Helliconia Summer

XXI The Slaying of Akhanaba

The drama of the court and the humiliation of JandolAnganol had been watched by a greater audience than the king could have imagined.

The personnel of the Avernus, however, were not entirely occupied by the story in which the king played a conspicuous part. Some scholars studied developments taking place elsewhere on the planet, or continuities in which the king played merely an incidental role. A group of learned ladies of the Tan family, for instance, had as their subject the origins of long-standing quarrels. They followed several quarrels through generations, studying how the differences began, were maintained and were eventually resolved. One of their cases concerned a village in Northern Borlien through which the king had passed on his way to Oldorando. There the quarrel originally concerned whether pigs belonging to two neighbours should drink at the same brook. The brook had gone and so had the pigs, yet two villages existed at the spot locked in hatred and still referring to the killing of neighbours as ‘hog-sticking’. King JandolAnganol, by passing with his phagors through one village and not the other, had exacerbated the feud, and a youth had had a finger broken in a brawl that night.

Of that, the learned Tan ladies were as yet unaware. All their records were automatically stored for study, while they at present worked over a chapter in their quarrel which had taken place two centuries ago; they studied videos of an incident of indecent exposure, when an old man from one of the villages had been mobbed by men from the other village. After this squalid incident, someone had composed a beautiful dirge on the subject, which was still sung on festive occasions. To the learned Tan ladies, such incidents were as vital as the king’s trial—and of more significance than all the austerities of the inorganic.

Other groups studied matters even more esoteric. Phagor lines of descent were particularly closely watched. The question of phagor mobility, baffling to the Helliconians, was by now fairly well understood on the Avernus. The ancipitals had ancient patterns of behaviour from which they were not easily deflected, but those patterns were more elaborate than had been supposed. There was a kind of ‘domestic’ phagor which accepted the rule of man as readily as the rule of a kzahhn; but hidden from the eyes of men was a much more independent ancipital which survived the seasons much as its ancestors had done, taking what it would and moving on: a free creature, unaffected by mankind.

The history of Oldorando as a unit also had its scholars, those who were most interested in process. They followed interweaving lives of individuals in only a general way.

When the eyes of Avernus first turned towards Oldorando, or Embruddock as it was then, it was little more than a place of hot springs where two rivers met. Round the springs, a few low towers stood in the middle of an immense ice desert. Even then, in the early years of Avernian research, it was apparent that this was a place, strategically situated, with a potential for growth when the climate improved.

Oldorando was now larger and more populous than anyone in the six families had seen it before. Like any living organism, it expanded in favourable weather, contracted in adverse.

But the story was no more than begun as far as those on the Avernus were concerned. They kept their records, they transmitted a constant stream of information back to Earth;

present transmissions could be reckoned to arrive there in the year 7877. The intricacies of the Helliconian biosphere and its response to change throughout the Great Year could be understood only when at least two complete cycles had been studied.

The scholars could extrapolate. They could make intelligent guesses. But they could no more see the future than King JandolAnganol could see what was to befall that very afternoon.

Sayren Stund had not been in better humour since before his elder daughter died. Before the afternoon’s event, which was to humiliate JandolAnganol further, Stund ate a light meal of Dorzin gout and called a meeting of the inner circle of his council to impress on them how clever he had been.

“Of course it was never my intention to hang King JandolAnganol,” he informed the councillors genially. “The threat of execution was simply to reduce him, as that Other of a son of his put it, to a mere man, naked and defenceless. He thinks he can do as he pleases. That is not so.”

When he had finished talking, his prime minister rose to make a speech of thanks to his majesty.

“We particularly appreciate your majesty’s humiliation of a monarch who cultivates phagors and treats them—well, almost as if they were human. We in Oldorando can have no doubt, must have no doubt, that the ancipitals are animals, nothing more. They have all the stamp of animals. They talk. So do preets and parrots.

“Unlike parrots, phagors are forever hostile to mankind. We know not where they come from. They seem to have been born in the late Cold Period. But we do know—and this is what King JandolAnganol does not know—that these formidable newcomers must be eradicated, first from among human society, then from the face of the earth.

“We still have the indignity of suffering JandolAnganol’s phagor brutes in our park. We all anticipate that, after this afternoon’s event, we shall be able to show gratitude once more to King Sayren Stund for ridding us for ever both of this pack of brutes, and of their pack master.”

There was general clapping. Sayren Stund himself clapped. Every word in the minister’s speech echoed his own words.

Sayren Stund enjoyed such sycophancy. But he was not a fool. Stund still needed the alliance with Borlien; he wished to make sure he would be the senior partner to it. He hoped, too, that the afternoon’s entertainment would impress the nation with whom he was already in uncomfortable alliance, Pannoval. He intended to challenge the C’Sarr’s monopoly of militarism and religion; that he could do by supplying an underlying philosophy for the Pannovalan drive against the ancipital kind. Having talked to SartoriIrvrash he foresaw that the scholar could provide precisely such a philosophy.

He had struck a bargain with SartoriIrvrash. In exchange for the afternoon’s oratory and the destruction of JandolAnganol’s authority, Sayren Stund had Odi Jeseratabhar released from the Sibornalese embassy, despite the grumbles of the Sibornalese. He promised SartoriIrvrash and Odi the safety of his court, where they could live and work in peace. The bargain had been agreed upon with glee on all sides.

The heat of the morning had overwhelmed many of those who attended the court; reports entering the palace spoke of hundreds dying of heart attacks in the city. The afternoon’s diversion was therefore staged in the royal gardens, where jets of water played on the foliage and gauzes were hung from trees to create pleasant shade.

