Helliconia Winter h-3 Read online

  “Come near, Luterin,” said the face now. The voice was deep and somewhat slow, as if the chin was reluctant to disturb the mound of goitre lying below it.

  “I am glad you are back, Father,” said Luterin, advancing. “Had you good hunting?”

  “Well enough. You are so metamorphosed that I scarcely recognised you.”

  “Those fortunate enough to survive the plague take on compact shape for the Weyr-Winter, Father. I assure you I feel excellently fit.”

  He took his father’s neat hand.

  Ebstok Esikananzi said, “We may assume that phagors feel themselves to be fit, yet they are proven carriers of the plague.”

  “I have recovered from the plague. I cannot carry it.”

  “We certainly hope you can’t, dear,” said his mother.

  As he turned to her, his father said sternly, “Luterin, I wish you to retire to the hall and await me. I shall be there presently. We have some legal matters to discuss.”

  “Is there something the matter?”

  Luterin took the full force of his father’s stare. He bowed his head and retired.

  Once in the hall, he paced about, heedless of the tongue of his bell. What had made his father so cold he could not guess. True, that august figure had always been distant even when present, but that had been merely one of his qualities, as much taken for granted as the hidden goitre.

  He summoned a slave and sent him to fetch Toress Lahl from her quarters.

  She came questioningly. As she approached, he thought how appealing her metamorphosed shape was. And the frost prints on her face had healed.

  “Why have you been so long away? Where have you been?” There was a hint of reproach, although she smiled and took his hand. As he kissed her, he said, “I’m entitled to vanish on the hunt. It’s in the family blood. Now listen, I am anxious for you. My father’s back and evidently displeased. This may be something that concerns you, since my mother and Insil have been talking to him.” “What a pity you were not here to welcome him, Luterin.” “That can’t be helped,” he said dismissively. “Listen, I want to give you something.”

  He led into an alcove off the hall, where a wooden cupboard stood. With a key taken from his pocket, he unlocked the cupboard. Within hung dozens of heavy iron keys, each labelled. He ran a finger along the rows, frowning.

  “Your father has a mania for locking things,” she said, half laughing. “Don’t be silly. He is the Keeper. This place has to be fortress as well as home.”

  He found what he wanted and picked out a rusted key almost a hand’s span long.

  “Nobody will miss this,” he said, locking up the cupboard. “Take it. Hide it. It is the key to that chapel built by your countryman, the king-saint. You remember, in the woods? There may be a little trouble—I can’t tell what. Perhaps about pauk. I don’t want you harmed. If anything happens to me, you will be in danger of arrest at the least. Go and hide in the chapel. Take a slave with you—they’re all longing to escape. Choose a woman who knows Kharnabhar, preferably a peasant.” She slipped the key into the pocket of her new clothes. “What can happen to you?” She clutched his hand. “Nothing, probably, but—I just feel an apprehension…” He heard a door opening. Hounds came scurrying, nails clicking on the tiles. He pushed Toress Lahl into the shadows behind the cupboard, and stepped forth into the hall. His father was emerging. Behind him came half a dozen of the conspiratorial men, bells clanking.

  “We’ll speak together,” said Lobanster, lifting one finger. He led into a small wooden room on the ground floor. Luterin followed, and the conspiratorial men moved in behind them. The last one in locked the door on the inside. The biogas hissed when turned up.

  This room had a wooden bench and table and little else in the way of furniture. People had been interrogated here. There was also a wooden door fortified with iron straps, which was kept locked. It was a private way down into the vaults, where the well was whose waters never froze. Legend had it that precious brood animals had been preserved down there in the coldest centuries.

  “Whatever we discuss should be said privately, Father,” Luterin said.

  “I don’t even know who these other gentlemen are, though they make free in our house. They are not your huntsmen.”

  “They are returned from Bribahr,” said Lobanster, speaking the words as if they gave him a cold pleasure. “Eminent men need bodyguards in these times. You are too young to understand how plague can cause the dissolution of the state. It breaks up first small communities and then large. The fear of it disintegrates nations.”

