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“Your sensing-organ, close to mine—”
“Yes. Yes.”
It was a communion Nialli Apuilana had never expected to have. But the moment her sensing-organ touched his, all fear and uncertainty went from her; and it was with almost unimaginable joy that she felt the rich torrent of his spirit come flooding into hers. It was a joy so great that it dizzied her and for a moment it swept her away; but then she remembered the Wonderstone, and carefully she curled the tip of her sensing-organ around it and gripped it with all her strength. The world turned to mist. A column of music rose beneath her. A great overwhelming chord of love buoyed her upward, carrying her soul toward the sky.
But Hresh was beside her, smiling at her tenderly, serenely, holding her, steadying her, guiding her. Together they soared across the vault of the heavens. A great golden glow was streaming from the west, a brilliant outpouring of dazzling radiance, darkening now into a stu
So now it begins, Hresh thinks. The last journey of all. The world is growing dark around him.
Nialli, he thinks. Minbain. Taniane.
The vortex comes whirling up to claim him. He stares into it.
Is that where I’m going? What will it be like? Will I feel anything? Will I be able to taste and smell? If only I could see a little more clearly—
Ah. That’s better, now. But how strange it looks in there. Is that you, Torlyri? Thaggoran? How strange it all is!
Mother. Nialli. Taniane.
Oh, look, Taniane! Look!
When she emerged from the tent she found Thu-Kimnibol with Chham. The two men broke off their conversation as she approached, and looked at her strangely, as though she had been transformed into some unworldly creature of a kind they had never before beheld.
“How is it with your father?” Thu-Kimnibol asked.
“He’s with Dawi
“Ah.” A shiver passed through Thu-Kimnibol’s massive frame, and he made the Five Heavenly Signs, slowly and deliberately, twice through, and Dawi
Nialli Apuilana held out her hand to show him the Barak Dayir in it in its pouch.
“I have the Wonderstone,” she said. “And I have much of Hresh within me now too. You heard him say that I’m to be the chronicler? I am to be Hresh for us now, if I can. I’ll say the words for him tonight, and we’ll put what remains of him to rest. But he is already with Dawi
“He was always with Dawi
Thu-Kimnibol said, “King Salaman has died this day also. Prince Chham — King Chham, is it now? — has just come from him.”
“Then we mourn together,” Nialli Apuilana said. “When I say the words for my father, I’ll say them also for yours.”
“If you will, lady. It would please me greatly.”
“We will lay them here side by side, in this forlorn place,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “Which will be forlorn no more, because Salaman and Hresh were buried here. They were the two wisest men in all the world.”
Taniane, resting her left hand on the Mask of Koshmar and her right on that of Lirridon, fought back the numbness that had been growing in her soul all afternoon, a strange disagreeable coldness behind her breastbone; and with such strength as she could muster she compelled herself to follow what Puit Kjai was trying to tell her.
“An insurrection, you say? Against me?”
“Against us all, lady. An uprising that’s meant to sweep away all those who hold power in the City of Dawi
She gave him a weary, skeptical look. “Does anyone hold power any more in the City of Dawi
“Lady! Lady, what are you saying?”
Taniane glanced away. The eerie force of Puit Kjai’s intense scarlet eyes was more than she wanted to meet this day. She had lived with this weariness of soul for what seemed like years, but today it seemed to have deepened almost to paralysis.
She stroked the masks. Once they had hung on the wall behind her; but some time back, not long after the departure of Nialli Apuilana to the war and the disappearance of Hresh, she had taken them down and put them on the desk beside her, where she could see them easily and touch them when she wished. They gave her comfort and, she thought, strength. In the time of the cocoon, Boldirinthe once had told her, there had been a certain black stone mounted in the wall of the central chamber that had been sacred to the memory of the tribe’s former chieftains. Koshmar used to touch that stone and pray to her predecessors when she was facing difficulties. That black stone had remained behind in the cocoon when the tribe made its Coming Forth. Taniane wished she had it now. But at least she had the masks.
To Puit Kjai she said, after a little while, “All right, go on. Who are the ringleaders of this insurrection?”
“That I ca
“But you’re certain that one is being pla
Puit Kjai shrugged. “The word comes out of the chapels, from the common people. It reaches me from the daughter of the nephew of an old groom in my son’s stables, who worships in the chapel of Tikharein Tourb.”
“The daughter of the nephew of a groom—”
“A tenuous chain, yes. What I’m told is that they mean to kill Thu-Kimnibol when he returns from the wars, unless the hjjks do it first, and that they will put you to death also, and me, and most of the rest of the Presidium, except those who they’ll keep alive to go before the city as rulers in their name. And then they’ll make peace with the hjjks and beg their forgiveness.”
“You say this as though you never wanted peace with the hjjks yourself, Puit Kjai.”
“Not this way. Not by a violent purging of the highborn. And this is no fantasy, lady, this talk of a conspiracy. They may already, I suspect, have done away with Hresh.”
“No,” Taniane said at once. “Hresh still lives.”
“Does he? Where is he, then?”
“Far from here, I think. But I know that he lives. There’s a bond between us, Puit Kjai, that transcends all distance. I feel him close beside me no matter how far away he may be. No harm has come to Hresh. Of that I’m certain.”
“Nakhaba grant that it be so,” Puit Kjai said.
They faced each other in silence for a time. The powerful old Beng leader stood so tall that his helmeted head neared the ceiling. He was gaunt and thin, but there was a majesty about his very gauntness. Dimly Taniane remembered Puit Kjai’s father, the ancient wise one of the Helmet People, Noum om Beng, to whom Hresh had gone for wisdom. Puit Kjai was coming to look like him now: that same frail but stern bearing, his great height compensating for the slenderness of his frame. His helmet today was a black one, with gnarled golden antlers rising from it.
At length Taniane said, “I’ll look into these rumors. If you hear anything more, come to me immediately.”
“You have my word on it, lady.”