by Julian May
Claude, Richard, Amerie, and Felice fled deep into the Vosges. Eventually they were contacted by a ragtag group of free outlaw humans, fugitives from Tanu settlements, who called themselves Lowlives. The Lowlife leader was none other than Madame Angélique Guderian, former keeper of the time-gate and the ultimate author of Pliocene humanity's degradation. She wore a golden tore, the gift of the Firvulag, who had formed a shaky alliance with the Lowlives against their mortal foe, the Tanu.
A great manhunt had been mounted by the Tanu after the prisoner revolt. Basil Wimborne and most of his contingent were recaptured and sent to Finiah. Its city-lord, Velteyn, led a Flying Hunt himself over the Vosges in search of the other escapees; but they were safe with Madame and her Lowlives, listening incredulously to the old woman's scheme for freeing humanity from the Tanu yoke, which would utilize the rather reluctant cooperation of the exotic Firvulag.
Hundreds of kilometers east of the Rhine River lay the so-called Ship's Grave. There the titanic space-going organism who had carried both Tanu and Firvulag from the Duat Galaxy to our own had plunged to Earth, creating a huge crater. Tanu and Firvulag passengers in the Ship, led by its spouse, a woman named Brede, had escaped from the dying organism in small flying machines before it impacted. Later the two groups of exotics had left the flyers parked around the rim of the crater after their two greatest heroes, Shining Lugonn of the Tanu and Sharn the Atrocious of the Firvulag, fought a ritual battle in honor of the defunct Ship. Ceremoniously entombed within one of the flyers— which were presumed to be still at the crater after a thousand years—was the body of Lugonn, together with his laserlike weapon, the Spear.
Madame proposed to lead an expedition of Lowlives to the Ship's Grave crater and retrieve this Spear for use against the very Tanu who held it sacred. And if the flyers were still operational, as seemed likely, the expedition would attempt to bring one back to participate in a joint Lowlife-Firvulag attack on Finiah, a Tanu stronghold.
After many vicissitudes, this first phase of Madame Guderian's great plan for the liberation of Pliocene humanity was successful. The Tanu were forced to abandon Finiah, thus losing their only barium mine, which had produced an element vital in the making of all tores. Felice, who showed increasing symptoms of a severe psychosis, obtained a golden tore for herself from the ruins of Finiah. The mental amplifier unlocked the stupendous powers of coercion, psychokinesis, and creativity that had been latent in her brain, and fueled the girl's fierce desire for revenge upon the Tanu.
The next phase of Madame's plan involved an infiltration of the tore factory in the Tanu capital, Muriah, and a parallel operation that had as its objective the permanent closing of the time-gate.
Madame and ten other conspirators, including Felice, Claude, Sister Amerie, and Basil Wimborne—who had been rescued during the fall of Finiah—now set out on a long trip south. They took with them the laserlike Spear of Lugonn. Its energies had been totally discharged during the Finiah operation, but they hoped that their clever Group Green companion, Aiken Drum, would be able to recharge it when they appealed to him for assistance down in the Tanu capital.
***
Aiken—together with Elizabeth, Bryan, Stein, and the other privileged captives—had encountered an utterly different face of the Many-Colored Land upon arriving in Muriah some weeks past. They were presented to the Tanu aristocracy at a lavish feast, where they were treated at first like honored guests instead of slaves.
Elizabeth was told by Thagdal, the King, that she would first be initiated into Tanu ways by Brede Shipspouse, the enigmatic guardian of both exotic races. When this was accomplished, she and the King would found a new dynasty of torcless, fully operant Tanu-human hybrids. (Queen Nontusvel seemed entirely agreeable to this plan, in spite of the fact that her own large brood of powerful adult children would undoubtedly be overshadowed by Elizabeth's offspring.)
Bryan the anthropologist was ordered to make a study of the impact of humanity upon the Tanu socioeconomy. King Thagdal believed that human genes and human innovation had been a boon to the Tanu, and he expected Bryan's survey to vindicate his policy encouraging interbreeding and the adoption of certain human inventions. A minority Tanu faction, headed by Nodonn Battlemaster, the most powerful son of Nontusvel and heir presumptive, maintained that the exotic culture was being poisoned by human influences.
