Golden Torc - 2 (22 page)

"... Kid, what about the friggerty monster?"

"Will you shut your snoose-chompin' yap? It's tough work, doing these different kinds of mind-bendery all at the same time."

"Sorry."

They hung from the roof of the cataract shaft by their tiny claws. The world was utterly, appallingly black. The waterfall made a hissing sound as it sprayed into the mountain's gut. A faraway rumble down below announced its drainage into an abyssal sump.

The two bats could "see" by means of the sounds. At last Aiken said, "It's okay. They're all going down to the campsite. Nobody's making a real effort to farsense us. The least little screen'll take care of them now...Trouble is, Steinie, I don't really know how good at farsensing any of these Tanu biggies are. I'm certain that most of the exotics can't farsee underground. That's why the Firvulag live in caves and burrows. But the King, Nodonn, that damn Ran who does the PK stunts-they just might be able to figure some way to spot us through a klom of solid rock...just like I can."

"Jeezuss God. Will you lay off the bragging and scan out where that torch-ass spook is holed up? Or don't you care if we get incinerated?"

"We're not gonna get incinerated. Delbaeth isn't waiting in some cranny to ambush us. He's gone home. He knows nobody in this Exile world is stupid enough to follow him into the caves."

"Ha ha. All right, Ace. Now that we're here-where the hell are we?"

"We're in a better position to nab the spook than we were before, hemmed in by that mob of exotics. This is just the kind of chance I hoped for ever since we took off on this dumb monster hunt! A chance to go after Delbaeth without the rest of 'em watching how I kill him!"

"You're not gonna zap him with your superbrain?"

"Betcher sweet ass I'm not. I wouldn't have a chance in a mind-to-mind with Delbaeth. Neither would any of those Tanu turds-unless the Firvulag was taken completely by surprise. And fat chance of that happening, with that friggerty circus parade of three hundred knights of the Round Table whooping after him. Nope! There's only one way to take the Shape of Fire. My little old sweetheart, Mayvar, knew it." "Well how, for chrissake?"

"I'm gonna cheat. Come on. Let's get outa here to some place where it's flat and dry and I'll show you." The two bats spiraled down the shaft. At the bottom they turned into pallid eyeless fish and went Whisking through the flooded tunnel of the sump, "seeing" the twists and turns of the rock pipe by means of pressure changes and the reflection of water currents, rather than the echolocation they had used while they were bats. They traveled for more than a kilometer before the stream broke into a large airfilled space. One fish leaped from the water-flopped back. Then both jumped up and metamorphosed into bats. A few moments later they were in human form again, sitting on a rock shelf beside the underground river while a small ball of incandescence hung in midair to furnish light. The cave ceiling two or three meters above was covered with a fantastic growth of crystal sodastraw formations, thin and delicate, each with a pendant drop of water at the tip.

Aiken wasted no time admiring the scenery. He took the golden box from his shirt, manipulated the lid in some tricky PK fashion, and showed Stein what was inside: a single thin gray object about twenty cents in length, vaguely resembling a silvery length of punk with a wire stem.

Stein frowned. "You know what that looks like? When I was a kid back in Illinois we had-"

"That's what it is. Just one of these little things is gonna kill that shitfire Firvulag stone dead. A long time ago, some poor sucker brought this through the time-gate, thinking he'd liven up the Pliocene a little bit. Since they're perfectly harmless, the people at the auberge had no objection. But when the guy stepped into Exile, his stuff was confiscated-and all but this one destroyed before Mayvar got hold of it. You know why? Because here, things like this are deadly! Not to humans not even torc-wearing humans-but to the exotics."

"Iron." Stein was awestruck. "No iron tools here, no iron implements, nothing iron at all. All glass, vitredur, bronze or other alloy, silver, gold, whatnot. But never any iron! Hell-why didn't anybody notice?"

"How much iron did we use back in the Milieu in places where it showed? We were almost out of the iron age. You know what the Tanu and Firvulag call the stuff? Blood-metal! One prick and they're goners. Or, in the case of this thing-"

"Jeez, yes!" Stein exclaimed. His expression became intent. "You're gonna do it, kid. I'm a believer at last. And after we finish off this Delbaeth, you're gonna help me escape with Sukey. And if any dumb Tanu tries to stop us-"

"You stupid squarehead! You forgot your gray torc? And Sukey's silver one? The Tanu could track you anywhere. Relax! I got other plans. We'll all make it if you don't pull any more great moves like you did with Tasha."

