Lyonesse Read online

  Lyonesse

  Jack Vance

  Jack Vance

  Lyonesse

  PRELIMINARY

  The Elder Isles and its peoples: a brief survey, which, while not altogether tedious, may be neglected by the reader impatient with facts.

  The Elder Isles, now sunk beneath the Atlantic, in olden times were located across the Cantabrian Gulf (now the Bay of Biscay) from Old Gaul.

  Christian chroniclers have little to say regarding the Elder Isles. Gildas and Nennius both make references to Hybras, though Bede is silent. Geoffrey of Monmouth alludes both to Lyonesse and Avallon, and perhaps other places and events which can less certainly be identified. Chretien of Troyes rhapsodizes upon Ys and its pleasures; and Ys is also the frequent locale of early Armorican folk-tales. Irish references are numerous but confusing and contradictory. St. Bresabius of Cardiff propounds a rather fanciful list of the Kings of Lyonesse; St. Columba inveighs against the "heretics, witches, idolaters and Druids" of the island he calls "Hy Brasill," the medieval term for "Hybras." Otherwise the record is quiet.

  Greeks and Phoenicians traded with the Elder Isles. Romans visited Hybras and many settled there, leaving behind aqueducts, roads, villas and temples. In the waning days of the Empire Christian dignitaries landed at Avallon amid vast pomp and panoply. They established bishoprics, appointed appropriate officials and spent good Roman gold to build their basilicas, none of which prospered. The bishops strove mightily against the olden gods, halflings and magicians alike, but few dared enter the Forest of Tantrevalles. Aspergillums, thuribles and curses proved futile against such as Dankvin the giant, Taudry the Weasoning, the fairies of Pithpenny Shee. Dozens of missionaries, exalted through faith, paid terrible prices for their zeal. Saint Elric marched barefoot to Smoorish Rock where he intended to subdue the ogre Magre and bring him to the Faith. According to subsequent tale-tellers, Saint Elric arrived at noon and Magre politely agreed to hear his declaration. Elric spoke a mighty sermon, while Magre started the fire in his pit. Elric expounded, recited Scripture and sang the glories of the Faith. When he came to an end and declared his final "Hallelujah!," Magre gave him a stoup of ale to ease his throat. Sharpening a knife he complimented Elric upon the fervor of his rhetoric. Then he smote off Elric's head, cut, drew, spitted, cooked and devoured the sanctified morsel with a garnish of leeks and cabbages. Saint Uldine attempted the baptism of a troll in the waters of Black Meira Tarn. She was indefatigable; he raped her four times during her efforts, until at last she despaired. In due course she gave birth to four imps. The first of these, Ignaldus, became father to the eery knight Sir Sacrontine who could not sleep of nights until he had killed a Christian. Saint Uldine's other children were Drathe, Alleia and Bazille.* In Godelia Druids never paused in the worship of Lug the Sun, Matrona the Moon, Adonis the Beautiful, Kernuun the Stag, Mokous the Boar, Kai the Dark, Sheah the Graceful, and innumerable local half-gods. During this period Olam Magnus of Lyonesse, aided by Per-silian, his so-called "Magic Mirror," brought all the Elder Isles (excepting Skaghane and Godelia) under his rule. Styling himself Olam I, he enjoyed a long and prosperous reign and was succeeded by Rordec I, Olam II, then, briefly, by the "Galician Cuckoos," Quarnitz I and Niffith I. Then Fafhion Long-nose reasserted the old blood line. He sired Olam III, who moved his throne Evandig and that great table known as Cairbra an Mead-han, the "Board of Notables,"* from Lyonesse Town to Avallon in the Duchy of Dahaut. When Olam III's grandson Uther II fled to Britain (there to sire Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur, King f Cornwall), the land fragmented to become ten kingdoms: Dahaut, Lyonesse, North Ulfland, South Ulfland, Godelia, Blaloc, Caduz, Pomperol, Dascinet and Troicinet.

  *The deeds of the four have been chronicled in a rare volume, "Saint Uldine's Children."

  *The Round Table of King Arthur was later inspired by the Cairbra an Meadhan.

  The new kings found many pretexts for contention, and the Elder Isles entered a time of trouble. North and South Ulfland, exposed to the Ska,* became lawless wastes, occupied by robber knights and dire beasts. Only the Vale Evander, guarded to the east by the castle Tintzin Fyral and to the west by the city Ys, remained a realm of tranquility.

