Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter

by Brian Aldiss

  Lying in the steamy centre of Campannlat, threaded by the River Valvoral which connected it with Matrassyl and – ultimately – the sea, Oldorando was a city of travellers. Mostly they came to worship or, if not to worship, to trade.

  In the physical form of the city was commemorated the long existence of these opposed intentions. The Holyval sector of the city ran in a diagonal line from southwest to northeast, rising above the sprawl of commerce like a fretted cliff. Holyval included the Old City, with its quaint seven-storey towers, in which lived permanent religious communities. Here were the Academicians, a female order. Here, too, were pilgrims and beggars, as well as god’s scum, those who beat empty breasts. Here were courts of shadow and places of prayer sunk deep into the earth. Here too stood the Dom with its attendant monastries, and King Sayren Stund’s palace.

  It was generally agreed – at least by those whose lives were enclosed by Holyval – that this sector of saintliness, this diagonal of decency, ran between sewers of worldly vices.

  But set in Holyval’s pompous and fretted walls and forbidding ramparts were a variety of doors. Some were opened only on ceremonial occasions. Others allowed access to the Old City only for the privileged. Others admitted only women or only men (no phagors were permitted to sully Holyval). But others, and those among the most used, left even the most secular of persons to come and go as they would. Between the holy and the unholy, as between the living and the dead, was set a barrier which detained nobody from crossing it.

  The unholy lived in less grand premises, although even here the rich had built their palaces along the broader boulevards. The wicked prospered, the good made their way through life as best they could. Of the city’s present population of eight hundred and ninety thousand humans, almost one hundred thousand were in religious orders, and served Akhanaba. At least as many were slaves, and served believer and unbeliever alike.

  It was in keeping with the shows which Oldorando loved that two messengers clad in blue and gold should wait on JandolAnganol’s arrival at the south gate, with a coach in which to draw him to King Sayren Stund.

  JandolAnganol refused the coach and, instead of taking the triumphal route along Wozen Avenue, paraded his dusty company into the Pauk. The Pauk was a comfortable, down-at-heels area of taverns and markets where there were traders who would buy both animals and protognostics.

  ‘Madis don’t fetch much in Embruddock,’ said one sturdy dealer, using the old country name for Oldorando. ‘We got enough of them and, like the Nondads, they don’t work well. Now your phagors would be a different question, but in this city I’m not allowed to trade in phagors.’

  ‘I’m selling only the Madis and animals, man. Your price, or I’ll go elsewhere.’

  When a sum had been agreed on, the Madis were sold into captivity and the animals to slaughter. The king retired in satisfaction. He was now better prepared to meet Sayren Stund. Before the transaction, he had not so much as a roon piece on him. Phagors dispatched to Matrassyl for gold had not returned.

  Moving in military order, the First Phagorian proceeded up Wozen Avenue, where crowds had assembled to watch them. The crowds cheered JandolAnganol as he strode along with Yuli. He was popular with the rabble of Oldorando, despite his championship of the officially deplored ancipitals. The common people contrasted a lively, eager man favourably with their fat, idle, domestic breed of monarch. The common people did not know the queen of queens. The common people had sympathy for a king whose bride-to-be had been brutally murdered – even if that bride was only a Madi, or half-Madi.

  Among the common people went the religious. The clerics were out with banners. RENOUNCE YOUR SINS. THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH. REPENT YE WHILE TIME IS. Here as in Borlien, the Pannovalan Church played on public fears in order to bring the independent-minded to heel.

  The dusty progress continued. Past the ancient King Denniss Pyramid. Through the Wozen sector. Into the wide Loylbryden Square. On the far side of the square, across a stream, Whistler Park. Facing on to square and park, the great Dom of Striving and the picturesque town palace of the king. In the centre of the square, a golden pavilion, in which was seated King Sayren Stund himself, waiting to greet his visitor.

  Beside the king sat Queen Bathkaarnet-she, wearing a grey keedrant decorated with black roses, and an uncomfortable crown. Between their majesties on a smaller throne sat their one remaining daughter, Milua Tal. The three of them reposed in absurd dignity under an awning, while the rest of the court sweated in the sun. The heat buzzed with flies. A band played. The absence of soldiers was noticeable, but several elderly officers in resplendent uniforms marched slowly about. The civil guard kept the crowd in order along the perimeters of the square.

