by Brian Aldiss
Aoz Roon spared his natural daughter no more than a look before saying challengingly to Laintal Ay, ‘You’ve been missing again.’
‘For a while, yes. I’m sorry. I was inspecting the defences. I—’
Aoz Roon laughed curtly and looked at his companions as he said, ‘When you enter in that state, with Oyre with her fancy garb unlaced, I know you have been inspecting something other than the defences. Don’t lie to me, you young fighting cock!’
The other men laughed. Laintal Ay went crimson.
‘I’m no liar. I went to inspect our defences – but we have no defences. There are no sentries, no guards, while you were lying drinking in the wilderness. Oldorando could fall to one single armed Borlienian. We’re taking life too easy, and you set a poor example.’
He felt Oyre’s steadying hand on his arm.
‘He spends little time here now,’ Dol called, in a teasing voice, but was ignored, for Aoz Roon had turned to his other companions and said, ‘You see what I have to endure from my lieutenants, so-called. Always impudence. Oldorando is now concealed and protected by green, growing higher every week. When the warlike weather returns, as return it will, that will be time enough for war. You’re trying to make trouble, Laintal Ay.’
‘Not so. I’m trying to prevent it.’
Aoz Roon walked forward and confronted him, his immense black figure towering over the youth.
‘Then keep quiet. And don’t lecture me.’
Above the noise of the downpour, cries could be heard outside. Dol turned to stare out of the window and called that someone was in trouble. Oyre ran to join her.
‘Stand back,’ Aoz Roon shouted, but the three older women also jostled to get close to the window. The room became even darker.
‘We’ll go and see what’s happening,’ Tanth Ein said. He started down the stairs, his great shoulders almost blocking the trap as he descended, with Faralin Ferd and Eline Tal after him. Raynil Layan remained in the shadows, watching them go. Aoz Roon made as if to stop them, then stood indecisively in the middle of the dull room, regarded only by Laintal Ay.
The latter came forward and said, ‘My temper ran away with me; you shouldn’t have called me a liar. Don’t let that mean that my warning goes unheeded. Our responsibility is to keep the place guarded as we used to.’
Aoz Roon bit his lip and did not listen.
‘You get your ideas from that damned woman Shay Tal.’ He spoke absently, one ear cocked to the noises outside. Masculine shouts were now added to the earlier cries. The women at the window also set up a great noise, running about and clinging to Dol and to each other.
‘Come away!’ cried Aoz Roon, grabbing Dol angrily. Curd, the great yellow hound, started to howl.
The world danced to drumming rain. The figures below the tower were grey in the downpour. Two of the three burly hunters were lifting a body from the mud, while the third, Faralin Ferd, was endeavouring to put his arms about two old women in rain-soaked furs and direct them towards shelter. The old women, uninterested in comfort, raised their faces in grief, rain pouring into their open mouths. They were recognisable as Datnil Skar’s woman and an ancient widow, the aunt of Faralin Ferd.
The women had dragged the body in from the north gate between them, covering it and themselves with mud in the process. As the hunters straightened up with their burden, the body was revealed. Its visage was distorted and masked by blood so caked that the rain did not wash it away. Its head fell back as the hunters heaved it high. Blood still gouted across its face and garments. Its throat had been bitten out, as cleanly as a man bites a great mouthful from an apple.
Dol began to shriek. Aoz Roon pushed past her, thrust his burly shoulders into the window space, and called down at those below, ‘Don’t bring that thing in here.’
The men chose to disregard him. They were making for the nearest shelter. Jets of rainwater were spewing down from the parapets above them. They floundered in the muck with their muddy burden.
Aoz Roon cursed and ran from the room, charging downstairs, Curd following. Caught by the drama of the moment, Laintal Ay followed, with Oyre, Dol, and the other women behind him, jostling on the narrow steps. Raynil Layan came more slowly in the rear.
