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  “No use,” the second guardsman said. “He’s gone, sire.”

  “Gone? Are you sure?”

  “He sat up, and cried out something in Beng, and his whole body shook in a way that was fearful to watch. Then he fell down on the bed and didn’t move again.”

  These southerners, Salaman thought. A few weeks of riding through the cold and they fall down dead.

  But for the guardsmen’s benefit he made a few quick holy signs, and intoned a Yissou-have-mercy, and told them to summon a healer just in case there was still some life in the man after all. But also make arrangements for his burial, he ordered. To Biterulve he said, “Take that xlendi to the palace stables and bring the saddlebags to my private chamber, and put them under lock and key. Then go to the hostelry and wake up Thu-Kimnibol. Let him know what’s happened. Tell him he can collect his message when he comes to the palace in the morning.”

  “And you, father?”

  “To the pavilion for a little while, I think. I need to clear my mind.”

  He went outside. Glancing down the street to the left, he stared into the Plaza of the Sun, to see if the Acknowledgers had come back to it to dance again. No, the plaza was deserted. He touched his hand to his throbbing forehead, bent, scooped up a few fingers’ worth of snow, and rubbed it against his brow. That was a little better.

  It was almost dawn. The wind howled unabated. But the snow was ceasing, now. It mantled the ground to a surprising depth. He couldn’t recall a snowfall this heavy in thirty years. Was that why those people had come out? To dance in it, to rejoice over the strangeness of it.

  Acknowledgers, he thought. Acknowledgers.

  I have to speak with Athimin about them in the morning.

  He ascended the wall and stood for a long while at the window of his pavilion, staring out into the bleakness of the southern plains, until his mind was utterly void of thought and his aching body had yielded up some of the tautness of its tense muscles. Eventually a pink light began to appear in the east. This whole night has been a dream, Salaman told himself. Feeling strangely unweary, as though he had passed into some state beyond even the possibility of fatigue—or as though, perhaps, he had died without noticing it, somewhere during the night—he went slowly down the stairs and rode back through the awakening city to the palace.

  Athimin was the first to come to him that morning as he sat enthroned, waiting in eerie tranquility, in the Hall of State. There was something odd about the prince’s movements as he approached the throne, something hesitant, that Salaman didn’t like. Ordinarily Athimin carried himself in a burly, decisive way, as befitted the next-to-oldest of the king’s eight sons. But now he seemed not so much to stride as to skulk toward the throne, giving his father wary glances as though peeping at him over the top of an arm that was flung defensively across his face.

  “The gods grant you a good morning, father,” he said, sounding oddly tentative. “They tell me you didn’t sleep well. The lady Sinithista—”

  “You’ve talked to her already, have you?”

  “Chham and I breakfasted with her, and she seemed troubled. She told us you’d had a profound dark dream, and had gone rushing out in the night like one who’s possessed—”

  “The lady Sinithista,” Salaman said, “should keep her royal mouth shut, or I’ll shut it for her. But I didn’t ask you here to discuss the nature of my dreams.” He gave the prince a sharp look. “What are Acknowledgers, Athimin?”

  “Acknowledgers, sir?”

  “Acknowledgers, yes. You’ve heard the term before, have you?”

  “Why, yes, father. But it surprises me that you have.”

  “It was in the night just past, also, one of my many adventures this night. I was outside the guardhouse near the Plaza of the Sun, and I looked down the street and saw lunatics dancing naked in the snow. Biterulve was with me, and I said, ‘What are those,’ and he said, ‘They are Acknowledgers, father.’ And he could say nothing more about them than that. You’d be able to give me better information, he told me.”

  Athimin shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. Salaman had never seen him like this before, so uncertain, so restive. The king began to smell the smell of treachery.

  “Acknowledgers, sir—these dancers you saw—these people you rightly call madmen—”

  “Lunatics is the word I used. Those who are driven mad by the moon. Though there was precious little moonlight visible through the driving snow while they were dancing. Who are these people, Athimin?”

