Collected Short Fiction, page 17
It is part of the legend that it is true, an account brought eventually to China by a wandering fisherman, who happened to be far out to sea in pursuit of a shoal when volcanic eruption crumpled the ocean bed five miles beneath his keel and caused the lands of Argot and Mag to settle and vanish beneath the waves as if they had never been. Which, perhaps, they had not.
Whoever else outlived that disaster did not survive the tempest that followed it, or if they did there is no record of them. A violent westerly gale carried the fisherman in his small craft a thousand miles or more in two days and flung him on an inhabited outpost of an archipelago in the China Seas. From which he made his way by sundry voyages over a period of ten years to the Chinese mainland, missing Japan altogether.
He was the first and last man (perhaps) of the Two Kingdoms ever to learn that Argot and Mag were not the whole world.
Yet I have doubts of this fisherman. True, he was supposed to have been at one time a foot soldier in the Army of Argot, and therefore would have witnessed the last act of the drama of the Three Pylons, played as it was before an audience of wondering thousands. But how could he have known of things so few people knew, and those people not of his circle—the contents of the Messages, for example?
Possibly it is Chinese embroidery.
But I suspect that the real originator of this tale was none other than Benevo himself, Benevo the mysterious, the all-wise, come by great chance and wonder to the land of the people so happily akin to his philosophy. Benevo and all knowledge of him must, however, be a faded and illegible page in Chinese history, for nought remains of him but this tale.
It begins in this fashion:
One evening, as the sun sank towards the western sea and enveloped it in glittering redness as a portent of its coming to rest, twelve men and a captain, all the King’s Own Guard, marched from a main door of the Palace of Argot. Straight down the avenue of palms they marched, their captain two paces ahead, leading them into the sunset.
Of a sudden they right-wheeled with precision, and so by a side path into a garden of seclusion. There, on a lawn, they halted, left turned and stood in rank. The captain ordered them to open ranks.
He addressed them.
“Men,” he said, “this is our last parade in this country. You have been good soldiers. You have been lazy, you have shirked small things, you have not always been clean. But you have never failed to perform the real tasks that have been demanded of you. I can trust you to continue to do so in the new life which opens up before us. Till we meet once more! Draw!”
The thin, short shriek of steel brushing steel as their swords were drawn from their scabbards. They saluted and the captain returned their salute.
“On guard!” the captain commanded.
Twelve swords thrust forward and up, a concord of simultaneous movements whose perfection told of long, long hours of drill and effort. In his own time the captain followed the movement.
And so they all stood, immobile.
The garden lay about them in loveliness in the evening light. Nature was given every chance in the royal garden. Flowering creepers climbed the trees and lost themselves in the higher greenery or arched across loggias and covered carved pillars with a more fantastic tracery of their own. The bushes were heavy with ripe fruit and the little berry plants thrust their bright offerings through every aperture they could find. The orchids were thick upon every green wall, things of staring colour like many-hued eyes watching the men in silent curiosity. And growths which had no beauty or fruit, but only ambition, crept and clambered on the backs of their fellows, parasitic and heartless in their all-consuming greed to reach the wonderful sun.
Small, vivid-feathered birds ever swooped and whirred, the midges drifted and swarmed like motes in a sunbeam.
It was a garden of bursting life. And into it came death in a subtle and strange form.
THE SWORD of the third guard from the left in the front rank suddenly wavered and dipped. Then its owner went down with a thump and crash of body and steel equipment, as though he had been pierced by an invisible arrow. He lay face downwards and very still, his fingers yet tight around his sword-grip.
No one even looked at him. No one moved a muscle. The discipline of the King’s Own Guard began in childhood.
Silence but for the humming of the flying insects. Stillness, save for the fluttering missions of the birds.
A man at one end of the rear rank sank gently to his knees, pitched as gently forward. The rigid men heard a sigh and that was all.
Presently two front-rankers reeled and toppled almost together. Another fell singly. And another. And another.
Until twelve dead men sprawled upon the living grass.
For the old King Fero, their lord, had died but a short time since, and it was the custom for the King of Argot’s bodyguard in life to follow him into the realm of death and there continue to guard him against whatever dangers may be. All the guard and their captain had quaffed poison but a moment before they marched from the Palace.
The captain now permitted himself to lower his gaze to survey his departed men. He noted with approval that not one of them had loosed his hold upon his sword. A certain fondness crept into his gaze, and then he pulled himself together with a military snap. Again he stared straight in front of him with ice-cold eyes.
But behind those expressionless eyes thoughts moved. He wondered whether his men had already arrived. If they were waiting for him. If the old-new King Fero were impatient of his coming. Or if there were impatience, which is fear, in that supposedly calm world of infinite time. Or if, indeed (blasphemy, this!) there were such a world at all.
The rosy light streaming from behind, over his shoulder, came from the last sunset he would ever see anywhere. For an incredible moment a queer aching desire struggled with discipline for him to turn his head and drink his fill of the glory behind him.
But discipline won. He even gazed across the tops of the bushes to the massive base of the White Pylon (the stone of it was now stained pink-red in that light) and forbore to look up at the dizzy summit, a hundred times a man’s height above him, even though curiosity burned in him yet again in those last moments.
