Quite a large number of outlaws were fighting their way through the hazel bushes that surrounded the hollow. The heads of at least five great Houses and numbers of their families came crunching down among the dead leaves, and with them people from Earth, sliding in the mud beneath. Siri, in her white bridal garments, was forcing her way through from another direction. Siri was clearly herself again. When some of Lady Sylvia’s floating veils hooked themselves on the hazel rods, Siri gathered them all up in an impatient hand and tore them off her dress. This made Vierran look down at herself. She was in trousers again. Comfortable, thank goodness.
Here Vierran’s mother and father descended on her. “Are you all right, girl?” Hugon said anxiously.
“Absolutely and perfectly,” Vierran said, beaming up at him. But she saw him realise that she was only sparing one arm to hug him with, and she saw the sour look he gave her other hand, still wrapped in Mordion’s. Well, he’ll probably come round, she thought.
Her mother saw it too. “I’m glad to see you yourself again,” Alisan said, laughing. “It was bad enough having you as an adolescent once.”
Since Vierran was not wholly sure that this meant her mother was on her side, she was glad of the distraction the arrival of Sir Artegal made.
Sir Artegal came ducking under the leaning trunks of the big tree and slid in the mud. He saved himself on the chest-high trunk where Hume leant, and remained there, staring face to face with Hume. “I don’t believe this!” Sir Artegal said. “It’s never–!”
Hume looked up, equally astonished. Hume was not a boy any longer, or even very young. His face was weatherbeaten, almost ageing, with rows of lines in its thin cheeks and more lines under his smaller eye. His hair was shades lighter with all the white in it. “Arthur!” he said.
“Merlin,” said Sir Artegal, sad and fond.
“Did they get you too?” said the ageing Hume. “Those damned Reigners?”
“They were always going to,” Sir Artegal replied, “after you’d gone. We went against them, though, just as I promised you.”
“The chronicles report that you went against the Emperor of Rome,” Yam put in.
“Well, the Reigners were bound to conceal the facts,” Sir Artegal said philosophically. “We beat them off Earth, but they came back and—” He broke off and stared at Yam shrewdly. Then he said to Mordion, “So you found the Bannus, Slave.”
This made Vierran’s head jerk round to look first at Mordion, then at Artegal. Sir Artegal looked at her as she looked at him. Sir Artegal said, “You’re my Girl Child!” and Vierran exclaimed, “But you’re the King!”
Mordion had been looking at Hume, mystified and embarrassed. It was small wonder he had never been able to realify Hume if Hume had been real all along. Now he looked at Vierran again. “Girl Child?” he said. “I so nearly asked you so often if you were!
“And everyone always forgets about me,” said Martin. Martin was roosting in the fork of the tree, where all the trunks branched, with his arms folded, looking very comfortable. “Hallo, Slave,” he said cheerfully to Mordion. “I sussed you at the castle, but you had things on your mind, so I didn’t bother you then.” Then he turned, even more cheerfully, to Hume. “Hallo, Prisoner – or should I say Uncle Wolf?”
Hume dropped the sword and trod on it as he whirled round. “Fitela!” he said. “Now by all that’s sacred, this is truly amazing.”
Martin hopped to the ground, grinning all over his face. The place that had seemed to be a graze before was now clearly a scar. He was very short, only about Vierran’s height, and slightly bow-legged. And he was older too. He seemed to be only slightly younger than Vierran, and as brown and weatherbeaten as Hume. “I believe that’s my wormblade you’re treading on, Uncle,” he said. “And you’ve lost the ruby. That’s no way to treat a valuable sword.”
Hume stooped hastily and picked the sword up. As he handed it to Martin, Hume’s face was mahogany-colour with shame.
Martin brushed away dead leaves that had stuck to the sword and sighted along it. “Do I see correctly?” he said. “This is covered with dragon’s blood.” He began to laugh. “Wolf! You never did!”
Hume’s face went from mahogany to crimson. “Yes, I did!”
“You fought a dragon?” Martin laughed. “I bet you spent the whole time running away then! You never did have a clue with dragons, did you?”
