“But we have to suppress it, lady! The thing is outrageous heresy. Are we simply going to allow it to spread?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you so godly, Husathirn Mueri?”
“I know a danger when I see it.”
“So do I. But didn’t you hear what I just said? Suppressing it may prove to be more risky than letting it thrive.”
Perhaps so, he thought.
“I don’t like this new religion any more than you do,” she said. “But it could be that the best way of controlling it just now is by not trying to control it. We need to learn something about it before we can decide how dangerous it really is. It may be simple foolishness of the common people, or perhaps it’s active subversion by the hjjks, and how can we know which it is, eh? Except by looking at it. What I want you to do is drop everything else and find out what’s really taking place. Send guardsmen to snoop around in those chapels. Infiltrate them. Listen to what’s being said.”
Husathirn Mueri nodded. “I’ll see to it personally.”
“Oh, and one more thing. Check up on the people who are about to go with the caravan to Yissou, will you? Make sure none of them are cultists. That’s the last thing we need, to have this business infect Yissou also.”
“A very good point,” said Husathirn Mueri.
The Dawinno caravan had arrived at last, more than two weeks overdue: eleven xlendi-drawn wagons with red-and-gold banners, clip-clopping up the Southern Highway amid clouds of tawny dust.
That night there was a grand celebration: bonfires burning in the plazas, street musicians playing until dawn, feasting and carousing galore, little sleep, much revelry. The coming of the caravan was always a signal for unfettered rejoicing in Yissou, where the prevailing mood was more often one of constraint and caution: it was as though the arrival of the merchants from the south caused the great stone wall of the city to swing apart and warm sultry winds out of the tropics to blow through the narrow winding streets. But the lateness of the caravan, the uncertainty about whether it would get there at all, made its arrival an even bigger occasion than usual.
To Salaman, in his private palace chamber, came the merchant Gardinak Cheysz, the most useful of his agents in Dawinno. He was a plump but somber man, with fur of a curious grayish-yellow cast, and a mouth that drooped on one side from some weakness of the facial muscles. Though born in Yissou, he had lived most of his life in Dawinno. Salaman had employed him for years.
“There’s much confusion in Dawinno,” Gardinak Cheysz began. “That’s why we were late. Our departure was delayed by it.”
“Ah. Tell me.”
“You know that a boy called Kundalimon, who had been taken from Dawinno many years ago by the hjjks, returned to the city in the spring, and—”
“I know all that. I also know that he was murdered, and the captain of the city’s guards was also. This is old news.”
“You know these things, do you?” Gardinak Cheysz paused a moment, as if to reorder his thoughts. “Very well. Very well, sire.” From a courtyard outside the palace came wild skirling sounds, some kind of discordant piping, and the sound of laughter. “Do you know also, sire, that on the day of the two murders the daughter of the chieftain Taniane went mad, and disappeared from the city?”
That was something new. “Nialli, is that her name?”
“Nialli Apuilana, yes. A difficult and unruly girl.”
“What else could be expected but unruliness and difficulty, from the child of Taniane and Hresh?” Salaman smiled grimly. “I knew Hresh when he was a boy, when we were in the cocoon. A mad little child he was, forever doing forbidden things. Well, so this Nialli Apuilana went insane and vanished. And the delay in your setting out, then — a period of mourning, was it?”
“Oh, she’s not dead,” said Gardinak Cheysz. “Though I hear it was a close thing. They found her raving and feverish in the swamps east of the city, a few days later, and the offering-woman nursed her back to health. But it was touch and go for days, they say. Taniane could deal with nothing else. Not a shred of government business transacted all the while the girl lay ill. Our permit to depart lay on her desk, and lay there, and there it lay, unsigned. And Hresh — he nearly went out of his mind himself. He locked himself up in the tower where he keeps all his old chronicles and hardly came out at all, and when he did he said nothing to anyone about anything.”
Salaman shook his head. “Hresh,” he muttered, with mingled respect and contempt. “There’s no mind like his in all the world. But a man can be brilliant and a fool all at once, I suppose.”
“There’s more,” said Gardinak Cheysz.
“Go on, then.”
“I mentioned the dead hjjk emissary, Kundalimon. They’ve begun to make him into a god in Dawinno. Or at least a demigod.”
“A god?” the king said, blinking several times very quickly. “What do you mean, a god?”
“Shrines. Chapels of worship, even. He’s considered a prophet, a bearer of revelation, a — I can hardly tell you what. It goes beyond my understanding. There’s a cult, that’s all I can tell you, sire. It seems absurd to me. But it’s caused tremendous commotion. Taniane, when she finally would turn her attention to something other than her daughter, sent out word that the new religion was to be suppressed.”
“I’d have credited her with more sense than that.”
“Exactly. They thrive under persecution. As she quickly discovered. The original order for suppression has already been rescinded, sire. The guards were trying to find the places where this Kundalimon is worshiped — there’s a new captain of guards, by the way, one Chevkija Aim, a young Beng, very ambitious and ruthless — and they were attempting to eradicate them. They’d desecrate the shrines, they’d arrest the worshipers. But it was impossible. The people wouldn’t stand for it. Therefore the persecutions have been called off, and the cultists’ numbers are growing from day to day. It’s happened so fast you wouldn’t believe it. Before we could leave for Yissou we had to take an oath that we weren’t believers ourselves.”
“And what’s this new faith all about, can you say?”
“I tell you, sire, such things are beyond me. The best I can make it out, it calls for surrender to the hjjks.”
“Surrender — to — the — hjjks?” Salaman said, slowly, incredulously.
“Yes, sire. Accepting Queen-love, sire. Whatever that may mean. You may know, the boy Kundalimon came bearing a proposal of a treaty of peace with the hjjks that would have divided the continent between us and them, with the boundary—”
“Yes. I know about that.”
“Well, the cult leaders are calling for immediate signing of the treaty. And more than that: for establishment of regular peaceful contact between the City of Dawinno and the land of the hjjks, with certain hjjks known as Nest-thinkers invited to live among us, as the treaty requires. So that we can come to understand their holy teachings. So that we can come to comprehend the wisdom of the Queen.”
Salaman stared. “This is madness.”
“So it is, my lord. And that’s why the caravan was delayed, because everything’s up in the air in the city. Perhaps it’s a little quieter by now. By the time we finally left, the chieftain’s daughter had apparently recovered — the story is going around that she’s become a leader of the new cult, by the way, but perhaps that’s only a story — and that gave Taniane time for government affairs again. And Hresh has reappeared too. So it may be that things are getting back to normal. But it was a hard few weeks, let me tell you, sire.”
“I imagine so. Anything else?”
“Only that we’ve brought eleven wagons full of fine goods, and look forward to a happy visit in your city.”