Lyonesse

by Jack Vance

  The negotiations proceeded another hour, but only emphasized the mutual inflexibility. Since nothing more had been expected the conversations ended on a polite basis. The envoys departed the Hall of Honors, that they might rest before the evening's banquet, while King Casmir remained brooding alone at the table. In the back room Suldrun watched in fascination, then in panic as King Casmir picked up one of the candelabra, turned and with heavy steps walked toward the back chamber.

  Suldrun stood paralyzed. Her presence was known! She turned, darted to the side, ducked into the corner beside a storage case, and pulled a fragment of old rag over her shining hair.

  The hangings parted; candlelight flickered through the chamber. Suldrun crouched, awaiting the voice of King Casmir. But he stood in silence, nostrils dilated, perhaps sensing the fragrance of the lavender sachet in which Suldrun's clothes were laid. He looked over his shoulder, then went to the back wall. From a crevice he took a thin iron rod, which he pushed into a small hole at the level of his knee, then into another somewhat higher. A door opened, emitting a light quivering and almost palpable, like a flickering alternation of purple and green. Out from the room flowed the thrilling tingle of magic. A pair of high-pitched voices produced a babbling outcry.

  "Silence," said King Casmir. He entered the room and closed the door.

  Suldrun jumped from the corner and departed the room. She ran across the Hall of Honors, slipped out into the Great Hall and thence to the Long Gallery. Once more, she went sedately to her rooms, where Dame Maugelin scolded her for soiled clothes and a dirty face.

  Suldrun bathed, dressed in a warm robe. She went to the window with her lute and pretended to practice, making such energetic discords that Dame Maugelin threw up her hands and went elsewhere.

  Suldrun was left alone. She put the lute aside and sat looking across the landscape. The time was late afternoon; the weather had broken; sunlight glistened on the wet roofs of Lyonesse Town.

  Slowly, incident by incident, Suldrun reviewed the events of the day.

  The three envoys from Dahaut interested her little, except that they wanted to take her away to Avallon and marry her to a strange man. Never! She would run away; she would become a peasant, or a minstrel girl, or gather mushrooms in the woods! The secret room behind the Hall of Honors in itself seemed neither extraordinary nor remarkable. In fact, it only corroborated certain of her half-formed suspicions regarding King Casmir, who wielded such absolute and awful power!

  Dame Maugelin returned to the room, panting in haste and excitement. "Your father commands you to the banquet. He wishes you to be everything a beautiful princess of Lyonesse should be. Do you hear? You may wear your blue velvet gown and your moonstones. At all times remember court etiquette! Don't spill your food; drink very little wine. Speak only when you are addressed, then respond with courtesy and without chewing your words. Neither titter, nor scratch yourself, nor wriggle in your chair as if your bottom itched. Do not belch, gurgle or gulp. If someone breaks wind, do not stare or point or attempt to place the blame. Naturally you will control yoursell as well; nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess. Come! I must brush your hair."

  In the morning Suldrun went to take her lessons in the library, but again Master Jaimes was not on hand, nor on the day after, nor the day after. Suldrun became a trifle miffed. Surely Master Jaimes might have communicated with her despite his indisposition. For an entire week she ostentatiously absented herself from the library, but still no word from Master Jaimes!

  In sudden alarm Suldrun sought out Dame Boudetta, who sent a footman to Master Jaimes' bleak little cell in the West Tower. The footman discovered Master Jaimes outstretched and dead on his pallet. His fever had become pneumonia, and he had died with no one the wiser.

  Chapter 4

  ONE MORNING OF THE SUMMER before Suldrun's tenth birthday she went to the third floor parlor in the squat old Tower of Owls for her dancing lesson. The room itself she thought perhaps the finest of all Haidion. A well-waxed birch parquetry floor reflected light from three windows draped with a pearl-gray satin. Furniture upholstered in pale gray and scarlet ranged the walls; and Mistress Laletta made sure that fresh flowers were to be found on all the tables. The students included eight boys and eight girls of high degree, ranging in age from eight to twelve. Suldrun judged them a mixed lot: some agreeable, others tiresome and dull.

