Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

The second time he emerged, the beast had vanished though Aslan thought she saw it looking at her now and then; she saw it surface and sink again when, hesitating and afraid, she told him of the Warmaster and what it meant to them.

The Smelter was quiet again. Looking around her, Aslan could see eyes flicking from side to side. Looking for those Huvved marks, she thought, hoping no one would see Huvved blood in them. On the screen a battle was over, the two commanders were standing face to face, meeting each other as equals, warrior to warrior. Parnalee had dug up more Huvved bastards to play the empire soldiers and there was a tense silence in the room as the two men confronted each other; the Empire’s Captain accepted his death at Pradix’s hands, taking the sword thrust with a stiff nobility that made Aslan hide another smile behind her hand.

Parnalee was playing all the themes that Tra Yarta had asked from him, but he was putting a spin on them that undercut the Huvved; he was playing to species memory and the depths of Hordar pride, deflecting their present angers only to intensity them, laying a clutch of bombs for the future. Future? As close as tomorrow, maybe. Despite Aslan’s training, Churri was aware of what the Proggerdi was doing before she was; she was too tangled in guilt to use her brain, but once he pointed out what was happening it was obvious to her. Parnalee was seeding in the general population the same change that was taking place in the rebels, teaching the Hordar indirectly but effectively that they belonged to Tairanna and had a common enemy no matter where they lived; he was making possible the final overthrow of the Huvved once the rebels solved the problem of the Warmaster, but that wasn’t what he wanted, oh no, what he wanted was Huvved dead and he didn’t care what it took. He teased at the Hordar by slyly putting down the Huvved, so slyly he couldn’t be pinned on it, but every Hordar who saw the Spectacles knew what he was getting at and felt the pride and saw the possibility. Aslan watched and was afraid; she thought of warning the Council, but doubted they’d believe her or understand what she was saying. The best there is, he told Xalloor once, and perhaps he was, but he was also crazy and men were going to die of that insanity. And she saw no way of stopping it.

On the screen Pradix was driving himself and his men into building a funeral pyre for the enemy; one by one his men began slipping away from him, showing by their glances and their gestures that they thought he had cracked his head on something and let his wits run out. Before long he was alone, sweating and struggling with the trees his men felled and left laying. Parnalee cut repeatedly from the madman working on that crazy magnificent pyre to shots of Empire soldiers flying toward the bloody ground, bent on avenging the death of their brothers.

Xalloor slipped in and crept as quietly as she could to join Aslan. She dropped on the floor beside the cushion, wrapped her arms about her legs and watched the play unfold with a curious double vision. One part of her saw it critically, judged the skill or lack of it in every aspect, recognized the tricks and the cynical manipulations, the lapses in taste and logic; the other part was entranced by what was there, that part plunged into the play until she was drowning in it, surrendering like a child to sensation and emotion. How those two parts could exist in Xalloor simultaneously and separately without destroying each other was something Aslan had never been able to understand in all the time they’d been together, something Xalloor had tried more than once to explain and failed each time.

As Pradix lit the pyre and flames leaped upward, the needlenosed fliers of the avenging soldiers were visible on the horizon, black specks growing larger by the moment. Suddenly the sky darkened, turned an eerie ominous greenish purple as clouds swept in from every side. A funnel formed behind the fliers, caught up with them, beat them from the air like a maidservant killing gnats and raced on toward Pradix and the pyre. Closer and closer it came until its blackened vortex filled most of the screen with Pradix a tiny figure kneeling on the torn and trampled glass. Then it was gone; the broken world it left behind was quiet except for the vigorous crackling of the funeral fire. The small figure of the kneeling man was there still, untouched, shining in the dimness of the coming storm as if lit by another fire, one that burned inside him. A bird sang. The sweetness of its song was almost unbearable.

There was an explosive sigh as if every lung in the Smelter empties itself at the same moment. Otherwise the silence was unbroken.

Parnalee, you’ve the Luck of the crazy cradling you, Aslan thought, I can’t believe Tra Yarta passed this one. Was he suckered by the casting of that boy with his Huvved face and form? She rubbed at her nose, gulped down the tea left in the cup; it was cold, but the small bitterness was a satisfying counter to the fantasy on the screen. A headache began at the back of her skull; she rubbed at her nape, closed her eyes. How long does this go on? she thought. Where’s Churri? She slitted an eye and sneaked a look at Xalloor. Have you two decided to split? The dancer looked placid as a sleeping lizard, but that didn’t mean much, she was sunk in the Spectacle and nothing else mattered.

Somehow Pradix had changed from a fighter to a poet, she’d missed the transition while she was fussing, but wasn’t much bothered by that. He wasn’t the Prophet yet, but he was getting close. He’d acquired three men with assorted instruments and a rough cart with straw sticking out all over, pulled along by a team of yunks painted battleship gray with vertical black stripes. Since Parnalee had thrown in tarmac highways kept in top condition and a swarm of small black vehicles rushing along them at near supersonic speeds, not to mention the vast assortment of fliers that passed by overhead, the reason for that cart with its two-yunk propulsion system escaped her. She poured some more tea; she needed a touch of reality or she’d start giggling and get herself lynched from the looks on the faces around her.

He was going from village to village, mixing sedition with preaching, poetry with politics, escaping again and again just before soldiers landed on the town, building toward a finale that got the rebels on their feet, shouting out the words to the poem he was chanting in the ancient worker’s vag that was the basis for the Hordar they all spoke today; apparently it was a poem everyone here knew, probably one of those she’d sent Churri hunting way back in that other life, the kind no Huvved ever heard. Reluctantly she got to her feet with the rest, but she refused to chant with them.

Pradix the poet stood on the cart’s bed, straw about his feet, music on three sides, Yesil Uranyi perched on the front, drums going tam tam tummm toom, Saadi Klemm on his left, twee twee tootle too ooh, wandering flute, and on his right, scree ooh wee, singee singee, the fiddling man Nanno Inallet. Pradix the not yet Prophet stood in the cart and chanted his vagger song.

year ya year ya year ya ya

fear ya hear ya fear

shake ya shiver

terror fever

same old song, same old

sad song

same old sad

song

some men get old

some women cold

old ya cold ya

I ya we ya I an we

we shout

them wonda what we been about

them wonda bout we fire

heartfire red and red

not dead

not we

them canna tame we an I

them canna tame I