Iain Banks - Inversions

“Accordingly the Emperor caused a great monumental palace to be built on an island in the centre of a great circular lake on the edge of the plains and the ocean, some way from his capital city. The palace was fashioned in the shape of a mighty conical tower half a hundred storeys tall. It was filled with every imaginable luxury and treasure the empire and kingdoms could provide, all secured deep within the furthest reaches of the monument, where they would be hidden from the common thief yet visible to the fiery bird when it came for the Emperor.

“There too were placed magical statues of all the Emperor’s favourites, wives and concubines, all guaranteed by his holiest holy men to come alive when the Emperor died and the great bird of fire came to take him.

“The chief architect of the palace was a man called Munnosh who was renowned throughout the world as the greatest builder there had ever been, and it was his skill and cunning that made the whole great project possible. For this reason the Emperor showered Munnosh with riches, favours and concubines. But Munnosh was ten years younger than the Emperor, and as the Emperor grew old and the great monument neared completion, he knew that Munnosh would outlive him, and might speak, or be made to speak of how and where the great cache of riches had been placed within the palace, once the Emperor had died and was living there with the great bird of fire and the magically alive statues. Munnosh might even have time to complete a still greater monument for the next King who ascended to the Imperial throne and became Emperor.

“With this in mind, the Emperor waited until the great mausoleum was all but finished and then had Munnosh lured to the very deepest level of the vast edifice, and while the architect waited in a small chamber deep underground for what he had been promised would be a great surprise, he was walled in by the Imperial guards, who closed off all that part of the lowest level.

“The Emperor had his courtiers tell Munnosh’s family that the architect had been killed when a great block of stone fell on him while he was inspecting the building, and they grieved loudly and terribly.

“But the Emperor had misjudged the cunning and wariness of the architect, who had long suspected something just like this might happen. Accordingly, he had had constructed a hidden passage from the lowest cellars of the great monumental palace to the outside. When Munnosh realised he had been immured, he uncovered the hidden passage and made his way to the ground above, where he waited until the night and then stole away on one of the workers’ boats, gliding across the circular lake.

“When he returned to his home his wife, who thought she was a widow, and his children, who thought they were without a father, at first thought he was a ghost, and shrank from him in fear. Eventually he persuaded them that he was alive, and that they should accompany him into exile, away from the Empire. The whole family made their escape to a distant Kingdom where the King had need of a great builder to oversee the construction of fortifications to keep out the savages of the wastelands, and where everybody either did not know who this great architect was, or pretended not to for the sake of the fortifications and the safety of the Kingdom.

“However, the Emperor heard that a great architect was at work in this distant Kingdom, and, through various rumours and reports, came to suspect that this master builder was indeed Munnosh. The Emperor, who was by now very frail and elderly and near death, ordered the secret opening-up of the great mausoleum’s lower levels. This was done, and of course Munnosh was not there, and the secret passage-way was discovered.

“The Emperor ordered the King to send his master builder to the Imperial capital. The King at first refused, asking for more time because the fortifications were not ready yet and the savages of the wasteland were proving more tenacious and better organised than had been anticipated, but the Emperor, still nearer to death now, insisted, and eventually the King gave in and with great reluctance sent the architect Munnosh to the capital. The architect’s family treated his departure as they had the false news that he had been killed, those many years ago.

“The Emperor at this time was so close to dying that he spent almost all his time in the great death-defying palace Munnosh had constructed for him, and it was there that Munnosh was taken.

“When the Emperor saw Munnosh, and knew that it was his old chief architect, he cried out, ‘Munnosh, treacherous Munnosh! Why did you desert me and your greatest creation?’

“‘Because you had me walled up within it and left to die, my Emperor,’ Munnosh replied.

“‘It was done only to assure the safety of your Emperor and to preserve your own good name,’ the old tyrant told Munnosh. ‘You ought to have accepted what was done and let your family mourn you decently and in peace. Instead you led them into benighted exile and only ensured that now they will have to mourn you a second time.’

“When the Emperor said this, Munnosh fell to his knees and began to weep and to plead for forgiveness from the Emperor. The Emperor held out one thin, shaking hand and smiled and said, ‘But that need not concern you, because I have sent my finest assassins to seek out your wife and your children and your grandchildren, to kill them all before they can learn of your disgrace and death.’

“At this Munnosh, who had concealed a mason’s store chisel beneath his robes, leapt forward and tried to strike the Emperor down, aiming the chisel straight at the old man’s throat.

“Instead Munnosh was struck down, before his blow could fall, by the Emperor’s chief bodyguard, who never left his master’s side. The man who had once been Imperial chief architect landed dead at his Emperor’s feet, head severed by a single terrible blow from the bodyguard’s sword.

“But the chief bodyguard was so full of shame that Munnosh had come so close to the Emperor with a weapon, and also so appalled at the cruelty which the Emperor intended to visit on the innocent family of the architect — which was but the grain that breaks the bridge, for he had witnessed a lifetime’s cruelty from the old tyrant — that he killed the Emperor and then himself, with another two swinging blows from his mighty sword, before anybody else could move to stop him.

“The Emperor got his wish then, dying within the great palatial mausoleum he had built. Whether he succeeded in cheating death or not we cannot know, but it is unlikely, as the Empire fell apart very soon after his death and the vast monument he caused to be constructed at such crippling expense to his empire was looted utterly within the year and fell quickly into disrepair, so that now it is used only as a ready source of dressed stone for the city of Haspide, which was founded a few centuries later on the same island, in what is now called Crater Lake, in the Kingdom of Haspidus.”

“What a sad tale! But what happened to the family of Munnosh?” asked the lady Perrund. The lady Perrund had once been the first concubine of the Protector. She remained a prized partner of the General’s household and one whom he was still known to visit on occasion.

The bodyguard DeWar shrugged. “We don’t know,” he told her. “The Empire fell, the Kings fought amongst themselves, the barbarians invaded from all sides, fire fell from the sky and a dark age resulted that lasted many hundreds of years. Little historical detail survived the fall of the lesser kingdoms.”

“But we may hope that the assassins heard their Emperor was dead and so did not carry out their mission, may we not? Or that they were caught up in the chaos of the Empire’s collapse and had to look to their own safety. Would that not be likely?”