Golden Torc - 2 (43 page)

The method...

She looked over distances. There could be no return to Muriah, the White Silver Plain, and the Combat. She could deal with many of them in direct confrontation, but never with them all. And it would have to be all.

Under the soaring balloon the Southern Lagoon narrowed toward the Long Fjord that lay south of Cartagena during the early Pliocene. Milky waters, dull-gleaming in early sunlight, had swallowed her gray torc. The alkali flats were punctuated by eroded volcanic necks from which jagged walls of old lava radiated. Where the short Spanish rivers dropped from the Betic Cordillera, the shores were stained with black and brown and vermilion alluvial fans. Receding on her right hand lay Aven. The Dragon Range of its midsection was still visible back in the haze. Somewhere on the other side of the peninsular neck would be the large city of Afaliah and the rich plantations of its dependencies.

Were human minions even now tending herds or overseeing ramas who mined ores in those mountains? Would they recognize the drifting speck of the balloon for what it was? Probably not-but her illusion-spinning power rendered the big red envelope invisible, just in case. Firvulag? There would be wild ones in the Betic highlands who had scorned to attend the Combat. But they could be no threat at such a distance, and their powers of farspeech were so weak that they would surely be incapable of spreading any alarm. Tanu? None. They were at the Grand Combat. All of them. All gathered together on the salty plain deep in the Empty Sea...

Yes, of course.

That was how. And so fitting, like a reverse birth, with the amniotic flow initiating. It would not be easy, even for her as she was now. But-yes! Stein had been a crust driller. He would know the great earth faults, the zones of instability. She smiled up at him. The bright-blue Viking eyes stared unseeing ahead. Every five seconds they slowly blinked. The unconscious mind of him below Elizabeth's expert restraints cycled easily, at peace. Felice could now admire the Grand Master's handiwork that had shunted to harmlessness all but the sustenance circuits of the gray torc. There remained certain grave dysfunctions within Stein's brain, but they were capable of being healed.

And the little woman? His wife, of course. Gently, Felice went probing among the secret places of Sukey's sleeping mind. After a time she found the well-concealed thing that would motivate Stein to help her engineer the murder of the Tanu race.

The estuary below narrowed rapidly. The fjord, deep and blue, snaked through a region of ancient vulcanism that linked Europe with Africa. Eroded cindercones, ash beds, and areas of dark rubble made a kind of sill across this part of the Mediterranean Basin. West of the fjord-pierced barrier, below the region that would be called the Costa del Sol by inhabitants of Elder Earth, was a sizable lowland; there lay the islet-studded Great Brackish Marsh, with its areas of open water where Bryan and Mercy had once anchored their yacht. Farther to the west the waters shoaled into playas and then blazing alkali deserts. The active volcano of Alboran poked up amidst barren wilderness, smoking in a desultory fashion. Beyond was a deep evaporite basin; and then the abrupt southerly curve of the Betic Range, which joined the two continents at the narrow and precipitous Gibraltar Isthmus.

A thin forest grew along the fjord. It looked like a lonely and pleasant place to stop.

Scanning Sukey's mind once again, Felice perceived the simple maneuvers needed to land the balloon. Heat reduction and cutoff, vent action, her own override of the vagrant lowlevel wind currents that threatened to send the balloon into an undesirable area. There! Into a sheltered nook below one of the old volcanic cones. A spring greened level and ashy soil. The bottom of the gondola touched down, lifted, came securely to rest. Holding the envelope in position with her PK, she tugged the deflation cable. The apex gaped and residual hot air vomited from bellying scarlet fabric. A normal human would have seized a line and jumped out to deck the still-stiffened envelope so that it could be secured or completely deflated; but the masterclass psychokinesis of Felice simply lowered the thing by mind-power. The touch of a stud began evacuation of the structural members of the envelope. Within a few minutes the decamole bag of the red balloon stretched tidily at one side of the gondola, flat and expired.

"Wake up, everybody!" Felice cried brightly. "Breakfast time!"

Bryan had been imprisoned in a comfortable suite in the highest level of Redactor Guild headquarters. The sleeping chamber was windowless, extending into the flank of the mountain; but the sitting room had a balcony that overlooked the southern section of Muriah and the orchards, olive groves, and suburban villas that extended from the city outskirts to the land's end promontory where Brede's small residence stood.

