“Aiken simply picked up the pieces after catastrophe. He’s king of the ruins! A demigod in Götterdämmerung.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. I see him chock-full of nuts and eager to howl. And a first-class power, babe—don’t forget that. Your father may just have a fish on his hook this time that’s more than he can handle.”
Cloud bit her lower tip, looking toward the gorgeous heap of blossoms and the upright stone slab on shore. Finally, she said, “Do you think Aiken will actually be able to handle this massive synergy? Papa could be planning to seize the executive from him at a critical moment.”
“If Marc doesn’t—if he can’t—then there may be a chance for us to enlist Aiken on our side later on. I still find it amazing that Marc agreed to let Aiken focus the psychozap. It implies confidence in Golden Boy’s abilities . . . or a nasty piece of manipulation.”
“It’s hard to think that someone else in this world might just be a match for Papa.” Cloud’s thought-tone was full of perplexity.
“He’s played God too damn long,” said Elaby bitterly. “We’ve forgotten that Marc’s human. That he’s a loser. He lost it all in the Milieu, and now he’s lost us. And he obviously feels threatened by both Felice and Aiken.”
“Papa is still a Paramount Grand Master farsensor, coercer, and creator,” said Cloud quietly. “And he’s limited here in the Pliocene mainly because there are so few suitable minds for him to work with. Don’t ever forget that he was one of the two greatest mental coordinators in the Galaxy. Only his brother Jon was better.”
“Remind me to light a candle to St. Jack the Bodiless.”
Cloud stood starring aft, her farsight wandering northward to the little islands off the mouth of the Genil where the forces of Celadeyr and Aluteyn and the other Spanish Tanu had been camped for two days, awaiting their rendezvous with Aiken Drum’s fleet. She shifted her gaze, scanning westward toward the Atlantic. “I still don’t see Aiken coming,” she said nervously. “How far out are they now, Elaby?”
“Fifteen hours, approx. Their ETA at the base-camp on the Genil is still dawn, as Aiken promised. They’ve been saving their metafaculties, using Ma Nature’s winds most of the way from Brittany. But this morning when they finally rounded Cape St. Vincent, Aiken put his psychokinetics to work. The fleet must be making twenty-six knots now. We’ll all be off to the Betics tomorrow on schedule.”
“And maybe we’ll all die.” Cloud came over to him, laying her head on his shoulder and embracing him so tightly that her fingers dug into the muscles of his back like claws. “Darling, I don’t know why . . . poor Jill this morning, and now this stupid dangerous thing we’re being forced to do with Aiken Drum . . . why I should feel like this . . . it’s insane, but . . .”
“It’s normal,” he whispered in her ear. “Normal to reach for life when the world seems ready to end. Very common phenom, if you can believe the books in the library back on Ocala. Plagues, wars, earthquakes—all disasters are keen incitements to venery.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
He kissed her “Sex often is. So what?” He led her to the companionway stairs “What say we rock the boat, then make everything shipshape for the royal visit?”
They disappeared. The breeze died and the jungle creatures were hushed in the afternoon heat. Two ramas emerged briefly from the undergrowth to inspect the mound of flowers and finger the strange incisions on the rock slab. Then they melted back into the greenery, their curiosity satisfied.
In his cramped cabin on the great tem schooner that was the Tanu flagship, Culluket worked on the cuirass of his ruby armor, resetting a few loose gemstones in the blazon, riveting a new strap in place of one that had weakened, then burnishing the whole so that the glass with its transfixed caput mortuum gleamed more richly than a slick of fresh blood.
You will die looking magnificent, at any rate, he told himself. Too clever at last, Interrogator! If you should escape being devoured by your demonic sweetheart, then surely your overdevious brain will be reduced to charred meat after serving as a living buss-bar between Aiken Drum and the Angel of the Abyss. You will die for your King, a very martyr to the battle-religion of your ancestors. A hero of the Host of Nontusvel could ask for no more glorious fate! What a pity you are a traitor to your blood, and an atheist, and so addicted to life that you would submit to any degradation now in order to be spared. You would even appeal to her, were it not the ultimate in futility . . .”
“Culluket,” said Mercy.
