Two Springs

"Spring and the wanderbirds came back; darkness dwindled; snow and ice thawed away into rushing streams; buds opened; grass sprouted; a tender green lay everywhere over the land."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Five, Chapter XII, p. 451.

"Raw winds and sleety rain brought in the springtime."
-Chapter XV, p. 459.

I honestly find Anderson's ever-fresh descriptions of seasonal changes more interesting than Gunnhild's malicious machinations. Not content with her sons' murders of Kings Gudrod Bjarnarson and Tryggvi Olafsson, she now hunts down Gudrod's young son and Tryggvi's pregnant wife! Gunnhild's maternal love for her own offspring has been completely perverted when it leads her to seek the death of another woman's as yet unborn son or daughter.

Taoist saying: "Two sages can share a blanket. Two Emperors cannot share a kingdom."

This and "Earth abides" seem to be the two messages of Mother Of Kings.