The Nonborn King (17 page)
Authors: Julian May
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Fantasy, #High Tech
Mercy saw Alken's drift at once "Royal progresses, they were called A grand political tool'" And again there came to her that strange feeling of dqa vu, the tantalizing certainty that she had seen Alken's crafty and triumphant face before Italy' The portrait in the palace in Firenze
"I'll do my royal progress before the coronation, not after," he was saying "I'll visit each city in turn and explain just how things are in this Many-Colored Land, using my own brand of friendly persuasion and sweet reason And a few surprises I've been cooking up'"
"And who could deny you to your face, my devious Shmmg One?" A current passed between Alken and Mercy Was the old wariness weakening against her better judgment. But he was a rare one'
"This maneuver could work." Culluket said "It has just the right mix of humble pie and regal condescension and blatant gall You go to the cities First, as an aspirant should, and then the city-lords may come confidently to you in recognition of your power "
Aiberonn nodded to the Interrogator "And we three to provide High Table prestige as we accompany Alken The Lady Creator's absence will be understandable "
"I like it," said Bleyn tersely "We have enough Tanu and human gold recruits now in Goriah to mount a respectable show of strength "
Alken refastened his cuffs and straightened his hat With an offhand PK chicane, he banished the moisture from all their garments and recreated the metapsychic umbrella "We'll sneak up the Garonne Valley very quietly, and ooze over into Spam And the first place we hit is Afaliah'"
Lady Morna was speechless Eadnar and Tirone radiated strong anxiety
"There's not that much danger." Alken reassured them "Celo's gang of mind-benders are strictly second-rate, and I can easily put the clamp on the old gaffer himself We'll put a fine face on it Pretend that we don't know how he's been undermining me I mean, he's never come right out with any blatant provocation Even his refusal of the Loving in vitation was medium-polite, and I can say we never received his letter "
Culluket said, "If Celo cracks, the others should fail into your lap like npe oranges "
"Ready for juicmg," the jester agreed "Well, how about it? What say we get back to Goriah and start polishing up the fancy armor'"
He launched them and their animals into the air, still fending off the rain, saying to Mercy, "I hope old Peliei and his sages are right about the rainy season being almost over I'm still a little green at levitating big groups And there aren't any computerized flight vectors to help a guy fly through soupy mountain passes in this Pliocene Exile "
Mercy laughed gaily "You'll manage somehow, my tricksy one " You nonbom kinglmg from far Dalnada six million years hence' And had some fine Italian genes migrated to stern Scotland? And had they gone on, frozen in vitro, to burgeon again in an obstetric lab on a Milieu planet, engendering this strange young man who was determined to make her his queen?
Whose portrait had worn Alken's face?
The train of nders sped through the sky toward Goriah, where glass turrets shone against a widening patch of blue The obsessive question gnawed at Mercy and spilled over into an madvertently projected thought.
Alken's mind was elsewhere, but the Interrogator responded with flawless courtesy, on her intimate mode.
May I assist your recollection with my special talent Lady Creator?
If you would Redactive Brother This maddening image. If you could sort out my memones and let me put a label to it.
A matter of utmost simplicity for a redactive specialist.
Oh! I'm glad the revelation amuses you Lady I must agree that the resemblance is remarkable What a dangerous-looking fellow that Florentine politician seems to be. Some day you must tell me all about him.
THE FARSEEING RAVEN RANGED ABOVE THE MAGHREB SHORE The rains had brought grass and drifts of pink and yellow flowers to the slopes, and all the gullies were turned into slim oases that seemed to point in astonishment toward the new blue sea The bird rejoiced. the many-colored landscape Natural beauty, more than anything else, helped her to keep the terrors at bay Aloft in spring sunlight, climbing the wind above this world she had helped to create, there was sanity and forgetfulness
She detected sentient life, and gold.
Her mind engendered a psychokinetic gale and she sped eastward The initial flare of life-aura fell below her farsensing threshold, but the predatory bird managed to track it into a wooded ravine with steep sides The scent of precious metal, living and dead, excited her to the point of madness She accelerated her metapsychic wind until black feathers npped from her pinions and she shrieked with pain and elation And then she arrived, calmed the air, and landed on an outcropping of rock near a trickling spring.
