by Brian Aldiss
And Queen MyrdemInggala had descended the stairs and had submitted to the divorce. And wine had been brought, and much mischief had been permitted. And Alam Esomberr, the envoy of the C’Sarr, had made his way into the ex-queen’s chamber only a few hours after he had conducted the ceremony of divorcement. And then had come the announcement that Simoda Tal had been slain in far Oldorando. And this sore news had been delivered to the king as the first rays of eastern Batalix painted yellow the peeling outer walls of the palace.
And now an inevitability could be discerned in the affairs of men and phagors, as events drew towards a climax in which even the chief participants would be swept helplessly along like comets plunging into darkness.
JandolAnganol’s voice was low with sorrow as he tore the hairs from his beard and head, crying to Akhanaba.
‘Thy servant falls before thee, O Great One. Thou hast visited sorrow upon me. Thou hast caused my armies to go down in defeat. Thou hast caused my son to forsake me. Thou hast caused me to divorce my beloved queen, MyrdemInggala. Thou hast caused my intended bride to be assassinated … What more must I suffer for Thy sake?
‘Let not my people suffer. Accept my suffering, O Great Lord, as a sufficient sacrifice for my people.’
As he rose and put on his tunic, the pallid-chopped AbstrogAthenat said casually, ‘It’s true that the army has lost Randonan. But all civilised countries are surrounded by barbaric ones, and are defeated when their armies invade them. We should go, not with the sword, but with the word of God.’
‘Crusades are in the province of Pannoval, not a poor country like ours, Vicar.’ Adjusting his tunic over his wounds, he felt in his pocket the three-faced timepiece he had taken from CaraBansity in Ottassol. Now as then, he felt it to be an object of ill omen.
AbstrogAthenat bowed, holding the whip behind him. ‘At least we might please the All-Powerful by being more human, and shunning the inhuman.’
In sudden anger, JandolAnganol struck out with his left hand and caught the vicar across the cheek with his knuckles.
‘You keep to God’s affairs and leave worldly matters to me.’
He knew what the man meant. His reference had been to purging phagors from Borlien.
Leaving his tunic open, feeling its fabric absorb the blood of his latest scourging, JandolAnganol climbed from the subterranean chapel to the ground floor of the wooden palace. Yuli jumped up to welcome him.
His head throbbed as if he were going blind. He patted the little phagor and sank his fingers into its thick pelage.
Shadows still lay long outside the palace. He scarcely knew how to face the morning: only yesterday he had arrived at Gravabagalinien and – in the presence of the envoy of the Holy C’Sarr, Alam Esomberr – he had divorced his fair queen.
The palace was shuttered as it had been the day previously. Now men lay everywhere in the rooms, still in drink-sodden sleep. Sunlight cut its way into the darkness in a crisscross of lines, making it seem like a woven basket that he walked through, heading for the doorway.
When he flung the door open, the Royal First Phagorian Guard stood on duty outside, its ranks of long jaws and horns unmoving. That was something worth seeing anyway, he told himself, trying to dispel his black mood.
He walked in the air before the heat rose. He saw the sea and felt the breeze, and heeded them not. Before dawn, while he still slept heavily from drink, Esomberr had come to him. Beside Esomberr stood his new chancellor, Bardol CaraBansity. They had informed him that the Madi princess he intended to marry was dead, killed by an assassin.
Nothing was left.
Why had he gone to such trouble to divorce his true wife? What had possessed his mind? There were severances the hardiest could not survive.
It was his wish to speak to her.
A delicacy in him restrained him from sending a messenger up to her room. He knew that she was there with the little princess Tatro waiting for him to leave and take his soldiers with him. Probably she had heard the news the men had brought in the night. Probably she feared assassination. Probably she hated him.
He turned in his sharp way, as if to catch himself out. His new chancellor was approaching with his heavy, determined tread, jowls jolting.
JandolAnganol eyed CaraBansity and then turned his back on him. CaraBansity was forced to skirt him and Yuli before making a clumsy bow.
