by K. J. Parker
The dining-room, which had served the same function when the building was still a religious house, was almost as big as the hall. There were four long lines of tables and benches on either side, enough room for three hundred people who didn’t mind their neighbours’ elbows in their gravy. It was full, and extremely noisy. From time to time a server passed up and down the aisles with a big earthenware jug; it was just as well that they’d managed to get places at the top end of a table, near the kitchens and the buttery, since the jugs never seemed to make it further than a third of the way down the line before running dry. Catching the server’s attention was a simple matter of sticking out an arm or a knee. The paintings on the ceiling weren’t quite as fine as those in the hallway, but the frescoes on the walls must have been exquisite at one time, before the damp got behind them and levered them out in handfuls. ‘Scenes from scripture,’ Copis told him with a yawn, when he asked. ‘Not that I’m any expert; half of these don’t mean anything to me. But there’s Actis stealing the sun from the giants – bloody silly story, that – and that one’s Cadanet sieving the stars, assuming that big round thing’s meant to be a sieve, and the one next to it is Sthen and Theron drinking the sea.’ She hesitated for a moment, then looked at him. ‘You haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, have you?’ she said.
He looked away. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘We must have different gods where I come from.’
‘Well . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to know. Eat your dinner before it gets cold.’
That seemed a sensible suggestion, and while he was doing it he tried not to look at the walls or the roof. It stood to reason, though; a man might forget his name and family, but something as basic as scripture (or mythology, or fairy-tales, whatever you liked to call it) ought to have stuck somewhere, along with language and how to tie knots and which hand to wipe your bum with. Even if they’d been knocked back into the scrap, seeing pictures that told the stories ought surely to bring them huddling back into the light. But she was right: none of it meant anything to him, except . . .
He froze, halfway through chewing his last slab of cheese. He’d recognised one of them, he was sure of it. He’d recognised it, but it was so familiar that he hadn’t noticed it; his mind had pushed past it in search of something more interesting. He looked round, had to look three times before he found it—
‘That one,’ he said, pointing. ‘Over there, just under the window.’
Copis frowned at him. ‘I’d really rather we didn’t go into this,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he replied irritably, ‘but I think I know what it is. That big man with the white beard, isn’t he just about to open that box? And when he does, I think something escapes.’
‘That’s right,’ Copis said, sounding excited. ‘The four seasons. The old man is Cadanet, of course, and—’
‘Cadanet,’ he replied. ‘Yes, I knew that. And his wife – that’ll be the thin woman with the funny hat—’
‘Veil of stars, actually, but—’
‘Her name,’ he went on, closing his eyes, ‘is Holden. She gave him the box.’
‘You’ve got it.’ Copis nodded frantically. ‘Go on, what else can you remember? Where did she get the box from?’
He clenched his fists, as if trying to squeeze the information out between his fingers. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t know that. But it was some kind of trick.’
‘That’s it,’ Copis said. ‘Olfar gave her the box while Cadanet was sleeping.’
‘And before he opened it, it was always summer?’
‘Exactly.’ Copis breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You’ve no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that.’
He thought for a moment before answering. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but it doesn’t prove anything. Just because I remember one story . . .’
‘It’s a start,’ Copis interrupted. ‘And it’s a pretty basic story, the fall from grace. I think the first time I heard it was when I was four. Maybe even earlier than that, because everything before I was six is really just a jumble. What I mean is, it’d be one of the first ones you learned, so it stands to reason it’ll be one of the first you remember. Assuming it works like that,’ she added.
‘Assuming.’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? And why have you got to be so downbeat about everything? It gets on my nerves sometimes.’
He grinned. ‘Who’s being downbeat? I’ve actually remembered a name. You have no idea . . .’ He paused; another picture had caught his eye. Irritatingly, it was too high up and far away for him to be able to see it clearly, but he could definitely make out a man and a woman in a cart, with a burning town in the background. He pointed at it.
