"I'll deep-probe the pair of them for you," Culluket said, "but it's obvious why they've come. Olone's father died in the Flood and the Craftsmaster's too tough to give in to her winsome wiles. Tonn can be a self-righteous ass and Oly is a sly chit, but I think we can count on their loyalty."
Aiken and Culluket descended to the receiving barracks, where the Tanu and gold-torc human newcomers had been segregated from the humbler arrivals. Congreve, a hulking gold wearing full blue coercer armor, smote his breastplate in salute and lost no time in presenting his telepathic appraisal:
Greetings Battlemaster and Exalted Lord Interrogator! Aside from Sullivan-Tonn and Lady Olone, the day's tot-up in the gold includes mostly minor powers. Those from Afaliah are respectable hybrid nobility who couldn't stomach the reactionary dictates of Lord Celadeyr. Eleven pure-blood Tanu from Calamosk are former fellow prisoners with Aluteyn in the Great Retort [classification].
Thanks Congreve. Suffering shit. Four traitors six wife-murderers and a tax-evader among our exotic jailbirds. But with so few Tanu survivors every one who's willing to follow me has to be made welcome. Cull ... you give 'em a good vetting. Especially the traitors!
That goes without saying Shining One. And I will also take pains with these twenty lesser human golds from Calamosk in like manner Retortfodder condemned for cowardice during the Combat. Now please give courteous attention to Tonn and his doxy who take their detention here with ill grace.
"All hail to you, conquering Battlemaster Aiken-Lugonn!" declaimed a portly individual attired in splendorous vestments of cerise and gold. But before Sullivan-Tonn could continue, there was a guttural shout:
"Aik! Aik—is it really you?"
From the motley group of gold-torc humans burst a scrawny man with tow-colored hair and flat, vaguely Mongoloid features. He wore a plaid flannel shirt, twill trousers, and heavy forester's boots with lug soles. Dropping to his knees before the diminutive usurper of Goriah, he mumbled, "I mean, Lord Lugonn. Sorry to bust in on this other guy's shtick, but—"
Thunderstruck, Aiken threw back the golden hood of his rain-suit. "Raimo! You ol' woodchopper, you!"
"If you want me, kid, I'm all yours. And I brought some pals, too."
"If I want you—" yelled the Shining One. The two fell into each other's arms, giggling like maniacs.
"Well!" Sulhvan-Tonn drew himself up in frosty hauteur.
The tender reunion was interrupted as Culluket's mind bespoke Aiken on the intimate mode:
Congreve prelimprobe finds thisRaimoHakkinen loaded hotdata urge you permit me fulldeep ream him immediately.
?! Forget it. Indignation. "Ray, baby—you mean they were gonna roast you? Just for going over the hill in the Combat?"
Listen ShiningOne thisone muchinfo PeaceFaction Dionket + MinanonnHeretic countertactic CeloAfaliah also—
Sullivan-Tonn brayed, "Lord Aiken-Lugonn, please let me continue!"
The thoughts of Aiken and the Interrogator crackled on the intimate mode:
Cull question sillyfartTonn not Raimo handsoff MINE.
I know Raimoyourfriend ShiningOne but he knows muchvalue even re Felice. Allow squeezeout—
You keep clawsoff Raimo FeliceobsessedsadistCullutortugator.
Raimo rumor Felice took SPEAR from bottonNewSea.
Christ!
Selfjustification. Thought that get yourattention. Well? You agree interrogation?
...Raimo know where Felice + Spear are?
Nodata. DeadpalRaimo saw Birdgirl flying Betics. LocalFirvulag bespoke pal re FelicehavingSpear. Must deepdig to get straights. You agree ream?
No!...Yes... shit! Later then. But when I say so and with My supervision reamout job and you fullrepair his brain after. You hear RedactiveBrother/GrandVizier/CullPrettyFace?
I hear and affirm your authority King. (But you/1 must find scatophilousalgolagniacbitchgoddess before she comesafter US why did I notkill her when I had chance?)
Scorn. Don't you know?
