by Julian May
(The less morbidly poetic decided that the fog was a meteorological freak, perhaps a belated consequent of the Flood refilling the Empty Sea. Ah ... but they had not been there in Goriah, watching the duel at dawn from the battlements of the Castle of Glass!)
The fog rolled over Armorica from the Strait of Redon to the dense jungles of the Upper Laar, south beyond the Gulf of Aquitaine and the marshes of Bordeaux. It brimmed the Paris Basin swamps and the Hercynian Forest and flowed eastward to the Vosges, the Jura, the very foothills of the High Helvetides. By afternoon its south-moving front had poured through the Cantabrian passes into central Koneyn. Paradoxically growing in volume, it buried the low Sierra Morena, seeped into the embayment of the Guadalquivir, and only halted at the snow-dusted Betic crest, lapping the slopes of Veleta and Alcazaba and blasted, empty Mulhacen.
Bland, energy sapping, it masked the sun and stifled sound and left the vegetation dripping sadly. Forest animals hid. Chilled birds and insects slept. The great herds of the Pliocene steppes crowded together on the heights, nostrils quivering and eyes wide and ears pricked, paralyzed because their senses gave no input but misty uncertainty.
It was the day the Nonborn King had his great victory. The day Queen Mercy-Rosmar and Nodonn Battlemaster died.
***
In the aftermath, the King returned to his castle, carrying the trophy.
The knights and retainers came rushing to meet him, exultant and mind-shouting, eager to proclaim the triumph. But they fell back dismayed when he dropped the silver hand in the courtyard and stood there silent and empty-eyed, his mind guarded—yet clearly changed in some terrible way, full to the bursting point rather than drained, as might have been expected.
Those who were closest to him, the great heroes Bleyn and Alberonn, prevailed on him to withdraw from the tumult. But he would not go to his own bedchamber (it was not until much later that they knew why), and so Bleyn said, "Let us take you then to my apartments, where my lady Tirone Heartsinger will attempt to help you with her healing power."
The King went with them and did not resist as they removed his dulled glass armor and laid him on a cot in a secluded retiring room. There were no bodily wounds; but even though he maintained his mental shield, they were aware of how swollen his psyche was, how it threatened to overflow and escape from the small body that confined it.
"What has happened?" Tirone asked him, fearful and overawed. But he would not reply. She said, "If I am to help you, High King, you must open to me at least a little, and tell me what manner of strange disability afflicts you."
He only shook his head.
Tirone made a helpless gesture to her husband and Alberonn. She said to the King, "Would you prefer that we leave you, then? Is there nothing we can do?"
He spoke at last. "Not for me. But take care of our people and oversee the mopping-up operations. I'll rest here. At twenty-one hundred hours, I'll deal with the prisoners. Farspeak the other High Table members and tell them to be ready."
"Surely that can wait," Alberonn protested.
"No," said the King.
The three of them prepared to go. Tirone said, "I will remain outside in case you need me. The best thing you can do now is sleep."
The Nonborn King smiled at her. "It would be best ... but the two of them won't let me."
They did not understand, but only touched him with reassurance and loyal deference and then went away, thinking that he was alone.
***
The relief column crept along the Great South Road above Sayzorask, twenty wagons loaded with contraband Milieu matériel, 200 Tanu knights, an equal number of humans belonging to the King's Own Elite Golds, and 500 gray-torcs serving in the capacity of men-at-arms, teamsters, lackeys, and logistics personnel. The travelers without farsight (and this included most of the human golds, who had received their tores as honorariums from the King, irrespective of any meta-psychic latency) had their vision limited to a little over two meters, a scant chaliko length. Not that you had much of a chance of seeing the fellows ahead of you, not with the caravan in extended order the way it had been all morning, with each pair of riders or wagon with its escort seeming to clump along in damp isolation. The column was strung out to minimize problems with the pack of guardian bear-dogs. Ever since they had departed Sayzorask the willful brutes had been acting up—spooking the stock by getting underfoot, slavering and yowling and rolling their yellow eyes and resisting attempts by the coercers to force them back into their proper stations on the flank.
"Bad ions in the air," the gold-tore Yoshimitsu Watanabe diag nosed. "The fog's made the amphicyons hypersensitive to metapsychic vibes. I can almost feel something myself lurking on the mental fringes ... I had a dog back in Colorado, a forty-five-kilo Akita who used to go backpacking with me in the Rockies. Acted like this sometimes when really foul weather was moving in. Berzerko, you know? Primitive dogs, Akitas. I learned to listen up good when old Inu told me to get out of the high country."
