by Brian Aldiss
‘You will have business with Pannoval today,’ she said.
‘I have to consort with a set of pompous asses, and all the while my history is not getting written.’ Then he caught himself and laughed sharply. ‘My pardon, ma’am, I meant to say merely that I do not reckon Prince Taynth Indredd of Pannoval a great friend of Borlien …’
She sometimes had a slow way of smiling as if she was reluctant to be amused, which started at her eyes, included her nose, and then worked about the curves of her lips.
‘We’d agree on that. Borlien lacks great friends at the present.’
‘Admit it, Rushven, your history will never be finished,’ said YeferalOboral, the queen’s brother, using an old nickname. ‘It simply gives you an excuse to sleep all afternoon.’
The chancellor sighed; the queen’s brother had not his sister’s brains. He said severely, ‘If you stopped kicking your heels about the court, you could set up an expedition and sail round the world. How that would add to our knowledge!’
‘I wish that Robayday had done some such thing,’ said MyrdemInggala. ‘Who knows where the lad is now?’
SartoriIrvrash was not going to waste sympathy on the queen’s son. ‘I made one new discovery yesterday,’ he said. ‘Do you wish to hear of it or not? Will I bore you? Will the mere sound of such botherations of knowledge cause you to jump from the ramparts?’
The queen laughed her silvery laugh and held his hand. ‘Come, Yef and I are no dolts. What’s the discovery? Is the world getting colder?’
Ignoring this facetiousness, SartoriIrvrash asked, frowning, ‘What colour is a hoxney?’
‘I know that,’ cried the young princess. ‘They’re brown. Everyone knows hoxneys are brown.’
Grunting, SartoriIrvrash lifted her up into his arms. ‘And what colour were hoxneys yesterday?’
‘Brown, of course.’
‘And the day before that?’
‘Brown, you silly Rushven.’
‘Correct, you wise little princess. But if that is the case, then why are hoxneys depicted as being striped in two brilliant colours in the illuminations in ancient chronicles?’
He had to answer his own question. ‘That is what I asked my friend Bardol CaraBansity down in Ottassol. He flayed a hoxney and examined its skin. And what has he discovered? Why, that a hoxney is not a brown animal as we all believe. It is a brown-striped animal, with brown stripes on a brown background.’
Tatro laughed. ‘You’re teasing us. If it’s brown and brown, then it’s brown, isn’t it?’
‘Yes and no. The lie of the coat shows that a hoxney is not a plain brown animal. It consists of brown stripes. What possible point could there be to that?
‘Well, I have hit upon the answer, and you will see how clever I am. Hoxneys were once striped in brilliant stripes, just as the chronicles show. When was that? Why, in the spring of the Great Year, when suitable grazing was available again. Then the hoxneys needed to multiply as rapidly as possible. So they put on their most brilliant sexual display. Nowadays, centuries later, hoxneys are well established everywhere. They don’t need to breed exponentially, so mating display is out. The stripes are dulled down to neutral brown – until the spring of the next Great Year calls them out again.’
The queen made a moue. ‘If there is another Great Year spring, and we don’t all tumble into Freyr.’
SartoriIrvrash clapped his hands pettishly together. ‘But don’t you see, this – this adaptive geometry of the hoxneian species is a guarantee that we don’t tumble into Freyr – that it comes near every great summer, and then again recedes?’
‘We’re not hoxneys,’ said YeferalOboral, gesturing dismissively.
‘Your Majesty,’ said the chancellor, addressing himself earnestly to the queen, ‘my discovery also shows that old manuscripts can often be trusted more than we think. You know the king your husband and I are at odds. Intercede for me, I pray. Let a ship be commissioned. Let me be allowed two years away from my duties to sail about the world, collecting manuscripts. Let us make Borlien a centre of learning, as it once was in the days of YarapRombry of Keevasien. Now my wife is dead, there’s little to keep me here, except your fair presence.’
A shadow passed over her face.
‘There is a crisis in the king, I feel it. His wound has healed in his flesh but not in his mind. Leave your thought with me, Rushven, and let it wait until this anxious meeting with the Pannovalans is over. I fear what is in store.’
