The King's Last Song by Geoff Ryman

Author:Geoff Ryman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Small Beer Press

April 1160

Jayavarman passed into the City and fear brushed him like feathers.

Once again an elephant jostled him up the main road into Yashodharapura. He remembered being a captive child all those years ago.

Once again he passed the great, foreboding temples. He saw the stalls, tasted the tang of smoke, and heard the babble of merchants. All of it dragged down his heart, and made him feel small and threatened.

Jayavarman told his memories: hush, child. Be still, little one. Little frightened prisoner, you are here no longer. You are now a strong warrior, tall and arrayed with arms and elephants and sons to defend you. Your kingdom is famous for its peace and prosperity. The King has called you because he needs you and your cheerful, robust armies. He cannot, dare not, hold you against your will.

You ride, son of Dharan Indravarman, on the back of an elephant, and even the elephant wears embroidered cloth. A servant crouches on the elephant's back to hold aloft a parasol, and another marches behind bearing your pendants and signs of office. Your troops march in front and behind.

Your Crown Prince, Suryakumara, rides beside you, and he is fierce and strong, and does not look on the City with fear. Little Cap-Pi-Hau, your son is already twice the age you were when you first arrived, friendless and one of many other captives. Your son comes in state alongside his father with a cadre of soldiers.

But, oh! the faces in the streets.

I don't see any of the old faces. Time has wiped all the old faces away, like the breath that mists a mirror.

Different people, replacement people. They still gawk at the higher categories. Their cheeks are sunken; their mouths are full of broken teeth, and the muscles around their mouths swell out. The flesh around their eyes is dark as if they have not slept; and they stare, baffled.

They remind me of wild dogs that no one wants. These are not men who share the air, rice, and water of a home. They have come to the City for advantage and find thievery and prostitution and the kind of poverty that eats the soul from the stomach up. They smell of sour fruit rinds and baked mud. A cat that lives wild has no fleas, but a cat that stews all day with other cats amid the rinds is full of fleas and worms.

Something is brewing in those replacement faces. It has been brewing for some time, for it is worse in these new faces than it was in the old. It is bafflement curdling into rage.

The caravan turned and even Jayavarman had to gape in amazement. There, finished finally, the Vishnuloka—Vishnu's World—thrust its way towards heaven like five mailed fists. Clad in bronze, its five towers were topped with high masts bearing flags. From their lotus-flower petals hung long banners, black and red but mostly gold. The sacred mountain of Suryavarman the Great was as big and yellow as the rising sun.

"That's it, Son, that is where your uncle-king rests, joined now with his god.

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