Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (169 page)

A treble voice, disembodied, sexless, free of lust, traced a thread of theatrical penitence which rose from the well of the church to its interlaced roof beams.

Odim smiled as he sang and felt his soul lifted towards the rafters. Belief would have been good. But even the wish to believe was consolatory.

As the voices of the congregation were raised in song inside, ten beefy soldiers marched down the street outside accompanied by an officer, and halted outside Odirin Nan Odim’s gate. The watchman opened up to them, bowing. The soldiers brushed him aside and marched into the centre of the courtyard, trampling the already trodden carpet of snow.

The officer barked orders to his men. Four men to search the houses set at each point of the compass, remainder to stand where they were and be alert for escapees.

‘Abro Hakmo Astab!’ Fashnalgid shouted, jumping up from his bed. He had been sitting half-dressed, watching both the window and Toress Lahl, to whom he occasionally read lines of poetry from a small book. She was obeying his orders to prepare a meal, and was carrying a flaming brand obtained from a slave downstairs to light their stove.

She flinched at the obscenity of his oath, although she was used to the swearing of soldiers.

‘How I love the sound of a military voice! “No song like yours under spring skies …”’ Fashnalgid said. ‘And the clump of army boots. Yes, there they are. Look at that young fool of a lieutenant, uniform gleaming. All I once was …’

He glared down at the scene in the courtyard, where, in front of the soldiers, slaves still worked, rodding out the biogas drains, glancing mistrustingly at the invaders.

A pair of boots started to clump up the stairs to the attic room.

Fashnalgid snarled, showing white teeth under the wave of his moustache. He rushed for his sword and glared round the room like a cornered beast. Toress Lahl stood petrified, one hand to her mouth, the other holding the flaming brand at arm’s length.

‘Haaa …’ He dashed forward and snatched the brand from her, trailing the smoke across the room as he ran for the window. Pushing it open, he forced his head and shoulders out and hurled the brand with all his strength.

He had not lost his military skills. No grenade could have flown truer. The flame drew a parabola down the darkened air and disappeared into the open trap of the biogas chamber. For a second, silence. Then the whole place exploded. Slabs of the courtyard went flying. A great flame rose in the midst of everything, burning blue at its core.

With a roar of satisfaction, Fashnalgid crossed to the door and flung it wide. A young soldier stood there, hesitating, looking back the way he had come. Without thought, Fashnalgid ran him through. As the man doubled, Fashnalgid kicked out, sending him head first down the stairs.

‘Now we’ve got to run for our lives, woman,’ he said, taking hold of Toress Lahl’s hand.

‘Luterin—’ she said, but she was too frightened to do anything but follow him. They ran downstairs. The courtyard was a scene of panic. The gas still burned. Odims too old, too young, or too voluminous to attend the church service, together with their animals, were running about among the soldiers. The smart lieutenant aimed a bullet or two at the clouds. Slaves were screaming. One of the houses had caught fire.

It was an easy matter to skirt the melee and leave by the gate.

Once they were in the street, Fashnalgid dropped to an easier pace and sheathed his sword, so as to be less conspicuous.

They hurried into the churchyard. He pulled the woman against a buttress, panting. Inside, hymns rose to God the Azoiaxic. In his excitement, he gripped her painfully by the upper arm.

‘Those sherbs, they’re after us. Even in this piddling dump …’

‘Oh, do let me go. You’re hurting me.’

‘I’ll let you go. You’re going to go inside this church and get Shokerandit. Tell him that the military have caught up with us. There’ll be no escaping by boat now. If he has arranged a sledge, then we all start for Kharnabhar as soon as we can. Go in and tell him.’ He gave her a push to encourage her. ‘Tell him they want to hang him.’

By the time Toress Lahl reappeared with Shokerandit, many people were about in the street – and not only innocent bystanders. As the Odims ran shouting with distress, Fashnalgid said, ‘Luterin, have you got a sledge? Can we get out of here right away?’

