by Brian Aldiss
If there was an explanation for these vile offences, then the Priest-Supreme of the Church of the Formidable Peace should present himself before the Oligarch forthwith, and deliver it in person.
The letter was signed with the signature of Torkerkanzleg II.
“I do not believe that man exists,” Chubsalid said. “He has reigned for over thirty years. Nobody has ever seen him. No portrait exists of his face. He could be a phagor for all we know to the contrary…”
He continued for a while in this vein, tut-tutting absently, and visiting the Synod library to compare signatures, toying with magnifying glasses and shaking his head.
This activity made the Priest-Supreme’s advisors nervous; they felt he should be concentrating on the gravity of a summons which, on the face of it at least, appeared to be his death warrant. Senior advisors, speaking among themselves, suggested that the entire centre of the Church should move immediately from Askitosh to a safer place— possibly to Rattagon, although it was under siege, since its position in the middle of a lake rendered it secure; or even to Kharnabhar, despite its extreme climate, since it was a religious refuge.
But Chubsalid had his own ideas. Retreat never entered his mind. After an hour of pottering about comparing signatures, he announced that he would meet the Oligarch. An acceptance note was written by his scribe to that effect. It suggested that the meeting should be in the great entrance hall of Icen Castle, and that anyone who wished might come there and hear the debate between the two men.
As Chubsalid appended his name to the document, Priest-Chaplain Parlingelteg, who was standing nearby, came forward and knelt by the Priest-Supreme’s chair.
“Sire, when you go to that place, permit me to accompany you. Whatever there befalls you, let it also befall me.”
Chubsalid set his hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“It shall be as you suggest. I shall be grateful for your presence.”
He turned then to Asperamanka, who was also in the company.
“And you, our Priest-Militant, will you also come to Icen Castle, to bear witness to the Oligarch’s crime?”
Asperamanka looked here and there, as if seeking out an invisible door. “You speak better than I, Priest-Supreme. I think it unwise to bring up the subject of the plague. We have no cure for the Fat Death, any more than the State. The Oligarch may have reasons we know nothing of for wishing to suppress pauk.”
“Then we will hear them. You will come with Parlingelteg and me?”
“Perhaps we should take doctors with us.”
Chubsalid smiled. “We shall be able to stand against him, I trust, without the aid of doctors.”
“Surely we ought to try and compromise,” said Asperamanka, looking wretched.
“We shall see if that is possible,” said Chubsalid. “And thank you for saying you will accompany us.”
The day dawned. Priest-Supreme Chubsalid put on his ecclesiastical robes and bade good-bye to his colleagues. One or two he embraced.
The silvery man shed a tear.
Chubsalid smiled at him. “Whatever happens this day, I will require your courage as well as mine.” His voice was firm and serene.
He climbed into his carriage, where Asperamanka and Parlingelteg waited. The carriage moved off.
It made its way through silent streets. The police, at the Oligarch’s command, had cleared onlookers away, so that there was none of the cheering which usually greeted the appearance of the Priest- Supreme. Only silence.
As the carriage ground its way up the treacherous paving stones of Icen Hill, the presence of soldiery was all too noticeable. At the gates of the castle, armed men stepped forward and fended off those priests who had followed behind their leader’s carriage. The carriage passed under the ponderous stone arch. The great iron gates closed behind it.
Many windows looked down on the front courtyard, enforcing silence with their oppressive dead shine. They were mean windows, less like eyes than blunt teeth.
The party of three was led unceremoniously from the carriage into the chill of the building. Their footsteps echoed as they traversed the great entrance hall. Soldiers in elaborate national uniform stood on guard. None moved.
The party was shown to the rear, to a dingy passage where the skirting was scuffed by innumerable boots, as if a tormented animal had tried to fight its way to freedom. After a wait, a signal was given their guide and they ascended by a narrow wooden stair which wound up two flights without a window by way of punctuation. They emerged into another passage, no more congenial to tormented animals than the first, and halted at a door. The guide knocked.
