When the bogle was gone, Sugoll indicated a sizable carved chest that stood in the shadows. "There is one more way I am able to assist you in your expedition. Open that, please."
Basil knelt. When the lid lifted, he cried, "Great Scott! Where did you get these?"
"The stun-guns were a gift from Sharn and Ayfa."
"Oh, shit," said Chief Burke.
"I can only presume they were a delicate hint. Sharn may already suspect that my loyalty to the Firvulag throne is less than wholehearted. And if there is war with Aiken Drum ... Well, it takes no grand strategist to note Nionel's position between Goriah and High Vrazel."
"If we're successful in procuring the aircraft," Basil said, "neither Aiken nor Sharn will dare harm you." He ran his weather-beaten hands over the weapons, mutely pointed out the recharging unit to Burke, then closed the lid. "These could be very useful to us. We thank you, Lord Sugoll. Even with our thirty technicians and experienced wilderness hands, it will be a dangerous trip—and it's questionable just how many of the flyers can be made operational. The Chief and our people at Hidden Springs will prepare a hiding place for at least two."
"How would they be useful in a war?" Sugoll asked. "You must forgive my ignorance, but flying machines would seem to be quite useless against ground forces such as the Firvulag would mount You no longer have the Spear of Lugonn, which was used against Finiah."
"True," said Burke. "But in their haste to get a single flyer airborne, Madame's party may have overlooked another set of potential weapons. This was pointed out to us by one of our new companions, a former spacecraft design engineer named Dmitrios Anastos."
Basil said, "You see, the ancient devices at the Ship's Grave are actually sophisticated gravomagnetic craft with planet-orbiter capability—quite similar to machines we had back in the Galactic Milieu. In our era, such orbiters were always equipped with tractor and pressor beams to assist in docking and midspace transfer when the rho-field was off. These force-beams were also used for meteor deflections. Sometimes, our ships even had small lasers for zapping away space debris. If our technicians can find similar systems on the ancient flyers, they might very possibly modify them for offense. If this isn't feasible—there's always the iron. And the hope of finding and raiding Sham's cache of twenty-second-century armaments."
The Howler Lord had been looking more and more puzzled. Now he threw up his hands in resignation. "Téah grant that the mere possession of flying machines by our friends will deter aggression!"
"Amen," said Basil. He added, drily, "Nevertheless, let's not count too heavily on divine intervention, shad we? Not with the Firvulag on one side of us, and Aiken Drum on the other."
***
"Look at those little beauties! Just look at them!"
Tony Wayland clutched Dougal's mailed arm and dragged him toward the front row of the exotic throng. The gnomes and ogres were good-humored enough about the shoving, although one fighting-drunk human in Firvulag costume threatened to upend his seidel of beer on Tony if he didn't mind his manners. "You're not the only eager one, cockie," the sudsbuster declared. "Simmer down, and you'd get plenty before this night's over."
It was nearly midnight The carousing and dancing of the married folk had come to an end and a great space around the maypole was cleared for the Dance of the Brides. The impromptu orchestra played a slow, demure melody and the maidens emerged in solemn procession. All of them wore gowns and headdresses of fantastic richness, with a color scheme of either red or green. The girls in scarlet were the most striking, with their gorgeous coats, tight jeweled cuffs, and tantalizing body suits with red boots. Perched on flowing locks of brown or dark red were tall starburst headpieces encrusted with rubies and some fiery gemstone resembling opal. The piquant faces beneath the towering constructions were enhanced by jeweled frames.
"Pocket Venuses, every one of them!" Tony rhapsodized.
The knight's expression was unreadable. "They're exotics. Kin to the soul-devouring Tanu."
Tony ignored that "And willing, just for tonight! God, Dougie—it's been so long!"
"Too long for all of us," growled the beer drinker. "Jesus, look at the jewels on 'em!"
"Jewels, hell," said another Lowlife feelingly. "I wouldn't care if they was wearin' gunny sacks. Real live women at last!"
"Inhuman women. Faerie women!" Dougal's voice rose.
Tony said, "Who gives a damn? Just on this one night in the year, they'll go with anybody! All you have to do is grab the flower-ring they hold out in the dance."
"I want me a red one!" somebody yelled. "A gal in little red boots!"
"Keep your breeks on, amigo! It won't be long now!"
