The troop of royal cavalry came to the house a week later, and he remembered his father out on the broad steps leading down into the courtyard, talking calmly, his own men running quietly through the house, taking up positions at every window. Cheradenine ran to find his mother; as he ran through the corridors, he put one hand out in front of him, as though holding reins, and with his other hand slapped one hip, making a one-two-three, one-two-three clopping noise, pretending he was a cavalryman. He discovered his mother with the woman who had the child inside her; the woman was crying and he was told to go away.
The boy was born that night, to the sound of screams.
Cheradenine noticed that the atmosphere in the house changed greatly after that, and everyone was at once even more busy than before but less worried.
For a few years he could torment the younger boy, but then Elethiomel, who grew faster than he did, started to retaliate, and an uneasy truce developed between the two boys. Tutors taught them, and Cheradenine gradually came to realise that Elethiomel was their favourite, always learning things more quickly than he did, always being praised for his abilities developing so early, always being called advanced and bright and clever. Cheradenine tried hard to match him, and gleaned a little recognition for not just giving up, but it never seemed that he was really appreciated. Their martial instructors were more evenly divided on their merits; Cheradenine was better at wrestling and strike-fighting; Elethiomel the more accomplished with gun and blade (under proper supervision; the boy could get carried away sometimes), though Cheradenine was perhaps his equal with a knife.
The two sisters loved them both, regardless, and they played through the long summers and the brief, cold winters, and - apart from the first year, after Elethiomel was born - spent a little of each spring and autumn in the big city, far down the river, where the parents of Darckense, Livueta and Cheradenine kept a tall town house. None of the children liked the place, though; its garden was so small and the public parks so crowded. Elethiomel's mother was always quieter when they went to the city, and cried more often, and went away for a few days every so often, all excited before she went, then sobbing when she returned.
They were in the city once, one fall, and the four children were keeping out of the way of the short-tempered adults when a messenger came to the house.
They couldn't help but hear the screams, and so abandoned their toy war and ran out of the nursery onto the landing to peer through the railings down into the great hall, where the messenger stood, head down, and Elethiomel's mother screamed and shrieked. Cheradenine, Livueta and Darckense's mother and father both held onto her, talking calmly. Finally, their father motioned the messenger away, and the hysterical woman slumped silent to the floor, a piece of paper crumpled in her hand.
Father looked up then, and saw the children, but looked at Elethiomel, not at Cheradenine. They were all sent to bed soon after.
When they returned to the house in the country a few days later, Elethiomel's mother was crying all the time, and did not come down for meals.
'Your father was a murderer. They put him to death because he killed lots of people.' Cheradenine sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the stone bulwark. It was a beautiful day in the garden and the trees sighed in the wind. The sisters were laughing and giggling in the background, collecting flowers from the beds in the centre of the stone boat. The stone ship sat in the west lake, joined to the garden by a short stone causeway. They had played pirates for a while, and then started investigating the flower beds on the upper of the boat's two decks. Cheradenine had a collection of pebbles by his side, and was throwing them, one at a time, down into the calm water, producing ripples that looked like an archery target as he tried always to hit the same place.
'He didn't do any of those things,' Elethiomel said, kicking the stone bulwark, looking down. 'He was a good man.'
'If he was good, why did the King have him killed?'
'I don't know. People must have told tales about him. Told lies.'
'But the King's clever,' Cheradenine said triumphantly, throwing another pebble into the spreading circles of waves. 'Cleverer than anybody. That's why he's king. He'd know if they were telling lies.'
'I don't care,' Elethiomel insisted. 'My father wasn't a bad man.'
'He was, and your mother must have been extremely naughty too, or they wouldn't have made her stay in her room all this time.'
'She hasn't been bad!' Elethiomel looked up at the other boy, and felt something build up inside his head, behind his nose and eyes. 'She's ill. She can't leave her room!'
'That's what she says,' Cheradenine said.
'Look! Millions of flowers! Look; we're going to make perfume! Do you want to help?' The two sisters ran up behind them, arms full of flowers. 'Elly...' Darckense tried to take Elethiomel's arm.
He pushed her away.
'Oh, Elly... Sheri, please don't,' Livueta said.
'She hasn't been bad!' he shouted at the other boy's back.
'Yes she ha-as,' Cheradenine said, in a sing-song voice, and flicked another pebble into the lake.
'She hasn't!' Elethiomel screamed, and ran forward, pushing the other boy hard in the back.
Cheradenine yelled and fell off the carved bulwark; his head struck the stonework as he fell. The two girls screamed.
Elethiomel leant over the parapet and saw Cheradenine splash into the centre of his many-layered circle of waves. He disappeared, came back up again, and floated face down.
Darckense screamed.
'Oh, Elly, no!' Livueta dropped all her flowers and ran towards the steps. Darckense kept on screaming and squatted down on her haunches, back against the stone bulwark, crushing her flowers to her chest. 'Darkle! Run to the house!' Livueta cried from the staircase.
Elethiomel watched the figure in the water move weakly, producing bubbles, as Livueta's steps sounded slapping on the deck underneath.