Why had King Fero built it? What was the answer to the riddle of the White Pylon?
The pain of death smote him in the middle of this old puzzlement. The wave of it sprang suddenly from the heart, paralysed his throat and mouth muscles. Involuntarily, he flung his hand back. He saw the point of the White Pylon dug into the darkening blue of the sky, and then swiftly pink-red and blue merged and became black. He felt himself falling. His last conscious directed thought was to clench his right hand as hard as he could.
So the captain joined his men in death, perhaps in life after death. Not with shame, anyway, for, as was fitting, he had outlasted them, nor had he lost his sword.
The birds dived and curved over the thirteen motionless bodies and cared nothing for them. The eternal midges moved in their golden-winged sphere.
Slowly, slowly, the sun sank.
II.
IN HIS private room at the Palace Rodan, son of Fero and now King by right of succession, weighed in his hand the flat golden case given to him by his dying father. His pale eyes regarded it from every angle as if their keenness could pierce any chink there might be and see all that was inside without opening it.
Apparently they could not, for: “The key, Benevo, the key,” he demanded impatiently.
Rodan was always impatient. The servants of the royal household lived under the constant threat of his boiling urge to get something or go somewhere and the eruptions if there was any delay. He was free and violent with his tongue, his fist and his whip.
The ladies of the Court were scared of him, too, but a thrill went with the scare. He was tall, big boned, with strikingly wide shoulders, and his hair was of pure gold, sweeping back in a disordered mane. The hair of his head might receive scant attention, but he was careful to keep all trace of hair from his lips and chin. Power stood stark in every line of them: he wanted it to show.
Not particularly for the ladies’ benefit. It was to impress “them”—and “them” meant the people—all people, male, female, young, old, clever, stupid, who happened to inhabit this island, which was the world, with him.
Only one man was not impressed. That was Benevo, Advisor to the old King Fero, now automatically filling the same office for Rodan. An ancient man—how ancient nobody seemed to know. He was bearded and venerable even in Fero’s youth, and whence he came and how he rose to power only the late King knew. Possibly.
Just now he was endeavouring, in his slow-moving way, to unfasten a small silver key from its catch on the thin gold chain which he wore fairly tightly around his neck. For that was the way Fero had enjoined him to carry it. It caught obstinately.
“My esteemed Benevo,” said Rodan, “the best way is always the shortest way.”
His strong fingers gripped the thin chain. One quick jerk and the links pulled out and fell apart and left an end in either palm. Rodan lifted the chain and key away.
“You see, just a little force, a little energy applied with determination in the right place will accomplish in a moment what an hour Of patient fumbling will not,” he said in the ironic tone habitual with him.
Ironic humour was the only kind he understood. That and fretting impatience, cold cruelty, contempt, a hunting instinct, a desire for conquest, a fighting rage and a quality of curiosity made up the whole character of Rodan. Love, worship, tolerance, generosity or real humour had never entered into it and never would.
“But, Sire, the chain cannot be worn again,” pointed out Benevo gently.
“There is no need for it to be: its use is finished,” said Rodan logically enough.
He was fitting the key in the lock as he spoke and now he turned it and lifted the lid. Inside the case was only a dark metal plate, deeply engraved with letters.
“What is this?” he asked, and carried it over to the window to examine it by the fading light of day.
It was the first of the Messages, and it read:
To my son, Rodan.
Greetings, new King of Argot!
I am departed to rule in another land, and I leave you as heritage this throne—and a Mystery! Truly I do not know all of this Mystery myself. I set it, indeed, detail by detail as the stars directed in the horoscope Oelin cast for me upon my wish. My wish was this: That I should become Emperor of the World, King of Argot and Mag together. But the path to that greater throne is hard. Hard to build, harder to follow. And the Gods decree that there shall be no other path for he who would conquer.
Before I began even to build, my spirit quailed. I knew I had not the qualities to tread that path. My dream of Lordship of the Two Kingdoms was just a dream—for me. But in you, my son, I perceive the qualities of the true conqueror, and therefore over many years and with much labour I have builded the path for you. That you may gain the prize for our line.
The first necessary step is that you climb to the top of the White Pylon, the Pylon of Life, which stands without the Palace, and learn what is written upon the top thereof. That will place your feet firmly on the beginning of the road.
A word of warning. Trust not in Benevo. I have over-trusted him in the past. He will weaken you with his words of seeming wisdom, as he weakened me, and sow doubt over your enterprise.
Trust rather in Oelin. It is written in the stars that he is to play a great part in this adventure. Seek help, therefore, in his house.
And now—climb, my son, and my hopes climb with you!
Your father,
FERO.
RODAN’S thick brows came together as he studied this. He shot an upward look from beneath them at Benevo, that imperturbable man with the snow-white beard, the dreamy dark eyes and the incredibly smooth brow.
“Have you read this?” he asked abruptly.
“No, Sire. Your father gave me the key, that is all. The case he kept himself: I have not seen it until now.”
“Read, then,” said Rodan, and passed the inscribed plate to the old man.
