The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  A player, in other words.

  The General introduces a number of army officers and civil service functionaries, all of whom want to be associated with the Book.

  "You see,” one of them says, “we take the safety of the Book very seriously."

  Luc cannot stop himself smiling.

  They crowd round to look over Luc's shoulder as he packs away the Book, still in its sections of ten leaves. The measurements were correct and the sections fit with serendipity into the slots, gripped in place by the foam padding.

  Then everyone toasts the health of the King and Mr. Hun Sen. Canapés have done little to absorb the alcohol. Hungry and slightly fogged from cognac, Luc glances at his watch, anxious to get going.

  Later than he likes, Luc and the General walk out to a waiting Mercedes. It takes two soldiers to load the now heavy case into the boot. The General holds out an expansive arm for Luc to precede him into the car. Luc smells the soft tan leather upholstery and runs his hands over it as he slides into place.

  Two motorcycles roar ahead of them. Almost inaudibly, the Mercedes eases out behind them, with an army jeep following. Feeling presidential, Luc settles back with relief as the cavalcade pulls out of the gates.

  Conversation with General Yimsut Vutthy soon runs out, but Luc has ready that morning's Herald Tribune. Rather gratifyingly, if well into the middle pages, the paper reports the Book's discovery. golden book holds key to cambodian history. An official press photograph shows the General himself displaying the leaves on a wooden table. Luc passes the newspaper to him.

  Then very suddenly Luc is sure he has left behind his passport and letter of contract to the Cambodian government.

  With a lurch of panic, he reaches down for his belt pouch. He has time to feel his passport and papers securely inside.

  The car swerves. In his slightly befuddled state, Luc thinks the veering has come from him.

  Tires squeal; metal slams. Inertia keeps Luc traveling forward, folding him against the front seat.

  An accident. Luc struggles his way back into his seat. He sees an angry face against the window.

  Luc behaves entirely automatically. There's been an accident, someone is upset, so go and see if you can help.

  He opens the car door.

  The angry man seizes him, pulls him out of the Mercedes, spins him around, and pushes him forward. Luc stumbles ahead in shock.

  A silver pickup gleams by the side of the road. New, Luc thinks, and probably rented. Very suddenly, as if a tree trunk had snapped, there is a crackling of gunfire behind him. This is it, he thinks, this is really it. He's absurdly grateful for his belt pouch. He's thinking that it will hide his passport and money. They'll only get the twenty dollars he keeps in his pocket.

  The back of the pickup truck is down. Someone shoves him towards it. Other hands grab him, hoist him up, and then slam his head down onto the floor. He hears a ripping sound and he realizes that heavy workman's tape is being wrapped around his head. It blacks out his eyes and covers his mouth. Something like a heavy sack is thrown against him. It groans. Luc recognizes the General's voice. A light, rough covering is thrown over them both; Luc smells cheap plastic sacking.

  Someone shouts urgently. A bony butt sits on the most fragile part of his ribcage. The engine revs and the truck jerks forward, bouncing over ruts and slamming the metal floor against his shoulders and head. The truck swings back around onto pavement and accelerates away. Luc assumes it has U-turned back towards town.

  The strange things you think when you are in trouble. Luc finds he is worried about the duct tape pulling off his eyebrows and jerking out his hair. He thinks of Mr. Yeo and wants to tell him, see how brave I'm being? He thinks of his mother. See, Maman? I don't feel any fear at all. This is bad, this is very bad, but I'm not panicking. He wants someone to be proud of him, to sit up and take notice.

  He remembers Tintin. Tintin always remembered how many turns, left or right, and the kind of terrain, and the kind of noises.

  So he pretends he is in a Tintin comic book. As they whine along the airport highway he counts to sixty five times. Then they shudder over open ground to the count of sixty times twelve. After a couple of almost vengeful crashes over humps he loses count.

  They slow to a stop. He smells dust and something else, metallic and sour, which he realizes is probably blood, his own or the General's.

