The Nonborn King (35 page)

"Stop it. Grandpa'"

The old man scowled at her, defiant and half-fearful "Just a joke. Damn cow, no sense of humor "

They ate The dusk was long in coming Outside, the birds began to sing and Huldah announced she was going to the waterfall to bathe "And when I come back, I don't want to find you here, Grandpa Take your things to the cork-oak grove It'll be nice there. If you try to spy tonight, you'll be sorry "

Isak watched her go, mouthing impotent curses He gathered up his sleeping robe and tossed into it fire-making tools, a water bottle, a broken chunk of ash-bread, and his set of three vitredur woodcarving knives Then he shuffled to the rear of the cave, bundle over his shoulder, and stood over the supine invalid.

"You're in for it tonight. Lord God The May madness has our Huldah in thrall!" He laughed until he fell into a fit of coughing, hawked, and spat The foul gobbet landed only a few centimeters from the God's beautiful face.

With great effort, he spoke "Who is Huldah? What is she?"

"Aha' Ha ha ha'" the old man exulted "Want to know what ground your by-blow's sprouted in. do you? Well, Lord God, her grandmother was one of you! Almost. When I was a newtransported bareneck slavey in the plantations of the Dragon Range on Aven, they sent me to thin the antelope herds. I found a baby exposed there on the mountainside. I didn't know it, but it was a changeling. A Firvulag half-blood that some poor human trull of yours had given birth to, the way it happens sometimes. In more civilized parts, I understand the Firvulag babies are turned over to the Little Folks. But on Aven, where no Firvulag live .. .Well, I found the mite and look her to my hut. I had a pet antelope with a kid, so there was milk. in the beginning I was just experimenting, you see. The changeling could shift shapes even when it was tiny, and sort of read my mind as well. It knew I was lonesome, and it found I liked its human-looking body best. It grew up fast, anxious to please." Isak hunkered down beside the motionless figure. The God

said. "Huldah?"

"No, no, not yet. What happened, this changeling was a kind of a pet at first, and then a friend and servant, and then.. -well, the way you Tanu bastards don't give us bareneck men hardly any women, when the changeling was big enough to screw, I screwed it. It liked me. I named it Borghild after a girl I knew back in the Milieu. We were happy out there in the mountains, me doing my stupid herding job and the changeling doing her best to look pretty, just like the other Borghild. Then one day, another guy found out about her and wanted his share. When I beat him up, he told the overseer. But by the time the gray-torc troopers came, me and Borghild were way to hell and gone over the Dragon Range, and we made a skin boat with a little sail and came to Kersic. And then she had a baby, and then she died."

"Baby Huldah?"

"Not yet, dammit. I named the baby Karin. She grew up fast, too, and we lived in a Lowlife settlement we found here on the island. Karin was enough of a Firvulag to scare off the other guys in the village. They were afraid of her and afraid of me. We did pretty good in those days. And then Karin had a baby, and this time it was Huldah. One night a Flying Hunt came from Muriah. They used Kersic now and then when the outlaw human population built up. Everybody in the village was slaughtered except me and little Huldah, We got away and found this place. It was a long time ago."

The God's slow voice said, "And when Huldah grew, you took her."

Isak started back as if struck tripping over his bundle and falling to the cave floor. "I didn't' I didn't!" Breathing thickly, he groped in the tangled furs. A sapphire blade gleamed in the meager firelight and approached the God's neck, trembling above the ornate knobbed catch of his golden torc.

"Alien bastard," the old man hissed. "For years I've dreamed of doing this."

"Do it," said the God.

Isak Henning grasped the handle of the knife in both scrawny hands and raised it high. "Hate you, hate you! You wrecked it, our chance for a new world! Now you're finished, too! We're all, " The aged body shook uncontrollably, arched in sudden spasm. Isak dropped the glass knife, covered his face with his hands, and began to sob.

Huldah came, tall, shining clean, naked, and wreathed with wild orange blossoms. "Silly Grandpa. I told you to go." She smiled at her God. "Grandpa tried to hurt me only once, when I was a little girl. I taught him better. Show the God. Grandpa."

The old man. still weeping, pulled aside his loincloth to show what an unwilling girl with Firvutag genes could do to one who tried to force her.

