Helliconia Summer

XVIII Visitors from the Deep

Anyone advancing on Gravabagalinien could see from a distance the wooden palace which was the queen’s refuge. It stood without compromise, like a toy left on a beach.

Legend said that Gravabagalinien was haunted. That at some distant time in the past a fortress had stood in place of the flimsy palace. That it had been entirely destroyed in a great battle.

But nobody knew who fought there, or for what reason. Only that many had died, and had been buried in shallow graves where they fell. Their shades, far from their proper land-octaves, were still reputed to haunt the spot.

Certainly, another tragedy was now being acted out on the old unhallowed ground. For the time had come round when King JandolAnganol arrived in two ships with his men and phagors, and with Esomberr and CaraBansity, to divorce his queen.

And Queen MyrdemInggala had descended the stairs and had submitted to the divorce. And wine had been brought, and much mischief had been permitted. And Alam Esomberr, the envoy of the C’Sarr, had made his way into the ex-queen’s chamber only a few hours after he had conducted the ceremony of divorcement. And then had come the announcement that Simoda Tal had been slain in far Oldorando. And this sore news had been delivered to the king as the first rays of eastern Batalix painted yellow the peeling outer walls of the palace.

And now an inevitability could be discerned in the affairs of men and phagors, as events drew towards a climax in which even the chief participants would be swept helplessly along like comets plunging into darkness.

JandolAnganol’s voice was low with sorrow as he tore the hairs from his beard and head, crying to Akhanaba.

“Thy servant falls before thee, O Great One. Thou hast visited sorrow upon me. Thou hast caused my armies to go down in defeat. Thou hast caused my son to forsake me. Thou hast caused me to divorce my beloved queen, MyrdemInggala. Thou hast caused my intended bride to be assassinated… What more must I suffer for Thy sake?

“Let not my people suffer. Accept my suffering O Great Lord, as a sufficient sacrifice for my people.”

As he rose and put on his tunic, the pallid-chopped AbstrogAthenat said casually, “It’s true that the army has lost Randonan. But all civilized countries are surrounded by barbaric ones, and are defeated when their armies invade them. We should go, not with the sword, but with the word of God.”

“Crusades are in the province of Pannoval, not a poor country like ours, Vicar.” Adjusting his tunic over his wounds, he felt in his pocket the three-faced timepiece he had taken from CaraBansity in Ottassol. Now as then, he felt it to be an object of ill omen.

AbstrogAthenat bowed, holding the whip behind him. “At least we might please the All-Powerful by being more human, and shunning the inhuman.”

In sudden anger, JandolAnganol struck out with his left hand and caught the vicar across the cheek with his knuckles.

“You keep to God’s affairs and leave worldly matters to me.”

He knew what the man meant. His reference had been to purging phagors from Borlien.

Leaving his tunic open, feeling its fabric absorb the blood of his latest scourging, JandolAnganol climbed from the subterranean chapel to the ground floor of the wooden palace. Yuli jumped up to welcome him.

His head throbbed as if he were going blind. He patted the little phagor and sank his fingers into its thick pelage.

Shadows still lay long outside the palace. He scarcely knew how to face the morning: only yesterday he had arrived at Gravabagalinien and—in the presence of the envoy of the Holy C’Sarr, Alam Esomberr—he had divorced his fair queen.

The palace was shuttered as it had been the day previously. Now men lay everywhere in the rooms, still in drink-sodden sleep. Sunlight cut its way into the darkness in a crisscross of lines, making it seem like a woven basket that he walked through, heading for the doorway.

When he flung the door open, the Royal First Phagorian Guard stood on duty outside, its ranks of long jaws and horns unmoving. That was something worth seeing anyway, he told himself, trying to dispel his black mood.

He walked in the air before the heat rose. He saw the sea and felt the breeze, and heeded them not. Before dawn, while he still slept heavily from drink, Esomberr had come to him. Beside Esomberr stood his new chancellor, Bardol CaraBansity. They had informed him that the Madi princess he intended to marry was dead, killed by an assassin.

Nothing was left.

Why had he gone to such trouble to divorce his true wife? What had possessed his mind? There were severances the hardiest could not survive.

It was his wish to speak to her.

A delicacy in him restrained from sending a messenger up to her room. He knew that she was there with the little princess Tatro waiting for him to leave and take his soldiers with him. Probably she had heard the news the men had brought in the night. Probably she feared assassination. Probably she hated him.

He turned in his sharp way, as if to catch himself out. His new chancellor was approaching with his heavy, determined tread, jowls jolting.

JandolAnganol eyed CaraBansity and then turned his back on him. CaraBansity was forced to skirt him and Yuli before making a clumsy bow.

The king stared at him. Neither man spoke. CaraBansity turned his cloudy gaze from the king’s.

“You find me in an ill mood.”

“I have not slept either, sire. I deeply regret this fresh misfortune which has visited you.”

“My ill mood covers not only the All-Powerful but you, who are not so powerful.”

“What have I done to displease you, sire?”

The Eagle drew his brows together, making his gaze more hawklike.

“I know you are secretly against me. You have a reputation for craftiness. I saw that gloating look you could not conceal when you came to announce the death of—you know who.”

“The Madi princess? If you so distrust me, sire, you must not take me on as your chancellor.”

JandolAnganol presented his back again, with the yellow gauze of his tunic patterned red with blood like an ancient banner.

CaraBansity began to shuffle. He stared up abstractedly at the palace and saw how its white paint was peeling. He felt what it was to be a commoner and what it was to be a king.

He enjoyed his life. He knew many people and was useful to the community. He loved his wife. He prospered. Yet the king had come along and snatched him up against his will, as if he were a slave.

He had accepted the role and, being a man of character, made the best of it. Now this sovereign had the gall to tell CaraBansity that he was secretly against his king. There was no limit to royal impertinence—and as yet he could see no way to escape following JandolAnganol all the way to Oldorando.

His sympathy with the king’s predicament left him. “I meant to say, Your Majesty,” he began in a determined voice, and then became alarmed by his own temerity, looking at that bloody back. “This is just a trifling matter, of course, but before we set sail from Ottassol, you took from me that interesting timepiece with three faces. Do you happen to have it still?” The king did not turn or move. He said, “I have it here in my tunic.” CaraBansity took a deep breath and then said, much more feebly than he intended, “Would you return it to me, please, Your Majesty?”

“This is no time to approach me for favours, when Borlien’s standing within the Holy Empire is threatened.” He was the Eagle as he spoke.

They both stood, watching Yuli root in the bushes by the palace. The creature pissed after the retromingent fashion of his species.

The king began to walk with measured pace in the direction of the sea.

I’m no better than a damned slave, said CaraBansity to himself. He followed.

With the runt skipping beside him, the king speeded his step, speaking rapidly as he went, so that the portly deuteroscopist was forced to catch up. He never mentioned the subject of his timepiece again.

“Akhanaba had favoured me and set many fruits in my life’s way. And always to those fruits an additional flavour was given when I saw that more were promised—tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Whatever I wished, I might have more of.

“It’s true I suffered setbacks and defeats, but that within a general atmosphere of promise. I did not allow them to disturb me for long. My personal defeat in the Cosgatt—well, I learnt from it and put it behind me, and eventually won a great victory there.”

They passed a line of gwing-gwing trees. The king snatched down a gwing-gwing, biting into it to the stone as he spoke, letting the juice run down his chin. He gestured, clutching the despoiled fruit.

“Today, I see my life in a new light. Perhaps all that was promised me I have already received… I am, after all, more than twenty-five years.” He spoke with difficulty. “Perhaps this is my summer, and in future when I shake the bush no fruit will fall… Can I any longer rely on plenty? Doesn’t our religion warn us that we must expect times of famine? Fah!—Akhanaba is like a Sibornalese, always obsessed with the winter to come.”

