“Salaman’s been telling us for years that the hjjks mean to invade him. I gather that wall of his has gotten higher and higher until it looms over his city in the most incredible way. But meanwhile no invasion has ever come. All the supposed hjjk threats against him have been strictly in his mind. Why should things be any different now?”
“I think they are,” Husathirn Mueri said.
“Because Salaman has rejected the Queen’s offer of a peace treaty and we’ve ignored it?”
“That’s part of it. But my guess is that it’s only a small part. I think that there are those among us who are actively engineering a war by provoking the hjjks to take action against us.”
“What are you saying, Husathirn Mueri?”
“I could say it again, if you wish.”
“You’re making a very grave accusation. Do you have any proof?”
Husathirn Mueri stared again into the distance. “I do.”
“The Presidium should have it, then.”
“It involves a person or persons very close to yourself, Hresh. Very close.”
Hresh scowled. “All this ponderous hinting at conspiracies is annoying, Husathirn Mueri. Speak out frankly or let me be.”
Husathirn Mueri looked dismayed. He said in his most ingratiating way, “Perhaps I’ve been too forward. Perhaps I’m leaping to conclusions too swiftly. I hesitate to implicate those who may be innocent, at least at this point. But let me put it another way, shall I? There are certain great forces in the universe that are pushing us to war, is what I believe. It’s inevitable. Sometimes a thing simply is inevitable, the way the coming of the death-stars was inevitable. Do you understand me, Hresh?”
This was maddening, this pious philosophizing out of an unbeliever like Husathirn Mueri. But Hresh saw that he wasn’t going to get anything explicit or even coherent out of him. He was determined to be evasive and elliptical, and no amount of questioning could break through his defenses.
It was always a temptation, when you were talking with Husathirn Mueri, to want to probe him with your second sight, to see what meanings lay concealed behind his words. Hresh resisted it. Surely Husathirn Mueri would be prepared for such a thrust, and would have a counterthrust ready.
With some irritation Hresh said, “Well, may the gods spare us, but if the hjjks do strike against Yissou, then we’re bound to go to Salaman’s defense. That’s done and agreed. As for your talk of conspiracies, I regard that as mere talk until I have reason to think otherwise. But in any event, why be so troubled by Thu-Kimnibol’s army? If a war’s coming, should we go into it unprepared?”
“You miss the point, though you utter it with your own lips. Don’t you see? It’s Thu-Kimnibol’s army. If war’s this close, and I think Thu-Kimnibol’s correct that it is, then the responsibility for organizing an army belongs to the Presidium. There has to be an official mobilization. It can’t simply be a private patriotic venture of one powerful prince. Can’t you see that, Hresh? Or are you so blinded by your love for your half-brother that you’ve forgotten that he’s his father’s son? Do you want another Harruel here? Think about that, Hresh.”
Hresh felt a stab of shock.
In an instant the years dropped away from him, and he was a boy again, and it was the Day of the Breaking Apart. Here stood the folk of Koshmar’s tribe, and there, opposite them, were those who had opted to depart from Vengiboneeza with Harruel. Hresh’s mother Minbain, Harruel’s mate, was among them; but Hresh had just chosen not to go. “There are important things for me still to do here,” Hresh had said.
And Harruel swelled with wrath, and his powerful arm swung in sudden fury.
“Miserable boy! Flea-ridden little cheat!”
The blow was only a glancing one. But it was enough to knock Hresh off his feet and send him flying through the air. He landed in a heap, stunned and trembling. And stayed there until Torlyri went to him and lifted him and held him in her warm embrace.
“Think about it,” said Torlyri’s son now. “Is it your brother Thu-Kimnibol who’s drilling that army on the stadium grounds now? Or is it King Harruel?” Husathirn Mueri gave him a close, searching look. Then he turned and was gone almost at once.
As Hresh entered the vestibule of the House of Knowledge, haunted by all that Husathirn Mueri had told him and deep in thoughts of the anguished past and the foreboding future, Chupitain Stuld stepped out of one of the inner offices and said, “Shall I bring the artifacts from Tangok Seip up to your study now, sir?”
“The artifacts from Tangok Seip?”
“The ones the farmer found in the cave, after the mudslide. You said you’d look at them today.”
“Ah. Yes. Yes. Those tools, you mean.”
He tried to shake off the fog that had engulfed him. His mind was scattered from one end of the world to the other.
That cache of Great World artifacts, yes. Chupitain Stuld had been after him persistently for the past few days to examine those things. She was probably right, he supposed. It was weeks since their discovery and he hadn’t even bothered to look at them. Other preoccupations had distracted him completely. But Plor Killivash had said the find was important. The least he could do, he told himself, was take a look.
Chupitain Stuld was waiting for an answer.
“Bring them upstairs, yes,” he said. “In half an hour, will you? I have a few things to do first.”
He made his way up the spiral ramp and into his private chamber.
Somehow he is outside the building, on the parapet. Then, without even troubling to take the Barak Dayir from its pouch, he feels himself rising, floating off into the upper air, soaring above the city, climbing effortlessly higher and higher, beyond the clustering clouds, into the sky above the sky. Everything up here is black, streaked with scarlet. Streams of cool air rush past him like rivers. Tiny pellets of ice strike his fur. There are crystals of ice on his fingertips. He dances on nothingness.
Looking down, he can see everything, as if through a clear window in the darkness. The entire city lies open to his gaze.
He sees the stadium grounds, and the troops of the Sword of Dawinno marching in formation, while at their head the impressive figure of Thu-Kimnibol struts and prances, gesturing emphatically and barking commands.
He sees Nialli Apuilana walking in a park, moving like one lost in a dream. Mysteries shroud her soul. A bright crimson line of conflict runs through it as though it is splitting apart.
Behind her, a considerable distance behind, lurks Husathirn Mueri. He is a mystery too: obvious enough on the surface, hungry for power and pathetically obsessed with Nialli Apuilana. But what lies beneath? Hresh senses only a void. Can it be, such emptiness in the son of Torlyri and Trei Husathirn? There must be more within him than that. What, though? Where?
Hresh’s gaze moves on.
Here is his garden of captive animals, now. The furry enigmatic blue stinchitoles, the gentle thekmurs, the stanimanders. The twittering sisichils frisk as though they know he’s watching them. The stumbains — the diswils — the catagraks — all the multitudinous horde of wondrous creatures that Dawinno the Transformer has tumbled forth upon the face of the thawing Earth, and which Hresh’s hunters have brought together for him here.
The caviandis. There they are beside their stream, the two slender gentle creatures. How lovely the sleekness of their purple fur, the brightness of their thick yellow manes. They look up and see him in the sky far above, and they smile.
He feels the warmth of their spirits radiating toward him. She-Kanzi, He-Lokim: his friends, his friends. His caviandi friends.
Their wordless greeting comes floating up to him, and his wordless reply descends. They speak again, and he replies; and then he asks, and they answer. Without words, without concepts, even. A simple, silent communion of being, an ongoing exchange of spirit that could not possibly be expressed other than as itself.