A voice bade them enter.
They came into a room which displayed all the festive cheer for which the Oligarchy was noted. It was a reception room of a kind, lined with chairs on which only the most emaciated anatomies could have found rest. The one window in the room was draped in heavy leather curtains, evidently designed to be capable of repelling the onslaughts of daylight.
The niggardly proportions of the room, in which the height of the ceiling was matched only by the depth of gloom it engendered, was reinforced by its lighting. One fat viridian candle burned in a tall stand in the middle of the otherwise empty floor. A chilling draught caused its shadows to stir wakefully on the creaking parquet.
“How long do we wait here?” Chubsalid enquired of the guide.
“A short while, sire.”
Short whiles were of long duration in such a room, but eventually inner doors opened. Two uniformed men with swords dragged the doors apart, allowing the party to view a further room.
This further room was lit by gas flares, which imparted a sickly light over everything but the face of a man sitting berobed in a large chair at the far end of the room. Since the gas lights were behind his throne, his face was cast into shadow. The man made no movement.
Chubsalid said in a clear voice, “I am Priest-Supreme Chubsalid of the Church of the Formidable Peace. Who are you?”
And an equally clear voice came back. “You address me as the Oligarch.”
The visiting party, although they had prepared themselves for the encounter, were silenced by a momentary awe. They shuffled forward to the door of the inner chamber, where soldiers barred their way with naked swords.
“Are you Torkerkanzlag II?” asked Chubsalid.
Again the clear voice. “Address me as the Oligarch.”
Chubsalid and Asperamanka looked at each other. Then the former spoke out.
“We have come here, Dread Oligarch, to discuss the curtailment of traditional liberties in our state, and to speak with you regarding a recent crime committed—”
The clear voice cut in. “You have come here to discuss nothing, priest. You have come here to speak of nothing. You have come here because you preached treason, in deliberate defiance of recent edicts issued by the State. You have come here because the punishment for treason is death.”
“On the contrary,” said Parlingelteg. “We came here anticipating reason, justice, and an open debate. Not some sort of tawdry melo-dramatics.”
Asperamanka set his chest against one of the drawn swords and said, “Dread Oligarch, I have served you faithfully. I am Priest-Militant Asperamanka, who, as no doubt you know, led your armies to victor}’ in the field against the thousand heathen cults of Pannoval. Did you not— were not those armies destroyed on their return to your domains?”
The unmoved voice of the Oligarch said, “In the presence of your ruler, you do not ask questions.”
“Tell us who you are,” said Parlingelteg. “If you are human you give no evidence of it.”
Ignoring the interruption, Torkerkanzlag II gave the guard an order: “Draw back the window curtain.”
The guide who had led the three into the stifling chamber creaked his way across the floor and grasped the leather curtain with both hands. Slowly, he pulled the curtain back from the long window.
Grey light filtered into the room. While the other two turned to se
e out, Chubsalid looked back towards the Oligarch. Some of the light filtered even to where he sat motionless on his shadowed throne; some- thing of his features was revealed.
“I recognise you! Why, you’re—” But the Priest-Supreme got no further, for one of the soldiers grasped him unceremoniously by the shoulder and swung him to the long window, where the guide stood pointing downwards.
A courtyard lay beneath the window, surrounded entirely by tall grey walls. Anyone walking down there would have been crushed by the weight of disapproving windows ranged above him.
In the middle of the courtyard, a wooden cage had been built. Inside the cage was a tall, sturdy pole. What made this arrangement remarkable was the fact that cage and pole stood on a slatted wooden platform, which was built over piles of logs. Tucked in among the logs were bundles of brushwood. Bunches of twigs and kindling skirted the brushwood.
The Oligarch said, “The punishment for treason is death. That you knew before you entered here. Death by burning. You have preached against the State. You will be burnt.”
Parlingelteg spoke up boldly as the curtain was pulled back over the window. “If you dare burn us, you will turn the religion of Sibornal against the State. Every man’s hand will be against you. You will not survive. Sibornal itself may not survive.”