  Mistress Laletta, a slender dark-eyed young woman of gentle birth but few prospects, taught competently and showed no favoritism; Suldrun neither liked nor disliked her.

  On this morning Mistress Laletta was indisposed and could not teach. Suldrun returned to her chambers to discover Dame Maugelin lying grandly naked on Suldrun's bed, mounted by a hearty young footman named Lopus.

  Suldrun watched in startled fascination until Dame Maugelin caught sight of her and uttered a horrified cry.

  "Disgusting!" said Suldrun. "And in my bed!"

  Lopus, sheepishly disengaging himself, drew on his breeches and departed. Dame Maugelin dressed herself no less hastily, meanwhile making jovial small-talk. "Back so soon from dancing, my dear Princess? Well, then, did you have a good lesson? What you saw was nothing of moment, just a bit of play. Better, far better, if no one knew—" Suldrun spoke in annoyance: "You've soiled my bed!"

  "Now then, dear Princess—"

  "Take all the bedding out—no, first go wash yourself, then bring in all clean bedding and air the room well!"

  "Yes, dear Princess." Dame Maugelin hastened to obey, and Suldrun ran off down the stairs, with a lift of the spirits, a skip and a gleeful laugh. Dame Maugelin's strictures might now be dismissed, and Suldrun could do as she pleased.

  Suldrun ran up the arcade, scanned the Urquial to make sure that no one watched, then ducked under the old larch and thrust open the groaning old gate. She squeezed through, shut the gate and descended the winding path past the fane and into the garden.

  The day was bright and sunny; the air smelled sweet of heliotrope and fresh green leaves. Suldrun surveyed the garden with satisfaction. She had uprooted all those weeds she considered rank and crass, including all the nettles and most of the thistles; the garden now was almost orderly. She had swept leaves and dirt from the tessellated floor of the old villa, and had cleared detritus from the bed of a little stream which trickled down one side of the ravine. There was still much to do, but not today.

  Standing in the shadow of a column, she opened the clasp at her shoulder, let her gown drop around her ankles and stepped away naked. Sunlight tingled on her skin; cool air produced a delicious contrast of sensations.

  She moved down through the garden. Just so must a dryad feel, thought Suldrun; just so must it move, in just such a hush, with no sound but the sigh of the wind in the leaves.

  She halted in the shade of the solitary old lime tree, then continued down to the beach to see what the waves had brought in. When the wind blew from the southwest, as was often the case, the currents swung around the headland and curled into her little cove, bringing all manner of stuff to the beach until the next high tide, when the same current lifted the articles and took them away once more. Today the beach was clean. Suldrun ran back and forth, skirting the surf as it moved along the coarse sand. She halted to scrutinize a rock fifty yards out under the headland, where she once had discovered a pair of young mermaids. They had seen her and called out, but they used a slow strange language Suldrun could not understand. Their olive-green hair hung about their pale shoulders; their lips and the nipples of their breasts were also a pale green. One waved and Suldrun saw the webbing between her fingers. Both turned and looked offshore to where a bearded merman reared from the waves. He called out in a hoarse windy voice; the mermaids slipped from the rocks and disappeared.

  Today the rocks were bare. Suldrun turned and walked slowly up into the garden.

  She dressed in her rumpled frock and returned to the top of the ravine. First a peek through the gateway to make sure no one watched, then quickly through and a run
, hop and skip back down the arcade, past the orangery and once more into Haidion.

  A summer storm blowing in from the Atlantic brought a soft rain to Lyonesse Town. Suldrun was confined to Haidion. One afternoon she wandered into the Hall of Honors.

  Haidion was quiet; the castle seemed to hold its breath. Suldrun walked slowly around the room, examining each of the great chairs as if to appraise its strength. The chairs in turn considered her. Some stood proud and aloof; others were surly. Some were dark and sinister, others benevolent. At the throne of King Casmir Suldrun surveyed the dark red gonfalon which concealed the back room. Nothing, she told herself, could induce her to venture within; not with magic so close.

  Stepping to the side she evaded the purview of the throne and felt more at ease. There, not ten feet from her face, hung the gonfalon. Naturally she dared not enter, nor even approach, the back room... Still, to look would cause no harm.

