Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter

by Brian Aldiss

  It was impossible to make out the number of the enemy. They merged together with the late afternoon mists filling the hollow, and with the scarred greys and blues of the scene. One of them gave a thick protracted cough; otherwise they might have been lifeless.

  Their white birds had settled on a ridge behind them, at first with some jostling, now spaced out regularly, with heads submissively on one side, like the souls of those departed.

  From their frosty outline, it could be determined that three of the phagors – presumably the leaders – were mounted on kaidaws. They sat, as was their habit, leaning forward with their heads close to their mounts’ heads, as if communion was in progress. The foot phagors clustered against the flanks of the kaidaws, shoulders hunched. Nearby boulders were not more still.

  The cougher coughed again. Aoz Roon threw off his spell and called to his men.

  They climbed along the crest of the ridge, to stare at the enemy in dismay.

  In response, the phagors made a sudden move. Their strangely jointed limbs geared themselves from immobility to action with no intermediate stage. The shallow lake had checked their advance. They had a well-known aversion to water, but times were changing; their harneys said ‘Forward.’ The sight of thirty human gillots at their mercy decided them. They charged.

  One of the three mounted brutes swung a sword above his head. With a churring cry, he kicked his kaidaw, and mount and rider burst forward. The other brutes followed as one, whether mounted or running. Forward they dashed – into the waters of the shallow lake.

  Panic scattered the women. Now that their adversary was almost on them, they ran hither and thither between the ridges. Some climbed one side, some the other, making small sharp noises of despair, like birds in distress.

  Only Shay Tal remained where she was, facing the charge, and Vry and Arnin Lim clung to her in terror, hiding their faces.

  ‘Run, you fool woman!’ bellowed Aoz Roon, coming down the ridge at a run.

  Shay Tal did not hear his voice above the shrieks and the furious splashing. She stood firm at the end of the fish lake and flung out her arms, as if gesturing to the phagor horde to halt.

  Then the transformation. Then the moment that ever after in the annals of Oldorando would be referred to as the miracle of Fish Lake.

  Some claimed later that a shrilling note rang through the frosty air, some said a high voice spoke, some vowed Wutra struck.

  The whole group of marauders, sixteen in number, had entered the lake, led by the three mounted stalluns. Their rage drove them into the alien element, they were thigh deep in it, churning it up with the fury of their charge, when the entire lake froze.

  One moment, it was an absolutely still liquid, lying, because undisturbed, unfrozen at three degrees below freezing point. The next moment, disturbed, it became solid. Kaidaws and phagors all were locked in its embrace. One kaidaw fell, never to rise again. The others froze where they were, and their riders froze with them, hemmed in ice. The stalluns behind, brandishing their arms – all were trapped, held in the grip of the element they had invaded. None took as much as one farther step. None could fight free to gain the safety of the shore. Soon, their veins froze within their bodies, despite the ancient biochemistries that coloured their bloodstream and protected it from the cold. Their coarse white coats became further sheathed in rime, their glaring eyes frosted over.

  What was organic became one with the great inorganic world that ruled.

  The tableau of furious death was absolute, carved from ice.

  Above it, white birds wheeled and dipped, crying with gaping beaks, finally making off to the east in desolate flight.

  *

  Next morning, three people rose up early from a skin bivouac. Powdery snow had fallen during the night; giving the wilderness a peppery appearance. Freyr ascended from the horizon, casting watery purple shadows over the plain. Several minutes later, the second faithful sentinel also struggled free into Wutra’s realm.

  By then, Aoz Roon, Laintal Ay, and Oyre were on their feet, beating and stamping circulation into their limbs. They coughed, but were otherwise silent. After looking at each other without speaking, they moved forward. Aoz Roon stepped out onto the lake of ice, which rang beneath his tread.

  The three of them walked across to the frozen tableau.

  They stared at it almost in disbelief. Before them was a monumental piece of statuary, fine in detail, wild in imagining. One kaidaw lay almost under the hoofs of the other two, the greater part of its bulk submerged by brittle waves, its head rearing up in fear, its nostrils distended. Its rider struggled for control, half fallen from its back, terrible in immobility.