  The conspiratorial men all looked very serious. In the limited space, it was impossible to stand away from them. Only Lobanster was separate, poised without movement behind the table, on the surface of which he played his fingers.

  “Father, it is an insult that we should have to converse before strangers. I resent it. But I say to you— and to them, if they are capable of hearing—that although there may be truth in what you say, there is a greater truth you neglect. There are other ways of disintegrating nations than by plague. The harsh measures being brought against pauk—the common people, the Church—the cruelty behind those measures—will eventually bring greater destruction than the Fat Death—”

  “Cease, boy!” His father’s hands went to the region of his throat. “Cruelty is also part of nature. Where is mercy, except with men? Men invented mercy, but cruelty was here before them, in nature. Nature is a press. Year by year, it squeezes us tighter. We cannot fight it but by bringing to bear cruelty of our own. The plague is nature’s latest cruelty, and must be fought with its own weapons.”

  Luterin could not speak. He could not find, under that chill, pale gaze, words to explain that while there might be a casual cruelty in circumstances, to formulate cruelty into a moral principle was a perversion of nature. To hear such pronouncements from his father turned him sick. He could only say, “You have swallowed utterly the words of the Oligarch.”

  One of the conspiratorial men spoke in a loud, rough voice. “That is everyone’s duty.”

  The sound of this stranger’s voice, the claustrophobia of the room, the tension, his father’s coldness, all mounted to Luterin’s brain. As if from afar, he heard himself shouting, “I hate the Oligarch! The Oligarch is a monster. He murdered Asperamanka’s army. I’m here as a fugitive instead of a hero. Now he will murder the Church. Father, fight this evil before you are yourself devoured by it.”

  This he said and more, in a kind of seizure. He was scarcely aware of their bringing him from the room and helping him outside. He felt the bite of the chill wind. There was snow in his face. He was pushed through a courtyard where the biogas inspection pit was, and into a harness room.

  The stablemen were sent away, the conspiratorial men were sent away. Luterin was alone with his father. Still he could not bear to look at him, but sat clutching his head, groaning. After a while he listened to what his father was saying.

  “…only son left to me. You I must groom to take over the role of Keeper. For you there are particular challenges, and you must meet them. You must be strong—”

  “I am strong! I defy the system.”

  “If the order is to wipe out pauk, then we must wipe it out. If to destroy all phagors, then we must destroy all phagors. Not to do so is weakness. We cannot live without a system—all else is anarchy.

  “I hear from your mother that you have a female slave who has influence over you. Luterin, you are a Shokerandit and you must be strong. That slave must be destroyed, and you will marry Insil Esikananzi, as we have planned since your childhood. There is no question but that you must obey. You obey not for my sake, but for the sake of freedom and Sibornal.”

  Luterin gave a laugh. “What freedom would there be in such circumstances? Insil hates me, I believe, but for you that’s neither here nor there. There’s no freedom under the laws now being imposed.”

  Lobanster moved as if for the first time. It was a simple gesture, a mere removal of o
ne hand from the throat, to extend it in appeal towards Luterin.

  “The laws are harsh. That’s understood. But there is no freedom, nor any life, without them. Without laws firmly applied, we shall die. Just as Campannlat dies without law, though the climate favours it above Sibornal. Campannlat already disintegrates under the coming of the Great Winter. Sibornal can survive.

  “Let me remind you, my son, that there are one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five small years in a Great Year. This Great Year has but five hundred and sixteen more years to run before its death, before the time of greatest cold, the winter solstice, when Freyr is farthest from us.

  “We have to live like iron men until that time. Then the plague will be gone, and conditions will improve once more. We have known these facts since birth, for we hold Kharnabhar. The life of the Great Wheel is dedicated to getting us through that black time, to bringing us again to the light and warmth—”

  Now Luterin confronted his father and spoke composedly.