When the distinguished members of court and Church had gathered, Sayren Stund came forward, his queen on his arm, his daughter following behind. Screwing up his eyes, he gazed about for sight of JandolAnganol. Milua Tal saw him first and hastened across the lawn to his side. He stood under a tree, together with his Royal Armourer and two of his captains.

“The fellow has boldness, grant him that,” Sayren Stund murmured. He had had delivered to JandolAnganol an ornate letter apologizing for his mistaken imprisonment, while making excuses because the evidence was so much against him. What he did not know was that Bathkaarnet-she had written a simpler note, expressing her pain over the whole incident and referring to her husband as a ‘love throttler’.

When his majesty was comfortably settled on his throne, a gong was struck, and Crispan Mornu appeared, shrouded as ever in black. Evidently the minister of the rolls, Kimon Euras, was too overcome by his morning’s activities to manage anything further. Crispan Mornu was in sole charge.

Ascending the platform set in the middle of the lawn, he bowed to the king and queen and spoke in his voice which had about it, as a court wit once remarked, the same redolence as the sex life of a public hangman.

“We have a rare treat this afternoon. We are to be present at an advancement of history and natural philosophy. Of recent generations, we among the enlightened nations have come to understand how the history of our cultures is at best intermittent. It is caused by our Great Year of 1825 small years, and not by wars as the idle have claimed. The Great Year contains a period of intense heat and several centuries of intense cold. These are punishments from the All-Powerful for the sinfulness of mankind. While the cold prevails for so long, civilization is difficult to maintain.

“We are to hear from one who has pierced through these disruptions to bring us news of distant matters which concern us urgently today. In particular, they refer to our relationship with those beasts which the All-Powerful sent to chasten us, the phagors.

“I beg you, gentles all, to listen well to the scholar Master SartoriIrvrash.”

Languidly polite clapping went about the lawn. On the whole, music and tales of bawdy were preferred to intellectual effort.

As the clapping died, SartoriIrvrash came forth. Although he smoothed his whiskers with a familiar gesture and looked rather furtively to left and right, he did not appear nervous. By his side walked Odi Jeseratabhar in a flowered chagirack. She had recovered from her assatassi wounds and carried herself alertly. Much of her Uskuti arrogance remained in the gaze with which she surveyed the assembly. Her expression was gentler when she looked at SartoriIrvrash.

The latter had adopted a linen hat to cover his baldness. He carried some books which he deposited carefully on the table before he spoke. The magisterial cairn with which he began betrayed nothing of the consternation he was about to spread.

“I am grateful to his majesty, King Sayren Stund, for giving me sanctuary in the Oldorandan court. In my long life, vicissitudes have been many, and even here, even here, I have not been free of botheration from those who are the enemies of knowledge. All too often, those who hate learning are the very people on whom we should most rely to promote it.

“For many years, I served as chancellor to King VarpalAnganol, and later to his son, who dares to be present here despite his encounter with justice this morning. By him I was unfairly dismissed from office. During my years in Matrassyl, I was compiling a survey of our world, entitled ‘The Alphabet of History and Nature’, in which I sought to integrate and distinguish between myth and reality. And it is on that subject I speak now.

“When I was dismissed, all my papers were most cruelly burnt, and my life’s work destroyed. The knowledge I carry in my head was not destroyed. With it, with my experiences since, and in particular with the assistance of this lady by my side, Odi Jeseratabhar, Priest-Militant Admiral of the Sibornalese fleet, I have come to understand much that was previously a mystery.

“One mystery in particular. A cosmological mystery, one which touches on our everyday lives. Bear with me, hot though it is, for I shall be as brief as possible, although I am told that is not always my habit.”

He laughed and looked about him. Everywhere was attention, real or feigned. Encouraged, he plunged into his argument.

“I hope to offend no one by what I say. I speak in the belief that men love truth above all things.

“We are so bound to our human concerns that we rarely catch sight of the great business of the planet about us. It is more marvellous than we can credit. It abounds with life. Whatever the season, winged and footed life is everywhere, from pole to pole. Endless herds of flambreg, each herd numbered in millions of beasts, rove ceaselessly across the vast continent of Sibornal. Such a sight is unforgettable. Where have the beasts come from? How long have they been there? We have no answers to such questions. We can only remain mute with awe.

“The secrets of antiquity could be unlocked if only we ceased our warring. If all kings had the wisdom of Sayren Stund.”

He bowed in the direction of the Oldorandan king, who smiled back, unaware of what was to come. There were scattered handclaps.

“While life was peaceful at the Matrassyl court, I was privileged in enjoying the company of MyrdemInggala, called by her subjects the queen of queens—merely because they knew not of Queen Bathkaarnet-she, of course—and her daughter, TatromanAdala. Tatro had a collection of fairy tales which I used to read to her. Although all my papers were destroyed, as I have said, Tatro’s fairy tales were not destroyed, not even when her cruel father banished her to the coast. We have a copy of Tatro’s book here.”

At this point, Odi solemnly raised the little book aloft and held it for all to see.

“In Tatro’s storybook is a tale called ‘The Silver Eye’. I read it many times without perceiving its inner meaning. Only when I travelled could I grasp its elusive truth. Perhaps because the herds of flambreg reminded me strongly of primitive ancipitals.”

Until this point, SartoriIrvrash’s delivery, free of his old pedantry, had kept his audience listlessly attentive. Many of the audience lounging on the lawn were drumble organizers, with a natural hatred of phagors; at the word ‘ancipitals’ they showed interest.

“There is an ancipital in the story of the Silver Eye.

“The ancipital is a gillot. Her role is advisor to a king in a mythical country, Ponpt. Well, not so mythical: Ponpt, now called Ponipot, still exists to the west of the Barrier Mountains. This gillot is superior to the king, and provides him with the wisdom whereby he rules. He depends on her as a son on a mother. At the end of the story, the king kills the gillot.

