M. John Harrison - Viriconium 1 - The Pastel City

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The Pastel City

by M. John Harrison (1971)

Version 1.1

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Prologue

On the Empire of Viriconium

Some seventeen notable empires rose in the

Middle Period of Earth. These were the

Afternoon Cultures. All but one are unimportant

to this narrative, and there is little need to speak

of them save to say that none of them lasted for

less than a millennium, none for more than ten;

that each extracted such secrets and obtained such

comforts as its nature (and the nature of the

Universe) enabled it to find; and that each fell

back from the Universe in confusion, dwindled,

and died.

The last of them left its name written in the

stars, but no one who came later could read it.

More important, perhaps, it built enduringly

despite its failing strength — leaving certain

technologies that, for good or ill, retained their

properties of operation for well over a thousand

years. And more important still, it was the last of

the Afternoon Cultures, and was followed by

Evening, and by Viriconium.

For five hundred years or more after the final

collapse of the Middle Period, Viriconium (it had

not that name, yet) was a primitive huddle of

communities bounded by the sea in the West and

South, by the unexplored lands in the East, and

the Great Brown Waste of the North.

The wealth of its people lay entirely in

salvage. They possessed no science, but scavenged

the deserts of rust that had been originally the

industrial complexes of the last of the Afternoon

Cultures: and since the largest deposits of metal

and machinery and ancient weapons lay in the

Great Brown Waste, the Northern Tribes held

them. Their loose empire had twin hubs, Glenluce

and Drunmore, bleak sprawling townships where

intricate and beautiful machines of unknown

function were processed crudely into swords and

tribal chieftains fought drunkenly over possession

of the deadly baans unearthed from the desert.

They were fierce and jealous. Their rule of the

Southerners was unkind, and, eventually,

insupportable.

The destruction of this pre-Viriconium culture,

and the wresting of power from the Northmen

was accomplished by Borring-Na-Lecht, son of a

herdsman of the Monar Mountains, who gathered

the Southerners, stiffened their spines with his

rural but powerful rhetoric, and in a single week

gutted both Drunmore and Glenluce.

He was a hero. During his lifetime, he united

the tribes, drove the Northmen into the mountains

and tundra beyond Glenluce and built the

city-fortress of Duirinish on the edge of the

Metal-salt Marsh where rusts and chemicals

weather-washed from the Great Brown Waste

collected in bogs and poisonous fens and drained

into the sea. Thus, he closed the Low Leedale

against the remnants of the Northern regime,

protecting the growing Southern cities of

Soubridge and Lendalfoot.

But his greatest feat was the renovation of

Viriconium, hub of the last of the Afternoon

Cultures, and he took it for his capital — building

where necessary, opening the time-choked

thoroughfares, adding artifacts and works of art

from the rust deserts, until the city glowed almost

as it had done half a millennium before. From it,

the empire took its name. Borring was a hero.

No other hero came until Methven. During the

centuries after Borring's death, Viriconium

consolidated, grew plump and rich, concerned

itself with wealth, internal trade and minor

political hagglings. What had begun well, in fire

and blood and triumph, lost its spirit.

For four hundred years the empire sat still

while the Northmen licked their wounds and

nourished their resentments. A slow war of

attrition began, with the Southerners grown

spineless again, the Northmen schooled to

savagery by their harsh cold environment.

Viriconium revered stability and poetry and

wine-merchants: its wolf-cousins, only revenge.

But, after a century of slow encroachment, the

wolves met one who, if not of their kind,

understood their ways . . .

Methven Nian came to the throne of

Viriconium to find the supply of metals and Old

Machines declining. He saw that a Dark Age

approached; he wished to rule something more

than a scavenger's empire. He drew to him young

men who also saw this, and who respected the

threat from the North. For him, they struck and

struck again at the lands beyond Duirinish, and

became known as the Northkillers, the Order of

Methven, or, simply, the Methven.

There were many of them and many died. They

fought with ruthlessness and a cold competence.

They were chosen each for a special skill: thus,

Norvin Trinor for his strategies, Tomb the Dwarf

for his skill with mechanics and energy-weapons,

Labart Tane for his knowledge of Northern

folkways, Benedict Paucemanly for his

aeronautics, tegeus-Cromis because he was the

finest swordsman in the land.

For his span, Methven Nian halted the decay:

he taught the Northmen to fear him; he instituted

the beginnings of a science independent of the

Old Technologies; he conserved what remained of

that technology. He made one mistake, but that

one was grievous.

