Golden Torc - 2 (8 page)

Damn...yes. I affirm.

Safe with me. Eventually get Sukey too. TurdflockTanu really bit it off when torced me. You know.

Suspected. But damn they get you if comdown mindunion crunch. Get us both if they decipher operant snuff sequence. Distract distract distract.

The mental exchange between Aiken and Elizabeth had occupied a fraction of a second. The arbiter bibendi was frantically jangling the chain of silence as the prankster in the shining suit strolled from his place at the High Table to a position beside Stein. When the tumult died away, the King said, "Speak, Aiken Drum."

The little man swept off his hat and bowed. Then he began to talk; and as he spoke aloud his mind played a subtle descant that somehow gave his ludicrous words credence, painting them with a mesmeric plausibility that disarmed even the most skeptical of the exotic audience.

"Now I know that my bidding has surprised you, friends! For not only is the deed itself an impudent thing, but you scarcely can understand how I know enough of the horrid Delbaeth to suggest his removal. It seems incredible to you, doesn't it, that a newly arrived little silver-torc can propose to do what so many of your own champions have failed of.

"Well, let me tell you how things are! I'm a different kind of human! You've never seen my like. Now, this big fellow who stands beside me is my friend. And I fear that the Good Queen is right in saying that he's not the kind who can wear your gray torc long and live. The coaching style of your fightingschool would undo all the redaction done by the little Sue-Gwen and the Lady Elizabeth to restore his sanity. And to save Stein, I'd take him from you. But not without offering a fair price in return.

"Now you've been probing me and pinching me and trying to peek inside me while I speak. And you've failed! Even King Thagdal has failed. Even Elizabeth can no longer probe me! And so you'd better know that the torc put on me at Castle Gateway set off a mental chain reaction that's still going on. I scared your Lord Creyn and I'm scaring you now. But don't fash yourselves! I don't fancy doing you any harm. In fact, I like almost all I see of this world, and the more I grow within, the better things seem to portend for all of us together. So wait until I have my say before you give in to the fear and try to swat me! First see how I can help you become even greater than before!

"Now, Delbaeth. I saw his Shape of Fire deep inside the Thagdal's mind. I was curious, and I studied it as we ate and drank and amused ourselves. And when the bidding started, I said to myself: Why not? And so I bid my services, following your own custom. I'm confident that I can exterminate this Firvulag menace. So I leave it up to all of you, friends-mental. And you, High King of the Tanu! I'll open myself for just a moment and let you look at what's growing in my skull. Then decide whether you want to treat me as a fellow mind-jouster, or as a slave ..."

He expanded to them all and they went rushing in. Elizabeth flowed over and around and through the exotics, rating an ironic acknowledgement from Aiken for her skill. The Tanu stumbled through incandescence, hardly aware of what the burgeoning mental sprouts showed promise of becoming. But Elizabeth knew.

Milieu well shot of you Aikenboy.

Pooh lass see how they run fewkin' psychelliptical blindmice.

No... one of them knows. See there?

Hah! Yes!... Who you anyhoo oldwomanmind?

I am Mayvar. I have been waiting for the likes of you since the coming of the Ship. I am ancient and I am ugly and I lead the Guild of Farsensors. Come freely to me for your initiation and it shall all be as you hope. Unless you are afraid... The chain of silence clanged. The Great Ones and all of the piddling, timorous inspectors went fleeing out of Aiken. He politely waited while Elizabeth and Mayvar withdrew, before slamming down the barrier once more.

"Shall we allow him?" roared King Thagdal.

"Slonshal!" the assembly responded.

"Shall we send him to the test, and shall the boldest of us witness his victory or destruction?"

"Slonshal!"

The King's voice fell to the threshold of audibility. "And who among us will dare to take him to kin and teach him our way, this perilously shining youth?"

Far down at the left end of the High Table a wand-thin figure arose. She came into the center of the hall leaning on a tall golden staff. Her gown was of a purple so deep as to be almost black, powdered with gold stars, and having a hood that concealed her hair but let the amazing ugliness of her features be fully revealed to the two humans waiting for her. "Mayvar Kingmaker will take him to kin," said the crone. "I'll see him to his gold and if he's kind, to more! Will you come with me, bright laddie? And will you bring your friend to learn the battlecompany's way, before the two of you together dare Delbaeth?"