As the "welcoming" banquet progressed, it became clear that a grim fate was in store for Stein Oleson, the brawny ex-driller who had been befriended by the trickster youth, Aiken Drum. Stein was put up for auction as a kind of gladiator; to save him from certain death, Aiken himself impudently put in his own bid for Stein. The Tanu throng was stunned when the head of the Farsensor Guild, Mayvar Kingmaker, not only endorsed Aiken's bid but also took him for her protégé. Mayvar was well aware that the young man, who wore a golden suit all covered with pockets, possessed enormous latent mindpowers that were only beginning to come fully operant as a result of the triggering action of his silver tore.
Deeply shaken by a glimpse into Aiken's mind and by Mayvar's embrace of the youth (she was not called "kingmaker" for nothing), Thagdal accepted Aiken's bid for Stein. After a period of training, Aiken would be obliged to rid the kingdom of a certain Firvulag monster, Delbaeth.
In the weeks that followed, Aiken was tutored by Mayvar in the exercise of his fast-developing metafunctions. He became fully operant without a tore—although this fact was concealed from the other Tanu by Mayvar. He successfully disposed of Delbaeth and, with Stein as his henchman, became cautiously allied with the human President of the Coercer Guild, Sebi-Gomnol, who had plans of his own for advancing human domination of the Tanu kingdom.
The unforced anthropologist, Bryan Grenfell, carried out his cul tural survey—but scarcely paid attention to the import of the growing body of data, because he was once more under the spell of his long-lost love, Mercy Lamballe. This woman had arrived in the Pliocene shortly before Group Green. A latent metapsychic with extraordinary creative powers, Mercy had become the latest consort of the formidable Nodonn Battlemaster and was completely converted to the Tanu cause. Nodonn and his siblings of the Host of Nontusvel encouraged Mercy to entice Bryan, so that the anthropologist's survey could be used against the King and Gomnol.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth was under the protection of the mysterious Brede Shipspouse, after having been subjected to inept attacks by Nodonn and the Host, who saw her as a dynastic threat. Safe inside Brede's room without doors, a sophisticated force-field secure against physical and mental penetration, Elizabeth confided her despair and hopelessness to the exotic woman. The Shipspouse, maternally concerned with both the Tanu and Firvulag races, perceived Elizabeth as one who might lead them (as Brede apparently could not) out of their barbarous battle-culture into a truly civilized society of the mind. Elizabeth declined this role of spiritual motherhood. She did, however, use her Milieu training to lift Brede into metapsychic operancy, and the two briefly enjoyed a limited Unity. This was broken when Brede insisted that she foresaw Elizabeth assuming the guardian role and the human woman violently rejected the responsibility.
***
Around the beginning of October, the entire Many-Colored Land prepared for the annual ritual war, the Grand Combat, by means of a month-long Truce. Up north, Madame Guderian and her band of saboteurs made use of the peace to implement their plans. Madame and Claude, the old paleontologist, went into hiding close by the time-gate. They planned to wait until the others—including Felice, Sister Amerie, Basil, and a Native American leader named Peopeo Moxmox Burke—reached Muriah and readied a strike against the tore factory inside Coercer Guild headquarters. The attacks against time-gate and factory would be made simultaneously.
Felice and the other southbound saboteurs at first hoped to use the Spear to destroy the factory. They summoned Aiken Drum to their hiding place and gave him the weapon, which he promised to recharge and return to them. Actually, Aiken had no intention of aiding his former compatriots. Encouraged by
both Mayvar and Gomnol, he aspired to become King of the Many-Colored Land by defeating Nodonn in the upcoming Grand Combat. He warned his confederate Gomnol to protect the tore factory against the saboteurs; then he flew north, disguised as a bird, in order to thwart Claude and Madame's attempt to close the time-gate. In this he failed. Sacrificing themselves, the elderly couple carried a warning back in time to the Milieu authorities, and the time-gate operation was suspended.
The saboteurs infiltrating the tore factory were surprised by a force of Tanu knights, members of the Host of Nontusvel, who had been sent by Nodonn. Of the surviving humans, Felice was turned over to Culluket the Interrogator for torture, while Sister Amerie, Chief Burke, and Basil were thrown into a dungeon to await death during the Grand Combat. The human Lord Coercer, Gomnol, was mind-blasted to death by the Host in a subterfuge, and the blame was put on Felice.
