Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter

by Brian Aldiss

  There was an answer. She switched to Eotemporal to be clear in her tenses. An answer would be delivered, was even now about to be delivered, but must nevertheless wait upon another time, another tenner. His power would be made great in Hrl-Drra Nhdo. Hold horns high.

  He had to be content with that.

  For farewell, JandolAnganol leant forward, hands to side, neck extended. The gillot also leaned forward, her head protruding over dugs and great barrel of body. Unhorned head met horned head, foreheads touched, harneys were together. Then both parties turned smartly away.

  The king left by the Humans Only door of the Clarigate.

  Excitement moved in his eddre. His Phagorian would provide their own arms. What faithfulness was theirs! What devotion, deeper than that of human beings! He did not reflect on other possible interpretations of Chzarn’s speech.

  Briefly, he thought of the happy days when his flesh invaded Cune’s delectable queme flesh; but those times of ease and venery were dead. His concern must now be with these creatures, who would help him rid Borlien of its enemies.

  Chzarn and the phagor soldiery departed from the Clarigate in a spirit different from the king’s. They could scarcely be said to have an alteration of mood. Blood flow hastened or slowed in response to breathing; so much was true.

  What was spoken in the Clarigate was reported by Ghht-Mlark Chzarn to the Matrassyl Kzahhn, Ghht-Yronz Tharl himself. The kzahhn reigned under his mountain, unknown even to the king. At this time of evil, when Freyr flew nearer down the air-octaves with his scorching breath, the ancipitals generally despaired. The ichor became sluggish in their veins. Lowland components allowed themselves to fall wholly under human subjugation. But a sign had been given them and hope stirred in their eddre.

  To Kzahhn Ghht-Yronz Tharl had been brought a remarkable Son of Freyr, a captive of the disgraced chancellor, by name Bhrl-Hzzh Rowpin. Bhrl-Hzzh Rowpin came from another world and knew almost as much about the Catastrophe as the ancipitals did. To them under the mountain, Bhrl-Hzzh Rowpin had delivered ancient truths which other Sons of Freyr rejected. The things he spoke had gone unheeded by the chancellor and by the king; but the component of Ghht-Yronz Tharl heeded them and determination took form in their harneys.

  For the speech of the strange Son of Freyr reinforced voices from tether which sometimes seemed to grow faint.

  The Sons of Freyr were badly made, with poor componentalism. So it was with the king, as the faithful spy Yuli reported. For the weak king now offered them a chance to strike back against their traditional enemy. By seeming to obey him, they could stamp their hurt and harm against Hrl-Drra Nhdo, ancient Hmn-Bhrrd Ydohk. It was a hate-place cursed long ago by one of the Great Ones now only a keratinous image, the Crusading Kzahhn, Hrr-Brahl Yprt. Red ichor would flow there again.

  Courage was needed. Be valiant. Hold horns high.

  For the required hand artillery, they had only to follow favourable air-octaves. The phagors were on occasion allies of the Nondads and aided them against the Sons of Freyr. The Nondads struggled against the Sons of Freyr called Uskuts. Uskuts – shame to speak it – devoured dead bodies of Nondads, denying them the comfort of the Eighty Darknesses … The Nondads would with their light fingers take hand artillery from the Uskut race. And the hand artillery would bring dismay to the Sons of Freyr.

  So it came about. Before another tenner passed, King JandolAnganol was armed with Sibornalese matchlocks – weapons supplied not by his allies in Pannoval or Oldorando, not forged by his own armourers, but brought by devious routes as a gift from those who were his enemies.

  In such a fashion, a better way of killing spread slowly across Helliconia.

  Belatedly, after many disputes, Fard Fantil the hunchback established his weapon factory outside Matrassyl. The newly acquired weapons served as models. After much cursing of his work force, the hunchback produced native matchlocks which did not blow up and fired with some accuracy.

  By then, Sibornalese manufacturers had improved their designs and perfected a wheel-lock piece, which fired the powder pan by means of a revolving flint wheel rather than the old untrustworthy fusee.

  Made confident by his new armoury, the king buckled on his breastplate, saddled Lapwing, and rode forth to war. Once more he led an ahuman army against his enemies, the rag and bobtail of Driat tribes who terrorised the Cosgatt under Darvlish the Skull.

