JandolAnganol’s voice was low with sorrow as he tore the hairs from his beard and head, crying to Akhanaba.
‘Thy servant falls before thee, O Great One. Thou hast visited sorrow upon me. Thou hast caused my armies to go down in defeat. Thou hast caused my son to forsake me. Thou hast caused me to divorce my beloved queen, MyrdemInggala. Thou hast caused my intended bride to be assassinated… What more must I suffer for Thy sake?
‘Let not my people suffer. Accept my suffering, O Great Lord, as a sufficient sacrifice for my people.’
As he rose and put on his tunic, the pallid-chopped AbstrogAthenat said casually, ‘It’s true that the army has lost Randonan. But all civilised countries are surrounded by barbaric ones, and are defeated when their armies invade them. We should go, not with the sword, but with the word of God.’
‘Crusades are in the province of Pannoval, not a poor country like ours, Vicar.’ Adjusting his tunic over his wounds, he felt in his pocket the three-faced timepiece he had taken from CaraBansity in Ottassol. Now as then, he felt it to be an object of ill omen.
AbstrogAthenat bowed, holding the whip behind him. ‘At least we might please the All-Powerful by being more human, and shunning the inhuman.’
In sudden anger, JandolAnganol struck out with his left hand and caught the vicar across the cheek with his knuckles.
‘You keep to God’s affairs and leave worldly matters to me.’
He knew what the man meant. His reference had been to purging phagors from Borlien.
Leaving his tunic open, feeling its fabric absorb the blood of his latest scourging, JandolAnganol climbed from the subterranean chapel to the ground floor of the wooden palace. Yuli jumped up to welcome him.
His head throbbed as if he were going blind. He patted the little phagor and sank his fingers into its thick pelage.
Shadows still lay long outside the palace. He scarcely knew how to face the morning: only yesterday he had arrived at Gravabagalinien and — in the presence of the envoy of the Holy C’Sarr, Alam Esomberr — he had divorced his fair queen.
The palace was shuttered as it had been the day previously. Now men lay everywhere in the rooms, still in drink-sodden sleep. Sunlight cut its way into the darkness in a crisscross of lines, making it seem like a woven basket that he walked through, heading for the doorway.
When he flung the door open, the Royal First Phagorian Guard stood on duty outside, its ranks of long jaws and horns unmoving. That was something worth seeing anyway, he told himself, trying to dispel his black mood.
He walked in the air before the heat rose. He saw the sea and felt the breeze, and heeded them not. Before dawn, while he still slept heavily from drink, Esomberr had come to him. Beside Esomberr stood his new chancellor, Bardol CaraBansity. They had informed him that the Madi princess he intended to marry was dead, killed by an assassin.
Nothing was left.
Why had he gone to such trouble to divorce his true wife? What had possessed his mind? There were severances the hardiest could not survive.
It was his wish to speak to her.
A delicacy in him restrained him from sending a messenger up to her room. He knew that she was there with the little princess Tatro waiting for him to leave and take his soldiers with him. Probably she had heard the news the men had brought in the night. Probably she feared assassination. Probably she hated him.
He turned in his sharp way, as if to catch himself out. His new chancellor was approaching with his heavy, determined tread, jowls jolting.
JandolAnganol eyed CaraBansity and then turned his back on him. CaraBansity was forced to skirt him and Yuli before making a clumsy bow.
The king stared at him. Neither man spoke. CaraBansity turned his cloudy gaze from the king’s.
‘You find me in an ill mood.’
‘I have not slept either, sire. I deeply regret this fresh misfortune which has visited you.’
‘My ill mood covers not only the All-Powerful but you, who are not so powerful.’
‘What have I done to displease you, sire?’
The Eagle drew his brows together, making his gaze more hawklike.
‘I know you are secretly against me. You have a reputation for craftiness. I saw that gloating look you could not conceal when you came to announce the death of — you know who.’
‘The Madi princess? If you so distrust me, sire, you must not take me on as your chancellor.’
JandolAnganol presented his back again, with the yellow gauze of his tunic patterned red with blood like an ancient banner.
CaraBansity began to shuffle. He stared up abstractedly at the palace and saw how its white paint was peeling. He felt what it was to be a commoner and what it was to be a king.
He enjoyed his life. He knew many people and was useful to the community. He loved his wife. He prospered. Yet the king had come along and snatched him up against his will, as if he were a slave.
He had accepted the role and, being a man of character, made the best of it. Now this sovereign had the gall to tell CaraBansity that he was secretly against his king. There was no limit to royal impertinence — and as yet he could see no way to escape following JandolAnganol all the way to Oldorando.
His sympathy with the king’s predicament left him.
‘I meant to say, Your Majesty,’ he began in a determined voice, and then became alarmed by his own temerity, looking at that bloody back. ‘This is just a trifling matter, of course, but, before we set sail from Ottassol, you took from me that interesting timepiece with three faces. Do you happen to have it still?’
The king did not turn or move.
He said, ‘I have it here in my tunic.’
CaraBansity took a deep breath and then said, much more feebly than he intended, ‘Would you return it to me, please, Your Majesty?’
‘This is no time to approach me for favours, when Borlien’s standing within the Holy Empire is threatened.’ He was the Eagle as he spoke.
They both stood, watching Yuli root in the bushes by the palace. The creature pissed after the retromingent fashion of his species.
The king began to walk with measured pace in the direction of the sea.
I’m no better than a damned slave, said CaraBansity to himself. He followed.
With the runt skipping beside him, the king speeded his step, speaking rapidly as he went, so that the portly deuteroscopist was forced to catch up. He never mentioned the subject of his timepiece again.
‘Akhanaba had favoured me and set many fruits in my life’s way. And always to those fruits an additional flavour was given when I saw that more were promised — tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Whatever I wished, I might have more of.
‘It’s true I suffered setbacks and defeats, but that within a general atmosphere of promise. I did not allow them to disturb me for long. My personal defeat in the Cosgart — well, I learnt from it and put it behind me, and eventually won a great victory there.’
They passed a line of gwing-gwing trees. The king snatched down a gwing-gwing, biting into it to the stone as he spoke, letting the juice run down his chin. He gestured, clutching the despoiled fruit.
‘Today, I see my life in a new light. Perhaps all that was promised me I have already received… I am, after all, more than twenty-five years.’ He spoke with difficulty. ‘Perhaps this is my summer, and in future when I shake the bush no fruit will fall… Can I any longer rely on plenty? Doesn’t our religion warn us that we must expect times of famine? Fah! — Akhanaba is like a Sibornalese, always obsessed with the winter to come.’
They walked along the low cliffs separating land from beach, where the queen was accustomed to swim.