Beyond the Burning Lands

by John Christopher

  Astonished and impressed as I was by the show of wealth, I tried to show nothing of it as I talked with King Cymru.

  In person he was not unlike his Colonel, small and unprepossessing though with quick, lively eyes and a mouth given to smiling. He was called Cymru because the Kings of the Wilsh always took that name on their accession. He was the fifth Cymru of his line.

  He wore a thin circlet of gold on his head, signifying royalty, but this, compared with his other adornments, had a bare and modest look. His doublet was of green silk, its puffed shoulders and long sleeves wired with silver and its front studded with gold buttons that each carried a pearl. His trousers, of darker green brocade, ended just below the knee; beneath them he wore a woman’s silken stockings and shoes of crimson leather with gold buckles.

  His beard and mustache were plucked and trimmed to a neatness that reminded me of fat Jeremy of Romsey and like Jeremy, he was scented. But whereas in Jeremy this had been a thing that caused men—even his own son—to despise him, here, as I had already found, it was a general custom. I had caught my first whiff of perfume when the Colonel greeted us in the street, and plenty since. Perfumers, it seemed, were important men and well paid for their services and the Perfumer Royal, a thin, white-haired fellow with surprisingly red lips, sat at this very table.

  Cymru leaned toward me, his sweetness wrinkling my nostrils with faint nausea. He said:

  “I am appreciative, Luke, of the honor your brother pays me by sending you, the Prince in Waiting, on this embassy. And of your own gallantry in accepting such a mission, and a journey into unknown and hostile lands.”

  He had learned of my rank from Greene who now, I thought, may have regretted telling him. Greene himself, though commander of the expedition, had been relegated by the King in my favor. I sat at Cymru’s right hand but Greene sat well down the table.

  I said: “It was not a difficult journey, sire, with no real dangers. We were well led by our commander.”

  Cymru smiled. “You are a modest youth.”

  They were serving a dish of small roasted birds. The King took half a dozen and crunched one whole. I forced myself to follow suit but almost gagged as the delicate bones splintered between my teeth. The sensation was so unpleasant I scarcely noticed what the taste was like. I washed it down but the ale seemed not just spiced but perfumed; though that could have been the King’s scent lingering in my nose. Cymru was chewing with evident satisfaction and reluctantly but with determination I reached for a second bird.

  He gave no sign of noticing my difficulties. Between eating he put questions to me about the lands of the south and I answered them as best I could. I was on guard, despite the friendliness of our reception, against betraying anything of importance but it seemed the King was uninterested in military matters. His questions were all about our customs, and way of life.

  I myself was trying to make sense of the habits of the Wilsh. I had been shocked to see that women sat down with men at the King’s table, and drank with them, and talked and laughed and jested, with no apparent regard for decorum or modesty. But my disgust at this was nothing to what I felt over something I now noticed. The roast had arrived and, accompanying it, a dish was going round full of small yellow sticks which proved to be potatoes, weirdly prepared by being sliced up and cooked in boiling fat. It went to a man a few places down and he waved it away. I saw his hand as he did so: it did not end in fingers but in two nailless digits. This was not man but polymuf!

  The King saw the direction of my look but did not read its meaning. He said:

  “That is Snake, my Chancellor. A capable man.”

  “Snake is a strange name.”

  Cymru shrugged. “He got it as a child—from the way he walks. His knees and thighs are jointed unlike those of ordinary men. His hands are different also.”

  I said, still finding it difficult to believe:

  “And he is your Chancellor?”

  “An excellent adviser,” the King said. “I do not know how I would manage without him.”

  • • •

  The shocks were not over for the night. After dinner we retired to another room, smaller than the banqueting hall but still big. It had several large windows, whose glass was not plain but colored and arranged to form pictures and designs. I saw birds and animals, trees and hills and rivers, and the figures of men and women. There were chairs, soft-cushioned, arranged in a crescent and I was given one at the center, beside the King. Some other nobles had seats and the rest stood behind. I saw Greene there, and also ladies standing.

  Servants, who were not all polymuf, positioned themselves beneath the lamps which were suspended from the ceiling and had long chains attached to them. A sheet of white silk was let down to cover the facing wall, and the servants pulled the chains. This dimmed the lamps to no more than a faint glow. Then suddenly there was bright light on the white sheet and, a moment later, moving figures.

  This did not disgust me as the sight of a polymuf at table had done, but it was unnerving. I knew what it was: a primitive form of what had been called the cinematograph, consisting of an optical system and a source of light. Our ancestors had used electricity for this last, as the High Seers did in the Sanctuary. Here a distant hissing noise told me that it came probably from the mixing of calcium carbide with water. The film was being turned by hand, as occasional jerks showed.

  The plain fact was that such a thing, in civilized lands, would undoubtedly be called a machine and its use forbidden on pain of death. But here it was being operated in the royal palace for the entertainment of the King!

