Queen of Springtime Read Online Free PDF

people and the Koshmars still dwelled uneasily side by side in Vengiboneeza.
    He sat waiting, more calmly now. At length the shadow of Curabayn Bangkea’s immense helmet entered the cupola, and then Curabayn Bangkea himself, leading the stranger at the end of a leash of plaited larret-withes. At the sight of him Husathirn Mueri sat to attention, hands tightly grasping the claw-and-ball arm-rests of the throne.
    This was a very strange stranger indeed.
    He was young, in late boyhood or early manhood, and painfully slender, with thin hunched shoulders and arms so frail they looked like dried stems. The ornaments he wore, the bracelet and the shining breastplate, did indeed seem to be polished fragments of a hjjk’s hard carapace, a grisly touch. His fur was black, but not a deep, rich black, like that of Husathirn Mueri: there was a dull grayish tinge to it, and it was pitiful scruffy fur, thin in places, almost worn through. This young man has been poorly fed all his life, Husathirn Mueri realized. He has suffered.
    And his eyes! Those pale, icy, unwavering eyes! They seemed to stare toward the judicial throne across a gulf many worlds wide. Frightful remorseless eyes, an enemy’s eyes; but then, as Husathirn Mueri continued to study them, he began to see them, more as sad compassionate eyes, the eyes of a prophet and healer.
    How could that be? The contradiction bewildered him.
    At any rate, whoever and whatever this boy might be, there seemed no reason to keep him tethered this way. “Unleash him,” Husathirn Mueri ordered.
    “But if he flees, throne-grace—!”
    “He came here with a purpose. Fleeing won’t serve it. Unleash him.”
    Curabayn Bangkea undid the knot. The stranger seemed to stand taller, but otherwise did not move.
    Husathirn Mueri said, “I am the holder of throne-duty in this court for today. Husathirn Mueri is my name. Who are you, and why have you come to the City of Dawinno?”
    The boy gestured, quick tense flutterings of his fingers, and made hoarse chittering hjjk-noises deep down in his chest, as if he meant to spit at Husathirn Mueri’s feet.
    Husathirn Mueri shivered and drew back. This was the nearest thing to having an actual hjjk here in the throne-room. He felt rising revulsion.
    “I speak no hjjk,” he said icily.
    “ Shhhtkkkk ,” the boy said, or something like it. “ Gggk thhhhhsp shtgggk .” And then he said, wresting the word from his throat as though it were some spiny thing within him that he must expel, “Peace.”
    “Peace.”
    The boy nodded. “Peace. Love.”
    “Love,” said Husathirn Mueri, and shook his head slowly.
    “It was like this when I interrogated him, too” Curabayn Bangkea murmured.
    “Be still.” To the boy Husathirn Mueri said, speaking very clearly and loudly, as though that would make any difference, “I ask you again: What is your name?”
    “Peace. Love. Ddddkddftshhh .”
    “Your name ,” Husathirn Mueri repeated. He tapped his chest where the white swirling streaks that he had inherited from his mother cut diagonally across the deep black fur. “I am Husathirn Mueri. Husathirn Mueri is my name. My name. His name”—pointing—“is Curabayn Bangkea. Curabayn Bangkea. And your name—”
    “ Shthhhjjk. Vtstsssth. Njnnnk !” The boy seemed to be struggling in a terrible way to articulate something. Muscles writhed in his sunken cheeks; his eyes rolled; he clenched his fists and dug his elbows into his hollow sides. Suddenly a complete understandable sentence burst from him: “I come in peace and love, from the Queen.”
    “An emissary, do you see?” cried Curabayn Bangkea, grinning triumphantly.
    Husathirn Mueri nodded. Curabayn Bangkea began to say something else, but Husathirn Mueri waved him impatiently to silence.
    This must indeed be some child the hjjks had stolen in infancy, he thought. Who has lived among them ever since, in their impenetrable northland empire. And has been sent back now to the city of his birth, bearing