The king stared at him. Neither man spoke. CaraBansity turned his cloudy gaze from the king’s.
‘You find me in an ill mood.’
‘I have not slept either, sire. I deeply regret this fresh misfortune which has visited you.’
‘My ill mood covers not only the All-Powerful but you, who are not so powerful.’
‘What have I done to displease you, sire?’
The Eagle drew his brows together, making his gaze more hawklike.
‘I know you are secretly against me. You have a reputation for craftiness. I saw that gloating look you could not conceal when you came to announce the death of – you know who.’
‘The Madi princess? If you so distrust me, sire, you must not take me on as your chancellor.’
JandolAnganol presented his back again, with the yellow gauze of his tunic patterned red with blood like an ancient banner.
CaraBansity began to shuffle. He stared up abstractedly at the palace and saw how its white paint was peeling. He felt what it was to be a commoner and what it was to be a king.
He enjoyed his life. He knew many people and was useful to the community. He loved his wife. He prospered. Yet the king had come along and snatched him up against his will, as if he were a slave.
He had accepted the role and, being a man of character, made the best of it. Now this sovereign had the gall to tell CaraBansity that he was secretly against his king. There was no limit to royal impertinence – and as yet he could see no way to escape following JandolAnganol all the way to Oldorando.
His sympathy with the king’s predicament left him.
‘I meant to say, Your Majesty,’ he began in a determined voice, and then became alarmed by his own temerity, looking at that bloody back. ‘This is just a trifling matter, of course, but, before we set sail from Ottassol, you took from me that interesting timepiece with three faces. Do you happen to have it still?’
The king did not turn or move.
He said, ‘I have it here in my tunic.’
CaraBansity took a deep breath and then said, much more feebly than he intended, ‘Would you return it to me, please, Your Majesty?’
‘This is no time to approach me for favours, when Borlien’s standing within the Holy Empire is threatened.’ He was the Eagle as he spoke.
They both stood, watching Yuli root in the bushes by the palace. The creature pissed after the retromingent fashion of his species.
The king began to walk with measured pace in the direction of the sea.
I’m no better than a damned slave, said CaraBansity to himself. He followed.
With the runt skipping beside him, the king speeded his step, speaking rapidly as he went, so that the portly deuteroscopist was forced to catch up. He never mentioned the subject of his timepiece again.
‘Akhanaba had favoured me and set many fruits in my life’s way. And always to those fruits an additional flavour was given when I saw that more were promised – tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Whatever I wished, I might have more of.
‘It’s true I suffered setbacks and defeats, but that within a general atmosphere of promise. I did not allow them to disturb me for long. My personal defeat in the Cosgart – well, I learnt from it and put it behind me, and eventually won a great victory there.’
They passed a line of gwing-gwing trees. The king snatched down a gwing-gwing, biting into it to the stone as he spoke, letting the juice run down his chin. He gestured, clutching the despoiled fruit.
‘Today, I see my life in a new light. Perhaps all that was promised me I have already received … I am, after all, more than twenty
-five years.’ He spoke with difficulty. ‘Perhaps this is my summer, and in future when I shake the bush no fruit will fall … Can I any longer rely on plenty? Doesn’t our religion warn us that we must expect times of famine? Fah! – Akhanaba is like a Sibornalese, always obsessed with the winter to come.’
They walked along the low cliffs separating land from beach, where the queen was accustomed to swim.
‘Tell me,’ said JandolAnganol carelessly, ‘if you as an atheist do not have a religious construction to put to the case – how do you see my difficulties?’
CaraBansity was silent, setting his beefy red face towards the ground as if guarding it against the king’s abrasive look. Work up your courage, he told himself.
‘Well? Come, say what you will. I have no spirit! I have been flogged by my whey-visaged vicar …’
When CaraBansity stopped walking, the king followed suit.
‘Sire, I recently to oblige a friend took into my establishment a certain young lady. My wife and I entertain many people, some alive, some dead; also animals for dissection, and phagors, either for dissection or for bodyguards. None caused as much trouble as that certain young lady.
