City of Saints and Madmen

III

ANY HISTORIAN MUST TAKE EXTREME CARE WHEN DISCUSSING the Silence, for the enormity of the event demands respect. But when the historian in question, myself, explains the Silence for a paltry pamphlet series, he must display a degree of solemnity in direct inverse proportion to the frivolity of the surrounding information. I find it unacceptable that you, the reader, should flip — a most disagreeably shallow word — from this pamphlet to the next, which may concern Best Masquerade Festivals or Where to Procure a Prostitute, without being made to grasp the awful ramifications of the Event. This requires no melodramatic folderol on my part, for the facts themselves should suffice: upon Aquelus’ return, the city ofAmbergris lay empty, not a single living soul to be found upon any of its boulevards, alleyways, and avenues, nor within its many homes, public buildings, and courtyards.

Aquelus’ ships landed at docks where the only sound was the lapping of water against wood. Arrived in the early morning, having raced home to meet the self-imposed two-week deadline, the Cappan found the city cast in a weak light, wreathed in mist come off the river. It must have been an ethereal scene — perhaps even a terrifying one.

At first, no one noticed the severity of the silence, but as the fleet weighed anchor and the crews walked out onto the docks, many thought it odd no one had come out to greet them. Soon, they noticed that the river defenses lay unmanned, and that the boats in the harbor around them, as they came clear of the mist, drifted, under no one’s control.

When Aquelus noticed these anomalies, he feared the worst — an invasion by the Brueghelites during his absence — and ordered the crews back onto the ships. All ships but his own sailed back out into the middle of the River Moth, where they remained, laden with squid, at battle readiness.

Then Aquelus, anxious to find his new bride, personally led an expedition of 50 men into the city. His fears of invasion seemed unfounded, for everywhere they went, Ambergris was as empty of enemies as it was of friends.

We are lucky indeed that among the leaders of the expedition was one Simon Jersak, a common soldier who would one day serve as the chief tax collector for the western provinces. Jersak left us with a full account of the expedition’s journey into Ambergris, and I quote liberally from it here:

What did they find upon the altar? An old weathered journal and two human eyeballs preserved by some unknown process in a solid square made of an unknown clear metal. Between journal and squared eyeballs blood had been used to draw a symbol:

More ominous still, the legendary entrance, once blocked up, boarded over, lay wide open, the same stairs that had enticed Manzikert I beckoning now to Aquelus.

The journal was, of course, the one that had disappeared with Samuel Tonsure 60 years before. The eyes, a fierce blue, could belong to no one but Manzikert I. Who the blood had come from, no one cared to guess, but Aquelus, finally confronted with an enemy — for who could now doubt the return of the gray caps and their implication in the disappearance of the city’s citizens? — acted decisively.

Those commanders who argued that a military force should attack the underground found themselves overruled by Aquelus, who, in the face of almost overwhelming opposition, ordered all of his military commanders back to the ships, there to speed up the disembarkation so as to simultaneously process the squid, which otherwise would have rotted, and take up defensive positions throughout the city. Aquelus knew that the Haragck, upon hearing of the developments in Ambergris, might well attack, followed by the Brueghelites. Worse still, if the Cappaness could not be found, the political consequences — regardless of his love for her — would be disastrous. Might not the King of the Menites blame Aquelus for the death of his daughter?

Once the commanders had taken their leave, Aquelus transferred power to his minister of finance, one Thomas Nadal, and announced that he intended to go down below himself. The Cappan’s decision horrified his ministers. In addition to their personal affection for Aquelus, they feared losing their Cappan after all else that had been taken from them. Many, Nadal included, also feared the Haragck and the Brueghlites, but Aquelus countered these arguments by pointing out, truthfully enough, that his military commanders could easily lead any defense of the city — after all, they had drawn up a plan for just sucha situation months ago. However, when Nadal then asked, “Yes, but who other than you can lead us to rebuild the morale of this shattered city?” Aquelus ignored him. Clearly, only he or his disappeared wife could make Ambergris a viable, living metropolis again. Still, down below he went, and down below he stayed for three days.

Above ground, Aquelus’ military commanders might well have staged a coup if not for the arrival that first night of Irene, only 12 hours after Aquelus’ descent into the domains of the mushroom dwellers. By a quirk of chance both cruel and kind, she had left the capital for a two-day hunting trip in the surrounding countryside.

