Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [446]
A long while later, he picked himself off the floor and looked helplessly about. A shelf against one wall served as bed and bench. Light filtered in from a high window. In one corner was a trough for sanitary purposes. He sank down on the bench, and thought of his father’s long imprisonment.
When his spirits had sunk still lower, he thought of Milua Tal.
‘Sayren Stund, if you harm one lash of her eyes, you slanje …’
He sat rigid. Eventually, he forced himself to relax and leaned with his back against the moist wall of the cell. With a roar, he jumped up and began to pace about, up and down, between wall and door.
He ceased only when he heard the scrape of boots coming down the stair. Keys rattled at the lock, and a black-clad member of the local clerisy entered between two armed guards. As he gave a scanty bow, JandolAnganol recognised him as Sayren Stund’s axe-faced advisor, by name Crispan Mornu.
‘Under what devious law am I, a visiting prince of a friendly country, imprisoned?’
‘I am come to inform you that you are charged with murder, and will be tried for that crime tomorrow at Batalix-break, before a royal ecclesiastical court.’ The sepulchral voice paused, then added, ‘Prepare yourself.’
JandolAnganol advanced in a fury. ‘Murder? Murder, you pack of criminals? What new scoundrelism is this? Whose murder is laid at my door?’
Crossed spears halted his advance.
The priest said, ‘You are charged with the murder of Princess Simoda Tal, elder daughter of King Sayren Stund of Oldorando.’
He bowed again and withdrew.
The king remained where he was, staring at the door. His eagle eyes fixed upon its boards, never blinking, as if he had vowed they should never blink again until he was free.
He stayed almost motionless throughout the night. The intense active principle within him, being confined, stayed coiled within him like a spring. He maintained a defiant alertness throughout the hours of dark, waiting to leap to attack anyone who ventured to enter the dungeon.
Nobody came. No food was brought, no water. During the night there was a remote tremor – so remote it might have been in an artery rather than the earth – and a powder shower of mortar floated down to the stones. Nothing else. Not so much as a rat visited JandolAnganol.
When light seeped in to the place of confinement, he went over to the stone trough. By climbing onto it and hooking his fingers into a hollow between two stones, carved by previous prisoners, he could look out of the unglazed window. A precious breath of fresh air expired upon his cheek.
His dungeon was at the front of the palace, near to the corner by the Dom, or so he estimated. He could look across Loylbryden Square. His viewpoint was too low to see anything beyond it except the tops of trees in the park.
The square was deserted. He thought that if he waited long enough he would possibly see Milua Tal – unless she was also captive of her father.
His view was towards the west. The tiny patch of sky he could see was free of haze. Batalix cast long shadows across the cobbles. Those shadows paled and then divided into two as Freyr also rose. Then they died as the haze returned and the temperature started to mount.
Workmen came. They brought platforms and poles with them. Their manner was the resigned one of workmen everywhere: they were prepared to do the job, but not prepared to hurry over it. After a while, they set up a scaffold.
JandolAnganol went and sat down on the bench, clutching his temples between his nails.
Guards came for him. He fought them, uselessly. They put him in chains. He snarled at them. They pushed him up the stone stairs indifferently.
Everything had fallen out as King Sayren Stund might have wished it. In the incessant enantiodromia which afflicts all things, turning them into their opposites, he could now crow over the man who had so recently crowed over him. He bounded up and down with glee, he uttered cries of joy, he embraced Bathkaarnet-she, he threw merrily