Hjjks.

— They’re dead, father. The Acknowledgers. Every one of them. Can you hear me?

— I hear you, boy.

— Father? Father? It came through so clearly, through the northern relay posts. They’ve all been killed, in the hjjk country, in a place where rivers fork. All the Acknowledgers, completely wiped out.

Salaman nodded, as though Biterulve were standing right beside him. With a fierce burst of mental strength he hurled toward the boy a message so vehement that he was certain it would get through, to say that he had received and comprehended the news; and after a moment came confirmation from Biterulve, and the boy’s relief that he had managed to make himself understood.

At last, Salaman thought.

Now the wheels begin to turn.

The Acknowledgers had found the martyrdom they wanted. Time now to send the second force, the army of vengeance, which would probably meet martyrdom too, though far less calmly. And then to make ready for the all-out war that was sure to follow.

The king swung about again toward the south. For a moment he stood resting, breathing easily, gathering force. There could be no ambiguities or mysteries this time. The message had to travel along the relay chain with no distortion whatever, and get through to Thu-Kimnibol in distant Dawinno untainted by error.

He summoned the images. The bodies by the riverbank. The dark angular shapes moving among them. The new army, setting out from Yissou, bravely marching into the territory of the enemy to avenge the murder of Zechtior Lukin and his people. The violent collision of forces that was sure to come. The hjjks, aroused, issuing threats.

And then the gates of Dawinno opening, and an immense force of warriors emerging, with Thu-Kimnibol at their head.

Salaman smiled. He raised his sensing-organ and held it rigid. Power throbbed in it from the base of his spine and traveled to the tip. He closed his eyes and let the word burst forth from him. It soared southward from station to station in a bright blaze of energy, like a thunderbolt leaping across the vast spaces between the two cities.

— I invoke the terms of our alliance. We are at war.

Something is wrong. Nialli Apuilana, alone in her room in the House of Nakhaba, feels a sudden tremor, a heaving and a wrenching, as if the world has been pulled free of its base and is plummeting wildly through the heavens. She goes to the window. Everything seems quiet in the streets. But her second sight shows her the sun, suddenly huge, hanging just above her in the air with rivers of blood dripping down from it. In the blackness of the sky the icy green tails of comets whirl and spin.

She trembles and looks away and covers her eyes with her arms. After a time she prays, first to the Five, and then to the spirit of Kundalimon. And then, without knowing why, she thinks to reach out to the Queen as well.

Taking the hjjk star from its place on the wall, Nialli Apuilana holds it before her face, gripping it lightly by its sides. She peers into the open place at its center, narrowing the focus of her vision down until that small open place is the only thing she can see.

It is dark in there. Perhaps some sort of image lurks in the deepest part of the darkness, but she isn’t at all sure it is there, and, if it is, it is blurred and faded and unclear, a mere ghost of a ghost. Once the star had been able to show her the Nest, or so she had thought. But now—

Nothing. Only dark hazy shadows that elude her gaze, try as she might to penetrate them. Of the Nest there is no trace.

Where has it gone? she wonders.

Was it ever there at all?

— Do you want to see?a voice within her asks.

— Yes.

— What you see may change you.

— I’ve been changed so many times already. What harm can one more do?

— Very well. See, then, what is there to be seen.

It seems to her then that the shadows are lifting, that the darkness at the core of the star is brightening, that once more she can look through the place at the center of the star into the familiar subterranean corridors that had for a time been her home. Figures are moving about. She grips the star more tightly, stares more intently.

Figures, yes—

She sees them all too clearly now.

Monstrous. Weird. Distorted, heads like hatchets, arms like swords. Huge cold burning eyes like mirrors of black glass that throw back a thousand malevolent refractory images at once. Glistening beaks that snap and clack and thrust themselves like daggers at her through the opening in the star. Nialli Apuilana hears the harsh hissing sound of their mocking laughter. The star itself, that simple thing of plaited grass, is covered with sharp black bristles now. Its center is a dark hairy mouth, gleaming, gaping, a wet and slippery hole that makes soft insinuating sucking noises at her.

Something is pulling at her, trying to draw her down into the heart of the little plaited star.

The temptation to yield is powerful. Return to the Nest, yes, allow the bond to be rebuilt, sit at the feet of Nest-thinker, absorb his wisdom. Be taken before the Queen to experience Her touch. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Wasn’t it what she has always wanted? And Kundalimon. The greatest temptation of all. They’d give Kundalimon back to her. Come to us and Kundalimon will be yours again. Was it so? How tempting it sounds. How easy it would be to surrender. How good to return to the nest … how comforting … how safe.

No. No. How can it be, any of it?

Nialli Apuilana resists with all the strength of her soul.

Still she is drawn inward. But then gradually, as she continues to struggle, the force of the pull recedes. Shuddering, she throws the star aside and watches it skitter into a far corner of the room, where it comes to rest against the wall, tipped up on end. But even from there it calls to her. Come to us. Come. Come.

The nightmare images refuse to leave her. The beaks and claws, the bristling mouth, the myriad cold gleaming eyes. They blaze in her mind no matter how she tries to drive them from her. She thought she had fought and won this battle already, weeks ago. But no, no, the Queen’s grip is not yet fully broken.

She fights for breath. Her heart races. Her skin breaks out in cold fiery pricklings.

Her head swims with mysteries.

The walls of her little room seem to be closing in on her. Streams of blood flow across the floor. Severed limbs arise and dance wildly about her. A baleful green light comes pulsing up from the star that lies beside the wall. Thin bristly arms reach out through its center, groping for her. Harsh whispering voices, distant but seductive, call to her.

“No,” she says. “I’m not yours any more.”

She edges backward, keeping her eyes on the star as she moves slowly toward the door, fumbling behind herself to open it, then slipping hurriedly out into the hallway. She slams the door and holds it shut, leaning against it, drawing air deep into her lungs, waiting for the dizziness to go from her, for the pounding in her chest to subside.

Free. Free.

What next, though?

There is only one person in the city she can turn to.

I’ll go to my father, she thinks.

“They want to destroy the Queen, if they can,” Husathirn Mueri said. “You have my word on it.”

He was in the chapel of Kundalimon in the alleyway just off Fishmonger Street. It wasn’t one of the regular days of communion. Only Tikharein Tourb and Chhia Kreun were with him now: the boy-priest, the girl-priestess.

Somewhat to his own surprise, Husathirn Mueri had become a regular communicant of the new creed. What had begun as spying had become — was it faith? Or spying still? He was unsure. The chapel, that dingy place reeking of dried fish where sweaty lower-class folk came four times a week to cry forth their love of the Queen, had become his special refuge in the storm that was sweeping Dawinno. To Chevkija Aim he maintained that he was still conducting an investigation. Inwardly he wasn’t so clear that that was what he was doing.