The hunters and the old women dragged or escorted the dead body into the low-ceilinged stable to drop it on scattered straw. The men stood away, wiping their faces with their hands, as a puddle of water in which blood spiralled leaked from the body, to set afloat wisps of straw, which turned uncertainly on the flood like boats seeking an estuary. The old women, grotesque bundles, cried on each other’s shoulders monumentally. Although the face of the dead man was plastered with blood and hair there was no doubt of his identity. Master Datnil Skar, with Curd sniffing at his cold ear, lay dead before them.
Tanth Ein’s woman was a personable creature, by name Farayl Musk. She broke into a series of long wailing cries, which she was unable to stifle.
Nobody could mistake the deadly neck wound for anything but a phagor bite. The mode of execution common in Pannoval had been passed on, for when need arose, as it rarely did, by Yuli the Priest. Somewhere outside in the pouring rain was Wutra, waiting. Wutra, for ever at war. Laintal Ay thought of Shay Tal’s alarming claim that Wutra was a phagor. Perhaps there really was a god, perhaps he really was a phagor. His mind went back to the time earlier in the day, before he had found Oyre naked, when he had seen Goija Hin leading Myk to the north gate. There was no doubt who was responsible for this death; he thought how Shay Tal would have fresh cause for sorrow.
He looked at the stricken faces about him – and Raynil Layan’s gloating one – and took courage. In a loud voice, he said, ‘Aoz Roon, I name you the killer of this good old man.’ He pointed at Aoz Roon as if imagining that some present did not know whom he designated.
All eyes turned to the Lord of Embruddock, who stood with his head against the rafters, his face pale. He said harshly, ‘Don’t dare speak against me. One word more from you, Laintal Ay, and I win strike you down.’
But Laintal Ay could not be stopped. Full of anger, he cried mockingly, ‘Is this another of your cruel blows against knowledge – against Shay Tal?’
The others murmured, restless in the confined space. Aoz Roon said, ‘This is justice. I have information that Datnil Skar allowed outsiders to read the secret book of his corps. It’s a forbidden act. Its just penalty is now, as it always was, death.’
‘Justice! Does this look like justice? This blow has all the stealth of murder. You’ve all seen – it’s carried out like the murder of—’
Aoz Roon’s attack was hardly unexpected, but its ferocity knocked his guard away. He struck back at Aoz Roon’s face, dancing black with rage before him. He heard Oyre shriek. Then a fist caught him squarely on the side of the jaw.
Detachedly, he saw himself stagger backwards, trip over the sodden corpse, and sprawl powerless on the stable floor.
He was aware of screams, shouting, boots trampling round him. He felt the kicks in his ribs. There was confusion as they took him up like the body they had dropped – he attempting to protect his skull from knocking against a wall – and carried him outside into the downpour. He heard thunder like a giant pulse.
From the steps, they flung him bodily into the mud. The rain came flying down into his face. As he sprawled there, he realised that he was no longer Aoz Roon’s lieutenant From now on, their enmity was out in the open, apparent to all.
Rain continued to fall. Belts of dense cloud rolled across the central continent. An atmosphere of stalemate prevailed over the affairs of Oldorando.
The distant army of the young kzahhn, Hrr-Brahl Yprt, was forced to halt its advance, to shelter among the shattered hills of the east. Its components went into a sort of tether rather than face the downpour.
The phagors also experienced earth tremors, which originated from the same source as those afflicting Oldorando. Far to the north, old rift zones in the Chalce region were undergoing violent seismic upheaval. A
s the burden of ice disappeared, the earth shook and rose up.
By this period, the ocean that girdled Helliconia became free of ice even beyond the wide tropical zones, which stretched from the equator to latitudes thirty-five degrees north and south. The westward circulation of oceanic waters built up in a series of tsunami, which devastated coastal regions all round the globe. The floodings often combined with vulcanism to alter the land area.
All such geological events were monitored by the instruments of the Earth Observation Station, which Vry called Kaidaw. The readings were signalled back to distant Earth. No planet in the galaxy was watched more intensely than Helliconia.
Account was taken of the dwindling herds of yelk and biyelk which inhabited the northern Campannlat plain; their pasturage was threatened. Kaidaws, on the other hand, were multiplying as marginal lands, hitherto barren, provided grazing.