He started, torn from his bitter reverie. Mercy’s figure, clad in her silver-and-green parade armor, materialized out of invisibility. She had interpenetrated his cabin door. It was a violation of Tanu etiquette almost as serious as levitating without a steed.
“Great Queen, what is it?” He hastened to pull the scattered pieces of armor together so that there would be room for her to stand.
Her mind radiated a fearful intensity, impinging on his own thick barrier with a coercive force that blurred his sight. “I need you to escort me to Lord Celadeyr now, while Aiken is locked in mind-meld with that horrible Abaddon. It may be the only chance I have. Hurry, man! Enarm yourself. This is no social call. And I’ll want the small sigma-field Aiken’s given you as a defense against Felice.”
He harnessed up hurriedly. The two of them, invisible, body-flew eastward above the Gulf of Guadalquivir, toward the deformed old moon rising late over the Andalusian jungle, and the camp where the Lord of Afaliah and the Craftsmaster and the rest of the Koneyn nobility awaited the fleet’s arrival. The site of the rendezvous was carefully concealed, both physically and mentally. The 3500 chalikos that would equip the raiding party had been penned in a mangrove swamp a full five kilometers from the camouflaged pavilions of the nobles and their retainers.
As Mercy and Culluket hovered just offshore, she commanded, “Farspeak your brother Kuhal on the intimate mode. Tell him we have arrived.”
“Kuhal is here?” Cullukel was nonplussed. “Surely he would not have been forced—”
“Do as I say,” she snapped. “It was I who saw to it that Celo brought him along. You’ll soon find out why. Tell Kuhal to call both Celo and Aluteyn Craftsmaster to his tent.”
Culluket obeyed. He and Mercy wafted into the encampment and became visible inside the dimly lamplit shelter of the convalescent Earthshaker. Kuhal lay on a bunk, propped up with cushions. Beside him stood the two Tanu heros, waiting in silence for Mercy’s explanation. Their antagonism for the interrogator was unconcealed.
She said, “Nodonn is alive.”
“Glorious Goddess!” exclaimed Kuhal, and Culluket made haste to clap a crude redactive damper over the invalid’s mind.
“Erect the sigma-field,” Mercy commanded. “It will be enough protection for us so long as Aiken and the others have no suspicions and don’t deliberately try to poke into it.”
Culluket took the device from his armored crumen set it upon Kuhal’s rightstand, and activated it. The noises of the jungle night chopped off. The tent and its inhabitants were isolated within a dynamic field virtually impervious to most energy and matter.
“I’ve known about Nodonn since early in May,”Mercy said, responding to unspoken questions. “He’s been marooned on Kersic all this time, in a coma, tended by a Lowlite woman who kept him inside a cave. This is why none of us detected him. Not even I.”
“Where is he now?” asked Celadeyr flatly. “What shape is he in?”
“He’s hidden in Var-Mesk, cared for by Lord Moreyn, who is”—she swept the Lord of Afaliah and the Craftsmaster with a trenchant glance—”a First Comer to the Many-Colored Land, just as you. And loyal to the old traditions. As you are.”
“Now, hold on a minute!” Aluteyn protested. “I gave my oath of fealty—”
“To a foul usurper!” Kuhal interrupted. “Under mortal duress and a sense of desperate inevitability, as we all did. Such an oath stinks before the Goddess! It demands repudiation!”
“Calm down before you strain somet
hing,” the Craftsmaster advised. He pulled up a sturdy stool and lowered his bulk gingerly onto it. The others also drew up seats close to the cot, and Mercy and Culluket removed their helmets. Aluteyn addressed his Queen. “Tell us exactly what happened to Nodonn, lass. Don’t leave out a thing.”
She coordinated the data in her mind, then displayed it without comment, save for the shining backdrop of her own joy.
When they had done studying, Kuhal beckoned her and took her silver-gauntleted hand to kiss. His eyes overflowed for the first time since his rescue.
“You are truly one of us, Mercy-Rosmar,” he said, “and worthy to be Queen.”
Old Celo’s reaction was bleaker, practical. “Nodonn’s still weak as a kitten. Not as badly off as you, Kuhal, but in no shape to take on Aiken.” He stared at Mercy. “You’ve waited this long to tell us . . . and perhaps it’s true that you had no choice. But what do you expect us to do?”