"Now!" Aiken exclaimed brightly out loud. The mental repartee with the Interrogator had lasted approximately ten seconds. Aiken thrust the continuing mental admonitions of Culluket aside and let the full wattage of his charm flow out upon Raimo, Sullivan-Tonn, the willowy Lady Olone (who had been watching Aiken intently ever since his arrival), and all of the other Tanu and human newcomers standing about the cheerless reception chamber. Emboldened, Sullivan-Tonn exclaimed:
"We've been treated outrageously by this military flunky of yours, Lord Lugonn. His men have presumed to examine our baggage—and a clumsy oaf dropped a priceless bottle of twenty-four-year-old Jameson's Reserve! I was barely able to rescue it in time with my PK."
"Shocking," said Aiken, frowning. He tipped a subliminal wink to the commandant. "Surely you know, Congreve, that an Exalted Personage of Lord Sullivan-Tonn's rank is exempt from such procedures. You are rebuked."
Congreve gave the chest-high salute. "I abase myself, Battlemaster. Such examinations have been a standard security precaution taken with all human persons seeking permanent residence in Goriah. Because of the bloodmetal peril, the ruling was enforced stringently under Lord Nodonn."
"Nodonn," Aiken noted, "is fish food. And I say that from now on, both human and Tanu arrivals will be given an equally cordial welcome. Remember that, or you'll answer to me."
Sullivan-Tonn simpered with pleasure. He drew the demure Olone forward and presented her to Aiken and the Interrogator. "Lady Olone of Calamosk, daughter of the late Lord Onedan Trumpeter, who is to become my bride at this year's Grand Loving."
A momentary flash of fire from the girl's mind was hastily curtained. She bowed gracefully. Grinning, the Shining One planted a lingering kiss in the palm of her hand. In a low voice, she asked, "Is it true, Lord Battlemaster, that you will be king?"
The black eyes sparkled. "As Tana wills, lovie!"
"With ... all the kingly prerogatives?" A smile stole over her coral lips. Sullivan-Tonn's face was immobile.
"The game," Aiken assured her, "goes with the name."
He strode over to the smirking Raimo, draped one arm over his old pal's shoulder, and called out: "Now, all you folks—be of good cheer! Aiken Drum is here! No more detention, no more searches, no more nasty interrogations. You're all coming along with me to my Castle of Glass, and we're going to have a party!"
7
OLD ISAK HENNING nagged and nagged and finally Huldah agreed to make the weary climb up to the promontory—even though she knew it was going to rain—and keep watch until midnight.
"We're the only ones left to give warning, girl!" Bony thumbs dug into her strong upper arms. Isak's filmed eyes rolled anxiously in the direction of the cave's inner chamber. "It's the most dangerous time of all! Full moon after the vernal equinox! The Hunt's bound to come. Every year it happens. Now you listen to me, girl! When you spot 'em flying over the lagoon from Aven, you light the signal fire. All Kersic is depending on you!"
"Yes, Grandpa."
"He might be calling to 'em! Even in his sleep!" The old man's voice was a malignant hiss.
"Yes, Grandpa."
Trembling, Isak scooped up glowing coals from the cooking fire into a ceramic beaker. He heaped on ashes to slow combustion. Huldah took the beaker and the thick torch of tallow-soaked reeds he had prepared.
"Now you know what to do with these!" he barked at her.
"What?" she asked.
"The signal, you damn stupid cow!" he exploded. "If you see the Flying Hunt, you use the hot coals to light the torch. Then use the torch to light the big pile of wood!"
Huldah smiled. "Light the torch. Light the wood. Yes, Grandpa."
The old man fairly screeched. "But only if you see the Hunt, dammit! Only if you see them coming at us from among the stars—all twisting and rising and falling like a knotted snake made of rainbow light!"
"All right." She stood staring down at him with an air of detachment. There was no physical beauty about her, only strength and health. Her lips and cheeks wer
e shiny from the butter-fat roast dormice they had had for supper. Her doeskin shift was still fairly clean. Her breasts, swelling now for a reason Isak could well guess, stretched the leather between their outthrust nipples.
"Well?" he roared. "Get going, you overgrown bitch!"
She remained standing in the cave antechamber. Her burdened hands hung slackly at her thighs. "You will not hurt the God while I'm gone, Grandpa."
