Biterulve grinned and clapped his hands, and ran from the room.
“Get me Athimin,” the king said to one of his stewards.
When the prince arrived, Salaman said to him dourly, “Biterulve has just told me he plans to go with us to the war.”
Athimin’s eyes brightened in surprise. “Surely you’ll forbid him, father!”
“No. No, I’ve given permission. He said I’d be making a woman of him, if I forced him to stay home. Well, so be it. But you’re going to be his protector and guardian, do you understand? If a finger of his is harmed, I’ll have three of yours. Do you understand me, Athimin? I love all my sons as I love my own self, but I love Biterulve in a way that goes beyond all else. Stay at his side on the battlefield. Constantly.”
“I will, father.”
“And see to it that he comes home from the war in one piece. If he doesn’t, you’d be wise to stay up there yourself in the hjjk wastelands rather than face me again.”
Athimin stared.
“Nothing will harm him, father,” the prince said hoarsely. “I promise you that.”
He went out without another word, nearly colliding as he did with a breathless messenger who had come scampering in.
“What is it?” Salaman barked.
“The army of Dawinno,” the runner said. “They’ve reached the lantern-tree groves. They’ll be in the city in a couple of hours.”
“Look yonder,” Thu-Kimnibol said. “The Great Wall of Yissou.”
Under a sky of purple and gold a massive band of the deepest black stretched along the horizon for an impossible distance, curving away finally at the sides to disappear in the obscurities beyond. It might have been a dark strip of low-lying cloud; but no, for its bulk and solidity were so oppressive that it was hard to understand how the ground could hold firm beneath its impossible weight.
“Can it be real?” Nialli Apuilana asked finally. “Or just some illusion, some trick that Salaman makes our minds play upon ourselves?”
Thu-Kimnibol laughed. “If it’s a trick, it’s one that Salaman has played on himself. The wall’s real enough, Nialli. For twice as many years as you’ve been alive, or something close to that, he’s poured all the resources of his city into constructing that thing. While we’ve built bridges and towers and roads and parks, Salaman’s built a wall. A wall of walls, one to stand throughout the ages. When this place is as old as Vengiboneeza, and twice as dead, that wall will still be there.”
“Is he crazy, do you think?”
“Very likely. But shrewd and strong, for all his craziness. It’s a mistake ever to underestimate him. There’s no one in this world as strong and determined as Salaman. Or as mad.”
“A crazy ally. That makes me uneasy.”
“Better a crazy ally than a crazy enemy,” Thu-Kimnibol said.
He turned and signaled to those in the wagons just behind him. They had halted when he had. Now they began to move forward again, up the sloping tableland toward the high ground where that incredible wall lay athwart the sky. Nialli Apuilana could see small figures atop the wall, warriors whose spears stood out like black bristles against the darkening air. For a moment she imagined that they were hjjks, somehow in possession of the city. The strangeness of this place inspired fantasy. She found herself thinking also that the wall, colossal as it was, was merely poised and lightly balanced on its great base, that it would take only a breeze to send it falling forward upon her, that already it had begun slowly to topple in her direction as the wagon rolled onward. Nialli Apuilana smiled. This is foolishness, she thought. But anything seemed possible in the City of Yissou. That black wall was like a thing of dreams, and not cheerful dreams.
Thu-Kimnibol said, “It was only a wooden palisade when I was a boy here. Not even a very sturdy one, at that. When the hjjks came, they’d have swarmed over it in a moment, if we hadn’t found a way of turning them back. Gods! How we fought, that day!”
He fell into silence. He seemed to lose himself in it.
Nialli Apuilana leaned against his comforting bulk and tried to imagine how it had been, that day when the hjjks came to Yissou. She saw the boy Samnibolon, who would call himself Thu-Kimnibol afterward, at the battle of Yissou: already tall and strong, never tiring, holding his weapons like a man, striking at the hordes of hjjks in the bloody dusk as the shadows lengthened. Yes, she could see him easily, a boy of heroic size, as now he was a man of heroic size. Fighting unrelentingly against the invaders who threatened his father’s young city. And something in her quivered with excitement at the thought of him hot with battle.
The warlike boy Samnibolon, who had become this warlike man Thu-Kimnibol: they were the utter opposite of the gentle Kundalimon, that shy and strange bearer of the Queen’s love and the Queen’s peace. Nialli Apuilana had loved Kundalimon beyond any doubt. In some way she still did. And yet — and yet — when she looked at this fierce Thu-Kimnibol she found herself swept by irresistible love and desire. It had come over her for the first time at the drill-field, to her astonishment and joy. It had come over her a hundred times since. Here beneath the terrible walls of Salaman’s city it seemed stronger than ever. She had known him since she was a child; and yet she realized now she had not actually known him at all, not until these past few weeks had brought them so strangely together.
All his life, she thought, he has waited for a chance to fight again; and now he will. And suddenly she realized that what she loved him for was that strength, that oneness of character, that had defined him since his earliest boyhood, when this city’s wall had been nothing more than a palisade of wood.
Her love for Kundalimon glowed imperishably within her: she was certain of that. And yet this other man, Kundalimon’s opposite in all things, now filled her soul so thoroughly that there seemed no room for anyone else.
Hresh had never touched such perfection before. He had not ever imagined it was possible. Truly the Nest functioned as smoothly as any machine.
He knew this was only a minor hjjk outpost, certainly not the great Nest of Nests; and yet it was so huge and complex that even after many days within it he had no clear idea of its plan. Its tunnels, warm and sweet-smelling and dimly lit by some pink glow that emanated from the walls, radiated in bewildering patterns, running this way and that, crossing and recrossing. Yet all those who traversed these corridors moved swiftly and unhesitatingly in obvious clear knowledge of the route.
The hjjks had fabricated their huge subterranean city in the simplest way, digging the tunnels with their bare claws — Hresh had watched them at work, for they never ceased expanding the Nest — and lining the walls with a pulp made of soft wood, which they chewed themselves and spat out into great soggy mounds that could be scooped up and pressed into place. Wooden beams served to prop the tunnel roof at regular intervals. He had expected something more complex from them. This was not very different except in size from the sort of nests the ants and termites of the forest built for themselves.
And, like those small insects of the forest floor, they had evolved an elaborate system of castes and professions. The biggest ones — females, they were, though apparently not fertile — were the Militaries. They were ordinarily the only ones who ventured into the world beyond the Nest. It was Militaries who had brought Hresh here.
A parallel caste of sterile males, the Workers, had charge of constructing and expanding the Nest, and of maintaining the intricate systems of ventilation and heating that kept it livable. They were thick-bodied and short, with little of the eerie grace that the slender Militaries displayed.