Faced with the double-edged horror of the Silence and her husband’s underground sojourn, Cappaness Irene never faltered, taking quick, decisive action. The rebellious commanders — Seymour, Nialson, and Rayne — she had thrown in prison. Simultaneously, she sent a fast boat to Morrow with a message for her father, asking for his immediate military support. The Cappaness might have thought this ended her immediate problems, but she had severely under-estimated the mood of the men and women who had returned to the city. The soldiers guarding the rebel commanders freed their prisoners and led a drunken mob of naval cadets to the front steps of the palace.

Inside, the Cappan’s ministers had succumbed to panic — burning documents, stripping murals for their gold thread, and preparing to abandon the city under cover of darkness. When they came to the Cappaness with news of the insurrection and told her she must flee too, she refused and, as reported by Nadal, said to them:

Shamed by these words, Nadal and his colleagues had no choice but to follow the Cappaness out to the front steps of the palace. What followed must be considered the crowning achievement of early Ambergrisian nationalism — a moment that even today sends “chills down the spine” of the least patriotic city dweller. This daughter of Menites, this Cappaness without a Cappan, made her famous speech in which she called upon the mob to lay down its arms “in the service of a greater good, for the greater glory of a city unique in the history of the world. For if we can overcome this strife now, we shall never fear ourselves ever again.” She then detailed in cold-blooded fashion exactly who the rebels would have to kill to gain power and the full extent of the repercussions for a severely divided Ambergris: instant assimilation by the Brueghelites. Further, she promised to strengthen the elected position of city mayor and not to pursue reprisals against the mob itself, only its leaders.

Such was the magnetism of her personality and the passion of her speech that the mob turned on its leaders and brought them to the Cappaness in chains. Thus was the most severe internal crisis in the cappandom’s short history diffused by Irene — the daughter of a foreign state with a heretical (to the Truffidians) religion. The people would not soon forget her.

But the Cappaness and her people had no time to draw breath, for on the second day of Aquelus’

disappearance, 7,000 Haragck crossed the Moth and attacked Ambergris. The Cappaness’ forces, although taken by surprise, managed to keep the Haragck pinned down in the region of the docks, except for a contingent of 2,000, whom Irene allowed to break through to the city proper; she rightly The more perplexing question is: How did the Haragck know to attack so soon? Until recent times, it remained a mystery. Even a good rider could not have reached Ambergris’ western borders in less than three days, and it would take three days to return after receiving the news — to say nothing of crossing the Moth itself. Five years ago, a carpenter in the western city ofNysimia accidentally unearthed a series of stone tablets carved with Haragck folk legends, and among sought to split the Haragck army in two, and in the labyrinthine streets of Ambergris, her own troops had a distinct advantage.

Outflanked by the Ambergrisian ships behind them, which they had neglected to secure before establishing their beach head, the rest of the Haragck floundered; bereft of their ponies, they fought hand-to-hand on the shore while the Ambergrisian sailors assaulted them from behind with arrows and burning faggots. If the Haragck had managed to fire the ships, they might still have won the day, but instead they tried to capture them (rightly perceiving that without a navy they would never be able to conquer the region). Even so, the defenders barely managed to hold their positions through the night. But at dawn of the third day an advance guard of light horsemen arrived from Morrow and turned the fortunes of the defenders, who, tired and disheartened by all they had lost, would soon have given way to Haragck pressure.

By nightfall, the surviving Haragck had either tried to bob back over the Moth on their inflated animal skins or run north or south. Those who swam were slaughtered by the navy (the inflated animal skins were neither maneuverable nor inflammable); those who fled south ended up as slaves to the Arch Duke of Malid (who, in his turn, would be enslaved by the encroaching Brueghelites); those who fled north managed to evade the Menite army marching south, but then ran into the ferocious Skamoo with their spears made of ice.

That night, Cappan Aquelus made his way back to the surface on his hands and knees, his hair a shocking white and his eyes plucked from him; they would never, even posthumously, be returned to him. Weak with hunger and delirium, Aquelus soon recovered under the personal ministrations of his wife, who was also a noted surgeon. Like Manzikert I, he would never discuss what had happened to him. Unlike Manzikert I, he would rule again, but in the three days of his absence, the dynamics of power had undergone a radical shift. His Cappaness had proven herself quite capable of governing and had demonstrated remarkable toughness in the face of catastrophe. The Cappandom was also indebted to the Menite King for his help.

Finally, not only had Aquelus been blinded, but even many of his own ministers concluded that his underground adventure had been an act of rashness and/or cowardice. Never again would Aquelus be the sole ruling authority; from now on it would be his wife who, backed by her father, ruled in matters of defense and foreign diplomacy. More and more, Aquelus would oversee building projects and provide valuable advice to his wife. That she ever intended to usurp the cappanship is unlikely, but once she had it, the people would not let her abdicate it.