Beyond that curved the White Silver Plain. He could not see the Combat, of course. The ritual battlefield lay nearly three kilometers away and below the peninsular rim. But as the sun climbed there were occasional heliographic flashes from that direction; and now and then, when the wind shifted, he thought he heard distant sounds of thunder and music.

If truth were told, Dr. Bryan Grenfell was deeply disappointed at missing the Grand Combat, even though the handsomely sinister Culluket had explained that he was going to play a very special role later in the celebration and so had to remain offstage, as it were, until his time had come. But almost every anthropologist delights in ritual spectacle, and Bryan, whose specialty ordinarily kept him busy studying statistics and other less colorful manifestations of culture, was at heart a sucker for a good show. He had looked forward to this stylized brawl between the exotic races... but here he sat in glum conventry on the balcony, imbibing pale Glendessarry with the sun still on the wrong side of the yardarm, while almost every other human or exotic inhabitant of Muriah was out cheering the preliminary sporting events that were taking place down on the sparkling salt.

She came through the locked door, found him, and laughed.

"Mercy!"

"Ah, your face, my darling love! That dear, astonished face!"

She ran to him, trailing cerise and gold gossamer, and reached up to kiss him. Her wired and jeweled headdress was so elaborate that he felt he was caught with her inside some fantastic bird cage where dangling ornaments tinkled and chimed. With her auburn hair concealed beneath a golden hood, she looked unfamiliar, alien: Lady of Goriah, wife to the godlike Battlemaster, aspirant President of Creators-all these, easily. But where was his lady passing by?

"Silly juggins," she said. There was a snap and she stood transformed, wearing the simple long dress of the portrait he had carried next to his heart.

"And is this better?" she inquired. "Now do you know me?" He let his arms gather her in, and it was as always (again), the soaring into light and the inevitable fall into darkness, from which he returned a little later each time.

They sat together on a shaded divan on the balcony when he had recovered, and he explained to her about the picture he had used in searching for her, and the strange reactions of the people he had shown it to. They laughed over that.

"I tried to imagine your life in the Pliocene when the computer first gave me your portrait, back in the auberge," he said. "You and your dog and the sheep and the strawberry plants and all. I visualized you in some idyllic pastorale... and I'm afraid there were even times when I was Daphnis and you were Chloe, God save the mark."

Once more she laughed, and then kissed him.

"But it wasn't at all like that," he said. "Was it?"

"You really want to know." The sea-eyes were opalescent this day, still slightly misted from the ecstasy. When he nodded she told him how it had been-how the Tanu examiner at Castle Gateway had been astonished, then terrified at the result of her mental assay, throwing the entire establishment into a swivet. How she had been granted the unprecedented honor of being flown to Muriah, where the members of the High Table had themselves confirmed her enormous creative potential. "And it was decided," she said, "that after I had been filled with the Thagdal's grace, I would go to Lord Nodonn. He came to fetch me, having in his mind to make me just another of his human ladies. But when we met-" A smile of wintry satisfaction touched Bryan's lips. "Enchantress."

"No... but he could see within my brain the differences. There was love, too. But Nodonn would not have made me his true wife because of that alone."

"Of course not," Bryan said dryly, and once again she laughed.

"He and I are not as romantic as you, dear Bryan!"

Not as human, something hiding inside him twitted. She said, "By the time we reached his domain of Goriah we were pledged to each other. He took me as consort in a faerie wedding that seemed the fulfillment of every wonderful dream I'd ever had. Ah, Bryan! If you could have seen it! All of them dressed in rose and gold, and the flowers and the singing and the joy ..."

He held her tight against his breast, looking over her head to the horizon where the mirror flashes were. He knew he was dying of her, and that it didn't matter. The elfin lover was as nothing, her metapsychic powers were nothing, not even her imminent ascension to the High Table of exotic nobility mattered. With one small portion of her heart she loved him, and she had promised that he could stay until the end. She shattered his reflection with a droll commonplace. "Deirdre had pups! Four of them. They're all over the palace, the little devils, snow-white and full of the dickens. Fortunately, we Tanu love dogs."