  “Unfortunate strange folk is what they are, whose minds have been turned by drivel and nonsense. They are just such folk as would dance when the black wind blows, or frolic naked in the snow. Or do many another strange things. Nothing fazes them. They hold the conviction that death isn’t important, that you should never at any time care about risk, but just do whatever seems right to you, without fear, without hindrance.”

  Salaman leaned forward, gripping the armrests of the Throne of Harruel.

  “So this is some new philosophy, then, you say?”

  “More like a religion, sir. Or so we think. There’s a system of belief that they teach one another—they have a book, a scripture—and they hold secret meetings, which we have yet to infiltrate. We’ve only begun to understand them, you see. The sapphire-eyes folk seem to be what they most admire, because they stayed calm when the Long Winter was coming on, and were indifferent to death. The Acknowledgers say that this is the great thing taught by Dawinno the Destroyer, that we need to show indifference to dying, that death is simply an aspect of change and is therefore holy.”

  “Indifference to dying,” said Salaman, musing. “Acceptance of death as an aspect of change.”

  “That’s why they call themselves Acknowledgers,” Athimin said. “The thing that they acknowledge is that death can’t be avoided, that it is in fact the design of the gods. And so they do whatever comes into their heads to do, father, regardless of risk or discomfort.”

  Salaman clenched his fists. He felt fury rising in him again after these hours of early morning calmness.

  So the City of Dawinno wasn’t the only place plagued by an absurd new creed? Gods! It sickened him to hear that such madness was loose virtually under his very nose. This could lead to anarchy, this cult of martyrdom. People who fear nothing will do anything. And worship of death wasn’t what his city needed. What was needed here was life, nothing but life, new flowering, new growth, new strength!

  He rose angrily to his feet.

  “Insanity!” he cried. “How many such lunatics do we have in this city?”

  “We’ve counted a hundred ninety of them, father. There may be more.”

  “You seem to know a great deal about these Acknowledgers.”

  “I’ve been investigating them all this month past, sir.”

  “You have? And said not a word to me?”

  “Our findings were only preliminary. We needed to know more before—”

  “More?” Salaman bellowed. “Madness is spreading like a pestilence in the city, and you needed to know more before you could tell me even that such a thing exists here? I was to be kept in the dark about it all? Why? And for how long? How long?”

  “Father, the black winds were blowing, and we felt—”

  “Ah. Ah, I understand now.” He stepped forward and brought his arm up in the same instant, and struck Athimin ferociously across the cheek. The prince’s head rocked back. Sturdy as he was, he nearly lost his balance at the force of the blow. For an instant there was fiery rage in the younger man’s eyes; then he recovered, and took a step away from the throne, breathing heavily and rubbing the place where he had been struck. He stared at his father with a look of utter disbelief on his face.

  “So this is how it begins,” said Salaman very calmly, after some moments. “The old man is considered so unstable, so easily deranged, that during the troublesome season he has to be kept from learning of significant developments that have occurred in the city, so th
at he won’t become so upset by them, that he’ll take unpredictable action. That’s the start of it, shielding the old man from difficult knowledge at a time of the year when he’s known to behave rashly. The next step is to shield him even from the mildly disturbing things, so that he’ll never feel any distress at all, for who knows? He might be dangerous when he’s troubled in any way, even the slightest. And a little while after that, the princes gather and conclude among themselves that he’s become so capricious and volatile that he can’t be trusted even in the times of calm weather, and so he’s gently removed from the throne, with the softest of apologies, and sent to live under guard in some smaller palace, while his eldest son takes his place on the Throne of Harruel, and—”

  “Father!” Athimin cried in a strangled voice. “None of this is true! By all the gods, I swear that no such thoughts have entered the minds of any of—”

  “Keep quiet!” Salaman thundered, raising his hand as though to strike him again. He gestured furiously to the throne-room guards. “You—you—convey Lord Athimin to the North Prison immediately, and have him kept in custody there until I send further word concerning his disposal.”