“The Silver Eye itself is a body like a sun, but silver and shining only by night. Like a close star, without heat. When the gillot is slain, the Silver Eye sails away and is lost for ever.

“What did all that signify? I asked myself. Where was the meaning of the tale?”

He leaned over the podium, hunching his shoulders and pointing at the audience in his eagerness to tell the tale.

“The key to the puzzle came when I was on an Uskuti sailing vessel. The vessel was becalmed in the Cadmer Straits. Odi, this lady here, and I landed on Gleeat Island, where we managed to capture a wild gillot with a black pelage. The females of the ancipital species have a one-day flow of menses from the uterus as a prelude to the oestral cycle, when they go into rut. Because of my prejudice against the species, I have no knowledge of Native Ancipital or even Hurdhu, but I discovered then that the gillot’s word for her period was ‘tennhrr’. That was the key! Forgive me if such a subject seems too disgusting to contemplate.

“In my studies—all destroyed by the great King JandolAnganol—I had noted that even phagors preserved one or two legends. They could hardly be expected to make sense. In particular, there is a legend which says Helliconia once had a sister body circling about it, just as Batalix circles about Freyr. This sister body flew away as Freyr arrived and as mankind was born. So the legend goes. And the name of the escaping body in Native is T’Sehn-Hrr.

“Why should ‘tennhrr’ and ‘T’Sehn-Hrr’ be virtually the same word? That was the question I asked myself.

“A gillot’s tennhrr occurs ten times in a small year—every six weeks. We may therefore assume that this heavenly eye or moon served as a timing mechanism for the periods. But did the moon ‘T’Sehn-Hrr’, supposing it existed, circle Helliconia once every six weeks? How to check on something which happened so long ago that human history has no record of it?

“The answer lay in Tatro’s story.

“Her story says that the silver eye in the sky opened and shut. Possibly that means it grew bigger or smaller, according to distance, as does Freyr. It became wide open or full ten times a year. That was it. Ten times again. The pieces of the puzzle fitted.

“You understand the unmistakable conclusion to which I was drawn?”

Gazing at his audience, SartoriIrvrash saw that indeed many of them did not understand. They waited politely for him to be done. He heard his voice rise to a shout.

“This world of ours once had a moon, a silver moon, which was lost at a time of some kind of disturbance in the heavens. It sailed away, we don’t as yet know how. The moon was called T’Sehn-Hrr—and T’Sehn-Hrr is a phagor name.”

He looked at his notes, he conferred briefly with Odi, as the listeners stirred. He resumed his discourse with a note of asperity in his voice.

“Why should the moon have only an ancipital name? Why is there no human record of this missing body? The answer leads us into the mazes and botherations of antiquity.

“For when I looked about, I found that missing moon. Not in the sky, but shining forth from our everyday speech. For how is our calendar divided? Eight days in a week, six weeks in a tenner, ten tenners in a year of four hundred and eighty days… We never question it. We never question why a tenner is called a tenner, because there are ten of them in a year.

“But that is not the whole truth. Our word ‘tenner’ commemorates the time when the silver eye was open and the moon was full. It does so because humanity adopted the phagor word ‘tennhrr’. ‘Tenner’ is ‘tennhrr’ is ‘T’Sehn-Hrr’.”

The murmurings from the crowd were louder. Sayren Stund was plainly uncomfortable. But SartoriIrvrash held up Tatro’s book and called for silence. So engrossed was he that he failed to see the trap opening before him.

“Hear the whole conclusion, my friends. There stands King JandolAnganol among you, and he must hear the truth as well—he who has so long encouraged the noxious ahumans to breed on his territories.”

But no one was interested in JandolAnganol at present. Their angry faces turned to SartoriIrvrash himself.

“The conclusion is clear, inescapable. The ancipital race, to which we can ascribe many of our human difficulties over the ages, is not a race of new invaders, like the Driats. No. It is an ancient race. It once covered Helliconia as flambreg cover the Circumpolar Regions.

“The phagors did not emerge out of the last Weyr-Winter, as the Sibornalese call it. No. That story is based on ignorance. The real story, the fairy story tells the truth. Phagors long preceded mankind.

“They were here on Helliconia before Freyr appeared—possibly long before. Mankind came later. Mankind depended on the phagors. Mankind learned language from the phagors and still uses phagor words. ‘Khmir’ is the Native word for ‘rut’. ‘Helliconia’ itself is an old ancipital term.”

JandolAnganol found his voice at last. The speech was such an onslaught on his religious sensibilities that he had stood as if in a trance, his mouth open, more resembling fish than eagle.

“Lies, heresy, blasphemy!” he shouted. The cry of blasphemy was taken up by other voices. But Sayren Stund had ordered his guard to see that JandolAnganol did not interrupt. Burly men closed in on him—to be met by JandolAnganol’s captains with drawn swords. A struggle broke out.

SartoriIrvrash raised his voice. “No, you see your glory diminished by the truth. Phagors preceded mankind. Phagors were the dominant race on our world, and probably treated our ancestors as animals until we rebelled against them.”

“Let’s hear him. Who dares say the man is wrong?” shrilled Queen Bathkaarnet-she. Her husband struck her in the mouth.

The hubbub from the audience rose. People were standing and shouting or kneeling to pray. Fresh guards ran to the scene, while some court ladies tried to escape. A fight had broken out round JandolAnganol. The first stone was thrown at SartoriIrvrash. Brandishing his fist, he continued to speak.

