The Karasor Read online

  Philip Hamm was born in 1965 in Suffolk, England. He went to school in the small town of Framlingham before going to the University of Keele to study English and History for his BA degree and then wrote a thesis on the last works of H.G. Wells for his MA. He has been a teacher and a college lecturer.

  By the author:

  Platinum Mind series

  Frim Folderol’s Short History of the Hundred Year War

  Quagga

  The Karasor

  Barnooli’s Circus

  The Karasor

  Philip Hamm

  All rights reserved © Philip Hamm 2017

  For maps and cross-sections of the Kyzyl Kum and other ships, go to:

  http://philipmhamm.wix.com/philip-hamm

  Chapters

  1 – Narikin Karasor

  2 – Kuchī Island

  3 – Kyzylagash

  4 – Kara Kum

  5 – Amah

  6 – Subarsi’s logbooks

  7 – Letters from Kimidori

  8 – Shōgun Karasor

  9 – Kyzyl Mazhalyk

  10 – Clundleby

  11 – Jamadar

  12 – Kyzyl Kum

  13 – Tenrec

  14 – Journey to Sarillon

  15 - The crew of the Kyzyl Kum

  16 – Scarp Rock

  17 – Gory Kamen

  18 – The phantom ship

  19 – Larret

  20 – Khorasan

  21 – Takla Makan

  Afterword

  1 – Narikin Karasor

  The fisherman threw his line over the side and sat down in his boat. The arc of the rings of Pentī Prime glittered above Sukoshi Island. The mists of the dawn began to evaporate. Narikin took the picture.

  The new lens was a big improvement. The details were much sharper and he could zoom in on the boat and the fisherman. He couldn’t wait to develop the film and show the results to his friend, Chikutei the gardener, who was raking leaves from the path nearby.

  But as he wound the film forward, the Shōgun’s barge appeared in the sky over Sukoshi Island and a gong rang in the palace on the hill behind him.

  He sighed and unscrewed the new lens from body of the camera. Developing the photographs would have to wait for another day.

  “Your father is early,” said Chikutei, dropping his rake and coming to Narikin to help him with his equipment.

  “He is,” said Narikin, laying the lens beside the others in the wooden box. He shut the lid and locked it carefully. “I thought he would be another day at the very least.”

  “Perhaps he has good news,” the gardener replied.

  Unlikely, he thought. He unclipped the camera from the tripod. Usually, his father was as predictable as the phases of the moons; only a catastrophe on a celestial scale could break his routine. And the only emergency he could think of was the conflict between his clan, the Karasor, and clan Taira, their rivals for control of the empire.

  Chikutei lifted the tripod onto his shoulder, picked up the box with the lenses and followed his master down the path to the workshop in the former potting shed.

  Narikin’s dog, Tosa, a great lump of an animal, drooled quietly on the wooden deck by the miniature trees. He raised his head once as Narikin stepped over him and then went back to sleep.

  Inside his workshop, Narikin put the camera on the table next to his enlarger and developing trays. Chikutei placed the tripod next to the door and passed him the box of lenses. “Will you make your pictures tonight?” he asked.

  “I expect Father will want me to sit with him during dinner.”

  Chikutei bowed, “A great honour.”

  “He won’t actually speak to me unless I’ve offended him again.”

  The gardener was silent. It wasn’t his place to comment on the relationship, such as it was, between the great Shōgun Karasor and his first-born, the Prince. But Narikin often confided in him.

  He knew the Shōgun was disappointed his son wasn’t built like a great warrior, that he considered him weak and feeble-minded, and thought his heir incapable of replacing him. Narikin had described the embarrassing silences and the awkward conversations, coloured by disappointment and regret that he wasn’t like the other children - that he wasn’t strong or impressive to look at. Even in his formal robes, Narikin often went unnoticed in the court.

  But at least he had his workshop to escape to. He had filled it with everything that interested him, from books to paints to writing materials. He had hung his model of the constellation of Evigone from the ceiling; the three concentric spheres held together by straws and string. He knew the names of all three hundred and seventy systems. His shelves were full of artefacts from other civilisations, empires and cultures. He had painted the poems by the Lords of the First Sphere on the beams. His camera had been made by the Clun machines in the Second. The heavy drapes across the single window had been woven in the Third.

  He had books and scrolls written by scholars from a dozen different worlds, in ultra-alien, quasi-alien and even human and quasi-human languages. He had maps in a box near his sink that covered almost every quarter of Evigone. But he had never left Pentī Prime, except to visit one of its satellites. The Second Sphere system, one of just twenty-six compared to the three-hundred and thirty-eight in the Third, was all the constellation he would ever see, especially if he became Shōgun of the Karasor clan.

  He put his camera equipment where it belonged, on the shelves among the glass bottles of fixers and developers, the light-proof boxes of photographic paper and the tubs containing the precious rolls of film. He looked at the enlarger wistfully and wished he could get to work on his latest pictures, developing them and pegging them up on the line that stretched across the hut.

  The smell of the chemicals had led to him being thrown out of the palace and relegated to the distant shed, was as familiar to him as the scents of the pine and fruit trees on the island. While he loved pruning his miniature trees, his calligraphy, his history books, it was the camera that had finally set him free.