  All the figures were caught in mid-action, many with weapons raised, eyes staring ahead to the shore they would never reach. All were encased in rime. They formed a monument to brutality.

  Finally, Aoz Roon nodded and spoke. His voice was subdued.

  ‘It did happen. Now I believe. Let’s get back.’

  The miracle of Year 24 was confirmed.

  He had sent the rest of the party back to Oldorando the previous evening, under Dathka’s leadership. Only after he had slept could he believe he did not dream the incident.

  Nobody else said anything. They had been saved by a miracle; the thought dazed their minds, silenced their tongues. They trudged away from the alarming sculpture without another word.

  Once they were back in Oldorando, Aoz Roon ordered one of his slaves to be taken by two hunters to Fish Lake, to the site of the miracle. When the slave had seen the tableau with his own eyes, his hands were lashed behind his back, he was faced towards the south, and booted on his way. Back in Borlien, he would tell his fellows that a powerful sorceress watched over Oldorando.

  VIII

  In Obsidian

  The room in which Shay Tal stood erect was ancient beyond her computation. She had furnished it with what she could: an old tapestry, once Loil Bry’s, once Loilanun’s – that illustrious line of dead women; her humble bed in the corner, built of woven bracken imported from Borlien (bracken kept out rats); her writing materials set on a small stone table; some skins on the floor, on which thirteen women sat or squatted. The academy was in session.

  The walls of the room were leprous with yellow and white lichen which, starting from the single narrow window, had, over uncounted years, colonised all the adjacent stonework. In the corners were spiders’ webs; most of their incumbents had starved to death long ago.

  Behind the thirteen women sat Laintal Ay, legs folded under him, resting his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee. He looked down at the floor. Most of the women gazed vacantly at Shay Tal. Vry, Amin Lim, were listening; of the others, she could not be sure.

  ‘The effects in our world are complex. We can pretend they are all a product of the mind of Wutra in that eternal war in Heaven, but that is too easy. We would do better to work things out for ourselves. We need some other key to understanding. Does Wutra care? Perhaps we have sole charge of our own actions …’

  She ceased to listen to what she was saying. She had posed the eternal question. Surely every human being who had ever lived had had to face up to that question, and answer it in her own way: have we sole charge of our own actions? She could not tell the answer in her own case. In consequence, she felt herself totally unfit to teach.

  Yet they listened. She knew why they listened, even if they listened without understanding. They listened because she was accepted as a great sorceress. Since the miracle at Fish Lake, she was isolated by their reverence. Aoz Roon himself was more distant than before.

  She looked out through the ruinous window at the ecrhythmous world, now freeing itself from the recent cold, its slimes and snows spatchcocked with green, its river streaked with muds from remote places she would never visit. There were miracles. The miraculous lay beyond her window. Yet – had she performed a miracle, as everyone assumed?

  Shay Tal broke off her talk in mid-sentence. She perceived that there way a way of
testing her own holiness.

  The phagors charging at Fish lake had turned to ice. Because of something in her – or something in them? She recalled tales about phagors dreading water; perhaps the reason was that they turned to ice in it. That could be tested: there were one or two old phagor slaves in Oldorando. She would try one out in the Voral and see what happened. One way or the other, she would know.

  The thirteen were staring at her, waiting for her to go on. Laintal Ay looked puzzled. She had no idea what she had been saying. She perceived that she had to conduct an experiment for her own peace of mind.

  ‘We have to do what we’re told …’ one of the women said from the floor, in a slow puzzled voice, as if repeating a lesson.

  Shay Tal stood listening to someone tramping up the steps from the floor below. There was no way in which she could answer politely a statement she had been contradicting since the Hour-Whistler last blew; any interruption was welcome at this point. Some of the women were irredeemably stupid.

