Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring

“I’ll settle with you later.” He pushed Raynil Layan aside and jumped on the yelk. Spurring it fiercely, he crossed the ridge and rode forward to the next one, calling.

On the syncline of the ridge, he found three people and a small boy sheltering. A Madi guide lay with his face buried in the bank, still overcome by the stigmata in the sky. Beside him were Dol, clinging to Rastil Roon, and Oyre. The boy was crying. The two women gazed at Laintal Ay in terror as he dismounted and went forward to them. Only when he clung to them and called their names did they recognise him.

Oyre too had been through the eye of the fever needle. They stood and surveyed each other, smiling and exclaiming at their skeletal selves. Then she gave a laugh and a cry at the same time, and snuggled into his arms. While they stood together, faces against each other’s flesh, Aoz Roon came forward, clutched his small son’s chubby wrist, and embraced Dol. Tears poured down his ravaged face.

The women related some of the recent painful history of Oldorando; Oyre explained Dathka’s unsuccessful attempt to take over the leadership. Dathka was still in the city, together with many others. When Raynil Layan had come to Oyre and Dol, offering to escort them to safety, they had accepted his offer. Though they suspected the man was really fleeing to save his own skin, such was their fear that Rastil Roon would catch the pest that they accepted Raynil Layan’s offer, and had left hurriedly with him. Because of his inexperience, their goods and mounts had been stolen almost immediately by Borlienian brigands. “And the phagors? They’re going to attack the city?” All the women could say was that the city still stood, despite the chaos within its walls. And there had certainly been massed ranks of the dreadful fuggies outside the city as they slipped away. “I shall have to go back.”

“Then I return with you—I’m not leaving you again, my precious,” Oyre said. “Raynil Layan can do as he pleases. Dol and the boy stay with father.”

As they stood talking, clutching each other, smoke drifted across the plains from the west. They were too involved, too happy, to notice.

“The sight of my son revives me,” Aoz Roon said, hugging the child and drying his eyes on his sleeve. “Dol, if you are able to let the past die, I’ll be a better man to you from now on.”

“You speak words of regret, Father,” Oyre said. “I should be the first to do that. I know now how wilfully I behaved to Laintal Ay, and almost lost him as a consequence.”

As he saw the tears come to her eyes, Laintal Ay thought involuntarily of his snoktruix in the earth below the rajabarals, and reflected that it was only through Oyre’s nearly having lost him that they were now able to find each other. He soothed her, but she burst out of his grasp, saying, “Forgive me, and I’ll be yours—and wilful no more, I swear.

He clasped her, smiling. “Keep your will. It’s needed. We have much else to learn, and must change as times change. I’m grateful to you for understanding, for making me act.”

They clung lovingly together, clutching each other’s skeletal bodies, kissing each others’ fragile lips.

The Madi guide began to come to his senses. He got up and called for Raynil Layan, but the master of the mint had fled. The smoke was thicker now, adding its ashes to the ashen sky.

Aoz Roon started to relate his experiences on the island to Dol, but Laintal Ay interrupted.

“We’re united again, and that is miraculous. But Oyre and I must return to Embruddock in all haste. We’ll surely be needed there.”

The two sentinels were lost in cloud. A breeze was rising, troubling the plain. It was the breeze, blowing from the direction of Embruddock, which carried the news of fire. Now the smoke became denser. It became a shroud, dimming the living beings—whether friend or foe—scattered across the expanses of plain. Everything was enveloped. With the smoke came the stench of burning. Flights of geese winged eastwards overhead.

The human figures clustering about two antlered animals represented between them three generations. They began to move across the landscape as it faded from view. They would survive, though everyone else perished, though the kzahhn triumphed, for that was what befell.

Even in the flames consuming Embruddock, new configurations were being born. Behind the ancipital mask of Wutra, Shiva—god of destruction and regeneration—was furiously at work on Helliconia.

The eclipse was total now.