They walked along the low cliffs separating land from beach, where the queen was accustomed to swim.

“Tell me,” said JandolAnganol carelessly, “if you as an atheist do not have a religious construction to put to the case—how do you see my difficulties?”

CaraBansity was silent, setting his beefy red face towards the ground as if guarding it against the king’s abrasive look. Work up your courage, he told himself.

“Well? Come, say what you will. I have no spirit! I have been flogged by my whey-visaged vicar…”

When CaraBansity stopped walking, the king followed suit.

“Sire, I recently to oblige a friend took into my establishment a certain young lady. My wife and I entertain many people, some alive, some dead; also animals for dissection, and phagors, either for dissection or for bodyguards. None caused as much trouble as that certain young lady.

“I love my wife, and ever continue to do so. But I lusted after that certain young lady. I had a contempt for her, yet I lusted after her. I despised myself, and yet I lusted after her.”

“But did you have her?”

CaraBansity laughed, and for the first time in the king’s presence, his face lightened. “Sire, I had her much as you have that gwing-gwing, the fruit par excellence of dimday. The juice, sire, ran down… But it was khmir and not love, and once the khmir was quenched—though that was certainly a process… that was summer process, sire—once it was quenched, I loathed myself and wanted nothing more of her. I established her apart and told her never to see me again. Since when, I learn that she has taken to her mother’s profession, and caused the death of at least one man.”

“What’s all this to me?” asked the king with a haughty look.

“Sire, I believe the activating principle of your life to be lust rather than love.

“You tell me in religious terms that Akhanaba has favoured you and put many fruits in your path. In my terms, you have taken what you would, done what you would, and so you wish to continue. You favour ancipitals as instruments of your lust, not caring that phagors are in reality never submissive. Nothing really can stand in your way—except the queen of queens. She can stand in your way because she alone in the world commands your love, and perhaps some respect. That is why you hate her, because you love her.

“She stands between you and your khmir. She alone can contain your—duality. In you as in me, and perhaps as in all men, the two principles are divided—but the division in you is as great as your state is great.

“If you prefer to believe in Akhanaba, believe now that he has by these supposed setbacks given you warning that your life is about to go wrong. Make it right while the chance is offered.”

They stopped on the cliff, ignoring the dull thunders of the sea, and stood face to face, both of them tense. The king heard his chancellor out with never a movement, while Yuli rolled in coarse grass nearby.

“How would you suggest that I make my life right?” A less self-assured man than CaraBansity would have taken fright from his tone.

This is my advice, Your Majesty. Do not go to Oldorando. Simoda Tal is dead. You no longer have reason to visit an unfriendly capital. As a deuteroscopist, I warn you against it.” Under his grizzled eyebrows, CaraBansity kept careful note of the effect of his words on JandolAnganol.

“Your place is in your own kingdom, never more so than now, while your enemies have not forgotten the Massacre of the Myrdolators. Return to Matrassyl.

“Your rightful queen is here. Fall before her and ask forgiveness. Tear up Esomberr’s bill before her eyes. Take back what you love most. Your sanity lies in her. Reject the cozzening of Pannoval.”

The Eagle glared out to sea, eyes rapidly blinking.

“Live a saner life, Majesty. Win back your son. Kick out Pannoval, kick out the phagor guard, live a sane life with your queen. Reject the false Akhanaba, who has led you—”

But he had gone too far.

Matchless fury seized the king. A rage filled him until he was rage personified. He hurled himself bodily upon CaraBansity. Before this anger beyond reason, CaraBansity quailed and fell an instant before the king was on him.

Kneeling on his prostrate body, the king drew his sword. CaraBansity screamed.

“Spare me, Your Majesty! Last night I saved your queen from vile rape.”

JandolAnganol paused, then stood, sword point directed at the quaking body huddled by his feet. “Who would dare touch the queen when I was near? Answer?”

“Your Majesty…” The voice trembled slightly, the lips uttering it were pressed almost to the ground; yet what it said was clear. “You were drunk. And Envoy Esomberr went into her room to ravish her.”

The king breathed deep. He sheathed his sword. He stood without movement.

“You base commoner! How could you understand the life of a king? I do not go back along the path I have once trod. You may possess life, which is mine to take, but I have a destiny and shall follow on where the All-Powerful leads.

“Crawl back to where you belong. You cannot advise me. Keep out of my way!”

Yet he still stood over the grovelling anatomist. When Yuli came snuffling up, the king turned suddenly away and strode back to the wooden palace.

The guard roused at his shout. They were to be away from Gravabagalinien within the hour. They would march for Oldorando, as planned. His voice, his cold fury, stirred up the palace as if it were a nest of rickybacks disturbed by the lifting of a log. Esomberr’s vicars could be heard within, calling to each other in high voices.

This commotion reached the queen in her chambers. She stood in the middle of her ivory room, listening. Her bodyguard was at the door. Mai TolramKetinet sat with two maids in the anteroom, clutching Tatro. Thick curtains were drawn across the windows. MyrdemInggala wore a long flimsy dress. Her face was as pale as the shadow of a cowbird’s wing on snow. She stood breathing the warm air into her lungs and out again, listening to the sound of men and hoxneys, of curses and commands below. Once she went to the curtains; then, as if disdaining her own weakness, withdrew the hand she had raised and returned to where she waited before. The heat brought out beads of perspiration which clung to her forehead like pearls. She heard the king’s voice once distinctly, then not again.

As for CaraBansity, he climbed to his feet when the king had gone. He walked down to the bay where he could not be seen, to recover his colour. After a while, he began to sing. He had his liberty back, if not his timepiece.

In his pain, the king went to a small room in one of the rickety towers and bolted the door behind him. Dust drifting down gave phantom substance to slices of gold shining in through a lattice. The place smelt of feathers, fungus, and old straw. On the bare boards of the floor were pigeon droppings, but the king, ignoring them, lay down and cast himself by an effort of will into pauk.

His soul, detached from his body, became tranquil. Like a moth wing falling, it sank into the velvety darkness. The darkness remained when all else had gone.

This was the paradox of the limbo in which the soul now drifted rudderless: that it extended everywhere and was an endless domain, while at the same time being as familiar to him as the dark space under the bedclothes to a child.

The soul had no mortal eyes. It saw with a different vision. It saw beneath it, through the obsidian, a host of dim lights, stationary but seeming to move in relation to each other because of the soul’s descent. Each light had once been a living spirit. Each was now drawn to the great mother-principle which would exist even when the world was dead, the original beholder, the principle even greater than—or at least apart from—such gods as Akhanaba.

And the soul moved in particular to one light that attracted it, the gossie of its father.

The spark that had once been no less a personage than VarpalAnganol, King of Borlien, resembled only a tentative sketch of sunshine on an old wall, with its ribs, its pelvis, scarcely drawn. All that remained of the head which had worn the crown was the suggestion of a stone, with ambers faintly connotating eye sockets. Beneath this little cockleshell—visible through it—were fessups like trails of dust.

“Father, I come before you, your unworthy son, to beg your forgiveness for my crimes to you.” So spoke the soul of JandolAnganol, hanging where no air was.

“My dear son, you are welcome here, welcome whenever you can find time to visit your father, now among the ranks of the dead. I have no reproach for you. You were always my dear son.”

“Father, I shall not mind your reproaches. Rather, I welcome your most bitter rebukes, for I know how great is my sin against you.”

The silences between their speeches were immeasurable because no breath was exhaled.

“Hush, my son, nobody needs to talk of sin among this company. You were my loving son, and that suffices. No more need be said. Grieve not.”

