Helliconia, page 62
JandolAnganol had come at dawn and embraced her. She sensed that he was uneasy. Pannoval loomed. To make matters worse, bad news was coming from the Second Army in Randonan. It was always bad news from Randonan.
‘You can listen to the day’s discussion from the private gallery,’ he said, ‘if it won’t bore you. Pray for me, Cune.’
‘I always pray for you. The All-Powerful will be with you.’
He shook his head patiently. ‘Why isn’t life simple? Why doesn’t the faith make it simple?’ His hand went to the long scar on his leg.
‘We’re safe while we’re here together, Jan.’
He kissed her. ‘I should be with my army. Then we’d see some victories. TolramKetinet is useless as a general.’
There’s nothing between the general and me, she thought – yet he knows there is …
He had left her. As soon as he was gone, she felt gloomy. A chill had fallen over him of late. Her own position was threatened. Without thinking, she linked her arm through her brother’s as they stood on the ramparts.
Princess Tatro was calling, pointing to servants she recognised wending their way up the hill to the palace.
Less than twenty years earlier, a covered way had been built up the hillside to the walls. Under its protection, an army had advanced on the besieged fortress. Using gunpowder charges, it blew an entrance into the palace grounds. A bloody battle was fought.
The inhabitants were defeated. All were put to the sword, men and women, phagors and peasants. All except the baron who had held the palace.
The baron disguised himself and – binding his wife, children, and immediate servants – led them to safety through the breached wall. Bellowing to the enemy to get out of his way, he had successfully bluffed a path to freedom with his mock prisoners. Thus his daughter escaped death.
This Baron RantanOborol was the queen’s father. His deed became renowned. But the fact was that he could never regain his former power.
The man who won the fortress – which was described, like all fortresses before they fall, as impregnable – was the warlike grandfather of JandolAnganol. This redoubtable old warrior was then busy unifying eastern Borlien, and making its frontiers safe. RantanOborol was the last warlord of the area to fall to his armies.
Those armies were largely a thing of the past, and MyrdemInggala, by marrying JandolAnganol and securing some future for her family, had come to live in her father’s old citadel.
Parts of it were still ruinous. Some sections had been rebuilt in JandolAnganol’s father’s reign. Other grand rebuilding schemes, hastily started, slowly crumbled in the heat. Piles of stone formed a prominent part of the fortress landscape. MyrdemInggala loved this extravagant semi-ruin, but the past hung heavy over its battlements.
She made her way, clutching Tatro’s hand, to a rear building with a small colonnade. These were her quarters. A featureless red sandstone wall was surmounted by whimsical pavilions built in white marble. Behind the wall were her gardens and a private reservoir, where she liked to swim. In the middle of the reservoir was an artificial islet, on which stood a slender temple dedicated to Akhanaba. There the king and queen had often made love in the early days of their marriage.
After saying good-bye to her brother, the queen walked up her stairs and along a passage. This passage, open to the breeze, overlooked the garden where JandolAnganol’s father, VarpalAnganol, had once raced dogs and flown multi-coloured birds. Some of the birds remained in their cotes – Roba had fed them every morning before he ran away. Now Mai TolramKetinet fed them.
MyrdemInggala was conscious of an oppressive fear. The sight of the birds merely vexed her. She left a maid to play with Tatro in the passage, and went to a door at the far end which she unlocked with a key hidden among the folds of her skirt. A guard saluted her as she passed through. Her footsteps, light as they were, rang on the tiled floor. She came to an alcove by a window, across which drapes had been drawn, and seated herself on a divan. Before her was an ornate trellis. Through this she could watch without being observed from the other side.
From this vantage point, she could see over a large council chamber. Sun streamed in through latticed windows. None of the dignitaries had yet arrived. Only the king was there, with his phagor runt, the runt that had been a constant companion ever since the Battle of the Cosgatt.
Yuli stood no higher than the king’s chest. Its coat was white and still tipped with the red tassels of its early years. It skipped and pirouetted and opened its ugly mouth as the king held out a hand for it. The king was laughing and snapping his fingers.