  What was being shown was an absurdity. The figures on the screen were animals but too ridiculously drawn even to be taken for polybeast. There was a mouse and a cat, and the story told of the efforts of the cat to catch the mouse, which never quite succeeded. The cat was continually falling into traps or down holes, or being squashed by heavy things dropping on it, but none of this harmed it and it still pursued the mouse. The flickering scenes were so scratched and torn as to be barely recognizable in places, but the court seemed to watch with fascination and, though they must have seen it many times before, occasional bursts of laughter. Beside me King Cymru chuckled deep in his belly.

  • • •

  Edmund and I walked together in front of the palace. The terrace was more than a hundred feet long and half as broad, made of blocks of pink granite so polished and so cunningly put together as to seem a continuous stretch of stone. It was bounded by a balustrade of white marble. Behind us rose the palace, topped by its colored spires and onion-domes. In front was the river, which here broadened and tumbled down falls shaped something like a horseshoe. The palace had been built in this spot for no other reason except the view it would command. I had been told so by one of the nobles and repeated it to Edmund with contempt.

  He said: “They put a high value on beauty.”

  “But to site a palace for such reasons!”

  Edmund smiled. “Your first thought, as mine, would be that it should be a stronghold. But then you would have walls around your city.”

  “That also is lunacy. If their warriors were so powerful that they had no need of walls I might understand it, but when they ride in pointed boots. . . .”

  “On ceremonial parade.”

  “Even so! And would you fear them in battle?”

  “Perhaps not. But things here are not as we are used to. What enemy do they have? There is no other city to challenge them. You have seen what the outlying savages are like. A rabble.”

  “A rabble can turn dangerous under the prick of hunger. Or greed. This would be a fine place to plunder.”

  “But for the same reason is a place to fear. And the city has its defenses. It lies snug in the fold of the hills. And has its crossbowmen.”

  “Crossbowmen?”

  “It is a sort of catapult for shooting arrows, sending them farther and faster and with more accuracy than a bowman could.”

  “A machine?”


  Edmund shrugged. “They do not ask such questions. But the approaches to the city are lined with hidden redoubts, armed with these weapons. I think the savages would have a warm time of it.”

  It was the sort of thing that I should have been finding out. I said, more angry at this moment with myself than the Wilsh:

  “It may be. I would still reckon that our army would cut through their defenses like a sickle through sun-dried corn. All this scent and finery and women drinking with men at table. . . . Have you listened to their Captains talk? Not of weapons or horses or tactics, but of whether the new fashion of wearing belt buckles at the side will last the summer!”

  “They have a still newer fashion,” Edmund said, smiling. “They are much taken with Greene’s mustache and have begun to wax the ends of their own. Have you not noticed? They have such a passion for pointed things I am surprised they did not think of it before. But you are too quick to condemn them, Luke.”

  I drew a deep breath. “At any rate it is good to be in the open air. That chatter and those perfumes. . . . I do not think I could stand another banquet.”

  “Have you forgotten there is one this evening?”

  “I will plead sickness.”

  “That would be unwise. The King’s daughter is to be presented to you, remember.”

  I groaned. “I had forgotten.”

  She had been ill at our arrival with some fever that had kept her to her bed. Now she was recovered and was to join us in the evening.

  Edmund looked over the balustrade at the sweep of river and the distant falls. Artificial islands had been set up in places and covered with plants that were hung with flowers. The plants were real but the flowers were made from cloth and servants rowed out each morning to see to them and change those that had grown shabby. He pointed past the islands to a building on the far bank built entirely of glass.

  “Where they grow the King’s roses,” he said, “long before any rose should bloom. The glass increases the sun’s rays and they also have braziers to give warmth. They are capable in many things.”

  I was not paying much attention. “Blodwen,” I said. “Imagine what she will be like, with such a name. Short and fat, dark and hairy.”

  Edmund grinned. “Like Maud of Basingstoke, whom Jenny and I once picked for you to marry?”

  A thought struck me. “If she is human at all! By the Great, she may be polymuf.”

  • • •

  The evening usually began in the King’s parlor, a large square room whose walls were painted with scenes of men and women, in scanty clothing or none, being chased by weird polymufs, creatures human above the waist but resembling goats below. Even for polymufs they seemed improbable and I asked Cymru in what part of his kingdom they were found. He told me none—they were merely fancies of the painter, based on some old legend. An unhealthy fancy, I thought but did not say, and one that I would not care to live with.

  But this evening instead we met in the throne room. It was much bigger and higher, with bronze doors leading in from an antechamber and a marble staircase, twenty feet across, rising to the floor above. The walls were painted gold and the ceiling was bright blue with realistic eagles soaring in it. The throne, against one wall, would have sat three men together. It was of heavy oak, magnificent in structure and carving, but spoiled, I thought, by the usual mass of cushions. When King Cymru took his seat I thought he might sink from view in multicolored satin.

  He called me to a stool close to the throne. The fancy he seemed to have taken to me showed no sign yet of waning: they probably had fashions in companions as well as clothes. I took breath before I joined him. I was growing more accustomed to the scent but was still a long way from enjoying it.

  He asked me fresh questions about my city and especially about life at court. Did the Prince hunt, he asked, and if so, what? I told him boar mostly and, on his further questioning, described the chase. He said with evident surprise:

  “You mean, your nobles—and your Prince—ride after them on horseback and kill them with spears? Are they so tame, then, your boar?”

