Valentine Pontifex by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780061054860
Publisher: ROC
Published: 1983-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Book of the Broken Sky

1

MILLILAIN WOULD ALWAYS remember the day when the first of the new Coronals proclaimed himself, because that was the day she paid five crowns for a couple of grilled sausages.

She was on her way at noon to meet her husband Kristofon at his shop on the esplanade by Khyntor Bridge. It was the beginning of the third month of the Shortage. That was what everyone in Khyntor called it, the Shortage, but inwardly Mililain had had a more realistic name for it: the famine. No one was starving—yet—but no one was getting enough to eat, either, and the situation seemed to be worsening daily. The night before last, she and Kristofon had eaten nothing but some porridge he had made out of dried calimbots and a bit of ghumba root.

Tonight’s dinner would be stajja pudding. And tomorrow—who knew? Kristofon was talking of going hunting for small animals, mistunes, droles, things of that sort, in Prestimion Park. Filet of mintun? Roast breast of drole? Millilain shuddered.

Lizard stew would be next, probably. With boiled cabbage-tree leaves on the side.

She came down Ossier Boulevard to the place where it turned into Zimr Way, which led to the bridge esplanade. And just as she passed the Proctorate office the unmistakable and irresistible aroma of grilled sausages came to her.

I’m hallucinating, she thought. Or dreaming, maybe.

Once there had been dozens of sausage peddlers along the esplanade. But not for weeks, now, had Millilain seen one. Meat was hard to come by these days: something about cattle starving in the western ranching country for lack of forage, and livestock shipments from Suvrael, where things still seemed to be all right, being disrupted by the seadragon herds that were thronging the maritime lanes.

But the smell of those sausages was very authentic. Millilain stared in all directions, seeking its source.

Yes! There!

No hallucination. No dream. Incredibly, astoundingly, a sausage peddler had emerged onto the esplanade, a little stoop-shouldered Liiman with a dented old cart in which long red sausages hung skewered over a charcoal fire. He was standing there just as if everything in the world were exactly as it had always been. As if there were no Shortage. As if the food shops had not gone on a three-hour-a-day schedule, because that was usually how long it took them to sell out everything they had in stock.

Millilain began to run.

Others were running too. From all sides of the esplanade they converged on the sausage peddler as though he were giving away ten-royal pieces. But in fact what he had to offer was far more precious than any shiny silver coin could be.

She ran as she had never run before, elbows flailing, knees coming up high, hair streaming out behind her. At least a hundred people were heading toward the Liiman and his cart. He couldn’t possibly have enough sausages for everyone. But Millilain was closer than anyone else: she had seen the vendor first, she was running the hardest. A long-legged1 Hjort woman

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