‘Good boy, good boy,’ he said.
‘Yezz, I good boy,’ said Yuli.
Laughing, the king embraced it, lifting it off the ground.
The queen shrank back. Fear seized her. As she lay back, the wicker chair beneath her creaked. She hid her eyes. If he knew she was there, he made no attempt to call.
My wild boar, my dear wild boar, she called silently. What has become of you? Her mother had been gifted with strange powers: the queen thought, Something awful is going to overwhelm this court and our lives …
When she dared look again, the visiting dignitaries were entering, chatting among themselves and making themselves comfortable. Cushions and rugs were scattered everywhere. Slaves, female and scantily clad, were busily providing coloured drinks.
JandolAnganol walked among them in his princely way and then flung himself down on a canopied divan. SartoriIrvrash entered, nodding sober greetings, and stationed himself behind the king’s divan, lighting a veronikane as he did so. The runt Yuli settled on a cushion, panting and yawning.
‘You are strangers in our court,’ said the queen aloud, peeping through her trellis. ‘You are strangers in our lives.’
Near JandolAnganol sat a group of local dignitaries, including the mayor of Matrassyl, who was also head of the scritina, JandolAnganol’s vicar, his Royal Armourer, and one or two army men. One of the military was, by his insignia, a captain of phagors but, out of deference to the visitors, no phagor was present, except for the king’s pet.
Among the foreign group, most conspicuous were the Sibornalese. The ambassador to Borlien, Io Pasharatid, was from Uskut. He and his wife sat tall and grey and distant from each other. Some said that they had quarrelled, some that Sibornalese were simply like that. The fact remained that the two, who had lived at the court for more than nine tenners – they were due to complete their first year in another three weeks – rarely smiled or exchanged a glance.
‘You I fear, Pasharatid, you ghost,’ said the queen.
Pannoval had sent a prince. The choice had been carefully made. Pannoval was the most powerful nation among the seventeen countries of Campannlat, its ambitions restrained only by the war it had constantly to wage against Sibornal on its northern front. Its religion dominated the continent. At present, Pannoval courted Borlien, which already paid levies in grain and church taxes; but the courtship was that between an elderly dowager and an upstart lad, and what the lad was sent was a minor prince.
Minor he might be, but Prince Taynth Indredd was a portly personage, making up in bulk what he lacked in significance. He was distantly related to the Oldorandan royal family. Nobody greatly liked Taynth Indredd, but a diplomat in Pannoval had sent with him as chief advisor an ageing priest, Guaddl Ulbobeg, known to be a friend of JandolAnganol since the days when the king had served his priestly term in the monasteries of Pannoval.
‘You men with clever tongues,’ sighed the queen, anxious behind her lattice.
JandolAnganol was speaking now in a modest tone. He remained seated. His voice ran fast, like his gaze. He was in effect giving a report on the state of his kingdom to his visitors.
‘All of Borlien is now peaceful within its borders. There are some brigands, but they are not important. Our armies are committed in the Western Wars. They drain our lifeblood. On our eastern borders, too, we are threatened by dangerous invaders, Unndreid the Hammer and the cruel Darvlish the Skull.’
He looked about him challengingly. It was his shame that he had received a wound from such an unimportant adversary as Darvlish.
‘As Freyr draws nearer, we suffer from drought. Famine is everywhere. You must not expect Borlien to fight elsewhere. We are a country large in extent, poor in produce.’
‘Come, cousin, you are too modest,’ said Taynth Indredd. ‘Everyone knows from childhood that your southern loess plain forms the richest land on the continent.’
‘Richness lies not in land but in land properly farmed,’ replied JandolAnganol. ‘Such is the pressure on our borders that we must press peasants into the armies, and let women and children work the farms.’
‘Then you certainly need our help, cousin,’ said Taynth Indredd, looking about for the applause he felt his point merited.
Io Pasharatid said, ‘If a farmer has a lame hoxney, will a wild kaidaw assist him?’
This remark was ignored. There were those who said that Sibornal should not have been present at this meeting.
