A Time of Changes

21

When we were docked in Manneran and the longshoremen were at work unloading our cargo, I collected my pay and left ship to enter town. At the foot of the pier I paused to pick up a shore pass from the Mannerangi immigration officials. “How long will you be in town?” I was asked, and blandly I replied that I meant to stay among them for three days, although my real intent was to settle for the rest of my years in this place.

Twice before had I been in Manneran: once just out of my infancy, to be bonded to Halum, and once when I was seven, for my Naming Day. My memories of the city amounted to nothing more than vague and random patterns of colors: the pale pink and green and blue tones of the buildings, the dark green masses of the heavy vegetation, the black solemn interior of the Stone Chapel. As I walked away from the waterfront those colors bombarded me again, and glowing images out of my childhood shimmered before my dazzled eyes. Manneran is not built of stone, as our northern cities are, but rather of a kind of artificial plaster, which they paint in light pastel hues, so that every wall and facade sings joyfully, and billows like a curtain in the sunlight. The day was a bright one, and the beams of light bounced gaily about, setting the streets ablaze and forcing me to shade my eyes. I was stunned also by the complexity of the streets. Mannerangi architects rely greatly on ornament; the buildings are decked with ornate ironwork balconies, fanciful scrollings, flamboyant rooftiles, gaudy window-draperies, so that the northern eye beholds at first glance a monstrous baffling clutter, which resolves itself only gradually into a vista of elegance and grace and proportion. Everywhere, too, there are plants: trees lining both sides of each street, vines cascading from window boxes, flowers bursting forth in curbside gardens, and the hint of lush vegetation in the sheltered courtyards of the houses. The effect is refined and sophisticated, an interplay of jungle profusion and disciplined urban textures. Manneran is an extraordinary city, subtle, sensuous, languorous, overripe.

My childhood recollections did not prepare me for the heat. A steamy haze enveloped the streets. The air was wet and heavy. I felt I could almost touch the heat, could seize it and grasp it, could wring it like water from the atmosphere. It was raining heat and I was drenched in it. I was clad in a coarse, heavy gray uniform, the usual wintertime issue aboard a Glinish merchant ship, and this was a sweltering spring morning in Manneran; two dozen paces in that stifling humidity and I was ready to rip off my chafing clothes and go naked.

A telephone directory gave me the address of Segvord Helalam, my bondsister’s father. I hired a taxi and went there. Helalam lived just outside the city, in a cool leafy suburb of grand homes and glistening lakes; a high brick wall shielded his house from the view of passersby. I rang at the gate and waited to be scanned. My taxi waited too, as if the driver knew certainly that I would be turned away. A voice within the house, some butler, no doubt, queried me over the scanner line and I replied, “Kinnall Darival of Salla, bondbrother to the daughter of the High Justice Helalam, wishes to call upon the father of his bondsister.”

“The Lord Kinnall is dead,” I was informed coldly, “and so you are some impostor.”

I rang again. “Scan this, and judge if he be dead,” I said, holding up to the machine’s eye my royal passport, which I had kept so long concealed. “This is Kinnall Darival before you, and it will not go well with you if you deny him access to the High Justice!”

“Passports may be stolen. Passports may be forged.”

“Open the gate!”

There was no reply. A third time I rang, and this time the unseen butler told me that the police would be summoned unless I departed at once. My taxi driver, parked just across the road, coughed politely. I had not reckoned on any of this. Would I have to go back to town, and take lodgings, and write Segvord Helalam for an appointment, and offer evidence that I still lived?

By good fortune I was spared those bothers. A sumptuous black groundcar drew up, of a kind used generally only by the highest aristocracy, and from it stepped Segvord Helalam, High Justice of the Port of Manneran. He was then at the height of his career, and he carried himself with kingly grace: a short man, but well constructed, with a fine head, a florid face, a noble mane of white hair, a look of strength and purpose. His eyes, an intense blue, were capable of flashing fire, and his nose was an imperial beak, but he canceled all his look of ferocity with a warm, ready smile. He was recognized in Manneran as a man of wisdom and temperance. I went immediately toward him, with a glad cry of “Bond-father!” Swinging about, he stared at me in bewilderment, and two large young men who had been with him in his groundcar placed themselves between the High Justice and myself as though they believed me to be an assassin.

“Your bodyguard may relax,” I said. “Are you unable to recognize Kinnall of Salla?”

“The Lord Kinnall died last year,” Segvord replied quickly.

“That comes as grievous news to Kinnall himself,” I said. I drew myself tall, resuming princely mien for the first time since my sad exit from the city of Glain, and gestured at the High Justice’s protectors with such fury that they gave ground, slipping off to the side. Segvord studied me carefully. He had last seen me at my brother’s coronation; two years had gone by since then, and the last softness of childhood had been stripped from me. My year of felling logs showed in the contours of my frame, and my winter among the farmers had weathered my face, and my weeks as a sailor had left me grimy and unkempt, with tangled hair and a shaggy beard. Segvord’s gaze cut gradually through these transformations until he was convinced of my identity; then suddenly he rushed at me, embracing me with such fervor that I nearly lost my footing in surprise. He cried my name, and I cried his; then the gate was opening, and he was hurrying me within, and the lofty cream-colored mansion loomed before me, the goal of all my wanderings and turmoil.