“Then make do without the mask,” said Taniane suddenly. “And without the title, also. All things are new now. If you won’t be chieftain, Thu-Kimnibol, call yourself king!”

“King?”

“Your father was a king in Yissou. You will be a king now too.”

He stared at Taniane in wonder. “Do you mean this?”

“Yours was the victory. Yours is the right. You are of the same blood as Hresh; and Nialli Apuilana has chosen you to rule. Can you refuse?”

“There’s never been a king over the Koshmar tribe.”

“This is not the Koshmar tribe,” said Taniane. “This is the City of Dawinno, and it’ll be without a ruler after today. Will you be king here, or do you mean to leave us leaderless, Thu-Kimnibol?”

He paced back and forth before the high table. Then he halted and whirled and pointed at Nialli Apuilana.

“If I’m to be king, then you’ll be queen!”

She looked at him in alarm. “Queen? What are you saying? Do you think I’m a hjjk, Thu-Kimnibol? They’re the only ones who have queens.”

Laughing, he said, “They have queens, yes, but why should that matter to us? In this city you are the king’s mate; and what’s the king’s mate, if not a queen? So the hjjks will have their queen, and we’ll have one too. Queen of Dawinno, you’ll be. And when we go to the unknown lands, you’ll be queen of those also, eh? Queen of everything that grows and flourishes on the face of this reborn world. The Queen of the New Springtime.” He took her hand in his. “What do you say to that, Nialli? The Queen of Springtime!” His voice went booming through the great room with overwhelming exuberance. “And when that other and far less beautiful queen sends another ambassador to us, bringing some new and troublesome proposition, which she will surely do before we are old, why, you can reply to her as her equal, one queen to another! What do you say, Nialli? Queen Nialli, is it? And King Thu-Kimnibol?”

Nialli Apuilana sits quietly, staring at the blank page in front of her. Her fingers hover above it. Chronicler? Her? And queen, too? How strange that seems! But for the moment, chronicler only. She is in Hresh’s study on the highest level of the House of Knowledge. All around her are Hresh’s things, the treasures he collected. The past is everywhere in this room.

She must set it all down, these wondrous bewildering events. What shall she say? She can barely comprehend it. Is this where she has been heading all along, all through this difficult voyage of hers? What shall she say, what shall she say?

Lightly she touches the amulet at her breast. A flicker of faint warmth goes through her hand. And it seems to her that a slight ghostly figure has passed swiftly through the room at that moment, one who is lithe and wiry, with great dark eyes in which luminous intelligence blazes forth, and that in the moment of his passage he turned to her, and smiled, and nodded, and shaped the word “queen” with his lips. The Queen of Springtime, yes. Yes. To whom will fall the task her father had begun, of attempting to discover who we really are, and what it is we must do to fulfill the intentions of the gods, how it is that we are meant to conduct ourselves in the world into which we came forth when the Long Winter ended. She smiles. She puts her fingers to the page at last, and the letters begin to form. She is entering it in the chronicles, finally, on the topmost blank page, that on the day such-and-such in the year such-and-such of the Coming Forth great changes came about, for on that day the revered chieftain Taniane resigned her office and with her the chieftainship of ancient days at last was brought to an end for all time, and the first of the kings and queens of the city were chosen, who would preside over all that must be done in the aftermath of the great and terrible war with the hjjks. In which the People had acquitted themselves honorably and won a mighty victory.

She pauses. Looks up. Searches through the room by the faint glow of lamplight, seeking Hresh. But now she is alone. She glances back at what she has written. The chieftain, the king, the queen, the victory. She must say something about the change of chroniclers now, too. Another great change.

Many great changes, yes. With greater ones no doubt yet to come. For we are deep into the New Springtime now, and the springtime is the season of unfolding and growth. In springtime the world is born anew.