  *See Glossary, III.

  King Audry I of Dahaut at last took a fateful step. He declared that since he sat on the throne Evandig, he must be acknowledged King of the Elder Isles.

  King Phristan of Lyonesse at once challenged him. Audry assembled a great army and marched down Icnield Way through Pomperol and into Lyonesse. King Phristan led his army north. At the Battle of Orm Hill the armies fought for two days and finally separated in mutual exhaustion. Both Phristan and Audry died in combat and both armies retired. Audry II failed to press his father's claim; effectively Phristan had won the battle.

  Twenty years pass. The Ska have made serious inroads into North Ulfland and have taken to themselves a section known as the North Foreshore. King Gax, old, half-blind and helpless has gone into hiding. The Ska do not even trouble to search for him. The king of South Ulfland is Oriante, who resides at Castle Sfan Sfeg near the town Oaldes. His single son, Prince Quilcy, is feeble-minded and spends his days playing with fanciful dolls and doll-houses. Audry II is King of Dahaut and Casmir is King of Lyonesse, and both intend to become King of the Elder Isles and sit rightfully on the throne Evandig.

  Chapter 1

  ON A DREARY WINTER'S DAY, with rain sweeping across Lyonesse Town, Queen Sollace went into labor. She was taken to the lying-in room and attended by two midwives, four maids, Balhamel the physician and the crone named Dyldra, who was profound in the lore of herbs, and by some considered a witch. Dyldra was present by the wish of Queen Sollace, who found more comfort in faith than logic.

  King Casmir made an appearance. Sollace's whimpers became moans and she clawed at her thick blonde hair with clenched fingers. Casmir watched from across the room. He wore a simple scarlet robe with a purple sash; a gold coronet confined his ruddy blond hair. He spoke to Balhamel. "What are the signs?"

  "Sire, there are none as yet."

  "There is no way to divine the sex?"

  "To my knowledge, none."

  Standing in the doorway, legs somewhat apart, hands behind his back, Casmir seemed the very embodiment of stern and kingly majesty. And, indeed, this was an attitude which accompanied him everywhere, so that kitchen-maids, tittering and giggling, often wondered if Casmir wore his crown to the nuptial bed. He inspected Sollace from under frowning eyebrows. "It would seem that she feels pain."

  "Her pain is not so much, sire, as might be. Not yet, at any rate. Remember, fear magnifies that pain which actually exists."

  To this observation Casmir made no response. He noticed, in the shadows to the side of the room, Dyldra the crone, where she crouched over a brazier. He pointed with his finger: "Why is the witch here?"

  "Sire," whispered the chief midwife, "she came at the behest of Queen Sollace!"

  Casmir grunted. "She'll bring a wrack to the child."

  Dyldra only crouched the lower over the brazier. She threw a handful of herbs on the coals; a waft of acrid smoke drifted across the room and touched Casmir's face; he coughed, backed away, and departed the room.

  The maid drew hangings across the wet landscape and set the bronze lanterns alight. On the couch Sollace lay taut, legs outthrust, head thrown back, her regal bulk fascinating the attention of those who stood tending her.

  The pangs became sharp; Sollace cried out, first for pain, then for rage that she should suffer like a common woman.

  Two hours later the child was born: a girl, of no great size. Sollace closed her eyes and lay back. When the child was brought to her she waved it away and presently relaxed into a stupor.

  The celebration attendant upon the birth of Princess Suldrun was muted. King Casmir
issued no jubilant proclamation and Queen Sollace refused audience to all save a certain Ewaldo Idra, Adept of the Caucasian Mysteries. Finally, and only, so it seemed, that he might not contravene custom, King Casmir ordained a gala procession.

  On a day of brittle white sunlight, cold wind and high hurrying clouds, the gates before Castle Haidion opened. Four heralds in white satin marched forth, at a stately step-halt-step. From their clarions depended gonfalons of white silk, embroidered with the emblem of Lyonesse: a black Tree of Life, on which grew twelve scarlet pomegranates.* They marched forty yards, halted, raised clarions and blew the "Gladsome Tidings" fanfare: From the palace yard, on snorting white horses, rode four noblemen: Cypris, Duke of Skroy; Bannoy, Duke of Tremblance; Odo, Duke of Folize and Sir Garnel, Knight Banneret of Castle Swange, nephew to the King. Next came the royal carriage, drawn by four white unicorns. Queen Sollace sat swathed in green robes, holding Suldrun on a crimson pillow: King Casmir rode his great black horse, Sheuvan, beside the carriage. Behind marched the Elite Guard, each of noble blood, carrying ceremonial silver halberds. At the rear rolled a wagon from which a pair of maidens tossed handfuls of pennies into the throng.

