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He told me I might now return to my room in Rhodia’s house, without fear since I was “under his protection” and that he would meet me again next day for further discussion of “our plans.”
I spent the night seated at a window, star-bathing, as if I were safely home. I was immersed in my plans for the re-establishment of Lelanos.
And next day, when I walked quite openly and at ease through the green spaces to the same airy building, and went up to our little platform among those stone symmetries, my mind was at work on management: the exercises and uses of management.
He was not there as he had said he would be. I did not think anything of this, then. I was considering the causes of the falling away of Lelanos, among which Rhodia had indicated was the failure to maintain the independence and integrity of money. Well, that was easily put right! An enforcement of the law… if necessary an enforcement by the power of Tafta’s troops… the strengthening of the Scrutiny, and its powers… perhaps Tafta should be made a member of the Scrutiny…
Tafta did not come at all that day. I felt as if I had had something snatched from me: and I was again full of grief on behalf of Lelanos, the deprived—the deprived of me, and my expert and benevolent guidance. But as I waited there on my little platform among the snowy and bluish cubes and spheres, the deep blue of the Rohandan sky enclosing the lovely scene, I looked down on little people far below, and it was as if I held them in my protection; as if I was promising them an eternal safety and well-being.
It is not that I am proud of this: I have to record it.
By the end of that day, I was in the sort of mood where, had I been on my own ground, within my own frame of understanding, I would have had to watch myself so as not to punish unjustly. I was feeling about Tafta as about a delinquent servant. That night, my contemplation of our stars was hazed, I seemed not to be able to find their shadow within myself, and at the back of my mind, where the shores of Sound begin, I could hear the warning whisper, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, and I was shaking my head as an animal does when its ears are full of irritating water. Sirius, Sirius—and I shook my head so as not to hear the echo of: Be careful, be careful, be careful.
I was late going to my high watching place next day, and it was from calculation, and when I reached it, Tafta was there, and bent in a gesture of submission that I had always previously found slavish. He applied his lips to my hand, and then glanced up from this humble position with a wi
And that did begin to shake me out of my illusion. He stood before me, all confident physicality, all glisten and shine, the sun on his whiskers and the smooth curls of his head, his brown skin where you could see the red blood ru
He told me that his absence was due to his having to bring in from outside the city the troops that would guard us. And to his having to organise their safety and their shelter. And he said that on the next morning he would come to my lodging for me and we—he and I and the guards—would make a public display of ourselves through Lelanos, to the place of government of the city and its environs, where we would be installed as rulers. This was not at all as I had been imagining events. But meanwhile we were standing on the very edge of the little platform, overlooking the whole plain and its focal city, and he was flinging out his arm and saying “It is yours, all yours. And together we will restore it and make it everything it was.” There was such a glossy insolence about him! He could not stop the triumphant grimace that showed his teeth, he could not control his glances down at me, as if he had already swallowed me whole, and finding me negligible, was about to spit me out again.
And yet my head swam as I overlooked Lelanos, and I was promising it in a silent passionate bond with it: “I will protect you, I will guard you, I will keep you safe.” And the warning whisper, Sirius, Sirius, was not more than a low hissing from a long way off.
Again he kissed my hand, and I descended, he following. and I went to my rooms, and—but now I was thinking. Thoughts that had been far from me crowded in.
Who was it who had warned the priests of the time of my arrival in the other city? Not Rhodia—though she had known what was going to happen. How was it that this gallant ruffian had made his appearance in Lelanos only after Rhodia’s death?
And how could I explain that Shammat was now so ready to devote himself to the restoration of sweet civilisation and order, when I had so recently seen this, their servant, at work, of the kind to be expected of them, with the dark priests?
How was it… but it was as if two forces were at war in me. I did not want to hear warnings from deep within me, or remember Canopus. I wanted with all my present self—the self brought into being by Shammat—to rule this city, and to strengthen my i
Next morning I waited quietly for Tafta, mind already beyond the—so I thought—unimportant formalities of the day, dwelling on future plans and arrangements, when Tafta walked in, saw me standing there in my ordinary Lela
And unable to escape. My mind was darting frantically around the possibilities of escape. My whole self had been shocked back into sanity, into sense. Behind me came, singing—if that is the word for it—the contingents. Beside me strolled, gri
That is how Ambien II, of Sirius, one of the Five, came to be marching into the gay and colourful building that used to house the governing bodies of Lelanos, at the head of a Shammat army; how I came to be made ruler of Lelanos.
When the brief and ridiculous ceremony was over, Tafta a
my “palace”—there was no such thing in Lelanos—and I said that I would return to my own lodgings. It was at this moment the illusion, or spell, that had been on me dissolved, and left me looking at a half-animal adventurer, who had no idea of the dimensions of the forces he was challenging. He could not stop me. Not unless he made me a prisoner then and there and ended his illusion. He was living in some dream of glory and grandeur, with his own city to rule, backed by Sirius, whom he could manipulate and use in his, Shammat’s, eternal battle with Canopus. So he had seen it. So he still saw it; looking into those shallow almost colourless eyes of his, I could see his thoughts swimming there, for my Sirian intelligence had come back to me—I could see, in the cocksure, but absurd, postures his limbs fell into that he was dreaming of an Empire that would match that dreamed of by Grakconkranpatl. Suddenly, I was able to see all kinds of things.