Aiken closed the golden box and put it back into his shirt. "Now sit still and shut up. I gotta track Delbaeth, and this X-ray vision thing is a hell of a lot tougher than you might think. Good thing these mountains aren't granite."

"Naw. Limestone, sandstone, medium-grade schists, and other metamorphics down below at this end of the Med. Don't forget I used to work these rocks when I was a crust driller."

"Shut up, dammit."

The two of them sat there in their underwear. The psychoenergy flare went out as Aiken concentrated all of his power in his seeker sense. The only sounds were the drips from the slender calcite pipelets.

Could I reach out, too? Stein wondered. Sukey had told him it was love that did it before, that broke through Dedra's coercive control. Was love strong enough to cross the thousand kilometers that separated him from Sukey, hidden back there in Muriah in the catacombs beneath Redact House? First, visualize her in the mind's eye. (Easy when your optic nerves are getting input zilch.) There she is. Now tell her that you love her, that it's going to be all right, that you're safe, that you're going to come back, that you're going to win... "I found him, Steinie! I found the fuckard!"

The astral light snapped on. Stein passed a great hand over his eyes and wiped it on his hip. The attempt at farspeech hadn't worked. His head hurt.

Reddish hair standing up like a charged mop, eyes seeming to snap with excitement, the trickster sprang to his feet and pointed toward a solid rock wall. "That direction. Maybe eight, nine kloms and a couple hundred meters lower down. There's this fuzzy blob-a mental aura, I guess. Only living thing anywhere around. It's gotta be him."

Stein sighed. "And all we have to do is walk through the wall."

The golliwog was apologetic. "That's not my act, Steinie. I can't do interpenetration. Can't zap mountains, either, not so's you'd notice. We'll have to walk, fly, or swim. If Delbaeth got there from here, so can we. This whole lousy range is honeycombed with caves. It'll take a while finding our way through the maze." He looked grim. "But it better not take too long or we'll be into the Truce. That's when Firvulags go outa season until Grand Combat time."

Stein looked at his wrist chronometer. "Half past eighteen hours, September twenty-seven, six million B.C."

"Checko."

"Just tell me one thing before you do your Dracula act, kid. Do we really turn into bats and fish and things when you say shazoom, or is it some kinda shape-shifting illusion thing and do we keep our regular bods all the time?"

"Damned if I know," said Aiken Drum. "Hang onto that food and beer, pally-we're off!"

They searched.

Tunnels dry and flooded; great galleries where flowstone and stalactites and rippling curtains of thin rock fell like frozen creations of peach and vanilla ice cream; constricted slots and tortuous low corridors studded with sparkling calcite teeth; tumbled rockfalls where a cave ceiling had collapsed into piles of house-sized chunks; partially drained streamways gleaming with mud; dead-end holes that had to be retraced; tempting passages that took them in the wrong direction.

They ate, and after a while, they slept. They woke and continued flying, swimming, walking, climbing. The food and beer were finished midway through the second day. There was plenty of water, but no bugs for bats, no edible bits floating in the subterranean waters that the men-fish could swallow to assuage the all-too-real spasms of their possibly illusory stomachs.

Aiken's mental screen was now projected only between

them and the concentration of psychic energy that presumably

marked Delbaeth. This hardly seemed to shift position at all

now; perhaps the Shape of Fire took very long naps between

sorties, or perhaps the fuzzy aura marked something else altogether...

The bats flew down a long, sloping tunnel. For the first time since their descent, they were aware of a current of air against their flapping wing membranes.

The mental voice of Aiken spoke to Stein on the intimate human mode:

Don't think one solitary thing. Keep your mind quiet if you value your sweet ass. I don't think he can hear me on this mode but any squeak outa you would hit him, and wall to wall.

The two bats, now totally enveloped in the heaviest mindbarrier that Aiken could conjure, came to a ninety-degree bend in the corridor. They fluttered around the corner and saw light ahead-orangey yellow and flickering gently. The passage was dry. There were huge footprints in the dust.

Drifting among the rock formations, the bats approached the lighted area. It was a large open camber full of looming monoliths almost like shrouded human figures, together with complex tiers of flowstone that resembled gigantic gilled fungi. The bats flew up toward the ceiling to a ledge that jutted far out over the central area of the floor. There, hidden from the sight of anyone below, the bats turned into Aiken and Stein. Silence. Don't move. Don't rattle that damn sword scabbard. Don't do one friggerty thing.