When it seemed time to speak, a dusty fire, the mere death of a candle flame, issued from where a mouth had been. Its smoke could be seen ascending between the cage of the ribs and up the stack of the throat.

The soul spoke again. “Father, I beg you to pour your wrath upon me for all that I did against you in your life, and for causing your death. Lessen my guilt. It is too much to bear.”

“You are innocent, my son, as innocent as the wave that splashes on the shore. Feel no guilt for the happiness you brought into my life. Now in the residue of that life, I have no wrath to bring against you.”

“Father, I kept you imprisoned ten years in a dungeon of the castle. In what way can I earn forgiveness for that act?”

The flame moved upwards, issuing as sparks.

That time is forgotten, son. I scarcely remember a time of imprisonment, for you were always there to speak with me. Those occasions were cherished, for you asked advice of me—which I freely gave, as far as it was in my capacity.”

“It was a melancholy place.”

“It gave me time to think over the failings of my own life, to prepare myself for what was to come.”

“Father, how your forgiveness wounds me!”

“Come closer, my boy, and let me comfort you.”

But for the living to touch the dead was forbidden in the realm of the original beholder. If that ultimate duality was breached, then both were consumed. The soul floated lightly away from the thing that hung before it in the abyss.

“Comfort me with more advice, Father.”

“Speak.”

“First of all, let me know whether that tormented son of mine has fallen among you. I fear the instability of his life.”

“I shall welcome the boy when he arrives, never worry—but as yet he still journeys in the world of light.”

After a moment, the soul communicated again.

“Father, you perceive my position among the living. Advise me where Tarn to go. Am I to return to Matrassyl? Should I remain in Gravabagalinien? Or shall I continue to Oldorando? Where does my most fruitful future lie?”

“In each place there are those who await you. But there is one who awaits you in Oldorando whom you know not. That one holds your destiny. Go to Oldorando.”

“Your advice will guide my actions.”

From among the sparkling battalions of the dead, the soul rose, slowly at first, and then with a great urgency. Somewhere, a drum was sounding. The sparks dissolved below, sinking back into the original beholder.

The inanimate anatomy on the floor in the belfry began slowly to move. Its limbs twitched. It sat up. Its eyes opened in a blank face.

The only living thing to meet its gaze was Yuli, who crawled nearer and said, “My poor king in tether.”

Without answering, JandolAnganol ruffled the runt’s fur and let it snuggle against him.

“Oh, Yuli, what a thing is life.”

After a minute, he patted the ancipital across the shoulders. “You’re a good boy. No harm in you.”

As the creature snuggled against him, the king felt an object against his side, and drew from his pocket the watch with three faces which he had taken from CaraBansity. Whenever he looked at it, his thoughts became troubled, yet he could not find it in himself to throw it away.

Once, the timepiece had belonged to Billy, the creature who claimed to come from a world not ruled by Akhanaba. It was necessary to banish Billy from consciousness (as one banished the thought of those damned Myrdolators), for Billy was a challenge to the whole elaborate structure of belief by which the Holy Pannovalan Empire stood. Sometimes, the fear came to the king that he might become bereft of his religious faith, as he had become bereft of so much else. Only his faith and this humble inhuman pet were left to him.

He groaned. With a great effort, he got to this feet again.

Within the hour, King JandolAnganol was at the head of his force, riding Lapwing with Envoy Alam Esomberr beside him. Behind came the king’s captains, then Esomberr’s party, and after them the body of the First Royal Phagorian Guard, ears atwitch, scarlet eyes fixed ahead, marching as their kind had done many centuries before towards the city of Oldorando.

The king’s departure from the wooden palace, with all its underlying sense of anxiety, made a due impression on the watchers on the Avernus. They were glad to divert their attention from the sight of the king in pauk. Even the devoted female admirers of his majesty felt uncomfortable at the sight of him lying prone with his spirit away from his body.

Throughout the human population of Helliconia, pauk, or paterplacation, came as naturally as spitting. It had no particular religious significance, although it often existed alongside religion. Just as women became pregnant with future lives, so people were pregnant with the lives of those who had gone before them.

On the Avernus, the mysterious Helliconian practice of pauk was regarded as a religious function roughly equivalent to prayer. As such, it embarrassed the six families. The families suffered no inhibitions concerning sex: constant monitoring had ensured that long since; for them love and the higher emotions were no more than side effects of daily functions, to be ignored where possible; but religion was particularly difficult to deal with.

The families regarded religion as a primitive obsession, an illness, an opiate for those who could not think straight. They hoped perpetually that SartoriIrvrash and his kind would become more militant in their atheism and bring about the death of Akhanaba, thus contributing to a happier state of affairs. They neither liked nor understood pauk. They wished it did not happen.

On Earth, other opinions prevailed. Life and death could be perceived as an inseparable whole; death was never feared where life was properly lived. The terrestrials regarded with the liveliest interest the Helliconia activity of pauk. During the first years of contact with Helliconia, they had regarded the trance state as a kind of astral-projection of the Helliconian soul, rather similar to a state of meditation. Later, a more sophisticated viewpoint had developed; understanding grew that the people of Helliconia possessed an ability peculiar to them, to shift beyond and return from the boundary set between life and death. This continuity had been given them in compensation for the remarkable discontinuities of their Great Year. Pauk had evolutionary value, and was a point of union between the humans and their changeable planet.

For this reason, the terrestrials were particularly interested in pauk. They had at this period discovered their own unity with their own planet, and related that unity to increasing empathy with Helliconia.

In the days that followed, lassitude took the queen of queens and laid her low.

She had lost the things of value which gave existence its previous fragrance. After the storm, the flowers would never lift their heads so high again. With her deep sense of guilt that she had somehow failed her king went bitter anger against him. If she had failed, it was not for want of trying, and the years of loving bestowed on him as freely as breath were more than wasted. Yet love remained beneath her anger. That was the cruellest thing. She understood JandolAnganol’s self-doubt as no one else did. She was unable to break from the bond they had once forged.

Every day, after prayer, she went into pauk, to communicate with her mother’s gossie. After her prostrations, recalling how SartoriIrvrash in particular had condemned all pater-placation as superstition, MyrdemInggala, in a fury of doubt, questioned whether she had visited her mother at all, whether the phantom was not in her head, whether there could be survival for anyone after death, except in the memories of those who had still to pass beyond that forbidding shore.

She questioned. Yet pauk was her consolation as much as the sea. For her dead brother YeferalOboral was now among the gossies, pouring out love for her as he sank towards the original beholder. The queen’s unspoken fear, that he had been murdered by JandolAnganol, was proved baseless. She knew now where the real blame lay. For all that she was grateful.

Yet she regretted not having that additional reason to hate the king. She swam in the sea among her familiars. Peace of mind forsook her each time she returned to shore. The phagors carried her back to the palace in her throne; her resentment grew as she approached its doors. The days dragged by and she grew no younger. She was scarcely on speaking terms with Mai. She ran up to her creaking chambers and hid her face.

“If you feel so badly, follow the king to Oldorando, and plead with the C’Sarr’s representatives there to annul your divorce,” Mai said in impatient tones.

“Would you like to follow the king?” asked MyrdemInggala. “I would not.”

Burnt into her memory was a recollection of how, in spendthrift times, this woman, her lady-in-waiting, had been harvested into the king’s bed and the two of them, like low whores, had been pleasured by him at one and the same time. Neither woman spoke of those occasions—but they lay between them as tangibly as a sword.

Chiefly from a need to talk to someone, the queen persuaded CaraBansity to stay at the palace for a few days, and then for a day more. He pleaded that his wife awaited him back home in Matrassyl. She pleaded with him to wait a little longer. He begged to be excused, but, cunning man though he was, he found it impossible to say no to the queen. They walked every day along the shore, sometimes coming on herds of deer, and Mai trailed disconsolately behind them.

