Matter

6. Scholastery

Ferbin otz Aelsh-Hausk’r and his servant Choubris Holse were riding along an ill-kept road through a forest of cloud trees towards the Xiliskine-Anjrinh Scholastery. They had chosen to travel through the long half-night of the Rollstar Guime, which showed as a sullen red glow spread like a rosy bruise across the farpole horizon. They had pulled off the road only twice so far, once to avoid a troop of mounted Ichteuen and once when a steam truck had appeared in the far distance. The prince no longer looked like himself; Holse had close-cut his scalp, his facial hair was growing quickly (darker than his head hair; nearly brown, which peeved him disproportionately), he had removed all his rings and other regal jewellery and he was dressed in clothes Holse had obtained from the battlefield.

“From a corpse?” Ferbin had spluttered, staring down at himself wide-eyed. Holse had thought to inform the prince of the provenance of his new-to-him civvies only after he’d put them on.

“One with no obvious wounds, sir,” Holse had assured him reasonably. “Just a little bleeding from the ears and nose. Dead a good two or three days, too, so any fleas would assuredly have caught cold and jumped ship. And he was a gentleman, too, I might add. An army private provisioner, unless I’m mistaken.”

“That’s not a gentleman,” Ferbin had told his servant patiently. “That’s a merchant.” He’d pulled at his sleeves, held out his hands and shaken his head.

If there had been any aerial activity — unlikely in the near darkness — they didn’t see it. At any rate, nobody came swooping down to inspect them as they trudged on, Holse on his rowel and Ferbin on the mersicor his servant had brought to the folly overlooking the river four days earlier. Holse had dug a couple of wads of crile root from a saddle bag to help keep them awake as they rode, and they chewed on this while they talked. It gave their conversation what Holse felt was a rather comical, munchy sort of quality, though he thought better of mentioning this to Ferbin.

“Choubris Holse, it is your duty to accompany me to wherever I might choose to go.”

“I’d beg to differ, sir.”

“There’s no differing involved. Duty is duty. Yours is to me.”

“Within the kingdom, and within the rule of the king’s law, I’d not argue with you, sir. It is my duty beyond that reach I might think to question.”

“Holse! You are a servant! I am a prince! You’d be best advised to do as you’re damn well told even were I some lowly gent with no more than a tumbledown fort, a flea-bitten nag and too many children to his name. As servant to a prince — the senior prince, I might add — of the royal house of Hausk…” Ferbin broke off, choking on his own amazement and disgust at encountering such obduracy in a servant. “My father would have you thrashed for this, Holse, I tell you! Or worse! Damn it, man, I am the rightful king!”

“Sir, I am with you now, and intend to stay with you until the varsity and thence to whatever conveyance you might find beyond that which they are able to recommend you to. To that very point I shall be at your side, as faithful as ever.”

“And there you damn well have to stay! Wherever I go!”

“Sir, pleasing your pardon, my allegiance — at the bottom of the pot, after all reduction, as it were — is to the throne rather than to your good self. Once you remove yourself from the furthest extent of your father’s conquests, it is my understanding that I am bound to return to the seat of authority — which I would take to be the royal palace in Pourl, all other matters being in normal balance — there to take fresh instruction from, well, whomsoever—”

“Holse! Are you a lawyer?”

“Dear God forbid, sir!”

“Then shut up. Your duty is to stay with me. That’s the all and end of it.”

“My duty, begging your pardon, sir, is to the king.”

“But I am the king! Haven’t you been telling me for the last four days that I’m the rightful heir to the throne?”

“Sir, excuse my bluntness, but you are an uncrowned king who is riding most determinedly away from his throne.”

“Yes! Yes, to save my life! To seek help so that I may return to claim that throne, if the WorldGod lets. And, I would point out, in doing so I am following the highest precedents; does not the WorldGod find its own sanctuary from cares here at the core of our blessed world? Did not the Sarl people themselves flee persecution on their homeworld, escaping here to our own dear Sursamen?”

“Still, sir. Being a king has its expectations. One is letting people know you’re alive.”

“Is it really? Well, well,” Ferbin said, deciding to be witheringly sarcastic. “Do you tell me that now? And what else, might one ask?”

“Well, sir, acting in a kingly manner regarding the taking up of the reins of power, by dispute if needs be, rather than leaving them to fall to—”

“Choubris Holse, you will not lecture me in the art of kingcraft or my regal obligations and responsibilities!”

“Indeed not, sir. I agree most completely. Lecturing is the province of the scholastic monk types towards which we make our way. No argument there from me, sir.”

Holse’s rowel snored as though in agreement. Their animals were bred to night-walk and could literally walk in their sleep, though they needed the odd prod to keep them on the road.

“I decide my duty, Holse, not you! And my duty is not to let myself be murdered by those who have already killed one king and would not flinch from adding another — that is, me — to their score!”

Holse looked up at the near-unGodly vastness of the Hicturean Tower, rising to their left like fate. The sky- supporting stem was skirted with grassed and forested slopes, their steepness increasing as they approached the topmost edge where, piled up against the smooth, uncanny surface of the Tower, the ground and foliage broke like a dark green wave against the trunk’s vast pale roundness, glowing in the low red light like the bone of some long- dead god.

Holse cleared his throat. “These documents we go in search of, sir. They don’t work the other way, do they?”

“The other way? What do you mean, Holse?”

“Well, would they let you travel downwards, to the Core, to see the WorldGod, sir?” Holse had no idea how these things worked; he had never really bothered with religion, though he had always paid lip-service to the church for the sake of an easy life. He had long suspected that the WorldGod was just another convenient semi-fiction supporting the whole structure that sustained the rich and powerful in their privilege. “To see if its Divineness might help you?” He shrugged. “It would save all the bother of travelling to the Surface and then to the external stars, sir.”

“That is impossible, Holse,” Ferbin said patiently, trying not to lose his temper at such childish drivel. “The Oct and — thank God — the Aultridia are forbidden from interfering with the WorldGod; they may not descend to the Core. Therefore neither may we.” He might have replied at greater length, but — following an inopportune partial inhaling of a well-chewed wad of crile root — he was struck by an attack of coughing, and spent much of the next few minutes wheezing and spluttering and refusing Holse’s repeated offers to administer a forceful slap on the back.

* * *

The Hicturean-Anjrinh Scholastery sat on a low hill a day’s ride from the Hicturean Tower in the direction of nearpole, so that the great column was almost directly between it and Pourl. Like most Scholasteries, the place was forbidding-looking, even if technically it was unfortified. It looked like a long, low castle with its curtain wall removed. It had two turrets, but they housed telescopes rather than guns. The visible walls actually looked quite jolly, painted in all sorts of different colours, but it still appeared somehow grim to Ferbin. He had always been rather in awe of such places and the people who inhabited them. To give yourself up to a life of study, thought and contemplation seemed like, well, such a waste. He tipped continually between contempt for anyone who could cut themself off from so much that made life fun just to pursue this abstraction they called learning, and something