In an attempt to cement a passing alliance with

some of the Northern Tribes, he persuaded his

brother Methvel, whom he loved, to marry their

Queen, Balquhider. On the failure of the treaty

two years later, this wolf-woman left Methvel in

their chambers, drowning in his own blood, his

eyes plucked out with a costume-pin, and, taking

their daughter, Canna Moidart, fled. She schooled

the child to see its future as the crown of a

combined empire; to make pretense on Methven's

death to the throne of Viriconium.

Nurtured on the grievances of the North, the

Moidart aged before her time, and fanned in

secret sparks of discontent in both North and

South.

So it was that when Methven died — some

said partly of the lasting sorrow at Methvel's end

— there were two Queens to pretend to the

throne: Canna Moidart, and Methven's sole heir

Methvet, known in her youth as Jane. And the

knights of the Order of Methven, seeing a strong

empire that had little need of their violent

abilities, confused and saddened by the death of

their King, scattered.

Canna Moidart waited a decade before the

first twist of the knife . . .

Chapter One

tegeus Cromis, sometime soldier and

sophisticate of Viriconium, the Pastel City, who

now dwelt quite alone in a tower by the sea and

imagined himself a better poet than swordsman,

stood at early morning on the sand-dunes that lay

between his tall home and the grey line of the

surf. Like swift and tattered scraps of rag, black

gulls sped and fought over his downcast head. It

was a catastrophe that had driven him from his

tower, something that he had witnessed from its

topmost room during the night.

He smelled burning on the offshore wind. In

the distance, faintly, he could hear dull and heavy

explosions: and it was not the powerful sea that

shook the dunes beneath his feet.

Cromis was a tall man, thin and cadaverous.

He had slept little lately, and his green eyes were

tired in the dark sunken hollows above his high,

prominent cheekbones.

He wore a dark green velvet cloak, spun about

him like a cocoon against the wind; a tabard of

antique leather set with iridium studs over a white

kid shirt; tight mazarine velvet trousers and high,

soft boots of pale blue suede. Beneath the heavy

cloak, his slim and deceptively delicate hands

were curled into fists, weighted, as was the

custom of the time, with heavy rings of

nonprecious metals intagliated with involved

cyphers and sphenograms. The right fist rested on

the pommel of his plain long sword, which,

contrary to the fashion of the time, had no name.

Cromis, whose lips were thin and bloodless, was

more possessed by the essential qualities of things

than by their names; concerned with the reality of

Reality, rather than with the names men give it.

He worried more, for instance, about the

beauty of the city that had fallen during the night

than he did that it was Viriconium, the Pastel

City. He loved it more for its avenues paved in

pale blue and for its alleys that were not paved at

all than he did for what its citizens chose to call

it, which was often Viricon the Old and The Place

Where The Roads Meet.

He had found no rest in music, which he loved,

and now he found none on the pink sand.

For a while he walked the tideline, examining

the objects cast up by the sea: paying particular

attention to a smooth stone here, a translucent

spiny shell there; picking up a bottle the colour of

his cloak, throwing down a branch whitened and

peculiarly carved by the water. He watched the

black gulls, but their cries depressed him. He

listened to the cold wind in the rowan woods

around his tower, and he shivered. Over the

pounding of the high tide, he heard the dull

concussions of falling Viriconium. And even

when he stood in the surf, feeling its sharp acid

sting on his cheek, lost in its thunder, he imagined

it was possible to hear the riots in the pastel

streets, the warring factions, and voices crying for

Young Queen, Old Queen.

He settled his russet shovel hat more firmly;

crossed the dunes, his feet slipping in the

treacherous sand; and found the white stone path

through the rowans to his tower, which also had

no name: though it was called by some after the

stretch of seaboard on which it stood, that is,

Balmacara. Cromis knew where his heart and his

sword lay — but he had thought that all finished

with and he had looked forward to a comfortable

life by the sea.

When the first of the refugees arrived, he knew

who had won the city, or the shell of it that

remained: but the circumstances of his learning

gave him no pleasure.

It was before noon, and he had still not

decided what to do.

He sat in his highest room (a circular place,

small, the walls of which were lined with leather

and shelves of books: musical and scientific

objects, astrolabes and lutes, stood on its draped

stone tables; it was here that he worked at his

songs), playing softly an instrument that he had

got under strange circumstances some time ago, in

the east. Its strings were taut and harsh, and stung

his finger-ends; its tone was high and unpleasant

and melancholy; but that was his mood. He

played in a mode forgotten by all but himself and

certain desert musicians, and his thoughts were

not with the music.

From the curved window of the room he could

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摘要：

ThePastelCitybyM.JohnHarrison (1971)Version1.1Contents Prologue ChapterOne ChapterTwo ChapterThree ChapterFour ChapterFive ChapterSix ChapterSeven ChapterEight ChapterNine ChapterTen ChapterEleven ChapterTwelve Epilogue Prologue OntheEm...

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