  The Oldorandan court was known for its stifling formality. Sayren Stund had done his best to soften court etiquette on this occasion, but there remained a line of advisors and church dignitaries, many of them in flowing canonicals, drawn up severely as they waited to shake JandolAnganol’s hand and kiss his cheek.

  The Eagle stood with his party of captains and his hunchbacked armourer, surveying them challengingly, the dust of his journey still about him.

  ‘Your parade would do credit to a museum, Cousin Sayren,’ he said.

  Sayren Stund was dressed, as were his officers, in a severe black charfrul to express mourning. He levered himself out of his throne and came to JandolAnganol with arms extended. JandolAnganol made a bow, holding himself stiffly. Yuli stood a pace behind him, sticking his milt up alternate nostrils, otherwise motionless.

  ‘Greetings in the name of the All-Powerful. The Court of Oldorando welcomes you in your peaceful and fraternal visit to our capital. May Akhanaba make the meeting fruitful.’

  ‘Greetings in the name of the All-Powerful. I thank you for your fraternal reception. I come to offer my condolences and my grief at the death of your daughter, Simoda Tal, my bride-elect.’

  As JandolAnganol spoke, his glance, under the line of his eyebrows, was ever active. He did not trust Sayren Stund. Stund paraded him along the ranks of dignitaries, and JandolAnganol allowed his hand to be shaken and his grimy cheek to be kissed.

  He saw from Sayren Stund’s demeanour that the King of Oldorando bore him ill will. The knowledge was a torment. Everywhere was hatred in men’s hearts. The murder of Simoda Tal had left its stain, with which he now had to reckon.

  After the parade, the queen approached, limping, her hand resting on Milua Tal’s arm. Bathkaarnet-she’s looks had faded, yet there was something in her expression, in the way she held her head – submissively yet perkily – which affected JandolAnganol. He recalled a remark of Sayren Stund’s which had once been reported to him – why had that lodged in his memory? – ‘Once you have lived with a Madi woman, you want no other.’

  Both Bathkaarnet-she and her daughter had the captivating bird faces of their kind. Though Milua Tal’s blood had been diluted with a human stream, she presented an exotically dark, brilliant impression, with enormous eyes glowing on either side of her aquiline nose. When she was presented, she gazed direct at JandolAnganol, and gave him the Look of Acceptance. He thought briefly of SartoriIrvrash’s mating experiments; here if ever was a fertile cross-breeding.

  He was pleased to gaze on this one bright face among so many dull ones, and said to her, ‘You much resemble the portrait I was sent of your sister. Indeed, you are even more beautiful.’

  ‘Simoda and I were much alike, and much different, like all sisters,’ Milua Tal replied. The music of her voice suggested to him many things, fires in the night, baby Tatro cooing in a cool room, pigeons in a wooden tower.

  ‘Our poor Milua is overcome by the assassination of her sister, as we all are,’ said the king, with a noise which incorporated the best features of a sigh and a belch. ‘We have agents out far and wide, pursing the killer, the villain who posed as a Madi to gain entrance to the palace.’

  ‘It was a cruel blow against us both.’

  Another compendious sigh. ‘Well,
Holy Council will be held next week, with a special memorial service for our departed daughter, which the Holy C’Sarr himself will bless with his presence. That will cheer us. You must stay with us for that event, Cousin, and be welcome. The C’Sarr will be delighted to greet such a valued member of his Community – and it would be to your advantage to pass time with him, as you will realise. Have you met His Holiness?’

  ‘I know his envoy, Alam Esomberr. He will arrive shortly.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Hmm. Esomberr. A witty fellow.’

  ‘And adventurous,’ said JandolAnganol.

  The band struck up. They proceeded across the square to the palace, and JandolAnganol found Milua Tal by his side. She looked up brightly at him, smiling. He asked her conspiratorially, ‘Are you prepared to tell me your age, ma’am, if I keep it a secret?’

  ‘Oh, that’s one of the questions I hear most often,’ she said, dismissively. ‘Together with “Do you like being a princess?” Persons think me in advance of my age, and they must be right. The increased heat of the present period brings younger persons on, develops them in every way. I have dreamed the dreams of an adult for over a year. Did you ever dream you were in the powerful irresistible embrace of a fire god?’