There were two sorts of ancipital community on the tropical continent: static components without kaidaws, which lived close to the land, and mobile or nomadic groups with kaidaws. Not only was the kaidaw a highly mobile animal in its own right; its fodder consumption forced those who domesticated it to move continuously in search of new foraging grounds. The army of the young kzahhn, for example, consisted of numerous small components committed to a nomadic and often warlike existence. Their crusade was only one aspect of a migration, which would take decades to complete, from east to west of the entire continent.
A tremor which brought down avalanches about the kzahhn’s army marked the tail end of an upheaval in the planet’s crust which deflected a river of meltwater flowing from the Hhryggt Glacier. A new valley opened. The new river coursed through it, and henceforth flowed westwards instead of north, as previously.
This river burst its way down to become a tributary of the river Takissa, streaming southwards to empty into the Sea of Eagles. Its waters ran black for many years; they carried with them dozens of metric tons of demolished mountain every day.
Flooding caused by the new river through its new valley forced one insignificant group of phagors of the nomadic type to disperse in the direction of Oldorando instead of heading east. Their destiny was to encounter Aoz Roon at a later date. Though their deflection at the time was of little seeming importance even to the ancipitals themselves, it was to alter the social history of the sector.
There were, on the Avernus, those who studied the social history of Helliconian cultures; but it was the heliographers who regarded their science as the most valuable. Before all else came the light.
Star B, which the natives below called Batalix, was a modest spectral class G4 sun. In real terms slightly smaller than Sol, its radius being 0.94 Sol’s, its apparent size as seen from Helliconia was 76 percent that of Sol seen from Earth. With a photosphere temperature of 5600 Kelvin, its luminosity was only 0.8 that of Sol. It was about five billion years old.
The more distant star, known locally as Freyr, about which Star B revolved, was a much more impressive object as viewed from the Avernus. Star A was a brilliant white spectral class A-type supergiant, with a radius sixty-five times that of Sol, and a luminosity sixty thousand times as great. Its mass was 14.8 times Sol’s, and its surface temperature 11,000K, as opposed to Sol’s 5780K.
Although Star B had its constant students, Star A was a greater magnet for attention, especially now that the Avernus was moving, along with the rest of Star B’s system, nearer to the supergiant.
Freyr was between ten and eleven million years old. It had evolved away from the main sequence of stars and was already entering its old age.
Such was the intensity of the energy it poured out that the disc of Star A was always more intense as viewed from Helliconia than that of Star B, though it never appeared so large, owing to its much greater distance. It was a worthy object for ancipital fear – and for Vry’s admiration.
Vry stood alone on the top of her tower, her telescope by her side. She waited. She watched. She felt the history of private relationships flowing towards the morrow like a silt-laden river; what had been fresh was clogged with sediment. Beneath her passivity was an unformulated longing to be seized up by some larger thing which would provide wider, purer perspectives than faulty human nature could command.
When darkness fell, she would look again at the stars – provided the cloud cover parted sufficiently.
Oldorando was now surrounded by palisades of green. Day by day, new leaves unfurled and mounted higher, as if nature had a plan to bury the town in forest. Some of the more distant towers had already been overwhelmed by vegetation.
She saw a large white bird hover above one such mound without paying it particular attention. She watched and admired its effortless hovering above the earth.
Distantly came the sound of men singing. The hunters were back in Oldorando from a hoxney hunt, and Aoz Roon was holding a feast. The feast was in honour of his three new lieutenants, Tanth Ein, Faralin Ferd, and Eline Tal. These friends of his childhood supplanted Dathka and Laintal Ay, who were now relegated to the chase.
Vry tried to keep her thoughts abstract, but they drifted back continually to the more emotional subject of defeated hope – hers, Dathka’s, whose desires she could not find it in herself to encourage, Laintal Ay’s. Her mood was in tune with the long-protracted evening. Batalix was down, the other sentinel would follow in an hour. This was a time when men and beasts made preparations against the reign of night. This was a time to bring out a stub of candle against some undreamed-of emergency, or to resolve to sleep until the light of dawn.