Isak's glance shifted. "You just get going on up to the promontory. Do your duty and leave him to me." He was breathing rapidly. "The Flying Hunt could be on its way to Kersic right now!"
"You will not hurt the God."
Huldah set the pot of coals and the unlit torch down on the rock floor. Isak tried to dodge away but she was too fast for him, seizing his sticklike arms and pressing them against the sides of his rib cage as she lifted him up. He kicked and howled and spat rage at her, dangling in the air, held at arm's length by the titaness. Finally he burst into tears. She put him down with great solicitude, crouched beside him as he collapsed, and wiped his face with one corner of her slit skirt.
"You will not hurt my God from the Sea," she said, satisfied.
"No." He could not stop shuddering. The musky smell of her was overpowering.
"I'll go then," she said. "And if I see the Flying Hunt, I'll light your signal fire. Even though there are no other people left on Kersic to see."
"There are, there are," wailed the old man. He covered his face with his hands.
"No," Huldah told him. "They sailed away when the salty water rose. There's only you and me and the God now." She gave Isak a tender pat on his sun-freckled bald crown and picked up the firemaking things. "And the Flying Hunt won't ever come again. The water's too deep. It's deep enough to pour into the slot where the sun goes down, so the Hunters can't come through any more to get us."
"Damn crazy cow," Isak mumbled. "Go. Go. Keep a sharp watch."
"All right. It won't do any harm."
She left him still huddled in a heap and set off into the dusk. The sky was the color of a duck's egg over the water, deepest blue lashed with violet mare's tails above the spine of Kersic. A few stars, fuzzy, were coming out Huldah hummed tunelessly as she strode along. It was damp and chilly, but she didn't mind. And the God was well-covered with his rug of woven rabbitskin strips.
Her heart lifted with thinking of him. So beautiful, so joy-bringing even in the endless sleep! (His poor lost hand would soon be fixed when lazy Grandpa finished the last sanding and smoothing.) If she hurried back after the futile vigil there would still be time to worship him; and Grandpa would wake up and watch and groan.
"I hate you, Grandpa," she said.
Pushing through the high maquis, she came at length to the land's end where there was a cleared space among twisted umbrella pines, and a tall silver-gray pile of wood. Huldah put down the firepot and the torch and went to the sheer western tip of the promontory. She sat on the edge with her strong legs dangling and the rising wind tickling as it blew up her skirt.
Down there in that cove, in a place of sharp reefs that the waters now covered, she had found him. The wonder. The marvel. The joy. The God from the Sea. His eyes had never opened during the months she had nursed him; but she knew that they would some day, now that his terrible hurts were healed. He would awaken and love her.
"Then we will kill Grandpa," Huldah decided.
8
ON THE MAGHREB SHORE of Africa, black waves lapped at the base of the Rif Range and the old volcanic hills that had once anchored the southern end of a broken rubble dike. A thin drizzle had started.
Kuhal Earthshaker, Second Lord Psychokinetic, had camped in the most sheltered spot he could find, a steep-walled wadi carrying a trickle of water that vanished into beach shingle before ever reaching the New Sea. There were palms and blooming acacia trees, and a poignant cluster of pink narcissus nodding in deep shadows beside a little spring.
He had propped the Firvulag coracle up like a dome above a fairly dry niche. Fian rested beneath it. Kuhal had managed to light a fire with his feeble creativity, but the supper pickings were meager: a palm heart, a couple of baked bird's eggs with their embryos, some delicious but insubstantial acacia flowers fried in the last of the hamster fat. A snake of mouth-watering dimensions had got away. Kuhal knew better than to cook the abundant but poisonous narcissus bulbs.
Fian moaned. The drizzle was turning into sharp gusts of rain that tapped on the coracle skins.
The sleeping-robe that Kuhal had made from small animal pelts was now almost falling to pieces. Its sinew threads had rotted and most of the fur had fallen from the fragile leather. He had tried to mend it with fresh skins, but the older portions tended to tear away from the patches. He tucked the ragged thing as closely as he could about Fian, then went off to scout more wood for the fire. He found dead branches on a tree up the arroyo. Thorns ripped his hands as he broke them up and heaped them onto the smoking fire. He crept back under the coracle's shelter and took off his soaked and slimy poncho, draping it over a thwart to serve as a curtain and heat-trap. The antelope hide stank abominably.
