Robert Silverberg: A Time of Changes

“One cries claim!” I shouted jubilantly, and lifted my weapon, and eyed the sight, remembering what I had been taught, to let the inner mind make the calculations, to aim and fire in one swift impulse before the intellect, by quibbling, could spoil the intuition’s command.

And in the instant before I sent my bolt aloft there came a ghastly outcry from my left, and I fired without aiming at all, turning in the same instant toward my father’s place, and seeing him half hidden beneath the madly flapping form of another hornfowl that had gored him from spine to belly. The air about them was clouded with red sand as the monster’s wings furiously slapped the ground; the bird was struggling to take off, but a hornfowl cannot lift a man’s weight, though this does not prevent them from attacking us. I ran to aid the septarch. He still was shouting, and I saw his hands clutching for the hornfowl’s scrawny throat, but now there was a liquid quality about his cries, a bubbling tone, and when I reached the scene — I was the first one there — he lay sprawled and quiet, with the bird still rammed through him and covering his body like a black cloak. My blade was out; I slashed the hornfowl’s neck as if it were a length of hose, kicked the carcass aside, began to wrench desperately at the demonic head mounted so hideously upon the septarch’s upturned back. Now the others came; they pulled me away; someone seized me by the shoulders and shook me until my fit was past. When I turned to them again, they closed their ranks, to keep me from seeing my father’s corpse, and then, to my dismay, they dropped to their knees before me to do homage. ***

But of course it was Stirron and not I who became septarch in Salla. His crowning was a grand event, for, young though he was, he would be the prime septarch of the province. Salla’s six other septarchs came to the capital — only on such an occasion were they ever to be found at once in the same city — and for a time everything was feasting and banners and the blare of trumpets. Stirron was at the center of it all, and I on the margins, which was as it should be, though it left me feeling more like a stableboy than a prince. Once he was enthroned, Stirron offered me titles and land and power, but he did not really expect me to accept, and I did not. Unless a septarch is a weakling, his younger brothers had best not stay nearby to help him rule, for such help is not desired often. I had had no living uncles on my father’s side of the family, and I did not care to have Stirron’s sons be able to make the same statement; therefore I took myself quickly from Salla once the time of mourning was ended. ***

I went to Glin, my mother’s land. There, however, things were unsatisfactory for me, and after a few years I moved on to the steamy province of Manneran, where I won my wife and sired my sons and became a prince in more than name, and lived happily and sturdily until my time of changes began.

Perhaps I should set down some words concerning my world’s geography.

There are five continents on our planet of Borthan. In this hemisphere there are two, Velada Borthan and Sumara Borthan, which is to say, the Northern World and the Southern World. It is a long sea journey from any shore of these continents to the continents of the opposite hemisphere, which have been named merely Umbis, Dabis, Tibis, that is, One, Two, Three.

Of those three distant lands I can tell you very little. They first were explored some seven hundred years ago by a septarch of Glin, who laid down his life for his curiosity, and there have not been five seeking-parties to them in all the time since. No human folk dwell in that hemisphere. Umbis is said to be largely like the Burnt Lowlands, but worse, with golden flames bursting from the tormented land in many places. Dabis is jungles and fever-ridden swamps, and someday will be full of our people hoping to prove manhood, for I understand it is thick with dangerous beasts. Tibis is covered with ice.

We are not a race afflicted with the wanderlust. I myself was never a voyager until circumstances made me one. Though the blood of the ancient Earthmen flows in our veins, and they were wanderers whose demons drove them out to prowl the stars, we of Borthan stay close to home. Even I who am somewhat different from my comrades in my way of thinking never hungered to see the snowfields of Tibis or the marshes of Dabis, except perhaps when I was a child and eager to gobble all the universe. Among us it is considered a great thing merely to journey from Salla to Glin, and rare indeed is the man who has crossed the continent, let alone ventured to Sumara Borthan, as I have done.

As I have done.

Velada Borthan is the home of our civilization. The mapmakers’ art reveals it to be a large squarish landmass with rounded corners. Two great V-shaped indentations puncture its periphery: along the northern coast, midway between the eastern and western corners, there is the Polar Gulf, and, due south on the opposite coast, there is the Gulf of Sumar. Between those two bodies of water lie the Lowlands, a trough that spans the entire continent from north to south. No point in the Lowlands rises higher above sea level than the height of five men, and there are many places, notably in the Burnt Lowlands, that are far below sea level.

There is a folktale we tell our children concerning the shape of Velada Borthan. We say that the great iceworm Hrungir, born in the waters of the North Polar Sea, stirred and woke one day in sudden appetite, and began to nibble at the northern shore of Velada Borthan. The worm chewed for a thousand thousand years, until it had eaten out the Polar Gulf. Then, its voracity having made it somewhat ill, it crawled up on the land to rest and digest what it had devoured. Uneasy at the stomach, Hrungir wriggled southward, causing the land to sink beneath its vast weight and the mountains to rise, in compensation, to the east and west of its resting-place. The worm rested longest in the Burnt Lowlands, which accordingly were depressed more deeply than any other region. In time the worm’s appetite revived, and it resumed its southward crawl, coming at last to a place where a range of mountains running from east to west barred its advance. Then it chewed the mountains, creating Stroin Gap, and proceeded toward our southern coast. In another fit of hunger the worm bit out the Gulf of Sumar. The waters of the Strait of Sumar rushed in to fill the place where the land had been, and the rising tide carried Hrungir to the continent of Sumara Borthan, where now the iceworm lives, coiled beneath the volcano Vashnir and emitting poisonous fumes. So the fable goes.

The long narrow basin that we think of as Hrungir’s track is divided into three districts. At the northern end we have the Frozen Lowlands, a place of perpetual ice where no man is ever seen. Legend has it that the air is so dry and cold that a single breath will turn a man’s lungs to leather. The polar influence reaches only a short distance into our continent, however. South of the Frozen Lowlands lie the immense Burnt Lowlands, which are almost totally without water, and on which the full fury of our sun constantly falls. Our two towering north-south mountain ranges prevent a drop of rain from entering the Burnt Lowlands, nor do any rivers or streams reach it. The soil is bright red, with occasional yellow streaks, and this we blame on the heat of Hrungir’s belly, though our geologists tell another tale. Small plants live in the Burnt Lowlands, taking their nourishment from I know not where, and there are many kinds of beasts, all of them strange, deformed, and unpleasant. At the southern end of the Burnt Lowlands there is a deep east-west valley, several days’ journey in breadth, and on its far side lies the small district known as the Wet Lowlands. Northerly breezes coming off the Gulf of Sumar carry moisture through Stroin Gap; these winds meet the fierce hot blasts out of the Burnt Lowlands and are forced to drop their burden not far above the Gap, creating a land of dense, lush vegetation. Never do the water-laden breezes from the south succeed in getting north of the Wet Lowlands to bathe the zone of red soil. The Frozen Lowlands, as I have said, go forever unvisited, and the Burnt Lowlands are entered only by hunters and those who must travel between the eastern and western coasts, but the Wet Lowlands are populated by several thousand farmers, who raise exotic fruits for the city folk. I am told that the constant rain rots their souls, that they have no form of government, and that our customs of self-denial are imperfectly observed. I would be among them now, to discover their nature at first hand, if only I could slip through the cordon that my enemies have set up to the south of this place.