The Brave Free Men (12 page)

Etzwane drank; Finnerack cautiously followed suit.

Etzwane made an oblique reference to Finnerack's remark. "The new Anome in my opinion is not a man hidebound by tradition. After the Roguskhoi are destroyed important changes will be made."

"Bah!" said Finnerack. "The Roguskhoi are no great problem; the Anome need only, hurl the might of Shant against them."

Etzwane chuckled sadly. "What might? Shant is feeble as a baby. The last Anome turned his face away from danger. It is all very mysterious; he is neither a wicked nor a stupid man."

"No mystery," said Finnerack. "He enjoyed ease above exertion."

"I might agree," said Etzwane, "were there not other mysteries as well: the Roguskhoi themselves, in the first instance."

"Again no mystery: they derive from Palasedran malice."

"Hmm . . . Who informed Hillen of my coming? Who gave orders that I be killed?"

"Is there any doubt?. The. balloon-way magnates!"

"Possible again. But there are other mysteries less easily explained." Etzwane recalled the Benevolence Garstang's suicidal attack and the peculiar mutilation worked upon his corpse, as if a rat had gnawed a hole in his chest."

Someone sat at their table. It was Dystar. "I have been studying your face," he told Etzwane. "It is a face I know, from the far past."

Etzwane collected his thoughts. "I have heard you play at Brassei; there perhaps you chanced to notice me."

Dystar glanced at Etzwane's torc to read the locality code. "Bastern, a strange canton."

"The Chilites no longer worship Galexis," said Etzwane. "Bastern is not so strange as before." Dystar, he noted, wore the rose and dull blue of Shkoriy. He asked, "Will you share our wine?"

Dystar gave a polite acquiescence. Etzwane signaled the steward, who brought another diorite goblet: egg-shell thin, polished to the color and sheen of pewter. Etzwane poured. Dystar raised a finger. "Enough . . . I no longer enjoy food or wine. An innate fault, I suppose."

Finnerack gave his sudden harsh laugh; Dystar glanced at him with curiosity. Etzwane said, "For long years my friend has labored under indenture at a camp for recalcitrants, and has known bitter times. Like yourself, he has no taste for fine food or wine, but for exactly opposite reasons."

Dystar smiled; his face a winter landscape suddenly illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. "Surfeit is not my enemy. I am troubled, rather, by what. I would term an aversion to purchased pleasure."

"I am glad it is for sale," grumbled Finnerack. "I would find little elsewhere."

Etzwane looked ruefully at the expensive flask of wine. "How then do you spend your money?"

"Foolishly," said Dystar. "Last year I bought land in Shkoriy: a high valley with an orchard, a pond, and a cottage, where I thought to pass my senility. . .. Such is the folly of foresight."

Finnerack tasted the wine, put the goblet down, and looked off across the hall.

Etzwane began to feel uncomfortable. A hundred times he had envisioned the meeting between Dystar and himself, always in dramatic terms. Now they sat at the same table and the occasion was suffocated in dullness. What could he say? "Dystar! You are my father; in my face you see your own!" Bathos. In desperation Etzwane said, "At Brassei your mood was better than tonight; I recall that you played with zest."

Dystar gave him a quick glance. "Is the situation so evident? Tonight I am stale; I have been distracted by events."

"The trouble in Shkoriy?"

Dystar was silent for a moment, then nodded. "The savages have taken my valley, where I often went, where nothing ever changed." He smiled. "A mood of melancholy induces music; on occasions of real tragedy I become merely insipid. . .. By repute I am a man who plays only by caprice. Still, here are two hundred people come to listen, and I would not wish to disappoint them."

Finnerack, now drunk, his mouth sagging in a crooked smile, said, "My friend Etzwane professes musicianship; you should press him into service."

" 'Etzwane'? The master musician of old Azume," said Dystar. "Do you know this?"

Etzwane nodded. "My mother lived on Rhododendron Way. I was born nameless and took the name 'Gastel Etzwane' for my own."

Dystar reflected a moment, perhaps occupied with his own recollections of Rhododendron Way. Too long ago, thought Etzwane; he would remember nothing.

"I must perform." Dystar moved back to his bench. He took up the darabence to play a somewhat trivial set of melodies, as might be heard in the Morningshore dancehalls. Just as Etzwane began to lose interest, Dystar altered the set of his blare valve to construct a sudden new environment: the same melodies, the same rhythm, but now they told a disturbed tale of callous departures and mocking laughter, of roof demons and storm birds. Dystar muted the whines, throttled the valves, and slowed his tempo. The music asserted the fragility of everything pleasant and bright, the triumph of darkness, and ended in a dismal twanging chord. . . . A pause, then a sudden coda remarking that, on the other hand, matters might easily be quite the reverse.

Dystar rested a moment. He struck a few chords, then played a complicated antiphony: glissandos swooping above a placid melody. His expression was abstracted, his hands moved without effort. Etzwane thought that the music came from calculation rather than emotion. Finnerack's eyelids were drooping; he had taken too much food and wine. Etzwane called the steward and paid the score; then he and Finnerack departed the Silver Samarsanda and returned to the River Island Inn.

Etzwane went out into the garden and stood in the quiet, looking up at the Schiafarilla, behind which, according to legend, lay old Earth. . . . When he returned to the drawing room, Finnerack had gone to his couch. Etzwane took a stylus and on a card wrote a careful message, upon which he impressed the sigil of the Anome.

He summoned a boy. "Take this message to the Silver Samarsanda, deliver it into the hands of Dystar the druithine, none other. Do not respond to any questions: give over the message and depart. Do you understand?"

"I do." The boy took the message and went off, and presently Etzwane went to his own couch. . . . As for the Repast of Forty-Five Dishes, he doubted if ever again he would dine so lavishly.

