Helliconia, page 74
The little figures wriggled and changed under the king’s inspection. His majesty seized the timepiece; he and BranzaBaginut inspected it, whispering. Prophets had spoken of a time when magical machineries would appear and the state would be overthrown and the Empire destroyed.
‘Will this jewel tell me how long I have left to reign? Can it inform me of the age of my daughter?’
‘Sir, it is science, plain science, not magic. Its case is of platinum trawled from space itself …’
The king brushed it away with a sweep of his hand.
‘The jewel is evil. I know it. Kings as well as deuteroscopists are cunning about the future. Why did you come here?’ He threw the watch back to Billy.
‘Your Majesty, I came to see the queen.’
JandolAnganol was disconcerted by this reply and stepped back as if he were confronting a ghost. Said BranzaBaginut, ‘So you are not only an atheist but a Myrdolator? And you expect to be welcome here? Why should his majesty tolerate any more of your riddling? Yon are neither lunatic nor jester. Where did you come from? SartoriIrvrash’s armpit?’
He advanced threateningly on Billy, who backed against a wall. Other members of the court began to close in, anxious to show their sovereign how they regarded unroasted Myrdolators.
Krillio Muntras rose from his cushions and advanced to where the king stood, looking about sharply in some indecision.
‘Your majesty, why not ask your prisoner by what ship he arrived from this other world of his?’
The king looked as if undecided as to whether to become angry. Instead, he said, with his nose still covered, ‘Well, creature, to please our ice trader – by what vehicle came you here?’
Edging round the perimeters of BranzaBaginut, Billy said, ‘My ship was of metal, a ship entirely enclosed, carrying its own air. I can make all this comprehensible with the aid of diagrams. Our science is advanced, and could aid Borlien … The ship brought me down to Helliconia safely, then left, to return on its own to my world.’
‘Has it a mind then, this vessel?’
‘That’s difficult to answer. Yes, it has a mind. It can calculate – navigate through space, perform a thousand actions by itself.’
JandolAnganol bent in a careless way and lifted up a wine jar, elevating it slowly until it was above his head. ‘Which of us is mad, creature, you or I? This vessel has a mind – yes, yes, it too can navigate all by itself. Look!’ He flung it. The jar flew through the air, crashed into a wall and broke, splashing its contents all about. This small violence caused everyone to become as immobile as phagors.
‘Your Majesty, I endeavoured to answer your—’ He sneezed violently.
‘It’s guilt and anger only that forces me to try and get reason out of you. But why should I bother? I’m deprived, I have nothing, this place is an empty larder, with rats for courtiers. All has been taken away, yet still more is asked of me. You too ask something of me … I am confronted by demons all the way … I must do penance again, Archpriest, and your hand must not be light upon me. This is SartoriIrvrash’s demon, I do believe. Tomorrow, I will endeavour to address the scritina and all will be changed. Today I am merely a father who bleeds a lot …’
He said in a lower voice, to himself, ‘Yes, that’s it, simply, I must change myself.’
He lowered his eyes and looked weary. A drip of blood fell to the floor.
Ice Captain Muntras gave a cough. As a practical man, he was embarrassed by the king’s outburst.
‘Sire, I come on you at a bad time, as I see. I am just a trader, and so had best be on my way. For the past many years, I have brought you the best Lordryardry ice straight off the best slice of our glaciers, and at the best prices. Now, sire, I will give my grateful thanks for your custom and hospitality at the palace, and take my leave of you for ever. Despite the fog, it’s best I was off back home.’
The speech seemed in a measure to revive the king, who put a hand on the Ice Captain’s shoulder. The eyes of the latter were round in innocence.
‘I would I had such men as you about me, talking plain sense all the time, Captain. Your service has been appreciated. Nor do I forget your assistance to me when I was wounded after that fearsome occasion in the Cosgatt – as I am wounded now. You are a true patriot.’
‘Sire, I am a true patriot of my own country, of Dimariam. To which I am about to retire. This is my last trip. My son will carry on the ice trade with all the devotion I have shown you and the – hm – the ex-queen. As the weather grows hotter, your majesty will perhaps be needing additional loads of ice?’
