Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [248]
It took Helliconia 2592 Earth years to complete one Great Year in its orbit about Freyr, during which time the planet endured extremes of heat and cold. Spring was over. Summer, the enervating summer of the Great Year, had arrived.
Summer’s duration would extend over two and a third Earth centuries. To those who lived on Helliconia at this time, winter and its desolations were but legends, although powerful ones. So they would remain yet a while, waiting in the human mind to become fact.
Above Helliconia shone its own local sun, Batalix. Dominating Batalix was its giant binary companion, Freyr, shining at present with an apparent brightness thirty percent greater than Batalix, although it was 236 times more distant.
Despite their involvements in their own history, the observers on Earth watched Helliconian events closely. They saw that strands of the web – the religious strand not the least – had been woven long ago which now entangled the King of Borlien.
III
A Premature Divorce
The Borlienese were not a nation of seamen, despite their long seacoast. It followed that they were not great shipbuilders like the Sibornalese, or even some nations of Hespagorat. The ship that took the king to Gravabagalinien and divorce was a small brig with round bows. It kept the coast in sight most of the time and navigated by traverse board, on which the mean course made good during each watch was calculated from the positions of pegs inserted on the board.
An even more tublike brig followed the first bearing the ancipitals of the First Phagorian Guard.
The king broke from his companions as soon as the ship sailed and went to stand by the rails, staring rigidly ahead, as if anxious to be the first to see the queen. Yuli became miserable at the motion of the sea and sprawled by the capstan. For once the king showed his pet no sympathy.
Its cordage creaking, the brig laboured through calm seas.
The king fell suddenly to the deck. His courtiers ran to him and lifted him. JandolAnganol was carried to his cabin and placed in his bunk. He was deathly pale and rolled about as if in pain, hiding his face.
A medical man examined him and ordered everyone to leave the cabin except CaraBansity. ‘Stay by his majesty. He has a touch of seasickness but nothing more. As soon as we get ashore he will be well again.’
‘I understood that a characteristic of seasickness was vomiting.’
‘Hmm, well, in some cases. Commoners. Royal personages respond in a different fashion.’ The doctor bowed himself out.
After a while, the king’s muttered complaints became articulate. ‘The dreadful thing I must do. Pray Akhanaba it will soon be over …’
‘Majesty let us discuss a sensible, important topic, to calm your mind. That rare bracelet of mine which you hold—’
The king raised his head and said, with his inflexible look, ‘Get out of here, you cretin. I’ll have you flung overboard to the fish. Nothing is important, nothing – nothing on this earth.’
‘May your majesty soon recover himself,’ said CaraBansity, backing his awkward bulk out of the cabin.
The ship made fair progress westwards, and sailed into the little bay at Gravabagalinien on the morning of the second day at sea. JandolAnganol, suddenly himself again, walked down the gangplank and into the surf – there was no jetty at Gravabagalinien – with Alam Esomberr close behind him, holding up his cloak tails.
With the latter travelled an escort of ten dignitaries of high ecclesiastical office, referred to by Esomberr as his rabble of vicars. The king’s retinue contained captains and armourers.
The queen’s palace waited inland, without a sign of life. Its narrow windows were shuttered. A black flag flew at half-mast from a turret. The king’s face, turned towards it, was itself as blank as a shuttered window. No man dared look long at it, lest he catch the Eagle’s eye.
The second brig was coming in, making awkward progress. Despite