Prompted by doubt and uneasiness, Etzwane decided to pass by the cantons of the far west and return at once to Garwiy. He had been gone longer than he intended; in Garwiy events moved faster than elsewhere in Shant.

There was no balloon-way link between Maschein and Brassei, by reason of adverse winds and poor terrain, but the Jardeen River served almost as well. Rather than await the scheduled riverboat, Etzwane chartered a swift pinnacle, with two lateen sails and a crew of ten to man sweeps or haul on the towrope in case of necessity.

East on a great loop through the sylvan foothills of Lot Ault they sailed, then north down Methel Vale, with mountains rising on both sides. At Griave in Fairlea they met the Great Ridge Route of the balloon-way, only to learn that all northbound balloons had been delayed by gales driving in from the Sualle. Continuing to Brassei Junction, they boarded the balloon
Aramaad.
The Sualle gales had waned; the Shellflower winds provided a splendid reach; the
Aramaad
spun north along the slot at a steady sixty miles an hour. Late in the afternoon they slid down the Vale of Silence, through the Jardeen Gap, and five minutes later descended to Garwiy Station.

At sunset Garwiy was at its most entrancing, with the low light from three suns drenching the glass of the tall spires, generating color in prodigal quantities. From all directions, high and low, on and through the pure glass slabs, the domes, bulbs, bosses, and carved ornaments, among and around the balustrades of high balconies, the ranked arches and buttresses, the crystal scrolls and prismatic columns flowed the tides of saturated color: pure purples to charm the mind; limpid greens, dark and rich, watergreen, leaf-green, emerald; dark and light blues, with ultramarine, smalt, and the range of middle blues; reflections and after-images of scarlet, inner shadows of light which could not be named; on near surfaces the luster of time: acrid metallic films. As Etzwane and Finnerack moved slowly east, the suns departed; the colors became clouded with pearl and quickly died. Etzwane thought: of all this ancient grandeur I am master. I can gratify each whim; I can take, I can give; I can build or lay waste. . . . He smiled, unable to accept the ideas; they were artificial and unreal.

Finnerack could never before have seen Garwiy; Etzwane wondered as to his reactions. Finnerack was at least overtly unimpressed. He had given the city a single all-encompassing glance, and thereafter appeared more interested in the urbane folk who walked Kavalesko Avenue.

At a kiosk Etzwane bought a journal. The colors black, ocher, and brown immediately struck his eyes. He read:

From Marestiy arresting news! The militia and a band of Roguskhoi have been engaged in a battle. The savage intruders, having worked awful damage in Canton Shkoriy, which must now be reckoned totally under Roguskhoi control, sent a foraging party north. At the border a Marest troop staunchly denied the intruders passage, and a battle ensued. Though greatly outnumbered, the insensate red brutes advanced. The Marest men discharged arrows, killing or at least incommoding certain of the enemy; the others pressed forward without qualm. The Marest militia, adopting flexible tactics, fell back into the forest, where their arrows and fire-wad flings denied the Roguskhoi entry. The treacherous savages. returned the fire-wads to set the forest ablaze, and the militia was forced back into the open. Here they were set upon by another band of savages, assembled for just such a bloodthirsty purpose. The militia suffered many casualties, but the survivors have resolved to extract a great revenge when the Anome provides them potency. All feel certain that the detestable creatures will be defeated and driven away.

Etzwane showed the report to Finnerack, who read with half-contemptuous disinterest. Etzwane's attention meanwhile had been drawn to a box outlined in the pale blue and purple of sagacious statement:

Here are presented the remarks of
 
Mialambre Octagon, the respected High Arbiter of Wale:

The years during and immediately after the Fourth Palasedran War were decisive; during these times was forged the soul of the hero Viana Paizifiume. He has rightly been called the progenitor of modern Shant. The Hundred Years War undeniably derived from his policies; still, for all its horror, this century now seems but a shadow on the water. Paizifiume created the awful authority of the Anome and, as a logical corollary, the employment of the coded torc. It is a system beautiful in its simplicity—unequivocal rigor balanced against responsibility, economy, effectiveness— which in the main has been kind to Shant. The Anomes have been largely competent; they have honored all their commitments—to the cantons, allowing each its traditional style; to the patricians, imposing no arbitrary restraints; to the generality, making no exorbitant demands. The previous cantonal wars and depredations have receded to the edge of memory and are currently unthinkable.

Critical minds will discover flaws in the

system. Justice, a human invention, is as protean as the race itself, and varies from canton to canton. The traveler must be wary lest he contravene some unfamiliar local ordinance. I cite those unfortunate wayfarers through Canton Haviosq who, when passing a shrine, have neglected the sign of sky, stomach, and soil, to their dismay; likewise the virgins careless enough to enter Canton Shalloran without certificates. The indenture system has shortcomings; the notorious vices of Canton Glirris are inherently wrong. Still, when all is weighed, we have enjoyed many placid centuries.

If the study of human interactions could become a science, I suspect that an inviolate axiom might be discovered to this effect:
Every social disposition creates a disparity of advantages.
Further:
Every innovation designed to correct the disparities, no matter how altruistic in concept, works only to create a new and different set of disparities.

I make this remark because the great effort which must now wrench Shant will beyond all question change our lives, in modes still unimaginable.

Etzwane looked once more to see who had formulated the piece.
 
Mialambre Octagon of Wale . . . Finnerack demanded somewhat peevishly: "How long do you propose to stand reading in the street?"

Etzwane signaled a passing diligence. "To Sershan Palace." Finnerack presently spoke: "We are being followed."

Etzwane looked at him in surprise. "Are you sure?"

"When you stopped to buy the journal a man in a blue cape stepped off to the side. While you read he stood with his back turned. When we walked forward he did likewise. Now a diligence follows behind."