The Zimiamvia Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  May the Gods move Yr. Highnes hearrte to order thinges by such a corse as wil stande with yr. Highnes dignitey and the relief of me yr. highnes pore cozen and verye loving penitente Servaunte,

  MARESCIA

  ‘Will it serve?’ she asked, leaning back to look up into the face first of one and then the other, when they had read it.

  ‘Most excellent well,’ said Supervius, and, bending her head yet farther back, kissed her fiercely in the throat: adding, as he turned away to the window, ‘—as the sheep-killing dog said when they showed him the noose.’

  Emmius held out his hand. The lady laid in it her own right hand, soft, warm, dazzling white, able. He raised it to his lips and kissed it. ‘You are a good fighter, dear Marescia. And a generous loser. Care not: you will not often lose.’

  The Princess, blushing like an untutored maiden, gave him a smile: not lip-work only, but, rare in her, a smile of her eyes. ‘I can bow to reason when I am shown it, lord brother-in-law,’ said she, and tightened her grasp on the hand that held hers. ‘I bear no grudge. For I see I was wrong.’

  Supervius, stiff-necked and haughty, but serene, came from the window. ‘Yes,’ he said, his gannet eyes staring in Emmius’s face: then wrung him by both hands.

  BOOK TWO

  UPRISING OF KING MEZENTIUS

  VII

  ZEUS TERPSIKERAUNOS

  STATEIRA had by then reigned a full month Queen Regent in Rialmar, wielding at once that dignity and the supreme power on behalf of her infant son, King Mezentius, that was not yet three years old. She was well loved of the folk throughout that country side, nor was any lord or man of mark in all Fingiswold found to speak against her, but every man of them made haste to Rialmar to do her homage and promise her firm upholding and obedience. To all these, she made answer simply and with open countenance, as might a private lady have done to tried friends come to condole her sorrow and renew pledges of friendship; but queenly too, commanding each instantly raise forces and stand ready at time and place appointed. For she meant to let go every lesser business till she should hear reason from the King of Akkama and have of him atonement too, and sure warranty of good behaviour for the future, and punish with death every person who had took hand, were it as deviser or as executer, in this most devilish mischief, that had left her a widow in the high summer-season of her youth, and a great kingdom bereft of the strong hand that had ably ruled it: a child on the throne, and a woman to be over all, and to take order for all, and to answer for all.

  Men were the better inclined, in these dark and misty matters, to follow and obey her and have confidence in her judgement and resolution, because well they knew how King Mardanus had made her secretary of his inmost intents and policies, insomuch that no lord of council nor no great officer of state had knowledge of these things so profound as she had; and they thought reasonably that her, whom so deep a politic as the great King had instructed, used, and put his trust in, they might well put their trust in too. Her council she had set up immediately under new letters patents, passing by the names of two or three but keeping all who had shown proof of their powers and weight of authority as counsellors of King Mardanus and whom he had set most store by: in especially, Mendes, the Knight Marshal: Acarnus, High Chancellor of Fingiswold: the High Admiral Psammius: Myntor, Constable in Rialmar: Prince Garman the late King’s uncle and father to Marescia. The Constable she had despatched, within a week after the King’s murder, upon secret embassage to Akkama with remonstrances and demands aforesaid.

  Prince Aktor had throughout the whole time behaved himself with a fitness which many commended and to which none could take exceptions: bearing out a good face after the first dismay and confusion were over, and showing he had the eye of reason common with the best: never a putter forward of himself in counsel, yet, being consulted, not dasht out of countenance by any big looks: ever the first, if disagreements arose, to devise some means of concord: making himself strange always sooner than familiar with the Queen, towards whom he maintained, as well in private as under the general eye, a discreet respectuous reverence as never thinking upon other but to please her.

  True it is that in the first hours, when the town was in uproar, and lie and surmise flew thick and noisy as starlings in late autumn, some shouted ’twas Aktor had slain the King in hope to ingross the kingdom to himself. Two or three voices there were that vomited out words of villany even against Queen Stateira: rhymes of the adulterous Sargus (which is a sea-fish, Aktor having come first to Fingiswold by sea) courting the Shee-Goats on the grassie shore. But a proclamation by the Lord Mendes to ‘see these rumourers whipt’ was so punctually put in execution by standers by, that the catchpolls running to do it found it done already; and the soundlier, as a labour of love. Since that, slanders miscoupling Aktor’s name with the Queen’s had no more been heard in Rialmar.