  *The usages of heraldry, as well as the theory and practice of chivalry, were still simple and fresh. They would not attain their full baroque extravagance for centuries to come.

  The procession descended the Sfer Arct, the central avenue of Lyonesse Town, to the Chale, the road which followed the semi-circle of the harbor. At the Chale, the procession circled the fish market and returned up the Sfer Arct to Haidion. Outside the gate, booths offered the king's pickled fish and biscuits to all who hungered; and ale to those who might wish to drink health to the new princess.

  During the months of winter and spring King Casmir looked only twice at the infant princess, in each case, standing back in cool disinterest. She had thwarted his royal will by coming female into the world. He could not immediately punish her for the act, no more could he extend the full beneficence of his favor.

  Sollace grew sulky because Casmir was displeased and, with a set of petulant flourishes, banished the child from her sight.

  Ehirme, a raw-boned peasant girl, and niece to an under-gardener, had lost her own infant son to the yellow bloat. With an amplitude of both milk and solicitude she became Suldrun's wet-nurse.

  Centuries in the past, at that middle-distant time when legend and history start to blur, Blausreddin the pirate built a fortress at the back of a stony semi-circular harbor. His concern was not so much assault from the sea, but surprise attacks down from the pinnacles and gorges of the mountains, to the north of the harbor.

  A century later the Danaan king, Tabbro, enclosed the harbor behind a remarkable breakwater, and added the Old Hall, new kitchens and a set of sleeping chambers to the fortress. His son, Zoltra Bright Star, constructed a massive stone pier and dredged the harbor so that any ship in the world might moor at the pier.*

  *According to legend both Tabbro and Zoltra Bright Star engaged loald, a submarine giant, to aid in their undertakings, for an unknown compensation.

  Zoltra further augmented the old fortress, adding the Great Hall and the West Tower, though he died before completion of the work, which continued through the reigns of Palaemon I, Edvarius I and Palaemon II.

  The Haidion of King Casmir held aloft five major towers: the East Tower, the King's Tower, the Tall Tower (also known as the Eyrie), the Tower of Palaemon and the West Tower. There were five major halls: the Great Hall; the Hall of Honors; the Old Hall; the Clod an Dach Nair, or the Banquet Hall; and the Small Refectory. Of these, the Great Hall was remarkable for its ponderous majesty, which seemed to transcend the scope of human effort. The proportions, the spaces and masses, the contrasts of shadow and light, which changed from morning to evening and again to the moving illumination of flamboys, all acted together to awe the senses. The entrances were almost afterthoughts; in any case no one could achieve a dramatic entrance into the Great Hall. At one end a portal entered upon a narrow stage from which six wide steps descended into the hall, beside columns so massive that a pair of men, arms outstretched, could not enclasp them. To one side a row of high windows, glazed with thick glass now lavender with age, admitted a watery half-light. At night, flamboys in iron brackets seemed to cast as much black shadow as light. Twelve Mauretanian rugs eased the harshness of the stone floor.

  A pair of iron doors opened into the Hall of Honors, which in scope and proportion resembled the nave of a cathedral. A heavy dark red carpet ran down the center from entrance to royal throne. Around the walls ranged fifty-four massive chairs, each signified by an emblem of nobility hanging on the wall above. On these chairs, for ceremonial occasions, sat the grandees of Lyonesse, each under the emblem of his ancestors. The royal throne, had been Evandig until Olam III moved it to Avalaon, along with the round table Cairbra an Meadhan. The table where the noblest of the noble might discover their named places, had occupied the center of the hall.

  The Hall of Honors had been added by King Carles, last of the Methewen Dynasty. Chlowod the Red, first of the Tyrrhenians,* extended Haidion's precincts to the east of Zoltra's Wall. He paved the Urquial, Zoltra's old parade ground, and to the back built the massive Peinhador, in which were housed infirmary, barracks and penitentiary. The dungeons under the old armory fell into disuse, with the ancient cages, racks, griddles, wheels, strappado lofts, presses, punches and twisting machines left to molder in the damp.

