She said softly, “You mustn’t worry yourself like this, father. Salaman is dreaming. The hjjks won’t attack Yissou and there isn’t going to be any all-out war.”
“They invaded Yissou once,” Hresh said.
“That was different. Yissou was right on the path of a hjjk swarming-drive.”
“A what?”
“A swarming-drive. The Nest, great as it is, can hold only so many. A time arrives when the population has to divide. And then they come bursting out, thousands of them, millions sometimes, carrying a young Queen with them. And they march. For a thousand leagues if they have to, or sometimes more, until they reach the place where they mean to go. The gods only know how they decide where that place is. But they let nothing stop them until they’re there. And then they build a new Nest.”
Hresh looked up, his eyes alive for an instant with sudden interest in the old Hresh manner.
“And is this what was happening when they attacked Harruel’s settlement?”
“Yes. They probably didn’t have any specific intention of harming the settlement. But when they swarm they go marching blindly straight ahead, and nothing will turn them. Nothing.”
“Well, and if they swarm in the same direction again?”
“It won’t happen. They never swarm twice in the same direction. I know how eager Thu-Kimnibol is to have a war, and Salaman too. But they’ll be disappointed.”
“Let’s pray that they are.”
“Unless a war with the hjjks is something that the Five intend for us to have,” Nialli Apuilana said. “In which case, may Dawinno help us all. I tell you, though, father, that there’ll be no war.”
He stared at her, smiling in that strange new sad way of his. The caviandis turned also to look at her. There was a curious bright glow of — what? Sadness also? Compassion? — in their big gleaming violet eyes.
Hresh said, in a voice so soft she could barely hear him, “Despite all you say, I feel the war rushing toward us like a great storm, Nialli. Who can stop a storm?”
“I’ve lived in the Nest, father. I know the hjjks won’t ever arbitrarily launch a war against us. That isn’t their way.”
“And if we begin the war? We have an army now, do you know that?”
She caught her breath. “Since when?”
“It’s brand-new. Thu-Kimnibol organized it. They’re at the stadium right now, marching and drilling. Once armies exist, wars are easy to bring about.”
“Does Taniane know about this?”
“Yes. And approves of it.” Hresh smiled ruefully. “They have Great World weapons, taken from the House of Knowledge without my awareness or consent. Taniane finds that acceptable also.”
“She wants war?”
“She expects it, at least. Is resigned to it. Will give her wholehearted support to it.”
Nialli Apuilana stared at Hresh, horrified.
She could see the People’s armies streaming northward into the land of the hjjks, and hordes of hjjk Militaries coming forth to meet them.
A terrible clash, frightful carnage. Thu-Kimnibol unleashing his purloined Great World weapons and working great devastation. Whole legions of Militaries blown into vapor at the touch of a button. The hjjk forces, vast though they were, driven back, ever back, the invaders advancing triumphantly into the dark northern territories. Swarm after swarm of Militaries sent to meet them, called in from every Nest of the north, each in turn destroyed by the inexorable drive of the attackers.
The Nest in danger! The Queen!
Yes, the Nest of Nests besieged. Everything in confusion there, Nest-plenty lost, Nest-truth denied, Egg-plan set awry, the wise Nest-thinkers scurrying to take cover in the dust, Egg-makers and Life-kindlers trying to flee and hacked down as they ran, and at last, the most terrible assault of all, even the Queen of Queens Herself rooted out of Her deep chamber and put to death—
Unthinkable. For the second time that day the world swayed and reeled about Nialli Apuilana.
This war must not be, she thought.
She wanted to cry out, to rage and scream her defiance of the war-makers, to send warning to the Nest of the treachery of her people, send it by dreams or second sight or Barak Dayir or any other means she could find. And more. To throw herself in the path of the forces of Thu-Kimnibol and Salaman as they set forth into the sacred territories of the Queen, and by her own will and strength hold them back from this unlawful strife. She would prevent it if it cost her her own life.
She clenched her fists fiercely. She would do anything to defend the Queen and the Nest. She would—
She would—
She would do—
What?
Nothing.
Nothing.
It was all gone. She felt only a void where, a moment before, there had been white-hot wrath.
In one bewildering instant all her fury, all her indignation, had died away, leaving her in a strange suspended state, empty, baffled. Why should she care what happened to the Nest? Why was she so eager to sacrifice her life for the sake of the Queen?
And then, stunned, she realized that all those fierce and desperate thoughts that had come welling up so spontaneously out of her soul had had no substance behind them.
They were shams. Mere automatic responses, empty of true feeling. The last flicker of the old loyalty to the Queen that once had burned within her. But these were her people, here. This was her city.
Across her mind now, like a red line of fire, came the recollection of the horrors she had seen this morning when she had stared into the star of grass, the things that had sent her fleeing in chaos to her father for solace. The claws, the clicking beaks, the mocking alien eyes. She heard the hissing laughter, the whispers of seduction. And she knew now what that terrible vision had been telling her.
Once more she summoned the image of the disruption of the Nest by the triumphant armies of the People, the ruination of Nest-plenty, the savaging of Nest-truth, the thwarting of Egg-plan, the terrible destruction even of the Queen of Queens. She confronted it all, even that, bringing it to vivid life in her thoughts.
And to her astonishment, none of it mattered to her at all. She was unable to find that fiery indignation which the same images had kindled in her just a moment before. She was free. Today she had finished the task of breaking the spell at last.
What is it to me, if the Nest is destroyed? If the Five have willed our path and the path of the hjjks to collide, why, then it must happen, and so be it. So be it. And if the collision comes, my loyalty must be with my own.
Everything was clear to her now.
The thing she must mourn, if the war did come, was not the fate of the insect-folk whose advocate she had been so long, but rather the loss of the young men and women of the People — her People — who would perish in the campaign, dead long before their time, a tragic pointless waste. There was the real horror: the thought of their blood staining the bleak wastelands of the north for leagues in every direction.
“Nialli?”
Hresh’s voice, cutting through her thoughts like a voice from another world.
She made no response. Her mind churned with unaskable questions and inconceivable answers.
Who are these hjjks whom I have claimed to love?
Why, they are the creatures who stole me from my mother and father, and took me to a strange place, and transformed me into that which I was never meant to be.
Why did I want to defend them against my own kind?
Because they magicked my soul, and won me to their cause.
And Kundalimon, whom you loved? What about him?
I still love him. But they had done to him what they did to me, so that they could use him; and they would have used me through him, if he had lived.
“Nialli? Nialli?” Hresh again, calling her from the far side of the sky.
As though in trance she said, “Yes, father?”