  “Agreed, the Wheel does as you say, Father. Why, then, do you approve—as I gather you must—these wicked deeds whereby Chubsalid, Priest-Supreme of our Church, is burnt and the Church in general attacked?”

  “Because the Wheel is an anachronism.” Lobanster made a throaty noise resembling a laugh, so that his goitre trembled under its black covering. “It is an anachronism, without meaning. It cannot save Helli- conia. It cannot save Sibornal. It is a sentimental concept. It functioned properly only when it imprisoned murders and debtors. It conflicts with the scientific laws of the Oligarchy. Those laws, and those alone, can bring us through the Weyr-Winter which will be upon our children. We cannot have two sets of laws in conflict. Therefore the Church must be demolished. It was as a first step towards that demolition that the Act against pauk was passed.” Again Luterin found no words.

  “Is that what you brought me here to tell me?” he asked at last. “I was not going to have others hear our discussion. I’m chiefly concerned with your contempt for the laws concerning pauk and the ex- termination of phagors, as reported by Evanporil. If you weren’t my son, I would have killed you. Do you understand?”

  Luterin shook his head once. He cast his gaze to the floor of the tack room. As in childhood, he was unable to face his father’s eyes. “Do you understand?”

  Still Luterin could not speak. He was utterly dismayed by his father’s imperviousness to his feelings.

  Lobanster wiped his shining brow and crossed to the table, on which lay a saddle bag among other pieces of harness. He flicked open the buckle on the saddle bag so that a wad of posters came spilling out. He handed one to his son.

  “Since you are so fond of Acts, have a look at the latest one.” Sighing, Luterin took it. He barely glanced at it before letting it drop. The sheet sailed into a corner of the room. It stated in black letters that, as a further measure to prevent plague, persons found in a metamorphosed state would be put to death. By Order of the Oligarch. Luterin said nothing.

  His father spoke. “You see that if you do not obey my wishes I cannot protect you. Can I?”

  At last Luterin stared at his father in misery. “I have served you, Father. I have done as you wished all my life. I went into the army without protest—and acquitted myself well. I have been—and desired nothing better than to be—your possession. No doubt something of the same was in Favin’s mind when he leaped to his death. But now I have to oppose you. Not for my sake. Not even for religion’s sake, or for the State. After all, what are they but abstractions? I must oppose you for your own sake. Either the season or the Oligarch himself has driven you mad.”

  A terrible fire shone on his father’s face, while the eyes remained as stoney as ever.

  He snatched a long black shoeing knife from the table and held it out to his son. “Take this, you fool, and come outside with me. You must be made to see who is mad.”

  The snow was coming down fast, whirling round a grey angle of the mansion as if bent on filling up the courtyard to the very top of its walls as soon as possible. The conspiratorial men stood in a group, hands tucked under their belts, waiting under a porch, heels knocking together for warmth. To one side stood yelk, still saddled, with an anxious stableman still standing among them. Near at hand was a pile of phagor corpses; they had been dead for some while: the snow settled on them without steaming.

  To one side, close to an outer gate, a row of rusty iron hooks stuck out from the wall above head level. The naked bodies of four men and a woman dangled by ropes from the hooks.

  Lobanster pushed his son in the back, urging him forward. The touch was like fire.

  “Cut these dead things down and look at them. Have a good look at their monstrousness and then ask if the Oligarch is not just. Go on.”

  Luterin drew near. The killing appeared recent. Moisture stood on the distorted faces of the dead. All five corpses were of people who had survived the Fat Death and metamorphosed.

  “Laws have to be obeyed, Luterin, obeyed. Laws are what make society, and without society men are only animals. We caught these people on the way to Kharnabhar today, and we hanged them here because of the law. They died so that society can survive. Do you now think the Oligarch mad?”

  As Luterin hesitated, his father said harshly, “Go on, cut them down, look at the agony in their faces, and then ask yourself if you prefer that state to life. When you reach an answer, you can get down on your knees to me.”

