“Why don’t I just leave you two alone to get on with whatever you’re doing? Another week, and you’ll probably both be well. Most gratifying.”
Stooping. Boduragol made a minute adjustment in the Skin around Cloud Remillard’s ivory feet.
“Gratifying,” he could not help repeating, and went out leaving the healing to proceed.
4
WHEN MERCY FINALLY RETURNED TO GORIAH AT THE END OF July, the deadly languor that had afflicted Aiken ever since the fight with Felice began at last to lighten, and his wounded brain to heal. The Queen’s tale was a thin one: that she had suffered amnesia when her boat was caught in the landslide and had wandered alone in the jungle east of the Genil, to be rescued at last by bareneck plant hunters who did not recognize her, and who brought her back to Afaliah only after having gathered sufficient numbers of rare orchids for the conservatory of Lady
Pennar-la, Celadeyr’s wife. Implausible though this story was, Aiken accepted it without question, nor did he attempt to delve into Mercy’s mind. She was back, she was unharmed, and her response to his lovemaking was once again fervent. It sufficed, and he was content.
One fine August day they went out to the dune hills along the Strait of Redon to see Yosh Watanabe and his crews demonstrate the different kinds of fighting kites being readied for the upcoming Grand Tourney. Aiken and Mercy and a large party of Most Exalteds lounged about beneath a shady canopy, enjoying the sea breeze and the novel entertainment. There was an abundance of picnic food and iced honey wine, and the kite battles were diverting and occasionally dangerous.
First into the air were agile, lozenge-shaped Nagasaki hata, with their flying lines coated in crushed glass, vividly decorated in stylized designs of red, white, and blue. When one kite managed to saw through the line of a rival, the well-rehearsed Tanu nobility yelled out the traditional cry, “Katsuro!” and paid off their wagers, while Yosh beamed and strutted and explained the future history of the events.
The wind picked up after the sun crossed the meridian, and the big kites soared aloft. There were Sanjo rokkaku. hexagonals half again as tall as a Tanu male, bearing gaudy portrayals of samurai warriors, Japanese demons, and mythical creatures; and there were rectangular Shirone o-dako, 6.7 meters high by 5 meters wide, ornamented with magnificent fishes and birds, figures from folklore, and abstract motifs, Crewed by five to ten humans, these fighting kites were too ponderous to attempt line-cutting maneuvers. Instead they engaged in stately dog-fights, crashing into one another while the competitors attempted to foul their lines. A losing kite, deprived of aerodynamic lift, would falter and tumble down out of control. Its victorious attacker would perforce follow it to the gound since the lines were entangled; but the winning kite usually maintained its dignity to the end, landing safely while its foe crashed to the sand, a mangled mass of torn paper and higgledy-piggledy bamboo bones.
When the wind was deemed suitably strong and steady, the truly enormous kites were trundled onto the beach, the combatant carriers that were destined to play a part in the Tourney proper rather than the preliminary events. Two o-dako measuring 14.5 by 11 meters and weighing more than 800 kilos apiece were hoisted onto temporary scaffolding so that their many bridle lines could be attached, braided, and fastened to the flying cable. This last was connected to a heavily weighted winch. The kite warrior would be suspended from the lower framework in a light breeches buoy. Three maneuvering lines joined to key bridles gave the fighter some control over his kite’s flight; but the principal guiding force came from the ground crew of fifty, who were equipped with running control lines that joined the main cable by means of large D-shaped carabiners.
When the pair of giant o-dako were ready for launching, Yosh came to the royal enclosure, trailed by his assistant, the dour Lithuanian gray-torc, Vilkas. Yosh was attired in his gorgeous samurai armor and Vilkas in the only slightly less ornate harness of an ashigaru, or foot-warrior.
Yosh bowed gravely to Aiken and Mercy. “This will be our first official demonstration of the man-carrying kites, Aiken-sama, the first time that we’ve actually attempted aerial combat.” He extended a singular pole-arm for the King to examine. “Vilkas and I will attempt to slice each other out of the sky using these naginata—curved blades mounted on long shafts. We won’t go for each other hand to hand, of course. The fighter and his suspension rig are out of bounds. Fair game includes me bridle lines, the maneuvering ropes, the main cable, and the bamboo frame and paper facing of the kite itself.”
