M. Harrison: The Pastel City

He was not present when the Wolves burned Soubridge, and, in desperation, died.

He did not see the Storming of the Gates, when Alstath

Fulthor – after leading a thousand Resurrected Men over the

Monar Mountains in the depths of Winter – attacked the Pastel

City from the north-east;

Or the brave death of Rotgob Mungo, a captain of the North, as he tried in vain to break the long Seige of the Artists'Quarter, and bled his life out in the Bistro Californium;

Nor was he there when Tomb met Alstath Fulthor on the Proton Circuit, coming from the opposite end of the City, and shook his hand.

He was not present at that final retaking of Methven's Hal!, when five hundred men died in one hour, and Tomb got his famous wound. They looked for him there, but he did not come.

He did not break with them into the inner room of the palace, there among the drifting curtains of light; or discover beneath the dying wreck of Usheen the Sloth, the Queen's Beast, the cold and beautiful corpse of Canna Moidart, the last twist of the knife.

It is rumoured that the Young Queen wept over the Old, her cousin. But he did not see that, either.

Methvet Nian, the Queen of Viriconium, stood at early evening on the sand-dunes that lay like a lost country between the land and the sea. Swift and tattered scraps of rag, black gulls sped and fought over her downcast head.

She was a tall and supple woman, clad in a gown of heavy russet velvet, and her skin was neither painted nor jewelled, as was the custom of the time. The nine identical rings of Neap glittered from her long fingers. Her hair, which recalled the colour of autumn rowans, hung in soft waves to her waist, coiled about her breasts.

For a while, she walked the tideline, examining the objects cast up by the sea: paying particular attention to a smooth stone here, a translucent spiny shell there; picking up a bottle the colour of dragonfly armour, throwing down a branch whitened and peculiarly carved by the water. She watched the gulls, but their cries depressed her.

She led her grey horse by its white bridle across the dunes, and found the stone path to the tower which had no name: though it was called by some after that stretch of seaboard on which it stood, that is, Balmacara.

Balmacara was broken: its walls were blackened, it was like a broken tooth; and despite the Spring that had brought green back to the land after a winter of darkness and harsh contrasts, the rowan woods that surrounded it were without life.

Among them in the growing gloom of twilight, she came upon the wreck of the crystal launch 'that had brought down the tower. It was black, and a wolf's head with wine red eyes stared at her from its buckled hull – quite without menace, for the paint was already beginning to peel.

She passed it, and came to the door; she tethered her horse.

She called out, but there was no answer.

She climbed fifty stone steps, and found that night had already taken the husk of the tower. Dusk was brown in the window arches, heaped up in great drifts in the corners. Her footsteps echoed emptily, but there was a strange, quiet music in the tower, a mournful, steely mode, cadences that brought tears to her violet eyes.

He sat on a wall-bed covered with blue embroidered silks. Around him on the walls hung trophies: a powered battle-axe he had got from his friend Tomb the dwarf after the sea-fight at Mingulay in the Rivermouth Campaign; the gaudy standard of Thorisman Carlemaker, whom he had defeated single-handed in the Mountains of Monadliath; queer weapons, and astrological equipment discovered in deserts.

He did not look up as she entered.

His fingers depressed the hard strings of his instrument; its tone was low and melancholy. He recited the following verse, which he had composed on the Cruachan Ridge in Monar:

'Strong visions: I have strong visions of this place in the empty times… Far below there are wavering pines… I left 'the rowan elphin woods to fulminate on ancient headlands, dipping slowly into the glasen seas of evening… On the devastated peaks of hills we ease 'the barrenness into our thin bones like a foot into a tight shoe… The narrative of this place: other than the smashed arris of the ridge there are only sad winds and silences… I lay on the cairn one more rock… I am possessed by Time…'

When he had finished, she said, 'My lord, we waited for you to come.'

In the gloom, he smiled. He still wore his torn cloak, his ragged, dented shirt of mail. The nameless sword was at his side. He had this mannerism: that when he was worried or nervous, his hand strayed out unknown to him and caressed its hilts.

He said with 'the grave politeness of his time, 'Lady, I would have come had I felt there was any need for me.'

'Lord Cromis,'she answered, 'you are absurd.'She laughed, and did not let him see her pity. 'Death brought you here to sulk and bite yourself like an animal. In Viriconiun, we have ceased to brood on death.'

'That is your choice, madam.'

'The Reborn Men are among us: they give us new arts, new perspectives; and from us they learn how to live in a land without despoiling it. If it brings you satisfaction, Cromis, you were correct – the Empire is dead.

'But so are the Afternoon Cultures. And something wholly new has replaced them both.'

He rose, and went to the window. His tread was silent and swift. He faced her, and the sun bled to death behind him.

'Is there room in this New Empire for an involuntary assassin?'he asked. 'Is there?'

'Cromis, you are a fool.'And she would allow him no answer to that.

Later, he made her look at the Name Stars.

'There,'he said. 'You will not deny this: no one who came after could read what is written there. All empires gutter, and leave a language their heirs cannot understand.'

She smiled up at him, and pushed her hair back from her face.

'Alstath Fulthor the Reborn Man could tell you what it means,'she said.

'It is important to my nature,'he admitted, 'that it remain a mystery to me. If you will command him to keep a close mouth, I will come back.'