  Thus these businesses rested, while the fates of peace or war swung doubtful, waiting on Akkama. But as May now passed into June, perceptive eyes in the court that had delicate discriminative minds behind them began to note, as a gardener will the beginnings of violet-buds under their obscuring leaves, signs of kindness betwixt the Queen and Aktor. The soberer among these lookers began to think they saw, in her as in him, whenever chance or the pleasures of the court or affairs of the realm brought them together, a drawing of curtains: a strained diligence to conceal, and that no less jealously from each other than from the general, and more and more diligently as the weeks passed by, his, and her, secret mind. It was witness to the good opinion the Prince now stood in, and to men’s faith in the Queen’s wise discretion and loyal and noble nature, that these things, as they grew to common notice, stirred up neither cavil nor envy, but were let alone as matter for her concern and nobody’s else.

  Upon the fourth of June the Queen, as, since her assumption of the Regency, she was wont once in every week to do, came down from Teremne and so through the town and up to the temple of Zeus upon Mehisbon, in which were the royal tombs and, last of them, the tomb of King Mardanus. Without state she came, on foot, through the wide streets and through the press of the market-place, and thence by the triumphal way that ascends from the market-place in broad sweeping curves, now left now right to ease the slope, up the steep backbone of that, the north-western, horn of Rialmar. Pillars of rose-red marble line that way on either hand, with on every pillar a mighty cresset for lighting on nights of high festival when, viewed from the Teremnene palace or from the town in Mesokerasin, the road shows like the uncurling on the hill of some gigantic fire-drake’s serpentine and sinuous body, fringed with lambent flame. It was mid-afternoon, sunny, but with a hot heaviness in the air, and on all sides an up-towering of great cloud-bastions that darkened the horizon southwards but were of a dazzling and foaming whiteness where they took the sun. Upon her left, the Queen led with a golden chain a black panther tamed to hand, his fur smooth and sleek as the gown she wore of black sendaline edged with gold lace, and upon her right a nurse wheeled the infant King in his childish hand-carriage of sandalwood inlaid with gold and silver. Save for an officer walking at a good distance behind with a half-dozen men of the bodyguard, and save for this nurse and child, she was alone and unguarded; maintaining in this the old custom of Kings of Fingiswold, to come and go their ways in Rialmar on their private occasions much like private folk and with scarce more ceremony: people but curtseying and capping to them as they passed. They of the royal seat-town liked well this custom, as proof ocular (had proof been needed) that the King thought his subjects at large the right guards of his person, and that his greatness was not a withered beauty that durst not be seen without ornaments of state, but rather a freshness and a youthful halesomeness that can strip all off if it please and be as beautiful, and majestical.

  The temple of Zeus Soter, high over all the lesser temples of Mehisbon, stands upon an outcrop of wild crag close under the peak. It is built all of jet-black marble with unpolished surfaces for the more darkness, and naked of ornament except for t
he carvings on the vast pediment and the sculptured frieze above the portico. Queen Stateira, when she was come to the foot of the threefold great flights of steps which, where the road ends, go up to that temple, took the child Mezentius by the hand and went on with him alone. Between the pillars of the entrance, so huge in girth that five men standing round the base of one of them might scarce touch hands, and well sixty-foot high from plinth to capital, she turned to look back across the saddle of Mesokerasin south-eastwards to the kingly palace of Teremne.

  That way thunder-storms were brewing. A murky darkness of vapours, thick, leaden-hued, and oily, swoll and shouldered and mounted and spread upward till that whole quarter of the sky, east and south-east up to the zenith, was turned to the colour of black grapes. The King pulled his mother’s hand and laughed, pointing to where against the black clouds the palace on that sudden appeared in an unearthly splendour, lighted by the sun which, through some window rent in the glowering and piling masses to the westward, yet shone.

  There was no wind now in the lower air, but a great heat and stillness: and, with the stillness, a silence. It was as though all sound had been emptied out till not even (as in ordinary silences) the unemptiable exiguous residue remained: fall of leaf, or, immeasurably far away, in immeasurably faint echo, the unsleeping welter and surge of the sea, or stir of the market-place below. Even such shadows of sound had drowsed away to nothingness. There was left but that simulacrum of audibility born of the pulsing of living blood in the hearkening ear as it strains to catch the extreme unvoiced voice of the silence.

