Helliconia, page 115
He saw the thick clumps of marsh grass underfoot like coarse body hair. The grass was getting closer in a puzzling way. He saw small amphibians hop away into hair-fringed clefts, heard the tinkle of water travelling, watched tiny pied daisies fall beneath the hoofs of the yelk as if they were stars going into eclipse. The universe came to him. He was slipping from his saddle.
At the last moment, he managed to pull himself upright and land on two feet. His legs felt unfamiliar.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Toress Lahl asked, riding up.
Shokerandit found difficulty in moving his neck to look up at her. Her eyes were shielded by her hat. Mistrusting her, he reached for his gun, then remembered it was stashed in his saddle. He fell forward, burying his face in the wet fur on his yelk’s rump. He sank to the ground and felt himself sliding down the side of the dyke.
A rigidity had seized him. A disconnection between will and ability had taken place. Yet he heard Toress Lahl dismount and come squelching down to where he lay sprawled.
He was conscious of her arm about him, of her voice, anxious, seeking out his sense. She was helping him up. His bones ached. He tried to cry out in pain, but no noise emerged. The bone ache, the limb pain, crept into his skull. His body twisted and contorted. He saw the sky swing on a hinge.
‘You’re ill,’ Toress Lahl said. She could not bring herself to mention the dread name of the disease.
She dropped him and let him lie in the wet grasses. She stood looking round at the vacancy of the marshes and at the distant bald hills from which they had come. There were still moving banners of rain in the southern sky. Tiny crabs ran in the streamlets at her feet.
She could escape. Her captor lay powerless at her feet. She could shoot him with his own gun as he lay. A return to Campannlat overland would be too perilous, with an army approaching somewhere over the steppe. Koriantura was only a few miles away to the northwest; the escarpment which marked the frontier could be discerned as a smudge on the horizon. But that was enemy territory. The light was fading.
Toress Lahl walked a few paces back and forth in her indecision. Then she returned to the prone figure of Luterin Shokerandit.
‘Come on, let’s see what can be done,’ she said.
She managed to get him back in the saddle with a struggle, climbing up behind him and kicking the yelk into action. Her yelk followed in fits and starts, as if preferring company to a night alone on the marshes.
Prompted by anxiety, she urged increased speed out of her animal. As dusk closed in, she caught a glimpse of Fashnalgid ahead, his figure silhouetted against the distant sea. Raising Shokerandit’s revolver, she fired it in the air. Birds rose in flocks from the surrounding land, screaming as they escaped.
In another half hour, night or its half-brother lay over the land, although shimmering pools here and there picked up a reflection from the southwestern horizon, just below which Freyr lurked. Fashnalgid could no longer be seen.
She spurred on the yelk, supporting Shokerandit’s body against hers.
Water flooded in on either side of the raised path. Its noise was greater now, which Toress Lahl believed indicated that the tide was rising. She had never seen the sea before, and feared it. In the deceptive light, she came on a small jetty before she knew it. A boat was moored there.
The sallow sea lapped with a greedy sound on the mud. Glumaceous grasses and sedges set up a ghostly rustle. Small waves slapped against the side of the dinghy. There was no sign of any human being.
Toress Lahl climbed from the yelk and eased Shokerandit down on a bank. Cautiously she ventured onto the creaking jetty to which the dinghy was moored.
‘Got you, then! Hold still!’
She gave a small scream as the shout came from beneath her feet. A man jumped out from under the jetty and pointed his gun at her head.
She smelled the spirits on his breath, saw his luxuriant moustache, and recognised Captain Fashnalgid with relief. He gave a grunt of recognition, expressing not so much pleasure or displeasure as an admission that life was full of tiresome incidents, each demanding to be dealt with.
‘Why did you follow? Are you leading Gardeterark after you?’
‘Shokerandit is ill. Will you help me?’
He turned and called towards the boat.
‘Besi! Come out. It’s safe.’