In that courtly crowd, now moved to fury, there was at least one cool observer, the envoy Alam Esomberr. He was detached from the human drama. Unable to be deeply moved by events, he could derive only amusement from their effects.

Those on Earth, distant in time and space, viewed the scene on King Sayren Stund’s lawn with less detachment. They knew that SartoriIrvrash spoke truth in general, even if his details were sometimes incorrect. They also knew that men did not love truth above all things, as he claimed. Truth had constantly to be fought for, for it was constantly being lost. Truth could sail away like a silver eye, never to be seen again.

When T’Sehn-Hrr sailed away, no human being had witnessed the event. Cosmologists on the Avernus and on Earth had reconstructed the event, and believed they understood it. In the great disruptions which had overtaken the system eight million Earth years previously, the gravitational forces of the star now called Freyr, with a mass 14.8 times that of the Sun, had wrenched T’Sehn-Hrr away from Helliconia’s pull.

Calculations indicated that T’Sehn-Hrr had a radius of 1252 km, against Helliconia’s 7723 km. Whether the satellite had been capable of supporting life was doubtful.

What was certain was that the events of that epoch had been so near catastrophic that they had remained etched in the eotemporal minds of the phagors. The sky had fallen in and no one had forgotten it.

More impressive to human minds was the way in which life on Helliconia had survived even the loss of its moon and the cosmological events which had caused that loss.

“Yes, I know. This sounds like sacrilege and I am sorry,” shouted SartoriIrvrash, as Odi moved close to him and the noise grew. “What is true should be said—and heard. Phagors were once the dominant race and will become so again if allowed to live. The experiments I conducted show, I believe, that we were animals. Genethlic divinities bred mankind from Others—Others who were ancipital pets before the upheaval. Mankind developed from Others as phagors developed from flambreg. As phagors developed from flambreg, they may again cover the earth one day. They are still waiting, wild, with kaidaws, in the High Nktryht, to descend in vengeance. They will wipe you out. Be warned then. Increase the drumbles. Intensify them. Ancipitals must be wiped out in the summer, when mankind is strong. When winter comes, the wild kaidaws return!

“My final word to you: We must not waste energy fighting each other. We should fight the older enemy—and those humans who protect them!”

But the humans were already fighting each other. The most religious members of the audience were often those, like Crispan Mornu, who were most in favour of drumbles. Here was an outsider offending their deepest religious principles, yet encouraging their violent instincts. The first one to throw a stone was attacked by his neighbour. Missiles were flying all over the garden. Soon the first dagger bit into flesh. A man ran among the flower beds, bleeding, and fell on his face. Women screamed. Fighting became more general as tempers and fears mounted. The awning collapsed.

As Alam Esomberr quietly left the scene, a miniature history of warfare was enacted on the palace lawn.

The chief cause of the commotion looked on aghast. It was beyond belief how people responded to scholarship. Holy idiots! A flying stone caught him in the mouth, and he collapsed.

Odi Jeseratabhar threw herself on SartoriIrvrash, crying and trying to ward off more stones.

She was dragged aside by a group of young monks, who punched her and then began to beat and kick the prostrate ex-chancellor. They at least refused to hear the name of Akhanaba defiled.

Crispan Mornu, in fear that matters were getting so out of hand, stepped forward and raised his arms, opening the black wings of his keedrant. It was slashed by a sword blade. Odi turned and ran; her garments were seized by a woman as she passed, and next moment she was struggling for her life amid a dozen angry women.

The clamour grew, a clamour that before the hour was out would spread into the city. Indeed the monks themselves spread the clamour. Before very long, they emerged bloodstained from the precincts of the palace, bearing above their heads the broken corpses of SartoriIrvrash and his Sibornalese companion, screaming as they went, “Blasphemy is dead! Long live Akhanaba!”

After the fighting in the garden, there was a rush to the streets, and more scuffles there, while the dead bodies were paraded down Wozen Avenue before finally being thrown to the dogs. Then a terrible quiet fell. Even the First Phagorian in the park seemed to be waiting.

Sayren Stund’s plan had terribly misfired.

SartoriIrvrash had intended merely to be revenged on his ex-master and to have the First Phagorian slain. That was his conscious aim. His love of knowledge for its own sake, his hatred of his fellow men, had betrayed him. He had failed to understand his audience. As a result, religious belief was set at an intolerable crisis—and that on the day before the Emperor of Holy Pannoval, the great C’Sarr Kilandar IX, was to arrive in Oldorando to bestow the unction of Akhanaba upon the faithful.

The most living words spring from dead martyrs. The monks unwittingly propagated the heresies of SartoriIrvrash, which found ready soil on which to grow. Within a few days, it would be the monks themselves who were under attack.

What had goaded the crowd into such fury was the aspect of his disclosures to which SartoriIrvrash himself was blind. His listeners would make a connection through their faith of which, with his limited sympathies, SartoriIrvrash was incapable.

They perceived that the rumour long suppressed by the Church now confronted them nakedly. All the world’s wisdom had always existed. Akhanaba was—and they themselves, and their fathers before them, had spent their lives in the worship of—a phagor. They prayed to the very beast they persecuted. “Ask not therefore if I am man or animal or stone,” said the scriptures. Now the comfortable enigma fell before the banal fact. The nature of their vaunted god, the god that held the political system together, was ancipital.

Which should the people now deny in order to make their lives tolerable? The intolerable truth? Or their intolerable religion?

Even the servants of the palace neglected their duties, asking each other, “Are we slaves of slaves?” Over their masters, a spiritual crisis prevailed. Those masters had taken it for granted that they were masters of their world. Suddenly the planet had become another place—a place where they were comparative newcomers, and lowly newcomers at that.