  The Queen, still gazing on that which her son’s dancing eyes still returned to, the louring gleam upon Teremne, drew him back a little under the shelter of the portico as the first thunder-drops plashed on the outer paving. Presently she began to say in herself:

  Queen of Heaven, Paphian Aphrodite,

  Let not me, too easily up-surrend’ring,

  Prove i’ th’end unnoble, a common woman,

  —Me, of like metal

  Cast with Your divinity. Nothing lower

  Dare I rate me, since that in all true lovers

  You, Who are the ultimate Fire, do burn and,

  Burning, transmew them.

  Me Your flame-tongu’d fingers, Your flick’ring lids, Your

  Kisses, Your empyreal heats distraining

  Soul alike and body with hapless passions,

  Long ago vanquish’d.

  Yet, – for Beauty dwelleth as well in action:

  Not in flesh alone and the flaming semblant

  (World’s desire and wonder of earth and Heaven

  Warmed as jewels

  ’Tween Your breasts, or stars in Your hair’s deep night-shade),

  But besides in mind: and in You the twain are

  Undivisible even in thought, an inly

  One everlasting—

  Therefore, burn me inwardly: burn my thinking

  Mind, as by this lover You sweep Your fires through

  This fair body, changing its blood to ichor:

  Fine me, until my

  Mortal eyes behold You in very presence,

  Not as feeble fantasy do conceive You,

  But the truth’s self, even as

  You Yourself behold Your own Godhead.

  As for answer, the storm broke on Mehisbon. A ball of eye-blinding flame, like a falling sun, went betwixt raging sky and the low land westward from the town; and upon its heels, with great shakings of the air, the thunder crashed and tumbled as if in a casting down about the temple of heavy palpable bodies toppled from some unsighted brink of the upper heavens and falling in a huddle amid darkness and rushing of rain. Stateira, looking down at her child, and tightening her clasp of his hand, had now, and now again, in the momentary livid out-leapings of the lightnings, swift sights of his face. There was one matter only to be read in it: not fear: not concern with her: but delight in the thunder.

  ARGUMENT WITH DATES

  THE PLOT SYNOPSIS, EDDISON’S ‘ARGUMENT WITH DATES’, BEGINS WITH THIS CHAPTER AND CONTINUES THROUGH TO CHAPTER XXVII. CHAPTER VIII IS ALSO THE FIRST FOR WHICH WRITINGS UNPUBLISHED IN THE ORIGINAL 1958 EDITION EXIST. IN THIS AND SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS, I SHALL INCORPORATE THE UNPUBLISHED DRAFTS WITH THE PUBLISHED ARGUMENT ACCORDING TO THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE STORY’S EPISODES.

  TO PREVENT CONFUSION WITH EDDISON’S DATES OF COMPOSITION, I HAVE MARKED ALL ZIMIAMVIAN DATES AZC (ANNO ZAYANAE CONDITAE, OR ‘FROM THE FOUNDING OF THE CITY OF ZAYANA’), AND TO PREVENT CONFUSION WITH EDDISON’S WRITING, MY EDITORIAL COMMENTS HAVE BEEN SET IN THIS SMALLER TYPE.

  P. E. THOMAS

  ARGUMENT WITH DATES

  King Mezentius grows to manhood

  Queen Rosma

  Tragedy of Aktor

  (Chapters VIII–XII)

  VIII

  THE PRINCE PROTECTOR

  CHAPTER VIII BEGINS WITH THE ARGUMENT:

  AKTOR, within a few weeks of the death of King Mardanus, utterly loathes his horrid deed. (It had been in fact not so much deed as abstention: he deliberately abstained from warning the King that the chess queens had been poisoned, and taking care not to touch his own queen, left chance to decide whether the King should touch his.) As time passes, he begins to think his crime can be ‘wished’ into nothingness. The Queen, so far as he can judge, suspects nothing: he begins to live in a new world, almost convincing himself that his crime never took place: the King is dead, but not through Aktor’s doing or contrivance. Aktor and the Queen settle down to an Arcadian existence of trust, affection, and understanding. She, feeling the alteration in him, is touched to the heart and can hardly refrain in his presence from showing her affection and passionate desire for him. However, she does refrain.

