Manzikert III had not been a good cappan.55 During his reign, he had launched numerous futile assaults on the Menites, and although no one ever doubted his personal bravery, he had all of his grandfather’s impatience and impulsiveness, but none of that man’s charisma or shrewdness. A grotesque gastronome, he put on decadent banquets even during the famine that struck in the third year of his reign.56 About all that can be said in Manzikert III’s defense is that he provided monies for research that resulted in refinements of the mariner’s compass and the invention of the double-ruddered ship (useful for maneuvering in narrow tributaries). However, Manzikert III is best remembered for his poor treatment of the poet Maximillian Sharp. Sharp came to Ambergris as an emissary of the Menites, and when it came time for him to leave, Manzikert III would not allow him safe passage by the most convenient route. He was consequently obliged to make his way back through malarial swampland as a result of which this greatest of all ancient masters caught a fever and died.57 Manzikert III, when brought news of Sharp’s death, is said to have joked, “Consider this my contribution to the Arts.”58 Another year and Manzikert III might have exhausted both the treasury and his people’s patience. As it was, he managed little permanent damage and all of this was put right by his successor: Manzikert II’s illegitimate son by a distant third cousin, the handsome and intelligent Michael Aquelus, arguably the greatest of the Manzikert cappans.59 If not for Aquelus’ firm hand, Ambergris, cappandom and city, might well have crumbled to dust within a generation.
We now stand on the threshold of the event known as the Silence. Almost 70 years have passed since the massacre of the gray caps and the destruction of the ancient city of Cinsorium. The new Cappandom of Ambergris has begun to thrive over its ruins and no gray caps have been seen since the day of the massacre. An initial population that may well have flinched in anticipation of some terrible reprisal for genocide has given way to people who have never seen a gray cap, many of them Aan clans folk from the south who also wish to resettle on land. Manzikert II has already, during an exceedingly long reign, overseen the painful transition to a permanent settlement—already, too, a prosperous middle class of merchants, shopkeepers, and bankers has sprung up, supplemented by farmers who have settled in Ambergris and the outlying minor towns.60 River trade is booming, and has made the city rich in a short period of time. Compulsory two-year military service has proven a success—the army is strong but civic-minded while Ambergris’ enemies appear few and impotent. Units of barter based on a gold standard have been introduced and these coins form the principal form of currency, followed closely by the southern Aan sel, which will gradually be phased out. All of Ambergris’ rulers—including Manzikert III—have successfully foiled attempts by the upper classes (mostly descendants of Manzikert I’s lieutenants) to form a ruling aristocracy by parceling out most of the land to small farmers. Thus, there are no serious internal threats to the succession. Finally, we are on the cusp of a period of inspired building and invention known as the Aquelus Age.
Everywhere, new ideas take root. The refurbished whaling fleet has focused its efforts on the giant freshwater squid, with great success. Aquelus will not just make freshwater squid products a national industry, but part of the national identity, inadvertently introducing the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, which will remain a peaceful event throughout the rule of the Manzikerts.61 The old aqueducts have been made functional again and extensive settlement has occurred in the valley beyond the city proper, creating a separate town of craftspeople. Every day a new house goes up and a new street is dedicated, and by the time of Aquelus there are over 30,000 permanent residents in Ambergris: approximately 13,000 men and 17,000 women and children.62
And yet, as Aquelus enters his sixth year in power, there is something dreadfully wrong, and although no one knows the source of this wrongness, perhaps a few suspect, at least a little. First, there is the sinister way in which the gray caps have entered the collective consciousness of the city: parents tell tales of the old inhabitants of Cinsorium to children at bedtime—that the gray caps will creep up out of the ground on their clammy pale hands and feet, crawl in through an open window, and grab you if you don’t go to sleep.
