There was a silence. Zechtior Lukin’s face was expressionless: no look of anger, no defiance, not even dismay. Something was going on in his mind, but he looked as untroubled as if the king had asked him some question about the price of meat.
“How much time will you allow us to prepare ourselves for the journey?” he asked, after a little while.
Nialli Apuilana has had all the solitude she can bear. She has been in hibernation all the winter long, like some animal that goes through a metamorphosis every year, and lies hidden away, wrapped in its own web, until the time arrives to come forth. Now the time is here. On a day in late winter when the rain is falling on Dawinno in torrents that are stupendous even for that season of merciless downpours, Nialli Apuilana leaves her room in the House of Nakhaba early in the afternoon. Now and then she has gone out late at night, but this is the first time since her recovery that she’s been out in daytime. There’s no one around to see her. The storm is so furious that the streets are deserted. Not even the guards are out. A light gleams behind every window: everyone’s indoors. But she laughs at the fury of the storm. “It’s really much too much,” she says out loud, looking upward, addressing herself to Dawinno. It is Dawinno who moves the great wheel of the seasons, now sending sun and now storms. “You’re overdoing it a little, don’t you think?” All she’s wearing is a sash. Her fur is drenched before she has taken five steps. It clings to her like a tight cloak, and water streams down her thighs.
She crosses the city to the House of Knowledge and climbs the winding stairs to the uppermost floor. She hadn’t doubted for an instant that Hresh would be there; and indeed he is, writing away in one of his huge old books.
“Nialli!” he cries. “Have you lost your wits, going out in weather like this? Here — let me dry you off—”
He swaddles her in a cloth, as if she’s a child. Passively she lets him enfold her and rub her dry, though it leaves her fur ruffled and wild.
When he’s done she says, “We should start to tell each other things, father. The time for doing that is long overdue.”
“Things? What kind of things?”
“About — the Nest—” she says hesitantly. “About — the Queen—”
He looks incredulous. “You actually want to talk about the hjjks?”
“About the hjjks, yes. The things you’ve learned, and what I have. They may not be the same things. You’ve always said you need to understand the hjjks better. You aren’t the only one. I do too, father. I do too.”
Chevkija Aim indicated an arching doorway of weather-beaten smoke-gray wood at the end of a blind alleyway just off Fishmonger Street, flanked on either side by grubby-looking commercial buildings with facades of soiled red brick. Husathirn Mueri had never been in this part of the city before. It was some sort of industrial district, more than a little disreputable. “It’s all the way down there,” the guard-captain said. “A basement room. You go in and turn left, and down the stairs.”
“And is it safe for me just to walk right in?” Husathirn Mueri asked. “They won’t recognize me and panic?”
“You’ll be all right, sir. There’s not much light in there. You can just barely make out shapes, let alone faces. Nobody’ll know who you are.” The lithe young Beng grinned and nudged Husathirn Mueri’s arm with surprising familiarity. “Go on in, sir! Go on! I tell you, you’ll be all right.”
Indeed the room, long and narrow and rich with the salty reek of dried fish, was very dark. The only sources of light were two faint glowberry clusters mounted on the wall at the far end. A boy and a girl stood there, beside a table containing fruits and aromatic boughs that was probably the altar.
Husathirn Mueri, squinting, saw only darkness. Then his eyes adapted to it and saw a congregation of perhaps fifty people seated close together on rows of rough black barrels. They were muttering and chanting and occasionally stamping their feet in response to the words of the children at the altar. Here and there a towering Beng helmet rose above the crowd, but most of them were unhelmeted. The voices he heard were deep, thick, the voices of ordinary people, working-folk. Husathirn Mueri felt a new level of uneasiness. He had never gone among working-folk much. And to spy on them now, in their own sanctuary—
“Sit!” Chevkija Aim whispered, half shoving him down on one of the barrels in the last row. “Sit and listen! The boy is Tikharein Tourb. He’s the priest. The priestess is Chhia Kreun.”
“Priest? Priestess?”
“Listen to them, sir!”
He stared in disbelief. It seemed to Husathirn Mueri that he had arrived at the threshold of some other world.
The boy-priest made thick strange sounds, horrid chittering clicking noises that seemed much like hjjk-talk. The worshipers before him replied with the same bizarre noises. Husathirn Mueri shivered and put his hands over his face.
Then suddenly the boy called out, in a high clear voice, “The Queen is our comfort and our joy. Such is the teaching of the prophet Kundalimon, blessed be he.”
“The Queen is our comfort and our joy,” replied the congregation, sing-song.
“She is the light and the way.”
“She is the light and the way.”
“She is the essence and the substance.”
“She is the essence and the substance.”
“She is the beginning and the end.”
“She is the beginning and the end.”
Husathirn Mueri trembled. At the sound of that sweet innocent voice he felt a touch of terror. The light and the way? The essence and the substance? What madness was this? Was he dreaming it?
He felt a choking, gagging sensation and covered his mouth with his hand. The basement room was windowless, and the air was close and hot. The musky salt tang of the barrels of dried fish, the gamy odor of sweaty fur, the rich pungent aroma of the sippariu and dilifar boughs on the altar — it was all starting to sicken him. He began to grow dizzy. He knotted his hands together and pressed his elbows hard into his ribs.
They were all crying out in hjjk-sounds again, the boy and the girl and the congregation.
At any moment, Husathirn Mueri imagined, the floor might open beneath him and he would find himself looking down into some vast pit where swarms of glittering hjjks moved in such multitudes that the earth seemed to be boiling with them.
“Easy, sir, easy,” Chevkija Aim murmured beside him.
He watched the boy and the girl moving about now, taking fruits and boughs from the altar and showing them to the congregation, and replacing them again, while the worshipers stamped their feet and made the droning, clicking sounds. What did it all mean? Where had it come from, so suddenly?
The boy was wearing a shining yellow-and-black amulet on his chest, much like the one dead Kundalimon had worn. The same one, perhaps. The girl had a wrist-talisman that was also of hjjk-shell. Even in the dimness these objects gleamed with a preternatural brightness. Husathirn Mueri remembered how the shells of the hjjks had gleamed as they moved on their mysterious rounds through the streets of Vengiboneeza when he was a child.
“Kundalimon guides us from on high. He tells us that the Queen is our comfort and our joy,” the boy called again.
And again the congregation responded, “The Queen is our comfort and joy.”
But this time a burly man three rows in front of Husathirn Mueri rose and shouted, “The Queen is the one true god!”
The congregation began to repeat that too. “The Queen is the one true—”
“No!” the boy cried. “The Queen is not a god!”
“Then what is She? What is She?” For a moment the rhythm of the service was broken. People were rising everywhere, calling out, waving their arms. “Tell us what She is!”