"Now go away. Leave us alone. Grandpa."

The old man crept off and Huldah went briefly to the back of the cave, then relumed to begin dressing her God. She handled him as easily as a doll. Lost in horror, he paid little attention.

Firvulag! She was Firvulag. He who had aspired so high had violated the greatest taboo between the two races. Firvulag! It explained her great stature and strength, her coarse vitality. And once, that mutilated wreck of a father-grandfather had been a brawny human male.

"Tonight will be the best full moon of all. since you're finally awake," she said. And after a little while, "You'll kill him for me, won't you? As soon as you're able?"

He could not reply. He realized now what garments she had put upon him, gambeson and trews of membranous bubbles caught in a mesh web, the padding for his glass armor And now the pieces themselves being strapped on, encasing legs and arms (except for the missing right gauntlet), thighs and shoulders She held up the breast-plate with its sun-face blazon all embossed in gold and rose-colored stones, then eased it on Last came the helmet, with its fierce glittering spikes and heraldic crest of a crouching, unearthly sun-bird. She left the visor open. and tucked wads of fur here and there beneath his head so that the awkward weight would not turn him awry.

He was in an agony of discomfort in spite of the padding The harness pressed into his supersensitive body like some fitted bed of nails. Humiliation, guilt, and hatred for her rose in him like a surge of magma The armor began to glow.

"Oh, wonderful!" she cried. "My wonderful God' God of Light and Beauty and Joy!"

She knelt, drawing aside the skirt of tassets, and began the act of worship. Her body was a soft mass of peach-colored luminosity and ebony shadows, and in spite of himself, he was coming alive to her.

"No!" For the first time, he heard his voice echo in the cavern's vault. He strained to lift his arms, to thrust away that adoring face His muscles were lead. The radiance grew.

"God of the Sun'"she sang. "0 my own God!" She mounted him, easily straddling the armor, a huge compelling softness devouring him. He was lost. and she was crying out in the sweet avalanche of blinding light, quenching the sun, blotting him out.

She fell away, senseless, and he hung in a scarlet void. I am dead, he thought, and damned.

He opened his eyes. The blood-colored glow dazzled himIt was coming from his own body. The glass armor flamed with it. An infinitude of tiny pain-impulses assaulted his skin and became a tingling that pulsed in rhythm to his thudding heart.

His left hand was on his breast. He raised it, And then the right, with even the wood suffused with brilliance and the crudely carved fingers flexing- He rolled away from the body of the woman, braced himself against the cave wall, and rose. The storm-sunrise light of him poured into every cranny of the cave. He saw a slight movement near the dark entrance and strode up to it.

It was the old man. cowering behind a rock. He had come back to spy after all.

Nodonn plucked Isak Henning up by the scruff and held him dangling. The laughter of triumphant Apollo was like the hurricane's roar. And then the gaunt shape was flung toward the rear of the cavern and crashed to the rock floor beside Huldah- The old bones snapped and there were piteous screams. The woman stirred, lifted her head. looked with stupid astonishment at the broken huddle, and then at him. She raised an arm to shield her eyes from his aura.

Nodonn came back to the two of them, his. armor chiming with every step. He picked up Isak in his gauntleted left hand and poised the glaring wooden one, tike a flaming claw. before me contorted old face.

"Now you will die," said the Battlemaster. "Both of you."

The old man began to laugh.

The claw affixed itself to the dome of his bald skull and began to twist. The laughter ascended to a shriek. "Kill her! Kill her! But before you do, took inside! Look..."

The high-pitched croak merged with other sounds. Nodonn wrung the head from its body and tossed both aside. Wideeyed, Huldah watched. There was no fear in her.

Look inside?

She sprawled in gory dust, a few smashed orange blossoms tangled in her hair. Nodonn exerted his deep farsense Hidden within that capacious Firvulag abdomen was a twelve-week fetus, half the length of his little finger. Perfect and strong A male.

"A son," he breathed. "At last."

But how? How. beneath this pitiless star's sublethal radiation that had mocked him for eight hundred years? He was the almighty Battlemasler. and yet he had begotten only poor weak things, of which only a few languid daughters still survived

He looked up at the shielding rock He looked down to the placid woman with her forbidden genes His race had resisted this mating to the brink of the Nightfall War in the remote Duat Galaxy But Gomnol, promoting his eugenic schemes, had atso urged miscegenation as a short-cut to operancy

Could it be?

