“Nothing.”
“Those efficient, highly paid agents of yours—”
“Have told me nothing, cousin. Nothing whatever.” There was a sticky little moment of silence between them. “Do you think I’d conceal news of your own city from you, Thu-Kimnibol? You and I are allies, and even friends, or have you forgotten?”
A little shamefacedly Thu-Kimnibol said, after a moment, “Forgive me, cousin. I simply wondered—”
“You know as much as I do about what’s going on down there. But listen, listen, cousin: it may not be as bad as Taniane thinks. She’s had a hard season. She’s getting old, she’s weary, she has a difficult daughter. You may find things a little shaky there, but I promise you you won’t find chaos, you won’t find the place in flames, you won’t find hjjks preaching the love of the Queen in the Presidium building. Taniane’s simply decided that she needs your steadying hand close by her in these troubled times. And that’s what you’ll provide. You’ll help her do whatever’s needed to restore order, and all will be well. After all, you’re coming home with an alliance, and after the alliance comes a war. I tell you this, cousin, nothing brings a troubled land back to its senses faster than the prospect of war!”
Thu-Kimnibol smiled. “Perhaps so. What you say makes sense.”
“Of course it does.” Salaman made an elaborate gesture of farewell. “On your way, then. You’ve done all you can here. Now your city needs you. A war is coming, and you’ll be the man of the hour when the fighting begins.”
“But will it begin? We talked of the need for some incident, Salaman, some provocation, something to get the whole thing going, something I can use to persuade my people to send troops north to join forces with you—”
“Leave that to me,” Salaman said.
It had also been a season of difficult weather to the south, in the City of Dawinno: no black winds there, nor hail or snow, but the rains came daily for week after week, until hillsides crumbled into muddy streams and floodwaters ran in the streets. It was the worst winter since the founding of the city. The sky was a leaden gray, the air was cool and heavy, the sun seemed to have vanished forever.
The simpler folk began to ask each other if a new death-star had struck the Earth and the Long Winter had returned. But simple folk had been asking themselves such things ever since the departure from the cocoon, whenever the weather was not to their liking. The wiser ones knew that the world had no new Long Winters to fear in their lifetimes, that such catastrophes came to the Earth only once in millions of years and that the one that had lately afflicted the planet was over and done with. Even those wiser ones, though, chafed at the dreary days and nights of endless rainfall and suffered when the swirling waters poured through the lower floors of their splendid homes.
Nialli Apuilana rarely left her room high up in the House of Nakhaba. With the help of Boldirinthe’s potions and aromatic herbs and prayers, she had driven out the fevers and pestilences that had entered her as she lay exhausted in the swamp, and regained her strength. But doubts and confusions assailed her, and there were no potions for those. She spent most of her time alone. Taniane came to see her once, a strained and unsatisfactory visit for both of them. Not long afterward Hresh paid a call, and took her hands in his, and held them and smiled, and stared into her eyes as though he could ease her of all that troubled her with a glance.
Other than Hresh and Taniane, she saw no one. A note came from Husathirn Mueri, asking if she’d care to dine with him. She let it pass unanswered.
“You’re a smart one,” the young Beng priest who had the room just down the hall from her said one day, meeting her as she came out to get her tray of food. “Staying holed up in there all the time. If I could, I’d do the same thing. This filthy rain goes on and on.”
“Does it?” Nialli Apuilana asked, without interest.
“Like a scourge. Like a curse. Nakhaba’s curse, it is.”
“Is it?” she said.
“Whole city washing away. Better off staying indoors, is what I say. Oh, you’re a smart one!”
Nialli Apuilana nodded and smiled faintly, and took her tray, and retreated into her room. Afterward she made a point of looking out before going into the hall to make certain that no one was there.
Sometimes, after that, she went to the window and watched the rain. Most often she sat crosslegged in the center of the room, absentmindedly grooming herself hour after hour while letting her thoughts drift without direction.
Now and again she would take the hjjk star down from the wall, the amulet of plaited grass that she had carried back with her from the Nest years ago. Would hold it, would stare into the open place at its center, would let her mind drift. Sometimes she could see the pink glow of Nest-light coming from it, and dim figures moving about: Militaries, Egg-makers, Kindlers, Nest-thinkers. Once she thought she even had a glimpse of the Queen-chamber itself, of the great unmoving mysterious bulk within it.
But the visions were vague ones. Most of the time the star showed her nothing at all.
She had no clear idea of where to go next, or what to do, or even who she was. She felt lost between worlds, mysteriously suspended, helpless.
Kundalimon’s death had been the death of love for her, the death of the world. No one had understood her as he had; and she had never felt such an understanding of anyone else. It hadn’t been just the twining, and certainly not the coupling, that had bound them together. It was the sense of shared experience, of knowledge held in common. It was Nest-bond. They had touched the Queen; the Queen had touched them; the Queen then had stood as a bridge between their souls, making it possible for them to open themselves to one another.
It had only been a beginning, though. And then Kundalimon had been taken away. And everything had seemed to end.
What didn’t end was the rain. It fell on the city and on the bay, on the hills and on the lakes. In the farming district of Tangok Seip, on the eastern side of the Emakkis Valley where the inner range of coastal mountains began to rise, it fell with such force that it peeled the soil from the slopes in torrential mud-slides such as had never been seen since the founding of the city. Whole hillsides sheared away and flowed down into the bottomlands.
A Stadrain farmer named Quisinimoir Flendra, taking advantage of a lull in the latest storm to chase after a prize vimbor bull that had broken free from its compound, was crossing the rain-soaked breast of a hill when the earth gave way practically at his feet. He dropped down and dug his fingers into the sodden earth, sure that he’d be swept over the edge into this newly formed abyss and buried alive. There was a terrible sickening sound, a kind of sucking roar, a liquid thunder.
Quisinimoir Flendra held tight and prayed to every god whose name he could remember: his own first, the All-Merciful, and then Nakhaba the Interceder, and then Yissou, Dawinno, Emakkis. He was struggling to remember the names of the other two Koshmar gods when he realized that the hill had stopped collapsing.
He looked down. The earth had broken away in a crescent just in front of him, revealing a sheer face of brown earth laced with exposed roots.
Other things were showing too. A great tiled arch, for one; a row of thick columns, their bases hidden somewhere deep in the earth; a scattering of shards and fragments of ruined structures strewn over the newly exposed face of the shattered hillside like so much trash. And also there was the mouth of a stone-vaulted tunnel, leading into the hill. Quisinimoir Flendra, hanging head-down, was able to make out the beginnings of a cave. He peered in astonishment and awe into its mysterious depths.
Then the rain started up again. The hill might collapse a little further, and take him down with it. Hastily he scrambled down the back face of the hill and headed for his house.