  The hatch was flung open. Aoz Roon appeared, looking rather like a great black bear, followed by his dog. Behind him came Dathka, to stand poker-faced in the rear, not even casting a glance at Laintal Ay. The latter stood rather awkwardly, and waited with his back to the cold wall. The women gaped at the intruders, some giggling nervously.

  Aoz Roon’s stature seemed to fill the low room. Though the women craned their necks at him uneasily, he ignored them and addressed Shay Tal. She had moved back to the window, but stood facing him, framed against a background of muddy village, fumaroles, and the parti-coloured landscape stretching to the horizon.

  ‘What do you want here?’ she asked. Her heart beat as she beheld him. For this above all she cursed her new reputation, that he no longer bullied her, or held her arms, or even pursued her. His whole manner suggested this was a formal and unfriendly visit.

  ‘I wish you to come back into the protection of the barricades, ma’am,’ he said. ‘You are not safe, living in this ruin. I cannot protect you here in the event of a raid.’

  ‘Vry and I prefer living here.’

  ‘You’re under my control, for all your reputation, you and Vry, and I must do my best to protect you. All you other women – you should not be here. It is too dangerous outside the barricades. If there was a sudden attack – well, you can guess what would happen to you. Shay Tal, as our powerful sorceress, must please herself. The rest of you must please me. I forbid you to come here. It’s too dangerous. You understand?’

  All evaded his gaze except the old midwife, Rol Sakil. ‘That’s all nonsense, Aoz Roon. This tower is safe enough. Shay Tal’s scared off the fuggies, we all know that. Besides, even you have been here on occasions, haven’t you now?’

  This last was said with a leer. Aoz Roon dismissed it.

  ‘I’m talking about the present. Nothing’s safe now the weather’s changing. None of you enter here again or there will be trouble.’

  He turned, raising a beckoning finger to Laintal Ay.

  ‘You come with me.’ He marched down the steps without a farewell, and Laintal Ay and Dathka followed.

  Outside, he paused, pulling at his beard. He looked up at her window.

  ‘I’m still Lord of Embruddock, and you had better not forget it.’

  She heard his shout from within, but would not go to the window. Instead, she stood where she was – alone despite the company – and said in a voice loud enough for him to hear, ‘Lord of a rotten little farmyard.’

  Only when she heard the squelch of three pairs of boots retreating did she deign to glance out the window. She watched his broad back as he trudged with his young lieutenants towards the north gate, Curd trotting at his heel. She understood his loneliness. None better.

  As his woman, she would surely not have lost stature, or whatever it was she valued so highly. Too late to think of that now. The rift was between them, and an empty-headed doll kept his bed warm.

  ‘You’d better all go home,’ she said, afraid to look directly at the women.

  When they got back to the muddy main square, Aoz Roon ordered Laintal Ay to stay away from the academy.

  Laintal Ay flushed. ‘Isn’t it time that you and the council gave up your prejudice against the academy? I hoped you’d think better of it since the miracle of Fish Lake. Why upset the women? They’ll hate you for it. The worst the academy can do is keep the women content.’

  ‘It makes the women idle. It causes division.’

  Laintal Ay looked at Dathka for support, but Dathka was gazing at his boots. ‘It’s more likely to be your attitude that causes division, Aoz Roon. Knowledge never hurt anyone; we need knowledge.’

  ‘Knowledge is slow poison – you’re too young to understand. We need discipline. That’s how we survive and how we always have survived. You stay away from Shay Tal – she exerts an unnatural power over people. Those who don’t work in Oldorando get no food. That’s always been the rule. Shay Tal and Vry have ceased working the boilery, so in future they will have nothing to eat. We’ll see how they like that.’

  ‘They’ll starve.’

  Aoz Roon drew his brows together and glared at Laintal Ay, ‘We will all starve if we do not cooperate. Those women have to be brought to heel, and I will not tolerate you siding with them. Argue with me any more and I’ll knock you down.’

  When Aoz Roon had gone, Laintal Ay gripped Dathka’s shoulder. ‘He is getting worse. It’s his personal battle with Shay Tal. What do you think?’

