Queenmagic, Kingmagic

by Ian Watson

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

In another world, somewhere in space and time, two countries - Bellogard and Chorny - are locked in perpetual war, conducted by magic. Each of the main members of the two countries' courts - king, queen, prince, bishop, knight and squire - has their own form of magic, and special ways of moving magically. A war may continue for centuries, until one side succeeds in killing the other side's king, at which point the whole world vanishes, only to reappear and have the cycle begin again. . . Pedino is a young Bellogardian who becomes the queen's squire and, as part of his training, is sent into a seedier part of the city to uncover a Chornian spy. During his adventures he meets and falls in love with a whore, Sara, who turns out to be a Chornian bishop's squire. Pedino succeeds in killing the other Chornian bishop - a remarkable achievement for a mere squire; but in the manoeuvres which follow Chorny proves to have outwitted its rival, and Pedino's whole world is threatened with extinction. There have been many stories modelled on chess games, but none so ingenious and enjoyable as Ian Watson's latest novel. And, as one would expect from Watson, the story of Bellogard and Chorny is only the beginning. When Pedino and Sara manage to escape the destruction of their universe, they find themselves in a series of even more bizarre worlds operating under still stranger rules, as they seek to discover the purpose of their existence, and the meaning of their universe. Queenmagic, Kingmagic is Ian Watson in sparkling, exuberant form.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 195

Sample

“What you see on the board is only the outcrop of a much larger world, like mountain peaks above mist.”

- Bishop Lovats the Perceptive

Do you spy the palace of Queen Isgalt?

Magnificent, eh? Yet what a medley! Part fortress, part fantasia.

Hewn into the curtain walls were mullioned windows of stained glass; invaders could practically leapfrog their way in. Isgalt’s predecessor, Queen Alyitsa, had those windows sawed through the stone to let in light, so she said, for light is the foe of dark and night. Alabaster statues of soldiers (from Queen Dama’s reign, before) stood on the palace parapets: a perch for pigeons. The white onion domes were so pierced by quatrefoils that they resembled peasants’ lacework, or curious colanders for draining salads. Rain poured through those to spout out by way of demon gargoyles. The impression was of roofs which moths had feasted on.

As for the cupolas topping the towers, on festival nights bright blaziers were lit in those. Often updrafts swirled sparks aloft so that the royal flags caught alight, burning high in the night and skidding down the spires to the roofs below like bloody, tattered shirts.

But of course no common-or-garden siege would decide the outcome of the war…

Our lovely, wistful Queen Isgalt only possessed half the magic force of Queen Alyitsa; quarter of the power of Queen Dama. King Karol spent much of his time high in the central tower devoting himself to bubble-art. Prince Ruk, who guarded the King, could race along two lines of magic. But the prince had long since used up his ability to shift instantaneously to another place through the body of a pawn-squire. (He used this to rescue King Karol from the suicidal attack of the Knight of Night, Oscaro.) Bishop Veck, who practised crosswise magic, continued to minister to the queen and to brace her courage. As did chevalier Sir Brant, who jumped askew through magics. Our city of Bellogard had survived longer than some of us imagined it might.

And me?

My name is Pedino. I was a pawn-squire.

At times how I envied the ordinary lives of burghers and menials of Bellogard, of farmers and peasants throughout the Dolina valley and the rest of the kingdom; even though those people had no full souls which might migrate to another life when our kingdom finally fell, when all houses and barns tumbled into chaos, and the palace burned like white paper.

How proud I was, as a lad, to have my soul divined as a full soul by the late Bishop Slon. How can I forget that day?

Queen Alyitsa was still with us. Isgalt was only one of a quartet of princesses. Despite the loss of Queen Dama, the struggle against the ebon city of Chorny seemed remote, inconsequential to our lives; not so much a total war to the death, by magic, as a mischievous dispute, a cantankerous scrimmage. There had been sorrow at the death of the long-reigning queen; she was killed when I was only an infant, and my mother told me about the pang people felt. There had been a whole fortnight of mourning; though no sense of doom. (Ah, but Prince Ruk and Bishop Veck knew the truth. They realized how vulnerable, in the long run, Dama’s loss had made us.)

My father was a pipe-maker in Chalk Street near the Spomenik Monument, and my mother ran the tobacconist’s shop which occupied the front of our premises. My sister Drina, a year older than me, was blonde and slim and tall, though with blobby features which gave her an air of whimsical babyishness; whereas my own hair was dark as walnut, my features were open, and I was broader of build but always somewhat shorter than Drina. She was a long clay pipe with a little bowl of a head; I was a burlier, briefer briar.