The gnomish musicians struck up a more lively air and the damsels began to circle the maypole. The male exotics all bawled out a phrase in their own tongue and the girls responded. Back and forth the two sexes called, teasing each other, while the veils on the starry headdresses streamed behind the accelerating dancers in a blurred conflagration. Finally, after a great shout the circling girls extended their arms and rushed toward the central maypole with its braided ribbons and heaped flower garlands at the base.
The maidens vanished. In their place rose a myriad of small, rainbow-hued lights, like tropical fireflies. In some magical fashion, each ignis fatuus attached itself to the end of a gleaming ribbon, and the entire swarm resumed dancing at a more languid, sensual pace. The ribbons twined and untwined; the wispy lights soared and fell, undulated and whirled. The invitational song was almost a hum, lower-pitched and alluring. Swaying helplessly, the ensorceled males sang along.
Abruptly, the music changed again to the faster beat. The costumed maids were back on the yellow sand and each one had a wreath in her hands. They danced out to where the swains waited, and as the teasing phrases were exchanged, the pairing-off began. One man after another gripped the wreath of his chosen red or green sweetheart and let her draw him by it onto the dancing ground. It was all irresistible: the spinning colors, the intoxicating scent of the flowers, the music with its thumping sexual beat.
One of the diminutive beauties stood before Tony Wayland. Black eyes sparkled beneath the jeweled face-frame. The fragrant May wind blew aside red and gold draperies to show a delicate body, curved, enticing, and perfectly human in its contours.
"Come, come," sang the nymph.
"No, my Lord!" Dougal cried, trying to haul Tony back. The metallurgist shook free.
"Come, come!"
Tony clutched the wreath. She pulled him out among the other couples. The girls in red, he noted, had mosdy chosen Lowlife lovers. How fastidious of them, since they were by far the loveliest of the lot!
"Don't go!" Dougal pleaded. "You're bewitched."
He was indeed, and gladly. The darling exotic wench hung the hoop of flowers around his neck as they danced. She kissed the fingers of one hand, then pressed his lips. Tony's blood sang. The warning shout from Dougal was swallowed as the music became a sonorous paean of love triumphant Two by two, the couples circled the maypole.
On the side of the square nearest the city gate, the mob of spectators was suddenly cleft opening a clear path. Two huge bonfires sprang to life, their flames topping the seven-meter walls. The couples marched safely between the twin fires, through the gate, and into moon-drenched meadows. The music back inside Nionel floated to them on the warm breeze.
"I am Rowane," the nymph in red said. "I love you."
"I'm Tony, and I love you, too!"
Giddy from the insidious flowers hung round his neck, he let her draw him on until they were far away from the other couples. They came to a rustic bower formed of bushes and entered, and he lifted the starburst headdress and the face-frame away and bent to kiss her. They shed their clothes and made love—not once, but four times. She howled in ecstasy and he was devastated by bliss, and wept at the end of it and she comforted him.
"Now we'd sleep," she said. "My dearest Tonee."
He felt a silken cloth pressed over his eyes, wrappe
d around his head and softly tied. "Rowane? What are you doing?"
"Shhh. You must never see me when we sleep. It would be terribly bad luck. Promise that you'll never try." Her warm lips met his, and she kissed his eyelids through the silk.
"My little Mayflower. My exotic darling. If it'll make you happy..." He was sinking toward sweet unconsciousness. Her voice faded, and the memory of her exultant cries, but not his pride in his own manhood that she had so marvelously reaffirmed. "For your sake ... I won't look. Strange litde one..."
"It's not for my sake, dear Tonee. It's for yours."
She laughed fondly, and then he was asleep, and he had the most singular dream.
When he woke up and absent-mindedly tore off the blindfold, he discovered that the dream had come true.
"Oh, my God!" he croaked.
She opened her eye and was instantly her old self. Petite. Lovely. Putting on her clothes and lifting the withered remnants of the wreath from his neck.
"Rowane!" His voice was anguished. "What have they done to you? And to me?"
Her smile was pert and very wise. "The ordinary Firvulag are able to see through our guises. They never would choose the brides in red, you see. And you poor human males ... we know how few of your own women came through the time-gate, and those still mostly enslaved by the Tanu. What could be more right than this?" She reached up and kissed him passionately. He felt himself respond in spite of the knowledge. "Dear Lord Greg-Donnet says the first cross will produce a normal-appearing hybrid. After that, there can be genetic engineering to modify the mutant strain."
