Helliconia Spring. Part three
Embruddock
And Shay Tal said:
You think we live at the centre of the universe. I say we live in the centre of a farmyard. Our position is so obscure that you cannot realise how obscure.
This I tell you all. Some disaster happened in the past, the long past. So complete was it that no one now can tell you what it was or how it came about. We know only that it brought darkness and cold of long duration.
You try to live as best you can. Good, good, live well, love one another, be kind. But don’t pretend that the disaster is nothing to do with you. It may have happened long ago, yet it infects every day of our lives. It ages us, it wears us out, it devours us, it tears our children from us. It makes us not only ignorant but in love with ignorance. We’re infested with ignorance.
I’m going to propose a treasure hunt—a quest, if you like. A quest in which every one of us can join. I want you to be aware of our fallen state, and to maintain constant alertness for evidence as to its nature. We have to piece together what has happened to reduce us to this chilly farmyard; then we can improve our lot, and see to it that the disaster does not befall us and our children again.
That’s the treasure I offer you. Knowledge. Truth. You fear it, yes. But you must seek it. You must grow to love it.
I • DEATH OF A GRANDFATHER
The sky was black, and men bearing torches came from the south gate. They were thickly wrapped in skins, and trod with a high step to get through the snow lying in the lanes. The holy man was coming! The holy man was coming!
Young Laintal Ay hid in the porch of the ruined temple, his face shining with excitement. He watched the procession trudge by between the old stone towers, each one encrusted on its east face with the snow that had arrived earlier in the day. He noticed how colour existed only at the spluttering ends of the torches, on the end of the holy father’s nose, and in the tongues of the six-dog team that pulled him. In each case, the colour was red. The heavy-laden sky—in which the sentinel Batalix was buried—had leached all other colours away.
Father Bondorlonganon from distant Borlien was fat, and made fatter by the enormous furs he wore, furs of a kind not used in Oldorando. He had come alone to Oldorando—the men who accompanied him were local hunters, each one already known to Laintal Ay. It was on the father’s face that the boy focussed all his attention, for strangers came seldom; he had been smaller, less tough, on the occasion of the father’s Last visit.
The holy man’s face was oval, and massively creased by horizontal lines, into which such features as his eyes fitted as best they could. The lines seemed to compress his mouth into a long cruel shape. He sat his sledge and stared about him suspiciously. Nothing in his attitude suggested he liked being back in Oldorando. His gaze took in the ruined temple; this visit was necessary because Oldorando had killed its priesthood some generations ago, as he knew. His uncomfortable stare rested a moment on the boy standing between two square pillars.
Laintal Ay stared back. It seemed to him that the priest’s look was cruel and calculating; but he could hardly expect to think well of a man who was coming to perform last rites over his dying grandfather.
He smelt the dogs as they went by, and the tarry scent of burning torches. The procession turned and was heading up the main street, away from the temple. Laintal Ay was in two minds about following. He stood on the steps and hugged himself, watching as the sledge’s arrival attracted people from their towers, despite the cold.
In the murk at the far end of the lane, under the big tower where Laintal Ay and his family lived, the procession halted. Slaves appeared to deal with the dogs—they would be housed in the stable under the tower—while the holy father climbed stiffly from his perch and bundled into shelter,