Or, more frequently now, the term “mushroom dweller” is used instead of “gray cap,” no doubt become more common because, rather disturbingly, the only major failure of the civil government and private citizens has been the war against the fungus that has overgrown many areas of Ambergris: cascades of dark and bright mushrooms, gaily festooned with red and green, or somber in jackets of gray or brown, sometimes as thick as the very grass. Public complaints proliferate, for certain types exude a slick poison which, when it comes into contact with legs, feet, arms, hands, leaves the victim in extreme pain and covered with purple splotches for up to a week. More alarmingly, a new type of mushroom with a stem as thick as an oak and four or five feet tall, begins to spring up in the middle of certain streets, wrenching free from the cobblestones. These blue-tinged “white whales,”63 as some wag nicknamed them, have to be chopped down by either fire emergency workers or the civil police department, causing hours of inconvenience and lost work time. They also smell so strongly of rotten eggs that whole neighborhoods have to be evacuated, sometimes for days.
Certainly the afflicted areas had grown more numerous in those last years before the Silence, almost as if the fungi formed a vast, nonsentient advance guard . . . but for what? At least one prominent citizen, the inventor Stephen Bacilus64—the great-great-great grandfather of the influential statistician Gort—appears to have known what for, and to have recognized a potential danger. As he put it to the Home Council, a body created to address issues of city-wide security:
The very fact that we cannot stop their proliferation, that every poison only makes them thrive the more, should alarm us. For it indicates the presence of another, superior, force determined that these fungi should live. The further observation, made by many in this room tonight, that some fungi, after we have uprooted them and placed them in the appointed garbage heaps for burning, mysteriously find their way back to their former location—this should also shock us into action . . . and, finally, I need not remind you, except that so many of us today have short memories, that several of these mushrooms are purple in hue. Until a few years ago, a purple mushroom could not be found in all the city. Somehow, I find this fact more sinister than any other . . .
Unfortunately, the Council dismissed his evidence as based on old wives’ tales, and placed an edict on Bacilus that forbid him to speak about “mushrooms, fungi, lichen, moss, or related plants so as not to unwittingly and unnecessarily cause a general panic amongst the populace.”65 After all, the Home Council was responsible for security in the city.
But did Bacilus have cause for alarm? Perhaps so. According to police reports, three years before the Silence the city experienced 76 unexplained or unsolved break-ins, up from only 30 the previous year. Two years before the Silence this figure rose to 99 break-ins, and in the year before the Silence, almost 150 unexplained break-ins occurred within the city limits. No doubt some of these burglaries can be attributed to the large number of unassimilated immigrant adventurers flooding into Ambergris, and no doubt the authorities’ failure to show undue concern means they had reached a similar conclusion. However, the victims in an astonishing number of these cases claim, when they saw anyone at all, that the intruder was a small person, usually hidden by shadow and almost always wearing a large felt hat. These mystery burglars most often made off with cutlery, jewelry, and food items.66 It is unfortunate indeed that the urban legend of the mushroom dwellers had spread so widely, because, reduced to stories to scare children, no one took them seriously. The police passed off such accounts as hysterical or as bald-faced lies, while criminals complicated the situation by disguising themselves in gray cap “garb” when committing burglaries.67
Worse still, the efficient government and the network of peace treaties Manzikert II and Aquelus had creat
ed proved to be built on a fragile foundation.
