The Choir Boats (46 page)

The play was an enormous success. The Queen sat in the front
row, feeding sausages to Isaak. Nexius received thunderous applause
when he rambled on stage as the Old General, and the climactic
battle scene had everyone on the edge of their seats. Barnabas’s
mangled Yountish caused great mirth; some of his deliveries were
repeated for days in the mess-halls and muster-rooms. Above all,
the audience was caught up in Playdermon’s loss of his beloved
Alexandra on the eve of battle, and her miraculous return after he
wins the day. There was not a dry eye in the house when Playdermon
and Alexandra are reunited on the crag above Killiecarnock, and
many wondered if the script called for the passion that Tom and
Afsana showed in the roles.

Their good spirits were reduced a few days later when they
received news of the war’s first encounters. The Ornish invaded
the Margravate on the Island of Orn, overrunning Yount Major’s
defences and besieging the Margravate’s lone city, Arreniuble.
An Ornish fleet was seen heading for the Northern Fief-Land. At
least one Ornish contingent had landed in the Liviates. The mood
in Yount Great-Port plunged when the first ship arrived from the
Margravate, bearing wounded and ill news.

Crew from the march-land ship whispered of the Ornish war
cries and the long lines of captives being led away in chains to work
in the Ornish iron mines, saltworks, and collieries. The stories
spread rapidly in a nervous city and by dawn the magnitude of Orn’s
victory had grown six-fold in the telling. In some corners talk was
heard that the Ornish invasion was punishment for Yount Major
inviting so many Karket-soomi and particularly for bringing in the
Key-bearers and the Whale-singers, or maybe it was retribution
for the failure to hold open the Door, or perhaps because some of
the Karket-soomi were in league with the powers that guarded
the Door, and so on. Some whispered that the Queen should have
handed the
lail-obos
to the Ornish. After all, what business was it
of Yount Major’s what the Ornish believed or wanted, if it meant
avoiding a war? Some wondered if the Hullitate dynasty, heirless,
had run its course: having emerged in the first Great War, perhaps
it was fate that the Hullitates would end in the second Great War, or
the War of Continued Affirmation as it was being called.

Nexius, called to a meeting with the Queen by the Major-Captain,
visited the McDoons. He was in a foul temper, both about the early
outcome of the war, and about the rumours in the streets.

“People
are
frightened,”
he
said.
“Understandable.
And
understandable that frightened people will believe and say
foolish things. But there is more to this talk than random fear. It
is orchestrated, that’s what I think. This is deliberate rumour-mongering, stoking the fear that people feel.”

Sally said, “The Arch-Bishop?”

Nexius grunted. “Loositage, yes. That’s what I think. Oh, not he
himself, of course. He is far too clever for that. But somewhere in
the dark, his minions write his words on the backsides of apes, and
send them scampering through the city to do their mischief.”

More ill news soon reached the city: one of the Liviate islands
had been taken, and the entire Yount Major garrison destroyed,
five hundred soldiers slain. The fear in Yount Great-Port rose and
the mutterings about Karket-soomi grew louder. Talk of Big Lander
conspiracies, of treason in high places, and the involvement of
diabolical forces moved from back alleys and the kitchen hearth to
impromptu gatherings at the well or at the market-stalls. Others
held opposite views, that the Key-bearers and Whale-singers would
soon lead Yount Major to victory, so arguments and fights broke out.
People talked of a great Ornish fleet bearing down on Yount Great-Port, and Ornish soldiers armed with weapons against which there
was no defence. The McDoons did not leave the Palace.

The Queen sent embassies to the Land of the Painted Gate and
to the Free City of Ilquajorance, seeking allies or at least neutrality.
The
Pratincole
was fitted out for a run to Karket-soom, to inform
Yount Major’s network there of the war. The Arch-Bishop and his
colleagues said little in these discussions but said much with their
silence. The journalists would duly print the official demarche from
the government in their newspapers, but they would also run up
separate handbills and broadsheets with lurid banner-sentences
and many exclamation points. Many of the more fantastical claims
flouted the libel laws and would have been suppressed by the
government censor but, since that function was controlled by the
Sacerdotes, no actions were taken against even the most scurrilous
speculations. The public, in any event, could not get enough of the
broadsheets, which, as the Yountish expression has it, flew out of
the print-houses and booksellers like star-ducks in mating season.
Nexius ripped up a particularly scabrous example in front of the
McDoons, saying only, “If one baits a bear, one must reckon with
the consequences.”

Sally looked out the window at the crowds in the streets. To her
they looked like fields of wheat swaying in the wind that leads a
thunderstorm. She turned away from the window and sat the rest of
the day with Isaak in her lap.

That evening, still in the chair with Isaak in her lap, Sally dreamed
that she walked at night on a road winding between low, barren
hills. An enormous moon dominated the sky. The stars were alien,
unknown to Big Worlders and Small Worlders alike. Sally walked a
long time on the silent road under moonlight, accompanied only by
her long shadow leading the way. The moonlight should have been a
pleasure except that she feared what lay at the end of the road. She
walked up an incline until she reached the top, where the road fanned
out in a dozen directions. The new roads sloped up another hill. At
the point immediately beyond the fork in the road was a white pillar
with thousands of names and dates inscribed on it, a cenotaph. On
the top sat the Wurm-Owl, gleaming in the moonlight, whiter than
the pillar. He did not move as Sally approached, except once to fluff
his wings slightly and shift his scissor-tail that hung far down the
cenotaph pillar.

Sally stopped in the middle of the fork in the road, directly in
front of the pillar, and looked straight up. She saw that the four-sided capital, the top of the pillar upon which the owl sat, had
writing on it as well but the Owl’s shadow obscured the words. The
Owl looked down at her with his blazing yellow eyes. At length, Sally
said, “Here is where you hide the moon then, Orb-Reaver!”