***
As the time of the Grand Combat approached, a number of crises reached a critical stage. Aiken, deprived of his powerful ally, Gomnol, found himself endangered by Stein. The big crust driller had been imprisoned with Sukey, now his wife, and his sanity was beginning to totter because of the unhealthy effect of the gray tore he wore. There was a chance that Stein might inadvertently reveal that Aiken conspired against the Tanu.
Resisting the temptation to kill his friend, Aiken asked Mayvar to get Stein and Sukey out of Muriah, beyond range of the Host's mental snooping. Mayvar agreed, then went to a meeting of the clandestine Tanu Peace Faction. This group hoped that Aiken would succeed in his bid for the kingship and bring a new era of peace and civilization to the Many-Colored Land. Among the peacelovers was Minanonn the Heretic, once Tanu Battlemaster, who had been forced into exile deep in the Pyrénées.
Brede Shipspouse let Elizabeth leave the room without doors when she saw that the human metapsychic was determined to live a life free of responsibility. Elizabeth agreed to take Stein and Sukey away with her in her three-place hot-air balloon. She awaited arrival of the pair on a mountaintop above Muriah. Creyn the redactor fetched them from prison—but he could not help bringing Felice, too, whom he had found unconscious and near death in an adjoining cell, in hopes that Elizabeth would give up her place in the balloon to the tortured young athlete.
Elizabeth was trapped by her own altruism, even though convinced that the Shipspouse had planned this to forestall her escape. Finally, Elizabeth sent Felice, Stein, and Sukey away in the balloon, and she returned to the room without doors, where she withdrew into a fiery mental cocoon that isolated her from Brede and all other minds.
***
The time of the Grand Combat had come. Virtually the entire population of Tanu and Firvulag—together with large numbers of human slaves, assembled on the White Silver Plain below Muriah for the ceremonies and the ritual war. Aiken was appointed by Mayvar to be a leader in the Combat; he had attracted many adherents among the Tanu and hybrid warriors. In a preliminary contest, Mercy overcame Aluteyn Craftsmaster to become the new President of the Creator Guild.
Hundreds of kilometers west of the White Silver Plain, the three escaping balloonists were enacting a drama that would ultimately affect the fate of the unsuspecting combatants.
In his torture of Felice, Culluket the Interrogator had unwittingly duplicated a drastic mind-altering technique that Elizabeth had used on Brede to raise her to operancy; now Felice had gone operant, too, and no longer needed a tore to exercise her metapsychic powers. These powers—at least the destructive aspects of psychokinesis and creativity—were greater than those of any other person in the world. The girl's incipient psychosis had similarly burgeoned under the torture; her thirst for revenge against the Tanu was now inextricably merged with a darker sadomasochistic element of her sick mind. Compelling Stein, the former planet-crust driller, to help her, Felice began to blast the narrow Gibraltar isthmus with bolts of psychoenergy. She intended to admit the Atlantic waters into the nearly empty basin of the Pliocene Mediterranean and drown the Grand Combat participants.
As the madwoman smote the earth with her mindbolts, the rocky barrier neared the breaking point. But Felice weakened before the job was complete. In her extremity of hatred she prayed for help from whatever powers of darkness might exist—and the assistance came from somewhere. A final titanic burst of psychoenergy opened the Gibraltar Gate and a cascade of seawater thundered into the dry Mediterranean, heading toward the White Silver Plain below the Tanu capital of Muriah.
Felice was flung from the balloon by the final concussion. Quite insane, she assumed the shape of a monstrous raven. Stein and Sukey soared away on the stormwinds and ultimately landed in a remote part of France.
The prescient Brede Shipspouse knew about the catastrophe. She appeared to Amerie, Basil, and Chief Burke in their prison cell, healed them, and took them to a room within the Redactor Guild complex, high on the Mount of Heroes above Murjah. There Elizabeth lay in her self-induced coma. Brede instructed the trio to guard Elizabeth, "the most important person in the world," and to wait until the following morning, when they would know what had to be done.
***
Meanwhile, the Grand Combat was reaching its climax. For the first time in forty years, the Firvulag were holding their own. The stubbornly conservative Little People had previously refused to emulate human tactics, as the Tanu had done; but the Firvulag-Lowlife victory at Finiah had opened the eyes of their generals, Sham and Ayfa, and inspired them to innovation. In the mêlée phase of Combat scoring, the Firvulag were only slightly behind the Tanu. The finale of the ritual war, in which individual champions met hand to hand, would decide the victor.