  On soft feet she sidled close to the hanging, and gently pulled it aside. Light from the high windows passed over her shoulder to fall on the far stone wall. There: in a crevice, the iron rod. There: the upper and lower lock-holes. And beyond, the room where only King Casmir might go... Suldrun let the panels come together. She turned away and, in a sober mood, departed the Hall of Honors.

  Relations between Lyonesse and Troicinet, never warm, had become strained, for a variety of reasons, which, trifle by trifle, acted to create hostility. The ambitions of King Casmir excluded neither Troicinet nor Dascinet, and his spies pervaded every level of Troice society.

  King Casmir was handicapped in his program by the absence of a navy. Despite a long coastline, Lyonesse lacked easy access to the sea, with blue-water ports only at Slute Skeme, Bulmer Skeme, Lyonesse Town and Pargetta behind Cape Farewell. The indented coast of Troicinet created dozens of sheltered harbors' each with piers, yards and ways. There was an amplitude both; of skilled shipwrights and good timber: hackberry and larch for knees, oak for frames, stands of young pinhead spruce for masts and a dense resinous pine for planking. Troice merchant ship: ranged north to Jutland, Britain and Ireland, south down the Atlantic to Mauretania, and the Kingdom of the Blue Men, east past Tingis and into the Mediterranean.

  King Casmir considered himself a master of intrigue and sought incessantly for some trifling advantage which he might exploit. On one "occasion a heavily laden Troice cog, inching along the coast of Dascinet in a dense fog ran aground on a sand bank. Yvar Excelsus, the irascible King of Dascinet, instantly claimed the vessel and its cargo, citing maritime law, and sent lighters to unload the cargo. A pair of Troice warships appeared, repelled what was now a swarming flotilla of half-piratical Dasce, and at high tide pulled the cog into deep water.

  In a fury King Yvar Excelsus sent an abusive message to King Granice at Alceinor demanding reparations, upon pain of punitive action.

  King Granice, who well knew the temperament of Yvar Excelsus, ignored the message, exasperating the Dasce king almost to a state of incandescence.

  King Casmir now dispatched a secret emissary to Dascinet, urging attack upon Troicinet, and promising full assistance. Troice spies intercepted the envoy and took him with his documents to Alceinor.

  A week later a cask was delivered to King Casmir at Haidion, in which he discovered the body of his envoy with the documents crammed into his mouth.

  Meanwhile King Yvar Excelsus became distracted by another matter, and his threats against Troicinet came to nothing.

  King Granice made no further remonstrance to King Casmir, but began seriously to consider the possibility of an unwelcome war. Troicinet, with a population half that of Lyonesse, could never expect to win such a war and hence had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

  From the town Pargetta, close by Cape Farewell, came ill reports of pillage and slaughter by the Ska. Two black ships, arriving at dawn, discharged troops who looted the town with a dispassionate precision more terrifying than savagery. All who interfered were killed. The Ska took crocks of olive oil, saffron, wine, gold from the Mithraic temple, tin and silver ingots, flasks of quicksilver. They took away no captives, put torches to no buildings, committed no rape or torture, and killed only those folk who impeded their robbery.

  Two weeks later a Troice cog, putting into Lyonesse Town with a cargo of Irish flax, reported a disabled Ska ship in the Sea of Tethra, west of Cape Farewell. The Troice cog had put in close to discover forty Ska sitting at their benches too weak to row. The Troice had offered a tow, but the Ska refused to take a line, and the cog sailed away.

  King Casmir instantly despatched three war-galleys to the area, where they found the long black ship wallowing dismasted in the swells.

  The galleys drew up alongside, to discover disaster, anguish and death. A storm had broken the vessel's back-stay; the mast had collapsed upon the forepeak, crushing the water casks, and half the ship's complement already had succumbed to thirst.

  Nineteen men survived; too weak to offer resistance, they were taken aboard the Lyonesse ships and given water. A line was made fast to the long-ship; the corpses were thrown overboard and all returned to Lyonesse Town, and the Ska were jailed in an old fort at the west end of the harbor. King Casmir, riding his horse Sheuvan, went down to the harbor to inspect the long-ship. The contents of the forward and after cargo holds had been conveyed to the dock: a case of gold and silver temple adornments, glass jars of saffron gathered from the sheltered valleys behind Cape Farewell, pottery urns stamped with the symbol of the Bulmer Skeme press.