When JandolAnganol, Esomberr, and their party had been gone from Gravabagalinien for a week and two days, the queen was sitting moodily in her room, gazing to the landward side of her narrow domain. The door was thrown open and in ran TatromanAdala, shrieking a greeting.

The child came halfway across the gulf between the door and the place where her mother crouched. That mother had raised her head and looked from under her disordered hair with such venom that Tatro halted.

“Moth! Can you play?”

The mother saw how the daughter’s infant face bore the features of her father’s line. The genethlic divinities might have further tragedies yet in store. The queen screamed at Tatro.

“Get out of my sight, you little witch!”

Amazement, scandal, anger, dismay passed across the child’s face. It glowed red, it seemed to dissolve, it flowed with tears and sobs.

The queen of queens leaped to her sandalless feet, and rushed at the small being. Twirling it about, she thrust it forward and out of the room, slamming the door on it. Then she herself, flinging her body against a wall, hands above her head, also wept.

Later in the day, her mood lightened. She sought out the child and made a fuss of her. Lassitude gave way to a mood of elation. She put on a satara gown and went downstairs. Her portable golden throne was summoned, though the heat of midday was heavy on Gravabagalinien. Submissive hornless phagors brought it forth. Majordomo ScufBar came, and Princess Tatro with her nursemaid, and the nursemaid’s maid, carrying storybooks and toys.

The small procession being assembled, MyrdemInggala mounted her throne, and they started on the way to the beach. At this hour, no courtiers accompanied them. Freyr regarded them, low over a shoulder of cliff, Batalix shone almost at zenith.

Leisurely waves, aglitter as if the world had just begun that day, came in, curling to reveal for a moment their cucumber hearts. About the stand of the Linien Rock, water gargled invitingly. Of the assatassi of the recent past there was no sign, nor would there be until next year.

MyrdemInggala stood for a while on the beach. The phagors stood silently by her throne. The princess rushed excitedly about, issuing her commands to the maids for the building of the strongest sand castle ever, a pianissimo generalissimo rehearsing her role in life. The lure of the sea was not to be resisted. With a bold swing of her arm, the queen released herself from her dress and slid the zona from under her breasts. Her perfumed body was available to the sunlight.

“Don’t leave me, Moth!” Tatro shrilled.

“I shall not be long,” replied her mother, and ran down the beach to plunge into the beckoning sea.

Once below the surface, the forked creature became a fish herself, as lithe as a fish and almost as speedy. Swimming strongly she passed the dark form of the Linien Rock, to surface only when she was well out into the bay. Here the headland to the east curved round, creating a comparatively narrow passage between it and the solitary stand of rock. She called. The queen of queens was immediately surrounded by dolphins—her familiars, as she spoke of them.

They came, as she knew, in ranking order. She had only to release a spur of urine into the water, and the shapes silvered in, circling about her, closer and closer, till she could rest her arms upon two of them as securely as on the arms of her throne.

Only the privileged could touch her. They were twenty-one in number. Beyond them was an outer court, not less than sixty-four in number. Sometimes, a member of this outer court was permitted to join the inner. Beyond the outer court was a retinue whose numbers MyrdemInggala could only estimate. Possibly one thousand three hundred and forty-four. The retinue contained most of the mothers, children, and oldsters belonging to this school—or nation, as the queen thought of it.

Beyond the retinue, constantly on guard for danger, was the regiment. She rarely saw individual members of the regiment and was discouraged from approaching them, but understood that it numbered certainly as many individuals as the retinue. She also understood that in the deeps were monsters which the dolphins feared. It was the duty of the regiment to guard the retinue and the courts, and to warn them of danger.

MyrdemInggala trusted her familiars more than she trusted her human companions; yet, as in every living relationship, something was withheld. Just as she could not share with them her life on land, they had something in the deeps, some dark knowledge, they could not share with her. Because this thing was unknown, lying beyond her mind, it had its sinister music.

The inner court spoke to her with their great orchestral range of voices. Their pipings near at hand were humble and sweet—truly she was accepted as a queen below water as on land. Further out to sea, long sustained baritone chirps sounded, with basso profundo groans intermingling in a perplexing pattern.

“What is it, my sweetings, my familiars?”

They raised their smiling faces and kissed her shoulders. She knew each member of the inner court by sight and had names for them.

Something worried them. She relaxed, letting her understanding spread out like her urine through the water. She swam deep with them, out to colder water. They spiralled about her, occasionally touching her skin with their skin.

Secretly she hoped to catch a glimpse of the monsters of the true sea. She had not been exiled long enough in Gravabagalinien ever to catch a glimpse of them. However, they appeared to be telling her that this time trouble came from the west.

They had warned her of the death-flight of the assatassi. Although they lacked her time sense, she began to appreciate that whatever was coming was coming slowly but remorselessly, and would arrive soon. Strange thrills worked in her. The creatures responded to her thrills. Every shudder of her body was part of their music.

Understanding her curiosity, the dolphins guided her forward again.

She stared through the zafferine panes of the sea. They had brought her to the brink of a shallow shelf, on which seaweeds grew, bent before the overmastering current. They pushed through. Beyond was a sandy basin. Here were the multitudes of the retinue, line on line, facing westwards.

Beyond them, moving with the wary action of a patrol, was the whole force of the regiment, close together, body almost touching body, making the sea black and extending farther out than vision could penetrate. Never before had the queen been allowed such a close sight of the whole school, or realized how vast it was, how many individuals comprised it. Matching the complex ranks assembled came a tremendous harmony of noise, extending far beyond her human hearing.

She surfaced, and the court followed. MyrdemInggala could remain submerged for three or four minutes, and the dolphins needed to take breath as she did.

She glanced towards the shore. It was distant. One day, she thought, these beautiful creatures that I can love and trust will carry me away from sight of mankind. I shall be changed. She could not tell whether it was for death or life she longed.

Figures danced on the remote shore. One figure waved a cloth. The queen’s first response was, indignantly, that they were using her dress for the purpose. Then she realized that they signalled to her. It could only mean a crisis of some kind. Guiltily, her thoughts went to the little princess.

She clutched her breasts in sudden apprehension. To the inner court she gave a word of explanation, before striking back towards the shore. Her familiars followed or plunged before her in arrowhead formation, creating a favourable wake to hasten her strokes.

Her dress lay untouched on her throne, the phagors guarding it, shoulders hunched and acknowledging no excitement. One of the maids, in desperation, had ripped off her own garment to wave. She assumed it again as MyrdemInggala emerged from the water, reluctant to have anyone compare her body with the queen’s.

“There’s a ship,” cried Tatro, eager to be first with the news. “A ship is coming!”

From the headland, using the spyglass which ScufBar brought, the queen saw the ship. CaraBansity was sent for. By the time he arrived on the scene, two further sails were sighted, mere blurs in the murk of the western horizon.

CaraBansity rubbed his eyes with a heavy hand as he returned the spyglass to ScufBar.

“Madam, to my mind the nearest ship is not from Borlien.”

“Where, then?”

“In half an hour, its marking will be clearer.”

She said, “You are a stubborn man. Where is the ship from? Can’t you identify that insignia on its sail?”

“If I could, madam, then I would think it was the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar, and that is nonsense, because it would mean there was a Sibornalese ship very far from home.”

She snatched the glass. “It is a Sibornalese ship—of good size. What could it be doing in these waters?”

The deuteroscopist folded his arms and looked grim. “You have been provided with no defences here. Let us hope it is making for Ottassol and its intentions are good.”