My childhood was interesting and happy. Both parents were at home all of the time and there were constant visitors to the shop, sometimes quite exalted ones. Shop and workshop provided fascinating hideouts.

In the workshop were tool-strewn benches for cutting, whittling, drilling, and polishing wood, for crafting silver lids to cap expensive long pipes; clay moulds and an oven; a deep cupboard where chunks of wood matured for up to two years. As kids, we sometimes took clays which had been rejected because of some trivial bobble or air-pit, and dipped them in soapy water to try to blow magical bubbles. Naturally we always failed, producing streams of quivering airy spheres which quickly popped.

Dad was purveyor of pipes by appointment to the palace; perhaps we weren’t such total commoners. His royal warrant looked grand, carved on the sign which hung outside, but this by no means implied constant consultations with the king. Dad had crafted his most recent bubble pipe masterpiece for His Majesty in the year of my birth. Equerries occasionally purchased ordinary smoking pipes, and flunkies frequently called to buy Mum’s special “royal cut mixture”; but that was a more mundane matter. Mum’s shop!–with its heady, nostril-teasing jars of shag and rum-shag, mellowleaf and ambershred; the plugs and pigtails laid out like knots of rope; the boxes of cheroots; the snuff of all scents from mint to strawberry. Dad’s pipes on display: racks and trays of clays and chibouks, briars and lulus. Boxes of lucifers illustrated with views of Bellogard, blooms from the botanic garden, fish of Lake Riboo.

Every year during our childhood we holidayed in the countryside at the village of Duvana, where the tobacco plantations were. Mum did not personally buy tobacco wholesale, but she liked to keep an eye on the quality of the crop and the standard of curing in the sheds. Duvana was close to the Shooma Forest and uplands; Dad would make excursions with the woodcutters to choose his branches for maturing in the cupboard back home and subsequent carving into pipe bowls and stems. The area around Duvana was a well-known beauty spot dominated by snow-tipped Mount Planina. The Vodopad Waterfall was half a day’s journey by horse and trap. Ruined Zamak Castle offered a stiff climb up from the base of the falls. We enjoyed our holidays.

Then there was Bellogard itself to explore: sprawling Piazza Market with its flower and fruit and vegetable stalls, the cool catacomb of the fish market underneath, slippery smelly stone steps leading down to the fish quay on the River Rehka, and behind Piazza the blood and sawdust arcades of the meat and offal shops. There was smart white Terga Square with its outdoor cafes and cake-icing buildings, the carved stone and plasterwork seeming piped from a master pastrycook’s tube–and the astrology observatory on Bresh Hill overlooking the botanic gardens…

Drina and I were forbidden to explore the Seveno district with its sprightly, disreputable bar-restaurants, “theatres”, casinos, dancing halls, and “house of ladies”. Since Drina usually tagged along with me and since I didn’t entirely trust her to keep a secret, on the whole Seveno remained for years as much outside my ken as the queen’s own palace. Take Drina through Seveno, even by day? She might be dragged inside one of those “houses of ladies” by a burly doorman for some unknown but embarrassing purpose.

A couple of incidents stand out from my boyhood, the second one marking its end.

The first event was an outing by my Gymnasium class to the Samostan, Bishop Slon’s town residence, with its wonderful topiary gardens where peacocks shrieked and stamped in circles, flaunting their blazoned tails, quills rattling like sticks on railings. Bishop Slon was Chairman of Governors of the Gymnasium.

All of us had visited the Samostan gardens numerous times; yes, and chased the big, stupid, glorious birds hoping to snatch a plume unobserved. On this occasion we were special guests of the bishop, who had arranged for a picnic of stuffed pancakes and lemonade on the main lawn.

There we all were, guzzling away of a bright, breezy afternoon under the benevolent gaze of the bishop. Swathed in white dalmatic and tunicle, with pearl-trimmed buckled shoes on his white-socked feet and a white biretta on his head, he sat enthroned in a high-back wicker chair with parasol attached. Our austere, dun-suited teacher, Master Samo, was chatting to him deferentially. Head-bobbing peacocks and hens pecked at crumbs which we flicked their way.

Slon was a tubby fellow. His cheeks were ripe apples, almost tomatoes. His hands, however, were big and bony. I remember noticing his hands because he began crackling his finger joints, producing crunchy little explosions which reminded me of a hound chewing over a marrow-bone, or far-off crepitations of thunder.

Presently Slon’s gaze unfocused, so that it seemed as if Master Samo was boring him considerably.