"The—first—cross?" He felt the world lurch. The meadow was full of golden flowers and rising larks.
"And our child will be immune to the blood metal, just as you humans are. Isn't that a nice bonus?"
"Uh," he said.
She was pulling him to his feet. "And now everyone's hurrying back to Nionel for the May Morning feast. We don't want to be late, do we!"
"No..."
"You'll love Mummy and Daddy," she added. "And you're going to love Nionel, too. Let's run!"
They went racing over the soft grass, hand in hand. Tony thought: What am I going to tell poor old Dougal? But then he saw other lovers converging on the city gates, and among them was a great ginger-bearded man wearing a surtout with a golden lion's head, being led along by another lovely little woman in red.
And Tony knew that his question was superfluous.
13
"WE'VE TRIED for the past three nights to blast the little gold devil while he was asleep and drawn zilch," Medor grumbled. "I don't see why tonight should be any different. He's using some kind of mechanical brain-shield. Pass the rabbit mousse."
King Sharn shoved a platter toward his first deputy, who scraped a great quivering wedge onto his plate and slurped it with gusto. "Tonight, Aiken won't sleep in the castle," the King explained. "He'll be out here in the Grove with everyone else, and using the gadget would cramp his style."
"How so?" inquired Mimee of Famorel, who was viceroy of the Helvetide Little People.
"Our ingenious hostess has scheduled another crazy innovation. Something called the Night of Secret Love. After the feast, we're all supposed to go to those robing tents on the other side of the amphitheatre and pick up a masquerade costume. No illusion making allowed. At midnight, a masked ball begins, followed by hanky-panky in the Trysting Grounds until dawn. Kind of a glorified bachelor party before all the weddings tomorrow. Except, being Tanu, the damn brides'll probably be off in the bushes rutting away with the rest of the Foe."
"Decadent bitches," growled Mimee. "And to think that our own folk are beginning the sacred Dance of the Brides almost at this very moment up in Nionel." He cast a wistful look at the high-riding full moon, whose light was drowned by the gemlamps that illuminated the feasting boards. The Firvulag had insisted on segregated dining facilities. They were willing to wolf down Tanu food, but disdained Tanu wines and high-proof brandies in favor of good old beer, mead, and cyser.
"You know what you're getting when you well a Firvulag bride." Medor heaved a maudlin sigh. "Virgins! Every last toothsome morsel! And faithful to you forever, once they finally open that adorable vagina dentata. If only my little Andamathe was here ... You brought your wife, Sharn. It was damned unfair of you to make the rest of us leave our mates behind! Spoils the whole Loving! Pass the sweetbreads grand due."
"I'm the Queen," Ayfa said. "I had to come. And the rest of you are supposed to keep your wits about you. This is a mission into the Foe's territory—deadly serious business. You can exercise your damn gonads on your own time."
"So we're to try for Aiken Drum again tonight, then," said young Fafnor Ice-Jaws. "I presume that we put on costumes and mingle."
"Not too enthusiastically," warned the Queen, her dark eyes twinkling. "The Tanu ladies have no teeth where it counts, but rumor has it that when they've finished with a man, his filberts are nothing but rattling husks. Don't be tempted, lad."
"The Goddess forbid!" said the young ogre, all in a huff.
"We must track Aiken wherever he goes and make our strike right at the magic moment," Sharn said. "Ad twelve of us."
"He'll be after that young coercer wench, Olone," Medor said shrewdly. "Her shameless flaunting of herself before the King of the May is the talk of all the Tanu gossips. Pass the ortolans en brochette."
The King seized the silver dish and slammed it down out of Medor's reach. "Dammit—will you think of something besides food? No wonder we haven't been able to work up a decent mind-meld! All the blood deserted our brains for our digestive tracts from the moment we set foot in Goriah!"
"Medor's in need of distraction." Old Betularn had a wicked smirk. "And not just because his wife's in Nionel. Guess who we saw at a special table off in a quiet corner of the feast-garden, dining on invalid's slop with his blood-brother, the Interrogator? None other than Medor's Grand Combat antagonist, Kuhal Earthshaker! The one we thought was surely dead."