Besi Besamitikahl, wrapped in her furs, emerged from under a tarpaulin where she had been sheltering and came forward. She had listened almost without astonishment as the captain, in one of his ranting moods, had outlined his scheme to snatch Asperamanka from the wrath of the Oligarch – as he dramatically put it. He would go such and such a way to meet the Priest-Militant, and would ride with him to the coast, where Besi would have a boat waiting. This boat would be lent by courtesy of Eedap Mun Odim. She must not fail him. Life and honour were at stake.
Odim had listened to this plan, as the girl related it, with delight. Once Fashnalgid became involved in an illegal enterprise, he would be in Odim’s power. By all means he should have a little boat, with a boatman to crew her, and Besi should sail round the bay and meet him and his holy companion.
Even while these arrangements had been made, the laws of the Oligarch were pressing down harder on the population. Day by day, street by street, Koriantura was falling under military control. Odim saw all, said nothing, worried for his herd of relations, and made his own plans.
Besi now helped Toress Lahl to carry the stiff body of Luterin Shokerandit into the boat. ‘Do we have to take these two?’ she asked Fashnalgid, staring down with disfavour at the sick man. ‘They are probably infectious.’
‘We can’t leave them here,’ Fashnalgid said.
‘I suppose you want us to take the yelks too.’
The captain ignored this remark and motioned to the boatman to cast off. The yelks stood on the shore, watching them depart. One ventured forward into the mud, slipped, and withdrew. They remained staring at the small boat as it faded away over the water in the direction of Koriantura.
It was cold on the water. While the boatman sat by the tiller, the others crouched below the tarpaulin, out of the wind. Toress Lahl was disinclined to talk, but Besi plied her with questions.
‘Where are you from? I can tell by your accent that you’re not from here. Is this man your husband?’
Reluctantly, Toress Lahl admitted that she was Shokerandit’s slave.
‘Well, there are ways out of slavery,’ said Besi feelingly. ‘Not many. I’m sorry for you. You could be worse off if your master dies.’
‘Perhaps I could find a boat in Koriantura which would take me back to Campannlat – once Lieutenant Shokerandit is safe, I mean. Would you help me?’
Fashnalgid said, ‘Lady, there will be trouble enough for us when we get back to Koriantura, without helping a slave to escape. You’re a good-looking woman – you should find a good billet.’
Ignoring this last remark, Toress Lahl said, ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Ah … That is up to God, the Oligarch, and a certain Major Gardeterark to devise,’ said Fashnalgid. He brought out his flask and took a long swig at its contents.
With some reluctance, he offered it round to the women.
From under the tarpaulin, Shokerandit said, slowly but distinctly, ‘I don’t want to go through this again …’
Toress Lahl rested a hand on his burning head.
Fashnalgid said, ‘You’ll find that life is essentially a series of repeat performances, my fine lieutenant.’
The population of Sibornal was less than forty percent that of its neighbour Campannlat. Yet communications between distant national capitals were generally better than in Campannlat. Roads were good, except in backward areas like Kuj-Juvec; since few centres of population were at a great distance from the coast, seas acted as thoroughfares. It was not a difficult continent to govern, given a strong will in the strongest city, Askitosh.
A street plan of Askitosh revealed a semicircular design, the centre point of which was the gigantic church perched on the waterfront. The light on the spire of this church could be seen for some miles down the coast. But at the rear of the semicircle, a mile or more from the sea, was Icen Hill, upon which granite mound stood a castle housing the strongest will in Askitosh and all Sibornal.
This Will saw to it that the land and sea roads of the continent were busy – busy with military preparation and with that forerunner of military preparation, the poster. Posters appeared in towns and in the smallest hamlets, announcing one new restriction after another. Often the announcements these posters bore came in the guise of concern for the population: they were for the Prevention of the Spread of Fat Death, or they were for the Limitation of Famine, or for the Arrest of Dangerous Elements. But what they all boiled down to was the Curtailment of Individual Liberty.