‘What?’ Copis said.
‘There,’ he replied. ‘Top left corner. It’s in shadow from where we’re sitting, but—’
‘My God, yes, fancy that.’ Copis leaned back to get a better view, jogging the elbow of the woman sitting next to her; she swore, and went back to her food. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘that’s odd. I could’ve sworn the cart was my idea.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘When I was a little girl, the end-of-the-world god rode around the place on a black horse with a white spot on its forehead. But there weren’t any black horses with white spots in my price range when I was figuring out the act, so I went for a cart instead. Yes, that’s definitely off.’
‘Stay there,’ he said, getting up. ‘I’m going to have a closer look.’
From the other end of the room, staring directly up at it, he could see rather more detail. The man, for instance, had a short black beard and a golden crown of some kind (nothing at all like the tiara-thing they used in the act), and while he was brandishing what was presumably meant to be a thunderbolt in his left hand, he was holding an oddly shaped curved sword in his right. The burning town was just a random pattern of black silhouetted squares and rectangles, but the carthorses were both skewbalds, just like the two the grooms had led away to the stables. The part that really caught his attention, however, was the other panel of the painting, which he hadn’t been able to see at all from where he’d been sitting. The man in it was definitely the same one as in the first panel; no sign of the woman or, indeed, the cart, but here were two other men standing with him, one on either side, and he was walking down the gangplank of a ship towards a landscape of green grass and decidedly unnaturalistic sheep.
He was about to turn away when someone bumped into him. Instead of swearing at him, the man apologised, which Poldarn took to indicate that he was an offcomer too. ‘No problem,’ he mumbled, expecting the man to go away. But he didn’t.
‘Looking at the painting?’ the man asked.
‘What? Oh, yes. Rather good, isn’t it?’
The man grinned. ‘I think it’s awful,’ he replied. ‘But it’s an interesting subject. Actually, I’ve just come twelve days’ ride to see it.’
Poldarn turned his head and looked at him. He was enormous, the size and shape of a bear who’d got himself apprenticed to a blacksmith; he had a short black beard, just like the man in the picture, a small stub nose and very big round brown eyes. He was smiling.
‘Professional curiosity,’ the man explained. ‘It’s the only known pictorial representation of this particular myth this side of Morevish. Pity it had to be in a shithole like this, really.’
Poldarn nodded, not quite sure what to make of him. ‘Maybe if you come back later,’ he said, ‘after dinner’s over, you could get a better look at it—’
‘Oh, I will,’ the man replied. ‘And I’ll hire some ladders, possibly even a scaffolding team; also a whole bunch of clerks to draw it for me – I never was any good at drawing, even when I was a kid. I haven’t come all this way just to gawp at it from down here and then go home.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ he added.
‘No.’
The man laughed. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘Makes a pleasant change, really. My name’s Cleapho
.’
That was obviously meant to mean something without further explanation. Poldarn’s face must have betrayed his thoughts, because the man laughed again. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘don’t worry about it. Like I said, it’s actually rather nice not to be recognised for once. So,’ he went on, and Poldarn could feel the man observing him. ‘You just like the look of it, do you?’
Poldarn nodded. ‘What’s the story behind it, do you know?’
‘Yes. Do you?’
Strange edge to his voice when he asked that. ‘Not a clue,’ Poldarn replied. ‘But I’d like it if you’d tell me.’
Cleapho nodded, having apparently satisfied himself about some point or other. ‘It’s a southern legend,’ he said. ‘Morevish, Tulice, Thurm, places like that. Not very widely known these days – I mean, that picture’s something like three hundred years old, possibly older. The man in the cart is a god, and he’s bringing the end of the world. The female’s just some priestess; in some versions of the story she’s got a name, Machaira, but that’s probably a later gloss. The first scene is where he burns down a major city; and that’s an interesting thing, because there’s a version of the story where the city that gets burned at this stage in the story is supposed to be somewhere in the north, between two great rivers, which could just about be taken to mean Josequin – well, you can see the topicality, can’t you? Unfortunately, that version’s pretty late and a very poor source in any case – Mannerist epic poetry, thoroughly unreliable, they used to make up any old stuff and chuck it in just to get the rhymes – so it probably doesn’t represent a genuine tradition or anything, just some rich dilettante’s imagination. It’ll be easier, of course, when I can get up there and read the writing.’
