouk was in too deep to retreat. “ Intelligentanimals, though! Waiting only for a touch, to be brought up to the next level, is what I think. Instead of hunting and eating them, we ought to be treating them with respect — teaching them to speak, maybe even to read and write if they’re capable of it.”
“Your mind is gone,” said Simthala Honginda. “This is some madness you must have caught from Hresh.” Turning to Thu-Kimnibol and looking up at him in dismay, as though such wild talk from one to whom he had been a mentor was a keen embarrassment to him, which probably it was, he said, “Until this morning I thought this young man was one of our finest officers. But now I see—”
“No,” said Thu-Kimnibol, holding up his hand. “What he says is interesting. But the time’s too soon for us to worry about raising up other creatures to read and write,” he said to Pelithhrouk, laughing. “We have to make our own lives safer before we can go about teaching the creatures of the field how to be civilized. The caviandis will have to look after themselves, for the time being. For the time being, animals is what they are and have to remain. And if you tell me that we are animals too, well, so be it. We’re animals too. But right now we are of the eaters, and they are of the eaten, and that makes all the difference.”
Dumanka, who had come up to them during this discussion and stood listening blankfaced to it, now tossed the caviandis down at Thu-Kimnibol’s feet. “I’ll build a fire, prince. We’ll be feasting in half an hour.”
“Well done,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “And an end to all this talk, thanks be to the Five.”
The caviandi meat was tasty stuff, yes. Thu-Kimnibol ate his portion without regret, though for a moment the disturbing notion passed through his mind that Pelithhrouk might be right, that these agile little creatures who hunted fish by the fast-flowing streams might in truth have intelligence, and a society, and a language, and names, and gods, and even a history of their own, for all anyone knew. Who could tell which creatures were mere animals and which intelligent beings? Not he. He put the thought aside. He noticed, though, that Pelithhrouk left his portion of the meat untouched. He has the courage of his convictions, at least, Thu-Kimnibol thought. A point in his favor.
The next day they left the zone of streams and marshes behind, and entered a drier district of rich dark earth and grassy meadows. At nightfall they saw lantern-trees blazing like beacons to the north. That was a good sign. It meant the caravan was getting close to the city.
The lantern-trees were inhabited by thousands of small birds able to emit a cool but brilliant light from colored patches on their throats and chests. Tirelessly they flashed their dazzling signals in steady rhythmic pulses, visible for great distances, all the night long. By day the tiny dull-plumaged birds were quiescent, nestling quietly. Why they chose those particular trees to live in, no one knew. But once they took possession of one they appeared never to relinquish it. And so lantern-trees became valuable highway markers by night, dependable and familiar guides for travelers.
Beyond the lantern-tree groves lay the farms of Yissou. Here, as those other farmers had done on the outskirts of Dawinno many weeks before, the farmers of Yissou came out sullenly to stand by the boundary-stones of their properties, glaring at the strangers passing by.
Now the land began to rise toward the great ridge south of the city, beyond which was Yissou itself, snug within the crater that the death-star had made.
They went on, up the outer slope of the crater. A little way farther along they came to a halt before the vast black wall that protected the City of Yissou, a wall that seemed to block the entire horizon and rise to a height altogether beyond belief.
The sight of it took Thu-Kimnibol’s breath away. It was one of the most astonishing things he had ever seen.
He remembered the wall of years past, four or five sturdy courses of solid square-cut stone: how proud Salaman had been, when that new wall finally circled the city on all sides and he could at last rip down the old wooden palisade! Thu-Kimnibol knew that Salaman had gone on enlarging his wall year by year. But he had never expected to be confronted by something like this. It loomed awesomely, a thing of overwhelming mass, a terrifying pile of dark rock that nearly blotted out the sky.
What sort of enemy did Salaman fear that he should feel the need of a wall like that? What demons had come to haunt Salaman’s soul, Thu-Kimnibol wondered, in the years since their last meeting?