Teniki X X V II noticed nothing.
The Trivashti cycle of seasons was the classic Four. W inter
sparkled and reddened the cheeks. Spring breathed sweetly over
tiny swords of grass and unfolding leafblades. Summer cast a net of
heat, coarse enough for a lordly dozing and dreaming in the afternoons, then the sensuous plunge into lake or river. Autumn was ripe with a treasury of fruits. Tiuark IV lost her imperial temper
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one time — she had forgotten her gloves and her fingers got cold —
!I will have summer!’ she said. H er Lord and Most High Slipper-
man (her biggest bigjack errandboy, that was) who was riding on
the next hippogryph heard her and within a couple of hours the
snows were melting and the summerfoxes in their dens beneath her
forests waking up. Believe it! — the snows melted — hibernating
animals awoke — the meany great iron cold trees started pumping
up their buds till they burst and the leaves unfurled! The sellers of
gloves and mufflers — oh, those boys cursed the great legend that
was their emperor, and the sellers of ice-cream blessed her!
She made those mostissimo winged horses herself — that was her
passion: breeding, engineering, gene-chopping and constructing
weird animals. All the creatures of all the myths of all the worlds of
all history lived in the flesh in her home-made menageries. Strange
and cruel and like a woman wearing a man’s beard was this arrogant Tiuark, lord of a thousand worlds. All of the twelve (some say fourteen) women who at various times ruled with the full powers of
emperor, and called themselves emperor, wore the emperor’s
beard. Some even had their chins cell-tailored to grow genuine
whiskers, and Maiken the Fat grew her own completely naturally
while still a young woman. Tiuark IV had dozens of lawfully
married queens and hundreds of concubines by whom she
produced a host of children — breeding them to the favoured
among her male relatives. There were ritual and economic reasons
for this.
In a great vision as I swam through space in the darkness of the
control cabin beside this long faced Fainey-Juveh with Bennet-
Kenny now a star beacon before us but still not quite a sun, as I
half-heard his strong monotonous voice now rising as he was
reminded of yet another jewel of interest in the history of the
Trivashti empire — in a great vision I saw the ancient barbaric
city-large ships ghost past, I rode a snorting hippogryph beside
Tiuark as she changed the season of a world with a wave of her
hand, I sat downtable from foppish Sesemene III when annoyed
with the supreme commander of his Instrumentality of Peace he
said, ‘Take me Fomalhaut,’ as you might say, ‘Pass me a nut,’ and the
commander went white to the gills. Years later that commander, his
body ruined beyond the wits of a now decadent imperial science to
repair in the last awful battle over Fomalhaut IV, yet by rigid will
still walking erect — that commander received Sesemene on the
bridge of the limping imperial flagship and presented him with an
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Anthony Peacey
iron mace removed for the first time in a thousand years from the
great Assembly Hall of Zianziohc saying, ‘Lord, Fomalhaut.’
‘Lord, Fomalhaut,’ he said, and died. Did he really say just that?
Answer ‘Take me Fomalhaut’ with ‘Lord, Famalhaut’, hand over the
mace and die? Yes, oh yes. I knew that then, riding there in Fainey-
Juveh’s little modern-day can just cut from Greenball and the tired
romanceless faces on the early mono to graceless Pororak — I knew
that then, listening to Fainey-Juveh’s magic-monotonous voice.
‘Lord, Fomalhaut.’
And I had seen — jostled and deafened in the monstrous crowd,
stifled by the stewy scent of the jostling roaring crowd — I had seen
eagle-featured Sesemene, foppish no longer, but eagle-featured
with terrible eyes and the skin of his face dyed blue and all his robes
glaring with a weight of gems riding a winged clawed elephant
(long had Tiuark’s art survived her) down the Avenue of Palaces in
marble carved Orlasc as the first expedition of conquest to Fomalhaut began — and upon opposing marble pillars that lined the way chained the naked halves of all