"Hey—you think we're in for a storm, chief?" Sunny Jim Quigley, driving a huge-wheeled Conestoga with the precious infrared spotter and its power supply and auxiliary robotics, was nothing but a hooded silhouette. Only his voice was clear, amplified telepathically by his gray tore.
"Storm?" Yosh shrugged. "Who can say? My experience with Pliocene climate is limited. You're the native."
"The Paris swamps were nothin' like this here," Jim said. "Half a desert on these slopes 'bove the Rhone, jungle in the bottoms. But it sure's hell got cold of a sudden. Could be the rainy season'll come early,"
"That's all we'd bloody well need," grunted Vilkas, who rode a chaliko to the right of the wagon. "As if it hasn't been tough enough hauling this damn equipment all the way from Goriah overland. By the time we get it to Bardelask, the damn spooks'll be thicker on the ground than roaches in a garbage dump! I've seen it all before and I know. The Firvulag plan to pick off the little cities first. That's why they hit Burask—why they're sniping at Bardelask and putting the blame on renegade Howlers. Once the little cities fall, they'll make a move on vulnerable big ones like Roniah. And His Exalted Shininess can't do a friggerty thing about it!"
"Aw, Vilkas," Jim demurred. "The King's sending us, i'n't he? We get this IR spotterscope set up in Bardelask, ain'no spook gone be able t' sneak up under illusion-cover. We got 'nuff good stuff in the other wagons t' fix Lady Armida's people so's the Famorel mob won't dare poke snout outa the Alps. Ain'at right, chief?"
"That's King Aiken-Lugonn's strategy." Yosh guided his chaliko closer to the wagon, frowning. His golden tore was warm beneath the clammy mastodon-hide plates of his nodowa, the throat-piece of his ornate samurai-style armor. He could "hear" the Tanu members of the column whispering anxiously among themselves on their private mental wavelength, incomprehensible to the human golds. What was happening?
Vilkas was still beefing bitterly. "If the King is so worried about Bardelask, why didn't he fly this junk to the city himself—or have that fat sod Sullivan-Tonn do it—instead of sending us on this three-week slog?"
"What good the spotterscope be, 'thout Yoshi-sama to set 'er up?" Sunny Jim asked reasonably. "And the weapons 'thout Lord Anket and Lord Raimo and the elites who know how t'use 'em? Shoo-oo!"
Yoshi beware! came Anket's mind-shout. Bear-dogs crazy! Maybe sabrecats—maybe Foe—maybe Tanaknowswhat—
"Heads up!" the samurai cried to his companions, and at the same moment Vilkas broke into vicious swearing as his chaliko reared. Something big and black hurtled out of the soup. A single amphicyon zigged to avoid the claws of Vilkas' chaliko and disappeared under the bed of the high-wheeled wagon. Another pair, whoofing and shambling, approached the wagon from Yosh's side, intent on using the same shelter. A bedlam of howls and snarling broke out. The four giraffids in the hitch plunged and squealed. Beneath the lurching vehicle the bear-dogs, weighing nearly 200 kilos each, thrashed and fought and banged against the enormous wheels.
"Look out!" Jim yelled, hauling back on the
reins. "We'll get up-sot!"
Vilkas jabbed futilely at the furry bodies with the butt of his long lance. His curses were lost in the tumult. Jim clung for his life as the wagon heaved like a lifeboat on the high seas and the valuable cargo thumped the side panels.
Two Tanu coercers and an operant human gold, their glass armor glowing fuzzy blue in the swirling fog, galloped up on their chalikos. But their mental efforts were unavailing in the face of the bear-dogs' frenzy.
Move back! Yosh ordered. He unsheathed his Husqvarna and now thumbed it to widest angle. The stun-gun sizzled, sweeping the ground with its beam. There were throttled yelps and moans. One massive shape lashed out in a final paroxysm, shattering the right front wheel of the Conestoga.
Suddenly, it was very quiet.
A tall form, luminous violet, the trappings of his mount shining with the same eerie light, materialized out of featureless opacity. It was Ochal the Harper, grandson of the ruler of Bardelask and leader of the relief column.
