Aldiss, Brian W. – Helliconia Spring. Part five

Helliconia Spring. Part five

VII • A COLD WELCOME FOR PHAGORS

“Lord or not, he’ll have to come to me,” Shay Tal said to Vry proudly, when in a still dimday they could not sleep.

But the new Lord of Embruddock also had his pride, and did not come.

His rule proved neither better nor worse than the previous one. He remained at odds with his council for one reason and with his young lieutenants for another.

Council and lord agreed where they could for the sake of a peaceful life; and one matter on which they could agree without inconvenience to themselves was on the subject of the troublesome academy. Discontent must not be allowed to breed. Needing the women to work communally, they could not forbid them to gather together, and so the prohibition was useless. Yet they did not revoke it—and that vexed the women.

Shay Tal and Vry met privately with Laintal Ay and Dathka.

“You understand what we’re trying to do,” Shay Tal said. “You persuade that stubborn man to change his mind. You are closer to him than I can manage.”

All that came of this meeting was that Dathka started making eyes at the reticent Vry. And Shay Tal became slightly more haughty.

Laintal Ay returned later from one of his solitary expeditions and sought Shay Tal out. Covered with mud, he squatted outside the women’s house until she emerged from the boilery.

When she appeared, she had with her two slaves bearing trays of fresh loaves. Vry walked in a docile way behind the slaves. Once more, Oldorando’s bread was ready, and Vry set off to supervise its distribution—though not before Shay Tal had snatched a spare loaf for Laintal Ay. She gave it to him, smiling and throwing back her unruly hair.

He munched gratefully, stamping his feet to warm them.

Milder weather, like the new lord, had proved more a convulsion than an actual progression. Now it was cold again, and the moisture beading Shay Tal’s dark eyelashes froze. All about, white stillness prevailed. The river still flowed, broad and dark, but its banks were fanged by icicles.

“How’s my young lieutenant? I see less of you these days.”

He swallowed down the last of the loaf, his first food in three days.

“Hunting has been difficult. We’ve had to travel far afield. Now that it’s colder again, the deer may move nearer home.”

He stood alertly, surveying her as she stood before him in her ill-fitting furs. In her coiled quietness was the quality that made people admire and stand back from her. He perceived before she spoke that she saw through his excuse.

“I think much of you, Laintal Ay, as I did of your mother. Remember your mother’s wisdom. Remember her example, and don’t turn against the academy, like some of your friends.”

“You know how Aoz Roon admires you,” he blurted out.

“I know the way he has of showing it.”

Seeing that he was disconcerted, she was more kind, and took his arm, walking with him, asking him where he had been. He glanced now and again at her sharp profile as he told her of a ruined village he had visited in the wilds. It lay half buried among boulders, its deserted streets like dried streambeds, fringed with roofless houses. All its wooden parts had been taken or had rotted away. Stone staircases ascended to floors that had long since disappeared, windows opened on prospects of tumbled rock. Toadstools grew in the doorsteps, driven snow accumulated in the fireplaces, birds made their nests in flaking alcoves.

“It’s part of the disaster,” said Shay Tal.

“It’s what happens,” he said innocently, and went on to tell of a small party of phagors he had stumbled across—not military ones, but humble fungusmongers, who had been as scared of him as he of them.

“You risk your life so needlessly.”

“I need to … I need to get away.”

“I have never left Oldorando. I must, I must—I want to get away as you do. I’m imprisoned. But I tell myself we are all prisoners.”

“I don’t see that, Shay Tal.”

“You will see. First, fate moulds our character; then character moulds our fate. Enough of that—you’re too young.”

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