  The lad looked in appeal at his father. “I loved you as a dog its master. Why do you make me do this?”

  “Cut them down!” One hand flew convulsively to the throat. Choking, Luterin came level with the first corpse. He raised the knife and looked up into its distorted face. It was someone he knew.

  For a moment, he hesitated. But there was no mistaking that face, even without its moustache. Luterin recalled vividly seeing it in the Noonat Tunnel, livid with exertion. Swinging the knife, he cut down the remains of Captain Harbin Fashnalgid. At the same time, his mind opened, fust for a second, he was the boy about to prefer a year’s paralysis to the truth. He turned to his father.

  “Good. That’s one. Now the next. To rule you must obey. Your brother was weak. You can be strong. I heard of your victory at Isturiacha when I was in Askitosh. You can be Keeper, Luterin, and your children. You can be more than Keeper.”

  Flecks of spittle flew from his mouth, to be carried along in a vortex of snow. The expression on his son’s face made him pause. In an instant, his demeanour altered. His bell rattled at his hip almost for the first time as he turned to look for his conspiratorial men.

  The words burst from Luterin. “Father, you are the Oligarch! You! That’s what Favin discovered, wasn’t it?”

  “No!” Lobanster suddenly changed. All command was gone. As he raised his crablike hands, every line of his body expressed fear. He clutched his son’s forearm as Luterin drove the knife up under his rib cage, straight into his heart. Blood burst from the torn clothing and covered both their hands.

  The courtyard became a scene of confusion. First to move was the saddler, who cried in terror and rushed out of the gate. He knew what befell menials who witnessed murder. The conspiratorial men were less quick to respond. Their leader was falling to his knees in the snow and then collapsing slowly, one reddened hand tugging weakly at his goitre, over the body of Fashnalgid. They stared at the sight as if paralysed. Luterin did not wait. Horrified though he was, he ran over to the yelk and flung himself on one of them. As he galloped from the yard, a shot came, and he heard the men behind him rushing to follow.

  Slitting his eyes against the snow, he spurred on the yelk. Across the rear square. Men shouted. His father’s recently returned cavalcade was still being unloaded. A woman ran, shrieking, slipped, fell. The yelk leaped over her. At the gate there was a move to stop him. It was ill-coordinated. He struck out with his revolver, trying to smash the face of a guard who made to grab his rein. Then he was in the grounds.

  As he rode, heading for a belt
of trees and the side road, he was saying something over and over again. His mind had lost its rationality. Only a while later could he grasp and understand what he said.

  What he constantly repeated to himself was, “Patricide is the greatest crime.”

  The words formed a rhythm to his escape.

  Nor did he make any conscious decision as to where he was going. There was but one place in Kharnabhar where he might be safe from pursuit. The trees flashed by on either side, smeared across his slitting vision. He rode with his head low on the yelk’s neck, breathing its misty breath, shouting at the creature to tell it what the greatest crime was.

  The gates of the Esikananzi estate loomed out of the flying twilight. There was a flicker of lamplight at the lodge, and a man ran out. Then he was torn from view. Beyond the drum of the yelk’s hoofs, above the whistle of the wind, came sounds of pursuit.

  He was into the village before he knew it. Bells clashed about his ears as he passed the first monastery. There were people about, muffled to the eyes. Pilgrims screamed and scattered. He glimpsed a waffle stall overturned. Then it too was gone and there were only guardhouses before him until—out of the murk—loomed the ramparts of Mount Kharnabhar. The tunnel with its mighty figures was before him.

  Without waiting to do more than check the yelk’s pace, Luterin flung himself off the animal and ran forward. Above, a great bell tolled. It spoke in solemn tones of his guilt. But the instinct for self- preservation drove him onwards. He ran down the ramp. Priestly figures came forward.

  “The soldiers!” he gasped.

  They understood. The soldiers were no longer their allies. They hurried him into the gloom, while the great metal doors clanged fast together behind him.

  The Great Wheel had claimed him.