He had to burst out laughing, restored to the still improbable here and now of a bright sunny morning, October 31, six million years before the time of their birth.

"Shall I show you the games?" she asked. And then in quick explanation, "Ah, no, love-I can't take you to the White Silver Plain as yet. But I can project images of what's happening for us to watch together. It'll be just like a glorified Tri-D, but with all the sensations. I needn't return to the others until tomorrow, when they have the manifestation of powers."

"And you go up against Aluteyn?"

"Yes, my dear. But I'll win over him, never fear. The poor man is old, more than three thousand, and tired. His time has come. He's as much as admitted to Nodonn that he'll welcome the life-offering."

"And will the Thagdal as well?" Bryan asked her. "Aiken and Nodonn are bound to meet in this Combat. No matter which one wins, the King himself must be challenged by the victor. I can't believe that Nodonn would continue to defer to Thagdal after a victory over Aiken Drum."

Mercy's bright gaze turned aside. "Nor would he. If my Lord wins-and he must win!-he will become king and restore the old ways. Matters have... progressed too far for him to consider any other course."

For only a moment, the scientist in him prevailed. "Mercy, the old ways can't be restored. The human advent, the adulteration of the exotic culture by our technology, the hybridization of the races-it can't be reversed! Nodonn must see that."

"Hush, Bryan. No more of such portentous talk!" She waved her hand and the distant tournament sprang to life in the thin air beyond the parapet. "Look! We'll watch the games together and between times you'll love me again and again from the excitement! But don't fear that your civilized sensibilities will be too affronted, for no people meet death in the First Day Events. All the wonderful violence is only for the sake of sport."

"So I'm civilized, am I?" Laughing they fell back again onto the cushions. All around spun the preliminary contests of the Combat-the Tanu knightly jousts and chariot races and chaliko races; the ramshackle Firvulag hurling competition and the Little People's gnomish version of highland games; the Contest of Animals in which Tanu and Firvulag and gold-torc humans matched purely natural skills against fierce Pliocene beasts (and could Bryan believe his dimming eyes when he saw who was to be the opponent of the giant ape?); and then the Fray of Warrior-Maids, wherein Tanu and human gold-torc women contended against one another in the lists with horrific illusions and genuine weapons, stopping only short of ritual decapitation so that the losers could be restored by the Skin in time for the real hostilities on the day after tomorrow. Bryan and Mercy watched the spectacle all afternoon and on into the night, for no one seemed to sleep during Grand Combat time when the days lasted from dawn to dawn. And she was right about the excitement inflaming them, and when she rose to go he was so sated that he could not be roused. "Oh, you've truly found that which you searched for," she told him, kissing his forehead. "So you won't begrudge me my share of the bargain, will you? Wait until they come for you, dear love. And after it's over, we'll meet one final time." Her magnificent court costume restored, she went out through the locked door just as she had entered.

4

AS THE LAST OF THE CHARIOT RACES ENDED, THERE WERE DEAFening cheers from the Tanu stands and flower garlands draped around the necks of the three blue-dyed chalikos; and a trophy, of course, and the royal accolade from the King himself. Only the bookies reacted to the victory with understandable ennui-not that the race was fixed, but what kind of odds could you give against the Queen? They always let her win the last one. "Congratulations, Nonnie," Thagdal said, kissing her as she alighted from the gilded wicker vehicle. "You showed 'em again, old girl."

But he didn't want to watch the Tanu youngsters in their point-to-point, or the humans and hybrids boat-racing while Fian Skybreaker whistled a breeze and the noble ladies shuddered delightedly at the occasional dump into the perilous chop. They debated for a moment whether to view the Firvulag cabertossing or the sword dance-for there was always the chance that a careless contestant would split a gut or get a foot chopped off. But even these diverting possibilities had little appeal to the King.

"I'd rather just go into the pavilion and take it easy for a while," he confessed. "I'm in a rotten mood, Nonnie." She led him away. Once they were secluded within the white silk, she wove metapsychic screens and blotted out the carnival hurly-burly. They served themselves lunch, for none of the little ramas were allowed on the White Silver Plain lest their sensitive minds be damaged by the emotional tempests of the Combat; and the gray-torc servants and barenecks, by long tradition, were free at this time to watch the games and indulge their gambling lust.