The problem went deeper than this, however. Although Aquelus had sacrificed his sight for them — indeed, many have speculated that Aquelus reached a pact with the mushroom dwellers that saved the city — the people no longer trusted him, and would never regain their former love for him. That he had gone below and survived when so many had not was proof enough for the common naval cadet that their Cappan had conspired with the enemy. Tales circulated that he snuck out at midnight to seek council with the mushroom dwellers. It was said that a tunnel had been dug from his private chambers to the mushroom dwellers’ underground lair. Most ridiculous of all, some claimed that Aquelus was actually a doppelganger, made of fungus, under the mushroom dwellers’ control; he had, after all, forbidden anyone from attacking them.

The latter part of Aquelus’ “reign” was marked by increasingly desperate attempts to regain the respect of his subjects. To this end, he would have himself led out into the city disguised as a blind beggar and listen to the common laborers and merchants as they walked by his huddled form. He also gave away huge sums of money to the poor, so seriously draining the treasury that Irene was forced to order a halt to his largesse. Aquelus’ spending, combined with the promises made to entice people to settle in Ambergris, led to the selling of titles and, in later years, a landed aristocracy that would prove a constant source of treasonous ambition.

Despite these failings, Aquelus managed partial redemption by having four children with Irene, although surely the irony of the Cappaness being the instrument of his salvation was not lost on him. These children— Mandrel, Tiphony, Cyril, and Samantha — became Aquelus’ delight and main reason for living.

While Irene ruled, he doted on them, and the people doted on them too. In Aquelus’ love for his children, Ambergrisians saw the shadow of their former love for him, and many forgave him his involvement with the mushroom dwellers — a charge almost certainly false anyway.

Thus, although in many ways tragic, the partnership of Cappaness and Cappan would define and redefine Ambergris — both internally and in the world beyond — for another 30 years. They would be haunted years, however, for the legacy of the Silence would permeate Ambergris for generations — in the sudden muting of the voices of children, of women, of those men who had stayed behind. For those inhabitants who had lost their families, their friends, the city was nothing more than a giant morgue, and no matter how they might console one another, no matter how they might set to their tasks with almost superhuman intensity, the better to block out the memories, they could never really escape the Silence, for the “City of Remembrance and Memorial,” as one poet called it, was all around them. It was common in those early, horrible years — still scarred by famine, despite the reduction in the population — for men and women to break down on the street in a sudden flux of tears.

The Truffi dian priest Michael Nysman came to the city as part of a humanitarian mission the year after the Silence and was shocked by what he found there. In a letter to his diocese back in Nicea, he wrote:

What are we, in this modern era, to make of the assertion that 25,000 people simply disappeared, leaving no trace of any struggle? Can it be believed? If the number were 1,000 could we believe it? The answer the honest historian reluctantly comes to is that the tale must be believed, because it happened.

Not a single person escaped from the mushroom dwellers. More hurtful still, it left behind a generation known simply as the Dispossessed. The city recovered, as all cities do, and yet for at least 100 years, this absence, this silence, insinuated itself into the happiest of events: the coronations and weddings of cappans, the extraordinarily high birth-rate (and low mortality rate), the victories over both Haragck and Brueghelite. The survivors retook their homes uneasily, if at all, and some areas, some houses, stood abandoned for a generation, never re-entered, so that dinners set out before the Silence rotted, moldered, and eventually fossilized. There remained the terrible conviction among the survivors that they had brought this upon themselves through Manzikert I’s massacre of the gray caps and Sophia’s torching of Cinsorium. It was hard not to feel that it was God’s judgment to see Ambergris destroyed soul by soul.

Worst of all, there was never any clue as to the fate of the Disappeared, and in the absence of information, imaginations, as always, imagined the worst. Soon, in the popular folklore of the times, the Disappeared had not only been killed, but had been subjected to terrible tortures and defilements.

Although some still claimed the Brueghelites had carried off the 25,000, most people truly believed the mushroom dwellers had been responsible. Theories as to how cropped up much more frequently than why because, short of revenge, no one could fathom why. It was said that the ever-present fungus had released spores that, inhaled, put all of the city’s inhabitants to sleep, after which the mushroom dwellers had come out and dragged them underground. Others claimed that the spores had not put the Disappeared to sleep, but had actually, in chemical combination, formed a mist that corroded human flesh, so that the inhabitants had slowly melted into nothing. The truth is, we shall never know unless the mushroom dwellers deign to tell us.