Fian stirred, plucking at the bandages of dirty rose-gold fabric that covered his dreadful head wounds. Kuhal restrained his brother's hands and pressed them firmly back beneath the fur coverlet. They were clammy, the skin stretched tight over stark bones and tendons, pulse fluttering in the web of blood vessels.
dying...
No.
we die together...
No.
we die cold?...
NO!
socoldbloodslowsheartslows...
NO I/I WARM US!!
The conjoined mind struggled. One half was frantic to cut loose and make an end to months of suffering. The other, remorseless in love, commanded life.
The pain was coming mostly from the infected facial nerves. That and the damp cold. Having mustered up barely enough PK to boost his brother's impeded circulation, Kuhal now steeled himself to assume the pain again with his redactive faculty. His strength was almost inadequate to manage the shunt. This would be his tenth night in a row without sleep, the outer limit. They would have to lay up here tomorrow. Rest well, get warm and dry, find some substantial food. Fian's will to live had diminished almost to nullity.
Sleep, Fian.
yes
Sleep, dearbrother.
yes
Sleep, soulmirror.
yes
Sleep, gentleintuitor.
y e s
Sleep, lovedselfwounded
y e s
Sleep, Fianmindofmymind, sleep.
[slow-wave theta rhythm]
Sleep.
For most of the day, Fian had been delirious, and the mental tempests of the right hemisphere of the Brain assaulted the fatigue-drugged defenses of the left until Kuhal himself suffered a hallucination.
He had trudged along the eternal beach, towing Fian through the shallows in the derelict Firvulag coracle. Suddenly he had seemed to see a city in the mists far out on the water. It was as luminous as an earthbound sun—Muriah, reborn in splendor! Kuhal heard the Tanu women singing the Song, cheering arena crowds at the Spring Sport Meeting, glass trumpets sounding, and the clangor of jewel-bright swords beating on glass shields.
Bewitched, he dropped the coracle rope. Home! They were almost home! After months of creeping westward along the African shore, wretched castaways, half-crazed and starving, battered into metapsychic impotence, a miracle had happened.
Arms outstretched, Kuhal waded toward the vision, into deep water.
The more seriously injured brother, with greater intuitive power in his share of the Brain, recognized the phantom for the sham it was. Summoning up a pulse of coercive force, he had compelled Kuhal to return, to take the rope in hand.
"Now we will go to the Blessed Isle together," Fian had said.
But Kuhal's brainstorm had passed. Obstinately, he chose life for them. They came ashore.
"I am dying slowly," Fia
n had said. "Why not make an end to it?"
"You won't die. I won't let you. We're going to get back to the European mainland. Just as soon as the rains stop, the wind will shift to the south. I'll rig a sail for the coracle."
"It won't do us any good to cross to the other shore. The others are all dead in the Flood."
"We don't know that! Our farsensing power is too weakened to perceive beyond earshot—if that far."
"Kuhal! Mind of my mind. Death is all there is for us ... if we are to remain united."
Screaming, Kuhal had denied it. Death was unthinkable. Separation was unthinkable. "Trust me! You've always trusted me, followed me. We're one."
And the pain flowed forth, and hopelessness, and Fian said, "If you won't follow me, I may have to go alone."
"No!" At Kuhal's lowest conscious level the truth crept out: I am afraid...
Sitting in the rain-beaten shelter, Kuhal Earthshaker who had been Second Lord Psychokinetic to the great Nodonn held his sleeping twin tightly. The fire was hissing; soon the rain would put it out Fian's brainwaves were slow and peaceful. He felt no pain. But for the wakeful brother it was otherwise:
[slow theta]
[slow theta] FEAR [slow theta]
[slow theta]
9
IT WAS POURING and getting pretty dark by the time that the ronin Yoshimitsu Watanabe came to the twelfth troll-gate on the Redon Track.
"Rotten Firvulag extortionists," he grumbled.
He reined in and considered the matter with weary disgust. He'd lost so much time already, swimming flooded fords and detouring around washouts and landslides. If he reached Goriah at all tonight it would be in the wee hours, when hospitality was hard to come by, even if a traveler had money. And if he was broke...