The rivalry between Aiken and Nodonn divided the loyalty of the Tanu forces. At a war feast prior to the Heroic Encounters, Nodonn tried to discredit Aiken by producing Bryan Grenfell and the latter's adverse study of humanity's impact upon the Many-Colored Land. This aggravated the split between traditionalist Tanu and those loyal to Aiken. The Encounters were won by Firvulag heroes in an upset. Only a victory by Aiken over ogreish Firvulag general, Pallol One-Eye, could save the day for the Tanu. Aiken told Nodonn and the traditionalists that he could lick the monster if he were allowed to fight in a human way. This was finally permitted. Aiken conquered Pallol and the Tanu were declared overall winners of the Grand Combat.
Heartbroken and bitter over their narrow loss, most of the Firvulag left the White Silver Plain. Only their royalty remained for the award ceremony and its intriguing anticlimax, a duel between Aiken and Nodonn for the battlemastership (and ultimately the kingship) of the Tanu. Virtually the entire flower and chivalry of the Tanu were gathered as witnesses. Brede herself was there to see Mayvar Kingmaker bestow upon Aiken his Tanu name: He was called Lugonn, after the Shining Hero who had fallen at the Ship's Grave a thousand years before, and he was invested with the sacred Spear, now recharged and ready for use again. Nodonn took up a similar weapon, the Sword, which had once belonged to a Firvulag hero.
The two rivals squared off and began their duel just as the cataclysmic flood from the encroaching Atlantic swept over the White Silver Plain.
The mind-cries of the thousands of drowning people roused Elizabeth, and she and her three human companions looked out upon devastated Muriah and a submerged White Silver Plain. Not all of the combatants and spectators of the last Grand Combat died, however. Most of the Firvulag, already en route home in their boats, survived. Some Tanu were cast ashore by the flood wave or managed to use their metapsychic powers to save themselves. Humans and hybrids in fair numbers swam to safety. Wounded Tanu knights who had retired to Redactor House, together with many members of that guild who attended them, were secure from the floodwaters. Aluteyn Craftsmaster and a rabble of craven knights floated to safety aboard the vessel in which they were to have been incinerated. Aiken Drum rode the flood inside a ceremonial cauldron and later rescued Mercy.
But more than half of the glorious Tanu, who were especially vul nerable to immersion, perished. Profoundly shocked and torn from her self-
centered despair, Elizabeth finally undertook the guardian rôle that the dead Brede bequeathed to her, and coordinated the evacuation of Muriah with the help of Chief Burke, Basil, Sister Amerie, and the powerful redactors Dionket and Creyn.
***
The Postdiluvium saw an entirely new balance of power take form in the Many-Colored Land. Sharn and Ayfa became co-monarchs of the Firvulag and inaugurated unprecedented reforms, including the domestication of animals, the utilization of contraband Milieu weapons, and experiments in metaconcerted mind-offensives. The Firvulag throne patched up a longstanding schism with the mutant Howlers, granted them the franchise, and encouraged the Howler lord Sugoll to resettle the abandoned Firvulag city of Nionel.
After leading the multiracial band of refugees from Muriah to safety, Elizabeth retired to a stronghold on Black Crag in southern France to meditate on her new rôle and its implications. Creyn the Redactor was among those who chose to attend her. Dionket and certain peace-loving Tanu, Firvulag, and humans went into the remote Pyrénées to join Minanonn the Heretic.
Felice, now completely insane, lived in an eyrie on Mount Mulhacén in southern Spain and frequently shape-shifted into the form of a giant raven. Her cave contained an immense trove of scavenged golden tores and also the Spear of Lugonn, which she had retrieved from the deepening New Sea. Felice was obsessed with the idea of finding Culluket the Interrogator, whom she called her "Beloved." She also felt persecuted by the "devils" who had helped her breach the Gibraltar Gate.
Felice's devil voices were by no means imaginary. Far away in North America lay the Ocala Island settlement of the Metapsychic Rebellion survivors. Twenty-seven years earlier, the fleeing Rebels had forced their way into Madame Guderian's establishment and passed through the time-gate into the Pliocene, taking with them a great store of equipment. When their leader, Marc Remillard, discovered that Europe was under the control of exotics, he withdrew beyond the Atlantic.