“My familiars warned me of this,” said the queen gravely.

The day wore on. The ship made slow progress. There was great excitement at the palace. Barrels of tar were rolled out to an eminence above the little bay where it was anticipated the ship’s boat would have to land if Gravabagalinien was its destination. At least the crew could be confronted by flaming tar if they proved hostile.

The air thickened towards evening. There was no doubt now about the hierogram on the sail. Batalix sank in concentric aureoles of light. People came and went in the palace. Freyr disappeared into the same hazes as its fellow and was gone. Twilight lingered, the sail glinted on the sea; it tacked now, to keep the wind.

With darkness, stars began to appear overhead. The Night Worm burned bright, with the Queen’s Scar dim beside it. Nobody slept. The small community feared and hoped, knowing its vulnerability.

The queen sat in her shuttered hall. Tall candles of whale oil fluttered on the table by her side. The wine a slave had poured into a crystal glass and topped with Lordryardry ice was untouched and threw blurred gules on the table. She waited and stared across the room at the bare wall opposite, as if to read there her future fate. Her aide de campe entered, bowing. “Madam, we hear the rattle of their chains. The anchor is going down.”

The queen called CaraBansity and they went to the seashore. Several men and phagors were mustered, to ignite the tar barrels if necessary. Only one torch burned. She took it and strode with it into the dark water. To the wetting of her garments she paid no heed. Lifting the torch above her head, she advanced towards the other advancing lights. She felt immediately the smooth kiss of her familiars about her legs.

Mingled with the roar of surf came a creek of oars. The wooden wall of the ship, its sails furled, was faintly visible as a backdrop. A boat had been let down. The queen saw men straining, barebacked, at the oars. Two men were standing amidships, one with a lantern, their faces caught in the nimbus of light. “Who dares come ashore here?” she called. And a voice came back, male, with a thrill in it, “Queen MyrdemInggala, queen of queens, is that you?”

“Who calls?” she asked. But she recognized the voice even as his response came across the diminishing distance between them.

“It is your general, ma’am, Hanra TolramKetinet.” He jumped from the boat and waded ashore. The queen raised her hand to those on the eminence not to fire their barrels. The general fell before her on one knee, clasping her hand on which the ring with the blue stone gleamed. Her other hand went to his head, to steady herself. In a half-circle round them stood the queen’s phagor guard, their morose faces vaguely sketched in the night.

CaraBansity stepped forward with some amazement to greet the general’s companion in the longboat. Taking SartoriIrvrash in a great hug, he said, “I had reason to suppose you were in hiding in Dimariam. For once I guessed wrong.”

“You’re rarely wrong, but this time you were out by a whole continent,” said SartoriIrvrash. “I’ve become a world traveller—what are you doing here?”

“I’ve remained here since the king left. For a while, JandolAnganol conscripted me to your old post, and almost killed me for it. I’ve stayed for the ex-queen’s sake. She’s in a doleful state of mind, poor lady.”

Both men looked towards MyrdemInggala and TolramKetinet, but could see no dolefulness about either of them.

“What of her son, Roba?” asked SartoriIrvrash. “Have you news of him?”

“News and no news.” CaraBansity’s forehead creased in a frown. “It would be some weeks ago that he arrived at my house in Ottassol, just after the assatassi death-flight. The lad’s crazed and will cause damage. I let him have a room for the night.” He was about to say more, but stopped himself. “Don’t mention Robay to the queen.”

As the two couples stood conversing on the sand, the boat returned to the Prayer to transport Odi Jeseratabhar and Lanstatet ashore. When the oarsmen had dragged the boat safely above the high-tide mark, the whole party made its way up the beach to the palace, following the queen and TolramKetinet. In some of the windows of the palace, lights had been lit.

SartoriIrvrash introduced Odi Jeseratabhar to CaraBansity in glowing terms. CaraBansity became noticeably cool; he made it clear that a Sibornalese admiral was not welcome on Borlienese soil.

“I understand your feelings,” Odi said faintly to CaraBansity. She was pale and drawn, her lips white and her hair straggling.

A meal was prepared for the unexpected guests, during which time the general was reunited with his sister Mai and embraced her. Mai wept.

“Oh, Hanra, what’s to happen to us all?” she asked. “Take me back to Matrassyl.”

“Everything will be fine now,” her brother said with assurance.

Mai merely looked her disbelief. She wished to be free of the queen—not to have her as sister-in-law.

They ate fish, followed by venison served with gwing-gwing sauces. They drank such wine as the king’s invading force had left, chilled with the best Lordryardry ice. As the meal progressed, TolramKetinet told the company something of the suffering of the Second Army in the jungle; he turned occasionally to Lanstatet, who sat next to his sister, for confirmation of one point or another. The queen appeared scarcely to be listening, though the account was addressed to her. She ate little and her gaze, shielded under long lashes, was rarely lifted from the table.

After the meal, she seized up a candle in its pewter holder and said to her guests, “The night grows short. I will show you to your quarters. You are more welcome than my previous visitors.”

The military force with Lanstatet were shown to rear accommodation. SartoriIrvrash and Odi Jeseratabhar were given a chamber near the queen’s and a slave woman to attend them and dress Odi’s wounds.

When these dispositions were completed, MyrdemInggala and TolramKetinet stood alone in the echoing hall.

“I fear you are tired,” he said in a low voice as they mounted the stairs. She made no answer. Her figure, ascending the steps before him, suggested not fatigue but suppressed energy.

In the corridor upstairs, slatted blinds rattled against the open windows with the stirrings of false dawn. An early bird called from a tower. Looking obliquely back at him, she said, “I have no husband, as you have no wife. Nor am I queen, though by that name I am still addressed. Nor have I been scarcely a woman since I arrived at this place. What I am, you shall see before this night is over.”

She flung open the doors of her own bedchamber and gestured to him to enter.

He paused, questioning. “By the beholder—”

“The beholder shall behold what she will behold. My faith has fallen from me as shall this gown.”

As he entered, she clasped the neck of her dress and pulled it open, so that her neat breasts, their nipples surrounded by large dark aureoles, sprang before his gaze. He shut the door behind him, calling her name.

She gave herself to him with an effort of will.

During what was left of the night, they did not sleep. The arms of TolramKetinet were round her body, and his flesh inside hers.

Thus was her letter, despatched by the Ice Captain, answered at last.

The next morning brought challenges forgotten in the reunions of the previous night. The Union and the Good Hope were closing in on the undefended harbour. Pasharatid was drawing near.

Despite the crisis, Mai insisted on getting her brother to herself for half an hour; while she lectured him on the miseries of life in Gravabagalinien, TolramKetinet fell asleep. She threw a glass of water over him to wake him. Staggering angrily out of the palace, he went to join the queen down by the shore. She stood with CaraBansity and one of her old women, looking out to sea.

Both suns were in different sectors of the sky, both shining the more brightly because they were about to be eclipsed by black rain clouds drawing up the slopes of the sky. Two sails glittered in the actinic light.

The Union was close, the Good Hope no more than an hour’s sailing behind; the hierograms on its spread canvas were clear to behold. The Union had lowered its artemon, in order to allow its companion to catch up.

Lanstatet was already working with his force, unloading equipment from the Prayer.

“They’re coming in, Akhanaba help us!” he shouted to TolramKetinet.

“What’s that woman doing?” TolramKetinet asked. An old woman, a servitor of the queen’s, a long-term housekeeper of the wooden palace, was helping Lanstatet’s men unload the Prayer. It was her way of showing her dedication to the queen. A man above her was rolling kegs of gunpowder from the deck onto a gangplank. The old woman was directing the kegs down the slope, releasing a soldier for other duties.

“I’m helping you—what do you think?” she screamed back at the general.

