Lyonesse

by Jack Vance

  When the place remained vacant, King Casmir spoke sharply to Queen Sollace: "Where is Suldrun?"

  Queen Sollace gave her marmoreal shoulders a slow shrug. "I can't say. She is unpredictable. I find it easiest to leave her to her own devices."

  "All well and good. Nevertheless I command her presence!"

  Queen Sollace shrugged once more and reached for a sugarplum. "In that case Lady Desdea must inform us."

  King Casmir looked over his shoulder to a footman. "Bring here the Lady Desdea,"

  King Deuel meanwhile enjoyed the antics of trained animals, which King Casmir had ordained for his pleasure. Bears in blue cocked hats tossed balls back and forth; four wolves in costumes of pink and yellow satin danced a quadrille; six herons with as many crows marched in formation.

  King Deuel applauded the spectacle, and was especially enthusiastic in regard to the birds: "Splendid! Are they not worthy creatures, stately and wise? Notice the grace of their marching! A pace: so! Another pace: just so!"

  King Casmir acknowledged the compliment with a stately gesture. "I take it that you are partial to birds?"

  "I consider them remarkably fine. They fly with an easy courage and a grace far exceeding our own capabilities!"

  "Exactly true... Excuse me, I must have a word with Lady Desdea. King Casmir turned aside. "Where is Suldrun?"

  Lady Desdea feigned puzzlement. "Is she not here? Most odd! She is stubborn, and perhaps a bit wayward, but I cannot believe her to be wilfully disobedient."

  "Where is she then?"

  Lady Desdea made a facetious grimace and waved her fingers. "As I say, she is a headstrong child and given to vagaries. Now she has taken a fancy to an old garden under the Urquial. I have tried to dissuade her, but she makes it her favored resort."

  King Casmir spoke brusquely. "And she is there now? Unattended?"

  "Your Majesty, she permits no one in the garden but herself, or so it would seem. I spoke to her and communicated Your Majesty's wishes. She would not listen and sent me away. I assume she remains still in the garden."

  King Deuel sat enthralled by the performance of a trained ape walking a tightrope. King Casmir murmured an excuse, and strode away. Lady Desdea went about her own affairs with a pleasant sense of achievement.

  King Casmir had not set foot in the old garden for twenty years. He descended along a path paved with pebbles set into sand, among trees, herbs and flowers. Halfway to the beach he came upon Suldrun. She knelt in the path, working pebbles into the sand.

  Suldrun looked up without surprise. King Casmir silently surveyed the garden, then looked down at Suldrun, who slowly rose to her feet. King Casmir spoke in a flat voice. "Why did you not heed my orders?"

  Suldrun stared in slack-jawed puzzlement. "What orders?"

  "I required your attendance upon King Deuel of Pomperol and his son Prince Kestrel."

  Suldrun cast back into her memory and now recovered the echo of Lady Desdea's voice. Squinting off toward the sea she said: "Lady Desdea might have said something. She talks so much that I seldom listen."

  King Casmir allowed a wintry smile to enliven his face. He also felt that Lady Desdea spoke at unnecessary length. Once more he inspected the garden. "Why do you come here?"

  Suldrun said haltingly: "I am alone here. No one troubles me."

  "But, are you not lonely?"

  "No. I pretend that the flowers talk to me."

  King Casmir grunted. Such fancies in a princess were unnecessary and impractical. Perhaps she was indeed eccentric. "Should you not entertain yourself among other maids of your station?"

  "Father, I do so, at my dancing lessons."

  King Casmir examined her dispassionately. She had tucked a small white flower into her gleaming dusty-gold hair; her features were regular and delicate. For the first time King Casmir saw his daughter as something other than a beautiful absent-minded child.

  "Come along" he said gruffly. "We shall go at; once to the reception. Your costume is far from adequate but neither King Deuel nor Kestrel will think the worse of you." He noticed Suldrun's melancholy expression. "Well then, are you reluctant for a banquet?"

  "Father, these are strangers; why must I meet them today?"

  "Because in due course you must marry and Kestrel might be the most advantageous match."

  Suldrun's face fell even further. "1 thought that I was to marry Prince Bellath of Caduz."

  King Casmir's face became hard. "Where did you hear that?"

