The New Springtime by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2016-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

7

Rumblings of War

A week after Thu-Kimnibol’s departure, Salaman had the commander of the Acknowledgers brought to the palace. Zechtior Lukin, his name was. Athimin, newly released from prison and more than a little chastened, went with half a dozen guards into the run-down eastern quarter of the city to get him, anticipating a fight. But Athimin was surprised to find that Zechtior Lukin had no more qualms about going to speak with the king than he did about dancing naked in the streets when the black winds were blowing. He behaved as though he’d been expecting Salaman to summon him all along—as though he’d been wondering why the summons had taken so long to come.

There were some surprises for Salaman, too, in his meeting with the Acknowledger leader.

He had imagined that the head of the sect would be some wild-eyed fanatic, excitable and irascible, who would foam at the mouth, would shout and rant and babble incomprehensible slogans. He was right about one part of that, at least: Zechtior Lukin was a fanatic, beyond any doubt. Everything about him, the iron set of his jaw and the cold, bleak stony look of his eyes and his hard, thick-muscled frame, covered with gray, grizzled fur, spoke of extraordinary singlemindedness of purpose and dedication to his unlikely cause. And very likely he was irascible, too.

But a shouter? A ranter? A babbler of slogans? No. This man was cool and tough, with an air of icy reserve that Salaman immediately recognized as much like his own. He could surely have been a king, this one, if things had gone a little differently in the early years of the city. Instead he had become a butcher, a meat-cutter, who spent his days not in a stone palace but in a slaughterhouse, chopping joints and loins and flanks while blood ran in rivers around him. And in the evenings he and his followers met in a drafty gymnasium in the eastern quarter, and drilled one another in the strange tenets of their creed.

He stood calmly before the king, square-shouldered, unintimidated.

“How long is it since you people first started this?” Salaman asked.

“Years.”

“Three years? Five?”

“Almost since the founding of the city.”

“No,” Salaman said. “That’s impossible, that you could have been in existence that long a time without my even hearing about you.”

Zechtior Lukin shrugged. “There were very few of us, and we kept to ourselves. We studied our texts and held our meetings and practiced our disciplines, and we didn’t go out looking for recruits. It was our private thing. My father Lakkamai was the first of us, and then—”

“Lakkamai?” Another surprise. In the cocoon and in Vengiboneeza Lakkamai had been a silent man, who kept to himself and seemed to have no depths to his soul. He had been the lover of the offering-woman Torlyri in Vengiboneeza, but when the Breaking Apart had happened Lakkamai had abandoned Torlyri without a qualm, to go off with Harruel as one of the founders of the tiny settlement that would become the City of Yissou.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.