Heated debates took place. Many of the faithful threw out SartoriIrvrash’s hypothesis entirely, affecting to dismiss it as a tissue of lies. But, as ever in such situations, there were others who subscribed to it and added to it, and even claimed they had known the truth all along. The torment mounted.

Sayren Stund took only a practical interest in faith. It was not to him the living thing it was to JandolAnganol. He cared for it only as oil which smoothed his rule. Suddenly, everything was in question.

The hapless Oldorandan king spent the rest of the afternoon shut in his wife’s compartments, with preets twittering round his head. Every so often, he sent Bathkaarnet-she out to attempt to discover where Milua Tal might be, or received messengers who spoke of shops being broken into and a pitched fight being held in one of the oldest monasteries.

“We’ve no soldiers,” wept Sayren Stund.

“And no faith,” said his wife, with some complacency. “You need both to keep order in this terrible city.”

“And I suppose JandolAnganol has fled to escape being killed. He should have stayed for the execution of his son.”

That thought cheered him until the arrival of Crispan Mornu in the evening. The advisor’s aspect showed that he had unsuspected reserves of gauntness in him. He bowed to his sovereign and said, “If I diagnose the confused situation correctly, Your Majesty, the central issue has shifted away from JandolAnganol. It now focusses on our faith itself. We must hope that this afternoon’s intemperate speech will soon be forgotten. Men cannot long endure to think of themselves as lower than phagor brutes.

“This might be a convenient time to see that JandolAnganol is removed altogether from our attention. In canon law, he remains undivorced, and this morning we exposed his pretentions for what they are. He is a spent force.

Therefore, we should remove him from the city before he can speak to the Holy C’Sarr—perhaps through Envoy Esomberr or Ulbobeg. The C’Sarr is going to have to face a larger issue, the problem of a spiritual crisis. The question of your daughter’s marriage is also one we can settle, with suitable parties.”

“Oh, I know what you’re hinting at, Crispan,” chirped Bathkaarnet-she. Mornu, in his oblique way, had been reminding his majesty that Milua Tal should be speedily married to Prince Taynth Indredd of Pannoval; in that way, a tighter religious grip over Oldorando could be established.

Crispan Mornu gave no sign that he had heard the queen’s remark.

“What will you do, Your Majesty?”

“Oh, really, I think I’ll take a bath…”

Crispan Mornu brought an envelope from the recesses of his dark gown.

“This week’s report from Matrassyl suggests that various problems there may come shortly to a head. Unndreid the Hammer, the Scourge of Mordriat, has died in a fall from his hoxney during a skirmish. While he threatened Borlien, some unity was preserved within the capital. Now with Unndreid dead and JandolAnganol away…” He let the sentence dangle and smiled with a cutting edge. “Offer JandolAnganol a fast ship, Your Majesty—two if necessary—to get himself and his Phagorian Guard back down the Valvoral as speedily as possible. He may accept. Urge on him that we have here a situation we cannot control, and that his precious beasts must be removed or massacred. He prides himself on going with circumstances. We will see that he does go.”

Sayren Stund mopped his forehead and pondered the matter.

“JandolAnganol will never take such good advice from me. Let his friends put it to him.”

“His friends?”

“Yes, yes, his Pannovalan friends. Alam Esomberr and that contemptible Guaddl Ulbobeg. Have them summoned while I have myself voluptuously bathed.” Addressing his wife, he asked, “Do you wish to come and enjoy the voluptuous sight, my dear?”

The mob was in action. Its gathering could be traced from the Avernus. Oldorando was full of idle hands. Mischief was always welcome. They came out of taverns, where they had been harmlessly occupied. They locked up shops and picked up sticks. They rose from outside churches, where they had been begging. They wandered along from hostels and billets and holy places. Just to have a share in whatever was going on.

Some hrattock had said they were inferior to fuggies. Those were fighting words. Where was this hrattock? Maybe it was that slanje standing talking over there…

Many Avernian watchers regarded the brawling, and the pretext for brawling, with contempt. Others who reflected more deeply saw another aspect of it. However preposterous, however primitive the issue that SartoriIrvrash had raised, it had its parallels aboard the Earth Observation Station—and there no rioting would solve it.

“Belief: an impermanence.” So it said in the treatise. “On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Lifetime.” The belief in technological progress which had inspired the building of the Avernus had, over the generations, become a trap for those aboard it, just as the accretion of beliefs called Akhanabaism had become a trap.

Settled into an introspective quietism, those who ran the Avernus saw no escape from their trap. They feared the change they most needed. Patronizing though their attitude was to the unwashed who ran through Goose Street and Wozen Avenue, the unwashed had a hope denied those far above them. Hot with fight and drink, a man in Goose Street could use his fists or shout before the cathedral. He might be confused, but he did not endure the emptiness the advisors among the six families endured. Belief: an impermanence. It was true. Belief had largely died on the Avernus, leaving despair in its place.

Individuals despair, but not peoples. Even as the elders looked down on, and transmitted wearily back to Earth, scenes of confusion which seemed to reflect their own futility, another faction was taking bold shape on the station.

That faction had already named itself the Aganippers. Its members were young and reckless. They knew there was no chance for them to return to Earth or—as the recent example of Billy Xiao Pin had effectively demonstrated—to live on Helliconia. But on Aganip there was a chance for them. Avoiding the ever watching lenses, they accumulated their stores and marked out a shuttle they could appropriate which would transport them to the empty planet. In their hearts was a hope as bright as any to be found in Goose Street.

The evening grew slightly cooler. There was another earth tremor, but it passed almost unnoticed among the general excitements.