There in a tittle clearing, one Tanu castaway knelt beside another's body The raven studied them, feeling that she knew this pair
They were identical twins. This was clear in spite of the fearful head wounds that disfigured the corpse The weeping survivor was still beautiful, with the classic features of the Host of Nontusvel. He had evidently just returned from hunting, for the body of a fawn gazelle and a crude spear fashioned from a glass dagger tied to a sapling lay on the ground beside himHe wore rose-gold rags, and the dead twin was similarly dressed in remnants of Psychokinetic Guild finery.
It seemed that the dead man had been unwilling to wait for his brother to return with food- A clump of deadly pink narcissus growing beside the spring had been partially grubbed up, and one half-eaten bulb lay on the ground The gigantic raven lifted her shoulders. Her harsh call, pruuk pruuk, caused the mourner to look up, trembling and wide-eyed. With great interest, the raven perceived that this twin was literally half-wined. He and his brother had evidently shared a mental symbiosis of the utmost intimacy; they must have been capable of mighty feats before the Rood had smashed them and marooned them here in North Africa. But with the death of his brother, the living twin was reduced to a state of latency even lower than that of a "normal" human being.
The enormous bird glided down to stand near the head of the corpse. The bereaved Tanu stared mutely at the bird, his green eyes dim with tears and his mouth a taut square of anguish. Only when the raven's beak poised above the dead man's throat did the other cry out:
"Fian!"
She did know them, these rose-gold twins! A paroxysm of anger dissolved the bird body, and a slender human woman wearing blue glass armor stood there. She wore no helmet and her hair was a buoyant platinum cloud. Her eyes flashed with the wrath of Hecate.
Kuhal Earthshaker recognized her, too. He remembered the vast dark room inside the Coercer Guild stronghold, the massed force of Nontusvel's Host awaiting the human assault on the torc factory, the Lowlife saboteurs armed with iron. They had been led by this small awful woman. Kuhai remembered psychocreative detonations, falling masonry, mental and physical strife, and the glory of the Host victorious amid the smoke and blood, in spite of this female monster's power. This was Felice, who had slain his sister Epone and vowed lo destroy the entire Tanu race, only to fail defeated in Imidol's ambush and then submit to Culluket's torture.
Felice laughed. She held his puny consciousness as if in a pair of tweezers and poked among the wreckage.
Kuhal and Fian! My Beloved's brothers. What a funny kind of mind ... you were the left hemisphere and he was the right. A syzygy, an aion couple' Kuhal Earthshaker the Second Lord Psychokinetic and Fian Skybreaker his better half!
Her mad giggling coarsened into grating croaks. The great raven again flapped black wings and Kuhal cringed away, both hands gripping his golden torc.
Felice's mind-voice turned petulant:
But where is the Beloved where is he? I call and call and only the faraway devils and the nonbom Shining One answer. They try to trick me' I reject them. He is the only one I love and want! Where is he who willed my destruction and instead raised me to operant life?
Kuhal whimpered aloud. His broken identity teetered on the edge of dissolution.
Cull is gone! And Imidol is gone and Mayvar and the King and the Queen and the glorious Battlemaster' They are all gone. As dearFian my Self is gone and i/-am alone and powerless. You have conquered avenging DeathBird.
The raven's glittering eye seemed to wink. Once again her cruel beak approached dead Fian's throat. The knobbed catch of his golden collar rotated, impelled by Felice's PK, and the semicirelets opened. The bird jerked the gold freeNow the living twin groveled on the ground. His arms were wrapped protectively about his own neck. Derision colored the raven's thought:
Oh ... keep your torc for a while. Earthshaker.
She leapt into the air, carrying the gold, and set off for the Spanish mainland. Kuhal uttered a single mind-cry, so profound in its desolation that it rang from one end of the New Sea to the other. Then he collapsed unmoving.
104 THE NONBORN KINO
Felice crossed the Mediterranean and flew tirelessly into the Betic Range, up the valley where the swollen Prolo-Andarax raged through jungles on the flank of Mount Mulhacen. Even in the time of the Galactic Milieu, Mulhacen thrust above the rest of the Sierra Nevada and had small glaciers on its shaded slope. In the gentler Pliocene Epoch the mountain rose some 4200 meters, with snowfields only on the summit.