At the time of the Silence, it would have seemed that Ambergris was not only secure but richer than ever before. Indeed, Aquelus had just formed an even stronger alliance with the Menites68—and took the first step toward the continuation of his bloodline by marrying the old Menite King’s daughter Irene,69 who by all accounts was not only beautiful but intelligent and could be expected to rule jointly with Aquelus, much as had, in their fashion, Sophia and Manzikert I.70
The same year, Aquelus secured his western borders against possible attacks by the Kalif71 with the signing of a treaty in which Ambergrisian merchants would receive preferential treatment (especially the waiver of export taxes) and in return Aquelus promised to hold Ambergris in vassalage to the Kalif.72
The depth of Aquelus’ deviousness is best illustrated by his response when the Kalif asked Aquelus to help suppress the southern rebellion of Stretcher Jones in return for further trade concessions. The Kalif, a devious man himself, also wrote that Aquelus’ two half-brothers, closest successors to the cappanship, had been awarded the honor of studying in the Kalif’s court, under the tutelage of his most able instructors, “amongst the most learned men in the civilized world.” Aquelus, who had remained neutral in the conflict, replied that a Brueghelite armada of 100 sail already threatened Ambergris—a fleet actually some 200 miles away, contentedly plundering the southern islands—and he could not spare any ships to attack a friendly Truffidian power in the west; nonetheless, he gratefully accepted the privileges so generously offered by the Kalif. As for the invitation to his half-brothers, Aquelus returned his “devout and immense thanks,” but they never went. Had they gone, the Kalif would almost certainly have kept them as hostages.73
However pleased Aquelus may have been at the adroit deflection of these potential threats, he still, as the annual fresh water squid expedition came ever closer, had two other dangerous situations that required swift resolution. First, the clear shortfall in the spring crops, combined with the influx of new settlers (which he had no wish to see slacken) meant the possibility of famine. Second, the Haragck, a warlike clan of nomads who rode sturdy mountain ponies into battle, had begun to make inroads on his western borders.74 Aquelus had no cavalry, but the Haragck had no fleet, and if it came to armed confrontation, Aquelus must have been confident—now that Morrow, in firm control of the northern Moth, was an ally—that he could stop the barbarians from crossing the river in force.
If the Haragck had been Aquelus’ only enemy, he would still have had cause to thank his good fortune, but to the south an old adversary chose this moment to reassert itself: the Aan descendants of the same Brueghel who had chased Manzikert I upriver. Drawn by the Aan exodus to the rich suburbs of Ambergris, these Brueghelites, as they called themselves, had begun to make trouble in the south. Understandably, they resented the loss of so much potential manpower when they found themselves beset by the still more southerly Gray Tribes. Most damaging, in light of the famine, the Brueghelites waged a trade war instead of a military war, which might at least have been resolved quickly. Some of their weapons included transit dues on Ambergrisian goods, heavy tolls on produce bound for the southern islands, and customs houses (backed by large, well-armed garrisons) along the Moth.75
Eventually, Aquelus would find a way to set the Haragck against the Brueghelites, eliminating both as a threat to Ambergris,76 but as the freshwater squid season approached, Aquelus could not know that his bribes and political maneuverings would bear fruit. Thus, he made the fateful decree that three times as many ships would participate in the hunt as usual. His purpose was to offset the shortfall of crops with squid meat and byproducts, and to provide enough extra food to withstand a siege by either the Brueghelites or the Haragck.77 In the event there was no siege, these provisions could accommodate the continuing flow of immigrants. The maneuvers to catch the squid, coincidentally, required a prowess and skill level far greater than necessary during an actual war, and so Aquelus also looked to toughen up his navy.
At the appointed time, Aquelus, at the head of nearly 5,000 men and women, took to the river in his 100 ships.78 They would be gone for two weeks, the longest period of time Aquelus thought he could safely remain away from the capital. His new wife stayed behind. No two turns of fate—Irene’s choice to stay at home and the enormity of the fleet that set off for the southern hunting grounds—would have a more profound effect on Ambergris during its early history.
III
ANY HISTORIAN MUST TAKE EXTREME CARE WHEN discussing the Silence, for the enormity of the event demands respect. But when the historian in question, myself, explains the Silence for a paltry pamphlet series, he must display a degree of solemnity in direct inverse proportion to the frivolity of the surrounding information. I find it unacceptable that you, the reader, should flip—a most disagreeably shallow word—from this pamphlet to the next, which may concern Best Masquerade Festivals or Where to Procure a Prostitute, without being made to grasp the awful ramifications of the Event. This requires no melodramatic folderol on my part, for the facts themselves should suffice: upon Aquelus’ return, the city of Ambergris lay empty, not a single living soul to be found upon any of its boulevards, alleyways, and avenues, nor within its many homes, public buildings, and courtyards.
