Chetwin's Backroom: Recent Episodes
Grace Chetwin
Annhilde flees the Fend to save her newborn grandchild from ritual snapping of the neck. Pursued by vengeful Fendmen, she accepts the help of an innocent stranger and in so doing risks not only the child's life but his. Quote from the chapter:
… Thanks to Brocan—tahin Brocan, she’d crossed the Rim, and was … under his protection. … His was a generous offer, but made in ignorance of the enormous stakes. Could she in all conscience, even for the child’s sake, accept it?. . . She tightened her arm about the anuk. Despicable, to deceive him, but did not the child’s need warrant such an act?
Above her head, the siffra wafted in the currents, like clouds. Heavenly veils. When she was small, she believed that if she stared long and hard enough, she would pierce those clouds and see the truth of all things. Sighing, she turned onto her side, her arm over the anuk now. “Laksra,” she murmured, and slept.
“Not far now,” the handler said, in evident relief. “A score of forhar hides says we’re almost on her.” A score of forhar hides? Anka remounted grimly. In that moment he’d have given half his season’s cull to prove the little handler wrong.
They moved off slowly at first, to get her used to the thar’s gait. She shut her eyes and clenched her jaw. How to endure this? And yet it was better than freezing to death back in that icy bolthole. And the farther they got from the Fend, the safer her grandchild would be.
“But if she has crossed the Rim?” Fahn persisted. “Then we follow.” Stugar swung into the saddle. “Follow!” Pahar looked horrified. Stugar laughed shortly. “You swore the oath.” Shrewd and promising to be as wise as Lahr, he also had a small, malicious wit. “We can’t go home without Annhilde and the child.” He spat out his wad and took up his reins. “So let’s catch her fast, before we find ourselves in Kond!”
She slid into her bolthole, had it almost shut—and cried out. In the center of her narrowing line of vision, directly across the pool from where she was, a man stood stock-still under the flying snow, and he was staring straight at her.
They moved off, down towards the pens, where the adahi awaited them, past rows of twitching window covers, all the way up the street. Anka, bringing up the rear, spat over his shoulder and made his lucky sign that they not find the two alive, for if they did, his troubles, far from ending, could well begin afresh.
Anka Ragnar loomed large in his crofthouse doorway, his very bulk a challenge, nay, a threat to the timid woman barring his way. His throat was raw, his breath, short; his hide coat hung wet and heavy on his back. He looked angry at seeing the woman there, more even than usual. He was angry. The anger masked his fear.
This, as mostly always, a quote from the chapter. Shira is falling into one of the Phrynis visions transmitted from Phrynis and shared with her grandfather: When her vision returned, the man was riding, and, she knew it just as clearly as he did himself, he would keep riding for full three days across the plain with the others, his mind part on the receding herds, but increasingly on getting home before . . . Shira, surrendering, lay still, locked in the shock of what lay before him, and in the terrible grip of his desperation. . . .
The Earth personnel are now split: some hiding out on in an Earth sub-polar base, the rest abducted up to Space Tektonics, Inc. (STI), Hengst’s massive orbiting complex near the moon. (Manfred Hengst is the heavy on Earth. He is a mining magnate, unscrupulous, and greedy. He and Pitar Ellisen are rivals to the death. "Hengst" is German for stallion.)
Here, a clip of Shira's thought during the chapter: Her mind and (Grandfather’s) were but sparks in the vastness of time and space. What if they were blown apart, away into that immense uncertainty, never to touch again? Only a heartbeat ago she’d been grumbling about the Bourg, and wishing for change. Now she wished all this had never been.
The tetralogy (The Last Legacy) connects in my mind with an aria from Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes. Unhinged, Peter is raving. Deranged people often have insights not shared by the sane, especially when they are having attacks. But the rants can contain deep truth. Parts of the aria preface the first 3 volumes, and the whole rounds out the 4th. Here, the clip for the second book: Who can decipher in storm or starlight/ The written character of a friendly fate/– As the sky turns, the world for us to change? Are local disasters really long-term rescue from bigger ones? Hard to see, especially when you are in the middle of the local one!
The Orborgon is only book 2. The local disaster - Torc's assassination - is history. Will it eventually turn to the long-term good? Maybe. Remember that the Earth segments are continuous throughout the series, while there has been the huge gap on Phrynis between books 1 & 2. As this second book begins, the Earth players are fleeing a rapidly approaching threat. On Phrynis, we witness an event apparently remote in time and place and action from The Atheling.