Calmed and refreshed by his bath, well fed, King Sayren Stund was in fit mood to receive Alam Esomberr and the elderly Guaddl Ulbobeg. He seated himself comfortably on a couch and assembled his wife behind him to make an attractive composition before summoning the two men to his presence.

All due courtesies were made, and a slave woman poured wine into glasses already freighted with Lordryardry ice.

Guaddl Ulbobeg wore an ecclesiastical sash over a light charfrul. He entered reluctantly and appeared no more comfortable to see Crispan Mornu present. He felt his position to be dangerous, and showed it in his nervous manner.

Alam Esomberr, by contrast, was excessively cheerful. Immaculately dressed as usual, he approached the king’s couch and kissed the hands of both majesties with the air of one immune to bacteria.

“Well, indeed, sire, you did present us with a spectacle this afternoon, just as you promised. My congratulations. How ably your old rogue of an atheist spoke! Of course, our faith is merely deepened by doubt. Nevertheless, what an amusing turn of fate it is that the abhorred King JandolAnganol, lover of phagors, who only this morning stood trial for his life, should this evening stand revealed as heroic protector of the children of God.”

He laughed pleasantly and turned to Advisor Mornu to judge his amusement.

“That is blasphemy,” said Crispan Mornu, in his blackest voice.

Esomberr nodded, smiling. “Now that God has a new definition, surely blasphemy has one too? The heresy of yesterday, sir, is now perceived as today’s true path, which we must tread as nimbly as we can…”

“I don’t know why you are so merry,” Sayren Stund complained. “But I hope to take advantage of your good humour. I wish to ask you both a favour. Woman, serve the wine again.”

“We will do whatever your majesty commands,” said Guaddl Ulbobeg, looking anxious and clutching his glass.

The king rose up from a reclining position, smoothed his stomach, and said, with a touch of royal pomp, “We shall give you the wherewithal with which to persuade King JandolAnganol to leave our kingdom immediately, before he can delude my poor infant daughter Milua Tal into matrimony.”

Esomberr looked at Guaddl Ulbobeg. Guaddl Ulbobeg looked at Esomberr.

“Well?” said the king.

“Sire,” said Esomberr, and fell to tugging a lock of hair at the back of his neck, which necessitated his looking down at the floor.

Guaddl Ulbobeg cleared his throat and then, more or less as an afterthought, cleared it again. “May I venture to ask your majesty if you have seen your daughter just of late?”

“As for me, sire, I am almost totally within the power of the King of Borlien, sir,” added Esomberr, still attending to his neck. “Owing to a past indiscretion on my part, sir. An indiscretion concerning—most unforgivably—the queen of queens. So when the King of Borlien came to us this afternoon, seeking our assistance, we felt bound…”

Since he allowed the sentence to dangle while he scrutinized the countenance of Sayren Stund, Ulbobeg continued the discourse.

“I being a bishop of the Household of the Holy C’Sarr of Pannoval, sire, and therefore,” said Guaddl Ulbobeg, “empowered to act in His Holiness’s stead in certain offices of the Church—”

“And I,” said Esomberr, “still remissly holding in my charge a bill of divorcement signed by the ex-queen MyrdemInggala which should have been rendered to the C’Sarr, or to one of his representatives of the Household, tenners ago—with apologies for using that now opprobrious word—”

“And we both having care,” said Guaddl Ulbobeg, now with rather more relish in his voice, “not to overburden His Holiness with too many functions on this visit of pleasure between sister nations—”

“When there will be more contentious matters—”

“Or, indeed, to incommode your majesty with—”

“Enough!” shouted Sayren Stund. “Come to the point, the pair of you! Enough procrastination!”

“Precisely what we both said to ourselves a few hours ago,” agreed Esomberr, bestowing his choicest smile on the gathering. “Enough procrastination—perfectly put, Your Majesty… Therefore, with the powers entrusted in us by those above us all, we solemnized a state of matrimony between JandolAnganol and your beautiful daughter, Milua Tal. It was a simple but touching service, and we wished that your majesties could have been present.”

His majesty fell off the couch, scrambled up, and roared.

“They were married?”

“No, Your Majesty, they are married,” said Guaddl Ulbobeg. “I took the ceremony and heard their vows for His Holiness in absentia.”

“And I was witness and held the ring,” said Esomberr. “Some of the King of Borlien’s captains were also present. But no phagors. That I promise.”

“They are married?” repeated Sayren Stund, looking about wildly. He fell back into his wife’s arms.

“We’d both like to congratulate your majesties,” said Esomberr suavely. “We are sure the lucky couple will be very happy.”

It was the evening of the following day. The haze had cleared toward sunset and stars shone in the east. Stains of a magnificent Freyr-set still lingered in the western sky. There was no wind. Earth tremors were frequent.

His Holiness the C’Sarr Kilandar IX had arrived in Oldorando at midday. Kilandar was an ancient man with long white hair, and he retired straight to a bed in the palace to recover from his journey. While he lay prostrate, sundry officials, and lastly King Sayren Stund, in a fever of apology, came to tell the old man of the religious disarray in which he would find the kingdom of Oldorando.

To all this, His Holiness listened. In his wisdom, he declared that he would hold a special service at Freyr-set—not in the Dom but in the chapel of the palace—during which he would address the congregation and resolve all their doubts. The degrading rumour that ancipitals were an ancient, superior race would be exposed as complete falsehood. The voice of atheists should never prevail while strength was left in his ageing body.

This service had now begun. The old C’Sarr spoke out in a noble voice. There was scarcely an absentee.

But two absentees were together in the white pavilion in Whistler Park.

King JandolAnganol, in penitence and gratitude, had just prayed and scourged himself, and was washing the blood from his back with jugs of hot spring water poured by a slave.

