Alam Esomberr felt less enthusiastic. Brought up in his father’s house in the subterranean recesses of Pannoval, he was unhappy in the open and mutinous about the forced pace. The dandified envoy of the Holy C’Sarr called a halt at last, knowing he had the support of his weary retinue.
It was dimday, when fat, brilliant flowers opened among the lustreless grasses, inviting the attention of dusk-moths. A bird called, hammering at its two notes.
They had left the loess farmlands behind and were traversing a farmless moor which supported few villages. For shade, the envoy’s party retreated under an enormous denniss tree, whose leaves sighed in the breeze. The denniss sprouted many trunks, some young, some ancient, which propped themselves up languidly — like Esomberr himself — with gnarled elbows as they sprawled on the ground in all directions.
‘What can drive you like this, Jandol?’ Esomberr asked. ‘What are we hurrying for, except for hurrying’s abominable sake? To put it another way, what fate awaits you in Oldorando better than the one you revoked in Gravabagalinien?’
He eased his legs and looked up with his amused glance into the king’s countenance.
JandolAnganol squatted nearby, balancing on his toes. A faint smell of smoke came to his nostrils, and he searched the distance for its origin. He threw small pebbles at the earth.
A group of the king’s captains, the Royal Armourer, and others leant on their staffs, a short distance away. Some smoked veronikanes, one teased Yuli, prodding the creature with his staff.
‘We must reach Oldorando as soon as possible.’ He spoke as one who wants no argument, but Esomberr persisted.
‘I’m eager to see that somewhat squalid city myself, if only to soak for a few millennia in one of their famous hot springs. That doesn’t mean I’m anxious to run all the way there. You’re a changed man since your Pannoval days, Jandol — not quite such fun, if I may say so…’
The king threw his pebbles more violently. ‘Borlien needs an alliance with Sayren Stund. That deuteroscopist who presented me with my three-faced timepiece, Bardol CaraBansity, said I had no business in Oldorando. A conviction seized me at that moment that I had to go there. My father supported me. His dying words to me were — as he lay dying in my arms—“Go to Oldorando.” Since that fool TolramKetinet allowed his army to be wiped out, I can only seek union with Oldorando. The fates of Borlien and Oldorando have always been linked.’ He flung down a final stone with violence, as if to destroy all argument.
Esomberr said nothing. He plucked a grass blade to suck, suddenly self-conscious under the king’s stare.
After a moment, JandolAnganol jumped up, to stand with his feet planted apart.
‘Here stand I. While I press upon the earth, the energies of the earth surge up through my body. I am of the Borlienese soil. I am a natural force.’
He raised his arms, fingers tensed.
The phagors, armed with their matchlocks, lay about at a short distance, like shapeless cattle, looking over the plain. Some rooted under stone and found grubs or rickybacks, which they ate. Others stood without movement beyond the occasional swing of the head or a flick of the ears to ward off flies. Winged things buzzed in the shade. Made uneasy, Esomberr sat up.
‘I don’t understand what you mean, but do enjoy yourself.’ His voice was dry.
The king scrutinised the horizon as he spoke. ‘An example for you, so that you understand well the kind of man I am. Although I may have rejected my Queen MyrdemInggala for whatever reason, nevertheless she remains mine. If I discovered that you, for instance, had dared to enter her bedchamber to consort with her while we were in Gravabagalinien, then, notwithstanding our friendship, I would kill you without compunction, and hang your eddre from this tree.’
Neither of them moved. Then Esomberr rose and stood with his back to one of the trunks of the denniss. His narrow handsome face had grown as pale as a dead leaf.
‘I say, did it ever occur to you that those damned phagors of yours, well armed with Sibornalese weapons, strike fear into ordinary chaps like me? That they will most likely meet with an ill reception in Sayren Stund’s capital, where a holy drumble is in progress? Are you ever afraid that you might… well, grow to be a bit like a phagor yourself?’
The king turned slowly, with an expression denoting total lack of interest in the question.
‘Watch.’
He screwed his face into a mixture of grimace and smile, and snorted breath through his nose. He broke into a run, gathered himself, and leaped clear over one of the trunks of the tree, a full four feet above the ground. It was a perfect jump. He recovered himself, turned, and jumped the trunk in the opposite direction, with a force which carried him almost against Esomberr.
The king was half a head taller than the envoy. The latter, alarmed, reached for his sword, then stood without movement, tense against the king.
‘I am twenty-five years of age, in fine condition, and fear neither man nor phagor. My secret is that I am capable of going with circumstances. Oldorando shall be my circumstance. I gain energy from the geometry of circumstance… Do not vex me, Alam Esomberr, or forget my words about the sanctity of what was once mine. I am one of your circumstances, and not vice versa.’
The envoy moved to one side, coughed as a reason for moving his hand from his sword hilt to his mouth, and managed a pale smile.
‘You’re terribly fit, I see that. That’s tremendous. By the beholder, but I envy you. It’s a wretched nuisance that I and my little rabble of vicars aren’t in such fine trim. I’ve often thought that praying vitiates the muscles. Therefore, I must request that you proceed ahead with your party and your favoured species — at your breakneck pace — while we follow on behind at our own feeble pace, eh?’
JandolAnganol regarded him without change of expression. Then he gave a fierce grimace. ‘Very well. The country hereabouts is peaceful, but guard yourselves. Robbers have scant respect for vicars. Remember you carry my bill of divorcement.’
‘Strive ever onwards, if you will. I shall deliver your bill to the C’Sarr in good time.’ He gave a wave of his hand and left it dangling in front of him. The king did not take it.
Instead, JandolAnganol turned away without further word and whistled Yuli to his side. He called the gillot leader of the guard, Ghht-Mlark Chzarn. The ahuman columns formed up and marched away; the humans followed more informally. In a short while, Alam Esomberr, together with his followers, was left standing silent under the denniss tree. Then the figures were lost to JandolAnganol amid the shade. Soon the great tree itself was lost in the shimmering heat of the plain.
Two days later, the king halted his force only a few miles short of Oldorando. Wisps of smoke trailed across the rolling landscape.
He stood by one of the aged stone pillars which dotted the landscape. Impatient for the rear of the phagor column to catch up, JandolAnganol traced with one finger the worn design on the stone, a familiar pattern of two concentric circles with curving lines running from inner to outer circle. Just for a moment, he wondered what the pillar and its pattern could signify; but such enigmas — presumably never capable of resolution, any more than he expected to be told what long-dead king had erected the stones — occupied his mind only for a moment. His thoughts were all on what lay immediately ahead.
They had reached a region which was in fact a hinterland of the fabled city they were approaching.
Of that city, there was as yet no sign. The view comprised low rolling hills, the foothills of the foothills of the Quzint Mountains, running like an armoured spine over the continent. Ahead, sprawling across the ground, was one of the ucts, threading its way into the distance on either side.