“Abandon him,” she said simply. “Leave him to Felice. We can all of us fly except Kuhal. and Celo can carry him. Let’s start for Var-Mesk now, flying within the sigma-field! Let’s go via Aven and Kersic, where we can hide in wilderness when we tire, deep in sheltering caves secure from his golden wrath! Aiken has no long-distance psychoenergetic function. And he won’t follow us, since that would mean abandoning his Quest.”
Aluteyn groaned. “Lass. lass! Yourhappiness over Nodonn’s deliverance has robbed you of your wits.”
“How could we leave our fellow warriors behind, in peril of Felice?” Celo demanded of her. “Would Nodonn want this?”
“The fleet is almost here,” Kuhal said sadly “Our people are committed. Great Queen . . . if only you had told us your news earlier.”
“I didn’t dare try to contact you through farspeech!” she cried. “I’m too clumsy still at far focusing. It was Nodonn who held the thin mind-beam secure between us. And he warned me—” Like a red-hot wire, her scorn lashed out at Culluket. “You watched and listened! And now even Aiken suspects something—perhaps he even knows for certain that Nodonn lives! I was afraid my own farspeech would betray Nodonn completely. Or that Culluket would!”
The Interrogator bowed his head. “My former loyalty to the usurper has been shaken since his alliance with Abaddon. You know the rôle that those two have forced on me . . .”
Aluteyn uttered a short laugh. “And we also know what your loyalty’s worth compared to your own precious skin! Poor Cull. Whipsawed yourself properly this time.”
“I know Culluket hates Nodonn.” Mercy’s mind was icy. “But they are Host Brothers. And Tanu. And now there’s a fine expedient reason for Cull to turn his coat again! Isn’t that so, Redactive Brother?”
“The Great Queen is wise,” said Culluket, without emotion.
“Well, then!” she exclaimed, the old wildfire in her eyes. “If we can’t fly to Nodonn now, then let’s think about how we might use Felice to kill Aiken! Shall we warn her of his impending raid on her treasure-trove?”
“Elizabeth has Felice inside the room without doors,” said Aluteyn. “She might not hear. And if she did, we can’t count on her sparing us.”
Kuhal’s face had gone livid. “For the love of Tana—don’t think of summoning that elemental female, my Queen! Cull can tell you what she’s capable of!”
“Even the worthy Abaddon holds Felice in respect,” said the Interrogator. “And may I suggest, as we mull over possible plans of action, that we don’t forget that Abaddon has unexcelled directorial powers in metaconcert. He can smile us with a psychocreative blast at any range—I know that for a fact. He can’t coerce us from the other side of the world, but he does possess stupendous farsensing power.”
“Then why the hell didn’t he finger Nodonn for Aiken?” Celo puzzled.
Culluket gave a mental shrug. “My dealings with this mysterious person have been peremptory in the extreme. I’m less than a thing to him. Abaddon seems indifferent to our petty politics. He’s a manipulator, but only on a grand scale—”
“As opposed to you, Brother,” said Kuhal.
“—and it’s very possible that he doesn’t care who rules the Many-Colored Land. He’d use Nodonn as readily as he now uses Aiken.”
“The bastard!” hissed Mercy. “Who can he be?”
The four Tanu men regarded her in amazement. “You don’t know, then?” asked the Craftsmaster. “Oh, lass. No wonder you’ve been so full of mad plans.” And he told her, beginning with the events he himself had witnessed twenty-seven years before, when he and the old Lord Coercer and Gomnol and the Lord of Roniah first encountered Marc Remillard and his party of exiled metapsychic rebels.
Mercy seemed turned to marble inside her silver-lustre armor “Then there’s no hope at all of halting the Quest. No hope.” She turned away from them. “But, if Aiken gets the Spear, then Nodonn will have no advantage over him in the final Duel of Battlemasters.”
“No,” Culluket smiled at her back. “Nodonn will have to meet Aiken fair and square if he wants to be king. And maybe lose.”
“Brother—enough!” Kuhal struggled to a sitting position. “There is no honorable escape from the present peril, no way to abort the raid. We must cooperate fully with Aiken Drum, and the Good Goddess alone knows how this affair will end. She may use Felice as her agent to destroy the usurper . . . or she may grant him success. But if we survive, then there may still be time for us to rally round the true king as he leads us in the Nightfall War!”