“It sounds dangerous for you,” Mercy remarked warmly. The young coercer woman, Olone, who had nursed baby Agraynel during the Queen’s absence, stood immediately behind the throne holding the infant. Mercy held out her arms for the child and cuddled it while Yosh continued his explanation.
“Since we play without safety nets, the game could be very dangerous for ordinary humans like Vilkas and myself. We minimize the hazard—and add to the fun for you Exalteds— by using PK adepts for coaches.” The Japanese technician made a courteous obeisance to a portly gold-torc human who stood beside the strapping Olone. “Lord Sullivan-Tonn was good enough to work with us during practice sessions. He’s agreed to coach Vilkas, here, during the contest today.”
Aiken eyed Sullivan thoughtfully. “Is coaching hard to learn?”
The pompous little psychokinetic lifted both hands in a deprecating gesture. “I found it quite simple, actually.” He simpered.
“How do you play?” Aiken asked Yosh.
“The coach gives telepathic direction not only to his fighter, but also to the ground crew, advising on tactics. He’s also allowed to generate PK wind for his kite only. Huffing the opposition’s aircraft around is grounds for disqualification. This effectively limits windplay to periods when the two kites are fairly widely separated, unless the puffer has a lot of finesse. I think you may find that close work with the ground crew gives better control in most clinch situations. If a combatant gets his strings clipped, it’s the duty of the coach to rescue him before he hits the ground. Which is why only PK heads get to be skippers in this game.”
Aiken nodded. His smile was wan and his eyes were like two holes burned in parchment. He was wearing golden jeans and a black shirt open at the throat. “So Sullivan’s going to handle your ichiban lad today, eh, Yosh? Who’s coaching you?”
“I hoped you would do me the honor. Aiken-sama.”
“Oh, please do!” squealed Olone. “I’m positive you’ll win!”
Sullivan’s face went starchy in the light of his young wife’s disloyalty, but he added, “Yes, please coach the second kite, my King.”
“I’m still feeling a bit seedy,” Aiken warned.
Yosh said, “You needn’t hold up the entire o-dako if I’m shot down, Aiken-sama. Just keep me off the deck. I only weigh sixty-four kilos, armor and all.”
With a visible effort, Aiken roused himself. “Hell I can manage that. This is a great job you’ve done, Yosh. Carry on! O-tanoshimi nasai, kiddo!”
Yosh grinned. “You bet, boss.” He hurried off with Vilkas to complete the preparations. Aiken slumped back into his wicker throne, watching the scurrying crew members. His mind was shuttered. It was becoming hotter as the westering sun dropped below the edge of the canopy. Sullivan and Olone kept up a banal chatter and the baby fussed, resisting Mercy’s attempts to coze and chirk her up mentally.
Finally, Aiken said, “Can’t you see she’s hungry, Merce? Let Olone feed her so she’ll stop that damn mind whimpering.”
“Oh, the poor mite!” Olone exclaimed, taking the child eagerly. She drew one of her elongate breasts from inside her azure chiffon gown. “Are you starving, Grania lambie? Come to Nurse!” Voraciously, the infant began to suck. The irritating telepathic bleats were submerged into emanations of sheer bliss.
“Take her to the other side of the tent, where it’s cooler, dear,” Mercy told the girl.
“Yes, my Queen. Shall I bring her back when she’s finished?”
Mercy’s expres
sion was remote, almost renunciatory. “Find some quiet corner to rock her and sing, Olone. I’m afraid all this turmoil has overexcited her. It was selfish of me to bring her along to the shore with us today...but I did so want her near me.”
Olone sketched a curtsy and rushed away, as if half-fearing that Mercy would change her mind. Sullivan observed, “My wife loves Agraynel as she would a child of her own, my Queen.”
“I know. And I’m more grateful than I can say for her nurturing of the child while I was—lost. I think perhaps it was my subconscious concern for Agraynel that must have cured my amnesia at last as I wandered forlorn in the jungle of Koneyn.”
Aiken uttered a soft chuckle. “Well, we know that it wasn’t subconscious concern for Me!” He pretended to be absorbed in the action out on the beach. The scaffolding was being-removed from the two great kites, which were held upright by the taut anchor lines manned by the sweating crews. Sullivan’s kite was predominantly scarlet and gold, decorated with a splendidly helmed Japanese warrior poised against a backdrop of cherry blossoms. Aiken’s kite was more stark, a medley of blues, a tsunami wave à la Hokusai frozen elegantly in the breaking above a rockbound islet.