Aiken crept toward the edge of the formation on his stomach and peered down. A large fire burned within a well-made circular hearth. Piles of barkless tree trunks were neatly stacked in an alcove. Other parts of the cavern were furnished with a table, chairs, a bedstead of gargantuan proportions having a canopy and side curtains of the finest Tanu brocade, and any number of carved wooden chests and shelves. Leathern bags bulging with mysterious contents stood at the base of one pillar.

Near another was a framework hung with fish netting edged with wooden floats. The floor was carpeted in glossy pelts-some dark, some spotted. Most of the dirty dishes on the table seemed to be large mollusk shells.

Drawn up close to the fire was a species of overstuffed chair upholstered in gray hide. In the chair, quite asleep, was a humanoid exceeding the tall Tanu in height and vastly more robust of build. His head had a tangled brick-colored mane of hair and a bushy beard. He wore a leather shirt with the front lacing open, showing the reddish pelt of his chest. His breeches were scarlet. He had taken off his boots and extended his huge feet toward the fire. Now and then the toes wiggled. A cyclic noise reminiscent of a malfunctioning ore crusher told Aiken Drum that Delbaeth, the Shape of Fire, most formidable wild Firvulag in the southern reaches of the Many-Colored Land, was snoring.

Aiken opened the golden box and removed the pencil-slim gray object. Hefting the little thing, he seemed to calculate a trajectory. He ignited the tip of his secret weapon with his creative metafunction.

The sparkler burst into vivid white light, throwing out glowing iron filings like tiny meteorites. Aiken held the firework at arm's length.

Down below, Delbaeth surged from his chair, bellowing. His body, nearly three meters tall, was transformed into a blazing mass that reached fiery arms toward the ceiling ledge and began to mold a ball of fire between incandescent paws.

Aiken threw the sparkler, guiding it with whatever PK he could muster through the thick psychic screen he had erected around Stein and himself. Delbaeth's fireball arced up, dead on target, and bounced.

There was another echoing cry from the monster. The fragile firework struck his flaming form and fell to the cave floor, still spitting sparks. Delbaeth's fire was extinguished. He crumpled slowly, almost seeming to melt into the ground, and did not move again.

"Come on!" Aiken cried.

The two bats flew down and became men once more. They stood beside the awesome carcass, and Stein said, "See where it hit him? Right on the forehead, because he was looking up. One tiny little burn with a hot iron wire!"

There was a leather bucket full of water beside the table. Aiken hoisted it and poured a stream over the still-coruscating sparkler. It hissed and went out. A hole had been burned in one fur rug, ruining it.

"You did it!" Stein swept up the little man and crushed him in a bear hug. "You did it!" Dropping Aiken, Stein howled to the stalactites: "Sukey, babe, we did it!"

Aiken frowned, then laughed out loud. "I'll be damned, Viking. She did hear you! Maybe you can't pick her up, but I get this little weak farspeak whisper. Aw...you'll never guess. She loves you."

Stein grabbed up the bucket and emptied it over Aiken. "Thanks," said the golliwog. "I needed that. Now cut off his head and let's get out of here. We've gotta find the shortest route to the open air and fly back to bedoozle the royalty. Not to sweat, though! We're one whole day early!"

Stein began to draw his great bronze sword from its amberstudded sheath. But when the blade was halfway out he froze and tilted his head. "Listen! Hear that?... It's a lot clearer now than it was up next to the ceiling with that spook snoring." Aiken cocked an ear. A slow, deep boom vibrated the rocks.

Several seconds passed. Boom. Like the tolling of some huge bell the sound repeated. Boom. Slow. Inexorable.

"Do you know what that is, kid?" Stein asked. "It's surf. Somewhere just the other side of that rock wall is the Atlantic Ocean."

THE END OF PART ONE

1

FELICE WALKED THE RUINS OF FINIAH.

By the time that the Truce was in its third day, the minor eruption of lava from the old Kaiserstuhl volcano had come to an end. Streams of once molten rock solidified into clinkery masses-fat, rounded, and branched like monstrous roots where they had flowed out from the central mineworkings into the streets and arcades of the devastated city. It had rained heavily. Buildings that had been white or golden and rose, or blue-green and silver with the colors of the Creative Lord Velteyn, were now streaked and smeared with ashy mud. Ash had smothered the gardens and blasted the foliage from most of the ornamental trees. The central plaza, where Felice prowled, was a tangle of burnt-out shops, shredded awnings, broken carts and tradesmen's booths, and bodies half-buried in cinders and muck. Giant ravens as long as Felice's arms pecked at the swollen remains of chalikos, hellads, ramapithecines, and people. The scavengers were not disturbed by the passing of the small woman dressed in shining black. Perhaps they took her for one of themselves.