Asperamanka made a run for the door, shouting, “I’ll see to it that the world hears of this villainy.”
But there were soldiers outside the door who turned him back.
Chubsalid stood in the middle of the room and said soothingly to him, “Be firm, my good priest. If this crime is committed here in the centre of Askitosh, there will be those who will never rest until the Azoiaxic triumphs. This is the monster who believes that treachery costs less than armies. He will find that this treachery costs him everything.”
The unmoving man in the chair said, “The greatest good is the survival of civilisation over the next centuries. To that end all else must be sacrificed. Fine principles have to go. When plague’s rampant, law and order break down. So it has always been at the onset of previous Great Winters—in Campannlat, in Hespagorat, even in Sibornal. Armies run mad, records burn, the finest emblems of the state are destroyed. Barbarism reigns.
“This time, this winter, we shall/will survive that crisis. Sibornal is to become a fortress. Already none may enter. Soon, none shall leave. For four centuries, we shall remain a haven of law and order, whilst the cold tears out the gizzards of wolves. We will live from the sea.
“Values will be maintained, but those values must be the values of survival. I will not have Church and State at loggerheads. That is what the Oligarchy has decided. Ours is the only plan which can/determined save the maximum number of people.
“Next spring, we shall rise up strong while Campannlat is still given over to primitivism and its women lug carts like beasts of burden—if they haven’t forgotten how to make wheels by then. At that time, we shall resolve the endless hostility with those savage lands for good and all.
“Do you call that wicked? Do you call that wicked, Priest-Supreme? To see our beloved continent triumph?”
Garbed in his canonicals, Chubsalid made a fine figure. He drew himself up. He let silence cover the Oligarch’s rhetoric before he replied. “Whatever you may arrogantly believe to the contrary, yours is the argument of a weak man. We have in Sibornal a harsh religion, forged, like the Great Wheel itself, out of an adverse climate. But what we preach is stoicism, not cruelty. Yours is the ancient argument of ends justifying means. You will find that if you pursue your proposed course the cruel means will subvert the end, and your plan will fail utterly.”
The man in the chair moved his hand scarcely an inch as a substitute for a gesture. “We may make mistakes, Priest-Supreme, that I grant. Then we shall simply bury our dead and remain on course.”
Parlingelteg’s clear young voice rang out: “And all the dead will bear witness against you. Word will go from gossie to gossie. All will hear of your crimes.”
The Oligarch’s darker tone replied. “The dead may bear witness. Happily, they cannot bear arms.”
“When this deed is known, many will bear arms against you!” “If you have nothing to say beyond the airing of threats, then the time has come for you to meet those unarmed millions below ground yourselves. Or do any of you care to reconsider your loyalty to the State in view of what I have said?”
He motioned to the guards. Parlingelteg shouted the forbidden curse. “Abro Hakmo Astab, damned Oligarch!”
Armed guards marched across the room with heavy tread, to take up positions behind the ecclesiastics.
Asperamanka could say nothing for the trembling of his jaw. He rolled his eyes at Chubsalid, who patted him on the shoulder. The youngest priest took Chubsalid by the arm and called out again, “Burn us and you set all Askitosh afire!”
Chubsalid said, “I warn you, Oligarch, if you cause a schism between Church and State, your plans will never succeed. You will divide the people. If you burn us, your plan will already have failed.”
In a composed voice, the Oligarch said, “I shall find others who will cooperate, Priest-Supreme. Dozens of the obedient will rush to fill your place—and think it honourable. I know men well.”
As the guards took hold of the captives, Asperamanka broke free. He ran towards the Oligarch’s throne and went down on one knee, bowing his head.
“Dread Oligarch, spare me. You know that I, Asperamanka, was your faithful servant in war. You surely never intended that such a valuable instrument should be killed. Do with these other two as you will, but let me be saved, let me serve again! I believe that Sibornal must survive as you say. Harsh times call for harsh measures. Spiritual power must make way for temporal power to secure the way. Just let me live, and I will serve… for the glory of God.”