Kuhal fell back, his face twisted in pain. Culluket bent over him with his palms pressed to his brother’s temples. Kuhal relaxed, instantly asleep.
Mercy turned off the little sigma-field generator and handed it to the Interrogator.
“So that’s that,” Celadeyr remarked. “But poor Kuhal was right. We’ll have to give Aiken Drum and his North American evil genius our very best shot in the Quest. Whether we tike it or not.” He and Aluteyn saluted Mercy briefly, then pushed aside the door-flap of the pavilion and went out into the loud night.
She stood close to the ruby-clad Interrogator as he replaced the screening device in his sabretache. “You knew about Nodonn all along, didn’t you. Death? My announcement was no surprise to you.”
“I am the greatest redactor of the Host. I would have felt my eldest brother’s extinction.”
“And yet you didn’t warn Aiken.”
“He knew. I showed him where the proof lay, within you.”
“Machinator!”
“As you, my Queen. But I think my game at last reaches its climax.”
He smiled down at her before covering his beauty with the red-glass helmet. She let her gloved hand rest lightly above his armored heart, touching the transfixed death’s-head that was his heraldic cognizance. She had never noticed before that the skull’s eyes were sapphires, like his, and that there was a flaming halo about it that mimicked his hair.
“Do you mean you’re finally afraid?” she inquired archly.
“Yes.”
“Ah! Well, so am I. Again. Will you take my hand, Death? Will you comfort?”
Nodding, he closed his visor and drew her to him. The tall red-armored form and the smaller one of emerald and silver faded together like wraiths and were gone, leaving Kuhal Earthshaker alone in dreamless sleep.
Dawn mist clung to the Hidden Springs evergreens like trailing scarves as Amerie walked by herself toward the little log chapel, carrying the bread and wine. The roosters had crowed and the penned goats and picketed chalikos were making low sounds; but the villagers and their guests still lay abed after the impromptu party of the night before.
Amerie thought: It’s just you and me this morning. Lord I’m glad.
She lit the two altar candles and prepared the offerings, then went into the tiny vestry to remove her wimple and veil and put on the scarlet chasuble of Pentecost. Singing her own entrance song. she came into the sanctuary.
Veni Creator Spintus,
Mentes tuorum visita
Imple supema gratia,
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Quae tu creasti pectora
She said the prayers at the fool of the altar with bowed head, then turned toward the dark interior of the chapel to give the first blessing.
“Dominus vobiscum.”
And Felice said, “Et cum spiriiu tuo.”
The pnest stood frozen in place with her hands raised as a girl in a long white gown came up the aisle and stood before the altar step, smiling.
“I’m back,” Felice said. “Elizabeth’s been working on my mind, and she’s reamed all of the old garbage out. I’m sane now, Amerie. Isn’t that wonderful? I can love properly now, without the pain detour. I can make a free choice of who to love, and how. I can give you joy just like mine! Elizabeth told me to choose, you see, and there was you and there was Culluket. You remember him, don’t you? I did love him more than you before, when I was mad. But now I know better. So I’ve come to fetch you.”
Amerie said, “Felice . . . my vow. My choice.”
“But it’s me,” said the girl reasonably. “Not just any woman—me’ You love me and want me just as I want you So come.”
“You don’t understand. My renunciation is my gift to God. My body offering, like the bread and wine I’ll consecrate in the Mass I gave it away long ago—”
“You can take it back.” Felice stood in front of the half-log benches, luminous in the light of the two candles, swaying as if she were a thing cut from fragile tissue set in motion by the priest’s own accelerating breath. Her eyes were like wells. “Come away now. We’ll fly together! I’m a white gyrfalcon now, and you shall be a cardinal-bird!”
“No,” Amerie whispered. “Felice, I can’t. You still don’t understand. This is where I belong, serving these people who need me. I’m their priest and their doctor. They’re good for me and I love them—”
The girl in white interrupted. “You love me more.”
“Yes,” Amerie admitted. “I do and I always will. But it changes nothing. I can’t help the love, but I can choose not to consummate it. And I do.”