Her attention was distracted. The next keg rolled off the gangplank and struck her shoulder, bowling the old woman over, pitching her face down on the shingle.

She was dragged up, faint but protesting, to lie against a chest on the beach. Blood streamed down her face. MyrdemInggala hurried down from the headland to comfort her.

As the queen knelt by her old servant, TolramKetinet stood over her and laid a hand on the queen’s shoulder.

“My arrival has brought trouble on you, lady. That was not my intention. I am trying to regret I did not sail straight on to Ottassol.”

The queen made no answer, but took the old woman’s head on her lap. The latter’s eyes had closed, but her breathing was regular.

“I said, lady, that I hope you don’t regret that I did not sail on to Ottassol.”

Distress showed in her face as she turned to him. “Hanra, I have no regrets about last night when we were together. It was my wish. I thought to be free of Jan. But it did not achieve what I hoped. For that, I am to blame, not you.”

“You are free of him. He divorced you, did he not? What are you talking about?” He looked angry. “I know I’m not a very good general, but—”

“Oh, stop that!” she said impatiently. “It’s got nothing to do with you. What do I care if you lost your scerming army? I’m talking about a bond, a solemn state that existed between two people for a long time… Some things don’t end when we hope they will. Jan and I—it’s like being unable to waken—oh, I’m unable to express—”

With some annoyance, TolramKetinet said, “You’re tired. I know how women get upset. Let’s talk about such things later. Let’s deal with the emergency first.” He pointed out to sea, and adopted a no-nonsense voice. “Judging by the nonappearance of the Golden Friendship, it was too badly damaged to sail. The Admiral Jeseratabhar says that Dienu Pasharatid was on it. Perhaps she has been killed, in which case Io Pasharatid on the Union will be full of vengeance.”

“I fear that man,” said MyrdemInggala. “And with excellent reason.” She bent her head over the old woman.

Her general gave her a side glance. “I’m here to protect you from him, aren’t I?”

“I suppose you are,” she said spiritlessly. “At least your lieutenant is doing something about the matter.”

JandolAnganol had seen to it that the wooden palace had no weapons with which to defend itself. But the rocks extending out to sea from the Linien Rock meant that any considerable vessel like the Union had to sail between the Rock and the headland, and there lay the defender’s chance. GortorLanstatet had reinforced his working party on the beach with phagors. Two large cannon from the Vajabhar Prayer’s quarterdeck had been winched ashore and were now being manhandled onto the headland, where they would command the bay.

ScufBar and another serving man came up with a stretcher to carry the injured woman back to the safety of the palace and apply iced bandages to her wounds.

Leaving the queen’s side, TolramKetinet ran to help position the cannon. He saw the danger of their situation. Apart from the phagors and a few unarmed helpers, the defending forces at Gravabagalinien numbered only his complement of thirteen who had come with him from Ordelay. The two Sibornalese ships now closing on the bay each contained possibly fifty well-armed fighting men. Pasharatid’s Union was turning, to present itself broadside on to the coast.

Heaving at the ropes, the men tried to get the second cannon into place.

Confronting the queen with folded arms, CaraBansity said, “Madam, I gave the king good advice which was ill taken. Let me now offer you a similar dose and hope for a kindlier reception. You and your ladies should saddle up hoxneys and ride inland, making no delay.”

Her face lit with a sad smile. “I’m glad of your concern, Bardol. You go. Return to your wife. This place has become my home. You know Gravabagalinien is said to be the residence of the ancient ghosts of those who were killed in a battle long ago. I would rather join those shades than leave.”

He nodded. “So it may be. I shall stay too, ma’am, in that case.”

Something in her expression showed him she was pleased by what he said. On impulse, she asked, “What do you make of this misalliance between our friend Rushven, and the Uskuti lady—an admiral, no less?”

“She keeps quiet, but that does not reassure me. It might be safer to pack those two off. There’s always more than an arm up a Sibornalese sleeve. We must use our cunning, ma’am—there’s little enough else on our side.”

“She appears genuinely devoted to my ex-chancellor.”

“If so, she has deserted the Sibornalese cause, ma’am. And that may give this man Pasharatid another reason for coming ashore. Pack her off, for everybody’s safety.”

At sea, smoke billowed, concealing all but the sails of the Union. A moment later, explosions were heard.

The shots landed in the water at the foot of a low cliff. With a second salvo, the marksmen would be more accurate. Evidently the lookout had sighted the manoeuvring of the cannon on shore.

But the shots proved to be no more than warnings. The Union swung to port and began sailing straight towards the little bay.

The queen stood alone, her long hair, still unbound from the night, streaming in the wind. There was a sense in which she was prepared to die. It might be the best way of resolving her troubles. She was—to her dismay—not prepared to accept TolramKetinet, an honest but insensitive man. She was vexed with herself for putting herself under emotional obligation to him. The truth was, his body, his caresses of the night, had merely aroused in her an intense longing for Jan. She felt lonelier than before.

Moreover, she divined with melancholy detachment Jan’s loneliness. That she might have assuaged, had she herself been more mature.

Out to sea, monsoon rain created gulfs of darkness and slanting light. Showers burned across the waters. The clouds loomed lower. Good Hope was almost lost in murk. And the sea itself—MyrdemInggala looked, and saw that her familiars were choking the waves. What she had mistaken for choppiness was the ferment of their bodies. The rain drove in at speed and dashed itself against her face.

Next second, everyone was struggling through a heavy downpour.

The cannon stuck, its wheels spun in mud. A man fell on his knees, cursing. Everyone cursed and bellowed. The fusee in its perforated tin would be doused if the downpour continued.

Hope of placing the cannon effectively was now dead. The wind veered with the storm. The Union was blown towards the bay.

As the ship drew level with the Linien Rock, the dolphins acted. They moved in formation, retinue and regiment. The entrance to the bay was barred by their bodies.

Sailors in the Union, half-blinded by rain, shouted and pointed at the teeming backs beneath their hulls. It was as if the ship ran across black shining cobbles. The dolphins wedged their bodies solid against the timbers. The Union slowed, groaning.

Screaming with excitement, MyrdemInggala forgot her sorrows and ran down to the water. She clapped her hands, shrieked encouragement at her agents. Sand and salt splashed over her calves, rushing beneath her dress. She plunged forward in the undertow. Even TolramKetinet hesitated to follow. The ship loomed over her and the rain lashed down.

One of her familiars reared out of the water as if he had expected her coming, seizing the fabric of her dress in his mouth. She recognized him as a senior member of the inner court, and spoke his name. In his medley of calls was an urgent message she could recognize: stay away, or gigantic things—she could not determine what—would seize her. Something far off in the deeps had her scent.

Even the queen of queens was frightened by the news. She retreated, guided by the familiar all the way. As she reached the sand, clutching her soaked dress, he sank away below the foam.

The Union lay only a few ship’s lengths from where the queen and her followers stood. Between beach and carrack were dolphins, both courts and regiment, packed tight. Through the driving torrents, the queen recognized the commanding figure of Io Pasharatid—and he had recognized her.

He stood tall and sinister on the streaming deck, swart-bearded, canvas jacket open to the rain, cap pitched over his eyes. He looked at her and then he acted.

In his fist was a spear. Climbing onto the rail of the ship, clutching the shrouds with one hand, he leaned forward and stabbed down repeatedly into the water. With every stab, crimson spurted up the blade of the weapon. The waters became lashed with foam. Pasharatid stabbed again and again.

To superstitious mariners, the dolphin is a sacred creature. Ally of the spirits of the deep, it can do no wrong in sailors’ eyes. Harm it and one places one’s own life in jeopardy.