  "Prince Bellath told me himself."

  King Casmir voiced a harsh laugh. "Three weeks ago, Bellath became betrothed to Princess Mahaeve of Dahaut."

  Suldrun's mouth sagged. "Is she not already a grown woman?"

  "She is nineteen years old and ill-favored to boot. But no matter; he obeyed his father the king, who chose Dahaut over Lyonesse, to his great folly as he will learn... So you became fond of Bellath?"

  "I liked him well enough."

  "It's of no consequence now. We need both Pomperol and Caduz; if we make a match with Deuel, we'll have them both. Come along, and mind you, show courtesy to Prince Kestrel." He turned on his heel. Suldrun followed him up the path on laggard feet.

  At the reception she was seated beside Prince Kestrel, who practiced lofty airs upon her. Suldrun failed to notice. Both Kestrel and the circumstances bored her.

  In the autumn of the year King Quairt of Caduz and Prince Bellath went to hunt in the Long Hills. They were set upon by masked bandits and killed. Caduz was thereby plunged into confusion, forboding and doubt.

  In Lyonesse King Casmir discovered a claim to the throne of Caduz, stemming from his grandfather Duke Cassander, brother to Queen Lydia of Caduz.

  The claim, based upon the flow of lineage from sister to brother, thence to a descendant twice removed, while legal (with qualifications) in Lyonesse and also in the Ulflands, ran counter to the strictly patrilinear customs of Dahaut. The laws of Caduz itself were ambiguous.

  The better to press his claim, Casmir rode to Montroc, capital of Caduz, at the head of a hundred knights, which instantly aroused King Audry of Dahaut. He warned that under no circumstances might Casmir so easily annex Caduz to his crown, and began to mobilize a great army.

  The dukes and earls of Caduz, thus emboldened, began to express distaste for Casmir, and many wondered, ever more pointedly, as to the identity of bandits so swift, so deadly and so anonymous in a countryside ordinarily so placid.

  Casmir saw the way the wind was blowing. One stormy afternoon, as the nobles of Caduz sat in conclave, a weird-woman dressed in white entered the chamber holding high a glass vessel which exuded a flux of colors swirling behind her like smoke. As if in a trance she picked up the crown, set it on the head of Duke Thirlach, husband to Etaine, younger sister to Casmir. The woman in white departed the chamber and was seen no more. After some contention, the omen was accepted at face value and Thirlach was enthroned as the new king. Casmir rode home with his knights, satisfied that he had done all possible to augment his interests, and indeed his sister Etaine, now Queen of Caduz, was a woman of redoubtable personality.

  Suldrun was fourteen years old and marriageable. The rumor of her beauty had traveled far, and to Haidion came a succession of young grandees, and others not so young, to judge the fabulous Princess Suldrun for themselves.

  King Casmir extended to all an equal hospitality, but was in no hurry to encourage a match until all of his options were clear to him.

  Suldrun's life became increasingly complex, what with balls and banquets, fetes and follies. Some of the visitors she found pleasing, others less so. King Casmir, however, never asked her opinion, which in any case was of no interest to him.

  A different sort of visitor arrived at Lyonesse Town: Brother Umphred, a portly round-faced evangelist, originally from Aquitania, who had arrived at Lyonesse by way of Whanish Isle and the Diocese of Skro.

  With an instinct as certain and sure as that which takes a ferret to the rabbit's throat, Brother Umphred found
the ear of Queen Sollace. Brother Umphred used an insistent mellifluous voice and Queen Sollace became a convert to Christianity.

  Brother Umphred established a chapel in the Tower of Palaemon only a few steps from Queen Sollace's chambers.

  At Brother Umphred's suggestion, Cassander and Suldrun were baptized and required to attend early morning mass in the chapel.

  Brother Umphred attempted next to convert King Casmir, and far overstepped himself.

  "Exactly what is your purpose here?" demanded King Casmir. "Are you a spy for Rome?"

  "I am a humble servant of the one and all-powerful God," said Brother Umphred. "I carry his message of hope and love to all folk, despite hardship and tribulation; no more."

  King Casmir uttered a derisive laugh. "What of the great cathedrals at Avallon and Taciel? Did ‘God' supply the money? No. It was milked from peasants."