  Dathka shook his head. ‘I don’t think. I do what I’m told.’

  Laintal Ay regarded his friend sarcastically. ‘And what are you told to do now?’

  ‘I’m going up by the brassimips patch. We’ve killed a stungebag.’ He exhibited a bleeding hand.

  ‘I’ll be there in a while.’

  He walked by the Voral, idly watching the geese swimming and parading, before following his friend. He thought to himself that he understood both Aoz Roon’s and Shay Tal’s points of view. To live, all had to cooperate, yet was it worth living if they merely cooperated? The conflict oppressed him and made him long to leave the hamlet – as he would do if only Oyre were to agree to come with him. He felt that he was too young to understand how the argument, the growing division, would resolve itself. Slyly, seeing nobody was looking, he brought out from his pocket a carved dog given him long ago by the old priest from Borlien. He held it forward and worked its tail. The dog began to bark furiously at nearby geese.

  Someone else was wending her way towards the brassimips and heard the imitation dog bark. Vry saw Laintal Ay’s back between two towers. She did not intrude on him, for that was not her way.

  She skirted the hot springs and the Hour-Whistler. An easterly breeze took the steam from the waters as it emerged from the ground, to blow it hissing across wet rock. Vry’s furs were pearled with a bead of moisture at every hair end.

  The waters ran gargling, yellow and chalky in their crevices, full of an infectious fury to be somewhere. She squatted down on a rock and absentmindedly dipped her hand in a spring. Hot water ran up her fingers and explored her palm.

  Vry licked the liquid off her fingers. She knew the sulphurous flavour from childhood. Children were playing here now, calling to each other, running across slippery rock without falling, agile as arangs.

  The more adventurous children ran naked, despite the stiff breeze, inserting their androgynous bodies into clefts between rocks. Spuming waters cascaded up their stomachs and over their shoulders.

  ‘Here comes the Whistler,’ they called to Vry. ‘Look out, missus, or you’ll get a soaking.’ They laughed heartily at the thought.

  Taking the warning, Vry moved away. She thought that a stranger here would credit the children with a sixth sense, able to predict exactly when the Hour-Whistler blew.

  Up it went, a solid column of water, muddy for a moment then brilliant pure. Ascending, it whistled on an ascending note – its unvarying note, sustained for an unvarying duration. The water sailed upw
ards to about three times the height of a man before falling back. The wind curved the jet towards the west, hammering the rocks where Vry had squatted a moment earlier.

  The whistle stopped. The column died back into the black lips of earth from which it had sprung.

  Vry waved to the children and continued up the brassimip track. She knew how they knew when the geyser was about to blow. She still remembered the thrill of wriggling naked between ochre rocks, plugging one’s body into the streaming earth, toes among hot slimes, flesh tickled by bursting bubbles. When the hour was near, a tremor shook the ground. One wedged oneself into the rock and felt in every fibre the strength of the earth gods as they tensed themselves to deliver their triumphant ejaculation of hot liquids.

  The path she followed was trodden mainly by women and pigs. It wandered hither and thither, unlike straighter paths created by hunters, since its course had been dictated largely by that wayward creature, the hairy black sow of Embruddock. To follow the direction in which the track tended was to arrive eventually at Lake Dorzin; but the path ceased long before that, at the brassimip patch. The rest of the way was still a wilderness of marsh and frost.

  As she moved up the path, Vry wondered if all things aspired to a highest level, and if there was a competing force trying to drag them to the lowest. One looked up to the stars, one ended as a gossie, a fessup. The Hour-Whistler was an embodiment of the two opposed forces. Its spouting waters always fell back to earth. In her unobtrusive way, she willed her spirit to soar to the sky, the region she studied without Shay Tal’s aid, the place of sublime movement, the riddling place of stars and suns, of as many secret passages as the body.

  Two men came towards her. She could see little of them but legs, elbows, and the tops of their heads, as they staggered downhill under heavy loads. She could identify Sparat Lim by his spindly legs. The men were carrying slabs of stungebag. After them came Dathka, carrying only a spear.