  Except he would never be truly free. He turned towards the gardener and said, “I suppose I’d better get back to the palace and prepare.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Chikutei bowed. “And I suppose I’d better finish raking the path.”

  Narikin gave him a nod and the gardener went back to his work. He wished his life was as simple.

  Narikin shut the door behind them and prodded the dog with his foot. “Come on, Tosa,” he said. “Let’s go and see what my father wants me to do today.”

  Reluctantly, the dog got to his feet and plodded after his master. They climbed up the winding path, under the pink umbrellas of the blossom trees, to the terraces at the foot of the palace. Narikin looked up at the tiers of floors, topped by tiled roofs and the green flags with the silver star-burst of his clan. His father’s barge passed over-head, pennants flying, and disappeared behind the building.

  Narikin, puffing slightly, climbed the stairs to the main balcony and followed it around the corner to his suite of rooms. He wondered if he had time to take a bath. But the sliding doors were open and his dresser was waiting for him with his formal robes.

  Narikin changed and then sat and waited in a chair by the door. Perhaps his father wouldn’t want to see him today. Perhaps he could read a book instead. He looked towards the shelf against the wall, between the lacquered cabinet that held his collection of Xramarian glass and the big vase with the Kilia-dragon on the side. There was a volume of stories written by the humans of the Tundra empire he could start translating. Or he could read another chapter from the Pinax Encyclopaedia...

  The house-steward, Kunaichō, came into the room and bowed, “Your father wishes to see you, Prince Narikin.”

  Tosa growled at him
and the steward looked worried. In every other respect, the dog was lazy and useless, but he did seem to enjoy frightening the servants.

  Narikin sighed and stood up, “Stay, Tosa. No chewing on Kunaichō today.”

  The steward bowed and looked grateful.

  Narikin followed him out of the door. At least he hadn’t been waiting too long, he thought. On the other hand, to demand to see his son so soon could only mean he had a task for him – something unpleasant, no doubt.

  They walked down the corridor between the suites of rooms where he could hear his seven sisters giggling, through the formal reception halls with their low tables and deep cushions, across a courtyard with its carefully raked gravel and strategically placed rocks, passed the spear-carrying guards in their heavy armour, crossed the dry moat by the bridge and entered the great west tower. The steward led the way up the wide stairs and stopped outside the Shōgun’s study. He slid the door open and stepped out of the way.

  Narikin went inside and knelt down on the silk cushion in front of his father’s desk. His father was writing and he knew better than to interrupt him. The window was open and the sound of the sea-birds drifted through. The room was full of interesting things that Narikin wasn’t supposed to look at. On the wall behind the desk were the swords and knives of the clan, in their lacquer scabbards with tassels and ribbons hanging down. On his right, Narikin could see the books on the shelves out of the corner of his eye; a wonderful collection gathered over centuries and containing more wisdom than he could ever hope to achieve. Then there was the desk itself: a beautiful piece of wood given to the Shōgun by the ultra-alien tree-folk of Foronesta. Carved and polished, reflecting his father’s golden inkwell and the stand for his pens and brushes, it was a beautiful object. But to possess the desk would mean becoming the leader of the clan and Narikin didn’t want that, not ever, not even for a second.

  He looked at the top of his father’s head, at the grey hairs clipped short around the sides and the bald top. He had a small moustache that did nothing to ease the severity of his expression whenever he chose to look at his son. His eyes were a light purple and could stare unblinking for minutes at a time. His body was thin like Narikin’s but with an underlying strength he didn’t possess. He still did a thousand press-ups and spent an hour with Captain Haku practicing with a katana every morning. He took cold showers and ate nothing but a handful of rice and a piece of fish every day. In the evenings, he meditated and then spent the nights working, keeping abreast of the clan and the affairs of the empire with just an hour of sleep to keep him going.

  After several minutes, Shōgun Karasor, without looking up, said, “I wish you to go to the Takla Makan. You will sit in my place and say nothing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father,” Narikin replied, bowing his head.

  He waited another few seconds but his father carried on writing, the pen scratching across the paper without pause. The meeting was over.

  As quietly as he could, Narikin got to his feet and left the study. Outside, he breathed a sigh and returned to his rooms alone. Even though a trip to the parliament ship was preferable to his father’s company, he knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. If his father didn’t want to attend, it meant he didn’t want to answer their questions and that meant there would be an awkward scene as the other clans objected. Narikin knew he was being used again and even though it was his duty to do what his father wanted, he wished he had been asked rather than told.

  His dresser already had his super-formal robes ready. Narikin hated them, especially the veil that hung from a pole like a curtain on a rail. But he changed obediently and shuffled across the palace to the yard where the barge was waiting. He climbed up the ramp and took his father’s seat in the centre, under the canopy.

  Karasor guards stood on either side. Behind him, on a higher platform, the pilot raised the Exarch shield and they floated up, above the palace, and began the short journey to the Takla Makan.