‘Writing?’ Poldarn squinted. ‘I can’t see any.’
‘You wouldn’t, not from down there. It’s a religious thing, doesn’t matter whether you or I can read the writing, it’s not us it’s addressed to. Lots of bloody stupid things like that in religion; they sound clever the first time you hear them, and then they’re just annoying. You know,’ he went on, stroking his beard, ‘three hundred years is probably on the conservative side. It’s difficult, of course, trying to put a date on religious painting, because styles don’t change the way they do with commercial stuff. Another religious thing,’ he added with a deep, rather exaggerated sigh; Poldarn got the impression that Cleapho was sharing a private joke with himself. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘as I was saying, it could be considerably older than that, though of course I’m no expert. Interesting, though.’
‘I suppose so,’ Poldarn said.
‘But not to you, evidently. And there’s no harm in that, either.’ The man was chuckling again. Whatever the private joke was, it was clearly very funny. ‘It’s annoying that some bloody fool saw fit to smash a damned great window right through the interesting bit,’ he said. ‘Of course nobody mentioned that to me before I left Torcea, or I wouldn’t have been quite so eager to come all this way. After all, the beginning of the story’s pretty well cut and dried; it’s the ending that’s the problem. But instead of an ending, all we’ve got is a window. You know, that’s probably highly symbolic, though what of I haven’t a clue.’
‘You were telling me the story,’ Poldarn reminded him.
‘What? Oh yes, so I was. Where had I got to?’
‘The god had just burned down a city.’
‘Right, yes. Now, this is where the story gets a bit complicated, because it all depends on which version you’re following. In the Tulicite version, for instance, that’s the point where he meets the maker of false images – though there’s a translation issue there, because the Tulicite word trahidur can also mean a worshipper of false gods, a confidence trickster or one of those people who clips little bits of silver off the coins, basically you can take your pick. Maker of false images sounds better, though. Well, that’s the Tulicite version. In the Morevish version – well, there’s two Morevish versions, but in the preferred texts the meeting with the maker of false images – only in this version he’s the man who makes little bronze statues of demons and brings them to life – well, the meeting with him comes after he fights and overcomes the Saviour of the People, who’s the only man on earth who could stop him and save the world – he doesn’t, though, it’s a very gloomy myth – except that there’s a tradition in some of the later Mannerists that may well be derived from a Morevish source that we don’t have any more, in which he murders all the priests of the true faith before he overcomes the Saviour, which you’d normally just dismiss out of hand as some Mannerist trying to be clever, if it wasn’t for the fact that in the Thurm tradition, which as far as we can tell is much, much older at this point, the Saviour bit comes before the maker of false images, in fact before the old woman in the hut and the false images and the drink from the lonely fountain but after the visit to the museum of lost souls, which is downright perverse, if you ask me.’
‘I see,’ Poldarn said. ‘If you’ll . . .’
‘And there, of course,’ Cleapho went on, ‘is where it really starts to get screwed up; because suddenly out of nowhere about three hundred and twenty-five years ago along comes this purely domestic tradition, right out of the blue with no warning, where the god in the cart isn’t actually Poldarn but Poldarn’s son, would you believe, and the battle with the Saviour comes right after the museum—’
‘Excuse me,’ Poldarn interrupted, ‘but what was that name you just mentioned?’
‘Poldarn. Him,’ Cleapho explained, pointing at the picture. ‘The one we’ve been talking about all this time.’
‘Poldarn?’
‘That’s right.’