  The back of the truck thumps down. “Out, out,” someone says. “Let's go!” Luc shifts, feeling his way out of the pickup. He is seized, hauled out, and thrust forward. Stumbling blindly over the ground he thinks: I will have to learn Braille in case I ever go blind. Why did I wear my good shoes, they'll be all dusty.

  Well, mon cher, they will look very branchée at your funeral. OUCH the stones are like teeth jabbing through the thin soles. Scrub crackles, prickling ankles.

  Luc hears the pickup rattle back onto the road behind him.

  Then his feet go out from under him and he slides down a dirt slope onto rocks. A wrench and a folding-under and he knows that his ankle is twisted. Someone crouches down on top of him. He hears sirens wail past on the road above them. We're down a ditch, he thinks. A ditch or a channel for floods in the dry season. You'd need to know it was here. These are local people.

  The sack is thrown over him again. Some tiny insect nips him. Daylight mosquitoes, they carry dengue fever. He tries to slap it, and realizes that he can't—his hands are tied. He tries experimentally to talk through the tape.

  "You say nothing!” The voice is so close to his face that he feels breath on his nose. An insect bites him again.

  He tries to count how long they wait, but then Tintin loses his nerve. Very suddenly Tintin wants to go home.

  You are local people. I've probably seen your faces. All smiles. Well, Cambodia is smiling now isn't? I can see it grinning at me.

  See, Cambodia is saying, you thought you could love us out of ourselves. Well, here it is. This is what everyone else in Cambodia went through. Do you love it now? See how powerful love is? How long did you think you could be in Cambodia and avoid this? How long did you think you could avoid the strong men, the gangs, and the armed ex-soldiers? This is Siem Reap on Highway 6, one of the most dangerous parts of Cambodia for most of the thirty years of conflict.

  Your turn, Luc, to be in a war.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  April 1142

  The teacher could not grow a beard.

  This was a great sadness for him and probably an embarrassment for his students. The teacher was a Brahmin, originally from India, Kalinga. His people could grow beards. It was a mark of their holiness. This Brahmin wondered if he had sinned in a previous life. Or perhaps his beard refused to come because of his lack of courage. He was too lax with challenging the boys, especially the one who called himself Prince Slave.

  For the sake of my beard, the Brahmin promised himself, the next time Nia questions authority, I will put him in his place.

  In the class they were discussing the ordering of castes, and Nia sighed and said, “There are no castes of people in Kambujadesa. In Kalinga, I'm sure these things hold firm, but here everyone is either a noble or some kind of slave."

  Now, the Brahmin thought, I must act now. “Do you deny the ordering of categories?"

  The slave prince said with a sideways smile, “I am sure the categories are orderly in a country where everyone can grow a beard."

  The silence in the room was clenched.

  Prince Nia continued. “Here everyone keeps telling us to support the ordering of categories and professions, but I can never tell if they are talking about Varna or Jakti. I don't think they can either."

  "Your problem, Prince,” said the Brahmin, “is that you think words have no power. You use them too freely."

  "I think truth has power. Words have power when they are pushed out of you by truth."

  "You have no humility."

  The young prince paused. “Not enough, it is true."

&nbs
p; "You should learn humility, Prince."

  "That's true too. From whom should I learn it, guru?"

  "From the King!"

  "There is no possibility of learning anything other than humility when confronted by a king. I find it more instructive to learn it from slaves."

  Like a clam, the jaw of the Brahmin slammed shut. Too, too clever, this slave prince. The Brahmin tried to humiliate him. “You speak of your little friend."

  "She is my friend. She sweeps and scrubs and fans and whisks. But she has a loyal heart."

  Just lately, the Brahmin had noticed, the children were not laughing at Nia. The other princes hung their heads and looked sullen, hiding something. The Brahmin had a terrible thought. This Nia is recruiting them. Recruiting them to what? The Brahmin had no words, but he felt this overturning prince was an enemy of religion.

