Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (102 page)

He looked about. The walls were covered with thin paper which had peeled in places. One picture hung there, a pen-and-tint drawing of what he recognised as Kharnabhar, the holy mountain of the Sibornalese. The only window, which was to one side, lighting Dienu Pasharatid’s face in profile, provided a view of rocky cliff from which creepers hung; the vegetation had a coating of grey ash. Roba sat cross-legged on the floor, sucking a straw and smiling from one to another of the party.

‘Madame, what do you want with me? I must go to catch a boat before further disasters befall me,’ SartoriIrvrash said.

She stood before him and clutched her hands behind her back, while gently moving her weight from one foot to another.

‘We ask you to forgive us for getting you here in such an unusual way, but we wish to enlist your aid – for which aid, we will pay generously.’

She outlined her proposal, turning occasionally to the men for confirmation. All Sibornalese were profoundly religious, believing, as he knew, in God the Azoiaxic, who existed before life and round whom all life revolves. The members of the ambassadorial contingent held the religion of Akhanaba in low regard, considering it little better than a superstition. They were therefore shocked but not surprised when JandolAnganol made the decision to break his marriage and contract another.

Sibornalese – and the Azoiaxic through them – regarded the bond between woman and man as an equal decision to be held through life. Love was a matter of will, not whim.

SartoriIrvrash sat nodding automatically through this part of the speech, recognising its sententious tone as characteristic of the northern continentals and longing to be on his way.

Roba, not even listening, winked at the ex-chancellor and said confidentially, ‘This is the house where Ambassador Pasharatid used to meet a lady of the town. It’s an historical whorish house – but for you this lady will only talk.’

SartoriIrvrash hushed him.

Ignoring the interruption, Madame Dienu said that her party
felt that he alone, Chancellor SartoriIrvrash, had pretension to knowledge in the Borlienese court. They felt that the king had treated him almost as badly as – possibly worse than – the queen. Such injustice distressed them, as it would all members of the Church of the Formidable Peace. She was now returning home. They invited SartoriIrvrash to join them, in the assurance that he would be given good accommodation in Askitosh and a good advisory position in the government, as well as freedom to complete his life’s work.

He felt the trembling which so often overcame him return. Temporising, he asked, What sort of advisory post?

Oh, advice on matters Borlienese, upon which he was such an expert. And they were preparing to leave Matrassyl on the hour.

So overwhelmed was he by this offer that SartoriIrvrash did not enquire why this sudden haste. Gratefully, he accepted.

‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Madame Dienu.

The two men behind her now showed an almost ancipital ability to change from stillness to intense activity without intervening stages. They were immediately gone from the room, to promote shouting on all floors and a galumphing on all stairs, as luggage and people hastened down into the courtyard below. Carriages emerged from shelters, hoxneys from stables, stable boys with harness from tackrooms. A procession was assembled in less time than a Borlienese could have drawn on a pair of boots. Prayers were briskly said, all standing round in a circle, and then they were away, leaving an empty house behind them.

They drove north through the warren of the old town, circled the great semisubterranean Dome of Striving, and were soon on the road north with the Takissa gleaming on their left-hand side. Roba yippeed and sang as they went.

Weeks of travel followed.

A feature of the fast part of their journey was the pervading greyness caused by the volcanic ash. Mount Rustyjonnik, always a source of grumbling and occasional runs of lava, was in full eruption. The country in the path of its ash became a land of the dead. Trees were killed by the substance, fields covered with it, streams clogged with it. After rain, it turned to paste. Birds and
animals died or fled the area. Human families and phagors trudged away from their blighted homes.

Once the Sibornalese party had crossed the River Mar, the blight grew less. Then it faded. They entered Mordriat – a name of terror in Matrassyl. The reality was peaceful. Most of the tribes smiled beneath sheltering layers of braffista turbans, their chief item of apparel.

Guides were engaged to guarantee their safety, thin villainous-looking men who abased themselves at every sunrise and sunset. Round their campfire at night, the head Pointer of the Way, as he called himself, explained to the travellers how the ornamentation on his braffista indicated his rank in life. He boasted of the numerous ranks below his.