The Wurm-Owl snapped his beak at her but made no other reply.
Sally saw now that the pillar was streaked with the Owl’s excrement,
fouling the names, that its base was littered with the regurgitated
bones and hair of the Owl’s prey, skulls of men and women among
the detritus. The eye-sockets of the dead stared at her, sharply etched
in the moonlight. A shinbone, shining and blank, stuck up from the
mound, seeming to point like a signpost to one road in the fork.

Sally looked down that road, and then at each of the others. So
many, how to choose? She decided one was as good as another and,
with a glance at the Owl above her, set her foot on the road indicated
by the shinbone (
I salute you, whoever you were
, she thought.
Rest in
honour
). Before she had gone three steps, the Owl opened its wings
with a rush and boomed, “Not here, not this time!”

Sally stepped back and tried another road, and a third, but each
time the Wurm beat his wings and cried the same words. Try as
she might, she could not pass down any of the roads, so strong was
the Wurm’s will. Instead, Sally floated upwards, past the outraged
face of the owl. His power prevented her from moving forward but
she was able to rise higher and higher until she hovered a hundred
yards above the road. Once as a child she had looked through a
kaleidoscope at the Covent Garden fair: it was like that now, as the
horizons shifted, fell into place, and she saw a plateau laid out below
her. From the Owl’s pillar the roads wandered over the plateau, each
of them in turn forking into more roads that disappeared into the
distance. At each new fork was another cenotaph, upon which sat
a great figure, not an owl but a different creature on every pillar: a
hoopoe with glowing eyes, a jackass-eared toad, a boar, and many
others. The plain was filled with grotesque stylites, all staring with
hostility at Sally, none moving except that once the toad’s tongue
shot out of his mouth and, like a squamous arm, groped down its
pillar before sliding back. None spoke but in her mind she heard
their words,
Not here, not this time!

She floated for a long time, unable to go forward, tethered like a
balloonist to one spot by the Wurm-Owl and rebuffed by the army of
his kindred arrayed before her. All eyes were on her. The moonlight
showed only the funereal plain and the snaking roads that dwindled
into darkness, and the forest of pillars, with the shadows of bones
everywhere, like ossuary-gardens at the foot of every column. She
had learned nothing in this place, unless it was that she had no
power here. Sally desperately wished for the dream to end, fearful
now that some part of this dreamworld would attach itself to her,
return with her. “Wake up,” she called to herself, “Oh, wake up!”

From below came a dry, gurgling sound: the Wurm-Owl was
laughing. Sally felt herself descending. She sought within herself for
music, but held no music, not a simple arpeggio, not an ostinado,
not one tiny note. Nothing. She descended and the Wurm’s beak
opened to receive her, while the Wurm gurgled and slobbered. Before
she fell beneath the level of the plateau, far off she saw something
moving on one of the roads, a small knot of men perhaps, led by
one who glowed a dull red, the only colour in that entire landscape.
Whoever they were, they were coming closer, approaching the rows
of watchers from behind, moving steadily but slowly, or it might be
that the distance was so great it only seemed that way. Sally had no
hope of succour from them, with the Owl’s beak only feet away.

“Wake up!” she screamed but still she descended, her legs circling
as if she were treading water. She looked down, right into the
shining empty pupils of the Owl, each pupil a tunnel into which she
could fall and never stop falling. At that instant, strength flowed
back into her. She stopped her descent, realizing that she had held
the Wurm pinned to his pillar, that he could not pursue her even if
she could not overcome him. Only ten feet above his slicing beak,
Sally floated and yelled, “No, not here, not this time!” With that she
suddenly flew backwards. The Owl’s face dwindled and disappeared.
Sally woke up.

She woke with her heart pounding. Isaak was walking all around
her chair. Tom was pounding on her door, and yelling. Still fearful
that a shadow from the Wurm’s world might have clung to her and
entered Yount, Sally stumbled to the door. Was it really Tom, or was
it something that only sounded like Tom? Isaak came to the door
and looked up at Sally as if to say, “Why aren’t you opening the door
to your brother?” Sally opened the door.

“Jambres!” yelled Tom. “He’s coming back, with Billy and Tat’head
and the others! I dreamed him — sister, you know I don’t dream the
way you do — but I dreamed. I saw them walking towards me on a
moonlit road. Billy Sea-Hen tipped his hat and held up a hand in
salute, curling two fingers into his palm. They’re coming! We must
tell the Queen.”

The next morning, Tom, Afsana, and Sally took pains to tell the
Queen without telling the Arch-Bishop or any Sacerdote. When they
could not tell her the timing of the Cretched Man’s arrival or what
he might do once he came, the Queen was in doubt but finally agreed
to meet him, provided the McDoons were with her.

“I put my trust in you, who have given us so much,” said the
Queen. “But I sense that you are yourselves not wholly convinced
about the wisdom of seeking alliance with . . . with the Cretched
Man. We shall meet with him, but no more can we promise now.”

The next week was grim. The Ornish siege of Arreniuble tightened. The Ornish continued their advances in the Northern Fief-Lands and in the Liviates. Casualties mounted. Against this backdrop,
the only good news was that the watchers on Yount Major’s western
coast reported that the embassy squadron was making good time
and that no Ornish raiders were to be seen.

“Ornish raiders!” said Tom to Reglum, who had arrived with this
latest piece of news.

“Unlikely though, they would have to cut right through our core
defences, to make ’round all of Yount Major,” said Reglum. “Don’t
you worry, the Ornish have stolen a march on us in the outlands, but
we shall rally quick enough once this war gets going for real. Well, I
must be off, even A.B.s with suspect shoulders have duty-watch in
wartime. May I come ’round the same time tomorrow, Sally?”