“Martin!” said Vierran. She still felt like Martins elder sister. “Martin, stop baiting Hume this instant!”
Vierran’s mother shook her arm. “Vierran, does this mean he isn’t ours? Who is he?”
I had not realised, Vierran thought, looking at Alisan’s distressed face, that Mother wanted a son so much. “I’ve always called him the Boy,” she said.
“He’s one of my descendants,” Hume explained. “The Reigners imported dragons from Lind to Earth to kill me, many years ago now, and I bred up a race of my children to deal with them. Fitela is the greatest dragon-killer of them all.” Martin grinned and bowed to Alisan, very pleased with himself, but Hume’s face was still beetroot-coloured. “Blast you, Yam – Bannus!” he said. “You were telling me, ‘This time kill your own dragons!’ weren’t you?”
“That is correct,” said Yam. “I see I made my point. I am glad to see it Your rehabilitation was of some concern to me. I was afraid you had damaged your personality irretrievably in the course of your struggle with the previous Reigners. Luckily, after all that time in stass, your bodyweight was sufficiently reduced for me to circumvent their ban – which I regret to say was imposed through me – by allowing you to believe yourself a child again. And this in turn proved helpful to Mordion.”
“And I was always child-sized,” Martin remarked. “Gnomes, both of us,” he said to Vierran. “By the way, Wolf, how come you’ve got two eyes again? Last I saw you, you’d only got the one the dragon didn’t get.”
“It grew back in the end,” said Hume, “but it was always a bit weak.”
“And—” began Martin, but he was interrupted by Sir John Bedford, who was leaning against another of the outstretched trunks of the tree and obviously running out of patience.
“If you’ve all quite done, will one of you tell me why we’re all crowded into this mudhole like this.” A murmur from the other people there suggested that they felt the same as Sir John.
“It is quite simple,” said Yam. “Four thousand years ago, it was felt that the great Reigner Houses on Homeworld would destroy one another unless they were controlled by the strongest possible rulers. For this reason, five of the strongest were selected and formed into a new House, which was called the House of Balance. This was because the five chosen were supposed to hold the balance among the rest. But since even then there was strife, I was constructed to make sure that the choosing and the ruling of the Reigners would be absolutely fair and absolutely immutable. The selection process – which has been delayed a thousand years through circumstances beyond my control – has taken place and is now completed. We are met here, with the legal minimum of Reigner candidates, for the Bannus to appoint the new Reigners and name their correct order. For the next ten years, Reigner One shall be Mordion Agenos.”
For the first time, Mordion consciously experienced the strength of the Bannus. It made him know – no, believe – no, made him be a. Reigner. It would have taken all his strength to refuse, but he would have refused – until he thought of the chaos out there in the galaxy that the absence of the Reigners would have caused. Someone had to deal with that So, instead, he put out a great effort and said, “Not – not Reigner One. You’ll have to call it First Reigner.”
“Amended,” Yam said, almost approvingly. “You are First Reigner, by reason of your strength of will and considerable knowledge of the House of Balance in its present form. Second Reigner, from much the same considerations, is Vierran of Guaranty.”
“What?” gasped Vierran.
“You are very hard to deceive,” Yam said, “and you were trained up to r
un a large commercial concern. Third Reigner is Martellian Pender.”
“No!” said Hume, with his teeth clenched. “Not again!”
“That is precisely why you are selected,” Yam told him. “You have the experience, and the ability, and you are aware of the pitfalls.”
“Rather too much so,” Hume said ruefully.
“Fourth Reigner,” Yam continued, “gave me some trouble to select, which was only solved by other considerations. He is Arthur Pendragon.”
“What!” said Sir Artegal. “Now I told you—”
“That is why. Only potential Reigners can tell me things,” Yam said. “And from your selection, it follows that Fifth Reigner must be Fitela Wolfson.”
“Why?” said Martin. “Why me? I’m a native of Earth. I don’t know the first thing about anything beyond dragons – and besides, I hate being responsible!”
“Then you must learn,” said Yam. “You have been in communication with the other four for many years—”
“But that was long ago, before they put me in stass,” Martin protested.