  "Your Majesty, humbly we accept alms."

  "It would seem far easier for all-powerful God to create the money... No further proselytizing! If you accept a single farthing from anyone in Lyonesse you will be whipped from here to Port Fader and shipped back to Rome in a sack."

  Brother Umphred bowed without visible resentment. "It shall be as you command."

  Suldrun found Brother Umphred's doctrines incomprehensible and his manner over-familiar. She stopped attending mass and so incurred her mother's displeasure.

  Suldrun found little time for herself. Noble maidens attended most of her waking hours, to chatter and gossip, to plan small intrigues, to discuss gowns and manners, and to analyze the persons who came courting to Haidion. Suldrun found little solitude and few occasions to visit the old garden.

  Early one summer morning the sun shone so sweetly and the thrush sang such plaintive songs in the orangery, that Suldrun felt impelled to leave the palace. She pretended indisposition to avoid her maids-in-waiting and furtively, lest someone notice and suspect a lover's tryst, she ran up the arcade, through the old portal and into the garden.

  Something had changed. She felt as if she were seeing the garden for the first time, even though every detail, every tree and flower was familiar and dear. She looked about her in sadness for the lost vision of childhood. She saw evidence of neglect: harebells, anemones and violets growing modestly in the shade had been challenged by insolent tufts of rank grass. Opposite, among the cypresses and olive trees, nettles had risen more proudly than the asphodel. The path she had so diligently paved with beach pebbles had been broken by rain.

  Suldrun went slowly down to the old lime tree, under which she had passed many dreaming hours... The garden seemed smaller. Ordinary sunlight suffused the air, rather than the old enchantment which had gathered in this place alone, and surely the wild roses had given a richer fragrance when first she had entered the garden? At a crunch of footsteps she looked about to discover a beaming Brother Umphred. He wore a brown cassock tied with a black cord. The cowl hung down between his plump shoulders; his tonsured baldness shone pink.

  Brother Umphred, after a quick glance to left and right, bowed and clasped his hands before him. "Blessed princess, surely you have not come so far without escort?"

  "Exactly so, since I have come here for solitude." Suldrun's voice was devoid of warmth. "It pleases me to be alone."

  Brother Umphred, still smiling, again surveyed the garden. "This is a tranquil retreat. I, too, enjoy solitude; is it possible that we two are cut from the same cloth?" Brother Umphred moved forward, halting no more than a yard from Suldrun. "It is a great pleasure to find you here. I have long wanted to talk to you, in all earnestness."

  Suldrun spoke in an even colder voice. "I do not care to talk to you, or anyone else. I came to be alone."

  Brother Umphred gave a wry jocular grimace. "I will go at once. Still, do you think it proper to venture alone into a place so secluded? How tongues would wag, were it known! All would wonder whom you favored with such intimacy."

  Suldrun turned her back in icy silence. Brother Umphred performed another comical grimace, shrugged, and ambled back up the path.

  Suldrun seated herself beside the lime tree. Brother Umphred, so she suspected, had gone up to wait among the rocks, hoping to discover who came to keep rendezvous.

  At last she arose and started back up the path. The outrage of Brother Umphred's presence had restored something of the garden's charm, and Suldrun stopped to pull weeds. Perhaps tomorrow morning she would come to uproot the nettles.

  Brother Umphred spoke to Queen Sollace, and made a number of suggestions. Sollace reflected, then in a spirit of cold and deliberate malice—she had long decided that she did not particularly care for Suldrun—she gave appropriate orders.

  Several weeks passed before Suldrun, despite her resolution, returned to the garden. Upon passing through the old timber door, she discovered a gang of masons at work upon the old fane. They had enlarged the windows, installed a door and broken open the back to expand the interior, and had added an altar. In consternation Suldrun asked the master mason: "What are you building here?"

  "Your Highness, we build a churchlet, or a chapel, as it might be called, that the Christian priest may conduct his rituals."

  Suldrun could hardly speak. "But—who gave such orders?"

  "It was Queen Sollace herself, your Highness, for her ease and convenience during her devotions."