  "I think you learn pride from her,” said the Brahmin.

  The cursed boy just looked thoughtful. “There is pride there, for I find her an exceptional person and so I am proud that she has condescended to be my friend."

  "Upside-down boy! She is the slave, you are The Prince."

  "So I should learn pride, not humility?"

  He was a treacherous lake that made the boats unsteady.

  "You....you take pride and turn it into humility and then turn it into pride!” The Brahmin knew that he sounded weak and shaken.

  A danger, this one. This one is a danger.

  Who knows what this danger to the Gods will bring? War? Famine? Drought? Severe lack of observance always brought the wrath of gods.

  Even at twelve, this overturning Slave Prince must be brought down.

  Shivering with the importance of what he was about to do, the teacher visited Steu Rau, the Master of the King's Fly Whisk.

  The Master's family had whisked kings in public for generations. Family members had also been the Guardian of the Royal Sword and the Superintendent of the Pages. They were not Brahmin but they were definitely Varna. The Fly Whisks understood loyalty and the meaning of the categories.

  Steu Rau agreed. “Yes, yes, you are right. You have no idea how this friendship unsteadies the palace girls. They keep looking for similar favours. Why, some of them have even offered themselves to me."

  "Shameful!"

  "In the house of the King!"

  The King was supposed to sleep with them, not the officers.

  "It is the singling out that is the problem,” the teacher said. “The lower categories have to understand that they lack distinction, that they are as alike as cattle. That they earn distinction slowly, life after life, though obedience."

  "This girl shoots up like a star!"

  "Through the attention of a capsizing prince. So. I think we must remove this attention by separating them. Permanently."

  "Yes! Yes! Kill her!"

  The Brahmin admired Fly Whisk's energy. But he also thought that perhaps the girl might have offended Fly Whisk. “I do not think the killing of a female nia would earn merit. It might have the reverse effect."

  "Humph! Well. You are the expert in these matters, guru."

  "I think the King will be making donations of land to a temple soon, and that she should be one of the gifts. She should be donated to work in the fields. No serving in the temples. In other words, the attention of this capsizing prince will have resulted in a lowering of her status. It will have taken her even farther from heaven."

  The Master enjoyed the idea. “Yes, yes, that would be an object lesson. And a donation will earn merit."

  "For all who are part of it.” The Brahmin smiled and held up his holy, bestowing hands.

  * * * *

  Suryavarman had many names, and would have another name after his death.

  He slept each night at the summit of the palace temple. At least that got him away from his wives. Attendants had strung up his hammock and lowered draperies to keep out the night air. In the old days a woman might have been left with him, for the sake of form.

  But the Universal King was old now. He did not want women with him. He did not like the way they searched his face and looked at his old body. He was exhausted with the impudent stripping gaze of everyone who saw him. They searched his face for signs of glory and found only a man after all.

  And yet, what he had done! He was the Sun King, who had swamped his enemies. Might not a little of that show on his face?

  Nowadays, Suryavarman turned might into merit. He had built the biggest temple in the world in honor of Vishnu and all the Gods. Perhaps doubt was the burden that gods lay on kings for coming too close to them.

  You sluiced water around a stone, and claimed it was holy. You did not know whether it was or not. You never saw a god, or felt a god. At times you used the Gods strategically, to frighten or threaten or shame your rivals.

  Sometimes you wondered if any of it was true.

  At night, lying awake and listening to the sounds of insects, you would know: you were tough and strong but sometimes that strength crushed things you wished to keep. You had a mean streak, you had a fearful streak, and you had a mind that always played chess with people's lives. You took pleasure in all the politicking; you promised yourself that you would stop. You tried to convince yourself that you had finally won and could afford to be more forgiving. Something in you prevented it.

  Bigger and bigger temples, more and more stones piled high, more exiles, more confiscations, more setting families off against each other. And at night, loneliness.