Aquelus’ ships landed at docks where the only sound was the lapping of water against wood. Arrived in the early morning, having raced home to meet the self-imposed two-week deadline, the cappan found the city cast in a weak light, wreathed in mist come off the river. It must have been an ethereal scene—perhaps even a terrifying one.
At first, no one noticed the severity of the silence, but as the fleet weighed anchor and the crews walked out onto the docks, many thought it odd no one had come out to greet them. Soon, they noticed that the river defenses lay unmanned, and that the boats in the harbor around them, as they came clear of the mist, drifted, under no one’s control.
When Aquelus noticed these anomalies, he feared the worst—an invasion by the Brueghelites during his absence—and ordered the crews back onto the ships. All ships but his own sailed back out into the middle of the River Moth, where they remained, laden with squid, at battle readiness.
Then Aquelus, anxious to find his new bride, personally led an expedition of 50 men into the city.79 His fears of invasion seemed unfounded, for everywhere they went, Ambergris was as empty of enemies as it was of friends.
We are lucky indeed that among the leaders of the expedition was one Simon Jersak, a common soldier who would one day serve as the chief tax collector for the western provinces. Jersak left us with a full account of the expedition’s journey into Ambergris, and I quote liberally from it here:
As the mist, which had hidden the true extent of the city’s emptiness from us, dissipated, and as every street, every building, every shop on every corner, proved to have been abandoned, the Cappan himself trembled and drew his cloak about him. Men from among our ranks were sent randomly through the neighborhoods, only to return with the news that more silence lay ahead: meals lay on tables ready to eat, and carts with horses stood placidly by the sides of avenues that, even at the early hour, would normally have been abustle. But nowhere could we find a soul: the banks were unlocked and empty, while in the Religious Quarter, the flags still weakly fluttered, and the giant rats meandered about the courtyards, but, again, no people; even the fungi that had been our scourge had gone away. We quickly searched through the public baths, the granaries, the porticos, the schools—nothing. When we reached the Cappan’s palace and found no one there—not his bride, not the least retainer—the Cappan openly wept, and yet underneath the tears his face was set as if for war. He was not the only man reduced to tears, for it soon became clear that our wives, our children, had all disappeared, and yet left behind all the signs of their presence, so we knew we had not been dreaming our lives away—they had existed, they had lived, but they were no longer in the city . . . And so, disconsolate, robbed of all power t
o act against an enemy whose identity he did not know, my Cappan sat upon the steps of the palace and stared out across the city . . . until such time as one of the men who had been sent out discovered certain items on the old altar of the gray caps. At this news, the Cappan donned his cloak once more, wiped the tears from his face, drew his sword and sped to the site with all haste. As we followed behind our Cappan, through that city once so full of lives and now as empty as a tomb, there were none among us who did not, in our heart of hearts, fear what we would find upon the old altar . . .
What did they find upon the altar? An old weathered journal and two human eyeballs preserved by some unknown process in a solid square made of an unknown clear metal. Between journal and squared eyeballs blood had been used to draw a symbol:80
More ominous still, the legendary entrance, once blocked up, boarded over, lay wide open, the same stairs that had enticed Manzikert I beckoning now to Aquelus.
The journal was, of course, the one that had disappeared with Samuel Tonsure 60 years before. The eyes, a fierce blue, could belong to no one but Manzikert I. Who the blood had come from, no one cared to guess, but Aquelus, finally confronted with an enemy—for who could now doubt the return of the gray caps and their implication in the disappearance of the city’s citizens?81—acted decisively.
Those commanders who argued that a military force should attack the underground found themselves overruled by Aquelus, who, in the face of almost overwhelming opposition, ordered all of his military commanders back to the ships, there to speed up the disembarkation so as to simultaneously process the squid, which otherwise would have rotted, and take up defensive positions throughout the city. Aquelus knew that the Haragck, upon hearing of the developments in Ambergris, might well attack, followed by the Brueghelites. Worse still, if the Cappaness could not be found, the political consequences—regardless of his love for her—would be disastrous. Might not the King of the Menites blame Aquelus for the death of his daughter?
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