Despite everything they had told him he was still unprepared for the transformation Taniane had undergone since summer. She seemed a hundred years old. It was hard to believe that this dull-eyed lusterless woman was the fiery chieftain who had ruled this city so vigorously for so many decades. The fierce masks of the former chieftains, hanging on the wall behind her, made a mockery of her fatigue. Thu-Kimnibol felt almost apologetic for his own vigor and strength.
“At last,” she said. “I thought you’d never return.”
“There was a great deal to discuss with Salaman. It had to be done carefully. And he went out of his way to make me feel welcome.”
“A strange man, Salaman. I’d have expected him still to hate you.”
“So would I. But all that’s ancient history now. He was very loving.”
“Salaman? Loving?” Taniane managed a faint smile. “Well, it may be. Even the hjjks are loving, so I’m told.” She leaned back in her chair. In a voice that seemed to come from some deep crypt she said, “There’s been madness here, Thu-Kimnibol. Things are almost beyond my control. I’m in need of all the help you can give.”
“I’ve never heard you so despondent, sister.”
“You know of the new religion? This Kundalimon-worship?”
“Hjjk-worship, you mean.”
“Yes. In truth, that’s what it is.”
“News of it came north with the autumn caravan.”
“Those who believe it — and there are hundreds of them, Thu-Kimnibol, perhaps thousands! — are pushing me to accept the treaty with the Queen. I get petitions every day. They march outside the Presidium. They cry out at me in the streets. I tell you, that boy spread some kind of poison in the minds of the children during just the few weeks he was among us. By the gods, Thu-Kimnibol, I tell you I wish he’d been killed sooner!”
Uneasily Thu-Kimnibol said, “Surely you didn’t have anything to do with his death, Taniane!”
For a moment there was a flash of the old fire in her eyes. “No. No, not at all. Am I a murderer? I had no idea the boy could do such harm. And he was Nialli’s lover. What do you think, that I’d have wanted him removed because of that? No, brother, I had nothing to do with it. I wish I knew who did.”
“Her lover?” Thu-Kimnibol said, shaken.
“You didn’t know? They were coupling-partners, and twining-partners also. I thought everyone knew that by now.”
“I’ve been away many months, sister.”
“You seem to know of everything else that’s gone on here.”
“Her lover,” Thu-Kimnibol said again, still struggling with the idea. “I never thought of that. But how obvious it seems now! Small wonder she went out of her mind when he was killed, then.” He shook his head. It was strange to think of his brother’s daughter having taken a lover of any sort, after the way she’d always kept herself aloof. But to have chosen that dreamy hjjk-reared lad — how much like her that was, he thought. And then for him to be killed. How sad. “The gods have been unkind to that girl,” he said. “One shouldn’t have to have so much turmoil so young. I suppose she’s involved with the new religion, now?”
“Not so far as I’ve heard. By all rights she should be, yes. But I’m told that she stays in her room at the House of Nakhaba and hardly ever goes out. I don’t see her very often, you understand.” Taniane laughed bitterly. “You see how it is? My one child is as foreign to me as a hjjk. My mate hides himself as usual in the House of Knowledge, and busies himself with important matters ten million years old. My people cry out to me to sign a treaty that means the end of us. There have been calls for my abdication, do you know that, Thu-Kimnibol? ‘ You stay much too long,’ they tell me, practically to my face. ‘ It’s time you stepped aside.’ By the gods, Thu-Kimnibol, I wish I could! I wish I could!”
“Taniane — my poor Taniane—” he began, in his gentlest tone.
Her eyes flared wildly. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I don’t want your pity! Or anyone’s! Pity isn’t what I need.” In a softer tone she said, “What I need is help. Do you see how isolated I am? How helpless? And do you see what troubles are upon us? What can you offer me beside pity, Thu-Kimnibol?”
“I can offer you a war,” he said.
“A war?”
“We’re in alliance now with the City of Yissou, if the Presidium will ratify it. It binds us to go to Salaman’s aid if his city is attacked by hjjks; and I tell you, no doubt of it, Yissou and the hjjks will be at war very soon. So, then, will we. And then it’ll be treason in this city to speak favorably of hjjks, for they’ll officially be our enemies. And so there’ll be an end to any talk of our accepting the Queen’s treaty, and an end also to this poisonous religion that has sprung up in our midst, and to all the rest of your troubles, sister. What do you say to that? Now, what do you say?”
“Tell me more,” said Taniane, and it seemed to Thu-Kimnibol that years had dropped from her in a single moment.
“All of us finally together again,” Boldirinthe cried. “You were gone so long, Simthala Honginda! How good it is to have you here with us at last!”
It was a joyous day for the old offering-woman; the day of her eldest son’s return from the north. Even the interminable rain had relented for once. For the first time in months her whole family was gathered about her in the warm pleasant hilltop lodgings she shared with Staip: her three sons and their mates, and her daughter and hers, and the whole horde of her grandchildren. Boldirinthe sat enfolded complacently in her own massiveness, contained by her vast body as though by a mound of blankets, and they came to her one by one to be embraced. Afterward they lifted her and led her to the dining-table, and brought the food and the wine. There were grilled scantrins, first, the fleshy-legged little creatures of the bay, not quite fish and not quite lizard but something midway between, and then heaping bowls of steamed kivvinfruit, and finally a roasted haunch of vimbor in shells of pastry, with plenty of good strong black Emakkis wine to wash it down. When they had eaten they sang and told old tales, and Staip, as he always did, reminisced about the People’s privations during the journeys from the cocoon to Vengiboneeza and from Vengiboneeza to the southland, and one of her grandsons recited a poem he had composed, and a granddaughter played a tinkling little tune on the serilingion, and the wine flowed freely and there was much laughter. But Boldirinthe noticed that in the midst of all this joy her son Simthala Honginda, in whose honor the gathering was being held, sat silently, smiling infrequently, seemingly forcing himself by supreme effort to pay even slight attention to what was taking place about him.
To her son’s mate Catiriil, sitting beside her, she said quietly, “He says so little. What troubles him, do you think?”
“Perhaps he’s finding it strange to be home again, after so long a journey.”
Boldirinthe frowned. “Strange? To be home? How can that be, girl? He’s with his kin again, his mate, his son, his daughter — he is here in his own splendid Dawinno, and not in Salaman’s miserable dank Yissou. But where is his spirit? Where is his spark? This isn’t the Simthala Honginda I remember.”
Nor I,” whispered Catiriil. “He seems still to be in some distant land.”
“Has he been like this all day?”
“From the first, when the caravan arrived at dawn. Oh, we embraced warmly enough, he told me how much he had missed me, he brought out gifts for me and for the children, he told us of the disagreeable place he had been and remarked on the beauty of Dawinno, even in the rain. It was all just words, though. There was no feeling in them.” Then, with a smile, Catiriil said, “It must be only that Thu-Kimnibol kept him up there in the north so long that the chill of Salaman’s city entered his soul. But give me a day or two to warm him up, Mother Boldirinthe. That’s all it’ll take!”