‘Need you have wrecked the Odim home after all they have done for us?’ Shokerandit said, regarding the other’s disarray.

‘Don’t trust Odim. He’s a tradesman. We have to leave. The army’s woken up. Don’t forget your lovely Toress Lahl is officially a runaway slave. You know the penalty for that. Where’s the sledge?’

‘We can get it when the stables open at Batalix-dawn. You have changed your mind suddenly, haven’t you?’

‘Where do we hide till dawn?’

Shokerandit thought. ‘There’s a family friend, by name Hernisarath. He and his wife will give us shelter until the morning … But I must go and say good-bye to Odim.’

Fashnalgid pointed a thick finger at him. ‘You’ll do no such thing. He’ll hand you over. Soldiers are swarming everywhere. You
are
an innocent, aren’t you?’

‘All right, and you’re an eccentric. Insults apart, why the change of plan? Only this morning you were going to sail for Campannlat.’

Fashnalgid smiled. ‘Suppose it occurred to me that I ought to be nearer to God? I’ve decided to come with you and your lady slave to Holy Kharnabhar.’

On the sixth day of the sixth tenner of every sixth small year, the Synod of the Church of the Formidable Peace met in Askitosh. The lesser fry met in conventials behind the Palace of the Supreme Priest. The fifteen dignitaries who formed the standing synod lived and met in the Palace itself. They represented both the ecclesiastical and the secular or military arms of the organisation of the Church. The burdens of office were heavy upon them. They were not men given to drollery.

Being human, the fifteen had their faults. One was regularly overcome by alcohol by sixteen twenty every day. Others kept young female or male slaves in their chambers. Some enjoyed peculiar defilements. Nevertheless, at least a part of each of them was dedicated to the good continuance of the Church. Since good men were hard to find, the fifteen could be accounted good men.

And the most dedicated man of all was Chubsalid, a man of Bribahr birth, brought up by holy fathers within the cloisters of their church, now Priest-Supreme of the Church of the Formidable Peace, the appointed representative on Helliconia of God the Azoiaxic, who existed before life and round whom all life revolves.

Even the most watchful ecclesiastical eye had never seen Chubsalid raise a bottle to his lips. If he had any sexual proclivities whatsoever, they were a secret kept between him and his maker. If he ever experienced anger, fear, or sorrow, no shadows of those emotions ever reached his rosy face. And he was no fool.

Unlike the Oligarchy, whose meeting place on Icen Hill was not a mile away, the Synod had wide popular support. The Church genuinely ministered to the needs of its people; uplifted
their hearts and supported them in adversity. And preserved tactful silence about pauk.

Unlike the Oligarch, who was never seen and whose image in the fearful popular imagination most resembled a huge crustacean with hyperactive nippers, Priest-Supreme Chubsalid travelled among the poor and was a popular visitor with his congregations. He looked every inch a Priest-Supreme, with his large stature, craggy but kindly countenance, and mane of white hair. When he spoke, people wished to listen. His addresses were spun from piety and often fringed by wit: he could make his congregations laugh as well as pray.

The discussion at the synodical meetings was conducted in the highest Sibish, with multiple clauses, elaborate parentheses, and spectacular verb formations. But the matter on this occasion was strictly practical. It concerned the strained relationship between the two great estates of Sibornal, the State and the Church.

The Church watched with alarm as the edicts of the Oligarchy increased in severity. One of the synodic priesthood was speaking to the assembly on this subject.

‘The new Restrictions of Persons in Abodes Act and similar regulations are / continue represented by the State as a move to curtail the plague. Already they are causing as much disruption as the plague does / will / can. The poor are evicted and arrested for vagrancy, or else perish from the increasing cold.’

He was a silvery man and spoke in a silvery voice, but its conviction carried to the end of the room. ‘We can see the political thinking behind this iniquitous Act. As more northerly farms fail / failing, the peasants and small farmers who worked those farms drift into town, where they must find shelter where they can, generally in overcrowded conditions. The Act seeks to confine them to their failed farms. There they will starve. I hope I am not unduly uncharitable when I say that their deaths would suit the State well. The dead never talk politics.’