‘Captain, you good trader in better climates, you should be rewarded for your service. Despite my dreadful state of penury, and the meanness of my scritina, I ask – is there anything I might present you with as a token of our esteem?’
Muntras shuffled. ‘Sire, I am unworthy of reward, and do not seek one, but supposing I said to you that I would make an exchange? On the journey here from Oldorando, I, being a compassionate man, rescued a phagor from a drumble. He is recovered from a watery ordeal, often fatal to his kind, and must find a living away from Cahchazzerh, where he was persecuted. I will present this stallun to you as a slave if you will present me with your prisoner, whether demon or not. Is it a deal?’
‘You may have the creature. Take it away, together with its mechanical jewel. You need give me nothing in return, Captain. I am in your debt if you will remove it from my kingdom.’
‘Then I will take him. And you shall have the phagor, so that my son may call on you in the same civil terms as I have always done. He’s a good boy, sir, is Div, though with no more polish than his father.’
So Billy Xiao Pin passed into the keeping of the Ice Captain. And on the following day, when the fog was dispersing before a slight breeze, the king’s cloudiness also dispersed. He kept his promise to address the scritina.
To that body, who sat coughing in their pews, he presented the appearance of a changed man. Having attested to the wickedness of Chancellor SartoriIrvrash, and to his major role in the reverses recently suffered by the state, JangolAnganol launched into a confession.
‘Gentlemen of the scritina, you swore fealty to me when I ascended the throne of Borlien. There have been reverses to our dearly beloved kingdom, that I do not deny. No king, however powerful, however benevolent, can greatly change the condition of his people – that I now realise. I cannot command droughts or the suns which bring such plagues on our land.
‘In my desperation, I have committed crimes. Urged on by the chancellor, I was responsible for the deaths of the Myrdolators. I confess and ask your forgiveness. It was done to set the kingdom right, to stop further dissension. I have given up my queen, and with her all lust, all seeking for self. My marriage to the Princess Simoda Tal of Oldorando will be a dynastic one – chaste, chaste, I swear. I will not touch her except to breed. I will take thought for her years. I shall henceforth devote myself wholeheartedly to my country. Give me your obedience, gentlemen, and you will have mine.’
He spoke controlledly, with tears in his eyes. His audience sat in silence, gazing up at him sitting on the gilded throne of the scritina. Few felt pity for him; most saw only the opportunity to exploit this fresh instance of his weakness.
Despite the absence of a moon, there were tides on Helliconia. As Freyr drew nearer, the planet’s watery envelope experienced an increase in tidal strength of some sixty percent above conditions at apastron, when Freyr was more than seven hundred astronomical units distant.
MyrdemInggala, in her new home, liked to walk alone by the shore of the sea. Her troubled thoughts blew away for a while. This was a marginal place, the strip between the kingdoms of the sea and the kingdoms of the land. It reminded her of her dimday garden left behind, placed between night and day. She was only vaguely aware of the constant struggle that went on at her feet, perhaps never to be entirely won or lost. She gazed towards the horizon, wondering as she did every day if the Ice Captain had delivered her letter to the general in the distant wars.
The queen’s gown was pale yellow. It went with the solitude. Her favourite colour was red, but she wore it no more. It did not go with old Gravabagalinien and its haunted past. The hiss of the sea demanded yellow, to her mind.
When she was not swimming, she left Tatro on the beach to play and walked below the high-tide line. Her lady-in-waiting reluctantly followed. Tough grasses grew from the sand. Some formed clumps. A step or two farther inland and other plants ventured. A little white daisy with armoured stem was among the first. There was a small plant with succulent leaves, almost like a seaweed. MyrdemInggala did not know its name, but she liked to pick it. Another plant had dark leaves. It straggled among the sand and grasses in insignificant clusters but, on occasions where conditions were right, raised itself into striking bushes with a lustrous sheen.
Behind these first bold invaders of the shore lay the litter of the tide line. Then came a haggard area, punctuated with tough, large-flowered daisies. Then less adventurous plants took over, and the beach was banished, though inlets of sand seamed the land for some way.