The queen smiled at the old man with considerable warmth. She easily endured his irritability, for she understood its source. He was not entirely good – indeed, she considered some of his experiments pure wickedness, especially the experiment in which his wife was killed. But who was entirely good? SartoriIrvrash’s relationship with the king was a difficult one, and she often tried, as now, to protect him from JandolAnganol’s anger.
Endeavouring to deliver him from his own blindness, she added gently, ‘Since the incident in the Cosgatt, I have to be careful with his majesty.’
Tatro tugged SartoriIrvrash’s whiskers. ‘You mustn’t go sailing at your age, Rushven.’
He set her down on the ground and saluted her. ‘We may all have to make unexpected journeys before we are finished, my dear little Tatro.’
As on most mornings, MyrdemInggala and her brother walked along the western ramparts of the palace and gazed out over the city. This morning, the mists that little winter usually brought were absent. The city lay clear below them.
The ancient stronghold stood on a cliff looming over the town, in a deep curve of the Takissa. Slightly towards the north, the Valvoral gleamed where it joined the greater river. Tatro never tired of looking down at the people in the streets or on the river craft.
The infant princess extended a finger towards the wharfs and cried, ‘Look, ice coming, Moth!’
A fore- and aft-rigged sloop was moored by the quayside. Its hatches had recently been opened, for steam poured forth into the air. Carts were drawn up alongside the ship, and blocks of finest Lordryardry ice gleamed for a moment in the sun as they were swung from the hold into the waiting vehicles. As ever, the delivery was on time, and the palace with its guests would be awaiting it.
The ice carts would come rumbling up the castle road, winding as the road wound, with four oxen straining at the shafts, to gain the fortress which stood out like a ship of stone from its cliffs.
Tatro wanted to stand and watch the ice carts come all the way up the hill, but the queen was short of patience this morning. She stood slightly apart from her child, looking about her with an abstracted air.
JandolAnganol had come at dawn and embraced her. She sensed that he was uneasy. Pannoval loomed. To make matters worse, bad news was coming from the Second Army in Randonan. It was always bad news from Randonan.
‘You can listen to the day’s discussion from the private gallery,’ he said, ‘if it won’t bore you. Pray for me, Cune.’
‘I always pray for you. The All-Powerful will be with you.’
He shook his head patiently. ‘Why isn’t life simple? Why doesn’t the faith make it simple?’ His hand went to the long scar on his leg.
‘We’re safe while we’re here together, Jan.’
He kissed her. ‘I should be with my army. Then we’d see some victories. TolramKetinet is useless as a general.’
There’s nothing between the general and me, she thought – yet he knows there is …
He had left her. As soon as he was gone, she felt gloomy. A chill had fallen over him of late. Her own position was threatened. Without thinking, she linked her arm through her brother’s as they stood on the ramparts.
Princess Tatro was calling, pointing to servants she recognised wending their way up the hill to the palace.
Less than twenty years earlier, a covered way had been built up the hillside to the walls. Under its protection, an army had advanced on the besieged fortress. Using gunpowder charges, it blew an entrance into the palace grounds. A bl
oody battle was fought.
The inhabitants were defeated. All were put to the sword, men and women, phagors and peasants. All except the baron who had held the palace.
The baron disguised himself and – binding his wife, children, and immediate servants – led them to safety through the breached wall. Bellowing to the enemy to get out of his way, he had successfully bluffed a path to freedom with his mock prisoners. Thus his daughter escaped death.
This Baron RantanOborol was the queen’s father. His deed became renowned. But the fact was that he could never regain his former power.
The man who won the fortress – which was described, like all fortresses before they fall, as impregnable – was the warlike grandfather of JandolAnganol. This redoubtable old warrior was then busy unifying eastern Borlien, and making its frontiers safe. RantanOborol was the last warlord of the area to fall to his armies.
Those armies were largely a thing of the past, and MyrdemInggala, by marrying JandolAnganol and securing some future for her family, had come to live in her father’s old citadel.