‘You foresee a revolt starting in the towns if the Act were repealed?’ asked a voice from the other end of the table.

‘In my youth, it was said that a Sibornalese worked for life, married for life, and longed for life,’ replied the silvery voice. ‘But we never rebel. We leave that to the people of the Savage
Continent. The Church has so far said nothing about these restrictive Acts. Now I suggest that we have reached a sticking point with the Act against pauk.’

‘We have no policy on pauk.’

‘Neither had the State till now. Again, the dead have no politics, and that the State has / continuous recognises. Nevertheless, the Oligarchy have now legislated against pauk. This causes / has / will further misery to our congregations for whom – if you will forgive my saying so – pauk is as much a part of life as parturition.

‘The poor are being unfairly punished to fit them for the coming winter. I move that the Church speaks out publicly against the recent actions of the State.’

An aged and bald man, completely lacking hair or colour, rose with the aid of two sticks and spoke.

‘It may be as you say, brother. The Oligarchy may be tightening its grip. I suggest to you that it has to do so. Think of the future. All too soon, our descendants will be faced / facing three and a half centuries of the bitter Weyr-Winter. The Oligarchy reasons that the harshness of nature must be matched by the harshness of mankind.

‘Let me remind you of that terrible Sibish oath which must not be spoken. It is regarded as a supreme blasphemy, and rightly. Yet it is admirable. Yes, admirable. I would not / admonitorily have it spoken in my diocese, yet I admire the defiance of it.’

He steadied himself. There were those who thought the venerable man was about to defile his lips with the oath. Instead, he took a different tack.

‘In the Savage Continent of Campannlat, chaos descends with the cold. They have no overriding order as we have. They crawl back to their caves. Sibornal survives intact. We will / shall / have perpetual survive by organisation. That organisation has to tighten like an iron fist. Many have to die that the state will survive.

‘Some of you have complained because all phagors are to be shot regardless. I say they are not human. Get rid of them. They have no souls. Shoot them. And shoot all that defend them. Shoot the farmers whose farms fail. This is no time for individual
gestures. Individuality itself must soon / will be punished by death.’

In the silence, his sticks rattled like bones as he seated himself again.

A murmur of shock went round the room, but Priest-Supreme Chubsalid from his ermine-lined seat said mildly, ‘No doubt they make such speeches all the while on Icen Hill, but we must keep to our chosen profession, which involves / continuous tempering our dealings even with failed farmers with mercy. Our Church stands for the individual, for individual conscience, individual salvation, and our duty is to remind our friends in the Oligarchy of this from time to time, so that the people are also clear in their minds on that point.

‘The seasons may grow harsh. We do not have to imitate them, so that even in harshest times the essential teaching of the Church may / will / must live. Otherwise there is no life in God. The State sees this time of crisis as one in which it must show its strength. The Church must do at least as much. Who here of the fifteen agrees that the Church should stand against the State?’

All of the fourteen he had addressed turned to mutter with their neighbours down the long table. They could guess the retribution which would follow the move advocated by their leader.

One of the number raised a gold-ringed hand and said, in a quavering voice, ‘Sire, the time may / potential come when we do indeed have to take the kind of stance you suggest. But for pauk? When we have carefully avoided for eons – when perhaps some doubt as to the legitimacy of challenging – when the myth of the Original Beholder opposes our …’

He left that theatrical thought unstated.

The youngest member of the Synod was a Priest-Chaplain named Parlingelteg, a delicate man, though it was whispered that some of his activities were indelicate. He was never afraid to speak up, and he addressed his words directly to Chubsalid.

‘That last miserable speech convinces me at least – and I imagine all of you – that we must stand against the State. Perhaps specifically on the issue of pauk. Let’s not pretend pauk isn’t real, or that the gossies don’t exist, just because they don’t fit with the Teaching.