In view of what was to happen, might it have been more sensible and considerate if Slon had fled, skirts flapping, inside the residence while he still had time? Vulnerable children sat all around him.

Yet what were the lives of a score of striplings–most of whom might only have the hundredth part of a soul–if protecting them from harm distracted the bishop’s concentration from a far more important task?

And perhaps he did shield us.

Abruptly, to everyone’s astonishment, Slon leapt up, knocking his wicker throne over. He adopted the stance of someone holding a quarterstaff, or invisible crozier, with which to do combat. He stared up. So did we.

Amidst otherwise scudding billows of clean woolly cumulus, one tiny compact black cloud moved at an eerily slower pace. This cloud didn’t obey the wind at all. It swung gently from side to side like the bob of a pendulum, always coming closer. Soon it was overhead. Its shadow fell upon the lawn, drinking the sunlight. Momentarily the cloud seemed to be flying up and away, shrinking as it receded. But no. It was descending, compacting, growing denser as it sank.

Slon skipped diagonally through our midst, scattering boys like pins. He danced diagonally a different way, kicking a peacock. Sweat-dew flew from his cheeks. He shouted words which I didn’t understand but some of which–alas–I memorized.

“Opasnost po Zhivot!”

Lighting flashed from the coaly cloud which was only just overhead. Slon swung his pretend crozier this way, that way, as the dazzling blue bolt struck. Electric fire shattered and flew aslant across the lawn.

When my vision blinked clear, I saw Slon still standing erect. The stuff of the black cloud–no longer above us–had gathered tarrily on his hand. He jerked the evil material to the ground, where it bubblingly evaporated. Kneeling, he furiously wiped his skin clean on the grass, which withered into brown threads.

Peacocks were rushing around, tails erect, clattering with colour. Peacocks have such tiny heads that it took me several moments to realize that all the birds had been decapitated—their heads sliced off by the lightning.

The headless birds paraded madly for a couple more minutes, displaying passionately, thin pulses of blood squirting from their severed necks as they cavorted. Their claws raked the hands and cheeks of sprawled, stunned pupils until one by one the peacocks fell over and lay still.

The bishop had resumed his previous pose of alertness, though twice he massaged his wrist.

A young man in a sober black suit staggered out from between huge box-bushes clipped to the shape of spinning tops. Bloody saliva dribbled from the stranger’s mouth, beneath a trim black moustache. His suit jacket was torn. A limp hand held a dagger loosely.

The young man advanced waveringly. He raised his dagger. In a flurry of white, Slon dashed forward. Hoisting his skirts, he kicked the weapon from the stranger’s grasp. The young man moaned, sighed, sank to his knees. Slon placed a pearly shoe against the would-be assassin’s shoulder and toppled him on the turf.

By now our whole class was watching, agape. Absurdly, Master Samo was scurrying to pick up all the scattered heads of peacocks and hens. He loped to a flower-bed and pressed his gruesome collection down tidily, beak first, into the soil to hide them. Had it occurred to Samo that he might as easily have been collecting the severed heads of boys for delivery to their parents? Supposing that Slon had parried the lightning thus, rather than that way?

Slon laughed grimly. “You may plant ’em. Those corms won’t grow new birds.” He wiped a tear from his eye; or was that a bead of sweat?

Scrawny, respectable Master Samo shook his head in confusion. He blushed as if caught in some childish prank or act of lubricity. His body had been doing things of which he was hardly conscious. His undermind had been operating him.

The black-clad stranger lay twitching. Perhaps near death, perhaps already dead, his weak spasms those of a dissociating soul.

Samo jerked a questioning finger at the body, gestured at his flock of boys. How much was it advisable to say? Would the bishop be so kind?

Obliging, Slon spread his arms. “Beloved boys! Behold here a man from Chorny. A magical pawn. What do we have to fear from such feeble bumblers?” He scooped up the dagger and cautiously sniffed the point. “Well, even a bumbler has a sting! I detect poison as well as magic–which is why I used my shoe to disarm him. Do not fret about this disruption which mars your picnic. But do not neglect to reflect in one corner of your mind upon the basis of reality, namely the magical enmity which dark Chorny holds for our beautiful Bellogard.”

“Boys, be watchful,” Samo instructed. “Ever watchful.”

The bishop frowned. “No, that would be paranoid, and would spoil our town. I’ve no doubt that in Chorny everyone watches everyone else. They must, there where blackness reigns! Ours is a land of light and openness and pleasure. Let us fear no evil.”

He rubbed the hand which had been soiled by black ooze, and smiled approvingly. With a mischievous grin at us boys he stuck two fingers in his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle.