"Té's toenails!" exclaimed the King. "That's bad news. Kuhal tied you in the Heroic Encounters, Medor, and his PK talent is—"
"Nil," the ogrish champion said, grinning around a half-masticated songbird. "His twin, Fian, died and Kuhal is a basket case. He still spends most of the day in Skin. I guess Aiken forced the Afaliah contingent to tote him up here to participate in the rump coronation on the third day of the Loving. Kuhal is a High Tabler, you know. But about as much threat to us as a newborn dik-dik. Pass the poached marrow and the salmon mayonnaise."
Mimee of Famorel made a face. "Your liver will take a month to recuperate."
"So what?" Medor said. "The war's not scheduled to start until fall."
"Silence!" hissed Sharn. His demonic aspect came upon him, the guise of a three-meter albino scorpion with glowing internal organs. His mind dealt a savage correction to the imprudent Medor, who tumbled from his seat onto the grass, pained and shocked and splattered with mayonnaise. Sham's body returned to normal. He regarded the Gnomish Council with a bleak expression. "No one knows the day the Nightfall War begins. Not I. Not you. You will never speak of it among yourselves. Never think of it! Do you understand?"
"Yes, High King," said the others. Over by the table of the King and Queen of May, a kind of fireworks display of fountaining Roman-candle lights had started. It signaled the end of the Moonlight Feast and the imminent beginning of the Night of Secret Love.
"Now get your fancy-dress outfits and sober up," said Sharn. "Ayfa and I will meet you at the base of the maypole in an hour."
***
"You look ... ridiculous," said Kuhal. "But in character."
Culluket shrugged. "I judged it a droll choice of disguise."
His expression behind the death's-head mask was perfectly clear to his brother. In light of the idiotic charade taking place out on the dancing ground, Cull's mocking smile was understandable; but excitement?
"You do surprise me, Interrogator. I had thought you web beyond the simpler styles of co
ncupiscence."
"Even so. But tonight is a special occasion."
Death folded his black-clad arms with their painted bones and surveyed the scene. The bab music was becoming more frenzied in its eroticism and the dancers more madcap and abandoned. The young, who scarcely needed the artificial stimulus anyway, were already pairing off and slipping away through the trees in the direction of the Trysting Grounds. Even those traditional Tanu who had entered reluctantly into the masquerade seemed about to surrender to the Dionysian atmosphere. Surely that capering wanton disguised as a purple moth was none other than the venerable Morna-Ia. And the stout, cloaked figure sporting a panther's head, shamelessly cavorting with a willowy charmer on each arm, bore a suspicious likeness to the Crafts master. Aiken Drum was out in the middle of things, of course, dressed inevitably in the particolored outfit of a medieval jester. He wore a mask with an obscenely long nose, which seemed to have a libido ab its own.
"And on the day after tomorrow," Kuhal observed, "we will acclaim him King! Goddess forgive us. And you have been among his chief supporters, Redactive Brother. You, an elder of the Host! I have the excuse of brainwreck, at least. But you, for ab your quirks of temperament, are a paragon of glacial rationality. Yet you calmly accept this human mountebank—even serve him! It was web known that you and Nodonn were estranged; but that you should pledge fealty to a Lowlife ... it negates ad that the Host of Nontusvel stood for."
Death laughed. "Who remains of our vaunted Host? Fifteen meager-powered brothers and sisters under Celo's protection, most of whom survived because they were wounded in the Combat and shipped off to Redactor House to get them out of the way. I myself. And you."
Kuhal turned away. His gaunt features tightened. An unbidden image rose in his memory, easily perceptible to the Interrogator. "And me. Half a mind. Half a man. Widowed and crippled in the same bereavement. Deprived of a love no singleton could ever understand!" The vehemence of his bitterness made him falter, grown suddenly gray-faced. Culluket took his brother by the arm and led him back to his cushioned seat near the clipped hedge, beyond the sight of the revelers. Kuhal sank down, accepted a small tumbler with some medicinal tisane, and sipped at it until the strong herbs took effect. He ventured a wan smile. "I almost envy your poor sweethearts their embrace with Death, Brother! Be sure to choose young ones, if you can lure them away from that priapic jackanapes. The young are less likely to know the melancholy history of your nine wives and thirty luckless mistresses."