In the manner of one making everything clear, Taynth Indredd said, ‘Cousin, you press us for assistance at a time when every nation is in trouble. The riches our grandfathers enjoyed are gone, while our fields burn and our fruits shrivel. And I must speak frankly and say that there is an unresolved quarrel between us. That we greatly hope to resolve, and must resolve if there is to be unanimity between us.’
A silence fell.
Perhaps Taynth Indredd feared to continue.
JandolAnganol jumped to his feet, a look of anger on his dark features.
The little runt, Yuli, scrambled up alertly, as if to do whatever his master might bid.
‘I went to Sayren Stund in Oldorando to ask for help only against common enemies. Here you gather like vultures! You confront me in my own court. What is this quarrel you dream up between us? Tell me.’
Taynth Indredd and his advisor, Guaddl Ulbobeg, conferred. It was the latter, the friend of the king’s, who answered him. He rose, bowed, and pointed to Yuli.
‘It’s no dream, Your Majesty. Our concern is real, and so is that creature you bring here amongst us. From the most ancient times, human kind and phagor kind have been enemies. No truce is possible between beings so different. The Holy Pannovalan Empire has declared holy crusades and drumbles against these odious creatures, with a view to ridding the world of them. Yet your majesty gives them shelter within his borders.’
He spoke almost apologetically, his gaze downcast, so as to rob his words of force. His master restored the force by shouting, ‘You expect aid from us, coz, when you harbour these vermin by the million? They overran Campannlat once before, and will again, given the opportunity you provide.’
JandolAnganol confronted his visitors, hands on hips.
‘I will have no one from outside my borders interfere with my interior policies. I listen to my scritina and my scritina does not complain. Yes, I welcome ancipitals to Borlien. A truce is possible with them. They farm infertile land that our people will not touch. They do humble work that slaves shrink from. They fight for no pay. My treasury is empty – you misers from Pannoval may not understand that, but it means I can afford only an army of phagors.
‘They get their reward in marginal land. Moreover, they do not turn and run in the face of danger! You may say that that is because they are too stupid. To which I reply, that I prefer a phagor to a peasant any day. As long as I am King of Borlien, the phagors have my protection.’
‘You mean, we believe, Your Majesty, that the phagors have your protection as long as MyrdemInggala is Queen of Borlien.’ These words were spoken by one of Taynth Indredd’s vicars, a thin man whose bones were draped in a black woollen charfrul. Again, tension filled the court. Following up his advantage, the vicar continued, ‘It was the queen, with her well-known tenderness towards any living thing, and her father, the warlord RantanOborol – whom your majesty’s grandfather dispossessed of this very palace not twenty years back – who began this degrading alliance with the ancipitals, which you have maintained.’
Guaddl Ulbobeg rose and bowed to Taynth Undredd. ‘Sire, I object to the trend this meeting is taking. We are not here to vilify the Queen of Borlien but to offer aid to the king.’
But JandolAnganol, as if weary, had sat down. The vicar had sought out his vulnerable spot: that his claim to the throne was recent and his consort the daughter of a minor baron.
With a sympathetic glance at his lord, SartoriIrvrash rose to face the Pannovalan visitors.
‘As his majesty’s chancellor, I find myself amazed – yet it’s an amazement blunted somewhat by custom – to discover such prejudice, I might even say animosity, among members of the same great Holy Pannovalan Empire. I, as you may understand, am an atheist, and therefore observe detachedly the antics of your Church. Where is the charity you preach? Do you aid his majesty by trying to undermine the position of the queen?
‘I am grown to the withered end of life, but I tell you, Illustrious Prince Taynth Indredd, that I have as great a hatred of phagors as you. But they are a factor of life we must live with, as you in Pannoval live with your constant hostilities against Sibornal. Would you wipe out all Sibornalese as you would wipe out all phagors? Is it not killing itself that is wrong? Doesn’t your Akhanaba preach that?
‘Since we are speaking frankly, then I will say that there has long been belief in Borlien that if Pannoval were not engaged in fighting Sibornalese colonists along a wide front to the north, then it would be invading us to the south, as you now attempt to dominate us with your ideologies. For that reason, we are grateful to the Sibornalese.’