  King Casmir inspected the loot and the long-ship, then rode Sheuvan around the Chale to the fortress. At his command the prisoners were brought out and ranked before him, to stand blinking into the sunlight: tall dark-haired men, pale of complexion, thin and sinewy rather than massive. They looked about them with the easy curiosity of honored guests, and spoke to each other in soft measured voices.

  King Casmir addressed the group. "Which among you is captain of the vessel?"

  The Ska turned to look at him, politely enough, but no one answered.

  King Casmir pointed to a man in the front rank. "Which man among you is in authority? Point him out."

  "The captain is dead. We are all ‘dead.' Authority is gone, and everything else of life."

  "To me you appear quite alive," said Casmir, smiling coldly.

  "We reckon ourselves dead."

  "Because you expect to be killed? Suppose I allowed you ransom?"

  "Who would ransom a dead man?"

  King Casmir made an impatient gesture. "I want information, not garble and cant." He looked through the group and in one man, somewhat older than the others, thought to recognize the| quality of authority. "You will remain here." He signaled the guards. "Take the others back to confinement."

  King Casmir took the man he had selected aside. "Are you also ‘dead'?"

  "I am no longer among the living Ska. To my family, my comrades and myself, I am dead."

  "Tell me this: Suppose I wished to confer with your king would he come to Lyonesse under guarantees of protection?

  "Naturally not." The Ska seemed amused.

  "Suppose I wished to explore the possibility of an alliance:

  "To what end?"

  "The Ska navy and the seven Lyonesse armies, acting in concert, might be invincible."

  "'Invincible'? Against whom?"

  King Casmir disliked anyone who pretended to more acuity than himself. "Against all others of the Elder Isles! Whom else?"

  "You imagine the Ska assisting you against your enemies? The idea is preposterous. If I were alive I would laugh. The Ska are at war with all the world, including Lyonesse."

  "That is no vindication. I am about to adjudge you a pirate." The Ska looked up at the sun, around the sky and out over the sea. "Do as you like. We are dead."

  King Casmir showed a grim smile. "Dead or not, your fate shall serve to daunt other murderers, and the time shall be noon tomorrow."

  Along the breakwater nineteen frames were erected. The n
ight passed; the day dawned bright and clear. By mid-morning crowds had assembled along the Chale, including folk from coastal villages, peasants in clean smocks and bell-hats, vendors of sages and dried fish. On the rocks west of the Chale crawled cripples, lepers and the weak-minded, in accordance with the statutes of Lyonesse.

  The sun reached the zenith. The Ska were led from the fortress. Each was spread-eagled naked to a frame and hung upside down, facing out to sea. Down from the Peinhador came Zerling, the Chief Executioner. He walked along the row, stopped by each man, slit the abdomen, drew out the intestines with a double-pronged hook, so that they fell over the chest and head, then moved on to the next. A black and yellow flag was hoisted at the entrance to the harbor, and the dying men were left to themselves.

  Dame Maugelin pulled an embroidered bonnet over her head and went down to the Chale. Suldrun thought that she might be left to herself, but Dame Boudetta took her to the balcony outside the Queen's bedchamber, where ladies of the court gathered to watch the execution. At noon the conversations halted and all pressed to the balustrade to view the proceedings. As Zerling went about his duties, the ladies sighed and made murmuring sounds. Suldrun was lifted to the balustrade the better that she might learn the fate accorded to outlaws. In fascinated revulsion she watched Zerling saunter from man to man, but distance concealed the details of his work.

  Few of the ladies present spoke favorably of the occasion. For Lady Duisane and Lady Ermoly who suffered poor vision, the distances were too great. Lady Spaneis pronounced the affair simply dull. "It was like butcher's work upon dead animals; the Ska showed neither fear nor penitence; what kind of execution is that?" Queen Sollace grumbled: "Worst of all, the wind blows directly across the harbor and into our windows. In three days the stink will drive us off to Sarris."

  Suldrun listened in hope and excitement; Sarris was the summer palace, some forty miles to the east beside the river Glame.