A few seconds before the girl jumped into the shallow water to haul her brother out, and while Darckense screamed on, Elethiomel swept the remaining pebbles off the parapet, sending them pattering and plopping into the water around the boy.
No, that wasn't it. It had to be something worse than that, didn't it? He was sure he remembered something about a chair (he remembered something about a boat too, but that didn't seem to be quite it either). He tried to think of all the nastiest things that could happen in a chair, dismissed them one by one as they hadn't happened to him or to anybody he knew - at least as far as he could remember - and finally concluded that his fixation on the idea of a chair was a random thing; it just so happened to be a chair and that was all there was to it.
Then there were the names; names that he'd used; pretend names that didn't really belong to him. Imagine calling himself after a ship! What a silly person, what a naughty boy; that was what he was trying to forget. He didn't know, he didn't understand how he could have been so stupid; now it all seemed so clear, so obvious. He wanted to forget about the ship; he wanted to bury the thing, so he shouldn't go calling himself after it.
Now he realised, now he understood, now when it was too late to do anything about it.
Ah, he made himself want to be sick.
A chair, a ship, a... something else; he forgot.
The boys learned metalwork, the girls pottery.
'But we're not peasants, or... or...'
'Artisans,' Elethiomel provided.
'You will not argue, and you shall learn something of what it is to work with materials,' Cheradenine's father told the two boys.
'But it's common!'
'So is learning how to write, and to work with numbers. Proficiency in those skills will not make you clerks any more than working with iron will make you blacksmiths.'
'But...'
'You will do as you are told. If it is more in accord with the martial ambitions you both lay claim to, you may attempt to construct blades and armour in the course of your lessons.'
The boys looked at each other.<
br />
'You might also care to tell your language tutor that I instructed you to ask him whether it is acceptable for young men of breeding to begin almost every sentence with the unfortunate word, "But". That is all.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'Thank you, sir.'
Outside, they agreed that metalwork might not be so bad after all. 'But we've got to tell Big-nose about saying "But". We'll get lines!'
'No we won't. Your old man said that we might care to tell Big-nose; that's not the same as actually telling us to tell him.'
'Ha. Yeah.'
Livueta wanted to take up metalwork too, but her father would not allow her to; it was not seemly. She persevered. He would not relent. She sulked. They compromised, on carpentry.
The boys made knives and swords, Darckense pots, and Livueta the furniture for a summerhouse, deep in the estate. It was in that summerhouse where Cheradenine discovered...
No no no, he didn't want to think about that, thank you. He knew what was coming.
Dammit, he'd rather think about the other bad time, the day with the gun they'd taken from the armoury...
Na; he didn't want to think at all. He tried to stop thinking about it all by bashing his head up and down, staring at the mad blue sky and hitting his head up-down, up-down off the pale scaly rocks beneath his head where the guano pellets had been swept away, but it hurt too much and the rocks just gave and he didn't have the strength seriously to threaten a determined speckfly anyway, so he stopped.
Where was he?
Ah yes, the crater, the drowned volcano... we're in a crater; an old crater in an old volcano, long dead and filled with water. And in the middle of the crater there was a little island and he was on the little island, and he was looking off the little island at the crater walls and he was a man wasn't he children, and he was a nice man and he was dying on the little island and...
'Scream?' he said.
Doubtfully, the sky looked down.
It was blue.
It had been Elethiomel's idea to take the gun. The armoury was unlocked but guarded at the moment; the adults seemed busy and worried all the time, and there was talk of sending the children away. The summer had passed and still they hadn't gone to the city. They were getting bored.
'We could run away.'
They were scuffing through the fallen leaves on a path through the estate. Elethiomel talked quietly. They couldn't even walk out here now without guards. The men kept thirty paces ahead and twenty behind. How could you play properly with all these guards around? Back nearer the house they were allowed out without guards, but that was even more boring.
'Don't be silly,' Livueta said.
'It's not silly,' Darckense said. 'We could go to the city. It would be something to do.'
'Yes.' Cheradenine said. 'You're right. It would be.'
'Why do you want to go to the city?' Livueta said. 'It might be... dangerous there.'
'Well it's boring here,' Darckense said.
'Yeah, it is,' Cheradenine agreed.
'We could take a boat and sail away,' Cheradenine said.
'We wouldn't even really have to sail, or row,' Elethiomel said. 'All we'd have to do is push the boat out and we'd end up in the city eventually anyway.'
'I wouldn't go,' Livueta said, kicking at a pile of leaves.
'Oh, Livvy,' Darckense said. 'Now you're being boring. Come on. We've got to do things together.'
'I wouldn't go,' Livueta repeated.
Elethiomel pressed his lips together. He kicked hard at a huge pile of leaves, sending them up into the air like an explosion. A couple of the guards turned round quickly, then relaxed, looked away again. 'We've got to do something,' he said, looking at the guards ahead, admiring the big automatic rifles they were allowed to use. He'd never even been allowed to touch a proper big gun; just piddling little small-bore pistols and light carbines.
He caught one of the leaves as it fell past his face.