Parts of it were still ruinous. Some sections had been rebuilt in JandolAnganol’s father’s reign. Other grand rebuilding schemes, hastily started, slowly crumbled in the heat. Piles of stone formed a prominent part of the fortress landscape. MyrdemInggala loved this extravagant semi-ruin, but the past hung heavy over its battlements.
She made her way, clutching Tatro’s hand, to a rear building with a small colonnade. These were her quarters. A featureless red sandstone wall was surmounted by whimsical pavilions built in white marble. Behind the wall were her gardens and a private reservoir, where she liked to swim. In the middle of the reservoir was an artificial islet, on which stood a slender temple dedicated to Akhanaba. There the king and queen had often made love in the early days of their marriage.
After saying good-bye to her brother, the queen walked up her stairs and along a passage. This passage, open to the breeze, overlooked the garden where JandolAnganol’s father, VarpalAnganol, had once raced dogs and flown multi-coloured birds. Some of the birds remained in their cotes – Roba had fed them every morning before he ran away. Now Mai TolramKetinet fed them.
MyrdemInggala was conscious of an oppressive fear. The sight of the birds merely vexed her. She left a maid to play with Tatro in the passage, and went to a door at the far end which she unlocked with a key hidden among the folds of her skirt. A guard saluted her as she passed through. Her footsteps, light as they were, rang on the tiled floor. She came to an alcove by a window, across which drapes had been drawn, and seated herself on a divan. Before her was an ornate trellis. Through this she could watch without being observed from the other side.
From this vantage point, she could see over a large council chamber. Sun streamed in through latticed windows. None of the dignitaries had yet arrived. Only the king was there, with his phagor runt, the runt that had been a constant companion ever since the Battle of the Cosgatt.
Yuli stood no higher than the king’s chest. Its coat was white and still tipped with the red tassels of its early years. It skipped and pirouetted and opened its ugly mouth as the king held out a hand for it. The king was laughing and snapping his fingers.
‘Good boy, good boy,’ he said.
‘Yezz, I good boy,’ said Yuli.
Laughing, the king embraced it, lifting it off the ground.
The queen shrank back. Fear seized her. As she lay back, the wicker chair beneath her creaked. She hid her eyes. If he knew she was there, he made no attempt to call.
My wild boar, my dear wild boar, she called silently. What has become of you? Her mother had been gifted with strange powers: the queen thought, Something awful is going to overwhelm this court and our lives …
When she dared look again, the visiting dignitaries were entering, chatting among themselves and making themselves comfortable. Cushions and rugs were scattered everywhere. Slaves, female and scantily clad, were busily providing coloured drinks.
JandolAnganol walked among them in his princely way and then flung himself down on a canopied divan. SartoriIrvrash entered, nodding sober greetings, and stationed himself behind the king’s divan, lighting a veronikane as he did so. The runt Yuli settled on a cushion, panting and yawning.
‘You are strangers in our court,’ said the queen aloud, peeping through her trellis. ‘You are strangers in our lives.’
Near JandolAnganol sat a group of local dignitaries, including the mayor of Matrassyl, who was also head of the scritina, JandolAnganol’s vicar, his Royal Armourer, and one or two army men. One of the military was, by his insignia, a captain of phagors but, out of deference to the visitors, no phagor was present, except for the king’s pet.
Among the foreign group, most conspicuous were the Sibornalese. The ambassador to Borlien, Io Pasharatid, was from Uskut. He and his wife sat tall and grey and distant from each other. Some said that they had quarrelled, some that Sibornalese were simply like that. The fact remained that the two, who had lived at the court for more than nine tenners – they were due to complete their first year in another three weeks – rarely smiled or exchanged a glance.
‘You I fear, Pasharatid, you ghost,’ said the queen.
Pannoval had sent a prince. The choice had been carefully made. Pannoval was the most powerful nation among the seventeen countries of Campannlat, its ambitions restrained only by the war it had constantly to wage against Sibornal on its northern front. Its religion dominated the continent. At present, Pannoval courted Borlien, which already paid levies in grain and church taxes; but the courtship was that between an elderly dowager and an upstart lad, and what the lad was sent was a minor prince.