No spoiler quotes this time. The chapter, which marks end of The Atheling, sets up Book II of the quartet, The Orborgon, which marks drastic change in both worlds. On Earth, whose timeline is continuous, the players scatter, while the action on Phrynis begins 1000 years after Torc in a remote region far removed from Gurnyac.
Torc dipped his head, feeling the unaccustomed weight of the crown, and as he did so, it slipped slightly on his bare scalp so that he had to snatch at it and push it back into place. Feric, still beside him, his back to the crowd, bowed. “I think, sire,” he murmured, “that the crown sits insecure upon a shaven head.”
“Gar is an ever-present danger while he lives. For that reason he must die before the sun sets on your crowning—and there’ll be edicts tomorrow for you to sign to that effect. If not, I’ll not, nor would any man in the whole Known World vouchsafe your future as king.”
Even as Ramoni’s warning came, a slight sound came from the window. He crossed the room, felt his way along the thick harpile, slipped around into the bay. Reminder: While mindspeech is clearly indicated by italics in the book, here it cannot be so easily distinguished. All speech between Ramoni and Torc is silent: the interactions with Feric are normal talk.
Torc looked to the empty blackness where once the king’s tower had stood. He wanted above all to stand in the ashes where his father had lain. Later. He must see Feric first.
It was a sombre vigil. His thoughts went again and again to the old visions: of tattered flame and blood and masses crowding the countryside, of his father’s last cry, of the tocsin, the screams of those dying in the fire. Of Ramoni toiling up the hill and the mentor falling in his own blood. Those hours were the among the loneliest in his life.
“About Kabun—”
“He’ll give you no more trouble, I promise.”
Well, that’s good….I don’t mean to complain, but he’s crazy. If, as you said, he’s one I’d be safe with, I’d like to see one who wished me ill.”
– Poor Tanna. It were well if she ‘d died in the fire. Such hopes the girl had had of him. How long was it since he’d thought of her? His mind turned to Ramoni. Bridge of love. As if he were not heated enough already. He squirmed a little, then relaxed his body joint by joint and in the closeness of that cramped space sought comfort in the Canticum.
*– You’re a fool. I thought so and now I know it. Go, while you’re yet safe.
- Fool you may think me, but when a man must choose between a raging fire and an uncertain ledge, surely the ledge is worth the risk… NOTE:* Spoken words have some advantages over written ones. But there can be loss. Mindspeech is depicted in italics. During this chapter when pilgrims use their voices again, the distinction between normal and silent speech is not evident. Torc speaks aloud only twice during his session with the Athor, and then not again until the chapter’s end
–The Iron Rose turned, looked blindly out into the darkness where Torc still stood. Look what you’ve done! she screeched at him, her face twisted. You hated thing. Now are you satisfied
– Smoke. She smelled smoke. She ran to the door. She took a deep breath to shout, choked. The passage was full of it. She ran back into her room, took up her washcloth, soaked it in water, put it over her face, and opened her mouth to shout again just as a strange light erupted through the passage windows, and a loud wild bell sounded tocsin over her voice. The king’s tower was afire.
– The trembling gave way to faint excitement. What if—what if Gar came home again before she returned the scrolls? What if she couldn’t get back into his bedchamber? Or someone saw her leaving the queen’s tower and followed her there?… The excitement faded. But after another minute, so did the fear. If they caught her, so be it. At least she’ll have tried.
–Out of the dark the old woman’s voice came. “I’m here. Pick her up, young man, gently, if you value your splendid outfit, and follow me.” “Harbeli!” Tanna was vaguely aware of being lifted, of the old woman’s face hovering somewhere upside down against the wheeling stars then in a flash of pain the face and the stars winked out.
18 –Then tell me only one thing, if you can: shall I be king hereafter? The Athor regarded him long and solemnly, then slowly he nodded. Yes, he answered. You shall wear the crown. The Athor stood, and in that moment a shiver of cold air passed through the arbor, stippling the surface of the pool, scattering the fish, and sending a faint frisson through the brittle bushes, showering dead and dying leaves onto the grass, chilling Torc’s sweat-damp clothes.
–If the scrot would make a likeness of the melk for him, and maybe give her some hair, that indeed would be a gift. But the mentor would never agree to ask Sheshu for the kind of likeness of her that Torc would want. But if he ever did, then, oh then would Torc test out the Gurnyac lore!
She … tried to sit up. But the night had been too much for her. The stables, the shock of seeing Feric’s treachery. The horrible moaning from next door. And now this that she’d tried so hard to avoid. With awful suddenness, hot caustic fluid welled from her gut, spilling out and down as though it would never ever stop.