'Leaves...' he turned the leaf, this way and that, in front of his eyes. 'Trees are stupid,' he told the others.
'Of course they are,' Livueta said. 'They don't have nerves and brains, do they?'
'I don't mean that,' he said, crumpling the leaf in his hands. 'I mean they're such a stupid idea. All this waste every autumn. A tree that kept its leaves wouldn't have to grow new ones; it would grow bigger than all the rest; it would be the king of the trees.'
'But the leaves are beautiful!' Darckense said.
Elethiomel shook his head, exchanging looks with Cheradenine. 'Girls!' he laughed, sneering.
He forgot what the other word was for a crater; there was another word for a crater, for a big volcanic crater, there was definitely another word for it, there was absolutely and positively another word for it, I just put it down for a minute here and now some bastard's swiped it, the bastard... if I could just find it, I... I just put it down here a minute ago...
Where was the volcano?
The volcano was on a big island on an inland sea, somewhere.
He looked around at the distant heights of the crater walls, trying to remember where this somewhere was. As he moved, his shoulder hurt, where one of the robbers had stabbed him. He'd attempted to protect the wound by shooing the clouds of flies away, but he was fairly sure they'd already laid their eggs.
(Not too near the heart; at least he still carried her there, and it would take a while for the corruption to spread that far. He'd be dead by then, before they found their way to his heart and her.)
But why not? Go ahead; be my guests, little maggots, eat away, sup your fill; quite probably I'll be dead anyway by the time you hatch, and will save you the pain and torment of my attempts to scratch you out... Dear little maggots, sweet little maggots. (Sweet little me; I'm the one that's being eaten.)
He paused and thought about the pool, the little puddle that he orbited around, like a captured rock. It was at the bottom of a small depression, and it seemed to him that he kept on trying to get out away from the stinking water and the slime and the flies that crowded around it and the bird shit he kept crawling through... He didn't manage it; he always seemed to end up back here for some reason, but he thought about it a lot.
The pool was shallow, muddy, rocky and smelly; it was foul and horrid and bloated past its normal limits with the sickness and the blood that he had spilled out into it; he wanted to leave, to get well away from it. Then he would send in a heavy-bomber raid.
He started to crawl again, hauling himself round the pool, disturbing pellets and insects, and heading off towards the lake at one point, then coming back, back to the same point as before, and stopping, gazing transfixed at the pool and the rock.
What had he been doing?
Helping the locals, as usual. Honest counsel; advisor, keeping the loonies at bay and people sweet; later leading a small army. But they'd assumed he'd betray them, and that he'd use the army he'd trained as his own power base. So, on the eve of their victory, the very hour they'd finally stormed the Sanctum, they'd struck at him, too.
They'd taken him to the furnace room, stripped him naked; he'd escaped, but soldiers had been pounding down the stairs and he'd had to run. He'd been forced into the river, when they cornered him again. The dive almost knocked him out. Currents took him and he spun, lazily... he woke up in the morning, under a winch housing on a big river barge; he had no idea how he'd got there. There was a rope trailing astern, and he could only guess he'd climbed up that. His head still hurt.
He took some clothes which were drying on a line behind the wheelhouse, but he was seen; he dived overboard with them, swam to the shore. He'd still been hounded, and all the time he was forced further away from the city and Sanctum, where the Culture might look for him. He spent hours trying to work out how to contact them.
He'd been on a stolen mount, skirting the edge of a water-filled volcanic crater when the robbers struck; they'd beaten him and raped him and cut the tendons in his legs and tossed him into the stinking, yellow-tinged
waters of the crater lake, then thrown boulders at him as he tried to swim away, using only his arms, legs floating uselessly behind him.
He knew one of the rocks would hit him sooner or later, so he tried to coax up some of that wonderful Culture training, quickly hyperventilated, and then dived. He only had to wait a couple of seconds. A big rock splashed into the water, in the line of bubbles he'd left when he dived; he embraced the rock like a lover as it wobbled down towards him, and let it take him deep into the darkness of the lake, switching off the way he'd been taught to, but not really caring very much if it didn't work, and he never woke up again.
He'd thought ten minutes when he dived. He woke up in crushing darkness; remembered, and dragged his arms out from under the rock. He kicked for the light but nothing happened. He used his arms. The surface came down to meet him, eventually. Air had never tasted so sweet.
The walls of the crater lake were sheer; the tiny rock island was the only place to swim to. Screeching birds lifted from the island as he thrashed his way ashore.
At least, he thought, as he dragged himself onto the rock through the guano, it wasn't the priests that found me. Then I'd really have been in trouble.
The bends set in a few minutes later, like slow acid seeping into every joint, and he wished the priests had got him.
Still - he told himself, talking to keep his mind away from the pain - they would come for him; the Culture would come down with a beautiful big ship and they would take him up and make it all better.
He was sure they would. He'd be looked after and made better and he'd be safe, very safe and well looked after and free from pain, back in their paradise, and it would be like... like being a child again; like being in the garden again. Except - some rogue part of his mind reminded him - bad things happened in gardens too, sometimes.