  “No, sire. They run well, but they also fight well when brought to bay.”

  “But surely this involves unnecessary danger?”

  “Danger. I do not think unnecessary. There is no sport where there is no risk.”

  He smiled. “A quaint thought.”

  I had meant to tell how I myself had once lain at the mercy of a charging polyboar, and been saved from death only by my brother’s alertness in my defense, but after that remark decided not to. He went on:

  “We must arrange one of our hunts while you are here.”

  “For boar? It is not the season.”

  “The season?”

  “At this time of year they are breeding.”

  “We hunt when we choose,” King Cymru said. “I will have Snake see to it.” There seemed to be nothing, I thought with repugnance, in which the polymuf did not take a hand. “Tell me about your brother’s palace. What sort of pipes do they use to carry hot water?”

  I shook my head. “We have no such things, sire.”

  “Then how is the palace heated in the winter months?”

  “By hearth fires.”

  “But do they keep you warm enough?”

  I thought of the Great Hall with a blizzard beating against the windows and drafts everywhere, and said with feeling:

  “Not always.”

  “And what of your baths? How is the water provided for them?”

  There was a bath in the room I had been given here, a thing like a stone coffin in which a man could lie full length. At the end it had two brass mouths and when one turned the handles above them water gushed out, hot or cold according to the mouth. It was a far cry from our tubs at home in which one must crouch with bent knees. I said:

  “The servants bring water to fill them.”

  He smiled again, incredulously. “And you tell me that anyone born with deformity of shape must be a servant in your land?” I nodded. “Even in so small a thing as having an extra finger or toe?”

  “Yes.”

  “So Snake would be a servant in your city, and be made to carry water for your bath?” He laughed in a high voice. “I must tell him so. He will find it very amusing. I hope to see your city one day, Luke. You have interesting customs.”

  His tone, ambiguous before, was unmistakably indulgent. I realized with a quick flush of anger that Cymru—this prinked and perfumed monarch—was condescending to me, was regarding us as barbarians. The thought was bitter. I could not get up and go—the courtesy due from me as my Prince’s representative forbade it—but I resolved that I would speak to Greene and see what could be done about cutting short our stay. This King, this whole place, sickened me.

  My ears had grown used to the chatter and laughter behind me in the throne room. The Wilsh were always gossiping and laughing about trifles; the din, even in so large and high a room, was enormous. Now it broke and died into a hush, and the silence seemed like a sigh. I turned my head to see the reason.

  She was at the top of the marble stairs and had just started to descend. All faces were upturned to watch her. These Wilsh were proud of their possessions and did not hesitate to boast loudly of them, but in the stillness I saw acknowledgment of their finest possession of all. There was pride and love in it.

  It was easy to see why. She was utterly different from the women of the court. For one thing, where they wore gowns of clashing colors, heavy with gold embossing, and brooches and necklaces and as many as a dozen bangles on their arms, her dress was of white silk, simply cut. She had no other adornment but a necklet of gold which showed how much finer and softer was the gold of her hair. The Wilsh were a swarthy people with a few red-haired and still fewer blond. But these last, compared with her, would look dark and coarse. Her skin had a fineness, a delicacy of pink and white, such as I had never seen even in a young child. She was halfway down the stairs before my eyes could take in the details of her features. And be
further dazzled: she was beautiful.

  I understood why we had met in the throne room rather than the King’s parlor. The staircase was a perfect setting for her entrance. It was what she would demand, from pride of beauty. I did not like her for that, but acknowledged it as just.

  She came from the stairs and the crowd, still silent, parted to give her room. She reached the throne and curtsied to her father.

  Then she turned to me. I smelled her scent—not cloying like the others but fresh and flowerlike. She put her hand out to me and I bent my head to kiss it, grazing its softness with my lips.

  When I looked up she was smiling. She said, and even her accent was unlike the rest, more lilting and more musical:

  “I have heard much of you, Luke. I am glad to meet you at last.”

  I made some sort of reply, I am not sure what. Her smile held me. It was not proud after all, but warm and open. Her eyes were a deep blue, big and wide.

  The chattering had started up again behind us. The Princess said:

  “Come and sit by me, Luke, and tell me things.”

  SEVEN

  THE BAYEMOT

  ONLY TWO ROADS LED OUT of Klan Gothlen; that to the east along which we had come and another that ran westward up the river valley. It was this we took when the court rode out to the hunt, postponed from the previous day because of the weather. There had been a little rain and some wind and it was cold, the King said, for the time of year. This morning there was patchy sunshine and the wind was less sharp. It blew into our faces, undoing the careful set of the King’s hair and beard, and jangling the bells on the reins of the jennets.

  Yes, jennets. Because in the hunts of the Wilsh as in their banquets the ladies shared the pleasure of their men. This deepened my contempt for their idea of sport but offered a compensation. The King was ahead, behind his outriders, deep in conversation with his Chancellor, Snake. Ten yards behind them rode Edmund and I, and Blodwen rode between us.