  Chapter 6

  BETWEEN DASCINET AND TROICINET was Scola, an island of crags and cliffs twenty miles across, inhabited by the Skyls. At the center a volcanic peak, Kro, reminded all of its presence with an occasional rumbling of the guts, a wisp of steam or a bubble of sulfur. From Kro radiated four steep ridges, dividing the island into four duchies: Sadaracx to the north, Corso to the east, Rhamnanthus to the south and Malvang to the west, nominally ruled by dukes who in turn gave fealty to King Yvar Excelsus of Dascinet.

  In practice the Skyls, a dark crafty race of unknown origin, were uncontrollable. They lived isolated in mountain glens, emerging only when the time came for dreadful deeds. Vendetta, revenge and counter-revenge ruled their lives. The Skyls' virtues were stealth, reckless elan, blood-lust and stoicism under torment; his word, be it promise, guarantee or threat might be equated with certainty; indeed the Skyl's exact adherence to his pledge often verged upon the absurd. From birth to death his life was a succession of murders, captivities, escapes, wild flights, daring rescues: deeds incongruous in a landscape of Arcadian beauty.

  On days of festival truce might be called; then merry-making and reveling exceeded rational bounds. Everything was to excess: tables groaned under the weight of food; fabulous feats of wine drinking were performed; there was passionate music and wild dancing. In sudden spasms of sentiment, ancient enmities might be resolved and feuds of a hundred murders put to rest. Old friendships were made whole, amid tears and reminiscences. Beautiful maidens and gallant lads met and loved, or met and parted. There were rapture and despair, seductions and abductions, pursuits, tragic deaths, virtue blighted and fuel for new vendettas.

  The clansmen along the west coast, when the mood came on them, crossed the channel to Troicinet, where they performed mischiefs, including pillage, rape, murder and kidnap.

  King Granice had long and often protested the acts to King Yvar Excelsus, who replied in effect that the incursions represented little more than youthful exuberance. He implied that in his opinion the better part of dignity was simply to ignore the nuisances and that, in any event, King Yvar Excelsus knew no practical method of abatement.

  Port Mel, at the eastern tip of Troicinet, each year celebrated the summer solstice with a three-day festival and a Grand Pageant. Retherd, the young and foolish Duke of Malvang, in the company of three roistering friends, visited the festival incognito. At the Grand Pageant, they agreed that the maidens who represented the Seven Graces were remarkably charming, but could form no consensus as to which was supreme. Thev discussed the matter well into the evening over wine, and at last, to resolve the matter in a practical way, kidnapped all seven of
the maidens and took them across the water to Malvang.

  Duke Retherd was recognized and the news swiftly reached King Granice.

  Wasting no time in a new complaint to King Yvar Excelsus, King Granice landed an army of a thousand warriors on Scola, destroyed Retherd's castle, rescued the maidens, gelded the duke and his cronies, then, for good measure, burned a dozen coastal villages.

  The three remaining dukes assembled an army of three thousand and attacked the Troice encampment. King Granice had secretly reinforced his expeditionary army with two hundred knights and four hundred heavy cavalry. The undisciplined clansmen were routed; the three dukes were captured and King Granice controlled Scola.

  Yvar Excelsus issued an intemperate ultimatum: King Granice must withdraw all troops, pay an indemnity of one hundred pounds of gold, rebuild Malvang Castle and put a bond of another hundred pounds of gold to insure no further offenses against the Kingdom of Dascinet.

  King Granice not only rejected the ultimatum but decreed annexation of Scola to Troicinet. King Yvar Excelsus raged, expostulated, then declared war. He might not have acted so strongly had he not recently signed a treaty of mutual assistance with King Casmir of Lyonesse.

  At the time King Casmir had thought only to strengthen himself for his eventual confrontation with Dahaut, never expecting to be embroiled in trouble not of his own choosing, especially a war with Troicinet.

  King Casmir might have extricated himself by one pretext or another had not the war, upon due reflection, seemed to promise advantage.

  King Casmir weighed all aspects of the situation. Allied with Dascinet he might base his armies on Dascinet, then thrust with all force across Scola against Troicinet, and thereby neutralize Troice sea-power, which was otherwise invulnerable.

  King Casmir made a fateful decision. He commanded seven of his twelve armies to Bulmer Skeme. Then, citing past sovereignty, present complaints and his treaty with King Yvar Excelsus, he declared war upon King Granice of Troicinet.