  The two forces met only a few miles from where JandolAnganol had sustained his wound. This time, the Eagle of Borlien was more experienced. After a day-long conflict, victory was his. The First Phagorian followed him blindly. The Driats were killed, routed, thrown into ravines. The survivors scattered among the tawny hills from which they had emerged.

  For the last time, the vultures had reason to praise the name of Darvlish.

  The king returned in triumph to his capital, with the head of Darvlish mounted high on a pole.

  The head was placed above the gate of Matrassyl palace, there to fester until Darvlish was in reality nothing but a skull.

  Billy Xiao Pin was by no means the only male among the inhabitants of Avernus to dream of Queen MyrdemInggala. Such private things were seldom admitted even to friends. They emerged only indirectly in that evasive society – for instance, in a general execration of King JaridolAnganol’s latest behaviour.

  The sight of the Thribriatan warlord’s head on JandolAnganol’s gatepost was enough to provoke a howl of protest from this faction.

  One of its spokesmen said, ‘This monster tasted blood with the death of the Myrdolators. Now he is accumulating the weapons for which he traded the queen of queens. Where will he stop? Plainly, we should check him now, before he plunges all Campannlat into war.’

  Just as JandolAnganol was enjoying some of the popularity he hoped for in Borlien, he roused unusual opprobrium on the Avernus.

  The complaints brought against him had been heard before of other tyrants. It was more convenient to blame the leader than the led; the illogic of that position was seldom remarked. Shifting conditions, shortages of foodstuffs and materials, guaranteed that Helliconian history was a constant series of bids for power, of dictators gaining wide support.

  The suggestion that Avernus should move in to put an end to one particular oppression or another was also far from new. Nor was intervention an entirely idle threat.

  When Earth’s colonising starship entered the Freyr-Batalix system in 3600 A.D., it established a base on Aganip, the inner planet closest to Helliconia. On Aganip, 512 colonists were landed. They had been hatched aboard the starship during the final years of its voyage. The information encoded in the DNA of fertilised human egg cells had been stored in computers during the voyage. It was transferred into 512 artificial wombs. The resultant babies – the first human beings to walk the ship during its one-and-a-half millennium flight – were reared by surrogate mothers in several large families.

  The young humans ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-one Earth years old when they landed on Aganip. The construction of the Avernus was already in process. Automation and local materials were used.

  Owing to more than one near-disaster, the ambitious construction programme had taken eight years. During that hazardous period, Aganip was used as a base. When the job was complete, the young colonists were ferried aboard their new home.

  The starship then left the system. The inhabitants of the Avernus were alone – more alone than any humans had ever been before.

  Now, 3269 Earth years later, the old base was a shrine, occasionally visited by the enlightened. It had become part of Avernian mythology.

  There were minerals on Aganip. It would not be impossible to shuttle to the planet and there construct a number of ships with which to invade Helliconia. Not impossible. But unlikely, for there were no technicians trained for such a project.

  The hotheads who whispered of such things had to work against the whole ethos of the Earth Observation Station, which was strictly non-interventionist.

  Also, the hotheads
were male. They had to contend with the female half of the population, who admired the troubled king. The women watched JandolAnganol defeat Darvlish. It was a great victory. JandolAnganol was a hero who suffered much for his country, shortsighted though that aim might be. He was a tragic figure.

  The sort of intervention this female faction dreamed of was to descend to Borlien and be by JandolAnganol’s side, day and night.

  And when these events at last reached Earth?

  There would be much nodding of approval at JandolAnganol’s choice of which piece of Darvlish’s anatomy to exhibit. Not the Skull’s feet, which had carried the man into skirmish after skirmish. Not his genitals, which had fathered so many bastards to create future trouble. Not his hands, which had silenced many a foe. But his head, where all the other mischief had been co-ordinated.

  XIV

  Where Flambreg Live

  White shadows filled the city of Askitosh. They lay entangled among grey buildings. When a man walked along the pale roads, he took on their pallor. This was the famous Uskuti ‘silt-mist’, a thin but blinding curtain of cold dry air which descended from the plateaux standing behind the city.

