Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [424]
At this stage of their existence, the great serpents were asexual. Long past was their period of intense mating activity. Then, they had been flighted creatures, and had squandered centuries in amorous anorexy, feeding on procreation. Like giant dragonflies, they and their kind had flirted above the world’s two lonely poles, free of enemies or even witnesses.
With the coming of the Great Summer, the aerial creatures migrated to the seas of the south, and in particular to the Sea of Eagles, where their appearance had led some long-dead and ornithologicaliy unversed seamen to name an ocean after them. On remote islands like Poorich and Lordry, the creatures shed their wings. They crawled upon their bellies into the brine, and there gave birth.
In the seas the summer would be spent. Eventually the great bodies would dissolve, to feed assatassi and other marine inhabitants. The voracious young were known as scupperfish. They were not fish at all. When the chills of the long winter came to prompt them, the scupperfish would emerge onto land and assume yet another form, called by such ill names as Wutra’s Worm.
In their present asexual state, the two serpents had been stirred into activity by a recollection of their distant past. The memory had been brought them by the dolphins, in the form of a scent trace, infused into the waters by the queen of queens during her menstrual period. In confused restlessness, they coiled about each other’s bodies; but no power could bring back what had gone.
Their ghastly apparition had knocked any desire for fighting from the bellies of those aboard the Union and the Good Hope. Gravabagalinien was a haunted place. Now the invaders knew it. Both ships crammed on all possible sail and fled eastwards before the storm. The clouds covered them and they were gone.
The dolphins had disappeared.
Only the waters raged, breaking high up the Linien Rock with dull booms which carried along the beach.
The human defenders of Gravabagalinien made their way back through the rain to the wooden palace.
The chambers of the palace echoed like drums under the weight of monsoon rain. The tune kept changing as the rain died, then fell with renewed vigour.
A council of war was held in the great chamber, the queen presiding.
‘First, we should be clear what kind of a man we are dealing with,’ TolramKetinet said. ‘Chancellor SartoriIrvrash, tell us what you know of Io Pasharatid, and please speak to the point.’
Whereupon SartoriIrvrash rose, smoothing his bald head and bowing to her majesty. What he had to say would indeed be brief but hardly pleasant. He apologised for bringing up old unhappy things, but the future was always linked with the past in ways that even the wisest among them could scarcely anticipate. He might give as an instance …
Catching Odi Jeseratabhar’s eye, he applied himself to the point, hunching up his shoulders to do so. In the years in Matrassyl, his duty as chancellor had been to discover the secrets of the court. When the queen’s brother, YeferalOboral of beloved memory, was still alive, he had discovered that Pasharatid – then ambassador from his country – was enjoying the favours of a young girl, a commoner, whose mother kept a house of ill-repute. He, the chancellor, also discovered from VarpalAnganol that Pasharatid contrived to look upon the queen’s body when naked. The fellow was a scoundrel, lustful and reckless, kept in check only by his wife – who they had reason to believe was now dead.
Moreover, he wished to retail a rumour – perhaps more than a rumour – gathered from a guide called the Pointer of the Way, whom he befriended on his journey through the desert to Sibornal, that Io Pasharatid had murdered the queen’s brother.
‘I know that to be so,’ said MyrdemInggala, dismissively. ‘We have every reason to regard Io Pasharatid as a dangerous man.’
TolramKetinet rose.
He adopted military postures and spoke with rhetorical flourishes, glancing across at the queen to see how his performance was being received. He said that they were now clear how Pasharatid