‘I love my wife, and ever continue to do so. But I lusted after that certain young lady. I had a contempt for her, yet I lusted after her. I despised myself, and yet I lusted after her.’
‘But did you have her?’
CaraBansity laughed, and for the first time in the king’s presence, his face lightened. ‘Sire, I had her much as you have that gwing-gwing, the fruit par excellence of dimday. The juice, sire, ran down … But it was khmir and not love, and once the khmir was quenched – though that was certainly a process … that was summer process, sire – once it was quenched, I loathed myself and wanted nothing more of her. I established her apart and told her never to see me again. Since when, I learn that she has taken to her mother’s profession, and caused the death of at least one man.’
‘What’s all this to me?’ asked the king with a haughty look.
‘Sire, I believe the activating principle of your life to be lust rather than love.
‘You tell me in religious terms that Akhanaba has favoured you and put many fruits in your path. In my terms, you have taken what you would, done what you would, and so you wish to continue. You favour ancipitals as instruments of your lust, not caring that phagors are in reality never submissive. Nothing really can stand in your way – except the queen of queens. She can stand in your way because she alone in the world commands your love, and perhaps some respect. That is why you hate her, because you love her.
‘She stands between you and your khmir. She alone can contain your – duality. In you as in me, and perhaps as in all men, the two principles are divided – but the division in you is as great as your state is great.
‘If you prefer to believe in Akhanaba, believe now that he has by these supposed setbacks given you warning that your life is about to go wrong. Make it right while the chance is offered.’
They stopped on the cliff, ignoring the dull thunders of the sea, and stood face to face, both of them tense. The king heard his chancellor out with never a movement, while Yuli rolled in coarse grass nearby.
‘How would you suggest that I make my life right?’ A less self-assured man than CaraBansity would have taken fright from his tone.
‘This is my advice, Your Majesty. Do not go to Oldorando. Simoda Tal is dead. You no longer have reason to visit an unfriendly capital. As a deuteroscopist, I warn you against it.’ Under his grizzled eyebrows, CaraBansity kept careful note of the effect of his words on JandolAnganol.
‘Your place is in your own kingdom, never more so than now, while your enemies have not forgotten the Massacre of the Myrdolators. Return to Matrassyl.
‘Your rightful queen is here. Fall before her and ask forgiveness. Tear up Esomberr’s bill before her eyes. Take back what you love most. Your sanity lies in her. Reject the cozzening of Pannoval.’
The Eagle glared out to sea, eyes rapidly blinking.
‘Live a saner life, Majesty. Win back your son. Kick out Pannoval, kick out the phagor guard, live a sane life with your queen. Reject the false Akhanaba, who has led you—’
But he had gone too far.
Matchless fury seized the king. A rage filled him until he was rage personified. He hurled himself bodily upon CaraBansity. Before this anger beyond reason, CaraBansity quailed and fell an instant before the king was on him. Kneeling on his prostrate body, the king drew his sword. CaraBansity screamed.
‘Spare me, Your Majesty! Last night I saved your queen from vile rape.’
JandolAnganol paused, then stood, sword point directed at the quaking body huddled by his feet. ‘Who would dare touch the queen when I was near? Answer?’
‘Your Majesty …’ The voice trembled slightly, the lips uttering it were pressed almost to the ground; yet what it said was clear. ‘You were drunk. And Envoy Esomberr went into her room to ravish her.’
The king breathed deep. He sheathed his sword. He stood without movement.
‘You base commoner! How could you understand the life of a king? I do not go back along the path I have once trod. You may possess life, which is mine to take, but I have a destiny and shall follow on where the All-Powerful leads.
‘Crawl back to where you belong. You cannot advise me. Keep out of my way!’
Yet he still stood over the grovelling anatomist. When Yuli came snuffling up, the king turned suddenly away and strode back to the wooden palace.