His redacuve faculty reached gingerly into the tiny brain But the fetus was too unformed, and he too clumsy He would have to wait

"You will stay here." he told the woman, "and when my son is bom, rear him with the utmost care until I come for him "

"You will go away now?" Huldah whispered, stricken

"Yes "

Tears sprang from her eyes She slumped, shivering Nodonn picked up the rumpled fur coverlet and laid it over her shoulders She touched the hard, smooth glass of his gauntlet

"In the back of the cave." she said dully "Your weapon "

His cry was jubilant It was the Sword and its pack' Inoperable, he discovered by flicking a stud, but he would find a way to repair it He fastened its harness "And now farewell," he said to the woman "The child's name will be Thagdal Remember that "

"Dagdal," she said. weeping "Little Dag 0 God "

He emerged from the cave and exerted his farsight It was ominously dim, but he discerned a high promontory on the western shore that would suit his purpose, and he set out briskly Before he had gone more than a kilometer or two he slowed, then found himself staggering His convalescent mind and body were weakening rapidly from the tremendous earlier effort It was to be expected He would have to be prudent

His creativity, which in former days had called down lightning and moved mountains, now barely sufficed to cut a stout wooden staff for him to lean upon The mighty PK faculty that once levitated Fifty knights and their battle-chargers strained to augment his faltering leg muscles as he climbed the cliff

The sun cleared the ndge behind him and seemed to smite him between the shoulder blades Out of breath, feverish, he thrust the staff into the earth of the steep trail again and again and hauled himself along Dust from his shuffling feel hung about him in the still air The shrubs were pungent with resin Insects buzzed and the plates of his armor rang discordantly with the clumsy motions of the staff

Where am I going? Why am I here? Yes To call To send a telepathic message, telling the others that I live Climb high, above the thought-obstructing rock Otherwise the diminished farspeech would have no range

He gained the height at last, still m the midst of a dense thicket of maquis and twisted jumper It was easier to walk now, though, and there was a slight breeze Call to them the survivors of the Host, his blood brothers and sisters Call and wait for rescue

He came to the promontory's tip, to the open spot where the umbrella pines grew and ashes and charcoal from Huldah's last bonfire (the one celebrating his awakening) lay strewn on a burnt circle of soil And there he had his first view of the New Sea thdt had drowned his world, vast and blue, not milkwhite, as the shallow lagoon had been, extending to a misty termination on the far horizon and north and south to the limit of his mind's feeble eye

Nodonn clutched the staff with both the gauntleted hand and the wooden one as he began to fail On his knees, still transfixed by the scene, he groaned aloud The memory came back the gigantic wave overwhelming them, the ones of the drowning ones And echoing over chaos, laughter as harsh as a raven's croak

He rested under one of the scraggly pines and managed to remove his armor Almost miraculously, he found tiny straw bemes on plants creeping among the rocks and gathered enough to assuage both thirst and hunger Then he crept to the brink of the headland and summoned his farsight again

North: Formerly, Kersic had had salt flats stretching from its northernmost rocks to the continental scarp east of VarMesk, a small city whose proximity to soda-ash beds made it a center of glass production- Now all the flats were inundated and Kersic was a true island.

South: More salt water, all the way to Africa, In that direction had been one of the deepest parts of the old lagoon.

East: The interior of Kersic, rugged and forested.

West: Aven ...

Oh, Goddess, yes. There it lay, dimly perceived. The peninsula shrunken, salt water creeping far up the valleys, and Muriah broken and silent and overgrown with jungle, while waves lapped at the cracked steps of the Thagdal's palace. The plantations deserted, the antelopes unharvesled, the chalikos and hellads reverted to the wild, and a timorous remnant of domesticated ramas scuttling about the ruins, waiting in vain for their overlords' commands to reanimate their cold little torcs What was left? Who was left? What should he do?

The questions floated in his brain as crazily as the specks of goldleaf in a stirred goblet of starwater liqueur. A roaring of blood filled his ears and pulsating colored masses swam across his blurred vision.