Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [310]
The two women walked in MyrdemInggala’s dimday garden. Tatro was playing with Princess Simoda Tal – an irony which could be borne if not contemplated closely.
This garden the queen had created herself, directing her gardeners. Heavy trees and artificial cliffs screened the walks from Freyr’s eyes. There was sufficient shade for genetic sports and melanic forms of vegetation to flourish.
Dimday plants flowered beside fullday ones. The jeodfray, a fullday creeper with light pink-and-orange flowers, became the stunted albic, hugging the ground. The albic occasionally put forth grotesque scarlet-and-orange buds along a fleshy stem, to attract the attention of dimday moths. Nearby were olvyl, yarrpel, idront, and spikey brooth, all relishing shade. The ground-loving vispard produced hooded blossoms. It was the adaptation of a nocturnal species, the zadal bush, and had moved towards lighter conditions rather than darker.
Such plants had been brought by her subjects from different parts of the kingdom. She had no great understanding of the astronomy which SartoriIrvrash tried to instil in her, or of the slow protracted manoeuvres of Freyr along the heavens, except through her appreciation of these plants, which represented an instinctive vegetable response to those confusingly abstract ellipses of which the chancellor loved to talk.
Now she would visit this favoured place no more. The ellipses of her own life were moving against her.
The king and his chancellor appeared at the gate. She sensed their wish for formality even from a distance. She saw the tension in the king’s stance. She laid a hand on her lady-in-waiting’s wrist in alarm.
SartoriIrvrash approached and bowed formally. Then he took the lady-in-waiting off with him, in order to leave the royal couple alone.
Mai instantly broke into anxious protests.
‘The king will murder Cune. He suspects she loves my brother Hanra, but it is not so. I’d swear to it. The queen has done nothing wrong. She is innocent.’
‘His calculations run otherwise, and he will not murder her,’ said SartoriIrvrash. He hardly looked the figure to comfort her. He had shrunk inside his charfrul and his face was grey. ‘He rids himself of the queen for political reasons. It has been done before.’
He brushed a butterfly impatiently from his sleeve.
‘Why did he have Yeferal murdered, then?’
‘That piece of botheration is not to be laid at the king’s door but rather at mine. Cease your prattle, woman. Go with Cune into exile and look after her. I hope to be in touch some time, if my own situation continues. Gravabagalinien is no bad place to be.’
They entered into an archway and were immediately embraced within the stuffy complexities of the building.
Mai TolramKetinet asked in a more even voice, ‘What has overcome the king’s mind?’
‘I know only of his ego, not his mind. It is bright like a diamond. It will cut all other egos. It cannot easily tolerate the queen’s gentleness.’
When the young woman left him, he stood at the bottom of the stairwell, trying to steady himself. Somewhere above him, he heard the voices of the visiting diplomats. They waited with indifference to hear how the matter worked out and would be departing soon, whatever happened.
‘Everything finally goes …’ he said to himself. In that moment, he longed for his dead wife.
The queen, meanwhile, stood in her garden, listening to the low, hasty voice of JandolAnganol, trying to thrust his emotions upon her. She recoiled, as from a great wave.
‘Cune, our parting is forced on me for the survival of the kingdom. You know my feelings, but you also know that I have duties which must be performed …’
‘No, I won’t have it. You obey a whim. It is not duty but your khmir speaking.’
He shook his head, as if trying to shake away the pain visible in his face.
‘What I do I have to do, though it destroys me.