Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [464]
A white flag waved from behind the defences. A stocky figure cautiously emerged into the open. Pasharatid signalled to his soldiery to halt, and walked forward alone. He was conscious of how brave he was, how upright. He felt every inch the conqueror.
The stocky man approached. They halted when no more than a pike’s length apart.
Bardol CaraBansity spoke. He asked why soldiers were advancing on an almost undefended palace.
To which Io Pasharatid responded haughtily that he was an honourable man. He required only the surrender of Queen MyrdemInggala, after which he would leave the palace in peace.
CaraBansity made the sacred circle on his forehead and sniffed a resounding sniff. Alas, he said, the queen of queens was dead, slain by an arrow fired by an agent of her ex-husband, King JandolAnganol.
Pasharatid responded with angry disbelief.
‘Look for yourself,’ said CaraBansity.
He gestured towards the sea, lacklustre in the dawn light. Men were launching a funeral barque upon the waters.
In truth, Pasharatid could see it for himself. He left his force and ran to the beach. Four men with heads bowed were carrying a bier on which a body lay beneath layers of white muslin. The hem of the muslin fluttered in a growing breeze. A wreath of flowers lay on top of the body. An old woman with hair growing from a mole in her cheek stood weeping at the water’s edge.
The four men carried the bier reverently aboard the white caravel, the Vajabhar Prayer; the ship’s battered sides had been repaired well enough for a voyage which did not involve the living. They laid the bier under the mast and retired.
ScufBar, the queen’s old majordomo dressed in black, stepped aboard the ship carrying a lighted torch. He bowed deeply to the shrouded body. Then he set light to the brushwood piled high on the deck.
As fire took the ship, it began with the favouring wind to sail slowly out from the bay. The smoke billowed out across the water like lank hair.
Pasharatid cast down his helmet into the sand, crying wildly to his men.
‘On your knees, you hrattocks! Down and pray to the Azoiaxic for this beautiful lady’s soul. The queen is dead, oh, the queen of queens is dead!’
CaraBansity smiled occasionally as he rode a brown hoxney back to his wife in Ottassol. He was a clever fellow and his ruse had succeeded; Pasharatid’s pursuit had been deflected. On the little finger of his right hand, he wore the queen’s gift to him, a ring with a sea-blue stone.
The queen had left Gravabagalinien only a few hours before Pasharatid’s arrival. With her went her general, his sister, the princess Tatro, and a handful of followers. They made their way northeastwards, across the fertile loess lands of Borlien, towards Matrassyl.
Wherever they went, peasants came from their huts, men, women, and children, and called blessing upon MyrdemInggala. The poorest of people ran to feed her party and help her in any way possible.
The queen’s heart was full. But it was not the heart it had been; the heat had gone from her affections. Perhaps she would accept TolramKetinet in time. That remained to be seen. She needed to find her son first and solace him. Then the future could be determined.
Pasharatid remained on the shore for a long while. A herd of deer came down onto the beach and foraged at the high-tide line, ignoring his presence.
The funeral ship drifted out to sea, bearing the corpse of the servant who had died following injuries from a falling gunpowder keg. Flames rose straight up, smoke sank across the waves. A crackle of timber came to Pasharatid’s ears.
He wept and tore his tunic and thought of all that would never happen. He fell to his knees on the sand, weeping for a death that had yet to occur.
The animals of the sea circled about the blazing hulk before leaving. They abandoned coastal waters and headed far out towards the deeps. Moving in well-organised legions,