‘Mai, don’t be unhappy. I love this place.’
The dawdling lady put on a sullen expression. ‘You are the most beautiful and fateful lady in Borlien.’ She had never spoken to her mistress in this tone before. ‘Why could you not keep your husband?’
The queen made no answer. The two women continued along the shore, some way apart. MyrdemInggala walked among the lustrous bushes, caressing their tips with her hand. Occasionally, something under a bush would hiss and recoil from her step.
She was aware of Mai TolramKetinet, trailing dolefully behind her, hating exile. ‘Keep up, Mai,’ she called encouragingly. Mai did not respond.
XI
Journey to the Northern Continent
The old man wore an ankle-length keedrant which had seen better days. On his head was a scoop-shaped hat, which protected his scrawny neck as well as his bald pate from the sun. At intervals, he lifted a shaking hand to his lips to puff at the stem of a veronikane. He stood all alone, waiting to leave the palace for good.
At his back was a coach of light build, loaded with his few personal belongings. Two hoxneys were harnessed between the shafts. It needed only a driver, and then SartoriIrvrash could be gone.
The wait afforded him a chance to look across the parade to a corner where an old bent slave with a stick was encouraging a mountain of papers to burn. That bonfire contained all the papers ransacked from the ex-chancellor’s suite, including the manuscripts which formed ‘The Alphabet of History and Nature’.
The smoke rose into a pallid sky from which light ash occasionally fell. Temperatures were as high as ever, but a grey overcast covered everything. The ash was born on an easterly airstream from a newly erupting volcano some distance from Matrassyl. That was of no interest to SartoriIrvrash; it was the black ashes ascending which occupied his attention.
His hand trembled more violently and he made the tip of his veronikane blaze like a small volcano.
A voice behind him said, ‘Here are some more of your clothes, master.’
His slave woman stood there, a neatly wrapped bundle offered to him. She gave him a placatory smile. ‘It’s a shame you have to go, master.’
He turned his worn face fully to her, stepped a pace nearer to look into her face.
‘Are you sorry to see me go, woman?’
She nodded and lowered her gaze. Well, he thought, she enjoyed it when we had a little rumbo – and to think I never bothered to ask. I never thought of her enjoyment. How isolated I have been in my own feelings. A good enough man, learned, but worth nothing because I had no feelings for others. Except for little Tatro.
He didn’t know what to say to the slave woman. He coughed.
‘It’s a bad day, woman. Go inside. Thank you.’
She gave him a last eloquent glance before turning away. SartoriIrvrash thought to himself, Who knows what slave women feel? He hunched his shoulders, irritated with her, and with himself, for showing feeling.
He scarcely noticed when the driver appeared. He took in only a youthful figure, head shrouded against the heat in a kind of Madi hood, so that its face could scarcely be seen.
‘Are you ready?’ this figure called, as it swung itself up into the driver’s seat. The two hoxneys shuffled as the weight adjusted against their straps.
Still SartoriIrvrash lingered. He pointed with his kane towards the distant bonfire. ‘There goes a whole lifetime’s learning.’ He was mainly addressing himself. ‘That’s what I can’t forgive. That’s what I shall never forgive. All that work …’
With a heavy sigh, he climbed aboard the coach. It began at once to roll forward, towards the palace gates. There were those in the palace who loved him; fearing the king’s wrath, they had not dared to emerge and wave him farewell. He set his face firmly to the front, blinking his eyes rapidly.
The prospects before SartoriIrvrash were dim. He was thirty-seven years and eight tenners old – well past middle age. It was possible that he could get a post as advisor at the court of King Sayren Stund, but he detested both the king and Oldorando, which was far too hot. He had always kept himself apart from his own and his dead wife’s relations in Matrassyl. His brothers were dead. There was nothing for it but to go and live with his daughter; she and her husband dwelt in a dull southern town near the Thribriat border.