  The parliament ship was the oldest vessel on Pentī Prime. It had floated half a mile above the oceans, pushed hither and thither by the wind, for almost three thousand years. The veil meant he couldn’t see very much but he’d seen its multiple decks in pictures and he could see the blurred outline of its hull as they approached. At the stern, the parliament hall had heard every argument and dispute since the empire began. And now it was going to listen to another and his presence, rather than his father’s, would be the chief cause of much of the anger.

  The barge drew up alongside and the guards rolled out the gangplank. Narikin tried not think of the storm ahead as he was escorted across the main deck, between the rows of masts, and up the stairs to the entrance.

  He tried to focus on his un-developed film and the fun he would have with the negatives, the enlarger and the chemical baths. He didn’t want to go through the doors.

  He wasn’t the first to take his seat in the circle in the centre of the floor. Vaguely, he could see the lords of the Ishan and Qomal clans were there already – typical of engineers and scientists, he thought. The Shōgun of Taira would be late. No doubt he had held his barge back to see if clan Karasor had sent the father or the son and no doubt he was busy thinking of an angry riposte now he knew it was the latter.

  Narikin sat down waited patiently. He heard the doors open and close and saw the shape of Shōgun Taira cross the floor, pause for a moment and then take his seat. Then the doors at the other end of the hall opened as Emperor Mizuiro from the Kolan clan came to take the throne and complete the circle.

  Prayers were said and bells tinkled in the background as the priests from clan Qomal hoped for the blessings of the Lords and the health of the Pentī people. The smell of incense was unbearably strong.

  Then the room was cleared of everybody except the clan leaders. Narikin heard the priests, the censer holders and the bell-ringers shuffle out and close the door. He wished he could have followed them.

  “Shōgun Taira,” said the emperor quietly, “You wish to make a statement…”

  Narikin saw the shape of the Shōgun leave his chair and kneel down on a cushion before the throne. “Majesty,” he began. “You know the reason we are gathered here today. You know a decision has to be made on the future of our empire in the Third Sphere - we have discussed it many times and you are aware of my thoughts. Today, we were going to come to a vote. Today, the matter was to be settled, once and for all. And yet, sir, Shōgun Karasor sends his weakling son in his place.”

  “Be careful, Shōgun Taira,” said the emperor. “He may not have a voice but he has ears to hear.”

  “Then let him hear my disapproval…”

  “I am sure he is well-aware of his position. I will speak with him.”

  “Sir, if he would express an opinion, we might at least know his mind…”

  There was an awkward silence and Narikin knew they were all looking towards him. It was the one saving-grace of the veil that he couldn’t see their expressions.

  “I will speak with him,” the emperor repeated.

  Shōgun Taira bowed. Instead of returning to his chair, he blessed the emperor, the empire, the Pentī people and left. The lords of Ishan and Qomal followed him.

  Narikin was alone with the emperor. He heard him sigh and there was a rustle of silk.

  “Come before me…”

  He did as he was told, left his chair and knelt before him. He could feel his palms growing sweaty and hoped he wasn’t leaving prints on the floor as he bowed.

  “Take your veil off,” said the emperor.

  “Your Majesty…?”

  “I want to see your face.”

  “But…”

  “There’s nobody here, Narikin. The traditions of our people won’t collapse over-night if we take off our veils just this once.”

  Reluctantly, Narikin undid the straps and removed the screen between him and his lord. He had no idea what to expect; the emperor’s voice sounded neither young nor old and it was impossible to tell how tall or short he
was from an out-line seen through silk. There were no pictures of him. It was another old tradition, dating from the days of chaos, that the throne was the icon, not the person sitting on it. So Narikin was surprised to find a youthful face smiling back at him, hands folded in his lap.

  “I think our traditions will be our undoing,” the emperor continued. “But you mustn’t tell anyone else that.”

  Narikin was also surprised to see how small the room was; his father’s banquet hall was bigger. He couldn’t resist taking a quick look around, at the gold-leaf on the walls and the red-painted pillars covered in lines of poetry. The floor was dustier than he expected and the cushion he was kneeling on looked as though it needed seeing to with a needle and thread.

  “Disappointing, isn’t it? When I first took the throne, I thought this was the anteroom and the doors behind me led somewhere bigger. But this is all there is,” he put his hands on the wooden arms of the chair. Despite being called the throne, it was no different from the other four chairs standing around the silver star-burst painted on the floor.

  “Our words and actions define us,” Narikin muttered, “Not ornaments to ego.”

  “You’ve read the works of Gel’Rathian…?”

  “I like his poetry but his philosophy is rather abstract.”

  “The thoughts of gods usually are - but I didn’t ask you to stay behind to talk about poetry or philosophy; like Shōgun Taira, I want to know your opinion on the matter of the Third Sphere.”

  “I have never left our system, sir; any opinion I express would be poorly informed and not worthy of repeating.”

  “And yet your half-brothers rule colonies there – have you not spoken to them?”

  “They speak with my father, sir, but not to me.”

  “Never…?”

  “I have heard them talk about their estates and life on the worlds they govern but they don’t share their political or economic news with me. Of course, I have read what the dispatches say and I have read books about the empires beyond the Equatorial Sea – but my knowledge is limited.”