“You may do it for your own base sake, but never for God’s,” said Chubsalid. “Get up! Die with us, Asperamanka—’twill be less pain.”
“Living or dying, we accept the role of pain in our existence,” said the Oligarch. “Asperamanka, this comes unexpectedly from you, the victor of Isturiacha. You entered here with your brothers; why not burn with your brothers?”
Asperamanka was silent. Then, without rising from his knees, he Burst out in a flood of eloquence.
“What has been said here belongs not so much to politics or morals as to history. You wish to change history, Oligarch—perhaps the obsession of all great men. Indeed our cyclic history stands in need of reform—reform which must be brutal to be effective.
“Yet I speak for our beloved Church, which I have also served— served with devotion. Let these burn for it. I’d rather live for it. History shows us that religions can perish just like nations. I have not forgotten my history lessons as a child in the monastery of Old Askitosh, where I was taught of the defeat of the religion of Pannoval at the hand of a wicked King of Borlien and his ministers. If Church and State here fall apart, then our Supreme God is similarly threatened. Let me, as a Man of God, serve your ends.”
As the other priests were marched out, Parlingelteg took a flying kick at Asperamanka, sending him sprawling on the floor. “Hypocrite!” he called as he was dragged out of range.
“Take those two down to the courtyard,” said the Oligarch. “If a little fear is struck into the heart of the Church, the Church may not be so vocal in future.”
He sat motionless as Priest-Supreme Chubsalid and Priest-Chaplain Parlingelteg were marched away.
The chamber emptied. Only one guard remained, silent in the shadows, and Asperamanka, still crouching on the floor, face pale.
The Oligarch’s cold stare turned in Asperamanka’s direction.
“I can always find work for your kind,” he said. “Get up on your feet.”
XI
STERN DISCIPLINE FOR TRAVELLERS
Most of Sibornal’s rivers ran south. Most of them, for most of the year, were fast and ill-natured, as befitted waters born of glaciers.
The Venj
was no exception. It was wide, full of dangerous currents, and could be said to hurtle rather than flow on its way to its outlet at Rivenjk.
In the course of centuries, however, the Venj had scoured itself a valley through which it might flow or flood as the mood took it, and it was along this valley that the road led which would eventually bear a north-bound traveller to Kharnabhar.
The road wound upward through pleasant country, protected from prevailing winds by the mass of the Shivenink Chain. Large bushes, indifferent to frost, grew here, putting out immense blossoms. Small flowers grew by the wayside, picked by pilgrims because they were never seen elsewhere.
The pilgrims were carefree on this, the first stage of their land journey to Kharnabhar. They travelled alone or in groups, dressed in all manner of garb. Some went barefoot, claiming that they controlled their bodies so as not to experience cold. There was singing and music among the groups. This was a serious exercise in piety—one that would stand them in good stead at home for the rest of their lives—but never- theless it was a holiday, and they rejoiced accordingly. For some miles out of Rivenjk, stalls stood by the side of the way, where fruit or emblems of the Wheel could be bought. Or peasants from Bribahr— for the frontier was close here—climbed up from the valley to sell produce to the travellers. This stage of the way was easy.
The way became steeper. The air grew a little thinner. The blossoms on the leathery-leaved bushes were brighter but smaller. Fewer peasants climbed up from the valley. Not so many of the pilgrims had the lung power to blow their musical instruments. There was nervous talk of robbers.
But still—well, this special trip must be an adventure, perhaps the great adventure. They would all return home as heroes. A little difficulty was welcome.
The hostels where the pilgrims slept for the night, if they could afford it, became rougher, the dreams of the pilgrims more troubled. The nights were filled with the sound of water forever falling—a reminder of the heights lost in the clouds above them. Next morning, the travellers would get silently on their way. Mountains are enemies of talk. Conversation was born a lowland art.