He silenced Yosh's attempts at explanation and the excuses of the coercer knights. "I have found the source of the madness—and the sense of unease that has plagued us all morning." He pointed to the east. "Out there. On the opposite bank of the Rhone. Behold!"
His powerful farsense projected a vision. For the shorter-sighted people in the train, it was as if the mysterious fog had abruptly become transparent, and the bottomland forest beyond the river as well.
Pouring out of one of the steep tributary valleys that formed corridors into the Alps came an army, arrogant in strength. It quick-marched through the ghostly farseen jungle casting no shadows, its members dark and numberless as a horde of predatory ants, unidentifiable until Ochal's mental eye magnified them and proved them to be Firvulag. They were some four kilometers away, not generating illusion-camouflage as was their usual custom, perhaps trusting in the fog to conceal them—or perhaps not caring whether or not they were detected. They came, giants and dwarfs and medium-sized warriors clad in obsidian battle-dress, bearing their traditional arms and holding standards draped with festoons of gilded skulls. As they marched they hummed a war chant with notes far beyond the threshold of audibility for Tanu or humans.
But the bear-dogs heard.
The track that the Firvulag army followed led straight into the Rhone bottomland, intersecting the narrow east-bank trail to Bardelask, not half a day's march upstream.
There were at least 8000 warriors.
"It's the main host of Mimee of Famorel," said Ochal, letting the terrible picture fade. "Now the raids and the pretense of Howler responsibility for the outrages committed against my grandmother's city are at an end. The Little People violate the Armistice openly! Doubtless the death of Nodonn Battlemaster served to embolden them."
One of the Tanu coercers said, "This is the opening offensive in that conflict that certain of us feared to be inevitable. I cannot speak its name! But we all know Celadeyr's prediction. Tana have mercy!"
Ochal said, "I have already farspoken Lady Armida. My kinfolk, although hopelessly outnumbered, will defend the city to the end."
"Shoo!" breathed Jim. "Never saw so many spooks in my life!"
"Compared to the army that hit Burask, it's a skeleton crew," Vilkas growled. "But it'll do. Bardelask's doomed—and the best damn brewery in the Pliocene along with it! Now we'll drink nothing but plonk and jungle juice."
Yosh sat slumped in the saddle. "Well, Ochal—our infrared eyeball system and load of Milieu arms aren't worth a mousefart to Bardy now."
The farsensor leader nodded grim agreement. He addressed the entire column on the command mode:
Companions! There is no way we can reach my home city before the Firvulag do. They would surely fall upon us as we attempted to cross the Rhone to the Bardelask docks. I have bespoken the King, pleading with him to allow us to die with my Exalted Grandmother. But for strategic reasons, he has forbidden it—
"God save Aiken Drum!" muttered Vilkas.
—so we must regroup, then return at once to Sayzorask. Our King has told me that the futuristic equipment we carry must be safeguarded from the Foe at all costs. We will wait in Sayzorask for his orders...
"And with our luck," came Vilkas' sotto voce snarl, "we'll end up marching on Famorel itself."
Ignoring him, Ochal addressed Yosh. "Have this wagon repaired as quickly as possible while I inspect the rest of the column. There's small chance of the Foe crossing the river to engage us, but we must not present an overly tempting target by lingering. They doubtless know that we're here—and they may suspect what we carry."
Yosh gave the Tanu salute. Ochal the Harper beckoned mentally to the waiting coercer knights, and the glowing purple shape and the three blue ones faded away into the fog. Their departure revealed how much darker it had become. Sunset was less than an hour away and the miasma seemed thicker than ever.
Yosh slipped the Husky back into its sheath. "Well, let's get on with it. Unpack a spotlight, Vilkas, and we'll study the damage."
As the Lithuanian complied, Jim slid cautiously down and soothed the four helladotheria in the team. They stamped their feet and swiveled their tufted ears. When the solar-powered lantern went on, Jim hunkered down and inspected the broken wheel. "Too bad we can't make our armor glow from mind-power, like Lord Ochal an' the other op'rants. Be handy in a sitch-ashun like this."
"You don't glow unless you got the power," said Vilkas. "The psychoactive microbes sandwiched in the glass armor laminations don't light up for grunts like you and me." He paused, then added pointedly, "Or for golds like Lord Yoshimitsu, who aren't genuine latents."
