2. The Table

The Chamber was magnificent, overadorned, overwhelming. The design came from a time far older than the sparse and severe simplicity of the Patricians.

The chandelier at the apex was shaped like a spiral galaxy and burned with atomic points of light, a symbol of the Stability’s eternity. The dome was paneled in dark brass and held up by statues of the gods.

Largest of all, and occupying the northeast quarter of the dome, was an onyx statue of Triumvirate, with his three heads, wearing many crowns. The first had the pointed chin, the long, slanted eyes, and long-lobed ears of a Hierophant; the second was an oddly angular and grinning face of what a male Fox Maiden would look like, were there any males of that race; and the third was a hirsute Hibernal with braided locks and beard that covered all but his eyes. In each of his eighty-one hands he held a knotwork of a different aspect or figure of cliometry notation, and all his lower hands held the lotus of enlightenment or the barbed arrow of Darwin, always pointing upward.

Facing him were the three Principalities of Man. Directly opposite Triumvirate loomed a statue hewn of deceptive blue apatite of Zauberring, in the conical cap, celestial mantle and charming wand of a warlock. To the southeast loomed a red coral statue of Toliman in his Phrygian cap with his bindlestaff, depicted as a silenus, a satyr with horse legs kicked up as if frozen in frantic dance. To the northwest, hewn of ivory and amber overlaid with black pearl and red coral, loomed solemn Consecrate, garbed in the white habit and red scapular and of a Sister of the Annunciation, with a black veil drawn close about her head and four crescent moons above.

An inner and lower ring upheld smaller statues of the six Powers: Twelve in his dark helm and in his hands shut with locks the grimoire of fate; Cerulean in his mortarboard and scholar’s hood; Immaculate in her blue veil and mantle of stars; Peacock like an empress garbed in her polychromatic robes; Vonrothbarth in his owl cloak and goggles; and old Neptune holding his conch of triumph aloft, breaking chains and fetters with his trident.

Lower still were smaller statuettes of the twenty-four Potentates, four to each side: Mars in red helm with lance and shield; Aesculapius leaning on his caduceus; Rossycross in the mail and surcoat of a crusader; Nocturne in black, crowned in stars; and December in white, money bag and abacus in hand; Odette and Odile, dark twin and bright, each in her feathered robes; Walpurgis in his goblin mask and gaberlunzie hat; and Cyan in blue, tonsured like a Mandarin, holding a grain sheaf. Eurotas and Perioecium were armed as Mars, their father world; Feast of Stephen was in a bishop’s miter, garbed in a cope of ermine-trimmed red. Eden was arrayed as a queen mother, dressed all in green, crowned in skulls and flowers. And ten others.

Torment was a slender maiden in a bridal gown of green and gold, adorned with a coronet of septfoil blossoms, but wore the hood of Jack Ketch. In her hands was a headman’s axe, and from her girdle hung pilliwinks and pear; a wheel was to one side of her, and to the other, a hoop of Skeffington’s gyves.

For the first time, in all his life, seeing her figure arrayed with all her sister worlds and brothers, Vigil wondered at her horrifying aspect and who had christened her.

In the center of this triple hexagon of godlike beings, the massive black metallic six-sided table squatted on its six thick legs. It was orichalchum, an alloy the same as that from which the strandworld of Zauberring was made, by legend, indestructible.

The floor was made of blocks of glass on top of which the furniture and figures in the chamber seemed to float.

Guest lamps by the silvery doors, which opened for the Lord Landing Party Senior and no man else, were blazing white, and the globes fanned their wings, the trees swayed, and the serpents of Hermetic heraldry hissed.

Vigil stepped forward, feeling every ounce of the weight of his father’s office.

3. The Anthem of the Strangers

All in the chamber save one man came to their feet. Figures at the table rose in greeting. Calm music swelled up from the silence in stately strains. It was the anthem of the Stranger.

A STRANGER came to the door at eve,

And he spoke the bridegroom fair.

He bore a green-white stick in his hand,

And, for all burden, care.

The Lords were standing near the Table, each in the livery of his post. Behind each Lord, Companions and Attendants stood rigidly, their cloaks all bright displays of color, their leggings gorgeous with signs and patterns of the families and clans from the Pilgrims.

Their chairs, called sieges, each held the shield or lozenge of their heraldry, and a small, white iron gavel hung nearby, an ornament whose meaning all but the most accomplished antiquarians had long ago forgotten.

At the corners of the table, between each of the Lords, stood or sat a Commensal, a nonvoting member, except that the siege between the Chronometrician and the Chrematist was empty. The shield on the back of the chair showed the emblem of a horned circle of olive leaves surmounting a cross.

Vigil saw that this was the siege of the Hermeticist, the Senior Officer of the Landing Party. His chair.

He asked with the eyes more than the lips

For a shelter for the night,

And he turned and looked at the road afar

Without a window light.

The First Speaker was garbed in golden robes of the Aedile, and he carried the ivory wand of his election. He was Eligius Eventide of the Eventide clan, a name which rang through history back through Feast of Stephen to Saint Mary’s World to Eden, back to the Twenty-Fourth Millennium, the time of the Bred Men, and his face and hands were coated with the pebbly scales of the Loricate race, but modern vanity had each tiny scale gilded with aurum, the living gold.

The anthem continued:

The bridegroom came forth into the porch

With, “Let us look at the sky,

And question what of the night to be,

Stranger, you and I.”

Opposite the Aedile stood the aged Lighthousekeeper with cloak of midnight blue and silver white, leaning on the candle douter which was his symbol of office. By the tradition of the ancient laws of Eden, the Lighthousekeeper and his two Companions, the Powerhouse Officer and the Uranographer, stood empty-handed, carrying no weapons.

The Lighthousekeeper’s speakership was the only one that passed by primogeniture and was older than the Pilgrim race on Torment. The man was an Itinerant. But he was no lumpy and ungainly Flocculent from Rime. Instead, his were the sleek features, the black brow-antennae and eerie black sclera of his necromancer ancestors of Schattenreich. The Lighthousekeeper had been adopted into a Pilgrim clan and was named Venerio Phosphoros.

This was the one who had turned the deceleration beam aside. No doubt the order had come from some higher officer, but an unlawful order should have been disobeyed. Here was the immediate culprit, no matter who the ultimate culprit might be.

Vigil stared at the man, and the Lighthousekeeper would not meet his eyes. It was as if the Lighthousekeeper could feel the pressure of Vigil’s thoughts, but an internal creature checked and confirmed that Vigil was not broadcasting.

Who, then, had given him the order? It had to be someone in the chamber. But when Vigil lifted his eyes they fell upon the Potentates, Principalities, and Powers, who also stood in the chamber.

The woodbine leaves littered the yard,

The woodbine berries were blue,

Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;