Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [564]
Many windows looked down on the front courtyard, enforcing silence with their oppressive dead shine. They were mean windows, less like eyes than blunt teeth.
The party of three was led unceremoniously from the carriage into the chill of the building. Their footsteps echoed as they traversed the great entrance hall. Soldiers in elaborate national uniform stood on guard. None moved.
The party was shown to the rear, to a dingy passage where the skirting was scuffed by innumerable boots, as if a tormented animal had tried to fight its way to freedom. After a wait, a signal was given their guide and they ascended by a narrow wooden stair which wound up two flights without a window by way of punctuation. They emerged into another passage, no more congenial to tormented animals than the first, and halted at a door. The guide knocked.
A voice bade them enter.
They came into a room which displayed all the festive cheer for which the Oligarchy was noted. It was a reception room of a kind, lined with chairs on which only the most emaciated anatomies could have found rest. The one window in the room was draped in heavy leather curtains, evidently designed to be capable of repelling the onslaughts of daylight.
The niggardly proportions of the room, in which the height of the ceiling was matched only by the depth of gloom it engendered, was reinforced by its lighting. One fat viridian candle burned in a tall stand in the middle of the otherwise empty floor. A chilling draught caused its shadows to stir wakefully on the creaking parquet.
‘How long do we wait here?’ Chubsalid enquired of the guide.
‘A short while, sire.’
Short whiles were of long duration in such a room, but eventually inner doors opened. Two uniformed men with swords dragged the doors apart, allowing the party to view a further room.
This further room was lit by gas flares, which imparted a sickly light over everything but the face of a man sitting berobed in a large chair at the far end of the room. Since the gas lights were behind his throne, his face was cast into shadow. The man made no movement.
Chubsalid said in a clear voice, ‘I am Priest-Supreme Chubsalid of the Church of the Formidable Peace. Who are you?’
And an equally clear voice came back. ‘You address me as the Oligarch.’
The visiting party, although they had prepared themselves for the encounter, were silenced by a momentary awe. They shuffled forward to the door of the inner chamber, where soldiers barred their way with naked swords.
‘Are you Torkerkanzlag II?’ asked Chubsalid.
Again the clear voice. ‘Address me as the Oligarch.’
Chubsalid and Asperamanka looked at each other. Then the former spoke out.
‘We have come here, Dread Oligarch, to discuss the curtailment of traditional liberties in our state, and to speak with you regarding a recent crime committed—’
The clear voice cut in. ‘You have come here to discuss nothing, priest. You have come here to speak of nothing. You have come here because you preached treason, in deliberate defiance of recent edicts issued by the State. You have come here because the punishment for treason is death.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Parlingelteg. ‘We came here anticipating reason, justice, and an open debate. Not some sort of tawdry melodramatics.’
Asperamanka set his chest against one of the drawn swords and said, ‘Dread Oligarch, I have served you faithfully. I am Priest-Militant Asperamanka, who, as no doubt you know, led your armies to victory in the field against the thousand heathen cults of Pannoval. Did you not – were not those armies destroyed on their return to your domains?’
The unmoved voice of the Oligarch said, ‘In the presence of your ruler, you do not ask questions.’
‘Tell us who you are,’ said Parlingelteg. ‘If you are human you give no evidence of it.’
Ignoring the interruption, Torkerkanzlag II gave the guard an order: ‘Draw