  “Father!”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to reflect on your errors while you’re sitting in your cell,” the king said. “And I’ll have writing materials sent to you, so you can prepare a full report on these deranged Acknowledgers of yours, telling me everything that you were too cowardly or too perfidious to tell me until I pulled some of it from you this morning. For there’s more: I’m certain there’s more. And you’ll tell me all of it. Do you understand me?” He made a sweeping gesture. “Take him out of here.”

  Athimin threw him a stunned, bewildered look. But he said not a word, nor did he resist in any way while the guards, looking no less astonished than he, led him from the great hall.

  Salaman reseated himself. He leaned back against the smooth obsidian. He drew deep, steady breaths. For all his shouting and fury, he saw that he was beginning now to glide easily back into that curious godlike calmness that had come over him in his pavilion at dawn.

  But his hand was tingling from the blow he had given Athimin.

  I have struck two of my sons this same night, he thought.

  He couldn’t remember having hit any of them ever before, and now he’d struck two in a matter of hours, and sent Athimin to prison besides. Well, the black winds were blowing. And Biterulve had broken a rule by coming to him in the pavilion. Maybe he thought that because he’d been allowed there once, he could come at any time. Athimin, too—what audacity, keeping the news of the Acknowledgers to himself! Downright dereliction of duty, it was. Which had to be punished, even if it was one of the royal princes who was guilty of it. Especially if it was one of the royal princes.

  And yet, to strike the gentle Biterulve—and the steady and capable Athimin, who might well be king here one day if anything evil befell his brother Chham—

  No matter. They’d have to forgive him. He was their father; he was their king. And the black winds were blowing.

  Salaman sat back and idly stroked the armrests of the throne. His mind was tranquil, and yet it was whirling at a pace almost beyond his comprehension. Thoughts, ideas, plans, swirled through it like raging gales, one after another. He made unexpected connections. He saw new possibilities. Is it martyrdom that these Acknowledgers long for? Good. Good. We’ll have a use for some martyrs around here soon. If martyrdom is what they love, well, then, martyrdom is what they will have. And everyone will be the better off for it, they and we both.

  He would have to talk with the leader of these Acknowledgers.

  There were sounds in the hall outside. “The Prince Thu-Kimnibol,” called a herald.

  The lofty figure of Harruel’s son stood in the doorway.

  “Almost ready to leave us, are you?” Salaman asked.

  “Another few hours and we’ll be ready to set out,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “If the storm doesn’t start up again.” He came further into the room. “I hear from your son that a messenger from Dawinno arrived during the night.”

  “A Beng, yes, a guardsman; He was caught in the storm, poor man. Died practically in my arms. He was carrying a letter for you. Over there, on that table.”

  “With your permission, cousin—” Thu-Kimnibol said.

  He snatched it up, stared at its face intently for a moment, ripped it open without pausing to inspect the seal. He read it slowly through, perhaps several times, running his fingers carefully over the vellum. Reading did not appear to be an easy thing for Thu-Kimnibol. He looked up finally and said, “From the chieftain. A good thing I’m about ready to leave here, cousin. I’m ordered to go back to Dawinno right away. There’s trouble there, Taniane says.”

  “Trouble? Does she say what kind of trouble?”

  Thu-Kimnibol shrugged. “All she says is that things are very bad.” He began to pace. “Cousin, this worries me. First the murders, and then the autumn caravan comes bearing word of upheavals and confusions and a new religion, and now this. Come home at once, she says! Things are very bad! Yissou, how I wish I were there now! If only I could fly, cousin!” He paused, steadying himself. In an altogether different tone he said, “Cousin, can you tell me anything about this?”

  “About what, cousin?”

  “These troubles in Dawinno. I wonder if perhaps you’ve had some report from sources of your own, something that could let me know what to expect.”

  “Nothing.”

  “These efficient, highly paid agents of yours—”

  “Have told me nothing, cousin. Nothing whatever.” There was a sticky little moment of silence between them. “Do you think I’d conceal news of your own city from you, Thu-Kimnibol? You and I are allies, and even friends, or have you forgotten?”