None listened more eagerly than SartoriIrvrash. ‘Strange, this human propensity to create ranks in society,’ he observed to the rest of the party.

‘A propensity the more noticeable the nearer the bottom of the pile one descends,’ said Madame Dienu. ‘We avoid such demeaning gradations in my land. How you will enjoy seeing Askitosh. It is a model for all communities.’

SartoriIrvrash had some reservations about that. But he found a restful quality in the steady severity of Madame Dienu after years of dealing with a changeable king. As the wilderness grew more arid, his spirits rose; equally, Roba’s madness grew calmer. But when the others slept, SartoriIrvrash could not. His bones, which had become accustomed to a goosedown mattress, could not adapt to a blanket and hard ground. He lay looking up at the stars and the lightning flickering between them, full of an excitement he had not known since he and his brothers were children. Even his bitterness against JandolAnganol abated somewhat.

The weather continued dry. The coaches made fair progress over the low hills. They arrived at a small trading town called Oysha – ‘Quite probably a corruption of the Local Olonets word “osh”, meaning simply “town”,’ SartoriIrvrash explained to the company. Explanations that could be attached to things made the journey more enjoyable. However the word was derived, at Oysha the Takissa, rushing down from the east, met up with its formidable tributary, the Madura. Both rivers had their sources
high in the limitless Nktryhk. Beyond Oysha to the north stretched the Madura Desert.

In Oysha, the coaches were exchanged for kaidaw geldings. The Pointer volubly made the deal, during which much striking of foreheads took place. The kaidaw was a reliable animal when it came to crossing deserts. The rust-coloured brutes stood in the dusty market square of Oysha, indifferent to the deal being negotiated beside them.

The ex-chancellor sat on a chest while the trading was in progress. He mopped his brow and coughed. The outfall from Mount Rustyjonnik had given him a sore throat and fever he could not shake off. He stared at the long haughty faces of the kaidaws – those legendary steeds of the warrior phagors in the Great Winter. It was hard to see in these slow beasts the whirlwind which, with phagors astride it, had brought destruction upon Oldorando and other Campannlatian cities in the time of cold.

In the Great Summer, the animals stored water in their single hump. This made them suitable for desert conditions. They looked meek enough now, but excited SartoriIrvrash’s sense of history.

‘I should purchase a sword,’ he told RobaydayAnganol. ‘I was quite a swordsman in my younger day.’

Roba turned a cartwheel. ‘You turn the year upside down, now that you are free of the Eagle. You’re right to defend yourself, of course. In those hills lives the accursed Unndreid – our herdsmen here sleep with his multitudinous daughters every night. Murder’s as frequent hereabouts as scorpions.’

‘The people seem friendly.’

Roba squatted before SartoriIrvrash and put on a cunning leer. ‘Why are they outwardly so friendly? Why is Unndreid now armed to the teeth with Sibornalese bang-bangs? Have you discovered why the big black Io Pasharatid left the court so suddenly?’

He took SartoriIrvrash’s arm and led him behind one of the coaches for privacy, where only the guileless eyes of the kaidaws were upon them.

‘Even my father cannot buy friendship or love. These
Sibornalese buy friendship. It’s their way. They’d trade their mothers for peace. They have been greasing their safe passage to Borlien by presenting the chiefs along the route with matchlocks, as they say. I say there is no match for them. Even Akhanaba’s favourite king, JandolAnganol, son of VarpalAnganol, father of a Madi-lover – but not so mad in that direction as he – even that monarch of Matrassyl was no match for matchlocks. They did for him in the Battle of the Cosgatt. Did you ever see the wound in his thigh?’

‘It kept your father abed. I saw only its effects, not the wound.’

‘He goes without a limp. Lucky not to go without a hard-on! That wound was a kiss from Sibornal.’

Lowering his voice, SartoriIrvrash said, ‘You well know that I never trusted the Sibs. When the matchlocks were demonstrated in court, I advised that no Sibs should be present. My word went unheeded. It was shortly after the demonstration that Io Pasharatid disappeared.’