"Stein!" cried Sukey.

The hag laughed. Her mind spoke to Aiken in the intimate mode.

Countercustom though it be I'll see that he alone has her if you fill your boast. Dionket and I are allied. Now are you coming?

The little man in the suit of gold extended both arms to the tall old Tanu woman. She bent to him and they kissed. Then they walked together from the hall, with Stein following as if in a dream a few paces behind. The arbiter bibendi gave a frantic signal and the musicians struck up a spirited dance tune. The magpies came cavorting to draw the stunned guests out onto the floor by sheer force.

At the High Table, Thagdal watched the strange trio leave through the door at the opposite end of the room. He had not moved so much as a muscle since the woman in purple had risen from the table. But then the opaque green eyes returned to life. Thagdal smiled and raised his cup and so did the remaining Exalted Personages occupying the thrones that flanked his.

"Shall we give Aiken Drum slonshal?" the King asked softly. "Or shall we wait a bit to see whether or not the Venerable Lady Mayvar has chosen rightly?"

His goblet tipped. Raspberry liquor poured onto the polished tabletop like fresh blood. Thagdal inverted his cup in the midst of the puddle, lurched to his feet, and vanished through a door concealed by draperies. The Queen hastened after him. Sukey came to Elizabeth, mind weeping but with dry eyes. "What's happened? I don't understand. Why have Stein and Aiken gone with that old woman?"

Patience little Mindsister I'll explain

"Kingmaker!" Bryan peered owlishly at the two human women, then raised his own jewel-eyed golden skull goblet with an unsteady hand. "Mayvar Kingmaker, Creyn called her! Bloody damn legend. Bloody damn world. Slonshal! Long live the King!"

He tilted the dregs down his throat and fell prone onto the table.

"I think," said Elizabeth, "that the party is over."

4

QUEEN NONTUSVEL AND THREE OF HER CHILDREN WALKED IN the garden before noon, while it was still cool, and if the royal lady was apprehensive, she kept her fear well veiled. The Queen plucked a coral-colored blossom from a honeysuckle and held it out with an invitational thought. A hummingbird came, its feathers flashing iridescent blue and green when it darted through sunbeams. It drank nectar and suffered the Queen to tickle its avian brain. When it was done it hovered for a moment before her face, buzzing, and then whisked away into the lemon tree.

"Those things are vicious, Mother," Imidol said. "They'll go for your eyes if they catch even a hint of threat. We should never have allowed them out of the aviary."

"But I love them," the Queen said, laughing as she tossed away the drained flower. "And they know it. They would never try to hurt me." This morning she was wearing a soft blue robe. Her flame-colored hair was bound into a braided diadem. "You're too trusting," Culluket said. And there it was, the opening wedge the other two had been waiting for. Imidol, the youngest and most aggressive, rushed in with all the natural force of the metacoercive.

"Even creatures that appear to be harmless can be dangerous. Consider human women! When they're cornered, when they're confronted with multiple psychic shocks, they may strike out rather than subside into the complaisant mode we've come to expect from them."

"This new operant one could be a serious menace," Riganone cautioned.

Culluket took his mother's arm as they came to a wide flight of rustic steps that led to a grassy area fully enclosed by flowering shrubs. A small marble pavilion stood in the center of the lawn.

"Let's sit here for a moment, Mother. We must speak of this. It can't be postponed."

"I suppose not." Nontusvel sighed. Culluket was smiling his reassurance and she radiated affection in return. Of these three grown children, he resembled her the most physically, having the same wide-set sapphire eyes and high brow. But in spite of his beauty and his great redactive skill, members of the Host rarely sought him out for the healing, even though he was their brother. Was it true, what the others said, that Culluket was too zealous in his scrutiny of pain?

Nontusvel said, "Surely we have the resources among the Host to control this Elizabeth, for all her torcless power. When she sees more of our ways, she will surely unite with us. It's only reasonable."

O Mother misapprehend! Woe.

Screen up Cull? Listeners!

Upfast. Imi shunt those gardeners away. Riga show her.

"You mustn't whisper behind my mind," the Queen chided them. "This mental jumble! I taught you better, dear ones. Now, an orderly disquisition, if you please."

