‘By now he’s probably in the queue to kiss the wounds of the dead SartoriIrvrash — an unhygienic form of amusement if ever I saw one.’
‘Why did Rob not come to me…?’
There was no answer, but JandolAnganol could guess it: he had been hidden in the pavilion with Milua Tal. It would take many a tenner before the consequences of this day’s work were fully borne out, and he would have to live them through.
As if echoing his thoughts, Alam Esomberr said, ‘And may I enquire what you intend to do with your famous Phagorian Guard, who have committed this atrocity?’
The king threw him a hard glance and continued to walk away from the blaze.
‘Perhaps you will tell me how mankind is ever to solve its phagor problem,’ he said.
Envoi
The soldiery from the Good Hope and the Union landed on the Borlienese coast and marched westwards on Gravabagalinien under the leadership of Io Pasharatid.
As the force progressed, Pasharatid gleaned news of the turmoil about to overwhelm Matrassyl. The conscience of the people had been slowly roused as they digested the news of the massacre of the Myrdolators; the king would be unwelcome when he returned.
In Pasharatid’s harneys a scheme burned with such conviction that it already seemed actual. He would take the queen of queens; Gravabagalinien would fall to him, and she also. Matrassyl would willingly accept her as queen. He would rule as consort; politically he was not ambitious, not greatly. His past, its evasions, disappointments, disgraces, would be over. One minor military engagement, and all he desired would be his.
His advance scouts reported breastworks about the wooden palace. He attacked at Batalix-dawn, when haze stretched across the land. His gunners advanced two-by-two, wheel locks at the ready, protected by pikemen.
A white flag waved from behind the defences. A stocky figure cautiously emerged into the open. Pasharatid signalled to his soldiery to halt, and walked forward alone. He was conscious of how brave he was, how upright. He felt every inch the conqueror.
The stocky man approached. They halted when no more than a pike’s length apart.
Bardol CaraBansity spoke. He asked why soldiers were advancing on an almost undefended palace.
To which Io Pasharatid responded haughtily that he was an honourable man. He required only the surrender of Queen MyrdemInggala, after which he would leave the palace in peace.
CaraBansity made the sacred circle on his forehead and sniffed a resounding sniff. Alas, he said, the queen of queens was dead, slain by an arrow fired by an agent of her ex-husband, King JandolAnganol.
Pasharatid responded with angry disbelief.
‘Look for yourself,’ said CaraBansity.
He gestured towards the sea, lacklustre in the dawn light. Men were launching a funeral barque upon the waters.
In truth, Pasharatid could see it for himself. He left his force and ran to the beach. Four men with heads bowed were carrying a bier on which a body lay beneath layers of white muslin. The hem of the muslin fluttered in a growing breeze. A wreath of flowers lay on top of the body. An old woman with hair growing from a mole in her cheek stood weeping at the water’s edge.
The four men carried the bier reverently aboard the white caravel, the Vajabhar Prayer; the ship’s battered sides had been repaired well enough for a voyage which did not involve the living. They laid the bier under the mast and retired.
ScufBar, the queen’s old majordomo dressed in black, stepped aboard the ship carrying a lighted torch. He bowed deeply to the shrouded body. Then he set light to the brushwood piled high on the deck.
As fire took the ship, it began with the favouring wind to sail slowly out from the bay. The smoke billowed out across the water like lank hair.
Pasharatid cast down his helmet into the sand, crying wildly to his men.
‘On your knees, you hrattocks! Down and pray to the Azoiaxic for this beautiful lady’s soul. The queen is dead, oh, the queen of queens is dead!’
CaraBansity smiled occasionally as he rode a brown hoxney back to his wife in Ottassol. He was a clever fellow and his ruse had succeeded; Pasharatid’s pursuit had been deflected. On the little finger of his right hand, he wore the queen’s gift to him, a ring with a sea-blue stone.
The queen had left Gravabagalinien only a few hours before Pasharatid’s arrival. With her went her general, his sister, the princess Tatro, and a handful of followers. They made their way northeastwards, across the fertile loess lands of Borlien, towards Matrassyl.
Wherever they went, peasants came from their huts, men, women, and children, and called blessing upon MyrdemInggala. The poorest of people ran to feed her party and help her in any way possible.
The queen’s heart was full. But it was not the heart it had been; the heat had gone from her affections. Perhaps she would accept TolramKetinet in time. That remained to be seen. She needed to find her son first and solace him. Then the future could be determined.
Pasharatid remained on the shore for a long while. A herd of deer came down onto the beach and foraged at the high-tide line, ignoring his presence.
The funeral ship drifted out to sea, bearing the corpse of the servant who had died following injuries from a falling gunpowder keg. Flames rose straight up, smoke sank across the waves. A crackle of timber came to Pasharatid’s ears.
He wept and tore his tunic and thought of all that would never happen. He fell to his knees on the sand, weeping for a death that had yet to occur.
The animals of the sea circled about the blazing hulk before leaving. They abandoned coastal waters and headed far out towards the deeps. Moving in well-organised legions, they swam where no man yet had sailed, to merge with the liquid wildernesses of Helliconia.
The years passed. That tumultuous generation faded one by one… Long after the queen was lost to mortal sight, much that was immortal of her travelled across the immeasurable gulfs of space and was received on Earth. There, those lineaments and that face lived again. Her sufferings, joys, failings, virtues — all were called up once more for the peoples of Earth.
On Helliconia itself, all memories of the queen were soon lost, as waves are lost on the beach.
T’Sehn-Hrr shone overhead. The moonlight was blue. Even by day, when Batalix shone through the cool mists, the daylight was blue.
Everything perfectly suited the ancipital kind. Temperatures were low. They held horns high and saw no need to hurry. They lived among the tropical mountains and forests of the Pegovin Peninsula of Hespagorat. They were at peace with one another.
As the runts grew slowly to creighthood and then full adulthood, their coats became dense and black. Under that shapeless pelage, they were immensely strong. They threw roughly shaped spears which could kill at a hundred yards. With those weapons they slew members of other components who infringed their territory.
They had other arts. Fire was their chained and domesticated pet. They travelled with their hearths on their shoulders, and groups of them were to be seen, climbing down to the coast on occasions, where they would trap fish, with names borne on stone slabs upon their broad shoulders.
Bronze accoutrements were not beyond their understanding. With that metal they decorated themselves; the warm gleam of bronze might be caught about the smoking firesides of their mountain caves. They mastered pottery sufficiently to make coil pots, often of intricate design, shaped to resemble the pods of the fruits they ate. Coarse body coverings were woven from reeds and creepers. They had the gift of language. Stalluns and gillots went out to hunt together, or cultivated their scanty vegetables together in cleared patches. There was no quarrel between male and female.