  Overhead, Freyr burned like a gigantic spark in the void. Sibornalese dimday reigned. Batalix would rise again in an hour or two. At present only the greater star remained. Batalix would rise and sink before Freyr-set and – in this early spring season – would never attain zenith.

  Wrapped up in a waterproof coat, SartoriIrvrash looked upon this phantasmal city as it slipped from view. It sank away into the silt-mist, became bare bones, and then was gone entirely. But the Golden Friendship was not entirely alone in the mist. From forwards, a well-muffled observer could make out the jolly boat ahead with the ancipital rowers straining as they pulled the warship out of harbour. At hand, too, were glimpses of other spectral ships, their sails hanging limp or flapping like dead skin, as the Uskuti fleet started on its mission of conquest.

  They were out in the sullen channel when a blur on the eastern horizon marked Batalix-rise. A wind got up. The striped sails above them began to stir and tighten. Not a sailor on board but felt a lightening in spirit; the omens were right for a long voyage.

  Sibornalese omens meant little to SartoriIrvrash. He shrugged his thin shoulders under his padded keedrant and went below. On the companionway, he was overtaken by Io Pasharatid, the ex-ambassador to Borlien.

  ‘We shall do well,’ he said, nodding his head wisely. ‘We set sail at the right time and the omens are fulfilled as decreed.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said SartoriIrvrash, yawning. The seagoing priests-militant of Askitosh had mustered every deuteroscopist, astromancer, uranometrist, hieromancer, meteorologician, metempiricist, and priest they could lay hands on to determine the tenner, week, day, hour, and minute on which the Golden Friendship should most auspiciously sail. The birth signs of the crew and the wood of which the keel was made had been taken into account. But the most persuasive sign lay in the heavens, where YarapRombry’s Comet, flying high in the northern night sky, was timed to enter the zodiacal constellation of the Golden Ship at six-eleven and ninety seconds that very morning. And that was the precise time when the hawsers were cast off and the rowers began to row.

  It was too early for SartoriIrvrash. He did not contemplate the long and hazardous voyage with cheer. His stomach felt queasy. He disliked the role that had been thrust upon him. And, to crown his discomfort, here was Io Pasharatid, marching about the ship and being suspiciously friendly, as if no disgrace had ever befallen him. How did one behave to a man like that?

  It seemed that Dienu Pasharatid could arrange anything. Perhaps because of her cunning appropriation of JandolAnganol’s ex-chancellor into her plans, and the designs of her war commission, she had saved her husband from prison. He had been allowed to sail with the soldiery of the Golden Friendship as a hand-artillery captain – perhaps in an understanding by the powers-that-be that a long sea voyage in a 910-ton carrack was as bad as a prison sentence, even a sentence in the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar.

  Despite this narrow escape from justice, Pasharatid was more arrogant than ever. He boasted to SartoriIrvrash that, by the time they reached Ottassol, he would command the soldiery; so he stood every chance of commanding the Ottassol garrison.

  SartoriIrvrash lay on his bunk and lit a veronikane. He was immediately hit by seasickness. It had not troubled him on the way to Askitosh. Now it made up for lost time.

  For three days, the ex-chancellor declined all rations. He woke on the fourth day feeling superlatively well and made his way on deck.

  Visibility was good. Freyr was eyeing them across the waters, low to the north of northeast, somewhere in the direction from which the Golden Friendship had come. The shadow of the ship danced across the smalts of the fresh sea. The air was steeped in light and tasted wonderful. SartoriIrvrash stretched up his arms and breathed deep.

  No land was to be seen. Batalix was set. Of the ships which had escorted them from harbour as guard of honour, only one remained, sailing two leagues to leeward with its flags streaming in the wind. Almost lost in blue distance was a cluster of herring-coaches.

  So delighted was he at being able to stand without feeling wretched, so loud was the song of canvas and shrouds, that he scarcely heard the greeting addressed to him. When it was repeated, he turned and looked up into the faces of Dienu and Io Pasharatid.

  ‘You’ve been ill,’ said Dienu. ‘My sympathies. Unfortunately, Borlienese are not good sailors, isn’t that so?’