Benevo read it without change of expression.
“You will mark the reference to yourself,” said Rodan, all irony. “Simply because I have never trusted you, I let you see it. My father was a weak man. His warning is unnecessary. As unnecessary as any ‘words of seeming wisdom will be from you. Nobody moulds the thoughts of Rodan but Rodan.”
“If my counsel is not to be heeded, Sire, then it would seem that my position of King’s Advisor is redundant. May I have your permission to resign?”
“No, you may not. Beside myself, you are the only passably intelligent man in this kingdom of fools. Again, it is my ambition to prove to you by my actions that your attitude of sweet reasonableness is a wordy emptiness, a negative, a sheer waste of our limited time of life.”
“Time is not limited except to those who place their own limits to it.”
“Nay, Benevo, draw me not into argument now. I say my time is limited by the dying light of this day. I have a task to do ere it is gone.”
“The funeral——”
“You will lead the funeral procession of my father in my absence. Argue not. I am aware that I am the first to break the aged custom. I will break many customs ere my reign is ended. Go now. See to it.”
“Very good, Sire.”
Benevo bowed and left. In Argot there was small delay in preparing men for burial after their death. Possibly because some held to the belief that a spirit could not leave the body for the next world until that body lay under earth. More possibly because Argot was a hot country. It was the practice for the eldest son (Rodan was an only son) to head the procession to the burial ground. Now all Benevo’s smooth diplomacy was needed to appease the shocked sense of propriety of the gathered and waiting nobles by this uncaring departure from custom by Rodan.
Rodan, meanwhile, pausing only to get his strong hunting lariat, had paced swiftly out to the base of the White Pylon, the Pylon of Life.
For a moment he stood there gazing up at the prodigious height of it. It was a four-sided erection of solid white stone, tapering as its sides rose until the last stretch of it before the summit appeared as thin as a twig. A solitary mare’s tail of cirrus cloud lay in the sky, and the death-light of the sun soaked it red. The narrow end of it lay exactly over the pinnacle of the pylon, so that, looking up from below, it seemed that the pylon flew a long, flaring pennon of crimson.
But the fancy that occurred to Rodan was that the great upthrusting blade of the pylon had ripped a bleeding wound in the belly of the sky, and the point of it had not yet been withdrawn from that bloody gash.
Then he put fancies aside and concentrated on the task in hand.
Up the height of one side of the pylon had been driven, exactly one above the other and some eight or nine feet apart, a series of thin metal bars, perhaps a yard long, projecting at right-angles from the stone, so that one end of each bar was embedded in stone and the other free in the empty air. This fantastically wide-runged ladder ran all the way to the summit, but its highest bars could not be distinguished one from another by reason of their distance.
The lowest bar, however, was all of thirty feet from the ground.
Rodan took a few paces back, measuring this bottom rung with his eye. Then he swung the noose of his lariat around his head and let it fly. The noose soared, passed neatly over the end of the bar and settled, to become a tight knot as Rodan jerked the rope downward.
He climbed the lariat hand over hand and swung himself easily on to the bar. There he sat while he pulled up the lariat, coiled it and hung it from his waist-belt.
Now he stood up on the bar, on his toes, steadying himself with one hand against the wall of the pylon. That in itself was no mean balancing feat, for the bar was very narrow and indeed bending slightly beneath his weight.
He reached upwards towards the next bar. His fingers were a long way below it. He did not hesitate. He bent his knees and leapt straight upwards, thrusting with his toes as hard as he could. His ranging fingers just made the bar, closed upon it. For a moment he swayed at arm’s length. Then, with a lithe acrobatic motion, he swung himself up into a sitting position on the bar.
Once more he stood and reached, leapt and swung.
And again the need to balance, judge, leap, swing, rest. . . .
Until, a score of bars up, he was forced to rest for a long time.
The sea had claimed the body of the sun now an I the cloud overhead had drifted apart and lost its glory. The sky was darkest of blues. The faint pin-point of Venus was appearing, to stand sentinel over the burying-place of the sun.
And suddenly, from the Palace below, already a small thing and blurred in the gloom that lay upon the ground, issued a string of little lights, tiny flames, that wound like the path of a snake towards the south. They were the torches of the funeral procession now setting out with Benevo at its head.
RODAN watched their progress dispassionately for a little while, then stood erect on his bar and judged his leap to the next.
He was already at a height where an error or a failing meant sudden and certain death.
He leapt, successfully.
Again, and again.
When he was as high again he was forced to rest once more. His breathing was stertorous, the muscles of his arms and thighs ached almost intolerably. It was a harder and longer business than he had bargained for. Even now he had lost his race against the light. But he had no thought of delaying therefore. His mental discipline was such that no notion entered his mind that he should not do what he had set himself to do in the shortest possible time.
Presently he stood up. The next rung above him was no more than a narrow black line ruled across the stars, now studding the sky in thousands. With such a perspective, it was difficult to judge its distance. Nevertheless, each bar had so far been exactly the same and uniform distance from its neighbour, and he had fallen into a rhythm of action. He put his faith in this rhythm and leapt again and was rewarded—his fingers encountered the bar just where it should be.