Riganone the farsensor rose from the marble bench and paced back and forth, tall and mauve, without meeting her mother's mind in the intimate mode.

"Early this morning, as I had planned, I observed the awakening of the woman Elizabeth. I knew that her screens would be misty in half-sleep and hoped that I would be able to penetrate her deeply and without trace during the few moments that she was vulnerable. I undertook the task, rather than Culluket, because my combination of farsensing and redactive faculties is perhaps most congruous to Elizabeth's own, and thus least likely to be detected by her... I believe that I succeeded. I observed her reactions to the events that took place at the supper last night, as well is her later response to the removal of her hot-air balloon and other survival gear from her chambers. As to the first: She views our simple culture with condescension and disdain. She finds our manners barbarous, our mental patterns adolescent, and our sexual mores incompatible with the ritual monogamy and sublimation fostered among the metapsychic elite of her Milieu. She despises us. She will never willingly integrate. She rejects and abominates the role of royal consort. There was something deep within her motivation that I was unable to con, but the fact of her resolution was clear and immutable. She will never submit to the new genetic scheme hatched by Gomnol. As to our abstraction of her escape gear, she still hopes to flee from Muriah in some manner and become a Lowlife."

Relief gratification! "But, my dears! We couldn't ask for a better outcome! My greatest anxiety was that she should aspire to be queen." And I... come at last to share the fate of Boanda and Anear-Ia.

Never! cried the three sibling minds.

The Queen expanded to embrace them: Dearest children flowers of my Host.

Culluket said aloud, "Nevertheless, we mustn't delude ourselves.

Even without ambition, Elizabeth menaces our dynasty.

I have been farspeaking to Nodonn in Goriah and he agrees. As matters now stand, our noble brother is the obvious heir to the Thagdal even in spite of his flaw, and we shall amplify our power beneath Nodonn's aegis. But we could not hope to prevail against a line of operant metapsychics of the type that Elizabeth and the Thagdal would engender. You can be sure that Gomnol is quite aware of this."

The redactor projected two genetic diagrams. "The first shows the offspring if Elizabeth is homozygous. Greg-Donnet says that metapsychic operancy is an autosomal dominant with full penetrance."

"All of the children will be operant!" Nontusvel exclaimed in dismay.

Culluket continued. "The second diagram assumes Elizabeth has only a single allele for operancy. Half the offspring would then be operant. Inbreed the operants of the first generation, and the next yields three operants out of four. Continue the consanguineous matings, and you have a rival host of torcless metapsychics ready to oppose us in the third generation!" Riganone's mind queried: Incest?

Culluket showed his sister a bleak smile. "The scheme is Gomnol's. He is hardly one to scruple at our Tanu taboos. And the Thagdal grows old and ever more subject to the filthy Coercer Lord's human wiles."

The four minds paused to reprise the old infamy. A human upstart as President of the Coercer Guild! Poor old Leyr hadn't had a chance against him.

"A good thing the wretch is sterile." Young Imidol's hatred was vividly displayed. "Gomnol would go for Elizabeth himself! Defiler of our sacred blue and gold!"

We depart from the immediate matter Brother.

"Culluket is right," said the Queen. "But what are we to do with Elizabeth?"

Visions: A red balloon soaring eastward from Aven, over the Deep Lagoon to the long isle of Kersic... A sailing craft manned by Highjohn, or even by the woman herself, fleeing south to Africa... A furtive figure in a red jumpsuit making its way westward on foot along the high spine of the Aven Peninsula, guided by ramas into the wilderness of Iberia... Consequents: The balloon swiftly spied out and pursued by flying psychokinetics loyal to the King rather than to the Host.

The escaping boat retrieved with even greater ease by the same

PK adepts, the sails of their cutters filled by mind-conjured

gales. The woman fleeing on foot presenting a knottier problem

and how far could she go with the entire countryside aroused, and four hundred kilometers to travel before reaching the mainland of Spain? She would have to skirt the large city of Afaliah at the peninsula's base, escape its Hunt and plantation security forces. Still, if she did reach the Catalan Wilderness

. . .

"She would be out of the Thagdal's reach and out of ours," Culluket said, "but subject to capture by the Firvulag or even the heretic Minanonn. And this last, I submit, would be an even greater calamity than the one facing us now." The Queen's kindly heart shrank from the next question.