Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Summer

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.”

“It was a melancholy place.”

“It gave me time to think over the failings of my own life, to prepare myself for what was to come.”

“Father, how your forgiveness wounds me!”

“Come closer, my boy, and let me comfort you.”

But for the living to touch the dead was forbidden in the realm of the original beholder. If that ultimate duality was breached, then both were consumed. The soul floated lightly away from the thing that hung before it in the abyss.

“Comfort me with more advice, Father.”

“Speak.”

“First of all, let me know whether that tormented son of mine has fallen among you. I fear the instability of his life.”

“I shall welcome the boy when he arrives, never worry—but as yet he still journeys in the world of light.”

After a moment, the soul communicated again.

“Father, you perceive my position among the living. Advise me where Tarn to go. Am I to return to Matrassyl? Should I remain in Gravabagalinien? Or shall I continue to Oldorando? Where does my most fruitful future lie?”

“In each place there are those who await you. But there is one who awaits you in Oldorando whom you know not. That one holds your destiny. Go to Oldorando.”

“Your advice will guide my actions.”

From among the sparkling battalions of the dead, the soul rose, slowly at first, and then with a great urgency. Somewhere, a drum was sounding. The sparks dissolved below, sinking back into the original beholder.

The inanimate anatomy on the floor in the belfry began slowly to move. Its limbs twitched. It sat up. Its eyes opened in a blank face.

The only living thing to meet its gaze was Yuli, who crawled nearer and said, “My poor king in tether.”