The bird flew higher and curved around to approach the north face. The growth of tropical hardwoods gave way lo laurel thickets. In more arid places there were pines and tangled rhododendrons bearing clusters of white or carmine blossoms. A sabertooth cat sunning itself on a rock yawned. Its slitted eyes followed the giant raven, puzzled by the glint of gold against the sky.
She rode an upwelling air current that let her view the distant turquoise embayment of the Gulf of Guadalquivir to the north. Beyond that hunched the Dark Mountains where wild Firvulag lived. She sideslipped, lost altitude, and dived toward the inviting gorge of the River Genii, nearly home at last after the long day's hunt- Rock thrushes and warblers trilled a welcome. Fat brown trout leaped in the river As usual, her friends waited outside the entrance to her lair. Otter with his gift of fish. Roe Deer and her child, who would share sweet milk. Yellow Panda holding tender bamboo shoots fetched all the way from the lowlands. Squirrel and Woodrat with nuts and mealy tubers. Dwarf Mastodon cheerfully waving a branch with gleaming purple fruits.
Felice stood before them and smiled, holding the golden torc- "See? Another one!"
The lynx. Pseudaelurus, rubbed adoringly against her bare legs. The other fnends, basking in the warmth of her mind, crowded close with their offerings. She accepted them all: the food, the garlands of flowers brought by the weaverbirds, the fragrant dned grass that the mice and coneys had heaped for a fresh sleeping couch. "Thank you! All of you," she said, dismissing them after they had had their fill of communion.
The sun set and a chilly wind began to blow from the Genii Canyon Several of the song sparrows lingered to sing to her while she kindled her fire with mental flame and got supper cooking. As often happened in the evening, the devil voices started in again, telling their lies and displaying their marvels, reminding her how they had helped when her strength failed at the sundering of the Gibraltar Isthmus
She ignored them, and presently the devils fell silent Mad she might be; but she wasn't foolish enough to mindspeak them on a far-carrying mode that might betray her precise whereabouts. Let them just try to tnangulate her' Let any of them try, the faraway devils, Aiken Drum, or even futile Elizabeth! Felice knew how to hide from them. (And she only called for the Beloved from high in the sky where there was no danger.)
The cooking fire fell to embers. She made the verandah area of her lair neal and then stood quietly for a moment under the brightening stars. It was good that the rain was nearly over. The flowers in her hair and around her neck exhaled a richer perfume now that they had begun to die, and that was good, too.
Felice took Fian's golden torc and entered the cleft in the mountain She could see quite well in pitch-darkness, but she wanted to enjoy the treasure at its best, and so she lifted two fingers and generated a bright flame of psychoenergy. The mica-laden rocks glistened. Her den was a talus-cave, not one carved by water, and the interior was perfectly dry Beyond her steeping place the way was blocked by a slab of rock weighing many tons. Felice waved the torc at it negligently and the rock slid aside.
In the smaller chamber behind, gold lay piled m heaps higher than her head: a Niebelung hoard acquired through four months of patient searching These thousands of exquisitely fashioned mind-amplifiers had once clasped the necks of Tanu and their privileged human minions, liking their latent brainpowers into metapsychic operancy. But now those proud tore wearers were dead in her Rood, their bodies swept from the submerged White Silver Plain and flung up for the scavengers to find, and Felice. She had robbed bodies rotting in the shallows and sought out skeletons buried in sill And when this plunder dwindled she hunted down wretched survivors and seized gold from those too weak to defend themselves from a bird with a body longer than a human ami. She fought them fairly and refrained from using her operant powers in offense. Beak and talons alone were usually sufficient to defeat the demoralized castaways who once had lorded it over the Many-Colored LandFelice pitched her new acquisition onto the nearest pile, There was a rich clang as the equilibrium was upset- Golden torcs went slipping and rolling in all directions, to reveal something else, haif'hidden in the tangle of precious metalShe lifted it easily in spite of its considerable weight. It was a great lance of gold-lustre glass, attached by a cable at its butt to a jeweled case, from which hung broken straps. Felice brandished the Spear and pressed one of the studs on the armrest. As usual, there was no result. Immersion in sail water had shorted out the photon weapon's power-supply module. It was as inoperative as it had been when Felice took it from the real Bright Lugonn at the Ship's Grave.