  *Chlowod's grandfather had been a Balearic Etruscan.

  The kings proceeded to rule, one by one, and each augmented Haidion's halls, passages, prospects, galleries, towers and turrets, as if each, brooding on mortality, sought to make himself part of ageless Haidion.

  For those who lived there, Haidion was a small universe indifferent to the events of elsewhere, though the membrane of separation was not impermeable. There were rumors from abroad, notices of the changing seasons, arrivals and excursions, an occasional novelty or alarm; but these were muffled murmurs, dim images, which barely stirred the organs of the palace. A comet flaring across the sky? Marvelous!—but forgotten when Shilk the pot-boy kicks the undercook's cat. The Ska have ravaged North Ulfland? The Ska are like wild animals; but this morning, after eating cream on hej porridge, the Duchess of Skroy found a dead mouse in the cream jug, and here was emotion raw and stark, what with her outcries and shoes thrown at the maids!

  The laws which ruled the small universe were exact. Status was graduated with the finest of discrimination, from high degree to lowest of the low. Each knew his quality and understood the delicate distinction between next highest (to be minimized) and next lowest (to be enforced and emphasized). Some encroached beyond their station, generating tension; the sharp stench of rancor hung in the air. Each scrutinized the conduct of those above, while concealing his own affairs from those below. The royal personages were watched with care; their habits were discussed and analyzed a dozen times a day. Queen Sollace showed great cordiality to religious zealots and priests, and found much of interest in their creeds. She was thought to be sexually cold and never took lovers. King Casmir made connubial visits to her bed regularly, once each month, and they coupled with stately ponderosity, like the mating of elephants.

  Princess Suldrun occupied a peculiar place in the social structure of the palace. The indifference of King Casmir and Queen Sollace were duly noted; petty discourtesies therefore might be visited upon Suldrun with impunity.

  The years passed and, without any notice being taken, Suldrun became a quiet child with long soft blonde hair. Because no one saw fit to arrange otherwise, Ehirme made the leap in status from wet-nurse to the private maid of the princess.

  Ehirme, untrained in etiquette and not greatly gifted in other ways, had assimilated lore from her Celtic grandfather, which across the seasons and over the years she communicated to Suldrun: tales and fables, the perils of far places, dints against the mischief of fairies, the language of flowers, precautions while walking out at midnigh
t and the avoidance of ghosts, the knowledge of good trees and bad trees.

  Suldrun learned of lands which lay beyond the castle. "Two roads lead from Lyonesse Town," said Ehirme. "You may go north through the mountains along the Sfer Arct, or you go east through Zoltra's Gate and across the Urquial. Presently you come to my little cottage and our three fields where we grow cabbages, turnips and hay for the beasts; then the road forks. To the right you follow the shore of the Lir all the way to Slute Skeme. To the left you fare north and join the Old Street which runs beside the Forest of Tantrevalles where the fairies live. Two roads pass through the forest, north to south and east to west." "Tell what happens where they meet!" Suldrun already knew but she enjoyed the zest of Ehirme's descriptions.

  Ehirme warned her: "I've never fared so far, you understand! But what grandfather says is this: in the old times the crossroads would move about, because the place was enchanted and never knew peace. This might be well enough for the traveler, because, after all, he would put one foot ahead of him and then the other and the road would at last be won, and the traveler none the wiser that he had seen twice as much forest as he had bargained for. The most troubled were the folk who sold their goods each year at the Goblin Fair, and where was that but at the crossroads! The folk for the fair were most put out, because the fair should be at the crossroads on Midsummer Night, but when they arrived at the crossroads it had shifted two miles and a half, and nowhere a fair to be seen.

  "About this time the magicians vied in awful conflict. Murgen proved the strongest and defeated Twitten, whose father was a halfling, his mother a bald priestess at Kai Kang, under the Atlas Mountains. What to do with the defeated magician, who seethed with evil and hate? Murgen rolled him up and forged him into a stout iron post, ten-foot long and thick as my leg. Then Murgen took this enchanted post to the crossroads and waited till it shifted to the proper place, then he drove the iron post down deep in the center, fixing the crossroads so it no longer could move, and all the folk at the Goblin Fair were glad, and spoke well of Murgen."