Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [427]
SartoriIrvrash gave a snort of disgust. ‘They may equally well have been enemies. You’ve no evidence either way.’
‘Certainly it’s a bad omen. I wouldn’t want the queen to see these. Or TolramKetinet. He’s scumber himself. We’d better cover the bodies up.’
The ex-chancellor made to turn away. ‘Not all of us cover up the secrets we find, friend. I have knowledge in my possession which, when I lay it before the authorites of Pannoval, will start a Holy War against the ancipital kind throughout all Campannlat.’
CaraBansity looked calculatingly at him through his heavy bloodshot eyes. ‘And you’ll get paid for starting that war, eh? Live and let live, I say.’
‘Yes, you say it, Bardol, but these horned creatures don’t. Their creed is different. They will outbreed us and kill us unless we act. If you had seen for yourself the flambreg herds—’
‘Don’t fly into a passion. Passion always causes trouble … Now, we’ll get on with our job. There are probably hundreds of bodies lying under the earth about here.’
Folding his arms tightly about his chest, SartoriIrvrash said, ‘You give me a cold reception, just like the queen.’
CaraBansity climbed slowly out of the trench. ‘Her majesty gave you what you asked for, a book and three hoxneys.’ He stuck a knuckle between his teeth and stared at the ex-chancellor.
‘Why are you so against me, Bardol? Have you forgotten the time when, as young men, we looked through your telescope and observed the phases of Kaidaw as it sped above us? And from that deduced the cosmic geometries under which we exist?’
‘I don’t forget. You come here, though, with a Sibornalese officer, a dedicated enemy of Borlien. The queen is under threat of death and the kingdom of dissolution. I have no love of JandolAnganol or of phagors, yet I wish to see them continue, in order that people may still look through telescopes.
‘Overturn the kingdom, as both you and she would do, and you overturn the telescopes.’
He gazed through the trees towards the sea with a bitter expression, shrugging his shoulders.
‘You have witnessed how Keevasien, once a place of some culture, home of the great YarapRombry, has been carelessly erased. Culture may flourish better under old injustice than under new. That’s all I say.’
‘It’s a plea for your own way of life.’
‘I shall always fight for my own way of life. I believe in it. Even when it means fighting myself. Go, take that woman with you – and remember there’s always more than an arm up a Sibornalese sleeve.’
‘Why speak to me like this? I’m a victim. A wanderer – an exile. My life’s work’s ruined. I could have been the YarapRombry of my epoch … I’m innocent.’
CaraBansity shook his large head. ‘You’re of an age when innocence is a crime. Leave with your lady. Go and spread your poison.’
They regarded each other challengingly. SartoriIrvrash sighed, CaraBansity climbed back into his trench.
SartoriIrvrash walked back to where Odi Jeseratabhar waited with the animals. He mounted his hoxney without a word, tears in his eyes.
They took the trail leading northwards to Oldorando. JandolAnganol and his party had travelled that way only a few days earlier, on their way to the home of the king’s murdered bride-to-be.
XIX
Oldorando
The suns blazed down out of a cloudless sky, flattening the veldt with their combined light.
King JandolAnganol, Eagle of Borlien, enjoyed being in the wilderness again. His way of enjoyment was not every man’s. It consisted mainly of hard marches interspersed with short rests. This was not to the taste of the C’Sarr’s pleasure-loving envoy, Alan Esomberr.
The king and his force, with attendant ecclesiastics, approached Oldorando from the south along one of the old Pilgrim’s Ways, which led on through Oldorando to Holy Pannoval.
Oldorando stood at the crossroads of Campannlat. The migratory route of the phagors and the various ucts of the Madis ran east