From her eyrie, Vry saw the common people of Oldorando – whether or not further on with their hopes – coming home. Among them was the thin crooked shape of Shay Tal.
Shay Tal returned to the tower with Amin Lim, looking grimy and tired. Since the murder of Master Datnil, she had become increasingly remote. The curse of silence had fallen on her too. She was currently trying to follow a suggestion made by the dead master, to dig her way into King Denniss’s pyramid, out by the sacrificial ground. Despite the aid of slaves, she had no success. People who went to look at the earthwork being thrown up laughed, openly or secretly, for the stepped walls of the pyramid went on down into the earth without feature. For every foot dug, Shay Tal’s mouth grew grimmer.
Moved by both pity and her own loneliness, Vry went down to speak to Shay Tal. The sorceress seemed to have precious little that was magical about her; almost alone among the women of Oldorando, she still wore the old clumsy furs, hanging ungracefully about her body, giving her an outdated air. Everyone else was in hoxneys.
Afflicted by the older woman’s woebegone air, Vry could not resist giving some advice.
‘You make yourself so unhappy, ma’am. The ground is full of the dark and the past – do stop scratching there.’
With a flash of humour, Shay Tal said, ‘We neither of us see happiness as our prime duty.’
‘Your attention’s so downcast.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘Look at that white bird, circling gracefully in the air. Doesn’t the sight lift your spirits? I’d like to be that bird, and fly up to the stars.’
Somewhat to Vry’s surprise. Shay Tal went to the window and looked in the direction Vry pointed. Then she turned, brushing her hair from her brow, and said calmly, ‘You observe it’s a cowbird you pointed out?’
‘I suppose so. What of it?’ Shadows were already gathering in the room.
‘Do you not recall Fish Lake and other encounters? Those birds are the familiars of phagors.’
She spoke placidly, in her detached academy manner. Vry was frightened, thinking how self-absorbed she had been to neglect an elementary fact. She put her hand to her mouth, looking from Shay Tal to Amin Lim and back.
‘Another attack? What should we do?’
‘It appears that I have ceased to communicate with the Lord of Embruddock, or he with me. Vry, you must go and inform him that the enemy may be at his gates while he feasts with his cronies. He will know that I can’t be relied on to f
orestall the brutes, as once I did. Go right away.’
As Vry hastened down the path, rain started to drip again. She followed the singing. Aoz Roon and his cronies sat in the lowest room in the tower of the metal-makers corps. Their faces were ripe with the food and beethel set before them. A trencher piled with geese stuffed with raige and scantiom formed the chief dish; its aroma made the starved Vry’s mouth water. Those present included the three new lieutenants and their women, the newest master of the council, Raynil Layan, and Dol and Oyre. The last two alone looked pleased at Vry’s entry. As Vry knew – as Rol Sakil had proudly announced – Dol now carried Aoz Roon’s child inside her.
Candles burned already on the tables; dogs milled in the shadows under the tables. Flavours of cooked goose and raw dogs’ piss intermingled.
Although the men were red and shining, despite the piped heating the room felt cold. Rain gusted in, causing streamlets to run between the flags. It was a small dirty room, with cobwebs festooning every corner. Vry took it all in as she broke her news nervously to Aoz Roon.
She had once been familiar with every adze mark on the beams overhead. Her mother had served as a slave to the metal makers, and she had lived in this room, or in a corner of it, and witnessed the degradation of her mother every night.
Although he had looked far gone in drink a moment earlier, Aoz Roon jumped up immediately. Curd started to bark furiously, and Dol kicked him into silence. The other feasters stared at each other rather stupidly, reluctant to digest Vry’s news.
Aoz Roon marched round the table, clouting their shoulders as he issued an order to each.
‘Tanth Ein, alert everyone and turn out the hunters. God’s eddre, why aren’t we properly guarded? Mount sentries on all towers, report when all’s done. Faralin Ferd, fetch in all women and children. Lock them in the women’s house for safety. Dol, Oyre, you two remain here, and you other women. Eline Tal, you have the loudest voice – you stay on top of this tower and relay any messages needed … Raynil Layan, you’re in charge of all corps men. Have them paraded at once, go.’