  Before any reply can be received to the Queen’s ultimatum, the revolution of the Nine takes place in Akkama.

  IN CHAPTER VII, EDDISON NARRATES THAT QUEEN STATEIRA DISPATCHED MYNTOR THE CONSTABLE OF FINGISWOLD TO AKKAMA WITH AN ULTIMATUM REGARDING THE MURDER OF KING MARDANUS. ON 9 JANUARY 1944, EDDISON DRAFTED NOTES FOR A SCENE IN WHICH THE QUEEN RECEIVES HIS LETTERS IN LATE JULY OF 726 AZC:

  Queen at work in King Mardanus’s study (not closet). Letters from Constable reporting revolt in Akkama: King and all his family thrown to the pigs (a nasty custom of the country for low-class criminals). Complete confusion, and Myntor is therefore waiting for some responsible power to crystallize with whom he can deal, and would like any new instructions. Is convinced no grave danger to him and members of their mission: Akkamites too uncertain of their position and afraid of what they’ve done (Aktor winces inwardly at the parallel) to bring Fingiswold into enmity against them.

  Queen sends for Aktor and consults him. (Bring out relations between her and him.)

  Queen: Here’s news from your country. I want your head in it.

  Aktor: Is’t good or bad?

  Queen: Doubtful. I’ll read it to you: dated 20th June.

  Aktor: That’s quick travelling.

  Queen: He’s been kept waiting for audience – at last given one and an interim answer. Thinks the King is raising forces. But nobles are showing signs of divided counsels. There’s a strengthening of your party.

  IN ADDITION TO THE NOTES ABOVE, EDDISON COMPOSED PART OF A LETTER FROM THE CONSTABLE TO QUEEN STATEIRA. THIS UNFINISHED LETTER DOES NOT MENTION THE REVOLUTION OF THE NINE, BUT IT DOES TELL OF AKKAMITE HOSPITALITY TOWARD FOREIGN AMBASSADORS:

  My whole entertainment from my first arrival till towards the very end, was such as if they had devised meanes of very purpose to shew their utter disliking of the whole Fingiswold nation.

  At my arriving at —— there was no man to bid me well coom, not so much as to conduct me up to my lodging. After I had stayed 2 or 3 dayes to see if anie well coom or other message would come from the King or the Lord ——, I sent my interpreter to the said Lord ——, to desir him to be a meanes for audience to the King. My interpreter having attended him 2 or 3 dayes, without speaking to him, was commanded by the Chancellour to coom no more
to the Court, nor to the house of the said Lord ——. The Counsell was commanded not to conferr with mee, nor I to send to anie of them.

  When I had audience of the King in the verie entrance of my speech I was cavilled withall by the Chancellour …

  The presents sent by yr. Highness to the King, and delivered to him in his own presence, with all other writings, wear the day following retourned to mee, and very contemptuouslie cast downe before mee.

  My articles of petition delivered by woord of mouth, and afterward by writing, with all other writings, wear altered and falsified by the King’s interpreter, by meanes of the Chancellour ——; … manie things were putt in and manie things strook out, which being complained of and the points noted would not be redressed.

  I was placed in a howse verie unhandsoom, unholsoom, of purpose (as it seemed) to doe me disgrace, and to hurt my health, whear I was kept as prisoner, not as an ambassadour.

  EDDISON MADE NO MORE NOTES UPON THE EVENTS OF THIS CHAPTER, BUT ON 20 JANUARY 1944, HE MADE SOME NOTES ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF AKKAMA:

  Akkama’s capital 300 miles from Rialmar WNW as crow flies. 1,200,000 square miles (about 500 miles greatest length and 400 N to S, roughly bean shaped). Southern part, the Waste of Akkama, sandy desert: Northern and central part a high tableland (? 4–5000 feet). Only practical communication with Fingiswold (except by sea) is through passes in comparatively low country 50 miles WNW of Rialmar between Western mountain end of mountain boundary that encloses the fertile lowlands in horseshoe shape, of Fingiswold, and the Bight. This way leads to the Shearbone range.