It was generally supposed by those who worked for the Oligarchy that the Will behind these edicts regulating the lives of the inhabitants of the northern continent was that of the Supreme Oligarch, Torkerkanzlag II. No one had ever seen Torkerkanzlag. If he existed, Torkerkanzlag confined himself to a set of chambers within Icen Hill Castle. But such edicts as were currently being issued were felt to be consistent with the nature of someone who had so little love for his own liberty that he locked himself up in a suite of windowless rooms.
Those higher up the scale had their doubts about the Supreme Oligarch, and often maintained that the title was an empty one, and that government was in the hands of the Inner Chamber of the Oligarchy itself.
It was a paradoxical situation. At the core of the State was an entity almost as nebulous as the Azoiaxic One, the entity at the heart of the Church. Torkerkanzlag was understood to be a name adopted on election, and possibly used by more than one person.
Then there were the obiter dicta supposed to filter down from the very lips – the beak, some claimed – of the Oligarch himself.
‘We may debate here in council. But remember that the world is not a debating chamber. It more closely resembles a torture chamber.’
‘Do not mind being called wicked. It is the fate of rulers. That the people want nothing but wickedness you can ascertain by listening at any street corner.’
‘Use treachery where possible. It costs less than armies.’
‘Church and State are brother and sister. One day we will decide which shall inherit the family fortune.’
Such morsels of wisdom passed through the oesophagus of the Inner Chamber and into the body politic.
As for that Inner Chamber, it might be expected that those who belonged to it would know the nature of the Will. Such was not the case. The Members of the Inner Chamber – they were now in session and came masked – were collectively even less sure of the nature of the Will than the ignorant citizens living in the damp streets below the hill. So close to that formidable Will were they that they had to fence it about with pretence. The masks they wore were but an outer cover for a barrier of deviousness; these men of power trusted each other so little that each had developed a posture with regard to the nature of the Oligarch by which truth could not be distinguished – much like insects which, if predatory, disguise themselves as something innocuous whereby to deceive their prey, or, if innocuous, as a poisonous species to deceive their predators.
Thus it might be that the Member from Braijth, the capital city of Bribahr, was a man who knew the truth about the Will that dominated them. He might admit to his cronies the truth of the matter; or he might tell a guarded half-truth; or he might lie about the matter in one way or another, according to what best suited him.
And in the case of that Member from Braijth, in actual fact, the degree of his deceitfulness could scarcely be judged, since, beneath the imposed continental unity, guaranteed by many a solemn pact, Uskutoshk was at war with Bribahr, and a force from Askitosh was besieging Rattagon (as far as it was possible to besiege that island fortress).
Moreover, other Members feigned to trust the Member from Braijth according to their secret sympathies with his country’s policy in daring to challenge the leadership of Uskutoshk. Feigning was all. Their very sincerity was feigned.
No one was secure in his understanding. With this they were collectively content, finding security in believing that their fellow Members were even more deluded than they were themselves.
Thus the soul of the most powerful city on the planet had at its core a profound obfuscation and confusion. It was with this confusion that they chose to meet the challenge of the changing seasons.
The Members were currently discussing the latest edict to descend from the unseen hand of the Oligarch for their ratification. This was the most challenging edict yet. The edict would prohibit the practice of pauk, as being against the principles of the Church.
If the required legislation was passed, it would entail in practice the stationing of soldiery in every hamlet throughout the continent in order to enforce the prohibition. Since the Members considered themselves learned, they approached the subject by leisurely discourse. Their lips moved thinly under their masks.
‘The edict brings under consideration our very nature,’ said the Member for the city of Juthir, the capital of Kuj-Juvec. ‘We are speaking here of an age-old custom. But what is age-old is not necessarily sacrosanct. On the one hand, we have our irreplaceable Church, the very basis of Sibornalese unity, with its cornerstone God the Azoiaxic. On the other hand, unrecognised by the Church, we have the custom of pauk, by which living persons can sink their selves down into a trance state to commune with their ancestral spirits. Those spirits, as we know, are supposed to be descending to as well as being descended from the Original Beholder, that inscrutable mother figure. On the one hand is our religion, pure, intellectual, scientific; on the other hand is this hazy notion of a female principle.