The guard roused at his shout. They were to be away from Gravabagalinien within the hour. They would march for Oldorando as planned. His voice, his cold fury, stirred up the palace as if it were a nest of rickybacks disturbed by the lifting of a log. Esomberr’s vicars could be heard within, calling to each other in high voices.
This commotion reached the queen in her chambers. She stood in the middle of her ivory room, listening. Her bodyguard was at the door. Mai TolramKetinet sat with two maids in the anteroom, clutching Tatro. Thick curtains were drawn across the windows.
MyrdemInggala wore a long flimsy dress. Her face was as pale as the shadow of a cowbird’s wing on snow. She stood breathing the warm air into her lungs and out again, listening to the sound of men and hoxneys, of curses and commands below. Once she went to the curtains; then, as if disdaining her own weakness, withdrew the hand she had raised and returned to where she waited before. The heat brought out beads of perspiration which clung to her forehead like pearls. She heard the king’s voice once distinctly, then not again.
As for CaraBansity, he climbed to his feet when the king had gone. He walked down to the bay where he could not be seen, to recover his colour. After a while, he began to sing. He had his liberty back, if not his timepiece.
In his pain, the king went to a small room in one of the rickety towers and bolted the door behind him. Dust drifting down gave phantom substance to slices of gold shining in through a lattice. The place smelt of feathers, fungus, and old straw. On the bare boards of the floor were pigeon droppings, but the king, ignoring them, lay down and cast himself by an effort of will into pauk.
His soul, detached from his body, became tranquil. Like a moth wing falling, it sank into the velvety darkness. The darkness remained when all else had gone.
This was the paradox of the limbo in which the soul now drifted rudderless: that it extended everywhere and was an endless domain, while at the same time being as familiar to him as the dark space under the bedclothes to a child.
The soul had no mortal eyes. It saw with a different vision. It saw beneath it, through the obsidian, a host of dim lights, stationary but seeming to move in relation to each other because of the soul’s descent. Each light had once been a living spirit. Each was now drawn to the great mother-principle which would exist even when the world was dead, the original beholder, the principle even greater than – or at least apart from – such gods as Akhanaba.
And the soul moved in particular to one light that
attracted it, the gossie of its father.
The spark that had once been no less a personage than VarpalAnganol, King of Borlien, resembled only a tentative sketch of sunshine on an old wall, with its ribs, its pelvis, scarcely drawn. All that remained of the head which had worn the crown was the suggestion of a stone, with ambers faintly connotating eye sockets. Beneath this little cockleshell – visible through it – were fessups like trails of dust.
‘Father, I come before you, your unworthy son, to beg your forgiveness for my crimes to you.’ So spoke the soul of JandolAnganol, hanging where no air was.
‘My dear son, you are welcome here, welcome whenever you can find time to visit your father, now among the ranks of the dead. I have no reproach for you. You were always my dear son.’
‘Father, I shall not mind your reproaches. Rather, I welcome your most bitter rebukes, for I know how great is my sin against you.’
The silences between their speeches were immeasurable because no breath was exhaled.
‘Hush, my son, nobody needs to talk of sin among this company. You were my loving son, and that suffices. No more need be said. Grieve not.’
When it seemed time to speak, a dusty fire, the mere death of a candle flame, issued from where a mouth had been. Its smoke could be seen ascending between the cage of the ribs and up the stack of the throat.
The soul spoke again. ‘Father, I beg you to pour your wrath upon me for all that I did against you in your life, and for causing your death. Lessen my guilt. It is too much to bear.’
‘You are innocent, my son, as innocent as the wave that splashes on the shore. Feel no guilt for the happiness you brought into my life. Now in the residue of that life, I have no wrath to bring against you.’
‘Father, I kept you imprisoned ten years in a dungeon of the castle. In what way can I earn forgiveness for that act?’
The flame moved upwards, issuing as sparks.
‘That time is forgotten, son. I scarcely remember a time of imprisonment, for you were always there to speak with me. Those occasions were cherished, for you asked advice of me – which I freely gave, as far as it was in my capacity.’