“This makes a special case, which overrules your incompetence,” Yam told him. “Many Reigners in the past have spoken over time and space to others like themselves, but it is very rare for such a Hand to assemble together in the flesh. Past experience shows that a Hand so assembled is unusually successful.” His rosy eyes swept round the small, crowded hollow. “So that is settled. You have all seen and ratified the five new Reigners. Now it only remains for us to proceed out of this Wood and to our various homes. You must take me with you to Homeworld, of course.”
Hume groaned at this. “It’s a man-high box,” he told the others, “and it weighs like solid lead.”
“No longer,” Yam said smugly. “I have just finished refining and transferring all my functions to my present form. Mordion aided me, under the impression he was performing repairs.”
“I am,” said Mordion, “rather sick of being cheated by you, Bannus.”
“You must keep more alert in future,” said Yam. “A mobile form is essential to me. One of the ways in which Orm Pender cheated me was by grasping me in his arms before my programmes commenced.”
“And what were the other ways he used to cheat you?” Sir Artegal asked with courteous sympathy.
“Hocus-pocus,” said Yam. “His mother was a witch from Lind.” And his eyes swivelled to Mordion with – could it have been? – apprehension.
That is very useful to know, Mordion thought. Sir Artegal said gravely, “That was most unfair.” And Mordion felt him give a swift flick at his mind, like a mental wink. Sir Artegal – Arthur – was going to be a pleasure to work with.
But Yam was saying, “We must move now, before the commercial empire of the House of Balance falls apart completely.”
“No such bad thing if it did,” Mordion said, as they all turned to move out of the hollow in the direction Yam pointed.
“Ah no,” Vierran told him. “You can’t just let a business slide into ruin.”
And Sir Artegal supported her. “That would be causing hardship and ruin to many innocent people,” he said.
I am getting a very good taste of the way Reigners work, Mordion thought, forcing a path for himself and Vierran through the hazel bushes. “Then it’s going to have a complete overhaul,” he said. “I doubt if you know how corrupt it is.”
Behind him, Hume waited until Siri picked her way near him in her unsuitable white slippers.
“Can I give you a hand getting over this ground?” he asked her diffidently.
Siri looked searchingly at his lined face. “If you don’t assume anything from it,” she said. But she let him take her arm and help her up the muddy bank.
Beyond, the wood was a space of beeches with sunlight glowing through the new green of their leaves. Everyone was able to walk together in a crowd. Vierran walked quietly, listening to the growl and chime of voices, as everyone discussed the decision of the Bannus and tried to get used to it. And it took some getting used to, Vierran thought. She was going to be busy. Overhauling the Reigner Organisation was a gigantic task in itself, but then there was Mordion. She looked at him striding ahead in his pale brown version of the Servants uniform. He was hurting. He always would be. And she would have to try to help. Then there was Hume, who was touchy enough, and not the person she had thought – though she knew him very well as the Prisoner, which might help. Then there was the Bannus. She could tell it was likely to get out of hand if they were not careful. Then there was Martin. Vierran could hear him now, chatting to her parents.
“Oh no, I like these times. There’s so much going on. I can’t wait to find out more. But—” wistfully “—I shall miss being part of a family. I never did have a family, you know. I was pushed off to fight dragons as soon as I was strong enough.”
And darned exciting that was, Vierran knew. But her mother said sympathetically, “You can always consider the House of Guaranty as your family, Martin.” And she heard her father giving agreeing sort of growls. Martin was shameless. But it might not be a bad thing for Martin if her parents adopted him. It would save Vierran having to devote half her time to keeping him in line.
But the hardest thing to get used to, she knew, was not having these people talking in her mind any more. She would be working with them instead, and they would be there every day, but it was not quite the same. Here she looked round to see Yam plodding spongily beside her.
“Why did you always stop my voices when I got into the wood?” she asked.
“That was not me,” Yam replied. “That is the Wood. You were speaking to your Hand through space-time and the Wood, when it forms its theta-space, is timeless. Normal communication is blocked.”
