Flooding caused by the new river through its new valley forced one insignificant group of phagors of the nomadic type to disperse in the direction of Oldorando instead of heading east. Their destiny was to encounter Aoz Roon at a later date. Though their deflection at the time was of little seeming importance even to the ancipitals themselves, it was to alter the social history of the sector.
There were, on the Avernus, those who studied the social history of Helliconian cultures; but it was the heliographers who regarded their science as the most valuable. Before all else came the light.
Star B, which the natives below called Batalix, was a modest spectral class G4 sun. In real terms slightly smaller than Sol, its radius being 0.94 Sol’s, its apparent size as seen from Helliconia was 76 percent that of Sol seen from Earth. With a photosphere temperature of 5600 Kelvin, its luminosity was only 0.8 that of Sol. It was about five billion years old.
The more distant star, known locally as Freyr, about which Star B revolved, was a much more impressive object as viewed from the Avernus. Star A was a brilliant white spectral class A-type supergiant, with a radius sixty-five times that of Sol, and a luminosity sixty thousand times as great. Its mass was 14.8 times Sol’s, and its surface temperature 11,000K, as opposed to Sol’s 5780K.
Although Star B had its constant students, Star A was a greater magnet for attention, especially now that the Avernus was moving, along with the rest of Star B’s system, nearer to the supergiant.
Freyr was between ten and eleven million years old. It had evolved away from the main sequence of stars and was already entering its old age.
Such was the intensity of the energy it poured out that the disc of Star A was always more intense as viewed from Helliconia than that of Star B, though it never appeared so large, owing to its much greater distance. It was a worthy object for ancipital fear — and for Vry’s admiration.
Vry stood alone on the top of her tower, her telescope by her side. She waited. She watched. She felt the history of private relationships flowing towards the morrow like a silt-laden river; what had been fresh was clogged with sediment. Beneath her passivity was an unformulated longing to be seized up by some larger thing which would provide wider, purer perspectives than faulty human nature could command.
When darkness fell, she would look again at the stars — provided the cloud cover parted sufficiently.
Oldorando was now surrounded by palisades of green. Day by day, new leaves unfurled and mounted higher, as if nature had a plan to bury the town in forest. Some of the more distant towers had already been overwhelmed by vegetation.
She saw a large white bird hover above one such mound without paying it particular attention. She watched and admired its effortless hovering above the earth.
Distantly came the sound of men singing. The hunters were back in Oldorando from a hoxney hunt, and Aoz Roon was holding a feast. The feast was in honour of his three new lieutenants, Tanth Ein, Faralin Ferd, and Eline Tal. These friends of his childhood supplanted Dathka and Laintal Ay, who were now relegated to the chase.
Vry tried to keep her thoughts abstract, but they drifted back continually to the more emotional subject of defeated hope — hers, Dathka’s, whose desires she could not find it in herself to encourage, Laintal Ay’s. Her mood was in tune with the long-protracted evening. Batalix was down, the other sentinel would follow in an hour. This was a time when men and beasts made preparations against the reign of night. This was a time to bring out a stub of candle against some undreamed-of emergency, or to resolve to sleep until the light of dawn.
From her eyrie, Vry saw the common people of Oldorando — whether or not further on with their hopes — coming home. Among them was the thin crooked shape of Shay Tal.
Shay Tal returned to the tower with Amin Lim, looking grimy and tired. Since the murder of Master Datnil, she had become increasingly remote. The curse of silence had fallen on her too. She was currently trying to follow a suggestion made by the dead master, to dig her way into King Denniss’s pyramid, out by the sacrificial ground. Despite the aid of slaves, she had no success. People who went to look at the earthwork being thrown up laughed, openly or secretly, for the stepped walls of the pyramid went on down into the earth without feature. For every foot dug, Shay Tal’s mouth grew grimmer.
Moved by both pity and her own loneliness, Vry went down to speak to Shay Tal. The sorceress seemed to have precious little that was magical about her; almost alone among the women of Oldorando, she still wore the old clumsy furs, hanging ungracefully about her body, giving her an outdated air. Everyone else was in hoxneys.
Afflicted by the older woman’s woebegone air, Vry could not resist giving some advice.
‘You make yourself so unhappy, ma’am. The ground is full of the dark and the past — do stop scratching there.’
With a flash of humour, Shay Tal said, ‘We neither of us see happiness as our prime duty.’
‘Your attention’s so downcast.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘Look at that white bird, circling gracefully in the air. Doesn’t the sight lift your spirits? I’d like to be that bird, and fly up to the stars.’
Somewhat to Vry’s surprise. Shay Tal went to the window and looked in the direction Vry pointed. Then she turned, brushing her hair from her brow, and said calmly, ‘You observe it’s a cowbird you pointed out?’
‘I suppose so. What of it?’ Shadows were already gathering in the room.
‘Do you not recall Fish Lake and other encounters? Those birds are the familiars of phagors.’
She spoke placidly, in her detached academy manner. Vry was frightened, thinking how self-absorbed she had been to neglect an elementary fact. She put her hand to her mouth, looking from Shay Tal to Amin Lim and back.
‘Another attack? What should we do?’
‘It appears that I have ceased to communicate with the Lord of Embruddock, or he with me. Vry, you must go and inform him that the enemy may be at his gates while he feasts with his cronies. He will know that I can’t be relied on to forestall the brutes, as once I did. Go right away.’
As Vry hastened down the path, rain started to drip again. She followed the singing. Aoz Roon and his cronies sat in the lowest room in the tower of the metal-makers corps. Their faces were ripe with the food and beethel set before them. A trencher piled with geese stuffed with raige and scantiom formed the chief dish; its aroma made the starved Vry’s mouth water. Those present included the three new lieutenants and their women, the newest master of the council, Raynil Layan, and Dol and Oyre. The last two alone looked pleased at Vry’s entry. As Vry knew — as Rol Sakil had proudly announced — Dol now carried Aoz Roon’s child inside her.
Candles burned already on the tables; dogs milled in the shadows under the tables. Flavours of cooked goose and raw dogs’ piss intermingled.
Although the men were red and shining, despite the piped heating the room felt cold. Rain gusted in, causing streamlets to run between the flags. It was a small dirty room, with cobwebs festooning every corner. Vry took it all in as she broke her news nervously to Aoz Roon.
She had once been familiar with every adze mark on the beams overhead. Her mother had served as a slave to the metal makers, and she had lived in this room, or in a corner of it, and witnessed the degradation of her mother every night.
Although he had looked far gone in drink a moment earlier, Aoz Roon jumped up immediately. Curd started to bark furiously, and Dol kicked him into silence. The other feasters stared at each other rather stupidly, reluctant to digest Vry’s news.