“How could you do such cruelty, my husband?” exclaimed Milua Tal, entering briskly. She was shoeless, and wore a filmy white gown of satara. “What are we made of but flesh? What else would you desire to be made of?”

“There is a division between flesh and spirit, of which both must be reminded. I shall not ask you to undergo the same rituals, though you must bear with my religious inclinations.”

“But your flesh is dear to me. Now it is my flesh and if you hurt it more, I will kill you. When you sleep, I will sit on your face with my bottom and suffocate you!” She embraced him, clinging to him until her dress was soaked. He sent the slave away, and kissed and petted her.

“Your young flesh is dear to me, but I am determined that I will not know you carnally until your tenth birthday.”

“Oh, no, Jan! That’s five whole tenners away! I’m not such a feeble little thing—I can easily receive you, you’ll see.” She pressed her flower face to his.

“Five tenners is not long, and it will do us no harm to wait.”

She flung herself on him and bore him down onto the bed, fighting and wriggling in his arms, laughing wildly as she did so.

“I’m not going to wait, I’m not going to wait! I know all about what wives should be and what wives should do, and I am going to be your wife in every single particle.”

They began to kiss furiously. Then he pushed her away, laughing.

“You little spitfire, you jewel, you posy. We’ll wait till circumstances are more propitious and I have made some sort of peace with your parents.”

“But now is always a popiters time,” she wailed.

To distract her, he said, “Listen, I have a little wedding present for you. It’s almost all I possess here. I shall heap gifts upon you when we are back home in Matrassyl.”

He took from his tunic the timepiece with the three faces and held it out to her.

The dials read:

Milua Tal took it and looked rather disappointed. She tried it on her brow, but the ends would not meet at the back of her head.

“Where am I supposed to wear it?”

“As a bracelet?”

“Maybe so. Well, thanks Jan. I’ll wear it later.” She threw the watch down and then, with a sudden movement, pulled off her damp dress.

“Now you can inspect me and see if you are going to get good value.”

He began to pray but his eyes would not close as she danced about the room. She smiled lasciviously, seeing in his eyes the awakening of his khmir. He ran to her, seized her, and carried her to the bed.

“Very well, my delicious Milua Tal. Here beginneth our married life.”

Over an hour later, they were roused from their raptures by a violent quake. The timbers about them groaned, their little lamp was pitched to the floor. The bed rattled. They jumped up, naked, and felt how the floor rocked.

“Shall we go out?” she asked. “The park jumps about a little, doesn’t it?”

“Wait a minute.”

The tremors were long sustained. Dogs howled in town. Then it was over, and a dead silence prevailed.

In that silence, thoughts worked like maggots in the king’s head. He thought of the vows he had made—all broken. Of the people he loved—all betrayed. Of the hopes he had entertained—all dead. He could not find, in the prevailing stillness, consolation anywhere, not even in the perspiring human body lying against his.

His eyes with their leaden stare fixed on an object which had dropped onto the rush mat on the floor. It was the timepiece once owned by BillishOwpin, the article of an unknown science which had woven its way through the tenners of his decline.

With a sudden shout of rage, he jumped up and hurled the timepiece away, out through the north-facing window. He stood there naked, glaring, as if daring the thing to return to his hand.

After a moment of fright, Milua Tal joined him, resting her hand on his shoulder. Without words, they leaned out of the window to breathe cooler air.

An eerie white light shone in the north, outlining horizons and trees. Lightning danced noiselessly in the middle of it.

“By the beholder, what’s happening?” JandolAnganol asked, clutching the slender shoulders of his bride.

“Don’t be alarmed, Jan. It’s the earthquake lights—they soon die. We often see them after a particularly bad quake. It’s a kind of night-rainbow.”

“Isn’t it quiet?” He realized that there was no sound of the First Phagorian moving about nearby, and was suddenly alarmed.

“I can hear something.” Suddenly she ran to the opposite window, and screamed. “Jandol! Look! The palace!”

He ran to her and looked out. On the far side of Loylbryden Square, the palace was alight. The entire wooden facade was ablaze, with clouds of smoke rolling up towards the stars.

“The quake must have caused a fire. Let’s go and see if we can help—fast, fast, my poor moth!” Her pigeon voice shrilled.

Aghast, the two dressed and ran out. There were no phagors in the park but, as they crossed the square, they saw them.

The First Phagorian stood armed, staring at the blazing palace, guarding it. They watched without movement as the flames took ever firmer hold. Townspeople stood at a distance, gazing helplessly, kept at bay by the phagors.

JandolAnganol went to break through the phagorian ranks, but a spear was thrust out and his way barred. Phagor-Major Ghht Mlark Chzarn saluted her leader and spoke.

“You may not make a coming to more nearness, sir, because danger. We have made a bringing of flames to all Sons of Freyr in that churchplace below the ground. Knowledge reaches our harneys that the evil king and the church-king would bring killing to your all servants of this Guard.”

“You had no orders.” He could scarcely speak. “You’ve slain Akhanaba—the god made in your image.”

The creature before him with its deep scarlet eyes brought a three-fingered hand to its skull, “Orders have formed in our harneys. Make arrival from long time. Once, this place izz ancient Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk… Further sayance…”

“You’ve slain the C’Sarr, Akhanaba… everything… everything…” He could scarcely hear what the ancipital was saying, for Milua Tal was holding his hand and screaming at the top of her voice. “My moth, my moth, my poor mother!”

“Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk once ancient place of ancipital kind. Not give to Sons of Freyr.”

He failed to understand. He pushed against her spear, then drew his own sword. “Let me through, Major Chzarn, or I shall kill you.”

He knew how useless threats were. Chzarn merely said, without emotion, “Not go through, sir.”