Flunkies came running. “Remove this creature. Convey him speedily to the queen’s dungeons. Summon chirurgeons to inspect him. Farewell, and bless you, boys.”

Obviously we gossiped amongst ourselves, and at home, about this incident. My classmate Alexander Mog (whose death I shall come to shortly) claimed that when Slon spoke of summoning chirurgeons he really meant torturers. Given the assailant’s moribund condition this seemed unlikely, a product of Mog’s unwholesome imagination.

A. Mog’s mind wasn’t entirely healthy. He was handsome and tall for his age, but he was also a bully with a cruel, nasty streak. He bred rabbits, confining them in tiny hutches. He liked to pick them up painfully by their long ears to show how they should be killed, by a chop on the neck. He especially enjoyed demonstrating this skill to girls, and pressured any classmate with a pretty sister to bring her round to his home for a visit. He boasted how he would hypnotize a girl, like a weasel fixing a bunny, then he could leap on her and bite her neck with kisses and play with her indecently. The rabbit which he killed before her eyes would do the trick. A girl’s slight, shy, yielding soul was like the soul of a rabbit. (Irrespective of the virtual certainty that A. Mog himself would only have a partial, microscopic soul!) Within six months of the magical assassination attempt A. Mog was leaning on me to persuade me to bring Drina his way; for what I perceived as a baby-face perched upon a willowy frame he viewed as someone vulnerably desirable.

But I anticipate.

To infill for a moment, we all talked about the magical skirmish, speculating in particular about the workings of the lightning which lopped off the heads of the bishop’s prized peacocks (a feature of the incident which strongly appealed to A. Mog!). I kept quiet regarding the exact words which Slon had shouted, and which I alone appeared to remember. (I was specially receptive to the magic language but I didn’t know that at the time.)

The official paper, Noveeny, carried a statement from the palace dismissing the attack as a trivial impertinence; and my parents and neighbours soon lost interest. Nothing was said about the fate of the attacker. Maybe he was already in Grobbny Cemetery or buried in a lime pit inside the palace grounds. The life of Bellogard, and my own boyhood, flowed on. The event seemed of no more ultimate account than a stone tossed into the Rehka. It made a splash then sank out of sight.

Now we shift forward almost a year. It had been a cold winter with much fluffy snow to toboggan on, long icicles spearing down from gutters, and small floes speeding along the swollen Rehka like families of dingy ducks.

The spring arrived, hot and sudden. All over town Jew’s-mallows, quinces, and magnolia trees burst into bloom: golden pompons, waxy cups of blood, milky goblets. A. Mog had begun browbeating me the previous autumn but winter cooled his ardour. A few idle threats to whip up a gang to bind me with rope on the way home and plaster me up as a snowman amounted to nothing.

Come spring, with its sudden heat and restlessness, its frustrated excitement and sweet fragrance in the air, and the doffing of heavy clothing, he resumed his onslaught. I must bring Drina to visit his rabbits–who were mating vigorously till the bucks lay flopped out, heaving and panting–or he would punish me.

Coincidentally–if this was a coincidence–A. Mog’s more amiable crony Boris Slad proposed a swimming expedition. Boris’s sister Dana attended the same academy as Drina. A dozen of us, plus any sisters, should visit the thermal baths.

These baths were at the south end of town beneath the looming Razval Rock which housed picturesque ruins of an ancient fortress, or perhaps a folly, the origin of which was something of a mystery. A fortress situated on that eminence would splendidly command the river; yet who would ever attack upstream? Anyway, an attack was a magical affair, not a jaunt by boat or barge.

Hot mineral water bubbled up from the deep guts of the rock. The outer, marble bath was a cold one fed by river water. The inner bath–carved into the limestone itself, though open to the elements–was hot, steamy, and sulphurous. Breezes ventilated the excess of rotten-egg vapour.

During the winter the baths were only used by the sort of stern old men who believe that an extreme contrast of hot and cold on their bare bodies–a simmering by mineral soup interspersed with icy plunges and soft flagellation by snowflakes–is salubrious.

Come the spring, the baths became much more popular as a way of steaming the winter out of one’s pores; not to mention accumulated dirt, if one was poor and had no home plumbing. Later, summer’s heat would render the inner bath intolerable; attendance would fall off; those spartan curmudgeons would come back into their own.

Boris declared as an added inducement that we were all invited to call at A. Mog’s afterwards for a wine and soda and a homemade rabbit pasty, since swimming always leaves such an enervating hole in the belly. Alexander Mog. . .