Sullivan was making a valiant attempt to be urbane in the face of ominous mental undertones. “No one was more astonished than I, Great Queen, when Olone volunteered to suckle your precious child, believing that you had perished. I had not realized that such a thing was possible for a woman who had not herself given birth! The Tanu are an amazing race, aren’t they? So human and yet so fascinating in their difference! The unique breasts of the women have a counterpart in the folklore of several European countries, you know. The Ellefolk and Skogrå of Scandinavia, the Fée of France, German Nixen, the Aguane of the Italian Alps, the Giane of Sardinia—”
“All elf-women with long breasts. I know.” Mercy was gentle. “But there’s nothing mysterious about the milk, Tonn dear. If a woman wishes it deeply enough and her will is strong, the prolactin hormone will be secreted along with others and the breasts will fill—even for those who are childless. Human women or Tanu, both are the same: The loving desire to nurture is all the magic that’s needed.”
“But don’t forget,” came Aiken’s wry interpolation, “that the converse holds good as well. Both Agraynel and I were lucky.”
Sullivan’s face flamed scarlet. He was on his feet, backing away from the royal couple, his imperfectly curtained mind leaking mortification and futile rage.
Mercy’s sad eyes saw only Aiken now. “Yes, I’m dry now, it’s true. I’ve been sore troubled and I’ve been diminished, and so I have no life to give my daughter, poor thing. What I have to give you we both know! So take it.”
“I’m—I’m going down to the beach!” Sullivan mumbled. “Keep tabs on my kite. Excuse me—excuse me—” And he fled, his rosy-gold caftan billowing in the hot wind.
“It was brutal of you to shame him to his face,” Mercy told Aiken. “And unnecessary. He knows what went on.”
“He’s an ass. Impotent.” Aiken’s eyes were closed. Sweat made his dark red hair cling to his rounded cranium. “He’d betray me to all corners in fifteen seconds if he thought he could escape with a whole skin. And you were gone . . .” The hollow black gaze opened to her. “They told me you were dead, Mercy.”
“And is it true that you wept over my silver-and-emerald helmet?” The taint of her mockery was elusive.
The little man turned away, “Oh, yes,” he admitted. “All the way back to Goriah, as I lay in my cabin coddling my combustion-chamber skull, I kept the thing with me. My last memento of you. Still full of your perfume in spite of its dunking in the Río Genil! You bet I cried, babe. Even though I knew you were alive.”
“Ah.”
“I didn’t think you’d leave him. It was his idea, wasn’t it?”
Down on the beach, there was a shout from many voices and a telepathic affirmation. Ue! Up she goes! The Tanu nobles still in the pavilion rushed outside for a better view as the scarlet warrior kite rose slowly into the shimmering sky, its human cargo dangling like a spindly tail. A moment later the blue-wave kite climbed aloft. Yosh’s farspoken voice said to the King:
Anytime you’re ready, boss!
Aiken’s mind and voice commanded: “Begin.” The great kites seemed to bow to each other and then swoop in for the initial engagement. Silver naginata flashed in the sun. The ground crews hauled the wrist-thick flying cables this way and that and the winch operators took in slack.
Aiken squinted into the glare, gauging the wind. He said to Mercy, “You’re supposed to stay close to me and report to him, I suppose. There’s no other way he could get through the slacked screens I’m using.”
She sat back among the cushions, inaccessible, her auburn hair rich on her golden-tan shoulders, glowing in contrast to her jade-colored gown. “I’m here to stay with you as long as you want me. Do you? Or shall I go?”
The blue kite, hovering a dozen meters above the scarlet, dived abruptly. Sunlight caught Yosh’s slashing blow that severed one of Vilkas’s maneuvering lines. The red kite retreated as line was paid out.
“You’re afraid of me again,” Aiken said. “It’s made you burn! You won’t go. You’re wild for me, as you were after the golden maypole dance! I give you more than he ever can. I love you more than he does. Admit it!”