  Something fluttered in the shadows of the candle. It slipped around the draperies, like a gecko.

  "I am child,” a boy said, and flung himself down onto the stone.

  I can see that, thought Suryavarman and sat up. The boy must have avoided the stairs by climbing up the sides of the temple, on the carvings. “Have you ruined the stucco?” the King demanded.

  "I took care to avoid doing harm, Great King. I am small and light. I do not come for myself, King, but for another."

  The King beadled down on him. “Whose son are you?"

  "Yours,” said the boy, and then hastened to add, “in spirit I am yours, for I have grown up in your house, but my father is Dharan Indravarman, who serves you as a small king in the Northeast."

  "I know him,” rumbled Suryavarman. My cousin, not particularly troublesome, a man of no obvious faults and a Buddhist, so doubly harmless. “You can sit up, I want to see your face."

  The boy was a plump little fellow only about twelve years old, with a big round face and thick peasant lips. No matter what he said, his serious, regarding eyes had no trace of real fear.

  The King asked him, “What makes you think you are not in a lot of trouble?"

  The boy replied, “Because you are a Universal King. A Universal King is brave and has faced terrible danger. Such a king would have no need to frighten me."

  "You are troubling my sleep.” Like bad dreams.

  The little fellow bowed and crawled closer. Determined, wasn't he?

  "King. You are generously setting up new temples, and you are to give to these establishments great gifts of land and water and parasols and oil and wax and people."

  "Yes?” Dangerous stuff, little fellow, for these gifts are the canals of politics. Gold and silver and obligation flow down them. And blood.

  "There is a slave girl. Her name is Fishing Cat. She was honored to be made part of our household when she was five. She is so happy to be here, she has not thought of her village since. She does not even remember its name. But I have checked the records and I see she must have come from the villages near Mount Merit. If...” Here the child faltered, bit his lip, became a child again. “If that is where you are planning a temple, then perhaps if she is sent there, that would be a good thing. She could see her family again."

  "Is that all you want?"

  "I have been very foolish,” said the child in the tiniest possible voice. “I became friends with her. It was easy for me, it was fun. I had no thought of the danger for her. It is m
y fault, but she is the one being punished."

  The King could not help but smile. “You climbed up here for a slave girl?"

  The boy sompiahed, yes. “My guru says I must learn humility."

  The King chuckled. “A strange way to show humility, to wake up a king with demands.” The boy went still and looked down.

  Impossible to gauge, little fellow, how much of a danger you will be. But what a heart you have. A brave heart and a good heart, to care so much for a slave girl. “All right. I will order it."

  The boy flung himself face-down onto the stone. Then the little imp sat up and made sure the King remembered. “Her name is Fishing Cat. Mount Merit."

  The King nodded. He stood up. His chest had sagged, his belly swelled, his calves had shrivelled. He shuffled into his sandals. “Come along, little fellow, I will get you past the guards."

  "Don't punish them,” said the boy, suddenly alarmed. “I am very small and quiet."

  The King had to laugh. The boy's heart is a kingdom; it could contain everyone. He cares for guards! They would kill him at a nod from me.

  "I won't punish them,” promised the King.

  Suryavarman quickly calculated. Little Buddhist, you have ten more years before you become a danger. By then, I will be dead. With all this sudden trouble over my wife's brother in Champa and with the Vietnamese in the north, someone somewhere will betray me soon. And so I know who you are. You are the danger to whoever is my successor. You can be my harrow.

  If you love me.

  "Can I tell you who you are?” Suryavarman said as they walked. “Your father is my first cousin. Your mother was from Mahidharapura, the same pastures from which my own family came.” His hand on the boy's shoulder pressed down hard. “So I am fond of your family, that is why I asked especially for you to be here. Really."

  He nearly laughed aloud again; the boy's eyes were so completely unfooled.

  "That is why I said you are my father,” whispered the boy.