Minor he might be, but Prince Taynth Indredd was a portly personage, making up in bulk what he lacked in significance. He was distantly related to the Oldorandan royal family. Nobody greatly liked Taynth Indredd, but a diplomat in Pannoval had sent with him as chief advisor an ageing priest, Guaddl Ulbobeg, known to be a friend of JandolAnganol since the days when the king had served his priestly term in the monasteries of Pannoval.
‘You men with clever tongues,’ sighed the queen, anxious behind her lattice.
JandolAnganol was speaking now in a modest tone. He remained seated. His voice ran fast, like his gaze. He was in effect giving a report on the state of his kingdom to his visitors.
‘All of Borlien is now peaceful within its borders. There are some brigands, but they are not important. Our armies are committed in the Western Wars. They drain our lifeblood. On our eastern borders, too, we are threatened by dangerous invaders, Unndreid the Hammer and the cruel Darvlish the Skull.’
He looked about him challengingly. It was his shame that he had received a wound from such an unimportant adversary as Darvlish.
‘As Freyr draws nearer, we suffer from drought. Famine is everywhere. You must not expect Borlien to fight elsewhere. We are a country large in extent, poor in produce.’
‘Come, cousin, you are too modest,’ said Taynth Indredd. ‘Everyone knows from childhood that your southern loess plain forms the richest land on the continent.’
‘Richness lies not in land but in land properly farmed,’ replied JandolAnganol. ‘Such is the pressure on our borders that we must press peasants into the armies, and let women and children work the farms.’
‘Then you certainly need our help, cousin,’ said Taynth Indredd, looking about for the applause he felt his point merited.
Io Pasharatid said, ‘If a farmer has a lame hoxney, will a wild kaidaw assist him?’
This remark was ignored. There were those who said that Sibornal should not have been present at this meeting.
In the manner of one making everything clear, Taynth Indredd said, ‘Cousin, you press us for assistance at a time when every nation is in trouble. The riches our grandfathers enjoyed are gone, while our fields burn and our fruits shrivel. And I must speak frankly and say that there is an unresolved quarrel between us. That we greatly hope to resolve, and must resolve if there is t
o be unanimity between us.’
A silence fell.
Perhaps Taynth Indredd feared to continue.
JandolAnganol jumped to his feet, a look of anger on his dark features.
The little runt, Yuli, scrambled up alertly, as if to do whatever his master might bid.
‘I went to Sayren Stund in Oldorando to ask for help only against common enemies. Here you gather like vultures! You confront me in my own court. What is this quarrel you dream up between us? Tell me.’
Taynth Indredd and his advisor, Guaddl Ulbobeg, conferred. It was the latter, the friend of the king’s, who answered him. He rose, bowed, and pointed to Yuli.
‘It’s no dream, Your Majesty. Our concern is real, and so is that creature you bring here amongst us. From the most ancient times, human kind and phagor kind have been enemies. No truce is possible between beings so different. The Holy Pannovalan Empire has declared holy crusades and drumbles against these odious creatures, with a view to ridding the world of them. Yet your majesty gives them shelter within his borders.’
He spoke almost apologetically, his gaze downcast, so as to rob his words of force. His master restored the force by shouting, ‘You expect aid from us, coz, when you harbour these vermin by the million? They overran Campannlat once before, and will again, given the opportunity you provide.’
JandolAnganol confronted his visitors, hands on hips.
‘I will have no one from outside my borders interfere with my interior policies. I listen to my scritina and my scritina does not complain. Yes, I welcome ancipitals to Borlien. A truce is possible with them. They farm infertile land that our people will not touch. They do humble work that slaves shrink from. They fight for no pay. My treasury is empty – you misers from Pannoval may not understand that, but it means I can afford only an army of phagors.
‘They get their reward in marginal land. Moreover, they do not turn and run in the face of danger! You may say that that is because they are too stupid. To which I reply, that I prefer a phagor to a peasant any day. As long as I am King of Borlien, the phagors have my protection.’