Poldarn took a deep breath. ‘That’s the god’s name, is it?’
Cleapho frowned, looking puzzled. ‘Well, of course. Didn’t you know that? Sorry, I’d assumed you knew, otherwise why would you be interested in the painting? Yes, that’s the name. Southern, originally.’
‘And hundreds of years old?’
‘More than hundreds of years down in Morevish and Thurm. More like thousands. They’re very conservative down there, hardly ever change their gods. Not like us.’ At that point he appeared to notice something and swore under his breath. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’ll think I’m very rude but I’ve just realised I’ve left my escort and about a dozen porters standing about in the courtyard – I came straight here, you see, from the jetty – so I really ought to go and sort them out, before they assume I’ve been murdered and tear the place apart looking for me. If you’re interested in all this, catch me a bit later on and I’ll tell you some more. Bye for now.’
Before Poldarn could say anything, Cleapho had marched briskly down the aisle and slipped out through the door; it was rather shocking that anything that size could be moved so fast without a crane and rollers, at the very least. Poldarn took one last look at the picture and headed back to his place at table, to find that Copis had come up the aisle and was only a few feet away.
‘You do know who that was you were talking to, don’t you?’ she hissed.
Poldarn, who’d been about to say something else, frowned. ‘He said his name was Cleapho,’ he replied.
‘That’s right, Cleapho,’ Copis said, actually sounding bewildered for once. ‘Cleapho, the emperor’s personal chaplain. Even I recognised him, and it’s years since I was last in Torcea.’
‘Torcea,’ Poldarn repeated.
‘That’s right. You know, where the emperor lives. I must have heard him preach in temple – oh, dozens of times. And it’s not a voice you forget.’
Poldarn hadn’t noticed anything specially distinctive about it, but that wasn’t the subject he wanted to talk about. ‘You said you got the name off a roof tile,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You know, the name. Poldarn. You said it was the name of a brickworks.’
Copis looked even more confused. ‘It is.’
‘No it’s not,’ Poldarn told her. ‘It’s the name of this god I
’m supposed to be, and that man Cleapho—’
‘Outside,’ Copis interrupted. ‘Before somebody hears us.’
So they went outside, and found a corner of the yard that wasn’t overlooked or near anything else. ‘He told me,’ Poldarn said angrily, ‘that this Poldarn is a real god, from somewhere away down south, and there’s all sorts of stories about him, including one where he drives round in a cart with a priestess burning down cities. You must’ve known that; it can’t be a coincidence. So why did you tell me you’d picked the name at random?’
‘I did,’ Copis said. ‘It must just be a coincidence, that’s all. Look, forget about all that now, it isn’t important. Do you realise you’ve just spent ten minutes talking to one of the most powerful men in the whole empire?’
‘What?’ Poldarn said, disconcerted. ‘I thought you said he was some sort of priest.’
‘That’s right, some kind of priest. And the emperor’s some kind of government official. What the hell’s he doing here? And what were you talking to him about for all that time?’
Poldarn was so bewildered that it took him a moment to remember. ‘The picture,’ he said. ‘He told me he’d come all the way from somewhere – Torcea, I think – just to look at that picture. Then he started telling me the story, only he kept sidetracking himself.’
Copis shook her head. ‘Cleapho’s probably the cleverest man in the empire,’ she said. ‘If he was talking to you all that time, it wasn’t just passing the time of day. What did you tell him? About us, I mean?’
‘Nothing. He didn’t ask.’
‘No, you’re missing something. He wouldn’t make it sound like he was asking. The likes of him don’t talk to the likes of you for a quarter of an hour unless it’s a national emergency.’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘He said the painting was three hundred years old. If it’s an emergency, it can’t be a very urgent one.’
‘No.’ Copis put on her decisive face. ‘Something’s going on. I don’t know or care what it is, but I don’t want to get mixed up in it. Let’s go to Mael Bohec while we still can.’