As the chancellor stooped to confer with JandolAnganol, the Sibornalese ambassador rose and said, ‘Since the progressive nations of Sibornal so rarely receive anything but condemnation from the Empire, I wish to record my astonished gratitude for that speech.’
Taynth Indredd, ignoring this sarcastic interjection, said in the direction of SartoriIrvrash, ‘You are so much at the withered end that you mistake the reality of the situation. Pannoval serves as a bastion between you and southward incursions of the warlike Sibornalese. As a self-proclaimed student of history, you should know that those same Sibornalese never cease – generation after generation – from trying to quit their loathsome northern continent and take over ours.’
Whatever the truth of this last assertion, it was true that the Pannovalans were as offended to find Sibornalese as phagors in the council room. But even Taynth Indredd knew that the real bastion between Sibornal and Borlien was geographical: the sharp spines of the Quzint Mountains and the great corridor between the Quzints and Mordriat called Hazziz, which at this period was a scorching desert.
JandolAnganol and SartoriIrvrash had been conferring. The chancellor now spoke again.
‘Our pleasant guests bring up the subject of the warlike Sibornalese. Before we enter into further botheration and insults, we should proceed to the heart of the matter. My lord King JandolAnganol was lately grievously wounded in defending his realm, so much that his life hung by a thread. He praises Akhanaba for his deliverance, while I praise the herbs my surgeons applied to the wound. I have here the cause of the injury.’
He called forth the Royal Armourer, a small and savagely moustached man dressed in leather who stumped into the centre of the room and then produced a leaden ball, which he held up between thumb and forefinger of a gloved hand. In a formal voice, he announced, ‘This is a shot. It was dug from out his majesty’s leg with a surgeon’s knife. It caused great injury. It was fired from a piece of hand artillery called a matchlock.’
‘Thank you,’ said SartoriIrvrash, dismissing the man. ‘We recognise that Sibornal is greatly progressive. The matchlock is evidence of that progress. We understand that matchlocks are now being made in Sibornal in great numbers, and that there is a later development, by name a wheel lock, which will spread greater devastation. I would advise the Holy Pannovalan Empire to show genuine unity in the face of this new development. Let me assure you, this innovation is more to be feared than Unndreid the Hammer himself.
‘I must furthermore advise you that our agents report that the tribes which invaded the Cosgatt were supplied with these weapons not from Sibornal itself, as might be expected, but from a Sibornalese source in Matrassyl.’
At this statement, all eyes in the court turned to the Sibornalese ambassador. It happened that Io Pasharatid was just refreshing himself with an iced drink. He paused with the glass halfway to his mouth, a look of distress on his face.
His wife, Dienu Pasharatid, reclined on cushions nearby. She rose now, a tall and graceful woman, thin, greyish in cast, severe in appearance.
‘If you statesmen wonder why in my country you are called the Savage Continent, look no further than this latest lie of magnitude. Who would be to blame for such arms trading? Why should my husband be always mistrusted?’
SartoriIrvrash pulled his whiskers, so that his face was tugged into an involuntary smile. ‘Why do you mention your husband in connection with this incident, Madame Dienu? No one else did. I didn’t.’
JandolAnganol rose again. ‘Two of our agents, posing as Driat tribesmen, went into the lower bazaar and bought one of these new inventions. I propose a demonstration of what this weapon can do, so that you will be in no doubt that we have entered a new era in warfare. Perhaps then you will see my need to retain phagors in my army and my realms.’
Addressing himself directly to the Pannovalan prince, he said, ‘If your refinement will allow you to tolerate the presence of ancipitals in the room …’
The diplomats sat up and stared apprehensively at the king.
He clapped his hands. A leather-clad captain from his cortege went to a passage and called an order. Two dehorned phagors marched smartly into the room. They had been standing motionless in the shadows. Their white pelages picked up the light as they passed by the windows. One of them carried a long matchlock before him. A passage was cleared across the middle of the chamber as he set it down and crouched beside it to prepare for firing.