“You’re the fire god, Jan—command it die!” As she parrot-screamed, she raked his flesh, but he did not move. Chzarn was intent on explaining something and wrestled with words before managing to say, “Ancient Hrrm-Bhhrd Ydohk good place, sir. Air-octaves make a song. Before Sons of Freyr any on Hrl-Ichor Yhar. In ancient time of T’Sehn-Hrr.”

“It’s the present, the present! We live and die in present time, gillot!” He tried to wind himself up to strike but was unable to do so, despite the screaming girl at his side. His will failed. The flames burned in the pupils of his narrowed eyes.

The phagor obstinately continued her explanation, as if she were an automaton.

“Ancipitals here, sir, before Sons of Freyr. Before Freyr make bad light. Before T’Sehn-Hrr goance, sir. Old sins, sir.”

Or perhaps she just said ‘old things’. In the fury of the blaze, it was impossible to hear. With a roar, part of the palace roof collapsed and a column of fire rolled up into the night sky. Pillars crashed forward into the square.

The crowd cried in unison and stumbled back. Among the watchers was AbathVasidol; she clung to the arm of a gentleman from the Sibornalese embassy as everyone shrank from the heat.

The Holy C’Sarr… all destroyed,” cried JandolAnganol in pain. Milua Tal hid her face in JandolAnganol’s side and wept. “All destroyed… all destroyed.”

He made no attempt to comfort the girl or to push her away. She was nothing to him. The flames devoured his spirit. In that holocaust were consumed his ambitions—the very ambitions the fire would fulfil. He could be master of Oldorando as well as Borlien, but in that ceaseless changing of things into their opposites, that chastising enantiodromia which made a god into a phagor, he no longer wished for that mastery.

His phagors had brought him a triumph, in which he saw clearly his defeat. His thoughts flew to MyrdemInggala:

but his and her summer was over, and this great bonfire of his enemies was his autumn beacon.

“All destroyed,” he said aloud.

But a figure approached them, moving elegantly through the ranks of the First Phagorian, arriving almost at a saunter in time to remark, “Not quite all, I’m glad to say.”

Despite his attempt at customary nonchalance, Esomberr’s face was pale and he trembled visibly.

“Since I’ve never worshipped the All-Powerful with any great degree of fervour, whether he’s man or phagor, I thought I would excuse myself from the C’Sarr’s lecture on the subject. Terribly fortunate as it proved. Let this be a lesson to you, Your Majesty, to go to church less frequently in future.”

Milua Tal looked up angrily to say, “Why don’t you run away? Both my parents are in there.”

Esomberr wagged a finger at her. “You must learn to ride with circumstances as your new husband claims to do. If your parents are perished—and there I suspect you have hit upon a profound truth—then may I be the first to congratulate you on becoming Queen of both Borlien and Oldorando.

“I hope for some advancement from you, as the chief instrument in your clandestine marriage. I may never make C’Sarr, but you both know my council is good. I’m cheerful, even in times of adversity like the present.”

JandolAnganol shook his head. He took Milua Tal by the shoulders and began to coax her away from the conflagration.

“We can do nothing. Slaying a phagor or two will solve nothing. We will wait for morning. In Esomberr’s cynicism there is some truth.”

“Cynicism?” asked Esomberr quietly. “Are not your brutes merely imitating what you did to the Myrdolators? Is there no cynicism in your taking advantage of that? Your brutes have crowned you King of Oldorando.”

Written in the king’s face was something Esomberr could not bear to see. “If the entire court is wiped out, then what is there for me but to stay, to do my duty, to see that the succession is legally continued in Milua Tal’s name? Will I find joy in that task, Esomberr?”

“You will go with the circumstances, I expect. As I would. What’s joy?”

They walked on, the princess shambling and needing support.

At length the king said, “Otherwise there will be anarchy—or Pannoval will step in. Whether it calls for rejoicing or weeping, it seems that we do indeed have a chance to make our two kingdoms one, strong against enemies.”

“Always enemies!” wailed Milua Tal to her failed god.

JandolAnganol turned to Esomberr, his expression one of blank disbelief. “The C’Sarr himself will have perished. The C’Sarr…”

“Failing divine intervention, yes. But one piece of better news for you. King Sayren Stund may not go down in history as its wisest monarch, but he experienced a generous impulse before he perished. He was probably prompted by your new queen’s mother. His majesty could not quite stomach hanging his new son-in-law’s son, and had him released an hour or so ago. Perhaps as a sort of wedding gift…”

“He released Robayday?” His frown left him momentarily.

Another section of the palace collapsed. The tall wooden columns burned like candles. More and more of the inhabitants of Oldorando crept forth silently to stare at the blaze, knowing they would never look on such a night again. Many, in their superstitious hearts, saw this as the long-prophesied end of the world.

“I saw the lad go free. Wild as ever. Wilder. An arrow from a bow would be a fair comparison.”

A groan escaped JandolAnganol’s lips. “Poor boy, why did he not come to me? I hoped that at last he had lost his hatred of me…”

“By now he’s probably in the queue to kiss the wounds of the dead SartoriIrvrash—an unhygienic form of amusement if ever I saw one.”

“Why did Rob not come to me… ?”

There was no answer, but JandolAnganol could guess it: he had been hidden in the pavilion with Milua Tal. It would take many a tenner before the consequences of this day’s work were fully borne out, and he would have to live them through.

As if echoing his thoughts, Alam Esomberr said, “And may I enquire what you intend to do with your famous Phagorian Guard, who have committed this atrocity?”

The king threw him a hard glance and continued to walk away from the blaze.

“Perhaps you will tell me how mankind is ever to solve its phagor problem,” he said.