  Io said quickly, ‘At least you feel better now. There’s nothing like a good long voyage for the health. The journey is approximately thirteen thousand miles, so with favouring winds we should be there in two tenners and three weeks – off Ottassol, that is.’

  He devoted himself over the next few days to taking SartoriIrvrash on a tour of the ship, explaining its working in the last detail. SartoriIrvrash made notes of what little interested him, wishing in his Borlienese heart that his own country had such expertise in nautical matters. The Uskuti and other nations of Sibornal had guilds and corps which were in general principle similar to those of the civilised Campannlatian nations; but their maritime and military guilds excelled all others in numbers and efficiency, and had / would (for the tense was conditional-eternal-subjunctive) triumphantly survived the Weyr-winter. Winter, Pasharatid explained, was especially severe in the north. Over the coldest centuries, Freyr remained always below the horizon. The winter was always in their hearts.

  ‘I believe that,’ said SartoriIrvrash solemnly.

  In Weyr-winter, even more than in the Great Summer, the peoples of the ice-bound north depended on the seas for survival. Sibornal therefore had few private ships. All ships belonged to the Priest-Sailors Guild. Emblems of the guild decorated the sails of the ship, making of its functionalism a thing of some beauty.

  On the main sail rode the device of Sibornal, the two concentric rings joined by two undulant spokes.

  The Golden Friendship had a fore-, main-, and mizzen-mast. An artemon projecting over the bowsprit was raised only in favouring winds, to speed progress. Io Pasharatid explained exactly how many square feet of sail could be hoisted at any time.

  SartoriIrvrash was not entirely averse to being bored by a stream of facts. He had devoted much of his life trying to ascertain what was speculation, what fact, and to have a constant flow of the latter was not without attraction. Nevertheless, he speculated as to why Pasharatid should go to such lengths to show friendship; it was hardly a predominant Sibornalese characteristic. Nor had it been in evidence in Matrassyl.

  ‘You stand in danger of tiring SartoriIrvrash with your facts, dear,’ said Dienu, on the sixth day of their voyage.

  She left them where they were standing, tucked back at the highest point of the poop, behind a pen containing female arang. Not a foot of deck but was used for something – rope, stores, livestock, cannon. And the two companies of soldiers they had aboard were forced to spend most of the day
, wet or fine, standing about on deck, impeding the movements of the sailors’ guildsmen.

  ‘You must miss Matrassyl,’ said Pasharatid, speaking firmly into the wind.

  ‘I miss the peace of my studies, yes.’

  ‘And other things as well, I imagine. Unlike many of my fellow Uskuts, I enjoyed my time in Matrassyl. It was very exotic. Too hot, of course, but I did not mind that. There were fine people with whom I came in contact.’

  SartoriIrvrash watched the arang fighting to turn round in their pen. They provided milk for the officers. He knew that Pasharatid was coming to his point at last.

  ‘Queen MyrdemInggala is a fine lady. It is a shame that the king has exiled her, do you not think?’

  So that was it. He waited before replying.

  ‘The king saw that his duty lay in serving his country …’

  ‘You must feel bitter at his treatment of you. You must hate him.’

  When SartoriIrvrash did not reply to that, Pasharatid said, or rather, shouted quietly in his ear, ‘How could he bear to give up a lady as lovely as the queen?’

  No response.

  ‘Your countrymen call her “the queen of queens”, is that not correct?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘I never saw anyone so beautiful in my life.’

  ‘Her brother, YeferalOboral, was a close friend of mine.’

  This remark silenced Pasharatid. He appeared almost about to terminate the conversation when, with a burst of feeling, he said, ‘Just to be in Queen MyrdemInggala’s presence – just to see her – made a man – affected a man like …’

  He did not finish his sentence.

  Weather conditions were changeable. A complex system of high-and low-pressure areas brought fogs, hot brownish rains, such as they had encountered on the voyage across to Sibornal – ‘regular Uskuti up-and-downers’ – and periods of clarity where the featureless coastlines of Loraj could sometimes be glimpsed to starboard. Still they made good time, with pursuing winds either warm from the southwest or chilly from west of northwest.