Steph Swainston - Dangerous Offspring

I looked out into the distance. The avenue ran straight on the other side of the lake, between beech plantations to the crest of a low hill. A folly stood there, a scaled-down replica of the entire palace, placed exactly opposite it at the end of the vista. It was so ingeniously decreased in size that it skewed the perspective-making the avenue look longer than it was. Everyone who saw the folly for the first time believed it was a palace exactly the same size at a great distance. I knew it housed only a single ballroom, but its trick of the eye was so exact I imagined that I could see a tiny Jant leaning on the pediment looking back at me. I shuddered.

Lemon trees and spear-like cypress grew on the brow of the hill clear against the sky around the folly and, beyond it, livestock grazed on smooth-turfed grass like a carpet. I could just see the beginnings of the hills rising up to Donaise in the distance. Tiny, spidery vine frames climbed them, and their lower slopes were lines of immaculately planted grey-green olive groves and coffee plantations.

I suppose the landscaped garden isn’t really designed to be seen from the roof. The guests on the terrace will have the best of it, or those strolling along the avenue, from which smaller pathways led and opened up new vistas. The perspective presented statues that seemed far off, suddenly near at hand. Gaps in the woodland revealed winter gardens, espaliers, great pillars, all meticulously landscaped for kilometres around.

Beyond the beech wood two smaller avenues crossed the main one in an asterisk, and of course Lightning had had time to watch over the trees as they grew and matured, so now centuries later, they were looking their best.

I stood on tiptoe and looked down the length of the Austringer Wing; over the roof of the Austringer building at the end. I could just see a dark green pattern of tall hedgerows-the labyrinth. It was enormous; lemon hedge on one side of the path and box on the other, so if you got lost you could smell your way around it to the great trellis and pergola in the centre. They are covered in vines drooping fat clusters of purple grapes. The tendrils hang down like a screen of falling water, and it is wonderful to push through them to the hideaway inside, where you can sit among statues in its shade.

Past the maze grew the long, unkempt grass of the ‘wilderness’-nothing of the sort but a well-designed meadow where Lightning held garden parties. I’d rather have kept it natural than have it look so through artifice and expenditure. Beyond that rose the belvedere, once copied by the Rachiswaters in their circular style. I wondered why it was that the richer people became, the more sequacious?

At the end of the Eyas Wing, in the other direction, a slope went down to ‘the farm’ by the river, a few kilometres distant but the clutch of aslant roofs looked more like a small town. Most of the estate workers lived there, tending beehives, kitchen and herb gardens, a phasianery for peacocks and pheasants, a rabbit warren, brick kilns and a dovecot. Lightning calls the estate office ‘The New House’, although it is four hundred years old. The Alula Road passes through to Micawater town itself, which was disguised behind another well-placed copse. Lots of townsfolk were here, watching the festivities and loving it. They were the sort of Awian citizens who hold street parties on their lord’s birthday.

People were converging on the archery stands. From up here, parasols over women’s shoulders looked like little circles. I noticed a knot of people heading from the refreshment tent and in their midst I recognised Eleonora’s confident stride. Beside her was my little, dark-haired, vivacious Tern. The Challenge is about to start. I had better go join them.

I stepped off the balustrade and tilted out in a long, slow glide. I swept over the terrace onto which the palace’s doors opened; then the water gardens below them, a round central spring framed symmetrically by four limpid pools.

The ground dropped away and steps led down to a parterre, with the sky-blue roses of Awia in flower beds bordered by low hedges. More box hedges looked like embroidery, clipped into lacy flowing designs, scrolls and plumes against the rich, loamy earth. From that level stone hounds guarded a balustraded double staircase descending to the avenue. People walking on the paths between the flower beds looked up as my shadow sped over them.

I focused on Tern and Eleonora and the courtiers surrounding them, who were settling on the lowest seat of the stands nearest the archery ground, reserved for the Queen’s use and covered with samite silk. I came in above the rounded end of the awning and veered wide to the arena’s grass, flared wings and touched down. My landing drew a little tentative applause from the crowd.

I hopped over the ropes and Tern came forward to meet me. ‘My love,’ I said over her shoulder as we hugged. ‘My dear, dear love.’

‘Isn’t this exciting?’ Tern exclaimed. ‘What a magnificent day!’

Eleonora nodded contentedly. ‘It’s a Lakeland summer all right. Three fine days and a thunderstorm. It’s like clockwork.’

‘Well, the sooner we get this over with and on to the party the better.’ She passed me a glass of sparkling wine. ‘I pestered Lightning to give us some real Stenasrai. “You must have had Stenasrai in six twenty,” I told him. “It’s better than that ridiculous mead.” It’s a wonder anyone in the seventh century had any teeth.’

I was enjoying the party but I still had a lot to do. Since the slaughter of the battle there had been more people hiding from the draft. There was a groundswell of sentiment against the war and criticism of the Emperor, which the Emperor was ignoring until it gradually subsided.

Eleonora had covered herself with glory and was full of pride. We hadn’t regained so much land since the Miroir battles of the last Tanager dynasty. No wonder the Rachiswaters had been so keen to match them by making advances in Lowespass, but Eleonora had taken more than any of them. Our shared knowledge of how awful the battle had been brought us together in this warm sunlight, whereas Tern, who could never understand, just kept talking. ‘I worried about you when the Circle broke,’ she said. ‘Although worry is quite an inadequate word for what I felt.’

‘I was fine, my love. I saw the flood. I never want to go back to Slake Cross though. Every time we go there we get massacred.’

Tern said, ‘Some people are talking about an odd phenomenon. My warden says god appeared to the Emperor on the battlefield.’

‘Really?’ I said casually. ‘In what shape?’

‘A very strange one. A tall column of smoke, and trees made of worms.’

‘Mass hysteria.’ I shrugged. ‘People report all kinds of visions under battle stress. It’s terror that causes it. Lowespass generates more folklore than it can use.’

‘Well, I don’t see why it should have to export it.’

I said, ‘Some fyrdsmen say that you can still hear the winch tower bell, tolling underwater in the river. Fyrdsmen will tell you any old crap.’

I was interrupted by three flights of whistling arrows being loosed on the other side of the lake in honour of the victor of the chariot races. Eleonora shook herself. ‘Lightning slept through the dam breaking,’ she said. Tern and I laughed. It’s a joke that Lightning is such a sound sleeper Insects could be eating him and he wouldn’t wake up.

‘You dare wake him, Jant,’ said Tern. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Um…I was busy.’

‘And the Emperor asked Lightning to have dinner with him. At least, I heard so…Is it true?’

‘Yes. That is true.’

‘But it’s unheard of! For Lightning, for anybody! Well, come on. Tell me. What did they talk about?’