Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [633]
A choir sang distantly the anthem, ‘Oh, May We All Find Light at Last’. Gloom settled in every heart. The loss was as sharp as the loss of a child.
The lackey solemnly drew the curtains again, hiding the landscape from view.
Many in the assembly stayed to drink more yadahl. They had little to say to each other. The musicians played, but a mood of sullen resignation had settled which would not be dispelled. Singly or in groups, the guests were leaving. They evaded each other’s gaze.
Stone steps wound down through the monastery to the entrance. A carpet had been laid on the stairs in honour of the occasion. Cold draughts, blowing upwards, lifted the edges of the carpet. As Luterin was descending, two men emerged from an archway on a landing and seized him.
He fought and shouted, but they locked his arms behind him and carried him into a stone washroom. Asperamanka was waiting there. He had divested himself of his ceremonial robes, and was putting on a coat and leather gauntlets. His two men wore leather and carried guns at their belts. Luterin thought of what Insil had said: ‘All those leather-clad men … doing secret things.’
Asperamanka put on a genial tone. ‘It isn’t going to work, is it, Luterin? We can’t have you going free in a tight-knit community like Kharnabhar. You’ll be too disruptive an influence.’
‘What are you trying to preserve here – apart from yourself?’
‘I wish to preserve my wife’s honour for one thing. You seem to think there is evil here. The fact is, we have to fight to survive. The good – and the bad – will naturally survive in us. Most people understand that. You don’t.
‘You are inclined to play the part of a holy innocent, and they always make trouble. So we are going to give you a chance to help the whole community. Helliconia needs to be hauled back into the light. You are going to go into the Wheel for another ten-year spell.’
He fought free and ran for the door. One of the huntsmen reached it in time to slam it in his face. He struck the man on the jaw, but was made captive again.
Tie him,’ Asperamanka ordered. ‘Don’t let him go again.’
The men had no cord. One reluctantly yielded up the broad belt of his jacket, and with that they lashed Luterin’s hands behind his back.
When Asperamanka opened the door, they marched down the rest of the stairs, the men flanking Luterin closely. Asperamanka seemed greatly pleased with himself.
‘We said farewell to Freyr with courage and ceremony. Admire power, Luterin. I admired your father for his ruthlessness as Oligarch. What a fateful generation ours is. Either we’ll be wiped out or we’ll decide the course of the world …’
‘Or you’ll choke on a fish bone,’ Luterin said.
They descended to the entrance hall. Through the broad archway, the outer world could be seen. The chill came in, and also the noise of the crowd and the bonfire. The simple people were dancing round the fires they had lit, faces gleaming in the light of the flames. Traders scurried about, selling waffles and spitted fish.
‘For all their religion, they believe that lighting fires may bring Freyr back,’ Asperamanka said. He lingered at the entrance. ‘What they are really doing is ensuring that wood becomes short before it need be … Well, let them get on with it. Let them go into pauk or do whatever they please. The elite is going to have to survive on the backs of just such peasants as these for the next few centuries or more.’
There was shouting and a stir from the back of the crowd. Soldiers came into view as the crowd parted to make way for them. They carried something struggling between them.
‘Ah, they’ve caught another phagor. Good. We’ll see this,’ Asperamanka said, with a hint of ancient angers under his brows.
The phagor was lashed upside down to a pole. It struggled violently as its captors brought it to one of the fires.
Behind came a figure of a man, lifting his arms and shouting. Luterin could not hear what he said for the general hubbub, but he recognised him by his long beard. The man was his