The scarlet kite bobbed up and down like a crazy pendulum, swinging as it tried to avoid the darting thrusts of the blue attacker. Vilkas managed to cut a few of the central bridle lines, but this had little effect on Yosh’s kite. The Japanese concentrated solely on the right side of his antagonist’s kite, cutting bridles and slicing great vertical rents in the paper until the painted samurai warrior’s face was all but obliterated in ribboning shreds. The red kite sank low in spite of the frantic hauling of its crew, and Vilkas’s dangling feet nearly brushed the scraggly trees growing on the top of a large dune.
Aiken’s mouth was set in a tight smile. He did not took at Mercy, but her face was overwhelming in his mind, and she knew. He said, “Nodonn’s gathering his adherents down in Afaliah right now, isn’t he! Sending out a call for all the reactionaries and hotheads and human-haters to rally round the old sun-face blazon. How many knights do you think he’ll finally muster? A few hundred, maybe? And how many first-class powers? Himself, Celo, his brother Kuhal if he ever gets his head put back together, maybe that old asshole from Tarasiah, Thufan Thunderfart. Does he really think he’s got a chance of licking me with that lot? . . . Or is he planning to show up at the Grand Tourney with the Sword and just file a challenge against me—as though the kingship of the Many-Colored Land was some kind of a runoff election for village dogcatcher?”
The spectators gave a tremendous cheer. The scarlet kite wavered, its lower margin forced backward by airflow as Yosh severed a last pair of critical bridle lines. Its flayed surface stalled, tumbled. Vilkas dropped his naginata as he clung to the shrouds of the breeches buoy. He fell toward the crowded beach, with the flailing kite appearing to slap at him like some berserk billboard in the grip of a hurricane. The Lithuanian’s despairing mental cry, broadcast by his gray torc, impinged on the minds of Aiken and Mercy. The mob below fled, crews abandoning their lines.
“Damn that Sullivan!” the King raged. He gripped the rattan arms of his throne, screwed his eyes shut in an agonized grimace, and reached out with his psychokinesis. Vilkas, tangled in his kite, was about to impact on the hard, wet sand. Yosh’s kite had gone out of control when its crew scattered, and now plummeted toward the sea.
Aiken groaned.
Vilkas in his breeches buoy swung aside and upward, beyond the menace of the crashing starlet kite. Seconds later he wafted gently to earth. The blue kite, responding to a sudden blast of psychic wind, recovered from its negative angle of attack and soared upward al the limit of its tether. The winch operators who had let their machine unwind scrambled back to reengage the brake mechanism and effect an orderly landing. There were relieved shouts from the h
uman crews down on the beach, cheers from the nobles who had viewed the contretemps from a dunetop vantage point, and a barely perceptible mental apology from Sullivan-Tonn on the King’s intimate mode.
Mercy had come to stand over Aiken, astonished at what the effort had cost him. She took a silk handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped his streaming brow and his eyes; and when his stertorous breathing softened and he relaxed with his head back, she said:
“I didn’t know. Was it Felice?”
“Who else?” He regarded her through slitted, pain-bleared eyes. “Well—now you know. Be sure to tell him the good news right away! But remind him that the Spear’s working just fine . . . and I have a few goodies stowed away in the dungeon that I can welcome him with in case he decides to pay us both a friendly call.”
She said nothing.
“But tell him not to delay too long,” Aiken added. “I’m a funny sort, Lady Wildfire, Creator Lady. Every time I have you I heal a bit more. Olone was some help—but you’re my sovereign remedy. If you stay, you may engineer your own defeat. And his!”
Her fingers touched the skin drawn lightly over his cheekbones, the long, well-formed nose, the thin lips now gone bloodless. She knelt on the cushions heaped beside his throne, placed cool hands over his eyes, and kissed him with soft passion. She put aside her mental veil and he saw the fear-spice joined inextricably with ardor. “Amadán,” she whispered “Fatal Amadán of my soul.”
“But not your heart. Never that.”
“It’s all as it was before in the Grove of May. So take what you want, Nonborn King, what you need. Take it while you can, for when I’m gone you’ll find no other.”
5
DURING THE LATTER PART OF THE TRIP, WHEN HE WAS HALF-dead with hunger and thirst and the endless jouncing gait of the pack animal and the sadistic mind-prodding of his exotic captors, Tony Wayland cried: