Queen of Springtime by Robert Silverberg Read Free Book Online Page B

wild creatures and placed them in chambers that duplicated their natural surroundings. The dreaming Hresh, to his terrible shame and chagrin, had even found his own ancestors among the animals housed there; and so he had learned beyond question that day that his People, who once had thought of themselves as humans, were no such lofty thing, and in the days of the Great World had been regarded as nothing more than beasts fit for collecting and keeping in cages.
    Most of the creatures Hresh had seen on that day of wandering in the remote past had perished in the Long Winter, and their kind was forever gone from the Earth. The Tree of Life itself had long ago crumbled to dust. But Hresh had built a Tree of Life of his own in the City of Dawinno, overlooking the tranquil bay: a maze-like garden where creatures from all parts of the continent had been assembled for him to study. He had water-striders there, and drum-bellies, and dancerhorns, and hosts of the other creatures which the People had encountered in their migrations across the face of the land since leaving the ancestral cocoon. He had blue-furred long-legged stinchitoles, whose minds were linked in a way he had not begun to fathom. He had bevies of plump-legged red scantrins. He had the pink ropy long-fanged worms, longer than a man was tall, that lived in the steaming mud of the lakelands. He had thekmurs, and crispalls, and stanimanders. He had gabools. He had steptors. He had a band of the mocking green monkey-like tree-dwelling beasts who had pelted the People raucously with wads of dung when first they entered Vengiboneeza.
    And now too he had a pair of caviandis, newly brought to him from the lakelands.
    He would make a comfortable habitat for them along the stream that ran through the garden, and the stream would be stocked with the fish they most preferred, and they would have room to dig the burrows in which they liked to live. And once they had grown accustomed to life in captivity he would try to reach their minds through second sight, through use of the Wonderstone if necessary. He would touch their souls, if souls they had, and see what depths were to be found in them.
    The caviandis, trembling, sat side by side in their carrier, giving him a saucer-eyed look of misery and fear.
    Hresh returned that sorry stare with a deep look of curiosity and fascination. They were graceful, elegant beasts, unquestionably intelligent. Just how intelligent was what he meant to find out. The lesson of the ancient Tree of Life, of the Great World itself, was that intelligence was to be found in creatures of many sorts.
    There were those among the People, Hresh knew, who hunted caviandis for their flesh. They were said to be tasty things. But that would have to stop, if the brightness of the caviandis’ eyes turned out to be matched by a corresponding richness of intellect. Some sort of protective legislation, maybe—unpopular, but necessary—
    He was tempted to take a quick peek into their minds now. A bit of preliminary probing. Just to get some general idea.
    He smiled at the trembling animals, and lifted his sensing-organ, thinking to summon his second sight, only for a moment, only for a quick look.
    “Lordship? Lord chronicler?”
    The interruption was as jarring as a blow in the small of the back. Hresh whirled and saw one of his deputies behind him, and a coarse-looking man with him in the sash of a bailiff of the court of justice.
    “What is it?”
    The bailiff stumbled forward. “Your pardon, lord chronicler, but I bring a message from the court, from Husathirn Mueri, who sits in judgment today at the Basilica. A stranger has been found, a young man who appears to be returned from captivity among the hjjks, and who speaks no language except the noises of the bug-folk. And Prince Husathirn Mueri respectfully requests—if you could assist him—if you could come to the Basilica to aid in the interrogation—”
    They had sent her off to wait in a holding chamber