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events and Our Shathra Anna. Against history and royalty Gabriel Elk ultimately had no
more resources than did the simplest masker. And on the following morning history and
royalty came to Grotto House in the person of Chancellor Arngrim Blaine.
PART TWO
xii
His roan tooth glistening, slashing like a miniature tusk, Arngrim Blaine said,  The
Halcyon Panic has broken, Sayati Elk. It s broken, and I believe your neuro-dramas have
been instrumental in destroying our citizenry s calm. Anger lay under the planes of his
thin, expressive face like a ripening bruise.
 Obviously you haven t attended a neuro-drama this season, I said. We were sitting
in Gabriel Elk s quiet little study on the main level of Grotto House; the room contained
leatherbound books not microchips, but books. Both the Elks were present, in adjacent,
meticulously carven chairs.
Bethel said,  The people have been kept abreast of the events in Firthshir, haven t
they?
 They have, Mistress Elk.
 Then how can you blame the people s distress the breaking of the panic, as you call
it, Chancellor on my husband s dramas, not a one of which you have seen in its entirety?
The Lief girl s performance doesn t count.
 I can do so, Mistress Elk, because things have culminated much too soon; the
misdirected rage the young women of Lunn have exhibited in the last two days comes
well ahead of schedule, it defies the computations of the Magi.
Gabriel Elk said,  But then again, Chancellor Blaine, the Pelagan invasion has taken
place sooner than the Magi expected.
 And the rage of the young Mansuecerian women, the wives of our soldiers and
seamen, Bethel Elk said,  has been growing for a long time. That rage has been building
since well before the Magi decreed the existence of a  Halcyon Panic. It s the product of a
long-ingrained and periodically aggravated sense of helplessness, which I feel too,
Chancellor Blaine.
 I don t doubt that you do. However, Our Shathra Anna who is, as I shouldn t have
to remind you, a woman too says that the  sense of helplessness you speak of need not
reveal itself in hysteria and acts of vandalism.
Bethel Elk said,  Our Shathra Anna s experience has hardly been typical.
A chill descended upon Gabriel Elk s study, like a dust of invisible snow sifting out of
the very air. We were all as separate as corpses put up in our own sealed, sound-muffling
preservators. Who would resurrect us?
I looked at Blaine, sitting cross-legged opposite me. He had come to Grotto House that
morning dressed not as the Chancellor of Ongladred, nor even as a member of the Atarite
Court, but instead like a reasonably successful masker tradesman. Two young guards had
accompanied him, posing as his sons. All these precautions had grown out of the wish to
prevent a visit as disastrous as Our Shathra Anna s last one. And yet the Chancellor had
come himself, he had not sent a representative.
Coolly he said,  Listen to me. Two days ago the day after your newest production
had opened, Sayati Elk a large group of young women left Lunn, marched out the
Mershead Road, and began turning over vegetable booths and fish stalls. Not the ones run
by old men or other women, but those tended by masker tradesmen whom we ve
exempted from military service or else booths owned by minor Atarite officials. There
was no stopping these women.
 In that case, Gabriel Elk laughed,  your choice of disguises could have been wiser.
Arngrim Blaine ignored this.  That night a pack of children turned loose by their
mothers, I ve no doubt ran into the thoroughfare beneath my offices and began chanting
a litany to Maz, asking Him to blow Himself up and Ongladred, too, so that we might at
least die in the light. The Chancellor permitted himself a wan smile.  We had no success
either in catching the children or in driving them away; the ones whom the guards did
catch were inevitably replaced by others, all crying together,  Maz, Maz, destroy us in
light. Preserve us from the slime of the sloak and the knives of barbarians. Let the lie die.
A litany drummed into them by women.
 Your sleep was spoiled, Bethel Elk commiserated.
 Oh, that episode has its amusing aspects; I m not blind to them. But that same night
some hysterical person, or group of persons, set fire to a row of dwellings on Lunn s
southwestern outskirts. The houses all burned, and several people died, including
children, Mistress Elk. A violet pall of smoke hung over the rooftops, quite lurid under the
Shattered Moons, I assure you. And yesterday the wail of keening women filled the
streets issued from every house from dawn until long after nightfall, a general
lamentation the likes of which I ve never heard in Lunn. I m surprised you didn t hear it
out here.
 Then yesterday since the keening doesn t by any means end the matter a
procession of old women, as many as two hundred or so, walked all the way from Lunn to
Brechtlin, on the point opposite Mershead, and disrobed on the beaches. After that, they
waded into the sea and kept wading until their strength gave out and they drowned.
These were widows, unmarried women, grandmothers. None of the Mansuecerian
population tried to stop them; that they be left alone seemed to be the unspoken desire of
even their relatives. We dispatched a few Atarite guardsmen to turn them back, but the
women wouldn t be reasoned with and simple coercion failed, from want of enough men
to restrain them. Into the water they went, naked pathetic creatures obeying an hysteria
beyond my comprehension, Mistress Elk. Even now they are being buried, all the
washed-ashore corpses no one will come forward to identify.
 And these things the arson, the keening, the senseless suicides are not amusing,
friends. They betoken the depth of our citizenry s fear.
A different kind of silence filled the study then. Arngrim Blaine had reasserted his
dignity. The four of us sat there, self-conscious, in its palpable aura. At last Bethel said,
 And you believe that Agon and Anabasis in Spring are responsible for these things,
Chancellor?
 In part, yes.
 I would like to think you are right, the old man said.
 May I ask why? the Chancellor said curtly.
 Certainly. Everyone requires a degree of power, no matter how minute.
 Of this sort? Power to cause suicides and arson?
 If one is weak, yes. However, I m not a weak man, Chancellor, and that s not what I
require in power. I see in these atypical patterns of behavior this hysteria the potential
for something constructive. It s that germ of constructiveness I would like to think my
neuro-dramas help nourish. In all the negative acts of the last three days there is a thin,
affirmative thread.
 Very thin. The Chancellor s lips hardly parted.  Very thin.
I said,  The best explanation for this behavior is not the neuro-dramas, but the news
from Firthshir.
 That figures prominently, Chancellor Blaine said.  Certainly I don t dismiss it. In
fact, I ought to tell you that the Pelagan forces have pushed out of Firthshir into Eenlich
Province, driving Field-Pavan Barrow s army before them. He paused.  There s no word
of casualties. As far as I know, Gareth and Coigns are alive. On this point I can t say any [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]