Roba lifted a cautionary finger and wagged it slowly. ‘Disappeared because his swindles were then revealed – revealed to his wife, our fair companion, and his own ambassadorial staff. There was a local young lady involved, who acted as go-between … and whom I also go between, on occasions … that’s how I know all about Io Pasharatid.’

He laughed. ‘The matchlocks which Taynth Indred had in his possession – which he presented so arrogantly to my eagle-father – which my eagle-father took so pusillanimously, because he would take a plague scab from a beggar if it was offered – those matchlocks were sold to Taynth Indred cheap by Pasharatid. Why cheap? Because they were not his to sell, in which case he could not avoid making a profit. The guns were the property of his government, intended to buy friendship with such as the rogues you see here, and with such as Dervlish the Skull, who has proved his friendship a thousand times over.’

‘Unusual behaviour for a Sib. Especially one in high office.’

‘High office, low character. It was because of the young lady. Did you never see the way he eyed my fair mother – I mean, she who was my mother before she went away without farewell?’

‘Pasharatid would have been put to death if your father had discovered his crime. I assume he is now back in Sibornal.’

RobaydayAnganol shrugged eloquently. ‘We are following him. Madame Dienu is after his blood. To understand his lust for other ladies, simply contemplate union with her. Would you couple with a matchlock? … He’ll be busy concocting a lying tale, to cover his sins. She will arrive and seek to destroy it. Ah, Rushven, no drama like a family drama! They will have old Io locked up in the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar, mark my words. It was a place of religion, now they lock up criminals there. Well, monks are also prisoners … What a drama to come. You know the old saying, “More than an arm up a Sibornalese sleeve.” I almost wish I were coming with you, to see what happens.’

‘But you are coming! My dear boy!’

‘Ah, unky, no affection! Not for Anganols! No protests. I’m leaving you here. You go north with Madame, I go back south with this coach. I have my parents to look after … my ex-parents …’

SartoriIrvrash’s face showed his distress. ‘Don’t leave me, lad, not with these villains. I shall be dead in no time.’

Making funny running-away gestures, the prince said, ‘Well, that’s escaping from being human, isn’t it? I’m going to be a Madi in no time. Another escape, another escapade. It’s the Ahd for me.’

He jumped forward and kissed SartoriIrvrash on his bald pate.

‘Good luck in your new career, old uncle. Green things will grow from us both!’

He leaped into the coach, cracked his whip over the hoxneys, and was away at a great pace. The tribesmen fell back in alarm, cursing him in the name of the sacred rivers. A cloud of dust swallowed the speeding vehicle.

The Madura Desert: Matrassyl began to seem a long way off. But the stars came nearer overhead and, on clear nights, the sickle of Yarap-Rombry’s Comet blazed like a signpost on their way.

SartoriIrvrash stood shivering in the small hours when the fire had died and the other travellers were sleeping. He could not entirely lose his fever. He thought of BillishOwpin. His story of
having come from another world seemed more likely here than it had done at the palace.

He walked by the tethered kaidaws and encountered the Pointer of the Way, standing silently smoking. The two men talked in low voices. The kaidaws uttered sniggering grunts.

‘The animals are quiet enough,’ SartoriIrvrash said. ‘History pictures them as almost unmanageable brutes. To be ridden only by phagors. I’ve never seen a phagor riding one, any more than I have ever seen a cowbird with a phagor. Perhaps history was wrong on that point, too. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to disentangle history from legend.’

‘Perhaps they aren’t so different,’ the Pointer said. ‘I can’t read a single letter, so I have no strong opinion in the matter. But we smoke these kaidaws when they’re mere calves – puff a veronikane up their nostrils. It seems to make them calm.

‘I’ll tell you a tale, since you can sleep no more than I.’ He sighed heavily in preparation for the burden of narrative. ‘Many years ago now, I went eastwards with my master, through the provinces controlled by Unndreid, up into the wilderness of the Nktryhk. It’s a different world up there, very harsh world, with little air to breathe, yet people remain fit.’