There he would sink from human ken and attempt to rewrite his life’s work. But who would print it, now that he had no power? Who would read it if it were not printed? In despair, he had written to his daughter, and now intended to catch a boat that would take him south. The coach proceeded briskly downhill. At the bottom of the hill, instead of turning towards the docks, it swerved to the right and rattled up a narrow alley. Its hubs on its left side screamed as they rubbed against the walls of the houses.
‘Take care, you fool, you’ve gone wrong!’ said SartoriIrvrash, but he said it to himself. Who cared what happened?
The equipage rattled down a back road under the brow of a cliff and entered a small neglected courtyard. The driver jumped energetically down and closed the courtyard gates, so that they could not be seen from the street. He looked in at the ex-chancellor.
‘Would you care to climb down? There’s someone waiting to see you.’ He swept off his elaborate headgear in a mock bow.
‘Who are you? What have you brought me here for?’
The boy opened the carriage door invitingly.
‘Don’t you recognise me, Rushven?’
‘Who are you? Why – Roba, it’s you!’ he said in some relief – for the thought had occurred to him that JandolAnganol might be planning to kidnap and murder him.
‘It’s me or a hoxney, for I move at speed these days. That’s how it’s all secrecy. I’m a secret even from myself. I have vowed to be revenged on my cursed father again, since he banished my mother. And on my mother, who left without a farewell to me.’
As he allowed the boy to help him out, SartoriIrvrash surveyed him, anxious to see if he looked as wild as his words. RobaydayAnganol was now just twelve years old, a smaller and thinner edition of his father. He was toasted brown by the sun; red scars showed on his torso. Smiles came and went like twitches over his face, as though he could not decide whether he was joking or not.
‘Where have you been, Roba? We’ve missed you. Your father missed you.’
‘Do you mean the Eagle? Why, he nearly caught me. I’ve never cared for court life. I care even less now. My father’s crime has set me free. So I am a hoxney-brother. A Madi-assister. I will never become king, and he will never again become happy. New lives, new lives, and one for you, Rushven! You first introduced me to the desert, and I will not desert you. I’m going to take you to someone important, human, not father or hoxney.’
‘Who? What’s all this about? Wait!’
But Roba was striding off. SartoriIrvrash looked doubtfully at the coach loaded with all his worldly goods and then decided he had better follow. Walking fast, he entered a dim hall only a step or two behind the king’s son.
The house was built according to a pattern suited to its overshadowed location: it stretched up to the light like a plant growing between boulders. The old man was panting by the time Roba led them off the shaking wooden stairs and into a room on the third floor, the only room on that level. SartoriIrvrash broke into prolonged coughing and collapsed on a stool someone offered him.
There were three people awaiting them in the room, and he observed that they seized on the opportunity also to cough. A certain rickety elegance in their structure, a certain sharpness of bone structure, marked them out as Sibornalese. One of them was a woman, elegantly dressed in a silk chagirack, the northern equivalent of a charfrul, its delicate fabric patterned with large black and white formal flowers. Two men stood behind her in the shadows. SartoriIrvrash recognised her immediately as Madame Dienu Pasharatid, wife of the ambassador who had disappeared the day that Taynth Indredd had introduced matchlocks into the palace.
He bowed to her and apologised for his coughing.
‘We are all doing it, Chancellor. It is the volcano making our throats sore.’
‘I believe my throat is sore through grief. You must not call me by my old title.’ He would not ask her to what volcano she referred, but she saw uncertainty in his face.
‘The volcanic eruption in the Rustyjonnik Mountains. Its ash carries this way.’
She regarded him with sympathy, letting him recover from the stairs. Her face was large and plain. Although be knew her for an intelligent woman, there was an unpleasant asperity about her mouth, and he had often been guilty of avoiding her company.
He looked about. The walls were covered with thin paper which had peeled in places. One picture hung there, a pen-and-tint drawing of what he recognised as Kharnabhar, the holy mountain of the Sibornalese. The only window, which was to one side, lighting Dienu Pasharatid’s face in profile, provided a view of rocky cliff from which creepers hung; the vegetation had a coating of grey ash. Roba sat cross-legged on the floor, sucking a straw and smiling from one to another of the party.