Ahead of them, Mordion strode across the small muddy stream he remembered and found himself in the sparse trees at the edge of the wood. Here was real life again. But it did no good to run away. He strode with long steps up the passage between the houses and out into Wood Street. Wood Street had a sad derelict look. The shops were all boarded up, and the road was littered with nails, glass, blowing paper and leaves from the wood. The surprisingly long line of cars down the near side looked as if every vehicle had stood in all weathers for at least a year.
But normality seemed to be back. Mordion found himself wearing the uncomfortable Earth clothes again, including the short camel coat Vierran had dared him to wear, and when he put his hand to his face it was not so much bearded as bristly. The gashes Orm had made were healed. He found that, as always, he missed the rolled cloak on the shoulder of the Servant’s uniform, so he corrected the clothes, back to the ones he had worn in the wood, right down to the grass stains on the front from where he had dived after Yam. But his face—He turned to ask Vierran if she thought a beard suited him.
He was entirely alone.
After a moment, when he stood stunned and lonely, Mordion realised what had happened. It made him smile. The Wood had not finished with them yet. It had let him out. It had given him special treatment, as it always did, even to bringing Hume back when there had been no real need for it, because the Wood knew Mordion wanted this, and it had done it hoping he would understand. Mordion thought he did, but it remained to see.
He went back down the passage between the houses again, with even longer, faster strides, and into the sparse wood. The moment he jumped the little stream, he was in the beechwood again, with green sunlight overhead and pewter-coloured trunks in all directions, like pillars in a vast hall. The others were standing in a perplexed crowd a little way off, dull-coloured except for the white of Siri at the edge beside Hume, and except for the frantic silver figure of Yam.
Yam was running round and round in little circles. “The Wood has taken us prisoner. The Wood will not let us go!” Mordion heard him cry out. “We shall be here for ever!”
Mordion was very tempted just to fold his arms and watch the delicious sight of a Bannus that had met its match running round and round on the spot. He let Yam make anot
her circuit and then strolled towards him.
“Oh there you are!” Vierran said, dashing up to him. “Is this true what Yam’s saying?”
“Quite true,” Mordion said. Everyone turned anxiously towards him, except for Yam. Yam continued to run round in little circles, crying out Mordion went on, “The Wood has co-operated with the Bannus because it needs something for itself. Now we have to give the Wood what it wants and it will let us go. I think I know what that is. Yam, shut up and stand still and tell me this.” Yam surged to a halt in a pile of sherry-coloured dead leaves and turned anxious pink eyes on Mordion. “You told me the Wood can form its own theta-space and become the great Forest,” Mordion said to him. “Does the Wood only do this when a human being enters it?”
“I had not thought of this,” said Yam. “Yes, I believe that when not reinforced by my field, the Wood requires human assistance to change.”
“And not all human’s will help,” Mordion said. “I think what the Wood is trying to tell me is that it requires its own theta-space permanently, so that it can be the great Forest all the time, without having to rely on human’s.”
“But that cannot be done!” Yam cried out
“I can do it.” said Mordion. “But I shall need help from the Earth people here. And you too, Hume. You’re good with the Wood too.”
He was a little nervous at asking this strange new Hume to help, but Hume came over to him quite willingly. He seemed nervous too. “I’m horribly out of practice still,” he said. “You’ll have to take the lead.”
“Fair enough.” Mordion singled out the twelve or so outlaws from Earth and asked the Homeworld people to stand back. Vierran made a face at him, but she understood, to Mordion’s relief. The Earth people came to stand round him willingly enough, but they were nervous too.
“What exactly needs doing?” Sir John asked.
“The Wood let me experiment,” Mordion explained, “with taking a piece of a theta-field and moving it about. It even let me destroy the bed of the river that way. So I think something on those lines is what it needs.” The sunny beech leaves overhead rustled excitedly as he spoke. Mordion said confidently, “Hume and I will take this theta-space and spread it as wide as we can, and then try to harden it to make it permanent. The rest of you must think with us. First think large, and then when I nod, think diamond-hard. Can you do that?”