  He bent to her ear and said in a ferocious whisper, playfully, ‘Before I reveal to you if I am that very fire god, I shall have to answer my own question. I’d put you at no more than nine years old.’

  ‘Nine years and five tenners,’ she replied, ‘but it is emotions, not years, which count.’

  The facade of the palace was long, and three storeys high, with massive polished columns of rajabaral rising through the marked horizontals of the upper storeys. The roof swept flamboyantly upwards, tiled with blue tiles made by Kaci potters. The palace had been first built over three hundred and fifty small years ago, after Oldorando was partially destroyed by phagor invasion; although its timbers had been renewed since, the original design was adhered to. Elaborately carved wooden screens protected the unglazed windows. The doors were of the same type of carving, but veneered in silver and backed by thick wooden panels. A tubular gong was struck within, the doors opened, and Sayren Stund led his guests inside.

  There followed two days of banqueting and empty speeches. The hot water springs for which Oldorando was famous also played their part. A service of thanksgiving was held in the Dom, attended by many high-ranking dignitaries of the Church. The singing was magnificent, the costumes impressive, the darkness in the great underground vault all that Akhanaba could desire. JandolAnganol prayed, sang, spoke, submitted to ceremony, and confided in no one.

  All were uncertain of this strange man, all kept their eyes on him. And his eyes were on all. It was clear why some called him the Eagle.

  He took care to see that the First Phagorian Guard was suitably housed. For a city that hated phagors, they were well provided for. Across the Loylbryden Square from the Dom was Whistler Park, an area of green entirely surrounded by the Valvoral or its tributaries. Here were preserved brassim trees. Here also was the Hour Whistler of continent-wide fame. This geyser blew with a shrill note at every hour, with the greatest accuracy. Days, weeks, tenners, years, centuries, went by, still the Hour Whistler blew. Some said the hour’s length, and the forty minutes which divided the hour, had been decided by this noise issuing from the earth.

  An ancient seven-storey tower and some new pavilions stood on the margins of the park. The phagors were billeted in the pavilions. The four bridges into the park were guarded, by phagors on the inner and humans on the outer side, so that no one could get into the park to molest the ancipitals.

  Crowds soon gathered to watch the ancipital soldiery across the water. These well-drilled, placid-seeming creatures were far different from the phagors of popular imagination, where they rode godlike on great rust-red steeds, travelling at godlike speeds to bring destruction among men. Those riders of the icy storm had little in common with the beasts marching dourly about the park.

  As JandalAnganol left his cohorts to return to Sayren Stund, he noticed how restless they were. He spoke to Phagor-Major Chzarn, but could get from her only that the guard needed a while to settle into new quarters.

  He assumed that the noise of the Hour Whistler caused them some irritation. Giving them words of reassurance, he left, the runt capering along at his side. A sulphurous volcano smell filled the air.

  Milua Tal met him as he entered the silver gates of the palace. In the last two days he had grown increasingly fond of her volatile company, her cooing pigeon voice.

  ‘Some of your friends have arrived. They say they’re holy, but everyone seems to be holy here. The chief of them doesn’t look holy. He’s too handsome to be holy. He looks naughty to me. Do you like naughty people, King Jandol? – because I think I’m rather naughty.’

  He laughed.

  ‘I think you are naughty. So are most people. Including some of the holy ones.’

  ‘So it is necessary to be exceptionally naughty to stand out from the crowd?’

  ‘That’s a reasonable deduction.’

  ‘Is that why you stand out from the crowd?’

  She slipped her hand into his, and he clasped it.

  ‘There are other reasons. Being a fire god is one.’

  ‘I find most people are terribly disappointing. Do you know, when my sister was murdered, we found her sitting upright in a chair, fully dressed. No blood visible. That was disappointing. I imagined pools of blood. I imagined people threw themselves all over the place when they were getting killed, as if they hated what was happening.’

  JandolAnganol asked in a hard voice, ‘How was she killed?’

  ‘Zygankes, stabbed right through the heart with a fuggie horn! Father says it was a fuggie horn. Right slap through her clothes and her heart.’ She glanced suspiciously at Yuli, following his master, but Yuli had been dehorned.

  ‘Were you frightened?’