"But who nevertheless earned their privileges," Yosh said.
"If the King had kept his promise, all of us humans would be wearing gold!" The Lithuanian's voice was bitter.
Jim looked up at Vilkas and winked. "Hey—I like my gray tore just fine. Specially on lonely nights!" To Yosh he said, "Chief, we gone need a PK-head to lift this sumbitch wagon outa the dirt. A human—not some Tanu 'ristocat who'll screw up. And you'd best bespeak ol' Maggers to bring us a spare wheel."
Yosh nodded. "Get the team unhitched. I'll ask Lord Raimo to give us a hand."
He guided his chaliko back behind the wagon a few meters, dismounted, and said, "Matte, Kiku. Good girl." The great animal was like a dappled statue in the vaporous dusk. Standing on tiptoe, Yosh opened a saddlebag and took out the kawa-nawa, a stout rope joined to a set of wickedly sharp gang hooks.
Returning to the wagon, he summoned Vilkas and indicated the stunned bear-dogs still bunched under the canted bed. "We'll have to drag these brutes away and finish them off. One of those hellads that Jim's uncoupling can do the hauling. But you'll have to crawl under and make fast."
Vilkas groaned. His tans had been fresh that morning and his bronze and green-glass cuirass and greaves freshly polished. For an instant, he hesitated, a mutinous protest on the tip of his tongue. And then he felt the faintest pulse of electricity in the metal at his throat.
"Yes, Yoshi-sama."
"Thank you, Vilkas." Yosh turned away to deal with the hellad while Vilkas dropped to his knees in the bloody dust and crept under the Conestoga with the hook end of the rope. The stunned and badly slashed brutes were all in a tangle. One had voided with the shock of the stun-beam. Retching, Vilkas sank the big barbs into the creature's shoulder.
"Ready?" Yosh sang out.
"Ready." Without the slave-tore's amplification, the Lithuanian's reply would have been inaudible. Fortunately for him, his samurai master was unable to decipher the deeper nuances of the telepathic message.
Vilkas hauled himself out from under the wagon as the rope tightened and the first amphicyon body began to move. Standing, he cursed with revulsion. Bloody mud and excrement stained his arms and legs.
Jim tried to sympathize. "Wot th' hey, guy—leastways we ain' fightin' for our lives upriver at Bardy-Town. Things could be lots worse."
"They will be. Just wait!"
Yosh reappeared out
of the fog leading the draft hellad. "Monku, monku, monku," he chided, handing the hooks back to Vilkas. "That's enough bitching. Down you go again, my man. I'll program extra goodies for you on the tore tonight to compensate."
"Thank you, Yoshi-sama." Vilkas' manner was completely civil. He ducked back under the wagon, took a firm grip on the kawa-nawa, and drove the daggerlike points into the throat of the next bear-dog.
2
THE CONVOY of fourplex modular ATVs, its number reduced to fifteen after the disaster with the freight hauler back in the Rif Mountains, crept along in the brassy African sunset enveloped in dust, ion-defiant midges, and anticipatory elation.
The Mediterranean rim was less than 90 kilometers away. And the Great Waterfall.
For more than two months, ever since they had dared to leave the camp on the Moroccan shore to which they had been diverted by their elders, the runaway adult children of Ocala Island had fled northeast by north toward that landmark that had somehow become symbolic of their guilt and daring. They had crossed more than 1500 kilometers of Pliocene wilderness—swamps and jungles, waterless desert, and most recently the Rif Range—and now rolled through the sere hills and scrub thickets covering the upper extremity of the broken Gibraltar Isthmus. Logic had told the expedition's leader, Hagen Remillard, to bear farther east on a more direct course to the flooded Mediterranean Basin, which they would have to cross in order to rendezvous with Cloud in Afaliah. But logic faltered before the irresistible glamour of the Waterfall. How could they pass it by? They had shared in its creation when they joined minds with their parents and helped mad Felice admit the western ocean waters into the Empty Sea. To view it was a psychological imperative.
The five youngsters of Ocala's meager third generation, called the Cubs, were even more eager than their parents. When a towering column of vapor signaling the cascade finally appeared on the horizon, the little ones dissolved into a frenzy of fidgeting. It became evident that none of them would be able to sleep that night without first beholding the marvel; so Hagen decided to forgo the usual sunset bivouac and press on. There would be plenty of moonlight to illumine the scene.