Now, of course, this meant they would have to give the creatures names and teach them to answer to them. But a name for his rescuer, and Carrig’s, suggested itself at once. That parradile was going to be called Sloin!
Chuckling with relief, he waited as the huge graceful flock approached circling the tower suspiciously, and their leader, the newly baptized Sloin, came to perch on the parapet and wave proudly at his companions with one wing. Saikmar patted the big-mouthed head affectionately. Then he tried to entice the others down too, but they were too frightened.
Sloin seemed to shrug. He took off with a blast of air that almost knocked Saikmar sprawling, and out of the hovering group he sorted a handsome young female, obviously his mate. Prodding and grunting at her, he compelled her to come close enough for Saikmar to pat her head also, but could not persuade her to settle on the tower.
“Oh, well!” he seemed to say at last, and with a final nod toward Saikmar he led his subjects swooping down to be fed in the market square.
Saikmar watched them go with envy in his heart. The new king-parradile had found subjects for him now, and a fine consort besides, and doubtless in a little while the parradiles would be again as numerous as before Belfeor ordered their slaughter. Whereas he…
“Oh, Melisma!” he groaned aloud to the air. There was no trace of her anywhere, the woman he had hoped to make his bride and equal ruler of this great city! It was small consolation to reflect that just as she had appeared mysteriously in the parradile’s lair far to the north, so she had gone mysteriously when the parradile returned her to the south. Could she have been real? She had given him many delicious proofs of her femininity, but that didn’t mean she was not in fact the creation of a friendly god …
An idea came to him. Though Melisma had gone, she need not be forgotten. Not if he had anything to do with it.
He hurried back down the stairs of the tower. When he came back into the regent’s apartments, he sent the first servant he saw on an urgent errand, and sat waiting impatiently for it to be completed.
Only a few minutes had passed when the harper came in and gave a low sweeping bow. “What does it please Saikmar that I should sing?” he inquired.
“I don’t want you to sing. Not yet. I want you to make a new ballad. It will be called The Ballad of Lady Melisma, and these are the events that must be included. They are strange and wonderful, and the song must be couched in strange and wonderful language to suit the subject. Do you understand?”
The harper seated himself on his red velvet stool. “I hear and obey,” he said. “I will do my best.”
“It must begin with the arrival of Belfeor,” Saikmar said, leaning his sharp chin on his hand. “When he usurped power the gods were angry, and so this is what they planned …”
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Also by John Brunner
A Maze of Stars
A Planet of Your Own
Age of Miracles
Bedlam Planet
Born Under Mars
Castaways’ World
Catch a Falling Star
Children of the Thunder
Double, Double
Enigma from Tantalus
Galactic Storm
Give Warning to the World
I Speak for Earth
Into the Slave Nebula
Manshape
Meeting at Infinity
More Things in Heaven
Muddle Earth
Players at the Game of People
Polymath
Quicksand
Sanctuary in the Sky
Stand on Zanzibar
Telepathist
The Atlantic Abomination
The (Compleat) Traveler in Black
The Altar on Asconel
The Avengers of Carrig
The Brink
The Crucible of Time
The Dramaturges of Yan
The Dreaming Earth
The Gaudy Shadows
The Infinitive of Go
The Jagged Orbit
The Ladder in the Sky
The Long Result
The Martian Sphinx
The Productions of Time
The Psionic Menace
The Repairmen of Cyclops
The Rites of Ohe
The Sheep Look Up
The Shift key
The Shockwave Riders
The Skynappers
The Space-Time Juggler
The Squares of the City
The Stardroppers
The Stone That Never Came Down
The Super Barbarians
The Tides of Time
The World Swappers
The Wrong End of Time
Threshold of Eternity
Times Without Number
Timescoop
To Conquer Chaos
Total Eclipse
Web of Everywhere
John Brunner (1934-1995) was a prolific British SF writer. In 1951, he published his first novel, Galactic Storm, at the age of just 17, and went on to write dozens of novels under his own and various house names until his death in 1995 at the Glasgow Worldcon. He won the Hugo Award and the British Science Fiction Award for Stand on Zanzibar (a regular contender for the ‘best SF novel of all time’) and the British Science Fiction Award for The Jagged Orbit.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © John Brunner 1969
All rights reserved.
The right of John Brunner to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1969
This eBook first published in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10148 7
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
John Brunner, The Avengers of Carrig
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