Pasharatid was surrounded by furious mariners. The spear was wrestled from his hand and thrown away. The watchers ashore saw him borne fighting to the deck until his soldiers rushed in and pulled him free. The scrimmage continued for a while. The queen’s familiars had successfully barred the way to Gravabagalinien.

The rainstorm was at its height. The waves rose higher, crashing up the beach with splendid fury. The queen screamed her victory, looking in her dishevelment much like her dead mother, the wild Shannana, until TolramKetinet dragged her back, in fear that she would hurl herself into the water again.

Lightning flashed in the storm’s belly and then struck with following thunder. Cloud shifted like blown sheet, outlining the Good Hope suddenly in silver water. It stood off a third of a mile or less from its companion ship, as its crew fought to keep it offshore.

A line of dolphins streamed from the bay and could be seen heading beyond the Good Hope as if summoned by something there.

The sea convulsed. It boiled about the Lorajan vessel. Men ashore swore afterwards that the water boiled. The convulsion grew, with glimpses of things churning. Then a mass rose from the water, shook waves from its head, rose, still rose, till it towered above the masts of the Good Hope. It had eyes. It had a great lantern jaw and whiskers that writhed like eels. More of it came out of the sea in thick scaled coils, thicker than a man’s torso. The storm was its element.

And there were more coils. A second monster appeared, this one in a rage, to judge by the darting movements of its head. Like a gigantic snake, it rose then struck at the waves, diving, to leave sections of its roped body still agleam in the viscous air.

Its head emerged again, setting the Good Hope rocking. The two creatures joined forces. Careless in their obscene sport, they writhed through the water. One lashing tail smashed against the side of the caravel, breaking planking and treenails.

Then both beasts were gone. The waters lay flattened where they had been. They had obeyed the summons of the dolphins and now were making back towards the depths of the ocean. Although their appearances before the eyes of men were rare, the great creatures still formed part of the cycle of living beings which had adapted to the Great Year of Helliconia.

At this stage of their existence, the great serpents were asexual. Long past was their period of intense mating activity. Then, they had been flighted creatures, and had squandered centuries in amorous anorexy, feeding on procreation. Like giant dragonflies, they and their kind had flirted above the world’s two lonely poles, free of enemies or even witnesses.

With the coming of the Great Summer, the aerial creatures migrated to the seas of the south, and in particular to the Sea of Eagles, where their appearance had led some long-dead and ornithologically unversed seamen to name an ocean after them. On remote islands like Poorich and Lordry, the creatures shed their wings. They crawled upon their bellies into the brine, and there gave birth.

In the seas the summer would be spent. Eventually the great bodies would dissolve, to feed assatassi and other marine inhabitants. The voracious young were known as scupperfish. They were not fish at all. When the chills of the long winter came to prompt them, the scupperfish would emerge onto land and assume yet another form, called by such ill names as Wutra’s Worm.

In their present asexual state, the two serpents had been stirred into activity by a recollection of their distant past. The memory had been brought them by the dolphins, in the form of a scent trace, infused into the waters by the queen of queens during her menstrual period. In confused restlessness they coiled about each other’s bodies; but no power could bring back what had gone.

Their ghastly apparition had knocked any desire for fighting from the bellies of those aboard the Union and the Good Hope. Gravabagalinien was a haunted place. Now the invaders knew it. Both ships crammed on all possible sail and fled eastwards before the storm. The clouds covered them and they were gone.

The dolphins had disappeared.

Only the waters raged, breaking high up the Linien Rock with dull booms which carried along the beach.

The human defenders of Gravabagalinien made their way back through the rain to the wooden palace.

The chambers of the palace echoed like drums under the weight of monsoon rain. The tune kept changing as the rain died, then fell with renewed vigour.

A council of war was held in the great chamber, the queen presiding.

“First, we should be clear what kind of a man we are dealing with,” TolramKetinet said. “Chancellor SartoriIrvrash, tell us what you know of Io Pasharatid, and please speak to the point.”

Whereupon SartoriIrvrash rose, smoothing his bald head and bowing to her majesty. What he had to say would indeed be brief but hardly pleasant. He apologized for bringing up old unhappy things, but the future was always linked with the past in ways that even the wisest among them could scarcely anticipate. He might give as an instance…

Catching Odi Jeseratabhar’s eye, he applied himself to the point, hunching up his shoulders to do so. In the years in Matrassyl, his duty as chancellor had been to discover the secrets of the court. When the queen’s brother, YeferalOboral of beloved memory, was still alive, he had discovered that Pasharatid—then ambassador from his country—was enjoying the favours of a young girl, a commoner, whose mother kept a house of ill-repute. He, the chancellor, also discovered from VarpalAnganol that Pasharatid contrived to look upon the queen’s body when naked. The fellow was a scoundrel, lustful and reckless, kept in check only by his wife—whom they had reason to believe was now dead.

Moreover, he wished to retail a rumour—perhaps more than a rumour—gathered from a guide called the Pointer of the Way, whom he befriended on his journey through the desert to Sibornal, that Io Pasharatid had murdered the queen’s brother.

“I know that to be so,” said MyrdemInggala, dismissively. “We have every reason to regard Io Pasharatid as a dangerous man.”

TolramKetinet rose.

He adopted military postures and spoke with rhetorical flourishes, glancing across at the queen to see how his performance was being received. He said that they were now clear how Pasharatid was to be feared. It was reasonable to assume that the scoundrel was in command of the Union and, by dint of his connections, could enforce his orders on the commander of the Good Hope. He, TolramKetinet, had evaluated the military situation from the enemy’s viewpoint, and estimated that Pasharatid would move as follows. One—

“Please, make this brief, or the man will burst in upon us at this table,” said CaraBansity. “We take it that you’re as great an orator as you are a general.”

Frowning, TolramKetinet said that Pasharatid would decide that two ships could never take Ottassol. His best plan would be to capture the queen and thus force Ottassol to submit to his demands. They should anticipate that Pasharatid would land somewhere to the east of Gravabagalinien, wherever a favourable beach presented itself. He would then march on Gravabagalinien with his men. He, TolramKetinet (who struck his chest as he spoke), declared that they must immediately muster their defences against this anticipated land attack. The queen’s person was safe in his keeping.

After a general discussion, the queen issued orders. As she spoke, rain started to drip down on the table. “Since water is my element, I cannot complain if the roof leaks,” she said.

MyrdemInggala advised that defences should be built along the perimeters of the palace grounds and that the general should draw up an inventory of all weapons and warlike impediments available, not forgetting the armoury of the Vajabhar Prayer.

Turning to SartoriIrvrash, she ordered him and Odi Jeseratabhar to depart from the palace at once. They might have three hoxneys from the stables.

“You are kind, ma’am,” said SartoriIrvrash, although the expression on his volelike face suggested he thought otherwise. “But can you spare us?”

“I can if your companion is fit to ride.”

“I don’t think she is fit.”

“Rushven, I can spare you as Jan could spare you. You advised him on the plan of divorcement, didn’t you? As for your new consort, I understand that she is or was a close friend of the villainous Io Pasharatid.”

He was taken aback. “My lady, there was much botheration… Many questions of policy were involved. I was paid to support the king.”

“You used to claim that you supported the truth.”

He searched his charfrul absentmindedly, as if looking for a veronikane, then settled for rubbing his whiskers instead.

“Sometimes the two roles coincided. I know that your kind heart and the king’s spoke for the phagors in our kingdom. Yet they are the chief cause of all human troubles. In summer, we have the opportunity to rid ourselves of them when their numbers are low. Yet summer is the time we squabble among ourselves and are least capable of seeing them as our ultimate enemy. Believe me, ma’am, I have studied such histories as Brakst’s Thribriatiad, and have learned—”

She looked at him not unfavourably, but now held up her hand.

“Rushven, no more! We were friends, but our lives have changed. Go in peace.”

Unexpectedly, he ran round the table and clasped her hand.

“We’ll go, we’ll go! After all, I’m used to cruel treatment. But grant one request before we leave… With Odi’s assistance, I have discovered something of vital importance to us all. We shall go on to Oldorando, and present this discovery to the Holy C’Sarr, in the hopes that it may merit reward. It will also discountenance your ex-husband, you may be pleased to hear—”

“What is your request?” she broke in angrily. “Be finished, will you? We have more important business.”

“The request has to do with the discovery, ma’am. When we were all safe at the palace of Matrassyl, I used to read to your infant daughter. Little you care for that now. I remember the charming storybook that Tatro possessed. Will you permit me to take that storybook with me to Oldorando?”

MyrdemInggala stifled something between a laugh and a scream. “Here we try to prepare for a land attack and you wish to have a child’s book of fairy tales! By all means take the book as far as I’m concerned—then be off the premises, and take that ceaseless tongue of yours with you!”

He kissed her hand. As he backed to the door, Odi beside him, he gave a sly smile and said, The rain is stopping. Fear not, we shall soon be away from this inhospitable refuge.”

The queen hurled a candlestick after his retreating back.

To one side of the palace was an extensive garden, where herbs and fruit bushes grew. In the garden was an enclosure within which pigs, goats, chickens, and geese were kept. Beyond this enclosure stood a line of gnarled trees. Beyond the trees lay a low earthworks, grass-covered, which encircled marshy ground to the east—the direction from which Pasharatid’s force would come if it did come.

After a businesslike survey of the ground, TolramKetinet and Lanstatet decided they must use this old line of defence.

They had considered evacuating Gravabagalinien by ship. But the Prayer had been inexpertly moored. During the storm, it suffered damage and could hardly be considered seaworthy.

Everything of value was unloaded from the ship. Some of its higher timbers were utilized to make a watchtower in the stoutest tree.

As the ground dried off after the storm, some of the phagors were employed to build a defensive breastwork along the top of the earthworks. Others were deployed to dig trenches nearby.

This was the scene of activity which met SartoriIrvrash and Odi Jeseratabhar as they left the settlement. They travelled one behind the other on hoxneys, with a third animal trailing, carrying their baggage. They saw CaraBansity supervising the digging of fortifications, and SartoriIrvrash halted. “I must bid farewell to my old friend,” he said as he dismounted.

“Don’t be long,” Odi warned. “You have no friends here because of me.”

He nodded and walked over to the deuteroscopist, squaring his shoulders.

CaraBansity was working in a patch of marshy ground with some labouring ancipitals. When he looked up and saw SartoriIrvrash, his heavy face went dark, then, as if forced to it by the pressure of excitement, burst into a smile. He beckoned SartoriIrvrash over.

“Here’s the past… these earthworks form part of an ancient fortification system. The phagors are uncovering the geometries of legend made flesh…”

He walked over to a newly dug pit. SartoriIrvrash followed. CaraBansity knelt at the edge of the pit, heedless of squelching mud. An arm’s length below the turf, emerging from the peaty soil, lay what SartoriIrvrash took at first to be an old black bag, pressed flat. It was or it had been a man. His body lay sprawled on its left side. Short leather tunic and boots suggested that the man had been a soldier. Half-concealed beneath his flattened form lay the hilt of a sword. The man’s profile, mouth distorted by broken teeth, had been moulded by earth’s pressure into a macabre smile. The flesh was a rich shining brown.

Other bodies were being uncovered. The phagors worked without interest, scratching the mud away with their fingers. From the dirt, another mummified soldier appeared, a fearful wound in his chest. The creases of his face were clear, as if in a pencil sketch. His eyeballs had collapsed giving his expression a melancholy vacancy.

The cellar smell of soil bit into their nostrils.

“The peaty earth has preserved them,” said SartoriIrvrash. “They could be soldiers who died in battle, or similar botheration. They may be a hundred years old.”

“Far more than that,” said CaraBansity, jumping down into the trench. He scratched up one of a number of what SartoriIrvrash had taken to be stones, and lifted it for examination. “This is probably what killed the fellow with the broken teeth. It’s a rajabaral tree seed, as hard as iron. It may have been baked, which is why it never germinated. It’s over six centuries since spring, when the rajabarals seeded. The attackers used the seeds as cannonballs. This is where the legendary battle of Gravabagalinien was fought. We find the site because we are about to use it again for battle.”

“Poor devils!”

“Them? Or us?” He went to the rear corner of the excavation. Lying below the body of the man with the chest wound was a phagor, partly visible. Its face was black, its coat matted and reddened by the bog water, until it resembled a compressed vegetable growth. “You see how even then men and phagors fought and died together.”

SartoriIrvrash gave a snort of disgust. “They may equally well have been enemies. You’ve no evidence either way.”

“Certainly it’s a bad omen. I wouldn’t want the queen to see these. Or TolramKetinet. He’s scumber himself. We’d better cover the bodies up.”

The ex-chancellor made to turn away. “Not all of us cover up the secrets we find, friend. I have knowledge in my possession which, when I lay it before the authorities of Pannoval, will start a Holy War against the ancipital kind throughout all Campannlat.”

CaraBansity looked calculatingly at him through his heavy bloodshot eyes. “And you’ll get paid for starting that war, eh? Live and let live, I say.”

“Yes, you say it, Bardol, but these horned creatures don’t. Their creed is different. They will outbreed us and kill us unless we act. If you had seen for yourself the flambreg herds—”

“Don’t fly into a passion. Passion always causes trouble… Now, we’ll get on with our job. There are probably hundreds of bodies lying under the earth about here.”

Folding his arms tightly about his chest, SartoriIrvrash said, “You give me a cold reception, just like the queen.”

CaraBansity climbed slowly out of the trench. “Her majesty gave you what you asked for, a book and three hoxneys.” He stuck a knuckle between his teeth and stared at the ex-chancellor.

“Why are you so against me, Bardol? Have you forgotten the time when, as young men, we looked through your telescope and observed the phases of Kaidaw as it sped above us? And from that deduced the cosmic geometries under which we exist?”

“I don’t forget. You come here, though, with a Sibornalese officer, a dedicated enemy of Borlien. The queen is under threat of death and the kingdom of dissolution. I have no love of JandolAnganol or of phagors, yet I wish to see them continue, in order that people may still look through telescopes.

“Overturn the kingdom, as both you and she would do, and you overturn the telescopes.”

He gazed through the trees towards the sea with a bitter expression, shrugging his shoulders.

“You have witnessed how Keevasien, once a place of some culture, home of the great YarapRombry, has been carelessly erased. Culture may flourish better under old injustice than under new. That’s all I say.”

“It’s a plea for your own way of life.”

“I shall always fight for my own way of life. I believe in it. Even when it means fighting myself. Go, take that woman with you—and remember there’s always more than an arm up a Sibornalese sleeve.”

“Why speak to me like this? I’m a victim. A wanderer—an exile. My life’s work’s ruined. I could have been the YarapRombry of my epoch… I’m innocent.”

CaraBansity shook his large head. “You’re of an age when innocence is a crime. Leave with your lady. Go and spread your poison.”

They regarded each other challengingly. SartoriIrvrash sighed, CaraBansity climbed back into his trench.

SartoriIrvrash walked back to where Odi Jeseratabhar waited with the animals. He mounted his hoxney without a word, tears in his eyes.

They took the trail leading northwards to Oldorando. JandolAnganol and his party had travelled that way only a few days earlier, on their way to the home of the king’s murdered bride-to-be.