  A little shamefacedly Thu-Kimnibol said, after a moment, “Forgive me, cousin. I simply wondered—”

  “You know as much as I do about what’s going on down there. But listen, listen, cousin: it may not be as bad as Taniane thinks. She’s had a hard season. She’s getting old, she’s weary, she has a difficult daughter. You may find things a little shaky there, but I promise you you won’t find chaos, you won’t find the place in flames, you won’t find hjjks preaching the love of the Queen in the Presidium building. Taniane’s simply decided that she needs your steadying hand close by her in these troubled times. And that’s what you’ll provide. You’ll help her do whatever’s needed to restore order, and all will be well. After all, you’re coming home with an alliance, and after the alliance comes a war. I tell you this, cousin, nothing brings a troubled land back to its senses faster than the prospect of war!”

  Thu-Kimnibol smiled. “Perhaps so. What you say makes sense.”

  “Of course it does.” Salaman made an elaborate gesture of farewell. “On your way, then. You’ve done all you can here. Now your city needs you. A war is coming, and you’ll be the man of the hour when the fighting begins.”

  “But will it begin? We talked of the need for some incident, Salaman, some provocation, something to get the whole thing going, something I can use to persuade my people to send troops north to join forces with you—”

  “Leave that to me,” Salaman said.

  It had also been a season of difficult weather to the south, in the City of Dawinno: no black winds there, nor hail or snow, but the rains came daily for week after week, until hillsides crumbled into muddy streams and floodwaters ran in the streets. It was the worst winter since the founding of the city. The sky was a leaden gray, the air was cool and heavy, the sun seemed to have vanished forever.

  The simpler folk began to ask each other if a new death-star had struck the earth and the Long Winter had returned. But simple folk had been asking themselves such things ever since the departure from the cocoon, whenever the weather was not to their liking. The wiser ones knew that the world had no new Long Winters to fear in their lifetimes, that such catastrophes came to the earth only once in millions of years an
d that the one that had lately afflicted the planet was over and done with. Even those wiser ones, though, chafed at the dreary days and nights of endless rainfall and suffered when the swirling waters poured through the lower floors of their splendid homes.

  Nialli Apuilana rarely left her room high up in the House of Nakhaba. With the help of Boldirinthe’s potions and aromatic herbs and prayers, she had driven out the fevers and pestilences that had entered her as she lay exhausted in the swamp, and regained her strength. But doubts and confusions assailed her, and there were no potions for those. She spent most of her time alone. Taniane came to see her once, a strained and unsatisfactory visit for both of them. Not long afterward Hresh paid a call, and took her hands in his, and held them and smiled, and stared into her eyes as though he could ease her of all that troubled her with a glance.

  Other than Hresh and Taniane, she saw no one. A note came from Husathirn Mueri, asking if she’d care to dine with him. She let it pass unanswered.

  “You’re a smart one,” the young Beng priest who had the room just down the hall from her said one day, meeting her as she came out to get her tray of food. “Staying holed up in there all the time. If I could, I’d do the same thing. This filthy rain goes on and on.”

  “Does it?” Nialli Apuilana asked, without interest.

  “Like a scourge. Like a curse. Nakhaba’s curse, it is.”

  “Is it?” she said.

  “Whole city washing away. Better off staying indoors, is what I say. Oh, you’re a smart one!”

  Nialli Apuilana nodded and smiled faintly, and took her tray, and retreated into her room. Afterward she made a point of looking out before going into the hall to make certain that no one was here.

  Sometimes, after that, she went to the window and watched the rain. Most often she sat crosslegged in the center of the room, absentmindedly grooming herself hour after hour while letting her thoughts drift without direction.

  Now and again she would take the hjjk star down from the wall, the amulet of plaited grass that she had carried back with her from the Nest years ago. Would hold it, would stare into the open place at its center, would let her mind drift. Sometimes she could see the pink glow or Nest-light coming from it, and dim figures moving about: Militaries, Egg-makers, Kindlers, Nest-thinkers. Once she thought she even had a glimpse of the Queen-chamber itself, of the great unmoving mysterious bulk within it.