He stood before a grassy courtyard walled in by white rush screens. In the centre of the grass was a raised blue mat marked off by a thick latik cord. In the centre of the mat sat a small golden man dressed only in a loin cloth…. “Behold the Harash D’ho, prince. Grand Master of the D’hogana.”
Here, where light and dark commingled, one stood to greet them. No Lothuri was he, for sure…. The features were blunt as the pitted Dryacs atop the Gurnyac keep. His scalp, furthermore, was shorn. His robe was dark brown, whatever that meant.
“Behold D’huru Nor, your mentor. Look your last on the world out there, an you will.”
There. By his broad flat accents, the be-hawld, the yaw , the last, the very gruff of his voice, Torc had him. From the far north, he was, of barbaric B’hadgazan. Now what was a man like that doing here?
The Athor looked him up and down curiously. “Tell me, Torc, prince: in the chamber of mirrors—what did you see?”
Torc considered. “I saw myself multiplied to the power of infinity, stretching in all directions, line upon line of me, going forever.”
At last a fleeting flash in the golden eyes. Of triumph? Or relief?
12 - (Shira) walked slowly into the third stall from the door, stepped up onto the toilet seat and felt along the narrow rim of the left-hand partition. There! A bead of paint? Better not try to move it, in case. She jumped down, ran to fetch MacAllister. A moment later, he gingerly lifted down a tiny silver bead.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said, grinning proudly down on her. “You did it. That was pretty smart. How old are you?”
“Nineteen,” she said primly. “Nineteen last month. Leo.”
“Ummm. It figures.”
The waters frothed and boiled, rising, filling the space of the lab floor, swirling and swelling to engulf them all. Ord closed his eyes and cried out but his cry went unheard. Just as the waters were surely closing over his head, the tumult faded, the raging river was gone, and the lights from the passageway shone in on an empty floor
What if things happened while she was away? Terrible things? And she was too late to do anything? Maybe she should make herself ill and stay behind. Maybe no one would notice if she did not go. Maybe....
As the daur turned ponderously and lumbered across the courtyard cobbles, Torc had one last glimpse of Gar heading Tanna’s way. Then he was passing under the inner courtyard arch and down towards the drawbridge gate.
Feric, massive and dark against the light, bowed his head. “I wish you safe journey and swift return, Highness.” He turned back to Brac. “I’ll catch you up, General,” he said, and strode back into the hutment.
“…Without his proving in the holy city the king is but a man like all the rest. Already the people line the streets to see their next king ride the route that will render him a demigod. What—shall you stand out there and tell them that you’ll not go? … Farce or no—and that’s not for you to say—of course you’ll go tomorrow against one thousand conspiracies, and there’s an end to it.”
Ord couldn’t help a small tinge of excitement at the thought. All this time using a tri-di-corder and never being able to see its true results until now. The TS was still operating, of course, but whatever came through today would be there, in its full roundness, filling the lab.
Ellisen waved him on. “Go ahead, Ord.”
Ord crossed his fingers and set the headband on Fazhakian’s brow.
The whole planet abounded with natural resources, as Earth had a century before. And there was Hengst, up there with his precious voyager ships, all rigged up and nowhere to go. Maybe there was a deal here. Perhaps, instead of going up to see Hengst, he could persuade the man to come down here. . . .
The old man’s adrenaline had reached an impossible high. Ord watched Suk pan it down again. This wasn’t like ’25. That woman had only gone catatonic, for a spell. This was something much worse. The pulse rate was faster than a hummingbird’s and the respiration, shallow. The eyes opened, rolled up under the lids. The lips were going cyanotic. Oxygen. Ord placed the mask over the old man’s face, adjusted the feed. No change. The TS was now a blinding, continuous white. Whatever it was was killing him.
Nothing stood against the bare skyline: no tree, no roof, not even the stump of a shelter wall. High in the sky a dirty sun filtered down and lit the shiny floor. There came a soft sound from somewhere in the room. Startled, Ord looked away. Across the couch, among the clutter of I.V.’s and respirator, Suk was crying.
"Pitar—something bad is happening to us.”
He pulled on his navy jumpsuit, clipped the belt shut. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Susann.” He turned to go.
“Why,” she called after him, “are you going off like this?”
“Later, Susann,” he said, and went downstairs.
***Now the great Bear and Pleiades
where earth moves
Are drawing up the clouds
of human grief
Breathing solemnity in the deep night.
From “Peter Grimes.”
Benjamin Britten***
Torc, n. the turning moment of a tangential force - ***(Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary).
atheling: Anglo-Saxon term for 'prince', 'heir'.***