‘It is necessary for us to prepare for the harsher, colder times to come. For that, we must arm ourselves against the female principle in ourselves, and eradicate it from the population. We must strike at this pernicious cult of the Original Beholder. We must banish pauk. I trust that what I say merely elucidates the wisdom behind this fresh and inspired edict of the Will.
‘Furthermore, I would go so far as to claim—’
Most of the Members were old, were accustomed to being old, had persisted in being old for a long while. They met in an ancient room in which all items, whether iron or wood, had been polished over the centuries by a host of slaves until they shone. The iron table at which they propped themselves, the bare floor beneath their slippered feet, the elaborately wrought chairs on which they sat, all gleamed at them. The austere iron panelling on the walls threw back distorted reflections of themselves. A fire glowed in the prison of its grate, sending more smoke than flame through the bars; because it did little to remove the chill of the chamber, the Members were well shrouded in felts, like mummers in an ancient play. The one furnishing to relieve this gloomy brightness was a large tapestry which decked one wall. Against a scarlet background, a great wheel was depicted being rowed through the heavens by oarsmen in pale blue garments; each oarsman smiled towards an astonishing maternal figure from whose nostrils, mouth, and breasts spurted the stars in the sky. This ancient fabric lent a touch of grandeur to the room.
While one or other of their number held forth, the Members sipped at pellamountain cordial and stared down at their fingernails or out through the slit windows, which provided glimpses of an Askitosh sliced into small vertical sections.
‘Some claim that the myth of the Original Beholder is a poetical image of the self,’ said the Member from the distant province of Carcampan. ‘But it has yet to be established whether such an entity as the self exists. If it does, it may not even be, if I may coin a phrase, master in its own house. It may exist outside our selves. That is to say, the self may be a component of Helliconia itself, since our atoms are Helliconia’s. In which case, there may be some danger attendant on destroying contact with the Beholder. That I must point out to the Honourable Members.’
‘Danger or not, the people must bend to the will of the Oligarch, or the Weyr-Winter will destroy them. We must be cured of our self. Only obedience will see us through three and a half centuries of ice …’ This platitude came from the other end of the iron table, where reflections and shadows merged.
The view of Askitosh was executed in sepia monochrome. The city was enfolded in one of the famous ‘silt mists’, a thin curtain of cold dry air which descended on the city from the plateaux ranged behind it. To this was added the smoke rising from thousands of chimneys, as the Uskuti endeavoured to keep themselves warm. The city faded under a shadow partly of its own making.
‘On the other hand, communication with our ancestors in the pauk state does much to fortify our selves,’ said one greybeard. ‘Particularly when in adversity. I mean, I imagine that few of us here have not derived comfort from communication with the gossies.’
In a querulous voice, a Member from the Lorajan port of Ijivibir said, ‘By the by, why have our scientists not discovered how it is that gossies and fessups are now friendly to our souls, whereas – as well-authenticated testaments tell – they were once always hostile? Could it be a seasonal change, do you think – friendly in winter and summer, hostile in spring?’
‘The question will be rendered immaterial if we abandon the gossies and fessups to their own devices by promulgating the edict before us,’ replied the Member from Juthir.
Through the narrow windows could be seen the roofs of the government printing press where, after only a day or two of further discussion, the edict of the Supreme Oligarch Torkerkanzlag II was turned into print. The posters that fell in their thousands from the flatbed presses announced in bold type that hereafter it would be an Offence to Go into Pauk, whether Secretly or in Company with Others. This was explained as another precaution against the Encroaching Plague. Penalty for contravening the law, One Hundred Sibs and, for a Second Offence, Life Imprisonment.