  She gave him a scornful look. ‘I never think about it. At all. Well, I think about her sitting upright, I suppose. Her eyes were still frozen open.’

  They entered the tapestried reception hall. Milua Tal’s warning had served to alert JandolAnganol to the arrival of Alam Esomberr and his ‘little rabble of vicars’, as Esomberr had called them. They were surrounded by a crowd of Oldorandan grandees, from whom a bumble of polite regard arose.

  The eagle eye of the king, penetrating to the rear of the chamber, observed another familiar figure who, as the king arrived, was being bustled out of a rear door. The figure turned to look back as he left the room and his gaze, despite all the heads in between, met JandolAnganol’s. Then he was gone, and the door closed behind them.

  On the entry of the king, Esomberr broke courteously from his companions and came forward to make a bow to JandolAnganol, giving one of his mocking smiles.

  ‘Here we are, as you see, Jandol, my somewhat ecclesiastical party and I. One twisted ankle, one case of food poisoning, one envoy longing for the fleshpots, otherwise all in good order. Travel-stained, of course, from a preposterously long walk across your domains …’ They embraced formally.

  ‘I’m glad you are preserved, Alam. You will find the fleshpots rather gloomy here, that’s my impression.’

  Esomberr was eyeing the runt standing by the king’s side. He made playfully to pat Yuli, and then withdrew his hand. ‘You don’t bite, do you, thing?’

  ‘I’m zivilised,’ said Yuli.

  Esomberr raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t want to speak out of turn, Jandol, but will this rather stuffy crowd here, Sayren Stund and company, tolerate even a zivilised you-know-what in their midst? There’s a drumble on at present – to celebrate the death of your betrothed, I gather …’

  ‘I’ve met no trouble yet – but the C’Sarr arrives soon. You had better get your fleshpotting in before then. By the way, I have just seen my ex-chancellor, SartoriIrvrash. Do you know anything about him?’

  ‘Hmm. Yes, yes, I do, sire.’ Esomberr rubbed his elegant nose with a finger. �
�He and a Sibornalese lady came upon me and my rabble of vicars shortly after you and your phagorian infantry had trotted on ahead in your brisk, forceful manner. Both he and the Sibornalese lady were on hoxney-back. They journeyed the rest of the way with us.’

  ‘What business has he in Oldorando?’

  ‘Fleshpots?’

  ‘Try again. What did he tell you?’

  Alam Esomberr cast his eyes down to the floor as if seeking to recall an elusive memory. ‘Zygankes, travel does soften the mind … hm. Why, I really cannot say, sire. Perhaps you had best ask him yourself?’

  ‘He had come from Gravabagalinien? Why was he there?’

  ‘Sire, perhaps he wished to view the sea, as I’ve heard some men do before they die.’

  ‘In that case, his wish could have been premonitory,’ said JandolAnganol, with spirit. ‘You are not helpful this evening, Alam.’

  ‘Forgive me. My legs are in such shape that my head is also affected. I may be more effectual after I have bathed and dined. Meanwhile, I assure you that I am no friend of your somewhat gaseous ex-chancellor.’

  ‘Except that you both would rid the world of phagors.’

  ‘So would most men if they had the courage to act. Phagors and fathers.’

  They regarded each other. ‘We had better not get to the subject of courage,’ said JandolAnganol, and walked away.

  He plunged into a group where men in grand ornamental charfruls and exotic hairpieces were conversing with King Sayren Stund, interrupting them without apology. Sayren Stund looked flustered, but reluctantly asked his audience to leave him. A space was cleared about the two kings. Immediately, a lackey came forward with a silver tray, to present glasses of iced wine. JandolAnganol turned. Only half deliberately, he knocked the tray from the man’s hand.

  ‘Tut-tut-tut,’ said Sayren Stund. ‘No matter, it was an accident, I saw that. Plenty more wine. And more ice, as a matter of fact, delivered now by a lady captain, Immya Muntras. We must accustom ourselves to such innovations.’

  ‘Brother king, never mind the niceties of conversation. You are sheltering here in your palace a man who was my chancellor, of whom I rid myself, a man I think my enemy, since he went over to the Sibornalese cause, by name SartoriIrvrash. What does he want here? Has he brought you some secret message from my ex-queen, as I fear?’